Hellspawn (Book 7): Hellspawn Aftermath

by Fleet, Ricky

Emma was hesitant, but the young girl returned his beaming grin. Taking her beneath the arms, he flipped her around and on to his shoulders in one fluid movement. She giggled as the dried leaves tickled her skin.

  “I like your beard. It’s like Father Christmas. Except his is white. And not full of stuff,” she said.

  “Why, thank you. I like yours too.”

  Tara giggled. “I don’t have a beard, silly.”

  “Are you sure?” he teased. “Keep your head down, ok? This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

  “I don’t have anything to hold on to.”

  “Use my hair if you have to. I need my hands free.”

  “Are you sure? Won’t it hurt?”

  “I’m tough. I can take it,” he replied, reaching up to pat her knee.

  “I like your tattoo,” said Tara, pointing at the small blue lizard on his left hand.

  “I like yours too.”

  “I don’t have any tattoos. I’m too small, silly.”

  “You’re not twenty-one?”

  “I’m six. I’ll be seven in forty nine days.”

  “That’s a great memory you have there,” Ian praised. “Is everyone ready? We’ve got about half a mile of rough terrain to cover. I suggest the smaller kids go on shoulders too.”

  “What if we come across some zombies? We’ll need our hands free,” said Winston.

  “I’ll take care of any we find. I keep my forest clear for the most part,” he replied, unsheathing a pair of combat knives.

  “Until now,” said DB.

  “Yeah, dude. Until now. I need a sign that says; ‘Trespassers Will Be Shot’.”

  “The dead won’t pay much attention to that.”

  “No, but humans might,” Ian said, frowning at the ragtag group. “Let’s move.”

  Chapter 29

  “Here we are,” said Ian, lifting Tara from his shoulders before gently sitting her down.

  “Where’s here?” asked DB. “It looks exactly the same as the last mile of woods we’ve run through.”

  Ian smiled. “That’s the entire point, dude. Watch.”

  Moving to an unexceptional patch of dead bracken, he crouched down and retrieved a short section of rope. Pulling on the cord, a camouflaged trap door opened up.

  “Ta-da!”

  “A bunker? That’s where you live?” marvelled Winston.

  “Hardly a bunker. More a hole in the ground. But it does the job, now follow me.”

  Scooping up the small child, he hurried down the steps and disappeared. Jonesy looked to DB. Irish looked at Greasy. Lots of questions flowed without words. Irish finally shrugged and reached for the crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  “Maybe it’s time to quit,” said Greasy, snatching them from his hand.

  “Whoa! What’s gotten into you?”

  “The smell can carry for half a mile. You might as well leave a sign pointing down to let them know where dinner is.”

  Irish tensed, looking like he would attack his friend for the stolen prize. Letting out a deep sigh, his shoulders dropped and all aggression fled. “I’m sorry, mate, I don’t want to put anyone in danger. I’ll try and find some gum when we hit the next pharmacy.”

  “And until then?”

  “I’ll do my best to not kill everyone.”

  “Good man,” said Greasy, patting him on the back as he descended.

  The darkness below was nearly absolute. Once Jonesy moved beyond the entrance, he had to feel with his hands. Ian was foraging in the back with much rustling and clanking of goods. Suddenly, a light bloomed to life from an old halogen lantern. He set it low, barely strong enough to illuminate more than the faintest outlines of the shivering occupants, but it was enough. Hurrying back to the hatch, he pulled on the other end of the rope and it snapped shut. DB winced, expecting a heavy clap to announce their position. Instead, it hit home with the dullest of thuds.

  “Rubber washers, dude. It kills the sound.”

  “How can you be sure they won’t find us?” asked Irish, already grumpy from the lack of nicotine.

  “You saw the hatch. I made sure to set it within a thick hawthorn bush to deter wanderers happening across my little hidey hole.”

  “How could you do this on your own? It’s amazing,” praised Jonesy as his eyes adjusted.

  The “room” itself was about twelve foot long and seven wide. Carefully shaped logs were used to support the weight of soil above, much like a mine support system. Rather than being damp, it was relatively dry. Two cot beds had been installed down the left hand side, with a few chairs formed from stubby sections of thick tree trunk.

  “I didn’t do it on my own, dude,” he replied. Reaching beneath the nearest bed, he pulled out a waterproof locker. Releasing the catches, he removed a handful of blankets and handed them around. “Get warm while you can. The kids can have a nap if they feel like it, we’ll be here for a bit.”

  “Thank you,” said Emma, taking one of the thick covers. Helping Tara to hobble to the camp bed, she laid the blanket over the small child. Within seconds, her eyes had closed and she was breathing evenly from sleep.

  “You said you didn’t do this alone. How many of you are there?” asked DB.

  “No offence, but I don’t know you well enough to share life stories. Let’s just keep it as a friendly face came along at just the right time.”

  “No offence taken. These are dark times. Thanks again for risking yourself for us, mate. I know you could’ve left us out there alone.”

  “My pleasure, dude. Don’t get me wrong, I get a good vibe from you, especially knowing you’re army. It just takes me a while to trust.”

  “Even so, thanks,” finished DB.

  They settled in as best they could, grateful to be out of the wind above. With the timber insulation and over a dozen bodies, the temperature climbed steadily to a bearable level.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d been in the forces,” said Greasy.

  “Was being the operative word, dude. I did my four years like a good soldier, but it wasn’t for me. I’m just not cut out for taking orders.”

  DB turned to Greasy. “How could you tell? Did you serve?”

  “Many years ago in another life, my friend,” Greasy replied, saying no more. There was something painful in his past, that much was plain from the look on his face.

  “Shh!” whispered Ian urgently.

  “What can you hear?” whispered DB.

  “Nothing. I can feel them. They’re close.”

  One hand was on the rough bark of the nearest vertical support. Ian closed his eyes, deep in concentration. Raising a finger to his lips, he urged silence. Jonesy pointed to the lantern and Ian nodded. Twisting the dial, the meagre light faded, plunging them into utter darkness. It dawned on Jonesy that the move might frighten the children to the point they cried out for comfort. Expecting to turn it back on, his fingers hovered near the invisible dial.

  Nothing. Not a single whimper.

  Irish and the others had worked miracles.

  Locked in unending blackness, their ears picked out the faintest sounds. The faint creak of canvas as Tara moved in her sleep. A rattle with each breath from Irish’s smoke damaged lungs. Then the first traces of the rustle shuffle of dragged feet. Growing. Getting closer. Closer. A pause. Frustrated cursing. Wailing dead. A piercing whistle. The clomp of thousands of feet moving away. Fading. Fading. Gone.

  “Told you,” whispered Ian.

  “If they were a decent tracker, they might’ve seen through our efforts to cover our movements,” said Greasy. “How could you be so sure they weren’t?”

  “I’m a good judge of people, dude. Plus I kinda prepared a few fake trails in case they weren’t complete morons. Luckily for us, those fuckers are nuts, but that’s about it.” Remembering there were children present, he apologised for the language. “I normally swear like a… erm, a pee’d up squaddie.”

  “In the current climate, I think bad language is acceptable. It’s not as
if it ever killed anyone.”

  Jonesy turned the lamp back on to the lowest setting, sending the shadows fleeing back into the nooks. Irish made a quick check of everyone to keep himself occupied.

  “How long should we wait? We need to be getting back to the castle.”

  “They’re moving north-east now which will take them out of the forest in about fifteen minutes. I’ll take you the fastest route to get you back to Arundel.”

  Jonesy clapped him on the back. “Ian?”

  “Sup, dude?”

  “Thank you, mate. Truly. We were in the shit there.”

  Ian stared at the soldier hard, as if he was boring into his very soul. Long seconds passed in awkward silence. Jonesy was close to breaking the impasse when Ian snorted in frustration.

  “Fuck!” he blurted.

  Jonesy took a cautious pace to the rear.

  “Sorry, I needed to get that out. What the hell is wrong with me?”

  “Huh?” Jonesy was perplexed.

  “I’m going to break my first and most important rule and I’m not sure how I really feel about that.”

  “You don’t have to. You can just get us out of here,” offered Jonesy.

  “What’s your first rule?” asked Winston, crashing in like a bull in a china shop.

  “I’m very cautious about new people. Very cautious,” he emphasised. “And I never tell them about us during the first meet.”

  “You still don’t have to. You’ve done enough,” Irish replied.

  “Stop being so…” Ian blurted. “So… decent. This is the fucking apocalypse!”

  “You’re funny,” giggled Tara who’d awoken during the exchange.

  Ian psyched himself up. “Fuck it, I’m doing it! We’ve got two dozen of these shelters littered around the forest and wider area. You can tell where they are by the trees around them. We lopped off the two lowest branches but left them six inches too long.”

  “You sound like an arborist,” said Sam.

  “I’m fully qualified as a tree surgeon. I was part of a team that maintained the forest for the Council and the Duke of Norfolk estate, plus some other posh fuckers. Once I left the army, I wanted to be away from people for a while. This job was a dream for me. Peace and quiet. Guys that didn’t talk too much. I started to take outdoor survival courses, the ones where you stay away from civilisation with no amenities. It was easier than I imagined.”

  “And your people move from shelter to shelter?” asked DB.

  “No. These’re our emergency stops. If we’re out and about and it gets too dark or too many of the dead catch wind of us, we lay low for a few hours.”

  “How many of you are there?” wondered Winston.

  “Seventy four. People that I came across in the wilderness. Lost and alone, looking for help. I’ve always heavily vetted them… before today.”

  “Did you say these were only for emergencies?” Jonesy probed.

  “Yeah.” Ian hesitated, searching the faces of the group for any threat. All he saw was good people trying their best to survive. That they had risked everything to keep the children alive when others simply discarded their burden sealed the deal. “Our home is deep within the forest. And I mean deep. It was an old warehouse where we kept all the equipment for the day to day. Quads, diggers, chainsaws, you name it. A garage pit to carry out repairs if they were needed. Plus a pair of underground tanks for petrol and diesel that was filled once a year. We’d only just been topped up.”

  “How do you feed them all?”

  Ian chortled. “Food’s the easy part, dude. Even if I couldn’t pick the local stores clean of all their goodies, the forest has all we need. I can forage and trap with the best of them.”

  “What about the zombies?” asked Braiden.

  “We’ve made it as difficult as possible for them. The terrain works in our favour as we’re tucked away near a hundred foot precipice. The rise itself is quite a climb, and they seem to follow the path of least resistance when the going gets tough. It also means we only have to defend on three sides.”

  “Cool,” Winston exclaimed, picturing towering Transylvanian castles perched on cliffs. Impregnable to the enemy. Mysterious and filled with secrets.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how far is it? You really don’t have to tell us, though,” Jonesy explained.

  “It’s about a mile if you’re a bird. One and a half if you’ve got legs, dude. Why?”

  “I’m going to ask a massive favour. Tell me to get fucked if I’m overstepping. We’ve got troubles at the castle of a human variety. I was going to take Irish and his people back with us, but I can’t guarantee they’ll be one hundred percent safe there.”

  “The “Nowhere Men”? Was that what you called them?”

  “No. The lunatics at Ford Prison. We had a run in with the brother of the psycho in charge. They’ve been gunning for us ever since.”

  “I see,” replied Ian. “We’ve seen them around but kept a respectable distance. Except for one incident a few nights ago.”

  “What happened? Have they attacked you too?”

  “No, they have no idea we’re even there. Three of my people found a man wounded in a stream. He’d been shot in the leg.”

  “Matt Hay!”

  “You know him? I tore them a new arsehole for being so stupid. We’d seen what they do at the prison.”

  “We saw the platform too, mate,” said Jonesy. The images of the guard would forever be burned into his mind.

  “Exactly! But my people rushed in, dragged him out and patched him up. It was only when they took off his soaking jumper they found the prison gear.”

  “Matt’s one of the good ones. He risked everything to get a young girl away from those monsters.”

  Ian’s scowl softened at the news. “Really?”

  “Yeah, he was in a bad way. It was touch and go. If we didn’t have a doctor he’d have died.”

  “Looks like they got lucky in the fuck-up then. I’ll let them know that I overreacted.”

  “That brings me on to my favour,” began Jonesy. “Your home sounds like a much safer haven for these folks than we can provide at the moment. Would you have space for them?”

  Irish stepped forward. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

  “Of course. Listen, mate, we’ve got a war coming,” said Jonesy. Briefly explaining the mission to secure the failing garrison on the Chiltern Mountains as well as the fight to retake Portsmouth, Irish started to come round. The boys listened in silence, accepting the news with resolve.

  “Ok, I see what you mean.”

  Jonesy looked at Ian. “So, how about it?”

  “We can always use people who aren’t afraid of a hard day’s work. We have a few kids with us too. I hope I don’t regret this.”

  “We’ll earn our keep, don’t you worry,” declared Irish.

  “But only if you’re sure,” added Jonesy.

  “I’m sure. Time’s up!” Ian exclaimed. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Can you point us in the right direction before you leave? I don’t want to follow the compass and end up in a dead end,” explained DB.

  Pushing the hatch clear, Ian turned around. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you to the edge of the woods closest to the castle while one of my people collect your friends.”

  “How will they know?”

  “I’ll light a fire and send smoke signals.”

  “Really?” Winston was excited to see the practice in person.

  “Of course not, dude,” Ian chuckled, retrieving a radio from his suit. Turning it on, the speaker crackled. Transmitting, he said, “Base, this is Ian. Come in, over.

  “This is base. Go ahead, over.”

  “Jas, we’ve got some folks out at number six. They need collecting asap. Over.”

  “Anything we should know? Over.”

  “Yeah, stay quiet. The free walkers have been out causing trouble. Keep your eyes peeled. Over.”

  “Will do. We can be th
ere in under half an hour. Over.”

  “Thanks, dude. Over and out.”

  Turning the radio off, he turned to the small, huddled group of estate survivors. “Get back below and rest a bit more. You’ll need your strength. There’s food and water under the second bed. I’d normally leave it alone for a more dire emergency, but you’ll need some energy.”

  “Thank you both,” said Greasy, shaking hands with Ian and Jonesy. “We owe you everything.”

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t do more, mate,” commiserated DB.

  “You did more than you needed to. I’ll never forget that.”

  Irish was hovering uncertainly. A man who was unused to showing emotion, he choked down the newly formed lump in his throat. “Thanks. I didn’t think anyone good was left. I was wrong.”

  Saying their farewells, the survivors hid themselves away and Ian closed the hatch. Braiden, Sam, and Winston were stretching, ready for the next leg of the journey.

  “What do we do with the food?” asked DB.

  “I think we can offer it as a down payment towards their hospitality. Ian, there’s a Merc parked by the train gates at Hardham. There’s a few bags of healthy goods in the boot. It’ll help offset the food your new members eat.”

  “Are you sure you can spare it?” said Ian, gratefully.

  “We’ll sort something. We’ve got some heavy artillery back at the castle that we can use to raid a local store.”

  “Ok. Follow me.” Ian slipped the hood on, becoming one with the woods once more.

  Chapter 30

  The return journey from the outskirts of Arundel had taken only fifteen minutes. Ian was back before the search party could find them, and now led them to a point where they would intersect with his people.

  “She’s asleep,” whispered Emma.

  Ian had felt the young child lolling as the pressure on his hair diminished, but didn’t realise she had drifted off completely. Sheathing the knives, he carefully lowered her from his shoulder and cradled Tara in his free arms. She mumbled once, then tucked herself in tighter to the crook of his arm, unheeding of the twigs and leaves.

  “You’ve kept yourself hidden all this time?” asked Irish.