Eddy, who was going to remain and guard the castle, selected who he wanted to stay with him. It was only fair that he should have first dibs with people, because if the castle wasn’t left defended properly, none of us would want to leave our families and loved ones behind.
An hour of frantic preparations later, we were ready and those chosen to go boarded their designated vehicles. All the vehicles had been checked over and any necessary repairs carried out. Shawn made sure the petrol cutter was working, and the same for the other equipment we thought we might need to break into the locked areas of the gun shop. While he was doing that, others loaded extra guns and ammunition and a small supply of food and water, just in case. We waved to those staying behind and for the first time, we drove out through our newly fortified barbican entrance.
Becky stood beside me in the trailer. We’d had a brief ‘discussion’, with her calling me a sexist because I begged her to stay and take care of the children when she insisted on being included on the mission. She was confident that they would be looked after well by Maud, Eddy and the ten other adults chosen to remain and she told me that she was just as capable of killing zombies as anyone else, something she’d proved many times before. She also joked that we needed to include more women on the shopping trip, because if it was left up to the men, all we’d get was pallets of beer and boxes of crisps.
She did have a point.
With a final wave to our children back on the walls keeping guard, we disappeared from their view. Becky stood holding on to the side of the rocking trailer, her weapon over her shoulder and a pistol on her hip, the tactical vest she was wearing stuffed full of extra magazines. It was a look I thought I’d never see on her, but to be fair, I thought she looked sexy.
I moved closer and put my arm around to help steady her and whispered cheekily in her ear.
“Look at you all dressed up in your finest gear. I know I never say it often enough, but you look damn good, woman.”
She just looked at me with raised eyebrows. Undaunted, I continued.
“And you say I never take you out. Here we are, off on a date without the kids. Don’t you ever moan at me again, my darling, for not making an effort.”
She rested her head on my shoulders, she knew I was just trying to take her mind off leaving the children behind and I think she appreciated it, but after a few moments of quiet companionship, she had to have the last word.
“Tom, if you think this is a date, I think you need to go and have a long, quiet word with yourself. Right now though, we’re getting near the gate, so we’ll have to discuss this later.”
Fortunately, only a few zombies could be seen beyond the first gate. Maybe whatever gap or hole they’d used to get in before wasn’t obvious to the hordes that filled the town. We still needed to find it, and it was on our growing list of jobs that needed doing, but for now it wasn’t posing a great problem.
We were through the gate in minutes as once again a few knights climbed out of the back of the armoured car to unlock it. They waited until we’d all got through, then secured it and climbed back into the armoured car, which had pulled to one side to wait for them. The other gate proved to be a different matter altogether. Hundreds of zombies could be seen just beyond it. It didn’t take a genius to work out that they were the ones that had followed the swath of destruction and noise we’d cut the day before when returning from the builders’ merchant.
The noise of us approaching caused the nearest to turn and head in our direction.
Captain Hammond spoke through the radio. “Okay, chaps, I think this is the time to show me what you knights can do. If you form up by the gates and open them when you’re ready, we’ll drive through and thin them out a tad and then loop round and pick you up.” Pausing for a moment, he continued, “Does that sound like a plan?”
Ian responded a few seconds later. He was in the trailer beside me. “Okay, lads, let’s show the army boys what we can do. Grab your pikes and head to the gates.”
Hinging back the door on the trailer, we pulled on the ropes to lower the ramp and passed the pikes to the knights when they’d all got out. They made their way to the gates, joining those that had left the armoured car.
Hundreds of zombies were crowding towards the gate, making it rattle and push against its locking bar. Even after all we’d seen and experienced, the sight was a daunting one.
Seven knights stood at the gates and began thrusting their pikes through the slats at the nearest heads. Bodies fell and soon began piling up in a macabre wall. More kept trying to crawl over the growing obstruction until their existence was ended by the sharp point on the head of the pike. Eventually, the pikes could no longer reach the masses beyond and the knights, sweating and breathing heavily, stepped back and surveyed the carnage they’d wreaked. Hundreds of bodies lay before them, but worryingly, hundreds more crowded in behind them.
Captain Hammond used the loudspeaker on the armoured vehicle to communicate this time. His voice boomed out. “Well done, chaps, great work. If you could open the gate and let us through now, we’ll thin the others out. Hold the line at the gates and we’ll be back with you shortly. Woody, can you stay back in the Land Rover to provide cover for them? If everyone could honk their horns to confirm you understand, we’ll get on with it.”
Five horns blasted their reply and revved their engines.
Ian stepped towards the gate and removing his glove, turned the dials on the padlock to the right code to unlock it and unwrapped the chain from around the gate. The coded padlocks were chosen from the ones we’d got from the builders’ merchant as the best to use. Remembering a four-digit code would be better than making sure the key didn’t get lost or forgotten, causing potentially dangerous delays and problems when opening the two main gates to the castle.
After checking the other knights were in position and the vehicles were ready, he slid the locking bar back and straining against the weight of the few bodies that were caught on them, pulled the gates open.
Shawn was first through. Lowering the plough to scrape on the ground, he powered the tractor into the tangled pile of bodies. Corpses mangled together as the plough pushed them aside to form a monstrous corridor of death. Body parts ripped from corpses lay abandoned in his blood-smeared wake as the lorries followed, bouncing over any that fell back into their path from the piles Shawn had created.
Those of us in the trailer stabbed at any near us, but the wild, bouncing ride we were on made even standing up difficult, let alone using our spears accurately. Frustrated, I picked up a shotgun and started blasting away at the many targets that surrounded us. I considered the shotgun, with its spread of lead pellets, to be better than using my rifle, only necessary where accuracy was more important. Others in the trailer followed suit, including Becky, as Shawn ploughed through the undead, making the trailer rock and sway as he swerved through, trying to get as many as he could.
Heads turned into smoking messes of brains and bones as the heavy lead-filled cartridges ended the existence of more zombies. Looking back, I could see that the two army lorries weren’t following in Shawn’s tracks, but had spread out slightly on either side of him to widen the path of destruction created, like a team of snow ploughs clearing a road. Shawn’s plough smashing through them was pushing destroyed and broken bodies aside into the path of the vehicles following. It made economical work as they destroyed the ones directly in front of them as well as hurling aside those pushed into their path. I hadn’t heard this tactic being discussed so it must have been a good idea hastily thought up which was proving to work brilliantly, because now, we weren’t just cutting a single path through them, but an entire swathe.
When the crowd thinned, Shawn used the whole width of the road to turn around and head back the way we’d come, the engine roaring powerfully all the while. The army lorries followed with the armoured car and the crane lorry. Passing the gate, I caught a glimpse of the knights standing with shields raised, hacking at the ones before them, wh
ile Woody and Steve fired over their heads from their elevated position standing on the seats of the Land Rover. The zombies had been thinned by us smashing through them, but they were still facing a large crowd. From what I could see, though, they were coping and no call for help came over the radio, so we continued.
Two passes later and with our vehicles coated in another layer of gore and sporting a few more dents, Captain Hammond radioed, telling us we’d done enough and that we should collect the knights from the gate.
Chapter Twelve
The bodies had piled up again as the knights practised their deadly trade and Shawn was forced to use his plough to clear the gate once more. Woody reversed his Land Rover out of the way to allow him and the armoured car to pass straight through the gate and turn around to get the knights back on board.
Both machine guns on the armoured car and the Land Rover then laid down a withering level of fire to cover the knights as they, with a final thrust of swords, axes and maces, picked up their pikes and ran back to the vehicles.
On the trailer we all helped the exhausted knights climb the ramp, holding out arms and hands to help them the last few paces. And then taking their weapons from them, we handed them bottles of water and cloths to wipe their blood-streaked faces and armour. Shawn, driving a little more slowly this time, pulled back out onto the main road. We waited until Captain Hammond had closed and secured the gate once more as we stabbed and shot any that tried to get past us to reach him.
The food warehouse was on the same road, but further out of town than the builders’ merchant we’d visited the day before, so once again we needed to drive through the centre of Warwick. The road was littered with the results of our previous action but happily, the ‘live’ ones were not as numerous. It was impossible to know how many we’d dealt with, but the hundreds of corpses being picked apart by innumerable carrion birds fluttering away half-heartedly as we passed was a stomach-wrenching sight. We’d already led a horde of many thousands away and we didn’t know how many more still roamed the town’s suburbs and side roads.
I sighed. This was only one relatively small town of the many hundreds all over the country. If you included the cities, how many millions upon countless millions of zombies were roaming the land, searching for their next meal? It would be impossible to kill even a small fraction of them. The only hope for humanity was for small outposts of survivors such as ours to gather supplies and remain safe until hopefully, the undead started to rot and turn to dust.
Gathering supplies was the problem because that inevitably meant leaving our sanctuary to face and survive the terror that lived outside our walls.
The tractor lurched as it rode over bodies and smashed through the ones that Shawn could aim at. We tried to stab or shoot as many as we could when passing, because no matter how many millions more there were, one less was still one less. We breathed a sigh of relief when we drove into the food warehouse’s large car park, just as we had when we’d raided the outdoors shop, and we saw it contained only a few awkwardly staggering figures. Most businesses hadn’t opened on the first morning of the apocalypse, their staff or owners were already dead or far too preoccupied to worry about work. So, remaining empty and deserted, they contained nothing to attract the undead and had remained devoid of the masses that filled other places.
“Right then,” announced Captain Hammond over the radio, once we’d driven a loop around the carpark to rid ourselves of its current residents. “If the lorries can get as close to the entrance as possible, the rest of us will form a defensive cordon. Knights, if you do the initial sweep of the interior, backed up by five others with guns, once you can give us the all clear, we’ll get cracking.”
The radios all crackled with affirmative responses before the vehicles started to shunt into position.
I joined the knights with four others at the shuttered entrance. Getting more adept with every break-in, the external security took no time at all to breach and with a wrench of a crowbar to the main door, we were in.
Ian took command. “Okay, ladies. Stick together and let’s go up and down every aisle first.” He pointed at what looked to be some offices that overlooked the interior of the building. “Then we check everywhere else out. Keep talking and calling out targets.” He looked at the five of us standing there with our weapons ready. “You lot, as before, stay in the middle of our formation and when we need you, you’ll be notified by Simon’s high-pitched girly squeal of terror.”
Simon was the only one not to dutifully laugh at his attempt at humour and retorted with, “Oi, Beaver, why don’t you pick on someone your own size? Oh, I forgot, no one is as big and stupid as you.”
With some more banter, the friends, seemingly relaxed and without a care in the world, checked their armour, hefted their shields and once more took the lead against the zombies. Aisles stacked high with pallets containing a huge variety of different goods stretched before us. I tried to take note of the location of everything, so that when we began working our way through the list Maud had given us, we could locate the items quickly.
Two hours later, we were still working hard under the direction of Becky, Louise and Victoria, who were all armed with lists, rushing around telling us which pallet to load next onto one of the hand-pump pallet trucks we’d found. Then we hauled them outside to another team who were ripping off the wrappings and passing boxes, cartons and sacks from hand to hand to load the lorries and trailer. The crane lorry had loaded itself and was now full of double-stacked pallets secured by lengths of rope.
The knights were standing guard and taking a well-earned rest after their earlier exertions. If they were needed again, then it was imperative they were as fresh as possible. Wielding their weapons and fighting in a shield wall was probably one of the most physically demanding things anyone could do. They were accustomed to it, though, and had trained regularly before the apocalypse started, knowing from doing re-enactments how much effort it took to fight for an extended period of time. But no matter how fit they were, they needed to rest their aching muscles so when they were recalled to the fray, they could once more fight to the best of their abilities. Everyone else on the mission was on collection and loading duties. None of us was far away and we could all be defending the perimeter within minutes if we needed to.
When Becky and Louise were satisfied that we’d procured most of the items jotted down on the list, they led teams of us dashing around the warehouse with large trolleys to load on other items they’d noticed and decided we could do with. We threw every item they pointed at into the trolleys and when they were full, we ran outside to empty them and fling it all in the lorries on top of everything we’d already loaded. When the radios broadcast the inevitable and not unexpected warning of, “Zombies! Everyone back to the trucks,” no one hesitated, and pushing and pulling loaded trolleys, we headed outside.
Inevitably, they’d found us. Whether they were ones from earlier who had followed us or others who had been attracted by our noise, even though we’d tried to be quiet as possible, it didn’t matter. They were there and in large numbers. With a final effort, we heaved the last items from our trolleys into the lorries and got on board ourselves. Our final act was to close the shutters on the shop to, if not secure it, then stop any wandering ghouls from inadvertently entering. The place still contained a large amount of supplies, so this was just common sense, because if we had to return, the last thing we’d want to do was to clear the place of any zombies first.
The captain had relinquished command to Becky at the warehouse and had been working just as hard as everyone else loading the lorries. Now the convoy was moving, he took over again.
“Good work, everyone,” he announced needlessly. “Now the gun shop. Same drill as before. Once we gain entry, we will secure the perimeter and start loading up. We know what the priorities are, so concentrate on those first and if time allows, we’ll look for other items that might be useful.”
All of us knew what the priorities were.
Basically, bullets, bullets and more bullets and if we could find them, more bullets. Ammunition for both rifles and shotguns had to be the priority. Every time we left the castle we were burning through ammunition at a prodigious rate and even though we had a large supply in reserve, we knew that enough would never be enough until the last zombie in the country had been exterminated. Guns were one thing we had plenty of, after our raid on the last gun shop, coupled with what the soldiers had brought with them, but still, they were on the list as well. Our immediate need was not our only concern. We might to arm others beside ourselves and if the guns were there for taking, then take them we would. The contents of just a single gun shop would never provide what we wanted, but it was a step in the right direction.
The gun shop was in a small row of shops on a housing estate. Sandwiched between a café and a local convenience store, the double-fronted shop was shuttered and looked deserted. A few zombies attracted by the noise we were making shuffled into view as we positioned the vehicles. Stabs from our spears ended their existence as soon as they were in range. After a few radio calls, the vehicles eventually stopped, nose to tail with the lorry at the rear and Shawn’s tractor at the front at an angle to create a solid barrier with a large protected space in front of the shop.
We waited for the captain, as he stood on the wheel arch of his vehicle, looking all around to assess the situation and issue his orders.
Zombie Castle Series (Book 4): ZC Four Page 8