“You’re right, Tom,” said Shawn, “I don’t have much packaged food to offer either, but let’s not worry about food too much; we’re surrounded by it.
I love foraging, and without even trying, I could get enough food just from this immediate area to give us all a good meal. I was thinking more in terms of the equipment we have. It would be better to spread it equally among us, otherwise the loss of one car or one bag could be disastrous.”
“Fair point, Shawn,” I replied, “we can’t argue with that logic.”
In the end, very little had to be distributed. We divided the food we had into equal piles and put a similar sized bag into each car.
It was the weapons we had the biggest discussion about. Shawn had one extra knife in his bag in addition to the ones he’d given to Becky and me, and apart from the machete, two axes and my probably useless “knife on a stick”, all we had was Stanley’s cricket bat, some tyre irons and some screwdrivers.
Chet took the hand axe and that left Andy with a choice between the machete, a knife and a long-handled axe. He chose the machete because with its sheath he could attach it to his belt.
We decided that the axe should be carried as an extra weapon by whoever was on guard duty. Shawn put the extra knife on his belt as a spare.
We knew the knives were effective for killing zombies, but weren’t keen on the fact that you had to get so close to do it. A weapon with a longer range would be safer, but for the time being we would have to manage with what we had. When Daisy walked up to me and whispered that she was hungry, we realised how late it was getting and that none of us had eaten anything substantial since breakfast. Chet and Andy hadn’t even had that, as they’d driven through the night straight into the zombie apocalypse.
As it was the middle of summer, there were still a few hours of daylight left, so while Becky and I set about heating up pans of food on the two gas cookers, Shawn foraged some flowers and leaves to make a tasty and colourful looking salad.
With the help of the children, he gathered up a stack of dry deadfall branches and quickly got a reasonably smoke-free fire going. It wasn’t cold, but the reassuring warmth from the flames and the crackle of the dry tinder made the camp feel a little cosier. As we all tucked into the meat and pasta we’d prepared, we complimented Shawn on how tasty his salad was. Even the kids had tried and enjoyed it.
It consisted, he explained, of dandelions, daisies and navelwort, all extremely nutritious and plentiful at this time of year. Impressed, we all insisted that he should start sharing his knowledge. He tried to make a joke of it, pointing out that this would be a good idea, as he might be dead tomorrow. Nobody laughed. We were only too aware of the precariousness of our situation.
After we’d eaten, one of the others went to keep a lookout and Becky and I got the children, who by now were all extremely drowsy, settled down at the back of the shelter under some blankets.
It wasn’t long before they were all fast asleep.
As darkness began to fall, the rest of us sat around the dying embers of the fire. We were all aware that it was best not to keep a blazing fire going, as this might advertise our presence to others, alive or dead.
Realising that it was pointless trying to keep a lookout in the increasing gloom, we agreed that while the rest of us sat around the circle of stones containing the remains of the fire, one of us would remain standing and stay alert. That, we reasoned, ought to suffice.
We’d gathered together all the torches in our possession and shared them out. I had a very powerful LED torch which I kept in the car at all times and between us we had a variety of head torches and smaller handheld ones.
For the moment, there were enough for us all to have one each, plus a few spares.
Shawn went to his car and returned with several bags. “This is one of the goodies I told you about earlier. It’s a crossbow. I always keep it broken down and hidden in various places around the car.”
“Why?” asked Chet, intrigued.
“Well, although it’s not illegal to own one, it’s easier to keep it disassembled than have to explain why you’ve got it. Under the current law it’s illegal to hunt with them in the UK, but most preppers, myself included, favour keeping a few of them around, because let’s face it, when the shit hits the fan who cares?
Now I’d say a whole ton of shit has hit the fan, so it’s probably time to get it out. They’re good for large and small game and obviously for defending yourself. Remember ‘The Walking Dead’? It was the only thing Daryl ever used.”
We watched as he removed various pieces from the bags and deftly assembled it. “They’re easy to maintain,” he explained, “and if you run out of bolts, it’s not impossible to make your own.”
He passed it round so that we could all handle it. It was a deadly looking piece of equipment, painted with a camouflage pattern, and with a small telescopic sight attached to the top of it. He explained that it would easily be powerful enough to kill something at a distance of fifty metres or even more, but then the obvious problem would be accuracy. At a distance of twenty to thirty metres he thought he should be able to get in some consistent headshots.
I handed it back to him. “That’s a great weapon. I think we should see if we can all get one. I feel a bit happier now that we’ve got something that’ll kill them from a distance. But I did a lot of thinking while I was on lookout duty, and I think we all need to discuss and agree on the best course of action to take.”
No one commented, so I continued, “We don’t know how far this thing has spread, but from what we’ve seen today, I think we’ll have to assume that most people are now dead or zombies.
There will also be other people who’ve been lucky enough to survive. Perhaps they’re having the same conversation as we are now.” I looked at Shawn, “Please feel free to interrupt if you disagree.”
He nodded and said, “Yes, but carry on. It’ll be interesting to hear someone else’s perspective on what’s happened, and what we can do. In the groups I belonged to no one ever agreed on anything, apart from the fact that it was going to happen at some point. It’s vitally important we do now. To survive this situation, we’ve all got to be on the same page.”
No one else said anything, so I added, “We can’t stay here long term; we’re too exposed. If a pack of them appeared over that hill we’d have no choice but to move on, and if that happened in the middle of the night it could easily go wrong. What we need is somewhere that can give us proper shelter. We also desperately need supplies and, if we can find them, some decent weapons.”
I looked around. Everyone was nodding. “I imagine that the one thing that will be in plentiful supply will be food. Every supermarket and shop in the land will have full shelves and hardly anyone will be needing it. We should be able to take whatever we need, when we need it, but in the long term it would be sensible to source a large supply that will keep us going for a long time. That would avoid the risk involved in constantly going out and gathering it.”
“We’re going to have to find some better weapons. Your crossbow is great, Shawn; a real asset. I have a few shotguns at home, but I can’t for one moment imagine that it’s worth driving all the way to Birmingham to collect a few shotguns, when there must be plenty of them around here.
Most farmers have shotguns, and possibly rifles, and what about the police or the army? If we know where to look, they must be around here somewhere. We could just get the Yellow Pages out and find the nearest barracks or gun shop.”
I paused, then asked the question: “So where do we go? Well, we also need somewhere that will offer constant protection so that we’re not living in fear of zombies appearing all the time. We need solid walls. While I was up on the rock, I went through all the places I could think of. But most of the obvious places: prisons, hospitals and army bases, are probably full of zombies already. We need to go somewhere where people don’t live, so that we can clear it of zombies when we get there.”
The others leaned
forward expectantly.
“We need to find an intact castle” I said seriously.
Everyone just looked at me.
Chapter Seventeen
Everyone continued to stare at me, then Shawn smiled and started quietly clapping.
“Well done mate,” he said, grinning. “I don’t think anyone could have put it any better. You’ve just described the best way to survive a zombie apocalypse. It is, when you think about it, just common sense after all. But as my old man always said, ‘There’s nothing common about sense!’ My mates and I used to talk about this over many a pint in a pub, but the one major flaw in your plan is the ‘intact castle’ bit. Every castle I’ve ever visited has either been a ruin, or it’s got so many holes in its walls, it would be impossible to defend. There’s nowhere suitable for what you want!”
Becky interrupted him smiling, “Shawn, do you or any of your friends have children?”
“No, why?”
“Where do you live?”
“Bristol, why?”
“Have you ever heard of Warwick Castle?”
I smiled as I realised she knew exactly what I was on about.
Shawn frowned. “Not really, is it in English Heritage or The National Trust? I think I’ve visited most of their places on my travels, so I may have been there, but it doesn’t spring to mind straightaway.”
Chet interrupted now. “I know it! When my parents came over to visit last year we went there. Shawn, it’s completely habitable. It’s got proper walls, gates, moats, everything. It even impressed my parents, who are a bit snobbish and say that Indian culture outdoes everything else.
If it’s still like I remember it, it would be a great place to use. It’s run as a big tourist attraction and is owned by some big group.”
Becky nodded eagerly. “That’s right, and it’s in Warwick; hence the name. Tom and I have taken the kids there many times. It really is in remarkable condition, given that I believe it was originally built by William the Conqueror. If we could get the gates closed, it would be pretty much impregnable to zombies. The accommodation area’s huge and in good condition. Great idea Tom, darling!”
She turned to Shawn, who was looking a little crestfallen. “Shawn, don’t worry, if you haven’t got kids or you’re a tourist, you probably won’t have visited the place.”
We all sat in silence for a while, lost in our own thoughts.
Shawn spoke first, “I think, unless we can think of somewhere closer, it’s a great plan.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked it, then sighed because it still wasn’t working.
He shoved it back into his pocket. “This would be a great time for a bit of googling. I bet within half an hour we’d have all the information we needed to make the right decisions. Can we think of anywhere similar to Warwick Castle? It’s a great idea, but there might be somewhere even better … I tell you what, let’s get the map out. It might remind us of somewhere we’ve been.”
He spread his O.S. map out and Andy got his UK road map from his car and we all spent the next twenty minutes studying them by the light of our torches to see if any ideas “jumped off the pages”. We managed to identify and mark on the map most of the castles and other places, such as old manor houses. We also picked out prisons and any buildings that might be surrounded by a secure fence or wall.
The same problems were evident with all of them; if they’d been inhabited by people, then they were likely to be full of the undead, or the security provided by the fences or walls wouldn’t be adequate.
The best alternative we could come up with was St Michael’s Mount, an island accessible by foot at low tide, just off Cornwall’s southern coast near to Penzance, which we’d visited a few years before on our last holiday in the area.
Despite its beauty and its advantage of being reasonably close to our current location, we ended up discounting it. It seemed unlikely that we would be able to secure the island from any potential zombie invasions at low tide, and after a quick check, we concluded that none of us was very competent at sea fishing and using boats. If we had to rely on the sea for our food we weren’t sure how successful that would be.
I stood up to take my turn as the lookout, leaving them to discuss the merits and drawbacks of each of the places identified on the map. Warwick Castle was still looking like the best candidate, but in a way, I hoped that we’d be able to find somewhere closer. We were a good few hundred miles from Warwick, and the prospect of driving that distance through a zombie-infested England wasn’t very appealing.
The conversation finally died out just as the embers in the fire lost their last traces of heat. The faces lit by the single small camping lantern we’d been using were showing signs of strain and exhaustion.
We were trying to keep our usage of lights to a minimum, and I’d walked about fifty metres away from the camp to check that the glow from the little lantern was barely visible before we’d decided that it was ok to use it.
Even though sleep was going to be hard to come by, we all knew that we had to rest.
After a brief discussion, we worked out a guard duty rota. I volunteered to take the first shift. Andy and Chet had had no sleep the night before, because they’d driven through the night, and Shawn had admitted to only managing a few hours due to sleeping in his car.
There were a few awkward moments when they realised that the mattress of bracken and heather meant that the sleeping area would be quite cosy when they all lay down, particularly as Becky would be lying next to them.
Becky made a few light-hearted jokes about no hugging and spooning, as she snuggled down next to the sleeping children.
After ensuring that everyone had their torches and weapons close to hand, I turned the lantern off and plunged the camp into darkness to begin the first guard shift. As my eyes adjusted, I marvelled at the amount of light given out by the moon and a myriad of stars, which covered the sky like a twinkling blanket.
It illuminated the scene in front of me, but the light also cast shadows. And when you’re on guard duty in the middle of the night, on the lookout for bloodthirsty zombies, every shadow of every bush, moving and rustling in the wind, looks like a flesh-eating monster. I had no trouble staying alert.
Not feeling tired at all, I waited for three hours before waking Shawn up for his turn. He woke up immediately and I handed him my large torch and crawled into the shelter next to Becky.
I tried to sleep, but after an hour of struggling to lie still so as not to disturb her, it became clear that the one thing that would evade me that night was sleep. My mind was still running at a hundred miles an hour. Carefully, I scrambled out of the shelter and went to join Shawn.
I made us both a cup of coffee and we stood watch together, chatting quietly and gradually getting to know each other better. In what seemed like no time at all, the eastern sky began to lighten as a precursor of the approaching dawn.
There was a beautiful sunrise over the moors, and I felt privileged to have been able to witness it. The fact that I might meet a horrible death at any time probably made me appreciate nature’s splendour all the more. One by one Becky, Chet and then Andy woke up and joined us. They all tried to admonish us for not having woken them, but Shawn and I were having none of it.
Keeping our voices as low as possible, so as not to wake the children, we planned out the day. I wanted to check out the farmhouse that was just out of sight over the hill. It was the nearest place that might offer us some solid shelter and I felt that we should at least see if it could provide us with more security than we had where we were.
The plan was unanimously agreed on. I wanted to set off straight away, but Shawn insisted that we deconstruct the camp we’d made and take it with us. He explained that he’d thought about this scenario a lot and it was always best practice to take everything you had with you at all times if possible. If you were unable to return for whatever reason, or the camp was overrun by zombies or another group of survivors (both potentially dangerous scenarios)
, then at least you’d still have most of your gear.
Once again, unable to fault his logic, we agreed and while Becky was gently waking the children, we began to take down and roll up the fencing wire we’d scavenged the day before.
Unsurprisingly Eddie quickly became distraught on waking, as the memories came flooding back. He was a brave boy though, and after a few minutes of comfort from Becky, he’d recovered enough to eat the breakfast we gave him.
We used most of the fresh milk for our cereal and for the kids to drink, and there was just enough left over to give us each a last cup of fresh milky coffee.
A shout from Shawn, who was on lookout duty, got us all scrambling to our feet. He was staring through the binoculars at the distant hillside.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Hang on, I thought I saw something. Wait, yes, two people heading this way. They seem to be rushing… oh shit! Zombies!”
Chapter Eighteen
Shawn handed me the binoculars. It took me a while, but I managed to make out two people trying to run through the purple heather. They were so far away it was impossible to make out their gender, but the shambling gait of the figures chasing them was unmistakeable. Straining my eyes, I managed to count five zombies in total.
“So what do we do, guys?” I asked, passing the binoculars to Becky.
“Well,” said Chet slowly, “You helped us, so I suppose it would be wrong not to help anyone else. There can’t be that many people left alive, so I guess it’s important that we all stick together. I’m no hero, but the human race needs all the help it can get at the moment if we’re all going to come through this.”
Andy butted in, “Blinking hell, mate, just because you’re in the debating society there’s no need to get all theatrical on us. But yes, I agree, we should try to help them.”
Zombie Castle Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 10