She found a tray, picked up a biscuit tin she’d found on the worktop and carried it all through to the children.
Maud seemed to come to all of a sudden. “Shall I put the kettle on then?”
We looked at each other and everyone burst out laughing. So typically British.
There we were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, struggling to survive, and fighting off hordes of flesh-eating monsters, one of our fledgling group already eaten alive, and at the first opportunity someone was offering to make a nice cup of tea.
Maud left us all giggling hysterically, and looking slightly mystified, proceeded to make a large pot of tea. Eventually we could laugh no more, but it had served its purpose: we’d managed to release a lot of pent up emotion. I walked over to Maud, wiping the tears from my eyes, and hugged her. “Thank you. We needed that,” I told her.
We helped ourselves to steaming mugs of tea and Sergeant Wood told Marine Brown to go outside and keep watch while he told us their story.
They were Royal Marines, based out at Bickleigh Barracks, just outside Plymouth. They’d been out there on a routine training exercise the previous morning when the whole base had suddenly been placed on alert. Amid great confusion, everyone had been issued with live ammunition and squads had been hurriedly formed and dispatched in whatever vehicle was available to guard road junctions.
The only orders they’d received had been to protect citizens against outbreaks of “civil unrest”. Their lorry had contained a hastily cobbled together mix of marines from different units under the command of a young lieutenant who’d been told to go to a road junction outside Bodmin.
Shortly afterwards a panic-stricken crowd of people, escaping from Bodmin, had rounded the corner and converged on the soldiers in the hope of being protected. The bemused marines had had no time to react when the snarling mass of zombies surged up against the screaming crowd and tore into them savagely. Not understanding what they were dealing with, some of the soldiers had ventured forward to try to intervene and had been quickly and brutally overrun themselves.
Sergeant Wood, a veteran of many campaigns, had quickly realised that their only chance of survival was to fight back.
He’d ordered the remaining marines to raise their weapons and they’d fired into the growing crowd of undead, who were heading straight for them. By the time the bewildered men had worked out that headshots were the only way to kill them, the zombies were almost on top of them. As they retreated they could only watch helplessly as one by one their comrades were attacked and ripped apart. When there were just the two of them left, Wood and Brown had just managed to scramble into the lorry.
Hastily filling their Bergens with as much ammunition as they could carry, they’d jumped down from the lorry and sprinted away from their pursuers. Being marines, they were both superbly fit and had had no trouble losing them.
Once they were clear of them they’d instinctively headed for the moors, an area they knew well, which they knew they could disappear into. They’d been working their way across the moors, in the hope of returning to their barracks and regrouping with whoever was left, when they’d come across the farmhouse and witnessed the drama that was unfolding.
He apologised again for not immediately coming to our aid, but we waved it off. He had saved our lives and that was all that mattered.
“Do you think anyone will still be alive at your barracks?” asked Becky.
“Well ma’am. If there isn’t, then the whole country is fucked as far as I’m concerned. Because if those undead bastards have managed to get through the best trained and toughest soldiers in the world, then there really is no hope. And I guess my carefully planned career will be over and I’ll have to look at my early retirement options! But my main objective is just to get back to see if any of my mates got through.”
He showed emotion for the first time. “They’re the only family I’ve got.”
He stared at the wall for a few moments, then snapping himself out of it, asked how we’d come to be fighting off an army of zombies in the middle of Bodmin Moor. I told him our story and how we’d all come together over the past two days, and that Louise had only joined our group a few hours before. I concluded by describing the plan we’d been formulating to try to head to Warwick Castle as, in our view, it was the only place we could think of where we might stand a chance of surviving this.
He was intrigued. “A castle! I like it! But what are you going to do now?”
“Well,” I said, hesitantly, “we can’t stay here, that’s for certain. We’ve just discovered that it’s nowhere near as safe as we thought. I suppose we should scavenge what we can from here and keep going. I wish we had a few more weapons though. Your rifles really proved their worth just now.
The shotguns are great, but they have to be reasonably close to be effective, and that creates its own problems. There’s a .22 rifle in there but I’m not sure how effective that will be.”
Simon asked to see the rifle and ammunition. He admired it, remarking that it was a perfectly good weapon and with the load the bullets had, it should be possible to kill with a headshot at a range of 100 metres. In reality, he admitted, that would be a damn fine shot under the circumstances given that you’d be firing it while under attack by zombies. If you could zero the sight on it to fifty to sixty metres, it would be a lethal weapon. He explained that the advantage of the .22 was that the bullets were light. This meant that you could carry a lot of them with you, unlike the 5.56mm bullets his own weapon used which were heavy and therefore limited you as to how much you could take with you.
Unnoticed, Maud had been quietly searching through the cupboards and had quickly made a huge pile of sandwiches. They were just what we needed.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be any good at fighting those things,” she said shuddering, “but the one thing I can do is make sure that no one goes hungry.”
I was desperately trying to think of a way to persuade Simon and Ben (Marine Brown) to stay with us and join our group. Being Royal Marines, I knew they were among the best trained and toughest soldiers in the world. We badly needed people like that on our side.
But before I could think of the best way to put it to them, Simon asked to be excused for a minute, saying that he wanted to have a word with Ben, who was still outside keeping watch.
His question, when he came back in, could not have made me any happier.
“I’ve just had a quick chat with Marine Brown and he’s in agreement with me. If we’re going to survive this, there’s going to have to be more than just the two of us. Even though we’re still heading back to the barracks, which we hope will still be operating, we’re going to have to face up to the possibility that it might have been overrun. If you want you can come with us. I think we could all help each other out. We’ve seen the way you fight and if the shit hits the fan big style, you’ll be great. All we’ve done is take pot shots from a distance. You badasses have taken it to them with bayonets, just like the ‘Walking Dead’!”
Shawn laughed. “Where do you think we learned how to do it?”
Now we were eleven.
Chapter Twenty-Three
While the children stayed inside watching the TV, and Maud kept an eye on them, we all moved outside to continue our discussion.
“Simon, Ben,” I began, “you’re absolutely right. We need to stay together. The only way we’re going to survive this is by strength in numbers. You two are the only ones with military training, but even that won’t help you if you get cornered by a pack of them. We need to put together some kind of plan for getting to your base. The cars we have won’t be any good if we have to fight through a lot of them, and what happens if we meet more survivors on the way? We only have a few more spaces available.”
Shawn spoke up, “Has anyone seen the film ‘Tremors’?” He turned and pointed to a large rusty silage trailer sitting outside one of the barns.
We all looked at him blankly.
He raised his eyebr
ows. “You know! The film where they used a big trailer and a bulldozer to escape from a large man-eating worm. I reckon we could use that trailer there, pull it with the tractor and then we’d have ourselves a pretty invincible zombie-proof ride.”
He looked at us all expectantly. “Let’s ‘A-Team’ the tractor and anti-zombie it. I reckon with its hydraulic front arm, we’ll easily be able to clear any blockages we find and the trailer will act as a mobile castle. It’ll carry the whole lot of us and more, if necessary, plus a lot of supplies.” He finished with a big grin on his face.
We all turned and stared at the tractor and trailer.
It would work. It was an absolutely bonkers, crazy idea. BUT it would work. We could meander slowly through the countryside in a mobile castle.
No! It wasn’t bonkers or crazy. It was absolutely brilliant.
I slapped Shawn on the back, and Ben and Simon started whistling the theme from the A-Team. It was catchy, and for a brief moment all the men whistled it together until Becky brought us back to reality by saying,
“You bunch of absolute idiots. Why are men such bloody simpletons? We’re in the middle of fighting for our very lives and at the thought of playing a bunch of fictional TV characters, you all start looking wistful and suddenly turn into Hannibal or BA or whoever you wanted to be when you were ten. Grow up the lot of you!”
We all looked sheepish. She continued. “You are now basing my survival and the survival of our children on a movie starring a big worm and a series about a bunch of characters whose only contribution to the world was a big black man who said ‘FOOL!’”
We tried to be serious, but when Becky said “FOOL!” there were a few sniggers. She had absolutely nailed the accent.
When she’d calmed down she admitted that it wasn’t a bad idea and agreed that we should try it.
Making a conscious effort not to laugh, I said, “Right, guys, let’s get started. We have a lot to do before we leave. If we get this done we can be off at first light tomorrow morning.”
First of all we decided who was doing what, based on their skill levels.
Simon, Shawn, Ben and I had the most practical experience in terms of mechanics and building, so we volunteered to work on the tractor and trailer.
Becky said that with the help of Maud and the children, she would search for and pack up anything we needed from the house.
Chet and Louise agreed to rebuild the partly collapsed perimeter wall and strengthen it as much as they could. Then they would muck in and help wherever they were needed.
With a sense of urgency (we were all conscious that at any time, an unstoppable wave of zombies might appear on the horizon), we set about our tasks.
The tractor looked fairly new and had a good-sized cab and a bucket loader attached to the front. I climbed up into the cab and was overjoyed to find the keys in the ignition. Either the farmer had been forgetful or he’d just been feeling too ill from the virus to worry about it when he’d got home the night before. Either way, it would save a lot of time hunting for the key. It started first time, emitting a quiet but powerful sounding noise. I pulled it out of the shed and backed it up to the silage trailer. I studied the controls for a minute, and having found the right ones, extended the hydraulic arm and attached the hook on the tractor to the eye on the trailer.
As everyone congratulated me, I didn’t have the heart to tell them it was pure luck. I gave them all a casual thumbs-up and pulled the trailer forward away from the wall of the barn so that we could get to work on it.
Shawn and Simon were setting up extension cables and carrying various power tools out of the shed. After a quick check of the materials we had available to us, we came up with a plan.
Using steel roof sheets taken from a large pile stacked next to the barn, we would place a skirt of metal roof sheets, reinforced with timber and steel, around both the tractor and the trailer to stop any zombies we encountered from getting under the wheels.
Shawn was reasonably confident that with his limited welding experience he would be able to fabricate a sturdy wedge that would stick out from the front of the tractor’s bucket to act as a zombie plough.
With a combination of trial and error and practical experience, the plan began to come together. We were lucky; we had the right tools, materials and skills, and the will to make it happen. As a result, within a few hours the bulk of the work was done.
Shawn still had some ideas for improving his zombie plough but what we’d created, although it might not win any beauty contests, looked fit for purpose.
Leaving Shawn and Ben to carry on with the work, I asked Simon to give me a quick lesson on using the .22 rifle and we walked back into the house.
Becky and Maud had been busy as well. Using the three children as porters, they’d emptied every cupboard and created neat piles of food, clothing and equipment. They were now systematically sorting them into essential and non-essential items.
I retrieved the rifle and we went to the room where the ammunition had been stored. After hunting around we gathered another two hundred and fifty or so shotgun cartridges and over three hundred rounds for the rifle.
I was pleased with the amount we’d managed to find, but Simon pointed out that we’d probably shot over forty cartridges that morning and he and Ben had burned through about fifty rounds in the short time they’d been involved in the fight. It was a sobering thought and although the little pile in front of us was better than nothing, it clearly fell well short of what we would need.
The rifle was a nice looking weapon with a black synthetic stock, a sling and a telescopic sight mounted on the top. A small magazine stuck out from underneath it. I’d found two more empty magazines in the safe.
I listened carefully as Simon explained that it was a semi-auto with a ten-shot magazine. He showed me how to load a magazine with ammunition and how to insert and eject them. Being used to firearms, it was all reasonably familiar, and after only one demonstration, I was able to perform all the basic tasks needed to operate it.
I loaded all the magazines and put the rest in my pocket, then I placed the remaining ammunition in a bag and carried them outside. After a quick discussion we decided against practice-firing the rifle, as we didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention.
I found the cartridge bags Louise and I had been using and filled them with as many as they would take, then made sure they were placed within easy reach.
Looking around, I could see that things were definitely moving in the right direction. The wall had now been rebuilt to a reasonable standard, and more timber and metal sheets had been propped up against it at its weakest points. The gates had also received some attention and were now looking strong enough to withstand a ram raid.
Everyone was rotating on lookout duty depending on how hard they’d been working and whether they needed the rest.
Sparks were still flying from the tractor and trailer as Shawn and Ben worked furiously with the welder and various power tools, improving on the work we’d already done.
Propping the guns up so that they were within easy reach, Simon and I turned our attention to the trailer. The interior was a bare rust-covered steel shell, about seven metres long and with sides about two metres high.
Once we were actually standing inside it we realised that you couldn’t see out, so we set about fixing a wooden walkway to each side to act as a viewing platform and firing step.
The sides were only thin steel so it wasn’t too difficult to do. Before long we had a basic platform running along each side.
I looked at it thoughtfully. “If we strap a tarpaulin over one end and put a load of mattresses or sofa cushions on the deck it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable,” I suggested.
“Bloody civvies,” said Simon with a grin. “I just want to make it impregnable, but you want to make it cosy as well. Try sitting in an un-air-conditioned armoured vehicle on a hard seat for hours at a time, in the heat of an Afghan summer, just waiting for the next IED to blow your b
ollocks back home. Trust me, being cosy’s not something I’m used to experiencing!”
He slapped me on the back. “Can’t wait!”
The arrival of Becky and Maud carrying trays laden with more sandwiches and mugs of tea made us all realise how hungry we were, and more importantly, how late in the afternoon it was getting. We’d all been working flat out for hours.
Still taking turns on lookout duty, we picked a part of the grounds where we couldn’t see a dead body and we all sat down on the dry ground to eat.
It was the first time we’d all had the chance to chat properly. Shawn explained that the farm still had power. A room off one of the barns was full of large batteries and the house had quite a technical back-up system. The batteries were continually topped up by the wind turbine and PV panels provided most of the power the house needed. If more was required then it could be pulled from the mains or if that was down, a diesel generator would kick in. In his opinion, it was a state of the art system and the farmer must either have had money to burn or managed to get a generous grant to install it. It was the kind of system most preppers would kill to own.
He shook his head regretfully, “It’s a shame we can’t take it with us, but I suppose I should be able to scavenge enough stuff to rig up a similar system wherever we end up.”
I asked him what he did and he explained that he was an electrical engineer. He’d been working as a jobbing electrician of late, as it suited him, but in the past he’d worked on big projects both at home and abroad, including some long stints on oil rigs.
Starting with myself, I then went round the group, asking what everybody did and what skills they had. I explained that I’d worked in building and property development, and had paid the bills by renting out houses I’d bought and refurbished myself.
Chet was a medical student who’d wanted to specialise in viral research. He explained that the previous year he’d had a summer internship at a laboratory in Birmingham where they’d been working on curing the common cold. He’d found it fascinating.
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