Zombie Castle Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Harris, Chris

  With twenty one of us on the roof that night, a new problem came to light.

  Where could we go to the toilet?

  “Number ones” were easy. The men stood at the roof’s edge and gleefully used the zombies as target practice. The women had been using a bucket and then pouring it over the edge. But “number twos” were a different matter!

  Dave explained that due to the lack of food and water prior to our arrival, going to the toilet hadn’t really been an issue. But now everyone had full stomachs and bladders, and we needed to come up with a solution quickly to save people’s modesty.

  I stamped my foot on the roof. It sounded like it was made from timber and felt. “Shawn, let’s get the petrol saw out of the trailer. I’ve got an idea.”

  Five minutes later, in a corner of the building, I’d cut a small hole in the roof, exposing the room below.

  Using some spare lengths of timber we had and a sheet, Shawn and I knocked up a screen and placed a roll of toilet paper by the entrance. Proudly, we announced that the toilet was now open.

  The queue that hastily formed showed that we’d built it just in time.

  With everyone now feeling much more comfortable, we sat around in the fading light and planned for the day ahead. At first light, Simon and Dave would take a quick trip around the barracks and try to collect as much ammunition as they could. They’d also gather up as many abandoned weapons as possible, if necessary taking them from the dead.

  Shawn kept impressing upon us the need to gather supplies at all times. As he pointed out, you never knew when the next opportunity might arise, so we decided to visit the small general stores on the base and empty them of anything useful.

  Fuel was our next pressing concern. We’d refilled the tanks of the tractor and the Volvo from the containers of fuel we’d brought from the farm and we still had some left. Simon and Dave told us that there was a large above ground diesel tank in the vehicle maintenance yard from which we could at least refill our empty containers.

  If we found any more containers we could bring more back with us.

  The route was easy to plan. We would travel up the A38 until it joined the M5 motorway and then follow it north to our destination. By good fortune, all the places we needed to visit to try to rescue family members were virtually on our route.

  Shawn for instance, had lived in Bristol. Even though he had no close family members there, he wanted to see if any of his friends had made it.

  He explained that they were all preppers like himself and would make valuable additions to our group.

  Louise’s family lived on the outskirts of Cheltenham and Steve Popley’s family lived outside the centre of Worcester. Using a map we were quickly able to identify their locations.

  Although devastated, Noah, Daniel and Aggi quickly acknowledged that it would be impossible to rescue their families, all of whom lived in Central London.

  As far as we knew, the outbreak had started there and therefore the streets of the capital would be swarming with millions of zombies. We were nervous enough about the rescue attempts we were going to make in Bristol, Cheltenham and Worcester but these were all places with much smaller populations. As a group, we’d already agreed that if at any stage the majority of the group felt it was too dangerous to continue, we would abort the rescue attempt in question. First and foremost, we needed to look out for ourselves.

  All the children had already settled down to sleep, wiped out by another long and stressful day. To their credit, over the course of the day Stanley, Daisy and Eddie had managed to drag both Emma and Josh out of their state of terrified silence, by chatting to them and trying to include them in everything. By the time they’d gone to sleep, they’d even managed a faint smile once or twice.

  As the darkness wrapped itself around us, our own conversations subsided as tiredness overtook us all. Becky and I cuddled up next to our kids and we soon drifted off to sleep.

  Ten minutes later Sarah woke us all up, crying for her next bottle. Even the zombies at the base of the building seemed to groan in protest at having their rest interrupted, growling and snarling in response.

  As the dawn began to show on the eastern horizon, I remembered how tiring young babies can be to look after. Twenty minutes after we were all awake and preparing to leave, Sarah fell into a deep sleep for the first time in five hours.

  I looked at the little girl’s sleeping face. You couldn’t be cross with her. A helpless six-month-old baby girl who’d lost everything. She’d already stolen a small piece of my heart and I think we all looked to her as a kind of mascot: a symbol of hope for the future.

  If little Sarah could survive this, then there might be hope for humanity yet. A small hope maybe, but at that moment I think we were willing to take whatever we could get.

  As we finished our breakfast of coffee and pancakes, we got ready to start our day. We had no idea how long it was going to take us, but we were beginning the journey we’d first planned on Bodmin Moor. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

  We were heading into unknown dangers. Our group had grown to twenty one, including a baby. We’d lost friends and loved ones and watched others die without being able to help them. We’d also killed out of mercy. As far as we knew, we might well be among the last survivors in the UK, but we had survived and we knew how to survive.

  Now we were heading for one of the oldest symbols of power in the world. These places had offered shelter and sanctuary to people for centuries.

  The designs might have changed and the materials used to build them might have altered, but they’d all been built for one purpose: to keep their occupants safe from the dangers that lurked outside the walls. Over the years countless castles had fallen into disrepair, no longer required for their original purpose. Now times had changed. We needed somewhere that could resist a besieging army of zombies. Nothing built in modern times was going to be able to do that.

  We set out on our journey to the only place that could offer us a future.

  A symbol of our past.

  We were heading to our Zombie Castle.

  ZC TWO

  Chris Harris

  Chapter one

  Twenty people and one baby sat on the roof eating their breakfast.

  Maud had once again cobbled together a delicious meal from only camping stoves. The porridge and bannock bread cakes (flour and water mixed together with raisons, and then fried) were delicious and would give us all the energy we knew we needed to survive another day. Becky kept another camping stove going, boiling kettles of water to make the gallons of tea and coffee the adults seemed to need.

  Sarah, the baby, now sleeping and oblivious to everything, was a great distraction for all of us. All of us preferring to gaze at the baby rather than the reality of the situation that was surrounding us twenty feet below.

  The roof of the building we were on at Bickley Barracks outside Plymouth had provided us not only with new members for our group, but with shelter for the night. We knew we had to leave, and soon, but for the moment we were safe. And that extra cup of coffee would delay our facing the zombies below, whose only aim in life was to eat us, for just ten more minutes or so.

  The calm was shattered by a shout from my son, Stanley. To keep the children occupied, as they had wolfed their breakfasts down in no time and didn’t seem as reluctant as the adults to start the day, we had given them the task of being lookouts.

  “There are more zombies coming.”

  The adults looked at each other ruefully and exchanged a few shrugs, knowing we could delay no longer. Standing up and stretching, I walked over to the edge of the roof with Sergeant Dave Eddy and Sergeant Simon Wood.

  Two battle-scarred, tough as nails Marines who had fought alongside each other in many conflicts and who had been reunited yesterday. We now looked to them for their military expertise and fighting skills, which we were desperately going to need if we were to survive.

  While everyone else worked together to finish packing the gear w
e’d transferred up to the roof to make our overnight stop as comfortable as possible, the three of us stood beside the children and stared at the approaching zombies.

  Despite the fact we’d thinned out the zombies that had overrun the base, about fifty still surrounded the building we were standing on, their low groans and rasping breath the only noise they made as they coalesced into one group, waiting, just waiting for the next meal to appear. As far as we could see in all directions, lay the efforts of our labours yesterday. Hundreds of corpses lay scattered in droves, killed for a second time by us either running them over and crushing them with our vehicles, or by stabbing them through the brain with our improvised zombie spears. A few had been shot as we had familiarized ourselves with the various weapons we now had, but the need to conserve ammunition had kept that number down, as they posed no danger to us on the roof and we knew that once we were back in our vehicles, we could easily kill them. Looking at the approaching, staggering crowd, Simon said.

  “I reckon there’s at least another hundred coming our way.”

  “Where are they coming from?” Dave asked, to no one in particular. Thinking for a few moments I replied, “We know they’re attracted by noise, so they’ve probably been following our little convoy, or are just attracted by all the noise we’ve been making.

  There’s not much else to distract them, so they keep heading to whatever grabs their attention and keep going until they find it.”

  I gave a grim laugh.

  “I’m sounding like an expert, but it’s what happens on the TV shows and it makes a kind of sense. We ain’t never going to get away from them, we’ll always be the noisiest thing around, with the tractor and car and all the shooting we’ve been doing. They’ll always catch up with us eventually.”

  Dave stood quietly for a moment, arms crossed, with one hand supporting his chin. You could almost hear his mind working as he contemplated the scene in front of him. More zombies came into view, following the lead pack.

  “Right, then,” he said, turning to face and address us all. His low voice, though quiet, easily reached us all.

  “Small change of plan. Let’s get packed and back in the vehicles. We may as well all load up and go together to scavenge what other supplies we can. There’s no point coming back here again, we just need to get what we can and go. By the look of it, there are a lot more of them heading our way, so splitting up is not an option anymore.”

  Initially the plan had been to leave a group on the roof, while a group toured the base, scavenging whatever we could find.

  Turning to the children, Dave said in his best Sergeant’s voice, “Well done, Marines. We’re all going to need your young eyes to keep us safe.” Pointing at Stanley, my son, he continued, “And you, young man. I’ve heard all about you and your skills with a cricket bat. You must show me how to do that. You are one brave Marine.”

  Stanley beamed with pleasure. I nodded at Dave, who winked at me.

  While the children had slept last night, one of the topics of conversation had been how to deal with and protect the children from the horrors they had already seen, and what they would no doubt witness daily from now on.

  The universal agreement was that we would all obviously protect every child with our own lives if need be. But there was no way we could stop them seeing and experiencing the reality of the lives we were now living.

  Even though we would always be the first to fight to protect them, it was essential they be able to defend themselves if need be. Daisy, my little baby girl, already carried a knife in a sheath on her belt, and Stanley his zombie-killing cricket bat. Eddie had claimed a zombie spear, which was never far from his grasp.

  As to the new junior members of our group, Emma, at six, was too young to really do anything but run. But Josh, who was twelve, would be able to wield a weapon if need be.

  Simon and Dave had both said that once the opportunity arose, they would begin training us all, including the children, in military tactics and fighting techniques. Everyone, they said, could play a part, including Emma, who could be shown how to reload magazines with bullets. In battle a supply of freshly loaded magazines could mean the difference between life and death.

  They did add that first they would both have to learn from us how to kill a zombie up close and personal with a knife, as they hadn’t dared do it yet, and after Shawn’s and my demonstration the day before at the Armoury, they realized guns were not the only answer.

  I looked around. It was a hive of activity as the last few items were gathered and passed down into the trailer.

  Becky was supervising the loading and Shawn was putting the last few items into the subfloor we’d created. Noah, Daniel and Aggie were holding a demonstration on how to use the zombie spears for those who had not used them yesterday, while Maud was looking after Sarah and keeping a general eye on the children.

  Maud looked frail and gentle, holding little Sarah.

  “I don’t care if you don’t want to go. You all need to go to the toilet before we leave. We are not stopping every five minutes because one of you needs the toilet,” she said, as she herded the children in the general direction of the toilet we had constructed.

  I chuckled when I heard her, as others around me did. How many millions of times had parents issued the same instructions to children before a long car journey? It now had a different meaning. She could have said, “Children, we are not stopping or getting out of the car to go to the toilet, because you will get eaten by that zombie over there.”

  It did remind me though, that I had better go as well before we left!

  Chapter two

  Just before we started our engines, I stood up on the seat of my car and got everyone’s attention.

  “Right, we all know who is doing what. Things can change, so remember that Simon’s in charge of the trailer, and I am of the Volvo. So, if we say something, just bloody do it.”

  Everyone nodded and looked deadly serious,

  My Eisenhower-esque dawn of war speech concluded, I sat down and started the engine.

  Dave had taken Ben’s seat next to me in the Volvo, while Chet and Steve the Marine stood up on my back seats, leaning against the side of the hole that had once been a roof, with their weapons held ready. Steve had his SA80 and sidearm; Chet had chosen one of the pump-action shotguns we’d recovered from the Armoury.

  Louise was riding in the cab of the tractor with Shawn, armed with a shotgun to provide another pair of eyes and extra protection for Shawn.

  With spears in the other hand and boxes of ammunition and shotgun cartridges stacked on the seat between them, everyone braced themselves as I followed the tractor and bumped over the corpses I couldn’t dodge.

  The tractor, with its zombie plough on the front, pushed the living dead out of the way, or mangled them enough so they slipped under the blade of the plough for our tyres to bump over, while eight adults in the trailer stabbed with their spears at any other zombie that was near enough as they slowly passed them.

  Chet, Steve and Dave in my car did the same to any that had got close to us.

  The plan we had come up with was to stop at various places around the base, including the shop and vehicle repair area, where we could gather useful supplies and equipment. We would also stop at places where there should be quantities of ammunition stored. Moving between these locations, we would also keep an eye out for weapons lying abandoned on the ground, and on or near dead former comrades in arms.

  That was why we had three in my car. When a weapon or something else useful was spotted, probably by either Shawn, who was driving the tractor and so had a clear view of what was in front, or from someone from the vantage point of the high trailer, a call over the radio or a shout and a wave from the trailer would warn us. I would then stop, and Chet and Steve would jump out via the roof of my car, and covered by myself and Dave with our weapons, they would retrieve whatever the item was and pass it up to us in the car.

  While we were doing that, Shawn w
ould circle round and keep any approaching zombies at bay. A plan we had not tested yet.

  Shawn’s voice came through the radio.

  “Guns coming up on the right.”

  I spotted the grizzly remains of three soldiers lying on the ground. From what I could make out, they’d died with their backs to each other, trying to fight off a horde of zombies that had surrounded them. They’d not died cheaply, and all around them lay the carcasses of those they’d killed before being overpowered.

  One of the Marine’s bodies, even though it looked as if had been passed through a blender, was moving. He’d turned before death could find him, but his body was so destroyed, all it could do was jerk spasmodically.

  As Chet and Steve climbed down from the roof, Dave called softly to them from beside me.

  “Don’t hesitate, boys. Steve, you know the Marine on the floor. Send him to his mates. He’ll thank you for it. But first, be careful of the ones you’re stepping over, they may not be dead yet.”

  We watched as they carefully walked the few paces through the bodies, circling the soldiers, and delivering the occasional stab through the head with a spear to ones they were not sure were dead.

  Steve paused and while Chet stood back, he mouthed a few silent words to his brother-in-arms, before delivering his final duty.

  “Good lad,” Dave said, “Now, don’t fuck about, grab what you can and get your arse back in the car, we ain’t got all day.” Motivation, military style!

  While they stripped the corpses of their rifles and any magazines they had, Shawn had driven in a circle, and was driving at and through the zombies following us. No matter how many he kept re-killing, more seemed to keep coming.

  Watching as they struggled back with their load, I realized that a bag would have made their job easier. As they handed the haul up to us and climbed up themselves, I shouted up to Becky in the trailer to find a bag we could use next time.