Zombie Castle Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Harris, Chris

  Happily, some tracks that reached back up the carriageway the far side of the blockage showed successful attempts had been made.

  I couldn’t tell how old the tracks were, but the thought of others doing as we were, surviving and trying to reach somewhere, filled us with hope.

  Sticking as close as I could to the back of the trailer, I followed Shawn as he started to clear the wreckage that lay ahead of us. The solid mass of crunched metal created by the crashed vehicles made it hard for zombies to reach us. Their arms still reached out to us, though, as they futilely tried to negotiate the maze that lay between us.

  Thrusts with the spears ended the existence of the ones in our path as Shawn drove deeper into the roadblock. Vehicles rolled or slid down the steep slope as he skilfully used the bucket and power of the tractor to push them aside.

  The radio crackled into life.

  “Tom, I may need a push soon. There’s a big old lorry in the way.” A few more cars rolled down the slope until I could see and hear Shawn revving the tractor, its wheels spinning as he tried to push the lorry.

  “Hold on, everyone,” I shouted, as I nudged the back of the trailer with the wedge at the front of my vehicle.

  Pressing my foot on the accelerator, I slowly increased power. The wedge held fast, testament to the way we had constructed it. Inch by inch, we moved, my spinning, smoking wheels filling the air with the pungent smell of burning rubber, until at last the lorry released itself from whatever was holding it back, and we lurched forward. I watched with satisfaction as the lorry slid down the slope before coming to rest against a tree.

  Bouncing over metal and other debris laying on the carriageway, I backed off from the trailer and followed as he continued with his demolition job.

  “Only a few more to go,” broadcast the radio. Moments later we were clear.

  The crash had stopped any cars getting further. Looking ahead, the road was clear for as far as I could see. We continued.

  The sign advertising a service station in one mile enabled me to get my bearings again. I smiled to myself as it was the one we usually stopped at when we drove to Cornwall. It was a good few hours’ drive under normal conditions from our home, and therefore, the coffee I’d usually drunk would have reached my bladder by then. We found the food at the service station was slightly better than the usual overpriced rubbish most offered, and to me the main benefit was that it had a huge carpark, so it was easy to park when towing the caravan.

  Becky, having seen the sign too, waved and pointed to it as we passed, smiling as she mouthed, “Do you need the loo?” One of us was usually desperate to go by the time we reached here, so normally one of us was racing across the carpark, desperate to reach the toilets before it was too late.

  It had become a joke between the children as they guessed who would be the one running.

  Ruefully I thought to myself, “A visit to a motorway service station. Another part of normal life we most likely will never experience again.”

  Chapter nineteen

  Mile after mile slipped by, albeit slowly due the pace set by Shawn. We had estimated it would take us most of the day to reach Bristol. At the speed we were going and if we hit no more problems, it had been a fair guess.

  With no zombies to kill, Dave, Chet and Steve sat down in their seats. For the next few miles we enjoyed the empty road and chatted. Not concentrating fully, as I was explaining to Steve why rugby is a far better sport than football would ever be, I missed seeing some debris in the road. It was a piece of wood, which Shawn, with his high clearance and wide axels had missed. Only seeing it as it emerged from underneath the trailer, I was slow to respond and yanked the wheel over to try and avoid it. The car jolted as my front wheel hit it.

  Immediately I knew something was wrong, the steering went heavy and the car started juddering.

  “Shit! We’ve blown a bloody tyre,” I exclaimed, furiously stopping the car. I hit the steering wheel, angry with myself, knowing it was my lapse in concentration that had led to this. Picking up the radio, Dave told Shawn to stop.

  “Where’s the spare?” asked Dave.

  “Underneath all that shit in the back. And it’s only one of those crappy little temporary ones too. It’s going to be a nightmare to change with all the armour we’ve put on. I don’t even know if we can get to the wheel.”

  “Tom, there’s no point moaning about it now. It’s happened, and we’ll just have to get on with it.” He turned to Chet and Steve.

  “There ain’t no zombies in sight now, but we know that can change. I want you two on perimeter security. Max out your ammo, then stuff some more in and keep sharp.”

  Shawn had turned the tractor round and pulled up next to me. Climbing down from the cab, he walked over to me, with Louise by his side.

  “It’s my fault,” he said when I told him what had happened, “I saw the lump of wood and it was only when I was on top of it, I thought of you behind me.”

  I laughed, “Cheers, pal, I’ll let you take the blame. I was only just blaming myself. We were chatting and I was slow to see it.” He got onto his knees and looked under the steel sheeting.

  “We’re going to have to remove some of this to get to it. I’ll go and get some tools. Tell me you know where your locking wheel nut key is?”

  “In the glove box, I hope. The main bloody problem is the spare is one of those temp jobs, and I don’t think it’ll be up to much,” I replied, turning around to climb back into the car. Relieved to find the key was still where I had last seen it, I climbed back out and joined the others, who by now had climbed down from the trailer. Dave spoke to us all.

  “Right, same as before. Simon and I will be in charge of security. Shawn, how many do you need to help?”

  “If we can have a few to help unload the boot first to get to the spare, then Tom and I should be able to do it. It will probably take us twenty minutes to half an hour to strip the side off, change the wheel and get it all back together.”

  Looking up the road, a few figures could now be seen in the distance.

  “You have fifteen minutes.” He looked at Shane.

  “Sharpshooter Shane. You’ll soon have a chance to show us how good you are. Get back in the trailer and start dropping those as soon as they’re in range. Shawn, you stick to changing the wheel, but I may need you to use the tractor to thin those bastards out if we can’t hold them back.

  Kids, stay in the trailer and keep watch as before.

  “The rest of you, grab as much ammo as you can, and set up a tight 360 perimeter. We’re deep in enemy territory and have a vehicle down. Until it’s fixed, we ain’t going anywhere. It’s up to us to keep whatever may come at bay.”

  Simon laughed, “Bloody hell, mate. I remember you saying exactly the same when that truck broke down in Helmand. Shit, that was a fight. Those fucking Taliban kept coming, no matter how many we dropped.”

  “Yes, mate. But we had Apache helicopters overhead then as well. Now we have four trained soldiers and a bunch of civvies, half of them women. I think I’d rather face the Taliban any day of the week, than a tide of undead bastards who don’t feel pain.”

  Becky looked at him. She stood with her rifle held ready, her vest stuffed with extra magazines.

  “Civvies? We are all you have. So, stop moaning and tell us what to do. If you think I’m going to let any of those things past me to get to my kids, then think again. If you think the Taliban were scary, you haven’t seen an angry mother.”

  Victoria, who was standing next to Becky and decked out in the same kit, spoke up.

  “Yes, Becky. You men think you can fight. You just watch.”

  Simon laughed and slapped Dave on the back.

  “I’ll leave you to dig yourself out of this one.” Dave huffed and flustered, his face growing red with embarrassment.

  “Sorry, ladies. I’m just an old git, that’s all. I know you can do it, and you’re not just civvies, you’re the strongest, bravest women I’ve met.” Becky l
ooked at Victoria, Lucy and Louise.

  “Shall we forgive him?”

  Maud called down from the trailer. She had a rifle over her shoulder and was holding Sarah on her hip.

  “Don’t worry, girls. I’ll be cooking his food later. We’ll see how sorry he is then.” He held up his hands in surrender.

  The loud bang of Shane firing a rifle from the trailer bought them all back to focus. Sarah began crying at the shock of the sudden noise. Simon called over to Dave.

  “I’ll go on overwatch with Shane and try and get as many as I can.”

  Meanwhile, while the boot was emptied of all the supplies we’d loaded earlier, Shawn and I began to remove the side panels from the car. We congratulated ourselves on choosing to bolt the sheets to the frame we’d constructed, rather than weld them on. It had taken longer, but we figured that should we need to repair it, then undoing bolts would be easier than breaking welds.

  Sweating and with knuckles bleeding from knocking them against the hard frame, we worked together to undo the bolts.

  “Let’s find a cordless impact driver, it’ll be bloody quicker and less painful,” I moaned as I sucked the blood from another bleeding knuckle. Chet carried over the spare wheel and jack, waiting for us to use them.

  Simon and Shane were now firing continually. Glancing up at the trailer, I saw Daisy handing Shane a fresh magazine. The hunting rifles only held three bullets, but Shane had chosen ones with removable magazines, so using extra ones he had gathered from the shop, and with the children loading them, they were able to keep up a good rate of fire.

  “How far away are they, Chet?”

  “Still quite a way. They’re getting closer, but Simon and Shane are holding them.”

  When the sheeting was removed, changing the wheel was a quick job. The thin temporary wheel, though, looked completely out of place and inadequate for the job.

  “The first XC90 we come across, I vote we take its wheels and use them. If I go over anything with that on, I think it’ll just fall off.”

  “Yes, mate,” replied Shawn, “In that case let’s not use all the bolts, so it’s easier to remove.” As I was holding the panel for Shawn to re-fix the first bolt, I heard a shout.

  “Watch out, they’re coming out of the woods.” This was followed by bursts of fire. I had to trust that they were capable of dealing with the new threat, and carry on fixing the car. We couldn’t move until we had, so my going to see how great a threat it was would not help, only slow us down. If they needed us, I was sure they’d soon let us know.

  The increasing volume of fire and shouting from the other side of the trailer made concentrating on the bolts a difficult job. Trying to speed up only made the job slower as we fumbled, dropping bolts and nuts in our haste.

  Stuffing the spare bolts in his pocket, Shawn declared, “That’ll do for now. Let’s get out of here.”

  We grabbed our weapons and ran around to the other side of the trailer. Half of the group, including Becky, stood in a line firing at zombies that were emerging from the woods adjoining the motorway, the corpses piling up at the hole in the fence made by a crashed car that had smashed into a tree.

  I got Dave’s attention by tapping him on the shoulder.

  “Finished?” He shouted over the firing. At my nod, he shouted to Simon in the trailer.

  “We’re pulling back, cover us from up there.” And then to the others in the line, “One by one, peel off and get into the trailer.”

  From only one day of training, the discipline was impressive. Everyone held their nerve and waited until told by Dave to leave the firing line. Knowing it would not take me long to climb into the car, I joined the line, with my rifle held ready, prepared to fire if necessary.

  Shawn climbed into the tractor and started the engine.

  “Tom, go and tell the others to start boarding, and then get your car started.

  Covered by fire from everyone in the trailer, Dave was the last one to leave the line and climb the ladder to get into the Volvo. Sitting down heavily in the seat, he drank deeply from a bottle of water.

  “We cannot keep getting in these situations. They’re not like a normal enemy, they don’t know what retreat is, and don’t care how many we’ve killed. All they do is keep coming until there are no more of them or they’ve got you.

  We simply do not have enough ammunition to keep fighting like that. I know we had to then, due to unforeseen circumstances. Unless we can avoid it, we’re going to have to pick our fights carefully or find a shit load more ammunition.”

  Driving the Volvo was made even harder by the narrow ‘get me home’ tyre, but we were moving again and that was the main thing.

  With the day wearing on, so did the distance to go reduce. We found a Volvo on an empty stretch of road, and a quick check confirmed the rims were the same as mine, but the only barrier to getting them was the family of four still trapped inside. None had any sign of an injury, so they must have turned at the same time.

  Dealing with the occupants took me back to the very start of the event, when I’d met Shawn in those first desperate few hours escaping from St Agnes.

  Holding my knife ready, I opened the passenger door. The woman trapped by the seatbelt snarled and snapped her teeth, her arms trying to reach me. I stepped back out of her line of sight, and she quietened down, moving her head from side to side in her effort to locate me again. Shawn then banged loudly on the driver’s side window. Her head immediately looked towards the new sound. I took one pace forward and stabbed her through the ear, killing her again.

  The glove box, where I hoped the locking wheel nut key was kept, was now accessible. It was there. Despite being no danger to us now, Shawn insisted we put down the rest of the family in the car.

  His zombie mantra of ‘kill everyone you can, because, if you do not, that one will be the one to get you’ did make sense, and no matter how many millions of the undead were now roaming the British Isles, a few less was still a few less.

  The banging on the window routine worked for the others too. The father and two sons soon joined their mother in hopefully a more peaceful place.

  Lifting the car up with the tractor bucket made removing the wheels an easy job. With a few zombies making their way towards us, we lifted the wheels into the tractor’s bucket and drove on to find a better place to swap my wheels over.

  The motorway was completely blocked at the Weston-Super-Mare junction. The accidents and ensuing chaos had no doubt been caused by the thousands of holiday-makers desperately fleeing danger, only to become part of the problem themselves when trapped by an impassable roadblock. They’d have been unable to return against the tide of people still trying to leave, falling victim to either a virus carrier or one who had already turned.

  From a distance, it was clear the way ahead was impossible to negotiate due to the number of vehicles involved and the thousands of undead, who I could see through the binoculars, milling aimlessly together, waiting for their next meal to appear.

  I checked the map to find one of the alternative routes we’d planned. After a quick radio check with Shawn, we turned around and headed back to the previous exit, where we hoped we could use minor side roads to circumvent the crash.

  The sides roads were clear, thankfully, and we soon navigated our way back to the motorway and continued north. We were almost there when Louise’s voice came over the radio.

  “There’s somebody approaching, it looks like army trucks.” Curious, I pulled out from behind the tractor, so I could see ahead.

  In the distance, heading towards us on our side of the carriageway, I could see what appeared to be an army convoy.

  “Let me deal with this,” Dave said, “We don’t know what they’ve been through or who’s leading them. Keep your guns out of view, we don’t want to spook them.”

  The convoy slowed as it approached. There were six vehicles led by an armoured vehicle with a machine gun turret on top, and behind it were three lorries and two land rovers. D
ave stood up, making himself as visible as possible and raised his arm in welcome. The convoy stopped, and menacingly, the machine gun turned to point in our direction. From my position, I couldn’t see anyone in the trailer, but I hoped Simon had the sense to tell everyone to keep their guns hidden.

  The door on the armoured vehicle opened and a soldier stepped out.

  “That’s the first good news,” Dave whispered, “They have an officer in charge. I’ll go and have a chat.”

  He lowered the ladder and walked over to the officer. He came to attention and saluted smartly. The officer returned the salute and then extended his hand to shake Dave’s. I could feel the tension dropping from me.

  The two soldiers talked for a few minutes until the officer turned and issued a command through the vehicle’s open door.

  Soon after that, doors opened on all the other vehicles and soldiers stepped out. Under the command of what I assumed was a sergeant, they spread out to provide perimeter security. My last worries were dispelled when I saw they were all looking outwards with their weapons ready, and not looking towards us.

  Dave turned and shouted, “It’s okay, everyone. Do you all want to come down and meet Captain Hammond?”.

  Once I’d helped Becky and the kids down from the trailer, giving them each a quick hug, we all gathered around the Captain. Dave introduced him, and he then told us what had happened to him and his men since the outbreak started.

  They were based at Imjin Barracks near Gloucester, where they formed part of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps that was based there.

  In the chaos of the first morning of the outbreak, they were issued with the same orders that every unit must have been given around the country: To go out and quell the public unrest that had broken out seemingly everywhere.

  Captain Hammond and his unit soon found themselves fighting for their lives amongst the streets of Cheltenham. His emotions showed when he told us how he and his men had to watch their comrades and friends being ripped apart by the ever-advancing mob. They worked out the hard way that the only way to kill them was to aim for the head, but for many, this knowledge came too late.