Zombie Castle Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Harris, Chris

  I counted four bodies lying amongst them, victims of either Shane or the machine gun.

  Simon began positioning us amongst the trees, picking spots where we could each fire upon them if need be. He, Dave and the other two Marines then ran in a low crouch onto the bridge, staying in the middle to avoid being spotted, and crawled to positions directly overlooking their site.

  The horde kept coming, each shambling step bringing them closer, their groans and sounds of thousands of bodies stumbling along audible to us now between the crack of Shane’s high-powered rifle. It would only be a matter of time before our enemies heard them too.

  Glancing around, I could see we all had our weapons raised, everyone using a tree or fallen branch as cover, silently observing them through their sights. Dave, Jamie and Geoff, holding their weapons, faced the other way, ready to protect us from any that might appear from the other direction.

  One of the gang eventually became aware of the noises coming from the direction opposite that which they were facing. Curiosity made him brave, despite the sporadic incoming fire, and he ran towards the opposite barricade. Standing still for a few seconds, he stared, gawping at the approaching, terrifying spectacle. His brain slowly comprehended what he was looking at and he cupped his hands to his mouth to shout a warning.

  A single shot rang out from one of the Marines on the bridge and he fell before he could raise the alarm. This shot, being fired from a new, close and unknown location caused immediate panic amongst the remaining gang members, who crouching even lower, urgently looked around to try and identify the new threat. A few shots were fired, but nothing came anywhere near us.

  Their fallen comrade lay unnoticed at the other barricade, the blood from the single gunshot to his chest staining the road around him.

  The throng of zombies, stretching back along the motorway was almost up to the wall of vehicles. We had been warned what the Marines planned to do, so when Dave bellowed, “Cover!” everyone threw themselves down flat behind whatever cover they were already behind.

  The four metal orbs, thrown by experienced arms and aimed at the same spot, exploded simultaneously. The shockwave from the exploding grenades passed over us and we looked up. A hole had been blown in the barricade, one of the cars lay on its roof, burning, and the smoke and dust cloud blanketed the area, making it hard to see beyond that spectacle.

  Knocked off their feet by the explosion, the gang members slowly picked themselves up and stared at the hole that had inexplicably been blown in their defences.

  Panic replaced their stunned silence when the first zombies appeared, staggering through the wall of smoke and dust. Not having the ability to know or care, some had walked through the flames pouring from the car and had caught fire themselves, their fiercely burning clothes turning them into human torches. Unable to feel pain, they carried on walking, heading towards the now completely panicking and freaking out gang members.

  Those with some presence of mind held their ground, raised their weapons and fired. The zombies pressed by the uncountable masses behind and forced through the narrow gap created by the explosion were propelled through like a cork out of a bottle.

  Within seconds, they realised that fighting them would be futile and they began looking to escape. Empty weapons dropped as they headed to the nearest wall of their barricade, any thoughts of working together forgotten as it became every man for himself.

  I aimed at one scrambling over the barricade nearest to me, took aim and fired a short burst that punched holes through the roof of the van he was trying to scramble across. He stopped in shock until another burst of fire from me that just missed him persuaded him to try another route.

  Others were doing the same, not allowing them to leave. They were going to answer for and pay with their lives for what they had done. I noticed the bodies of some gang members remained unmoving after been fired at. Killed by either a badly or well-aimed warning shot, depending on your point of view.

  Everyone who tried to escape I sent scrambling back, bullets flying around their heads as their pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears.

  The zombies kept surging through the gap, rapidly filling the square created by the vehicles. I had seen none escape. I did not feel any guilt, they had sealed their own fate when they shot Daniel.

  When the line of cars began to buckle, pushed aside like toy cars by the sheer weight of numbers pressing against them, it was time to leave. To get back to the others.

  I took a few seconds to watch what we had created, after gathering up my ejected magazines.

  The camp was filled with snarling, groaning beasts. One of the gang must have locked himself in a van. It was rocking as it was pushed at from all sides. They wanted the prize that was inside, and nothing was going to stop them getting it.

  The van toppled over, crushing some as it fell. I could hear the man’s shrill screams of panic, trapped as he was, with no possible means of escape. The windscreen buckled, pushed inwards as it gave way to the snarling faces pressing against it, the screams of terror changing to howls of pain as they reached him and began feasting on his living flesh.

  Dave and Simon had left the bridge and called for us to join them back on the road.

  “Well done, guys,” said Dave. “Let’s double-time it back. The back wall of the barricade has already been destroyed by them and it won’t be long until they break through the one facing us. We need to get back and find an alternative route around them.”

  The others had not been idle in our absence. They’d already thoughtfully dug a grave for Daniel and laid his body in it. We gathered round as the Vicar conducted a brief but emotional service at his graveside and we all said our last goodbyes.

  Following that, and in the time it took us all to board all the vehicles, Simon quickly went to retrieve his trailer that we’d abandoned earlier. Starting our engines, we followed Shawn as he led the way back down the motorway to find a route around the impassable mass of the undead.

  Forty-two people and one dog silently kept watch for the next threat as they continued the journey. The dog not so much, he was asleep again.

  Chapter Eleven

  The route Shawn chose took us back over the same bridge we had just been on. We couldn’t help but slow down and gawk like rubberneckers reducing speed to look at a crash on another carriageway as they passed it. The barrier of cars had been destroyed by the advancing zombies, their weight of numbers unstoppable. Still stretching into the distance, the compact mass of countless thousands continued their journey south in their search for their next meal.

  At Weston-Super-Mare we’d been forced to divert off the motorway when we’d found it blocked by a vast mangle of crashed and abandoned vehicles and thousands of zombies. If they kept on going straight and didn’t deviate from the obvious straight route, they would eventually meet. Joining together, and if they kept going, their eventual destination would be the end of the motorway at Exeter, and from there following the same route we had taken, but in the opposite direction deeper into the South West towards Cornwall.

  I thought of Willie. Would he remain safe, protected by his isolation in the wilds of Dartmoor? If we had a Ham Radio, we could contact him and warn him.

  Shawn was already on the lookout for CB radios to scavenge from trucks, but we also needed to look out for the tell-tale signs of a house with a radio antenna rigged up on the property somewhere and take it.

  Had the soldiers found their families safe and well? The chances, I knew, were slim and with the massive pack of undead slowly heading their way, I also hoped they wouldn’t encounter them. Despite their armoured vehicles and firepower, their only chance of survival would be to avoid them, retreat and only pick fights they could win.

  Dartmoor

  In the days following the group’s departure, Willie worked tirelessly, reinforcing and improving his perimeter; building walls higher, adding extra barriers of wire fences and more early warning trip wires and flares. Being alone, he knew it was impossible
for him to maintain an effective all-round guard, so he ensured that what he built and improved would offer him the best protection.

  The house he turned into a fortress, strengthening the shutters and keeping the now heavily armoured tractor and trailer parked up against its wall so if need be, he could climb down from an upper window and escape.

  He built defensible outposts around his property and further afield. Places he could keep watch from or run to if caught unawares. Hidden in each was a small stash of food and extra ammunition.

  Already a very organised man, he catalogued his food and equipment supplies. Augmented by his foraging and hunting skills, he knew he could survive indefinitely at his farm. If he took people in, though, as he had promised and was prepared to do, the extra mouths would eventually put a strain on his resources.

  Using his intimate knowledge of the moors from his years living on them, he began patrolling further field. Visiting the nearest properties to him first, he quickly became adept at dispatching the previous occupants if they were still ‘living’ there, taking any food or other supplies he found back to his property.

  The trip to the nearest shop nearly ended in disaster when the hotel and pub that was next door to it spewed out a crowd of zombies attracted by the noise he’d made breaking into the shop. A few desperate minutes ensued as he hacked, punched and kicked his way through the enveloping horde.

  His stubbornness refused to let him be beaten by them, though. Nothing would stop him completing the task he had set himself. An hour later, he had hunted down and killed every last one of them, gaining knowledge at every kill about the nature and capabilities of his new enemy. It took him the rest of the day to empty the shop and transport what he needed home.

  When darkness forced him indoors, he sat in his usual chair and planned the following day’s missions and targets. He had always been contented living alone on the moors, happy with his own company, never imagining for even a moment that he would want to share his peaceful, happy, but solitary existence with anyone.

  And then Maud came along.

  Loneliness was a feeling he had never experienced before, but he found his thoughts often turning to her and the rest of the group that had sought shelter at his farm for a few short days. Eventually he came to realise that the physical pangs he was feeling and the sense of emptiness in his heart was disappointment. He had missed an opportunity. One that had never happened before to him and one that as far as he knew, would not fall to him again.

  He missed them, the companionship and camaraderie that had made his home come alive again. It reminded him of what he missed about his time serving in the armed forces; a sense of family.

  But most of all he missed Maud.

  When she’d asked him to join them he had refused without hesitation, content to remain in the nice peaceful existence he had created for himself.

  A decision he now regretted.

  Not being one to dwell on regrets, he forced himself to put those feelings aside and continue with his new mission and goal in life. To seek out and offer help to anyone he could.

  The problem was he had not found a living soul yet. He had found evidence of people camping recently on the moors and on one occasion on the edge of the moors, found the still smouldering and glowing remains of a camp fire and evidence of a hastily departed overnight rough camp. He followed the trail, hoping to find his first survivors.

  Zombies scattered the path, evidence of a bitter fight for survival. Re-killed, and from what Willie could tell, it had happened recently. Willie quickened his pace, hoping he could reach them in time to help.

  He found them a mile later. They had attempted to reach one of the granite tors that towered from the ground in many places over the moors, seeking the safety the castle-like rocks could provide. This one, unfortunately, had sides too steep to climb and they had become trapped, forced into a small cleft in its side. Zombies littered the ground around the entrance, all with their heads smashed in from whatever weapons they had been carrying.

  One he noticed still had a golf iron with a broken shaft sticking from its skull. The loss of the weapon had sealed their terrible fate. At the end of the narrow cleft three zombies were still feasting on the bodies.

  Willie’s anger grew. The family had almost made it, killing over twenty in their desperate fighting retreat, only to have their main weapon break with only three left to fight. The whole unfairness of it turned his anger into rage. He had almost found his first survivors, he could have offered them shelter and safety, a chance to live.

  Instead, he had missed them by probably no more than thirty minutes. The rage increased as he began to feel guilty. He had let them down. Why hadn’t he left earlier that morning? He’d selfishly sat having a second cup of coffee, waiting for the dawn to show itself on the horizon, while this family was fighting for its existence.

  He let his rifle drop on the harness that held it to his body and pulled the adapted light sledgehammer he’d chosen as his preferred close quarter weapon from the straps that held it to his pack. One end of the head he had sharpened with an angle grinder for use as a piercing weapon, the other he’d left as a blunt head smasher. It was light enough so when it was swung it didn’t unbalance him, but still had enough weight to it to make it deadly.

  Still feasting on their latest victims, the three zombies hadn’t noticed Willie. Previously he had always, out of some inbuilt sense of fairness, got the attention of any zombie he was going to kill, enabling him to attack them face to face and not in his opinion, in cowardly fashion from behind. This time he did not afford them that luxury and stepping forward into the narrow opening in the rock, he swung his weapon hard overhead time after time, the blood and brains from their smashed heads and bodies splashing up the rock in some macabre new version of a cave painting. Eventually, with his anger subsiding and his rage spent, he stepped, panting from the exertion, from the cool shade cast by the rocks into the bright sunlight shining over the moors.

  Sitting down heavily on a rock, he took a long pull from his water bottle before reaching into his top pocket, retrieving, and lighting a fresh cigar.

  He sat, enjoying the silence and looked over from his elevated position across the moors he loved, and which had been his home for decades. The exhaled smoke from his cigar slowly drifted and dissipated in the light wind that provided only slight relief from the growing heat.

  He pondered his next step.

  In his days of searching, he had found no survivors. The fact he had just missed out on saving some broke his heart and he began to question the futility of his promise. Did this mean that all he would keep finding would be the grizzly remains of more unlucky ones? Could he stay strong enough to cope with that?

  It was summer, and the moors would be an obvious choice for any still in the area to escape to. Winter, though, would be a different story. In a few short months they would change from the beautiful, wild and remote place they were now to a bleak, desolate and inhospitable environment. A place where even those with advanced survival skills would question the sense of attempting to live for any period of time. If any were heading to the moors, he was sure they would have done so by now.

  Wille could survive. He was used to the conditions and he had a roof and a warm fire to make himself comfortable. The conditions, he knew, would curtail his ability to patrol a wide area, forcing his world to shrink to a small radius around his farm and isolating him even further from the outside world be was beginning to realise he now missed.

  As he sat, pulling on his cigar, lost deep in thought, he slowly reached the conclusion that had been bouncing around in his head for the past days.

  His future was not on the moors, it was with Maud.

  The daunting journey didn’t worry him, he would make it or die trying.

  Decision made, he stood up, made sure all his kit was securely in place and strode off across the land to his farm.

  He hoped he would not be alone for much longer.

  C
hapter Twelve

  Willie

  Crossing the Moors, Willie maintained a pace that would have broken many younger, fitter people. He had a new mission and he was eager to start it as soon as possible.

  A sound came to him, carried on the wind. A distant but familiar ‘rat tat tat’ and popping sounds faded in and out.

  Knowing instantly it was gunfire, not just normal gunfire, but a machine gun firing, meant one thing to him.

  Military!

  The long-sustained bursts also meant they were heavily engaged, and in this day and age, that also meant only one thing: zombies.

  Standing still and listening to the distant sounds, he worked out the approximate direction they were coming from. They were at least over two miles away by his reckoning. Closer to the edge of the moors. A few villages and hamlets were in that direction. It could be coming from any of a number of locations.

  Willie took a drink from his bottle, tightened the straps on his Bergen and checked the other equipment he carried wouldn’t come loose and hamper his progress.

  Muttering to himself, “Shall we see what’s going on then, laddie?” he started to jog towards the distant sounds, picking up the pace as his muscles warmed and his Bergen settled on his back.

  Captain Hammond

  Firing single shots from the window of the Armoured vehicle, he aimed at the heads of the zombies nearest to him, blood and brains spraying from the back of their destroyed skulls as they fell to join the growing mound of bodies that surrounded the desperate position they found themselves in.