The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 3)

by Luke Duffy

  “How do you know, Sam? You’ve seen for yourself how bad things are getting. People are running left, right, and centre. Being a pilot would have given her much better odds at survival than those poor bastards trying to cross the English Channel on rafts made from old tyres and plastic bottles.”

  “I know she wasn’t running because she was waiting for me,” Samantha finally confessed as she stepped back into the room.

  “What do you mean?” Gerry asked. He knew exactly what she was saying, but he wanted to hear it spelled out for him so that he could be sure of no misinterpretation.

  She walked back fully into the room and sat herself down on the small couch beside the door. She sighed heavily and ran her fingers through her hair, sweeping it back from her face and then turning to look up at him as he stood waiting for her response.

  “It was my idea, and she was waiting for me to give her the green light. We hadn’t decided how or when, but we had begun preparing for it. Our priority was to identify somewhere to run to. We didn’t want to just take off and have nowhere to go.”

  Gerry sat himself down into the chair in front of the desk that Samantha had been sitting in just a few moments before. He had never imagined that she, of all people, would be inclined to desert. He had thought about it himself, and he was sure that everyone on the island had done so at some point, but he felt shocked that Samantha would consider running.

  “Who?” he asked in a hushed voice. “Who was going with you? Was it just you and Melanie, or were there others?”

  Samantha shook her head and let out a low chuckle. She could see where Gerry’s thinking was automatically leading him. Although he wanted to know the details of how and when they were planning to escape, there was also the other question that he needed answering. It was a question brought on by his male instincts and was completely beyond his control. He had never known much about her private life or been aware of her relationships. She was an enigma to him, and he had even voiced that fact during conversations, masking his suspicions as a joke. Over the months, he had seen how close Samantha and Melanie had become, and he had begun to wonder. His mind had automatically spewed out the thought, and regardless of how briefly it had sounded inside his head, the question lingered. Samantha herself had helped to fuel Gerry’s thought process by her own ambiguity.

  “We’re not lesbians, Gerry,” she announced, and shook her head again. “Did you think that Melanie and I were going to just fly off into the sunset and spend the rest of our days getting it on? Yes, we had others in mind, but I hadn’t asked any of them as yet. Actually, you were going to be one of them.”

  Gerry looked up at her. His momentary embarrassment quickly fading and being replaced with a strange sense of belonging, mixed with one of apprehension. On one hand, he was touched by the fact that Samantha would have considered him as someone worth taking with her. However, on the other hand, the thought of them being discovered before they had made it off the island and subsequently swinging from the gallows as deserters terrified him.

  “How were you planning on doing it, a helicopter?”

  “I was thinking we could take one of the Chinooks, but that doesn’t matter now, does it? Mel and Mike have been left to fucking rot in London.” She rose to her feet again and turned towards the door. She stopped and turned to face Gerry. “As for what we’ve just spoken about; I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you to keep your mouth shut, do I?”

  Gerry was quiet for a moment. He looked up at her, his mind a chaotic jumble of different thoughts and mixed emotions.

  “Of course, Sam. Who do you think I am?” he replied, feeling somewhat insulted that she had felt the need to even mention it.

  He watched her as he remained sitting in the chair. Again, he had visions of Samantha taking drastic action in order to help her friend.

  “Where are you going now? You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

  “I’m off to see the boys. I’ll see what they have to say about this, so no, I’m not going to do anything stupid but… I can’t promise you that they won’t.”

  Gerry watched her leave and the door close behind her. He sat there for a few minutes, alone in the dark with the only light coming from the computer screen behind him. Samantha, rather than taking matters into her own hands alone, was headed for Stan and his men. He leaned back, looked up at the ceiling, and wiped the palm of his hand down over his face as though attempting to remove the stress.

  “Shit.”

  9

  The seasons were clearly on the change. The wind that blew in from the increasingly choppy sea had turned more blustery and cold as the temperature dropped steadily, and the hours of darkness began to grow longer. Fires were needed at night to keep them warm, and as leaves fell from the trees, so too did the rain from the heavy clouds that were forming more frequently overhead. Soon, the sky would be nothing more than a patchwork quilt of different shades of grey as autumn took hold and prepared the land for the coming winter.

  Fighting the plague and one another would not be the only concern for the island’s survivors. They would also need to battle Mother Nature for their own survival. Food stocks were low, as was fuel, and keeping warm and fed during the harsh winter months would be no easy task, especially for the weak and ill equipped. Once the spring arrived again, many people suspected that the Isle of Wight would be a mass grave to hundreds of thousands of people who were unable to win their fight against the elements, disease, and famine. With the failure of the offensive and the changing of the seasons, no one was left with any doubt that the world had become a much harder place to survive in. On the southern side of the island, two men sat watching over their chosen patch of ground beneath the gloomy skies, while the bottom of the shallow trench had already become a mass of churned, wet mud.

  Bobby sat on the lip of the ditch, avoiding the mire and doing his best to light the gas burner that he was huddled around. He was failing miserably as the unrelenting gusts of wind continued to extinguish his flame. He had even built up a feeble hearth made from rocks in an attempt to provide his small cooker with a degree of protection, but it was no use, the wind found its way in between the cracks and repeatedly proved his efforts as being ineffective.

  “For fuck sake,” he snarled with frustration. He shook the lighter in his hand and adjusted the dial, increasing the size of the flame, and hopefully, giving him enough to set the burner alight before the wind snatched the flame away. “I’ve used up half a can of gas trying to make a brew here. It’s beginning to seriously piss me off.”

  Richard, the civil engineer who since the failure of the operation on the mainland had made himself welcome amongst the group, was sitting on the opposite lip, staring back at Bobby. He held a bemused expression upon his face and continuously shook his head with disapproval. For quite some time he had watched his friend valiantly attempting to get the stove to light. For the entire time he had said nothing but looked on in awe at the soldier’s dogged determination. Finally, he pulled the cigarette from his mouth, threw back his head, and blew out a stream of grey smoke that was quickly swept away from him by the wind.

  “Sweet Jesus, I thought you lot were supposed to be super-troopers and know how to survive in the most hostile environments? You can’t even get a camping stove going on the Isle of Wight, Bob. Ray Meyers would be turning in his grave…or walking around in circles, where ever he is. Are you sure that you weren’t just making all those war stories up, just to impress the chicks?”

  Bobby stopped for a brief moment and stared back at him before returning his attention to the infuriating task of trying to light the gas stove while the weather did everything it could to prevent him from achieving his aim.

  “Shut up, Dick,” he grunted.

  “Ah, good comeback. It’s true what they say about your wit and charm, isn’t it. You’ve resorted to name calling now. Very mature of you.”

  Bobby was losing patience and looked up from his task as another gust of wind
blew in and ruined his latest attempt. His face clearly showed his annoyance and Richard decided that he would cease all attempts at their usual style of conversation that mainly consisted of them making fun at the expense of the other. The last thing he wanted to do was to get on the wrong side of Bobby, or any of the other soldiers, for that matter. Although they had accepted him into their group, he was well aware that he was not one of them and that he never would be. They were a breed apart and a completely different species of animal to Richard and the remainder of humanity. He viewed them as being better described as human Alsatians, great to have around but not to be crossed and capable of creating an untold amount of carnage.

  He turned and looked out towards the centre of the island while he continued to puff away at his cigarette. The rasping sound of the lighter wheel scraping against the small nugget of flint continued the come from the other side of the trench accompanied with sighs and muttered curses. In the low ground, far off to their right, he could see the fence line of the refugee camp. In the open ground in between the camp and their own position close to the cliffs on the south of the island, a number of small, dark figures slowly made their way across the fields, appearing like little more than specks in the distance. Richard did not need to use binoculars to know what they were. The dead were roaming freely through the unoccupied regions of the island, and nobody seemed to really care all that much.

  “Looks like another mass funeral down there,” he said, indicating the clouds of smoke rising up from within the camp.

  Bobby did not bother to look. He had seen it all too many times.

  “Maybe you should ask them to light the stove for you?” Richard laughed.

  He had tried to resist the temptation of making the joke, but it had been no use. He found the comment so amusing to himself he just had to share it with Bobby, even if it meant provoking him to the point that he lost his temper.

  Bobby remained silent but shook his head, and Richard was sure that he could see a faint smile upon his face.

  “What are we going to do about that, then?” Richard asked, nodding to a patch of ground just a few metres away from their sentry position.

  Bobby looked up, his face twisted with anger, and his body language displaying a large degree of irritation. He looked across to where Richard indicated and shrugged his shoulders with disinterest.

  “I’m doing nothing until I’ve got a brew on the go. I’ve started, so I’ll finish. That thing can wait for now, but you crack on with it, if you like.”

  Richard watched Bobby as he snarled and grunted, spitting insults and curses at the stove and the lighter, threatening to have them both executed by firing squad. He wondered how much longer it would be before the gas stove was launched from their hole and sent sailing through the air. During his time spent with the team, Richard had seen the same sort of fury fuelled reaction on a number of occasions. Just a few days before, he had witnessed Taff, while in an argument with Danny over whose turn it was to cook, sling one of his own boots out through the rear window of the house where it then disappeared over the cliff’s edge. After a few minutes of grumbling and with one bare foot, Taff finally conceded that he would have to go out after the boot. The angry Welshman spent the better part of the evening combing the beach and the cliff side until he finally located its resting place.

  Richard looked back at the tangles of wire out to the front of their trench. Their position was situated on the crest of a hill and to the side of the track that approached the old house where the team lived. Over a large area, the ground was laced with snaring obstacles, stubby thorn bushes, and low-wire entanglements, all designed and deliberately placed to deny access and force anyone approaching into a bottleneck that was overlooked by defensive positions. From their vantage point, they could see for a vast distance across the island. They more or less had an arc of three-hundred and sixty degrees from that one position, and every approach towards the house from the north, east, and west could be covered with minimum manpower. The cliffs to the south that overlooked the English Channel provided their base with a natural obstacle that ensured they had a degree of rear protection, but just to be sure, the clifftop had also been secured with obstacles and coils of razor wire.

  The body of a woman, still writhing and growling, lay trapped by the barbed wire just a few metres away from where Richard and Bobby were sitting. It had been there since it first stumbled up from the low ground during the middle of the night. Initially, its clothing had become snagged and prevented it from continuing its senseless meanderings. While the two living men looked on with curiosity it stood there, stupidly tugging at the snares until eventually it tripped and quickly became completely entangled within the strands. The more the woman’s corpse struggled, the more the sharp barbs sliced through the decaying flesh of her arms and legs, lodging themselves deep within her soft tissue like fish hooks. As she lay there, pulling and kicking, they cut deeper and deeper, tearing out chunks of skin and muscle, almost severing limbs and slicing open her abdomen. Her putrid intestines, bloated and foul smelling, had spilled out over the cold, moss covered ground around her. She lay squirming in her own filth, unmindful of the irreparable damage that she was inflicting upon her body.

  Richard’s face twisted in disgust, and he turned his attention back to Bobby. The last thing he had wanted to do was to go and deal with the infected up close and personally. Since the outbreak had begun, he had only come face to face and at close range with the horrific looking and smelling corpses on a few occasions. He considered himself lucky in that respect, and he had no intention of changing his habit of complete avoidance just yet. If he could help it, he would continue to keep a healthy distance from the grotesque and dangerous creatures.

  “I’ll tell you what, Bobby,” he began in a tone that suggested there was a deal in the making, culminating with an offer that Bobby could not refuse. “You go sort her out, and I’ll get the burner lit. How’s that sound? You’re trained for all that sort of thing. I’m not.”

  Bobby looked at him, screwing his face up and then glancing across at the thrashing corpse. The woman’s dim and flat eyes stared back at him from amongst the wire that had become wrapped around her head and pulled at the tearing flesh of her cheeks and forehead. The barbs had already virtually ripped away her nose and lips, and it would not be long before it removed the remains of her features completely.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot about that part of basic training. You know, the part when they taught us how to kill people that were already dead but still walking around? If I remember correctly, we covered it between learning how to march and running around the assault course. Actually, I think I got top marks on that one.”

  “Sarcastic cunt,” Richard snorted, and then quickly went back to his reasoning tone. “You know what I mean. You’re just better prepared for it than I am. I’d probably make a right balls up of it and end up stuck in the wire, lying alongside of it. I’d probably get bitten and either end up as one of them, or you would have to do the honours. I don’t think either of us want that, do we?”

  Bobby grunted at Richard’s attempts at emotional blackmail. He shook his head and continued with his stubborn, but futile endeavour of getting the stove to work.

  “I’ll tell you what…” Richard continued. “You go and take care of that pretty lady out there, and I promise you that by the time you get back here, the stove will be burning, and the water will be on the boil. How does that sound?”

  Bobby sat back and blew out a frustrated sigh. He was more capable of dealing with the reanimated corpse than Richard was, and the stove was proving to be a much harder task. He threw the lighter across to Richard and picked up his M-4 rifle, instinctively checking the safety-catch with his right thumb and without so much as a downward glance. He stood up and stomped his feet, shaking off the thick clumps of mud from his boots that he had picked up from the bottom of the shell-scrape.

  “I’ve got an acre stuck to each foot here,” he mumbled before turnin
g his attention towards the strands of wire. “Go easy on the sugar.”

  The corpse was alone and virtually immobilised within the wire, but that did not make it any less of a threat. He had seen men make the mistake of presuming a reanimated corpse to be incapacitated when they were actually still capable of attack. Too many times he had witnessed people become infected through carelessness and overconfidence.

  Stupidity, more like, he thought.

  He looked around, checking that there was nothing else that could present a threat. The closest infected that he could see were hundreds of metres away in the low ground and had not noticed him up on the hill.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Bobby declared as he drew the long knife from his belt.

  He began making his way through the coils of wire and towards the thrashing body. He moved nimbly, negotiating the ensnaring obstacles with ease and grace. He knew the ground and exactly where to step, and while his eyes remained focussed upon the corpse, a subconscious part of his brain stayed fixed on the ground, instinctively guiding him through and carefully placing each foot.

  The woman stared back up at him, her teeth snapping together as she lay completely cocooned in the steel barbs and incapable of reaching him. Without any hesitation or thought, Bobby reached down and drove the blade of his knife through her left eye. It struck with a popping squelch and the woman instantly became limp and lifeless. He withdrew the shaft and wiped the gore across the filthy blouse covering the body’s upper torso. That sort of thing had become so routine to Bobby and the others that it was never given a second thought. It no longer occurred to them that the things they were killing had once been living, breathing people. They had become nothing more than dangerous, inhuman creatures that needed to be destroyed without ponder.