When There's No More Room in Hell 2

by Luke Duffy

Jake nodded as he stared at Lee's face. It was smeared in blood with a large gash on his forehead.

  "Is he okay, Kieran?" he asked, turning to the young man that had punched Lee unconscious.

  "He'll be okay," Kieran replied as he squatted down and inspected Lee. "He'll have a headache when he wakes up and probably, he'll want to kill me but at least he's under control, for now."

  Stan turned to Jake, "Look, I know that Helen and Steve are your friends, but we can't go back in there after them."

  Jake nodded, his eyes remaining fixed on the unconscious Lee at his feet. "Okay," he announced, looking back up and focussing his attention on Johnny. "Your friend is hurt, did you say?"

  Johnny nodded.

  Jake walked to the edge of the road towards the concrete barrier of the overpass. He peered out at the supermarket and saw the hundreds of bodies that shuffled around the car park and the hundreds more that spewed into the buildings and onto the exit road. There was no sign of Steve or Helen.

  His heart felt heavy. He felt responsible for what had happened. It was his fault. Steve and Helen were missing, probably dead, and John was bitten. Everyone knew what happened to the people that were bitten by the infected dead, and it was all his fault.

  "Okay," he said turning to the others. "We need to leave. Maybe Steve and Helen will be all right but we cannot stay here. Those things are headed this way and we need to take care of John and Lee," he turned to Johnny, "and your friend."

  23

  "What we got here then, Robbie?" Tobias shouted up to the driver.

  The flatbed truck pulled up as the soldier at the gates slammed the heavy steel barrier back into place with a loud reverberating clang. Its large wheels crunched against the gravel of the parking bay beneath them as the four tonne truck came to a halt directly in front of him. The driver threw his door open and jumped out whistling cheerfully, his high pitched notes drifting through the air as he strolled toward Tobias.

  "A truckload of these dead heads for you, boss," Robbie replied as he came to a halt in front of his friend and commander.

  He removed the magazine from his rifle, pulled back on the cocking lever, clearing the chamber and catching the ejected round in mid-air with a lightning speed swipe of his hand as he continued to whistle.

  "No survivors?" Tobias asked as he lit a cigarette, the blue-grey plumes of smoke billowing around him.

  Robbie snorted and spat a wad of phlegm onto the gravel below his feet. "Didn’t see any, boss, but to be honest we weren't exactly going door to door."

  Tobias nodded as he eyed the man to his right. He had known Robbie a long time. Though he was lean and always looked a little underweight, Tobias knew how fierce and strong the man was when the time called for it. He had a natural core strength that Tobias had never seen in any other man, punching and lifting much more than was expected from a man of his slight build. In his younger days, Robbie had been the Welter Weight boxing champion for the army and in thirty-seven bouts, he had never lost, and twenty-eight of them were by knock out.

  The pair of them had joined the army on the same recruit intake, and though they were originally from different ends of the British Isles, they had struck up a strong friendship and had been close ever since. In the fourteen years that they had known each other, they had been inseparable. They climbed the ranks and attended most of their courses together, always trying to outdo one another as they competed for dominance in their friendship, but Tobias had always had the edge on Robbie, something that the other bitterly refused to accept.

  Every operation the battalion had been on, Tobias and Robbie had ended up in the same platoon or company together. They fought side by side during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq early on at the turn of the millennium, and they were both Platoon Sergeants in the same company when their battalion was sent in as part of the coalition during the invasion of Iran.

  When the plague hit, their battalion had been decimated in the battles for the Midlands in the opening stages of the outbreak. At the time, no one really understood the problem and those that did never passed the information all the way to the bottom. As a result, soldiers were sent in to fight an enemy that could not be beaten. The dead would never retreat or cower away from any amount of devastating gunfire and they would never throw their hands up in surrender.

  The pair of them had fought side by side, watching their friends fall all around them and being torn to shreds as the dead overwhelmed their positions. When they were finally pulled back, what remained of the battalion was able to fit in just one of the sixteen Chinook helicopters that were sent in to rescue them.

  Subsequently, Tobias found himself being left in charge of a platoon of men that had been thrown together from the battered remnants of other companies. They were quickly and half-heartedly resupplied and sent to a small Territorial Army barracks on the outskirts of a large town. There, they joined a handful of mechanics and radio specialists and were told to defend the perimeter and await further orders.

  Those orders never arrived, until a week ago.

  For months, they listened as the army and government lost control of the country against the onslaught of the dead. They heard the dying transmissions of whole regiments that were overrun and consumed by the hordes of rotting corpses that attacked any living thing they saw. With despair, they bore witness to the death of their country and their once proud armed forces.

  They looked on, helpless as the number of the dead grew in the town beyond their walls. They opened their gates to the flocks of civilians that fled the chaos, giving them shelter and a degree of safety behind the high, reinforced fortifications of the barracks. Eventually, there was no one left to rescue. From a population of around eighty thousand, less than a hundred had made it to the protection of the base.

  Tobias and his men were forgotten about in the mayhem. Whenever they managed to gain communications with another unit, or the recently formed Mainland Joint Operation's Command, nobody could give them any information or suggest when they were likely to be resupplied or reinforced.

  The MJOC had been set up to command and control the evacuation of the military units of the country to the islands that had been set up as Forward Operating Bases. Eventually, it would be the main Operations Room for the counter offensive. That was the concept at least.

  The chaos was spreading too fast and the control element was nonexistent as units either disappeared from the map board, or deserted to save their own lives after being given insane orders to recapture this town or that city. Tobias and his men looked on in disbelief as the high command and their staff panicked and ordered units, some real and some completely imagined or no longer in existence, into battle. It was almost like witnessing the stupidity of the First World War over again. The brass ordered assault after assault until eventually there were no more troops to send into the fray.

  The Prime Minister was said to have crumbled and collapsed into tears over the large map board in the Operations Room, as he was given a tactical briefing of the military situation, position and capabilities by the high command at MJOC headquarters, stationed on the Isle of Man. He had been carried away never to be seen again, and rumour had it he had suffered a nervous breakdown. More rumours circled that a rogue Major General had ordered him to be executed for cowardice.

  When the MJOC lost control of the mainland and retreated to the safety of the islands, Tobias and his men were left to rot. Their calls went unanswered as the radio operators sat for hours, days and weeks, signalling for help and information. The air was dead and all they received in reply was the hiss of static. Eventually, they gave up trying to contact anyone and the radio operators fell in to a listening watch, working in shifts around the clock, listening for any stray transmissions.

  The ad-hoc unit was close to falling apart. Some men jumped the walls while others drank and fought each other. Tobias saw what needed to be done. The men had lost hope and leaving them to their own devices was out of the question. At the end of the worl
d, with no one to control them, a bunch of armed soldiers was a dangerous thing. They needed to carry on as an army unit, with a command structure and focus, discipline and orders.

  He instilled a new sense of pride in them, pointing out the fact that where other units had succumbed to the dead and perished, they had held out. They took on the duty not only to protect the civilians within their walls, but to live side by side with them. They became a community with the survivors of the town bringing their own skills and expertise to the table. The soldiers, of course, provided the security and carried out the hazardous tasks of searching for supplies, or keeping the hordes of dead away from the walls.

  More, personal, relationships had flourished between the soldiers and the refugees. Many found comfort in each other as they came to terms with the losses they had suffered and the harsh realities of the new world. Friendships had arisen as they all worked together and toiled to make the best of what they had and inevitably, deeper, more physical relationships had blossomed. Even Tobias looked forward to his evenings when he and Katie, the long legged raven-haired barrister, could be alone together.

  The troops and refugees soon realised that they were on their own, and their future was up to them. A garrison town mentality arose, centred on their continued independent coexistence and survival and the relationship between military and civilian. They had all but forgotten about the government and the planned counter offensive and its build up that they had seen so many news reports about before the transmissions stopped.

  That was until a week ago, when one of the radio operators from the night shift had come banging on Tobias' door in the early hours of the morning. He was flustered and struggled with his words as he attempted to gain control of his composure. He waved a piece of paper in front of him excitedly as he stammered.

  "Okay, just take a breath and tell me what the problem is," Tobias had said as he ruffled his hair and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  "It’s a message, we got a message."

  Tobias' eyes had shot open, suddenly shaking the swirling fog from his still sleeping brain as he snatched the piece of paper from the young radio operator. He read the message and raced back to his room, banging into furniture as he jumped into his clothes and hitting the intercom at the same time to alert Robbie and the other section commanders, telling them to meet him in the radio room.

  The message had been sent in Morse code and read:

  Sierra one three, this is MJOC.

  Counter Offensive H-hour: 0600 28th August 2015.

  Collect six specimens of reanimated from your Area of Operation ready for collection.

  Standby for air resupply and reinforcement,

  Wait Out.

  "Why Morse code, Tobias?" Robbie asked, reading the piece of paper as they gathered around the radios in their Operations Room.

  "No idea, maybe the brass has gotten paranoid and thinks the dead have learned to read and write?"

  Dozens of messages streamed in as the radio operators scribbled them down on pieces of paper, handing each one back to Tobias and Robbie. Only one had arrived with their call sign at the top, Sierra One Three. The remainder was the same message repeated over again, but for different units.

  "Jesus, I didn’t realise there were so many of us left on the mainland," Tobias remarked as he looked down at the ever-growing stack of messages piled at the side of the radio operators. More were being added by the minute.

  One of the radio operators leaned back from his chair and looked over at Tobias.

  "To be honest, I think most of those call signs don’t exist anymore. Only two have replied so far, three including us." He looked back down at the logbook in front of him and read, "Whisky One Two in the south east, and Romeo Five in the north."

  "And we're slap bang in the middle," Robbie muttered. "We haven't exactly got a good forward operating base network to launch a counter attack from, have we?" he said as he worked out their dispositions in his head.

  "Has anything come through about the operation, where they intend to start the break in, or a mission statement or warning order?" Tobias asked.

  The radio operator shook his head, "Nothing as yet. Just that Morse code message telling us to stand by is all we've received."

  Since the coded message, nothing had been sent addressed directly to Tobias and his men but a steady stream of radio traffic grew in the earphones of the radio operators. They studied their maps and plotted what they heard over the airwaves, giving them an estimate of what was happening around the country. From what they could surmise, London, Nottingham, Leeds and Edinburgh were the break in points. They would be the first places that the task force would attack.

  It made sense to Tobias, because those four large cities were linked with the same major highway running the length of the country. Once they were cleared and secured, they would act as Forward Operating Bases and the main highway that linked them would be a solid linier supply route, making it easier for troop movements as they broke out to begin the clear up and reoccupation of the mainland, one town and city at a time.

  At least, in Tobias' mind, that was the plan. With the top brass and their behaviour and strategy in the closing days of the mainland evacuations, anything was possible and it may have just been a fluke that the MJOC had chosen those four cities.

  They listened and waited, expecting to hear the sound of helicopters and bombers in the sky above them, but none came. In the meantime, the men of the base began preparations for the break out. They checked their equipment, their weapons and vehicles and settled in to the age old 'Hurry up and Wait' maxim of the British Army.

  Tobias looked up at the truck. He could see the filth encrusted bobbing heads of the dead that were on-board and watched as their rotting hands reached over the side, trying to climb the steel walls to which they were chained. They thrashed and moaned as they struggled against their bonds, watching the living people that moved about, just out of reach beyond the tailgate at the back of the truck.

  "Okay, Robbie, let's get them in the cage." He sighed as he exhaled a cloud of smoke from his lungs.

  They had cleared out one of the caged mechanics tool stores to house the reanimated bodies of the six specimens that they had been ordered to capture. No one cherished the idea of keeping them anywhere near where they ate or slept in the main part of the barracks, so the mechanics cleared out their equipment from one of the large stores in the garages to keep them secured.

  Tobias had inspected the makeshift cell beforehand while the mechanics reinforced it and added welded steel plates around any potential weak points. He checked and ensured that the steel cage would hold and arranged for a two man guard to be present at all times, throughout the day and night. The last thing any of them wanted was six of the dead on the loose within the walls of the barracks.

  The truck slowly backed up to the entrance of the cage, its rear nudging the steel frame with an echoing bang as the driver made sure that there was no gap for the dead to escape through. The men standing on top of the cab began herding the dead towards the tailgate, pushing and shoving them with their long poles.

  The creatures twisted and whirled, thrashing their arms and grasping at the long staffs that prodded them. A couple of the men almost lost their balance as their pole was jerked and wrenched in the hands of the dead and they came close to tumbling into the back of the truck amongst the hungry ghouls.

  As they were pushed to the end, towards the cage, the dead slipped and tumbled from the bed of the truck, hitting the concrete floor with wet sounding slaps, their joints dislocating and bones breaking as they made contact with the hard floor. They writhed and floundered as they attempted to stand up, becoming entangled with each other as the next body fell from the truck, landing on top of them as it was shoved from the tailgate.

  Tobias watched the progress and eyed the soldier that stood by, ready to slide the heavy gate shut once the last of the creatures were secure inside. He could see the fear in his eyes. The beads of sweat
poured down his forehead as he gripped the heavy steel door. He glanced back up at Tobias, his pale moist skin reflecting in the beams of sunlight that poured through the large shutter doors of the garage. Tobias nodded to him and the man returned the gesture, assuring him that regardless of his fear, he was steadfast in his duty.

  The walking corpses lunged back at the opening from within the cage, attempting to climb the tailgate of the truck. They beat their hands against the cage in frustration and rage as they realised that they were trapped, unable to climb the obstacle and get at the living people they could see before them.

  They moaned and wailed loudly, their voices echoing around in the long open-plan building of the mechanics workshop. Tobias felt a shiver run down his spine. He did not envy the job of the men that were to stand guard over the dead, listening to their ghostly poignant moans bouncing from the walls and high ceiling all day and night.

  There was just one of them left in the truck, and then they could slam the heavy steel-barred door shut and feel secure again. Tobias stood on top of the cage and watched as Robbie hefted his long pole and aimed it at the emaciated corpse. It did not get agitated or flail its arms like the others. It did not even wail or moan. It just stood there, looking back at Tobias, its eyes fixed on him and studying him.

  Robbie's pole poked it in the back. It spun, sidestepping the second thrust and glaring back at the man on top of the cab of the truck. Robbie lunged again, this time making contact with the creature's midriff and knocking it backward towards the tailgate. It growled back at Robbie, a low hoarse grumble rattling from its throat, but still it did not try to attack or even approach the living it saw all around it.

  "This is the one that wanted to fight us when we found it hiding in a ditch, Toby," Robbie called down with a grin.

  Tobias looked back at him, his brow furrowed. "Hiding in a ditch?"

  "Yeah," Robbie nodded. "It was stuck in the mud and was hiding from us, as though it was scared. When we tried to capture it, it stood its ground and tried to fight back. It took three of us to get the noose around its neck and into the truck."