by Holroyd, Tom
Every day more and more people arrived and were crammed inside. I don’t know when exactly it was but at some point the people started to trickle off and the first infected started to arrive. That was when the Army sealed people in. A JCB built a wall across the gate, sealed everyone in and then left them.
Over the course of the next few days more and more infected turned up; one of my sources told me about how he got into one of the towers to have a look around and all he could see were infected coming in from all directions, thousands of them. They were like ants, just a non-stop stream of dots coming over the horizon, arms raised, moaning, straight towards the Camp and joining a growing moat of infected.
Apparently, most of them were drawn to the fort first, I guess it was because of all the shooting and noise but there were still enough around the camp to make life hellish. It wasn’t just the fear of being surrounded or under siege, although I am sure that was bad enough. It was the moaning that drove everyone mad. I take it you’ve been under siege at some point, heard that constant non-stop moan. It’s bad enough when it is only one or two, even a couple of hundred infected doing it but when you have a million infected moaning at you for a month. That would drive anyone mad.
What were the effects?
Have you read the reports on how the moan is one of the infected’s most potent psychological weapons? The US military did studies on the effects; sleep deprivation, stress, and anxiety. All that in a frightened population of 600,000 people.
There were more fights, murders, the number of suicides shot up. Some people even threw themselves over the wall. There are even reports of people turning into Quislings and attacking people in the camp before being put down.
It was not too bad until the Fort was overrun, that was the final straw. After a month of being under siege from only a small percentage of the horde the remainder then turned their attention to the camp and that was went the decision to run was made.
Who made the decision?
No one knows, I doubt there was any form of vote. In my opinion some idiot just decided to go for it and the other people were so frightened that they went along with it.
What was their plan?
No idea, as far as any of my sources can tell me the first they knew about it was when the screaming started. It appears that they tried to climb over the wall by building a ramp to the top, the only problem was that as soon as it was built thousands of people surged to the top and the wall collapsed into the moat. The fucking geniuses created a walkway straight in camp and the dead came pouring in.
I don’t even want to imagine what it must have been like. A million infected pouring into a contained space with 600,000 people trapped inside, it must have been a slaughter. People panicked, ran, tried to fight, tried to hide, but it did them no good as there was nowhere to run to.
I managed to get a clip from a UAV released by the military last year. They’d had a drone circling the camp for weeks and it caught the moment when the wall was breached. I don’t know if you’ve seen it but it was like a dam breaking in slow motion. It was like a grey wave of zombies spreading out from the breach and all the people running away from it to the far side of the Camp, before they were trapped against the wall and killed. It was horrible, I felt so helpless just watching it, imagine what it must have been like trapped against that wall watching as the horde ate its way toward you, knowing there was nothing you could do. I think of my parents and whether they suffered through that or died before the wall was breached. That’s why I can never forgive the military, if they had stayed and fought they could have save all those people, saved my parents.
Was that the end of it?
No and the next bit is why I think it was planned all along. The Military bombed the camp.
Really, that was never reported?
Of course not, the only reason I knew about it was from one of the survivors. He had managed to get on top of the wall and lay there waiting for an opportunity to run. He told me how he lay there listening to all those people being slaughtered and then eaten before he could leave. Apparently he waited until most of the infected were inside the camp before jumping off the wall and running north as fast as he could.
He had gotten about a few miles away when he heard jet engines; he told me that he saw six jets flying low and slowly straight towards the camp. As they flew over he saw them dropping loads of bombs which then blew up into these huge fire balls, covering the camp.
That’s why I think it was a conspiracy, get all those zombies into one place and then napalm them. Take out a million of them in one go and prevent all those that had just died from re-animating.
What makes you think it was napalm?
My source says he saw some of them wandering around on fire before they eventually collapsed. Now it takes a lot to get a human body burning and only napalm could stick to one long enough to kill it.
Let me see if I can sum up your official position? You believe that the Government and the military deliberately herded people into a contained area with the express purpose of using them as bait to keep the infected away from the northern Safe Zone. Then they waited until the camp was overrun before launching an air strike to kill as many zombies as possible.
That’s correct.
Despite the valiant efforts of 2 Mercian in defence of the camp and the relief column that was only two miles away when the wall was breached.
Yes.
What do you hope to gain by pressing this course of action?
I want to bring the perpetrators of the biggest mass murder in British history to justice.
Don’t you think that could be construed as a little ungrateful towards the military that protected you while you were safe in Dover Castle?
This interview is over.
Rally to the Colours.
Bath,
The St John’s Hospice for Feral Children is located in the centre of Bath near to the historic Roman baths and hot springs and has been caring for feral individuals since the end of the war. By VB Day there were over fifty hospices spread throughout the country, today there are less than five. This is down to a combination of cost, political will, successful rehabilitations but most important is the loss of public interest.
The subject of my interview is Corporal John Smith, not his real name but one given to him by the staff since the vast majority of military records from before the war were lost. Corporal Smith is the sole survivor of 2 Mercian and the Battle of Junction. He was found during the Restoration, living in the burnt out ruins of a church near Buckden in the Yorkshire Dales. He was wearing the tattered remains of his uniform and had the Regimental and Queens Colours tied round his waist. It is believed by the staff that he had been living alone and traumatised from the events at Junction for three years before he was found and that it was this isolation that led to his loss of speech.
For the last four years Dr Diana Carlson has been counselling John and trying to encourage him to speak. As an interim measure Corporal Smith has been taught sign language which he will use for this interview. For clarity I have written this interview as if it were between Corporal Smith and I, although in reality Dr Carlson is translating, I have also taken the liberty of clarifying the conversation for ease of reading.
I had been in the regiment for three years before the outbreak of the war. I had been to Afghanistan before we all pulled out and had been based in Catterick before the Panic. About three months before the battle we were getting warnings from the Commanding Officer that we should standby for a deployment. We had all been watching the news and had seen all the bad things going on, everyone thought we would be deployed soon and have to do some fighting.
When did you get the orders to move?
It was right after the Cromwell. I had been in the Junior Ranks Bar with my Platoon watching it live on the news. Then the Platoon Commander came in grabbed the Platoon Sergeant and started to talk to him in a corner of the bar. When he finished the Sergeant nodded and turn round, we cou
ld see him building up steam for some shouting and half of us were out of our seats ready to go. The Sergeant yelled out that we were being mobilised and had ten minutes to grab our kit and get on the parade square.
That’s not a lot of time?
We had all packed our kit days before, it was just a case of running to your room, changing your uniform, grabbing your kit and getting back down to the square. Once we were there we were issued our weapons, I was an Light Machine Gunner usually but I was issued my rifle instead which I was quite surprised about. We were given lots of ammunition but no grenades or anything else which was confusing for a lot of us. We were also told to hand our helmets, body armour and NBC kit in to the stores. All our mobiles were confiscated as well.
We were all there on the square, milling around in our Companies, there was lots of talk about what was going on and where we were going when the Regimental Sergeant Major came onto the square and yelled for us to form up. Pretty soon the Commanding Officer came down and briefed us on the situation. He said that the dead really were coming back to life and that we would be fully briefed by our Company Commanders. He said that we were being tasked to move south and hold a choke point in order to save as many civilians as possible. His final point was that the Army realised that there would be major fears about the safety of our families but that we shouldn’t worry, the Regimental Welfare Officer was in the process of contacting all our families and getting them to a safe area. That was a big weight off all our minds.
We were told to gather round our Company Commanders who briefed us on the infected and where we were off to. He told us that we were going to a position by the A1 and we would be helping to build a fort that we would defend against any enemy that turned up. This would allow any refugees fleeing north to get away.
Pretty much as soon as the briefs had stopped a load of coaches turned up and we began to get on board. My coach joined a big convoy of vehicles, Army trucks loaded with supplies, Land Rovers with radios and tents and all the stuff the CO obviously thought we needed.
It took an hour and a half to travel to Junction 47 in a huge convoy of vehicles. We got there by about five O’clock in the afternoon and then sat around waiting in the car park of a golf driving range just off the motorway for about two hours. According to my Platoon Commander they were marking out the perimeter of the camp, which was basically the perimeter road of the driving range.
Eventually we were called off the coach and led to the place where we would be living. There was nothing there except a pile of canvas and military cot beds that had been dumped by the storemen. We were divided up into our sections and tasked with various jobs. One section put up the tent and set up the accommodation for the Platoon, the other section went out beyond the perimeter to stand guard and my section started to dig the outer ditch.
The engineers had marked out a perimeter about a kilometre long with flags and white tape to mark the width of the ditch. They had also dumped a load of bastions which we were told to fill in. The plan was for there to be an outer ditch two meters deep by three wide, there would then be a mound of soil from the ditch and a barrier of bastions on top. It all sounded great except we were the bastards who had to dig it, the Engineer tractor with the digging arms was busy building the civilian camp over the road, so we were left to get on with it.
It took six days, rotating between digging, guarding and sleeping, to get the outer perimeter built. Everyone got involved, sergeants and officers, to get the job done. Don’t believe the press that officers never get their hands dirty, they were right there with us digging in and leading from the front.
Of course, once the wall was done the work didn’t finish as we had to make it as defensible as possible. There were a lot of trees right in front of the camp that needed to be cleared and guess who had to chop them down. Then there were the work parties to help set up the camp and get things neat and tidy; things like an ammo store, cook house, a headquarters, latrines all that sort of stuff. We even converted the driving range into a final fall-back position, stocking it with food and ammo and defences.
By the time we finished almost two weeks later, we had a well prepared and fortified position. We had created a tangled barrier of trees and barbed wire then a cleared area, then the ditch and the wall. We felt good about our position and how long we could last but then the boredom kicked in and we had time to think.
People started to ask about their families and wanted to call them. After a lot of pressure from the soldiers we were eventually allowed to use our mobiles to try and make calls. It didn’t do any good though, we didn’t realise that the country was going through the Great Panic and the mobile networks were over loaded, there was no way we could get through to anyone. Pretty soon everyone started to feel a real sense of isolation and the CO ordered radios to be set and up tuned into the BBC, he set up film nights, sports competitions, wrestling matched anything to keep people busy.
A huge portion of our time was spent training and patrolling. We mounted foot patrols around the perimeter going out for a day and then back in the evening. I don’t think there was any point apart from to keep people busy.
Did you come across any infected at that stage?
We came across a few but they were still mostly in the cities at that point, we would shoot them, then bury the bodies and move on. If we came across any refugees we directed them to the Camp.
You said you were doing some training?
Yes, we spent a lot of time on the wall practicing shooting at these wooden targets that had been set up. It was so we could get used to a head shot which was very difficult at first. The Army had trained us to aim for the centre of mass, basically the chest, but now we had to hit a small moving target. It took a lot of time and ammo but we got better and better each day.
How long was it before the infected started to turn up en mass?
It was about two weeks after the Mall that we started to see more and more refugees turning up at the Camp. They had come from all over; Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, and Birmingham even some from London, hundreds of them and more came every day. The Commanding officer realised pretty soon that the infected would not be far behind so we doubled our patrols to eliminate the ones in the lead and hopefully give us more time before the main swarms arrived.
Within a couple of days we ran into more Gs on the patrols, sometimes it was so many that we had to fall back to the Fort, fighting a running battle the whole way before we killed them all. It was around then that we sighted the first of the major swarms coming in from the south west. The order to “Stand To” was passed and we all rushed to our positions on the wall. My section was stationed on the south wall facing the road and fields beyond it. The first ones I saw were just individual dots, appearing over the horizon but getting bigger every moment as they headed straight for us. Behind them more and more started to appear. Before long it looked like there was a stream of them flowing towards us, then it became a river, then a flood, just this mass of grey bodies stretching back as far as the eye could see. The official military estimate for the size of the swarm is 1.5 million.
It took a couple of hours for them to reach us but we could hear them way before then. The moan of God knows how many infected was carried to us by the wind and scared the crap out of us. I guess we knew then that none of us were going to get out of this one.
The first to reach us were dealt with quickly by the sharpshooters in the towers out at a distance of eight hundred meters or so but then the numbers started to thicken and there were too many for them to take down, that was where we started to join in. I took my first shot at the three-hundred-meter marker. I lined up my sights on a G, this teenage girl in a tracksuit, half her face was hanging off and there was a big bite mark on her throat. I was shaking as I fired and shot the guy behind her in the chest. He pitched backwards but then got straight back up again and carried on. I calmed my nerves as everyone else around me started to open fire and this time got her right in the head. After that it
was automatic, sight and shoot, re-load your magazines. We each had a box of ammunition at our feet, I think it was supposed to last for a few days but I emptied mine in the first few hours.
All the time we were firing the horde was getting closer and closer, at two hundred meters the leading edges of the swarm hit the line of trees, pits and barbwire that we had laid out to try and slow them down. It worked for about an hour as G after G got tangled up or fell in a pit, but then the next one would come along, fall in the same pit, then another and pretty soon the pit was full and the next G just walked straight over the top and into the open ground.