Chapter 21 – The hero
No sooner had I stepped on to the bridge than I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in what felt like years. The sound of a large engine coming from behind me and travelling my way. My first thought was to hide from it. Too many zombie novels and films I’m afraid. In every one I’ve read or watched it turns out that other humans are probably more dangerous than the dead. Then I realised this was the UK not a fucking Mad Max film. I stood and waited for the vehicle to emerge from the bend. The tractor that came in to view was the last thing I’d expected. What I had expected was some armoured, scrapheap-challenge, apocalyptic shit with sculls on the bonnet driven by a leather-clad warrior with a pink Mohican. Then I remembered. This was not Mad fucking Max.
The driver drove past, gave me a glance, then turned back to driving the behemoth of a tractor. Something must have registered in the driver because he slammed his brakes on bringing the tractor to a shuddering halt and turned off the engine. He slowly turned in his seat and looked straight at me. Opening the door, he leaned out and said, ‘Fuck me, are you alive?’
‘Just,’ I answered.
‘Well hurry the fuck up and climb in before the stinkaz get here.’
That was it. Twelve words and I turned into a blubbering mess. For some reason my legs went from under me and I ended up on my knees, hands on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. If he’d put his tractor into gear and trundled off into the sunset I wouldn’t have blamed him. There I was, on all fours, dressed in a piss and gore stained camo onesie and crying like a mackem at the end of the season. I’d never realised that my mental state had deteriorated so much over the past weeks of solitude. To finally see someone else alive and not at death’s door was utterly overwhelming.
The words, ‘What the fucks wrong with you?’ brought me to my senses.
I clambered to my feet and jogged over to the tractor while wiping the tears and snot on the sleeve of my onesie.
‘Sorry mate, I thought I was the only person left,’ I explained.
‘Well, hurry the fuck up and climb in. The stinkaz are coming.’
I turned towards the direction he’d come from and sure enough, an army of approximately a hundred deedaz were coming our way.
‘I’m like the fucking pied piper with this thing,’ he said, gesturing towards the tractor with a nod.
I climbed in, shut the door and sat in the seat next to him. Without a word he just smiled, started the engine and drove onward.
I introduced myself and shook his shovel like hand as I thanked him for picking me up.
‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘You’re the first live person I’ve seen in weeks too.’
He told me his name was Darren and he lived and worked on his father’s farm a few miles away. Darren was bald and at a guess was around the same age as me. With very broad shoulders, he unsurprisingly owned the complexion of someone who spent their lives outdoors. Rugged and definitely not to be trifled with. He’d been holed up at the farm until that morning.
Darren had also seen the news reports on the night the world changed. Being a farmer, getting up before dawn every day was the norm and he’d caught the tail end of the chaos on the news as he made breakfast.
My saviour admitted he too was a bit of a prepper and went about fortifying the farmhouse he lived in. All of the downstairs windows were promptly boarded up and his trusty tractor was parked beneath the porch at the front of his home. At no point did he mention the fate of his father, which I thought was a little strange, so instead I planned to enquire about this when I got to know him a little better.
The decision to leave the security of his homestead was made for him when the house had been unexplainably surrounded by the ‘stinkaz’, as he liked to call them.
He’d waited until they had breached the back door before he fled. Climbing out of the upstairs window and onto the top of the porch, he climbed down onto the tractor’s roof and lowered himself inside.
The crowd of stinkaz that had gathered never stood a chance against the might of the brand new John Deere tractor. It had trampled the dead with no effort at all. It was then I noticed that there were indeed the remnants of deedaz in the grooves of the vehicle's very large tyres.
‘Where are you headed?’ I asked. To my surprise Darren had had the exact same plan as me. He was heading for the boatyard. I was starting to like this guy.
The only thing I didn’t like was the noise the tractor created.
The next mile of travel turned out to be uneventful. We’d passed a couple of shambler deedaz and the odd crawly one and thought the journey to the boatyard was going to be continue to be uneventful. That is until we turned onto the main street that ran through Cambois.
For some unexplained reason it was full of the dead, most of them gathered around one house in particular. There was a small council estate around three-quarters of a mile away so I could only guess that the majority of the deedaz were from there. The smell that blew through the cab of the tractor was horrendous.
I turned to look at Darren and was bemused to why he was smiling a devilish grin. It was when he started revving the tractor engine that I realised his intentions. ‘Let me show you what this baby can do,’ he shouted.
At the sound of the engine revving the dead turned as one and converged on the tractor. Without a moment’s hesitation Darren floored it. You’re probably thinking ‘floor a tractor?’ Well, apparently you can. We shot off towards the oncoming deedaz and carved a path through them like a hot knife through butter. With hardly a shudder from the multitudes of bodies it crushed it ploughed on and past the house the deedaz had congregated around.
There, in the upstairs window of the house, was a rather large, barking dog. How long it had been up there attracting the dead was anyone’s guess. The deedaz in the street below had obviously been unable to gain access to the heavily barricaded front door and windows. I was pretty sure whoever secured the house were not there to restrain the dog from barking. Then that left the question of how was the dog still alive without owners to feed it. Unless it was feeding on its owners? I pushed that gruesome thought from my head and concentrated on the gruesome panorama in front of me.
I turned to Darren and was reminded of a scene from the movie Planes, trains and automobiles. He really did look like the laughing devil as he annihilated the dead with his motorised hound of hell. The windscreen wiper moved at full belt, smearing the gore and detritus of the dead over the glass. Finally we broke through and continued north to our hoped-for salvation.
The boatyard was only around two miles away, but with most of the dead that had avoided the wheels of the tractor following us at a ‘laup’ we’d only have around thirty minutes to find and launch something that could float.
The road that we entered to access the boatyard was home to a pub and a few converted barns. I’d ashamedly hoped that the residents here were either dead or had escaped using other forms of transport. My whole plan hinged on getting on the water. The only other accessible harbour I knew of was approximately twenty miles north in a place called Amble and would surely have scores of the dead there.
Chapter 22 – The lucky shot
We passed the pub without any drama and trundled along the lane. The gates to the boatyard lay ahead, but there were five deedaz standing in wait in front of them who seemed intent on getting to something inside the secure yard. I was surprised at the fact they hadn’t turned and assaulted the tractor. I didn’t take long to see why. Directly on the other side of the fence a man was trying unsuccessfully to drag a small fishing boat across the yard. Behind the boat was a young girl of around eighteen pushing with everything she had. They obviously hadn’t heard the tractor because of the effort of trying to move the boat. That and the moaning from the dead at the gate must have muffled the sound the engine made. Until Darren beeped the horn, that is.
The couple stopped their impossible task and looked our way. They didn’t seem too glad to see us. I know this because in a flash th
e man drew what looked like a shotgun and pointed it towards us.
‘Don’t worry,’ Darren said. ‘He hasn’t got a clean shot with all those stinkaz in the way and we’re too far away for a shotgun to do any real harm.’
This revelation did nothing to make me feel any better. A gun’s a gun’s a gun.
Darren opened the glass door of the cab and leaned out. ‘No need for the hostilities friend. You look like you need a tow and we need a boat, and that tub looks big enough for us all. Also, there’s around over a hundred stinkaz on their way from Cambois that will arrive in about twenty minutes. You need us, we need you.’
To say I was impressed with the calmness and bravery Darren showed would be an understatement and I started to thank the heavens that I’d met him.
Shotgun-man lowered the gun and seemed to be having a conversation with the young girl behind the boat.
‘OK, but I can’t open the gate with the dead there,’ he shouted.
Darren looked at me with another one of his devilish grins. ‘What?’ I asked.
‘Time to get those blades dirty’ he said as he lifted what looked like two small sledgehammers with both hands. Without another word he deftly leapt from the tractor door and stood gesturing me to follow. Not wanting to look like a proper softie I jumped down beside him.
The deedaz now seeing an easier meal standing in front of them advanced on us.
Of the five dead, two of them were of the walker ilk. The other three were definite ‘Igors’. Luckily for me, two of them went straight for Darren. My respect for him increased to god like when I saw how he despatched the deedaz. With one fell swoop he lifted both hammers above his head and simultaneously brought them down on both of the deedaz heads. They both fell in heaps at his feet with very sizeable divots in their melons.
With awe I watched as he put one foot triumphantly onto a deeda and held one of his hammers aloft, Thor-like.
That more than likely would have been the last thing I ever saw if the god of thunder hadn’t looked at me and thrown his lofted hammer in my direction. In shock I followed the hammer as it came towards me, spinning through the air. This all happened so fast all I could do was close my eyes and wait for death. Instead, I heard a thump and a crack. Slowly I opened my eyes and saw the third lauping deeda at my feet. Somehow Darren had calculated his throw to where he knew the deeda would be when it hit. He’d saved my life.
Who the fuck was this guy?
As I stood rooted to the spot he smiled and calmly walked to the two deedaz that were left and despatched them with the ease of swatting flies.
I retrieved his hammer from the cranium of the fucker that nearly ended me and walked over to Darren.
‘Fucking hell, thanks mate,’ I said. ‘Nee botha pal,’ was his reply. ‘Let’s go and see this fuckwit with the gun.’
Darren walked up to the gate where the man was unlooping a chain that held it closed.
‘The names Darren, this is my friend Carter. Thanks for not shooting us.’
‘Thanks for getting rid of the zeds,’ the man said. ‘My name is Andy, this is my daughter Bobby.’ With the pleasantries out of the way, Andy asked Darren, ‘Where the fuck did you learn to do that shit anyway?’
‘What shit?’ Darren asked innocently.
‘The fucking ninja turtle shit you just did on the zeds.’
‘Oh, that shit. Just saw what needed to be done and did it. Lucky shot when I threw the hammer I guess.’
‘Lucky shot my arse,’ I thought. There was no way any normal person would have risked a shot like that. A normal person would have pointed and shouted ‘Look out!’ We stood there looking at each other. Darren obviously wasn’t going to elaborate on his talent for killing ‘zeds’ so I interrupted the awkward silence and reminded everyone that a flock of deedaz were still on the way.
Chapter 23 – The open sea
After Darren drove the tractor through the gate, Andy secured it again with the length of chain. Five minutes later Darren had hooked up the boat and deftly reversed into the waterway that led to the sea.
Seemingly from nowhere Andy and Bobby started heaving bottled water and what looked like boxes of food from a shipping container into the boat.
‘Where’d you get all that from?’ I asked.
‘We’ve been planning this for a few weeks,’ Andy explained. ‘I’ve been making runs down here for the past few days. We owned a shop in Stakeford before all this happened.’
I knew Stakeford quite well. Not really a village or a town. More like a borough that was on the outskirts of another large town called Ashington. My grandparents used to live there and I knew the shop he owned. It was a small local supermarket.
‘On our last run our pickup ran out of petrol about a mile away. I’d been planning on moving the boat with it but I’d syphoned half of the tank and put it in the boat. In hindsight,
I should have moved the boat first.’
I helped Andy and Bobby to load the rest of the provisions into the boat while ‘Thor’ guarded the gate. Just as the last box was aboard Darren shouted, ‘They’re here!’ Without a word between us we climbed into the boat and started the engine. Darren bounded over from the gates carrying a rather large rucksack on his back, another in his hand, and what looked to be some kind of case for an electric guitar. He didn’t strike me as the musician type and I couldn’t think of any situation we’d ever be in for him to break out in song. But hey, he’d just saved my life. Twice. Who was I to stop him if he wanted to strum out ‘I’ve got a brand new combine harvester’? I’d put some fucking harmonies on if it meant he’d keep throwing those fucking hammers to save my arse.
The boat itself was nothing to write home about. It was eighteen feet long, had no cabin but had quite a large outboard motor.
As we pulled away from the boatyard the gate gave way to the multitude of deedaz that had arrived. They Igored down the ramp towards the waterway and stopped as they came to the water’s edge. With a collective mournful wail they watched as their warm meal chugged away towards the sea and freedom.
‘Where to?’ Asked Andy as he steered us out of the waterway and out to sea.
‘North is our best bet,’ replied Darren.
Bobby, who until that moment hadn’t said anything, chirped up with, ‘Why north?’
Darren went on to explain the whys and wherefores and it turned out he thought exactly the same as I did.
Northumberland as a whole had a relatively small population and with us living in the south of the county the farther north you went the towns got smaller and more distant from each other. Also peppered along the coast were a group bird sanctuaries called the Farne Islands which happened to have buildings on them for the wildlife wardens who lived there.
The perfect place to ride out this apocalyptic storm.
All we had to do was get there.
As we turned north out of the waterway a new chorus of moans greeted us from the beach. The beach belonged to a caravan park that sat above the sand dunes. Sandy Bay caravan park to be exact. I know this because I’d sung there a couple of times over the years. Ironic really because now the holiday makers were serenading me.
Deedaz of all ages crowded the beach, reaching out toward us. It was the first time I’d seen child deedaz and hoped it would be the last. It was heartbreaking to see the damage they had taken, most likely from one of their own family.
‘They’re not going anywhere near the water,’ Bobby noticed.
She was right, the deedaz were standing right on the tide line of the beach and it looked like they definitely had no intention of getting their feet wet. This bode well for all of us. Andy decided to take us further out to sea because the throng of dead started following the boat along the beach. I was definitely apprehensive about this and although the sea was being kind to us by not being too choppy, the biggest worry was running out of fuel or having mechanical problems and being at the mercy of the unforgiving North Sea, which I knew could be a right twat if it w
anted to be.
After a while the dead on the beach gave up the chase. It would take about an hour and a half to reach our destination and we all sat in silence contemplating our future and praying our salvation was just up the coast. Andy made use of the lull in conversation to apologise about pointing the gun at us when we arrived and added the fact that it didn’t actually work. He’d bought it from an antique shop years ago and had intended to use it as an ornament to hang it above the fireplace. The firing pin had been filed down and rendered the firearm unusable.
I later found out from Bobby that word had gotten out around the Stakeford area that Andy owned the shotgun and an ‘urban myth’ was born that the local kids believed to be true: ‘Steal from Andy and he’ll shoot ye’. The parents in the area would fuel the myth in the hope their children would not stay the straight and narrow. Andy became the legendary ‘Shotgun Andy’ and never ever came up short on stock taking day.
Chapter 24 – The welcome party
We soon came upon the first island we’d planned to scope out. Coquet Island.
With an area of around fifteen acres and home to a lighthouse and outbuildings, and around half a mile from the coastal town of Amble, we had all agreed this would be an ideal place of sanctuary if it was uninhabited.
The island loomed larger as we approached, and Bobby suddenly proclaimed from her vantage point at the front of the boat, ‘People!’
I moved next to her for a closer view. She was right. In the distance on the small beach of the island were a group of around fifteen to twenty people. And it looked like they needed help and were trying to get our attention.
Andy steered the boat towards the beach but brought it to a stop when we all realised the people there were past help. They were dead.
Fuck!
‘What will we do now dad?’ Bobby asked. Andy didn’t say a word. He just shook his head.
I looked at Darren and shrugged. ‘Well, we’ll just have to go find another island.’
It's Grim Up North (Book 1): It's Grim Up North Page 7