Andy continued. The next few days had been dark days indeed. From their vantage point looking over the main road that ran through Stakeford they watched it all unfold. The first deeda they saw was a young girl of fourteen. He knew her age because he knew the girl. She’d come in for her weekly horse riding magazine. She’d been terrible bitten on both arms, injuries obviously received while trying to fight off whoever bit her. Bobby had insisted that they go down and help the girl. She hadn’t seen the news flash so didn’t really understand what was going on. She finally came to terms with the situation when the poor girl with the bitten arms attacked a middle-aged woman who’d stopped her car to help. Before she could get her seatbelt off the young deeda had launched herself through the open car window and attacked. Stories like this happened again and again but after a few days the killing stopped and all that remained were the walking dead.
It was three weeks later that Andy made the decision to leave. He’d seen sporadic fires breaking out through the area and knew it was just a matter of time before they made it to the shop.
As soon as this mess started he’d had the boatyard plan in the back of his mind. His friend had a boat stored there and Andy had been there countless times while fishing.
With the pickup truck loaded with food, Andy and Bobby struck out to check that an escape by boat would be possible. Andy had checked the back lane for deedaz before he opened the garage door from the safety of the pickup.
As soon as they were clear he closed it again with the remote. The back lane was surprisingly free of deedaz but at the end of the road a gaggle of them had started to enter, curious as to the noise the truck made. Now, the pickup they were driving was a high-end one. Not one of these beat-up cowboy things. This was the cream of the cream. A Toyota Hilux with heightened suspension and a bull bar on the front that could knock buildings down. It had a single cab and an enclosed bed for supplies. The last thing Andy wanted to do was damage his baby, so he simply ploughed slowly through the nosey deedaz. A couple of them were knocked over and crushed under the large heavy tyres. The rest banged futilely on the windows as the vehicle glided by. Being only three and a half miles away and travelling on a back road that was rarely used, they arrived after around ten minutes.
The boatyard was locked up tight, which was a good sign. Andy bent down and from under a large black rock produced the key for the padlock holding the gates together. After emptying the provisions into the shipping container and checking that Andy’s friend’s boat was in ship shape, they locked everything up tight and left, taking the key for the padlock with a them. When they got back to the shop, Andy slowly drove the truck up the back lane. The deedaz that were there followed. When he got to the end he floored it to the left and then left again and made it back to the garage door having left the stupid deedaz behind. With a click of the remote the garage opened and the truck slipped in. Andy and Bobby repeated this around fifteen times during the next couple of weeks. Always succeeding but having had some very close shaves indeed. His story ended at the part when two strange men came tootling along the lane in a John Deere.
When everyone went to bed I took a chair and went and sat on the upstairs landing. From my position I had an unobstructed view through the window of the approach to the island and the beach and jetty.
My shift went without any drama and my thoughts again turned to my ex’s safety. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed me somehow, but getting to her from the island would have been an impossible task. Plus, there was a strong chance she’d fled to somewhere safer or, heaven forbid, become a walking corpse. I knew if the latter was true I’d have probably given up on surviving and walked into her arms for one final cuddle.
The feelings of guilt weighed heavy on me for not taking the detour to see if she was safe. Though, If I had gone, I wouldn’t be on the island, I’d never have met Darren and I’d have never gotten through Cambois without that tractor.
Andy relieved me at 2am and with a heavy heart I went to bed expecting again to be haunted in my dreams. After the weeks I’d spent sleeping on the hard floorboards of the loft, the feeling of jumping into a real bed was amazing. I kept the sobbing to a minimum, but the bed and the fact I felt relatively safe with someone watching over me was something I had never expected to feel again.
Chapter 28 – The padlock
I awoke to the bright sun shining through the grimy bedroom window, the amazing aroma of breakfast being cooked and the sound of the creaking shutters of the windows on the ground floor being opened. After quickly changing into the clean clothes from my bugout bag and finally getting out of that fucking onesie, I descended the stairs and found everyone in the kitchen. Clean clothes were sported by all. More noticeably, Darren was decked out in full army combat regalia looking every inch the soldier he was.
Andy told me to sit and then proceeded to dish out a veritable feast. Powdered eggs, beans, fried spam, tinned mushrooms and tinned tomatoes. We talked while we ate as if it were just an ordinary day and the terrors of the world hadn’t happened. That feeling came to an end when Darren said that we needed a plan of action for the day ahead. If it was up to me we’d have a day off. After the past few weeks, I just wanted to relax and soak up the feeling of safety the island gave. Darren, however, was one of those people who always needed a purpose. Something to conquer. A mission to undertake. He was the leader now.
Who was I to argue?
It was decided that a lookout was needed 24/7 and should be positioned up in the lighthouse during daylight hours and in the house during the night. Andy volunteered to take the watch for the day while Darren and I opened the rest of the buildings that were locked around the island. Bobby was tasked with getting the house sorted by removing the furniture coverings and generally making the place liveable. She’d be alone, but having Andy watching our backs and hers we knew she’d be as safe as she was ever going to be.
Before Darren and I left to explore I strapped on my machete and hatchet and went to pick up my crossbow.
‘Just leave that mate,’ Darren said as he opened one side of his jacket. There, in a chest holster, was some sort of pistol. With a Darren grin he said, ‘Say hello to my leetle friend’.
Apart from Andy’s ‘shotgun’ and the helicopter gun, this was the first time I’d seen a real gun up close. Apparently it was a Glock 17, 17 being the number of 9mm rounds it held. I wasn’t sure whether I felt safer or not. As I’d mentioned earlier, guns were not a common thing in the UK. In fact it felt totally alien to me to be this close to one. I knew that Darren had been trained to use such a thing but the fear was if it fell into the wrong hands. I mentioned this to Darren to which he replied, ‘The only way this gun will be taken from me is from my cold dead hands, and if that happens Carter, you’re proper fucked’. With that sobering thought hanging in the air he turned and went outside. I followed like a lost puppy not wanting to be far from the protective field that positively surrounded Darren. I knew if there was any chance of surviving the ZA it would happen only if I was in close proximity to him.
We decided to open the locks on the other two houses. The first one seemed to be an exact replica of the house we’d claimed. The second, however, had some sort of workshop in the living room. The dining room had been repurposed into a storeroom for fuel with sacks upon sacks of smokeless coal, logs and kindling. Thankfully, a journey back to the mainland wouldn’t be needed now for quite some time.
Upstairs we found a room full of waterproof clothing of different sizes and a room full of scuba diving equipment. The reason for this equipment being there was lost on us. At a guess it was owned by the marine/wildlife researchers that once used the island.
Darren started searching amongst the shelves and cupboards in the tool room and eventually found what he was looking for. ‘Aha!’ he exclaimed. In his hand was a can of WD40 lubricating oil. I had no idea what on earth he planned to do with it.
‘Follow me bonny lad,’ he cheerfully said and led me out of the house
and towards the large padlocked building adjoined to the lighthouse. On arriving he went to work with the WD40 on the keyhole of the padlock. I doubted he would get the prehistoric looking security device open. After five minutes of waiting he produced his lock picks from one of his many pockets and attacked the lock.
As I was watching him I noticed grooves in the ground in front of the building which were obviously made by the out-swinging doors. I also noticed that the grooves seemed relatively fresh. How could that be? That lock hadn’t been opened in years judging by the rust and the difficulty Darren was having in opening it. I stood back to get a better look. The chain that the padlock was attached to passed through holes in each of the large metal doors. Then it dawned on me why the locks were so old and unused.
‘Darren?’ I said.
‘Yeah mate?’ He replied.
‘If I can get that door open in less than five seconds, will you teach me how to use that gun?’ I asked.
‘Ha, if you can do it in less than an hour I’ll teach you how to use it and give you my spare gun.’
‘WTF mate, you’ve got another gun?’ I asked.
‘Did you just say ‘WTF’ instead of what the fuck?’ he asked laughingly.
‘Never mind that, have you another gun?’ I asked again.
‘No mate, I’ve another three!’ he proclaimed.
Speechless and shaking my head I walked towards the doors and put my hand into one of the holes the chain went through. I followed the chain down to the nail that the end was looped onto and unhooked it, pulled it through and triumphantly showed it to Darren. The lock and chain were only there for effect. Most likely so whatever was held inside the building could be accessed easily and without the fuss of having to look for the key.
It had probably fooled just about everyone who’d seen it. Including Darren.
All he could say was ‘WTF’.
At this we both turned back into the giggling schoolgirls until tears streamed down our faces. I’ve had giggle attacks before, stoned ones, church ones and bingo ones, but apocalypse ones have got to be the most rewarding giggles you can get. All that pent-up fear, mixed with the relief at being alive must cause the mind to behave differently. I only just made it to the corner of the building to relieve myself. After all the pissy pants I’d experienced since the start of ZA, I never thought I’d be pissing myself with laughter, when just two days previously, I’d been contemplating suicide in the loft.
Once the giggles had passed and Andy had shouted down from the lighthouse to ‘knock it the fuck off’, we entered the large doorway. Directly inside the door was a small tractor. I say tractor; it was more like a sit-on lawn mower to be honest. Behind it, on a trailer, was a zodiac with a large 120hp outboard motor. A zodiac is a boat. It has a solid bottom and a large inflatable tube that encircles the rigid hull. In the centre of the hull towards the back is a console with a steering wheel and throttle lever. My mate used to have more or less the same type with only a 90hp outboard on, but boy could it move.
We used to take it across to the Lake District in the summer and camp out, smoke weed, take pills, and play and sing songs with the aid of my acoustic guitar, which usually ended up with us being thrown off the site at an ungodly hour when the singing got too rambunctious.
The last time we went we were thrown off approximately one hour after we arrived. We hadn’t even set the tents up. Someone thought it a good idea to take the boat for a spin on the lake first and then thought it a good idea to produce some ready rolled spliffs. Half an hour later the four of us were stoned immaculate and carelessly drifting towards the Ullswater boating club.
Now a whitey is a condition many stoners know all too well. The unavoidable spinning sensation is usually followed by projectile vomiting. This ailment is always brought on by smoking too much weed or mixing the leaf with alcohol. Well the whitey that struck my friend Paul was a seasickness whitey. A force ten on the whitey scale.
So imagine the looks of disgust we got from the guests at the boating club’s annual summer fete when Paul went off like old faithful. The geyser that spewed hot stomach acid into the air and down on to our little boat set of a whitey chain reaction, and before we knew it we looked like the Bellagio fountain show in Las Vegas.
Needless to say, the owner of the campsite was informed of our behaviour, expelled us forth with and barred us for life.
Chapter 29 – The questions
Back in the garage where the tractor and zodiac were, Darren turned the ignition key on the small tractor. It started first time. I told Darren I thought we should use this boat if we ever needed to get to the mainland for any reason. It was much lighter than the fishing boat we’d used to get to the island and we could beach it and re-float it without much effort. It was also as fast as hell.
Darren agreed and we planned to move it down to the beach the next day. After cutting the tractor engine we suddenly heard whistling coming from outside. As we ran out,
Andy shouted down. ‘Ship!’
Darren and I bounded up the lighthouse stairs to where Andy was situated. Directly to the east on the horizon was a ship.
Darren took the binoculars off Andy and told him to keep watch to the western approach to the island. After looking he held the binos out for me to use.
‘It’s a Royal Navy destroyer,’ he said.
My heart leapt. I grabbed the binoculars and quickly zeroed in on the boat. It was large and grey with what looked like a tall thin pyramid in its centre with a large ball on top.
Could this be our salvation? Could it be over? Were they looking for survivors? My jubilations were short lived when I glanced at Darren.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t we going to signal them?’ Darren sat deep in thought for a good while.
‘So?’ I asked again.
Darren, as it happens is even more paranoid than me and is of the thinking if something is too good to be true it usually is. On his watch the previous night, he’d spent his time wisely and had been scanning the radio channels, military and civilian, looking for fellow survivors. He’d heard nothing. He surmised that if this ship was indeed looking for survivors, we surely would have received a broadcast of some kind in advance of it arriving. As I was listening to Darren’s reasoning I happened to spot a small fishing vessel travelling on a southeast heading on a direct course with the ship. The boat must have come from one of the small harbours to the north of us.
The ship had obviously spotted it too and slowed to a stop. Within forty-five minutes the small fishing vessel had arrived at its destination and Darren gave a running commentary of what was happening as he looked through the binoculars.
‘They seem to be talking to each other with bullhorns. The man on the fishing vessel looks to be taking his clothes off. He’s got his hands in the air. This doesn’t look good guys.
Ah, fuck.’
Darren lowered the binoculars just as the sound wave of a high-powered chain machine gun hit us. I put the binoculars to my eyes just in time to see the fishing vessel disappear beneath the rolling waves. I slowly sat down in the chair behind me.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ Andy asked.
‘They blew him out of the fucking water,’ I replied.
Darren’s face was blank. Why did they kill him? was my first question. Fuck me. What if we’d signalled them? was my second.
Darren came out of his daydream and suggested possible scenarios of what had happened. His first, was that the man in the fishing boat was infected and they’d seen this when he’d stripped his clothes off. This couldn’t be right though. The infected usually turned in a matter of seconds. Unless something had changed in the infection process.
His second scenario was that the sailors on board the destroyer weren’t loyal to her majesty anymore and had turned into pirates, shooting down the naked man when he’d confessed to having nothing of value.
The third scenario, and this was the bitter sweet one, was that the UK was a quarantine zone. Th
is meant the rest of the world was uninfected, which was really good news but meant the British people were on their own and the chances of getting away from this place with a patrolling navy destroyer were slim to none.
We decided not to signal the murdering fucks and planned to cover all windows of the house to blot out any light in case the patrol passed during the night and clocked us.
With our spirits dampened we returned to the house for some lunch and promised to send some up for Andy as soon as we were done.
Bobby was to be kept in the dark regarding the ship incident. She’d asked what the noise was but we palmed her off by saying it was a building collapsing in Amble. She’d been through enough lately and she didn’t need to have another thing to worry about.
After lunch Darren disappeared upstairs and I took Andy his lunch and stayed with him for a while. I told him about the decision we took about not telling Bobby about the occurrences of the morning and he agreed, thanking us for being so thoughtful.
I returned to the house and entered the living room. Darren was there sitting on the chair next to the fireplace. Before him on the floor lay what can only be described as an arsenal. Guns, grenades, scopes, what looked like a man-shaped bush, tins of camouflage paint, knives of different sizes, medikit and four black boxes with two prongs sticking from the bottom of each of them.
The events that took place before lunch looked to have spurred Darren into action.
‘What’s happening mate?’ I asked.
It's Grim Up North (Book 1): It's Grim Up North Page 9