The creatures below looked up, and gathered underneath the window, scratching at the windows and walls.
Jeffrey looked over Terry’s shoulders, trying to see if any zombies were not taking the bait.
“I think they’ve bought it.”
They ran for the back door, flinging it open and running for the truck. They made it to the hedge without a problem, but as they pushed through the narrow gap they imagined that every branch was a dead hand reaching out to grab them, each twig scraping against their skin was fingernails scratching at their flesh.
They got up and into the cab, everything seeming almost too easy.
As soon as they started the engine the banging began on the truck. When they turned on the lights they saw dozens of creatures running down the road towards them from both directions.
Jeffrey had to reverse a few feet before he could move forward. The truck let out a warning beep, and lights flashed at the back to warn people behind that it was coming, but the noise echoed through the countryside: a piercing signal that there were still people alive in the area.
The creatures running down the road crashed into the front of the reversing lorry, their hammering fists only reaching the bottom of the window, leaving greasy prints.
Jeffrey slammed the truck into gear and sped off down the road, crunching bodies under his wheels and sending body parts flying in all directions.
“OK, so now the shit has really hit the fan,” Jeffrey groaned staring wildly out of the window, “where do we head for?”
They had packed some emergency supplies in the cab of the truck: clothes, water, tins of food and a can opener, but only enough for a day or two. The truck had enough petrol for a hundred steady miles at most.
“Bexleyheath!” Insisted Terry, “It’s that way.” He pointed to the North East, towards the edge of London.
“I was thinking more of the countryside. We were doing quite well until…” Jeffrey stopped in the middle of his sentence; he was remembering the arrival of the creature that had once been Troy.
“Fuck that!” Terry shouted, “I want big, secure walls, and a garden in the middle. A prison! My son’s prison.”
“Nice idea, but if those things can’t get inside how the hell are we meant to?”
“No problem. We just park the truck alongside the wall, climb up through the sun roof and jump over…”
“Will it be tall enough?”
“Dunno, but I’m pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure? And what if the prison is already overrun by those things?”
“Well then, we park for a minute outside, look over the wall, see what we shall see. If it’s a dead place then we just get back in the truck and carry on with your plan to a find a place in the country.”
“You do know it’s taking us into the city: it’s going to be crawling with those things.”
“It’s only the edge of the city, five minutes from the countryside.”
“OK,” sighed Jeffrey, “do you know the way?”
“Sure, it’s signposted as soon as you come off the M25.”
“Yeah, but do you know the way using the back roads? The motorways are blocked, and the closer we get to London the more small roads will be blocked too.”
“I know the direction,” said Terry doubtfully, “but not an exact route.”
“There’s a map in the glove box; get it out and lead on.”
Terry rummaged around and found the map. It was an old dog-eared, spiral-bound book with several pages loose.
“It’s five years out of date,” Terry complained.
“Luckily we won’t be much affected by new one-way systems,” returned Jeffrey, wryly.
Every five minutes a figure would come running out into the road in front of the truck. The lights made them look brilliant white, almost comical: like ghostly clowns, their make-up a stark smudge of dark red around their open mouths.
Then they truck would hit them and they would either go down under the wheels, or burst against the front of the cab, splattering guts and gore over the windscreen; the wiper would smear the stain before wiping it away.
One creature looked like it had once been an old woman, its white hair crazed and tangled. It smashed into the front of the truck, a splatter of blood smearing the window. Then the woman stuck there, the body glued to the radiator grille by torn flesh and the truck’s momentum.
It beat its hands feebly against the windscreen, snapping its teeth at the faces on the other side of the glass.
“Oh shit! I really could do without the hitch-hiker,” spat Jeffrey, “fuck off grandma!”
The truck lumbered on, maintaining a reasonable pace, slowing only when the road was blocked, to push rather than smash the obstructions out of the way.
As they approached their crossing under the blocked M25 motorway all the roads became busier and zombies increased in number.
Jeffrey stepped on the accelerator, bodies crumpled, and cars were shoved aside. When they drove under the motorway they started to hear pounding on the roof of the truck. As Jeffrey looked in the rear-view mirror he saw monsters spilling over the edge of the flyover chasing the survivors in the truck. The noises on the roof continued and Jeffrey realised that zombies were still up there.
He looked up through the sunroof and saw two faces staring back at him.
“Up there!” Jeffrey shouted, pointing to the roof as he slammed on the brakes.
As the truck jolted, Joe, who hadn’t fastened his seatbelt, and who had been sitting in silence up to this point, smacked against the inside of the windscreen. The glass cracked in a cobweb pattern, and Joe lost consciousness.
At the same moment the sunroof shattered. One of the zombies was able to get half inside the cab before the other shot forward by the truck’s change in speed.
Everyone in the cab was showered with broken glass. Jeffrey screamed to Terry, “Get this fucking thing out!” He was gripping the steering wheel and pumping the accelerator once more as, outside the truck, crowds of the dead were emerging from every direction.
Terry struggled against his seatbelt, while the zombie, a middle-aged man in a grey suit, was flailing about in his lap. Terry tried to push its head away, but in the confusion and tangle of limbs, the zombie was able to turn itself around and lunge for Jeffrey.
Jeffrey screamed as the creature managed to sink its teeth into his neck.
Terry unhooked his seatbelt and pushed at the creature with all the adrenaline-fuelled strength that he could muster, til it smashed out through the windscreen.
His triumph was short-lived as he realised that Jeffrey was steering the truck up the kerb, and was clutching his throat, blood flowing freely. He was losing control.
Terry unclipped Jeffrey’s seatbelt, and pulled him out of the driver’s seat. For a moment there was no one driving and the truck left the road altogether, slowing down as it started scraping along the side of a high, brick wall.
Terry quickly took over driving, and headed back to the middle of the road. Creatures were coming from the shadows, and Terry heard more falling on the truck from above.
They were near the prison now. If he could get there without further catastrophes it should take five minutes.
Terry squeezed Jeffrey’s arm “You’ll be alright mate, just hang in there, we’ll get you help; not far now.”
Terry continued his litany of reassuring words, although he knew that Jeffrey was beyond aid. Even if they could bind his wound the disease would get him sooner or later. Probably sooner.
He had to get to the prison,
“They have a medical unit,” Terry soothed, glancing nervously at Jeffrey, “all the medicines we need. They usually have a doctor on site, and there’s always a nurse.”
The truck rammed into a charging group of zombies, and with no windscreen, blood splattered the faces of Terry and Jeffrey.
Most of the creatures went downwards, under the wheels, but one body did not. As the truck hit the fragile body of a child it sp
lit apart. The zombie was covered in bite marks, and also large, slashing wounds where some survivor had tried to fight it off with a knife. Now the body had split in two and from the ribs down the guts and flesh fell to the ground and were flattened by the wheels. The top half of the child was thrown upwards and landed on the dashboard of the cab. Its arms were still working and it pulled its mangled remains towards Terry.
Its small form managed to get tangled in the steering wheel when Terry had to take a sharp left turn to avoid a road totally blocked by a burnt-out double-decker bus.
He tried to reach in to grab the monstrous child and throw it out of the window, but its small hands found his large one and latched on. It pulled itself through the steering wheel and sunk its teeth into Terry’s forearm. He screamed and smashed his arm against the roof, window and steering wheel in a desperate attempt to free himself from its grasp.
The creature managed to bite him twice more before he managed to pulp its head against the roof of the cab.
“Fuck you! You little fucking shit.”
Terry glanced down at his arm. Blood was pumping vigorously from a gouge near his wrist.
“Fuck this!”
He slammed his foot on the accelerator and lurched forwards. The city was totally overrun, zombies emerging from every building.
He smashed his way through any obstacle. As he saw a sign for the prison ahead, he crashed into a car that exploded on impact, causing a flare of heat to hurt his eyes and singe his hair.
The truck drove on even though it had lost some tires, something flammable had stuck to the passenger side of the cab and flames curled around the edge of the shattered windscreen.
He was nearly there.
His head started to feel woozy. There was a warm, damp feeling in his trousers; he wondered for a moment if he had wet himself, but no, it was blood running down his arm from his bitten wrist.
White dots started to pop in front of his eyes.
“Hold it together, Terry,” he told himself, “nearly there now.”
He was finding it harder to put his thoughts together.
His heart leapt when he saw lights on inside the prison, but he couldn’t remember why that was such good news any more.
His vision was getting blurry, and the white spots were so distracting he could barely see anything else.
“Must get to the prison.”
The crowds of the dead outside the prison must have numbered thousands, attracted by the light, noise and movement of the wind-turbine. They now turned towards Terry and his truck.
Barely able to keep his eyes open, Terry sunk the accelerator to the floor…
Here is how the story connects with the rest of the Wild Strawberry Trilogy in this chapter from Book 2: Life in Hell:
Chapter Twenty-three
Crash
L
ee, in the prison control room, suddenly sat bolt upright.
There was a large truck tearing down the access road at speed. There were zombies clinging all over the driver’s cab, flames were licking its sides, and he could see the windows were smashed.
This was the first sign of life outside, but it seemed that it would not be a sign of life, for very much longer.
The prison was surrounded by a double wall. The outer wall was mostly brick, but in places it was a solid metal fence, topped with a wire fence, topped with razor wire.
The inner wall was a tall wire fence, topped with razor wire.
Terry was behind the wheel of the truck. Jeffrey sat beside him clutching his throat, blood pumping rhythmically between his fingers. Both looked deathly pale, their eyes barely able to focus. They had been at a gathering of motor bikers’ on the day of the Rising, and had a long and complicated journey to this day.
Terry knew that he had to get inside the prison, but no longer remembered why or how. The sea of angry faces in front of him was confusing, and as the truck ploughed a path through the middle Terry wondered if this was a dream, and if so, what was its meaning? His ex-wife had been very fond of looking for meanings in dreams: she’d kept a ‘dream diary’ and Terry had teased her mercilessly for it.
The wall of the prison was solid brick: he didn’t know how he could get through that.
Then he noticed the portions of metal fence, ‘that looks passable’ he thought, as he turned the truck with a skid and headed straight towards it.
He pressed down hard on the accelerator. He was feeling numb now. Was he cold? He couldn’t remember why he was driving towards this fence. Should he have put on his seatbelt?
The truck hit the outer fence, sending it straight down under the wheels, and in a ‘domino effect’ the inner fence also toppled.
The truck continued into the wall of the prison chapel, where it stopped, the engine hissing angrily.
Zombies swarmed into the prison through the hole in the fence. They ran screaming in their hundreds, hungry for the flesh that they had known was inside, but which had been denied them for so long.
* * *
Clive spent every morning working to turn the prison green into a kitchen garden. This morning was no exception. Even before the first rays of the red dawn had stained the walls, Clive had been there. He had almost reached retirement age, and had been really looking forward to getting to grips with his garden. The Apocalypse had happened, the world as he knew it had ended, but at least he had his garden. He really wanted flowers and shrubs, but considering the fate of most people he knew, he mustn’t grumble.
As the truck smashed through the fence and Clive saw the stampeding throng of the dead spill into his painstakingly planted vegetable patch, he felt a pain shooting down his arm.
He had lost consciousness before he hit the ground. The others would not be so lucky.
After Tina had locked most of the male staff in Ed’s office they had managed to open the doors by a mixture of brute force and by unscrewing lock fittings. The resulting missing doors and broken locks gave the zombies almost instant access to the whole of the complex.
The men had managed to break free, but there was now an easy and unlockable passage from the garden to Ed’s office, which the zombies were quick to discover.
Ed had watched the truck smash through the outer wall of the prison. He’d watched Clive collapse, with what looked like a heart attack. Looking down, he saw creatures swarm into the building.
His final line of defence was the small staff kitchen. It had a supply of food, but, more importantly, a window leading to a ledge from which it was theoretically possible to reach the roof. He hurried down the corridor until he reached this kitchen, ducked inside and bolted the door.
The door had a small, reinforced glass panel, through which Ed scanned the corridor looking for signs of the undead, or, he hoped, signs of his staff securing the area.
He was peering sidelong, squinting with one eye, when a shadow fell on him from the other side and hands started to pound frantically on the glass.
Ed stumbled backwards, swearing.
A high pitched voice screamed at him, “Open up, open up quickly and let me in!”
Ed hesitated, looking Angie in the face.
“Hurry! They’re coming!”
Ed took a tentative step forward, “Where are they? How near?”
“Just let me in! They’re coming up the stairs!”
Ed put a hand to the latch, but didn’t try to move it. “I’m sorry, Angie, it’s stuck.”
“Open it you stupid fucking bastard!”
Another member of staff appeared, and he banged a bloodstained fist on the door, smearing the glass.
“Ed, fuck! Open up, they’re coming up both stairs!”
“Sorry,” Ed shrugged.
He saw Angie’s face smashed up against the glass and a second later a spray of blood covering the window.
Ed slumped down, his back against the vibrating door, where, behind a mere few inches of wood, his staff were being eaten alive.
“Oh fuck.” He swore, head in hands.
Wild Strawberry: The Motorcycle Diaries Page 4