Ridgetown (Book 2): Neighbours

by Philip Radford

  The door leading out of the bedroom was locked but Helen had a key. It wouldn’t stop someone if they really wanted to get through but it was enough to deter someone who was curious enough to try but understand boundaries. The door opened onto the upstairs landing with a bathroom to the right and the door to the master bedroom opposite. The door to the master bedroom was also locked but the bathroom was wide open. The door to the bathroom had been utilised downstairs for barricading. It also let any visitors know they could use it, should Dennis leave the first door open for them to come through.

  Helen locked the second bedroom door after Mark had come through and unlocked the door to the master bedroom. Immediately in front of them was a gaping hole in the wall that led through to the original safe house in which Dennis, Ishaq and Scott stood waiting for them, all smiling enthusiastically. Their smiles faded as they saw the expressions that Helen and Mark were wearing, they knew that this was more than a social visit.

  “What’s wrong?” Dennis asked immediately.

  “We’ve been to investigate the possible Leaper sighting at the shop that Ant told us about, the good news is that it wasn’t a Leaper.”

  “The bad news?” Ishaq asked.

  “I don’t know, never seen anything like this before” Mark shrugged and let his arms slap his sides, not knowing how to describe what they had just encountered.

  Dennis sensed that they had just been through an ordeal and suggested they went and sat down in the main safe house. They headed downstairs into the living room and sat down on the two sofas that faced each other either side of a coffee table. Ishaq got some bottles of water for everyone while Mark and Helen sat on one couch taking it in turns to describe what they had seen and heard. Dennis and Scott sat opposite, horrified as they recounted the nest made of body parts and the descriptions of the undead creatures that were scaling the walls. Ishaq stood behind Dennis and Scott, occasionally stretching his torso in each direction causing it to click quietly. At Mark’s revelation that he thought the things had lured Helen and himself inside in order to trap them, the room fell silent.

  It was Dennis who spoke first, “So you didn’t actually see them move but you think they were fast?”

  “Yeah. A couple of times we heard a noise or I thought I saw something but by the time I had turned to face it, whatever it was had gone. I don’t know how they were connected to the walls either, they looked like they were crouching on it the same way you would crouch on the floor.”

  “Sounds like another one for the specials page on the website.” Said Scott.

  “They need a name.” Ishaq suggested.

  “Right now I’m more concerned that one of these things nearly incapacitated me and Helen and could have taken out a lot more if there had been more of us there. Couple that with the fact that they can set traps and there are a group of them and we’re looking at a serious problem.” Mark was clearly unnerved by being stalked by something when he prided himself on being so careful.

  “I’m more worried that they can climb.”

  Helen’s eyes widened at Ishaq’s observation. “I hadn’t even thought about that. We’ve worked so hard modifying buildings thinking that people would be safe living above the ground floor and now these things can scutter up a flat surface.”

  Mark continued, “They didn’t follow us out into the light and the one that confronted us seemed to shy away from my torchlight, although I don’t know if that was just to lure us closer to it and its friends. We need to find out if light harms them in any way, at least that could give us a decent weapon against them.”

  “You’re going back?” Scott asked in surprise.

  “Not today, it’ll be going dark soon and we need to update Ridgetown. It will have to be soon though, because I don’t like how close they are to you guys.”

  Mark and Helen rested while Scott brought them up to date on what they had been up to. He and Luke had been working on a locking mechanism based on electronic cat flaps.

  “Cat flaps?” Mark raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes. Just the locks though, I don’t mean we replace the whole door with a massive cat flap. That would be ridiculous.” Scott was suddenly worried that Mark thought his idea was stupid. Mark was someone he looked up to and respected his opinion.

  Helen jumped on the opportunity to tease Mark. “Don’t you have an oversized cat flap as an entrance to the pub?”

  “That’s hinged differently.” Mark was quick to defend their pivoted door. “It doesn’t look anything like a cat flap.”

  Scott continued, unsure as to what everyone now thought about his idea. He explained how they could all wear a wristband or keep something like a keyring with a chip inside it. Once they approached one of the doors with the cat flap lock, it would detect the signal and prime the locks on the door or window to release.

  “What if someone dies whilst wearing one of the wristbands? Would the door open for a zombie to stumble straight through?”

  Scott was ready for Mark’s question. “No, we thought about that. It’s going to work as a two tier system. There will be a keypad at the door for a four digit code to be inputted.”

  “Which would totally negate the point of having the wristband?” Mark interrupted.

  “And…” Scott continued, “Luke is looking at implementing the keypad into a link on the website. You click on a link on the safe house, input your four digit code on the way there which is valid for, let’s say five minutes, then when you rock up the door does swing open for you. Instant access but you would still have to put the four digit code in first.”

  There was a moment of silence as Helen and thought about the possibilities. Rushing to a safe house with an injured partner, being able to pre-arm the lock with the code and then sail straight in when they got there. Very useful if you were travelling with someone who needed to be carried. For all the good that came from incorporating climbing into getting into safe houses, there were times it was inconvenient. Those occasions however were far outweighed by the simple face that it kept zombies out of their buildings. With the revelation of this new special type though, who knew what extra measures they would have to take.

  “I’ll be honest. It sounds like a great idea.” Mark looked around at everyone. “These are the kinds of ideas that are going to keep us safer and give people confidence in their security. That’s exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing.”

  Scott looked overjoyed at the approval by Mark. “Thanks. Luke’s been a great help with it though. He said that this new guy Anthony was pretty tech savvy so we’re going to see if he’s interested in helping.”

  “The more people we can get working on the more projects, the better. I like the idea of people sharing knowledge about things so that if there’s a problem with anything, someone else can step in. Helen’s been teaching me some of the coding stuff that goes into the website and I want it to be as accessible to everyone as possible, mainly so that everyone can share the workload as evenly as possible. I don’t want people getting burned out on specific projects just because no one else can do it.”

  Scott explained that they were going to trial the new locks at The Outpost first and then they could start to implement it at new safe houses they established. Scott had found two of the electronic collars in a house nearby when he and Ishaq had been looking for supplies but they would probably have to target pet stores if they wanted a decent amount of the chips and sensors.

  Dennis mentioned that they had heard vehicles driving round in the past few nights. They hadn’t seen anything on the cameras and hadn’t heard them during the day but they were going to see if they could see anything from the roof if they heard them again that night. Mark told them to keep an eye on the website in case they tried to make contact through that, the URL for the website was spray painted and on fliers stuck all over the town in an effort to get people using it.

  After reassuring Dennis that they were feeling better after their attack, Helen and Mark decided to head bac
k to Ridgetown. They advised the others to keep the entrance point doors locked and keep their eyes on the external cameras. Even though those things didn’t look like they were planning on leaving the store, Mark advised them not to take it for granted.

  They said goodbye in the second bedroom of the entrance house and as Helen descended the ladder, she heard someone locking the door and checking it on the other side of the room. The street was still silent and they set off from The Outpost without seeing any other zombies.

  “I think that’s a really good idea of Scott’s.” Said Mark, feeling positive. “The code idea adds a bit of scavenger security as well, reassurance that another group couldn’t steal one of the wristbands and sail into The Outpost uninvited.”

  “Be careful Mark, you’re beginning to sound as paranoid about people as I do.”

  After an uneventful drive back to Ridgetown, Mark group messaged Liz, Gaz, Luke and Ant to meet at his house to discuss what they had seen. Everyone arrived quickly, Ant bringing his girlfriend Maisie with him.

  Anthony and Maisie had been roaming round the Northwest part of the country for the last four months after the group they had been staying with in their hometown had been overrun. The first three weeks had been rough as they had been chased out of a different building everyday. They spent most of those three weeks starving and sleep depraved as they looked for a safe place to stay, only looking for food or stopping to rest when they thought they had found somewhere. Inevitably, after a few hours sleep if they were lucky, the building would be compromised and they would have to run for their lives again, abandoning most of their belongings. They managed to stay alive by learning from their mistakes. At first they searched for supplies in risky areas such as hospitals and supermarkets. The rewards from searching such places never met the time and energy they exerted trying to stay alive, they were always hotspots for zombies. In one supermarket they came across a group of survivors who assaulted Ant even after he told them he didn’t have anything useful.

  After growing wary of other survivors, they began to move under the cover of darkness and stay in places that were less than desirable. They avoided secure looking homes for office buildings where they could hide in an out-of-the-way office with access to the fire escape if they needed a quick getaway. They also picked small businesses such as funeral parlours or garden centres where survivors were less likely to loot, any place that might have a kitchen area or break room. They changed locations frequently and kept little supplies with them so that they didn’t have much to carry, favouring moving on foot to using a vehicle that would draw attention to them.

  The constant moving and lack of security was beginning to wear on them both and their relationship was beginning to suffer because of it. They were spending every waking second together and even when they slept, one would watch over the other. Without any external stimulus they began to argue more often and their desperation grew. They had been travelling close to Ridgetown and noticed a couple of the flyers stuck to walls. At first they had dismissed them as some advertisement from before the apocalypse but after seeing so many of them, Maisie had read one and suggested they try the website out. That night they broke into a house not far from the store and used the owner’s mobile phone that had been left on his bedside table.

  The owner was found hanging at the top of the stairs. He’d removed the cover to the attic and had used a beam from the roofing as a ligature point, strangling himself with a rope. An upturned chair near his feet suggested he’d done it unaided and he had a note and a photograph pinned to his T-shirt. The note simply said “I’m sorry, you’ll stand a better chance without me.” and the picture was of the owner with his arm round a woman and a young boy.

  Maisie had spent that entire night wondering what could have possibly driven the man to give up. She wondered if the man had still lived with the woman and boy in the picture. She wondered if they had ever found him or if they had been killed before he had hung himself. She wanted to know why this man thought they would be better off without him, was he a bad husband or father? Was he terminally ill? Was he in some kind of trouble that could have put them at risk? She knew she’d never find out and that bothered her.

  They had powered up the mobile phone and followed the flyer’s instructions to get online. They had seen they weren’t far from one of Ridgetown’s safe houses and Ant had used to messenger client to get in contact. It had been Gaz who responded first and invited them to come to Ridgetown or asked if they needed any help. Ant and Maisie were slightly reluctant at first after the assault at the supermarket but Gaz reassured them that it was their decision and they didn’t have to make it right away. Gaz told them to use the website to keep themselves safe and they could contact him or anyone else from Ridgetown on the messenger client whenever they wanted.

  Maisie and Ant discussed their options that night and read all about Ridgetown on the website as well as reading all the information about the special zombies that had been spotted. They read the tips for survival and suggested combat techniques. They decided to contact Gaz again in the morning and see what the Ridgetown estate was like. Gaz shared Ridgetown’s location with them and offered to pick them up but they said they would be able to find the estate easy enough. They had planned to see if there was anything worth scavenging in the store nearby and that’s when Ant had thought he had seen a Leaper. After reading about them and seeing the pictures that were posted on the website, they decided to steer clear of it.

  So far, Ant and Maisie had been a great new addition to the town. They thrived off interacting with people and their relationship blossomed again. The relative safety of Ridgetown allowed them to relax more than they had done at any point in the last year and they threw themselves into anything that needed to be done to help out. They had made a big impact in the week they had spent at Ridgetown so far and their new optimism was exactly what the other residents needed after recent events.

  “Me and Helen found the store where you thought you had seen a Leaper.” Mark addressed Ant directly but spoke to the group as a whole. “We went inside and found a new special type of zombie. It wasn’t a Leaper you saw, these were skinny little things but they seemed just as dangerous.”

  Mark described how they could climb and were fast. Telling all the information to Dennis, Scott and Ishaq had allowed him to put his thoughts and ideas into a structured package. He speculated to the Ridgetowners how he thought they could be working as a pack as well as their reluctance to follow Helen and himself outside of the store.

  “It could be that the light hurts them or maybe they didn’t want to leave that nest thing. Either way, I’m hoping that we don’t have to worry about them straying too far from the store. Our priority needs to be finding out if there any more of these…” He looked at Helen, “Scutters, or whether this is a one off.”

  “Why Scutters?” Luke asked.

  “I don’t know, Helen came up with it.”

  Helen gawped at Mark, “No I didn’t.”

  “That nest was made up from human and zombie body parts which means, if they aren’t straying outside the building, they’re luring victims inside. I think that’s what they did to me and Helen. We need to issue a warning on the site about that grid and update the special zombies page. Luke, can you and Helen do that. Helen try to remember as much as possible about them, some kind of image would help as well if you could draw something up.”

  Helen and Luke nodded towards each other.

  “Gaz, it’s starting to get dark so I don’t want you going now but first thing in the morning can your team head down there? Spray a warning near by and see if you can get any pictures or any other information about them. I don’t want you taking any chances but I’m not gonna patronise you, you guys are good so I feel like I can stay here without worrying that I’ve sent you into a trap. Keep your distance and stay vigilant the whole time.”

  “Liz, as our resident zombie scientist, do you want to go with Gaz’s team?”

  Li
z thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “If that’s okay with you guys?”

  “Are you kidding me? With those wrist blades of yours, we’ll hide behind you.”

  The others laughed and Liz looked down, suddenly embarrassed.

  “Ant and Maisie, I realise you’re probably the only people who haven’t seen a Leaper in the flesh. Sorry, bad choice of words. But I’ll take you guys to see the one we keep in the fridge near the pub. Don’t worry, it’s very dead. Liz has kept it for further testing but I think you guys should see the size of one in real life just so you know how big they actually are. Those things in the store are more like children compared to a Leaper.”

  “How are the others at The Outpost?” Liz asked.

  “They’re doing good. The reinforcements to the house are pretty solid and Scott was telling me about the work he’s been doing with Luke for wristband keys for door locks. It sounds like a really good idea and I’m looking forward to seeing it implemented. Dennis mentioned that they’ve heard vehicles in the area at night, they’re gonna try and get a visual on them tonight so make sure there’s always someone overseeing the messenger service incase they need help.”

  The meeting slowly became less informal and discussion moved on to Maisie and Anthony. The Ridgetowners asked questions about their lives before the infection and told stories of their own. Anthony asked about the battle that happened two months ago because he’d heard a couple of people reference it but no-one had really spoken about it. The mood turned sombre for a short while and Liz hid a tear that escaped down her cheek when Ryan’s name was brought up. The laughter returned as Helen tried to tell the group how she had nearly made Mark cry and Mark hurriedly tried to break up the meeting and throw everyone out of his house.