Ridgetown (Book 2): Neighbours

by Philip Radford

  “There’s the train.”

  Helen looked at him to see where he was looking and found him staring through a pair of binoculars that she hadn’t even noticed him carrying. She followed his eye line to the far right of the site. At first she couldn’t see anything except more mountains of junk and portable cabins. She focused her attention on an area that was quite well lit compared to everywhere else, lights on high stands all pointed down to a centralised area where she saw two trucks and a forklift, all switched off and unmanned. Behind the well lit area, Helen could see movement in the darkness, figures entering and exiting what at first looked like another portable cabin. As her eyes adjusted, Helen could make out the shape of the train, partially disguised by the extra plating and barbed wire.

  “Here, take a look.” Ishaq handed over the binoculars.

  The binoculars were quite powerful and allowed Helen to see the figures moving in the darkness in more detail. Two men, wearing dark coloured uniforms with hints of body armour were carrying boxes onto the train and exiting empty handed. Judging by the ease with which they carried the boxes, it looked like they were nearly empty or holding very light contents.

  “Should we try to get a closer look?” Helen asked without taking her eyes off the figures, following their movements to see if they interacted with anyone else.

  “No. Mark just wants to know that the train’s here and when it’s setting off. No point in risking getting caught when we don’t need to. Speaking of Mark, I’d better let him know it’s here. I’ll let him know in group chat so the others know as well.”

  Ishaq took his phone from his pocket and quickly typed a message out. He sent it and sat on the grass with his phone in his hand, waiting for the read receipt to say that Mark had read it.

  Helen’s phone made a fanfare sound, alerting her to a new message. She quickly fumbled in her pocket to retrieve it.

  “Sorry, I didn’t think about turning the sound off.”

  Ishaq let out a chuckle. “Don’t worry, I’m just glad we’re not closer to them while you’re announcing our location.”

  Helen felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment as she switched the phone into silent mode. She was used to being careful when she was out on operations (she still refused to refer to them as raids) but she was new to stealth missions involving other humans. Human interaction had been kept to an absolute minimum while she had been surviving with Dennis and Luke, plus there had been no electricity for most of that time so they didn’t have to worry about phones going off throughout that period.

  Helen’s phone lit up and Ishaq’s vibrated quietly in his hand.

  “Mark’s seen the message and wants us to lay low and send another one when the train sets off or if we need to abandon it for any reason.”

  “What time did it leave last night?”

  “It was probably around midnight but I wouldn’t imagine they work to a schedule.”

  “Well, you said you had been hearing the vehicles at night. Was it a similar time every night?”

  “Could have been. Huh, I didn’t really think about that. Maybe they are on some kind of schedule. I guess we’d better get comfy.”

  Ishaq changed from a sitting position to lying on his back, propping himself up on his elbows parallel to the slope with his head poking over the top of the peak. A slight wince as he flattened himself out was the only indication that he still had any bother from the injury to his ribs.

  Helen lay on her front, confident that Ishaq would keep an eye out for anything sneaking up on them from behind. She held the binoculars out to Ishaq who told her to keep them for a while. It was cooler on the slope, the wind travelling up it and sweeping over them at the top. It felt cold on the back of Helen’s neck and she wished she had brought a hoody. She hoped that they wouldn’t have to wait too long before the train set off, catching a cold would be less than ideal.

  She checked her watch, it was just after eleven o clock and the darkness had set in for the evening. The only lights in the area were within the site so they were relatively hidden. Helen felt something touch her hair and shook her head thinking it was a bug. There were enough things in this world trying to eat her alive, she didn’t want to give anything else an opportunity if she could help it. She felt it again and realised it wasn’t a bug.

  Ishaq let out a single laugh as it began to rain.

  Mark and Dennis sat in Mark’s car, listening to the rain drum on the windscreen and roof. The car was partially sheltered by a tree that protected the rear but caused heavier droplets to collect and fall on the bonnet every so often.

  “Could be worse.” Said Mark to break the silence. “We could be sat outside in this.”

  “Our vantage point last night was in the open so if that’s where Helen and Ishaq are, they are going to get soaked.”

  Mark picked his phone off the dashboard and typed a quick message to Helen asking if they were under cover. He quickly got a response.

  “She says ‘Should have brought a jacket with a hood. ’”

  Mark chuckled and typed out a reply. He looked over at Dennis, holding the phone up ready to show him what he thought would be a funny reply. Dennis had his eyebrows raised and his lips screwed up. Mark interpreted it as warning.

  “Yeah, I guess now wouldn’t be a good time to wind her up.” He said as he deleted the message and responded with a simple, ‘Be safe’.

  Mark tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He stopped when he noticed Dennis staring at him in his peripheral vision. Without moving his head, Mark shifted his eyes to his left and saw Dennis’ head turn back to look out of the windscreen. A few moments of silence followed before Mark spoke again.

  “Do you think it’s crazy to think that these other survivors have anything to do with the special zombies?”

  Dennis continued to stare straight ahead and Mark wondered if he had heard the question.

  “I don’t think it’s crazy to think anything anymore. The world never used to make sense at the best of times, but since the dead started walking and trying to eat the living, I don’t know where the boundaries of unbelievable lay anymore.”

  “When Gaz said there were no Scutters at the store, I wondered whether they might have been in the boxes you saw being loaded onto the train last night?”

  “I couldn’t say. The boxes were quite big and we don’t know how many they loaded before we got there or even if they unloaded all of them. From your description of their size, it’s plausible. But why collect them if they already knew about them? And why didn’t they take the one that attacked your group?”

  Mark considered the two groups, his and Dennis’ to be a single unit, spread over two locations but Dennis sometimes referred to the two groups independently still. Mark didn’t know if he consciously did it to reinforce the separation or if he found it easier to differentiate the groups of people when talking. He never questioned it, it didn’t really matter. It was just something he had noted over the past couple of weeks.

  “It’s crossed my mind that maybe they picked the Scutters up and dropped the other one off.”

  This time Mark stared straight ahead while Dennis looked at him.

  “Like they were leaving a trap?” Dennis sounded shocked.

  “I don’t know. I’m hoping my suspicions are completely wrong, it’s just that something feels… off about this other group. I’m really keen to get some answers.”

  Dennis sat back in his seat. “Maybe they started the fire to kill the Scutters and that thing survived the fire.”

  “Luke noticed ash on its feet just before it attacked, as if it had been put there after the fire had gone out.”

  “Been put there?”

  “Or arrived.” Mark was getting frustrated with himself. “I’m driving myself crazy with conspiracy theories.”

  “Try not to overthink things without enough information.”

  “I can’t help it. I keep thinking, what if these people created the special zombies or even created the inf
ection? What if they’re working on a cure or they already have one?”

  “There’s no cure for this.” Dennis muttered sombrely.

  “What if there is? What if there’s someway of fixing all this?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “We don’t know though do we?” Mark could feel himself getting more animated, he couldn’t help it. It was like he had opened the flood gates on his conspiracy theory and he needed to get it all out. “We don’t know how it started or what this whole thing even is. We say ‘this thing’ because we don’t know if it’s an ancient disease or virus or biological warfare. These people could have some kind of antidote…”

  “There is no cure!” Dennis slammed his hand down on the dashboard in front of him.

  Mark stopped speaking immediately, shocked by Dennis’ outburst.

  Dennis took a couple of quick, deep breaths, avoiding eye contact. He slowly retracted his arm from the dash and clasped his hands together, quickly stealing a glance at Mark before looking down at his lap.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Hey, don’t worry.” Mark sat back in his seat and leaned in to the headrest. “It’s been a wild two days.”

  “Really, I am sorry.” Dennis’ voice returned to his softly spoken normal self, his body visibly relaxed. “I’ve not really slept and the whole idea of the rules changing again. Not trusting people and looking out for ourselves, I really thought we were past that when we met you all.”

  Mark saw Dennis change from a ball of rage to sheepish and humble in seconds, the difference was startling. He’d never seen that side of Dennis before, even in battle.

  They returned to sitting in silence, an aura of awkwardness filling the car. Mark was frantically trying to think of something to say when his phone vibrated.

  “It’s Helen, the train’s on its way.”

  Dennis and Mark acted quickly, relieved to get out of the car. They had parked in the tree line a few hundred metres from the bridge due to there not being much cover around the train tracks. An eight foot chainlink fence separated a public foot path from the downwards embankment to the train track to discourage people and wildlife from trespassing. They followed the fence towards the road they had arrived on, reaching the bridge before the road.

  The section of fence closest to the bridge had been vandalised, the top bent inwards making it possible to scale. Dennis pushed the exposed edge of the fence inwards to make the gap bigger for Mark who was trying to be careful not to get his clothes caught on the sharp edges. Once over, Dennis let the fence spring back and took a step back to act as lookout for anyone or anything coming down the path.

  Mark slowly negotiated his way onto the ledge of the bridge, a thin border of bricks that graffiti artists used to stand on while they sprayed their designs for the train’s passengers to admire. Mark held on to the top of the bridge as tightly as he could, heart racing as he began to shimmy out over the track below.

  He felt relatively steady but the wet brickwork made him feel uneasy. He clamped his bare hands onto the bricks as tightly as he could, slowly turning his head to look back at Dennis who was nervously watching from the other side of the fence.

  “Are you okay?” Dennis shouted in a hushed tone.

  “Yeah, fine.” Mark lied.

  “Can you get the tacker out of your pocket okay?”

  Mark wished he’d got the tracker out and held it between his teeth before he’d started to negotiate the bridge. The tracker was in the right pocket of his jeans but he didn’t want to rely on his weaker left hand to hold on with. Deciding it would be even riskier to reach across to his right pocket with his left hand, Mark released his grip on the bridge with his right hand.

  “Yeah, I just need to take my…” He looked at Dennis again, “Behind you!”

  Dennis spun in place to find himself face to face with a male adult zombie. It grabbed Dennis’ shoulders and leaned in to bite him. Dennis fell backwards into the fence and instinctively brought his knee up to his chest, keeping the zombie at bay. Mark saw it snapping its teeth at Dennis, heard the growl through the pattering of the rain.

  Mark grabbed hold of the bridge again. He desperately wanted to get back to the fence to help Dennis but didn’t want to rush and risk falling onto the tracks below. A fall from this height could break his legs or even kill him, if it didn’t, the speeding train that was due at any moment would.

  “I’m coming, hold on!” He shouted, disregarding being stealthy.

  “No!” Dennis shouted between gritted teeth. “Stay there! Plant the tracker. I’ve got this.” His voice crescendoed towards the end of his sentence and he drove his bodyweight forwards into the zombie. He stopped fighting forwards for a moment and allowed himself to fall back into the fence, using the bounciness of it to spring back into the zombie again, this time with a bit more momentum. Creating a slight gap between his knee and the zombie’s chest, Dennis quickly brought his foot up against the zombie and pushed it backwards as hard as he could, stumbling forward as he did.

  Conflicted, Mark struggled with his conscience. His gut was telling him to return to Dennis and every second he waited could cost Dennis his life but he also felt compelled to stay and make sure the mission to track the train was a success. If he failed the attempt to tag the train because he had returned to help Dennis when Dennis didn’t need his help, he’d not only have failed the group by failing to achieve his mission but also displayed a lack of faith in Dennis’ ability to fend off a lone zombie by himself.

  Mark watched Dennis kick the zombie’s right knee cap and it spilled to the floor, his decision was made for him as he heard a slow crescendo in the distance. He listened carefully and could hear the sound of an approaching train getting closer.

  “It’s coming!” Mark shouted as he turned his head away from Dennis and once again held tightly to the bricks of the bridge before letting go with his right hand. Shakily, he fished the collar out of his right pocket, under pressure as the rushing sound got louder.

  Dennis had estimated that it would only take a few minutes for the train to reach the bridge from the landfill and he was right. He heard Dennis grunt and the zombie moan behind him, the shuffling noise of feet on gravel hinting that the zombie was back on its feet and was on the offence again. Mark was desperate to turn around and look to make sure Dennis was alright but he didn’t want to risk losing his balance as the train was about to speed past underneath, he couldn’t hold on properly with his right hand without risking dropping the tracker.

  Below him, Mark saw the lights of the train faintly illuminating the track, growing quickly in brightness. He suddenly realised he didn’t know how long the train was so he would need to throw the tracker as soon as he saw the front of it. From the blurry picture he had seen, it looked at least three or four carriages long but he didn’t know how much of a window of opportunity he had, especially not knowing the speed of the train.

  Before he could think anything else, the front of the train sped under the bridge and without thinking, Mark threw the tracker as hard as he could. He had no idea if the tracker stuck or not but almost immediately after he threw it, the train was gone. He watched the rear of the train getting smaller in the distance and finally disappearing in the blanket of rain. He snapped out of his distraction and immediately made his way back to Dennis.

  When he reached the fence, Dennis was already pulling the cut edge of the chainlink back. He seemed slightly out of breath but appeared uninjured.

  “You okay?” Mark asked.

  “Yes thank you. He’s not though.”

  Dennis tilted his head to his left and Mark looked to see the zombie crumpled on the floor with a large kitchen knife stuck deep into its eye. Its legs and arms were contorted at the unnatural angles of a body that had dropped to the floor without any attempt to stop its fall. The zombie had died as soon as the knife had entered its skull.

  “Did you get it?” Dennis asked.

  “I h
ope so.” Mark responded as he climbed through the opening. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and was about to type a message out when he received one from Luke.

  Tracker’s moving at high speed along track. Guessing that means you did it?

  “Yeah,” he smiled at Dennis, “yeah, it worked.”

  Chapter 7

  Everyone rendezvoused at The Outpost, Luke and Scott clearly excited and wanting to share it with everyone else. Helen and Ishaq returned first, closely followed by Mark and Dennis. When Mark walked in, he found Helen sat on one of the sofas, drinking a hot cup of tea wearing a different top from before and with a towel around her shoulders. Her hair was frizzy from being scrubbed aggressively with the towel. Mark grinned when he saw her and opened his mouth to make a comment.

  “Don’t!” Helen cut him off. “Just… Don’t”

  Mark new better than to further poke the tiger with a stick, instead he headed to the computer where Scott and Luke were sat.

  “It’s stopped.” Luke told him.

  “What? You mean it’s fallen off the train?”

  “That’s what we thought at first, but look.” Scott zoomed in on the satellite image where a brightly coloured virtual pin sat in the map.

  As the image enlarged, Mark could see the area was away from any houses and was comprised of a few large buildings that looked to be on some kind of industrial estate. The pin marked a point in the middle of the train track, adjacent to the middle buildings of the industrial estate.

  “We think they’ve stopped the train there.” Luke added.

  “Any ideas why there?” Mark asked.

  “Well… I searched the postcode on the Internet to see what businesses came up in the area. One of the warehouses belongs to a printing company and the other is a supplier for a DIY company. The one that caught my eye though is this one in the centre, right next to the pin.” Luke pointed at an erratically angled building. “That’s a cash counting depot.”

  “What good would cash do them?” Mark asked.