Chapter 6, Off to the lakes
The rattling of empty fuel drums is like a death knell. A gong signalling the cadavers below to be seated for the final meal. Tasker throws down the last empty drum in disgust. “They're inside” says Trowler from the edge of the helipad as if the noise of breaking glass hadn't been enough of an indicator.
Carlisle had risen. Tens of thousands of crimson eyes which had been aimlessly shuffling through the streets several miles away had looked up from their activities when the light went up. The Sword of Pendragon, as it had been known, had been the cause of much controversy and conflict between the company and the people who lived there. Some saw it as a welcome symbol of a thriving British industry and a company which supplied thousands of local jobs. Others saw it as ostentatious light pollution. The cadavers saw it as the dinner bell and had flocked towards the light.
“Stefan Kessler” the thought comes to me suddenly.
“What about him?” says Tasker.
“He, and several other top execs had access to the secure underground car park, he drove a bomb proof Rolls Royce with bullet proof windows, he drove the kind of car that we might be able to get out of here in”.
“Keys?”
“His office, on the penultimate floor, just below the board room.” We sprint down the stairs. As I go I look down and far below I can see shadows dancing within the low level emergency lighting. The cadavers were shambling their way up to meet us.
Stefan's office is opulent. I am reminded that no matter how high I thought I might have risen within Pendragon I was still a long way from a top spot that I would never see. The paintings on the walls were not replicas and the carpet underfoot was as expensive as it felt. Three of the walls were glass, the fourth was home to book shelves and a door which led to the CEO's private bathroom suite.
We ransacked drawers and upturned ornaments looking for the keys, but they stayed hidden or were not there. Tasker was becoming angry. He smashed the butt of his gun through a glass tabletop for no other reason than to apparently try and alleviate some of the rage, it did not work.
I was not immune to the feeling, after going through the empty drawers of Stefans three hundred year old, gold inlaid oak desk, for about the tenth time, I slammed my fist down on the unforgiving surface in frustration. I was surprised when I looked up to see a face looking back at me from Stefan's computer monitor, the face was that of the man in whose chair I sat.
“Patrick?” said the figure with a slight Scandinavian twang to his voice. The fifty seven year old looked in remarkably good health, he was well groomed and dressed in an expensive looking suit, I could make out little of his background, though I was certain that I could see shadows shifting slightly behind him.
“Mr Kessler” I returned his greeting. The others came running as soon as they heard the voice from the speakers. “Patrick” said my former CEO in a friendly tone “What are all these people doing in my office?”
“Trying to survive Mr Kessler...sir, where are you?” I ask still in disbelief at what I am seeing. “Far away Patrick, far away and safe”.
“Well that's good to hear sir, I wish that the same could be said of us, Edenpark has been infested Mr Kessler, we are in here looking for the keys to your car in order that we might escape?” The blond billionaire mulls this over thoughtfully.
“My heart, my heart goes out to you Patrick, truly it does...but survival, survival is not for everybody my boy, sometimes it is easier to accept your fate, in times such as these, really there is no escape.” I do not get a chance to respond. I have felt his hot breath coming over my shoulder the whole time and after what was just said there will be no containing him.
“Well bugger you very much Mr CEO but some of us want to survive anyway if it's all the same to you, so be a good chap and tell us where the god damn keys are would you?!” Tasker almost screams into the webcam and covers the screen in spittle as he does so.
“And who are you?” says Kessler apparently unphased by Taskers rage.
“Lieutenant Tasker, British Army”
“Ah, a military man, well I am sorry to hear that your brave endeavours are coming to an end, perhaps you should turn that weapon on yourself, after putting your comrades out of their misery first yes?” I can scarce believe that I am hearing, Stefan Kessler had always seemed like a mild mannered compassionate man. Despite his calm smiling demeanour there was no mirth or mercy about what he was saying, he seemed to be speaking to us in the same way that a scientist would address a lab rat.
“Mr Kessler,”
“Yes Patrick,”
“Eight years ago on a company retreat in Eastern Europe we went white water rafting on the Danube, do you remember that sir?” Stefan nods.
“You will recall that you fell from the raft and struck your head. By the time you came to you were in the hospital, do you remember that also sir?” Again he nods.
“Stefan, I was one of the people who jumped in, I helped pull you from the water, I pressed my mouth to yours and I literally breathed life back into your body”. I let the silence hold for a moment or two before adding “That sir, was an act of compassion.” I do not need to elaborate, he gets the point, I just hope it is enough. I hear several voices from the background on his end of the transmission and Stefan appears to be listening and nodding to someone off camera.
When he looks at me again the smile is gone and a slight frown furrows that surgically perfected brow. “In the private bathroom there is a towel cupboard. The wall at the back is false, behind it is a ladder which goes down to an escape tunnel which leads out to the hills well beyond Edenpark.” The others move straight away. I sigh a relieved sigh which is cut short by the banging on the office door. They have arrived.
“Thank you sir, goodbye and I hope to see you again one day”, the smile is back on Stefan's face but he shakes his head at my statement. Just as I make to move away he speaks. “Patrick” he calls.
“Yes sir?”
“Fey Le Nar raen” he says before the screen goes dark. I carry my confusion with me as I reach the bathroom, see the broken panels at the back of the towel cupboard and follow my comrades down the ladder which leads into the gloom of the escape tunnel.
There is a light on the horizon as I exit the tunnel into some hills just to the north of Edenpark. The site is far away, yet I can still see the terrain around it shifting slightly as the cadaver swarm ebbs and flows around the pyramid. The tunnel had been long and dark but the passage was smooth and well built. I tripped and stumbled under my own steam not because of any architectural flaws in Kessler's escape route.
The others did not wait for me, I was not surprised, I could hear them getting further and further ahead the whole way up the tunnel but I did not call out, I would not shame myself any further. There is relief as I see them sitting waiting for me as I emerge, the relief does not last, as soon as I am in the open they are on their feet and start surging down the hillside towards a nearby farmhouse. Thanks for the rest guys.
Edenpark was a revelation on more than one level. Pendragon Systems was a progressive company, it did not believe in standing still or having its progress come about as a reactionary measure. Pendragon wanted to control the market, to control the scenario. I'd always been a supporter of this proactive approach, but the events of the past day led me to question whether or not the lines had become blurred. Stefan Kessler and his company seemed to have been remarkably well prepared for an apocalyptic nightmare which no one, apparently, had seen coming.
I shiver as I stand under a tiny canopy on the side of one of the farms outbuildings. The rain pours steadily down the corrugated corridors and splashes noisily at our feet. Across the way Tasker and Trowler are fiddling with the engine of a run down looking Range Rover. Patricia, Mark and Daniel stand with me, they do not seem to be shivering, but all of us are silent, alone with our thoughts. Any attempt at conversation is struck down, for all I know we are all standing here thinking the same thing but we're ju
st too afraid to broach the subject.
Or perhaps it's just me, perhaps I alone am worried and filled with fear, perhaps they are stoically staring out at the rain and thinking of successes to come, planning a way out of the mire. Perhaps not. But I am not yet dead, and will not be reaching into anyone's brain to seek out their thoughts any time soon.
There comes a throaty rumble from the car. Trowler gives us a thumbs up, Tasker pays us no heed at all, I honestly don't think it would make any difference to him if we came along or not.
The vehicle is cramped. We still carry a fair amount of munitions and supplies, gun barrels dig painfully into peoples ribs, boxes of ammo weigh heavily on our feet and will lead to a numbness that the rest of the body would envy if it knew what other kind of fates might be in store.
We drove to the top of the drive which leads out on to the main road. I volunteered to open the gate, once the vehicle was through I closed it back up and jumped in the car. Tasker was scowling, the others had grins painted on their weary faces.
“What?” I ask of the amused collective.
“Felt the need to close the gate eh old chap” says Mark Kirby.
“Ah” said I realising the source of their mirth “Old habits die hard”
“Old soldiers die harder” intoned Trowler and Daniel Sutton almost in unison. I nodded my head at the old saying and then with our fearless leader muttering to himself from behind the steering wheel we pulled out and started our journey.
Had these been better times then we would have jumped on the ring road outside Carlisle, pootled onto the M6 and zoomed south at high speed. But these are not better times, nor the same times, these are the hard times of our times. These are the days about which the poets would write and the prophets would be prophesying, if it wasn't for the fact they are all dead and trying to eat those that aren't.
So we took the little winding back roads. We were stopping constantly to force unoccupied vehicles or vehicles being driven by the truly dead, off to the side.
Back at the farm the discussion about our next step had been a short one. Trowler and Pat had floated the possibility that given our predicament the mission was effectively over and that perhaps the time had come to begin the long cross country hike to the east in order to try and somehow get back to the aircraft carrier.
Tasker said that the mission went on. He further explained that someone was broadcasting the radio signal from Ravensburg. If they had access to transmission equipment then they might have access to other things, like aviation fuel. Mark and Daniel had stayed silent because they agreed with him. I stayed silent because I was afraid of him. And so we headed south.
By back road and dirt track we eked our way south. I nodded off on occasion, I'd come to and look out at another field, another hedgerow, the patchwork of green and brown that was as much a symbol of Britain as all the other stereotypes. After many more hours than it should have taken we reached the first of the great lakes of the County of Cumbria.
It was getting dark as we came through Pooley Bridge at the north end of Ullswater. The wide body of the lake stretched out like a long black slug winding its slimy way south.
“We're stopping?” I said feeling like an idiot as soon as I'd said it. Tasker had pulled the car over to the side of the small road into some trees, of course we were stopping.
“It's getting dark, and much earlier than usual, my guess would be that we're in for a storm” said Trowler giving me an explanation. I nodded. The first rumble of thunder came and the rain started to lash down on the vehicle, some of the rain drops fell freely down onto the car, others cascaded in miniature waterfalls off a dozen different leaves before striking. Conversation was nearly impossible given the noise of the lashing rain, we lit no light that would give us away to any foe in the dark.
The only real option was to close my eyes and try to sleep. Dreams did not come easy and when they did they were a mimic of the horror of real life. Over and over my subconscious mind confronted me with images of what I'd seen on the display screen at Edenpark. Over and over I saw Vincent, as a puppy which morphed into a monster and ate me whole. Over and over I imagined my wife and sons last moments. Then just as the nightmare was at its deepest, just as my dream self drowned a welcome drowning another thought, a thought of razor sharp clarity entered my head and shook me awake.
The others were all sleeping or pretending to be asleep. Except for Patricia. She was looking up at the thunder split sky through the trees, watching the lightning intersect with the few visible stars in a display of destructive beauty.
“Patricia” said I leaning in close and whispering right into her ear. She nearly jumped out of her skin but recovered quickly. “What?” she hissed leaning in, seemingly annoyed at my intrusion.
“Back at the house, when I was attacked by the hound, why were you in the attic?”. Even in the low light of the night storm I could see her confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“When I was in the garden running away, I saw a figure and a light at the attic window?” She fixed me with a level gaze. Though she tolerated me with a little less open disgust than someone like Tasker I knew that she, like them all considered me to be a weak link in an unsteady chain. Even so there was a curious pity in her eyes as she leaned in.
“We never went into the house Patrick, we only arrived minutes before the incident and just stayed on the perimeter. No one went inside”.
Chapter 7, Little green men
There were plenty of rational explanations. Plenty of logical paths which I could have guided myself down. It could have been a vagrant, it could have been a cadaver. It could have been a trick of the light or it could have been a ghost. No. There was someone standing in the attic window with a candle. Cadavers have no interest in candles and as far as I know neither do ghosts. a living breathing person stood there, a person who up until now, in the middle of all the madness which had conspired against us since, I'd just assumed in the background of my mind was one of my fellow travellers.
In the hours since Patricia told me that they never set foot in the house I'd gone over it again hundreds of times. I'd fixated on that tiny blurred scrap of memory in my head. I examined the fleeting moment from every single angle, and as the mind has a tendency to do so, I started to make changes to my memories, where there was no face before I started to imagine many different faces. But it always came back to two, the two most prominent faces in my life, the faces who I had watched over in their sleep many times in my life, him and her, the wife and the son.
The thought that I might have tiptoed around inside the house, sniffing at the mouldy memories whilst one or both of them were in the loft brought me a mixture of hope and despair. I'd been so close, close enough that a man with wit and wisdom might have checked up in the attic, what with it being one of the more obvious hideouts in the house. Instead I'd stayed downstairs weeping into a rotten pillow, curse myself for a fool.
I must get back, I could think of nothing else as I sat there in the lonely dark. The storm passed and we had a brief respite beneath the stars. But barely had the last of the raindrops finished diving down from leafy heights that the clouds started to roll in from the west again. Within hours of the death of one storm nature gave birth to another right above our heads.
My mind resigned itself to a logical if slightly depressing fate. Should such a twisted luck have been suffered, should my wife or my son or my wife and my son live, still in our house. Then they had been there for many months, and hopefully they would remain, for as long as it took me to get back there. For as long as it would take me to gather the courage to flee from Emmanuel Tasker again.
Thinking about the lieutenant made me look up and glance in his direction. My eyes darted at each of them in turn, taking in the five silhouettes and pondering briefly the ridiculousness of our scenario. Cooped up in a car, in the middle of the nights second storm, the world had ended, all purpose had been lost. But still we sat here anyway, pretending. That's
all we'd ever done, made a show of carrying on, giving ourselves missions and then clinging to them like life rafts.
Whereas the previous storm heralded the coming of an early sunset, its brother seemed to introduce us to a late dawn. The day barely climbed from the dark auspices of the weather front, but after a time I realised with shock that a new day was upon us. Barely a wink of sleep had been mine, but still I had the cramp and stiffness to show for a long stormy night in the car.
As they woke one by one they shared a look. A look that said they'd woken from a bad dream and wished that they could go back. A look that asked what they'd done to deserve to wake at all.
Breakfast was miserable. We climbed from the illusory protection of the car in order to relieve ourselves. Personally I also spent a considerable amount of time staring off into the trees imagining running through them to safety, then I recalled the anger Tasker had shown during my last sojourn. I imagined his face prowling through the undergrowth behind me, hunting knife in hand.
I got dutifully back into the car and we trundled on. The puddles caused huge splashes as we went. We saw a couple of cadavers by the side of the road, shuffling along, the undead hitchers who would not find a willing ride.
Through Dobbin Wood we went, through the spidery, slick trees. As we neared the end of the lake we came across the idyllic English village of Glenridden, the villages populous had ambled together in the centre of town to great us by the time we got there. This was one of the few occasions that the others were forced to open up with heavy ammunition in order to clear a path.
Barrels poked out of windows and boomed at the cadavers. Grenades made red puffs and loud cracks here and there. I put my hands over my ears to protect them from the roar, the guns were mere inches from my head. I looked out of the window at the lame Ullswater Steamers, they bobbed up and down, bereft of passengers and crew. Destined to rust and break down into the water, one day they would be nothing, it was likely that not even the history of what they were or the pleasure they brought would be remembered.
Eventually the guns went quiet. We rolled with slick, red tyres through the rest of the empty village and carried on down the road. When we got there Ravensburg seemed slightly less idyllic than Glenridden. The water of the Ravenpool was grey and murky. The tiny stone cottages seemed cramped and cold, meagre dwellings which, unlike those of Glenridden, did not give the impression that there was a warm and welcoming fire beyond the door.
Fortunately the village was cadaver free, those dead souls who once dwelt here must have wondered off some time ago, into the wild to savage squirrels and unwary travellers. We pulled to a stop just outside the village. On the other side of the small body of water that was the Ravenpool I could see a cluster of buildings, they looked deserted but I noted with interest the large antenna tower in their midst.
Tasker had his long range radio in hand which was connected to his ear via a headphone. Both he and Captain Skellen had been sketchy about the nature of the radio signal coming from the area. As far as I knew only a handful of people had been allowed to listen to it back on the carrier. Certainly as far as I was aware no one else had heard it since we started the mission which seems like many days ago now.
Always Tasker would listen to it privately. Right now he seemed to be incredibly agitated by what he heard.
“What's wrong Emmanuel?” asked Trowler. After a few moments Tasker shook his head and pulled the earpiece out.
“Nothing, there has been no sign of the signal for several days now” he said banging the radio down on the dash.
“Well what was it when you did hear it?” asked Mark Kirby. At this Tasker adopted a furtive posture.
“Different things, nothing clear and coherent, nothing tangible” he evaded.
“We've come all this way for 'nothing tangible'?” said Daniel Sutton voicing an annoyance I sensed was becoming universal.
“The message is irrelevant, just the fact that someone was here transmitting was the key factor, and it still is,” said Tasker starting up the engine and revving loudly to cut off any more conversation.
We drove slowly up to the cluster of buildings down the lake road. They stretched off into the valley beyond the Ravenpool, this was a much bigger complex than was apparent from the village and the main road.
Ravensburg Secure Hospital was what it read on the signs. It was not an area which any of us were familiar with. We drove around the ring road but the site looked as dead as the village. When we heard about a radio signal I think everyone assumed that perhaps a bastion of the old world was still here. An operational base where there would be people with a plan that we could leech off for some hope. Instead there was just another of the civilised worlds ten million tombs.
We got out and skimmed the perimeter on foot but this yielded nothing. We were just about to return to the car when Sutton spoke up.
“Blood here” he said indicating some bushes just outside the main fence. We walked out to where he stood and sure enough there was an unmistakable sanguine sheen to a number of the leaves on the bush.
“More here” said Patricia a few feet into the undergrowth. The trail of blood went off into the woods near the hospital and the further along it we went the fresher and more plentifully it was daubed on the flora and fauna.
We were a few hundred metres into the trees when I saw him. He was just laying there in a clearing. His chest moved slowly up and down, he wore some sort of white gown that was covered in blood. The others moved in as a circle, their eyes and their guns scanned the undergrowth until they surrounded the wounded man. Trowler reached him first. I saw the sergeant reach tentatively to the persons neck. I walked up behind him and gazed down upon the wound ravaged form.
That he still breathed was a miracle. I could see the shards from where his shoulder bone had once been. The old me would have vomited, but the new me has a harder stomach. Even so it is difficult to look at the injury, the burned, mangled flesh around the shoulder is what has given our friend away, the steady trail of blood it left behind has now become a pool in which he lays, dying slowly in the woods.
Trowlers hand has not moved from the man's neck, which is strange but I think nothing of it. I look at the face, there is a horrific injury to the victims cheek. An aperture through which I see a dark tongue flailing slowly.
It is impossible to place his age, old I would say, but the ageless old, like your favourite filmstar, who reaches a certain peak in years and seems to stay that way for decade after decade.
Thus far his eyes have stayed closed, but as I stand fully over him, as he lay in my shadow they open. With green brilliance they shine on me and it feels like I am falling. They look like eyes which have watched me through time, eyes whose gaze has pierced the veil of the centuries, eyes which have seen things they should not have seen. My legs are unsteady but I do not notice as I fall with a leafy thud into the undergrowth.
I am experiencing a dream that I know I will never remember yet I sense it is vital that I try. I see a world that is illuminated by a green shadow. Vast towers poke out from the clouds and yearn to touch the moon and sky. Circles of gold pulsate around the planet. Ravens whose wings cover cities float majestically in space.
Fields of white ash stretch as far as the eye can see. Pits are filled with bodies. They are so deep that with my hands I could never reach the bottom, I would crush myself in a sea of limbs and torsos long before I got there. Long before I gave up in my search for a non existent radioactive phoenix.
I can see every fruitless ambition that came before, every woe that came after. They follow one another yet are completely unaware of each others existence. They stand on opposite sides of the circle, close enough to touch yet without a chance of meeting except on the pages of a book, except in the minds of those unlucky enough to live through both.
“Redmayne. Redmayne wake up” Patricia's voice pulls me back. I am hauled from the edge of a void. I open my eyes. She looks worried. I am too. But not by her, nor by t
he vision of an ever expanding doom which was sparked by the eyes of the prone injured man. No, I am worried by the black clad figure who has appeared at the edge of the clearing, I am worried about the hulking giant whose long barrelled silver cannons are pointed straight at us.
“Don't move” spoke a voice that was so deep it sounded like it could have only been generated by a machine. Indeed it seemed to warble with an echoing, metallic flux.
How he managed to get the drop on such a highly trained and vigilant group I do not know. Tasker, Kirby and Sutton are tense but they adhere to the strangers instructions. Trowler still has his hands on the wounded man's neck, he does not respond in any way. Patricia stands very slowly.
“Who are you?” asks Tasker.
“A friend perhaps, an enemy I hope not” says the giant. Perhaps it was the after effect of the dream trance, perhaps it was the fact that I was still sunk down on the muddy forest floor, but my mind reels from the size of this new player in our game. I would have put him at eight feet at least. But he was not just tall, his bulk dwarfed that of any rugby player or sumo wrestler that I'd seen. Judging from his catlike poise and that way in which he held rigid the massive silver guns it was a bulk comprised of muscle and not fat. Not that it was possible to tell given the thick black clothes he wore which were further smothered by an enormous cloak of a similar shade.
“Friends don't tend to point guns at each other” says Tasker, I could see the lieutenant was itching to raise his weapon and squeeze the trigger. But Tasker wasn't an idiot, he hadn't stayed alive this long by being rash. There was something about this newcomer that reeked of death, the capacity for violence oozed from every obsidian pore and the lieutenant knew it.
“These are unusual times, as well you know” replies the stranger cryptically. The chalk white skin of his face gave away nothing of any emotional content, neither did his pure jet back eyes which looked like something from a horror film.
“I'm going to need to take him with me”, speaks the stranger indicating with one of the guns at the injured man on the moss.
“What is he to you?” I find myself asking. The stranger turns his eyes on me. As he assesses me there is a faint hint of surprise in his reply.
“You have the look of a Redmayne” he speaks, I am shocked and can find no words to reply, the stranger continues.
“He is a parasite and a criminal, I will take him to meet his justice”. Tasker glares at me, then the stranger, then his fellows.
“I don't think so” says the lieutenant. Suddenly I notice something. Ever so slightly the black clad figures arms are tensing. They quiver in the air and I can see the fingers holding the triggers of the long barrelled weapons he has trained on us are taut with pressure. If I did not know better I would swear that the stranger is trying with all his considerable strength to pull the triggers, to send us on our merry way to hell, but he can't, some force restricts him.
“Our mercy will be our undoing you know” says the black clad man to no one in particular. As he speaks he lifts the heavy looking cannons and points them into the air, adopting more of a relaxed posture. Almost as soon as this happens one of our group strikes. It's not me, or Tasker, or Dan or Mark or Patricia. No, Sergeant Trowler who has to this point avoided all interaction with the stranger springs up, SA-80 in hand, he is firing as he brings the weapon to bare, the others react a split second later, aim is taken, lead is loaded and flung through the air at hundreds of miles an hour.
I look to the stranger, I expect to see him fly back through the air punctured by half a hundred bullet holes. Few of my expectations are being met these days. He moves, I will not say he moves quickly, I will not say he moves with inhuman speed for even this does not do him justice. He moves so fast that my eyes can barely track his movements. The stranger bends around trees like the wind, they cannot track him with their heavy leaden barrels.
Over fallen logs and through the undergrowth he moves with grace that would fill the eyes of every dead ballet dancer with green envy. It seems like only moments and he is gone. A few wisps of vapour hang in the air from the rapid fire machine guns which have collectively failed to hit their mark as they vandalised the trees and the air.
“What the shitting hell was that?” asked Tasker after a few moments of dumb incomprehension.
“I don't know, but I don't fancy being here when he comes back” says Kirby. Tasker nods.
“Too bloody right, lets move”.
“We have to take him with us” says Trowler quietly.
“No way, bugger him, lets go” says Tasker starting to stride of into the trees.
“We have no choice” says Trowler moving to the body of the blood soaked man.
“I wasn't putting it up for debate” says Tasker intercepting the sergeant. They stand eyeball to eyeball for quite some time. No one else knows what to do. I sense that this confrontation has been building for a while. I am surprised to see Tasker back down.
“Fine, but he's your responsibility” says the lieutenant, storming off into the trees without a word to anyone else. Trowler picks the injured man up into his arms in an almost reverential fashion and follows Tasker. I exchange looks and shrugs with the others and then we fall in line. About ten minutes later we are all stood together on the edge of the woodland. We are all staring in dismay at our carriage and the billowing cloud of smoke which wafts up from it into the sky. The car is a shell, our belongings are less than that.
At that moment a cadaver comes stumbling from the trees behind us, it has seen the smoke and smelt the burning. It has sensed life and has moved to extinguish it. The manner in which Patricia pulls out her hunting knife and rams it through the fiends head is almost casual. Off in the trees we hear more noise, the sound of multiple things stumbling towards the roaring fire.
“Run” says the lieutenant. We obey.
Amidst the Falling Dust (The Green and Pleasant Land, Volume 2) Page 6