The Undead the Second Week Compilation Edition Days 8-14

by RR Haywood

  What the hell am I thinking about this for? I’ll be planning the soft furnishings for our houses next. Shaking my head I look over at Howard, marvelling at how a mere miniscule coincidence could cause a reaction.

  ‘Well Howard, you’re in charge of this bit, tell us where you want us,’ Reginald beams at the man, taking great pride in his new ability to delegate.

  ‘I will check,’ he replies before walking off towards the boat. Jerry walks back over to my side, where he’s been since he turned in the house.

  Waiting in the balmy night air we could almost be a gaggle of tourists waiting to board a boat for a pleasure cruise. Nearly all of the ones closest look uninjured. The bitten ones are further back in the main crowd. They’re even talking to each other, well the ones that have retained intelligence are anyway. Having almost normal conversations about what they did in their previous lives, and as with any small place they soon start mentioning places and people they all know. Moaning about the state of the roads and how busy it gets in the summer season with all the coaches driving about.

  The surrealism astounds me to the core. Thousands of people just stood waiting patiently. No pushing or shoving, no moaning at having to wait or the heat. No one griping about their feet hurting or having a sore back. No one lighting up and annoying everyone else with their cigarette smoke. Children and adults just stood together with a handful at the front chatting amiably.

  ‘Howard's back,’ Reginald nods towards the walkway at the side of the boat and Howard walking back towards us. He approaches quietly, coming to a stop a few feet away and standing motionless, arms hanging at his sides.

  ‘Is it okay?’ I ask him.

  ‘Yes, they can get on. Please put them into the vehicle section at the bottom so the weight is evenly distributed,’ he speaks without expression.

  ‘Reginald, would you care to delegate? What else do you need?’ I direct the question at Howard.

  ‘Please give me a few minutes to get ready and then you can untie the ropes. The tide is in with very little pull. I can hold the vessel in position.’

  ‘Of course,’ he turns and walks away as Reginald turns to speak with the communicators, delegating his little legs off.

  The communicators work quickly but then once the instruction is given and they know which way to go there is little else to worry about. No pushing and shoving, or tickets that need to be collected and none of them will rush the little café kiosk to get served before everyone else.

  Reginald marches ahead guiding them onto the big flat sections at the bottom where the vehicles normally park, using the massed living challenged, as he calls them, as ballast.

  It takes just minutes and I wonder how much longer it would take with humans and all the issues they have. Definitely a lot longer. Jerry stays by my side, smitten with love as he stares up at me. Bless, at least he’s not goggling at my cleavage. The lights on the ship flicker on as Howard gets the engines going. The ship looked inert and lifeless before, but now the lights are stark against the darkness everywhere else. A sign of life and a warming sight at that.

  We walk up the ramp, walking through the narrow hatch into the stairwell. The host bodies are all stood evenly spaced throughout the vehicle section. Jerry and I go up the stairs, coming out in the empty passenger lounge. We walk a circuit of the central area, going round the café and small shop until we find the door leading to the bridge.

  At the top we walk in to see Howard directing other hosts, telling them to press this and turn that. His flat voice is the only real sound, none of the others say anything but just do as he tells them. The ropes are untied and he starts pulling the vessel out from the dock, gliding it backwards out into the open sea.

  The pre-recorded safety message starts blurting out, thanking everyone for travelling today and making them aware where they can and can’t smoke and asking them to de-activate their car alarms, finishing off with wishing them a pleasant voyage.

  The whole thing is seamless from start to finish. Effortless almost. Reginald and a few others make their way onto the bridge, like a gesture that they’re part of the top table so standing on the vehicle section doesn't apply.

  ‘So dark,’ I murmur quietly. The motion is so stable it almost feels like we’re still and the land is moving away. No lights anywhere. No street lights, no buildings, nothing. Just a dark silhouette with the roof tops glinting from the moonlight.

  Howard turns the ship round, which causes a mild vibration as we go against whatever tide there is. The vibrations ease as he settles on course and powers the ship to move forward.

  We’re away. Heading towards the mainland and the fort while I pray Howie is the decent man I think he is.

  Twenty-Five

  ‘Jesus Christ that’s fucking massive,’ Cookey exclaims from his position on the GPMG, ‘it’s just fucking massive, like huge.’

  The drive here was uneventful, we stuck to the motorways purposefully taking a longer route to avoid the city centres.

  Coming down towards the site now we can see the vast, sprawling refinery. Like a city almost. The thing just goes on and on, stretching off into the distance. It looks alien to me. Something that means nothing. A complex network of giant silvery tubes and pipes running between gargantuan white silos. The whole design of the place is on a grid, straight roads leading between the silos and the concrete buildings.

  From our position we can see the harbour entrance. A wide mouth that goes deep into the land with a myriad of commercial docks, pontoons, harbours and jetties.

  On the seaward side of the refinery there’s a pontoon, and something in the water with big silver coloured tubes running back onto land. A super tanker, the type they use to ship oil around the world, is moored alongside. More tubes and pipes run from the ship into structures that must be pumps, used to move the crude oil through the big pipes into the refinery.

  The silos must store the different types of fuel as they go through the various processes to turn it into petrol or diesel, or whatever else they make here.

  We’re still some distance off which gives us an opportunity to recce the land, all of us looking out for any sign of vehicle tankers.

  I take the junction marked for the refinery and start heading down towards it. Coming down from the hill we lose sight of the refinery, the road is wider than normal which I guess must be for the constant flow of heavy vehicles using it.

  At another signposted junction we turn and start to see the first real signs of the refinery. A high metal fence fixed securely into the ground and topped with coils of razor wire runs alongside the road. Big warning notices are fixed to the fence at regular intervals, warning of security patrols, CCTV and only authorised personnel beyond this point.

  The refinery would have been a viable terrorism threat, and what better way to cripple a country than by taking out its ability to make the fuel usable.

  Within a few hundred metres we see another sign fixed to the side of the road, this one is large and hand-painted, only recently erected by the looks of it. THIS AREA IS PROTECTED BY ARMED GUARDS. WE WILL SHOOT ON SIGHT. TURN BACK.

  ‘Shit, looks like someone else got here first,’ Clarence says as I bring the speed down to a slow crawl.

  ‘Cookey, you better get down mate,’ I call out just as Dave tells him the same thing. The lad drops down, grabbing a bottle of water and staring out the windscreen at the road ahead.

  ‘Look,’ Clarence points down the road to a huddled mass on the verge. As we get closer the shapes come into distinction, something we’ve seen time and time again; bodies piled up and left to rot in the sun.

  I stop the vehicle alongside as Clarence peers down. There are more piles further up, stacked at regular intervals like the old signs on the fence.

  ‘They ain’t all those things,’ Clarence says still avoiding using the zed word, ‘some people in there too, been shot by the looks of it.’

  ‘Not good,’ I reply. We push on, going at a crawl until we reach the next pile o
f bodies.

  ‘Same again, mixture of people and those things,’ Clarence reports as he looks down from his window.

  ‘Some on your side up there Mr Howie,’ Dave points to another stack on the other side of the road. The piles are set at almost the same distance apart from each other. A clear and visible warning of what will happen if we proceed.

  ‘Maybe not such a good idea after all,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Keep going Mr Howie,’ Dave urges.

  ‘You sure? This doesn't look too good mate.’

  ‘Just a bit further.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I push my foot down gently, easing the vehicle forward and passing more piles of bodies.

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask, pointing to a much larger mass in the distance. The view becomes clearer as we get closer. Several cars pushed together and burnt out.

  ‘Controlled burning,’ Dave says, ‘see the even scorch marks on the ground, someone was with the fire preventing it from spreading.’

  ‘Shit, are those bodies in there?’ I ask at the distinct shapes within the vehicles and more stacked to the sides.

  ‘Yeah,’ Clarence replies, ‘burnt with the vehicles.’

  ‘Christ they’ve killed a lot,’ I say, ‘reminds me of when we went into your compound in London, all the bodies hanging up.’

  ‘Chris did that as a warning, but they were all those things and already dead, some of these look like normal people.’

  ‘We can’t tell that from here, they could have bite marks,’ I reply, thinking of last night and the people we killed who had yet to turn.

  ‘Maybe,’ he says quietly, ‘fuck…’ he exclaims. Another large sign has been fixed to the side of the road. Again this one is hand painted; TURN BACK. YOU WILL BE KILLED IF YOU PROCEED.

  The sign is fixed into the ground by two thick posts, bodies have been arranged at the base of the sign. All of them in the sitting position. Men, women and children all sat upright. Their backs either resting against the posts or each other. A rope tied round the sign holds them in place.

  Every single one of them has bullet wounds in their heads, execution style shots in the front of the head. The backs of their skulls are mostly missing as the rounds took the back of their heads off.

  ‘Are they zombies?’ Cookey asks. I understand what he means, it’s impossible to tell from here. They just look like normal dead people.

  ‘Dave you get up top, I’ll go and look,’ Clarence says.

  ‘On it,’ Dave replies, he scrabbles up top onto the GPMG, shouting down when he’s ready. Clarence quickly opens the door and drops down, running in a crouch to the bodies.

  He stops in front of them, kneeling down to examine the face. His arm reaches out to open an eyelid, then another, he checks several of them before running back.

  ‘Just people,’ he says after slamming the door, ‘not one of them had red eyes.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Blowers mutters.

  ‘Couldn’t see any bite marks from what I could see either.’

  ‘They just been killed then,’ I reply.

  ‘Looks like it, this place would have been a magnet for anyone living locally. Big fences, loads of buildings and the sea on one side.’

  ‘Like our fort,’ I say.

  ‘Exactly, just much bigger,’ he replies.

  The sight of the bodies jars me. Normal people just looking for somewhere safe. I bet they didn’t care about the fuel inside and just wanted to be behind the big fences.

  ‘We going back?’ Cookey asks.

  ‘We should,’ I reply, my gaze still fixed on the bodies. A little girl with golden curly hair and wearing a blue dress. Her feet look tiny in matching blue shoes. The people with her must be her parents.

  Executed.

  Murdered.

  I ease the vehicle forward, pushing further down the road. Clarence glances over at me then turns to fix his head facing forward.

  We had to kill last night but we killed those that had been bitten. Not innocent people like Debbie said we did.

  More bodies have been positioned sat up leaning against the fence. Gruesome and morbid, some with open eyes staring out. Birds and carrion have clearly been attacking some of the corpses. Still we drive on, the inside of the Saxon in silence now. No banter or conversation.

  ‘SHOTS,’ Dave calls down.

  ‘Where from?’ Clarence shouts, grabbing his assault rifle.

  ‘AHEAD.’

  We peer forward, scanning the road, the trees and the fence. I hear the lads in the back making ready, checking magazines and pulling their rucksacks on.

  We follow the curvature of the road, a long sweeping bend that obstructs our view of ahead. The road straightens out to reveal a white pick-up truck stationary in the middle of the road, maybe two hundred metres away. Armed men stand to the rear of it, pointing their weapons down at a cluster of people kneeling on the road with their hands behind their heads.

  On sight of us, several of the men lift their weapons to aim in our direction. A couple keep their guns pointing at the people on the floor. The kneeling people are all in a line, stretched across the road. Two of them are lying down, already shot by the looks of it.

  From the size of the people kneeling it’s easy to see two of them are children. Distinctly smaller than the others but still with their hands on their heads.

  One of the armed men runs to the truck and pulls a radio out, speaking into it.

  ‘They've got to be human,’ Clarence says, ‘those things don’t kneel down.’

  ‘Dave, if they start shooting those people…’

  ‘I will,’ he cuts me off, his voice calm and deadly as always.

  I push on, going slowly towards the truck. The men look worried, looking at each other then at the man holding the radio.

  ‘They’ll be calling for reinforcements,’ Clarence says. One of the men walks to the line of kneeling people and grabs a woman by her hair, dragging her towards the vehicle. He uses the butt of his rifle to hit the back of her head, forcing her into the rear passenger seats. The noise of her screams carry clearly to us.

  A man moves forward, shuffling on his knees, his arms outstretched as thought begging. An armed guard slams the butt of his gun into the man’s face driving him to the floor.

  ‘Shit,’ Clarence curses. The armed men seem worried, shouting at each other and pointing at the people on the floor.

  ‘We've got to do something,’ Lani says quickly.

  ‘They’ve already killed two of ‘em,’ Nick adds.

  ‘Mr Howie? I can take them…’ Dave calls down.

  More of the kneeling people scream in terror, some of them dropping down and others stretching their arms out. One of them shuffles to get in front of a child and gets two guards slamming their rifle butts into her head, forcing her to the floor.

  One of the kneeling men drops to the floor, rolling away to rise quickly to his feet. He starts running towards us, screaming for help with his arms in the air.

  A guard lifts his rifle, firing several shots at the running man, the rounds hit him, sending him spinning to the floor.

  ‘DAVE,’ I shout, the last of the word is cut off as Dave opens up. Taking down the guard who shot the man first. The GPMG gives short bursts as Dave moves from one guard to the other.

  The guards react quickly, star bursting away and returning fire. Two of them open up on the line of people, firing at the far end and strafing their weapons across the line before being blown apart by the heavy calibre bullets of our GPMG.

  I grab my rifle and jump down, the rifle up and aiming as my feet start striding out to the right, keeping clear of Dave’s arc of fire.

  Clarence follows suit, out the vehicle and aiming at the truck. The rear doors burst open as the lads jump down, jogging round the sides and out from the vehicle.

  The man on the radio throws it the floor, lifting his gun toward us. I fire several shots at him, sending him crashing into the pick-up truck. Clarence fires at the pick-up’s tyres,
blowing them out. More shots ring out from them but they’re panicked and aimed at the vehicle, loud pinging noises ring out as the bullets ricochet of the armour plating. Our rifles fire single shots, picking out targets. The GPMG doing the same, small bursts firing until the guards are all shot down.

  ‘CLEAR,’ Dave shouts.

  ‘MOVING IN,’ Clarence responds, ‘COVER.’

  ‘COVERING,’ Dave shouts back.

  We stride in, the rifles still up and aimed towards the truck. The silence doesn't bode well. I speed up, jogging towards the line of bodies.

  Clarence and Blowers move past the rest of us, both of them checking the guards and kicking weapons away.

  We check the bodies of the people who were kneeling. All of them cut to pieces by the close range shots fired into them. Heads blown apart, skulls and brains blown everywhere. Blood pissing out to pool on the hot road surface.

  All of them dead.

  ‘Fuck it, fuck it,’ Cookey mutters with a hard edge to his voice, ‘too fucking slow, we were too fucking slow.’

  ‘They all dead?’ Clarence calls out.

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply.

  ‘Cunts, utter fucking cunts,’ Nick shouts, ‘fucking wankers…’

  Dave jogs over, assault rifle at the ready. He glances along the line of bodies before looking up and away, scanning the sides.

  ‘CUNTS,’ Nick shouts even louder, his voice cracking with emotion.

  ‘Be quiet,’ Dave says bluntly, ‘it’s done.’ Nick bites his tongue, his face quickly becoming set as he glares down at the murdered people.

  ‘Get the weapons into the vehicle,’ I call out.

  ‘The girl’s in the truck,’ Lani says heading towards the rear doors. She opens the door as the rest of us stare over. ‘She’s here…hey it’s okay, come on it’s okay,’ she starts speaking in a soft tone. Gently pulling the girl from the vehicle.