But despite all that, the bad side of human nature could override basic common decency. It didn’t take a genius to work out that there would be enough supplies and equipment lying abandoned in shops, warehouses and homes to keep the surviving population going for a long time. This was due to how quickly the virus had spread, but you just had to be brave enough and organised enough to go and get it.
Some, though, would still take the easy option and steal from others. These were the first of such scum we had come across and I was certain they wouldn’t be the last. How we dealt with others we found needed to be discussed between us when the time was right.
The sound of chinking armour drew my attention in the direction Simon, Jamie and Dave had left.
They rounded the bend at a full sprint, Jamie, even though he was carrying a full weight of armour, keeping up with them.
Breathing heavily from the exertion, Dave spoke.
“The situation has changed. There’s a massive horde heading down the motorway towards their position. I can’t tell how many, but they stretch back as far as I can see. There must be thousands of them. All I know is that it’s bigger than the one we faced back at the base. I don’t think their walls will keep them safe, there are just too many of them. Not that I care what happens to them. My concern is that they’re heading towards us.”
He looked at us.
“Anybody have any suggestions?”
My first thought was to get back to my family. If the horde was as big as Dave was telling us, we needed all of us together to protect ourselves.
“I vote we go back now. Their defences won’t hold against that many, so they’re done for. Let’s get the zombies to do our dirty work for us.”
Most nodded in agreement and started back towards the vehicles.
Dave, the knight, stopped us.
“Hang on, folks. Why don’t we help the zombies out a bit? We came here to kill those bastards. If we can knock a few holes in their walls and stop them escaping over the others, job done.”
Dave, the Marine, answered.
“So, you’re suggesting we use the zombies as a weapon?”
“Yes, mate. They did it a few times on the Walking Dead.”
“Are you are suggesting we adopt tactics from a made-up TV show?”
He laughed, “It’s not so made up now, is it? I do think we should watch the show again as a sort of training video. We’re living in the same world now, and most of what happened to them might happen to us. It should give us some good ideas.”
It was Dave’s turn to laugh.
“Right, then. All of my years of military experience are being overridden by some script writer in America? Oh well. I can’t think of anything better, so let’s get on with it. If we put our foot down, we’re less than ten minutes away from the others, so we’ve got plenty of time to do this and get back. Are we all in agreement?”
We all were, our anger at Daniel’s death fuelling our need for revenge.
“Simon, get on the radio and let everyone know what’s going on. Tell whoever is on the machine gun to stop firing. We don’t want any stray rounds coming our way, but tell Shane to continue sniping. From what I saw, they’ve already got a few of them and it’ll keep them concentrating in our direction watching us and not watching the way the zombies are coming from….”
“Watch out!”
Two zombies had approached unnoticed and appeared from around the side of the van, ten metres from where we were all gathered.
We all raised our weapons and took aim. Simon quickly shouted.
“Don’t fire, we need to keep quiet.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got this,” Jamie cheerfully replied, “Geoff, with me, mate. I’ll take the one on the left.”
They both casually sauntered up to the pair. One looked to be untouched by any injuries so most likely succumbed in the initial stages of the virus spreading. His clothes were ripped and tattered, probably from his wanderings as an undead monster looking for his next meal. The other was a woman who was naked, her wounds visible for us all to see. Her neck had an obvious bite wound and her stomach had been ripped open so her intestines bulged out, hampering her progress as she kept stumbling on a trailing piece of gut.
Had they been husband and wife? Had the man turned first and attacked his wife as she slept beside him, infecting and turning her? The bonds of their relationship seemed to be somehow keeping them together in their new existence.
Jamie swung his axe, taking the woman’s head clean off her shoulders. Geoff swung his mace overhead next, the man’s head caved in and brains and blood sprayed out of his ears, nose and mouth.
I watched as they fell, their bodies falling on each other, the man’s arms lying across what might have been his loved one in a final embrace.
Simon got our attention.
“I’ll take the blame for that. Bloody rooky mistake, though. We stopped checking our perimeter when we were all having a lovely chat.”
He looked at Dave.
“Maybe we do need to watch the Walking Dead. I need to get up to speed on this zombie thing. Right then, let’s get on with this.”
He took a radio out of his pocket and informed the others what we were planning to do and to get ready for our speedy return.
Once they had all acknowledged, we got ready.
The machine gun falling silent was our signal to approach the bridge, seeking shelter under some trees that would hide us, but give us a view of our target, and once in situ, we planned what to do next.
The horde of approaching zombies was clearly visible. They filled the motorway from side to side, hemmed in by the fences, and stretched back as far as I could see, easily numbering in their thousands, maybe tens of thousands.
It looked as if the entire undead population of a town or city had left as one mass, searching for their next meal.
I remembered watching a documentary a while before about migrating animals, and it said that sometimes the herds grew so massive that the ones at the back starved to death due to the lead ones eating all the available food as they cut a swathe through the land on their journey to fresh grazing. The similarity was eerie, but probably true.
All the available food sources in an area i.e. humans, had been exhausted where they were and now they’d gathered together and, as one, had started to move on to find a new source.
They were migrating, forming a massive and unstoppable tide of undead flesh-eating monsters. We’d already observed and agreed that they tended to coalesce, some primeval programming still left in the brain probably telling them that they could hunt better together in packs.
Would these individual groups eventually meet and form a super herd? Probably, I guessed.
We could, one day, find ourselves facing millions of them.
Our objective, Warwick Castle, needed to be reached as soon as possible. We didn’t yet know if it would be suitable. If it was, I imagined there would be a lot of work do to make it impregnable against an untold number.
Time was of the essence and if it ran out and we weren’t fully ready, we could be in serious trouble with nowhere left to run.
The thugs hadn’t spotted them yet and were all, as far as we could tell, crouching behind the bullet-scarred barricade, facing the direction where the firing was coming from. Occasionally one of them fired a wildly aimed shot in that general direction. Not all of them were armed, but most did have either a shotgun or rifle. We were in a rural area, so one or more of them had either owned them or known where to get them from.
I counted four bodies lying amongst them, victims of either Shane or the machine gun.
Simon began positioning us amongst the trees, picking spots where we could each fire upon them if need be. He, Dave and the other two Marines then ran in a low crouch onto the bridge, staying in the middle to avoid being spotted, and crawled to positions directly overlooking their site.
The horde kept coming, each shambling step bringing them closer, their groans and sound
s of thousands of bodies stumbling along audible to us now between the crack of Shane’s high-powered rifle. It would only be a matter of time before our enemies heard them too.
Glancing around, I could see we all had our weapons raised, everyone using a tree or fallen branch as cover, silently observing them through their sights. Dave, Jamie and Geoff, holding their weapons, faced the other way, ready to protect us from any that might appear from the other direction.
One of the gang eventually became aware of the noises coming from the direction opposite that which they were facing. Curiosity made him brave, despite the sporadic incoming fire, and he ran towards the opposite barricade.
Standing still for a few seconds, he stared, gawping at the approaching, terrifying spectacle. His brain slowly comprehended what he was looking at and he cupped his hands to his mouth to shout a warning.
A single shot rang out from one of the Marines on the bridge and he fell before he could raise the alarm. This shot, being fired from a new, close and unknown location caused immediate panic amongst the remaining gang members, who crouching even lower, urgently looked around to try and identify the new threat. A few shots were fired, but nothing came anywhere near us.
Their fallen comrade lay unnoticed at the other barricade, the blood from the single gunshot to his chest staining the road around him.
The throng of zombies, stretching back along the motorway was almost up to the wall of vehicles. We had been warned what the Marines planned to do, so when Dave bellowed, “Cover!” everyone threw themselves down flat behind whatever cover they were already behind.
The four metal orbs, thrown by experienced arms and aimed at the same spot, exploded simultaneously. The shockwave from the exploding grenades passed over us and we looked up. A hole had been blown in the barricade, one of the cars lay on its roof, burning, and the smoke and dust cloud blanketed the area, making it hard to see beyond that spectacle.
Knocked off their feet by the explosion, the gang members slowly picked themselves up and stared at the hole that had inexplicably been blown in their defences.
Panic replaced their stunned silence when the first zombies appeared, staggering through the wall of smoke and dust.
Not having the ability to know or care, some had walked through the flames pouring from the car and had caught fire themselves, their fiercely burning clothes turning them into human torches. Unable to feel pain, they carried on walking, heading towards the now completely panicking and freaking out gang members.
Those with some presence of mind held their ground, raised their weapons and fired. The zombies pressed by the uncountable masses behind and forced through the narrow gap created by the explosion were propelled through like a cork out of a bottle.
Within seconds, they realised that fighting them would be futile and they began looking to escape. Empty weapons dropped as they headed to the nearest wall of their barricade, any thoughts of working together forgotten as it became every man for himself.
I aimed at one scrambling over the barricade nearest to me, took aim and fired a short burst that punched holes through the roof of the van he was trying to scramble across. He stopped in shock until another burst of fire from me that just missed him persuaded him to try another route.
Others were doing the same, not allowing them to leave. They were going to answer for and pay with their lives for what they had done. I noticed the bodies of some gang members remained unmoving after been fired at. Killed by either a badly or well-aimed warning shot, depending on your point of view.
Everyone who tried to escape I sent scrambling back, bullets flying around their heads as their pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears.
The zombies kept surging through the gap, rapidly filling the square created by the vehicles. I had seen none escape. I did not feel any guilt, they had sealed their own fate when they shot Daniel.
When the line of cars began to buckle, pushed aside like toy cars by the sheer weight of numbers pressing against them, it was time to leave. To get back to the others.
I took a few seconds to watch what we had created, after gathering up my ejected magazines.
The camp was filled with snarling, groaning beasts. One of the gang must have locked himself in a van. It was rocking as it was pushed at from all sides. They wanted the prize that was inside, and nothing was going to stop them getting it.
The van toppled over, crushing some as it fell. I could hear the man’s shrill screams of panic, trapped as he was, with no possible means of escape. The windscreen buckled, pushed inwards as it gave way to the snarling faces pressing against it, the screams of terror changing to howls of pain as they reached him and began feasting on his living flesh.
Dave and Simon had left the bridge and called for us to join them back on the road.
“Well done, guys,” said Dave. “Let’s double-time it back. The back wall of the barricade has already been destroyed by them and it won’t be long until they break through the one facing us. We need to get back and find an alternative route around them.”
The others had not been idle in our absence. They’d already thoughtfully dug a grave for Daniel and laid his body in it. We gathered round as the Vicar conducted a brief but emotional service at his graveside and we all said our last goodbyes.
Following that, and in the time it took us all to board all the vehicles, Simon quickly went to retrieve his trailer that we’d abandoned earlier. Starting our engines, we followed Shawn as he led the way back down the motorway to find a route around the impassable mass of the undead.
Forty-two people and one dog silently kept watch for the next threat as they continued the journey. The dog not so much, he was asleep again.
Chapter eleven
The route Shawn chose took us back over the same bridge we had just been on. We couldn’t help but slow down and gawk like rubberneckers reducing speed to look at a crash on another carriageway as they passed it. The barrier of cars had been destroyed by the advancing zombies, their weight of numbers unstoppable. Still stretching into the distance, the compact mass of countless thousands continued their journey south in their search for their next meal.
At Weston-Super-Mare we’d been forced to divert off the motorway when we’d found it blocked by a vast mangle of crashed and abandoned vehicles and thousands of zombies. If they kept on going straight and didn’t deviate from the obvious straight route, they would eventually meet. Joining together, and if they kept going, their eventual destination would be the end of the motorway at Exeter, and from there following the same route we had taken, but in the opposite direction deeper into the South West towards Cornwall.
I thought of Willie. Would he remain safe, protected by his isolation in the wilds of Dartmoor? If we had a Ham Radio, we could contact him and warn him.
Shawn was already on the lookout for CB radios to scavenge from trucks, but we also needed to look out for the tell-tale signs of a house with a radio antenna rigged up on the property somewhere and take it.
Had the soldiers found their families safe and well? The chances, I knew, were slim and with the massive pack of undead slowly heading their way, I also hoped they wouldn’t encounter them. Despite their armoured vehicles and firepower, their only chance of survival would be to avoid them, retreat and only pick fights they could win.
~
Dartmoor
In the days following the group’s departure, Willie worked tirelessly, reinforcing and improving his perimeter; building walls higher, adding extra barriers of wire fences and more early warning trip wires and flares. Being alone, he knew it was impossible for him to maintain an effective all-round guard, so he ensured that what he built and improved would offer him the best protection.
The house he turned into a fortress, strengthening the shutters and keeping the now heavily armoured tractor and trailer parked up against its wall so if need be, he could climb down from an upper window and escape.
He built defensible outposts around his property and further afield. Plac
es he could keep watch from or run to if caught unawares. Hidden in each was a small stash of food and extra ammunition.
Already a very organised man, he catalogued his food and equipment supplies. Augmented by his foraging and hunting skills, he knew he could survive indefinitely at his farm. If he took people in, though, as he had promised and was prepared to do, the extra mouths would eventually put a strain on his resources.
Using his intimate knowledge of the moors from his years living on them, he began patrolling further field. Visiting the nearest properties to him first, he quickly became adept at dispatching the previous occupants if they were still ‘living’ there, taking any food or other supplies he found back to his property.
The trip to the nearest shop nearly ended in disaster when the hotel and pub that was next door to it spewed out a crowd of zombies attracted by the noise he’d made breaking into the shop. A few desperate minutes ensued as he hacked, punched and kicked his way through the enveloping horde.
His stubbornness refused to let him be beaten by them, though. Nothing would stop him completing the task he had set himself. An hour later, he had hunted down and killed every last one of them, gaining knowledge at every kill about the nature and capabilities of his new enemy. It took him the rest of the day to empty the shop and transport what he needed home.
When darkness forced him indoors, he sat in his usual chair and planned the following day’s missions and targets. He had always been contented living alone on the moors, happy with his own company, never imagining for even a moment that he would want to share his peaceful, happy, but solitary existence with anyone.
And then Maud came along.
Loneliness was a feeling he had never experienced before, but he found his thoughts often turning to her and the rest of the group that had sought shelter at his farm for a few short days. Eventually he came to realise that the physical pangs he was feeling and the sense of emptiness in his heart was disappointment. He had missed an opportunity. One that had never happened before to him and one that as far as he knew, would not fall to him again.
Zombie Castle Series (Book 3): ZC Three Page 8