Leaving the machine guns manned, the remains of his command disembarked from the vehicles and did a complete sweep of the area to make sure no surprises lay in wait.
The vehicle maintenance area was in a large steel shed with a metal sliding door, which could easily house all their vehicles and with the main door closed, it would give them a secure area further protected by a sturdy perimeter fence.
As soon as the shutter was closed, in the dim light coming through the skylights, the exhausted men turned off their engines and gathered together.
The Captain addressed his men, trying to bolster their spirits. An impossible job when taking into account what they had been through.
Rest was what they needed more than anything. Despite his own exhaustion, he knew sleep would not find him easily, so he took the kindest action he could think of for them. He ordered them to stand down completely and he would take watch.
His men individually and silently went to find a place to bed down, each lost in his own grief and heartbreak. In the advancing gloom, the Captain listened to the quiet moans, snores and occasional sobbing emanating from various places around the room. Six hours later, his Sergeant relieved him and despite his protests, forced him to get some sleep himself.
He slept for eighteen hours straight.
They stayed in the unexpected sanctuary for three days before he felt his men were ready to continue the journey. The enforced quietness and calm gave them the chance they needed to absorb and deal with their emotions. They spent their time either alone, cleaning their weapons and kit, or tinkering with and doing basic maintenance and servicing all the vehicles. Rebuilding and strengthening the bonds that would make them an effective fighting force once more.
Ensuring the gate was secure, they headed to the moors to find the man who they hoped would offer them shelter and safety in the depths of Dartmoor.
Following the planned route, they slowly felt their way towards the moors via as many backroads as possible, hoping to avoid any undead that might delay their passage. It went well until they had to cross the only main road that traversed their route. The moors could be seen rising ahead, which meant they were closing in on their destination, but it also meant there were fewer roads to choose from. Only a small number of roads crossed the moors and even though they could use sideroads for another mile or so, eventually they would have to join the main road that cut through them.
Stopping at that junction, they found it thick with zombies, all shambling along in the same direction.
With no other option, Captain Hammond gave the order to plough through them and to keep following the intended route, thinking they would soon leave them behind as they continued.
The plan came apart when they entered the village not far from the main road.
Unfortunately, the way ahead was blocked by a lorry. It must have crashed at some speed into a house alongside the road, because a good portion of the house had collapsed, blocking the way ahead.
A quick scan of the map revealed an alternative route. They just needed to turn around and backtrack a few hundred yards to join a road which should take them on another route through the village and around the blockage.
The problem was that they had attracted the unwanted attention of the zombies when crossing the main road, and they appeared as a solid wall of terror, blocking the way to their new route. The armoured car would have been able to smash through them, but that was now at the wrong end of the convoy.
The lorry bringing up the rear tried to reverse through them but the bodies all too quickly piled up underneath it, forcing it to lose control and crash into a wall, where it now lay stuck, blocking their escape route.
Shaking the pain from his hand after smashing it against the windscreen of the armoured car, he looked to his Sergeant.
“I believe this is just about the right time for you to come up with a brilliant suggestion, Sergeant.”
He waited for the heavy calibre machine gun in the rotating cupola on top of the armoured car to finish another long burst. The bullets had the power to destroy many until stopped by something more solid than flesh and bone. Each burst cut a massive swath through the undead, and depending on where it hit bodies, disintegrated or arms legs or heads flew in all directions. The relentless horde soon filled these gaps, though, and continued gathering around them in ever increasing numbers.
“Hate to say it, Captain, but I’m all out of ideas for now. But we could ask that person waving what I think is a bed sheet at us through that window over there.”
He pointed a finger over the heads of the zombies crowding around them at a building across the road. The window was closed, and the person couldn’t be seen, but a white sheet was indeed being waved up and down in it, trying to attract their attention.
Chapter thirteen
Willie
Willie was breathing hard and sweat was pouring down his face, but he forced himself to maintain the punishing pace he’d set.
The gunfire was getting closer with every step and the last thing he wanted was to arrive too late to help. The firing had slowed, but not stopped, which to him probably meant that probably there were either fewer people firing, or they were running low on ammunition; neither scenario much good if they were surrounded by zombies.
He only slowed the pace as he neared the village. Not out of tiredness, but as a practical move. The last thing he wanted to do was to rush into a situation he had no tactical awareness of. Now he was there, the last few hundred yards would need to be slow and cautious. Zombies were in the area and bullets were also still outgoing. Getting shot or being on the menu was not something he wanted to happen to himself for the sake of a bit of caution.
The village wasn’t large, so it didn’t take him long to creep through back gardens and climb over fences until he knew he was at the rear of a large house that faced the main road that went through it.
Finding the back door unlocked, he slowly entered, his senses on high alert, ready to face anything he found, alive or not, still occupying it. Not discovering anything, he cautiously made his way upstairs and found a room that overlooked the front.
Still mindful of incoming fire, he crawled to the window and raised his head over the sill, had a quick glance and ducked back down again.
That quick look told him all he needed to know. He had discovered a small military convoy that had become immobilised by some unlucky circumstance and now found themselves trapped by a milling crowd of thousands of the undead.
He needed to help them, but how?
Shrugging himself free from the weight of his Bergen and retrieving his water bottle, he took a drink from it as he sat with his back against a wall, got his breath back and came up with a plan.
The first thing he needed to do was to get their attention. With so many zombies out there, it was impossible for him to reach them or vice versa. Another burst of fire from the trapped soldiers made him wince. If they kept making so much noise, there was no way they would disperse. Yes, they were killing some with every bullet fired, but all it was doing was advertising their presence to any within hearing distance. And those guns were loud and could be heard from a long way off. If they kept it up, he might find himself trapped soon.
Pulling a bedsheet from the bed next to him, he tied it to his rifle and keeping his back against the wall, just in case a nervous trigger finger decided he was a new target, he began waving it up and down in front of the window.
Minutes went by with no reaction. There was nothing else he could think of doing to get their attention, so he just had to keep at until they noticed him.
When he was about to give up and try and come up with something else, the loudspeaker on the vehicle screeched and a voice boomed out across the village.
“You in the window. We see you. Are in in a position to offer us assistance?”
Lowering his rifle and removing the sheet, he peered round the window.
The machine gun in the turret of the lead armoured car was now facing him and
a rifle was pointing out of the window in his direction.
He was not a coward by any means, but the idea of showing himself while facing a big machine gun that looked like a fifty cal and another automatic rifle, did not fill him with joy. But he decided where else would they be pointing their weapons, and anyway the machine gun could reduce the room he was standing in to rubble in a matter of seconds, so the false security of the wall he was using for protection did not mean that much, really. Slowly and with his hands held out to show he wasn’t holding a weapon, he stepped in front of the window to show himself.
After a few seconds with no incoming fire, he relaxed a bit and raised his arm in the universal sign of hello.
“Are you military?” boomed the voice over the loudspeaker. “How many are you?”
Willie was dressed in army surplus clothing, so the assumption was a logical one to make. He slowly shook his head to signal he was not and held up one finger to tell them he was on his own.
A plan had been forming in his mind. He first needed them to be quiet, so he could begin.
Using more basic hand signals he told them to be quiet and to wait.
Hand signals taught in the military hadn’t changed much over the years, therefore, these basic instructions were easy to get across.
Acknowledgment was even easier using the vehicle’s PA system.
“Understood,” came the reply. “We’ll go quiet and wait.”
Giving them the thumbs up, he stepped away from the window, pulled on his Bergen and exited the house. The idea he was forming was to create a noisy diversion a short distance away, which he hoped would get the horde to move on.
With not much more of a plan than that, he slowly worked his way through the village, using his hand weapon to pulverise the brains of the few zombies he came across that had wandered away from the main crowd.
Spotting a house on the edge of the village that stood in the middle of a large plot, he decided to see if he could find inspiration there to begin the rescue mission.
His plan became more solid when he noticed the propane tank that supplied the house with gas in the garden. What would be better for getting the zombies’ attention than a big bang!
Peering through the kitchen window of the house, to his dismay he could see the former occupants in the kitchen. None had any visible injuries, but they had clearly turned. Without any distractions they were all standing in the large kitchen, their heads bowed as if in a trance. In hibernation, as it were, until the chance came to satiate their hunger for human flesh.
Willie hadn’t had to kill any zombie children yet. He’d known the time would come, but so far all he had come across were adults. He’d seen the horrific chewed remains of youngsters, but not any ‘live’ ones.
“Come on, laddie,” he said quietly to himself, preparing himself to do what went against all the laws of decency and moral conduct he had tried to live his life by: harming children.
Finding the kitchen door unlocked, he quietly opened it. Quickly rechecking that all his gear was in place and wouldn’t hamper him, he tapped his weapon against the door frame to get their attention.
Four heads snapped in his direction. Low groans and growls issued from four throats as four pairs of eyes transfixed him. The nearest one, the husband and father, seemed to smell the air, as if relishing the smell of fresh human flesh emanating from Willie’s body, before groaning louder and moving to the open door. His loud rasping call and movement was the command for the rest of the pack, his family, to follow him and feast on the meal that had appeared at their door.
Willie stepped back from the doorway and raised his weapon, ready to strike. Previous experience had taught him that if you killed the first one, the ones behind wouldn’t step over or around the carcass, but would invariably still take the most direct route and stumble over it in their need to get to you.
The man reached the door and paused, trying to locate Wille, who had stepped a few paces back. Knowing this was the time to strike, Willie swung his sledge hammer overhead, the blunt end smashing straight down through his head, leaving an unrecognisable, deformed mess of blood, bones and hair as he dropped to the floor, half-blocking the doorway.
The remainder of the family were easy to kill as they predictably fell over the body and lay sprawling in the doorway, their arms and legs moving without coordination as they tried to regain their feet. Willie was thankful the children had fallen face first, so he didn’t have to look at their faces as he swung his weapon at their exposed heads.
Dragging the limp corpses out of the way to avoid stepping over them, he entered the house. His plan was as all the best ones were: simple. Turn the taps on the oven to release the gas and leave something burning somewhere so when the gas reached it, it should ignite and cause an explosion. He just needed to make sure he wasn’t near it when it blew.
Making sure all the downstairs windows and external doors were closed, apart from the kitchen, he searched through the kitchen drawers till he found what he was looking for: some candles. He knew that the propane in the gas tank outside was heavier than air, and so, when he left the house and closed the door, the escaping gas would build up, filling the downstairs of the house slowly like an invisible flood. Opening the doors to all the internal rooms in the house to allow the gas to spread throughout the ground floor, he set the candles near to the top of a bookcase in the hallway, putting them in some handily left ornamental candlestick holders to ensure they wouldn’t fall over, and then he lit them.
In the kitchen, he turned on all the gas taps to the hob and oven and waited for a minute to make sure the gas kept flowing and that it didn’t just stop. He knew some cookers had an auto cut-off safety feature, but fortunately, this wasn’t one of them. Once he was sure, he left, closing the door behind him.
After making his way stealthily back to the house overlooking the convoy, he got their attention again. Despite the military contingent going quiet and hunkering down in their vehicles, the zombies had not wandered far and were still pressed tightly against all the vehicles.
The ones in the armoured cars and lorries were okay as the zombies couldn’t see them in their elevated positions, but they still clawed at the sides of the vehicles. Wille thought, though, that it must be an uncomfortable experience for the ones in the Land Rovers. The zombies pressed their faces up to the windows, inches from their own, teeth and hands continually trying to break the bullet proof glass that provided the only protection.
Signalling to them to hold fast and wait, he moved away from the window to avoid being inadvertently spotted and sat with his back against the wall and waited.
Ten minutes later he was beginning to doubt his plan would work. He thought that surely the gas level should have reached the candle flame by now and began to wonder if the candles had gone out or if there had been enough gas in the tank.
Staring at his watch, he decided to give it five more minutes, and then he would have to decide what to do next.
It would be stupid to return to the house to check, he knew that, so he would have to come up with another plan to get the zombies to move on.
He was muttering to himself a few minutes later as he got to his feet,
“Well done you idiot, better come up with plan B, then,” when suddenly his breath was completely knocked out of him and he was thrown across the room by a huge explosion. The window shattered, covering him with glass.
Lying stunned with his ears ringing, it took him a few moments to gather his senses and realise that his plan had worked. Struggling back to his feet and wiping blood from a cut above his eye, he staggered to the window that was hanging by one remaining hinge from its frame.
Almost every zombie had been knocked off its feet. All the windows as far as he could see in the village had been shattered by the force of the blast. Looking towards where the house had been, a huge mushroom cloud was slowly climbing into the sky, the top of it dissipating as the wind caught it.
Willie chuckled to himse
lf, “Oops. Think you overdid it a bit there, my boy.”
The zombies slowly regained their feet and as one, they began to move towards the source of the explosion, the crackling flames and the huge pall of rising black smoke acting as a beacon for them. When the last zombie had shambled from view, he made his way to the front door and opened it.
He was going to be alone no longer.
Chapter fourteen
Roused by the delicious smells of bacon frying and coffee, Captain Steve Hammond and his men gathered at Willie’s large kitchen table.
Wille was himself refreshed after having his first good night’s sleep for days, and he was in a good mood. This was mostly due to Captain Hammond’s insisting they did guard duty to give him a night’s peace. Singing to himself as he bustled around the kitchen, he heaped bacon, sausages and eggs onto a platter for the men to help themselves from.
The Captain noticed that his men seemed in better spirits too. A night sharing stories, discussing the future and drinking fine whiskey in between a not very onerous guard rota to interrupt their sleep, had done wonders. A new chapter had started in their lives, and now they had a mission to take their minds away from the terrible grief that had been looming over them.
Willie had relied on his isolated position being his main defence, but after witnessing the horde that had almost overcome Hammond and his men, he realised that the possibility of an unstoppable mass one day appearing at his walls and fences was something that only luck or fate would decide.
To him, it proved that the decision he had already made to leave was the right one, not just because he wanted to be with Maud again, but staying could be more dangerous than the journey he was planning.
The soldiers had also agreed in discussions the previous night to accompany him on the journey. With their families gone, there was nothing left to hold them to any particular area. They’d already met this group, and no one could deny that their plan was a sound one.
Captain Hammond had issued no orders and did not influence the decision, knowing that to get them on board with the idea, they all had to agree with this, and indeed any other plan that came up in the future.
Zombie Castle Series (Book 3): ZC Three Page 10