When There's No More room In Hell: A Zombie Novel

by Luke Duffy

  “Both,” Steve replied.

  “Well,” Gary began, “what is happening is quite obvious. For some reason, a plague has swept the globe and caused the dead to rise and attack the living. From what I can gather, it began on the Southern hemisphere and spread North. Originally, it was flu, and it mutated again and again and now it’s become like some kind of spore, drifting through the air and reanimating corpses. People are still becoming sick with the flu strain, and some become aggressive and attack others before they succumb to the illness and die, then come back as the walking dead.

  “I've seen lots of reports from the so called experts and none of them can give solid answers. But one thing I have gained from the reports is; they have no need of nourishment, there's no real reason why they feed on the living. All their internal organs are dead and inactive and slowly rotting away at the same rate as the rest of their bodies. Apparently, it’s a deep instinct that has been triggered by the portion of the brain that reanimates, and they seek only warm living flesh. Not all of the brain comes back. Only the central core still shows any sign of activity. And that is where the method of destroying them comes in; they can only be killed by a gunshot or heavy blow to the head.”

  Steve nodded. “That’ll explain a lot. From what I've seen, there's no reasoning power amongst them, no speech or any higher level of intelligence. I believe that they're dead, but I still can’t get my head around it. I've never heard anything like it, except in the Bible, and that doesn’t say anything about the dead eating the living when they rise up on Judgement Day. You think it could be biologically engineered?”

  “You can listen to all the religious nut jobs spouting off about the ‘End of Days’ on the internet, or watch the nerdy man wearing a lab coat with a comb over trying to baffle us with formulas and such when they have no idea what is actually causing it. Maybe we aren’t supposed to know why this is happening.

  “Think about it. Look at the dinosaurs. For over one hundred and sixty million years they ruled the planet. Granted, they never learned how to make fire and never landed on the moon. But their reign was a long one, and they thrived from species to species. They never damaged the planet or waged war on each other. There was a healthy balance in the ecosystem and although fierce and brutal as it must've been at times, they stayed in line with nature.”

  Steve nodded, understanding where Gary was taking his train of thought, “Yeah, but still, they became extinct and then we come along.”

  “Yeah we did. But we didn't show up the day after all the dinosaurs had died did we? There was a gap of about sixty million years before anything resembling us started to walk the earth.”

  “And your point is?” Kevin asked.

  “My point, young fellow, is that maybe Mother Nature became bored of the dinosaurs and killed them off, then took some time off before deciding on her next big thing. Maybe she wanted something completely different? Something that could adapt to her changes in nature, to be able to think and create new things and ideas? Maybe,” he paused and leaned forward, a stern look at Steve, “Maybe she wanted to create a species that had the potential to rival her in its beauty and creativity?”

  “You're just being poetic Gary,” Kevin huffed.

  Gary turned on him, waving his finger. “Don't play the dumbass, Kevin. I know you're smarter than that. You no longer have to sit there writing in silly ways in text messages anymore and deliberately mispronouncing words. Those days are gone and it’s the people who can think for themselves and adapt that will survive this.”

  Kevin looked at Gary feeling ashamed for his ignorance. It wasn’t the first time he had been reprimanded by him. Gary and Kevin had become close, long before the dead began to rise, and now, Gary looked on the young man as a son.

  Steve watched the two with interest and saw the close father and son style bond just from their body language. “So, what you're saying is, is that Mother Nature screwed up?”

  “Well, yeah, sort of. Or maybe we were just an experiment that she’s gotten fed up with.”

  Kevin had put his grown up head on. “And now she's getting rid of us? Surely there's easier ways to do that?”

  “Yes, there is, but you know me, I'm not religious at all, but the Bible bashers always say that God works in mysterious ways. Well, I say the same for old Mother Nature. You ever heard of Necrotizing Fasciitis?”

  Steve and Kevin shook their heads.

  Gary continued, “It’s a flesh-eating virus. Maybe our dead are now just a new version of it? What if Mother Nature has watched and thought ‘Okay, you want to act like a virus? Well I’ll show you’ and this is a result? I believe that she has tried to warn us throughout history, but in our arrogance, we ignored the signs.

  “The most recent being the tsunamis and earthquakes that have killed millions over the last decade, and that strain of swine flu that broke out in 2012, it was stronger and deadlier than the strain of 2009, but still, we carried on, out of control and with our heads buried deep in the sand and as a result, this sneaked up and now we’re getting our arses bitten off.”

  Steve was enjoying the conversation and wanted to hear more of what Gary wanted to say. “So, we pissed her off?”

  “Absolutely,” Gary exclaimed, “we pissed her off good I think. Consider this,” he glanced from Kevin and Steve in turn, then down to his fingers, pushing them back as though counting off his points of view, “we humans, that is, anatomically modern-appearing humans, originated in Africa about two hundred thousand years ago. It took from then until the late eighteen hundreds for the human population to reach two billion.

  “If you look at the life of the Earth as a clock face, imagine it had started at twelve o’clock with its birth, and it was back at twelve o’clock now having done a full rotation, then humans only arrived in the last fifteen seconds.”

  He paused so that Steve and Kevin could take in what he was saying and judge the time scale for themselves.

  “Now then, in just over one hundred years, the population has more than tripled from two billion, to seven billion. That's against nature in my eyes.”

  “How do you mean, against nature?” Kevin asked.

  Gary ticked off another finger. “Because, of the rate of expansion. Only up until recently have we been able to vaccinate, cure and eradicate certain diseases. Smallpox for instance, killed thousands. Now, it doesn’t exist, apart from a small amount in a test tube in a lab somewhere.

  “Left to nature, many of the natural illnesses and defects that plague man would kill us. Look at families, they used to be huge and it was common that some of the children born to a man and woman wouldn't make it to adulthood for one reason or another. Death during childbirth was a common occurrence once and people born handicapped or disabled rarely survived. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that was a good thing, I'm just saying that the chances of survival through life had risen for everyone during the twentieth century.”

  “Right,” Kevin butted in, “before you tell me off for ‘dumbing down’ again and send me to bed without supper, you really have lost me, Gary.”

  Gary smiled at him and nodded. “What I'm getting at, Kev, is that the mortality rate has dropped amongst humans, and as a result, the rest of the planet has suffered.”

  Another finger was ticked off. “It’s my opinion, and this is just an opinion mind you, that Mother Nature never intended for us to take the path that we did. I believe that she wanted someone that could interact and live alongside nature, as well as advance and think for themselves. But maybe she got our programming wrong when she created us?

  “Instead of a species that lived in harmony with its surroundings, we developed into something more like a virus. We spread and multiplied and ravaged the planet, destroying everything she had created for us. We, Homo-Sapiens, annihilated Neanderthal Man as well as thousands of other species of animals and brought many more close to extinction. We polluted her beautiful atmosphere, waged war on one another.

  “Eventually we
became what we are now. And that is my next point.” He was in full flow and he pushed back yet another finger. “What are we now? Well, what were we before the dead started to walk? We were consumers. The word consumer and its usage to describe us, causes my piss to boil, but it’s become a byword for the human race. It’s perfectly acceptable now and seven billion people consented to the label that the governments, banks and big corporations labeled us with. But the label is pretty accurate. Like I mentioned before, we became like a virus. We went forth and multiplied and along the way, consumed everything in our path.”

  He paused, no one else spoke and he continued. “In the twentieth century man became the scourge of the earth. The industrial age was in full swing and all matter of crap was being pumped into the atmosphere. Oil became one of our main sources of power and at that point, man found his true greedy self. No one bothered about the damage that we did to the planet. The air was filled with the by-products and nobody cared. Land was destroyed and carved up to make way for the oil derricks and pipelines. Look at the wars over the stuff. During the Second World War, many of the main objectives of all the armies involved were to seize, or destroy and cut off the enemy oil supplies. The Falklands War, there’s oil beneath those islands and I don’t believe what was said about it being a matter of national pride, it was a war waged for oil. The two Gulf Wars were for black gold. And I don’t care how much any government spouts off with their token gestures for the environment by raising fuel tax and toll booths. Even when there isn’t open fighting, the oil war wages. People are killed, whole towns subdued, countries trodden down. It all boils down to money. And it’s the politicians and oil barons that sit back and reap the spoils.

  “Then came the nuclear age, followed by the digital age; the nuclear age had its own side effects and everyone has seen enough video footage of nuclear test sites and Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know the destruction we could cause the planet. Even when it is so called used for good causes, such as energy, look at Japan a couple of years ago after the earthquake. Remember the damage?

  “And, most recently, something that I believe was the most destructive age of all; the digital age. Not in a physical sense, but in a moral one. The whole planet was plugged into the ‘world wide web’. Information was accessible to anyone who wanted it.

  “The human race has been turned into mindless drones that sit in front of TVs or computers and soak up the rubbish pumped out in the name of entertainment. Celebrities; it has become perfectly acceptable to take someone from the street with no talent whatsoever, an IQ well below average and turn them into multi millionaires with books being written about them and perfumes made with their names on for no apparent reason other than they were so called entertaining on some stupid reality TV show through being so ignorant and stupid.

  “People have become addicted to drivel that is readily available through a wire that is plugged into your home and into your computer or TV. The next step would’ve been just to plug it into the back of our heads and no one would then need to live their lives, they could virtually live them and the corporations would control the masses like in that movie about the robots taking over.

  “Look at pornography. It was once a taboo and not easily come by unless you knew where to get it, or a friend had a secret stash that he bought from Amsterdam. Now, all you have to do is click on the internet and anything you want is there in front of you. Simple, straight forward sex isn’t enough anymore, it has to be extreme and shocking. Children being exposed to it, children being manipulated and abused by it.

  “Look at us, our technological advance in the last century has been at an extraordinary rate. When man landed on the moon, the power they had in their computers back then was no more than what we have in the average calculator or digital watch now. But they did it and reached beyond the boundaries of human limitations. Now, with the knowledge and equipment available, we should’ve been colonising Mars and looking to travel beyond our Solar System. Instead, the technology was wasted. In my opinion, Mother Nature is not just angry, but she is ashamed of us.”

  Steve whistled through his teeth, a long low-sounding whistle. “Jesus, when you put it like that, Gary, I feel quite shit about us.”

  “Well that's the conundrum, Steve. In small groups, closely knit communities and families, maybe like what we have here now,” he swept his arm across the room, “we do well. Throw us into a giant city with millions of people crammed so close together that we have to build huge concrete structures to inhabit like rats, and then we become viral. We fight and we squabble and we consume and kill. Greed has overcome us fellas and Mother Nature has finally said ‘enough is enough’”

  They sat and talked until late in the night. Helen and Jennifer had sat and joined in with the conversation and offered their own thoughts and feelings on the situation.

  Soon, it had turned into an open debate, with glasses of whisky and more people joining in. Jake, the man who had been in charge of all of the parks electronic systems and communications, was very animated in his descriptions and his theories. It was apparent from the start that he was gay but the more glasses he drank, the more camp he became.

  Steve found him hilarious and Helen and Jennifer had taken a shine to him also. “See, I’ve even got my own fag-hags at the end of the world,” he declared.

  Finally, Gary announced, “Well, it’s been interesting, but some of us are up early aren’t we, Steve? We need our ugly sleep.” He made a short bow to the congregation and walked away, headed for the stairs.

  Helen seized the chance to catch Steve alone. She pulled him to one side in the hallway when he came back through from the kitchen as he headed for the stairs.

  “Steve, do you really have to be going out there tomorrow? I mean, it seems like a big risk to me and after all, you have your daughter to think about.”

  “That's why I'm not taking her, she's staying here,” Steve replied.

  “Don't be coy, Steve, you know what I mean.” Her eyebrows knitted together as she spoke and her tone was deadly serious.

  “Look,” he sighed, “she's the mother of my daughter. It’s not that I feel some sense of loyalty or duty to her, but it’s for Sarah that I have to do this. I explained the same thing to Gary.”

  She nodded, “Okay, I don’t have kids myself, so maybe it’s harder for me to get my head around, but be careful out there, Steve.”

  “I will.”

  “I haven’t thanked you properly for helping me.”

  He went to butt in but she spoke over him. “If you hadn't taken me with you, I’d be dead by now.” She reached up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek and whispered, “Be careful, Steve, please?”

  She turned away and walked up the stairs to her own room, leaving Steve standing at the bottom rubbing the patch on his cheek where he had felt her warm lips kiss him. He looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the exchange and then climbed the stairs, whistling cheerily to himself.

  That night he lay in bed, thoughts running through his mind.

  To start with, about the day ahead of him and what could happen and how they were to do it. Scenarios of the possible obstacles raced through his mind and before he could think through a solution to one foreseen mishap, another scenario would crop up. In the end he resigned himself to the fact that he was just going to have to deal with it as it came and react fast on his feet.

  Still, it didn't help him to sleep.

  Then, his mind started to drift to something else, and he fell asleep thinking about Helen, the lovely Nurse Helen.

  19

  “Okay lads, this is the plan.” Marcus stood in front of his assembled team with a notepad in his hand containing timings and specific orders for individuals.

  Ian and Stu had built a scaled sand model of the area. It showed their current location, the village on the Iraq side and the river. Also it showed the opposite hamlet and the far side with the high ground and enemy positions, including the tank, machinegun position and suspected comman
d post and surrounding buildings. Jim had insisted on donating a cigarette packet to denote the tank.

  The model was layered and showed the relief and lay of the land in 3D. If there was a hill on the opposite bank of the river, then there would also be a scaled down version of it on the model. It needed to be as accurate to the ground as possible so that everyone could get a clear view in their mind’s eye of what lay in the target area and immediately around them.

  It was also orientated to the ground with a North pointer and an indication of the scale and distances between features. Marcus pointed to various positions for people to sit in relation to the ground and their tasks, so that they could get an idea of what the landscape would look like ahead of them during the actual mission.

  It reminded Jim of a battlefield that he had built as a child in his garden for his toy soldiers that he had then stood over, pretending to be a general high up in a helicopter observing his men as they advanced.

  The team worked from a system that they had learned in the army. While Marcus planned the operation to the last detail, the rest of the team conducted what was known as ‘concurrent activity’.

  Stu and Ian built the model and the rest of the men checked, cleaned and oiled the weapons. Ammunition and magazines were checked and redistributed. Then they went through and reorganised their personal kit, making sure it was sufficient for the task.

  Any unnecessary weight would be left behind in a cache area, so that the team could move fast and carry more ammunition during the assault. Everyone stripped their kit to ‘fighting order’, ditching everything except ammunition. Anything that wasn’t to be used in the assault was left in the vehicles.

  With everyone seated around the model, Marcus began.

  He had a radio antenna in his hand that he used as a pointer for the model to indicate positions as he explained the mission. The rest of the men settled in to listen to the plan as they sipped their coffee and smoked cigarettes.

  Marcus began by explaining the model in detail, pointing out the various features that related to the map and the description of the model. The tank, machinegun position, buildings and even the river had all been added to the model using a range of different materials such as ammunition boxes and the blue towel that Ian had ripped up and shaped and added to act as the river.