It's Grim Up North (Book 2): The Island

by Wilkinson, Sean

  The deeda spun and zeroed in on us. The moan that came from his mouth was soon echoed by the dead at the caravan park.

  ‘Run you daft fucker,’ Darren shouted as he jumped over my prone form.

  I scrambled up to my feet and legged it after Darren and watched as he slammed the sniper gun case into the deeda’s face. The deeda slumped to the floor in a heap. I turned for a quick glance towards the caravan park and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  The fence gave way, as the holidaying deedaz spilled out of the place, like a wave crashing against rocks. Not only that, nearly all of the ensuing wave were Igors.

  Running through the sandy dunes felt like running through a river of toffee. That, combined with the lack of cardio over the past six weeks, had me blowing out of my arse when I’d caught up with Darren who, by this time, had untied the anchor line from the rock and was wrestling the sailboat into the shallow sea.

  ‘Push you daft fucker,’ he shouted.

  ‘Again with the daft fucker, mate?’ I asked breathlessly.

  ‘The truth hurts Carter. You daft fucker. Now push or it’ll not just be the truth that hurts,’ he shouted as he nodded towards the dunes.

  ‘Fuck me!’ I muttered.

  Behind us looked like someone had just kicked over an ants’ nest. The dead poured over the dunes like thick viscous liquid, lauping towards us. Darren stopped pushing, reached into the boat and pulled out his suppressed AR15 assault rifle. He then took a knee in the surf and started firing steadily. Now I always thought a suppressor fitted to a gun would make it silent, you know, like they do in the movies. It doesn’t. It only minimises the sound. So compared with the deafening sound of the stick snapping, the gun sounded like a fucking cannon going off.

  With a strength I didn’t know I had, I dug my heels into the shore bed and practically lifted the whole boat in to deeper water.

  ‘Keep pushin mate, until it’s at least chest deep,’ Darren shouted over his shoulder as he fired, retreated into the sea, stopped, turned and fired again.

  The summer we’d experience that year had been unusually hot. I don’t think I’d seen a single rain cloud since this whole debacle started. But the North Sea is the North Sea. A hundred years of sunshine was never gonna heat the bitch up. As it lapped at my groin I unintentionally let out a little squeal. Which, true to form, sent Darren over the edge again.

  ‘Ha ha haaaaaa. Did you just scream like a little girl mate? What’s the matter? Did the nasty sea shrivel your balls? Soft arse! He he he. Classic!’ he shouted over the blasting gun and the crashing waves.

  By this time the deedaz that hadn’t been shot by Darren had made it to the shoreline. Again they stopped, as they had done a few days earlier when we left the boatyard, and moaned in despair.

  ‘Thank fuck for that.’ I shouted. ‘Come on in girls, the waters fine,’ I added with bravado.

  A deeda from behind the group that was already at the shoreline crashed through the crowd and ended up face planting the shallow water. It slowly stood up and looked around, finding us. Then it looked down at its feet then looked back up towards us. What I witnessed next sent a shiver up my spine which had nothing to do with the freezing water. An emotion registered on the deeda’s face. Realisation. It took a tentative step towards us, then another, then another building momentum every time. It’s brethren, on witnessing this, started moving forward too.

  ‘For fuck’s sake Carter. You had to invite them in, didn’t you?’ Darren said as he threw his gun into the boat and climbed in. ‘Keep pushing while I get the sail up.’

  I was now swimming and pushing, kicking my little legs as fast as they would go until I kicked something behind me. I let out another squeal when the thing I’d kicked, grabbed my leg and pulled. I turned my head while hanging on to the boat for dear life and recognised my captor. It was the clever fucking zombie that had worked out that the sea could be walked in. As it brought my foot up to its mouth for a bite, the top of its head disappeared. Its grip relinquished immediately and Darren pulled me into the boat. The rest of the deedaz were only an arm’s length away from grabbing the boat when the sail caught the wind and slowly began to increase the gap between us and them.

  ‘That’s was fucking close mate,’ Darren said as he sat at the back of the boat with the tiller in hand.

  ‘That water was pretty warm when I pulled you out Carter. Did you piss yourself again?

  I answered his question with a, ‘Fuck you, you fuckin fucker,’ and lay on the deck, freezing, out of breath and counting my lucky stars.

  Chapter 11

  As we sailed away from the beach, the deedaz that had followed us in were beginning to get out of their depth and were disappearing below the waves. At seeing this, the deedaz behind halted their advance. This was a double-edged sword. One, it was a good sign that they couldn’t swim, but then again, we’d have to be extra vigilant over the next few days in case any castaways washed up onto our island.

  Two, it was a bad sign they had not just mindlessly walked into the sea after their brethren. This suggested the horrible bastards were thinking and were beginning to care about their self-preservation.

  ‘Gippa and his gang will surely have heard all that commotion on the beach Darren,’ I stated, once my breath had returned.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘The compound is over a mile away from the beach and the wind was blowing from the mainland to the sea. Plus, the dunes would have deadened any sound too. The suppressed gun sounded loud to us but would have been more or less silent from the compound. At the most it would have sounded like a dustbin lid banging in the wind to them. I doubt they heard a thing Carter.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I replied sceptically. ‘By the way mate, please don’t tell Andy about my waterworks at the waterworks,’ I requested, knowing full well he wouldn’t.

  He replied with a, ‘No problem, brother.’

  Darren used the night scope as he deftly manoeuvred the small sailboat, hugging the shoreline as we made our way back to the safety of the island.

  Suddenly, as we approached the island, Darren dropped the sail and we drifted to a stop.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Visitors,’ he replied and handed me the scope.

  Two sinister looking men were rowing towards the island. Once there they pulled the boat on to the beach and armed themselves with hunting rifles. Instead of walking straight towards the buildings, they sidled off the beach to the left, skirting the island just as Darren had predicted that anyone with nefarious intentions would do. The problem was, Darren had disarmed the claymore mines earlier that day.

  ‘Fuck!’ He muttered under his breath.

  ‘What are we going to do Darren?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘We’re going to introduce ourselves and make them have a very fucking bad day,’ he said, bristling with malevolence.

  Chapter 12

  He sailed the boat silently up to the jetty and I tied us off.

  ‘Where the fuck is Andy? He should be on look out,’ I stated.

  ‘He is, but I’ve got the scope,’ he whispered, looking at the sky. ‘And the cloud cover that’s rolled in has dimmed the light from the moon. He won’t have seen the sneaky bastards.’

  He looked through the scope and said, ‘Come on, the fuckers are nearly at the front of the house.’

  We silently moved off the jetty and skirted the right side of the island, taking with us our melee of weapons and hand guns. We approached the house from the rear and cautiously crept to the front corner of the building, stopping when we heard feverish whispering.

  ‘There’s a girl in there,’ one of them said. They’d obviously spotted Bobby through the letterbox.

  ‘She’s a fuckin worldy as well,’ he added.

  ‘Nice, try the door,’ his accomplice suggested.

  ‘Locked,’ came his reply.

  ‘Shall we just kick the fucking door in?’ the accomplice asked.

  ‘Dunno. Could be dan
gerous. Don’t know how many are in there. We should go back and get Gippa’.

  The ten-second silence that followed was obviously being used by the usurpers to weigh up the pros and cons of their situation. They knew that steaming into the house, guns blazing, without knowing how many people were inside, could prove costly. But they also knew that if they went to get Gippa, they would lose the prize of primae noctis with Bobby.

  I turned to Darren to see if I could gauge from him what we were going to do about this threat. Yep. You guessed it. He wasn’t there. How the fuck he did his Houdini act, I’ll never know.

  Just as I was about to take matters into my own hands and step around the corner and confront the men with my Glock drawn, I heard a crack and then the tell-tale clump of slumping bodies.

  I chanced a peek around the edge of the building, just as the cloud covering the moon drifted away, revealing Darren, standing menacingly over the intruders.

  ‘How the fuck did you do that?’ I whispered, puzzled at the swiftness and virtual silence of his attack on the unsuspecting marauders.

  ‘Just sneaked up on em and banged their heads together.’ He answered.

  ‘What? Like the fuckin three stooges? Did you poke them in the eyes as well?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘He he he! Grab him and drag him round to the back of the lighthouse,’ he whispered as he disarmed the men, then grabbed a wrist of the one he’d chosen to ferry to the lighthouse. Thankfully he’d picked the larger of the two to lug away and did it with no effort at all. I, however, had to use both wrists of my quarry to complete the task.

  Chapter 13

  The men we had captured were dressed in camouflage clothing. The type civilians can buy from fishing and hunting stores. In the moonlight I could see both men had swathes of bushy hair and beards to match. The only difference was the larger guy had jet black hair and the smaller guy’s was blonde.

  Once at the back of the lighthouse we dumped them next to each other.

  ‘Why’ve we brought them around here Darren?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t want Bobby to know about this. I don’t think she’s doing so well Carter. She’s not eating much and this will just stress her out,’ he said while watching the slumbering men. I hadn’t noticed Bobby’s lack of appetite but our leader had. Another reason why we were lucky to have the man. He was always looking out for us.

  ‘So, that’s her name,’ a voice said from the jumble of arms and legs in the darkness at our feet. The larger man was awake and had been listening. He pushed his associate away from him and sat with his back against the lighthouse wall. ‘Oooo! She’s so fucking hot. I’m going to enjoy fu...’ Darren punched him full on in the face before he could finish his sentence, his nose exploding from the force.

  ‘What was that?’ Darren asked.

  The man, face covered in blood, glared up at Darren defiantly.

  ‘I said I’m going t...’ Again Darren punched the man, this time breaking his nose, spreading it across the right side of his face.

  ‘Sorry, missed that too. Would to care to repeat it?’ Darren asked politely.

  The pancake-faced man sat silently cradling his wrecked nose, blood running through his fingers. By this time his friend was starting to stir.

  ‘Ah, good morning sir. Did you enjoy your nap?’ Darren asked.

  I just stood there silently covering the two men with my Glock.

  The newly awakened man looked around and spotted his co-conspirator, then sat next to him, eyes wide with fear.

  ‘OK gentleman, usually a person in my position would offer you the hard way or the easy way. I’m not that kind of person I’m afraid. I’m just going to torture you. No water boarding or mind games. I’m just going to make you bleed lots and if you give me any information, well that’s just a bonus,’ Darren said, getting the full attention of the prisoners.

  I, for one, was not comfortable with this. OK, these men were responsible for evil acts upon their fellow man and I realised I had just agreed with Darren hours before that they must all die, but I could not condone torturing people.

  I know that killing and torture are pretty level on the scale of naughty things to do to someone, but shooting a person from afar with a high-powered rifle is a lot different from inflicting increasing levels of pain on someone up close and personal. It was just something I could not be a part of.

  ‘Darren, could I have a word please?’ I asked sheepishly.

  He didn’t answer me.

  ‘Darren?’ I asked again.

  He turned and walked over to me. ‘For fuck sake! Come over here and don’t take your gun off the fuckers,’ he hissed angrily.

  Shocked and hurt at his outburst, we moved about five metres away from them, out of earshot. Darren stood with his back to them and I covered them with my gun. Darren spoke slowly, quietly and kindly. ‘Sorry mate. I just spoke that way to you because I want them to think I’m angry.’ He said this while pointing one of his sausage fingers threateningly at my face, keeping up the charade of being vexed with me.

  ‘Carter, I know what you’re thinking but I’m trained in this shit mate. I’m just trying to put the shits up them to get some info about the rest of the murdering fucks. As for what to do with them after that? I haven’t got a fucking clue to be honest. We’ll just have to lock the fuckers up in the coal house with Josh and Damien for now and have a think about it. Just trust me Carte...’

  There was a scrabbling sound coming from the men. I’d taken my eyes off them for a second. Fuck.

  The blonde guy, who had just woken up, made a break for it and was just about to scoot around the corner as I lined up the Glock’s iron sights on the centre of his spine. Before I could get a shot off he fell to his knees and then onto his face. A large black knife protruded from his back. In the split second it took for the man to bolt, Darren had unsheathed it and thrown it underhand in one swift movement.

  The other man, still cradling his nose, looked emotionlessly at the dead man, then up at us. He didn’t seem at all bothered that his ‘friend’ had just expired and it was plain to see there was no honour between these thieves. Darren walked over to the dead body, retrieved his knife and walked back.

  ‘Now, where were we?’ he said to the surviving prisoner. ‘First things first. Do you have a name?’

  ‘Adam,’ he replied confidently and defiantly, probably thinking that his number was up and he didn’t have long left.

  ‘I’m guessing you’re the party that went to tax the colony on the River Coquet?’ asked Darren.

  ‘How the fuck do you know that?’ Adam demanded. ‘Have you seen Olly? Where the fuck is he?’

  Olly was obviously tattoo boy’s real name.

  ‘He’s here on the island,’ Darren informed him, though he chose not to tell Adam that Olly wasn’t breathing and that his body was lying approximately ten metres away.

  Darren continued. ‘I want some information before you get to see him. Why are you here, first of all?’

  With the thought of seeing tattoo boy in his mind, Adam opened up and went on to tell us that Olly was supposed to have met them at the harbour at dusk. From there they were to travel back to the compound together. When Olly didn’t turn up they decided to run the gauntlet through Amble and back to the compound on their own. That’s when they had heard the muffled gun shots from our close shave at the beach. They had wrongly deduced the shots had come from the island so had decided to check it out.

  ‘I’m glad we did,’ added Adam. ‘It was nice to see some fresh meat through that letter box. She’s a fuckin beaut. The things I’m going to do to he...’ Again, Darren punched Adam, this time knocking him out.

  Desperately I asked, ‘What are we going to do Darren? This is all getting out of hand. I think we should just leave this place and find somewhere else mate. Another island maybe?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter where we go Carter,’ Darren said soberly. ‘From now on we’re always going to be in danger. Either from fuckers like
Gippa and his crew or from the walking dead. By the sounds of things Gippa has all of the other islands in the area under his net too. Nothing has changed. We stick to our plan. Tomorrow we hide in the houses and hope they pass us by. Then we come up with a plan to kill them all.’

  ‘Ha ha! Kill them all?’ Adam had regained consciousness. ‘You pussies? You haven’t got a fucking chance. We’ve got a fucking army. You’re fucking dead men, the lot of you. Gippa is going to tear you to fuckin pieces and feed you to the zeds and then the girl in that house is going to get passed around all of us. And I’ll be firs...’ Darren didn’t punch Adam this time. He plunged his knife straight into his throat. Adam frantically tried to stem the blood flow with his hands. The look of surprise and the immediate regret of his final words stayed there until his last gargled breath.

  I stood there. Emotionless. I knew deep down they had to die. As soon as they’d put a foot in our sanctuary they’d signed their own death warrants. As I watched the life slowly ebb away from Adam I realised something quite scary. I didn’t feel anything. No empathy, no compassion, no remorse. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Chapter 14

  We dragged the bodies over to the bonfire site and laid them next to Olly, formerly known as tattoo boy, and covered them with a tarp from the boat shed.

  I followed Darren down to the beach and helped him unload the sailboat. Next, I pushed Adam’s rowing boat away from the beach and into the water. Darren jumped into the little sailboat and went about tying the drifting rowing boat to the back of it.

  He then sailed both boats around the far side of the island. It was a risky manoeuvre with the destroyer out there somewhere, but the boats needed to be hidden if we were to have any chance of evading Gippa’s goons. Darren just hoped the vessels would be too small to be detected and that the proximity to the rocks surrounding the island would scatter any radar pings that may have come our way.