‘Please tell me you’ve got a plan to get this shit back to the boat Darren.’
‘Oh yes. Start getting the stuff outside first. I’ll be back in a jiffy,’ and with that he bounded up the stairs, adding, ‘Keep a swivel on for stinkaz matey.’
Five minutes later, after I’d ferried most of the supplies down and out of the tower, shuddering every time I went through the ground floor house of horrors, Darren made an appearance.
‘I’ve got you a couple of prezzies,’ he proclaimed with a smile, as he came down the stairs.
In one hand was a silver case. On it, written in black sharpie pen, was ‘Carter’.
I knew exactly what it was before he handed it to me. ‘Didn’t that thing nearly just fucking kill me?’ I asked.
‘Yep.’ He replied. ‘It’s yours now, so there’s no chance it can kill you anymore.’
I lay the case on the floor and opened it. Inside was a black and menacing-looking rifle. The same rifle the dead soldier had used to try and end me.
‘You can’t use it until I’ve cleaned it and set it up though. The scope’s not as good as mine but it’ll serve you fine when it’s sorted. It uses the same ammo as Bessy,’ he told me.
‘Thanks mate,’ I replied.
‘You’re welcome. All you have to do now is name it. It’s got to be a girl’s name though and not your boyfriend’s,’ he said as he dodged a punch that was aimed at his arm.
He then held out his other hand. In it was what looked to be two large camera cases. ‘Take one,’ he said.
‘What’s this?’ I asked as I took one from him and started to unzip the lid. Inside were what looked to be binoculars fitted to a sort of head-shaped bracket, attached to which was a chin strap. My very own magic goggles!
‘Wow, cheers mate. They’re fuckin awesome!’ I exclaimed with sincere gratitude.
‘They’re only night vision goggles and don’t have IR, but they’ll come in handy. Come on, time to go.’
On the way out, Darren looked over one of the dead soldier’s shoulders. ‘Ooooo, full house. Lucky bastard.’
‘You’re a sick man putz,’ I said as he closed and locked the door on their eternal poker game.
Chapter 30
As I stood guard over the goodies, Darren shot off across the yard, with his gun up, and slipped around the corner of a building.
The sun was still beating down as I covered the area with my new SA80. It was fitted with an Elcan SpectreOS4X, which meant absolutely fucking nothing to me. I think the 4X described its magnification. Who knows?
The day before, when Darren been sewing the strips of material to my ghillie jacket in the kitchen, he’d given me a few tips on how to use a gun with a scope on it.
Always keep both eyes open. For some reason, when most people look through a telescope or scope, they always close the eye that’s not being used. This is so they can concentrate on what is being magnified. Doing this in a combat situation is not a good idea, as it effectively blinds you to everything that the scope isn’t pointed at. A sort of tunnel vision. When both eyes are open the viewer has a greater field of view. The trick is to tell your brain to use the scope eye and put the other eye on standby. The amazing thing is, like a motion detecting camera, the standby eye will still identify movement. Darren told me it takes a bit of getting used to but after a while it becomes second nature. As I practised, while scanning the vicinity for danger, the eye I’d effectively turned off, spotted something in the copse of trees we’d been lying in earlier. I trained the scope on the area and slowly searched the shadows made by the dense foliage. After a minute of combing and seeing nothing I told myself it must have been my imagination.
Starting to get spooked I willed Darren to hurry the fuck up. He’d been away for what felt a lifetime. As I was turning my head to look in the direction he’d gone, I spotted movement again. Directly in the centre of the wood, the leaves on a bush started moving.
Where the fuck was Darren? I didn’t like this one bit. Whatever was in that wood knew I was here. I could feel its beady eyes watching me. My mind started racing, asking questions I had no answer to. If it was a deeda, wouldn’t it have come for me by now? Had they’d changed? They were running a lot faster now. And they were learning too. Had they learned to stalk and lay traps? Had they started hunting in packs and the one in the bush was just distracting me? I suddenly turned around at this thought, a horrible feeling that something was behind me. Nothing. Just the bags. As I was focusing on the bush again, two flashes of brown darted out and fled deeper into the trees. I didn’t get a good look at them, but they looked to be some sort of animal. It was difficult to judge their size from where I was. At a guess, they were small. Not much bigger than a domestic cat. Whatever they were, they had been watching me. I spent the next five minutes manically checking every corner and angle.
Chapter 31
Suddenly the eerie silence was disturbed by the sound of an engine. What came round the corner put a very big smile on my very relieved face. It was an immaculate, brand new, black Land Rover Defender. It had been modified too. Oversized tyres, a huge bull bar and fitted with a snorkel.
I’d wanted a beast like this ever since I was small. A timeless classic that looks as good now as it did fifty years ago.
The smile on Darren’s face matched mine.
‘Your chariot awaits, my lady,’ he said as he pulled up next to the pile of supplies. ‘You pack, I’ll shoot.’
‘Shoot?’ I asked.
I turned around. ‘Oh fuck,’ I said, as over thirty deedaz lauped toward us. I quickly opened the back door and started heaving the rucksacks in along with my new sniper rifle and Bessy.
‘Hurry up,’ he said singingly as he expertly shot the heads of the oncoming tsunami of deedaz. ‘There’s more coming.’
I chanced a look at the throng coming our way. My heart nearly stopped. Approximately sixty deedaz bore down on us.
When the last bag went in, I slammed the door and ran around to the passenger side and nearly tripped over a sliding Igor that had been shot by Darren as it charged me. I climbed in and closed the door just as the next deeda slammed into it.
‘Go, go, go!!’ I shouted
Darren slid into his seat threw Dot in the back of the 4x4 and shut his door. But it didn’t shut. It was ripped open by a deeda that grabbed his arm and pulled it to its mouth. Time slowed. Darren’s face turned white. This was it. Darren the un-killable was going to be killed. Well, turned at least. And then thirty seconds later he’d turn me. Ah fuck. All the trouble we’d gone to to get all that lovely booty. And then Andy and Bobby popped into my head. Their deaths at the hands of Gippa played out in my mind’s eye. We’d failed them and the poor women at Gippa’s compound. All of this was for nothing.
Then there was the Land Rover. I hadn’t even got to have a ride in the beautiful beast.
Then finally, thoughts of my ex. There’d always been that tiny spark of hope in my heart that I’d get a chance to go to her hometown and look for her. A tiny spark of hope that she was alive and waiting for me to rescue her. The situation we were in extinguished the spark once and for all. Fuck. Well, it was fun while it lasted. It would all be over soon.
Then a miracle happened. The deedaz brains shot out of the back of its head, just before it clamped down on Darren’s arm with its chipped and yellow teeth. Who the fuck made a shot like that? It wasn’t Darren. His other hand was hanging onto the steering wheel for dear life, stopping him from being dragged out.
Someone with a sniper rifle must have taken the shot from outside of the vehicle somewhere and shot through my open window, but where was he?
Darren pushed the deeda out of the ATV, shut the door properly this time, put the Land Rover into gear and pushed slowly through the gathering deedaz as the slapped futilely on the windows.
‘Fucking hell, thanks mate,’ he said as one of the dead bounced across the bonnet.
Eh? I looked in the back seat to see who he was talking to. T
here was no one there. Was he thanking me? What on earth for, I wondered. I looked out of my window to see if I could see the sniper through the throng of dead people that had converged on us. Then I realised, the window was up. There was no sniper. Then I looked down into my lap and in my left hand was my smoking Glock 17. What the fuck?
‘Did I shoot it? I asked.
Darren looked at me like I was fucking nuts. He even shuffled in his seat and moved away from me a little.
‘Am I talking to Carter or Tyler Durden at the moment?’ he asked jokingly as we jostled and bounced over the dead that had fallen beneath the wheels.
‘Seriously, was that me? I really can’t remember doing it mate,’ I said, dumbfounded as we bowled over more deedaz.
‘Don’t worry mate, it happens sometimes. The body just takes over and completes the job for you. A bit like muscle memory. Thank Tyler for me when you see him next.’
For those of you who do not know, Tyler Durden is the alter ego of a character named The Narrator in a film called Fight Club. Unbeknown to The Narrator, Tyler controls most aspects of his life. If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother. I’ve just ruined the whole movie for you.
Chapter 32
Darren made it through the throng of deedaz and put his foot down.
‘How’d they get into the base? I thought the LAMOE had dealt with the dead in here?’ I asked.
‘The front gate is open. Don’t know why. My guess is he opens it for a few days and entices in any dead that are in the area, shuts the gate somehow and then goes to work giving them all migraines from the top of the tower,’ he answered as he drove towards the gate in question.
Once through the gate, Darren stopped the Defender, opened his door and jumped out.
‘What the fuck are you doin mate?’ I shouted after him, as he ran to the gates, closed and zip tied them together.
As Darren got back in he said, ‘That should hold them. We don’t want them following us back to the beach if Josh has fucked off and left us. I’ll drive along the fence slowly and spread them out so they don’t all attack the gate at the same time.’
I watched the gate as the first of the deedaz arrived. Darren slowly drove east along the road. The steady flow of dead that arrived soon spread out along the length of the fence as Darren had predicted.
‘That should do it,’ he said as he put his foot down and sped away from RAF Boulmer.
The road ahead was clear of abandoned vehicles and deedaz. With the small population of the area, the exodus of vehicles that had happened in my hometown of Cramlington had not been repeated here and the road was gridlock free.
After a minute of driving I asked, ‘So, what was said then?’ I’d been itching to ask him about this all day.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked with a half-smile, again, knowing exactly what it was I was referring to.
‘You know what I’m talking about mate. Just tell me,’ I pleaded. It had been niggling away in the back of my mind all day. What had Sonny said to get Darren to relinquish the upper hand and set down his weapons?
‘Not a lot mate. He just said some things that I didn’t like so I accepted his challenge of a fight.’
‘What did he say, like?’ I asked.
‘He just kept saying, I’m going to do this to your girlfriend and I’m going to do that to your girlfriend. So I said, there’s no way you’re doing anything to Carter. He’s my bitch!’ he said breaking out into fits of laughter.
‘Very funny dickhead,’ I said dejectedly. Whatever Sonny had said to Darren had hit a nerve somewhere and he obviously didn’t want to talk about it. Darren was as deep as the ocean and was obviously battling his own demons. Something was lurking beneath the surface and Darren didn’t want to face it. I guessed this was why he was always on the go. Never resting. Never giving himself a moment to ruminate over whatever he was hiding from. The rest of us could frequently be found, staring into the distance with furrowed brow, thinking, regretting, wishing. I don’t think I’d ever witnessed Darren doing so. He didn’t give himself time to do anything like that.
‘OK, don’t tell me. But at least tell me what you said before you ended him. That was epic. I’ll never ever forget the look on his face,’ I said.
‘He he. Oh, that? It’s a bit dark,’ he said with a hint of embarrassment.
‘Aw, tell is mate,’ I begged.
‘You sure?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure. I think,’ I said, uncertain if I really did want to know.
‘OK, I told him I’d missed my morning constitutional with having to wait for him to arrive this morning and that as soon as he was dead I’d be taking a dump in his perdy little mouth.’
I wished I’d never asked. No wonder Sonny looked so bloody furious.
‘Mate, that is just wrong,’ I said, shaking my head and holding back the urge to retch.
‘I warned you it was dark,’ he said, giggling.
Chapter 33
Half a mile from the village, Darren opened the glove box in front of me, pulled out a strangely shaped orange gun and opened the driver’s side window.
‘Where the fuck did you get that from?’ I asked. He just looked at me with one eyebrow raised questioningly.
‘The six P’s?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes bonny lad,’ he replied, and then fired the gun into the sky. A bright red ball of flame shot up to the heavens then slowly arced and lethargically fell back towards the earth.
‘Do you think he’s still there?’ I asked.
‘He’d fucking better be,’ was the reply.
Darren shot through the village, turned the engine off and coasted out on to the sand.
Josh, thankfully, was still there and had paddled close to the shore, but had stopped because of the five deedaz that were still enraptured with him.
‘OK Carter, you’re up. Don’t go for them straight on. Veer to the side and come at them from an angle to make sure Josh isn’t in your line of fire.’
I sat there trying to comprehend what he’d just said to me.
‘You want me to go and do it’? I asked dubiously.
‘You’ll have to do it sooner or later matey,’ Darren reasoned. ‘No time like the present, and hurry the fuck up – we should have been back at the island by now. Andy will be shitting his knickers,’ he added with a giggle.
My arse went. Not literally, but close. There was no other option, other than beg Darren to go out there and do it for me. Two days ago I probably would have begged, but not now. Not after all I’d seen Darren accomplish. Not after the revelation I’d had back at the island, after the Andy incident. It was time for me to step up properly. Time for me to pull my weight and put my big-boy pants on. Time for me to prove to Darren that he was right to put his trust in me. More than anything, time for me to trust myself and be the man I thought I’d be in an apocalypse situation. After all, I’d planned for this happening for most of my life. I told myself, ‘It’s now or never.’
I steeled myself and opened the door. This would be the first time I’d actually fired a gun. Well, apart from the deeda I’d just plugged back at the base, but to be fair I couldn’t remember doing that.
Darren gave me a few pointers as I was opening the door.
‘Aim and squeeze the trigger gently while exhaling. Remember what I taught you at the island – you want the gun to surprise you as it fires.’
I tentatively stepped down from the Land Rover with my gun up the way Darren had showed me on the island. The dead hadn’t noticed we were there. Josh was far more interesting to them. I walked off to the left and then sidestepped down towards the crashing waves, keeping my sights trained on them at all times. I glanced at Darren, who was still sitting in the Land Rover. I thought he’d at least be covering me with Dot from the window of the vehicle, but no. He was just sitting there tapping his fingers on the steering wheel; then he smiled at me and gave me a little wiggly fingered wave and mouthed ‘coo wee’. Twat!
I turned my attention
back to the deedaz. I had seventeen rounds in the gun and five zombies to deal with, so the odds were good that I’d get them all. Hopefully.
When I was in position I pointed the gun at the closest deeda’s head and gently squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. I applied some more pressure. Still nothing. Was the safety stil... Bang!
The deeda I’d been aiming at slumped to the ground with the side of its head blasted away. I quickly aimed at the next one in the line who had turned and looked at its fallen comrade. Bang! He went down too. This was fucking easy I thought. The three that were left zeroed in on the sound of the gun and started Igoring towards me. ‘Darre...’ Bang. Another one down, two left. Luckily one of them tripped over the deeda that had most recently eaten the lead sandwich I’d just served him. The other one, however, kept coming. To my utter surprise, I started walking towards it. Cool calm and collected. When it was around ten feet away I pulled the trigger. Bang. Another one down. I kept advancing and stepped over it. The deeda that had tripped was still struggling to get up as I approached it. I just kept on walking and shot it in the head on the way past. I didn’t even stop or really look at it as I blew its brains all over the wet sand. Probably one of the coolest things I’d ever done in my life. I just looked at Darren pointed my finger to the sky and did a circle motion to signal him to turn the Land Rover around and reverse into the sea. The look of awe I received from Josh, as he looked over his shoulder while he rowed towards the shore, made me blush a little, and it took all of the will power I had to keep a face of nonchalance and not smile. This, I felt, added to my absolute awesomeness.
Darren started the engine and reversed the back wheels into the surf. He then climbed between the front seats and into the back, opened the rear door and started throwing the rucksacks and weapons into the boat as soon as Josh was close enough. I kept my gun up, pointing it towards the village. Once loaded we begrudgingly said goodbye to the Land Rover and pushed off. Darren replaced the spark plug in the outboard motor, started it and guided us out of the harbour area.
It's Grim Up North (Book 2): The Island Page 8