The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  Which allows us to remove some of those internal defences and hit the rest switch, getting back to a brighter, more bearable state of mind, if only for a little while. It also allows us to carry forward our plans for longer-term survival; plotting trenches and traps, reviewing our reinforcements, and strategising for sustainability. We’ve been busy doing just that overnight and this morning we emerged anew, ready to embark upon a new chapter of endurance up here.

  Though keen to keep Jenny even further from harm’s way, we both ventured outside before lunch to break up some of those discarded wooden pallets and begin to make the raised beds that we hope will provide us with food crops of some kind in the future. Shortly, I will set off on a two-fold ‘mission’ over the wall and into the neighbouring farmland; firstly to loot crop seeds and secondly to lure any residual corpses away from the site. My palms are already starting to dampen and perspire at the thought of heading out there on my own, into the unknown.

  25th March 2016

  According to the calendar pop-up on my laptop today, it would be Easter this weekend. It’s Friday, but there’s little good about it. Just over three months since the world quite literally came apart at the seams and sent pockets of the populace into hiding, and it’s a very macabre place to be.

  When it’s not fraught with fear and flesh-flying scenes, the scene outside is one of dread – a dank and dark existence. It’s a combination of horror-filled survival and all-encompassing entrapment. Easter had always been a time of reflection, a time to celebrate sacrifice, regrowth and new beginnings. We have the sacrifice, but now it’s more reanimation than regrowth. It’s increasingly darker days than new beginnings; the world around us is more revulsion than resplendence.

  How lucky we once were, only last year in fact, to be ‘celebrating’ Easter with hot cross buns, chocolate eggs, and family and friends alike. Twelve months on, and we’ll be happy to make it through another weekend together, unscathed. No hot cross buns, no bounding Easter bunnies to speak of, no chocolate to seek comfort in, and no family or friends in attendance. Right now we’re trapped in a very scary, very lonely new world.

  That’s been reaffirmed for me not once but twice in the last 24 hours. The dash for crops presented me with the first affirmation. It was desolate out there, completely vacuous. My heart was pounding so much it felt like it was going to burst right out of my chest, and yet there was nothing around me; nothing bust meadows and empty space. Even the walkers I had sought to distract up to the cliff edge and out of our way were desperately lagging behind, so much so that I had time enough to fill my backpack with a dozen corn on the cobs, even more maize kernels, a couple of cabbages and a hefty marrow before they had even reached the stone wall between us. The farmer’s fields proved a survivor’s riches.

  A little more content in the pace I had in my pocket, as well as the knives, I ran on toward the farmhouse and found it thankfully vacant, at least to my knowledge; I didn’t stray beyond the kitchen and again had enough minutes spare to loot a handful of jams, eggs ad dried foods. My backpack brimming and yet my confidence now less so, I turned on my heels and ran for the far corner of the cabbage patch, away from the slow-to-catch-up corpses that had proven such a lumbering enemy. A handful of carrots later and I had already negotiated the stone wall again and gave a cursory glance back to see the cadavers heading straight for the farmhouse, my escape successfully averted.

  Though it had been mere minutes, the loneliness felt decades old; for miles the scene was one of emptiness, nothing coming and nothing going. Just craggy cliff edges, wooded hillsides and a salty, blood-laden stench in the air.

  And then, as I turned to face the base we now called home, there it was. The menacing, seemingly cerebral corpse that has so stalked our survival for weeks. It stood right there in front of me, not thirty feet away and ominously between my now, and my safety. From solitude to shock in seconds, I hesitated and scrambled for thoughts. It stood too tantalisingly close to the pallet-born ledge that I had crafted to give me quick passage over the rear fence. It grew visibly angrier and voracious as the seconds passed by, facing me down and twitching all over as if it couldn’t hold back any longer. A savage, flesh-stripping attack had been a long time coming from this particular blood-thirsty beast and I quickly worked out that my only way past it would be the most primitive of diversions. I would have to run into space in the opposite direction and as it gave chase, turn on my heels again and damn near risk turning my ankle to sprint back to the ledge and over the fence.

  Fitness and agility – and vast open space – were on my side today, but they won’t always be. I know that. I may have outrun several unwieldy walkers and out-thought a more astute, aggressive other, but there’s only so much running you can do – especially with a babe in arms. And I won’t always be so fortunate either. This brave new world is no place for misguided confidence.

  I don’t think Jenny and I have ever hugged so tightly; she watched the whole drama with our haunting corpse play out from the observatory and confessed there was a moment she didn’t think I would make it. We embraced for 20 minutes, neither of us wanting to let go of the other. All the while, I felt the gaunt gaze of that insatiable cadaver piercing through the walls with renewed intent. True enough, as we turned to face the window, it stared back at us through the wiry mesh of the fence, pressed up against the surface and convulsing with an antagonistic hunger. Though reunited and relieved, we were met with a feeling entrapment and isolation all over again.

  26th March 2016

  Dear diary

  An impromptu miracle in the control centre has done little to ease our sense of foreboding in this ever-lonely, chilling world. Quite by chance, it seemed, fresh life was breathed into the site’s surveillance system when I was confusedly tapping away at various buttons and commands. Nothing has registered for weeks and weeks of us being here and then, in mere moments, the system swung into action.

  We would never have even known it existed, but the site seems to have a surveillance network throughout Porthreth village. It can’t have been known about, nor could it have been legal in a 21st century beset by civil rights, but right here from this disused military base someone, for some reason, was keeping tabs on the village at large.

  Four cameras that would once have provided a snapshot of the community, now only tell a tale of quiet bleakness.

  · Cam1 – What appears to be a traffic camera positioned along the winding rural roads that comprise the entrance to the village.

  · Cam2 – Another traffic camera, positioned just past the school and towards our old apartment; it must be mounted atop a street light or something similar.

  · Cam3 – A camera that must be sited somewhere in the woodland. Not far from the road, it has a perfect view of the school and must be just far enough into the hillside to be discretely masked by the thick of the trees.

  · Cam4 – Located in The Square, probably in the pub car park and with a brilliant view of the heart of the village. It must be mounted high, such is its ability to just about zoom in on the beach via the harbour.

  Each has a compelling range and provides a perfect picture quality – but what they hell would they have been used for? Here and now, the cameras seem redundant, such is the lack of anything to observe. The eerie emptiness is chilling; the belying calm is nothing short of unnerving. The mass of zombies that once made the streets untenable, as we found to our own cost, now appear to have moved on, perhaps in the throngs of corpses that followed my flare like a flock of sheep. The roads look passable.

  But it isn’t all that it seems. The threat has not gone away, far from it. And we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security – as if such thing exists these days. Upon closer inspection, we see clusters of cadavers skulking on street corners, while other pockets of puss-filled undead idly loiter in gardens and hedgerows. Many houses project the silhouettes of what appear to be stumbling stiffs trapped in their mindless pursuit of fleshy feasts.


  It makes for beguiling, yet soon demoralising viewing. Porthreth as we knew it is all but gone. If we had even the faintest slither of hope for the village, for the community, those four cameras have all but extinguished it. Our thoughts turned to those still surviving in the church, struggling to combat the cold and make ends meet. Are they still there? Have they made it this far? Would it really be all that satisfying if they have? Perhaps we could find a way to get a message to them, to get them up here and build a new community, a new existence for all…

  27th March 2016

  We’re searching for clarity and clear thought this afternoon, having endured a fright in the night. The security light to the rear of the building came on, and stayed on. We could see it in the tiny clearance between the bottom of the blinds and the surface of the floor, seeping in through every crack and crevice of the window. Is there anything more unsettling than that? Knowing that something or someone is out there, something has triggered the security light, the very thing meant to alert you to an unexpected event.

  It's the fear, the crippling fear that the light itself evokes – it's the threat or anticipation of danger. The best movies were always based on suggestion, on paranoia. The worst fears are irrational; they are based upon suggestion, implication, and over-complicated thought. That's exactly what that light represents – imagination running wildly away with itself.

  It spawned so many questions: Who or what triggered it, and why? Was it just the gusting winds sweeping in over the cliff top, or are we to expect some kind of threat? Was it just an aimlessly wandering walker? We still don't know. Short of stepping outside into the unknown, into the dark of the night, we have no way of knowing for sure who or what triggered the infrared sensor. It tripped a couple of times in a 10-minute spell and then there was nothing for the rest of the night, not that we know of.

  I'm concerned, deeply concerned. Especially so given the slain corpses that we witnessed outside the fence only a couple of weeks ago. We still don't know who was responsible for those acts, or why - or where they have been since. We didn't see any signs of them during the mass flock of undead at the fence, nor during my crop run just the other day once the coast was clear – but now this. Is it all linked, or completely over-complicated thought, again?

  Concerned though I am, it isn't lost on me how equally absurd it all is too; here we are, Easter Sunday 2016, sat square in the middle of a horrific zombie apocalypse and having slain countless violent corpses to survive this long, and we are worried about the flicker of a security light in the early hours. It sounds ridiculous, but the paranoid mind is a very powerful thing – and we’re conscious that the last thing we need is any kind of new threat thrown into the mix.

  28th March 2016

  I cannot stop thinking about the so-called stalker walker. Ever since it faced me down out there just beyond the perimeter fence, it’s gnawed at my subconscious and provides a daily reminder – as if it were needed – of how lucky I am to still be here in one piece, without even a scratch or scrape.

  It doesn’t just stalk the site anymore, it hounds my mind and I can’t decide which is worse – knowing that it’s out there, or incessantly thinking about it being out there. It’s firmly got into my head. I think it was the moment our eyes locked on each other and that realisation that it had little other thought than to rip me to shreds; not in the same way as all of the other cadavers out there, but almost in a targeted, lustful manner, as if it has actively hunted us down. I guess it has – we know it has – and it has shown some kind of cerebral traits completely out of context with all other reanimated corpses. But that moment when our eyes met brought a huge reality check.

  It has also been stirring all kinds of memories from this apocalypse; thoughts of those we’ve killed or narrowly avoided, recollections of the savage things we have witnessed, even stills from the TV screen of the tragedies unfolding during the early onset of the apocalypse. About a 20 different faces seem to transition through my mind on a loop, some of those I know, some of those I have been face-to-face with, and some I couldn’t even place. They haunt me during the small hours.

  The biggest obstacle that this unwavering enemy poses right now, however, is to our plans for fortification. I cannot dig the trench we so desperately need to excavate while it is even vaguely in the vicinity. It’s not like any other lumbering figure of the undead that you can simply keep an eye on or lure away, it has so far proven itself to be ‘smarter’ than that. I can’t believe I just wrote that…

  I don’t even feel like I can take it on and plunge a knife into its bloody head like I might its peers. It somehow has this towering, foreboding aura about it like no other cadaver. I don’t want to be anywhere near it, let alone on the same side of the fence as it. Even now, as I write this from the secure depths of the living quarters, it’s almost as if I can feel its gaze penetrating the thick concrete walls and reaching deep into my soul – and its yearning to ravage my flesh from the inside out.

  As long as it’s out there, around the base, we can’t get to grips with the trench excavation. It’s a major stumbling block; I feel certain we’ll need to have such a measure in place sooner rather than later. Our lives could depend on it.

  It’s not as if we can even take a gun to its head; a gunshot would alert any and all passing corpses within about a five-mile radius. That’s not even a generous assessment; we’d be lucky to survive the amount of undead that would be unleashed upon the site in the hours that followed. I guess it all depends how quickly we can dig out a perimeter trench and shore up any other defences – we may have to weigh up whether the shot of a firearm ringing out is a risk we have to take in the next couple of days. I don’t think we can wait much longer than that.

  Though we successfully diverted the hordes of corpses away from the site, we have to live in the knowledge that they could meander macabrely back in its direction just as easily. The crunch of a twig snapping under foot, the squawk of a seagull, or even the rasping rustle of litter floating on the wind is enough to summon their unwanted attention. We are secure again for now, but it could change in a mere moment.

  29th March 2016

  Day 72. I think we may have unearthed our phantom bell-ringer at the school.

  Three days since the surveillance system unexpectedly came online, and we have barely had anything but deflating scenes to look out upon. Porthreth as we knew it is all but gone, with the system’s four active cameras painting a desperate picture of survival. They served only to depress, until today.

  While scanning the cameras as part of our early morning routine of looking for signs of life, we made a significant, if not inconclusive, discovery. On Cam3, and quite by chance, we saw movement from the wooden play equipment in the school grounds. Zooming in, we could just make out a darkly dressed figure hunched within the tree-house style cabin – the same kind of wooden play equipment structure that we found ourselves seeking refuge in during those dank, desolate days of late February in the thick of the woodland. Great minds really must think alike.

  Much lower to the ground, whoever it is must be far more exposed to the threat of cadavers, yet appears to go largely unnoticed. There are few, if any wandering corpses in the vicinity, from what we can see. We checked Cam2, positioned just beyond the school, and it appears to confirm the lack of undead surrounding the school.

  So is this the explanation behind the seemingly methodical bell-ringing we heard on several occasions in the last couple of months? There’s little to confirm it, but it would be one hell of a coincidence. Whoever it is makes little movement, barely breaking cover to adjust their shelter and blankets when we spotted them; it was only a forearm poking out of the side of the canopy that caught our attention. We watched almost religiously for almost an hour for any clue as to their identity – or any detail at all – but with no movement to give anything away. We couldn’t waste any more time than that, we have to make the most of the daylight hours to fortify the place and assess the furtive actions of the
sinister corpse that is yet to kill us.

  Speaking of which, having finally located it to the far left of the site as we look out, our very own haunting cadaver kept an unnervingly safe distance today – so much so that I was able to make a start on the trench I’m so determined to plough beyond the perimeter fence. As Jenny kept watch to all sides, and particularly our left, I ventured just outside the main gate and began to dig out a five-feet deep ditch to the right of the gate. Using a ladder removed from the bunk beds in the base’s living quarters for my own escape, I was able to dig out a trough both deep enough and wide enough to maroon several corpses all at once. Progress was slow and unsettling, excavating on the edge of my anxieties as I was, but we have about a six-feet stretch of pit started and so the trench is underway. It will take weeks at this rate, but we hope that this added defence will have hundreds of cadavers beached should we be under attack again in the future.

  Today was indeed a day of progress. Questions prevail, however, about those sighted at the school – who is it? How many are there? How long have they been there? What is their status or motive? As things stand, we know very little. We have seen only one figure, presumably male, dressed in dark hooded clothing and tightly shrouded in equally dark fabrics. But it is reason enough to have hope and we intend to keenly observe Cam3 throughout the evening for more clues as to the identity and actions of the mystery survivor.