Plague Of The Revenants

by Chilvers, Edward

  “You mean somebody has actually been making uniforms?” Said Kit with trepidation.

  “That’s right,” I said. “And the only reason people wear uniforms is so that they can be singled out by the rest of the crowd. Seems like somebody is trying to mount a more organised fight back, although their true intentions remain to be seen.”

  I now completed a circuit of the pub and noticed that a side door which had previously been boarded up was now split wide open, as if it had been smashed in with a battering ram. I narrowed my eyes and peered inside, seeing nothing but darkness in the pale winter’s light. I snapped my fingers for the flashlight, which Dev quickly passed to me, flicked it on and stepped cautiously inside. I saw at once we were in the kitchen. The stainless steel units were still intact but covered with a thin layer of dust. Looking down I saw several sets of footprints leading to the bar area. The others had followed me inside. I opened up a few cupboards in search of food but there were nothing except indistinguishable mould. I approached the door to the bar and pressed my ear against it but there was no sound. Just then something growled in the dark. I swung my flashlight around but at that moment Stan let out a cry and rushed past me back through the door, knocking the torch out of my hands as he went. The torch clattered to the floor and the beam shone uselessly against the corner of the bar. I dropped to my knees to retrieve it but at that moment a great heavy weight that was akin to a deadweight sack of potatoes landed on top of me and my nostrils were immediately filled with the foul smell of putrefaction. I felt the hammer slip from my hands. I heard cries from the others and I wondered if we had been assailed but at that moment the weight was suddenly lifted off me. I seized up the torch and shone it around in time to see the revenant send Kit flying against the corner. The revenant now advanced upon her. I was up in a moment and raised the torch aloft, charging forwards and leapt upon the revenant’s back, smashing the metal end of the torch hard against its head. The two of us clattered to the floor but the revenant now drew upon its full primeval strength and forced its head and upper body towards me. Suddenly I felt a splash of blood and the revenant went limp. Kit picked up the torch and shone it upon me. Dev stood above both myself and the revenants with a long carving knife that now dripped black blood. “Are you alright?” Kit asked me urgently. “Bitten?”

  “Don’t think so,” I replied, getting unsteadily to my feet, taking the torch and spending a good minute checking myself over for signs I might be infected. Fortunately I came back clean.

  I bent down and started to examine the revenant. It was male, probably around forty years old when it was alive and quite a substantial weight which went some way to explaining its abnormal strength. “Look at this,” I said at last, pointing the flashlight at a darkened hole to the right of the revenant’s chest. “A bullet wound. Somebody tried to finish this thing off before we got to it.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” suggested Paul. “Perhaps the guy tried to finish itself off when he got bitten, or maybe somebody else got bitten, finished it off then turned themselves.”

  “Possible,” I acknowledged. “But let’s look around.”

  We completed a circuit of the bar and restaurant area but found nothing unusual except that the place appeared to have been thoroughly looted. In the end there was nothing left to do except return to the truck, emptied handed once more but with a headful of unanswered questions to go with it. Stan and Gloria had locked themselves into the truck. I strode up to the truck and rapped hard upon the window. “Open the fucking door,” I instructed, trying to control my temper. “Open up you fucking cowards or I’ll smash it in, drag you out, shoot you through the kneecaps and leave you for the revenants to pick at.” Maybe I was being too harsh on them. I didn’t care. For now there was nothing for it except to go back to the van and admit defeat. Before doing so we congregated once more in the car park where an urgent discussion took place. As I looked at the sky I could see we only had around ninety minutes of daylight left, too late to go out looking for supplies especially given the scale of the threat we might well be facing.

  “We’ve only got food for the next couple of days,” said Kit. “We’ve just sat back recently and enjoyed having moved into the farmhouse. Sure, we’ve been around the houses in our area but that’s hardly going to last us. Last time we went scavenging from house to house we lost a lot of people.”

  “We’re going to have to go back to scavenging,” said Paul, sounding deeply downhearted. “But then who knows we won’t run into whoever did this?”

  “Starvation rations it is,” I said with a heavy sigh. “It was fool of us to allow us to get this low. We should have come back the following day and looted those cars, then we wouldn’t be in this position.”

  “Perhaps we could head for town?” Suggested Dev hopefully. “Find a supermarket or something?”

  “Towns are a death-trap,” said Kit.

  “They are,” I agreed. “But it won’t be long before we’re too desperate not to do it.”

  “Maybe we should go on,” said Kit. “It would be awful to come back empty handed.”

  “It’s getting dark,” said Paul. “If there are any enemies about they’ll see our headlights.”

  “You’re right,” I acknowledged. “We should head back home. We’ve got information and some idea as to what we’re up against. We’ll have to spend the next few days scavenging closer to home.”

  And so we began the long ride home. It felt like a retreat from an invading army, which was exactly what it was in a way. And to think I imagined the revenants would prove our only concern. “This is fucking great,” whinged Stan, his tone the manner of a sulking teenager. “We’ve got nothing. No food and we almost got killed in the process.

  “Shut up!” I snapped angrily, my patience snapping at last. “Just shut both your fucking mouths do you hear me? If I have one more self-pitying word out of either of you I’ll let you out of this truck and you can fend for yourselves from hereon in. It’s not like you haven’t leeched off us non-stop from the moment you got here. You were supposed to prove yourselves today but have you done that? Well have you? It was for your sake as well as everyone else because I sure as hell aren’t the only one getting sick to the back teeth of the both of you.”

  Stan shrugged and at that moment I noticed her was holding his coat tight. “Just what in the fuck is this?” I demanded, in a mixture of anger and amazement, as I reached into Stan’s coat and snatched the bottle of brandy he had been concealing since we set off back home. “where the fuck did you get this, huh?”

  “In the pub,” said Stan weakly. “It’s medicinal. I was going to share it.”

  “In the pub?” I repeated in astonishment. “You mean that same pub where you almost got me killed by the fucking revenant?” I would have gone further but at that moment there came a frantic beeping on the horn of Kit’s car and the flashing of lights. I slammed on the brakes of the truck and leapt out of the truck, hammer at the ready.

  “It’s a potato field!” Exclaimed Kit, and she was actually smiling which was a rare occurrence for her. “We forgot all about the fields which would have been planted at the start of the year! We can fill up and take what we want and they’ll be even fresher than the ones you found at the supermarket.”

  “Of course!” Exclaimed Paul. “The harvest is well overdue now and the potatoes should still be fresh in the ground.”

  I knew nothing about farming matters and to be truthful would not have been able to tell a potato plant from a common weed but when I pulled the first plant from the ground and saw the rich crop underneath I needed no more convincing. We pulled the potatoes from the ground with gusto, gathering them up in our arms, stems and all, before dumping them back in the trucks. “Keep the stems as well,” I said with a lopsided smile. “I have a plan for them as well.” It was then I noticed that Stan and Gloria had remained in the truck, even after all I had said to them earlier. “Get out here,” I told them two of them crossly. “G
et out there and prove yourselves. Do something useful for once in your lives.”

  On the drive back home I gave the keys to Dev and went and sat with Paul. I was sick of the sight of Stan and Gloria for one day.

  “They’re a disaster,” I said, my voice close to despair.

  “Why don’t you keep them around the farm?” Suggested Paul. “Have them cook and things like that?”

  “Because they’re strong enough to be doing far more than that,” I told him. “They’re young and fast and they need to be out there foraging and scavenging the same as us. This will be the rest of their lives as likely as not.”

  “What are your thoughts about today?” Asked Paul.

  “We won’t tell everyone what we saw,” I said. “Except Reverend Thorpe and Hammond that is. I don’t want to panic them after all. For now we’ll just say we came across this field and decided to pull it up because the potatoes wouldn’t keep much longer and the stuff in the tins at the highway would last a long time.”

  The others were waiting for us outside the church once more although the night was dark and there was a severe chill in the air. There was great surprise when we returned with two trucks filled with potatoes but this was tempered by the fact of us having returned with a full few weeks of food. They were happy enough with the potatoes but curious as to why we had seemingly abandoned our original plan. I brushed their questions away as best I could, trying not to sound deflective.

  “But what about the stuff from the cars?” Asked Reverend Thorpe.

  “We’ll talk about that later,” I said in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Right now just be thankful we brought anything back at all.”

  Thorpe nodded. He was perceptive enough not to push the matter when there were others about.

  “This is the first fresh food most of us will have had for months aside from the game we might have shot every now and again,” I said. “Fresh vegetables straight from the ground and without the artificial taste of the tin. People will appreciate it for a time, until we can find something else. To starve would be even worse for morale.”

  “Potatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and we’ll soon have a mutiny on our hands,” said Hammond. He said it lightly but there was a serious undertone to his words.

  “We may have to get used to it,” I told him. “From now on there isn’t going to be a steady source of meat unless we’re prepared to breed it ourselves, and that’s going to take time.”

  As the elders began to prepare the potatoes and Kit and Paul talked up the fresh food in a quickly thought out propaganda exercise I beckoned Reverend Thorpe into the vestry and told him what had happened. “Maybe it was a localised war,” I said after I had finished. “There must be other survivors out there, perhaps they’ve split off into factions.”

  “But you said some of the revenants had been shot with a machine gun?” Said Hammond doubtfully.

  “Yes but again that may not mean anything,” I replied, although there was doubt in my voice. “Any punk could have stolen a machine gun off a dead soldier. You have a point though. Whatever it is I don’t fancy being caught in the middle of it all. We’ve got our golf clubs, axes and a couple of shotguns and that works well enough against the revenants but it won’t stand up that well to any determined, organised force with a brain to use between them.”

  “What reason could they have had to fight?” Asked Reverend Thorpe.

  “I suppose people can always find an excuse for war,” I told him. “The only problem was one side appeared to have been greatly outnumbered, massacred even. I only saw one revenant in army uniform and believe me I was keeping my eyes peeled.”

  “We can’t fight,” said Thorpe. “At least not yet. If they came by tomorrow we’d just have to surrender and hope for the best.”

  “And if they decided to kill us all?” I asked him. “Maybe I’m over analysing things, but it was one hell of a statement they made, burning all those cars like that.”

  “So for now we just wait?”

  “I don’t see what else we can do,” I said. “We certainly don’t want to go out looking for trouble. After all, at bet they might be a roving horde, semi nomadic. Perhaps they’ll just loot the land and move on. We’ve had no signs of any permanent settlements around here. Certainly Hammond hasn’t seen anything from the tower so they can hardly be too close.”

  I had found some animal traps in one of the farmhouses we had looted a few weeks back. Initially I had hoped to use them to entrap revenants but soon found they were too small. Nonetheless I’d had an idea. When I got up the following morning I went out and adjusted the springs on the traps so they would not immediately kill smaller prey then went out and set those traps near some rabbit warrens. The plan worked and later I came back with five live rabbits. Kit saw me as I walked towards the barn with them. “Rabbit and potato pie?” She asked me curiously.

  “Not just yet,” I told her. “These rabbits are for breeding in the sheds. We can feed them the heads of the potato plants. In a month or so they’ll have started breeding and we’ll have a steady production line of meat.”

  “I suppose it’s for the best if we’re not going to be able to scavenge for much longer,” said Kit.

  “Where did you find the traps?”

  “In one of the barns we raided,” I told her. “I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure it would work but last night I put some of the potato stalks inside and sure enough we came back with quite a haul.”

  “Yet more mouths to feed,” sighed Kit.

  “We were worried about Stan and Gloria not working hard enough for the group,” I said. “We now here’s something she can do. She can be a farmer.”

  “And if she whinges on about that?”

  “Then we threaten to take her out on the road with us again.”

  “What about him?”

  “We need him,” I replied with determination. “He has to learn.”

  “Especially with that gang about,” said Kit. “Remember how we spoke the other day about this becoming a permanent thing? Well if it is to become permanent we’re going to have a showdown with that other gang someday.”

  “I know,” I acknowledged. “But the longer that confrontation takes to come the more time we have to plan.”

  A little later I went to see Hammond up on the roof. The policeman had constructed himself a sort of tent in which he had placed an outside wood burner to provide him some warmth, for it was bitterly cold up here. “You see that lot over there?” Said Hammond, pointing into the distance and passing me the binoculars. “They’ve hardly stopped. In a different location every day. In my experience this means something has unsettled them, and yet I know for a fact none of our group have been close to that part of the countryside for weeks now.”

  I looked towards a swarm of around two hundred revenants congregated around a farmhouse about five miles away. I recognised the place as one we had looted earlier in the autumn. “Have you seen any signs of proper life?” I asked him. “Perhaps the reason the revenants are moving is because they’ve been disturbed?”

  “Funny you should say that because I’ve noticed more of them around,” said Hammond. “Of course it may be because they’re spreading out from the cities as food becomes scarce but perhaps too they’re being displaced.”

  “What kind of thing would displace them?”

  “Fire possibly,” he replied. “Like that blaze which took care of that line of the cars the other day. As for signs of life as we know it I’m afraid that’s inconclusive. The light isn’t good on these winter days; mostly cloud, fog and low light. There are few clear days that allow me a clear view. Every now and again, towards the evening, I get a glimpse of something I think may be headlights but then it may also just be my tired old eyes. I don’t know why they move although I don’t necessarily think they’re going towards a group of survivors as you might expect.”

  After coming down from the tower I went and found Gloria who was with Stan as usua
l and brought her outside.

  “We need that whole part of the meadow dug up,” I told her, pointing and making an imaginary line between the fence and a large tree. “We need to put up fences and partitions as well but I’ll ask Mr Frey to give you a hand with that.”

  “But it’s freezing out here,” she protested.

  “Yes it is,” I said reasonably. “But there are far worse places to be and at least you’ll be around the farmhouse. Besides, compared to some farms this is pretty small. There won’t be as much to do as you think once we’ve got the groundwork done. You can scythe down grass for the rabbits and you can lay out the humane traps to hopefully catch some more.”

  “This is because of the other day isn’t it?” She said resentfully. “Because I took that brandy?”

  “It’s because it needs doing,” I said frankly. “This isn’t an army camp and we don’t punish punitively.”

  “Outside all this time?” She said fearfully.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re all fenced in. Myself and Mr Frey took care of that. But you need to work. I’ve said this to you many times before.”

  Gloria was still reticent but appeared glad she would not have to go out on raids anymore.

  The following day Gloria got started in the garden whilst I summoned Stan and Dev and told them we were going out scavenging. Hammond was right. The survivors could not live solely on potatoes forever without going quite mad.

  “Are we all going out?” Asked Stan.

  “Just the three of us,” I said cheerfully. “We’re going to look for some tins of stuff. Potatoes are good for now but we’ll all lose our minds if we have to eat them every day. There’s a row of former council houses a few miles away. We passed it yesterday and I’m told they have yet to be raided.”

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea to start raiding again?” Asked Reverend Thorpe with some concern.