I didn’t bother asking but gathered that the four-leaf clover on the emblem beneath the ‘Celtic Football Club’ emblazoned on it had something to do with it.
Since I wasn’t really inclined to listen to their banter, I set off at as steady a pace as I could manage. That wasn’t at all fast since I’d not eaten in days and before then my diet had consisted of snack foods. My belt was on its last notch already. Like everyone else, I was on the apocalypse diet, the number one weight loss program since the fall of the world.
As we approached the building, I couldn’t help but notice that to my right was the motorway which was full of the undead on their endless travels and to my left was a river that looked to be around twenty metres wide.
That certainly meant that anyone approaching from the south had one way of doing so. Which likely made maintaining security easier.
At the bottom of the hill we climbed a barbed wire fence, carefully I might add, we were in no position to get an infection from a cut, and set off along the road. As we walked, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of any undead.
Sure, I could smell the stink from the motorway off to my right, hidden behind an embankment and a couple of hundred metres of scrubland. Could hear their incessant moaning too. But on the narrow road we were on… nothing.
That suggested that they were organised enough to kill any that approached and dispose of their bodies. Not a bad idea to be honest.
“You calmed down yet?” Georgia asked, breaking into my reverie.
I glanced at her and raised one eyebrow as I said, “what do you think?”
“That you’re being…” she struggled with the right word and finally settled on, “human!”
“We might be different but we are still human.”
“No! We’re better than them! We’re more than they will ever be.”
“Foolishness,” I said with a mocking smile. “If anything, we are less than they are, we are lacking.”
She stared at me for a moment, eyes searching my face and then she shook her head.
“That bitch did a real number on you, didn’t she?” Before I could respond she held up one hand to silence me. “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t rag on your precious Lily too much.”
“Be careful,” I said and it was her turn to wear the mocking smile.
“I like you, Ryan, I do. We could have a lot of fun together but you need to get over that nonsense she fed you. We kill who we want, when we want and because we want to. No other reason.”
“Once, maybe,” I said. “Now… I’m not so sure.”
“She stared straight ahead as she considered her next words then turned and said, “do you even want to fuck me?”
“What?”
“I could understand if you were into guys, but you’re not. You’re hung up on her! Monogamy is not something our type have ever had a problem with, so why haven’t you tried to fuck me?”
“Never occurred to me,” I muttered as I refused to look at her. In the back of my mind that irritating little voice sniggered.
“Fine, well here we are then,” she said. “I want to fuck you, let’s go and do it now.”
“No.”
“Why not? I’m attractive and I’m good at sex. You’d enjoy it.”
How could I explain to her that I wasn’t interested in her or anyone for that matter? Well, one person perhaps but that door was closed for good. I’d had a life of misery and hate and then had a glimpse of something more. Something that I could barely touch upon, but had been affected by. How could I tell her that I’d found out that I could love someone?
I couldn’t.
“It’s not the right time,” I said instead. “Half-starved and stinking from weeks on the road.”
She rolled her eyes at that and pouted, crossing her arms beneath her breasts as she sulked a little. She’d get over it or she wouldn’t. I didn’t care either way and fortunately, we were approaching the great wall that surrounded the building and our approach had been noticed, so I didn’t need to continue the conversation.
There was activity atop the wall of containers and train carriages and people began to gather. The wall was a good thirty feet high, more than enough to prevent the lone shambler clambering over so I guessed that they might have encountered some Ferals too. Not a great sign, but they’d survived.
“Who goes there?” a voice called from above and I looked up, shading my eyes with one hand. It was the first voice I’d heard for a while without the Scottish accent. English by the sounds and upper-class.
“We’re friendly,” I called just as Amos said, “Ahoy there!”
He glared at me and I just grinned back before waving him forward. If he wanted to play at being leader, I was willing to let him. But not without a little prodding to remind him that I was allowing it.
“Will you let us in?” Amos called. “We’ve been on the road a good long way.”
A rope ladder was thrown from the top of the wall and it just about reached the bottom. Before we could move towards it, someone began to climb down. I shaded my eyes and watched him descend.
If I were to make an educated guess, I’d say military. He had close-cropped hair, brown but starting to grey. Clean shaven with the clean-cut good looks of a man who had taken the time to care for his appearance.
He was slim but moved with a self-assurance that spoke of a confidence in his abilities and a knowledge of his own strengths and limits. If he was typical of the people inside the fortress, we wouldn’t have an easy time.
The man dropped the final few feet to the road and took three steps forward before stopping with hands on his hips as he looked at each of us in turn. He nodded once when he noted Georgia. His face didn’t betray anything and I held out a small hope that he’d just noted her presence as a point in the pro column to our entering his home.
“Who are you?” he said finally and introductions were made swiftly by my new companions. As each of them said their name, he nodded slightly as though committing them to memory and then it was my turn.
“Ryan,” he frowned at that and seemed to take a longer look my way, his eyes darting to Georgia for a second then back to me. I tried to appear as innocent and unthreatening as possible, though had no real idea how to look like that anymore.
“Okay then,” he said with a final nod. He reminded me of one of those bobbing bird toys you could get for your desk. “Names Macintosh but most people call me Lou.”
“Wouldn’t they call you Mac?” I asked and his lips tightened.
“Macintosh is my name, Lieutenant is… was, my rank. People here were used to calling me by my rank.”
“Lou… lieutenant,” I said. “Yeah, I get that I suppose.”
“What do you want here?” he asked bluntly.
“Food, water and a place to hide from the tens of thousands of zombies that have been pushing us north for months,” I said with a grin. Amos glared and I gave an unrepentant half-shrug.
“The what?” Lou said, mouth agape.
“Aye now laddie,” Amos said with a warning glare for me. “There’s some great horde of the damned things moving this way. Give it a few hours and you’ll see them come over yon hill.”
He waved back to the hill we’d descended and Lou looked from us to the hill and back again as he scratched at the back of his neck. His plaid shirt was clean and new looking, I couldn’t help but notice.
“What is this place?” I asked. “Or what was it?”
“Why?” Lou asked with a shake of his head before turning back to Amos. “How many did you say?”
“Could be a hundred thousand or more,” he said. “Stretch as far as the eye can see and cover the land like a swarm of the blasted flies that they bring with them.”
“What type?” Lou asked and when Amos didn’t immediately answer he said, “you must have noticed there’s three different types?”
“Seen Shamblers and Ferals,” I said before Amos could speak. “That’s what we’ve taken to calling them.�
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“As good a name as any,” he muttered. “You’d better come in and debrief us fully. We’ll spare some food and water for you but don’t expect too much.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said with a grin that brought a new scowl to Amos’s face.
Lou turned and moved to the ladder, he paused briefly to say, “your weapons will be taken from you at the top. Refuse and you’ll come back down, without the ladder. Clear?”
“As crystal laddie,” Amos said.
Just as the man began to climb, it finally registered with me and I blinked as I took a step forwards.
“Wait! What do you mean three types?”
Chapter 15
I gave up my knife, with a great deal of reluctance I might add, when I reached the top of their wall. A bunch of hard-faced and competent looking men and women with a variety of spears and axes watched us warily. More than one compact bow was in evidence too. I ignored the stares and while the others were disarmed, I took a moment to appreciate the view I was afforded by being so high.
Pallets loaded high with cardboard boxes filled the area between the wall and the building. While it didn’t leave much room to manoeuvre, it told me that they needed the room inside the building for their people.
Some of those people worked around the outside of the building, but the majority were there to play the role of sentry. Enough of them that I figured they had pretty good coverage of every direction and nothing would sneak up on them.
From inside I could hear the rhythmic sound of metal beating against metal. It was muffled enough that I suspected they’d actively tried to soundproof whatever they were doing as best they could.
The defences were sound, the wall itself was high and wide, the containers and carriages it had been made of had been filled with all manner of heavy junk. Enough that I doubted even the horde we had following us would have an easy time of pushing it aside.
Beyond the wall to the north were the great cranes that had been used to lift the various pieces of the wall into place and a brief glimpse at where two of the containers connected was enough to show me that they had welded them together with metal plates.
While to the east, through the trees, I could just about make out the motorway. So close to the city, a mere twenty miles away, it was packed with all manner of vehicles and between them walked a seemingly endless number of the undead.
To the west was the river, fairly fast moving and deep judging by what I could see. It would give pause to the undead. Sure, some would be pushed into it by those behind, but the majority would have the good sense to avoid it. Which was a shame because the wall they had made effectively blocked all travel to the north so the only way for the zombies to go would be through it.
The walkway around the roof was bolted fast to the wall and it would have taken time and skill to get the place set up. Considering the noise, they’d have made while doing it, I couldn’t not be impressed. Lou had done a great job.
Without a sign on the front of the building, I couldn’t tell what it had been before it became the fortress it was then, but I could guess. On the edge of an industrial estate with easy access to the motorway, I didn’t think I’d be too far wrong at thinking it was a distribution centre. If I was right, that meant food most likely.
“These uns’ are guid tae go,” said one of the sentries, a thickset man with braided red hair. He looked like the stereotypical Scottish warrior and spoke with such a heavy accent that it took a moment for me to register what he’d said.
“Thank you, Mal,” Lou said. “If you would all follow me.”
The ladder we’d climbed, was pulled up and thrown over the other side to hang down the inner wall. Lou was the first down the ladder and curious, I followed next which likely annoyed Amos.
“Hoo abit some scran?” a woman said as we reached the bottom. She thrust a bowl of baked beans towards me. It steamed nicely and my mouth began to water.
“Thank you.”
Her accent, like many of the others in the base, was heavy and thick with the Scottish burr that so annoyed me. I was fairly sure she’d asked, ‘how about some food’ and realised I’d have to filter everything I heard to actually understand them. Not for the first time I wondered why I’d bothered coming north.
“Och, that’s great!” Amos said as he received the next bowl. “Thank ye.”
I shook my head at how easily he changed the tone of his voice and the words to reflect that of the people he was with. While speaking to Georgia and me, he’d effected a more northern English tone but around true Scots folk, he dropped into the same heavy accent as them.
Lou waited, surprisingly patiently, for each of us to reach the courtyard and receive a steaming bowl of baked beans. He gestured for us to follow him and eat along the way, but since I’d been the first down I’d already finished the food. I handed it back to the lady who had given it to me with a smile of thanks and followed the others as my belly rumbled, not nearly close to being full.
He led us between stacked pallets of tinned food, giving the occasional nod of greeting to people as he passed and then into the building. It was cool and dark inside, a welcome relief from the unrelenting sun of the last few days.
There was little to see to be honest. Plenty of pallets stacked high with cardboard boxes and that was about it except for one corner of the building. Partition walls had been raised and as I passed the open doorway, a ridiculously large man in just a leather apron looked up from his work before raising his hammer and bringing it down on the piece of metal he held against an anvil with steel tongs.
“You have a blacksmith?” I said, barely able to keep the delight from my voice.
“We certainly do,” Lou said. “He had a shop on the edge of town and we were able to bring most of his tools here. Had to build him a forge from scratch, but we have a couple of engineers who are damned good at their job.”
“Must be hot in there,” Georgia said as she passed with a lingering, appreciative look at the muscular man. She licked her lips slowly as she gazed at him, an all too conscious gesture of desire he couldn’t fail to notice.
“Aye, poor sod is in there twelve hours a day,” Lou said. “No idea how he stands it. Had two lads pass out from the heat already when they tried to help him out.”
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked.
“Living quarters are upstairs,” Lou said. “Elevator no longer works and we’ve taken out the stairs.”
“Why?” Kareem asked.
“Security,” I said before Lou could answer. “No one can get to the living quarters without a ladder. Means they’re safe from zombies if they ever break in.”
Lou gave me an appraising look as he nodded.
“That’s right. Not that we expect any to get in here, but we’ve had problems with live people too.”
“Raiders?” Amos said. “That’s fair terrible to hear, so it is.”
“Killed four of my people last time they attacked,” he said. “Haven’t gotten over the wall yet but they keep trying.”
“Surprised you have that problem,” I said and when he looked at me, I added, “Town full of zombies above you and the motorway to the east.”
“The town’s not full of them,” he said and it was my turn to be surprised.
“How come?”
He just shook his head and I shared a glance with Georgia as he stopped beneath a hole in the ceiling and reached up to pull on a cord. Somewhere above us, the clang of a bell rang out and a minute later, a rope ladder was thrown down the twenty or so feet to us.
“No checking we’re friendly?” I asked but was ignored as Lou clambered up first.
I followed with a grin for an increasingly furious Amos and pulled myself up onto the next floor, pausing as I found two rather sharp spear heads just inches from my face.
“At ease lads,” Lou said and the two men, barely more than teenagers really, pulled their spears back.
“Your blacksmith makes the spears?”
While the ground floor had been used for storage only, the first floor was full of people going about their daily business. Rows of tents had been set up to give privacy to the people who lived there and there were cushions and blankets aplenty.
On the far side of the building were a row of ovens and grills. They had a staff of people there providing the cooking for all, but as I watched, a woman rose from beside her tent and wandered over to an open grill and set to with doing some cooking of her own.
The windows, set high up into the wall, allowed in a fair amount of light and had been opened to allow some fresh air in. It was swelteringly hot and more than one person lounged around, the heat making them lethargic. The stench of so many bodies together was better than I’d expected and I guessed they at least had some water for cleaning themselves. Something I sorely missed being able to do.
Men, women and children, all shared the same space and that was a good indicator of the kind of people they were.
“Follow me,” Lou said and without waiting for a reply, headed off towards one of the few office type buildings.
I could see from the markings on the floor and wall that there had been more such buildings, but they had been taken apart to provide space for the people, leaving just a few.
The first one we passed was obviously used for storage and a glance through the open door revealed crates of what looked to be marked as explosives. Stacked on top of those crates were a variety of assault rifles and combat gear. Stored for future use or perhaps because they no longer had bullets for them.
It was hard to get a count of how many were there, but I estimated there was less than a hundred people in the entire compound. Not much less. An impressive feat to keep so many people alive so close to a city.
In the room that he led us to, were a number of plastic backed chairs set in rows and he gestured for us to take a seat as he closed the door softly behind us. He took up an at rest stance, legs apart and arms clasped behind his back as he stared at us, then spoke.
March of the Dead (Killing the Dead Book 11) Page 11