Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent

by Trevor Donnelly

  “No, no,” said Rob hurriedly, “nobody ever thought of you in those terms.” He shared an awkward sideways look with Helena.

  Chapter Seven

  Back on Top

  The fence between the Bunker and the neighbouring car park had been knocked down on a previous venture, so the scavenging team could run straight over towards the cars.

  All of the survivors had been trained by Will the mechanic to hotwire a car, so they formed two groups of three and spread out in the car park. Each group had two people trying to hotwire, while one looked out for zombies.

  Tina tried a car door, and as it swung open a creature came tumbling out, scrabbling after the woman who had inadvertently set it free.

  The creature had been a young man, dressed entirely in black, with large black boots and long black hair that had been torn out in clumps. The back of its head was covered in bites and its skull showed through under the blood, gore and matted hair.

  Arlene had been on lookout in her group, and immediately swung her club at the zombie’s head. Her weapon had six-inch nails welded to the end. One of the nails penetrated the skull and sank full length into the monster’s brain.

  Arlene tried to pull the club out again, but it was stuck fast.

  She tugged, but the zombie’s head remained attached, so all she achieved was to pull the creature towards herself.

  As the zombie started to twist and turn, it wrenched the club from her hand. She pushed it away as she lost her grip.

  In a moment, almost comic but for the horror, the zombie twisted round, club still attached, swinging wildly in the air. The handle of the club struck Tina squarely on the forehead.

  Will left his car, vaulted over another car bonnet, heart pounding, ready to join in the fray.

  Tina dropped to the ground, floored by the blow to her head.

  The zombie followed her down, clawing at her face.

  Leaping after it, Will grabbed hold of the club. His palms smarted as he made contact.

  Using the zombie’s momentum to his advantage, Will gripped the club, changed its direction and smashed the monster’s face into the concrete of the car park.

  Once down, the club finally came free with a sickening, sucking sound, and Will almost toppled over; he staggered and bumped his nose into a parked car. He yelled and cursed, as he tried to shake off the tears that had instantly formed in his eyes.

  Unabated, the creature scrabbled around on the floor.

  As it turned its head Will saw with horror that its nose had been completely squashed flat: a bloody, pulpy mess on its face. Will felt as if his own nose was in a similar state.

  The creature grabbed Will’s foot and bit into his shoe.

  The shoe leather stopped teeth reaching his skin, but it felt as though his foot was in a vice.

  Will used his free foot to stamp on the hideous mangled head with all his weight. He felt a satisfying crack, but still the creature gripped his shoe, and scratched at his leg.

  While this drama had been unfolding Arlene had been trying to hotwire a white minivan. Her shaking fingers were getting nowhere.

  Danniella had more luck trying to start her car: she yelped in triumph as the engine came to life.

  It was an old estate car. She had wanted to go for a van or people carrier, but Will insisted that old cars were much easier to hotwire.

  Leaving the engine purring Danniella leapt out of the driving seat to help the others.

  As she did so she noticed over a hundred zombies lumbering towards them, about fifty metres off.

  Even in her panic she was aware that the freeze had affected their motor skills: their limbs looked stiff, their run ungainly; it may have slowed them down, but it would not make them any less deadly up close.

  The shelter of the car, however, had been warm enough to make the creature wrestling with Will and Tina as lively as a fresh zombie on heat.

  Danniella wielded her own sharpened bedpost and stuck the end into the skull just below the ear.

  “You’ve got to the fuck out of here: they’re coming!”

  Will staggered to his feet, wiped his eyes and caught sight of the shambling horde. He yelled “Run!”

  The creatures had reached the end of the car park. Their bodies were glistening with frost, their limbs stiff and clumsy, but by weight of numbers they pushed, climbed and squeezed in between the cars like an unstoppable tide.

  Danniella rammed her post deeper into the monster’s skull, and tried to stir its brains.

  After a few moments of this punishment the creature stopped moving, and Danniella pulled her stick, stained grey-red and stinking from its brains.

  They clambered into the car. Will paused at the door to the driving seat and looked in. It was already occupied by Danniella. He shook his head, bringing a fresh wave of pain to his bleeding nose, and then he climbed in the back with Tina. Arlene took the front passenger.

  Siobhan had negotiated her way over the back seat into the large trunk, where she knelt down and looked out of the back window at the rapidly approaching monsters. The others seemed to be painfully slow at getting into the car.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” She screamed.

  The car lurched forward as the first of the monsters reached it. Siobhan had an uncomfortably close view of the zombies as they reached for her. Frost coated their faces, and the blood, gore and disfigurements were less visible under this perfect white veneer. They looked otherworldly, like animated shop window dummies.

  * * *

  Will found himself on the road with a car full of women. No matter how grim the situation he could not help but be a little pleased with himself.

  He was by no means handsome, but his good humour and gentleness meant he was not unpopular with the ladies. However, he had never felt quite so in demand.

  Will had made a few journeys since the dead had risen. He had made his way to a temporary refuge in Elsbeth’s house; he had fled there with Jim, Summer, Danniella and several others who had not made it all the way. Then he had gone on their first shopping trip to get food and scientific equipment, and stopped off at Father James’ Church, and the University of Rochester. Despite being encouraged by so much female company, Will felt that this time his luck would run out. Every journey had produced casualties: sometimes more casualties than survivors. He was not particularly fit, nor particularly good in a crisis. So far he had just been lucky.

  * * *

  Danniella thought she knew where the suppliers of medical equipment for her lab were based; it was an address in an industrial estate in Surrey. The Bunker too was located in an industrial estate which was far from safe, but perhaps such areas were less populated than other possible sources of equipment.

  It was a relatively short distance from the Bunker to the medical supplies warehouse; in days gone by it would have taken an hour (as long as the M25 hadn’t been blocked). Now the M25 was permanently blocked and most of the small roads were blocked at one point or another: sometimes it was crashed cars or lorries; sometimes it was clear that villages and towns had tried to set up barricades when they had known the plague had been heading their way.

  Every barricade they saw was woefully inadequate.

  Will looked at a row of cars parked across the road. The battered vehicles were topped with a roll of barbed wire that had been flattened at various points, and red and ragged lumps had stuck to the barbs.

  “No entry, team,” Will beat his fist against the dashboard in frustration.

  Arlene looked out from the back seat: “Denied!” she muttered grimly to nobody in particular.

  “Look at that sad-arsed fucking barricade.” Will remarked as they drew parallel to it while Danniella did a three-point-turn, “I wonder if it even managed to slow the zombies down.”

  Running a hand over his face, Will winced slightly when his palm passed over his still tender nose.

  “Slowed them down for about five fucking minutes.”

  “Shit!” Yelped Arlene, “make that fiv
e fucking seconds.”

  The former inhabitants of the village had heard the car, and were clambering out of the barricade towards them.

  Some of these zombies were frost-covered and clumsy, but others seemed as lithe and uncannily athletic as the day they had died.

  The first of the crowd ran headlong into the back corner of the car as Danniella completed her turn, and started to speed away.

  Looking in her rear view mirror she saw the creature run at full speed, untiring, unstoppable.

  “We may just be a bit more fucked than we thought we were!”

  “Dan,” Arlene said with a drawl, “I thought we were just about as fucked as it was possible to be; don’t tell me it’s worse.”

  Danniella laughed, “I think it just might be. We thought the zombies would be frozen. We knew it wouldn’t be complete, but we’d hoped the ice would slow them down: make them clumsy and brittle. Any creatures wandering around outside have been affected. They are easy.”

  “I think ‘easy’ may be overstating it,” objected Siobhan.

  “Okay, whatever,” Danniella was peering intently for any sign of danger as she spoke, “the point is that any of those bastards who are lurking indoors are pretty much unaffected, which would simply be a pain in the arse, except that indoors is where we are all going.”

  They pulled into the Salvini Trading Estate.

  They drove slowly and looked at the large board which gave a map of the estate along with a list of companies within it.

  “This could be good,” said Will excitedly, “we’ve your scientific instruments, we’ve a hardware warehouse, a security firm, and a postal depot.”

  “What’s so great about security and the post office?” Asked Arlene.

  “Both are going to be bloody secure and full of interesting stuff.”

  “Well then, let’s get started.”

  Danniella drove the car into the middle of the estate and beat out a loud tattoo on the car horn.

  It beeped a cheery rhythm that she hoped would say to any living occupants that ‘here are a bunch of people in good spirits who can take you somewhere relatively safe.’ It would also let any zombies lurking in the area know that living, breathing, thinking fresh and juicy survivors were available for lunch.

  Whether any living heard the sound they did not know, but the undead certainly started to appear, shambling from behind the few scattered vehicles in the car parks, and running from several buildings.

  “Game on,” hissed Arlene,

  The industrial estate was built around a long circular road. Danniella drove around the circle, still pumping the car horn so more and more creatures were tempted to join the chase.

  The aim was to empty the estate of zombies, lure them as far away as possible, then double back to explore the unoccupied buildings at their leisure.

  They would repeat the luring. The first time they would just pump the horn from the road; the next time, they would drive closer to the buildings to encourage any monsters that remained inside.

  “You do know where this whole plan falls down don’t you?” Tina said from the back seat.

  “Do I want to hear this?” Asked Will.

  “Probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway.” Tina had to raise her voice to be heard over the constant cacophony of the horn. “This will get most of those fuckers from the buildings for sure, but I reckon we’ll also attract any creatures within a mile.”

  Danniella stopped beating the car horn. “Now that you come to mention it, it’s obvious. Why didn’t we think of this before now?”

  “Let’s just keep beeping the horn as we move away, make sure the last time these dead shits hear it, it’s miles from where we want to be.”

  The first part of the plan worked to near perfection. They gathered a huge throng of the undead, and with the car horn acting like the Pied Piper’s flute, they led a crowd of zombies deep into the Surrey countryside.

  Danniella looked guiltily at a farmhouse as the car crawled past it, while hundreds of the undead swarmed around the building and said “I really hope there are no survivors in there.”

  But there was no reason to suppose that anybody lived in the area as they started to speed up, preparing to take their circular route back towards their ‘shopping’ destination.

  * * *

  Danniella and Tina found their way into a medical warehouse through a fire escape and were able to scavenge supplies without encountering the living or the dead. No one had turned up for work on the day the world had ended, and no one, living or dead, had found their way inside since.

  Meanwhile Will and Siobhan scouted the security firm building while Arlene stayed in the car, driving round from one building to the other, looking out for roaming monsters.

  They entered by upper floor windows having pushed a van up to the wall of the security company.

  Will jumped down inside from the window ledge. When he landed on the floor of an office, the jarring movement made the pain in his nose flare up again. Feeling fresh blood drip onto his upper lip he cursed.

  He would need to find a way down to the shop floor to find anything of use.

  Siobhan dropped softly to the floor behind him. Walking through the open plan office, Will and Siobhan started to feel uneasy. There were beds made up on desks that had been pushed together. Untidy sheets were covered in dark stains. The room smelled of old blood and rotten meat.

  The large room was divided into small workspaces - cubicles each containing a desk, computer and chair. Although lots of furniture had been removed, Will assumed it had been to create barricades.

  “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this place.” Siobhan felt her heartbeat increase as she realised that this had been a scene of violence.

  When the whole human race had devoured itself in unearthly hunger, there was nowhere left that did not feel like a crime scene. The whole world was soaked in blood.

  A face appeared behind one of the cubicle walls. In the dim light it seemed to be composed of only wild, dark hair and yellow teeth.

  A creature lunged at the survivors, with one arm outstretched. The light wooden cubicle wall collapsed, but the zombie stopped short. Its other hand had been handcuffed to a desk, which it now began to haul laboriously along the floor towards Will and Siobhan.

  “Fuck this, Will!” Siobhan shouted, “Run!”

  They hurtled back towards the window and out into the cold.

  * * *

  The survivors inspected their spoils. They had found as much medical research equipment as they could hope to carry, and plenty of medicines for every eventuality.

  Once they had taken their inventory, the time had come for the group to part company. Danniella and Tina were destined for Down Street Research Laboratory, and the others for the Bunker. There would be almost fifty miles separating their destinations: fifty miles that included London, the most densely populated area of the country, and now a stronghold of the undead. Assuming they made it to their goals (which felt like a big assumption) there would be a whole world between them: their chances of ever meeting again were millions to one.

  The moment of their separation felt momentous, but there was no time to bid emotional farewells, or make speeches about how much they had come to rely on each other. They drove to a car park that appeared quiet, and hotwired a new car for Danniella and Tina. It was small, but they were relieved to see it had an almost full tank of petrol; the moment the engine started they each ran back to their separate cars to drive through an advancing crowd of zombies. Tina was driving, Danniella looked back wistfully at the car they had recently vacated, with Will, Siobhan and Arlene driving away forever.

  She put her hand up to the cold of the window.

  “Goodbye my friends.” As their car disappeared from sight Danniella wished she could believe in an afterlife where they could meet one day in the sweet by-and-by; “But then again,” she whispered to herself, “six months ago I didn’t believe in zombies.”

  C
hapter Eight

  Let’s go Shopping

  Will, Siobhan, and Arlene were shopping.

  Shopping had taken on a whole new meaning since the Apocalypse. Cash and credit cards were no longer necessary: the new currency was weaponry and utter terror.

  They had managed to slip into a shop called ‘Indoor Jungle’ where they picked up all the daylight simulation lamps they would ever need. It had been relatively. They had entered through an upstairs window, the car circling the block while the shoppers explored indoors. The original inhabitants seemed to have killed themselves after the food had run out. There were luxuriant marijuana plants (Arlene picked all the leaves and stuck them, bulging into her jacket pockets) but there appeared to have been no wherewithal to grow fruit, pulses or vegetables– unless their choice of weed over tomatoes had been deliberate. There was soil, fertiliser and indoor-gardening guidebooks (albeit focused on the growing of narcotics) and everything they would need to set up an underground vegetable patch.

  Solar panels were another matter, they would have to visit yet another industrial estate. They found a business directory in the ‘Indoor Jungle,’ and located a few which stocked solar panels. They picked the option deepest in the countryside and set off.

  The Bunker had its own water supply, so dried foods were particularly useful. They stopped off at a garage shop where all the tinned food had been looted, but with no water and power the rice and pasta had been left behind. This proved to be the situation in most of the shops they found.

  Followed by a host of around two hundred zombies about 10 minutes behind them they approached a village. It seemed deserted: just a row of a dozen houses and a small shop that been no more than a house with a minor conversion to turn it into a small grocery store.

  It was getting dark was they crept around. Once again there was no tinned food, and even the dog food (they was a large display proclaiming ‘Dog nibbles 2 for 1 Special Offer!’) had been looted.