Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent

by Trevor Donnelly

  Jim felt himself approach orgasm, slipped out of her, and kissed his way down her body till his tongue reached her most private places.

  “Oh thank you,” she gasped as she writhed against his face.

  Max stood in the corridor by the door for the twenty minutes Jim and Elsbeth had taken to sate their lust. His eyes were wide as he took in the scene of the two lovers moving their bodies in unison. His anger and frustration at Elsbeth’s refusal to have sex with him, had given way to guilty arousal, so he slipped out his penis and pleasured himself furiously. He drank in every moment of the performance, storing away in his memory the shape of Elsbeth’s breasts, the colour of her nipples and the luxurious curls of her pubic hair (which came as a shock: all the porn he had ever watched featured shaved or minutely sculpted hair.) He came quickly, but stayed watching till Jim and Elsbeth had finished. As they lay naked in each other’s arms, glistening with sweat, Max slipped away. Simultaneously he felt sick and frustrated, angry and aroused again. He was younger than Jim, better looking and a lot smarter; he was doing vital work, that could save them all. Surely his expertise and efforts to save life were enough for Elsbeth to spread her legs for him?

  Instead she’d let Jim, a no-brained nobody have her. Dirty slut.

  * * *

  Max found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his work. He could live without sex, but he was not sure he could live without the possibility of sex. He was stuck in a Bunker with, possibly, the last few people alive on the planet.

  Elsbeth was not interested. She was allowing Jim to paw her whenever they thought no one was watching.

  Summer was gorgeous, but under sixteen years old, so with her father in tow he would only go there in fantasy. He thought that the end of the world and the need to repopulate the planet should change ideas of sexual morality, but he suspected that Jim would not see it that way.

  No sex, and no one on the same intellectual plane: this truly was hell; no sex, no conversation.

  He thought about the world that had gone. He would never again taste French fries. He could imagine one day making chips, but he had no idea how to make French fries. There would never be another James Bond film. Even if the human race recovered he doubted that they would rebuild society sufficiently to make movies in his lifetime.

  His favourite authors were all dead.

  He knew how to use computers to achieve amazing results. He could analyse data and calculate its meaning, but he could not repair hardware, nor write software. He was intelligent, the most intelligent person he knew (this was true even before the Apocalypse; he was now the most intelligent by a long way).

  But there was so much he didn’t know. He could work out how to make bread. He remembered a science-fiction story he had read as a youth: the last surviving member of the human race had set up home on another planet. Despite his education and life-long learning on earth all he could bring to another civilisation was how to make sandwiches.

  Apart from amazingly high-powered biology Max was not qualified or skilled to do very much. If he found a cure to the zombie virus he would struggle of find a place in any Brave New World he would have created. On the other hand, if he saved the world he would not have to find a role: he would be too busy being fellated by every surviving female overwhelmed with gratitude.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Return

  When they had been planning this trip they had thought their biggest challenge would be to set up the solar panels. They would have minutes, perhaps seconds before the undead caught up with them.

  There would not have the time to place them precisely; they would have to set them down or prop them up on the aerials, and feed the wires through the pipe that led down to the Communications Room below.

  Jim had unearthed the plans of the Bunker and there was a steel hatch over a small pipe that led from the surface into the Plant Room below. It could be used to take samples of the air, or to send up a primitive remote-controlled arm to fix the aerials. The arm would need considerable attention to be restored to working order. It was controlled by wires, and the rubber seals and some of the mechanism had perished in the years since it had been built.

  However the pipe could be used to run power cables from the solar panels to the Bunker. They would not give as much power as the petrol generator, but they would hopefully be able to provide enough for the daylight bulbs and the computers for research.

  All their plans had focussed on this challenge, but now they had an even greater (though glorious) problem: they had a whole truck load of food, enough to sustain them for years. In the normal world this would take hours to unload, and they realized that the more time they took the longer they could last below ground. Without having to risk more trips out foraging, they would have more time to organise and practice how to sustain a home-grown food system, powered by artificial lights.

  They would need a big, loud and irresistible distraction to lure the zombies away from the Bunker, and keep at bay.

  “I’ll be the distraction,” offered Neil.

  “You a good driver, son?” Asked Will, “Because I am, and I think it should be my job.”

  “It’s not my driving skills that qualify me,” countered Neil, rolling up his trouser leg to reveal a bandaged and weeping wound.

  “You’re infected?” Asked Siobhan. Suddenly the atmosphere in the cab changed dramatically.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied solemnly, “my wound is infected; but I’m not sure if it’s the sort of infection that turns you into one of those things! But either way, it makes me the most dispensable of us all.”

  “That’s not right, Neil, none of us are dispensable,” said Misha.

  However, they agreed that someone had to risk it and Neil was nominated. He would find the biggest vehicle they could hotwire and with hazard lights flashing and horn blaring, lure every possible zombie away from the Bunker door. Under cover of darkness they would drive the truck without lights, to the main door of the Bunker, and unload as much as they could until they were noticed.

  Once everyone except Neil was inside the Bunker, he would circle the installation to attract any remaining zombies, then slowly drive five miles away, with as many of the monsters as possible in tow. Next he would switch off the lights, race back to the now hopefully deserted area around the Bunker and hop in the back door.

  Obviously Neil would be alone, with zombies close at hand, and outside longer than everyone else. The plan hinged on him. He was delighted to be useful again, having spent the last few weeks in the service station feeling as though he was simply a problem. However, his delight was mixed with cold terror: his job was the hardest, and he felt doubtful that he could manage it. The pain in his leg would make driving difficult, and he also felt light-headed from time to time.

  Isolated garages had become very familiar to the survivors, and Will had honed his skills at hotwiring cars at speed. He could also remove petrol caps and siphon out the petrol in record time.

  They found a large, battered, old 4X4 for Neil to drive. He was delighted to discover that it had an ancient audio tape deck and a collection of homemade heavy metal compilation tapes in the glove compartment. His distraction would involve some Black Sabbath and Rainbow at full volume.

  Even the undead could not fail to be moved by the riff that starts Paranoid.

  * * *

  The first tape Neil tried to play as they were driving through country roads on the way to the Bunker was Led Zeppelin. He was in the mood for Stairway to Heaven but the tape jammed in the player.

  He cursed and punched the eject button until the cassette came out followed by an unravelling mess of tape that stuck in the machine.

  He drove along trying to avoid hitting the cars that were scattered across the roads, where they had been abandoned or attacked; he also did his best to avoid the zombies which would spring out into the headlights. He tried to miss the monsters, but had to confess to a shiver of pleasure when hitting one was unavoidable and
he sent it crunching under his wheels. In the middle of these tricky manoeuvers he was using one hand to pull tape from the machine, which gathered around the floor of the car in a tangle of shiny, dark brown ribbon.

  Neil cursed at the zombies and cursed at the tape deck.

  As the pulled into the industrial estate, he tugged the last bit of tape from the machine.

  “Alle-fucking-lulia!” He punched the air, pulled another cassette from the glove box, gave it a kiss and placed it in the slot.

  The lorry was now in the compound of the Bunker.

  It was time for him to draw the attention of the zombies.

  He flicked on the main beams, started flashing the hazard lights, and turned on the interior light to give the creatures a good view of the fresh meat. As the music started he sounded his horn in time to the beat.

  “Whoo hoo!” He whooped, screamed and banged his head as the opening riff to Paranoid started.

  He remembered seeing Ozzy Osbourne perform it live, and for a moment all his worries, pains and mortal dangers were miles away, as the music took him back in time. He sung along. The zombies reaching out for him seemed unreal, like extras in a heavy metal music video.

  This is living he thought to himself as he continued singing at the top of his voice.

  “Finished with my woman ’cause she couldn’t help me with my mind.

  People think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time…”

  * * *

  Will cursed as he drove straight into a zombie he hadn’t seen, its blood and brains spraying the windscreen, then smeared blackly by the wipers. His poor visibility was now reduced to almost nothing.

  He was driving slowly in a low gear, trying to keep engine noise to a minimum. As they approached the gate to the compound he had to slow further. The actual gate was blocked by a bus that had parked in front of it. That was the way the survivors had first come to the Bunker. But pursuing zombies had smashed the mesh fence next to the gate, so he had to drive across that instead.

  Will cursed as several of the tyres burst passing over the razor wire that had topped the fence. The truck had enough wheels to keep going once the wire was flattened but steering became erratic.

  Particularly difficult was reversing up to the Bunker’s entrance.

  Will had disabled the reversing warning noise and smashed the reversing lights. These had been important precautions, but made negotiating the track backwards extremely difficult.

  “I just hope to fuck they’re watching out for us,” Will said nervously.

  * * *

  Neil’s beeping and flashing lights were joined by loud music, and the survivor’s voice which could be heard half-singing and half-shouting over the crackly recording”

  “All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy

  Think I’ll lose my mind if I don’t find something to pacify…”

  The monsters were crowding round him now. He heard the rear window smash, and the driver’s side window cracked as a creature butted it with its face.

  “Shit!”

  Neil was brought back to his grisly reality. The street ahead of him seemed to be filling up with monsters. It was going to be like running into a wall.

  Despite the panic rising like bile in his guts he carried on singing, “Can you help me occupy my brain?”

  “Oh yeah!”

  He slammed on the brakes, screeched the protesting gears into reverse and set off backwards along the way he had just driven.

  Glancing in the rear view mirror he saw hands reaching in towards him. “This is not going to fucking work!”

  He was speeding backwards as fast as the car could go. The headlights illuminated the vast and seemingly endless crowd of the undead rushing towards him. The car lights turned the open wounds and bloodstains around their mouths into an unnatural, glittering black.

  It was hard to control the car as it reversed at speed, bumping into and over the monsters, with Neil’s view obstructed by the creatures trying to claw their way in through the broken rear window.

  As he sped backwards the car hit something solid. He couldn’t tell if it was a car, wall or bollard, but the effect was to spin the car sideways, so that it was wedged between a wall by the side of the road and a car in the middle.

  “Shit!” He had seconds to act and one wrong move could be fatal. More of the creatures slammed into the driver’s side window, and the parked car behind allowed the creatures finally to pull themselves into the rear seat.

  Neil leapt across to the passenger seat and out of the side door. One of the car lights was still flashing, and the music was still playing at full volume. Suddenly he was painfully aware of being next to the object that was attracting every zombie within earshot.

  Outside the car the smell became overpowering. Spots of rain in the night air were the coldest thing Neil had ever felt.

  Ahead of him was a huge crowd of zombies; behind the crowd was smaller, but just as deadly. To one side there were just a few, but they were already making their way over and through the car and would be on him in seconds. To his other side was a seven-foot wall. It was unlikely he could climb it in time, but it was his only chance. He leapt at it, his hands gripping the top as he hauled himself up.

  He almost burst into tears as he pulled himself onto the wall only to see the yard beyond full of zombies, which were now also reaching for him.

  He carefully eased himself up to stand on the wall. Their hands could reach his feet; and he found himself walking on fingers which meant having to pull each foot up as he would if walking through sticky mud.

  “This is not going to work.” He spoke aloud as he walked along the wall, feeling as though he would fall at every step.

  At the far end of the wall was a lamppost with a ‘30 miles per hour sign on it.’ It was the only place left for him to go.

  As he reached the post his foot slipped on some zombies’ fingers which split wetly under his feet.

  His leg slipped and he felt cold hands grabbing at it.

  “Fucking scratching the other leg now?” He shouted at the monsters. As he gripped the lamppost and hauled his foot back up he felt teeth grazing the skin of his ankle.

  “A great fucking end to the perfect fucking day!”

  He climbed from wall onto the lamppost. He stood on the sign while his hands gripped the pole.

  “Fuck, I do not want to die tonight,” he murmured to himself. The pain in his leg told him he would be disappointed; he looked down at his ankle which was bleeding profusely.

  Then with defiance, and as loud as he could, he started to sing along. At least he would sing until the tape ran out. And he could still continue his job of distracting the zombies from the other survivors.

  In the flashing light from his car below Neil could occasionally catch the vaguest glimpse of activity by the Bunker. The plan seemed to be was working.

  When the tape came to a halt, he shouted across the space between him and the Bunker to the others, “I’m bit! It’s too late for me, but you guys carry on.”

  Now that the music from the tape had come to an end it was up to Neil to make some more noise to attract the zombies. He didn’t know what to sing, but then remembered the last moments of his favourite film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. There was only one song to sing:

  “We’ll meet again

  Don’t know where

  Don’t know when

  But I know we’ll meet again

  Some sunny day…”

  The irony of the words, sung against the darkness and noise of the undead scrabbling for his flesh, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. If he met his friends again he would no longer be like them. His ankle ached, and the loss of blood was making him feel dizzier than ever. He took a deep breath and carried on singing”

  “Keep smiling through

  Just like you always do

  ‘Till the blue skies

  Drive the dark cloud
s far away…”

  * * *

  It seemed impossible to Misha, but someone had been looking out for them and as the truck approached, the huge, thick, steel door of the Bunker opened.

  “Hello?” A tall, thin man with dark hair and glasses regarding her with a slightly troubled expression. Just then Siobhan also appeared round the side of the truck and the man smiled.

  “Jim this is Misha; Rob is in the car with Will and the guy singing is Neil, but he’s infected. That’s all the introductions we have time for; we’ve a truck full of food and we need to get unloading.”

  As Jim ran back into the Bunker to get more help Misha heard the song carry across the howling of the night:

  “So, will you please say hello

  To the folks that I know

  Tell them I won’t be long

  They’ll be happy to know

  That as you saw me go

  I was singing this song…”

  She smiled sadly. She had fought for her friend, and now he was using his last breath to fight for her.

  Will jumped from the cab and rushed up the hill that housed Bunker to arrange the solar panels and push the cables down into the service tube that had been prepared for them. On top of the small rise the wind felt stronger, and he had a heightened awareness of his senses.

  He thought he saw movement in the car park on the other side of the Bunker’s compound, but couldn’t be sure, and he had too much to do to waste time staring at the darkness.

  Neil was still singing loudly, and Will had to resist the urge to join in”

  “We’ll meet again

  Don’t know where

  Don’t know when

  But I know we’ll meet again

  Some sunny day…”

  The crowd around the bottom of the lamppost was growing. Neil was finding the smell of them almost unbearable.

  Will was pushing the last cable into the pipe when a figure loomed out of the darkness. It was an obese man in oversized jeans and a ripped sweater. The creature’s large stomach was covered in large bite marks. It moved with a speed that Will had not been prepared for as it bounded towards him with its mouth open wide.