Realm of the Raiders

by Christopher Artinian

  “C’mon, we need to get out of here,” said Barnes. He took hold of Beth’s arm once again and ran towards the infirmary.

  *

  “What the fuck’s that shooting, Turtle?” grunted Hughes as he began to lift himself from the bed.

  “Hold it, soldier, you’re not going anywhere,” said Lucy, gently forcing him back down.

  Tuttle stood up and headed out of the ward and through the small reception area. He didn’t even get to the glass doors before he saw Barnes, Beth, the children and the dog hurtling across the courtyard. They burst in through the doors and kept their momentum while dragging Tuttle with them back onto the ward. Lucy and Hughes gaped as they piled through the door. Barnes took two long breaths to regain control.

  “RAMs. Loads of the buggers. They came out of the woods and were on the crowd before they knew what was happening. We need to get to a vehicle and get the hell out of here now,” he ordered, in between breaths.

  It took a moment for the news to sink in but then Lucy sprang into action. “Okay, we need the ambulance, that’s got a gurney for Hughes. One of you give me your sidearm, you can’t shoot two guns at once.” Barnes unholstered his Glock 17 and gave it to Lucy along with the two spare magazines he carried.

  “Okay, we need to move fast, those things are everywhere. Doctor, I’m going to back the ambulance right up to the entrance. We’re only going to get one shot at this, so we need to get it right.” Lucy nodded and Barnes headed back out.

  “Wait a minute, Barney,” said Tuttle, grabbing his friend’s arm. “It makes more sense if I go and you cover me. You’re a sniper, for God’s sake, and if I was covering you, you’d be lucky if you didn’t get hit by one of my rounds.”

  Barnes paused for a moment, looking back at his friend. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “’Course I fucking don’t, I know I’m no genius, but I’m not a fucking idiot. The thing is, we all stand a better chance doing it this way.”

  “I really don’t want to sound pushy, but one of you had better make your mind up soon or it will be a moot point,” said Lucy, placing the Glock in the back of her jeans while heading back to the bed to recover her patient. “Beth, do you want to give me a hand?” she said while gently levering Hughes’s legs out of the bed.

  “Right, I’m off.” Tuttle barged out of the door with Barnes behind him.

  “Good luck, mate,” said Barnes, taking his position at the entrance of the infirmary, his SA80 loaded and ready.

  The courtyard was empty as Tuttle sheepishly jogged across. He had his Glock in hand, loaded and with the safety off. It wasn’t a case of if he had to use it, but when. He kept his eyes peeled as he made his way up the side of the administration building. When he reached the end he ducked low and peeked around the corner. He could see villagers being chased down by ravenous beasts. A child was getting up off the ground. Blood covered her neck and shoulder. At first she appeared to be in a daze, but then she found her purpose and began chasing any living body in sight. It was total carnage and any thought that he and Barnes should help rather than flee was batted from Tuttle’s conscience in an instant. When he thought it was safe, he broke cover and sprinted to the ambulance. He opened the door and slid in, unnoticed. The keys weren’t in the ignition as he’d expected. He checked behind the sun visor, nothing. He reached over to the passenger visor, nothing. “Shit, shit, shit!” he cursed as his face twitched nervously. He felt under the seat, nothing. Tuttle checked the mirrors and slipped back out of the ambulance and into the administration block. His feet echoed in the empty corridor as he ran. He reached the control room that Thomson was using as his office and found three sets of keys on the desk. Not sure which was for the ambulance, he took them all and sprinted back down the hall. Just as he reached the entrance, a female villager swung the door open. She was about to dive inside to safety when the first of two RAMs dragged her to the ground.

  Their growls became more feverish as the woman’s screams turned to terrified gurgles and their teeth bore down on her exposed skin. The first creature looked up, blood and flesh leaking from its disfigured lips and over its ghostly grey chin as it caught sight of Tuttle. The last thing he wanted was to shoot – that would alert more RAMs – but as the first and then the second creature sprang towards him he had no option. He brought them both down with a single bullet to the head. The woman on the ground had already turned and was scrambling to her feet as he approached her. He fired a shot into her temple and her suffering was over.

  Tuttle had his gun at the ready as he exited the admin block. He felt sure there would be more waiting for him, but the coast seemed clear. He ran across to the ambulance and started to climb in when he heard a shuffle behind him. He wasted a second looking around. That was all the time the creature needed to pounce. He recognised his assailant; it had once been Ed Carter. He hadn’t cared for Carter much in life, but now, as the creature’s teeth gouged into Tuttle’s muscles and crunched against his breastbone, he hated him. He screamed in anger and fear as he brought the handgun up to Carter’s head and put a hole through it. Tuttle knew he was done for, but he hoped he could get the ambulance back to his friends before his last breath deserted him. He climbed in and started the engine. “What do you know, first set of keys, my luck must be changing for the better.” He struggled to let out a laugh as he looked down to see an expanding patch of purple on his uniform. He pulled off the handbrake and the wheels began to roll. He rounded the corner and noticed two RAMs abandon their hunt of a fleeing villager to chase down the ambulance instead. “Shit,” he grunted as his head got lighter and lighter. He put his foot down and the engine whirred. He crunched the stick down into second, then up to third. The infirmary was in sight; he was going to make it. Barney would take care of the RAMs and get everyone to safety. His death wouldn’t be in vain. With that final thought, Tuttle slumped over the wheel.

  “Jesus, fuck!” cried Barnes as he saw his friend collapse forward. The ambulance was heading straight towards the entrance at speed, and beyond, a growing number of RAMs were in pursuit. Barnes hesitated for a moment; he wasn’t sure what to do. Then he let the glass door swing shut and ran back into the ward. “Take cover,” he shouted as he hurried further into the infirmary. A thundering crash followed his words, then another rumbled through the panicked air as the ambulance ploughed through the reception area and came to rest half inside, half outside the ward. Dust and debris quickly settled, revealing gaps on either side of the vehicle large enough for bodies to get through. It would take the RAMs no time at all to gain access to the infirmary. Barnes looked on hopelessly at the devastation, then he saw the creature behind the wheel slowly rouse itself. Barnes dropped his head. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him.

  It was Lucy. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “He was a brave man,” she said, as she aimed the Glock at Tuttle’s forehead and fired. Humphrey begin to bark behind her. “Come on, we’ve got to move.” As the words left her lips, the first creatures began to appear, crawling around and over the obstacles with single-mindedness. “Come on, Barnes,” ordered Lucy.

  He raised his SA80 rifle and fired single rounds at each head that appeared. His friend had died and he wanted revenge.

  “Barney, come on, mate,” said the strained voice of Hughes as Lucy and Beth helped him towards the only other door in the ward. This time Barnes snapped out of his temporary rage and looked back. He began to back up, firing as he went. When he was sure the adults and the children were safe, he fired two last rounds and then ducked through the doorway, nearly getting knocked over by Humphrey as he barged in. It was dark inside but for a small penlight which Lucy used to check ears and throats. The room was six feet by eight feet and, other than some abandoned metal racking for linen and other supplies, it was empty.

  “Help me barricade the door with these,” said Lucy, placing the pen in her mouth and beginning to drag the first metal rack across the floor. Barnes put down his rifle and heaved. The shelving
unit teetered for a second then tipped over. It crashed into the bottom of the door, denting the wood. Barnes and Lucy lifted it again to straighten it out. There was a four-inch gap between the base of the unit and the wall. Nothing would be able to get in but, recalling the house in Leeds where the flailing arms of RAMs had taunted her and Emma for what seemed like an eternity, she would prefer it if any gaps were plugged. “Have we got anything to wedge it?” she asked as the first beast thudded against the thick wood. There was nothing in the room other than two empty shelving units, and in the panic they had not brought anything in with them. No food, no water, just the clothes on their backs and the weapons in their hands.

  Barnes took out his torch and panned around. There was a vent, but it was far too small to try and make an escape. “So what do we do now?” he asked, realising they were stuck there.

  “All we can do is wait,” replied Lucy, “and hope there’s somebody out there who can help us.”

  “Anybody got a deck of cards?” asked Hughes as the two children began to cry.

  *

  Mike gagged as he brought his mouth away from the hose pipe, releasing a spray of diesel. He quickly placed the nozzle into the final jerrican and let the valuable liquid flow in from the tank of the snow plough. “This is probably the last one,” he said to his sister, before spitting another mouthful of foul-tasting saliva on the floor.

  “Will we have enough?” she asked.

  “We’ll have more than enough to get to the base, but we’ll have to refuel a couple of times to get to Gran’s place,” he replied, hearing the diesel turn from a flow to a drip. He pulled the nozzle out of the can and tapped it. A few more drops dribbled out and then nothing. He screwed the top on the can and withdrew the pipe. “Come on, let’s go give Raj the good news.”

  Talikha untied the rope from the cleat and hopped back on to the cruiser as it pulled away from the dock with its small motor dinghy in tow. The water was calm, the sky was clear and within a few minutes they had left the small cove and were heading north with Raj and Talikha at the helm. Everybody else enjoyed a few moments of gentle sea, where the problems on land seemed a million miles away. “My stomach’s starting to feel funny,” said Richard and he placed his palm firmly over his gut. Mike and Emma looked at each other and rolled their eyes, then Mike motioned for his sister to follow him. He cleared his throat, a little embarrassed, as they walked in on Raj and Talikha kissing.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said as the married couple retreated from each other like a couple of embarrassed teenagers.

  “What can I do for you, Mike?” asked Raj.

  “Is it all working okay? The boat, I mean?”

  “She’s purring like a kitten, my friend.” He took a deep breath of sea air and smiled.

  Mike and Emma left the couple and headed downstairs to the saloon where everything had been dumped during loading. He found the bag of armaments which Shaw had given them and took out the SA80 and handed it to Emma. “Listen, I know you’re pissed off that I’m taking Raj rather than you, but this is our family and this is our ticket to Scotland. What if someone attacked while we were ashore? Raj is a good man, but he doesn’t have the killer instinct needed to protect everyone. You’re my sister. I know what’s inside you and I’ve seen what you can do.” He opened his rucksack and removed the remaining Molotov cocktails. He took one of the two Glock 17s from the weapons bag along with two magazines and the remaining shells for his shotgun and arranged them along with the wire cutters and the rest of his weapons.

  “So, what’s the plan?” asked Emma as he jiggled his machetes, knives and other contents of his rucksack around to make it more symmetrical.

  “Well, I’m guessing we’ll be up there by mid-afternoon. We’ll take the dinghy ashore and head inland. I reckon it’s about two miles. Presumably there’ll be a perimeter fence. After dark, we’ll cut through and head to where I think the base will be.”

  “Where you think the base will be?” replied Emma.

  “All this is best guess stuff, Em, going from what they told us about the place. Anyway, once we’re there, we’ll figure out where they’re holding Lucy and take it from there.” He didn’t want to go into the finer details.

  “That’s pretty bloody feeble, Mike. Figure out where they’re holding her and take it from there? How the hell are you proposing to do that?” she snapped. “You’ve not thought this through at all. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “Em, I’ve thought it all through. What do you want me to tell you? That I’ll take one of the soldiers or one of the reserves and torture him until he tells me what I want to know? Do you want me to tell you how? Do you want me to tell you how I’ll break his fingers or cut off one of his eyebrows or rip his nostrils apart with the wire cutters? I will do whatever I need to do to get Lucy out of there. There’s no such thing as fighting fair any more. This is what I’d do for any one of us and don’t think for a second I’ll have any hang-ups about it.” He checked the weight of the bag and placed it in the corner, ready for his mission.

  Emma looked at him for a moment. There was a part of her that was horrified, the part that still lived in London and had mid-morning staff meetings where they called out for pastries and lattes. There was a larger part of her that was grateful, because his acceptance of this new world, his readiness to do the unthinkable to protect the ones he cared about, was what had kept them alive and it was what would lead them to safety. “There, was that too much to ask?” she said and headed back on deck.

  *

  Despite the thickness of the door, the menacing sounds of the RAMs seeped through and under the wood. Annie and John had sobbed themselves silent. They clung to each other like glue, shaking and terrified. More thuds and sounds came from outside as further beasts battered themselves against the thick wood. The knob half turned as one of the creatures lost its footing, and the door sprang open. The rack shifted back through the four inches of empty space and its feet pushed against the breeze-block interior. As Lucy had feared, an arm entered the gap, feeling its way through the darkness, hoping to catch hold of something meaty and alive. Then another arm appeared, this one lower down, from the RAM that had lost its footing. Its wristwatch clunked against the metal shelf as it waved around, fishing for prey. The low growls increased in volume and intensity as the four-inch gap in the doorway released a new wave of screams from Annie and John. The light from the ward seemed bright compared to the two torches they had been using. The breach caused the adults’ faces to display the panic that they had previously managed to subdue.

  “Barnes, give me a hand with this,” said Lucy as the pair of them took hold of the second heavy metal shelving unit. They laid it down flat and then lifted it on top of the first. They had to push hard as there was no longer a gap for them to position it, but eventually it squeaked into place, blocking out the sight of the lower arm and covering the door as far up as the handle. “Provided the wood holds, nothing’s going to get in.” She winced as Annie and John continued to scream. “Beth, could you try and calm them down, please?”

  Beth had helped Hughes to get comfortable in the far right corner of the small room and since then had been holding onto Humphrey as if he were a life belt in a stormy sea. She moved across to her brother and sister and muted their cries by pulling their faces into her embrace.

  “What if there’s nobody left? What if nobody comes?” asked Barnes.

  “Then we have to try and fight our way out. But that really is a last resort,” Lucy said, hiding a shiver at the prospect.

  “Oh yeah, that’ll work,” replied Barnes under his breath.

  “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears,” said Lucy.

  The young soldier looked towards Hughes, his eyes closed, laid out flat next to the wall. Then he glanced across at Beth, who was smothering the cries of her brother and sister with her body, and finally to Lucy. “You and me against that lot?” He gestured to what lay beyond the door. “I’ll count my bu
llets now to make sure I’ve got enough for the six of us.”

  “Y’know, sweetie, a few days ago I’d have been thinking exactly the same. But then something happened, and now I know there is always a chance. It might not seem like it, but there is.” She looked towards the door then went to sit next to Hughes.

  Barnes squeezed in next to her, lying his rifle down by his side and resting his arm on the leg of the juddering shelving unit. “Okay, so what changed you?” he asked, desperate to be persuaded.

  “A guy who deliberately ran into a crowd of those things to save his friends and family, without a single thought for his own safety.” She thought back to the afternoon when their group had come to a crashing stop in Skelton. She remembered the panic she had felt as the RAMs approached, and she recalled the pain she had felt as Mike led them away. She didn’t realise it until now, but she had already been falling for him, even then. She thought about how he had disappeared into the distance with dozens of blood-crazed creatures desperate to feast on him. “I knew,” – she coughed a little to try and hold back the tears she wanted to cry – “I didn’t think, I knew I would never see him again. I mean, Jesus, one man against all of them, in a place he didn’t know. He didn’t give up. He kept on fighting, and that’s what we’ve got to do. We need to keep on fighting.” Hughes reached out and took hold of Lucy’s hand, squeezing it tight.

  “Too bloody right,” he said. “If you think for a second I took a bullet just to die in a bleeding linen cupboard, you’re off your head.”

  *

  “Mike, you need to come and see this,” said Raj, popping his head round the corner of his family’s cabin. Mike followed his captain up onto deck and took hold of the binoculars he was passed. “Over there. That’s Morecambe pier, if I’m not very much mistaken.”

  Mike raised the binoculars in the direction Raj was pointing. He followed the shiny, metallic-looking waves until they reached land and then panned across. He caught sight of it, lowered the binoculars as if he couldn’t believe what he had seen, then raised them again. The pier was a hive of activity. There were small vessels moored all around it, with planks and gangways between them creating a floating shanty town. Ropes and makeshift ladders led up to the pier, where boxes of supplies were being hoisted and arranged. Tents had been arranged by the side of some of the permanent structures and at the end of the pier was a sturdy looking fence with at least a dozen guards armed with homemade lances. Smoke rose from two small domes. They were not big enough for anyone to live in, but they were too large for ovens. “What the hell is going on over there?” asked Mike.