by Park, Grant
“Sounds like Michaels is on his high horse again, Cupcake.” he replied to Cassie “He has started using the alarm to call meetings rather than to send out runners”
“Surely that can’t be a good idea, what if there really is an emergency? And, Dad; please don’t call me cupcake.” said Cassie.
“Since when did Michaels have any good ideas?” he said, ignoring her request.
Cassie let out an exasperated sigh in reply to the half hearted joke and avoidance. They made it to the end of the long hallway and took a right towards the conference room.
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“Ah! Dr Foster,” announced Major Michaels from behind the desk which he had proclaimed to be his own, “the very man we have been waiting for,” He was a portly man and seemed to have somehow been gaining weight since he had been stuck in the bunker, he wore his dark green uniform as usual, though he hadn’t been buttoning up the jacket of late, Cassie wasn’t sure he actually could button it any more, his short hair was greying from the roots confirming her suspicions that he had been dying it dark brown for many years. “....and Miss Foster too, excellent.” he continued.
He refused to recognise that Cassie too was in fact a doctor; possibly because having two people by the same title would confuse and befuddle his aging brain. Thusly, Cassie had given up correcting him.
The room already held the other six laboratory staff, doctors and scientists, who were sat on bright orange plastic stackable chairs before the Major, Cassie and her father joined them. The room was also lined with eight soldiers, armed as always but looking slightly edgier than usual. And there he was, as ever, on the Majors right hand side, the bulldog that was Staff Sergeant Knox; loyal as a bulldog and twice as stupid. Knox was a squat, wide man, heavily built with a shaven bald head and a face that looked like it had been used to hammer in fence posts. His head seemed to be too big for his features, which were always scowling. He looked like he felt it was an injustice for him to be shipped here to look after a bunch of science geeks and a toff Major while he could be out there smashing some innocent persons face into the dirt.
“Well, now that we are all here let us get down to brass tacks,” Michaels said as he made his way from behind his desk, taking his red banded hat from under his arm and sitting it on the table before resting his ample behind beside it, “It has been a week now since we lost contact with London, and I believe it is time for some decisive action. We have the resources here to wipe these cursed zombies off the face of our fine country, and I mean to use them. The Sellafield plutonium resources…
At this Cassie could no longer hold her tongue, she stood and interrupted the Major, “You can not be truly serious about this; we have no idea what that kind of effect the alpha particles will have on these creatures!”
“Please Miss Foster, let me finish,” The Major loudly cut in, “as it turns out, the Plutonium would not have the desired reach or effect on the country,” Cassie let out a sigh of relief, “So I have opted to put the reactor core into meltdown!”
Utterly dumbfounded Cassie was left staring at the Major; half way from standing and sitting back down. She was brought out of her stupor upon hearing her father’s voice and many of the other doctors leaping to their feet to object. Above the hubbub she could hear the Michaels trying to quell the ruckus. There was little wonder why he had brought so many army grunts as well as the bulldog.
“Please my good ladies and gentlemen,” Michaels attempted to shout above the raising hysteria, “please!” At this he looked to the bulldog who took a step forward.
“SILENCE!” Knox bellowed in a well practiced and booming voice, cutting the scientists down. He kept the displeased frown on his face and stepped back.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Michaels began again, “all of your objections and opinions have been noted, and I thank you for them, but the defence of the country is in the hands of the army.”
“You can’t really be planning on setting the core to meltdown!” interjected Phillips, one of the geneticists from B wing.
“Oh no, I don’t plan to,” Michaels let the words hang in the air, “the process has already been put into action!”
An air of shocked silence rented the room.
Cassie didn’t know how long she had been sitting alone in the orange plastic moulded chair; she vaguely remembered the arguments, the objections, the panic, the desperation in the voices of her co workers and their ultimate reluctant acceptance of the situation. Cassie, however, would not accept the situation. She couldn’t accept it. Something had to be done.
She purposefully stood; the chair sliding backwards from her several inches, and she made her way from the room. It wasn’t long before she found herself in her father’s office; he was sat at his desk, his forehead was furled and he was deep in thought, tapping his gold parker pen on the notepad in front of him. He didn’t acknowledge Cassie’s arrival but she knew he had noticed her.
“Eight days,” he said eventually, looking up at Cassie, “Michaels said it would take eight days for the reactor core to go into meltdown.”
“Do you think we can stop it?” Cassie asked.
“Not from here. There is no way we could hack into to the command centre here. Not even with Greg’s help. He said that the firewalls, or whatever they are called, are impenetrable: like Fort Knox! No pun intended....”
“Hmm...?” Cassie looked at her father puzzled for a second “Oh, Knox. Yes, he would be trouble. But what are the other options?”
“The only other option is to stop the meltdown from the inside, from the Sellafield power plant its self.”
“Are you serious?” Cassie asked in bewilderment, “We would never make it there alive; you don’t think any of the soldiers would side with us if they knew just what was going on, do you?
“There may be a few of them but not enough; they are all too scared of Knox to say anything, and you can be sure that if we know then the grunts know too. To be honest, I can’t believe that I am serious; I don’t know who is crazier, me or Michaels. But we can not let this happen. Having the world over run by Zombies is one thing, but to turn the world into a radioactive wasteland is sheer madness.”
“Ok,” Cassie sat down at the opposite side of the desk from her father, “where do we start?”
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It felt good to finally be getting clean again. Brandon dunked his head under, escaping from the layer of scum and grime quickly accumulating on the surface of the bathwater. He held his head there; watching small bubbles make their way to the surface and pop, distorting the dark brown wooden beams of the back room of the old town hall. His dad was through in the other room talking to Frank, or keeping an eye on him as he had put it.
There was something very wrong about Frank, and Brandon knew he was going to be trouble, but in a situation like this how do you get away from someone you don’t want to be teamed up with? Especially when that someone has the kind of armament that frank has. Frank was keeping his guns as near to himself as his dad was with his naginata. They both were trying to act as casual toward each other as possible but the air was still tense, dangerously tense.
As Brandon was drying himself his dad chapped on the door, he wrapped the towel round himself and cracked open the door.
“Got these for you buddy,” his dad said and handed Brandon a small pile of clothes, “They are too big for you but they will do till your clothes dry.” Brandon had washed their clothes in the sink while his dad had taken his turn to bathe first. This was more of a way of keeping them apart from Frank than a desire to get into the tepid water first. His dad didn’t like Brandon to be alone with Frank, and Brandon silently thanked him for it.
Once dressed in the oversized clothes he joined the others huddled around a small gas stove. They all sat in silence watching a pan of water slowly come to the boil in the dim light. All the windows in the hall and the back rooms had been boarded over; it seemed as if Frank was prepared to make the plac
e his home, by the mess he had made it looked like he had been there some time.
“Tomato and basil soup ok for everyone?” Frank said as he emptied two sachets of pink powder into the water.
“Sounds great,” said Brandon and his dad in almost practiced synchronicity.
“No prob’s lads, all courtesy of her majesty armed forces. I grabbed a good load of these ration packs before I high tailed it out of the T.A. base in Carlisle when it got over run.”
“How bad is it in Carlisle?” His dad asked.
“Carlisle...?” Frank puffed out his cheeks, “Bad don’t even begin to describe it mate. We was in a castle and that didn’t even manage to keep them out.” He lifted a dirty spoon from the counter next to him and started stirring the pot of soup
“A castle...? Fuck!” His dad replied, sending Franks eyes flicking to the ceiling again. “We have to get out of this bloody country....”
“How do you propose to do that mate, where do you plan to go?” Frank asked as he poured the watery soup into three cups.
“I dunno, find a boat or something, there must be some islands the Infected haven’t got to yet somewhere.” His dad said as he took the cup from frank and lifted it to his lips, blowing over the top or it, adding “Cheers.” before trying a sip.
“I don’t think you will have much luck with boats mate,” Frank said as he handed a cup of steaming soup to Brandon.
“Thanks” Brandon whispered not wanting to interrupt Frank; he held the cup tightly in both hands, feeling the warmth flood through his fingers.
“Last I heard the navy were blowing boats out of the water that were trying to leave the country and scuppering any of those left in dock, trying to stop the spread of the disease or something, more like tryin’ to stop any of them biters getting on board any of their ships if you ask me. Either way it’s pretty smart, them navy boys are all set up for the long haul at sea, their stocks wont last forever mind and I doubt any of them brought a fishing rod with them either, ma right?” Frank gave a chuckle to his own joke and barely raised a smile from Brandon’s dad who looked deep in thought. They all sat quietly sipping their soups as Frank snipped the tops off of two silver packets and squeezed the contents into the soup pot. Brandon wasn’t sure the two packets contained the same flavour of rations but at this stage he didn’t care.
As the mystery concoction in the pot started to splutter and pop Brandon’s dad finally spoke “Do you have a map handy Frank?”
“Course I do mate,” He said reaching into his backpack, “It’s a bit creased and there is a bit of blood on it but it’s otherwise its ok; as long as you don’t intend going anywhere near Newcastle that is.” He handed the map over to Brandons’ dad, and went back to stirring the pot.
Brandon shuffled his chair closer to his father to get a better look at the map. Right enough there was a large blood stain covering the entirety of where Newcastle should have been. His dad was concentrating on the other side of the map though, and had his finger resting just below a small circle drawn on the map in red ink; Brandon could just make out ‘Blencogo’ in small letters next to it.
His dad stared at the map for a long time until Frank nudged his knee with a bowl of steaming stew, at which he looked up at Brandon and taking the bowl he said, “We need to get to Kendal.” Brandon was shocked at this, his dad hadn’t even mentioned going there since the whole ordeal had started and he was pretty sure he knew why.
“Why Kendal mate?” Frank asked while shovelling a lump of beef and dumpling into his mouth.
Brandon dragged his eyes away from his fathers, looked over to Frank and said “That’s where my grandparents live!”
Chapter
5
Dead in the Eyes
The day after the meeting with Major Michaels, Cassie was leaning nonchalantly against one of the army trucks in the loading dock of the complex, talking to a pair of boots sticking out of the front end of the vehicle.
“What are you doing under there anyway?” she asked.
“Just a little tweak here and there, a bit of jiggery poakery.” replied the boots.
“So there isn’t actually anything wrong with this…. Umm…truck? What is this?”
“Husky,”
“Husky?”
“Husky!” repeated the boots.
Cassie stepped back from the ‘Husky’ to get a better look at it. It was painted a sandy beige colour and had very large tyres, it was covered in what looked like grab rails and had a large frame on the back of it, but most important of all it had a very large gun attached to the top of it, it was just what she was looking for.
“How fast does one of these go exactly?”
“70, tops, but that’s over pretty much any type of terrain you can think of, it’s powered by a MaxxForce D6.0L V8 that puts out 340hp.”
“Mmmmm, wow” Cassie tried to pretend she cared about the second part of what he had said, but the 70 mph, that would do nicely. “So, do you just drive it like any ordinary car or is it different?”
The pair of boots slid out from under the Husky to reveal, firstly a pair of olive clad legs and then an equally olive clad torso, lastly the grease stroked face of Sergeant Ethan Rigby appeared; he had a good square, clean shaven jaw, short brown hair that was graying at the temples and pale grey eyes, Cassie assumed that he was in his early forties but he could have been older.
“What’s with all the questions about the trucks Cassie? You never showed any interest in them before.”
She walked over, swept her lab coat behind her and crouched down beside him, tilting her head innocently to the side she said, “I’m just interested in what keeps you down this end of the complex so much.”
“C’mon Cassie, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. What’s really going on?” He pulled himself swiftly to his feet and walked over to the workbench, pulling a rag from his pocket and wiping his hands on it thoroughly.
“Maybe I just would like to know how to get out of this place should I need to?” she said as she was rising “And maybe I don’t fully trust the all people I am stuck down here with?” she added almost under her breath but loud enough for Ethan to hear.
“Hmph, I hear you on that one, I think you have just found out exactly what keeps me down here so much.” Ethan pulled a face that looked somewhere between a grimace and a smile.
“What do you think of M&M’s plan to get rid of the zombies then?” Cassie moved closer to Ethan so as to speak quieter and get a better judge of his reaction.
“I think my opinion on his actions is pretty much mute by now. Don’t you? That’s us stuck down here together, forever.” He finished wiping his hands and threw the oily rag over his shoulder on to the workbench. “Still, could be worse, we could be one of the poor bastards stuck out there without a clue about Old Slim Shady’s plan to melt their faces off. Could you imagine it? Surviving that long out there, fighting off the undead just to die from nuclear radiation.” Ethan gave a visible shake and looked to the floor, he genuinely did pity those left alive. They both stood in silence for a while in their respective thoughts; Ethan no doubt thinking of family who were ‘out there’, Cassie started building up courage, till finally she broke the silence.
“Do you really think there are people still alive out there?”
“I don’t doubt it, not for a second.” he replied confidently.
Cassie looked him dead in the eyes, “What if I told you we could save them?” she almost whispered.
“What do you mean? It’s too late! Isn’t it?”
“We still have just over 7 days till the reactor goes into meltdown. I’m sure we could make it from Darlington to the plant in that time, especially in the husky!” she said with a determined glint in her eye.
Ethan stared at her stunned, “You’re serious aren’t you?”
“Deadly.”
“Well that’s an appropriate word to use, love! Getting from here to Sellafield in a week would be a piece of cake, even in an old Ford Cortina, i
f it wasn’t for the horde of undead beating at our doors; and then there is the question of what exactly do we do about a nuclear reactor going into meltdown when we get there? I don’t know if you had noticed, but we are a little short on nuclear physicists around here.” Ethan said, shaking his head at her in disbelief.