Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival

by Warren Fielding

  My own mental dithering was a symptom of my nerves. I wasn’t a nervous person by nature and it was difficult for me to be pushed out of my wide and generous comfort zone. A slow approach to a potential ambush, with a high likelihood of homosapian bloodshed at the risk of my own precious life was evidently too much for even me to cope with. Rick looked just as tense. I genuinely doubted our ability to handle any hostile situation beyond a random mob with torches and pitchforks. When I was finally at the end of my tether, quite bored of waiting for our deaths on the horizon, a haphazard wreck blocking both lanes swung into view. It did look like a trap. There was a filthy once-white transit van on its side. It straddled both lanes of the dual carriageway we were on, and there was a barrier that would easily stop us from hopping over to the other side of the road. There were other cars on the other side of the carriageway, but we’d be doubling back on ourselves, and we’d have to end up on the exit we’d come this way to avoid. The van on its side had burned out an anonymous number of days before. It didn’t look hot. There was no haze rising from it. There wasn’t even the faintest wisp of smoke. The thin pillar we had seen was coming from behind the van and slightly to the left. I still had no idea what it was coming from, but with the complete lack of any other debris, it had to be a planned move. I was starting to hedge my bets with tyre stack, but at the very least it was going to be a fire in an oil barrel. Rick had started tapping the steering wheel. I pushed on his wrist, letting him know I was still there. He’d obviously gone into his own zone. He looked across at me but quickly switched his eyes back to the road, assessing the situation and bringing the car back to another stop.

  "So what now?"

  "I don’t know. I think that if there had been some sort of ambush for us, we’d know about it by now. We haven’t exactly been discreet about this have we? We’ve just ridden our horse down the middle of the road at sunrise. The thing is, no one has come out at us shooting. I think that means we can go in the bar and check out what’s going on, no?"

  Rick nodded agreeably. "I think that sounds fair. But what if…"

  "No what if that’s what they want us to think. We keep on double guessing ourselves. It’s like a game show. I think we need to be a bit more decisive."

  "Being decisive might get us killed."

  "Being overly thoughtful might get us killed. It’s the end of our civilisation as we currently know it. Catching a cold could get us killed."

  "Then what are we doing this for?"

  "Now it’s thinking like that, young Rick, which leaves you hanging at the end of a rope. We can do more here. And we’re going to start with finding my sister."

  "More? Then what? You going to stop the zombie apocalypse single-handed?"

  "I’m not single-handed, Rick, I’ve got you with me. My plucky sidekick."

  I punched his shoulder and he snorted. "Sidekick my arse. I’m Batman and you’re Robin. If you’re lucky. The way you run into situations, you’re like an overexcited kitten. The superhero does not act like that."

  "That’s because when you actually examine the situation, the superhero never does any of the hard work." I grinned. "So are we going to drive past the van and see what we can see, or run through charging?"

  Rick craned his head around, trying to see the full scope of the road ahead. "I really don’t think there’s anything going on behind there. I’m not driving through it, we might damage the car, and for what?"

  "We can always get another car."

  "Not so easily. Sure, we’re passing a few of them, but you’re assuming the next one we get will have enough fuel to get us the rest of the way."

  "We’re what, about fifteen miles away from the community on the radio? We could walk it from here. Granted, that would be insane, but it’s still do-able."

  "We’re going off topic. Back to the situation in hand."

  "I have a better idea."

  I got out of the car and clambered rather ungracefully on the bonnet. I had to go hands and knees up the windscreen and could see Rick wincing at my progress. Once on the roof, I grinned at what I was doing. I had always thought about jumping up and down on the bonnet of a car—for nothing more than larks—but had never had the balls to do it in case I got in trouble. Well there was no chance of that happening here, beyond attracting the unwanted attention of the undead. Seeing as I knew we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, it was with barely restrained glee that I started bouncing lightly up and down, riding with the suspension of the car as I waved my arms around shouting like a lunatic. I think Rick banged at the roof, but I couldn’t be sure. I risked a quick peek over my shoulder to check we weren’t going to be caught out by a zombie attack from the rear. When I looked back, a woman was approaching us waving her arms in mock mimicry of my own movements. I stopped immediately, sensing that she wanted me to quit my noise. It had served its purpose, and I spared myself a grin for the experience. I slid off the side of the car and straight to the pavement. I opened my car door and grabbed my knife, which I had left on the seat behind me. I left it in cover, standing behind the door as she approached.

  "That’s close enough, I think," I called.

  She slowed, walking a few more steps before coming to a full stop. She was about fifteen yards away from me, cracks in the tarmac splitting between us. That would only get worse with age. She was close enough to talk, but far away enough so that neither of us could be taken by surprise. She was a good-natured woman approaching middle age if I was being kind. She was obese if I wasn’t. She had a safe face, naturally worn and showing the true age of a woman who has gone through life mostly in a headwind.

  "What the hell were you doing on the roof of that car?"

  "Trying to get your attention. It worked, no?"

  "Are you suicidal or something?"

  "There’s nothing around here. No zombies. We’re safe."

  "You bloody idiot," she hissed, "no one is safe anymore. You’re just going to bring us more attention than we need."

  "Us? So there’s more of you hiding out behind there then? I was nervous about driving up too close. Didn’t want you to think we were nasty."

  "Well we definitely don’t think you’re very bright. We’ve been watching you for the last hour. You drive pretty slowly, don’t you?"

  "Well you haven’t shot us, have you?"

  She laughed, genuine and deep with an edge of dark cynicism. It was one of the most spontaneous and honest gestures I had heard in my life. "Oh, my dear, if we had a gun we’d have fired warning shots ages ago. Probably at your face."

  I heard Rick chuckling from the driver’s seat and waggled the knife at him in warning. "Well then lucky for me you haven’t got any guns. Are you the leader, or the spokesperson?"

  "Is there a difference?"

  "There’s definitely a difference." I had no idea if there was a difference. I was just trying to stay on top of the conversation. "So which one is it?"

  She shifted her feet, showing the first sign of nerves. If she was all they had, then Rick and I had no need to fret. "I’m both, I suppose."

  Bingo.

  "In that case, I’m glad to meet you. My name is Warren. The mute idiot in the driver’s seat that drives like a grandma is Rick." Rick waved obligatorily through the window, grinning like an embarrassed clown. The woman hesitated before offering her own name.

  "I’m Trish. I’ll wait to get to know you a little before I decide whether or not I’m glad about it."

  "I like her," Rick shouted through the window. "She reminds me a bit of Alan."

  I shot him a look, which I hoped was filthy. "I wouldn’t associate her with Alan. That’s cruel."

  Trish frowned. "I’m right here. Who is Alan?"

  I waved dismissively. "I didn’t know him very well. He turned early on. Rick can tell you more, if you really get that bored. Listen, Trish, are you going to kill us?"

  "No." She looked a little revolted at the thought. "Why would we do that?"

  "No reason. We’ve just
come across some people with questionable tendencies. We’re thinking of setting up vetting procedures before introducing ourselves to new groups. Beyond the checking for bite marks, of course."

  Trish cracked a small smile. "Is that a request to join my group, or a request for me to strip you naked and check for teeth marks?"

  I suppressed a shudder. "How about the former? At least for a short time. Do you stay here?"

  "It’s the safest place we’ve found. There’s no dead up here. Not seeing as the fuckwits in government stopped everyone from using the main roads."

  "I’m surprised there’s no one else coming these ways."

  "Ah I’m not. There are bigger roads than this. Most people, if they’re really that bothered about making ground, will just make it to the motorways, eventually get stuck, and probably die. Why were you coming this way?"

  "Did you hear the notices about military safe-havens?" I asked.

  Trish nodded.

  "We heard a radio broadcast. There’s a community in north Surrey. One of those gated things that posh people usually live in. It was abandoned, and now they’re trying to build up. There’s walls all the way round, and there’s hundreds alive there I’ve heard."

  Trish laughed again, slowly this time, more of a cackle than a drawl. "Yeah I’ve heard of it, and if you don’t mind, we’ll be steering well clear of it. It was big population centres that got us in this mess in the first place. There were thousands of those evil things where I lived. Thousands. And I only lived in a small town. No thank you, Mr Warren, we’re safe and sound right here, where there’s no one and nothing to disturb us for miles around."

  "And there's nothing for you to eat? How do you get food for you and your people, Trish?"

  She looked nervous for a brief moment, biting at her lip and looking guiltily down at the floor. She didn't look like she was having a good run of things at the moment. Her skin was sallow and her eyes a little sunken. At the very least, she was suffering from dehydration. If she felt responsible for the people she was still hiding, then I would be happy to bet that she was now going without to allow them to live.

  Rick pulled himself out of the driver's seat and came around the back of the car to stand with me, hopefully to appear less threatening, and was now gesturing to Trish. "We can help you, Trish. Come with us. If it's safe like they say, then you have nothing to fear from this community. It's not like how the government handled things. We're on our own now, and we have to start looking out for each other. That's what they'll be doing there. Looking out for one another—making sure that we can all get along and survive."

  "How can you possibly know that? Do you know these people?"

  We didn't, and we had to admit that. Trish threw up her arms in disgust at us and walked away a few mocking steps. "You're not the first people to tell us about the community. You wouldn't be the first to tell us that we'd be safer off elsewhere, too. You know what they tried to do before? They tried to abduct my girls, Mr Warren. If it hadn't been for me, they would have taken them, too. If those are the kind of people ending up in these communities, then I'll take my chances on what we can scavenge on the roads. There's food enough—there's no reason for the wildlife to hide anymore, and I know how to set basic traps. I think you two can just carry on past us."

  "We're not like that," I implored. Even if she didn't want to come with us, for some reason part of me didn't want to be categorised alongside marauding rapists. Austin was in that side of the Venn diagram, and I wanted to stay as far away as possible from his reputation. "Trust me, if we were like that we wouldn't have even stopped; we'd have just driven through your barricade and taken what we wanted. You're vulnerable here, Trish, you and your girls." I thought they might be her daughters, or even granddaughters, for her to be so overprotective. But then I thought about the word girls and started erring on the side of aunty or teacher. Trish had stopped gesticulating and was scowling at us both again.

  "Look, what do you actually want from us?" she asked.

  Rick and I exchanged a look. I sighed and said, "We don't want anything. We saw the smoke and we were worried you might be a threat. You're not. Then we thought we might be able to help. We can't. We don't have anything that you could possibly want or need. We'd be happy to take you to the community with us, but you don't want to go. So," I waved my arms around a little, hoping to convey the futility I was feeling, "it's not far away, so I suppose we'll just be on our way. The trouble is, your little roadblock is stopping us from getting anywhere."

  Trish eyed our car. "How much fuel has that thing got in it?"

  "Half a tank," Rick replied.

  "I'll do you a trade. I've got a vehicle on the other side of us—trusting of course you don't just want to turn your car around and take a different route. It's not as if you're going to cause traffic chaos driving on the wrong side of the road anymore."

  I supposed she was right, but I couldn't be bothered to work out a different route and didn't want to be diverted from our most direct path. "What car have you got?"

  "I know it's a BMW. Past that, I haven't got a clue. It hasn't got too much fuel in it, but if this place is as close as you say then that doesn't matter. Your car with more fuel and better," she looked a little fondly at our runaround, "economy is better suited to our needs."

  "Can we look at the car first?" Rick asked.

  "Sure," Trish replied casually, "it's not as if there's haggling to be done. No MOTs for it to pass either. If it goes, it goes, right?"

  Trish was right. It might be quicker to just turn our car around, but we didn't know who else might be blocking other routes. This woman was pleasant, and she wasn't at all threatening. As she turned away, I tucked the knife into the back of my jeans. Rick did the same. We followed her past the husk of the burnt out van and caught up short. The cynical part of me had expected to see some teenager with a shotgun, looking bestial and wild and telling us to strip down to our nothings so they could rob us blind. I had not expected to see five frightened girls ranging from pre to at the very most late-teens huddled around the barrel we had been mulling over for so long. The older two looked at us over their shoulders, their eyes small and unreadable. The smaller girls huddled between their older guardians and the protective metal of the barrel. They must have all been petrified. I was suddenly quite desperate to find out if their previous visitors had indeed been heading to the community and whether or not they had made it. If the place was the peaceful haven it claimed to be, aggressors would not have been allowed in anyway. But what kind of defence would such a place have? We were taking things on face value again—too much taken for granted and putting ourselves in harm's way as a result. I resolved to talk to Rick about this properly when we were on our way again. It had been fine before to have disagreements and sit in a frosty silence whilst you let the rest of the day run its course. In this day and age, and in these violent times, we simply couldn't afford to be second-guessing each other as well as the world around us. We had to be in sync and in complete agreement about the decisions we were making. Otherwise, as I had already thought more than once today, we were both going to die.

  Rick checked out the car. I couldn't have cared less what we were in, but he had lamented so much about the old vehicle that I didn't want to let a chance go begging for him to have a blast in a sports car that we didn't have to hotwire or steal from someone else. I sensed a lot of potential for that in our future if things went southern at any point. As Rick prodded at things and chatted over the car with Trish, I looked back at their camp, trying to look for any other weakness I could use to try to convince her that they should all come with us. I couldn't see where they slept, but there were more cars on this side. One had its bonnet up, and I supposed they slept in the cars at night. That was a sensible move. The undead, even the faster ones, couldn't operate doors as far as I had seen. As long as they kept quiet and out of sight, then no one would even know this place was populated. I did wonder about the barrel, and I worried that they
might be bringing themselves unwanted attention. They had already mentioned encountering undesirables. However, I also had to infer from Trish that despite their best endeavours, the attackers hadn't actually made it away with any of the girls under her care and protection. The woman was clearly a formidable force in her own right and, no matter what she had done in her life before all this happened, I didn't want to unreasonably disrupt the matriarchal group she was building here. All I could do was give her my opinion and hope she chose our company over riding the roads as a solo mother hen.

  I walked a little closer to the cluster of girls, hoping to speak to one of them and find out how they had come to be with Trish. Trish must have seen me, and called out to instruct me not to go near them. One of the elder girls, again, looked at me over her shoulder. It seemed like she was scowling still, but then she opened her eyes wide in fright. She broke away from her little pack and started walking towards me.

  "It's okay. We're not like the others. We're not going to hurt you."

  "Get the others in the car, Rose."

  The other older girl looked over and must have seen the same as her friend. She, too, went wide-eyed for a short time before hustling her little group into the nearest car. She shovelled all three of them into the backseat, hiding them down in the footwells, before closing the door. She picked up a metal rod that was resting by the tire and walked towards me. By this time the first girl, whose name I still did not know, was almost on me. I could see her eyes properly now, and she looked angry.

  "Look, we're not going to hurt you," I pleaded, upset that she looked so hurt.

  "It's not you. Look behind you."

  I turned. Beyond us, across the other side of the carriageway, there was a small group of undead. They were slow, but something had caught their attention and they were heading in our direction.