Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival

by Warren Fielding

  "I understand that. We had to do a lot of that. Pretty early on, too."

  "Is it true that you got out of London without turning an eye?"

  I nodded. "Yeah. I caught the early end of it. Fuckers were still out all the way to Croydon before I even made my move. Saw a plane crash over from Gatwick. It wasn't nice at all. I'd rather not have seen the majority of what we've come up against. But hey, we're still here, right? So what's your story? Did you get here by clubbing all the zombies to death?"

  At my question, Rich downed his whole glass of whisky. I took a cautious sip, which he acknowledged. "That question is why I need this. You see, I might look like I could wrestle a bear, but truth be told, this thing has hit me really hard. I'm from the community. I was a security guard here, and I was here when it all started. I tried to get out, but they wouldn't let me. I had no comms with the outside world, and by the time my client woke up and I realised the daytime guy wasn't coming to cover my shift, there was a whole lot more trouble going than we could handle. They locked down the community and decided they weren't going to let folk out. There are very few here that actually lived here. Most of them were abroad or living in some other house. Some were out at work and just never came back. Travis and Gordon were both inside when it got locked down. Gordon was an accountant, and Travis was a personal stylist. We all clubbed together and when the gates were closed we just started taking stock."

  I wanted to ask what the kicker was. All of this sounded rosy. I suspected it was coming though. He didn't leave me hanging for long.

  "I've been married for three months. My wife told me a month ago that she's pregnant. The phones haven't been working since this started. I haven't been able to get hold of her. I have no idea whether she's alive or dead."

  I hung my head. I had survived because I didn't have this kind of responsibility hanging around my neck. Rich had survived despite it. He seemed like one of life's genuinely nice guys. He must have been going through some kind of personal hell.

  "The restriction here is over though. Can't you go back to her? Find her?"

  "I can. But she was in south London. That's a helluva trek when the world is normal. Now? It's a suicide mission. No. If she's hearing the broadcasts then she might be able to make it here. She knows this is where I work. I just don't think the signal is getting out that far."

  I didn't know what to say, so I stuck to my guns and said nothing. I sipped at the whisky some more. It was a well-placed prop. "So the runs you guys are talking about—for outside—have you done some of these before?"

  "No. We've been able to live off the kitchens of the community so far. But things are starting to get congested, and we need to make sure we keep stocks. That way, if we ever get hemmed in, then we don't need to worry about running empty in a day or two. We also need to start thinking about overcrowding. I know you and Rick were the tail end of things, but that's not to say that people aren't trying to make their way here still. And what if we just get a big group that happen to be coming past? We need to be able to house everyone. If people see things being disorganised, they'll start getting unhappy. So far, people have been very happy, under the circumstances. I intend to keep it that way."

  "Simple. I like simple. The world used to be very complicated. At least this thing has cut out a lot of the bullshit."

  "Amen that."

  We chinked glasses briefly. Rich tipped the bottle, contemplating it for another dram, but held back. For all I knew it was the only bottle of the stuff in the entire community. I doubted it. I would bet a fair amount of my skin, seeing as money was useless now, that the majority of the alcohol was wherever Gordon and Travis lived.

  "So on the first run, what's the plans? How many men have you got? What weapons? Because I know you asked about weapons for a reason. What are we aiming for?"

  "That's a lot of questions for a new guy. You don't fuck around, do you?"

  "Isn't that why you like me?"

  "It is. Fair warning though, not everyone likes questions. Gordon likes his privacy. Travis doesn't give a shit, but he's so unlikeable you won't want to ask him anything anyway."

  "Aren't they your friends?"

  "Friends? Fuck no. I barely saw them when this all happened. Nodded at them in the street maybe, saw them going to someone else's house. But no. Gordon is tolerable. But Travis? There's something slippery about him. Creepy as fuck that guy. Serial killer creepy."

  I didn't voice my own thoughts. I didn't know if this was a setup. Rich didn't seem to be waiting for a response, so that suited us both fine. We quickly got back to business.

  "So targets? For the runs?"

  "Oh yeah. Medicine and food is the number one priority in the first run. There are loads of villages and towns nearby, and we're sure that most of them are burned out. That is, most of the living people are gone, not that they've been razed to the ground. We're going to assess and process each house and shop and take everything we can. It's going to take some time, but we need to strip our local resources down to the bone—almost literally. We're in it for the long haul. We don't want to have to go Lord of the Flies over winter because we didn't prepare properly."

  "About that. There's plenty of garden space in here. Can't we set up farming?"

  "As soon as we find someone who knows what they're doing, we'll set right to it. Some of the spaces I want for tents, just in case we have to resort to emergency housing. But the sad fact is that we're in a rich county and near a massive city. No one around here knew how to plant or sustain a garden."

  "How about preparation? So if we do get someone like that, they've got ground ready to plant in?"

  "That makes sense. I'll suggest it to Gordon the next time we meet up. He might already have someone doing that for all I know. This is a big place."

  I didn't believe there was anything going on in here that Rich didn't know about. What he wanted to admit to me was his choice. I was keeping the journalist under wraps—for now. At the moment, I would just make myself useful. Useful enough that I wouldn't be overlooked. Not so useful that I would become indispensible—or worse, a threat, and expendable. Rich spent much of the rest of the day going through the inventories. What he thought was necessary and should be looked out for, as well as things we had too much of and should ignore. He kept repeating himself, as if he were talking to a child. This didn't bother me so much. Repetition, hopefully, meant he was being thorough.

  * * *

  I met the rest of the men that had been enlisted to the first outside group. There were nine of us. I had a tough time with their names initially, but I made an effort. Now at the business end of the night, Rich had sat us in a room together to gel and with a donation of beer to help the conversation flow a little, certainly not enough for it to drizzle southwards, some sort of alpha bond was forming. This wasn't my usual cup of tea, but the circumstances were exceptional. We were going to be going into hell together, the least I could do was get their names right. Ben and Connor had made the biggest impression. They were the most outspoken. Possibly even the comic relief. They were already friends, and had come here from a local rugby game. They looked like they played the game as opposed to watching it. I assumed they were the muscle. There was an older guy, Charles; he seemed like he would be the leader of our little group. He was quiet and sat with an amused smile for most of the night. He seemed happy to sit back and watch, taking in everyone else's thoughts and attitudes. Not unlike the way I was doing. I had caught his eyes more than once, but the smile hadn't left his face for a second. There was Tobias. He went by Toby. He reminded me of Gollum, from the pier. My experience there had taught me to stop being judgemental on face value. Toby was quiet, too. I could tell others were isolating him because of his look, his tattoos and piercings. As if we had many options for who we could make friends with these days. I made a personal resolution to make an effort with him. Maybe this was to atone for my mistakes with Gollum. If it was, then at least I was learning my lessons. There were three lads who d
idn't look far off from being teenagers. They didn't know each other outside of the community, but they appeared to stick together at the table. I was having a hard time not calling them Huey, Dewy, and Louie, but their names, I was assured, were Harry, Jacob, though he preferred Jake, and Tyler. They all had thin faces and sunken eye sockets. I wondered if they were coming off something. With a quick glance to Toby, I tried to suppress that. Being a judgmental shit now wouldn't do me any good. The last guy gave me the shivers more than Travis. He could have been anywhere between twenty and fifty. He had a constant look of arrogance. He gave airs of being superior to everyone else. I was not surprised to find out he was one of the few original residents of the community. He wanted to be referred to as Tom, but Ben snickered in my ear that his actual name was Tarquin. Tarquin was on the team because he knew how to shoot guns. And whilst Rich had let us know we didn't have many guns and, as it stood, bullets were more scarce than unicorn shit, he also wanted to keep us safe and apparently that meant having someone experienced with ranged weapons. I had no idea what we had or how safe an aim Tom was, but we all had to trust Rich's choice and we definitely had to trust each other.

  Late enough into the night, we exchanged our war stories. I was relieved that violence wasn't the elephant in the room that it had been at the pier. There, I had almost been feared for what I'd done to get my people to safety. Here, we were all treating each other like war heroes, and we were left and centre for the sequel.

  Our first run out would be tomorrow. We were being given three cars. The houses we had been asked to hit were only a couple of miles down the road, but we would need the space for our pickings, which we all hoped would be plentiful.

  I managed to find my way back to my house in the dark. I relished the silence. Looking up, I blinked in astonishment at the blanket of stars that now covered the sky. It was amazing what nature presented to you when the artificial world of man had to pull itself back. I started trying to remind myself of the different constellations. Swaying gently on my feet, I mused that I would have possibly been mistaken for one of the undead outside of these walls. Unwittingly reminding myself of the threat at the door, I was suddenly glad of the envelope of silence. That meant none of the savage undead were at our door. I felt they were our biggest threat. That if we brought any of those home with us, they would beckon more to our door—then Rich's preparations for biters inside the walls would be unwantingly realised.

  The house was dark and empty when I walked through the unlocked door. With the silence now becoming a claustrophobic sensation, my brain turned the space into every horror cliché known to man. I virtually sprinted up the stairs, heart hammering and hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I berated myself in my head. I had faced actual fears, not these things of childhood night terrors. It didn't seem to matter. I darted into my room, relieved to see starlight throwing a visual on my sleeping quarters. I wasn't sure if we were meant to use the same mattress every time. The one I had thrown myself in the night before was empty again, so I slumped into it hoping for a night of deep sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We hadn't been given a time to meet the next day. No one had kicked me out of bed, so I took my time with proceedings. I made my way to the gate without much of an expectation for the day, but with an undeniable excited thrum. The community was an undeniable safe haven, but it was far too much like something being too good to be true. I was waiting for the first thing to go wrong. It didn't look like that would be inside the walls.

  I was pleasantly surprised to see I was the first one at the gate. There were three cars lined up nearby. They hadn't been there yesterday, so I assumed they had been made available for our use. The sky was heavy with clouds. I had my fingers crossed that the weather would hold for us. We had been lucky so far. But the United Kingdom was not renowned for its periods of fine sunshine, and it wouldn't be long before Mother Nature put a spanner in the works. I sat back on my palms and scanned the sky. I hadn't had much time or space to actually appreciate what had started going on in the world around us. No planes. There was a blessed change, especially being used to the over-excitable flight plans of City and Heathrow airports. A flock of birds flew overhead. Their world hadn't changed. They weren't tied down to this one island. I envied their freedom. I was jealous that the undead would not crave their flesh. That their species hadn't been turned by whatever had started this plague. They would not have to face the things we would face. They would fly to their destination. They would feed and mate, and continue existing the same way they had for however many centuries their species had been in existence.

  I felt that the human race itself was being threatened by what was happening to us, but that wasn't true, was it? Because they had shut us down and cut us off. There was no help coming. We'd have heard something by now. I couldn't believe that, with the combined firepower of the EU and NATO, they couldn't do something to help us out. There had to be some kind of furore going on in the international markets, with the loss of one of Europe's major financial and political powers imploding on itself. Were they literally just watching and waiting to see what would happen to us? I supposed for an ambivalent third party, being on the fence would be the most advantageous position to watch all of this going down. Were they eating popcorn whilst they watched?

  "Warren, hey! Bit early. Your bed on fire?"

  Ben and Connor walked up the road. I wasn't surprised they were together. They started chatting away as if last night hadn't stopped. I zoned out and left them to it. They weren't including me anyway. I wasn't too sure on the time, but it wasn't long before we were all clustered together, save for Charles. When he did come back, he was with Rich. Rich handed over the three sets of keys. Charles, Ben, and Toby would be driving.

  "You've all got your instructions. Charles answers to me. Now, you all answer to Charles. Any problems with that?"

  There were none. Charles divvied us into groups for the cars. I was with him. I was glad. It might be a short ride, but I could see Ben and Connor's chatter wearing thin quite easily. I wasn't pleased to be with Tom too, but I'd let him sit down first, then pick somewhere where I wouldn't have to look at him.

  There was a silence in the car. It was odd. There was a tension that I couldn't place. I was in the back, and scrutinising as much as I could see of the back of each man's head. Charles kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror. He didn't keep eye contact long. I thought he might be keeping an eye on me, as if I were a child that might at any moment start pissing on the seat lining. Tom was looking out the window, but he didn't seem sulky. What I was feeling was anticipation. Had we all been bored without our encounters against the undead? Was this all we had left now in life to feel a sense of fullness and vigour? Or did despatching those infected make us feel alive?

  * * *

  We were on a leafy road. It was beautiful, no matter what state of decline mankind was suffering from. Out in the trees, I thought I saw figures staggering around. There would be people wandering everywhere now. It wasn't a safe place to be, out in the wilderness. Throughout all of this, I was lucky that only once we had to succumb to risking it in the outdoors. Even then, it had been on top of a hill, with a full view of the world around us. The infected had still found where we were.

  I looked behind us. Ben was almost tailgating. He caught me looking and gave me a wave. Connor was in the passenger seat, chatting away. I turned and smiled, regretting my positioning. Better to put up with some friendly banter than sullen silence.

  The road broke from leafy boulevard to a line of houses. We were at the start of the suburbs. It was here that we'd start our work. Charles pulled over, even indicating, and the other cars filed in behind. We got out, all of us quickly scanning for approaching undead. There were none, though it was possible some were following the noise of the cars. We couldn't linger outside for too long. Charles popped his boot, and waved for the other cars to follow suit. He pulled out a couple of crowbars, handing them to me and Tom.

 
"I'm only here to shoot," he sneered.

  "You're here to work. Ain't no shooting needed this time," Charles retorted.

  Tom opened his mouth to complain, but thought better of it. As weapons were dished out, we grouped together, waiting for Charles' orders. They were short and sweet.

  "The groups we're in are our sweeping groups. Three per house is plenty. We take one house each here. First things first: make sure there are no infected in your house. If there are, eliminate them. If there are survivors that have been bitten, eliminate them. If there are survivors that are safe, offer them the chance to join the community. Tell them we will have to take their food, their essential items, but that they will be cared for with us. If they turn us down," I braced myself, "then leave them. Do not take anything."

  I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. I was scared this would turn into another silent pier, that we would become the oppressors when other people just wanted to try to survive on their own. If Charles' orders were for us to leave people alone, then the rules from up top couldn't be that bad. Everyone nodded between themselves, happy with the requirements. We split into our groups. Tom, Charles, and I would take the first house. I doubted Tom's ability to actually wield a weapon, let alone in anger. He looked more the type to run off screaming. He held the crowbar limply in his left hand. His clothes weren't suitable for the work, either. I was surprised both Rich and Charles had let him out like this. He wore a pair of skinny jeans that looked painted on. They didn't look very forgiving if it came to a sprint. He certainly wouldn't be able to father any children if he fell over the wrong way. What did it matter to me? If he got into a situation, he couldn't solve, he'd get bitten and then he'd get left behind. There ends the Tarquin Annoyance.