"Look at them, look at what they've done!"
Rich nodded in response. "Clean. Very clean."
"Do you know what that means? They've got organised up here. They sorted their shit out, the same as we did. They've been scavenging, and they've been careful. She could be with them, Rich, she could be alive!"
"I know that, Warren," he answered carefully and quietly. "My heart is beating so fast right now and I don't think I can really see straight. But I'm not going to get my hopes up. You saw what happened at the gates. We had walls. Don't give me false hope. I won't be able to deal with the disappointment."
I edged back down into my seat, not aware that I had pushed myself unconsciously forward, almost to the point of gesticulating in the big guy's face. I tried to temper my own excitement. I had found Carla, so my own expectations were artificially elevated. Not everyone had been as lucky as Average Warren.
We wound through a couple more streets, trying to avoid the cul de sacs, when we found the cars. We pulled up and clambered onto the roof of our own car to admire the view. All varying shapes and sizes, the cars had been parked in staggered rows, bumper to bumper on either side of the road. They were on verges right up to the houses that stood silent and anonymous. Rich was shaking his head in admiration, and I couldn't help but join him.
"So that's what you do when you haven't got a wall. You create a funnel." Rich thought out loud, clearly impressed at their ingenuity.
"What about the other roads?" I asked, still not clear on the layout of the area.
"There are only two roads into this bit of the estate, and it ends at the back in a cul de sac. I'd bet you a kick in the face that they've done this on the other entry road as well."
"A kick in the face? That's a bit harsh." I didn’t fancy Rich ever kicking me in the face, and wanted to make sure he knew that fact.
"Well what's the point in betting money? Not as if it's worth anything right now."
"Fair point, well made. So what do we do now? No one coming to greet us, is there?" I said, instantly regretting those depressing words.
I had been right and, as we stood to listen to the silence, the only thing that came to meet us was a tragic conclusion.
"The motor barrier wasn't enough. Something got in there."
I agreed. "Do you still want to go in? How likely is it that she's in there?"
Rich chewed over his lower lip whilst he thought about it. He was conflicted, that much was evident. "Look, Warren, I don't want you risking..."
"Fuck off, Rich, you're a big reason why lots of people are alive. You're not going in there on your own."
He smiled weakly. "Well there's that bit sorted. I see it one way. If she's alive or she's not, she lived in this place. She will have been here when everything went to hell and if she went anywhere else, I haven't got a cat's chance of hell in finding her anyway. So we go to my house, we check it over top to bottom, and then we get the fuck out of here. How does that sound?"
"Sounds like a plan. How many undead do you think are in there?"
"No idea. Could be dozens. Hundreds? They look like they had a good thing set up here. It would have taken huge numbers to set them going." Rich admitted, grimly.
"Well that's good odds then," I said sarcastically. "Wait, I've got an idea."
I headed back to the car and pulled out both of the guns and a box of cartridges. Tucking the rifles under one arm, we split the cartridges and made sure the guns were loaded. Then I put mine up in the air and let one shot ring out. A murder of crows took off from a nearby tree, which made me jump. The shot echoed off the walls of the houses and through the abandoned streets. Rich thumped me on the arm, and he wasn't gentle. I turned to him and saw he was rubbing his ear.
"You could have warned me, you twat?"
"Ah sorry," I winced by way of apology "I thought you were up with the plan."
"To what, deafen me?"
"No. To bring out the dead."
"Oh. Fuck, of course, the quick ones should come running to that. But...how far away will they be coming from?" Rich asked nervously.
"I have no idea. But if we see a lot of them, we get in the car and lure them away. Get it?" I said, feeling only mildly concerned that this frankly deranged idea could just work.
"I get it. Solid plan. What about the ones that are going to be running from a mile off? They won't get here for another ten minutes, if they're vaguely fast."
I thought about a zombie in running shorts. Instead of water in the bottle, it was topped up with lurid red liquid, fresh blood to keep the virus pumping. I resisted chuckling to myself.
"I'd be surprised if it was heard that far away. But I suppose we don't know, do we? So... let's just sit tight for half an hour, no? See what comes out to say hi."
"Genius."
I ignored his sarcasm. He had already said himself—I was alive. Maybe I had some kind of instinctive ability to survive, and it was deliberately diluted by stupidity so other people weren't so intimidated. I couldn't think of another way to draw out the infected and undead to our position so quickly, and Rich hadn't exactly been forthcoming on the ideas front.
"Fuck off," I said.
I never knew before, how tedious it was waiting around without knowing the actual time. The saying had been something along the lines of watched clocks...or was it stopped clocks? Regardless, not having a tangible marker for time passing was irritating.
Some elements of the breakdown of society, I was thoroughly enjoying, however. Not having to go to work. Not having to avoid people who walked down the street staring at their phone. Not needing to shave every day to please employers fastidious about appearances. No one seemed to care when I farted any more. But having to deal with loved ones turning into mindless flesh-hungry cannibals was not an even trade. Another thing that annoyed me before was society's inability to genuinely communicate. There were two situations on public transport. Either a stoic miserable silence, an unspoken rule conformed to by any and every traveller on board, or there were the Delay Chats. This was when there would be a cow on the line or a rat in the tunnel or some other crap that brought the creaking transport network to a senseless halt for hours on end. We would finally turn to Baldy That Sleeps With Mouth Open or Woman With Wind Issues and we would laugh awkwardly, exchange mutual eye rolls at the ridiculousness of the situation, and speculate on who was going to attack the train manager first when he or she came into the carriage. Now, Avoiding Man With Cannibal Tendencies and Dodge Goth With Pointy Teeth were the order of the day. Rail subscriptions would never recover. Now, we were in a bigger disaster than the British Government had ever brokered for, and no one felt they had to fill the silence by pointing out the obvious features of the weather, other disgruntled passengers, and how much they needed to go to the loo but were scared to catch something from the public toilets.
One thing I liked about being with Rich, he didn't feel compelled to fill in the silence with idle bullshit. He was content to sit there and enjoy the quiet. Hell, he might even meditate in his spare time. I didn't know enough about the big man to comment.
I was considering sitting down when we heard running feet. The noise sounded like more than one set, but they were erratic, as if bumping into each other, falling over, then getting back up. In short, they sounded like drunks running to the bar before closing time. I poked Rich, who appeared to have descended into some sort of daydream, and we both snapped into alertness. I had no decent sense of hearing and couldn't gauge the direction they were coming from. I was sure the acoustics of the street and the positioning of the houses made it more difficult for me, but I was sure Rich wouldn't care one jot about that kind of senseless whining. We elected to stand back-to-back, so we both had a decent wide view of the surroundings. For us to hear footfall, they couldn't be too far, and I wasn't betting on it being anything alive, though the kicking probably came optional. Behind our parked car, I saw two runners breach the corner and make down the road. They were heading straight for us, th
ough I didn't think they had actually seen us yet. They were acting more on instinct, a basic savage reaction to hunt. We had made the noise, and they had broken cover. I elbowed Rich gently in the back, and he muttered back to me.
"There's some on my side too."
Fuck.
"How many have you got?" I asked.
"Two... three... ah shit. Four. You?"
"More. Car?"
"That sounds like a sterling plan."
We both jumped awkwardly off the roof. As I landed, my ankle turned. I had never been a graceful chap. Becoming an urban hero wasn't going to change that. I cursed, but Rich either didn't hear me or chose not to look back. Iron bastard. Rich had said there were 'more' on his side. I didn't want that quantifying, but at least they had to get through the myriad of stationery cars to get to us.
The four that had been charging down the street on my side were closing fast, and I limped to the car as Rich gained the driver's seat. He looked aghast to see me still making my igor leg-drag style to the car. To his credit, he leaned across and pushed the door open for me. I decided not to linger on what Rick might have done in his place. I heard him shout, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. I was more concerned with the charging infected that were rapidly closing in on me. I caught a glimpse of the front-runner. He looked athletic and not far off the size of my chauffeur. Blood covered its face, and some of it looked fresh. I didn't fancy my chances wrestling against that in a one-on-one death match, and tried to limp faster.
If I had been watching myself it would have been comical. As it was, when I finally threw myself into the car and Rich squealed into reverse, I was already breaking down into manic fits of laughter. I pulled in my legs and the door swung itself shut with a light click as he brought the car around. The first undead, Mr Fitness, missed us as he launched himself. Where the car had been there was now only air, and he went flying past us, skidding across the tarmac and leaving a bloody-red smear in his wake. This only fuelled the helium of my laughter.
The other three, perhaps more cunning in their slow endeavours, were preparing to launch themselves on the bonnet. I didn't think we could sustain much impact, no matter what the speed, and did not fancy trying to find another working car now that we had put out the flare to the infected on where to find their dinner.
Rich had already thought of this, and he worked the car from side to side. It was ludicrous. There was no way we could avoid them barrelling into us. But we could make it at least a glancing blow.
The first two, this worked a treat and they bumped off the side of the bodywork like meaningless debris. The third one launched herself at my window, and she was not a pretty sight. She was even less pretty after she caved her skull through my door, howling as her head lodged through the glass.
Another yank of the steering wheel dodged the car in the opposite direction. She had only been hanging on through momentum and the lightest of holds on the window; as we moved, that glass effectively scalped her, and she dropped to the road. She didn't move—although she hadn't been injured enough for brain damage. She would be staggering around as one of the slower infected before we knew it. I grimaced at the window and blanched away from it. Bits of skull and matted hair were stuck in black coagulated blood. Infected blood.
"Slow down a bit," I said.
Rich complied. I noticed he was white, perhaps in shock. I clambered into the backseat, wanting to be away from the open window, dangerous in more ways than one. Once I felt comfortable again, I asked him what the problem was.
"Did you recognise any of them? Was it..." I asked.
I couldn't say her name, but Rich shook his head violently in response. "No. None of them were her. But I did recognise two of them. The big guy? The one that face-planted the road? I used to work out with him. The woman who just tried to butt her way through your window was his wife. They lived near us."
"You think they were infected when..."
"Who the fuck knows. I've got to check that other roadblock though. There's no way the infected got in through that barrier we just saw."
Rich took me around another few quiet streets. We passed slower infected, but these were ignored. In smaller numbers, they were barely a threat to us when we were out of the car, let alone when we were in it and mobile. Soon, we were facing another set of cars. It was clear that at one point in time they had been set up like the other block. These had been moved though, and it had been in an orderly fashion, almost as if from within. The cars were fanned out on either side of the road, allowing for other vehicles to move down the road. It looked like they had escaped.
"What the hell?"
Rich slowed down through the alleyway of cars, silent monoliths now to a dead street in a dead town, never to be moved again. My adrenalin buzz returned, and I felt uneasy about the whole thing. It stunk of a trap, of someone laying in wait to take us down. It was a life-sized Venus flytrap.
"Is this the right thing, Rich?"
"We've got guns, Warren. We're fine. What's the American saying? They bugged out? There's no one here. It's a ghost town, pure and simple. They've stripped it down."
We rattled slowly along a road that had turned into cobbles.
"Wait, didn't you say this ended in a dead-end?" I asked.
"Yeah. But don't worry. There's a massive turning circle. We don't have to stop moving if that's what you're worried about."
That was exactly what I had been worried about. I didn't share Rich's confidence. They had already created one barrier. There was no saying they hadn't tinkered with the layout, as it were, deeper into their safe haven...
CHAPTER TEN
My hackles didn't settle down until we did a turn in the end of the cul de sac and started on our way back out. Rich had been right. It was a ghost town here now. All the doors were open. None had been marked with red. This had been a safe place, and there were no signs that infected had come through here and forced their way in. There had been the couple that Rich had recognised, but there was no proof that they had been part of this group before they left. They hadn't made their way to the community; otherwise Rich would have recognised more of the people coming our way. Quite simply, they had vanished.
"I don't know how I feel about this, Warren. I expected to come here and get some news, one way or another. Now, I have no idea what's happened. I see my friends, and they've turned, but there was no struggle there. Nothing. You saw the way those cars had been moved. They planned leaving there. That was a safe place. They had really thought about their defences, and they weren't having any problems. So why go?"
"Rich, we're speculating. We need to cool it down a notch, both of us, and think about it from a distance. We weren't there. We don’t know that they weren't struggling. I'm not seeing shops around here. Where are the nearest stores? Maybe they were running out of supplies and had to move on."
"Move on to where? The only safe place near here is the community. Why haven't we seen them?"
"Just because we know we're big and safe, doesn't mean we're the only safe place."
We both let that settle in for a while before we realised the gravity of the statement. I had lamented more than once that the government hadn't been helping people. People were coming to us, but they weren't coming in any real numbers anymore. What if there were other places out there—safer and bigger places—and our insular lives in the community were shielding us from that fact.
The way Gordon had accepted Austin, had not really questioned his motives and actions at the pier until forced to do so, made me uncertain that he'd want to let go of his little kingdom, should we find out that a better offer was available. What if Rich's wife had made her way to one of these other places? The potential was extensive across the country. The Isle of Wight, the Isle of Dogs, castles, isolated town houses, gated communities, and sports stadiums—the residents of the UK could have potentially set up hundreds if not thousands of little pockets of survivors, all believing they were the only ones left, and that was a conse
rvative number just for the south. It was feasible that one of the bigger locations, or places near military barracks, could be making a bigger push for survival. There could be support out there, but we were just blinded to it.
I sounded all this out to Rich. He listened to my thoughts quietly, not interrupting, nodding at each point. I stopped, and he was silent for what had to be a full minute. His thoughts were mountainous, substantial, seemingly immobile, but moving piece by piece and unmotivated by the world around us.
"You motherfucker, I think you're right. I don't like it, and I don't want to believe it, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense.
"Travis and Gordon are weird," he continued. "We all know that. Well, maybe more Travis than Gordon, but still. If you were looking to dream up two leaders of a post-society civilisation that would withstand the end of the world, they are not it are they? Take them out of the community and they could easily pass for a couple of removals men. And yet here they are, the rulers of us all. We still have electricity, but we're not allowed to use it. They say it's so we don't attract attention to ourselves. Is that the real reason? They don't let us near the cars. They don't let us leave the community. Every single man and woman that has come through those gates has fought to survive and make it that far. They deserve, more so than Travis, Gordon, or any other resident, to have the right to leave to hunt, to scavenge, to find their families. But we're indoctrinated into staying, and I've been the one leading the chants all this time."
"You weren't to know." I tried to console him though I was reasonably sure my efforts were in vain. "None of us were to know. I'm meant to be the nosy knowledgeable bastard and it's not as if I've had this revelation until now. I'm not sharing old information with you here. It hadn't occurred to me, until I saw how organised that place was, that other people would be riding this out. So far all I've seen is chaos and bloodshed. It's become really easy to assume that the community is the only place around here with its shit together."
Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival Page 18