Rich walked away, clutching some of the supplies I had found, and I was glad that he did not try any kind of brotherhood bonding to make me feel better. I didn’t need group hugs and head pats. I needed a kick in the balls and a shot of tequila.
I gathered the rest of the supplies together and, despite myself, was looking forward to filling my stomach. Comfort eating at its finest. We pulled away, the car reversing and the forlorn scene shrinking then rolling out of sight.
"What now?" Rich shouted, his voice echoing across the bloody tarmac. "We don’t want to go too far away from Austin, but I don’t want to be around when that herd comes through."
"It looks like it’s on a steady walk. If Austin has half a brain, he’ll make sure he doesn’t even fart loudly whilst they get past. How far out of the forest was the tail?"
"I can’t be sure. I think we were seeing the last of them, but there were still a damned lot. And they can’t be making quick progress through those woods. What if they stop moving altogether?"
"Then I guess Austin really won’t be our problem anymore. I know somewhere nearby we can wait it out. It was quiet and safe. At least, it was when I left it." I added tentatively.
Precious supplies safely seconded in the boot and plenty of fuel left to push around our car, we made our way back to the foothills of the Cissbury Ring, and the house that had been the start of this sorry stage of my tale.
* * *
Two and a half days pass very slowly when you’re stuck inside the same four walls. The good weather we had been having finally broke, and for two days solid of our voluntary incarceration we were stuck with grey clouds, rolling fog, and the oddly comforting patter of raindrops against the windows. There was a leak in the gutter and this eventually turned into a constant cascade of water. The wind picked up and started buffeting the broken fence at the back, but we paid this no heed. We had our supplies and our car. If we saw a herd making its lava-like progress towards us, then we would turn tail and run. If the noise brought a couple of prospecting zombie salesmen to the door, we would deal with them. But our broken fence was no more noisy and annoying than any other piece of debris smacking around in the poor weather. We didn’t stand out, and that was preferable.
There was no more alcohol. Rick and I had managed to clear that out in one go on our last visit. We made do with lukewarm tea, crisps, crackers, and tins of vegetables lovingly cajoled to warm temperature so that we did not use up too much fuel. We found a set of cards in the kitchen and became proficient at snap and pairs, and realised with both hated poker. We talked about a lot of nothing, if only to keep our minds off the very real something that was going on not that far down the road. We kept a watch in shifts, but we also managed to catch up on a lot of sleep. I still woke up in cold sweats. I caught Rich sometimes eyeing me with a mix of pity and sympathy, but he never mentioned them.
It was the third morning of our stay in the house. We were both grimacing as we sipped at our insipid tea and fearing the tedium of yet another game of cards. I broke first. Someone had to.
"How long do you think the power is going to be here for?"
"I don’t know." Rich flopped down a card. We were playing the slowest game of snap known to man.
"How much do you know about that stuff? Power infrastructure. Gas. Things like that?" I asked, genuinely interested in finding an answer.
"Dunno. Don’t we get it all from abroad? I’m pretty surprised it’s still on now." The crisp swish of another card being flipped over as Rich answered.
"Course we don’t." I knew that much. "There are power stations all over the place. A few years ago in the news, there was that nuclear plant they wanted to build. Hinkley?"
"Where’s Hinkley?" Flip.
"Somewhere in Somerset I think. Not near here. But there must be something near here, someone keeping the lights on. It should have all gone to shit, right? Trains not running things exploding. Don’t nuclear plants rely on electricity?" I was wading into unfamiliar territory.
Flip. "If you say so. So what?"
"So there are people out there keeping the lights on. That might just be to make the nuclear things safe. Sure as fuck don’t want one of those going all Chernobyl on us. But what if they’re on and it’s been organised? Someone out there has to be pulling the strings. I think that’s where your wife went. You know we said about them picking up a different message? I think that’s exactly what happened. We just haven’t found the message yet. And I think… even if they are keeping things running now," flip "it’s only going to be a matter of time before the fuel runs out and then…"
"Snap."
I met Rich’s eyes. They tingled with mirth, but his face was serious. "When the power goes out how many things are going to start breaking down, you mean?"
"That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t want to be anywhere near anywhere big when that starts happening. And we are very near to the biggest place in the country." I’d already survived London once, and didn’t fancy my chances a second time.
"Not here. Pretty far away from things here."
Flip. "True, but I don’t think there’s enough around here for us to survive, either. And no offense, but I think I want to be in a bigger group. You’re a sexy man, Rich, but I’m not desperate enough to turn."
He chortled. "Besides, you’ve got a woman waiting for you back at the community. Two, in fact."
Karen’s smile sprang to mind. And Carla’s laugh. It was comforting that these images were now the ones coming to me first, rather than the sadness and the tears I had left them with.
"You think it’s been long enough for that herd to pass by Austin?" I asked, turning back to business.
"Aye. And long enough that Gordon will have stopped thinking about us. He has a short term memory, that man. He’d have expected us to kick up a fuss at the wall I reckon. We didn’t, and he thinks he’s won." Rich knew Gordon better than I did; I trusted his judgement.
"So what’s the plan, big man?"
"You hitting on me again, bunny rabbit?"
"Fuck off. You’re a bit too butch for my liking."
"You mean you don’t like these guns?" he struck a pose, pulling his sleeve up to flex a bicep that looked like he’d sewn a melon into his arm.
"Put that thing away. How on earth do you even get like that?"
"Lots of hours in the gym. I’m going to lose it now. Not as if I can take that sort of downtime any more. But if I can use it, I will. You want a plan? Let’s just go back to the house. We’ll do a drive around some of the roads around it—and there’s a slim chance we run into anyone from the community, before you say it—and make sure that stadium full of death has moved on before we do anything else. Then… well, let’s camp and watch. They’re only thirty miles away and we’ve still got half a tank of fuel on top of the extras Gordon gave us, so we don’t need to worry about pegging it back here if we need to."
"Simple. I like it. We’ve got supplies now too, at least. What weapons have we got apart from the guns? I don’t like using guns."
The head of the infected that had burst like a pus-filled balloon was lingering with me. In a perverse way, dealing with the undead hand-to-hand felt cleaner, though it was obviously far riskier. And it would be a much more subtle way to deal with Austin.
"We’ve got a couple of kitchen knives. Small ones. I’m guessing you took the decent ones the last time you were here?"
"We did."
"Did you look in the shed?"
"Ha, did we fuck. There were zombies in the garden. The owners of this fine establishment are decomposing in their daffodil patch. We did not check the bloody shed."
"They were old you said, the people here?"
"They were."
"Then I bet you a pound to a penny that shed is full of stuff we can use. It would have been worth your while. Come on. Cover me."
Rich grabbed a bag from the kitchen—the oversize plasticky ones the supermarkets tell you will last for life, but just in case they don’t they’ll replace th
em for you—and headed out into the back garden. It was clear of infected. Opening the door we were met with a rush of air and a rare scent of damp freshness. The cloying stench of undead vapour had been cleansed and we were left with the smells of moist earth and spring grass. It was heady and I took it in by the lungful. Rich made short work of the shed. We were rewarded with basic gear—some twine, secateurs, gloves, gardening shears, and a fork and spade. The last three would make interesting weapons in closer quarters, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the one with the shears. The contents got dumped into the car and pooling together some of the food and water, we made our way back out into the familiarity of the quiet dead world.
* * *
"What’s that?" I pointed up in the distance, squinting at the sky. It was overcast again, but I could have sworn I saw an aircraft drifting in between the low-lying clouds. I followed the same point in the sky as the car carried on and was rewarded with another little dot.
"Up there, look, in the sky. It’s a fucking plane!"
Rich did an emergency brake, and my forehead almost slapped the dash. I swore, but he ignored me, gazing into the sky at the same place I had been looking. Again the object broke the clouds, but it was quickly enveloped.
"That isn’t a plane," Rich said.
"How do you know that?"
"Well for a start it’s too small."
"How can you tell? It’s up there?" I pointed and swore again as I crushed my finger against the inside of the windscreen.
"Because it’s just not. Those clouds aren’t that high, and we can barely make it out. You know what I think that is?"
"Superman?"
"Ha bloody ha. I think it’s a drone. You know, those things they send around unmanned?"
I snorted. "The thing that they want to use to deliver post? Why would it be a drone?"
"Well… what if we’re right? What if we haven’t been left to our own devices? What a perfect way to keep an eye on things," Rich mused.
The object left the clouds once more before being completely lost from view in the distance.
"What exactly would it be keeping an eye on over here?"
Our answer was in unison. "The herd."
"Put on the radio. Long wave. Let’s start going through the channels." I swung back into command.
"Is it safe here?"
I snorted in response. "It’s always been safe around here. No one lives around here. Can you see any houses? Can you even see any cars?"
"Okay I get the idea. I’ll send you back to the house if you’re going to start this bitch whining again."
We flicked on the radio and sat through almost an hour of wall to wall static. Twice we came across the message that had brought me and Rick to the community. Rich grimaced at it every time. Then we clicked into a voice we did not recognise.
"It is imperative you heed this warning. This is not a hoax." There was silence. We had caught the tail-end of a transmission. The frequency didn’t click back to static, so we both hung on, almost literally clinging to the trimmings of the car waiting in hope for the voice to return.
"Transmitting on the common broadcast frequency. This is a security message. The UK is under quarantine. The following areas are not safe to a radius of ten miles. London. Brighton. Norwich. The following areas are known not safe. Complete avoidance. Manchester. Birmingham. Glasgow. Edinburgh. Cardiff. Portsmouth. Large populations of infected seen traversing the country. Move with caution. The following areas are currently code pink at risk of nuclear fallout: Kent. Lancashire. Yorkshire. Norfolk. Recommend immediate evacuation of these areas. Devon and Cornwall are under military control. I repeat, Devon and Cornwall are under military control. We have food and secure shelter. Recommend all survivors to head to the south-west. I repeat, recommend all survivors, no matter what size your community, to head to the south-west. You will be met kindly. We can accommodate all. Do not try to evacuate the country by any means. There is an international no-tolerance restriction now placed on the waters and skies around us. Unknown vessels and unauthorised aircraft will be shot down without warning. Move your people to the south-west. It is imperative you heed this warning. This is not a hoax."
We listened to the message carefully half a dozen times before we clicked the radio off.
"Well isn’t he a charmer?"
"He’s a charmer that sounds like he knows what he’s doing," Rich said. Hope sparkled in his damp eyes. This was the message he’d been waiting for. This was where he knew, if there was going to be anywhere, that he would find his wife. I sounded out the words that he didn’t dare breath.
"This is where your wife’s people went."
"It must be." He exhaled heavily. "We know they went without a struggle." He paused, then he thumped the steering wheel repeatedly, and so hard I thought he would set off the airbag. "I knew it. I fucking knew they were hiding something from us. There’s no way they didn’t get this message. They’ve been doing their own broadcasts since this whole thing started. They’ve been keeping from us the only place in the whole fucking country that is safe."
I was going to retort our classic line, that we didn’t really know that, but my heart wasn’t in it. Rich was right. There was no way that Gordon or Travis had let this broadcast slip them by. I was hurt that Rick and I had managed to miss it the first time round. I mused that it must have been a weak signal, especially compared to the more localised transmission of the community. We heard more of their venomous drawl before we got to the reassuring and, importantly, credible words of the anonymous man on the radio. The man with control in his voice. He sounded like someone with greying sideburns and a moustache. Probably smoked cigars. Got away with calling women ‘my dear’ and not even sounding condescending.
"So there's part one of our evidence. What's part two?"
"Finding Austin, proving that they've been supporting him, and calling them out for the self-pleasing hoarding bastards they are."
"Sounds like a great plan."
We pushed off again. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. I would be pleased when we finally found the answers to our questions and I could genuinely put my feet up somewhere. Devon and Cornwall was apparently where the good times were at. I didn't feel any animosity towards this message. I had been burnt twice already by spectres of safe havens. This time it was my decision, and it felt right. It hadn't been a coincidence that we'd seen something in the air before we tuned into that broadcast. It was more than feasible to me that it had been a drone, and our people in the south were monitoring the hoards. They had mentioned them in the broadcast, hadn't they? That also meant that they knew where the communities were, and who would be heading for them. Would they be able to direct people away from the worst of the drama? Would they help you get to them trouble-free? As much as you could be on the open road.
As we skirted back around Trish's camp, I strained my eyes looking for any sign that they were alive. Of course, I found none, and my eyes were drawn back to where the blood smear should be, though I was too far away to be able to put my eyes on it. There were more infected on the roads, too. Were these the genuine strugglers at the back of the herd? Many of them were small—children not yet in their teens. There were some larger people too. One morbidly obese woman struggled her bulk up the road. She had a robe on that flapped in the breeze, and from her sizeable stomach, intestines hung in globs of black blood and dark yellow reams of fat.
"Get us away from this lot before I heave," I said.
Rich hadn't spotted her and it was definitely best not to repeat the description to him. There were no runners around these stragglers. The fast ones were becoming rarer. Was this a sign for the future? Did the infection naturally kill them sentencing them to this muscular prison until entropy or human intervention finally brought them to their maker?
"We're going to come from a different direction. I don't want to take a chance at being spotted."
"What's the point? No one would have seen us leave."
"We don't know
that. Plus, we don't know how many of them might be at that house now. So we're going to park a mile away and walk it. Don't argue."
"But we've got all the stuff in the car." I whined like a stroppy teenager and I knew it, but I had lost a car full of decent gear more than once and I didn't fancy going through the rigmarole of collecting everything together again if I could possibly avoid it.
"We're going to park it where there's a load of other cars. It'll be fine."
Rich pulled into a retail park. There were cars littered everywhere. I exclaimed at first, wondering what on earth he was playing at, bringing us somewhere that would have been guaranteed to have people clamouring for supplies. Then I realised it was one of those nowhere parks. It had a pet store, a couple of clothing stores, and two more stores dedicated to carpets and oak furniture respectively. I could see figures in some of the scattered vehicles. Nothing moved. We either weren't seen, or the undead were in far too much of a decayed state to do anything about it.
"And you know the way from here?"
"It's a main road. Clear run. Pick your weapons."
I stuffed a bottle of water and some cartridges into a little backpack that had been stowed in the car. Then I grabbed the fork and hoisted that over my other shoulder.
"Very Archers of you. Want to get a tweed jacket from over there?"
Rich eyed the clothing store and I told him to tweed off, especially when he grabbed the garden shears to go with his gun. He grabbed at my backpack and stuffed the remainder of the cartridges in.
"If we don't need them now, I don't know when we're going to need 'em."
"Aren't we coming back to the car?"
"Not if we don't have to. This car is going to be marked out. But the car of whoever is visiting Austin today is free to come and go as needed. That is the car we're going back to the community in."
"Huh. I hadn't thought of that. Stop being the brain, because I sure as fuck can't be the brawn."
"Too right you can't be the brawn. I've got that monopolised."
"For most of the country."
Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival Page 22