Daryl turned to Morgan and happily informed him.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself a gunner.”
Kathy gave up on the argument and shrugged towards Morgan who just smiled back at her.
All nine of the group climbed out the armoured vehicles, and gathered together. They would be in radio contact with one another whilst on their journey, so they didn’t need to go over plans again. Instead the group used the time to hug and embrace one another.
Gerard and Shanice had spent the night sleeping on top of a stack of empty pallets which were stacked next to the train service depot. It had not been comfortable, but the elevated station and tracks were safer than being at ground level. He had tried in vain to break into the depot, and after two hours he had given up. Gerard had conceded defeat that he and Shanice, would have to sleep out in the open just for the evening. Five minutes ago the sound of an idling engine below him had woke him up, yet now it was silent. He wondered if he had imagined it, but something deep down inside of him told him it wasn’t his imagination, and that it had indeed been an engine, and now he was sure that it may have been even more than one.
He gently woke Shanice, and helped her climb down to the ground, and they checked both sides of the tracks, which were clear. He hurried her to the edge of the station platform which was all closed up and locked. They now stood at the end of the platform, looking back into the distance at the depot doors. Before they left Gerard wanted to see what had made the noise, a running engine meant that others were alive. For a long time the father and daughter stood at the end of the station platform, Gerard had almost given up hope of seeing what had made the noise. Suddenly there was a noise as the large metal doors began to open, it took a couple of minutes for the doors to fully retract and as they did, three armoured Humvee’s exited the fake depot entrance, and began to head towards the train station. The first vehicles occupants were so preoccupied watching the tracks ahead that they nearly drove past the couple standing on the station platform.
Daryl stamped down hard on the breaks and brought the Humvee to a sudden halt, he wound down the window, to check if he really had seen two people standing there to the side. Before he could say anything the girl, ran from the older man’s grip and ran to the window. The little pink ribbon tied in her hair fluttered in the wind as she approached Daryl. The man she had run from tried to call her back, he seemed scared to approach the armoured jeep. The young girl offered Daryl and infectious smile as she reached the window
“Hi honey, what’s your name?” Daryl greeted her.
“Hi mister my names Shanice, and that’s my Daddy over there.” She said as she pointed at the scared man.
“Well my name is Daryl, and this is Scott.”
Scott gave a little wave to Shanice.
“Tell me Shanice what’s your Daddy’s name?” Daryl asked her.
“It’s Gerard.”
“Have you or your Dad been bitten?” Scott asked Shanice.
“No we haven’t.” Answered Gerard as he approached the vehicle.
“Well Gerard and Shanice it’s your lucky day we have two spare seats if you’d like to come with us?” Daryl offered them with a smile.
Gerard paused he didn’t like the thought of a fleet of armoured cars creeping out of a secret entrance during the middle of a zombie apocalypse. It took the other cars doors to open and the rest of the group to climb out before Gerard stopped looking for a sinister motive behind the sudden appearance of human life.
“Yes we would like that very much.” Gerard told Daryl.
Shanice followed her father and greeted the rest of the group, she was glad that the world wasn’t just full of the “bad men”. Kathy invited them to jump in the front car with Daryl and Scott, and informed them that they would be able to chat later when they found somewhere safe to stop. Everyone climbed back inside the Humvee’s and they were soon on their way along the train tracks heading for Hadleigh.
THE END.
Day Zed – Volume II
The Wastelands
Of London.
Charles Smith
Copyright © Charles Smith 2015
Contents
Shanice’s Journal, 17th July 21:00 hours GMT
Tilbury Docks, 17th July, 21:01 GMT
Tilbury Docks, 17th July, 23:35 GMT
Tilbury Docks, 18th July, 2:32 GMT
Glanmire, County Cork, Ireland, 18th July 8:32 GMT
Tilbury Docks, 18th July, 9:04 GMT
Shanice’s Journal, 20th July, 16:05 GMT
Tower Hill, London, 20th July, 17:07 GMT
Tower Hill, London, 20th July, 19:15 GMT
Vatican City, Italy, 20th July, 21:17 GMT
Berwick-Upon-Tweed, England, 20th July, 22:15 GMT
Chatsworth Bunker, London, 20th July, 22:45 GMT
Shanice’s Journal, Chatsworth Bunker, London, 20th July, 23:51 GMT
Alicante, Spain, 21st July, 5:15 GMT
Chatsworth Bunker, London, 21st July, 12:19 GMT
The Circle Line, London, 21st July 14:05 GMT
Black Forest, Germany, 21st July, 20:00 GMT
Monument Station, London, 21st July 21:08 GMT
Monument Station, London, 22nd July, 8:00 GMT
Shanice’s Journal, Monument Station, London, 23rd July, 21:09GMT
Circle Line, London, 24th July, 7:00 GMT
Embankment Station, London, 24th July, 15:12 GMT
Paris, France, 24th July, 17:24 GMT
Westminster, London, 25th July, 5:30 GMT
Westminster Station, London, 25th July, 8:09 GMT
Victoria Station, London, 25thJuly, 12:30 GMT
Shanice’s Journal, Victoria Station, London, 26th July, 6:15 GMT
Battersea Dogs Home, London, 26th July, 13:19 GMT
Battersea Dogs Home, London, 26th July, 23:29 GMT
Volgograd, Russia, 27th July, 7:18 GMT
Battersea, Government Bunker, London, 27th July, 18:52 GMT
Battersea Bunker, London, 27th July, 23:47 GMT
Shanice’s Journal, New Covent Garden Market, London, 28th July, 10:18 GMT
The River Thames, London, 29th July, 11:42 GMT
Mount Buller, Victoria, Australia, 31st July, 7:09 GMT
Liverpool Street Station, London, 1st August, 10:15 GMT
Romford, Essex, 1st August, 17:15 GMT
Shanice’s Journal, Romford, Essex, 1st August, 20:27 GMT
Rayleigh Downs, Essex, 4th August, 06:11 GMT
The British Naval Fleet, Berwick-Upon Tweed, 4th August, 15:41 GMT
Canvey Island, Essex, 5th August, 9:05 GMT
Shanice’s Journal, 17th July 21:00 hours GMT
It is now two whole weeks, since me and Daddy made new friends at the train station. I like all of them; even Kathy who can sometimes be very bossy. My favourite friend out of all of the group is Jin-Lee, she is so pretty and always manages to find the time to play with my hair. Tomorrow is my birthday and I will be just eleven years old. I cannot have a party, just in case the bad people hear us celebrating. So far, since people started to get sick, I haven’t seen another live child to invite to a party.
When everyone got sick, they changed, and went from being nice people to plain old bad people. Now all they want to do is bite and eat us. They make horrible noises and smell really bad. Daddy tells me to read my Bible every night and pray, he says that God will look out for us and protect us by keeping the sinners away. I just don’t have the heart to tell Daddy that I don’t believe in God anymore. If he was real why did he allow people to get sick and change into the monsters that they are now?
Two weeks ago we were all planning to go to a place called Hadleigh, Jackson told us that there was a real castle there. We didn’t make it there, which made me really sad. Daddy has always called me, “his little Princess”, and I was looking forward to pretending to be one in a real castle. When we left the station, we drove along the tracks, until we came to a great big bridge above us. The grown-ups said above it was
a big road; they called it the M-Twenty-Five. Something really bad must have happened on that road, as lots of people must have got trapped in their cars and had nowhere to escape to when the zombies came. They must have all got sick, and then they changed and they just went on making more people sick, until there were no more good people left. Oh God, silly me. How can I tell a story if I forget to tell the important parts? When a bad person, bites a normal person, they get sick and soon die. Something then happens to their body when they are laying dead, because they change and wake back up, and the person that used to be inside them disappears.
Where was I? Oh yes the big road. All the people that got stuck on the road got bitten and changed, it’s a big shame as there were thousands and thousands of them stuck up there, judging by the amount we could see moving around. A lot of them had walked away from the road and down the grass slopes, leading to the train tracks. I don’t know why they made the effort? All they did was stand there and moan at each other, there wasn’t even any normal people for them left to chase.
The problem with so many of them being down on the tracks meant that our big army jeeps couldn’t drive through them, and there were that many littered across the fields, that it made it impossible to even drive around them. It was Dave’s idea to then come here, we managed to drive onto the other track and escape down the other train line.
When we first got here I was really scared. All we could see was this really high metal fence that had really sharp spikes coming from the top of it. On the other side of the fence was lots and lots of big metal boxes, in lots of different colours. Because of the big fence there were no bad people inside; it had stopped them getting inside. Jackson climbed the gates like a big spider and eventually let us all in, once he had unlocked the gates, from the inside. We decided to make a home out of three of the giant metal boxes. It was hard climbing up to them as they are on top of other boxes, but now Daddy has built us a nice ramp, which we can move in case the zombies do somehow get inside. Every day we open up more of the boxes that have been locked up; some are full, whilst some are empty. I am still dreaming that one day we will find a box that is full to the brim with toys. Today we found a box which was full of diaries. My friend Jackson said I should use them to tell our story, and here I am.
Oh no, Daddy just told me it is time to go to bed. Why do I have sleep now? I was just getting started, I wanted to tell you about the room that Daddy and Daryl have been fixing up. It’s not like I have to get up for school anymore, because there are no schools left. I have to go, Daddy is coming back to check up on me, I promise I will tell you more stories tomorrow.
Princess Shanice. Just ten years old until tomorrow.
X
Tilbury Docks, 17th July, 21:01 GMT
Gerard counted to sixty in his head, he would count for another thirty seconds before walking back to check Shanice had done as he had asked and gone to bed. Over the past two weeks the group had grown accustomed to their new home. At first when they had entered the docks a fortnight ago, it was purely as a temporary measure, until they came up with a more solid plan for how they would bypass the thousands of living dead that had congregated across the train tracks, under one of Britain’s busiest motorways.
When they had first pulled to a halt in front of the horde they had felt an instant feeling of pity. How many of the lost souls in front of them had become trapped up on the motorway was anyone’s guess. The road usually struggled to cope on a day to day basis with rush hour traffic, it was never going to cope with every Londoner who owned a car using it as their preferred escape route from the city. What would have made the whole situation catastrophically worse was the authorities’ decision to close both of the tunnels and the bridge that led to Kent, in a misjudged attempt at containing the spread of the virus.
The group had discussed their next move, before moving away from the dismaying scene under the motorway. The heavily armoured Humvee’s could have slowly forced their way through the throngs of zombies, but after a quick discussion about respecting the dead, they chose to seek an alternative route. A second railway track led off from the junction they had sat at, its track was clear, and although it offered a longer trip round, it offered the perfect solution. It was the slower of the two tracks, but after taking them through Thurrock they would arrive at Pitsea, just one station away from Hadleigh. When they had reached Tilbury Town Dave suggested to the group that the docks would probably make a great place to spend a couple of nights, if it was at that stage still secure. They had arrived fourteen days ago and as yet still had no intention of leaving.
After arriving late in the area that evening, they had slept in the Humvee’s. Once they checked that the entire area was free of any threat, and after finding no other signs of life they had chosen to set up base in the centre of one of the many loading bays. They decided to make three empty containers their abode; the metal boxes were stacked up on top of another three containers, making them impossible to reach for any stray zombies that they may have missed. It had looked like the containers were due to be loaded onto a ship, but the outbreak had changed all that. For the next two days the only way the survivors had reached their new home, was by climbing onto the vehicle parked directly below and then climbing up into the box from the roof of the Humvee. That had all changed when Gerard had come to their rescue; on the fourth day of opening up container after container they had stumbled upon a container loaded with brand new scaffolding boards. Armed with Kathy’s inventory list of the containers they had searched so far, Gerard had set about using their contents to make a series of detachable ramps.
The ramps soon replaced the Humvee as a method of reaching their sleeping quarters, and as the vehicles were no longer needed to gain access to the containers, they decided to move the vehicles away from their makeshift home for greater security; the zombies may not have learnt how to climb up obstacles, but living humans certainly could. To make sure that couldn’t happen the Humvees were parked a little over two hundred metres away. Every night when the group retired to their beds, Gerard would detach the top two tiers of the ramp to ensure that they were safe from the living, as well as the dead.
Gerard and Shanice had decided to share a container with Penny and Dave. Privacy at first had been an easily forgotten luxury, but Gerard being Gerard had set about curing that immediately after the construction of the ramps had been completed. The engineer had busied himself with the erection of partition walls, which he then filled with the same scaffolding boards left over from the construction of the ramps. Everyone had also been afforded large sheets of tarpaulin that they could draw across the doorways leading to their beds to ensure total privacy. Each separate living quarter that Gerard created had its own supply of food and water; more than enough to keep the survivors alive for weeks.
They had been very lucky so far with their hauls from the containers and had already come across both canned and dried food. Other containers produced bottled water and a multitude of canned soft drinks. Without even considering it as an option the docks had become their home; in what many would have considered a modern day gold mine they would be foolish to surrender such a magnificent horde. Wealth would no longer be counted by the amount of zeros a person had printed on their bank statement, but by the supplies and merchandise they had to trade.
Despite spending the last nine days opening and cataloguing each container and its contents, they still had hundreds to go through. They had already acquired enough supplies to last them for at least a year, and at the rate they were going it would probably take them that long to open the remainder of the containers.
Every night two members of the group were tasked with the monotonous, but necessary job of night watch duty. Tonight Gerard and Dave were due to take up their positions in watching both the front and the rear of the Docks for any signs of activity. Gerard had elected to watch from the rear for any danger coming from the estuary behind them, which left Dave to guard the front gate. After tucking Shanice in fo
r the night the two men would head off for the evening and leave Penny to watch over the little girl.
After counting for more than the thirty seconds he had originally set as a target for himself Gerard crept towards the back of the container. He eased in past the blue tarpauling screen and smiled at Shanice, who was now tucked up in her sleeping bag. As everyday went by Gerard could see more and more of his deceased wife’s characteristics beginning to develop in his daughter. Shanice smiled back at her father, and then puckered her lips up waiting for her father’s good night kiss. Gerard leant over placing his right cheek into Shanice’s protruding lips. As his cheek met the little girl’s lips, she giggled and then made a big over exaggerated kissing sound. Gerard laughed straight back at her, “Goodnight Princess.” “Goodnight Daddy.” Shanice replied and then closed he eyes, her father reluctantly crept out and met Dave at the front of the container.
As the two men made their way down the first two ramps, Gerard stopped and began working at the levers he had constructed. The ramp slowly eased down, until it was flat. “Good job we’ve got you MacGuyver.” Dave joked. Ever since Gerard had displayed the ability to build almost anything from scrap, Dave had given him the nickname which referred to an eighties television series. It was routine practice for Dave to make a joke about something, which Gerard liked about the man, and as he hadn’t been offended the name had stuck.
Once they reached the bottom of the ramp they stopped to check their hand held radios were set to the same frequencies, they then exchanged good luck wishes and went their separate ways. Every hour they were expected to use the radios in order to check on each other, allowing them to stay at their own posts. Each would be relieved from their sentry duties eight hours from now. Secretly most of the group enjoyed their slot on the night watch; it gave them time to reflect, and the solitude to find their own much needed karma. Kathy had been insistent to each of them that when they were on night watch, they were to find a safe spot to stay hidden and purely observe; no one was allowed to use the same spot twice. Guns were not to be fired, unless it was absolutely necessary, as noise attracted the dead. If one bullet was fired it could draw thousands of the undead towards the deserted docks.
Day Zed - Box Set: Volumes I and II Page 16