British Zombie Breakout: Part Two (6 page)

As she drove off, Sarah heard the soldier muttering to himself
'Cor, bacon and sausages for breakfast, pies for lunch…'

Chapter
1
3: Mess

When Sarah reached the mess tent, it was all in darkness. She
got out and looked around. There was apparently no-one in sight, so
she opened the back of the van and started unloading boxes onto an
empty pallet outside the tent.

'I suppose they'll find the stuff in the morning,' she said to
herself.

After taking no more than three boxes, a figure emerged from
the shadows. Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin and was about to
run back to the cab and drive off with the accelerator pushed to
the floor, when she heard a man's voice. He was talking loudly into
a headset, clearly intending for her to hear. She also saw he was
wearing camo gear and so was almost definitely not a
zombie.

'OK, Briggsie, 'sright, she's just here. Yeah, I'll give her a
hand.'

'Sentry on duty, miss,' the soldier said, giving her a snappy
salute. 'Hope I didn't give you a fright.'

'Well, a bit, actually, coming out from behind that tree.' In
the dim light she could see he was rather younger than the other
one. 'What with zombies being about and all that.'

'No zombies round here, miss.'

'I'm very pleased to hear it.'

'If there was, we'd shoot 'em.' The soldier grinned, then
pointed to his earpiece. 'That was…'

'Oh, yes. Briggs? He said I should mention his
name.'

'Yeah, Briggsie we call him. Let me have that one,' he said,
taking the box of pasties Sarah had in her arms.

They took twenty-four boxes, stacked two deep in four rows by
three high, from the back of the van. Then Sarah stopped and said,
'That's it now.'

'What about the rest of it?'

'You've got all the pies and stuff. The rest is simply basics,
flour, salt, that kind of thing, see?'

The soldier flashed his torch inside, look at the remaining
wall of boxes and saw that what she said was true. It had been
Alex's idea to put the more interesting food stuffs on the outside
layers, in case they were stopped, with the staple items behind as
a screen to hide the fugitives.

'We've got to make a living, you know,' Sarah said with a
smile as she shut the doors and turned the handle. 'Enjoy your pies
and sausages.'

'You needn't worry on that score, miss,' the soldier said as
Sarah released the brake and pulled away.

Within half a mile she found herself shaking so badly she
could hardly stay on the road. Sarah stopped and opened the cab
door to look back and make certain the van wasn't being followed.
Then she forced herself to go on another mile, until the lights
from the camp had completely vanished behind. She staggered out of
the cab, tapping lightly on the side as she went to open the back
doors.

'OK, OK,' she gasped, pulling down a couple of boxes. 'We're
through.'

Graham's head appeared from behind the next box as he moved it
out of the way and climbed out.

'You alright?' he said, taking her in his arms.

'No, it was awful, I thought the first one was going to use
his radio and they'd find us out, then…' Before she could finish,
Sarah burst into tears and sat down on the floor of the van
quivering uncontrollably. Graham comforted her as best he could.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group reorganised the boxes to make
things more comfortable.

'Good job,' Janet said.' You and Graham come and sit in the
cab. The rest of you make yourselves as comfortable as possible. I
want to get as far away from here as I can before they realise
they've been had.'

'Ha!' Bill said. 'Someone's going to choke on his sausages in
the morning!'

Maisie yawned extravagantly. 'Like, what do you mean?' she
said before sitting down on a sack of potatoes.

'I mean when they find out the delivery had nothing to do with
any orders from the chief and the van's disappeared.'

'Even better, for all they know, there was only one person in
it,' Janet said.

'You were fantastic,' Karen said, squeezing Sarah's hand
before they closed the doors. 'I could never have done
it.'

Graham led Sarah to the cab and helped her in. Janet fought
her instinct to roar away as fast as possible and moved off at a
sedate pace. She didn't want to shake up the others in the back and
there was no telling what you might run into in the middle of the
night.

Chapter
14: Sweep The Valley

'There's something funny going on here, you know, Doug,'
Professor Mason said, speaking on the VHF link.

'Go on.'

'The telecoms company boffins can tell when a phone logs into
a tower to get a signal, so we're certain the texts all got through
to the individual phones.'

'How do they know that?'

'Because they weren't out of range or anything, they were
actively connected with the phone relay tower at the time the texts
were sent.'

'I see.'

'What we also know is that within less than ten minutes after
that, each phone was turned off.'

'Dead people can't easily do that.'

'So, we still have nine or ten live people wandering around
somewhere.'

'How come nine or ten?'

'Because we've got ten missing persons but a phone registered
to one of the kids hasn't been operational all day, so it's
probably switched off and left at home, or the battery's run
down.'

'Did they get a triangulation for the location of the phones
before they were turned off?'

'No because the only tower they connected to was the Kilkorne
relay.'

'So they're still in the village.'

'Looks that way.'

'Just a minute, Albert. I've got another call to deal with.
Get back to you.'

'OK. Out.'

'What sausages?' Commander Hodgeson's voice rose as he heard
the mess sergeant thanking him for the surprise shipment of
supplies delivered in the middle of the night. 'A van? A civilian
woman?'

Hodgeson paced along the quay. It was quarter to ten and the
early morning mist had completely dissipated from the sea.
Squawking gulls wheeled above the heads of the soldiers, ever
hopeful that one would drop something edible that could be swooped
on.

Without raising his voice, Douglas Hodgeson spoke in a deep,
menacing tone, 'Who was on duty? Briggs? Send him to me. I want a
full description of this van and its driver, then get a chopper in
the air and send out scouts on motorbikes. That van has got to be
found… What? No, you can not eat the sausages. We have no idea what
might have been done to them. Recall the lot. I don't care if they
smell fit for the Queen, if anyone's eaten them, keep them away
from anyone else. Briggs? Oh, yes, I bet he was first in line. Well
keep him up there, then.'

'Trouble, Doug?' Professor Mason said, detecting strain in his
friend's voice.

'At least one of them's got out.'

'When?'

'About 4 a.m., followed the convoy I sent you as far as the
roadblock, bluffed their way through the camp, leaving a load of
suspect food, then vanished.'

'Could the others have been in the van?'

'None were seen but it's very possible.'

'They're acting way too smart for zombies.'

'Knowing to turn the phones off, not replying to the texts,
getting in a van and bluffing their way through an army camp, I
should say so.'

'Might still be infected, though.'

'That's what concerns me.'

'Shoot on sight?'

'Sweep the whole Kilkorne valley from the harbour to the
cliff. If they don't turn up, they've escaped.'

'I'll call you in three hours, that should be enough time to
be sure.'

Chapter
15: Double Blind

'Mason, I hope you've got some good news.' The Minister for
Home Affairs had caught the professor in his office again, trying
to catch up on paperwork.

'I've sent a cargo of UV equipment over to
Kilkorne.'

'That's good news, is it?'

'There's a mixture of hand-held detectors and adapted
searchlights. It means Hodgeson can finish the clean up and be sure
it's effective.'

'Processing of the detainees at Breathdeep, how's that
progressing?'

'I've supervised separating the zombies from the
pre-symptomatic ones. Subdividing the holding facilities means I
now have groups no larger than six in any one room. That should
help keep the media quiet on this occasion.'

'This occasion? You're anticipating more?'

'I meant compared with the first one.'

'I see. What about the vaccine?'

'We've proceeded with giving the trial batch to the most
advanced cases and everyone who volunteered out of the
pre-symptomatic group has had it, too.'

'Why only volunteers? I thought you'd dispensed with medical
ethics over there. Just make them all have it.'

'Actually, it's quite useful because it provides us with a
control group of sorts. If it was a proper trial, we'd have a
double-blind system of course, where no-one knows who's got the
vaccine and who hasn't, until after the results have been
analysed.'

'That's scientific method is it?'

'Internationally accepted practice. In this case, though, the
vaccine is either going to work or it isn't; anyone who refuses the
vaccine is going to die, going by the last time.'

'There were several hundred thousand who survived the first
attack.'

'Only five who'd been exposed to the virus
survived.'

'You mean...?'

'Yes, Minister, the others all managed to keep away from being
infected, either by barricading themselves into somewhere they
could survive until the clean-up was completed, or were in the few
remote areas that weren't affected. This was fully explained in the
paper I sent you.'

'Have you found a way to tell if someone is infected before
they show the symptoms?'

'No, blood tests work but by the time the markers show up, the
symptoms have already appeared anyway.'

'That's not very helpful.'

'I know you don't want to hear it but there's some bad
news.'

'And that is?'

'A few more of the zombie subjects are unaccounted for and we
have nine or ten very resourceful Kilkorne residents on the
loose.'

'Are they infected?'

'That we don't know but if they are, they'll start making
mistakes and we'll catch up with them, same as the others. You
authorised Hodgeson's shoot on sight orders, he'll implement them,
as necessary.'

Chapter
1
6: Supermarket

Janet drove on 'til dawn, then stopped so Graham and Sarah
could swap with Alex and Steve.

An hour later, Rachel banged a fist on the wall of the van.
Janet slowed and pulled over.

'Can't we stop somewhere? This van's horrible with no windows
and it doesn't feel safe with one of the back doors
open.'

'OK, Steve, swap with Rachel, let her have a turn in the
front.

'I'm hungry,' Maisie said. 'Sarah, why'd you have to, like,
give away all the best food?'

'It all needed cooking for one thing, so it wouldn't be much
use right now.'

'Are there any sausages left?' Fred said. 'We could do some
over a camp fire.'

'There won't be any fires, young man,' Janet said. 'Not while
there are helicopters looking for us.'

'And it's what we agreed before we set off,' Alex said. 'If we
got stopped I had a pretty good idea the food would take their
minds off what the van was doing there.'

'Worked, too,' Bill said. 'Brilliant job all
round.'

'Thanks,' Sarah said. 'If I'd just driven straight off without
leaving the food, the last sentry would have been alerted
immediately and they'd have come after us for sure.'

'I agree,' Graham said. 'They were so distracted by the idea
of what they'd be tucking in to the next day that they didn't even
question it.'

Janet looked around the pale faces in the back of the van. 'It
doesn't stop us from all being hungry now, though. I'm sure we'll
find something soon.'

Half an hour later they pulled up at one of those out of town
supermarkets, next to a tyre shop and a carpet store. The van's
paint job looked garish and completely out of place there, in front
of a concrete and glass building set in an expanse of deserted
tarmac which would have once been packed with cars. Three of the
four shutters were down over the front display windows of the shop
but the door was unlocked.

Janet got out and looked around, Alex changed places to sit
behind the van's steering wheel, with Rachel next to her. Steve and
Alex stayed in the back of the van. Janet, Karen, Bill and Graham
went into the shop. Sarah remained outside, keeping a lookout with
the flare gun.