The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 3) (10 page)
It had once belonged to Mr. Carpenter, the village grump. The people of the community tended to avoid him in the same way they would with the door-to-door sales reps who sailed into town from time to time. He remembered the haggard and frail Mr. Carpenter well, and while most people hated him, Peter had always felt a degree of sorrow for the lonely old man. Despite the amount of times he had lost a football to Mr. Carpenter when they landed in his garden and never to be seen again, Peter always refrained from hurling abuse and taunts at the man like all the other children did.
Mr. Carpenter had died two years earlier, and after some searching by local authorities, long lost family members began to crawl out from the woodwork. His son, whom had not seen his father for over twenty-five years, suddenly made an appearance and claimed the house and possessions for his own. The ‘For Sale’ sign that had soon after been erected still stood at the end of the garden, askew and looking faded through time.
“There,” Peter cried and shoved his brother ahead of him, aiming for the blue door of Mr. Carpenter’s house. “Go, Mike, run.”
The blast of Peter’s gun caused Michael’s knees to buckle and his body to drop as he raised his hands to his ears. To their right, a corpse hit the pavement with a heavy thud and a gaping hole in its skull. Peter threw a kick at Michael, catching him squarely in the buttocks and causing him to howl.
“Keep fucking going. Don’t you dare stop,” he snarled as he fired at another one of the infected that was close by.
The round missed its target and smashed through the throat of the corpse, tearing out a large portion of decayed tissue and muscle. Its head slumped to the side, but the body continued its relentless advance towards them. Again, the crack of the gun caused Michael to flinch, but this time he kept his feet moving across the ground while his brother kept a tight grip upon his collar, driving him forward. With another well aimed kick, Peter corrected the direction in which his brother was headed. Michael howled again but complied with the painful steering method which Peter was using.
“Blue door,” Peter screamed from behind over the raucous din of the infected and kicking him again. Another blast from the gun echoed loudly through the street and spelled the end of another of the infected. “Head for the blue door.”
They reached the gate that was set into the old stone wall and led onto the path leading down to the door of the house. Peter had no idea whether or not the door was locked or just held closed by the flimsy catch. He fired another shot and then tightly gripped Michael’s collar in his screwed fist. With all the energy he could muster, he pushed his brother and charged along the path, aiming Michael for the door. The slight decline of the front garden helped increase the momentum of the two brothers as they raced towards the house.
“Head down, Mikey,” Peter shouted, intending to use his brother as a battering ram and smash their way in through the door if necessary.
Michael saw the thick blue barrier racing towards him, growing larger as his brother continued to push him forward without even marginally reducing their speed. He squealed and raised his arms to protect his head. He tried to twist away from the collision, but Peter’s grip was too strong, and it was inevitable that he was going to hit at a break-neck pace.
With a mighty crash, Michael’s body slammed into the door. It was instantly flung open and smashed against the wall of the hallway with an echoing jolt, causing it to shudder and rebound back towards the doorframe. Michael spilled in over the threshold, screaming with pain and sent into a spin from the impact. He crumpled to the floor as Peter, still firing his gun and being carried forward by the momentum, vaulted over his pain-wracked body.
Peter landed on the bare concrete of the hall floor and came to a skidding halt. Immediately, he twisted his body and lunged back towards the front door as the first of the infected entered into the garden and lumbered towards the house. He slammed the door shut again, but it would not remain closed. The lock was too damaged, knocked askew and pushed away from the splintered wood of the doorframe. Again, Peter slammed the door until it sat flush with the rest of the architrave. Reaching down, he threw the lower bolt across and then turned his attention to the one at the top of the door. Within seconds, the first of the dead arrived on the other side of their barricade. A body crashed against it and began to beat its fists, howling with frustration as its way inside was suddenly thwarted. More of the infected began to hammer away at the doorway, causing it to shake and groan beneath the assault.
Peter stepped back, watching the door for a moment and judging whether or not it was capable of holding back the dead until he found another way out. He leaned down and scooped up Michael from the floor. Blood was seeping from a gash in the side of his brother’s head, but other than that, he could see no debilitating injuries on the boy.
Without a word, he dragged him through another doorway and into the kitchen. The room was dark, and the window above the old rickety sink was so encrusted with filth that it was impossible for him to see out. He looked towards the door that led out into the garden. He could see the bolts in place and decided against opening it until he was sure of what was on the other side. He let go of Michael and left him to fall to the floor again. He passed through another door to his left and into what would have once been the rear sitting room. Like the kitchen, it was dark inside and smelled musty and dank. The window looking out over the rear of the house was just as grime covered as the one in the kitchen but much more accessible. He wiped his hand across the glass, smearing the condensation with the dust and creating large murky swirls. He pulled the cuff of his jacket over his palm and began vigorously rubbing at the window, steadily transforming a small patch of the glass from impenetrable brown to a semi-opaque beige, and eventually to a murky transparent.
He pressed his face close to the cold windowpane and peered out into the overgrown tangles of weeds and unkempt trees that made up Mr. Carpenter’s garden. Peter’s hopes were immediately dashed. Just as he had feared, Michael had done an outstanding job of informing every ghoul in the immediate vicinity of their whereabouts. Through the dirty glass he could see shadowy figures climbing and fighting their way through the branches of the trees and bushes that marked the perimeter of the property. The fence, having long ago been neglected and left to ruin, did nothing to stop the creatures from spilling into the rear of the house. Already there were dozens of them filling the small enclosure, and more of them were converging from the fields beyond the end of the garden.
“Shit,” Peter gasped, his mouth falling open as he stared in horror. He turned and called into the next room as he pulled himself away from the window. “We’re fucked, Mikey. You’ve really outdone yourself this time, brother.”
For over a week the pair of them had remained trapped inside the house. The dead had refused to leave, keeping up their assault against the doors on the ground floor while Peter and Michael retreated to the upstairs. For the first day they had sat huddled in a darkened room, too terrified to even speak as they waited to hear the sound of the doors caving in and the infected crashing through the house in their search for living flesh. However, the doors held and refused to allow the rotting corpses of the villagers inside.
The measly few tins of food they had discovered in the kitchen did not last long, and they were soon out of water, having used up the stagnant and fetid dregs they found in the toilet bowl and the rust coloured puddle they salvaged from the boiler. They were cold, thirsty, and hungry. They had no way out of the house, and there was no one coming to rescue them. They were trapped, and after a week of them relentlessly pounding at the doors and walls, Peter doubted that the dead would ever leave.
As the days passed, both of them became more withdrawn. Michael attempted to speak to Peter on many occasions, but his brother rarely said anything in return. Instead, he just sat glaring at him with anger burning in his eyes. Michael was scared, but he was not sure of who to fear the most, the corpses outside or his brother. At least for the moment, the monsters in the garden could not hurt him, but Peter surely could if he wished.
While Michael lay huddled on the bare floorboards, Peter stared into thin air. He was exhausted, but unable to sleep. He was scared, but unable to do anything about their predicament. They were trapped, and no matter how hard he thought, he could see no way out. Now, as he sat hunched beneath the windowsill and staring at the lamp, he accepted that death would eventually come for them.
“Do you think they made it?” Michael’s voice drifted across to him, abruptly snatching him from his thoughts.
Peter’s eyes suddenly focussed, and he realised then that the kerosene lamp had died, having used up the last of their fuel and casting the room into complete darkness. Peter had been staring at the bright glow of the lamp for hours and had not noticed the light fading as the blackness slowly crept in from the shadowy corners of the room.
“Do I think who made what?” he replied with disinterest and a hint of irritation as he adjusted his position on the floor, feeling that his buttocks had grown numb.
“Those soldiers we met in the pub, remember?” Michael replied from somewhere within the gloom. “What was his name…? Uh, Marcus, that was it. Do you think him and his mates managed to get home again?”
Peter shrugged, knowing that Michael could not see him. He had not thought about Marcus and his men for quite some time, but now he found himself wondering whether they had actually made it after their long fight from halfway across the planet. A flood of possibilities that quickly turned to fantasy began to swamp his thoughts. He began to wish that he had taken them up on their offer of going with them. He now realised, with hindsight, that they would have stood a far better chance at survival if he had accepted their invitation to join their group.
He imagined himself safe, having made it to their final destination with Marcus and his small but tough band of soldiers. He could virtually see the warm bed and steaming food that he would have been indulging himself with daily, if only he had gone with them. Smiling faces, safe from the monsters that roamed the outside world, flitted across his mind’s eye and for a short moment, he began to feel warm and relaxed, happy in his new home with Marcus and his kin. A smile of false contentment tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“Do you think they made it then?”
Michael’s annoying and urgent questioning snapped Peter back to reality where he landed with a bump. His fantasy was quashed in an instant, and he returned to the real world and the hell in which they were trapped.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled quietly. “I doubt it.”
“I hope they did.”
“Get some sleep, Mikey.”
As the first rays of the morning sun began to penetrate the murky windows of the upstairs bedroom, Peter continued to stare at the dark and cold lamp in the centre of the room and the bulky shape of his sleeping brother beside it. He was hungry and thirsty, but they were completely out of food and water. He dreaded the idea of a slow death through dehydration. He did not want to die, but he also did not want to suffer while clinging to life when there was no hope of survival.
The house continued to echo with the dull thuds as the dead kept up their unrelenting beat. Their haunting moans and aggressive snorts drifted up along the staircase and into the room where Peter and Michael took refuge. Peter had become strangely used to the noise now, no longer flinching with each and every bang or groan. However, he knew that would all soon change once the doors finally collapsed, and the terror would quickly return to him.
“Just fucking get on with it,” he grunted.
For a brief moment he considered going down to the hallway and screaming at the infected through the letterbox, telling them that they should leave. He sniggered to himself at the ridiculous idea.
Absentmindedly, he pulled the pistol from inside his jacket. In the dim orange light of morning, he removed the magazine. It was empty, with just one round remaining in the chamber of the gun. He did not even have enough ammunition to deal with them both when the time came. He could keep the bullet for himself, but he knew that he would never do that. He began to envision all kinds of ways to use the one round. The thought of them sitting side by side, their heads pressed together, and hoping that the bullet had enough power to penetrate from one skull to the next made him want to laugh. He smiled sadly and shook his head as he slipped the magazine back into the grip of the pistol.
“If only we’d gone with them,” he whispered.
7
Ineffective, demoralised, decimated. They were just a few of the words that were being used to describe the state of the remaining armed forces. After the disastrous attack on the city of London, the offensive capability of Britain’s military in the south had ceased to exist. Ammunition was drastically low, but the morale and fighting spirit of the surviving soldiers was lower still. They had gone to the mainland with confidence, sure that they could reclaim their country from the dead plague, only to be beaten back and slaughtered in the mayhem that followed.
The high command soon began to realise that they had once again greatly underestimated the enemy. Junior officers and militia commanders, even ‘armchair generals’, could see that the army commanders had overreached in their strategic goals and failed to take into consideration that they were not fighting a conventional foe. Many believed that the counter offensive had been doomed from the very start and that the three-pronged attack should have been dismissed by the military planners and replaced with a single, broad fronted offensive. Concerns had been voiced from early on, and recommendations for an assault from the south coast with objectives that could be taken and held easily and more securely were ignored, and the more spectacular and inherently complex plan was put into motion.
It was widely believed that politicians had been given too much influence in the strategic planning, and the result was an operation that consisted of too many working parts and a severe overstretching of resources. A high degree of pressure had been placed upon the commanders by men and women who had no experience in military matters, and eventually the senior command had relented. A number of high ranking officers expressed that attacking London would be a mistake, but the government had insisted that the capital be retaken as a symbolic gesture to the remains of the civilian population and the military as a whole. Now, everyone involved could see that the operational goals had been unattainable. However, hindsight was always twenty-twenty vision.
Thousands of men and women had been lost, and now many more were deserting and fleeing the island on a daily basis. The men and women returning from the mainland, having lost much of their equipment, including weapons and ammunition, were a mere shadow of the conquering troops they had set out to be. They were a broken army, running headlong in retreat, and fighting for their own survival. The intelligence, firepower, physical superiority, and technology of the living had not been enough to defeat the legions of infected that ravaged the land. The faint but hypnotic glimmer of hope that had once been the driving force behind many of the people to continue following their government and for the soldiers to obey the orders of their commanders was gone, replaced with overwhelming despair.
The writing on the wall was plain for all to see. The armies of the dead had won, and there was no chance of returning to the offensive.
The Royal Air Force was spent. Most of their ordnance had been used up with the initial bombing runs and later in their desperate attempts to shore up the various fronts and prevent a complete collapse. Their aircraft now sat idle on the deck of the HMS Illustrious and the hastily built airfield on the Isle of Wight. There was nothing for them to do now, and there was no ammunition to rearm them. Like much of the rest of the world and the inventions of mankind, the sophisticated and extremely expensive fighter jets and helicopters had become nothing more than relics of what once was.
So much had been thrown into the assault on the mainland that now, in the aftermath of complete catastrophe, there was barely enough supplies left on the island to sustain what was left of the military and the civilians. Soon after the counter offensive was called off, a number of attempts were made to recapture the airfield at Farnborough in order to salvage what they could in the way of fuel and supplies, but the raids ended in failure with more lives lost and an irreplaceable expenditure of precious ammunition. The battered and fragmented British forces retreated to the island, and there they remained, reeling from shock and losing the confidence in their power and abilities that had once seen them conquer half of the globe.
Shortly after the battles on the mainland, some militia commanders quickly realised that their own forces vastly outnumbered the regular units. Compared to the trained veterans, the civilian soldiers had suffered a much lower percentage of casualties. The bulk of the militia forces had never managed to get off the island and join in on the offensive before the retreat was ordered. This left a large number of militia troops that were still heavily armed and well supplied. As the severely weakened forces arrived back from the mainland, local commanders soon began to realise that they had a great advantage in the way of numbers and firepower.
Many of the civilians and their commanders watched the tattered units as they arrived in disarray and instantly began to turn the tables around. The vast majority of the population were angry and wanted to see the people responsible for the failure held accountable. The dismissals of government leaders and army commanders were soon being demanded. Violence and small skirmishes between armed troops began to break out across the island. The short but bloody battles were mostly orchestrated by senior militia commanders in veiled attempts at testing the strength and capabilities of the remaining regular forces. The ensuing clashes saw a number of people killed as fighting erupted between the militia and government troops in the centre of Newport. All the time, the fires of discontent were being fuelled from behind the scenes by ambitious usurpers that wanted to snatch power for themselves.
During the clashes, as the militia fought to seize control of the central powers of the island, revenge had become a strong motivator for many of the fighters. They wanted people to be held accountable for the failure of the offensive, to stand and be judged, and receive retribution for their incompetence. The politicians, accused of having the blood of thousands on their hands, closed ranks and refused to accept any blame for the disaster and attempted to point the finger at the army commanders. It was a move that angered the surviving military and militia all the more. It was nothing new for politicians to deny any wrong doing and shirk responsibility, but now they no longer had the law and an entire country’s political infrastructure to hide behind and support them.
As the hostilities continued over ground that was frequently gained and lost, men and women who held offices in government and were accused of cowardice and negligence during the mainland offensive began to disappear. In almost every case, they were found within a few days, hanging from the street lights after being sentenced to death by kangaroo-style-courts that usually amounted to little more than a lynch-mob. Even the new Prime Minister and four of his closest staff members were caught in an ambush by a large militia force and summarily executed, their bullet riddled bodies being left to rot at the roadside. Many people fled, fearing that they too would suffer the same fate regardless of what their roles had been during the failed assault on the mainland.
Despite their lack of ammunition and manpower, the regular soldiers managed to hold on to the towns under their control and eventually beat the militia back, inflicting heavy losses. The civilian troops, lacking in training and strong leadership, withdrew towards the east of the island and centralised the bulk of their forces in the towns of Ryde and East Cowes. All the while, the HMS Illustrious, with what little assets and firepower she had remaining, kept an over-watch on the situation from the east coast, ready to halt any westward advance by the rebel forces. The Isle of Wight had very nearly been lost, and now there was a clear east and west divide with an undeclared demilitarised zone running from north to south through the centre of the island.
As the militia fell back, the dead that littered the streets began to walk again. For days, while the army and the militia continued to dig in and defend their territories, the reanimated corpses roamed the towns and outlying villages, adding countless innocent lives to their ranks. Entire communities were overrun and their populations swallowed up by the infected that relentlessly advanced through the chaos and confusion that reigned over the island.
Eventually, an uneasy truce was agreed upon, and the two battling armies turned their attentions to dealing with the outbreaks in their respective sectors. Both sides realised that holding onto ground meant nothing if the infected were swarming through their towns. It took a long time before the built-up areas could be declared free of the infected and secure. However, with both sides needing to concentrate their manpower on strategic points within their respective sectors, vast areas behind their lines were neglected and left to their own devices. There were hundreds of the dead that had escaped the hunter-killer groups drifting through the countryside and creating their own little armies as they fell upon the defenceless civilians who were beyond the protection of the army and militia.
In an effort to stem the spread and deal with the outbreaks in the rear, small patrols, consisting of barely trained men and women, were sent out to deal with the clusters of infected, but their numbers were never adequate to deal with the growing situation. Very often, large numbers of the dead remained roaming through the rural areas where the soldiers were reluctant to follow them. Most of the wandering reanimated corpses were only dealt with when they appeared in and around the occupied towns and villages. An almost blasé attitude of ‘out of sight and out of mind’ seemed to have arisen within the well defended urban sectors, but the dead were never out of sight or mind for long. Many of the people from the unprotected farms and hamlets dotted across the island began to flock towards the larger towns in droves, leaving empty villages behind.
Thousands of people were escaping from the island each week. Soldiers, civilians, and even many of the doctors and scientists were seeing the situation for what it was and taking their chances on the mainland. Many of them gathered their families and what supplies and weapons they could and headed for the coast. Anything that could float was used to transport them across the narrow stretch of water that separated the Isle of Wight from southern England. The remains of the government and military did little to stop the exodus of the general population. The way that they looked at it was fewer mouths to feed and worry about.
However, the deserting soldiers and doctors were viewed in a different light. They were vital to the continued survival of the island, and when caught trying to escape, examples were made. Corporal and capital punishment was introduced to deter further desertions. Some were beaten and then thrown into jail, while others faced much harsher and more permanent punishments. The firing squads and hangings did little to stop others from attempting escape, and the island’s population continued to shrink at a steady rate. Even the boat patrols through The Solent were too few and ineffective.
In the refugee camps situated towards the south of the island, chaos reigned. Their numbers were swollen beyond capacity, and due to the lack of manpower for the guard force and medical staff to keep an eye on the deteriorating health of the civilians, conditions for the people within the wire were worsening. Shortly after the failure of the offensive, the camps saw a large number of people becoming sick due to neglect and the filthy conditions. Many of the guard force had abandoned their posts, and the army did not have the numbers to sufficiently watch the expansive enclosures. Many of the sick and dying went unnoticed, and before long, the dead were returning and spreading their virus through the trapped throngs of panicking refugees. The infection spread fast and thousands died. Large groups of people rushed the fences and fled into the island, ignoring the machinegun fire that rained down upon them from the few soldiers that watched in horror from the towers. Some of the fleeing civilians joined the militia in the east and others, wanting only to survive, headed into the vast rural areas in the hope of finding somewhere to hide or a way of escaping from the island.
The flu that had wiped out much of humanity had found a new home within the camps and rapidly grew, claiming more lives each day. Funeral pyres were common within the fences as the refugees disposed of the dead themselves. The thick black clouds of choking noxious smoke carried the stench of burning bodies across the entire island. The towering flames could be seen for miles around as piles of human corpses were reduced to ash while the refugees struggled to contain the outbreak. To add to their misery and desperation, an epidemic of cholera had also taken root, and the whole refugee compound was placed under strict quarantine.
Some managed to sneak through the wire or bribe one of the few guards to look the other way, but many of those trying to breakout were killed before they had made it to the fence. The guards that were still on duty no longer bothered to patrol the perimeter. Instead, they took up positions at a safe distance all around the compound where they could see the entire length of the coils of barbed wire. Anyone trying to climb or tunnel out was shot without warning.
The alarms had become a natural daily occurrence. Their high-pitched wails could be heard regularly, denoting an escape attempt or a breakout of infected within the fences. Most of the time, little was done from the outside to contain the spread, and it was left to the unarmed civilians living within the camp to deal with the dead as they tore through the tents.
Control was beginning to slip from the fingers of the government personnel stationed on the islands inhabited by living humans. Many soldiers and civilians no longer felt obliged to hold their oaths and turned their attention to their own survival. Humanity was splintered, and civilisation, which had once been the adhesive that held it all together, had long since crumbled and been destroyed.