The Dead Walk The Earth II (11 page)

Emily, still standing in the doorway as she watched and listened in amusement to the men and their banter had not seen Taff move. She must have blinked at the moment he launched his lightning attack but she had clearly heard the thud and the fact that Bull had suddenly disappeared from sight and his voice could no longer be heard was enough to tell her that he had somehow been incapacitated.

“Dear God, Taff,” Emily huffed as she realised what had happened and made her way across to the sofa. “Not again.”

“I told him to shut up,” Taff grunted in a tone reminiscent of a child who was being told off for fighting with one of his siblings.

Kneeling down beside the unconscious Bull and after scooping her fingers into his cavernous mouth to ensure that he was not going to swallow his tongue, she turned to look up at Taff. Her face conveyed the level of her annoyance.

“I know you told him to shut up but it’s always
me
who ends up having to deal with him. You know what he’s like. He’s not much different from a kid at times.” She paused and looked about at the rest of them. “In fact, none of you are. You’re all a bunch of overgrown bloody five year olds.”

“Well, I’ll keep doing it until he learns to back off when I tell him to.” Taff leaned over her and peered down at his friend. “Is he okay?”

“Of course he’s okay,” Emily replied with a sigh. “It’s
you
that won’t be okay when he wakes up, Taff. I’m not playing ‘mother’ for you all and getting in the way of your silly squabbling when he comes to.”

Stan and Marty looked on in amusement from the other side of the room while they continued to inspect the contents of the box. Neither of them were electricians but the item numbers on the equipment matched the list that Richard had given them.

“You’d better make yourself scarce before he wakes up, mate,” Marty advised Taff as he handed a bottle of whisky across to their team commander.

Below average in height but powerfully built, Taff knew that in a fair fight he would not be able to take on the mighty Bull in a slugging match. None of them could. Instead, he always resorted to using his wits and speed and on a number of occasions, Bull had made the mistake of dropping his guard and leaving himself wide open to attack.

“Aye, good idea,” Taff agreed as he stared down at his drooling friend on the floor. “I’m due for my daily walk anyway. I have to keep working on getting my ankle strong again. You coming, Billy?”

Bobby returned a couple of hours later with Richard and set to work on improving their power issues. With his wiry grey hair that stood out in strands from his scalp and leathery skin, Richard looked nothing like one expected from a man who had once sat on the London City Council. He was short and lean, to the point where he looked malnourished, and the burning cigarette that always seemed to dangle between his nicotine stained lips and discoloured stubble made him appear like a man who had been living on the streets for most of his life.

“All right, Bull?” Richard grinned as he walked through the door revealing the four discoloured teeth he had remaining within his mouth.

Bull was still brooding over the incident with Taff but Stan had managed to calm him down from his rage and convinced him that he was overreacting.

“I’m good, Richie. How about you?” Bull replied from the table where he continued to strip and clean his weapons. “Taff hit me again. Sucker-punched me when I wasn’t looking, the wanker.”

Richard shrugged.

“Well what else is he going to do, arm wrestle you? You’re lucky he didn’t go with the gun option, mate.”

By nightfall, the house had become a little more civilised. Bull was happy to bury the hatchet over a few drinks and the oven and hot water boiler were fully functional. Each of them took it in turns to have hot showers and finally began to feel human again while they sat down to a hefty meal of mostly locally caught meat. Taff was an expert tracker and trapping animals in snares was something that had come as part of his skill. Knowing what to look for and how to read the ground helped when setting his snares and had kept them all reasonably well fed compared to the rest of the island’s inhabitants.

Marty gave Stan a full report on the reconnaissance mission that he and the others had conducted over the previous three weeks and what they had seen.

“Sounds like it will be a hard job getting into the city from the west then,” Stan concluded. “Aviation fuel is one of their main concerns at the moment, but if they decide to try a heli insertion, we’ll have those things all over us before we even get close.”

“You sound pretty sure that we’ll be going in ahead of everyone else on this one, Stan,” Bull said as he reassembled his pistol after giving it a thorough cleaning.

“What else would we be doing? Taking it easy here on the island?”

“Aye, I suppose so,” Bull shrugged.

Marty nodded and poured himself another glass of whisky.

“Getting us in there is their problem. We can let them figure that out. Plus, with the shortage of aircraft I get a sneaky feeling that they won’t risk losing one while dropping us in. As you said, fuel is also an issue. Obviously we’ll have the final say on it but as long as they don’t try dropping us in by parachute then I’m happy enough to consider their ideas.”

“That might explain the meeting I’m having with Gerry in the morning,” Stan pondered as he rubbed at the bristles on his chin.

“What meeting?”

“Just a rough head’s up on the outline of the coming ops. More of an in-depth warning order really and he’s bringing an old friend of mine who I didn’t even know was on the island. Anyway, what about the other stuff?”

Marty nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of the golden fiery liquid and twisted the map around on the table so that he could get a better orientation. Stan was referring to the secondary task that he had given them in secret and was not a part of the orders from the Operations Officer or the army commanders.

“Here’s where we left the first cache,” he said as he pointed to an area on the mainland that was north of the island and directly south of Swindon. “There’s weapons, ammunition, food and water, and cold weather gear too. We piled it all into the back of two SUVs and both are fully fuelled with battery chargers inside in case it’s a while before we use them. The cache is off the beaten track too, so we shouldn’t have any trouble with unwanted attention while approaching it.”

“Upavon,” Stan read the name of the closest town aloud. “That’s about what, seventy kilometres?”

“Roughly that, yeah,” Marty nodded and then tapped another point on the map with the sharpened point of his pencil.

“I have the exact grid for you and a cache report,” Danny cut in. “It’s close to an old Cold-War bunker and away from the built-up area. The other cache is here, about a hundred kilometres further north towards Birmingham.”

“You covered quite a distance on your visit to the mainland, didn’t you? Did you see any survivors? What about infected?”

“Plenty of both,” Marty confirmed. “The infected are sticking mainly to the urban areas but there are still a lot of them scattered through the sticks. Survivor wise; we watched a few units of soldiers carrying out raids and so on. Not sure whether they were from any of the FOBs or acting independently though. We passed quite a few families who were still barricaded inside their homes too.”

“Anything that’s likely to give us problems?”

Marty shook his head with confidence.

“Nah, I doubt it. People on the mainland are too busy just trying to survive. Besides, I’m one hundred percent sure that we weren’t seen by anyone. We only moved at night and laid up during daylight hours.”

Remembering the incident of the fire that engulfed the better part of a town, Danny glanced across at Marty. The look was only fleeting but Stan saw it and wondered what exactly they were holding back from him. He decided not to push the subject and reasoned that if there were something that was operationally critical, they would tell him. Other than that, he did not want to know what they got up to on the mainland so long as it did not get in the way of them doing their jobs or affected their continued survival.

“Good work,” Stan nodded.

With the caches that Marty and the others had left in the south of the country he was satisfied that they were not placing all their eggs into the same basket as the remains of their government and military forces. If the worst came to the worst, they knew that everything they needed could be located in the same spot. Their only problem would be getting there, and in one piece.

Later, as they sat eating and drinking, Samantha arrived. She did her best to appear annoyed over the theft of her Land Rover but her face betrayed her amusement at the men’s complete disregard for the rules when it came to taking care of themselves. Within minutes of her appearance she made an excuse to leave and as per their routine, Bobby left shortly afterwards with his own excuses.

“Those two kids must think we’re stupid,” Richard remarked as he topped up his glass. “Hey, Stan, what’s the latest on that Marcus guy and his blokes?”

Richard was referring to the transmissions they had been listening to on the High-Frequency radio over the previous couple of months. Each night they had tuned in to catch up on the latest developments concerning a group of men who were fighting their way back across Europe after battling their way out of Baghdad and crossing over from Turkey and the Middle East.

“We haven’t heard anything from them for a few days,” Stan replied. “The last message they sent was that they were approaching the French coast and that there was strong evidence of a rogue militia in the area.”

“Yeah,” Taff added as he sat back in his chair and looking more than a little inebriated. “They were up against tanks and all sorts, apparently.”

“Jesus,” Richard whistled through his well-spaced teeth, “they fought their way out from one shit hole to the next, all the way from Baghdad, only to run into a bunch of Frogs with chips on their shoulders?”

“French Fries, you mean? They had French Fries on their shoulders,” Taff quipped as he sat swaying in his seat.

“Good one, Taff.” Richard sniggered.

The joke was sharp but Richard really did hope that Marcus and his men had somehow come through. For weeks, Stan and the others had all been listening intently to their progress as they dragged themselves across Europe. There had been many transmissions over the months from various sources across the world, but the saga of Marcus and his men had drawn them in. It was something they could relate to and not completely dissimilar to predicaments they had found themselves in.

Bull had compared it to a soap-opera. With very little in the way of entertainment, the team of mercenaries from Iraq and their adventures had it all. Drama, action, excitement, and tension. It even had the love interest and intimacy between Marcus and his wife, Jennifer.

“Do you think they made it?” Marty asked with interest.

“I doubt it,” Stan shrugged as he emptied his glass.

“That’s shit,” Bull grumbled, “I was rooting for those boys.”

The next morning, while Taff attempted to scrub the permanent marker-pen drawing of a penis from his forehead that Bull had settled upon as payback for the sucker-punch, Stan headed off to meet with Gerry.

7

“There, that should do it,” Tina said with satisfaction as she stepped back away from the door and rubbed her hands together.

“Do you think it’ll be strong enough?” Christopher asked with scepticism as he eyed the barricade that they had both spent the better part of a day building.

For hours they had both toiled, hefting large heavy desks from the offices and dragging them into the foyer where they stacked them at the main entrance to the building. With each piece of furniture that they piled up against the door, less light filtered in from outside. The reception area was steadily becoming darker.

Tina had conducted the construction of their defences like a military operation. Each time they brought in a desk or cabinet she would insist that they place it down and wait while she crept forward through the maze of obstacles and took a look through the glass. She was terrified of any of the infected that were scattered about the car park noticing them as they worked. She knew well from experience that it did not take much to attract their attention and if one of them saw her there would soon be an immense crowd of the things beating away at the door.

She nodded confidently while she stood back, placing her hands on her hips and admiring their handiwork.

“I don’t see why not, Chris. As long as we’re careful not to make too much noise and we remain conscious of any light we use during the night, they won’t know we’re in here. Hopefully, if the worst came to the worst, the barricade will hold them off long enough for us to come up with a plan if things went tits up.”

He nodded to her. He was confident in her judgement. Since she had arrived home in the early days of the infection’s spread, she had never been proven wrong in her decisions. He was more than happy for her to take the lead and sit back while she did all the thinking for both of them.

For a number of days they had spent their time making their new home safe. After clearing the warehouse, Tina had gone about the grisly task of dealing with the frozen corpses in the cold storage room. She had dragged their stiffened carcasses out through the door beside the loading bay and out into the open air.

She discovered there that she had been correct in her assumptions and the area on that side of the building was a sealed off parking lot for staff vehicles and delivery trucks. There were a number of cars dotted about the area, but she doubted that any of them were capable of starting and did not want to risk attempting to turn the engines over. At that moment, the area was clear of the infected and she wanted it to stay that way.

The entrance gate was still open but it was at an odd angle from the main parking area in front of the buildings and obscured by a row of tall bushes running along the fence line. Tina considered closing the gate but decided against it. Leaving it open would provide them with an alternate means of escape and they would be extremely unfortunate for the infected to wander into the area due to its location and lack of accessibility. At the very worst, one or two meandering bodies could stumble into the staff parking area from time to time but she could easily deal with that.

Out in the private car park they also uncovered the source of the power that had kept the cold storage units working. Solar panels were connected to a large bank of batteries that had originally been charged from the main-grid. When the power had failed, the batteries kicked in and the unusually good English summer had provided enough solar power to keep them topped up. It made sense. Stock being ruined and costing the company money due to a power cut would have been unacceptable in the old world.

Tina set about taking care of the icy cadavers. One by one, she crawled over the unfortunate people with a long screwdriver in her hand and delivered the final death to each of them. She still could not bear to look at the children and driving the long shaft of the screwdriver through their tiny heads had been heart breaking for her.

With minimal help from her brother, she loaded the bodies onto one of the handcarts and made five separate trips to and from the loading bay before all the dead were gone from the freezer. She piled them at the far side of the staff parking area and did her best to afford them a degree of dignity under the circumstances. The bags of lime that she found in the DIY section of the shelving units were cut open and poured over the remains to help with decomposition and to keep the smell down to a minimum.

Collecting the half-eaten skeletal corpses in the main part of the warehouse had been the toughest test of their resolve. For that particular task, she insisted that Christopher helped her and no excuse would be listened to. Using shovels and plastic sheeting, they scraped the gruesome remains from the floor and scooped them into large plastic waste bins before dragging them out to add to the growing funeral mound.

To complete the mass grave, she covered the heap of defrosting bodies with a large canvas sheet she had found on the back of one of the forklift trucks. She bowed her head in respect for a moment then walked away and never looked back.

The cafeteria was of no use to them. It was destroyed beyond repair and all the furniture and utensils were too badly damaged from the heat and smoke. Rather than sift through the charred ashes of the canteen, both Tina and Christopher unanimously agreed that they would settle for sealing the room off completely. They closed the door and used the strongest adhesive they could find to seal it shut. The place was a tomb and neither of them had any desire to open it up again.

With all the various entrances around the building checked and secured they began rummaging through the warehouse and collecting anything they could use. It had been a storage depot for a big supermarket chain, supplying all the outlets in the region with stock. To that end, they were able to find virtually everything they needed. Food, water, clothing, it was all there in abundance.

There was also an entire section dedicated to tools and gardening supplies. It was there that Tina swapped her crowbar for an extremely attractive hatchet. She fell in love with it the moment she picked it up. Grabbing a builder’s work belt down from the rack, she made herself a crude but extremely effective harness to carry her new weaponry. She kept her crowbar as a backup, tucked into the straps of her harness. Its length was useful for keeping the infected beyond arms’ reach and she had, to a degree, become sentimentally attached to it through months of reliability. The long shafted screwdriver that she had used to deal with the frozen corpses completed her arsenal.

In another aisle, they found camping equipment and wasted no time in grabbing what they needed. Each of them had a pack filled with a sleeping bag, gas stove, spare clothing, and food and water. Tina, much to her brother’s annoyance, made a point of taking an inventory of what they had in their gear. She wanted to ensure that they had everything they needed should they find themselves in a situation where they had to grab their packs and run. With everything they could ask for right at their fingertips, she reasoned that it would be foolish not to make sure that they planned for all eventualities.

On the upper floor they made themselves comfortable. They stocked the place with piles of food and water. They used gas camping stoves for cooking and once they had covered the windows with thick blackout curtains taken from the homecare aisle, they were able make use of the battery powered lanterns they had snatched from the warehouse. Compared to how they had survived for the previous four months, they were now living in splendour and with a degree of safety that neither of them had experienced since before the outbreak.

“We did okay, didn’t we,” Christopher remarked as he scooped up another spoonful of hot spam and baked beans.

Tina nodded vigorously, unable to speak due to her bulging cheeks. She reached over, picked up the bottle of beer from beside her, and washed the food down her throat with the cool liquid. She wiped her mouth and stifled a burp.

“Yup,” she replied, smacking her lips with glee and reaching for another helping of their gourmet meal. “We did pretty fucking okay, Chris.”

Both of them sat in silence for a moment and savoured the luck that had befallen them. They were lying on the floor on top of their thick sleeping bags. They had tried the couches in the offices but after having to rough it for so long neither of them could get comfortable on the soft springy cushions. Instead, they both opted for a compromise and compared to what they had grown used to, their new home was akin to a five-star hotel.

“Do you think we’ll be safe here?”

“I don’t see why not,” Tina replied thoughtfully. “As long as we’re careful and don’t attract any attention to ourselves, we should be fine.”

She paused for a moment and let out a sigh that made Christopher believe that there was something else on her mind.

“What is it?” He asked with concern.

“The boredom,” she replied simply.

“What boredom?”

“The boredom that will eventually set in once we’ve been here a while. Think about it. What will we do with ourselves, Chris? Just sit here and eat, and slowly grow old? That’s not for me I’m afraid. Within a week I’ll be climbing the walls in here.”

He huffed and shook his head in dismay. Her point of view was completely alien to him. They did not want for anything or need to go anywhere. They had it all there and he could not understand how she could ever want to step out into the open air again. Staying safe and away from the infected from then until the end of time would be easy for him.

“Don’t be daft, sis. Why would we get bored? We can just sit here and wait it out. This thing can’t last forever.”

Tina leaned back. Having had her fill, she now wanted to stretch out and allow the sugars and carbohydrates to carry her away on a lazily flowing river of bliss as her body transferred much of her energy into digestion. She was craving for a cigarette. She always did after a meal, but before the world had ended, she had given them up and saw no reason to reverse her decision and begin smoking again.

“You know this how, Chris?” She asked as she stared up at the ceiling. “How do you know it won’t last forever?”

He shrugged as he continued to eat.

“It just can’t, can it? I mean, those things out there will eventually die, won’t they? They can’t just keep walking about for all eternity.”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll never die? Maybe they will continue walking about forever and keep searching for the living? I haven’t a clue. No one has ever seen or dreamed of anything like this before. The scientists couldn’t work it out so I’m fucked if I can.”

“But you’ve got a degree, haven’t you?”

She looked over at him and then turned away with a slight shake of her head. She wanted to laugh but it would upset him and she did not want to hear his bleating at that particular moment. Especially while she was attempting to digest a large meal.

“Yes, in Business Management, not virology or any of the sciences. Having a degree in one thing doesn’t make you an expert in another, Chris.”

“Oh, right,” he murmured with embarrassment. He looked back up at her with a puzzled expression. “So why did you join the army? You could’ve made lots of money working in an office somewhere and telling everyone what to do.”

“I didn’t join for the money. No one joins the army for the shitty money they pay. I did the degree and when I hit twenty I realised that I was fooling no one, especially myself. I’m not cut out to be in an office. There are other careers I could’ve chosen I suppose but I really wanted to see what life in the army was like.”

“What was it like then?”

He had always been curious about the life of a soldier and on many occasions, he had fantasized about one day having the ability and drive to become one. He read the books, watched the movies, and played the games, but he had never taken the step towards changing his life for the better.

“It was great,” she nodded as she stared into thin air and seemed to focus on something from her past. “Nine years of travelling the world, going on operations, and doing things that the average person could only dream about. I had money in my pocket, a roof over my head, and needed to worry about nothing. I was fit, healthy, and had everything I needed. Then there was the social life. Jesus, we had some great times. I had the best bunch of friends on the planet, Chris. A tight-knit group of lunatics that wanted nothing more than to enjoy themselves and live life to the full.” She paused for a moment then smiled mischievously. “Plus, I had as much cock as I could handle.”

After her last statement, she looked across at him with a glint in her eye. His face was glowing red with embarrassment and she was sure that she could see the steam rising from his flushed skin. She burst into laughter.

“Seriously though, I loved it. I never regretted my decision to join up.”

Christopher felt extremely awkward. He had no idea on how to continue the conversation. After the announcement his sister had made with regards to her
other
activities, he instantly got a vision of her having sex. The thought revolted him and made him squirm internally. He wanted to shake it from his mind but it stubbornly and vividly clung to the forefront of his imagination and refused to be dislodged.

“Did you ever kill anyone?” He blurted finally.

She rolled her eyes. That same question was the one that all soldiers dreaded from naïve and tactless civilians.