I'm making this thread to use as a notepad for this big story I'm writing. Plus i need some feedback from people! Please feel free to cast your eyes over this, don't feel like you gotta read all of it though. I'd just appriciate IJL's opinions on this shit.
Welcome to Samworths
Chapter 1
Good morning. Did you sleep well? I hope the groans on the wind didn't keep you up half the night. It's common for the new residents to get a little creeped out when they're trying to get some shut eye after they arrive, this isn't the most friendly place after all. But it's safe, isn't it? Nothing beats back the Apocalypse like 15 foot high concrete walls and wire with barbs that resemble ninja caltrops lining the edges. I guess that’s what first made me think to come here when things went completely to shit. God that was 18 months ago! I guess the fact that we're still alive means we made the right choice.
I'm sure I don't have to explain what it felt like on that day. You were probably the same yourself. I remember getting out of bed, bleary eyed, and walking in on my flatmate gawking at the TV. When I'd asked him what was up it was like he didn't even know I was there. After 15 frustrating seconds I'd finally took in what the news reporter was saying.
"I'm afraid I don't have an explanation for you. All I can say is that reports are coming in from all over the country stating the same thing. The recently deceased are coming back to life and attacking the living. Their numbers are multiplying at a frightening rate as those bitten by these officially dubbed 'Zombies' contract the same disease and will suffer the same fate as the creature which bit them. Do not be fooled by their human appearance. As all attempts to reason with them have ended in failure. The only reported effective method of stopping them appears to be extreme trauma to the head region. London's Chief of Police has advised all citizens to reinforce their homes against a possible attack or report to a more secure location as soon as possible. This is not a hoax. I repeat. This is not a hoax."
Jimmy finally looked at me then. It's funny how some looks can engrave themselves on your memory for eternity. More than anything else I remember the dead quality to his eyes. It was the look of a man who's teetering over the edge of the abyss without a safety net. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. I knew him well enough to know he'd be quietly freaking out for a good few hours yet. It's funny, the only other time I’d seen him like that was when a police officer had come to our door 12 months before that and told Jimmy they'd found his missing cat under the wheels of a 4 by 4. Fuck, I was freaking out myself, but then again I’ve always had that drill sergeant voice at the back of my head that starts barking orders when the rest of me wants to curl into a ball. I remember the next few hours in a hazy montage. Mostly I remember spending a long time staring out the window with a pair of binoculars and trying not to shit myself at what I saw.
The reporter wasn't kidding. The fuckers where everywhere. They were easy to pick out from the regular people, most of who were fleeing for their lives. I saw a few brave souls here and there who'd taken up arms and were beating down the revenants as best they could. Their success rate was dicey at best though. I saw a pot-bellied, middle aged man huffing and wheezing as he swung a baseball bat at a shambling ghoul. It was horrifying to watch this archetype of British society trying to conquer his opponent. He swung and swung again, the zombies head snapped from left to right, I could see the unnatural shape of its body from where its ribs had broken from the impacts and the slow trail of congealed blood it was leaving behind. It never slowed despite the damage being done to it and, finally, the man made the mistake of overextending himself and stumbled forward into the creatures grasp. It was enough to break me from my trance. I'd noticed Jimmy was finally coming back to reality at this point, although he was choosing to dilute reality a little by pouring what was left of a bottle of whisky into his coffee. He finally spoke then
"What are we going to do?"
I didn't answer right away, maybe I’d been annoyed that he'd gone to la-la land while I’d been thinking, I don't remember. I eventually caved in and indulged him.
"I reckon if we leave the flat now we're gonna have to deal with that panic."
Gunshots in the distance had illustrated my point.
"I don't know if this building is much safer but at least we're a fair distance from the ground floor."
8 floors up. That did us pretty fine.
"The way I see it, if most the people are out on the street it follows that most of those... zombies would be out there too."
I remember fighting the urge to laugh. Why had I wanted to laugh? In any case from that point Jimmy and I had put together a plan. Which mainly consisted of staying the hell inside while everyone else spent the next few days panicking and being eaten in the street, while we tried to figure out where we’d go when our food ran out. There hadn't been much food either, half a block of cheese, a loaf of bread a day past its sell-by date, various condiments, a pack of biscuits and a jar of what I call concentrated evil, Jimmy called it marmite. I blame that part on the fact that we'd only graduated 6 months earlier and were stuck in 'student habits' which also consistent of not being able to clean the mould out the sink until it had evolved enough to discover fire.
As far as where we were going to go, that was a tougher question. I heard a lot of stories later about what people had done to save themselves. Most of the early reports that came in through the news channels were of citizens swarming towards the hospital in hope of a cure for their dying loved ones or for a vaccine to make themselves immune from the infection. Of course, doctors were among the early causalities as their building acted like a magnet for anyone hours away from becoming a zombie. One of my neighbours, who is a nurse (don't laugh, he'd begged me) told me he'd had the misfortune to be working a shift in the morgue when one of the corpses he'd been ordered to store had sat up inside it's body bag and started flailing at the air, making a groan he'd remember for the rest of his life. After that, he'd told me he'd pissed himself, grabbed his personal effects and made his escape just in time avoid a hundred strong crowd of new patients come limping in through the front door. In any case, long before I’d had the fortune of meeting 'Nurse Roberts' Jimmy and I had figured that hospitals were out.
Churches were the next places to fall. And nothing shouts Apocalypse like hordes of the living dead banging on the doors of every religious building in the city. Thousands had fled to pray for divine intervention or simply to make peace before they died. The old saying that there are no atheists in a foxhole rang true. Of course, those atheists in a foxhole quickly became believers in a slaughterhouse. When we got out of our building all the religious centres we passed were either wide-open and empty or completely penned in by hostiles. It's funny to think that today (to my knowledge) our happy little home is host to the only living preacher in London, maybe in the whole south of England. Father Morrison (we call him Father Murdoch for reasons which I’ll explain later) apparently had continued his sermon even in the face of the undead approaching his pulpit until his nerve finally broke and he sprinted out through the backdoor of his private chambers. The running Joke among the cruder citizens about Morrison is that it must've been a real test of faith for him to leave his church without a choir boy in tow.
Other places like the suburbs or the classic 'shopping centre idea' were out simply because all those places were liberally decorated with big ground level windows which were simplicity itself to break into. Another one of the residents here (an ex-banker named Chris) told me that he'd been woken up early morning in his suburban home to the sound of his burglar alarm going off. He walked downstairs in a state of utter confusion as to who would be robbing him at 8 in the morning, and found a girl in his kitchen with her intestines trailing on the floor and saliva running out of her mouth as she ate his cat. Needless to say Chris yelled a warning to his, now, sadly deceased, wife and grabbed his cars keys.
Chris was also the guy who'd made the Police Station mistake. Another place we'd ruled out early. Since crimes had been breaking out all over the city the place was swarmed by civilians seeking help and refuge. Chris had entered to building to find a scene of total chaos. Several officers had already been bitten trying to imprison 'unruly' suspects. Another cop was opening fire at a zombie in a cell who'd been put in there with a regular person for God knew what reason. When Chris saw the first zombie in a cop uniform staggering out of its office, tea stains and blood smeared all over its shirt, he'd made his excuses and left.
Like I said, it took us a couple of days of watching, waiting and gathering our shit together. And no small number of mentally scarring phone calls to friends and family we were positive we'd never see again (something which you should never, ever ask me to go into) before we were ready to try and find a more permanent residence to wait the thing out. Neither of us had wanted to wait in that apartment complex for a rescue. We'd figured out by that point that a rescue mission was unlikely if this was happening the country over (the world over, I later found out). This is an approximation of Jim and Is last conversation about where we were going. It was 2 hours before we left and I was crashed out in the living room staring at the 3rd static-ridden TV broadcast I’d seen in as many hours, when Jimmy had walked into the room swinging, of all things, a katana.
"Where in the name of good captain Christ did you find that?"
"Had it in a box under my bed, I got it delivered a few months ago."
A note about Jimmy, the man is a weapons nut, particularly of all things ancient and far-eastern. His DVD collection sagged under the weight of endless kung fu flicks and anime movies. He told me he was a black belt in jeet kun do, although I’d found out later from a friend of his that he'd made it to 3rd belt before dropping out with back problems. His moderate martial art prowess didn't stop him from indulging his fantasies though. And at that point I was actually a little grateful that Jimmy had delusions of being Bruce Lee, but I couldn't help ripping him a little about it.
"You realise that even if you hit one of those things in the neck with that and it doesn't cut its head off you'll be standing on the end of a zombie kebab and looking like an arsehole?"
"Yep."
I gave up, the man was impossible to verbally knock down.
"Got ninja stars to go with that?"
"Yep."
I'd given an appraising look. Yes. He was serious. He struck a neo-esque pose and grinned.
"So, have we figured out where we're going?"
"Yeah. Samworths."
"The prison?"
"You got it."
"How come?"
So I explained it to him. Samworths, I reasoned, was the most difficult building to break into in the city, which meant the chances of it being overrun were virtually zero. Reports in the news over the last few days of known criminals being released and ushered out by the guards meant that it was probably still under some kind of stable authority. There was extra protection available within the building in the forms of endless security gates, not to mention hundreds of lockable cells if the shit really hit the fan. And, best of all, since the prison had weekly deliveries of food for the inmates and half a dozen emergency generators with plenty of petrol (I discovered that later) it meant the prison would be self-sufficient for a long time.
"Shit." I told Jimmy "Even if we get into the place and it's a madhouse, we could always try and nick one of those armoured trucks they transport the prisoners in and floor it out of London."
We'd decided then that we'd give it a shot. It wasn't that either of us had anything particularly important to look forward to in our lives before the carnage started, but neither of us were eager to lie down and be eaten alive. At 3pm, on the afternoon of Sunday 5th August, we put on our backpacks and got armed. Jimmy twirling his katana (a replica, I was sure of it) and running his free hand over the throwing stars hanging from his belt (I told you he was serious) while I’d gone the slightly more conservative route of taking my nail gun.
A little more explanation needed here, while Jimmy was the kung fu crazy of our house, but I was the Mr 'Fix-It'. I used to work as a joiner so I’d still kept an array of building tools around. The nailgun was an industrial strength model which ran by battery. And I can't honestly say that when Jimmy was out I wasn't occasionally playing 'FBI agent', doing barrel rolls with the thing and 'sending coded messages back to headquarters'. Don’t judge me! Basically what I’m saying is that the alpha male in me had a serious hard-on for black and decker, and the nailgun could put a 3 inch nail almost completely into a wooden beam from a dozen feet away. As handy as that was, I was never tempted to hang if off my belt like a gun, mainly from occasional bouts of paranoia of nailing my foot to the ground by accident. In my hand it stayed, carefully angled away from anything fleshy. I’d thought to myself at that moment that what I felt must’ve been similar to a kamikaze pilot from World War II about to start his first, and almost certainly, final mission.
“Are you ready?”
“No. But let’s go anyway.”
That first step into the corridor was one of the scariest experiences of my life. We'd been keeping an ear out for the other residents in the building since we comes to terms with the situation. On the day of the outbreak there had been the sounds of a lot of frantic packing and door slamming. They'd been screaming arguments in hallways from the floors below which later in the day had turned into just screams. When we left it was the evening of the day after the building had turned ominously quiet. Although Jimmy swore he could hear occasional footsteps he wasn't completely sure. What lay in store for us on the way down 8 flights of stairs was anybody's guess. And we had to find out since we weren't dumb enough to take the elevator and risk the doors opening on a dozen greeters and no way to escape. One of the new reports we'd seen had shown footage of that exact thing happening and neither of us were prepared to experience it firsthand.
It was about 2 floors down I received my first major shock. The way the stairs were constructed was like a lazy spiral, which meant we passed in front of the doors to several flats in on each floor. We'd already seen scratch marks on a couple, and on another the door had been kicked clean off the hinges. In any case, just as I was passing one particular door...
BANG
Something slammed into the other side of the door, making it jolt in its frame and sending me skittering to the floor desperately aiming my weapon at an enemy who wasn't even in view.
The biggest mistake I made was screaming.
Instantly a chorus of groans rose from all around us. The door bucked again in its frame. Jimmy uttered a frightened expletive and hauled me to my feet. We didn't need to exchange words. We just started running.
It was 1 floor from the exit where we encountered our first zombie.
If I was going to explain what a real life zombie looked like to someone who's never seen one before I’d have to say this: Hollywood doesn't do them justice. NOTHING can prepare you for the sight of someone who should be dead but isn't standing right in front of you. The sight of congealed blood hardening on the torn skin of where the fatal bite occurred, the 1,000 yard stare of a monster which isn't really using its eyes to look at you, the leathery quality of the skin and the shambling, broken limp they use to walk throws you. It's as if every part of your brain screams out all at once that what you're taking in with your 5 senses is utterly impossible. But, in the end, it's the stench which brings you back to reality.
The smell of tin and rot snapped us out of our horrified fascination, but at that point I still had a severe case of the jitters, the first nail I fired plugged its ways to the depths of the zombie’s abdomen with no visible effect. Jimmy broke his paralysis to step in and swing his pride and joy which, for a wonder, buried itself past the neck bones of the thing and left its head hanging gruesomely to one side. The zombie duly collapsed. I stifled a wretch, the head was still snapping.
"Oh Jesus!"
"Come on man! You can have nightmares later!"
We'd burst out onto the street squinting our eyes at the first real sunshine we'd enjoyed in days. I lurched out of the way from a stumbling figure trying to embrace me as we broke into another run. I don't remember much of what Jimmy was shouting as we made our way down the street, weaving past horror with reflexes motivated by pure fear, but I remembered thinking that we couldn't stop no matter what. The wing mirror of parked ford cracked into my hip as we scrambled down an alley but the adrenalin didn't left me feel it. It was there I pulled my head out my arse long enough to use the nailgun properly. It left a corpse twitching as a nail disappeared into its eye.
I can't tell you how long we running, it felt like hours but was probably minutes. I suppose memory does it's best to heal us of traumatic experiences so we can sleep better at night. What comes to me when cast my mind back then more than anything else was the moment we finally found what we'd been looking for.
Bicycles.
It may sound ridiculous but since most of the streets were chock-a-block with 4 wheeled vehicles, and motorbikes weren't liable to have the keys left in them. The bikes seemed like a logical choice.
"Less noise, easy to weave through traffic and it's faster than walking."
Jimmy's idea. He'd thought it up and I had the means to execute it. Of course at times a well-thought out plan can still go tits-up when put into practise. When we'd found our transport it was the work of 30 mentally scarring seconds to stop, reach into my backpack, grab the right tool and break the chains securing our getaway. I did all this of course while Jimmy stood nearby, swinging at anything that got too close. It would've been the work of 20 seconds but, like an arsehole, I managed to drop the clippers when I took them out the bag.
"God! You clumsy bastard!"
A crazy grin had occupied my face while I went to work. I'd been thinking at maybe all this was evidence that I'd finally gone crazy and all this was delusion brought on by a large dose of morphine while I was really lying in a puddle of my own drool in a rubber cell. I'd dismissed the idea. I could always get existential about life later.
If we survived that is.
Chapter 2
I stopped my story there, leaned back into the confides of my bunk and pulled my hat over my eyes. Grisly images floated past my inner sight.
"What happened after that?"
I sat back up. It was Simon who'd asked the question of course; he'd arrived at Samworths a couple of day ago after spending most of the last 18 months locked in a wine cellar and eating freeze-dried food. To say he was little maladjusted from the experience would've been an understatement. A couple of the remaining prison guards, Alex and Jack, continued playing the poker game they'd started hours ago, a stack of plastic bottle caps lay on the small table. Jimmy was stretched out on the bunk above me; he'd barely spoken in the last hour when I’d started the story, although he'd occasionally chipped in with 'his side of the dialogue' as he'd called it.
"Don't want you misquoting me, man."
These days he was starting to resemble Kurt Russell in 'The Big Lebowski' more and more. He wandered around the prison in an old dressing robe with a beard he hadn't shaved since we'd gotten here. And yes, he was definitely still a big fan of cocktails. I pushed my distracted mind towards Simon's question.
"There's not much to tell mate. Once we got our transportation sorted out most of the major problems were out the way."
Even so, I described to him some of the sights we'd seen on our way here: Zombie-swamped cathedrals, the gunfire from inside the residential buildings, the things banging on the metal pull-down shutters of local businesses. We'd seen zombies moving in packs all over the city. We'd figured they'd started hunting as a group, but we'd later found from The Doc (another one of Samworth's residents) that 'Zombies are only driven by the instinct to eat. When you see a group of them, try to see them as individual predators converging on a single target'. We hadn't gone out to the street to do a biology project, however, we'd just raced in the direction of the one real safe haven in the city, skidding and riding out of the way of the monsters trying to eat us.
Jimmy chipped in again at this point, taking the trouble to remind me how I’d gone flipping over the handlebars at one point because of a cat.
"Not a zombie, a fucking cat! We were on the home stretch and one darted out in front of dipshit's bike. So he slammed the brakes on, did a forward flip and landed arse-first on the tarmac."
"Yeah, yeah. Very funny. My tailbone was bruised for a week and I was hobbling around like a violated gimp. Fucking hysterical. Can I get back to the story now?"
He grinned and gestured 'sure man, go ahead.'
Not that there was much else to tell, I admitted. Once we'd got in sight of the place, one of the guards who'd elected to stay behind (Paul, his name was. He later told me he didn't have any family to go home to, and the closest thing he had to friends were the other co-workers in the prison. I guess I can't blame the guy for hanging around.) Unbarred the tiny back gates long enough for us to get into the compound. We were about to close them again when Jimmy had had one of his bright ideas.
"Hey, say what you like man. You KNOW I would've pulled it off if you'd given me another try."
"You threw a ninja star at a zombie from 20 yards away. Did you honestly think it was going to work?"
"I winged him."
"You hit his arm! And it was lying on the ground!"
"A technicality."
It was a lame way to end the story of our daring escape but at least it was accurate. Guys who came in bragging about being superheroes were immediately put to the test by the remaining authorities at Samworth's. A couple of shifts spent doing 'mandatory extermination' was usually enough to find out who the blaggers were.
Not that the Head Warden was a particularly cruel man, most of the residents did agree to that, he was just a periodic arsehole. He'd allowed many of the brighter citizens who'd fled here into Samworths under the condition that they pitched in to keep the place safe and running. 'Paying the Rent' was the number one concern on everyone's mind these days. It was a small consolation to the people who got too far behind in payments that they were at least allowed to wait until the coast was clear before they got kicked into the street. The Doc once told me he estimated their survival time to be just under a couple of hours.
"Assuming they're uninjured, in solid physical shape and carrying a decent melee weapon." he'd added. It was enough to convince me not to slack off. I was up-to-date at the present moment, as far as I knew, everyone was, even Jimmy, who had a tendency to wait until the threats started, had headed out yesterday to raid a couple of vending machines several blocks away. I'd paid in seeds, which the vegetable freaks went apeshit for. Half the outside area had been converted into a garden 'To stop us from getting the leprosy' the head honcho had said. I was pretty sure he'd meant scurvy.
Foraging was the most common way for the residents to 'make rent'. This generally involved telling the guards you were 'heading out', and having them cut a swathe in the zombies at the back gate. The reason for that being the back gate was difficult for the undead to access as the path to it was littered with crashed cars and fallen masonry. Jim and I had to scramble like madmen over it the first time we'd come here. Unfortunately though, sometimes ammo was too low in the compound to waste on unnecessary targets, and people 'heading out' had to go down the manhole exit and walk of couple of blocks of sewer before coming up into an exposed street. A few times people had taken the sewer route and not come up the other side.
Once you'd 'headed out' you basically had until sundown to find and locate supplies for the prison. Food had been less of a necessity in recent months due a couple of big strokes of luck (finding an untapped general store and a crashed supply truck full of cans, as it happened) but a couple of cans of beans was a guarantee of a bed for the night. Petrol was a big help since the prison used generators to keep the lights running. Any building materials were also good. There were a thousand things to look for, the 'need' list was pretty long.
The biggest danger from 'heading out' was the curfew that the Head had imposed and his guards reinforced. If the sun was below the horizon and you were still outside the prison, you were stuck outside for the night. Although a few of the more human-rights driven residents had complained and threatened over it; the rule did make sense. Doc had figured out early on that the zombies weren't as dependant on their eyes as human beings are. If anything, they used their sense of smell to hunt more than any other sense. In basic terms, in the dark the guards couldn't see a damn thing, and they wouldn't put searchlights on as that would draw the attention of every single walking disease pit this side of the Thames. This left the unfortunate with 2 options; either try and find a place to hole up for the night and pray they didn't get discovered, or bite the bullet and take the sewer route back into the base.
'Mandatory Extermination' was a job that was generally taken by the prison guards when they had enough spare ammo to do it. It meant walking along the top of the compound walls and thinning the crowd who were trying to break into the facility. Apart from anything else it made things easier for people going out when the gunfire attracted all zombies in range to the front of the building. However, when ammo was too low to waste on anything except an invasion it was usually the residents who took up the job, while the guards simply patrolled. Most of the time that entailed being handed a broom handle with a kitchen knife strapped to the end of it, leaning over the edge of the wall and stabbing away. Some people (Jimmy, again) got a little more creative in their methods. About 3 months ago I'd seen him with a can of hair spray and a book of matches. He'd spent 40 minutes trying to soak a single zombie with enough aerosol to burn it, and then found the wind was too strong to light the matches. Stuff like that happened fairly regularly at Samworths, people's boredom made them more creative, sometimes with disastrous consequences. The biggest draw back to taking the job was leaning over too far and falling onto a tightly packed group of zombies. It wasn't unheard for guys to start a shift staring down into the crowd and seeing the (mangled) face of the last guy who was working on the walls.
There were other ways of 'making rent' as well, menial stuff like using the exercise bikes hooked up to the generators so someone could cook, gardening, cleaning and so on. Several people who'd recently arrived came loaded down with goodies which they were trading for their stay, other were just trading with the other residents to get what they needed. Needless to say cash was now a defunct commodity since the apocalypse, but things like alcohol, clothing, cigarettes and medicinal drugs (and not-so-medicinal for that matter) are worth their weight in gold.
I guess I'm telling you all this because I want you to get a sense that Samworth's is a functioning community. Admittedly it's a community full of lunatics, who are surrounded by a sea of living dead, but it works, it really does.
Chapter 3
Another day. 8 Am. I rolled out of the bunk of the cell and on the first step kicked an empty bottle spinning across the floor.
"Shit."
I sat back down and waited for the weariness to go away. We'd had to accept early on that sleeping in a city infested by the living dead was going to be difficult at the best of times. One of the first things people had headed out for had been an industrial sized box of ear plugs to deaden the background noise.
I pulled out the plugs. Faint moans. Ahh. There they were.
I made my unsteady way to the small mirror we'd set up over the horror show of the cell's sink. Jimmy murmured something unintelligible and turned over on the top bunk. I splashed water on my face (thank God we'd gotten the pumps working again) and stared at the tired man's face in front of me.
It was funny how we'd stopped caring about how we looked since the undead had taken over. Fashion sense had been replaced by comfort or practicality in the field. People heading out never wore baggy clothing or kept their hair hanging loose. People staying in walked around in shit you'd expect them to wear on a Sunday morning hangover. Most of the woman wore no make-up. A sight made sadder by the fact that there were a lot fewer women in Samworths than men (although it made sense that women would be reluctant to enter a building originality designed to hold some of the most dangerous men in the country). The men REALLY didn't give a shit, the situation being what it was, so most walked around reeking of sweat and greasy hair, with stained and torn clothes mostly swiped from boutiques or the newly deceased. In honesty, the reek of other people was barely noticeable in comparison to the sheer throat burning rot that was waiting for us when we walked outside.
I threw on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans tearing at the crotch and unlocked the door to my cell (the wardens had been decent enough to give us keys), stepped out and nearly collided with Father Murdock who'd been moving at speed across the walkway.
"Ow! Oh, sorry Father."
"No apologies needed child, blessings be upon you."
He shuffled past in the curious old man gait he used to travel. Father Murdock ('Morrison' I told myself, 'His real name is Morrison') wasn't an old man by any stretch of the imagination, although no-one actually knew his age, he couldn't have been a day over 40. His face was a tapestry of worry lines and the features on it all apologetically small. He was the only priest we knew of who was left in the south of England. Small wonder, given the nature of his escape to this place.
As I mentioned before, he'd escaped mid-congregation out the back door of his parish when the undead came walking up the aisle. What actually happened afterwards was anyone's guess. Murdock/Morrison had always been sketchy on the details.
"God protected me on my travels to this place."
That was generally all anyone ever got from him on the subject. He had, at one point, mentioned something about a kind Samaritan who had helped him part of the way. God knows what happened to that Samaritan because the holy man had turned up alone, but with a parade on his heels.
He'd arrived only a few days after Jim and me, dressed in bloodied robes and wearing bedraggled hair like some kind of primeval massager of God. The Head Warden had been overjoyed at the news, being a man of faith himself, he often sat in with the Priest as he was delivering his morning sermon. And he was quite prepared to listen to Murdoch for his religious ties and ignore the fact that the man was crazy.
Utterly. Batshit. Crazy.
The reason we called him 'Murdock' came down to several people's love of the A-team, added to the fact that he faintly resembled the actor who played the character and topped off with the fact that Morrison and Murdock weren't a huge grammatical leap from one to the other.
Father Murdock delivered his sermons to the zombies.
If there was ever an image to perfectly illustrate the absurdity of the human condition it's this: an insane priest delivering a heartfelt lecture on sin to reanimated human corpses. Or maybe Father Murdock's sermons were an image that would fit seamlessly into an alcove in the deepest, darkest pits of Hell. It was a horribly hypnotic picture.
I followed Murdock towards his pulpit.
The glare of the sun reduced my eyes to slits as I followed the reverend out into the main outside area of the compound. It was here where the vast majority of our unwanted guests gathered. The smell of them hit me. I retched; glad I hadn't bothered with breakfast this morning. It was almost comedic to think that the number 1 cause of lost food in the prison was from people walking outside after a meal and inhaling too deeply. Murdock, however, showed no indication of the stench on his face. His eyes were wide, smiling, his pupils contracted to pinpricks as he thumbed through the bible he carried.
We didn't speak as I followed him to his make-shift pulpit overlooking the hostile crowd. Father Murdock was at his least communicative just before a congregation. Not that he was ever particularly communicative. Most of the time he restricted his speech to short sentences packed with 'thee's and thou's'. On of the platforms dotted around the outer wall was Head Warden Hollister. The apotheosis of fat bastards in charge everywhere. He leaned back on a deckchair with a shotgun propped against the side, the huge shades on his face barely resting above the bridge of his oversized moustache and dazzling anyone who looked at him directly. I'd never known him to miss one of the Murdock's masses. I could feel his eagerness as Murdock hobbled forward.
He climbed the stairs to the outer wall and positioned himself on the platform. It jutted dangerously out onto the crowd. Although Rob, the resident carpenter, had assured me the extension was secure, there was always a collective indrawing of breath whenever someone was dumb enough to stand on it. The ghouls moaned louder than ever.
"Blessings be upon you, ye children of the damned." He threw his arms out as if he made to embrace his audience. I stifled a grin.
"On this fair morn we give thanks for the gifts of sunshine and life."
He wasn't wrong about that at least. It was mid-summer, which meant a hell of a lot more vegetation to swipe to stop us all starving to death. The zombies, 8 feet below, pawed at the smooth concrete with a look of pleading on their faces.
"Every new day is a gift from God. Open your hearts to his love and all shall be forgiven."
A dark thought ran through my mind then; tell that to the 'hanger' we found in his cell last week. A 'hanger' was basically any kind of suicide (hanging being the most common). We'd needed an umbrella term, as many of the residents got horrifically creative when their minds finally snapped. The last hanger I'd witnessed live had done a swan dive off the pulpit Father Murdock was standing on. Still, in the case of last week the situation could've been a lot worse. The resident who'd hung himself had reanimated during the night and his bunkmate had been completely unaware (Markus, the man could sleep through a fucking earthquake) until early the following morning when his dead friends boot had brushed against his dangling arm. Markus' had woken up, seen the predicament and limbo'd (that was how he described it) under the twitching zombie to the cell door, getting out and locking it just in time to see the rope snap and the zombie fall to the floor. It was enough to send the man screaming to the guards, wake everyone up and put an instant downer on the day.
Father Murdock continued his sermon.
"Ye, the wretched, have turned your backs on the almighty, and have been cursed with an unholy hunger for the flesh of man. Repent and let the light shine in your hearts!"
I thought about the catholic mass, and the congregation coming forward to eat the body of Christ, but said nothing. Usually at this point in the sermon Murdock banged on about 'sins of the flesh' or whatever it was that turned the dead into the undead for another 15 minutes while leafing through his bible for an appropriate passage to read. This time, however, he struck gold early.
"The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars... they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death."
Revelations, I believe.
"Amen Reverend!" Shouted Hollister.
"And this second death will find you as surely as the first did. For I see it floating behind every pair of unholy eyes and locked within your lifeless hearts. Repent! And ye shall be spared the endless agony in trade for God's love."
That was the conclusion. I fought the urge to hold a lighter up and wave it from side to side. I heard a cough and turned around to see Jimmy, still wrapped in his duvet, lighting a roll-up with his last pack of matches.
"Breakfast." he grumbled.
"How can you think of food when you're standing out here?"
"Easy. I hear them moan. They moan because they're hungry for fresh meat. That makes me think about fresh meat. That makes me hungry. QED: I want breakfast."
"That's sound enough logic, you got bread?
"And eggs. You got butter?"
"Yep. I'll peddle if you cook."
It was a vicious but highly effective way to wake yourself up in the morning. It was 20 minutes of sweating on an exercise bike hooked up to a modified grill. We would've used gas but the Wardens had clamped down on anything that wasn't essential to use fuel for recently. Word was we were low again. Which meant opportunities for anyone with balls and good information. We were lining our stomachs when I pitched an idea to Jim.
"You remember that petrol station about 20 blocks to the West of here?"
"The one on Crescent Street?"
"Bingo."
"What about it?"
"I heard from one of the wardens that the ex-owner of the place put in a secondary storage area around the back of the building."
He considered this.
"Who told you?"
"Jack."
"Yeah. He'd probably be right about that. Dude spends too much time looking through the yellow pages."
"You up for it?"
"Dunno. How was mass?"
"Crowded as usual."
This was usual pre-mission banter bullshit, Jimmy would ask me all the questions he needed to know in a manner that suggested he didn't want to go, and then agree to whatever I suggested because he had nothing more interesting to do.
"We're ahead with the rent, so why bother?"
"It's insurance. Plus if someone else nicks it first we'll be missing out on 2 weeks of chilling out."
"Are you packing?"
"Would I be suggesting this if I wasn't?"
I still had my nailgun, although nowadays I used it for building and repairing, I still occasionally used it for target practise when heading out was too dangerous. I'd traded my first weapons for a long handled machete and a low-calibre pistol (both acquired in a gun store, funnily enough). The pistol was for emergency use only as gunfire had a tendency to attract a lot of trouble. I knew Jimmy still fucked around with his katana, and the lucky bastard had come across a fully-operational hunting crossbow complete with a decent scope and a stack of arrows. The perfect long-range silent weapon. Recently he'd spent more time on 'mandatory extermination' than any of us. Even as I filled him in on the last few details I could see his eyes shining. He was ready alright.
Chapter 4
30 minutes later we stood at the rear exit of the compound (or entrance, if you took the zombies point of view). We'd put saddlebags on the bikes with empty bottles inside to transport the (admittedly alleged) fuel. Our main concern at that moment had been how difficult it would be to get 16 litres and our transportation through the heavily blocked street on the way home. Jimmy had suggested he take it down the manhole route by himself while I dumped the bikes and doubled back for him. A typically suicidal idea. I managed to figure out a workable solution. We'd take backpacks and switch the fuel into them when we had to scramble. The last stretch would be tough, but when victory was in sight it generally was. In any case we were tooled up and ready to go. I looked up to the outer wall.
"Alex! We're heading out!"
Alex nodded, paused a second to feel the weight of his shotgun, then looked in the direction of the other guard, Jack, who gave him the thumbs up.
"Yeah. We can cover you. Hold up a second."
Alex was a big guy but we moved quickly. He jogged over to the part of the wall that was nearest to the gate and gestured for us to get ready. Jim and I put our hands on the bar to raise it; we could feel the shudders through the metal as the living dead hammered relentlessly on the other side. Jack got into position and mirrored Alex. I focused my mind and tried to stop my hands shaking. I looked at Jim who was grinning evilly. Alex put the barrel of the shotgun to his shoulder, like a rifle, and levelled the barrel of it at the central monster closest to the gates.
"Ok, here we go. Hi! My name is Barry Scott and this is cilit BANG!"
The cloud of steel pellets tore the monsters head to pieces and winged several of its comrades. Jack fired. More carnage. The crowd was scattered. Jim and I needed no cue. We unhooked the bar and went out swinging, shoving and kicking past any of the creatures still in the way.
"Fuckshitfuckshitfuck."
I'm not sure which of us was cursing. I was too concerned with not getting bitten to worry about making the trip a PG certificate.
We broke through. Jimmy shaking off the reaching hand of a ghoul that had snapped off and clung to his jacket. We sprinted over the first pileup and weaved past a secondary line of the monsters stuck behind the cars. My chest was heaving, but stopping was the last thing on the mind. A couple more panicked minutes and we were finally out on the street and flying free.
It was a strange thing, cycling through a city empty of life besides occasional crowds of predators. On quiet stretches it was bizarrely relaxing. The sun was climbing its way towards the top of the sky. A fire hydrant gushed onto the street. Occasional motionless bodies were littered on the pavements.
In theory this trip could be managed in under 2 hours (Doc's estimated 'survival time' for anyone going out in the dark, remember?). It was a simple case of getting there, possibly clearing the area, filling the bottles and getting back. In execution though, plans rarely went as smoothly as the were planned out. The worst incident recently being a new resident being so worked up looking for the dead he hadn't noticed an open manhole cover in the street. The fall shattered his legs, and he'd sent up a scream like a flare to every predator in several hundred yards. We never heard from him again.
I shook the recent bad memories from my head as we did a dog-leg across a particularly crowded main street. Jimmy kept a hand on the handle of his katana, which rested in a scabbard hung under the body of the bike. Jimmy’s reflexes in a crisis had only ever grown faster since that first encounter. I'd seen him draw the blade while moving full pelt to clothesline ghouls as he rode past, 'The drive by shogun', he'd called the manoeuvre. He hopped up a curb and dipped around a post box, looking like he was having the time of his life.
I considered the zombies we rode past. In the front of the prison gates the zombies were always a tightly packed mass, a swarm, a huge entity that appeared to be controlled by some singular evil conscious. But as we rode across the city we could see what they really were: individuals. They staggered to and fro, scratching at doors and windows at random, sometimes not hearing the soft clatter of our wheels at all. Lost souls.
It was generally The Doc who was considered to be the info-guy about the living dead (as his name would imply). The new residents often had preconceptions about him, ideas like:
"A post-apocalyptic doctor? Holy Mother. Is he insane?"
"A post-apocalyptic doctor? Fuck me. Does he try to train the zombies like in 'Land of the Dead'?"
"A post-apocalyptic doctor? Shit. Does he stitch zombies into frankenstiens?"
That last one always got me. Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster, and the answers were no, no and no! They might as well have asked if he fired kittens off a clay pigeon launcher in his spare time for the level of stupidity of some of their questions.
The Doc was, in fact, a very pleasant middle-aged man called Peter who found his skills still very much needed by the handful of people still left in London. He was soft-spoken, with a receding hairline and a terrible moustache. He occasionally asked people going out for medical supplies and anatomy textbooks. It WAS true, however, that Peter did a few experiments on zombies but that generally got about as exciting as capturing one of the aggressors and kicking it into an empty cell. What followed was a lot of clipboard holding and Peter murmuring 'A-ha, yes, I see' under his breath while his pen danced across the pages. The conclusion to the experiment was inevitably the Doc drawing a tick across his findings and putting a bullet in the zombie's head.
In truth, he had performed a single live autopsy a couple of weeks after he'd arrived ('purely for practical purposes of research' he'd said) but the experience had traumatised him sick for a week. But despite his squeamishness in the face of a still living pile of cut up organs, he was a still steady shot and enjoyed permanent residence due to his unique skills, it could be said he'd fitted into life at Samworth's better than any of us.
As for what he'd discovered: it was eerily close to what we'd seen portrayed on the silver screen.
"They don't breathe, sleep or tire. They don't feel. They don't fuck. And they can't be reasoned with."
I'd never asked him how he knew they didn't fuck (draw your own conclusions). What he had found that was unusual was as follows:
"The brain appears to have been altered in some way, like an extra chemical, possibly viral in nature, has been added to its make-up. It excretes oxygen directly into the brain and couples the process with some kind of embalming agent which in turns slows down the process of decomposition across the whole body."
His discovery had led us to the real question we wanted answered.
"How long would it take for the zombies to rot away?"
I was jolted out of my reverie by the sound of distant gunfire. I looked at Jim, his eyes were wide, wordlessly we pulled to a halt. A few seconds passed in silence.
"Raiders?"
"Shush."
There it was again, quiet but unmistakable. Jimmy looked over his shoulder.
"Is that coming from the compound?"
"No. We came from the South. That was definitely..."
Another shot sounded.
"Yeah. From the East, definitely from the East. I think it's getting louder too."
"Is the main road clear that way?"
"Enough so they could probably get through with the odd detour."
We started edging towards the nearest side of the road. Jimmy unslung his crossbow and loaded a bolt.
"Could just be travellers."
"Could be."
A pause.
"But you don't think it is."
"No. I don't think it is. Only psychopaths voluntarily drive INTO a city filled with a million zombies."
The roar of engines grew louder. Whatever it was they were driving, it sounded pretty heavy. I caught myself wondering how many private security organisations there were in London that kept armoured trucks. I stopped that line of thought; it was many, too many. The sound of a crash accompanying the uninterrupted sound of the engines announced that the vehicle may have had its worries, but roadblocks weren't one of them.
Jimmy shoved me roughly to one side. I went stumbling. His arm snapped out and pulled the trigger of the crossbow. There was a sound like tearing silk followed by a wet sounding impact. The zombie behind me collapsed.
"You've got to stop going into deep trains of thought when you're standing outside."
I rolled back to my feet, held my side and winced.
"Point taken. Thank you."
The roar reached a crescendo. We ducked behind a ruined car as the vehicles drove past. Yup. They were armoured trucks. Two of them. I caught a glimpse of one of the drivers. I saw the bandanna around his head, the army jacket across his shoulders and the whisky bottle in his hand that was flapping out the open window. Whoops and screams echoed after they passed. Jimmy straightened back up.
"Raiders."
"Yeah."
"Did you get a good look at the trucks?"
"Yes. Unfortunately."
"Fucking MILITARY Raiders."
"Yeah, and it gets worse."
"Christ, what else?"
"They're heading towards the petrol station."
Chapter 5
The first time we ever encountered Raiders was about 10 months ago. 3 months after the outbreak most of the communications systems we'd taken for granted had broken down. Most of the people who'd survived to that point had done so either because they'd holed up in a fortified location like we'd done, or simply run to the most remote location they could find and started rebuilding their lives there. About 3 months after that we'd started to find pockets of humanity dotted around the city. Some of the people found had run mad and attacked those who found them like rabid animals, most had to be killed, some were captured and brought to the Doc for treatment. A fair few of the saner people we encountered had opted to follow us back to Samworth's, others were secure and snug in familiar surroundings and we left them to it.
The Raiders had appeared a few months after that. Initially we'd heard them at a distance on the outskirts of the city, but as time passed they made bolder and bolder intrusions. They caused mayhem, riding over crowds of zombies, smashing shop windows and residences to loot whatever they could find. In a sense they hadn't been doing anything different to what we'd been (although their execution was a little louder). That was until we'd seen the faces of hostages bundled into the back of their trucks. One of the worst memories I'd acquired since the end was the image of one of the girls there as they'd rode into the distance. Her name was Suzie Parker. She'd been 15 years old. I never saw her again.
I hated them. At least with the ghouls what terror you felt was mixed in with a degree of pity. But the Raiders were marauders on the edge of civilisation, determined to have one last party before the End came. They crippled people and left them screaming on the streets for sport. They hung dogs from lampposts to act as bait for the living dead. They packed cars with dynamite and set them off near building foundations. They were fucking psychopaths and they were headed towards our fuel supply.
I'd edged towards the corner of the street while comprising my internal, self-righteous rant. Jimmy played rearguard. He'd reloaded and put away a second zombie that had stumbled around the corner while we'd advanced to a peeking spot.
I peered round to see the back end of the second truck disappearing round the next junction. We'd have to hurry.
"Alright, saddle up."
Jimmy grumbled something about 'we're not riding horses' and did so. 10 minutes later we'd caught up with them.
Tracking the raiders hadn't been difficult. Apart from screech of their tires echoing for blocks around them fired off their guns intermittently. Whether or not they were actually aiming for anything when they did was anyone's guess, considering they were raiders, we thought it was unlikely.
I didn't have a plan, and thinking wasn't Jimmy's strong suit. All I knew was that we'd have to keep an eye on the bastards while they were in the city, even if that meant leaving the fuel for another day. If these psychopaths had come across Samworths there was no telling what could happen.
Yet we'd had a pretty major fight against another group of marauders almost a year to the day after we'd arrived at the prison. With barely any warning they'd appeared from the direction of the setting sun, ploughed through the crowd of zombies besieging our front gate and started firing at the wardens patrolling the wall. Two of them had been shot down before anyone had had a chance to draw a bead on the vehicles they were driving. A sniper had brought down one of them as he'd raised his hands to throw a Molotov cocktail and the fire which ensued had spread throughout the group of the undead still uncrippled and spoiling for a meal. Needless to say, while fire was debilitating to a person engulfed in it, a zombie covered in fire kept on walking around until its head was incinerated. Even though they couldn't have reached us, the stench of the smoke was blistering. In the smog, the warden's who had been shot had reanimated and caused another two causalities from the residents and all of a sudden we'd found ourselves fighting on two fronts. It had fallen to Jack and me to deal with that threat while the raiders had continued their attack. They'd hooked up chains to the gates and had tried to tear them off the hinges, but fortunately by that point the gate side zombies had reorganised (if such a word could be applied to them) and the volume of fire we'd started pouring into them had forced them to unhook and retreat. We've been on our toes ever since, I knew one of Hollister prayers was that they didn't come back in larger numbers.
This group was smaller than the one which had attacked the compound and, despite their uniforms, they seemed less organised. If the alcohol they were leaving carelessly splashed on the road was a clue, then it would be safe to assume the raiders were heavy drinkers with plenty to spare. We'd just got them in sight again when Jimmy pitched an idea.
"Alright, there they are."
We pulled into an alley and parked up. I drew my machete.
"I just thought of something."
"Tell me."
"They're going for the petrol, right?"
I stole a glance around the corner. They'd pulled the trucks to a halt and were disembarking. The lead raider made a 'come this way' motion with his arm and started walking towards the petrol station.
"Looks like it."
"Are they all getting out?"
The backs of the trucks were fairly open; a cloth edged arch with a 2 foot flap of wood at the bottom which provided a barrier for the people sitting in there and the road. Trucks like that usually had benches lining the inside of their walls for passengers to sit on. Which would make them clearly visible to the eye. We saw no-one, just boxes of supplies. While at the front of the trucks half a dozen people were walking away and the driver’s compartments were only wide enough to hold 3 people.
"Looks like no-one's staying home."
I looked at Jimmy. His grin was threatening to split the top off his head.
"Then let's rob the fuckers."
A few minutes later we were sneaking towards the truck, weaving in and out of cover and keeping as low we could. I went first, with Jimmy covering me with his crossbow (the man was the better shot after all). We reached the back of the vehicle without hearing any noise but the ever-present moan of the walking cadavers, but that would change soon. The raiders had made too much noise on their arrival. They might as well have sent up a flare to announce their location. That fact, couple with the fact that the raiders would probably be aware of it and would be hurrying to grab supplies, made me question the sanity of what we were doing. But (goddammit) they were murdering fuckheads and we weren't leaving empty-handed!
We pressed against the back of the vehicle. I glanced at Jimmy, who made an 'I'll watch' gesture and started edging towards the nearest corner. Wordlessly, I climbed up the back and stepped over the wooden barrier.
And nearly tripped over the girl who was lying on the floor.
Our eyes met. She opened her mouth and a took a deep breath. My hand shot out of its own accord and clamped it shut.
"Don't scream!"
It was a paradoxical phrase to whisper. Jimmy had manoeuvred back into view to see what was going on. He kept quiet, but his mouth was clearly miming 'a variety of curse words. I tried to reassure the girl.
"We're not going to hurt you. Your boys are nicking our fuel so we're..."
I trailed off as my vision finally took in the complete picture. I saw the discolouration around one of her eyes: a stella artois special if I'd ever seen one. She hadn't been lying down to sleep as I'd thought, but was lying flat out because her wrists and ankles had been bound. I took all this in and then tried to make myself look as harmless as possible. Not an easy feat given that nowadays I was looking almost as scruffy as Jimmy was.
"Please don't scream."
I removed my hand and, for a wonder, she kept quiet. I thought about why on earth her captors would leave her unsupervised, and then the obviousness of it struck me; if she called for help, what was almost certain to arrive first? By this point Jimmy was switching his view between 2 set of potential trouble like a man watching a rally in a tennis match. I spoke again.
"Are you a captive?"
A stupid question, but sometimes it pays to ask. She nodded rapidly, as if not trusting herself to speak.
"What's your name?"
"Ashley."
"Hold up your hands, Ashley."
She did so; I started to cut her free. At that moment gunfire sounded from the store.
"Shit." I worker faster. "What's happening Jimmy?"
"They're still inside. Must've run into trouble."
Ashley's wrist bounds snapped. I moved to her feet. The gunfire sounded again. The moans we'd been hearing grew louder. Every zombie within a 5 block radius was converging on our location. Madness. I yanked the machete upwards. The rope came apart. Ashley was a free woman. By now, Jimmy's voice had risen and octave and had started to tremble.
"Hurry the fuck up man!"
We bailed out the back of the truck and sprinted back to the alley where we'd parked the bikes. I unslung my backpack and threw it to Jimmy, who unslung his own and tied them together by the straps and then put them on, giving him the look of the world's largest turtle. He jumped onto his transportation. I followed suit and turned to Ashley, gesturing for her to get on behind me. I took the .22 out of its holster and held it out to her.
"Take this."
She shook her head.
"Look, just aim it at anything that gets to close to us and pull the trigger. I'll do my best to steer clear of trouble."
The girl was petrified, but she did as she was asked. She clambered on behind me and hugged her free arm around my chest to stabilise herself. Jimmy fired a shot at an advancing zombie. It fell. I gritted my teeth and started peddling.
Soon. Too soon. He heard the noises behind us change. The sound of moans and gunfire were interrupted by a door crashing open and a slurring, highly aggravated voice yelling out:
"What the fuck? Stop those pricks!"
Ashley whimpered into my ear. We rode faster and ducked around the block corner.
Chapter 6
20 blocks from sanctuary, being chased by a pair of armoured trucks driven by gun toting maniacs, with a thousand zombies coming at us from every point on the compass. Not good.
We zigzagged across the streets. Keeping to the narrow alleys as much as possible. We'd have had zero chance of escaping the raiders across the open roads, but fortunately the traffic situation in London was like a half-empty can of sardines. Our pursuers distance from us fluctuated constantly. We heard the sounds of them forcing their way through ruined cars, speeding up, and then cursing as they hit dead ends again and again. If I hadn't been panting with exhaustion I would've cheered.
From what I could hear from behind me I knew Ashley was beginning to pull herself together. As reluctantly as she'd taken the gun from me I immediately saw the calming effect the weapon was having on her. I saw her hand in my peripheral vision turn the weapon from side to side.
"The safety's already off." I panted.
She didn't reply. We rode out onto an open road, Jimmy leading. He quickly ducked to stop himself from being clotheslined off his bike by a reaching ghoul. He hadn't stopped cursing and ranting since we'd taken off. I watched as he took a hand off the handlebars to hook the strap of his crossbow across his shoulder and reach under the frame of the bike to retrieve his sword. At least he was thinking clearly enough to switch to a weapon he could use while he was riding. Ashley fired twice at the possible assailant. Missing cleanly. A quick detour around a wreck and we were clear.
"Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. We're fine."
We clipped the tail of a car. I swerved, but regained equilibrium. I made myself a thousand promises of treats I'd give myself if I made it home. The noise of the raider’s engines grew louder. We saw them come into view just as we finished crossing another street. Bullets clattered the brickwork as we disappeared from view.
Another narrow alley, even as we entered we saw a door fly open and another monster come limping into view. It blocked us. Jimmy skidded to halt 3 feet from it and swung his blade viciously across its throat. Through the horror of our predicament I caught myself thinking about what the hell had happened to us all since this thing had began. Jimmy had used to be a martial arts and anime nerd who occasionally attended self-defence classes. Now, there he was fighting with a sword against an animated corpse like some kind of cheesy movie hero. The ghoul fell. We pressed onwards.
It was the next alley when we ran into serious problems.
We were almost of the end of it when the light at the end of the tunnel disappeared. The front of one of the trucks pulled to a stop less than 6 feet from our exit. The window was down. An automatic sprayed.
Jimmy was still in the lead. He uttered a cry and fell sideways, clutching his shoulder. I hit the brakes and time seemed to slow down.
Maybe it was the certainty I had that I was going to die that made me more aware of what was happening. Had I really been paying attention to Ashley since we'd set out I would've noticed the change in their breathing. The whimpers in her voice had changed to something that now resembled an animalistic snarl. Her arm snapped out rigidly in front of me. The snarl turned into a roar and she fired. And fired. And fired.
Bullets peppered the passenger-side door of the truck where the shots had come from. I saw blood hit the windshield. There were cries of gurgled agony and their fire ceased. I dismounted and ran over to Jimmy. He was still moving, thank God.
"Jimmy! Talk to me mate!"
He sat up still clutching his shoulder. Blood dribbled between his fingers. He took his hand away.
"I'm ok. It just grazed me. God, I nearly shat myself."
"We've got to go!"
The other truck was still catching up by the sound of it. We exited the alley and edged our way around the side of the halted vehicle. We got to the other side just in time to see the drivers door open and a surviving raider fall sprawling from it.
He was in bad shape. Ashley's shooting had proven to be wickedly accurate. One of his comrades lay slumped against the windshield, his gray matter decorating it colourfully. The other sat upright, his chest a collage of glass and lead, his head tilted back as if in mid-yawn. The eyes snapped open as the raider reanimated. The escaping raider tried to pull himself back to his feet but slipped, his head cracking off the unforgiving concrete. He didn't see his ex-teammate until the zombie fell on top of him. The shriek he made seemed to echo across the whole city. Jimmy jumped off his bike and nearly forward-flipped into the back of the truck the raiders had been driving.
"What the hell are you doing?"
His voice was muffled but still understandable.
"I'm making this trip worth the risk."
He reappeared with his backpack weighted down. I heard the clink of glass. In a split second we were riding again. The fear I was feeling was briefly overruled by curiosity.
"What's in there?"
"Vodka. You can thank me later."
There was a screech and the smell of burning rubber. The second truck was on us again. Ashley's shooting took down another undead road block and the gun clicked empty. At that moment I really wished I'd thought to bring along some extra ammo. We were now three blocks from home with more than a fair amount of open ground to cover.
As we crossed the next street the gunfire started up again. Jimmy stifled a cry as a car windshield shattered next to him. By now my muscles felt like they'd been filled with molten lead. The truck was in plain sight now, another bullet buzzed by close enough to leave a red hot groove on the handlebars of my bike. If my hand had been an inch further to the left I would've lost a finger.
One final narrow alley and we were on the home stretch. The ghouls we'd passed earlier had now gathered in greater numbers on the street leading to Samworth's. They were packed together in a crowd, turning and moaning as soon as we rode into view. The drill sergeant's voice in the back of my mind spoke up again, telling me to use the situation to our advantage.
"Jimmy! Bank right!"
He did as he was told; there was no time to ask questions. We zipped around the side of the hundred strong crowd which was frighteningly animated in the face of the fresh meat approaching. As the truck pulled back into view I caught a glance at the driver’s look of surprise when he saw a hundred more obstacles than he'd anticipated between him and his prey.
We broke clear of the mob just as the truck ploughed directly into it. We hit the first blockade of wrecked vehicles and dismounted. Ashley had gone silent again; she frantically hoisted herself over the bonnet of an old ford and started sprinting flat out towards safety. Jim and I uttered grunts of effort to lift our vehicles and equipment. Jimmy was still bleeding pretty badly. This was going to be close.
The tone of the zombies vocals didn't change much even as some of their numbers where being crushed under the wheels of the reinforced truck. Several had shambled around the sides to start reaching through the open windows and seize their new meal. I felt a brief moment of satisfaction when I heard a cry of terror and redoubled gunfire as the raiders changed their primary targets.
Ashley paused momentarily for us to catch up. I caught myself staring at her as she planted a boot onto the chest of a cadaver that had managed to slip past the majority of the barriers and kick it flat on its back. Her short black hair whipped from across her face as she inflicted the violence. I tried to ignore the voice in the back of my head asking me about when the last time was I'd gotten laid.
The mother of all stitches had manifested itself under the right side of my ribs as we mounted the last row of cars and jumped over. Jimmy was awkwardly swinging his katana from side to side; hindered under the weight of all the stuff he was carrying and the blood leaking from his shoulder. I drew in a painful breath and shouted as loud as I could.
"Jack! Alex! Let us in!"
Almost immediately the crack of shotguns filled the air and the group of undead who were still banging on the back gate of Samworths went staggering backwards. A few seconds that after the gates opened. We put on a final burst of energy to propel ourselves to sanctuary, managing to hold our nerves in check even as the last fire from the raiders accidentally felled a zombie lunging after us. The gates closed. We were safe again.
I wanted to collapse with exhaustion as we re-entered the compound, Jimmy made no pretence, and he dumped his bike and weapons, carefully dumped his backpack and practically buried his face in the dirt. Ashley didn't stop running until she reached a corner, then flung herself back first into it and drew her knees to her chest. I kept going; mounting the steps to the outer wall which made up the back wall of the prison and snatched the binoculars from Alex's neck as I passed him.
I got my wish: a good, clear look at our pursuers. The truck (now a couple of hundred feet away) reversed sharply out of the crowd of zombies, leaving bloody smears all over the tarmac. I saw the scum inside the front of the vehicle, the fury in their faces mixed with panic in recognition of the threat all around them. It was clear they'd decided to call it a day. The remaining truck did a swift 3 point turn and disappeared around the nearest corner. Jack racked his shotgun (a typically macho move from him) and wandered over to Alex and me. My whole body was burning. Nausea rose like a tidal wave.
"Reckon they'll be back?"
"I reckon it's damn near certain."
That was all he got from me, I winced, clutched my stomach, staggered over to the edge of the wall and puked.
Chapter 7
Night time. The events of the day had been washed away by a sea of fatigue and alcohol. I crawled into the bottom bunk of my cell as vague images flashed across my mind of what had happened after we'd returned to Samworths.
Jimmy had eventually pulled his face out the dirt and reported to the warden's office. He'd dropped off a couple of bottles of vladivar and secured us an extra couple of days of credit. Ashley had recovered her senses enough to allow herself to be taken inside. She'd been given her own cell in the women's block of the prison (although it's worth pointing out that some of the couples in Samworth's did bunk together in C-block). Jimmy and I had done our best to help her get settled in. Which basically consisted of Jimmy cracking open the one bottle of vodka he hadn't turned over to the wardens and me giving her a chocolate bar that was 3 months past it's 'best by' date, God knew the girl could use the food, it was obvious her captors hadn't fed her well. She didn't talk much, other than to thank us for helping her escape. Around midnight the bottle had clinked empty and she'd asked us to leave her to rest. Jimmy and I had staggered back to our cell in a strange mood.
"Hey man." Jimmy had slurred. "Do you ever think about getting out of here?"
The lights were intermittent and low level. The warden's hated to waste electricity. I'd taken a moment to consider Jimmy's question.
"Yeah. I've thought about it. But where would be go? The whole worlds covered in rotten cunts."
A 'Shhhhh!' had sounded from a cell we'd passed. Jimmy had told the owner of the voice to go fuck themselves. Day to day hostility in the prison wasn't too bad; it was after dark when people's tempers generally got the better of them. Maybe it was the fact that everyone knew they had no chance of escaping in the dark that put their nerves on edge. Jimmy had broken off his abuse to continue his train of thought.
"Maybe. Maybe not. You see, I've been checking out the atlas lately."
The prison had a (functional) library. It had turned out to be a life-saver since the outbreak, providing information in the form of self-help and guide books for things like agriculture and mechanically related things. We certainly wouldn't have been able to figure out how to plant a proper vegetable garden or convert some of the generators to manual power without it.
"There's a couple of islands not too far off the southern coast of England. We could always make a break for them if the shit hits the fan here."
I mulled it over. It was a pretty damn good plan by Jimmy's standards. That didn't make it a good one however.
"We could, I suppose. But the problem is we'd have to find a boat still in port to get there. Neither of us knows how to sail and if we run out of fuel we'll either be set adrift and at the mercy of the wind. Or get there and find ourselves standing in port like a couple of arseholes while a thousand island-bound zombies comes shambling over to us."
He stopped, swaying slightly, I swear at that moment I could hear the cogs in his head turning.
"Good point. But if this place gets invaded where else could we go?"
In truth, I'd thought this issue over repeatedly ever since we'd taken up residence at Samworths. Jimmy's island idea wasn't actually any worse than any of the places I'd thought of.
"We could always break north for Scotland and try and lose the bastards in the mountains. Or cross the channel to mainland Europe and try to find a safe place there."
"Yeah. But that would mean we'd have to travel through France."
Jimmy was a typical Englishman in that respect. He hated the French and had readily jumped on board with the 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' attitude displayed by the American government at the turn of the century.
"Scotland it is then."
We didn't talk much for the rest of our journey. When we arrived at the cell Jimmy had staggered over to the sink, brushed his teeth furiously with an aged toothbrush and flung himself into the top bunk. I'd locked the cell door, lain down a few minutes later and closed my eyes.
An indeterminable amount of time passed and I came to. It was still dark, although I could still make out the faint outline of the bunk above me. Why was I awake? If there'd been a noise that had awoken me it wasn't repeating. I sat up in the bunk and tried to massage some feeling back into my face.
A moan sounded from very close by.
The effect was electric. I was jolted off the bed and staggered sideways to press my back against the cell wall. The light outside the cell flickered on and then I saw it all. The zombies had arrived. They were crowded on the other side of the cell door. Reaching with discoloured fingers and groaning through decaying vocals chords. I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle a shriek: there was Hollister on the left, his bulbous gut sickeningly overlapping through the bars of the cell. Alex and Jack stood shoulder to shoulder next to him, Jack still dragged the empty shotgun he'd doubtless used to try and repel the invaders. Reverend Murdock and The Doc were there too, blood decorating their once pristine uniforms they wore to mark their trades and to the right...
"No!"
There was Ashley, the new resident, the girl we'd rescued, moaning and groaning with the rest of them. Her throat was a red ruin, a single arm stretched through the bars, seeking me. The chorus rose several decibels.
"Oh Christ! Jimmy! JIMMY!"
Jimmy sat up in his bunk. His lips retracted into a snarl. Blood ran from his open mouth. He vaulted from his bed and lunged at me. I screamed.
I sat up in my bunk so fast I cracked my head neatly off the bottom of the top bunk. The dream vanished. I lay back down clutching my aching forehead and whimpering. Jimmy made an unrecognisable noise and shifted in his bed. It was a dream, just a dream. My hands trembled; my heart was doing about thousand beats a minute. Jimmy's sleepy voice mumbled through the near silence.
"Are you ok mate?"
I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to compose myself.
"Yeah. I'm fine. Just had a nightmare, that's all."
"I heard you scream in your sleep. It must've been a bad one."
"It was. This might sound dumb. But just do me a favour and tell me first if you ever get bitten."
"Will do. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
Jimmy turned over, 30 seconds later he was asleep again.
Chapter 8
A new day. I uttered a groan and rolled out of bed. Thanks to my colourful dreams and 10 shots of vodka I'd had a pitiful nights sleep. Somehow the earplugs hadn't done their work as well as normal, or maybe just an increased fear of being eaten alive had sharpened my hearing to pick out every undead voice I'd heard from outside.
I ran my sandpaper tongue over gums that felt like the top of the wall, and made a mental note to loot a new toothbrush the next time I went into the city. That wouldn't be today though, thanks to our recklessness in the last 24 hours it would be nearly a week before the wardens would think to get on our cases about paying the rent again. Which left us, unusually, at a loose end. I started pondering about what we could do to kill the time.
A gentle snore announced that Jimmy was still dead to the world. I tried to shake the recent image of my best friend tearing my throat out in the dead of night as I looked at him lying there. Certainly the previous night’s discussion of finding a place to flee to was playing on my mind. I shook my head to clear the paranoia away and quietly made my way out of the cell.
As I’m sure I’ve indicated before, Samworth's was a big place and there was a multitude of activities available for the bored and uneasy minds to dedicate themselves to when they had free time. I promised myself I'd head to C-block later to see how Ashley was doing, but first I meandered my way to the dining hall. It was located centrally and was a dour, gray-walled affair filled with rusty metal benches and yellowing, lengthy dining tables. It was arguably not the best place for a man to raise his flagging spirits. In fact, a lot of residents chose to eat in their quarters, jealously guarding the meagre amounts of food they'd earned, grown, traded for or looted. Despite that, it was almost guaranteed that at least a few of the more colourful characters of Samworth's would be hanging around the hall. If they weren't eating, they were usually engaging in some form of eccentric or, sometimes, vaguely homicidal behaviour, and I was in need of some entertainment.
I made my way down the rattling steel steeps to the ground floor of the prison. Faint chords drifted from the direction of the dining hall, that at least meant Paul (another one of the wardens, the one who'd let us in on the day of the end, remember?) was up and in a positive mood. As far as I knew he was the only person in the prison who knew how to play a musical instrument. He played a slightly battered-looking acoustic guitar and drew from a catalogue of slightly depressing songs of yesteryear. It was almost a shame that the man's singing voice was nowhere near as strong as his ability to strum. As I got closer I could make out his reedy tones drifting through the air.
Come gather round people
wherever you roam
and admit that the waters
around you have grown
and accept it that soon
you’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth saving
Then you better start swimming
Or you’ll sink like a stone
for the times they are a-changing.
Bob Dylan of course, Paul worshipped the ground Bob now most likely shambled across.
Come writers and critics
who prophesize with your pen
and keep your eyes wide
the chance wont come again
And don’t speak too soon
for the wheels still in spin
And there's no telling who
that it’s naming.
For the loser now
will be later to win
for the times they are a-changing.
I walked into the hall just as he finished the second verse of the song and winced. Paul had a habit of cracking his high notes. The more I thought about it the more I fought the urge to smile; the man was probably now one of the best musicians left in the country. He caught my eye as he started butchering the 3rd verse of the song and nodded. Paul knew he was a mediocre singer, but he carried on completely unselfconsciously. The handful of other residents scattered around were carefully ignoring him.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is raging.
It’ll soon shake your windows
and rattle your walls
for the times they are a-changing
I made my way over and sat on the table opposite him, he grinned in obvious good humour. I searched my mind to see if I could remember the rest of the lyrics. I did, and joined in.
Come mothers and fathers
throughout the land
and don’t criticize
what you can’t understand
your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
your old road is
rapidly aging.
Please get out of the new one
if you can’t lend your hand
for the times they are a-changing.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fading.
And the first one now
will later be last
for the times they are a-changing
An appropriate song for the apocalypse. Paul finished the tune with a quick blues riff. I applauded.
"Morning."
"Morning Paul. How's tricks?"
"Plodding along as usual. I heard about yesterday."
"Yeah. Credit that to a couple of blockheads having a rush of blood to the nuts."
"A couple of brave blockheads. Hollister said he'll give her credit and feed her for a couple of days. After that she'll have to pitch in."
I nodded. Hollister was always a little more lenient with the female residents of Samworths. Whether that was from a sense of patronising chauvinism or genuine chivalry was unclear. It added up to the same thing either way.
"You up to anything today?"
"Nah. We're paid up until Sunday and I'm nursing a hangover."
"Figures. By the way, I didn't get a chance to tell you earlier. The Doc's been asking for you."
"Me? How come?"
"He said something about going harpooning."
Christ. The Doc wanted another specimen. It was (Nurse) Roberts who'd figured out a few months ago the safest way to retrieve an individual zombie out of a crowd was to shoot the thing with a harpoon on a line and have a group of burly and mentally unbalanced men drag it over the wall.
"It sounds like he's nearing a breakthrough."
"Or a breakdown. But he was jabbering about studying their rate of decay."
"You mean he could actually figure out how long the Apocalypse is going to last?"
"Yep. But I'm not sure I'd want to know. I mean, what if it's something fucked up, like 20 years?"
I shrugged. I had no answer to that. I stood up and arched my back. It made a satisfying cracking noise.
"I'll go see him a little later. Thanks for letting me know, mate."
"No worries. Catch you later." Paul smiled and returned to playing his guitar
Chapter 9
I'd perked up considerably by now. Paul had a way of doing that to people. He'd put me in a more social mood. The Doc's request had me edging towards the opposite end of the dining hall (his 'lab' was down a corridor and a few floors up from the dining area) but at the same time I was casting an eye around for residents I was on a first name basis with. I spotted 2 I recognised in deep discussion, sitting near the exit. The first was Simon, the new resident I'd told the story of Jimmy and me's daring escape of 18 months ago. The person he was sitting opposite was Lady Eve.
Oh God. Someone better warn him.
To say Lady Eve wasn't the nicest girl in the world would be similar to referring to the Holocaust as 'an unfortunate misunderstanding'. The woman was a borderline psychopath who'd made quite an impression a few days after she'd first arrived at Samworths. She'd been sat reading a book and minding her own business when one of the more obnoxious residents, a prick called Lee, had had the nerve to walk up to her, pretend to drop something and take a good hard squeeze of her arse as he was standing up. This was how their conversation had gone.
"Did you just grope me?"
"Hey relax sweetheart, I was just having a bit of fun."
"You made me lose my page."
"Fuck reading babe! Come and party with me!"
He'd leaned in at that point and winked conspiringly "I've got a joint in my room."
There'd been a blur: Lady Eve's hand had shot out and grabbed the back of Lee's head and then snapped downwards, ricocheting his head off the table and spending blood spraying in an arc as his nose had flattened across his face. Her other hand had switched the book (someone told me the book had been 'The Little Book of Calm'. As hysterically ironic as that sounds, I really doubt that's true.) for a knife and lodged it a full inch into his inner thigh, and less than an inch from his manhood. Sam had frozen mid-cry, blinking tears of pain from his eyes as Eve had slowly pulled his head back down so her mouth was next to his ear. She'd whispered:
"If you ever make me lose my place again. I'm going to cut off one of your nuts and use it for a paperweight."
She'd released him then, and he'd gone limping and blubbering to The Doc after that. Ever since then we'd nicknamed her 'Lady' Eve, for the same reason you'd call a 300 pound bouncer 'Sir'.
I tried to make myself inconspicuous as I made my way over. Simon appeared to be completely unaware of the danger he was in: he was talking animatedly and, although Eve was smiling pleasantly, it was clear from her expression that the rest of her features had nothing in common with the angle of her mouth. In her right hand she was scratching a pattern in the bench she was sitting on with the knife that caused the grown men of Samworths to wince. I moved within earshot. As I'd expected, it was Simon who was doing most of the talking.
"...so when I got out of the cellar I remembered thinking how dumb a lot of the people must've been to get caught by the zombies walking the streets. I mean, look at them! They move so slowly! And who doesn't know that you've got to hit them in the head?"
Lady Eve nodded, her eye twitched.
"And so I used this old busted lamp. You know one of those old, heavy bastards? Yeah, I used it to bash the head in of this old one that had been banging on the door for days. He'd been driving me mad with his moans. You ever feel like you're going nuts sometimes?"
"Some days more than others."
The switchblade dug deeper into the wood. I made a move.
"Simon! Hey Simon, how are you doing mate?"
Simon broke out of his near monologue with an oblivious grin, Eve's head snapped in my direction like a snake.
"I'm good buddy. What you up to?"
"Serious business mate. Serious business. Look... erm. You got told about the rent system in here right?"
He nodded. I jumped on the opportunity.
"Well, it just so happens that The Doc got a job on offer and he personally asked for the pair of us to come meet in him his lab. Right now."
"Right now? Can't it wait a while?"
The Lady knew what was up. She played along regardless.
"Oh yes. Simon here was telling me a really interesting story."
He flushed. Sweet Mother, he fancied her! I quickly interrupted as he opened his mouth.
"I'm sure he can tell you some other time. But Simon, mate, The Doc's jobs are low risk and on temporary offer. Just think of it as an investment towards a bed for the night."
"Oh well. I suppose I should go and help out then."
"Good man. It'll be easy, I promise."
"That's a relief."
He stood up.
"Bye Eve, talk to you later."
"Byeeeee Simon."
I put a hand on the dumb bastard's shoulder and led him away, Lady Eve waved us goodbye.
Chapter 10
It was a short trip to The Doc's lab, although 'lab' was a generous term for what was effectively a cell that had been stripped of all of it's furnishings and replaced with a small bookcase and a couple of work benches. A herb rack was fixed to the far wall and laden with bottles of painkillers and other medical drugs. A few emergency medical kits were stacked here and there. It wasn't exactly the well-equipped or sterile environment needed for a man to practise medicine, but it was functional. To my knowledge, The Doc had only ever lost patients when they'd been bitten by the undead or so been so horrendously injured that even a team of surgeons complete with every resource under the sun wouldn't have been able to save them.
One of the questions The Doc was often asked was why zombie’s bites were so deadly. As was often the case with him: The Doc had solid theories but no solid proof. He'd hypothesised that, given that anyone who died regardless or whether or not they were bitten resurrected unless their head was in ruins that meant that the virus/chemical/whatever that caused it to happen was already inside all of us. The zombies bite; he'd said, must either act as a catalyst for the dormant disease or simply be so highly toxic it was on a par with a deadly snake bite.
Once bitten, the average person had around 6 hours before the toxins killed them. In the cases where I'd seen this happen most people just chose to blow their brains out. Some of the braver people tooled up and went on a kamikaze run against the horde outside the front gate, taking as many of the bastards with them as possible before they succumbed. On some occasions though, the selfish bastards kept it quiet until it was too late, and by then they were shuffling down the hall to attack unsuspecting people. It was one of my, and most of Samworths, biggest fear that one day an outbreak would start within the prison walls and by the time it was noticed it would be too late. The nightmare I'd had last night wasn't the first by a long shot or unique in its images. Sometimes even in the sanctity of these thick walls people found themselves jumping with fright if someone clapped a hand on their shoulder when they weren't expecting it. It was a hope that many of the residents had that The Doc would one day figure out a cure, or at least a vaccine, for the terrible illness that had turned so many people into semi-invincible cannibals. As much as I wanted to believe it, I kept reminding myself that the man had been a general practitioner before the outbreak, not a disease researcher, and although he was a highly intelligent human being, he was limited by the training he'd received.
Since the Doc had summoned us (well... me... but I wasn't going to tell Simon that) to help him acquire another specimen that probably meant he'd chosen to put one of his theories into practise. His initial studies of the undead behaviour had only told him so much, after all. We arrived at his cell, I knocked on the bars.
"Come in, come in."
His voice drifted through the air in well-spoken tones of course; the man was as middle-class as a jar of hummus. We stepped inside. Peter was staring out of the cell window, clearly preoccupied. Nurse Roberts was there too, sitting on a wooden stool and flipping through some old comic with the words 'Tales of the Macabre' written on the front. He didn't look up.
"What's the good word Doc? Heard you needed a hand."
He seemed to climb out of whatever train of thought he was riding. He turned to face us and made a faint smile.
"Ahh. Yes. As Paul probably already told you I need another infected individual."
Simon visibly blanched.
"You mean you want us to capture a zombie?"
"Chill out mate, it's just a bit of industrial sized fishing. Right Doc?"
"Yes. The same method as before. I sent word to the wardens to bring me the harpoon gun and the nets. Are you free to help out?"
Simon started to stammer. I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow and did the talking for the both of us.
"Sure. It won't be a problem. But what's the motivation behind this one? Got more research to do?"
Roberts fielded this one.
"Doctor Peter recently made a breakthrough in his research. He's spent the last few months focusing on the rate of decay and is now close to determining an expiry date for the average zombie."
The Doc interjected.
"Which is why we need a specific sample this time around."
I found myself frowning.
"A specific sample? How specific are we talking here?"
"Not one in the thousands outside. More like one out of hundreds. We need an old specimen."
Simon's fear had given away to confusion.
"What? Do you mean, like, an old man zombie?"
The Doc nodded to his assistant. Roberts sighed, stood up and started pulling his worn-out coat on.
"Come on. I'll explain on the way"
Roberts kept it short and to the point. Basically the Doc's reasoning was that the older the zombie was that we'd captured, not in the age of the human it had been but rather how long the human had been infected, the more accurately The Doc would be able to judge the decay process once he'd performed the necessary tests on the ghoul, including another autopsy, for which Nurse Bob told us he'd sought out a couple of vomit bags for when The Doc inevitably lost control of his stomach. Roberts spoke with a flurry of impatience, but then again, he'd always had a short fuse when it came to his work. He often said how pissed off he was that he hadn't been able to finish his training to become a full-fledged doctor before the Apocalypse came and now, he never would. Pointing out to him that he could always just learn from the Doc was a moot point. Bob was a materialistic man, if he didn't have the degree, he reasoned, his qualifications didn't count.
As we walked through a set of double doors into the murky sunshine of a British summer I turned and saw Simon's nerves were beginning to get the better of him. I clapped him companionably on the shoulder, he jumped.
"Whoa! Ok bud. Look, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. But, believe me; this is gonna be the easiest day's rent you ever made."
I could feel his body trembling under my palm.
"But we have to catch one of those things and haul it INTO the compound! Isn't that dangerous?"
I looked in Robert's direction. He'd zoned out, and was busy staring in the direction of the undead crowd we could now hear as clear as a bell. I spent a moment taking in the scenery. I could see Head Warden Hollister in his usual spot: a deckchair a dozen meters or so from the edge of the wall. He was chuckling to himself at some private joke as he surveyed the crowd. Paul had come back on duty and was patrolling the perimeter with Jack and a few other guards. There were a couple of guys on 'mandatory extermination', fretfully stabbing downwards into the crowd using improvised weapons. Lastly, I saw a resident whose face I didn't recognise sat in the centre of the ground area. He was curled into a ball, rocking back and forth and crying. I could see the wet trail leading to him where his bladder had let go. He must've been new.
Overall, not the best sight to inspire confidence. I returned my attention Simon and tried to reassure him. Robert left us to our devices and went to collect our equipment.
"It's not as dangerous as you think. One of us shoots a decrepit bastard in the chest to hook the harpoon into its ribcage, then two of us pull it up and the third throws a weighted net on it after it comes over the wall. We pin it face down, tie its hands together, pull a gag over its mouth and call it a day. Boom. You're back in your cell and sipping a coke before you know it."
He seemed reassured, if only a little. He straightened up and took a deep breath.
"Ok. I guess I'm ready."
At that moment Robert returned. He was heavily laden down with the bulky tools for the job. I wordlessly took the harpoon gun from him and started to inspect it. The last thing anyone wanted for this nearly irreplaceable weapon to break when it had cost 3 of the resident their lives to raid the necessary shop to acquire it. The only known fishing store was a couple of miles away and through the centre of London, where the infected population was at its densest. A little rust speckled the edge of the barrel; it was otherwise good to go. Robert beckoned for us to follow him up the steps to the top of the wall while issuing instructions. He pointed to me.
"Alright, I know you've used the harpoon gun a few times before so I'm relying on you to hit the right target."
He indicated the binoculars around his neck.
"I'll try and find our specimen in the crowd and give you a hand reeling it in. Simon, you throw the net over it when it comes over the wall. Clear?"
"Clear."
"Yeah, no problem."
As always when someone leaned over the wall to take a look at our unwanted guests the rasping cries rose in pitch and volume. I saw Simon had started to tremble again. I couldn't blame him. The man had spent so long cut off from civilisation before he came to Samworths that his imagination had had more time to play tricks on him than anyone else.
Looking back, I think it was that factor above any other that caused things to go wrong.
We stood there for a good 10 minutes while Robert scanned and scanned the crowd again. Almost unperceivably he came to a stop. His arm stretched out in a straight line, pointing at a face in the crowd.
"There's our girl."
I squinted.
"Which one?"
"She's wearing a brown shirt. Long hair. Next to that big bastard that looks like he might've been a bouncer."
I leaned in to follow the angle of his arm and looked harder... there she was. A young woman. I guessed she couldn't have been far out of her teenage years when she was infected although it was tricky to tell. Her head hung loosely, her skin showed much greater signs of decay than the undead standing around her, her movements where noticeably slower. I lifted the harpoon gun and aimed.
I had to wait for a while. It was a difficult task to get a clear shot at a single body with a dozen others milling around in front of it. The 'big bastard' Roberts had pointed out even blocked her off completely a couple of times. I waited for the right moment. And... there it was. The big guy lumbered off to one side, our girl raised her hands in the air as if to testify, her rib cage stretched to its maximum. Even as I pulled the trigger my vision seemed to sharpen; I could see the tears in her shirt and the flashes of bare bone underneath. The harpoon shot across the distance with liquid grace.
It was a sickening squelch of a noise that brought me back to reality. She was hooked.
"Nice shooting!" Roberts shouted. He rushed to my side as I pressed to button to reel her in.
"Okay. Pull! Pull!"
The line shortened. We heaved. In the midst of the constant cacophony of noise we could make out the girl's voice groan out something like surprise as she realised she was hooked. She was lifted up and pulled over the heads and shoulders of her companions, looking like a crowd surfer from Hell. We strained and grunted conscious of the fact that if we pulled too hard we could shake her loose. The other zombies flailed as she was dragged over them, their hands clasping at the line connecting us to our specimen. She was almost at the base of the wall when there was a jolt. She got stuck. One of the quicker monsters had grasped the line. Roberts cursed colourfully.
"God fuck it! Hey Simon! Grab something and dislodge that prick!"
Simon had been on stand by with his net. His demeanour was like a man caught in a dream. He didn't appear to hear us.
"SIMON!"
I swear my eardrums nearly burst when Roberts shouted again. Simon snapped out of whatever personal dementia he'd settled into and reached for one of the improvised pole weapons dotted around the wall. He leaned over and mechanically thrust downwards at the rogue zombie who'd halted our mission. The line moved again.
The ghoul finally rose up the wall as the line spun inwards. Simon shrieked and stumbled away from the approaching threat. Christ, what had I been thinking bringing this guy along? He ran clear, leaving the weighted net a dozen feet away from where it needed to be, just as Madame Death came tumbling over the wall from our final pull. Roberts uttered another stream of expletives and shoved me away just as the monster grabbed at him.
"Get the fucking net!"
I didn't argue. I sprinted over to it while Roberts tried to keep the ghoul at bay. It was only the work of 5 seconds to retrieve it from where the frightened idiot had left it but it was already too late. The zombie was just too close. Roberts tried to clamp a hand under her jaw and restrain her. But her head rolled sickeningly, elastically around his outstretched arm and sank her rotting teeth into his wrist.
Roberts howled in pain and fell backwards. I hauled the net over the now chewing zombie and planted a kick into its contorted back to send it crashing to the ground.
But it was too late.
Chapter 11
Roberts funeral was scheduled for tomorrow morning.
It was a sick montage of images that were stuck in my mind of what should've been an easy job. After being bitten Roberts had screamed in pain, then taken a second to really take in the consequences of the bite and screamed again, this time in realisation.
At that point I'd thrown my weight over the struggling zombie which was then (thankfully) pinned face down on the concrete. Two of the guards had rushed over and between the three of us we'd managed to gag and bind it. I remember the horrific discolouration of the monster we'd captured, and then turning to Roberts and seeing the begginings of the same decay in him. He'd gone into shock and then started crying.
Simon had been cowering in a corner and shaking with fear and the guilt of what'd done. I don't remember walking towards him. I do remember dragging him to his feet and belting him across the face, feeling anger too large to contain.
"WHAT DID YOU DO! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?"
I shook him from side to side, he didn't answer me, maybe he couldn't, he just wailed and wailed. My strength left me. I released him and sank to the ground. I pressed my forehead against the earth as if I was praying. I cut my knuckles on the stones.
It was Jimmy who pulled me back to my feet of course. I heard later he started to make his way over to the entrance as soon as he'd heard I was going harpooning. He slung an arm under my shoulders and led me to a step. I sat down bonelessly, wordlessly. He reached into a pocket and brought out a ciggerette. I took it with an arm that felt like it was made of lead. In the background I could dully make out Robert's cries of anguish. There was a single gunshot and all conversaton halted.
A minute passed. I didn't Roberts cries any more. Slowly, Jimmy pulled a match from its cardboard packet. He struck it and held it to the end of my smoke. I inhaled gratefully.
"Fuck."
I screwed my eyes up.
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
"That should've been easy."
"I know."
"We just lost one of our medical guys."
I raised my head and looked at him then, and saw the same thoughts running through his mind as mine.
"...Fuck."
It was 6 hours later. We'd most spend of the day in our cell. Death was a common thing at Samworths but the death of Roberts meant everyone's situation had worsened. That was the funny thing about the place, even when people didn't get along, which happened often, most of them understood the importance everyone played in maintaining a sembelence of a life. When someone with an important function died it oftens provoked a grieving reaction from the population, but for selfishly-motivated reasons.
My own reaction to his death had been understandable. I felt responciable for the poor bastards death. I'd convinced Simon to come along. Punching him in the face afterwards hadn't done anything except give The Doc a patient to attend to while he was being informed his assistant was dead.
Well at least we'd gotten his godammed sample.
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