Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent (2 page)

             
At Camp Hope the End of the World felt like an extended holiday.

             
They had no idea how long they would have to be there, but fishing and trapping rabbits for food, searching for berries and mushrooms were more like a ‘Boys Own’ adventure than the Apocalypse.

             
They had been concerned about families and friends, and occasionally one or two of their number would venture out to try and find out what was going on in the world outside.  These expeditions either came back having encountered no one, or didn’t come back at all.  This disturbing pattern started to cause panic among the survivors.

             
They had no idea how bad things were out there, but even in their wildest imaginings they did not envisage the hideous truth.

             
There was a meadow on the other side of the lake, and Adam spent a day arranging stones to form the letters  ‘SOS’ and an arrow pointing towards the camp.

             
“Adam, you’re a legend!” said Neil, admiring the handiwork as he handed his exhausted friend some soup made from a mixture of the campers’ remaining food supplies.

             
They waited for rescue.

             
Neil had a clockwork radio, and several times a day they would attempt to find a station.

             
After nearly four weeks they encountered their first zombie.  It was on the meadow across the lake.  At first it was wandering aimlessly, and the survivors mistook it for another living person.  They waved and shouted, then stopped abruptly as the creature’s movements were clearly not ‘normal.’

             
It spun towards their shouts, and ran headlong into the water towards them.

             
Some of the campers fled to the concrete shower block, while others armed themselves with sticks, knives and mallets, and waited by the shore.

             
It would have been horrific enough if the creature had swum across and attacked right away, but what was worse was that it had just disappeared under the water, and not reappeared.

             
Night fell and the creature still had not emerged.  The night watches were more alert than usual that night, but their attention was focused on the water, not the road.

             
Next morning, when the survivors came to collect water and to wash in the lake they all felt deeply uneasy.

             
The lake, for which they had previously been thankful, now became a place of dread.   Something had entered the water and remained lurking in its depths.

             
Whether it was still under there they couldn’t know. But the small stream that entered the lake to the West and flowed out to the East was too small to wash anything human-sized away.

             
It was the second night when the creature resurfaced.

Maybe it had lost its way, maybe it had forgotten the survivors once they were no longer visible from the bottom of the lake, maybe it had become tangled in weeds and spent the time struggling to get free: they would never know what had caused the delay.

             
Having never seen a zombie up close, whatever they expected, it was not the fast, furious creature that appeared, slippery from over a day underwater.

             
It was a cloudy night with almost no light from the moon, and in the cold the survivors were numb and clumsy.  The creature ripped out the throat of one camper and severed an artery in the forearm of another before they were able to rain down enough blows on its head to have any real effect.

             
As they smashed the skull the creature’s movements became increasingly erratic, until its brain was pulped and it stopped.

             
They stood breathing heavily after their exertions, when the body of the survivor with the missing throat bit a chunk out of his best friend’s ankle.

             
The scenario had been a microcosm of the Fall of the World. In one night most of the community had been devoured.  Neil escaped in his car along with Adam and Misha.

             
Adam was the child of hippie parents, and had ginger dreadlocks, and since his supply of marijuana had run out before his rolling papers, he was always trying to find new things to smoke.  He had tried tea leaves and various fruit skins, but all he achieved was a permanently sore throat.

             
Neil shook his head as he watched Adam roll a fat joint full of experimental herbs and leaves: “In the face of all this you’re busy trying to get high.”

             
“In the face of all this, what could be better?”

             
“Adam, you’re a legend!”

             
Neil described Misha as ‘the world’s only Muslim feminist.’  She insisted that she was far from alone, but she was passionate about her faith, and about gender politics.  Her most  prized possessions were her Qur’an and her prayer mat.  She had been camping in a separate area of the site with a group of postgraduate students from the Women’s Studies department of Sunderland University.  All of her sisters were dead.

             
It was hard to know exactly what she looked like as she wore a black abaya and hijab, covering her from head to toe in flowing black fabric, with only her dark eyes and a glimpse of olive skin visible.

             
Before the Apocalypse she talked about feminism in every conversation.  After the Apocalypse she talked about religion.  When Neil pointed this out to her she said, “I am every bit as much of a feminist, but I just think right now we all need Allah’s help and mercy.”

In the Dead of Night

While Danniella lay awake brooding on her part in the End of the World, Siobhan had her own secret.  When she reckoned everyone was asleep she would strip off her clothes in the pitch dark of the Bunker, and run round the full length of the corridors naked.  She wasn’t a naturist and she was not really sure why she felt compelled to make her secret streaks, but she lived in a world that had fallen apart: she felt so much daily sorrow at the memories of everyone she had ever known.  This at least reminded her that she was still alive: that her body was still resisting the rot and decay of the undead.

             
The other survivors had become like family: she was sure no one would complain about her midnight runs (and she suspected Max would invent some night-vision goggles if he found out), but it was the thrill of the secret as well as the thrill of being nude in a place where everyone normally wore clothes that excited her.

             
She delighted in the feeling of the cold floor under her bare feet, she delighted in the feeling of her bare legs rubbing together as she ran, she delighted in the cool air caressing every inch of her body.

             
She ran in the pitch black, but she knew the layout of the Bunker’s corridors intimately.  She kept track of her location by skimming her fingertips along the walls, and counting the doors she passed.  In the middle of the corridor she risked a cartwheel.

             
The feeling of her bare breasts in motion was a pleasant discomfort.

             
She felt alive.

             
Then satiated and sleepy she would creep back to her bunk and sleep.

*   *   *

As Camp Hope was overrun, a few survivors slipped away in the car of a dead friend.  The vehicle was substantial enough to sleep all of them: Adam and Neil on the front seats, lay back flat; Misha curled up in the large boot space (which sounded undignified, but which gave her the largest, flattest space for sleep).

             
They drove till they happened on a deserted farm house, where they stayed for months, until a small pack of zombies found them, and after a brief attempt to stand and fight, followed by a terrifying chase, they were back on the road again.

             
They tried not to go far, finding food in fields and orchards.  In the farm they had tried to milk a cow, but the udders of any cattle they’d found had long since dried up.  They could not bring themselves to slaughter any large livestock, but they had managed to kill chickens, and once they spent a week eating venison from a deer they had hit with their car.

             
They were feasting on a pigeon they had caught and cooked on an open fire when one of the creatures gate crashed their party.

             
It had been a tall thin man with a mess of mid-length grey hair; it was wearing a checked shirt, jeans and one foot in a brown shoe, the other foot bare.

             
“Fuck off!” Neil yelled as the monster stumbled over the camp fire to bite at his hand, which was still greasy from pigeon fat.

             
The creature fell on top of the fire.

             
Adam grabbed the bottle of lighter fluid and sprayed it on the zombie.  It burst into flames, its clothes cracking, as dry outer layers met damp insides.

             
It did not seem to notice or care as the flames consumed it: it was still just as hungry for human flesh.

             
Its flaming hand gripped hold of Adam’s wrist.  He felt its hand still cold, with the flames burning hot.  The monster pulled itself through the blaze, and just as its hair caught fire it sunk its teeth into Adam’s hand.

             
Adam pulled himself free, spraying the creature with his warm blood.

             
The survivors made for the car as several other creatures burst through the undergrowth.

             
Adam was in the driving seat, pressing his bleeding and torn hand into his armpit, while he started the motor.

             
Misha and Neil were in the back seat.  As they sped off the doors closed by the motion of them lurching away.

             
Tears were rolling down Adam’s face as blood soaked into his shirt.  He imagined he could feel the poison coursing through his veins.  He wondered how long he had left: days? hours? minutes?

             
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

             
The zombie was smashing its fists against the car, and as it gripped onto the roof-rack it somehow trapped its wrist in the frame, and the car started to pull it along, flames licking the side of the car.

             
Suddenly they found themselves in the middle of a crowd of zombies.  Fists and faces flung themselves against the glass.

             
As they pulled away the windows were smeared with blood and grime.

             
The burning zombie was still attached to the roof rack, and flames were spreading to the hardened plastic of the roof box.

             
Adam speeded up, and the zombie’s trapped arm started to twist in unnatural places.

             
Adam slammed on the brakes and the creature’s flesh tore.  The zombie shot ahead, its burning arm remaining attached to the roof of the car.

             
They sped on again, Adam swerving to run over the creature that had bitten him.  He knew driving over flames would not do the vehicle any good, but he could not let the creature that had killed him just wander off unavenged.

             
He looked at the petrol gauge.  It was not good news.  Glancing in his wing mirror he notice the flames from the severed arm licking the roof rack.

             
None of this was good.

Cold Dead Hands

“Will they freeze?”  With this simple schoolgirl question Summer changed the parameters of their discussions about visiting the surface.

             
They were gathered in the Conference Room for one of their nightly Community Meetings.

             
Danniella smacked her forehead with her palm. “Why didn’t I think of that?”  She smacked her forehead again. “They should freeze.  I mean they should rot, and that’s not happening, at least not happening in the usual way.  But I can’t see how whatever is keeping them from rotting should, or could, stop them freezing.”

             
“So what are you saying?” asked Will, “are they going to freeze solid and die?”

             
Max shook his head, “They’ll defrost when temperature rises again, but the freezing of organic cells causes the water in them to expand and cell walls to burst.  It’s going to do some damage, but whatever is keeping them alive may stop the freezing or stop the cells bursting.”  He shrugged, “We can have no idea till we see it happen.”

             
“Or not,” added Siobhan.  Siobhan had been a dance teacher in her spare time: her curvy figure had become an increasingly well-muscled physique due to nightly exercise in the Bunker; her striking, green eyes reflected her restlessness at being cooped up underground.