Zombie Castle (Book 1) (17 page)

The only sound to be heard was our laboured breathing and the engine of my car.

The engine stopped and I heard the window wind down. I turned to see Becky and Maud sitting in the front of the car and the three children looking at me from the rear seats. They sat there silently, still looking petrified.

The quiet sound of a sheep baaing on the moor sounded positively unnatural after what we’d just experienced.

Who had just helped us?

‘We’re coming out from behind the wall. Lower your weapons,’ came a shout.

I lowered my knife and Shawn and Louise followed suit.

Two soldiers in full kit with rifles aimed at us stood up from behind the wall to our left. One of them kept his weapon trained on us while the other climbed over the wall. The other followed, and they walked slowly towards us. At a command from one of them, they both lowered their weapons.

They stood in silence for a moment, then the older one of the two broke into a smile and said, ‘That was a bit intense wasn’t it? I’m glad most of you made it.’

We were speechless.

Chet finally spoke first. ‘How long have you been there? Could you have saved my mate?’

The man shook his head. ‘No pal. I’m sorry but we couldn’t. In fact, if it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have got involved. I’d made the decision, rightly or wrongly, not to intervene when we first came across you. Your situation looked so hopeless I didn’t want to put us at risk for no reason. It was only when we saw what he did – sacrificing himself to help you even though he’d been bitten – that I decided you must be OK and worth helping. That man was a fucking hero the way he piled in there. If anything like that happens to me, I hope I go down as well as he did. And then the way you all piled in after him! I just had to help after that.’

He grinned and then put out his hand. ‘Sorry, I’m forgetting myself. I’m Sergeant Simon Wood and this scrawny individual by my side is Marine Brown.’

Still stunned by their appearance, I stammered, ‘Hi.. er sorry but where the hell have you just come from? I mean, thanks for helping us out and everything. I really thought we’d had it then. But, well, you just rise up from behind a wall and say, ‘sorry I wasn’t going to get involved, but then I decided I would! I’m a bit confused!’

He laughed. ‘Yes it sounds like it. Let me explain where we came from.’ He looked beyond us towards the car. ‘Do you want to let the women and children out of the car first?’

Becky, who’d been listening through the car window, leant out and said, ‘Don’t worry we’re getting out, but can you make sure none of those things are still alive first?’

‘Good point!’ said Shawn.

The soldiers agreed, so we spent the next few minutes kicking each zombie to check for signs of life and if in doubt, throwing in an extra stab to the brain for good measure. Chet made his way over to what was left of Andy. We could only tell it was him by the scraps of clothing that remained.

We let him have a moment to grieve for his friend. I did a quick count up. He’d gone down fighting and taken six of the bastards with him. Shawn walked round retrieving as many of his crossbow bolts as he could. He was careful to wipe them before packing them away.

We gathered together over by the house, away from the piles of bodies.

Becky ushered Maud and the children into the house. We waited for Chet to join us, then went into the kitchen. The children retired to the lounge and carried on watching the DVD that was still playing. Becky grabbed a carton of juice from the fridge and rummaged through the cupboards for some glasses. She found a tray, picked up a biscuit tin she’d found on the worktop and carried it all through to the children.

Maud seemed to come to all of a sudden. ‘Shall I put the kettle on then?’

We looked at each other and everyone burst out laughing. So typically British. There we were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, struggling to survive and fighting off hordes of flesh eating monsters, one of our fledgling group already eaten alive, and at the first opportunity someone was offering to make a nice cup of tea.

Maud left us all giggling hysterically, and looking slightly mystified, proceeded to make a large pot of tea. Eventually we could laugh no more, but it had served its purpose: we’d managed to release a lot of pent up emotion. I walked over to Maud, wiping the tears from my eyes and hugged her. ‘Thank you. We needed that,’ I told her.

We helped ourselves to steaming mugs of tea and Sergeant Wood told Marine Brown to go outside and keep watch while he told us their story.

They were Royal Marines, based out at Bickleigh Barracks, just outside Plymouth. They’d been out there on a routine training exercise the previous morning when the whole base had suddenly been placed on alert. Amid great confusion, everyone had been issued with live ammunition and squads had been hurriedly formed and dispatched in whatever vehicle was available to guard road junctions.

The only orders they’d received had been to protect citizens against outbreaks of ‘civil unrest’. Their lorry had contained a hastily cobbled together mix of marines from different units under the command of a young lieutenant who’d been told to go to a road junction outside Bodmin.

Shortly afterwards a panic-stricken crowd of people, escaping from Bodmin, had rounded the corner and converged on the soldiers in the hope of being protected. The bemused marines had had no time to react when the snarling mass of zombies surged up against the screaming crowd and tore into them savagely.

Not understanding what they were dealing with, some of the soldiers had ventured forward to try to intervene and had been quickly and brutally overrun themselves.

Sergeant Wood, a veteran of many campaigns, had quickly realised that their only chance of survival was to fight back. He’d ordered the remaining marines to raise their weapons and they’d fired into the growing crowd of undead, who were heading straight for them. By the time the bewildered men had worked out that headshots were the only way to kill them, the zombies were almost on top of them. As they retreated they could only watch helplessly as one by one their comrades were attacked and ripped apart. When there were just the two of them left, Wood and Brown had just managed to scramble into the lorry. Hastily filling their Bergens with as much ammunition as they could carry, they’d jumped down from the lorry and sprinted away from their pursuers. Being marines, they were both superbly fit and had had no trouble losing them. Once they were clear of them they’d instinctively headed for the moors, an area they knew well which they knew they could disappear into.

They’d been working their way across the moors, in the hope of returning to their barracks and regrouping with whoever was left, when they’d come across the farmhouse and witnessed the drama that was unfolding.

He apologised again for not immediately coming to our aid, but we waved it off. He had saved our lives and that was all that mattered.

‘Do you think anyone will still be alive at your barracks?’ asked Becky.

‘Well ma’am. If there isn’t, then the whole country is fucked as far as I’m concerned. Because if those undead bastards have managed to get through the best trained and toughest soldiers in the world then there really is no hope. And I guess my carefully planned career will be over and I’ll have to look at my early retirement options! But my main objective is just to get back to see if any of my mates got through.’

He showed emotion for the first time. ‘They’re the only family I’ve got.’

He stared at the wall for a few moments, then snapping himself out of it, asked how we’d come to be fighting off an army of zombies in the middle of Bodmin Moor.

I told him our story and how we’d all come together over the past two days, and that Louise had only joined our group a few hours before. I concluded by describing the plan we’d been formulating to try to head to Warwick Castle as, in our view, it was the only place we could think of where we might stand a chance of surviving this.

He was intrigued. ‘A castle! I like it! But what are you going to do now?’

‘Well,’ I said, hesitantly, ‘we can’t stay here, that’s for certain. We’ve just discovered that it’s nowhere near as safe as we thought. I suppose we should scavenge what we can from here and keep going. I wish we had a few more weapons though. Your rifles really proved their worth just now. The shotguns are great, but they have to be reasonably close to be effective and that creates its own problems. There’s a.22 rifle in there but I’m not sure how effective that will be.’

Simon asked to see the rifle and ammunition. He admired it, remarking that it was a perfectly good weapon and with the load the bullets had, it should be possible to kill with a headshot at a range of 100 metres. In reality, he admitted, that would be a damn fine shot under the circumstances given that you’d be firing it while under attack by zombies. If you could zero the sight on it to fifty to sixty metres it would be a lethal weapon. He explained that the advantage of the.22 was that the bullets were light. This meant that you could carry a lot of them with you, unlike the 5.56mm bullets his own weapon used which were heavy and therefore limited you as to how much you could take with you.

Unnoticed, Maud had been quietly searching through the cupboards and had quickly made a huge pile of sandwiches. They were just what we needed.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever be any good at fighting those things,’ she said shuddering, ‘but the one thing I can do is make sure that no one goes hungry.’

I was desperately trying to think of a way to persuade Simon and Ben (Marine Brown) to stay with us and join our group. Being Royal Marines, I knew they were among the best trained and toughest soldiers in the world. We badly needed people like that on our side.

But before I could think of the best way to put it to them, Simon asked to be excused for a minute, saying that he wanted to have a word with Ben, who was still outside keeping watch.

His question, when he came back in, could not have made me any happier.

‘I’ve just had a quick chat with Marine Brown and he’s in agreement with me. If we’re going to survive this, there’s going to have to be more than just the two of us. Even though we’re still heading back to the barracks, which we hope will still be operating, we’re going to have to face up to the possibility that it might have been overrun. If you want you can come with us. I think we could all help each other out. We’ve seen the way you fight and if the shit hits the fan big style you’ll be great. All we’ve done is take pot shots from a distance. You badasses have taken it to them with bayonets, just like the ‘Walking Dead’!’

Shawn laughed. ‘Where do you think we learned how to do it?’

Now we were eleven.

While the children stayed inside watching the TV and Maud kept an eye on them, we all moved outside to continue our discussion.

‘Simon, Ben,’ I began, ‘you’re absolutely right. We need to stay together. The only way we’re going to survive this is by strength in numbers. You two are the only ones with military training, but even that won’t help you if you get cornered by a pack of them. We need to put together some kind of plan for getting to your base. The cars we have won’t be any good if we have to fight through a lot of them, and what happens if we meet more survivors on the way? We only have a few more spaces available.’

Shawn spoke up. ‘Has anyone seen the film ‘Tremors?’’ He turned and pointed to a large rusty silage trailer sitting outside one of the barns.

We all looked at him blankly.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You know! The film where they used a big trailer and a bulldozer to escape from a large man-eating worm! I reckon we could use that trailer there, pull it with the tractor and then we’d have ourselves a pretty invincible zombie-proof ride!’

He looked at us all expectantly. ‘Let’s ‘A-Team’ the tractor and anti-zombie it. I reckon with its hydraulic front arm we’ll easily be able to clear any blockages we find and the trailer will act as a mobile castle. It’ll carry the whole lot of us and more, if necessary, plus a lot of supplies.’ He finished with a big grin on his face.

We all turned and stared at the tractor and trailer.

It would work. It was an absolutely bonkers, crazy idea. BUT it would work. We could meander slowly through the countryside in a mobile castle.

No! It wasn’t bonkers or crazy. It was absolutely brilliant.

I slapped Shawn on the back and Ben and Simon started whistling the theme from the A-Team. It was catchy, and for a brief moment all the men whistled it together until Becky brought us back to reality by saying:

‘You bunch of absolute idiots. Why are men such bloody simpletons? We’re in the middle of fighting for our very lives and at the thought of playing a bunch of fictional TV characters, you all start looking wistful and suddenly turn into Hannibal or BA or whoever you wanted to be when you were ten. Grow up the lot of you!’

We all looked sheepish. She continued. ‘You are now basing my survival and the survival of our children on a movie starring a big worm and a series about a bunch of characters whose only contribution to the world was a big black man who said ‘FOOL!’

We tried to be serious, but when Becky said ‘FOOL!’ there were a few sniggers. She had absolutely nailed the accent.

When she’d calmed down she admitted that it wasn’t a bad idea and agreed that we should try it.

Making a conscious effort not to laugh I said, ‘Right guys, let’s get started. We have a lot to do before we leave. If we get this done we can be off at first light tomorrow morning.

First of all we decided who was doing what, based on their skill levels.

Simon, Shawn, Ben and I had the most practical experience in terms of mechanics and building, so we volunteered to work on the tractor and trailer.

Becky said that with the help of Maud and the children, she would search for and pack up anything we needed from the house.

Chet and Louise agreed to rebuild the partly collapsed perimeter wall and strengthen it as much as they could. Then they would muck in and help wherever they were needed.

With a sense of urgency (we were all conscious that at any time, an unstoppable wave of zombies might appear on the horizon), we set about our tasks.