Zombie Castle (Book 1) (18 page)

The tractor looked fairly new and had a good sized cab and a bucket loader attached to the front. I climbed up into the cab and was overjoyed to find the keys in the ignition. Either the farmer had been forgetful or he’d just been feeling too ill from the virus to worry about it when he’d got home the night before. Either way, it would save a lot of time hunting for the key.

It started first time, emitting a quiet but powerful sounding noise. I pulled it out of the shed and backed it up to the silage trailer. I studied the controls for a minute, and having found the right ones, extended the hydraulic arm and attached the hook on the tractor to the eye on the trailer.

As everyone congratulated me, I didn’t have the heart to tell them it was pure luck. I gave them all a casual thumbs up and pulled the trailer forward away from the wall of the barn so that we could get to work on it.

Shawn and Simon were setting up extension cables and carrying various power tools out of the shed. After a quick check of the materials we had available to us, we came up with a plan. Using steel roof sheets taken from a large pile stacked next to the barn we would place a skirt of metal roof sheets, reinforced with timber and steel, around both the tractor and the trailer to stop any zombies we encountered from getting under the wheels. Shawn was reasonably confident that with his limited welding experience he would be able to fabricate a sturdy wedge that would stick out from the front of the tractor’s bucket to act as a zombie plough.

With a combination of trial and error and practical experience, the plan began to come together. We were lucky; we had the right tools, materials and skills and the will to make it happen. As a result, within a few hours the bulk of the work was done. Shawn still had some ideas for improving his zombie plough but what we’d created, although it might not win any beauty contests, looked fit for purpose.

Leaving Shawn and Ben to carry on with the work, I asked Simon to give me a quick lesson on using the .22 rifle and we walked back into the house.

Becky and Maud had been busy as well. Using the three children as porters, they’d emptied every cupboard and created neat piles of food, clothing and equipment. They were now systematically sorting them into essential and non-essential items.

I retrieved the rifle and we went to the room where the ammunition had been stored. After hunting around we gathered another two hundred and fifty or so shotgun cartridges and over three hundred rounds for the rifle.

I was pleased with the amount we’d managed to find but Simon pointed out that we’d probably shot over forty cartridges that morning and he and Ben had burned through about fifty rounds in the short time they’d been involved in the fight. It was a sobering thought and although the little pile in front of us was better than nothing, it clearly fell well short of what we would need.

The rifle was a nice looking weapon with a black synthetic stock, a sling and a telescopic sight mounted on the top. A small magazine stuck out from underneath it. I’d found two more empty magazines in the safe.

I listened carefully as Simon explained that it was a semi-auto with a ten shot magazine. He showed me how to load a magazine with ammunition and how to insert and eject them. Being used to firearms, it was all reasonably familiar, and after only one demonstration I was able to perform all the basic tasks needed to operate it.

I loaded all the magazines and put the rest in my pocket, then I placed the remaining ammunition in a bag and carried them outside. After a quick discussion we decided against practice firing the rifle, as we didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention.

I found the cartridge bags Louise and I had been using and filled them with as many as they would take then made sure they were placed within easy reach.

Looking around, I could see that things were definitely moving in the right direction. The wall had now been rebuilt to a reasonable standard and more timber and metal sheets had been propped up against it at its weakest points. The gates had also received some attention and were now looking strong enough to withstand a ram raid.

Everyone was rotating on lookout duty depending on how hard they’d been working and whether they needed the rest!

Sparks were still flying from the tractor and trailer as Shawn and Ben worked furiously with the welder and various power tools, improving on the work we’d already done.

Propping the guns up so that they were within easy reach, Simon and I turned our attention to the trailer. The interior was a bare rust covered steel shell, about seven metres long and with sides about two metres high. Once we were actually standing inside it we realised that you couldn’t see out, so we set about fixing a wooden walkway to each side to act as a viewing platform and firing step. The sides were only thin steel so it wasn’t too difficult to do. Before long we had a basic platform running along each side.

I looked at it thoughtfully. ‘If we strap a tarpaulin over one end and put a load of mattresses or sofa cushions on the deck it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable,’ I suggested.

‘Bloody civvies,’ said Simon with a grin. ‘I just want to make it impregnable, but you want to make it cosy as well. Try sitting in an un-air-conditioned armoured vehicle on a hard seat for hours at a time, in the heat of an Afghan summer, just waiting for the next IED to blow your bollocks back home. Trust me, being cosy’s not something I’m used to experiencing!’

He slapped me on the back. ‘Can’t wait!’

The arrival of Becky and Maud carrying trays laden with more sandwiches and mugs of tea made us all realise how hungry we were, and more importantly, how late in the afternoon it was getting. We’d all been working flat out for hours.

Still taking turns on lookout duty, we picked a part of the grounds where we couldn’t see a dead body and we all sat down on the dry ground to eat.

It was the first time we’d all had the chance to chat properly. Shawn explained how the farm still had power. A room off one of the barns was full of large batteries and the house had quite a technical back-up system. The batteries were continually topped up by the wind turbine and PV panels provided most of the power the house needed. If more was required then it could be pulled from the mains or if that was down, a diesel generator would kick in. In his opinion it was a state of the art system and the farmer must either have had money to burn or managed to get a generous grant to install it. It was the kind of system most preppers would kill to own.

He shook his head regretfully, ‘It’s a shame we can’t take it with us, but I suppose I should be able to scavenge enough stuff to rig up a similar system wherever we end up.’

I asked him what he did and he explained that he was an electrical engineer. He’d been working as a jobbing electrician of late, as it suited him, but in the past he’d worked on big projects both at home and abroad, including some long stints on oil rigs.

Starting with myself, I then went round the group asking what everybody did and what skills they had. I explained that I’d worked in building and property development and had paid the bills by renting out houses I’d bought and refurbished myself.

Chet was a medical student who’d wanted to specialise in viral research. He explained that the previous year he’d had a summer internship at a laboratory in Birmingham where they’d been working on curing the common cold. He’d found it fascinating.

Simon snorted at this, saying, ‘It’s probably some lab somewhere that’s developed this zombie thing. Don’t mess with nature. That’s what I say!’

Simon had been in the Marines since leaving school. He was now in his mid-forties and could have retired on a full pension but having tragically lost his wife to cancer a few years previously, retirement didn’t have the same appeal as it used to. He’d stayed on, hoping to pass on his experience to the new recruits coming through; the kind of invaluable experience that could only be gained by participating in most of the scrapes the British Army had got itself into over the past twenty five years.

Marine Ben Brown, on the other hand, had only passed selection six months previously. He was still waiting to go on his first active deployment and had been based at Bickleigh barracks since passing selection. A local lad, he had followed his family’s tradition of serving in the Marines and was proud that he was the fourth generation of his family to serve.

The two were complete opposites. Simon was a battle-scarred bear of a man who emanated sheer toughness and therefore commanded instant respect wherever he went. Ben was a thin gangly youth who didn’t look as if he’d say boo to a goose. But, I reminded myself, he’d passed selection which must make him a very tough and determined individual, so in his case perhaps looks were deceiving.

Louise lived near Cheltenham. She and her sister owned a holiday letting business and had been in the area assessing new properties to add to their portfolio. I’d heard of their company and Becky and I had rented a holiday cottage through them the previous year after reading a newspaper article about how successful this ‘all women’ venture had been, going from strength to strength based on good old hard work and customer satisfaction. I was impressed. The sisters had built up a sizeable business from scratch with little more than charm and the power of persuasion. As she talked, she began to think about her sister again and the tears came very quickly, but she managed to recover and soon re-joined the conversation.

We carried on planning the best course of action to take. We all agreed that it would be best to head for Bickleigh Barracks first, to see if anyone was still alive there. Even in a slow moving tractor it should only take two to three hours to get there. And if the base was still operational it would offer us the best protection.

I hesitated, then asked, ‘Simon, if it turns out that there’s no one left there, only zombies, what do you want to do then?’

He sat and thought for a while. Then cleared his throat and spoke. ‘Well, as I said before. If there’s nothing left there, then there’s nothing left of the Marines. If that turns out to be the case then I might as well stay with you if that’s all right. I like your castle idea; I can see it working. So if that’s the case, we’ll scavenge what we can from the base and head out.’

Ben spoke up. ‘I’ll stay with you as well, but I would like to see if my family made it. They live near the barracks in Plymouth.’

‘Of course, we will,’ I assured him. ‘In fact, if this tractor idea works as well as we think it will, we’ll need to try and find all our families and friends. Unless we know what’s happened to them, not knowing will just tear us apart eventually. Fuel shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a diesel tank by the barn so we can take a lot with us and every car on the road should have fuel we can syphon off.’

In the end we decided to take my Volvo and the tractor. The Volvo could be used if speed was needed. Shawn asked permission and I agreed to him making a few modifications to toughen it up a bit, so that it could stand up better to a bit of zombie bashing if necessary.

All he said was, ‘Don’t get upset if you don’t like how I pimp your ride.’ Then he strode off toward the vehicles. Ben went to help him and the rest of us decided to start loading the trailer.

Having looked at the growing piles of food and equipment in the dining room, we decided to make some additional adaptions to the trailer. Using timber and boards, we managed to make a deck between the walkways so that all the supplies could be stored underneath.

An hour later we’d finished. We formed a chain and loaded the underdeck of the trailer with a large quantity of tinned food, camping equipment, clothes and blankets. We took cushions from some of the sofas in the house and placed them on the deck and then we fixed a tarpaulin over a third of the trailer to create a shelter. When we tried it out, we were pleased to find that all the adults could see and reach over the sides and the cushions now provided a comfortable resting place.

‘Dad,’ said Stanley, as he stood on tiptoe looking over the side. ‘You need to make some spears. You don’t need to waste ammunition on killing zombies. You could just bash them on the head from up here.’

‘You bloodthirsty little tyke!’ I said, startled. ‘Where did you get that idea from?’ I enquired.

‘Well, you said it would be like a mobile castle and I watched a programme that said the spear was the best way of defending a castle when the enemy was trying to climb the walls.’

I nodded smiling. ‘Well done son, why don’t you take your sister and Eddie and go and find some things we can make into spears.’

As he walked off looking pleased, I told Simon how he’d saved my life the day before by killing a zombie with his cricket bat. He was amazed. ‘The whole fucking lot of you are crazy! Even your son has more balls than I have. I almost shit myself every time I see one and now you tell me your nipper bashed a zombie’s brains in!’ He shook his head, ‘I’m getting too old for this shit.’

Shawn returned and announced that he’d finished adapting my car. Did I want to check it out?

Feeling conflicted, I walked over to it and stopped dead. In the twilight my reasonably new Volvo now looked like something out of a Mad Max movie.

It was covered in corrugated steel up to halfway up its windows. Holes had been cut into the steel so that both doors could be opened. A wedge similar to the one he’d fixed to the bucket on the tractor now stuck out from both the front and the rear of the car. And a tarpaulin was stretched across the roof.

I was so shocked, all I could say was, ‘What’s the tarpaulin for?’

He replied cheerfully, ‘It’s your escape hatch! I’ve chopped a hole in the roof so if you’re ever surrounded and unable to move we can pull up beside you in the tractor and you can just climb out and over to us. Simple!’

I sighed heavily. ‘I hope you know you’ve just invalidated my warranty! What the hell am I going to do if something goes wrong with it now? I’ll never be able to take it back now you’ve zombie-proofed it.’

His face fell and I took pity on him, slapped him on the back and told him not to worry. He’d done a great job and it would now stand up better to whatever life threw at it.