Plague Of The Revenants (15 page)

Stan lay next to Dev in the front of the truck as he drove back whilst I sat in the trailer in the back, trying to ignore the bracing wind. I bitterly regretted what I had just done and was thinking hard. Back at the church
Reverend Thorpe smiled when he saw the fairly sizable haul on the back of the truck but his smile soon faded when he saw the extent of Stan’s wounds.
“What the hell happened?” Demanded Kit in shock. “Was he attacked?”
“You could say that,” I muttered, walking straight past the gathering crowd towards the clock room in the tower, leaving Dev to explain what had happened. I sat down on my bedding and closed my eyes, trying to collect my thoughts. It was not long before heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs and Kit burst in followed closely by Thorpe and Hammond. “What a fucking time to go psycho!” Exclaimed Kit without preamble. “Have you seen the state of the poor boy’s face? Do you even realise what you’ve done to him? We don’t have a fucking doctor here, Grant. I don’t even know if he’s going to make it.”
“He’ll make it,” I said with a shrug. “Wipe away all the blood and all you’re left with is a bit of bruising and a few broken bones in his face.”
“And that makes it alright does it?” Demanded Kit, and her face was red with anger.
I sighed heavily. “Look,” I said, spreading out my palms. “He almost killed me. He didn’t just make a mistake, rather he was completely negligent and also he lied to me. We can’t have that. If somebody makes a mistake like that they have to be punished for it.”
“This was too much,” retorted Kit.
“Hardly,” I snapped back. “He’s alive, isn’t he? No broken bones. Most likely there are survivors out there who would do far worse to them.”
“If justice is to be meted out it must be controlled, otherwise it is not justice,” said Reverend Thorpe calmly, ever the peacemaker. “It doesn’t sound to me as though you had a lot of control over what you did.”
“The thing almost bit me,” I said with a tinge of remorse. “I suppose I might have panicked a bit.”
“Now don’t be so hasty,” interjected Hammond, coming to my defence. “I’d have been pretty mad as well had somebody risked my life like that. We don’t exactly have a working justice system here anymore. When somebody does wrong it needs to be acted upon, needs to be corrected.”
“Everything you’ve been saying about needing to keep calm and maintain a cool head,” said Kit resentfully. “But it all goes out of the window as soon as one person makes a mistake.”
“This was hardly an innocent mistake,” I retorted angrily. “The damned kid lied to me and almost got me killed.” I sighed heavily and made an effort to cool down, knowing my current bad temper was hardly helping my argument. “Look, I shouldn’t have taken him out with us. That’s what I regret most of all. He wasn’t ready. You know what it is like out there.”
“I know full well what it’s like,” snapped Kit. “I’ve been out on easily as many raids as you have, remember?”
“I know why you did what you did,” said Hammond. “I’ve known people like Stan in my police work and he’s not good. He wasn’t in the old world and he’s no good in this one either. What you did was extreme, Grant, but what Stan did shouldn’t easily be forgotten either.”

There was little more to be said after this. The three of them left and I was left to myself once more.
As usual Reverend Thorpe tried to show restraint in his words whilst Kit was the more forthright. I was the leader but my actions today had shown me up as a tyrant. The last thing I wanted was for the rest of the group to be afraid of me. I felt drained. All the hope I had built up over the past few weeks was now shot down. I bore an irrational hatred towards Stan, wishing I had held him over the revenant and allowed it to devour him one bite at a time. I shook my head, trying to clear the anger from my veins and when it was gone I found myself resigned and depressed, wanting only to go to sleep.

For the next few days I was aloof and sullen. For the first time since arriving I took to sleeping in until the others had eaten their breakfast and then when I did get up I would often go out in the truck on my own without telling anyone. This was a direct contravention of my own rule but nobody tried to
stop me. Stan’s injuries faded in time and he took to helping Gloria out on the farm, not out of any great desire to help I don’t think, but more because he did not wish to incur any more of my wrath. Nobody went out of their way to speak to me and I did not seek out their company. On my trips out in the truck I wondered if I should just keep going, drive off as far as I could and set up on my own somewhere, hope the heat went down sooner or later. But deep down I knew I could never do it. Something I could never quite put my finger on drew me back to that church and farmhouse. On several occasions Kit made as though she were about to engage me in conversation but she always pulled out at the last moment. I spent the evenings alone in the church, shivering in the clock room, lost in my own thoughts.

One night I lay alone in the clock room. It was ridiculously cold now and were I getting on better with my companions I might have been tempted to go and join them in the farmhouse. I had managed a sleep of sorts and imagined it to be around three in the morning. I closed my eyes again but it
was no use. All I could think about was how cold it was. I was about to get up and begin the day, perhaps even go out on an early raid.

T
he fist slammed desperately upon the wooden door of the church. I did not feel frightened, or even unnerved, just slightly annoyed. I knew the revenant could not get in. The creature moaned and whined, cried out like the demon it was to be let in. But something was wrong. Maybe it was just my imagination but I could almost hear words. “Help me! Please help me!”
I sat bulk upright and listened again. Still the hammering upon the door, still the cries. “Please! Is there anybody there?”

I got to my feet and cautiously made my way down the steps and into the chancel, taking my hammer with me as I went, because I was wary that this might be a trick.
I approached and opened the door just a crack and held my full weight against it to prevent it being smashed down by invaders.
“How many of you are there?” I demanded sharply.
“Just me,” came the desperate voice. “Please. Let me in.”
“Are you bitten? Hurt?”
“No,” replied the man. “Not yet but they’re coming. They’re coming! Please, let me in!”
I opened the door a little further, allowing the man to fall in and collapse on the ground at my feet. He was around forty years old, of Asian appearance and the skin hung off his body in a way that suggested he used to be well nourished. There were strange, welt like marks on those parts of his skin that I could see and despite the freezing temperatures outside he was dressed only in a pair of grey suit trousers and a thin white shirt. I dragged him inside and quickly turned him over, looking for signs of the infection as he gibbered weakly before me. Finally I laid him out on the floor and hurried upstairs to my sleeping area, retuning a few minutes later with a heavy coat and several pairs of blankets. He was bruised and malnourished and half mad with panic but as far as I could tell he had not been bitten. I quickly dragged him inside and closed and bolted the door behind us.
Eventually I half carried the man out of the church and down the tunnel towards the farmhouse, took him inside and sat him down on one of the wooden chairs before going through into the living room to awaken Thorpe. The Reverend came at once and I stood over the stricken man whilst Thorpe checked him over more thoroughly for bite marks, of which there were none. Kit, Paul and Hammond joined us shortly afterwards. The man fell asleep several times and it was almost an hour before I could rouse him sufficiently. I gave him water and also some hot tea from the flask I always carried upstairs with me.
“What has he said to you?” Asked Thorpe.
“Nothing at all that makes any sense,” I replied. “I’m wondering if he might not have gone completely out of his mind.”
“Well I wouldn’t blame him,” put in Hammond. “You can see by the sight of him he’s half-starved to death and I sure as hell wouldn’t fancy dodging revenants in the middle of the night in what he was wearing.”
“If the revenants were the only thing he was dodging,” I said warily. “He hasn’t come from near here and there must have been more places to hide before he came here.”
“He’s waking,” said Kit suddenly.

It took a while but eventually the man awoke sufficiently to answer the questions we put to him. He told us his name was Bashir Ahmed and that he was a doctor.
“I was one of the doctors at the hospital when the infection first broke out,” he told us. “Very few of us made it out alive.”
“How did you make it out alive?” I asked him.
“Towards the end the army would simply put down anybody showing signs of the infection,” replied the doctor. “The survivors and the living bitten stormed the place. It was everyone for themselves. Everybody else ran. I hid down a laundry chute for three days. By that time it was quiet. There was still revenants about but I was able to outrun them. I ran with a few of the nurses who had hidden up in the same fashion as myself. We stole a car and drove off. It wasn’t long before the roads were blocked and where the roads were blocked the revenants were bound to attack. So we abandoned our cars and set off on foot. In time we came to this camp on a former racecourse surrounded by wire fencing. We almost fell to our knees and thanked God. If only we knew what we were letting ourselves in for.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded of him.
“The racecourse turned out to be a hell on earth,” said Doctor Bashir. “It was like walking into a Nazi microstate. There was this small group, they called themselves the Elite, who ran everything. Everyone who wasn’t part of the Elite was enslaved. They’re all men, all strong. Former military, police or politicians. People who had power in the old world who look to keep it in the new.”
“Were you one of the Elite?” Asked Kit, narrowing her eyes.
The doctor smiled and shook his head. “Of course as a doctor I was in high demand,” he said. “I wanted to treat everyone equally, the slaves as well as the Elite. But the leaders insisted I give priority to their own men. They beat the slaves to within an inch of their lives. When I tried to help they pulled me back, said they couldn’t afford to squander precious resources on disobedient scum. When I insisted they beat me too, locked me in my own cell and basically enslaved me with the rest of them.”
“How does one join the Elite?” Asked Hammond.
“When somebody from the Elite is killed they elect a slave to take his place,” replied the doctor. “That way they keep the slaves in line you see, keep them from rebelling. Of course new people are being found all the time but the slaves are worked so hard and placed in such danger that their numbers are falling all the time.”
“But you say all the Elite are men?” said Kit quizzically.
“That is right,” replied the Doctor. “The best women can hope for is to be treated well, to become a sort of pet. That’s if they didn’t come with a man to vouch for them. When a family man is promoted to the Elite his family are held over him, given an apartment of their own.”
“Are they well organised?” I asked.
“They have a great deal of weaponry, I don’t know where they got it from and also many trucks. The fence around the racecourse is completely secure. It is electrified even as the slaves freeze to death in the stables.” He shook his head in disgust.
“You say a small group,” I said. “How many exactly?”
“There are about fifty people making up the elite,” replied Bashir. “Thirty-five members of their respective families and a hundred more slaves, including women and children.”
“Who leads this Elite?” Asked Hammond.
“I don’t know exactly,” replied Dr Bashir. “When I was one of them it was a man named Giles but from what I heard he was deposed the day before I fled in a power struggle between himself and a new man.”
“Who is this new man?”
“Again I don’t know.” The doctor shook his head. “I’ve been on the run for three days now. They came looking for me. I remember hiding in ditches for hours as their trucks came past.”
“How did you escape?” Asked Paul.
“There was an accident,” replied the Doctor. “One of the trucks ran into a horde of revenants and ended up in the ditch. They managed to kill all the revenants but some of the men in the truck were hurt badly by the impact of the crash. They took me out to see if I could do anything for them. When I started to treat them another horde appeared. In all the confusion I just got up and ran.”
“How did you know we were here?” I asked him.
“The passageway,” replied the man weakly. “I recognised it must be a new building, a defensive measure. I figured you’d all be holed up in the church.”
“How far away is this racecourse?” I asked.
“I’m sorry but I don’t know.”
“I think I do,” put in Kit. “I remember we used to go there when I was a child. It was called the Hammerstone Racecourse.
“Is it big?”
“Pretty big,” she replied. “And it’s got high fences as well and quite a few strong buildings. I daresay you could turn it into a fortress.
“Fifty armed men and even more slaves,” I mused. “And from the sound of things they know how to handle themselves.”

I wanted to question the doctor further but at that moment
I heard a familiar noise, one that I had not heard since that time taking the posts from the depot in the town. It was the sound of multiple moans, a cacophony of mindless despair. I quickly made my way over to the window where a terrible sight greeted my eyes. In the dim moonlight I saw at least a hundred revenants. They came through the trees, in a long line, trudging with eerily quiet determination as if they had almost reached the promised land. The others came to the window and they too were numbed to silence. From throughout the house there came gasps and shouts as the other survivors were awoken to the terrible invasion from the night. The defences were strongly built and would not give way easily although as I watched I saw revenants climbing on top of one another. The head of the pyramid put its hands to the board of the window and started to prise it away. Given time it would come loose.
“Why are there so many of them?” Demanded Kit, her voice close to panic.
“The doctor,” replied Hammond grimly. “He must have attracted them here during his flight.”
I continued watching as they tested the defences around the fenced off meadow but there were quicker ways to the farmhouse than that and they soon found the path from the road that led directly towards our front door.
“What if it was deliberate?” said Kit. “What if this doctor is actually one of the Elite and led them here to trap us?”
“I can’t discount the possibility,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. “But if that is the case he’s put himself as much at risk as everybody else.”
“Will they go away if we’re quiet?” Demanded Kit.
“Unlikely,” said Hammond gravely. “They know we’re here and they’re not going to bugger off again unless we make them.”
“But how can we?” Demanded Paul. “We haven’t got anything like enough firepower.”
“Then we need to lead them off,” I said urgently. “We’ll never take down as many as that, neither can our defences hold out against them for more than a few hours.”
And indeed the defences were built for delay, to withstand a few revenants, not a hundred at a time. We had no chance of resisting them if we went in for a long siege. We had to fight them somehow. There was no two ways about it.
“There are too many of them!” Exclaimed Kit. “We should take cover until they go away.”
“They won’t go away,” said Hammond. “And I have studied these bastards more than most this past month. When they know there’s living flesh to be had they’ll hang around, probe and won’t give up until they’ve found a way in.”
“How will we get rid of them?” Demanded Stan, his voice close to panic. “There are too many of them, they must outnumber us ten to one!”
“We need to draw them away from the house,” I said. “The defences here can’t stand up to so many but the stone walls of the church are a far better prospect.”
“We’ll never get those old people down to the church,” protested Reverend Thorpe.
“You don’t have to,” I replied. “We just need to draw them away.” I had the seeds of a plan in my head, one which even at that early stage I believed would probably fail but which I had no time to fine tune. At that moment the first of the revenants reached the walls of the farmhouse and started scratching and tearing at the boarded up windows which had previously seemed so strong but now looked so flimsy in the face of their onslaught. The revenants began to hammer at the wooden boards of the windows, started to climb on top of one another, reaching out for the unguarded higher storeys. And they just kept coming.
“We can’t afford to lose this farmhouse,” I said urgently. “Not after all the work we’ve put into it. Not now in the middle of winter and especially not when it contains most of our supplies for the month ahead. If we retreat into the church we’ll survive tonight but are bound to starve in the next few days.”
“So what are we going to do?” Demanded Paul and I noticed that everyone was once looking to me for guidance once more.
I thought fast. “Get everybody upstairs and barricade the doors to the rooms as best you can,” I told Reverend Thorpe. Then I turned to Kit, Paul, Dev and Stan. “Come with me,” I said. “We’re going back to the church to see if we can’t attract those things our way.”
“And then what?” Demanded Kit.
“I have an idea,” I replied. “You’ll think I’m crazy but there’s no time to explain. Follow me.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Frey. Stan still had bruises and a black eye but there was no time for hard feelings now. I needed people who could run. He appeared white with fear but to my gratification he appeared more afraid of me and did not argue when I told him he was to come with us.
We armed ourselves as best we could as Reverend Thorpe herded the other survivors up to the second floor. Gloria, Hammond, Mrs Frey and Mr and Mrs Marston remained downstairs with crowbars and iron poles to hand, ready to repel the revenants should they breach any of the defences. Hammond took charge and ordered everyone to make regular patrols around the downstairs windows of the house although for the moment the revenants were mostly concentrating their assault on the front. I looked down once more and saw a wooden board ripped from the windows. It was only a matter of time before they were through into the main part of the farmhouse, and if that happened we were facing wipeout. Reverend Thorpe began to place gates in front of the stairways although I could see this would be a morale boosting measure only. If the revenants got far enough to climb the stairs it would mean they would have overwhelmed the rest of us and Thorpe and the others would have nothing left at their disposal with which to fight them. I saw at that moment how little we had, what a false hope it had been putting up the fences and passages, for these could only be a temporary defensive measure. Unless we had real weapons, which we didn’t, we could not possibly hope to repel them.