Ridgetown: A zombie apocalypse novel (3 page)

The truck was for runs like this. It was what they used if they wanted something tough that they could drive over and through things as well as being able to make a quick getaway. The hatchback was for more stealthy missions. Scott had added insulation to the engine bay of it and an extra section to the silencer making it as quiet as possible. It had been stripped out for convenience and extra room but was still quite slow. The hatchback was used when they wanted to be quiet and its slowness was due to the small engine that made it economical. Petrol was something that no one wanted to be relying on too much.

The group barely spoke as they got into the truck. They'd briefly discussed the plan as they were getting ready but they wouldn't know how bad things were until they got there. The plan was to rescue the stranger if he was still okay, if not, they were going to secure the substation as best they could. It was still valuable to them as they attempted to make contact with other survivors and assess the scale of what was going on.

As they set off, Dennis thought about what they were heading into. He didn't blame Helen for what she had done but it was something he considered an overreaction. He could tell that she still had real problems trusting people and it made him sad.
He
could see that Scott was a trustworthy person but Helen was still quite guarded around him. He felt flattered that she trusted him but also an overwhelming responsibility for her. He felt like it was his job to show her that she could trust people and knew just how delicate her trust in him was. He wondered whether some of her skepticism about trusting random people was rubbing off on him because he didn't necessarily think that sounding the alarm was the wrong thing to do, just maybe something that had been blown out of proportion on this occasion.

It was for precisely that reason that he had decided they needed to try and save this man. He needed to show Helen that they
had
to care about other people and that other people
were
important. He prayed that this person turned out to be friendly. If they were, maybe they could all be introduced to more likeminded people. They could only survive as a trio for so long, they needed other people to survive. Dennis couldn't explain why he had a positive feeling about this random survivor, he just did. He'd had the same feeling about Helen and Scott and he hadn't been wrong. Maybe he was doing this for himself as much as Helen but he felt that whoever it was for, it was important that he did it.

They saw the first zombie before they saw the substation, it was badly decomposed and struggling to walk. It wasn't even clear whether it used to be male or female. Scott slowed down and drove as close to the zombie as possible, Dennis unbuckled himself and leant slightly over the side of the truck. The creature raised its arms slowly towards him in a pitiful attempt at grabbing him, Dennis held a short handled axe in his right arm and with one swoop, dispatched it with a sickening blow to the skull.

Scott sped up slightly and followed the path stopping at the peak of the hill. From here they could see the building, a few figures shambling around outside but otherwise quiet. Dennis hopped out from the back of the truck and cursed silently at the pain in his knees when he landed, his body reminding him that he wasn't as young as he felt anymore. He tapped on the driver's window and Scott wound it down.

"Turn the truck around and make sure it's ready for a quick getaway if we need it."

Scott nodded and wound the window back up. He turned the truck round and pulled up on the edge of the path where it ended and the adjoining field began. He and Helen got out and put their backpacks on.

They all went out with the same gear so that it didn't matter who picked up which stuff. Each of them took a backpack and an identical, short handled axe that had been taken from a DIY store when they had been collecting supplies for reinforcing the house's defences. Despite being described on the shelf as a short handled axe, the handle was long enough for a person to hold with two hands and wield like an Olympic hammer throw. The backpacks were practically empty. They each had a torch, a bottle of water, a pozi head screwdriver and a roll of duct tape. Each item from the eclectic mix had proved its usefulness more than once on previous missions although the main reason for the backpacks was for collecting supplies. Even though they weren't expecting to find anything useful, due to them leaving the substation bare from their previous visit, there was still the possibility of finding some useful things and being able to carry supplies hands-free could quite literally save lives.

The only difference between them was that Helen always carried a small, four inch knife in a sheath above her ankle. She had never used it, always managing to stay out of situations that required anything more than the axe she carried, but Helen had been carrying it for so long that she felt vulnerable without it. There was something reassuring about knowing that if she had to drop everything and run, she would still have something to defend herself with.

They slowly headed down the crest of the hill towards the building. They left the truck pointing in the direction they would be leaving for speed incase a quick getaway was needed. They left it unlocked for the same reason.

It was strange how unnatural it felt to walk away from a vehicle knowing that it had been left unlocked but it was something that Dennis had rationalised to the others as being the best thing to do. He had argued that the world was a different place now, that people didn't follow the same rules that they did before. There weren't a lot of people left walking around to worry about stealing their truck anyway, but anyone who wanted it wouldn't be put off by a locked door anymore. They themselves had taken vehicles by simply smashing windows to gain entry, locks didn't have the same gravitas as they did before. A locked door used to mean, 'keep out or you will be in trouble' but now it meant 'whatever is behind here could save your life'. Also, they had yet to witness a zombie opening a car door and getting inside. Dennis had summed up by hypothesising a scenario that had been in so many horror films; A person is being chased, they make it to the relative safety of their car, in their panicked state they fumble with the car keys and drop them on the floor, maybe even knocking them under the vehicle. Person gets eaten.

It was hard to argue the logic, even though he was citing low budget horror movies, so now they always left it open, for safety's sake.

They practically sneaked up on the closest zombie to them, Scott being only a few feet away as it eventually turned round. Before it could make a sound, he dashed the last few feet between them and buried the axe in the top of its head. The zombie was more decomposed than Scott was expecting and the axe caved its skull in easily, fragmenting like a shell being cracked on the rim of a mug. It fell to the ground without having let out a moan.

The three of them sped up and covered the last twenty metres to the building quickly. They could hear the occasional moan coming from inside, travelling through the doorless corridors but nothing that indicated too many creatures. They stayed cautious and quiet, sticking to a routine they had used many times before. Dennis motioned with his hand for Scott to go inside, keeping his eyes peeled as best he could. Helen kept her back to the pair, looking out for anything trying to sneak up on them.

Scott was only out of sight for half a minute before appearing at the doorway, waving them to come in. As they huddled together he held up three fingers clearly to both of them, he held his hand out in front of him in a handshake position with his fingers together indicating he meant straight down the corridor. He then bent his fingers at a right angle to indicate the room to the left of the corridor.

Dennis and Helen nodded that they understood; Three zombies in the room down the corridor on the left.

The building was quiet apart from an eerie methodic banging against thin metal and the occasional moan. The three moved as silently as they could towards the room, Scott dashed to the other side of the doorway while Dennis and Helen stayed on the near side. They all peeked inside where three zombies had gathered around an air vent and one was slapping his hands against it.

Dennis pointed at himself and the middle zombie, then at Helen and the zombie to its left and at Scott and the zombie on the right. They all nodded and stared at each other to indicate they understood. Dennis held his fist up between them and counted.

On three they dashed inside, Helen and Scott bashing each of their zombies in the head with their respective weapons. The third zombie turned around, distracted by the commotion. It had barely rotated all the way before Dennis smashed the handle of his axe into its temple. It crumpled to the floor and Dennis bent down, bringing the blade of the axe down with him and driving it into the zombie's skull. The kills were quick and clean, the axes cutting cleanly into the brains of the zombies and causing severe trauma. None of the three zombies would be getting up again.

The three survivors turned their attention to the vent that the zombies had been drawn to. Dennis and Helen stepped back, raising their weapons while Scott took a cautious step forward. The vent had a cover over it that was large enough for a human to squeeze into, although not very comfortably.

The lack of blood around the control room and the zombie's interest in the vent made it likely that their new friend was packed inside like a sardine. Scott dug his fingers behind a corner of the vent cover and steadied himself. He looked at Dennis, who nodded, and tore the vent off.

Revealing nothing inside.

The three of them stared at the empty vent confused, there was nowhere else the intruder could have been. He definitely wasn't dead because none of the zombies had been feeding, there was no body, plus they were definitely interested in the vent.

The cover to the vent was actually the end of the ventilation system, designed to blow cooling air onto the surrounding hardware. It didn't stretch below ground and the only other direction was straight up.

Helen had trouble believing that the slightly chubby gentleman on the camera had managed to squeeze into the vent to begin with, there was no way he could crawl vertically up an aluminium vent and into the maze of air conditioning that snaked around the ceiling.

Scott had taken his torch out of his bag and hesitantly approached the opening, illuminating the way with the powerful beam. He dipped his head inside and instantly pulled it back out, waiting to see or hear if anything moved. After a few moments of silence, he stuck his head into the opening again, this time shining the torch upwards and leaning in to investigate properly. He looked back at Dennis and Helen and shrugged his shoulders. They both looked as mystified as he did.

"Hello?" He called out. Even though he hushed his voice, it echoed greatly in the tight confines of the vent.

Immediately a bang of warping aluminium came from behind them, they turned and looked up to pinpoint where the sound had come from. A section of the vent above them sagged suspiciously compared to the rest.

Dennis took a step towards it and shouted up, "The zombies are gone. Why don't you come down?"

"I can't." Came the slightly muffled response.

Dennis stepped closer. "We just want to talk. Let's not let this misunderstanding stand in the way of a mutually beneficial partnership."

Helen winced when he said 'misunderstanding'. She knew he thought she was wrong to set the alarm off but refused to feel embarrassed about it.

"No, I can't. I mean I can't get back down. Every time I move, the whole thing feels like its gonna fall down."

Scott and Helen frowned at each other. Dennis betrayed a slight smirk.

"Okay, My friend Scott and I will see if we can find some ladders or something to get up to you." He turned back to Helen. "Make sure the air con stays off, we don't want him to freeze up there."

Helen rolled her eyes as Dennis and Scott walked out of the main control room.

"Is he joking? He's joking right?"

Helen walked over to the terminal and reached behind it. She felt around for the small Notebook she had left plugged into the system. She felt her fingers brush over it and carefully eased it out of its hiding place.

"Are you still there?"

"Yes." Helen thought about not answering but hoped responding with a minimal answer might keep him quiet for a bit.

"Erm, are you the voice from the speakers that tried to kill me?"

"Yes."

A few seconds of silence passed and Helen hoped that his enquiries had stopped. She turned her attention back to the Notebook and opened it, waking it up.

"Could you erm... You know.... Not try to kill me?"

Helen turned towards the vent with a frown. Before she could verbalise a response the shape in the vent moved slightly. It wasn't a significant movement, it could have just been a transfer of weight from one tired limb to another but it was enough to shift extra weight onto one of the wires that hung from the ceiling via a hook. A hook which had been supporting half of the weight inside the vent for the last twenty minutes and had slowly worked its way free with every slight movement, a hook that couldn't hold on anymore and fell from the ceiling.

Luke felt the vent give way around him. His stomach lurched as gravity took control of his body and he hit the ground hard, the flimsy metal offering no protection from the collision. He had been lying on his back and trying to turn onto his side when the vent fell, his outstretched body had spread the force of the impact. Unfortunately, it also knocked the wind out of him and he struggled to breathe.

With his breath taken out of him and the vent wrapped tightly around him, Luke began to panic. He tried desperately to breathe in but each attempt resulted in him opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, his arms were extended above his head with no room between his body and the thin metal. He couldn't move and he couldn't breathe, only his legs protruded from the vent, which he kicked wildly in a vain hope that it would help. He heard voices and suddenly remembered that he wasn't alone. Still struggling to breathe, his body allowed him short, shallow breaths that burned with each gasp and made a raspy noise like each gasp was his last.