Ridgetown: A zombie apocalypse novel (5 page)

As he approached the truck he could hear Scott still trying to explain to Ishaq that he wasn't a prisoner. Dennis smiled, he could tell Ishaq was teasing Scott and thought he would be an ideal person to talk with to get a feel of what their community was like.

"You can sit in the front, if you want?" Scott asked Ishaq, who was sat in the seat in the back of the pickup.

"No, I'm fine here. Don't you want to blindfold me so I don't know where your safe house is?" He smiled at Dennis, acknowledging he was being friendly.

Dennis got into the driver's seat and turned the engine over. He tried to look back to Helen but couldn't see her anymore. He felt a pang of guilt and questioned whether he'd made the right decision but knew that this was something that needed to be done.

Back with the other group, Helen felt angry at Dennis more than she felt apprehensive about being with a group of strangers and being taken back to their community. She felt reassured when they didn't say anything about her keeping her axe, but it didn't mean she trusted them.

She walked a few steps behind Luke, he seemed harmless enough but she wasn't taking any chances. He opened the passenger door and motioned for her to enter, he had a smile that said he was friendly but a wrinkled forehead that said he expected her to punch him in the throat at any moment.

She sat in the car, putting her backpack in the footwell and her axe on her lap and Luke closed the door behind her. He got in the back and sat in the center section of the back seats. He clipped his seatbelt fastened and leant forward, resting one arm on the driver's seat and one on the passenger's.

"You're gonna be impressed with what we've done with the town. Everyone's worked really hard to get it where it is now, you'll get to meet nearly everyone."

Helen didn't turn her head to listen to Luke, she watched Mark through the windscreen. He was talking to the two drivers who were now stood with the other car, pointing into the distance and occasionally glancing at Helen. She wasn't sure whether he was talking about her or making sure she wasn't about to steal the car.

"Mark's cool. He listens to what people say and really values their opinions."

Helen realised she must have been staring for Luke to have commented. She suddenly felt slightly embarrassed, then angry that she felt embarrassed.

A few minutes of silence followed as they waited for Mark to finish talking. Helen thought about asking Luke about where they were going so she could mentally prepare herself but she didn't want to appear too friendly.

When Mark finally returned to the car, Helen's heart started to beat faster. Mainly because she was becoming apprehensive about where they were going and what would happen when they got there. She still had her knife clipped to her ankle and her axe lay across her lap. She liked carrying the axe because it projected a warning that she meant business, she hated people looking at her and assuming she wasn't strong or not realising she could be a force to be reckoned with. She never let anyone walk over her before all this happened and she sure as hell wasn't going to let them start now.

As Mark opened the driver's door and dropped himself into the driver's seat, Helen noticed that the car had been subtly modified. Although Mark was wearing quite bulky body armour, he wasn't squashed against the interior. The trim for the door had been replaced with something more flush, there was still a door handle but it was more subtle and hinged so it could sit flat against the door when not in use. His seat was further back but there wasn't as much padding on it and a lot of the plastic coverings had been removed from the centre console, around the gear stick and handbrake.

When Helen noticed the flush door handle, she briefly panicked and checked her own door to make sure she could still get out. She was quickly reassured when she turned and found her door was like Mark's, modified to make it more flush but still functional with its own handle. As she studied it, she noted that the new cover looked like carbon fibre rather than plastic. She was surprised when she felt it and discovered it was carbon fibre. She looked round at the dashboard and knocked on that, noting that as well was carbon fibre.

Mark addressed her interest, "One of our residents, Ryan, is a genius with any kind of car modification. He's really good with carbon fibre, it's amazing how he does it. Have you ever seen what it looks like before it's treated?"

"It starts off as a cloth. You drape it over whatever you want to replicate and treat it with a varnish which hardens it, then it can be cut or sanded down to whatever shape you want."

Mark was impressed. "Have you used it before?"

"I had a go at making cases for things like laptops and phones to sell online. They sold for a decent amount considering the materials weren't very expensive. I'm not a stranger to cars though, I've helped Scott with ours and used to service my own car."

"I'll have to mention that to Ryan. He likes to use carbon fibre on our vehicles to take as much weight out of them as possible. It means we can strengthen certain areas without compromising performance and also free up space so we can wear armour and still be comfortable. Well... Sort of comfortable."

Luke leant forward, "I help with a lot of the electronics on the vehicles. When we get to Ridgetown I'll show you some of the stuff I've helped work on."

The journey to Ridgetown didn't take long. The dirt track lead to a dual carriageway which they joined for a short distance, moving reasonably slowly to avoid the odd car that had been abandoned.

Helen used the relative safety of the moving vehicle to look around at the ghost town she had been living on the edge of for the past couple of months. Rather than the wrecked vehicles and burnt out houses she had seen throughout her group's travels, this area seemed deserted.

They drove past a house that had its front door wide open and the car outside had been left in a similar state, doors and the hatchback open, the car half loaded with weather beaten cases and bags. Helen allowed herself to wonder if it belonged to a family, the amount of stuff already in the car was too much for one person alone. She stopped herself just short of wondering what had happened to them.

As they turned off the dual carriageway and onto a main road, Helen noticed hints of reinforcement around a couple of buildings, mainly around the windows and doors of the lower floors. This was true of a couple of semi-detached houses and an old pub.

Luke addressed her quizzical gazes, "We're creating safe houses all around the area so we can expand and also so other travelling survivors can use them."

"We're a long way off yet, we're still trying to make our estate safer. But hopefully, getting the community and surrounding areas online will help improve our communications." Mark didn't want to guilt trip Helen, not that he was sure he could, but he wanted her to know how important her help would be. "It would definitely save lives."

They turned towards a small gated community. The estate was laid out like a loop, a road led off the main road and circled back round, meeting it again further down. An eight foot wall ran the circumference of the small estate with electric gates branching across the two entrances. Helen noted that the gates were significantly reinforced and assumed that the barbed wire at the top of the wall was a relatively new addition.

As the car approached, Mark pressed a custom fabricated button on the dashboard. Helen watched skeptically as the gates struggled to open, slowly and awkwardly due to the extra weight.

Luke leaned forward to address Mark, "We're gonna have to have another look at those gates, we can't risk them jamming open or closed."

Mark acknowledged with a nod. When the gap was barely big enough, he drove through and waited on the other side while it awkwardly closed.

The car sat on the other side of the fence, blocking anyone or anything from coming in whilst the gate repeated its pained movement in reverse.

"We really need to try and arrange some kind of Rota and have someone on guard." Said Mark to no one in particular, mainly to remind himself to look into it.

When it had finally shut, they drove into the estate. Helen observed all the houses had two floors, some were semi detached but most were detached. Straight away the most noticeable thing was that all the lower floors featured boarded up windows and doors. Not just reinforced, boarded up with no access.

"Are these houses abandoned?" Helen asked.

She looked at Mark but it was Luke who answered her. Instead of craning her neck, she returned to looking at the houses and glanced at Luke in the rear view mirror as he spoke.

"No. Not all of them are occupied but they're all ready for someone to move in."

Helen moved her head closer to the window and squinted as she tried to see an entrance on one as they drove past. "How do you get in? They all look sealed up from here." She saw Mark smile when she sat back in the seat.

"We barricade the lower floors and access the houses through upstairs windows. Each one has either a ladder in the font or back garden, or something like a rope ladder, usually attached to the inside and kept just out of reach so it needs a jump to grab it or a hook to lower it."

"Do you keep the windows upstairs locked?"

The question surprised Mark. "No, why would we do that?"

"What's to stop people going into other people's houses and stealing their stuff? Leaving a ladder and an open window seems to be asking for trouble." Helen folded her arms, resting them on her weapon so it couldn't be snatched from her.

"You really don't trust anyone do you?" He couldn't tell if Helen scowled at his question or if she had been wearing that expression the whole time. "It's not humans we're worried about. We're just trying to make sure zombies can't get in. It doesn't have to be a super complicated way of gaining entry, it just has to involve some form of coordination that they don't possess."

They carried straight on, as the road looped to the left, onto a street that led to a dead end. The road widened into a circle to allow cars to turn around. Mark continued onto the driveway of the house straight ahead. Like all the other houses, the windows and front door had been boarded up. The short driveway lead to a garage that connected to the house, Mark drove close to the door and pressed another button on the dashboard.

Nothing happened.

Mark pressed the button again, once again nothing happened. Mark rapidly pressed the button a bunch of times, his frustration evident. He stopped and let out a loud sigh. "I thought this was working now?" He said to Luke in the rear view mirror.

"It was when I left yesterday." Luke sounded puzzled. He saw Mark's shoulders sag before getting out of the car, leaving the engine running. Luke leant forward to address Helen, "We've started to implement automatic gate openers on the garage doors, like we had on the gate when we came in. We hope someone will be able to get from inside their house to outside the walls without getting out of their vehicle. It worked okay yesterday but as you can see, we're still having a few teething issues."

Mark twisted the handle on the front of the garage door and pushed it backwards at the top, exposing a gap at the bottom. It was clearly a struggle as he lifted the door from the bottom and pushed it above his head.

Luke continued. "We've reinforced the garage doors but obviously that makes them a lot heavier. It's part of the reason we're trying to automate them."

Helen was unimpressed. "Relying on faulty mechanics seems like a good way to get yourself killed, that's just my opinion though."

With the garage door open, Mark got back into the car and drove it in. Once inside he tried the button on the dashboard again, this time he was rewarded with the whirring sound of a motor as the door slowly began to close.

Luke speculated as he watched it, "Maybe the sensitivity of the receiver needs turning up. The signal must not be getting through the door because of the reinforcements that have been added."

As soon as the door was shut they all got out of the car, Helen adorning her backpack again. Luke went straight over to the motor attached to the ceiling above them and removed the cover. Mark waited for Helen at the door to the house, she walked over when she realised Luke was going to stay behind to work on the door mechanism.

"This is my house when I have a bit of downtime, which isn't very often to be honest."

Helen wasn't sure what she expected but was surprised as they entered the kitchen from the garage. Light came from a large wind-up torch/radio combination in the center of the room. Helen recognised it as they had scavenged something similar themselves, it only got used as a torch though due to no broadcasts coming through anymore.

The rest of the room was quite bare with most of the cupboard doors, the oven and fridge missing. She followed Mark into the dining room that was brighter due to the high walls featuring two large windows at the top, un-boarded due to them being inaccessible by the undead. Light spilled in, providing enough light to brighten up the living room that was joined to it.

Both the dining room and living room were plastered in maps and notes stuck to the walls. Helen scanned the walls. Big maps of the surrounding areas had been printed from satellite photos and stuck together in a grid fashion combined with pieces of roadmaps layered over the top. Blown up pictures of certain buildings were stuck at the sides with lines made from string pointing to where they could be found.

It was what Helen imagined a military base would look like, something that you would see in the movies in a central command hub or intelligence centre.

As well as locations, there were pictures of vehicles and drawings of how they could be modified. She recognised pictures of the car she had just been brought in. Next to it were sketches of possible improvements, some subtle and some radically different. One closely matched its current state but it looked like there were plans to change it further.

On one of the maps, Helen noticed the substation they had just come from had been circled multiple times as if it had been an important point of discussion. The map stopped short of the building where she was staying with the others but there was a scrap of paper near where the house would be if the map continued. The scrap of paper was a hastily scrawled note saying: