Surviving The Evacuation (Book 2): Wasteland (23 page)

I aimed, fired, reloaded. The music stopped. I fired again, and again, and again, until all the zombies around the gate were down, Then I shifted my aim. I picked a target to the right of the track, a zombie with the tattered remains of a rucksack still strapped to its back. I fired. It went down. I aimed at a lanky creature, wearing a ski jacket that must have been too big for it when it had been alive. I fired. It went down. I aimed and fired and aimed and fired, and sometimes I missed, but either side of the track the zombies were falling. Then, when I put my hand in my pocket, I found it was empty. I don't know how long I was up there. I couldn't say how many shots I fired. I'd left a hundred rounds with Bill, and that was now all we had left.

“Coming down!” I shouted, and half climbed, half fell down the scaffolding. Barrett had already started the truck's engine. I could just make out Annette, bouncing up and down in the back seat as I ran to the gate. I glanced at Bill.

“Ready?” he asked. I nodded. We pulled the gate open and the truck shot out. I got a half glimpse of Annette and Daisy in the back seat, before I had to dive out of the way. By the time I'd picked myself up, the truck was already half way down the track.

“Come on.” Bill called, already waiting by the car. I ran over and climbed into the driver seat.

I had to drive. I don't know if Liz could drive, I never asked, but I wasn't going to trust my life to her. As for Bill, he could drive the truck, but not the car. With his foot twisted at that angle, and with the extra bulk of the leg brace, in the cramped confines of that little runabout every time he tried to put his foot on the accelerator it came down on the brake as well.

We followed the truck down the track. It started to speed up the moment it turned onto the road.

“You're too slow, you've got to match their speed.” Liz barked. I put my foot down. Ten miles per hour, fifteen, twenty. The undead were everywhere, in the road, coming from the fields, their dried up snarling faces filling every window. Then, suddenly, we were through. The ghoulish faces were gone and I could see the road, the hedgerow, and the truck, getting smaller as it got further ahead of us.

“Faster,” Liz said, louder this time. Twenty five, thirty. I watched the needle bounce slowly up the dial, but the truck was still getting away. I saw it swerve, hitting one square on, its body came tumbling over the cab, bouncing over the truck-bed and into the verge.

“They're going too fast,” Bill muttered.

“You've got to catch up with them,” Liz shouted, into my ear. I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore her.

A zombie staggered onto the road between us and the truck. I slowed, swerving at the last minute to avoid hitting it. The creature banged a fist on the side window. Liz screamed. I remember wishing she'd just shut up.

“Faster! You've got to go faster!” She whined.

“Relax,” Bill said. “They'll slow down in a bit.” I don't think he believed it any more than I did.

“Yeah. They'll slow down in a bit,” Liz said, and began repeating it over and over.

I haven't driven much in the last five years. I didn't own a car, couldn't afford one. I drove a bit last summer when I was on holiday, and I hired a van to move flats a few years ago, but I haven't really driven since I got back from the US. That was an automatic on the back roads, backwoods and on a dirt bike round the back of the old wood plant. I had to concentrate. Clutch, change gear, accelerate, break, steer, clutch... It was hard enough without the undead drifting onto the road. I kept glancing reflexively at the rear view mirror. Most of the time all I could see was Liz as she shifted and twisted in the back seat, but sometimes, I caught a glimpse of the road behind us. They weren't close, but a horde of the undead were following us, and it was a horde. I'd never seen anything like it and couldn't begin to describe it. At least we were driving away from them, that was what I kept telling myself.

The truck was half a mile ahead now, and as it edged further away from us I realised just how loud its engine was. As we drove up a slight rise, I could see the undead streaming towards the road, getting caught up in hedges, bottlenecking at gates and low stone walls, an inexorable flood, pouring onto the road behind the truck. Which meant these zombies were now in front of us.

Bill suddenly pointed at a fork up ahead “Take a left here,” he said.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Can't you just go faster?” Liz pleaded.

“We can't catch up with the truck and we can't go on like this,” Bill said. I took the turning. There were fewer zombies on this road, and those that I could see were, until they heard the putt-putting of our little car, heading toward the now distant roar of the truck.

“But,” Liz began. “How will you know where to go if we become separated?”

“We know where we're going. We have a map, we have the address,” Bill said, calmly. “We've got half the fuel here, they're not going to leave us. This way will be faster. There's a fork ahead,” he added to me “take a right. The road curves back towards the north after a half mile or so.”

“Hey! You've got to stick to the plan. We've got a plan. Stick to the plan...” Liz started muttering that over and over as she rocked on her seat. Shock. I suppose that's what it was, though at the time I just thought it was pathetic. Maybe she realised what I hadn't, that we'd been betrayed. I don't know. All I could think was that she was distracting me. I gave Bill a meaningful look.

He turned in his seat. “We're heading to the river. There's another bridge over the motorway about a mile from where we were going to cross. It was closed down, scheduled for demolition in April. That's our best bet.”

“But if it was going to be knocked down, how do you know it's still there?” Liz asked and I swear she sounded petulant.

“Because it's a bridge. Bridges don't disappear. They don't just fall down, and no one leaves them to just fall, not in the UK. It's got another ten or twenty years worth of life. Who's going to have bothered blowing it up since the evacuation?”

“They did in London.”

“Then if they did that here, we head due east, there's a rail bridge about five miles down. And,” he added loudly to forestall the next whine, “if that doesn't work we keep going until we get to Windsor and look for a boat there. We've got half the fuel, remember? We'll catch them on the river.” He turned back to face forwards once more. “The road branches again in about a mile, you take the left, then there's a hard right after a hundred yards. Your seat belts on?” he added half a question, half a statement. “And if we can't find a boat at Windsor, then we head out of town to a level crossing and get onto the tracks and follow the train line. Now” he said turning once more “Seatbelt on.”

I took the turn, slowed, and took the hard right. We were now running roughly parallel to the planned route.

Was Bill lying? Not about the heading to Windsor bit, with what happened after, I know that was all for Liz's benefit. I mean did he honestly intend to find a way to catch up with the others and the children? Maybe he was planning on just crossing the river and getting to his precious Lenham Hill, but I don't think so. I don't think he would have abandoned the girls.

Driving a car along the train tracks sounds like a good idea. Maybe it just sounds fun, right here, right now, as the night draws in. The nights are the worst. During daylight I can look outside, I can see whether the undead are out there. At night, all I can do is check the doors are locked and hope that morning comes.

11
th
July – 3pm.

It's too hot to be outside now. What I wouldn't give for air conditioning. What I wouldn't give for ice and a fan and something cold to drink.

I went out first thing. Not for food, there's more than enough of that here, but there's so little else, and so much I need when my worldly possessions amount to nothing more than what I can carry on my back. Clothes, bandages, matches, thread, a map, a torch, books, water, toilet paper, medicines, every time I sit down I find there's something I’m missing.

There's a storeroom downstairs, behind the bar. Whatever was in there had been looted long ago, but at the back of the storeroom was another door. I didn't notice it at first, not with the stack of posters, banners and sandwich boards stacked up in front of it. The door led to a pantry. That's where I found the food. Half a dozen catering sized tubs of instant soup, some beef, some tomato, some mushroom, instant coffee, tea and enough ketchup and mustard to sauce a thousand hot dogs. There'd been biscuits too, but those had gone mouldy.

It's interesting that the rats and mice didn't get in there. I wondered why until I remembered the footprints of an uncountable number of feet. A huge swarm of millions of the undead, trampling the countryside. Either the rodents flee before it, are crushed under foot, or, for all I know, have barricaded themselves in their holes, hiding like the rest of us.

After I found the powdered soup, half of the immediate problems were solved. The other half, that's the lack of water. It's been nearly a week since it last rained, and that wasn't anything more than a light shower. Now it seems like a heat-wave is setting in. Finding water is a daily task. Toilet cisterns, hot water boilers, long forgotten bottles of water left in glove boxes. It's out there, but each day, I have to go further to find it. Then it's back here, to boil it up. It takes all morning. Getting it from the river is very definitely not an option. Typhoid, cholera, who knows what disease that water is carrying.

I don't want to stay here, but there is nowhere nearby that is any better. Besides, I won't be here long. I've enough water for today at least, so until tomorrow, and whilst there's still daylight I might as well make use of it.

We were in the car, heading north. Once I had worked out the rhythm of the road, driving became easier. It was a case of drive on the left, then swerve to the right, then straight on for twenty metres, then swerve to the left, then straight on and swerve and so on. I managed to avoid head-on collisions, but still I kept hitting the undead with the side of the car, and it was taking a real beating.

After ten minutes we lost the right wing mirror. After fifteen we'd lost the left. After twenty five minutes I was starting worry that the sides were going to be so dented we'd never open the doors if we needed to escape.

For all Bill's talk of plan B and plan C and plan X, Y and Z, I didn't think we'd make it more than a few more miles, let alone to the M4. I was just concentrating on the road, hoping we could get close enough to the river that we could run the rest of the way.

“I'll take the wheel for a moment,” Bill said suddenly. “You wrap up your face. It's OK. It's a straight bit.”

“Why?” I asked, but I was already pulling my scarf around my face leaving only my sunglasses uncovered.

“You too, Liz. I don't know that these windows will take much more.”

In the rear view mirror I watched her wrap her head in one of the blankets covering the spare fuel-cans.

“What's coming up, Bill?” I asked, as I retook the wheel.

“Nothing,” he said, looking at me, and I knew he was lying and he knew I knew. “We're coming up to the bridge in about three miles. Try not to stop, but if you have to, throw the car into reverse and just go backwards as fast as you can.” He pulled out the pistol and half turned in the seat. “Liz, you've got the back. If the windows break, just push them away. Don't waste your time trying to kill them, OK? Right. You've got a weapon?”

In the rear view mirror I saw her hold up a cleaver, the blade and handle covered in neon-pink plastic. It wasn't ideal under the circumstances, not a proper butcher's tool, but the kind for the home kitchen where every utensil had to “match”. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up just at the thought of her waving it around in such close quarters.

“This isn't going to be pleasant,” Bill said,” but it is going to be quick. We'll get through to the other side then it's just a short drive to the river. The zombies around the motorway, they'll have heard the truck, they'll be heading that way.”

The way Bill said “through to the other side” struck me as strange, then I understood what we were about to do. My mouth went dry.

“How far?” I asked.

“About two miles,” he said.

I stretched in the seat. Trying to get in a better position, hunching forward slightly. Flexing my shoulders, gripping and ungripping the wheel. The number of undead in front of us thinned out. We'd entered the dead zone that lay before the motorway.

The road bent, and then I saw it, the M4. Inside and in front were the undead. They were too far away to make out any details, but it looked nothing like the scene he had described. Where he had described a quiet, waiting mass, now it heaved and shoved and pushed as it headed towards where the truck must have crossed. As, with each second, we got closer, the sound of our little engine was drowned out by the pummelling, moaning, bone-cracking crescendo of thousands upon thousands of zombies that we were heading towards. I tried to focus on the road ahead and nothing else.

Then I saw the bridge, but it was the motorway that went over it. Our road went through a tunnel underneath. I didn't say anything. Bill knew, and what Liz didn't know, she couldn't scream about.