The Undead. The First Seven Days (43 page)

  Blowers then fires a few shots, aiming for the head too.
  ‘Pick your shots and take your time,’ Dave gives them a final instruction before we move.

  We leave the recruits behind us and the sounds of individual rifle shots; they are calling to each other and offering encouragement or comments as they hit or miss. We walk out onto the parade square and look back.
  The recruits are spread out in a row and are firing into the densely packed crowd. The undead zombie soldiers are shuffling and turning round slowly, moving towards the recruits with their slow gait. Every now and then I see a head explode in pink mist as the bullet hits the mark; immediately followed by cheering.

  Smith runs out of bullets first and shouts MAGAZINE loudly.

  I look at Dave and see him watching them closely. Smith then drops down onto one knee and changes the magazine quickly. He remains on one knee, as he continues to fire into the crowd. The rest follow suit, shouting MAGAZINE and dropping down to change.

  We then move off and Dave identifies the stores building. I have no idea how, as they all look the same to me. Within minutes, we are in a similar structured building, over the counter and into the stores room.
  ‘What do we need?’ Blowers asks me and Dave.
  ‘Belts, magazine holders and water bottles,’ Dave responds.

  The room is roughly the same size as the armoury, but there are shelves and units everywhere. There is typical army order here and it doesn’t take long to find a big, cardboard box to put all of the belts and other things into. Dave also grabs a load of green camouflage jackets and changes the one he is wearing, that is too big, into one that fits better.

  Blowers comes into view from the end of a unit, holding an army style long sleeve tee-shirt: ‘Are these any good? Might be too hot in those jackets.’ He asks.
  ‘Ah, now, that’s what we need. Here Dave - these look handy.’ I have found a section just for rucksacks.

  Half are the normal green colour but the other half are sandy in hue. We fill a couple of the bags with the belts, bottles and ammunition pouches and more with jackets and tee-shirts. Then we put the empty bags into the used ones, so we have less to carry.
  ‘Fuck it, this is silly. Let’s just get the lads up here to grab what they need,’ I say to Dave.

  I run back outside and over towards the armoury building.

  My jaw drops as I get closer and see the mound of dead zombies piled and spread out of the front of the building. There are only a handful left now and the lads are taking their time to aim carefully for the exclusive head shot.

  I call out and get their attention.. As they start running to me, I go back into the stores.
  ‘Dave, I’ve got some bad news, mate.’
  ‘What is it, Mr Howie?’ He stops and stares at me.
  ‘The lads haven’t really left any zombies for you to kill, sorry.’
  ‘They’ve done them all?’
  ‘Pretty much.’

  The lads come running through, puffing and panting and bragging about how many they dropped.  

  Cooke and McKinney are the first through and are breathing hard, clearly having raced the last stretch of ground.
  We dump all of the kit outside and the lads rummage through to get the right sized tops and jackets.

  Dave and Blowers then come out with black and desert coloured boots in their hands, hanging from their laces. Dave hands me a pair of desert boots, then a pair of tan coloured heavyweight trousers with pockets on the sides.
  ‘There’s only a few of them, Mr Howie. The rest are normal greens.’
  ‘Thanks Dave.’

  I join the lads in getting changed into army kit: boots and tops - most of them change into army trousers too, but the green ones.

  I note that Dave and Blowers are both in the tan trousers too; a hierarchy is developing already, just in this little group and I understand that maybe it needs to be done, but I wonder if people will ever change.

  Dave and Blowers go back to the armoury and bring back boxes of ammunition, which they separate and hand out to the recruits.
  Eventually, I look over to them – and see, not raw recruits, but soldiers. All of them are chatting, with assault rifles resting across the crooks of their arms, like they saw Dave and Blowers doing. The belts are loaded and the bottles filled from a cold tap inside the stores building. The visual effect is striking and they suddenly look tougher and harder. Even Tucker looks a bit less soft, but not that much.
  ‘Mr Howie and I will take point, the rest of you in two lines, evenly spaced out behind us, covering the flanks.’ Dave gives his instructions.

  We are a small, untrained, group of eleven - headed by a supermarket shelf stacker and a night manager.
  And we are moving off into the plains, towards the undead army.
 

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___________________
 

Extract from Howie’s Journal:

The infection sweeps through the rats, devastating the rodent population within hours. The infection takes over the small bodies and drives them on; urging them forward to surge out of the sewers and drains and into the streets.

  The streets and roads are an undulating carpet of sleek black bodies and thousands upon thousands of red, blood shot eyes.
  Survivors try to flee, before they are engulfed by the tidal wave. The rats are given the same clear instruction;
bite, but don’t kill
.

  The rats number in the tens of thousands and with each being given the same instruction to bite, they soon devastate many potential host bodies. The infection evolves and strives to control this super organism; reign them in. Many potential host bodies are so horrifically bitten and injured that even the infection struggled to bring them back. The infection takes greater control and soon the rats are
controlled as one and more and more hosts are found.
  Hosts that fortified their homes from outside attack; that played the long game and eeked out their supplies, were suddenly attacked from within, as thousands of wet rats surged from the toilets and drains, overwhelming them within minutes. Small dogs, still surviving from the initial outbreak, were in heaven at first, as the rats poured into their homes and the plucky, brave, little dogs fought with a warriors courage - killing hundreds of the zombie rodents, before finally being brought down. Even then, they fought to the last, proud to be laying their lives down in honour of their owners.
  The sudden end of mankind and the cessation of the gases and fumes pumped into the atmosphere, had an instant effect. The unusually hot summer became scorching and people that ran and hid in cars and trucks soon found themselves suffering high temperatures, even in the relatively mild climate of northern Europe, but they were too afraid to open their doors against the never ending wave of rats pouring round and over them.

  Rats can eat through anything, given time, and the infection saw through the rats eyes and watched the survivors screaming in terror.

  The infection knows that these small bodies have a very limited life span and it will push them faster and harder then any other host, simply to make them work as a super organism - to take over as many larger hosts as possible.
  A young couple on their way to the Forts, managed to lock themselves into their car as the rats stormed out in the open. They sat clutching their new born baby and watched, in horrified silence, as the rats swept past them; praying they will be spared. The sound of rat claws skittering over the back of the car and then over the top, was almost too much to bear. Then the child started whimpering loudly and the mother panicked and started trying to undo her top; aiming to soothe her baby by breastfeeding.

The only noise left now is the swishing of the rats bodies along the sides of the vehicle. The rats on the front of the car turn and watch the couple, through the windscreen; fixing their red, beady eyes onto the frozen parents.

   The rats start gnawing at the rubber seals of the windows and, before long,  there are hundreds of sharp, yellow teeth setting to work - slowly eating their way into the car. They are driven by the infection, which can smell the fear of the hosts inside.
 

_____________________________________________________________________
 

We walk at a constant, brisk pace and I am sweating freely.

  The recruits are spread out evenly behind us in two lines, which took some cajoling and berating from Blowers at first, but Dave bellowed at the top of his voice and they fell silent, apart from Cooke, muttering to Blowers behind me.
  ‘Why do you get the
Gucci
brown trousers?’
  ‘Cos, I’m a section leader, that’s why.’
  ‘No, you’re a team leader for this today, not for always - it’s not a promotion in the field.’
  ‘Fuck off, Cookey.’
  ‘You fuck off, Blowers, with your super brown trousers.’
  ‘Ha, go and iron your nice green BDU’s mate.’
  ‘You’re a cock, Blowers.’
  ‘Sorry, what did you say Cookey? Did you say that you like cock?’
  ‘You know what I said.’
  ‘You said that you like cock, there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a modern world...’
  ‘Get fucked, I didn’t say anything like that.’
  ‘Yes you did, you said that you like cock, you like zombie cock’
  ‘Blowers, you wanker… I’m gonna have a negligent discharge in a minute and shoot you.’

  Blowers bursts out laughing.
  ‘A negligent discharge?! What… in your pants?’ Have you seen a hot zombie or something then?’
  ‘You fucking twat.’
  ‘Watch out lads, Cookey is going to bum some zombies.’

  Everyone starts laughing at Cooke, who yells abuse at them all for a few minutes, then joins in with the laughing.
  I walk on smiling at the easy banter behind me.
  ‘Don’t they call this tabbing or something?’ I ask Dave.
  ‘Yes, Mr Howie’
  ‘Why not just walking?’
  ‘The Romans did it first. A soldier has to show he can march to a place with weight, that’s called a loaded march. The word tab comes from Tactical Advance to Battle.’
  ‘Oh.’
  ‘Dave, did you enjoy showing those recruits what to do?’
  ‘Enjoy? I don’t understand Mr Howie.’
  ‘Well, you were good at it. Did you ever teach when you were in the army?’
  ‘No, not really. Well there were times when I had to tell units what to do, so we could achieve our objective - but that’s it.’
  ‘What about that voice? You sound like a proper drill sergeant.’
  ‘When they knew I could shout loudly, they taught me what to say to the enemy, to make them scared. Scared men make mistakes.’
  ‘Bloody hell, I think I had better start calling you, Mr Dave from now on.’
  ‘No, Mr Howie’ Dave suddenly spoke in a very serious tone.
  ‘I was joking, Dave, but mate, I don’t know any more then they do, and I know less than Blowers. I guess I don’t feel right taking the position of leader.’
  Dave goes from constant scanning of the area to looking at me.
  ‘I can show them how to shoot and strip weapons and kill those things, but I don’t understand people. I don’t see the difference in any of them. I don’t understand characters and personalities or when people are upset. I just don’t get that kind of thing.’
  ‘People are just people, Dave. Insecure and scared like the rest of us. People are easy to understand really.’
  ‘Not to me.’
  ‘Well, people have base needs, like needing to eat and drink - take any of those needs away and people die very easily. But then you have base emotions too, things like: love, hate, greed, lust and jealousy. They are incredibly powerful emotions that drive people to do the most amazing things. And if you mix a few of them together with other, maybe less impacting emotions, like insecurity or distress, then you can have issues, real issues. If you look at history and the evil dictators, I bet all of them had a mixture of those issues going on. Plus, when you couple that with the immediate family around you, then the people, society and community you grow up in and the cultural beliefs that are drummed into people when they are young – well, it can make for a deadly recipe. Fascinating, but deadly.

  ‘Look at this around us know. Something like this could have been caused by an evil tyrant addicted to power, or a belief that his god is the right one, so everyone else must suffer and die. Or it could just as easily be a scientist working in a lab somewhere. Safe and secure and the most rational person you could ever meet. One day he gets home to find out his wife is cheating and he is consumed with anger and jealousy and bang, he takes the whole world out, for one seemingly small act that would otherwise be a private episode in someone’s life.

  ‘In fact, I’ve heard theories that Adolf Hitler grew up surrounded by wealthy Jews, when his family was relatively poor, and so maybe that sparked his intense hatred. A chemical imbalance that sits dormant and then explodes from one random act. Then there is the old cliché of power corrupts. We only have to look at every government that has ever come to power to know that exists. And then of course, there is communism, what a fantastic notion that everything should be owned by everyone and shared equally. But, at a certain point, there will be some bugger stood there thinking he is doing more work than others, so therefore he is entitled to more then they have. He gets a bit more and then he always wants more, and if they don’t give it to him, he will take it.