Dead Ahead (7 page)

Slowly she cracked the lab door open and peaked out. There was an eerie silence about the complex now, but Cassie put that down to her own paranoia, she had spent her hours trapped in the underground complex; quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, worrying about all the problems facing humans in the future as a group, but never before had she been so worried for her personal safety.

She closed the door silently and crept down the hallway, heading towards her fathers office. It was only a matter of metres to get there, but to Cassie the journey felt like an eternity, until, finally she had her hand on the handle of the office door. She turned the handle and gently pushed, but he door wouldn’t budge. Her eyes widened and she tried again, still the door wouldn’t budge. A million thoughts shot through her head, but primarily the thought that they had somehow been caught out in their schemes prevailed. A staggered breath escaped her lips and she felt as if the very fibre of her body had a great weight upon it, she closed her eyes and let her head bump against the door.

“Hello?” She heard her father voice from within.

“Hello! It’s me! It’s Cassie!” She burst out excitedly. She heard the key work the lock and her father’s concerned face appeared in the small crack of the door, when he saw she was alone he gave her a smile making his moustache bristle outwards.

Cassie joyously rushed into the room, hugging her father, which startled some of the other people in the room. There was Sarah Carson, a red haired virologist of around forty five years of age, she had let out a slight yelp as Cassie had burst into the room and was straightening her white blouse and pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her index finger; Greg Woodward, a young computer systems analyst whom had been working on the computers at the complex when the world had fallen apart, he had begrudgingly been forced, by Major Michaels, to help him access the main frame of the defence network and create the issues that were present, Cassie wasn’t surprised at all to see him here at all; James Macmillan was also present, he was the caretaker and had access to every part of the complex, he was a short balding man of ages with her father, they had been good friends for many years and it was Cassie’s father who had actually got him the job in the complex in the first place; lastly there was Brian Phillips, the geneticist from B wing, he was a young man, slightly younger than Cassie herself and a genius in his field, seeing Cassie was distressed he raised his slender form from his seat and offered it to her, asking if she was ok, she gratefully sat as her father locked the door again, walked calmly over and crouched beside her.

“Cassandra?” Her father asked, “Are you ok? What’s happened?”

She slowed her breathing and tried to calm her heart, “I don’t know, I just, I just had a run in with Harper earlier, and, and the door was locked, and I was worried that something had happened to you!” She steadied herself again with a deep breath.

“Harper! Not that asshole again? Why I have a good mind to….” boasted Phillips. Though Cassie knew he didn’t really have it in him to do anything about it.

“It’s ok,” Said Cassie, getting control of her emotions and placing her hand on Phillips’ arm, “I put Harper in his place, I just got a little upset by it is all.”

“When you say you ‘put him in his place’ what exactly do you mean Cassie?” Cassie’s father knew of her abilities of ‘putting people in their place’, it, after all, had been him that had insisted on her training in aikido when she had been getting bullied whilst at school.

“Let’s just say I dented his ego a little, that’s all.” She said innocently.

“Hmph.” her father responded, unimpressed, “How did you get on with Sergeant Rigby?”

“Oh! That’s the good news,” She replied happily, “It took a little convincing but he is on board. I told him to be ready for tomorrow around nine am. He said he should be able to find a couple of others to help us too. How are things coming along here?”

Greg Woodward was rattling away on the computer keyboard as Cassie was speaking “We are just about done here too actually,” he said, still tapping the keys. He then stopped, leaned back and hit the return key dramatically, “I’m just running a little simulation right now to check everything is going to work just right, and we are done”

“Really? That’s wonderful. Everything seems to be coming along nicely.” Cassie said cheerfully.

“Yes,” said Sarah, “Greg here is quite a wizard on the old computer: he has really been doing most of the work on the Sellafield side of things, which has left the rest of us to put our collective minds on to how to get everyone else out of the complex safely as possible.

“
Is
that possible?” asked Cassie.

“We believe so,” Answered Phillips, sliding a map of the complex closer to Cassie allowing her to see more clearly “You see; when we leave from the loading bay up here in the north of the complex, we will jam the doors open allowing the zombies access to the facility,”

“How do we know there will be enough zombies outside to infiltrate the bunker properly,” interjected Cassie, “and how do we know they will actually go deeper into the complex? Do they know how to use doors?”

“Oh that’s the genius part. But I will let your father tell you, it was his idea”

“It’s quite simple my dear,” Her father said, “Greg has managed to set the external alert to sound at around one in the morning, he assures me that it will be quite inaudible to all of us in the complex, but to every member of the undead within a mile or so it will act like a beacon drawing them to this very spot, well, I say this spot, though the actual alert horn is contained within a small building around one hundred yards from the front of the barn which leads to the loading bay, this should leave quite enough space between the undead and ourselves to escape comfortably, but also alert them to the entrance of the complex.

“Upon our leaving we will activate the fire alarm, though it sounds exactly the same as the alarm Major Michaels uses, which it
is
in fact, but the alarm used by Michaels is a fire
drill
, a test alarm, when the fire alarm is truly activated
all
doors in the complex are opened and locked in the open position. When the soldiers hear this unexpected alarm they will instinctively all head towards the conference room thinking that Michaels has some form of important declaration to make, as he likes to do, and I am sure Michaels and his lap dog will be there too. This will bring all of the unwanted inhabitants of this facility quite safely to the south wing, keeping them a comfortable distance from all of us, who will be in the north of the complex, and the control centre in the east wing.

As we make our escape, Michaels and the others should still be waiting on our arrival in the conference room, when greeted by a horde of the undead they will make their way out the back of the conference hall to the exit through the farm house above. I am quite confident they have enough fire power and army know how to survive outside, in fact, some of them may quite enjoy it.”

Throughout everything her father had been saying Cassie had felt the smile bloom across her face, she was more than proud of her father and what seemed to her to be an immeasurable intelligence contained within him. As she was about to express her feelings in a burst of squeals and praise that would no doubt leave her feeling vastly lower in intelligence later in the night, she was cut short.

“Tada!” shouted Greg from the computer “All done here.” he said raising a small something up in his hand for all to see.

“Is that it?” asked James the caretaker, “That little doofer is what you’ve been working on all this time?”

“Is that it? Is that it, he asks! This little ‘doofer’ is a dongle my good man, a memory stick, and it is nothing short of a work of genius on my part might I add. All you have to do is plug this dongle into the mainframe at Sellafield and hit return. Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your auntie, you save the world!”

“That’s amazing, Greg,” Cassie said as she delicately took it from his open palm, “This little dongle can really do everything we need it to?”

“Yup, and you don’t need to be so dainty with it neither, its good and hardy, I don’t go buying none of that cheap rubbish you get in Curry’s you know, but don’t go playing football with it or nothing either mind.”

Cassie handed the dongle to her father and stood from her chair, she paced the room for a moment or two while the others ‘oooh’d’ and ‘aaah’d’ over the dongle and the massive significance surrounding it. She worked through every detail of the plan, it was remarkably simple, the leaving of the complex, slowly she was building more confident that they would truly manage to pull it off.

She had no idea what to expect when she left though, none of them did, each one of them had been stuck down there since the pandemic had started, they had no idea of the atrocities being performed above their heads, but tomorrow they would find out.

Chapter

6

This Quiet Earth

‘This is where it all begins.’
Frank was stood upon the battlements with his eyes closed, arms outstretched, feeling the cold night air wisp around his ears. The angels had been whispering gently to him all day, slowly building up to this point.

‘
This
is where it begins.’
Frank slowly allowed his eyes to open to the bright moonlight night, slowly he dropped his vision to look at the thousands of dead, pawing and mewing at the walls of the castle entrance, they had been there for days now, scraping their rotting fingers down to mangled bloody stumps with tendrils of fetid flesh hanging from them. They were nothing to Frank, just souls waiting to be reaped for his Angels. ‘
You are buying your way into heaven’
they told him, buying his way into their grace. This was Frank’s world now, it was his world, and he was king, free to do whatever he and the angels wished. Slowly Frank closed his eyes and waited for the angels to speak the word he longed to hear. Tonight would be his reckoning.

‘NOW!’

Franks eyes snapped open, he pulled a grenade from his coat pocket, pulled the pin and dropped it into the mass of creatures on the road beneath him, he then leapt backwards from the battlements back onto the roof of the gate house and made his way to above the inner gate, he dropped a second grenade just as the first one was exploding, sending a mass of ragged body parts flying through the air, the second grenade blew the steel gates holding the dead souls wide open, destroying many of them in the process.

It had the desired effect, a flood of dead burst through the opening fanning out as they came. Frank could see movement throughout the castle reacting to the explosions; soldiers came from every orifice of their precious castle, he could hear screaming and shouting as some of the dead started running towards them. He took a deep breath and drank it all in, the chaos, the turmoil, fires burned, gunshots echoed from every corner of the castle, he had created this, and he had the power in his hands to end it. He crouched down at the battlements and brought the night vision scope up to his eye, he scanned the crowd, watching it all unfold in front of him, enjoying the warm pulse of adrenaline flowing through his vanes as he watched the soldiers kill and inevitably die themselves. Then a familiar face popped into view from a doorway, it was his Lance Corporal, ‘
here is one of your precious bullets.’
Frank thought to himself as he squeezed the trigger and blew the out the back of the Lance Corporal’s head.

Frank was content to watch as the other soldiers were torn to pieces by the murderous horde, he watched as a man was set upon by three of the returned, he was still alive as they tore the jaw from his face and dived greedily into his belly, ‘
that one had always been too fat anyway.’
he thought.

The more experienced soldiers put up a good united front at the entrance to the castle proper, using the walls of their elevated position in front of the gate to defend themselves and copious grenades to defend against their open left flank. That was when Frank decided to intervene; he first took out a couple of the soldiers who were taking pot shots at the horde but soon he spotted the bag in which the grenades were being stored, the soldiers were huddled around the bag now, aware that someone must be shooting at them, just at the moment they seemed about to turn and run through the castle gate, Frank squeezed the trigger.

He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life before, time seemed to slip into slow motion, he squeezed the trigger and opened his other eye just in time to see his work take shape. At first a small ball of light appeared between the soldiers that spread outwards in a bright circle lighting behind them, it put them into perfect silhouette just before engulfing them in flame and tearing their bodies to pieces, arms and legs somersaulting in all directions, spraying claret blood into the already rich tapestry of colours before him, it was like a majestic flower of light, blooming and dying before him, at that moment Frank felt truly godlike.

He stood from his hiding place and dropped the rifle, he bent down and picked up the M60 machine gun at his side, opened the bipod and sat it on the battlements, he surveyed the sea of dead flesh before him flooding still through the gates beneath his feet, through every crevice of the castle, a sea of souls waiting to be sent to heaven, it was time to start the reaping.

By the time frank had run out of ammo for the M60, the box of grenades he had brought up to the rooftop and all the rounds for his sniper rifle with the night scope, it was starting to get light, in the light of the day he could truly see devastation brought by his hand, there was a river of blood running through the entrance tunnel and out of the castle onto what was once lush green grass surrounding the great monument to Carlisle’s past, it had now been churned to a muddy mess by a thousand shuffling feet and still more were heading towards it. He could still hear shots and screams coming from the buildings surrounding the interior of the castle, but he didn’t care any more, his angels were pacified and his life was now his again to do with what he will.

He made his way carefully along the top of the wall to the west till he got to the corner and turned to the north; again, carefully he made his way along the crumbling wall top till he got to the mid turret where he had stashed all the makings of his escape, an SA80 rifle, a semi auto pistol, plenty of ammo for both, plenty of grenades, plenty of rations, extra clothing, camping stove with mess tins for cooking and a good sturdy rope to clamber down the wall with.

He was tired, no, tired wasn’t the word, he was exhausted, but he had to get away from this open grave of his own creation. He tied the rope securely, slung on the pack, holstered the pistol, put the strap of the rifle round his neck and worked his way over the edge, he was almost clear of the top when his foot slipped and he lost his grip on the rope. Frank fell for what seemed forever till he smacked face first into the dirt below the wall, he tried desperately to focus on the trees and grass sloping quickly away form him but he could feel the walls of his vision closing in around him, his head swam in circles and everything slipped slowly into black.

It was the dead of night when Frank awoke, his was head pounding and he felt as if someone was sitting on top of him, pinning his chest to the ground, then it all came flooding back, the explosions, the gunfire, the killing and the dead. ‘
Oh my angels, the dead, how could I forget the dead?’
Frank thought to himself. He tried to get up but the weight of his backpack was still too much so he rolled to the side and wriggled free from the dead weight, slowly he crouched beside it and gathered his bearings.

He desperately tried to shake the dullness from his mind, he needed to be alert. He was beneath the mid turret on the west wall of the castle, which was where he had made his daring escape. Frank had to picture the map of the area in his mind; he dared not use a torch to look at the map in his pack in fear of attracting the dead. The west wall had a road running parallel to it which led to large open playing fields behind the castle: from there he could either cut to the left and cross the railway bridge across the river or head over the playing fields to a footbridge leading past some kind of sports centre. After that he had no idea where he would be heading, he had planned on relying mostly on daylight, and the ability to avoid the dead that it brings, to aid his escape.

Frank huddled round his knees shutting out all sight of his cheap Casio watch as he dared to illuminate the screen, 1:23 am, it was just as he feared, he still had hours of night before him. He wished he was still sleeping in his comatose state, blissfully unaware of the horrors around him and with a face full of dirt.

‘How the mighty have fallen.’
Frank started at the sudden voice of the angels. He wanted to crawl to the walls behind him and cower there from the world until the morning came.

“Please, my angels, what should I do?” he whispered almost silently to them.

‘Godlike you told us. How the mighty have fallen.’
the angels started to laugh at him, a wild manic laugh that seemed to be all around him echoing off of the tall stone walls, shaking the trees around him. Frank then realised that it was he himself that was cackling blindly into the night and cut himself off with a strangled choking noise.

He sat for a moment listening intently at the dark before him, pleading within himself not to hear the moaning of the dead, but all he could hear was the beating of his own thumping heart in his ears.

He slung his pack onto his shoulders and made for the road. Shuffling through the bushes he made it to the top of a wall which dropped to the road, he could now see it was another bright moonlit night once he was clear of the trees and could see clearly in both directions. To his relief the road was empty and he gently lowered himself down.

The playing fields were only a hundred metres away at most and he reached them quickly, but once there he was reluctant to cross such an open space in such bright moonlight, so he skirted the edges keeping just within the shadows of the trees and headed up towards the footbridge which he deemed would be the safest route as it would keep the river to one side of him giving him an easy escape should things get difficult. He didn’t know if the dead could swim, they could no doubt float, but he was betting he could outpace them in any case.

As he approached the footbridge he became aware of a shuffling noise behind him which stopped him in his tracks, making him reach for his rifle, he cursed himself for leaving the night vision scope on the roof, so much so that a thought of returning for it crossed his mind briefly but was equally as quickly dismissed.

Frank dropped to a knee and aimed his rifle into the darkness. The scuffing noise was growing louder, Frank waited patiently, SShhhffft, SShhhffft, it grew louder still, and then suddenly frank caught the glint of moonlight catching a bald head bobbing towards him, it was an old man, the corpse of an old man, with white wispy hair flowing from above his ears; he was as most of the slow moving ones were, mostly eaten away, but this old fellow had managed to keep hold of his tattered brown cardigan through it all.

Frank slung his rifle and pulled a large hunting knife from his belt, it was then that he realised what was making the scuffing noise, the old geezer had a lead wrapped around his wrist and was dragging the mangy maggot infected carcass of his dog behind him. Frank took a step towards the old man, intent of disposing of him before he made any more noise, but then he stopped, the old man wasn’t making any noise, he was walking silently on the grass while it was the dragging of the dog made all the noise.

Frank broke his focus on the old man and looked further behind him, he could now see all the other dead shambling towards him on the grass, he panned round, they were everywhere, there was no escape, not without making a hell of a lot of noise. He sheathed the knife, reached for the rifle, turned on his heel and fled toward the bridge, right into a mass of the undead.

Gunfire shattered the peace of the night and lit up a hundred faces of the undead as his bullets tore through their flesh. Frank struggled his way to the bridge but got stuck in the middle, desperately firing in both directions till his rifle clicked empty and he had no choice but to throw himself over the side.

Frank was expecting a loud splash and the shocking cold of deep river water, all he received was a loud crack and a light sploosh as he hit a large bed of loose rocks below the bridge. He had no time to assess the condition of his body after yet another bad fall; the dead would soon be upon him, so he splashed his way down the river and up the bank on the other side whilst reloading the rifle.

On the other side he found himself up against yet another army of the undead bearing down on him from his right, the others spilling from the direction of the bridge on his left, and right between them he saw a white transit van parked with the back doors open. Frank made his move and ran as fast as he could towards the van; with seconds to spare he made it, pulling one of the doors closed as he leapt inside and the other shortly after, he then scrambled through the cluttered van and over the drivers seat to lock the doors.

Frank allowed himself a brief respite to calm him, but the moaning and banging around the van was only getting louder, he took off his pack and climbed onto the drivers’ seat reaching delicately for the ignition.

Frank thanked the Angels when he felt the cold plastic and steel of the keys between his fingers, he turned the ignition and the engine begrudgingly spluttered into life. As he flicked on the lights a sports centre was visible beyond the sea of haggard faces in front of him. Frank thumped the gearstick into first and revved the engine.

He was relentless as he mowed down as many of the dead as he possibly could in his escape, he didn’t care for the noise he was making, and he didn’t care for the other dead it would bring. ‘
I am the harbinger of death for the dead, let them all hear my call.’
he thought to himself as he rumbled over a few more corpses and headed off away from the sports centre, into the east.

________________________