Ridgetown: A zombie apocalypse novel
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Authors: Philip Radford
Ridgetown
A zombie apocalypse novel
Philip Radford
www.philipradford.com
Chapter One
As Luke sat in the safe house working up the courage to get up and go, a part of him thought about staying where he was. It was a quiet voice whispering at the back of his head, a voice that he recognised all too well. It was the same voice that told him not to bother going for a promotion because he would never get it. It was the same voice that told him not to speak up in school when he knew the answer to the teacher's question because it would probably be wrong and everyone would laugh. It was the voice that told him not to bother telling the woman from the office that he fancied her because she'd only knock him back anyway. Now it told him to stay where he was. 'If you stay here, no one would know. You could stay safe and comfortable for another night then head back tomorrow. Go back tomorrow and say you tried but you couldn't fix it. Everyone would think you had tried your best and think you were brave and you wouldn't even have to see another zombie. It's a win-win situation.' Luke was tempted, very tempted. He even rehearsed what he would say to everyone as he checked his gear, ready to make the trek to the substation.
Luke had stayed overnight at a safe house that had been established on the edge of town. He'd left the relative safety of Ridgetown for one night, getting dropped off by the raiding party, so that he could head to a transmission hub early the next morning. Ridgetown was a small, gated community in a once middleclass area that was being fortified by a growing group of survivors to become a safe place to live since the dead had started walking again. It had been around a year since the world had changed and it quickly stopped evolving, technology collapsed and the world went dark. Then, just over a month ago, power returned to the community. Luke and the others weren't sure who had turned it back on or why but they enjoyed a solid week of electricity before it disappeared again. It became intermittent after that but it was on more than it was off and the Ridgetowners decided to take advantage of it.
One of the big initiatives that they had decided on was to get as large an area as possible online so that any survivors could be free to communicate with each other, no matter where they were. A social media for the post apocalyptic world, allowing someone to update an online map with hotspots of roaming hordes or well barricaded safe houses that people could use. Luke and Allister had both worked in IT before the world changed, so had a good idea of how to set up what they wanted. Within a week they had collected enough equipment to get started and within a few days they had got their project off the ground. They were online and setting up a website that would serve as the base of their ideas. Then, without warning, they woke up one morning to find they had lost their connection to the Internet. They spent two days troubleshooting from Ridgetown, trying different routers and computers and locations without success.
After those two days, Luke suggested the problem may be at the nearby substation. The substation was owned by a company called Redsky and Luke had been there a couple of times for work although almost strictly to assist hardware installations. Redsky were an ambitious company and their substation was the gateway for the majority of electricity, mobile signals and Internet access in the area. When Redsky first announced the plans for the substation, the community didn't like the idea. There were protests that Redsky were trying to monopolise the area's access to power and information. The substation went ahead and the controversy quickly died down once people realised that they were paying less than they were before.
The substation was a mile from the closest houses, surrounded by farmer's fields and close to a canal. The raid team that had dropped Luke off were doing a run to the closest hospital and had decided to do it at night to avoid running into a hostile group of humans that stayed nearby. They had offered to accompany Luke but he had refused, the hospital supplies were more important and the substation was far enough out of town that there shouldn't be too many zombies roaming about. He knew the layout of the building relatively well and the raid team wouldn't really be able to offer any technical advice, apart from Allister.
With all the tools and hardware he had brought accounted for and his ice axe clipped to his backpack, Luke climbed out of the upstairs window of the house. The morning air was cool and it was unnervingly quiet. He stood as still as possible on the roof, listening intently for any danger in the vicinity. There were the ever-present moans in the distant but nothing close by apart from a crow squawking in a nearby tree. Luke ignored the internal voice telling him to go back inside and began to climb down the fence onto the driveway. He sprayed a large square with a triangle on top in bright orange spray paint and sprayed a large letter 'S' in the middle of the square. The symbol was big enough to be visible from the street and was a symbol that Ridgetowner's used to indicate a safe house, somewhere for anyone to use. He threw the spray can into the garden, unclipped the ice axe and headed towards the substation, quietly and cautiously.
Luke headed for the transmitters acting like beacons for the substation, standing high above the trees. He moved slowly, remaining as vigilant as possible, never looking in one direction for too long. He was convinced that he wouldn't spot a silent zombie creeping up on him before it was too late, Mark was always telling him never to assume he was safe.
He lay down on the grass at the top of a hill, looking down at the building at the base of the tower. He darted his head around, convinced he had heard something approaching, before keeping perfectly still to listen out for any moans. All he could hear was the breeze gently blowing in his ears so he turned his head to face the wind straight on.
Nothing.
Luke looked below him again. The building had a chain-link fence around it but the gates at the front had been removed. The front doors to the building had also been removed, leaving it totally exposed for anyone or anything to wander in. A couple of zombies had been put down near the front of the building, two men and a woman. It was hard to determine much about the creatures from his viewpoint apart from that they looked quite well decomposed and had been neutralised without much bother.
"Neutralised", Luke laughed to himself. He'd definitely spent too much time with the gamers.
He had one last look around and took a deep breath before making his way down to the building. A sickness began to build in his stomach and he began to sweat. Luke had never been particularly adventurous before and couldn't decide if he was having an adrenaline rush or just feeling sick. The closest he'd felt to this before was going to a job interview, although he'd only ever been to one interview and that was for his apprenticeship. A feeling of dread started to creep in with every step he took and Luke tried to force himself to get over it. He'd been the person to suggest coming out here and he'd offered to do it alone.
As well as being a practical decision, Luke saw it as an opportunity to show that he wasn't scared to go out alone. Most of the others had gone out alone at some point and he wanted to prove that he was just as brave as the rest of them. Mark constantly told people not to go out alone, stay in numbers and evaluate whether the need to leave the estate was worth it but sometimes it was necessary. The truth was that he
was
scared to go out alone and he wasn't as brave as the rest of them, this journey was as much to convince himself that he could do it as everyone else.
Right now, as the dark interior of the building got closer and closer, he was feeling terrified. His brain was screaming at him to stop and turn around, it pleaded with him, trying to get him to slow down and think about what he was doing. It was only because his legs seemed to be moving on their own that he didn't allow himself to listen and let his brain rationalise his body into stopping.
The moment he stepped inside the building, his brain stopped protesting and went quiet, allowing him to listen. He stood in the rectangular strip of light that lit up the floor just inside the doorway and kept perfectly still. The blood pumping in his ears sounded deafening but he tried to ignore it so he could listen out for anything that would mean he needed to turn around. He waited for a haunting moan, a stumbling or scraping noise that could be an uncoordinated walk, the soft thump of rotting flesh on an impassable object. One minute turned into two. None of those sounds transpired, meaning Luke had no excuse to turn around and leave.
Luke's eyes began to adjust to the darkness, he gasped as he began to make out a silhouette of a body on the floor. His body tensed as he waited for it to move. After a few seconds, he began to believe it was dead. After a few more seconds, he worked up the courage to go and check it out. He took a few steps forward and lightly kicked its shoulder with the tip of his shoe, ready to jump back. It didn't move. He kicked it again, more confidently this time. When it didn't move again, he felt relieved and ready to carry on.
He'd been to a lot of different substations since working as a data technician and even different companies followed a similar layout for their buildings. Although more concentrated than others, this one wasn't much different. He pulled the torch from his backpack and tried to remember where the main server room was. As he did, his brain began to revert to work mode.
It felt slightly surreal to concentrate on something so familiar after the whole world being turned upside down, but it was somehow comforting. Luke never thought he'd find comfort in his work but at this moment in time, it gave him a focus that he so greatly needed. He tried each light switch he found but none of them worked, shining his torch up revealed the florescent tubes had been completely removed in those areas. He found exactly what he was looking for very quickly without having to travel too far into the building. He'd noticed that all the doors had been removed, leaving open frames, but couldn't decide whether it was part of a renovation or whether it had been done recently. The dead zombies told him people had been here since but if survivors had been using it as a place to hide, why would they remove the doors?
Luke stepped into the main control room and was met by a wall of screens, lights and switches illuminating the dark room. He fumbled around searching for the light switch and quickly found it. Lights blinked and flickered as they warmed up before bathing the large room in a dull yellow glow. The room was a mass of electrical equipment and pipes. A large air vent ran the length of the room and a large generator hummed in the back corner. The fact that everything seemed to have power allowed Luke to mentally cross power off his list of reasons for the mobile data network not working.
He approached the largest screen he could see in the room that had prime position in the centre of the back wall, windows on either side showed the banks of servers in an air-conditioned room behind it. The screen showed a real time display of data being uploaded and downloaded from the antenna and the efficiency of it. The healthy looking readings meant that Luke could mentally cross off the next potential problem on his list which was 'something is broken'.
He looked down at a monitor below the main screen that displayed a list of options to do with the running of the site. It looked like a simple user interface and the monitor had a keyboard and mouse connected to it so Luke figured he'd have a go at trying to find out exactly why they were having trouble connecting to the Internet. The monitor displayed a list of options ranging from viewing output levels to a help option at the bottom. Luke figured 'help' would be a good place to start so he dragged the cursor to the bottom option and clicked the mouse. He'd used similar software on previous visits but had not had such open access to everything before.
