Surviving the Fall: How England Died (18 page)

Chapter 5

The night was long. They were put up in barracks with other refugees. She found it hard to accept that was what she was, a refugee, but what other word could she use? Her and Adam had no home, no place to go, no means to support themselves.

Life as they knew it was gone.

About thirty other people were sleeping in the room - a mix across all of society. The zombie apocalypse made no distinctions or judgements - all would suffer. 

Adam had somehow fallen asleep. Him and Harriet had small camp beds beside each other. Cheap blankets and thin mattresses, but what more could refugees expect? Harriet lay still in the dim light from the overhead lamps - turned down for night time, but not completely out. Probably so the two soldiers standing by the door, ‘for their own safety’, would be able to quickly dispatch of anyone displaying zombie tendencies.

At least she was safe, thought Harriet. The last few days had been so non-stop, so base, so just-staying-alive, that she hadn’t had time to think beyond anything but getting her and Adam to somewhere safe.

But what now?

She tucked herself into the small bed and turned over, the light frame of the bed creaking as she shifted her weight. She tuned out the mumbles of conversation around her, the sobs that came from a few dark bunks, and tried to sleep.

The hardest part to tune out was her own mind.

She reached over and kissed Adam gently on the forehead, and rested her hand on his shoulder. How had she ended up looking after this boy, this orphan? Now her responsibility.

She would have to step up.

A shrill alarm broke her nightmares apart and Harriet sat up sharply. The lights were on full and the soldiers were shouting loudly, ordering the occupants of the barracks to get up and get dressed.

“Are you ok Adam?”

The boy sat up, dazed, his eyes red from his earlier crying, and nodded.

“Good. We have to get dressed.”

The siren continued to blare above all other noise, a shrill repeating klaxon that hurt Harriet’s ears.

One of the soldiers had a hand on his ear and was talking quickly - must be some sort of in ear radio thought Harriet. The other solider was keeping an eye on the increasingly panicked members of the barracks, and kept glancing at his partner.

Harriet helped Adam on with his top and handed him his rucksack.

The soldier on the radio nodded to the other, who on receiving the subtle notification jumped into life.

“Ok people, move now, we need to move, move, move!” His voice boomed above the siren and he motioned urgently with his gun. 

Everyone sprung into action, quickly scrambling over each other to get to the door and out. Harriet imagined this is what it felt like in a real fire evacuation, not the practice drills they used to repeat every month in her office. Now real, all order and consideration were forgotten,
get me out
.

She grabbed Adam’s hand and pulled, “Come on, we have to be quick.”

She ran forward and Adam tripped, catching his foot on the corner of the bed. She tried to turn against the tide of people to go back for him, but was pushed over herself. She fell down between two beds.

A hand grabbed onto her and pulled her up. A tall, dark, wide man with a shaved head said in a strong African accent, “Are you ok?”

She nodded, “Yes, but my boy,” she pointed back to the cots.

The man nodded and pushed his way easily through the people to grab Adam. He hoisted him up and held him close to his chest.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Harriet followed the man out the door.

Once outside, the noise of the sirens lessened, but the chaos increased; shouting, engines, gunshots, explosions.

Harriet was pushed into a flow of people. She looked for Adam and saw him and the man now a few people behind her. The man’s eyes locked onto hers and he pushed forward, trying to reach her.

A second stream of people joined from the left, and Harriet was buffeted amongst the throng, becoming disoriented in the panicked crowd. Within moments she lost sight of Adam and the man.

“Adam!” she shouted. Her voice was immediately lost in the chaos.

She shouted his name again, and again, trying to fight the flow and stay in one place, but being dragged in a predetermined direction, like in a river, like a fish being funnelled to the sea.

Her only thought was to find Adam, and for that she needed to get out and above the crowd.

She pushed her way sideways against the flow, and struggled to keep her footing as the now terrified people pushed against her. A man shoulder barged her, and in fury, she shoulder barged him back, pushing harder and faster. She squeezed past him and, with her new found boldness, began to make progress against the sea of panic.

She reached a truck, and pulled herself up onto its roof. The frightened faces of the people glowed under the harsh glare of the floodlights. The crowd was being funnelled towards a group of waiting trucks by the fences of the base.

A fire burnt in the third floor of the main building. A man, in flames, hung out one of the windows. He still moved, however, his arms swinging wildly. His flesh was black.

At the edges of the crowd, soldiers fired at what she assumed were zeds. Their efforts were in vain, however - the zeds had infiltrated the crowd. A man grabbed a passing woman and sunk his teeth into her neck. People nearby screamed as they were bathed in blood, and a hasty space formed around the unfortunate woman. The man, his face and hands dripping with blood turned again to the crowd, looking for new flesh.

Dragging her eyes away from the horror, she scanned the chaos.

She saw Adam.

The large man was free from the crowd, still holding Adam and running back towards the building. They disappeared into a doorway off the courtyard.

“Adam!” she yelled uselessly against the wall of noise around her. She had to get in the building, but if she jumped back into the crowd she would be rushed away. There had to be another way.

The truck she stood on was parked against a high concrete wall. She managed to pull herself up onto the wall. On the other side of the wall she saw a door into the building, about fifty yards away. More importantly, there was no crazed mob of people.

A flake of concrete next to her chipped off and hit her on the leg, hard, stinging painfully. Then another. She was being shot at.

She jumped off the wall onto the other side, and felt a warm burning on her shoulder as she jumped. She landed hard on the ground and let out a gasp of pain. She grabbed her shoulder trying to squeeze the pain away. It felt wet. She looked at her hand and it was covered in blood. I’ve been shot, she thought.

She pulled her top back to asses the wound - A large graze on the top side of her arm. The bullet hadn’t penetrated, but skimmed off her flesh.

A wave of nausea passed through her.

Harriet pushed her fear to the back of her mind and ran towards the doorway. A number of soldiers ran past her, ignoring her.

She reached the doorway, but it was locked shut. There was a window next to it. She quickly scanned around her and near the bottom of the wall sat a pile of bricks.

She grabbed one and threw it at the nearest window.

The brick bounced off.

She cursed and picked up the brick again, then moved close to the window. Shielding her eyes she hit the window with the brick; once, twice, then harder, and harder again, and then it smashed. Shards of glass bounced off the skin around her face and neck.

She used the brick to remove the glass from the edge of the pane and started to climb through.

A hand grabbed her on the shoulder. She turned round to look in the eyes of a young soldier.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“My boy, the boy I am looking after, he’s in here, I have to find him.”

The soldier looked nervously behind him. He was a young man with a shaved head and acne. “You know what, fuck it. Do what you like.” He ran off towards the fence to join a group of other soldiers.

Harriet pulled herself through the window and was in a medium sized dark room. It looked like some sort of classroom - she could make out desks in the darkness.

She ran to the door and paused. How was she going to find Adam? Think, where would they go, why had he gone back in the building?

She had to assume the man’s intentions were good, to keep Adam safe. So if he wanted to help Adam, wouldn’t he want to find her? There could only be one place he would go, back to the barracks, back to their room.

She opened the door into a low lit corridor, the blasting volume of the siren again cutting up the air with its incessant wailing. The corridor was empty and long, with a number of doors along its length.

Thinking back to their hasty evacuation from the barracks, they had exited the middle of the building. She had just entered the right wing, so if she headed left… seemed easy enough. Harriet set off running along the corridor.

She reached a T-junction. A number of soldiers were down the far end of the corridor to her left, so she ran right.

She heard a shout and the sound of running.

She ran faster.

She turned into a long corridor. The sounds of footsteps came closer and she realised she couldn’t reach the end of the corridor before the soldiers caught her. She tried the nearest door.

Locked.

She ran a few yards and tried the next.

Locked.

Panic fought through her adrenalin and she heard herself pleading under her breath, “open, open, open”.

The next was also locked.

She glanced at the corner of the corridor, still no soldiers, but their footsteps echoed loudly.

She tried the next door. Her last chance.

It opened.

She burst into the room and slammed the door. She was in a small office containing a desk and wardrobe. She climbed into the wardrobe.

Standing as still as she could, not daring to breathe, she listened for the soldiers. All she heard was her heartbeat - surely they could hear it too.

Then the sound of several people running past the room.

She paused for a moment, then got out of the wardrobe and opened the door to the corridor slowly. She peered down it to see three soldiers at the far end. She ran out of the room in the opposite direction.

Turning a corridor she collided with a body coming the other way. Harriet fell back and held her breath, ready to fight, but relaxed when she saw an old woman in front of her.

The old woman was wearing the white overalls of a cleaner, her face was pale with fear and her eyes wide open. She breathed fast and held her hand to her chest.

“Where’s the barracks?” shouted Harriet.

“What?”

“The barracks?” Harriet grabbed the woman’s shoulders.

The woman recoiled and pointed behind her - “Back that way, take your first left, then straight down that corridor.”

“Thanks,” said Harriet. She bolted past the bemused old woman, her footsteps echoing in the empty corridor.

She followed the cleaner’s directions. Twice soldiers ran past her, but they ignored her. It seemed that some cared, and others didn’t. Or maybe the situation was just getting worse by the second.

She reached the barracks.

She opened the door and went in.

The room was empty.

Even though the siren was still blaring its incessant alarm, the room felt silent, and still. Her heart sank, and she dropped onto the nearest bunk. Where could she start looking for Adam now?

Chapter 6

Above the siren emerged a piercing scraping sound, the noise of metal against laminate flooring. Harriet looked up to see a moving bed in the far corner of the room. A large hand appeared from below and grabbed the top of the bed, pulling up the huge body of the man. Adam jumped up beside him, a wide smile on his face.

“Harriet!”

Harriet and Adam ran towards each other and hugged, Harriet again surprised at how strong her feelings were for Adam - how strong her relief, her warmth.

“Sorry,” said the man, his voice low and sonorous. He was well over six foot, and maybe a few years older than Harriet. He wore a white t-shirt that clung to a well built upper body. His face was downcast, sad almost. “I tried to keep up with you, but I wasn’t able, not while keeping hold of Adam.”

Harriet smiled. “It’s ok, thank you.”

Adam said, “His name is Arthur.”

Arthur nodded to Harriet.

“Thanks, Arthur.”

“It’s no problem.”

“I’m Harriet.”

“Hello, Harriet.”

Adam pulled on Harriet’s hand. “We need to go.”

“Where to? There are soldiers every where. And zombies.”

The siren stopped, and the air suddenly felt empty, Harriet’s ears searching for sound.

Then the lights went out.

“The power,” said Arthur.

Adam squeezed Harriet’s hand. “I have a torch.” Adam rustled through his back pack.

A click, and then the thin faint yellow beam of a low powered torch.

The beam first shone at Harriet, then at Arthur, then at the door.

“So where to?” said Harriet.

“I saw a garage on the way in, maybe we can get a vehicle, ” said Arthur.

“Where was it, can you remember?” said Harriet.

“I think so.We need to go out the back of the building.”

They set off into the maze of corridors, turning left and right, heading further into the heart of the base with no real idea where they were headed. Faint shots and distant screams where now the ambient sound. Every now and again Harriet felt her heart jump as a yell, or the rapport of gunfire, sounded too close for comfort. But they saw no-one. It seemed the building was empty.

They reached a door that led outside. They stepped into the darkness and relative silence. Sounds of chaos echoed from the other side of the building, but seemed distant.

A road led to the left and right, both directions to darkness - the floodlights had also died with the power outage.

“I think I came in on this road,” said Arthur.

“Which way do you think the garage is?” said Harriet

Arthur paused and looked up and down the road. He shrugged. “Let’s try this way.” He beamed a large toothy grin.

They turned right and ran down the road. To their left was a wide grass field, contained by a large fence, the glint of its metal just visible. The building’s of the base sat on their other side.

They ran past a small alleyway. The sound of fast footsteps. A scream.

A soldier ran out of the alleyway, his arm raised, a knife in his hand. He was upon Harriet as soon as she had seen him. The knife came down and she dodged to the left, tripping and falling as she did so.

She landed on her injured arm and cried out in pain.

Arthur body-checked the soldier, sending him flying. The soldier scrambled to get up, and Arthur swung his fist hard. It connected with the soldier’s face, a heavy crack sounded in the air as his nose splintered. The solider fell with a heavy thump, out cold.

Harriet got up and stared at the man on the floor. His face was smeared in blood. There was no visible cuts - it looked like he had smeared his entire face with blood himself.

Harriet’s shoulder stung badly. She rubbed it.

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?” said Arthur.

Harriet shrugged. “It’s ok. I got shot.”

Arthur smiled. “Tough lady.”

“Come on,” said Adam, staring wildly around him, as if expecting another attack from any direction, any second.

They continued down the road until they reached a turnoff to the left.

“Down here, I think,” said Arthur.

They headed down a tree lined and thin road for a few hundred feet. A low, wide, grey building emerged from the darkness, plain concrete walls and corrugated iron roof. A single small door was in the wall.

Harriet got there first and put her hand on the door. “You think this is the garage?”

“Try it…” said Arthur.

Harriet turned the handle, it wasn’t locked. She opened the door.

A dark room, its far walls not visible. Grey shapes lined the sides, maybe cabinets, tables, other furniture. Two large shapes in the darkness. What little light there was glinted of their metal bodies - vehicles of some sort, jeeps.

Also, sounds. The shuffling of feet; bodies bumping into inanimate objects knocking them over, falling over them; moans; hisses; painful calls of despair.

Zombies.

It was impossible to tell how many, or where they were.

The sounds were coming closer - it seemed they didn’t need light to find the living.

Harriet fought the urge to run from the room. “This place is full of those things, can you hear them?” she whispered.

Arthur turned to Adam. “Give me your torch.”

Adam handed it to Arthur, who turned it on.

“Are you sure we-” Harriet gasped.

The light revealed a writhing mass of the living dead, their faces frozen in bloody and mindless desire. The moans of the zombies doubled.

This time, Harriet did run from the room, dragging Adam with her. Arthur slammed the door behind them.

“How many are in there?” she said.

“Too many,” said Arthur. “We need another plan.”

“But we need the vehicles, we have to get out of here.”

Adam pulled on Harriet’s sleeve.

“What is it?” she said.

“We don’t have much time,” said Adam

“What do you mean?”

“All those people back at the base, there’s a good chance they are all going to be zombies soon,” said Adam, speaking quickly. “The soldiers don’t seem to be able to do anything. We have to get out of here or we will be surrounded.”

Harriet felt fear at the boy’s words. She looked at Arthur. “We need those vehicles.”

“We can’t kill all those things. We have no weapons,” said Arthur.

The door banged causing all of them to jump. The zombies had reached the door and were no doubt piling against it, hearing and sensing the live flesh on the other side.

“We’ll let them out,” said Harriet. “Lure them away.”

“That would work,” said Arthur nodding thoughtfully. “If we can open the door round the front of the garage, one of us can…”

“Act as bait,” said Harriet.

The three looked at each other.

“I’ll do it,” said Harriet, taking a deep breath.

“No!” Adam grabbed hold of her leg.

“The boy is right, I should do it,” said Arthur. “The boy needs you.”

Harriet shook her head. “Nothing going’s to happen me, you’re talking as if it’s a suicide mission.”

Arthur took Harriet’s arm and whispered to her, “He cannot lose anyone else. Please, let me do it.”

Adam squeezed her leg, “I want to stay with you.”

Looking at Adam, she knew Arthur was right.

“Ok. I’ll stay with you Adam, Arthur can be the distraction.”

Adam smiled.

“So Arthur, you get the garage door open, lure them out,” said Harriet. “Me and Adam come in the back way, get one of those vehicles started and come find you?” said Harriet.

“That sounds about good to me,” said Arthur.

“What happens if we can’t get them started?”

Arthur thought for a moment. “I’ll run in a circle through the woods for about five minutes. I’ll end up back here, you guys wait for me. If we have the jeep started, great, we go. If not, then we run, together.”

“What do you think Adam?” said Harriet.

“Ten four,” he said.

Harriet smiled. “Ok, let’s do it.”

The door rattled again, and the sound of moaning from the other side echoed into the night, chilling Harriet to the core. The sound of the dead should never be heard by the living.

“I will be shouting to get them to follow me,” said Arthur, “you should hear me.”

“Ok, be quick, and Arthur…”

“Yes?”

“Good luck.”

The giant man smiled. “No problem.”