The Undead. The First Seven Days (99 page)

Howie stands watching the activity unfolding in front of him, a deep look of concentration on his face. So far so good, he thinks, but the news of the zombies leading across the fields leave his mind unsettled. Howie knows the reality of the situation, probably better than anyone else, other than Dave - but for one of them to have actually seen them preparing brings it home. Two armies - one vastly outnumbering the other, getting ready to meet.
  He turns and heads back towards the Fort, in deep in thought; Cookey and Blowers both remain quiet and let him pass without interruption.

The noise of the camp fills the air, the recent movement of people going outside to help with spikes, caltrops, cutting grass, weapons training and archery have rapidly increased the air of excitement and charged the atmosphere.

Howie watches people moving quickly between sections. He notices that many of them are now armed with whatever they can find: sticks, metal poles, knives, hand axes and hammers. The change is palpable and positive.
  The charged atmosphere has rubbed off on everyone and, for the first time, Howie takes note of the children in the camp. Small children are running between the tents, chasing each other and laughing. Bigger boys walk in groups and hold small sticks in their hands, ready to fight and kill all the zombies.

Howie notices the traditional roles of male and female have suddenly come back, those boys carrying the weapons and the girls working with the women to prepare food and clean the area, helping to feed babies.
  The sound of children’s laughter fills his ears and the gleeful, uncorrupted sound is like music; their innocence and utter faith that these adults will protect them from everything.

The resilience of their young minds that have almost certainly faced untold horrors already, but here they are; running and playing like children have always done.

The thought of the undead army sweeping through them and getting into the Fort to savage these children, fills Howie with a sickening feeling and a thought process quickly enters his head. There’s a problem here, if they do get in and there is every chance they will, then these children have nowhere to go. The mothers will fight like tigers, of that there is no doubt, but they too will fall.
 
They must be protected; at all costs they must be made safe and kept safe. Without them there is no purpose for all of this. We can stand and fight and show them how brave we are
, Howie thinks,
but for what reason? To give ourselves freedom to live so our race can continue. The thought of there now being two races of people on the earth hits Howie hard. An evil race intent on killing every last human, and those small humans now running about and playing have to survive in order to make more humans.
  There is nowhere else to run though; beyond that wall is the sea. There aren’t enough boats to take them all away, and nowhere to go if they did find enough. But maybe… just maybe…
  Howie makes his way quickly through the camp, his mind whirling.
Why did he leave this so late
? He reaches the police office and is stunned for a second to see the almighty clamour going on. People shouting and pushing forward to speak to a very harassed looking Sergeant Hopewell and Terri,
  ‘Sarah, Terri, I need to speak with you both now,’ Howie speaks firmly and his voice cuts across the room, as the people realise Mr Howie is here.
  They step outside and move away from the door to a quiet spot.
  ‘Listen, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, but we are right on the sea here, so there must be harbours or mooring points round here. I want you to find boats and get them back here.’
  ‘Why? What for?’ Sarah asks, quickly.
  ‘When they come, I want the children loaded onto boats and moved out and away from the Fort. If they get in, we’ll all be killed. We must do whatever we can to keep them safe, find some people that can handle boats and navigation and have them ready to report to a set place when the action starts. Get the mothers too, be ready to get them out,’ Howie says, intensely.
  ‘Good idea, very good idea,’ Sarah replies, nodding her head.
  ‘There is one boat out there already, I saw it when we arrived,’ Terri says.
  ‘Good, get them to use that to go out and find more and bring them back. Work out how many children and mothers we have and make sure they bring enough back with them.’
  ‘Err, this is a horrible question, Howie - but what age child do we go up to? Sixteen, Eighteen?’
  ‘Eighteen, they’ll be old enough to offer some protection and care for the younger ones.’
  ‘Some of the eighteen year olds won’t want to go,’ Terri says. ‘They’ll want to stay and fight with their fathers or brothers.’
  ‘That’s natural, but just do what you can, it’s already getting late, so do it quickly, and I will want to speak to the boat people before they go. Send them to the planning office.’

Breaking apart to move off to their respective offices, they each feel the sense of pace increasing. Knowing that, with each passing hour, the zombie army build in numbers and draw ever closer.

Terri rushes into the office, ignoring the people moving towards her with questions - she pulls the stacks of lists from the desk and moves down to Sarah at the back of the office, purposefully putting her back to the rest of the room.
  ‘How do we do this?’ Terri asks, scanning through the lists of skills. ‘I don’t know if we even recorded people with boat skills.’ She glances back to see Sergeant Hopewell still frantically struggling to cope at the main desk.
  ‘Sarge, did we record people with boating skills?’ Terri shouts across and gets a quick glance from Sergeant Hopewell, before she returns to dealing with the people in front of her.
  ‘It’s here, under occupations,’ Sarah says. ‘We’ve got Royal Navy sailors and commercial sailors in the camp, I guess being this close to the coast there would be.’
  ‘Let me see,’ Terri asks, leafing through the papers. ‘There’s a Royal Navy Reserves Captain here, Henry Marshall, he’s retired and getting on a bit in age, but we recorded him having commercial experience, too.’
  ‘Let’s find him,’ Sarah stands up, ready to go.
  ‘Hang on; let me check something, yes he’s also on the list of people with weapons experience. He’ll be down with Clarence at the front.’
  ‘Clarence has a radio, can we call him and get him sent back?’ Sarah asks.

Terri fights back through the crowds at the desk to reach the radio, then pushes back out to find some clear ground.
 
‘Police office to Clarence.’
  ‘Clarence to police office, go ahead.’
  ‘Police office to Clarence, have you got a Henry Marshall with you?’
  ‘Confirm Henry Marshall. Stand by.’
  ‘Answer yes, Henry Marshall.’
 
A few minutes go by, with Sarah and Terri staring intently at the radio.

‘Clarence to police office, yes we have Henry Marshall with us.’
  ‘Police office to Clarence, send him back to us immediately, his services are required urgently.’
  ‘Clarence to police office, Roger that he’s on his way to the police office.’
  ‘Police office to Clarence, thank you and out.’
  ‘Good, now I don’t know about you but I need coffee,’ Sarah says, heading to the back room and the kettle that has been running non-stop for several hours.

Howie moves back into the planning office, after leaving Terri and Sarah. Big Chris is inside with several men all looking over the plans on the table.
  ‘Yes, these are the ditches here, we want pipes running with fuel that we can ignite from a distance and create a wall of flame,’ Chris explains to the men.
  ‘Cancel that Chris, change of plan,’ Howie says quickly, then runs through the idea given by Dave.
  ‘Much better,’ Chris nods back.
  ‘Sorry, you must be the plumbers, seeing as most of you have pencils behind your ears, I’m Howie,’ Howie says, smiling and shaking hands with them in turn.
  ‘Howie, leave this with me. I’ll take these chaps down and get started,’ Chris says, quickly leading the men outside.
  Howie pauses for a second in the sudden quietness of the room, the noise from the camp reduced as Chris closes the door behind him.

Rubbing his hands through his hair, he walks round the desk to the large flask and presses his hand against the side. Still warm. He finds a half-filled cup and moves back over to the door and throws the cold empty contents out onto the ground. He then closes the door and moves back inside. He takes a teaspoon and loads it up with sugar from a ragged bag left on the table, then pours the hot black coffee into the mug. The aroma hits him instantly and the simple act of making a coffee calms him immeasurably.
  Mug in hand, he feels his body relaxing for the first time in days. Staring into nothingness he raises the mug slowly to his lips and takes the first mouthful, just as the door pops open with Terri leaning in.
  ‘Howie, this is Henry Marshall, retired Navy Captain. Mr Marshall this is Howie.’ Terri moves back and closes the door, after a small built man with white hair and a white beard enters.
  ‘Mr Howie, good to meet you Sir,’ the man moves forward as Howie scrabbles up from his now seated position to shake his hand.
  ‘Mr Marshall, thank you for coming, please take a seat,’ Howie offers.
  ‘Please… Henry is fine,’ the man replies, smiling and taking a seat opposite Howie.
  ‘Okay and I’m just Howie, everyone seems to be calling me Mr Howie lately.’
  ‘Comes with the job, young man, people like to know who is in charge,’ Henry smiles warmly, his voice rich with a deep baritone.
  ‘Forgive me firing questions at you, has anyone said why you’re here?’ Howie asks.
  ‘Not yet, I was with the others, going through weapons drill, when they said to come here.’
  ‘Okay, may I ask, what’s your experience with ships and boats?’ Howie asks.
  ‘Well, where do I start young man,’ Henry smiles. ‘I was a commercial skipper on cargo ships, fuel tanker’s then did a stint in the cruise liners and I was also Captain in the Royal Navy Reserves. I’ve been around boats and ships all of my life.’
  ‘Do you know these waters very well?’ Howie asks.
  ‘Like the back of my hand ,young man, may I ask why?’
  ‘Sir, as you know, there is a huge army of those things coming for us. We’ve got lots of children here, and we have to do what we can to protect them. ‘
  ‘I was thinking of this when I first got here. Yes, it is an option, and yes there are several small harbours around here that would have numerous pleasure craft moored up.’
  ‘Could you take the small boat that’s out the back and bring more boats back? Enough for the children and their mothers?’
  ‘I can try, we’ll definitely get some back, whether there’s enough is a different matter, and do we know how long we’ve got?’
  ‘We know they are massing now a few miles out, so it could be any time. The night would be the best time for them to attack, as they become faster, but they’ve been changing so much in the last few days that anything is possible,’ Howie explains.
  ‘Right, we’d best get moving then. I’ll need some people with me, I know a few here that will be suitable to take with me.’
  ‘Speak to Terri and Sarah next door, they’ll help you find them. One more thing, do you have a safe destination to take them all?’ Howie asks.
  ‘There’s two  places: across the water to the Isle of Wight, or to one of the Forts in the sea,’ Henry replies.
  ‘Henry, this is absolutely vital. Do not tell anyone else where you plan to take them. Not one other person must know. If those things find out where you are going they will hunt you down and kill you all, I cannot make that clear enough,’ Howie presses on the older man.
  ‘Yes of course,’ Henry says, looking Howie in the eye.
  ‘Now please hurry and be as quick as you can,’ Howie says standing up.

Henry follows his lead and extends his hand to Howie. ‘I won’t let you down,’ Henry says firmly before leaving the room.

Howie sinks back down on his chair, raises his feet to rest on the desk and once more takes a sip of his coffee.
  ‘Typical, it’s gone cold,’ Howie mutters, staring down at the inky black liquid sloshing in the cup, his brow furrows as he thinks of something he was meant to do… something with coffee.
  ‘Shit, Dave…’

‘These rooms are very secure,’ Roger explains to Dave, as he unlocks the solid metal padlock before inserting keys to the several locks on the door. ‘They’re alarmed too,’ Roger adds as he pushes the door open to hear a loud urgent bleeping sound. He moves over to an alarm panel and keys in a number of digits. ‘That’s better, now do you know what you need?’ Roger asks.
  Dave steps into the room to look at the wrought iron fence bolted across the width of the room and the small gate set into them.
  ‘That’s locked too, now let me see, it must be one of these,’ Roger thumbs the keys on the big loop, trying several, until, with a satisfying click, the gate swings open.

Entering the cage, Dave heads straight to the rear. Powder bags are already made up and stacked carefully on shelves above the ground. There are large signs telling people not to smoke.
  ‘Is this where you got the powder from earlier?’ Dave asks.
  ‘Yes David, there are containers on the shelving unit that I think they use for the muskets,’ Roger answers as Dave winces at the use of his full name.
  ‘It’s Dave, I need all of these powder bags to be brought up, plus all of that wadding and I need lots of water, and all of those ramrods…’ Dave says, pointing to each item in turn.
  ‘Anything else?’ Roger asks.
  ‘Yes, all of the black powder that’s here and the empty powder bags too, get them all up to the top and leave them by the Saxon.’ Dave turns to leave, walking straight out of the door without another word and leaving Roger standing, bemused.
  Dave walks across the compound and through the camp, ignoring everyone else. His mind entirely on the task at hand. Reaching the armoury he enters, to find Malcolm still sorting the weapons and ammunition.
  ‘I need all of the cannon ammunition,’ Dave asks, flatly.
  ‘Hello Dave, how are you?’ Malcolm asks, irritated by his instant demand.
  ‘I’m fine, where is the cannon ammunition?’ Dave answers, not registering Malcolm’s tone.
  ‘We’ve got buckets of the stuff, tons of it. Clarence got a load on his forage and we went round to find more stuff.’
  ‘Where is it?’
  ‘We moved it all into one of the back rooms.’
  ‘Why?’
  ‘Because it was taking up so much bloody space, that’s why,’ Malcolm snaps back.
  ‘I need it all up top,’ Dave says, still devoid of emotion.
  ‘Right, you need it up top, okay well let’s drop everything and get that done for you, is there anything else we can do while we’re here?’ Malcolm says, sarcastically.
  ‘No, just that. Thank you,’ Dave replies and leaves the room to head back up to the top of the north wall.
  ‘Fucking Special Forces always the fucking same…’ Malcolm mutters.