Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent (5 page)

             
He kept his phone charged to entertain the fantasy that it would ring, but his other reason was to provide himself with a little torch.

             
Jim peered into his daughter’s bunk where she was sleeping fitfully.  They could be proud of the community they had built underground, but no matter how good things became in the Bunker, no matter how well they managed to create a new ‘normality’ they all shared the nightmares.  Maybe it was the trauma they had all experienced, but even the most horrific trauma should give them one or two nights’ respite from the nightmares.  Jim wondered if the violent death of almost every human being on the planet had disfigured the collective unconscious of the remainder.  Or were the undead still somehow connected to the collective unconscious network, making it a place only fit for nightmares.

             
Whatever the truth, sometimes Jim preferred to keep awake to avoid the nightly terrors.

             
He was reminded of a horror film he had seen while at college. “…three, four, better lock the door; five, six, grab your crucifix; seven, eight, better stay up late; nine, ten, never sleep again.”

             
With the rhyme swimming round his weary head Jim pulled on his track-suit bottoms and slowly opened the door.

             
The corridor was completely dark.

             
A sound, distant, and quiet, like scampering feet.  Suddenly Jim was fully awake.  There was no way they could get in here, it couldn’t possibly be a zombie. 
Just keep telling yourself that Jim
, he muttered to himself while he slapped closed his mobile phone, extinguishing its tiny light.

             
It was as dark as if he had had his eyes closed: it was a total, disorientating darkness that seemed to suck him deep inside.

             
The situation suddenly felt more dangerous in the pitch black, his body tensed and he had no idea what could be in the corridor.  The light from his phone was so dim that he would only see potential danger once it was almost on top of him, yet it was still just bright enough to attract attention.

             
They had been through drills of what to do if any infection found its way inside the Bunker: he should raise the alarm immediately.  But he was not sure if he really had heard anything.  If a creature had passed this way surely it would have been attracted to the snoring from Will’s bedroom?

             
They had propped makeshift clubs fashioned from the posts of dismantled metal bunk beds by every door in every corridor.  Telling himself he was being foolish, Jim felt along the wall till he found the nearest club.  He winced at the noise it made when he picked it up: he felt the weight in his hands and stood still again, listening.

             
He sensed trouble before he heard it.  Something was moving towards him fast.

             
He drew his club back ready to strike.

             
The undead were seldom quiet: they snarled and lumbered, and sometimes screamed so Jim reasoned that he would have sufficient warning before any creatures drew near.  He hefted the club, tensing to strike.

             
He thought he could hear something close… held his breath… listened hard.

             
At that moment he was knocked off his feet by something smashing into him at full speed.  Air escaped from his lungs.  He tried to scream at whatever it was fell on top of him.

             
“Siobhan?”

             
“Shit!”

             
“Is that you Siobhan?”

             
“Fuck!”

             
“Siobhan?  Are you naked?”

*   *   *

Neil’s pain blocked everything going on outside his own head.

             
Misha could hear Rob and Helena arguing about them.

             
“No, it wouldn’t be killing them, Rob!”  Helena’s voice drifted across from the other side of the roof.  “We distract the zombies, they run out to the car park and get away.”

             
“How long would they last out there?”

             
“If he
is
infected they’ll not last long in here either; the only difference is that
we
won’t last long either.”

             
“We can’t let all this make us lose our humanity.”

             
“It’s the End.  We are not ‘living’ here, we’re just ‘raging against the dying of the light.’”

             
“We are all going to die soon enough, I’d rather face the End as myself: not as a monster every bit as merciless as those zombies down there.”

             
And so the argument raged endlessly into the night, occasionally drowned out by the noise from the creatures below.

             
On and on they argued.

             
There was a dull ache in Neil’s scratched leg, and the shouting and snarling was making his head hurt too.  He shrouded himself in the blankets, squeezing his arm over his ears, and trying to sleep as blood pounded in his head.

*   *   *

Neil was back in the campsite.  Had they decided to go back?  Had Helena and Rob thrown them out of the service station?  He couldn’t remember.  He recalled driving away in the first place, a farm, and a service station.  But he couldn’t remember how he had returned to the lakeside.

             
Someone had re-pitched the tents; last time he had seen them they had been trampled underfoot by zombies and fleeing survivors.

             
He was in the shower block, peering out at the site through a chink in the door.  There were people walking about, but he couldn’t tell if they were alive or undead.

             
It was dark, and there was thunder.  He looked upwards, somehow the roof had gone.  Had they used it to repair the fence?  Drops of rain started to land around them.  They washed the surface of the sinks, turning the brown grime to a swirl of fresh, clear red, translucent as watercolour paint.

             
His hands also started to run red.  He looked at them as they crumbled, like the roof, like the walls around him.  Everything was rotting and wasting away.

             
“This is all wrong.  Everything’s wrong.  It’ll never be right again.”

             
He turned around, looking for some sign of hope.  All the doors had fallen off the cubicles and all the occupants were exposed.

             
There was Jesus sitting and smiling benignly.

             
Next to him sat a bearded stranger, and further on was a very fat, bald man.

             
“I think,” Neil began, “that you guys really let the side down.”

             
“Who do you think is responsible for all this?” Said Jesus, waving his hand around to indicate the state of the world.

             
“Even if you didn’t do it, you still let it happen.”

             
“I could say the same to you.”

             
“Oh Jesus!”

*   *   *

Neil woke to see Rob’s bearded face looking down at him.

             
“I’m sorry, son,”  Rob looked awkward, “I’m really sorry, but you can’t stay.  Those scratches...  You know…  They look like they may be...  I’m sure you’re OK, but we have to be careful.”

             
Misha heard them talking, and came over to join in. “Wait!”  She protested, “You can’t send us out again.  We’ll die out there.  You’d be murdering us!”

             
“Oh no, no, no, we wouldn’t be sending you out too.  You’re not infected, you can stay, it’s only
him
.  Neil.  So sorry.  But what can we do?”

             
“Helena!”  Misha protested to the other survivor, who was in one of the back rooms, below the others.

             
Helena climbed up, her face defiant.  “I know what you’re going to say.  But it’s no good, we have no choice.”

             
Rob looked pleadingly from Helena to Neil.  He felt sick.

             
Finally Neil cleared his throat and spoke,  “I have no idea if I’m infected or not.  I’m sorry to be the cause of this.  I understand.  I don’t want to end up killing any of you.”

             
“Wait, I have an idea,” Misha spoke with tears welling in her eyes.  “why don’t we lock Neil in a room and see if he gets better?  Quarantine him.”

             
“This is our whole world now,” Helena indicated the service station, “we can’t leave a zombie running loose in part of our home, it’s not secure at the best of times.”

             
“You would kill a man for the sake of a room?”

             
“Listen!” Helena snapped, “You’ve no idea what we’ve been through, what we’ve had to do to survive.  This place is our hope, our
only
hope.  I’m not stupid, the food here won’t last forever.  Our luck will run out one of these days.”

             
Rob, who had been trying hard not to think about the harsh reality of their situation looked as though he had been slapped him in the face.

             
“We know what we have here is a last gasp,” Helena continued, “but it’s all we’ve got, and we’ve had to fight for it.”

             
“OK, OK I get it,” said Misha, “if we can’t afford a room why don’t we let him set up camp up on the roof outside?”

             
“But he’d freeze to death out there!” Objected Rob.

             
“No, if we can get to the car we have tents, sleeping bags and bed rolls.  He’d be fine up there, and if he
turned
, he’d fall off; he’d never be able to get down here.”

             
Helena thought about her bed made out of car blankets from the service station shop.  “How much bedding have you got?  And how much food?”

             
Rob looked stricken that she could even ask.

             
“We were camping,” Misha explained, “we escaped in the car in a hurry, but it had been packed for emergency exit.  “We have five sleeping bags, three bedding rolls, two small tents, a gas stove, a few bottles of gas, a box of noodles and a box of Kendal Mint Cake.”  Misha paused, and looked Helena in the eye. “We can pay our way; you don’t have to think of us as a drain on your precious resources.”

             
“No, no,” said Rob hurriedly, “nobody ever thought of you in those terms.”  He shared an awkward sideways look with Helena.

Back on Top

The fence between the Bunker and the neighbouring car park had been knocked down on a previous venture, so the scavenging team could run straight over towards the cars.

             
All of the survivors had been trained by Will the mechanic to hotwire a car, so they formed two groups of three and spread out in the car park.  Each group had two people trying to hotwire, while one looked out for zombies.

             
Tina tried a car door, and as it swung open a creature came tumbling out, scrabbling after the woman who had inadvertently set it free.

             
The creature had been a young man, dressed entirely in black, with large black boots and long black hair that had been torn out in clumps.  The back of its head was covered in bites and its skull showed through under the blood, gore and matted hair.

             
Arlene had been on lookout in her group, and immediately swung her club at the zombie’s head.  Her weapon had six-inch nails welded to the end.  One of the nails penetrated the skull and sank full length into the monster’s brain.

             
Arlene tried to pull the club out again, but it was stuck fast.

             
She tugged, but the zombie’s head remained attached, so all she achieved was to pull the creature towards herself.

             
As the zombie started to twist and turn, it wrenched the club from her hand.  She pushed it away as she lost her grip.

             
In a moment, almost comic but for the horror, the zombie twisted round, club still attached, swinging wildly in the air.  The handle of the club struck Tina squarely on the forehead.

             
Will left his car, vaulted over another car bonnet, heart pounding, ready to join in the fray.