British Zombie Breakout: Part Two (2 page)

'I have to admit things were pretty tight at times. You'd have
thought being harbourmaster, I'd have been given advance
notice.'

'We didn't know anything until the klaxon went off and we
tried the radio,' Sarah said. 'The three of us, that's Mrs
Reynolds, Karen and I ran straight out because we were supposed to
organise getting all you school kids onto a boat and
away.'

'What like happened to all the other kids, then?'

'We don't know because they never turned up.'

'Zombies or the army must have got 'em,' Bill said.

'So like how did you end up here?'

'That,' Janet said with a smile, 'is a whole other
story.'

'You've got to hear what we got up to in the castle,
mum.'

'I'm sure I should, dear but I don't think we ought to hang
around here much longer without a purpose. Now might be a good time
to check the weapons,' Janet said, taking out her flare
gun.

'You got weapons?' Fred said, leaning forward, eyes wide. 'I
had a mace and a sword in the castle.'

'And you stuck that zombie with a pike,' Steve
said.

'Yeah, that was cool.'

'Steven, you know I don't like to hear about random acts of
violence.' Janet said. 'This is deadly serious.'

'Sorry mum.'

'Now, Sarah, do you still have the spare flares?'

Sarah spread the half dozen cartridges on the table. 'All
looking OK.'

'Bill, your revolver?'

Bill lifted the gun from his pocket, checked the safety and
span the chamber. 'Still got no spare ammo,' he said.

Chapter
3: Once Bitten

At one end of the quay a sergeant in charge of half a dozen
men spoke into his radio, 'Sir, we've tracked a group of zombies
into a fish processing shed.'

'
How many are
there?
'

'Twenty or more and they're tearing the place up, lashing
together makeshift weapons.'

'
Weapons?
'

'I know, they're usually not smart enough for that sort of
thing.'

'
Do they have
firearms?
'

'No, sir. I don't think so sir. It's pretty dark inside but in
the IR scopes we can see them running around with fish knives and
lengths of timber.'

'
You need to get them flushed out of
there at the double.
'

'Yes sir, right away sir. We'll smoke 'em out.'

'Sarge, it's too late, they're coming right at us.' The man at
the sergeant's left lurched away firing in rapid bursts.

The sergeant turned towards the processing shed and looked
around the side of a stack of fish crates he was sheltering behind.
A short knife buzzed past his ear and clattered onto the ground
behind him. It was closely followed by a zombie with only one arm.
The remaining arm looked sturdy enough as the crazed creature
lunged towards him with a gleaming fish-gutting knife strapped to a
broom handle. The improvised spear missed him by inches but the
zombie turned back and was upon him in a moment, snarling and
spitting with fury. The sergeant raised his automatic but his first
shot missed as the zombie sank his teeth into his face. Screaming
in pain, the sergeant pulled the trigger again, until half a dozen
bullets ripped clean through his attacker, flinging him aside. All
around he heard the deafening roar of gunfire. Blood poured from
the open wound in his cheek, mixing with the slime and zombie blood
that now soaked through his uniform. Zombie stink filled his
nostrils.

'One of them got the sarge. Move across, cover
him.'

'Look out, there's another one!'

'Fall back, fall back!'

'Cut them down.'

Zombie screams and the shouts of the sergeant's men became
lost in a blur of pain, sounds of battle and his rising certainty
that he had joined the walking dead. 'I'm down,' he said into his
microphone, not expecting a reply. 'Bitten.' Several sharp, heavy
objects fell, knocking him to the ground.

The transmission broke up, '
Your
men… out of there… amputate… transfusion
.'

'No good… bit my cheek.' His face was contorted with pain and
the paralysing effects of virus-laden saliva. He heard the shooting
become more sporadic, until it stopped, along with the screaming.
Then he felt two sets of hands grab him by the ankles and pull him
out from under the tumbled fish crates.

A figure stood over him, blocking the light. 'We're too late,
he's had it.'

He heard a click close to his ear, an explosion,
blackness.

Chapter
4: Ultra Violet

Alex left the others sitting round the canteen tables
discussing fanciful tactics for dealing with zombies. They seemed
to have forgotten again the danger they were all in. She wandered
out to where a grocery van was stationed in the school yard outside
the canteen door. It had been given a commercial paint job, each of
the vans in that grocery chain had them. The side of the van was
covered in a rustic mural: a grassy bank, trees, grazing animals;
the cab and rear doors were plain brown.

'
Actually
,'
Alex thought, '
this is quite well
camouflaged.
'

She remembered her phone and rummaged in her bag for it, one
of the bags Maisie had collected before her narrow escape from the
collapsing classroom floor.

If I hadn't grabbed Maisie and pulled her into the
corridor…

Alex's hand connected with her phone but as soon as she
glanced at the screen, she saw that the power cut that had blanked
out the town had also killed the cell relay tower. No
signal.

Alex heard a sound from behind. It was Janet Reynolds and her
son Steve.

'Got a signal?' Steve said, looking at Alex's
phone.

'Nope, power cut's taken out the relay tower.' Alex nodded in
the direction of the pylon at the top of the cliff which shielded
the village from the rest of the county.

'Mine's on a different network,' Steve said, 'but that's out
too, and mum's.'

'All the networks share the same tower.'

'Karen's got a scanner.' Janet said but then noticed Alex's
bemused expression. 'It's a special radio we use in the harbour
office. Digital, scans… I mean kind of hops through all the
channels one after the other. We can tune in anything official,
coastguard, army, that sort of thing.'

'Sounds more useful than the dinner ladies' ordinary radio I
saw in the kitchen. Does yours transmit?'

Janet shook her head. 'No but it's got heavy duty,
rechargeable batteries.' She looked at her watch. 'Ten to six; we'd
better go back inside and scan the channels again, see what's going
on.'

They re-entered the canteen to find Karen had been thinking
the same thing, with the volume kept low, everyone was already
listening to the latest Ministry announcement:

'
It is thought that the zombies were
trying to get to the harbour in Kilkorne. From there, we believe
their intention was to take some of the many fishing vessels
berthed there and sail for France, with the intention of spreading
the infection. Fortunately, the fishing fleet is currently out of
the harbour. Also since the zombies focussed their attentions in
this area, it made it easy for the army to launch an offensive.
Kilkorne village is currently being secured within a quarantine
perimeter and the army is mopping up both infected individuals and
survivors.
'

Rachel's face held a bitter expression. 'Yeah, just as
before.'

'They just, like, don't care,' Maisie said.

'
Criticism in the media has been
levelled at the Ministry for maintaining a small zombie population
in the secure facility. The purpose of this was to continue with
the search for a vaccine that would combat the new variant of the
disease and to develop a method of detecting infection. These are
the conditions essential for the UK to meet before being permitted
to re-engage in international trade.'

'In terms of progress, it has been reported that zombie blood
glows green under Ultra Violet light. This means that clean-up
operations can be more thorough. The use of UV is still in the
early stages of experimentation, however, we are hopeful that rapid
progress will be made shortly.
'

Steve listened intently to what was being said but held back
from talking until the bulletin was over.

'In the meantime, it is absolutely essential to avoid contact
with zombies. Their blood and all other bodily secretions are as
lethally infectious as in the previous outbreak. Any person
suspecting they have been contaminated must, without delay, hand
themselves into the nearest police station, hospital or army
unit.'

'There's dad's torch from the castle,' Steve said. 'We could
convert it to LEDs.'

'Where would you get hold of those, lad?' Graham
said.

'We've used white light ones in Design Technology
lessons.'

'But they said it's got to be UV,' Rachel said.

'I'm sure the DT teacher had some UV ones he was saving for an
invisible ink project next term. He said they were safe to use
because they were longer wavelength ones.'

'What does that mean?' Alex said.

'It means the diodes which produce invisible UV can cause eye
damage but the ones which give out a bit of visible light as well
are OK.'

'Yeah, that's kind of what he said.'

'You'd better show us the Tech room, then, lad,' Graham
said.

The door had to be forced because it was still locked. Apart
from shot out windows, and a layer of dust and glass splinters over
most of the surfaces, the DT room appeared to be
undamaged.

'That's a good sign,' Steve said, pointing to the fact that
none of the debris had been disturbed. He went straight to the
components store. It was a large, shallow cabinet fastened to one
of the walls, with compartments for an array of small, plastic
drawers containing all manner of electronic spare parts. Steve ran
his fingers along the rows of labels, pulling out first one drawer
and then another. Alex found the classroom broom and swept off one
of the benches, so that Steve could put down the two boxes he had
obtained.

'They look the same,' Janet said, peering at two trays full of
small, clear plastic beads, each with two wires at one
end.

'But they're not,' Steve said, smiling. Then his face changed
and he smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. 'Oh no! I
left the torch by the entrance to the tunnel under the
castle.'

'There must be others in the school, surely?'

'There might have been in the caretaker's room in the Admin
Block.'

'The bit that's completely burnt out?'

'I'll have to go back for it,' Steve said, heading for the
door.

'Not so fast, young man,' Janet said. 'The army are still
roaming around out there, not to mention any zombies they've
missed.'

Chapter
5: Something Moved

After obtaining precise directions from Steve and Janet, Bill
and Graham set off on a circumspect route to retrieve the torch.
Rather than taking the road, they left the school grounds behind
the canteen and made their way through the woods and from there
into the field at the top of which were the brambles and bushes
concealing the entrance to the tunnel.

'Here it is,' Bill said, holding up the heavy duty torch.
'Looks like a good 'un. Thought it'd be one of those weedy cylinder
ones with the batteries in the handle,' he said, 'but it's got a
separate handle with the battery compartment
underneath.'

Graham felt the weight of it. 'Yeah, it's one of those with a
big square battery,' he said, 'Should last a good
while.'

'Do we have to go back through the woods again? The road's
much quicker.'

'Yeah, shorter and chancier.'

'Well, I'm going back by the road, you can take the long way
round if you want.'

'Alright, I've not heard any army trucks for a while. And it's
nearly dark.'

Bill glanced at his watch. 'Six thirty, 'bout right for this
time of year.'

Graham nodded towards the road and they set off to the gate
through the hedge at the top of the field. He carefully lifted the
catch and the two of them crept out onto the road in the gathering
dusk. They were halfway to the school when they passed a side road
off Academy Row, leading off into the centre of the town. It was
the road taken by some zombies after leaving the castle earlier in
the day. They'd been rounded up or shot by the army. Bill thought
he saw a shadowy figure in a doorway but didn't want to hang about
to look any closer. In his haste, he trod on a dry twig which broke
with a snap.