British Zombie Breakout: Part Two (8 page)

'As long as that 'copter's out of the way, we can get everyone
else looking round.'

'OK, we'll get them started, while we swap the batteries
out.'

Changing the batteries over turned out to be the easy part.
After more than an hour, the fugitives had managed to find an old
oil can, a plastic bucket, a piece of sheet metal that could be
bent to form a makeshift funnel, and a length of hosepipe. It took
another forty minutes to transfer two bucket-fulls of fuel into the
army truck's tank.

'OK,' Bill said, 'let's give it a try.'

'Better prime the pump first.' Graham reached into the engine
compartment and found the little rubber button on the top of the
fuel pump. He depressed it repeatedly, until the little glass bowl
next to it filled with fuel.

'Try it now, Bill.'

After the fourth attempt, the engine roared into life,
accompanied by clouds of smoke.

'Oh, that's like gross!' Maisie said, waving her hands and
backing away.

Janet kept a wary eye on the sky. 'Let's hope the helicopter
doesn't see that smoke.'

Fifteen minutes later, they were back on the road. Bill was
driving with the instruction that if anyone saw the helicopter, or
anything else for that matter, he must stop immediately. As long as
the truck wasn't moving when it was spotted, there was a chance it
would simply be assumed to be abandoned. The first time it was seen
at least.

They drove on for another two hours, until they reached
Stannicvale, a medium-sized town. It looked to have been abandoned,
as were many towns across the south west of the country. What they
needed was somewhere to rest up and recover, have something
uncontaminated to eat. They had flour, eggs and some of the tinned
food left from the supermarket. There was also one large pack of
bacon which had defrosted and needed to be eaten straight away, if
they could only cook it.

'I'm going to try the shopping district,' Graham said. If we
can find a café, we may be able to cook what we've got.'

'Milk, flour, eggs. Like, that means pancakes!'

'There's still a pack of bacon the army guys missed. It's got
to be eaten today.'

'Cheese and bacon omelettes.'

'Or fried eggs and bacon.'

'Will you kids stop talking about food!' Bill said, 'You've
nearly got me drooling like a zombie already.'

'Eww, Bill!'

Chapter 20: Café
Zombie

The whole street had a sorrowful air; shop signs sagged,
broken glass was everywhere, between clothing and other goods which
had been looted and later dropped in the road. They passed a
jeweller's shop, where the windows were completely smashed away and
every single item had been stripped out. Sarah kept a sharp lookout
from the front seat next to Graham, while he dodged the larger
items of rubbish that were strewn around the road.

'Look, there's one,' Sarah said, pointing to the right hand
side of the road.

Graham stopped short of the café. Its windows were intact but
the door was cracked and standing ajar.

Despite the hunger the kids had worked up in him with their
talk, Bill remained cautious. 'Better scan the place with the UV.'
He stepped down from the van and shone the torch into the doorway.
There were the tell-tale signs of contamination. The spots of blood
were faint, maybe months old but no-one had any idea yet how long
the virus remained active. 'We'd better move on,' he
said.

They passed a fast food takeaway and a pizza restaurant,
without being able to use either because of contamination. Graham
turned into a parallel street and almost at once Sarah grabbed his
arm.

'Look, that big clothing store. The ones in that chain all
have a café on the top floor.'

'That's right, Janet said. 'It's supposed to keep the
customers in the shop longer, so they're more likely to buy
something.'

Bill shone Steve's torch around the doorway and found only a
couple of spots several feet away on the pavement. He pushed at the
main door but found it locked.

'That might be a good sign; it doesn't look like this street
took so much damage. Is there any chance we can get in?'

'There's probably some sort of tool kit with a truck like
this.'

'Here,' cried Alex, holding up a heavy compartmentalised
folding pouch which had been digging into her back for the last few
miles.

Graham took if from her. 'Great, let's see if there's anything
like a tyre wrench in there?'

'Here we go,' Bill said, pulling out a two foot long metal bar
which was flattened at one end. 'This might do it.'

After several minutes of levering and shoving, the door gave
way. The UV torch showed the place to be clean inside. Even better,
the lights still worked.

'It's amazing how there's power everywhere,' Janet
said.

Steve carried on trying the switches until he had just the
lights in the back of the shop working. 'The power companies
probably don't have the engineers to go round doing maintenance,
unless there's a serious problem, then I expect they just isolate
the whole section.

'Can we like go upstairs now?'

'You're always so keen to go charging in,' Rachel
said.

'Well, if I hadn't got your bag, it would be still back at the
school under a pile of rubble.'

'Which was very nearly where you ended up,' Alex
said.

'I wonder if they've got any shoes here.'

'Rachel! We're like all half dead from hunger!'

'Yes,' Janet said. 'Bill, you've got the pistol and Steve's
torch; Graham will you please take the flare gun and go with Bill
to check all the way to the top. See if the café has any equipment
working. Maisie, make sure all the food is ready in the shopping
basket.'

Chapter 21: The
Website

Within the shortest time possible, the fugitives worked
together to get a meal spread out on one of the café tables. Janet
had washed the utensils they needed, Steve wiped over a couple of
tables, then Maisie and Fred set out plates, cutlery and napkins.
Alex had made pancakes, Sarah produced a large pan of scrambled
eggs with cheese and bacon, and Karen had heated up the contents of
her three tins of beans with mini-sausages. Graham kept watch while
Bill backed the lorry into a side street and checked the fuel,
water and oil levels. Rachel, meanwhile, had been busy in the shop,
finding a handbag she liked.

Fresh vegetables didn't feature anywhere but everyone felt as
though they'd enjoyed a feast.

'There's still some coffee left,' Bill said, standing up
offering to make some.

'Well, what next?' Graham said. 'We can't just keep aimlessly
driving about.'

'Fuel tank on the lorry's gone down a bit,' Bill
said.

'Can't we like try the phones again?'

'Now, that's a good idea,' Janet said.

'But we can't use them because of being tracked,' Alex
said.

'My mum and dad will be, like, so worried.'

'We could each send one text, couldn't we?'

'Ten phones all zinging off a text at once is going to attract
some attention. They'll have our numbers and phone IDs on an alert
list.'

'Nine, mine's still in Kilkorne, probably under a pile of
rubble,' Fred said.

'What if we use one single phone to send one text, giving the
phone numbers and a list of names for everyone else, so they can
relay the fact that we're all OK? Then switch the phone off
immediately.'

'They'd still be able to locate us. The computers will pick
out the numbers from the thousands of other calls, then work out
whereabouts we are.'

'What about the internet?'

'Brilliant, Alex! Much harder to trace.'

'But where are we going to be able to do that? This is a
clothes shop.'

'There might be an internet café near the centre of
town.'

'Hmm, I bet that would be well zombied up.'

'You're probably right.'

'Computer shop?'

'Haven't seen one yet.'

'The office in this shop might have had access to the
internet.'

'Being part of chain they'd definitely have had a network
linking all the stores. Only trouble is, it would all be passworded
and may not have had external access.'

'Let's take a look, see if there's a laptop or
something.'

Within ten minutes they had a laptop up and running on the
office wifi. It took rather longer to decide what to say and to
send all the messages to their families.

'You know, now we've got internet access, we can try and get
in touch with the Ministry about getting the army off our
backs.'

'Or go direct to Breathdeep.'

Rachel was horrified. 'Go there?'

'Contact them direct, through the internet.'

'I wonder if they've got a website?'

'You must be joking. A secret bio-research centre?'

'Well, OK, what about the government website?'

Chapter
22: Photographic Evidence

'Is that Mason?'

'This is Professor Albert Mason, head of the Breathdeep
Biological Research Facility. What, Minister, can I do for you this
time? Mason was not in his office, he was supervising the
collection of inoculation data from the inmates of the holding
facility. It was a tricky job, requiring full protective gear and
restraint equipment for holding down individual zombies, whose sole
mission was to tear open the scientists' protective suits and
infect them.

'
This is indeed a quite remarkable
weapon,
' he thought to himself,
'
as long as you don't mind there being no
survivors at all, on either side.
'

'You can tell me why it is,' the Minister for Home Affairs
said in a cutting voice, 'that my own department informs me of a
method for detecting early exposure to the zombie virus, rather
than your facility.'

'First I've heard of it, Minister,'

'My point precisely.'

'Well right now, we're examining and recording the results for
all the inmates we have here. So far, the new vaccine appears to be
working, albeit rather slowly in the most chronic
cases.'

'That, at least is some good news.'

'Alright, what's this early detection system you've heard
of?'

'The fugitives that neither you nor the army seem to have been
able to track down…'

Mason sighed. 'Kilkorne residents, got past the roadblock
yesterday?'

'They've managed to use the internet to contact the government
website.'

'Resourceful.'

'I believe we've mentioned that before. Anyway, apparently one
of the kids heard your broadcast about UV showing up zombie blood,
so he went in the school DT room and converted a torch.'

'The school was totally cleared out and hit with an RPG later,
how'd they manage that?'

'We keep coming back to resourcefulness again, don't
we?'

'So, they made a torch. We've done that. So what?'

'Apart from showing up zombie blood, it makes the eyes of
anyone infected fluor… fluor-something. Whatever, they glow. The
kid says it works after only a few hours.'

'Fluoresce is the word that's escaped you. We've got some hand
held units for detecting zombie blood. I'll get someone to bring
one down immediately.'

Five minutes later, the professor was briefly shining one of
his portable UV lamp near the eyes of every patient whose
temperature was taken and whose blood was sampled. He didn't want
to use the almost invisible beam directly in case it damaged the
retina.

'Minister, I'm seeing a weak effect on some patients. With the
full infectees, I'm getting a slightly stronger reaction. You said
it was very pronounced after only a few hours?'

'That's what your fugitives are reporting.'

'They got any photographic evidence?'

'I asked that. They said it was rather hard to obtain, as they
were keeping as far away as possible from other people, especially
zombies.'

Mason stopped to think for a moment. 'We need to know the
exact type of UV LED they used. Ours don't do the job. There can be
small but significant differences in specification. I need the
manufacturer and serial number.'

'If you think that'll do it.'

'Send me their email address and I'll contact them directly. I
need to find exactly which type of emitters they're
using.'

'As you wish.'

Chapter 23:
Contact

Professor Mason exchanged emails with Steve and ascertained
that the UV LEDs he'd used were a longer wavelength variety than
the Breathdeep ones. Steve used the webcam built into the laptop to
send a video of the light emitted by his torch and added that he'd
left one of the boxes of UV diodes in the school. He also showed
that his own eyes didn't fluoresce when scanned by the
torch.