When There's No More room In Hell: A Zombie Novel (33 page)

Then, very faintly, they heard a voice.

“Hello, Steve can you hear me?” The voice was distorted with the distance and the fluctuations in the signal strength, but it was unmistakable.

Instantly Jennifer squealed, clasping her hands to her mouth as she recognised the voice of her husband. The rest of the room erupted with a cheer as the survivors felt they had achieved a small victory as they managed to cling onto an element of civilisation that was still in their hands.

From then on, they were able to speak with Marcus every night and receive updates on w
here he was and their condition as he made his trek across the Middle East, headed for the southern tip of Europe.

The first thing that would happen was, Marcus would give Steve the exact position and location of where they were and where they planned to be the next night, and whenever possible, he would tell them the route. Steve
and Jake could then plot it on the maps they had on the walls of the radio room. Afterward, Jennifer and the two boys were always given time alone in the room so they could have a private conversation.

People began to feel better about t
he situation as they settled into their new lives. As to be expected, there were a few hiccups. Some people still had difficulty adapting and coming to terms with what was happening and their losses. There were people in the house that had lost their entire family, some in front of their very eyes.

A few still remained withdrawn and glided around the house on auto-pilot, not
completely unlike the dead roaming the streets outside. They would sit and stare at nothing, rarely interacting with anyone else and consumed in their own thoughts and emotions.

One such person was a woman named Lisa. She had seen her two yo
ung sons and husband torn to pieces in front of her, and in the brief moments that she did stumble onto the same plane as everyone else, she would say very little other than she should have died with them.

An elderly couple had decided that life wasn't worth living anymore
since losing their daughter and grandchildren. Seeing no good left in the new world, they had taken their own lives. They both swallowed all the sleeping pills they had between them one night and went to bed with the intention of never waking up. They hadn't realised or considered the consequences of their actions and during the early hours, they had revived and crashed into the bedroom of another couple.

Screams of terror had echoed through the house and only through the quick reactions of Gary and Jennifer, were the
two newly revived dead subdued. They rushed the room with clubs and bars; everyone had adopted the habit of keeping some form of weapon by their bed, and beat them to the floor and then restrained them by ripping the sheets and blankets from the bed and throwing them over the couple, pinning their flailing bodies down. The couple were disposed of with as much dignity as could be provided and buried alongside Roy in the garden.

As always, everybody gathered every evening to watch the news reports and learn anything they could on the situation. There was always the hope that somehow, the situation would stabilise or be completely reversed.

One night, they learned that it was to get worse first.

Steve recognised the reporter from the days before the virus. Then, he had always been smooth shaven
, wearing a neatly pressed and finely cut suit with impeccable hair and skin as he smiled at the camera and flashed his whitened teeth. Even when he was announcing bad news, many people had swallowed it easier because it was being read to them by someone who looked like they belonged on the front of a Men’s Health magazine and they were dazzled by his persona.

Now, he sat in front of the camera wearing a faded blue t-shirt that looked stretched around the neck as though he had sle
pt in it. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen and dark rims had developed around the lids. His unshaven cheeks looked sunken, his hair was unkempt and greasy, and his reporting was bare bones. There was no glitz and no bullshit with bulletins and fancy visuals. His voice was strained and he smoked as he read from the papers laid out in front of him.

“Jesus,” Gary commented, “t
he world really has gone to pot when reporters are sat puffing away on TV.”

The man
went straight into his report. “Ladies and Gentlemen, reports from existing government and army officials have informed us that all remaining military and police units still operating on the mainland, are to be evacuated immediately into the so called ‘safe zones’ of the Channel Islands and the Outer Hebrides, where they will consolidate and regroup.

“A massive relief effort is currently underway to retrieve as much equipment and manpower of the deple
ted security forces as possible and I am informed that once they have undergone a period of refitting and planning, there will be a renewed effort to claim back the mainland from the infected. However, we have not yet been told of when this is likely to take place or given any indication of how they plan to do it.

“In the meantime, people are encouraged to seek whatever shelter they can. Remain indoors and await the outcome of the renewed attempt from the security forces.”

He glanced back down at his papers and shuffled to the next announcement as he cleared his throat.

“All major cities have been dec
lared as overrun and no one is advised to try and enter them for whatever reason. There has been no news to come out of London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham and Manchester for the past few days and it is believed that they are now completely devoid of the living. Newcastle, Leeds Glasgow, Edinburgh and Cardiff are also believed to be dead, but no official confirmation has yet been received.

“It is advised for those that are ab
le, to head away from the built-up areas and seek shelter in the country. However, small villages and towns still untouched by the virus and the infected have reported that they have been inundated with refugees as they flee the cities and Red Cross and local hospitals are overwhelmed with the influx of the sick and dying.

“We recommend that
if you're in a secure and safe location and have adequate stocks of supplies, that you stay there and do not attempt to head further into the rural areas. It is speculated that many people could still be surviving in some of the urban areas just by keeping out of sight and avoiding all contact with the infected. We have been asked to inform any surviving people in the cities not make any unnecessary movement or noise and keep any light to a minimum.

“There
is no further news on the plague itself or what is being done about the spread of it. Many have begun to suspect that scientists and governments have given up trying to find a cause or even a cure and are now looking at using tactical nuclear weapons to try and bring down the numbers of the dead before they attempt to retake the mainland. An interview with the Defence Secretary some weeks ago aroused suspicions when he stated that,

‘We haven't  looked in
to using our larger weapon capability as yet, but maybe we should.’

“The statement
sparked outrage from other remaining government officials and spokespeople alike. The Defence Secretary hasn’t been seen since and it is suspected that he could be the victim of an infected attack.

“Other countries around the world have released statements that their cities are now uninhabitable and consumed entirely by the thousands of reanimated bodies that now infest them. The United States have announced that their National Guard Units have been mostly overwhelmed and with the bulk of the regular army
and air force still en-route from the various conflicts in the Middle East, it is believed that they won’t arrive in time to repel the infection and its spread.

“France, Spain
, Belgium and Germany have all declared that their countries are overrun as well as the rest of Europe, with all military units fighting a retreating battle to the coasts in all directions, in the hopes of joining forces with the remaining British military units in the ‘safe zones’ of the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and Malta.”

He shuffled through papers again
, then looked up, an apologetic look on his face and a reluctance to look directly into the camera.

“We have also received word that we will be going off the air as of tonight and
we will be evacuated to a new facility where all the news stations and information will be consolidated and will come under direct control of the government.”

He shook
his head and glanced off camera. “There will be no more broadcasts from this station after tonight as we will be shutting down immediately after this."

The room around them was silent. No one had moved during the news broadcast and now everyone stood and stared as the television went blank.

Lee broke the silence. “Does that mean that they won’t be giving us the weather report now then?”

Though it was a stupid remark and completely out of place, it broke the ice
and dragged a few people from their trance.

“Looks like they won’t be telling us anything anymore
, Lee,” Gary answered, still staring at the dark TV. “And you can bet your last penny that when they do finally start broadcasting under the government’s gaze, we will only get bits of the bigger picture and rarely the truth.” He paused and looked around him at the people gathered in the lobby. “We really are on our own here now.”

The next morning, Steve
, Gary and Lee walked to the main gate and began their checks. They stood back in the shade of the trees and out of sight from the gateway. The mass of bodies pushing against the entrance had more than doubled in the last week and Steve guessed there to be possibly fifty of them clawing and wrenching at the iron bars of the main gate.

Their emaciated
and lifeless faces pushed and squeezed into the gaps between the bars. Claw-like hands reached into the empty space beyond and into the park grasping at thin air. A steady low hum radiated from the dead as they moaned and gurgled constantly, and the buzz from the clouds of insects that continually circled them added to the noise, creating an unremitting murmur.

Steve eyed the th
rong of bodies in front of them. “Shit, we could find ourselves in real trouble here fellas if we don’t find a way of keeping them back from the gate, even the road if possible.”

Gary was at his side
. “There's more of them every day.”

They moved back in
to the trees and headed to the far end of the park where the wall ran close to the road that accessed the area. They stopped in front of it and looked up and along its length. It was eight feet high and made from solid sandstone. All along the perimeter wall, large fir trees grew at regular intervals on both sides of the stone, their long branches hanging over the wall’s edge and sheltering the inside from view. The wall had stood for a couple of hundred years, from the time before the land within had become a Safari Park and when it was the land of a rich Lord who had encompassed his estate with the tall barrier.

Lee scaled the wall and peered over the edge for a moment before climbing back down. He wiped his hands together to clear them of the small pieces of grit that crumbled away from the stone and the moss that had grown at the top.

“Well, you want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.

Steve shrugged, “You may as well give us both Lee.”

He nodded. “Okay, well I don’t think the walls will be a problem. It’s about two feet lower on the other side, so unless they learn how to use a ladder, they have ten feet to climb. Don't think even I could manage that easily, never mind them things.”

Gary spoke, “Well, that's the
good news. What's the bad?”

Lee looked up from dusting the knees of his jeans
. “Um, there's fucking loads more on their way.”

Gary and Steve swapped glances and then looked at the wall. Steve began scrambling up it to get a look for himself. The road was just a few metres from the wall, separated from it by a nar
row grass verge. The road spanned twenty metres to the other side where it then crossed onto the path of another, more modern brick wall running parallel to it along the access road. The junction was to his left and at the tip of the road. It was the main entry point for the access road to the Safari Park and it was wide open to anyone that walked along it.

Shambling b
odies approached. A few were just metres away from him as he watched them travel from the direction of the crossroads and onto the access road. They didn't see him as he peered over the wall in the shade of the large trees and he counted at least twenty of them while he watched through the branches, spread out and all headed in the same direction, toward the gate.

Some shuffled and staggered on unsteady legs, others walked slowly but with more coordination. A few seemed to struggle to stay upright at all. With each step, their bodies lurched and their dangling arms swayed with them, giving Steve the impression that their hips were mounted on some kind of seesaw. Most of them still looked relatively fresh, apart from their colour and gait
. But others couldn't be mistaken for anything other than what they were. Green, sagging, rotted skin hung from their bodies, grotesque wounds betrayed their deaths. Some were missing limbs or trailed fetid intestines along the ground in their wake as they lumbered forward.