Authors: Justin Gowland
We looked out the window and watched the back of the house for another ten or twenty minutes, it was then that near what I thought was the back of the Land Rover. I saw two small yellow orbs appear then just as quickly they vanished. We didn't hear any keening or any other noises coming from outside. It was just silent except for the heavy breathing of our friends asleep in the other room. I walked to the door to look in and make sure everything was ok in there. That was when I saw the yellow eyes, trying to look in through the dirty front window into the front room.
“Rees, we have them at the front as well.” I whispered.
“Yeah, I thought they might come round that side. Are they trying anything?” he answered.
Looking at the eyes, they seemed to lock on to me and then just disappear.
“No, they just went away. What the fuck is going on?”
The last of the night seemed to slowly fade from black to the red and orange of pre dawn. We continued to watch for any sign of the Reapers, but nothing happened. When the sun was up in the cloudless blue sky, I went into the front room and slowly woke everyone. We all sat and ate some breakfast bars and drank some water. (what I would do for a cup of tea.)
After my breakfast (yeah, right calling that breakfast is like a Tofu burger the same as a Beef Burger.) I went to the back door and removed the cupboard door and stepped outside. There was nothing out of place the Land Rover sat there unmolested. Rees came out and looked about, we had a clear view for about twenty five meters before the high grass restricted any view.
“What happened last night Walker?” He asked.
“Not too sure it did look like they were checking us out. I’m just a little confused, because every time I have come across them, they attacked as soon as they saw us.”
“Yeah, they looked like they were scouting us out. But where have they gone now?”
“Not sure where they have gone, but I think we should be on the move soon, just in case. I’ll go get the Land Rover checked out can you get the guys packed up and ready to move?” I asked
He nodded and turned and walked back into the house and I walked over to the Land Rover. As I walked round to the other side of the Land Rover I noticed that there were footprints in the grass and dirt. Enough to trample the grass on this side for at least four or five feet. The funny thing was that the area flattened was just the length of the Land Rover and no more. It was like they had been using the Land Rover as a place to hide behind. After those five feet or so of trampled grass there was no indication of them. It was like they had just dropped out the sky and then were snatched back up the same way. I heard footsteps and turned to see Rees walking up behind me.
“Everyone should be ready to go in about ten minutes.” He said.
“Ok! What do you make of this Rees? Why trample all this down, but leave no other tracks? It just makes no sense.” I said.
“Walker dude, you’re thinking like a normal human. They might have just wanted to show that there is a lot more of them than us. Judging by the size of some of the prints, there were adults and children out here last night.”
Marc walked round the side of the Land Rover and looked around. “What’s all this? You been rolling around in the grass this morning Jay?” he said smiling.
“Marc, we had some visitors last night did you see anything when you were on look out?” asked Rees.
“Fuck, no mate, we didn’t see anything!”
“We?” I asked.
“Yeah, Becky said she couldn’t sleep so she stopped up with me for my shift.” He replied.
I just nodded and Rees looked at me, we both knew that it was usually the wrong thing to do in letting two people who are involved like Marc and Becky, do guard or look out duty together. It usually meant they spent more time looking into each others eyes than looking around. I was going to have to sort out some other way to cover the shifts on a night.
Becky and the girls came out with Ghost trailing behind them. They loaded the sleeping bags in the back of the Land Rover and climbed in, Marc went round and closed that back door as he got in. Ghost had one to the edge of the trampled grass and was sniffing the ground when he shook his head and sneezed. I smiled and walked to the drivers side door opened it and shouted for him. He ran about three steps when he skidded to a stop and turned his head, looking into the tall grass he growled and bared his teeth. Looking in the direction that he was looking I saw a pale gray head and yellow eyes just above the grass. As I watched the head lowered back into the grass and disappeared.
Shouting again for Ghost this time he slowly made his way across and jumped into the Land Rover. I climbed inside turned to Rees and asked “By any chance did you see that?”
“Yeah, it was there one second the next it was gone and it never disturbed the grass round it.” He replied.
“Think it might be a good idea to get a move on, don’t you?”
I started the Land Rover and backed out onto the road and continued on the empty roads heading east. We passed a few small villages and the route I had chosen helped to bypass a few of the larger towns. The ones where it couldn’t be helped, we did at a snails pace. We were all constantly aware of what was around us when we went through these. Once or twice, one or all of us saw the gray heads or bodies of Reapers, but we never got attacked.
We came to the junction with the east coast road and we now had to turn north. The only problem with that was the ten car pile up blocking the slip road. From the looks of things, a heavy goods vehicle had slammed into the side of some cars that had pulled out of the junction. The other vehicles had slammed into the back and sides of the heavy goods. One of them must have caught fire because the whole pile up looked to be one large charred mess. Tires had melted into the tarmac and here and there you could see that charred husks of people in their seats. The only thing that I had seen that was not a charred, blackened mess was a hand that was locked on to a steering wheel, why that hand had not burnt to a crisp was strange. Rees got out of the car and went for a scout round to see if we could find another way round.
A hand was gently placed on my shoulder, I turned my head slightly and saw it was Maddie. I took a hand from the steering wheel and placed it over hers. These little gestures that she made where the sort of things that I had been missing in my life and never realized till I had them. I didn’t want to lose them and I would end up fighting for her and for my extended family till I probably drew my last breath. We sat for another ten minutes before I saw Rees moving quickly toward the car. He stuck his thumb over his shoulder and held up his hand and closed it into a fist.
I stepped down from the car and pulled back on the charging handle on my rifle. Flicking the safety off and putting my rifle on single shot, I looked down my scope to see probably a dozen Reapers coming round and over the cars further down the road. I fired and my first round took the lead Reaper in the throat and nearly took its head off. The black blood sprayed back onto the Reapers coming behind it. My second shot wasn’t as good as my first and hit the Reaper in the upper left part of its chest. It did go down and I never saw it get back up, taking my time I managed to hit another two before Becky and Marc started shooting with the .22 rifles. We had managed to create a space between Rees and the Reapers of a good ten or fifteen feet. He must have thought this was enough because he turned, dropped to one knee and started taking shots. I have to admit every shot he took, hit where he wanted and put the Reaper down. Rees must have been within about eight or nine feet from us, and as the Reapers closed in on him, they suddenly looked up and nearly as one turned and fled back through the cars and just disappeared.
Rees stood after a few minutes and turned to look at me with a puzzled look on his face. I just shrugged my shoulders and ejected my magazine and placed a fresh, full one into my rifle. He walked back to the car doing the same thing, but every few feet, he would turn and look down the road, toward where the fleeing Reapers had gone. The air was filled with the smell of fired rounds, and the last echoes of gunfire. Rees reached the passenger side and climbed in, I leaned inside and put my rifle in between the drivers seat and passenger seat, and climbed in to sit behind the wheel.
Looking out at the dead bodies, I was trying to understand what had happened. Last night we seemed to be surrounded by them and like today they just turned and ran away. What the hell was going on they seemed to be changing the way that they behaved. When all this first started, all they ever wanted to do was attack, kill and eat everything they could. Now twice in twenty fours hours they had changed the way they were doing things. The only thing that had me confused was they had no problem chasing Rees, but when they got to where they could see us, they just seemed to turn tail and run for it. I mean we had a lot of fire power and we were taking care of them, to be honest that had never bothered them before.
"There is a way through on to the southbound lane, we could head north on that side and if we come to any places we can't get past, we just change sides." said Rees, whilst I was woolgathering.
"Where did you see the Reapers?" I asked.
"They were clustered near and inside a large coach just past the southern slip roads."
"Do you think we are going to get into any trouble when we get there. If we move quickly enough, it shouldn't be a problem." He said.
Starting the car and pulling away we moved to the southern slip road and I drove up and on to the east coast road. Looking over the side we could see the coach, but we never saw any Reapers again, they seemed to have disappeared from sight. We moved up the slip road and on to the overpass and headed north, the southbound lane seemed to be less congested than the northbound. We were making good time moving in and out of the stalled and abandoned traffic. It was about two in the afternoon when I pulled into a service station. The fuel gauge on the Land Rover was hovering at about a quarter tank.
“We’re going to need to get some fuel soon or we won’t be able to get any further. I also think we could do with some food and rest, apart from the killing of the Reapers we’ve been on the go since first thing.” I said as I turned the engine off.
“I’ll take Marc and see if we can get some fuel from one of the cars or trucks in the car park.” Said Rees.
“Ok, I’ll get on top of the Land Rover and provide over watch. The girls can get some food in themselves and some shut eye. We can eat when you get back from the fuel run.” I said.
Chapter Twelve
Getting out and taking my rifle with me, I climbed on the bonnet, then up on top of the Land Rover. It gave me a good clear field of fire around the car park. Marc climbed out the back and Rees had got out of the front.
Leaning over the side slightly I waved Marc over “Dude, take these…” I passed him the browning and a couple of extra mags. “Rees will show you how to fire it. Don’t worry about going for a kill shot, as long as you slow them down should be alright.”
“Are you sure? I was a crap shot with the shotguns.” He replied.
“Look, Rees will give you a quick run through on how to stand and fire. The rest we will try and go through when we get somewhere safe. To tell you the truth in the world we live in now, we all need to be able to use guns.”
He just walked over to Rees and they started to walk away, I could see Rees talking to Marc and miming how to hold the pistol, then he pointed to the safety and the magazine release. They then went behind a blue van of some sort and I started to scan the area around the Land Rover. Looking through my scope at the doors to the service station I could see dark smears on the glass and what looked like a leg sticking out through the doors. I saw no movement in there, that’s not to say we were not being watched from somewhere.
One of the doors closed and I looked down to see Mary coming round the Land Rover. I held out my hand a helped pull her up onto the roof, her grip was quite firm and she didn’t leave go until she was stable on her feet. I continued looking round, I was sure if I left her long enough, she would say what she came out to ask. She sank down so that she was sitting with her legs crossed on the roof.
She sat there for about five minutes before she asked “Jay, do you think that this will end?”
“Sorry, Mary I don’t think so. Hear me out before you go find sharp knife to end it all. (yeah, I can be a twat sometimes.) Even if there was some way of going back to the way things were, there would be too few of us to do that. Why do you ask?” I said
“Just I don’t know what is going to happen to me. I mean you and Maddie are the height of happiness. Marc and Becky seem to be like the old couple everyone wants to be. Rees is the ultimate warrior and is capable of anything…” (I was tempted to say that I thought Rees was slightly smitten with her, but they have to get to that point on their own without help.) “And then there is me, the last few weeks have been like a roller coaster for me. I haven’t got the survival skills that you all have.”
That’s when I laughed and when she looked shocked I held up my hand “First things, first. Marc has about as much survival skills as you do and Becky is a farmer’s daughter so she has been brought up to be tough. Maddie if you haven’t noticed, has such a soft nature and I think she would be the first to say survival skills would be the last thing she has. That leaves me and Rees, I left the Army awhile ago, but he is a twenty five year man and probably has better survival skills than I do. Yes, a couple of us have been lucky in finding each other in the mess, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t. Did the girls ever tell you about Lisa and how I got injured?”
She shook her head, so I told her the tale of Lisa the Bitch and Mr Blobby the Reaper. Half way through my tale I heard a single shot, but nothing else, so I just continued telling the tale. By the end of it, she was wiping the tears from her eyes because she had been laughing so hard at me for trying to go all ninja on Mr Blobby the Reaper.
Out the corner of my eye I saw Rees and Marc heading back carrying some green fuel cans, where the hell had they got them?
Marc was walking over, smiling his head off, Rees had a bemused look on his face, as he got closer he saw Mary sat on the roof and he grinned. Now I am not sure if Mary had noticed, but she did ask if he could help her down. (oh, the wicked wiles of women.)
“Ok butt wad, why are you smiling like you had sexy for the first time. Which the way you and Becky were going at it that night at her dads it was.” I said, laughing as I climbed down.
“Hah hah, funny fucker. I killed a Reaper with one shot. Whoot.” He said.
Looking at Rees he just shrugged his shoulders and said “Walker, I couldn’t believe it. The Reaper was about ten meters away and coming at us. I was getting some fuel out of a car and Marc says ‘Any chance I can have a go?’. I said for him to knock himself out, but being on the safe side I brought my rifle round. I told him how to stand, you know the weaver stance. Well, he squeezed off the one round and I couldn’t fucking believe it right in between the fuckers eyes.”
Turning to look at Marc I said “Where were you aiming?”
“I thought seeing as it was so close, I would try for a head shot and boom down it went.” Marc said smiling like a kid at Christmas.
“Ok, next time I want to watch what you did.” I couldn’t believe he had done it. I mean, I would have thought that Marc couldn’t hit the side of a barn even if he was standing in it at the time.
Marc walked round the back of the Land Rover and opened the door Mary climbed in then he did and closed it behind him. I took one of the fuel cans and poured it into the tank. Rees poured the remaining two cans in as well, by the time we had finished, it was getting on again and we needed to find somewhere to bed down for the night. We pulled out of the services and continued north to Holy Island. I had hoped we might have been there by the time it got dark. With the way the roads were and constantly looking out for the Reapers, I didn’t think we were going to get there till probably the following day. Then we would have to hope that the tide was out so we could make it across the causeway.
As we came to the outskirts of a small village we came across a small industrial estate. I pulled off the main road and followed the single lane road round the outside of the estate. I saw a single storey building with a large rolling shutter that was up. It had small windows set high up near the roof line, there was a single door beside the roller door. It had an iron gate over it that was locked with a padlock at the top and one at the bottom. So that would be secure for the night, and if we could lock the roller shutter from the inside, we could all get a good night’s sleep. That and we could also bring the Land Rover inside if there was enough room. I pointed it out to Rees and I pulled up outside with the headlights shining inside.