We made our way tentatively through the Cornish countryside and by good fortune, didn’t encounter another soul for the next three hours.
Eventually, as I was beginning to need the toilet quite badly, I asked the kids if they needed to go. It quickly became obvious that they were also desperate, but had been too afraid to ask me to stop and had been holding it in. I stopped the car on a stretch of road overlooking the town of Bodmin. We were surrounded by open fields and therefore had clear views all around us. By unspoken agreement, Shawn, Chet and Andy positioned their cars bumper to bumper with mine to create a rough triangle around a `safe’ area in the middle of the cars. Before I let Becky and the kids out of the car Shawn and I did a quick sweep of the area, to make sure that there were no nasty surprises hiding anywhere.
Becky and I took the children to a suitable spot and we all thankfully emptied our bladders. Then we quickly ushered them back to the safe area.
When everyone had followed suit, we all stood for a while in silence, our eyes naturally drawn to the smoke shrouded town of Bodmin.
‘I hope we don’t have to go through there,’ said Chet, shivering.
I looked down at the town. There were obviously fires burning out of control in several places. I shook my head. ‘No chance. If it looks bad from up here it’s got to be freakin’ awful down there. Shawn, let’s get the map out and see if there’s a way around.’
Becky retrieved Shawn’s map and spread it out on the bonnet of his car. Before long we’d managed to plan and agree a route that avoided Bodmin completely, and took us through country lanes until we reached the Moor.
Shawn explained that he’d camped by a small lake there previously and that it would be remote enough to keep us safe at least for the night. Once he’d found it on the map we agreed to trust his judgement and head for it. Before we carried on he insisted that we all have something hot to drink, and took out a small metal stove from the back of his car. He picked up a few small sticks from the ground and put them at the bottom of the stove. Then he lit them and placed a saucepan of water on top of the fire.
The little stove was amazing, and in no time at all the water was boiling. I got some mugs from our car, and using the coffee we’d hastily packed in our food bag, I made us mugs of sugary coffee. We gave the children a can of coke each and I handed round some chocolate bars for good measure.
We immediately felt the benefit of the drinks and the chocolate, the sugar and caffeine giving us all a much needed energy boost. Just a few sips made us all feel more alert, as the stimulants in the drinks did the job that Shawn had intended.
Thanking Shawn, we made another quick study of the map and set off. The first mile or so was just as uneventful, but I had the uneasy feeling that our luck was about to run out. Yet as we continued through the narrow country lanes there was still no sign of anyone.
The road we were on gradually became steeper, the banks on either side of us growing higher and higher as the road turned into a traditional Cornish sunken lane. The feeling of being hemmed in intensified. I leant forward in my seat and gripped the wheel tighter. I couldn’t explain it. It might have been paranoia due to the stresses of the day, but I knew we had ridden our luck for hours now. Something was going to go wrong.
And it did.
As we rounded a steep bend, I was greeted by the sight of a minibus stuck halfway up the bank and completely blocking the road. A body, which I took to be the driver, was lying motionless, half in and half out of the bus, having been thrown through the windscreen.
The radio crackled. ‘Can you see anything?’ asked Shawn, the tension in his voice transmitting clearly over the radio waves.
I could see that the side door of the bus was open but I couldn’t see anyone else.
‘No,’ replied Becky, ‘just the driver, who looks dead.’
I sat in silence for a minute, considering our options.
Should we reverse back up the lane and find another route?
Should we get out and try to move the bus?
Could I push it out of the way with my car?
I was reluctant to leave the safety of the car if I didn’t have to, so I decided against getting out. I could see past the van and noted that there was a cutting in the high banks to gain access to a field on a bend just ahead. If I could push the van off the bank, the chances were that the minibus would roll backwards guided by the narrow lane and high banks. Hopefully then it would just roll into the field and clear the way for us. This seemed like a better option than reversing and I couldn’t make the roadblock any worse than it was, so I decided to give it a go.
I put the car in drive and slowly drove forward until my bumper was nudging the minibus. Then very carefully I increased the power to try to push it out of the way. The minibus moved slightly and then stopped again. I applied more power but it wouldn’t budge. The Volvo’s engine roared ineffectually and all four wheels spun. No luck. I backed off the power for fear of breaking anything and reversed back a few metres to see what the problem was.
It was obvious when you looked. The front wheels of the minibus were at the wrong angle. All I was doing was pushing it against a large tree, and I wasn’t going to win that battle.
I was going to have to get out and turn the steering wheel on the minibus myself if it was going to go anywhere. I looked at the bus and my heart sank. A head appeared and something stood up in the minibus.
We now knew why the bus had crashed. We watched a zombie, its face covered in blood, trudge to the front of the bus carrying a severed arm in its hands. If it had been capable of curiosity I would have said it wanted to know what had interrupted its meal. You couldn’t hear it with the car windows closed and the engine running, but it didn’t take much effort to imagine the groans and snarls it was making as it gnashed its teeth through the window at us.
I was about to pick up the radio to tell Shawn that we would have to reverse and find another route when the blaring of Chet and Andy’s car horn made us all look round. A large group of zombies was making its way down the lane.
We were in the middle of nowhere. Where the hell had they come from?
Andy revved his car and reversed as fast as he could in an attempt to force a way through them. There were too many of them and he stalled the car against the solid barrier of zombie flesh that was jammed in between the steep banks. He pulled the car forward and tried again, but apart from leaving a few zombies with broken bodies, struggling and thrashing on the floor, he was unsuccessful.
Luckily the lane was so narrow that the zombies couldn’t get past the boys’ car that easily, and they formed a pile of writhing bodies as they fell over each other in their desperation to squeeze between the car and the steep bank in order to get to us.
We only had a matter of minutes. I had to get the minibus moving!
‘Becky, climb over and drive,’ I said, undoing my seatbelt. ‘I need to deal with that bus.’
I didn’t give her a chance to respond but jumped out of the car and pulled my knife from its sheath. I waved at Shawn to indicate that he should stay where he was and ran over to the bus. I could see the zombie inside watching me, and as I approached the open side door it immediately made a move for me. As it lunged, I didn’t pause to think. I ran my knife through the side of its head, shoved it to one side and climbed aboard the bus. I couldn’t tell how many dead were on the bus because the bodies were badly mutilated, but the one thing I was certain of was that none of them would be able to do me any harm.
The driver had lost most of his lower torso and legs so his seat was a mess of blood, scraps of flesh, bones and clothing. I looked up the road. Three zombies had managed to push past Chet and Andy’s car and were banging on Shawn’s car window. Thankfully they hadn’t reached the Volvo yet but I knew I had no time to lose. Grimacing in disgust, I pushed what was left of the driver out of the way and sat on the sticky residue that remained. I put my foot on the clutch, turned the key and prayed under my breath.
This had to work or we’d be in serious shit.
The starter motor whirred and turned the engine but agonisingly it didn’t catch. I tried again, but the battery was dying, and the starter motor gave the characteristic but gut wrenching last few slow turns before it died.
‘SHIT!’ I screamed.
I was going to have to do this the hard way. Grabbing the steering wheel, I put all my strength into turning the tyres in the right direction. It was hard going, as they were stuck in the soft banks of the country lane, but with the sweat rolling down my face I realised in panic that more zombies were approaching.
I have read in the past that in times of extreme peril, the human body is capable of amazing things: acts of superhuman strength for instance, when forced to. This was one of those occasions. I am sure there is no way that under normal circumstances I would have had a hope in hell of freeing those wheels from that bank. But I managed it.
The handbrake wasn’t on and I still had my foot on the clutch, so as soon as the wheels were released and were pointing in the right direction, the bus started to roll backwards down the hill. I didn’t have time to look back at the others as the bus gained momentum and gathered speed. The large side mirrors gave me just about enough of a view to enable me to roughly steer the bus towards the gap in the bank. I bounced the minibus off both banks, but the bus had enough momentum to keep going.
I risked a quick glance through the windscreen and was relieved to see all three cars following closely, although Shawn’s car had a zombie clinging stubbornly to its bonnet. The bend was approaching rapidly, so I tried to aim the bus towards the gap.
‘Oh bollocks!’ I groaned, as more zombies appeared in the mirrors. They were staggering up the hill. As I approached the bend I could see further down the lane. More of them were on their way. I made a split second decision not to aim for the field but to use the minibus, with its weight and momentum, as a battering ram. Then I gritted my teeth and steered the bus down the hill.
I couldn’t tell the others what I was planning to do; I just had to hope that they would work it out.
Bang! The first zombie was hit by the back of the bus, now travelling at a respectable twenty miles an hour. I felt a bump as it went under the wheels. I fervently hoped that Becky would realise what was happening and increase the gap between us so that she’d avoid the bodies. More smacks and bumps followed as the heavy bus steamrolled over everything in its path.
I tried the brakes, but with no power to the engine they were soft and hardly slowed it at all. I lifted my foot off the clutch to try to use the gearbox to slow my descent but the van was in first gear so the wheels locked and almost made me lose control. If I’d been thinking clearly the obvious solution would have been to attempt to jump start the van, but I was too busy trying to control it and steer into the few remaining zombies I could see.
The road ahead looked clear now, so putting all my weight on the brakes and feathering the clutch I tried to bring the bus under control. It slowed gradually as the hill bottomed out, and as the road widened, I steered the bus into a wall in an attempt to stop it. Eventually, after much screeching of metal and the destruction of a perfectly good wall, the bus came to a halt, leaning at an angle with its rear axle sitting on top of the damaged wall.
I jumped out of the bus and saw more zombies pouring out of the door of a hotel across the road and heading straight towards us. Most were dressed in suits and posh frocks. The two wedding cars outside, bedecked in ribbons, told the story of someone’s dream day that hadn’t quite worked out the way they’d intended. No wonder there were so many zombies around in what we’d hoped would be a quiet back road.
Shawn got out of his car, killed the zombie that was still clinging obstinately to the front of his car, removed it from his bonnet and walked over to me. ‘You’re a bloody nutter mate!’ he said, beaming.
I would have loved to relax for a while but the next wave of wedding zombies was only fifty metres away and getting closer.
Nodding at them, I replied, ‘Let’s discuss my stupidity later. We need to keep moving. We should only be a few miles away from the edge of the moors now.’
Chet and Andy had rolled down the windows of their car, which was looking considerably more beaten up and wouldn’t have looked out of place on the starting line of a stock car race. Both side mirrors were now hanging off, it was covered in dents and the rear window had a hole in it, presumably from a zombie’s head going through it.
After a quick exchange to check that they were ok I ran back to the passenger side of the car and climbed in. We had no time to swap drivers and besides, Becky had already proved that she was up to the job when she’d saved all our lives earlier.
We pulled away just as the first zombies reached us. As we drove past the bus I sent it a silent ‘thank you’. The fact that it had been blocking the road could well have caused our deaths, but in the end it had redeemed itself in its last wild ride down the hill. It rested forlornly atop the damaged wall, most likely never to move again.
Scanning ahead to make sure the road was clear, I leant over and gave Becky a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek then turned to see how the kids were doing. Eddie was still sitting quietly but both Stanley and Daisy were wide eyed with excitement. They jabbered on about how I’d crashed the bus and mommy had had to drive over the bodies in the road. I let them carry on. It was probably their way of coping with what was happening, trying to normalise what was, let’s face it, a very untypical experience for them. Untypical for all of us in fact.
I managed to get them to calm down by asking them to carry on keeping watch out of the windows for more zombies. Previously we’d occasionally played ‘I spy’ to entertain the children on long car journeys. Now we were playing ‘I spy a zombie!’
I noticed a junction up ahead and hurriedly picked the map up off the floor where it had ended up after Becky and I had swapped seats. I quickly found our location and gave Becky instructions. I could see the edge of the moors rising ahead and hoped that they would offer us the sanctuary we needed. Shawn had shown me a track on the map which, from memory, he thought would be suitable for cars and would lead to the lake we wanted to get to. I kept my finger on the spot on the map and carefully guided us to it.