He spread his O.S. map out and Andy got his UK road map from his car and we all spent the next twenty minutes studying them by the light of our torches to see if any ideas ‘jumped off the pages’.
We managed to identify and mark on the map most of the castles and other places, such as old manor houses. We also picked out prisons and any buildings that might be surrounded by a secure fence or wall. The same problems were evident with all of them; if they’d been inhabited by people then they were likely to be full of the undead, or the security provided by the fences or walls wouldn’t be adequate.
The best alternative we could come up with was St Michael’s Mount, an island accessible by foot at low tide just off Cornwall’s southern coast near to Penzance, which we’d visited a few years before on our last holiday in the area. Despite its beauty and its advantage of being reasonably close to our current location, we ended up discounting it. It seemed unlikely that we would be able to secure the island from any potential zombie invasions at low tide, and after a quick check we concluded that none of us were very competent at sea fishing and using boats. If we had to rely on the sea for our food we weren’t sure how successful that would be.
I stood up to take my turn as the lookout, leaving them to discuss the merits and drawbacks of each of the places identified on the map. Warwick Castle was still looking like the best candidate, but in a way I hoped that we’d be able to find somewhere closer. We were a good few hundred miles from Warwick, and the prospect of driving that distance through a zombie infested England wasn’t very appealing.
The conversation finally died out just as the embers in the fire lost their last traces of heat. The faces lit by the single small camping lantern we’d been using were showing signs of strain and exhaustion. We were trying to keep our usage of lights to a minimum, and I’d walked about fifty metres away from the camp to check that the glow from the little lantern was barely visible before we’d decided that it was ok to use it.
Even though sleep was going to be hard to come by, we all knew that we had to rest. After a brief discussion, we worked out a guard duty rota. I volunteered to take the first shift. Andy and Chet had had no sleep the night before because they’d driven through the night and Shawn had admitted to only managing a few hours due to sleeping in his car. There were a few awkward moments when they realised that the mattress of bracken and heather meant that the sleeping area would be quite cosy when they all lay down, particularly as Becky would be lying next to them. Becky made a few light hearted jokes about no hugging and spooning, as she snuggled down next to the sleeping children.
After ensuring that everyone had their torches and weapons close to hand, I turned the lantern off and plunged the camp into darkness to begin the first guard shift. As my eyes adjusted, I marvelled at the amount of light given out by the moon and a myriad of stars, which covered the sky like a twinkling blanket. It illuminated the scene in front of me, but the light also cast shadows. And when you’re on guard duty in the middle of the night, on the lookout for bloodthirsty zombies, every shadow of every bush, moving and rustling in the wind, looks like a flesh eating monster. I had no trouble staying alert!
Not feeling tired at all, I waited for three hours before waking Shawn up for his turn. He woke up immediately and I handed him my large torch and crawled into the shelter next to Becky. I tried to sleep, but after an hour of struggling to lie still so as not to disturb her, it became clear that the one thing that would evade me that night was sleep. My mind was still running at a hundred miles an hour. Carefully, I scrambled out of the shelter and went to join Shawn.
I made us both a cup of coffee and we stood watch together, chatting quietly and gradually getting to know each other better. In what seemed like no time at all, the eastern sky began to lighten as a precursor of the approaching dawn.
There was a beautiful sunrise over the moors, and I felt privileged to have been able to witness it. The fact that I might meet a horrible death at any time probably made me appreciate nature’s splendour all the more. One by one Becky, Chet and then Andy woke up and joined us. They all tried to admonish us for not having woken them but Shawn and I were having none of it.
Keeping our voices as low as possible, so as not to wake the children, we planned out the day. I wanted to check out the farmhouse that was just out of sight over the hill. It was the nearest place that might offer us some solid shelter and I felt that we should at least see if it could provide us with more security than we had where we were.
The plan was unanimously agreed on. I wanted to set off straight away, but Shawn insisted that we deconstruct the camp we’d made and take it with us. He explained that he’d thought about this scenario a lot and it was always best practice to take everything you had with you at all times if possible. If you were unable to return for whatever reason, or the camp was overrun by zombies or another group of survivors (both potentially dangerous scenarios), then at least you’d still have most of your gear.
Once again, unable to fault his logic, we agreed and while Becky was gently waking the children, we began to take down and roll up the fencing wire we’d scavenged the day before.
Unsurprisingly Eddie quickly became distraught on waking, as the memories came flooding back. He was a brave boy though, and after a few minutes of comfort from Becky, he’d recovered enough to eat the breakfast we gave him. We used most of the fresh milk for our cereal and for the kids to drink, and there was just enough left over to give us each a last cup of fresh milky coffee.
A shout from Shawn, who was on lookout duty, got us all scrambling to our feet. He was staring through the binoculars at the distant hillside.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Hang on, I thought I saw something. Wait, yes, two people heading this way. They seem to be rushing…….oh shit! Zombies!’
Shawn handed me the binoculars. It took me a while, but I managed to make out two people trying to run through the purple heather. They were so far away it was impossible to make out their gender, but the shambling gait of the figures chasing them was unmistakeable. Straining my eyes, I managed to count five zombies in total.
‘So what do we do guys?’ I asked, passing the binoculars to Becky.
‘Well,’ said Chet slowly, ‘You helped us, so I suppose it would be wrong not to help anyone else. There can’t be that many people left alive, so I guess it’s important that we all stick together. I’m no hero but the human race needs all the help it can get at the moment if we’re all going to come through this.’
Andy butted in, ‘Blinking hell mate, just because you’re in the debating society there’s no need to get all theatrical on us. But yes, I agree, we should try to help them.’
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Unfortunately the terrain was too rough to even contemplate using a car to reach them. Even the Volvo, with its high ground clearance and four wheel drive, wouldn’t make it fifty metres off the track. We were going to have use Shanks’s pony, in other words walk.
I made a quick decision. ‘Look, we’re all going to have to go. If we leave the kids here we’ll need at least two people to protect them and, well, don’t take this the wrong way but only Shawn and I actually have any experience of killing those things, so I’d prefer it if one of us stayed with my family. But given that I can see at least five zombies over there, it’s probably best if we’re all on hand to deal with them.’
‘Dad,’ called Stanley. I turned to find him standing behind me holding his cricket bat. Eddie was beside him gripping my home-made zombie spear in both hands. ‘We can help as well. Eddie and I will protect Mom and Daisy.’
Looking into the distance at the two objects of our discussion, it was soon clear that they weren’t managing to increase their lead on the zombies. If anything the zombies were rapidly gaining ground. They’d be in serious need of some help soon.
I took a deep breath. ‘Come on then, let’s all go. Stanley and Eddie, if you could guard our backs and look after Mommy and Daisy that would be a great help.’
It was the best I could come up with at short notice; the lesser of two evils. I would die before I let anything happen to my family and I was afraid that if they stayed behind, they’d end up in even greater danger if more zombies appeared. Staying together seemed the best idea, and Stanley had already killed a zombie.
Hefting the weapons we’d laid claim to the day before, we got ready to go. Shawn cocked his crossbow and fitted a vicious looking barbed bolt into the groove. He put a bag over his shoulder containing more bolts. I grabbed the large axe and made sure my knife was still in its sheath. Chet and Andy stood around looking nervous, clutching their respective machete and axe.
Just as we were about to set out, Shawn unclipped the spare knife from his belt and walked over to Daisy. Smiling gently at her, he knelt down and clipped it to her belt. Then he looked at Becky. ‘It’s better that she has it so she’ll at least have the chance to defend herself.’
I could see that Becky was about to protest when Daisy spoke up, ‘Mommy it’s ok, I know what I’ve got to do. Everyone else has got something to fight with; it’s not fair if I haven’t.’
I intervened hastily, ‘Becky it’s fine. I’ll give her a good talk later about knife safety. Thanks Shawn.’ Then I looked at Daisy. ‘Do NOT get that knife out unless you’re in danger, do you understand? Leave this to the grown-ups. Now come on everyone, the zombies are almost on top of those people. What the hell is making them so slow? They should easily be able to outpace them!’
As we set out across the moor, I found myself reflecting on the bizarreness of our situation, and I almost laughed out loud. Less than twenty four hours ago I’d been packing the car for a day at the beach with my family. Now we were all striding across a moor, armed to the teeth, hoping to save two people we’d never met before from zombies. In a few minutes I’d be driving my knife through the head of someone who’d once been a normal person.
As we got closer we could see that the people in trouble were both women and were clinging to each other for support. One seemed to be having trouble walking and the other was helping. They hadn’t noticed us, so I shouted but they clearly couldn’t hear me. Shawn finally managed to get their attention by blowing loudly on a whistle and they responded by waving and changing direction towards us. Unfortunately, this shortened the distance between them and the zombies who, distracted by Shawn’s whistle, began to make their way over to us instead.
This is not good! I thought. They’re going to get caught by them unless we do something.
‘Becky, keep the kids with you. If anything happens to us run back to the cars and drive away.’ Throwing caution to the wind, the four of us started sprinting across the moor. It was going to be close. We were all running together, holding our weapons ready.
‘We need to distract them,’ I gasped between breaths. Our shouting and hollering had confused the zombies, who seemed to be struggling to work out the best food sources to aim for: the quiet ones closest to them or the noisier ones further away. Two of them suddenly turned back towards the women and three of them continued on towards us. One of the women fell over, dragging the other one down with her, their shrieks of terror prompting me to run even faster.
‘Chet, with me. Shawn and Andy get the others!’ I panted, as I headed towards the women.
As I ran past the outstretched arms of the nearest zombie, I swung my axe wildly at it. The blow, poorly aimed, failed to hit anything vital but did succeed in knocking it off balance. As I ran on, the blood pounding in my ears, I could hear Chet breathing heavily beside me. The women were trying to get back up, but their panic was making them clumsy. I was ten metres from them when the two zombies reached them and fell upon them.
I dropped my axe, knowing that if I swung it now it could easily injure one of the women as she lay writhing on the ground, and instead pulled my knife from its sheath. The woman’s screams pierced the air. There was no time to give Chet instructions; he knew what he had to do.
The long hair of the nearest zombie proved a bonus. It was so intent on feeding on the woman, it had forgotten all about me. I grabbed a fistful, pulled its head back and stabbed it as hard as I could. It instantly went limp, as it died for a second time. Still clutching its hair, I pulled it off the hysterical woman. The other zombie was also stone dead. Chet was standing over it, staring at his hand axe, which was sticking out of its head as if it was stuck in a log. I immediately turned to check on Shawn and Andy and watched Shawn neatly dispatch the last three zombies from a distance of about ten metres, with crossbow bolts to their brains.
Beyond them stood Becky and the kids. They immediately became my first priority and I walked over to them, saying: ‘Shawn, see to the ladies please. I’ll go and get Becky.’
I grabbed Becky and gave her a hug, then turned to Stanley, Daisy and Eddie. ‘Thanks for protecting Mom for me.’ Eddie showed no discomfort at my referring to Becky as his mom. In a sense I suppose we’d already unofficially adopted him, so when we had time we would need to think carefully about how to deal with that. ‘Come on,’ I said to them. ‘Let’s go and meet the new arrivals.’
As we approached the others I suddenly realised that something wasn’t right. The three men were standing around the women, who were both still on the ground holding on to each other. They were both crying.
Andy came to meet us, looking worried. ‘One of them’s been bitten.’
‘Shit!’ I said, ‘When?’
‘Just as you got there, when they first attacked them.’
I immediately felt guilty. We’d wasted precious minutes and seconds prior to going to help them. If we’d gone to them as soon as we’d spotted them, she might have been ok.
Becky, who knew the way my mind worked, said firmly, ‘Don’t even go there Tom. Do not even begin to blame yourself. You did your best.’
‘I know love. Look, can you take the kids over there somewhere? You know what we’re going to have to do.’