Maybe today’s video games had desensitized them.
‘Can we start again?’ I said to the man. ‘I’m Tom and that’s my wife Becky, and those are my kids Stanley and Daisy in the back.’
He waved his hand at them in greeting. ‘Shawn Graveling.’ He looked around and frowned. ‘Where is everyone? This is normally a busy road.’
‘Not a clue. The radio told everyone to stay indoors and avoid contact with other people. Maybe they’re all doing that.’
‘Come on. Some people might be but you didn’t. There should be loads of people trying to get home just like you. This road should be like a racetrack. It’s the main summer season, there are thousands of holidaymakers in tents or caravans and they must all be starting to realise that they’re not safe and they need to head for home.’
‘We were in a caravan; that’s why we decided to go.’
‘Exactly. So where are the rest of them?’
As if in response to his question, we heard an explosion in the distance. Looking towards St Agnes, we could see a huge column of smoke rising.
‘Perhaps that’s why,’ said Shawn looking troubled. ‘However this thing is spreading, it looks as if you might have got out of Dodge just in time. It doesn’t look good in that direction.’
If they’d had a bird’s eye view over St Agnes, they would have witnessed scenes of chaos. The infection had been carried there by a single traveller, a lad of twenty, returning from a six month backpacking trip. Vladimir had walked past him coughing while he’d been waiting for his rucksack to arrive at Heathrow Airport. Having cleared Customs, he’d set out on the long coach ride home to see his family in St Agnes, passing the virus on to other passengers on the coach, all of whom disembarked at stops throughout the West Country.
Having arrived home late and enjoyed a quick catch up with his family, he’d met up with his friends and they’d embarked on a pub crawl to celebrate his homecoming. By the time he’d staggered home in the early hours of the morning, feeling decidedly worse for wear, a good portion of the small Cornish village had been exposed to the infection. He was destined never to know this. When his parents, both beginning to feel off colour themselves, walked into the room he shared with his six year old brother the following morning, they found a blood streaked ghoul feasting on what was left of the little boy’s body.
As the number of zombies increased, the trickle of people who had heard the news and had decided to make for home quickly turned into a flood. Many of them would have made it too, had it not been for one man’s mistake. In his panic to get out, a tourist had tried to overtake a slower moving car on a bend and had collided head on with a lorry, effectively blocking the main route out of the village.
The explosion and smoke Tom and Shawn saw were the result of a spark igniting the leaking fuel from the crashed car and setting off a chain reaction, culminating in a fuel lorry, caught in the traffic jam and unable to move, exploding as soon as the flames reached it.
From then on most people, still not fully aware of the magnitude of the situation, became easy prey for the zombies. Even the people who managed to escape initially, came into contact with those who were infected when they tried to seek shelter. The Darwinian process had begun. If you learned quickly, and were able to adapt, you might just stand a chance of surviving. If you weren’t able to do that, well it was just a matter of time. One mistake would end in you and your family dying, or worse, becoming one of the legions of zombies who were now roaming the earth, looking for their next meal. Most people, sadly, fell into the latter category.
The picture was a similar one the world over. Most countries were experiencing outbreaks of the virus. Some countries had some initial success in controlling the spread, but didn’t take action quickly enough to close their borders. As a result many people fled in panic, making the problem worse.
Island nations had a geographical advantage and could have isolated themselves until the infectious cold-based stage of the virus had run its course on the mainland. Most though failed to do this.
As Tom and Shawn stood in the middle of the road staring at the ominous cloud of smoke, all of this was irrelevant. The only thing they were certain of was that the little part of England they were standing in was going to shit.
We stood there quietly for a moment until Becky shouted, ‘Tom! What on earth are you doing!’ and snapped me out of it. I turned and was about to wish Shawn good luck before we went our separate ways, when he passed me the knife he was holding, saying, ‘Please take it. I have others and you’ve got your family to protect.’
I was about to thank him when I heard another car approaching, this time from the other direction, the way I was intending to go; towards the A30 and home.
Again, this car was travelling at breakneck speed, but it started to slow down as it approached us. It was a Mercedes saloon and as it got closer, the driver’s window began to open. We both stepped back and I gripped my new knife tightly. We could see a man and a woman in the front and two teenagers in the back. They all looked scared to death.
‘You need to turn round and get out of here!’ he screamed at us.
In his agitated state, it was difficult to understand exactly what he was saying but I heard something along the lines of: ‘It’s like the news this morning! People are eating each other! The main road’s blocked; we can’t go that way…’ Then he spotted the body of the man from the Range Rover, sprawled beside his car with his throat a gaping mess of chewed flesh, and his son lying on the road with his brains spilling out of the wound Shawn had inflicted. On top of everything he’d already experienced, this seemed to push him over the edge.
He screamed and slammed the car into gear. Realising that he was heading in the direction of the explosion, I ran forward and shouted for him to stop. In his desperation he either couldn’t, or didn’t want to hear me, and with his engine over revving and his tyres screeching, he sped away towards St Agnes, and the rising smoke. He was driving far too fast and was struggling to control the car, which was fishtailing down the road. He clearly wasn’t used to driving at speed and kept overcorrecting as the car’s rear end swung from side to side in an increasingly erratic way. The rear wheel of the Mercedes hit the kerb and he lost control completely. The car shot across the carriageway, and we heard the engine screaming in protest as the man kept his foot down hard on the accelerator. The vehicle slammed into the other kerb, flipped over and flew through the air. Then it rolled and virtually disintegrated as it smashed through a wall.
We watched in shocked silence as what was left of the car continued to roll down a bank into a field and disappeared from view.
I hadn’t heard Becky get out of the car, so when she spoke beside me, I jumped. ‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked, looking white. That man said the main road’s blocked. And whatever he’s seen scared him enough to drive like that!’ she said, pointing at the trail of destruction.
Shawn spoke up, ‘As I said, I’m heading off to the moors to get out of the way.’
‘How are you going to get there?’ asked Becky, remarkably calm considering what we’d all experienced in the last five minutes. ‘Bodmin Moor’s quite a way from here, and if everyone’s driving like that bloke, you certainly don’t want to be on the roads. And he said the main road’s going to be blocked anyway!’
Shawn nodded and stood there looking thoughtful.
I walked over to the car and opened the rear door to reassure Stanley and Daisy. They threw themselves at me, and I hugged them both tightly, telling them over and over that it was all going to be ok. Mommy and daddy would work something out.
Shawn had an Ordnance Survey map spread out on the bonnet of the car. It was the 1:25000 scale map of the area and was much more detailed than the usual road map.
Becky joined us for a family hug and stayed to comfort the kids while Shawn and I traced a route with our fingers that would use the back roads and avoid as many villages and hamlets as possible.
Looking up at me, he said, ‘You know what, I think I’d be happier if we travelled together. Being on your own is all very well in theory, but if we join forces, at least in the short term, we’ll be able to help each other out.’
Unable to see a downside and feeling secretly relieved, I agreed. He was a prepper and knew things that I didn’t about living in the wild. As he’d already said, a zombie apocalypse was one of the things they were ready for. My sole responsibility was my family’s safety and welfare and at that precise moment, as far as I was concerned, Shawn could play a big part in keeping us alive.
Becky shouted, ‘Tom, look!’ and we both swung round and looked in the direction she was pointing.
The woman in the front of the Range Rover was moving, her head jerking from side to side. A cold feeling of dread came over me.
‘I thought she was dead!’ I shouted.
‘What’s it been? No more than ten minutes, and she’s turned,’ said Shawn thoughtfully. ‘This is straight out of the Zombie Instruction Manual! We need to know what we’re dealing with here Tom. If you could get Becky to move the kids to the other side of the car, I think we need to do a bit of research.’
‘What do you mean, research?’ I asked, confused.
He looked at me sharply, placed his hand on my shoulder and then said slowly and clearly, as if addressing a child: ‘Tom, I’m going to get another knife and then we’ll see exactly what kind of zombies we’re dealing with. In the meantime, I don’t think you’re going to want your kids to see what I’m going to do.’
Becky, always quicker on the uptake, had been listening and nodded. She threw me a look of sympathy and led the kids around to the other side of the car.
My instincts were telling me to get as far away from the place as possible but Shawn was completely calm and collected. Once he’d understood what was happening his whole personality seemed to have changed and he was acting as if being in the middle of a zombie apocalypse was an everyday occurrence.
All business now, Shawn walked briskly to the boot of his car and came back with a similar looking knife to the one he’d given me. Stepping over the body of her son, we gingerly approached the woman.
She looked as if she was waking from a deep sleep. Her movements were spasmodic and uncoordinated, her eyes opening and closing but not focusing on anything.
‘Is she alive?’ I whispered.
‘She’s been bitten, which according to zombie folklore means she’s been infected,’ Shawn whispered back. ‘Her movements aren’t normal so I would say no, she’s not alive. She’s in the first stage of becoming a zombie.’
‘I can’t believe we’re talking like this,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘Have you heard yourself?’
Shawn turned, walked back to his open boot and came back with a short length of rope.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘I’m going to tie her up some more,’ he replied. ‘Her seatbelt won’t keep her still enough and I for one am not going to take the chance of getting bitten.’
Opening the rear of the car, Shawn gently pulled the little girl out and laid her respectfully on the road. Watching him do this brought me fully back to myself, and realising that I needed to help, I stepped forward.
We worked together to secure the woman’s head to the headrest and made sure her arms were immobilised so that she wouldn’t be able to grab us. As we were doing this, her movements became more coordinated and low groaning sounds were emitting from her throat. The sound sent a chill through me.
As we stood back to admire our handiwork we were startled by the sound of a car hurtling by at top speed. Our attention had been focused on tying the woman up, so we hadn’t heard it approach. We couldn’t see how many people were in the car but the brief glimpse we got showed that most of its body panels were bashed and scraped and the rear bumper was dragging along behind it.
‘No wonder we haven’t seen any others cars,’ I remarked, watching it disappear into the distance. ‘If that’s the state of the one that got out, it must be bloody awful there.’
Shawn made no comment. He looked back at the woman and said, ‘I think we can safely say that’s a zombie.’
We stepped closer for a better look, knives raised, just in case.
The woman’s complexion was grey and mottled and her eyes were dull and blank, open but still unfocused. The groaning increased and she gnashed her teeth together. Sensing our approach, she tried to turn her head towards us but the ropes held her secure. Her groans grew louder and turned to snarls, and her movements became more agitated and desperate as she tried to struggle free.
Involuntarily, we stepped back, then stood in silence and watched her for a while.
She was breathing like an asthmatic smoker, her breaths laboured and noisy like a death rattle.
‘She’s breathing!’ I exclaimed, ‘Zombies aren’t meant to do that, are they?’
Shawn nodded, ‘Well that’s settled zombie argument number one. I always thought it was wrong that zombies were portrayed as not needing to breathe so that they could stay underwater or be buried and then come out and attack people. They’re still an organic lifeform after all, so I guess they need oxygen to survive. That’s good news for us!’
‘Why?’ I asked, not quite feeling up to ‘prepper level’ in terms of understanding zombies.
‘We can use it as another way to kill them, and deep water will keep us safe.’
I nodded, trying hard to understand what he was getting at.
‘It should also mean,’ he continued enthusiastically, ‘that they need to eat to survive. That’s good news, because eventually easy food sources will run out and they should start to die off through starvation. And before you say anything, I haven’t got a clue how long that will take.’
Looking meaningfully at me he said, ‘Now just keep telling yourself that this is not a human being.’
He stabbed his knife into the woman’s leg. She gave no visible signs of pain. He then stabbed her repeatedly in the arms and chest.
He stood back and watched her. She’d been stabbed enough times to kill her, but the only sign of distress she showed was a redoubling of her efforts to escape her bonds.