Dead Ahead (5 page)

“Keep it running mate. I take it you’ll be wanting this gear?”

“Aye! Cheers!” Caleb retorted in the manliest Scottish accent he could muster, for which he was rewarded with an odd look from Brandon.

“Ah! Couple of Jocks are you, just down here for a little holiday?” He said with a chuckle.

“That’s not far off the truth as it happens,” Caleb said resuming his normal voice and picking up the gear and handing some of it to Brandon who was now standing just behind him.

“We gotta be quick. Them buggers ain’t gonna be far behind us,” the stranger said as he picked up Brandon’s makeshift Nanigata. Caleb tensed and moved his hand behind his back to rest on his own weapon of choice. But the stranger looked at the crudely made weapon and shook his head, then grabbed it in both hands and snapped the knife end off, dropping the knife clad end to the floor.

“Oi” Brandon shouted.

“Sorry, buddy, needs must be.” He jammed one end of the broken stick through the steering wheel and on to the accelerator; then moved the angle of the steering wheel up fully sending the other end against the roof jamming the pedal to the floor causing the engine to start revving. He then quickly engaged first and released the clutch, jumping quickly out and sending the truck flying off down the road.

“That should send them on a merry little chase I should think! C’mon, we are on the road down the right here. Best get a jog on, get out of sight!”

The three of them started to run down the road together as quietly as possible then ducked in to a field gate when they heard the infected running by the end of the road. Amazingly the truck could still be heard rattling down the road until a large explosion was heard from down the road.

That’s gonna get the attention of every returned for miles around that is! We’re gonna have to get to the house sharpish.”

“How far is it?” asked Brandon.

“Not far; just over the brow of this hill.”

It didn’t take long for them to reach the place. It looked like a cross between a church and abandoned school; which sent a shiver down Caleb’s spine, reminding him of the last church like house they were trapped in. But this place was in much more open surroundings. Wide open fields behind and to the left of it, a playground and fields in front and what looked like a very small village to the right.

They safely made it through the large sturdy red doors, through the porch and into the main hall: which much to Caleb’s relief is exactly what the place turned out to be; a village hall.

The stranger bolted the doors behind him, laid his pack to the side and pulled off the balaclava. He had tussled curly blonde hair with slightly larger than normal ears sticking out from beneath it, a strong chin and a slim pointed nose; but it was the eyes that grabbed their attention, wild eyes that always seemed to be glancing upwards.

“Franks the name; saving Jocks and hitching rides the game!” frank said happily.

“I’m Caleb and this is Brandon.” Caleb said as he dropped his pack to the floor, keeping the Nanigata in his hands.

“Where the fuck are we?” Asked Caleb.

“Blencogo village hall” Frank said chirpily, opening his arms and spinning round. “Or as I call it, Home”

“Blencogo?” asked Brandon

“Blencogo!” Frank said again but more dramatically this time “Fun to say ain’t it?”

“Where the fuck is Blencogo?” asked Caleb with a chuckle.

Franks face dropped; as he turned to Caleb his eyes flicked up to the ceiling and back down, “You swear a lot, they don’t like that!”

Brandon took a barely noticeable step back and Caleb contemplated asking exactly who ‘they’ were, but thought better of it and responded with a smile and a shrug and said “I’m Scottish.”

Frank stood staring at him for a few seconds then flicked his eyes again. Then his smile returned and he said “Awright,” and moved on down the hall. “By the way,” he shouted over his shoulder “You boys stink. You might want to have a wash.”

Chapter

4

Eight Days

The shrill alarm warbled through the complex. It reverberated through the cast concrete walls as Dr Jonathan Fosters’ moustached nose went bobbing quickly down the dark grey hallway.

“What’s going on?” asked Cassie as she emerged from one of the doorways. She looked as beautiful as ever, the perfect picture of womanhood at only 31 years old; her blonde hair was pulled back into a pony tail and streaming down her back, her face was pretty enough so as she had no need of makeup. Even in her slightly flustered state Dr Foster found her beautiful, but of course he would, he was after all her father and he had found her to be the most beautiful thing on the planet since the day she had been born.

He had had the pleasure of working with his daughter in the D.G.V.M.C. (Darlington Genetic and Viral Modification Complex) for three years now. Situated beneath a farm house just off of the Rotary Way roundabout in the outskirts of Darlington, only the highest of government and military officials knew of its existence. It wasn’t the only one of its kind, far from it, but it did seem to be the only active one left. They had lost contact with London one week ago now. They had been the last to go; which, unfortunately, put Michaels in charge. Major Michaels (or M&M as some of the troops had been heard calling him) was a trigger happy, pompous fool as far as Dr Foster and most of the staff was concerned, and he was now the man with his finger on the button so to speak.

Somehow Michaels had tapped into the power source controlling the cooling system of the plutonium fuel cells contained in Sellafield. He had taken up residence in the executive command centre of the bunker and was using the computer systems, supposed to be used as a last line of defence against various apocalyptic scenarios, in an attempt to destroy the ‘cursed Zombies’ as he put it. Only no one had quite foreseen the rise of the Zombies, nor planned for any way to combat it. This was the best Michaels could come up with, to turn Britain into a radioactive wasteland and hideout in his bunker till the radiation had cleared.

Foster and the other doctors were desperately trying to stall him giving him reports on how they were combating the M.L.R-V (Mycobacterium Leprae Requi-virus) It seemed to be some form of genetically mutated Hanson’s disease, or leprosy if you will. Probably the unfortunate result of a chemical weapon experiment performed in a lab very similar to the one in which Foster and his team were trying to combat it. But there was no combating it. True, M.L.R-V was indeed the cause of the dead rising from the grave, but once the host ‘died’ the virus died with it. But it left the host genetically altered after death. Only the host never really truly died, well, not the brain. The brain fooled the rest of the body into believing that it was dead, allowing all other internal organs to shut down without affecting the brain, the body would rot and decay at a much slower rate than if the host was truly dead, the brain would swell and contract slowly, pulsing blood around its self and sending strong signals to muscle cells allowing the walking corpse to remain active. The real problem was the mutation of the saliva gland which seemed to be secreting a new strain of M.L.R-V as a result of the brains over activity, a new strain which was unfathomable to the doctor and his team. But this new strain allowed the victims of the virus carriers to mutate themselves and rise from the dead, though with a diminished brain capacity, most likely because of great blood loss, and damage to muscle structure, causing reduced motor functions. What they couldn’t work out was why they have the desire to eat human flesh; it seemed to be genetically programmed into the brain of the creatures, to work this out, however, would be a job for a neurobiologist, of which they had none. This was the cause of Fosters conundrum. The zombies were genetically altered and therefore untreatable, but he couldn’t tell this to Michaels as he would then deactivate the cooling systems, so he had to keep feeding him false data. He knew he was running out of time.

“Sounds like Michaels is on his high horse again, Cupcake.” he replied to Cassie “He has started using the alarm to call meetings rather than to send out runners”

“Surely that can’t be a good idea, what if there really is an emergency? And, Dad; please don’t call me cupcake.” said Cassie.

“Since when did Michaels have any good ideas?” he said, ignoring her request.

Cassie let out an exasperated sigh in reply to the half hearted joke and avoidance. They made it to the end of the long hallway and took a right towards the conference room.

_________________________

“Ah! Dr Foster,” announced Major Michaels from behind the desk which he had proclaimed to be his own, “the very man we have been waiting for,” He was a portly man and seemed to have somehow been gaining weight since he had been stuck in the bunker, he wore his dark green uniform as usual, though he hadn’t been buttoning up the jacket of late, Cassie wasn’t sure he actually could button it any more, his short hair was greying from the roots confirming her suspicions that he had been dying it dark brown for many years. “....and Miss Foster too, excellent.” he continued.

He refused to recognise that Cassie too was in fact a doctor; possibly because having two people by the same title would confuse and befuddle his aging brain. Thusly, Cassie had given up correcting him.

The room already held the other six laboratory staff, doctors and scientists, who were sat on bright orange plastic stackable chairs before the Major, Cassie and her father joined them. The room was also lined with eight soldiers, armed as always but looking slightly edgier than usual. And there he was, as ever, on the Majors right hand side, the bulldog that was Staff Sergeant Knox; loyal as a bulldog and twice as stupid. Knox was a squat, wide man, heavily built with a shaven bald head and a face that looked like it had been used to hammer in fence posts. His head seemed to be too big for his features, which were always scowling. He looked like he felt it was an injustice for him to be shipped here to look after a bunch of science geeks and a toff Major while he could be out there smashing some innocent persons face into the dirt.

“Well, now that we are all here let us get down to brass tacks,” Michaels said as he made his way from behind his desk, taking his red banded hat from under his arm and sitting it on the table before resting his ample behind beside it, “It has been a week now since we lost contact with London, and I believe it is time for some decisive action. We have the resources here to wipe these cursed zombies off the face of our fine country, and I mean to use them. The Sellafield plutonium resources…

At this Cassie could no longer hold her tongue, she stood and interrupted the Major, “You can not be truly serious about this; we have no idea what that kind of effect the alpha particles will have on these creatures!”

“Please Miss Foster, let me finish,” The Major loudly cut in, “as it turns out, the Plutonium would not have the desired reach or effect on the country,” Cassie let out a sigh of relief, “So I have opted to put the reactor core into meltdown!”

Utterly dumbfounded Cassie was left staring at the Major; half way from standing and sitting back down. She was brought out of her stupor upon hearing her father’s voice and many of the other doctors leaping to their feet to object. Above the hubbub she could hear the Michaels trying to quell the ruckus. There was little wonder why he had brought so many army grunts as well as the bulldog.

“Please my good ladies and gentlemen,” Michaels attempted to shout above the raising hysteria, “please!” At this he looked to the bulldog who took a step forward.

“
SILENCE!
” Knox bellowed in a well practiced and booming voice, cutting the scientists down. He kept the displeased frown on his face and stepped back.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Michaels began again, “all of your objections and opinions have been noted, and I thank you for them, but the defence of the country is in the hands of the army.”

“You can’t really be planning on setting the core to meltdown!” interjected Phillips, one of the geneticists from B wing.

“Oh no, I don’t plan to,” Michaels let the words hang in the air, “the process has already been put into action!”

An air of shocked silence rented the room.

Cassie didn’t know how long she had been sitting alone in the orange plastic moulded chair; she vaguely remembered the arguments, the objections, the panic, the desperation in the voices of her co workers and their ultimate reluctant acceptance of the situation. Cassie, however, would not accept the situation. She couldn’t accept it. Something had to be done.

She purposefully stood; the chair sliding backwards from her several inches, and she made her way from the room. It wasn’t long before she found herself in her father’s office; he was sat at his desk, his forehead was furled and he was deep in thought, tapping his gold parker pen on the notepad in front of him. He didn’t acknowledge Cassie’s arrival but she knew he had noticed her.

“Eight days,” he said eventually, looking up at Cassie, “Michaels said it would take eight days for the reactor core to go into meltdown.”

“Do you think we can stop it?” Cassie asked.

“Not from here. There is no way we could hack into to the command centre here. Not even with Greg’s help. He said that the firewalls, or whatever they are called, are impenetrable: like Fort Knox! No pun intended....”

“Hmm...?” Cassie looked at her father puzzled for a second “Oh,
Knox
. Yes, he would be trouble. But what are the
other
options?”

“The only other option is to stop the meltdown from the inside, from the Sellafield power plant its self.”

“Are you serious?” Cassie asked in bewilderment, “We would never make it there alive; you don’t think any of the soldiers would side with us if they knew just what was going on, do you?

“There may be a few of them but not enough; they are all too scared of Knox to say anything, and you can be sure that if
we
know then the grunts know too. To be honest, I can’t believe that I
am
serious; I don’t know who is crazier, me or Michaels. But we can
not
let this happen. Having the world over run by Zombies is one thing, but to turn the world into a radioactive wasteland is sheer madness.”

“Ok,” Cassie sat down at the opposite side of the desk from her father, “where do we start?”

_________________________

It felt good to finally be getting clean again. Brandon dunked his head under, escaping from the layer of scum and grime quickly accumulating on the surface of the bathwater. He held his head there; watching small bubbles make their way to the surface and pop, distorting the dark brown wooden beams of the back room of the old town hall. His dad was through in the other room talking to Frank, or keeping an eye on him as he had put it.

There was something very wrong about Frank, and Brandon knew he was going to be trouble, but in a situation like this how do you get away from someone you don’t want to be teamed up with? Especially when that someone has the kind of armament that frank has. Frank was keeping his guns as near to himself as his dad was with his naginata. They both were trying to act as casual toward each other as possible but the air was still tense, dangerously tense.

As Brandon was drying himself his dad chapped on the door, he wrapped the towel round himself and cracked open the door.

“Got these for you buddy,” his dad said and handed Brandon a small pile of clothes, “They are too big for you but they will do till your clothes dry.” Brandon had washed their clothes in the sink while his dad had taken his turn to bathe first. This was more of a way of keeping them apart from Frank than a desire to get into the tepid water first. His dad didn’t like Brandon to be alone with Frank, and Brandon silently thanked him for it.

Once dressed in the oversized clothes he joined the others huddled around a small gas stove. They all sat in silence watching a pan of water slowly come to the boil in the dim light. All the windows in the hall and the back rooms had been boarded over; it seemed as if Frank was prepared to make the place his home, by the mess he had made it looked like he had been there some time.

“Tomato and basil soup ok for everyone?” Frank said as he emptied two sachets of pink powder into the water.

“Sounds great,” said Brandon and his dad in almost practiced synchronicity.

“No prob’s lads, all courtesy of her majesty armed forces. I grabbed a good load of these ration packs before I high tailed it out of the T.A. base in Carlisle when it got over run.”

“How bad is it in Carlisle?” His dad asked.

“Carlisle...?” Frank puffed out his cheeks, “Bad don’t even begin to describe it mate. We was in a castle and that didn’t even manage to keep them out.” He lifted a dirty spoon from the counter next to him and started stirring the pot of soup

“A castle...? Fuck!” His dad replied, sending Franks eyes flicking to the ceiling again. “We have to get out of this bloody country....”

“How do you propose to do that mate, where do you plan to go?” Frank asked as he poured the watery soup into three cups.