Autumn: Aftermath Page 5

  Driver unfolded the largest map he’d got and spread it out over the steering wheel, flitting his eyes between the map and the view outside, trying to match them both up. For a while he was stumped, unable to orientate himself easily despite his naval training, distracted by the constant movement of the obnoxious, tireless husk of another dead woman which had, by chance, stumbled out of the trees and was now biting at the glass in front of him, moving from side to side, getting in the way and covering the window with greasy, cream-colored stains.

  The map was simple and cartoonish and had few details. It was only when it dawned on Driver that the best landmarks to use were the hills he was parked between, that everything finally began to click into place.

  Got it.

  He could see where the fire had been last night. There was a faint but steady wisp of smoke still rising up from it; a perilously thin trail of darker gray against the off-white clouds. Driver’s eyes drifted back down toward ground level where he saw that the smoke seemed, bizarrely, to be coming from a castle. He picked up a tourist guide of the local area and flicked through the pages to find anything that looked even remotely similar.

  And then he found it. Cheetham Castle.

  7

  Driver accelerated toward the castle, obliterating anything foolish enough to get in his way. The closer he’d got, the lighter the smoke trail hanging in the air had become to the point where he was now beginning to doubt he’d seen anything at all. Had he been hallucinating? Was it just a cloud formation he’d willed into being something else? He also knew there was a very real possibility that if there was a fire, it might well have started accidentally, and that this place was actually as dead as everywhere else. But whatever it was and whatever had or hadn’t caused it, he was here now. For the first time he could remember, he was actually pleased to see a few more bodies around. Their numbers gave him some slight reassurance because the more of them he saw, the more likely he thought it that there might have been other survivors here recently. At best he might have stumbled upon a fully operational base camp. At worst, a damn good place to hide for a while. That was assuming, of course, that he could get in.

  He followed the route of a road which roughly matched the curve of the castle wall, albeit at a considerable distance away. Between him and the fortress was a vast crowd of cadavers, perhaps even more than he’d seen approaching the hotel back in Bromwell, and close to the numbers he’d seen around the flats. The fact there were so many of them, so tightly packed in such a relatively confined space, was both a help and a hindrance. Those which had already noticed him were trapped and were finding it difficult to move, but their numbers were also preventing him from seeing much of the immediate area. Even from his elevated driving position it was difficult to see beyond the dead.

  Driver forced himself to concentrate and watch the road again, steering hard around the back end of a burned-out car, and wiping out several stragglers in the process. He watched one he’d just plowed down in his mirror. He’d driven straight over it and had crushed its pelvis and spine (he knew that for a fact—he’d felt the crunch), and yet it was still coming after him. Dogged. Persistent. Only able to move its arms now, it seemed almost to be trying to swim along the tarmac.

  The road climbed, and he was afforded a slightly better view of the land around the castle. With relief and surprise, he saw that the crowd of bodies didn’t stretch all the way to the castle walls, and that was clearly because of the steep slope upwards. He also saw, a little farther ahead still, a bizarre queue of bodies stretching away from the bulk of the crowd and up toward the gatehouse entrance. They appeared to be following some kind of track, almost as if they were lining up to try and get inside. And that, he decided, would be his best chance of getting in too.

  Driver continued forward, passing level with the snaking column of corpses. He could see the wooden gate of the castle up ahead now, shut fast, and a swollen bottleneck of dead flesh directly outside it. The turn onto the track from this direction was too tight an angle, so he continued farther down the road, then turned around in a large gravel car park which was only partially filled with corpses. Some flung themselves at him, bouncing off the front of the bus like flies hitting the windscreen.

  He accelerated back toward the castle, this time with a far better view of the approach road. He wrenched the steering wheel hard around and after misjudging his turn and driving through mud for a few seconds, fearing the bus might become mired, his wheels eventually gripped the tarmac and his speed increased as he began to climb. The bodies farther up the road were more spread out than they’d first appeared. It was no longer about them wanting to get to the castle which kept them moving, he realized, but a question of whether they were still physically able to keep climbing up. Some of them turned and started stumbling back down toward him, only to be obliterated on impact. Others now seemed to be trying to get farther up the road, almost as if they wanted to get out of the way, perhaps aware of the danger approaching them at speed.

  A flash of movement higher up caught his eye. He looked down at the road when he lost control momentarily and clipped the curb, but then looked back and saw there was someone gesturing wildly at him from the top of the gatehouse. There were two of them now, a man and a woman, and they were pointing furiously at the wooden gate below.

  Driver accelerated again, lining the bus up as best he could and hurtling toward the gate at optimum speed. On either side of the road now he saw that many of the dead were little more than piles of dismembered remains—heaps of broken bodies which looked to have been shunted out of the way in the same way a plow might clear a path through a fresh fall of winter snow. The bus juddered as he reached the wooden bridge before the gate, and he felt himself beginning to panic. What to do? Should he pull up and wait for the gate to open and risk being surrounded, or maintain this speed and just hope for the best? Up ahead, his question was answered as the two halves of the gate began to slowly part. Driver gripped the steering wheel tight, kept his foot down hard on the accelerator, and flew through the narrow gap before skidding to a halt in the middle of a vast courtyard filled with vehicles, caravans, equipment and … people! Healthy people. Living people!

  He didn’t move for a while. He couldn’t. Exhausted, he switched off the engine and slumped forward over the steering wheel, his heart thumping so hard he thought it might be about to burst from his chest. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as a handful of corpses which had slipped through the gate with him were rounded up and destroyed. Some of the people he saw were hurriedly putting on hazmat suits; others wore leathers like Jas, Ian Harte, Greg Hollis and the rest of them used to wear. Some concentrated on getting the gate shut; others dealt with the disposal and removal of the dead. He was transfixed by this unexpected display of organization and cooperation.

  A sudden knock on the door of the bus startled Driver. He sat up quickly and let a tall, clean, and remarkably well-presented man come on board.

  “You okay?” the man asked.

  “Think so,” Driver mumbled, not entirely sure.

  “My name’s Jackson,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Anthony Kent,” he replied as they shook. “Tony. But most folks just call me Driver.”

  “Most folks? There’s more of you?”

  “There were. Probably still are.”

  “We’ll get you some food, get you cleaned up, then you can tell me more,” he said, gesturing for Driver to follow him off the bus. Driver did as he was told. He looked around him in disbelief.

  “What is this place?”

  “Home,” Jackson replied.

  8

  Several hours later, Bob Wilkins ushered Driver into another part of the castle. Once part of a small museum space used as an onsite classroom by visiting schools, its size and relative comfort had resulted in it being adopted for use as a communal lounge by the current occupants of the ancient building. Driver waited in the doorway, feeling unexpectedly nervous, and Bob gently pus
hed him through. There were four other people in the room already, and he felt like a definite outsider.

  “Come on in, love,” Sue Preston said to him as she carried in a tray of food and drinks from the adjoining café and kitchen. “No standing on ceremony here.”

  Driver did as she said and walked a little farther, stopping again when he caught sight of his reflection in a window. He had to look twice to be sure it really was him. He’d almost forgotten what he looked like. Since arriving at the castle earlier he’d managed to shave for the first time in weeks, and one of the others—a lady called Shirley—had hacked at his long hair with a pair of scissors. He still wore his bus driver’s uniform overcoat as he had almost every day since the beginning, partially because it was warm, but mainly because he didn’t have anything else.

  Jackson was sitting with another man in front of a paraffin heater which glowed a comforting orange. Even from here Driver could feel the heat it was producing. It was warmer than anything he’d felt in weeks. Jackson looked around, then beckoned him over, pulling up another chair. Driver sat down, still feeling unexpectedly uncomfortable.

  “This is Kieran,” Jackson said, introducing the man sitting on Driver’s right. “Kieran, this is Tony.”

  “I prefer Driver.”

  “How’re you doing?” Kieran asked as they shook hands.

  “Been better, been worse,” he replied, giving little away.

  “Smoke?” Jackson offered.

  “No thanks. Bad for you.”

  “Coffee?” Sue asked, leaning between them with a tray.

  “Now that I won’t say no to,” Driver said quickly, taking a mug and reveling in its warmth and its bitter taste. He sipped the drink and stared at the glowing heater, trying to work out how he’d managed to get from yesterday’s nightmare to here.

  “Something wrong?”

  Driver shook his head and glanced over at Jackson.

  “Just doesn’t feel right, that’s all.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Sitting in a place like this, with people like you, enjoying a drink in front of the fire like nothing’s happened.”

  “If there’s somewhere else you’d rather be…”

  “No,” Driver said quickly, “of course not.”

  He drank more of his coffee—almost hiding behind it—and remembered the people he’d left behind at the hotel. He wondered what state they were in right now. Assuming, of course, they were still alive.

  “It takes folks a few days to get used to being here,” Jackson said. “It’s a bit of a culture shock. Thing is, the castle is safer than most other places.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “No, seriously, it is. The dead just can’t get up here, apart from the few that make it up the road. The only downside of being somewhere as good as this, is it gives you time to think.”

  “Tell me about it,” Driver said quietly. “I’ve been doing too much of that myself recently.”

  “Anything you want to share?”

  Driver paused before answering.

  “This time yesterday,” he eventually said, feeling like he was confessing, “I was sitting in that bus out there, freezing cold, wondering if there was any point going on. I didn’t have a bloody clue what I was going to do next. The night before that I spent hiding in a café. The night before that I spent sitting in a truck. Before that it was a hotel…”

  “So what point are you making?”

  “You just get used to running, don’t you? You forget how to stop.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time we all got used to stopping again,” Jackson said, putting a reassuring hand on Driver’s shoulder.

  “It’s been the best part of two months since all this started,” Kieran said, his tone a little harsher than Jackson’s, abrasive almost. “You’ve told us about the last few days. Where were you before that?”

  “Spent most of the time in a block of flats.”

  “And why did you leave?”

  “Same reason anyone leaves anywhere these days. A few thousand dead folk outside the front door that didn’t want to leave us alone.”

  “Us?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what happened to the others?”

  Kieran’s tone was almost accusatory now, and Jackson reeled him in quickly.

  “Take it easy, mate. Driver here’s had a tough day.”

  “They’re all tough days now,” Kieran said, unimpressed. “So what happened? Where are they?”

  “We left the flats when the bodies got too close.”

  “How many of you?”

  Driver paused as he tried to remember. Picturing the faces of each of the people he’d been at the flats with stretched the pause out a little longer still.

  “Eight.”

  “And you’re all that’s left?”

  “So where did you go?” Jackson asked, quickly taking over the questioning. “You said something about a hotel?”

  “That’s right. Over in Bromwell. We found more people there.”

  “How many more?”

  Another endless pause. Jackson rocked back in his chair as he waited for Driver to answer. He was having trouble remembering. Christ, Jackson thought, we’ve all been through a lot, but this is like getting blood out of a stone.

  “Five,” he answered, finally. “And a dog.”

  “So that’s thirteen of you altogether.”

  “And a dog,” Kieran added sarcastically. Jackson shot him a withering glance.

  “So where are they all?”

  “Don’t know for sure about all of them,” Driver replied. “Things were getting bad, same as they always do. I knew the situation was most likely about to go shit-shaped, so I shut myself away in one of the rooms. Kept my distance from the rest of them.”

  “You hid?”

  “If you like. You could say that. Thing is, sometimes it’s better just to keep yourself to yourself, don’t you think?”

  That comment caught Jackson off-guard momentarily. He happened to agree.

  “Okay, cut to the chase,” he said, his patience wearing thin. “Just tell us what happened. What happened to all the others?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. They’d been keeping the bodies out of the way for a while, distracting them with music.”

  “Smart move.”

  “But you probably know what it’s been like. The bloody things started to get smarter and were working out what was what. Someone lost their nerve and screwed up and properly let the cat out of the bag, and the whole place was surrounded.”

  “So you just did a runner?” Kieran interrupted. He couldn’t help himself.

  “What else was I supposed to do? It didn’t take a genius to work out what was going to happen next. All the escape routes were blocked. If I hadn’t gone, no one would have got away.”

  “So you were just looking out for yourself,” Kieran sneered. “Fuck the rest of them.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. I swear, I was planning to go back. I still am.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Go easy,” Jackson warned. “Give the guy a break.”

  “You’d have done the same,” Driver continued, sounding close to tears. “If I’d have stopped there with them, we’d have all been buggered. I thought I’d leave it a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, then try and get back and get them out. I know how it looks, but I swear I was going back.”

  The awkward conversation faltered. Although neither Kieran nor Jackson said as much, they both remained unsure about this strange little man.

  “So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Jackson said. “Back at this hotel, there are potentially as many as twelve people stranded?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And this is in Bromwell.”

  “Yep.”

  “I know the place. It’s not too far from here.”

  The other people in the room had been eavesdropping.

  “Come on, Jackson,” Bob protes
ted, “we agreed. Surely you’re not suggesting we should leave here and—”

  “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” Jackson said, cutting across him. “We said we’d help other folks if we came across them. I’m not saying we should go today or tomorrow or even next week, but as soon as possible we should do all we can to try and reach those people. We can’t afford not to. You know as well as I do, numbers are important now.”

  “Well I think it’s a risk too far,” Bob grumbled.

  “Bob Hawkins,” Sue Preston sighed. “Sometimes getting out of bed in the morning is a risk too far for you.”

  A few laughs punctuated the silence. Driver enjoyed the banter and soaked up the relaxed atmosphere. It had been a long time since he’d seen people getting on with each other like this. He watched Sue as she leaned against the window and sipped her drink.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said to him, “I think Jackson’s right. We should try and help your friends. You’ll not find a better place than this, lover. We’ve got food, we’re safe, there’s room for everyone…”

  “Well, I’m sold,” Driver said, “but I do want to go back. I meant what I said, I didn’t want to walk out on them like that. I just didn’t have any choice.”

  “We understand,” Jackson told him. “And like I said, the more people we have here, the better. Another twelve will take us up to almost thirty folks. As soon as the time’s right we’ll head on out to Bromwell and see what we can find.”

  Seventy-Six Days Since Infection

  9

  Driver had settled quickly into the routine—what little routine there was—of life within the crumbling walls of Cheetham Castle. In comparison to everywhere else he’d been recently, this was bliss. Okay, so he was having to work harder than he was used to, and sometimes Jackson’s “all for the common good” ethos felt a little forced and hard to stomach, but he was safe and his mind was kept occupied and it was a small price to pay. He generally busied himself around the group’s vehicles, particularly the comfortable backseat of his replacement bus. He was tasked with keeping them all in good working order but, as no one had ventured beyond the castle walls in all the time he’d been there, that hadn’t required a huge amount of effort. But, Driver being Driver, he’d done all he could to make a little work last as long as possible. He always managed to make himself look busy when, in fact, none of them actually had very much to do at all.