Killing the Dead (Season 2 | Book 2): Dark and Deadly Land (3 page)

Chapter 3 - Ryan

Upon our return to the island we called home, Lily had rather pointedly informed me that I stank. Fair enough I suppose, I had been living in a place that had housed a number of zombies for an extended period. That sort of odour had a tendency to sink into your clothing.

Ever heedful of her ability to point out to me the things that normal people would consider ‘common sense’ but I would hardly even notice, I took a shower.

While the island still had running water, the pressure was low and by my estimation, dropping lower. We did have a propane tank that allowed us to heat the water though, which more than made up for the poor pressure, even if we were allowed only a few minutes to shower at a time.

Sticking to the rules was never quite my thing and considering my reputation and the fear my community viewed me with, I was sure no one would object to my taking longer. Well, no one but Lily and my friends. A downside to having them that I had not considered. They saw no harm in pointing out when I was doing something I shouldn’t.

To save myself the admonishments that would surely have followed, I kept my shower to the regulated length and dried myself off with a towel that was still slightly damp from its last use and bore a slightly unpleasant musk of mildew.

I’d used the en suite bathroom that adjoined the master bedroom. It was smaller than the house’s main facility but it saw less use. Perhaps because so many unpleasant people had taken the master bedroom for their own, few of my community seemed inclined to visit it.

Clean and refreshed, I pulled on a spare pair of jeans and t-shirt. Neither of which could be considered clean but they were less foul than the ones I’d been wearing. A tattered grey woollen jumper followed and I was good to go. I left the bathroom and pulled up short in the bedroom when I found it full of people.

They were crowded around the bed which had a number of items laid upon it. Gregg was at the far end talking rapidly with Pat. Or at least he was talking
at
Pat. That was a man who made me seem loquacious.

He glanced up and caught my eyes and I saw a trace of the simmering anger that still burned in his. He ran one meaty hand over his shaved scalp and nodded at whatever Gregg had just said before he pulled himself upright.

I gave him a wary nod of the head. He was an impressively muscled man and for some reason had seen cause to strike me during our previous excursion. His anger was palpable and though he appeared to be coming around a little, I guessed he still had something unresolved there.

His girlfriend and Gregg’s sister stood beside him. Cass had the same dark skin as her brother and had cut her hair almost down to the scalp like the rest of us. Apparently with the pregnancy on her mind, she had no time to be worrying about trying to maintain her hair. No doubt the outbreak of lice had had something to do with it too.

Lily was on the opposite side of the bed, her back to me and head turned to one side to speak to the final person in the room, Becky. She irritated me more than most. Her mousy hair was cut short and hung around her face. She was in her mid-thirties and would no doubt be considered striking by many. She had the confidence of one who usually got her way and when she looked at me I was sure she was seeing more than I intended.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re discussing plans for leaving,” Lily said without turning round. “Supplies, routes and whatnot.”

“Fair enough,” I wondered briefly why she was refusing to look my way but dismissed it as something she would tell me when she wanted me to know. Either that or it was for some reason that I just wouldn’t understand or care about anyway.

“Where about near Dumfries is your family?” Gregg asked and jumped as Lily’s head shot up and he caught her glare. “What?”

“We were supposed to be subtle,” Cass said as she rolled her eyes. “Idiot.”

“My family?”

Lily sighed and turned to me after one last shake of her head at Gregg to indicate her annoyance. “We’ve discussed it and we all think you should stop and see if your family are around as we head north.”

“I don’t,” Becky said brightly.

“She doesn’t, the rest of us do and outvoted her,” Cass added with a wide smile of her own.

“Why bother?” I asked. “It will just add on more time and increase the danger.”

“Mate,” Pat said in his usual quiet voice. It had some emotion behind it this time though, not that I could make out what it was. “All of us have pretty much zero chance of ever seeing any of our friends or family again. You have the chance, however small. We’re going.”

He seemed to be taking a firm stance on the issue and as I glanced at my other friends and Becky, they all wore their agreement openly. Finally, I shrugged.

“It’s a small place called Glencaple on the river Nith,” I said. “To the south of Dumfries itself.”

“Show us on the map,” Lily said and waved at a large paper that covered a portion of the bed.

I crossed over to join them and looked down at the map. It wasn’t the best I’d ever seen and looked like it had been ripped from an atlas. Few roads were shown and the majority of the names on the map were for cities and the occasional town. I found Dumfries on the map and located the river Nith which flowed down to the Irish Sea and pointed to a tiny dot next to the river just a short distance from the coast.

“There.”

The five of them all peered down at where I pointed and then exchanged looks. I considered reminding them that I’d said it was pointless but thought it best not.

“Will be awkward,” Cass said as she tapped at her chin with one finger.

“We can follow the roads up through the Lake District easily enough,” Lily said as she traced her finger from where we were at Lake Windermere, all the way north to the edge of the district. “Keep going north to the coast will be easy. A lot of villages and small towns that we can avoid, plenty of countryside to walk through.”

She stabbed her finger down at the place on the map where the land met the sea. “Here is the problem,” she said as she traced her finger to the east, following the coast until it curved back around.

“We can’t cross the bay without a boat and that’s unlikely but if we follow the coast we’ll have to keep running into towns and villages, and here,” she tapped the point on the map where the coast curved around to the north before moving back west. “Carlisle.”

“It’s not quite at the coast,” Gregg said as he peered down at where her finger rested.

“Close enough that the area is likely swarming with the undead,” she said. “Then you have the river Eden that comes inland from the coast, forks in two. One of those forks goes straight through Carlisle, the other is north of that. Neither of them will be easy to cross and to do so we will need to be near the city.”

“You know the area?” Pat asked.

“I’ve been to Carlisle a few times,” she admitted. Her eyes met mine briefly before dropping back to the map. “My boyfriend was interviewing for a job at the hospital there so we visited to check the place out.”

“How big a city is it?” Pat asked.

“Hundred and ten to hundred and twenty thousand people,” Becky said and all eyes turned towards her. She grinned, “What? I was a journalist, there’s no end to the useless stuff I know.”

“Easier to just bypass it entirely and go straight north,” I said.

“No,” Lily glared as she shook her head. “This is happening so get used to it and help us figure a way to make it work.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “We’re all happy that we can’t use the roads because they are likely swarming with undead. We’ve seen them growing in number since the winter weather changed to something milder, yes?”

Each of my friends nodded agreement and I smiled as I stabbed down on the map with my finger. “This is the M6 motorway. It passes right past the city and meets up with several large roads. If, and it is rather a large if, the undead haven’t spilt out into the surrounding area around the city, then we still have a motorway full of them that we will need to cross.”

“We can’t swim the bay since at its narrowest we’re looking at about a kilometre in width and the river Eden is anything from fifty to a hundred metres.”

“What’s your point?” Lily asked.

I looked down at the map and touched a point on the coast just to the north-west of where we were on the island.

“My point is that it would be better to try going this way,” I said. “Work our way up the coast and around. It will add some time on to the journey but we will meet less of the undead than if we head straight towards Carlisle.”

“There’re villages all the way up the coast though, that’s a lot of places with dead people that will be trying to eat us,” Gregg said.

“We can avoid them fairly easily compared to the hundred thousand in a city,” I said. “Also, we have the chance of finding supplies, a boat or a village that has managed to survive the initial wave of zombies.”

“Like Coniston,” Lily said thoughtfully. She pored over the map as though she could already see the possible survivors. “A small village with plenty of rifles and perhaps even boats to escape the first zombies… they could be surviving by fishing the sea and using the local farms.”

“Anything is possible,” I agreed.

“I don’t know,” Becky said. “It’s a long way around.”

“We will move quicker on the beaches and cliff tops than we would through the hills further inland,” Pat pointed out. “We’ve seen how the zombies hate moving water. They avoid the lake so I doubt any will be wandering along the beaches.”

“Perhaps,” she said. Her gaze was distant as she considered the options. I decided that perhaps it was time to provide a little extra incentive. Since Lily was so determined to go this route, I might as well make it as easy as possible.

“There’s also an airfield just about here,” I said as I pointed to a spot on the map midway between the coast and the city. “If we can’t find a boat by the time we get this far north, we can always head inland and check that out.”

Her eyes lit up as her mouth widened into a true smile and she beamed at me. “Really?”

“Sure, just because you crashed your last plane, there’s no reason not to let you try again if we can find another,” I said.

“No need to be an ass about it darling,” she said too sweetly with malice in her eyes. I grinned.

“Alright,” Lily said before anyone else could reply. “So that’s the route decided, what about supplies?”

“Backpack each,” Pat said. “Two-litre bottle of water, enough food for a few days, change of socks at the very least, torch, basic first aid kit for each of us, map if possible, compass and our weapons.”

“I think I’d like us to have a number of set places to meet up if we get separated,” Cass said. “That way if anything happens we know that everyone will meet at the same place.”

“Makes sense,” Lily said. “We have one map and a pretty crappy one but we have spare paper so we can do a rough copy for each of us. We’ll figure out a number of places to use as rendezvous points.”

“Pencil and paper,” I added. “May as well take them with us. I don’t want to have to open a vein if I need to write a message.”

I remembered all too well how frustrating it was back at the beginning when I was separated from the group. It was as much luck as anything else that had me find everyone again.

“We’ll need some basic utensils for eating,” Gregg said. “Some bin liners will be useful for any number of things. Matches, batteries, hand sanitizer if we have any.”

“Anything else?” Lily asked as she looked at each of us in turn.

“A little salt, bleach and maybe some duct tape,” I said.

“Bleach?”

“To help purify water.”

“These bags are going to be heavy,” Pat said. “With weapons too, it will be a lot to carry.”

“Necessary though,” Lily said with a sigh. She looked around at each of us and nodded to herself. “Right then, we have a route and idea of supplies. Let’s get everything together, we leave at first light.”

Chapter 4 - Lily

At the top of Lake Windermere, there sat a town. Like many of those we’d had to trek through on our desperate search for safety all those months ago, it had fallen to the undead. Its houses were empty, the streets and open spaces devoid of life. All that remained there now were the zombies.

We’d often discussed whether or not to try and scavenge from its lifeless shops and homes but had, in the end, decided against it. Too risky. It sounds strange to say that since we had often visited Windermere, a town overflowing with the undead. But there it was, Ambleside was off limits.

What it did have in its favour was the wide river that passed through it. In fact, most of the great lakes that made up the Lake District were connected by a series of wide rivers. Toby, a man who had lived in Windermere all his life was confident that he could get us a good distance through the district via those rivers. Which was a good thing since the roads were fairly packed with roaming undead.

As the sun rose above the horizon we gathered on the docks and said goodbye to our friends, our community. Each of us had been allowed our pick of the jackets and coats which meant that we all wore something waterproof and warm.

The backpack was already digging into my shoulders as I leant forward and wrapped my arms around Gabby. She would be in charge of my people while I was away and though I had a great deal of faith in the former veterinarian, I still worried.

“It’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Go and find help for us.”

I smiled and brushed away the tear before it could fully form in my eye. Foolish I know but goodbyes always make me cry. I could see that I wasn’t the only one either. Cass had red-rimmed eyes and gave a quick wave before allowing Pat to help her into the boat.

Gregg was already sat in the bow beside Becky, distracting himself with asking her questions while she answered in a distracted manner as she waited impatiently for us to be off. She was the one who had been pushing for this since Ryan had pulled her from the wreckage of her plane months ago.

That man himself, the sometimes distant man who I cared so much for, stood on the edge of the dock staring across the lake. I very much doubted he had anything other than a dry eye but I walked over to join him anyway.