Road to London: City of the Dead

XIII – August 1st

It had taken much longer than expected to prepare before the group were ready to start walking. Luckily there were the eight hiking bags in the Land Rover boot that hadn’t been used until now. The bags were laid out on the potholed tarmac and were steadily filled with the supplies that were absolutely essential. They had been laden with the most space efficient food, the camping equipment and the tools that had proven themselves as indispensible.

In front of the bags each member of the group put their respective weapons. The two sawn-off shotguns had been assigned to Israel and James, despite a cruel joke from Israel stating that Katrina should be entrusted with one based on the “serious tekkers” she had displayed using it earlier. Upon hearing this Kat burst into tears and wrapped herself around James, who was the nearest boy at the time. He comforted her and gave Israel a disgusted glare over her shoulder. Upon close inspection James concluded that the weapons were Beretta SO10 twelve bore shotguns. Very Expensive. He claimed that if the owner had seen what the group had done to these guns he would have killed them himself!

The hunting rifle, an Austrian Steyr Mannlicher Custom .300, was handed to Nathan, on the grounds that it only required one eye to use the scope and that he would probably be almost useless with any other firearm. The long, solitary weapon suited Nathan and it would definitely be appropriate for his and Hiya-kō’s scouting missions. There were only forty .300 calibre rifle rounds that the group had found before they’d needed to leave the Bettle House but Nathan would certainly see the limited ammunition he had put to good use.

After scrubbing the gore off of the handle, Conrad had taken on the Smith and Wesson Model 64 .38 revolver that had previously belonged to Will. Aside from the five bullets left in the chambers, Conrad had found another eight in what was left of Will’s jacket. He mentioned something about his dad having had owned an identical handgun back in Texas and that he’d been allowed to mess about with it during the holidays when he went back to America. The fact that a teenage boy had been allowed to “mess about” with a lethal weapon was a mystery to James but then again, it was no mystery that the United States was a peculiar place.

James knew that back at home, one of Conrad’s favourite pastimes was getting involved with the U.S. Army Rangers Cadet program. This was heavily influenced by his dad’s status as a major in the Rangers. His father had served in most of the United States’ conflicts over the last twenty years and had been a career infantryman. Conrad had yearned to follow in his father’s footsteps and had attained the rank of Cadet sergeant by the time he was fourteen. James suspected that this was where the majority of Conrad’s invaluable leadership skills and tactical know-how had come from.

Along with Hiya-kō’s elusive Nambu (that hadn’t made any kind of appearance during their most recent battle) the group was now in possession of five firearms as well as their melee weapons. James swiftly calculated that between them they had fifty-eight twelve bore shotgun cartridges, forty .300 rifle rounds, thirteen .38 pistol slugs and five 8mm rounds that he was sure in Hiya-kō ‘s hands wouldn’t run out any time soon. That meant that using guns, the group could potentially dispatch only one hundred and sixteen Dead. Naturally the ammunition would have to be heavily conserved and unless the situation was dire the guns would have to take a backseat to their conventional hand to hand weapons.

Looking over to his left James noticed that Hiya-kō had also picked up the composite bow. She apparent thought it was fitting that she should carry the weapon of the boy who had payed dearly for attempting to molest her. There were sixteen carbon fibre arrows in a plastic, zip-up quiver on the floor near his corpse that Hiya-kō slung across her back. James wondered to himself if she could even use a bow and arrow but then realised this was Hiya-kō, the girl who they fondly nicknamed Gogo after the mace wielding Japanese schoolgirl from the Kill Bill series. Of course she could use a bow and arrow.

From the same corpse Latiwa had picked up the machete and the brown leather sheath. James was surprised to see her holding any weapon other than her dusters but after fighting enemies who could use weapons of their own, even Latiwa had realised that just her fists might not be enough to keep her safe anymore.

When everyone had packed their bags and set down their weapons, it was time to get suited up. The group hadn’t had an armed conflict where they’d been appropriately dressed since before Bunnerton. Dragging his gear from the boot James quickly shoved some soccer shin pads on over his jeans and pulled some skateboarding shields onto his elbows. He also wore a pair of shin pads on his upper arms. Though only made of cheap, flimsy plastic and a thin layer of foam, the pads were almost impossible for a Dead to bite or claw through using just their teeth and fingernails.

On his hands he donned a pair of rugby gloves. They helped a lot to stop Mildred from slipping out of his hands when they unavoidably became covered with sweat. Next he used a headband that he used to wear for rugby matches to hold the shoulder length, light blonde hair out of his eyes. He had been given it by his sister years ago and though wearing bright pink headgear had made him the centre of some of the rugby clubs casual banter he didn’t care. His sister. Where was Jodie right now? The oldest person the group had encountered who was still alive was twenty so it was possible that his eighteen year old sibling hadn’t Died.

It was strange knowing that he was travelling closer to her every day, to the city where she had been studying medicine at Imperial College London University. Of course had she survived the initial Deaths the chances were that she had succumbed to some other horrid fate since the eleventh of July were overwhelming. With such a vast and dense population that day must have been unimaginably terrifying. He could only hope that she had reached one of the strongholds that they had been told about such as at the BBC Broadcast Centre with Jamie the Post-Apocalyptic Anchor and others.

Though only brother and sister through the complex system of adoption, James couldn’t count the number of times people had asked the two if they were twins. Where James was handsome and broad Jodie was pretty and curvy. Without a boyfriend James often shivered at the thought of what she was getting up to at uni. She was smart like him as well, smarter in fact. If anyone could stay alive in that urban hellhole where they were headed right now it was Jodie.

Most of the group had people who they hoped were still alive. Conrad had his three younger sisters back in the U.S. Israel had his brother who had been carrying out his national service in the Promised Land. Nathan had his sister whose location was currently unknown to them. Katrina was an only child but had a multitude of cousins who lived in Southampton, the next stop on their journey. All of Svetlana’s brothers and sisters back in Russia were too old to have survived the Deaths but she had mentioned a childhood friend who was studying in London, similarly to how she had been at St. James’. Latiwa had over ten siblings all within the “Survival” range as Jamie had called it. They were spread all over the English speaking world, from Canada to New Zealand at different boarding schools. An experiment the Nigerian government had paid for her family to take part in. No one had any idea about Hiya-kō’s family. She never said anything about them which wasn’t unusual as she rarely said anything about anything.

Thinking back to the task at hand James hung a hockey stick case over his shoulder that would serve to hold Mildred when he wasn’t using her. Holding her still didn’t feel right after he had used her to smash a living human being around the jaw. In the rush he had left his black hiking boots back at the Bettle House so instead he had to make do with some comfortable Nike trainers. His dark green T-shirt and khaki trousers would do just fine as they were, on night missions he would usually wear his black Superdry hoodie but it was far too hot during the day. Since the Deaths the days seemed to be getting progressively hotter and the nights colder. Evidence that not just the colour was off.

Fully dressed he turned to the others. Israel was out of his pyjamas and had happily put on his Metallica T, his spiked leather jacket and his chained black jeans. Though Israel wore no pads or protective equipment to speak of, there was an ornamental steel plate on the knee of his left jean legging that James had seen him smash a Dead’s nose in on more than one occasion. At his waist was the skulled belt he almost always wore that doubled up as a bottle opener for those instances when he would come across an unopened bottle of Carlsberg Export or Budweiser. At the moment Israel was using a small comb to re-shape his spiked Mohican.

Next to him Latiwa stood fully prepared as well. Rather than letting her dreadlocks hang free, she had tied them up into a brown and lime ponytail. Like James, she was wearing a pair of Nikes upon her feet, though unlike James these shoes had been paid for by the Nigerian Olympic Team and had been custom made for her gym sessions. Along with these she wore a short beige skirt over some tight lycra shorts. On top she had on only a cropped, yellow, vest top and over her mouth she had pulled on her piece-de-resistance, a strip of cloth with intricate holing stitch work that formed the frightening image of a sharks’ mouth. Though illegal to wear in official bouts, she always used this lower face mask when she knew there was some less-than-legitimate brawling to be done.

Nathan, in his “Anarchy” shirt, ripped skinny jeans and black leather Converse high tops wouldn’t look out of place on among any group of Goths. However, he was a fearsome sight with the handmade leather sheaths that held his Ghurkha knives were over his shoulders. Though the burns on the left side of his face were showing no signs of receding, the colour had settled at a shade that was only slightly pinker than his skin tone. While he had been recuperating Svet had shaved away all of the burnt hair so now his long, glossy black hair fell only on a single side of his face. He too was wearing skateboarding pads on his knees and football pads on his shins. It was a trend that half the group had adopted and stuck to after realising its worth. On his hands he was wearing some black, fingerless gloves that he had used to use in the Winter to role cigarettes.

Svetlana was dressed pretty much as she always had. She had on her Russian designer white hoodie and a black mini-skirt, with some stocky trainers on her feet instead of the daps that she would’ve been seen wearing after school back at St. James’. The only conversions she had made were a pair of hockey pads on her shins and a couple of belts across her chest that held the most important medical equipment she needed: drugs, bandages, scalpels and the likes.

Katrina looked more like she was going to the beach than trekking across a treacherous landscape. She was wearing her favourite Summer dress and a pair of knackered sandals that looked as if they were about to fall apart before James’ very eyes. She had that carefree expression on her face that he found so attractive. A face that showed her ability to look past all the shit that she was surrounded by and look forward with hope. That was part of what made her so amazing and James had to force himself to pull his gaze away from her.

He walked over to Hiya-ko, who was stuffing food into a rucksack and began helping her by holding up the bag as she pushed. Unbelievably, she was still wearing her school uniform. Instead of the white button shirt she had on a T (that displayed a violent anime scene that James supposed was the album artwork for some Japanese rock band) but aside from that and her shoes she was still the image of a St. James’ student. Her navy blue blazer was ragged now and under her skirt she had tied some throwing knives to the inside of her thighs but even her hair was partially tied up into a knot behind her head so that only some of her silky black hair fell to her shoulders. Though her sword was belted and sheathed at her side her gun was hidden from view, probably in her jacket or somewhere or up her skirt.

***

The group had been walking for over three hours before they saw the first Dead of what they would later call “The Long Walk”, it was a group of three strolling down the centre on the road. It was uncommon that James would ever see Dead in numbers this small, he reckoned that the other members of this family had either been killed by humans, other Dead tribes or that they had been sacrificed for food. The thing about Dead was that they became hungry very, very quickly. It had been long established that the Living were a delicacy. More often than not the Dead would fight other clans to the death and the victors would feast. One of the lads James had met back in Cardiff had sworn that in the first few days he had seen two villages of Dead having a full out war.

The Dead were pack animals and usually hunted in squads of ten to fifteen. After spotting some of the extended families sticking together back in Bunnerton James had concluded that pre-Death familiarity definitely had an effect on the Dead’s behaviour. Of course there were also the Hordes but those were rare and James had noticed that herds larger than twenty were almost always led by Tall-Men.

Tall-Men, such as the Dead Nathan had encountered back in the Bunnerton Tesco’s, were just one of the various sub species the group had encountered since leaving St. James’. At first they’d just assumed that the Tall-Men were just people who were freakishly large before the Deaths and that the natural human alpha male mentality had put them in charge. But after witnessing some Dead who were over eight feet tall and built like absolute tanks it soon became apparent that it had to be some kind of mutation.

They weren’t just big though. While the vast majority of Dead seemed to feel pain normally and died from any injury that would kill a normal human, the Tall-Men took a lot more to bring them down as Nathan had found out the hard way just a few days ago. They had only come across Tall Men a few times, probably because the group tended to stay away from areas where Hordes were likely to roam. James shuddered whenever he remembered the first time they’d ever faced one. That had been a truly horrible night. The night when it truly hit home that they were living in Hell now.

Drifting back to the present he watched the Dead pick up the pace as they neared the group. Conrad and Israel, who had taken the fore, were putting down their heavy packs and were about to ready their weapons when James put one of his hands on each of their shoulders. “I’ve got this one lads!” he proclaimed confidently. Conrad gave him a confused look, James was never eager to throw himself into the fight so why was he volunteering now?

James set down his things and slid Mildred out of his bag. Putting it on the floor for a moment he took a Ritalin from his back pocket. Crushing the pill in his left palm he used his right index finger to hold his right nostril closed and crudely snorted the white powder up his left. He instantly felt the hit that had caused the British government to brand non prescription Ritalin a Class B drug. He licked his fingers and them flexed them as the rush flooded his extremities. He picked Mildred back up and pushed past Israel to get a clear run at the Dead.

The world slowed down as the rest of the powder diffused into his nasal artery, the attention boosting properties of the drug boosted tenfold when taken in this unorthodox manner. He turned in slow motion to Katrina, who was ambling behind the rest of the group so as to stay as far away from the Dead as possible. He knew that snorting his pills creeped her out but ignoring this he looked into her eyes and smiled. She met his gaze for a moment and then looked away when she saw the white around the edge of his nose.

Un-phased by this, James walked a few metres towards the Dead, who had paused and were clearly assessing whether to risk a frontal assault against a group so large. By the way two of them had their hands on their stomachs James could tell that they were starving. As soon as they saw him break away from the pack they began to encroach, slowly first but then at a run.

As was usual, one of the three was considerably faster and came away from the others. It was a young man with a shaved head and a pair of chequered pyjama bottoms on. As it sprinted into the danger zone James took a short run up and swung. The bat struck the Dead right in the temple, his enhanced focus meaning that his aim was bang on perfect. The Dead was taken off its feet as if it had been close lined and landed awkwardly on its neck.

Compared to the other guys in the group James had a relatively low kill count and sometimes they (especially Israel) used it against him. They let off the girls simply because they were girls but James had no excuse. He wanted to use this opportunity to prove that he was as deadly a killer as the rest of them. And like all heterosexual men who have ever done anything dangerous , it was partly for the girl. In his current doped up state James concluded that this display of horrific violence would somehow impress Katrina. He needed to get one up on Conrad, the pretty boy who everyone looked up to as if he was some kind of God. James knew that Kat still liked Conrad and he also knew that Conrad still liked her, but as long as neither of them knew that then he still had a shot.

The second Dead, a woman in her early twenties, dived at him at full pelt. She would have tackled James around the neck if he hadn’t ducked and rolled forwards so that she didn’t land on him. He heard a crunch as she overshot and face planted into the ground behind him. Still in a state of slow motion James saw the whole world flip three hundred and sixty degrees as he completed the roll. The forwards momentum helped him spring to his feet and as he did so Mildred caught the final Dead about the legs. It wailed as its shin shattered and its kneecap split. James finished the swing with a golfing follow through that put the fat, middle aged man flat on his stomach.

Before he had a chance to put in a finishing blow, the girl was back on her feet and was tearing towards him. James picked his moment as she stumbled over the fat Dead who couldn’t get up for its mutilated legs. He hit her under the chin with an upwards blow. Mildred didn’t smash through her jaw and into her skull as he’d intended but the strike made her head snap backwards and her neck cracked. Her body collapsed onto the fat Dead, pinning it to the ground. Now with the Dead between him and the group, James managed to catch Katrina’s eye once again. This time she didn’t look away. He couldn’t tell if she was impressed or horrified but their eyes stayed locked as he put in the final blow to finish the job.