The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) (40 page)

              I decided to go and sit in the coach, I didn’t want anyone’s company and I was now feeling pissed off. I had just started to hoist myself up onto the first step when they rolled out from under the coach.

              Two severed heads.

They must have been caught in the under carriage of the coach and now that the coach was standing still, gravity had taken its toll.

              “Bloody hell!” I heard myself scream and I jumped backwards, my bad leg gave way and I landed on my arse, scrabbling backwards from the gruesome deposit only inches away from my boots.

              Nearly everyone came running. Jasmine screamed when she saw the heads on the grass, she grabbed hold of Eden’s arm and buried her head into her friend’s shoulder. Eden surprised me by not screaming too, she just looked at the heads on the ground as she patted her friend’s back and said with a twitch of her nose, “Uggh! Stinky fruit!”

              Cassidy was munching on a pear and didn’t appear too perturbed either. I heard Adag gag, and Corporal Peters say, “Fuck,” whilst Seb edged Lewis forward to get a closer look. Percy and Gabe both grimaced; they quickly picked up their dogs and held them tightly in their arms, trying not to retch. Stevie didn’t react. He had seen far worse.

              Mitch found a fallen branch from a tree nearby and gingerly prodded at the heads, which made them roll again.

              “I wonder if they are anymore under there?” he said as he looked at his coach.

              “We can’t do anything with them,” Private Jasper said abruptly. He wouldn’t look at me. He was angry with himself I suspected.

Good I thought savagely.

              “Well we can’t just leave them there,” Mitch snapped, “We need to either bury them or burn them.”

              “Do you know how hot a fire would have to be to burn a skull?” Seb said, “As hot as Dante’s inferno, we’ll have to bury them, great!”

              “They were people once,” I said softly as I looked at the heads, a male and a female, the heat of the coach undercarriage had burned their faces, but they were still recognizable as being once human. Their lips were pulled over their teeth in a crispy grin, but I could see the female head had once been a blonde-haired woman. There was a small patch of her hair, near her forehead that was surprisingly untouched. I couldn’t tell what colour hair the male had once had; only that he possibly had a beard, as the front of his face was blacker in the chin area to the upper part of his face.

              “I’ve got a shovel in my van,” Mitch said and he went off to get it.

Adag took the girls away to sit with Paul. Seb called Cassidy over to help him put more pine-cones on the fire and Gabe and Percy went to see if Phoenix had located the Colonel with the Bee-in-the SKY.

              Private Jasper and Corporal Peters hovered nearby waiting for Mitch to return with the shovel. Stevie came over to me and helped me get up. He was quiet, and I patted his arm.

              Private Jasper took the shovel off Mitch, the older man didn’t stop him and he stood with the rest of us as he dug a large and deep hole and then with the shovel, pushed the heads toward it and then into it.

              They rolled gently into their final resting place in the damp earth and it was at this moment Stevie turned and ran to the water’s edge. He gathered several handfuls of wild flowers that were growing on the bank and he hurried back to the hole that Private Jasper was about to fill in.

              He dropped the flowers onto the heads. The white flowers fluttered gently into the hole until the skulls were totally covered. Private Jasper began to shovel the earth back into the ground. He had put three lots of earth into the hole when Corporal Peters barked out, “What the hell is happening?”

              The earth that Private Jasper had dropped into the hole was moving, shaking in fact, Private Jasper jumped back, we all did. I would have fallen over again, but Stevie grabbed my arm to steady me.

              The dark earth was bubbling, it reminded me of the blackened crust that grows over red-hot lava as it starts to cool, there was a strong smell of burning flesh, and then the white flowers began to rise to the surface, pushing through the dirt and I got a distinct smell of…oh my God, wild garlic!

              Stevie had dropped wild garlic flowers onto the skulls in the hole! We all watched, mesmerized as the earth bubbled upwards, the white flowers eventually turning black as they mixed with the dirt, water from the lake and of course the skulls in the hole.

              When the bubbling stopped, Private Jasper moved cautiously over to the hole, as did I. Stevie still had hold of my arm, he peered around me, not sure what had just happened.

              With the shovel, Private Jasper prodded the earth, it was soft and sticky, he pushed it in deeper and lifted out a small amount and we all scrutinised it. Chunks of a skull bone glistened up at us amid the sloppy dirt, the flesh on the skulls was gone and there was a strong smell of burning wild garlic in the air. It was surprisingly not unpleasant though it was strong.

              “That stinks!” Eden shouted from where she was sitting with Paul and Eden and she sneezed.

              “Holy shit,” Private Jasper whispered, “Holy fucking shit!”

              “Now do you believe us?” I said. I didn’t add that until right now, I had no idea what the wild garlic would do to the Twice Dead, but now we did, though we still didn’t know enough.

              Private Jasper shoveled more dirt onto of the now still mound and ten minutes later, the hole had a layer of rocks on top of it. Mitch went to wash the spade in the lake.

              Corporal Peters and Private Jasper were checking under the coach and the other vehicles to see if any other body parts had got stuck where they shouldn’t have. Miraculously they hadn’t.

              I got into the coach and limped to the back of it, near to where Lewis would normally be locked into. I sat down on a seat and hunched my body forward, resting my head on the seat in front of me. I stared at the plastic matting on the floor. Grey, with bubbles, easy to keep clean.

              I think I must have dozed off because I suddenly jerked forward, wide-awake because my name was being shouted. I got up so suddenly I went dizzy and had to sit back down again. I got up successfully the second time around.

              I scrambled out of the coach. I saw that everyone was surrounding Phoenix who was sitting cross-legged on the grass with his computer on his lap and I knew that something was happening.

              I limped over to my companions. Private Jasper and Corporal Peters were crouched beside Phoenix, Eden and Jasmine were holding hands, for once not chattering away like two magpies.

Stevie and Cassidy were hovering on the periphery whilst Adag had Paul in his manual wheelchair, wrapped up warmly and in the sun. Beside them were Percy and Gabe who were holding their dogs in their arms. Seb was craning his neck to look at the computer screen with Mitch at his side, his hand resting on the back of Lewis.

              Private Jasper looked up and saw me, “The Bee-in-the-SKY has located the Colonel,” he said tightly, “They are driving right into a whole heap of Twice Dead type trouble.”

              “Shit,” I said my stomach turning over, “Where are they?”

              “About 15 miles from here, in a village called East Dean.” Private Jasper said, “They have had to stop there to refuel, but the Twice Dead aren’t far away and they are trying to get hear via a road going south, but everywhere is pretty much blocked with even more Twice Dead, they are screwed.”

              “If only they could hear us,” Corporal Peters said in a frustrated voice, “Can you let them see the bee?”

              “They don’t know what it is,” Mitch pointed out, “They might try to bring it down like we did with that Drone.”

              I instinctively looked upwards, and Phoenix said, “There are no Drones here, no Twice Dead to monitor in this part of the world.”

              “Are there drones following the Colonel and his people?” I asked.

              “They were,” Phoenix said, “But the Colonel switched off the GPS linked to the Drones, they have no idea where he is, we only do because we contacted them on the military analogue radio, COBRA stopped monitoring military analogue signals about five days ago, all their outside military units are now working on digital.”

              “Short sighted of them,” Mitch commented, “But it works for us,”

“Is the Colonel’s analogue radio still working, Phoenix?” Paul spoke for the first time.

              Phoenix looked up, “More than likely,” he said, “But I can't contact them, we don’t have a signal strong enough, it was different in the home, we could bounce off the Septimus Analogue Tower which is still working, but it’s out of range now.”

              Paul smiled and slowly pulled one of his hands out from under his blanket, in it was a USB stick, he held it out, his hand shaking slightly and he said, “Use this.”

              Adag took it from him and handed it to Phoenix who without question pushed it into a free USB slot on the side of his computer. There was a soft whirring noise, the screen changed slightly, and Phoenix began to tap certain keys.

              “What is it?” I heard myself ask.

              “A booster for this,” Paul’s other hand came from under his blanket and in it was a simple black walkie-talkie, nothing like the military ones we had been using to keep in touch with each other, these were the type you can buy online or in any good quality electrical shop, “The program turns digital signals into analogue signals, and it is encrypted, I thought we just might need it.”

              Corporal Peters and Private Jasper looked at the young man stupidly. They were trying to process what he was trying to tell them. I almost laughed aloud, but this was not the time and place.

              Phoenix’s fingers flew over the keyboard, “Very interesting Paul,” he said a few minutes later as we all waited in tense silence, “It works.”

              “Of course it works,” Paul replied and he held out the digital come analogue walkie-talkie to Corporal Peters, “It has a full charge, there is a solar battery on the back of it to help keep it going, you will need to find the channel the Colonel is on.”

              Paul spoke in a matter of fact voice and Corporal Peters took the radio from him, staring at the dying young man sitting in the manual wheelchair before him. Adag put her hand on Paul’s shoulder, her eyes were full of maternal pride, “They are not useless eaters,” she said, “They are more than that, all of them, and don’t you ever forget it.”

              “Thanks Bud,” To our surprise Corporal Peters reached out and took Paul’s hand, which was still held out and gripped it. Paul didn’t smile, but he gripped Corporal Peters hand back, and slowly, ever so slowly nodded his head.

Ten minutes later Corporal Peters was speaking to the Colonel. The convoy was about to leave East Dean with their vehicles filled with diesel from a petrol station on the edge of the village.

I don’t remember much of the conversation between them, I was glad to hear Wolf’s voice crackle out of the walkie-talkie. He didn’t sound panicked, I think he was well beyond that.

              “Ask him if Duke and Charles have survived,” I instinctively said.

              Corporal Peters was smart enough not to say that these two soldiers were Command Central plants, instead he asked for the casualty list. If the Colonel was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. Charles was one of the seven dead, but Duke was one of the survivors. I felt a surge of relief when Private Salter’s name was not mentioned as one of the casualties.

              “Damn!” I said under my breath.

The Colonel had managed to get Zimmerman and his family out safely, the three children, and their Grandmother. The baby was still ill but she appeared to be improving.

The only way for the Colonel to get to the safety of Brocklease Bunker was by doing what we had already done. Go through the Twice Dead, literally.

Phoenix was using the Bee-in-the-SKY to see where the least amount of Twice Dead were, but they were converging from all sides on the Colonel and the only way through was for the convoy to run a gauntlet even more horrific than the one we had gone through on our way to the bunker. The thought made me feel sick.

We at least had been encased in metal, but Wolf and his people were in canvas covered trucks albeit ones with metal cages under the canvas, but they were still exposed. What they had to their slight advantage was that their vehicles were made for war. The front of the trucks had bull bars on them, but big didn’t necessarily mean maneuverable and speed was a factor too. What they gained in certain areas, they lost in others, like us with the flimsy catch on the coach door.

“If they can get to the borders of Ashby Forest,” Phoenix said from his computer, “They should be safe.”

Corporal Peters relayed the message. Wolf didn’t question why they would be safe if they managed to get to Ashby Forest, which was on the borders of the Brocklease Bunker, but I knew why Phoenix had directed the Colonel to the Forest, it was well known for both its bluebells, copious fields of wild garlic and another lake.