The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) (36 page)

Corporal Peters grabbed my arm again, I winced I was going to be black and blue very soon “The Colonel is coming back here?”

“Yes,” I nodded my head.

“That might not be possible,” Phoenix said and we both turned at his words. He had switched from the Bee-in-the-SKY to the Epsilon Command Drones that were still out and about. It wasn’t just a few rouge Twice Dead that were out and about, there were hundreds of them, no thousands would be more accurate. Fuck.

“They are driving blind,” Phoenix said from his vantage point at his computer, his fingers lightly going over the mouse pad as he steered his Bee-in-the-SKY, keeping it airborne, “They won’t stand a chance, they’re heading for a grouping of Twice Dead.”

“We have to try and help them,” Corporal Peters said, “Shit we have to help them!”

“How?” I said helplessly, “What can we do here; we’re miles away from them?”

“Radio,” we turned, Adag was standing at the door, for how long I don’t know, but obviously, enough time to understand what was going on.

Of course! Mitch’s military radio.

“Phoenix bring your computer into the office! NOW!” I shouted and this time I grabbed Corporal Peters arm, “Can you get them on the radio?”

It took a moment for him to register what I was saying, but seconds later we were all in Adag’s office and Corporal Peters was frantically fiddling with the knobs as Phoenix plugged in his computer.

“Get Seb and Paul,” he said without looking up from what he was doing, “I need their help.”

Adag swiftly left the room. It gets a bit hazy for me after that. I remember Corporal Peters using the radio, his head bent forward next to the mouthpiece, his knuckles white as he gripped it.

“Alpha Delta to Sunray!” Corporal Peters barked into the radio mike, “Alpha Delta to Sunray!” It seemed to take forever; I remember that the world around me sounded hollow and empty. I did hear people speaking, but I wasn’t sure who was saying what. My eyes were on Corporal Peters and the radio, which for the moment was deader than the Twice Dead.

Corporal Peters twisted various buttons on the radio, his fingers moving almost as fast as Phoenix’s on the computer keyboard. I wished we had Private Salter with us, he was a communications geek.

How much time passed I don’t know, but Wolf’s voice suddenly came over the airwaves. Loud and clear. He was alive. I was surprised how relieved I was. Really surprised.

“Sunray to Alpha Delta,” his voice was clear, calm, though I suspected he was probably shitting himself privately. I knew I was.

“Colonel you are flying blind,” Corporal Peters spoke rapidly into the radio, “Heading into more trouble.”

“Get on the dual carriage way,” Phoenix said, “Look for signs for the A233, keep on that road; it will take him to the village of Linton, it’s clear of Twice Dead for the moment.”

Corporal Peters relayed the message. I realised that Adag had wheeled Paul into the office and he was wedged next to Phoenix, his hollow face animated and alive. He had what looked like a silver remote control in his hand. He was clicking on it.

My hearing seemed to come back to normal; I heard a crunch of wheels. It was Seb.

“Our dish needs more power for the Bee-in-the-SKY,” Phoenix said without looking up from his computer screen, but he was aware that Seb had arrived, “Can you link it to the solar generator?”

“On it,” Seb said and swung his wheelchair away from the office and shouted for Gabe and Percy to help him.

I had to leave the office; I had an urge to remove myself from the gravity of the situation. I saw Percy and Gabe running out after Seb into the garden. I heard them shouting. I moved to toward the dining room doors to see what they were doing. They were trying to move the generator. It had long cables, but it needed to be moved a good fifty feet in order to be in line with the satellite dish on our roof. It had taken six of Wolf’s men to get it off the truck and into place.

“Cass, Stevie!” I shouted, “Cass! Stevie! We need your help!” They came running along with Eden and Jasmine who had been in one of the furthest bedrooms clearing it out.

Seconds later, we were all outside with Seb shouting orders as he unhooked wires and gathered them up.

Between all of us, we managed to carry the generator to its new place. It wasn’t easy but we did it.

“Hurry!” Seb shouted as he began to jam plugs and wires back into place into the generator, he had a huge black cable wound over his arm, one of the ends had a round three pronged plug socket on it which he pushed into the back of the big machine, the other end was the polar opposite with three thick metal prongs coming out of moulded black rubber, “Eden, Jasmine get the ladder from Mitch’s garage!”

The girls had no idea what was going on, but the sense of urgency compelled them to obey. It was a heavy ladder, big, but between them, they managed to carry it from the garage to the front of the building.

The ladder was swiftly put against the wall and raised up to the overhanging ledge that lead to the home’s satellite dish. Seb held out a long cable with the separate socket on it, “Someone has to go up there and plug this into the black box by the satellite, not the grey box, the black one.”

“Oh God,” Gabe said his face draining of colour, “I can’t do heights.”

“Me neither,” Percy said his face equally as pale, “We both have really bad vertigo, that’s how we met, at a Vertigo Support Group.”

I almost burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. I grabbed the plug off Seb.

“Hold the ladder,” I said to the two men. I tied the cable around my waist and grabbed the sides of the ladder. My leg brace is made of a special kind of plastic, flexible and luckily not heavy.

I hopped onto the first rung and moved upwards, I didn’t look downwards, just upwards. I was terrified and I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull myself onto the ledge, which was some 15 feet above us.

The ladder had been custom made for the building so it had two thick metal hooks that were now wedged into a purpose made concrete lip in the wall so it was pretty stable, but that didn’t stop me thinking about how high up I had to go to get on the roof itself.

My hands grasped the top of the ledge, my fingers feeling the gritty coldness of the stone, I felt them slipping, oh shit, I was going to fall! My fingers came away from the ledge, but I was moving upward, not falling as I expected, I felt myself being pushed on the bottom, hard, and Stevie’s voice, shouting to me, “Grab the railing Lucy!”

I saw the railing sticking out of the roof, just under the other side of the ledge, my hands flayed about, but I managed to grab it and then I was scrabbling onto the roof, thankful I had my trousers on, but I still scraped my legs through the cloth and it hurt like a bitch.

The roof of the home where the Satellite dish was flat and gravel covered. As I got up, I unwound the cable from my waist, and then Stevie was behind me, pulling the cable with me as it was heavy and we were running, or rather I was hopping toward the dish and the boxes.

Two boxes, one black, one grey. Black box. It was sealed. I almost screamed, but Stevie was on his knees in front of the black box and seconds later it was open and I saw the point in which to push the plug.

I couldn’t have done it without Stevie, it took both of us to force the plug in and then Stevie rushed back to the edge of the roof.

“It’s in Seb!” he shouted.

“Go to the grey box!” Seb shouted back up, “Push all the switches from green to red, do them three at a time!”

Once again, Stevie had to help me get the grey box open. There were about thirty or so switches. Three at a time. Seconds later the satellite dish began to rotate.

“Tell Seb the dish is moving,” I said to Stevie. He relayed the message and we got a reply that this was OK.

Stevie turned around to me and said, “I can see the coach.”

Coach? What coach? Oh of course, Mitch and Private Jasper. Thank God!

Ten minutes later Mitch was up the ladder, his face ashen. To my surprise, he hugged me and then hugged Stevie.

“Go back down;” he ordered us both, “I will deal with this now.”

The thought of having to use the ladder to go down to the ground made me feel ill. Stevie took hold of my hand and said kindly, “I will help you Lucy.”

And he did.

In the office Corporal Peters was relaying information to the Colonel whilst Phoenix told him where the Twice Dead were. The army convoy had moved off the dual carriageway and were now on B roads.

              “How many made it out?” I heard myself ask. Private Jasper was at the window with his revolver, which he was loading. He looked up at me.

              “Seven down, two slightly wounded, but not by the Twice Dead,” he said.

              I felt sick.

              “Who?” I said. I thought of Private Salter, and my stomach churned.

              “No idea as yet,” was the response.

              “The Twice Dead are following them,” Phoenix said from the computer, “They are moving a lot faster.”

              I moved to the screen and looked at the Drone footage that was running alongside the Bee-in-the-SKY on Phoenix’s computer screen.

              The once shambling Twice Dead were moving faster than the last time we had seen them. Men, women and children, and the Sentinels, moving their troops along, following the survivors of the Birenchester attack, converging from all directions.

It reminded me of a couple of blockbuster Zombie movies I had seen on YouTube. The Twice Dead weren’t as fast as they were, but they had certainly increased their speed from the last lot of footage we had viewed.

Evolving. They were evolving.

              “You need to get everyone inside now,” Private Jasper said as he snapped his revolver into his holster and started to check his rifle, “Everyone in the cellar who isn’t able to handle a weapon of some sort.”

              I turned to Stevie, Cassidy, Eden and Jasmine who were hovering nearby. Jasmine had picked up on the urgency of the situation and surprisingly had not tried to get Corporal Peters attention. She looked at me and I gave her a reassuring smile.

              Gabe and Percy looked at me questioningly.

              “Take the dogs girls,” I said to Eden and Jasmine, “And go into the cellar, Cassidy, Stevie, get Mitch and tell him you need to go to the store room for the things from the Sports Shop, he will know what you mean, tell him to find something for Gabe and Percy.”

              Stevie and Cassidy hurried away. I heard Cassidy asking Stevie what was wrong and Stevie saying that bad people were coming.

              “We want to help too!” Eden said.

              “You’ll help by looking after the dogs,” Gabe said and added before she could start to argue with him, “They’ll be frightened, take them downstairs and keep them with you.”

              “We need Phoenix and Paul here in the office,” Corporal Peters said from where he was sitting, he was now loading his revolver whilst waiting for Wolf to request further information, “They are our eyes and ears.”

              I nodded my head and limped to my room where I retrieved the Glock along with three rather large boxes. I hadn’t looked at them properly; just glanced under the bed and saw they were there.

              I pulled them out; two were much larger and heavier than the other. To my surprise, one was a box full of Glock cartridges and a spare Glock whilst the other two were filled with 60 green M67 hand grenades.

              There was a note on top of them, written by Wolf I think for it said, “
I really hope you don’t have to use these, just pull the pin out and throw them as far as you can, please remember to then drop to the ground and cover your ass.
”

              I laughed even though nothing was really funny at that moment.

              Private Jasper’s face was a picture when I showed him the grenades.

              “Don’t ask,” I said and then I loaded my Glock and went to find Mitch. He was with Cassidy, Stevie, Gabe and Percy in the storeroom, he had given them all cricket bats and I was surprised to see that lying on the table behind him was a samurai sword.

              He saw me looking at it and he smiled faintly, “My Grandfather bought it back from Burma after the war, a trophy, never thought I’d ever have to use it.”

              “Where’s Seb?” I said suddenly.

              “He went to the garage; he said he had to change over his chair.”

I went to find Seb. He was coming out of the garage in Lewis. He was strapped into it from the shoulders as well as around his waist I noticed.

              “I was going to give Mitch this,” I said handing him the spare Glock “But he has his own weapon.”

              “I don’t know how to shoot,” he said as he gingerly took the gun off me.

              “Neither can I,” was my unhelpful reply, “So learn fast.”

              “Fuck,” I showed him how to load the magazine then explained how to fire it.

              “You have 17 cartridges in each magazine,” I said, “You need to aim for the head.”