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  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Paul manoeuvred us up to the Saltwind and we tied the Hope to the back, or were that bow in boat talk? We could see the three guys inside, they looked quite shaken, but they were alive and unharmed. I didn’t want to shout out in case we alerted the rotter to our presence.

  We didn’t want to take the risk of bringing another three people on board the Hope; the boat was already listing quite badly with all the extra weight on board. Paul had already cut our engines. Becky had hold of our boat hook and Paul had his gun pointed at the tarp. We untied the Hope and pulled it along the side of the Saltwind by hand so that we were as close to the tarp as we could get.

  I told Becky to lift the tarp with the boat hook on my signal and Paul to be ready with the gun. We’d already crammed the four children into the Cab with Hayley and Babs, but the rest of us needed to stay at the front, in order to keep the boat stable.

  I counted down with my fingers, five, four, three, two, and one. Becky hooked the tarp first attempt and managed to rip if from the Saltwind in one clean action. We spotted Kathy straight away; she was still munching away on Alan’s leg. He was clearly dead or unconscious now; he had probably bled to death from his multiple bite wounds. Then Kathy suddenly turned around, she looked straight at me and then started scurrying towards me on all fours. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes; she looked wild, primeval almost and determined to get to me. She quickly reached the side of the Saltwind and scrambled up the side with little effort, then, she launched herself into the air, like a primate jumping from tree to tree in a jungle canopy. She was heading straight towards me. BANG! She fell to the deck of the Hope, Fuck, no sooner was she down, but she was up on all fours and scurrying towards me again! Then all I saw was the boat hook entering her eye and immerging through the back of her skull. Good girl Becky! Thank fuck! Just in the nick of time, she was less than a foot from me!

  Becky stood on her and prised the hook from her skull. Relief soon turned to sadness though, I was alive, thanks to Paul and Becky, but this little girl was dead, not two years old yet, what kind of fucked up world were we living in?

  Paul and Becky jumped over onto the Saltwind. They approached Alan. Becky poked him with the boat hook, he didn’t move, she went in closer and checked to see if he was breathing and then finally checked for a pulse. He was dead, almost certainly bled to death from his wounds as we had first thought. Liz was lying not far from him. CRUNCH! Becky had speared the hook through Alan’s eye and into his brain, much the same as she’d done with his daughter. Just in case, she said, as she removed the hook from his skull.

  The horrors that this young woman had been through in order to do that to a friend in order to protect us all would have been unimaginable to us all two years ago. But we just accepted it now, we didn’t like what we were becoming, but we had to, it was the way of the world that we were now living in. I couldn’t imagine the horrors my children were going to have to face in their lifetime in order to survive in this world, it frightened me more to think of the life they were going to have than the horrors in front of me now. All I knew was that I was going to do my best to give them the safest, most normal childhood I could and try to build a safe future for them somewhere.

  We decided the best thing to do would be to “bury” the family together at sea. We needed to move fast, it was going to start getting dark soon and we needed to find somewhere safe to spend the night. David and I carefully put each of them into the sea one at a time. David said a few words and that was that, there was no time to mourn, we’d do that later, it was our priority to get moving.

  Chapter Thirty

  David stayed on the Saltwind with Ken and Margret and the other six guys boarded too. We had decided to head for a small village on our map called Bowling. This was the point where the Clyde met the canal system. The map showed a few basins for moorings, so we set a course for them. The Saltwind took the lead with us following closely behind.

  We made it to Bowling later that evening. There was a small man made marina before you entered the first lock at Bowling and into the canal system proper. We decided to moor in the marina that first night and deal with the first lock the following morning when we could see well. It was still pouring with rain. The children were in the two cabs with Paul and David and the rest of us were huddled under the tarps sharing body heat to try and keep ourselves warm. I certainly didn’t fancy spending a night under the tarp.

  There were houses all along the one side of the marina, so we moored the two boats on the far side away from them. There was a small wooded walkway that you tied the boats up to and this walkway was the only way to get to this side of the marina. There were no other boats on our side of the marina, but we could see two on the far side near to a large white building. There was no sign of life, or death for that matter, so John, Becky and me decided to go and check out the two boats. If they were clear of rotters and uninhabited we might at least have somewhere dry and comfortable to spend the night. We weren’t planning on checking out any of the houses after everything we had already been through that day.

  Chapter Thirty One

  We made our way slowly and quietly around the marina via the wooden walkway to the shore side where the two boats were moored, as we got closer we could see that they were house boats or narrow boats, the type that you see on canals.

  John had Paul’s gun and Becky had an old axe and I had a boat hook. We approached the first house boat and carefully climbed aboard. It was quite a long boat, blue and aptly named the Blue Hue. There was a small decked area at the back where we climbed on board. The double doors that led onto the deck were unlocked, so we went inside. We entered into an open plan living, kitchen and dining area. There must have been some kind of disturbance at some point as everything was upside down and in a general mess. The room was clear now though, so we quietly made our way through it to a narrow door at the rear. The door was ajar, so I pushed it open with the boat hook. It led into a bedroom with a double bed, again it looked ransacked as if there had been some kind of struggle, but it was also clear. We could see a small control cab and a larger deck at the front of the boat, but both appeared to be clear too. There was a small toilet and shower room which was open and also clear.

  We all let out a sigh of relief. We exited the boat the same way as we’d entered and made our way to the much smaller boat further along the walkway. This boat, the Gamebird, again had a small deck area at the rear and a slightly larger one at the front. It was all locked up and we couldn’t see inside, but as there was no sign of life, we used the boat hook to prize the doors open. The stench was overwhelming, we all rushed to the side of the boat gagging for fresh air and trying not to vomit. Then we realized we’d taken our eye off the ball, we jumped back into action, and luckily there had been nothing to be seen in the small living space. We waited for some of the fresh air to mix with the stale air inside before entering again. There was a small seating area, a log stove and a small kitchen area with a sink and gas hobs, similar to what you’d find in a small touring caravan.

  There was another small door at the rear of this room. We braced ourselves and opened it. Shit! The stench was even worse, I struggled not to puke all over the place, and John didn’t fair quite as well and spewed where he stood. It was dark in the room as all the curtains were drawn and it was now turning to dusk outside. I strained to see two figures hanging from a beam which ran across the centre of the room. It was a small bedroom with two small bunks at either side of it. The two bodies hanging from the beam were in the early stages of decomposition. One had its head missing and the weight of the body on the second one had stretched the neck to the point the head on that one looked like it was ready to fall off too.

  We were looking at the bodies of a male and a female, the only way we could tell was from the clothing, it was the female that was missing its head. We thought that they must have took their own lives as there was no signs of a struggle and the boat had been all locked up
when we’d found it. I got the impression that it hadn’t been there as long as the Blue Hue, maybe the couple had survived the initial outbreak and had been surviving all this time. I wondered what had made them take their own lives as they’d clearly have had to have gone through a lot to survive so long in this world as it was now. Maybe they had come to Bowling for a reason and not found what they were looking for. We’d probably never know. They were just two more victims of this shit we were living in.

  The male began to move, fuck, he was still alive, well not alive, but a rotter. It was trying to stretch its arms towards us and it was gnashing its teeth like Hannibal Lecter in silence of the lambs! Did these bloody things never stop! At what point of decomposition could they no longer function! CRUNCH! Becky had dispatched it with her axe. She was getting good at this. Becky the zombie slayer!

  We cut them both down and disposed of them over the side of the boat as quietly as we could; it wasn’t a very pleasant experience, I can tell you that! We then set about cleaning up the room as best we could; we all agreed that nobody else needed to know what had gone on aboard the Gamebird.

  There was one thing that was mystifying me though, what had happened to the females head? Maybe it had just fallen off and rodents had consumed it, who knew?

  Chapter Thirty Two

  There were large barge poles on each of the boats for manoeuvring them along the tight canals and tunnels. We didn’t want to try and start them up as we were trying to make as little noise as possible. It was dark outside now, with the only light coming from the moon. We could see the lights from the Saltwind and the Hope on the far side of the marina, so we untied the Blue Hue and used the barge poles to slowly move it around the marina. We had got a couple of the other guys to help by pulling on the boats rope, probably in the same way they had done years ago before these kind of boats had engines. We repeated the process with the Gamebird.

  We felt safer on the far side of the marina away from the houses. The small walkway was the only access by foot to the four boats. Paul and David had had a root around the boats engine rooms and found some tools; they used them to pull up a few of the boards on the walkway so there was no access to us by land at all anymore.

  We soon had the two boats tidied up a bit. My family and I took the double room as there were most of us and we could all squash into the same bed together. Hayley did the same on the Gamebird with her two little ones sharing a bed. John, Amy and Anthony took the living area on the Hue where the seats doubled as beds and Ken and Margaret did the same thing on the Gamebird.

  David said he wanted to stay on the Saltwind, so made himself comfortable in the cab. Sophie and Paul did the same thing on the Hope.

  Maddison managed to squeeze in with Hayley and Becky just crashed out on the floor in the Hope.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  The next morning I woke to the sound of the children playing and the smell of something cooking, beans I guessed at. Babs was still sleeping and Luke and Emily were playing together quite happily with their toys. I left them playing to go and investigate the smell that was coming from the next room.

  Good morning sleepy head Becky said, or should I say good afternoon she laughed. The other three guys were awake, but just lounging about. It seemed that the former residents of the Gamebird had been well prepared for the zombie apocalypse and had managed to gather quite a few supplies. Hence, tinned beans and sausages for breakfast! The other guys are cooking up the same Becky said, come on guys, scrans up everyone!

  We all sat together in the living area and ate and chatted, remembering the happier times we’d had back on the site with the guys that we’d lost on our journey. It was the first time I felt relaxed since we’d been back on our site, we were back in charge of our own destinies and I was looking forward to getting home. But then as always a horrible feeling of sickening and dread came over me, I was very aware again of the fact that I might not like what I found there and the journey we still needed to take to get us there. I hoped I wasn’t putting these guys’ lives at risk in search of something I couldn’t give them, the safety and need to have somewhere to call home. But they respected me and seemed happy to follow me and I was going to do my best not to let them down. There were many small islands on the west coast of Scotland that we could potentially set up a safe home on, but I felt sure I could find the same back in Northumberland and use my local knowledge to make it safer, only time would tell if I’d made the right decision.

  After breakfast we headed out to the rear deck, the guys on the Gamebird saw us and came out too. We needed to decide what we were going to do now. It would only take a few days at most to navigate our way through the canal system and to Falkirk and from there it was a couple of days travel down the coast to the port of Amble. We agreed that staying on the water was our safest option. We had no idea what we’d encounter if we travelled by land and even if it was possible.

  We were going to need to see if the Hue and Gamebird were still able to run and if we had enough fuel to run four vessels as we would need to take the Saltwind and hope with us too as David didn’t think the two new boats were sea worthy enough to cope with the North Sea. So we were going to need them again once we got to Falkirk.

  David and Paul were working away on the Gamebird when we heard them shouting from the engine room. All I remember hearing was Jesus Christ! For fucks sake I nearly shit myself! Then David emerged from below holding a decapitated head by the hair. It was still alive! It was doing the same as the body on the male one had done, gnashing it’s teeth. We found this Bastard moving around using its bloody lips! Apparently it had had a go a Paul’s foot, but fortunately for him he was wearing heavy duty safety boots, another reason to wear your PPE when working I figured, protection from stray zombie heads! The two guys were unaware of the two bodies we’d found on the Gamebird the following evening, so I had to fill them in on the details. David used his best rugby skills and dropped kicked the head far into the marina! Nice shot I thought and somehow found it quite amusing, it was as if we were disassociating these rotters from the human being that they had once been. This worried me, but if it made us tougher, then so be it.

  David and Paul eventually got the Gamebird running after their scare, it looked like it had been running until fairly recently so was still in good shape. The former residents had also stock piled a lot of fuel. It made me wonder again why they’d decided to take their own lives, they seemed so well prepared and had survived so long.

  The Hue was a different kettle of fish altogether, it was well and truly knackered and without access to any spare parts, it was dead in the water.

  The guys said that the Gamebird would be able to tow the Hue, obviously it would take us a longer to get to Falkirk, but we all agreed it was the best option, we had no hurry now and in fact I hoped it would give my brother a chance to catch up with us quicker if he was coming after us. Luckily for us Ken and Margret had been on a few canal boating holidays in their time so would be able to advise us on how locks and stuff worked. This was the beauty of having such a large group of people working together; there were so many more skill sets and knowledge available to us.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  We set off at midday. The noise from us and our engines seemed to be attracting some of the resident rotters from Bowling. We could see them starting to emerge from some of the houses and places along the river side and heading towards the noise. Thank God we hadn’t been for a look around there last night!

  We stuck to the far side of the river. It took us a good hour to get all four boats safely through Bowling lock; hopefully we’d get better with practise as the Bowling rotters were almost upon us. But we were soon on our way at a speedy five Miles per hour top speed. Fortunately, this was faster than the rotters could move, however I couldn’t help but think back to how fast young Kathy had moved on the Saltwind. Maybe they moved faster when they were newly turned and slowed down as they decomposed?

  The Saltwind followed behind th
e two houseboats and the Hope went ahead with David and Becky on board to check for any dangers ahead. A scout ship if you like. However, after a while we realized this wasn’t going to work very well as the noise from the Hope was attracting too many rotters to the canal side before we got there with the other three boats. The canal narrowed quite a bit in places and it was fairly daunting having to go past groups of rotters every so often, particularly in those narrower places. I don’t know if it was instinct or what, but they never stepped from the bank into the water, but I’m fairly sure if the boats had been close enough, they’d have clambered on board, so we stuck rigidly to the centre of the waterways!

  Chapter Thirty Five

  I knew from studying the maps back on the Somerset that the most difficult part of our journey was going to be quite early on. We had to navigate a low lock after which the canal actually goes through the centre of Clydebank. There are many shopping centres that have water features in them, but not many that have an actual working canal flowing through them! And it was just our luck that we had to pass through it. I knew from the maps that there were pedestrian bridges that had to be lifted in order for boats to be able to get under them. I just hoped that we would be able to operate them manually.

  The rural tranquillity soon changed after the first few miles as the canal swung northwards and entered Clydebank. This is where we encountered the drop lock. Normally this lock was manned by British Waterways due to how hazardous it was supposed to be to navigate and we had four boats to get through it and hordes of rotters baying for our blood!