Ridgetown (Book 0): Rising Read online

  I attacked again with the drill, this time driving the drill deep into its leg. The head was still too hard of a target so I wanted to at least slow it down a bit. It shrieked with a sound that could have been anger or pain, I didn't care as I pulled the drill out and drilled into the other leg. I heard a horrible scratching noise as the drill bit went through the leg and scratched the bodywork of the car.

  I stepped back, expecting it to fall to the floor but it didn't. If anything, I had just made it angry. It dived towards me and I pivoted behind the steps, letting it carry on going as I dashed towards the car door. I pulled on the door handle and opened the driver's door. I jumped in and pulled the door shut behind me.

  I lay across the driver's seat and the passenger's seat with the handbrake and the gear stick digging in my back. I could see the thing outside turning its head from side to side looking for me, I wondered whether it had seen me dive into the car.

  I slowly sat up and leant towards the driver's door, I carefully pressed the button to lock the doors. A faint thump indicated that the central locking had engaged all the locks, this faint thump was all it took to alert the thing outside to where I was.

  It leapt towards the car, slapping its hands on the metal and head butting the glass. With its face so close, I could see a thick layer of white film over its eyes. I wondered whether it was blind or at least partially sighted, whatever it was didn't make it any less dangerous. It head butted the glass again, harder this time, which made me decide that I probably shouldn't give it many more chances.

  I fumbled around for the keys from my belt and unclipped them, I started the car and the engine revved to life. I put the car in reverse as it head butted the glass again, shattering it this time. I brought my arm up to my face instinctively even though I had already felt glass brush my face. I dropped the handbrake and floored the accelerator as it leaned in, turning the wheel clockwise so that the car turned away from the thing. As it slipped out of the window, it tried to hold on but its hands slipped off the bonnet.

  I'd scraped the front of the car on the garden wall because I'd started turning so early but it would match nicely with the drill marks from before. With the car now off the drive and on the road, I straightened up and carried on reversing, the thing ran out onto the road and began to chase me. I saw its strides get bigger as it ran, after a couple of huge strides it leapt into the air towards the car. Still rolling back, I changed into first gear and tried to go forward to avoid it but the rear wheels just span as the car fought for traction. The zombie landed on the bonnet with a loud thud that shook the front of the car, the tyres suddenly gripped the road and we lurched forward. Even though I wasn't convinced it could see me, it seemed to stare right at me with a horrific scowl on its face. It let out a hissing sound from its throat, its mouth wide open baring its teeth which looked jagged and broken making them razor sharp.

  I saw a lamppost to my right, so before I picked up too much speed, I jerked the wheel towards it. My aim was perfect as the car crumpled into the lamppost. My body jolted forward in the crash and I hit the steering wheel with my chest, I felt winded but didn't think it was anything serious. My head ricocheted off the A-pillar, my vision went black for a few seconds. I didn't have time to be injured. Crushed between the lamppost and the car, the thing flopped forward, it wasn't moving but I'd seen too many scary movies to leave it there.

  I tried the driver's door but it wouldn't open. Then I remembered I'd locked the door, I unlocked it and tried again successfully. My chest hurt making me cough as I stood up when I got out. I calmly walked to the back of the car and popped the boot. I rooted round for the wheel brace that was attached to the inside of the spare wheel and unclipped it. It was flat at one end like a crowbar, something I never understood but right now greatly appreciated. I glanced round the front of the car but the thing still hadn't moved. I calmly walked to the front of the car and without hesitating drove the sharp end of the wheel brace into the back of the thing's head.

  Exhausted, I turned around and walked back towards the house. I left the keys in the car but it wasn't running. I wasn't sure if it had stalled or stopped running due to the impact, all I could think of was going home.

  My chest still felt tight and my arm was hurting again, it was the sharp pain I felt when I had first fallen from upstairs into the dining room. My head felt fuzzy, as if the whole world was a bit more distant than usual. I wondered if I looked like a zombie, struggling to walk straight and probably more than a bit bruised. I was aware of movement down the road, something moving slowly towards me, but I didn't need to rush.

  I felt like I was in shock, struggling to process what had happened. It seemed that, in an instant, I had gone from taking charge of the situation and rescuing someone who needed my help, to failing that person and fighting for my life. It hit me that I had felt strong and confident when I had gone to help Karl. I had felt scared nearly the whole time since this thing had started but for those few moments earlier, I had actually felt optimistic and positive about the situation. Whether it was because I was helping someone or whether it was just because I knew someone else had survived, it gave me hope.

  But now, now there was no hope.

  I made it to the ladder and picked it up, my arm protesting at having to work. I set it up and slowly began to climb, I struggled to keep my balance even though I was always holding on to something. When I reached the top, I clumsily climbed up onto the roof and pulled the ladder up with me, cursing as I struggled. I glanced round at the carnage on the street and the creature lay slumped over the bonnet of my car. I realised I'd left the driver's door and the boot open but I didn't care. I started to turn my head to the right but stopped as the mutilated corpse of Karl began to creep into my peripheral vision, I winced at the sight.

  I counted three zombies slowly starting to converge on the house, one might have been heading towards Karl but I didn't want to check. I needed to get inside. I didn't want to consider the idea that there could be more of those fast ones out here.

  I left the ladder on the roof, resting it in the gutter to stop it falling over the edge, and made my way back to the bedroom window. I felt the overwhelming urge to rest, a part of my brain worried that I could have concussion from the crash and tried to remember if it was dangerous to fall asleep with a head injury. However, that part of my brain was a lost voice amongst the overwhelming urge to go back inside, crawl onto the bed and fall asleep. At that moment, I didn't care if I woke up.

  I crawled in through the window and collapsed forwards onto the bed. Lying there, facedown on the cool covers, I thought about cleaning up my wounds but couldn't bring myself to get back up. My head span ever so slightly and my mind raced at one hundred miles an hour but I could feel sleep drawing me closer. The moans outside sounded hypnotizing and I could feel myself slowly slipping into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 7

  When I woke up, I instantly started panicking. I felt like I had lost consciousness from banging my head in the car, but managed to stay awake just long enough to get myself to safety. I got up slowly, my whole body ached and my arm pulsed with a dull throbbing pain. I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, my face looked dirty and I had a few spots of blood spattered on it, but I couldn't see any serious injuries. I ran some water in the sink and had a wash. I struggled taking my Polo shirt off, I had to hold my arm straight up but I found it hard to keep it above my head. My shoulder felt like it was going to pop and when I saw it in the mirror it was surrounded by bruised skin. Just seeing the purple and green colours made me wince, it looked really bad and I worried that it should have hurt more.

  Cleaned up, I looked a bit more human. I went back into the bedroom and picked up a bottle of water, as I started to drink, I became even thirstier. I finished one bottle and immediately opened another while I dug around the bag of plasters and bandages. I pulled out any boxes of tablets that looked like they would kill pain and took a handful of them. I thought about bandaging
my shoulder up to support it but didn't have a clue how to do it.

  I glanced at my phone on the table and noticed the light blinking, indicating I had a missed call. I stared at it for a few seconds before the realization dawned on me and I rushed over to it. I fumbled with it as I tried to swipe the screen to unlock it. I had a missed call from my mum's mobile and a voicemail message.

  The message was about thirty seconds long and was mostly banging and shouting, there were voices in the background that sounded like my mum and dad as well as other people. I couldn't make out exactly what they were saying apart from my mum shouting my dad's name a few times. The raised voices were drowned out by other loud noises before the call cut off for no reason.

  I immediately tried to ring back. I must have tried the number thirty or forty times and got the; "The mobile you are calling is switched off" message every time. I tried my dad's phone but that was just answered by the three beeps I was getting yesterday.

  I looked at the time stamp of the phone call and it was from six hours ago, I looked at the time now and saw it was nearly 14:00. I tried to work out how long I had been asleep, probably four or five hours. I must have missed the call when I was outside.

  They were still alive, if they had made it this long then they surely would still be alive right now. I grabbed the routeplanner map and studied it as best as I could. The caravan was around 240 miles away.

  I couldn't take the car because it was pretty banged up and still half wrapped round a lamppost. There was a push bike in the garage that I had been using to keep fit at weekends, it'd be useful but I physically couldn't ride it all the way there, it'd take days and I'd be nearly dead by the time I got there. Judging by the state of the street, there probably wasn't going to be a clear road to anywhere. I needed to borrow someone's car to get me as much of the way as possible and take the bike with me to use once I got stuck.

  I grabbed a backpack from the study and started to fill it up with stuff, I threw in what I thought would be the essentials;

  Torch, bandages, water, fruit, bread, a couple of tins of tuna, the charger and spare battery for the drill, my laptop, phone and laptop chargers.

  I felt the weight of the bag and, although it wasn't too heavy, I decided that after a few hours with it on my back it would be heavy enough. Some of the stuff was digging into my back so I put a couple of T shirts in to pad it out a bit. I picked out the biggest kitchen knife I could find and put it in the side pocket of the bag.

  As I was going to be taking a car, at least to begin with, I decided to take another bag of things that would be useful but I could abandon if I needed to. I used a duffle bag that was in a wardrobe in the bedroom and filled it with more food and water, tape, the dumbbell bar I had used the other night, more knives and a few tools from the toolbox.

  I went out onto the roof again and headed to the front of the house to get the ladders. Thankfully they were still there, they hadn't fallen off or been clawed off by either of the two zombies that were staggering round the front of the house. I collected it as quietly as I could and headed to the rear of the house again. My shoulder ached as I carefully opened the ladder up and lowered it down into the back garden before carefully climbing down it.

  I stood outside the patio doors and looked inside, it was quite dark with the boards over the front windows, but I could make out the shapes of the furniture inside blocking anyone from coming in. I was quite pleased with how I had protected the house and hoped that my parents had managed to do something similar.

  I got my bike out of the garage and rested it against the gate in the fence that lead out onto the driveway. I climbed back onto the roof and collected the bags from the bedroom, putting the main one on my back and gently dropping the other one onto the ground next to the bike. I felt like I should be taking a house key, but mine was attached to my car key which was still in the car.

  As I stood on the roof looking out, I surveyed the car, it definitely didn't look like it was in a driveable condition any more. I looked at the drive next door, they had a small hatchback that would do the job. I wanted something small that I could weave through small gaps if I needed to and something economical that wouldn't need refueling every five minutes.

  I headed back inside and grabbed a claw hammer. I also wrote a quick note I could leave in next door's house saying I had borrowed the car, but I would bring it back. I kept it short and wrote in big letters in black marker so they would see it straight away.

  I've borrowed your car, I promise I'll bring it back. (Number 26)

  I folded it up and put it in my pocket. Even though it was bright outside, I put my black hoodie on and wore my hood up. I wanted to keep this as brief and as inconspicuous as possible.

  Chapter 8

  I sat on the roof and looked at the house next door. The front of our houses were exposed to the rest of the street and the gap between the houses was too far to jump. Both our house and next door's mirrored each other, they had a long driveway with a garage at the end, the bottom of the garden wrapped round the back of the garage meaning there was a single fence separating the two gardens. It was a tall fence panel, roughly eight feet high but it was easily climbable by using the reinforcing beams of wood as steps.

  I spoke to the neighbours quite regularly, they were a nice enough family who had moved in a few years ago. Marie and David had moved in when Marie was pregnant. They were newly married and they were a nice couple who introduced themselves straight away when they moved in. My mum and dad were quick to volunteer my help with their moving in, saying that they were too old to do any lifting but I could help.

  I went round a few days after they moved in when my dad had volunteered me to help David fit his surround sound system for the TV. I didn't know anything about installing speakers but I went round anyway, I just needed to be shown what to do on one set and I could repeat it on the others. David turned out to be quite a good teacher, I ended up understanding exactly what I was doing to each speaker and what difference it made to the overall system. The afternoon ended up being more fun than I expected, which turned into an evening of playing on his Xbox to test the set-up.

  Marie frequently came round for a gossip with my mum, which I always thought was nice of her as she was closer to my age than my mum's. I got the impression Marie didn't have a great relationship with her family and it wouldn't be unusual for her to come to my mum for advice about work or plans they had for the house. She seemed genuinely interested in my mum's opinions and took them onboard. She even went for a promotion once, based on my mum's suggestion, and was thrilled when she got it. I'd see them talking at the gate for a spontaneous conversation and knew it wouldn't be long before my mum invited her inside. Sure enough, Marie would come in for a drink and they'd spend the next hour in the kitchen talking.

  My dad was just as bad with David, if either of them saw the other one working on their car or doing some DIY, it would be as though the other could sense it and he'd be round offering to help.

  It wasn't really a surprise when they had Julie and asked my parents to be Godparents. My mum and dad were overjoyed and jumped at the opportunity. It was quite a small gathering at the church and my mum insisted on putting on a spread for everyone at our house afterwards. Some of David's family came but I wasn't aware of anyone from Marie's side.

  When Julie was a baby, my mum and dad would babysit to give David and Marie a night to themselves. My mum loved having a baby in the house, I'd usually try to make myself scarce by going to a friend's house and stopping over. I was under strict instructions not to come home in the early hours and wake Julie up, I didn't mind though because I could see it made them happy.

  Now she was older, my mum would go round and sit in to look after her while they went to the cinema or to a concert. Julie was a pretty bright kid, she was always happy and polite. I didn't realise our street had kids on it until they started coming round for parties.

  I'd seen the three of them heading out somewhere the other
night, they were all dressed up smartly as if they were going for a meal or something. I'd not even thought about them until now, not thought to try and see if they were okay.

  I scaled the fence and dropped down into their garden. I was right at the bottom, round the back of the garage, so I wasn't visible from the house yet. I had the hammer in my right hand, but held it behind my back as I stepped out into the garden. The last thing I wanted to do was freak them out by having them look in the back garden and see someone wearing a hoodie and holding a hammer.

  Their house was bigger than ours, it was built as a two storey building compared to ours which was a bungalow that had been turned into a two storey building. However, like our house, theirs had a dining room with a large patio window and door that opened out onto the garden. It was too dark inside to see anything properly, the curtains must have been closed, blocking out most of the natural light coming in through the front of the house.

  As I couldn't make out any definite shapes, I looked for movement. I stared for a couple of minutes, but when I didn't see anything I moved slowly towards the door, hoping that it would be unlocked. I didn't expect it to be, so I was surprised that it was. I carefully and quietly slid it open and stepped inside.

  I stood at the open doorway, ready to jump back outside and slam the door shut if anyone or anything rushed towards me. After a few moments without any noise or movement, I hesitantly made my way in and towards the front of the house.

  Like us, their kitchen was at the front and looked out onto the street and I knew that they kept all their keys in a bowl on the kitchen table. I could see the practicality of always knowing where your keys were by always leaving them in the same place, but I always preferred to keep my keys as close to me as possible, so I was prepared for an emergency.