Ridgetown (Book 2): Neighbours Read online

  Ridgetown: Neighbours

  A sequel to Ridgetown

  Philip Radford

  www.philipradford.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Copyright - About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Helen looked through the scope of her rifle. She panned it slowly from left to right, squinting slightly whenever the sunlight reflected off a surface. She followed the outline of the buildings, looking for any window or doorway that could frame a zombie. She fought the urge to speed up as she moved from one building to the next, battling to stay methodical.

  “Anything?” Mark kept his voice low so not to startle her.

  “Not yet. Have they seen a Leaper before? Could it have just been a big zombie?”

  “I’m not sure. If we don’t find anything I’ll show Ant some photos of the Leaper and see if it looks like what he saw. Either way, we need to check it out. We need to know one way or the other.”

  Helen lowered the rifle, frustrated at not being able to see anything. “Yeah, we better had.”

  Mark took his mobile out of his pocket and checked the website’s basic map of the area. He zoomed in on the pin that marked their location, currently sitting in the middle of a red square on the grid.

  Since setting up Ridgetown’s secure Internet connection, Helen and Luke had worked nonstop turning Luke’s idea for Ridgetown’s website into a reality. They had spent countless hours programming it between them and although it was still a work in progress, the website was live and seemed to be working. The website was split into three main sections; News and updates, different zombie types, and the map.

  The map was still quite a small area at the moment, focusing on a very local area to the South of Ridgetown but it was expanding every day. The map borrowed a satellite image of the area and overlaid it with a grid, each square capable of being updated by an administrator from the website or a visitor who set up their own account. Each square in the grid was either shaded green if it was confirmed as a safe area, left grey if there was no good or bad info about the area or shaded red if it was a confirmed danger zone. Safe areas consisted of areas that contained a well-barricaded safe house or areas that had been consistently zombie-free following multiple checks. Squares were marked as danger zones if there had been a significant number of zombies spotted, there had been a recent attack on a building or a special zombie had been spotted.

  So far it was just Helen and Luke updating the map via the website, Mark had shown an interest but finding time to sit him down and explain the process was near impossible.

  It had been two months since the battle for Ridgetown but the effect on the community still lingered. Mark had said that he didn’t expect everything to go back to normal straight away but had hoped that it would feel more normal than it did at the moment, not that normal meant anything anymore. There were so many unanswered questions that people struggled to find closure. There hadn’t been a sighting of a horde anything like the size of the one Ridgetown had had to defend itself against that night and there was no clue as to where it had come from or why. That made people feel uneasy, not knowing if the town had done something to attract them and residents were scared they would attract another one. The first few days were tense but people had slowly started to relax, moving all the corpses had helped.

  “I’ll leave it as a red zone for now, just until we check it out properly. Let’s go.”

  Helen nodded and got into the passenger seat of the Mark’s car. It was the same car that she had gotten into when they had first met, now sprayed black with tinted windows to make it more stealthy. They headed slowly towards the buildings that potentially housed a Leaper, Mark ready to react if they actually spotted one. Their mission today was a scouting one, identify if there was a Leaper in the area, not engage if they did find one.

  Helen scanned the surrounding houses as they passed, trying to imagine which ones would make good candidates to be reinforced as safe houses. She looked towards the top of the buildings to try and judge if they had an attic or how difficult it would be to attach scaffolding to. She looked at how close the detached buildings were to each other. Some of the houses looked like they would be hard to barricade to an impenetrable standard but could be used as access points to other buildings, like the pub was to the church near Ridgetown. That was an idea Mark was keen to develop, entrances separate from the main buildings.

  “Do you want to swing by and see Dennis while we’re out? We’ve still got a couple of hours of sunlight left.” Mark asked.

  “Yeah please, I spoke to him yesterday through video chat but it feels like I’ve not seen Scott or Ishaq for a while.”

  Helen felt bad each time she was asked if she wanted to visit Dennis and Scott because it was never her asking to go, it always seemed to be someone else’s idea. She rationalised that they could quite easily come to Ridgetown to visit her, it didn’t always have to be her making the effort, but Scott was still meant to be taking it easy on his leg and although Ishaq claimed to be fully recovered, Helen still saw him wince sometimes if he overexerted himself. Both Mark and herself had offered to stay at their safe house while their health improved but Dennis maintained that their time and efforts would be more valuable helping to rebuild Ridgetown.

  Mark stopped the car a few metres from the looted convenience store where Ant had claimed to have seen the Leaper. All the glass was missing from the large windows along the front of the building and from the electric doors that were permanently open. The sign above the door was blackened by smoke damage from a fire that had burned out most of the entrance. Mark hated to think about all of the useful supplies that could have been lost in the fire and probably had been in other stores. He and Allister had visited the building soon after they had begun gathering supplies for Ridgetown and found the place already picked clean, it hadn’t been clear whether the fire had been ignited maliciously or through some electrical fault but it had looked to have been contained to the entrance. Fire damaged buildings were part of the scenery in the new world as they were allowed to burn without any emergency services to stop them, spreading until the weather stopped them or the fires simply burned themselves out.

  The thought of Allister pulled at Mark’s gut. They had searched for him extensively following the attack on Ridgetown but hadn’t found any trace of him. No one had heard from him since he had transmitted the message that Ryan had died in the car bomb. Initially, not finding his body amongst the charred remains of the car bomb’s victims had been reassuring to Mark. At first, Mark thought it meant he was still alive and he was hiding somewhere nearby but as one day turned into one week without any sign of him, Mark began to fear he was dead. They had swept the area to see if they could find the remains of his body but that also turned into a worthless task. Mark thought he knew Allister quite well and knew that he wouldn’t have just turned his back on Ridgetown. He had gotten angry at Helen when she suggested that Allister had got scared at the size of the horde and run away. Mark had shouted at her saying that Allister wasn’t a coward and wouldn’t have left everyone behind, later apologising for his outburst and putting it down to worry. Every day that passed reenforced the possibility that Allister had been injured and run for cover, only to succumb from his injuries before he got any help. Even that possibility troubled Mark who had pointed out that there were no trails leading away from the horde th
at would support that idea.

  Helen and Mark got out of the car and waited, listening for any noise to suggest that they weren’t alone. Mark left the car running in case they needed to get away quickly but when nothing moved, he switched the car off to listen even closer, even though the car was close to silent thanks to Scott’s stealth modifications to it.

  They looked at each other and Helen shrugged.

  “You wanna go in?” Mark asked.

  Again, Helen shrugged.

  “I’m going in…”

  Helen shrugged a third time.

  “You gonna do that all day?”

  There was a tense moment of silence from Helen as she considered the question carefully. Then she shrugged.

  Mark led the way, opting to carry one ice axe and a torch. Although it was still light outside, the inside of the store was shrouded in darkness. Indoor lighting was nearly nonexistent following looting. Power apparently still ran to some of the food displays that could be seen through the missing windows, however even some of those had fallen victim to looters, intent on destruction.

  The instant destructive nature of some people once civilisation began to fall apart was something Mark had found most disturbing about the apocalypse. It was as if the collapse of society had given permission to some people to drop all pretences of decency, as if they were now allowed to do whatever they wanted without the fear of facing repercussions.

  He turned the torch on before he reached the entrance, Helen following carefully, making sure she stayed alert of anything that could be creeping up on them outside. There was a dripping noise coming from inside the store, irregular but loud and echoing. Broken glass crunched under Mark’s boots and he paused after every couple of steps to see if the noise had disturbed anything lying in wait.

  He looked back at Helen who was still scanning the car park outside with her back to him. Both of them were poised ready to run for the car at the earliest sign of trouble. If Ant was wrong and all he’d seen was a large, low level zombie, they could take care of it and declare the grid as safe on the map. If Ant was right and there was a Leaper inside the store, they were going to bail. They’d already agreed not to even attempt to take it on with just the two of them in an area they weren’t familiar with, it wasn’t worth it.

  “Nothing yet, you comfortable heading in?” Mark whispered.

  Helen nodded without looking at him, taking one last look around outside. The front of the store was their only definite entrance and exit, trying to find another route to escape from would be putting their survival in a possibly nonexistent fire exit and they both knew better than to do that. Helen and Mark had turned into a formidable team when it came to scouting out potentially dangerous areas as well as during raids.

  Helen worried that Mark would compare her to Allister since he had been gone, she had seen how well the two of them worked together and the mutual respect they had for each other as well as listening to the stories Mark and Luke had told since he had disappeared. She felt like she had big shoes to fill and made sure she did her best to fill them.

  Helen unclipped her ice axe from her belt, she’d recently started using the same gear as Mark when they went out, more out of habit than a conscious decision. She was lighter on her feet over the broken glass but still looked for the shortest route over it.

  Once inside, they stuck together closely. Moving along the first isle closest to the broken windows and still considerably well lit from the outside. As soon as they reached the bottom of the isle, there was a stark contrast in light levels. The end display’s light flickered, dark coloured mush that used to be fresh fruit and vegetables had degraded and poured over the edge of the shelving and onto the floor creating a sticky patch that looked a lot like dried blood. The flickering light gave a yellowish tint to the surrounding shelves, mostly bare apart from the odd crushed box.

  Mark moved ahead and peeked round the corner, mentally preparing himself to come face to face with a Leaper.

  Darkness stared back at him.

  The sound of the dripping had gotten louder and Mark allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness, his pupils dilating in an attempt to reveal whatever was currently hidden by a blanket of blackness. Mark held his arm out behind him with his hand flat to indicate to Helen he hadn’t decided if it was safe yet.

  Helen stayed as quiet as she could, not wanting to distract Mark’s hearing. When there was no other sound than the dripping noise, without turning round he gave a thumbs up and continued walking. Helen let him walk a few steps before following incase anything jumped out. It was one of the tactics they had talked about as they tried to evolve their survivor habits, not just as a means of self preservation.

  Mark was used to going out as part of a team of at least three people and was still getting used to going out as a pair with Helen. It seemed counterintuitive as he had always preached to Ridgetowners the importance of going out in threes. One person to have an accident, one person to stay with them and one person to go and get help. Whenever he gave the speech before a raid, Ishaq always volunteered to be the person to have an accident.

  Initially they had stayed as close to each other as possible when exploring a new building. It had proved effective in places that had lots of branching corridors, like hospitals, allowing them to travel back to back and give them a three hundred and sixty degree view of any danger. It was only when they had been in a warehouse and Mark had kicked a zombie into a stack of shelves and the shelves had collapsed towards them that they had considered the risk of them both being injured due to being in such close proximity. Now they judged each place they went to separately and improvised the distance they would keep between them. Occasions like this were when Helen would hang back a bit. If anything attacked Mark she could jump in and help but if he suddenly became overwhelmed and there was no chance of saving him, she had a head start if she needed to turn around and run. Not that Helen would ever run, whatever the odds of survival.

  Mark peeked down the next isle as he had done the first. Being methodical had been working for them so far and although it took a while, it was better than taking their safety for granted and running into trouble. They continued checking each isle, using it as an opportunity to look for supplies even though they both knew there was nothing left.

  As they moved further away from the front of the store, what was left of the light quickly diminished even further. Their eyes adjusted as much as possible to compensate but, even with the aid of Mark’s torch, they struggled to see more than a few feet in front of them. Helen’s brain was telling her that it was time to turn round but they drove on, the lack of danger so far supporting the idea that the store was deserted.

  Mark found himself following the dripping sound almost hypnotically, seemingly getting louder as the store got darker. There had been no other sounds to suggest they had company but Mark wasn’t going to take that for granted. He stayed aware of his orientation within the store, ready to make a break for the exit in a moment’s notice. The search for supplies had now been abandoned completely due to the concentration needed, not only to stay safe, but also to try and see where they were going.

  Mark kept the light from the torch moving, making sure no corner was ignored. He swept it along the floor looking for any obstacles they needed to avoid, then swept back to eye level to see what was closest to them. Satisfied they weren’t going to walk straight into anything if they kept moving straight ahead, Mark shone the light up towards the ceiling of the store.

  Movement followed by the clunk of something falling over startled Mark. He cursed out loud and nearly dropped the torch, causing the beam to dance in the air in front of him. His sudden jerking made Helen jump, startling her. She felt embarrassed at being frightened but knew Mark hadn’t seen her which allowed her to feel slightly better.

  “What the hell was that?” Mark asked, darting the light from the torch all over the ceiling as he looked for whatever had made him jump.

  “What do you think it
was?” Helen asked.

  “I don’t know. But we need to find out.”

  They sounded like famous last words but Helen knew he was right. They were here to find out whether this area was safe and they weren’t going to do that by running away from whatever was inside the shop without first finding out what it was.

  Mark tried to picture in his head what he had just seen, his short term memory fighting with his imagination. It was too big to be an animal, although it seemed too out of proportion to be human. From the glimpse he had of whatever it was, it seemed to have long arms and legs whilst being quite skinny. He wondered whether it could have been a monkey of some sort. The nearest monkeys were at a safari park twenty miles away, that’s assuming they were still alive and hadn’t escaped. An escaped zoo animal seemed like a long shot. It had been weeks since he’d seen a cat.

  They zig-zagged down the last couple of isles, the freezer cabinets against the back wall signalling they had reached the edge of the shop. Mark followed the ceiling with the torch slowly, mentally tensed, ready for a jump scare. The dripping was right in front of them now and as Mark followed the ceiling he found a corpse hanging from the ceiling, arms and legs pinned to the roof although it was impossible to see how. Mark froze on the spot, completely forgetting about Helen until he heard a gasp behind him. He kept the torch centred on the body that had had all of its flesh stripped of, leaving a human shaped tangle of red body parts drooping down like a sick flag attached to the roof. Mark fought back the urge to be sick and lowered the light from the torch, following a drip of some kind of fluid from the corpse into what lay below.

  Underneath the body was a pile of body parts, human and what had clearly been zombie parts. there were arms and legs sticking up in varying degrees of decomposition. Although the body parts were strewn all over the floor, there was something slightly structured about the way they were laid out. Bits of intestines were strung across bones and under ribs protruding from half of a chest cavity. The limbs that were laid on top of those mostly pointed upwards and out in a rudimentary circular shape.