'It looks like the kids are safe, as there's no sign of them and we can now see that the zombies did try to storm the castle,' Janet said. 'Good old Stevie.'
Karen eyed the zombies with disgust. Several of them had a limb missing and others had additionally lost most of their teeth and an eye or an ear. All of them were appallingly disfigured. After a while they seemed to lose interest in the castle and hobbled off back down the hill. Not long after they had turned down a side street into the town, they were caught by the army and taken away.
Karen let out a lengthy sigh. 'What we need,' she said, 'is a plan.'
Graham put in his two-pennyworth first, 'Until the sounds of shooting in the village and the circling of the army lorries have ceased, we're going to have to stay put. That's how I see it.'
'I agree,' Bill said. 'But do we have any weapons, apart from Graham's stick?'
Janet smiled and opened her capacious handbag.
'First, there's this.' She pulled out a flare pistol. 'Come on girls, I know you didn't run out empty-handed!'
'I've got half a dozen more flares,' Sarah said.
'OK,' Bill said, as he pulled a revolver from his jacket pocket. 'It's loaded but I've no spare cartridges.'
'Good going,' Graham said. 'Unfortunately, in the great re-arming of the British public in the fight against the zombies, I seem to have missed out.'
'Well,' Karen said, feeling rather proud of herself, 'I grabbed a scanning radio on the way out.'
'Oh, well done, darling,' Bill said, gently patting his wife on the back. 'The best part of making a plan is finding out what's happening, so we don't blunder into any unfortunate situations.'
'We certainly can't take on the army,' Janet added putting her flare pistol away. 'But we should be able to dispose of a number of zombies, if we come across any.'
'Which we should take great care to avoid,' Bill said.
'Alright,' Janet said, 'let's go see what we can eavesdrop with this scanner.'
Backing off into the undergrowth out of range of being heard, they listened in to the police and army channels. It soon became apparent that once the army had finished 'cleaning up', several soldiers were to be stationed in the village on guard, in case anyone had been missed and came out thinking it was safe to do so.
Janet nodded at that significant piece of news. 'It means we've got to keep low. I just hope how-ever many kids there are up there,' she said, pointing at the castle, know to stay hidden.'
They tuned in a channel for public service announcements, where an ominous-sounding message was repeated: "The coastguard has warned the Kilkorne fishing fleet to stay out at sea until further instruction, or to dock at another port in a medical emergency. A cordon has been placed around the area of the Secure Facility and Kilkorne's borders. Regular army units have been sent in to take control of the area and to capture or destroy any zombies."
'Yeah, we picked up on that alright,' Bill said.
'Well however many kids made it into the castle should be safe in there,' Janet said.
'Unless the army drop a helicopter in to collect them,' Karen said
'They could but it would have to be by winch because there's not enough clear space to land inside.'
'So, we're still stuck on Plan A, then,' Graham said. 'Sit tight and out of sight.'
Chapter 7: Dungeon
'Speaking of zombies, I wonder if they're still there?' Alex said.
The group traipsed back outside and up onto the ledge round the walls. Maisie peeked down her favourite murder hole.
'They're totally gone from the gatehouse. Except the, like, dead ones.'
Alex looked out through the crenellations. 'There's one climbing out over the turnstile, the rest are moving back down the hill towards the town.'
'Now I know they've lost interest in us,' Fred said, 'I'm feeling kinda hungry.'
'Tough, nothing to eat round here,' Rachel said.
'Actually, there is the snack bar,' Steve said, holding up the keys.
With the main door of the keep wide open, there was enough light so they could see what the snack bar had to offer. Crammed in at the end of the gift shop on the ground floor, it didn't have much. There were cereal bars, energy sweets, packets of biscuits and bottles of fruit-flavour drinks. For the winter time there was an electric deep fat fryer for making French fries. Fred eyed it with interest but it was empty of oil, there were no chipped potatoes and the power was still off.
Maisie looked at Steve. 'I don't have any money.'
'I wouldn't worry. If my dad's alive, he'd say to help ourselves. If he's not… ' He leaned against the doorway, looking down.
'Steve,' Alex said, putting her arm round his shoulder, 'We're all in the same boat, none of us know what's happened down in the village.'
He took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. 'No, you're right,' he said and reached for a bottle of orange drink, which he stowed in the pocket of his brown, wind-proof jacket. The rest of them filled their pockets with snack food and drink, then went out into the gift shop. They ate a couple of cereal bars each while wandering around, picking things up and putting them back. It didn't seem right to take anything they didn't actually need from Steve's dad's shop.
'Shall we move on?' Alex said after a few more minutes, reviving her usual role as decision-maker.
'OK, it's this way,' Steve said, taking the lead out of the keep and over to one of the towers at the rear of the surrounding wall.
'Good thing the castle didn't get ruined,' Alex said, trying to be chatty as they tramped across the grass courtyard.
'Oh, it did,' Steve said. 'But some Victorian benefactor made a donation and had it restored.'
'Why would he, like, do that?' Maisie said.
'I think he lived in the village when he was a kid and used to play in the ruins. When he got grown up and rich, he came back and had it all built up.'
Rachel laughed. 'Grown up and rich would be cool,' she said.
Alex regarded Rachel in silence. She knew Rachel would be the first to complain when her shoes got the least bit scuffed or dirty.
At the foot of the east tower there was a heavy, studded oak door with a keyhole. Steve selected the biggest key and turned it in the lock. There was the usual screeching of ancient hinges as the door opened to reveal a trapdoor in the middle of the room. A heavy padlock was fitted round a hasp that kept it locked to the floor.
'I see now why we needed all the keys,' Alex said.
'Yeah,' Steve nodded, 'and if there is a tunnel, there'll be another locked door at the other end.'
'When you say tunnel…' Rachel said. 'You don't mean just some disgusting, muddy hole under the ground?'
Steve looked up from selecting a key for the padlock.
'I'm hoping it's a proper brick-lined passage. If it's not, it'll have collapsed years ago.'
Once the trapdoor was opened, they all stared down into a deep, dingy, stone-lined pit. There was a near vertical wooden ladder going down fifteen feet to the bottom.
'Are you sure this is right?' Alex said.
'There's no way I'm going down there,' Maisie wailed.
Steve shrugged. 'It's the only way out.'
'You can stay up here and wait to see if you get rescued,' Fred said. 'But I'm going first.'
Fred climbed down the ladder and looked around. His eyes were already more accustomed to the dark. 'There's another door here,' he called up.
The rest of them followed him down and jostled for a look through the small glass window set in the top of the door. What appeared to be another window could be seen dimly in the distance.
Maisie shivered for what seemed like about the tenth time. 'It's freezing down here,' she said.
It was so dark, they could barely see the lock on the door. Alex pulled her key ring out of her pocket. There was a tiny LED torch on it, which stayed lit just long enough for Steve to unfasten the lock. He got Fred to help him haul on the door but when it opened, something weird happened. A gust of ai
r blasted through the tunnel and made the outside door of the tower slam shut, plunging them into total darkness, with every tiny noise echoing around the dungeon.
Maisie began screaming and didn't stop until Alex slapped her. Then she began crying.
'Pull yourself together,' Alex said in a rough tone. We're half-way out.'
'But Steve said it might be haunted,' Maisie wailed.
Rachel pushed past and started down the tunnel, aiming for the light at the far end. 'Well, I'm not hanging around here,' she said in a shaky but defiant voice.
They heard her make three footsteps, then there was a shriek and she stumbled and fell. Alex could vaguely see her scrabbling around on the floor before righting herself and feeling her way back to where the rest of them were clinging to the door frame. Alex grabbed her school jacket and let go immediately, feeling the damp and dirt Rachel had picked up on it.
'No, don't let go,' Rachel gasped.
'What's the matter?'
Alex could only just hear her reply, 'Cobwebs!'
Steve let out a long sigh. 'We'd better go back up and look for a torch,' he said.
Getting back up a fifteen foot ladder in the dark was no fun. Back outside in the courtyard, blinking in the light, they all saw what a state Rachel had got herself in. Her new jacket had damp patches and smudges of dirt and cobwebs everywhere. She had cobwebs in her hair but Alex wasn't going to be the one to tell her about it.
'I think you'd better go to the washroom and tidy up,' Fred said with an ill-concealed smirk.
'And the rest of you can help me find a torch in the office,' Steve said. 'There must be one somewhere.'
Rachel cleaned herself up in the tiny restroom next to the snack bar, while the others searched the office for a torch. A sudden freezing draft blew through the room and made the door swing shut with an eerie creak. They all looked round at the door and saw a large torch swinging from a hook on the back of it.
'I knew there had to be one somewhere,' Steve said.
'Let's hope it works,' Alex said.
Steve reached it down from its hook and pressed the button. The torch gave out a bright beam. 'Thanks, dad,' he said in a quiet voice that only Alex heard.
Fred went down into the museum again and came out with a replica mace: a two foot long stick with a steel ball on the end covered in spikes.
'What's that for?' Alex said.
'Just in case.'
At the far end of the scary, cobwebby, damp tunnel they were held up by another door. It had a rusty old lock that wouldn't budge. They each took a turn to try with the key but none of them could do it.
'Are you certain it's the right key?' Rachel said, her voice rising.
'It must be the right one, I can feel it turning part way but the mechanism is stuck, probably rusted up inside.'
Fred banged his fist on the door. 'We could do with some oil,' he said.
'There's frying oil in the snack bar.'
Alex could see in the torch light that Steve looked tired and strained. 'It's OK,' she said, 'I'll go.'
'But the fryer's empty,' Fred said. 'I looked in it.'
'They leave it like that in the summer,' Steve said. 'But the oil is kept in half litre bottles in the cupboard underneath.'
Alex trekked all the way back for the oil from the snack bar. While on the way across the courtyard, a heavy, twin-rotor army helicopter flew low overhead. It was so loud that she ducked at first but it was gone even before she could wave. She ran up the steps to the top of the wall and watched it descend rapidly towards the far side of the village.
Clutching her small bottle of oil, Alex felt quite positive on her way back to the east tower. It had been a close call but they'd managed to get themselves into the castle without any of them getting infected… and kept the zombies out. They'd found enough food and drink to keep them going for at least an hour or two, and they'd found a way out, which didn't actually seem to be haunted. And an army helicopter flying into the village was probably a good thing because, she guessed, they'd be bringing reinforcements to clear out the zombies.
Chapter 8: Ghost
Happy at first that she had managed to get her thoughts neatly in order, Alex's brow furrowed and her heart began to pound the instant she heard screams coming from the dungeon. She ran the last couple of yards to the door of the east tower and shouted down through the trap door into the dungeon. The screaming continued without pause. It was definitely both Maisie and Rachel. Alex shouted again as loud as she could. Her body responded and she was shaking with fear so much that she almost fell down the hole. Sitting on the edge with her feet dangling into the darkness, she tried again.
Between cupped hands, Alex bellowed, 'Steve, Fred? What's happening?' Her whole body quivered at the thought that the zombies had somehow got into the tunnel, perhaps at the far end. She pulled her feet up quickly and knelt on the floor, peering into the darkness.
Alex was about to shout again when the screaming stopped and was replaced by the sound of running footsteps.
'Alex? Alex is that you?' It was Fred's voice.
More footsteps and a torch beam lashing to and fro. The beam flashed upwards, washing over Alex's face.
'Alex, are you all right?' Steve said, his voice quavering.
'Of course I'm alright. What's with all the screaming? Have the zombies got in?'
'No, they bloody haven't!' Rachel screamed. 'But I'm not staying down this haunted hell-hole a minute longer.'
Steve moved the torch beam and Alex could see Rachel climbing onto the lower rungs of the ladder. Maisie was standing nearby reaching up to follow, her hands shaking and her shoulders quivering with sobs.
'You'd better all come up and tell me what's going on,' Alex said, stepping back to allow Rachel out through the trapdoor.
Rachel was dreadfully pale and pushed straight past Alex into the courtyard. She plonked herself down cross-legged on the grass with her head in her hands, rocking to and fro, and humming. Alex had never seen her do that before and thought it best to leave her to it. Maisie was next up, only snivelling by the time she reached the top. When she was clear of the trapdoor, she rushed to Alex and flung her arms round her neck and began blubbering again.
'Alex, you wouldn't believe it,' she cried. 'It was horrible, horrible.'
'Alright, alright,' Alex said, prising Maisie off, certain she'd have been dribbling teary mascara onto her collar. Alex dabbed at the collar of her pale blue school blouse with a hanky as she led Maisie out of the tower and deposited her on the grass next to the oblivious Rachel.
By the time Fred and Steve made their way up and out into the light, Rachel had stopped humming and rocking and Maisie had calmed down as far as large gulps between sniffles.
Alex sat down at the same time as the boys. She was about to take a drink from the oil bottle, mistaking it for one containing juice and stopped herself just in time. When the others realised what had happened, they began laughing. They laughed for what seemed like ages to Alex, though she realised they were laughing away their fear and tension.
'Alright,' she said, Once they were quiet again, 'What happened.'
Rachel, Maisie, Fred and Steve all began talking at once, with only a few intelligible words getting through.
'OK, enough!' Alex shouted. 'All I got from that was "haunted", "really loud", and "ghost". So I only want one of you to speak next and I choose Rachel.'
'It was this terrible thumping noise, all throbbing and echoing, so loud it made the air vibrate and I could feel it and bits of stuff started falling on us and I thought the tunnel was going to cave in and Maisie was screaming and it was horrible!'
Alex wasn't sure how Rachel managed to say all that in one breath and informative though it was, an idea was forming in her head, so she asked Fred for his version.
'It was like Rachel said, awful, like some huge thing was in the dungeon.'
'Steve, did the noise build up and then die away again? And how long did it last?'
'The r
eally loud bit, where we could feel the air vibrating was quite short but it seemed to come from no-where, it was really scary.'
'Yeah, like it was inside the dungeon,' Maisie added.
'And was it just after I left or was it just before I came back and found you all screaming?'
'Not long after you left, why?'
'Follow me, there's something I want to show you.'
Alex took the little group up onto the ramparts and pointed down across the village to some orchards.'
'What are we looking at?' Steve said.
'See the car park next to the fruit packing sheds?'
'Yes?' Rachel said, 'so what?'
'It's a helicopter,' Maisie said.
'It's a big, twin rotor helicopter that makes very loud thumping noises when it flies low overhead and has a heck of a downdraft that nearly knocked me off my feet,' Alex said.
'It flew right over the castle while you were up here and we were down the oubliette?'
Alex nodded.
'Helicopter!' Fred muttered to himself as much as anyone else.
'That's it?' Rachel screeched, 'It wasn't a ghost? Really?'
'Nope.' Alex shook her head. 'No ghost.'
Rachel put her hands on her hips and stamped her foot. 'I'm sick of this place,' she said, all too quick to forget it had protected them from the zombies. 'The quicker we get out of it the better.'
'I reckon we all feel like that,' Alex said. 'Why don't we sit quiet for a few minutes and have something to eat or drink. Then I'll go to the door at the end of the tunnel with Steve and his keys and we'll see if we can get it unlocked. Assuming we can and it's all clear at the other end, the rest of you can follow down.'
'What if the door doesn't open?' Maisie said, her lip trembling.
'The oil should do it,' Steve said. 'And if not, we'll just have to break it down.'