Plague Of The Revenants Read Free Page B

to claim us at last. It turned out it was just desperate people, begging to be let in. For myself I wished the revenants luck. I wanted them to destroy society. I did not at that point see the opportunity the catastrophe would present to me, just hoped I would live long enough to see everything crumble. The world could go to hell for all I cared. Some of the prisoners crowed at how safe we all were here behind bars but I knew it could not last. Worrying voices began to be heard and as the crisis went on their views started to gain more and more momentum. News was infrequent and unreliable. It was impossible to tell how bad things really were. Of course nobody told us lags anything. Towards the end we noticed fewer and fewer prison guards and we stopped being let out of our cells. Sometimes we would go days without being fed and would be reduced to drinking toilet water. It was clear the entire outside infrastructure was breaking down. I became frustrated. I was not afraid to die but I was not prepared to go down without a fight. I wondered if we might be abandoned completely by the guards and left to starve to death, locked in our cells. Blake somehow managed to get himself a gun and he armed the other guards as well. It was clear he was forming the prison into his own personal microstate with himself as the supreme ruler. Stanger still how some of the prisoners started to go missing, the weaker ones mostly; or the ones who were sick in the head; the nonces and the psychotic serial killers and those with the lowest IQs. I was sure Blake had something to do with it, but he was not quite the master yet.
    Two weeks after the revenant plague first hit the shores of Britain we prisoners were herded outside into the yard and from there into vans, minibuses and lorries. As we drove through the gates we were passed by long black cars I recognised as ministerial vehicles. The great and good now came to cower behind the thick walls of the prison protected by the army’s ring of steel. As we travelled to the town that day I looked out of the bus window and saw some terrible scenes. The highways were packed with traffic. The army cleared a path as best it could in order to let us through. Cars rushed past us, completely out of control, their occupants fleeing in a panic. We saw many of those same cars smash themselves up against trees or buildings. Houses were boarded up. Entire streets had been cordoned off. Cars and furniture formed barricades which were set on fire in a bid to deter the undead. It did not work of course. Nothing did. To see the revenants up close was as nothing I had ever seen before. The television could not do them justice. They shuffled and hobbled after us as we drove past, clawing with outstretched arms, their teeth chomping up and down in anticipation of their feast. Many of them had visible tears on their bodies, such as from their throats or arms from where they had been bitten. The most pitiful sight of all was that of those who had recently been bitten but were yet to turn running after the buses beseeching us for help. Their skin was already pale and washed in a cold sweat and their tongues lolled out to contrast obscenely with their infected, bloodshot eyes.
    We had no idea where we were being taken. I wondered if it was to become decoys as the survivors were evacuated from the towns. Leastways I didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance in hell of making it out alive, especially not with Blake in charge. And yet the warden was pacing up and down the bus, gazing intently out of the window and he was actually smiling, as if he relished the chaos and was welcoming a new opportunity.
    Eventually the convoy of vehicles pulled up outside a large football stadium guarded by what remained of the armed forces. We were let in through thick metal gates and the vehicles pulled up on a piece of waste ground in the stadium’s shadow. We were herded outside at gunpoint and lined up. I glanced beyond the fence and saw