"Jesus! Weird guy." Anita muttered.
They sprinted up a small mound immediately on their left, towards the carcass of an old, World War Two fighter plane, its nose painted in a fearsome mask with glaring eyes and bared, pointed teeth. They slid underneath the body of the plane and lay on their bellies in the long cool grass.
They were near the main road that led back to Stratford-on-Avon. The previous night, Lisa had explained her plan to Anita. She'd had a look at some local maps that the soldiers were using and had worked out that, if they travelled due north, they would hit the River Avon in just a few miles. The river was part of the British Waterways network and linked to the Stratford Canal in Stratford-on-Avon. Then, it ran all the way into Birmingham, passing right along the southern edge of Attwood Common.
Ever since they had been on the canal side in Knowle, she had been thinking about what it was like down there. There were few, if any, infected or survivors along the towpaths. The canal boats were sturdy and high-sided. They were fuel-efficient and self-contained. If they could find one and get it going, they'd have a comfortable shelter, a place of safety and a vehicle, all rolled into one. In Lisa's mind, it was the perfect solution.
Anita hadn't been so sure, almost scathing. Wouldn't they be locked up? Didn't they need a key to turn the engine on? Even if they did find one that they could get into and start the engine, could she even steer it? What about locks? Did she know what to do with these?
Lisa had explained that she had been on a canal boat holiday with some friends when she was at university. The boys had steered the boat, but it hadn't looked all that difficult. You didn't even need a licence, for God's sake! People could turn up at the hire centre and be on the water after 15 minutes instruction. How difficult could it be?
"Be positive, Nita," she'd pleaded. "We can do it; I know we can!"
"We could just stay here," Anita had moaned.
From their vantage point, they scanned the area and identified their route. They decided to avoid the road itself but to keep close enough to it to be able to use it as a guide to their direction of travel. The night before, they had also discussed how to stay as safe as possible while they were on the move. The infected were not the only danger. It was a group of fellow survivors that had mugged them for their bicycles, and they had to try and avoid any similar encounters. They had agreed to try and move quickly from one place of cover to another and keep out of sight as much as possible.
They identified a clear route to a small cluster of bushes a few hundred metres away. On Anita's signal, they wriggled out from under the plane and ran over to it, concealing themselves again before identifying their next point of cover and then repeating the whole process. Although it may have been unnecessarily cautious, it gave them a sense of security. The moments spent in the hiding spots provided a temporary, but welcome, respite from the heart-pounding anxiety of running across exposed ground.
They travelled like this for several miles making good progress in small stages. There were infected around, but most seemed intent on travelling towards the camp and didn't notice the two women.
On a couple of occasions, they were forced to crouch in silence barely breathing, staring at each other with wide eyes and fingers on lips, as an infected stumbled past their hiding place. Generally, they were easy to see or hear as they meandered across the fields or rustled through the bushes, but, increasingly, the smell was the first indication that one was nearby.
Ten days into the outbreak, most were in the advanced stages of decomposition. They were more disgusting than ever, their skin now more green than grey and beginning to sag from their bodies in drooping folds. They smelt putrid and rotten, like meat that had spoiled or a strong cheese that had been out of the fridge for too long. The smell was cloying and lingered in the air and in the women's nostrils long after the infected had passed. The only thing Lisa could recall that even began to get close was the odour of her grandfather's infected leg ulcers. On a couple of occasions, she'd been visiting when the District Nurse had changed his dressings. As the bandages were unravelled, the bottom layers had been soaked in a pinkish, yellow fluid. When the bottom layer of pus-soaked gauze was removed, the odour arising from the moist open sores was enough to send her gagging from the room.
It was around midday when they reached a large water treatment plant about a hundred metres from the river. Helping each other to slip under the fence, they made their way to the centre. Concealed between the wide basins and oblivious to the aroma of raw sewage, they celebrated the completion of the first stage of their plan with a bottle of water, fortified with a sachet of energy powder and a jam sandwich from one of the MRE ration packs that Rick had given them. They rested in the relative safety of their location for a while, feeling virtually jovial about how well things had gone so far.
Next, they needed
