A lot can happen in a week…
Last Friday all of our internet went down. No amount of rebooting the router would fix it, and none of us had mobile internet, which sounds silly in the world of today, but we were all either too broke to buy new phones or too stuck in our ways to care for them.
The last time Henry posted he mentioned how we had been surrounded, things didn’t get any better over the weekend and supplies were, once again, getting low. We couldn’t stay where we were, so Henry and Andy climbed out of the window and made their way along the roof to a wall that lead away from the house, after walking along the top of the wall they slide out of our view.
They turned up twenty minutes later with a van, you know the ones that are like a small lorry. After driving the zombies around us away, they pushed their way out a hatch in the roof of the storage compartment and we helped them back into the flat. We set about grabbing our worldly items and putting them in the van as another crowd gathered around us.
At the time I couldn’t imagine anything worse; leaving out flat, lowering myself into a van surrounded by these monsters…Henry did a sterling job of taking control of everything.
So where were we headed? What was out plan?
We were heading to Machynlleth, I think Henry had mentioned previously that some of us work on the railway up at Mach, our hope was that there would be some trains left in the depot, so the plan was to steal some trains and have a moving fortress.
Aberystwyth was swarming with zombies, I’m not sure quite how the town was so full…After passing the main University campus the windscreen was splattered with blood where Henry had plowed through crowds of zombies.
Leaving Aber would found the roads quiet, the towns we went through were mainly deserted, much like the trip to Llanrhystyd, again we raided several houses for supplies. It took six hours to get to Machynlleth with all of the stops, but we were set for a good few weeks with all the tins we had collected.
Arriving in Mach we drove past the depot and we were in luck, there were eight trains in the yard!
We headed to our office to pick up the 24 cooler bottles of water that had been delivered a week or so before all this happened along with the bosses iPad and a handful of work mobiles, then we headed to the depot office. Checking paperwork, five of the eight trains here were fuelled and ready to go! Two of which were the new refurbished units that sported comfier seats, and power sockets!
Machynlleth train depot has two sheds, so Andy and Don took two unit down to the bottom shed and locked themselves away while the rest of us took two units into the other shed and locked down the place. The mobiles didn’t work inside the shed, but we had some walkie talkies so we could all communicate with each other.
We spent the next few days taking everything out of the trains we wouldn’t need, things like seats came out along with air con units which don’t work half the time anyway, it was a big job and took us until yesterday to get everything as we needed it. All this time we were being surrounded by zombies, though we don’t know this until they started mauling the large doors.
This morning we decided to do the big move, our four units were going to join together to create one eight car train. We had rigged all the doors to open on a timer, we we had 60 seconds to set the timer and get on the trains. As the doors opened hordes of zombies came flooding in, around, and under the trains. I looked over to the left and saw Henry starting up his train, screams came from underneath as the smell burning hair and flesh filled the air with the diesel fumes. I started my train up which added to the screaming and stench, then we saw the doors opening in the bottom shed, I went first and joined up to Don’s train, we then came back on ourselves and joined onto Andy’s.
Andy and Henry moved their trains closer, but as they did so some zombies ran between them, the coupling failed. Again they tried coupling up, but the mess the zombies had made was jamming the coupling mechanisms. Henry opened the door between the two trains and kicked out the head that was mucking up the coupling. Then we’re not sure what happened, but Henry disappeared for a second, then we heard a yell. Henry was being dragged away from the train by his calf, two zombies were at him. Quick as a flash Don was across to the train Henry had been driving and completed the coupling. I was already at the other end ready to pull away, there was nothing we could do for Henry, but Fran was just screaming out the window while Beth was sobbing at one of the tables. Andy opened a door and was about to jump out when Don closed the door again, it was too risky and there was nothing we could do.
We were off, with Henry being left behind we pulled our train out of the depot and onto the main line, we switched ends and headed up the coast. As I write this now we are sitting just short of Barmouth bridge and I’m truing to figure out how to use WordPress on the iPad we nabbed.
R.I.P. Henry, we will miss you and we thank you for setting up this voice for the clean.
-George