Zombielandia by Lee Wade

the same way we’d got there, by the canal’s waterway and as far as we knew, rotters hadn’t learned how to sail boats!
    We met on the Hue as usual that night in order to discuss what our plan was going to be the next day. Although we’d travelled just over half of the canals length, we’d put the hardest obstacles behind us and had a lot of long stretches of open countryside not too far ahead of us and by the look of the maps the remaining locks were much more spread out.
    We felt quite safe that night, high up on the aqueduct and looking out over the valley below. We lit the stoves and had our first hot meal for a few days. We took the same watches as we had done the previous night, only that night we didn’t feel as on edge as we had been.
    After my watch with Sandie, I crawled into bed with Babs and the two kids. The kids were sleeping, but Babs was still awake. I cuddled up to her, God how I wished for time alone with her. Maybe one day soon I thought. We chatted quietly for a while. Mostly about how things had been before all the shit had begun. The two kids had gone to school in our village and Babs had been a stay at home mum looking after them, me and our home. We’d been married eight years before Luke had come along. He had been our little miracle after everything Babs had been through, we’d never expected to be able to have children, then Emily came along not long after and our little family had been complete. I knew then as I always had that I was going to do everything and anything I could to protect them and try to give them as normal an upbringing as we could in this world. We would keep searching until we found somewhere safe to call home again. If only we had never left our site in Devon, we were safe there until the Navy had come along and taken us away. I could only hope that we would find somewhere as good again, if not better. Maybe we’d find that back home in Togston; I remember thinking that I could only hope that things would be okay there. We chatted into the early hours before finally falling asleep in each other’s arms.
    Chapter Forty Four
    We woke the following morning to the sound of the engines starting up. Bless, I thought, the guys must have left us to sleep. I got up and showered myself and the kids before going up top to see the rest of the guys. Everyone else on the Hue was just lazing around too, so I felt a little less guilty about sleeping in. I went out onto the forward deck and radioed over to John on the Gamebird. Everything was fine, John had said, we’d just let you guys rest a while; we’ll be on our way in a bit.
    We headed off not long after, everyone was fed, cleaned and rested and ready for the day ahead. It wasn’t long though until we came to the first of a series of locks at Maryhill. I remember there being five of them in quick succession. It had turned out that Maryhill had been a large built up area with a lot of new developments along the canal side and built up areas only meant one thing, more rotters!
    Becky, Lia, Amy and I climbed off the boats in order to operate the locks. They had all been manually operated ones that we’d worked several times before. Ken had taught us all how to operate them before his death. We were armed with our boat hook, axe and crowbars, but also carried our guns as well, just in case. Maddison and Hayley also kept watch from the Gamebird. They had climbed on top so that they had a good view.
    We’d gone through that same routine several times the day before, but the locks hadn’t been in such built up places as Maryhill was. There was a small lock keepers cottage next to the first lock. We had a look inside, but couldn’t see any signs of life or any movement. The locks were only big enough to take two of our boats at a time, but we had been used to this too. The Gamebird and Hue went first. The engines were cut as the boats slowly descended in the lock, so we took the opportunity to have a closer look inside the