Prologue

It was a beautiful, crisp winter morning when the Gods up in Heaven shut the gates of Hell forever and ceased the flow of damned souls entering, and forcing their evil essence back to the earthly realm as twisted bloodthirsty monsters.

I remember the day well. The ground had started to soften from the frost, ready for the new years coming yield of crop. Near the end of January it was. Not a full month in to the year of 1820 when the King, in all his God blessed glory suddenly fell ill and died.

He was a stubborn man, was our King George III, not only did he lose the American Colonies to a bunch of farmers and almost bankrupt the country. He butted heads with Napoleon and almost bankrupted the country again!

And his stubbornness did not end there. when he did die, he selfishly refused to stay dead. As his personal servants and chambermaids prepared his cadaver for his royal burial, which was promised to be an astonishing country funeral party, he awoke in a temper more foul and rotten than his usual demeaner and persisted to chew his loyal subjects to death.

The bad day did not end there though.

They followed in stubborn suit and refused to die also.

'The Madness Of King George' it was called for a time.

The poor devils who he feasted on, and passed his madness to became known commonly as 'The Stricken' and they ravaged the Windsor Castle and royal grounds, spreading The Madness Of King George to others.

In less than two months after his death, London had fallen. no living soul dared to venture in to that cursed capitol again.

The Army, what a waste of time that was, and I don't mind telling you. Lead by Gentlemen who bought their commission and rank who valued honour above all else. what could be more honourable than meeting your enemy en-mass in an open field of battle and grind them to dust? Their honour soon dissipated when the dead broke their firing lines and they fouled their breeches and screamed for mercy as the Stricken tore their throats out.

The firing lines managed to fire three volleys before the Stricken tore them apart. The cavalry faired less advantageous, quick to manoeuvre, charge and retreat, but they didn't get far with a stricken horse that soon succumbed to the sickness from a single bite. The dead quickly overran and obliterated any army that it came across, soon adding the fallen to their own ranks. Many men fled, and who could blame them? not me, that's for sure, even against threat of a flogging charge, or worse, meeting the hangman. The bloodbaths became known to all, even the most stout hearted soldiers became more afraid of the Stricken than any hangman's noose.

The Army, however did learn from these first few defeats. They would protect each town and city individually and abandon the roads and countryside to the Stricken, they could deploy a garrison of one hundred soldiers to each populated area to defend it from individual and small groups of Stricken. The issue was, if one Stricken got in to a town and killed, one became two, two became four, four became eight and so on and so forth. They learned from the fall of Cambridge that if a large enough group of stricken was making their way to a populated area, the only way to deter them was a juicy decoy. A 'volunteer' would be selected and sent off with bells sewn in to their clothes and horse saddle. These people were always convicted criminals, as crimes such as theft and robbery increased with the madness worsening. They were promised if they successfully lead the Stricken away from the town or city, their criminal records would be forgotten and they could re-join the civilised society without the fear of the hangman's noose. The plan failed at Cambridge due to the volunteer distracting the horde by venturing far out towards Melbourn, another populated area that quickly fell under the weight of the Stricken horde, which then made their way back to Cambridge with greater numbers as if instinctively drawn. Able to smell the living.

Nottingham had a brilliant idea to build a wall around their required area and then at their most southern border built another wall, and sent builders to Derby to encircle the populated area and join the walls in the middle. This quickly caught on with other mayors and Lords, each city, town and village had its very own wall keeping it safe from the outside world and then a wall that ventured the entire width of the country, this became known as The Living Line that protected the north of England from the Stricken South. The living line grew naturally as things do, it spread from the west, in Chester, just from the mouth of the river Dee, spreading to Boston, extending to the river Haven that joined the sea.

The Welsh took care of themselves, as they often preferred, apparently they wanted their own wall, segregated from the English one, there was a rumour that the Madness had already spread inside their border, but I knew why. If the English wall breached, which it most likely would do at some point. Knowing the English, like I do, and we do love a good bargain, most towns would have saved money on the building materials by buying cheap stuff. So I found their choice to protect themselves justified.

Locals would feel the living line was taking too long to build and most complained, but many joined the labour workforce to speed things up, which seemed like a saviour, but in truth, I find it more of a damnation. These men had little or no training as a tradesmen and couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions written in to the heel. The forward wall was completed after a single year of construction, the reinforcements, cannon beds and firing steps would come later, this was simply a wall. The completion came as wonderful news as, January 1821 brought ill news to our hearts. With our King George dying in 1820, his son, also called George, took the throne at a ripe age of fifty seven, and as an established military figure fighting Napoleon, he gathered a massive army, leaving a minimal skeleton crew to man and defend the living line. he marched south with his two hundred thousand soldiers, fifty thousand cavalry and fifteen hundred cannons, a large contingent of civilians followed the armies tail like a hungry dog, seeking the glories and adventure the southern marching army would certainly achieve and feed off the protection it would certainly provide. Their plan, was to re-take Cambridge and fortify it, branch out and secure another living line, fortify that, and move further south, and so on.

The army marched and fought in skirmishes against small groups of the Stricken. Gaining victory after victory. These soldiers became experts at killing the Stricken souls, but their luck ran out, as it always does. The army had Cambridge in its sights. And the Stricken had the army in theirs. Hordes had been following the smell of the fresh flesh of the army, and caught up when the army stopped outside Cambridge to bombard it for a week before the attack commenced. The army was destroyed on their fourth night of the bombardment. King George also fell. Some adventurers who have big mouths claim to have seen his roaming twisted form on their travels. I doubt it.

After George died, the royal line had been broken. his brothers had died in the first months of the madness in London. Politicians took over, and fearing God's will, they gave more and more power to the Church and its Holy Men. The common folk swarmed the churches and the Holy Men's pockets grew fat with coin. They quickly had more power than the elected officials, not that many elections took place nowadays. The Church passed a law that the Hangman was not longer a fitting punishment for crimes in the eyes of God. Criminals now were to be exiled to the lands beyond the living wall. The Plaguelands.

Fear was their weapon. and coin was their appetite.

They paid the soldiers who patrolled the walls, they made the cities and towns safe and each military unit had a Holy Man acting as an officer and so people became dependant on the church. if anybody questioned God or even the Church, they found themselves south of the living line, running from the Stricken. The wall had ordered to shoot any living soul not dressed in uniform on site, and question those who are in uniform, shooting them if their reason was not deemed sufficient by the church.

Crime almost disappeared and the homeless vanished, people thought; with the Church in control and their seemingly unending coin supply, that they had accepted them in to their ranks and given them hope and a home, but the truth was far worse. They had all been banished to death in the Plaguelands.

Soon people did begin to become restless and soon demanded the raising of an army to purge the Plaguelands of the Stricken. These were raised Battalion by Battalion. One thousand infantry, one hundred cavalry and ten cannons per battalion. These men had been taken from the overpopulated streets. Their purpose was to thin the Stricken hordes to the south, but their true purpose was to thin the breadlines that waiting outside the churches every morning, and this was the reason why a Holy Man was never assigned to one of these roaming armies and their officers consisted of 'volunteers' that had some form of intelligence, even a little. The Church preached that this was because these Battalions were of the People and so they should remain, the populations rejoiced at having a military unit that was free of the Church and free to them.

I almost willingly joined the 33rd of Foot Battalion raised, but I lacked one of the most desired features needed. I simply couldn't brawl. I had never been in a fight, spit, or even insult without cause, or at least I couldn't back then.

I fancied a stroll in town and through the local shops. Little did I know that it would change my life forever.