“But fly to where, Jeff? This is happening all over Britain. I heard it on the radio. They advised people to stay away from big cities and towns. That locking yourselves indoors and staying put was the best thing to do.”
“I already tried that, and it didn’t work. I have a plan all mapped out.”
“Huh, so you’re going to take a small plane like yours and fly it to an island somewhere? Hmm, is that the plan? How many times would you have to stop and refuel? This thing, this…”
“Plague?” he interjected.
“Plague may have reached the four corners of the earth by now?”
“Not if we went to the place I have in mind, we won’t. And besides, even if we did have to keep moving, I know mostly all of the small islands off Britain and Europe. I also know what airports to land at for fuel.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve been working this out for a while? So tell me, what was or is your plan?”
“My goal was to fly to the north of Scotland, to Inverness. I have a sister living there in a small fishing village, with her husband James. The population is very low, and the chances of the place being overrun by them, is slim to none. She runs a fresh fish farm, and has access to trawlers. If push comes to shove she could take us over to the Shetland Islands or up to the Orkney ones where I am sure we would be safe. We could stock up on supplies and be safe.” Jeff looked over at Amy, and was now worried that the girl may tell the other two. But she was still transfixed by the fire; she was in a zombie-like state. Poor child, he thought.
“But, err, Jeff? What makes you so sure your sister is okay up there?”
“I spoke to her before the situation got totally out of hand. She told me she would be waiting for us, that she would keep herself safe and wait for Kathryn and me.”
“Oh, right, I see.”
They fell silent for a bit before Jeff broke the silence.
“May I ask you something, Maria?”
“Yes, Jeff, of course you can.”
“Where are you from?”
“From this area, but my parents are from Greece.”
“So you are Greek?”
“Yes and no…”
Before she could finish, a shower of rocks and shrapnel bombarded the house. Jeff heard an upstairs window explode and rain onto the floor above him. More stones could be heard bounding off the walls outside and ricocheting off the army wagon. Clink, clink clink…
“They at it with them fucking bricks again, Jeffy?” Ollie yelled.
Ollie stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his shoulders near enough touching either side of the frame, with his dainty girlfriend standing somewhere behind. Lost at the back of Man Mountain.
He walked over to the window covered by the table, and looked out. He could just about see past the truck and spot maybe a dozen of them gathering things up to fling at the cottage. He could hear their missiles roll off the roof and hit the floor below or find their way into the guttering with a rattle.
“Bastards. Maybe we should go back out there Jeff, boy. Take care of some more of them? Thin their numbers out, like.”
“No, I think we should conserve our ammo; we might have to make a break for it.”
The air felt tense. Jeff felt that the biker may come over and whack him again, just like he had done when Maria and he had walked into the cottage for the first time. He had not meant to brandish his gun in the big guy’s face. He wasn’t to know that Ollie was not sick like the rest of those things out there. He was just being cautious. He’d smashed Jeff in the eye, knocking him out. When he had finally come around, Ollie had had a hold of Maria by her jumper, lifting her off her feet and holding her close to his scarred face. He didn’t know what had happened between the two of them while he’d been out cold. He eyed Ollie now, unsure whether his comment about saving bullets had gone down well.
Then the lines in Ollie’s pulled face relaxed.
“Good idea, Jeffy. But I think we should make a move soon, like. Maybe tomorrow morning we can make for the hills in the truck you brought? This place isn’t going to keep us safe for much longer, and besides, we’ve no food or water.”
“Yes, you’re right,” he said with a false smile. God the man’s a vile pig, Jeff thought. But Maria and I are going to need him to help us get out of here. Jeff had seen the man take out a few of them with his bare hands, just before they had put the truck across the face of the cottage; a couple had managed to get in through the door because Jeff had broken it down to get in. Ollie had broken their necks. He didn’t technically need a gun. But he was nursing a wound to his gut that he’d picked up whilst fighting the guy now lying dead in the middle of the room. He’d stuck Ollie with a straight razor, just before Ollie could get him with the broken banister.
“We could just leave right now, I mean we have guns. The truck outside is all fuelled up, right Jeff?” Roxie said. “We could even take the bikes with us, Ollie. Put them on the back of the wagon? I know their tanks are dry, but they may come in handy at some point.”
“That’s a sweet idea, love,” Ollie said to Roxie. “But what about Amy? Look at her. She is in no state to go anywhere.”
“But—” Roxie was about to protest.
“But nothing, love. I think leaving in the night is stupid, anyway. Where are we going go to? We’ve got no plan, no food and no water. At least in the day they’re not about, which will give us a chance to look for supplies. I think we should ride the night out and leave very early tomorrow morning.”
“I…I’m scared, Ollie, love,” Roxie said, snuggling herself into her boyfriend by wrapping her both arms around his one, huge tattooed arm. “What if they manage to get in here in the night, like, and take us by surprise?”
“That’s the last of your worries, beaut. Jeffy and I will take turns guarding the place while you sleep. Innit, butty?”
Jeff put the thought of telling them about the plane to the back of his mind. “Yes, Ollie. Good idea.” He truly thought it was a good idea; it was stupid all of them trying to stay awake when three could sleep and one could stand guard. “I don’t mind taking first watch.” He felt he had to; he’d only known these people for a few hours. He was pretty sure he could trust Maria though. “I could watch for most of the night then wake you, Ollie, so I could get some shut eye before morning. And maybe by that time Amy will have come out of shock.”
He looked at his watch, and not at the wall-mounted clock with its cracked face in the empty room. 00.02. Precisely three hours he’d been here, most of them spent sat on the floor with his head bowed. He hadn’t even bothered to give the place much of a look over.
“OK, butty. Do you and your girl want to take the beds? I don’t think Amy is going to want to sleep…”
“Now listen here, Ollie,” Jeff butted in. “She is not my ‘girl’, as you put it. I’m a married man.” He flashed his third finger at the biker.
Ollie shouldered his machine-gun by the strap, and marched over to Jeff. “Don’t piss me off with that hoity-stick-it-up-your-toity-tone, Jeffy, bach.” He dragged Jeff from the floor and rammed him against the wall. The back of his skull thwacked the brick. “I was only trying to be nice to you.” Spittle found its way into Jeff’s mouth. The biker’s hot breath fanned his face. Roxie and Maria tried pulling him free of Jeff, shouting at him to stop, that he was hurting him. “Next time I won’t be so nice,” Ollie spat, letting Jeff go and watching the man slide down the wall
Jeff narrowed his eyes as he looked up at Roxie and the brute. “Well, I’m sorry you feel like that. Maybe I should just take my plane and leave you two here to rot in this fucking place.” He could feel the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was the first time he had lost his cool and used such distasteful language in years. “Maybe I should just stick to my plan and sneak out in the middle of the night and leave you fuckers here to die. Hmm? Is that what you want?” He found strength in his legs, and stood up. He looked up at Ollie, and jabbed his finger into the man’s chest. �
��Just maybe, I should take that truck I brought here and go with my ‘girl’?”
Ollie swatted the stiff finger away. “You’re bluffing, boy. You haven’t got a fucking plane. And if you did, you’d have made straight for it instead of coming here. You—”
“Ollie, please,” Roxie protested, tugging on his arm. “Perhaps he does have a plane, mun.”
“Don’t go buying into his bullshit, love. He’s full of it.”
“He does have a plane,” Maria said softly. “He told me earlier about it.”
Jeff’s mouth grew into a wry smile as he pulled the keys from his back pocket and dangled them in front of Ollie’s nose. “What the fuck do you think these are? Why don’t you have a read what it says on the fob?”
Ollie slowly tilted his head to one side, the way a dog would when trying to work something out. He scanned the dangling key ring, and mouthed the words, “Wings Flying Club, Cardiff, CF62 3BD – Instructor’s Key, plane 6.” Ollie looked up and Jeff could see the man’s half-witted brain searching for an apology. His smug, angry expression had been wiped from his face. Roxie could do nothing but look on in agony, for she knew that Ollie had hit and abused the only person in the house with a solution to their fucked-up-situation.
“Don’t you think you should at least say you’re sorry? Sorry for hitting Jeff and calling him names?”
The stunned man looked over at Maria. “I…I…”
“Well?”
“Come on Ollie, mun. Tell him you’re sorry.” Roxie’s tone wavered, portraying her terror for the first time.
“Look, Jeff, butt. I’m…is there any point in me trying to say sorry to you?”
Jeff closed the gap between the two of them
“Why don’t you have a go? You don’t exactly strike me as the sort of person who’s capable of saying sorry. And even if you did, and it sounded half convincing, why would you want to anyway? You don’t want my friendship, do you? You just want my plane. So here’s a bit of free advice for you Ollie – keep your damn hands and comments to yourself in future. And stop bloody well calling me Jeffy. It’s Jeff. Or can’t your minuscule brain get that?”
The big man was stunned, rocked by the fact that Jeff had had the balls to stand up to him and by the realisation that it was he who needed Jeff, and not the other way around.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I punched you in the face earlier, but how was I to know you thought I was one of them, innit?” He resembled a naughty child who had just been told off by his mother. The only thing missing was that his hands were not buried in his pockets. “How would you feel if someone had shoved a gun in your face, just after you’d been stabbed in the gut by a fucking perv? Come on, mun. Give a man a break, yeah? It’s been tough on all of us. We need to work together, not go at each other, innit? The fight is outside, all around us. Please, look, I am truly sorry. I’ll try and control my temper from now on.”
He stuck his hand out for Jeff to shake. They stood there looking at each other for a couple of moments, before Jeff finally took the offer of friendship.
“And in answer to your question, we’ll stay down here with Amy. You two can have the beds up there. To be honest with you, I don’t think I could sleep next to a room with a dead child in it. Makes me go cold just thinking about it,” he said, almost mouthing the last part.
“Ollie, do you mind if we stay down here too? I’d like to stay with Amy.” Roxie looked at him with pleading eyes.
“I think it would make sense if we all stick together in this room. Plus you’d both be much warmer with the fire.”
Jeff couldn’t help but go to Roxie’s rescue. He liked her – the daughter he’d never had.
“Okay.” That’s all he felt he could muster, and he left it at that. He’d been a fool. He knew that.
Before they settled for the night, both men carted Eddie’s body upstairs and put it with the other one.
The others had been asleep for almost two hours, Jeff thought, looking at the time on his watch. Ollie and Roxie lay in a lover’s embrace on their jackets in front of the fireplace, with Amy cuddled into Roxie. A duvet from upstairs draped over them. They’d fed wood to the fire shortly after one, just before they had settled there for the night.
Maria lay close to them with a quilt of her own. They had talked about bringing mattresses down too, but had decided against it in the end. Jeff sat by the window and watched Maria. Her breathing seemed controlled, rhythmic. It was a peaceful sleep for someone who had been ‘too terrified to sleep’, even though they had gone a bit quiet outside. The odd brick would pang off the house now and then.
Jeff got up on the hour every hour to walk around the cottage and check on the activities outside. He’d start upstairs, avoiding the room with the dead girls, and make sure those outside had not managed to scale the walls and slip in through a window. Once done up there, he’d look out in the kitchen, then garden. This would take Jeff around twenty-minutes to do. On completing his perimeter check, he’d settle back by the window, and watch them.
But now he watched Maria, the twenty-something student, sleep. He kept his eye on her, and the way her face twitched every so often made smile. How could she sleep so peacefully with what was going on in the world? He looked back out through the glass.
He was sure there were more of them out there now. He pushed his face close to the window, until his breath misted the glass slightly. There was one standing right in front of him, about twenty feet away, holding a baseball bat at his side. The lone figure stood unmoving, just watching. Can he see me? Jeff thought. No, impossible. There is no light on in here and it is too dark out there.
The silhouette started to rotate the bat. Thin trails of air issued from its mouth, reflecting just how cold it was out there. Then, the thing waved over at Jeff.
“What the hell is…did it just…just wave at me? Impossible. They’re brain-dead?”
A tap on Jeff’s shoulder almost made him scream out; he flew around, fist clenched.
“Shh, it’s only me, Maria.”
“What the heck are you doing up? You were sleeping a moment ago.”
She shrugged her shoulders, unsure of what to tell him.
“I just woke up and saw you sitting over here. Thought I’d come and join you.”
She settled down by his side.
“What were you looking at?”
“There is one standing out there. It’s got a baseball bat. Look, out by the back of the army wagon. It…” He trailed off.
“It what, Jeff? I can’t see anyone. I can see a few moving around by the trees, but that’s about it.”
He looked himself, and sure enough, the one he had been watching had gone.
“It…it…nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
She nodded.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“Not too bad.”
“You should try and get some rest,” he said.
“Their movements are keeping me awake. And that growling they do, it’s awful. It’s as if…as if they are…”
“Communicating with each other,” he said, and shivered.
“Try not to think about it, Jeff, that’s what I am trying to do.”
“Talk to me then. Tell me something to keep my mind off it.”
“Mm,” she thought. “Remember you asked me about Greece and my family?”
He nodded.
“Well I never did get the chance to tell you, did I? See, the thing is – my mother and father came to Britain before I was born. They had me when they were very young, before marriage. When my mother’s mother found out, she wouldn’t have anything to do with them.” Her eyes glassed over slightly, and her mouth started to wobble.
“It’s okay,” Jeff said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“But I want to, Jeff. She cursed them, and their unborn baby, for having a child before getting married. She told them it was a sin, and that she didn’t want the wrath of God brought down on her house, so she banished my mother.�
��
“So what happened? Did your parents stay together?”
“My dad brought my mother to Wales where he had a brother to stay with. Soon after he found a job, and started to support his family. He moved us into a house. My mother tried to keep in touch with her mother, but her calls and letters were unanswered.”
Tears slid down her cheeks as her fingers fumbled with a corner of the quilt. Jeff drew her in and held her.
“That’s a horrible thing that your grandmother did to your mother. But your parents’ love for one another, and you, pulled them through it. I’m sure they have survived this.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Jeff. I just wish I knew for sure.”
“Of course I am. It sounds like your father is pretty resilient, and good at handling difficult situations.”
They sat there in silence for a bit. Jeff fingered his wedding ring.
“Will you tell me what happened, Jeff? To you and your wife, I mean?”
He’d been waiting for that question all night. He knew at some point he would have to relive the story. But before he did, he noticed something; a room he had not yet checked – there was a door under the stairs, as though there was a cubbyhole there. He slowly got up and walked over to it.
“Jeff, what’s the matter?”
The worry was back in her voice.
“It’s okay, stay there. I just want to check something.”
He approached the small wooden door, and caught hold of the brass handle. He readied his gun and gently pulled his arm back, but the door didn’t budge. Locked. She saw his shoulders slump. Jeff returned to where he and Maria were seated, and sat back down by her.
“I had to kill my wife…”
Chapter 4
Ollie stood with his back against the passenger door of the army truck. His machine-gun pushed into his back, but he ignored the pain. He slowly drew at the cigarette in his mouth, while lazily plucking it from his mouth to blow out the smoke every now and then. He smashed his balled fist into the door behind him and shouted, “Fuck!”
Walled In Page 4