Using a tin-opener, he opened a tin of sausage and beans and drank from it until it was empty. He then opened a tin of peaches and ate them, slowly, while looking through his bags. There was dried beef – an anomalous food-stuff that Mr Singh, of Mr Singh’s Pakistani corner shop, stocked in some abundance – matches and lighters, batteries, two torches, three knives (though none so big as the ones on his belt), an A-Z road map of The Midlands, toilet roll, baby wipes, random bars of chocolate – at this Nate smiled and sighed “Mum”, wiping his face – bags of dried fruit, bags of nuts, paper cups and plates, plastic cutlery, candles, an empty flask and a blow torch. Another bag also held extra clothes and blankets, while a rolled up sleeping bag still in its purchased carrier was hooked to the top-loop.
Nate finished off the peaches, his belly almost satisfied. He opened a bag of peanuts and tipped some into his mouth, then took out the road map and flicked through its pages.
*****
“Haribo time,” said Mrs Westwood.
“Finally something good!” said Ryan.
Mrs Westwood opened a bag of Haribo sweets and offered them around. Nate said thanks and took a handful, saying “I should get some more since I’m winning.” The bag was offered to Ryan over the Scrabble board. “That’s because you keep making up words,” replied Ryan.
“Make them last, boys, don’t know when we’ll get some more. Nate, what’s ‘convive’ mean?”
Nate adjusted the tiles slightly in the light from some candles that were burning slowly. “You are a convive, and Ryan; you’re eating and drinking buddies. You’ll have to add Haribo to the shopping list for next time I go out.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go out there,” said Mrs Westwood, taking a sweet and putting the bag down besides the bag of waiting tiles.
“We can always get a Tesco delivery,” said Ryan.
“Hey, you know what, that’s not the worst idea, bro.”
“Sure I’ll just power up the laptop.”
“I bet there are some of those delivery vans that have still got food in.”
“Maybe,” said Mrs Westwood, “but I bet a lot of people have thought of that. Maybe if you see one stranded, but it’s probably not worth just going to the compound ‘cause they’ll likely be empty.”
“If you see a different board game, pick it up. I suck at Scrabble.” Ryan placed the word ‘odd’ down. “Maybe Buckaroo.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Still don’t see why I can’t help.”
“Let’s not get into that again, Ryan,” said Mrs Westwood.
“I need you here to look after Mum while I’m gone.”
“I know, I know.” Ryan took two tiles from the bag. The letters on his tile holder were like foreign characters to his dyslexic brain. He sighed and laid back, with this the fourth game they had played today. “Is this it? Scrabble for all eternity...”
“I know that would be hell for you,” said Nate. “Plenty of time to get practice in.”
“Screw you, Nate.”
“Boys.”
“Sorry, Mum,” they both said. Ryan continued; “I just think, everyone’s dead you know, or everyone left wants us dead. I don’t know what we’re doing here, stuck here. Shouldn’t we at least go out with a fight or else we’ll just starve to death here.”
“We got enough supplies for the time being,” said Mrs Westwood. “When things around us start running out, then we’ll have to think about what to do then. We don’t know what’s going on out there – maybe the army is sorting this out and there’ll be a rescue tomorrow –”
“– if they didn’t cause this in the first place –”
“– and even if they’re not and everything’s lost, you got to keep going.” She upended the bag of sweets and handed them out. “Promise me, boys...” she held each of their hands. “You... keep... going. Don’t do it for me, for yourself, or for each other for that matter. If no-one keeps going, then everything we have ever done will be lost. That’s what you got to remember, okay?”
*****
A gust had picked up, rustling debris along the gutters of the scatter-brained road – plenty of shadows to hide in its vehicle-strewn collage of ruin.
Sniffing the air, Nate scented the petroleum that hadn’t burned and lay in puddles here and there, or where someone had felt confident enough to siphon it from an opened tank and some remained. There was also death; perhaps if he were to tear down the boards from the upstairs window at the bald-man-who-lived-with-his-mum’s house, he’d see the pair of them dismembered on the bed. He stepped over the broken bones of a cat as he came to the end of the street. There was no moon at all, and the clouds only revealed stars intermittently, yet he found he could see well enough. Something scuttered about ten or fifteen metres away and, looking over in its direction, Nate noticed two sparkling eyes staring back at him: a fox, ears pricked, nose sniffing. Nate turned towards it but it took flight.
The air moved and in its molecules Nate caught a scent he could not recognise. He had smelled it before, he thought, with a sense of déjà vu. Back in the house? Walking upright down the middle of the road, he headed three streets away from his home street; to Redstone Lane where the bigger houses of the estate ruled, and which lead to Stourport caravan park.
He carried a back-pack on each shoulder, with the water looped over his right. In his left was another bag, and in his right was a knife.
At the junction, the larger houses had fared no better than the terraced ones. In fact, fewer were boarded up, and many sported broken windows and open doorways. The smell was slightly sweeter here; almost sickly. Faintly coppery, too. He turned right on the street and walked down the pathway on the left. The road was clearer due to the presence of driveways; cars and vans with open doors graced them.
On one such driveway was a mound of flesh and bone, and as Nate got nearer, he realised it was this that he smelled. It was fresh – to a point – he knew. Stripped to the bone certainly, but where there was still fur there was also still some meat. It all sat in a puddle of congealed blood. This, he sensed, was sour, but it was only a faint minim on the staff of sugary coppery notes that dominated.
These had been two, maybe three foxes by the look of it. Perhaps they were the barkers from the night before. Nate knelt suddenly, for whatever killed them could still be around somewhere. He did not see movement anywhere; the street was still but for the gentle wind. He closed his eyes and cocked his head. He sniffed. Excrement now played a note – a note that grew louder.
“Come out,” he said, standing up. He dropped the bag he was carrying and shrugged his shoulders free of the rest. Vaulting the low-brick wall, he walked up the path towards the open entrance, the dead animals on his right. From the doorway came one of the risen, naked except for torn trousers. Its chest bore the healed scars of saw-edged wounds and smudges of blood. Large veins, pumped plush, tattooed its arms and legs, where a brown smear had trickled and dried down its hamstrings and calves. The rich and sour aroma of ammonia added its scent to the score. It growled a mucus-rich uttering, and raised hands that drew nails black and sharp.
It charged at Nate, who dropped and thrust two knife-equipped hands forward. The knives entered stomach-flesh soft as porridge, and with this purchase, Nate was able to redirect the things momentum so that it flew through the air towards a neighbour’s wall. The knives soundlessly left the wounds which started to gush green and yellow mush. Nate pounced on it before it had chance to rise again, sinking both knives into its head.
Rolling from the inanimate body, Nate took a breath. His empty palms were sweating, his hands shaking. He looked at the blood on them then dragged them across the overgrown grass. Looking at the thing with two newly placed ears, he felt along his own neck, fingertips searching for the bite-mark that had surely been left – or had he dreamed that? Or maybe he’d merely been left unconscious. There had been pain, right?
A raised lump of skin was smooth to his touch, just to the right of
his windpipe. He swallowed, the rasping pain all but gone, and compared the skin to the rest of his neck. Everything else was normal.
Confused, he stood. Bending, he removed the knives and re-sheathed one of them. Experience so far had taught him that it was rare for there to be more than one of these things together. Nevertheless, he approached the doorway with caution.
At the doorway he whispered a hello, then crossed the threshold. He was in a hallway that opened up to a dining room on the right through a double-archway; one door swung open, the other on the carpet with smashed glass. Beneath the dining table was a body with an arm missing; male, with a paunch and a considerable beard. Nate knelt down next to it and deciphered if he was dead, alive, or undead. The things forehead was clammy and cold and it moaned, quietly, as though dreaming. Its chest didn’t expand once.
He stabbed it in the head and then moved quickly to the kitchen. A saucepan of beans sat atop a depleted gas burner. The beans smelled burned, and when Nate checked, he saw the pan was black inside. He opened cupboards that were bare except for a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps, which he opened and ate.
“What do I actually need?” he said aloud. Nothing, he thought. “I have food and water. What I really need is a gun. You listening in there?” he shouted back towards the dining room. “Did you have a gun? I’m guessing not, eh?” He sighed and absently opened a few drawers. Cutlery rattled in one. “Talking to the dead. What I need is a friend.”
Half-bathed in the yellow glow of the torchlight, burying a knife into the chest of Wallace.
“Bet you’re long gone, even if you’re still alive.”
His thoughts turned again to his friends; his last contact with any of them had been months ago before the final rolling blackout had cut the power to the signal towers. Each of his closest friends – Karl, Markus, Phillip – had all lived on the other side of the bridge, nearer to school. Many times he had gone to their house after school to wait being picked up in the evening. Afternoons spent on playing games instead of doing homework and chores, or sharpening knives on the bones of reanimated corpses.
He slammed a drawer shut, a loud punctuation in the dark house.
He sank to the floor with his back against a cupboard, his mind a loss-percolated fog he swam through, hooking first images of school ties and playgrounds loud with laughter and shouting, then quiet whispers and tentative first hand-holds and kisses; Leeann’s lips glistening pink from gloss. His jaw clenched; he hadn’t said goodbye to any of them. Taken from him was the final day of sixth-form; prom; the promises to keep in touch; the future reunions and reminiscences. He dragged the sharp end of a knife across the tiled floor towards him, over and over – shhh-ka, shhh-ka – reliving climbing into and out of friends’ parents’ cars; riding awkwardly along, silent in the back-seat: that polite wave goodbye. Shhh-ka, shhh-ka. He closed his eyes and the ever-present smell of rotting flesh turned the faces of those he once knew black; skin like dripping tar, eyes and noses melting.
If no-one keeps going, then everything we have ever done will be lost.
The words of his mother bounced around his head, and suddenly he wished he had his bag so he could draw out the photograph. They were in a pile at the front of the house, waiting for him.
In a moment of mania, he thought, You need me, don’t you, bags.
He opened his eyes and pushed himself to his feet and headed out to retrieve them.
“Go where you last saw life,” he said. If you break it down, that’s the only answer.
*****
Nate passed a torn Snickers wrapper that had blown towards a gutter, as he walked towards Wigley’s. He hadn’t encountered anyone, or anything, on his walk here. It was a cold, cloudy night, and his skin was cold to the touch, but he felt warm inside, probably to do with the bags and water he was carrying.
At Wigley’s he entered through the broken window and went straight for the store room. He found a corner free of boxes and stored his bags and water there, and then went to the room that was smelling faintly of decomposition now. Closing the door, half a bloody footprint remained, poking into the corridor. “Are you still nearby?” he asked.
He re-entered the storeroom and drank some water. He then took out a bag of dried beef and put it in his pocket.
He lit a candle and surveyed the room. It was almost full of still-wrapped cans of soft drink, boxes of crisps, tins and more. This would be a good base of operations, but first, he needed to secure it, and then get rid of the bodies, which he could still smell.
The key to the storeroom was in the door, on the inside, which made him smile. On a top shelf, he noticed an unrolled sleeping bag, and a pile of clothes. No doubt Wallace’s.
He grabbed these and left the room. He walked through the store to the far end where uncut wood had waited to be sawn. Now all that remained were a few off-cuts. He didn’t need much. He chucked Wallace’s sleeping bag and clothes into an alcove and took a metre-squared piece of plywood. On his way back, he picked up a carton of nails. No hammer, but that spanner of Wallace’s should do the job.
In the room with the mattress – now more clearly soaked in blood – he looked at body of the dead woman slumped against the wall. Clothed, like the many others he had found, she would not have affected him half so much; her naked purple skin was proof of mortality however; blotchy, with a clammy looking sheen accentuated by the yellow hue of the candlelight. Wallace was clothed and a bastard, displaying personality even in death. She was an anonymous lump of meat.
But she wasn’t. She was a mother.
Nate took a deep breath to keep a tear at bay, and then headed into the room. Grabbing Wallace’s legs, he pulled him out, and dragged him as far to the end of the building he could. He retrieved Wallace’s sleeping bag and clothes and threw them on top of the body.
Returning to the room, he entered and walked cautiously around the dried blood towards the woman. Rather than dragging her, he picked her up under the knees and around the shoulder – she was surprisingly light – and carried her into the corridor. Eyes focused ahead and chin raised, he carried her to the store entrance.
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to pick up his own mother, his own brother, yet here he was. An anonymous lump of meat.
Not my mother. Not my mother.
Would someone, some day, do what he could not?
He placed her down and finally took a really good look at her face. “Not anonymous.” There was peace in her distant, brown eyes. It was difficult to distinguish the bruises from the swelled, cold flesh, but he could tell she would once have been pretty.
“In the light I will bury you.” He found a couple coats and covered her up.
In the storeroom, he took the map and a pen, blew out the candle, and then locked the door behind him. He found the crowbar he remembered from the night before, and with the plywood board, nails and spanner, went back through the window. He nailed the board to the front of the window and hid his tools in a nearby hedge.
Unsure of the time, but sure it was still a few hours until dawn, he ran. Unencumbered and light, the air was enriching against his face as it brushed past him. It wasn’t even air he was running into; it was a cleansing shower that gently lifted the burdens from his shoulders and left them scattered behind him. After a while he was running along the track again with a tow of competitors behind him. In his wake, they should have been catching him up, but he was fast, the fastest now, they would never catch him. Then the night encroached again and the lines of the track were just road markings and double-yellow lines, free for anyone to park on.
He paused at the junction before turning right, away from town and towards the countryside. He didn’t know who the girl was, where she was from, where she was going; indeed, he didn’t expect to find her. But he didn’t know what to expect from this road, or the roads that lead off of it. Wallace had been here, the girl and the woman had been here, and these were the only ones alive he had seen for some time. There may be more.
Nate picked up the latest issue of Empire magazine with Han Solo on the cover. “I really wanted to see this too,” he laughed, adding, “Maybe there’s an early cut somewhere I can hunt down. Hey; there’s a purpose, Mum. Now I just need to find the Lucasfilm studios.”
Tossing the magazine aside, he quickly checked the rest of the shelves, noting a few tins here and there. He took his map from his back pocket and marked the grocery store on it, with a symbol he decided meant ‘food’.
Back outside, he began jogging down the middle of the road. Hedges with intermittent clusters of trees, their boughs bare of leaves and dull against the dark clouds, lined the sides. Nate could smell where a house had burned to rubble in the distance, but could not see it. He did keep an eye out for any more sweet wrappers, and was rewarded with another Snickers cast-off. “Litterer,” he said with a hint of a smile, but immediately regretted it; that blood-stained mattress suddenly at the forefront of his mind.
Even if he found her, what would he say to her? What could he say to her?
He stopped jogging and started to walk, taking out the map and pen. He marked on it locations of the houses he could see, their windows lifeless but in many cases, not boarded. The storeroom would be good for now, but perhaps a real bed would be nice in the near future. He made a mental note to check these houses out.
The Risen Page 4