by T. A. Sorsby
‘Yeah, I remember.’ I smirked, seeing his eyes.
‘Were you going to invite us?’ a deeply accented voice asked.
I hadn’t heard the elevator rattle open, but Lucile and Damian were just stepping out of it.
‘I coming witch you.’ Damian raised his voice to carry down the corridor. He as a physically imposing man with dreadlocks brushing the tops of his shoulders; tall, broad, muscular and friendly as they come.
‘I’ll sit this one out,’ Lucile tutted, ‘I’m gonna, you know, listen to the nice woman on the TV.’ she added as she folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at Damian, looking him up and further up. Petite, blonde and short-haired, she contrasted her in almost every way, save her own muscle. Labourer’s biceps flexed with her folded arms, on show with her tank top.
I’m not usually the type to pay attention to the gender stereotype, but it looked as if the menfolk were manning up, while the womenfolk were staying at home.
‘Then we leave now.’ I said, nobody left to ask.
We dressed warm, grabbing coats and jumpers. Five minutes later, Neville, Damian and myself left Castle Towers, Neville locking up behind us with Stan’s keys.
‘Where to first?’ he asked, bleeping his sedan open.
‘Shotgun.’ I called.
‘How old are you mon?’ Damian snorted, shaking his head. I think it helped diffuse the tension a little.
‘Katy’s place first. You remember where it is, right?’ I asked Neville, getting into the front passenger seat. He’d picked Morgan up from there more than once.
‘Yeah, I remember,’ he nodded. ‘What about after? If we’re going to make a drive for everyone’s family then we’ll need a bigger car.’
‘I like to check on me sister, an de little ones. She text me de other day saying she were heading out, I need to be sure they made it,’ Damian said, ‘you feel?’
‘I feel. Where does your sis live?’ I asked.
‘Terrace housing, over an Greenside.’ he answered, his accent turning ‘Greenside’ into something exotic, rather than a slightly rundown estate. ‘If she there, she’ll lend her car.’
‘We’ll go there first then. Katy’s is further away, and nobody in her house has a car, just one oversized bike. We’ll need more seats if we’re bringing more people.’
‘Thanks man.’ he sighed, his shoulders sagging with relief.
The sun was setting as we left, a light breeze taking with it the last warmth of the day. Even with my jacket, I was cold. Inside Neville’s car we were out of the wind, but still needed the heater.
Neville got us moving but kept to a slow, wary driving pace. We could see smoke rising from several different fires somewhere in the city, the black clouds standing out clearly against the orange of the sunset. On a long, straight stretch of road on a slight rise overlooking the city centre, we came to the clearest view.
In the waning light, we could make out the blinking lights of a helicopter circling over the city, and with the radio turned off, we could hear the sirens of emergency service vehicles, but there was no sign of anyone as we drove through our neck of the woods.
We must have only been driving for ten minutes when we came to a roadblock. It wasn’t military, not a checkpoint. It was a crash, with one of the cars still pouring steam from under the bonnet. One car straddled across both lanes, the other two had somehow crashed into it, making it a sandwich of sharp metal.
Neville rolled his sedan to a stop maybe ten yards back and unbuckled, while I did the same. It was the sort of thing that makes you want to get out and have a look. As we straightened up, a foul smell caught our attention. We glanced at each other over the roof, making sure we were both smelling it.
You don’t forget that smell. The rotten, clinging scent of death. Scrub all you want, trim your nose hairs, and put on some of Neville’s powerful aftershave, but that smell’s only going away once you’ve gotten used to it. Someone had died in that crash. Died bad.
I moved closer. The nearest car had both its doors on one side open, and I could see dark brown stains – blood – on the seats. It looked like there were two people in the back, one unconscious man, and a woman trying to rouse him. Or so I thought.
‘Hey, you okay?’ I asked.
I wish I hadn’t. The woman’s head snapped towards me, her hair covered in blood and grime, obscuring her face. She kept rheumy eyes on me while she crawled backwards out of the car…when she stood up, that’s when I could see her properly.
From her chin to the top of her nose was a mask of fresh blood and bared teeth. But her teeth weren’t showing because of some animalistic gesture…her top lip was torn away, just gone.
She staggered towards me and reached out with both arms, taking in a ragged wheezing breath and letting out a low moan. The moan carried everything dark; pain, hunger, sadness, and it struck a chord right at the base of my spine that froze my feet for a second. I stared into her eyes, white and glassy, and felt my throat tighten.
‘Kelly!’ Neville urged, watching the woman step towards me. ‘Get away, she’s infected!’
‘Shit!’ I swore, thawing my feet, running back to the car.
She followed, staggering towards me so quickly she almost fell over. Before I could get the car door open, she lunged forwards, falling, and just managed to get a grip with one hand around my ankle. She used the grip to pull herself forwards, groaning and wheezing a little more excitedly. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I tried to shake her off, but she had me by the sock.
Damian’s shoe came down on the woman’s wrist, and I heard the bone snap. He got a hand under my arm and pulled me away from the woman, whose grip was nothing now her wrist had been broken. But she clawed forwards an inch using her other hand, pulling so hard that two of her nails peeled free of her fingers. She didn’t even wince.
‘What de hell is this shit?’ Damian cursed, the pair of us taking a few quick steps backward. ‘She a zombie!’
‘There’s no such thing as zombies.’ Neville murmured, looking right at the damn thing while his face turned pale.
‘Come to this side of the damn car and tell me that!’ I yelled back, watching the rest of the woman’s nails tear free as she clawed another inch towards us.
‘In the movies they shoot them in their blackest evil hearts.’ Neville said distantly, half quoting from some film. He looked to have frozen up too, his face puzzled.
But Damian was on the ball; he grunted with effort and threw open the rear passenger door, hitting the woman in the face with another crack of broken bone. She rolled over, thick blood oozing from her nose, which was so twisted over to one side that she looked like an abstract painting.
‘Get in de back!’ he shouted, scrambling over the seats to make some room for me.
I followed him in. ‘Neville, get us out of here!’ I yelled, closing the door just before she could slip her hand inside.
‘You’re serious?’ Neville asked, still outside of the car. ‘A zombie? She’s just sick…’
‘You were looking right at it!’ Damian cried, his voice running high pitched with fear.
A deeper, more masculine moan joined that of the woman’s. Neville spun around, and saw something in the mess of tangled metal that made him turn green when he faced back towards the car. He looked about ready to vomit right there on the street.
‘Yeah, we should go back home.’ he said quickly, slamming the car door and ignoring his seatbelt as he put us into reverse. Tyres squealed as he flicked the car around. Damian and I used each other for support, ourselves un-belted, tossed around in the back.
I turned to look out of the rear window as we sped away, watching as two more figures emerged around the side of the crash and the half-faced woman pushed herself back up to her feet. They started lurching after the car with jerking steps, limping after us a little faster than walking pace. We were safe.
‘This can’t be happening, no way.’ I panted, short for breath, noticing my voice
squeak a little higher. I swallowed hard and tried to breathe steadily. ‘This can’t be happening…’
As Neville tore up the streets heading back home, it was like our eyes had been opened. They were everywhere, with their glassy eyes and bloody clothes, staggering in our wake, letting out that awful moan.
*
Six
We came to a gentle stop back in the parking lot, the engine making little ticking sounds as it cooled. Neville just sat still, one hand on the handbrake and one on the wheel. Damian was holding his head between his hands and staring at the carpet mat, dreads hanging down.
‘That just happened.’ I tried, hearing my voice come out a little quieter than it should have. I repeated myself, louder, searching for confirmation.
‘I broke de woman’s arm,’ Damian muttered, massaging his temples, ‘she didn’t feel a thing.’
‘I know, I saw…saw her nails tear out. She didn’t slow down, just kept coming forwards…’ I spoke, seeing it happen all over again in my head.
Neville opened the drivers’ side door and started taking in those deep, steady breaths that you take when you’re trying not to be sick. I needed air too.
We took a few minutes to pull ourselves together, the terror-induced adrenaline ebbing away, making me feel a little drained, a little weak at the knees. I leaned against the side of the car. Neville’s hands shook as he took out the keys to unlock the foyer, but he clenched his fists, steadying himself.
The elevator ride back up was just as tense and jittery, the usual rattling of the lift not helping matters. I slumped, propped up in a corner, Neville damn near chewed his own bottom lip off and Damian just leaned his head against the cold metal doors, misting them up with his breath.
‘Zombies man,’ he said, a dark laugh in his voice, ‘real old Island lore. They like de story what you tell little ones when they misbehaving, try to get them to eat they greens and not play out after dark. Can’t be real. Can’t.’
‘You slammed a car door in one’s face, D,’ Neville said, looking down at his shoes, ‘sounded pretty real from where I was standing.’
‘You should be proud. Knocking seven shades out of the bogeyman like that.’ I offered up.
‘I need a brew about now,’ he chuckled, forcing a humourless smile and removing his head from the doors.
They shook open onto the top floor, me and Neville following Damian out into the corridor. I could see the big man’s shoulders shaking when he breathed. The Jamesons’ door was open, but before we’d gotten to it, Edgar appeared. He’d been keeping an ear out for us.
‘Well that wasn’t slow.’ The old man said, raising an eyebrow, ‘What’s gone on?’
‘I need to use your bathroom please.’ Damian politely said, Edgar letting him slip by in the doorway.
‘Could you get the kettle on?’ Neville asked, following in Damian’s wake. Edgar looked at me, holding the bag, so to speak.
‘We’ve got big news.’ I nodded gravely, just as the sound of Damian’s first round of retching came from the bathroom.
About ten minutes later, we had everyone together for a sit-down in the Jamesons’ comfortable living room. The old couple were sharing sofa space with Lucile while Damian paced the room, still a little rough around the edges. Morgan was in the kitchen making everyone’s tea, while me and Neville sat on the arms of Edgar’s big chair, both of us too polite to take the actual seat.
‘You remember what that reporter said in the last broadcast? About how ERHR and the cannibal murders are related?’ I asked, struggling to think of a way to break the subject of zombies to someone. ‘I think she was right. Out there, we saw…there was a woman…’
‘Didn’t feel pain.’ Neville chimed in. ‘White as a sheet.’
‘She was bent over this guy, her face was…covering in blood…’
‘Broke her arm. Can still feel it snap. She wouldn’t stop.’ Damian muttered, scratching the back of his neck.
‘Ah,’ Morgan said from the kitchen, ‘you think that the East Rojas Human Rabies virus is in actual fact, the cause of the cannibal murders of last week? That somehow the virus is turning people into violent cannibals who attack their victims with their hands and teeth? That these people are in fact…zombies?’ she added with a dramatic pause.
I looked at the back of her head, ponytail bobbing about the kitchen. I couldn’t tell if she was joking, or just repeating some conspiracy theory she’d read on the Wireless.
‘Way to steal my thunder.’ I grimaced, looking at the reaction on everyone’s face. ‘Yeah. That is exactly what I’m getting at, yeah.’
‘Zombies?’ Rosie scoffed, ‘What’s this rubbish?’
‘East Rojas virus,’ Damian said softly, his voice hoarse from throwing up, ‘you been seen them pictures? All de infected, grey faces, cuts, nothing behind de eyes. That’s what we just seen out there, everywhere.’
‘But they get a fever, that’s it, isn’t it?’ Rosie asked, ‘Everything I’ve read about it says that the infected get a fever and a few sores. I haven’t seen anything like zombies on the news when they reported from abroad.’
‘Well you wouldn’t get many people staying around to record stuff like that…people, eating other people.’ I tried, ‘But they showed us crowds, people with horrible injuries, civic unrest, but not much new in the last few days. I thought it was just because they’d contained it. But if Parliament knew it was coming here, maybe they didn’t want to panic people by showing the full extent. If they even knew about it at all. Pretty much every state in the East has imposed a press ban in the last couple weeks.’ By the time I’d finished talking, just voicing aloud my own thoughts, I realised people had started listening. It left a deep silence when I shut my mouth.
‘Maybe?’ Morgan replied, a blanket response as she started to ferry mugs of tea over.
I shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. But what we just saw out there, no question. The cannibal murders, ERHR, it’s the same thing. That makes the situation a little more dangerous than just some contagious fever. Out there…that woman, she was after us. She meant to kill us. She wouldn’t stop.’
‘Zombies aren’t real though, they’re movie monsters, superstitious myths from backwater cultures…ah, no offence, Mr Grant.’ Rosie added, not looking Damian in the eye. He didn’t look like he was listening, but would probably have politely ignored her anyway.
He was currently engaged in a staring contest with his tea. There were no end of goblins and other nasties in the mythology of the midlands – wonder how I’d feel if I smashed a living, snarling monster right in the face?
‘There was a woman sat in the back of this car. It’d been in a crash,’ I told them, ‘I thought she was trying to wake the guy. But when she got out of the car, I could see…she’d been…’ I faltered, looking for the right word. ‘She’d been eating him. Hell, there’s no way she should have even been walking around. Half her godsdamn face was missing…’ I added, gesturing at my own.
I looked down at the carpet, the vintage floral pattern making me feel even more nauseous. ‘She was missing her top lip, not even bleeding from it. She tried to grab me, fell down, and started crawling forwards,’ I kept talking, trying to get the words out as quick as possible, so I didn’t have to think about it too much. ‘She tore out her nails on the tarmac. Damian broke her wrist, and that didn’t even slow her down. So come on Missus Jameson, what do you know that can make a person do that?’
‘Drugs, or, maybe she wasn’t right after the crash? I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable -’ she began, but Edgar cut her off.
‘Roe, just hold it? Let the man talk.’
I nodded thanks to Edgar. ‘Like I said, this makes things more serious than we thought. This means that it’s a lot more dangerous out there than just rioting and quarantines or some disease...if you don’t want to call them zombies, then fine, infected, afflicted, whatever. But that’s what we saw – a walking corpse. The living dead.’
I know I promised Katy t
hat I’d sit tight, but knowing what kind of danger she could be in? I couldn’t bear it. What if she was already like one of those things? What if work got her killed? I had to at least try and find her, bring her somewhere safe. Or safer. Or whatever. I had to know she was okay.
‘I’m going back out to look for my fiancée.’ I said slowly.
‘But you just said it was dangerous!’ Lucile exclaimed, pointing a finger, ‘And now you want to go back out there, knowing what’s waiting? And seriously, if I couldn’t smell Damian’s breath from here, I’d think ya’ll were yanking our chains.’ She added.
‘Thanks girl,’ Damian chuckled, sniffing in another deep breath, ‘but we not trying to joke here.’
‘Which is why we have to find our families, now. If they’re anything like in the movies, zombies won’t know how to use elevators, and from what we saw out there, they’d have trouble with stairs. We’re the safest place in the city right now.’ I added, feeling a welcome burst of resolve setting in, a purpose. I stood up.
‘It’s dark now, and we don’t know what these things are capable of. Without being able to see them coming…I’ll listen to her advice, stay safe. Until tomorrow. Then, I’m going to bring my fiancée back here. I won’t ask anyone to come with me, but if you want me to see if I can find your families too, I’ll do it. Might need your ride though, if you’re cool with it?’ I asked Damian.
‘I coming witch you.’ he nodded, ‘Not going to be asking anyone to do something I not willing to do myself.’
‘I’m in,’ Neville said, raising his hand, ‘I have a weapon and know how to use it. Been…a long time since I shot at anyone, but I think I still remember how.’
‘Uh,’ Lucile hummed, tentatively raising her hand too, ‘I don’t really know many people in the city, certainly not any I’d be willing to risk my life for. My brothers are all down in Sydow. But if you’re serious about this, you might need an extra pair of hands.’
‘We’ll just hold the fort, shall we, Ed?’ Rosie said, putting a hand on Edgar’s leg.