“I’d starve to death before then anyway,” he said, smiling as he expertly dodged a viciously flung pillow. “So you want me to go out and get something then? What do you fancy?”
“Anything.”
“Kebabs it is then.”
“Except kebabs. I wouldn’t have thought there would be a kebab shop around here anyway.”
“There must be,” Roy told her. “I haven’t seen a single cat or dog since we got here.”
“How about fish and chips?” Susan suggested. “We drove past a chippy on the way in. It can’t be more than a five minute walk.”
Roy looked out again at the steady drizzle. “Five minutes,” he sneered. “Maybe you should go.”
“Take the car,” Susan suggested.
He shook his head, reaching for his coat. “Fish and chips, yeah? Salt and vinegar?”
“Of course. What are you having?”
“Same, I reckon. Seeing as I can’t have kebabs.”
“I’m only thinking of you,” she protested, and then, glancing down at his increasing-noticeable paunch, “and that.” He followed her gaze and patted his stomach contentedly. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he walked over to her and leaned down.
“You just stay there,” he said, kissing her gently on the forehead. She reached up and pulled his head down for the sort of kiss more befitting a new bride.
“Don’t be long,” she breathed heavily. “Have you got your mobile?”
“I’ll only be gone a few minutes,” he said, smiling as he tapped the phone in his pocket. “I’ve got a great new ringtone on it, though. You’ll love it when you hear it.” He winked, and left the room. A few seconds later she heard the front door slam behind him.
II
Ten minutes later the telephone rang. Susan, newly dressed but still looking like someone who had just got out of bed, raced across the room and lifted the antique-looking receiver. “Hello?” she said brightly.
There was no answer.
“Hello?” she repeated. “Roy?” Through the phone she thought could hear the gentle patter of rain. Susan shrugged, and put the phone down.
Almost immediately it rang again.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s only me.”
“Did you just ring?”
“No. I’m outside the chip shop. Is something wrong?”
“Just a wrong number or something,” she said lightly.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if the phones around here are a bit missed up,” Roy told her. “We used to have problems at home. I’m only ringing to see if I can get a signal. Plus I wanted to make sure you’re alright, all alone there.”
“Fine,” she told him. “You’ve only been gone ten minutes.”
“I know,” he said, and there was a pause. “You realise this is the first time we’ve been apart since we got married?”
“Go and buy the food,” she told him firmly.
“OK. Bye.”
III
Quarter of an hour had passed when she heard the front door open. “I’ve got some plates ready in the kitchen,” she called, rinsing the last of the toothpaste from her mouth and wiping it with a horribly brown-hued towel.
There was no answer.
Susan draped the towel over the radiator and walked out of the bathroom back into the bedroom. “Roy?” she called. Outside the rain was still gently drumming against the window.
She slowly opened the bedroom door, and looked through it into the living room. The kitchen door was slightly ajar, and she could see the plates and cutlery that she had laid out on the table. There was no sign of any food, and no sign of Roy. She sniffed. The room smelt of disuse, of being left empty nine months of the year. She could faintly smell the air-freshener she had sprayed about the room on their arrival. There was no hint of the distinctive odour of fish and chips.
“Roy?” she repeated, quietly. There was a slight tremor in her voice, she knew. Her heart was beginning to beat more quickly. She felt cold, the fine hairs on her arms rising in sympathetic unison.
From the part of the kitchen that she could not see, behind the thin wooden door, there came the faintest of noises.
Susan stepped forward, very slowly edging towards the kitchen. Another noise came, causing her to breathe in sharply. She reached out with one hand and gently pushed the door open.
There was a flash of movement, and suddenly there were hands upon her, tightly gripping her waist. She screamed.
“Got you!” Roy shouted triumphantly.
“You bastard!” she shouted, punching his arm with as much force as she could muster.
“Steady on, it was just a joke.”
“You almost scared me to death!” she snapped at him, her eyes flashing with anger.
“That was the idea,” he said, slightly defensively. He kissed her, despite her best attempts to turn her head away. Then he began to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” she told him, trying to stifle a smile that was half-amusement, half very genuine relief.
“It is,” he disagreed. “But not as funny as what just happened to me.”
Susan looked around the tiny kitchen. “Where’s the food?” she demanded.
“That’s what’s funny,” he told her, continuing to laugh. “Sit down and I’ll tell you.”
It took Roy a few moments to compose himself, while Susan watched him, still a little angry but mostly just bemused by his behaviour. She probably should have guessed that it was him waiting to scare her, she decided. It was just the sort of thing Roy did. Once he’d bought an empty fish-tank and told her there was a pet tarantula in it. When she said she couldn’t see it, he had very convincingly panicked and told her it must have escaped. She hadn’t been able to sleep that night. He hadn’t been allowed to sleep with her that week.
“OK,” he said finally. “I just went into the village and found that chip shop. I rang you just before I went in, yeah? Just to make sure you weren’t scared on your own. If I’d known just how jumpy you were …”
“Get on with it.”
“So I go into the chippy and I ask the bloke behind the counter for fish and chips twice. And do you know what he says to me?”
“No,” Susan replied, trying to sound bored. “Enlighten me.”
“He says, get this, I can’t give you fish and chips twice, or the zombies will get you!”
“What?”
“That was what I said. I asked him what he had said, and he repeats it.”
Susan looked at Roy, and his giggling face. “Don’t joke around,” she told him sternly. “I’m not in the mood.”
“No, honest,” he replied, somehow managing to look hurt and amused at the same time. “That’s what he said. He can’t give me fish and chips twice because the zombies will get me. He repeated that twice. I thought he was joking but he just wouldn’t budge. In the end I thought sod it because there was a queue forming behind me.”
“OK, whatever,” she told him exasperatedly. “What are you going to do about dinner?”
“I asked some woman, there’s another chip shop a mile or so up the lane. I just popped in on my way past to tell you about this. It’s pretty weird. Maybe they just don’t like the English.”
“Maybe they just don’t like you,” she suggested. “Go and get my fish and chips.”
IV
The smile was gone when he came through the front door again.
“What’s up?” Susan asked, sitting up in her seat when she saw his expression and his empty hands.
“OK, once was funny.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I went up to that other chip shop, and asked for fish and chips twice. It was a woman this time, but she said the same thing.”
“What? That rubbish about zombies?”
“Yeah.” He put on a high pitched voice. “I can’t give you fish and chips twice, love, the zombies will get you!” He shook his head. “This is probably some local wind-up trick. I bet your bloody Uncle rang them
up and arranged all this.”
“I doubt it,” she said firmly. “Uncle Ben is a right sweetie but he has no sense of humour whatsoever.” She looked at him closely, still suspecting that Roy was winding her up, but the look of annoyance in his eyes and the low rumble that came from his stomach at that moment suggested otherwise. “Did you try ordering anything else?”
“No. I want fish and chips. If they don’t want my custom, sod them. I’ll go somewhere else.”
“Roy, don’t get stubborn about this.”
“I’m not getting stubborn.”
“You are,” she told him gently.
“I’m not,” he replied, not quite so gently.
She put her hands up, placating. “All I’m saying is I’m happy to have something else. A fishcake, maybe. I’m not sure I could eat a whole fish anyway.”
“That’s not the point,” he said sharply. “Where are the car keys?”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“Llannisa … Llanas … whatever it’s called. The next village. There’s bound to be a decent chip shop there.”
“Roy,” she began, then saw his look. “OK, have it your way.”
“I won’t be long. Where are the keys?”
V
Despite the fact she was waiting for it, and that she had deliberately sat by it, the ringing of the phone still caught her by surprise.
“Any luck?” she said as she picked it up.
There was only silence at the other end.
“Roy?” she called. “Can you hear me?” She listened carefully. Again there was no reply – just the sound of rain beating against something. Then the line went dead.
She put the phone gently down and dialled 1471, hoping to find out the number. The emotionless, disembodied voice of the computerised operator told her the number was unavailable.
Susan cursed aloud, and put the phone down, harder this time. She still suspected it was Roy playing silly buggers, just as she still had a faint suspicion that this whole thing with the zombies was just a wind-up on his part. But then again, Roy liked his food, enough so that he would have ended the joke a while ago in order to get some grub down him. Maybe she was being unfair to him. Maybe it was Uncle Ben developing a sense of mischief late in life.
She picked up the phone again and clumsily called Roy’s mobile number, unused to the obsolete manual dial. The number rang seven times before it was finally answered.
“Hello?”
Roy’s voice, sounding annoyed.
“It’s me. Where are you?”
“I’m in the car. I’m getting a bit pissed off now.”
“Why? Don’t tell me you’re getting the same thing there?”
“You guessed it,” he replied shortly. “The same old shit about zombies. I’ve already tried two places here. The last place had a girl behind the counter, only about eighteen. When she started to talk about zombies I got quite annoyed, and a couple of blokes in the queue behind me told me to get out. I was going to kick off but I’m too bloody hungry.”
“Roy, just forget it. I’ll have a battered burger or something.”
“No!” he almost shouted at her. “You’re having fish and chips. I’m having fish and chips. We’re having fish and chips twice if I have to go behind the counter and serve them myself. OK, I can see another chip shop. I’ll call you soon.”
“Don’t do anything stupid and get yourself hurt,” she half-hissed at him.
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” he replied firmly, and hung up. She didn’t care much for his tone of voice. She glanced at her watch. They’d been married for twenty-eight hours and thirty-six minutes, and they were having their first argument.
The phone rang. Answering it only confirmed her suspicion that there would be no one there.
VI
It was dark outside now. Susan stood by the window, looking through the rain towards the shadowy bulk of the hills. She could see lights in the village, though she could not make out the individual buildings. Occasionally a car came down the lane, past the drive of the cottage, and with each new set of headlights she prayed that it was Roy. But it never was.
She was worried. She knew how Roy’s mind worked. He was stubborn. Sometimes that was a good thing. The fact that they were together was largely due to his stubbornness, his refusal to accept that her family’s dislike of him should stop them marrying. He had eventually won them over, even Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben had hated Roy from the start, but something must have changed because by the time the wedding date was announced he had been only too keen to lend them his beloved cottage. But that same stubbornness could also get Roy into trouble. He could be aggressive, and would almost never back down, regardless of the odds. When he said that he would get fish and chips twice, that’s what he would do. She loved him for it, even as she wished he could just back down and get something else. She was hardly even hungry anymore. She was simply too worried.
She had tried his mobile twice, and each time she had got his answer-phone. That in itself meant nothing, she told herself. In these hills, in this weather, the mobile signal could come and go. If anything had happened, if their ageing car had finally given up on life and died on him, if he’d got in a fight, he’d have found a way to tell her. She told herself all this.
It didn’t make her feel any better.
The phone had rung twice more. Each time she had picked it up, wanting to hear his voice in the darkened room. Each time there had been no one there. This time, when it rang, she didn’t answer it, not straight away. She ignored its annoying tinny noise, looking out of the window. There was no moon, she realised. It was heavily overcast of course, but Susan still felt she should have been able to see some sign of it, some faint glow behind the shadow of the cloud. Dark moon, Roy had called it. She had once admitted to a little trepidation when it was a full moon, childhood nightmares of werewolves and demons coming to mind. Roy had told her not to worry, that the moon couldn’t hurt her. It was when there was a dark moon, no moon at all – that was the time to worry.
He’d always been able to frighten her. He’d frightened her then. He’d frightened her in the kitchen earlier. He was frightening her now.
The phone continued to ring.
Another car passed, its headlights briefly illuminating the darkness in front of the cottage, the low rumble of its engine penetrating into the room before fading into the encroaching darkness.
The phone continued to ring.
Susan watched as several drops of rain coalesced into one which slid down the window frame, gathering speed before dashing itself to pieces on the windowsill. A night bird called somewhere in the darkness.
The phone was in her hand. She did not remember picking it up.
“Susan?”
“Oh God, Roy? Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” he told her. “Why, were you starting to worry?”
“No,” she lied, sniffing. She realised for the first time that she was crying. A tear rolled down her cheek and dropped onto the phone. “Where are you?”
“I’ve just turned into the lane. I haven’t been able to get a signal until now. I’ve got dinner with me – hope you’ve still got an appetite.”
“You mean …?”
“Yep,” he told her triumphantly, “fish and chips twice.”
“You found somewhere, then?”
“Well, no. I just got bored and pissed off and thought enough was enough. Finally I went into this chip shop and asked the guy for fish and chips twice. He starts to give me the usual about I can’t give you fish and chips twice and I interrupted him and said, look mate, I don’t want to hear this crap about zombies. I’ve heard it all before. You’ve all had your little joke and it was very funny, but now I’m sick of it. I just want two lots of fish and chips and I honestly don’t give a flying fuck about the zombies. And that was it. He asks me if I want salt and vinegar, he serves it all up, I pay him and that was that.” He laughed.
“What do you think that was all ab
out then?” Susan asked.
“God knows. Like I said before, maybe they just don’t like the English. Maybe it’s some bizarre local custom. They all look a bit inbred around here, don’t you think? I keep expecting to see some kid playing the banjo. I’m back now, anyway.”
Susan looked up, towards the window, as two shafts of light illuminated the room. The car pulled up into the drive.
“I hope you’ve got those plates warmed and ready,” Roy said. She heard the engine die, and a second later the lights were extinguished. Silhouetted against the faint glow of the village she saw him step out of the car, his mobile tucked between shoulder and ear, two grey-white bundles in his hands. “I’m starving,” he told her. “I could eat …” and his voice stopped abruptly. Through the window she saw him stop moving.
“What’s up now?” she asked him, jokingly exasperated.
“Hey!” he suddenly shouted, and it was a moment before she realised he wasn’t talking to her. “What are you doing over there?” She watched him walk away from the car, disappearing from her view. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”
Holiday of the Dead Page 38