A Dead Disappointment

by Birch, S. C.

  Lucy started walking towards them.

  “Fuck this, I’m off!” Emily said then ran down the stairs.

  “Shit!” Jack said and chased after Emily, sprinting down the stairs. He heard Lucy and Owen start fighting again, but he didn’t slow down. As soon as Jack reached the bottom, he rounded the corner, ran up the hall and into the kitchen where he doubled over, placed both hands on his knees, and started wheezing.

  “Are you really that unfit?” Daniel asked.

  “Shut. Up.” Jack panted and tried to stand.

  Cameron hoisted himself up on a counter, lit up a cigarette, and held the packet towards Jack, “Want one?”

  Jack pushed himself up and glared at Cameron, “Fuck. You.” he said, then accepted that cigarette.

  Daniel tutted, “We should get you started on a fitness plan.”

  And Jack let out the loudest and most sarcastic laugh he had in him in between trying to catch his breath.

  Day Three

  “It’s Day Three of the end of days!” Jack said standing amongst the numerous book towers in the library, “Just kidding. It’s the zedpocs, but I don’t think this is how the world ends. I mean, so far we haven’t even seen any zombies. Which is just so disappointing! You would think, you know, since it’s the apocalypse and everything there would be hundreds! But nope! Not one so far. If I do see any though, I’ll let you guys know. But in the meantime, I want to know how you guys are getting on! So, yeah, send photos or even just let me -”

  “What are you doing?” Owen asked as he walked into his once library.

  “Hey! It’s Owen Parker! Yeah, forgot to mention that! I’m holding up the zombie apocalypse with Thee Owen! And not a lookalike. This is the real guy from The Day The Dead Came Back! Don’t believe me? Then check out the scar!” Jack pulled his phone away from his face and shoved it into Owen’s, “No mistaking it, is there?”

  Owen laughed. “I was wondering what you were up to. And I could hear you talking to yourself and got worried.”

  Jack pulled his phone away from Owen and back to himself. “I’m talking to my people! Seeing how they’re getting on. Oh, and zedpocs is totally what this is getting called. I decree it! So…yeah, if you have stories, photos or videos just send them to me. For some reason, we still have electricity and interne-”

  “Don’t jinx it! My God, man!” Emily shouted as she burst into the room.

  Jack twisted his wrist and faced the phone at his sister, then back to himself, “I’m jinxing nothing! Just stating facts. Anyway, guys, I’m off, but I’ll still be around. Till next time.”

  Owen folded his arms and leaned into the wall, “Why are you filming?” he asked.

  “It’s how I make my living. And I’m kind of limited to what I can actually do right now. Oh, I know! We should all do videos and I can load them to my channel. That way when the world goes back to normal, I’ll be the internet’s hero!”

  “Oooh! I like that idea! We can do individual and group ones, too!” said Emily who flapped her hands to show her excitement.

  “My God, you two are insane.” said Owen.

  “How so, mate?” asked Jack.

  “There’s zombies outside and you two wanna make videos.” Owen shrugged, “It’s just funny.”

  Then Cameron dropped in on the action and all four stood amongst the books which Owen had stacked into piles, “There’s not though is there?” he said, “We haven’t actually seen any yet. I bet it’s all a conspiracy. That nothing’s actually happening out there.”

  “God, Cam.” said Emily with a teasing smile, “You can be so paranoid.”

  Jack’s phone dinged and the screen lit up. He slid his finger across the black glass and opened up an app, “No this is real. Look at the photos and I’m being sent.”

  They huddled around the phone and watched as Jack swiped through photographs. The zombies looked exactly how they had expected. Grey skin, blood-drenched mouths, chunks of their own flesh rotting off them, white eyes. The usual kind of thing.

  “Oh, hey-hey! Owen, there’s a page set up for you! Literally about three seconds ago called ‘Owen Parker Lives’. Glad to know I added some cheer to the world.” Jack grinned.

  “Oh, Christ!” Owen whipped out his own phone from his pocket and opened the site. “For the love of God. People have actually taken a clip from your video! Oh, yep, there it is. A photo of the scar. Great. Says here that’s proof I’m still alive. The fucking things people care about.”

  “Err, you’re kinda famous now. You can’t exactly get pissed off at people treating you like it.” Emily said.

  “Err, yes I can when there’s an apocalypse outside…”

  “Oh, yeah…” Emily chewed her lip, “I guess you can’t really be like, a real celebrity if the world is ending, can you?”

  “…No, Emily, I don’t think I can…” Owen replied, unsure if he was being stupid, or she was.

  “Wow,” Jack said, “you’re dumb as fuck sometimes.” He was then punched.

  “Shut up!”

  “Aww,” Cameron teased, “you’re cute when you’re mad.”

  And Emily roared in rage.

  “Is it wrong that I kind of miss talking about making stupid videos?” Owen asked over Emily’s incoherent wails.

  “Fuck up. Nothing stupid about what I do.” Jack said and walked to Owen, passing a screaming Emily and a laughing Cameron, “Here, you got anything I could borrow for it? Like a camera or laptop?”

  Owen shrugged, “Probably? Laptop’s in my bedroom and I might have a camera somewhere.”

  Grace had walked in some time ago. She was stood in the door frame, torn between which Brooker to go to. After watching Emily shout for a while Grace concluded that she wasn’t going to calm down any time soon, so she walked to Jack. “Is everything okay in here?”

  Jack released this high-pitched screech from deep within himself and spun round “Oh, fuck!” he yelled, his heart thumping fast. He grabbed Grace’s shoulder, “Oh my God. You’ve just given me the fright of my fucking life.”

  Grace giggled at him.

  Cameron was now nearly on the floor laughing.

  Emily was still doing whatever it was she was doing, Owen had no idea anymore.

  “This is too much for me.” he said and started walking out of the room, “Good luck with…whatever.”

  He travelled down the stairs and towards the kitchen. He could still hear the Brooker induced mania from above him. It was incredible how much noise those two were able to generate.

  “Oh, hi, Owen.” Daniel said. He was sitting on the floor and patting Mortimer, “How are you?”

  “I’m good. Just here to check how much food we’ve got left.”

  “I’ll help…” Lucy hovered for a moment, “If that’s okay?”

  Owen nodded, “Yeah, sure.” he said and while Daniel continued to do nothing those two counted what was left and edible.

  They had:

  Three boxes of cereal.

  Enough milk for one bowl of cereal and a small cup of tea.

  Four bags of assorted crisps.

  One bar of chocolate.

  One frozen black forest gateau (still in the freezer).

  Nine packets of instant noodles.

  One whole tin of pineapple chunks.

  One punctured tin of pineapple chunks.

  Four tins of mushroom soup.

  One frozen cheese and onion quiche (still in the freezer).

  Still enough alcohol to sink fourteen hardened sailors.

  Seven bags of dog food (for reasons wholly unknown, Mortimer avoided the bags even though they were of a premium brand).

  One can of condensed milk.

  And one can of Moonshine still tucked away in the fridge.

  As Owen packed the food away in a more secure spot, Lucy walked to the living room. The tension between them was easing off, but Lucy didn’t want to push it, so left.

  She crossed the room to the sofa. There she picked up the ‘What To Do I
n The Unfortunate Case Of A Zombie Outbreak’ book and started thumbing through the pages when she heard a loud crash outside. Struck with panic she spun round and climbed up the sofa, looking past the blockade and outside.

  “Owen!” she screamed. “Owen get in here!”

  Owen ran to the living room. Daniel followed. Lucy was by the window, trembling. Her eyes red and her face pale.

  Owen reached her and looked outside, past the railings and towards the woodlands facing his home.

  It should be noted here, before events unfold, that how they missed what came next nobody knows.

  A man in a blue shirt crawled out of a crashed car across the road. He flung open the door and flopped onto the ground. There was shuffling and wrestling from the thicket nearby. The Blue Shirted Man lifted himself up and looked around. His eyes were pried apart and the scream that forced itself from him froze Owen’s blood. Rotting corpses were shuffling towards him. One dragged itself out from under the car and snatched at the man’s legs. Biting and snarling. The Blue Shirted Man fell to the ground and started kicking at the crawling zombie.

  “Oh my God.” Owen said then ran towards the front door.

  “Owen?” Jack shouted as he and the others started climbing down the stairs, “What’s happened?”

  “Someone’s outside!”

  “Oh fuck!” Jack barked and dashed down the stairs.

  Owen fumbled at the buzzer by the door. He slammed his hand hard into it and opened the gates.

  Jack reached the front door and flung it open. “In here! Now!” he yelled and the Blue Shirted Man started flying towards the house.

  The man crossed the threshold and ran up the driveway. Jack and Cameron ran out to meet him. But the Blue Shirted Man screamed out and ran in the other direction. Owen ran towards his garage for a weapon, then saw what the man had.

  His garden was littered with zombies.

  “Fuck! Get back in the house!” Owen shouted. He darted around dozens of jaws and weaved through rotting hands and towards his garage.

  “What -” Jack started. He felt a sharp tug at his leg. It was pulled out from under him and he crashed to the ground. His head bounced off the stone driveway and blood started to treacle out.

  Emily screamed Jack’s name and ran out to him. She slammed her boot into the zombie’s face and separated the skull from its neck. The zombie’s head deflated and shot up streams of black puss and blood.

  “Up!” Emily yelled as she hauled her brother to his feet. Cameron ducked down and heaved Jack up.

  As Owen heard Emily scream, he ran out of his garage, holding all he had managed to find; his nineteen-year-old and always faithful baseball bat (they were almost a necessity when you lived on the estate he had). Owen pushed forwards and slammed the bat into the side of a zombie’s head and bashed his way forwards.

  Jack was dizzy and heavy. Cameron slung him over his shoulder and dragged him back to the house. “Inside now!” he yelled at Emily.

  “Emily!” Grace shouted.

  Daniel ran out and grabbed Jack from Emily. In turn, Emily ran behind the three boys and started pushing Jack towards the house.

  Owen swung his bat wildly. Frozen with adrenaline, stuck in the fight. He couldn’t think to retreat. All he could do was swing and swing and swing…

  “Owen, get in!” Lucy shouted.

  He was shocked back to his senses and ran back to the house. As Owen passed the door, he grabbed it and slammed it hard.

  With his heart thumping and his lungs burning, Owen started locking the door. Turning the keys and latching the chain.

  His garden was filled with the not-quite-so-dead. They swayed and stumbled around. Circling the house.

  “The fuck. They. Even come. From!” he panted, looking outside the thick glass of the door.

  “I don’t know! I haven’t seen any at all!” Daniel brought his hand to his mouth, “Oh, I think I’m going to be sick…”

  Emily sat Jack in the dining room beside the first aid kit.

  “You okay?” she asked as she opened the green plastic box and started rummaging around for things she might need.

  “Fucking hell, that was intense!” Jack shouted.

  “Christ tell me about it!” said Owen as he threw himself down beside his friends. He had abandoned the door to check Jack was okay.

  “Cam!” Jack shouted.

  Emily punched Jack’s arm, “Stop moving!”

  Cameron appeared at the door and clasped his hands on either side of the frame, “Yeah?”

  “Told you it wasn’t a conspiracy.” Jack said with a wide grin.

  Cameron laughed.

  Owen also burst into laughter, but Emily glared.

  Jack rolled his rather sore head, “Oh come on! You have to admit that was a little fun…”

  Grace started cleaning up the blood, puss and skull fragments that had been traipsed into the house. Daniel crouched down beside her with a wad of kitchen roll, bin bags, and bottled bleach.

  “Ohhh my God. Oh, no. No. Ah! It’s everywhere.” Daniel buried his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow. “Why is it so sticky?”

  With her hands safely in rubber gloves, Grace scooped some of the gunk into a bin bag. She gagged violently.

  Daniel gagged in response.

  And poor Lucy. She wandered from the kitchen and past the dining room where she watched four of her friends laughing. And in the hall ahead of her, sat Daniel and Grace who were jerking and had tears in their eyes – also laughing, no doubt. She launched herself down on the sofa in the living room beside Mortimer and gave him a clap. He, in turn, rumbled, grumbled, slid off the sofa, and left the room, leaving a rancid smell behind himself. So Lucy sat alone until everyone came back in.

  “We need to sort out something safer than this.” she said.

  “I’ll get the book.” Owen said and picked it up from the sofa.

  Lucy ran her hands through her hair, “Are we really going to use that book again?”

  Daniel sat forwards and swept his hair up, “I’m for any help. I don’t think we’re that good at this. There’s hundreds out there we never noticed.”

  “Speak for yourself. I think I’m quite fantastic at this.” Jack said, grinning. “But seriously, if you look at them, they’ve all stopped moving and are just standing around. I mean, some are even sitting down next to bushes like some weird rotting Ninjas.”

  “Here we go!” Owen shouted and grabbed everyone’s attention. “Okay…So… next, you must find weapons. As we discussed earlier, the best option is to go for the head, and as they are attracted to noise only use guns if absolu-”

  “Oh crap!” Jack shouted, “Should’ve filmed us attacking those zombies.”

  “You failed us.” Cameron said. “For shame.”

  “Christ almighty will I actually ever be able to read this without being interrupted?” Owen looked around the room and glared at everyone. “Good! Right so, guns, blah, blah, blah, trapped with imminent death approaching blah, blah, blah, can’t raid shop shelves without a means of defence, blaaahhh, humans are also the enemy…right, this chapter is stupidly boring. Let’s just find weapons and stuff and bring them back here. Lucy, can you keep an eye out and let us know if anything gets in?”

  “Sure.” Lucy replied.

  “Who’s brave enough to take the basement?” asked Owen.

  Jack shot forwards, “You have a basement? Mine. Totally mine.”

  Cameron sighed, “I’ll go with him.”

  “Right, in that case, Em, you and me’ll take upstairs and you two,” Owen looked over at Grace and Daniel, “can take this floor. All good?”

  There was a resounding “Yup.” then they all set off.

  The Basement

  Slowly, Jack pushed open the creaky door behind the stairs. He and Cameron stood at the frame, looking down. The darkness from deep behind the door slithered forwards. A dull breeze slid up and chilled them. The slight whiff of mould and dampness licked their nostrils. The two boys
looked down into it. They could see nothing but a wall of black beyond the first three steps. Staring into the overwhelming darkness, they felt it sink into their souls and wrap its way around them. Jack inched forwards, found a switch, flicked it on and light shone through the doorway and devoured the darkness. A dull rumbling noise echoed up and along the concrete walls below. Both boys peered down the stairs and into the room. Now they could see the stairs in their entirety, but nothing beyond.

  “Be back in a sec.” said Cameron who then vanished from sight.

  Jack continued to stare down the concrete steps and into the light. He gulped hard. His throat felt rough and his legs weighed him down and anchored him above those stairs.

  “Here.” Cameron said as he reappeared and pushed a kitchen knife into Jack’s hand.

  They both stood, knives ready, looking into the light.

  And then they stood for longer.

  And longer.

  Then there was a rumbling down the stairs.

  Then they looked at each other in fear.

  And then they looked back into the light.

  And then they waited.

  “Err, you first?” asked Jack.

  “Nope. This was your idea.”

  “Okay…”

  And then they waited.

  “Right. I’m going down.” Cameron said.

  And they both waited.

  “Are you okay?” Grace asked, passing them on her way to collect her own weapons.

  “Yeah!” Jack said, convincing no one but her.

  Cameron slid a foot down and onto the first step. Then he brought the other along. Then he went down to the next step. Then Jack pressed his foot hard on the concrete. Then Cameron slid his hand up the wall beside him. Then they waited.

  It took sixteen minutes for them to go down the stairs. Sixteen. But they had both made it to the bottom alive. It was as expected for a basement or attic to be. Filled with boxes and clutter in no discernible order. The basement was huge and spanned out under the house. It was almost as big as Cameron and Daniel’s flat. Each foot those boys placed down on the solid concrete was calculated. They both slid through the boxes. Pushing past them side on and moving through them.

  A box fell, and metal clattered on the floor.