by Moody, David
‘Why are you always pulling in the opposite direction to me? Do you do it on purpose?’
‘Yeah, well you’re not always right, you know. You seem to think you have a monopoly on common-sense, coming at me from your bloody moral high ground.’
‘It’s not about common-sense, it’s about putting the kids first and not scoring points. I don’t think you can do that.’
‘Of course I can.’
Jody lowered her voice and moved closer to him. ‘Then why is your dead girlfriend still in the dining room? We should have got rid of her.’
‘She’s not dead.’
‘As good as.’
‘Maybe I’m just not as quick to give up on people as you are.’
‘Why do you keep turning everything around like it’s my fault? You’ve always done that, and you did it again just now with the chocolate. You’re always undermining me.’
‘It was just a bloody chocolate bar.’
‘Yeah, but it’s the message you’re giving out. Mum’s wrong and Dad’s right. You’re always making me out to be the villain.’
‘That’s ’cause you’ve always been a fucking killjoy.’
‘Can’t you both just stop?’ Jenny asked. Her innocence and honesty was heart-breaking.
‘You need to tell your mother,’ Gary said quickly.
‘I’m talking to both of you,’ she replied with a clarity which belied her years. ‘You’re always fighting. I know you don’t like each other, but you don’t have to keep fighting all the time. It’s embarrassing.’
‘That’s us told,’ Jody said, feeling awful.
Holly peered out from behind her older sister. ‘Daddy, I think Charlie’s awake. I heard her.’
Both Jody and Gary bolted towards the dining room door. Gary paused with his hand almost on the handle. Almost, but not quite. ‘Stay back,’ he said to the children, and Ben and the girls moved away without protest.
Gary’s hammer was on the hall floor. Jody picked it up and handed it to him. ‘You know it’s the right thing to do,’ she said, and for once he didn’t argue. He cautiously pushed the door open.
At first he couldn’t see her.
With the light coming in from the partially-boarded up window, it was hard to make out much in the shadowy dining room. It was only when she twitched and shook that he realised where Charlie was: crouched in the corner, all arms and legs and hate, spiderlike. She didn’t look like Charlie anymore. Instead, she looked like every other damn infected. Her movements were awkward and unnatural, stop-start, and her limbs twisted in ways they shouldn’t. Her head ticked like a chicken pecking corn. The smell in the room was enough to make his eyes water. Death, decay, disease and defecation, all wrapped up in a single stifling stench.
Jody was on his shoulder. ‘Close the door,’ she whispered, quietly and carefully.
‘I need to see her,’ he said, edging in the other direction.
‘Don’t be stupid. She’ll kill you.’
‘She won’t.’
‘She will. And then she’ll kill the rest of us.’
Gary’s arrogance continued to astound her. Even now he was ready to tell her how wrong she was. He turned to push her away and—
—Charlie attacked.
It was sudden and swift. Deadly. The creature’s speed and ferocity compensated for the awkwardness of its barely coordinated movements.
The Charlie-thing leapt forward and was fully illuminated by the light. The gash along her forearm seemed deeper and wider and it glistened with overflowing disease. She was coming straight at Gary and the bloody idiot was just standing there, dumbstruck, waiting for it to happen. In half the time it took him to react, Jody grabbed his hand and dragged him out into the hall. She turned around to pull the door closed and barely managed to shut it in time. Dead Charlie was on all fours, scuttling like a crab towards her, head lolling back but eyes fixed forward.
Jody shut the door and clung onto the handle as it rattled in its frame. The noise was terrible and filled the house – dead Charlie hitting the woodwork again and again and again.
‘Want Mummy!’ Holly screamed, her high-pitched wail cutting through the panic and everything else.
‘Get them out of here,’ Jody screamed, but she needn’t have bothered because Gary was already halfway up the stairs, pushing and dragging the kids to safety. In the split-second she was distracted, Jody almost let go of the door. Charlie yanked it open from inside, spindly fingers wrapped around the handle, pulling Jody into the dining room. Jody pulled it back at the last possible second and clung on for dear life. ‘Help me, Gary!’
Gary feigned deafness, but then looked back out of guilt. Momentary eye contact. Jody pleading for help she knew she wasn’t going to get. Ben tried to turn back, but Gary kept him moving forward.
Dead Charlie yanked at the door again, and this time the hideous thing’s strength was such that the handle was snatched clean out of Jody’s hands.
The door was wide open.
Jody and the Charlie-thing, face-to-face.
Gary glanced back once more as the dead girl lunged and knocked Jody clean off her feet.
Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving.
Into the bedroom he and Charlie had shared. The kids were crying, all of them, even Ben. ‘It’s okay,’ he told them. ‘It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be all right.’
He herded them over to the far side of the king-size bed, then went back and shifted Charlie’s bedside table, knocking her jewellery, makeup and creams everywhere. Didn’t matter. She had no use for any of them now. He hefted the table out of the way then ran back around again and shoved the bed frame against the door to block it. Ben helped, quickly realising what his dad was trying to do.
‘What about Mum?’ asked Jenny.
‘Sorry, love.’
‘Will she be all right?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Can we help her?’
‘It’s too late.’
‘But we have to help her.’
‘I don’t think we can. Mummy stayed downstairs to stop Charlie getting us. She’s really brave.’
‘I want Mummy,’ Holly whined.
‘I know you do, love. You have to remember, though, Mummy wanted you three to be safe more than anything else in the world. That’s why she stayed downstairs, and that’s why she brought you here so we could both look after you together. She got hurt taking care of all of us. She was really brave, your mum.’
‘We should go back,’ Ben said.
‘We’re not going back.’
‘She dead?’ Holly asked.
‘She one of those things?’ Jenny asked, sobbing.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think she’s dead,’ Holly said.
Jenny started howling. Ben started shouting, kicking out in frustration. Gary wrapped his arms around all three of them and sat them down on the floor in the space where the bed had originally been. ‘Shh... all of you,’ he whispered. ‘We have to keep the noise down so the sick people don’t hear us, okay? We can’t let anything happen now, because if we do then all of Mummy’s effort will have been for nothing.’
Noises downstairs. Awful screaming noises. Bangs, crashes, breaking glass. Death throes. Gary pulled the kids closer still and covered their ears as the ground floor cacophony continued in the rooms beneath them. They could feel the fighting. The whole house seemed to shake.
‘It’s gonna be all right,’ he told them when the noises eventually began to subside. ‘Mummy was really brave, and now it’s your turn to be brave. All of us. Daddy too. I’m gonna look after you all the time now.’
Nothing but shock and sobbing. He relaxed his grip but the kids didn’t move. Too scared. Paralysed with fear.
Gary filled the silence with nervous chatter. ‘We’ll wait here until it’s safe, then I’ll go down and sort everything out. The police will come and help us, maybe even the army. I know it’s been horrible this last couple of days, but things are go
nna be okay. It’s just the four of us now, like you always wanted. We’ll go to Disneyland like I promised. Everything will be okay.’
Still nothing.
‘We can go and see Gramps and Nanny. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet they’re keen to see you. It’s been ages since I’ve seen them.’
‘Mum takes us,’ Ben said.
‘What?’
‘Mummy takes us to see Gramps and Nanny, and Granny and Pa,’ Jenny explained.
‘What? Wait, your mum’s been taking you to see my parents? You never told me.’
‘We thought you’d get cross.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t.’
‘You said you didn’t care what Mummy did and you didn’t want to hear about it,’ Jenny said, repeating parrot-fashion.
‘They’re still all friends, even though you and Mum hate each other,’ Ben said. ‘Nanny said just because you’ve fallen out, doesn’t mean we can’t all still get on.’
Gary was shocked. ‘My mum said that?’
‘Yep,’ said Holly.
Jenny continued. ‘Gramps said he thought Mummy was doing really well considering.’
‘Considering what?’
‘Don’t know. They usually stop talking when they know we’re listening.’
Gary got up from the floor, incensed. ‘That bloody woman. Out to get the bloody sympathy vote from my parents. How low will she go?’
‘That’s not fair, Dad,’ Ben said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Gary turned on him.
‘Adult business, son. Keep your bloody nose out.’
‘I’m only trying to—’
‘Well don’t. When I want your advice I’ll...’
Ben looked up to see why his dad had stopped talking, and then he saw her.
Mum.
At the window.
Clothes torn and blood-soaked.
Infected.
Gary staggered back in fright as she hauled herself up onto the veranda, using the roof of his car to get up. She beat against the glass with leaden hands, fists smearing grease and germs.
Gary grabbed the kids, but Jenny slipped his grip. As he dragged them away from the window, she ran towards it. ‘Mummy!’ she shouted, thrilled to see her again. Gary tried to stop her, but Ben and Holly were in the way and he could only watch helpless as Jenny slipped the latch and let Jody inside.
The Jody-thing watched him from the other end of the room. The gusting breeze from the window caught her shirt, and when it flapped open Gary saw the scratch. Long, deep, dirty, uneven. It ran from her left shoulder down her bicep, a vicious zigzag line, dripping with blood.
‘It’s not Mummy,’ he told the kids. ‘She’s got the disease. Don’t go near her.’
His dead ex-wife stood her ground. Unmoving. Glowering.
And then she attacked.
She launched herself at Gary and he panicked, remembering the things he’d seen on TV and the things they’d fought in the back garden of the house. Abhorrent, cursed, infected creatures. He remembered what Charlie had become.
Gary reached for Jenny and Holly’s outstretched hands, but infected Jody stood between them. And in the ensuing chaos, as Gary did everything he could to avoid her savage, poisonous claws, their positions were steadily reversed.
Jody with the kids cowering behind her now.
Gary next to the open window.
She came at him again, and his decision was made.
‘Sorry, kids.’
He dived for the open window as she lurched towards him. Heart-racing, desperate, terrified, he climbed over the veranda then dropped down onto the roof of his car. He half-rolled, half-fell to the ground then immediately picked himself up. He checked his pockets. Car keys, but for the wrong car. Charlie’s motor was locked in the garage, blocked in by his own useless vehicle, and there were infected approaching. Three of them. Wait, no, four. Six! Eight! He looked up at the house he’d just escaped from, then ran.
As fast as he could. As far as he could. Not stopping. Not looking back.
Gone.
Jody watched from the upstairs window until he’d disappeared, then turned back to face the children. Ben, shaking with fear, positioned himself in front of his two younger sisters, ready to defend them from the vile creature that had once been his mother.
‘It’s okay, love,’ she said. ‘It’s me. I’m all right.’
‘Don’t believe you,’ he said, voice trembling as badly as his legs.
‘I swear. She didn’t touch me. I’m okay. Not sick.’
‘What about the scratch?’
‘I did it.’
‘You did it?’ Jenny asked, peering around her brother’s stocky frame.
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted to see what your dad would do. I wanted to know if he was really going to look after you.’
‘Daddy ran away,’ Holly said.
‘Yep. Pretty much exactly what I expected.’
‘And you’re not sick?’ Ben asked, still clearly unsure.
‘I’m not sick.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘What about Charlie?’
‘I couldn’t help her. She’s okay now, though. She’s not hurting anymore.’
‘She dead?’ Holly asked.
‘Yes, she’s dead. Sorry, love.’
‘I liked Charlie.’
‘Yeah, I liked Charlie. She deserved much better. Shall we go home now?’
‘Yes, please,’ Ben said.
‘Cool.’
With a grunt of effort Jody moved the bed away from the door then led her children downstairs, distracting them from the wreckage and the blood and what was left of Charlie. She found the keys to Gary’s 4x4 in a bowl on the kitchen table, and she drove the kids out of the infected zone.
And they felt safe.
And they were safe.
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Moody grew up on a diet of trashy horror and pulp science fiction. He worked as a bank manager before giving up the day job to write about the end of the world for a living. He has written a number of horror novels, including AUTUMN, which has been downloaded more than half a million times since publication in 2001 and spawned a series of sequels and a movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine. Film rights to HATER were snapped up by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) and Mark Johnson (producer of the Chronicles of Narnia films). Moody lives with his wife and a houseful of daughters and stepdaughters, which may explain his pre-occupation with Armageddon.
ALSO BY DAVID MOODY
THE HATER SERIES
HATER
DOG BLOOD
THEM OR US
THE AUTUMN SERIES
AUTUMN
AUTUMN: THE CITY
AUTUMN: PURIFICATION
AUTUMN: DISINTEGRATION
AUTUMN: AFTERMATH
AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION
TRUST
STRAIGHT TO YOU
LAST OF THE LIVING
STRANGERS
ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE
My first novel, STRAIGHT TO YOU, was released in 1996 and promptly disappeared from view. 500 copies were printed, and I still have a couple of boxes from the original print run in my garage! The experience taught me several valuable lessons about writing, most notably that both the hardest and most important task for a new author is to find people to read their work. In those dim and distant pre-Internet, pre-ebook days, that was no easy task.
When it came to releasing my second novel, AUTUMN, in 2001, I was already making my first tentative steps online. It struck me that the easiest way to get people to read my book was to give it to them for free, so that was what I did. And with no real plan or design, my first zombie novel generated around half a million downloads, a series of sequels, a radio adaptation and even a (not so great) movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine.
Self-publishing was frowned upon in 2001 (and
still is today in some quarters), so I decided to take a different approach. I talked about ‘independent publishing’ instead, and I set up INFECTED BOOKS, my own publishing company. I hit the market at just the right time and managed, through luck more than judgement, to capitalize both on the sudden growth of ebooks, and also on the massive popularity of zombies.
In the fifteen years since AUTUMN was published, zombies have become a global phenomenon. In the same decade and a half, the publishing industry has changed beyond all recognition. Back in the day, myself, Brian Keene and David Wellington were just about the only folks putting out zombie fiction. Now that’s changed and there are many brilliant zombie authors delivering the goods. I thought the fifteen year anniversary would be a great opportunity to celebrate both the enduring appeal of the living dead and the massive success of zombie authors worldwide.
2016 is Infected Books’ YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE, and over the course of the year you’re going to be treated to brand new zombie novellas by some of the very best in the business. Check www.infectedbooks.co.uk at the beginning of each month for each new release.
David Moody
January 2016
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM INFECTED BOOKS
YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE
KILLCHAIN by Adam Baker
THE PLAGUE WINTER by Rich Hawkins
THE YACHT by Iain Rob Wright
Z-HUNT by Mark Tufo
GERAINT WYN: ZOMBIE KILLER by Gary Slaymaker
LITTLE MONSTER by James Plumb
RIDE THE SERPENTINE by Andre Duza
STRANGERS
LAST OF THE LIVING
ISOLATION
THE COST OF LIVING
STRAIGHT TO YOU
AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION
TRUST
by David Moody
GIRL IN THE BASEMENT
by Wayne Simmons
VOODOO CHILD
by Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza
FIND OUT MORE AT WWW.INFECTEDBOOKS.CO.UK