Class Four: Those Who Survive

by Duncan P. Bradshaw

  Repeat.

  She’s on the floor again, rubbing her jaw. Must’ve cracked something. She ain’t happy but it did shut her the fuck up.

  Which was nice.

  The husband, at least I think that’s what he was, picked her up and said it’d be okay. Then he looked at me and asked me what I’d done to the village. I said I hadn’t done anything to their village; I’d just took some stuff from the shop.

  He squeezed the old bird and took a step towards me. Only then did I notice that his trousers were crusted with dried blood, and not just a little bit. It was like he had gone fly fishing in Blood Lake.

  He then proceeds to regale me with the story about how they had kept everything tip-top, even when the dead came back.

  How they kept the village together.

  For the greater good, he said.

  When they turned, they took care of them, took their heads off and stored them in the basement. Turns out the deaders down there had been their two sons and their daughters-in-law.

  Aww, isn’t that sweet, I thought. Fucking chop everyone else’s heads off, but keep your own family in one piece.

  Turns out that sometimes they didn’t always wait until they were dead, either.

  BA-BOOM.

  I had cocked the shotgun before I even knew it.

  BOOM.

  Sarge was the next thing I saw. I was in a room I didn’t recognise. Turns out I’d offed Mr and Mrs Natural Born Killers and gone upstairs, where other upstanding members of the community were hiding out from the looter—me—downstairs. In that state, I didn’t know any better. There were four bodies lying on the floor in a neat row, all had their backs to me, all of them missing something important.

  Their heads.

  One of them had blood caked all over their crusty jugular.

  An—

  Sarge got up the stairs just as the last one finished begging and started pissing blood following a sudden meeting with a twelve gauge shell, and piss from his, well, normal place. He said that I almost took him out too.

  So there. That was the last run I went on. You happy now, Gaffer? Make you feel better?

  Anyway, we got back here. Andy told The Gaffer here what had occurred. I got a week in the coal scuttle.

  That really fucking helped.

  Thanks.

  I’m being sarcastic by the way.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You know why you got a week out front, Dee. Don’t pout and give it the big ‘un. Self-defence is one thing, offing people without provocation is not really what we’re trying to accomplish here, is it?” The Gaffer‘s beady eyes glared at her.

  She met his stare. “No. I guess not,” she growled back.

  The Gaffer clapped his gloved hands together. “Ha, excellent. Seems like you’re all making real progress here, Steve. What do you reckon?”

  Steve continued scribbling as he looked around the room. “We’re making progress, for sure, but it’s still early days. Losing Tristan didn’t help. We need stab—”

  “We lost Tristan because he tried to introduce me to my maker. It was unfortunate. Ultimately, if you had done your job better, perhaps he would still be here,” The Gaffer replied.

  The scratching stopped, the room held its collective breath. “My job? My job is long gone, as is my family, and every single thing that I valued or held dear. Most people these days who are still alive, which is the minority I’d like to add, have seen more horror than the average person can cope with in a lifetime. Pretty much every person I’ve met in the past three months is suffering from some form of PTSD.”

  Scratch.

  “You included.”

  The room gulped as one.

  Scratch.

  Scratch.

  “You’re the Doc, Doc, now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got things to do, a camp to keep running, people to keep alive.” The Gaffer pulled his trousers up and thudded out of the room.

  “Steve?” Matt asked with a squeaky voice.

  “Yes Matt?”

  “I need to go wee-wee now.”

  May 14th 2014

  20:22

  The monitor crackled and died, stealing the grainy image into an inky black void. Francis and Diane held hands even tighter.

  The doctor broke the silence. “I’m really sorry, he’s…your baby has died. We need to talk about what the next steps are, but I want you two to take a moment. If you need me, I’ll be outside, okay? If not, I’ll pop back in ten minutes and we’ll go through what happens next. I’m really sorry for your loss.”

  The doctor trudged wearily out of the room, the door closing with a soft click. The sound seemed to be the signal for the outpouring of grief, as Francis and Diane grabbed hold of each other and set free the mountain of emotions that had been building up since the ultrasound had shown the baby, their baby, not moving and with no signs of life.

  “H…he looked like he was just sleeping. His little thumb was by his mouth…” Francis gasped through waves of tears and sobbing.

  Diane held him closer. “I can’t believe it. How long did we try for? When that test came back positive, I thought it was a miracle. He was our miracle. I just can’t—”

  “It’ll be alright, love. We’ll get through this. We have each other; we’ll try again. When you’re ready,” Francis said through judders and spasms of crying.

  Diane convulsed as if wracked with electricity. “I want him, though, Francis. I want him.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Daffodils waved in the gentle breeze, sticking through the gaps between the railway sleepers, another indication that Mother Nature was taking the power back. “First sign of spring,” Francis said, pointing to the scattered flowers.

  Nate looked at them with as much interest as a vegetarian eyeing up a bacon sandwich. “Are we nearly there yet?” he complained.

  Zena chuckled. “Not far now, Nathan. Just round that bend.” She pointed to the near horizon, where the train tracks took a stern right turn, disappearing behind trees teeming with blossom. She took in a deep lungful of the early evening air, laced with natural perfume and damp concrete. “Rain’s coming in. Only a shower. Always remember that smell as a kid. Never leaves you eh, Francis?”

  Francis trudged alongside the woman. In the past week, since surviving the Penny Gaff of Death, he’d been glad of some grown-up company. “You’re not wrong there, sister. It’s up there with creosote, petrol and exhaust fumes.” His mind flitted back.

  “Petrol fumes? That’s an odd one,” Zena quipped. She climbed the rail and endeavoured to travel as far as she could without falling off; an amateur trapeze artist in practise.

  “Ha, my dad had this blue Cortina. We never got to spend much time together, what with him being away in the army. When he got home, I used to be like a limpet. Wherever he went, you can bet your life I was there with him. He used to take me out on these little drives. Never too far, perhaps into town to get some sweets, or off to camp on Bonfire night. It was the trips to the petrol station that always stuck with me.”

  Francis pulled a bottle of water from a side pouch on his rucksack and took a swig. He offered it to Zena, who politely refused. “I’d be allowed to sit up front, the window was wound down, and I’d watch him fill the car up and watch the world go by. Petrol smelt good, but it was always when he had paid and we pulled away, window still open, those fumes would roll right in. Used to breathe them in deep. Ha, guess that’s what you do when you’re a kid. You do what feels good, rather than being too bogged down with doing what is right.” He screwed the cap back on the bottle and slid it back into its home.

  “What about him?” Zena shielded her eyes from the dropping sun and nodded towards the solitary figure thirty odd feet in front of them. Russ looked like he was a Scalextric car, on a fixed path equidistant between the rusting metal rails. Baseball-capped head looking down, hands tucked into the shoulder straps, he crushed the delicate spring flowers with no compunction.

  Francis sighed. “It’s g
onna take some time, I guess. Sure would be good if he would say something, though. He’s not said a peep since he watched that fella choke to death.”

  “I’m not that surprised. Not long after that, when he caved his head in to stop him coming back, he picked up what was left of his family and buried them, remember?” Zena replied, staring into the distance.

  “We offered, sister. It was the least I could’ve done to take that burden off him. I know I would have wanted someone to…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, doesn’t matter. How far to go?” Francis asked, changing the subject as quickly as possible.

  Zena stumbled off the rail, ruining the chance of breaking her twenty year old personal best. “Well, the station is only half a mile away. I think, Rontey is another ten, maybe twelve miles after that? I do appreciate it, you know? Not many people would do this.”

  Francis coughed and wiped his bristly beard with the back of his hand. “Hey, it’s the least we can do. It’s only a slight detour for us. After everything that’s happened, I know I’d feel happier about you getting there in one piece.”

  “Well, it’s taken me this long to get to here. The closer I get, the more scared I get,” Zena confessed.

  “What do ya mean?”

  Zena shoved her hands into her pocket. “When this all started, I was in Oslo for work. I never thought for one moment I’d make it this far. Nearly didn’t make it off the ferry. Then by the time we finally got to the port here, well, you remember what it was like in those first weeks. If they didn’t get you, some opportunistic prick would. When you measure the distance first off in hundreds of miles, the notion that you will ever get back to something, anything that is ‘your area’, well, it seemed impossible.”

  Francis looked across to her and waited for her to continue. She fished out a Lego Boba Fett keyring; a single brass key hung from the metal hoop. “I never thought I’d get to use this again. Sounds stupid, but even something as monumentally mundane as putting a key in a lock, and stepping into your house, well…it’s gone from being a pipe dream to being on the verge of reality. Of hopefully seeing Tom again.”

  She shoved the key back into her pocket. “Our first date, and where we’re heading to, is two stops down from here. Every place I’ve lived, everywhere I’ve ever worked, exists up and down this train track. I’ve sat on trains rolling up and down these tracks after the best of times, and after the worst.” Zena stepped onto the rail again, teetering as she edged along it.

  “Except now, when I think back to those days, you know the bad ones, I can barely remember what the hell was so awful. Not just because of how crap everything is now, just…it’s all so impermanent, eh? The person I am now would tell the me back then to shut the fuck up and get on with it. Robert Young was never worth crying over, or that job going door-to-door selling fucking discounted dinners at some new eaterie was as shit as it sounded.”

  Zena concentrated as she wobbled after an overstep. “Phew. So now, I’m not getting the train down these tracks, I’m walking down them, which is odd, admittedly. But I’m scared. I’m here. I’m here despite everything I’ve gone through, for over nine months. What if he’s not there? What if he’s been evacuated? What if…what if he’s dead?” Zena let the words hang in the air as she tried to regain her balance. “Balls,” she uttered as she fell off.

  “Honestly? I can’t say what we’ll find when we get there, if anything. If I believed in some higher power or being, I’d probably be able to comfort you and tell you with a sure heart that we’ll find him there. All I can do is hope. That’s all I’ve got now. Well, that and keeping that little tyke alive.” Francis nodded over to Nathan, who had taken his turn to balance on the metal track.

  “Hope? Think that’s a commodity Russ is lacking right now. What do you do when everything you love is gone?” Zena said.

  Francis looked across to her. “First you go a little mad. The rest? That’s up to you. You can’t live with sorrow flooding your heart, it’ll destroy you.”

  Zena stared into Francis’ deep blue eyes. “Speaking from experience?”

  “More than you know, sister,” Francis coughed. “More than you know.”

  “Hey Francis, look.” Nathan pointed off to a small station sitting amidst the overgrowth. It looked like it was squatting there, unloved and unwanted.

  Francis and Zena broke their gaze. “Good find, kid. We’ll be spending the night here. You should have some reading time before bed if you’re lucky.”

  Nathan pumped his fists in the air like Rocky and ran off to catch up with Russ, who plodded on like a human monorail.

  The three stragglers climbed the ramped end of the platform. Russ stood waiting for them, leaning on a sign proclaiming they were in;

  The painted veneer was chipped and scaly, revealing the rust-coloured metal meat under the outer skin. The last smudge of sun lingered, just about to fall off the edge of the earth for another day, before the night would usher in the cadaverous embrace of nightmare-filled sleep.

  “What’s in this place? Anything of note?” Francis asked, pulling his bag off his shoulders and easing the tension out of one of them with rough pinches of skin.

  Zena shook her head. “Nope, nothing worth stopping for. It was only a two horse town before this all started. I doubt either have stayed around since it all kicked off.”

  The platform had weeds sprouting through the joins between the large concrete paving slabs; clumps of dandelions swayed annoyingly. A rectangular building housing a small ticket office, waiting room, and lavatories ran two-thirds the length of the structure.

  Newspaper had been stuck to the inside of the windows with Blu-Tack. Judging by the lurid headlines, they had gone up just after the dead had started wandering around, nibbling on folk:

  It was one of the more bleeding obvious exclamations, though Zena did look at the closing date on a voucher for Paintballing in Wiltshire.

  “You guys hold up a minute. I’ll go check inside, make sure there isn’t anyone waiting for the train to nowhere.” Francis flicked the baton to extend it to its full bashing length.

  Holding a small Maglite in his free hand, he sidled up to the door and tugged on the handle, fully expecting resistance. It opened with a pathetic PFFFTT.

  Switching on like a baby monitor, he motioned the others for silence. He pulled the door open as gently as possible. Once it was wide enough, he planted a foot against the door like any good double-glazing salesman and crept into the gloom.

  The light from outside was sparse. Through the paper-covered windows, it gave the effect of a mock dusk. Zena held the door for him, holding a wrench in her hand which had been liberated from the weapon stash back at the Penny Gaff.

  A thin rod of light stabbed through the air and flashed around the interior. Symmetrical rows of uncomfortable metal benches stood idle, some covered in mouldering food packaging and more newspapers.

  A Perspex wall with a circular metallic grille looked out over its kingdom, with a rectangular hole cut at the bottom for the transaction of tickets for money. It looked like a gormless robot. The torchlight slashed through the particle-laden air; flakes of dead skin and fragments of hair drifted aimlessly around, disturbed from their kip.

  From behind a bench at the back came the scuffing of boots and a stifled belch. Francis sighed and reluctantly skated slowly through the rubbish-strewn floor to the origin of the sounds.

  He rounded the bolted down bench and shone the light onto the back of a crouched figure. A mottled grey hoodie was a snug fit on the man. Matching grey combat trousers ended a few inches above the ankles, which were covered in pulled-up white sports socks with pale brown Chelsea boots.

  The man was leaning over the slightly steaming remains of an elderly fellow whose checked shirt had been torn open. The figure’s blood-soaked hands rummaged through the assortment of guts, stopping from time to time to extricate lumps of meat.

  “Goddamit,” Francis muttered under his breath. H
e pulled the baton over his shoulder and inched forward, ready to administer a bit of old-fashioned justice.

  As he got to within striking distance, the figure spun around. Mad, startled eyes looked up at Francis. The torchlight shone into the back of his retina, giving his ocular orbs a reddish tint.

  Between chewing on strips of pancreas, he waved his gory hands. Droplets of blood were shaken over Francis and the poor geriatric laying very dead on the floor.

  “Hhmhhmmhh nnaaaaahh!”

  Francis looked at the man with a furrowed brow. He peered into his eyes and noticed a lack of tell-tale infection. “What the hell are you doing, slim?” he demanded.

  The man sheepishly pointed to his mouth, indicating that he might be a cannibal, but he sure as hell was a cannibal with impeccable eating decorum. Francis lowered the baton and waited for the man to finish. Zena, Russ, and Nathan were now in the room and were staring at the scene with equal parts disgust and confusion.

  The cannibal ran a finger around his gums, he fished out a nugget of clotted vein from his teeth and flicked it behind him. After reverently placing the hunk of digestive organ on the old fella’s shirt, he rubbed his hand against the dead man’s trousers before holding it out to Francis, gibbering, “Wait, don’t hit me. Oh you haven’t. This isn’t what it looks like.

  “Honest.”

  “So, erm, yeah, this is going to sound a little crazy, but I kinda found him here like this, so…I…erm, well, you know…”

  “You ate him?” Zena finished, glaring at the man with a look that suggested she was about to stove his head in.

  You know the look.

  That one.

  “Well, not at first. I’m not a savage. I stuck the screwdriver in his ear first.” The man elicited a nervous high-pitched laugh. “Look.” With a grip usually reserved for shoddy care home workers, he cranked the dead man’s head ninety degrees to the side.

  The shaft of a long reach screwdriver protruded from the old timer’s large flappy ear. A skin of dried blood like the kind you find formed on the top of cooling rice pudding, split, releasing a tidal wave of crimson liquid over the dead man’s liver-spotted face.