Class Four: Those Who Survive

by Duncan P. Bradshaw

  I waltz out of there feeling like a goddamn king. Think someone must’ve been capped. Racially motivated incident? Perhaps it’s a terrorist attack or something? I ain’t fussed. Free food. Plus even got some fags and a bottle of Jack. Today was my lucky day.

  That’s what I thought then anyway.

  Get back to the block and there’s still people everywhere. The roads are clogged. Worst I’d ever seen it. Even when they have the half marathon on and close the streets off. Bump into a few people who don’t even bother to check if I’m there.

  Wankers.

  I’ve never been so glad to get back to mine before. Well, not since before Casey was born. Kids change everything. Thing is, everyone tells you that, but like a twat you think it’ll be different for you. Like you’re something special. We weren’t. Hadn’t been for a long time. Jenny was different, though. That bit they got spot on. She was born to be a mum.

  I get back and Jenny and Casey were sat in silence watching the telly. Not CBeebies. The News. I know. I was shocked too. Those reports just kept going. Some of the things they showed, though. Not sure Casey should be watching that. What was I going to say, though? Jenny would’ve just got the hump and then the prison would’ve been hell.

  Again.

  People eating people. Think that needs to be said out loud once in a while. What a messed up sentence, huh? You heard it from time to time back then. To be fair, mostly from Germany where some guy puts up an online advert.

  Yeah, you remember that, too?

  Mad.

  Thing is though, at least that implied consent. Those reports were something else. Animalistic. Primal. Fucked up.

  We watched it until lunchtime. Casey had gone off the idea of Coco Pops by now. Wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever want to eat again after seeing that reporter. Yeah, that one. Always wondered why the cameraman just followed the body dropping. You notice he didn’t lift a finger to help? Recorded the whole time.

  You can bet your arse if we had internet now, the full length clip would be on YouTube. Wonder how long it was until the reporter got up and ripped the cameraman’s throat out. Thing is. Goes back to my earlier question.

  Do you think he knew?

  Did he do it because;

  He’s a zombie.

  Or

  To get the disrespectful prick back for filming instead of fighting?

  I’m not sure anymore. But for a while, she sure as hell convinced me that it was B.

  Not yet mate. This is called background. Context. You lay the foundations before you build the house yeah? Patience. Where are we in a rush to go anymore anyway?

  Chill.

  Now I’m not much of a survivalist. Not much of a talker, either. Yeah. You guessed, huh? But I do listen, and I take in a lot of pointless shit. Remembered a mate talking about what to do in an apocalypse. Not tape the windows up shit. They were the undead, not a nuclear blast wave. Filled the bath and sinks up with water. Got the candles out from the kitchen drawer. Anything else we might need. Got it all to hand.

  Then we just sat there and watched the world burn. In amongst the zombies eating people of course.

  The Grey Worm Part-2

  Like most normal city folk, we never met our neighbours. Sure as hell had names for them. The Old Fucks opposite us. Potheads and Star Trek Tennis Porn below us.

  Eh? Oh, you used to hear it at night. Just as you’re trying to get to sleep. You know the sound of the transporter in the old Star Trek? Well you got that interspersed with:

  UH

  UHHH

  UH

  UHHH

  If he got into a pattern with that, by day five it would go on for twenty minutes or so. Must’ve been yanking his dick red raw by then.

  So. Single White Female and Estate Agent Cock on two. Pingu and Pervy Old Bastard on one. Then Gary Glitter and an empty on the ground floor. No. Not the real Gary Glitter. Just this guy. Well. He had a look of the paedo about him, that’s all. We were worried that someone would firebomb his flat in the night and we’d go up, too.

  Heard this big commotion and go out onto the landing, can see the single bird downstairs dragging a suitcase out of the door. She’d been crying. Red eyes and that. Looked a right state. Sounds like Pingu was also getting out of Dodge too.

  Pingu? Have you seen the cartoon? You know the sound? Yeah, that matched the exact pitch of his voice. You couldn’t have a conversation with him. Not without checking to see if he was squeezing his balls at the same time anyway.

  Went back inside my flat. We had one of those chains for the door. Never used it before. Sure as hell did from then on, though. Our kitchen had this big bay window. Useless if you fancied a quickie. That had ended years before anyway. But it was handy if you wanted to watch what was going on outside. It was madness. Single White Female got into her MX5.

  Took her twenty minutes just to get let out of where she parked.

  That was that. We spent the rest of the day watching people trickle slowly out of the street. By night time it was pretty quiet. We went back to watching the news. Casey was bored of it by then. Was grateful for that fact. She went onto her 3DS.

  Cooking Mama I think, Matt. Yeah? You too? No I never tried to cook proper food on it.

  It—

  It doesn’t work that way.

  No. I’m not surprised you got food poisoning.

  We went to bed late that night. Jenny was really quiet. I woke up in the night and she was just staring at me. Was really freaky. Worried I’d wake up with a carrier bag over my head and look up into her face. With the red Tesco logo stretched over it.

  That became our life for a few days. Aside from the news, we never actually saw one of the zombies. Nope. Guess they were hitting up the roads and that. Supermarkets, hospitals, all the places they say to avoid in crises.

  First one we saw was a few doors down. The kitchen window was our second telly by then. Not much was happening. But the fact nothing was going on was equally as fascinating. This car screeches up the road and brakes real sudden. Two guys jump out and are kicking in the door of this house a few down from us. Looked like they knew where they were going. Didn’t look random.

  About three or four minutes later they saunter back out. Real casual like. One gets in the driver’s side and starts the engine. The other, though, he stops to light a fag or a spliff. Something. See this shape behind him.

  Just. Lunges.

  Even from where we were stood we saw the blood. Sprayed everywhere. The car was white. A poor choice in hindsight, eh? The smoking guy falls to the floor and the zombie follows him to the ground. He’s clawing at the guy’s throat. It was like he was sorting through all the veins. Looking for one in particular. He must have found it as he pulled on this bit of purple string. Whoosh. Another fountain of blood. The driver must’ve seen it, but just like the cameraman. Does nothing about it. After a minute, he’s done one. Gone.

  We just stood there and watched the zombie. The other man was alive for a bit, but with the amount of claret all over the place, not for long. It was weird. The zombie was eating him. But didn’t really seem that fussed. He was chewing. But looking into the middle distance, like he was thinking about what he had for tea last night. After ten minutes and having torn the man’s arm off and nibbling on it a bit, he got bored. Got up. Threw up. Then staggered off down the road.

  The other guy lay there for ages. When we came back later, though, he had gone. Just this big patch of dried black blood. And his arm. Looked like a rolled-up doormat lying in paint from our window. Over the next few days there were more and more. It was like they had been cooped up somewhere. And then someone had just set them all free.

  Estate Agent Cock tried making a break for it at the end of the first week. Jenny and I had a side bet on whether he’d make it to the end of the street.

  That cigarette never tasted so good.

  Poor bastard barely made the third lamp post. Think he might have had a chance if he’d travelled lighter. Dunno what h
e was thinking about when he made the decision to take his golf clubs.

  Well, hardly aerodynamic, are they? The bag just kept banging against his back. Interesting factoid. Golf clubs are shit against zombies.

  Yeah.

  We saw it alright. He got taken down. But we saw his smug bastard grin. Pulled out his driver and swung it at the closest one. The club head broke off on contact. The zombie’s jaw was a bit fucked but he was left there holding this metal stick.

  No. Don’t think there was enough of him left to come back. Least the dick closed the front door.

  Few days later we lost Gary Glitter. Stupid bastard. Must’ve seen the schoolkids go past. Didn’t check their vitals though. They checked his alright, by chewing through his jugular. When he was going, though, all these kids over him, biting, I’ll never be sure if the look on his face was pleasure or pain. Sick fuck. One thing for sure though. He had the biggest grin.

  Everyone else hunkered down. For now at least. No one left their flats. Star Trek Tennis Porn man went into overdrive. Don’t think any amount of Vaseline would put his dick back together again. Three hours was the record. Must’ve been an old VHS tape. A T-60 I think. Had to rewind it once it was done. Could hear it over our telly it was that loud.

  Then a couple of weeks in. Boom. No more television. Food wise we were okay. Well in the sense that we had enough frozen fish fingers to last until the second coming. We would have to do something. But not for a week or so.

  The telly was a bummer, though. Meant we had to communicate with each other. We compromised. We sat in the kitchen longer. A few days later, that’s when we heard the shots.

  We used to hear the odd boom when the exercises were on the plains. But never a gunshot. Too far away.

  We looked at the end of the street. The goddamn cavalry was here. We thought that it would all be over in a few hours. A day at most. Sure the council would have to clean up the blood and body parts, but at least things would go back to normal.

  Fuck. I’d even do that job. This steady trickle of soldiers walked from right to left. Down the hill. You could see the muzzle flashes. Even Casey tore herself away from her 3DS to see the ‘soldier men’.

  The Grey Worm Part-3

  The stream of men stopped. You could hear the crackle of gunfire, though. It was mad to think that it was happening in our city centre. All the shops we had gone in. All the places we had bought stuff from. The battle was going on amongst it all.

  As night fell so did the amount of shooting we heard. They somehow seemed to be entwined. Casey fell asleep on the sofa in the living room. We put a blanket over her and maintained our vigil in the kitchen.

  Any minute now, we thought. We didn’t know what would happen to signal it being won. But we knew it would be something.

  Something big.

  Poor Jenny flaked out about half three. The shooting now was pretty sparse. Either it was far away or worse. There weren’t as many soldiers as there had been.

  You know when you fall asleep on the train? And you wake up and you’ve dribbled on yourself? You look around and see that it’s a completely different time to you last remember?

  That.

  I woke Jenny up and I made a cup of tea for us. She grunted a thanks. It was then I realised I couldn’t hear anything. No gunfire. Nothing. That was it. We had won! I was so happy I nearly kissed her. One look at her face, though. That told me it wasn’t an option.

  I’m about to get up and get changed. I’d turned my pants inside out so many times that it was like a runway on the fabric. Then I saw him. He was dressed in army camouflage. Limping badly. I couldn’t see that he was carrying a weapon. He was going back the way they had come from the day before. He crossed the road, and I remember he stopped and looked back.

  We saw them first. This mass of bodies. All flailing arms and snapping jaws. They looked like they were one great big grey maggot. Then the sound rolled up the street to our window. That moaning. The army guy looked away and disappeared up the road. The grey worm just kept on coming.

  That’s when I knew. This wasn’t going to end. Not now. Not ever. It was me, Jenny and Casey. Forever. In this stupid little flat.

  Fuck.

  I don’t know what depressed me more. Looking at her showed me that she had just had the same thought as me. We smiled like idiots at each other.

  Fuck.

  Fate usually has the temerity to kick you in the balls. And that it did. The electric went a few days later. No freezer. No oven. No ability to recharge Casey’s batteries for her 3DS. Things became even more strained. I knew that within a day or so, we’d have to go out there. Get food. Something. And then it happened.

  Another nugget of advice you get when you become a parent? You need eyes in the back of your head. The little devils get everywhere they shouldn’t. Casey had stayed content so far. But when her 3DS died. Well. Never thought anyone could moan that persistently for so long.

  I was in the kitchen, trying to work out where I would go to look for food. And how I would get past the zombies. Part of me thought why bother? Would it be so bad coming back as one of them? I wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire so far, was I?

  Jenny had just told Casey to stop whinging. Again. She was in the toilet. Shouting about how it wasn’t flushing. Great. Summertime in a little flat with overflowing faecal matter. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?

  Next thing. I hear this giant bang. A crash. A thud. A whimper.

  Rush into the living room to see Casey in a heap against the window. The sofa should’ve, in theory at least, arrested her accelerated journey. All it did was spin her through the air. I look across the room and see a fork embedded in a plug socket. This little wisp of smoke was coming off it.

  Ha. Reminded me of Willo The Wisp. Do you remember that?

  Creepy. But good.

  We reckon she was trying to get electricity out of the socket. Get some out to put into her batteries. She had her doll’s trolley with them in it next to the plug socket. Turns out that even with the power out, sockets hold some residual charge. And when you’re four and ten twelfths, that charge is enough to propel you across the room at breakneck speed.

  Bad choice of words. I know. It may sound like I didn’t love them. But when you’ve seen them grow up from a grainy black and white picture on a bit of paper, into a proper little girl, then…then when you see them lying there. And you know there is absolutely fucking NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.

  I tried to wake her. She was groggy. Not with it at all. I was frantic. Jenny came in. I’ve never heard any animal make a noise that even closely resembled the sound that came out of her then. It was a mix of every human emotion. She took Casey’s hand, and it was all burned, this little line stamped down the centre of her palm. Like it was her life line. But it wasn’t. That line went from top to bottom. Palmistry would’ve said a long and bountiful life.

  Casey left us five minutes later.

  Jenny was born to be a mum. I’ve said that. I know. She held Casey for ages. I knew we had to do something. At some point, soon, Casey would come back. But it wouldn’t be her. It would be something else entirely. I thought about going outside again. Let myself be added to the grey worm.

  I would’ve done. But Jenny said otherwise. She lay Casey down on the sofa and went into our bedroom. We all had to sleep in one room. She came back with Casey’s skipping rope. Tied one end around the radiator pipe and the other around Casey’s arm. She yanked it to make sure it was tight enough.

  Much like the night which ended with all hope walking injured back up the hill, we watched our dead daughter. Waiting for the sign. Waiting for her to come back.

  At twenty three eleven, on my watch, the thing that now lived in her dead body came back. Jenny started crying. Tears of joy I think.

  I cried too. I know mine weren’t the same kind, though. She wasn’t my daughter. That thing was not of my making.

  Jenny tried to hold Casey, but her little mouth kept snapping at her. S
he put her puffa jacket on and held her again. Those little teeth tried to chomp on Jenny’s arm. Her dead eyes couldn’t work out why she wasn’t getting through. Jenny sang her a lullaby. Did fuck all use, though. Well, not on Casey.

  I fell asleep and awoke to find Casey straining at the end of the skipping rope. Trying to bite my wrist. Jenny was in the kitchen. Nothing for breakfast, she said. Tell me something I don’t know. For the past god knows how many weeks I had told her the same thing.

  Nothing for me, she says.

  Nothing for you, she says.

  Nothing for Casey, she says.

  I skirt round the My Little Zombie in our living room. Jenny is as calm as I’ve ever seen her. She tells me that Casey is still there. She’s changed, she says. But she’s still our little girl, she says. I try to explain to her that the thing in our house is no longer our daughter. She said one thing.

  You’ll see.

  You’ll see like I do.

  The Grey Worm Part-4

  I had an epiphany. I’d go into the flats that were now empty. They were bound to have food, supplies, whatever. I wouldn’t have to get eaten by the worm. I’d be the good guy for once. I told Jenny my plan. She smiled at me. I barely recognised her face making that shape. It had been that long.

  I thought I’d start at the bottom. Gary Glitter hadn’t bothered to lock his door. His flat was like a time capsule. Turns out he wasn’t a paedo. At least, I don’t think so. His walls were lined with pictures of him and giant cheques. Money he’d raised for all these different charities.

  I got my Bag For Looting out and went through his cupboards. Didn’t have much. But bagged some rice, pasta, pot noodles and the like. Even had some bottled water. Carbonated. Better than nothing, though. I must’ve been gone fifteen, twenty minutes. At most.

  Get up to our floor and see that the door opposite is open.

  Bad things.

  The old couple hardly ever went out. She was pretty much bedridden. We saw him from time to time, though, bringing the shopping back.