“Ready to go?” he asked her.
She stood and straightened her back and nodded in the dim shed. He picked up the rucksack and went over to the door and pushed the door open. The pair of them squinted as the sun flooded the inside of the wooden hut, stinging their eyes. Both raised their hands to shield their eyes, and slowly stepped outside to a beautiful day, with Simon leading the way. He hadn’t eaten for a day and decided to rummage through his bag.
Because of his daughter, he didn’t want to use the supplies, but he was no good to her dead. He looked around at the garden they were in and could see the long grass. The houses that stretched along were in ruins. Some were unrecognisable as houses anymore, and yet, bizarrely, the shed that they had stayed in stood untouched. Maybe the houses in front had shielded it from the bombs that had been dropped months ago. He wanted to keep away from the ruins, the areas that had been affected, but last night they had no choice.
Noises from the previous night, coming from males, had forced father and daughter to flee, and the shed was the first thing they saw whilst their bodies were engulfed in panic.
Simon put the bag on the floor, unzipped the rucksack and began to rummage through. Inside the bag he had:
Two steak knives.
One claw hammer.
3 tins of beans.
A tin of sardines.
A packet of Frosties (out of date).
3 bars of soap.
3 carrier bags.
Two jars and soda bottles to purify water.
One empty plastic bottle.
A hairbrush.
An assortment of candles.
A shaving mirror.
Peter Benchley’s Jaws paperback (This book was in the bottom of his bag. It was his favourite film, and had read the book when he was a child).
One pair of spare trainers for his daughter.
Two pairs of knickers.
An OMG black T-shirt. OMG was in pink lettering.
One black V-neck T-shirt.
Two worn yellow toothbrushes.
Green disposable lighter.
An adult blue T-shirt.
He pulled out a tin of beans and shook it in front of Imelda. “You sure you’re not hungry?”
“I’m sure.” She nodded, and scanned around where they were with fear scrawled on her face.
“Okay. Maybe I’ll have a tin later.” Simon could see the concern on her face and pointed up ahead. “Let’s go this way.”
Simon put the tin in his pocket, threw the bag over his shoulder and moved away from the ruins that was once a street full of life. He took a quick scan around the broken street and imagined brand new cars parked on the drives, children playing, and people out walking their dogs. He had hardly seen any animals since he had been on the road. He didn’t know why. There must have been a lot of domestic pets, mainly cats and dogs that had lost their owners and had to fend for themselves.
He placed his arm around his daughter’s shoulder and his mind went back to that day—not when they announced the first crisis, but weeks after, when the bombs fell.
Before the bombs had fallen, Simon and his family had been hiding in their attic, away from those things, living off scraps, and occasionally going out and taking supplies from abandoned houses that had been left when the country was in stage one of this crisis.
He hated going out. It frightened the life out of him when going out for the first time, but he couldn’t let his family starve. Thankfully, the neighbours to his left had decided to chance their luck elsewhere and had fled, but hadn’t taken all the food with them. He didn’t know why. His elderly neighbours to the right had decided to commit suicide. When he broke into the house, he found them on their bed, on their backs and holding hands. They had taken an overdose of painkillers. The positives from this was that they had left a house with cupboards full of food, and this told Simon that they must have killed themselves in the first week.
Stage One was what Simon and Imelda called it. Stage One was when the dead began to attack. Stage Two was when the bombs fell.
When Stage Two began, Simon had a feeling what was happening and relocated his family to the basement, to lower ground, to be safer. Getting to higher ground was better for Stage One, when the dead were out in their numbers, but going to lower ground was more beneficial when Stage Two began to happen, getting his family away from potential falling debris and shattered glass from the windows.
When the bombs had stopped and he was brave enough to get to the roof of his house, a couple of weeks after, he could see that the area he was in looked unscathed. There was the usual smashed up cars from the Stage One era, as well as bodies and blood, but after the explosions had stopped, he could see that the streets near him looked untouched. He could see from afar that certain buildings like high-rise flats and churches, as well as a shopping centre, weren’t there anymore, but his area was fine. Whoever dropped the bombs, it appeared that there were specific targets, but his street, as well as dozens around him, hadn’t been damaged.
“Dad!”
Imelda had brought Simon out of his daydreaming of yesteryear, and he turned to his daughter to see what she wanted. They were walking side by side and it looked like they were heading towards a small cluster of trees.
“What is it, babe?” he finally spoke up.
“How come those trees look okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember the last time we tried to go to the woods and all the trees were bare and burnt?”
“I think they were affected by Stage Two,” Simon said. “And anyway, that’s not exactly the woods, is it?” He pointed over to the trees. “We need to walk through and see what’s on the other side. We’re running out of water, so we need to fill up our jars once we find a pond or a stream … or something.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Hold onto my hand.” He held out his hand and his daughter took it.
“We haven’t seen people for days,” Imelda sighed and moaned further, “And when we do, we run or hide from them.”
Simon never responded and it only took them a minute to get out of the trees. He looked down at his worn boots and Imelda’s dirty white trainers. Thankfully there was another pair for her in his rucksack.
In front of them were miles of fields, nothing else apart from a farmhouse in the distance.
“Now what, daddy?” she asked with a little attitude in her tone.
Simon pointed ahead of him and said, “We’re going to that farmhouse, but first...” He sat down, placed the bag on the floor and pulled out the tin from his pocket. “I’m gonna have something to eat.”
Ghostland: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel is available from Amazon here
Plague War: Pandemic Page 28