“They are scared,” he replied.
“So am I.” She looked at Jack.
“Do you live alone?” Even though he’d asked her this before, Jack wanted to take his mind off the situation outside.
“Yes. My family is all in Poland.”
“Poland, that’s interesting. What brought you out here?” Jack asked, genuinely interested.
“The lifestyle. I always loved to look at England. At English girls. I wanted to have that, to be that. So I saved my money, my wages from my job, and when I had enough, I left Poland and came here. Four years ago, when I was seventeen.”
“What about Anna’s father?” Jack had never seen anybody coming and going in Tania’s flat, but he was not one to sit and watch everybody that closely.
“He died before he knew about Anna. A car crash.” There was sadness in Tania’s voice, but her face remained strong.
“I’m sorry.” Jack felt like an ass for asking. “It’s getting dark.”
“Yes, I think I’m going to sleep. She is tired, but she won’t sleep alone.”
Jack got up from the table, and took the empty coffee cups through to the kitchen.
“You can stay in my room. I will sleep in the spare room.” Jack pointed to the room that was his.
“Thank you, Jack. You are a good man.” She gave him a hug and picked Anna from the sofa. “We will see you in the morning. Tomorrow, we will need to make some decisions.” She did not wait for further discussion but slipped into the room and closed the door.
Eric was still passed out on the chair. He was breathing lightly, but had not moved in a long time. Jack debated on waking him but realized he didn’t really want to spend the evening chatting. He liked the silence. Making himself a cocoa, a tradition since his childhood, he sat back down by the window and drank until he felt drowsy.
Outside, a large group of people moved through the street. They were singing and laughing. Jack couldn’t help but wonder if it was because they didn’t know the truth. He thought, sadly enough, that it was most likely that they just chose to ignore it. They were all men, and they had been drinking, that much was clear. They were putting on some macho display, proving they were not afraid of the undead.
Jack had not contemplated sleep. He had naturally assumed that after everything he had seen that day, sleep would be the last thing his brain would allow. He was wrong. Sliding into Terry’s bed, he was asleep not long after he closed his eyes.
Dreams came, and while they were not pleasant, they were not the horror-filled nightmares that Jack had expected. There were no undead creatures walking around, flesh dribbling from their mouths. Instead, he was lost in a fog. A thick haze that smothered everything. Someone was holding his hand. Their fingers interlocked in his own. He looked but could not see who it was. He felt alone, and as he walked, an endless march through a never-changing field of grey, he kept squeezing the hand that held his own. Even though he could not see the owner, he kept going, because they gave him the strength to do so.
Chapter 4
The scream snatched Jack from his dreams, and yanked him viciously into the cold, harsh reality of the early morning.
He jumped from the bed, lost and confused. It was not his room. The scream came again, a two-level shriek. No, two cries. Two very different cries.
Jack ran. He crashed into the desk chair in the middle of the room. The pain rang out from his second toe. Jack swallowed the string of curses he wanted to scream. The injury had the beneficial effect of blowing away the cobwebs of sleep from his mind.
He burst from the room, charging into the living room he recognized. He looked around. There was nobody. The scream came again. It came from inside his room.
Jack swallowed hard as he remembered Tania and her daughter. He had let them stay in his room because of the undead.
The undead. They were real.
Jack hurdled the sofa and charged into the room. He was armed with an antique paperweight. The large, round glass structure was solid and had the potential in it to deal out decimating blows.
Jack took one look around his room, and wished he had not done so.
The table lamp was on, and cast a dim glow that lit up just enough of the room for the gruesome scene to be witnessed in full Technicolour.
Eric was standing by the bed, backing Tania, who was screaming, and Anna into the corner. Eric was growling, and Jack could see the subtle grey hue of his skin.
“Eric,” he called, but the figure did not react.
In a frantic burst of movement, Eric lunged for the terrified pair, a guttural noise that exceeded far beyond a mere growl. Likewise, Jack lunged forward, grabbing at the form that had once been Eric.
Eric turned his upper body and swung an arm. The dead weight of his flesh resulted in a powerful backhanded blow that caught Jack across the side of his jaw. Jack veered from his intended course and crashed over the bed and into the wall.
Tania, to her credit, tried to take advantage of the distraction. She burst into a run, determined to sprint her way to freedom. Undead Eric was too quick for them, however. His snarling face snapped towards their movement, and his burning red eyes darkened as he struck.
Teeth sank into soft and tender flesh, a sudden jerk of the neck sufficient to shear a large chunk of blood-dripping meat out of Anna’s side.
The child gave a cry that ran into an ear-piercing wail. She thrashed in her mother’s arms, sending thick spurts of young blood into the air.
Eric chewed and swallowed the meat, smiling as he moved in for seconds.
He didn’t get that chance. The heavy paperweight smashed into his skull, splitting the skin at the first attempt and splattering the walls with blood with the second and all subsequent strikes. Jack roared as he tapped into a deep-seated fury. He swung and swung until his arms ached. Each clubbing blow gouging out more and more chunks of flesh, bone, and brain. By the time Jack dropped the trophy, a memento of his academic prowess in school, it was a battered and twisted reminder of his first step towards acceptance of the undead, and the ushering in of a new world. Eric’s body lay on the floor, twitching as the final remnants of his second life leeched into the old carpet along with his pulverized brain.
Panting and covered in blood, Jack looked up and saw Tania running through the living room towards the front door.
Pushing aside the stomach-churning nausea that came as a result of what he had done, Jack gave chase.
“Tania, wait,” he cried out as she yanked the door open and sped into the hall. Jack was not far behind her, his determined stride had him moving faster than her panicked flight.
With her bleeding, screaming child clasped tight in her arms, Tania sped through the hallway. Her screams had given way to a silent determination. She needed to escape. She disappeared into the dark stairwell and took the steps two or three at a time, her footing even though her stride was ungainly.
“Wait, it’s not safe.” Jack watched Tania disappear into the stairwell, and without thinking, ran after her.
The hallway was dark, the lighting dim at best during the early morning hours, a strange quirk of the housing association, who thought it rather unsightly to have hall lights on full power when people were trying to sleep. Still, even the dim light was enough to stop Jack in his tracks.
The barricade that had been erected was holding firm, however, it did not fully block off the stairs. Eager to succeed, the woman who had met her death on the floor above, sought to share her second chance at life with those below. She had climbed onto the pile of furniture and belongings, pulling herself over them, inching her way towards the end.
Only, her death had resulted in a large gash being opened across her belly region, and while all of the blood had been shed before she expired, the jutting legs of crudely piled tables and chairs had been sufficient to hook themselves into her open wound and further tear her flesh. A string of intestines extended behind her almost the length of the stairwell blockade.
The organs had
been torn and ruptured, and the stench of fermenting faeces and the early onset of rot in the slimy innards was overpowering. The undead woman saw Jack, and her energy was renewed. She pulled herself with a vigour that saw her flesh rip around her back and over her spine. Her flesh peeled away, exposing bone and muscle below. None of that seemed to matter, though. Not when there was fresh meat for the taking.
Beneath him, Jack heard the doors to the ground floor close, and he found control again. He turned, and for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he was racing down the stairs. Only now, he was closer to leaping them in a single stride, landing hard each time, using the wall to stop his forward momentum and to push off his next stage of descent.
Outside, the morning was cool, the scent of the rain from the previous day heavy in the air. Even in the pre-dawn murk, it was easy to tell that the forecast for the coming day would be very similar.
Being as early as it was, Jack had been prepared for the quiet. It was to be expected. What he had not expected was the constant, but distant groan. It was a subtle sound that carried on the air. It was a chilling noise because Jack knew what creatures created such a lifeless groan. He also understood that for the noise to permeate through the air to such an extent, there were more than just a handful of the creatures roaming the streets.
Looking around, Jack saw Tania bolting between the buildings on the other side of the street. He gave chase without thinking.
He ran, his legs driving against the wet floor, his lungs burning from the exertion thus far. Sweat slicked his body, and the general damp in the air was drenching him also. He wanted to call out but understood what a bad idea that might be. So he followed, and with every stride, he gained some ground, closing the distance between them. With every stride, the silence, the lack of screaming, weighed heavier on it.
Jack finally caught up with Tania in the park. She had collapsed by a tree, shrouded by darkness. Had it not been for her deep, heart-breaking sobs, Jack would have struggled to see her.
“Tania,” he began, walking towards her.
She sat on the ground, her back against the tree. She was caked in blood, and clutching Anna in her arms.
She raised her head to look at Jack as he approached, but she was unable to speak. Grief overpowered her. She looked down at her child, and back at Jack, her mouth open, strands of spit tracing from her upper to lower lip and back again, as if her mouth had been sewn shut and now tore open in order to give voice to her emotion.
Jack stopped close. He didn’t want to look, yet, at the same time, he could not stop his eyes from absorbing the scene. Anna looked like a doll in her mother’s arms, a pale, blood-covered doll.
“My baby,” she wept, the first words she had spoken since it had happened.
Jack tried to think how long ago it had been. It felt like hours, a lifetime even. Every second that passed surrounded by the presence of such young tragedy felt like a lifetime stripped away from his soul. In reality, it could not have been more than a few minutes.
“It’s not safe out here.” Jack didn’t realize how redundant that statement was until it was too late.
“It’s not safe anywhere,” Tania shrieked, rising to her feet, clutching Anna to her, kissing her head over and over, as if she could somehow replace the missing lump of flesh and breathe fresh life back into her daughter.
The blood came from nowhere, or so it seemed. One minute Tania was crying and kissing her child, and the next, a torrent of dark red blood spewed from her mouth, covering both herself and Anna.
Tania’s eyes widened, and she moved to stare at Jack. Her body went limp, and Anna tumbled from her arms, falling to the ground with a heavy thud. Tania followed soon after, landing face first on top of her daughter. The back of her neck was missing, the vertebrae exposed in the ever-increasing light of a new day.
The dead hobo who was savagely chewing the lump of prime flesh he had stolen emerged from the dark. His long, hard, and thick chest-length beard was sticky with blood, and as Jack looked, he saw a severed finger hanging from the man’s tangled facial locks.
He staggered forward, his body bloated, coated from head to toe in grime and dirt. A foul stench emanated from his body, and Jack was sure that he would have smelled as bad in life, also.
Unarmed and unsure of everything around him, Jack was in no position to fight back. He backed up, his eyes not locked on the zombie, but on the two tangled bodies that lay on the floor.
Turning to run, Jack saw three more creatures stumbling in the street. They looked like they belonged to the party of men he had seen earlier in the night. Clearly, their bravado got the better of them.
Ducking to his right, Jack tried to turn back into the park, hoping to use the shadows to escape the undead hobo and at least buy himself some time. The hobo was caught unaware, and even gave a confused growl when he realized his second course had evaded him.
The problem was that there were half a dozen other flesh-munching, reanimated corpses meandering their way through the park. Each of them were covered in gore. One had been gutted completely, the flesh ripped away from his rib cage, exposing the protective casing to the world. Another had a large chunk missing from his thigh, and subsequently walked with a limp that under any other circumstance would have been insanely comical.
The others were so covered in blood it was impossible to tell what blood came from them and what came from their victims.
Jack was trapped. He looked around, and felt surrounded. The undead were acting alone, converging on fresh meat, but it was as good a trap as many could have created.
There were gaps between them all, and with each shuffled metre gained on him, those gaps closed.
Residential properties surrounded the park on all sides. To the west was a train station, which would connect him straight to the city. Not that he expected many trains to be running. To the east was a pub. It was one that he had frequented regularly over the years he had been living in the apartment.
Jack didn’t know why those places came to his mind at that particular moment, but neither were of any use.
Jack ran forward, deep into the park. He had no idea where he was going to go, but he soon had an idea, one that might have just saved his life.
The bandstand was a feature of the park. It was never used for anything resembling its real purpose. The inside was covered with graffiti and was a popular spot for drunken couples to come and fuck under the watchful eye of the night. Surprisingly, it was unoccupied when Jack arrived, not that it mattered, for he was not looking to find shelter in the structure, but rather, on it. Jumping up, Jack managed to grab the overhanging roof and haul himself up and onto the gently slanting surface.
Rolling onto his back, keeping himself as flat as possible, Jack closed his eyes. He closed his eyes in the hope that he was dreaming. He wanted to shut out everything, to give his mind a chance to focus.
Jack jolted, his eyes springing open, and his abs contracting to pull him upright. It took a moment before he realized what was happening. It was his phone. It was vibrating.
Chapter 5
Frantic and uncoordinated, Jack fumbled to try to pull his phone free. Ultimately, it popped from his pocket and slid through his clumsy fingers. It skidded down the roof of the bandstand, eliciting a cry of despair from Jack.
He lunged forward and grabbed the phone just as it began to disappear over the edge. He pulled back quickly when an undead arm snatched at his hand. He looked down to see Tania staring at him. Her eyes were a cloudy grey, although behind the cloud, he could still make out a faint trace of the rich hazel colour that had been such a striking sight. Her blood-soaked body was twisted as she reached up for him. Her mouth pulled back into a snarl. Her skin had already started to pale, a sullen grey hue.
For a moment, Jack was lost to the horror and forgot about his phone. Clawing his way back up to the centre of the hexagonal roof, Jack swiped his thumb over the screen.
“Hello?” he called, almost yelling i
nto the device.
For a heart-stopping moment, Jack thought he was too late. He had blown it. He heard nothing but static.
“Jack?” The voice was distant and crackled, like the recordings of old police interviews or 999 calls. Yet Jack would have recognized the voice even if it had been nothing but a single syllable that had made it through the bad connection.
“Sarah?” Jack couldn’t believe it.
The wave of relief that washed over him was immeasurable. It was like waking up late, having slept through the alarm only to realize it was Saturday, and then magnified a hundred times.
“Jack, something’s happened …”Sarah’s voice crackled before falling away again.
“I know, I know. The dead rose. Not exactly what you call a normal weekend. This is why you should not leave me to my own devices,” Jack joked. His body shook as part of the weight on him sprang free and drifted off into the great unknown.
“I thought you would just sit around eating pizza and playing video games,” Sarah said, finishing with a laugh.
“Where are you?” Jack realized he did not know how long the signal would last, and had better make some practical use of it.
“We are in the theatre. Those things, they came during the show. The police and military are everywhere, Jack. We can’t leave.” The fear that she had hidden until that point, rose with a flourish in those three small words.
“Why not? The army is there. They will help, surely. Just hold tight,” Jack spoke, faltering only when he heard Sarah’s sobs.
“You don’t understand, Jack. They are killing people.”
“The undead?”
“No, the army, the police. They are killing anybody they see. London is gone. There are so many of those things.” The voice fell away and silence took over the line. “Run, Jack.” Sarah’s voice came back just long enough to say the words, before the connection was lost.
“Sarah … Sarah,” Jack called into the phone over and over. It was no use. The signal was lost.
Jack shot to his feet on the bandstand roof, holding his phone aloft, as if it could somehow reconnect if he held it a few feet higher than normal.
No Zombies Please We Are British Page 4