by Ben Stevens
The pressure against his spine vanished. The woman said, ‘Turn around.’
Parker did so. He looked into a not unattractive, but still prematurely lined and aged face. Suspicious, guarded brown eyes met his own.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Parker – John Parker.’
‘You on your own?’
Parker nodded.
‘Sure am. You?’
‘No.’
‘You mean – there’s more of you?’ Parker demanded, unable to keep a note of excitement out of his voice.
‘Yes – three more. My family.’
‘That’s great,’ said Parker, almost with a sigh. ‘I’ve been seeing no one; just hiding out from one or two of those gangs they call ‘hogs’.’
‘They are – evil,’ said the woman with a shudder. ‘They kill and – do other bad things – for fun.’
‘I know,’ returned Parker softly. ‘I know. Look – what’s your name?’
‘Lisa-Ann.’
She stared at Parker for a few moments. He kept quiet, knowing she was determining whether or not she could trust him. Parker met her eyes with an honest, open gaze of his own.
Finally, she said quietly, ‘Would you like to meet my family, John?’
‘Yes, Lisa-Ann,’ said Parker sincerely. ‘I would.’
‘They’re just sitting down for dinner,’ declared Lisa-Ann. ‘We’ll leave this supermarket and go and join them.’
Carrying the rifle she’d previously jabbed into Parker’s back, Lisa-Ann walked ahead of him, heading to the entrance. Evidently, she had decided to trust him pretty quickly – and entirely.
As Parker followed her, though, his face was creased with confusion. Something wasn’t right here. She said she had a family; presumably that included a husband? So why was she out here carrying a rifle, and not he? Was he sick in some way? Injured?
The matter of Lisa-Ann’s husband was one of several questions pricking at Parker’s mind. But as he followed her out of the store and along the street, his eyes never still, always searching for possible threats, he decided that he’d get the answers soon enough. Better that he didn’t start asking questions straight away.
Before too long, she moved into a narrow side-street littered with abandoned cars and junk piled against the walls on either side. A chill wind blew a torn sheet of newspaper across the road and Parker felt his heart grow cold.
It really is all over. The Earth is dead.
No – he had to cling to this source of hope that had just been presented to him. Other people – decent people – survivors still existed. Together, maybe they could construct something positive out of this hell. Maybe humanity could be rebuilt – one day. Parker would never see that happen, of course, but still it was his duty to ensure that he did everything in his power to try to facilitate its happening...
...Parker was surprised when the woman put her rifle against one wall – and then, looking quickly up and down the street, lifted a heavy-looking sheet of wood to one side, exposing a doorway.
‘Good idea,’ nodded Parker, at the same time realizing that this woman was a lot stronger than she looked.
Lisa-Ann stepped suddenly to one side and grabbed her gun. Her eyes were again guarded and suspicious; she almost glared at Parker.
‘Just so you know – if you aren’t the person I think you are...’
Parker didn’t let her finish the threat.
‘You’re tough,’ he said simply. ‘I can see that. I’m not going to hurt you – and you’re not going to hurt me. Instead, I’m hoping this meeting will result in something really – positive.’
He’d had to think for a moment, before remembering this last word. He’d not had reason to think of it – far less say it aloud – for a long time.
Lisa-Ann gave him a curiously ‘upside-down’ smile that made her look a lot more attractive. Just for a moment, the hard-earned lines in her face were erased by a genuine look of trust.
‘You’re a good man,’ she told him. ‘I know that. And you’ve had your share of tragedy, too. That’s something else I can tell.’
Parker nodded slowly.
‘The ‘good man’ bit – well, whatever...’ he said wearily. ‘But you’re right about the tragedy.’
Lisa-Ann produced a key from her trouser pocket, and opened the door.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get inside, and you can meet my family.’
The open door led straight to a flight of stairs. Lisa-Ann pulled the sheet of wood back across before shutting the door. It was a little gloomy as Parker walked up. Was this apartment the one Lisa-Ann had always lived in with her family? Even before the virus had broken out?
Then, halfway up the stairs, Parker was hit by the smell. That sickly-sweet odor, like corruption...
‘Lisa-Ann,’ he began, quietly but urgently.
‘Shhh!’ she replied, her voice hushed but still a little irritable. ‘They might hear you and be scared.’
Parker’s brow again creased with confusion. Were there only children here? Exactly what did she mean by ‘...They might hear you and be scared...’?
The smell increased in intensity as Parker and the woman reached the top of the stairs and walked along a small corridor. There were a couple of open doors either side; Parker saw a bed with an old wooden cupboard next to it... Then a bathroom.
But his heart was thumping violently and his hand reached in to grab his gun. Ahead – at the end of this short corridor – was another open door, a sink just beyond it. From an area inside this kitchen that Parker couldn’t yet see there came a sudden groan –
‘Shit!’ he said, putting his left hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Lisa-Ann, there’s things in there!’
She turned round so quickly and with such a look of mad hatred that Parker started backwards.
‘Things?’ she hissed. ‘That’s my family! Come – come and see for yourself! Things indeed...’
She tried to give an indignant trill of laughter as she entered into the kitchen. But to Parker, it sounded like something emitted from the owner of a hopelessly warped and cracked mind. Feeling as though he was in some dark nightmare, knowing that he’d be drawing his gun any second now, Parker followed the black haired woman inside the kitchen...
There were three of them, sat round a circular table near the furthest wall in the squalid kitchen.
‘I’m home, darlings!’ cried Lisa-Ann, as Parker’s eyes widened and he dragged out his gun. The things had seen him and so were groaning and straining at the ropes which bound them securely to three heavy wooden chairs. There was a male thing, and two children. They had the usual boils and lumps but were not nearly so dirty as the other things Parker had seen. No patches of dried blood, and such. The clothes clean-looking and untorn.
Lisa-Ann turned to look at Parker. Her expectant smile – as though she was expecting Parker to say some compliment about her family – turned into a look of rage as she saw that Parker was now holding his gun.
‘Bastard!’ she screeched at him.
‘For Christ’s sake – your family are things!’ returned Parker, although he wasn’t about to start shooting, given that these things were currently so well-secured.
But with another hiss, Lisa-Ann dropped her rifle and flew at Parker with her long nails. He fell backwards, the mad woman on top of him, clawing at his face and trying to scratch out his eyes.
Shit, she was strong! Parker realized he was basically fighting enraged insanity. The sex of his opponent didn’t really matter. But he didn’t want to shoot the woman...
He managed to bring up his gun hand and he smacked the butt of the handle against Lisa-Ann’s left temple. Her eyes briefly rolled upwards... then she was again hissing at Parker and seeking to tear his face to shreds. He realized that he was already bleeding from a deep scratch along one cheek...
He hit again, harder. Much harder. Almost hating himself for striking a mentally-sick woman with such ferocity but having ab
solutely no idea as to what he should do otherwise.
This time Lisa-Ann’s eyes rolled backwards and remained there. Her body went floppy and weak and almost with a cry of relief Parker shoved her off him and onto the floor.
He shakily stood up, the things moaning and groaning as they strained at their bonds in their eagerness to get at him. The girl and boy looked to be about the same age. Ten or thereabouts. Naked hunger in their eyes, and those of their father. Tears pricked at Parker’s own eyes. Thank God but child-things were almost something of a rarity. For whatever reason – possibly because they’d usually succumbed to the virus quickly (that was, hadn’t become things following their ‘death’) – you just didn’t see them very often.
So Parker had not had to kill one, yet. He’d forced himself to consider the possibility that one day he’d have to but he didn’t know if he had it in him...
Parker left the kitchen and walked back along the corridor to the stairs. These he descended, opened the front door, pushed the heavy sheet of wood out of the way and was again in the street.
He closed the front door and again slid the sheet of wood across it as he heard Lisa-Ann give a wretched scream from inside.
Parker walked away.
He was crying.
It really is all over. The Earth is dead.
Nothing came back this time to counter such a thought.
‘...Hey, buddy – come on round the back of this place, and I’ll let you in,’ said the uniformed man. Parker stood in an agony of indecision. Almost pitch-black now – but a light was shining from the open doorway some way behind the man. Just one door belonging to this massive factory surrounded by the sturdy chainmail fence – what was currently keeping the now-seventy or so things from getting in and tearing the man with the loudhailer to pieces.
Suddenly making his mind up, Parker began walking fast towards the factory.
‘That’s it! Round the back, buddy. Just follow the fence,’ said the security guard, who then walked back across the outside yard towards the open door, entered the factory – and closed the door behind him.
Parker veered away towards the furthest edge of the fence on his right-hand side when he was still twenty or so yards from the factory perimeter itself. But still some things disengaged themselves from the mass clawing at the fence, and began shuffling in the same direction.
They know, thought Parker darkly. They heard what this man said and they understood.
Only now did those few things walking in the same general direction as Parker look at him. But they’d realized his presence when the security guard or whoever he was had spoken; and, moreover, they’d recognized the instructions he’d given Parker.
Of that, Parker was certain.
Still, despite the rat bites on his legs and general physical fatigue following his battle with the hogs, he could at least outpace these few strangely intelligent things. He reached one corner of the fence and then followed it along the side of the darkened factory for approximately one hundred yards. Turning the corner again he saw another ray of light like the one before and – again just at the outer edge of this ray of light’s reach – the security guard waiting with a bunch of keys in his hand by a sturdy, padlocked back gate.
Parker hesitated just for a moment, remembering that woman called Lisa-Ann. She’d seemed relatively sane, trustworthy – happy to meet another survivor who wasn’t going to try and rape her or cut her throat...
‘It’s okay, buddy, really,’ said the man in his natural voice. It was gentle, friendly. ‘I know what you’re thinking but – I wouldn’t have called to you if I didn’t think you were the right sort. Believe me, I’ve seen others while keeping watch from the top of this place and I’ve just let them walk right on by.’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Parker softly to himself. He walked forwards towards the gate which the man now began to unlock.
‘There’re some things coming, behind me,’ said Parker.
‘Better get inside quickly, then,’ returned the man. ‘I was keeping a look out at the front there but... A number of familiar faces – even given some of them names – but I didn’t see any I especially liked the look of...’
Parker tried to think what had been meant by this strange last remark, but the man was ushering him through the gate and then padlocking it shut again. From not far away, in the darkness, there came the sound of moaning.
‘I’m George,’ said the man, extending his right hand and briefly putting his left on Parker’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for trusting me, and coming here. It’s been a long time since I had decent company. I hope you like steak.’
‘You kidding me?’ was all Parker felt able to say.
George briefly looked Parker up and down, and smiled kindly. Parker tried not to stare too much at the huge mole he now saw on one side of George’s nose. He wondered how George had never had it removed before the virus had struck; it was so large it was almost like a disfigurement.
‘Looks like you’ve been in the wars,’ remarked George. His uniform, saw Parker now, was dark-blue in color. Undoubtedly, he’d been a security guard at this factory before the virus had struck. So what was with him still wearing his uniform now?
‘See if I can’t find you a pair of jeans or something,’ continued George, motioning at Parker’s blood-stained, rat-bitten trousers. ‘But first, let’s get inside.’
They walked together, towards the open door and the light. George motioned for Parker to step inside ahead of him. Parker did so after a split-second’s hesitation. Then the backdoor to this factory closed and the night lay in darkness.
Book 2
The virus was here
In his country.
On his lunch-break after setting out the dining tables and benches for the kids at the school where he worked as janitor, Parker watched the rioting that had broken out in several major cities. He’d already seen footage of those ‘things’ which some people became after contracting the virus – those people who weren’t just killed by it – but this had previously been in far-away continents and countries such as Africa, Europe and China...
(Most of the Far East had by now completely fallen; there was no longer any contact at all with China, Korea and Japan.)
This now was happening in his homeland. Parker watched the burning and the pillaging, and the awful, shuffling things hissing in the street at the screaming survivors, and he realized that this news’ broadcast was coming from a city barely three hundred miles from where he was now...
People were trying to escape; fleeing to hide out in remote mountain ranges and such. But it was becoming steadily more obvious that the virus (or plague – whatever you wished to call the fucking thing) would find you wherever you went.
All you could hope for was that you were fortunate enough to be one of the one in every five to ten thousand people (scientists seemed unsure about the precise ratio) who were somehow resistant to the disease which was either killing everyone else – or else turning them into things.
But then, of course, as a survivor, you had to start worrying about these so-called ‘hogs’. Those gangs of mobilized rapists, torturers and murderers who were basically revelling in this fall of civilization...
Parker turned off the television – it was pretty much the same scene now, playing out all over the world – and sat thinking. Barely half the usual number of students in school today. Parker doubted whether the school would even be open tomorrow. He could well be dead by then, anyway – or else be a thing.
Amazing how coldly, how clinically he could think in the face of this apocalypse...
For this was surely what this virus had brought about. An apocalypse. Mankind was absolutely powerless in the face of it. There was no treatment, no cure and no hope. People died with their internal organs haemorrhaging and their skin tearing like tissue paper and they died screaming in agony. This Parker knew. And then they sometimes got right back off whatever surface they’d ‘died’ upon and began searching for any remaining
humans to feed on.
Still some people refused to believe this last part was true. Just wouldn’t accept it. Even after evidence of the dead coming back to life and attacking the living had been broadcast again and again, along with the message –
...Shoot or cause these things some other type of ‘extreme trauma’ to the head. It’s the only way to stop them. They are no longer your loved ones or friends. They do not know you and they will not respond to any emotion. Destroy them – or be destroyed yourself...
And so the already small number of survivors dwindled even further, although the hogs had no compunction about killing things, in as many inventive and preferably bloody ways as possible. Although when it quickly became obvious that things didn’t really feel pain as such – or at least were basically incapable of showing it – hogs found it much more fun to prey upon other survivors, who this time would scream at the top of their lungs as the hogs had their ‘fun’...
...Such thoughts passed through Parker’s mind as he sat staring at the empty TV screen. Then he looked at his wristwatch.
Still twenty minutes before he was due back at the school to put away the dining tables and benches. Time enough to go and do what he should have done already. Before he and Carrie started coughing and got sick; before this backwater town got transformed into just another mass graveyard, through which stumbled things and maybe a group of hogs rocked up in, hoping to find the odd man or woman still alive...
Parker put on his light jacket and left his house sited on the far side of the school playground. His was a small town where everyone knew each other, tree-lined streets heading towards a shopping arcade of sorts. Never very busy at the best of times; but today the streets along which Parker walked seemed even quieter than usual. Some of the quaint, white-boarded houses already with their windows shuttered, the occupants clearly departed.
Parker then saw one family hurriedly loading their car, the chubby, sweating father yelling at his wife and young daughter and son – ‘Get a move on, would ya?’