by Tim Lebbon
They saw several cows standing very still in the distance, not chewing, not snorting, not flicking their tails. Their udders hung slack and empty, teats already black. They seemed to be looking in their direction. None of them moved. They looked like photos Jack had seen of the concrete cows in Milton Keynes, though those looked more lifelike.
It took an hour to reach the edge of the woods. Flies buzzed them but did not bite, the skies were empty of birds, things crawled along at the edges of fields, where dead crops met dead hedges.
The thought of entering the woods terrified Jack, though he could not say why. Perhaps it was a subconscious memory of the time he had been lost in the woods. That time had been followed by a mountain of heartache. Maybe he was anticipating the same now.
Instead, as they passed under the first stretch of dipping trees, they found a house, and a garden, and more bright colours than Jack had names for.
“Look at that! Janey, look at that! Jack, see, I told you, it’s not all bad!”
The cottage was small, its roof slumped in the middle and its woodwork was painted a bright, cheery yellow. The garden was a blazing attack of colour, and for a while Jack thought he was seeing something from a fairytale. Roses were only this red in stories, beans this green, grass so pure, ivy so darkly gorgeous across two sides of the house. Only in fairytales did potted plants stand in windowsill ranks so perfectly, their petals kissing each other but never stealing or leeching colour from their neighbour. Greens and reds and blues and violets and yellows, all stood out against the backdrop of the house and the limp, dying woods behind it. In the woods there were still colours, true, vague echoes of past glories clinging to branches or leaves or fronds. But this garden, Jack thought, must be where all the colour in the world had fled, a Noah’s Ark for every known shade and tint and perhaps a few still to be discovered. There was magic in this place.
“Oh, wow,” his mum said. She was smiling, and Jack was glad. But his father, who had walked to the garden gate and pulled an overhanging rose stem to his nose, was no longer smiling. His expression was as far away from a smile as could be.
“It’s not real,” his dad said.
“What?”
“This rose isn’t real. It’s…synthetic. It’s silk, or something.”
“But the grass, Dad …”
Jack ran to the gate as his father pushed through it, and they hit the lawns together.
“Astroturf. Like they use on football pitches, sometimes. Looks pretty real, doesn’t it, son?”
“The beans. The fruit trees, over there next to the cottage.”
“Beans and fruit? In spring?”
Jack’s mum was through the gate now, using her one good hand to caress the plants, squeeze them and watch them spring back into shape, bend them and hear the tiny snap as a plastic stem broke. Against the fake colours of the fake plants, she looked very pale indeed.
Jack ran to the fruit bushes and tried to pluck one of the red berries hanging there in abundance. It was difficult parting it from its stem, but it eventually popped free and he threw it straight into his mouth. He was not really expecting a burst of fruity flesh, and he was not proved wrong. It tasted like the inside of a yoghurt carton: plastic and false.
“It’s not fair!” Jack ran to the front door of the cottage and hammered on the old wood, ignoring his father’s hissed words of caution from behind him. His mum was poorly, they needed some food and drink, there were dead things— dead things, for fucking hell’s sake—walking around and chasing them and eating people. Saw them eating a fucking bunch of people on the motorway, the man in the car had said.
All that, and now this, and none of it was fair.
The door drifted open. There were good smells from within, but old smells as well: the echoes of fresh bread; the memory of pastries; a vague idea that chicken had been roasted here recently, though surely not today, and probably not yesterday.
“There’s no one here!” Jack called over his shoulder.
“They might be upstairs.”
Jack shook his head. No, he knew this place was empty. He’d known the people in the field were coming and he’d seen what the dead folk in the banana car were like before…before he saw them for real. And he knew that this cottage was empty.
He went inside.
His parents dashed in after him, even his poorly mum. He felt bad about making her rush, but once they were inside and his dad had looked around, they knew they had the place to themselves.
“It’s just not fair,” Jack said once again, elbows resting on a windowsill in the kitchen, chin cradled in cupped hands. “All those colours …”
There was a little bird in the garden, another survivor drawn by the colours. It was darting here and there, working at the fruit, pecking at invisible insects, fluttering from branch to plastic branch in a state of increasing agitation.
“Why would someone do this—” his mum asked. She was sitting at the pitted wooden table with a glass of orange juice and a slice of cake. Real juice, real cake. “Why construct a garden so false?”
“I feel bad about just eating their stuff,” his dad said. “I mean, who knows who lives here? Maybe it’s a little old lady and she has her garden like this because she’s too frail to tend it herself. We’ll leave some money when we go.” He tapped his pockets, sighed. “You got any cash, Janey?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t think to bring any when we left this morning. It was all so…rushed.”
“Maybe everything’s turning plastic and this is just where it begins,” Jack mused. Neither of his parents replied. “I read a book once where everything turned to glass.”
“I’ll try the TV,” his dad said after a long pause.
Jack followed him through the stuffy hallway and into the living room, a small room adorned with faded tapestries, brass ornaments and family portraits of what seemed like a hundred children. Faces smiled from the walls, hair shone in forgotten summer sunshine, and Jack wondered where all these people were now. If they were still children, were they in school? If they were grown up, were they doing what he and his parents were doing, stumbling their way through something so strange and unexpected that it forbore comprehension?
Or perhaps they were all dead. Sitting at home. Staring at their own photographs on their own walls, seeing how things used to be.
“There it is,” his dad said. “Christ, what a relic.” He never swore in front of Jack, not even damn or Christ or shit. He did not seem to notice his own standards slipping.
The television was an old wooden cabinet type, buttons and dials running down one side of the screen, no remote control, years of mugs and plates having left their ghostly impressions on the veneered top. His dad plugged it in and switched it on, and they heard an electrical buzz as it wound itself up. As the picture coalesced from the soupy screen Jack’s dad glanced at his watch. “Almost six o’clock, news should be on any time now.”
“I expect they’ll have a news flash, anyway,” Jack said confidently.
His dad did something then that both warmed his heart and disconcerted him. He laughed gently and gave him a hug, and Jack felt tears cool and shameless on his cheek. “Of course they will, son,” he said, “I’m sure they will.”
“Anything?” called his mum.
“Nearly,” Jack shouted back.
There was no sound. The screen was stark and bland, and the bottom half stated: ‘This is a Government Announcement’. The top half of the screen contained scrolling words: ‘Stay calm…Remain indoors…Help is at hand…Please await further news.’
And that was it.
“What’s on the other side, Dad?”
Buttons clicked in, the picture fizzled and changed, BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, there were no others. But if there were, they would probably have all contained the same image. The Government notice, the scrolling words that should have brought comfort but which, in actual fact, terrified Jack. “I wonder how long it’s been like that,” he said,
unable to prevent a shiver in his voice. “Dad, what if it isn’t changing.”
“It says ‘Please await further news’. They wouldn’t say that unless they were going to put something else up soon. Information on where to go, or something.”
“Yeah, but that’s like a sign on a shop door saying ‘Be back soon’. It could have been there for months.”
His dad looked down at him, frowning, chewing his lower lip. “There’s bound to be something on the radio. Come on, I think I saw one in the kitchen.”
His mum glanced up as they entered and Jack told her what they had seen. The radio was on a shelf above the cooker. It looked like the sort of antique people spent lots of money to own nowadays, but it was battered and yellowed, and its back cover was taped on. It crackled into instant life. A sombre brass band sprang from the speakers.
“Try 1215 medium wave,” Jack said. “Virgin.”
His dad tuned; the same brass band.
In six more places across the wavelengths, the same brass band.
“I’ll leave it on. Maybe there’ll be some news after this bit of music. I’ll leave it on.”
They tried the telephone as well, but every number was engaged. 999, the operator, the local police station, family and friends, random numbers. It was as if everyone in the world was trying to talk to someone else.
Twenty minutes later Jack’s dad turned the radio off. They went to check the television and he switched that off as well. His mum laid down on the settee and Jack washed the cuts on her arms and the horrible wound on her shoulder, crying and gagging at the same time. He was brave, he kept it down. His mum was braver.
Later, after they had eaten some more food from the fridge and shared a huge pot of tea, his dad suggested they go to bed. No point trying to travel at night, he said, they’d only get lost. Besides, better to rest now and do the final part of the trip tomorrow than to travel all night, exhausted.
And there were those things out there as well, Jack thought, though his dad did not mention them. Dead things. These fuckers are everywhere. Dead cows, dead birds, dead insects, dead grass, dead crops, dead trees, dead hedges…dead people. Dead things everywhere with one thing in mind—to keep on moving. To find life.
How long before they rot away?
Or maybe the bugs that make things rot are dead as well.
There were two bedrooms. Jack said he was happy sleeping alone in one, so long as both doors were kept open. He heard his mother groan as she lowered herself onto their bed, his father bustling in the bathroom, the toilet flushing…and it was all so normal.
Then he saw a spider in the corner of his room and there was no way of telling whether it was alive or dead—even when it moved—and he realised that ‘normal’ was going to have to change its coat.
Night fell unnaturally quickly, but when he glanced at his watch in the moonlight he saw that several hours had passed. Maybe he had been drifting in and out of sleep, daydreaming, though he could not recall what these fancies were about. He could hear his father’s light snoring, his mother’s breathing pained and uncomfortable. What if something tries to get in now? he thought. What if I hear fingers picking at window latches and tapping at the glass, nails scratching wood to dig out the frames? He looked up at the misshapen ceiling and thought he saw tiny dark things scurrying in and out of cracks, but it may have been fluid shapes on the surfaces of his eyes.
Then he heard the noises beginning outside. They may be the sounds of dead things crawling through undergrowth, but so long as he did not hear them shoving between plastic stems and false flowers, everything would be fine. The dark seemed to allow sounds to travel further, ring clearer, as if light could dampen noise. Perhaps it could; perhaps it would lessen the sound of dead things walking.
The night was full of furtive movements, clawed feet on hard ground, sagging bellies dragging through stiff grasses. There were no grunts or cries or shouts, no hooting owls or barking foxes screaming like tortured babies, because dead things can’t talk. Dead things, Jack discovered that night, can only wander from one pointless place to another, taking other dead things with them and perhaps leaving parts of themselves behind. Whether he closed his eyes or kept them open he saw the same image, his own idea of what the scene was like out there tonight: no rhyme; no reason; no competition to survive; no feeding (unless there were a few unlucky living things still abroad); no point, no use, no ultimate aim…
…aimless.
He opened and closed his eyes, opened and closed them, stood and walked quietly to the window. The moon was almost full and it cast its silvery glare across a sickly landscape. He thought there was movement here and there, but when he looked he saw nothing. It was his poor night vision, he knew that, but it was also possible that the things didn’t want to be seen moving. There was something secretive in that. Something intentional.
He went back to bed. When he was much younger it had always felt safe, and the feeling persisted now in some small measure. He pulled the stale blankets up over his nose.
His parents slept on. Jack remained awake. Perhaps he was seeking another secret in the night, and that thought conjured Mandy again. All those nights she had sat next to his bed talking to him, telling him adult things she’d never spoken of before, things about fear and imagination and how growing up closes doors in your mind. He had thought she’d been talking about herself, but she’d really been talking about him as well. She’d been talking about both of them because they were so alike, even if she was twice his age. And because they loved each other just as a brother and sister always should, and whatever had happened in the past could never, ever change that.
Because of Mandy he could name his fears, dissect and identify them, come to know them if not actually come to terms with them. He would never have figured that for himself, he was sure.
What she said had always seemed so right.
He closed his eyes to rest, and the dead had their hands on him.
They were grabbing at his arms, moving to his legs, pinching and piercing with rotten nails. One of them slapped his face and it was Mandy, she was standing at the bedside smiling down at him, her eyes shrivelled prunes in her grey face, and you should always name your fears…
Jack opened his mouth to scream but realised he was not breathing. It’s safe here, he heard Mandy say. She was still smiling, welcoming, but there was a sadness behind that smile—even behind the slab of meat she had become—that Jack did not understand.
He had not seen Mandy for several months. She should be pleased to see him.
Then he noticed that the hands on his arms and legs were her own and her nails were digging in, promising never, ever to let him go, they were together now, it was safe here, safe…
“Jack!”
Still shaking, still slapped.
“Jack! For fuck’s sake!”
Jack opened his eyes and Mandy disappeared. His dad was there instead, and for a split second Jack was confused. Mandy and his Dad looked so alike.
“Jackie, come with me,” his dad said quietly. “Come on, we’re leaving now.”
“Is it morning?”
“Yes. Morning.”
“Where’s Mum?”
“Come on, son, we’re going to go now. We’re going to find Mandy.”
Her name chilled him briefly, but then Jack remembered that even though she had been dead in his dream, still she’d been smiling. She had never hurt him, she would never hurt him. She would never hurt any of them.
“I need a pee.”
“You can do that outside.”
“What about food, Dad? We can’t walk all that way without eating.”
His dad turned his back and his voice sounded strange, as if forced through lips sewn shut. “I’ll get some food together when we’re downstairs, now come on.”
“Mum!” Jack shouted.
“Jackie—”
“Mum! Is she awake yet, Dad?”
His father turned back to him, his eyes wide and wet and ov
erflowing with grief and shock. Jack should have been shocked as well, but he was not, not really that shocked at all.
“Mum…” he whispered.
He darted past his father’s outstretched hands and into the bedroom his parents had shared.
“Mum!” he said, relief sagging him against the wall. She was sitting up in bed, hands in her lap, staring at the doorway because she knew Jack would come running in as soon as he woke up. “I thought…Dad made me think …” that you were dead.
Nobody moved for what seemed like hours.
“She was cold when I woke up,” his dad sobbed behind him. “Cold. So cold. And sitting like that. She hasn’t moved, Jackie. Not even when I touched her. I felt for her pulse and she just looked at me…I felt for her heart, she just stared…she just keeps staring …”
“Mum,” Jack gasped. Her expression did not change, because there was no expression. Her face was like a child’s painting: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, no life there at all, no heart, no love or personality or soul. “Oh Mum…”
She was looking at him. Her eyes were dry so he could not see himself reflected there. Her breasts sagged in death, her open shoulder was a pale bloodless mass, like over-cooked meat. Her hands were crossed, and the finger she had pricked so that he could study her swarming blood under his microscope was pasty grey.
“We’ll take her,” Jack said. “When we get to Tewton they’ll have a cure, we’ll take her and—”
“Jack!” His father grabbed him under the arms and hauled him back towards the stairs. Jack began to kick and shout, trying to give life to his mother by pleading with her to help him, promising they would save her. “Jack we’re leaving now, because Mum’s dead. And Mandy is all we have left, Jackie. Listen to me!”
Jack continued to scream and his father dragged him downstairs, through the hallway and into the kitchen. He shouted and struggled, even though he knew his dad was right. They had to go on, they couldn’t take his dead Mum with them, they had to go on. They’d seen dead people yesterday, and the results of dead people eating living people. He knew his dad was right but he was only a terrified boy, verging on his teens, full of fight and power and rage. The doors in his mind were as wide as they’d ever been, but grief makes so many unconscious choices that control becomes an unknown quantity.