by David Moody
In a little under two hours I was done. My trip passed with little incident, save for a few uncomfortable moments in the hardware store car park when another crowd of dishevelled people gathered around the front of the building after I had gone inside. I took my time and moved around quietly, hoping they wouldn’t notice me. I used the trade entrance at the rear of the building to load up a small flat-bed truck, and was done before any of them saw me. Once home I parked the truck on the other side of the back fence and heaved everything over. I left the truck just in case I needed to use it again.
The people in the streets had become increasingly inquisitive. I couldn’t do anything without huge swathes of lethargically shuffling individuals following my every move. They appeared washed out and empty, and although they were individually easy to brush away, their incessant, unwanted attention made me uncomfortable. If they continued to come, I thought to myself, the house might be surrounded by incalculable numbers and I might end up using the hardware store truck as a means of escape. I couldn’t imagine leaving, and I decided it was more important than ever to make my property as strong and secure as possible.
I began at the front of the house. My place is already separated from the road by a knee-high brick wall topped with iron railings and a strong iron gate. It seemed sensible to increase the height of the barrier, to completely block the house and myself from view as far as was possible. I sank a row of six-foot concrete posts into the flower bed directly behind the wall, then placed fence panels between them. I then used nylon rope and chains to secure a split panel onto the gate, which I locked with chains and a hefty padlock I had taken from the store. The front of the house was the hardest place to work. The relentless interest of the people on the street was unsettling. On more than one occasion I had to push them back to get them out of the way. I asked them to move but the bloody things seemed incapable of any positive response and in the end I had to manhandle them off the drive.
I did a beautiful job on the ground floor doors. In a moment of inspiration I decided to build a second timber frame around each entrance and fitted new doors on top of the existing ones. Solid wooden fire doors, separately hinged and able to open independently. Perfect. I did something similar with the windows, making wooden shutters which completely blocked out the light. I couldn’t help but make a terrific amount of noise as I fitted them. I had no option but to drill into the masonry around the windows and doors. I could see over the newly raised fence from the top of the ladder whilst at the front of the house, and the effect the noise was having on the people in the street was dramatic. Some of them began to bang angrily on my new gate. At times the noise they made threatened to drown out the sound of my drill. I was almost relieved when the battery pack ran out.
It took the best part of two days to make the house as secure as I wanted it. By the time I’d finished I was exhausted. I worked whenever it was light, knowing I would have plenty of time to stop and rest once the job was complete. At six-thirty on Tuesday evening – more than a week since the nightmare started – I sat out on the lawn next to Maddy and her mother and looked back at the house with pride. They would have been impressed with what I’d achieved. If nothing else they would have been proud of the fact I had survived when so many others had fallen. Perhaps Janice wouldn’t have been too keen on the aesthetic side of the alterations, but she’d have surely appreciated their practicality. I sat between the graves of my wife and my daughter with a can of beer and the remainder of my daily rations and finally allowed myself to relax. The food and drink tasted better than ever. I had a normal appetite for the first time in days. Rationed food wasn’t so bad after all, I decided. I had a fairly wide selection of tastes and flavours in each day’s supply. I fully appreciated that my choices might become more limited as time progressed but, for now, it was more than sufficient.
I slept well last night.
#
This morning I discovered that the situation outside has deteriorated again. Things have suddenly become much less certain, and I feel increasingly unsure. Although the house remains secure, today the enormity of what has happened to the world has again become painfully apparent.
I lay lazily in bed for a while, resting after the efforts of the last two days. When I finally got up I went to the front of the house and opened several of the new wooden window shutters. I immediately saw that the crowd outside had more than doubled in size. It now stretched from one end of the street to the other – completely filling the entire length of Baker Road West – and initially I couldn’t understand why. Surely once I had finished work on the house and was out of sight the people outside should have drifted away, shouldn’t they? The bathroom window was open slightly and I listened. Although not one of them spoke, there was a constant and very definite noise coming from the unwanted masses. The sounds of shuffling feet, of bodies tripping and falling, of things being knocked over in the street and smashed, of tired hands being slammed against my fence… individually they were insignificant but when added together they became uncomfortably loud. I realised this was no longer a crowd which would simply drift away again. I could see still more people arriving and joining the fringes of the huge gathering.
I ran to the back of the house, thinking that if I did have to leave quickly I could use the hardware store truck which I’d left parked on the road behind the fence at the end of the garden, but it was no good. Standing on my stepladder, I looked over the fence and saw the truck was surrounded. Those bloody things had somehow found the entrance to the road and had filled it for as far as I could see in both directions. There were bloody hundreds of them out there, wedged in so tight they could hardly move.
The front of the house was cut off, as was the back. Increasingly concerned, I fetched my binoculars from the study and tried to make a full assessment of the situation. The news wasn’t good. My house – number forty-seven – is two-thirds of the way down Baker Road West which is a fairly straight road. To the left of my property, approximately two hundred and fifty yards (ten houses) away, is a large pub, The Highway. To my horror, I saw from the bedroom window that the pub car park was full of even more people. The crowd was immense, dwarfing the numbers at the front and back of my house. And, worst of all, all that separated them from my garden and my house was eleven wooden fences. The fences around my property are all in relatively good repair, but the same couldn’t be said of those belonging to some of my neighbours. I would frequently see their fences wobbling in strong winds and I doubted whether they’d be able to withstand much force. I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that the mass of bodies in the car park would probably be able to exert more than enough collective pressure to bring them down.
At the other end of the road, almost out of sight from where I was watching, was another crowd of similar proportions to the one outside the house. What had I done? What an idiot I had been. I realised I was responsible for bringing all these people here. In my haste and enthusiasm to protect the house and make it secure, the noise I had made had inadvertently revealed my location to untold thousands of the damn things.
Did I sit and wait this out or take my chances and run? My two original choices seemed suddenly to have been slashed to one as I realised I had no obvious way of getting out.
I read through the government booklet again and again, hoping I’d find a page I’d somehow missed previously that might give me some idea of how to deal with a situation like this, but no matter how hard I stared at the pages, there was nothing. There was information on dealing with bomb threats, hostage situations, flu epidemics and terrorist attacks, basic first aid advice and a list of emergency telephone numbers (useless as the phone had been dead most of the week) but nothing to help me with the sudden and very real threat I was now facing. Apart from me the entire population had died, and now most of them had returned from the grave and were gravitating around my house. What the hell was I supposed to do?
During the course of the day now ending I have watched the
crowds draw ever closer. Just before one this afternoon, the fence around the pub car park finally gave way under the collective weight of hundreds of bodies pushing against it. With the barrier down the people then pushed, shoved and surged to get into the first garden, only to then stop when they slammed into the next fence. It began to wobble and shake precariously but it remained intact for a time, finally falling about an hour and a half later when it could no longer withstand the pressure being exerted from behind. The strength of the crowd was incredible. As each fence collapsed it was as if a dam had burst its banks, and the people poured through like an unstoppable wave.
Bill Peters, who lived at number fifty-five, had a good, sturdy fence with concrete posts and a strong base which held up their progress for a while, but even Bill’s fence wasn’t good enough. They finally broke through at a quarter past four, leaving them just three gardens away from my home.
#
Day eight ends and day nine begins.
It’s a little before one in the morning, and I’m sitting alone in Maddy’s room watching them. I can see them from the end of the bed: hundreds, probably thousands of shifting, bobbing heads moving in the cold moonlight. The recent nights have been overcast and dark but tonight the sky is clear and the moon is full and I can see everything. I wish it would disappear back behind the clouds. I’d rather be blind to this.
Over the days I have done all I can to secure my small plot of land. This is my home, and everything I’ve ever worked for is here. This place is my world, and I’ll continue to defend it for as long as I’m able. But just now, sitting here alone, the emptiness of the place has struck me. Behind the double-strength doors and the window shutters and high fences, there’s nothing anymore. It’s just a shell. The house feels like a tomb.
I miss Janice and Maddy. I miss their conversation and their noise. I miss their soap operas and gossip.
I feel relatively calm. I’m nervous and I don’t want to face what’s I know is coming, but I will keep a level head. I have maintained my dignity and pride since this catastrophe began and I will continue to do so. There will be no kicking and screaming and no shame.
Oh, Christ… The splinter and crack of wood shatters the silence and another fence goes down. I can see that the crowd is closer than ever now, surging awkwardly across Pauline and Geoff Smart’s lawn and slamming against the fence on the other side of their garden. They are now just two properties away. It won’t be long.
#
Three-fifteen.
The penultimate fence is down and a few thin wooden slats are all that separates the crowd from my home. I’m standing at the window now, looking directly at them. There doesn’t seem to be any point keeping out of sight anymore; it won’t make any difference. Their progress is unstoppable. They’re coming here whatever.
This doesn’t feel right, hiding up here alone. I shouldn’t be cowering like this, just watching them, waiting for them to invade. I should be down there. I should be alongside Maddy and her mother when it happens. For goodness sake, it’s not the house I should be defending, it’s my family. All that effort making our home secure, when all along I should have been out there protecting my girls.
#
Lester Prescott left his daughter’s room and shuffled across the landing to the bedroom he and Janice had shared for the last twenty-five years. Tired, and with a heavy heart, he opened the wardrobe and took out his favourite jumper. Threadbare and tattered, it was the jumper he always used to wear when he was out working in the garden at weekends. He pulled it on over his head and then sat down on the edge of the bed to tighten his shoe laces and pull up his socks.
He took one last long look around his home and then went outside, taking with him a few cans of beer from his supplies. He walked the length of the garden with pride, even now stopping to pick a weed from between the slabs on the patio and to tidy the edge of a flower bed where the uncut grass had begun to encroach on Janice’s prized plants. He stopped when he reached the garden shed and looked down at the two uneven mounds in the lawn where he’d buried his wife and only child.
Seems a shame it all has to finish like this, he thought as he disappeared into the shed and fetched a spade and garden fork with which he could defend himself when the fence came down. He then squeezed his backside onto the seat of Maddy’s swing and looked back at the house. All that work, he thought. All those years of relentless number-crunching, day after day, week after week. Maybe he should have taken more time off? Perhaps he should have spent more time at home. And when he’d been at home, should he have spent more time sitting doing nothing with his family instead of working on his projects or hiding himself away in the garden shed? Lester opened his first beer and drank half of it in a series of quick, gassy gulps. He’d never been much of a drinker and it made him feel slightly sick. He belched and wiped his mouth and looked at the fence which was now rocking and shaking with the force of untold numbers of bodies on the other side. Hope the drink takes the edge off this fear, he thought, shaking his half-full can and stifling another belch.
Bloody hell, Lester said sadly to himself, this is like waiting to see the dentist. Let’s just get it over with.
#
Lester was on his final can when it happened. For the briefest of moments he’d actually become distracted with pointless, random thoughts about nothing in particular and he’d almost forgotten what was coming. The sudden sharp crack of splintering wood brought him crashing back to reality in an instant. He jumped to his feet and grabbed the garden fork, holding it out in front of him like a four-pronged bayonet.
The fence had given way at the other end of the garden, nearer to the house. It was difficult to see much from his present position, but he was vaguely aware of dark, swarming movement close to the garage door, frighteningly indistinct. The top of the fence, already weakened closer to the house, now began to dip and bow halfway up the garden. Lester watched as it drooped further and further down, finally falling so low that he could see the heads and shoulders of the advancing bodies on the other side. Their ultimate intent, although to a large degree still random and uncoordinated, was obvious and inevitable.
As the first few bodies began their stilted, awkward walk towards him, Lester took up position in front of the graves of his family. His heart began to race. What would they do to him? Were they capable of an attack or would they just trample him down? He couldn’t look away, his fear making it impossible to do anything but stare directly at the advancing shadowy shapes. He wanted to stop them. He didn’t care what they did to him, but he wanted to stop them from trampling the graves of his wife and daughter. I might not have been very good at telling you how I felt about you when you were alive, he thought, picturing Maddy and Janice in his head, but I can show you now…
As the closest bodies lifted their emaciated arms out for him, Lester lunged forward with the garden fork. He smashed into the chest cavity of the nearest cadaver, skewering it and sending it crashing to the ground. He wrenched the fork back out and swung it around at other sinewy figures, catching one of them on the side of the head, practically decapitating it. Fuelled by adrenalin and fear he attacked again, diving deeper into the crowd, desperate to defend his family’s honour. The final section of fence that was still standing now came down with a tremendous groan and crack and a heavy thump and hundreds more bodies poured into Lester’s garden. He wanted to keep fighting but he didn’t have room to move. They were surrounding him on all sides now, reaching out for him, grabbing at him tirelessly. Disorientated by the chaos, out of the corner of his eye he spied the dark silhouette of the garden shed and he ran towards it, pushing and kicking more bodies out of the way. He reached out for the door handle, knowing that the end of his life was close, running to delay the inevitable. He flung the door open and crashed inside. The door flapped shut in the wind behind him, the sudden noise leaving the mass of bodies in no doubt as to where he was hiding. Now sobbing uncontrollably, Lester collapsed into his deckchair in the corner a
nd waited.
So many memories.
The garden shed – the coldest, weakest and most exposed part of his property – suddenly felt as reassuringly strong and warm as anywhere else. In the half-light he looked around and saw nothing but memories: the tools with which he and Janice had lovingly tended their small plot of land, the battered wooden tea-chest on which he used to leave his paper or his book and his drink when he dozed in the shed on long, relaxing Saturday afternoons, the plastic table and chairs which had been dragged out onto the patio each summer when they’d entertained family and friends… And finally the box of garden games and the buckets and spades and all those memories of being with Janice and Maddy. All about to be lost forever now. Most of it already gone. Lester knew he didn’t have long.
More through luck than judgement, a single skeletal hand managed to wedge itself between the flapping door and the frame and pulled it open. The creature dragged itself into the shed, followed by an apparently endless queue of others. Do I know you? Lester got up and stared at the rotting shadow which lurched towards him. Were you once a friend? Someone I used to work with? Have I passed you on the street? Did I work on your accounts? The creature’s face, repellent in the cold moonlight and shadow, was vacant and unrecognisable. What gives you the right?
Lester tried to push the bodies away but their numbers were too great. One of the corpses trying to get inside tripped and fell, pushing those in front of it forward with unexpected force. Like dominoes they crashed into Lester and knocked him back. He slammed against the back wall of the shed unexpectedly, feeling a sudden stinging pain between his shoulders as the ten steel prongs of his garden rake punctured his skin. Anaesthetized by fear, it was more a disorientating discomfort than pain as such. Lester lifted his arms and shielded his face from the rotting bodies which continued to advance, pushing into him and forcing the spikes deeper into his back.