Autumn

by David Moody

  And again he thought, if this is our enemy, how the hell did we lose the farmhouse?

  #

  The rest of the small house was clear. The dead woman in the lounge banged the door repeatedly, doing little more than filling the building with unwanted noise.

  Michael and Emma sat in the kitchen together and ate. What they didn’t eat now, they’d take. Despite their hunger, their nervousness had stolen their appetites and each mouthful was an effort to swallow. Emma didn’t think she’d be able to keep much down. Her stomach turned over every time the dead woman hit the door.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That noise… it’ll bring more of them.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So where are we going to go?’

  Michael didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He got up and walked to the front of the house. Emma followed. There was another body outside now. They watched from the safety of the shadows as a creature which used to be a paramedic awkwardly lumbered past in its loose and badly soiled jumpsuit uniform. It looked like it was going to keep walking, but an inconvenient thump from the corpse in the lounge attracted its attention. It pivoted around awkwardly on leaden feet, then came towards the house, crashing into the window through which Michael and Emma had been watching, pawing at the glass.

  Another noise from the woman in the lounge, louder this time, perhaps in response.

  ‘We could shut her up,’ Emma suggested.

  ‘What, tie her hands behind her back?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Michael knew exactly what she meant, but just the thought of having to face that foul old hag again made his legs weaken. He’d never been particularly good at handling confrontation, and the longer this nightmare continued, the less-equipped he felt to be able to deal with the dead. They were weak and yet so driven to attack: so relentlessly hostile and so bloody unpredictable. He couldn’t face it, not yet.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and the dead paramedic began beating on the glass in response to his voice and movement. It was just a matter of time before more corpses arrived here.

  Between them they carried a small supply of food and other supplies out to the Land Rover, carefully creeping around the back of the paramedic and avoiding yet another corpse which was tripping unsteadily down the road towards the house now.

  Michael started the engine and watched as both of the creatures turned and moved towards the Land Rover with renewed interest and speed. ‘Which way?’ he asked.

  ‘Any way,’ Emma replied. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just go.’

  #

  No maps. No satnav. No real idea where they were or where they were going…

  As the afternoon disappeared into the evening and the light began to fade, Michael and Emma found themselves skirting around the edge of a small town. Their nerves increased as their surroundings became more urban and less open. There seemed to be movement around them constantly now. The road immediately ahead was blocked by a crash which neither of them saw coming until they were almost upon it: during the final rush hour, two buses travelling in opposite directions had collided with each other at speed. One was still standing upright, the other over on its side. Michael swung the Land Rover around, bumping up over a low central reservation, then accelerated back the way they’d come. The road they’d just driven along, virtually empty a few minutes earlier, was filling with teeming movement now as hordes of the dead gravitated towards the Land Rover’s noise. A group of them that had been trapped in a building – some kind of coach station, it appeared – managed to get free and spilled out onto the carriageway like a slick. Michael swerved, then steered hard the other way to avoid ploughing into another group emerging from a side street like a gang. Maybe the dark made things look worse than they actually were, but there seemed to be hundreds of bodies up ahead of them now, fucking hundreds.

  ‘Get off the road,’ Emma said, sounding calmer than she felt.

  ‘And go where?’ Michael demanded, more than a hint of desperation in his voice. ‘We can’t risk going any deeper into the town.’

  She grabbed his arm and pointed towards the entrance to a multi-storey car park on the far side of a traffic island they were fast approaching. ‘Head up. Just get up off the street.’

  Michael grunted something unintelligible then steered up the exit ramp, crashing through a barrier. He drove up floor by floor, using whatever gaps in the stationary traffic he could find to keep climbing, having to fight against his instincts and ignore the road markings. He was turning and turning the car now like they were riding a helter-skelter in reverse, half-expecting to still come across other drivers coming back down the other way.

  They finally stopped when they reached the top floor of the car park and there was nowhere else to go. A sudden sharp shower of rain hammered down and wind whipped across the rooftop, but the conditions didn’t stop Michael from getting out, running over to the edge of the building, and looking down. He held onto a metal railing as another gust of wind buffeted him.

  ‘See much?’ Emma asked when he returned.

  ‘Not a lot. The dumb fuckers haven’t worked out we’re up here.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said under her breath as she climbed over the seats and bedded down in the back. ‘Just give it time.’

  #

  Several days passed. It was now dawn on the third day since they’d reached the car park. Each hour seemed to drag on forever. The meagre, barely sufficient supplies they’d gathered from the house were supplemented by bags of shopping they’d found in other cars nearby. Emma and Michael sat in the Land Rover together through the light and the dark and the wind and rain. Conversation was infrequent and difficult, the atmosphere unremittingly grim. Their situation, whilst by no means completely hopeless, was unclear at best.

  Several times Emma tried asking the questions Michael was doing his best to avoid. ‘So what are we going to do? And please answer me this time, Michael. Don’t just ignore me again...’

  But that was exactly what he did. Rather than answer or argue, Michael got out and walked to the edge of the roof again and looked down, as he’d done countless times since they’d got here. This time Emma followed.

  ‘This is crazy. We have to do something.’

  ‘Like what?’ he demanded, his voice unexpectedly loud. Emma took a step back with surprise at the strength of his response. He sounded desperate, close to tears. ‘You keep asking me the same thing again and again, but I can’t give you any answers. Just look down there, Em. It’s fucking hopeless.’

  He pointed down and Emma leant over to see. The crowd of bodies around the car park had been growing steadily since they’d first arrived. Now a huge mass of them filled the street directly below. She didn’t know why they kept coming. Was the rest of the world really so quiet that they could hear even the slight noises she and Michael made up here? Had this crowd grown from the remnants of the dead attracted here by the noise of their arrival? But why so many?

  ‘They know,’ Michael said, his voice a little calmer now. ‘It’s the only explanation. They know we’re up here – some of them, anyway – and that’s enough. And I think they’ll keep trying to climb up until either they get to us or we have to go back down.’

  He stared down into the silent, constantly shifting mass of dead flesh so far below. He couldn’t tell whether their movements were controlled or involuntary, but he was sure he saw several of them lift their heads and look up. He tried to block the thought from his mind, but suddenly all he could think about was this car park steadily filling up with the dead, floor by floor, until he and Emma were trapped and surrounded again, until the point of no return had been reached. Breaking point.

  #

  Another endless day slowly turned to night. Emma busied herself by looting from the few cars on the top floor of the car park they still hadn’t touched, occasionally creeping down to the floor immediately below. She’d found scraps of food i
n one car, the odd bottle of water in another, some warmer clothes for both of them in a third. Michael, spurred into doing something because Emma suddenly seemed so busy, filled the tank of the Land Rover with fuel siphoned from other vehicles, then built a bonfire in an empty space and lit it, desperate for warmth. Emma came running over as soon as she saw the flames.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Keeping warm.’

  ‘But you can’t… what if they see it?’

  ‘Who, the bodies?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because we’re on the top floor of a fucking car park, Emma. We’re fifty fucking feet off the ground!’

  ‘But what if they do see it?’ she screamed at him. ‘What if it brings more of them here?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, think about what you’re saying. How can they possibly see it from down there?’

  ‘How do you know they can’t? There are other buildings this tall. What if there are bodies up there too? They’ll see it.’

  ‘And how are they going to get here? Get a bloody grip.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that—’

  ‘Then don’t talk to me at all! Anyway, if this fire doesn’t bring them up here, your bloody screaming will.’

  ‘I’m not screaming.’

  ‘You fucking are!’ he yelled at her.

  They both shut up, aware that they were being as loud as each other. Michael’s last words echoed off the walls of empty buildings.

  ‘We should just go,’ she said, quieter now, calmer. ‘Take our chances and get out of here.’

  ‘There are still too many of them down there. We can’t. We’re trapped. I don’t want to go anywhere near any of those fucking things, do you? We’ll keep waiting. They have to go eventually, don’t they?’

  ‘You reckon?’

  Michael turned his back and walked away. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

  #

  Michael had been sitting in the front of the Land Rover, staring out into the darkness for what felt like forever, when he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. It was almost dawn – yet another dawn – and he glanced back over his shoulder to check on Emma. She was still asleep behind him, her head buried under blankets to block out the rest of the world. He peered deeper into the gloom around the ramp which led up onto the rooftop, desperately hoping not to see anything. Had it, as he now prayed, just been a trick of the low light? A scavenging bird landing and taking off again, feeding off the scraps like he and Emma did? Ash being blown from the remains of last night’s fire? But then he saw it again, and this time he knew exactly what it was. He could tell from the slow, stilted movements, from the unsteady awkwardness and listless gait, that it was one of the dead. How it had managed to drag itself all the way up here, he had no idea. It must have heard them looting and arguing and reacted to their noise. And now, hours later, the total lack of other interruptions had combined with the bizarre, dogged persistence the dead now displayed to allow this one to finally reach the top floor.

  Was this corpse alone, or was this the first of thousands? Was this the beginning of the deluge he feared?

  What do I do?

  Michael sat perfectly still and watched the creature as it approached. He moved only his eyes and tried to work out what his next move should be. Maybe if he just ignored it, it might go away like the lone body they’d seen out on the hills? But this one couldn’t get away – there was nowhere left for it to go. Perhaps he should wait for it to reach the edge of the roof and hope it would take a final step too far and fall off. As the corpse staggered closer, the first shards of morning sunlight allowed Michael to make out all the details he didn’t want to see. It was a pathetic, miserable sight. Barely able to support its own emaciated weight, it dragged its feet along and its leaden arms swung with every step as if it was half-heartedly attempting to march. It had dark greasy hair covering most of its face and its clothing glistened with damp decay where the light struck. Bizarrely, something about its lethargy – its apparent ignorance, apathy almost – annoyed Michael. The corpse reminded him of a useless teenager, like one of the kids in the school classroom where he’d been delivering a talk when this nightmare had begun. It looked pathetic, and he asked himself, why am I afraid of you?

  Michael looked back at Emma again when she stirred in her sleep, and his sudden movement was enough to make the corpse react. It started towards the car and, as it approached, he thought about the cruel irony of their situation. He was still alive. He was still strong. He could still think and eat and sleep and laugh and cry and do all the other things he’d always been able to do, and yet he and Emma were the ones who’d become prisoners of the dead, trapped on this car park roof. The body continued to come closer and Michael watched it intently. Its face was hollow and vacant, infuriatingly expressionless. It barely looked capable of moving much further forward, let alone causing either of them any harm. And yet he still couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. He thought back to the farmhouse again, to the life he’d almost had there with Emma before things had fallen apart. They should have done so much better. Had that really been their last chance as they’d feared, or could they try again? Was he really going to allow what was left of his time to be ruled by these foul, decaying creatures, this one in particular? Or was he going to do something about it?

  Michael got out of the car, waking Emma in the process, and marched towards the corpse. His sudden surge of determination waned just as quickly as it had begun. He slowed, then stopped and stood his ground. The body continued its desperately slow approach. It’s just you and me, he thought, looking deep into the foul aberration’s distorted face and doing all he could to ignore the bilious feeling at the back of his throat. It suddenly felt as if everything boiled down to what happened next; that these few minutes would somehow shape every single day he and Emma still had left. So was it sink or swim? Fight or flight? Win or lose?

  The corpse took another lurching step forward, and Michael flinched.

  ‘Get back in the Land Rover,’ Emma said from somewhere behind him. ‘Quick!’

  He looked at the dead body as it reacted to her voice. Then he turned to Emma and said: ‘No.’

  Before she could stop him, Michael lunged forward and grabbed the corpse. The smell up close was foul, and the soggy noises the pitiful cadaver made as it squirmed in his grip made him want to vomit. Its flesh was cold and pliable under his fingers. It tried to push his arms away but its comparative lack of strength meant it didn’t stand a chance. Michael straightened his arms and surprised himself by lifting the creature’s entire soggy body several inches off the ground. It continued to try and fight, but it was miserably weak. He lifted the corpse higher before running to the edge of the rooftop and hurling it over. He watched as it tumbled down like a shop window dummy, stiff arms and legs sprawling, then crashed into the crowd below, hitting the deck with a sickening crunch which Michael could clearly hear over the silence of everything else. Down at ground level, the dead immediately surged again, tripping and sliding inquisitively over what was left of their fallen brethren.

  Breathless and feeling strangely exhilarated, Michael returned to the Land Rover.

  ‘We’re going,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t care.’ He wiped his hands clean on a towel then threw it out of the window. ‘Anywhere but here. I’m not going to be a prisoner.’

  He started the engine, and another corpse dragged itself up onto the rooftop, seemingly in response to the noise.

  ‘Are you sure about this? You were the one who—’

  ‘I know what I said,’ he interrupted, ‘and I was wrong. And no, I’m not sure about this, but if we do something and fuck it up, at least we’ll have tried. You were right, we can’t just sit up here and either starve to death or wait for them to get us. I’m taking back control, Em.’

 
; She was about to speak again, but it was too late. Michael put his foot down and the Land Rover juddered across the wet asphalt. He swerved around a tight corner, smacking into the lone approaching body and sending it flying, then ploughed down the steep, stomach-churning incline into the darkness. Emma held on to her seat, her safety belt, the door… anything she could grab hold of as the Land Rover hurtled further and further down. With each level they descended, the amount of dead flesh around them increased, but it was never enough to stop them. On one floor Michael clipped the wing of another car, and his response was simply to accelerate harder and get out of this gloomy, germ-filled concrete maze as fast as he could. Eventually he smashed through another barrier alongside the one they’d broken through when they’d first arrived here, then raced out onto the street. He gripped the steering wheel tight and thundered through the mass of rotting flesh, no longer bothering to try and avoid hitting them, just doing whatever he had to do to get away.

  #

  They stopped at a cut-price supermarket on the way back out of town. Emma had spotted it in a side road: ignored and overlooked by the bulk of the dead. Michael slammed on the brakes and reversed up to the doors. They’d done this before.

  ‘We should fill the car up,’ Emma said as she climbed out and ran into the store, ‘then just get away again.’

  Michael didn’t answer. He was already inside, dragging a pile of plastic shopping baskets over towards the nearest aisle. He looked around anxiously and began to fill them. Fortunately there were no corpses inside that he could see, but a handful had already appeared at the floor-to-ceiling windows which ran the length of the shop floor. They slammed their hands and slid their decaying faces against the glass, moving from side to side, slowly matching the movements of the two looters inside.

  By the time the first four baskets had been filled at speed and carried back over to the Land Rover, there were eight corpses at the windows. By the time they’d filled ten baskets, there were twenty of them. By the time they’d collected enough, it had become impossible to gauge how many of the damn things there were. The full expanse of glass had become a solid mass of greasy grey flesh, and a crowd had formed around the front of the Land Rover too. Neither Michael nor Emma said anything until they were loaded up and ready to leave. They stood a short distance back and surveyed the chaos outside together.