“Last time I had flu I spent a week laid up in bed. I didn’t go around looting the place,” Stephen said.
“Then you didn’t have flu,” Gary said.
“What? You do loot?”
“No, the in bed for a week. My sister caught flu a few years back. She spent six weeks in bed and dropped nearly thirty pounds. No, this ain’t no flu.” Gary wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m burning up in here. Can we have the AC on?”
“Yeah, sure.” Stephen fiddled with the controls on the dashboard and a fan started up.
“I don’t feel well,” Grant said pitifully to his mother.
Liz hugged the boy close, stroking his damp hair. “It’s okay. We’ll be at the hospital soon.”
“Look. A cop down there.” Gary said, pointing at the white and blue squad car on an adjoining street.
“We’ll ask him if he knows how we can get to the hospital,” Stephen said.
He checked his mirrors out of habit, indicated, and pulled on to the road where the police car and its driver were parked.
The police officer stood propped up by his cruiser. His arms were on top of the roof, his head buried deep in their folds, the lights pulsating eagerly, but the siren mute.
“It’s okay. We’ll stop and ask the policeman,” Stephen said to the rear of the car as he slowed down.
“Ask what—directions? Why the world’s fucked up?” Gary snapped.
“You’re not helping,” Liz said from the rear seats with her children.
Stephen stopped the car and opened the door. With an arm over the roof and one foot still in the car, Stephen called across to the man.
“Officer.”
The policeman didn’t react.
“Excuse me, officer.” Stephen said, a bit louder.
The officer’s shoulders twitched.
Gary unwound his window and called out, “Hey, wake up!”
Slowly the officer started to turn.
He looked through Gary, his face like stone.
Stephen tried again. “Officer, we’re trying to get to the hospital, but there was a crashed bus blocking—”
“Hospital?! Ha!” the policeman snorted.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t want to go there,” the policeman grunted.
Liz said, “Officer, my husband’s been murdered and my little boy’s been attacked. He needs medical attention.”
The policeman slowly shook his head. He said dryly, “It’s a big day for that sort of thing.”
“Come on, buddy, help us out here. I’m cut up all to hell,” Gary said, pointing at the conspicuous plasters smattered across his face.
“I’m not your buddy and for your information it’s all gone to hell.”
“What is going on?” Stephen asked.
“Fuck if I know,” the policeman said, shaking his head. “My advice is get the hell out of Dodge.”
“The radio said we should stay indoors,” Stephen said.
“Yeah, well, I’ve heard a lot over the radio since starting my shift yesterday. That makes as much sense as any of it.”
“What’s that noise?” Melissa asked from the back of the car.
“What noise, honey?” Liz asked.
“I hear it, too,” Stephen said. He cast around for a moment before pointing and shouting, “Look up there!”
The policeman turned in the direction Stephen pointed.
Even from within the car the noise could be heard building to a roar.
“What is it, ma?” Melissa asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t see,” Liz said. She craned her neck to peer out of the back window of the car.
Melissa unclipped her seatbelt and threw open the car door before Liz could react.
“Get back in here!” she called after her daughter.
Melissa just stood, one hand on the car door, staring off in the direction of the whining.
Liz shuffled over the back seat and came up behind her daughter. Everyone except Grant was out of the car now, looking to the southern horizon.
The whining noise deepened and Liz spotted movement low in the sky. Three darts, black and sleek, slipped across the azure-backed horizon. They tilted slightly, showing a flash of wing as they turned. They swept in low, almost touching the taller buildings. Suddenly all three aircraft changed their angle and climbed back into the clouds.
“What are they doing?” Liz asked.
As she spoke, there came a wave of dust with sparkle-like flashes trailing in its wake. Then an explosion billowed up along the line the planes had flown, a rolling plume of flame and smoke erupting into the sky.
“What the fuck?” Stephen said.
“Why is there no noise?” Liz asked.
“Who just bombed us?” Gary asked.
The billowing fire started to subside when the thunder hit them. A gust of wind carried with it the cacophony of destruction.
“Where is that?” Stephen said absently.
“About three miles away,” the police officer said.
“Who were they and what were they attacking?” Gary asked.
“They were ours, and my guess is the hospital.” The policeman took off his hat and tossed it onto the passenger seat.
“Why would they bomb a hospital?” Liz said, hysteria at the edge of her voice.
“Surgical strike,” the policeman said.
“You’re being funny now, aren’t you?” Gary said.
“Nope,” the policeman replied. “They’re trying to stop the spread, like amputating a foot to stop gangrene. Only problem is, it’s too little, too late.”
He bent down, slipped into the driving seat of the car, and slammed the door shut.
“Where are you going?” Stephen said with panic in his voice.
The police car’s engine sprung to life and the vehicle started to pull away.
Stephen ducked out from behind the car door and round to the cruiser.
“Where are you going?!” he shouted at the police car.
The window unwound and the police officer looked out at Stephen. He said, “I don’t know, but I’m not staying here.”
“What? What kind of an answer is that?”
The police car sped up and disappeared down the road.
“What?! That’s just shit!” Stephen shouted after it.
***
Thunder rolled over them with a palpable force. Shan slowed the bike and put a foot down to steady it. A wave of hot air swept across them, scorching the moisture from their eyes.
The wind increased and with it came the smell of burning.
Karen hopped off the back of the bike and stared dumbstruck at the rising wall of flame.
“What was that?” she asked.
Shan simply shook her head, devoid of an answer.
Karen stumbled forward, looking at the now subsiding fireball.
“My house?” she uttered softly. “My parents?” she said, still taking half steps towards the explosion.
“They might be okay,” Shan said, sensing her friend’s fragility. “It looked like it was just beyond your place, up at the hospital.” She batted her eyelashes, trying to coax the moisture back to her eyes. “They might not even be at home. Your dad will be away at his work by now.”
“No, he was working from home. They’ve closed the office ‘cause of this flu thing,” Karen said, still mesmerised by the rolling black clouds.
“Get back on and we’ll go take a look. I bet they’re okay,” Shan said.
“You don’t know that.” Karen shook her head in short judders, her eyes wide open.
“Okay, I don’t know—that’s why we’ll go look, okay?” Shan said, offering a hand out. “Come on, Karen. We’re attracting some attention here.”
Karen looked around the suburban street. She hadn’t been able to see all the turmoil from the back of the bike, but now it assaulted her. Front doors wide open, windows broken or sprayed with blood. Smoke from innumerable fires tumbling i
nto the summer sky. The smell of burning and the taint of blood on the air. Screams, some distant, some terrifyingly close.
And then there were the people. Some were running, looking as scared as Karen knew she must look. But then there were the others, the shambling stiff-legged people, their faces an alabaster canvas splashed with glistening red.
“Okay,” Karen mumbled, the shock clutching at her throat.
She straddled the bike and wrapped her arms tight around Shan’s waist.
Shan clicked the bike into gear and began weaving her way past the gathering rabble.
The short ride to Karen’s house was marred by a plethora of fresh obstacles. Derelict traffic jams, sporadic fires, and the swelling numbers of seemingly hypnotized people inexorably drawn to the sound of the passing motorcycle.
Mounting the pavement, taking short cuts across waste ground, and taking the dirt bike down paths that would normally end up with a police pursuit and a spot on the six o’clock news, Shan managed to bypass the blocked roads.
Eventually the bike stopped.
“We’re here,” Shan said softly.
Karen’s nose filled with the smell of burning. She stepped off the back of the bike to stand, facing her house. There was a hot wind wafting glowing cinders in the air. The lawn that only this morning had sported lush green grass was now scorched black. The house itself looked for the most part intact other than the shattered windows and the blackened exterior.
Karen took a step towards the front door, but before she knew it she was running along the path. She hit the door at full tilt and tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge. Grabbing the key from her pocket, she unlocked the door and dashed inside.
“Hello?!” Karen shouted, running along the hallway.
“Karen?!”a woman replied.
“Where are you?!” Karen called, trying to locate where the voice had came from.
“In here,” came the trembling reply.
Karen bolted into the kitchen. There was blood all over the floor.
“Dad?” Karen said, looking down.
“I don’t know what to do,” her mother sobbed.
There was a ripped tablecloth discarded on the floor, soaking up blood, and lying in the centre of the pool of blood was her father. Her mother had swathed her husband in the makeshift bandages, but hadn’t yet finished her task. There were still large areas of her father’s left side thick with blood and chewed-up pink tissue.
Her mother was sitting next to him, her hands covered in blood. On one side of her were strips of torn linen, on the other were shards of blood-stained glass.
“What happened?” Karen asked.
“There was an explosion. Your dad was in the home office by the window,” she said, shaking her head. “The windows just shattered.”
Karen knelt down beside her mother. “Dad?”
She stretched out a hand and touched her father on the shoulder.
“Dad?” Karen said more forcibly, but the only sound was her mother crying.
It was clear that she had stopped trying to bandage the wounds when she realized her husband was dead.
Karen took in a deep breath, but it caught halfway. It came tumbling back out on a sob. Her whole chest shuddered under the pressure of her tears. She felt herself weeping, her chest heaving as if she was going to be sick.
Between sobs she panted, “Oh God.”
She felt an arm around her. Karen jerked back in surprise before she realised it was her mother embracing her in a hug.
She let her mother pull her in close as if she were a little girl again. She buried her face deep into her mother’s shoulder, letting the tears soak into her blouse. The strangest thing was that she could feel her mother weeping, too. Just like her she was sobbing, snatching in breaths in between the tears. Never before had she felt such raw emotion in her mother. Karen couldn’t remember the last time she had been held like this, so vulnerable and so childlike, but never before had she felt her mother’s pain so attuned to her own.
She heard footsteps behind her in the hallway. She turned, expecting to see Shan entering the house, but it wasn’t Shan.
Two dark figures pushed their way in through the open door. The burnt people stumbled forward, fighting against their own charred skin with every step. The closest charcoal figure raised its arms to Karen. As it did, the skin down its bicep split, revealing glistening red muscle beneath.
“Oh God!” Karen uttered, voice trembling.
She pulled back to leave, but her mother still held her close.
Karen pushed away. “We need to leave.”
“We can’t. We can’t leave your father,” Karen’s mother said, still kneeling on the floor.
Karen broke free of her mother’s embrace and stood up.
“We need to leave now!”
The two creatures in the hallway started moaning, drawn in by the vitality of their prey and the scent of fresh blood.
“They’re going to attack us!” Karen barked.
“Who are, dear?” her mother asked.
Then she spotted the two intruders.
She stood up and walked to the kitchen door.
“Who are you and what do you think you’re doing in my home?!” she demanded, seemingly not noticing their hideous injuries.
Karen tugged at her mother’s arm. “We have to run.”
“Get out or I’ll phone the police!” her mother said sternly.
“Get away from them!” Karen cried.
”Let go of me.”
For a moment Karen thought her mother was talking to her, but then she felt the jerk.
Her mother shuddered as the first zombie grabbed hold of her.
“Get off of me!” she shouted, her voice shrill.
Then she screamed.
The two zombies tussled her mother to the floor, biting and clawing as they fell. Karen kicked and slapped, trying to get the creatures off her mother, but to no avail.
Changing tack, Karen raced over to the cooker and pulled a large kitchen knife from its block like a sword from its scabbard.
She whirled around and stabbed at the two attackers. Over and over she plunged the knife down into their crisp, charred skin, but no matter how furiously she struck they were unperturbed. Karen’s hand stung from the effort, but regardless of how deeply she plunged the knife in or how rapidly she stabbed, they seemed oblivious. The two ghouls ignored her and kept feasting on her mother.
Exhausted and with chest heaving, Karen fell back into the kitchen, still clutching the bloodied knife.
Her mother was no longer fighting. She lay there still.
Karen stood, holding the knife in front of her breast with both hands. She didn’t know when her mother had stopped struggling. She hadn’t noticed that the only screams were her own.
She stood, chest heaving, the only sounds that of her rising and falling breath and the slurps and smacks as the cannibals feasted on her mother.
“Karen!”
She turned to see her friend Shan at the back door.
“This way,” Shan said.
Karen ran and opened the back door, all the while keeping her gaze on the two monsters chomping down on her mother.
“What happened?” Shan asked, gazing at her friend’s hands.
Karen looked at the bloodied knife she held.
When Karen didn’t answer, Shan bobbed her head round the kitchen door to view the carnage inside.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Shan said.
She gently took hold of one of Karen’s bloodied hands and led her round the corner of the house.
The dirt bike was propped up against the wall, facing out towards the street.
“Where were you?” Karen asked.
“I heard you talking to someone, one of your parents I guessed, so I brought the bike round the back here to have a smoke.”
“My parents are dead,” Karen said.
“I saw,” Shan replied.
“There are two of them in the
re. I tried to stop them,” Karen said, looking at the knife. “They wouldn’t die. I stabbed and stabbed at them, but they don’t die.”
“Get on,” Shan said as she pulled the bike upright.
“Where are we going to go?” Karen asked. “Your place?”
“No way. I think my dad’s one of those." Shan nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “That would explain how he was behaving this morning.”
“Where then?”
“Don’t know. Away from here, at least. Head for the back of the Wreks. There’s farmland past there. It’ll be safe.”
Hesitantly Karen got on the bike behind Shan.
As the bike sped up, Karen tried to take a last look at her home, but Shan’s aggressive manoeuvres made it impossible to catch more than a blurred glimpse. Now all she could see were charred buildings and shambling monsters stretching their arms out in their desperation to devour her.
Chapter 5
Transmission
“Christ, it’s getting busy down there,” John said, peering out of the window.
He took another bite out of his sandwich, spilling crumbs down his shirt.
Colin sidled up to the window. “What’s going on now?”
“Well, there’s been a constant to and fro of cars since that explosion, but they’re all over the place. Doesn’t look like anyone’s got any idea where they’re going,” John said. “But look, now there’s at least a hundred of those fuckers down there.” He pointed out the shambling figures on the road. “See those ones there?”
He singled out a small group at the end of the street. “Yeah,” Colin said.
“They’ve just all come out of that apartment block. Came tumbling out all at once, tripping over each other to get out of the door.”
“Huh.” Colin shrugged.
“I guess they were chasing some guy with a backpack who came sprinting out of there just ahead of them,” John said.
“Where?” Colin asked, looking around the street.
“Oh, he’s long gone,” John said. “He disappeared round the corner at that end of the street. A dozen or so of those trancers went wandering after him.”
John gently nudged the man next to him with his elbow. “Bet you’re glad you decided not to go for that walk.”
Demise of the Living Page 7