by James King
They hurried across the farmyard to the front door. Before they could reach it, the door opened to reveal Jenny and Shaun.
“Oh thank god you’re alright,” said Jenny as they arrived, “me and Shaun were watching through the window, We saw that thing climb over the gate. I was going to go out and try and warn you, but Shaun held me back, said it was too dangerous.”
“Shaun said right,” Dave returned.
“Come on,” said Jenny, “for God’s sake get into the house.”
Dave and Ted piled in, Ted bringing the door closed with a slam behind him. He locked it, shot the two bolts, then they all hurried into the kitchen.
“Alright, we need to work fast,” said Dave, “First thing to do is get these legs the hell off this table.”
“Wait!” said Jenny, holding out a hand and touching Dave’s arm to stay him, “the axe – it’s covered in that thing’s blood.”
They all gazed down at the axe – and of course Jenny was right. The metal of the axe’s head was smeared with the foul black juices that had spurted out of the ruptured head, while the wooden shaft close to the head was spattered with it.
“We get that on us...” said Jenny, “...and we could be infected. That’s what they said on the TV wasn’t it, just before the broadcasts went off air? The infection is spread by contact. And that black shit is probably full of it.”
“Okay, you’re right,” Dave replied, “gotta wash it off. Where’s the sink?” he asked, peering around the kitchen.
“Over here,” said Ted. He stepped across the kitchen to where a small door was set into the wall. He pulled the door open. Dave joined him and peered inside. Beyond the door was a small cubicle just large enough for someone to fit into. Standing in the cubicle was what looked like an old fashioned water pump: a single metal cylinder with a long handle extending from the top and curving down the side.
Dave looked at Ted, “is that what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is?” asked Ted.
“A water pump?”
“Correct. It feeds off a small well not far from the house. I’m not on the water mains.”
Dave groaned, “...oh great... Better get pumping then I suppose. What do I do, just work the handle up and down?”
“That’s right. Just a moment.”
Ted hurried to the other side of the kitchen, got a bucket, and put it beneath the spout of the pump to catch the water.
“Alright,” said Ted, “good to go.”
With a sigh, Dave crouched into the alcove and started working the handle of the pump. It took a moment, but then water started spurting out of the spout. He carried on until the axe head was as clean as he could make it. Then he looked back at Ted.
“You got any disinfectant at all?” Dave asked.
“Sorry...” Ted replied with a shrug.
“Alright, screw it. It’ll just have to do.”
Dave turned from the pump and hurried across to the upended table. He took aim at one of the table legs.
“Right, here goes,” said Dave, preparing to chop the leg. Suddenly, sweat stood out on his brow, and a sickly expression spread over his face. Ted supposed that he might be thinking about the last time that he’d used the axe in anger, not half an hour ago. Seeing a pale neck, black blood spurting, a head rolling end over end like a football... flashbacks. Ted knew all about them.
But then Dave recalled himself. He tensed, was about to swing the axe, when Shaun, who was standing by the window, suddenly said:
“Better hurry it along guys. They’re here!”
FOUR
Dave faltered in mid swing. He gazed angrily around toward Shaun.
“Fuck sake Shaun, you’re putting me off!” said Dave.
“I’m not kidding man,” Shaun replied, “they’re here!”
Dave, Ted, and Jenny hurried over to the window and peered out. There, sure enough, were more figures appearing just beyond the gate. They looked very similar to the one that Dave had decapitated: lurching, tottering, their skin pale, some showing signs of decay, heads cocked as though they’re necks had been broken in a hang man’s noose; and eyes as pale and blank as death. There weren’t a huge number of them yet – Ted counted about eight, but he supposed that others would soon arrive. Like the first who had arrived, these others hadn’t yet figured out how to climb across the gate: but he reckoned that it would only be a matter of time before they did.
“Oh shit...” said Dave, real fear now loud within his voice, “we gotta work like demons in hell if we’re gonna get the windows boarded before they get here.”
He turned away from the window and hurried over to the table. Briefly hefting the axe, he brought it high above his head, and then brought it crashing down onto the first table leg. Ted had time to reflect that the table had been his grandmother’s, a sort of family heirloom, and also had time to feel a pang of regret, before all the table legs had been hacked off, and Dave was hollering for Shaun to help him lift the table top up over the window.
Puffing and grunting, the two men lifted the table top into position so that it was covering the kitchen window. Then, while Shaun held it in place, Dave scrabbled for the hammer and nails, held a nail in position and started pounding it in. For a couple of minutes the kitchen was full of the carpenter’s workshop noise of hammer pounding nails.
“You got anything else we can use?” Dave called to Ted as he pounded, “another table top, wardrobe doors, anything we can use to board these windows?”
“There might be something upstairs,” Ted replied.
“Well please go and find it. Quick. But then – we can use the downstairs doors just as well. The kitchen door – that door into where the water pump is. Shit, we should have got a screwdriver for the hinges.”
“I think I might have one in here actually,” Ted replied.
He started snatching open drawers and rummaging within them. At last he found a small plastic wallet with five screwdrivers in it. They all seemed to be Phillips – so they would have to hope that the screws in the door hinges were similar. He handed one to Shaun and one to Jenny.
“You do the kitchen door,” Ted said to Jenny, “and you Shaun do the living room door. For goodness sake don’t anyone do the front door.”
No one laughed at the joke.
Ted attacked the door into the water pump alcove. The screws had been driven in tight, and it took some hard turning, but at last he had them. Finally the hinges were removed, and he struggled with the door’s heavy weight. Dave had finished hammering, so he hurried across to help Dave with the door. The two men wrestled with the heavy piece of wood, then made their way, Dave holding one end and Ted holding the other, through the twilight gloom that had descended in the kitchen since Dave had boarded the window. They reached the kitchen door where Jenny was still grinding at the hinges with the screwdriver. She stepped back to let them past.
“Where’s the next front facing window?” asked Dave as they made their way through the kitchen door.
“Living room,” Ted replied, “that door where Shaun is.”
Shaun – who, like Jenny, was still working at the hinges of his door, stepped back to let them through. The living room was sizeable, the typical sparse living quarters of a man who lived on his own but was of tidy habits. A large window stood at one end, overlooking the farmyard just as the kitchen window did. They manoeuvred the door passed the furniture, and then placed it on the ground and propped the other end against the wall to give themselves time to draw breath.
Ted offered a worried glance through the living room window, as did Dave. None of the figures had made their way over the gate yet – but more of them had arrived. Ted didn’t know how many there were, but there was enough. They were massing against the gate and, unless Ted’s eyes were deceiving him, the gate was beginning to bend beneath their pressure.
“Shit...” Dave hissed, “they’re not going away, are they. Come on, let’s get on with this. I think it’s going to take more than
two of us to fit this baby up. It’ll need two to lift into position, and one to hammer it home. Shaun!”
Shaun’s face appeared around the living room doorway.
“Get over here. Help Ted to hold this door in position while I start hammering.”
Shaun hurried across, and he and, puffing and grunting, he and Ted lifted the door into a position, while Dave got busy with the hammer and the nails. The door was horrifically heavy, and at one point Ted wasn’t sure whether he was going to be able to hold it anymore. But Dave worked fast and accurately, and at last all the nails were hammered home, and able to take the weight. Carefully, Shaun and Ted let go of the door, and it remained there against the wall.
“Good job,” said Ted to Dave.
“Thanks. I used to be a carpenter in another life. Haven’t lost too many of the skills – or the speed, it seems.”
“Will it hold though?” asked Shaun, his face a worried ghost within the gloom that the living room had now descended into, “when they come I mean? If they break through the glass? Is it going to be enough?”
Dave shook his head, “we’ll just have to bloody hope it is. At the end of the day, it’s all we’ve got. Come on; let’s get on with the other doors.”
Soon, the door that Shaun had been working on, and the door that Jenny had been working on; were liberated from their hinges. The same performance was then enacted with the window in the dining room, and the window that stood at the end of the hallway. When that was done, Dave stepped back from it, panting, mopping his brow, the hammer still clutched in his hand more as though it were a weapon than a tool.
“Alright...” Dave said breathlessly, “is that it? Are there any more windows on the ground floor?”
Ted shook his head, “no...”
Dave nodded, but then glanced around as though he didn’t quite believe Ted, and expected to see another window suddenly appear in the wall next to him.
“So now what?” asked Shaun.
Dave shrugged, “we wait it out.”
“Wait it out?” said Shaun, “you think that those things are just going to give up and go away as soon as they see we’ve nailed a few bits of wood across the windows? I don’t think so. Once they know we’re in here – if they don’t already – then they’ll keep on and on trying to get in at us.”
“Shaun’s right,” said Jenny, her face, like Shaun’s a frightened ghost in the hallway gloom, “we’re bloody stuck again – just like we were in the house in Birmingham. We’ve driven hundreds of miles from one trap into another.”
“Well what do you think we should have done?” Dave shouted, suddenly angry, “the car was crashed and out of fuel anyway. We couldn’t have just carried on driving forever. We fetched up outside Ted’s house, so we had to take refuge in Ted’s house, just like we would have had to take refuge in any other place we’d fetched up next to. It’s just survival, Jenny, one hour to the next, one minute to the next, one second to the next. Moment by moment survival until something better turns up.”
“Yeah, all well and good,” Jenny responded, “but this time we haven’t got a car that we can hope will get us out of here if things turn really shitty, have we? Unless Ted, you...?”
Reluctantly, Ted shook his head, “no, sorry. I don’t own a car.”
“No car?” asked Shaun, “what about those shopping trips you go on to town?”
“Put a rucksack on my back and walk,” Ted replied.
“Bloody hell, that must take you ages.”
Ted shrugged again, “haven’t got anything better to do.”
“Look – there, you see?” Jenny fired at Dave, “no car, apart from the one smashed to shit down the road. No means at all of getting out of here other than walking. And that’s not going to be possible is it? Might as well admit it – we can take down and nail up every single door in the house, but the truth is we’re fucked.”
“We are if we say we are,” Dave replied angrily, “if we convince ourselves that there’s no hope and we’re all doomed. If we’d thought that in Birmingham then we’d just have stayed in the house and died.”
“In Birmingham we had a car,” Jenny shot back.
Before Dave could fire back any retort to this, Ted said, “alright, alright – I think we all just need to calm down. Firstly, we need to get our energy back after all the hammering and banging. Secondly – I don’t know how well those things out there can hear, but if they can, and if we keep shouting at the top of our voices, then they’re going to get even more interested in the house than they already are. And secondly – I think we all need a drink.”
“Good idea,” said Shaun, “lager for me.”
Ted shook his head, “sorry... I was thinking more water from the pump, to hydrate us after all the exertion. And then...” Ted trailed off.
“And then what?” Dave asked.
Ted licked his lips, “look – like you were saying earlier, I don’t want to be pessimistic. Rather – realistic. If those things do manage to break in, then we might not only be trapped in the house, but we might be trapped in the upper floors of the house. So I think we should take provisions upstairs. Food, and as much water as we can manage.”
Dave offered a wry laugh, “if those things break into the house, do you really think we’re going to have time for eating and drinking?”
“Maybe not,” Ted replied, “but we might find a way to defend ourselves. Hold out. If so, if we manage to hold out on the upper floor for any length of time, then we’ll need provisions. Water to drink at the very least. Like you say – it’s a matter of survival. Hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second.”
Dave nodded, “okay.”
“Alright,” said Ted, “come on – a drink of water first, as much as you can take on board, as though you were about to run a marathon across the Sahara Desert. And don’t worry, there’s a toilet upstairs for when it all finds its way out. And then haul as much water as we can upstairs, and then the food. And then we can start thinking of ways to barricade the upper floor if need be.”
They hurried into the kitchen. Ted sorted four pint glasses out of a cupboard, and then got busy with the pump, handing the glasses to the others when they were full.
“Thanks,” said Shaun as he took his brimming glass, “but damn – I still wish this was full of Budweiser.”
Dave offered a sardonic snort as he took his own glass, “Bud? That’s a pussies drink.”
“You reckon?” said Shaun between gulps.
“Banks’s Bitter, mate. Now that’s a man’s drink.”
“Yeah...” said Shaun, “an old man’s drink.”
Jenny giggled between gulps of her water, “stop it off you guys and drink your bloody water.”
“Ohhh – listen to ma’am,” said Dave, and they all laughed, and for a moment, a curious air of normality descended between them. But it didn’t last long.
“Alright,” said Ted, “if we’ve all had enough to drink, I suggest we start hauling water upstairs. I’ll start gathering together as much receptacles as I can. Here...” Ted reached into the cupboard that he’d just brought the glasses out of and pulled down a large earthenware jug, “take this Dave, get pumping and I’ll scout around for more thing to fill.”
Dave took the jug. He turned, and was about to make his way over to the water closet, when a loud sound came from outside. It was a kind of harsh, metallic rending sound, like something hard and heavy and made of metal falling over.
“Oh shit,” said Dave, and offered Ted a hard stare, “are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That...” said Ted, “...sounded like...”
“A gate falling over...” Jenny finished for them both.
FIVE
“You start pumping,” Ted said to Dave as he turned toward the now doorless doorway, “I’ll go upstairs and check what’s happening.”
“Fuck that shit,” said Dave, placing the jug on the counter, “I’m coming with you. I need to see what the hell’s going on out th
ere.”
Ted was about to remonstrate with the other man – the sooner that water was pumped the sooner they’d be in a better position than they were now – but in the end he didn’t. From what he knew so far of Dave, he wasn’t the kind of guy who was going to take no for an answer. Ted was about to tell the Jenny and Shaun to start pumping, but they seemed intent on going upstairs too.
Ted turned to the doorway with an irritated shrug, “alright,” he said, “but it’s only going to be a quick look. Then we get back down to it.”
With Ted in the lead, they pounded upstairs and onto the landing. Ted’s bedroom lay at the front of the house, overlooking the farmyard, so that was the room that would be best to look out from. Ted wasn’t particularly crazy about having three strange people in his bedroom- it still felt weird having them in his house at all – but he supposed that in the situation he would just have to put up with it.
Ted pushed through the door and into the bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it was tidy but sparse, consisting of a single bed, a dresser, a hard chair, and a wardrobe stood in one corner. The curtains were still drawn, so Ted hurried across to them and swept them back, flooding the room with strong autumn sunlight. Then the others gathered around him, and they all peered out.
The gate had indeed been thrown down. The sheer weight of numbers had caused the two gateposts to buckle, and then finally collapse. The posts were solid wood, and had been buried about a foot in the earth, so the pressure required to cast them down must have been considerable. The gate now lay at a broken angle against the concrete of the farmyard, an easy enough obstacle for anyone to get over or around.
And they were.
The people – these strange, crooked, tottering, demented people – were stumbling across the fallen gate and into the farmyard. Sometimes one would get his ankle stuck in the struts of the gate, and then would writhe there for a moment before it finally extricated itself. Others who got into the predicament were less successful at freeing themselves, and still lurched and strained like a rabbit in a snare, unable to free their limb from the restraining gate.