by Lex Sinclair
‘Do you know where Tulisa may have gone, specifically?’
Diana shrugged. ‘Wherever Jack has taken her.’
‘If I remember rightly, Jack’s house was either next door or the last farmhouse on this side of the road before the newly built estate. But please, I can barely keep my eyes open. Gimme a couple of hours. You can read some more of that guy’s diary. It may even tell you in there or give us a hint.’
‘Lie down on the sofa, prop your head up with the pillows. You’ve got exactly two hours. I’ll go and find some batteries and matches,’ Diana said. Then she took the torch off him and headed into the horizontal chasm into the kitchen.
Eric fell asleep the moment his head touched the top pillow.
***
Diana had found two Duracell batteries and a box of matches. There were only four left in the pack. She used them all to get the logs the pile of sticks burning atop the logs. Then she lay down on the Persian rug and opened Alan Willard’s diary.
The Rhos Meadow I have always known is no more. The country folk who make this small town what it is are either absent or scared. The ones who are around are mere shadows of their former selves. They wear the same morose expressions. To an out-of-towner everything appears normal, albeit gloom.
The drilling operation is still functioning, but even the workers appear desolate.
Since the last diary input more fatalities have occurred. Mostly elderly people. Heart attacks, blood clots. One man in his late thirties died because he consumed flammable drinking water and another four people died of gastrointestinal damage. Another lady in her early fifties died sitting on the toilet shitting herself to death.
Another two men died of a massive brain haemorrhage. And a couple more of sunstroke. Apart from the melancholy weighing down on me like a tonne, I have yet to endure any sudden or inexplicable illnesses.
I stay at home a lot more than I used to even on these hot Spring nights when the days grow longer. I did sit on the porch for awhile reading the newspaper and crime novels by Tess Gerritsen and John Connolly. But the gruesome deaths do nothing to avert my mind from my everyday reality.
I order my weekly shopping online so I don’t have to go outside. I suppose I should venture outside more than I do, but every time I do guaranteed someone will tell me more bad news.
The other day I spoke to Gary Williams. He said, ‘Since the increase in deaths I haven’t stopped. It’s literally everyday I’m out here in the graveyard digging another hole in the ground for some poor sod.’
I asked him about the sickly-yellow colouring on the side of his neck. He said: ‘I don’t know what it is. It must be a bruise. But I can’t for the life of me remember whacking myself there. Probably did while I was out here digging. Looks like a minefield out here.’
I agree with him that this seems to be more than just a coincidence. But as the deaths of so many in a short space of time are a variety of reasons there is no common ground to link them together. But the doctors and authorities don’t live here. The out-of-towners wouldn’t notice the changes. How could they? Everything looks normal on the surface. But even Gary say’s he’s noticed an unsettling tension in the atmosphere. I just can’t put my finger on what this is all about. The Evening Post mentioned the hydraulic fracturing had induced the Gillespie’s and other environing farm owners’ livestock to die or be born mutilated - but this seems far more serious. All I know is Rhos Meadow for reasons unknown has been cursed...
As parched as she was, Diana didn’t dare draw water from the kitchen sink and quench her thirst. Instead she reread the last couple of sentences, letting the profound impact sink in.
Please God let me find her, she prayed.
A dreaded thought sparked in her mind the next second.
There is no place in this god-forsaken town for prayers.
Yet, in spite of the perpetual melancholy in Alan Willard’s diary and the current situation, Diana clasped her sweaty hands together, squeezed her eyes shut and prayed... and prayed... and prayed.
11.
NOW
Tulisa remembered vividly the moment she’d been struck by an epiphany. She’d been sitting at home eating a ham sandwich. She’d finished reading her library book called The Witches by Roald Dahl. The TV wasn’t on and the sound of silence filled the room. Most kids and adults would have become lonesome - not Tulisa. Loneliness had become her ally. But this silence felt... strange.
Distant screams threatened to perforate her ears. Then a voice belonging to a boy her age or not much older reverberated around the house coming from far away. Far away like another galaxy; another time.
‘Tulisa. Tulisa.’ The voice was squeaky quiet.
Then it grew in pitch and volume. ‘Tulisa! Tulisa!’
Finally Tulisa clapped her hands to her ears to block out the screaming.
‘TULISA! TULISA!’
‘What?’ she shrieked.
‘I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ a young boy’s voice said over her shoulder.
She jolted.
‘Or scare you,’ Jack Zane said.
Tulisa staggered backwards, frightened and curious simultaneously. The transparent figure before her appeared frail and lost. He also looked lonely. Tulisa knew what that felt like it. She’d been lonely for a long time until being by herself for long periods of time became a part of her life. Yet this boy’s loneliness was far more severe. This boy wasn’t alive. This boy was a ghost.
Now sitting in the dark room that used to belong to Jack, Tulisa’s only friend, glowed.
Using the instructions given by Jack, Tulisa had erected the tent and pulled out two sleeping bags and used the torch. But when she turned the torch off Jack’s shape glowed like a luminescent hue. He reminded Tulisa of Casper.
‘I need to tell you something important,’ Jack said.
‘Everything you say is important or bad,’ Tulisa said.
Jack shrugged. ‘Your mum is praying to find you. She’s been looking for you ever since you got lost in the fog. She’s with a policeman and they’ve survived an attack from one of the infected. But now it’s dark and that’s when they come out at night, mostly. That’s why we - or rather, you - have to be as quiet as a mouse.’
Tulisa put a finger to her lips.
‘Once the infection gets into the system the people who they used to belong to no longer exist. Some go through a lot of physical changes. My dad now has a back like a porcupine clustered with spines. Not only that once a person reaches the latter stages of infection they become hard to kill. A knife won’t stop them nor will a hammer. I saw one being cut in half by a chainsaw and for five minutes later the top half of this woman still dragged herself across the floor to her attacker. The legs she’d left behind still kicked and twitched by themselves. The only way to kill them is in their entirety, such as a bomb or severe blows to the head or being shot in the head. Other than that if you see one just run as fast as you can.
‘If one of them bites you or you get a drop of their blood in your mouth or eye, it’s over. I had to watch a friend of mine from school get bitten and then die slowly in terrible agony until he too became a monster.
‘The ones that do become infected and go mad intentionally kill. The person - the character - they once were dies. They are forced to bite and pierce flesh in order to spread the contagion. They are overtaken by an unnatural blood thirst and show pity or remorse. Crying and pleading won’t do you any good. I have seen this. The ones who beg and plead die horrifically. Their eyes are gouged out; throats torn apart. The infected don’t have a conscience or moral decency.’
Tulisa pulled the sleeping bag up around her, envisioning these monsters. She’d seen visions before but nothing for real. Not yet. She thought about her mum praying for her, desperately yearning for Tulisa to be with her again.
‘Will my mum be all right?’
Jack’s eye dropped away from Tulisa’s gaze.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She has a big kitchen knife and a good policeman. But your mum, the policeman and you are vastly outnumbered. Also, you’re not familiar with the town or the terrain. I can guide you, but I am only a ghost stuck here until my soul, like all the other trapped souls in the rising dead, are set free.’
‘And how can they be set free?’ Tulisa asked, anxious
‘By dying.’
‘But I thought they all ready were,’ Tulisa said, frowning.
‘They are and they’re not. I mean how many dead people do you know get up off the slab in a mortuary and start running around looking to sink their teeth into a human being?’
‘None.’
‘The bodies of the dead need to be destroyed and buried for the people they belonged to be able to have eternal rest. I don’t want my lasting memories of my mum and dad to be of them running after you in this town trying to kill you in ways you don’t even want to think about.’
Tears brimmed in Tulisa’s eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t know you when I was alive,’ Jack said, seeing the tears roll down Tulisa’s fleshy cheeks. ‘I know something better is waiting for me, but I can’t go until I have found peace. You’re the only one sensitive enough to be able to see and hear me.
‘There aren’t many left but if you and your mum and the policeman don’t find and kill the remaining ones soon they will go beyond Rhos Meadow. If they do that and infect others what started off as a small town disease will rapidly become a worldwide pandemic that could eventually end humanity.’
***
The Rhos Meadow Primary School stood at the opposite end of the small town. The stone façade covered in moss and thick timber doors gave it the appearance in the night of a haunted castle. The opaque windows were dark chasms. Swings squeaked on rusty hinges in the gentle breeze. The leafless oaks swayed their skeletal branches to and fro.
At the rear of the building the door leading onto the playing fields stood ajar, ripped from the frame. Anyone who knew it was open could get in or out as they pleased.
Inside the school, dark, empty corridors welcomed no one. A collection of leaves rattled across the linoleum. The first of the un-dead stirred and rose. The pallid figure standing at five feet snapped open its feral eyes the colour of scarlet. The boy whose hair was matted to his elongated skull peeled his lips apart revealing a mouthful of blood. He spat a wad of red mist onto the floorboards and turned his head. The assembly hall was crowded with more than thirty infant beasts and six fully grown monsters.
The night was young.
One by one the infected rose, sniffing the air, smelling something in the wind.
Something alive...
***
Diana had to shake Eric by the shoulders to wake him. He yawned and stretched his arms and legs out over the arms of the sofa. It took him a few seconds to get his bearings and bring himself back to the harrowing situation he found himself in.
‘How long?’ he asked, getting up with a groan.
‘Two hours. You slept like a baby,’ Diana said.
Eric rubbed sleep from the corner of his eyes. ‘Is there still a fog?’
Diana went to the picture window and looked outside. Tendrils of fog still drifted languidly past like a fallen cloud. ‘Yeah.’
‘Great. I guess we’ll just have to take our time. If I remember correctly there’s a pavement at the foot of the drive. If we turn right and follow it till we get to the road leading up the hill, Jack’s house is one of those.’
‘The torches have both got new batteries in them,’ Diana said, trying to sound optimistic.
‘But all we got to protect ourselves is pepper spray and two large kitchen knives.’
‘Better than nothing.’
‘It won’t do us much good if there are loads of infected running about ready to rip our throats out though, is it?’
‘Well, it’s more than what my little girl’s got, so count yourself lucky.’
Eric nodded, albeit reluctantly.
‘Maybe one of the houses will have a weapon and ammunition,’ Diana said.
‘Possibly. A few residents own a rifle and go shooting in the woods sometimes. God help us if we are outnumbered though.’
***
Not making a sound, Diana and Eric stepped out of Bobbie and Abigail Hopkins’ deserted home and into the night, glimpsing their surroundings with protuberant eyes. Their senses were on high alert for anything moving towards them. For anything that was not quite dead.
There torches pierced the night, like laser beams.
‘You take the lead,’ Eric whispered. ‘I’ll cover our backs.’
Diana nodded an affirmative.
The eerie silence heightened Eric and Diana’s anxiety. Together they snapped their heads to and fro mentally preparing themselves for an unwarranted attack.
The fog had dissipated in close quarter but still obscured their vision in the near distance. The emptiness of the town and quiet aided them. Diana still wanted to be able to see everything surrounding her though. She could sense Eric behind her pivoting slowly and then moving on tiptoes to keep up with her. She felt bad for having a go at him in the café earlier and at Alan Willard’s house. True, he was an officer enforcing the law and had a duty of care towards civilians. Yet this wasn’t a domestic situation. This was a kidnapping of a young girl in a town that had been quarantined from the rest of civilisation. No back-up. No radio or phone to contact his superintendent. No communication from the outside world which might be useful to their situation.
Also, Eric was young. He had only by chance been driving through this hellhole when his patrol car and slammed into the rear end of her parked car. Eric had explained how he’d been on his way home after a long shift. He didn’t have the appropriate training for this type of ordeal. Come to think of it, Diana wasn’t aware of anyone who would.
They moved along the pavement quickly reaching the foot of the hill in less than five minutes. The oaks and cedars grew between empty houses. The branches sprouted high above; monstrous arms reaching out for them.
‘If memory serves me well,’ Eric whispered, ‘I think Jack’s house was one of the ones closer to the bottom than the top.’
The properties were capacious. Their front yards had enough room to park four or five cars and still have enough space for a basketball net atop the garage.
The beige-stone façade and big lawn that belonged to the Zane family was the third house they arrived at. Eric had used his torchlight in the first two homes to look at the framed photographs. He’d never met Jack Zane. However, the young boy’s cute, angelic face had been on the front cover of the Evening Post on two occasions. Eric recalled seeing it and wanted to cry for him, knowing the way he’d died.
‘For a town of the dead they sure have nice homes,’ Diana said under her breath.
The front door was locked. Nevertheless, the kitchen window around the back of the house was ajar. Eric pulled it open as far as it would allow, handed Diana his torch and knife and clambered inside. He fell off the worktop and landed with a thud on the tiled floor. For a brief moment Diana thought he’d knocked himself unconscious. Then he pulled himself up and took the equipment off Diana and helped her inside.
Diana’s thigh knocked something over. When she got in she turned and looked at what it was. She knocked over a thick candle stick and behind it there was a box of matches.
‘We need to save the batteries in the torches as much as we can,’ Eric said.
There were four matches left in the box. Diana rushed one across the coarse strip and lighted the candle. She killed her torch. Then she crept into the living room area.
Something in her peripheral vision caused her to do a double-take.
In the flickering candlelight a shape crumpled in a heap leaning against the wall could be seen. Diana edged closer, palms sweating. She couldn’t make out the top half of the shape in the dimness and needed to see in case the body was that of a survivor.
A sharp gasp escaped her as she recoiled.
The candlelight revealed far too much. The body was that of a woman, which could be determined by the breasts. However the white stump protruding at the centre of a bloodied, desecrated mess did not identify whom the woman was. Chunks of flesh, bone and brain matter decorated the green walls and carpet where her head should have been.
Eric sighed. Stars sparkled in his vision. He bent over and put his hands on his knees and breathed. Diana sat on her arse, staring wide-eyed at the shape, trembling.
‘If you know you’re infected and there is no cure what’d you do?’ Eric said.
‘Where’s the gun?’ Diana croaked.
Eric glimpsed the room using his torchlight and saw the Remington shotgun lying on the floor three feet away.
‘This must’ve been Jack’s mum,’ Eric said.
Eric picked the shotgun up and checked it had ammunition. An empty shell popped out. One bullet remained.
‘We need to find where they keep the ammunition. I can’t imagine they’d just leave the box lying around and the weapon. These were good people who enjoyed shooting not scavengers.’
Diana concurred in her mind. Yet she couldn’t stop trembling and find her voice to make this known. Eric noticed this. She’d been paralysed with fear and wouldn’t be much good to him at this moment. In the meanwhile time was getting away from them. Eric couldn’t sit here waiting for Diana to snap out of her shock - he needed to act.
‘Stay here, okay? I’m just gonna go upstairs and take a look for some more ammo. We’ll need more than one bullet. Shout if anyone comes in and I’ll be down in a flash. You got that?’
Diana continued to stare unblinkingly at the ruined cadaver.
‘Diana! You got that?’