by Morgana Wray
“Hello, Cyril. I hate to drop in on you like this, unannounced, especially after all you did for me. But I just had to.” Diane’s Mom beamed a forced smile at the unimpressed old man that had just popped his head out of the window, along with a loaded shotgun.
“Jeez are all your friends always this hospitable,” I turned to Diane’s Mom, grinning sarcastically at her.
“The only goddamn thing I ever wanted was to be left the fuck alone in this pissing wilderness. But you couldn’t even let me have that. You had to find your way back here.” The old man spat on the floor, wearing a disappointed look on his dull, saggy face. “So when the shit storm you obviously must have brought with you comes to bite us all in the ass, I’m guessing we ain’t going to be smiling much when the Risers pick off what is left on our bones after we get slaughtered and cannibalized by whatever fucktarded clan you’ve pissed off now.”
“You know me way too well, old man.” Diane’s Mom chuckled. “Are you going to let us in? Or are you going to leave us out here to die from listening to your pessimism? Gosh it will be raining frogs and locusts soon if you keep running that cynical gob of yours!”
“It is what I am good for. It is all I have now-an undiluted dose of realism.” the old man withdrew his head from the window, dragging his shotgun in with him.
The door soon flung open and he was right behind it with a broad smile on his face. You could tell that Cyril sorely missed human company even though he put on the whole loner facade. His short stature wasn’t at all as frightening as his overpowering personality. The guy had a knack for spreading gloomy clouds and pissing all over a perfectly good day. Not that we were having a good day.
His short hair was a patchwork of grey and black. The wrinkles on his face was a testament to the load that time had placed on his frail-looking body. He was skinny. But not stick thin. His belt was lifted all the way up to his belly. I guessed his generation were fond of tucking in their shirts in that way.
The house was neat and tidy. Everything had its place. There was a mantelpiece over the roaring fire. It was starting to get cold and the wise old man was burning logs. Guess his old bones needed that to keep him from getting sickly.
“I am here for Diane. I told you about her, remember.” Diane’s mom placed hand on the old man’s chest.
“She’s alive? How did you manage to find her?” Cyril’s brows shifted downwards, exposing some feelings of sincere empathy within him.
“We can discuss that later! Right now, I just need to get her warm and safe! I need to buy her some time to have a fighting chance at surviving! I owe her that much!” Diane’s Mom made an almost tearful but forceful demand on Cyril.
The old man nodded and smiled briefly, “Sure. Whatever you need.”
He followed Diane’s mom to the ambulance and helped her lift Diane off the makeshift bed in the ambulance. They were careful to keep the IV line in place. It was a two man job. They did not need my help. So, I just stood in the living room, and tucked both hands in my pockets. I hoped for the best for Diane. She was the closest thing to family that I had, now.
“You seem to have a lot of guns on your wall. They seem to have had some work done on them.” My eyes focused on the collection of assault weapons on the wall. “Did you mod them yourself?”
“Yep, before the plague hit, I needed those to keep me from getting mauled by bears in the wild. Regular shotguns just don’t put grizzlies down quickly enough to spare you from meeting the sharp ends of a wild beast’s claws. Bears are beautiful but ferocious creatures when you step into their territory.” The old man rambled on, planting himself right beside me.
Cyril seemed proud of his collection. He seemed very pleased with what he did before everything went to shit. Before the satellites went silent. The better times when we could all tune in to cable TV to catch up on the Jeremy kyle show or just to see some demented dude do some really dum ass shit like cementing his head to the inside of a microwave.
That was a breath of fresh air.
I missed those times. I hated fighting every second to keep my head on my neck. I hated being on edge all the time. This was definitely not what you called living. Sure, we made it from day to day. But there didn’t seem to be any sort of guarantees that the undead wouldn’t get you when you went out to gather food or medicine. They were everywhere. There must be thousands of them in this town alone.
If the nukes killed billions, that would only mean that they only added to the numbers of undead, flesh-hungry things that keep hunting us. I don’t even know if there are any safe zones. Where there are no Risers, there is severe radiation in the atmosphere. Not safe to travel in without protective gear.
“Hey Cyril, why do you live so close to the edge of the wall? Are you trying to get out or something?” I asked, glaring inquisitively at the old man beside me.
“Nothing but radiation out there and loads of things you can’t even dream up in the worst of your nightmares. Seriously, nobody is trying to leave town. But there are all sorts of things trying to get in. I think this could be the only place with anything remotely human,” The old man sighed with a dejected look on his face.
He looked pretty certain of what he was saying. He believed every word of it. In his mind, there seemed to be no hope of anybody surviving the heavy nuclear bombardments that flattened entire nations.
“You can’t be sure of that! You can’t be sure that there isn’t some land mass or a few islands, or maybe small towns that did not get nuked. I cannot accept that this miniscule backwater is all that is left of humanity,” I shook my head with regret weighing heavily on my mind.
“You are surely not that naive. Someone your age, surely, should remember Hiroshima, or at least have heard of it. The radiation and the heat that caused untold carnage; the black rain that poisoned the soil making it barren for decades to come-these things were the shame of the behaviour of humans towards other humans. People were poisoned by a cocktail of residual x-rays and other radiation from the blast. Wounds of the injured never healed and they just flatlined and gave up the ghost in the end. To think the nuclear tech was in its rudimentary stages then. Imagine what a flurry of nuclear bombs being consecutively fired by child-minded leaders with sticky fingers on the trigger would have done. Imagine the nuclear debris that would be left after that sort of onslaught. Trust me young man, you don’t want to go out there. Not unless you are done with living.” The old man fired a stern warning in my general direction.
Was he saying he was smart and I was dum?
The nerve of that guy, coming all the way from Chinatown to heap insults on a regular, hardworking veteran like myself. I should have given him a piece of my damn mind. But he was kind enough to offer us shelter from the elements, and sustenance for our aching bellies. Yep, I’d chuck that up to him not being such a bad guy.
“Is that why you stay so close to the wall? Are you done with living?” I launched a snappy, insensitive defensive flurry of questions at the old man.
He gave a vague smile and did not grace my questions with an answer. He simply stroked the edge of the photo of an old lady and himself, on the mantelpiece. She was white, and he was Chinese. They must have had a serious culture clash.
“Is that your missus? She looks pretty!” I blurted out the words very quickly in a bid to redeem myself.
“She was my wife. I lost her to the damn plague. She was bitten by one of the neighbours. I rushed back as fast as I could when I got the call. I was booking our next expedition to somewhere exotic. She loved to camp out with me in the wild, you see. I remember the fear in her voice when she discovered the window had been smashed. She could tell there was something off about Jeff that day and did her best not to let him past the front door. But he managed to wreck the window with his head. He used his head as a sledge hammer, and didn’t feel a thing. She got bit trying to fight him off. I had to butcher my neighbour and long-time friend with a kitchen knife.
It was hard. I stabbed and stabbed aga
in and again at his chest but he wouldn’t stop attacking me. There was blood. So much blood. He would have got me too if my dear Wendy hadn’t made a hole in the back of his skull with this very shotgun. That is why I never let Wendy out of my grasp. She is my good luck charm and all that is left of my wife. She held this gun. I can feel her every time I hold it too,” Cyril gave a long dramatic account of what had happened to him.
My eyes took hold of what looked like a child’s toy on the floor. It felt squishy in my palm when I picked it up.
I had barely had time to admire the patchwork design on the soft, round object when I heard what seamed like soft warning growls behind me. I froze in a spot, and did not move a muscle. I knew it was a dog, and it must have been upset by my presence. I was probably all over his turf and he was probably not very pleased.
“Tell me I am not standing on Fido's pissing spot or something?” I spoke very slowly, attempting to make light of the situation.
There was a big husky behind me with pointy fangs hanging out of its mouth. I had to be at least a bit intimidated by that. Even though I tried not to show it. Cyril seemed like that kind of guy that would forever remind me of how I nearly crapped my pants in front of a damn dog if I were to give an inch to the feelings on insecurity that was rushing through every fibre of me.
“She is not Fido. Her name is Vixen and she doesn’t like people putting their meats all over her second favourite chew toy. It isn’t exactly very polite,” the old man laughed, patting the big wolf-like dog on the head.
I instantly dropped the ball out of disgust more than panic. How could I have been foolish enough to pick up something that a dog had drooled all over?
“She seems fond of you. That is one fine canine you have there,” I said, gawking at Cyril and his pet husky.
“She sure is. This one has saved my skin more than once. She never strays far from my side. She took a beat down from a wolf once, just to keep this old sack of piss from getting mauled,” the old man stroked the dogs head, brimming with pride in his dark-brown eyes.
“She is a keeper,” I joked, deliberately teasing the Cyril.
He didn’t seem to mind. He was just happy to have someone to exchange some banter with. We were just two guys making some small talk. That was going to be something that was going to be a rarity in these apocalyptic days.
The plague of the undead had hit. It had hit harder than I thought. Hell, it hit the world harder than even Nostradamus could have dared to predict. We had literally been dropped on our asses and shoved into the harshest depths of the bowels of hell.
We weren’t hoping for a rescue plan or the cavalry to come and save the day. We didn’t even know if the military had survived the nuclear warfare that ensued after the Riser plague rocked the globe. We can’t drink the stuff from the taps. I am told that people started to get symptoms of fever and turned after drinking tap water.
They puked their guts out and morphed into black-eyed, flesh-munching freaks.
I was not going to make that same mistake. Puking out your guts sounded like a painful way to go. No thank you. I would rather die of thirst than puke out my insides.
“Got anything to drink?” I asked, rubbing my palm against my parched throat.
“Uh sure!” Cyril coughed. “There is some Burgundy wine in the cellar. If you would be so kind as to fetch a bottle or two. That would be much appreciated. I do rather fancy some Domaine Leflaive.”
“Ah! The good stuff! Must have cost you a pretty penny to get your hands on one of those!” I licked my lips with relish at the prospect of wetting my taste buds with some expensive booze.
I descended down a musty, narrow space, holding my breath and hoping that there were no giant rats down there. I had once had a rat nibble on the tip of my toe. It was not a pleasant experience. I thought I would have caught rabies from that and died. The thought of that experience sickened me to the stomach.
My legs were hesitant, and sluggish. My subconscious was fighting tooth and nail to stop me from going any further into the dark basement. This was exactly the sort of place where people got themselves butchered or worse in all those B rated horror movies.
Common sense was begging me not to go down there. But an insatiable thirst for that expensive wine was clouding my better judgement. Or maybe I was just being a bit paranoid about the whole creepy basement thing.
What could a man of pension age possibly have stashed away in a wine cellar? A few broken golf clubs maybe? Perhaps a few false teeth that don’t quite chew as they were meant to?
Whatever it was, did not phase me in the end. I was resolute and wanted to just get past the dangling cobwebs and grab the damn bottles of wine. Yeah, that was pretty much the idea.
“Why do people have to keep the really good stuff in creepy basements? I just had to volunteer myself to fetch that wine, didn’t I?” I muttered some disgruntled words to myself, as I descended further down the flight of stairs. “Maybe I’ll just break my neck going down these narrow steps. The old man could have put an elevator in or something.”
I finally brought myself to go all the way down into the heart of the dark cellar. I fumbled my way through the cluttered space, knocking over crates of things that smelt really rancid and out of date. Some of the crates felt as if there were things still breathing inside them.
Chapter 8
My feet trod against something moist, and I sort of lost control of them. I would have smashed my face straight into the solid ground if I hadn’t been sensible enough to put my hands under me.
That certainly broke my fall. For a minute, I thought I could hear some scratching and scraping on the walls in a barricaded room opposite to the one that I was in.
“Must be rats! Can’t be anything remotely interesting?” I muttered reassuringly to myself, feeling unmotivated to conduct any sort of investigation into what could turn out to be nothing more than a hallucination.
I got up, and felt something that felt ropy brush against my nose. Curiously, I pulled on the ropy thing and beams of light came flooding into the room from above. There was a solitary light bulb dangling directly over my head.
My eyes soon caught sight of something on four giant paws with terrifying eyes that had nothing but bad intentions towards whomever they were focused on. There were razor sharp fangs on the face of the massive wild cat in front of me. It definitely had a full mane of hair.
I did not know what to do. My mind was going into overdrive with all sorts of thoughts. It was all a jumble up there. I was just paralyzed by the raw fear that coursed through my pulsating veins. I wasn’t blessed with superhuman strength, and my skin was not made of titanium.
That big cat could sever my arteries in minutes. It would definitely tear me apart if I made the wrong moves. I was praying that someone had given that beast its supper. If not there would probably be a lot of blood to mop up on the floor. And it would most likely be mine.
“Good kitty. Now, I am unarmed and I mean you no harm. There’s nothing on me that you’d find to be an appetizer. I am all skin and bones, I am,” I raised both hands in the air, hoping that some form of submission might dissuade the beast from making any sort of move on me.
“You should see your face, now! You look like you are about to crap your pants! Do you always do role play with stuffed animals? Is that a thing that you are into?” a coarse female voice hit my ears from behind “Not that I am judging.”
I was taken aback by the sudden intervention. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be down there with me. My fingers had gotten numb with skin-biting fear. My teeth were nibbling on my lips just to give myself some level of composure which I was sorely lacking.
“Don’t fucking do that! You scared me half to death?” I slapped my hand against my chest, and went a bit red in the face with embarrassment.
“I think the stuffed lion did a better job of that. You sure do whimper a lot for a man with such rugged features.” Diane’s mom leaned forward, pressing her chest against mine, with
her hands reaching for something behind my head. “And that is where the old geezer keeps the good stuff.”
“Did you know that thing was down here?” I asked, looking Diane’s mom in the eye.
“Yeah, I most certainly did. Don’t take it personally but the old man gets a kick out of seeing people scream whenever they set eyes on that monstrosity. He’s got a camera somewhere, and you just pissed your pants on tape.” Diane’s mom pressed her soft thin lips against my left ear, whispering softly into it.
There was a ruckus. Some thumping noises came from the staircase. The muscly warrior woman’s attention soon shifted away from me, and was focused on the steps. She was up those stairs quicker than a rocket.
I chased after her, and felt rather confused as to what could have caused her to bolt so unceremoniously from the rather tangled position that she had forced us into.
“Where is Diane? Is she awake, yet? Did you see her?” Diane’s mom threw question after question at the rather disinterested old man.
“She stormed out the door about 5 seconds ago. I tried to tell her to rest a little but she insisted upon getting some air. Guess she is her mother’s daughter that way.” The old man wore a cheery smile on his face, slouching deeper into his armchair.
“If anything has happened to her! God help you when I get back, Cyril?” Diane’s mom frowned with a sharp discontented look etched on her face.
“Are you, uh, going to drink that?” Cyril’s cast a longing gaze at the bottle of wine in Diane’s mother’s left hand.
She grimaced a bit, baring a set of gnashed teeth, then sent the bottle crashing into the wall. She nearly hit Cyril on the head with the bottle, only missing him very narrowly.
He did not say another word. All he could do was recoil into his armchair in utter shock. He had finally cottoned on to the fact that she wasn’t in the mood for mundane stuff, or any sort of shenanigans that didn’t involve finding her runaway daughter.