Like Rats

by Adam Watts

  We stand in the doorway and shine our torches into the darkness beyond.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Stan mutters, stepping through the door.

  ‘What the fuck, indeed,’ I say, turning to Wade.

  He smiles, like there’s nothing wrong.

  ‘Surprise!’ he says.

  MY KINGDOM FOR A CHAINSAW.

  Stan’s light darts desperately around the room in search of anything that might suggest we’re not a hundred percent boned. But there’s no evidence to the contrary.

  Stan turns the light on Wade. ‘You…’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Wade says, squinting idiotically into the torch beam.

  ‘What’s wrong? What do you think’s wrong? Look at this place! We’ve got hundreds of zombies beating our door down and you bring us here!’

  ‘Firstly, Stan, they’re not zombies,’ Wade says, ‘it’s a little more complicated than that.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what they are! They’re mental and they’re hungry!’

  ‘Calm yourself, mate,’ I say, placing a hand on his shoulder, only to have it shrugged off.

  ‘We’d have been better off out there! At least out there we could’ve made a run for it. But now we’re trapped in this stupid bloody place. Out of the frying pan and into the fiery shit-pit!’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased…’ Wade says, still looking completely baffled by Stan’s reaction.

  ‘Wade… you absolute twat… I’m going to put this to you as gently as I can, because if we ever get out of here I want this to have been a learning experience for you. So please listen carefully to my words. There are rules in life… right? Rules such as; never take a piss in the middle urinal, never put your dick between the teeth of a wronged woman, and most importantly… and I think we can all appreciate the relevance of this one right now… if you’re being pursued by zombies and you need to hide out somewhere, you go to the fuckin hardware store! You know? With the chainsaws and aisle after aisle of sharp stabby tools and heavy things for swinging and sheet metal and stuff with wheels and spades and shit. You go somewhere filled with stuff that will make a grisly death slightly less inevitable, and where it’s possible that your last moment on earth can be spent ploughing into the undead atop a ride-on lawnmower with a bloodied hedge-trimmer in one hand and a sharpened cricket bat in the other, ready to take the fuckers down in a gore-drenched blaze of glory. That’s the fucking golden rule, you giant nob-knacker!’

  Wade slumps a little. ‘Like I said, they’re not really zombies.’

  ‘They could be a disgruntled troupe of pensioners and we’d probably still be screwed.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Wade says, pulling the mask down over his face.

  ‘Maybe it’s not so bad,’ I say, feeling a begrudging pang of sympathy for him. I don’t like the guy but he probably saved our lives.

  ‘Look around you, Pres. We’re in fucking Poundland! We’ll need more than cheap batteries and last year’s Beano annual to make it out of here with our guts intact.’

  I scan the room with my torch but my head’s still spinning from the adrenaline. I want to slump to the floor and sleep but I know I can’t.

  ‘At the very least, there’s food and drinks in here,’ Wade says, moving past us. ‘Let’s eat, then we can argue about how doomed we might be.’

  ‘Don’t suppose they started selling booze in Poundland did they?’ Says Stan, trudging into the store. He’ll probably be hungry for a snack; spoilt toddlers always are.

  I follow on, but only to put as much space as possible between me and the quaking office door.

  Stan grabs a few bags of some cheesy snack, opens them up and starts to eat. He tosses a bag in my direction.

  ‘Not really hungry,’ I tell him.

  ‘Eat them. You need your strength. They’re not stale or anything.’

  I look down at the dusty packet. Cheese Wizz. The name alone is enough to induce another bout of fluorescent vomiting. ‘Maybe later,’ I say.

  ‘You worrying about Eve?’ Stan says, taking me off guard. I hate how he does that.

  Wade jumps in before I can answer. ‘What’s up with the lovely Eve?’

  ‘She’s why we’re out here,’ Stan says between chews. ‘You seen her on your travels?’

  ‘Nope. You sure she’s out here?’

  ‘Well she’s not in the village. Me and Pres looked over the whole place for her. She used to live out this way so it seemed like a good place to search.’

  ‘If she is out here, the racket you two made blowing up all them cars will’ve probably scared her into a hole somewhere. At least, you’ll wanna hope that’s what happened. Would hate to think of any of those things out there getting their hands on her.’ Wade sniggers like a low-rent sidekick, and any thanks I might have felt for his presence is lost like flatulence to the wind. Wonder how much he’d snigger if I bludgeoned him to death with a cheap camping mallet.

  ‘You heard our explosions then?’ Stan says, sounding pleased to have had an audience.

  ‘Yeah… kinda hard to miss a whole bunch of cars going skyward. That’s probably what drew our friends out of whatever hole they’d been hiding in all this time. So… good work there, geniuses!’

  ‘We were trying to get Eve’s attention,’ Stan says. ‘Besides, who was it who turned up at the village with a smug look on his chops giving it the big one about how there’s nothing out here but big skies, empty streets and adventure out the wazzoo? Turns out you’re still full of shit.’

  ‘So that’s the thanks I get for saving your crummy little lives? Maybe I should’ve just left you to the zombies.’

  ‘Thought they weren’t zombies. Or were you wrong about that too?’

  ‘Zombies or not, they’d have ripped you to pieces.’

  ‘Well then… thank fuck you’ve brought us to this almighty discount fortress. Good work!’

  I decide to interject before they start pulling each other’s hair. ‘Can both of you please shut up. We’re alive, aren’t we? So does it really matter how we got here or who’s a bigger twat than who? Because I don’t know about you two, but my head’s fucking pounding, my feet feel like they’re going to drop off, and I’m pretty sure that door won’t hold out forever. I’m keen as hell to get fuelled up and gone, so can we please not completely lose our shit and see about forming some kind of plan to get ourselves out of here? And I promise when we get out and when we’re safe… I’ll be more than delighted to watch you both kill each other in whichever way you deem fit. But for now, please do me the courtesy of shutting the fuck up.’

  Stan’s response is to open up another bag of Cheese Wizz and shovel them into his mouth.

  ‘Looks like somebody grew a pair since I was last in the village,’ Wade says. ‘What’s brought on this sudden transformation?’

  I let out a reluctant huff. ‘Long story.’

  ‘It’s not that long,’ Stan says, sucking some orange powder from his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Not now, Stan.’

  ‘Why? He needs to know.’

  ‘Needs to know what?’ Wade says, leaning in.

  ‘Pretty sure now’s not the time. Wade, how long have you been in town?’

  ‘Just today. I was on the outskirts when I heard the cars go up. But anyway… I wanna know the he needs to know story.’

  ‘Like I said, now’s not the time.’ I look over to Stan; he shrugs his shoulders at me. I decide to shift the subject towards something else. ‘Look, we were a scouting around for Eve in the suburbs and we found something.’

  ‘Wait!’ says Stan. ‘First, I have a question. Wade, you’ve been out here before, right? In town, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, a bunch of times.’

  ‘Did you ever notice anything weird?’

  ‘You mean apart from the whole Chernobyl vibe this place has taken on?’

  ‘It’s not just that, though, is it. Didn’t you notice anything else?’

  ‘What’s to notice?’

  ‘A c
ouple of years ago this place was all crazies and killing and end of days type shit. Thousands died. Tens of thousands. The streets would’ve been choked up with the dead. But now…’

  ‘But now… what?’ Wade shifts uncomfortably. ‘They’d have all been eaten, or rotted away… birds, scavengers, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Firstly; there’s no birds, no rats, no pets-gone-Cujo.’

  ‘Ok… that’s pretty weird. But I’m not seeing your point?’

  ‘Where are the skeletons?’

  Wade looks at me with a smile. ‘Some things never change, huh?’

  ‘Actually, turns out Stan was bang on the money this time.’

  ‘Wait…’ Stan says, pointing his torch at Wade. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What was me?’

  ‘You know about the skeletons, because you were at the pit.’

  ‘You’ve lost me now.’

  ‘In the suburbs. Me and Pres were on our bikes, we were hollering for Eve. I saw something out the corner of my eye and Pres went to look. That’s when we found the mass grave.’

  Wade looks stunned. ‘I… no… I didn’t… I wasn’t there! I don’t know anything about a mass grave. I’m just… shocked. A mass grave?’

  Stan stares at him, waits for him to crack, to admit he was the one who made the somewhat bizarre decision to bulldoze thousands of rotten bodies into the gardens of the semi-affluent.

  ‘I smell bull-shit,’ he says.

  ‘Look, I’ve been waiting all day for you two to come back. Why would I want to spy on you, anyway?’

  ‘So you’ve never seen it?’ I ask.

  ‘No! Never. Why would I go wandering about round there? Suburbia’s dead at the best of times.’

  ‘This is no time for shitty satire,’ warns Stan, pinging a Cheese Wizz at Wade’s nose.

  ‘I’m just trying to make the point that me and suburbia don’t mix. I’ve got no interest in poking around out there, never did, never will.’

  ‘Oh yeah… forgot you were an agent of anarchy, or whatever you want to call it, even though you voted for the PCP.’

  ‘Had to vote for something,’ Wade shrugs.

  ‘Your Nazi Radar must have been on the blink that day.’

  ‘Guess so.’

  Growing frustrated by the cyclical bickering and the sense that neither will concede the last word, I decide to steer the conversation in a more useful direction.

  ‘So if you don’t know about the pit and the skeletons, then what do you know? You’ve been out here all this time.’

  ‘So he tells us.’

  ‘Shut it, Stan!’

  Wade shakes his head slowly. ‘All I know is what you know. Mad, bloody-minded fuckers hunting and killing anything with a pulse, same as what happened two years back.’

  ‘But you said they were all gone,’ I say.

  ‘Never saw any. Else I’d have probably been dead, right?’

  ‘So… they were just hiding?’

  ‘I don’t know! You wanna cool the interrogation? I’m in the same crummy boat as you two in case it wasn’t plainly obvious.’

  ‘Sorry, Wade. But it feels like we’re missing a piece of the puzzle.’

  ‘What about the dance music? Was that you?’ Stan says with a sideward glance.

  ‘For fuck sake, Stan! I’m just as confused as you are. I don’t know what caused this, I don’t know where they came from and I don’t know what silly bastard was playing that dance music. I’m in the dark! I have no answers!’

  ‘But you told us they’re not zombies,’ I say, managing the reproach in my tone. ‘That’s not something you’d say if you knew nothing about them.’

  ‘I just meant tha –’

  ‘And you said I wouldn’t turn just because I got scratched.’

  ‘Sounds to me like somebody knows more than he’s letting on,’ Stan says.

  ‘I only know because I got scratched myself, and I didn’t turn.’

  ‘Coulda fooled me! How do we know you’re not some sort of super-intelligent zombie?’ Stan says.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ Wade asks. ‘Unlike you couple of nob-ends I’ve come up against these things before, so excuse me for having a little prior knowledge on the matter. We didn’t all get front row seats to guaranteed salvation.’ Wade turns his face away and starts plucking at the skin on the back of his hands. ‘Fucking rural folk… always think you’re so fucking hard up… so bloody suspicious. You wanna know how I know these things aren’t zombies? Because I’ve seen enough Romero to know what a zombie is, and those things are not freshly dug corpses. There’s no such thing as zombies, they’re fiction; like ghosts and demons and telekinetic teenagers with period pains.’

  Stan starts shaking his head like he’s about to say something. But for once, I beat him to the punch.

  ‘Strictly speaking, that’s not true.’

  Stan claps his hands loudly in delight. ‘This is gonna be good! I always knew my sensible little Pres would lose his mind if he spent long enough around me.’

  ‘You’re talking shit. There’s no such thing as zombies,’ Wade says.

  ‘That’s not what Frida reckons,’ I say.

  ‘Frida?’ Wade says. ‘Since when was Frida the font of all zombie knowledge?’

  ‘When did you speak to Frida about zombies?’ Stan says.

  ‘A few days back. You were… busy… I spoke with her about MIDS…’ I try not to look Stan in the eye, but he probably wouldn’t get what I mean anyway. The big clod. ‘She said something about Haiti and some aunt that used to tell her stories about Voodoo and how they’d use it to bring people back from the dead.’

  ‘Shit… never took Frida for the Voodoo type. Better get my arse back to the village before she makes a doll of me and starts stabbing pins in its groin.’

  ‘Not that type of Voodoo. She said it was real magic… like poisons that’ll alter a person’s state of mind, make them go crazy. She seemed dead serious.’

  Wade snorts. ‘So Frida reckons MIDS is a voodoo poison that turned half the population of a civilised country into real zombies? She’s even more out of her mind than Stan.’

  ‘Hey!’ shouts Stan, so loudly he sets our friends outside into a frenzy of banging and screaming. ‘Say what you like about me, but one more harsh word against Frida and I’ll rip your scrawny arms off and feed ‘em to the zombies.’

  ‘But she can’t be serious with all that Voodoo stuff. MIDS didn’t do all this. I mean, look, there’s a shelf full of the stuff over there,’ Wade says, pointing behind me. And sure enough, he’s right.

  ‘Her point was that if the right poison is administered in the right social climate then people’s minds can be twisted, they can change, like an altered state of consciousness. And once you start seeing it happen, you believe it can happen, pack mentality takes hold and before you know it, it spreads, and it can’t be stopped, because it’s real. You remember the riots before the Olympics? Same thing, just cranked up a few hundred times.’

  ‘Sorry, Preston. But that’s a crock of shit.’

  ‘Makes sense to me,’ Stan says.

  ‘That’s no surprise, is it? I get what you’re saying about the riots but these things always peter out. The filth get their tear gas and water cannons out, public condemnation, blah-blah-blah… but everyone eventually gets bored and goes home. This is different to a bunch of chavs looting tellies, this was millions of people on a rampage, killing people and eating them. And look! Two years later and they’re still out there. If it was MIDS then how are they still like that? Unless they’ve got a secret stash somewhere.’

  ‘I’m not saying I’ve got all the answers, I’m just trying to understand what we’re facing so we can get out of here without our brains being chewed out.’

  ‘You know what I reckon?’ Stan says. ‘I don’t think we need to understand them. I don’t even think we need to know what caused it all.’

  ‘That’s a very sudden change of direction,’ I say.

  Stan swat
s the accusation away. ‘Whatever. I’ll figure it out another time. But what I’m saying is this: the stakes are high and we need to get on with the task at hand.’

  ‘And go where?’ Wade says, whining a little.

  ‘Back to the village. Even if they follow us they won’t get through the fences and there’ll be enough of us to fend them off.’

  ‘I don’t know, Stan,’ I say, imagining hundreds of those things straining at the fences; overwhelming them, flattening them. And then the blood and the screaming… and even if some of us managed to survive, where would we go? And what if Eve is out there? I’m no good to her back in the village. Despite the danger there’s a part of me that feels nailed down to these streets. It’s not about wanting to be her hero, it’s about wanting to know she’s ok.

  ‘Come on, Pres. Who’s to say they’d follow us anyway? We haven’t seen a single zombie out there in two years. They clearly don’t like all that fresh air and wide open space.’

  ‘Possibly because of the all pig-fucking and shit music,’ Wade says under his breath.

  ‘Yeah, yeah… I get it, Wade. You city folk are all awesome,’ I say. ‘But have you actually got anything useful to say about this or are you just gonna crack wise about farmers and Little-Englanders?’

  ‘I’ll say one thing about our zombies,’ Wade says. ‘They’re smarter than you think they are. They figure things out. They learn… they communicate. They’re not all the same.’

  ‘So you think there’s a leader?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know about that, but some just seem to lumber about looking for something to chew on, following the pack, but others, they run, they watch, they hide.’

  ‘Like velociraptors!’ Stan says.

  ‘Oh shit, Stan…’ I say. ‘Please can we not bring dinosaurs into the conversation? Next you’ll be telling us that life finds a way.’

  ‘Ok… sorry…’ Stan says. ‘But are we agreed that going back to the village is our best shot at long-term survival?’

  ‘I guess,’ I say, unable to think of an alternative for now. Wade nods, his brain equally devoid of ideas.

  ‘Fine then. So the only thing I need to know is this: can we kill ‘em?’