by David Moody
“Come on,” I say, interrupting him as he walks around the ground floor of his house, checking that the windows and doors are locked for the third time, “we need to get moving.”
I expect a sneering reply because that’s what I usually get from Harry. He’s a loud and opinionated old fart who doesn’t think much of me. He assumes he knows more than me about everything and he never takes kindly to being hurried or told what to do. I’m surprised when he just nods, picks up his bag, and slowly walks toward the front door. I take the bag from him and put it in the car, leaving him to lock up his home.
“Quiet, isn’t it?” he says as we drive back toward the flat. He immediately regrets his words as we pull onto a main road which is solid with traffic. We join the back of the line. It’s slow but it’s still moving and I can’t think of a better route home. I decide to sit tight.
“You okay, Harry?” I ask.
“Fine,” he mumbles. “Bit tired, that’s all.”
“Trouble sleeping?”
He nods his head.
“Something happened around the back of the house last night,” he explains, his voice quiet. “There was a fight or an accident or something . . . lots of screaming, lots of noise . . .”
The traffic has slowed down again to almost a complete standstill. It’s stop-start all the way.
“Don’t know what’s going on here,” I mumble.
The road we’re crawling along runs past the front of a row of houses before swinging up and left over a bridge which spans the motorway below. As we follow the arc of the road the reason for the delay becomes apparent. There’s a steady stream of cars leaving the motorway and rejoining the town traffic. We grind to a halt again midway over the bridge.
“What’s the holdup?” Harry asks, looking around curiously.
“No idea. Must have been an accident or something . . .”
“That’s not an accident,” he says, peering out of his window and tapping his finger on the glass. I sit up in my seat and lean across him to try and see whatever it is he’s looking at. There’s a blockade of some kind stretching right across the motorway. There are dark green military trucks straddling both sides of the road. Armed guards are manning red- and white-striped barrier gates while other soldiers direct the lines of approaching traffic. What the hell are they doing? Unless I’m mistaken, the cars trying to leave the city are being stopped. They’re not even being searched. They’re either being marshaled up the slip-road and straight off the motorway or they’re being sent around through a hole that’s been cut in the central barrier and forced back the way they came. The traffic is being channeled back into town.
“Don’t want us to go far, do they?” Harry says, watching the cars below us as we begin to shunt forward again.
“Thought they said they were getting things under control.”
“What?”
“I was watching something on the TV just before I came out to get you. They said the situation is being brought under control.”
“Well, this is probably part of that control, isn’t it? They need to know where everyone is . . .”
“Do they?”
“How can the authorities protect us if they don’t know where we are?”
I don’t bother answering him. The fact that I’ve just seen a substantial military presence out on the streets doesn’t inspire me or fill me with confidence. If anything it makes me feel worse.
As we move away from the motorway the traffic begins to thin out again. I put my foot down and continue toward home.
My nervousness and paranoia are increasing by the second. I need to be back with my family.
The streets we’re driving through now are uncomfortably silent and still. It all looks and feels perverse. The country seems to be tearing itself apart with unprecedented levels of violence, so why is everywhere so quiet? The normal human reaction to a threat like the Haters would be to stand and fight but today we can’t. These people are sick. They’re driven by a desire to kill and destroy and, from what I’ve seen, they won’t stop until those desires have been satisfied. To stand and fight against them would mean displaying the same emotions as they do. It would be self-destructive. To fight back is to risk being called a Hater too. All we can do is keep to ourselves and not retaliate. The population is withdrawing from each other in fear. Fear of everyone else and fear of themselves.
We finally pull up outside the building and I get Harry inside. I’m about to go back out to get his bag from the car when I spot a solitary figure walking down the street. Instinctively I wait in the shadows until I’m sure they’ve disappeared before setting foot out in the open again. Christ, I’m too scared to risk even being seen by anyone I don’t know.
24
“DAD,” ED SAYS.
“What?” I grunt, annoyed that I’ve been interrupted. I’ve been reading through a pile of music magazines I found under the bed. I thought I’d thrown these out years ago. They’ve helped me get through the uneasy boredom of this never-ending afternoon.
“What’s he doing?”
“What’s who doing?” I ask, not lifting my head.
“That man from the house down the road. What’s he doing?”
“What man?”
“Jesus Christ,” Lizzie screams as she walks into the room. The panic in her voice makes me drop my magazine and look up. Fucking hell, the man who lives in one of the houses adjacent to our building is dragging his wife out of their house and into the middle of the street. She’s a huge woman with a wide backside and flabby arms which are thrashing about wildly. The man—I think his name is Woods—is pulling her along by her feet and I can hear her screaming from here. He drags her down the curb and her head cracks back against the road. He’s carrying something else with him. I can’t see what it is . . .
“What’s he doing?” Ed asks again.
“Don’t look,” Liz yells at him. She rushes across the room and tries to turn Ed around and push him toward the door. Josh is in the way. He’s standing in the doorway eating a biscuit and Lizzie can’t get past.
“Don’t look at what?” Ellis asks. I didn’t see her come in. She’s behind me, standing on tiptoe and looking out of the window.
“Do what Mum says,” I say as I try to pull her away. She clings onto the windowsill and won’t let go. The children have been going stir crazy trapped in the house. They’re desperate for any distraction.
Outside Woods has stopped moving now. His wife is still lying on the ground and he’s standing on her neck. Bloody hell, he’s put his boot and his full weight on her throat. Her face is blood red and she’s thrashing about more than ever but he’s managing to keep her down even though he’s half her size.
“Ellis, let go,” I shout as I finally manage to prize her away from the window. Ed is still watching and I can’t help staring either. I can’t look away. It was a bottle that Woods was carrying. He’s unscrewed the top now and he’s emptying the contents all over his wife. What the hell is he doing?
“What’s happening?” Harry asks. Now we’re all in the living room. He’s between me and the door and I have to move around him to get Ellis out. I try to close the curtains again but I can’t reach from here. Harry’s in the way.
“Get the children out of here,” Lizzie screams.
“Will you move, Harry?” I snap. “I can’t get through . . .”
I look out of the window again as Woods sets fire to his wife. Christ knows what he just doused her in but she’s gone up in a huge ball of flames and the fire has caught him too. She’s still moving. Bloody hell. I put my hands over Ellis’s eyes but I’m slow to react and she’s already seen too much. Woods trips away from the burning body, his pants legs on fire. He staggers down Calder Grove but only makes it halfway down the road before he’s consumed by the flames.
Between us we push the kids out into the hall. I go back to the living room.
Outside no one does anything. No one moves. There’s no activity out on the street, not ev
en when the fire from Woods’s wife’s burning body spreads and sets light to a pile of plastic bags filled with garbage which have been sitting at the side of the road for more than a week. Thick black smoke billows up from the bags and from the corpses in the road, filling the air with dirty fumes.
Sobbing, Lizzie pulls the curtains shut.
The man on the landing at the top of the stairs is dead. I crept out of the flat a few minutes ago and went up to check. What a fucking horrible way to go—ending your days slowly bleeding to death on your own at the top of a dark, concrete staircase. Could I have done anything for him? Possibly. Should I have done anything for him? Definitely not. He was a Hater, and it’s scum like him that have caused all of this. They’re the reason everything is falling apart. They’re the reason I’ve had to lock myself and my family in the apartment. They’re the reason we’re all fucking terrified.
What scares me most about the body upstairs and what we saw on the street is the closeness of it all. I could cope with this crisis when it was just something on the news. I could even deal with it at the concert and when we saw the fight in the pub and the kid under the car. What’s changed today is the proximity of the trouble to my children and my home. This apartment felt safe until today.
25
THE KIDS HAVE DEFINITELY sensed a change now. Maybe it’s because they’ve been trapped in the apartment without contact from anyone else for days. Obviously what they’ve seen today has made matters worse. They keep asking questions and I don’t know how to answer them. I don’t know what to say to them anymore. I took the bolt I fixed on Sunday morning off the bathroom door and attached it to the inside of the living room (or “safe room” as we’re now supposed to call it) to try and make everyone feel a little safer. I don’t know if it’s done any good.
We’ve been sitting in the safe room for hours and I can’t stand it any longer. I get up and wander aimlessly around the apartment. I can’t sit and do nothing, but there’s nothing I can do either. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m cold and tired and frightened. I walk into Josh and Ed’s small room and climb up onto Ed’s top bunk. His small screen TV is at the end of the bed. I switch it on and flick through the channels. Nothing worth watching. There are a couple of channels showing repeats of old TV shows, the rest are just showing the public information film that we saw earlier. It’s running at exactly the same time on all the major national channels. It must be produced and broadcast by the government. At least I assume it’s the government. Who else could it be?
With nothing on TV and no other distractions I find myself looking out of the window just to the side of the bed. I lie down flat on my stomach on the narrow bunk and stare out through the net curtain at the street outside. From here I can see along the full length of Calder Grove—from the still smoking bodies of Woods and his wife right down to the junction of the road with Gregory Street. Apart from the drifting smoke everything else is still. The world feels silent and deserted, as if we’ve all been put in quarantine from each other. Now and again I catch sight of a lonely figure in the distance. People stick to the shadows and they’re gone as quickly as they appear. There’s hardly any other movement at all. Once in a while a car passes by, otherwise nothing else seems to move. It’s like looking at a freeze-frame photograph of the world.
Why hasn’t anyone done anything about the corpses? We’ve kept the curtains in the living room closed so the kids can’t see them. If Woods’s wife’s body is still there in the morning I might go and throw a blanket over it just so it’s out of view. I can see the blackened remains of the dead woman’s arms. Her bony hands and fingers are lifted up and clasped together like she’s praying or pleading for help.
I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’m trying not to panic. I don’t think we have any choice but to lock ourselves in here and sit this thing out, however long that takes. I don’t want to—
“What are you looking at?” a voice suddenly asks from beside me, making me jump. I look round and see that it’s Ellis. She’s crept into the bedroom and has managed to climb the ladder up to Ed’s bed. She peers at me over the top rung with wide, saucer-shaped eyes.
“Nothing,” I answer, rolling over and giving her space to climb up with me. She puffs and pants and drags herself onto the bed.
“What are you doing in here?”
It’s difficult to answer. I’m not exactly sure myself.
“Nothing,” I say again.
“You looking at the dead lady?” she asks in a remarkably innocent and matter-of-fact way.
“No, I’m just lying down for a while. I’m tired.”
“Why are you lying on Ed’s bed? Why aren’t you lying on yours and Mummy’s bed?”
Her questions never seem to stop. I wish they would. I’m not in the mood to answer them.
“I wanted to watch the TV,” I tell her, not being entirely honest. “I haven’t got one in my bedroom.”
“Why not watch the other telly with the rest of us?”
“Ellis,” I say, stifling a yawn and pulling her closer, “shut up, will you.”
“You shut up,” she mumbles under her breath. She yawns too and shuffles closer to me.
For a little while the room is quiet again and I begin to wonder whether Ellis has fallen asleep. But it’s not just this room that’s quiet—the whole apartment is ominously silent. In the distance I can just about hear the muffled sounds of the TV in the living room. Are they being quiet or is there something wrong with the others? Is it because of what’s happening outside, or is the isolation and uncertainty starting to have an effect on the rest of my family? Is one of them about to start changing, or have they already changed . . . ? I find myself thinking about what’s happening outside again and I’m depressed by a constant stream of dark and uncomfortable thoughts. Surely things can’t continue like this indefinitely? There has to come a point when something gives or the situation resolves itself, doesn’t there? I don’t have any answers and I’m actually relieved when Ellis decides to attack me with another barrage of much easier questions.
“Will we be going back to school tomorrow?” she asks naively.
“I don’t think so,” I reply.
“The next day?”
“I don’t know.”
“The next day?”
“I don’t know. Look, Ellis, we don’t know when school’s going to be open again. Hopefully it won’t be too long.”
“I’m going on a trip next week.”
“I know.”
“My class is going to a farm.”
“I know.”
“We’re going on a bus.”
“I know.”
“Will we still be able to go?”
“I hope so.”
“Will you take me if school’s still shut?”
“I’ll take you.”
She seems happy with that and, again, she becomes quiet. I lie back and close my eyes. The day so far has been long and emotionally draining and it has taken its toll. My eyes feel heavy. In just a few short minutes I feel Ellis’s body go limp in my arms. Her breathing changes, becoming shallow and steady and I look down at her. She’s dozing, completely relaxed and almost asleep. In a world which has suddenly become completely irrational, unpredictable, and fucked-up she remains perfect and unaltered. This little girl means everything to me.
I’m tired. I close my eyes.
I was almost asleep for a second until the image of the girl in the supermarket this morning returned. For a terrifying moment I imagined that it was Ellis, and that she was attacking Lizzie lying on the ground. I’m frightened. I’m petrified by the prospect that whatever it is that’s happening outside will eventually find its way into my home and harm my family.
I try to imagine this beautiful little girl attacking me.
I try to imagine me attacking her.
26
IT’S JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT. The children are asleep. We’re sitting in the living room in silence and in almost total darkne
ss. Harry, Liz, and I couldn’t be sitting any farther apart from each other in here. Harry’s opposite the window, looking out through half-drawn curtains. Liz is by the door, staring into space. The television has been off all night. No one’s saying anything new so there’s no point watching. The lack of information is just making things worse.
“Anyone want a drink?” I offer. This silence is unbearable.
“Not for me,” answers Harry. I look over at Lizzie. She shakes her head and looks down. She hasn’t spoken for hours. We had a conversation about the kids just after they’d gone to bed but since then she’s hardly said anything.
The room is filled with dull, rumbling noise and a sudden flash of light as a huge ball of flame mushrooms up into the sky from a building nearby.
“What in hell’s name was that?” Harry grumbles as he gets up from his chair and staggers to the window. He pulls the curtains fully open and I stand behind him and look over his shoulder. I can’t see what’s burning. It looks like it might be the medical center on Colville Way. It’s about a quarter mile away from here but that’s too close for comfort. As the initial noise and burst of flame dies down I hear other, equally frightening sounds. A desperate woman yells out for help. Her voice is hoarse and terrified. She’s pleading with someone, screaming at them to get away from her and leave her alone and . . . and her cries suddenly stop. Now I can hear a car starting. The engine is revved and accelerated furiously. The car begins to move at speed but its brief journey is over in seconds. Brakes squeal and tires skid across the road before I hear the unmistakable thump and crunch of a collision.