by Davis, SJ
“Nila what are you doing?” Kyle asked.
“None of your damn business, your safe to go to your whore now, that is if the zombies didn’t get to her first, she might not be so appealing if she’s all bitey.”
“That’s not even funny.”
“Go check on her then, I don’t give a shit.”
I lowered the ladder, grabbed a massive empty hold-all with wheels, climbed down, down the stairs and out the front door without looking back. I hated that I cared if he was going to be there when I got back, hated that a parted of me wanted him to stay because I didn’t want to be alone.
There was an Asda two streets away, so I headed down amidst the chaos. People were still fleeing and others, well others were thinking it was smart to steal big TV’s and other items. Asda was in absolute chaos; the car park was packed with cars trying to get out, car horns beeping. Well no change there from the norm.
I jumped over a couple of car bonnets; I was feeling frisky in my pissed of state of mind. Inside people were filling suitcases with everything they could lay their hands on. I took my holdall from my shoulder and headed for the camping section. I was trying to be smart, I mean there were people in the dairy section filling up on yogurt for Christ’s sake.
The camping section was pretty ransacked; the tents were gone, (really! Someone actually thought camping and zombies went together) and most of the sleeping bags and dear stuff. I found a badly dented box with a small one burner portable gas ring. I bagged it and a crap load of spare gas canisters. I grabbed cooks matches and a shit load of dried packet protein stuff, I bet it tasted like cack but it would do if there were nothing else. The bottle water aisle was bad, I grabbed two massive bottles of water thanking God my hold-all had wheels. I headed for the pasta aisle and stuck in whatever I could get to, rice, pasta noodles. The sweet aisle was disappointingly empty. I bagged some crisps and dried veg and fruit. My bag was packed full. Someone shouldered me.
“Hey!” I yelled.
“The Zombies are coming!”
“Yes so fucking what,” I yelled after him. “Did they take your manners with them?”
I dragged my bag along getting annoyingly shunted a lot! I trudged up the street, the wheels clicky-clacking on the pavement stones. Britain was not doing well with an end of the world situation, damn looters were everywhere. I watched in horror as someone ripped an expensive stereo out of a nearby BMW. Another was leaving a house shoving a laptop into a black bag. Appalling. I made it back to my house and it was just after lunch. I was starving so I switched on the grill and took a packet of bacon and sausages out of the fridge. I loaded the grill to the max then looked out some waffles from the freezer and some eggs from the cupboard too.
“What are you doing?” Came a Kyle’s voice from behind me.
Without turning I answered.
“I’m doing myself a cooked breakfast, I’m hungry. Why are you still even here?”
“Do you want me to leave Nila? I mean if you hate me that much, and I know I deserve it then I’ll go, but I’ll be going to my mums, nowhere else.”
I thought. I thought. Then I thought a little more. I flipped my bacon and sausages and began to slice mushrooms, leaving him stood beside me waiting for an answer.
“Me and you, we are over. I always said I would never forgive a cheat and I mean it. If you are sticking around to re-populate Britain the answer is hell no. However I don’t want to go through this alone so if you want to stay, stay. You will just need to let me calm down because right now I wanna throw this big ass knife in your eye.” I held up the large kitchen knife I was using to chop the mushrooms.
He smiled and then dropped it as quick.
“I want to stay.” He said quietly. “It doesn’t matter whether we are a couple there’s nowhere else I want to be Nila.”
“Okay then.” I said simply and put my mushrooms on to fry.
“Can I get…”
“Nope, make your own fucking breakfast when I’m done, and watch out for the bogey men.” I gave him a smile and a wink while a cracked my egg in the pan.
Once I’d dished up my ridiculously large breakfast leaving Kyle one measly sausage and 2 rashers of bacon for his, (a dared him to complain.) I sat on the couch and flicked on the TV. There were the same all reports I had become familiar with.
“How can you be so calm Nila?” Kyle asked me from the doorway.
“I don’t know.” I answered honestly. “Survival instinct… maybe. Or maybe my anger at your betrayal is cancelling out my fear. Anyway it’s not gonna do any good losing the plot is it. The first girl to bite the dust in the zombie movies is the ditzy blonde with fake boobs, I… have neither.” I stabbed at my sausage, getting some practise in.
“I’m gonna get some more bedding and stuff put upstairs. I got candles last night just in case the power goes. I’ll dig out that old radio from under the stairs. If the electric is out it might be the only means of listening to the emergency channels.”
“I got more water and a little camping stove too, plenty dry provisions.”
“Cool if it gets mad from tonight we have enough food and water to last a couple of weeks, maybe more. We might need to top up on water. I wouldn’t risking drinking tap stuff. If we use it sparingly we can still make what we have last quite a while.”
“There’s heaps of fizzy pop in the cupboard from the big shop I did we’ll get that up there too.”
I finished my belly busting meal, rinsed off my plate, more out of habit and then we trudged my Asda spoils and the other odds and sods upstairs. Lastly I went for a wee because I was going hauled up in the attic and I wanted a bit of luxury. I was just finishing and grabbing a few toiletries when I heard a crash from our bedroom. I ran thru to find Kyle tipping over our wardrobes.
“Kyle, What the fuck!”
“Do you want a zombie hiding in here?”
“Fair point.” And with that I gave him a hand tipping over out heavier four door wardrobe. We went up to our attic and Kyle called his mum and dad. They lived about a hundred miles north.
He hung up after a minute.
“No answer.” He said sadly.
“Look they could have been moved or rescued Kyle. Its daytime and those thing burn to a cinder in the day. We’ll try again tomorrow when the sun comes up.”
He nodded and together we moved the boxes over the loft hatch. We sat together side by side and watched the sky darken through the window. We kept the lights off and sat in silence until we were engulfed in darkness. Our ‘situation’ was temporarily forgotten and we curled up under the duvet and huddled together and waited.
I was just drifting into sleep when I heard the first shriek. It came from a distance, a cross between an elephant and an eagle. It pierced the night like a sharp blade. Another answered its call, and another and more joined in until it was all we could hear. The noise was deafening and was getting closer. Kyle held me tightly. When they hit our street the noise was so loud it was almost like they were in the same room. My heart beat sped up, my breath came out in short bursts.
“Oh my God, oh my God…” I whispered over and over.
“It’s ok. I’m here.” Kyle soothed. I was glad then and there that he’d stayed. This would have been petrifying on my own.
We heard the carnage they were creating, windows were smashed and then we heard the noises of the people they found. The terrifying, blood curdling screams. I bit down on my hand. I felt the building quake slightly as they began hammering in the door of the house next to ours and then the terrifying boom right below us as they pounded in ours. It sounded like dozens were spilling and then crashed about, smashing everything. I was pretty sure I heard Kyle’s new and expensive 3D TV dropping off the wall bracket. He wasn’t going to like that.
Then they were right below us on the second floor of the house. I heard some of them screaming that high pitched shriek and others quieter. I heard something being smashed up in the bathroom and thundering in our bedroom almost like
they were throwing each other off the walls, maybe they were.
The worst went on for about three hours then it got quieter and you could just hear the odd one or two entering the house, looking for victims, smashing stuff and leaving. We didn’t move a muscle. I drifted in and out of sleep but never falling into a deep sleep. Kyle stayed awake, stoking my hair, holding me. He nudged me awake at one point and pointed to the skylight. The sky was lightening and we had survived our first night.
Chapter 3
We didn’t move until the sun was high in the sky and then I pulled up the laptop and decided to get the latest news. According to reports Britain was engulfed. In 48 hours 70% of our population were estimated to be wiped out. What was left of the government was forming a plan to get any survivors to safety. The trouble was nowhere was safe. The advice was the same, get somewhere hidden and safe and sit tight till there was some kind of rescue plan.
We evaluated our provisions and had more than enough for at least three weeks of food and we had bottles and bottles of fizzy juice and several huge bottles of water for cooking. We just had to ration stuff, eat sparingly.
I passed the next few hours reading. Kyle tried his mum several times and didn’t get a reply. I could see he was worried but I just couldn’t find it in me to be sympathetic towards him. I mean 48hrs previous he was boinking my best friend.
We had crisps and chocolate for breakfast, using up all the stuff that was most perishable first. I read for a few hours, immersing myself in a vampire novel. Kyle didn’t try to engage me in conversation and I was grateful for that. I needed time to not be mad at him. I wished to God I’d never found out about them and at the same time I wished she were there so I could kick her stupid betraying ass. I’d known Kristen for a long time. She was the ditzy type, if she had survived this far I’d have been shocked. She once forgot to put her knickers on before her tights… I am serious!
Even though we knew that we were relatively safe during the day we didn’t want to venture out in case we disturbed a sleeping zombie. We dug out an old sheet from a box and wrote ‘2 SURVIVORS INSIDE’ in big black marker pen then laid it out on the roof weighted down with a couple of boxes and then we passed the time.
Day after day, hour after hour passed. We read, we talked, we played spider solitaire endlessly. The Internet went down after a week and the power went two days after that. We opened the skylight during the day to get fresh air and Kyle even sat on the roof looking for helicopters. We saw nothing and we had no access to news either. Nights were spent huddled together while we listened to the occasional zombie pass by.
By the second week Kyle and I were on more friendly terms and my steely resolve had weakened. We chatted like old times during the day and curled up together at night. We finally managed to sleep during the night, feeling a little safer that no one had discovered us.
The beginning of the third week we had a dilemma. We were out of water and juice. We hadn’t heard anything activity in the area, at night for at least 4 days and we had no choice but to venture out. Kyle had a crow bar and I wielded the meat clever from the kitchen and at dawn, twenty-three days after the first wave we ventured out of the loft for the first time.
We descended the loft stairs and I had to cover my mouth and nose. The smell was putrid and the source was faeces smeared along the wall, almost like someone had been covered in it and had staggered along brushing and banging into things. Everything was trashed. My drawers in my bedroom had been emptied, the toilet had been ripped from the wall. There was blood smeared all over the bathroom were the toilet culprit had injured themselves. I stuck to the back of Kyle as we tiptoed down the stairs.
“Did we have any water left in the cupboard?” Kyle whispered.
“There was a half a big bottle.” I replied.
“Okay, let’s get that first and have something to drink before we go find a bigger supply.”
The kitchen was beyond recognition. The island that used to stand in the middle had been hurled at the cupboard and the door was hanging off on one hinge. Every single cupboard was missing the doors, the fridge had been tipped over and the window was smashed. The kitchen was only six months old and Kyle had spent a fortune getting me my dream kitchen with an American style fridge.
Kyle looked over and saw I was getting a little teary.
“It’s all replaceable Nila.”
“I know.” I whispered. We were just lucky to be alive.
Kyle grabbed the corner of the island and began to drag it away from the cupboard so we could get access. It was then I spotted a foot. As Kyle pulled I gasped and he stopped to see why but as I pointed to the foot it moved and then in a flash a man jumped up from the debris.
I screamed. He had been burned, badly burned and most of his hair and face were melted. He had no lips and one of his eyes was missing. The smell was god awful and his skin was rotting.
Kyle swung the crowbar and the tip embedded itself into the zombie’s skull. The thing screamed blue murder and lunged at Kyle knocking him to the floor. Remembering zombie 101 I brought my clever down with all my might on the soft spot below the occipital bone of his skull. The clever passed through surprisingly effortlessly with a sicking crunch and the thing collapsed, motionless onto Kyle. I grabbed the back of its shirt and hauled it away then leant down to Kyle.
It had bitten him on the shoulder and the blood was pooling out of the wound.
“No, no.” I sobbed, realising what would happen to him. “Kyle no, please, I can’t do this by myself.”
He choked a little.
“Don’t let me become… please.” He begged and I knew what he was asking me to do. “I love you Nila and I was stupid, forgive me?”
I nodded and kissed his forehead and within seconds his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he started to convulse. I brought the clever high above my head and down onto his neck. The last flash of life in his eyes was not the Kyle I loved but the beginning of a monster. His head rolled to the side and then, only then did I drop my clever, fall to the floor and cry.
Chapter 4
Something inside of me gave in, my spirit to fight died and I sat on the filthy floor of the kitchen for ages, splattered with the blood of my first and only love. After the longest time I picked myself up from the floor and made my way back up to the loft. I pulled the hatch closed behind me and pushed a box over it. I wrapped the blankets around me tightly and just lay on my back and watched the sky. I ignored my thirst and hunger and decided I didn’t want to live. I didn’t want to fight the chaos anymore. Not without Kyle. No one was coming, no one was rescuing us. I watched the sky darken overhead and I heard movement below. Then I listened in horror to the faint noises of the undead feasting on the corpses in my kitchen. Silent tears slid down my face and I listened to them climb the stairs, overturning furniture and banging into walls.
It went on forever. The smell of the fresh blood must have drawn them in and sent them into a frenzy. I heard the rain start and I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sploosh sploosh on the window to give me something to focus on and through sheer exhaustion I fell into a restless sleep.
Tap, tap, tap.
I had been dreaming of Kyle. We’d been happy and in love. I felt something pulling me from sleep and I fought it. I didn’t want to waken.
Tap, tap, tap.
I screwed up my face and then with fear realised the tapping was too loud to be rain. I opened my eyes to see a face staring back at me from the skylight and with relief I realised it was a human. When he saw he had my attention he brought his hand up to his mouth and in the light of the moon I heard him motion for me to remain quiet. He pointed to the latch of the window and I opened it, allowing him to jump inside.
He climbed in gracefully and landed so silently on the loft floor. I sat back on the floor feeling quite dizzy and dehydrated looking up at him. He was tall, even from the angle I was looking at him I could tell he was well over six feet. He was built slim with short dark hair slicke
d back. He bent down so his mouth was right next to my ear.
“Are there any more survivors?” It was barely a whisper but I clearly heard a slight Italian accent, I was surprised to find my heartbeat hammering wilding in my chest and I felt my face flush.
I shook my head.
Silently he pulled a backpack from behind his grey, woollen tailored coat. He unzipped it slowly and pulled out a bottled water and some kind of energy bar in silver foil type wrapping.
“Eat, Drink quickly we need to move.”
I shook my head. I could still hear movement downstairs and no way in hell was I going anywhere.
“Eat, do as I say. Don’t worry there’s a rendezvous chopper on its way. When it gets here we need to move fast.”
I shouldn’t have felt anything other than fear. I was hungry and dehydrated and I hadn’t bathed in weeks yet I found myself deeply inhaling his scent. As I did my cheek brushed against his slightly rough chin and an undeniable jolt shot up my spine. He felt it too, I know he did because he reeled back and looked at me. He looked at me with a most puzzled expression on his face and for a moment I actually questioned the way I might smell. Nothing else could explain the stare I was getting.
“Please eat, we don’t have much time.”
I relented, sat up properly and opened the water drained the whole lot and letting some spill onto my chin. With the last bit of the bottle I splashed my face and wiped myself clean with my blanket. Next I began on the mystery bar, which looked like a square nugget of shit, and it tasted like it too. I chowed it down wishing I’d saved some water to help swallow it.
In the distance we heard the rushing of helicopter blades and the man panicked slightly.
“Ok listen, and carefully. The chopper will lower a rope ladder, you need to climb a little way up and then lock your arms and remain in position. The infected will quickly realise there is activity here and they will start to climb up by any means possible. The chopper will raise up high enough that we are out of danger and them, only then must you climb up to safety.”