by David Moody
Colin staggered away, looking around frantically for help but still seeing no one. With 999 still ringing out unanswered, he tried another number. He called home, hoping Marj would come to his rescue as she usually did.
By the time his wife picked up the call, Colin had dropped the phone and it was lost in the surf.
The corpse was moving.
Unsteady, like a new-born animal, it picked itself up and came at him. The dead swimmer stumbled as if learning to walk for the first time, legs stiff and unresponsive, uncoordinated. Its broken arm flapped uselessly at its side.
The creature’s movements were unnatural. All wrong. It was as if the body was leading the head, not the other way around. It was bizarrely puppet-like in its behaviour. Stiff and staccato. A strange approximation of a person. An imitation of normality which looked the part but acted anything but.
As Colin slowed down, the dead man sped up.
The infected figure came at him with sudden, predatory speed, its good arm clawing through the air. It was on him in seconds and though he was initially able to push it away, it came at him again and again, relentless.
Arnold scampered behind Colin, barking furiously, and inadvertently tripped his owner up. Colin found himself on his back in the wet sand with the corpse on top of him, pinning him down. The lifeless swimmer dragged its numb fingers down his face, leaving a series of deep and bloody diagonal grooves from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth.
And then it left him.
Job done.
It got up and staggered away.
The dog wasn’t barking now, he was growling. And the object of his attention was no longer the dead man, instead it was his owner. The attack may have been brief and deceptively ineffective, but sufficient damage had been done.
Colin wasn’t Colin anymore now that there were things burrowing deep into his brain and flooding his circulatory system. Multiplying. Consuming. Taking over. Controlling.
◆◆◆
Jody Phelps panicked in unfamiliar surroundings, and when she found she couldn’t move, she panicked again. Cocooned in a sleeping bag, wedged between two sleeping kids and fighting claustrophobia, she screamed as hands clawed the outside of the tent, dragging the canvas down until it was just inches from her face, fingers desperately scratching to find a way inside.
‘Mum, where’s the zip gone?’
She relaxed when she heard his voice. It was just Ben. ‘You’re at the wrong end of the tent, love,’ she told him. ‘Try the other end.’ Her heart thumped in her chest like crazy.
Ben undid the zip, filling the tent with dull morning light, then lifted the flap and crawled inside. Jody propped herself up on her elbows and watched as he struggled to shut it again.
‘Just leave it,’ she said. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘For a piss.’
‘Don’t use that word.’
‘Whatever. I hate this tent. It’s stupid.’
She lay back down again. ‘I know you hate it. You’ve told me about a hundred times since we got here.’
‘Why couldn’t we have stayed in a hotel like last year?’
‘You know why.’
‘It’s not fair.’
‘Life’s not fair.’
‘Can I go out and play?’
‘No.’
‘What are we going to do today?’
‘Don’t know yet.’
‘It’s boring here. There’s no pool. And I’m freezing.’
‘Get back into bed then,’ she said, and she pulled her sleeping bag over her head and rolled over to try and get back to sleep. She checked her phone under the covers, the bright light hurting her eyes. Christ, it wasn’t even half-seven. It was early. Too early.
◆◆◆
Jody managed to doze for a while longer, but it was difficult to switch off fully with a head full of crap and a tent full of bored kids. Jenny and Holly had been playing with their dolls at the end of her sleeping bag, squashing her feet, and she’d heard Ben playing games on his phone. She hadn’t wanted him to bring the phone because of who he might contact, but she was glad she’d reneged because it was keeping him quiet. She kept telling herself I should really get up and do something with them, but the longer she stayed wrapped up, the less she wanted to move.
She must have clocked out again, because when she woke up this time the tent was quiet. Ben was outside, struggling to get back in again. Bloody kid. Ten year old boys – even her own son – were a complete enigma to her. She didn’t understand the way they worked. ‘For Christ’s sake, Ben,’ she yelled, ‘how many times do I have to tell you? The zip’s at the other end.’
He was leaning right against the canvas again, his full weight pushing down on the tent, threatening to collapse it on top of her.
‘I’m here, Mum,’ he said, and she looked up fast. Ben, Jenny and Holly, all in the tent with their faces buried in books and magazines and phones.
‘Shit.’
She got up fast, still struggling to get out of her bedding in the tight confines of this three-man tent occupied by four. As she sat up, the back end of the tent crashed down. Whoever was outside had fallen on top of it.
‘Oi!’ she yelled, furious. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
She manhandled the kids out of the way and grabbed her sandals, then fumbled with the zip and burst out into the light.
‘For Christ’s sake, what the hell’s going on out here?’
She’d seen the woman elsewhere on the campsite with her husband last night. Elderly. Silver-haired. Prim and proper. Professional campers, the pair of them. One of those couples with all the right kit and a gadget for everything. They’d watched from a distance (and hadn’t lifted a finger to help) as Jody had struggled to get her tent erected and cook a half-decent meal on a less than adequate stove.
Except the woman looked completely different this morning.
She slowly disentangled herself from the wreckage of the tent like she didn’t understand. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused and yet, when she turned her head, there was absolutely no question she was looking straight at Jody. A string of thick, blood-stained drool dribbled from the corner of her mouth, and when she managed to fee herself from what was left of the tent, Jody saw that she was barely half-dressed. Her towelling dressing-gown flapped open, revealing unsupported, sagging breasts. She had a dirty scratch running between them, roughly in line with her breastbone; a rough-raw, bloody groove like she’d been mauled by a one-clawed bear.
‘Oh my God, are you okay?’ Jody asked, but there was no response. ‘Do you need help?’
The woman walked over the tent and over the kids. They howled in protest from inside, but she paid them no attention. She was coming straight for Jody now, clear vicious intent in her unclear eyes. Jody backed away but the woman kept on coming, held back momentarily when one foot became entangled with a guy rope.
Her head clicked and ticked. Random, repeated movements. Alien-looking. She picked up her stilted, awkward pace, only to stumble again, tripping over the sleeping bag Jody had inadvertently dragged outside with her.
‘Back off, love,’ she warned, and when the woman picked herself up this time, Jody clouted her around the side of the head with a camping gas cylinder.
Got to get out of here.
Jody reached into the front of the collapsed tent and felt around inside for the kids, yanking them out into the daylight one by one, blinking against the brightness. She pushed them towards the car. ‘We’re leaving.’
Holly, clutching a limp rag doll, stopped just short of the old woman sprawled on the grass. She peered down at her, feet together like she’d pulled up on the very edge of a hundred metre drop.
The woman began to move again. Fistful of fingers crawling like a crab.
Jody grabbed Holly’s arm and thrust her towards her older brother. ‘Get your sisters into the car, Ben,’ she told him.
‘Did you do that?’ he asked, unable to take his eyes off
the battered creature on the ground.
‘Get your sisters into the car!’ she screamed at him again, and this time he didn’t argue.
Jody checked her pockets.
Fuck. Pyjama trousers. No pockets.
Fuck. No keys.
She reached back into the tent and felt around in the darkness for her handbag. Bedding, books, toys, discarded clothes . . . no bag. She’d kept it at the other end of the tent for safety, away from the zip. Crawling in deeper, up to her shoulders. Deeper still, all but her ankles inside.
Got it.
By the time Jody had reversed out, bag in hand, the dead woman was almost back on her feet. Her jaw had been horrifically dislocated – locked to one side like a freeze-frame picture of a cow chewing the cud – but she seemed not to notice. It wasn’t her ghastly deformed face that Jody focused on, instead it was the hideous gash below her throat. It looked different now. Wider. Glistening with blood and pus.
Jenny screamed, ‘Mummy!’
The kids were cowering around the back of the car, and as Jody ran towards them, she saw two loping figures coming the other way. They too had been children once. She remembered seeing them around here last night, loitering by the swings. A loud and obnoxiously fat kid and his mate, a lanky strip of piss. They’d looked like a bad comedy double-act, but this morning they were anything but funny. Fat kid stumbled towards the car, thin kid zeroed in on the girls. Jody fished for her keys in her bag then clicked the fob and the car unlocked with a reassuring mechanical clunk.
‘Get in,’ she yelled, and Jenny and Holly did exactly as they were told, fighting with each other to get in first. Ben, though, had frozen. Jody ran over to him, dragged him from the back of the car to the front, then shoved him into the passenger seat. She felt the fat kid’s fingers on her back, dragging down her anorak. She’d been freezing cold last night and was still wearing the waterproof coat she’d slept in.
She slammed the car door shut and spun around just as the kid came at her again with a speed which belied his bulk, claw-like fingers lashing out. She pushed him away and sent him tripping backwards. He fell over his own feet, too slow to react, and lay on his back on the ground like a turtle on its shell, unable to right himself, arms and legs thrashing wildly. Jody allowed herself to get a little closer to fatboy. His grubby T-shirt had ridden up in the fall, exposing his wide, white belly. The area below his navel was covered in a crosshatch of scratch marks, raw and infected.
Ben was hammering on the window.
Jody looked up and saw her son gesticulating wildly. It was the old woman with the crooked jaw again. She was getting dangerously close. Jody ran around to the driver’s side and let herself in, then double-locked the doors and started the engine. ‘Everybody okay?’ she asked. ‘No one hurt?’ No reply. Just muffled cries from the back.
The lanky kid walked clumsily into the side of the car, slamming into her window and smearing it with oily discharge.
‘What’s wrong with them, Mum?’ Ben asked, eyes wide and terrified.
‘Don’t know. Put your seatbelt on.’
‘But why are they—?’
‘Put your bloody seatbelt on!’ she shrieked at him as she slammed the car into reverse. She put her foot down and sent them careering backwards in a wild arc which just missed what was left of their tent.
‘My dollies,’ Holly whined.
‘We’ll come back and get them later,’ Jody told her, although she already knew they never would.
Into first gear, ready to disappear.
She stopped.
The dead old woman with the fucked-up face was blocking their way. ‘How can she still be standing?’ Jody asked no one in particular. The woman had looked paper-thin and frail when she saw her last night, so where the hell had all this strength and hostility come from?
‘You think they’re sick?’ Ben asked.
‘Very sick,’ she mumbled, still watching the woman who seemed as strong now as the two kid attackers some fifty or sixty years her junior.
The woman wasn’t giving ground. It was a bizarre stand-off which lasted only a few seconds until she made a single lurching step forward. Jody responded with a sudden burst of wheel-spin and speed. She hit the woman hard then immediately braked again, the impact sufficient to send her flying several metres through the air and inflict enough damage to make it impossible for her to get up again. Though she tried. Both legs now broken, bones protruding through ripped skin, spine snapped in two, yet still she tried.
Jody put her foot down again and this time she didn’t stop.
◆◆◆
‘Where are we going, Mum?’ Ben asked for what felt like the hundredth time in the half hour they’d been on the road. Jody had long since given up trying to answer. The speed with which everything had happened this morning was incredible. She was still trying to catch up and process it all.
‘Are we nearly there?’ Holly whined from the back.
Ben turned around and snarled at his sister. ‘She don’t even know where we’re going, dummy.’
‘Mum, Ben called me dummy.’
‘Don’t be rude to your sister.’
‘Tell her to stop being stupid then.’
‘She’s only four.’
‘She’s still stupid.’
‘I don’t like that word.’
‘Okay, then, she’s a retard.’
‘I like that word even less. Now shut up, all of you. I need to listen to this.’
The roads around the campsite had been mercifully quiet, though here in the Welsh mountains they weaved and snaked continuously through the landscape, never letting her get up quite enough speed. Still, the lack of traffic meant Jody could focus a little more attention on the radio. The stuff she was hearing was bizarre, like something out of those third-rate zombie horror novels Gary used to read.
A deadly infection, the likes of which hadn’t been seen before.
Source unknown.
The disease kills the hosts, then reanimates them.
Spreads through physical contact. Usually with open wounds.
The infected break the skin of their victims by scratching or clawing (or, in unconfirmed reports, biting).
Short incubation time – usually between one and three hours.
Widespread, and spreading wider.
No known cure.
Stay indoors. Stay calm. Stay safe.
‘That man said stay indoors,’ Ben said.
‘I know.’
‘We going home then?’
‘That’s the plan.’ She glanced at the fuel gauge. She’d planned to fill up on the way to the campsite last night but she’d had enough of being stuck in the car with three squabbling kids. ‘Don’t know yet,’ she added.
‘Where else we gonna go?’
‘You shut up and play with your phone. Leave the planning to me.’
‘My phone’s still in the tent.’
‘Shit. Sorry, love.’
‘I need it.’
‘You don’t need it. You want it. There’s a difference. You only use it for games.’
‘Not just games,’ he said without thinking, sounding unexpectedly aggressive. Jody looked across at her son.
‘Shit, Ben, have you been texting him again? What have I told you about texting him?’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘No, you don’t understand. He shouldn’t put you in this position. It’s not fair.’
‘I need a wee,’ came a small voice from the back.
‘Can you hold on, Hol?’
‘For a little bit. Can you hurry up?’
‘I’ll do what I can.’
More radio noise: frantic eyewitness reports, floundering politicians using hundreds of words to say nothing, phone-ins and social media round-ups. Everything tinged with an air of resignation and desperation. An edge of raw panic, barely suppressed. Inevitability. The end is nigh? The end is now.
Or maybe not.
Out here on the road, surrounded by
absolutely nothing and no one, Jody found it increasingly hard to accept the unacceptable. She knew what she’d seen at the campsite, what she’d done, but with every mile she drove away from the place, it was harder and harder to believe what had happened. The last year and a half had been horrible – the hardest eighteen months of her life – so was this a side-effect of that? Had she lost her mind? That seemed marginally more plausible than the things she was hearing on the radio right now.
‘Really need a wee.’
‘I know. You already said.’
‘Yeah, but I need one now.’
‘Do it out the window,’ said Ben.
‘Shut up, Ben,’ said Jody. ‘Hold on, Hol, there’ll be somewhere we can stop soon.’
Another ten minutes and she found it. An outwardly well-kept toilet block in a National Park car park. Jody slammed on the brakes and brought her tired car to a juddering stop, then crossed the carriageway and pulled into the car park. Ben reached for the door handle. She told him to wait.
There was one other car in the car park. A dirty blue Ford Focus. Doors shut and all locked up. Empty.
She told the kids to stay put and checked out the toilets and surrounding area. There was no one about.
‘All of you, with me,’ she ordered as she marched them out of the car. She herded them into the toilet block like sheep. Ben pushed back when he realised which door they were heading for.
‘I’m not going in the girls’ loo,’ he protested.
‘Yes, you are,’ she said as she pushed him inside.
Two cubicles, four people.
‘I don’t need to go,’ Jenny said.
‘You’re going. I don’t know when we’ll get chance to stop again.’
Less than impressed, she trudged towards the remaining cubicle, the firehouse-like noise from the other indicating that Holly’s need had been genuine. Ben leant against the solitary sink and glared as his mum. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.