by David Moody
Gary feigned deafness, but then looked back out of guilt. Momentary eye contact. Jody pleading for help she knew she wasn’t going to get. Ben tried to turn back, but Gary kept him moving forward.
Dead Charlie yanked at the door again, and this time the hideous thing’s strength was such that the handle was snatched clean out of Jody’s hands.
The door was wide open.
Jody and the Charlie-thing, face-to-face.
Gary glanced back once more as the dead girl lunged and knocked Jody clean off her feet.
Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving.
Into the bedroom he and Charlie had shared. The kids were crying, all of them, even Ben. ‘It’s okay,’ he told them. ‘It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be all right.’
He herded them over to the far side of the king-size bed, then went back and shifted Charlie’s bedside table, knocking her jewellery, makeup and creams everywhere. Didn’t matter. She had no use for any of them now. He hefted the table out of the way then ran back around again and shoved the bed frame against the door to block it. Ben helped, quickly realising what his dad was trying to do.
‘What about Mum?’ asked Jenny.
‘Sorry, love.’
‘Will she be all right?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Can we help her?’
‘It’s too late.’
‘But we have to help her.’
‘I don’t think we can. Mummy stayed downstairs to stop Charlie getting us. She’s really brave.’
‘I want Mummy,’ Holly whined.
‘I know you do, love. You have to remember, though, Mummy wanted you three to be safe more than anything else in the world. That’s why she stayed downstairs, and that’s why she brought you here so we could both look after you together. She got hurt taking care of all of us. She was really brave, your mum.’
‘We should go back,’ Ben said.
‘We’re not going back.’
‘She dead?’ Holly asked.
‘She one of those things?’ Jenny asked, sobbing.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think she’s dead,’ Holly said.
Jenny started howling. Ben started shouting, kicking out in frustration. Gary wrapped his arms around all three of them and sat them down on the floor in the space where the bed had originally been. ‘Shh... all of you,’ he whispered. ‘We have to keep the noise down so the sick people don’t hear us, okay? We can’t let anything happen now, because if we do then all of Mummy’s effort will have been for nothing.’
Noises downstairs. Awful screaming noises. Bangs, crashes, breaking glass. Death throes. Gary pulled the kids closer still and covered their ears as the ground floor cacophony continued in the rooms beneath them. They could feel the fighting. The whole house seemed to shake.
‘It’s gonna be all right,’ he told them when the noises eventually began to subside. ‘Mummy was really brave, and now it’s your turn to be brave. All of us. Daddy too. I’m gonna look after you all the time now.’
Nothing but shock and sobbing. He relaxed his grip but the kids didn’t move. Too scared. Paralysed with fear.
Gary filled the silence with nervous chatter. ‘We’ll wait here until it’s safe, then I’ll go down and sort everything out. The police will come and help us, maybe even the army. I know it’s been horrible this last couple of days, but things are gonna be okay. It’s just the four of us now, like you always wanted. We’ll go to Disneyland like I promised. Everything will be okay.’
Still nothing.
‘We can go and see Gramps and Nanny. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet they’re keen to see you. It’s been ages since I’ve seen them.’
‘Mum takes us,’ Ben said.
‘What?’
‘Mummy takes us to see Gramps and Nanny, and Granny and Pa,’ Jenny explained.
‘What? Wait, your mum’s been taking you to see my parents? You never told me.’
‘We thought you’d get cross.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t.’
‘You said you didn’t care what Mummy did and you didn’t want to hear about it,’ Jenny said, repeating parrot-fashion.
‘They’re still all friends, even though you and Mum hate each other,’ Ben said. ‘Nanny said just because you’ve fallen out, doesn’t mean we can’t all still get on.’
Gary was shocked. ‘My mum said that?’
‘Yep,’ said Holly.
Jenny continued. ‘Gramps said he thought Mummy was doing really well considering.’
‘Considering what?’
‘Don’t know. They usually stop talking when they know we’re listening.’
Gary got up from the floor, incensed. ‘That bloody woman. Out to get the bloody sympathy vote from my parents. How low will she go?’
‘That’s not fair, Dad,’ Ben said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Gary turned on him.
‘Adult business, son. Keep your bloody nose out.’
‘I’m only trying to—’
‘Well don’t. When I want your advice I’ll...’
Ben looked up to see why his dad had stopped talking, and then he saw her.
Mum.
At the window.
Clothes torn and blood-soaked.
Infected.
Gary staggered back in fright as she hauled herself up onto the veranda, using the roof of his car to get up. She beat against the glass with leaden hands, fists smearing grease and germs.
Gary grabbed the kids, but Jenny slipped his grip. As he dragged them away from the window, she ran towards it. ‘Mummy!’ she shouted, thrilled to see her again. Gary tried to stop her, but Ben and Holly were in the way and he could only watch helpless as Jenny slipped the latch and let Jody inside.
The Jody-thing watched him from the other end of the room. The gusting breeze from the window caught her shirt, and when it flapped open Gary saw the scratch. Long, deep, dirty, uneven. It ran from her left shoulder down her bicep, a vicious zigzag line, dripping with blood.
‘It’s not Mummy,’ he told the kids. ‘She’s got the disease. Don’t go near her.’
His dead ex-wife stood her ground. Unmoving. Glowering.
And then she attacked.
She launched herself at Gary and he panicked, remembering the things he’d seen on TV and the things they’d fought in the back garden of the house. Abhorrent, cursed, infected creatures. He remembered what Charlie had become.
Gary reached for Jenny and Holly’s outstretched hands, but infected Jody stood between them. And in the ensuing chaos, as Gary did everything he could to avoid her savage, poisonous claws, their positions were steadily reversed.
Jody with the kids cowering behind her now.
Gary next to the open window.
She came at him again, and his decision was made.
‘Sorry, kids.’
He dived for the open window as she lurched towards him. Heart-racing, desperate, terrified, he climbed over the veranda then dropped down onto the roof of his car. He half-rolled, half-fell to the ground then immediately picked himself up. He checked his pockets. Car keys, but for the wrong car. Charlie’s motor was locked in the garage, blocked in by his own useless vehicle, and there were infected approaching. Three of them. Wait, no, four. Six! Eight! He looked up at the house he’d just escaped from, then ran.
As fast as he could. As far as he could. Not stopping. Not looking back.
Gone.
Jody watched from the upstairs window until he’d disappeared, then turned back to face the children. Ben, shaking with fear, positioned himself in front of his two younger sisters, ready to defend them from the vile creature that had once been his mother.
‘It’s okay, love,’ she said. ‘It’s me. I’m all right.’
‘Don’t believe you,’ he said, voice trembling as badly as his legs.
‘I swear. She didn’t touch me. I’m okay. Not sick.’
‘What about the scratch?’
‘I did it.’
‘You did it?’ Jenny asked, peering around her brother’s stocky frame.
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted to see what your dad would do. I wanted to know if he was really going to look after you.’
‘Daddy ran away,’ Holly said.
‘Yep. Pretty much exactly what I expected.’
‘And you’re not sick?’ Ben asked, still clearly unsure.
‘I’m not sick.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘What about Charlie?’
‘I couldn’t help her. She’s okay now, though. She’s not hurting anymore.’
‘She dead?’ Holly asked.
‘Yes, she’s dead. Sorry, love.’
‘I liked Charlie.’
‘Yeah, I liked Charlie. She deserved much better. Shall we go home now?’
‘Yes, please,’ Ben said.
‘Cool.’
With a grunt of effort Jody moved the bed away from the door then led her children downstairs, distracting them from the wreckage and the blood and what was left of Charlie. She found the keys to Gary’s 4x4 in a bowl on the kitchen table, and she drove the kids out of the infected zone.
And they felt safe.
And they were safe.
1975
Sean T. Page
Cole sat in the kind of blue fabric tub chair you find in any mundane office. A chair people sit in as they wait with sweaty palms and nervous stomachs for a job interviews, surrounded by buzzing telex machines and disinterested receptionists pounding the keys of their typewriters to an impossible deadline. But Cole wasn’t in any office and there was certainly no pending interview.
He peered through the bullet-proof glass onto the teeming wasteland of Parliament Square. A plume of inky black smoke drifted from the half-collapsed tower of Big Ben and up into a dreary overcast London sky. Gazing to his right, he noticed with little interest that the transept of the once great abbey had now completely caved in, leaving great piles of dusty limestone rubble and ecclesiastical carvings on the streets.
Cars with sun-stained paintwork were jammed bumper to bumper across Westminster Bridge, a military vehicle hanging like a vulture over the railings, peering into a murky and polluted Thames. Powerful weeds forced their way through the cracks in the broken pavement with the tenacity of unwelcome door-to-door salesmen preventing doors being slammed in their faces by wedging their feet in the gap.
Cole sipped a Coke and played the squinty game he knew so well. If you stood at one of the large safety windows overlooking the square and squinted, the shuffling figures littering the outside blurred through your constricted cornea and began to look human again. The shambling figure dragging the rusty push chair with the wheel missing; a tired polyester-mum on the daily school run. The armless walking corpse entangled in the chain link fence; an excited, gnome-like tourist in a virulent green anorak they would never wear at home. Cole squinted harder but the trick was working less and less with every passing month so he closed his eyes and just stood there, allowing his pallid skin to soak up whatever weak UV rays crept past the clouds and refracted through the thick glass window of the common room.
‘Seen Ahmed you tosser?’ came a bluff voice from a nearby armchair. Cole hadn’t realised the bulky Royal Marine was there and was dragged back abruptly from his daydream.
‘Not today,’ he answered, immediately regretting not being more specific.
‘Not just today you fucking idiot, no one’s seen him for days.’ The Marine hesitated, tilting his head and sniffing the air like a curious dog. ‘This place stinks.’
Cole turned towards the scruffy soldier, half-thinking of answering back but deciding against it. He’d already lost one tooth to this unpredictable thug. There was something decidedly canine about him, with his long shaggy beard and unwavering loyalty to his mistress.
‘I haven’t seen him all week Corporal Farrell,’ Cole replied.
‘Discipline you little reptile, that’s what you need. You’re just fucking lucky we all stick around here. If it wasn’t for us, turds like you and lover boy would be easy meat snacks out there in the real world.’
Farrell sank back into his chair and continued flicking through a worn porno mag, slowing fingering his way through the crisp and curling pages.
Cole acknowledged the giant Irishman with a nod, purposely avoiding contact with his permanently angry slate-grey eyes. Pointless enraging the uniformed guard dog whilst Captain Seaton wasn’t on duty, to pull at his chain and keep him under control.
‘I’ll check the labs and the supermarket again; he must be down there working on the air con system.’
‘That’s better, tosser. A little more respect for those who protect you and we’ll all get along just dandy.’
As Cole left the common room he heard Farrell shouting after him. ‘Ask your boyfriend what that bloody smell is while you’re down there. This place stinks like a Plymouth whorehouse on Sunday morning.’
◆◆◆
Cole headed down the first corridor, passing Green’s empty room en-route. He slowed for a few seconds as he passed by, unable to resist a quick glance into the former technician’s quarters. An army-issue mattress sat like new on a chipped grey steel bed frame. A lonely cardboard box on the desk, piled high with elaborate framed photos, Carpenters LPs and his other personal effects. It felt like he’d died but of course Cole knew he might still be out there, surviving in the city. Green had been assigned to the Ark in the same intake as Cole. They’d been through the same emergency protocol induction together. Then, three weeks ago, he just disappeared. The Ark was a sizable bunker. Seven floors. Seven thousand square yards. You could hide for a while but it would be difficult to just disappear. No one spoke about Green anymore and when Cole had asked about him in the canteen, the place just fell silent. A stern, threatening look from one of the Rottweiler-Marines was enough for Cole to keep his mouth shut. Now the dust was just starting to build up in his quarters. The technical team had started out with five – now he and Ahmed were the only two left standing.
Cole pushed Green to the back of his mind. Best not to think about him being dead. He was just gone. Out of sight, out of mind. He headed down two flights of steps into the bowels of the Ministry bunker. Only the top two floors of the Ark emerged above ground, masquerading as a conference centre. The bulk of the facility was buried beneath the surface like an ice-berg, hidden from view. Some might say, hidden in plain sight bearing in mind it was not two hundred yards from Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
‘Karim?’ he shouted as poked his head inside Research Laboratory Two.
‘Shhhh,’ came the response as an overweight figure sat hunched and sweating over a microscope. His lab coat was stained urine-yellow down the back. Cole didn’t want to know what it was and didn’t ask.
‘Sorry Dr Bruce. You seen Technician Ahmed anywhere?’
Bruce grunted his response without moving, clearly growing impatient at even such a minor interruption. Cole thought he heard the biomedical expert mumble something about logarithmic scales but like some obese gecko, the scientist just sat there tensing over his plastic microfiche sheets.
‘Not seen him today. Didn’t see him yesterday and don’t really care.’
Cole left Dr Bruce to his work and data screens, whatever it was he did. How much bio-chemistry does it take to sustain five thousand bodies in a chemically-induced state of deep hibernation? In the early days, the labs had been hives of activity with the scientific challenge of finding a cure or vaccine to the complex virus first noted in Northern India. That early enthusiasm had soon faded. It was partly due to the challenge of battling a virus which mutated with each new generation, and partly due to the inescapable fact that the country had already died. No one, not even the most naïve researcher believed they could “re-humanise” the countless millions already affected.
Outside the labs he followed a clinically white corridor from the sci
ence block to a concrete grey vestibule and the stairwell down to the corridor leading to the cryo-chambers. It was four floors down but he still preferred the claustrophobic stairwell to the central lifts. Cole paused and leant over the handrail to look down through the floors. He could hear two of the Marines coming up the stairs like elephants in a library so decided to change his plans rather than risk yet another uncomfortable encounter. Their stop and searches were farcical considering there were only around a dozen people left in the bunker. Some laughable pretence about stolen food. It was a power play, nothing more. A show of force designed to intimidate. And it worked.
Cole glanced at his quartz watch – it was almost 1600 hours so his safest option was to postpone any visit to the cryogenics labs and instead head towards the canteen and avoid any trouble altogether. He hadn’t eaten since the dry bowl of Shreddies washed down with some fizzy orange Tizer he’d had for breakfast. He dismissed any thoughts of Farrell, the angry dog could wait.
The canteen was silent when Cole pushed open the swinging doors, barren. The lights over the food serving station were off and the tables were clear but for a lonesome salt shaker and a preservative-red bottle with putrefying tomato gunk around the squirter left on each. Hyperactive blue bottles circled the bins like excited helicopters. Cole could have sworn they were getting bigger. They were now the kind of size that made you feel uneasy swatting them. Large enough to resist a magazine swipe. The bunker was meant to be a clean area so Cole had no idea how they were still getting in, but the filthy insects seemed to be all over the place now, filling every corner with their interminable drone.
Cole noticed the slumped figure of Corporal Taylor, the cook, at a table in the corner. The shy and spotty teenager was the bunker’s resident dogsbody. He was holding his head in his detergent-bleached hands, an empty bottle of vodka lying smashed on the floor beside him.
Cole didn’t have the heart to wake him. He’d been a bright spark of light in the early days, a companion of sorts to talk about science fiction with. These days he scarcely uttered a word. He was suffering from depression. A condition brought on by being stuck in a concrete box with no natural daylight and stale recycled air, and made worse by the imposition of an increasingly brutal and secretive quasi-military regime with the Captain as its uncrowned queen.