As the Light Dies

by M. D. Woodham

  Feeling the added chill from the dampness she dared to check herself certain she would find herself enveloped in blood, but she didn’t. She’d wet herself! Giving it no more thought she carried on scanning the hall, the screaming had stopped!No one left to scream, she thought, and then without realising what she was doing, not believing what she was doing she started pushing her way up through the toppled chairs sending them falling to the floor all around her.

  Figures turned to look. They were all either kneeling or sitting on the floor gathered around the little figures and one big one. They were devouring them!

  Some even fought over what was left; the remains!

  Blood smeared their hands and their mottled black faces.

  Lisa grabbed the handle of the shovel as it started to slide off the chairs and kicked the rest of the chairs away from in front her. A figure close to her, one of the dads started to rise and Lisa swung the shovel with as much force as she could muster and hit it square in the face knocking it to the floor but before she’d even recovered from the swing the figure, a slim built man had already propped himself up on his elbows and started pushing himself back up on to his feet!

  Lightning flashed and Lisa saw that half of his neck was missing and his collarbone was exposed.“SHIT!” she cursed as she backed up towards the smashed door without taking her eyes from him when a scrawny woman bounced up on to her feet to her right shoving the last little morsel of flesh in to her mouth and dropped some as she stood up.

  Lisa backed up quicker and couldn’t help but look to see what the woman had dropped already wishing she hadn’t as she did. Lying on the floor by the woman’s feet was what remained of a scalp with blood splattered blonde ponytails with pink hair bands still attached.

  Acidic bile rushed up her throat burning her as it forced its way up against the inside of her lips and dribbled down her chin. She held her stare with the woman regardless. If she made a move Lisa wanted to know about it. Movement caught her attention and she glanced at the man she’d knocked down as he closed the distance coming towards her! Then she saw more figures rise up out of the corner of her eyes! Broken glass crunched under her rear most foot and that was her trigger to run!

  Lisa spun on her heels and took flight. She dove through the shattered patio door and out in to the icy cold black snow and started sprinting. She pumped her legs as hard as she could sucking in lung full’s of air. She dared a glance over her shoulder once as she crossed to the other side of the playground thinking it looked more like a power station coalfield than a playground now.

  She was alone.

  Why chase me when they have a feast sitting at their feet, she thought, hating every inch of herself for thinking of it like that. She glanced at the picnic bench that had Mandy worried, it had been abandoned. Beyond it she saw that the front doors had been forced open and nearby there was a long dark hump lying on the snow.

  Poor Bill, she thought as she ran around the end of the building. She stole another glance back. She still had no followers - at least not yet.

  She carried on feeling horrid. She was angry and upset, scared and relieved all at the same time.

  She hated herself for not being able to help any of the children or Bill or Mandy.

  She was angry that she’d fallen asleep earlier, thinking that if she’d been more alert instead of turning up in the dining hall sleepy eyed and slow just as the figures arrived she might have managed to save some lives.

  I failed them all, she thought, and she hated herself for it.

  She was afraid as well. Afraid of what was happening to the world around her.

  She had a feeling that this wasn’t just going to blow over like she first thought, there was more to this, much, much more than first thought. And along with those feelings, she was relieved to be out of the hall, away from the slaughter and with no one chasing after her.

  I’ve got to find Leann,she thought,I can’t fail her. I can’t and I WONT!

  “I know what I’m up against now,”she told herself as she ran,“I’ll be ready next time! Hold on Leann hun, wherever you are my sweetheart I’m coming for you, I’m coming.”

  A few strides along she uttered between gasps for air,“God bless you children. God bless you all. And Bill and Mandy. And if you are there God, please, please help the rest of us that are left.”

  She carried on ignoring her burning throat and lungs as she ran as fast as she could deeper in to the darkness....

  CHAPTER 32

  Andy leaned back letting out a big yawn as he rested his hands on his full stomach.

  He was tired from building and reinforcing barricades. He’d done it alone, giving Collin and Leann some space to come to terms with things and think things over together, plus he wanted some alone time for himself as well. He thought and worked better alone.

  After working on the barricades, he set to covering as many of the ground floor windows as he could, including the floor to ceiling glass. He used bedding sheets and pillowcases that he liberated from one of the house and furnishing shops. He fixed them up like rudimentary curtains using sticky tape to stop any infected people or animals from seeing in;or even looters!

  Then, once he was satisfied with his work, he broke into one of the shopping centre’s mountaineering and outdoor pursuits shops and changed in to some fresh clothes that were more suitable for their new conditions. While in the shop he took the time to pack a rucksack with some essentials he thought might come in handy when the time came for them to leave and then he set about finding some food. Real food!

  He worked his way around the shopping centre’s small cafes, breaking in to them, trying to cause as little damage as he could as he looked for food and checked to see if the cookers still worked.

  He found plenty pre-packaged sandwiches that already showed signs of decay, turning green around the edges, and none of the cookers worked. They were all electric.

  It wasn’t until he forced his way in to the M&S outlet that he found cookers that ran off gas. Delighted he set about checking the food stocks and found plenty that was still good to eat along the shop’s own food aisles.

  He heard the others walking the aisles looking for him. They were quietly calling out for him as they walked, and spurred on by his good mood from finding the food and the means to cook it with he jumped in to action.

  They were worried. They’d seen the broken glass and the forced doors.

  They were starting to wonder if they weren’t alone in the shopping centre after all. They both wondered if something might have happened to Andy.

  Neither of them said anything about their feelings to each other for the sheer fact that neither of them wanted to hear the thought out loud.

  Andy suddenly appeared beside them startling them both!

  He was standing inside the M&S main display window in the middle of their Christmas Wonderland display between an oversized cartoonlike Santa Clause mannequin and his cartoonlike reindeers grinning like psychopaths.

  “Ho, Ho. Ho!” he said with a chuckle,“C’mon, diners ready.”

  Relieved that Andy was ok, and both feeling stupid for thinking the way they had, Leann and Collin made their way inside the shop and followed him to the shops restaurant where they ate.

  Sirloin steak, pork chops and bacon, chicken breasts and even eggs and black pudding and baked beans were on the menu. Leann refused at first saying she wasn’t hungry but Andy managed to persuade her telling her she needed the energy to keep her strength up. Especially if she wanted to make her way home to her mum with the conditions outside being what they were, and the added dangers that waited for them. Plus who knew when they’d eat like this again, he told her.

  “The butcher shops are shut and the freezers ain’t working,”he said,“the only meat we’ll be eating soon enough will be what we kill.”

  Leann gave in, and once she started eating and tasted the food she ate just as greedily as the others did, until eventually she couldn’t possibly eat another thing.
She couldn’t even look at it.

  Afterwards they chatted for a while bouncing ideas off each other until they were all agreed they’d all leave together in a day’s time. Maybe even in two days now that they had food and could cook it. They all agreed that they’d load up with supplies and head to Leann’s first because it was closest. Andy actually lived the closest to the shopping centre but his flat was in the opposite direction and he lived alone. There was no-one for him to go home for, and so no reason to try and go there. They’d pick up Leann’s mum, maybe even stay a night or two there to recharge their batteries before they carried on to Collin’s grandparents with all the supplies they could possibly take with them from Leann’s and they’d all wait it out there until this all blew over. If it blew over!

  “There’s strength in numbers,”said Andy,“and with our joint supplies and a little rationing we’ll be able to see this thing through,hopefully.”

  Leann liked the idea. She dreaded the thought of being holed up with her mum in their tiny flat with those infected maniacs outside, or looters.Even animals! she thought, remembering the infected dog on the bus.

  Collin liked the idea of having Andy with them to help with things. He thought it would be good for his grandparents having him there. He would take most of the strain off his grandparents just by being the way he was. And he loved the idea of Leann staying over, even despite the situation.

  With the trek in mind Andy sent them both to the mountaineering shop where he’d changed and packed some gear. He told them to do the same and as they left to do just that, Andy called over to them,“Make sure you both grab one of these.”and he lifted a long black handled ice-axe up over his head for them to see. Leann raised her eyebrows and grimaced showing her dislike knowing all too well why Andy wanted them to have one.

  “Protection,”he said and she nodded knowing that ultimately he was right and she turned and headed for the mountaineering shop with Collin while Andy sat back and ran over the plan in his head trying to think of all the possible scenarios they might face while he enjoyed the feeling of being full. He doubted he’d feel like this again for a while. If ever!

  CHAPTER 33

  Dean, Gavin and Ann sat on the floor in a semi-circle facing David.

  Sam sat off to their right with his head high and his ears standing tall. He was alert and ready for action. They ate cold smoked sausage straight out the pack. Apparently one of David’s favourite snacks. Sam had his own small pile of sausage meat that was building up between his outstretched front legs as the others tossed some over for him.

  After reluctantly following David inside, they found themselves in the Castle Street pawn shop, of which David was the owner. It was a shop that none of them had ever been in, but on occasion Dean and Gavin had both glanced in through the window as they passed. There was always a varied selection of items on show ranging from the usual video games and consuls, DVDs CDs and TVs, and on occasion there’d been an air rifle or a sling shot, and more than once there’d even been an imitation decorative sword or fantastically shaped dagger for hanging on the wall that more often than not, originally came from one of the tourist shops across town. These always caught Gavin’s eye as he passed and he always told himself he’d buy one one day, when he had the spare cash. So far, that day hadn’t come.

  Relations between the four of them had started off tense and uncomfortable, but as it turned out David was actually ok.

  He was just extremely twitchy after suffering years of break-ins, and after all the violence and aggression he’d witnessed over the last twenty four hours he wasn’t taking any chances. The gun he’d pointed at them was real. He shot clay pigeons with it at the weekends, but it wasn’t loaded. It was for intimidation purposes only, and that together with his enormous muscular frame worked quite well.

  After their initial meeting David had been totally blown away by what he saw through the peephole in his back door. He hadn’t seen any infected yet. He told the others that maybe he had seen some, but just hadn’t realised it.

  “Everyone looked like shadows out in the ash,”he said. But he’d heard plenty of strange sounds. Unnatural sounds that he just couldn’t place. And there’d been screaming, lots of screaming.

  Thanks to the ground floor windows being bricked up, the horde of infected people in the backyard couldn’t see them, nor could they make any lasting impression on the solid steel back door, so their attack eased.

  After one too many break-ins David had bricked up all of the ground floor windows at the back of the shop and right now, they were all glad he had.

  David watched through the peephole as his backyard filled up with horrible looking infected people. He couldn’t believe his eyes, or his ears. The sounds he’d been hearing from out in the dark and polluted snow, since he battened down the hatches were all coming from infected people.

  Gradually the horde started to thin out, and some of them started climbing back out, and as the yard slowly cleared, five discoloured and badly gnarled up dogs emerged from within in the horde. They seemed to wander around aimlessly for a while, before suddenly going berserk.

  Within a flash they scaled the end wall that gave on to Connel Court steps and they tore off out of sight snarling and barking that horrible gurgle like sound.

  A few seconds later he heard screams. They all did.

  They were high pitched and desperate!

  The horde fell in to a frenzy behind them and quickly followed, climbing over each other and shoving each other out of the way to get over the wall. They sliced their arms and hands and thighs to shreds as they climbed over the jagged broken bottle top wall without a care.

  The screams got Ann crying. She knew what it meant.

  They all knew, and so did David but not fully. Not until he heard Gavin’s story about Eddy, and then what had happened to Keith. But he knew from the pitch of the sound scratching its way across the surface of his eardrum that it wasn’t good. He knew that somewhere out there, through the black snow and the choking ash, someone had been found by those infected freaks. Sniffed out by those terror dogs. The screams rose to an unimaginable pitch, ringing out louder that the crescendo of gurgles, and then they stopped dead.

  Cut short!

  Ann blurted out that she hated it as she covered her ears. But it was no good, she could still hear the horror.“Why isn’t anyone doing anything, why aren’t the army or someone here to help?”she sobbed.“I have to get home, I have to, I’ve got to get back to my boys.”

  Dean put an arm around her and she buried her face in his shoulder and wept.

  He nodded at the others, indicating for them to move away from the back of the shop and David led them through in to the main part of the shop. He told them that he didn’t want to get any of the ash from their clothing in to his apartment upstairs above the shop, just in case that’s what was spreading the infection: if that’s what it really was.

  So they settled down on the floor in front of the till counter, amongst the vast array of items for sale. David gave them all something to drink. It seemed he’d stocked up on a fair bit of Gatorade. And he put down some water for Sam using a replica WW2 soldier’s helmet for a bowl. Then he dug out the smoked sausages and passed them around.

  As they ate, and drank they felt relatively safe, at least for now.

  Nothing was coming in through the back door, and the shutters were down out the front, covering the main window, giving them confidence that nothing was about to burst in on them from the street, and Dean hoped that at the very least it would slow any infected down long enough for them to get moving.

  David went in to a bit of a daze after seeing the horde of infected in his back yard hammering and clawing at the thick steel door turning their hands in to bloody stumps without caring. Not slowing down, not giving up. Until they thought they had a better chance of hunting down someone else.

  He struggled to get his head around it all: they all did.

  “I don’t think there’s a rescue cent
re round at the Eastgate,”said David, coming out of his daze.

  “At least I haven’t heard of anything like that and I haven’t seen anyone making their way in that direction. I thought if anything that the rescue centre would be at the sports centre with the big halls and all that, but obviously not.”

  Dean shook his head.“I’m afraid not. And if it’s not the Eastgate then it must be at one of the schools. In which case we’re outa luck, coz we can’t go around every school in town. We’d be dead before we reached the second one with those things out there, that’s if we even made it that far.”

  “No! It won’t be a school,”said David.

  Ann looked up at him,“Have you heard something?”

  David shook his head sharply.“No, uh, what I mean is, I think Dean’s right, I think we’d have been told or something you know. Seeing as there’s so many schools around. It could be any of them. Like Dean said, people would have to try them one by one. Maybe it is at the Eastgate Centre, but I think I woulda seen people heading in that direction already.

  Dean said,“Maybe the power died before they had chance to broadcast. Either way we’ll be passing the Eastgate Centre so it won’t hurt us to check. We already know that it’s not at the leisure centre and the next biggest place in town is the Eastgate. We gotta try even if that’s all we do, see if we can find any answers to any of this, and if not. Well then we’ll just stick to our plan and take Ann home to Tim and her kids, and then we’ll get to the A9 and head north, back home to mum and dad.”Dean gave Gavin a nod as he finished. Gavin nodded back.

  “You’ve got it all figured out,”said David.

  “Have to,”said Dean,“there’s no second chances out there right now.”

  As he finished the shutters banged against the windows making them all jump!

  Sam was on his feet and halfway across the shop in a flash and Ann yelled out in reflex.

  “Shit!What the fuck was that?”blurted David getting to his feet.