Old World (The Green and Pleasant Land)

by Kennedy, Oliver

  We'd planted vegetables in the garden, we'd turned the house into a castle, we scavenged, we inventoried, we decapitated and we survived. Cough, cough, cough. I was sitting staring deep into flame which earnestly danced this way and that to avoid scrutiny when she spoke. “Rob” said my wife, my darling Sue.

  There comes a point, when you have been with someone so long, when so many sentences and feelings have passed between you that even with the space of a single word you can hear a hundred different meanings based on the tiniest alterations of inflection. There is the “Rob” that she would say if she wanted me to help with the drying up. There is the “Rob” she would say if she wanted me to help with a crossword puzzle. Then there was this “Rob”, the one she'd just said, the one I hated, the one that contained all the fear.

  My machete never left my side these days. It came to hand as easily now as say a pen or a mobile phone had done before. I joined her by the kitchen window. She'd just blown the candle out and a thin wisp of smoke was rising up and bumping against the glass as it slowly dissipated and became one with the universe. I put a comforting hand on a shaking shoulder, I looked out into the garden to try and spy what made my lady love tremble so.

  Something moved out there, between us and the lake lapping gently at the shore. The problem was that this wasn't cadaver movement. For all their horrific nature the maggot men are slow and easy to despatch provided they don't get the drop on you. This was different, this shadow did not shuffle or shamble it's way mindlessly through the bushes. It seemed to jump and leap with speed, it looked like a squat bulbous thing which bent the darkness to its form and scurried here and there with a malign yet unpredictable purpose.

  “Wake the boys” whispered Sue.

  “Let them sleep” came my foolhardy response.

  “Rob” she said. This was the 'Rob' that was half plead half command, this was the Rob that had been the cause of many disagreements, it was the 'Rob' which overruled me and I was often glad it did. I crept quickly and quietly up stairs which desired to creak but could not such was my knowledge of their weak points. The boys were together whereas my coughing girl had a room all of her own. I laid a hand on Zak who was instantly awake, we sleep lightly these days, Mac was roused from his slumber a few moments later.

  “There is something in the garden” I whispered. My heart soared with pride at their response, Zak was eighteen and Mac four years younger, but there was no fear, they nodded and drew meat cleavers and knives from beneath their pillows before following me downstairs.

  Sue had maintained a vigil by the window. “Still there?” I asked. She nodded.

  “Still there, trampling through the tomato vines” she said, sounding mightily offended that our night-time visitor was causing damage to the cherry plumbs.

  “Graveborn?” asked Mac in a voice that became less a boys and more a man's every day. “I don't think so, it's moving too fast, and it looks..” Sue hesitated “Different, not right somehow”. We all spent some time peering out into the darkness catching the occasional glimpse of what is what out there, however a waning moon was shedding little light this night and there was only so much we were going to be able to descry from inside.

  Though I was confident that all the entrances to the house were well protected I was not comfortable letting that thing have free reign outside. I pondered for a only a few moment more. Cough, cough, cough.

  “Zak, with me, Mac stay here with your mother” No objections, no arguments, just obedience, it was the only thing which had kept us alive at times. We removed the barricade from the side entrance of the house together, Zak and I slipped out into the darkness, the door closed behind us and I heard the scraping of tables and chairs being moved back up against it.

  We crept almost on all fours around the side of the house and into the back garden, my ears were attuned to the sounds of the night, none of which seemed untoward. We moved slowly to the vegetable patch, I felt squashed tomatoes as my fingers grazed the ground. I stood up to get a better look around. Then came the attack.

  This was definitely no cadaver, it leapt out of nowhere with incredible speed and flexibility. I lost my balance and went down under the weight of it, I lost my grip on the machete and turned as I fell pushing the bulbous thing away from me. It's skin did not feel cold and lifeless like the cadavers, it was warm, hot to the touch even, it seemed to writhe and pulsate beneath my grip. Zak shouted as he bulldozed into my attacker, knocking it from on top of me before it had a chance to sink in tooth and claw.

  As it rolled away, Zak helped me to my feet and handed me one of the spare knives from his belt. At that moment the waning moon managed to free itself from the restricting cloak of the clouds, even in the slim silver light of the crescent I was able to see it. My heart almost stopped before proceeding to beat faster than it had before. This wasn't a cadaver, this wasn't anything that I'd seen or heard of or even imagined before.

  There was no time to lose, we both rushed in, the thing launched another of its leaping attacks, this time I ducked slashing up at it as the form sailed over the top of me, it had barely landed when Zaks meat cleaver thudded into it. A horrifying scream pierced the night, a clunky bulging fist on the end of an elongated bony arm lashed out and sent my son sprawling to the ground clutching his chest in pain.

  I threw the knife, I'd never been much of a knife thrower in the before times but practise makes perfect and there had been plenty of practise on the road. Though the creature was squat and bulky I still outmatched it for size. As it was trying to remove the knife which was solidly embedded in it I seized the meat cleaver still jutting from its back and then jumped onto top of the writing mass forcing it to the floor.

  The gurgling screams echoed out into the darkness as I continued to hammer the cleaver into flesh and bone, the mist had descended again, as I continued to strike I saw images of Greg, flashes of my friend, I saw him underneath me pleading with me stop the attack, but I did not, I brought the blade down repeatedly until he was in pieces. The screaming stopped, the thing was not moving any more. I looked up at the house, I could see two faint silhouettes at the kitchen window.

  I pulled the thing down to the lake and rolled its body into the water, making a mental note to remove fish from the menu entirely.

  I grabbed Zak and we headed back to the side door where we already heard scraping as the barricade was being moved, the screaming could well have attracted cadavers and it would not do well to be caught out in the dark by a horde.

  We made our way inside and Sue hugged me despite the blood soaked shirt.

  “A cadaver?” she asked.

  “Yes” I replied quickly cutting Zak off and giving him a look that spoke volumes. He looked surprised but nodded in agreement at my lie.

  “Only a little one, possibly not long turned and that's why it moved like that” I said. Sue nodded and forced a smile, she knew I was lying but she also knew that I would not do so without reason.

  “Lets all get some sleep, we can go over what happened in the morning” They didn't take much convincing, Sue kissed me before tiptoeing up the stairs after the boys. I would see her soon. First I sat and poured myself a large helping of Mrs Robinsons whiskey. I sat and drank until my heart rate slowed and the panic abated. I thought about what I'd seen in those moments of moonlight, a creature from a nightmare, there had been no face, no legs, just arms, lots of long spindly arms around a fat round body, like some warped spider. Where the hell it screamed from I had no idea. One thing was for certain, alive or dead it was certainly not human.

  I continued to drink, later than I had intended but still I could not bring myself to surrender to sleep. It was the wee small hours when I took Mrs Robinsons old ham radio down from the shelf and started to cycle through the static. I did this often, a couple of times a week, kidding myself that maybe the world out there had come back to life and was waiting for us to rejoin it.

  I listened to the static for a time until suddenly the dial clicked onto silen
ce, it was a mid range FM frequency, but gone was the familiar hissing. Maybe I'd had too much whiskey, maybe the radio was knackered. I leaned in close to the speaker, I could hear something and the longer I listened the more convinced I became that I could hear breathing, when a voice spoke I nearly jumped out of my skin. There it was, clear, concise, and soft reaching across the radio waves, a voice asking a question over and over again, “Are you feeling better?”.

  Chapter 3, The old man

  More time passed, decisions weighed heavily upon me. Sue wanted to move, to find help for Ellie who grew paler by the day and whose cough grew into a spectre more threatening than any cadaver. I wanted to go and find help also, but there was nowhere to go, after seeing the world fall to pieces I could not responsibly believe that it had sewn itself back together in such a short space of time.

  Everyday I scanned the radio waves, finding nothing but that strange station with the question repeated over and over, mixed in with occasional bursts of manic laughter and the sound of blade on blade. I kept that discovery of the station to myself, it seemed the kind of revelation that would only add to the worry.

  My sons were restless. They bickered, the fought for attention, they fought to prove themselves despite having already done so many, many times. We were all restless. It exacts a heavy toll when the totality of your life comes down to sitting around waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I took to ranging, further and further afield, I found a boat moored nearby, I rowed around the lake, as much to vent the some pent up frustration as to explore. Time was running out...

  Lungs were burning, old lungs which had seen better days many years ago.

  Then, about a week after the fight with the freak of the many arms I went on a wide range over the hills to see what I could see, I took Mac with me, usually I took Zachary but my younger son was becoming jealous, besides, he need to learn what was out there just as much as his older sibling. It was high summer and the green and pleasant land had become just that, bathed in light and teeming with life.

  The trees were the cadavers of nature, except they had the good grace to die and decay away before being resurrected in a different form and a different time, unlike the victims of the Deathwalker Virus, dead who did not know they were so, who clung to life with lifeless fingers, driven by a dark purpose that even they did not know.

  Despite the heat and the sun I could not help but note the hazy field in the sky, a grey tinge to the glorious blue of the before times. I'd watched plenty of documentaries and disaster movies which talked about a nuclear winter, but a nightmare described and not witnessed is a nightmare that is hard to recognise for what it is. Is this as they had described? Would this be the last summer as the heavens slowly filled with the ash and dust of the world. I had no idea, it could go on the list of such.

  Stretched and stringy muscles filled with acid. He was not built for this kind of punishment. But he must keep going. He must survive for just a few moments more, because each moment is valuable, though moment is a footstep which exacts a heavy toll on the life span of he who runs.

  I didn't know it when I got up this morning but today would be the day when an event would come to pass. Life is not a straight line, life is a memory which we are forgetting even as we live it. Events occur which sent us spinning this way and that, they are not so much stepping stones, for they trip us as often as they aid us along the way.

  Walking along with Mac I was reminded of many walks which we'd taken when he was a young boy, I used to take them out alone sometimes for I wanted my children to know that though we were whole as a family, each of them had my love and my time as individuals. As we gazed over the Lake District national park I caught hold of such a thread of recollection, I closed my eyes and followed it back in time, I breathed deep the warm air of the Summer and I almost forgot, I came so close to peace, then I heard the cry for help and the horror descended, the grey film of dust that hung above us choked off the blue sky of memory.

  From what have I escaped? I have traded one nightmare for another. My heart beats as if to deafen me. Ah, and I am done, the last of my strength fades from me. Even as I collapse down into the shelter of the shade I can hear their slavering maws coming for me. But alas, it seems I have a few moments more to treasure, for a few rays of determined light do pierce down through the ceiling of the trees, and through them I see the living, a man and a boy, a father and a son.

  We are insane. This is a very bad move. The arrogant part of me thinks that we are driven by nobility, some desire to preserve life. The realistic part of me knows that I am doing this out of combination of bloodlust and desperation. The anger which was unleashed during Greg's demise has not abated, it rests sometimes but it has been born and will be denied life by no will that I possess. Also, you never know who you might end up saving in this kind of world.

  There are about a dozen cadavers in all bearing down on the old man who has collapsed into a sweating gasping heap on the floor. It is a group that we would normally have hidden from, too big to handle with just the two of us. What kind of idiot would endanger his son like this?

  “Circle around, hit them from behind, don't put yourself in the middle” I shout to Mac as we rush towards the scene of unfolding violence. The seconds are whizzing by with unseemly haste. I am saddened to see that we will not be in time to fully save the old man's life, one of the cadavers has already reached him and has sunk its teeth into the flesh of the old timers calf. There is a weak scream in response, judging from the condition of the victim the bite will only serve to hasten the inevitable conclusion, but perhaps we can buy him a few more breaths.

  Mrs Robinson had an old hatchet for chopping wood which judging from the rust on it when I found had not been used for many years. But after some vigorous cleaning and my developing skill with a whetstone it was now a razor sharp implement of cadaver destruction. In my left hand it complimented the old faithful machete in my right very nicely indeed. The dance began.

  It was cooler here in the shade of the trees which covered the foothills around Windermere, though I think the goosebumps are very little to do with the temperature. The first cadaver I took was busy chewing on pieces of the old man's leg to notice me, not that it would have defended itself if it had, they were empty of any intellect that might pertain to a desire for self preservation.

  The hatchet took off half of its head, my exultation was brief for I was now surrounded by a sea of growls and outstretched arms. In such a remote area it was odd to see this many cadavers gathered together in the wild. Some had thick grey fingers and short stubby nails, others had long sharp nails which had once held pretty pictures and an array of garish colours.

  I slashed here and there like a madman, they painted me with blood so dark that it was more black then red. They lost hands and arms but they still shuffled in. I would equate fighting cadavers to what it must be like to fight a maddened dog which has moved beyond the ability to feel pain. Attacks to the knees, the groin, the chest, these are largely ineffective, a heart that does not beat will not burst with enthusiasm for causing death in its host.

  Taking the head, destroying the brain is the only way to ensure victory. But in these circumstances, with eleven of the things crowded around me, I take what I can get. Severed fingers can no longer claw at me, the kneecaps shorn off by the sweeping arcs of my machete cause their owners to at least fall to the floor where they are forced to crawl towards their prey.

  Despite my furious slashing I can still feel my will being undone. I trip over the old man who I've almost forgotten about behind me. The shadows of the cadavers loom over me, mixing in the shade of the trees which loom over us all, looking down from their lofty boughs in revulsion at the bloody mortal madness that has become this world.

  Then he is there, my son. Mac favours hammers. He has two, salvaged from Mrs Robinsons old tool box, the tools had once belonged to her husband Reg, who had used them to tend to the home of his lady wife, and more often than not fix damage to
his model boats which he sailed on the lake in his retirement. They passed from him to her and now they had passed to my son who used them for a very different but still entirely worthwhile purpose.

  We were not warriors before, but have become so through necessity, I have seen him practising this deadly dance in the garden, now implemented with devastating effect. For a few moments I lay in awe at my boys martial prowess. Cadaver heads explode like melons, steel claws crush long dead skulls, pulling them apart as if they were eggshells. But he is in amongst them and is in need of my help. I surge to my feet with blades in hand, together we paint the woodland red, gore and grey matter splatter across the trunks of trees who have never seen such vile slaughter in all their long years of looking down upon the savagery of nature.

  It is over quick enough, the maws have been sated in their lust by the blood of their own bodies, they will not feast again, they will join the earth as they were meant to. I look at Mac, once I have assessed him from head to toe for any hint of a bite or scratch then I allow the pride to show in my smile. “Well done” he returns the smile and the compliment with a nod of recognition at my own violent endeavours.

  Then I remember the old man, the purpose of our heroism. He is of an age, which would explain why such slow shuffling enemies had been able to keep up with him. Where he had come from I could not guess, his clothes were soiled tatters, flecked with as much dirt as blood.

  “Can you hear me?” I ask him. He is struggling to breath and I fear it unlikely that he has the energy for words. I roll him onto his back with his head resting on my knees, I give him some water from my canteen before questioning him again.