by Ian Woodhead
Jacob switched off the television and decided to find out what had happened to his Internet connection. He hoped to Christ that those bastards hadn’t cut him off. If they had, there would be seven levels of hell to pay. It’s not as if he owed the company any money.
While he was checking the wires downstairs, it might be a good idea to grab something to eat. Jacob had forgotten the last time he’d eaten anything more filling than a packet of crisps. Maybe he could convince his mum to make him a sandwich. She was still in; he had heard her moving about a few minutes ago.
Jacob wondered why she was still in the house. She ought to be down at the Horse and Jockey by this time, propping up the bar. It’s what she did on a Friday. What the hell was he talking about? She was in that place every fucking night. He remembered having his eighteenth birthday in that dump. God, that was embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as finding out that every scumbag on the estate called his own mum ‘Scary Mary’.
He slid his chair back and gave Bub a salute. The poster of zombie Bub from the original Day of the Dead movie directly above him saluted back. Apparently, Dead City Rising 2 was going to have sprinting zombies in the game. He hoped to Christ that the rumor was wrong. It would completely ruin the game. Everybody knew that zombies did not run. It was like the first commandment or something.
He reached into his back pocket and brought out his phone. If Mum was home, then no doubt the fat bitch would be guzzling her way through the bottles of White Lightning cider at the side of the telly. She would be too fucked to stand up, never mind make him a sandwich. Fuck it, he’d just order out instead; the diet could wait until tomorrow.
There was no signal on his phone. Oh bollocks! That’s just what he wanted to see. He'd have to go downstairs anyway to use the house phone, if he could find the bloody thing. Christ knows where his mum would have put it this time. Buying the messiest woman in the known universe a cordless phone for Christmas wasn’t one of his better ideas. Jacob opened his bedroom door and wandered down the stairs.
When Jacob was a kid, his dream was to wake up one day to find that someone had swapped his parents during the night. He’d open his eyes to find himself in a luxurious house, clean and tidy and full of toys, and best of all, his parents spoke to him like he was a normal human being. What was he talking about? He still had that dream. To have a mother that didn’t drink herself to oblivion or leave the house looking like a bomb site every day would be so cool. Jacob stepped over a pair of her dirty knickers draped over a pile of old newspapers.
His other dream as a kid was to find out that he really was adopted, and his real parents turned up one day to take him away from all this. Looking back, he guessed they were just two variations of the same desire. Jacob had always wondered if there was a grain of truth to his fantasy. He wasn’t a bit like his two parents. Unlike those dirty slobs, he kept his bedroom immaculate. Then again, he did spend most of his free time in there.
The eighteenth birthday party disaster had put to rest any notions of him accompanying his mum to the pub every night.
Somehow, Jacob managed to get to the foot of the steps without breaking his neck. He cringed when he saw his mother’s buttery fingerprints coating the door handle. He took a step back, lifted up his foot and booted the door open. Jacob shook his head in dismay before wandering into the living room.
Mary Kingsley wasn’t sitting in her favourite chair, nor had she opened any bottles of cider. Scary Mary was kneeling down in front of the television, holding their pet cat’s legs in both hands with her face buried deep in its open, bloody stomach.
“What the fuck are you doing?” screamed Jacob.
Mary dropped the dead cat and lifted her vast bulk off the carpet, frothy scarlet gore dripping off her jowls. She let out a single bubbly groan and took a single shambling step towards her son.
He took one look at those dead eyes set into her fat face, and it clicked. “Oh my fucking God,” gasped Jacob. “My mum is a fucking zombie!”
Jacob stumbled out of the living room and charged up the stairs. His racing mind rushed through the first level on Dead City Rising. He remembered whacking a big fat zombie woman in the underground train station. He’d thrown a fire extinguisher at her head. Oh bloody hell. There must be something similar he could use to dispatch his mum.
He stopped at the top of the stairs and opened the curtains so he could check the outside. He just had to see if the rest of the estate was in the same situation; he had time. Jacob knew from experience that although a zombie’s sense of smell was far superior to a human’s, height confused them. Even with the steps right in front of her; it would take her fucking ages to reach him.
Jacob looked out the window and grinned like a lunatic. The zombie apocalypse had arrived. Oh God, this was just brilliant. He watched a lurching woman with no arms turning in a circle as an old man kept dancing forward, slicing into her with a long knife, then dancing back out of her reach. A bit further down near the main road, there was another zombie on the ground. One lad had his boot on the zombie’s arse while another bloke kept smashing what looked like a snooker cue over the zombie’s head. He had to get outside and join in.
His mum had managed to find the stairs, but she had yet to figure out how to climb them.
“What’s wrong, you dumb bitch?” he taunted, “Are the stairs a bit too hard for you to work out? Come on, you stupid fat fuck, get me if you can.”
He decided to kill her with Dad’s old lava lamp. The glass would shatter, obviously, but the base was mega heavy. Hell, he didn’t even have to move from the top step to do it.
“You wait there, Mum, I’m gonna get you a nice surprise,” he said before rushing into his parents’ bedroom. He hated going in there, not because he respected their privacy or anything. It just smelled bad, like a cross between sweaty socks and rotting bacon grease.
The stench in here tonight was even worse than normal, Jesus! What the hell had she been doing? Jacob held his nose and scanned the dingy room for the lamp. This was just disgusting. He’d seen tidier landfill sites. He heard his mother groaning away at the bottom of the stairs. Despite his mocking, he was a little surprised that she was still down there and waiting for him. Jacob thought that once she could no longer see him, she’d go back into the living room to finish off the cat.
At last his eyes caught sight of the lamp buried under a couple of bulging black bin liners under the window. His parents’ bed was the only thing in there that was relatively free of detritus. He couldn’t even see the carpet. There had been evidence of a tidy up, by which he meant all the rubbish had been pushed to the edges of the room, but that would have been in the distant past. Torn supermarket carrier bags spilling their contents of old newspapers and puzzle magazines competed for space with discarded clothes and DVDs.
He figured out what the spicy new stench was when he located several piles of dried cat shit layered between a horse racing pullout and an old TV listings magazine. Jacob stood on the head of a broken vacuum cleaner and dove onto the bed. There was no way he was standing on that carpet.
As he bounced across the bed, Jacob weighed up the pros and cons between going it alone or joining a group. Judging by how his zombie mum was acting, these buggers were the slow type. He smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d be so fucked if they were sprinters.
“Up yours, Dawn of the Dead remake.”
Racking up a decent kill count shouldn’t be that much of a problem. God, he so wished that he could get hold of a shotgun. That thought made him smile, considering that he lived in one of the roughest housing estates in the North of England. It wouldn’t be that hard to find an empty house with a couple of weapons hidden under the floorboards.
He stood still in the middle of his parents’ bedroom, thinking about this. In Dead City Rising, they always hid the weapons under the floorboards. He supposed that was the advantage of it being a British game. If it was American, finding guns and spare ammo would be easier. Jacob had never been t
o the States, but from what he’d read, you could pick up assault weapons over the counter in any shop. He grinned. How cool would it be to go to Tesco, buy a packet of doughnuts, a can of Pepsi, and stop off at the gun aisle to grab an AK47 and enough banana clips to fill a trolley?
That was decided then, his first priority once he’d fucked his mum over would be to find a gun.
As more unfortunate souls joined the ranks of the dead, their swelling numbers would present a major predicament. He had no desire to go the same way as his game character, thank you very much.
Joining the nearest band of survivors would probably be his best chance of surviving the apocalypse. The social barriers that prevented him from interacting with the rest of the people on Breakspear would now be gone. Everybody would work together in order to defeat the common adversary. Any group would, of course, welcome Jacob with open arms. Everyone on the estate knew that he was the resident zombie expert. For the first time in his life he would be accepted and loved. They’d love him even more if he was armed to the fucking teeth.
Jacob kneeled down at the edge of the bed and pushed his arm through the black metal railings on the footboard, reaching towards the lava lamp. As soon as he’d finished taking out his zombie mum, Jacob could get on with enjoying his new life. His future had never looked so bright.
The boy squealed when a hand snaked out from under the bed and fastened around his wrist. He tried to pull away, but only succeeded in dragging the owner of the appendage out.
“Oh God no, Dad, let go please!”
His father regarded him with dead eyes, then opened his mouth and like a cobra, darted forward. The searing pain exploded through Jacob’s body when the man bit into his bicep. He reared back with a lump of his son’s arm still in his mouth; only then did he release Jacob.
The boy fell back clutching his damaged arm, moaning and sobbing, gazing in disbelief as his scarlet life fluid spurted through the cracks in his fingers. He was so fucked. This was so not fair! Jacob didn’t want to become a fucking zombie! He looked up, whimpering when he discovered that his mother had found her way up the stairs. He sobbed one last time as the dead woman lurched up to the edge of the bed and fell onto him with her mouth wide open.
Chapter Six
That last screw had somehow managed to defeat every tool in Kevin’s modeling box. Even the butter knife that he found under his bed was no match for the stubborn bastard. In the end, he just lost his head and battered the fucker off the wall with the end of a never-worn ice-skating boot. To make things worse, the noise he made got those things outside his door all worked up.
Kevin had thought, or had at least hoped, that they had gotten bored with waiting and left the house, but no, they were still there. To make matters worse, if that was fucking possible, he heard three different moans. It appeared that Thom wasn’t as dead as Kevin had first thought. Bloody hell! What did you have to do to kill the bastards?
He gazed down at the genuine piece of war memorabilia and wondered if this would stop them. It was sharp enough to cut through flesh, he had no doubts about that. He had made a right mess of his Star Wars wallpaper while practicing his stabbing techniques.
His bayonet wasn’t really the issue. Kevin knew, deep down, that he could be armed with an assault rifle and grenades and still be in the same position. The problem was with him. He had never been the confrontational type, which was ironic considering the vast amount of military junk that littered his room. It was doubly ironic considering where he lived.
Ever since he was young, he had negotiated or tricked his way out of potential fights and arguments, and if that didn’t work then he just ran as far and as fast as his legs could take him. Kevin was very good at running away. He’d had plenty of practice.
He almost jumped out of his skin when one of those dead things banged against the door. Those tactics weren’t going to work with those things though, were they? Oh Jesus, just where the hell could he go? Kevin was trapped in his bedroom. He hurried over to his window and peered out. He might have a chance out there on the street. He spun around as they banged on the door yet again. This time, he actually saw the doorframe shake.
His gut dropped when he saw a pair of mottled grey hands appear under the door. The fuckers were trying to find a way in. How long would it take them to burst in here and launch into his poor body? He guessed maybe an hour, and if he was really lucky, maybe two hours. He shook his head and pressed his back against the door, knowing that even with the blade he’d be hard pressed to stop one, never mind three of the bastards.
How long would it take them to realize that his door wasn’t as solid as it looked? His dad had once put his fist through his sister’s door during one of their drunken arguments. The fingers disappeared, and the banging resumed. They were going to be through that bloody door as if it was made from paper maché. He let out a hysterical giggle; it probably was.
The door handle began to turn and Kevin screamed.
“No you flipping don’t!”
He raced over, grabbed the foot of his bed, and pushed it across the door. Bloody hell! He was such an idiot! He should have done that in the first place! Why didn’t he run into Claire’s bedroom? Her door had a massive lock and bolt on it. The handle swung down and flipped back up again. Were they learning or remembering? Why was he even asking? If he didn’t do something, he would soon be their dinner; even with the bed blocking the door, it wouldn’t hold them forever.
The light from the full moon shone through the window. He heard no sounds at all from outside. There had been a few screams earlier, but nothing for a good few minutes since. He picked his bayonet off the bed and opened the window to get a better view. Breakspear looked deserted. He looked up and saw the telltale flashing light of an aircraft slowly descending.
“Maybe it’s just happened in the estate. I bet the rest of England is still OK ...”
The handle turned, and this time it stayed down. He leaned out. It was a fair way to drop, but the ground should be soft. If he stayed in the middle of the road and ran like fuck, he’d be out of this godforsaken estate and back on the main road in five minutes.
“And back to normality.”
He threw the bayonet out, looked up and down the street one last time, and climbed onto the windowsill. When he saw those things pushing open the door a couple of inches, sliding the bed away from the wall, he screamed again and nearly jumped there and then.
They still couldn’t get in, not yet anyway. Kevin turned, his eyes fixed on that door. Two pairs of hands reached around and inched up and down the edge. He was pretty sure one pair belonged to his sister.
Maybe there was a cure for this already. Maybe it still wasn’t too late to save the ones affected.
“I’ll come back, Claire,” he whispered. “I promise.” He eased his legs and body out into the warm night air. He doubted that the drop would hurt him if he hung from the window and dropped to the ground; it should only be a few feet.
As he clung to the outside window ledge, preparing to let go, his boot was grabbed. He jerked his head down and saw Thom’s head leaning out of the open living room window, the boy’s hand guiding his foot towards his snapping jaws. He felt his fingers slipping. Oh fuck. If he let go now, he would break his bastard neck when he hit the ground.
He swung his other foot into Thom’s face and felt the crunch of broken teeth, but the grip on his boot still remained firm. Kevin booted him again. This time he managed to find the spot he’d already hit with the binoculars. His foot sank into Thom’s head. It felt like he’d just booted a watermelon. The hand released his foot just as both of Kevin’s hands slipped off the wooden sill. He instinctively brought up his knees when his feet crashed into the lawn.
Kevin rolled away from the window, and then shakily got back on his feet. He had done it! He couldn’t believe that he’d just jumped out of his own pissing window. Kevin reached down, snatched his bayonet out of the lawn, and looked over at the downstairs window.
He managed a strangled laugh. “Got you that time, didn’t I?”
Thom half sprawled out of the window, and he wasn’t moving. Kevin tapped Thom’s head with the flat of his blade, then jumped back. He still didn’t move.
“Yeah, I got you that time,” he repeated. He used the deep grass to wipe off the thick mess coating the front of his boot. Events would have been so much different if Kevin had opted to wear his comfortable fabric trainers when he changed out of his school uniform tonight. His stomach suddenly rebelled.
“Oh Jesus!” Kevin fell to his knees and threw up his last meal into his dad’s flowerbed.
The sound of moaning made him look up towards his bedroom window. He wiped his chin on the back of his hand, then let out a small moan of his own. His sister had managed to get into his bedroom. Claire’s hungry eyes viewed him much as a dog looked at a rabbit. She slowly blinked before turning around and disappearing from view.
He rushed over to the garden gate, unlatched it, and ran out into the still-deserted street. Kevin glanced behind him, and he could see Claire through the kitchen window making her way towards the open front door. Oh fucking hell! The bitch was following him.
Yeah, well let her. It’s not like she’d be able to catch him. Kevin ran into the middle of the road and sprinted to the end of the street. He then stopped and turned around. Claire had reached the gate. She paused, too, then slipped out of the garden and lurched away in the opposite direction.
Kevin turned onto Breaks Road and walked over to the white lines. He stopped in the middle and slowly turned in a tight circle. It felt like he was the last person on the estate still alive. Nothing moved. The main road leading out of the estate was at the end of this street. He consoled himself knowing that in a few moments his nightmare would be over.