There was a quiet moment of tension as the ugly bastard considered Dean’s casual threat.
“We’ll see you again, pig,” declared Fugly, lowering the shotgun. “The Nomads got you marked.” Then he looked at me and put one hand on his crotch, sneering a filthy leer my way. “Me and my boy will see you too, honey.” He gave his crotch a faint thrust my way while still touching himself to illustrate his intentions.
I just laughed. “I’ve worn heels bigger than your dick, my little chipolata, and squeezed out wet post-curry turds prettier than you. So, unless you want me to give you a 5.56 makeover on that bag of smashed arseholes you call a face, do as the nice officer says and fuck the fuck off, eh?”
Even some of Fugly’s minions had trouble stifling a laugh at that. Sarah was almost in fits, shoulders shaking and snorting like a piglet as she tried to suppress her laughter.
“Eloquent.” I couldn’t see Dean’s face as he was behind me, but I could hear the smile as he said it.
Fugly’s butt-crack smile was slapped off his scabby lips and his features clouded over with barely contained violence. His face twisted with as much hate as the undead do just before they lunge.
Freya, this guy is not a good dude. I feel like not shooting him there and then might just cause pain for some other poor survivor down the road and that worries me. However, putting him down then with his gun pointing down and his crew edging to leave without eating a bullet would have been cold-blooded murder. I can’t go down that dark path because there’s no coming back from it, and probably the kind of fuckery that contributed to the dead sitting back up to judge us all. I don’t have room for hate in my heart, so I have to be better than that.
I do have a little space in my heart for some “go fuck yourself” though.
Gun still lowered in his right hand, Fugly raised his left in a finger gun and mimicked shooting me, like I was going to be intimidated.
“Nomads got you all marked, bitches.” Then he put his arm in the air and spun it in a circle. “We’re out.”
We kept all our guns trained on them as they moved past us in a line on foot, waiting a good five minutes after they’d disappeared before relaxing even a tiny bit.
“Sarah, Isaac, stay here and stay ready. Keep your eyes out for any sign.” The two nodded. “Erin, you’re with me.”
The two of us approached the house, slinging our rifles down as we waved up in a friendly manner to the window.
“It’s okay, it’s safe now. My name is Dean Williams, and I was a police sergeant before everything fell apart. This is my foster-daughter, Erin Locke.”
I was blown away. He’d never said that before, even though that’s how he and Maria had always treated me. I got a warm squishy feeling inside when I heard that, and it cheered my mood considerably.
“Are you all okay?” I shouted up. “Is anyone hurt?”
“No,” the woman shouted down, her eyes still looking out beyond Isaac and Sarah to make sure the thugs had gone.
“We’re from a small community just out looking for supplies,” I continued. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”
The front door opened and a man in his thirties appeared. He was mixed race, probably from one black parent and one white, judging by the beautiful russet colour of his skin. It’s the same colour as Charlie’s, where the perfect blend of both parents has created this glowing skin tone that sits smack bang in the middle of the white and black genes.
The most striking thing that caught my eye, however, was his green eyes. They were like polished jade. Absolutely gorgeous, and they sparkled even brighter when contrasted with his darker skin.
He looked physically fit, if a little thin. A thick beard shrouded the lower half of his face and his dark hair was long and thick.
The newcomer took us all in quickly, assessing us, and I almost had Nate’s voice in my ear telling me this guy had seen action in some way. He was vigilant, took us all in at a glance, was ready to act if he needed, but wasn’t threatening in any way. Confident, despite the rifles slung across our chest.
“A timely intervention officer,” he said. His voice was deep with a hint of southern accent. Not thick cockney, but just a hint to the way some of his words were pronounced.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, stepping forward and thrusting out my hand. “Erin, but everyone calls me Lockey.”
“Elijah,” he replied. Then with a smile added, “But everyone calls me Eli.”
Okay Freya. I’m not easily giddy, and Eli is a decent looking guy with that lovely skin and amazing eyes, but holy shit, when he smiled, he was drop dead gorgeous. You know how they say some people smile with their whole body? That was what happened to Eli. His face shined, his eyes seemed brighter, and his whole posture changed to warm and friendly.
I am ashamed to say this, but I actually went, “Ha, yeah, cool,” as he shook my hand, like some fucking giddy teenage geek girl that’s just been noticed by the hottest guy in class. I am never lost for words. Never. But when that pretty bastard hit me with that smile, my mind went all foggy and my tongue felt about three times too big.
I feel like such a tool now.
I’ll give you the rundown on our new friends, as there were five of them in total.
Elijah Beckett – who henceforth I shall just refer to as Eli – is thirty and a trained paramedic. Talk about striking gold. Not only that, but I was right about my feeling. He served in 3 Medical Regiment in the British army for six years as a CMT. That’s Combat Medical Technician for the uninitiated, which I was. He’s a fully trained soldier which is great, as it means another able shooter, but this is a guy who had to patch people up in the field, while under fire, to keep them alive until they could be evacuated to a military hospital. It’s like the military battlefield version of a first responder, from what I can gather. I imagine that takes some serious cool to patch someone up while bullets are raining down. Plus, more medical support for Maria is awesome.
Eli served in Afghanistan too, at the big military base there called Camp Bastion, and has seen active duty under fire.
I don’t know why, but when he said the camp’s name, I got a little shiver, like someone had just walked over my grave. Weird.
Anyway, with Eli is his younger brother, Theodore.
Side note here. Elijah and Theodore Beckett. You just don’t hear cool as fuck names like that round here. Everybody is Dave, Steve, Mike, John, Andy, and all those other common names. Elijah and Theodore Beckett sound like something out of a movie. Awesome names.
Theodore is early twenties, and is on the autism spectrum somewhere, though he seems quite high functioning. Apparently, he’s got perfect recall – like full on eidetic memory – and also has savant syndrome. Eli says he loves to draw and has beyond normal skills, able to recreate anything he’s seen from memory in perfect detail. That’s amazing, and I look forward to seeing that.
Eli left the service when their mum died. While Theodore can generally take care of himself, he struggles with the difficulties of emotional engagement and refuses to make eye contact with anyone except Eli. He speaks in a sort of flat, almost robotic manner, like his mind is always somewhere else and his mouth is doing the speaking for him. It’s devoid of emotion from what I’ve heard so far.
Eli used his skills learned in the military and flew through paramedic training so he could have a civilian job and be near his brother who needed him.
Well, my candle for the green-eyed saver of lives just started burning a little brighter. What a thoroughly decent and noble thing to do. After seeing how the brothers interact this evening here on campus, and how sweet and gentle Eli is with him, I’m fairly sure I heard my ovaries screaming.
The other survivors are a family unit. Clyde Ritchie is a big Scottish fellow in his early thirties (can you get a more Scottish name than Clyde Ritchie?) He’s a mechanic and welder by trade, so again, an awesome skill set. He moved to Cheshire to be with wife Ellie, which is short for Elizabeth. Again, she’s early thirt
ies, really pretty and very warm. I think she might be the best find of the lot.
Freya, she’s a hair stylist.
We are a shaggy, messy bunch of apocalypse grunge hippies at the moment, so getting haircuts is high on the agenda, I think. We’ll need to get her the supplies and hit a salon for them, but fuck you, oh split ends of doom; your days are numbered.
Their son is Max, who is the same age as Charlie. When we came back to campus, well, those two hit it off like they were best friends in some former life that have just been reacquainted in this one. They love all the same things, they spent all evening chatting away, giggling, and playing video games, and Mark and Clyde got on like a house on fire as well. A mechanic and an engineer? Shit, those two will be geeking out over all things clunky and oily.
We decided to put the Ritchie family in the third and final little house in the maintenance area. Max and Charlie can hang out, and Mark and Clyde will likely be working closely together, so it makes sense. Letting the little family units with boys the same age live next to each other just seems right. I have no doubt that Ellie and Norah will become fast friends as well.
I’m so stoked by how happy Charlie is now. Having a kid his own age, who he gets on with so well, is amazing.
Eli and Theodore were put in one of the small staff houses that’s across from Hall Fire. With Theodore’s special needs, putting him in a large dorm with others might be a bit of a sensory overload for him. Eli nearly wept in joy when we told him and was so damn grateful it nearly had us all in floods.
The five of them were blown away by Crenshaw. Power, hot showers, clean water, food, vehicles, security, heating… all five of them spent most of the afternoon on the tour in a daze, hardly believing their luck. Clyde got a glass of water from the tap and laughed like he had just seen the most incredible invention of the era, shaking his head in awed disbelief.
They’ve all had it pretty hard and it’s a testament to their tenacity that they’ve lasted this long, just scavenging house to house, keeping on the move, avoiding the undead where they can. Max is a little trooper, and it can’t have been easy for Theodore.
I’m not shortening it to Theo in my journal so I can get it right in my head. Apparently, it’s one of his idiosyncrasies that we need to be aware of. His name is Theodore, so we have to call him by his full name, or he gets upset.
The last thing I want to note down are these so called ‘Nomads’ that we scattered. Eli and Clyde both said they’ve had run ins with smaller groups and just managed to avoid them, but they’re a bad bunch. They must have some smarts to have lasted this long, so at least one of them must have a strategic brain, but there is definitely a large group somewhere in town making a home base, and they have smaller groups that go scavenging. Eli has seen two other groups with people that weren’t in the mob we sent packing, which suggests that there are more than the twenty that chased the Becketts and the Ritchies into that house about five minutes before we rolled up.
We’ll have to keep an eye out for them, as they’re a bit of a wild card now when we’re house clearing. For the first time, it feels like we’re directly competing for resources against another local group. We’re clearly better armed, but that just means they might get sneaky. We can never afford to be complacent with the undead plague, but thinking humans have the potential to be far more dangerous. Especially vengeful ones.
For once though, we got somewhere in time to help strangers, and for that I am thankful. This feels like a huge win.
Tomorrow, I’m going to make Sarah play the piano for me and make good on her promise. I’m feeling good after this win today, so I’m in the mood for some music.
NOVEMBER 30th, 2010
WHITE CLOUDS
We’ve been really busy settling the newcomers for a couple of days and doing stuff around campus. Boring, everyday stuff, checking things, taking stock of stuff, blah blah boring blah. I never got my piano concerto from Sarah.
Today however, I did. We had a quiet hour in the afternoon, and I ambushed her. Just the two of us I said, as I just really wanted to hear her play.
She took me to the music department, which didn’t look like any bloody music department in any school I ever went to. In one room which looked like a little Victorian library, a grand piano stood in one corner next to a huge bay window, the wide sill scattered with cushions to create a little chill out spot, looking out over the school’s green fields.
I sat on the bay window and asked her what she was going to play. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin? I mentioned those because they were the only three that I knew and told her so, not having a clue which one it would be if she started playing.
“No, I’ll play a modern one,” she laughed. “My mum passed in 2006, and this was released a couple of years earlier by an Italian composer and pianist named Ludovico Einaudi.”
I nodded like I’d heard of him. I hadn’t.
“Mum fell in love with it and would forever play it. When she died, I played it at her funeral.”
My mouth dropped at that. “That seems really… personal,” I said softly. “If it’s too hard, play something else.”
She shook her head with a little smile. “No, it’s the piece I always go to when I want to think of her. Whenever I play it, I feel connected to her, like she’s with me, her hands on mine, guiding them on the keys.”
That is some deep shit for an eighteen-year old woman to drop. I was already tearing up.
“I haven’t played it since… well… since everything.” She paused for a moment. “Since dad went too.” She sighed, gave me a heartbreakingly sad smile, and sat down at the keys. “Just sit and listen. I hope you like it.”
“What’s it called?”
“Novule Bianche,” she answered.
“Which translates to?”
“White Clouds.”
I took my place by the window, settled myself in, not knowing what to expect.
And then she started to play.
Music has an unquestionable power on the human soul. It can break hearts, evoke memories, call tears of joy, and bring hope. When you hear the right piece of music, you feel it. It speaks to you, as if the music was yours and yours alone.
This was Sarah’s tribute to her parents, her connection to them, and I felt every single note.
The music is breathtaking, a gentle waltz of notes that draws you in, and captivates your attention. Soft and harmonic, I found my eyes drifting to the window, the ghosts of memory rising to haunt me. Door number nine, the child under the stairs, and you, Freya, on that final day. Just those early notes lowered me into a deep well of remembered sorrow.
Then the tempo picked up, and somehow lifted me. I was no longer sad for the loss of you, but thankful for the time of knowing you.
And then Sarah’s fingers burned with a life of their own as the tempo and pitch rose, her slim fingers dancing elegantly, eyes closed as the music poured out of her and into the piano.
Freya, it was pure serenity.
Tranquil, haunting, effortless, and beautiful in its simplicity. The serenity of it carried me away, drifting into my own thoughts, desires, fears, and hopes, yet not allowing me to dwell on any of them too long. My life floated by me in all its misery and glory.
For those six minutes, the horror, the death, the tragedy, the thoughts of hardships to come, the people I feared to lose; all of them floated by like the white clouds of the composition’s title. It was acceptance of all the pain that had brought me to this moment, and for what yet lay before me, it gave me hope.
For those six, serene minutes, nothing could hurt me, or cause me pain. There was no guilt, no heartache, and no anger, just those six minutes of freedom as my heart and soul were uncaged to just… be. All that existed was the music.
If told I had just six minutes to live, and asked what I wanted for my final moments, it would be to close my eyes, lie back, and let me leave life without fear or guilt, by having this song played to me. Never has my heart felt so… free.
/>
It was pure rapture.
As Sarah drew to the close, I pulled my eyes from the window and looked over at her, seeing the tracks of tears leaking from closed eyes, her fingers flickering on the keys of their own accord. She didn’t need her eyes and knew every note by heart, like her mum’s hands had been guiding them. She played for herself, for her lost parents, and it touched the deepest part of her when she did so.
When her hands finally moved to her lap and the last echoing note faded, she wept in earnest, the gates to her grief finally cracking wide. It was the first time she had played such a deeply personal piece of music since the world collapsed around us, and it pierced through the last line of her emotional defence. She was strong, enduring, and inspiring, to have adapted to this new world, but she had never truly grieved.
I moved to the seat next to her, put my arm around her, and held her until the tears ran dry.
The power of music, Freya. It can take you away from the world for a while, but it can also heal. Sometimes, when words will fail, music can speak louder to the human soul than anything I know. It says what you can’t express in words, despite my poor attempt in this journal entry. It brings peace and can make you whole.
Sarah has a powerful gift to share, never more so in this dark and broken world. I feel privileged that she allowed me to share that moment with her, and in her own grief and sorrow, that she managed to give me such a gift.
I feel… good, Freya. For the first time in a long time, I feel genuinely at peace, and even if it’s for just this one night, it’s a gift I will treasure.
DECEMBER 1st, 2010
EVERYTHING IS WHAT?
All my good feeling disappeared in a shiver today. I checked in on Eli and Theodore to see how they were settling in.
Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 2 | We Will Rise [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Page 25