Great Bitten: Outbreak

by Warren Fielding

  Carla and Rick were both keeping busy in their own way. I heard the loft steps squeaking as they were unfurled from months of slumber so that one of them, probably Rick, could check that the loft was a viable sleeping option if it became necessary. I’d already read more than a dozen tweets where others had already done the same, moving most of their practical goods in to loft spaces and destroying any stairs. I heard boxes moving around and the house became steadily darker as makeshift blinds were put up over windows. Carla was doing research of her own here and there, and a few Romero films were aired as she did some genre-stereotyping to try to at least make her home basically defensible without disturbing the neighbours.

  As my hand began to grasp and knead at my tight neck muscles a thumping at the front door jolted me out of my research reverie. Carla ran past me and I called at her to stop.

  “You can’t just answer it! Calm down! Look through the peephole first. We’ve got no idea what might be out there.”

  She cocked a mildly disgusted eyebrow at me, as if to say “I’m not an idiot, dickhead” and strode towards the door. There was a pause before she exclaimed out loud and hurriedly fumbled with the lock and the chain. I was irritated to be disturbed so abruptly, and scraped my chair back forcefully so that it fell to the dining room floor. I ignored it in my hurry to get to the front door to make sure my sister wasn’t doing something fatally idiotic, and was late enough to see her ushering in a slow lumbering man who was wheezing so hard he seemed to be at borderline collapse. I stood to one side as she guided him to the living room, putting him carefully in a seat and heading straight for the whisky that I’d had to wheedle for earlier in the day. I wasn’t exactly livid, but I was fourteen flavours of fucked off, my brain still teraflopping with all the data I’d been trying to process and my worst case scenario gene going overdrive. I put my hands on my hips much as I imagined Carla felt like doing and asked quite simply,

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “I could ask the same of you, if only you didn’t look so much like Carla. Clearly she was in the deep end of the pool when manners were dished out. I’m her next door neighbour and trust me, you don’t want me to leave the house quite yet.”

  “Leave? I’ll bloody kick you out myself!”

  “Stop being an arsehole Warren. Alan’s a good neighbour and he’s not stupid, unlike some men in this room I could mention. What’s happened Alan? Is everything okay?”

  “You mean aside from everything going on in the news? Dandy Carly, just dandy.” Alan, or Ass, as I’d decided to snidely call him in my head to satisfy my inner child at hearing his pet name for my sister, sipped at his over-generous whisky with a shaking hand. He had more than a paunch, and his thin white hair had long since declared a formal retreat from his head, leaving a shiny pate that was glowing red with exertion.

  “I saw one. They’re here Carla, they’ve made it to Bennington. Have you got food? Can you secure the house?”

  “Whoa there calm down Alan. What do you mean they’ve made it here? They locked down London, I can’t see how they’ve made it to here already?”

  “How many people do you think got out of London before they started shutting people in? And do you really think they could stem every minor route out of that place? It’s a rat’s nest, there’ll be thousands of people getting out of the city and we’ve got no idea how many of them might be coming down with that plague.”

  Carla threw me a sidelong accusatory glance which Alan was far too sharp to miss. He threw the glass aside in shock, almost climbing in to the back of the chair in a panicked attempt to get away from me. “He’s one of them isn’t he? You’ve got to turn him in, for fuck’s sake Carla he’ll kill us all!”

  She scooted forward, her hands on each arm of the chair as she shushed him, trying to ease his panic as Rick thundered down the stairs to see what the commotion was about.

  “Alan he’s fine, he’s been here most of the day. He got out of London before it all started kicking off. He’s seen some of… them. But they haven’t touched him.”

  “This morning you say?” Ass eyed me with a wary look somewhere between fear and morbid curiosity. “You got out of London? Without getting hurt? They didn’t even scratch you?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to voice those soft memories so soon in front of a total stranger at a time when I needed to sound calm, collected and very much in charge. Besides, Ass looked charged, his adrenalin and the calming effects of the alcohol the only things damming the torrent of words just waiting to spew from his mouth.

  “If Carla’s not taken your head off yet I suppose you must be okay.” He took a long slurp from the tumbler, and I grimaced at the ghastly sound. Alan made a face not far off mine; if you don’t like whisky, don’t drink it. What a waste, though I couldn’t really begrudge him the need to soften the edges if he’d just come across anything like what I’d seen so far online. And if any of them had made it to Bennington already… we had to make sure our plans were fluid, just in case.

  “They’re at the train station. I was waiting for my daughter, she was on a train already coming down from the Midlands and I thought they’d still let it finish the journey. I lost contact with her after Clapham Junction, so I don’t want to think about what’s happened to that train. But… oh god Carla it was horrible.” He dropped his face in to his hands and sobbed, great wracking heaves that set off ripples across his massive stomach. His shoulders shook as he worked the shock out of his body. Carla looked quizzically at me and I waved my arms around, not sure what she was expecting me to do. She mouthed at me, something along the lines of ‘say something’ though I had no idea what she was expecting of me, when Ass looked up with bloodshot eyes and a resigned grin.

  “The entire train was riddled with them. Every single person that fell out of that train was a zombie. I’ve never run so fast in my life. I’ve never run so far in my life. I got back to my car and came straight here, I had to get back to my wife and well if one train is like it,” his voice cracked and broke “how many others?”

  Carla cradled her face in her hand, a frown creasing her brow and a tear squeezing its way down her cheek. “Trudy will be fine, Alan. She’s a clever girl, she’ll be okay.”

  Ass laughed outright at that. “Bless you for the comfort Carla, but I’ve seen the news, and after seeing that train, I’m not so sure. Did you listen to me? The train was full. It must have been standing room only. And every. Single. Person. On. That. Train. Was. Dead.”

  Each and every word was punctuated, a verbal poke in the chest that had us both rocking on our heels, bordering between speechlessness and helplessness. Ass didn’t give us a break. “I watched the ones that were still moving – you know, the dead people - fall out of the train and it was right off the screen of a horror movie. There were bloody handprints smeared across the windows and the doors. Some of the bodies that fell out were just… hunks of flesh. They fell off the train and got stuck in the gap to the platform. They got trampled and forgotten as those zombies stampeded - and that’s the only right word Carla, stampeded - off that train and headed straight for anything living and breathing they could get their vicious claws on. They,” Ass stopped, gasping for air and finishing the rest of his whisky in a swift throw, coughing and thumping at his chest as septuagenarian phlegm shifted under the coating of alcohol. “There was an old boy at the station. I was waiting with him. He was waiting for his daughter too, though she was a few years older than my Trudy he said. He had a walking stick with him. He couldn’t have run away from a three-legged donkey even if he’d wanted to. One of those things leapt on him as I back-pedalled it. Literally threw himself on to him. You know the way the cartoons make dogs eat steak, ragging it side to side? It was like that, except for it was someone’s throat! If my Trudy was on a train with those things, I’m not going to see her again. I’m never going to see anyone I love ever again. That’s why I had to come here.

  I don’t want to die Carla, but I want to try and save
some people. I’ve got guns. The police are going to come knocking for them, if those broadcasters are telling the truth. They’ve got their own bloody weapons so I want you to have them. You can defend yourself. You’re the same age as Trudy and you’ve been a good friend to us. It’s the right thing to do.”

  I watched dumbstruck as Ass abruptly got out of his chair and ducked outside the front door. He was gone for a couple of minutes and we all stood looking at each other, shoulders shrugging and mouths gaping. I’d fired a shotgun a couple of times out hunting with friends and I’m pretty sure of all of us Rick would be the most handy, having been more than a bit of a hunting jack throughout his years at university and beyond. I was already eyeing up his shoulder’s potential to stand up against the repeated recoil as we stood the line against a shambling zombie horde. I’m pretty sure my eyes were glazing over at this Hollywood fantasy when Ass shambled back in clutching an armful of anonymous double-barrelled guns as if he was a toddler bringing a bunch of branches to a scout’s fire. Well, I say armful, I meant four. He dumped them on the sofa and brought round a rucksack that I’d overlooked as I’d been gawping at the guns. He threw that to the floor with an unceremonious grunt and looked over first at me, then at Rick, who’d rushed over to start pawing at the new toys.

  “Alan these are too much. I mean are you sure you can spare these? How are you going to defend yourself?”

  “I’m heading to my boat, so I won’t need to defend myself. I suggest you do the same. They might have stopped the planes but I can’t see how they can even begin to police the coastline. People are going to start leaving this blighted place and I’m going to be one of the first of them, so I suggest you start getting your act together.”

  I watched him look around the room, seeing his eyes take in the planks of wood leaning across walls and, I hoped, my own arrogant and pissed off alpha-male demeanour.

  “You’re going to try to make a stand here?”

  “There’s no try about it, Al” I said with a swagger. “The house is big and we have a high vantage point. We can fortify and last it out. I’ve been checking things out online; the main populace around here is to the south and we’re away from most of the major roads. I can’t see us being swarmed by those things. In fact, if we just hole up and keep dark, I think the whole thing will probably just pass us by.” My hackles rose as I saw the early sneer forming on Ass’s smarmy middle-class red-wine rosy cheeks, and before my brain could get in to gear my mouth was on auto pilot. “So thanks but no thanks, I don’t want my sister shooting her leg off below the knee, so you can take your pea-shooters home and wait for the Old Nick to take them. Or take them to the museum, whichever they’re better for.”

  Carla looked like she was going to slap me again and I was genuinely grimacing inside at my words, but far too far gone now to take any of them back. “If we want some proper guns I’ll go to that shop down the road in Broadwater and buy some myself, we don’t want your charity. So kindly pick them back up and fuck off.”

  I had expected forlorn humility however Ass started bellowing in genuine humour. I frowned in confusion as he happily stooped and grabbed three of the four guns, leaving the rucksack of bullets. “Ah lad, you’ve got balls but it’s a shame they’ve replaced your brain. The gun shop in Broadwater only sells deactivated guns, they’re good for nothing but photo shoots and exhibitions. You’ve given me a laugh though, so I’ll make you a deal.” He picked up the remaining shotgun and happily threw it into Rick’s gratefully waiting hands. Rick hugged the firearm close, as if it was the last of an endangered species which, as things stood, I suppose it was. “You can keep that gun. If you three are going to have to live together through the apocalypse,” he looked at me with a glint in his eye “I’m sure you’re going to give in at some point and want to shoot this twat in the face.”

  Carla snatched the gun off Rick and brandished it at me. “Alan, you have no idea. Stay the night, we can all shoot him together.”

  The older man relented, handing over two more guns. “One each. I’m sure someone loves him and wants him to keep alive through all of this. Just shoot him somewhere non-fatal.”

  “Oh no trust me, there’s no one left that gives a flying fuck about this monkey apart from his boss, at a stretch.” Carla appeared to ponder this for a second. “Actually, I can’t see anyone buying rounds at the bar any time soon, so we’re back to no one.”

  Ass smiled, hugging Carla before he left which took the Ice Queen herself clearly by surprise. “He wouldn’t be here if you didn’t care for him. Look after each other. Trust me, it’s hell out there.”

  “How many of them do you think came off the train?”

  “I don’t know. Over a hundred? Enough for me to be on my way before the night’s over, put it that way. If you’re going to hole yourselves up, I’d start doing it sharpish. They’ve tried their best to stop this thing from spreading but we’re talking about the British government here. They’d struggle to organise a piss-up in a brewery and this my dear, to coin a very American phrase, is one hell of a clusterfuck.”

  “Look after yourself Alan. And stop swearing, it doesn’t suit you.”

  The old fart left, thankfully leaving the majority of the guns behind him. He was probably going to do that all along, he just wanted to put a rocket up me. Fair play, Carla gave me two minutes of peace after he left to sit and anticipate the shitstorm that was about to land on my pig-headed shoulders. Then she spent about a minute cat-slapping me and a further ten minutes screaming and stamping, waving her arms around not greatly unlike an octopus being given an electric shock. Carla would have made an amazing Mediterranean housewife. As it was, she was an angry lawyer that lived in a posh suburb of a lost little town on the south coast of England; her talents, alack and alas, were wasted.

  “Are you done?”

  Her chest heaving, Rick guided her away, this time pouring her quadruple what I’d had in my own whisky tumbler. She took one long gulp, her hand shaking. Her words, when they came, were cutting barbs that I really couldn’t argue with.

  “You’ve done the research, Warren. It’s what you’re good at. You’ve seen what’s happening outside. People are dying. People we know are dying. You might not have any friends, anyone you care about, but other people do! So take your thumb out of your ass for one second, just one short second, and think how other people feel right now.

  Alan’s pretty sure his daughter is dead, and we have nothing to say to him that will give him any comfort. He was probably in shock when he came round here, just wanting to find someone he could actually help, and what do you do? The classic Fielding charm, oh how the women must fawn over you. No, wait. You’re single, alone, a workaholic and miserable shit, which is why you’re such an arsehole in the first place.

  If you were listening to him which I highly doubt, as you appear to spend most of the time sucking your teeth and looking annoyed which is a fair blessing as it keeps your mouth shut, Alan said the zombies are in Bennington. If they’ve made it to the train station then they’ll be in the town centre, and we don’t have enough police here to deal with that kind of threat. If they’re taking guns off normal people, I’m guessing they think they don’t have enough to cope. So we should start boarding it up now and make sure we can go dark tonight. Rick? Rick where have you gone?”

  Carla started screaming at the house in general and I slumped my shoulders in relief. When Carla decided to rail at you, it was like being pinned up against a wall by your neck with a hurricane-force gale blowing fully at your face. Being released from her wrath, it wasn’t uncommon to feel like falling to your knees and kissing the blessed peace and stability of the floor. Rick clattered to the bottom of the stairs, dropping a hammer and anonymous boxes in a racket of clattering and swearing. Carla cursed him in return.

  “I think if we’re going to be keeping ourselves incognito we need to start turning down the volume in here.”

  “Let’s start with your voice, no?”

 
; Clearly too soon to start with the lip again. Thankfully Carla wasn’t Medusa, and I wasn’t reformed in to limestone, so I helped Rick pick up the detritus from the hall floor and we traipsed to the back of the house to begin properly boarding up the patio doors, our largest and most vulnerable point of ingress.