The Human Condition a-4

by David Moody

  He'd been sat there in the kitchen, trying to find a way out of the conversation without letting them win, when it happened. One minute they were both in full flow � Dad yelling at him for being a bloody waste of space, Mum crying into her tea and yelling at Dad to stop yelling � the next they were dead. Both of them. Face down, dead on the floor.

  The death of his parents (and, apparently, the rest of the world) was the moment it finally all began to make sense. Up until that day Skin's summer had been fucking miserable and the tedium showed no sign of relenting. He'd flunked his exams and left school and had then been forced into enrolling for re-takes at college. And his girlfriend had left him. They'd been together on and off for eight months when Dawn ended it. She said that he'd bullied her into having sex. She'd said that he kept making demands that she wasn't prepared to fulfil. It was her fault, the fucking tease. She was the one who dressed like a fucking whore all the time for Christ's sake. Jesus, she was the one who'd been sat there in a fucking corset, tight black leather mini-skirt, fishnet stockings and knee-high PVC boots when she'd told him that she didn't want to be with him any more. He'd lost his virginity to her pretty early on in their brief relationship and his imagination had run away with him since then. He'd already learnt that he was the only virgin in the relationship (he'd suspected as much) and that made him feel like he had something to prove, or that he had some catching up to do. Skin had always imagined first sex would have been this incredible event � the undisputed highlight of both their young lives so far � but the reality had been bitterly disappointing. Instead of endless hours of uninterrupted dirty passion he had to settle for a fifteen minute fumble in Dawn's bedroom while her mum went to the chip shop. And half of those fifteen minutes were spent trying to get the bloody condom on.

  In the three weeks between Skin splitting up with Dawn and the sudden arrival of the end of the world, he began to hate her with a vengeance. He still saw her regularly because, after she'd finished with him, she started sleeping her way around his friends, doing more with each of them (if the rumours were to be believed) than she'd ever done with him.

  After they'd all died he'd been nervous and frightened for a while of course (who wouldn't have been?) but his fear and anxiety was primarily caused by the fact that he didn't know whether he was in danger, not because of what had happened to the rest of them. As the hours ticked by and his personal safety and apparent immunity to whatever had happened seemed more certain, his confidence and attitude gradually returned. He got himself as far away from his parent's safe and predictable upper-middle-class home as he could and began to enjoy his new and unexpected role as king of the world. He could do what he wanted, whenever he wanted. After a couple of days the bodies had risen, but even that hadn't dampened the sudden euphoria he'd felt at having survived when absolutely everyone else had died. He was invincible. Without doing anything, he had won.

  Brought up on a dark diet of pulp horror films, comics and books, Skin revelled in the filth, disease and decay. As the bodies around him became more active, he actually became more confident and self-assured. As the potential danger increased, so his excitement and adrenaline levels rose. He looted shops, taking food, booze, cigarettes, magazines, music and whatever else he damn well wanted. And, in a long-considered and calculated gesture of defiance, he built a base for himself right in the middle of the school he'd just left. He spent days tearing the place apart. He ripped the heart out of the place that had caused him and countless hundreds of other kids untold amounts of grief over the years. He'd pissed on the headteacher's corpse. He'd even squatted down and taken a shit in the middle of the classroom where he'd been humiliated and yelled at by his Nazi-like Maths teacher Mr Miller last term. And where was Miller now, he thought smugly to himself? Dead, just like the rest of them. Skin had sat in the classroom for a while, his feet up on Miller's chair, drinking scotch. He laughed out loud at the irony of it all. And they'd said he'd never amount to anything...

  The bodies became increasingly insistent. The damn things just wouldn't leave him alone. He tried to convince himself that he was the subject of some bizarre kind of hero-worship but he knew that wasn't the case. Just the slightest sound or unexpected movement from him would cause a crowd of the bloody things to herd after him incessantly. And he noticed that they'd started to become violent too, occasionally tearing each other apart. He guessed that it wouldn't take much for them to start on him if he gave them half a chance. Skin made a conscious decision to keep out of sight and lie low for a while but, before disappearing from view, he went out looting again. He rode into town on his bike, following the route of the bus he used to take. Once there he cycled through the side-streets until he reached one particular shop. He and his friends had spent hours looking in the window before now but they'd never managed to make it inside. The shop sold hunting and fishing equipment. He didn't know what he wanted or needed, but he took as much from the shelves as he could carry � knives, pistols, rifles and anything else which looked vaguely useful and suitably harmful. He packed it onto the bike and rode back to school.

  Skin was in charge now. Unrestrained and unstoppable, he made the decisions and he made the rules. Hiding away didn't suit him. Why should he keep out of sight when he was in control? He moved through the bodies with contempt and disinterest, only running when he absolutely had to. Already feeling vastly superior to the decomposing relics which surrounded him, the fact that he was now armed made him feel impervious and all-conquering. He carried weapons with him all of the time. He hadn't had to use them yet, but he was ready.

  Food began to become a problem. He'd had some supplies with him but they'd quickly dwindled down to nothing. With a rucksack slung across his back and a rifle in his hand he walked to the local shopping precinct, which was around half a mile from school. He'd spent many long afternoons hanging out there with his friends when they should have been in lessons. Hadn't done him any harm missing school, had it, he thought to himself as he crept through the supermarket, collecting up all the food he could find which was still edible. Most of the shop's stock had gone rotten. The place stank of decay and he almost threw up. He needed to rest and catch his breath before he made the trip back to school. Not wanting to wait in the decaying supermarket he walked further into the building, eventually emerging out of a back entrance. A grey concrete staircase led up to a row of boarded up, graffiti-covered flats above the shop. Skin climbed the stairs and forced his way into one of the flats. He rested for a while in a cold and damp empty living room. He lay on the floor and passed the time with cigarettes and alcohol he'd taken from the shop below.

  A narrow veranda ran across the front of the flats. After almost an hour had passed Skin stepped outside and stood there and looked out over the whole of the dead precinct below him. A large, roughly elliptical collection of run-down shops centred around a large oval patch of muddy grass, it didn't look very different now to how it always used to look, he thought. There were a few bodies still lying on the ground, but other than that the place looked as grey, lifeless and terminally dull as it always had done. Even those bodies which incessantly dragged themselves around looked strangely similar to how they'd been before they'd died. Slow, empty and pointless. Skin baulked at the idea of ever allowing himself to become like that.

  Standing up there, in full view but knowing that he was completely safe and untouchable, he felt incredibly powerful and strong. He felt in full control, almost like some kind of ancient lord looking down over his rotting subjects. Maybe this was his opportunity to show them just how powerful he was? He ran back into the flat and grabbed the rifle he'd brought with him. He rummaged around in his rucksack for ammunition and then stepped back outside. He loaded the rifle and took aim.

  Can I do this? Of course you can.

  Should I do it? Why not, who's going to stop you? No-one tells you what to do anymore.

  Does it matter? Don't be fucking stupid. Of course it doesn't matter. Damn things are dead anyway.
r />   Skin lined up a single, bedraggled figure in his sights. Breathing heavily he squeezed the trigger slightly and took up the slack, loosening his grip momentarily with nerves. There's nothing to be scared of, he thought, clearing his throat and then holding his breath as he prepared to fire. Just fucking do it. The end of the rifle seemed to be waving about uncontrollably. He wedged the butt deeper into his shoulder, shuffled his feet and re-balanced himself and then located the figure in his sights again. Before he'd had chance to dissuade himself he pulled on the trigger and fired. The gunshot cracked in his ear, rendering him temporarily deaf on one side, and the force of the shot almost threw him over. He dropped the rifle and rubbed the sore patch on his shoulder where the recoil had dug in. He shook his head clear and then looked out over the precinct. There wasn't much to see at first, primarily because all of the bodies gathered there had turned and had suddenly begun to stagger towards the supermarket. After a few seconds he managed to locate the body he'd been aiming at. He'd hit it. Christ, he thought, he'd hit it bloody well. It was difficult to see exactly how much damage he'd caused, but it looked as if at least half of its head had been blown clean away. More importantly, the fucking thing had finally stopped moving.

  Skin stood on the veranda and fired another thirty-two times, managing to down at least another twenty-four bodies. Each time he fired the rifle he became more accustomed to the noise and the kick it gave him. He learnt to ride the recoil and absorb it. He learnt how to load and reload quickly. Most importantly, he learnt how to get rid of those fucking things below him.

  Unchecked and unrestricted, Skin's confidence soared. No-one was laughing at him now or trying to tell him what to do, were they? No-one was on his back to do this or do that or be home by a certain time or not to wear certain clothes or not to speak in a certain way or not to drink or not to smoke or... Christ, he could do anything.

  He began by getting himself more comfortable. The school had two gymnasiums, housed in a single two-storey building. He moved from his previous classroom hideout and made his home in Gym 1 (as it was known) on the first floor. There he hoarded the supplies he'd collected and, under cover of night, he fetched more. Using a battery-powered machine he filled the vast room with music from when he first woke to when he finally fell asleep at night. Fully aware of the effect the noise had on the dead population but arrogantly indifferent to their attentions, he drank and smoked his way through each day. His height above the crowds seemed somehow to camouflage the direction and source of the sound. Although it continued to attract many more bodies to the school, they wandered aimlessly around the campus rather than gravitating towards the gym building.

  Skin kicked a football around the gym. He threw empty beer bottles out of the window and watched them hit the bodies below. He spray-painted the bland grey-brick gym walls. Now and then he took out one of the guns and took pot-shots into the festering crowd. He slept. He ate. He began to get bored. The novelty of his situation was beginning to wear dangerously thin. A person of sound mind and average intelligence might well have been able to rise above the boredom, or put up with it in view of the potential danger outside the gym. Skin, however, although possessing sufficient intelligence, was also still driven by a hormone, alcohol and drug-induced anger. The remarkable power he suddenly seemed to have was incredible, and yet he still wanted more. The strength of his feelings was increasing by the hour and none of the distractions he could find seemed able to alleviate or reduce his frustrations. In spite of all he suddenly had, he still felt incomplete.

  It was late one night � around midnight � when the way forward came to him and things suddenly became clear. Revenge. That was what was missing. It was the ultimate expression of his superiority. Hell, why hadn't he thought of it before? Here he was in this incredible position of power and authority, and he hadn't used it properly once. Sure, he'd fired a few shots and got rid of a pile of bodies and he'd defaced about ninety percent of the school, but he'd not yet taken out his anger on the people who deserved it most, had he? Christ, he had a list of names as long as his arm of people he wanted to get even with. His parents topped the list, then his ex-girlfriend, then the so-called friends who'd slept with her after she'd dumped him, then his teachers... Fucking hell, he thought, what an idiot. All that time he'd been sat there, letting those fuckers wander about free.

  This was his time. He was in control. Time for retribution.

  There would be little satisfaction in just finding these people and destroying what was left of them, he thought to himself next morning as he walked through the dawn shadows back towards his parents' house. What I need to do, he decided, is make them suffer. What I have to do is make things as difficult and painful for them as they did for me. I have to make them hurt.

  His mother and father were still in the kitchen of the house where he'd left them on the first morning. His mother lay dead on the ground, slumped between the defrosted fridge-freezer and the dishwater. Her soggy body stank. She was going nowhere, but a whack to the back of her head with a rolling pin made it completely certain that she wasn't going to get up again. He hated his mother marginally less than he hated his father. It didn't matter unduly that he was going to leave her, as long as he got to take Dad with him. Skin's dead father followed him around the kitchen, occasionally lunging at him and lashing out with sharp, twisted hands. Skin brushed aside the body's pathetic attacks and slipped a dog collar and lead around its neck. He tied its hands together with the washing line from the overgrown garden and half-led, half-dragged it the quarter-mile or so back to school. He threw the body into the empty ground floor gym and watched it scramble around aimlessly for a while. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the damn thing's face.

  `Bet you wish you hadn't been such an uptight fucker now, don't you Dad?' he sneered as the corpse stumbled towards him again. `Who's laughing now?'

  Dawn was in her bedroom back at her mother's house. She was Skin's next victim that afternoon. He slipped the lead around her neck and then tied her to the bed in which he'd lost his virginity earlier in the year. Before leaving he spent some time going through her belongings. He wasn't sure whether that made him feel better or worse. In her underwear drawer he found the kind of things he'd always hoped she'd wear for him, but which she'd obviously saved for his friends. To humiliate the dead bitch he stripped her bare before dragging her back through the streets and dumping her in the gym with the remains of his dad.

  He'd had a feeling that he'd seen the bodies of Mr McKenzie, Mr Miller and Miss Charles wandering around the school. It was getting harder and harder to distinguish between the bodies but he knew that he had to look. It was while he was searching for them that he came across what was left of an ex-friend (and one of Dawn's recent conquests) Glenn Tranter. Tranter's face was pretty badly decayed, but he could tell from the body's general build that it was him. Although his skin was a blotchy blue-grey, he could still see the tip of a tattoo he'd recently had done on his shoulder and neck, just below the collar of his blood-stained school shirt. The corpse's neck was scrawny and emaciated and the shirt hung unintentionally loose, revealing more of the tattoo than he'd ever been allowed to show at school. Another one for the gym.

  There was no sign of Mr Miller. Damn, if there was one fucker who deserved a little dismemberment and torture, it was him. It was of some consolation when he found what remained of Mr McKenzie, his dictatorial modern languages teacher, dragging itself along the corridor outside the main assembly hall. Stupid fucking thing was still wearing the same damn tweed jacket it had worn to school every bloody day. He took great pleasure in wrapping the dog collar around the dead teacher's neck and dragging the body twice round the school before throwing it into the gym.

  Miss Charles, his twisted, sadistic, sour-faced ex-head of year, had been trapped in the stock cupboard next to her office when she'd died. Skin found her still crashing around the room, half-buried beneath text books and papers. He'd hated this bitch more than any of the others, and
she'd hated him too. He tried to drag her to the gym by her wiry grey hair but it wasn't strong enough and it kept coming away from her rotting scalp in sickly clumps. Instead he resorted to the dog lead and another drag through the increasingly crowded school grounds.

  Over the course of the next day and a half he gathered together another fifteen bodies. Some of the rapidly putrefying, reanimated corpses had belonged to people who had, in one way or another (according to Skin), wronged him. Others were just unfortunate cadavers which just happened to have been picked out of the faceless masses and flung into the gym.

  So what do I do with them now, he thought to himself as he lay on his makeshift bed at the far end of Gym 1. Music blared out of the CD player that he'd now hung from a basketball hoop with skipping ropes. He thought it sounded better like that, although the volume was so loud that getting the right acoustics didn't really matter. The room was filled with a haze of smoke from cigarettes and improvised spliffs. The smoke helped disguise the increasingly obnoxious stench of death, decay and putrefaction that filled the gym building and the world beyond its walls.

  It was hard to believe whom he'd managed to shut into the gym downstairs. The incredible fact that they were all trapped in there and that their fates were completely in his control was almost harder to believe than what had happened to the rest of the world. This was an opportunity for revenge on a massive scale that he wasn't about to pass up. He was determined to make the most of every last second and make these fuckers suffer in the same way they'd tortured him for years. They had no idea what they'd done to him. None of them had given a damn.