by Russ Watts
“Jo and Lissie have been mates since school,” said Tony. “I’m just bloody thankful they were here. I don’t know what I would’ve done if—” Tony’s voice cracked.
“All right, Tony, knock it off,” said Jo. “I’ve had enough tears from Lissie and Amelia without you balling on my shoulder too. Lissie waited for you. All’s well that ends well.”
“Not for everyone,” muttered Lissie.
“There were others,” explained Tony. “Apparently most people left. A few stayed. The manager tried to coral everyone into the food hall, but—”
“But not everyone was quick enough.” Lissie sighed. “There was a shop girl helping us, making sure everyone got down the escalator. She was bitten and then dragged outside. We never saw her again. Richard managed to block the top with those trolleys. We’ve been down here since.”
“Richard?”
“The manager. He made sure we were all okay. Said we could help ourselves if we needed anything to eat or drink. That other woman, Michelle, is all that’s left of the staff now.”
Bashar assumed Michelle was the one who had let them in. The way that Jo mentioned her name was not reassuring. It was clear that she was not held in high regard.
“Where is he?” asked Tony. “I’d like to thank this Richard.”
Jo and Lissie looked at each other knowingly. “Richard’s back there in the storeroom.”
“Is there another way in?” asked Bashar. “I thought the escalator was it. If the store room is back there then there must be a loading bay. If we can get out to street level then they can get in. Richard shouldn’t be back there on his own, whether he’s the manager or not. It’s not safe.”
“No, there’s nothing back there. We checked.” Lissie looked nervous. “The loading bay is at street level and there’s a lift that brings the products down here. But the power’s out, so it’s just a dead end. Anyway the manager is there, but he’s not there. If you know what I mean.”
Bashar was worried that they might have missed something. If the manager Richard was on his own, then perhaps there was another way out. What if he was busy barricading another doorway up on his own, being the hero whilst everyone hung back and waited for this mess to pass? Bashar walked over to the doors and gently pushed on one.
“You don’t want to go back there,” said Lissie.
“Why not?” Bashar pushed open the double doors wider. He saw the body of a man on the floor wearing a black suit and white shirt. There was blood pooled around him and a discarded meat cleaver on the stained floor. “I assume that’s Richard?”
“He got bit when he was stacking the trolleys,” said Lissie. She held onto Tony as she spoke, as if he literally had to hold her up. “He said it was nothing, but one of those… one of those people got him… one of the dead people. Took off one of his fingers.”
“Zombies.” Lulu sniffed the air and approached the door. She looked through it quickly and then handed Bashar a samosa. “Hungry?”
Bashar pushed it away. “Not now, Lulu. Go on, Lissie.”
“Well, we bandaged him up when he was finished. He insisted on making sure we were safe first and by the time he was done he’d lost a lot of blood. He said he’d be fine. I mean, how were we to know? I don’t know how this works. All I know is dead people started getting back up and killing other people. They bit the manager before following the others out of the store. We gave Richard some antibiotics, but I guess they weren’t enough. It was just regular stuff, you know, meant for scratches and bruises, not getting your bloody finger bitten off by a dead person.”
“For zombies, no, I doubt they were.” Lulu pushed aside a chopping board, pulled herself up onto the counter, and then began to eat the samosa she had brought for Bashar.
Lissie frowned. “Excuse me, you are…?”
“Lulu,” she mumbled, spilling pastry onto her lap.
“She’s okay.” Tony rubbed Lissie’s back gently. “Go on, hun. What happened to him?”
“He just keeled over,” said Jo. “No more than what, twenty minutes after we’d been down here. Said he felt faint and then bang, he was gone.”
“What, he died, just like that?” Bashar looked at the body. The man would have a wife somewhere, perhaps children. There was a wedding ring on his finger. Was his family alive? Were they waiting for him?
“No. He collapsed. He died. But then…” Jo trailed off.
“But then he got back up again, right?” asked Lulu as she wiped her hands down her jeans.
“Yeah,” whispered Lissie. “It was like he was possessed. He started attacking us. We had no choice. He kept coming.”
Tony remembered the woman in the coffee shop. She had kept on attacking them too.
Bashar remembered Angie, Lulu’s friend who had bitten Bob. She hadn’t stopped either.
Lulu remembered the girl, Clara, outside the ‘Maiden England’ bar. She had repeatedly tried to bite Lulu, until she had been forced to stop. Only when Lulu had rammed the broken chair leg through the girl’s brain did she stop.
“You did the right thing. Richard wouldn’t have stopped.” Bashar closed the door, concealing the body of the manager who had given his life for his customers. “You have to kill them. These people are dead and they will come for us, and they will kill us, and they will win, unless we kill them. These people…” Bashar looked at Lulu. “These zombies, are relentless. And there’s something else up there, something else hunting us.”
“Something else?” asked Lissie.
“Something waiting for us,” said Tony despondently.
“You know what, I’m just going to take Amelia to the bathroom. I don’t think we need to hear the rest of this story. Come on, honey, let’s go.” Jo led her timid daughter away.
The words spun around Bashar’s head: waiting, waiting, waiting. ‘She’s waiting for you.’ What was it about that phrase? Why did he keep hearing it? It was like a mantra, a prayer that his brain kept reciting over and over. He knew he couldn’t afford to prolong his stay in the store, or even London. He was going to have to get to Nurtaj. If it meant leaving the others then he would. They had what they needed, but he was missing the one thing he needed, what he wanted above all else: his wife.
The others in the food hall began to gather around and at first it was just small talk, introductions and social pleasantries that seemed obsolete and unnecessary given the circumstances. The young couple Bashar had mistaken for an actual couple had only just met. Rad and Marama introduced themselves first.
“Rad. What kind of name is that anyway?” asked Neale. He had arrived with a bottle of vodka discreetly tucked under his arm, yet only because he didn’t want to share rather than out of any shame.
“It’s shortened.”
“For what, radish?” Neale winked at Marama.
“Radley,” replied Rad plainly. He sighed as if he had already answered the same question a thousand times before. “I was called Rad at school and it just stuck. What about you, Marama. Does your name mean something?”
Marama smiled at Rad. “I’m the light of the world.” She laughed lightly. “I think my parents were high when they picked my name.”
“Pull the other one,” said Neale.
“It’s true. That’s what it means.”
“Your name, Bashar. Does that mean anything.” Rad looked at Bashar.
“Like Marama I think my parents were having a joke at someone’s expense when they picked my name. I was mocked when I was younger. All the kids thought it was highly hilarious.”
“Why, what does it mean?” asked Rad. “At least it’s not something boring, like Neale.”
“Hey.” Neale swallowed a large gulp of vodka. “That’s the stuff.”
“It means butcher,” said Bashar, glaring at Neale. “It’s supposed to signal strength, that sort of thing. I don’t think you are defined by your name though. I don’t really go in for it.”
“Me neither,” said Neale. “Although in Marama’s case I’d make
an exception. She could light up my world anytime,” he said, laughing and winking at Marama who made pretend vomiting noises.
Rad chuckled.
“Well, I think it suits you,” said Tony.
“Cheers.” Bashar decided he had had enough. As he left he brushed past Neale. “You might want to go easy on that. It’s going to be a long day.”
As Bashar left he heard the others begin to discuss their situation. They discussed the dead, the zombies that walked above them, and what the government were doing about it. They touched on the loved ones they missed and how they were going to get home. They spoke of banding together and fighting their way out whilst at the same time contemplating staying hidden in the basement and waiting it out. Bashar knew he could not wait much longer. He needed Nurtaj. He needed to know she was safe. He began to plan how he was going to travel out of the city and north to her. His journey would be difficult and lonely. He couldn’t expect anyone else to accompany him. Their homes were here but London was no longer a part of his future. He knew there were thousands of zombies between him and his wife, and some kind of terrifying black monster, but his mind was made up. He would tell Tony and the rest when he could.
While the survivors in the basement of the department store discussed their future, Bashar sat on his own and began to plot his route north to Nurtaj.
CHAPTER 12
“All right, mate?” Tony joined Bashar on the floor and sat down with his legs splayed out in front of him. They were nestled beneath rows of muesli bars and health food. The aisle was cool and far away from the deli counter, and most importantly away from the rest of the people stuck down in the basement of the department store. Bashar had a torch next to him and there was enough light around the place to see, not that he wanted to see much. He acknowledged Tony, knowing it was time to make some concrete decisions.
The building continued to shake and rattle as more explosions sounded overhead. No zombies found their way to the escalator. Bashar reasoned it was likely some had found their way into the store, yet thankfully none had ventured down to the basement. He hoped that whatever was going on up in the streets would at least thin them out. At some point, probably sooner rather than later, they were going to have to leave. The noises that reached his ears from the building’s upper floors and London sounded a lot like a battle was raging. Occasionally there would be rapid popping noises, like gunfire, and then silence again. Sometimes he heard aircraft fly low overhead, then more explosions. The whole building would occasionally vibrate, sending packets and jars tumbling to the floor. There were distant voices, shouting and screaming, but mostly it was just the constant thudding and booming that drowned out anything else. He took some satisfaction from the thought that at least someone was fighting back. But what were they fighting? The zombies were one thing, but that thing that had brought down the plane was on another level. The longer he sat thinking about it, the more he was convinced it wasn’t an animal, but something more human. Yet nothing that large could possibly be human. It was also seemingly confined to the fog which was now dispersing. Was the appearance of the monster and the thinning of the fog linked or just coincidental? Bashar felt there was something portentous about the monster appearing when it did. Just as more and more people died, in their thousands, it was growing stronger. The thing radiated power, so why had it not just decimated London already? Why was there even a fight going on? For all he knew the sounds of the blasts were simply a result of the creature wading through the buildings of London, tearing them all down and killing anyone unlucky enough to still be around.
The thing had appeared to flicker in the fog, almost as if it wasn’t quite real. It felt like it didn’t belong, but was somehow forcing its way through. Bashar couldn’t grasp how it worked, how the thing could be there and yet not there. It almost hurt to think about it and he felt like a child trying to solve an impossible mathematical puzzle. It was too much so he dropped it and started plotting a course in his head that would get him out of the city. He needed some peace to think things through and had left the little group that had formed around Tony quickly. There had been brief introductions and Bashar had felt the usual looks cast in his direction of suspicion and mistrust. He seemed to have won over Lulu, though she was quickly aligning herself with Tony and Lissie. It seemed as if everyone had someone else to cling to. Seeing everyone else so close made thoughts of Nurtaj press their way to the front of his mind.
Jo had her daughter, Amelia. Rad and Marama weren’t a couple at all but seemed to have forged a friendship already. Rad was still a student, using a morning off to head for the British Library, while Marama was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, over on a working holiday. She was supposed to be returning home at the end of the week. The two younger men in hoodies were footballers on their day off. They played for one of the smaller clubs that Bashar had never heard of, but still seemed to have plenty of cash to throw around. That just left the two older men, the ones in the suits. They kept themselves to themselves, skirting around the fringe of the group, listening intently, but never actually joining in the conversation. Tony and Lissie had started entering into discussion with the others as to what was going on, but Bashar felt tired. He was tired of running, of killing, of the whole sorry situation; he wanted to be back with Nurtaj, wherever that might be. He needed some time and space to figure out just how he was going to reach her. His starting point was already an assumption: that her plane would land as planned in Manchester and that she would go back to her friend’s house. He had the address written on a note stuck to the fridge back at his flat in Ealing, so he had to get home first. Before he could even contemplate escaping the city, he had to get home. That meant travelling through west London. From there he would try to find a ride. Beg, borrow or steal, he was going to find one. If the motorway was clear he could be in Manchester in two to three hours. He assumed that this incident was contained to London, but he was making a lot of assumptions. His goal was reaching Nurtaj. That was simple. The hard part would be getting to her.
“I’ve left them to it,” said Tony. “The boy, Rad, he’s pretty bright. You wouldn’t think so looking at what he’s wearing, but he seems onto it. He’s finding weapons we can use for when we leave, just in case. They cut meat fresh so they’ve a lot of knives and shit back there. He’s doing the whole MacGyver thing.”
The name meant nothing to Bashar. “You think we’ll need them?”
“Yeah, I think we will. I know it sounds like World War Three up there, but I’m not convinced. Too little, too late. You saw that thing. Anyway, better to be prepared. You’ve still got your hammer but we lost all our other gear. My tools are lost and I’m not going up there to defend Lissie with just my bare hands. They sell cutlery and stuff too, so they’re hunting out what they can.”
“How’s Neale doing?” asked Bashar. “He okay?”
“Neale? He’s half cut. Found some expensive Polish vodka and drank half the bottle before any of us knew what he was up to. I left him making a play for that girl, what’s her name, Marama?”
“Yeah. She seemed nice.”
Tony whistled. “Nice? I’m happily married but even I can see she’s hot. Neale’s got no chance. Especially the shape he’s in.”
Bashar smiled wryly at the thought of Neale trying to chat up a strange girl in a basement whilst zombies walked the streets overhead. If he could pull in those circumstances then he deserved everything he got.
“She just wants to get home like all of us. Problem is her home is in New Zealand. What’s that, like ten thousand miles away? Poor kid. Neale keeps banging on about Hammersmith and Rad lives in Leightonstone. We’re all over the place, so no one can come up with a solid plan. They all want to stick together, but they all want to go their own way and get home too.”
“What about those footballers? They got much to say?” Bashar reached for an apple he had picked up and took a bite. He offered it to Tony who declined.
“Not much. They seem to t
hink this is all a bit of a joke. They haven’t seen the worst of it. They still reckon there will be a game on Saturday. I think they’ll be lucky if there even is a next Saturday.”
“What do you really think is going on?” Bashar looked at Tony, trying to read his face in the dull light. Tony was looking at his shoes and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. “You think the sun will rise tomorrow? You think you’ll get home for that cup of tea before the day’s through?”
Tony took a minute to answer. “I have to. I have to, Bashar. I can’t give up on Lissie. I have to get her home. Jo and Amelia too. Me and Lissie never had any kids. Always thought we would, you know, but we just never seemed to get around to it. Too old now. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that Lissie is everything to me. Jo and her kid too. They’re like family. I can’t give up yet. And what about London? We can’t give up on the old bird now. After everything she’s been through…”
They sat in silence, digesting Tony’s words. Was London still worth fighting for? What was left of it? The sound of destruction was ever-present. It wasn’t just the buildings that made a city, or the shops and streets. The people made it what it was too. How many of them were alive? How many now were dead and roaming the streets? There should be groups of schoolchildren going to Madame Tussauds. There should be tourists lining up outside Harrods and Selfridges and all the shops on Oxford Street. Tower Bridge, the London Eye, Borough Market, Wembley – were they all now relics? So much history and so much of the future of the city was intertwined with these places that it was hard to imagine them gone.
Tony shuddered as dust rained down upon them. He looked up at the ceiling and the loose tiles. “Wish I knew what was happening. It sounds like a war up there.”
There was another muffled bang which sounded like an explosion not too far away. “Maybe it is. Maybe somebody is fighting back,” said Bashar.