Doomware

by Nathan Kuzack

  A bath normally managed to relax him and lift his mood, but after this bath he felt dreadful and couldn’t eat. There was an emptiness inside him, one that food didn’t have a hope of filling. He sat in silence and semi-darkness, staring into space as he sipped on a glass of rosé wine. For the umpteenth time he thought about the possibility of other survivors. It was impossible not to fantasise about, but the hope of it only served to highlight his despair. He recalled the time, only days after the virus had struck, when he’d charged headlong into a church, drawn by the sound of one of its bells ringing, only to be met by the sight of a zombie moronically pulling on a bell rope, an incident that had subsequently inspired terrible nightmares.

  His aloneness had given him an affinity for the book Robinson Crusoe, which he’d reread since the calamity had begun, and was inclined towards reading yet again. Like the narrator of Crusoe, he was alone, marooned, living in constant fear of man-eating savages. He was the sole survivor, and the whole world was his island. He needed his own Friday. God how he needed one. His period of solitude wasn’t even measured in years, yet already his desire for companionship had reached epic proportions. But there had to be others, didn’t there? All his life he’d heard stories about other non-elective acybernetics like himself, people whose young bodies had rejected brainware for reasons unknown, but he’d never met one – not once in almost 100 years. He knew there were more males than females; it was looked upon as one of men’s many failings. Years ago he thought he spotted an acybernetic’s disk identical to his own, hung around the neck of a fair-haired man. He’d pursued the man through a Tube station, but had lost him in the ever-shifting crowds. Ever since that day the thought that he might be passing a fellow acybernetic on the street, a kindred soul who would understand precisely how he felt, who would automatically be both friend and confidant courtesy of their shared experiences, had both tantalised and tormented him.

  Elective acybernetics – “offliners” as they were usually called – he hadn’t felt the same way about at all. They were the source of a good deal of the animosity that came his way, and he resented them. Nowadays he regarded them with almost as much trepidation as the zombies themselves. He didn’t know for sure, but he assumed offliners were unaffected by the virus, and he suspected they were having an absolute field day in this lawless new world.

  He wondered how many acybernetics like himself had been killed the first day of the virus, murdered by someone they’d loved as he’d almost been. His survival had only come about by pure chance. But why? Why was he still here when everyone else was either dead outright or dead and zombified? He didn’t feel worthy of it. Somebody else might have been able to deal with it better, had more purpose, or at least been able to appreciate the gift of continued life they’d been given. Guilt over being alive: he carried it around wherever he went like an overcoat of shame with a badge of dishonour attached, weighed down by it, unable to cast it off. Even a saint would have felt their strength being sapped by it.

  He tipped the remainder of the wine down his throat and decided not to think about other survivors. It was better not to hope. The higher the hopes the greater the fall.

  CHAPTER 12

  D + 198

  After a night of fitful sleeping he hauled himself out of bed, compelled only by the cat’s mewling persistence. He fed the feline, but not himself. Taking a bottle of his pills from the cupboard, he shook one of them onto the palm of his hand. He stared at the thing, pushing it around with the tip of his finger as if trying to prod it into life. The powder-blue pill looked no different to the thousands of others he’d consumed over the years, but for some reason it felt it. After a while he carefully tipped the pill back into the bottle it had come from, which he then tossed noisily back into the cupboard. What was the point? There was no one to worry him about it any more, no one to care. Besides, finding a fresh supply of them might be a problem in the future, he reasoned, knowing he was only deceiving himself. It was the first time in more than nine decades he’d deliberately missed a dose.

  For the next hour he wandered around the flat as if in a daze, aimlessly going from room to room. He didn’t feel like reading a book, nor listening to music, nor watching a film. The idea of going to the Lighthouse flitted about the periphery of his thoughts, but wasn’t strong enough an attraction to get him to brave the outside. Hunger still eluded him; the only items in the kitchen calling to him like Sirens were his bottles of wines, which he stood staring at for a long while. No, he decided in the end. Not this early. Besides, too much wine just makes you crazy. Or ill. With the motivation for nothing else, he went back to bed.

  He lay there for hours, drifting in and out of sleep the way he’d drifted in and out of different rooms.

  Eventually, the need to go to the toilet summoned him to the bathroom. As he stood urinating he stared at his reflection in the medicine cabinet’s mirror. His skin was unshaven, pallid and sun-starved, and the zombie’s backhand had made his upper lip swell just enough to give his face an odd, distorted look. But what struck him most was the look of his eyes. The shrunken, hole-like pupils were surrounded by irises that looked to be darker shades of green than normal, almost as if they’d been stained by something corrosive. Beyond them, the whites were badly bloodshot. If the eyes were windows to the soul then his had the blinds firmly shut and the curtains drawn.

  My God! His eyes looked just like theirs. The colours were different, but the overall impression was exactly the same. The epiphany rolled over him, as ominous as distant thunder.

  He was just as big a zombie as they were.

  He didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. He was like them: dead already. He wandered around devoid of spirit or joy or purpose, as did they; he’d lost everything that had meant anything to him, as they had; his existence was completely without worth, as was theirs. The parallels went on and on when he really thought about it. All this time he’d been labouring under the apprehension that his technology-free body had saved him from the calamity, but it wasn’t true. He was merely going through the motions, waiting for disease or a zombie pick him off, treading water on the edge of a giant whirlpool that was sure to swallow him whole, its pull irresistible. He pictured a zombie tearing the flesh from his bones, feeding on it as nonchalantly as the zombie had fed on the severed foot the day before, the barbarous act meaning as little to it as the flesh did to the universe itself.

  In fact, he was an even bigger zombie than they were; they didn’t have any choice in the matter.

  He went into the living room, and it was no accident that the first thing his eyes fell upon was the handgun lying on the coffee table.

  Just do it, a voice that seemed entirely separate to his own said. They’ve already won: you’re one of them. You’re a zombie by your own volition. What’s the point of prolonging the inevitable? Do it your way. Don’t let them eat the flesh from your bones.

  He picked the gun up and stroked its smooth, cool exterior. This device would make it so easy – the solution to all his ills with just the pulling of a trigger. Yesterday it had released a dead man’s body from the indignity of a pointless existence, a state of unrest forced upon it by a heartless virus; today it could do the same for his soul. His barren soul, so wasted it was an insult to the ranks of the virus-slain dead, every one of whom would gladly, gratefully, be standing in his place if only they could. An insult to the memory of mankind itself.

  Without releasing the safeties, he pointed the muzzle at himself, trying out the different ways it could be done. Which would be best? The temple? Under the chin? The pseudo-sexual in the mouth?

  Don’t do it! another voice implored him, as separate to himself as the other had been. You’re stronger than that. You might be embattled and lonely, feeling useless and miserable, but you’re a survivor. A survivor! A lingering representative of humanity. A lone, struggling pall-bearer for the whole human race. The same race that was capable of scientific learning, great works of art and unconditional love. Th
e mere fact of your existence is like spit in the Devil’s eye!

  He placed the gun back down on the table, peering at it sideways as if it had been trying to seduce him into wrongdoing.

  The second voice had prevailed. For now, at least.

  CHAPTER 13

  D + 199

  The next morning he woke to what had become a welcome sight in this topsy-turvy world: heavy rain. In his fragile state of mind, it provided the extra incentive he needed to venture outside. Thank God he lived in rainy old England; otherwise he might have been a prisoner in his own home for much longer stretches of time.

  Once again he omitted to take his prophylactic medication, unbothered by the threat of withdrawal symptoms. He dressed hurriedly and slipped the gun into his holdall. He didn’t really feel like blowing the brains out of another zombie just yet, but he wouldn’t balk at the task if it came to it.

  After the tiresome rigmarole of the barricades he made his way towards the Lighthouse. The downpour was so intense it was a constant struggle to keep moving, and by the time he reached his destination he was tired and soaked through – half sweat and half rainwater, despite the protection of his raincoat. The cold, damp and fatigue couldn’t stop him from feeling glad to be there, and he looked around the place fondly as he hastened to dry himself. He didn’t bother checking the house for intruders; somehow the place felt sacred, inviolable.

  In the kitchen he sorted food into his holdall. There was still a mountain of it to get through, and each new item placed into the holdall widened the diversity of potential meals he could conjure up, piquing within him the first real desire for food he’d felt for days.

  In the first-floor drawing room David flipped through the records and chose one at random by an act called the Pet Shop Boys, the cover of which featured a picture of two men, one of them yawning, against a white background. The first song was an incredible orchestral number called It Couldn’t Happen Here, sung by a male vocalist with a starkly distinctive voice. He sat on a chaise long and listened intently as the mournful, prophetic lyrics washed over him. The second track was a barnstorming extravaganza called It’s a Sin, which ended, fittingly enough, with the singer reciting part of the Confiteor – mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. As before, the music felt like a gift from a bygone age.

  The music continued playing as he explored the third floor, the topmost part of the house and obviously the least used by whoever had lived here. There was a small single bedroom, while most of the other rooms were almost completely empty, occupied only by boxes piled here and there. It was a criminal waste of space, and yet another testament to the former owners’ wealth.

  By the time he re-entered the drawing room the record had stopped playing. As he moved to turn it over something out the window caught his eye. A zombie child in a shiny blue boys’ parka, the fur-lined hood down despite the rain, was walking along the pavement on the opposite side of the street, moving sluggishly, drawing level with the house. It was probably the same kid he’d seen on the motorway flyover, he thought, uninterested.

  Then the zombie child turned its head in his direction and he did a double-take. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Or, rather, right. Very right. Although pale, it didn’t have the ghostly all-over pallor of a zombie, nor did it have the same shuffling gait when he thought about it. Plus it was outside in heavy rain. And the eyes! Even at this distance, the customary colours of a zombie’s eyes should have been detectable. Instead, there appeared to be distinct whites and dark pupils – the way they should be. Unless it was a trick of the light, the boy’s eyes looked to be normal.

  It wasn’t a zombie.

  For a moment he didn’t react, refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes.

  It wasn’t a zombie. It was a boy. A normal boy.

  Recovering himself, he pounded on the window pane with a clenched fist and went to shout, only for a feeble croak to come rasping from his throat. He’d lived such a wordless existence for the past six months he had to struggle to make his vocal cords work above a whisper; not to mention the fact that his heart had leapt into his mouth.

  “Hey! Heyyyyy! Up here!”

  The boy heard him and froze, looking around apprehensively for the source of the sound. There were definitely no zombie cataracts in his eyes, the surest sign that the boy was uninfected. David pummelled on the window again and waved furiously, and the boy saw him. He looked scared. Even at this distance, he could see fear on the boy’s face and in his body language.

  Zombies didn’t show fear.

  David swung the window open and the gentle tinkling of the rain amplified into something like the roar of a waterfall.

  “Hey!” he shouted over the rain. “Hey! Up here.”

  The boy said nothing; he just peered out from under a curtain of dirty-blond hair gone straggly in the rain with wide, wary eyes. Then he reached up, pulled on his hood, and started backing away slowly, as if worried that sudden movements might provoke some kind of retaliation.

  “No! It’s okay,” David called, trying to force what might be taken for friendliness into his overstrained voice. “Don’t be afraid. It’s all right. Come on up here.”

  At that, the boy turned on his heel and ran back the way he’d come.

  “NO!” David roared.

  He tore from the drawing room and onto the wooden stairs, nearly tripping headlong as he thundered down them.

  Outside, the boy had already disappeared around a corner where the street turned sharply to the right. David ran as fast as he could through the rain, rounding the corner onto Richmond Road. Here there was a left turn onto St Mary’s Road, quickly followed by turnings onto Twickenham Road and Francis Road. David ran along St Mary’s Road, his eyes darting to and fro urgently, his mouth calling out greetings, but even to him they sounded hollow and half-hearted. He could sense it was no use. The boy had been quick on his feet, and he’d had too much of a head start. There was no sign of him, no telling which direction he’d gone in, and the weather hampered both vision and hearing. The torrent was coming down so forcefully it was creating a kind of grey haze, one that hovered above the ground and was capable of swallowing up the figure of a retreating boy in no time. Moreover, he’d run outside without stopping to put on his raincoat; he was getting absolutely drenched through.

  After a short period of fruitless searching David reluctantly accepted that the boy was gone. Crestfallen, he returned to the Lighthouse with a limp body and an even limper morale, compelled to look over his shoulder every few seconds in the vain hope the boy might reappear. He castigated himself for not thinking before acting; he should have made his presence known far more subtly than beating on the window and hollering at the poor kid.

  Back in the Lighthouse he stripped off his wet clothes, dried himself using a towel from the ground-floor cloakroom, and put on dry clothes he found in one of the bedrooms. All through this he shivered violently, shaking with a sense of angry self-recrimination as much as the cold.

  In the kitchen he made himself a hot drink using an old-fashioned kettle, and sat warming his hands on the mug as he sipped from it.

  “Stupid!” he muttered to himself. “So fuckin’ stupid.”

  For a long time his thoughts were nebulous, clouded with dismay, exacerbated by his low opinion of himself. Deep down, the boy’s running away felt like yet another rejection. No one but freakish, murderous zombies in the world and the boy would rather go it alone than be with a freak like him. No, that bordered on blaming the boy. You couldn’t fault a child, especially when their reactions were born of fear in this hellish world adults had created. The boy would naturally harbour a distrust of all adults; he hadn’t understood they were both survivors – islands of humanity in a sea of the soulless. The fact alone that another survivor had been revealed to him ought to be buoying his spirits.

  Look on the bright side, he instructed himself. So he’d fouled up their first contact – he was only human. Still human. Next time he’d know better. All
was not lost: he would find the boy.

  Slowly his disappointment in himself over chasing away the first living human being he’d seen in more than six months dissipated, giving way to a brand of optimistic anticipation the likes of which he hadn’t felt for so long it took him a moment to identify it. It was the feeling of having a goal in life, having something to look forward to. Although aware that his change of mood was being fuelled by this renewed sense of purpose, he also knew that he wasn’t thinking entirely selfishly. The boy needed help, and he was the only one around who could give it to him. He would search for the child day and night – well, probably not the nights, he conceded – until he found him.

  How old was the boy? Seven? Eight? Older? He was hopeless as far as children’s ages were concerned. Instinctively, he knew the boy was alone; he had to be a fellow acybernetic, and what were the chances of him having a parent or guardian who was the same? Besides, who in their right mind would have let a child out on their own, even in rain? Plus there was the time on the flyover; the boy been alone then too. Of course, it begged the question of how a child that young had managed to survive six months’ worth of a post-apocalypse nightmare on his own. At this point a note of doubt crept into his mind. What if he was wrong? The boy hadn’t looked or acted like a zombie, but what if it was simply a type of zombie he hadn’t encountered before? One that had normal-looking eyes and showed fear, that loved the rain and ran away at the sight of another person. With a shake of his head he pushed the doubt aside, ready and willing to grasp firmly onto hope this time. He knew what he’d seen. The boy’s eyes hadn’t been reversed the way all zombies’ eyes were and, besides, zombies never showed fear and they never ran from you; ergo, the boy was no zombie.