by Ian Woodhead
He grinned as he heard the slow, monotonous pounding on the cellar door. “And speak of the devil.” he murmured.
His loving wife had awakened from her not so eternal sleep. Trust Ethel to be late, she never was very prompt. Then again, the ropes he’d tied around her wrists and legs had been very tight; maybe it just took her awhile to work herself free. That would be ironic; before he’d taken the decision to bludgeon her with the lump hammer, she couldn’t tie her own shoelaces without his help.
Dennis stood up; he flicked through the channels one last time before turning off the TV. He supposed that he’d have to deal with Ethel before that noise drove him to distraction The trouble was that Dennis was at a loss as to how he was going to achieve this. Ethel was dead and Albert Pannier certainly was. The man had been rotting under a flower bed for the best part of a decade. How do you kill something that’s already dead? It wasn’t the sort of question that usually got asked.
The banging stopped, then re-started as he approached the kitchen door, the sound seemed louder, and it had definitely become faster, almost frantic. Could she sense that he was closer?
He had a machete under the bed and a shotgun hidden in the base of the wardrobe. Dennis was positive that one of them should be able to put an end to her. He paused for a moment as a screaming man ran past the living room window. Light bulbs went off in his head; he’d just had an epiphany. It was madness out there. Residents were consuming or being consumed, there had been no sign of any police or ambulance or even the army. They must know what was going on. Dennis figured that the area must have been sealed off. Why stop at Ethel? He looked up at the framed portrait of Clint Eastwood handing above the fireplace.
“The Rojos on one side of town, the Baxter’s on the other and me right in the middle.”
Dennis was going to have a lot of fun tonight, after all, it wasn’t like there was anything on the television.
Chapter Five
That shambling horde of undead rotting bastards had cornered him; there was no way that he’d be able to get past them, not this time. He could feel the sweat dripping down his face, what was he going to do? He was surrounded; they’d eat him for sure if he didn’t find a way out. Bugger, he only had the baseball bat and the hockey stick left in his inventory.
Jacob Kingsley tugged at his long goatee, this was a bloody quandary. He couldn’t even ask his clan mates for assistance, the fucking internet had died an hour ago. He sighed then paused the game instead, playing off-line just wasn’t the same; it sucked big monkey’s balls. Leaning towards the television to study the screen, he looked past the frozen snarling dead faces to see if he could see a path through them, thank God, the designers had opted for the slow, shambling zombies, oh this was so annoying there must be something he had missed.
The snarling faces splattered all over the game box got his bloody goat when he first purchased Dead City Rising for his 360. Since when did zombies snarl? Everybody knew that was wrong. Still, apart from that major oversight, it was a pretty decent game, fucking hard too; Jacob had heard a rumour that someone in the States had actually clocked it on insane mode. Personally, he thought that rumour was a big pile of steaming poo. He couldn’t even finish the game on medium and Jacob knew that his gaming skills were bloody good, they ought to be; playing games was all he did in his spare time.
Dead City Rising 2 was supposed to be coming out next month. Just in time for his twentieth birthday. Of course he would be buying it himself, probably the only present he was going to get this year anyway.
It would be nice to have a party too, like that would ever happen, who on earth would he invite? Nobody liked him on the estate, which was cool as he didn’t like anybody either. Speaking of parties, he knew that the house over the road was having one tonight, not that he’d been invited, and not that he gave a fuck either. Just what did he have in common with the average brain dead scummy chav bastard that infested the streets of Breakspear apart from fuck all?
Jacob turned the telly off; he’d decided to find out what had happened to the internet. Those bastards had better not have cut him off, if they had, there’d be hell to pay, it’s not like he owed them any money.
While he was checking the wires downstairs, it might be an idea to get a bit of grub; maybe he could convince his mum to make him a sandwich. She was still in; he had heard her moving about a few minutes ago. Jacob wondered why she was still in the house; she ought to be down at the Horse and Jockey by this time, propping up the bar, it’s what she did on a Friday. What the hell was he talking about? She was in that place every fucking night. He remembered having his eighteenth birthday in that dump. God, that was embarrassing, almost as embarrassing as finding out that every scumbag on the estate called his own mum ‘Scary Mary’.
He slid his chair back and gave Bub a salute. The poster of zombie Bub from the original Day of the Dead movie directly above him saluted back. Apparently Dead City Rising 2 was going to have sprinting zombies in the game. He hoped to Christ that the rumour was wrong; it would completely ruin the game. Everybody knew that zombies did not run. It was like the first commandment or something.
He reached into his back pocket and brought out his phone, if mum was home then no doubt the fat bitch would be guzzling her way through the bottles of White Lightning cider at the side of the telly. She would be too fucked to stand up, never mind make him a sandwich. He decided to order out instead, the diet could wait until tomorrow.
There was no signal on his phone, oh bollocks; he’d have to go downstairs anyway to use the house phone, if he could find the bloody thing. Christ knows where his mum would have put it this time; buying the messiest woman in the known universe a cordless phone for Christmas wasn’t one of his better ideas. Jacob opened his bedroom door and wandered down the stairs.
When Jacob was a kid, his dream was to wake up one day to find that someone had swapped his parents during the night, he’d open his eyes to find himself in a luxurious house, clean and tidy and full of toys and best of all, his parents spoke to him like he was a normal human being. What was he talking about? He still had that dream. To have a mother that didn’t drink herself to oblivion or leave the house looking like a bomb site every day would be so cool. Jacob stepped over a pair of her dirty knickers, draped over a pile of old newspapers.
He wasn’t a bit like this, he kept his bedroom immaculate and the eighteenth party disaster had put paid to any notions of him accompanying his mum to the pub every night. He managed to get to the foot of the steps without breaking his neck. Jacob cringed when he saw the door handle was covered in buttery fingerprints. He took a step back, lifted up his foot and booted the door open. He shook his head and wandered into the living room.
Mary Kingsley wasn’t sat in her favourite chair, nor had she opened any bottles of cider. Scary Mary was kneeling down in front of the television with her face buried deep in their pet cat’s open stomach.
“What the fuck are you doing?” screamed Jacob.
Mary dropped the dead cat and lifted her vast bulk off the carpet, frothy scarlet gore dripped off her jowls. Mary groaned and took one step towards her son.
“Oh, my fucking God, My mum is a fucking zombie!”
Jacob stumbled out the living room and charged up the stairs; his racing mind rushed through the first level on Dead City Rising, he had twatted a big fat zombie woman in the underground train station, he threw a fire extinguisher at her head. Oh bloody hell; there must be something similar he could use to dispatch his mum.
He stopped at the top of the stairs and opened the curtains so he could check the outside; he just had to see if the rest of the estate was in the same situation, he had time. Jacob knew from experience that although a zombie’s sense of smell was far superior to a human’s, height confused them, even with the steps right in front of her; it would take her fucking ages to reach him.
Jacob looked out of the window and grinned like a lunatic. The zombie apocalypse had arrived. Oh God, this was just br
illiant. He watched a lurching woman with no arms turning in a circle as an old man kept dancing forward, slicing into her with a long knife then dancing back out of her reach. A bit further down, near the main road, there was another zombie on the floor, one lad had his boot on the zombies arse while another bloke kept smashing what looked like a snooker cue over the zombie’s head. He had to get outside – and join in.
Mum had found the stairs; she had yet to figure out how to climb them.
“What’s wrong you dumb bitch?” he taunted, “Are the stairs a bit too hard for you to work out is it?”
He decided to kill her with dad’s old lava lamp, the glass would shatter, obviously but the base was mega heavy. Hell, he didn’t even have to move from the top step to do it.
“You wait there mum, I’m gonna get you a nice surprise.” He said before rushing into his parent’s bedroom. He hated going in here, not because he respected their privacy or anything, it just smelt bad, like a cross between sweaty socks and rotting bacon grease. The stench in here tonight was even worse, Jesus! What the hell had she been doing?
Jacob held his nose and scanned the dingy room for the lamp. This was just disgusting; he’d seen tidier landfill sites. He heard his mother groaning away at the bottom of the stairs, he was a little surprised that she was still down there and waiting for him.
At last, his eyes caught sight of the lamp, buried under a couple of bulging black bin liners, under the window. His parent’s bed was the only thing in there that was relatively free of detritus; he couldn’t even see the carpet. There had been evidence of a tidy up, by that he meant all the rubbish pushed to the edges of the room, but that would have been in the distant past. Torn supermarket carrier bags spilling their contents of old newspapers and puzzle magazines competed for space with discarded clothes and DVD’s.
He figured out what the spicy new stench was when he located a load of cat poo layered between a horse racing pullout and a TV listings magazine dated last month. Jacob stood on the head of a broken vacuum cleaner and dived onto the bed, there was no way he was standing on that carpet.
As he bounced across the bed, Jacob weighed up the pros and cons between going it alone or joining a group. Judging by how the zombie mum was acting, these buggers were the slow type, he smiled.
“Up yours Dawn of the Dead remake.”
Racking up a decent kill count shouldn’t be that much of a problem, God he wished he could get hold of a shotgun. As more unfortunate souls joined the ranks of the dead, their swelling numbers would present a major predicament. He had no desire to go the same way as his game character, thank you very much.
Joining the nearest band of survivors would probably be his best chance of surviving the apocalypse. The social barriers that prevented him from interacting with the rest of the people on Breakspear would now be gone; everybody would work together in order to defeat the common adversary. Any group would of course welcome Jacob with open arms; everyone on the estate knew that he was the resident zombie expert. For the first time in his life, he would be accepted and loved.
Jacob kneeled down at the edge of the bed and pushed his arm through the black metal railings on the footboard and reached towards the lava lamp. As soon as he’d finished taking out his zombie mum, Jacob could get on with enjoying his new life. His future never looked so bright.
The boy squealed when a hand snaked out from under the bed and fastened around his wrist, he tried to pull away but only succeeded in dragging the owner of the appendage out.
“Oh God no, Dad let go please!”
His father regarded him with dead eyes then opened his mouth and like a cobra he darted forward. The searing pain exploded through Jacob’s body when the man bit into his bicep. He reared back with a lump of his son’s arm still in his mouth, only then did he release Jacob.
The boy fell back, he clutched his damaged arm, moaning and sobbing, and gazing in disbelief as his scarlet life fluid spurted through the cracks in his fingers. He looked up, whimpering when he discovered that his mother had found her way up the stairs. He sobbed one last time as the dead woman lurched up to the edge of the bed and fell on to him with her mouth wide open.
Chapter Six
That last screw had somehow managed to defeat every tool in Kevin’s modelling box. Even the butter knife that he found under his bed was no match for the stubborn bastard, in the end he just lost his rag and battered the fucker off the wall with the end of a never-worn ice-skating boot. To make things worse, the noise he made got those things outside his door all worked up.
Kevin had thought, or at least hoped, that they had gotten bored with waiting and left the house, but no, they were still there. To make matters worse, if that was fucking possible, he heard three different moans; it appeared that Thom wasn’t as dead as Kevin had first thought. Bloody hell, what did you have to do to kill the bastards?
He gazed down at the genuine piece of war memorabilia and wondered if this would stop them. It was sharp enough to cut through flesh; he had no doubts about that. He had made a right mess of Star Wars wallpaper while practising his stabbing techniques.
His bayonet wasn’t really the issue, Kevin knew, deep down, that he could be armed with an assault rifle and grenades and still be in the same position. The problem was him; he’d never been the confrontational type, which was ironic considering the vast amount of military junk that littered his room.
Ever since he was young, he had negotiated or tricked his way out of potential fights and arguments, and if that didn’t work then he just ran as far as fast as his legs could take him.
He jumped when one of them banged against the door. Those tactics weren’t going to work with those things were they? Oh Jesus, just where the hell could he go? Kevin was trapped in his bedroom. He hurried over to his window and peered out, he might have a chance out there, on the street. He spun around as they banged on the door yet again: this time he actually saw the door frame shake.
His gut dropped when he saw a pair of grey, skeletal hands appear under the door: the fuckers were trying to find a way in. How long would it take for them to burst through and launch into his poor body? One hour, maybe two? He shook his head and pressed his back against the door, knowing that even with the blade he’d be hard pressed to stop one, never mind three, of the bastards.
How long would it take them to realise that his door wasn’t as solid as it looked? His dad had once put his fist through his sister’s door during one of their drunken arguing bouts. The fingers disappeared and the banging resumed, they were going to be through that bloody door as if it was made from paper maché. He let out a hysterical giggle; it probably was.
The door handle began to turn. Kevin screamed.
“No you flipping don’t!”
He raced over and grabbed the foot of his bed and pushed it across the door. Bloody hell, he was such an idiot; he should have done that in the first place! Why didn’t he run into Claire’s bedroom? Her door had a massive lock and bolt on it. The handle swung down and flipped back up again. Were they learning or remembering? Why was he even asking? If he didn’t do something, he would soon be their dinner, even with the bed blocking the door, it wouldn’t hold them forever.
The light from the full moon shone through the window; he heard no sounds at all from outside. There had been a few screams earlier but nothing for a good few minutes since. He picked his bayonet off the bed and opened the window to get a better view. Breakspear looked deserted. He looked up and saw the telltale flashing light of an aircraft slowly descending.
“Maybe it’s just happened in the estate; I bet the rest of England is still ok...”
The handle turned and this time it stayed down. He leaned out, it was a fair way to drop but the ground should be soft. If he stayed in the middle of the road and ran like fuck he’d be on the main road in five minutes.
“And back to normality.”
He threw the bayonet out, looked up and down the street one last time and climbed onto the wind
ow sill. When the door was pushed open a couple of inches and his bed moved across the room, he screamed and nearly jumped there and then.
They still couldn’t get in, not yet anyway. Kevin turned, his eyes fixed on that door. Two pairs of hands reached around and inched up and down the edge, one pair belonged to his sister.
Maybe there was a cure for this already; maybe it still wasn’t too late to save the ones affected.
“I’ll come back, Claire,” he whispered. “I promise.” He eased his legs and body out into the warm night air, he doubted that the drop would hurt him if he hung from the window and dropped to the floor; it should only be a few feet.
As he hung to the outside window ledge and was preparing to let go, his boot was grabbed. He jerked his head down and saw Thom’s head leaning out of the open living room window; the boy’s hand guiding his foot towards his snapping jaws. He felt his fingers slipping: oh fuck, if he let go now, he would break his bastard neck when he hit the ground.
He swung his other foot into Thom’s face: he felt the crunch of broken teeth but the grip on his boot still remained firm. Kevin booted him again. This time he managed to find the spot he’d already hit with the binoculars. His foot sank into Thom’s head: it felt like he’d just booted a watermelon. The hand released his foot just as both of Kevin’s hands slipped off the wooden sill. He instinctively brought up his knees when his feet crashed into the lawn.
Kevin rolled away from the window then shakily got back on his feet. He’d done it! He couldn’t believe that he’d just jumped out of his own pissing window. He reached down and snatched his bayonet out of the lawn and looked over at the downstairs window.