After the Fall

by Stephen Cross

  Mac shook his head. “I don’t know if I can. This world… It’s not worth it anymore.” He looked Ellie in the eyes. “It was my fault wasn’t it? If I’d left them stupid boys alone… Do you think they started the fire?”

  “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. We’re here now, and we have to survive. Together. You know how much Angie loved Eddy.”

  “She did, very much.”

  “She would want us to continue. You’re all we’ve got now Mac. Remember what you told me when my husband died?”

  “You need to keep alive for the baby’s sake.”

  “You need to do the same. To keep alive for Eddy’s sake. For Angie’s sake. She’s watching you, you know,” said Ellie, trying a smile. “You think she would want you to give up?”

  Eddy stirred in Ellie’s arms, finishing his feed. His little blue eyes looked around the outhouse and settled on Mac.

  “He’s looking at me,” said Mac, smiling. “Can they see properly at this age?”

  Ellie shrugged. “Who knows. There’s no google to check these things anymore. I think he can. He’s telling you you’ll be ok. Just like his Mummy was after she lost the person she loved.”

  Mac reached his arms out, “Can I?”

  Ellie passed Eddy to Mac, and he took the baby in his big hands and big arms. The tiny baby nearly disappeared in the big old hulk of Mac.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Angie wouldn’t want me moping about.” He looked up at Ellie again. “I just feel so sad, it’s a physical pain. What do I do?”

  “I kept busy. That’s the best you can do.”

  Mac looked around the outhouse, as if trying to find jobs that needed doing. His gaze settled on Angie. “We need to bury her.”

  They used stones from a nearby dry stone wall and covered her.

  “That should keep the animals off at least,” said Mac placing the last stone.

  He said a few words, and told Ellie the story of how they met. Ellie cried.

  The weather remained good for the make shift funeral. The sun shone in between lumpy racing clouds, driven on by a stiff breeze.

  “We need to find somewhere to stay tonight,” said Ellie, “And I need some clothes, nappies.”

  “Aye,” said Mac, staring across the rolling yellow and green hills of the countryside. “We’re in a fix alright. We can try Marshall’s farm. It’s not too far away. There’s not much in the way of food, but there is a rain butt and we can use it as a base, somewhere we can keep the little one. I’ll do a run into town, get some supplies.”

  There was another reason they needed to get inside, but an unspoken one. Eddy’s crying had to be contained, and that was best done by a building. Every cry out here in the open was a call to the undead. Maybe they were getting lucky at the moment because they were all still fascinated with the burning pub - a zombie multiplex, all of them gawking at the fanning flames and colours.

  Mac stared at the spiraling tower of grey smoke.

  “Wonder how long it will burn.”

  It took an hour to reach the farmhouse. Mac did a quick scan of the building. “All the same as it has been.”

  “You have been here before?”

  “Every week or so. Good place for rabbits nearby. Used to be friends of ours, the Marshalls.”

  The farmhouse was in surprisingly good condition. Ellie walked from room to room. The house felt abandoned, as if the soul of the house had left. It was not just empty, the owners packed up for two weeks and gone on holiday; it felt a special type of empty; the way Angie’s body had looked after she was dead.

  There was a good supply of sheets upstairs. Ellie could use those for nappies. She would rip them into squares later. There was also plenty of rugs and clothing she could fashion clothes for Eddy from. Angie had been teaching her how to sow.

  Ellie put on an old summer dress she found in the wardrobe and wrapped Eddy in a nice warm rug. He cooed with what Ellie thought was pleasure.

  Going downstairs again, she found Mac in the kitchen, leaning over the table, his head in his hands. His body jumped softly, to the sound of quiet sobs. She sneaked back upstairs and lay on the bed, were she quickly fell asleep, with Eddy in her arms.

  Chapter 11

  She woke in the early evening and found Mac still in the kitchen, piling up tins of food. “I found these in the cupboards. Should be enough for a day or two until we get ourselves sorted.”

  There was also a number of bottles filled with water, from the water butt, assumed Ellie. She had a long drink and ate some tuna from one of the tins.

  “I need you to look after Eddy for an hour or two,” said Ellie. “He’s just been fed, so he should be ok.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going back to the pub.”

  “On your own? No-” Mac paused. He had been about to tell her that she couldn’t go on her own. “Ok. But be careful. What are you doing there?”

  “I want to look through the remains, see if there is anything worth keeping, if anything survived.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  “No, it’s best if Eddy stays here. He may start crying and attract zombies.”

  Mac nodded. He looked tired. Used up. Beat up. “Well, like I said, be careful. Me and Eddy will be just fine.”

  “I know you will.”

  The light was beginning to fade as Ellie walked down the long drive from the farmhouse to the main road. The sun glowed red on the horizon turning the far woods atop of hills into silhouettes. A murder of crows took off from nearby. Ellie hurried up her pace. Disturbed birds could mean zombies.

  She turned left once she reached the main road and walked quickly towards the pub. Thin strands of smoke still floated gently into the still evening sky, their gossamer grey filtering the dying sunlight into light oranges and yellows.

  A lone zombie appeared on the road in the distance. It saw her and let out a small moan before picking up its pace and heading dumbly towards Ellie.

  Ellie skipped into a run. She wanted to silence it before it made any more noise. She pulled out her knife as she ran, raised it high and on reaching the zombie, jumped and plunged the blade deep into its skull. She pulled the knife out in the same motion, and landed beyond the zombie. She carried on walking, with just a slight glance behind her to make sure it was dead again.

  It was.

  When she reached the pub, she stared at it from the main road. The once proud and welcoming white building was now an empty and black skeleton. Three of the walls had fallen in, leaving only the left side. Charred timbers stuck up from the ground through the smoking rubble like ragged black bones.

  It was just as well Angie couldn’t see what was let of her home.

  Ellie didn’t walk up the drive, however. She didn’t want to check the remains. Instead she turned round and climbed through the hedge into the field opposite the pub.

  The dark and silent shape of Green’s farm nestled at the end of the field. Ellie ran across to the boundary hedge and moved quickly towards the farmhouse, keeping low.

  As she approached, rabbits scurried into their burrows and a cat watched her from a dilapidated brick wall. The cobblestones of the farm’s courtyard was mired in thick mud. Vegetation was making a slow comeback, shoots of green promising that one day things would be better.

  An old Land Rover rusted by an outhouse.

  Mac said he had found the Demon Writers upstairs in the main building. They had been asleep.

  Ellie crept to the back door, it was hanging open. Dusk was here and it cast a unearthly grey light across the house, like it was the feature in a avant-garde back and white photographic exhibition.

  She peered through the door. Stairs led up, and two doorways led to a lounge and a kitchen.

  Her heart was pumping fast, but not as fast as she had thought it would. A strange calmness had come over her. She felt still in confidence and purpose.

  Ellie sneaked into the house, quick darting looks peering into
the dark corners, looking for movement or the recognisable forms of a human.

  She found nothing but mess, which gave the impression of an abandoned building, but whose tenants were revealed by a few tell tale signs. Empty tins of foods. Beer cans. Crisp packets. A girlie mag. Plates with food that could only be a day or two old.

  Ellie crept up the stairs, still surprised at how calm she felt. She held her knife tightly, up and ready to strike.

  But there was no-one to strike.

  The bedrooms were also empty.

  Ellie went back downstairs. There was a crevice under the stairs, dark and filled in shadow. She shuffled in and got herself comfortable.

  She would wait.

  Ellie jumped awake. Her immediate thought was one of anger that she had fallen asleep. How long had she slept? It could have been hours; the grey cloak of dusk had shuffled off to reveal the full darkness of night.

  Voices.

  She pulled herself tighter into the shadows.

  The voices came from the kitchen.

  “More fucking baked beans. I’d kill for chips n curry.”

  A young voice, accented.

  “Better than nothing,” said another.

  The sound of cupboards opening and closing. A gas burner. A tin being opened.

  “Pub’s stopped burning.”

  “Fuck ‘em. Serves ‘em right.”

  “Still reckon we should have got that bird out. She was fit.”

  “Nah. Fuck ‘em all.”

  Something being scraped from a pan. Footsteps.

  Ellie held her breath as two figures walked past her in the darkness. She saw the legs. Jeans, black boots. Skinny legs. Sound of squeaking springs from the lounge.

  Ellie peered into the lounge from her hiding spot and saw boots resting upon a coffee table. Sounds of eating.

  Now.

  Ellie took a few deep breaths.

  Had to be now.

  She closed her eyes and thought of Eddy. Thought of Angie. Thought of Mac, his big frame shaking in sobs. She thought of Eddy again. Anything to keep him safe.

  She got up slowly from her hiding pace, took a few short steps and stood in the entrance to the lounge. She stared at the Demon Writers.

  Teenage boys wearing black band T-shirts, Led Zepplin on one, Slipknot on the other. Long hair and sporadic beards with tight black jeans. One of them was covered in spots.

  “Shit,” said the boy with the Slipknot T-shirt as he looked up and saw Ellie.

  “It’s her,” said the other, “Hold on lady-”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Ellie leaped forward and drove her knife into the boy’s chest. He let out a terrible scream, like a young girl, thought Ellie.

  She had no other thoughts. She was on automatic, she was a machine.

  She pulled the knife out and looked into his eyes as she stabbed him again, sticking the knife deep into his throat. His eyes opened wide and as she pulled the knife out, blood spurted in a thick red flow onto her top. It felt warm, like when Eddy wet his nappy.

  The boy with the Slipknot T-shirt stumbled from the couch, and ran past Ellie, out the door.

  Ellie jumped off the dying boy and gave chase.

  Slipknot had ran out of the house into the darkness and tripped over something in the courtyard.

  There was only moonlight. He turned and held up his hand, his face open wide in fear. “Please miss, sorry, we didn’t mean it, we was only messin’, please miss!”

  Ellie didn’t really hear the words. It was a background noise. Like a lawnmower in the distance on a summer’s day. She stood above the snivelling boy and raised her knife. He started crying.

  Ellie stuck the knife in the top of his skull. It squeaked as it slid through bone. His body shook. Ellie pulled the knife out and the boy fell, his skull thumping on a cobble stone. Blood glugged out of the hole in his head like water from a kicked over bottle.

  Chapter 12

  Mac sat on the couch in the quiet farmhouse. Eddy was asleep in his arms, snoring quietly. He worried that the baby was catching another cold. Nothing wrong with a baby with a cold, it just meant he would wake more in the night, and cry more. Crying sounded so loud in the middle of the night. Mac imagined zombies for miles hearing the high pitched wailing, their rotten ears exciting at the sound.

  It was dark. Ellie had been gone for over four hours. He didn’t know how he would continue if something had happened to her. He felt like a shadow as it was. A half man.

  But he didn’t have to worry much longer.

  Mac heard the front door opening. He jumped up, the twin thoughts of being glad that Ellie was back, and fearing the return of the Demon Writers, jumped through his mind.

  It was Ellie.

  She stood before him, covered in blood. She held her knife in her right hand, loosely. On seeing Mac, she dropped it and held out her arms.

  “Eddy,” she said.

  “Are you ok? What happened?” said Mac.

  “Eddy,” she repeated.

  Mac held out the baby to Ellie, and she took him, holding him tight. Mac worried about the blood; could the boy sense it, would it upset him?

  “Are you ok? Do you need help?”

  She looked at Mac with glazed eyes. “I’m ok Mac.”

  “But the blood?”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Did you meet some zombies?”

  She shook her head. “No Mac. No zombies.”

  “Then what-” Mac trailed off, sudden realisation. “You didn’t go to the pub did you? You went to Green’s farm.”

  Ellie nodded.

  Mac let out a deep sigh. He wasn’t sure how he felt.

  Except he was.

  He felt glad, but he was trying to not feel glad, like it was wrong, that he should somehow not be glad.

  But the world had changed.

  He took Ellie in his arms and hugged her and the baby. Ellie began to cry.

  “It’s ok love,” he said.

  The next few days passed quickly. Mac and Ellie took turns to look after Eddy and go hunting for supplies: camping gear; tinned food; stuff for the baby.

  The plan was to head south and west, towards the Cornish peninsula. Mac reasoned that there would be less people that way. Less people meant less chance of bumping into crazies. In time, he thought, they might find a community. He thought there must be communities springing up all over where people came together, good people. He would bring his radio and they would listen in. Any community would, after securing themselves and sorting out food and water, look to communicate with others, maybe by radio.

  They would travel from house to house, only sleeping rough when it was absolutely necessary. It was too much of a risk with Eddy’s crying being so unpredictable, and loud.

  Mac didn’t know what kind of life he was looking to find, and he knew that without Ellie and Eddy, he wouldn’t have gone on. What sort of world was it without people to love?

  They left first thing, the fourth morning after the pub had burnt down.

  “We can cut across the hills, it’s about five miles away,” said Mac.

  “You sure the mill house is empty?” said Ellie.

  “It was yesterday,” said Mac.

  Mac didn’t look behind him as they left Marshall’s farm. It was the last place he would probably see that had a history for him and Angie. She was gone now, and nothing remained. No photos, only his memories.

  The whole world only existed in memory now, a landscape of the survivor’s loved ones and their sweetest recollections, so painful and beautiful in equal measure.

  “Should be there by late afternoon,” said Mac. “Just in time for dinner.”

  “Sounds good,” said Ellie.

  Eddy gurgled in agreement.

  Mac took out his axe, Ellie her knife. She adjusted her sling, Eddy tucked in tight against her front.

  “Let’s go.”

  Overtime

  Chapter 1

  Sergeant Allen stood by a window on
the second floor of the small, empty office block that was now a prison. It was early morning, just past 4am, that strange hour when it was neither night or day, and the world was a seldom seen flat grey, colours yet to be born.

  Allen keyed his radio. “Lewis, it’s Allen.”

  “Sir.”

  “There’s more. Must be in the hundreds now.”

  “Ok sir. Me and Johnson have the barricades secure. Nothing getting in here. Must be every desk in the place against these doors.”

  “Good work. When you’re done, get up here. I want you to see this.”

  “Yes sir. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Allen placed his radio on his belt buckle. He took his empty gun from his shoulder and held the sight to his eye.

  The zombie hoard was a writhing mass of dead flesh. Allen’s stomach turned. It was like looking into an insect nest of forsaken humans, bereft of any attribute that had ever rendered them alive. Empty carcasses with one desire: to spread their special brand of never ending death to the world.

  Last night, there had been only tens, now there where hundreds surrounding the whole building. The main road was only a few hundred feet away, but it may as well have been on another continent.

  Allen cursed. He had fucked up.

  It had seemed like a good idea. He hadn’t been confident in leading his band of twenty three civilian refugees into the Devonshire town of Cricklesworth without a reconnaissance first. His plan had been to rest in this building for a few days whilst he took one of his three remaining soldiers and scanned the town for suitability.

  It had taken only a few hours for the first undead to turn up. How had they known? Had they seen them arrive, smelled them? Allen had no idea. Maybe it was a form of death telepathy, or an attraction to the living. He didn’t like an enemy he couldn’t understand, so he didn’t think about it too much. They were here, that was it. All he needed to know. Fucking deal with it.

  Allen knew he should have got everyone out straight away, but instead decided to sit tight. Mistake number two. Now, one day later, they were stuck. The continuous moaning, teeth chattering and hissing seemed to act like a telegraph that invited every living dead fucker in the vicinity to the party. Live flesh, get it here.