After the Fall

by Stephen Cross

  “I wasn’t scared,” said Adam. “I thought it was you.”

  Arthur laughed. A deep booming laugh from the depths of his huge lungs. He didn’t see the hand behind him.

  A rotten hand, with hanging tendrils of flesh flapping like grotesque reptiles.

  “Arthur!” Harriet managed to shout.

  The laughter stopped as the hand touched his shoulder. His eyes opened wide and he turned to face the zombie. The rest of it appeared. A well dressed zombie in a tight fitting suit, its head sunken, nearly green, the eyes popping out in excitement. The suit, however, still presented well.

  Arthur’s hand carrying his sledgehammer was too close for a good swing, but he still tried, only connecting with a weak body shot. The zombie absorbed the shot and fell towards Arthur.

  The two of them struggled, with Arthur falling back to the opposite wall, trying to avoid the gnashing jaws of the zombie.

  The large window behind the fighting pair shattered into a million pieces. No ceremony, just a sudden crack and it was collapsing in a shower of shards with the sound of a celestial car crash.

  “Shit,” said a small voice beside Harriet. She turned to see Adam fighting with his crossbow, desperately struggling to load the next bolt.

  Arthur and the zombie fell backwards. Arthur let out a heavy cry as his head hit the exposed brick of the wall. A picture frame above him fell and hit his face, obscuring his vision. His hands flailed aimlessly, striking the zombie, trying to find the head, trying to grip it.

  The zombie’s teeth chattered like a machine, gnashing at Arthur’s hands, getting so close.

  Harriet ran towards them.

  “Out of the way!” shouted Adam.

  Harriet instinctively threw herself to the left of the corridor.

  A deep thunk from behind signalled the letting of the bolt. A swish in the air passed inches from her face.

  A damp thud from the end of the landing and the zombie was suddenly standing by the hole in the smashed window, a thick crossbow bolt protruding from the side of its ear like an overzealous bluetooth device. Its teeth chattered once, twice, stopped, and then the zombie fell backwards, out of the window.

  Harriet’s twitching antenna stopped.

  She took a deep breath, scanning both ends of the landing, trying to check her men were ok.

  Arthur stood up straight, throwing the picture frame out the window. He glanced outside, then turned back in and smiled at Adam.

  Adam was breathing fast, his eyes wide open. He met Arthur and Harriet’s eyes in turn. “I’ll get them in one shot next time. I promise.”

  Arthur walked over and lifted Adam up. He gave him a quick bear hug, then held him out, so their heads were level. “Don’t be silly, I knew fine well you would get that dead head.” He beamed Adam a huge smile.

  Chapter 3

  It was early evening. Harriet, Arthur, and Adam sat upstairs in one of the bedrooms of the farmhouse. A full, slow, and careful search had revealed no further zombies hiding in any of the building’s intricate nooks and crannies. All they found was perfect avant-garde furniture decorating each room. Strangely daubed paintings accosted every wall. Harriet preferred cosy. Funny how she still found time to judge a roof over her head, even now.

  They shared a few tins of corned beef and some leaves from a plant Adam had found the previous day. He told them the leaves were perfectly safe, but Harriet wasn’t convinced, and she nibbled away with mouse-like bites, even though Adam and Arthur wolfed the lot.

  “I’ll take first watch,” said Adam as they unpacked their sleeping bags. Already, heading into autumn, the nights were showing a bite. It wouldn’t be long before the true cold of winter arrived. When would that be? They had no idea what date it was. By the time they had settled enough after the initial shock of the Fall, too many days had passed to have any idea what month it was, never mind the day.

  Harriet had a pleasant realisation though, that it didn’t actually matter.

  “I’ll go upstairs, to the attic room,” said Adam. “Get a better view from there.” He picked up his torch and crossbow.

  “Adam, take your coat,” said Harriet holding out the parker they had found in an abandoned car last week.

  Adam took the coat, kissed Harriet and Arthur. “I’ll wake you in about 4 hours.” That was the shift. 4 hours each covered 12 hours, and allowed each person to get 8 hours sleep. They had discussed the benefits of this against the time they lost from travelling, but decided it was much better to have everyone sharp. They were in no rush.

  Adam’s small footsteps make dull thuds as he climbed to the attic room.

  “I would be dead if not for him,” said Arthur.

  “And we’d be dead if not for you,” said Harriet.

  “I think you would have been ok.”

  Harriet shook her head. “No. Without you coming back to get us, Dalby would have finished us.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, both caught in the memory, three months ago, the beginning of the Fall.

  Lieutenant Dalby.

  The Fall had hit Harriet as she tried to escape London, stuck on the M25. She abandoned her car just before a hoard enveloped the god-knows-how-many-miles tailback that had snarled up the road. That’s were she met Adam and his Mum - now dead, killed by a survivalist nut. Her and Adam ended up being rescued by the army and taken to a base, where poor Adam was told his Dad, a sergeant, was also dead.

  Then things went bad. The base was overrun, factions of the army had gone rogue. Lieutenant Dalby nearly killed Harriet as she tried to escape the overrun military base. Arthur had saved them.

  There was no telling who you could trust now. Societal rules had broken down and everyone’s true nature was on full display like a neon sign, printed out with their deeds.

  It was suddenly a more honest world.

  “You know what makes me sad,” said Arthur.

  “The Fall?” said Harriet with a small laugh.

  Arthur smiled back at her in the low light. “I have no pictures of my family.”

  “You have a family?” Arthur had never spoken about his past, and she hadn’t asked. Life before the Fall seemed so distant, yet so painful. She hadn’t wanted to intrude.

  “I did,” he said. “I may still have, but I think I will never know.”

  “You mean you have a wife and children?” Harriet felt young and stupid. She was only in her mid twenties, had no long term boyfriend. Her parents, well, she didn’t know what had happened to them. She didn’t want to think about it too much, and she had neatly compartmentalised that part of her life away in the back of her mind.

  “My wife, Grace, and three children. Baby Mary, she will be five months old now. She has two big brothers, Sterling and Moses. Aged 4 and 7. Good boys. They treat their little sister so well. They are so kind to her.”

  Arthur turned away. She wondered if he was hiding tears. Harriet herself felt tears. She felt she had become Adam’s de facto mum, well, maybe that was too presumptuous of her, but at least his guardian. She felt so strongly for him, overcome with an urge to protect him, to keep him safe. She loved his little foibles, his daft questions, and his hope and enthusiasm for life. The way he was convinced his Dad was still alive, and his devotion to that ideal. She had never liked kids before the Fall. Now, hearing of Arthur’s family, no doubt lost, she was feeling a new type of pain. It was all too sad, nearly too much to take.

  Arthur turned back to her. His eyes were red, he had a tear rolling down his cheek.

  “I’m not a stupid man, I know they are gone. I just wished I could have got there to save them.”

  “What happened?” said Harriet.

  “I was working at the hospital, in London. Things were getting worse, you remember what it was like on the TV. I told Grace to stay at home, and to not let anyone in at all. I told them I would be home soon. But I stayed and did an extra shift. It was so busy, so many people were coming in, both with the virus, and the other associated accidents. Car cra
shes, broken bones, people who had been beat up, fires. It was chaos. The doctors couldn’t cope, no one could cope. In the end it became a matter of just lining people up to let them die. All we gave them was the hope that they may get better, but we all knew.

  “The TV’s went off, and that was when I knew I needed to go. I just left. Other people were leaving too. Other nurses, doctors, surgeons. People just walking out. I wondered if it would be like in the films when you see things like this, and people give their lives to stay and helps others, but it wasn’t. When it became obvious something serious was going on, people just left.”

  Arthur took a pause. He had a vacant stare in his eyes. So different from the spark of life that always burned deep in his dark pupils. She wondered how much effort it took him to maintain that spark.

  “The streets were crazy. All the trains stopped. We lived in Streatham, eight miles from the hospital. I started to run. It took me hours to get there, and I was exhausted by the time I got home.

  “Our flat was empty. They had gone. There was no letter, no note. One of my neighbours was outside. He told me the army had come early and loaded everyone into trucks, they had no option. He remembered seeing Grace and the kids and told me she was screaming, calling my name over and over.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I wondered the streets for a while. I saw soldiers and asked about my wife, where she would’ve been taken. They told me about the camps. They took me to a base, and that’s were I found you.”

  Arthur wiped his eyes and smiled at Harriet. “Such is the world now. I know my story is no different from anyone else’s.”

  “It’s ok. We need to talk about these things.”

  “Do we? I wonder what use talking is. What does it solve? It won’t help me find them.” He turned to Harriet, a fire in his eyes again. “I wonder if even I will recognise them if I ever see them again. I have a memory, but how do I know my memory is real? If this had happened twenty years go, then I would have their photo in my wallet, but now, now all I have if this useless piece of…” he struggled to say the word as he held up his mobile phone, “shit! A hundred photos and I can’t see one of them. Not ONE!”

  Harriet wrapped her arms around him, She could barely get each side of his shoulders, but she hugged for all her might.

  Chapter 4

  It has Harriet’s turn on watch. Adam had roused her half an hour ago, and she had shook off her sleep to climb into the attic room. She had the middle shift, which was the worst; two periods of sleep, broken by the watch.

  The attic was a large open space, with wide and tall velux windows. It was sparsely decorated, just an old beside table, a few boxes and a lamp. The whole room was bathed in a metal blue light from patches of moonlight piercing through cloud.

  Her breath formed gentle bursts of vapour.

  She spent her watch going from from window to window, looking for movement, zombies, other people, the end of the world. Funny what became normal and what one could become used to. Four months she was sitting at a desk trying to get computer programmers jobs with large blue chip companies for ridiculous contract rates that made her eyes water. Now she was sitting in an attic, looking for undead creatures that wanted to rip her apart and suck out her brains. Against all the odds, she found herself smiling.

  One window looked upon the farmhouse’s long driveway to a main road that lay just beyond a line of tall trees, which in this light were nothing but hulking shadows of darkest blue.

  She opened the window, wanting to hear the wind and the night. The silence was peaceful. Although it indicated that real life had stopped, she still hadn’t got used to the novelty and beauty in the quiet, the absolute quiet. Nothing but nature, as the world had been hundreds of thousands of years ago. No cars, no machines, no planes in the sky.

  Which is why it took her a few moments to register the sound. A quiet buzzing in the distance, a sound she knew. The sound of a vehicle.

  She stuck her head out the window and looked sharply to the left, to the right. Far away, pinpricks of white light grew quickly into beams of alien brightness dancing through the trees. Vehicles on the main road.

  She felt anxious, scared.

  Harriet ran down the stairs and into the room Arthur and Adam were sleeping in. She shook Arthur awake. He turned round, his eyes heavy, his voice groggy, like he was drunk.

  “What’s up?”

  “Cars, on the main road.”

  “Cars?” Arthur’s eyes immediately opened wide and he sat up.

  “What is it?” murmured Adam.

  “Get up,” said Harriet.

  The three of them ran up the stairs and squeezed together at the window.

  The cars were closer now, there were four.

  “What do we do?” said Adam.

  “Maybe they’ll just go past,” said Arthur.

  As they approached what must have been the entrance of the main road into the house, they slowed.

  Looking back, Harriet realised that was when they should have ran. That was their last chance.

  But they didn’t.

  One by one, like neon tropical fish, the white lights of the cars turned in the darkness, their beams winding down the long driveway.

  “Let’s go,” said Arthur.

  They ran downstairs. Harriet began to roll up the sleeping bags.

  “Forget them!” shouted Arthur. “Just get our weapons. We can replace the rest, we have to go.”

  Arthur grabbed his sledgehammer, Harriet her baseball bat, and Adam his crossbow.

  The cars could be heard clearly now. Greedy, heavy diesel engines. Large vehicles, maybe trucks or at least 4X4’s. It sounded like the invasion of the machines, of clunky industrial monsters stomping into the neolithic.

  They got downstairs into the kitchen and Arthur opened the door to outside. The first car pulled into the driveway, its heavy engine thumping above the crunch of gravel. Its strong beams lit up the kitchen like a lighthouse.

  Harriet realised she was terrified. People scared her more than zombies.

  “Come on!” shouted Arthur, motioning them into the driveway. Harriet couldn’t move. She stared at the sleek black truck that had parked just ten yards away. The lights from the following cars bounced of its glossy black coat like white phantoms.

  Arthur grabbed her hand and pulled. She grabbed Adam’s hand and they ran as one into the courtyard. Arthur led them past the truck, to the field and towards the woods beyond.

  Shouts followed them. The sound of other vehicles coming to a stop. Opening and closing doors. Feet running on gravel. Harriet couldn’t help but glance behind. Five figures, silhouettes against the trucks powerful halogens, gave chase.

  “Hey!” shouted one of the voices.

  Another voice let out a loud whooping sound.

  Adam tripped, she had been pulling on his hand too hard.

  “Arthur!” shouted Harriet as she stalled to help Adam up.

  Arthur turned and ran back to help them.

  “Hey, where you going?” shouted one of the approaching figures.

  Adam got up, his face filled with panic. He stared at Harriet with wide open eyes and she pulled him tight. It was too late to run any more. They were upon them.

  The figures got closer, moving steadily now, spreading out to surround them. One of them raised a rifle towards them. Another raised a shotgun.

  “That’s better,” said the nearest man.

  Arthur held out his arms and moved in between them and Harriet and Adam.

  “You’re a big fella, aren’t you,” said the man. He had a strong west country accent. Long hair and a growing beard. He wore a wax jacket and jeans with heavy boots.

  “We just want to go on our way,” said Arthur.

  “This is our house,” said the man.

  “I’m sorry, we didn’t know,” said Arthur. “We will go, leave you your house.”

  “We’d like you to stay for a while,” said the man. “We could do with some company.” The man looked
at Harriet, his gaze up and down. Arthur moved in front of her.

  The man smirked. “Come on,” he said motioning back towards the farmhouse.

  They had no choice, they were surrounded. They followed the men back into the house.

  Chapter 5

  They were led through a now busy building, back to the attic room. They were stared at by the sudden inhabitants of the house; men and women noisily unpacking boxes, lighting candles, preparing food.

  Once in the attic four men dressed in a mix of leathers, wax jackets, jeans and heavy boots, all unshaven with long and dirty hair, tied Harriet, Arthur and Adam’s wrists. They used leather straps, that bit into her skin, but she refused to show any signs of pain. The three of them were then tied together, facing away from each other in three directions. Harriet felt Arthur’s hand grab hers. She grabbed Adam’s, and she assumed, hoped, that Arthur and Adam were also connected to complete the circle.

  A man was left in the room with them. He was small and stocky, young. He had tattoos. He opened his jacket to reveal a threadbare T-shirt, black with white writing that said something about whiskey. He had wide arms and was holding a shotgun.

  He stared at Harriet. She had been placed to face the man. She suspected he hadn’t wanted to have to stare at Arthur.

  “Are you ok?” she said to Adam.

  “No talking,” said the man, still staring at Harriet.

  Harriet stared back at him. She was scared, yes, but also angry, and presently, the anger was stronger. “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t,” he said.

  “Says who? You? Who the hell are you anyway?”

  “Someone with a gun, now shut it.”

  “So you’re going to shoot us if we talk?” said Arthur, craning his head round to look at the man.

  “If I have to,” said the man. He lifted his gun up, but didn’t point it any of them.

  “Bullshit,” said Harriet. “If you shot us you’d be in trouble.” Harriet was baiting him. She didn’t want to think about where her courage was coming from in case she lost it. Or in case she realised it was actually foolishness