“We could take care of them now, before they attract any others,” she said.
Harry preferred not to confront them. Grace liked to kill them.
“If you think so,” he said. “Let’s have a cup of tea first,” he said.
The kitchen. Linoleum wallpaper similar to that which Harry’s grandmother used to have; dirty brown and shiny pictures of unknown vegetables sitting by pots, repeating in little squares across the wall. Greasy stains above the rusting gas cooker. Bright yellow linoleum curtains.
Harry pulled open one of the cupboards, took out the tea and the sugar, and passed them to Grace, who was lighting their little camping stove.
“We’re going to have to go on that run,” he said. The cupboard was nearly empty. Just a few tins of chopped tomatoes, tuna, and baked beans. Maybe enough for a day or two. Always best to go when you weren’t desperate.
“I’ll go,” said Grace, staring out into the garden.
“You went last time,” said Harry.
“It’s ok, I can go again. You don’t like them.”
“It’s my turn,” he said trying to inject his words with an air of finality. It may have worked, she didn’t say anything else.
After the last run, she had come back covered in blood. Her face, her arms, her clothes. He asked her how many she had killed and she hadn’t answered, but went upstairs. He hadn’t seen her for three hours.
He watched as she put the tea bags into the cups. He wanted to put a hand on her shoulder, to hug her, for he knew that she never stopped thinking about what she had done on the day the Fall had reached their secret government lab. The man, the government man, Taylor, had deserved to die.
But Grace couldn’t see that.
Instead she locked everything inside, punishing herself, punishingthem,the infected.
He wished she would stop.
How many zombies would be enough?
The kettle whistled. Grace rushed to pull out the stopper. She turned and gave Harry a rare smile. “Maybe you can get a kettle that doesn’t whistle this time?”
He smiled back, “Consider it done.”
Chapter 3
The cramped terrace streets made Harry nervous. Red brick and dirty tired houses looked down upon him with dark windows like a thousand watching eyes. How many people hid in the empty rooms and watched him pass? How many thought about stealing his goods, taking his weapons, or killing him just for the hell of it?
He had seen them. Curtains twitching, figures disappearing in a flash as he looked up. He knew the houses hid people and secrets behind their nailed shut doors.
The infected too. Bouncing around the walls of their old homes, trapped, gnashing at the windows as he walked passed.
His steps crunched on the street. It was a gentle clear day, the type he had missed in his old life in his underground lab, exploring and manipulating the worst viruses man and nature had deigned to forge. Grace suggested their lab may have had something to do with this virus. She carried round her laptop like a child with its favourite teddy bear, saying she had evidence on there, but with no power, how could she show him? He wondered if she was going mad.
He turned at the end of a t-junction, and saw his usual route to the shopping precinct cut off by two cars on fire. Zombies loitered around the burning metal carcass, black smoke flailing into the sky like escaping laundry. They loved fire like they loved loud noises. Their base senses dragged them to the large; big noises, big sounds, big colours.
The air shimmered with the heat, giving the undead an ethereal presence.
He didn’t think about how the fire started, or who started it, or where the cars had came from. It didn’t do to think about things like that. Everything was as it was, simple as that. Any further thoughts would tend to drive you mad.
He would have to go round.
Harry turned and walked the two hundred feet to the next junction. It would take him to the park, and then he could back track to the shopping centre that way.
As Harry turned the corner, he paused.
A mass of figures congregated in the park. Black figures, bumbling, shuffling. Funny how even those who had worn bright clothes at the time of their turning had managed to become dark and grey; their colour, along with their souls, sucked dry.
There was too many to count. A playground to the left, its bright and lonely climbing frame and swings sprouting above the crowd of zombies.
The worst kid’s party Harry had ever seen.
A sudden moan, louder than the background hum, cut into the almost still air. Quickly followed by another, then another. A terrible chorus of the damned.
He had stared for too long. They were like that; it was hard not to stare, to become transfixed by their awfulness, their hopelessness. There was always the danger of getting caught up in them, not realising until it was almost too late.
Like now.
They began to move as one, their shuffling coming together like a macabre dance. Their heads turning in unison towards Harry. Their drawling gaits directed towards him.
“Shit,” he whispered under his breath.
It was a bad job, Grace would have to wait for her kettle. Or maybe she could go and get it herself; he’d had enough today.
He turned and broke into a run, back towards the house.
He reached to the junction that led to their street, and with no sign of the dead following him, he was safe to go home
He stopped. Something caught his eye.
The other zombies, the ones by the flaming cars, were walking towards him, moaning and clicking. Did they communicate like this? Had the horde behind called to this group;here, he is here, this way.
Harry darted down his road, towards their house that sat in the middle of the tenement row. He ran fast, glancing behind him.
They appeared as he arrived at the house. The fire gang. Pulling their legs along awkwardly. Groaning, hissing, calling to the others.
He fumbled with the keys and opened the door. Maybe they wouldn’t see which house he was going into. Maybe they would just move on.
One last glance. The park gang were there too now.
He pushed the door open and shut it behind him. He locked it.
“Grace,” he whisper shouted.
No response. The dark hallway, with the old woman’s coat still hanging next to the door, remained silent.
“Grace,” he said, allowing his voice to rise.
Nothing.
She must be upstairs.
He put his foot on the first stair, then stopped.
A cry from beyond the kitchen. Shrill, triumphant, even.
He raised his baseball bat and stepped quietly towards the noise.
The front door closed as Harry left on his run. Grace stood in the small kitchen, sipping on her tea, standing by the window. The garden was developing a gentle covering of leaves as the few small and spindly birch trees began to undress for winter. The back fence was visible above some overgrown bushes.
Four zombies were in the garden beyond.
As if waking from a dream she glanced behind her at the front door, finally recognising its closing. Harry was out on a run. He may not come back. She should have kissed him, just on the cheek, and maybe squeezed his shoulder and told him good luck. Smiled at him, let him know that she cared and that she wanted him to come back alive; not dripping in blood, his innards hanging from his stomach like a wet sack of meat.
He had said,I’m going. Grace had nodded her head, but continued staring into the garden, thinking of the zombies beyond the fence.
Why did she do that? Why did she shut him out?
She put down her tea and walked into the lounge. The curtains were closed, like they always were, and the room was cast in a dim grey orange light.
Her laptop sat on the table. It contained files her old professor had saved that spoke of global conspiracy, that hinted at the nature of this virus; that it had been cooked up in a lab by men and women in white coats, like her and Harry.
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It made her think of Taylor. The government spook, the silent man in the grey suit that hovered throughout the labs, silently directing the wishes of whatever organisation he reported to.
Taylor, who Grace shot in the face.
In anger, in cold blood.
Taylor, who made Grace a killer. Grace. Miss Grace. DisGrace. Fall from Grace.
She picked up the sledgehammer that lay against the couch.
Walking quickly, no time for any more thought, she left the lounge, the kitchen, into the back garden.
Low moans floated in the air. The occasional hissing. No clicking though, they saved that for when they were really excited.
She curled her hands tight around the sledgehammer, her knuckles white, staring at the fence, she walked towards it. Her feet sank into the wet dewy grass. Her heart beat fast. Her vision blurred around the edges and a rage of butterflies fired in her stomach. More than butterflies, more like eagles, pterodactyls, demons. That was it, full of demons.
Every killer was.
She smashed the heavy hammer against the fence. It shuddered and a nail popped.
Excited groans from behind the fence.
She dealt another heavy blow, and another, and another. The thumps echoed dull in the damp air.
There it was, the clicking; they were excited now.
The first plank fell away. A face pushed up against the gap. Its jaw was hanging on by a thin thread of some type of flesh. Muscle? Tendon? Grace didn’t give a fuck.
She began on the next plank. She wanted them in the garden, she wanted them next to her. She wanted to see them die, to see the life (the death?) leave them as their brains and skulls shattered.
This is what killers do. They kill. They have to kill. They have to normalise, justify their existence.
The second plank thumped to the ground. A rotten body pushed through the slim gap. A teenage boy, guessed Grace. He had a lego batman T-shirt on. His jeans were ripped to reveal a thigh with a huge gash, inches wide, teaming with maggots. A few fell as it moved forward.
Grace backed up, letting it into the garden. Letting the others follow.
She lifted her hammer and brought it down on the boys head. She momentarily wondered what his life used to be like, what his dreams had been; was there more to his life than lego batman?
The skull shattered and chips of white bone flung into the air, surrounded by pink flurries of flesh. Finally dead, the boy dropped to the ground. Blood dripped on her forehead.
Grace waded into the remaining three.
She swung her hammer, it only took her a few seconds to kill them all. Too quick.
They lay on the ground. She brought the hammer down again and again, putting all her weight and strength into each blow. She pummelled the flesh, the bones, the skin.
Four bodies, becoming unrecognisable, turning to a pink and black and green and red mush, like a terrible troll’s soup.
Tears crowded her eyes, she could hardly see. She was wet all over, her clothes heavy and dark.
A shrill sound cut into the air. It was her, she was yelling, she didn’t know whether she was crying or laughing.
She continued to smash the death on the ground. Each swing hit the ground hard, dull thuds. The soil of the earth sucked in the decrepit and mushed flesh.
She took another swing but her hand stopped. Something was holding her, pulling her back. She turned, caught in a rage, had one sneaked up on her? She tried to swing, but the hammer was pulled from her. Arms trapped her arms. She couldn’t move.
A voice in the noise.
What noise? There was no noise, just a silent early suburban morning…
A voice.
“It’s ok, Grace, it’s ok. It’s Harry, it’s ok.”
The voice felt warm against her ear. She turned and saw Harry. He looked down at her warmly, into her. Kind brown eyes.
She hugged him. Like she should have done.
“We have to get inside,” he said.
She let herself be led back into the house.
Chapter 4
Standing in the kitchen. Harry grabbed both of Grace’s shoulders and looked at her.
“You ok?”
She nodded. She was. Already the killing spree of the garden was becoming a faded frenzy that didn’t seem like part of her.
“Ok,” said Harry. “Wait here a minute. We have to be quick.”
Harry ran out of the kitchen towards the front of the house. She could hear the windows being tested, the door being tested.
Grace looked down at herself. Her top was covered in blood. Horrible, black, sticky, thick blood. Globules of something were hanging off her clothes. Was it flesh? Was it coagulated blood that had sat in clumps in the veins of the infected for the past three months?
She held her palms out. Red and sticky. She moved her jaw and she felt the slight resistance of dried blood on her skin. An almost uncontrollable urge to strip off her clothes and wash herself, somehow, with anything, overcame her. She pulled at her top. A feeling of nausea grew within her.
It was the same every time she went on a spree. Why did she think it would make her feel better? How was this a path to atonement?
Harry ran back into the kitchen. He looked past Grace, out into the garden.
“Shit,” he said. He pushed past Grace and made sure the back door was locked.
Grace turned so she could see the garden. The remains of the zombies she had killed, the pink and black mush, covered a small area in the garden. Beyond was the hole in the fence, through which another infected was pushing into the garden. More scrambled and clawed behind.
“We have to get upstairs,” said Harry. He held out his hand. “You coming?”
She looked at his hand for a second, then at hers. Red. Unclean.
Harry grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
She followed him through to the hallway, to the stairs. The front door rattled, the wood clanking in the frame. Hisses and moans pervaded from the other side.
“How many?” sad Grace.
“Too many,” said Harry. “I fucked up.”
“So did I.”
“Guess we’re even then.”
They ran up the stairs, past the first floor to the attic room. Grace ran to the front of the room. Her mind was clearing. Adrenalin expunging all unnecessary thoughts and soul searching. No time for guilt and sin when the wolves are at the door.
She pushed open the attic’s front velux window and stuck her head out. A horde filled the street. They were coming from the west, the junction with Jubilee Street. Hundreds of them. They surrounded the front of their little house. The old woman’s house. Clawed at the door, at the window. They passed on the news somehow to the others, a kind of telepathy, or maybe it was simply behavioural, but somehow when one knew, they all knew.
She looked to the East, the junction with Markland Street; it was clear. Lone zombies cycled in and out of the main group, but never strayed far from the house. They didn’t want to miss out.
Harry appeared next to her.
“It’s the same at the back,” he said. “They’ve filled the garden. There’s no way out.”
“I’m sorry,” said Grace. “I don’t know what it is, I just feel that, if I kill them, if I… Then maybe…”
“Don’t worry about it, not now.” He looked her up and down. “We need to get you to a shower,” he smiled.
“Well no chance of that, unless…” She stuck her head out the window again and looked down towards Markland Street junction. Their house was in the middle of the row of terrace houses. There was six, maybe seven, houses until Markland street.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, running towards the attic stairs. “Come on, we need to get our things.”
Harry followed her down the stairs.
In her room, Grace picked up her clothes and piled them into her backpack. She pulled the photo of her mum off the bedside table. Having been at this house for a few weeks, she had started to make the room her own,
homely. She knew that was a mistake, but she hadn’t been able to help it. She squeezed the photo in the backpack, her laptop next. She grabbed her blood stained sledgehammer, took one last look around the room, and ran back to the attic. Harry joined her, also with his things.
“So come on, what’s the idea?” he said.
Grace ran her hands along the bricks that separated their house from the next, in the direction of Markland street. “These houses are old. You think we can get through the walls?”
“Maybe,” said Harry, putting on his gloves and picking up his sledgehammer. “Stand back.”
He swung hard and fast, and the sledgehammer hit the wall with a dull thud, almost as if it hadn’t made any noise, the wall absorbing the blast. Paint and brick fragments crumbled from the wall.
Harry shook his arm. “That hurt…” He tried again, not so hard, more directed. The wall caved a little, the brick work coming loose from the old concrete.
“Again,” said Grace.
Harry swung a third, fourth, fifth time. The first few bricks collapsed away revealing a gap of about half a foot, then another wall of bricks; the attic next door.
They smiled at each other. Grace picked up her hammer and they both started swinging.
Chapter 5
A few hours later, four houses down.
It was hard work. With jarred and throbbing arms, they pushed through the fatigue, from one house to the next.
The current attic room was decorated in clean whites, football posters on the wall. Racing car bedsheets. The wardrobe was pulled open and clothes lay spilled across the floor, leaving a trail to the door. Evidence of a hurried and panicked evacuation. She imagined a young boy in tears, scared by his parent’s loss of control, the muddled news reports, the people in the streets. Had the zombies arrived already, were they outside the front door? His young life, his chance to be a boy and to live without fear or responsibility extinguished in one frantic and terrifying afternoon. Did he survive? If so, to what? Hardness; his joy and emotion shuttered by fear and guilt for the things he would have to do…
Grace felt tears form in the corner of her eye.
Someone was saying something.
After the Fall Page 32