I saw that Clay had killed the ones closest but the others were staggering this way and Mark was still out cold.
‘Judging by the mess he’s just made of Sophie’s face, I’m guessing, yes,’ said Kay. ‘Leave some zombies to tear the bastard to pieces.’
I wondered if Charlotte – who looked the most confused of all of us – would say anything in his defence but I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t.
Mark began to regain consciousness, groaning as his eyes fluttered open. I spotted Kay’s axe in her belt and I pulled it free. She didn’t stop me. She and Charlotte let me go and I staggered along the road to stand over Mark.
‘Sweetie,’ said Charlotte as I raised the axe.
Mark groaned. ‘He murdered my parents,’ I said between swollen, bloody lips.
I brought the blade down so that it sliced into his left leg beneath the knee, not quite severing the limb but not far off. Mark cried out with pain, his body spasming as he went into shock. The zombies were only a metre away and I turned and staggered back to the house, the others following me.
Inside the living room, I glanced out of the window to see Mark crawling on his stomach, his partially severed leg trailing behind him. I watched until the zombies caught up with him. I turned my back on the window, closing my eyes as Mark’s screams rang out.
‘I guess he’s gone out of circulation,’ I said as I staggered across the living room and collapsed onto the sofa.
I couldn’t stop shaking so Clay wrapped his quilt cover around my shoulders. I tried to say thank you but I couldn’t be sure if the words came out of my swollen lips in a form that the others could understand. I could taste blood from my cut lips. My right eye had swollen shut. I winced as I tentatively touched the puffy flesh around it, numb but painful as though an injection from the dentist was just wearing off. I didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror but if I’d had the courage, I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw.
I tried to speak to tell the others everything that had happened but Charlotte, who was sat beside me with a first aid kit on her lap, dabbing at the blood that flowed down my cheeks, said, ‘Shhhhh, don’t try and talk yet, sweetie. Let’s get you cleaned up first.’ I noticed how pale she looked and how her whole body trembled. ‘Shhh, it’s OK,’ she said as I winced and ouched with each touch of cotton wool against my busted skin.
Kay paced the room and cursed under her breath that if the zombies hadn’t already got Mark, she would. I glanced at Clay who sat on the arm of the sofa looking down at me, his hand stroking my blood matted hair. ‘Bastard,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What kind of bastard does this to a woman, you got me?’
I couldn’t help a tear escaping my eye and I imagined it weaving a streak though the drying blood on my face. I turned when I heard the front door open. Charlotte paused mid dab.
‘What the fuck…?’
I stared at Misfit as he stood by the door, five rabbits strung over his shoulder. His eyes were wide and disbelieving. He shook his head once, as though trying to clear his vision before dropping his backpack and the rabbits to the ground. He darted over to me.
‘What the fuck happened?’ he demanded as he kneeled before me and gazed at my broken face. ‘Sophie, what happened?’
I looked from Misfit to the others who all stared back at me, waiting for my response. ‘He… Mark… he murdered my parents…’
‘He put them down,’ said Charlotte. ‘We know–’
‘No. They weren’t zombies.’
‘What?’
‘They were alive when he arrived here.’
‘How… how do you know?’ asked Charlotte.
‘His comics. I read his comics. It’s all in there. Except he embellished bits and pieces, it’s not quite truthful. In the comic he made it look as though my parents attacked him for revenge because he put my brother down after he turned. But – fuck – he admitted he killed them for this house, for their supplies. He just came in here and got rid of them because they were in his way. They weren’t the first and neither were they the last by the sound of it.’
‘What the fucking fuck…?’ said Kay.
I ignored Kay and glanced at Charlotte. She sat staring at me, her face even paler than before, if that was possible. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to her, ‘but it’s true. He told me himself, just before he beat the shit out of me.’
Charlotte opened her mouth to say something and nothing came out. The blood soaked piece of cotton wool in her hand fell onto her lap. She covered her face with her hands and sunk back into the sofa, her head bowed. Kay wedged herself in the small gap between the arm of the sofa and Charlotte and put her arms around her.
Misfit raised a hand and gently cupped me under the chin. ‘How did it all come out? What the fuck happened after I left you?’
‘He caught me reading his comics. There was enough detail in there for me to know he murdered them and he – he didn’t want me to say anything to… he didn’t want anything to spoil what was happening between him and Charlotte.’
Charlotte pulled herself from Kay and turned to me. Her eyes were puffy but the tears had ceased. ‘Oh sweetie,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for,’ I said.
‘Talking about picking a wrongun,’ said Kay. ‘I’ve known some women with bad taste in men, but fucking hell.’
Charlotte looked at her but didn’t say anything.
‘Where the fuck is he?’ said Misfit as he stood, his small hunting knife clenched in his hand. ‘I’ll kill him.’
‘Zombies have beat you too it, bro,’ said Clay.
‘He’s dead,’ I said. ‘Gone for good.’
January 16, 8.30am
‘You’re beautiful,’ Misfit whispered to me as I lay in his arms last night. I smiled at him, even though it made me wince. Even with my face all puffy, bruised and bloodied, I knew he meant it.
8pm
Earlier I sat with my back against the chimney breast in the dining room, my knees drawn to my chest, and stared at the bloodstain on the carpet. My mum’s blood. Dried and discoloured but it had been part of her. I had no idea how long I had been sitting there – could’ve been ten minutes, could’ve been hours. I didn’t look at the time. I just sat and stared, wondering how my mum could so easily have gone from a living, breathing, flesh and blood human to nothing but a smear on a carpet. My dad’s bloodstain was nearby, but for some reason I fixated on Mum’s, like it was harder to believe someone could slay her in cold blood because she was so defenceless. A petite, gentle middle-aged woman. Dad had been gentle too but he could have handled himself. But Mum…
‘Sophie. Sophie, we need to decide what we’re going to do. The others want to know.’ I glanced up to see Misfit squatting in front of me. I hadn’t even noticed him arrive. I looked back at the bloodstain without answering him.
Misfit remained where he was for a few moments before taking a seat on the floor next to me. He stayed there, his left shoulder pressed against my right, his hand on my thigh, but he didn’t say another word.
January 17, 9am
Once I’d had enough of staring at the blood on the carpet, I stood and headed for the stairs. Misfit, who remained by my side for the best part of the day, followed me. Without saying a word to each other, we headed up to my bedroom. Misfit perched on the edge of my bed and watched while I sat at my desk and wrote in my diary. Then we lay in bed together, in each other’s arms and said nothing, nothing that could be heard, until we drifted off to sleep.
January 21, 5pm
Today was the first day that I didn’t feel the need to sit and stare at the blood stains on the carpet. Instead, I spent it sitting around the dining table with Misfit, Kay, Clay and Charlotte, all five of us looking at old family photos. There weren’t many recent ones, what with most of my parents’ photographs having been on the computer and now lost forever. But there were lots from when I was little and some of Jake as a ba
by as well as some that had been printed off from the computer. The old biscuit tin they were stored in sat in the centre of the table, and as I passed the photos around, the memories they evoked hurt at first but soon brought a widening smile to my face.
‘This was taken at Disneyland Paris,’ I said as I passed a photo to Misfit. ‘Jake was four, I think. He hated the place. He had really sensitive hearing and that place… it’s loud, loud everywhere. He didn’t want to go on anything. He had to have been the only kid in the entire park who was crying because he wanted to go home. Mum and Dad thought he might like the stunt show but it was so noisy with these massive explosions that Jake kept jumping out his skin. He had his little podgy fingers rammed in his ears. And at the end there was a huge explosion and Jake started screaming, ‘I’m on fire! I’m on fire!’ I mean, we were sat right at the back but even I thought I might have lost a layer of skin, the explosion was that fierce.
‘Anyway, after we left the stunt show we were going to get some lunch when we realised Jake wasn’t with us. It’s that horrible blood-draining moment when you realise the worst possible thing that could happen has just happened. We stood there for a moment not knowing what to do, the three of us, our heads snapping left and right, trying to spot little Jake among the crowds, but with so many people rushing this way and that or standing around in big groups, it was impossible to see where he’d gone. Mum and Dad started shouting his name but no little dungaree-wearing kid came running back. I just remember darting off. It might not have been the wisest decision, I mean Mum and Dad had just lost their little boy and now their other kid goes AWOL. But I just had to find him.’
‘And did you, sweetie?’
‘Yeah,’ I said with a little laugh. ‘I found him near the entrance sitting on the travelators that help speed people up into the park. People were getting annoyed because he was in their way, but he didn’t care. It was much emptier here and quieter too. Once he got to the end of one travelator, he’d get up and walk along to the next one, sit down and ride on that one. I managed to convince Jake to get off the travelator and come with me to the booths at the entrance where security helped find Mum and Dad.
‘Once they went through the range of emotions of finding their lost child – relief he’d been found, anger that he’d gone off in the first place back to relief again – Mum and Dad wanted to go back into the park again, but Jake just wanted to ride the travelators. He drove Mum mental cos he just kept going on them again and again.’ I moved my finger in front of my face a few times as I spoke. ‘In the end, I said to Mum and Dad that I’d stay and watch him and they could head off into the park. They didn’t argue and were off. Jake must have spent hours on that bloody travelator getting in people’s way. I just loved that my kid brother was so random.’ The photo made its way back to me. I looked at it again and gave a little sigh. No one spoke. They watched and waited for me to pass another photo. I put the photo of Jake down and picked up another from the tin.
‘Oh, this one was Dad’s birthday,’ I said and I couldn’t help laughing out loud at the picture of Dad squinting and covered in chocolate butter icing. I passed the photo to Misfit. ‘His brother, Mike thought it was funny to shove his face down after Dad blew the candle out. Only thing was, the candle dug him in the eye and Mum wasn’t too pleased at first cos she’d spent ages making that cake. But when Jake grabbed a handful of icing and smeared it right in Mike’s gob, no one could keep a straight face!
‘Ahh, this one’s Jake as a new born and me pretending to be his mum…’
As the photos went round and everyone laughed along with my memories and the others made comments like, ‘You look just like your mum’ or ‘You all looked so close’ or ‘I can’t believe you were into Steps’ (I was seven years old, don’t judge me).
Afterwards, I felt like I’d had the best therapy session ever. Not that I’d ever had a therapy session but if I’d had, I guessed a good one would feel just like that. My face was healing nicely too. All the puffiness had gone down, my lips were as good as new but the bruising around my eye and my cheek had switched from red to greenish yellow.
Along with my physical recovery, I had got my fighting spirit back.
January 22, 10.30am
‘We should head on,’ I said over a breakfast of stale cereal made with powdered milk and rainwater, and crackers washed down with out of date orange juice that fizzed a little on my tongue.
‘To Wales?’ said Kay, sitting opposite me at the kitchen table.
‘Yeah. I came here to find out what happened to my family. Now I know. Let’s move on.’
‘Good idea, sweetie,’ said Charlotte. ‘I think moving on is the best thing you can do.’
January 23, 4am
It’s been a really long day (and night). I need to sleep. I don’t feel like writing but if I don’t do it now, I think I’ll be too busy once we wake up, so I’ll jot it all down quickly. I’m not sure I can go straight to sleep anyway.
By 1pm yesterday we were ready to go. Misfit sat in the driver’s seat with me up front with him, Clay sat in the seat between us, and Kay and Charlotte on the futons in the back, digging their fingernails into the black fabric every time Misfit swung us around a corner. Drizzle clouded the windscreen. The wipers cleared the glass in one swipe, only for the light rain to blur the way instantly.
Direct from Guildford to Chepstow – just across the River Wye from the English border – would normally be no more than two to two and a half hours drive from Guildford, but we had to take a few detours to avoid gridlocked roads and roads blocked by shambling zombies and burned out cars. We had already been driving over three hours, with the drizzle having been replaced by large, heavy raindrops that thudded against the windscreen.
Wind drove the rain through various holes in the old vehicle that we didn’t know were there until now. Water dripped in through at least three places I could see – one somewhere above the driver’s side door, with large drops of rain water dripping in a regular beat to the right of Misfit’s feet, another came in irregular drips and drabs from above the windscreen, with the occasional splatter of water on the dashboard between Clay and Misfit, and the other was a trickle from the window in the side door. I could hear the dribble of water hitting the laminate floor even above the pattering of the rain and the roar of the wind on the outside of the van.
We had only just passed the village of Pewsey, Wiltshire, roughly half way on our journey and with the time already past 4pm, the sky was growing dark. More detours forced us further down winding country roads. The black clouds and driving rain darkened the sky so that Misfit had to flick on the headlights. The van’s tired engine screeched even more than usual as the vehicle struggled up the gentle hills in the awful weather. Zombies lumbered through the fields at the sides of the road and from behind and in front of us. I worried at how slow the van crawled along, its engine reluctant, making us an easy target for zombies.
The poor condition of the single lane made the going even harder and the vehicle rocked from side to side as its wheels disappeared and sloshed through the many rain filled potholes.
‘Turn left,’ I said to Misfit, having seen the road ahead blocked with zombies.
‘You need to switch the headlights off, mate,’ said Clay. ‘The beams are attracting the zombies. They can see us for miles.’
‘Then I won’t be able to see.’
‘A least they won’t be able to see us,’ said Clay.
‘But they’ll be able to hear us,’ I said and as if to drive the point home, the van’s engine suddenly squealed with the effort of Misfit swinging the van around to the left as I’d instructed him.
Misfit flicked the headlights off anyway. ‘Shit, I can’t see a thing!’ he said and switched them back on, but too late. He’d already veered too far to the edge of the road and into a shallow ditch. The rain had caused a mudslide and, try as he might to right the vehicle again, its wheels on the left hand side skidded in the mud, spinning but going nowhere. We
were stuck in the bloody muddy ditch.
‘Fuck it!’ said Misfit as he cut the engine and the lights, plunging us into silent darkness.
‘Right, no panicking,’ said Kay from the back of the van. ‘Misfit, you try the engine again while the rest of us go out and–’ But she didn’t finish because at that moment we all heard a thud on the rear doors. All eyes flicked in that direct.
‘Shit!’ I said.
‘There can’t be many, like,’ said Clay. ‘Me and Sophie can hold ‘em back while Charlotte and Kay push, right?’
More thudding on the back of the van made me feel very insecure about Clay’s plan – that and the darkness outside. We had no torch and only close combat weapons. No, I didn’t like Clay’s plan at all. I don’t think anyone else did either because no one said a word.
After a moment Charlotte broke the silence. ‘We could head out and find somewhere to stay for the night. We drove past a couple of places a little while ago.’
‘It’s too dark and there are too many zombies for us to be roaming around out there,’ I said.
‘How far back were the places you saw?’ Misfit asked Charlotte.
‘Not far. Maybe fifteen/twenty minutes walk.’
‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘We’re not–’
‘Sophie, you’re right. It’s too fucking dark and risky for us all to head out,’ began Misfit. He paused as we heard a thud on his side of the van and he lowered his voice as he continued. ‘But I can slip out and head back to one of the places Charlotte saw and pick up another vehicle.’
‘No,’ I said, even more flatly than before. ‘We stay together.’
‘We can’t stay here, you fucktard,’ said Kay. The van began to rock from the pummelling it received from outside. ‘This old thing isn’t going to hold up against the bloody zombies for long.’
‘It’s too risky to head out now,’ I said, my voice low. ‘It’s dark and getting darker. There’s a fucking storm raging and we don’t know where the fuck we are or exactly how far back those places were. We need to sit tight.’
Blog of the Dead (Book 3): Lost Page 14