by Burke, Rowan
He knew Derek and Lance knew.
He also knew soon both Jon and Phil would know too, and he knew he had to say something.
“It was only one bite”
He said.
My holding golf club instantly negated itself of its necessity as Jon and Phil took a firm and instant step backwards.
“It was only one; a small one, on her side. It’s been several days and nothing has happened, so she’s clearly going to be fine”
Phil and Jon turned away and shimmied towards the wall in shock at the revelation. Carl’s tears became more prominent, yet his sad and pitiful expression suddenly switched to one of anger as he looked up to face me.
“You don’t even know if people turn. You don’t know this is like the movies, do you? People must just get killed or survive, who’s to say that anyone turn into zombies too?! If it was anything like the movies then Ving Rhames, or Woody Harrelson, or Simon Fucking Pegg would come through the door right now and save the fucking day! You don’t even fucking know!”
Carl’s sincerity came in the supporting form of a weapon as he scooped the handle of kitchen knife from the shelf before pointing it at random toward everyone else in the room.
“What the fuck do any of you know? Eh? What? Well I’ll tell you what I know, I know that if any one of you come anywhere near her, I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll take this knife, I’ll sink it into your chest, and I’ll fucking kill you”
His words now came through a waterfall of tears and saliva, spraying clouds in front of him as his passion and anger rose. He spoke louder and louder, until he was no longer speaking; he was shouting, his threats projected with venom and an aggressive, sincere acrimony.
Phil raised his hand in attempt to stifle Carl’s bellowing for universal fear it would bring some unwanted attention. He tried to approach Carl in attempt to console him, but Carl flailed the knife wildly in his direction.
“Do you hear me?! You touch her! You do anything to her! And I will fucking kill you all! You leave her and me alone, don’t you fucking touch either of us you fucking bastards! I will end you! You hear me?! I will end…”
BANG!
In an instant, Carl was silenced with a heart-shuddering noise. Not from one of us striking him or shutting him up, but from the front door. It was a noise coming from outside. Someone, or something, had banged the door.
BANG!
We all stood up and grouped in the frame of the living room door, staring down the hall at the wood nailed across the front of the house.
BANG!
Standing in silence, every bang made us all jump in sync; the deafening noise sourced from the other side making our hearts beat faster and faster.
BANG!
My brain gradually accepted what was coming; Hope and prayers aside, I knew in my heart what was on the other side of that day, I knew exactly what was causing the exterior noise. However, I became confused as to how anyone, or anything, could have got up here. I was certain that it must have heard Carl’s shouting to know we were in the flat, but how did it get through the barricades? We hadn’t heard any noise, and had been looking out across the carpark and surrounding area most of the day yet saw nothing. The barricades were strong and thick enough that they should have been able to withstand a singular intruder for at least a couple of hours if they were determined enough, and would have had to make a hell of a lot of noise in the process. Then, it dawned on me; this wasn’t something that got in, it was something that was already here, already in the block, already inside the barricades.
“Carl, where did you say you were you when your friends got killed?”
BANG!
Carl shuffled backwards, still holding Stacey as she shook on in his arms. His steps were small and cowardly, his feet softly vibrating on the carpet as his body trembled and cascaded down through his legs. The pair moved all the way back to the window of the living room, now several feet between us five and them whilst we still remained wide-eyed, fixated on the source of the commotion.
BANG!
“CARL?!”
Carl exhaled.
“It was in our living room”
He said.
“It was our house, next door. Our friends were torn apart on our floor”
I closed my eyes, angry at not being told this; it was another lie to add to the one about Stacey’s hidden bite. Clenching my fists, I shook my head in disbelief, wondering why the Hell we didn’t just check the extra house, wondering why we just trusted the neighbours, the strangers, without pushing them for more information. They seemed to be good people, I’m sure they still are, but crazy situations like this make people do crazy things; we’d already seen that first hand. But this time the crazy things they had done had put every single one of us in very serious danger.
“…what about the zombie?”
Jon calmly enquired, knowing full well what the answer was.
We weren’t looking at them, but heard Carl break into tears. We could hear his lip quivering and soft whimpers escaping the confinements of his mouth.
“What about the fucking zombie, Carl?”
Jon asked again through his teeth. He knew the answer of course; we all fucking knew. But Jon wanted to hear Carl say it out loud.
BANG!
“CARL?”
BANG!
Uncharacteristically, Jon completely and utterly lost his shit. He turned from our fixated stance and grabbed Carl by the ruff of his jacket to lift him swiftly up onto his tiptoes. Jon matched Carl’s height, but his build was slightly more muscular. He was no gym goer or anything like that, but sported an athletic build that when he rears up can be quite intimating. Jon was a calm guy normally, often being the one who slips out with definitive conviction way before a confrontation has the opportunity to unveil itself. He was a lover, not a fighter, but we had already seen what this infestation had done to the otherwise sane and stable locals on the high street, and now the stability of Stacey and Carl, so exhibited that Jon’s stability was the next to be tested in the face of adversity. This was a side of Jon we had not seen, like Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde, or Lassie to Cujo, but I have to say it; his anger fuelled actions were more than justified, I for one having no qualms to advocate them.
Jon had a blubbering Carl pushed against the window sill at the back of the living room as he snarled menacingly in his face. Stacey tried to grab his leg as she kneeled on the floor to pull him away, but the fear of her bite combined with his already present aggression resulted in a sharp kick in the face. Carl’s tearful remorse took yet another sudden switch to defence for his loved one, taking the opportunity of Stacey’s momentary distraction to move his hands from his previous palms out pleading stature to wrap around Jon’s body, tumbling him onto the coffee table, rolling both of them into a scrappy heap on the carpet.
Stacey, holding her now bleeding nose, began shrieking and crying hysterically. Derek pulled Jon off Carl, whilst I yanked him back and threw him back toward his floor dwelling girlfriend. He got himself back to his feet and grabbed me by the throat, to which Phil responded by punching his rib, then placing him a headlock as he struggled and kicked out in violent desperation. It was essentially five on one, as Stacey was about as useful as a toothpick in a sword fight, but Carl wasn’t giving up easy, making a scrappy rumble as we all tried to ascertain our own grasp of the situation. Phil lifted Carl up, wrapping his other arm under Carl’s armpit, now with both hands behind his head to hold him still and render him helpless with both arms up above his head. Jon broke free from Derek, grabbing the hammer from Lance’s hand in the process and raised his arm with intent of swinging the blunt weapon down onto Carl’s awaiting skull. He had gone too far, but the beast was now free and hungry for blood. Jon quickly motioned the sharp end of the hammer downward with a crazed look commandeering his entire face. Realising he had bridged the transition to submerging himself into vengeful and ultimately regretful madness; I grabbed the hammer a mere inch or two from the target to stop it caving
his cranium.
Derek stood with his fists up and ready over Jon’s left shoulder, Jon broken in motion as my hand held this looming hammer of Damocles. Lance merely looked disappointed his weapon had been swiped away from him. Phil continued to hold Carl, who had now stopped kicking and resisting as Stacey shuffled across the floor to his feet. Everyone panted to regain oxygen after the commotion; all standing waiting for the next move but not knowing where or who it was to come from. It was naïve of us to think the next move would be from one of us seven, but as we all waited for one another to break the standstill, and I pondered Jon’s reaction with sincere concern, our hopeful visitor decided to make sure we hadn’t forgotten about his looming presence.
A huge sound of shattering glass cut the tension in an instant, followed by the low, ambient, bellowing moan I had first heard in the pub a few nights before. It was a terrifying noise, added in severity by the lack of visibility from its fabricator. Our brain-lusting intruder had made light of the bay windows, enticed by a noisy potential feed on the other side. We knew the wooden shutters we nailed to the back of the outside frame weren’t particularly strong; it was more of a last minute extra security measure we added at the end of the day, hammered up somewhat half-arsed, not really expecting it to ever be rendered as a factor or its usefulness be tested. We could now see a shadow shifting around the bottom of the wooden panels, shuffling glass and tearing remnants of door and window out of the way.
BANG!
The bangs now had a louder, more prominent, much clearer sound. No longer where they muffled from the exterior glass to make it seem like the zombie was outside whilst we were safely in. Now it sounded like it was already inside, already close to us, already on its way to getting us. This fear just got more intense, more real, it could easily get to us now, and all seven of us knew that far too well.
“What do we do?”
I asked, a panicked tremolo engulfing my voice.
I was now breathing heavily through my nose, my heart beating a million times a second. I could feel it beating through my chest, the adrenaline from the fight we just had converting into fearful anxiety. I let go of the hammer as felt that would safely be considered as part of a moment now passed, a feeling evidently reciprocated by Jon as his hand lowered down by his side whilst he turned toward the front of the house, moving up to stand next to me.
“It’s going to get in”
I spoke again.
“The wood isn’t strong, it’s not nailed in very well, and most of its held up with duct tape for fuck sake. It’s getting in, so what do we do?”
BANG!
This time several nails shot out of their fixtures, firing across the floor like small missiles. The tape began to tear, the two large sheets of wood used now revealing a centralised gap through which a silhouette of our uninvited guest began to present itself. We could all see that there were only a few nails left in place, and they weren’t going to last very long at all. We had to figure out what we were going to do; we had to figure it out right fucking now.
“We could climb out through the lookout?”
Lance suggested.
“One of us could run out and distract it. They could lead it into one of the houses and lock it in?”
The idea, although said with good intent, was filled with flaws; having destroyed all doors and windows of the other properties in our first night’s rampage, there was nothing to keep this zombie in, so it wouldn’t have been long before it made its way back. Plus the risk was far too high; it was far too easy to get cornered, and I for one didn’t fancy taking that chance, neither did I want anyone else to.
BANG!
The next bang was the final one; the wood split in the middle and clattered down from the ceiling into a pile of debris on the floor. The sun beamed behind our intruder, blinding us and creating an exacerbating backdrop to emphasise its doom bearing entrance. It didn’t stop to take in what it saw, it didn’t even ponder whether or not it was outnumbered, it merely swarmed forward, negating the broken wood and shards of glass slicing the soles of its feet. It really didn’t seem like it was coming in for a cup of tea and a quick hello, but I had no idea what to do.
“MOVE!”
Jon and I shuffled to our subsequent left and right, parting the way for Lance, suddenly armed with a dining room chair as he charged forward from behind us. He had clearly capitalised on the time we spent trying to come up with an idea by actually coming up with one. I don’t know if he was shouting ‘charge’, or even shouting at all, the surreal extravagance of the moment has hazed my memory somewhat, but all I know was he darted forward with determined conviction like a charging rhino and slammed the zombie in the chest with the legs of the chair. The momentum lifted the zombie of his decrepit, bloodied feet, attaching him to the chair as it hurtled him backwards. Lance continued to run out the front of the house and through the small, concrete front garden, across the thin path and up and over the metal railing, launching both chair and zombie over the edge into the carpark 12ft below.
Well, I guess that was a good plan.
Jon, Derek, Phil, Carl and I all ran up behind Lance as he pressed against the railings and looked at the zombie below. Showered in broken chair bits and dropped from a fair height out of our fortress, it certainly got it away from us, but didn’t do anything to hinder its appetite. The zombie got back to its feet, un-phased by the impact of either the chair or the fall, and then peered up to see us all standing above it looking momentarily relieved.
I hugged Lance and thanked him for his quick thinking assault, taking the bull by the horns whilst the rest of us stood in the shadows trying to figure what the fuck to do. There was definitive warmth of glory beaming down on us, which soon cascaded to a feeling of calmness and security. Derek and I threw our arms over Lance’s shoulders, turning him with indication to walk victoriously back into the house.
It was only a second or two of facilitating the aforementioned feelings of triumph before we were once again stopped dead in our tracks. That now too familiar moaning noise our friendly visitor had made in attempt to get us to open the door came back, but this time in multiple force. A choir of moans boomed off buildings and filled the air, and although our now below us zombie intruder didn’t change his facial expression in anyway, as I looked back over the railing down into his lifeless, gaunt face, I got the sense he was somehow telling me we were in big fucking trouble now.
4.
Like slow approaching ants, the carpark gradually filled from every angle. It appeared as though everyone else in the town had either been eaten or had escaped by now, so we were the only ones left for the zombies to feast upon. The dinner bell we had ringed by making such a big fucking noise drew attention from each and every brain-hungry undead fuck in a couple mile radius. It was like a paddling pool being filled with a hose; slow, gradual, but consistent. Surely enough, after a few minutes passed, the carpark was eventually filled corner to corner with zombies, every single one of which wanted one thing; Us.
“Shit just got real”
Lance said, grabbing his hammer back from Jon.
“Fuck fuckidy fuck”
Said Jon.
“Fuck fuck fuckidy fuck fuck fucking shit fuck”
The six boys paced the living room and hallway, attempting to conjure up any memories of zombie movies where the protagonists managed to escape a scenario such as this one. All I could think of was the scenes where people got torn to shreds and stood zero chance and making it out alive, which really wasn’t helping me at all. I also remembered someone saying I looked like one of the zombies in Shaun of the Dead, so could already envision the physical element of my looming fate. I didn’t want that, it wasn’t a good look.
Accepting that we were most likely going to have to get into some pretty extensive somatic experiences, we began arming ourselves with whatever seemed like it was going to help us live. We were happy riding this one out, waiting for help, but we all knew it was only a matter of time before th
e downstairs undead army made their way up to us, so sitting on the roof just meant we were sitting duck pancakes, facing either a 30 odd foot jump down or being mauled by our hungry party guests.
“Lads”
Carl broke the unspoken time we had spent scurrying and getting weapons ready.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Y’know…for what happened before. I just, wanted to protect Stacey”
Jon, being the man he is, was the first to turn to Carl with an understanding smile, placing a hand firmly onto his shoulder to indicate his reassurance and acceptance of the apology.
“I couldn’t stop her getting bitten, but I still wanted to help her. I couldn’t….I can’t….”
Derek and I patted him on the back, and Phil caught his eye, proceeding to nod. We didn’t know Carl well, but we had grown accustomed to him over the past few days and liked him a lot. Before his earlier outburst, he seemed kind and funny. He seemed to have a good, strong business mind, but despite his career maturity he could still joke and was very easy to chat with. He was also extremely interesting, providing an endless array of stories about his global escapades and extravagant adventures.