by RR Haywood
Heather pops the tablets from the pack and mouths two that get swallowed down with more water.
‘Yeah, your films are shit,’ she says spitefully, resuming the earlier conversation like it’s entirely natural. ‘Like you do the same thing in every film. Ooh look at me being all Paco Maguire beating everyone up in tight tops with my big arms and shagging all the women.’
Paco takes the critique without complaint.
‘And that serious one you did? That was shit. And that comedy action one with that English actor…that was shit too. I didn’t even watch them but everyone told me they were shit. Completely shit.’
She selects another tin, checks the label and starts winding the tin opener round the edge.
‘I prefer The Rock,’ she tells him. ‘And Vin Diesel…he’s way better than you. And…Statham is so much cooler than you are.’ The lid pops, she takes a fork and sticks it into the tuna. ‘Tom Cruise…awesome,’ she says with a mouthful of tuna in brine. ‘And Will Smith is like hot. Like so hot.’
Paco doesn’t show reaction to the comparison to his peers.
Heather puts the tin of tuna down. It’s too dry to eat without mayonnaise or at least some salad cream or some dressing. It’s stuck in her teeth too. She moves her tongue round her mouth trying to prise the bits of fish while staring down at the zombie in the street then at the bodies of the other zombies he threw out of the window. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he bite her or hurt her? He was with the others when she ran into them when they were howling.
‘So,’ she begins casually, as though making idle chit chat then stops herself from asking why he didn’t bite her. Even giving voice to that topic seems too dangerous and maybe it will spark him up. She pauses, desperate to fill the silence. ‘You’re in England then?’ She asks with an inward curse at the stupid question. ‘What for? Filming?’
Paco doesn’t explain his reasons for being in the country.
She leans out to look up and down the street. Listening intently. She stares across to the cinema then down to the shops opposite on the ground floor and the windows to the flats above them. An idea forms, a new one, a fresh one, a cunning one.
She looks round again, effecting the nonchalance then snaps her head to the block of flats directly opposite. She double takes, blinks, narrows her eyes and leans further out. She waves, hesitant at first then more exaggerated until her arm is pumping side to side.
‘HELLO!’ She shouts and casts a quick furtive look down. ‘HI! Over here…oh wow…other survivors.’
Paco doesn’t turn to look at the other survivors.
‘How many of you?’ Heather stage whispers so Paco can hear. ‘Five?’ She holds her hand up, splaying her fingers. ‘No six? Six yes? Six of you? Oh wow…six more survivors in that building opposite me. Hey….be careful because the front door is like wide open. I said WIDE OPEN…’
Paco doesn’t look at the wide open door.
Heather looks down at him and on thinking she’s caught his eye she nods up, discrete and casual. She does it again. Inclining her head to the building behind him. She points with a finger, jabbing the air several times while nodding more emphatically. She winks. Nods. Points. She pulls faces, urging him to look round at the building behind him. ‘Food,’ she whispers. ‘Fresh food…brains…breakfast…yummy…yummy for your tummy…right behind you…fuck’s sake.’ She huffs, sags and folds her arms. ‘This is stalking. You’re a stalker. Like harassment. If the world comes back I’ll tell everyone you did this.’
Paco doesn’t respond to being called a stalker.
This is like facing off against a spider that’s dangling in the doorway, trapping you in the room. You can’t go near it for fear of being savaged to death or even being touched by one of those eight spindly legs. You can’t kill it either as that’s not on. So you ponder and prevaricate and come with wild plans of unwinding wire coat hangers to stretch out and snag the web to move the creature somewhere else. Problem with that is the merest motion disturbs the air which makes the spider flinch or move which renders you once more frozen to the spot. Paco Maguire is a spider dangling in the doorway, but worse. He’s over six feet in height with shoulders like boulders and arms like Popeye who has already shown he can flick a big fat bastard out a window like it was nothing.
He’s stood right there. Right underneath her. Throw the telly down. Throw the coffee table and bash his head in. He’s infected, one of them. Heather bites her bottom lip, willing herself to do just that but he looks so bloody dejected and lost. Like a child almost. No, not a child as he’s a big man but that forlorn expression is like a puppy. That’s it. A puppy. Shit. Now she’s thought that she’ll never be able to throw the coffee table at his head. She thinks to last night when he lifted her off the floor one handed then held her out at arm’s length supporting her entire body weight. He’s big but even a very big man would struggle to do that. The infection must have done something to his strength. Why didn’t he bite her?
A fresh cramp hits her belly making her bend forward grunting in pain. She closes her eyes, waiting for the spasm to pass while rubbing her stomach and moaning softly. Why do periods hurt so much? Christ this is the worst day ever, well maybe not as bad as last night but still.
He’s moved. She’s sure of it. He’s closer. Maybe only a step and he looks different too with his head cocked at an angle. The sad puppy now curious, more alert. She straightens up, staring hard. Has he moved? He has moved. She’s sure of it. The cramp persists, grinding through her gut. She shifts, lifting one shoulder to stretch her stomach with a blast of air sent through her nose that makes his head tilt another inch. If he wasn’t an infected zombie in a war ravaged street full of dead bodies she’d think he looked almost concerned. Almost.
She hides the pain from her face. Forcing her body to stand straight but wanting only to curl up in a ball and cry. Emotion hits her. Raw and powerful that sweeps through her heart with a surge that makes her want to sob. She’s still half-naked in someone else’s flat with kitchen roll shoved in her vagina. The very thought makes her feel dirty, like every pore is clogged with grime. She longs to shower and rinse the sweat away and feel clean but instead she has to watch him. Why doesn’t he move? Attack or do something? What does he want?
‘Go away,’ she says it again but with real feeling this time. A real request that comes from the heart. ‘Please,’ she pleads, bending forward to hold her weight on the windowsill. The pain is horrible, stabbing and both dull and sharp at the same time. Her mind fills with memories of the church and the long days spent lounging about watching the dust particles hang in the rays of light coming through the stained glass windows. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and too late. Mistake after mistake. Mistakes compounded and made worse. Hiding in plain sight? She should have run and kept going but some bloody stupid spark of an idea made her run in here.
In the depths of misery she keeps an eye on the man below but he doesn’t move or do anything but stands staring with his arms hanging limp and his head cocked slightly to one side.
‘Fuck off,’ she gasps in teary frustration. ‘Please just fuck off…’ The thought of him watching her in this misery is too much so she backs away into the lounge but instantly worries he’ll do something while she’s not watching. When she looks again he’s still there in exactly the same place.
Yoyo emotions. Up and down. Angry. Upset. Pissed off. Tearful. Frustrated. Morbid. Stabbing pains that shift about her stomach that feels even more bloated now. She leans forward again, leaning on the sill while shoving her arse out in an attempt to find a position that doesn’t hurt.
She farts.
She farts without warning. A physical reaction to the food, the exercise, the heat, the period and a hundred other things that cause the gases inside to become trapped and by leaning forward and sticking her arse out so the gas finds the way clear and escapes from an orifice that vibrates as it passes.
It’s not even a quick fart but a long one. Sh
e tries to clamp it off but it keeps coming. A raspberry blown that sounds so clearly in the otherwise silent street. She blushes instantly and stares in horror at Paco Maguire as the fart ends and plunges them both back into a profound silence. She just farted. She did. She farted in front of another human being. Embarrassment hits and a wish for the ground to open up and if a horde attacked right now she’d go willingly and without complaint to avoid being here in this second.
Time passes. The opportunity to blame something else comes and goes. She could have pretended it was someone else in the flat. A dog or a man. She could have laughed it off and played it cool but none of those things can happen now. Instead she lifts her head up and arches an eyebrow with a pathetic attempt at clawing back some dignity.
‘I hate you.’ Venom drips from her tongue as she turns away to fold her arms and sob.
Eleven
A morning gone. A morning spent flitting between shouting angrily, crying, farting, running to the toilet and all the time staring at an infected former Hollywood actor staring up. One who doesn’t move, twitch say or do anything.
Now she sits on a wooden chair dragged to the window sill that has become a make-shift table to hold the tins, cups, cutlery, bags of crisps, snacks, chocolate bars and Nurofen. She actually feels much better in a post-explosion of temper and emotions kind of way. Like the relief that comes after having a big argument that clears the air when you’ve said all the things that have been building up for ages.
Heather sighs at the relief of having also had a poo. She felt the need coming on and did everything she could to hold it in but the body wants what the body wants. It was perhaps the quickest poo ever in the history of womankind. She sprinted. Sat. Voided. Wiped. Rinsed and sprinted back. That and having eaten, drank lots of water and taken more Nurofen all combine to bring a much needed sense of calm back to her troubled mind.
Paco stands in a similar status quo of gained equilibrium. Dumb as a house brick and as stupid as the day is hot.
It is hot too. Very hot. Hotter than yesterday and she sweats just sitting still. Mind you, the sun is pouring into the room. She thought about taking her top off but that would mean sitting in her bra. Which ain’t gonna happen. Not for all the tea in China or wherever tea comes from these days. Or where it used to come from. You know, before the whole zombie thing happened.
What to do? She’s checked the windows on the other side of the flat and they’re straight drops down. There is no back door. The only way out is through the door into the street. Plans come and go. The wire coater hanger to remove the spider is the sticking point that remains. If she moves she might prompt him to do the same.
‘That western with Clint Eastwood,’ she tells Paco. ‘The Good The Bad and The Ugly? Wasn’t that famous for a stand-off? Did you ever meet Clint Eastwood? He’s so cool. Loved everything he did.’
She rests her chin on her hands with her elbows propped on the sill. ‘I never really liked Burt Reynolds though. He was handsome but always came across like a dick, do you know what I mean? Who else do I like? Oh I used to love that bloke from Gladiator…Russel er…anyway but nah, I went right off him. Keanu Reeves. Now that is a good actor. Why couldn’t it be Keanu Reeves stalking me? I’d be down there like a shot. Hey Keanu you can bite my neck just here and then here and maybe here…’ She snorts at the image. ‘Oh oh…I know who I like. Dicaprio. He is just oh. My. God. Just…just…yeah I like him. Wolf of Wall Street? That is so funny and god, did you ever watch Titanic again? He looked so young! Mind you he was young wasn’t he?’ She stops to sip water that she swishes in her mouth before swallowing. The act of which makes her look down at Paco who has now been standing in the heat for several hours. Is he thirsty? Do they even get thirsty? What about hunger or needing a wee or a poo? His throat looks awful. Must hurt like hell and the other injuries look bad too. That bite on his arm from the woman last night in the office looks raw. He’s covered in cuts and bruises. Maybe he’ll keel over and just die in a minute. She huffs and drinks more water.
Motion catches her eye and she glances idly to look down the street to see the woman walking down the centre of the road. Long greasy hair matted and filthy. A torn dress covered in blood. Arms hanging limp but her head is fixed and staring ahead. Everything about her screams infected. She’s bare footed and her right calf has been bitten deep.
The sense of security vanishes in a heartbeat with an absolute belief that this is why he hasn’t attacked. He’s been waiting for back-up, for more to come and help while he kept her trapped.
Adrenalin starts to surge as plans form to fortify the front door. Drag the coffee table, the sofa and the heavy bedroom furniture to barricade and buy time. Knot the bed sheets and when they attack climb out and drop down. Why hasn’t she done that already? Why didn’t she barricade the door when she woke up? More mistakes made that she curses herself for as she stands straight to watch the woman coming. She goes to turn, to run and start doing what she should have done before but Paco’s movement catches her eye. His head turning. Just his head that swivels to stare down to the woman walking towards him. A single motion but the only one he has done and the way he does it changes his whole manner and bearing. He stands straighter, arms tensing, fists clenching and the puppy vanishes the second he pivots his body to face down the street.
Heather doesn’t move but remains rooted to the spot. Unable to drag her eyes from him and when the snarl comes it makes the hairs on the back of her neck prickle while a chill runs down her spine.
The infected woman keeps coming. Her red bloodshot eyes fixed on Paco as her hands go from floppy to clawed talons and her lips pull back to show brown teeth. She speeds up. A distinct acceleration of legs moving faster. From static to running and Paco surges down the street with a burst of power that makes Heather’s heart beat faster and harder.
‘Fuck,’ she whispers into the room as Paco slams into the infected woman with the sound of meat hitting meat. The woman is sent sprawling to roll and tumble from the impact but Paco presses on with one hand grabbing an ankle. A mighty twist and he back steps, yanking her up off the ground to be sent flying across the road into the side of the van Heather looked at last night. She hits with a sickening crunch of bones and slides down to a messy heap. Paco runs in, stamping again and again. Snapping bones that crack audibly. His feet pummelling and destroying until the woman becomes a worthless unrecognisable lump of bloodied meat. Still he goes on with a rage exploding that makes him pick the woman up bodily to be lifted overhead then slammed back down into the hard surface of the road.
The shock of it makes Heather cover her own mouth to stifle the scream. She saw him doing the same thing last night but that was in the middle of a life and death chase. This is after hours of peace and quiet. A brutal explosion of violence to be seen and heard in every awful detail.
The woman is dead. That much is without doubt but Paco stares down. His fists bunched. His arms locked and tensed. His stance wide and challenging. Seconds tick by. Seconds of him seemingly making sure the ruined woman cannot rise again and only then does he turn away and stalk back to the same place he was before. He resumes his position with his chest falling to rise with hard breathing. His head turning to stare down at the mangled corpse. His eyes alive with something, not intelligence but something else. A pure energy that seems to pour from his body. Like an aura that surrounds him and fills the street. A guard dog. A puppy one minute and a guard dog the next. The threat is negated now though. The intruder is dead and so finally he turns away to stare back up at the window and Heather staring down with eyes wide and her hand still covering her mouth,
The comparison screams in her mind. A puppy to a raging guard dog and back to a puppy. Even his look is yearning. Did I do good?
Oh Christ. Oh my. Oh…she sags down onto the chair and stares in horror, her eyes flicking from him to the woman with several strands of thought whirling through her mind at the same time. The ease in which he killed the woman. The absolute and ut
ter strength in him was terrible yet spectacular at the same time. Lifting an adult woman over his head as though she weighed nothing at all and the way he stamped and kept going without any shred of being human. He did what a dog would do. He destroyed the threat and made it not be a threat anymore. No less and no more. Those thoughts race one after the other. Did he protect her or mark his territory. Is this his prey to be hunted or something else happening? For a second she gets an almost overwhelming urge to walk down and stand in front of him. Just to see for herself. She’ll either die or not. A tendril of organic understanding but a ridiculous notion that she pushes down and away. Don’t be stupid. Going down there is suicide. You saw what he just did. The speed he moved. The way he killed. You wouldn’t stand a chance. Why doesn’t he come up then? Even if she barricaded the door he’d be through in seconds. His strength would batter a path with ease.
She can’t speak or form a coherent thought. Her legs shake with unused adrenalin still coursing through her veins. She trembles from head to toe while breathing hard as if it were her that just killed the woman.
Then another one comes. A man this time. Big and heavy like a builder with meaty shoulders and thick limbs. He’s out of shape but not obese. The sort of man she used to see on building sites carrying heavy loads all day long. The sort of man in jeans and work boots with a yellow jacket and a hardhat. Now he wears boxer shorts. The same boxers he was wearing when the infected got into his house and bit into his chest. He’s been walking all morning. Drawn to the centre from the action that was taking place last night.
Paco’s head turns the same way it did before. Puppy to guard dog. Arms tensing, fists clenching. Power bunching to explode out as he sprints hard towards the builder who in turn holds course until the last few seconds before charging at Paco. A big man against a big man but the result was decreed before time began. Paco mows him down. Literally steamrolling over the builder who is knocked flat only to be grabbed, hefted up and have his neck broken at the same time as a foot comes down to snap his knee joint from the rear. The body falls. Broken and dead. The head at an unnatural angle.