by Ian Woodhead
The door opened with a single soft push to reveal nothing but blackness. He stepped inside and looked around. There was a narrow spear of white light which illuminated what looked like yet another carrier bag. Once his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he figured out that the old woman had, at some point in the past, put some wooden boards across the window.
He could now make out a little more detail. Jordan spotted another dining chair at the back of the room, next to a single bed. Did she sleep in here? He reached for the torch, not realising until his fingers brushed over the edges of the map, that the torch was in Necrovoid.
“Come on, Jordan, man. Get a grip.” He turned around. There was nothing in here apart from more irrelevant questions. In fact, why was he still in this house at all? The only person who lived here was dead. He'd got the sword, shouldn't he be looking through the contents of another house for supplies and more survivors?
Jordan reached for the edge of the door, his thoughts had strayed back to going home, to check his bedroom one more time before continuing with the search when he heard rustling behind him. He spun around, his eyes squinting, looking into the darkness for signs that something was in here with him. Could his movement disturbed a rat or mouse? He backed away, not stopping until his feet banged against the doorframe. That sounded about right, It made sense that this place was infested with vermin. There must be enough crap in this house to keep half the town's rodent population happy.
The sound of wood scraping against wood reached his ears, then something else shifted, at the back of the room. No rat could have caused that, not unless it was the size of a donkey. “Is there anybody there?”
A single cough answered his demand. Jordan resisted the urge to slam the bedroom door and beat a retreat. “Who's there? Come on, out you get. I won't tell you twice, I'll just shoot.”
“You're going to shoot me with your sword?” inquired a voice coming from the back of the room. “How does that work then?”
He almost did shut the door and run off when he was answered, almost believing that his dad was inside there. His mind caught up with his instinct to flee, a moment later and gently reminded him that his old man had joined the ranks of the super-zombies. The voice simply belonged to a man similar in age to his dad, that's all. Jordan tightened his grip on the sword. The doorway made it difficult to perform his signature move, but he'd still be able to thrust the point into the back of the stranger's skull if he did prove to be a danger. A pair of hands appeared from behind the back of a wardrobe, followed by the rest of the man's body. As the stranger slowly approached Jordan, he began to notice that something about him wasn't quite right. The fact that he flinched when Jordan shifted his position, and that he hadn't yet stood up told him as much. Still on all fours, the middle-aged man stopped in front of Jordan, sat on his backside with his legs crossed, then held out a grubby, calloused hand.
“Hi, it is nice to meet you. My name is Matt. What is your name? That's a pretty sword. My mum had one just like that. She's dead now, and I am not sad at all about this development. Would you like some cheese?”
The man was somewhere between forty and seventy, in this poor light, it was difficult to tell. The man's childlike manner did not help at all. Jordan stepped back without offering his hand. He had this strange picture of grubbily dressed chatterbox grabbing the offered limb, pulling him into his dark lair and doing to Jordan exactly what the sure-zombies wanted to do to his body earlier. He blinked. “Wait, you're Mrs Spicer's son?”
The man nodded. “Yep. That’s me. The one and only. You know it is really nice to meet you too. I guess you don't want to shake my hand? That’s not a problem, most people never wanted to before she took away the light either, on account of me always covered in grease and muck.” He got to his feet, picked up what looked like an old miniature television and stuffed it into the back of his jeans pocket. “ Hey, do you want to race me?”
Before Jordan could answer that bizarre question, the man took off, still on all fours, he streaked past him, reached the top of the stairs and ran down. Jordan heard him running from room to room, laughing and whooping. This went on for another few seconds before he ran back up the stairs and collapsed on the landing. He rolled onto his back.
“Gosh. That was so much fun!” he announced while panting heavily. “You know, I've wanted to do that for years. I kinda reached the point where I thought I'd spend the last of my days in that room. Hey, what about beef pate, do you like that?” Matt sat up. “You've grown, you know. The last time I saw your happy little face, you were like five or something. Wait, have I been in there so long? God, it's so good to talk, to have an actual conversation. Would you believe I was even having second thoughts about killing her?”
To think that he thought watching his dead sister jump on his parents' bed would be the weirdest thing to happened to him. Jordan walked past the middle-aged man, gave him a little wave then slowly made his way down the stairs, not too shocked to find Matt following him at a discreet distance.
Fine, let the strange man follow him back home. It would be nice to have an audience while he got his own back on the sister which made his life a complete misery from practically the moment he was born. Going back home kinda fit in to his goals as well. True, Jordan needed to see if his other self was still there but there was still the problem of food, and he knew that tin of hot-dogs that he'd taken out of the cupboard yesterday was still sitting on his bookcase.
He stopped at the bottom of the steps, suddenly feeling a little sick and disoriented.
“Hey, are you alright?”
Jordan nodded. “Yeah, thanks,” he replied. Jordan made his way into the hallway and then through the into the kitchen. “I don't suppose you know where the key is for that door, do you?”
“I do indeed, young sir.”
Matt nodded while wearing the biggest grin he had ever seen on a person of that age. It made him look a little slow, although, Jordan doubted that he was. If his parents had locked him in a dark bedroom, he guessed that after twenty years, he'd be a little peculiar too. Maybe not as extreme as this guy though. What twenty years of confinement where your only source of conversation is some mad fruitcake who feeds bicycle parts to birds compared to surviving the start of a zombie apocalypse? True, Matt the weirdo is also now part of the zombie scenario but as he was already on the same path as his mum went, it didn't really count.
“Sure I know where the key is. Mum always kept it in the same place. Always had and always will. Are we going outside? Ha! Of course, we are, why else would you need the key?” Matt scrambled over to the drawer underneath the microwave covered in used teabags, opened it and dug inside, muttering as he searched the contents.
Why did he go dizzy earlier? It had something to do with that tin of hotdogs, that's for sure. Was there a tin of pineapples next to the hotdogs too, or was that in the game? Jordan wasn't sure now.
Matt slapped the key into Jordan's palm. “There you go. Good old Matt came up trumps yet again.” He ran over to the kitchen door. “Wait a minute, please. Can you do that? I just need to collect some things first. You won't go without me will you?”
Jordan shook his head. “No, I won't go without you.” He wasn't lying either. The guy, if a little odd was kinda fun company, also, unlike everyone else he'd ever fucking known, had no inclination to bully him, boss him about or, in Barry's case, believe he knew better than him. He listened to Matt run back up the steps while he pushed the key into the key, turn it and open the door. Fresh air battered his face. It smelled glorious. Until now, he hadn't realised just how stuffy this house was.
“Okay, here I am. All set for the great adventure. Isn't this fun, Jordan? You know, this will be the first time that I've been outside since mum took away my toys and punished me. Still, she got what she deserved and that's all I have to say on the matter.”
“That's nice,” replied Jordan. “Do you think it's possible for you to shut your hole then? As I'm not that keen on confronting
a horde of super-zombies armed only with this sword. An assault rifle or maybe a Leopard 2 main battle tank, then I wouldn't really mind.”
“Sure, whatever you say, boss.”
Did he just detect a hint of sarcasm in the man's voice just then? “You don't want to get eaten, do you?” he turned around. “Are you even aware what has happened?”
Matt nodded. “Sure I do, boss” he replied. That grin never left his face. “I saw all the classic horror movies back when I was a kid. When there's no more room in hell. The dead will... Well, you probably know the rest.” Matt pushed past him, ran over to the gate and pulled it open. “I’m Ready when you are, boss!”
Jordan put the sword on his shoulder and made his way down the path, His gaze darted from the man's gormless expression and over to his house. He couldn't shake the feeling that his sister was now waiting for him. Perhaps he ought not to bother and explore another house. After all, he knew for a fact that there were nobody else in there who still lived, not unless his parents had a secret child they kept in the loft.
He reached the gate, still deciding what to do, when Matt made the decision for him by running down the path, opening his gate and scooting up to his back door. “Christ, you're so going to get yourself killed, Matt!” He ran after him. By the time Jordan reached the door, Matt had already crawled inside.
He got down on his knees. The man's head poked out through the broken window.
“Come on through! Your sister is still upstairs. You have a lovely house, it's a lot cleaner than mine. You know, it's odd to walk through rooms and not seeing carrier bags everywhere.”
Jordan bit his bottom lip to stop himself from releasing a verbal outburst. He just waited until the man moved out of the way before he crawled through the hole. He placed his sword on the table and walked over to the cupboard, he had no idea what had made him do this, only that he just needed to see if that tin of hotdogs was still inside. Right at that moment, needing to know this was even more important than checking his bedroom for his other self.
The cupboard door swung open of its own volition. “What the fuck is going on here?” Dozens of tins of hotdogs filled the top shelf, while tins of pineapples occupied the bottom shelf. Jordan spun around, intending to ask his new weird pal if he had any clue. Matt had picked up the sword and was using the tip to deface his mum's table. “Put that down, right now!”
Matt shook his head. “No, finders keepers.” He darted out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs.
“This is getting beyond a joke,” he growled, racing after him. Jordan reached the top of the stairs, to see Matt run into his bedroom. “You little shit. Give me that back!” He ran across the hallway. He was so focussed on getting his pride and joy back, that he hadn't noticed his parents' bedroom door now stood ajar until it was too late.
His sister ran out of the room, her arms outstretched. He yelped, dropped to the floor and rolled to the left. She followed him down, her knees landing on Jordan's ankle. He screamed out as the sudden pain enveloped his leg. Susan's arm snaked towards his face. He could only watch, helpless, as those jagged fingernails streaked forward.
The view suddenly changed as another hand grabbed Susan's hair and dragged her off his body. Matt ran around grabbed Jordan by the wrists and dragged him into the bedroom. The older man slammed the door shut.
“Phew, that was a close one!” he said, while giggling.
Jordan sat up. He carefully rolled up his trouser leg. It hurt so much! “Thanks for saving my life. Can I have my sword back now? You know, before she bursts through that door and eats the pair of us?”
Matt shook his head. “I’m sorry, boss, but it doesn't work like that.” He picked up the sword that he had leaned against the side of Jordan's wardrobe, he then opened the door and climbed inside.
“What the fuck are you playing at?”
Matt closed the door. “Your sister will be through that door at any second, Jordan. You have only two options. Look at what's on your bed.”
“Open this sodding door and give me my sword back, you weird freakazoid!”
Matt laughed. “That's not going to happen. Now, do as you're fucking told, you annoying shit. Christ, haven't you got it yet?”
The sudden change in Matt's voice scared him even more than the imminent threat of his sister bursting through the door. “Barry? Are you in there as well?” Jordan thought his head was going to burst. He backed away from the wardrobe. Not stopping until his legs hit his bed. Jordan turned around. The sensenet lay in the middle of his bed covers.
“Well done,” said the voice from the wardrobe. “Now put it on. Jenny has some things to explain to you and when you come back out, I'll do the same.”
What other choice did he have? Jordan climbed on the bed, rolled the sensenet over his head, just as his bedroom door burst open.
Chapter Ten
Sixth Insertion
They sat on the wall outside the shopping mall. Jordan took another bite out of an apple he found on the wall beside him, while Jenny carefully wrapped a bandage around his ankle. It had been almost an hour since that plant-pod monster almost killed him and in the intervening time, all he had really cared about was for his ankle to stop feeling like someone had forced it into a wood chipper. The pain had only receded somewhat when Jenny had pushed open the fire-door, a few metres away and led them into the twilight.
“Thank you for saving my life, yet again.”
Jenny finished off tying the bandage, stood up and sat next to him. “If you had listened to me in the first place, this wouldn't have happened.”
“Yeah, thanks for the reminder,” he replied. “You could have just told me, you know.” The pain really had diminished, he might even be up to hobbling to the other shop. The town looked so different now. There wasn't much sunlight left and back before this happened, all the street-lights would have come on by now. If they didn't set off soon, then as weird as it sounded, they might end up getting lost in his own town. The cloudy sky ensured no moon or stars would help them light their way either.
“I think we should make a start, Jenny.” He started to get up, only for her to push him back down.
“Wait,” she said.”Not yet. Look over there.”
He followed her pointed finger and spotted movement close to a bus stop. It was another dead thing. It didn't seem to be moving very fast. “I wonder what it's doing?”
“I would guess that it's waiting for a bus.”
“Don't take the piss, Jenny.”
“I'm not. We've noticed this type of phenomenon a few times. The dead, trying to replicate motions from the time they were alive. I think it's a little sad, you know.”
“Great, so we're stuck here?”
“It won't be long, give it a few minutes and it'll wander off.”
Jordan threw the apple core behind him.”In that case, why don't you tell exactly what that plant thing in the shopping centre was doing.”
Jenny just looked at her feet. She then took a deep breath. “I hadn't realised any of those bastard things were still around. Finding one more, just like that, well. Well, it kinda freaked me out.” She took another jagged breath. “Like that isn't the understatement of the decade.” The woman lifted her gaze and looked straight at him. “They are the cause of all this, Jordan. Those things are responsible for this whole fucking nightmare. Barry called them Seeder pods, and the poor bastards who were caught, like the man in the book shop, Barry called them Seeders. I guess the name speaks for itself, you know? Although I had never heard of a Seeder physically attacking another human like that before. The ones we saw, just staggered into the closest crowd and detonated.”
“They what?”
“Detonated. You know, exploded. It wasn't like blood everywhere, people picking out tiny bits of flesh and bone fragments out of their hair or anything, it was more like watching the contents of an over-full vacuum cleaner bag exploding. We think that the Seeder pods converted their captured humans into some kind of spore factor
y and it's the spores which turned living humans into dead, walking humans.”
“Fucking hell, that's just horrid.”
She nodded. “That's not the worst of it.”
“How can it get any worse?” he asked.
“In the first wave, the Seeders only infected a small percentage. It was enough to cause a panic, obviously, but the authorities managed to contain it. They imposed some pretty draconian measures, at least, that's what it looked like to us.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the usual, curfews, shooting anybody remotely suspicious. Raiding houses belonging to people suspected of harbouring a dead thing. That kinda stuff. It was working though, so most people didn't kick up a fuss. It's only when the second wave hit and even more people were infected when the panic really did set in.” Jenny wiped her eyes. “I lost most of my friends in the second wave.”
“I'm sorry.”
Don’t bother, there’s no need, it's not like you knew them, is it? Anyway, by that time, order had just about broken down. That's when they struck again.” She looked back at the fire-door. “Christ. We are so fucked now.”
“No we’re not. We've survived the worst of it. All we need to do is get tooled up, get some food and meet up with your friends.”
“You still don't get it. Tell me something, why do you think we haven't been changed yet?”
He shrugged. ”I'm not sure, because we're immune?”
“Yeah, Barry said the exact thing.” Jenny jumped off the wall. “Come on, let's see if you can walk on that leg.”
“Wait, don't stop. What are you getting at?”
Jenny pulled him up and made Jordan walk a few steps. The pain wasn't too bad now, it just felt numb and every so often, his whole leg twitched but on the whole, he felt confident that he'd be able to complete the journey to the shop.