by Carl Meadows
So, in light of him losing his childhood quicker than most, we can still mark the big one-zero with a fancy-dress party. One little light of humanity in a dark inhuman world.
After I gave Nate the nod I was done, he looked visibly relieved as we loaded up and rolled out. The last part of our little sojourn still had to be tested though. We needed to find an undead or two and test their reaction to me and we weren’t enamoured with the idea of heading to the great wall of hate uptown.
As we’d rolled out about 7.30am, and now it was only a little after 10.30am, we still had the best part of the day left, so on the very edge of town we decided to pull into a little cul-de-sac that had some high-end detached houses. There were five houses in the little circle at the end of the road, three of which still had vehicles on the driveway. We surmised that people in these houses had decided to lock down and we would either find survivors we could possibly help, or at least some undead to run my little test.
Sadly, we did not find survivors.
I was in a good mood on our journey back from the party shop. High spirited, you might even say. One of those houses, however, sucked all the joy out of me. I was brought crashing back down to reality with a hard stop.
Four were devoid of presence, either living or dead, two of them being the houses without vehicles out front. The two that did have a vehicle outside - but no sign of living or dead inside - we assumed escaped on foot or were away on holiday when all this bullshit went down.
Bing bong. “All flights into the UK are cancelled due to unforeseen global apocalypse. The team at Undead Airlines apologise for any inconvenience.”
The last remaining house in the circle was a stark reminder of the horrors hiding behind closed doors. Once we experienced that house, all I wanted to do was go home.
We knew it was bad when we popped the door open. It was like the halitosis of the dead exhaling out of the doorway. There was no doubt there were undead inside because the cloud of fetid corruption that hissed out of the open doorway was straight up evil.
There’s no other way to put it. It wasn’t just rotten, but aggressive and acidic, like a targeted assault against your senses. I can never find the right words to describe the putrescent stench of the undead, even though I keep trying. The best single word I can think of to convey its foulness is violating. It violates your senses, burning the eyes, souring the tongue, and invading your nostrils to squat there like a hobo that’s shat himself.
Just fucking dreadful.
Nate didn’t need to whistle test. The moment we peered into the hallway we saw a dead couple who I guessed were in their mid-thirties when alive. They were skinny though, like way too skinny, as though they had slowly starved these past few months. Their faces were sunken and sharp, their fingers skeletal with thin layers of pale skin stretched over the bony digits.
I couldn’t help but feel remorse when I saw the state of them. This little cul-de-sac was literally two miles from the lodge on the wealthier outskirts of town. We’d driven past this little avenue of houses so many times on our various runs beyond the gate. They must have heard the throaty engine of our pickup pass them by on numerous occasions, or the gunshots of our firearms training in the distance, and cowered behind their curtains, fearful that bandits or raiders were coming to assault them.
After hearing Nate crack open the front door with the halligan, the undead couple turned towards us. I held my breath in anticipation, waiting for them to lock on and do that weird purposeful stride towards me.
However, they did not. They had the same glassy vacant look common to the undead, shuffled aimlessly towards us with blank expressions, and only twisted their lips into that silent snarl at their usual pre-lunge distance. They didn’t focus solely on me and were equally interested in munching on Nate. Weird, like whatever was driving them at the pharmacy, the main road through downtown, and the builder’s yard, was now simply… absent.
We let them stumble into the open and brained them with ease, saving bullets and unnecessary noise by spiking their melons with the halligans. Just another normal day in the apocalypse.
Until we went inside.
My heart sank the moment we entered. Pictures dotted the wall in the entrance hallway, matching the couple that lay with their heads caved in outside the front door. Right between them in those pictures, however, was a little mousy-haired girl. She was no more than five years old.
“Nate,” was all I said, gesturing to the picture.
He glanced at the framed photo. His jaw tightened a little, and he exhaled long and even, but I know him well enough now to see the little signs of distress that nobody else will spot. To my eyes, I witnessed a visible sag to his posture. Nate’s whole demeanour hardly moved to the untrained observer, but I saw his entire body radiate sorrow, each little sign melding together into a single, unspoken sentiment.
God, not again.
Then we heard the scratching.
Where the parents had been stood when we popped the door, there was a little cupboard under the staircase. There were deep scratches and smears of old, dried blood on the outside of the once-white door, with broken pieces of bloody fingernail embedded in some of the grooves. The undead parents had stood there, scratching at the door, trying to get at their tiny daughter as she trembled in the darkness.
Only the mother had wounds. The father must have died, and when he turned, it must have been a flurry of shock and panic. The mother had likely bundled their precious daughter into the cupboard to keep her safe while she tried to deal with her reanimated – and now murderous – husband. She clearly failed, killed by a hungry bite to the back of her neck, severing an artery. There was a massive pool of dark, thick-crusted blood on the kitchen floor tiles evidencing her awful death.
“I’ll do it,” said Nate.
“No,” I replied, feeling sick to my soul. “No, Nate. Let me take this one. You’ve taken too many already.”
“Erin…”
I held up a hand. “No, Nate. Not this time. This is how life is now. You’re right, I wasn’t ready before, with Freya.” I released a shaking breath, before inhaling a deep lungful of courage. “But now I am, and I need this.” My voice shrank to almost a whisper then, and what I said next was more for myself than for Nate. “I’ve got this, Nate. I’ve got this.”
I could feel his dark eyes on me, assessing the truth of my statement.
“Look at me,” he said, and I obeyed. He locked his gaze to mine for a few moments, then his own expression turned resolute. “Fuck the noise,” he said. “Use the Glock.”
Then he placed a strong hand on my shoulder, squeezed once in support, and retreated outside.
Whatever he was looking for in my eyes, he must have found it, and stamped his approval on my personal need to get this done. He’s my rock, and honestly, I can’t imagine life without him now. I draw strength just from his presence, and I needed all of his might to get this done.
Alone, I stepped to the small, bloodied door, hearing the little nails scratching at the wood inside. I swallowed a nervous dry lump that felt like broken glass as it went down, drew the Glock, mimicked Nate’s check for a round in the chamber, and twisted the small brass knob.
The little girl tumbled out into the hall as I stepped back, her weight having been pressed against the door when she sensed the living beyond it. She was dressed in a tiny, off-white nightdress, with a faded pink unicorn smiling as it leaped over a rainbow. She was barefoot and covered in filth, with no visible bite or mortal wounds on her little form. My heart almost shattered inside my chest as I realised the little girl must have pissed and shit in that dark little prison, unable to escape even by accident, as there was no knob to turn on the inside of the cupboard door. She had been trapped, alone in the dark, as her murderous parents tried to claw their way in. And all this after hearing the terrified shrieks of her dying mother.
For an unknown length of time, she had been trapped in the darkness, with silent, scratching demons outside her
only door. No food, no water, no light, and no hope. I mean, fuck… I can’t even comprehend the level of terror a five-year old would feel in that sightless hell.
She probably faded from dehydration, but not before she’d been forced to lie in a lake of her own filth. The stench emanating from her was just pure… misery.
White eyes stared up at me from the laminate wooden floor, as she climbed to her feet while I backed away. In the picture on the wall, she’d had such pretty hazel eyes that glimmered with the light of innocence and security. All that remained of that bright and happy girl was a white-eyed husk, caked in human waste, with shredded fingertips that reached for me as she stumbled forward.
I lined the pistol with her head and didn’t hesitate.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I fired, but the Glock’s thunder in the confined hallway swallowed my apology.
Sheathing the pistol, I spun on my heel and walked right past Nate with my head in hands, climbed into the passenger seat, and slammed the door shut. I didn’t care if there was anything of use in that house. I just wanted to be away.
Wordlessly, Nate climbed into the truck, hummed the engine into life, and we came home. He never said a word, but he didn’t need to. Just him being there was enough for me.
I couldn’t write yesterday after that, hence why I’m doing it today. I needed peace, and I needed Particles, and I cried my fucking heart out in my room for two hours straight until I was borderline dehydrated myself.
That house makes me feel absolutely shit, Freya. It had been within our power to help those people, but we just never knew they were there. We’d driven past those houses so many times, and never thought to stop there.
Yesterday and today, I said, “if only,” so many times. Freya, those two words alone don’t have much of a punch, but when you stick them beside each other, they gain a power that can fucking break you if you let them.
I’ll cry for them, I’ll feel every stab of guilt for what might have been, but it only makes me more determined to do something about this fucking mess. To make something of it for those who are left.
There will be many more days when I feel like this, that much I know. There will be more days where I struggle to collect the shattered fragments of my heart, and I feel like I can’t go on.
However, I also know this truth.
You might see me weak, but you’ll never see me quit.
PART 2
FAMILY AFFAIRS
OCTOBER 21st, 2010
NO REASON WHY
I’ve been thinking a lot these last few days.
I know, dangerous right?
But seriously, I’ve taken a few days to consider the weirdness with the undead. Why the change after your death, Freya? Why the sudden shift where the undead focused entirely on me, then after the builder’s yard, everything reverts back to how it was?
I decided that last night I would throw it out to the rest of our little community as we had our evening meal. Mark and Alicia saw the evidence themselves at the yard, how they were largely ignored once I was on the scene, and how the dead crowded round my voice coming through the radio like dogs hearing their absent owner’s voice over the phone. Alicia was also with us when the wall of undead marched towards us downtown.
The prior couple of days we did some house clearing for supplies, and to give Isaac, Maria, and Alicia more time in the field. Mark was busy with the generator housing and wood stove prep work – which incidentally gets full installation tomorrow, as we’ll need lots of hands to get it in place - and he’s best left doing useful stuff like that. Mark is best coming out beyond the gate when there’s stuff we might need his engineering brain for. He’s just got too much skill and know-how and there’s always stuff he can be doing on the home front. We’re going to convert the double garage next to the bungalow into a workshop for him, and find a table saw, and some other tool stuff I stopped listening about when he and Nate were chatting.
Isaac, Maria, and Alicia came out with me and Nate, and we rolled in two vehicles; our trusty pickup, and the white van we took from the convenience store what seems like a decade ago. Our plan was to start hitting houses on the outskirts of town to give Maria and Isaac some live trigger time against small pockets of undead that could be easily managed. It would also serve to bed Alicia in as part of our new fully fledged security team, and to just generally take it easy, doing simple resource gathering without venturing too far from the lodge. If we’re going to take the fight to the undead and clear large areas of town, best to start small and work in a pattern.
We ignored the cul-de-sac of housing where I shot the little girl. I wasn’t ready to go back there just yet, so we moved on to the next fancy-pants housing area a little way down.
We found some good stuff, but I won’t list it as inventory bores the shit out of me, as you are all too aware, Freya. It was interesting having Maria along though, as she took stuff that Nate and I never even think of. Clean bedding sheets, pillows, towels; that kind of stuff. We’re always looking for food, tools, cleaning supplies, and useful clothing, but never even thought of stuff like bedding and towels.
Nate had to put the stoppers on her a few times though.
“Maria, we can’t take everything,” he chided. “Our space is limited, and we can’t empty every house in the town into that lodge. Think of it like a triage.”
She laughed at his medical analogy, nodded, and started being more selective about real essentials. Medicine and vitamins, however, she wouldn’t be moved on and Nate wouldn’t fight her on those anyway. If we found any form of medicine or vitamin supplies, we took it all. That stuff always tops our list.
Isaac and Maria both took down their first zombies with a handgun. Isaac did okay, but Maria… I mean, shit, I’m sorry I ever thought her caregiver nature would be a hindrance to her. She palmed her Glock slow and smooth, both hands solid, feet planted, and squeezed off a single round to drop a zombie stumbling out of an open door like a stone-cold pro.
I looked at Nate in surprise, and he just had a half-grin on one side of his mouth reminiscent of a teacher’s pride in a star pupil. I am pleased to announce that our caregiving medical professional is officially a zombie-killing bad ass. So cool.
Isaac did fine, but he was still a nervous amateur. You could see he was thinking of everything in little steps, trying to remember he was doing everything right while Nate was watching. He did, but he took a little long to get himself set and took three rounds before he popped the melon. He’s still learning, but he’ll be fine with more field time and hard practice, I think.
Ha! Listen to the wise and sagely pro here. I’ve been shooting for just under four months and chatting shit like I’m some spec-ops ninja. Still, I’ve got a lot of trigger time now, and as flighty as I seem, I secretly practice my handling all the time. If you do something enough your brain wires up a hard-coded program for that skill. You move from conscious competence – where you know how to do it but have to think about it – to the desired stage of unconscious competence, when it becomes second nature, allowing you to multi-task.
You can see the difference in Maria and Isaac. She’s practiced it way more, as well as having a natural affinity for it. Alicia is the same now, as she does nothing but practice with weapons. It drives her to be better and as long as she can keep her head cool, she’ll be a real asset. That girl does not fuck about and takes her security role very seriously. As long as we don’t see that savagery we witnessed when she first brained a zombie with the halligan, Alicia will join our top tier defence along with me and Nate.
I’ve wandered off on tangents again. Reading my journal entries is like watching Billy Connolly live on stage… I’ll wander off down a merry road of tangents and side notes, but I’ll eventually find my way back to what I was trying to actually talk about.
My point about the house clearing was to illustrate how the small pockets of undead we came across were back to their ‘normal’ aimless selves. Gone was the purpose, the drive,
and the singular focus towards me. I’ll admit my relief, because I hated the thought of having to stay in the lodge while others went out and did the grind. At the same time though, it unnerves me. Why did it happen for that short period? And why has it reverted to the same threat level as it is for anyone else?
This is what I put to the group. We laid out everything we’d seen at the little pharmacy where it first appeared, then the wall of undead downtown, which Nate and Alicia both confirmed there was no reaction from until I opened my mouth.
Finally, there was the builder’s yard, and both Mark and Alicia were quite animated about that experience. They saw first-hand how every zombie came stomping after me when I played carrot for the undead donkey, allowing them to gun down some rear stragglers and make it safely to the trucks.
I laid out what I felt and just put it right out there. This apocalypse was not a virus, nor was it some chemical weapon. It was not man-made, and it was not a natural viral mutation. There was something more at work.
“Like God, or the Devil?” asked Maria.
She’s never been religious, but Dean was. Not in-your-face religious or ram-it-down-your-throat religious though. Faith was just something he’d been brought up with and was very personal to him. I think it also gave him some comfort in an incredibly stressful job and let him find some peace amid everything he’d seen.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t believe in magic sky fairies, nor in horned demons in a plane of fire tormenting souls for eternity. I’m not saying there isn’t something out there we don’t understand, because the longer this goes on, the more I have to believe there is something out there that sparked this bullshit. I just can’t give it a name right now.”
“It does feel a little like we’re being judged,” offered Norah.
I was so happy to hear that from someone else because that’s what’s always been eating at me. It does feel like a punishment, a slow death for humanity, with the dead as our judge, jury, and executioner for all the death and misery humanity has inflicted upon itself. I said as much to the group.