She disappeared and left me alone in my living room.
As soon as she left, a tapping noise at my left made me gasp. I looked to the side of me to see the roller blind down to the floor. Behind my patio door was Annie. I was sure I heard her clomping about on the decking during the night. It was hard not to make a sound on the decking. Even the cats sounded like they had clogs on in the old days, and me and the wife would sometimes hear them during the night.
I bent over, making a groaning sound as I did it, and tightened my shoelaces before I pulled up the blind. There she was. Her dirty blonde hair, those wide milky eyes, like flying saucers, and her dirty white nightie. She could have done with a good wash, but she was dead. It didn’t really matter.
She looked unsteady on her feet and didn’t paw at the glass of my patio door, like she sometimes would. The glass was marked with her pawing from the other day and was in a desperate need of a wash. I had a small chuckle to myself and thought about the wife. What would she do if she was here? She hated dirty windows, and I knew this would drive her up the wall.
A few months back, our usual window cleaner turned up and cleaned the windows. He had purposely avoided cleaning my daughter’s room, the bedroom that looked out onto the main road, which had two windows. How did I know this? Because I was on the opposite side of the road, waiting for my bus to work. It was after nine, I had just walked the kids round to the school, and was now at my usual bus stop. The window cleaner, who didn’t know I was at the bus stop, watching him, did the toilet window above and the living room window, but avoided the two bedroom windows and went round the back to do the rest.
I texted my wife and told her. She was still in the house and had a day off from work, and when he had ‘finished’ he came to the door for his money and she told him not to come back again. She informed him, in the only way she could, that she would rather do them herself and he was about as much use as a coal-powered frog violin. Yeah. I didn’t know what that meant either. Basically she told him to fuck off and that he was a robbing bastard.
She was never one for mixing her words and I hoped, and was pretty sure, that she was a different animal when she was at hospital where she worked as a Senior Staff Nurse.
A smack on the patio glass from Annie had managed to bring me out of my thoughts of yesteryear, and I smiled at the dead girl. I could have sworn that she had smiled back, or even developed creases in the corner of her mouth to create the thinnest of smiles, but I came to my senses pretty quickly. She was dead. She was one of them.
“So how was your night?” I asked her from behind the thick pane of glass. Don’t ask me why. I had Emma staying with me now, so it wasn’t as if I was starved of company. “Rough one?”
She snarled, as I gazed at her, and gently stroked at the glass. I wasn’t goading the creature, I was… I don’t know what the fuck I was doing. She reminded me of my daughter, despite her appearance, and sometimes I would look at Annie and smile, and other times I’d look at her and feel upset. I wondered if my daughter, as well as the rest of my family, had turned, and if she had, then this was probably what she looked like.
I rubbed my weary head, knowing that water and hydrating myself would be the answer to my self-inflicted pain, and took in a few deep breaths. A few gulps of fresh air would have been ideal, but a small matter of Annie was stopping me. A smile emerged under my nose when a thought appeared in my throbbing head.
Maybe I should tie her up.
I screwed my face in thought. “That’s not such a bad idea.”
I had my huge conniver tree at the bottom of the garden, the kids’ play swings to the side of it and my decking had banisters, so there was plenty of places I could tie her up to; I just needed the rope.
“Why not?”
I went out of the back room and went into my downstairs bathroom. The bath was to the left, the toilet and sink at the far end of the small room, and to the right was a cupboard that was on the floor. The cupboard was under the stairs and was a place that the wife used to store extra toiletries, decorating equipment and bargains like crisps and biscuits that she would come across in the supermarket—I think I have mentioned that before. To the right of the cupboard was where I used to store my cans of Guinness. God, I missed that drink.
Apart from the decorating equipment that was in the cupboard, there wasn’t a lot else that was in there, but I did find some blue rope that had been used in the past for something that I couldn’t recall. I grabbed the rope, and left the cupboard, banging my head on the way out. After releasing a profanity or two, I closed the cupboard door and went back to my new living room, clutching onto the blue rope.
Aware that Emma was in bed, I walked to the back room, wincing because of the noise the flooring was making with my steps, and placed my hand on the handle of the patio door, ready to open it.
“What the hell are you doing, Shaun?” I muttered under my breath.
I already had it planned: Open the door. Kick Annie over. Drag her to the tree and tie her up. Simple. Right?
I blew out a breath. “Here goes.”
I released the patio door handle. I had lost my nerve. Maybe it was a crazy idea. I thought that maybe I should wait until Emma woke up, discussed it with her and see what she thought, and, of course, give me a hand.
“Just do it.”
I went into the kitchen and took a knife from the block. I placed the knife in my back pocket, but was certain that I wouldn’t use it. I didn’t want to use it.
I pulled open the handle, and was taken aback by the speed of Annie. I front-kicked Annie into the midriff and forgot how light she was because she was such a young age. She flew backwards, landing hard on the decking, and I did something that I had learned when I was a prison officer many years ago; I grabbed her arm and put her in a thumb and wristlock.
She snarled and tried to lash out at me with her free arm, but I managed to drag her over to the conniver tree. I pushed her over and grabbed both of her arms. Even though she was technically dead, I made sure that I didn’t break her arm when trying to tie them behind her back, her arms around the stump of the tree.
Easier than I thought, I tied the blue rope around her wrists and made it as tight as I could get. Satisfied with my work, I got off my knees and walked around the tree, assessing the situation. I stood in front of the now-sitting Annie and goaded her, testing the strength of the rope. I was satisfied. She was going nowhere.
I had a look around the area. My lawn needed cutting, desperately, my fence badly needed creosoting and the decking needed a bit of a clean. Normally, because of the little gaps in the wood, it would be, on a monthly basis, cleaned by either myself or the wife. The decking was usually brushed, and then we’d hoover up all the stubborn bits of grass and stones that were still in the gaps. The wood looked dirty and was covered in bird shit.
Annie’s appearance hadn’t made that much of a difference, but the marks on my patio glass from her pawing the windows was doing my head in, and at least now I could sit or stand in my own garden and get fresh air. With her tied to the tree, I went back into the house, grabbed some glass cleaner that hadn’t been used in many months from the kitchen cupboard, and took an old smelly tea-towel that was scrunched up and sitting by the empty bread bin.
I walked out of the kitchen, passing the bathroom to my left and the old living room to my right, and turned left once I reached the reception area and went into the new living room and opened the patio door. Annie was still tied to the tree, and I put the glass cleaner and tea-towel to good use and cleaned the outside patio door. I stepped inside and shut the door, inspecting my handy work. Not as good as the wife’s work, but it’d do. I then heard thudding from above me. It sounded like Emma was up. A minute later, she appeared in the new living room, or the back room. She complained that she couldn’t drop off and her mind was going at a hundred miles per hour. She asked if I had any toothpaste. I didn’t, but I had a spare brush she could use. It was better than nothing.
“Oh,” I said, stopping her in her tracks. “Once you’ve finished cleaning yourself up, fancy popping out on the decking for a bit of fresh air?”
She looked at me as if I was insane. I didn’t need to verbally explain to her that it was safe; I simply opened the patio door and pointed over at the conniver tree, and she could see that Annie was tied to it.
She shook her head and laughed, “You mad bastard.”
Chapter Twelve
Emma and myself stepped out of the living room and onto the decking. I closed the door behind me and went to the left part of the house, where the kitchen window was. I took two chairs that were sitting around the abandoned table, and put them against the wall, just underneath the kitchen window.
I apologised for the rusty garden furniture, but Emma laughed it off. We both sat down and gazed over at Annie. A soft wind tickled our faces and the pair of us moaned. Wow, it was such a great feeling. It was a feeling you took for granted in the old world, but when it happened, we both moaned in delight and then began to laugh at ourselves for groaning at the same time.
“I wonder where she came from,” Emma said out loud.
I asked, “Who? Annie?”
Emma nodded.
“No idea. I don’t recognise her from my street. We didn’t really have many kids living in our street; it was mainly elderly people.”
“Poor thing must have escaped her house and ran away from those things … maybe.” Emma didn’t seem so sure. “Or maybe she was in a car crash; she escaped on foot, then…”
“Doesn’t matter now, I suppose,” I said. “She’s gone. Whatever she was before, she’s no longer that child. Her body still moves, but she has no soul.”
“Shit,” Emma laughed and began to twirl her hair with her finger. “I had no idea you were the religious type.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“Where did that come from?”
I began to snicker to myself. “I have no idea.”
Emma sighed and lifted her head up. It was a weird kind of day, weather wise. It was humid, but the sky was filled with grey threatening clouds, blocking the sun, and a gentle wind could be felt on our faces once more.
Emma moaned again when the wind caressed her features, and I had another look around, especially at the back of the houses, behind my garden. Over my fence that was situated at the bottom of my garden, was another back garden belonging to another house to another street. The back of the houses that I could see belonged to another street called Blackstone Crescent, and I remember when I first moved into my house, some sixteen years ago when I was in my twenties, I could never get used to having people’s back bedrooms looking onto my house from the other street.
One Sunday morning, a few years ago, I got up with a hangover and my throat was so dry and my head hurt so much that I practically crawled downstairs. Once I was in the kitchen, dressed in only my Fred Flintstone boxer shorts, I had a couple of glasses of water, then stared out of my kitchen window. I began to fantasise for a few minutes, but when I snapped out of it, I realised that I had been looking up at the back of a house that was opposite mine.
When I managed to regain my focus, I could see in the bedroom and realised that I had been daydreaming. It must have looked like I was staring into it.
At the window was a heavy woman with her hands on her hips, clearly angry, and had thought that I had been spying on her. Trust me. She wasn’t really a woman that your average male voyeur would spy on. I don’t want to sound unkind, but she had a mass of frizzy ginger hair—I have nothing against ginger hair, a face like a bucket of worms and a figure that would struggle to squeeze into a size 20 dress. Now, before you go all judgemental, I have no problem with big women, but this salad dodger, thinking I was spying on her, was kidding herself on. If I was that desperate and sexually deprived, I would have simply logged onto Pornhub and cracked one off to the chubby milf section.
Sitting on my rusty chair with Emma by my side, I gazed at that very same window. The curtains were closed, and I guessed that she had left the house or she was dead inside. Maybe she had killed herself.
Strangely enough, as I was thinking about yesteryear, Emma asked me, “So who lives in those houses over there?”
I began to laugh, “I haven’t a clue. I didn’t really know my neighbours that well, not even the ones near me.”
“You’re hopeless,” said Emma.
I leaned my head back and put my arms behind my head. “Us two are sitting out here,” I began. “And there’re over fifty houses in my street, at least.”
“And what’s your point?”
“There must be survivors about, even in this street alone. So I’m guessing that there’re thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands across the UK.”
“Don’t think about it too much. You’ll start to get a headache.”
I smiled and stared to my left, thinking about my neighbours, Rena especially. Poor Rena. I lost my smile and began to think about my own family. It was hard to express how I felt. Of course I missed them, but I had no idea if they were dead or not, so I couldn’t grieve. I know it had been six months, but because I had no idea if they were alive or dead there was always that glimmer of hope that kept me going and kept me at my house.
“You’d think there’d be more carnage,” I began, “considering what has happened … or should I say, what is still happening.”
“What do you mean?” Emma seemed confused. “You mean … blood and stuff?”
I nodded. “I thought the street would be in a right mess. I know it’s a bit morbid.”
“Just a bit,” she began to laugh. “There’s plenty about. On the way here, before I crashed the car there were bodies everywhere. There’s a crashed car right at the top of the road, just outside this street, with blood inside. It was horrendous.”
“I’ve never left the street,” I groaned. “I was too scared to, just in case…”
“What’s that?” Emma suddenly blurted out.
I looked at Emma and asked her, “What?”
“I saw something.” She pointed at the house next to the one that was directly opposite mine.
“Are you sure?” I didn’t know whether she was hallucinating or not. The bedroom she pointed at had its curtains closed.
“Yes, I’m sure. I saw the curtains move. I know I’m still a bit tender from last night, but I’m not seeing things. Anyway, who lives there?”
“No idea.”
We both continued to look. A wind blew past and a bit of grit went into my left eye. I gave it a fierce rub, and once the pair of them were opened we could both see that the curtains had been pulled open by a couple of inches. She was right.
We both looked at one another, then Emma began to wave at the window, even though we couldn’t see a face.
“What’re you doing?” I asked her.
“Letting them know that we’re friendly.”
“Friendly? We don’t even know who they are.”
“They’re your neighbours, aren’t they?”
The curtains remained pulled apart and we both watched with intrigue, but for minutes nothing happened. Then a face appeared, making Emma gasp. My eyes weren’t the greatest, but I could work out that the face belonged to a young female, possibly a teenager. She waved, and I waved back.
“Oh, bless.” Emma put her hand over her mouth. You know, that thing women do when they become upset. “We’ve got to help her.”
“Help her?” Just the thought of going over there made me jitter with nerves. “How do we know she needs help? She might be with her parents. She might be like us, just trying to ride this out.”
“I’m not so sure.” Emma disappeared through the patio door, leaving me sitting on the chair, wondering what the hell she was up to.
I looked over at Annie. It looked like she had given up struggling. She sat with her head bowed, not making a sound. I knew if I walked over to her, she’d be back to her snarling ways, trying to take a chunk out of me.
&nb
sp; My eyes moved back up to where we saw the teenager. She wasn’t there anymore. Emma then came out of the patio door and onto the decking. She had a pad of paper and a marker in her hand.
“Found them in one of your kitchen drawers,” she said.
I knew what she was going to do, so I didn’t bother asking.
She looked up to the bedroom, to see there was no girl there anymore, and sat down and began to write on the A4 paper with the marker. Do You Need Help?
We waited a few minutes. Where we sat was a nice little suntrap when the hot weather was upon us, but even the wind was welcomed. It was good to be outdoors, even though the circumstances of the world were very grim.
“No sign of her,” I muttered the obvious.
“Yep.” Emma sighed. “But she’ll return. Hopefully.”
We didn’t have to wait a minute when Emma pointed and said, “Look.”
The girl in the window began waving at the pair of us, I assumed it was both of us, and Emma held up the piece of paper with her sign.
We could see the young female nodding and she opened her window and called out, “You have to help me!”
Her call for help was heartfelt, but I couldn’t help feeling paranoid with her raised voice. It didn’t seem to bother Emma.
She continued, “My parents have turned and are downstairs. I can’t get out.”
A part of me felt for the young girl, but another part of me was thinking: Shut the fuck up, will you, love?
Emma stepped off the decking and went to the bottom of my garden, over to the fence. She did this so she didn’t have to raise her voice as much. Emma asked the young girl, “Can’t you just jump down and come over to us?”
“No,” she sobbed.
“Why not?”
She pointed downwards, but Emma couldn’t see because of their hedge that was behind my fence. Emma lifted herself up, both hands on top of the fence, and peered over the hedge. “Shit.”
“What is it?” I had now stepped off the decking and onto my lawn.
“Take a look for yourself.”
So I did.
The Z Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 9