I could only imagine what they had been through.
My wife must have made a decision and decided to risk driving back to the house, and then somehow crashed the car into the wall. It was so cruel. She was so desperately close. Maybe she wasn't paying attention. Maybe she hit one of them and panicked. I don't know, but the crash must have attracted the dead and they must have swarmed around the car in numbers.
How long did my family have to wait before being torn apart? Obviously I don't know, but I was hoping it was just seconds, but it could have been much, much longer than that.
“Shaun!” Emma called out.
I looked to the side and could see the blurred figure of Emma coming towards me.
“Where's Jane?” I asked her, dazed. The truth was, right at that moment, I couldn't give a hoot about Jane's safety. I had other things on my mind.
“I've left her in the house.” Emma placed her hand on my shoulder and said, “Come on. We need to go.”
“But ... my family.”
“I'm sorry, Shaun. I had no idea.” Emma bent down and kissed me on the forehead. She wiped my tears away with her thumb and pointed down the road. “We need to go, babes.”
“I can't leave them like this,” I sobbed.
“You can't help them now.”
“But ... my wife, my baby girl. My boy.”
“I'm really sorry. I'm so sorry, but we need to leave.”
“I can't.”
“Shaun.” Emma touched my face with both of her hands and wiped my tears away with her fingers. She then gently moved my head to the right.
I could see them. Over a fucking dozen of the dead cunts, shambling up the road, towards me.
Emma said softly, “They're coming.”
Chapter Eighteen
Emma tried to grab me, but right at that moment I didn't care if I lived or died. The realisation that my family were dead hurt so much that I wanted to die as well.
“If you don't move,” Emma cried. “If you don’t, you're going to go the same way.”
“I don't care.”
“Move your arse, Shaun!” Emma was now screaming at me and the horde were getting closer, coming from my right. “You need to move, now, or you're gonna die.”
“I want to die.” I wiped the tears from my eyes and face. “Go back to Jane.”
“Fuck this!” Emma pulled out her knife and took steps towards the crowd.
I couldn't believe it. There were thirteen of them. She'd never be able to take thirteen. If I didn't leave, then she was going to die. She wasn’t going to leave my side, no matter what, and I didn’t understand why she was doing this.
I stood up and reached for my own knife “Emma!” I called from behind her.
She turned around. The horde were only ten yards away from her. She was really prepared to do this. Crazy bitch.
“Let's go,” I sighed.
“Really?”
I nodded.
She began to jog away and as she passed me, she urged me to follow. I did as I was told and we ran alongside one another, both holding our steak knives in our right hand. Once we were many yards away from the Mazda and went past the shops, we came to the brow of the hill of my street. Once we were over, we could see three of the dead shambling on the other side of my street.
I ran across the road, away from the three dead, but Emma called me back.
“What's up?” I asked.
“We need to get rid of them!”
“What?”
“If we don't, they'll follow us to your house. They'll never go away, unless distracted by something else, and if they remain outside your house for a while, we might have more than three to deal with.”
“I don’t know.”
“Especially now we have those dead cunts behind us. We need to kill these three freaks and get to your place before those other thirteen get over the hill and see us returning to the house.”
I looked at Emma and she gave me a quick nod. “No time to lose, cocker.”
I gazed over at the three dead who were now crossing the road, and could see that two were females, middle aged and both heavy. They were both in light-coloured clothing, splattered in old blood, and the remaining DC—as Emma called them—was a male. He looked like he was a man in his twenties, dressed in blue chequered pyjamas.
Emma front-kicked one of the females and it flew backwards. I had no idea what Emma was doing at first, but then I realised that her pushing one out of the way left us with just two to take care of for the time being.
Emma never hesitated and it looked like she had given the other female creature a right hook, knife in hand, and stabbed the thing at the side of its head, and through the temple.
My male assailant reached for me and I was repulsed by its rotten and peeling face. I gulped and went for the eye socket. My knife went through the left eye. I rammed the blade right in, gave it a twist, and it fell whilst I still had a hold of the knife.
I bent down to the dead individual and wiped the blade on its tattered clothes. Emma was already over to the one she had front-kicked earlier. It was scrambling to its feet, but my female companion had already rammed her knife into the top of its skull. It slumped back to the floor and then she looked over to see if I was okay. She gazed at the floor where the three dead lay and gave a nod of satisfaction.
“Back to your house.” She nodded over the road.
We jogged over the road. Even after six months of this disaster I still looked both ways for oncoming traffic. We then entered the house and I shut the door behind me. Emma told Jane that we were back, and Jane appeared from the living room and ran at Emma. The pair of them hugged for just under a minute and then broke away.
“I was getting worried,” Jane said.
Emma nodded. “We’re okay.”
“Want a drink?” Jane asked.
“That'd be grand.” Emma smiled.
Whilst Jane disappeared into the kitchen, Emma asked me, “How’re you feeling?”
I shook my head. I was dazed and Emma said something else to me, but to this day I can’t remember what it was. I think it was words of comfort, but she stopped speaking in mid-sentence and snapped her fingers at me.
“What?” I said in a daze
“You okay?”
I shook my head. “No. Of course not. My family are dead.”
“That horde were coming down the road. I just hope they didn't see us coming in here.”
I turned and locked my door and slid down the wall. I sobbed so hard that Emma tried to shush me.
“I've lost them,” I cried. “I can't believe I've lost them. They were just outside my street all along. Probably since June or July.”
“Let's get you away from the door.” Emma put her hand under my armpit, trying to get me up.
“They're gone!” I continued to wail. “My babies!”
“We need to get you upstairs, away from the door. If those things see us through that frosted glass or hear you crying…”
I rose to my feet, slowly, and with help from Emma we decided to go into the front room, the old living room. I sat down and Jane joined us, asking Emma what was wrong with me. Emma kissed me on the head, then disappeared into the kitchen with Jane and told her what had happened.
She had been away for minutes, and then returned with Jane and three bottles of water. She announced that she was going to take a look outside from my daughter’s room to get a better look. She ran upstairs and returned to the living room a minute later.
Jane asked, “Everything okay?”
Emma said, “No. Those smelly pricks are making their way down here.”
“So what do we do?” There was panic in Jane’s voice and she was close to tears.
“We're going upstairs,” Emma told the pair of us. “Right now. All of us.”
I got up on my shaky feet and headed for the front window and peered from the blinds. “Bastards!” I snapped. “Dirty, filthy bastards!”
Emma walked over and stood nex
t to me, also looking out.
We could both see them turning onto my drive. There were three so far, but the other ten were close behind, and I knew that in a matter of seconds they'd all be on my drive, hanging around my front door. I didn't want to start blocking off the door with furniture. If those dirty twats saw me through the frosted window, I feared that that would give them extra incentive to press themselves against the door, which could lead to the door giving way. Emma also never suggested a barricade.
The door was locked. If they could get through that, then a few tables and chairs were hardly going to make a difference.
The three of us made our way upstairs. Emma and I had placed our knives in our pockets and it still irked me that I couldn't find the ball hammer. Then I broke down again, hunched over, and cried whilst I was on the landing. Emma grabbed a hold of my shirt and pulled me into Poppy's bedroom and pulled down the hatch of the attic.
“I'm not going up there,” I said. “Not yet.”
“Okay.” Emma agreed and turned to Jane. “Do you wanna go up?”
Jane shook her head. “I want to stay with you two.”
“We'll sleep in the attic,” I spoke to Emma. “But I'm not going to be a prisoner in my own home. They're not even in, and even if they do get in, I'm not sure their dead legs can climb the stairs.”
“No, they can't, but they could crawl up them,” Emma announced and said something to me that gave me chills. “Trust me. I've seen it.”
I never asked how she'd seen it. I knew that she had a lot more experience than I did, and I only knew a small portion of Emma Rowley's story of her last six months.
For hours we sat about, and Jane constantly looked out of the window. For the first half a dozen times she removed herself from the window, Emma would ask if they were still there and the answer was yes every time. When she went up for the seventh time and moved away from the window, Emma never asked. She never asked again.
I could see that the day was dimming and it looked like everybody was ready for sleep. I decided to check the front door before going into the attic for the night and crept down the stairs.
As soon as I was at the bottom, I crept the two yards down the hall and poked my head around and could see the dead squished against the door. They weren't budging, and I was sure that the door wasn't going to hold if this was going to continue through the night.
I ran back upstairs, onto the landing, and into my daughter's bedroom. I went up the ladders and into the attic, where Emma and Jane were waiting for me. I pulled the ladders and hatch up, never said a word to the girls, then curled up on the floor and cried softly.
I had no idea how long it took me to get to sleep.
It felt like hours, but I wasn't sure.
*
“Shaun.”
I opened my eyes, and then sat up suddenly, I turned to my right and could see that it was Emma that had woken me.
“What is it?” I asked her. I then noticed that Jane was still fast asleep.
“Listen,” she said.
So I did. I cocked my head to one side and was unsure what it actually was that I could hear. “What is it?”
“It sounds like ... buzzing.”
I stood up and yawned, stretching my arms. “What time is it?”
“Dunno.” Emma hunched her shoulders. “Does it matter?”
I looked up to the skylight and could see it was dawn. At least I had slept for a few hours, I thought.
“It sounds like an engine,” Emma said.
“It sounds like humming to me.” I then looked at Emma with wide eyes. “Or ... groaning.”
“Shall we go down to the bedroom and have a look?”
“Not really. I’d rather shit in my hands and clap.”
“Come on, chicken shit.”
I nodded reluctantly and we both decided to go down, trying to be as quiet as possible because Jane was still asleep.
We began to descend down the ladders and Emma moaned, “I hope it's not what I think it is.”
She was the first to reach the floor and went over to the bedroom window to look out.
“And what do you think it is?”
Emma turned to me in the dusky light and her voice quivered when she said just the one word. “This.”
I looked out and could feel my heart galloping furiously. “Well, suck me sideways.”
Chapter Nineteen
We stood for ... I don't know how long, but it felt like hours. In truth, it was probably for a couple of minutes, but that was enough. There were ... I don't know how many of the dead outside my house. I'm guessing around two hundred.
Half of my street was scattered with the manky bastards. My drive was full of them, fifty at least, and the rest were along the road, all slowly heading in the direction of my house.
I was the first to speak up and suggested that we should get a couple of sports bags that I had, fill them up with water and food, and spend our time in the attic until the dead had given up.
Emma disagreed. “The longer we stay here, the more will come.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Exactly what you said, apart from the staying in the attic part.”
“What?”
Emma huffed and said, “If we stay here any longer, this place will be our tomb.”
“We could go along the roof and move house,” I suggested.
“Take another look outside.” Emma grabbed my shirt and pulled me to the window. “Yes, there's a shit load of those DCs on your drive, but look at the whole street.”
I looked and released a heavy sigh. The dead were everywhere. Some were on my side of the road, and some were on the other side of the road. Some were in the front gardens. The thirteen heading for my house was somehow attracting more of them from other close-by areas.
“We'll get the bags, like you said, and get them filled,” Emma began, brushing her blonde curls over her ears. “We go to the attic and then we leave the street.”
“Leave the street?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “There must be other places for us to go.”
“But what about the dead?”
“Well, I'm guessing that the dead that are in your street, came from other streets. They were attracted by your own wails when you saw your family and must have clocked and followed the thirteen by the car. Meaning ... some of the nearer streets are probably empty because of the amount outside this place. This is our best chance to leave, unscathed, and try and find a place, away from those freaks.”
“They might just leave ... eventually.”
“And do you really believe that?”
I remembered them pressing up against my door when I went downstairs. It was only a matter of time before the door gave way and they spilled in onto the ground floor of my house.
I shook my head and admitted, “No, I don't.”
We went up the ladders, into the attic, and Emma gently shook Jane, waking the young girl up.
“What is it?” Jane yawned and asked further, “What's wrong?”
“We need to leave now,” Emma told her.
“Leave?” Jane suddenly sat up and looked startled. “Why?”
Emma snapped impatiently, clearly stressed, “They're outside. Loads of them. We're moving to another location.”
“Moving? Where?”
“Does it matter?” Emma gritted her teeth and relaxed a little once I gave her a stern look. Jane was frightened and had just been woken up, so she was obviously confused as well, which was why she was asking questions. She had been told that she needed to move and she wanted to know why.
I picked up the bags that were in the attic, next to the boxes of CDs, and went back to the first floor, then took the stairs to the ground, aware that the main door could give way any minute. I used one of the canisters to fill the empty plastic bottles I had and put the bottles in both bags, sharing the weight that myself and Emma were going to carry. The rest of the edible produce in the cupboard also went into each bag, a
nd I was ready to go.
I turned and saw the ball hammer on top of the microwave, making me smile. I couldn't remember putting it there. I picked it up and put it in my free pocket. I then put a bag on each shoulder and cussed when I felt the weight in them. I struggled to get upstairs, and struggled further when it was time to climb the ladders into the attic. I finally managed to get up and plonked the bags on the floor.
“I warn you now,” I said to Emma, nodding to the bags. “They're heavy.”
She picked one up and threw it over her shoulder. “It'll do.”
“Try carrying two of them up two floors.”
“Alright, Shaun,” Emma huffed. “It's not a competition. Fucking shagwit.”
“Sorry.” I took my reprimand, then asked, “So, are we ready?”
Emma nodded. “We go up to the spine of the roof, shuffle along it and along to the end terrace, and then slide down and out onto the street. That part should be clear.”
“And if it's not?”
“Over the gardens and into the next street.”
Emma reached for the skylight and pushed it open. She had the rucksack on her back, over both shoulders, and was the first to climb out. I looked up and saw the dawn behind Emma as she bent down and reached out her hand to Jane.
She said to Jane, “Take it.”
Jane reached up and Emma grabbed her wrist. I stood behind Jane and placed my hands on Jane’s lower back to help Emma with the lift, to make Jane somehow lighter.
Once they were up, I was up next, so I threw the other bag over my shoulder. I'm not going to lie to you, my fellow reader, I struggled. Emma made it look so easy and I knew the weight in the two bags was roughly the same. I managed to get half of my body out onto the roof, my legs still dangling inside, and Emma grabbed me under my arms and helped me at the final hurdle.
Once I was up and on my feet, Jane made the slow climb to the spine of the roof, with Emma behind, telling Jane to take her time. The climb didn't look too bad, despite the weight on my back, and with the roof being new I was certain that the tiles wouldn't move much.
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