“Yeah, heard that on the radio.”
“But it all went quiet. Carried on anyway.”
The foxes outside scampered back into the undergrowth, as light rain turned heavier; the clouds like the dark-grey undersides of bombers rolling slowly in from the coast.
“Least there’s one thing you can always rely on.”
Nate smiled and looked out the window. “An apocalypse happens and we’re stuck on this shitty island. Why couldn’t it have happened when we were on holiday?”
Ruby saw his smile in the reflection from the window, and smiled herself; “We’d only complain about sunburn and missing our home comforts.” Their eyes met in the reflection; hers superimposed over the hedgerows and trees that encroached on the road before the road-block; his against the backdrop where hills met sky; and didn’t move, content to watch the world and content to have company.
Not until her eyelids drooped and she began to slump forward did Nate move.
*****
Nate took Ruby in his arms – she was heavy-but-not-heavy – and carried her up stairs he found through the back of the kitchen. Her head rested on his shoulder and was warm through the cloth of his jumper. Her arms dangled limply.
The landing at the top was vast with numerous rooms leading off – he couldn’t even see how many more there were around the corner. There were drawn blue curtains at either end of the landing which restricted light, what little there was, and they hung unmoving to the carpeted floor. No feet poking out, Nate noted with forced good-humour, as he tried the nearest room. There was a bed with a tightly wrapped duvet and what looked like a freshly plumped pillow, so Nate kicked the duvet off slightly so he could sit Ruby down, then swung her legs beneath it. On her back, she snored lightly, and small beads of sweat formed on her brow.
He closed the door behind him and went searching through the rest of the building. Its look from the outside was slightly manor-esque, and inside, the rooms were all decorated and furnished stylishly, relenting to the perceived expectancy of what a manor house bed-and-breakfast should look like, even though this classed itself as an inn. Beige and cream walls and bed-spreads, crystal white bathroom suites, beige carpet throughout. Furniture had a regal, green-cushioned edge, and everything needed a dusting. Slapping the bed sheets and curtains resulted in small clouds of dust that would just resettle again before long. Drawers opened stiffly when Nate searched them and closed again with a bang.
In one of the many bathrooms he turned a tap. Cold water spurted out. Better than nothing. If there were American-style showers here, built into the wall and the plumbing, he thought, then we could have had a shower.
He found some paper and a pen to write with, and left Ruby a note on the bedside table beside her.
‘Gone for supplies. If you wake before I return, the bath works (cold though). Don’t know how much longer for. Don’t leave, okay?’
By luck or fate he had found Ruby, and by luck or fate they had stumbled upon a deserted, comfortable, pub. The sight of those clean, immaculate beds had reminded him of the shelf he had originally planned to spend the day sleeping on, and that option no longer seemed attractive. He didn’t know how long they would stay here, but they needed food, and he needed to retrieve his bags at the very least.
Before heading out into the day, he checked the walk-in refrigerator in the kitchen. One inch of an open doorway told him all he needed to know as his nostrils were assaulted with the perfume of warm mould, the air dry but with enough moisture to aid the turning of meats and cheeses. Opening the doorway fully, he noted a few large tins of things like passata, sliced jalapeno peppers, and beans. Bottles of olive oil and assorted vinegars, possibly good for preservation, Nate noted, sat on shelves at the far end where a body was slumped wearing tattered trousers and shoes, and an open shirt. Its tie hung unbound across its shoulders. It was a skeleton of a living thing, still covered in skin, but so thin that you could almost imagine the ball-joints turning, like on a training skeleton manikin. And it moved. Sighting Nate – somehow through thickly white cataracts, or what looked like cataracts – it reached out an arm. This weight counter-balanced it and it flopped forward on its face, unable even to protect itself from the fall. Its nose cracked and the head turned sideways. Nate wondered for a second if an intervention was even needed here, but then it moaned and tilted its head toward him. He stepped into the miasma of smells – ripe to his senses, yet manageable in the stomach – and bent, inserting a knife into bone and brain. The skull had felt hollow, like the shell of a crab, and cracked like one might at a crab shack.
“So, you gotta eat like the rest of us it seems, or you get weak.” Nate pulled the knife out and left the refrigerator, closing the door until it clicked back in place. “Any other secrets?”
A door awaited him off the bar area, one he had not wanted to test until now. He opened it onto steps that immediately descended into darkness. He found his torch and went down.
It smelled overwhelmingly of spilled beer. He concentrated, sensing for the tell-tale smells he was becoming accustomed to. A rat pattered along a wall.
At the bottom, torchlight revealed a vast open cellar with wine bottles gathering cobwebs and dust stacked to the right. Metal barrels lay connected by pipes to the pull-levers upstairs on the left. They wouldn’t be short of a drink. Boxes of soft-drink syrup, all the usual offenders, were piled like a fortress at the far end. The bottom one had been attacked; brown liquid had dribbled from a large hole and become sticky. A thin layer of slimy condensation covered everything, from the cobbled-stone floor to the shelves that held rows and rows of wine-glasses and plates.
That pattering sound again; it circled Nate from behind and then tapped along the edge of the wall on the right, chasing the shadows left by the light beam. Standing by the wine bottle shelves and shining the light behind them, a rat startled and ran for the opposite end. Swiftly, Nate lifted the knife above his shoulder and threw it at the rat – missing it – and sending it rattling up to the barrels.
“You got away this time,” he said, picking the knife back up.
Back upstairs, full daylight filled the bar, momentarily blinding Nate until his eyes adjusted. He closed and locked the door behind him and stood by the window. He hadn’t ventured out in the day time in a long time. He could be too easily seen – not enough of a nigger, he thought wryly – but he needed his bags, and he wanted to be here when Ruby woke. If left alone he suspected she might disappear. They could go out tonight, together, to retrieve his things, but would she want to return there? He doubted it.
He could run, he thought. But then remembered the weight and volume of his bags. And anyway, the more goods he could bring back, the better. He needed transport. He looked out to the car park.
Three cars were parked up, as though casually waiting for their owners to finish lunch and get back in them to be driven home. They were all Fords of a kind; an old Fiesta and a couple of Focuses. Nate felt a sudden stirring of butterflies in his belly; not at the thought of driving one of these, but perhaps, if he lived long enough, of stumbling across a Ferrari or other sports car. He wouldn’t be picky.
Looking at the road-block; “Just have to find a stretch of road that’s safe.”
He headed back behind the bar, dragging his hands across all the shelves and in all the crannies – beneath the till and behind partitions – but found nothing. Another door leading off the kitchen was the manager’s office. Inside, papers were littered across the floor and folders lay open across the desk and keyboard. A blank CRT monitor hung over the edge. “Geez,” commented Nate, and searched the drawers. Inside, nothing but paperwork and stationary and a half-empty bottle of vodka.
There were hooks on the wall with numbers – room numbers probably – but no car keys on any of them, just regular Yale keys.
Nate stepped out, glanced at the refrigeratore “Hmmm,” he said, and opened it. He held his breath and stepped inside. Searching the pockets of the dead body inside, he found a
wallet and a set of keys.
Standing by the window in the bar, he pressed the key fob. None of the cars flashed its lights.
Sighing, he unbolted the front entrance and headed out. It was cold, around 5- or 6-degrees Celsius, but he barely felt it. The nearest parked car was a silver Focus. He tried the key in the lock and it turned, opening the door. A waft of mustiness erupted, but soon evaporated, and he sat inside. The key in the ignition, he turned. The engine also turned – there was juice there – but it wouldn’t turn over. Maybe with a push, he thought.
With luck, the driver had reversed into the spot. With the handbrake released, the door open and the wheel turned in towards the middle of the car park, Nate pushed. After an initial heave, he found it moved quite readily, and that he could even pick up the pace. At its fastest, he jumped into the seat, put it into gear and turned the ignition, firing the engine into life.
“Now if only I could drive,” he said. He adjusted the seat and orientated himself with the controls. He’d had a couple of lessons from his father, which had consisted of going up into second gear and cruising around the Tesco’s car park late one night. “Okay, back in a sec.”
He removed all the keys from the key-ring while it was still in the ignition, and left the car idling to return to the pub. He locked the door.
Back in the car, he tentatively made his first move, lifting up the clutch until it inched forwards. His predominant memory of driving had been lifting the clutch too soon and stalling it. He did not want to stall it.
Once the car was moving with the clutch fully depressed, he turned the car towards the exit. Only when he was on the road did he put any gas into it.
“Eerie as fuck,” said Nate. He cruised along the empty road, heading up the gears, subconsciously sticking to the left until he reached the straight with the abandoned car. Slowly, he rounded it, thudding up onto the pavement as he did so and only narrowly missing the hedgerow, before bouncing back onto the road. The car screeched its annoyance.
From the house that had been ‘Armed & Dangerous’, one of the risen pulled on the gate and ran out into the road. Its clothes hung torn and ragged from its body, and it hunched down like an ape in a tree as the car sped up past it. It shot back to its feet and began chasing.
Nate was going slowly enough that it could have kept up, if only he hadn’t given the car more gas. In the rear-view mirror, he watched it recede without giving up. From another gateway appeared another of the risen, and before Nate turned a bend in the road, he noticed the one attack the other.
“What in hell is happening, man?” he said.
At the next bend, he slowed some more, conscious of not wanting to make too much sound – because speed makes a difference, right? – and rolled as though moving through a school zone until the turning for Wigley’s.
“Just here to pick up the kids,” he joked, before registering the car-seat in the periphery of the rear-view mirror. He tilted it up until it was out of view.
At Wigley’s, he parked, but remained inside the car with the engine running.
The board across the broken window was unmoved.
If this were a movie, he thought, this is where I get out and get attacked by the zombies attracted to the sound of the car. For a moment, he considered blaring the horn – better to know if they were nearby, and better to see them if so! And anyway, they seemed to fight themselves! But then couldn’t bring himself to do it. If this were a movie, he thought, that is what a stupid person would have done.
He gave it five more minutes, playing with the radio but finding only static on the airwaves. The pop CDs stored in the door were the eclectic mix of tastes that evidently represented the family whose car this had been, ranging from Adele and Little Mix, to a Jools Holland compilation and Simply Red. Nothing to Nate’s taste.
He cracked open the door and took a step outside; there was a breeze, the slight drizzle, nothing else to alert him.
He opened the passenger door and removed the baby car-seat. Leaving the doors open, he removed the board from the window and went inside.
Behind him, the car waited for his return, and could do nothing to prevent its boot from being opened, the intruder from climbing in and pulling the door down behind him.
*****
Daylight filtered around the edges of the flowery curtains in Ruby’s room when she woke, turning on her side and ungluing her eyes. Her hair was matted against her face, but she hadn’t felt so comfortable in ages; the bed and the sheets were soft and the pillow’s aroma was faintly of a lemon softener that had been added when it was washed. She made a resolution that there was no excuse to sleep rough in a world of empty beds.
There was one problem though; she lifted the duvet slightly and a more stringent aroma wafted up, of sweat, dirt and blood. Her clothes felt tight around her body and faintly moist from sweat, and she was even still wearing her boots. When she threw the duvet off the bed, dried mud was revealed towards the bottom.
She sat up and noticed the letter from Nate, asking her not to go. Having neither decided to stay or to go, she stood. “What time is it?” she said, with no way of telling. She walked over to the curtains and parted them slightly. Rain fell from what seemed like the same clouds as earlier, and it was still bright. She hadn’t slept until dark, at least.
The window also revealed the rear of the plot; a children’s playground covered with a blanket of leaves; overgrown coniferous hedgerows backing on to neighbour’s land – perhaps a paddock or just a field left dormant – and waste bins.
She let the curtains fall back into place and went out onto the landing. She called out, “Nate,” without response, and walked up and down the landing, checking the doors. A further set of stairs lead upwards to the next level. She went up them and then through a door marked ‘Private’.
On the other side was a vast living space, plush, with a thick pile cream rug and deep, leather settees with reclining end-chairs. Large lead-lined windows allowed the light to cascade in from both the front and the back, and Ruby could see the tops of trees from her vantage point in the centre of the room. A large archway revealed a kitchen at the back, and further doors lead off which revealed themselves as bedrooms. These were much more homely decorated, and personal, with posters and family photographs, the spines of DVDs frequently watched, and of books well-thumbed. A grandfather clock was carrying on as though time hadn’t stopped – tick-tick-tick – its great pendulum still swinging, the face reading 4:43 or thereabouts.
Ruby entered all the rooms until she found what she was looking for; a wardrobe with female clothes inside. She picked out some clothes and finally kicked off those boots. She found the bathroom and turned the tap in the bath. It was icy cold but exactly what she needed –
– Wallace –
so after taking a couple handfuls of water to her lips, she let the bath fill and stood to strip. There was a towel hanging on a rail, and another crumpled on the floor. She spread the latter out to create a mat, and prepped the former to grab as soon as she was ready.
All the home amenities were laid out ready along the shelf of the bathtub and in the compartments beneath the shower. Naked, she took a deep breath and entered, quickly, ignoring any doubts. The ice-cold nature of the water melted against her skin as she plunged her head beneath it, so that after a few seconds it was more refreshing than piercing. Head back above the water, she released a long breath in a cloud of condensation. Water turned pink.
She looked down at the cuts and scratches that she knew existed, and here and there, across the inside of a thigh and the instep of an ankle; or the hollow of the elbow joint; or like a smile beneath an areola – faint white scars of raised skin were indicators of the horror that had been endured. Even in her mind it felt as though a scar had healed across those memories; or stranger, that they were not her memories but the memories of another girl.
All the pink in the water was from the dried blood on her skin, not from any wounds still open.
; She sat up, vapours gently emanating from her shoulders, and grabbed a hand mirror. In it, her face was blushed at the cheeks, the wound on her neck was healed. Clots of blood remained in her long dark hair.
Grabbing some shampoo, she quickly washed her hair, twice, and with each dunk of her head the water felt warmed, more relaxing. Dragging her nails across her scalp, with each clot she removed there was a sensation of becoming clean, cleaner; a sensation that travelled down her spine.
She washed the rest of her body and got out, dripping on an already-musty towel. She wrapped the other towel around her body and went in search of another towel for her hair.
“Good enough for Vogue,” she said to the thin body in the full-length mirror, back in the bedroom. Custom had made her shut the door behind her – she had been living in a mixed-gender house in year two of University, and now custom made her search for a phone to put some music on. Of course, there was nothing.
She found some underwear and socks in a drawer – the bra didn’t fit exactly, she would need to start eating again – but it was good enough. The teenage girl in some of the photographs on the wall didn’t look much older than fourteen. She tried on a pair of jeans and found a belt to tighten them around the waist. On top, she put three layers of clothing, ending with a black wool-knit number that still had its price tag attached to the label. She found a pair of trainers tucked up under the bed that fit, and put them on.
*****
The roller-door was electronic, however, Nate managed to get a crowbar under the bottom of it and lift it up. He was then able to get his fingers in underneath and use his strength to lift it. Once it was above his head, he tentatively let go, and it remained in place. Daylight flooded into the loading area revealing a rack of tools and a workstation, as well as the fork-lift truck with its prongs respectfully at half-mast.
With the storage room unlocked, he grabbed first his bags and water, and put them on the front passenger seat of the Focus. He opened the rear door and started hauling boxes of goods out and putting them on the back seat. The car lowered visibly with each additional weight. “I hope your suspension can take it,” he said quietly, throwing a carton of baked beans into the seat-well.
The Risen (Book 1): The Risen, Part 1 Page 6