Judging that the suspension could take a little more, he went back to the storeroom and grabbed a carton of spaghetti and another of tomato soup – Heinz, even – he smiled to himself. At the back of the car, he put the cartons down and depressed the button on the boot to lift it up. Inside, a boy, no older than seven or eight, was cowering with his arms above his head. “What the...” said Nate.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
“What are you doing in the boot of my car?”
Shaking, from equal measure cold and fear, he replied, “I’m hungry. I thought you might take me to some food. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I was in the shop and I saw your car. Don’t hurt me.”
Hand on hilt, Nate surveyed the car park and the other side of the road. Rain drizzled continuously and drained slowly off the open boot door of the car, dripping onto the road. Nothing else but the low idling groan of the engine.
Turning back towards the boy, Nate said, “I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”
“Sam.” He sat up. Brown hair, long and frazzled, and with dirt caked to his clothes and across his face, he resembled Stig from the dump.
“Sam, get out.”
“Okay. You’re not gonna hurt me, are you?”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Nate reached out a hand and helped the boy out. “But we can’t stand around talking out in the open like this, not if I have to protect you. Get in the car, the front, move the bags if you have to.” With the boot clear, Nate tossed the cartons of tins in the back and closed it. Meanwhile, Sam clambered into the front seat.
Rushing now, Nate jumped and pulled down on the roller-door. He grabbed some nails and a hammer from the workstation, climbed out the window, and re-boarded it up.
“Come on,” he said, back behind the wheel. He closed the door and eased his way slowly forward, turning the car in a loop back on itself.
As the car moved off, the inside of the windscreen began to cloud up from the breath of its two inhabitants. Between that and the rain, it was hard to see. Nate fiddled with the levers until he found the wipers, and the left-turn light clicked until it was auto-released by the steering.
“I’m Nate. I have somewhere we can go.”
Nate turned the dials on the dashboard until the heater began clearing the windscreen. Clarity inched its way north as he drove, weaving between the detritus left behind; not just vehicles but a sofa, a mangled bicycle, upturned tables and chairs. It looked as though someone had thought about setting up a road-block, but then been thwarted or given up.
To Nate’s left, Sam shrunk beneath the back-packs piled on top of him, with the water cartons between his legs. It looked very much like he was using the bags to gain warmth though.
With the windscreen clear, Nate targeted the warm air towards his passenger.
Driving along at 10mph in second gear, Nate could feel the vibration of the road on the tires touring up his leg, and his calf muscle tensed from it. It was all he could manage to not push down, but it was all very well getting home, he needed to make sure he did it without drawing unwanted attention.
Somewhere up ahead were the two that had chased and then fought each other earlier.
At the bend, the car’s heater went silent, and a second later, the car’s engine. It jolted to a halt. “Shit,” said Nate.
“Can you get it going again?”
Nate turned the key and the heater whirred into life momentarily, before a final death throe.
“Nate, there’s a zombie.” Sam pointed forward as, bloody from the mouth, one of the risen from earlier, possibly the one that had begun the chase, came around the bend.
“They’re not zombies,” said Nate, turning the key and desperately pumping the gas pedal.
“Sure act like zombies.”
“Zombies don’t kill other zombies. Zombies are dead and come alive again.”
“My dad got eaten by three zombies. He was trying to help me get away.”
Nate looked at Sam; “I’m sorry. Maybe they like fresh meat, but when there’s nothing else around they kill each other, and they’re quick,” the body in the walk-in refrigerator, “... normally.”
“But they come alive again!” cried Sam.
“Sam! Listen.” The thing had spotted the car by now, and its inhabitants, “It’s important. Everything you think you know about zombies –” How does a kid even find out about zombies – Call of Duty? “– is wrong. They attack not just with teeth, but claws as well, and they’re quick, they run. It’s not like some old movie or TV show. I only wish it were!”
It jumped up onto the bonnet of the car and smashed down its hands on the windscreen, cracking it. Its hands in fists, it pummelled the glass, over and over in unison from above its head and down, above its head and down, sending reverberations from the cracking and the screaming of its guttural-coarse roar that were almost drowned out by Sam’s screaming; looking up, as he was, at this looming monster trying to smash its way in but just a few feet above him. Nate tried one last attempt at the ignition, but the battery was completely drained. And then it was in. It collapsed inside from the force of its own power and fell in between the two front seats. But its arms had widened in the fall, and they stretched like a bear hug across the width of the car, so that its left hand was trying to grip Nate around the throat, and the right was burying deep into the bags to find Sam. His screams were piercing.
With his left arm Nate fended off the clawed hand. He could see there was already blood dripping from the long black talons protruding from the tips of the once-normal human hand. This wasn’t its blood though. With his right hand he reached down and pulled the knife from his belt and twisted in his seat, coming face to face with the snarling beast. This is why I only go out at night, he absently thought. It widened its mouth and screeched; bleeding gums where apparently new incisors had decided to push out the old, gave off a sickening halitosis that reeked of rotting flesh. A blackened tongue had at some point decided to fork. Heightened cheekbones and a stronger jaw-line seemed to indicate that this thing’s bite could clamp and tear his very limbs apart. Nate thrust his knife into the soft flesh of its eye socket, cutting short its deafening screech in one abrupt and final bloody gurgle. Its head slumped against Nate’s shoulder.
A heavy rain dappled the dusty dashboard.
Nate opened his door and stepped out, pulling the attacker out with him. He dragged it by the arm until it was completely out, and then dragged it some more to the side of the road. Once its head was on the edge of the curb, he brought his foot down.
Looking up, the passenger seat was a pile of back-packs, but he could hear Sam crying.
He retrieved his knife, which had fallen out of the skull, and listened.
“Sam,” he hushed. “Quiet!”
Sam’s tears abated but only slightly, reduced to muffling.
Looking left, then right, Nate walked back towards the car.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
*****
Ruby had found an MP3 player with some juice and was listening randomly to the playlist through headphones; at the moment it was the newest – an oxymoron if there was one, she thought – Coldplay song, while standing at the large window at the top of the building that looked out on the front. The clouds were darkening and the rain was still falling. From here, the road-block looked ineffective; deep but easy to circumvent.
The song changed; MGMT’s Kids started up with its choral happy-playground chanting and optimistic-sounding melody – only when you listened to the words did you realise it was about hanging on to your youth. In conjunction with another of their big hits, Time to Pretend, about escaping the everyday commute of life, nothing had seemed as empty as these songs now did to Ruby.
Somewhere there was a digital reservoir of music that someday someone would cash in, and they would bathe in lyrics that meant n
othing to them, all sung by people who were long dead and who sang a pretence of life and love anyway. What would Everyday is like Sunday mean to someone of the future, who would have no concept of Sunday being a day on which you rested from a week of work. What would a week be? The months? Years? Everything would be up for grabs again – year zero. Anno Domini, the year of our so-called lord. Was it you? Did you reset the counter? Anno Mortem – If nothing else, my law degree gave me a rudimentary knowledge of Latin so that I could make that quip – the year of our death, and sometime resurrection. Were we all little Jesuses? Jesi? Walking the earth and eating the flesh of the sacrificed and drinking their blood so that we may be saved from ourselves? Are the Buddhists and Hindus of the world thinking the same and kicking themselves?
Ruby ended the song by skipping it. Lana Del Rey – Born to Die. Much more like it, she thought.
Hungry, she turned to the kitchen and began raiding the cupboards.
“What is it with this place? Were the family on holiday?” In the cupboards she found stacks of tins; soups, beans and spaghetti mostly, hot dogs, but also some easy curry meals – even a fry-up in a can! “What I wouldn’t give for something hot to eat.”
Milk like cheese was in the door of the fridge, and vegetables and fruits no longer resembled vegetables or fruits. She quickly closed the door. Now that aroma of rot had been released she couldn’t let it go. It lingered almost visibly green over the kitchenette counter-tops. She opened a nearby window.
Lana Del Rey’s high-pitched chords sank to deep depths and then quit altogether. Ruby sighed and put the MP3 player and headphones on the counter. She found a tin-opener in a drawer and opened a tin of hot dogs. She drained the tin down the sink and plucked the dogs into her mouth. A single chew and they were down. “Mmm, protein,” she mocked.
She sat on the end of the corner sofa and raised the recliner. Before her, a 50-inch television was flanked by up-lighters, and LED lights on a cable framed the frames of photographs on the wall. Would’ve been very cosy, she thought. A half-empty bottle of white wine accentuated this thought, perched down the side of the sofa next to a lipstick ringed wine glass. “Not my shade,” she said, picking them both up, “but the wine I’ll try.” She unscrewed the cap and tipped it to her nose; the grapes were floral in her nostrils and astringent at the same time, so sharp they brought tears to her eyes. “Perhaps not.”
In the mood now though, she went back to the cupboards. Beneath the sink, a wine rack held a menagerie of reds and whites. “One thing that’ll only get better with time,” she said, taking a bottle of ‘cab sav’ to the sofa and – shit – back to the kitchenette again. She found a corkscrew in the cutlery drawer, uncorked the bottle and then returned to her perch.
“Cheers,” she said, toasting the photographs on the wall and swigging from the bottle. Beneath the bitter alcohol, the red grape had never tasted so sweet. She lay her head back and closed her eyes.
She positioned the knife on her mother’s temple and thrust it in.
Bad mistake. She opened her eyes again, now wet, and drank some more from the bottle.
She was dead, she thought. Whether Nate was right about sometimes the dead not dying, it didn’t matter. Wallace’s spanner had caved part of her head in. If she came back, it would not have been her.
Ruby toasted her mother in her mind and then took another swig. After a while she drifted back off to sleep.
*****
“People are being advised to stay indoors. Do not go out into public, and do not answer the door to anyone, even if you know them.”
“Are you serious?” squealed Helen, gesturing the television news reporter. “Who’s not going to answer the door and let people they know in? What kind of bullshit is this?”
“Calm down, Helen,” said Joe.
“Calm down? I need to call my parents.” She stormed from the room and her feet could be heard stomping on the stairs.
Ruby uncurled herself from Joe’s arms and leaned in towards the images. “Turn it up,” she said.
Master-of-the-remote Joe duly obliged.
“The images you are seeing here have not been doctored in any way. They were taken from public terminals at waystations across the United Kingdom, from Heathrow and the Greater Manchester Airport, to the London Subway and New Street Station, Birmingham.” The images on the screen flicked from one set of rampaging horde to another. On one, police were firing into a crowd – startling Ruby from her seat – but the crowd surged ever forward, trampling on the fallen while others, visibly maimed with bullets, charged. “Reports are still coming in, and we are still waiting for an official response from both Downing Street and the White House. States of emergency have been called in six major European countries and surely it won’t be much longer until we hear a statement from the Prime Minister’s office along similar lines. I repeat, it is being advised that...”
The report continued in the background while Joe absently rubbed Ruby’s lower back as they both watched.
“Do you think it’s real?” asked Joe.
“Something’s happened.”
“Well, I’m not ready for it if it is the apocalypse.”
“Who is?”
“End-of-the-world nutters and conspiracy theorists.”
“Guess they’ll have the last laugh, then.”
“Yep, fundamentalist nut-jobs will be heading to heaven all the while looking over their shoulder and laughing at us.”
There was banging at the door. Helen’s heavy thuds thundered down the stairs. Joe and Ruby heard the latch turn and Helen scream.
*****
“Ruby, hey,” said Nate, shaking her shoulder.
She jumped to alertness and almost spilled the bottle of wine from her lap. “Hey, I’m awake.”
“You okay?”
“Me? I’m fine, just taking it easy. What time is it?”
“Dark,” replied Nate. Cupping the end of the torch, he shone it around the room and went over to the curtains to draw them. “We have a guest.”
“Oh?” she stood, tensed.
“Yeah, a kid. Sam. He found me when I went back to get my things and a few supplies.”
Unclenching her fists, “Wow. Lucky kid to still be alive. Alone?”
“Apparently. You got food up here?”
“Yeah,” she picked up a half-finished tin of hot dogs, and handed it over. “Some protein for ya.”
“Anything else?” Nate began eating.
“Some tins, beds,” she gestured to the bottle. “Nice collection of red. Looks like the family either up and left pretty quickly, or they just weren’t here when the shit hit the fan.”
“Yeah, I was figuring that. Found the manager or something in the walk-in fridge downstairs, like a skeleton, but still alive.”
“Alive?”
“Sorry, dead, but alive. I killed him. It.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“Where’s the kid?”
“Down in the bar eating some chocolate. We were attacked. He got scratched up a bit but should be okay.”
“You should bring him up here, I think we’re safest here. I mean, there’s only one way something can get in, even if it got into the building in the first place.”
“Okay. Any candles?”
“I’ll take a look.”
Nate left Ruby and returned down the stairs. After the attack, they had carried as much as they could and cautiously walked back to The Mitre Oak. There was a relative treasure trove of goods just sitting in that car should someone be lucky enough to stumble across them before he had a chance to get back.
On his trip back down the levels, he made sure to continue to cup the end of the torch, heading to the end of each corridor and ensuring all the curtains were drawn. Peering out, not so much as a remote wink of light. On the horizon, not even a definition of a horizon; no distant yellow glow of life.
Down in the bar, Sam was sat in a booth next to a window, so at le
ast there was some literal night-light to eat by. Nate turned off the torch. “Ready?” he said.
“I’m still starving,” said Sam, a litter of chocolate wrappers on the table in front of him.
“Haven’t you eaten enough? You’ll get a sugar rush. Come on, we’re going upstairs. You can meet Ruby.”
Inching out of the booth with the box of chocolate clutched under his arm, he said, “I’m really hot.”
“I’m not surprised, out in the weather like you have been. It’s a miracle you ain’t got pneumonia. You probably got the beginnings of a fever. Follow me.”
“Coming.”
Together, they made their way to the top of the building. Nate closed the ‘Private’ door behind them and stepped up into the living room where Ruby had lit a couple of candles, which now stood in the middle of the coffee table. “Hi, Sam,” she said. “I hear you got into a scrape.”
“Hi,” said Sam, blood glistening in the light from the candle, from a scratch down his left cheek. Looking at Nate, “Can I have another chocolate bar now?”
“In a minute. Come on, we need to get you washed. There a bathroom?”
“Yeah, in there,” pointed Ruby, setting some cups down on the table. “Found a bottle of coke for after.”
“Cool. Come on, Sam.”
In the bathroom, Nate set the torch on the edge of the bathtub and filled the sink. He grabbed a washcloth and wet it, and then began washing Sam’s face. “Really, you could do with a bath,” he said, “but it’s getting a bit late now. You need rest, and can have one in the morning.”
Sam groaned, eyes half open and struggling to stay so. Caked on mud eventually came away from his face as Nate wiped, momentarily thinking of Ryan. Ryan was older than Sam, but it was hard not to consider that his brother was this age once, and could easily have bled on some occasion or other, from a cut knee after a scrape playing football or riding the bike.
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