After The End (Book 1): The Furious Four

by Rendle, Samantha

  He approached the sofa bed like a nervous animal as Larry groaned in pain behind him. He seemed to be under some sort of hypnosis as he sat down on Beth’s other side, watching her fingers move with a small frown creasing his forehead.

  He let the bridge pave his way before he joined in with the singing, his voice sliding neatly in beside hers as the chorus hit. Kerry watched as Beth’s eyes widened before her face settled into a smile. Even Sabrina watched them, though she was scowling. They sang the song slowly, unwilling to break the spell the music cast.

  Understanding seemed to pass between them when the song did end. It seemed Beth had unwittingly stumbled upon a calming method for Hurricane Preston. At least, for thirty seconds, before Larry spoke up.

  ‘God, Pres, had to put your balls in my mouth, didn’t you?’ he spat, stretching and clicking his bones.

  ‘Well it says a lot for you as a lover,’ responded Preston airily, ‘because I gained no pleasure. I’m disappointed.’

  ‘I’m a phenomenal lover, you meathead!’

  ‘You’re a terrible singer,’ Preston told Beth with a grin.

  By the end of the week food had withered away to nothing. Preston and Larry had been out looting every day, but so had a hundred other remaining citizens. Nearby supermarkets and corner shops didn’t have anything to offer anymore and no one who could drive could be bothered to go any further. Somehow the bunker was becoming an even more unbearable place to live.

  One of Beth’s friends had phoned her in the week, the only contact any of them had had with anyone on the outside. According to the friend, the evacuees had sought shelter in schools and churches outside the city until they could find better accommodation, and word was that other cities were to be walled-in to keep infection out. There was no way to know how many infected people (Kerry still didn’t like to call them zombies) were walking the streets of Bristol, but Preston had made the decision to leave.

  ‘Are you sure we should be leaving?’ Beth asked on their last night, between acoustic sing-a-longs.

  ‘You’re more than welcome to stay here,’ Preston replied. ‘I said I’m leaving and I didn’t say you’re invited.’

  ‘It might blow over,’ she insisted, ignoring him, ‘like swine flu.’

  Preston laughed. ‘That’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘You and I could go,’ Sabrina suggested breathily. ‘We could leave all these losers behind and just drive.’

  ‘That’s the second dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  That was one good decision he made, Kerry decided. The ugly bruise-like blemishes on his neck were starting to look less angry, and she had a feeling that if he stayed away from Sabrina they’d eventually disappear altogether.

  It came as a surprise that Preston let Kerry, Beth and Gabriel accompany him to the car on the morning of his departure. He must’ve been in a good mood, because he saved saying something until they were already driving away from a waving Larry and a scowling Sabrina.

  ‘I was kind of hoping you’d take the children and bugger off,’ he admitted to Beth.

  ‘I don’t know what else to do,’ said Beth sadly.

  Larry had decided to stay in Bristol and carry out his “Big Apocalypse Plans,” accompanied by Sabrina who announced she “wasn’t going anywhere with her.” Not that Preston had given her any real option anyway. According to Larry, there were enough people in Bristol left in need of a leader. He intended to establish a dictatorship with himself at the top of the food chain, and no one had the heart to tell him he was bonkers. He was probably still drunk when he declared these things.

  They didn’t drive for long before they hit an obstacle: too many abandoned cars blocked the road and they couldn’t manoeuvre through. Preston reversed the car, got a little further, and then the same happened.

  ‘You know what we need?’ Preston snapped as they reversed for a third time. ‘We need bikes.’

  Perimeter Breach

  ‘Shit,’ Gabriel says hopelessly. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  He’d get a slap from Beth for every time he says that if she’d bothered coming back. He wonders again about his mum and Preston getting all couple-y but brushes the thought off. Beth hates Preston, and there’s no way she’d jeopardise her son’s precious life over a meaningless five minutes (or however long doing it took) with a scumbag like Preston. So where is she?

  After the quickest bath of his life, he’s gathered all the food he can into a basket and hauls it up the ladder, his fourth trip from the kitchen to the tree house since Kerry took her turn in the bath, and she’s still in there. It’s as if they’re not under threat of invasion at all with the amount of time she’s taking.

  There are tins stacked up the wall of the boys’ bedroom but it doesn’t make him feel any better. All he sees are tins where his mother and Preston should be. He knows with dreadful certainty that something has happened to them. Preston would know what to do.

  When he’s making his second trip for water, Kerry finally makes an appearance, her wet hair in a braid and her pale fingers curled around the trigger of her sawn-off. She glances nervously around before hurrying up the ladder after Gabriel, pulling the ladder up behind them. Ratbag watches them, and even he looks worried to Gabriel.

  ‘Do we have everything?’ Kerry asks, picking up a pair of binoculars and scanning the ground below.

  ‘I forgot plates,’ Gabriel admits. ‘But I got cutlery, food for us and the cat, water...’

  ‘Enough,’ says Kerry reassuringly. ‘You got more than enough to tide us over until they get back.’

  ‘If,’ says Gabriel quietly.

  Kerry lowers the binoculars to look at him. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘If they come back,’ he whispers, hating the tears pricking his eyes.

  ‘Hey,’ she scolds, grabbing his hand and squeezing. ‘You know Beth wouldn’t leave you for the sake of anything. If she’d died her ghost would come back to protect you.’

  Gabriel pales. ‘Mum’s died...’

  ‘No, no, no, I didn’t mean it like that. Forget the dead part. She’s on her way...’

  He nods and sits down on Beth’s mattress beside the cat. His book lies half read on the floor but he can’t bring himself to read it. Instead he buries his fingers in the cat’s fur, petting him too hard as he always has. He wonders if he goes to sleep now, if Beth will be back by the time he wakes again.

  They hear the first grunt when they’re eating lunch a few hours later. Abandoning his fork in a half-eaten tin of sweet corn, Gabriel scrambles to his feet and flings himself at the doorway. There, to the right of the cafe, is a pair of them. They shuffle and groan, moving slowly forward but not seeing Gabriel high above them. As he moves along the balcony he spots four more to the left.

  Wordlessly he douses readily-wrapped arrows in Preston’s precious alcohol and sets fire to them with a match. Two on the left go down in flames, screaming inhumanely, and their peers flail and panic. The two others to the right look over at the ruckus, yelling unintelligibly. The surviving Ailing look around wildly, and Gabriel fells another one.

  He notches the bow, sure he can kill the remaining two with one arrow, but to his despair the Ailings' screams are attracting more. They move quickly now, eager to witness the commotion. He aims at a larger group, but Kerry grips his arm in warning.

  ‘Don’t overdo it,’ she cautions him. ‘Save the arrows.’

  Nodding, he lowers the bow. She’s right; he needs the arrows to clear a path for Beth and Preston. He sets the bow down and they sit together on the balcony, finishing their lunch and watching the zombies swarm around their burning friends.

  He wonders what could’ve attracted them to the Sanctuary, and then he remembers with a guilty lurch the lorry driver. Had they killed the man, leaving him there? Surely the guy was smart enough and old enough to survive? He’d been a good mile away too; could he really have lured them here? Maybe they’re just lost and stupid. That’s probably it.
r />   Curious, Ratbag slinks out onto the balcony to join them. He looks dispassionately down at the burning bodies and begins licking himself. Oh, to be a cat, thinks Gabriel ruefully.

  For a while they play quiet, mindless games: I-Spy, Twenty Questions, slaps... But it seems too bizarre that over twenty Ailing mill about beneath them like passengers awaiting a train. Gabriel can’t concentrate on anything but the distance, where he hopes to see his mother any second now. It seems exactly like their kind of luck, a zombie invasion while the group is separated.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Kerry asks maybe a minute or an hour later.

  He shakes his head. ‘I can’t eat.’

  ‘You should,’ she says softly. ‘The moment Beth and Preston get back we’re going to have to make a break for it. You’ll need your strength.’

  ‘I’ll have some water if you’re having some.’

  ‘What about custard? We skip dinner altogether and go straight for dessert.’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  He doesn’t ask if it’s even dinnertime. The sky is dim, but it’s been dim all day. As they half-heartedly slurp custard it grows ever darker, but they don’t switch the lanterns on for fear of being spotted. They watch figures move in the near-darkness and say nothing.

  A few times before now he’s been apart from Beth, and it makes him feel sick now to think he’d relished in the freedom. Once she’d been away with Kerry for almost a week on another job for Steve. He can’t remember the details, but he clearly remembers messing about with Preston the whole time, eating nothing put sweet corn and rice pudding and neglecting their everyday duties. It felt like a holiday, Preston had said. Gabriel had never had a holiday, but he’d been quick to concur.

  He’d read a book once about the Second World War, back when Beth had insisted he read at least one educational book a week, and there was a whole chapter on these things called air-raid shelters, where people would hide when planes dropped bombs. He feels like he knows how they felt now, on some level. He feels dread, anxiety, fear for the lives of himself and his loved ones. There is very little air between himself and Kerry and that what would harm them. Claustrophobia might be the word for it – hiding in limited space with death all around.

  Finally, before the sky can get completely dark, they hear a voice, and they leap to their feet and squint into the gloom below. They notice the figure at the same time the visitor notices the swarm.

  ‘Shee-it,’ curses the figure below, and Kerry’s eyes widen.

  ‘Gabriel, it’s Steve,’ she hisses.

  With a hammering heart Gabriel switches on a lantern and reaches for his bow as the Ailing turn their heads to the light, groaning. They throw frenzied yells at the sight of Kerry in the lamplight, standing on the balcony above them. Gabriel loads the bow as Steve slices the head off an unwitting zombie from behind, swinging a machete wildly. A few closest to Steve swivel their heads at the thump of the head hitting the ground, and they launch themselves at him as Gabriel attacks from above.

  Bizarrely, Gabriel pictures the bad guys from the Fellowship. He imagines he is Strider, protecting the hobbits from danger, and just as quickly dismisses the idea as silly child’s play. He shoots until he’s out of arrows and Steve swipes until he runs out of heads to sever.

  ‘Beth?’ Steve calls from below.

  ‘They’re not back yet,’ Kerry replies, throwing the ladder down for him, frowning as he gestures into the trees. ‘He has people with him,’ she mutters to Gabriel.

  ‘And you’re just letting them come up?’ says Gabriel, narrowing his eyes as he rushes around lighting more lanterns.

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘We don’t know them, Kerry, and from what I saw they didn’t exactly help.’

  ‘I’m coming up, kids,’ Steve announces. ‘I’ve got a couple of Inlanders with me, completely harmless. Okay?’

  A look passes between Gabriel and Kerry. ‘Okay,’ she calls.

  Rolling his eyes, Gabriel sets about gathering their things. He packs Beth’s and Preston’s weapons into Preston’s rucksack (Beth has hers with her), adding a couple of tins to it, plus a water-bottle each and a few other essentials. He packs his and Kerry’s things second, adding ammunition, the wall calendar, a marker pen and Kerry’s sketchbook. He only hesitates for a second before packing Preston’s Lord of the Rings books.

  When he’s done, Steve and his two friends have sat down awkwardly on Beth’s mattress and Ratbag sniffs their shoes suspiciously. It’s a man and a woman, a bit older than Kerry, maybe in their very early twenties. The man is tall and skinny with a streaky blonde fringe and the woman is petite with a heart-shaped face and straight brown hair. They look scared out of their wits, which tempts a satisfied smirk from Gabriel.

  ‘I thought they’d be back by now,’ Steve admits. ‘I hope there wasn’t any trouble at the gates; I don’t know what we’d do if they were arrested-’

  ‘Steve,’ Kerry snaps, glancing worriedly at Gabriel, who is stony-faced. ‘Who are these people? You said... They’re Inlanders?’

  ‘I picked them up on my way here,’ Steve explains. ‘Their car broke down on the motorway – must’ve been what attracted our friends down there – and I found them locked in it with a horde drooling all over the bonnet. I figured I’d bring them with me when I couldn’t restart their car.’

  ‘My dad is probably there by now,’ the girl says, glancing around, frightened. ‘I rang him a couple of times and he said he’d be on his way, that he had a small taxi job to perform anyway.’

  ‘He’ll call, Poppy, don’t worry,’ the young man reassures her, squeezing her hand.

  ‘Not that we’re not grateful for the rescue,’ says Gabriel, glancing distastefully between the two strangers but addressing Steve, ‘but why are you here? They only went earlier today and you’re back already.’

  ‘Wishful thinking,’ says Steve with a shrug. ‘But now I’m here I suppose I ought to take you lot with me. You know there’ll be more coming along now blood’s been spilled. We ought to torch the place, really-’

  ‘No,’ says Gabriel.

  ‘We can’t leave without Beth and Preston,’ Kerry adds.

  ‘Do you live here?’ the girl called Poppy says, scrunching up her nose.

  ‘Seems we’ve done better in all the years we’ve lived here than you in the five minutes you’ve been outside city walls,’ snaps Gabriel, ‘so if I were you I’d take that judgemental tone and shove it right up your-’

  ‘We can’t leave,’ Kerry repeats, speaking over Gabriel.

  ‘We can leave a signal for them on the motorway,’ Steve suggests. ‘No doubt they’ll come back the way they came. We light a distraction fire for whatever Ailing are lurking about and we sneak away, find a place to hole up for the night.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Poppy says to Gabriel.

  ‘Hush, Poppy,’ says her boyfriend.

  ‘Maybe Steve’s right,’ Gabriel sighs sadly. ‘We’re going to have to leave either way. We might as well now...’

  ‘And go where?’ Kerry snaps, her eyes glassy all of a sudden. ‘I don’t know if you remember how long it took for us to find this place, how long it took us to build all this after we found it, but...’

  ‘But it’s compromised,’ Gabriel reasons. ‘Mum and Preston would never let us stay.’

  ‘Gabriel...’

  ‘Uh, I hate to interrupt,’ injects the young man, ‘but did anyone just hear that?’

  The group falls silent, listening. A sound, not dissimilar to the cat’s snoring, drifts up from below, and a sudden grunt makes everyone jump. Uneasy gazes pass around the room as Gabriel scrambles to his feet and Steve swears under his breath. Gabriel moves slowly to the balcony and peers over, and his entire body goes cold.

  Several of them, more than before, form a circle around the tree houses, all looking up at him with glazed eyes and gaping mouths. He cannot see them, but he pictures discarded arrows lying uselessly in the gloom beneath. He start
s as a hand rests on his shoulder, and jerks away when he sees it’s the strange man. The Ailing grunt hungrily at the appearance of another potential snack.

  Gabriel frowns up at the man, who stares dumbstruck at the monsters on the ground. He’s handsome, Gabriel supposes, though a different kind of handsome than Preston. Preston’s looks are something obvious, something you’re forced to acknowledge in his cold, dark eyes, his tall, toned body and his strong jaw. This stranger has a more subtle beauty to him, in the curve of his freckled nose and the honey glow of his hair. He’s a friendly, approachable kind of handsome, a human handsome compared to the Adonis that is Preston.

  ‘It looks like we’re stuck here,’ says the man in his privileged, middle-class voice. ‘Come inside, Gabriel, there’s no use gawping at them for now – it is Gabriel, isn’t it?’

  He resists the urge to tell the stupid man that he’d been the one gawping, not Gabriel, and that he would not be allowing him to boss him around. Instead he just glowers and stomps back inside, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

  ‘What do we do?’ says Poppy, her face white as a sheet.

  ‘We feed the spoilt posh girl to the Ailing,’ snaps Gabriel. ‘They eat her while we run away.’

  ‘B-b-but...’

  ‘He’s joking, love,’ says Steve, crossing his arms. ‘Obviously we’re going to have to wait here for the others to get back.’ He sighs and glances out the window. ‘Oh, Andrea...’

  ‘She’ll be okay for the night,’ Kerry reassures him, placing a comforting hand on him.

  ‘I’m not spoilt,’ says Poppy stupidly.

  ‘“Do you live here?”’ Gabriel mimics.

  ‘Gabriel,’ Kerry barks. ‘Be nice. We have to spend the night with these people so you might as well get used to it for now.’

  Huffing, Gabriel picks up the cat and takes him onto the balcony. He sits against the wall with his legs crossed and Ratbag makes himself comfortable in his lap. The parasites below stare up at him unthinkingly, smacking their chops and waiting for sacrifice with no possible way to get it. He counts all the stars he can see through the trees and makes a wish for each one. Please let Mum and Pres come back safely.