After The End (Book 1): The Furious Four

by Rendle, Samantha

  ‘Show me the ammo,’ snarled Preston, pocketing the gold pistol and flicking away his cigarette stub. He glanced after the woman. ‘And you’d better be quick.’

  Larry obliged, and after another minute Preston was loading two cardboard boxes into the back seat of his car with the two black cases. Beth climbed into the car, shaking, as Preston lit another cigarette and handed Larry a wad of cash, hastily taken from a cash point on the way there. This was the last of David’s money, and some of Beth’s savings on top. Larry leafed quickly through the notes as sirens wailed in the distance.

  ‘Less than I wanted,’ admitted Larry, pocketing the cash, ‘but I did say you could have a discount.’

  He held out a hand for Preston to shake, but instead Preston punched him, hard, in the jaw. Larry recoiled, laughing somewhat manically, and pressed a hand to his face. Preston took a drag on his cigarette, a hint of amusement on his face as Larry straightened up once more.

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘You know,’ said Preston with a dangerous smile.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Beth moaned, sinking down in her seat as they pulled casually out of the car park, gliding innocently past rushing police cars.

  ‘What?’ Preston said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Whack your guns out in the middle of town when someone pisses you off,’ she hissed, her eyes glued to the rear view mirror, where blue lights flashed.

  ‘Oh, no one died, Bethany. You’re being dramatic.’

  ‘Says the one who...’ she trailed off and sighed, ‘never mind.’

  ‘It’ll be a laugh if they catch Larry,’ Preston chuckled, glancing at the mirror. ‘He had a whole load of goodies in that van.’

  ‘Are we referring to the weed or the guns?’

  ‘All sorts,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Speaking of guns,’ she said, frowning, ‘it would’ve been nice of you to warn me that was what we were going for. I would’ve stayed in the car.’

  ‘Who ever said I was nice? That person needs a stern talking to.’

  Rolling her eyes, Beth wound down her window and switched on the radio. Preston grinned and turned it up, singing along to the chart-topping crap that Beth seemed to love so much. As they sailed out of the half-built walls, Beth visibly relaxed and closed her eyes, and Preston felt himself unwind too. Even for such a short time, being among people again had tensed every single muscle in his body. If he was going to wimp out on joining David so soon, leaving civilisation was the right second choice.

  Instead of dwelling on why the hell he hadn’t returned to David, Preston turned the radio up and sang louder. The song was terrible, but he knew the words and Beth seemed happy listening to him singing tunefully along.

  As Bath shrank behind them and the song ended, Beth turned the music down and Preston shot her a sharp look. Sighing, she leaned back and looked at him.

  ‘It’s difficult,’ she said, ‘leaving everyone. My friends are getting ready to move into a... What’s it called, a Zone?’

  ‘Quarantine Zone,’ supplied Preston gruffly.

  ‘Yeah, those,’ she said. ‘My friends are moving in with relatives or relocating with their families, and I’m running away with my kid, a little girl and some random handsome guy-’ she paused to blush. ‘-I mean... Should I be trying to find my parents even though I think they’re dead?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Preston simply, reaching for the volume knob once more, but Beth pulled his hand back. He glared at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said hastily, holding up her hands in surrender.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ he warned her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I just need to know if I’m doing the right thing.’

  ‘I can’t help you there, sweetheart.’

  ‘Well, how do you know?’

  He glanced at her. ‘I don’t do the right thing. I do the easy thing.’

  Looking thoughtful, Beth leaned her head back. Preston turned the radio up once more, very much wanting the miserable conversation to be over. God, girls didn’t half whine. No wonder he’d pushed his ex girlfriend down the stairs all those years ago. The thought brought a smirk to his face.

  The remainder of the drive was filled with Beth’s silence and Preston’s singing. He hung his arm casually out the window, tapping the warm metal of the door along to the beat, and the breeze raked its fingers through his hair. Having shut up, Beth was an ideal companion for car journeys; it was almost as if she wasn’t there. In fact, if Preston looked slightly right, he couldn’t even see her.

  As the inn materialised before them, something else took shape in the road. Preston braked, leaning forward in his seat to squint at the obstacle. It was a man, staggering along with his back to them, his clothes wrinkled and dotted with dark flecks. Frowning, Preston pressed down on the horn and the car gave a tentative toot! The man turned around, his weight against one foot, searching glassy-eyed for the source of the noise. His fingers dangled from his mouth and the other hand hung limply at his side.

  Removing his foot from the brake, Preston floored it, throwing Beth back in her seat. She let out a squeal as the zombie’s body smacked onto the bonnet and rolled away, leaving a streak of blood across the windscreen. Preston drove straight over the body and sped towards the inn, and more figures began cropping up in his periphery.

  ‘Oh, my god,’ Beth whispered.

  The inn was surrounded. Dozens of them tottered slowly towards the building from all sides, some grunting audibly. They seemed to be coming out of nowhere, in numbers too large to overcome.

  ‘What do we do?’ Beth squeaked.

  Preston accelerated once more, hitting two stumbling bodies as he went, and wrenched the wheel to the left as he braked, drifting to a stop a few metres away from the bedding he’d laid not too long ago. He didn’t wait for Beth to follow as he leapt out of the car, drawing his guns and shooting at anyone who got near him. Trembling, Beth pressed her body against the car, too frightened to approach the inn without Preston and so presumably attempting invisibility.

  ‘Get inside!’ he bellowed, gesturing at Beth with one of his guns.

  She obliged, sprinting past the grimy bedding with her hair flying behind her, and Preston ran after her. He stopped when he’d stepped over the bedding, pausing to shoot some more, and when his area was clear he dug in his pockets. Behind him, Beth screamed. He whirled around in time to see her dragged backwards by the hair, and he rolled his eyes. He had warned her.

  As three more rushed him, Preston’s fingers found his lighter, and he knelt close to the bedding, offering his enemies a smile before he ripped the lighter from his pocket touched a flame to the fabric. In a matter of seconds the bedding – laid all the way around the inn and doused in petrol – burst into flame, sealing off the building from any more attackers. Across the way, screams pierced the air. Grinning, Preston waved his middle finger at the monsters behind the fire. Then Beth screamed again, and he hurried over to her.

  She lay on the ground, under a dribbling, hideous woman with raw, rotting flesh and a completely bald head, who was intent on feasting on Beth’s nose with jagged, broken teeth. Beth barely held her off, trying and failing to get a foot under the woman to kick her away. Preston allowed himself to chuckle at the sight before launching a flying kick at the zombie’s head, and the babbling dribbler crumpled. He shot it for good measure.

  ‘Thanks,’ cried Beth, holding out her hand for help up, but Preston ignored it. ‘So that’s what the bedding was for.’

  ‘You’re useless,’ he informed her, figuring that since his lighter was already in his hand, he’d take the opportunity to light a cigarette.

  ‘She came out of nowhere!’ said Beth miserably, getting to her feet and brushing gravel from her jeans. ‘She grabbed my hair.’

  ‘Then perhaps you ought to shave your head,’ he suggested. ‘It might make you a fraction less useless. Only a tiny amount, mind you, but every little helps.’

  ‘I like my h
air,’ murmured Beth.

  ‘Do you prefer it over your life?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. Flicking ash onto the ground, he strode towards the inn. Screams and groans filled the air and fire crackled around him, and Preston was glad they were finally leaving.

  Christmas Day

  Snow continues to fall silently outside, and Beth’s breaths fog as she huddles in her sleeping bag. She listens as Preston unpacks a trailer, talking quietly to Ratbag. There isn’t much, and Beth can just see him lining up their next-to-useless findings on the barn floor: a box of matches, a pair of scissors, a thermal mug, a candle, a pack of coloured pencils and a travel pillow. The last thing, a small stuffed bear, is thrown across the barn for Ratbag to chase, and he tears after it happily.

  In her sleeping bag, Beth clutches her own find from yesterday: the pack of Christmas cards. She’ll need to write them soon, before Gabriel and Kerry wake up. She’s unsure what time it is; she hasn’t slept a wink for fear that she’d wake up without her mind. It must be past midnight, which means that it’s Christmas Day. It’s Gabriel’s ninth Christmas, and it is Beth’s last. The thought is sobering, to say the least.

  They’d arrived back at the snow-covered barn, which looked like a postcard save for the three bodies strewn around, and discovered that their traps had worked a treat. Two people had managed to impale themselves on spikes trying to infiltrate the barn, while the other had fired a warning shot a little too closely to one of their petrol bombs, dropping a spark into the tin resulting in his burning. Against Preston’s wishes, she’d told the others what happened to her, and through a haze of tears and panic they settled on a plan: find help in a Quarantine Zone; perhaps there’s a cure.

  Beth has her own plan, but she’s too nervous to execute it. The gaping wound on her neck throbs and burns, and the urge to gnaw at her nails grows stronger by the minute. A headache builds, the result of a skipped dinner; she refused her meal with the excuse that she was feeling unwell, but in truth she hadn’t wanted to waste a meal if she wasn’t going to last the night.

  After what feels like another hour, Beth sits up. She can just hear Preston across the barn, laughing softly at his cat playing with the teddy. Bizarrely, she wonders how Preston will cope when she’s gone. Will he even care? Will he abandon the kids? The thought is unbearable. With tears brimming in her eyes, Beth gets up quietly, clutching her stomach. She moves towards the row of items, carefully selecting the items she needs: the scissors, the coloured pencils and a lantern. She doesn’t light the lantern until she’s stuffed her boots on and slipped outside.

  Having gone to bed in her hat and scarf, she is already protected against the cold, but she removes her hat as she walks, savouring the snow. It crunches pleasingly underfoot. She wishes she had time to build a snowman. Instead she rubs her hungry stomach, clutching her cards and other items under her arm, and trudges on towards the small gap in their booby traps.

  The willow tree a few yards away provides shelter from the snow, and Beth seats herself beneath it, setting the lantern down beside her, and begins unpacking the Christmas cards from their plastic box.

  She writes in all of them, discarding draft after draft. A pile forms beside her, growing quickly damp in the shallow snow as the lantern glows loyally, shedding light on her poor spelling and unpractised handwriting. She wishes for enough time to think up beautiful words, but again her wish goes unfulfilled. She has no time.

  ‘Careful,’ says wry a voice as she licks the third and final envelope, ‘you might catch a virus.’

  Peering through her lashes, Beth spots Preston standing a few feet away, with one eyebrow raised and his arms folded. A gun hangs lazily from one hand, glinting in the moonlight. For once Beth does not ache in response to his casual beauty; she just looks at him dully. The wound in her neck tingles sharply and she has to fight not to scratch it.

  ‘That might be the least funny thing you’ve ever said,’ she mutters.

  He shrugs. ‘Well, I’ve said some classics in my time. I can’t always go around being hilarious.’

  She says nothing as he sits down beside her, still looking at her. She ignores him and instead looks at the sky. Orion’s belt, the only arrangement she knows, twinkles brightly among its neighbouring stars. A memory comes back to her, of her mother after her auntie had died. Beth was only small, perhaps Gabriel’s age or younger, and she’d been close to her auntie. That night she’d sat on her bed, staring out at the sky, and Mum had come and sat down next to her. She took Beth’s little hand in her larger one, and she smiled.

  ‘You know,’ she’d said, ‘the stars are named after people. Orion, Cassiopeia, Hercules... Perhaps your auntie is up there too.’

  ‘I thought Auntie was in Heaven,’ whispered Beth.

  ‘As are the stars,’ said Mum with a smile.

  Religion had deserted Beth a long time ago. Auntie isn’t in Heaven and she isn’t a star; Auntie is in the ground, dead. God and Jesus aren’t watching from thrones made of clouds, mulling over this girl’s short life and whether to permit her through a set of pearly gates. She will end up like Auntie, sooner than she’d like, rotten and fleshless, a grinning brown skeleton in the earth. Where will they bury her, she wonders?

  One thing is certain: she will not be watching her son from the stars or the clouds. He will be left without her, maybe orphaned. She will never see him again. Who will comfort him in the middle of the night if not his mother?

  Preston, too, glances skyward. ‘I don’t think he’s coming, you know.’

  Startled, Beth looks at him. He smirks.

  ‘We’re undoubtedly on the Naughty List.’

  She offers a grim smile. ‘Then I’m definitely not getting into Heaven.’

  ‘The best people don’t.’

  Her eyes widen mockingly. ‘Was that a compliment?’

  ‘No,’ he grunts, wrinkling his nose. ‘I was thinking about me.’

  ‘Ah.’

  In that moment she can’t help it. Beth wrenches her coat collar away from her neck and scratches an inflamed patch beside her festering wound. She’s glad she can’t see it. If she could see how much her flesh has deteriorated since its mauling, perhaps she wouldn’t be so together. Preston frowns, but he does not stop her.

  ‘You know,’ he says thoughtfully, shifting onto one buttock and pulling something out from underneath him, ‘I think I’m sitting on your suicide tool.’

  The scissors glint evilly in his hand before he tosses them aside, where they bury themselves in the snow. In their place, he raises his gun and examines it. Beth watches him carefully.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ she whispers.

  ‘I don’t intend to,’ he says.

  ‘There is no cure.’

  ‘No, there isn’t.’ Blowing an imaginary speck of dust off the weapon’s gleaming gold side, he gets to his feet and holds out a hand. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

  Shocked at the offer of help, Beth seizes her chance to accept before Preston can change his mind, and he hauls her to her feet. For a moment she considers holding onto his hand as he leads her away, but her fingers loosen as he trudges through the snow, heading away from the barn. She picks up her Christmas cards as the snow crunches under Preston’s feet. Following him, Beth can’t decide if she’s scared. Will she cry if he shouts at her, or will it just wash over her? Does she have the courage to look into his eyes as he kills her, which is obviously the plan? Is that the plan?

  In silence they clamber over a damp picket fence that creaks under their weight. The fence is soft and bumpy under Beth’s palm, and the smell of rotting wood wafts lazily past her nostrils. In front of her, Preston strides tall and confident with a straight back, as if he’s walking on a smooth, polished linoleum floor and not thick, treacherous snow. The breeze tickles his short, newly cut hair and his gun swings at his side.

  Large white crumbs continue to drift around them as they tramp through one field and then another, towards a cluster of snow-capped tre
es. Beth counts the flakes that cling to Preston’s hair as they land, and as if sensing her gaze on him, he turns to look at her. For perhaps the first time she looks upon his face without a hint of fear, and for the hundredth time his handsome face makes her ache.

  Can the virus be transferred through kissing, she wonders bizarrely.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asks, and Beth feels her face heat up furiously.

  ‘I...’ she says slowly, noting with a hint of despair that the snow in his hair is now uncountable. ‘I wonder how many seconds I have left of my life.’

  ‘We can sit around while you transform, if you want.’

  She smiles. ‘You make me sound like some sort of magician.’

  ‘Poof, she’s a zombie.’

  ‘Tada,’ she says with unenthusiastic jazz hands.

  The snow thins on the ground as they seek the trees’ shelter. The barn is now out of their sight, and a fleeting worry for Gabriel flutters in Beth’s chest as Preston sits down and lights a cigarette. He senses her hesitation and pats the frosty ground beside him. Here, on slightly drier ground, snowflakes fall small and rarely, caught by the branches above.

  Preston finds himself humming 'White Christmas and Beth shakes her head. ‘I hate that song.’

  ‘Bethany, a Scrooge?’ says Preston, raising an eyebrow. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

  ‘No,’ she says, fiddling with the corner of one of the cards still clutched in her hands. ‘It’s just a boring song. I love Christmas. Well, I loved it.’

  ‘I bet you got all the random crap on your list,’ he grunts, rolling his eyes.

  Smiling grimly, Beth nods, and the movement flares up pain in her wound that she does her best to ignore. A thumb creeps into her mouth as she recalls her parents’ plump tree stuffed with lights and baubles, and the presents they shoved under it, and how their cat had gotten stuck behind everything one year. She remembers her nut-roast lunch, pulling crackers and saying prayers around the table. They’d visit Nan and Gramps in the evening, leaving the house in a state because everyone knew you didn’t have to tidy properly until Boxing Day.