From Despair to Where

by Oliver Smith

  “It didn’t break the skin. You’re okay. Jack, you’ve survived this one. You were lucky.”

  He paused and then continued, “I should rephrase that; you were well prepared. It looks as though your layers saved your life. Take a look in the mirror, you can see the indents of the teeth on your skin, but it didn’t break the surface. You can’t be infected.”

  Jack stumbled over to the mirror and looked at himself. He was sweating profusely. He examined the bite, it was true, the blood thirsty creature hadn’t broken the skin. He exhaled loudly and sank to the floor, failing to hold in sobs. He was grateful that he hadn’t emptied his bowels, but the embarrassment of crying in front of his neighbour wasn’t lost on him.

  Danny threw Jack one of his many tops and Jack put it on.

  Danny had previously irritated Jack. In Jack’s opinion, Danny was just too nice. He was a policeman and his wife a nurse. They were the perfect couple and of use to society, and Jack was a little bitter about this. He didn’t know why, it was irrational, it was jealousy. In reality, Jack was jealous of their life together. He always knew that he was in the wrong. Danny was nice, he was a good guy and now Jack felt ashamed for his envy.

  Jack moved himself to a chair and looked at Danny, he was embarrassed that he couldn’t remember Danny’s wife’s name, he asked, “Where’s your wife?” and then immediately regretted the question.

  Sadness filled Danny’s face, “Dawn was working at the hospital. I haven’t heard from her.” He paused, “I haven’t lost hope.”

  Silence filled the room and Jack felt awkward once again. He was no good at small talk, but continued his heavy-footed conversation regardless, “It’s not that bad here so I’m sure she’s working helping people. She’ll be back soon.”

  Danny smiled, he knew Jack meant well, he said, “It’s a lot worse than you realise. I thought you were gone. I hadn’t seen you in days, so I assumed the worst. I’ve been clearing the streets of the dead for the past few days. So far, I’ve put down over 30. 32 to be precise.”

  Jack was astonished, “What? How, sorry, I’m thrown a little. I’ve been locked in at home and I had no idea it was so bad here.”

  Danny continued, “It’s getting worse and worse. When I realised what was happening, we were given a full briefing at the station, I knew I needed to keep the street safe. I want a clear run for Dawn when she gets home. I can’t have her getting here and then being jumped by one of those fuckers.

  “The way I see it is that we haven’t got that much time before things become untenable here.”

  Jack looked confused, “How so?”

  Danny clarified, “Think about it. We’re on the outskirts of one of the largest cities in the UK. From the reports I’ve heard and what I’ve seen, the rate of infection is high. Let’s just take a conservative estimate of 50 percent, we could have 500,000 undead on our doorsteps.

  “As the food runs out in the city. The dead will wander, and from what I’ve seen they tend to follow each other. We could easily have 10,000 stumbling upon us. I swear they sense us too. Any noise, maybe even our smell, seems to attract them.”

  Danny’s face darkened before he continued his impressive situational overview, “It takes about 40 minutes to drive from the centre of Manchester to here. It’s been about 3 or 4 days since it really kicked off. I’m assuming that their food will be limited now so that they’ll have started wandering. By my guess work, I’d say we’ll continue to see more and more of the dead stumble our way in the coming days.”

  Jack took a moment for all the information to sink in. His carefully thought out plan was unravelling. Waiting a week seemed logical to let things settle down outside, but it now occurred to Jack that he needed to make his move sooner rather than later.

  After a couple of moment’s silence, Jack said, “If I understand you correctly.” Not meaning to sound so formal, “You’re saying that we could have thousands of those things in the village in a couple of days?”

  Danny looked Jack hard in the eyes, “Hey, I could be wrong, but my assumptions are based on logic and from what I’ve seen when I’ve been clearing a path for Dawn.”

  Danny once again took a pause and looked destitute for just a second. He regained his composure and turned to Jack, “Do you want a beer?”

  “Yeah sure.” Jack responded.

  They spent a couple of hours drinking beer and getting to know one another’s lives before the world ended. Jack thought to himself that it only took a small matter of an apocalypse to break down the British social barriers of neighbour interaction.

  Jack told Danny his plan to wait it out and then head over to Yorkshire where it was less densely populated and asked Danny to go with him. He knew he’d have a lot better chance of survival with Danny as a travelling companion. He also knew that Danny was never going to leave without Dawn.

  Danny was waiting; no matter what the cost.

  Chapter 10 – Flee the City of Teeth

  Lucy had found the car keys in Lucas’ apartment easily. In the fruit bowl in the kitchen. Lucas was so predictable. Why he felt the need to purchase a Range Rover as a second car in a second city was beyond Lucy’s grasp of reality, but she was grateful for his opulence.

  She also took some time to take a few other items that would come in handy for her attempted city breakout. Lucy’s belongings had proved pretty useless for a survival attempt. Silky tops and skirts weren’t going to dazzle the zombie hordes into submission. She’d got surprisingly few sturdy items of clothing, other than a couple of pairs of jeans and some flannel shirts that were in a season a year or two ago.

  Finding a weapon was also problematic. She saw the machetes and large knives that the teens outside were using, but all she could get her hands on was a four-inch-long kitchen knife that had trouble cutting potatoes, so she doubted it’d be much use killing the undead.

  Lucas’ apartment proved more helpful to Lucy’s quest. Next to the bed was an aluminium baseball bat. A native Londoner, Lucy smiled as she pictured Lucas worrying about Manchester’s unwarranted reputation and investing in the bat purely out of paranoia.

  Lucy said out loud, “Pussy.”

  She picked up the bat, enjoying the feel of it as she continued searching. Lucy left the apartment with the bat and a large bottle of mineral water. Together with her own supplies she was ready to start her journey.

  Having made one last stop in her apartment to say a silent goodbye to her home, she quietly closed the door and set off, making a conscious effort to not think about the journey that awaited her, the apprehension gnawed in her mind, but she knew she needed to set off rather than find an excuse to stay put.

  Passing down the corridor, Lucy moved slowly and quietly. She had no idea if any of the monsters were lurking around in the apartment block. When she was holed up in her flat, the screams and bangs had sounded all around her and she didn’t know if they were outside her window on the streets, or outside her door in the building.

  Halfway down the corridor, Lucy stopped, annoyed with herself. She was walking towards the lift. The stairs were the opposite direction. She had to get out of the 21st century way of thinking and go into survival mode. Man, or woman, against beast. She was a cavewoman fighting for survival against a cruel earth.

  Back past her flat, she turned to smile at her adopted home for one last time, she took her eye off her pace and stumbled over a door mat. She knocked against the wall loudly. From the apartment opposite, something began to pound against the door, low moans accompanied the banging. Lucy stopped and looked. She was safe for now. It was her neighbour’s door, Charlie. She’d known him to say ‘hi’ to, but nothing more, he was quiet but seemed like a nice guy.

  Charlie was no more. All that was left of him was a husk of a body, now driven by a burning hunger, that would ultimately end with its starvation, locked in its apartment tomb. Charlie had been bitten a couple of days ago whilst fleeing a group of undead. He was bitten, comically, on his little finger. The smallest o
f fingers. The smallest of bites. A graze. That was enough for the infection to take hold. He lasted the rest of the day, fell asleep and woke a changed man.

  Lucy left Charlie behind the door and made her way to the stairwell, down to the underground car park. She realised she was going to have to deal with the automatic gates. She’d been out of the car park once when Lucas had driven her to the supermarket. It had been raining that day, so Lucy was happy to humour his company. She remembered that there were roller shutters that opened with some sort of fob. She reasoned that there must be a manual way to open them in case of power failure or fire, mentally thanking the world of health and safety.

  The car park was pitch black. She hadn’t thought of this. She peered into the darkness from the barely lit stairwell. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out her torch. It was now or never. Walking slowly with her bat in one hand and torch in the other, Lucy’s heart was beating fast. She heard noises and wasn’t sure if they were outside, the building creaking, or worse, something lurking in the shadows.

  She had an idea; she pressed the unlock button on the Range Rover keys. Orange lights briefly illuminated the car park as they blinked twice. The car was at the end of the car park. During the brief light she hadn’t seen anything untoward and nothing appeared to stir. Still acting on impulse, she knew, to make her escape, she had to attend to the shutters first.

  Lucy made her way to the shutters, searching with the flashlight for a control panel. As she knew, they were automatic, but next to the electronic controls was a sign that read:

  In case of power failure, use the hand crank to open manually

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck” Lucy muttered as she pondered her next move. All was still quiet in the car park, but far too dark for Lucy to relax and clear her mind to think where the hand crank could be. She knew she couldn’t ram the shutters. That would ruin her chances of escape.

  Remembering a cupboard just a few feet away along the wall, she shone her torch and located it easily. Cautiously, she knocked on the door. No sound followed. Turning the handle, her luck was in, the cupboard was open. Pushing the door open, Lucy shone the torch and illuminated the small room. It was unoccupied and there at the back, gleaming in the torch light, like a beacon of hope, the hand crank. Pleased with how easy this had been so far, Lucy picked up the crank and marched purposefully back to the shutters.

  Placing the crank into the manual opening mechanism, she braced herself. Lucy knew that the cark park was down a floor with an ascending ramp to the street; only 50 metres away. She had to do this quickly and would only get one chance; the dead would hear the noise and hungrily descend to her.

  Lucy subconsciously counted down from three and began. With both hands turning, the noise of moving metal echoed in the car park and out into the streets. Dead heads turned to try and locate the new sound, a few stragglers started moving towards the street entrance of the car park.

  Every muscle and sinew in Lucy’s arms ached and she fought to keep a steady and swift motion. The shutter was about a foot open, she paused to listen, Lucy could hear the low raspy moans of the dead and knew they were coming. She started again and picked up speed, it seemed to take an eternity, at about five feet, she could see movements in the shadows emanating from the street. The damn car was so tall, she needed another couple of feet to make sure she didn’t turn it into a soft top in her retreat. She gave everything she had until the dead were close enough to see.

  Four of them stumbled down the ramp heading straight for Lucy, she gave the handle one last turn, quickly looked at the shutters and decided that they were high enough. She hoped. The four dead were joined by a few others just a short distance behind. She needed to make her escape. Picking up her bag and bat she bolted for the car, fumbling in her pocket for the keys to the Range Rover. The dead were now inside the car park and following their prey with determined anticipation.

  Lucy sprinted to the car with the nearest of the dead only feet away. She had the key in her hand and in blind panic had forgotten that it was already unlocked and struggled to find the unlock button. She paused to shine her light on the key and pressed the unlock button just as the first of the dead sensed her pause and grasped at her from over the car bonnet. The creature fell as it lost balance, grabbing Lucy’s coat whilst tumbling to the ground.

  Lucy stumbled backwards but managed to stay on her feet. She opened the door, jumped in, shut the door and fumbled for the central locking.

  The peaceful solitude of the car was quickly broken as a dead face, that was partially missing, pressed up against the driver side window, hands beating on the glass. The other three quickly surrounded the car. Lucy fiddled with the key fob trying to figure out how to start the car. She looked at the dashboard and saw a start button. She pressed it. Nothing. The dashboard came up with an alert:

  Please press down the clutch when starting the engine.

  Lucy swore and put her foot on the clutch and pressed the start button once again. This time the engine roared into life followed swiftly by James Blunt singing in stereo. Christ, she thought, Lucas you cock. She put the car into first and gave the car a nudge forward. The dead grabbed at the car as she slowly manoeuvred it out of the parking bay. The dead banging so hard against the windows she feared they would break.

  The car park was tight, but she managed to turn the car with only a little clang. She cleared her throat and added some haste to her escape. Two of the dead tried in vain to claw at the moving car, stumbling as the weight supporting them shifted rapidly towards the exit. Lucy navigated the final curve and straight ahead, up the ramp, was her exit. Coming towards her now were three more of the dead, ambling down the middle of the ramp. She looked up and put her foot down. The big Range Rover was quick and she accelerated into the first of the dead, knocking it back against the wall with the wing of the car. The second of the dead was hit head on. Lucy watched on as if in slow motion. The once living person was hit in the midriff, the force arching the head and shoulders towards Lucy and clattering against the car bonnet with a bang and a dent to show. The impact wasn’t enough to kill it, Lucy could see the creature staring directly into her eyes, desperately searching for grip to drag itself towards the windshield. Legs dragging, and gravity against the dead man, the body was pulled swiftly under the car, its head colliding with such force that the skull smashed against the concrete ramp, leaving the monster motionless in a sea of red. James Blunt continued to warble on, “You’re beautiful, it’s true”. Lucy maintained her composure, slammed her hand against the audio off button and continued to the top of the ramp, effortlessly brushing aside the last of the dead on the ramp.

  Outside, in the daylight, Lucy slowed the car down to a gentle roll whilst taking in the vista that awaited her.

  “Fuck.” Lucy exclaimed under her breath. There were hundreds in both directions littering the wide street. It was now that she started to doubt her idea of escape and envied death by starvation or dehydration. Still, she remained calm. It’s too late to turn back.

  Her plan consisted of heading south, sticking to wide roads so she could manoeuvre obstacles and turn around quickly if needed.

  “Slow and steady wins the race.” Lucy spoke to herself to calm her nerves as she turned left and slowly weaved cars, debris, and the growing numbers of dead, rolling over many, bones crunching audibly. Lucy’s heart raced as she slowly ploughed forwards.

  Chapter 11 - Make Haste, the dead Are Coming

  The morning after spending some time with Danny and listening to his experiences and predictions, Jack decided he was going to make haste with his planned trip across the country. He was planning to leave the next day.

  He was practically ready, practically, as in supplies. His near-death experience had left him frightened and shaky on his feet and the thought of making the trip filled him with trepidation. Jack knew he needed to pull himself together and throw himself in at the deep end. He needed practice.

  A thought hit him. He needed things to su
rvive. He needed warmth for the winter, he needed more practical clothing, ropes, weapons, and a host of other things. Just on the outskirts of Manchester was an outdoor activity shop called Adventure Island that would provide Jack with everything he needed. I will go to Adventure Island.

  Jack knew the risk. It was just on the edge of Manchester so the numbers of dead would be huge. He reasoned with himself that he could go and get as close as he could. If it was too bad, he could turn around. The purpose of the trip was as much for practice as it was for supplies, so reasoned that the short trip should give him plenty of experience to take across the country. It helped keep him brave having a goal. The thought of obtaining a nice sharp ice axe built up Jack’s shivering courage that hid somewhere deep inside his stomach.

  Searching the house for his car keys, Jack decided he’d go light, taking Colin, the Hammer, as his only weapon. Colin was yet to taste action other than to cling to Jack’s belt and bruise his leg as he was toppled by the marauding dead man. A bottle of water, some walking boots and many, many layers of clothing completed Jack’s survival kit.

  Jack nipped next door to see Danny with the hope that he would volunteer to come along. The gardens of both houses were next to each other, so rather than go out visibly around the front, Jack just had to lift the fence panel and duck through. It was a great idea, Danny’s idea, not Jack’s. Jack felt woefully underprepared for everything around him, whereas Danny was willing and able to throw himself into every challenge effortlessly. For all Jack’s bookish preparation, he had achieved nothing other than just staying alive, thanks to Danny.

  Knocking gently on windows, as not to make much noise, there appeared to be no sign of life. Jack could see through the open plan living area and couldn’t see Danny. He threw a few pebbles to the upstairs windows, still nothing. Danny was out.