by Luke Duffy
One Christmas, at an office party, he had met Louise, the daughter of one of the directors. As far as Johnny was concerned, it was love at first sight and a whirlwind romance had followed. They were living the highlife with parties, holidays and the best of everything with the world at their feet. For their engagement, Louise's father had bought them a penthouse apartment in the city.
It had seemed that his future was paved with golden flagstones.
However, the stresses and demands of modern day society, relationships and the constant worry of finance and the need to succeed caused him to suffer a mental break down in the process. It did not help that on the day he turned twenty-five, the woman he had loved so much and had married just a year earlier walked out on him, taking their baby son with her and cutting all contact with him. She sold the apartment and disappeared.
He never saw them again.
He crumbled and withdrew from the world. Only to emerge as a man that held very little value in personal possessions and very little love for a society that was more than happy to shower him with praise and glory when he was doing well, but at the first sign of trouble, tossed him into the gutter with all the other trash.
His house became nothing more than a solid shelter for him. He no longer owned a bed or furniture of any kind and he spent most of his time wandering about the towns and cities, greeting people in the street, calling 'hello' to anyone who looked in his direction.
He laughed all the time, too. Most believed that it was because he was insane, but it was nothing of the sort. Johnny saw things that most people did not. He watched how the population of the world scurried about, striving to better themselves by the standards that were forced upon them by their peers and the pressures of society. He found it amusing how so many of the world's population rarely paused and contemplated what they were actually struggling for, or appreciated what they had.
As far as Johnny was concerned, all he needed was air in his lungs and food in his belly and everything else was an unnecessary burden. He saw no value in wearing fancy clothes or driving expensive cars. He was at his happiest sitting in parks and talking to strangers, just appreciating life in general.
Now, once again, he watched. It was a new society that he gazed upon, very different from the old ways. Gone were the days of people chasing the promotion at work or their bank balances, these new people behaved differently but Johnny did not really feel affected by it. He still lived on the fringes, and still no one paid him much attention.
He knew that the new society was dangerous and that he had to be careful. As long as he remained silent and moved slowly, as he always had done anyway, he was able to move among them and continue in much the same way as he had done before. Only he could not speak to any of them and they were not as amusing to watch as they had been in the old days when they were more preoccupied with pettiness.
Over the recent months, Johnny had seen much happen on the streets. He saw the panic of the people as they fled and fought amongst each other. He saw the police lose control and the city burst into anarchy. He witnessed killings and torture, even rape, as people turned on one another.
He also saw the dead.
He watched as they slowly and steadily became the dominant species and packed the streets as they roamed, searching for the flesh of the living. He saw how they consumed anything alive that was unfortunate enough to fall in their path. How they multiplied and how they never gave up. He witnessed how they would quickly increase in mass as soon as they detected someone living, as if they could communicate with their moans.
Johnny knew from very early on that he had to remain on the outskirts of this new society, but at the same time he needed to blend within them from time to time.
Now, he stood on the roof of the shopping arcade. As always, he had shuffled through the town, slowly and quietly, passing the dead as they staggered by or sat decaying in the street. He did not laugh or nod to the figures he saw or feel any desire to say 'hello' to them. He just kept his eyes to the floor and slowly made his way toward the place where he normally got his food.
He knew the arcade well. He had spent much time there in the old days, greeting people and receiving strange looks from them as they scurried by about their business.
Even now, though he was the only living being amongst them, no one paid him any attention. It did amuse him how he had managed to get one up on the old society and even the new one. When the old ways, the ways that had frowned upon him and his kind, had perished, he had survived. Now, surrounded by the dead, he continued to survive and the dead were oblivious to him.
He made his way into the bargain priced supermarket and gently, without any sudden movements, collected his usual tins of beans and meatballs. He always collected two of each at a time. He could have taken more, but that would have broken his routine. He enjoyed having the chance to walk through the city centre every few days. Not because he got a thrill from it or because he gloated at the creatures around him for having become what they were; it was because he had always liked being in the arcade and he did not want that to change now because it had become more dangerous for him. It was the same with his boots; he always wore them and they were part of his routine. A sudden change in it, regardless of necessity, could cause him great upset.
For the last hour he had watched as the entire dead population of the city had been on the move. At first, while in the supermarket, the moans and wails had sent him into a panic. For a moment, he believed that he had been detected and the crowd was coming for him. Through the glass front of the shop, he witnessed the multitude of bodies as they massed, their arms flailing and their cries becoming a crescendo. Fear had gripped him and turned his blood ice cold.
He had fled through the storeroom of the shop and headed for the roof. All the time, as he bounded up the steel staircase, he muttered to himself, cursing himself for being so careless. He burst onto the rooftop and spun, expecting to see a foul smelling and hideous looking crowd following him through the door. None followed and Johnny felt perplexed for a while, all the time, the anticipation building as he expected them to appear at any moment.
The noise from the street continued and he began searching for a way off the roof, still believing that they were coming for him. The roof to the supermarket was lower than the adjacent buildings and there was no way he could have crossed onto the rooftops to his left or right. He was trapped and terror clutched at him even more.
Still watching the rooftop entrance, Johnny backed himself up to the wall. A large air conditioning unit provided him with the only cover available and he squatted behind it, trembling and sure that it was only a matter of time before they came.
After a while, curiosity ruled him and with no sign of the dead pursuing him onto the roof, he decided to investigate what was going on and why the city was so riled up. Carefully, he raised his head above the lip of the wall to the roof. Below, he saw a swarm of bobbing heads and thrashing arms as the dead ploughed through the street.
They were everywhere.
They were not interested in the building he was on top of and bodies were even spilling out from the arcade that the supermarket was part of and joining the rest of the crowd. No, they were definitely not interested in him and Johnny deduced that they probably did not even know he was there. They were headed away from him, and to Johnny it looked as though the whole city was on the move.
Something or someone must have caught their attention further along the street, he decided. Craning his neck, Johnny attempted to see further along but all he could see was the multitude of moving bodies. They covered the entire street from one side to the other and he struggled to see the pavement.
Lifting himself up, he leaned out from the rooftop and over the wall, hoping to see what the distraction was. It was no use. There were just too many of them. Hundreds, even thousands, Johnny calculated.
More were coming.
Looking down, all he could see was a filthy sea of foul, decaying bodies that
trundled through the street. He watched as the birds and insects swarmed them, screeching and buzzing, adding to the unremitting whine of the dead.
The sight reminded Johnny a little of the old days. On many occasion, he had sat in a vantage point and just watched the people doing their thing. Even then, in Johnny's opinion, they were mindless husks that crowded the shopping centres and swarmed the street in their bid to consume. Only back then, they did not smell as bad and they had more colours to them. Now, from the height of the roof, all that Johnny could see were greys, browns and greens. Even their clothes had become colourless and dull. Their greasy and waterlogged clothing hung from their bodies and their hair was matted to their heads. It was as if they had all been dragged through a clay pit.
He gave up on trying to see along the street and maybe catch a glimpse of what had started the commotion. It was just too thick with them down that way and Johnny knew himself that it could have been any one of a number of things. He had witnessed them swarm at the sight of something as small as a rat, or even a dog.
He had even seen them crowd and attack each other.
Only a few days before, he had watched dozens of them tear one of their own to shreds. Johnny noticed a tall gangly looking corpse enter a small tool shop, and a few minutes later emerge carrying a hammer and wearing a hardhat. At the time, he had guessed that maybe the man had been a builder during his life and still had an interest in hardware.
The creature had then set about hammering away at any surface he came across as he staggered along the street. Brick walls, steel posts, cars, even windows that shattered with a deafening racket. Everything was hit with the heavy hammer.
Before long, a mob of the dead emerged, and whether it was because they mistook him for one of the living, or that the noise offended them in some way, Johnny could not be sure; they set about the unfortunate gangly dead builder and soon left him as a bloodied limbless pulp, squirming in its own filth on the floor.
Johnny had no idea what had set the dead city off and concluded that it was pointless to try to find out. Instead, he decided to amuse himself with his old favourite pastime, people watching, or alternatively, 'dead watching' as he now referred to it.
He still found humorous moments in his hobby. Now and then he would watch as one of the dead began acting in a way that mirrored a living person, albeit in a much more unsophisticated way, very often making a complete mess of whatever it was doing.
He watched one trying to turn on a television in one of the shop windows, even sitting back on the couch that was on display in front of it and eventually, standing up and smacking the television on the top of its casing in an attempt to get a signal. Johnny had smiled to himself as he remembered his own father doing that very same thing to the television when he was a child.
He watched another endeavour to drive a car. Sitting behind the wheel, it turned the steering wheel continually and eventually began beeping the horn. In the end, it climbed from the vehicle, mimicked what Johnny could only assume was a sigh or a huff, then it kicked the door shut and trundled off.
The mob below began to thin and Johnny was once again able to see the street below. He saw the revolting trail that they had left in their wake and a shudder ran down his spine at the thought of having to cross that same street, sidestepping the piles of stomach-churning human remains, but at the same time trying not to look too animated in his movements.
As he was about to move, something caught his eye. In a narrow doorway, across from the building that he was on top of, a body moved. This body was different from the others he had just watched swarm through the streets. It moved cautiously, aware of its surroundings and as though it was apprehensive about coming out into the open. For a moment, Johnny believed that it could be a living person, the first he had seen in over a week. He soon realised, though, it was the body of a dead man. The mottled and grey skin stretched taut across its face, the sagging dirty clothes smeared in stains and grime. Then the eyes, the dead eyes, even from that distance, they were unmistakable.
Yet it was not like the others. It moved, though less well coordinated and not as swiftly as a living person; it was more purposeful and sure-footed than the usual staggering gait of the dead that he saw on a daily basis.
Johnny frowned and twisted his beard between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
"You're a strange one, aren't you?" he murmured quietly to himself as he watched with gripping fascination.
He looked on as the body took a guarded step out from the safety of the doorway. It stopped and peered around, its decaying head and eyes travelling the length of the street as it watched after the mass of dead that had just passed by. It seemed to be studying, scrutinising its surroundings, checking that it was safe to be in the open before it ventured further.
To Johnny, it looked cautious, even scared. He had never seen one behave in such a way. He had watched them, through instinct, mimic the living but never move prudently and watchfully. It occurred to Johnny that this particular body in the street below him was a genius amongst its peers.
It stepped out further into open and looked left and right. It glanced back at the cover of the shop door where it had emerged from and then back in the direction that the crowd had travelled.
Turning in the opposite direction, it began to walk away.
"Clever fellow," Johnny whispered to himself as he watched the corpse.
It suddenly stopped and turned. It looked up, directly at him.
Johnny's eyes widened and he felt an icy hand crawl up his spine again, but he could not look away. The thing was staring straight at him and he could not tear his eyes from it. They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. The body stood stock still in the street, its eyes fixed on him. It did not moan or wail. It did not raise its arms or even stagger towards him. It just stood there, staring right back at him.
He pulled away from the wall and gasped. Stepping backward and cautiously feeling his way around the air conditioning unit with his hands behind him. He turned and headed for the entrance to the staircase that led down from the rooftop. His feet involuntarily picked up speed and he found himself sprinting for the door. Panic overcame him and now that he could no longer see the body, he imagined a whole horde of them gathering in the street again and coming for him.
His old Wellington boots thumped from one steel step to the next as he pounded down toward the supermarket. He vaulted the last few steps and crashed through the door that led into the main shop. He headed for the entrance. His breath came in shallow hard snorts as his heart raced in his chest. Fear clouded his judgement and all he could think of was getting out of the supermarket and away from the city centre.
He turned left onto an aisle that he knew would lead him to the exit. He let out a yelp as he turned the corner. He reeled back and his boots let out a squeal on the tiled floor as he forced himself to come to sudden a stop.
In front of him stood the same body that he had just seen in the street. It stared directly at him, its hands hanging by its side. Johnny felt his stomach flip. His knees shook and he began to step backwards.
He knew he was dead. He had not really learned how to defend himself against the dead physically, choosing instead to use his wits in avoiding detection. He could charge the walking corpse ahead of him and hope to knock it away from him and then make a run for it or, swing the plastic bag that he carried, laden with heavy tins of food, at its head and hope to knock it to the ground, or even kill it. Johnny had never done anything like either of those things before and he knew he would mess it up.
"Oh shit, oh shit," he mumbled to himself as he began to back away.
He retraced his steps as his mind raced for a solution to his predicament. The body was blocking the only door that he knew of that would lead him back on to the street. Johnny craned his neck as he backed away and tried to see what was outside the shop door behind the body. He expected to see more of them coming, but the area looked clear.
T
he figure remained where it was. It had not attempted to follow him and it confused Johnny. He was used to them moaning and groaning, raising their arms and chasing after the living. This one, however, just stood and watched him.
After a while, Johnny's heart seemed to calm a little. Knowing that there was no immediate danger and only one of them, he began to think more clearly. He backed further into the shop and slowly walked along an adjacent aisle toward the doorway. Through the stacked goods on the shelves, he was still able to see glimpses of the creature in the next aisle, and it could still see him. It did not move to cut off his escape; it just slowly pivoted its feet so that it could still watch him as he headed for the exit.
Johnny reached the end of the walkway and slowed before he turned the corner. He took in a deep breath and steeled himself, letting the air out of his lungs in a long slow stream, all the time keeping an eye on the figure that was no more than two metres away from him with just a waist-high freezer unit and a few shelves separating them.
Gingerly, he stepped out from the aisle and shuffled towards the doorway, afraid of making any sudden movement that would rile the walking corpse beside him. He remained facing the threat all the time as he headed for the exit, and as he rounded the corner, though he knew he would be in the same aisle and in full view of the body, the actual act forced his heart to skip a beat.
He stopped in his tracks.
It had turned to face him and, again, it did not even attempt to take a step towards him. It just stood watching him. It did not moan. It did not gnash its teeth. It just watched.
In its eyes, Johnny saw something. Though they were unmistakably dead, there was something behind them. Thought, even intelligence Johnny believed. It stood, studying him in the same way that Johnny studied it. Its sunken and clouded eyes stared at him unblinkingly. For a while, neither of them moved. Like two gunslingers about to draw down on one another, they eyed and studied each other.
