by T. A. Sorsby
But after a few seconds, I lowered my swing. It wasn’t moving. Lucile was on the same page as me now, for sure. The blood. It wasn’t bleeding living, red, oxygenated blood. It was just seeping brown, necrotic gore.
‘Folklore be damned,’ Lucile said, giving the thing a prod with the end of her bat, ‘ain’t the heart we need to kill. The head. Got to get them in the head.’
‘Their hearts aren’t pumping any blood. How do they move? Breathe? I know they breathe, I’ve heard them doing it, right before they moan.’ I said, shaking my head and looking down at the thing. For once I was more confused than horrified. I didn’t even want to throw up, despite the smell, and all the…fluids.
‘Could really use a smoke right now.’ Lucile said, shaking her hair, ‘I’ve got the shakes, look at my hand…’
I knew how she felt.
‘Come on people,’ Neville shouted to us, leading the way back out of Damian’s sister’s house, ‘let’s just get the hell out of here.’
‘No one there man,’ Damian said, following him out, with blood on the end of his cricket bat. ‘Some dead guy was eating de housecat, real fucking sick.’ he spat.
‘What about your sister?’ I asked, as we climbed back into the 4x4. Lucile needed Morgan to give her a hand up again.
‘Gone. Lydia, de kids, everything gone,’ he said, turning the ignition, ‘clothes, food, suitcases. They packed up, but I don’t know where they’d go. Uncle Rob’s maybe. Car’s gone. But no note, no nothing.’ He added, slamming a hand down on the steering wheel. ‘Less just get de fuck out of here.’
‘You want me to drive?’ Neville asked quietly.
‘Nah I…I be fine, it’s all good. Maybe they with de CDC or some shit, I dunno.’ he cringed, shaking his head. I could see his jaw was tense, and he was avoiding looking at Neville. ‘Who been messing with me radio?’ he asked, carrying on the drive down the street.
Morgan produced baby wipes from her pocket, for Lucile and me, so we could set about cleaning the blackened blood off our bats. Apologetically, Neville passed Damian’s cricket bat to her, so she could do it for him. I gave up when I realised the blood had soaked into all the frays and notches on mine. Lucile had more luck with her smooth-finish aluminium.
Damian eventually found a way out of the estate that didn’t involve driving over the top of other vehicles, so we were back on the main roads after only mild cursing, with Morgan giving him directions towards the Mason place.
Even after most of the folks in the car had just been toe-to-toe with a zombie, there wasn’t as much tension in the air as I thought there’d be. I was tearing myself up inside, my guts writhing around like snakes trying to find a way out, thinking about the city, the county, the whole Republic. But everyone else looked…calm. Well, calmer than I felt at least.
I glanced across at Morgan, who was just looking out of the front window with her lips pursed; more concerned than afraid. When she spoke, her voice didn’t shake or come out weak, just steady, maybe thicker, with a side of worry.
Lucile looked like she’d gotten past panic and was just…going with it. If I ignored the blood that’d streaked into Damian’s cricket bat, I could pretend we were just going down to the park for the afternoon.
Is this how quick the rest of the country would be adjusting? There was no power, no TV, the government was hiding behind a nation’s worth of soldiers, and packs of walking corpses were roaming the streets. We’d accepted that in just a couple of days. We had to. It was that or go mad.
I think people just accept the reality they’ve been given, try to muddle through and do their best. Either that or they take the easy way out. Rosie, Edgar...I felt my muscles tense with the urge to hit something. The way things were going, I wouldn’t have to wait long.
I looked out of the window again as we passed a pickup truck loaded up with suitcases, its cab’s windows smashed in. A few yards down the pavement, a woman’s body was pinned down beneath four of them; clothes reddened and torn. People were still alive out there, trying to escape…and largely failing, from what we were seeing. Maybe this rescue mission business was a worse idea than I thought.
Neville tuned us back into GCR as we got onto the city centre roads. Not being a huge residential area meant that not many people had driven through the centre when they were trying to evacuate. Still, some roads were blocked off here and there, grey military trucks, 4x4s and armoured personnel carriers pulled across into makeshift checkpoints, or wrecks like the ones we’d seen earlier, so a twenty minute drive to the Masons’ house took closer to forty.
By the time we cleared the city and were back in the suburbs, my knees had started to lock up, that feeling of wanting to hit something not going away, all that nervous energy settling in my joints. I suppose it was better than being scared again, like when I’d seen my first one at that car crash.
Damian pulled up a rise and into a fancy ‘cul-de-sac’. You couldn’t just say it was a dead-end, because the people here had paid to live on a ‘cul-de-sac’. Suburbanites.
The lawns were immaculately trimmed, a couple of them neatly ringed off from the neighbour’s lawn by a pigmy hedge you’d barely have to raise your foot to step over.
All the houses were two storeys and built up slight inclines, so that the lawns sloped gently down to the sidewalk. Paths laid down in pretty coloured masonry tiles led down to the recycling bins and trash cans. The whole thing was so middle class and picturesque it’d make Katy sneer just out of anarchistic principal. Places like this reminded her of her family.
Morgan kept Damian driving onwards, about halfway down the left-hand side of the cul-de-sac, where he parked up and set the handbrake.
‘Their car’s not here.’ Neville observed.
‘Might be caught up in traffic, ya’ll seen the roads.’ Lucile drawled. ‘Could be they abandoned ship and ran home.’
‘Something else not right, seen?’ Damian muttered.
‘No zombies.’ Neville nodded, sitting forward in his seat for a better view of the road, ‘This is residential, not even that far from Mercy. Shouldn’t exactly be crawling with them but...its quiet-’
‘Don’t say it-’ I tried, before he could finish.
‘-too quiet.’ Lucile grimaced, finishing for him. It’s not often you get a setup like that.
I looked out of the window, already accustomed to seeing zombies emerging from alleyways and looking up from dead bodies, getting to their feet to come after us and letting out that godsawful moan. There was none of that here. The place was just as she’d said, it was too quiet.
Morgan unbuckled her seatbelt, but Neville piped up from the front, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘To see if Becky’s family are still alive?’ Morgan replied, her voice taking on the first chords of an argument.
‘I thought the agreement was that you wait in the car?’ her father reminded her.
She sent a quick look my way, but I didn’t say anything. If the vibe we were getting from this place was right, I didn’t want Morgan far from our ride. But I couldn’t just tell her that. I’d be agreeing with her father, and thus, not being a good mate.
‘Young Roberts, Marchland, Grant,’ I said, stiffening my voice, ‘stick with the vehicle. Roberts Senior, you’re with me on the door.’
‘Aye captain.’ Morgan nodded with a sarcastic salute. She folded her arms and glanced at me, disappointed but there was the shadow of a smirk there. I felt a little rush of embarrassment as Lucile turned to raise an eyebrow at me, but I met it with one of my own. Her lips twitched up, shaking her head.
Everyone dismounted, except Morgan. She swung her legs over the side of the backseats and watched Neville and me head up the path to what must have been the Masons’ place. Lucile and Damian walked to the front bumper and kept an eye out.
‘Nice move back there, very diplomatic.’ Neville muttered when we were out of earshot, ‘You find it easy to talk to kids?’
‘Wasn’t too long since I was
her age,’ I replied, ‘she just doesn’t want to feel useless. She’s a doer, you need to let her do more.’ I tried not to sound critical.
‘Given our circumstances, do you think that’s a good idea?’ he said, his voice growing harsher.
‘Who knows how long this could last?’ I replied, pretending not to notice. ‘We could be eating ice cream at the movies this time next week, or we could be poking through an abandoned supermarket looking for the last tin of beans. I don’t know which way the world is swinging and I’d rather know she’s ready for the worst.’
‘But you’re not her father.’ Neville said, a definite edge to his words this time.
Gulp. I liked Neville, but I was starting to get the impression he wasn’t overly impressed with me sticking up for the Independent Morgan Front so much.
‘I know, Neville.’ I said, ‘But you’re not the only one who cares about her. You remember how we both froze up at the crash?’
He nodded, listening.
‘Maybe if that wasn’t the first zombie we’d seen, we’d have been more like Damian. Prepared. Doing something about it. She’s seen what the city’s like now, what zombies are like, maybe she won’t freeze up if she comes face to face with one.’
‘I really don’t want that to happen.’ Neville said, looking intently across the street.
‘Me nether. But given our circumstances…’ I shrugged, echoing him. He smiled, and held a hand up in surrender.
‘We’ll see.’
I knocked on the door, making it a little musical, so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a zombie trying to beat the door down. I blinked for a moment, and I was standing outside the Jamesons’ door again. I wondered, if in the end, things would have turned out differently if they had been with us.
But a sound, or something else, snapped me right back out of it. Have you ever heard a dog whistle? You don’t hear the sound so much as you feel it, like a tinny buzz. This was more booming, resounding, but it still struck something inside my ear, inside my head. Something wasn’t right.
*
Twelve
I had to take a step back to keep my balance. My vision blurred, growing fuzzy at the edges.
‘What the hell was that?’ Neville asked, sounding like he was standing further away than just a few feet, like I was hearing him from the other side of a thick window.
I looked back over at the 4x4, my vision coming back to me. The others must have heard it too. Morgan was getting ready to close her door, while Lucile and Damian were readying their bats.
The not-noise boomed out again, my eyes blurring and balance wavering for just a moment this time, like I’d gotten used to it.
‘We should go inside, check the place out.’ Neville said, keeping his voice low. I got the sense he’d rather have been indoors right now and I seconded that strongly.
‘Let me look first, then you can shoot the lock or whatever.’ I said, not wanting to exit one lot of weirdness and walk into another.
‘I actually have a spare key, but hey…’ he mumbled.
I knelt down in front of the door, glad that the house owners hadn’t bought a mailbox, but had the conventional letter flap instead. I could see stairs to the right, and the open door to their living room on my left, with the red-linoleum kitchen straight down the middle of the hall.
I was scanning the corners when the family pooch padded out of the living room. It was probably a small child’s cuddly toy once, but now it had grown up it could probably fight off a band of burglars single-pawed. It turned towards me, and dropped into a pouncing stance, jaw hanging open. That’s when I noticed what was wrong in this picture.
The kitchen floor wasn’t red – it was blood. More of it speckled the hall’s cream carpet with red footprints, human and canine, leading upstairs. The dog’s muzzle was coated in it, and its legs were stained almost up to the knees.
Its eyes were strangely glassy, white, reflecting the light like when you see footage of people through nightvision cameras, like those stupid “ghost hunters” on haunted-house TV shows.
It opened its mouth and saliva dangled from its teeth. Instead of a bark, it let out the sub-audible boom we’d not-heard a minute ago. I jumped to my feet and let the letterbox snap closed, just as the dog threw its full weight against the door, silently roaring.
‘What’s going on?’ Neville asked, pulling his gun out, aiming it at the door uncertainly, setting his feet apart in a marksman’s stance. He opened his jaw wide, as if trying to pop his ears.
‘The dog’s infected.’ I said, pulling my own gun out clumsily and resting my bat against my shoulder. Swinging it at the letterbox wouldn’t do me much good.
‘What?’ Neville said sharply, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘Take a look for yourself, go ahead!’ I answered, voice rising with the panic. I knew it wasn’t getting through that door, but something about the bark was unsettling me, more than the quietened streets had already.
Neville bent down and opened the flap of the letterbox with the barrel of his pistol. Immediately, the dog was pawing away at it, trying to bite through the letterbox. The door shook as the dog barrelled into it again.
‘It could just be rabid?’ He tried.
‘We thought East Rojas was human rabies.’ I reminded him, ‘Did you see its eyes?’
‘No, let me have another look…’ he snarked, putting his gun up against the flap again.
I saw movement, half a dozen silent shapes bounding over the hedges, coming straight for us across the gardens on Neville’s side. More dogs. I shouted out to him, but I could barely hear the sound of my own voice above the growing buzzing in my ears. He turned to me, frowning, forgetting the letterbox. I jabbed a finger over his shoulder. He spun around and raised his gun in a practiced motion.
At least the sound wasn’t upsetting our balance anymore; otherwise Neville would never have made the shot with a handgun at that distance. He put the first dog down two gardens away, and took his time with the next shot, taking out a sheepdog as it leapt the next hedge. Two shots, two hits. I never knew my neighbour could do that.
Even though I was stood right next to him, his shots sounded about as loud as someone slamming their hand on the table, barely getting through the buzz from the weird, silent-barking from the oncoming pack.
I looked over to my right and saw Lucile and Damian running up the path towards us, to get our backs. Morgan was leaning over the front seats, doors closed and face whitening. I wondered if she’d watched us take down that zombie earlier.
When I looked back, the dogs were much closer. I dropped my bat, fumbled the hammer back and aimed my gun inexpertly at the leading dog. The trigger wasn’t as stiff as I expected – Edgar must have kept the antique pristine. One moment I was pulling it, the next, the hammer fell. Bam. The dog dropped to its side and lay panting. I felt a surge of pride, and resisted the urge to punch the air.
I wasn’t quite prepared for the recoil. It made my hand feel strange, like holding on to your phone when it vibrates, but a hundred times stronger. I didn’t have time to make a second shot, but Neville had already fired twice more, a quick double-tap, bam-bam.
The last dog reached us at the door. It pounced through the air, towards Neville, and I only had that split second to act. I jumped forward, putting myself between the shining-eyed retriever and my neighbour, punching my gun upwards, hitting it under the jaw. I pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked down into an empty chamber. Of course, I forgot to cock it.
The force of my punch and its own momentum sent the dog flying into the side of the house, where it bounced off the white wall and landed in the flowerbeds. My fingers didn’t feel sore from the blow, the trigger-guard and barrel had protected my hand like a knuckle duster.
I cocked the hammer back and aimed down at the dog, already stumbling to its feet. This time, without the disorientating barking of the pack, the shot was loud. Like someone slamming a metal pipe on an empty trash can.
‘Shit�
��’ Neville gasped, taking a step backwards and thumping a hand on his chest, as if to dislodge his heart from his mouth, ‘Thought it had me there.’
‘No problem….’ I panted, out of breath even though I’d only moved a couple of feet. I swallowed down my pulse and looked around the street for any more surprises.
I’d shot at something, and I’d hit it too. I’d stood between Neville and that dog, and I didn’t even think about it. On the one hand, I was proud of myself, feeling a kind of heroic rush – we’d been attacked and we’d come through, defeated our assailants. But on the other hand, we’d still been attacked. Twice now, things had come at us and tried to kill us. That shit just doesn’t happen to people in the real world. It was fucking dangerous out here.
‘I think I see what you meant now, the dogs are infected. Their eyes, and that bark…’ he trailed off, looking at Damian and Lucile for confirmation.
‘I saw, I heard, yeah.’ Damian nodded, looking down at the retriever’s body. ‘Me ears still ringing.’
Lucile walked over to the dog that I’d shot first, and lifted her bat up. I turned away, but I heard the wet crunch as it broke the dog’s skull open.
‘I don’t think we need to do that, Lucile.’ I said, still not looking, ‘Neville’s dogs dropped just as easy as they would have if they weren’t infected.’
‘Can’t be too careful?’ Lucile shrugged, sounding a little reluctant to stop. I think she’d found an outlet.
‘Permission to make more loud noises?’ Neville asked, pointing his gun at the door, which shook again. There was still one dog left.
‘Granted. But we need to be out of here as soon as we can, if Morgan’s theory about noise bringing more trouble holds.’ I nodded.
Neville put a bullet through the door, just above the letterbox. I wanted to hear a little whine as the dog keeled over, to know it’d been hit, but all I heard was the sudden quiet of the door no longer rattling against its hinges. That’d have to do.
