by Woods, Mark
For retired Dairy Farmer Arthur Haversham and his family, Z-Day had come and gone largely unnoticed. Living on a small, isolated Dairy Farm situated in one of the most rural and remote parts of Norfolk - the nearest village was over ten miles away - the only worries he or his family had in the days after the Z-pocalypse hit was the odd, occasional straggler that found its way onto their land. Since most people had not even realised his Farm was there when they were alive, very few of them found their way there after they were dead. It was set way back away from anything that even remotely represented any kind of main road anymore, since the creation of a nearby bypass several years before, and that was exactly the way that Arthur and his family liked it.
Arthur had never been regarded as much of a ‘people person’, and neither had his wife, and so they had always been perfectly happy going days, if not weeks, without having to see any of their neighbours. Nor had either of them ever been particularly welcoming of strangers. Arthur had been told, in the past, that he had the kind of personality and demeanour that made Terry Marven look positively friendly, and quite frankly, he always took that as a compliment - even if it wasn’t intended to be taken in that way.
Terry Marven was a local land-owner who had jury-rigged and booby trapped his house after being burgled once too many times. When three youths had broken into his house one night, Terry Marven had shot and killed one of them, and beaten a second with a baseball bat. The third youth had tried to escape, but had gotten his leg caught in a Poachers Gin trap that Marven had set up just outside his front door. This same youth had later had to have his foot amputated due to complications arising from infection.
Vilified in the Press, Marven had gone to Prison sentenced not just for murder, but also for aggravated assault and for causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Arthur had positively applauded and celebrated when, over a year later, a local appeal had seen Marven granted early release due to diminished responsibility. In Arthur’s eyes, if in few others, Terry Marven was a real have-a-go hero, and to be compared to him by his peers was, to Arthur’s mind, nothing short of flattering to say the least.
Arthur Haversham lived on his now closed-down Dairy Farm with his wife, Mary, and eight year old grand-daughter, Rosie. He and his wife had taken custody of Rosie after her mum and dad had both been killed in a head-on collision on the newly built NDR several years back.
Before the world had all gone to shit, Mary had always driven Rosie to the nearest school twenty miles away each and every day. In between dropping off her grand-daughter at school, and then returning to pick her up later, Mary had taken up painting and had even sold several landscapes to art galleries on the nearby North Norfolk coast, who then sold them onto gullible tourists, readily willing to snap up her work as holiday souvenirs.
Arthur had mostly spent his retirement from Farming drinking whiskey, and cataloguing his vast collection of antiquarian and often rare agricultural periodicals which he had collected over the years. He had picked up many of them second-hand from car-boot sales, or from fellow Farmers at their annual meets, but many of them too had been passed down to him from his own father and grand-father.
Someone had once told him that, catalogued properly, he might have a small fortune on his hands and that some eager collector might be prepared to pay him a lot of money for his collection if he ever decided to sell it. Arthur wasn’t too sure about that, but he did like things organised and knew there was a veritable wealth of long-forgotten agricultural knowledge stored within the pages of his collection that he had never even looked at yet.
It was because of this that Arthur had decided to spend his retirement sorting through each one of his hundreds of magazines carefully; painstakingly reading and scrutinising every article within before it could be filed.
And then one day, around last Christmas time, Z-day had happened.
Quite understandably, cataloguing his archives properly was something of a full-time job, and had ended up taking up much of his time and was still an ongoing process even now - though to be fair, his constant drinking probably didn’t help much - but since everything had all turned to shit and the dead had started coming back to life, it had almost become a welcome distraction.
***
When the news first broke about Z-Day, around December last year, and the news readers started talking about terror attacks and the dead coming back to life, Arthur wasn’t worried.
At first he thought it just a joke, and then he realised - it wasn’t April fool’s day yet for at least another five months and besides, nobody was laughing. By the time he realised that it was serious and that the world really was going to Hell in a hand basket, he still wasn’t that worried.
He and his farm had survived the paranoia, the fear, and the mass culling and cremations that had occurred several months before, when a new strain of Swine Flu, more commonly known as H1N1Z, had swept across the country. The virus was allegedly supposed to have mutated from a rare strain of bird flu and crossed species, killing herds of cattle and swine, leaving devastation in its wake, and if they had survived that largely unscathed, Arthur thought, they could certainly survive this.
Arthur had lived most of his life being paranoid and expecting the worst and had long started storing canned produce and bottled water below his farmhouse, in a storm cellar that his Father had converted to a fallout Shelter during the days of the Cold War. Arthur always watched the news, had seen the way the world was going, and fully intended to be prepared when society eventually broke down; which he always knew in his heart it eventually would.
In Arthur’s eyes, it had always been more a matter of when, not if, the world came to an end, and the coming of Z-Day had only served to prove him right.
Every six months or so, Arthur would rotate his store of supplies; ensuring that his stock of food always remained fresh, and that nothing was kept that might go out of date. If he and his family were to survive whatever disaster might occur, the last thing he wanted was for any one of them to get sick from eating food that was spoiled because it was long past its use-by date.
Arthur had also fortified the shelter and camouflaged all the entries and exits so that if anything ever did happen - though the last thing had ever anticipated was the dead coming back to life - he and his family would be adequately prepared. Able to hide away and keep safe, hidden from enquiring eyes, or any potential raiders who might wish to do them harm.
Mary, his wife, had thought him a fool.
Rosie had thought her grandfather cool, even though she confessed that sometimes the other kids at school teased her and said he was crazy.
Arthur didn’t care.
He had never been bothered about the opinion of others before and besides, who was laughing now?
***
What had once been a fairly profitable Dairy Farm in years gone by, more recently had become a Farm only in the sense that Arthur still kept cows. Of his former stock, Arthur now only owned three cows, called Maisy, Daisy and Matilda respectively, and one ageing bull named Barthomelew, or Barty as his grand-daughter had insisted on calling him for as long as anyone could remember.
The rest of his cattle had all been sold as his retirement loomed close, but these last four he had kept on for sentimental reasons as he had raised them all since they were calves.
Barty was getting a bit long in the tooth now, and Arthur’s three remaining dairy cows were long past their days of producing any milk, but still Arthur could not bear to part with any of them. He had had grown up around cows all his life, and had spent the majority of his early childhood learning how to tend and care for them. It was probably fair to say, in fact, that he probably had a lot more respect for them than he did for any humans.
Other than his immediate family, of course.
His wife, Mary, was more of a cat person.
Arthur had reluctantly let her keep a pair of Tabby’s, but only because they helped keep down the population of mice and rats that you always inevitably got on a
ny Farm. When they had both disappeared recently, Arthur hadn’t exactly shed any tears, but Mary and his grand-daughter, Rosie, on the other hand, had been distraught.
Arthur had consoled them both and told them it was all okay, that the cats had probably just run off. What he actually believed though was that they had both more likely fallen foul of Zombies and been eaten.
Both the two cats had been getting on in years, were not particularly fast movers anymore, and in this new dawn where the dead had returned to feast upon the living, Arthur guessed it probably didn’t matter if some of those living were not always human. Flesh was flesh after all, and in the months since the news of Z-Day had broken all across the world, it was certainly true that the amount of wild-life normally seen around the outskirts of the Farm had definitely decreased.
Putting two and two together then, the longer the cats stayed missing, the more Arthur began to think his theory was correct - that the Walking Dead probably weren’t fussy what they ate - just so long as it was alive.
Better them than us, Arthur thought, though he would never say as much out loud. Besides, as far as he was concerned, they had much bigger things to worry about than a pair of missing cats…
Arthur’s stock of supplies was beginning to run low...not dangerously low, but low. He had stocked up all he could afford, but prepping for a future apocalypse – especially one that might not even ever happen - had proven a much more costly business than he had initially anticipated and, it seemed, he had vastly underestimated just how much food they might need.
More importantly, Arthur was nearly out of Whiskey.
By his best estimates, they had about enough food for another three weeks; maybe four if they began to tighten their belts, but by that time, the last of the whiskey would be well and truly gone.
Sooner or later, he thought, he was going to have to make a decision. Go cold turkey and try to live through this brave new world entirely stone cold sober, or go out hunting alone for more supplies in the hope he might stumble across a forgotten cache of alcohol somewhere whilst hunting down more food.
The problem was, he didn’t exactly feel comfortable about leaving his family behind, and if the three of them left this Farm, Arthur didn’t see them ever coming back again.
They had no idea what was out there, waiting for them, and the last thing any of them wanted was to end up leading the living dead back to their door if and when they chose to return.
If they started to draw attention to themselves, or caught the eye of a horde, they might have to forget all about trying to make it back here and instead hit the road. Otherwise, what until now had been their sanctuary might instead become their final resting place - and that was only if they did not end up coming back to life themselves to join the ranks of all the other dead out there.
All this combined made Arthur very reluctant to leave.
For now, this Farm seemed to be the safest place for all of them and while they still had food, surely he could manage to go without his drink....after all; it wasn’t like he was an alcoholic or anything, right?
They could start worrying about the food, he thought, in a couple of weeks when things started to become really desperate.
By then, he thought, he might even manage to come up with a plan…
***
The day Arthur’s world ended started much like any other.
Whilst Mary and Rosie sat in the front room eating breakfast - cereal with powdered milk, dry toast, and two glasses of powdered orange Juice; nothing for Arthur, he didn’t do breakfast, the same way he didn’t do people - Arthur retired to his Study. There, amongst the piles of his unsorted Agricultural periodicals and magazines - those sorted long having been boxed up and now residing in the attic - Arthur fired up his old computer, accessed the Internet and started scanning through the various News and Social Networking sites still working, looking for any signs of life.
A diesel powered generator, stored in the basement, ensured they still had electricity long after it should have gone off by rights, but even so, Arthur made sure to use its power sparingly. This meant no lights that might attract unwanted attention, no music even if it did help distract them and get them through the day, and absolutely NO television. Not that there was anything on the television to watch now anyway, save for a few programmes still playing in an endless, eternal loop. It had been a long, long time now since the last live broadcast had been shown, and by now automated systems had cut in to attempt to fill the void and probably would continue to do so until someone turned them off or the power eventually went off for good everywhere instead of just out here n the sticks.
How the automated programmes were still going, months after Z-day had long since been and gone, Arthur didn’t know.
The same as the Internet.
He didn’t know how that was still going either, but then, Arthur never had ever really been all that technically minded, even before the Zombie apocalypse had happened.
Across the whole of the Internet, Arthur found nothing.
He hadn’t gotten any hits on any of the Websites or social media sites he frequented in over three months, but still he kept trying. Everywhere had all gone quiet.
Silent.
The world was slowly dying, one piece at a time, with no-one left to watch and soon, Arthur thought, he and his family here could well end up being amongst the last humans left alive, if they weren’t already.
Arthur hadn’t told his wife, Mary, he was still checking the computer every day.
She thought the Internet was gone and he didn’t want to tell her the truth because he had seen the look on her face when the television had begun repeating the same programmes over and over and over again; flashing up the same old message about staying in your home and locking all your doors between commercials.
The last thing Arthur wanted was to give her false hope and so, as far as Mary was concerned, the only reason Arthur still came in here every morning was to continue to sort through all his magazines.
What she didn’t know, after all, couldn’t hurt her…
After switching off and powering down the computer, Arthur took his shotgun out of the locked gun cabinet by the front door, and made his rounds of the borders surrounding his land. Arthur did this five times a day - walking around his property, checking there were no breaches in any of the fences or that nothing dead, that had once lived and now wanted nothing more but to feed, had wandered onto his land uninvited overnight. Every evening, all three of them, Arthur, his wife and his Grand-daughter, would sleep locked inside the storm cellar/ fallout shelter, safe and secure, so there was no need for patrols, but during the day, Arthur wanted to make sure that nothing or nobody caught him or his family unawares. That wasn’t the only reason why he patrolled, but it was the most important one. One of the other reasons he walked the perimeters was because it gave him something to do, and was a good way of convincing himself he was being pro-active and actually doing something, instead of just sitting there waiting to die.
It was also a good opportunity for him to sneak a drink from out of the hip-flask he always carried whilst his wife wasn’t looking.
Needless to say, Mary was less than impressed with Arthur’s drinking habits, and that was without knowing how much Whiskey he actually drank every day!
In one corner of his property, there was a small water tower that just brushed the tops of the trees, and one of the things Arthur always did was climb to the top so that he could look out across the countryside all around him and search for any kind of movement. About a month ago, a horde had come past, several miles away to the East. Around sixty or seventy Zombies, at a guess - just casually stumbling through the countryside as though they were ramblers out for a jaunt.
Arthur had hunkered down low, grabbed his binoculars and watched them.
He knew that Mary and Rosie would stay in the Farmhouse until he returned to give them the all clear, and that both knew better than to make any kind of noise, so was not undu
ly worried. Still, he had observed and watched the horde for over an hour in case any of them headed back this way, towards Arthur’s farm, and had only relaxed again when they were gone.
Thankfully, none of them had stopped, they had just stumbled on - headed for only the Devil himself knew where.
This day, the day Arthur’s whole world ended, there was nothing...same as always.
Lately, there was always nothing.
No life on the Internet, no signal on the Radio, nothing live on the T.V.
A small part of Arthur had begun to wonder whether it might be all over. If maybe the Zombies had started dying off or something and that was why he hadn’t seen any in a while? And if maybe, just maybe, what was left of the rest of the world was out there hiding, waiting for someone...him and his family perhaps...to go out there and find them.
It was at times like this that Arthur was reminded of the horde he had seen.
He didn’t know where it had been headed but wherever that was, Arthur knew that it was somewhere far away from here. For now, Arthur and his family were safe, this farm was safe, and here was where they were staying.
There was no-one around now, most likely, for hundreds of miles and where there was no life, so Arthur reckoned, it made sense that there would be no Zombies.
Unfortunately, in his semi-drunken haze, he forgot.
The dead didn’t think like that.
In point of fact, they didn’t think at all....
***
Arthur returned to the house about an hour later and as he did every day, gave his wife and grand-daughter the all-clear whilst reminding them to still be vigilant and not take any unnecessary risks. Mary sent Rosie out to play with her dolls, telling her not to move off the front step and to shout if she saw anything, and it was then, when Rosie was out of earshot, that she confronted him.
It was the same conversation they’d had numerous times before.
Mary believed they needed to move on and try and find someone else, some other sign of life; her argument being that she couldn’t continue to live like this any longer, all cooped up and just sitting here, waiting to die.
