by Woods, Mark
Ever since those first days when the Zombie Apocalypse had first began, they hadn’t been able to pick up any kind of signal on the radio, but this was probably, Mary argued, because they were out here in the middle of nowhere, out in the boondocks.
There was nothing keeping them out here.
They had vehicles, they had fuel. Maybe closer to one of the cities - not in the cities, that would be suicide - but close by, they might pick up a radio transmitter signal, some sign that they were not alone.
Arthur argued back that they didn’t need anyone else; that, for now, they were entirely self-sufficient here and perfectly safe.
Why give that up? He asked. Why leave somewhere that, for now, was perfectly safe for somewhere that might necessarily not be?
He didn’t tell his wife that she was echoing some of his own thoughts, and some of the self-doubt that he, himself, had started having recently – especially in light of their dwindling supplies.
It was bad enough, he thought, that she had plucked up the courage to dare to talk to him about this in the first place, let alone telling her that he thought she might be right...
Mary then went on to say that it wasn’t just about them, it was also about Rosie. If anything happened to either of them, their grand-daughter would be alone and if she was supposed to be the next generation, if she was supposed to go on and survive and hopefully have children of her own, then surely it made sense for her to be around other survivors, and sooner rather than later.
If nothing else, Mary argued, it would surely increase her chances of survival, for what was it they said about there being safety in numbers?
Besides, Mary continued, the girl was starting to get bored, and restless, out here on her own – needed to be around people her own age, if there were any left - and sooner or later would end up getting careless and stumbling into trouble. Surely it was far better that they move on so that she could begin to learn the dangers of this brave new world for herself and quickly start adopting the skills she would need to survive after the two of them were gone?
It was at this point that Arthur started to lose his cool.
How did they know there was even anyone else out there? He asked. How did they know there was even anyone out there to find?
Right now, he told her, was neither the time nor place to discuss such things. It was something they could think about later, much later, when their supplies started to get closer to running out and the decision was taken out of their hands.
He didn’t tell her that that time was rapidly approaching, and would probably end up getting here a lot sooner than she might think.
No, that was a conversation for later, he decided. After he had time to think a bit more about their situation and had had a chance to come up with some sort of a plan.
Mary, by this point, was seething mad.
In indignation, she asked Arthur whether he didn’t think it might not be a little bit too late by then, and then stomped outside to leave him to his own devices whilst she and their grand-daughter went off to feed the cows.
Mary had made it her job to try and keep Rosie protected through all this - distracted from what had happened, was still happening, in the world beyond their farm – but the time was fast approaching, she thought, when they would need to come clean to her about just how desperate their situation was.
And as for her husband, Arthur – well, it was high time he woke up and realised the truth. That this place they had once called their home was no longer the sanctuary it had once been, but was instead now a prison - with them as the prisoners, counting down the days till they died.
She could no longer live that way, Mary thought, and it wasn’t fair to make Rosie live that way either.
And the sooner her husband realised that, the better…
***
Arthur waited until Mary had left, slamming her way through the front door on her way out to the front porch, and then went back to his study to continue sorting through his magazines and drinking what was left of his Whiskey.
With no more than a few bottles left, he figured he may as well enjoy what was left before it was all gone. Soon, sitting there, surrounded by his few creature comforts, Arthur began to lose all track of time and before long, began to slowly drift off into his own little world...
When he came back to himself again, an unknown amount of time later, the first thing Arthur heard was his wife screaming. Quickly jumping to his feet, Arthur pulled himself together and headed towards the front porch where he kept his shotgun during the day - locked away safely so that Rosie couldn’t get to it, thus hopefully preventing any kind of unfortunate accident. This was a safety precaution he had learnt from his Father and which was all well and good, but did make for much slower access to his gun in the case of an emergency such as now...
For a second, he fumbled with the key – then suddenly the tumblers turned and the loaded shotgun now in his hands, Arthur began making his way outside and around the side of the house. When he got to where Mary and his grand-daughter were, it took him several seconds for his mind to register exactly what his eyes were seeing...
A lone Zombie had obviously made its way onto his farm.
At first, Arthur tried to understand how his wife, Mary, could possibly have been caught unawares - hadn’t he told her enough times to always be on the alert - but then he remembered that she had been mad at him, distracted.
His grand-daughter lay on the floor, bleeding out from a bite wound to the throat, and from her glassy eyes and cold expression, Arthur could tell it was already too late to try and save her.
Mary was still fighting.
A Zombie who had obviously been dead for quite some time - dressed in flannel pyjamas that, by now, were torn, stained and filthy with all manner of who knew what bodily fluids – held his wife by the arm and was biting into her shoulder. As she struggled to pull away, her foot slipped and her ankle turned entirely the wrong way.
Mary broke free but, as she did, she fell.
Hard.
As she tumbled to the floor, Mary’s head connected with the crazy paving that ran along the outside of the Farm house with a sickening crack. A spray of blood, and what could only be bits of brain, flew from her head. Mere seconds later, Mary’s feet began drumming on the floor, and her mouth started to froth as her body went into seizure.
Arthur stood and watched all this occur with cold, strange detachment.
As events unfolded in front of him, Arthur felt as though he were watching some kind of a bad horror movie. His brain obviously thinking that if it could only convince him that what he saw wasn’t real, then maybe, just maybe he could pretend that none of this was actually happening.
Except it was.
It all was and now, as Arthur watched, the Zombie started moving towards him; apparently sensing fresh meat now that both its other victims had passed on.
Almost as though he were in a trance, which right now he kind of was, Arthur automatically raised his shotgun and aimed it at the creature stumbling before him. Looking down seemingly from above and outside himself all at the same time, Arthur unthinkingly opened fire with both barrels.
A heady combination of shock, adrenalin and fear had rendered him almost sober and it was for this reason alone that his aim rang true.
Before the Zombie could even get a chance to close upon its newest victim, Arthur’s shot blew its head clear apart - the Zombie’s skull exploding outwards like an over-ripe watermelon, bits of that which had once made it human spraying out in a shower of blood, gore and decomposing brain matter.
As the now deceased and inanimate walking corpse collapsed to the floor, Arthur let his shotgun likewise fall from his hands. For a moment he just stood there, still in shock at how quickly everything had just happened – though in many other respects, it also felt as though he had been standing here forever. Finally, as the realisation of what he had just seen played out before him sunk in, Arthur began to scream.
It wa
s several seconds before he realised that no sound was coming from his mouth, even though in his head he still continued to scream.
Inside the confines of his mind, Arthur screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed until he thought he would never be able to stop.
Tears flowing down his face, he dropped to his knees.
Though his wife had still been alive only minutes before, Arthur could now see she had finished her death throes and was now no longer with him.
There was no hope left for his grand-daughter either.
She too was gone, he could tell – there was no need to check.
Both of the two most important people in his life were now hopelessly and irreversibly gone...and had he not made his wife mad - had he only gone off after her and apologised and admitted that she was right, that he agreed with everything she had just said - then maybe right now, he thought, the two of them would still be alive.
All this was all his fault.
Arthur felt consumed by guilt.
If only he had gotten out here sooner, he thought, or even not stopped to get his gun, then maybe, just maybe, he might have possibly saved them.
But as his Father had always said back when he were still alive, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride and besides, without his gun, chances were Arthur would most likely have probably died out here too.
Right now though, that didn’t seem like that bad of a thing. At least if I had died, Arthur thought, I would still be with my family right now.
Realising that these thoughts were getting him nowhere, and that the smell of fresh carrion was likely to carry on the wind and bring more Zombies onto his farm, Arthur, still caught up in his grief, instinctively began the laborious process of moving both their bodies.
He picked up Rosie first - both because she was the lightest, but also because she was the youngest. Though his wife, Mary, had seen more of life and her death was no less tragic, still, Arthur rationalised, if she were still alive, she would have wanted...no insisted...that he take care of their grand-daughter first.
Carefully, he placed them both inside the cow shed for now.
Arthur knew what he should do – on a sub-conscious level, he knew he should probably burn both the bodies to prevent them coming back – but that was something he didn’t think he could face just yet. Moving them, and putting them out of the way until he was in a better frame of mind to deal with them, was about all he thought he could manage right now. The most he thought he could cope with.
As he entered the barn, all three of his cows, lying in their stalls, barely looked up at him and just continued to lay there, strangely silent and unmoving.
At any other time, Arthur might have thought this unusual.
In his current cold, detached state, however, barely even able to function as a normal human being, working almost on remote control, today he didn’t notice.
Though a part of Arthur was still there, the main part of his conscious mind was currently absent.
Right now, Arthur was like a machine – a mindless automaton - simply going through the motions. It was for this reason, likewise, that he also failed to notice the smell - a combination of blood, death, decay…and something…something else...something that hung around the shed, tainting the very same air he was breathing in all around him.
The bodies of his family moved - out of sight and for now, at least, temporarily out of mind - Arthur returned back to the house.
Right about now, he thought, he needed another drink.
The hip flask he always carried with him was long since empty, and all he could think about now was the last few remaining bottles of Malt Whiskey that he had left.
Soon there would be one less, Arthur thought, fully intending to drink himself into a stupor in a bid to try and block out the pain and the memories of all that he’d just witnessed. Maybe if he could make himself forget, he told himself, then maybe, just maybe, he could pretend none of what he’d just seen had ever happened.
Certainly, he thought, it was worth a go…
He didn’t think he could remember a time when he had ever needed a drink quite so badly...
***
Arthur came back to full consciousness again, who knew how much time later. There was sick all down the front of his clothes where his body had begun rejecting and trying to expel the Whiskey he had been drinking earlier, and his eyes were now red and burned from all the crying he had obviously been doing in the midst of his drunken haze.
An empty bottle lay by his side, and from how sticky the floor around him was, Arthur reckoned he probably must have spilt at least half as much as he had drank.
As he lay there, collapsed in his study, he found himself thinking about how much of a mess he must look right about now, and about how mad Mary would be at him for getting in this state.
Then Arthur suddenly remembered what had happened all over again and instantly found himself wanting to burst into tears and start crying once more.
It was only the fact that his tear ducts had been completely drained dry during his recent drinking binge that stopped and prevented him from doing so.
Instead, he found himself starting to blubber and dry sob.
Arthur suddenly thought about the bodies and what he’d done with them, and realised that he needed to go back outside and take care of them properly before they decided to come back, if it wasn’t too late already.
With a panic, Arthur cursed himself for his stupidity, brought on by his grief. He had very little personal experience of how the Zombie virus worked, and no idea how long it took for the dead to reanimate, and no idea either of how long he had been sitting here drinking. Opinions on the internet, before everything had all gone silent, had all varied, and from what he remembered reading, everyone who had known anything had all seemed to have a different answer. Even if both of his wife and Grand-daughter had already come back, Arthur thought, he still couldn’t leave them out there with his cows.
He had to go back and sort things out, go clear up the mess that his own stupidity had caused and then, and only then, maybe, just maybe, he could start thinking about what he intended to do next.
Maybe he might decide to end it all; maybe, just maybe, he might end up choosing to follow both of them into the next life, he thought. Make the decision not to carry on, to end it all...but that was something to consider once he had dealt with this current situation first, he told himself, and not a decision he thought he was ready to make just yet.
Leaving by way of the front door, Arthur made his way back round to the cow shed at the rear of the farm, staggering as he did so – still reeling from the effects of the alcohol in his system.
Along the way, he picked up the shotgun from where he’d dropped it.
The stinking, maggot-ridden body of the Zombie he’d killed still lay there where it had fallen.
For obvious reasons, it did not stir.
Even in his shocked and drunken haze, Arthur had made plenty sure of that.
If only you could have saved your wife and grand-daughter, Arthur thought, then maybe you might have had something to be proud of.
“Shut up,” Arthur muttered to the inner voice inside his head. “Just shut the fuck up already.”
Thankfully, it did.
Arriving at the cow shed, Arthur paused to take a heavy breath and ready himself for whatever he might see inside. He had no idea quite what to expect, but hoped desperately that his wife and grand-daughter might still be dead and unmoving.
He didn’t think he could face it if they had come back.
The fact that they had both been bitten though, meant that the odds were stacked against him.
Slowly, and trying to make as little noise as was possible – not that easy in his drunken state - Arthur opened the door and briskly stepped inside.
The first thing Arthur noticed was the smell.
That he had not noticed it earlier beggared all belief.
The only thing Arthur could put that
down to was the post-traumatic shock he had been in when he had entered before. Now though, even as half-cut and three sheets to the wind as he was, it was all he could do not to gag as the stink of decay and rotting flesh slowly invaded all his senses.
It was a carrion smell, a dead smell.
A combination of decaying and decomposing flesh mixed with the heady aroma of bovine faecal matter.
Arthur had put the bodies of his wife and grand-daughter towards the back of the shed and, holding his nose, that was where he headed towards now.
As he did so though, what he saw there brought him to a sudden and immediate stop.
Maisy and Matilda, his two former prize winning Friesians, had come out from their stall. Both now stood, bent over the two, still unmoving, corpses of Arthur’s wife and grand-daughter.
It was from the two cows, not the bodies in front of them that the majority of the smell permeating in here seemed to originate.
With a shock, Arthur realised both cows were in the process of eating and consuming the bodies of his wife and grand-daughter and, by any God given right, should probably, no definitely, be dead themselves.
Both cows had had their stomachs ripped open, torn and bitten open no doubt by the zombie he’d killed outside, and pieces of their insides now dangled from beneath them. Arthur thought he could recognise something that looked like intestines dangling from Maisy and moving, swaying, as she continued to bite and chew.
From Matilda, pieces of the lining from one of her stomachs dropped and fell to the floor beneath her with a sickening splat, as the cow stuck her head deeper into his wife’s corpse; searching for the choicest cuts, the finest delicacies to be found within.
Her hooves and calves were covered in her own shit and, as Arthur watched, more splattered out the Friesian’s backside as her bowels let loose the more she ate. Arthur was horrified, sickened and repulsed by the sight before him but, more than that, he was also angry and apoplectic with rage at this act of desecration that both his cattle were involved in.
