Fear of the Dead (Novella): Contagion

by Woods, Mark

  Other Terrorist attacks, all across the rest of London, were also slowly starting to be reported.

  Official statements released by the authorities claimed that the reports of rioting coming from elsewhere in the city were nothing to do with the Terrorist attacks taking place and instead, were just a re-occurrence of the Brexit riots that had taken place a couple of years before as people took this opportunity to take advantage of the current crisis and confusion. Rebelling against the days and weeks they’d just had to endure being locked in their own homes.

  No-one believed them.

  Already other Terrorist attacks were starting to be reported as happening in other cities all up and down the rest of the country. Whole scale violence, riots and looting all seemed to follow in the wake of these attacks and it was too much to think that all this might just be coincidence.

  Local authorities, already stretched to breaking point trying to deal with the H1N1-Z crisis, were ill-equipped to deal with so many mass uprisings occurring all at once, especially hot on the heels of a global pandemic, and were simply unable to cope, and as things rapidly began spiralling out of control in more and more cities all up and down the U.K, people saw that those supposedly in power were beginning to lose control and really began to panic...leading to even more mass chaos and confusion.

  At the same time as this was all happening in the U.K, International News Agencies started reporting Terrorist attacks in other countries all across the globe as well.

  Everywhere the story was just the same.

  There would be some kind of massive explosion and then, in the wake of it, everyone just went crazy.

  Video footage posted on sites like YouTube appeared to back up the earlier reports on Twitter that those attacking were the Dead returning to life, and those posting started trying to warn people that this was the start of a real-life Zombie Apocalypse. But too many people watching these videos refused to believe what they were seeing. They had been fooled before with bogus Emergency broadcasts and the like, become numb to the whole concept of a Zombie Apocalypse through their mass exposure from films, books, video games and T.V shows, and though they could not deny that something serious appeared to be happening, possibly even another 9/11, still the idea of it being Zombies seemed a step of the imagination too far. On top of the recent global pandemic that they were still only just starting to recover from, this was all just too much for them to deal with. By the time anyone realised the truth - that a small minority who had been trying to enlighten the rest of the World had actually been right all along - it was too late.

  All of the government agencies, all across the world, who, rather than working together, had all this time instead been merely trying to contain their own localised problems, finally, too late, began realising their mistake - that this was a global disaster on a scale even bigger than the recent pandemic, and not just something isolated to their own individual countries - and from that moment on, it was game over.

  The World, as we knew it was finished and, in its place, a New World Order had arrived. It was not the meek who were destined to inherit the Earth anymore, it seemed.

  It was the Dead...

  To this day, no one really knows who was responsible for all that happened that day. All anyone knows is that the Terrorist attacks on Z-Day were the result of a series of highly co-ordinated and well thought out attacks.

  Funnily enough, now, years later, finding out the truth no longer seems like such a big priority anymore. I have heard some up here on the roof top with me claiming it was North Korea, striking out at all their enemies in one big hit, reducing the whole World to chaos and disorder within a matter of hours the way they had threatened to for years. I have heard others say it was the Middle-East, ISIS or some such – not least because they seemed to be the countries least affected by the H1N1-Z virus and the global pandemic that preceded Z-day, but personally, I find all that to be a bit too convenient and trite for my liking - especially when you take into account the fact that many of the countries in the Middle East allegedly were just as badly affected by what happened on Z-day as the rest of all of us.

  What’s that saying about not shitting on your own doorstep?

  I suppose it could have been North Korea – I mean because of their media silence even before everything else that happened, no-one really knows how badly they were affected by Z-day, but if you’re going to lay the blame with them, you might as well blame China for they the ones most people still blame for the H1N1-Z outbreak.

  There was even some talk that it might have the work of that Eco-Terrorist group, Terra, who had supposedly been responsible for the Brexit riots a few years previously.

  From what few reports we could gather from up here in our apartment block before everything all went tits up, there wasn’t a single place on the planet that didn’t suffer some kind of attack or another back on Z-day.

  Just because we didn’t hear any reports coming out of either North Korea or China, doesn’t mean they weren’t affected too.

  It doesn’t prove shit.

  The fact is when things all first starting going the way of the pear, they did so all across the globe and like a chain of dominos, once things had started, there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop it.

  If it was ISIS or the Middle East, I suppose at least there’s some comfort in the fact that their plan to destroy the world had ended up backfiring on them as well.

  Chapter nine: Kevin’s big day out

  For Kevin Dowley, Z-day almost came as a relief.

  Fifteen days.

  That was how long he’d been stuck inside, in lockdown.

  Fifteen days.

  And by now, he had just been starting to go stir-crazy.

  But then Z-day had happened, and now everything had all changed.

  He had watched the news, he had seen the Terrorist attacks all across the globe, and then he had watched as the Dead and the infected started attacking both the living and the healthy and inside, just a little part of him, a small part of him had rejoiced.

  This had been what he had been waiting for all his life, he thought.

  The Zombie apocalypse.

  Kevin was a big horror fan.

  Loved horror.

  He especially loved Zombie movies so for him, this was like a dream come true.

  He was prepared for this.

  He had been playing Zombie computer games for years, had played the new re-release of the classic video game, Resident Evil 3 on the hardest level recently and completed it, and so knew exactly what to do.

  Go for the head and avoid getting bit.

  Easy.

  Easy-peasy.

  On the day he first decided to venture out, Kevin woke up as normal.

  Looking out of his bedroom window that looked down on the street outside, Kevin could see the usual signs of life.

  The same few people he saw everyday at this time, up and about, walking around…only this time, this morning, something was different, something had changed.

  Looking down Kevin could tell, even from here, that the people walking around down there were dead.

  You could tell just from the way they hung their heads, like it was too much effort to try and keep them up, not to mention the way they were lumbering down the street like a drunk after a twenty-four bender, that those he could see down there were no longer in the land of the living.

  Time, thought Kevin Dowley, to go to work.

  Kevin allowed himself a little smile, and then turned and walked away from the window before any of those things out there could see him.

  Yes, he thought. Time to go break some heads…

  ***

  At first, Kevin hadn’t really minded the lockdown.

  It had just felt like an extended holiday.

  Okay, he wasn’t supposed to leave the house other than to go shopping for essentials, or to partake in the one hour of outside exercise the government wanted everyone to have, so in some ways it was like being u
nder house arrest, but it was still better than having to go to work and under the government’s Stay at home scheme, he was still getting 80 percent of his wages - essentially for just sitting around, doing nothing.

  All in all, it was win-win really.

  Or so he had thought at first.

  But then Kevin had started to get bored.

  It wasn’t like he didn’t have plenty to do – he had his Xbox, and loads of books he had downloaded onto the Kindle app on his iPad that he still hadn’t read - it was just that every day had started to blend into one and feel all the same.

  It was like living in limbo, he thought.

  Or else, his own personal version of that old Bill Murray film, Groundhog Day.

  He had started to lose all sense of time, all track of even what day it was, and had found himself sleeping in later and even napping during the day because he was just so bored of being cooped in all day long.

  The only good thing about it all was that he had started to eat proper meals. Kevin thought he had probably never eaten so well.

  Usually, apart from his two days off, normally he barely had time to scoff down a ready meal, or cook something out of the freezer between shifts, before he had to go back to work, but for the past fifteen days or so he had actually begun eating properly.

  Kevin was a chef - and as bars, pubs, and restaurants had been one of the first to close when the hashtag:lockdownnotlockdown had been announced, he had been one of the first to have been put into ‘furlough’.

  But even eating proper meals had started to get boring.

  It just wasn’t the same when you were only cooking for one.

  By the time fifteen days had passed, Kevin had about been at the end of his tether.

  So when Z-day arrived, it almost felt like a relief.

  ***

  Kevin had been watching the news reports and although for most people it had probably taken a while for it all to sink in, unlike them he had known straight away what was happening.

  The Dead were coming back to life to feast on the living.

  Kevin had been waiting for this all his life.

  For him, it was like a dream come true.

  He had been preparing for this, training for this all his life, he thought, and now, finally, he was going to get a chance to put that training to good use.

  For the past three days, he had watched and waited.

  He had seen the infection spread much quicker and faster than the H1N1-Z virus that had brought about his self-imprisonment; had seen the virus finally reach his own neighbourhood, and had stayed locked inside when he heard the screams of his neighbours as they fell victim to those they had once thought of as their family and friends, but now, he thought, it was finally time to go out and brave whatever was waiting for him outside.

  It was time for him to clean up the neighbourhood.

  On social media, and the news – what little remained of it now - he had seen the pictures and videos of the army and the police taking on the Dead in the big cities, had seen them being overrun and knew no-one was coming to save him.

  No, if anyone was going to deal with the Dead running loose outside his home, he thought, that only left him.

  His plan was a simple one.

  Clear the small street where he lived of the Dead, raid his neighbour’s houses for anything that might be useful – food, essential medical supplies etc – and then formulate a further plan from there.

  Once he knew how well he was stocked up, he could then decide whether or not to fortify his house and stay put, or whether to venture out and hit the road in search of other survivors.

  Either plan had its merits.

  But whatever he decided, first he had to clear the immediate area of the Dead.

  While there were still Zombies out there, all around him, Kevin knew it would be suicide to try and leave.

  First, he had to give himself some breathing space.

  After grabbing a quick shower, Kevin started to suit up.

  A keen cricket player, the pub he worked at even had their own team, Kevin already owned shin-pads, elbow pads, a helmet and thick, heavy gloves. All this he donned now to give him protection from bites.

  He wasn’t sure how this particular virus was spread, but he knew from all the movies he’d watched, and video games he’d played, that in them a bite from the Dead was usually fatal and what’s more, made you become one of them.

  His cricket kit might slow him down, but at least it would offer him protection.

  Next, Kevin picked up his cricket bat.

  This wasn’t the States, he didn’t have easy access to a gun, and so figured his cricket bat was the closest thing he had to a melee weapon.

  Trying to attack the Dead with a knife would mean getting a bit too up close and personal for Kevin’s liking, and he didn’t intend to take any chances.

  At least armed with the cricket bat, it meant he could strike them from a distance and from past experience, he knew, a cricket bat was perfectly capable of dealing some damage.

  He had seen a couple of his teammates take a cricket bat to the head on past occasion, in unfortunate accidents, and every time they had required hospital treatment, so Kevin was fairly confident that it would serve as a perfectly adequate weapon against the Dead.

  Finally satisfied he was as ready for action as he was ever going to get, Kevin unlocked and unbolted his door and readied himself to step outside.

  ***

  Outside, the same Zombies he’d seen earlier were still lumbering up and down the street.

  From everything Kevin had seen, there were two types of the Undead – the newly infected that were fast Zombies like those ones in 28 Days Later, and those that had been dead a while that were slower like something out of an old black and white George Romero movie.

  Kevin had been watching carefully the last few days, and observing, and as far as he could tell the only ones in his neighbourhood were the slow Zombies.

  If he had seen any of the faster ones, then he might have rethought his plan.

  As he left the safety of his house, Kevin paused to hack up a lung.

  He had been starting to feel a bit rough the last week or so.

  He’d been waking up with a sore throat in the mornings and a couple of times during the night, had had trouble breathing – all symptoms, he knew, that were associated with the H1N1-Z virus, but he didn’t think that’s what it was because he’d done a good job of staying as much away from anyone else as he could and so far was showing no other symptoms.

  Kevin just figured the only reason he felt rough was because he had been so cooped up all the time these past couple of weeks, and had been stuck breathing the same air for most of the day other than his daily walks, that was all.

  Nothing more.

  Nothing to worry about.

  A small boy started staggering towards him, no more than about nine or ten, blood all over his face and all round his snarling mouth, and Kevin swung his bat up to meet him. The cricket bat connected with a healthy- sounding ‘splat’, and the boys head flew back at an impossible angle.

  For a second the young boy stood there, motionless, and then the boy fell and collapsed to the ground, his head now nothing but a bloody, gory mess.

  Strike one, Kevin thought, even though that was entirely the wrong sport.

  Another figure started moving towards him.

  The boy’s mother, Kevin figured, judging from the floral dress she was wearing and the similar features on her face.

  That’s okay, Kevin thought. Like mother, like son.

  He swung the bat once again.

  This time, his victim didn’t go down first time.

  The woman’s head swung back on her neck, just like her sons, but then just as quickly swivelled back round to face him again, angrily snarling at him as she started moving towards him once more to attack.

  Kevin swung his bat once more, and this time connected with her jaw.

  He heard a sharp crunch as
several of her teeth exploded in her mouth and saw he’d managed to dislocate her jaw.

  But still she came at him.

  Kevin swept her feet out from under her with his own foot, and then as she went down, brought his bat down directly on the dead woman’s face for a third time.

  Blood, and dark black ichor, sprayed up at him as he brought his bat down again and again and again, rendering her features into no more than a bloody mass of pulverised meat, gristle and bone.

  At some point, the woman stopped moving.

  Kevin didn’t even notice.

  He just kept hitting, and hitting, and hitting until…

  Kevin heard a tortured scream and looked up just in time to see another Zombie approaching – faster than the others he’d seen before, but still lumbering towards him like a drunk.

  Kevin waded in to the attack once more.

  This time, the elderly gentleman attacking him went down a lot easier.

  His arm starting to get a bit tired, Kevin didn’t stop until the elderly gent’s face was likewise a bloody, gory mess – just like the other two Zombies he’d killed before him. Looking down, Kevin saw his cricket gear was now no longer white, but splattered all over with red.

  Bits of blood, and gore, and pieces of what he took to be brain coated the end of his cricket bat.

  Glancing around him, Kevin saw there were currently no other Zombies around him. The three he’d killed had obviously been the only ones out here for now, but he was sure there’d be more around soon.

  If nothing else, the old man’s tortured cry before he’d attacked would no doubt, before long, attract more to this area.

  It was time to go inside, Kevin thought. Time to go shopping…

  ***

  Kevin spent the next hour raiding his neighbours’ homes.

  The first couple of houses he entered were empty with no occupants inside.