The One Percent (Episode 3): The One Percent

by Heller, Erik P.

  “Have a look on the map and see if you can work out which village that is,” I suggested.

  “Can’t we just aim at it?”

  “We can’t go cross-country if that’s what you mean.”

  “Wish we’d brought the tractor now.”

  “Really? You’d rather be in your tractor than in the lap of luxury with me?”

  “Well, I suppose this thing’s alright,” she said. “Bit posh for my liking.”

  “Like me?” I asked. I wanted to know if Daisy knowing what I was would stop her wanting to get to know who I was.

  “Well, you’re certainly an acquired taste, Frank, but you seem like a good egg, what-ho, so I think I’ll stick with you for the time being.” She put on her fake posh accent again when she said that. “As long as you don’t mind slumming it with a farmer’s daughter?”

  “You are so far from slumming, you have no idea,” I said. “I like you, Daisy. You’re a decent, hardworking person that any man would be proud to be with.”

  “Good. Well, I’m glad we got that sorted out. Now, are we heading to that church or what?”

  “We certainly are, but when I expire halfway up that tower, it’s your fault.” I gave her what I hoped was a lopsided grin and she rewarded me with a beautiful, full-on smile.

  Looks like a lopsided grin rather than smiling for me from now on.

  When we got to the church, we had managed to avoid most of the small village it served. It stood on the very outside of it with only a couple of old houses close by. I guessed the vicarage was one of them.

  “Should we check out the houses first, Frank?”

  I glanced over. I knew we should but after the house at the gun shop, I’d lost my desire to go into other peoples’ houses and steal their stuff, just in case I stumbled onto something horrific again. Or at least anything more horrific than a few Groaners.

  “Maybe when we’ve been up there.” I pointed at the steeple which looked a hell of a lot higher close-up than it had from a distance.

  As we walked past the house closest to the church, a figure ran head first into the window, cracking one of the glass panes. From the dog collar, I guessed it must be the vicar, but he didn’t seem to be getting ready to deliver the sermon anytime soon. He had a large chunk of his face missing so his jaw bone and teeth were showing through the wound which was now crusty with dried-on blood.

  Even with his facial disfigurement, he still managed to look like he was trying to suck the window out of the frame or lick it completely clean.

  I tried to look inside but I couldn’t see anyone else, and Mungo, who until we stopped had been fast asleep on the back seat of the car, leaped out of the car in a rush when we’d stopped and started to growl and yap at him. That was only going to draw more attention to us, so I picked the little fellow up and carried him away, only putting the wriggling little bugger back down when we were out of sight.

  The church was very much a traditional-looking building and I’m sure somewhere they had a little guidebook to say which bits were Norman, and which bits weren’t, but right then, all we really wanted to do was find a way inside, find a way up, and see what we could see. I guessed we would probably be able to see a good distance.

  The church graveyard surrounded the building, still looking relatively well-trimmed apart from a couple of rougher areas. I was glad the long dead weren’t going to be joining in the catastrophe going on around us, but when I thought about it, I thought that would be silly. I mean, the dead scrabbling up through six feet of earth? Who could imagine that ever happening!

  That was when the impossible happened.

  No, not really.

  It’s actually when we got to the door that we found out about the impossible.

  As in impossible to get open.

  Big, heavy, wooden doors with black-painted metal studs through and metal straps holding the wood together. If we’d brought a hand grenade, then maybe that would have opened it, but a pig sticker, a handgun, and a shotgun had no chance.

  “Shall we take a walk around, there might be another door,” Daisy said when our feeble attempts had come to nothing.

  I wished then I’d gone scavenging instead.

  IX0X0X0X0X0X0XI

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Daisy was kicking the door to what I guessed was the vestry. It was another solid door but minus all the metalwork, so it looked as though it was more likely to open than the main door.

  “Trying to get in, what does it look like?” Daisy said with more than a hint of irritation in her voice.

  “OK, OK, I was only asking. Does it feel like it’s going to give?”

  “It’s moving but it’s so heavy I’m not sure if it will or not.”

  “Maybe it will if we both shoulder charge it.”

  Daisy looked me up and down as if to cast some doubt on my ability to put enough strength behind a shoulder charge to even make the door rattle a bit let alone smash it to smithereens.

  “What?” I asked, feeling a bit miffed that she might be doubting my door-smashing ability.

  “We can try I suppose.”

  “You don’t sound like you rate our chances very highly.”

  “Well … let’s see, shall we? Line up then.”

  I lined up like a good boy doing as he was told. I knew my place.

  “After three?” she said.

  I nodded and when she had counted down, we threw ourselves at the door with all our weight and strength.

  Bloody thing didn’t move an inch.

  “Again?” she said.

  I rubbed the top of my arm but nodded anyway. She’d already nearly broken one of my arms, so she might as well help me break the other.

  She counted down to three, but as Daisy turned in to shoulder it, I changed my mind and gave it a good kick with the flat of my foot, extending my leg right through the kick and with a very satisfying crack, the piece of wood with the lock in it stayed where it was, but the rest of the door swung inwards with a ghostly creak.

  I hadn’t really given what we were doing a lot of thought beforehand but I was, when I did think about, immensely pleased that the church wasn’t full of the villagers, sheltering where they could. Or even an undead version of the villagers. That would have been worse.

  Nobody shouted an objection or started groaning so I stepped through, pushing the door all the way back.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go and see what we can find.”

  “I hope the next door isn’t locked. I’m knackered,” Daisy said behind me.

  It wasn’t. A quick tour around the vestry itself provided nothing of interest, but when we came out through that door, the opposite side of the church bore a door which, when we opened it, led to a steep set of stone stairs.

  “You sure you want to do this?” I asked, not relishing the idea.

  “Oh, come on, lazy bones.”

  I took that as a yes.

  By the time we got up as high as we could go, I was sweating buckets and panting like a dog after a ten-mile run. Daisy pushed open the door and stepped through. I stayed inside and asked her if it was safe. My head for heights wasn’t great at the best of times so a hundred feet up with no safety rail was my world’s worst nightmare.

  “It’s windy but it’s fine,” she said loudly over the sound of a stiff breeze that didn’t exist down at ground level but was rushing and whistling through the gaps in the ornate stone rail that stopped unwise visitors from walking off into midair and a certain death.

  I crept out slowly, having to fight against the wind as it tried to blow the door shut again.

  Eventually, I managed to get out onto the narrow walkway that ran around the tower where the steeple joined. I looked around for something to stop the door closing on us. I really didn’t want to get trapped up there.

  Opting to slip off my jacket and use that to stop the door from blowing shut, I stepped out onto the walkway, staying as close as I could to the steeple side rather than t
he rail side.

  I mean it looked substantial and all that but it’s probably a couple of hundred-year-old mortar keeping it in place so there was no way I was going to go leaning over with all my weight on it.

  Mungo, who had scampered ahead of us on the stairs and was waiting patiently by the door when us unfit humans made it there, ran off around the first corner once he’d had a substantial sniff of the air and the walls and had anointed the church building with his own version of holy water.

  Daisy had also disappeared around the first corner and I walked slowly after her, one hand leaning on the spire at all times.

  “Frank, come and look.” She called from around the corner. I’m glad it wasn’t an emergency because I was having to move very slowly indeed and was starting to get a little nauseous.

  Finally, I got around the corner to where she was standing. Mungo, having run all the way around came back and sat by my feet.

  “What is it?” I gulped back the rising taste of bile in my throat.

  “The fantastic view. Look. I reckon that must be Swindon over there.” She pointed off to the west, where the large white industrial units that seemed to have cropped up everywhere suburban before the shit hit the fan, caught the sun, and almost seemed to glitter in the distance. Long gone were the days when distant cities and towns were spotted by their church towers piercing the sky.

  In all truth, the last thing I was interested in was visiting any sort of densely packed urban area. The plan of steering clear of the big towns and cities had worked so far. Yes, we’d met with Groaners but not many. Swindon was home to a lot of people, therefore, for the foreseeable future, it was home to thousands of Groaners.

  Not somewhere I would be planning to visit anytime soon.

  One thing I did wonder was how many survivors were there in a place like that? Given what we had seen so far, my guess was not very many.

  Seems like everyone is part of the one percent now.

  I wasn’t sure that was a line that might endear me to any other survivors, so I decided to keep it to myself.

  “Swindon. Yes, I think steering clear of there would be a good idea,” I said, still edging around the walkway. Far below, I could see the vicarage we had walked past earlier. I couldn’t see the vicar any more, I guess he had given up trying to suck the window now the prospect of a meal had passed him by. Daisy had vanished around the corner again with Mungo hot on her heels. I tried to stand up straight and at least pretend that I was looking out for signs of life, but every time I took a step closer to the edge, my legs went wobbly, and my head began to swim. I stepped quickly back each time, and I resumed my crawling, sidling pace around the tower.

  “Frank, come and look at this,” Daisy yelled from around the corner.

  “Be there in a minute,” I said, as I approached the corner. When I poked my head around, she was halfway along the walkway, leaning over the edge which made my stomach lurch. I wanted to reach out, grab her, and pull her back away, then yell at her for being so stupid, but I realised that it was me being stupid.

  She was obviously much more comfortable with heights than I was which, in truth, wouldn’t be difficult as I was bloody petrified.

  Eventually, I managed to sidle up to where she was standing, but that was me done. Mungo looked at me with that cocked head look dogs give you when they can’t work out quite why you are being such a pussy. I ignored him. I don’t need a nag in my life, especially not a little Jack Russell.

  “What can you see?” I asked, trying not to let my voice tremble as much as I was.

  Daisy turned her head to look at me. “Come and look.”

  “I can’t. Amnesia. No not amnesia, fear of heights whatever that’s called.” I couldn’t think straight. I just kept picturing myself tipping head first over the edge and landing head first on the ground. I reckoned it must be some kind of overblown self-preservation impulse that only very sensible people have. For once, at least in my mind, being sensible was an advantage.

  “You mean vertigo?”

  “That’s the one. So, what can you see?”

  She turned fully to face me, leaning back on the stone rail which suddenly seemed very flimsy to me.

  “Is that vertigo like the constipation you had back at my farm?”

  “No. This is real. Can’t you tell?”

  “Well, you do look a bit pale, and you’re trembling, and sweating a bit now you mention it.”

  “There you go then,” I said, “that proves it.”

  “OK. I suppose it does. What I can see is a camp, Frank. Well, a couple of tents and another campervan. Maybe that’s who was firing the flares last night?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Just over there,” I noted the lack of precision, “on the edge of some trees and by the side of a road.”

  “Can you see anyone?”

  “Nah, I thought I saw one of the curtains twitch on the campervan but that could have just been the wind blowing.” She turned back to look at me. “Should we go down and introduce ourselves?”

  “No,” I said, probably too quickly as Daisy looked a bit surprised.

  “Why not?”

  I had to take some time to come up with an answer to what was, after all, a perfectly fair question. Something inside me had changed since we picked Steve Simms up alive and I ended up throwing him out of the tractor to his doom.

  I would always have said that I would help anyone before this all kicked off, and I would have, but I was warier now. I’d seen the TV and read a book or two. It was always the survivors who were the real problem.

  The Groaners were slow and frankly pretty stupid. Literally mindless in their pursuit of fresh meat. They were predictable. You knew that if you came up against a Groaner, it would attack, and you could be ready for that.

  The people I’d come across had, so far at least, been pretty sound, with the obvious exception of Steve Simms and Jamie and the more I’d thought about them, the more I’d come to realise that Steve was just trying to survive and get home. His way of going about it had been his downfall. But he had put me off approaching anyone else without being as sure as possible that they weren’t a gun-toting lorry driver intent on stealing my ride.

  Jamie on the other hand, I had no explanation for. I’m not religious, but I had to wonder how any just God could kill off most of the human population, and let someone like Jamie survive, even if it wasn’t for very long.

  “Let’s just watch for a bit, Daisy. See what we can see first.”

  “Well, you can’t see anything from back there. Come forward a little bit just so you can see. I promise I won’t let you fall.”

  I looked at Mungo and I swear that four-legged monster flicked his head toward the edge. It could just have been a twitch, but I reckon that dog understood every spoken word and nuance of human body language and was daring me to step forward. I’d be OK as long as I didn’t turn back and see him with his paws over his head, not daring to look himself.

  For a while, I stood there, constantly battling with myself not to reach out, grab Daisy’s jacket, and drag her away from the edge. It was almost obsessive but then my fear of heights was like that too.

  I was obsessed with not falling for a start.

  So, I stood still, fighting to keep my arm down, and heaving in deep breaths every time she moved while she was hanging over the rail.

  All I could see was the top half of the tents and the whole of the campervan which I thought was probably enough to work out if there was anyone around or staying in them. The tents looked in good condition, so I assumed they hadn’t been up long.

  I got a bit bored after a while to be honest, as nothing was happening, so I started to look around a little more widely, even getting brave enough to wander around a corner and see what I could see. That side looked over the village. Lots of thatched roofs and local stone buildings, but from what I could see, no people, at least none who were making themselves known. That didn’t surprise me either after what I’
d seen so far.

  When this thing had hit it had evidently hit quickly and took down a lot of people in a very short time span. The people who were left alive, a week or so into the outbreak, were either out and about, trying to get somewhere they hoped might be safe, or were sitting tight with the supplies they had to hand and hoping.

  Much as that prospect was what had kept me back at Lanchcombe for so long, I was glad I wasn’t doing that now. Much better to be out and trying at least to do something positive to secure my, our survival, than sitting in the dark, waiting for my food and water to run out before I was either forced out of the front door or forced to do something to end the misery.

  That was something I didn’t really want to think about too much.

  Over the years the black dog of depression had settled on my shoulders from time to time.

  That was a big no-no for discussion around the Lanchcombe household dinner table, so by and large I’d dealt with it myself, but at least a couple of times I’d found myself staring at the wooden cross beams out in the old barn where my father kept his useless Daimlers, wondering if I could find a different use for them.

  The beams, not the Daimlers.

  I shook my head to clear those thoughts away. I felt, considering the circumstances, the lack of sleep, and the irregular eating, pretty good. Optimistic that we could achieve what we wanted to, and get north, away from the masses.

  I didn’t suppose, looking down on the village right then, that it would have looked much different from the way it would have looked before this all kicked off.

  It was only small, as in tiny, much like Lanchcombe village. Maybe a little smaller but not much. Chances are the place would have been this deserted anyway on a weekday.

  Village life in the UK wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Barely any transport, no shops or pubs in many villages, and weekend visitors from the cities buying up all the property, so the locals couldn’t afford to buy.

  I had often wondered how long it would be before there was a village that was entirely made up of weekenders so there was no local population left at all and it stood deserted all week.