“How do you know all this?” Jack asked, feeling uncomfortable.
“Death was my business for many years. I was an undertaker, you see. Not that it gives me any advantage or special knowledge. I’m just repeating what I know, and hope that it will help you on your way.”
Again, the same ominous feeling swept over Jack, like a shadow over the ground on a summer’s day.
George said nothing but took another long drink of his tea. His hands had started to shake.
“I’m not going to survive this new world. There is no place for the elderly. We slow you down.” He turned his head and looked at Jack with tears in his eyes.
“What do you mean? You’re fitter than me.” Jack tried to smile, but the pieces were beginning to fit together.
“Not for long. Find your way to London. Get your girl and make sure you tell her exactly how much she means to you. Every damned day.” George reached out and shook Jack’s hand. Doing so before Jack even realized he had offered it.
George turned and walked away without saying another word.
“George, George, wait,” Jack called, after finding the silence of the room too much for him to bear.
The living room was at the back of the house on the second floor. The kitchen was on the ground floor, along with a small dining room. Jack was moving down the stairs when he heard the first sounds of a struggle. Picking up speed, he hit the small hallway at a run and charged into the kitchen.
“George, you don’t have to do this …” he began, but words failed him the moment his brain processed the scene before him.
In his mind, Jack envisioned George killing his wife and then himself. What he saw was quite different. Mary was standing with her hands around George’s throat. Her head was tilted to one side. Her lips were pulled back exposing dentures, which had come loose at some point in time. Mary snarled and snapped, as her teeth found George’s aged, yet tantalizing flesh.
Without thinking, Jack strode forward and picked up the large cook’s knife from the counter top. He stabbed down through the back of Mary’s head. The blade pierced her skull with ease, and slid through the grey jelly that was her brain, before tearing through the skin between her cheek and nose.
The body went limp immediately and fell forward against George. The false teeth fell from her mouth and landed on the floor.
George wrapped his arms around his wife and held her still. He said nothing, but kissed her on the forehead and laid her down on the floor.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” George strained to speak. “The tea was supposed to kill us both. Poison.”
“Why?” Jack asked, confused.
“I told you. We are old. Mary has cancer, and I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease last June. Our days are numbered. Recent events just pushed up the date, that’s all.” George raised his head to look at Jack. His eyes were stained red with tears. “Don’t you worry about me. Go on upstairs. Lock the kitchen door, there is a key on this side you can use. Get some rest upstairs and leave.”
As he spoke, George walked towards Jack and helped usher him out into the hall. He placed the key in Jack’s left hand, and shook his right one, one last time.
“Thank you, Jack,” he said, and closed the door.
Jack stood and stared at his hands, more specifically at the key that lay in his palm. For a moment, he considered just opening the door and walking back inside. He didn’t. Eventually, he slid the key into the lock, turned it, and walked away.
The sun was going down and long shadows extended from the shambling creatures who seemed to be milling about in the street. Jack didn’t count them, but he guessed their numbers to be close to fifty. On both sides of the street, houses stood occupied. Lights illuminating their windows; providing safety to those inside, while serving as quite the draw for the undead. It was clear to see the houses illuminated with the brightest lights garnered the most attention from the hungry dead.
Moving up to the second, and eventually third floor of the house, Jack looked around. He felt oddly cold as he made his way through the rooms. The bathroom with its tiled walls and dated decoration. A bathtub in place of a shower, and a cupboard with a near endless supply of toothbrushes, mouthwash, toothpastes, and an assortment of medicines bearing both George’s and Mary’s names.
The main bedroom was a simple affair. A large, old, but terribly comfortable-looking bed occupied the majority of the room. Thick, white-cased pillows and a matching duvet covered the bed. The curtains were pulled back and the warm evening glow filled the room. There was no television, no sign of mobile phones, or anything else modern. A pile of books stood on both nightstands on either side of the bed, and a dresser occupied the far corner. Jewellery and watches, perfumes and aftershaves decorated the top.
Jack took it all in, turning around as he felt the peace of the room wash over him. Then he made the mistake of looking out the window and saw a man fighting off three very lively undead freaks. One of them was using the man’s own arm as a club, seemingly seeking to tenderize his flesh before it dug in for its evening meal.
Jack couldn’t bring himself to lie down in George and Mary’s bed. He didn’t know them from Adam, but they had saved him, and they reminded him of his grandparents. Instead, he moved out into the narrow hallway and into the second bedroom.
The room was smaller, but no less comfortable looking. The single bed was decked with the same thick, cloud-like pillows and duvet. Cream-coloured sheets and pale yellow walls; the room was a pastel overload but it worked. Jack sat on the bed, ignoring the chair in the corner of the room. He took off his shoes and looked at his feet on the plush carpet.
“Fists with your toes,” he said with a smile. The smile became a laugh, and before he knew it he was lying on the bed with tears in his eyes and a stitch in his side.
Scooting further up the bed, he lay for a while and realized just how fucked up life was becoming. George had been right. The world was changing, and as much as he hated what it was becoming, Jack had no interest in throwing in the towel just yet.
The window looked out onto several other houses, overlooking the rear of the property. The dead were milling about in the street, but that was not what held his attention. The rest of the world did that just fine.
Looking through the illuminated windows across the street, Jack gazed as he saw a woman in the kitchen, cooking a meal. Her husband was at the table with the kids. He could not see what they were doing, but in his mind, he saw them colouring together. One happy family. A few doors down, he saw a woman working out. Her body was jumping and moving, pushing weights around as she kept up with the instructions that played on her television. The final house that he could see had a couple fucking. They were standing up, the girl with her back against the wall, while the man held her there, his hips thrusting.
Jack averted his eyes, not in any mood to spy on someone’s fuck session, but it made him smile. The world was carrying on. The world would always carry on. People would always find a way.
Getting up from the bed, he thought about Sarah. She and her mother were trapped, but they were not gone. They too would find a way to survive.
Jack paced the room for a while, unsettled by the strange restful feeling that settled over his mind. He wanted to fight it. He wanted to push it away and go back to the panic and the fear. The uncertainty. It made more sense to him.
Instead, he ran a bath. He had not had a bath since he was a kid, so he made sure to put extra bubbles in it, and make it as hot as he could stand.
The water was close to scalding when he slid down into the tub, but it felt great. He gasped and gritted his teeth as he lay back, his spine moving through the hot water to rest on the still cold interior of the bath.
The lavender-scented mixture in the bath created a soothing steam. As the bath emptied, the water falling below the level of the drainage hole, he would fill it up again.
Jack had no idea how long he lay in the water, but he fell asleep twice.
/>
It was dark when Jack towelled his water-wrinkled body off and slid into bed. He cringed at the thought of putting his dirty clothes back on, but the idea of wearing an old man´s clothes, in particular his underwear, was equally unappealing. So Jack was naked when he slid between the sheets.
The bed enveloped him, and within moments, he was taken by sleep. Blissfully unaware, even if just for a few hours, of the continuing destruction of society.
Chapter 6
When Jack woke, the sky was no longer dark with the threat of a storm. The sky was cloudless, and a pale baby blue. The sun teasing of an appearance but not yet visible from his position.
He slid out of bed and stretched. The sleep had done him the world of good. Jack looked at his watch and gasped. It was almost eleven, which meant he had slept for thirteen hours straight. He looked around. After studying his blood-soaked clothes for a while, he decided that another man’s underwear was not such a bad idea. Dressing in the white bedroom, he found a pair of new briefs, still in the box, and a pair of black jeans that were only a little bit too big. The belt he found by the bed solved that problem, and a black, collared t-shirt completed the look. Socks were also not a problem, but shoes were a different story. Jack didn’t mind. His own were more comfortable anyway, and the blood that crusted over them had not yet leaked through to the inside.
Dressed, still feeling relaxed and ready for anything, Jack went downstairs. He paused half way down the final flight. He could hear snarls and growls coming from inside the kitchen. It only took a second for the rested and relaxed feeling to fall away.
Jack stared at the door, knowing it was George who made those noises. He had died, and was now back. Jack debated opening the door and putting the old man out of his misery. It was the least he deserved for his hospitality. Jack couldn’t do it.
Instead, Jack moved back to the second floor. The living room had a fireplace. A real, working, wood-burning fireplace. This included a full suite of tools, including a nasty looking fire iron. Jack lifted it from the rack. It was a heavy, old-school iron piece. The handle part of the same single lump of iron, twisted around to give it grip, before ending in a ball to add extra purchase. The business end was a fine point. Six inches or so behind the tip was a large barb that curled from the main shaft and added an extra dimension to the weapon.
Jack swung it in the room, and while it was heavy, he liked the feel of it in his hands.
Any lingering moments of rest and relaxation were blown away when Jack opened the front door and stepped out onto the street. It was early morning, but the freshly bled corpse of a young woman lay in the middle of the street. She was face down, the skin flayed from her body, the bones broken and roughly pushed to one side to allow whomever it was that was so hungry, to feast on her flesh.
The street was littered with the dead, and all seemed to turn at the scent of fresh meat. It didn’t take long before Jack got the chance to put his new weapon to the test. The woman came from his left, her mouth dripping with strands of meat. Half of her face was missing, the skin peeled away revealing oddly white teeth along her jaw.
Jack didn’t wait for the chance to ask her how the woman on the floor had tasted. He thrust the fire iron in front of him, and stabbed the snarling figure through the throat. Black blood jettisoned from the wound and as Jack pulled the iron free, yanking with two hands, the iron slid so far through the woman’s throat that the barb slid behind her neck. Jack pulled his weapon free in an explosion of cold flesh, blackened lumps of coagulated blood and bone. The head lolled backwards, gravity pulling the skull farther back, the flesh tearing more and more. The skull landed on the floor, followed a few moments later by the rest of the woman’s body.
Jack stared as the eyes turned towards him, the jaw still trying to chomp down on anything that came close to it.
There was no time to kill the thing because there were two more dead bearing down on him, and another cluster behind them.
Both sides of the street held equally unappealing options, but Jack knew he could not go back inside. He couldn’t hide. Closing his eyes for a second, he said what, for him at least, counted as a prayer. He opened his eyes and was already swinging his iron like a club. The skull of the first creature caved inwards, the force of the blow squeezing brain matter out through its nose. The speed of the swing carried on after it fell to the floor. It was then with a backhanded swing that Jack drove the sharp barb into the side of the second dead man’s head. The curl slid in through the temple and out through the eye socket. The skull tore as Jack pulled free, placing his foot on the thing’s chest to give himself extra leverage.
He was dripping with gore by the time he ran at the second group. Swinging the iron like a man possessed, he struck them down with a series of blows. Only one was a kill shot, but Jack didn’t care. The other five fell, and that gave him the window to escape, and that was all he was looking for.
Sprinting down the street, Jack refused to look at what was turning towards him. Jack put his head down and ran. He ran and swung at anybody or anything that came near him. He felt iron and flesh collide and the repeated shower of cold blood as it splattered against him. Everything moved in a blur. Jack had no idea where he was headed, or whom he took down, but by the time he looked up and found himself with enough room to breathe, his arms were numb, and his chest burned so bad he feared he would not be able to draw breath.
His fire iron was bent at the end, and the barb torn off at some point in time. It had been replaced by an ear, which had been impaled on the iron and forced farther down the shaft. Jack let the weapon fall from his hands as he leaned back against the small fence behind him. His hands hardly opened, cramped from holding onto the bar.
Looking around, Jack tried to understand where he was. The street was littered with cars, and a bus sat parked at the stop. The driver stared at Jack, his pale white face streaked with purple veins as he snapped and scratched at the window. Its throat was a mess of torn flesh and dried blood. There were others too, trapped on the upper level, seemingly unable to move down the stairs and out into the world.
Behind him was a children’s playground. Jack paused to catch his breath, but quickly turned away. The sight of so many tiny bodies was not something he wanted to dwell on. He saw people staring at him from inside the buildings. Mainly commercial properties. A Pakistani family watched from behind the walls of their shop. When Jack’s gaze made contact with them, they disappeared from view.
Others followed suit, hiding or pulling something across their field of vision as soon as they realized they had been spotted.
There was something else too. A tapping sound. Something that had something more behind it than the mindless thump of the hungry dead.
Jack looked around, but there was nobody on the street. Nobody alive, at least.
That was when his eyes returned to the bus. Sitting in the rear, her face pressed to the glass, was a woman. She stared at him, tapping away on the window. Every tap her hand made seemed to further agitate the creatures who were along with her for the ride.
Jack looked at her, and as soon as she realized he had seen her, a smile spread across her face. The relief that washed over her in the moment was so strong Jack could feel it.
He was stuck. He couldn’t turn away and leave her.
Bending down, he picked up his battle-hardened fire iron and walked towards the bus. The choice was a simple one. Take out the driver first. It was not as though he would have floored it and driven away with Jack as his new prisoner, but Jack didn’t want to get on the bus with that snarling mess still alive.
The driver was a large man in life, and the bloating brought on by the decay had seen him lodged behind the wheel. He strained and snarled as Jack approached, his head crashing against the glass window.
The closer Jack drew, the more agitated the thing became. The glass cracked and split under the pressure of the blows. Softened clumps of rotting flesh smeared the inside, and came close to obscuring the view
completely.
Then, with a final strike, the undead bus driver threw his head through the window. Glass shards dug into its flesh, digging deep gouges as the creature shoved its head farther and farther. Jack watched it, a strange, cold fascination growing within him.
He then raised his iron and drove it through the man’s head. A single, fluid jab, in one ear and out the other.
What freaked Jack out the most was that from all of the dead he had laid to rest, none of them screamed, or gave any sign of pain. He knew they were dead. That had been a worryingly simple thing to get used to. Yet, their complete silence at the moment of death, not even a gasp as the blow came. That made him shiver.
Moving around the front of the bus, he held the iron at the ready. Adrenaline surging through his body, pushing away the fatigue and muscle ache. There was one other death-walker, but its attention was directed towards the window of the laundrette, which was the building hidden behind the bus. Numerous scared faces looked out at him.
Jack did the decent thing and caved the thing’s skull in from behind. He could not do anything to help the people trapped inside. There were three other undead figures making their way through from the laundrette’s back room.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed to them.
He knew they couldn’t have heard him, unless they were part bat or some other weird shit, so he reasoned that the creatures must have growled at the same moment, for everybody turned around and screamed. They ran around like headless chickens, and before he even had the chance to consider smashing the windows to set them free, it was all over. They had barricaded the front door, but left the rear unguarded.
Turning his attention back to the bus, Jack climbed on board. The stench was atrocious. The odour of piss, shit, and vomit all rolled into one. The high temperature made the aroma all the more stomach-churning.
No Zombies Please We Are British Page 6
