by Tim Lebbon
And that was it.
“What’s on the other side, Dad?”
Buttons clicked in, the picture fizzled and changed, BBCI, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, there were no others. But if there were, they probably would have contained the same image. The government notice, the scrolling words that should have brought comfort but which, in actual fact, terrified Jack. “I wonder how long it’s been like that,” he said, unable to prevent a shiver in his voice. “Dad, what if it isn’t changing.”
“It says ‘Please await further news.’ They wouldn’t say that unless they were going to put something else up soon. Information on where to go or something.”
“Yeah, but that’s like a sign on a shop door saying ‘Be back soon.’ It could have been there for months.”
His dad looked down at him, frowning, chewing his lower lip. “There’s bound to be something on the radio. Come on, I think I saw one in the kitchen.”
His mum glanced up as they entered and Jack told her what they had seen. The radio was on a shelf above the cooker. It looked like the sort of antique people spent lots of money to own nowadays, but it was battered and yellowed, and its back cover was taped on. It crackled into instant life. A somber brass band sprang from the speakers.
“Try 1215 medium wave,” Jack said. “Virgin.”
His dad tuned; the same brass band.
In six more places across the wavelengths, the same brass band.
“I’ll leave it on. Maybe there’ll be some news after this bit of music. I’ll leave it on.”
They tried the telephone as well, but every number was engaged. 999, the operator, the local police station, family and friends, random numbers. It was as if everyone in the world was trying to talk to someone else.
Twenty minutes later Jack’s dad turned the radio off. They went to check the television and he switched that off as well. His mum laid down on the settee and Jack washed the cuts on her arms and the horrible wound on her shoulder, crying and gagging at the same time. He was brave, he kept it down. His mum was braver.
Later, after they had eaten some more food from the fridge and shared a huge pot of tea, his dad suggested they go to bed. No point trying to travel at night, he said, they’d only get lost. Besides, better to rest now and do the final part of the trip tomorrow than to travel all night, exhausted.
And there were those things out there as well, Jack thought, though his dad did not mention them. Dead things. These fuckers are everywhere. Dead cows, dead birds, dead insects, dead grass, dead crops, dead trees, dead hedges… dead people. Dead things everywhere with one thing in mind—to keep moving. To find life.
How long before they rot away?
Or maybe the bugs that make things rot are dead as well.
There were two bedrooms. Jack said he was happy sleeping alone in one, so long as both doors were kept open. He heard his mother groan as she lowered herself onto their bed, his father bustling in the bathroom, the toilet flushing… and it was all so normal.
Then he saw a spider in the corner of his room and there was no way of telling whether it was alive or dead—even when it moved—and he realized that “normal” was going to have to change its coat.
Night fell unnaturally quickly, but when he glanced at his watch in the moonlight he saw that several hours had passed. Maybe he had been drifting in and out of sleep, daydreaming, though he could not recall what these fancies were about. He could hear his father’s light snoring, his mother’s breathing pained and uncomfortable. What if something tries to get in now? he thought. What if I hear fingers picking at window latches and tapping at the glass, nails scratching wood to dig out the frames? He looked up at the misshapen ceiling and thought he saw tiny dark things scurrying in and out of cracks, but it may have been fluid shapes on the surfaces of his eyes.
Then he heard the noises beginning outside. They may have been the sounds of dead things crawling through undergrowth, but so long as he did not hear them shoving between plastic stems and false flowers, everything would be fine. The dark seemed to allow sounds to travel farther, ring clearer, as if light could dampen noise. Perhaps it could; perhaps it would lessen the sound of dead things walking.
The night was full of furtive movements, clawed feet on hard ground, sagging bellies dragging through stiff grasses. There were no grunts or cries or shouts, no hooting owls or barking foxes screaming like tortured babies, because dead things couldn’t talk. Dead things, Jack discovered that night, could only wander from one pointless place to another, taking other dead things with them and perhaps leaving parts of themselves behind. Whether he closed his eyes or kept them open he saw the same image, his own idea of what the scene was like out there tonight: no rhyme; no reason; no competition to survive; no feeding (unless there were a few unlucky living things still abroad); no point, no use, no ultimate aim…
… aimless.
He opened and closed his eyes, opened and closed them, stood and walked quietly to the window. The moon was almost full and it cast its silvery glare across a sickly landscape. He thought there was movement here and there, but when he looked he saw nothing. It was his poor night vision, he knew that, but it was also possible that the things didn’t want to be seen moving. There was something secretive in that. Something intentional.
He went back to bed. When he was much younger it had always felt safe, and the feeling persisted now in some small measure. He pulled the stale blankets up over his nose.
His parents slept on. Jack remained awake. Perhaps he was seeking another secret in the night, and that thought conjured Mandy again. All those nights she had sat next to his bed talking to him, telling him adult things she’d never spoken of before, things about fear and imagination and how growing up closes doors in your mind. He had thought she’d been talking about herself, but she’d really been talking about him as well. She’d been talking about both of them because they were so alike, even if she was twice his age. And because they loved each other just as a brother and sister always should, and whatever had happened in the past could never, ever change that.
Because of Mandy he could name his fears, dissect and identify them, come to know them if not actually come to terms with them. He would never have figured that out for himself, he was sure.
What she said had always seemed so right.
He closed his eyes to rest, and the dead had their hands on him.
They were grabbing at his arms, moving to his legs, pinching and piercing with rotten nails. One of them slapped his face and it was Mandy, she was standing at the bedside smiling down at him, her eyes shriveled prunes in her gray face, and you should always name your fears.
Jack opened his mouth to scream but realized he was not breathing. It’s safe here, he heard Mandy say. She was still smiling, welcoming, but there was a sadness behind that smile—even behind the slab of meat she had become—that Jack did not understand.
He had not seen Mandy for several months. She should be pleased to see him.
Then he noticed that the hands on his arms and legs were her own and her nails were digging in, promising never, ever to let him go, they were together now, it was safe here, safe…
“Jack!”
Still shaking, still slapped.
“Jack! For fuck’s sake!”
Jack opened his eyes and Mandy disappeared. His dad was there instead, and for a split second Jack was confused. Mandy and his dad looked so alike.
“Jackie, come with me,” his dad said quietly. “Come on, we’re leaving now.”
“Is it morning?”
“Yes. Morning.”
“Where’s Mum?”
“Come on, son, we’re going to go now. We’re going to find Mandy.”
Her name chilled him briefly, but then Jack remembered that even though she had been dead in his dream, still she’d been smiling. She had never hurt him; she would never hurt him. She would never hurt any of them.
“I need a pee.”
“You can do that outside.”
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“What about food, Dad? We can’t walk all that way without eating.”
His dad turned his back and his voice sounded strange, as if forced through lips sewn shut. “I’ll get some food together when we’re downstairs, now come on.”
“Mum!” Jack shouted.
“Jackie—”
“Mum! Is she awake yet, Dad?”
His father turned back to him, his eyes wide and wet and overflowing with grief and shock. Jack should have been shocked as well, but he was not, not really that shocked at all.
“Mum…” he whispered.
He darted past his father’s outstretched hands and into the bedroom his parents had shared.
“Mum!” he said, relief sagging him against the wall. She was sitting up in bed, hands in her lap, staring at the doorway because she knew Jack would come running in as soon as he woke up. “I thought… Dad made me think…” that you were dead
Nobody moved for what seemed like hours.
“She was cold when I woke up.” His dad sobbed behind him. “Cold. So cold. And sitting like that. She hasn’t moved, Jackie. Not even when I touched her. I felt for her pulse and she just looked at me… I felt for her heart, but she just stared… she just keeps staring…”
“Mum,” Jack gasped. Her expression did not change because there was no expression. Her face was like a child’s painting: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, no life there at all, no heart, no love or personality or soul. “Oh Mum…”
She was looking at him. Her eyes were dry, so he could not see himself reflected there. Her breasts sagged in death, her open shoulder was a pale bloodless mass, like over-cooked meat. Her hands were crossed, and the finger she had pricked so that he could study her swarming blood under his microscope was pasty gray.
“We’ll take her,” Jack said. “When we get to Tewton they’ll have a cure. We’ll take her and—”
“Jack!” His father grabbed him under the arms and hauled him back toward the stairs. Jack began to kick and shout, trying to give life to his mother by pleading with her to help him, promising they would save her. “Jack we’re leaving now, because Mum’s dead. And Mandy is all we have left, Jackie. Listen to me!”
Jack continued to scream and his father dragged him downstairs, through the hallway and into the kitchen. He shouted and struggled, even though he knew his dad was right. They had to go on, they couldn’t take his dead mum with them, they had to go on. They’d seen dead people yesterday, and the results of dead people eating living people. He knew his dad was right but he was only a terrified boy, verging on his teens, full of fight and power and rage. The doors in his mind were as wide as they’d ever been, but grief makes so many unconscious choices that control becomes an unknown quantity.
Jack sat at the kitchen table and cried as his father filled a bag with food and bread. He wanted comfort, he wanted a cuddle, but he watched his dad work and saw the tears on his face too. He looked a hundred years old.
At last Jack looked up at the ceiling—he thought he’d heard movement from up there, bedsprings flexing and settling—and he told his dad he was sorry.
“Jack, you and Mandy… I have to help you. We’ve got to get to Mandy, you see that? All the silly stuff, all that shit that happened… if only we knew how petty it all was. Oh God, if only I could un-say so much, son. Now, with all this… Mandy and Mum can never make up now.” Bitter tears were pouring from his eyes, no matter how much he tried to keep them in. “But Mandy and I can. Come on, it’s time to go.”
“Is there any news, Dad?” Jack wanted him to say yes, to hear they’d found a cure.
His dad shrugged. “TV’s the same this morning. Just like that ‘Be back soon’ sign.”
“You checked it already?”
“And the phone and the radio. All the same. When I found your mum, I thought… I wanted help.”
They opened the front door together. Jack went first and as he turned to watch the door close, he was sure he saw his mother’s feet appear at the top of the stairs. Ready to follow them out.
It was only as they came to the edge of the grotesquely cheerful garden that Jack saw just how much things had changed overnight.
Looking down the hillside he could recognize little. Yesterday had come along to kill everything, and last night had leeched any remnants of color or life from those sad corpses. Everything was dull. Branches dipped at the ground as if trying to find their way back to seed, grasses lay flat against the earth, hedgerows snaked blandly across the land, their dividing purpose now moot. Jack’s eye was drawn to the occasional hints of color in clumps of trees or hedges, where a lone survivor stood proudly against the background of its dead cousins. A survivor much like them.
Nothing was moving. The sky was devoid of birds, and for as far as they could see the landscape was utterly still.
“Through the woods. Back of the house. Come on, son, one hour and we’ll be there.” Jack thought it would be more like two hours, maybe three, but he was grateful for his dad’s efforts on his behalf.
They skirted the garden. Jack tried desperately not to look at the cottage in case he saw a familiar face pressed against a window.
Ten minutes later they were deep in the woods, still heading generally upward toward the summit of the hill. The ground was coated with dead leaves—autumn in spring—and in places they were knee-deep. Jack had used to enjoy kicking through dried leaves piled along pavements in the autumn—his mother told him it was an indication of the rebirth soon to come—but today he did not enjoy it. His mum was not here to talk to him… and he was unsure of what sort of rebirth could ever come of this. He saw a squirrel at the base of one tree, grayer than gray, stiff in death but its limbs still twitching intermittently. It was like a wind-up toy whose key was on its final revolution. Some branches were lined with dead birds, and only a few of them were moving. There was an occasional rustle of leaves as something fell to the ground.
Grief was blurring Jack’s vision, but even without tears the unreality of what was on view would have done the same. Where trees dipped down and tapped him on the shoulder, he thought they were skeletal fingers reaching from above. Where dead things lay twitching, he thought he could see some hidden hand moving them. There had to be something hidden, Jack thought, something causing and controlling all this. Otherwise what was the point? He believed strongly in reasons, cause and effect. Coincidence and randomness were just too terrifyingly cold to even consider. Without reason, his mum’s death was pointless.
His dad kept reaching out to touch him on the head, or the shoulder, or the arm, perhaps to make sure he was still there, or maybe simply to ensure that he was real. Occasionally he would mumble incoherently, but mostly he was silent. The only other sound was the swish of dead leaves, and the intermittent impact of things hitting the ground for the final time.
Jack looked back once. After thinking of doing so, it took him several minutes to work up the courage. They had found an old track that led deep into the woods, always erring upward, and they were following that path now, the going easier than plowing across the forest floor. He knew that if he turned he would see his mother following them, a gray echo of the wonderful woman she had been yesterday, her blood dried black on her clothes, smile caused by stretched skin rather than love. She had pricked her finger for him that Christmas, and to the young boy he’d been then, that was the ultimate sign of love—the willingness to inflict pain upon herself for him. But now, now that she was gone, Jack knew that his mother’s true love was something else entirely. It was the proud smile every time she saw him go out to explore and experience. It was the hint of sadness in that smile, because every single time she said goodbye, somewhere deep inside she knew it could be the last. And it was the hug and kiss at the end of the day, when once again he came home safe and sound.
So Jack turned around, knowing he would see this false shadow of all the wonderful things his mother had been.
There was nothing following them, no one, and Jack was pleased.
But still fresh tears came.
They paused and tried to eat, but neither was hungry. Jack sat on a fallen tree and put his face in his hands.
“Be brave, Jack.” His dad sat next to him and hugged him close. “Be brave. Your mum would want that, wouldn’t she?”
“But what about you, Dad?” Jack asked helplessly. “Won’t you be lonely?”
His dad lowered his head and Jack saw the diamond rain of tears. “Of course I will, son. But I’ve got you, and I’ve got Mandy. And your mum would want me to be brave as well, don’t you think?”
Jack nodded and they sat that way for a while, alternately crying and smiling into the trees when unbidden memories came. Jack did not want to relive good memories, not now, because here they would be polluted by all the dead things around them. But they came anyway and he guessed they always would, and at the most unexpected and surprising times. They were sad but comforting. He could not bear to drive them away.
They started walking again. Here and there were signs of life, but they were few and far between: a bluebell still bright among its million dead cousins; a woodpecker burrowing into rotting wood; a squirrel, jumping from tree to tree as if following them, then disappearing altogether.
Jack began to wonder how long the survivors would survive. How long would it be before whatever had killed everything else killed them, like it had his mum? He was going to ask his dad, but decided against it. He must be thinking the same thing.
In Tewton it would be safe. Mandy had said so, Mandy was there, and now she and Dad could make up for good. At least then, there would still be something of a family about them
.
They walked through the woods and nothing changed. Jack’s dad held the shotgun in both hands but he had no cause to use it. Things were grayer today, blander, slower. It seemed also that things were deader. They found three dead people beneath a tree, not one of them showing any signs of movement. They looked as though they had been dead for weeks, but they still had blood on their chins. Their stomachs were bloated and torn open.
