Parker: The Story of an Apocalypse Survivor: COMPLETE SERIES

by Ben Stevens

  Parker pulled his exhausted body up onto the ladder, and then began to climb. Soon he estimated that he was approximately fifty feet above ground – and still the iron ladder with the circular metal struts periodically enclosing it kept going up. A fire-escape, obviously. It ran up (or down, depending on your point of view) alongside a large window on every floor.

  It ultimately led up onto a flat roof, which Parker clambered onto. The roof stretched off ahead of Parker. There was a small building in the centre of it. Parker walked towards it, tried the door and almost smiled when it opened.

  An old, tatty sofa facing a TV. A sink in one corner. Undrawn curtains either side of a wide, dirty window. (Moonshine flooding through this window, which was how Parker was able to see.) Magazines – a few mildly pornographic – piled up on a coffee table, a dirty coffee cup alongside. A well-thumbed deck of cards. A small room containing a toilet and sink.

  Home sweet home...

  If this wasn’t a janitor’s pad then he’d never been a janitor himself, thought Parker with hazy contentment. He shut the door behind him and there on the handle itself was a lock he just had to turn with thumb and forefinger. This room just kept getting better and better – and that sofa looked damn inviting.

  Parker laid down upon it, then taking out his gun and putting it on the floor where it would be in easy reach. But he was guarded by a locked door, at least – and this place was high up on top of a roof. He felt as safe as he could feel, in any case.

  Parker’s eyelids fell and darkness enveloped his brain...

  For a while.

  Most of the world had died and yet Carrie and he were still alive. As incredible as that seemed, still it was the truth. They awoke each morning in their house with the sealed windows on the ground floor and the reinforced front and rear doors, and they determinedly continued with the simple process of living.

  That very first night they’d realized that they were survivors, the school’s principal had come to pay them a visit. At approximately half-three in the morning, his bearded face covered with boils, still wearing his bowtie. He wasn’t bleeding from anywhere that Parker could see, as the thirty-six year old janitor of the school pointed his gun at the figure stood in the darkness just in front of him.

  Looked as though the principal had turned into a thing entirely ‘naturally’, first dying before reanimating as this hissing, boil-covered creature of nightmare. (Others came back as things only after they’d first been attacked and bitten by other things – this Parker had learnt from the reports on television.)

  ‘Ssssjjjohn,’ rasped the thing that had once been the most intelligent man Parker had ever met. Parker assumed the thing was trying to say his name. Parker’s hand shook slightly as he began to squeeze the trigger. Never fired a gun in his life before; but even he couldn’t miss from this close...

  This used to be a man I knew, respected and liked. I can’t do this...

  ...This thing will tear out your throat and then attack Carrie if you don’t act...

  The thing had moved forward so that the barrel of the gun was pressed hard against its high forehead by the time Parker managed to pull the trigger. Something in the darkness went flying out of the back of the thing’s skull, and then it almost slowly flopped down by Parker’s feet.

  Parker took a few steps past it, before vomiting almost perfunctorily onto the ground.

  That’s your first and last time for doing that, buddy. You might have to kill a hundred of these things and you’d better toughen up to that fact fast.

  First pulling the thing by its feet away from the front door, Parker then re-entered his small house and closed the door behind him. The smell of gun-smoke was still strong.

  ‘John,’ Carrie all but whispered, stood at the top of the narrow staircase.

  ‘It’s all right, Carrie,’ Parker replied, his voice sounding strangely distant even to his own ears. ‘I had to kill one of those things, that’s all. May have to kill a whole bunch more – I don’t know, yet.

  ‘Anyway,’ Parker continued, ‘why don’t you go back to bed?’

  But instead, Carrie came downstairs and they sat drinking coffee in the living room as the sun slowly rose on a desolate, plague-ridden but still beautiful world. The couple didn’t exchange many words, just looked at each other from time to time, Parker holding his gun loosely in his lap as he sat on a chair.

  Then, once it was light enough to see properly, he slowly rose.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ asked Carrie.

  ‘Better see about burying the principal already. Looks like it’ll be... hot, today.’

  ‘Oh...’ Carrie murmured, her blue eyes at once very wide. Then her expression reposed and she nodded her head.

  ‘Okay,’ she said firmly.

  Parker used a spade in his janitor’s hut to get what had once been the principal buried in the school’s playing field. Didn’t look like there was anyone else around, human or thing. High, blue, cloudless sky like a dome all around.

  ‘Hell of a nice day,’ declared Parker appreciatively.

  When he got back Carrie cooked him breakfast. Power still on – nuclear station a couple of miles away still operational, obviously. Anyone still manning it or was it (as Parker suspected) now running fully on auto? And as such, would it automatically shutdown at some point – or just go into meltdown? Parker had visions of surviving this whole zombie apocalypse gig only for Carrie and him to then dissolve in a great big mushroom cloud...

  Still, for the moment he was alive and well and facing the woman he loved over their small dining table. Eating bacon and eggs even though he’d shot and buried what had once been the school principal just a short while ago.

  Hadn’t affected his appetite none. Seemed as though he really was toughening up, as he knew that he had to.

  For Carrie.

  For himself.

  They were together and they were alive.

  Parker silently vowed that he would do whatever it took for that to remain so...

  ...When Parker awoke on the sofa he was crying. He swore bitterly, harshly, until the old familiar feeling of blackness sort of diminished. Outside the early morning was beginning to lighten and rain was falling heavily.

  Parker pulled himself off the sofa, and looking under the sink found several old pots and pans. These he first cleaned outside using rainwater and his hand, before placing them on the flat roof by the hut, so that they might catch the rainwater.

  Then he stripped naked, and took a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush from his rucksack prior to stepping back out into the downpour.

  He let the rain wash over him as he thoroughly cleaned his teeth. Raised his face towards the sky and opened his mouth wide open. Rinsed and spat; rinsed and spat.

  Back in the hut he found an old tea-towel and dried himself. Put on his torn, blood-stained clothes again. He’d find a clothing store soon enough, once he got to walking again.

  When the heavy rain stopped a couple of hours later, he went outside and carefully poured the rainwater collected in the pots and pans into his two large water bottles, so that they were again both full. Wasn’t exactly ‘A’-grade mineral water; but, what the hell, it was still perfectly drinkable...

  It was fully light when Parker scaled the ladder back down. He’d climbed up pretty high, he realised now. There was a hatch set in the flat roof and he guessed that this had been how the janitors had gained access to this hut.

  Back on the ground, Parker’s nerves were once again fully stretched. An expanse of desolate industrial buildings, overgrown yards, rusting chainmail fences topped with barbed wire...

  Parker spun round as he heard a vicious yowling – two wildcats were fighting, ripping each other to shreds with their claws...

  Parker walked on.

  A multitude of stacked steel boxes rising on his left; the sort of thing people had shipped furniture and such in when they’d moved abroad. The large boxes which must weigh many tonnes painted red, blue, orange and yello
w...

  Whatever was within them – possessions once precious to many different people – now possibly remaining locked away within the darkness forever...

  It was a couple of hours before Parker realized he was finally leaving the industrial area behind him. Entering into wide streets with houses and shops set well-back from the sidewalk. Far too open for Parker’s tastes; too much to continually try and scan, his hand in the inside pocket of his light jacket, there where he kept his gun.

  The sky blue and almost cloud-free; the cracked, weed-pocketed asphalt concrete under Parker’s feet quickly drying in the heat after the earlier downpour. A car half-mounted on the sidewalk, all its doors open.

  Parker looked closer and saw that there was in fact a corpse sitting in the driver seat, bent over so that the top of its almost shiny white skull was jammed against the driving wheel. Must have sounded the horn for a long time, until the battery had finally run flat...

  Parker realized that his thoughts were drifting. Stupid. That could get him killed. He had to remain firmly in the present. He again began looking all around him – even up at the sky, in case any pigeons might be circling.

  He didn’t have any sort of club but firing his gun into an attacking flock nearly always got a couple of the vermin, and served to scare the others away (they were primarily cowards, Parker had long since discovered) until such time as he could find a stout length of wood or something similar.

  After that, the pigeons tended just to fly away. Other animals, after all, made easier targets – Parker had found a dog that had clearly been pecked to death, and then partially devoured, on several different occasions.

  Parker walked for a while longer until ahead of him, set against that blue sky, he saw a large white cross. A crucifix. A church – built from red brick, with stained-glass windows. Circular stone steps leading towards the two large wooden doors – which were open.

  Cautiously, Parker approached. Looked inside: a tiled floor, rows of pews either side of the central aisle – and ahead an altar lit up by tall candles placed either side of it.

  ‘What?’ murmured Parker.

  A figure detached itself from the gloom close to the rear of the church. A figure that began walking towards Parker quicker than a thing could have done.

  Parker hurriedly stepped backwards, nearly falling down the sweeping stone steps as he pulled out his gun.

  ‘Hey – whoever you are, I’m warning you that I’ll...’ he began, before the figure moved in to the light shining through the open wooden doors at the church’s entrance.

  A bearded, thick-set man with piercing blue eyes, dressed in a black shirt and trousers and wearing a white dog-collar. He surveyed Parker almost with amusement as he approached, before stopping to stand by one of the pews closest to the entrance.

  ‘You can come in, if you wish,’ said the priest, his voice soft but carrying a definite authority. ‘But before you do, I’ll ask you put that gun back in your jacket pocket. I wouldn’t normally allow it in my church under any circumstances, only I recognize that these circumstances are not exactly what you might term... usual.’

  Parker blinked several times; then almost without thinking he jammed the gun back in the pocket of his jacket and entered inside the church, to where the priest was stood waiting with his hand outstretched.

  There was a large figure of Christ on the cross, hanging from a beam that ran above the centre aisle between the two rows of pews. Parker gazed up at the agonized face, the bleeding wound raw on one side of the stomach, as he seated himself next to the priest at the end of one pew.

  After shaking Parker’s hand and introducing himself as ‘Father Tom Sullivan’, the priest had suggested that they have a seat. Something in Father Sullivan’s manner almost compelled Parker to do whatever was said. For the moment, he couldn’t recall a time when he’d felt so –

  Safe?

  ‘What’s your name, might I ask?’

  ‘Parker, Father – John Parker.’

  ‘Might I call you John?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The priest was quiet for a few moments, evidently thinking about his next question. Then he asked –

  ‘Have you been on your own, John, this whole time? I mean, travelling like this?’

  Parker nodded slowly.

  ‘Yes, Father. I mean, I was married, and my wife also looked to be a... survivor. I stayed in my house, barricaded the windows and doors and such. Then, one day...’

  Another pause.

  Finally the priest said, gently –

  ‘Yes?’

  Parker felt the tears pricking. Almost angrily, he wiped the back of one hand across his eyes.

  ‘I left her, Father!’ he said passionately. ‘That’s what I did! She was sick in bed – she had the boils and she was becoming delirious with fever. She said if she showed any signs of turning, I was to...’

  Again, Parker hesitated. Unable to finish verbally, he patted the inner pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ said the priest in that calm, authoritative voice. ‘And of course you couldn’t, and so instead you fled.’

  Nothing could stop the tears, now. They ran thickly down Parker’s face.

  ‘I’m the worst type of coward,’ he said wretchedly.

  Briefly, gently, the priest patted the back of one of Parker’s hands.

  ‘You understand, of course, that you were placed in one of the hardest of all situations,’ declared the priest, his tone of voice somehow neither excusing nor criticising Parker for his actions. ‘Who knows how another man might have acted, given your circumstances.

  ‘It was easy, almost, when they said on the television and radio that those things are not your friends, relations or loved ones,’ continued the priest quietly, thoughtfully. ‘That they must be destroyed by causing severe trauma to the head. But to actually do something like this, to something that was once a friend, relation or loved one...

  ‘Well,’ said the priest then, emitting a sigh, ‘I do not think you are the first person ever who found that committing such an action was quite beyond them.’

  The tears had stopped, at least. The priest had handed Parker a tissue at the same time as he was talking and Parker had wiped his face. Parker felt slightly calmer, now able to talk and think a little more subjectively.

  ‘I just keep thinking of her, Father,’ he said quietly, shoulders slumped as he stared unseeingly ahead. ‘Keep picturing what she looks like now – and those things –’

  Before Parker could continue, there came a sudden groaning from the entrance of the church. Parked turned his head and shoulders around so quickly that he felt something pull. The familiar, sickly-sweet smell hit him at the same time as he saw the old couple begin to shuffle inside the entrance.

  The old man had only one arm; the other, his right, ended in a bloody stump just above the elbow. The old woman was dressed in a skirt and hat, some of her intestines trailing down by her feet. She held onto the man’s – her husband? – remaining arm as though they were both out for a stroll.

  As he began quickly to get to his feet, Parker realized that the priest had barely even glanced behind him. But they were sat on a pew only a few rows inside the church; as slowly as the old things were moving, they’d soon reach here.

  ‘Father,’ muttered Parker, his hand instinctively going for his gun then (as he remembered where he was) hesitating.

  ‘At first,’ returned the priest, a slight smile showing as he stared unblinking towards the altar, ‘they came for me. So, I was forced to adopt somewhat... tough... measures, if you will.’

  From under the pew upon which they were sat, the priest briefly produced a circular length of hard-looking wood, topped one end with metal. As Parker stared alternately at this and then back at the old couple, trying desperately to comprehend what was happening, Father Sullivan replaced what was obviously a club beneath the pew.

  He then motioned for Parker to sit back down, which after a moment Parker cautious
ly did.

  ‘I fashioned such a... thing to put under almost every pew. Sometimes twenty or more of those things came for me – because the door to this church was open every day, and every evening, as it has been right from the time it was built.

  ‘As a boy I grew up in a somewhat tough neighborhood; I learnt to fight before I received the calling to become a priest,’ continued Father Sullivan. ‘So using only the type weapon I was obliged to create, I was at least able to repel, for want of a better word, those – things – who sought to devour me.

  ‘I had already realized that I’d been spared that plague sweeping the world, of course. I’d sat beside the beds of the dying, giving them the Last Rites and so forth. And then, on a number of occasions, I’d seen the dead rise...’

  The priest turned his head so that his narrow, almost startlingly blue eyes met Parker’s own. Here was a man who’d seen as many horrors as Parker had himself (understood Parker) – yet still that gentle smile remained in place...

  Parker looked back again and goddamn if the things weren’t both slowly going down on one knee, genuflecting before the figure of Christ on the cross. Then, the old couple slowly shuffled into one of the pews at the very back of the church, before bowing their heads and mumbling some words which Parker realized were prayers...

  ‘They come here nearly every day,’ declared the priest, still looking at Parker. ‘As for years they have. I knew them – well, before...

  ‘But,’ continued the priest, ‘you were interrupted. It seemed to me you were about to make some observation, concerning these ‘things’, as they were so crudely named, that now so vastly outnumber us remaining survivors.’

  Parker nodded.

  ‘I see this, now, and also recently –’

  He hesitated, trying to gather his thoughts but not wanting to tell the priest about the security guard named George and that horrific rape-cellar.

  ‘I... helped, in a manner of speaking, a thing recently; and she thanked me,’ declared Parker slowly, choosing his words carefully. ‘She also stopped another thing from attacking me; I was almost as close to those two things and one other as I am to you now, Father – and I had no need for my gun.’