Ultimate Undead Collection: The Zombie Apocalypse Best Sellers Boxed Set (10 Books)

by Joe McKinney

  ‘Don’t know if I’d want to survive if everyone else was gone.’

  Drew looked at him in disbelief. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I’ll get myself tooled-up and—’

  ‘But why do you need a gun if everyone else is dead?’

  Drew sighed. ‘Kieran, man, have you not seen enough films? There’s always something needs shooting at. Jeez.’

  ‘Well if that’s the case I definitely don’t want to be the only one left alive.’

  ‘So what happens next?’ Marc asked, ignoring him. ‘You’ve got your safe place and your weapons – whether or not there’s anyone else left to shoot – now what?’

  ‘Supplies. I’d get myself a truck or a van, and I’d load it up with food and water. Biggest one I could find. Maybe even a delivery truck from Waitrose, ready stocked, something like that. I’d get as much as I could together, then stash the lot of it away.’

  ‘You wouldn’t need that much if you were on your own,’ Kieran suggested.

  ‘Have you seen how much this fat bastard eats?’ Duncan laughed.

  ‘Probably wouldn’t be on my own for long,’ Drew continued. ‘You’ve really not been paying attention, have you Kieran? I might start out on my own, but there’s probably going to be a busload of fucking gorgeous female survivors coming over the hill at any moment.’

  ‘And you reckon they’re going to look at you sitting there in your underpants with a farmer’s rifle in your lap, shoving a bloody Waitrose pork pie down your throat, and think staying with you’ll be a good move? Think again, mate, think again!’

  ‘Power!’ Drew shouted when the laughter had died down. ‘Forgot about that. I’d need to get some kind of generator hooked up. Wouldn’t have to be anything fancy – just a small petrol-fired generator to start with, enough to power the lights, keep me warm, and let me play Xbox.’

  ‘Wouldn’t need Xbox, mate,’ Duncan said. ‘You might be playing live action Left 4 Dead if things really get that bad.’

  ‘That’d be cool.’

  ‘You think? Be fucking terrifying, I reckon.’

  ‘So what then?’ Kieran asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What happens next? You’re all set up, probably on your own. So what happens after that?’

  ‘Nothing. It’d be paradise, mate. No distractions or complications. No one telling me what to do or where to be all the time. Bliss.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you get bored?’

  ‘I’d have plenty to do.’

  ‘You’ll run out of games and films eventually.’

  ‘Maybe after a few years.’

  ‘But you would run out eventually.’

  ‘And there’s the loneliness,’ Marc added, picking up on Kieran’s point.

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘I think it’ll be harder than you’re making out.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what then,’ Drew said, grinning, ‘I’ll come back here and drag in a few shop window dummies to keep me company while I drink myself stupid. I’ll call them Kieran, Dunc and Marc. I’ll write their names on their foreheads in black pen so I remember which one’s which.’

  ‘So then, Kieran,’ Duncan said, ‘I’ll ask you again. What would you do?’

  Kieran thought for a moment. ‘What Drew said, I guess,’ he answered, laughing as he got to his feet. ‘Now, as none of you tight buggers are going to put your hands in your pockets, does anyone fancy another drink before the world ends?’

  #

  The conversation in the pub had continued for a while longer, drifting back into surreal territories on more than one occasion. The four work colleagues had talked about the various ways they thought the world might end, with conversation then turning to all the ways they’d seen it happen on film.

  It was just over two weeks later when it happened for real. All the noise and bluster they’d imagined never came to pass. Only a fraction of the immediate chaos and devastation they’d envisaged actually happened. Most people simply dropped dead as if they’d just been switched off. A little noise, panic and blood first, of course, then nothing but silence. Survivors of the infection which swept around the world were few and far between. If people were looking in the wrong direction – or not looking at all – they might even have missed it. Bizarrely, that was exactly what happened to Kieran. The end of the world crept up on him and tapped him on the shoulder, and he didn’t even notice.

  The working day had begun like any other Tuesday. Kieran was first at the office, as usual. He’d driven in along the Pentwyn Road, enjoying the early morning sun, hoping it would last until home-time. Autumn was coming, and winter would be here soon after that. Too soon. Short days and long nights. Winter could be a bind in this job. The research and development workspaces were, by necessity, large, windowless, soulless places. Kieran hated how he’d often arrive at work in the dark on a winter morning, then not leave again until gone five when it would be pitch-black outside. Some days he didn’t get to see any daylight at all. It made him feel like a bloody vampire.

  But it wasn’t the lack of light which was bothering him this morning, it was the heat. He couldn’t understand why people did it: one cool day – not even a cold day, mind – and they’d crank up the heating to furnace-like levels, then go home without bothering to turn it back down. They’d all deny doing it if he asked them, of course. They weren’t bothered because by the time they’d all dragged themselves into work, he’d have sorted the temperature again. Grumbling to himself, he adjusted the thermostat then sat down to check his emails.

  It never ceased to amaze Kieran just how much crap ended up in his inbox overnight. The system filtered out and deleted the obvious rubbish, so there was a fair chance that every message which got through to his account might be important and had to be checked. He wanted to develop his own kind of spam filter: one which would detect and remove the things which really wasted his time… multiple invites to the same meetings from different people, countless requests for information he’d already provided, reports linked to projects he’d long since ceased to have any involvement with, inane conversations between people who didn’t understand the difference between ‘reply’ and ‘reply to all’… At this time of the morning everything annoyed him. He fired off an abrupt reply to an infuriating colleague from another department, suggesting that if he’d read his previous reply, he’d have found all the information he was asking for now. He paused just before he clicked ‘send’. Too hasty. Too risky. He deleted his reply and rewrote it using far less confrontational language. A slanging match in front of the rest of the team was definitely not what he wanted this morning.

  An error in a formula in an Excel spreadsheet kept Kieran occupied for far longer than it should have. He’d wasted the best part of half an hour before spotting a rogue comma in place of a period. He thought it frustrating that it had taken him so long to find, and also that such an inordinate delay could be caused by a single tiny mistake. Just one character out of place had prevented a whole stream of calculations from being completed. It was the same with everything he did, really. Attention to detail was of paramount importance, and there was no margin for error. That was one of the reasons he liked to get in before everyone else. The quiet gave him chance to get a head start before the room filled with other people and their constant chatter and noise. Well, usually it did, when he wasn’t being distracted by stupid bloody schoolboy errors in simple spreadsheets.

  The others were really late.

  He couldn’t remember anyone saying they were going to be in late today. They’d all left as normal last night, and no one had said anything about doing anything different this morning. Drew and Marc should definitely have been here by now. Maybe they’d got stuck in traffic? He’d have got up and looked out of one of the windows, had there been any. Leaving the office would have taken too much effort, so he returned his attention to his emails, chuntering angrily because
although he’d replied to all the messages he’d received this morning, as yet no one had got back to him with responses to any of the questions he’d asked. If I took as long as the rest of them, he thought, there’d be hell to pay. He remembered back to his most recent trip to Japan, to the firm’s head office. This simply wouldn’t have been allowed to happen there. Everything felt like it was calculated down to the second in Japan. He’d hoped to bring back some of the Japanese work ethos with him, but his efforts hadn’t gone down well. ‘Look outside, lad,’ one of the old hands on the production line had said to him. ‘What do you see? This is Welsh Wales, man, not Toyko!’

  Another fifteen minutes passed. Kieran was starting to get genuinely concerned now. His colleagues were no longer just slightly delayed, they were seriously late. And the fact it was all of them turned his concern into something resembling mild panic. Am I the one who’s in the wrong place? Am I supposed to be somewhere else? Was today the day of the offsite meeting? He frantically checked and double-checked his diary. It wasn’t like him to be this disorganised…

  Nothing. A blank screen. No scheduled meetings.

  He started to feel a little better when he remembered Drew having said something about running diagnostics first thing before the production line reached full capacity, but the temporary relief disappeared again quickly because the fact remained, everyone else had failed to show for work.

  He fished his mobile from his pocket, checked for messages, then dialled Marc’s number. It rang and rang, eventually switching to voicemail. Kieran cancelled before leaving a message, worried he’d sound like a nagging old woman. He tried Drew’s number next. Same. No reply. He didn’t like it when his routine was messed-up like this. He wasn’t obsessive-compulsive or anything like that, but he did like logic and order to be maintained. As a software engineer, he’d learnt to think methodically and predict logical outcomes, and what was happening this morning just wasn’t making sense. There was probably a simple, straightforward explanation for all of this, but he couldn’t find it. Maybe there’d been an accident since he’d arrived? Any snarl up on the A48 would inevitably impact the traffic trying to get onto the business estate.

  Kieran angrily shoved his chair under his desk. He headed for the door, phone still in hand. The signal strength was poor this morning. Maybe that was it? Maybe they’d been trying to call him but hadn’t been able to get through? Bloody Vodafone. Sometimes he thought it would be easier to go up to the roof and shout rather than try to get through to anyone on this network. He tried a few more numbers as he walked. Mom and Dad, a couple of friends, his sister, his other half… still nothing.

  Christ, it was quiet on the landing outside his office.

  All the noise he’d expected to hear – the chatter from the canteen, the rumble of machinery from the production line downstairs, the hustle of people scrambling to get to their desks on time – was absent. Just the background hum of the building in its place: the low groan of the air conditioning.

  Kieran soon found other people.

  He walked into the canteen, then stopped in utter disbelief. Bodies. There were bodies everywhere. One of the canteen staff was slumped against the wall behind her till, face pressed against the plaster, blood dribbling down her chin and onto her white apron, dripping on her name badge. A little further ahead was one of the guys from the production line. It took Kieran a few seconds to recognise him, so agonised was the expression on his lifeless face. Blood pooled around his mouth which hung open in a never-ending scream. At a table nearby sat one of the HR managers, slumped forward in a chair surrounded by the corpses of several visitors. They were young and smartly dressed, probably here for interviews, he thought. The last wisps of steam still snaked up from their unfinished drinks.

  And there, right on the other side of the room by the window, facedown on the carpet, was Andrew.

  ‘Drew?’ Kieran said as he stood over him. He cringed, his voice seeming to echo endlessly off the walls. He said his friend’s name again… still no response. Kieran knelt down and looked around, hoping someone else would come along who could explain what the hell was going on. He reached out and rested a hand on Drew’s shoulder, then shook it lightly. When he didn’t move, Kieran shook him again, harder this time. Then again and again before rolling his dead friend over onto his back. He could only stand to look into Drew’s pallid, blood-splattered face for the briefest of moments before staggering away, reeling with shock.

  What the hell happened here? What do I do?

  He looked out of the window, head spinning, barely able to focus on what was going on inside the building, never mind out there. But once he looked past the factory grounds he saw that, for as far as he could see in every direction, the rest of the world appeared to have suffered the same inexplicable fate as the people here. From the streets directly below, all the way to the centre of Cardiff in the near distance, nothing moved. Dead builders littered the housing development, construction abruptly halted. The Waitrose car park was an unruly mass of crashed cars, abandoned trolleys and dead shoppers. One of the slick sales guys from the Jaguar dealership lay sprawled in a puddle, the water ruining his expensive designer suit. Birds occasionally darted across the grey sky, and the tops of the trees shook in the wind, but other than that, nothing and no one moved.

  Everyone was dead. Everyone but him.

  #

  A return to the familiar gave Kieran a meagre crumb of comfort to hold onto. He cursed himself, but he didn’t know what else to do. Everyone else was dead and yet there he was, sitting in front of his computer ploughing through his work as if nothing had happened. He clung desperately to distractions, working through his daily to-do list, using the banality of the most menial tasks he could find to block out the fear. He was terrified when he thought about what was waiting for him on the other side of the office door: What if I’m next? When am I going to die?

  It felt like hours, but only a few minutes had passed before he got up from his seat again. He’d been trying to type, but his hands were shaking. His throat was dry. He picked up a water bottle he’d brought with him from home, but he could barely hold it steady enough to drink.

  I can’t just sit here like this.

  He had to do something. He left the office and returned to the canteen where he helped himself to a coffee from one of the vending machines. He stood on the far side of the room and stared at Drew from a distance, forcing down the hot drink so fast he scalded himself. The pain and bitter taste was welcome. It made him feel alive and helped counteract the bizarre thoughts now filling his mind: What if it’s me? What if I’m the one who’s dead? It was marginally easier to believe he’d passed away and found himself stuck in a real life Twilight Zone episode, than to have to accept that everyone else had died just like that, without any immediately obvious reason. How could he have not noticed the world ending?

  The light, open space of the canteen was reassuring. He sat at an empty table a few seats down from the dead manager and his equally lifeless guests. He tried constantly to contact the people who mattered with his mobile. When they didn’t answer, he tried anyone else he could think of. He worked his way through his entire address book, then picked up Drew’s phone from where it had fallen near to his corpse, and tried all his contacts too. Nothing. No one.

  It was then that he remembered the drunken conversation from the club the other week. It felt perverse to now be trying to remember what was said to help him stay alive. Kieran had been trying to pluck up courage to go home, but hadn’t Marc said something about the office being an ideal place to hide? He’d talked about getting food from the supermarket and maybe taking a car. All those things could wait, Kieran decided. He had enough food here in the canteen to last a while, and his own car was in the car park, visible from the canteen window. He still had a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach that he should try and get back, but he placated himself by constantly repeating Marc’s drunken assurances that this was a good place to hide.

/>   On autopilot, Kieran finished his drink then walked across the canteen and switched on the TV mounted on the wall. The BBC news channel was silent. He felt around the outside of the TV’s housing for control buttons and changed channel. He clicked up again and again until he’d worked his way back around to the start. No one was broadcasting. Some stations showed nothing at all, others a mix of motionless studios, dead presenters and slumped audiences; real-time freeze-frames.

  Face it, he told himself, it’s actually happened. You’re the only one left.

  #

  The day felt never-ending, the night even more so. All the comfort and familiarity of the office disappeared along with the light. The electricity had failed in this part of town late into the evening, but he’d remained where he was, sitting under his desk like a kid hiding under his bed, occasionally drifting off to sleep for a few seconds at a time, only to jolt back into reality and scare himself stupid over nothing. No matter how dark and unsettling it was, at least here in the office he was alone. The thought of being outside this room with them – his dead colleagues and friends, the unknown thousands beyond – was unbearable.

  He checked his phone regularly. The signal was no better, and still no one called or sent messages. As the hours crawled by he felt increasing guilt, sitting here like a coward while his parents and his partner and everyone else he cared about was out there. But what else was he supposed to do? The probability (increasingly the certainty) was that they were all dead. He couldn’t do anything for them. Dad would most probably be on the golf course somewhere. Mom… well she could be anywhere. Kieran pulled his knees up to his chest and sobbed himself to sleep.

  #

  It was morning but still dark when he finally left the office. He could stand being there no more. He put on his coat and filled his pockets with food from the canteen, then went outside—

  —and almost immediately turned back again. Despite being surrounded by corpses inside, he’d been sheltered from the reality of the illogical nightmare. He could feel the wind and rain on his face, a constant reminder that he was no longer hiding behind walls, windows and doors. Now he felt vulnerable; naked and exposed. It was what he couldn’t see or hear which unnerved him most of all. There was no traffic noise; no engines, horns or brakes. No people moving or talking. Everything was in the exact same place it had been yesterday. He looked back up at the canteen window, wondering whether Marc had been right and if he’d made a mistake coming out. Too late now. He couldn’t go back inside… From the outside looking in, his work building now looked like a tomb.