by David Moody
‘What?’
‘But when I was out there, completely bloody terrified, I realised how much we all need you. How much I need you. All along you’ve been trying to keep this family together, but I just couldn’t see it. I was angry. I was stupid.’
He leant back against the wall and stared at her. ‘Why leave it until now? You could have made this all so much easier for everyone.’
‘I know,’ she said, and she took a step forward. ‘I wish I could have the time again.’ He could see her more clearly now. Her skin was pale, porcelain-like, her hair falling in soft curls down either side of her face. She’d been a little kid when he and Michelle had first got together; a snotty-faced rebel full of resentment and spite. Christ, she’d made things difficult for all of them. And though he’d certainly noticed it before today, her gradual transformation was now complete. She was a woman now, her emotional maturity finally catching up with the physical changes her body had undergone over the last few years. ‘I wanted to make it up to you, Scott,’ she said.
She started to unbutton her shirt, letting it fall back off her shoulders. He stared at her pert breasts, not sagging like her mother’s. Cellulite and stretch-mark free skin. Her young, inexperienced body. He checked himself. The dulling effect of the beer faded quickly. Was she playing him? ‘Do you think I’m fucking stupid?’
‘Nope,’ she said, and she bit her lip as she watched him watching her.
‘This is bullshit.’
‘It’s not, I swear. I’m sorry.’
And then he remembered. He cursed himself for being so easily distracted. ‘Wait... this isn’t right... Did you see anyone else while you were out there?’
‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was light and airy, strangely soothing.
‘You know exactly what I mean. Are you infected?’
She laughed. A cute nervous giggle. ‘I didn’t see anyone else. I got halfway to Thussock then turned back because I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do.’ She took another step closer, almost touching him now, and took his hand in hers and held it against her chest. Her breasts felt so smooth, so soft and so cold. ‘We might not have long left. I wanted to come back and show you how sorry I am. I wanted to make it up to you.’
She stood on tiptoes and kissed him gently on the cheek, then pulled him into the kitchen. He followed at first, then stopped and pulled back, yanking his hand from hers. ‘You’re infected.’
‘I didn’t see anybody out there, honest I didn’t.’ She hopped up onto the kitchen table and sat and watched him. He was holding back, obviously unsure, and she wasn’t surprised. She’d expected this. Yet more traffic thundered past outside. She opened her arms to him. ‘Come on, Scott... please...’
He grabbed her wrist when she lunged for one of the knives in the knife block on the table. She screamed with pain as he twisted her arm around behind her, forcing her up onto her feet and pushing her against the wall. He pressed his full weight against her. She was right, he did want her, had done for a while, but it was too late for that. ‘You dumb fucking kid,’ he said. ‘Did you really think I’d fall for that bullshit?’
She screamed again, sobbing now for him to release her. ‘You’re hurting me... please.’
‘Do you think I care? After all the grief you’ve caused?’
‘It wasn’t me, it was—’ she started to say and he yanked her wrist upwards again, threatening to pop her shoulder from its socket.
‘You’re all as bad as each other,’ he whispered, his mouth just millimetres from her ear, his weight crushing her. ‘I don’t know how I managed to stay sane living with so many moaning, miserable bitches.’
‘Let her go, Scott.’
Scott looked around, surprised. Michelle was standing in the kitchen doorway. Christ, she looked bad. One side of her face was lumpy and misshapen, her right eye black and swollen, almost completely shut.
‘How did you get out?’
‘You said we’d need double-glazing, remember?’ she said, her voice slurred and her words hard to discern. ‘You were right. I forced the French window open. Now let her go.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said, turning back to face Tammy.
‘No, Scott, fuck you.’
Michelle smacked him on the back of his head with the claw hammer he’d used to seal up the doors. He let go of Tammy and slowly turned around, almost tripping over his own feet. He lifted a hand to his head and looked at the blood on his fingers, glistening in the half-light. He looked confused. Hurt. ‘Chelle, why did you—?’ She swung the hammer around again, shattering his jaw. Scott crumpled to the ground and she reached for Tammy’s hand and pulled her away. ‘We’re going. Find the car keys.’
Without waiting for her response Michelle ran upstairs to get the others.
#
Ten minutes and she’d managed to prise open the bedroom door and get enough of their stuff together. They loaded it into the Zafira, still more helicopters circling overhead as they worked. The road out of Thussock was a steady stream of traffic now, an exodus. The military retreat told them all they needed to know.
‘Where are we going, Mum?’ Phoebe asked.
‘Home.’
‘What, to—’
‘Redditch, yes. Home, home. We’ll go and stay with Granddad.’
‘What about Scott?’
‘What about him?’
She started the engine, waited for another truck to pass, then pulled out onto the road. She glanced back in the rear view mirror at the house they were leaving and felt relief, nothing else.
They’d barely driven more than half a mile when they followed a bend in the road and reached the military blockade. The other vehicles had made it through, but she was unidentified and was flagged down. Guns and soldiers everywhere. For the briefest of moments she wondered if Scott had been right. Should they have stayed back at the house? Had she made a huge mistake?
Familiarly faceless figures appeared at every window. A solider opened her door and pulled her out. George began to scream. ‘Follow me,’ a voice barked. ‘All of you, now!’
Too tired, outgunned and outnumbered to even think about resisting, Michelle pulled her children close and did as she was told. The family were pushed roughly into the back of a large trailer which began to move, a lab on wheels from what they could see. There were no explanations as DNA swabs were taken from the inside of their mouths and blood samples drawn, but they were beaten now, way past the point of being able to resist. The vehicle began to pick up speed, part of a convoy heading south.
It felt like forever but it could only have been a minute or two later when one of the faceless figures took off her mask. ‘All clear,’ she said. ‘Lucky escape there, Mrs Griffiths.’
‘Lucky?’ Michelle said, still struggling to speak with a mouth full of broken teeth.
‘Yes, lucky. You managed to get away before the accident.’
‘What accident?’
‘The accident at the fracking site.’
‘When?’
The woman paused, glanced at a colleague, then looked at her watch. ‘Anytime now.’
#
Two low flying jets raced over the convoy, travelling in the opposite direction, back towards Thussock. And in the distance, the infected town died. A moment of silence, then a series of explosions and chain reactions tore the place apart. From the fracking site to the leisure centre, from the centre of town all the way to the grey house on the road south out of Thussock, the place was consumed by fire, heat, and intense white light.
FIFTEEN MILES SOUTH OF THUSSOCK
The van juddered to a halt. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ the soldier in the passenger seat said.
‘Just checking. Christ, can’t you hear her? They’ll have our bollocks if we don’t get her back in one piece.’
‘You know what they said.’
‘Yeah, I know what they said.’
Before the other man could argue – as he usually did – the driver climbed out and walk
ed around to the back. He slid the viewing panel across and looked at her through the wire-mesh. ‘You all right there, Jackie, love?’
She was more than all right. She was bloody gorgeous. She sat in the corner of the cage just looking at him... wanting him.
But he’d seen enough tonight to know better. The noise from the explosion which had destroyed most of Thussock was still ringing in his ears. He slid the viewing panel back across.
‘Everything all right?’ his mate asked.
‘Perfect.’
FALRIGG
‘Told you sumthin’ like this was gonna happen,’ Arthur had said to his wife before he’d set out this morning. They’d known something had been wrong in Thussock all day yesterday. Bloody army had stopped them getting anywhere near the place. He’d missed his doctor’s appointment because of the road blocks. Inconsiderate buggers.
When they heard the explosions last night, ten of them had set out from the village to try and see what had happened, to see if they could help. They’d made it as far as the first of the peaks before being turned back. They’d seen all they’d needed to see, mind. It had been the fracking site, all right. Arthur had been telling people from the start that place was an accident waiting to happen. It was some kind of chain reaction caused by gas deposits buried underground, Jock had said. It was all over the news now, of course, but Jock had heard first. His son was a teacher at a school in Glasgow. If anyone knew what had happened, it’d be him. Probably no bad thing that Thussock had been wiped off the map, though, after everything that had gone on there over the last couple of weeks.
Still, life goes on.
Arthur found her by the stream which ran along the bottom edge of his lowest paddock. Poor thing looked like she’d barely managed to get away in time before the town had gone to hell last evening. She’d been caught in a blast, that much was clear, and quite how she’d lasted this long, he didn’t know. He didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. Maybe the water had helped keep her alive, or the shock, perhaps.
Her legs and the right side of her face were badly burned. Some of her clothes were fused to her flesh. She’d no hair left on one half of her scalp. That was what upset him more than anything. She’d probably been a good looking woman before this, he’d thought. She’d groaned with pain when he’d lifted her up and laid her down in the back of the Land Rover. The dogs had gone crazy, but he’d just shooed them away. Bloody animals.
She watched him through her one good eye, the left eye blistered and burned, glued shut with discharge, and she reached out for him with the one hand that still worked. She pulled him closer until he could feel her breath on his face, then closer still until their lips met.
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Moody grew up on a diet of trashy horror and pulp science fiction. He worked as a bank manager before giving up the day job to write about the end of the world for a living. He has written a number of horror novels, including AUTUMN, which has been downloaded more than half a million times since publication in 2001 and spawned a series of sequels and a movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine. Film rights to HATER were snapped up by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim) and Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad). Moody lives with his wife and a houseful of daughters and stepdaughters, which may explain his pre-occupation with Armageddon. Visit Moody at www.davidmoody.net.
ALSO BY DAVID MOODY
www.davidmoody.net
THE COST OF LIVING
“Moody has the power to make the most mundane and ordinary characters interesting and believable, and is reminiscent of Stephen King at his finest.” —Shadowlocked
“A truly superb post-apocalyptic story.” —DLS Reviews
“A short story that will have you eager to see how Stuart and his family survive, an ending that will leave you stunned, this is an intense zombie story that I would recommend to anyone.” —Bookbloke
“If you are looking for a story with princesses and bubble gum, then do not read The Cost of Living. If you want a real story that is raw and dark then you need to read this book.” —Greg at 2BooksLoversReviews
ISOLATION
“A gory thrill-fest from start to finish.” —Wayne Simmons, author of THE GIRL IN THE BASEMENT and PLASTIC JESUS
“An absolute masterclass in devastatingly dramatic character arcs.” —DLS Reviews
“A unique peek into the world of the zombie apocalypse.” —The Next Best Book Blog
“With Isolation I was once again blown away by the recognisable settings and relatable yet engrossing characters. A gripping read. Treated to four more short stories within this book, all with different takes on zombie fiction, it’s a must have for zombie lovers, people who love gore and violence and people who love stories with exceptional characterisation. It’s one that’s not to be missed.” —BookBloke
“Isolation is a taut piece of character driven writing.” —Shadowlocked
THE COST OF LIVING AND ISOLATION ARE AVAILABLE IN A COMBINED PAPERBACK EDITION ENTITLED: LAST OF THE LIVING
THE ACCLAIMED AUTUMN SERIES
AUTUMN
AUTUMN: THE CITY
AUTUMN: PURIFICATION
AUTUMN: DISNTEGRATION
AUTUMN: AFTERMATH
AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION
“If John Wyndham was alive and writing zombie novels, they’d read like this”
—Jonathan Maberry, best-selling author of Patient Zero and Rot & Ruin
www.lastoftheliving.net
THE HATER TRILOGY
HATER
DOG BLOOD
THEM OR US
“A head-spinning thrill ride” —Guillermo del Toro
www.thehatertrilogy.com
TRUST
“An outstanding novel... worthy of a place on the discerning fan's bookshelf. 10/10” —Starburst Magazine
www.trustdavidmoody.com
STRAIGHT TO YOU
“Deserves to be ranked alongside such classics as The Stand and Swan Song”
—Ginger Nuts of Horror
www.davidmoody.net/straight
@davidjmoody
Facebook: davidmoodyauthor
ALSO FROM INFECTED BOOKS
www.infectedbooks.co.uk
THE GIRL IN THE BASEMENT
by Wayne Simmons
In the UK, a teenager goes missing every three minutes.
Goth girl, Kayley Sands, is one of them.
A fast-paced thriller from the bestselling author of Flu and Plastic Jesus.
‘Jaw-clenchingly brutal and bitterly unrelenting from start to finish.’ —DLS Reviews
###
Wish you’d bought the print edition of this book rather than the ebook?
If you’re the original purchaser of this ebook, you can buy a signed copy of
STRANGERS
at a special discount by visiting:
www.infectedbooks.co.uk/print
