Demise of the Living

by Iain McKinnon

He backed up from the entrance to the woman’s toilets.

  “If I can do anything to help, anything at all, just let me know.”

  Liz’s angry glare did not soften.

  Mo turned and headed back down the stairs.

  ***

  Sharon was gazing out of the window onto the street as if she was watching TV in a showroom, trying to choose which one to buy.

  “You okay?” Colin asked.

  “Considering, yes I’m fine,” Sharon replied.

  “I should have gone with Stephen when I had the chance,” Colin said.

  “Why?” Sharon asked, still looking out onto the street.

  “I should have tried to get to the school just in case any of the kids had turned up.”

  “Oh,” Sharon said absentmindedly.

  “I know they would have been dropped off by their parents—at least I hope they would’ve. I mean, I hate to think of some poor kid stranded during all this.” Colin continued, “Have you got children?”

  “What?” Sharon snapped out of her trance. “No.”

  “Me neither,” Colin said. “Would like to someday.”

  He looked out the window. The sun was getting low in the sky and it wouldn’t be long before night fell. In the street below there were innumerable figures wandering randomly to and fro,so many it was becoming difficult to spot the tarmac at their feet.

  “Yeah, I’d like to be a dad some day when all this is done with,” Colin said.

  “What makes you think all this will be over?” Sharon asked.

  “Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

  Sharon shook her head. “Look at it out there. There are hundreds—if not thousands—of those maniacs in the street. There are fires all over the city and have you seen any signs that it’s going to end soon?”

  Colin was silent for a moment.

  “The government will swing into action. It just takes time for them to get organised, that’s all,” he said finally.

  “This is happening everywhere, Colin. You saw the news when it was still broadcasting.”

  “You really think it’s that serious?”

  Sharon turned to look at the deserted office. She said, “Of course it’s that serious. I have a staff of almost three hundred. Take a look around. Do you see any of them?”

  The empty office spoke for itself.

  “One percent of my staff turned up for work today and that includes me,” Sharon said. “And I know we’re just a poxy little office doing a meaningless job in the grand scheme of things, but if this is typical of what’s going on elsewhere I don’t see how things can get back to normal, at least not quickly.”

  “So we’re in this for the long haul,” Colin said.

  “We need to start making plans, because I very much doubt we’ll wake up tomorrow morning to find street cleaners outside mopping up the mess.”

  There was a clunk and the lights went out.

  “What’s happened to the power?” Colin asked, looking up at the ceiling. “I thought we were running off the generator?”

  “I asked Thomas to switch it off for the night,” Sharon replied. “I think you were right. I think we need to conserve what power we have and try not to advertise our presence here.Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check my laptop’s switched off. No point wasting the battery life if I’m not using it.”

  ***

  Colin jerked awake from a sleep he would have sworn he’d never had. The woman’s coat he’d found on a hanger in a cupboard wasn’t long enough to cover all of him. He had scrunched himself into a ball, but as soon as he relaxed or turned he would expose a bare leg or arm to the cold air, and every time he moved he got a fresh whiff of the woman’s fragrance that lingered on the fabric.

  This was not the only barrier to sleep. The manmade fibres of the floor tiles were rasping and bristly. The other occupants coughed or snored or whimpered in the dark. And the unfamiliarity with the building meant that any unidentified sound piqued his fear that one of those things outside had broken in or that the boy upstairs had broken loose. But despite this, exhaustion snatched at him and forced him to doze even if it was for only a few minutes.

  He turned over and rearranged the coat trying to cover his legs up.

  He breathed in and caught a mote of smoke over the perfume.

  Nervously, Colin sat up and sniffed the air. There was a warm orange glow coming in through the windows, but it wasn’t the fires outside he could smell. He stood up as quietly as he could. He looked around, but there wasn’t enough ambient light to reveal the interior of the office. He cautiously made his way over to the window, feeling for tables or chairs that might impede his path. Before it went dark the maintenance guy had found three torches and placed them all end-up in a row on the windowsill; that way if someone needed to go to the toilet in the middle of the night there wouldn’t be any accidents.

  Colin made it over to the window without any collisions and noticed one of the torches was missing. He picked up the second and switched it on. An oval of light fell across the floor. Using the faintly illuminated exit sign above the door and the sickly yellow of the torch, he successfully navigated his way out of the office.

  With the power off, the security doors had defaulted to open and he walked on through without having to use his visitor’s pass. The door creaked ferociously, like a tree about to be felled by a storm. There were a couple of coughs from behind him and the fresh rustling of clothing, but no one got up.

  On the other side of the door, Colin held the handle and let the door slip back into its frame as quietly as he could.

  He took a sniff of air through his nostrils. There was a definite smell of tobacco lingering in the stairwell. He walked over to the handrail and looked down into the darkness. There was nothing. He looked up and saw a faint light at the top of the stairs.

  He decided to investigate.

  As he climbed he began to hear voices. Reaching the fourth floor, he saw the roof access door that had been locked shut earlier was now open. He entered and climbed up a smaller stairwell to emerge on the roof of the building.

  The wind was gently blowing and the smell of burning assaulted his nostrils, overwhelming all trace of tobacco he’d followed from downstairs.

  He took a few steps past the entrance and saw Thomas and one of the cleaners sitting on the edge of the building.

  Colin walked over.

  “Hi,” he said to announce his arrival.

  “Hey there,” Thomas said.

  “Hello,” the Polish woman replied.

  In the light he couldn’t tell which one she was, Magda or Alex; he hadn’t gotten to know them well enough yet to tell them apart.

  The cleaner offered over her lit cigarette.

  ”Oh, no thanks. I don’t smoke,” Colin said.

  The woman seemed to understand and she drew the cigarette back to her lips.

  “It’s the end of the fucking world out there,” Thomas said.

  Colin looked out over the city. Much of it was ablaze. The clouds of smog that hung overhead reflected back the soft orange taint of the fires below.

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Colin said.

  “What radio saying?” the cleaner asked in clipped English.

  “Is that safe?” Colin asked, pointing at the woman’s legs dangling over the side of the building.

  The woman bent forward to look down at the ground from between her feet.

  “Whoa, don’t do that,” Colin said, feeling queasy.

  “You worry too much,” she said, still looking down at the darkness below.

  “What else did the radio say?” Thomas asked, taking a draw of his cigarette.

  “I didn’t catch much; just that it’s a contagion spread by bites and that people should stay in their homes and...” Colin hesitated.

  “And what?” Thomas asked.

  Colin uneasily shuffled his feet on the gravel.

  “I know it’s hard to digest, but the radio said they
were dead. It said this disease or infection was bringing them back to life. They attack other people, biting and scratching at them, I guess as a way to spread the infection.”

  His audience was silent, smoking their cigarettes.

  “It said the only way to stop them was to decapitate them.” Colin saw the cleaner’s blank expression. “To chop off their heads.”

  “Strzyga,” the Polish woman said, cigarette in mouth.

  “Stiz…what?” Colin asked.

  “Strzyga. The dead who rise from grave. Fairy story. Those whose souls don’t leave the body rise after death. Feast on human flesh,” she said. “Only way to stop them is…” She drew a finger across her neck and made a burbling hiss as she did so.

  “Charming culture you have there, Alex,” Thomas said. He turned to Colin. “What else did the radio say?”

  “Don’t know. I fell on it and it broke,” Colin said with a shrug.

  “So what do we do?” Thomas asked.

  “Don’t know,” Colin admitted. “I guess sit tight for a bit.”

  “How long do we stay here?” the woman asked.

  “The radio didn’t say anything to give me an idea. It must be pretty major. I guess we wait as long as we can, play things by ear.”

  “What is this with your ear?” she asked.

  “Um, it’s an expression. Means we’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” Colin explained.

  The woman took a long draw from her cigarette and inhaled deeply. She held the smoke a lot longer than Colin thought possible before blowing it out in a steady stream.

  “Best get some sleep.” She flicked the spent stub off into the void.

  Colin watched as the tumbling ember plunged into the darkness and disappeared.

  Alex swung her legs back over onto the roof and stood up. “Be ready to meet things by ear, no?”

  Tuesday

  Chapter 8

  Life Lesson

  The sun was up, Karen guessed, but the thick haze of smoke blotted its arrival in the sky. The headlight from the bike was still visible on the ash-coated road, but not as strong now. She wanted to check her phone to find out what time it was, but she knew she couldn’t stop. She could feel Shan’s arms wrapped around her waist, not as tightly as they had been at first, and her chest rising and stuttering as she sobbed.

  Something warm trickled its way down the back of Karen’s neck. She didn’t know if it was blood or tears.

  “We’ll be there soon,” Karen assured her friend.

  “It hurts so fucking much,” Shan growled.

  Karen turned the handlebars of the bike to avoid a zombie and the pain in her shoulder flared.

  Still, it was nothing compared to her friend’s injuries. Karen had come off lightly. Her shoulder was chewed up pretty badly. Ordinarily she could see herself milking it for a couple of weeks of school, but she had no such luxury now. Her mother and father were gone and now she only had Shan.

  Even then she could have lost her, too.

  “It’s just round the corner and we’ll be there. Hang on, Shan.”

  Karen mounted the pavement to cut past a knot of abandoned cars. As she did she felt Shan’s grip around her waist slacken.

  “Stay with me, Shan. We’re almost there,” Karen said, engaging her friend to keep her conscious. “Look up ahead, What can you see?”

  They drove past a bright yellow digger surrounded by mesh fencing to protect it from vandals. It sat on the outside of a playing field. Behind the grey fencing the flat grass swept up to a long blocky building.

  “It’s the fucking school,” Shan groaned.

  “Bet you didn’t think we’d be coming here during the school holidays,” Karen said.

  Shan simply grunted.

  Karen pulled up in front of the school gates. They were locked. Skirting along the side of the road she tried the pupil entrance further along, but it too was barred.

  A handful of zombies had taken an interest in the buzzing of the bike and were plodding their way towards them.

  “The dog bolt at the back of Science,” Shan mumbled.

  Karen tugged the accelerator and sped off, following the line of the school fence. She quickly took the bike round a thick clump of bushes and round to a strip of wasteland between the school and adjoining housing.

  There was an old wooden fence, greasy and knotted with splintered edges. Karen pulled the bike up to the fence and stopped it.

  “That’s as far as we can take this,” she said.

  Painfully, Shan eased herself off the bike and waited for her companion to park it. The adrenaline from last night had drained from her and she shook like there was ice inside her veins. Blood still trickled from the mess of torn flesh at the side of her face.

  Karen saw her holding back and took the lead. One of the slats in the fence was missing and the two adjoining ones had been snapped at the middle. The hole was just big enough for the girls to tiptoe inside, then duck through the gap. A narrow path flanked by gangly grasses and only the breadth of a single foot width meandered its way down the corridor of waste ground. As they passed, their legs brushed the stalks back, leaving a faint line of pollen below the knee. To the left the stiff branches of bushes squeezed their way past the slats of the metal fence. On the right was the creosote-stained wood that formed the boundary to the back gardens beyond. A few metres into the corridor the path took a sharp left-hand turn. Ducking low, the girls squeezed themselves through the tunnel of snapped branches and through a twisted and bent hole in the fencing to emerge at the back of the school’s science block. The ground here was littered with discarded drinks cans, wrappers, and spent cigarette butts.

  “How do we get in?” Karen asked.

  “Break a window,” Shan answered.

  “We can’t...” Karen stopped herself. After everything that had happened since yesterday, breaking a window was a small matter. “I suppose. Which one though?”

  Shan pointed down the side of the school block. “That’ll do.”

  They walked down a slight incline to join a paving slab path that ringed most of the school building.

  “How do we break it?” Karen asked.

  “I don’t know,” Shan snapped. “Find a brick or something.”

  “Okay,” Karen said softly.

  Shan slumped against the wall and made a controlled slide down it, ending up in a sitting position with her knees up by her chest.

  “You be okay?” Karen asked.

  Shan waved her off.

  Karen started skirting the path and the edge of the playing field. It wasn’t long before she found a snapped corner of a paving stone she managed to work loose. She trotted back, holding the lump of concrete like a shot-putt.

  Shan was still slumped up against the wall when Karen returned.

  “Watch out,” Karen said.

  She pulled her arm back and threw the lump of concrete at one of the classroom windows. The projectile went straight through the glass with a tremendous crash. The window was left with a hole twice the size of the object that had hurtled through it, but Karen was disappointed. She had envisioned that the whole window would just simply evaporate, leaving a clear window frame to climb in through. Instead there were razor edge splinters creeping out from the break.

  Karen slipped off her shoe, and using the heel as a hammer she gingerly tapped at the remaining glass to free it. With each successful tap she would jump back out of the way of the crashing shards. Once the window was cleared,she swept the inside and outside ledges clean with the sole of her shoe. Confident she had removed anything that could cut her, she slipped her shoe back on and clambered into the classroom. She landed with a crunch as the broken glass shifted under her weight.

  Karen looked back out of the window.

  “You coming?” she asked.

  “What?” Shan snapped. “No, I’m not coming. Go round and open the door for fuck’s sake.”

  “Oh,” Karen said sheepishly, realizing her stupidity.


  She trotted out of the classroom and into the hallway. It was a shock how alien it felt. With the power off, only the light filtering through the empty classrooms illuminated the corridor. The air was still and cold, but the silence was the eeriest thing. No period bells ringing, no sound of shoes squeaking on the polished floors, no voices.

  There was a soft crunch of glass from underfoot. Karen scuffed the sole of her foot down the rough breezeblock wall, knocking free a mote of glass imbedded in the plastic.

  She moved on to the fire door at the bottom of the middle stairwell. She pushed the bar down and pushed the door open.

  She called out, “Shan.”

  Shan moaned, and without raising her head she stretched out her arms at the sound of Karen’s voice.

  Karen scurried over and took Shan’s hands.

  “You’re freezing,” Karen said as she pulled Shan upright.

  Shan gave a displeased moan and threw her arms around Karen.

  “Come on, let’s get you to the nurse’s office.”

  “Thanks,” Shan muttered.

  The pair shuffled down the abandoned hallways to the administration block.

  Although the nurse’s office was locked, it didn’t take much to break the flimsy internal door open. Karen laid Shan on the bed and rifled through the medical cabinet until she found all the equipment she thought she’d need.

  “Any painkillers in there?” Shan asked, looking at the various first aid supplies.

  “Nah, I don’t think they’re allowed to give you any. You’ve got to bring your own and have a note.”

  “This is fucking killing me,” Shan protested.

  “I’ll clean the wound out and get a dressing on it, then I’ll look for some painkillers.”

  “Miss Gilmore has had a migraine forever. She’s always popping something,” Shan offered.

  Karen turned round, a wad of white tissue in one hand, a pair of tweezers in the other.

  “I’ll check her desk after I look after you,” she said.

  “What’re you doing with those?”