He decided to go back upstairs and tell his daughter the good news.
He made slow steps to the bottom of the stairs and scratched his head. He put his knife back into his pocket and wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers once more. He looked up to the landing and gasped as he could see a man standing at the top of them.
Simon gulped and said, “But … how? The other two bedrooms are empty.”
The man was of similar appearance to Simon, but this guy’s hair was longer and so was his beard. The stranger said with a smile, “You forgot to check the bedroom wardrobes.”
Chapter Seven
“What do you want?”
Simon remained calm on the outside, but panic ran through his veins as he knew that the intruder was just yards away from the room where he and his daughter slept, away from where Imelda was right now.
Please don’t get out from under that bed. Stay where you are, babe.
The man at the top of the stairs remained gazing at Simon. He was dressed all in black. He was a skinny fellow, had dark features with a thick dark beard and had a hairdo that was reminiscent of Liam Gallagher in his 90s Oasis days.
“I’m not here to harm anyone,” the man spoke and held up his hands as if he had a gun pointing at him. As soon as the man at the top of the stairs had said those words, Simon began to relax. He believed him straightaway. The man was calm and had no malice laced in his words.
“So … what are you after, mate?” Simon asked him. He hadn’t called an individual ‘mate’ for a while. It was probably because he only addressed males as mate, and he hadn’t talked to another man in a good while.
“I thought this place was empty,” the man began. “I came to seek for food and shelter, but ... you’re here.”
“I am.” Simon nodded.
“Is it just you here?” The man gazed around and added, “The place looks big enough to share.”
“Yes, I’m here on my own.” Simon stroked his beard and gazed at the man menacingly, trying to scare the man away by using false bravado. “And I don’t do sharing.”
“Why so hostile, friend? I’m just a normal guy, like you, just doing my best to survive.”
Simon gave no answer, and he dismissed the question. He thought for a few seconds and asked the man to come downstairs so they could have a chat, face-to-face.
The man smiled and made the descent. Once he was five steps away from the ground floor, Simon put his hand into his pocket, feeling for the knife in case it was needed. They both headed for the living room and Simon told the man to follow him. The skinny individual stepped into the living room and Simon asked him to sit down in the armchair. The fear that Simon had before was now gone. Going by the behaviour of the intruder, it appeared that he was the one that seemed a little nervous, and also a little paranoid.
“I’m sorry I broke in, sorry about your window,” said the man. “I’m just desperate.”
“It wasn’t really my place until a couple of days ago.”
“Still…”
“Give me a minute, mate,” said Simon, and headed for the stairs and left the living room.
“Wh-where are you going?”
“I need to do something. Won’t be long.”
Simon ran up the stairs and went into the bedroom where he and Imelda had slept.
“It’s okay, babe,” he announced in a whisper and looked under the bed. “It’s me.”
“What’s happening, daddy?” Imelda gasped and her eyes were large with fear.
“There’s a man here,” Simon tried to explain.
“A man?” she cried.
“It’s okay. I think he might be alright,” he tried to calm his frightened little girl. “I just need you to stay here while I get to know him, to make sure he really is a good guy.”
“Do I have to stay here, under the bed?”
“You can sit on the bed, if you want, but if you hear any noises downstairs or footsteps making their way up here, get back under the bed and stay hidden.”
Imelda looked confused and began to crawl from underneath the bed. “Why would I hear noises from downstairs?”
In case we’re fighting, Simon thought. Fighting to the death.
He decided not to speak his mind, and told her to be quiet and not to leave the room until he came back.
Simon went over and kissed the confused child on the forehead, then left the room and galloped downstairs to the ground floor.
He tapped his right pocket to make sure his knife was still there before returning to the living room.
The intruder was still sitting in the armchair. He greeted Simon with a smile and then began to gaze around the room. Simon sat on the couch, opposite his intruder, and sat back, giving off a relaxed impression. Now both men were glaring at one another and Simon was the first to speak after a thirty-second silence.
“Why here?” Simon asked the man.
The man opposite smiled and said, “No introductions first?”
“Okay,” sighed Simon. “I’m Simon. And that’s all you need to know ... for now. And you?”
The intruder nodded the once and announced, “People call or called me Dicko. Or D, if you prefer. It’s up to you.”
“Dicko?” Simon snickered.
The man who called himself Dicko looked at Simon coldly. “The last people that I were with used to call me that. It’s quite a recent nickname, if that’s what you want to call it.”
“No. What’s your real name? I was good enough to give you mine.”
“Look, Simon,” the man began and revealed a skinny smile. “Dicko was a nickname I was given months ago and it sort of stuck. I don’t go by my real name anymore. My real name reminds me of the past. And in the past I have lost people. Understand?”
“Not really. I’ve also lost family members, but I’m still Simon.”
“We all have different ways of dealing with this.”
Simon didn’t understand the way of the stranger’s thinking, and said, “You can change your name all you want, but does it stop you thinking about friends and family before you go to sleep?”
“Let’s change the subject,” Dicko said with a smile. “I won’t pry about your past, if you do the same for me. Okay?”
The conversation had dried up temporarily, even though Simon had many questions to ask the stranger, and queried him once more. “You never answered my question. Why here?”
“Why do you think?” Dicko ran his fingers through his scruffy beard and added, “‘I’ve been walking miles, even went into the city.”
“The city?”
“Yeah. The place has been bombed to shit.” Dicko stroked his hairy chin and added, “I’m from the countryside originally, so being on the road and seeing cities and large towns that had been bombed was a new thing for me to witness. I suppose it was the government’s way of reducing the problem.”
“Have you come across any ... unsavoury characters on your travels?”
“You could say that,” Dicko laughed.
“Tell me.”
“You’re not from around these parts, are you?” Dicko asked, quickly changing the subject.
“Originally I’m from down south.”
The intruder nodded. “I thought so.”
“These characters you mentioned. How bad were they?”
“From the old past or the recent past?”
“Recent.”
Dicko shook his head and snickered, “You’ve lived a sheltered life, haven’t you?”
Simon nodded. “I’ve tried to avoid conflict. Nothing wrong with that, mate, is there?”
Dicko never answered and changed the subject. He said, “I was recently with a gang. I was with them for just a couple of days, but they wanted me to join them on a permanent basis…”
“But…?”
“Their … methods, shall we say, were too brutal for me, so I did a runner during the night.”
“Brutal?” Simon looked puzzled. “What do you mean? How brutal?”
&n
bsp; Dicko snickered, “Let’s just say that people just aren’t the same anymore.”
“How?”
The man that called himself Dicko leaned his head back and released a puff of breath out. He stroked his beard, gazed over at Simon, and then leaned forwards with his hands clasped together.
“Just remember this,” he began. “Friends don’t exist anymore. A lot of good people don’t exist anymore.”
“So I should be wary of you,” Simon snarled and leaned forward. “So I should throw you out of here right now. Maybe I’ll kill you.”
Dicko said with a thin smile, “I’m one of the rare good guys.”
The stranger didn’t seem flustered at all with Simon’s so called aggressiveness, which diluted Simon Washington’s confidence a little.
“How many men have you actually killed?” Dicko asked with a grin, knowing the answer anyway.
Simon didn’t think there was any point lying to the man. He gulped hard and flushed a little. “None ... yet.”
“Jeez.” Dicko began to snicker. “Have you been living in the shadows or something? How are you still alive?”
Simon gulped and asked, “How many have you killed?”
“A few.”
“A few?”
Dicko nodded and said, “I’ve had to. It was either them or me. It’s nothing that has ever given me pleasure, I can tell you. Also…”
“Yes?”
Dicko lowered his head and mumbled, “It doesn’t matter.”
“I know I’ll have to do it eventually,” Simon said. “I know that we’ve been lucky so far.”
Dicko smiled and said, “What you need is another housemate. Someone that has a bit more experience, because—”
“That’s not going to happen.” Simon spoke up with a snarl in his tone, hoping that his face wouldn’t quiver with fright like it did when his boss gave him a present and a presentation for his 21st birthday in front of the whole workforce.
“Is it not?” Dicko looked solemn, showing no emotion.
Simon shook his head.
“So no sharing. Finders keepers. Is that the way we’re playing this?”
“I’m not playing.”
Dicko slowly stood to his feet and looked like he was ready to leave. “You mentioned earlier that we’ve been lucky so far. You’re not alone in here, are you?” Dicko smiled and looked up at the ceiling. “Somebody up there?”
Simon now stood up and placed his hand in his pocket, feeling for the steak knife. “Leave ... please.”
“Is that what you really want?”
Simon nodded and now seemed unsure. Dicko could see the uncertainty in Simon’s face and gave off a thin smile.
“Yes,” Simon finally answered Dicko’s query. “It’s what I really want.”
“Okay, friend.” Dicko nodded. “I’m going.”
Dicko walked into the kitchen, unbolted the door, opened it and stepped outside. Simon went to the door and watched as Dicko descended down the grassy bank and headed for the cluster of trees at the bottom. Once Simon saw Dicko disappear and swallowed up by the greenery, he relaxed a little.
Dicko seemed like a reasonable fellow, Simon thought. If he wanted to hurt him, then he would have. Dicko even left when he was asked to. Simon hoped that asking him to leave was something he wasn’t going to regret in the future.
Chapter Eight
An hour had passed after Dicko’s leaving, and Simon had told his daughter that the man that had broken in had now gone for good. He was going to tell her that it was a stray animal that had managed to get in, just so she wasn’t scared, but she already asked him who was down there as she heard voices.
Simon had found a yellow plastic bucket in a cupboard, underneath the sink, and wanted to go out and find running water. They could fill the bucket, take it back to the house and filter it in their jars. Imelda didn’t want to go out with her dad, but he wasn’t leaving her alone, especially since the visit from Dicko.
He took the yellow bucket, a knife in his right pocket, and went outside, taking a reluctant Imelda with him. He was wary because of the visitor from earlier, and also the fact that they had to leave the house unlocked whenever they left the premises.
“How long is this going to take?” Imelda was moaning already, and they had only walked twenty yards. Simon had decided to walk the same way Dicko had gone when he left. The stranger must have headed that way for a reason. He must know the place better than he did, Simon thought.
Simon had been concerned for Imelda. She never drank enough.
Even before the incidents happened, when things were normal, Imelda never drank enough fluids and was always constipated. Simon and Diana used to moan at her all the time. She would take a full bottle of water to school and would return six hours later with the bottle still full. There had never been a problem with Tyler keeping hydrated. But he had his own problems. He was the fussy eater out of the two. He would eat meatballs but never touch normal mince. He would eat a roast potato but claimed to hate mash. And would eat pizza from Pizza Hut but wouldn’t eat a square one because it was the wrong shape.
Imelda would try any food once, but keeping her hydrated had always been a problem. The problem was even worse now, as the water, after being filtered, didn’t taste great. Luckily, Simon had found some blackcurrant cordial juice in the kitchen, and was going to add that to the water to make her drink more.
“We’ll be out for no more than an hour,” he told her, holding her hand with his left and clasping the bucket with his right.
“What if we don’t find any water, daddy?”
Simon shrugged his shoulders. “We will. Don’t worry.”
They continued with their walk and he could now feel his daughter staring at him.
“You okay, babe?” he asked her.
She hunched her shoulders and said, “Not bad. I’m a little sad today, daddy, that’s all.”
“I know, babe.”
She gazed at her daddy, gulped, and said, “I was thinking about mummy.”
“Oh?”
She looked at her dad with wet eyes and said with a quiver, “I was thinking about when she used to take me to gymnastics.”
Simon raised a smile and remembered the Friday evenings well.
Diana used to take Imelda and her friend Sophie every Friday. Sophie was more advanced than Imelda. His daughter was a new starter and began with practising forward rolls, then went onto handstands, and then the crab. Months later she had progressed to cartwheels and one-handed cartwheels. Imelda always used to be high as a kite whenever she came back. She used to have one new move a week, and would drive Diana mad when practising her moves in the bedroom or the living room where there was a hard floor. Diana was concerned that Imelda could end up hurting herself, but she did them anyway, whenever her mother wasn’t around. Sometimes Simon would catch her doing a cartwheel in her room, but he never told Diana. Imelda had found something that she loved and he didn’t want to discourage her, although he could see Diana’s point.
“I miss mummy,” Imelda said with a sad sigh. “I miss Sophie as well.”
“Of course you miss Sophie,” said Simon. “She was ... is your best friend.”
“Do you think I’ll ever see her again?”
Simon scratched his eyes and had a face that looked puzzled. “Who? Mummy?”
“No, silly. Mummy and Tyler are dead.” She squeezed her father’s hand tighter than normal and added, “I mean Sophie.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Simon decided to be brutally honest with his daughter. There was no point lying to her. “When the Canavars came, and then the bombs fell, we hid for months. A lot of people died during Stage One, and others fled to go to the countryside or to be with relatives. Sophie and her family had relatives up north, so I’m guessing her family probably left to go there.”
“Maybe the bombs killed her.”
“I don’t think so,” said her father. “Sophie lives just a couple of streets away. If
just a couple of bombs had hit near her house, we wouldn’t be here either.”
“Why did they bomb us, daddy?”
“We’ve been through this before. I’m not entirely sure, but...”
They both started walking again, still holding hands, and Simon was trying to think how he could word his explanation to Imelda. They reached a group of trees that were all huddled together and passed the trees that were to their right.
“Look, daddy,” Imelda shrieked and pointed over at the trees. “A fox.”
He narrowed his eyes to try and focus and shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a fox, babe. Looks like a red squirrel. Very rare. Even more so now.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t we go somewhere safe when the monsters came?”
“We just hid,” Simon said. “Me, you, mummy and Tyler only left the house once we realised it wasn’t safe anymore.”
A while after Stage Two, a few unsavoury, or maybe just desperate, survivors broke into their home. Luckily they were all in the basement so no one got hurt. It sounded like three or four men that had broken in, and Simon came to the decision right away that their home was no longer safe anymore. Their home had been good for Stage One and Stage Two, but desperate survivors had killed his confidence. Not only that, but the scumbags had ransacked the place and had broken the door whilst trying to get in. But at least they didn’t take the car—not that it was much use in the long term anyway.
In the first week, Simon siphoned his vehicle and took the wheels off just in case it was stolen. The trouble with doing this meant that it could highlight to looters that people may be inside. When the men came and broke down his door, they were clearly in for food, and not for the car or looking for other people.
Simon sighed, “I miss home, our street.”
“I miss nana. I wish we could have driven to her house when we had the car.”
“We’ve already been through this before, babe, many times. I think nana, papa, grandma and granddad, your uncles ... are all ... gone.”
“How do you know that grandma and granddad are dead? They live four hundred miles away.”
Ghostland_A Zombie apocalypse Novel Page 4
