“Fucking hell! It’s Goliath!” the kid shouted.
The others didn’t hear, because one lad, who looked about twenty, dressed in a grey tracksuit, swinging a cricket bat had caught the dog, and was proceeding to beat it to death.
Lennie witnessed the carnage. He became enraged.
An earsplitting roar poured from him as he started charging down the hall towards the yob with the bloodied cricket bat.
“No Lennie!” Betty screamed as she stepped into the corridor and saw what was happening.
The other three turned to see what the new noise was. They were shocked to see a huge, angry man, who almost filled the hallway with his bulk, running at them like a steam train.
Survival instinct kicked in – the cowards, who could beat on a helpless dog, but not defend themselves against an enraged giant, turned and fled.
The one with the cricket bat slipped on the blood, falling face down. He scrambled to his feet and ran after the others.
As he ran, Lennie grabbed a small wooden chair that lay on its side, and tossed it at the oldest looking yob that was retreating.
The older, overweight man, who looked anything from between thirty and forty, was wearing a long army poncho. The guy was already injured. He used a curtain pole as a walking stick. There was blood on the bottom of his jeans on his left leg.
The chair just missed his head.
Lennie reached the dog. It lay panting heavily. It’s golden fur was matted in blood.
Lennie leaned down and made a gentle shushing sound, as he stroked the Labradors head.
By the time Betty reached Lennie the dog was dead.
19
Friday 5th January 2013
Day 21
Betty decided they would be okay to stay for the remainder of the night. The chavs would be too shaken up to return so soon. But she knew their type. After a few calming beers and bravado talk, they would be back, looking for revenge.
First thing in the morning Lennie carried the dog out to the back of the school. There was a small patch of grass, next to the large playground. Betty watched as Lennie used his hands to dig a grave.
“Don’t you worry; he’s in doggy heaven now,” Betty said. “And as soon as we can, I will find you a doggy to look after.”
Lennie looked up as he wiped his forehead, smearing mud over his brow. He gave a weak lopsided smile.
They needed to get moving. It was coming up to 10:30 AM and if the lads were going to come back, it would be soon.
They had eaten all the food she had found, and they were down to their last couple of drink cartons. They needed to find food and drink.
Such a simple thing, eating and drinking, something I used to take for granted. Food was always available. Water was just a tap turn away. When you have to physically search for it, everything changes. Something so simple, becomes life-changing – a matter of life and death.
Lennie put on the bag and turned, waiting for instructions.
“Don’t worry, we will find somewhere safe soon. Somewhere where we are wanted and needed.”
Her grandson will follow her anywhere, regardless of the destination. Her words were mainly to booster herself.
They left the primary school and continued down the main street.
As they got to Wetherspoons, for some reason, she decided to turn up King Street. There were houses up there, long rows of them. She reasoned there could be an empty one, a house that still contained food.
They checked inside a Chinese restaurant. It was looted and wrecked. They didn’t linger; someone had used one of the corners as a toilet.
Just up the road a little was a tall building. Betty looked up at the three-story building. It was a mortgage company of some kind.
Then there was a strange sound – more of a vibration. It started in the pit of Betty’s stomach and then rose in tempo. Suddenly, it assaulted her ears as a helicopter flew over. It was flying erratically, trailing black smoke.
Betty was just deciding on whether to follow the helicopter, which looked like it was about to crash in Courtney Park, when an ear piercing scream made her spin around.
Running down the road was a handful of naked people. Even from their distance she could tell something was wrong. They were covered in blood, and their faces and throats were deformed. Like a flock of birds they turned as one, and smashed through the door to the large Paint Centre.
There was probably a side entrance into the mortgage company building, but Betty did not want to give those things time to change their minds and head towards them.
“Lennie, quick, kick the door down!”
DOCTOR LAZARO’S STORY
Doctor Melanie Ann Lazaro BSc PhD
419 Pinhoe Road
Exeter
South Devon
England
Works at Exeter University in the Microbes and Disease section of the Biosciences Department.
1
Doctor Melanie Ann Lazaro BSc PhD
419 Pinhoe Road
Exeter
South Devon
England
Saturday 15th December 2012
The Day of the Outbreak
Day 1
Melanie rolled over and stared at the alarm clock. It had green tinsel on it.
6:15 AM, the glaring red light announced.
She had to be up in fifteen minutes, but she always woke up before the alarm went off.
The twenty-inch fan next to her bed hummed. She always slept with it on. The humming and vibrations stopped the sound of the traffic on the busy road next to the house from keeping her awake.
Melanie stared at the ceiling. Christmas decorations crisscrossed it. She followed the same crack that had been there for over ten years. Her father always promised he would sort it out. However, he was always too busy in the basement, working on his project. Now he was retired, he had more time to spend in the windowless room. Besides, he was too old and unwell to go climbing around on a ladder.
I need to get a life! It’s Saturday, and I’m still getting up at 6:30 to head into work. I need a...
She was almost going to say boyfriend, but she stopped herself just in time. It was because of her ex that she was living at home again. Well, that and because she made any excuse to run home to mummy and daddy.
She had now given up on men and concentrated on her job. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in over six years. She had also had ample opportunity to move out, but living at home was cheap and easy, and she did enjoy living with her parents.
Due to being a child prodigy – with an IQ of 157 – she spent from the age of ten at a school for the gifted in Manchester. She returned home only one weekend a month. At the age of thirteen, she was one of only four people ever to be accepted into Cambridge University at such a young age. She took her BSc degree in Biomedical Science, and then her PhD, passing at the age of nineteen. And even with her busy schedule she still managed to write extra papers on DNA sequencing, which were published by science journals the world over.
Parenting Issues, her ex used to shout, when they fought. He said she never had time to grow up properly.
She thought about it a lot after they argued, and she agreed with him; she was damaged goods when it came to the emotional department. It should be called the Michael Jackson Syndrome; she decided.
Her ex was called Jack Jenkins, or JJ as his friends called him, or Junkie Jack her parents nicknamed him towards the end of the relationship.
Her mother used to berate her, “You have a brain the size of a country, and yet when it comes to picking boyfriends you act as if you’re a stupid, rebellious love struck teenager, looking for a bad boy.” She would then go to walk away, mumbling, “Even Stephen Hawkin’s IQ is only three points away at 160, for Christ’s sake!”
Of course, her mother was right. What woman didn’t like the bad-boy element? The dangerous side? However, the boyfriends she ended up with weren’t so much the bad boy, more a dim-witted lowlife.
She didn’
t want to say, and hurt her feelings, but it was because of the way her parents treated her as a child, pushing her harder and harder that she ended up the way she has. She never had her parents around to support her; she was pushed into a routine where strict rules had to be followed.
JJ looked tough, and was tough; that is, when it came to hitting females. He talked the talk, but never walked the walk. And when the drugs started flowing, she’d best be as far away from him as possible.
Then she turned up back at home, having to leave wherever she was renting, losing the deposit her parents had given her because she left her ex behind, and they always stayed until they were forcibly kicked out – after trashing the place.
At the time she was away in university, and instead of living on campus she rented out, and it wasn’t long before the insects started to gather around her light.
Melanie was already blacklisted and severely in debt, all before she even turned eighteenth, all thanks to her list of deadbeat boyfriends.
It was such a regular occurrence that her room was always ready for her to return to at a moment’s notice, until her parents could get her back into some sort of campus dwelling, or sort out another flat or bed-sit. The commute up to Cambridge was just too far from Exeter.
Her mother was good at reading the signs. Her mood swings. Ignoring their phone calls. The bruises.
When Melanie did turn up, standing on the doorstep with her bags in her hands, with her mascara running, she would find her bed turned down, with the lights on, and a towel ready for a shower.
It was a regular occurrence at one stage. From the age of sixteen, she could legally move out without her parent’s permission, and even though she continued with her schooling, she refused to follow their rules.
There was Michael Hodge, or Mickey as he liked to be called, who lasted three months. He trashed the flat they were living in at the time, and stole her laptop with all her research and syllabus work, and swapped it for an ounce of weed.
Then there was Jason Clack, nicknamed Snappy, who lasted only two months. He broke into her parent’s house and stole their flat screen telly, so he could buy an eight-ball of cocaine.
Next came Gerald McSteel, who lasted only one month, nicknamed Glass due to his taste in drugs – crystal methamphetamine. Technically, she didn’t dump him; he died from an overdose. She woke up in the morning to find him on his back next to her, having drowned on his own vomit.
Then came Jack Jenkins, who it turned out, was Gerald’s dealer, who she met at the funeral. It’s a small world.
At least the lease on the flat wasn’t in her name the last time, because she moved in with JJ.
He lasted only two weeks.
She lay on her back, reminiscing as to why she was single.
Melanie had returned from the university due to a free period, and she caught JJ in bed with Dolly, the fifty-one-year-old washed-out junkie that lived in the flat downstairs.
JJ didn’t see the problem, as he pointed out Dolly was short this month, and she was paying for her drugs in flesh.
Melanie had packed up her things and caught a bus straight to the clinic to get tested. She then caught a train home back to Devon.
Why can’t I find Mr. Right? A nice guy. A man with a job and responsibilities. A man who treats me like a lady? Every woman who has ever lived has probably wished for the same thing, she reasoned.
When you see a couple arguing in the supermarket, or walking down the street, with three kids in tow, shouting at each other, as the children act as if it’s an everyday occurrence. No one would start a relationship if they thought it would end up like that, surely? Would they?
Melanie flicked back the duvet.
At what point do people give up and accept that their lives will never change? When fighting in public doesn’t even bother them?
Her string of deadbeat boyfriends was her way of rebelling against her parents who forced her into a life of studying. Her rebellion only lasted a year, and she returned to the university’s campus just after her seventeenth birthday.
Amazingly, all the upheaval and trouble didn’t effect her studies, and because her studies weren’t interrupted, and she passed with flying colours, the incidents were never mentioned again.
“She will put it down to experience,” she heard her father telling her mother after she passed her PhD. “At least she got it out of her system. And hopefully she has learned a valuable lesson?”
Her parents had her late in life – her mother was forty-six, and her father was fifty-two when their only child turned up on the scene.
They were both retired now.
Her mother was a botanist. She had worked at the same university for twenty-eight years. Her father was a dentist, owning and running his own clinic for thirty-six years.
Melanie slowly walked over and pulled back the curtains. It was still dark outside.
She stood looking down across the back garden towards the large infant and nursery school that was situated behind the detached house. There was a set of swings and a slide, with hopscotch painted on the playground’s tarmac. Circling the large playground was squat wooden buildings painted in pastel colours.
When she was young, and she returned for the school holidays from The Academy for Gifted Children, she would look across at the normal school, from her bedroom window, and feel envious. Her holidays were slightly out of sync with normal schools.
They had a childhood – they played and ran around, fighting and playing football, or kiss chase, or whatever it was they did at such a young age. All the while Melanie sat behind her desk in her room looking out at the children playing while she did her vast piles of homework.
She could still hear their laughter, their screams of joy, the hollow thud of the football. The only sound she made was her pen scratching over the paper. She had no friends around where she lived.
Besides, her mother always used to say, “You have no time for childish games; you have a higher calling. God gave you this gift for a reason.”
One game she used to love watching was the girls playing with the skipping rope. Two would swing the rope in a large loop, while others would try to jump in and last as long as they could. She could still remember the words they used to sing, that drifted up to her open window.
Robin Hood, Robin Hood dressed so good, got as many kisses as he could. How many kisses did he get? One... Two... Three...
She would sometimes count along with the other children, pretending she was playing with them.
Her bedroom used to be at the front of the property, but she soon started to have nightmares, and she was moved to the back of the house. Across the road was a large church, surrounded by crumbling gravestones.
Death at the front. Life at the back.
The nightmares started when she became old enough to understand what the graveyard was. There were dead bodies buried just across the road!
After weeks of sleepless nights, and having Melanie screaming that they were coming to get her, her parents swapped her room with the spare room at the back of the house.
When she thinks back, she found it strange that a child could be placated so easily, not realizing that the bodies were still there, simply a little further around the building.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Melanie wandered to the bathroom and commenced her morning ritual. Toilet. Shower. Straighten hair. Clothes. Makeup.
Her parents couldn’t understand why she would want to straighten her long curly black hair. Her mother pointed out that if it was straight, she would probably sit and curl it every morning.
Melanie conceded she had a point. People always want what they don’t have – they are never happy with what they’ve got. It is human nature.
She dressed in smart long black trousers with a cream coloured blouse and open V neck jumper. She liked her clothes clean lined and simple. Muted, earthly colours, accentuated with black shoes or skirt or trousers. She reasoned she was a professional; she need
ed to dress like one.
She slipped on her black, flat bottomed, comfy, Hush Puppies. They wouldn’t turn heads, but she was on her feet most of the day and comfort won every time. If she did need to go to a meeting or pop out, she had a pair of smarter shoes in her locker.
Melanie grabbed her worn brown leather work bag off the chest of drawers and slid in the file off her bedside cabinet, that she was reading late into the night, and headed down for breakfast.
She stopped at the full-length mirror – which also had green tinsel around the top. Her mother had decorated her room while she was at work.
She looked elegant and professional. She was average height with a slim athletic build.
She mimicked a chavy teenagers voice, while pretending to chew gum, while placing a hand on one hip and tilted to one side. “Hi, I’m Melanie; I’m twenty-three, single, and I’m a workaholic.” She smiled to herself and headed down for breakfast.
2
Her mother was already up, stood over the sink washing dishes.
Margery was a woman who was forever busy. To show for it, she didn’t have an ounce of fat to spare. She had never smoked, and her face, even though old, was fresh and vibrant, with rosy red cheeks. Since retiring she always wore an apron around the house over the top of a long simple dress.
Melanie hopes that when she reached sixty-nine that she would look as good.
“Morning dear. Good night I hope?” Margery asked, while still leaning over the sink with her back to her. Her mother could hear a cat sneaking across a carpet on the other side of the house.
“Morning. It was great, thanks.” Melanie put her bag on the floor and settled into an old style, thick chunky, farmhouse wooden seat.
Her mother asked her about her sleep every morning, ever since the nightmares, over thirteen years ago.
The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10] Page 41
