Dead Beat

by Remy Porter

  Griffin took a last worried glance at his brother and went outside. A minute later, the old green Land Rover was heading out the farmyard and up the narrow valley lane to the village.

  Jack settled his son into bed and set about pulling the three dead bodies out of the house to lay them side by side in the old barn. He covered them with an old tarpaulin sheet and left them. Back inside the farmhouse he bolted the doors and locked down the windows.

  Upstairs his son Dexter sounded like he was talking but he found him still asleep. He figured it must be some awful nightmare he was having because he kept moaning and moving almost in a spasm. Trying to rouse him and feed him some painkillers, he wasn’t for waking. He hoped Griffin wouldn’t be long.

  Two hours later night was down like a black mask and still there was no improvement from Dexter. Jack sat in the kitchen absently turning the dial on the radio. No news, no music, no nothing. He looked at the pattern of red stains around the dog’s basket but didn’t have the energy to clean it up. He vowed to bury the dog later. The younger dogs barked out in the court yard, but he didn’t care about them.

  Later, when the electric lights went out he wasn’t entirely surprised. Jack pulled on his Wellingtons again and stepped out into the dark yard with his torch. Cold mist was on his breath and the rutted mud on the ground had taken on ice and was hard underfoot. The smaller building next to the barn housed his diesel generator. Jack thought it slightly odd that all his dogs had stopped barking. Whistling, none would come to heel. Looking around cautiously, he couldn’t catch any movement in the fields with his torch beam.

  Jack walked across his farmyard, every other foot crunching on small frozen puddles between the ruts. The cold breeze rustled over the fields and seeped into his clothes. The generator house looked a little like a garage with paneled wooden door set in cream pebble-dashed walls. His father had built it in a time when power cuts had been more common, and out of respect for him, he’d always maintained it. Jack fiddled with the twenty plus keys he had on his key ring before finding the small Yale key that would fit the lock.

  There was a noise of falling rock from behind him. Turning, he flashed the torch to its source. Two or more bodies were awkwardly throwing themselves over the dry stone wall that lined the perimeter of the farmhouse. Low moans filled the air. Caught in a fight or flight blood rush, he hesitated and then fumbled at the door lock to the generator room. The lock turned and he grabbed the handle and turned it. Already the first body had reached him and Jack kicked out wildly catching its knee with a crack. The teenager fell, taking a tear of Jack’s waterproof coat in his teeth to the frozen ground.

  Jack didn’t waste time. Inside the generator building, he shut the door behind him. At least two other of the creatures started hammering on the wooden door to get inside. He dropped his keys and scrabbled around desperately to retrieve them. The things outside were too stupid to turn a door handle otherwise he’d have been in serious trouble. Jack moved down the musty corridor and let his hands play over the massive diesel generator controls. He found the hand pulley and to his relief it roared into life after a single yank. Life was illuminated again and he was bathed in neon light from the strips on the ceiling. In a dusty deck chair, he waited, as the creatures thumped and scratched a steady beat on his door.

  His watch read 1am when he heard a familiar diesel sound coming down the lane. He heard the vehicle hiss into the courtyard, skid and grind to a stop. Griffin’s voice was shouting, and then the sharp repeat of the shotgun twice and then twice again. Stray pelts clattered and chipped into the outside wall of the generator room.

  ‘Da, are you in there?’

  The door of the generator room opened and for a moment Jack found himself staring into the barrel of Griffin’s raised shotgun.

  ‘Yes son, I’m fine. What took you so long?’

  Jack looked around and counted four fresh cadavers decorating his farmyard. All four had the grey look and heads that were no longer fully part of their bodies. Griffin was a good shot.

  ‘Da it’s totally crazy out there. These things are everywhere. I tried the Doc’s house and he was there alright, but with bits of his wife in his teeth. I went further Da, all the way to Havelock. It was a nightmare, wrecked cars with things wriggling inside. It got so blocked I took to the fields, but even then the things were everywhere. I got spooked by one and ended up getting the Land Rover stuck in the mud. I thought I was a goner right there. It took me hours to get moving and it was pitch black. I just thought I should get back. Good job I did, I think.’

  Jack shone his torch over at the Land Rover noting the fresh mud and dents it had picked up. Then he saw somebody sat in the passenger seat, her face white as a ghost.

  ‘And Da, I found this woman up at the tower. She was stuck up the steps waving her red coat at me. I think her husband turned into one of those things we killed. She’s freezing.’

  Jack smiled over to her and waved.

  ‘Griffin, get her inside and get her some warm food. I need to check on your brother.’

  Jack marched back inside the house suddenly worried. He went up to Dexter’s room and flung open the door. Dexter still appeared to be asleep. His temperature was high and his skin had a sickly shine of sweat.

  ‘Dexter, are you awake?’ he said softly.

  Dexter didn’t reply and he decided it best to leave him until the morning. If anything, he thought he looked slightly better. He went over to his bedroom and gathered some clothes from a drawer he hadn’t been in for a long time. Millie’s clothes. They smelt bad but he didn’t expect the woman would mind.

  He went downstairs and found his son stoking the stove back into life. The woman sat at the table and looked in a state of shock. Her red coat was covered with dirt.

  ‘You need to get those things off,’ he said placing the clothes on to the table. ‘What’s your name love?

  ‘Alison,’ she replied looking up at him. ‘Where am I, please?’

  ‘You’re at The Old Lodge. But you’re fine now. You’re going to be safe here.’

  ‘Do you know what’s happened?’ Alison said.

  ‘Not really love. My best case is those terrorists have released something. Or maybe it’s the government, some experiment that’s gone pear shaped. I don’t know. All I do know is there are dead things out there that should be under dirt and under ground. If I see them, that’s where I’ll be putting them.’

  ‘Here’s your coffee and there’s hot soup on the way,’ Griffin said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said and smiled for the first time.

  ‘I’ll run you a hot bath,’ Jack said eventually.

  It had been a while since they’d had a woman in the house. Not since Millie had died in fact, discounting his sister and the district nurse. He felt a little tongue tied and unsure of himself. Would Millie have approved of him taking this woman in? Of course she would have. She’d always been the charitable sort in life. Jack ran the bath and found his best towel.

  Later, when he lay in bed, he thought of her in the bath and he thought about how this world had turned out in the end. Out of bed, he creaked along the narrow corridor to the spare bedroom. Downstairs he could hear Griffin talking into his old CB radio. Near the spare bedroom door, his heart danced like a sixteen year old boy’s again.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. We all need to earn our keep now.’

  He let his dressing gown slide to the floor.

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘I think we should meet. Over.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Yes. Okay, PC Silverman we agree. Over.’

  ‘What is your name? I don’t think we’ve met. Over.’

  ‘Griffin Nation.’

  By the time dawn came, none of us had had any sleep. We’d agreed on the CB to try and meet at the local Women’s Institute building later in the day. The building had strong doors and windows and a good location on the edge of the vil
lage. We hoped it might be relatively free of the bodies. I also had a spare set of keys for the WI hung up in the police station.

  Summer and I stood bleary eyed around the gas hob in the kitchen watching water boil in a pan. Behind us Lester sat grumbling about some great injustice or other and eating a hearty portion of stale cereal from the cupboard. Police station cupboards accumulated unwanted food, often left for years. Lester had no misgivings about the combination of blueberry and mango crunch.

  ‘We’ll take the 4x4. It’s the most powerful vehicle and can handle the off-road driving if we run into any road blocks.

  ‘Okay I suppose,’ Summer said. ‘But I’m not going to any stupid community meeting until we’ve gone to my parent’s house and checked they’re okay. I can’t leave it any longer Johnny, I’m going nuts.’

  I quietly opened the back door of the police station while Summer, and to a lesser extent Lester, acted as lookouts through the drying room window. There were seven bodies in the main car park but I was mindful that others could be hidden behind corners and walls around the outside of the police station.

  Removing my fluorescent jacket, I just kept on my black police fleece. My handcuffs and incapacitant spray were redundant. I carried the twelve bore in one hand and the key fob to the 4x4 in the other.

  I made my dash for the driver door, timing it for when I felt all seven bodies were facing away from me. The closest one looked young and was staggering around in an old Guns and Roses t-shirt, no more than ten metres away. The 4x4 lights all flashed at once and with a dull clunk, the central locking released.

  Tricky part next. I beckoned to Summer and Lester in the window to come out and follow me. Keeping my head ducked down, I was mindful to keep out of sight.

  Summer ran out of the door and flung herself into the passenger seat. Her eyes looked wild and her cheeks burning red.

  ‘He’s not coming,’ she managed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said he may be a fucking drunk but he’s not fucking drunk enough to do anything this stupid.’

  ‘Fair to say he’s sobered up,’ I said.

  ‘Not for long I bet. Come on, let’s get going.’

  I started the engine, paused and then crept the 4x4 forward. Despite the stealth, it didn’t take long for the dead to turn our way. They flocked at the vehicle like demented flamingos. Pressing the accelerator, we lurched forward just as the Guns and Roses man had his fingertips on my driver window. Turning hard onto Main Street I left the police station behind. Summer looked across and gave me a tense smile. We were lost together in this dead new world.

  Dropping down we passed the local pub, The Archer, on the corner. My eyes were fixed on the road but my peripheral vision featured bodies scattered and pacing all over the expansive beer garden. The road ran parallel to the beach and estuary, and I saw a red sign warning of quicksand flash by. To my right ran a line of the village shops, a bakery, a gift shop, a butcher’s and the village’s other general store. Windows looked broken and there were bodies inside and out. I spotted the woman who used to sell me meat pies and cakes shambling across the road, a bloody Rorscharch stain on her apron. To my left I could see the railway bridge stretching the miles across the sands and tidal waters of the bay.

  The road narrowed as we approached our railway station, and I slowed to ten mph as more bodies littered the tarmac. No way was I going to stop and I deliberately clipped one man and then another with the bull bars at the front of the 4x4. The second body flew six feet and marked the windscreen and bonnet of a parked car. On the pavement, I could see the disturbing sight of a dead man pulling his dog behind him, the animal clearly aware its master was now an unnatural and dangerous thing. It pulled and rolled wildly on its lead to get away, but was dragged on towards the village.

  We bore left under the railway bridge and I accelerated out of the village. Four miles later, we faced the choice of risking a single track lane or joining the motorway for a much longer stretch.

  ‘We can’t risk the country road being blocked. I’d have to reverse or risk a difficult manoeuvre to turn around. They could be on us in that time. I think we have to go down,’ I said, looking from our position on the motorway bridge.

  Below us I could see cars and lorries parked and crashed all over the three lanes. ‘Yeah okay. The hard shoulder looks clear,’ Summer said, ‘and we can use the 4x4 on the banking at the side to get round any bad blocks.’

  I engaged the gear and we headed down the slip road with care, constantly having to weave a path through the parked metal. We went straight onto the rouge banded hard shoulder.

  ‘I can see them moving in the cars,’ Summer told me. ‘They’re pawing at the windows. They’re dead; they’re all dead in there, Johnny.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied.

  I was more worried about the ones out of the cars. The ones that kept drifting through gaps in the cars and that I could see in my rear view mirror filling the space on the hard shoulder where they’d just been. It was a blessing these ones were slow to react, otherwise we’d really be in trouble.

  Twice we had to ride the banking with the 4x4 tyres straining and tearing at the turf to get around first a badly parked car and then a coach toppled onto its side. Glass shards were everywhere and I wondered what we’d do if we got a puncture. Finally, I saw the sliproad off the next juncture and we were free of the carnage and back on a wide country road towards the village of Wick.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ she said.

  I could only imagine how she was feeling. I thought about my wife again, the dark cloud of guilt. I needed to think clearly and stay on track. People were counting on me it seemed, but it didn’t stop the screaming emptiness building inside.

  Summer’s house was an average sized three bedroom mid terrace off a short cul-de-sac. I parked the Freelander in the middle of the road and purposefully left the engine running. The gauge on the dashboard told me we only had half a tank of fuel left. Just another problem for later, I thought. ‘Have you got your key?’ I asked.

  ‘You know you can wait here if you want. I’ll be okay.’

  ‘You’re kidding right?’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t let you go anywhere that dangerous on your own.’

  ‘Do you think they are going to be alright?’

  I paused and her face dropped.

  ‘You should take this,’ I told her.

  ‘Okay.’

  Summer got out of the 4x4 with a small but very sharp hatchet in her hand. I followed behind with the shotgun looking out for movement on the street. There was none. Summer took out her key and pushed it into the lock. She took a large breath and turned the door handle.

  The hallway carpet had an old fashioned tortoiseshell look which reminded me of my grandmother’s old house. We edged our way down, intently listening for any movement. Ahead of us were stairs leading up to the three second floor bedrooms. At the bottom of the stairs was a door on the right hand side which led into a through lounge diner, a kitchen and a downstairs bathroom.

  Summer pushed open the door and stepped into the dining area. I followed her and immediately it was clear that we had a problem. The mess was considerable. Broken crockery and food strewn throughout the three rooms. In the dining room, the table had at least two legs shattered as if somebody’s full weight had fallen on top of it at some point. It was clear to me whatever had happened to Summer’s parents and sister may not turn out to be pretty.

  ‘They’ll be okay,’ she mumbled.

  ‘We should search the rooms. Carefully,’ I said.

  I took the lead and edged up the two short steps out of the end of the kitchen to the bathroom door. I pressed my ear as close as I dared to the door and listened for any tell-tale movements. I looked at Summer and saw how wide her eyes had become, somewhere between terror and hysteria.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I whispered.

  Someone or something must have heard me; something rustled inside the room. I paused but Summer went straight a
head and opened the bathroom door. At first it didn’t look like anyone was there but then it was clear somebody was lying in the bath. We walked in and I raised the gun.

  In the bath was a young woman in her late teens. She was slumped on her back half covered in a shower curtain that had been ripped violently from its hooks. Her body had the waxy, doll-like look I’d had seen before at countless sudden deaths. She wasn’t moving and she appeared dead. The sound had come from a small ginger cat on her chest. Red tears in her shoulder where it had recently eaten. Trapped and starving it had had no choice.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  Summer just stood, unmoving, I went to touch her and move her out of the room. She felt stiff and rigid.

  ‘We can’t just leave her there,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Summer we ...’ I started to say but the movement above stopped me. ‘Oh no,’ I finished.

  Summer was already out of the dining room door and running up the stairs. I ran after her as she made straight for the master bedroom at the end of the corridor. She opened the door and then slammed it shut again. In that second it was clear to see that there were two bodies in that room, a male and a female of an age that must make them Summer’s parents. Their hands started to pound on the door.

  ‘I’ve lost everything,’ she said

  ‘Well, you haven’t lost me.’

  We started moving away from the room and back down the stairs. We got as far as the front door when she turned to me.

  ‘I need to do something,’ she said.

  ‘We need to leave, Summer. We need to go now.’

  ‘Just go to the car, Johnny. Just go and it will okay. I won’t be long.’

  She turned and went back to the stairs. I watched her go but somehow I knew better than to follow her. It crossed my mind that maybe she just wanted to end it all, and that the despair was too much to live with. I didn’t know how I felt when I turned to the front door and walked outside.

  Already I could see three bodies down the street, but thankfully not close. I got into the driver’s seat and waited. I doubted I would have the courage to go back outside if Summer didn’t appear. How much horror can one person take before the mind distorts and shatters? Part of me wondered how long I would wait before I would set off and drive back alone.