by James Plumb
He realised that if he was to have any chance of surviving another day of this life he needed caffeine. A lot of caffeine.
Gareth was sat at the table nursing a cup of tea, when Jen came into the kitchen. She looked up at the ceiling, listening to the ruckus being made upstairs.
‘Well that didn’t satisfy her for long.’
‘I’m feeling a bit better, you can probably drain a pint of me after I’ve finished my tea,’ Gareth said.
‘That’ll keep her occupied for all of twenty minutes.’
‘Fine, we’ll load up the car and try and grab somebody early before there are too many people on the roads.’
‘What are we going to do, feed that thing upstairs three people a day?’
‘That thing is your daughter. It’s our daughter.’
‘That boy she ate was someone’s son.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Gareth! How—’
‘Jen, I do not care. I care about Ana, I care about our family.’
‘Look maybe we should try the doctor’s again, tell them that we know that blood, that flesh helps, they may—’
‘We tell them that we’ve fed her a kid?’
‘No we simply tell them that she drank some of our blood and—’
‘The doctors didn’t work, the hospitals didn’t work, the medicine didn’t work. This works. We keep going until she’s better.’
‘We can’t let her kill.’
‘We’re not letting her, we’re helping her kill.’
‘No, no we didn’t—’
‘Jen, you lured the boy into the car and I let Ana loose. We did that. We killed that boy just as much as Ana did, if not more. She just fed. And it worked. So, we get in the car. We find someone for Ana. We get them. And we keep going. We keep going until our daughter is better. We worry about everything else after, after she is better.’
‘We’ve got to stop this.’
‘Stop this?’
‘Stop her.’
‘Stop her? Say it.’
‘I’m saying we’ve got to stop her.’
‘Don’t say stop her. Say what you mean!’
‘Kill her.’
Gareth stared at his wife. She met his gaze.
His eyes stung as he contemplated what the woman in front of him was suggesting. He barely knew his daughter anymore, and now he could hardly recognise the exhausted shell of a woman who faced him.
‘That’s not Ana anymore, Gareth. You know it’s not.’
Gareth opened his mouth to challenge her. A thousand thoughts rushed through his brain, but no sound came.
‘Gareth, I’m telling you, that’s not my baby up there. I know it. Deep down, you know it too. Ana was taken from us a long time ago, and we’ve just been denying it all this time.’
Gareth couldn’t look at his wife any longer, instead he stared at the mug in his hands. Tears flowed freely now, as he heard the kitchen drawer open. Looking up, he saw Jen with the kitchen knife in her hands, holding it as if it were a foreign object.
Jen and Gareth crept up the stairs together, passed birthday photos of Ana, passed photos of Jen (with bump), passed wedding photos. The usual floorboard creaks were drowned out by the sound of Ana crashing about.
Opening the door, Gareth and Jen saw that one of the bungee cords had come loose. Ana thrashed on the bed wildly.
Jen slumped, the tension from her shoulders ebbed away. She seemed to almost lose a foot in height. A low moan, unrecognisable as a human sound, escaped her lips.
‘I can’t...’ was all she managed to say.
Gareth understood. It wasn’t easy to talk about killing your only child, but it was harder still to carry out the act. Jen was telling herself that the creature in front of them wasn’t their daughter, but the creature in front of them still wore Ana’s face. A cruel parody of her face, but still undeniably recognisable as Ana.
Without looking to see where Gareth was, Jen fell backwards into his arms.
He held her. He understood why Jen believed that they had to kill Ana. He knew that if they were to continue down this path, Ana would just consume and consume and consume. He knew that he would be bringing pain and heartbreak to countless other families just to keep his daughter fed.
Gareth rested his head against Jen’s and held out his left hand.
Jen looked up at Gareth’s face for answers.
Eyes closed, Gareth gave a barely perceptible nod.
Jen understood that Gareth would do what needed to be done.
She placed the knife in his hand. Gareth wrapped his fingers around the handle.
Gareth smiled sadly at his wife.
Gripping Jen’s hair with his right hand, he brought the knife quickly and deeply across her throat.
Gareth understood. Gareth understood that Jen didn’t love Ana as much as he did. Gareth knew that what Jen wanted to do was the logical thing, but Gareth knew that he would do anything, anything for his daughter. Gareth knew he could kill for Ana, he knew it when he had killed that thing in the playground. He had felt nothing as Ana had bitten, eaten and consumed that teenage boy. No remorse, just an inkling of hope, hope that this meal would be the one that brought his daughter back to him.
He realised he must have hit a vein/artery/ God-knows-what as blood sprayed out from his wife’s throat in almost comical proportions, coating the Disney Princess walls, coating the Disney Princess bed sheets and landing on Ana’s face.
Ana, for a brief moment, went rigid.
A primal bloodlust racked her body, causing to her flail violently, the bungee cords coming loose.
Gareth let his wife drop to the ground as Ana leapt at the source of the blood.
Swiftly he moved behind the door, pulling it closed and bolting it.
Sinking to the ground, he listened to his family eat itself.
EPILOGUE
It’s been five days since we killed Jen.
I managed to make her last almost three days.
I don’t know whether there are any red flags if you google “how to drain a human body”, but I googled it anyway. We had most of the implements in the house and I stored the blood in jars and washed out milk bottles in the fridge.
On the third day Ana was sick on the blood, so I decided to get a new source.
We kept Jen in the main bathroom. I rarely used it anyway. I was worried that if I tried to get rid of what was left of her body, what Ana hadn’t devoured, I’d get caught and then Ana would be alone. That terrifies me more than anything.
Three days ago I grabbed another body. It only lasted two days as it was a kid, but Ana didn’t get ill this time. When it was used up we put it in the bathroom with Jen.
People have started to notice the missing persons. You can feel it.
Posters have been put up around town.
I overheard someone saying the Police are starting to go door to door.
I think people are starting to wonder where Jen’s got to. The neighbours exchange nervous glances with each other when they see me.
Last night I packed the car with Ana’s and my belongings. We’re ready to go at a moment’s notice.
***
Ana’s starting to get agitated again. She’s docile for shorter and shorter periods of time now. If I can get more blood, more flesh, I know she’ll get better.
We’re going to visit Mum and Dad back in the Midlands. They’ve been wanting us to visit for months. Their place is nicely secluded, off the beaten track.
I can’t risk getting another body from round here.
We can’t risk staying in the house any longer.
The smell is getting worse and...
And Jen has started to move.
I killed my wife five days ago and what’s left of her is starting to move again.
She’ll have to fend for herself. There’s no way I can cope with two mouths to feed.
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Plumb is the co-writer and director of “Night of the Living
Dead: Resurrection”, “Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming” & “Kerb Crawlers”. His films have terrorised cinemas and supermarket shelves from Northern America, Germany to deepest, darkest Wales (where life is cheap!).
He is most interested in that territory where the ordinary meets the extraordinary and the two blur.
ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE
My first novel, STRAIGHT TO YOU, was released in 1996 and promptly disappeared from view. 500 copies were printed, and I still have a couple of boxes from the original print run in my garage! The experience taught me several valuable lessons about writing, most notably that both the hardest and most important task for a new author is to find people to read their work. In those dim and distant pre-Internet, pre-ebook days, that was no easy task.
When it came to releasing my second novel, AUTUMN, in 2001, I was already making my first tentative steps online. It struck me that the easiest way to get people to read my book was to give it to them for free, so that was what I did. And with no real plan or design, my first zombie novel generated around half a million downloads, a series of sequels, a radio adaptation and even a (not so great) movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine.
Self-publishing was frowned upon in 2001 (and still is today in some quarters), so I decided to take a different approach. I talked about ‘independent publishing’ instead, and I set up INFECTED BOOKS, my own publishing company. I hit the market at just the right time and managed, through luck more than judgement, to capitalize both on the sudden growth of ebooks, and also on the massive popularity of zombies.
In the fifteen years since AUTUMN was published, zombies have become a global phenomenon. In the same decade and a half, the publishing industry has changed beyond all recognition. Back in the day, myself, Brian Keene and David Wellington were just about the only folks putting out zombie fiction. Now that’s changed and there are many brilliant zombie authors delivering the goods. I thought the fifteen year anniversary would be a great opportunity to celebrate both the enduring appeal of the living dead and the massive success of zombie authors worldwide.
2016 is Infected Books’ YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE, and over the course of the year you’re going to be treated to brand new zombie novellas by some of the very best in the business. Check www.infectedbooks.co.uk at the beginning of each month for each new release.
David Moody
January 2016
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM INFECTED BOOKS
YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE
KILLCHAIN by Adam Baker
THE PLAGUE WINTER by Rich Hawkins
THE YACHT by Iain Rob Wright
Z-HUNT by Mark Tufo
GERAINT WYN: ZOMBIE KILLER by Gary Slaymaker
STRANGERS
LAST OF THE LIVING
ISOLATION
THE COST OF LIVING
STRAIGHT TO YOU
AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION
TRUST
by David Moody
GIRL IN THE BASEMENT
by Wayne Simmons
VOODOO CHILD
by Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza
FIND OUT MORE AT WWW.INFECTEDBOOKS.CO.UK
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