The Dust: The Zombie Apocalypse in Ireland

by Jonathan Lynch

  I took Lauren’s letter out from the pocket of my old jeans and read it again a couple more times. I felt so guilty reading her handwritten words. This – quest that I was on had all been in the hope of finding her. But in the midst of everything that had happened, I felt as though I had neglected her. I couldn’t help but feel like I was somehow cheating on her with Janet. We hadn’t done anything wrong, but we had become very close since meeting, and we had almost died in each other’s arms. The emotional connection was there even if the physical one wasn’t. Yet.

  I wondered what would become of Janet if I did find Lauren, and things somehow started to get back to normal, eventually. I couldn’t just forget about Janet. She had saved my life. And by the looks of it, she hadn’t told Sarah about our situation no more than I had Bruce, and it appeared she wasn’t going to object to me sleeping in the same bed beside her either.

  I folded the letter over and put it inside my pocket. I had kept it on me at all times since I had found it, and it had helped me to try and do the right thing. There was no reason why that should change now. I had told Janet about my situation as soon as I had met her. I had a couple of moments of weakness looking at her and feeling attracted to her, but they were only moments and I needed to put them behind me. I left the bathroom and went to the bed. I was relieved to see that Janet had changed out of her robe into a tracksuit and was in a deep sleep. I lay down on my back and closed my eyes.

  All of my aches were gone. I was exhausted, but clean. When I woke up I would be having fillet steak – something I wouldn’t have contemplated only a few hours earlier. We were ok. We were safe with a good bunch of people. Things could only get better from now on.

  I repeated those words to myself until I fell asleep.

  Chapter 31

  Dinner had been a good experience. The food was delicious, and the conversation had been like it used to be around the table before all of the death came. We talked about all the things that each of us missed, and took for granted, in the days gone by. The real world hadn’t ended all that long ago but it felt like a lot longer. Even Alan had joined in on the conversation after a few glasses of wine. I learned a lot about our new family as Monty called us. Well, everybody except the aforementioned.

  Alan and the girls, (which included Janet), broke away from the table after dinner to play cards. I couldn’t help but be pissed at Janet for doing such a thing. When we woke up before dinner I had told her my doubts about Monty and this whole set up, and how I planned on grilling him about everything once dinner was out of the way. She had told me that she’d have my back no matter what went down and that she had a few questions for him herself. But now it seemed she had taken a shine to Bruce and his family – especially Sarah.

  I waited until Monty had lit his filter tip cigar, and topped up his scotch before asking him about the whole pregnant women protection plan. He took a long drag on his thin smoke and gazed at me through narrowed eyes before he answered me.

  ‘I am assuming that someone you know was taken into the care program?’

  ‘Yes, my girlfriend, and my grandmother.’

  My reply brought Monty forward in his chair. His eyes widened and he looked at Janet and then back me to. I saw Bruce and Alan do the exact same double take.

  ‘I feel I must apologise to yourself and Janet, Eric.’ Monty said holding a hand up to me. ‘I assumed that the two of you were a couple, hence me telling Bruce to issue you a double room. Now I feel as if I have put you in an unnecessarily awkward situation. I feel embarrassed. The room arrangements can be easily rearranged though.’ Monty turned to Bruce. ‘The change can be done without hassle yes?’

  ‘Of course,’ Bruce replied. ‘It won’t be a problem at all.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ I cut in. ‘You didn’t ask about our situation, and we didn’t tell you either. It’s no big deal. I’m not worried about the living arrangements right now Monty. I just want to know if you have any information as to what happened to that centre. Or where they might have taken the women?’

  I could see all of the girls’ eyes burning into me from the corner of peripheral, and I pretended not to notice. I kept my eyes on Monty who was staring right back at me with his scrunched up face as he puffed from his cigar.

  ‘I am afraid I do not Eric. I’m sorry. I probably know as much as you do on the matter. I mean, I heard that they were setting up those clinics quite hastily all over the place, but I don’t know who was in charge of it all, or what became of them. I am sorry.’

  I sagged back in my chair and gripped the arm rests. All of the men except Monty were doing their best to avoid eye contact with me, and even the girls had resumed their card game.

  ‘I went back to the centre a few days ago.’ I said breaking the silence and drawing every- body’s attention once again.

  ‘What happened?’ Bruce asked.

  ‘The place had been destroyed. I came across two of the dead in the lobby, but they weren’t too much trouble, not like some of the others that I’ve come across anyway. The rest of the place was deserted. I came up with nothing.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them about the pregnant girl, thing, that I found restrained in the ward, but I held back. I didn’t want to tell them about the note Lauren had left for me either. It was personal, and I didn’t know these people well enough to be sharing it with them, especially Monty who was still staring me down as he poured himself another drink.

  I really do wish that I could be of more assistance to you Eric,’ the senator said to me as he twisted the cap back onto his bottle.

  I moved a seat closer to the group around the table. ‘But surely you must have heard something Monty?’ I asked. ‘There had to be some sort of contingency plan in place for such a disaster. I know this type of thing is far beyond a disaster, more like Armageddon, and I don’t know if such a thing could be planned against, but there had to be something, right? I mean it was set up by your colleagues was it not?’

  ‘Yes it was,’ Monty sighed. ‘But as I said, everything happened like lightning. I lost contact with all of my colleagues, associates, and the whole country, with the exception of the people in this room of course in a matter of hours.’

  I balled my fists under the table and gritted my teeth. I felt an overwhelming urge to smash Monty in the mouth. I took some deep breaths and rubbed my hands on my thighs. I got the feeling that he was just giving me the politically correct answer, yet deep down he didn’t really give a shit because he was safe and secure. When I spoke again I tried to sound passive.

  ‘So what’s the overall plan here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Monty answered my question with his own.

  ‘Well I must admit I’m pretty impressed at the amount of supplies you got here. The supermarket room is something else, and I’m in awe of how you guys were able to gather it all. I mean even your kitchen is top of the range. But what happens when the food starts to run low?’

  Monty’s whole face pursed as he took a long drag on his cigar. He exhaled a large plume of smoke and then answered.

  ‘We have a large painted SOS sign on the roof, and every night Bruce goes up there to fire a flare. We do that to alert survivors like yourself and Janet, and hopefully to any of the forces that might be still active to our presence. It attracts the dead too of course, but they just beat against the doors below us and eventually give up.’

  ‘So you’re hoping that someone will come along and rescue you before stocks deplete?’

  ‘Well we do have a great amount of reserves indeed like you said Eric.’ Monty said and then sipped on his drink. ‘We also have an old CB radio. But alas we haven’t made contact with anybody just yet. Alan is working on trying to create a signal amplifier for it, but he tells me that he needs components from the outside to complete it. But I will not allow anybody to go back out there. I have seen enough innocents die.’

  ‘Do you believe that there are still people out there that can save us?’ I asked looking
around the table. Bruce and Marty shrugged.

  Alan looked at me and nodded. ‘I believe we will be saved Eric. When all of this began I heard the choppers, saw the tanks and the soldiers. I …’

  ‘I saw them too Alan.’ I butted in. ‘I saw the trained men get torn apart by the dead. How can you be so sure that there are still any soldiers left? And if there are, what’s to say that they would want, or be allowed to come back inside the warzone?’

  Alan opened his mouth to speak but it was Monty who got there before him.

  ‘Look around the room Eric. With the exception of Bruce, none of us here are trained survivors. We’ve kept ourselves alive by the inner will to live. So I believe, truly believe, that the men and women who trained to put their lives on the line for us every day, and serve our great country, are still out there surviving and fighting just like us.’

  I mulled over Monty’s words. I didn’t know why I felt such resentment for him when all he was doing was exactly what myself and Janet had been doing – surviving and hoping. I knew I needed to back down. I felt I was being an asshole. The group had taken us in and saved our lives. We had lots of food, and we were safe. The only downside was that I was still none the wiser as to Lauren’s whereabouts and that wasn’t Monty’s fault, and I had to stop taking it out on him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I aimed my apology at Monty but looked at the rest of the men around the table too. ‘I’ve just seen so much horror that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be positive. I guess that all of the bad out there has just worn me down. I really appreciate you taking me in, us in, and saving our lives. I really can’t thank you all enough.’

  ‘That’s exactly my point Eric.’ Monty said. ‘I know that this virus spread like wildfire, and if you are to believe reports it spread across Europe, and even as far as the States, Australia, and Asia too. But there are still some of us left here, which means that there has to be other survivors’ spread around out there too. The sun is still rising, and when it does one of these mornings, we will be saved.’

  Chapter 32

  That night I didn’t sleep very well. Janet had gone to bed long before me, and when I made it to the room she was snoring. I had told Bruce I’d sort out the living arrangements the next day. He had looked at me puzzled but didn’t pass any comment on the matter. I was too tired to care what he thought about the situation with myself and Janet anyway.

  When I eventually dozed off I had nightmares, but none of them was related to what was going on outside. When I lay awake staring at the ceiling my racing mind irritated me. I got out of bed and went down to the library.

  The library, like the rest of the place, impressed me. It was twice the size of my room and stacked wall to wall with books ranging from the classics right up to the years earlier releases. There were four plush reading chairs in the centre of the room, but I stepped by them and headed straight for the large telescope set up by the window.

  The streets were thriving with the dead. Their decaying bodies appeared to glow under the moonlight. Some of them shambled aimlessly around in circles, while others stood still dripping infected fluids. I even saw a few of them disappear into the smothering fog that myself and Janet had escaped from earlier that day.

  The buildings all around had been burned, vandalised, and home to struggle and massacre. I left the telescope and went and sat down in one of the chairs. I had lost the feeling of tiredness, but I was still too drained to read. My thoughts turned to the situation I was in once again. I was safe, food was plentiful, and the people I was with were well trained in the essential disciplines that we needed to survive. But despite all of that I still didn’t feel right. There was something about Monty that I just couldn’t take to. I knew he was keeping stuff from me, maybe from all of us. I needed to get him alone, and talk to him one on one. But that could prove to be tricky.

  I leaned back, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the feel of the chair’s soft fabric as it wrapped around my body. The chair felt better than my bed, and I wondered whether it was because Janet wasn’t beside me. We hadn’t even been here all that long but she had grown distant towards me so quickly since meeting Bruce’s wife. I had no problem with her making friends, or needing some female companionship. I wasn’t her husband or even her boyfriend so I had no say in what she did and with whom. But she still didn’t have to be ignoring me. So much for our team. But team or not, I still shouldn’t have been sharing a bed with her. It was wrong and immoral and I still didn’t know whether Lauren was still alive. And even if she was dead, jumping straight into something with Janet wasn’t the answer either.

  So until I knew for sure about my pregnant girlfriend, I shouldn’t have been co habiting with Janet. It was that simple.

  ‘Can’t sleep huh?’ Alan asked, startling me from my thoughts. He came into the room and sat down facing me. He put a cup of what looked like hot chocolate on the table between us.

  ‘No,’ I said shaking my head. ‘I came down to try and read a book but I haven’t got the head for it. So I decided to take in some of the local scenery instead.’ I cocked my thumb in the direction of the telescope.

  Alan frowned. ‘Not really the best of sights to be taking in if you’re having trouble sleeping.’

  I laughed. ‘No, I guess not. What has you up walking the floors then?’

  ‘I’m not really a great sleeper Eric. I never was to begin with, and then when all this stuff happened my sleep patterns went haywire. I’m always the last to go to bed anyway after I shut things down and give the equipment its nightly once over.’

  ‘Must get a bit tedious?’

  Alan sighed. ‘Yeah it does alright, especially because all I have to do all day is monitor the equipment anyway. It doesn’t give us any trouble. The only concerns we have is the diesel levels for the generators.’

  ‘Are you running low?’

  Alan shook his head and picked up his cup before replying. ‘No, we’ve got another 4 months providing we use it wisely. But – it’s nights like this that winds me right up.’

  I sat forward in my chair. ‘What do you mean?’

  Alan looked towards the door before speaking in a lower tone. ‘It’s Monty. He makes me leave the power on every second or third night so that he can play his music in his quarters, and do god knows whatever else he does up there. I’ve told him to use the battery stuff, but his music gear is all vinyl. So it’s nights like these that when I can’t sleep that I take advantage of the power being on and make myself one of these bad boys.’ Alan held his cup out to me. ‘It’s mint hot chocolate. I could make you one if you want?’

  I shook my head and politely declined. ‘So none of you guys are allowed up there to Monty’s quarters?’

  ‘Yeah we are. Well, just myself and Bruce. I go up to give the maintenance reports, and Bruce is up there a lot more than me. But it’s always when Monty is there. He’s got the only key to the place, and he carries it on him at all times.’

  ‘Do you think he’s hiding something up there?’

  Alan drank his chocolate and eyed me over the rim of his cup. He licked his lips and shrugged. ‘I don’t know to be honest Eric. He is a politician after all, so I guess he’s got some skeletons. But who of us doesn’t? Like I said, the only thing that bothers me about him is his insistence on wasting fuel. Anything else he does after that is his own business.’

  The night began to rumble with thunder and it brought along more rain too.

  ‘Well’ Alan said standing. ‘At least the dead will get a shower tonight. I’m going to hit the hay and try and get some sleep. You sure I can’t interest you in a cup of the good stuff?’

  I declined once again and then Alan headed for the door. Before he disappeared out of sight he turned back to me and nodded at the bookshelves. ‘You know, if you’re having trouble sleeping then I recommend any one of the chick lit books. They always do it for me. I get five or six pages in and I’m gone, if only for a while at least.’

  We both laughed and then A
lan left me alone in the library. I reclined back into the chair and closed my eyes. My mind began to race with a thousand thoughts. The last one I had was trying to figure out how to get into Monty’s quarters. I felt that was where I needed to be to try and uncover any sort of truth he could be possibly holding out on.

  Then the world went silent.

  Chapter 33

  The next morning after breakfast I was sent to work with Alan down in the bowels of the building. I was to be his number two in maintenance. Most of it was visual inspections of the equipment that required simple checks with special emphasis on the generators and the diesel levels. Once again I was taken aback at how new all of the equipment looked, and how much fuel there was in reserve. On a quick count I guessed that there was at least two dozen IBCS’ treble stacked and all labelled in bright green stickers. The water we were using to wash with came from a massive reservoir tank under the building that was kept topped up by harvesting and filtering the rainwater from an intricate pipework system set up on the roof.

  The room we were in was the heart and brain of the building, as well as Alan’s personal space too. In one corner he had set up a small living area beside one of the workbenches. Its layout was similar to the library upstairs only his was more cosy. He told me that he preferred to spend most of his time down here reading and sipping coffee while listening to the generators hum. I had only been down here with him a couple of hours myself but I already agreed. The room reminded me of my own garage, a place of hard work and honesty from the good old days. A place where I felt secure. And at that moment I ached to be back there in my own surroundings.

  After our checks were all done we pulled up a couple of chairs and drank coffee. We shot the shit about the old days, and shared a few laughs. When our coffee was gone Alan looked around the room and then sighed.