Like Rats

by Adam Watts

  ‘Or…’ Stan says to me, ‘you stay here with us and play. Have some fun. Take that risk. Just this once.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Take the risk, Pres,’ Stan says, his eyes urgent and wide. ‘Trust me.’

  I shake my head. ‘You wanna fuck around, that’s your choice, but don’t drag Eve in with you.’

  ‘I make my own decisions, Preston,’ Eve slurs. She leans forwards and takes the packet, hesitates, then presses two pills out into her hand. She looks straight in my eye as she pops them in her mouth and swallows. ‘See!’ she says, opening her mouth wide and sticking out her tongue.

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ Stan says before necking his own.

  They look at one another and laugh. There’s a budding mania between them that burns right into me, a connection forged in madness. And the way they smile at each other… it’s like nothing bad could happen.

  ‘See you on the other side,’ Stan says to her, before turning to me. ‘You sure you don’t want in?’

  HOW TO MAKE A ZOMBIE.

  Frida places a cup of coffee in front of me and tries her best not to let the lateness of the hour dampen the warmth of her hospitality.

  ‘Are you not having one?’ I ask.

  ‘Not for me, no. I’d prefer to save what I have for when I really need it; for when my face looks as flat as yours.’

  ‘Sorry, Frida. I didn’t mean to interrupt your evening.’

  ‘There’s no need for sorry. The only thing you interrupted was the silence, and there’s far too much of that in this house anyway. So you just drink up and tell me what the matter is, because last I knew, you had a fine evening planned with your two favourite people.’

  ‘Yeah, well it didn’t go like it usually does,’ I say. I’m not sure how to continue, especially with my brain being so pickled. Where to begin? How far back do you have to go to establish the starting point?

  Frida leans back in her chair and scrutinises me through narrowed eyes. She doesn’t need to make a show of it, she’s just letting me know that she knows.

  ‘Is this about our lovely Eve?’

  ‘Sort of…’

  ‘Well it either is or it isn’t.’

  ‘It’s not her… it’s me. And it’s not really even me… it’s Stan.’

  ‘My darling, you really have had too much to drink.’

  ‘No, I mean… it’s hard to say what it is. It’s all of us, I suppose. It’s this whole place… this village… the fences… all the pretending we do.’

  ‘Those fences will come down one day. What goes up, must come down, so they say.’

  ‘It’s not even that,’ I say, still feeling like I don’t know what to tell her and what to leave out. Frida looks at me like I’m a jigsaw puzzle missing half the pieces.

  ‘Something happened up there. By the fire. You can tell me.’

  But somehow, I can’t. All I can do is sip at the coffee and deflect the issue at hand. ‘Before you lived here, where were you?’

  ‘You mean, where did I live?’

  ‘Yeah. You seemed to turn up one day, and everyone loved you and nobody questioned why you were here.’

  ‘Well I suppose that means I must belong here. For now at least.’ She smiles like she knows more than she’s letting on, like the whole universe is a riddle she solved years ago.

  ‘But do you remember much about what happened? Or how it happened?’

  ‘I remember what I saw. And what I saw I did not like. I saw people turning on one another, people being pulled apart in the streets, the country falling to its knees against its own better judgment. What I saw, was the country split down the middle; those who cracked and those who stayed whole.’

  ‘Those who cracked… the zombies, you mean?’

  ‘The division I’m referring to came long before that happened,’ she says, placing her hands in a neat pile on the table.

  ‘Do you remember MIDS?’

  ‘I do,’ she says, turning her eyes away.

  ‘Do you think that –’

  ‘Those men in the capital, their big ideas about putting everything up for public vote, creating all that mess and letting the people take the blame. Create a disease and sell the cure. That’s what they must have thought. They took peoples’ dignity and sold it back to them cheap and hollow. It was a nasty trick.’

  ‘Ok… but do you think it turned people into zombies?’

  Frida raises an eyebrow, like I’ve piqued her interest. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because it’s what a lot of people thought happened. People started taking MIDS and then…’

  ‘Then…’ Frida stares off somewhere beyond the walls of this house. ‘Do you know what zombies are, my darling Preston?’

  The answer to this question seems easy, but the words fail to form. Something tells me that any response I could give would be nothing but a pale joke withering in the deep shadow of the dreadful truth.

  ‘When I was young,’ she says, sitting back and folding her hands across her stomach, ‘I used to listen to the stories my Aunt Sylvia would tell me from back in Haiti. You know where Haiti is?’

  ‘Caribbean?’

  ‘Correct. Now… this is where I have to be careful not to say too much for fear of confusing that drunk little mind of yours – but Haiti is a land of magic, and I’m not talking about funny little men in shiny suits pulling things out of hats, I’m talking about magic. Real magic. The kind of magic that could bring people back from the dead.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ I say. I bring my cup to my lips only to realise I’ve emptied it.

  ‘That’s right, Preston my child, it’s not possible… and that’s why it’s magic. You see?’

  ‘Not really,’

  Frida rolls her eyes. ‘I’m going to assume you’ve heard of voodoo, or at least a certain type of Voodoo, yes?’

  ‘Pins in dolls…’

  She rolls her eyes again. ‘That’s what I figured you’d say. But that’s not what voodoo is. That’s just Hollywood stuff… over-simplified garbage. So, no… we’re not talking about pins in dolls and chicken claws. In real Voodoo, there are people who can make poisons that turn people into zombies. A victim is selected – there’ll usually be some sort grudge involved, some matter of honour or revenge – a fee is exchanged and the poison administered. The victim dies… and then a ritual; a ritual few people will ever witness or speak of. Then…’ she says, her eyes widening, her hands fanned, showman-like, ‘the victim is returned to the land of the living; but he is not the same. He’s bereft, stupefied. He is not human anymore; just a shell under somebody else’s control.’

  ‘For real?’

  ‘It happens. More than you might imagine. Like I said, Haiti’s a land of magic.’

  ‘So, you think MIDS is a magic Voodoo potion?’

  Frida laughs. ‘No, Preston. No. That’s not what I’m saying. You see, in Haiti, there is a belief that zombies exist – centuries old – and there’s evidence to back that belief up. Combine the right mix of chemicals with the right person in the right state of mind and you create reality from belief. MIDS didn’t make zombies of anybody, it just unearthed something that had been buried for too long.’

  ‘I don’t imagine anyone would’ve taken MIDS in the belief that it was going to turn them into zombies. Self-improvement; that was the hook,’ I say.

  ‘And for some it would’ve had the desired effect, it would have amplified all that was good about them, or at least it would’ve given people a false sense of confidence. But for some, it was a way of removing all the things that made them feel bad about themselves. The fact they were so compelled to take it in the first place was confirmation enough that they were imperfect, not good enough… animals in need of training. Once those messages get in your head, even a sugar pill can do the job of a poison. And after years under the PCP, there were plenty of people who felt plenty bad about themselves. Sometimes, probably most of the time, the mind is the most powerful drug. Am I right?’ />
  It takes a moment for the pieces to come together, but then it all hits me at once with a blinding crystal clarity. All of a sudden, it makes horrible, horrible sense.

  ‘I need to go,’ I say, pushing my chair away from the table and sending it clattering to the floor as I stand. Every part of me vibrates with a nervous fear. ‘I need to get back.’

  Frida says something, but I’m past listening. I need to get back to the fire. To Eve.

  CHANGES.

  I ran all the way. I had to stop them.

  I’d seen something in their eyes as I left. There was a change. A hunger. Like fires had been set in their minds, fanned by a depraved and savage wind; scorching all reason and virtue.

  That’s why I left them. I needed to feel reassured that MIDS was a dumb marketing ploy, just like Stan said. I didn’t want to believe that it could make beasts of those dearest to me. I needed somebody to soothe my worries and tell me that as dawn urged the retreat of night I’d find no need to fret, and my friends would return to me, happy and intact.

  But Frida was right. Even a sugar pill can play tricks on a mind that’s willing to be fooled. That’s what I’d seen in their eyes; two people succumbing to something primal, simply because they were tired of burying it. And as I ran back to the fire, I knew for certain what I’d find. I had to force myself not to turn away, but to be brave and face the thing I feared most. Change would crash against my world and tear down the fences that had protected us for so long, and whatever it was we’d managed to keep out, would now find its way in.

  There, in the steady orange glow of the dying fire, the two people I’d held closest in my heart were ruined before me. Neither one of them alive, nor dead. But in the act that occurred between them; in their moans, in their writhing naked flesh and clawing lust; something had certainly died in me.

  TUESDAY’S ABSENT HERO.

  The story of Eve (or Kylie, or whoever she was) always impressed me, even before I truly knew her. She arrived much as anyone else did; covered in all manner of filth, bleeding from several places at once, and crying with either exhaustion or relief – but most likely both. She made the horrors beyond the fences real to me. She brought the horror home.

  Eve wasn’t some combat-hardened squaddie, she was just an ordinary girl from the other side of town, who (as I came to understand) had a liking for a certain brand of vacuum cleaner and whose hopes and dreams were probably quite ordinary. But there she was, screaming for help at the fences, propping up not just herself, but two others: Tuesday and her brother, Will. Tuesday pulled through, but Will didn’t. He’s the only person who ever died in this village since the fences went up. Nobody really knew what it was that killed him. Tuesday reckoned he died of a broken heart at having seen their mum killed in the street. No-one argued with that.

  Eve became her hero. She told everyone that Eve had found her, given her the will to fight on and the hope that they’d be saved. She described a time when they’d been spotted by a horde whilst walking along one of the back roads. Through Eve’s quick thinking they managed to lose most of them and Eve had apparently battered the life from the few who remained with nothing but a length of wood and sheer grit. Eve had always seemed embarrassed about that, like too much of a big deal was made of the whole thing. Though one night, whilst under the influence of some of her moonshine, she admitted to Stan and I that she’d never felt so alive as she did piling that length of wood down onto the heads of those zombies. Alive but sick to her stomach. She asked us if we thought it made her a murderer. Blurred lines, I guess.

  Eve never spoke much about what happened between leaving her home and finding Tuesday and Will. She’d just say she was lucky to have escaped with her life and even luckier to have happened upon the village. Saving two people along the way was nothing spectacular to her, just something any decent person would’ve done.

  The village was lucky to have Eve, she contributed more than me and Stan put together. I hoped her story would long continue and that I’d become part of it. But her story is finished. Eve is gone.

  Eve is gone.

  FIRST BLOOD.

  The first couple of throws miss; further proof of Harry’s theory that I’m not a real man, because real men can throw. But the third throw finds its target – although a little too keenly. Rather than gently wrapping against it, the stone crashes right through the window pane. Moments later, the bemused face of Callum Stanhope appears on the other side of the hole. There’s a look of mild irritation as he surveys the damage, but upon seeing me his face is struck with a sudden and intense horror.

  ‘Pres!’ he screams, before disappearing. From inside the house I hear him crashing down the stairs and shrieking, ‘Don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you fucking dare!’

  But I most certainly do dare.

  I found a couple of capfuls of two-stroke in his garage. Not a lot, but enough to set things off. I drop the lighter just as Stan bursts from the front door; teeth bared, panicked eyes bulging from his head, hands outstretched and grasping at thin air despite knowing it’s too late.

  He sinks to his knees, his face wrecked with anguish.

  ‘What have you done? You fucking maniac! What have you done?’ he howls. Actual tears roll down his face.

  I say nothing, because it’s obvious what I’ve done. I’ve set fire to his thinking chair. Stan can barely watch as his well-worn arse-groove is consumed in flame. But to me, this is up there with the most satisfying moments of my life.

  Stan remains frozen, transfixed by the smouldering carcass of his beloved thinking chair. Grieving.

  ‘Maybe that’ll give you something to think about,’ I say, smirking at my newly-acquired wit.

  Stan looks up at me. ‘Was that a pun?’ he says, his voice hoarse and weak. He stands and glances ruefully down at the burning chair. ‘Was that a pun, Pres? A fucking pun? At a time like this!’

  I smile from the very centre of myself as he strides towards me. The sorrow in his eyes rapidly giving way to a furious snarl.

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are? James fucking Bond? Burning things and making puns? What the fuck is wrong with you?’

  Stan fronts up to me, I can feel his breath on my face.

  ‘This is what happens when you fuck a friend over,’ I say.

  ‘What the fuck –’ Stan slumps, his voice dies back. ‘Fine… so you know. Pres… look… I was off my face, and so was she. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing. If I could’ve stopped myself I –’

  ‘You chose to take the MIDS.’

  ‘For fuck sake, Preston. If I’d known the effects then I’d never have taken them. I thought it’d just be trippy and fun. I never thought… that would happen… not with…’

  The mere implication of her name is like a punch in the throat.

  ‘But seriously… this is calculated. This is cold. You knew I loved that chair.’

  ‘And you knew I loved Eve.’

  ‘I… wait… what? You never told me that...!’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it was blindingly obvious. Even to somebody with the brain capacity of a fucking fridge magnet. Jesus Christ, Stan!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, fine! I get it! I’m a piece of shit. But still… I mean, burning my chair… my thinking chair. Why can’t you react like a normal man and just punch me in the face or something? This is something like a woman would do. What are you going to do next? Empty all my clothes on the street?’

  ‘The fact that you think burning an item of furniture is anywhere near as bad as what you did says a lot about you, Stan. It speaks volumes. And as for not being a man… that’s the last thing you should be calling me on.’

  Stan backs off a little. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re a man-baby, Stan. You want everything done for you so the only things you have to think about are sucking your thumb and pulling your pud. You make all these loud noises about getting out there, roaming the land, gradually making your way to Luxemburg or whatever fuck-stick id
ea your dumb-shit brain has scraped together. But look at you… you went out for one fucking day and came back. If you were a man – a real man – you’d have stayed gone. You could’ve done us all a massive favour and disappeared.’

  ‘Oh… you don’t think I’m a real man?’ he says, curling his lip, glancing back at the smouldering chair. ‘If you were a real man, you’d have screwed her yourself months ago,’ he says with a sneer.

  Stan jabs a finger into my shoulder, and a curious thing happens; my hand curls itself into a tight fist, and then I smash that fist into the side of Stan’s face with every ounce of hatred that I can muster. He tumbles to the ground, and then he’s staring up at me with this startled expression that I’ve never before seen from him. And I’m staring down at him with what must be an equally startled expression. For about two seconds, it feels so very fucking good, like everything bad that ever happened just caught light and was consumed in the briefest but most intense of fires.

  But then…

  ‘Jesus!’ I scream, clutching my fist. ‘What the hell is your face made out of? Plate steel?’

  ‘You… punched me,’ Stan says, looking like he’s witnessed the queen defecating on his lawn.

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ I say, breathlessly inspecting the damage to my knuckles. ‘And it really bloody hurt!’ I had absolutely no idea that punching people was so painful. No wonder it’s something I never do.

  Stan rubs his cheek, adjusts his jaw. ‘Now that’s a proper reaction. Why couldn’t you have done that in the first place instead of setting fire to my thinking chair, you absolute…’ but words fail him. He kicks out at me instead, but misses.

  I sit down on the grass and hold my hand close to my chest. I’d give anything for an ice-pack. Burning the chair was much less painful. I should have just stuck with my original plan of burning as many of his possessions as I could until my heart stopped aching.

  ‘Feel better now?’ Stan says, giving his head a brisk shake.