Like Rats

by Adam Watts

‘Good find,’ Stan says. ‘You scared the crap out of me, though, sneaking up like that.’

  ‘Didn’t piss ya pants again, did ya? Or well up in tears?’ she says.

  Stan’s silence is nothing short of incriminating. Tuesday starts laughing.

  ‘So… this is fun,’ I say.

  ‘Fuck sake…’ Stan mutters. ‘It had to be you that saved me. This could be my last night alive and now you’re gonna make it really bloody awkward.’

  ‘So you coupla divs don’t want my help?’ she says. ‘Coz it turns out I’m pretty handy when it comes to crackin’ skulls.’

  ‘Well don’t sound so pleased about it,’ Stan says.

  ‘We need to get to Harry’s,’ I tell her.

  ‘Oh… he alright?’

  ‘He’s with Frida. Now, shine that torch, will ya? I’ve lost my bearings.’

  Tuesday aims the weak beam at the houses. ‘Bit further down,’ she says, taking off past me. Stan and I follow on.

  ‘How many of those things do you reckon there are?’ Stan says, running alongside me. ‘I mean, there must have been twenty or thirty outside Frida’s.’

  ‘I think it’s fair to assume we’re massively outnumbered. We need that gun and we need to hope there’s plenty of bullets.’

  ‘That’s all well and good, but it’s dark, mate. No good having a gun if you can’t see what you’re aiming at.’

  ‘Let’s just get the gun,’ I tell him, not wanting to dwell on the fact that it might not be our ticket out of this mess.

  Up ahead Tuesday starts flashing the torch to signal that she’s found Harry’s place. ‘Here,’ she says as we approach, before heading off to the right, shining the beam on the floor for us to follow.

  ‘You think we were followed?’ Stan asks as Tuesday pushes the door open and ushers us through.

  ‘Dunno,’ she says. She closes the door softly behind us. ‘Probably won’t take ‘em long to find us. They seem pretty good at trackin’ people down. Reckon they got special eyes, or noses like dogs or something.’

  ‘Told ya, Pres. Wolves. They’re like wolves!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s just find the gun,’ I say, feeling uneasy in Harry’s house. If we got in here so easily, so could something else.

  Tuesday shines the torch around the place and it occurs to me that I’ve never been in here before. I always expected him to live in a neat and tidy little nest. Everything in its place like a well-made time-piece. But it’s actually a complete tip. There’s stuff piled everywhere, stacks and stacks of junk all teetering and creaking under its own unsteady weight. Even in the dim torch-light you can see the dust coating every surface like sifted flour.

  Stan makes a little whistling sound like a cartoonish bomb falling from a height. ‘Someone needs a maid. How are we meant to find a gun amongst this lot?’

  ‘He said it was in a cabinet in the front bedroom.’

  ‘I know where,’ Tuesday says.

  ‘I don’t wanna know how you know that,’ Stan says.

  ‘Grow up, pissy pants,’ she tells him back.

  And again the silence tells of a long held secret.

  Eventually we find the cabinet behind a pile of empty boxes and tins. For what purpose they’ve been kept is anyone’s guess. Tuesday shines the torch inside.

  ‘That, my friends, is a very nice looking shotgun,’ Stan says, reaching in and taking it. He puts the stock to his shoulder and looks down the sight. ‘I have no idea why I’m doing this, by the way. It just seems like the thing to do when you find a shotgun.’

  ‘Careful! What if it’s loaded?’ Tuesday says.

  ‘It’s not loaded,’ Stan says, flipping the barrel down. ‘Ok… it is loaded. I’ll err… just put the safety on.’

  ‘Did you know this was here?’ I ask Tuesday.

  ‘Nah… if I’d known I would’ve come got it myself.’

  ‘Wonder why he didn’t say anything. We could’ve used this for hunting,’ I say.

  ‘That’s probably why he didn’t tell ya. You coupla special cases woulda just used up all the ammo shooting holes in the clouds from your tree house.’

  ‘It’s a lookout post, Tuesday. Our job is to maintain the perimeter,’ Stan says.

  ‘And there was me thinkin’ you were just comparin’ ya fannies,’ she says. ‘And stop callin’ me fuckin’ Tuesday. My name’s Charlie, and ya know it is!’

  ‘Fine. I’ll stop calling you Tuesday.’

  ‘Makes me feel like a right fuckin’ pleb,’ she says.

  ‘Right… I get it. I won’t call you Tuesday anymore. Now… how many bullets have we got?’

  I grab what’s in the cabinet and count them out.

  ‘Eleven. And they’re cartridges, not bullets.’

  ‘Jesus, Pres! Does it really matter? It’s just a name. Bullets, cartridges, Charlies, Tuesdays. Fuck!’

  ‘Don’t piss ya pants, Callum!’ Charlie says.

  ‘Stop with the name bullshi–’ Stan is cut off by the sound of the front door opening just beneath us. ‘Who didn’t lock the door?!’ he hisses, meaning he didn’t think to do it either.

  ‘What does it matter? We’ll just shoot it,’ I whisper.

  ‘You’re assuming it’s just one?’

  Slow footsteps fall upon the stairs.

  ‘It only sounds like one.’

  ‘Then we get it with the meat hammer or the oar! We’ve got to preserve the bullets,’ Stan says.

  ‘They’re cartridges,’ I tell him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what they are! Just beat the fucking thing to death.’

  The footsteps fall on the landing now, creeping towards the door. We all step back, raise our weapons. Charlie points the torch at the door. Something pushes its way in, a hand curls around the edge of the door, then a stunned face appears, squinting into the light. Stan raises his cleaver, ready to thump it down between those confused eyes and crack its skull. I grab his hand and pull it back.

  I’m not entirely sure how I imagined this moment might feel. Big, I suppose. Big words, big gestures, sweeping strings and a grand sky arching over us. I imagined that I could be strong; a solid and reassuring pair of arms to fall in to. But upon seeing her, I’m more fragile than ever; a pillar of ash.

  ‘Hey,’ she says, shielding her eyes from the torch light. And with that one simple word, I am scattered.

  HERE AND THERE.

  ‘You all going to keep staring at me or do I get to play with the gun too?’

  ‘Where you been?’ Charlie says, throwing her arms around her.

  ‘Here and there,’ Eve says, tentatively partaking in the embrace.

  Here and there. That’s it? Here and there? No big deal, just here and there. How can she be so casual?

  ‘Hey, Stan,’ Eve says through a set jaw.

  ‘I knew you weren’t dead.’ Stan slaps me hard on the shoulder.

  ‘Oh… ok,’ she says. ‘Definitely not dead. Sorry if I worried you all.’

  This is the point where I should say something. A grand gesture… that’s what’s needed, and after all I’ve been through these last few days, it should be a cinch. So why is it not?

  True to form, I say something rubbish. ‘We’ve got a gun.’

  Idiot. Fucking spanner-brained goober!

  ‘And… a frying pan… from the looks of it,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah… It’s Frida’s. We’ve err… they’re err…’

  ‘Ok! Thanks for that, Hugh Grant,’ Stan says, clapping his hands loudly. ‘There’ll be time to continue this touching reunion later on, but right now we have a village full of zombies and one helluva big cunt of an uncle who’s playing us like marbles in Kerplunk. So, we need to figure out what we’re doing, and since Eve here is such a sneaky little sausage, I vote she comes up with the plan.’

  ‘Oh…’ she says. ‘A plan? I don’t even know what the game is. Just kill some crazies? Is that it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Stan says. ‘Turns out my uncle wants us all to j
oin him in paradise and the price for entry is one decapitated head per person. And if we’ve not dropped one off at the hall by dawn, he’ll shoot us. Looks like it’s been a busy year for old Uncle Lawrence. Aren’t we lucky he decided to come back?’

  ‘Wait… what do you mean, paradise?’ Eve says.

  ‘No idea,’ Stan says. ‘But I sure as hell don’t wanna go any place where my uncle is king of the hill.’ He goes on for a while longer but I stop hearing him. I’m too busy staring at Eve. A few minutes ago I’d almost resigned myself to never seeing her again, or maybe only glimpsing her in some transformed state before she lunged at my jugular. And now she’s here, looking the same as she ever did. But somehow different. Somehow, she is transformed. It occurs to me that I have no idea how she feels about me anymore, or even how she feels about herself. I’ve been holding on to the lofty delusion that all the bad things would be forgotten, rendered immediately insignificant by the horrors faced while trying to find her. But seeing her and Stan talking, laughing, making plans, it somehow feels more dreadful than the prospect of death. I want to reach out to her, draw her close, tell her how I’ve missed her. I want her to know I can be a better man. But if anything, I’m worse. I am no good to her anymore, I’ve revealed my true colours and they’re as base as everybody else’s. What good am I to her when I’ve killed and lost sight of all things decent? And maybe I’m being stupid, but I feel like she knows it.

  I hear my name mentioned and try to click back in to the conversation, but fail.

  ‘Sorry, what?’ I say.

  Eve looks over at me. Was that a smile?

  ‘Pres, are you even in the room?’ Stan says.

  ‘Sorry. Head’s a little fuzzy. Too much running.’

  Stan snorts a little at that, he knows I’m full of shit. But despite the whiff of derision, I sense relief in him. It’ll be fleeting, as most things tend to be with Stan, and now he’s confirmed he hasn’t caused our friend to disappear of the face off the planet, he’ll be keen to pretend none of it ever happened. Which is fine with me if that’s the attitude required to get us through the night without being eaten or shot. The axe can stay its grinding for the time being.

  ‘So what are we doing?’ I ask.

  ‘We’ve got limited ammo, so taking out every zombie is not a possibility.’

  ‘I thought they weren’t zombies,’ Charlie says.

  ‘It’s not important!’ snaps Stan. ‘What is important is that we have eleven bullets, or… fucking cartridges or whatever they are… and we have more than eleven zombie-things. And then there’s the fact that none of us really know how to shoot and some zombie-things might take more than one shot to go down. So basically, the gun doesn’t do us a lot of good.’

  ‘I can shoot a gun pretty well,’ Charlie says, before sensing the apprehension in the room. ‘Well I can! My dad used to shoot, used to show me how.’

  ‘Are you being serious?’ Stan says.

  ‘Err… course I’m serious. Ain’t rocket science. Better off me avin’ it than you. You’d only end up dislocatin’ a shoulder or somethin’, and then we’d have to put you down, and we’re runnin’ low on bullets as it is.’

  Stan takes a moment to consider Charlie’s argument. He’ll have been keen on being the man with the gun, cancelling out the crazies with both barrels of his boom-stick, but to my surprise he hands it to Charlie. She must be surprised too, because she says nothing.

  ‘So,’ Stan continues, his voice sounding a little wounded at the loss of his weapon. ‘If we can’t use it to mow the bastards down, we’ll have to use it tactically; which means we’ve gotta head back to the hall and sort out Uncle Lawrence.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to shoot your uncle?’ Eve asks.

  ‘I’d like to…’ Stan says, with a note of genuine intent in his voice.

  ‘Lawrence shot Frida in the leg,’ I add, for Eve’s benefit.

  ‘And let’s not forget the bit where he had her dragged out of the hall as bait! The sick bastard,’ Stan says.

  ‘But you wouldn’t shoot him…’ Eve says.

  ‘Maybe not… but I might get Charlie to.’

  ‘He’s your fuckin’ uncle. Why should I do ya dirty work?’

  ‘Because you’re a better shot, apparently.’

  ‘So,’ I say, fearing that we’re veering off-message, ‘we take ourselves down to the hall, and then what? You heard him, he said this village is the property of New Paradise. I don’t think they’re going to give it up just because we’ve got a gun and eleven bullets.’

  ‘Cartridges, Pres.’

  ‘Thanks… eleven cartridges. But I reckon Uncle Lawrence is still our best hope of ending this. He’s clearly the one with the clout. The man clicks his fingers and bullets fly.’

  ‘So… we request a meeting with Uncle Cunt-Face?’ Stan says. ‘That’s a shit plan.’

  ‘I’m not talking about a meeting. I say we kidnap him. We hold him as collateral and when we get our village back, they get him back.’

  ‘But what about all the things out there?’ Eve asks.

  ‘They go down pretty easy,’ Charlie says.

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ Stan says. Nobody’s laughing.

  ‘Lawrence’s men brought those things here, so they must have some way of… wrangling them. If they got them into those trucks to bring them here, then they must be able to get them back in somehow. So, we get their guns and we make them do their wrangling thing.’

  ‘That sounds just about simple enough to fail spectacularly,’ Stan says.

  There’s a crash and a scream from outside. Charlie rushes to the window to check. ‘Shit!’ she says.

  ‘How many?’ Stan asks. The screams and howls don’t sound so distant anymore.

  ‘Dunno, but we need to get out of ‘ere now,’ she says.

  ‘Right then… new plan!’ announces Stan. ‘Get to the hall and knock as many of these sickos to the ground as we can. Eve… cleaver or hammer?’

  ‘Errr… cleaver?’

  ‘Good choice,’ says Stan, thrusting it towards her. ‘Now… what time is it, Pres?’

  ‘Is it go time?’ I say, trying to summon the strength to lift up that hefty pan again.

  ‘You bet your smelly arse it’s go time!’

  ‘I thought you hated go time.’

  ‘I do, old son. I do.’

  Charlie stamps her foot. ‘Can we just go? There’ll be a hundred of ‘em before y’know it.’

  ‘Pres… you first,’ Stan says, stepping back. Luckily for me, Charlie barges past the both of us. Followed by Eve.

  ‘To the Crystal Doooooome!’ Stan cries as we thunder down the stairs and out in to the fray.

  NEGATIVE CYCLICAL BEHAVIOUR.

  There’s not much to see, and it’s probably better that way. If I could see how many there are it’d almost certainly overwhelm my will to fight. And if I could see that pan breaking into those faces (no matter how twisted and malicious they might be) I think it’d send me over the edge. The MIDS fogged my mind last time around; maybe if our current position were different I’d ask Stan to hook me up, let myself switch off again. But there’s no time for that. There is only time for running. Running and smashing. Sometimes a murky figure lunges from darkness, tearing at my clothes, screaming into my face and snapping its teeth. Sometimes I shove them off and run, sometimes I pile that pan down as hard as I can. All you see if the faint glimmer of their eyes and teeth; the whites picked out by what little light the moon provides. Then, as my weapon parts flesh from bone, there’ll be the spatter of hot blood across my hands and face, followed by the crumple of their bodies hitting the floor behind me.

  Just stay down!

  Every so often one of us will shout out to check on the others, and so far, everyone has yelled back. Sometimes Charlie will flick her torch on to check where we are. Those brief but grisly glimpses are dreadful enough to keep us moving… and keep us fighting. There’s dozens of them, hundreds maybe, ravenous and contorted, fix
ated by the kill. And they just keep coming, until the darkness is no longer an endless black sheet, it’s a throbbing rapacious sea, ready to swallow us up and pull us down into the crushing depths.

  Charlie’s light flicks on again. There’s a clear path ahead, so I run.

  ‘We all still good?’ I yell. All three yell back.

  Somewhere to my left I hear Stan bellowing and then there’s a dull crack as his hammer finds the mark, then laughter. That boy’s enjoying this far too much for my liking. The light flicks on again and I see him looming over his victim, hammer poised, ready to land a killing blow. The light cuts, another hollow crack and more howls of jubilation.

  ‘Not far!’ I hear Charlie yell. ‘Just ahead. Keep runnin’.’ The light flicks on again and I recognise where we are. The village hall is maybe fifty meters in front of us.

  ‘We all good?’ I yell.

  ‘I’m all good!’ yells Stan.

  ‘All good,’ calls Charlie from ahead.

  I wait for Eve’s response, but it doesn’t come. ‘Eve? You all good?’ I call.

  I hear Stan call for her, but still nothing.

  Charlie’s torch flicks on, moves towards us. ‘Where’s Eve,’ she says, darting the light around.

  ‘Eve!’ I yell through cupped hands. Over and over. And then something lunges up from the floor, pulling me down and pinning me there. I buck and kick but it’s too strong. Sharp elbows drive into my chest as it snarls in my ear, it’s breath thick and rancid. I scream and writhe as ragged fingernails rake against my neck. Then… a flash of light, just enough to glimpse the creature sat atop me.

  ‘Fuck off!’ Charlie screams through the darkness, and then the weight is gone.

  I scramble up, wincing at every thwack of Charlie’s oar against the creature’s head. That one may well be dead, but the night air remains swamped by their clamour. Cutting through it all, just loud enough to hear, comes a faint cry: ‘You guys all good? You guys? You guys all good?’

  It’s Eve. We all start yelling and Charlie flashes her torch, seemingly unperturbed by how exposed it leaves us.

  ‘Where are you?’ Eve calls out, her voice getting swallowed up in the howling maelstrom that circles us. We keep yelling and waving the torch but all she does is call back. She can’t see us. Where the hell is she?