by Glynn James
I nodded. I’d forgotten about CutterJack. Don’t ask how. I just had.
“It could be Adler.”
We set up for the next night in one of the buildings across from the shop, hoping that whoever had gone down the manhole might come back up again at some point, then we could check them out at a distance. Rudy was on watch again as I spent the rest of the day poking around in the half dozen other derelict shops on the street.
Found a box of cigarettes! Ten packets! They’re a bit dry, and they don’t smell so good, but I tried one and they smoke pretty well. Guess I’m not the fussiest of people these days.
You know, I'd forgotten that I had run out. I guess I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about it, but I think I had my last smoke sitting under the ten feet tall mushroom in the rain. Back before I crossed the plateau. It seemed as good a place as any.
Something strange was bothering me as I thought of my “last cigarette” moment, something niggling in the back of my mind. I can’t figure out what. I remember sitting there under that enormous mushroom, smoking, and frowning at the empty packet. I kept thinking that there was something odd about the brand. Nothing really odd, they are just Mayfair cigarettes. I really can’t figure out why it’s been bothering me ever since then.
I don’t recognise these new cigarettes. The name on them is in Chinese, or some other glyph-like language, maybe Korean?
Found two packets of unopened dry noodles in the last shop and a harmonica, but nothing else of real use. I can’t play harmonica. Maybe I need to learn.
Decided to take a quick inventory. Figure out what I have left.
DIY backpack
“ZombieBane” Mace
Harmonica. (It works! I just can’t play it.)
Pair of petrol lamps
4 bottles petrol
18 bottles water
9 torches
Electric lamp + Battery
Torch (no batteries)
Screwdriver, 3 hammers (1 broken), spanner.
12 tins of food + Pods (lots) + Mushrooms (3 big ones)
2 packets of noodles.
2 DIY knives + Kitchen knife
Cigarettes / Wallet / Car keys
Journal + Pens
Deodorant + 3 towels
Namibia travel guide (Why?)
Mouthwash (Nearly empty)
Sunglasses + sun tan lotion (Nearly empty)
Sofa pillow + Blanket
Plastic bottles x 13 in sack
2 bits of hose pipe
Half a Curtain
A dozen magazines
Lots of plastic sheeting
Adler’s diary
Rusty saw
Can’t believe I actually named my mace. What am I? Conan the Barbarian?
I suspect that my cigarette lighter is going to run out soon. It’s stuttering and taking several attempts to get a flame, and even then it’s a weak one. I hope the petrol from the car wreck works in it. I’m sure I heard somewhere that it does. I guess I’ll find out soon.
Day 27
I think I nearly died last night.
I was in a deep sleep. I know that because I was still dreaming some strange dream about glowing spiders when I woke up, even though the noise was loud enough to wake even the dead.
Rudy was standing inside the door, his hand to his mouth and one finger over his lips.
The voice in my head that wasn’t Rudy spoke.
Silence.
Don’t make a sound.
Something was trying to get into the building, and as the last of the spiders from my dream drifted away, the door shook violently. I’m so glad I propped that broken chair up against the handle.
Another violent shake. I was up, grabbing my mace and my knife. I crept quietly towards where Rudy was standing, fighting panic as my heart tried to leap right out of my chest.
Then it spoke. Not the voice in my head a moment before, warning me, no, this was another one. It was speaking in plain English and I understood everything that it said, but it was raspy and deep, the accent like none I had ever heard. Russian sounding, but not quite.
“I know you are in there. Rat.”
I almost bit off the end of my tongue stopping myself from calling out in fear.
The door shook again, this time even more violently. I heard something crack, and realised that whatever was out there was going to get in, and something told me this was no clumsy friggin zombie.
Crack. The top hinge of the door broke. Bits of wood scattered across the floor.
Then there was growling, and a lot of it. I recognised DogThing’s deep growl over the noise, but it wasn’t just him out there. The others must have returned. Whatever it was that was trying to break down the door hissed in reply.
“Another time then. Rat.”
Footsteps echoed away from the building and the growling followed it. I pulled the chair away, opened the door, swung my mace back ready to strike, just in case, and stepped out.
DogThing was sitting in the middle of the street. I followed the direction of his gaze and was in time to see a bunch of maw, a dozen or so I think, vanish round the corner of a building two blocks away.
Across the street the manhole was lying half open.
“I guess that answers our mystery,” said Rudy.
I sat down heavily on the pavement, breathing deeply. “Screw this. That was CutterJack wasn’t it?”
“Yes. That was CutterJack.”
“I’d recognise that voice even if a hundred years had passed.”
Rudy was standing in the doorway, watching the road.
“What the hell do we do now?”
“We leave.”
We had to. If CutterJack came back and the maw weren’t around, I didn’t stand a chance. I’d seen his shadow and the sheer size of him when the door began to break. For a moment the top corner of the door had leant inwards, giving me a glimpse of the monster that stood outside.
He was huge, tall enough to have to crouch down to be able to hit the door. Roughly? I’d say eight feet tall, and that’s only a guess.
People don’t grow that tall, do they? Not normally anyway. DogThing must have been out there the whole time, but it took a whole pack of maw to scare CutterJack away. Now if that had been me, one DogThing would have had me running.
The mess in the shop had to have been made by him. I was convinced of it. Unless there were others around here, or the maw and the lizard thing had a set to and CutterJack had arrived afterwards.
I don’t know. I don’t know.
I packed my stuff back into the cart as fast as I could, dumping a lot of stuff to make it lighter. The travel guide and the magazines went, making a surprising difference. I’d not realised how heavy they were until I left them behind. Why had I been keeping them anyway?
Distance.
We had to put some distance between us and CutterJack, and then hope we hadn’t left enough of a trail for him to follow. I wouldn’t have a clue about tracking someone, but I also didn’t know how skilled CutterJack was either. I had a horrible sickly feeling that he would be able to follow us anywhere, if he wanted to.
I reckon it was less than two minutes later when I hauled the cart outside onto the pavement.
Rudy was waiting for me, watching the road where CutterJack had fled.
“Which way?”
“The way he didn’t go.”
We headed along the pavement as quickly as the cart could go. DogThing eventually caught us up and followed us, always twenty or so feet behind, always scanning behind us and sniffing the ground.
We crossed a road, Maldon Street. I had to pull the cart backwards to get it over the cobbles, and haul it back up onto the pavement on the other side of the road. I stopped for a moment and looked down Maldon. Shop after shop lined the street, twenty of them, at least, and no time to look.
We hurried for another block and began to cross Merriwether Avenue. Odd name.
Rudy stopped in the middle of the road, frowning.
“Wait.�
�
“What?”
“Be quiet.”
Then I heard it too.
Music.
Somewhere nearby music was playing. It was quiet and echoed faintly down Merriwether Avenue. It sounded like it was coming out of a window high up somewhere, and I could see that further down Merriwether there was a row of three and four story Victorian style townhouses.
One of the buildings, right in the middle of the row, had a window wide open on the top floor. Long drape curtains were hanging out, swaying like they were caught in a breeze, even though I could feel no wind from down on the street.
There was a light on in the room.
“Is that?”
“Yes. Music. What the hell?”
I started walking down the street towards the house, for the second time in as many days wondering if I had found someone else alive, someone else other than CutterJack.
“Is this a good idea?”
Rudy was following me, but I could see he was hesitant. Why would a ghost be scared? It’s not like he could die twice. I didn’t consider until now, whilst I’m writing this, that if I died he would be trapped again, probably for a long time.
“I have no idea.”
We approached the building slowly, checking every alleyway and door as we went. CutterJack had gone the other way, but he was tall, and I imagined he could move fast.
I stopped. Now I was my turn to be hesitant.
“What if we’re just walking to CutterJack’s house?”
“I’m with you. I say we just run.”
We both started back down the street again, away from the house, but we only travelled a few feet when DogThing lowered himself to the ground and started growling. Nearby I heard more growling, and my nerves hissed as I saw two other maw dart out from an alleyway that both Rudy and I had checked moments before. Neither of us had seen them.
Then we saw him, right down the other end of Merriwether, walking towards us casually, as though he was out for a stroll in the country on a Sunday afternoon.
CutterJack.
“You can’t hide from me forever, Rat. I got your friend and I’ll get you.”
We ran, straight for the house. My heart was thumping again as the front door rushed towards us. I nearly tripped on the cobbles at least twice, and I could almost feel him getting closer to us. I glanced back as Rudy ran up the steps to the front door.
Down the street, the maw were holding him off, but there was only three of them and CutterJack had drawn out a pair of long blades and was swinging them in long swirling patterns as he walked slowly forwards. I turned and ran for the door, colliding with it, hoping it would open, but it was shut tight. Rudy stepped through the door and vanished.
“Rudy!”
Lots of growling and noise behind me.
I tried the handle. Still no luck, then I rammed the door a second time with my shoulder, but it wasn’t budging.
“Rudy!”
I glanced back over my shoulder to see CutterJack standing at the bottom of the steps, grinning at me. The three maw, including DogThing, were lying in the street. One of them was still barely moving, twitching. I couldn’t make out which maw it was.
It was over. I knew it was. I pointed my knife at him and pulled my mace back, ready to fight. I didn’t stand a chance, I knew that, but he had killed my dogs. I was going to hurt him before he killed me too.
I have no idea how it happened. It was all over far too quickly for me to recall it clearly. CutterJack leapt forward at me, much quicker than I had expected, taking the steps and the distance between us before I could even react. I had barely enough time to fall over onto my back. Something hit the door above me with a bang, then again another, thwack. I tried to roll out of the way but felt my mace catch on something, only the weight of me falling off of the front porch pulled it away. I think that is when I hit my head, maybe on the cobbles or on the porch steps as I fell. There was a scream. The kind of noise I imagined I would be making in a few moments. Or was it me screaming?
No pain came.
Everything went blurry for a while after that. I remember hearing someone bellowing at the top of their voice, it might have been Rudy, but when I came to my senses it had stopped.
It was all over, I was still breathing, and CutterJack was gone.
There was blood all over the sharp end of my mace.
A Buddy Holly song was blaring out of the window above me, and I couldn’t remember which one it was.
I heard Rudy’s voice nearby.
“Quickly, get up.”
I hauled myself to me feet, still staring in wonder at the end of my mace, unable to figure out how the hell I had managed to fumble my way out of death.
“Where the hell were you?” I mumbled. I wanted to shout at him but my head was still spinning.
“I ran inside. I thought you would come through, but you didn’t. I could see that you couldn’t open the door, so I ran around the house, trying to find another way in or someone else in there that could open the door. There wasn’t.”
“It’s locked up.”
“Yes. I figured as much. You have got to see in there.”
I sat down on the porch steps, trying to catch my breath and slow my heart-beat down.
“Then I heard the noise from the maw stop and I ran as fast as I could. I’ve no idea what I was going to do, but couldn’t think of anything else. When I ran back through the door I ran straight into CutterJack. I screamed. I know, I know. You must think me a coward, but I’m terrified of him.”
“No. You’re all good there. I’m damn scared of him myself.”
“Well, I think, I don’t know, but I think I made him jump.”
I looked up at this, almost smiled.
“You frightened him?”
“Well, I doubt that, but I don’t think he expected someone to come running through a closed door. You do realise your mace was stuck in his leg don’t you?”
“Was it? I thought it was caught on his clothes or something. I think I fell of the porch.”
“Yes, you did, but so did he. He stumbled back from me and tripped over you.”
At this I did laugh, and Rudy laughed too. I was avoiding looking over towards where I knew the maw would be lying, dead. Anything mildly funny was enough for me at that moment.
Then Rudy stopped laughing, his jaw almost dropped off. I followed the direction of his gaze, my stomach lurching as I expected to see CutterJack coming back again.
The maw had gone.
“What the… ”
“They’ve gone. How?”
“How the hell should I know?”
We both moved quickly then, jogging over to where we had last seen the maw. My head was still fuzzy, but seeing the bodies of the maw missing sobered me up fast.
No trace, nothing. There was blood over the cobbles, where they had each fallen, not as much blood as I had expected, but other than that, nothing.
“Let’s get into the house, just in case he comes back,” I said, heading over to grab the cart from where I had abandoned it.
“Um, James? I don’t think he is coming back any time soon,” said Rudy.
I stopped and turned round. Rudy was standing in front of the porch, staring at the ground.
“Why?”
“Because I think this is a bit of his leg.”
I pushed the cart as quickly as I could, and went over to look at Rudy’s grizzly find.
“Oh, hell! That’s gross.”
There was a lump of bloody flesh about the size of my fist lying in the street. I’d literally taken a chunk out of CutterJack.
“And if he does come back, he is going to need some new knives,” said Rudy, pointing up at the door.
They were embedded in the wood by at least six inches, one in the door itself, it had gone all the way through and Rudy said it was sticking a few inches out of the other side of the door. The other was stuck hard in the wooden floorboards of the porch. CutterJack had left his knives behind.<
br />
It took me about five minutes to pry the one out of the floor, whilst Rudy went round inside the building, trying to find a way I could get in. It was no small knife. The thing was about two feet long and sharp as a Stanley knife. Cripes, if that thing had gone in me instead of the door…
The one in the door took longer. I’d just managed to pull it out when Rudy came back.
“There is a window at the back, on the second floor. I think if you can get up there you might be able to get in. There is a rope hidden behind the drain pipe. I didn’t spot it at first. It’s well hidden. All the other windows in the house apart from that one and the one on the top floor are all shored up on the inside. Someone made a fortress out of this place.”
We left the cart at the front of the house, and made our way around the row of buildings and into an alley way. It looked like someone had been shoving their junk into the alley for years. I had to climb over three fences before we got into the yard.
I couldn’t see the rope, even when I looked behind the pipe. Then I noticed a bit of it poking out of a hole in the drain, high up near the window. It went inside through a small gap where the window had been left open, just a little bit. The rope was tucked into the pipe. Whoever had put it there had hidden it well, cutting a slit all the way from the top to the bottom and stuffing it inside.
Day 28
We are holed up in the house. All the windows are shut and the door is locked. I hauled the rope up and pulled it back through the window. There is so much to say about what we have discovered in the house, but I’ve not had the time. Feeling sick and dizzy. I need to sleep.
I asked Rudy if he had spoken to me when CutterJack was trying to bang the door down in the building opposite the shop the night before. He says he didn’t. I shrugged it off, maybe I’d imagined that I heard it, but I was almost certain that someone had spoken to me. It hadn’t been CutterJack. Why would he have told me to be silent and still? He wouldn’t have at all. Someone other than Rudy had told me, someone who didn’t want CutterJack to find me.
Silence.
Don’t make a sound.
Day 29
Rudy thinks I may have had a slight concussion from when I hit the paving, after my fall. I remember being dazed for a while afterwards, so I guess he could be right. I don’t have any injuries though, so if I did bang my head it can’t have been too hard. I think I’ve just been feeling sick from fear, after nearly being butchered. I know, I’ve fought with zombies a couple of times now, and they are gruesome looking, but they are slow, and I always had time to line myself up for each swing. Well, nearly every time. CutterJack was different, and I think that’s why I’ve been feeling sick.
