Winter Smith (Book 1): London's Burning

by Strange, J. S.

  He left, struggling with the door before it slammed shut once more.

  The atmosphere in the room changed. The kids were playing with a stress ball they had found, and Winter was stood in the middle of the room between them and Violet.

  Violet didn’t bother to avert her attention elsewhere. She seemed to revel in the way she made Winter uncomfortable. She twisted a strand of hair between two fingers while staring at Winter silently.

  “Are you okay after your fall?” Winter asked her. She was still covered in plaster, and Winter again thought both of her friends had been lucky to survive tonight.

  Violet said nothing. Instead, she pushed herself away from the desk and headed towards the door.

  “You can’t give me the silent treatment, Violet.”

  But that’s exactly what she did. Winter was left with an echoing slam from the door and two young children.

  The kids looked at Winter expectantly, waiting for her to tell them what to do. She was their security, something Winter couldn’t really handle. She clapped her hands together and smiled, trying to clear her face of any tension or worry.

  “Let’s go get you pair washed up and ready for bed.”

  She found the showers downstairs, and after setting up the shower so it poured warm water let the girl go in first. She listened by the door, making sure the girl was alright. The girl called when she wanted to come out, and Winter handed her a towel from a heap she had found in a basket inside the shower room. The next person to use the shower was the boy.

  “His name is Connor,” the girl said. Winter’s heart flipped. “I’m Leah. Thank you for helping us both.”

  “That’s okay, Leah. I’m Winter. My friends upstairs are Zach and Violet.”

  Leah nodded, her eyes staring at nothing as she tried to remember their names.

  “I’m eight, and Connor is six.”

  “So you’re the responsible one then.” Winter smiled.

  Leah seemed pleased at this. She nodded enthusiastically.

  “Yes, I’m the responivele one,” Leah said, unaware of her mistake. “How old are you?”

  “I’m seventeen.”

  Leah gasped.

  “You’re old!”

  Winter laughed. “Yes, I’m really old.”

  “Winter, I’d like to come out now!” Connor called from inside the shower room.

  Again, Winter handed a second towel to Connor and waited for him to dry and dress himself with the help of Leah.

  “Are you all done?” Winter asked.

  The pair bounded out of the shower room looking healthier than before. Winter noticed how small they were, dwarfed by everything around them. Looking into their eyes, Winter saw they looked slightly ill. She worried for them, but she had to get them out of London. She couldn’t leave them behind now.

  “Are we getting food before bed, Winter?” Leah asked politely.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Winter smiled, watching their eyes light up. “Why don’t you run up to bed and I’ll go and find something in the kitchen?”

  “Bet you I can beat you there!” Connor challenged, running through the doors back into reception. Leah gasped and pursued him, unable to catch up with her agile brother.

  Winter left a few seconds later, listening to them bound up the set of steps nearby. The building was in a V shape, and was much bigger than expected. Winter looked down a hallway lined with offices, blinds drawn over windows. Company names were stuck to clean windows, but Winter was sure these companies had stopped making business now.

  She climbed the steps Leah and Connor had run up, thinking of the Connor she had lost back in Violet’s town. She wished she could see him now. She wished he were here. Somehow she knew he would be on her side and that she wouldn’t feel so alone.

  As she neared the kitchen she stopped. She could hear voices, and she knew they could only belong to Violet and Zach. Hiding behind the wall and out of sight, Winter eavesdropped on their conversation.

  “We shouldn’t have stayed here, Zach.” Violet was saying. “We’re only a street away from that town, so this place is going to be swarming by tomorrow morning. We’ve led ourselves into a trap.”

  “We couldn’t really go anywhere else, Violet,” Zach muttered. Winter leaned in to hear him better. “We were being chased. We couldn’t outrun them any longer. You saw what almost happened when we got here. They almost got in.”

  “And why do you think we had to come here, Zach? Whose fault do you think it is?”

  “I know what you’re going to say…”

  “It’s Winter’s fault. She bought those fucking children along, and now we’re weighed down.”

  “I know what you mean.” Zach sighed. “But we have to help her with them.”

  “No, we don’t. They’re going to be so demanding, Winter is going to be caught up with getting them what they need. I say we leave. Tomorrow. We leave her and the kids here. We’re not far from the Thames if we’re really in Harrow. We can get to Shepherds Bush and then find a safe way to get to the Thames.”

  “I don’t know, Vi. My hip is really hurting; I can’t walk without searing pain. And we can’t really leave Winter behind. It’s the three of us.”

  “You have me, Zach.” Violet urged. “The two of us will be safe. We just can’t stay here. You know we can’t.”

  There was silence. Winter prayed that Zach wouldn’t cave in. He had always been afraid of her. Violet was able to wrap Zach around her little finger. She was playing him.

  “There’s zombies outside now, and by morning there will be more. We have to leave. Just me and you.”

  Winter waited, and then she heard the words that broke her.

  “Fine, we’ll leave,” Zach said.

  She heard the kitchen door open, the hum of a fan being cut short as the light went off. She concealed herself behind the banister, watching Violet and Zach walk across a seating area and to the floor below.

  Once they were gone, Winter trudged up the next flight of stairs, allowing tears to roll down her cheeks. She had lost Zach to Violet. She was going to be abandoned and left alone. If she were alone, she wouldn’t survive.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes while she entered the kitchen on the third floor. Opening the refrigerator, she saw it was empty and knew the kids would not be happy without food.

  She walked across to the office where the kids and her would be staying the night. She tried to forget about Violet and Zach as she shut the door and locked it behind her. She was relieved to find the kids sound asleep, all thought of food gone from their minds.

  She sat down on a wooden chair and looked out at the street below. The window was obscured with rain, lazily rolling down the glass. She could spot moving figures and wondered if the ones she saw were dead or alive. She rested her head on the glass and let her tears sync with the rolling rain on the glass.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning Winter woke up to nothing but herself in one room. Awoken by a draft, she pulled her jumper she had been using as a blanket around her. She tried to fall back to sleep, but when she rolled over and saw that Leah and Connor were gone she panicked.

  She jumped to her feet. The building was silent except for the heating, which seemed to heat the hallways but not the rooms themselves.

  She hurried down the flight of steps; past the kitchen where she had listened to Violet and Zach, and down to reception again. She checked the bathrooms and the showers but found no one inside. Fearing she had been deserted, she looked at the front door; only to see the front car park of the building was crawling with the dead.

  Slowing down, she walked as calmly as possible down the hallway in front of her. She tried the door of the first office but found it locked. She tried the second door and was greeted with a room full of computers, desks and phones. Attached to the phones were headsets. She assumed this must be a call centre. It was quiet, with no sign of life.

  She began to leave when she heard a noise. Turning around she
saw Zach emerging from behind a desk. He had his back turned to her, but Winter could see he was naked. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. He was looking down at someone, fussing with a blanket and giggling. A few moments later Violet stood up in nothing but her underwear. She threw her arms around Zach and kissed him passionately.

  Winter felt sick. She willed her feet to move but she couldn’t. The kiss seemed to last forever. Zach stood, running his hands over Violet’s body, his fingers dancing over her bra strap.

  Aware of what was about to happen, Winter cleared her throat to announce her presence.

  Zach turned in horror, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He cried out and covered his body with his hands. Winter would have found it funny if she wasn’t so enraged with the look of pleasure and the smug smile on Violet’s face.

  Winter met her eyes and they stared at each other. She couldn’t believe the pair had slept together. There had been no interest before, had there? At least, she hadn’t noticed any.

  Winter turned away from the room, slamming the door behind her. She leant against the door, breathing in, watching a zombie in police uniform outside inspect a parked car. She heard Violet giggling inside as Zach muttered something.

  She left the office and tried the next door, finding it locked.

  She was about to turn back when she saw the kids stood in the stairway above her. They waved at her though the glass and pointed outside, towards the dead. Winter signalled for them to stop and began climbing the steps.

  “Look, Winter, look!” Leah exclaimed, jumping up and down.

  “Let’s move away from the window, kids. We don’t want them to see us.”

  She didn’t even try to be happy. She didn’t care if they saw she was sad. She led them into an office, identical to all of the others, and let them play with whatever they found while she logged on to one of the computers.

  She began searching zombie stories, the most recent of which were posted last week. She saw the date was the fifteenth of June. She couldn’t believe so much time had gone by already.

  She searched the government website, and found it full of information on what to do now that the zombies were taking over. The home page of the website depicted a large ship, with the caption: GET SAFE.

  Winter clicked on a tab that said ‘EVACUATION PROCEDURES’, and proceeded to type in her location. Using the computer’s technology, she found it worked out her location for her. She wasn’t far from the Thames, but with everything going on outside she knew it would take longer to get where she needed to be.

  She clicked on a sub-heading that read ‘Nearest Evacuation Point For You’, and thought about how she would leave with the kids, and instead leave Violet and Zach behind. As far as she was concerned, she had lost. Violet had managed to successfully manipulate Zach using the one thing men only cared for.

  Winter hated herself for thinking it, but she should have seen it coming. Violet had only ever known how to use sex to her advantage, and use it to gain what she wanted. She had done it as a career, and she was doing it now. She hadn’t changed at all, and she never would.

  She saw only two dates remained for the biggest ships leaving the river Thames. One was on Friday the 23rd, while the other was Tuesday the 6th. Other smaller ships left every hour, but could only contain ten to fifteen people. Winter thought it unlikely she would get on.

  Winter’s eyes hovered over the 23rd. She could make that. She knew she could make that. If she left now, and kept on the move, she would get there in time.

  She heard a door in the hallway below open and listened to someone climbing the steps. Staring at the computer screen she waited, wondering if whoever it was would come in and see her.

  She knew it was Violet without looking. She could tell by the way she walked. She approached slowly, hovering behind the computer screen. Winter shut it down, refusing to let Violet know the information she did. Turning around, Winter saw Violet hadn’t bothered to put any clothes on. It was almost as if she thought she didn’t need to. Maybe she thought when she went back downstairs she would be back at it with Zach.

  “I’m sorry you had to walk in on that, Winter,” Violet whispered, with no trace of sorrow in her voice. “But listen, me and Zach have a deal. You dispose of the kids, or we leave without you.”

  Winter glared at Violet as she leaned back.

  “It’s your choice.” Violet shrugged. “See you later.”

  Violet left the room, strolling casually along whistling a tune.

  Winter looked across at the kids, who were playing hide and seek underneath the tables. She couldn’t leave them alone. The thought hadn’t even entered her mind.

  But what would she do when they all got to Paris? Where would the kids go then? Would she have to adopt them? She couldn’t be dealing with that responsibility at seventeen. If she had wanted to be a mother she would have gotten herself knocked up, like her posh rich friends that existed in a previous life.

  Winter shut down the computer. Her mind just wasn’t functioning. She couldn’t concentrate on what she had to do. She walked out of the room and stared out of the glass in front of her. She watched the zombies walking back and forth, waiting for their next victims to appear.

  She decided she would go in the shower. She needed time to clear her head, think out a plan to leave Violet and, regretfully, Zach behind. She told the kids where she was going and told them to stay where they were and behave.

  She went to the floor below, striding past the room where Violet and Zach were. She didn’t even pause to listen, afraid of what she might hear. She tried to convince herself she didn’t care. After all, why should she? She didn’t love or fancy Zach. She had only known the pair for a short time. The two of them could do what they wanted. It was bound to happen eventually. It was life. You spent time with people, realised you were different to them and drifted apart.

  It had always been the same in Winter’s life.

  She turned on the shower, stripped off her clothes and let the warm water pour down her body. She was glad there were soap and towels left behind.

  Running a hand through her hair, she remembered how in school she had always been bullied. Nobody wanted to be friends with celebrity Winter Smith, the girl with a troubled life. When she was a kid, the press ripped her apart. That was hard to deal with when you were younger than Leah or Connor upstairs. Of course, they didn’t say awful things about her, and it was true Winter was too young to understand. Yet they called her a brat, assisted by her parents. As she got older, she became ‘trouble’. Her parents always spoke out about how she defied their rules. Then, of course, everything changed when she hit the age of fourteen.

  She had always spent time with her grandparents. They were her escape. As a child, her favourite person was her grandfather. He gave her sweets, gave her new clothes, and did her hair. He was always sweet towards her, calling her his ‘favourite grandchild’. But when she started developing, their relationship changed. Suddenly her grandfather wasn’t the sweet grandfather he had always been. He became odd, sleazy, creepy. He would send his wife to the shop so he could be left in a room alone with Winter, and there he’d talk dirty words to her, explain his fantasies in detail. At fourteen, Winter didn’t know what much of it truly meant, but she knew it was odd.

  Even though the water that poured on Winter was warm, she felt a chill creep up her skin at the memory. She remembered the touch of his fingers, how she had tried to hide away from him but he was always there.

  Then, he made a move on her. He kissed her, and Winter pushed him away. He apologised, told her never to tell. He said if she uttered a single word, to his wife or to her parents, her life would be ruined.

  Then, one weekend later, she woke up to find him running a hand over her thighs. She had frozen. She had let him corrupt her body. He had done things to her that no person should ever do. He left her in the bed that night, weeping. His grandmother lay in bed, and Winter remembered the hatred she had felt towards her. She didn’t h
elp. She was the only other person in that house who could have stopped him. But she stayed in that room.

  Winter never wanted to go back. She became reserved and moody. Her parents hated her even more. They believed she was being a typical teenager, set out to make their lives a misery. That was when they had no time for her anymore. They ignored her, and despite her protests they sent her for a weekend down to her grandparents’ house in Cornwall.

  That night, everything had changed. Winter lost herself. Her whole body had become a shell. She never healed after that night, and she could still feel the emotional scars now.

  Everything had been going okay. Her grandfather had been quiet. He hadn’t really spoken to Winter. She savoured the moments. Every second he didn’t look at her, talk to her, touch her was to be treasured. She remembered she wore layers of clothing so no skin was on show, despite the Cornwall cottage being warm, heated by an old fireplace.

  Then, as the night wore on, arguments broke out. Winter tried to block out the screams of anger coming from her grandmother, and the shouts of protest coming from her grandfather. Then she had heard a scream. Stood in the kitchen, Winter thought she should escape through the back door now. She knew if she stayed in that building something bad was going to happen.

  She would always feel guilty that she never called for help. It would be one of the biggest regrets she had in life.

  But she heard another piercing scream and an echoing bang and knew something wasn’t right.

  Running out into the hallway, Winter watched as her grandfather hit his wife over the head with a shovel. She watched the life fade from her grandmother’s eyes.

  Then her grandfather turned to Winter. Grabbed her before she could run. He raped her, not once but three times. He laughed as he did it, enjoyed the look of fear in Winter’s eyes. He bathed in her tears. He enjoyed hurting her, pinning her down.

  He was solely responsible for taking away Winter’s innocence, and partly responsible for the way she had turned out to be.

  But that night, lying bruised and naked from the waist down, Winter knew she had to end this. If she kept him alive, he’d always be there to haunt her. He’d always taunt her without anybody else noticing.