Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel]

by Meadows, Carl

  Nate has this thing now, where he opens the door and throws out a whistle into the building, listens for any movement of undead and if so, steps back away from the door and waits for them to come out. Choose the ground most advantageous for you is the lesson there, as in the open, one or two undead are easy to deal with in melee. You just sidestep and flank them, as they can’t turn for shit, so you get the time to aim and brain.

  Alicia and Mark both got the opportunity to skull-puncture zombies, and they both did it with very different reactions. Mark acted like I did the first time I smashed up a zombie skull in close quarters; he puked his guts up. That’s how normal people react, because it’s a fucking gross and ugly process, so you know Mark will take all of this with the gravitas a sensible person should. Tick in the box for our resident engineer.

  Nate and I were a little concerned about Alicia though. Since Nate got through to her with his Kadie story and she calmed down, we thought she’d be a bit more level-headed, and in the main, she has. She’s listened to us both attentively, asked pertinent questions, hasn’t pushed for being armed and firing live rounds; she’s basically done everything that Nate wanted from her in the right way, which is why she got to come on these training field trips.

  However, when it was her turn to drop an undead with the halligan spike for the first time, I can’t really put my finger on it, but there was a visceral savagery when that spike thunked into a zed’s skull. It didn’t affect her like it did Mark; if anything, she looked triumphant, like some battle-maddened Norse shield-maiden after killing an enemy warrior. The expression on her face was hungry, like that one zombie was only the starter to whet her appetite, and she was avidly waiting for the main course to arrive.

  We’re going to have to monitor her closely, I reckon. The last thing we need is one of our new field operatives being reckless because she’s hungry for more zombie kills. That’s how she’ll get herself killed, or worse, she’ll get someone else bitten or killed through negligence. I’m a mouthy, cocky little shit that appears to take nothing seriously, and mostly that’s true. I make jokes when I shouldn’t and enjoy the banter, but when shit gets real, my head is firmly in the game and focused entirely on the safety of me and my friends. You don’t fuck about with other people’s lives. If you want to fuck about with your own that’s your own stupid business, but woe to you if it endangers someone in your proximity. If it does, I swear I will kick my dainty size-three foot so far up your arse, you’ll be clipping my toenails with your teeth.

  For the moment, it’s just a feeling, those signs I interpret from her expression and body language. She hasn’t been overt and screamed a blood-curdling war cry to the heavens as she demands blood for the Blood God (and skulls for the Skull Throne of Khorne), but she’s still not reacting like normal people do. It’s like she’s biting down and restraining the urge to scream that battle cry though. The last thing we need is a wild berserker going all Leeroy Jenkins on our carefully crafted plans. One to keep an eye on.

  We got some handy stuff from our little excursions though. Nothing amazing, except maybe some really useful stuff at one big farmhouse. The guy who lived there was something of a car enthusiast, with a big ass triple garage with a vehicle lift, spare parts, but most useful of all, a ton of additives to treat petrol with. Apparently, petrol can go bad. Who knew?

  Well, Mark did. Seems the guy who lived here must make his living doing custom work on cars as there were all kinds of tools and resources. It was part mini-warehouse, part workshop. As it’s only two miles from the lodge, it will actually make a pretty good “colony” of sorts in the future. If we take on some more people, we’ll soon outgrow the lodge and the big house here could be a useful ally location, with any vehicle or engineering work dealt with by Mark on site. He’s not moving anywhere yet, and he won’t until he can properly defend his boy with some combat skills, but it’s definitely one for the future. For now at least, it can be used as an off-site safehouse where Mark can build stuff.

  We did find a couple of other farmhouses with wood burners, which is good. We’ve marked them as they’re pretty big and we’ll come back with a bigger team to get them loaded on to a more appropriate vehicle. They look pretty damn heavy and Mark says the van or pickup aren’t appropriate as they’re only light goods vehicles. We could do with a builder’s delivery truck or something, one of those open flatbed vehicles with a much stronger frame and wheelbase.

  Ha, listen to me chatting shit like I know what I’m on about. I’m just quoting super-smart Mark and his engineering know-how. I’d be the kind of dickhead that bought one of these on eBay, rocking up in my little Ford Fiesta, thinking I’d get it in if I just put the back seats down. “It’ll be right,” I’d say with surety, as everyone around me looked like they’d just found the idiot that had been missing from a nearby village.

  So, yeah, we’ve had a few easy days. We’ve dropped a couple of local undead that were milling about in these isolated farmhouses and fancy rich folk estates. There was a lot of money in Cheshire pre-apocalypse, and a lot of quite magnificent houses I didn’t even know existed along all these back roads. It’s been mental seeing how the 1% lived, with huge home cinemas and bowling alleys in basements, entire gyms for personal use, indoor pools etc. I think we might have stumbled on a footballer house or two in the area, given the shrines to football careers we found in them. Don’t know who they were, don’t really care, but their houses—for all their fancy possessions filling them—are powerless now, empty shrines to the dead. Honestly, I don’t know why one person needed a house so stupidly big. Some of the rooms in them were straight up empty, with just carpet on the floor.

  Imagine having so many rooms in your home that you left a shitload empty, simply because you had no use for them. The end of the world is a great equaliser in the wealth stakes. Waitrose isn’t doing deliveries now, you pompous twats. No more gnocchi, quinoa, foie gras, or Cashmere enriched toilet roll to wipe their snooty arses any longer.

  I found out what foie gras is from the ever-knowledgeable Norah and was bloody horrified. Did you know it’s the liver of a force-fed duck or goose? This process is apparently called ‘gavage.’ I’m no vegetarian, but that just seems a bit too messed up, even for me.

  Anyway, weird sadism delicacies aside, it’s been an interesting and relatively quiet few days. A nice change of pace.

  Ooh, one of those footballer houses had a Playstation, Nintendo Wii and an Xbox, with all the accessories and a boat load of games for each. So, we brought home the lot, plus a big ass TV, and Charlie and I have been smashing the shit out of it in the evenings.

  Also, who knew that Nate was a bit of a natural on Mario Kart? The competition just heated up. I can’t just beat the old soldier (sorry Nate, marine) that’s never played console games before, not at Mario Kart. It’s my game. I can’t just beat him; I must crush him and revel as his Luigi burns and weeps.

  Nate laughs about how competitive I am.

  I laugh harder. And longer.

  I told you, being this funny is hard.

  September 18th, 2010

  PAIN

  I need to write this.

  But now I’m here I don’t think I can.

  No. I can’t. Not yet. I’ve marked the day. That’s enough for now.

  The pain is too much. It’s just too damn much.

  It’s too raw. I can’t see for crying, can’t catch a breath.

  I’ll try again another time.

  September 20th, 2010

  NO

  I don’t even know how to begin writing this. I don’t want to. And yet I have to.

  I have to.

  It’s only right, but it’s taken me two days before my mind would even let me sit here and open this white, digital page again. Two days of hollow, empty grief, of weeping out every last tear until my well was dry. No matter how much this hurts, I have to do this now, or I’m afraid I never will. She deserves that much at the very least. To be remembered.

  The
four of us were out on a run beyond the gate, just hitting some isolated houses again, continuing Alicia and Mark’s training. It was about two in the afternoon when we rolled up and immediately, we knew something was wrong. As we pulled in the gate, Mark jumped out of his vehicle as Charlie came thundering down the hill towards us, no sense of safety as he gathered speed down the slope. Mark caught him just as he started to tumble, sweeping him up and asking him what was wrong.

  “Zombie,” was all he panted, tears streaking his face, desperately trying to suck air into his little lungs.

  That word was like being doused in ice water. Nate and I shared a horrified glance, pulled our handguns from holsters and charged up the hill. The situation had been dealt with, as we found Norah sitting outside, shotgun in hand, beside a body wrapped in a rug. The old woman was sat smoking a cigarette, her hands still shaking and knuckles white on the gun barrel.

  With the threat clearly contained, we both relaxed, though my breathing was quick and shallow.

  “Didn’t know you smoked,” observed Nate softly, holstering his Glock.

  “Haven’t for twenty years,” said Norah in a quivering voice. “Needed one today. Took one from your trade stash.” Nate just nodded.

  I dreaded to ask, but did anyway, pointing to the concealed corpse.

  “Who is it?”

  “Laura,” sighed the widow. “Did for herself. Guess the demons in her head got too loud, poor love.”

  When she said Laura’s name, I’m ashamed to admit that my initial reaction was relief; what an absolute shithead thought to have, eh? That poor woman had endured three months of unimaginable trauma, and all I felt at hearing Laura’s name as the deceased was relief. God, I hate myself right now. I’m sorry, Laura. I’m sorry for all the pain you endured, that we couldn’t help you, and that you found yourself in such a dark place that all you could do was turn out the last of the lights. I hope you can now find some peace.

  “Had to put her down,” said Norah softly. “First time I ever shot a gun at anything bigger than a pheasant. Poor girl strung herself up in her room.”

  It was then that I noticed activity in the kitchen. Norah caught me looking, her already haunted expression collapsing. Her next words froze my heart.

  “Freya found her,” she said, and the desolation in her voice spun me into a daze.

  I wandered through the open glass door as if I was one of the undead, my movements clumsy, sightless eyes uncomprehending everything in the room as I bumped and shuffled my way round the kitchen. I could see Freya was sitting in a chair, but she was hidden by Maria, who was fussing at her with her back towards me. Isaac was beside them and as I walked in, our eyes locked. His gaze fixed to mine, filled with a painful sympathy that confirmed my worst fear.

  Maria sensed Isaac’s shift and straightened, turning towards me and revealing Freya sat in the chair.

  My eyes didn’t see my friend’s face. All I could see was the bloody bandage around her right hand, though my mind didn’t comprehend it.

  “Erin,” said Freya, drawing my attention to her face.

  She looked pallid, drawn. Darkness pooled beneath her eyes, her once luminous skin pale and waxen, a sheen of sweat glistening on her brow.

  “No,” was all I said, shaking my head. “No. No.”

  I knew what I was seeing but couldn’t accept it. No. Not Freya.

  Not Freya.

  “I heard her, Erin,” said Freya, her once musical voice now impossibly weak. “I went to check on her and heard her. I screamed for help, burst into the room, saw her struggling and did the first thing that come to mind.”

  “No,” I said again, the word little more than an exhale.

  “I reached up for the belt, I wasn’t thinking,” she said, a listless smile, rueing her own foolish actions even as she recounted them. “But she wasn’t dying, Erin. She was already gone. She was already one of… them. I was too close.”

  She held up the bloody bandages.

  “She grabbed my arm, pulled it towards her,” she sighed. “I pulled my arm free with all I had, but the side of my hand was already in Laura’s teeth.”

  “No,” I said again, dropping to my knees in front of her.

  This is killing me writing this. Killing me. I have to keep stopping. I can’t see through the damn film of tears, but I’ve got to finish. I have to tell this.

  She put her good hand on my cheek. She was bitten and her clock was counting down, yet still all her thoughts were geared towards comforting me.

  God, I’m such a selfish prick. She was fucking dying, and she was comforting me. What kind of arsehole needs to be comforted by their dying friend? Damn it, Lockey, you’re such a useless fucking shit.

  “I can feel it, Erin,” she said gently. “It’s like a poison spreading through me, taking me piece by piece. It’s cold, and it’s dark, and it’s speeding up.”

  “No,” I sobbed, disbelief and denial giving way to the grim reality. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

  Freya gave me such a gentle sympathetic smile, and it was like a knife to my heart. Still the caregiver, even as the darkness rose to swallow her.

  “You know a bite is final, Lockey.” She never called me that. She always called me Erin, and I never minded. She had such a sweet, lilting way of saying it that it sounded like a name I wanted. “And because it’s final, I want a choice.”

  “A… choice?” I didn’t grasp what she was implying, my mind too clouded by heartbreak and denial.

  “You can’t let me become one of those things,” she breathed, fear creeping into her voice for the first time. “I don’t want your lasting memory of me to be a monster, a thing of the dark. I don’t want even the chance to hurt anyone.”

  “What?”

  “She wants you to end it for her,” said Nate quietly at my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him enter the kitchen. “Before she turns. Go out on her own terms, as a whole person, not a thing.”

  Freya’s eyes misted with tears for the first time, nodding at Nate’s observation.

  I was horrified. “You want me to… to… kill you?”

  “I’m already dead, Erin,” she sniffed. “I can’t die at peace, knowing you’ll see me become one of those things. They turn so fast, Erin. So fast. What happens to someone who turns? What happens to their soul, if such a thing exists? Is it simply gone, swallowed by the dark?” She shook her head. “Please,” she implored, “don’t make me find out. Let me go as Freya, not the thing that used to be her.”

  Even through my grief, I knew she was right. She was on a rapidly decreasing countdown. I could see her sliding away even as we spoke, her once radiant complexion sickening towards death, the life visibly slipping from her while we talked.

  If this was the one thing she wanted from me, right at the last, who was I to deny her? All I could do was nod, and sob, “okay,” before her arms were around me.

  I grabbed on to her, desperately mumbling some prayers to whatever force had cursed our world with the dead, begging it to take me in her place. The world wouldn’t miss a fuck up like me, but Freya was so… so good… it seemed a travesty, a tragedy, that she was taken this way.

  Like all prayers inevitably do, they fell on deaf ears. If there was any God, he was either absent, or a royal fucking bastard for doing this. What kind of “grand plan” requires the death of such a gentle soul?

  There is no God; this world of ashes and the dead is all there is. All that matters is the people you care for, and who care for you. We have to decide our own destiny, make our own way and look after each other, because we are all we have left now.

  Freya finally let me go, smiling with unbearable compassion as she thumbed the tears from my cheeks, then stood and walked outside.

  “Stay in here, all of you,” I heard Nate say. “Remember her as she was. I’ll go with them.”

  There were murmurs of assent. No one wanted to see this. I didn’t want to do this. But Freya needed it, and I couldn’t deny her the only
thing she’d ever asked of me. It was the one thing that would give her peace.

  September 18th was a bright afternoon, but the dark clouds in the distance seemed symbolic, creeping ever closer, menacing, readying themselves to draw a dark curtain over the sun and pour their misery atop me. Freya walked regally, despite her weakening body, moving out of sight of the lodge’s kitchen. No one would see her final moments except me and Nate.

  We embraced again and she nodded, saying nothing, her expression speaking volumes. She knelt, no fear on her beautiful face, my eyes glancing down at the angry crimson dressing shrouding her injured hand, and it was like seeing it for the first time again. Such a little thing, a bite to the hand, yet it was Freya’s death sentence, her recruitment to the legion of the undead unless I freed her from that obligation.

  I could feel Nate’s eyes on me, watching every move as I slid the Glock from my hip, forcing a firm grip on the weapon, though my hand felt so weak. The weapon was live, deadly, and I couldn’t keep it straight in my head what I was planning to do.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked, desperate to think of some other way.

  “There’s no other way, Erin,” she said, her voice feather soft. “I know this is a terrible thing for me to ask of you, but I need this, Erin. Don’t let me become a monster.”

  Eyes burning with tears as hot as magma, I nodded, moving behind her. Glancing up, Nate’s features were expressionless, save for a tightening around his eyes. He was trying to lend me his strength to do what was needed, but I knew this was killing him inside. He was fond of Freya. The two of us had become like foster daughters to him in our short time together. We’d become our own little family before we rescued the others from Bancroft. This wasn’t just my pain; it was his too.