by Create50
Outside, she tossed the bulging sack into a wheelie-bin and held the lid shut a few moments, as if to make sure.
Angela skipped up to her front door with shopping bags and a new haircut. Inside, she poured some juice and flopped onto the sofa, just as her photo-frame changed from her on holiday to the guy kissing her dolphin tattoo.
Dolphin, not Bear.
She took a self-portrait:
Nothing like a #newhairdo to make a girl feel good! #gotmymojoback
and sent it. She sipped her juice, merrily tapping the glass. She ceased tapping –
But the sound continued.
A similar sound, like knocking on glass. Baffled, she looked at the highball in her hand. Nothing. Her phone. Nothing. She rose and made for the windows. . . then stopped and turned.
The tapping was coming from her photo-frame. She peered closer. In a photograph of herself and Claire, Angela had been swapped for the Bear. “No. . . no, this isn't possible!”
The photo cleared, and colourful words gradually appeared, as if scrawled by a child:
YES IT IS
Angela covered her eyes, looked away. . . then back again. Another photo – a wedding, a bunch of friends, and Bear.
And more – parties, travelling, sports, coming thick and fast – in all of which Bear had taken Angela's place. Even photos of her as a kid, family photos on holiday, Christmas… Bear had invaded them all.
She smashed her glass into the frame with an anguished wail. Dug her nails into her hair and screamed and ranted in disbelief.
BRIIIINNG!
Her phone rang. It was Bear, his face vicious, murderous. Eyes black and void. Shattered glass had cut her hand, and blood ran down her arm towards her elbow, just like the wine had previously. She yelled, threw it on the sofa and shot into the bedroom.
Her laptop pinged. On her Facebook page, a profile with the Bear's image had posted on her wall:
YES IT IS
Ping! And again.
YES IT IS
YES IT IS
YES IT IS
She touched the screen, as if checking it were real. Blood smeared over it. She fled back to the lounge, tears flowing, fear and anger surging through her. Her phone beeped. And beeped, and beeped . . .
Twitter this time. She had apparently Tweeted:
I’LL FUCKING UNFRIEND YOU!
Eight times.
Nine, ten, eleven. . .
I’LL FUCKING UNFRIEND YOU!
I’LL FUCKING UNFRIEND YOU!
In a frenzy, she ripped the back off, yanked out the battery and threw it on the floor. Then stood over it, staring – new hair ruined, face smeared with tears and blood.
The tapping came again.
Her head snapped up, glaring at the photo-frame. This time it was Bear at graduation, flanked by her parents.
Angela's teeth bit into her lower lip and her hands clenched like claws.
Snatching the frame, she held it above her head and brought it crashing down on the shelf, letting loose a primal shriek with every blow.
Once, twice, thrice –
Then sudden darkness.
When Angela came round, she was staring at her flat. Clean, tidy. . . somehow different. She heard a familiar voice from the landing, but couldn't quite place it. Then a man entered the lounge and it became clear.
“. . . a cosy flat, but at the same time quite spacious. All the mod cons, recently redecorated, new boiler, and of course. . . no chain.” Lloyd led another woman around the flat.
“Excellent.” She then looked in Angela's direction. “And these strange ornaments?” she asked. Angela realised that her viewpoint was from the shelf where the toys were. To one side she noticed the familiar shape of the Bear.
Her stomach twisted and tugged as if desperate to get out.
As the woman turned her attention elsewhere, Angela managed to look down at herself. Her arms were flippers, her legs a tail. She was undoubtedly a dolphin.
“Oh, they're the previous owners.”
The woman strolled into the kitchen, her voice fading. “It's a lovely little place isn't it?”
Lloyd stared right at Angela, eyes black and void. “Yes, it is. . .”
The Turned
By Mat Sunderland
The sunrise through the corpses is pretty today. If you can get over the fact that what you are looking at is human. They stand, like an Antony Gormley sculpture, their shadows stretching out across the lawn of the house, and I wonder what they were doing here when it hit. I could probably triangulate where I was at that moment, which might give me a clue. Each face – screaming mouth, staring eyes – is precisely orientated to where I was stood when the infection took hold.
The shadows are creeping slowly forwards as the sun sets. I have sat here watching them all day again.
These bodies are fairly late to my party. The eyes have gone, pecked out, I would imagine, by some vermin or other. They are still fairly composed. Hands torn off, foxes maybe, but clothes still fresh. Not green or covered in mould. Which is why I wonder what they were doing when it caught and how they contracted the virus for it to have hit them all together. They can only have been here a few months. So what were they doing? There are no rackets, no games played. Not that many people were playing games when they had to survive in a world of standing cadavers.
At least the eyes are gone. If they have eyes they watch me; then I need to stand behind them to escape.
Or put the eyes out myself.
I think the worst of it is wondering. Can they still sense that I am out here, as they are slowly mummifying? Can they feel I am watching? Do they know it’s my fault?
I call them corpses to keep my sanity. If I think of them as alive, which they are, I would have to accept that I need to destroy them or save them and I don’t have time for one or the ingenuity for the second.
I was saving the world. Cancer gone forever, no heart disease, people healthy and immortal. Well at least as long as they didn’t do anything stupid like base jumping.
Then something went wrong and it’s linked to me. When the disease hits they stop, stand, turn towards where ever I am and start to scream. The cry never comes. Mouths open, eyes widen and then nothing. They stop.
But they don’t die and they don’t fall. I guess they are immortal. I am going to close the curtains. A crow is trying to pull the girls tongue from her mouth. She is probably only twelve years old. I hope there is no pain. Another belief, another element of faith if you like to keep me sane.
I spent a good year trying to reverse it, to cure it. Now that there is no one left to save, I try to understand it. But I can’t. The bacteria I used was simple, the gene splicing had nothing that could cause this. Nothing could cause this. They stand, they don’t eat, they don’t fall, implying some sort of control of their bodies. It makes me doubt my faith – my faith in science. What I have created is impossible.
Which is why the body in the bedroom is important.
It has been there around a month. The cheeks have hollowed; the eyes dried up and begun to shrink back as the fluids are drawn out. Blinded by the body’s use of the water to try and keep the body in order.
But a mummy, really, dry and emaciated, yet still stood. Still staring, still screaming. This one has been a guinea pig for a while now. I have tried moving it to another room, but it resists, the wasted muscles fighting against me, not pushing, or grappling, but simply resisting. I could try with a pallet truck, or something that would knock it over, but it is easier to move my equipment here. I have a final cure to try.
I chose this house, not for its view of the river from where the frozen family seems to have been returning from (there is a canal boat at the end of the garden; I can only assume they were scavenging when it caught), but for the large, modern kitchen. It’s close to my laboratory so I dragged the equipment I needed over. More importantly, it is far away from the staring, blank-eyed skull of my wife. I still cannot call her dead and she gave my son nightmares.
I tried to save her, keep her healthy just in case. I failed at this. I still have the memory of my son stood in his bedroom, watching as I tried to save her.
Her mouth overrunning with water, running down her chin, tears on my cheeks reflecting hers. The water filling her stomach and not draining away into her as I hoped it would. Osmosis, a powerful ally in my work, but not when I needed it most. The water festered, life within it creating belches and burps and finally splitting her open as the gasses expanded. It was then when I took my son, abandoned my home and came here.
Best I move away from the window. My thoughts always darken when I see a group of turners. The shadows have nearly reached the flowerbeds beyond the windows.
I should close the curtains.
The house has solar panels, another reason why I chose it. I can sit here with only the five watchers and a test subject in the bedroom. I left once, drove down to a lab in Oxford. You can’t imagine what it was like. Once you leave the confines of the suburbs you realize how many people there are in the world.
Thousands of still bodies, all in various states of decay, staring at me. Lining the sides of the road where they crashed or pulled over, trying to stand in the confines of a steel box. Tendons creaking as they try to straighten their bodies. Some bones have broken, pushing out of the skin. I don’t look.
They tend to face towards this house or my family home, as I spend more time there than anywhere else. Another reminder of my failures.
Thank God they cannot actually scream.
Oxford was about three months after the effects really kicked in, so there were plenty of people still alive, wandering through my installation, my apocalyptic art piece, looking for food. It was pathetic really, not the hell you see after film apocalypses. Everyone had given up, no touching, no contact; a basic human need that I destroyed.
Three months was the gestation period. No symptoms and transmissible by touch. How could I not have seen that? I thought I had prevented transmission. I can still remember the first victim; he was my lab assistant, presenting me with an award at the office.
We were all elated; then he stopped, his eyes widening, staring directly into my face as the animation of his body fell away and he became unmoving. Just his mouth opening in a scream as his limbs stilled. His eyes, tearless, not seeing, followed me around the room
Then a second assistant succumbed. Now turned to the point where I had stumbled away from my first victim, halfway through an exclamation of horror.
That was when I realized it was me. It took a while to confirm it but in my heart, at that moment, I knew. I think I survive because my DNA was the base for the alterations. The segments we replaced do not take in my cells, so I survive.
But if I am honest, the rest of this is impossible, so it might be a god I don’t believe in, playing with loaded dice. Showing me that I should not mess with its plan. I hope it’s Vishnu. I always liked Vishnu.
I had sent a long time working on the details of containment. It could not survive in air for longer than microseconds. It could not live in fluids other than blood, so, yes, it could be transmissible but as the subjects were tightly controlled it should have been safe. It lives in the grease of our skins as it colonizes the body, beginning on the outside then entering and spreading. Why the sudden end, I don’t know. Why the standing, looking at me. Impossible.
But still it happens.
For the man who ended the world, life has been pretty easy. I still have all the trappings of civilization. No internet of course, but box sets a plenty. Power, water from a spring nearby.
I still have coffee and cigarettes and plenty of booze for when I need to rinse away everything. I don’t do that now. Not since my son turned to scream at me one morning. Too much anger, self pity. So I stay sober. My name is Alan and I have been sober for thirty two days.
In Oxford, I had to get a sample of a highly infectious flu vaccine and smallpox. I needed a delivery system for my final attempt to release the long-standing corpses. I used sections of the DNA of both, but none of mine this time. I am pretty sure it can transmit by blood, air and water now, so I have created an epidemic, which might kill me but cure the world.
It may of course be better just to leave the world as it is, but I am too much the coward to kill myself and I cannot bear the guilt of watching them.
Are there survivors out there? Have new norms taken hold? No touching for three months, no passing near the turned. Living in a world filled with the dead, always watching them.
The problem was that when the end spread, it spread delayed by three months. Another month passed before we realized how it was spreading. My entire staff were the first, so my lab was pretty debilitated. Not only was I the centre of the storm, the most hated man in the world, but also my friends, colleagues and family were the first to stand and turn their accusing gaze on me.
I was lucky society collapsed before they could put me on trial.
So all the details of the disease are on the other pages here. The cure I am going to attempt on my bedroom patient is here. It should fight the infection and spread. I am not sure what will happen.
The thing’s eyes have gone. I have placed food and water ready, as well as a tape explaining what has happened. I will help them, of course, if the disease does not kill me first. Which is why I have the precautions ready, in case I am granted a release.
I worry what will happen to the older turned. The ones who are missing chunks of flesh, devoured, as they stand there, by family pets, marauding strays and opportunists. Will they simply die? Am I just releasing them to die? Is that better?
I close the curtains. I don’t want to see them anymore. I don’t want to see anything. I want to die. I hope the disease takes me. Takes all the eyes I have seen face me and washes it into the darkness.
I had to fight our dog for a piece of my daughter, who died on our way to the new house, which I tried to stitch back on, see if she would heal. All the time wondering if she could feel the needle I was putting through her flesh. If inside she was screaming.
That was when I first failed to kill myself.
I killed the dog later that day. I killed a lot of dogs that month, but there are always more. Running through the bodies, eating my living corpses. At least now the flesh on most is so desiccated the dogs don’t bother. This time I will die. I promise.
Everything is ready.
The Middle Class Zombie
By Alistair Canlin
I wish I could remember.
In fact, I wish I could do lots of things; but it’s the memories I miss the most. I mean, I think I had a family, before everything happened. I have vague recollections of something, but I’m not sure anymore if they’re my memories, or something I’ve made up.
I can’t even tell you my name, or where I live, or whether I’m alive.
You see, I’m what most people would call a zombie. Technically I’m undead.
I’m not rotting, I’m not dying, but I’m not really living.
See, I’m new to all this.
Maybe I’ve got all that to look forward to, or not, as the case may be.
One thing that you never forget is the pain; that might explain why we moan a lot. But it hurts; it so hurts being a zombie. Not a dull ache, not a sharp pain, just pain all over, when you move, when you breathe. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. But then none of us had a choice as to whether or not we’d be zombies. No choice at all.
I’ll tell you very quickly about what happened, before I forget.
There was a virus, a bug. Spread like wildfire. Almost all of us got it. And that, to be honest, is all I know. There are many of us, most in a worse state than me, but all of us need one thing to survive. Human flesh.
Horrible, I know; you wouldn’t last long in this game if you were a vegetarian. And to be honest vegetarians don’t taste very nice, too stringy, a lack of iron or something.
I’ll tell you, you wouldn’t invite a group of zombies round for a dinn
er party, far too messy.
I try and keep myself to myself; the older zombies aren’t much into conversation, just the odd grunt and occasional moan. But everything changes when it gets dark, that’s when the hunt begins, when the flesh lust rises.
When I first became ill I tried to resist the urge for flesh, but there’s only so many times that the neighbour’s cat will suffice.
I can remember my first kill, something that doesn’t leave me, no matter how hard I try. It was a hoodie. Young lad started stealing things, made me so mad. That’s when I lost it, started chasing him. Didn’t even know what I was going to do with him when I caught him. But eventually I got him cornered, some dead-end alleyway behind the warehouses on the industrial estate.
So there I was facing down this thug, staring eye to eye. Then he came at me, arms flailing. Before I knew what had happened, I’d blocked the blow, grabbed his arm and twisted it. There was a crunch. He screamed like a girl. Hit me with his free arm, but pain doesn’t register anymore. Then I knocked him to the floor.
Next thing I know I’m biting into his thigh and tearing lumps of flesh out! Nobody was more surprised than me! I don’t even like steak; chicken I can cope with, but… Anyway, those choices seem to have been in another world, another lifetime.
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Others seem to hunt in packs, but that’s not for me. Like I said, their conversation is not up to much, and as for their personal hygiene, it’s like being around a bunch of hormonal teenagers.
I saw one the other day peel off a layer of skin from his own arm and eat it. Where’s the manners in that?
I sound like such a snob.
I can’t be around normal people anymore, something to do with the fact that I scare them. I didn’t ask to be a zombie; it’s not like I’m doing it on purpose. I’ll never get to see the inside of the golf course clubhouse again. Is that not punishment enough?
I’ve got a good mind to go down there and ransack the place, see their faces then.
