Ridgetown (Book 0): Rising

by Radford, Philip

  Satisfied with the front door, I wondered whether I could do anything similar with the rest of the house. There were still a couple of chairs in the living room. The guestroom had a bed, cabinets and wardrobe. A sofa-bed and cabinet in the spare room, and a large table with chairs in the dining room next to a huge cabinet.

  My plan was to turn the downstairs into an uninhabitable area that would block those things getting in, but even if they did get in, they wouldn't get very far. From what I'd seen from the top of the stairs, they wouldn't have the coordination to navigate the simplest of assault courses. I thought that by filling the downstairs rooms with furniture and other bulky objects, their poor motor skills would keep them at bay. First however, I needed to get rid of the bodies that were already starting to stink up the house.

  I opened the patio door and fresh air swept in, pushing the stale air out. I dragged the three bodies outside to the bottom of the garden, as far from the house as possible. They weren't easy to move, two of them were starting to suffer from rigor mortis, their arms weren't bending very easily and their bodies felt stiff. I tried not to think too much about how they used to be human.

  I was surprised that I didn't have the mixed emotions about killing them like I did before. I had hesitated at the top of the stairs when I started to think about what I was doing but when I had to act, I didn't think twice about it. The way I felt when I was stood in the kitchen had concerned me slightly, I was ready to charge outside and run down the street, drilling every zombie I saw.

  That reminded me, the drill had been a useful weapon but I knew from experience that the batteries didn't last too long. I needed to make sure the two batteries that I had for it were fully charged all the time, especially if it was being used for barricading and repairing things. I also considered how it had begun to struggle as the short drill bit had entered the skull, the rest of the drill stopping it from entering any further. I decided it would be better to replace the current drill bit with a longer and thicker one, maybe one that was designed to drill through metal. A morbid thought, but a practical one.

  I looked at the three bodies and as I stared, the mixed emotions started to return. I turned away and went back inside. Maybe it was the fear that helped me look past their identities, the fact that they were once living people. Husbands, fathers, children, sisters, but now they were walking, killing, undead creatures.

  I shut the patio door and looked at the blood all over the walls and floor. It was going to smell horrific but I wasn't going to go round bleaching carpets and scrubbing walls, there were more pressing matters to address.

  There was one door in the dining room that opened into a short corridor that led to the downstairs bathroom, the guest room and spare room. If I could block that one, I wouldn't have to worry about the other three rooms, essentially cutting the number of rooms I had to worry about in half. I decided to grab all the furniture out of those three rooms and use it to block them off.

  The spare room had only recently been done and I could remember carrying the sofa-bed and cabinet in with my dad. I say 'with my dad', but it was me that did most of the carrying, my dad just stood at the other end holding whatever we were carrying and getting in the way. He meant well but was quite useless at times, making things twice as hard as they needed to be because of his clumsy nature. That was something I'd inherited from my dad, clumsiness. If there was a way of breaking something, or even if there wasn't, he'd find it. I hoped they were okay. As soon as I'd secured the house again I'd try to contact them.

  The spare room emptied relatively easily, I'd even found a packet of Paracetamol in a drawer so I took a couple for my arm. It was the guest bedroom that was going to take longer. I started by removing the mattress and separating the two parts of the double divan bed. I was surprised at how light the two pieces were, they were basically just two light wooden frames. I still took them through because even though they felt light, they looked quite sturdy and some form of barricade was better than non. I tried moving the tall wardrobe but struggled to move it a few inches. I was going to leave it where it was and abandon it, but before I did, I decided to open it. The inside was packed with boxes and clothes. If I emptied all the contents of the wardrobe then it might be movable, if not then I would still have a pile of stuff to stack against the door.

  I started sweating almost straight away, going back and forth carrying boxes of junk. The contents of each one varied, photos, keepsakes, old clothes, music (in CD and vinyl format) and a whole mountain of keepsakes from over the years. Reminders of places we'd been as a family or things we'd done. Things that would mean nothing to anyone else, but the key to a fond memory to us. A particularly unremarkable rock that to anyone else is just a rock but to us, was a rock from the beach on a caravanning holiday many years ago. A holiday when I was so young I was barely walking but was trusted to hold a kite. A kite which I immediately let go of and laughed uncontrollably as my dad sprinted across the field, desperately trying to catch it. Quickly running out of time before the field ended with a large spiky bush and the kite would be gone forever. The kite seemed to tease my dad, floating just out of reach as his legs moved faster than they had for years. Why he cared so much about a cheap kite he'd bought the day earlier I would never know, but he was determined to catch it. And catch it he did, half embedding himself it the spiky bush, grasping the last slither of the tail before it escaped into freedom. He brought it back triumphant and tired, scratched and grazed from the bush. Feeling like a superhero returning a child to a panicked parent, he had given me the kite to hold once again. And once again, I had immediately let go of it.

  After the wardrobe was empty it was easier to move but still a bit of a struggle. That gave me confidence that it wouldn't collapse under pressure.

  With the dining room door shut, I began moving as much furniture into the living room as possible. Because the living room and kitchen were at the front of the house and more likely to come under attack from passing zombies, that was where I was concentrating all my efforts.

  The spare chairs from the living room were the first things to go up against the wall below the window, cabinets went on top of them and also blocked the doorway to the kitchen, not that anything was coming through there. I connected the two bits of the bed back together and weighed them down with the junk from the cabinets. I tried to keep the pile high but deep enough that it wouldn't just topple over.

  I was pretty satisfied by the time I had finished. I sat down in the bare, bloodstained dining room and looked at my achievement. I suddenly realised that I was hungry, starving hungry. I was also thirsty and my arm was aching again. I set up the ladders and headed upstairs, carrying the drill with me. I decided I'd refuel and then remove the last few stairs.

  Before I stopped for a rest, I plugged in one of the televisions and booted up my laptop. I also put the drill for the battery on charge. As the laptop loaded up and the T.V. scanned through looking for Freeview channels, I opened a bag of crisp. Crisp seemed like the perfect convenience food for the moment, along with a can of energy drink, I figured the sugar boost would do me good. There was some fresh food that I thought I should eat first, but I needed something instant. The fridge would have been too much of a challenge to get upstairs on my own so I didn't even try.

  I tried my phone again but only got the three beeps that I got before. I checked the message I had sent before but it still said 'sending'. I wrote another one;

  "Please try to ring/text/email. I am fine, want to make sure you are too."

  It queued up behind the other one and also said 'sending', I didn't have high hopes for it sending any time soon.

  The T.V. made me jump when it suddenly tuned into a 24hr news station. The presenters' voices sounded strange but reassuringly familiar after listening to hours of moaning. I turned it down a bit, it wasn't loud but I didn't want to risk attracting any unwanted attention. The two newsreaders looked very uncomfortable, repeating themselves and talking over each other. It was ob
vious they were trying to report live on reports that were coming in consistently and unedited. The top corner was looping videos from earlier, while the newsreaders had different videos playing behind them on a larger screen. Neither of them used the words Zombie or Undead but they were clear that whatever these things were, it wasn't normal. They speculated about it being caused by a virus as bites were infecting people, however, there seemed to be mixed reports about how long it took for a bite to kill someone and bring them back. They said the transformation time ranged from seconds for some people to stories about people being immune.

  I realised that I hadn't seen a transformation myself but doubted that it could vary so much. That was one thing that always irritated me up about the media, the eagerness to report an interesting story without bothering to check the facts. I supposed that this kind of scenario wasn't something the news channel had prepared for, so they were probably winging it like I was. I thought about searching the internet for answers about where this thing had started or what people knew about it, but I knew from experience unless you knew a reputable source, the internet was a minefield of false information.

  I remembered trying to diagnose a lump on my neck when I was in college, I trawled through pages and pages for hours getting different online diagnoses, reading accounts of people who had similar things and found out they were terminal. Heartbreaking accounts from family members about people going to sleep with this lump and never waking up. I printed off pages of it and showed it to my parents, giving them a lecture on how tumors form and develop, and the most common locations one website had handily provided. My mum reassured me that nothing would happen overnight and not to worry. That night, I barely slept. It turned out to be a spot.

  I checked my phone again, neither message had sent yet. My mum was quite tech-savvy and I knew she usually took her laptop with her, so I sent an e-mail asking if they were okay. Just a short one;

  "I've tried texting and ringing to see if you're okay but I think the phone lines are down. Have you seen what's going on? I'm fine, just want to know you are too. Stay inside, lock doors and windows. I've made a mess of the house, I'm sorry. Insurance might not cover it. Please reply, Love you."

  I hit send and was pleased to see it had sent. Whatever the issue was with the phone lines, the internet didn't seem to be suffering from the same problem. It felt reassuring that I could stay connected to people another way.

  I'd brought the kettle and microwave upstairs and decided to whip up some noodles and mix in a tin of tuna, the thought of food sent shooting pains through my stomach, made worse by the brief snack of crisp and a drink. I was also starting to feel a bit dizzy, maybe the sudden sugar rush wasn't such a good idea.

  I gulped down a bottle of water while I waited for the noodles to cook, casting my eye over the T.V. again. I hadn't realised how thirsty I was until that moment but thought about how much I had been sweating, rushing round and moving heavy objects. I had to make sure I didn't over exhaust myself. The last thing I wanted was to have to defend myself against one of those things feeling lightheaded. Earlier had been too much of a close call.

  There was a new report from London, a helicopter flying over the upper class area of Chelsea that was overrun by figures running round erratically. It was unclear whether they were humans or zombies. I turned back to the microwave and stopped it just before the counter reached zero. One thing that had always irritated me about our microwave was the unbelievably loud ding that rung when the food was done. It was like a sick joke by the designers, creating the loudest sound known to man. It was also irritating trying to prevent it from going off and waking the house up early in the morning if I made breakfast before work.

  I opened the tin of tuna into the noodles and mixed it together. I barely waited for it to cool down before I devoured it, burning the roof of my mouth slightly.

  The Paracetamol I'd taken earlier for my arm seemed to be working. It was still sore, but it was manageable. I desperately needed sleep. I was exhausted but felt compelled to remove the last few stairs, the events from earlier had been too close of an encounter for my liking. Just by stepping up that extra few inches, the second zombie had been able to grab me. I went back out onto the landing and started cutting the stairs away again.

  Putting together the barricades made me feel like I could take my time a bit more. Working slower allowed me to work a lot quieter than I had been doing before, I could think about what and where I was cutting as opposed to hacking at them like a maniac. I let the pieces fall to the floor as I removed them and was pleased with how much difference those last few stairs made.

  I went back into the bedroom and checked my emails, but hadn't received a reply. I'd left the TV on while I worked, not too loud, but loud enough so it drowned out the moaning from outside. The newsreaders were repeating some of the things they had been saying earlier about staying inside but included a few updates about safe areas people could head to. I was too tired to care, the clock on the TV told me it was 19:15. I dragged the bed against the door to help block it if anything came in and collapsed on the bed. I fell into a chasm of sleep that I so desperately needed.

  Chapter 6

  I jumped as I woke up, the way you do when you dream that you're falling and wake up just before you hit the ground. Light came in through the window, I checked my watch and it was 05:47. I'd been asleep for a long time but my body had clearly needed it. Between the exhaustion of not sleeping properly the night before, the injuries from falling down what was left of the stairs and barricading the whole house, I was surprised I hadn't passed out.

  Even though I'd been outside to the garage a couple of times, I hadn't really seen how the rest of the street was coping. My journey to the gate out front had been as covert as possible, so I'd only seen the gate and driveway.

  The study across the landing had a skylight window that opened out onto the roof. It was quite low down so I knew I'd have no problem lifting myself up and out, I just had to make sure I didn't slip or get spotted. The last thing I wanted was to be a beacon for every surrounding zombie that there was a free meal inside this house.

  I wondered whether there were any binoculars up here or whether they were in the garage. My parents were keen birdwatchers so I knew there'd be at least one pair somewhere. Before I left the bedroom I used the en-suite bathroom and checked my emails, still nothing. I checked my phone but there were no missed calls and the two text messages still said 'sending' despite it apparently having full signal.

  I stepped into the study and wandered over to the workstation where my mum usually used her laptop. I sat down in the chair in front of it, the laptop was gone which supported my theory of her taking it with her. I glanced at all the scraps of paper around the desk. Despite being a very tidy lady, the desk she used looked like a hurricane had blown through the house but been localized solely to the desk. Most of it was work related. She worked as an advertiser so there were a lot of contacts, names and numbers as well as random ideas that could be concepts for a project or leftovers from the last one, I didn't have a clue.

  What did catch my eye was a half illegible printout stuffed in the bin, it looked distinctly like a map with a route overlaid from Manchester to somewhere in Scotland. I dug it out and squinted my eyes as I attempted to make out the directions. The ink cartridge had obviously been running out and she'd printed another copy to take with them, but this one was just about readable. The end destination was a static caravan around an area of Scotland called Loch Lomond, that sounded right because it was somewhere they'd been a couple of times and loved it.

  I'd been to that area with them once before, it was a gorgeous place and very tranquil. It was a huge Loch, North of Glasgow, that had a few villages dotted around it but largely undisturbed highlands. Hopefully if their caravan was out of the way, they might not have encountered any of these things.

  Although I had an address, the route wasn't very clear. I folded it up and put it in my pocket to search on the intern
et later, for now I needed to find out how desperate my situation was.

  I stood up and looked around for any sign of binoculars. There were two big bookcases towards the back of the study with a huge range of books on them. The majority of one bookcase was fiction while the other was devoted to non-fiction, very organised my parents. Towards the bottom of the non-fiction bookcase were the bird watching books.

  There was also a small box that was overflowing with bits of paper and books about the birds of Scotland, they must have forgotten it. As I picked the top couple of books up, I could see why it was overflowing. An old looking, but powerful, pair of binoculars sat at the bottom.

  I opened the skylight and was surprised how quiet it was. It looked cloudy but it wasn't too cold as I stuck my head outside. From there I could see the gardens of a couple of houses behind us. One had its back door wide open but apart from that, there wasn't any sign of life.

  I got the chair from the desk and hoisted myself up and out of the window. I kept as close to the tiles as I could as I slid onto the roof, partially to keep myself hidden and partially to keep as stable as possible. I wasn't great with heights in the best of conditions, now definitely couldn't be described as ideal so I was trying my best not to look down. I crawled up towards the peak of the roof and glanced over the top, immediately the carnage was apparent.

  A few bodies littered the street, one in particular had a couple of zombies tearing pieces from it and consuming what they tore off. The body was at the end of a passage between two houses further down the road. I wondered if the victim had been chased down the passage or had been surprised when they reached this end of it. I couldn't even tell if the victim was male or female from where I was, I thought about using the binoculars to get a better look but decided that any more detail could not be described as a 'better look'.