by Burke, Rowan
He said no.
“Have you been bitten?”
His shaking head signified another no.
I took a moment to look back at Lance. He shrugged and displayed a nonchalant expression, seemingly taking on an ‘it’s up to you’ kind of mentality. I looked back down at Carl.
“And what about your girlfriend, is she ok?”
Carl nodded convincingly.
Raising my hand, I signalled for him to wait as I crawled back into the house to talk to the others who had now made their way upstairs, coming to the sensible consensus that Carl posed little threat.
Jon was strongly against letting him in, saying we have to worry about ourselves, but the general unanimity was that if we could help we would, or morally we at least should do. Plus we barricaded the stairs at either end so he couldn’t get out anyway, or not without destroying all our hard work. Another two people meant two more mouths to feed, but it also meant two more members of our small militia, which left a confident feeling of added security for us all. With the pros and cons stacked up back to back, we granted him and his girlfriend entry. As the front was boarded up, I lowered the loose ladder down to him from the lookout, using which he and his girlfriend climbed up, through the window, and in.
“Hi, I’m Carl”
Hello, Carl.
“And this is Stacey”.
Hello, Stacey.
Pleasantries exchanged and hands politely shaken, we welcomed the duo into our humble fortress.
Carl was tall but skinny, about 6’ 2” but can’t have weighed more than eleven or twelve stone. He looked well-kept and in good shape, with short mousey hair and light stubble revealing a hint of a beard. He looked and acted friendly, and genuinely seemed like he could be an asset to the team. He did, however, come across as extremely scared and concerned for the wellbeing of both Stacey and himself, and understandably so. Most importantly, on closer inspection my initial assumption that he was uninjured seemed to have been confirmed as Carl had no signs of combat anywhere on his body, so we felt safe in assuming he wasn’t carrying a bite or injury that could have been a detriment to our survival.
Stacey was short, about 5’ 5”, but athletically built, looking to be in her early thirties. She had shoulder length blonde hair, and wore minimal make-up although still naturally very pretty, yet adopted the same expression of worry as Carl. She wore light blue jean shorts and a light grey top under a thick blue cardigan; the cardigan seemed very odd to me considering the muggy midsummer heat, but assumed it was most likely to be more a comfort thing, perhaps due to having had witnessed some of the atrocities we did on the high street from the confinements her flat window. Again though, there were no clear signs of a fight, which was good.
We welcomed the pair in, offering them coffee and whatever food they wanted from our stash, and then tried to establish what they knew about what the fuck was going on. Carl told us they saw a zombie rip apart their two friends right in front of them, and as they didn’t know anyone else in town they just ran and hid inside, moving to the cupboard when they heard us coming for not knowing if we were friend or….zombie.
They went on to tell us what they had viewed out of the window; how people had lost their minds, acting as brutal and heartless as the zombies had been when trying to save their own loved ones. Stacey spoke through tears, depicting how she saw a man throw a young boy, maybe 13 or 14, toward a cluster of zombies who were after the man’s family. He used the boy as a distraction, a living decoy, who screamed in utter agony as he was eaten alive whilst the family ran away to hopeful safety. She also told us about a woman who pulled an old man out of his car as he tried to drive away, before smashing his head on the curb at the side of the road. She left him for dead just to take his car from him in hope to escape, but another woman ran in front of the car causing her to swerve and crash into the furniture shop across on the other side of the street, then burst into flame. The zombies heard the commotion and were quick to the scene, enjoying barbeque this time, before making their way over to the old man still in the street to finish him off as well.
What we had seen were the zombies causing chaos, subsequently assuming they were the sole source of the torment people would be exposed to. We didn’t even consider the madness of humanity to be just as cataclysmic as our new found undead local residents. We were shocked, sitting mouths agape as we listened intently to the stories of what Carl and Stacey had seen. It was scary, but it was real; these were not stories of hyperbole, they were genuine witness depictions of what we as a race are capable of when faced with desperation and lawless panic. A man sacrificing a young boy was all the evidence we needed that the world, or at least Fleet, had lost its fucking mind.
We ate and drank as little as possible throughout the day for not knowing how long we would be in the flat, but the one thing that did hit us was the heat. I remembered this house being hot when I lived here, the warmth always raising from the shops below and not escaping properly through the flat roof, but having the front all boarded up and the curtains mostly closed just exacerbated the already high temperature. It was like a fucking sauna. Eventually, we used the ladder to get up from the look out and onto the roof, which was flat and stretched uninterrupted across all six houses, with sheer drops on either side. It gave us a great view across Fleet, one I hadn’t seen before, and amidst the mayhem and destruction, there was still an element of beauty in the beating summer sun. It was still hot as hell on the roof, the tar on the roof an unwelcome under foot heating system, but as we were now a good 25 even 30 feet from the high street below, there was a cool breeze which was refreshing when compared to the stuffiness of inside the flat.
The main benefit was that we had an aerial view; we could see for miles at anything headed our way well in advance of it getting anywhere near us, which seemed to be a colossal advantage at this point. Moreover, all the zombies we could see appeared to be only looking forwards, none looking up or scouting the rooftops, so we felt pretty safe up here for now; as long as we were quiet and retained a consistent level of awareness it looked like we were going to be fine. It also meant that we were high and visible should any helicopters or equivalent come over, meaning we had a direct visual appeal for help should anything come passing us within a fair stretch of distance on every side. Even if anything didn’t see us, we still had a pretty solid fort of household items solidly barricading any entry points, stopping potential intruders from getting to us, and even if they got through we were armed to the tits with weapons, ready and waiting should they manage to pass our preliminary security gates.
It was looking good for us, a faint silver lining on the whole ordeal, and as we still had plenty of food and water, we felt like this was a storm we just needed to ride out, remaining hopeful that the army or rescue workers would come get us all the fuck out of here. We had all seen enough zombie flicks to know what happened in the movies; the movies always had hope, they always had survivors. The only thought of detriment we had in the back of our minds though was this wasn’t a movie, this was more like a documentary, and one that we were a prominent fixture in.
3.
One of the very few items we excluded from hurling into our security walls was a TV, which we thought may have been of some use in order to attempt an understanding of what was going on outside of our fortress and immediate surrounding area. The previous occupants clearly didn’t opt for Sky or Virgin or any expensive TV providers, so with all the English channels scrambled or showing error messages we were limited to the very inadequate selection of foreign channels on their freeview box. On a particular hot day, a few days into the whole experience, we found ourselves all scattered in various locations around the house, with Jon and I sipping a beer whilst sitting in the sun on the roof. The atrocities of what we could see were gradually subsiding, both in volume and in severity, as with the significant reduction of people around that the zombies could eat, their ruthlessness became more and more normal to us. For every person we saw eaten
, or chased, or bitten, or mercilessly ripped limb from limb, we sourced an inner previously unfounded religion and said a prayer for them, raising our bottle to wish them peace in whatever afterlife they were taken to. Neither of us were religious, or even drawn to any particular religious way of life, but we found a level of solace in thinking they were going to somewhere better, some kind of heaven in whatever form they believed in. Earth, or at least Fleet, now resembled my interpretation of Hell; a place filled with monsters, torment, torture and fear. So their deaths, albeit painful and terrifying, were at least a way of them getting out of here to find peace in the afterlife.
We smiled contently as a woman managed to outrun the grasp of a pair of zombies who had jumped out at her, and was pulled into a car which sailed by her before zooming off in the distance. The woman’s minor victory of that particular battle was met with Jon and I clinking our bottles in acknowledgement of her escape. Just as we witnessed her car disappear over the horizon, Derek shot his head over the ledge from the top of the ladder.
“Lads”
He exclaimed, in the loudest possible whisper.
“Get down here quick. The whole thing’s on the news! Come and see what the Americans are saying on the news”
We scrambled to our feet, still staying low and keeping as quiet as possible, then shifted with as much speed as possible to the ledge and down the ladder, in through the bathroom window, bolting downstairs to gather around the TV in the living room. CBS news America was the only channel that seemed stable enough to make out a picture and some audio, so it quietly flickered in the background most of the time in case something of interest came on. It didn’t appear that this zombie outbreak had hit America yet, so until now there had been no coverage of it at all; the American news shows seem to only like home grown, American stories about American things and American people, never too concerned with what was happening elsewhere. Normally, you’d be more likely to see coverage of a dog taking on a school spelling bee over a natural disaster in Japan, as long as both the dog and the school were American.
But the reason we were called off the roof was that they were covering the events we were living in, stipulating a full UK mainland infestation of the zombie outbreak. The whole thing appeared to be confined to UK soil, and the US (presumably why they were covering it) Armies had flown over to set up strict and merciless parameters around the UK coast, assumedly to control who came out and who went in so to avoid a more widespread outbreak. Phil and I felt another bittersweet sense of relief as we now knew for sure that our ladies were safe on unaffected US soil.
I don’t know how the Americans did it in only a few days, but the images on the TV showed that there were walls and checkpoints out in the water covering the entire UK coastline, along with newly erected airspace on the beaches, and an endless array of soldiers carefully monitoring anyone trying to get in or out. They had set up long, high, thick, barbed wire covered fences that stretched far out into the deep waters before submerging under the surface. The fences then lead to a series of soldier manned gates one behind another, what appeared to be three in total, before a tunnel lead people to the shore where they were being evacuated by boats and helicopters. There was an American news woman done up to the nines showing live coverage of what was happening, an overly tarted up blonde lady unsurprisingly acting over eccentrically as she detailed her depiction of the events. Only a few seconds in to her coverage, a commotion caused the cameraman to drop his camera onto the rocks below, showing a few seconds of the pebbles and the sand in frame with screams and gunfire heard in the background, before the coverage cut back to a studio in the States.
“Thank you Karen, it looks like you have everything in control there. Well folks, there you have it; a zombie outbreak in the United Kingdom. We hear that a series of rescue missions from our boys in green are being sent inland for those stuck and in need of help. Fear not though as our troops are taking all necessary action to ensure that these zombies or anyone infected do not get off the island and do not spread this infestation any further, so please don’t expect any of the undead knocking on your door this evening. Now onto Sports with..”
Lance cut the studio presenter’s words dead with the mute button before it carried the news over to something irrelevant and unimportant. Hearing the latest NBA results probably wouldn’t help our situation.
We looked at each other, all seven of us making our best attempts to process the news we just heard.
“Is this…a good thing?”
Phil queried.
“I guess so”
Carl retorted.
“I mean, it’s our home, it’s our country, this is where we’re all from and where our families are from, so to learn how widespread it is means countless people we all know could be affected, and from the severity we’ve seen they probably have been, or possibly even worse. However, it also means there’s a way out. It means there’s hope. A rescue mission will come, you heard them, they’re sending out search parties, helicopters….”
I felt this was a justified and utilitarian response; it certainly made sense to me and appeared to be the case with the rest of the group too. All we had to do was keep ourselves and each other safe for a few days or so more, before a rescue team came and found us. We should have someone on the roof at all times to signal down a prospective helicopter, working in shifts, and outside that simply ration the food, keep quiet and don’t draw attention to ourselves. If we can do all that then we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.
“We’ll be fine!”
I cheered, standing up swiftly as I raised my bottle of beer to the group.
As I stood, my bottle accidentally caught Stacey’s side causing her to winch and keel over in pain. I instantly felt awful and started apologising profusely whilst trying to help her up. My good hearted attempts were short lived as Carl grabbed me by the arm and launched me back, instructing me to get off her and to leave her alone. I slammed my back on the wall as a result of his violent ejection, feeling completely confused as to his seemingly overreacting actions. But as I went to say something, and re-approach her, I looked down to the hand I had just used to try to help her to her feet. On the hand I had placed on her side whilst apologising for catching her with the bottle, there was blood.
“You cut her!”
Carl stood her up and rapidly tried to lead her out the room whilst Jon, Phil and Derek looked at me with those “you’ve fucked up here, pal” expressions I’ve grown somewhat accustomed to over the years. He swiftly pulled her to her feet and headed for the door out of the leaving room which I was now stood next to. Although taken back in a sincere state of remorse, something seemed odd to me; why would he try and move her so quickly if she was really that hurt? Plus the blood on my hand was thick and full, had the bottle smashed? I looked down at it and nope, it hadn’t. So how was it possible for blunt glass to cut her so bad? I looked up at Derek who was clearly in the midst of the same thought process I was as he was scanning my hand, then her side, then looking at the unbroken bottle, and moving back to my hand. Derek looked up into my confused eyes as his started to widen with the same cynical speculation my brain had also concluded.
“Wait!”
With my assertive instruction I grabbed a golf club that was leaning against the wall and slammed it across the middle of the doorway in front of them, like a steel gate disallowing them to leave the room.
“Get out of the way you bastard! She’s bleeding!”
Carl continued in his motion, grabbing at the club and trying to shoulder me out of the way. He moved Stacey to his right, the opposite side to me, and pulled her tightly in to his body.
“WAIT!”
I firmly fixed the 9-iron back in its gate-like position before barging the now intertwined couple backwards, forcibly perching them on the arm of one of the sofas.
Phil and Jon stood up and rushed over to help Stacey who was clearly in pain, whimpering through muffled tears which had run down from her eyes to shower her
lips. Derek and Lance stood up too, Lance grabbing his hammer from the table next to him, standing on his heels ready to jump to action should such a call be necessitated. Before Phil or Jon had a chance to touch her I swung the golf club around to push them back and snarled at them not to connect with her in any way. They tried again, yet I denied them once more, this time more stern and in such a manner they knew there was a definitive reason behind what I was doing.
“What’s the fucking problem, mate??”
Phil’s question preceded a vocal silence across a now still room. Lance stood in the corner, hammer in hand, breathing deeply and looking dead at me, evidently waiting for any kind of signal. Jon and Phil both stood behind the golf club barrier, strong in their stance but weakened with curiosity, also staring at me for some kind of clarification. My gaze moved slowly from theirs into the tear-filled eyes of Stacey as she cuddled up to Carl, soon closing them and pulling her face into his brown jacket. He kissed the top of her head, putting his hand on her hair to pull her in tightly, a motion clearly intended to reassure her from what he expected to happen next.
“It’s OK”
He whispered to her.
“Everything’s going to be alright”.
His eyes stared at the floor, following suit and glazing over, every blink releasing fast travelling chariots of salty water hurtling toward the carpet below.
He knew I knew.
