World Down: A Zombie Novel

by Walker, Callum Bennington Goldworth

  “Can you hear the gunshots Gran; I can hear them in the background. Put your hearing aids in!”

  “Yes, we can hear them!” I cried in horror in the living room.

  “They're supposed to be illegal in the UK! Honey I don't. Here,” Linda handed me the phone. “Here's your mother.”

  “Blake!” I cried while catching the phone from her. “Mom. Mom they want us to mobilise. They said we need to be up and to the streets by tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh my, Blake. What are you going to do?” There was a pause as he thought on his answer.

  “I've got to stay. I can't leave.”

  I frowned in defiance, not that he could see me, tears in my eyes. “You need to come home. You come home right now, I don’t where Jess is,” I broke up in fear.

  “I can't. You know I can't do that, you were supposed to protect her,” he said carelessly.

  “Don't do this baby. You've nothing to prove. To anyone. Please. Come home.”

  “Mom. You always said I was special. That I meant something, right?” He reasoned.

  “Don't do this.”

  “Now’s my chance,” he told me.

  “No! Please.”

  “You know I love you.”

  I held the phone down and looked to the news as he spoke. It was a different news network to the one we normally watched, more rural, that Grandma Linda had just put on. A rural local news team, showing the chaos of the nearby motorway, cars on fire everywhere. The footage played and revealed the police, shooting a woman and her young son in the face. Cars empty lining the roads, bodies in the streets. I raised the phone to my ear again.

  “Blake I want you home!”

  “Where would I be safer? With you. Or here?” He asked me.

  “It's here,” I lied, as a solitary tear brushed my cheek.

  “You know that's not true,” I heard him say, as the line broke up into static.

  “Is that Blake?” Lily’s voice sung gently from the bottom of the stairs. I turned, and then looked away again.

  “Blake?” I asked the empty line, but no reply came, the line was gone.

  My Daughter - Day 5 - Rich

  Out in the streets, here I was, stepping in alleys and dirt paths at the back of our house. The light from a neighbour’s windows flashed as they cautiously ran and peered out to see me, only to fall away in fear a moment later at the uneasy wind, and the cracking of the distant fireworks. Jess was still missing, all I wanted was to find her and make her safe again. I can’t believe I let her go, I was stupid. She swore not to go far, I thought I could trust her, I was wrong. Jess lied to me, just as I had lied to her.

  Small puddles of rainwater had built up in the path behind our house. Near to the rail line the carcasses of a flock of dead pigeons lay electrocuted, some impaled on the sharp fences before the tracks. Burned feathers swept the lonely path ahead of me, as the raging barks of scared dogs howled in the breathless air.

  I knew she went this way to the woods with her friends often. Jess was a climber, a runner, an adventurer. I’d take her and her brother with me to the Welsh mountains, Snowdon, every summer. We would go up and over the mountains when she was little. They were precious memories to me and I wanted to experience more with her, but time was against me. This plague, this sickness, coupled with what I’d done. There was no escape it seemed, but I still had hope that a better day will come. I had to find her and save her first, I had to make sure she was safe.

  My footsteps were soon the only sound I heard on the trek, passing wooden fences, gardens, avoiding the nasty puddles and gashes in the earth on the path behind our neighbourhood. Until suddenly, I heard the loud slamming of a shed door. It was as if someone was slamming it over and over again, violently to my right where someone’s garden was. Lightning flashed behind me, as I searched for a way to see inside the garden. It must be the wind I thought, as I found a crack then in the fence and kneeled down to peer through, the lightning helped me see the crack. Inside I saw blades of grass freshly cut, and a rocking horse, dripping with water from the rain of earlier.

  I flashed the flashlight through but the shadow of the splintered wood near the crack could not let me see clearly. A children’s mirror in the garden reflected the light back to me, blinding me, if only for a second, for the lightning flashed once more around me, revealing that it was not water but blood that dripped from the horse's mouth. The thunder cracked above me, the loudest of ruptures in the sky, as I witnessed a pale woman with blackest of hair, slick with the water of the rain, standing at the golden porch, or was it blood, blood rinsed; her eyes cold like a serpents. The sight of her could only be seen for a fleeting second; staring right at me, before fading, the harsh reality of the black of night resuming all around me.

  I rose up and gulped fast, every sense felt heightened as I stepped away from the crack and back into one of the puddles. The shed door smashed again, harder and harder, faster and faster. I ran, past the gardens, to the tunnel over the railway and the winding deep woods.

  I ran for a minute at least, wondering what it was I’d seen. All of a sudden, a figure appeared in the middle of the path, the shadows of the woods eclipsing the moon above, for that was how close I was. I shined the light to them, but they shielded their face. It was a girl.

  “Who are you? Jess?” I asked. They fell their arm to their side and I saw the face I had wanted to see more than any other. It was my daughters face.

  “Dad?” She spoke.

  “Jess!” I ran over to her and hugged her tightly. “You scared me to death,” I told her.

  “I know,” she whispered back.

  “Dad, I just want to go home.”

  “Come.”

  I took off my coat and heralded it over her soaked head.

  “Dad?” She said again, as we turned and walked the path back.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “A policeman shot a man in the garages down near the bridge,” she said, to my utter shock. Her lips quivered and her voice sounded shaken. Somehow, I knew she was telling the truth.

  “Don’t worry love, I’m here for you,” I told her, my arm holding her firmly, as if I’d never let her go again.

  “Let's get you home.”

  “I’ve seen worse on the news, but I didn't expect that,” she said with baited breath.

  “Don't think about it,” I told her. “You shouldn't have gone out, all this could have been avoided.”

  Lighting lit the path up for a moment as we walked on, revealing familiar garden fences. My eyes flashed to the crack in the wall, now twice as large, as if a large dog had smashed through. I didn't realise my mouth had gasped as I saw it. Something didn't sit right with me, so I paused in fright, spooking Jess.

  “What?” She asked, before I shushed her and stepped forward with caution. As we approached, I noticed there was bloody flesh hanging from the splinters of the wood around the crater in the fence. I flashed my light onwards, not wanting to spook myself even more on the path.

  I didn't know where the pale woman went, but I knew that if the light guiding us were to go out now, I’d probably shit myself. We passed on and picked up the pace. Jess caught on quickly that something was wrong. We passed fences after fences, houses with lights on behind dark black curtains, all the way to the railway track, where the birds lay dead, only they weren't. The dead pigeons were gone save for one who had been disembowelled, its guts hanging like a thread of web to the sharp rail fences I’d passed earlier.

  “Oh my god,” Jess whimpered in distraught words.

  “Take my hands, don't look, the house is just this way.”

  “I know the way!” She groaned like a teenager would.

  “When you get home, you go straight to bed,” I said to her. “Not likely,” she responded in a grumble as the ground rumbled beneath our feet.

  I held her close and stumbled along the dirt path. A train approached, louder than the thunder, louder than the airplanes. Loud booms of wind and metal slammed ou
r ears. All was fine at first, until a splatter of blood hit our faces, then a part of a bloody rib cage of a small human flung to the rail fence and fell in our way.

  Jess screamed then threw up to the wet gravel part of the path. I just snarled and frowned at it.

  “Come on,” I told her, feeling sick to my stomach myself. This was a nightmare.

  I went forth first over the remains holding her hand, stepping over the wet mess of flesh and bone, I could see there was more on the tracks. Jess followed looking up to the twinkling stars in the night sky. I heard a squelch and a pop as she came across.

  “I stepped in it!” She squelched her boot in it by accident and carried on.

  “Wipe your foot in the grass!” I advised her.

  It was a shame the rain was gone now, as it would have washed our faces of the small splatters of blood spots now adorning our tired and weary faces. We looked like children with dark red chicken pocks. A minute later, we found home.

  “There, there's the house!” I said seeing the lights on, and Lily’s pink curtains illuminated in the dark.

  “We’re safe now,” I said, I thought. But my thoughts had betrayed me, as standing in the path ahead facing towards the other direction was our elderly neighbour, Mike. Mike Carmichael. I knew it was him, from the blue coat and jacket he wore when he usually tended his crops in the autumn.

  “Mr Carmichael. Sir?” I asked the strangely silent man. He was silent…

  “Dad just leave it!” Said Jess, ushering me away to the red door of our own garden. It was so close.

  “No!” I shouted, before gazing into our neighbours’ cold white eyes. He’d turned, and he for sure wasn't the same man I knew. His purple lips opened and closed like a fish.

  “Can you hear me? Mr Carmichael?” I said. He didn't hear, he didn't care, he just stood there, mulberry like liquid trickling down his jaw from his rancid mouth. He groaned loudly to the stars, before snarling and growling, reaching for me.

  “Rarghh,” he sneered, leering over in a terrifying fashion.

  He lunged, gnawing at my belt.

  “Jess, run!” I shouted while struggling, holding my attacker back. I leaned back as we fell to the floor, but before I could, he bit through my coat and into my shoulder.

  “Arghh!” I screamed, but another roar ripped up the night sky. It was Jess, bashing Mr Carmichaels head in with our metal tree lopper. She caught my hand as I tried to tell her to stop, but the deed was done. By the time I rose up, the man I once knew as a friend was lying in a growing pool of blood and puddle water.

  “Inside, now,” I looked to Jess, still frightened. She was in shock of what she’d done.

  “Rich!” Called Sarah from the house. She rushed out to the scene of the carnage with a large broomstick in her hands.

  “Sarah, don't come out here, inside the house. Both of you.”

  “Oh my good lord, is that Mr Carmichael?” She asked. Me and Jess both just stared at her. I then pulled away the body from near our garden and to his garden door.

  “His wife?” My wife whispered in concern. “I don't, I don't know,” I told her, exhausted, both mentally and physically. We made it back to the house and locked the garden door, then the back door. Double locked it.

  Jess hugged her gran and then immediately ran upstairs to be with Lily.

  “What's wrong Richard?” Asked Linda while the backdrop of rolling news reported more chaos and death.

  “It's not safe now, even in our backyard,” I spoke to them. “You must sleep.”

  “No, I, I don't need much sleep anyhow, you two go up to bed, I’ll stay down here,” said my mother in law in rushed tones. It was rather unlike her. I soon followed Sarah up to bed, finding Lily alone in her sister's bed while Jess showered in the bathroom. I kissed goodnight to her, told her everything was alright and held her fragile hands. A few minutes later I cleaned my wounds in the now sauna like state of a bathroom. Jess always showered with piping hot water.

  In my bedroom, Sarah lay while on her phone. Messaging family and hoping for the best. The wound on my shoulder stung and itched, but all I could do was think of how close I came to losing my daughter, and how I had saved her, for now at least.

  Patrol - Day 6 - Blake

  It was our second day on the streets. We had been sent to the outskirts of Sutton Coldfield, to Perry Common, east of Wolverhampton, north of Birmingham. Our section had been dealing with logistics, transporting food and water to houses, and smuggling one or two VIP’s out from under the hands of the armoured battalion in the city centre. Singing songs in the jeep was the only way to keep our spirits up.

  We hadn't seen much of the sick on our first day. Many people were in their homes, scared and afraid. Outside, the morning air was clear and the sun was bright and shining. It didn't feel like doomsday. It felt like any other day.

  “Charlie and Delta Squad, foot patrol, cover the streets of Bleak Hill Road, Marlow Road, Crowther Road, Birthdale Road,” the order from command radioed in. Lieutenant Bridge was uneasy. He wouldn't tell us of the 1st Battalion’s exploits inside the city centre, but we all suspected the worst.

  James from Delta had told us of terrible things his friends in A company had seen in Sutton Coldfield, just a few miles away from us.

  “Let's get the bulldog moving!” Shouted Thomas. It's what he called our other rover. We rolled on through semi deserted streets until we found a sign on the road saying Bleak Hill. The street sign was old and decrepit, awash with bugs, dust and faded writing. The navigator confirmed where we were.

  My squad, Charlie, was to search the houses on the left, while Delta, the left. At the first semidetached house, no one answered the door. Me, Hussain and Maddison, our beautiful medic, approached the garden, while Jake and Thomas remained in the rover. In the back yard all we found were vegetables and an apple tree. Soon we heard shouting from the other side of the street.

  “Blake, Jake, assist them,” I heard Thomas order.

  When I arrived across the street, I found Mason, Jacob and the Light Machine Gun of The Princess facing a white coloured house and a man shouting in a foreign language.

  “What's he saying?” Mason demanded to know, holding aloft his SA80 rifle.

  “I don't know.” said Jacob, holding his own weapon steadfast.

  “Hussain. What the hells he talking about?” Lance Corporal James asked from his rover. Hussain crouched and took a moment to understand the man, listening intently, before lowering his voice and answering in a solemn tone.

  “He says that his neighbours are dead.”

  We all breathed a sigh of relief and resignation. I took the man aside. I could see his family cowering behind the front door of their home.

  “Go inside where it's safe sir, get your family. The Exhibition Centre on the outskirts, you know where that is!?” He nodded. “Or the airport. International airport. Yeah international, you got it?”

  He repeated my words and nodded his head erratically. His eyes red, as if he’d seen the worst possible evil and survived it barely.

  “Alright take care,” I said with a nod, before raising my weapon to my shoulder and to the neighbour’s ominous house. As we all approached, Mason made his usual incendiary comments.

  “Man lives in England and he can't even speak English. What the fucks that all about?”

  “Shut up man,” Hussain told him.

  “And what. You gonna make me Hussain?”

  “We got bigger things to worry about right now,” James hollered from the jeep, shutting them up. “Clear the houses. One by one. Eyes open. Don't let anything come near you. Masks on!”

  “Copy that,” I said touching the door. “1, 2...3,” we pushed open the door and entered. The stench of death overwhelmed me, even with the mask on. Dried blood lay on the floor and on the couch, and a terrible black mould had taken hold on the ceiling of the living room.

  “Me and Hussain will check upstairs,” I said to them. “Hussain take the bathroom and small bedroom
; I'll take the master bedroom.”

  “Oscar Mike,” Hussain said.

  “Copy.”

  I creaked up one stair at a time.

  “No movement downstairs,” I heard Mason say. I took the turn to the main bedroom, and found two bodies. They were an old couple, holding each other in their arms for one final time. No bullet wounds, no nothing. I was nervous. A hundred dead flies lay on the window sill a metre from their bodies, and faeces covered the walls, smeared peculiarly against pictures of what I assumed to be family.

  “Blake, I got nothing in the bathroom,” I heard Hussain say.

  “Oscar, Kilo,” I said. I left as I heard Hussain going back downstairs. I raced the bottom, to find Mason and Jacob stood in the living room.

  “Oscar Kilo? What the fuck is Oscar Kilo? You fucking wet wipe,” Mason said.

  “Two bodies upstairs in the main bedroom on the right, I’m going to let Thomas know,” I said to him.

  “Tom!” I called to his jeep as I walked outside. “Two bodies.”

  “Right,” Tom said, turning to Jake, our signaller. Jake promptly ordered a truck for collection. “Alright, Hussain, Blake. Search the houses on our side of the street.”

  We moved on and knocked on the door of each house in the street. Only six families answered, the rest were reclusive and scared, or god forbid, dead.

  I heard Hussain coughing silently as we came to the last house.

  “You ok man?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” he answered. A woman smoking a cigar answered and had a confused look on her face when she saw us. We gave them over to the corporal.

  Thomas told them where to go for safety. The shelters that were being set up near here. “We need to move,” I said to Hussain. “I don't like it here.”

  “What you find?” Asked James from his jeep. “Nothing, just scared people.”

  “Nothing,” Hussain answered.

  “Yeah. Understood,” Jake said down the radio. “Thomas, command wants us to head straight to the base at Heartlands,” he said.