World Down: A Zombie Novel

by Walker, Callum Bennington Goldworth

  “We just want to live, it's safe here, safe enough, don't shut us out, don't do anything rash,” I said. He wouldn't really pull the trigger? Would he? Maybe I should have gotten out of here when we had the chance. No, there was no time for second thoughts now.

  “How can you stay? When you won’t accept her?” He said then, pointing the gun sparingly to the girl next to Susie, then back to me.

  I shook my head, took a long look at the girl, she was normal? I didn't understand.

  “What do you mean? What's wrong with her? She looks fine?” I said.

  “Does she?” He asked, licking his crusted lips with his slimy tongue. “Of course she does, she is perfect.”

  I gave him a puzzled look. I was completely lost. What did he mean? Then I had a dark thought. “Who is she?” I asked him.

  “She's mine, Mr Lively, to do with as I please.”

  She was his?! What? What the fuck was wrong with these people?

  “That's sick,” I said, and as I spoke, Susie edged away and whimpered, as if she knew what came next, the sick twisted wrath of a deranged old paedophile.

  “Got her from a friend, Abdul always delivers the best, she was no exception.”

  “I'm so sorry,” Susie cried.

  “That's sick! Sick!” I shouted to him. I couldn't keep myself from becoming enraged.

  He thrusted the gun on me, catching me unaware.

  “You forget yourself Mr. Lively, this is my house, under my house, the rules are simple, I am the law, I am the master, understand!?”

  I felt dizzy as he pushed me onto the wall with the gun. Normally I would have the strength to fight back, especially against this old man, but it was so blurry, so much so that Susie's crying face became distorted scarily so, as I glanced from her to the paedophile bearing down on me.

  “There's something you must understand, I am infected with the disease,” I said with my wavering breath. It brought a few relieving seconds of suspense, as he processed what I’d said.

  “Then I should kill you!” He finally exclaimed, touching the musket end to my head. I feared I was about to die then. This was it. No prison, no gangs, nope, it was an old mad fool to end my existence.

  “Wait, let me say goodbye! If it were you and your daughter, would you not want to say goodbye?” I reasoned.

  “You could have infected us all you idiot!” He hit me across the face with the gun, I fell and felt water trickle down my face, wait no, he had drawn blood. He hasn't hit me that hard, surely?

  “Move!” He said gesturing for me to go downstairs. “We’re going for a walk.”

  I got to my feet and trudged along. Feeling myself getting weaker and weaker, why did he want to go for a walk? I thought I saw a shadow cross my vision on the floor below. It was just my imagination. We came to the ground floor, what the hell was he going to do to my children? Why involve them?

  We left and walked over to the dark barn in the thunder and rain. It lashed down, puddles, great swathes of field were covered in water. As we came to the open barn, I stopped in place, upon seeing my oldest daughter in a chair alone. Jess was tied up, rope around her legs, a ripped piece of cloth fixed around her mouth to prevent her from screaming.

  “Jess?” I exclaimed. My strength returned to me upon seeing her in distress.

  “What the hell is this?” Said Davies scanning the room. I ran, as much as I could, moving towards Jess quickly as she rubbed against her bonds, her eyes screamed a thousand words, I had to help her, I had to save her again. I heard an almighty struggle behind me but I didn't think twice about what I had to do. I tried helping her save looking back to the commotion behind me.

  I glanced up as I undid the rope on her hands behind her back. It was Gareth, tackling Davies and grabbing his gun.

  “Daddy!” Screamed Susie’s voice from outside.

  I quickly rose up after untying Jess’s hands, knowing she could do the rest herself. I wondered where Lily and Mike were for a brief moment, then looked to Gareth, he was now holding a knife to Davies’s throat and holding him steady. The gun was on the floor, it had skidded across the barn floor nearby the cattle pen. By the time I could reach it and aim he’d have already slit his throat and made up the ground to slice at me.

  “Rich!” The boy said, inches away from me. “He deserves to die, let me do it.”

  He held the blade to Davies’s skin and cut a little, drawing blood and gasps of pain from the old decrepit man. I held the musket at them.

  “No, Gareth,” I said, knowing Susie was listening from outside. This was still her father.

  “I heard everything he said, he's diseased, and so are you. You're not fit enough to protect her,” he said, of Jess I assumed.

  “I’m her father!”

  “You're a dead man, and I’m so much more,” he said. “In fact, you pick up the gun, you shoot him!”

  He wanted me to kill Davies and waste the bullet on him, so then he was free to come at me with his knife. That was what he wanted. No way, I wasn't going to allow some madman to keep my daughter hostage, to control her like Davies had controlled that girl.

  I stepped forward.

  “What are you doing?” He asked as I took another step.

  “Put down the knife Gareth,” I said. “Put it down, now!”

  I stepped another step, and another and another. Davies' life hung in the balance, I could see his fear, his desperation, he wanted me to stop. But I wouldn't, I couldn't, he had made his bed, now he may lie in it.

  Stepping one more foot nearer, Gareth finally grew tired and sliced Davies’s neck across with one painful cut. I seized the moment and jumped for him, as blood poured out and onto the floorboards, as the body of Davies fell to the floor, I picked up my spirit, evading his knife swing and thrust, holding his arm down and slamming him into the wall with great force. The knife spun from his grip and onto the floor.

  It was a struggle now. I punched thrice in the abdomen, his toned muscles were hard to my fist, and his chin dug into my shoulder like a blade. I had to beat him, I had to. We fell to the floor wrestling each other, throwing punches back and forth.

  All of a sudden, as I pushed and pulled, headbutted him and swore, he managed to get the better of me, he had the power now, he had the knife.

  He stabbed me, right through the side of my stomach. I didn't feel it at first, then the pain set in, I felt the loss of control as I fell. He was poised to kill me, but as he did my vision fell and I was left staring at a flash of light, and then at the blurry mess of red where Gareth's distorted face once was. He collapsed, not like a fall, but a limp fall, like a rag doll, and I knew then he was dead.

  Jess had shot him. Straight through the head. I saw the motion in the corner of my eye, and the call of her familiar voice, calling my name, but I was too weak to move.

  After a few moments I felt her holding me, cradling me in her arms.

  “Jess, you did it,” I said. My vision focused on her face, she was so close now, tearing up. We both knew I was at death's door. It was my time.

  “You'll be ok,” she lied.

  “Where's Lily?” I asked her.

  “He locked them in the shed,” she said while a tear fell from her cheek.

  “Get them out, keep them safe always,” I said, groaning between fits of spasms.

  “What did he mean?” She asked me. As if she didn't know.

  “I’m infected, I have been for some time,” I told her the truth.

  “No,” she shook her head in denial.

  “It was always going to come to this,” I said, not wanting her to blame herself. “Look after Lily, she is your only family now, the only one that matters.” I tried to be quick and neat, not the bumbling wreck that I was in life.

  “Don’t be stupid, this doesn’t happen to us, I love you, this does not happen,” she said.

  “I know, look at me,” I told her. “I love you; I'll always love you, my daughter. My everything.” I could no longer see her, just the outline of
her face, her wet black hair flanking her face, falling down her shoulders…

  The Field Hospital - Day 11 - Blake

  I sat on the back of The Princess, my legs hanging off the railing, smoking a lone cigarette, looking at a large smoke plume in the distance, rising up and up and into the clouds in the great blue sky.

  We had spent yesterday cleaning up the runway and all the dust, the blood, the ruinous debris, and the quiet dead. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. Fifteen alone I had put down on that terrible night, the night of the crash, yesterday I totalled 25. And at the end of it all I had one question. Where was my family? Was my mother among them, she must be I thought, scattered and at peace, that I had no doubt. I would cry if I had tears left to spare, but I had used them all up on that fiery night.

  Beside me sat Mason, smoking with me. Of all of them, it was Mason, not Thomas, my mentor, my role model, not Hussain, my cheery friend, or Jake, my old friend, not even Maddison, my twilight crush.

  He was looking ahead, like me, to the runway. Sighing, he reloaded his pistol with a new magazine and set it to his holder. James had run away in the night, Jake had followed him in one of the cars, both of them abandoning their duties. Not that their duties were being enforced by any higher order now. The headquarters was ash and all inside were now reduced to ash. I had not picked up my spirits since the moment of the bright light. The moment of the impact.

  “You think there's a heaven? A higher power?” Mason asked me.

  “I think there's peace, or restless,” I told him after a moment.

  I was never outwardly religious, but I had often found myself staring at the sky with wonder and questions, all the while having a knowing that had been installed in me since I was little, since I rang the church bell as a pupil, since the times when my mother would pick me up from day care.

  “You think they knew what was happening when it happened?” I asked him. I couldn’t bear to imagine her suffering in her final moments. If it was prolonged or final, I shall never know, and that, for some reason, worried me to death.

  “I don't think so,” he said, and I believed him. Mason always gave honest if not blunt answers.

  “It probably happened so quickly for them,” he added.

  “I never even got to say goodbye to her, never got to even say hello, not properly,” I blabbered. I was getting sensitive again, emotional, I tried to keep it together. I didn't want him seeing and hearing me like this, it was not manly, especially in this company.

  “I'm sorry about your mom,” he then said, surprising me with his care. It didn’t mean a great deal, but it was something to shoulder.

  “Have we heard anything of James and Jake?” I asked him. He’d just spoken with the remaining others as they prepared the vehicles, as I’d been here, staring at the sight I had stared at for an hour now. The dreaded scorched runway.

  “Nope, still missing. Thomas is not the same,” he said.

  “I don't think any of us are,” I said haphazardly. I was still thinking about my mother, I wanted her so badly. “I don't think any of us will ever be the same again.”

  He hesitantly patted my shoulder, seeing me upset. I had never seen this side of him, an affectionate, passionate side, I liked it. This gesture he extended spoke a thousand words while speaking none.

  “I have exhausted everything, every emotion I had ever felt in my life I have felt these past twenty-four hours,” I told him, breaking my emotional fortitude.

  “I remember when my dad left me,” he said. It felt like half my life was ripped away. Just like that.”

  He was trying to relate to me. It was not the same, but I could appreciate his tone. It meant a great deal to him, as this event had to me. I heard a call from Jacob, telling us to be ready for evacuation.

  “The war goes on,” Mason said, rising up.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said nonchalantly, still staring ahead.

  I threw my cigarette forward, to the sight I had stared at, to the countless body bags lining the abandoned runway, the sight we had stared at for almost an hour now. The thousand dead. Beyond counting. Body bag upon body bag, laid out like chairs.

  It was a slow drive away from the airport. We were one of the last of our platoon to leave. Half of what was left of our platoon were still at the base near the NEC.

  I looked around at us. We were broken, demoralised and unfit to continue serving, but we did anyway. Serving who I thought. Command was gone, perhaps it was the lieutenant back at the civilian camp, as that was certainly where we were heading. There was nothing left in this world. It was the end of everything I had ever known or loved, I wanted to die.

  We stopped at a petrol station. Most of the fuel had gone up in the flames at the storage facility inside the airport. It was abandoned, Thomo didn’t want us to stay long. I could see a terrible fury in his eyes when he glanced my way. He had hardly spoken to anyone since that horrible night, well I thought that was the case, until I heard him loudly scolding Hussain on how to work the radio in Jake's absence.

  “No, it's simple mate, you press that button, then that one, and then speak. Jesus Christ, a trained damn monkey could do it!”

  Me, Hussain and Thomas loaded up to The Princess, but before I could, the corporal pulled me aside.

  “Blake, come, I must speak with you. I need you to be sharp now, we’ve lost command, we won't lose any more, we must do whatever is necessary to protect those still alive. Do you agree?”

  “I agree,” I nodded my head.

  “Good,” he said, before returning to the others.

  “Attention,” he spoke. “I am authorising Blake to act as squad leader for Delta Squad.”

  I was shocked, that position was left vacant now that James had deserted. Of course, Mason immediately took up issue with it.

  “Ok, I’m all fine with you lending over support to him, but he's just lost his mom, he's in shit shape for that, a wreck, no offence Blake,” he added quickly. None taken, I thought.

  “I mean this is ridiculous. I should be squad leader for my squad,” he finished.

  “He's the squad leader. No objections,” said Thomo pointing to me, then to the rest of them as a warning.

  “Whatever,” Mason bemoaned to himself as he resumed readying his jeep.

  All of a sudden, a car skidded in the road, weaving itself through the dead traffic, coming to a stop right in the road. Out stepped a man in a tattered army uniform. It was Jake!

  Maddison ran out to meet him. She hugged him, without caution or care to see if he was infected. He had just lost both his parents, poor Jake. His eyes were dry and red. I felt for him. I felt for all of us.

  “Did you find him?” Asked Thomas, of James. Maddison turned back and shook her head, and a ghastly look of remorse beamed back to us from Jake.

  “Come, we must keep on moving, the lieutenant wants us to check the field hospital down at a rural clinic. Wayfeather Clinic, three miles south, load up!”

  I was already seated on the other jeep.

  “We call this baby The Destroyer,” said Mason as he took the wheel.

  “HMS Pussycrusher formerly,” said Jacob with a light hearted giggle. “But ugh… Maddison made us change it.”

  “I really can't think why?” I said sarcastically.

  I gave Jake a sincere nod of my head as he approached. Maddison jumped into the backseat, while Jacob manned the GPMG on top. I sat beside Mason in the passenger seat. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you ok Blake?” I heard Maddison ask as the engine started, and as we made our way south.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said holding her hand, then pushing it away.

  “I say the same thing I said to Jake. We cannot linger on death,” she said. “Or else it will rule us forever. Your mom would want you to go on.”

  “She would,” I told her. Mom would never want me to stop. Was that a lie I told myself? She wanted me safe, well in my opinion in this jeep, with these people, my friends,

&nbs
p; It was the safest I could be. So yeah, she would want me here, on this path, as safe as I could be in this shit world.

  My dad, Jess, Lily, my nan, they were all fine, they were waiting for me in one of the safe zones. There were so many liars now, pretending to be clean when they were anything but. This virus, or disease, whatever it was, it was destroying us, not just destroying our bodies, but our spirits. Spiritually, I said to myself, I think we have been broken. I’d seen some horrible things since this outbreak began, from everyday people, monsters revealing themselves among us, killers and rapists, but then an even more awful thought reached out and grabbed hold of me, the thought that even now, I had not seen the worst of this madness, and that terrified me. The flu we had a year back, when the whole world panicked and closed its borders. The vaccine for that came within six months. We will have a cure soon, but how many of us will be left?

  “Whaoh!” Shouted Mason as we came to a stop.

  “Mas! Are you seeing this?” Jacob said in astonishment from above. I snapped out of my fixed gaze and came to attention.

  “What?” Said Maddison.

  I looked ahead to what they saw, just where the junction for the clinic lay, there was a herd of idle people. They were not ordinary people, they were swaying side to side, as if at a music festival. A silent, dead festival.

  “I’m seeing it. Reverse, now,” I ordered Mason.

  “We’ll go in the back way,” I heard Thomo call over the radio quietly. There must be some small road that led to a depo where supplies were delivered to the clinic. We found it and made our way to the small staff car park. There was not a soul in sight, not anything alive anyway. Pieces and pages of last week's newspaper swept up and to the sidewalk, with dried drops of blood on them, and the howl of the almost silent wind could be heard ever so gently passing through the dead streets.

  A sign read up ahead, it was the welcome to Wayfeather sign, sprayed out in red graffiti. EVERYTHING HERE IS DEAD

  The wind carried with it the scowls and taunts of the dead from the village down the road. It was not a very densely packed area, it was rural, with trees covering the privacy of pristine gardens of newly erected houses.