The Z Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Whittington, Shaun

  It was time to leave.

  Chapter Five

  I ran along the terribly-long Barrhead Road and once I got to the Crookston area, I turned left and ran down another stretch of road and noticed that the desolate streets seem to be coming to life, in more ways than one. I could see up ahead three of the things stumbling around. I thought I could easily outrun and dodge them and was correct with my prediction.

  They hopelessly tried to claw at me as I ran past, but my speed seemed to have frustrated them when I heard an almost prehistoric growl from one of them as if I had pissed them off to a certain degree.

  As I past Lidl, I saw a woman from my left coming out of her house, screaming. She was dressed in a cream robe; blood was splattered over that robe and she held onto her right arm. She fell over and I cowardly crossed the road and looked over to see the poor woman being surrounded by a man and three children who had all turned. They all knelt down by her, as she weakly tried to fight them off. I looked away once I heard those horrendous screams coming from the woman as she was being torn to shreds by her own family—I presumed.

  I turned left at the next junction onto Brockburn Road, and had to eventually stop as I felt a sharp pain in the right side of my chest. This time, instead of bending over and placing my hands on my knees, I decided to walk through the pain. To my right was a row of houses where curtains twitched as I walked by, with the residents probably wondering if I had some kind of death wish. To my left was Crookston Castle; a castle that dated back to the 12th century—and that’s pretty much all I know about the place.

  As I continued my arduous walk, knowing I was only half a mile from home, I came to the brow of a hill and as soon as I cleared the hill, my feet stopped walking and my heart almost stopped at what I saw.

  My clammy right hand gripped the tyre iron even tighter when I clapped eyes on at least a dozen of the things around the large roundabout—a place I needed to pass to get to the small bridge that led to the street where my house was situated. They were about fifty yards away from me and I stood motionless, wondering what the hell to do next.

  The only way I could get around these things was to draw them out and make them move away from the bridge that I used to walk my daughter across, when I used to take her to Crookston Primary School. I then suddenly thought of my daughter, Kelly, and reached my hand into my pocket and felt my heart drop when the pocket was empty and the phone had gone. I blamed the disappearance of the phone on the crash, but I wasn’t annoyed because I had lost hundreds of pounds of ebooks I had downloaded over the years, or the fact that there was about five hundred pounds worth of music on it. My overall concern was the communication cut off from my daughters as I had no landline anymore at home, as I felt there was no point.

  I always used my mobile phone for outgoing calls, and the only incoming calls I used to receive on my landline phone were from sales representatives selling all kinds of shit I was never going to buy, especially when they usually called at the time I was about to sit down and eat my dinner. It was for that reason I had decided to abandon my landline phone.

  Shrugging off the disappearance of my mobile phone, I squatted down and began to think about what I was going to do next. Still squatting, I began to tap the tyre iron on the tarmac. At first it started out as a gentle tap, but as their ears weren’t picking up the noise, my tapping increased and it became louder.

  The first one to turn and face me was a woman. She was dressed in yellow joggies, wearing flip-flops on her feet, and had only a bright green shirt on her back. With witnessing some of the way people were dressed, whether it was pyjamas, a robe or flip flops, I came to the conclusion with it being Sunday morning, before they turned into these things, the public were hoping for a lazy, slouchy day, doing jobs around the house or lounging around and watching TV in order to relax their brain and mentally prepare themselves for work the next morning.

  If my plan didn’t work, I would have to run back the way I came, but the tapping had already produced results, as the group had now began to walk towards me and, there seemed to be an eagerness in their steps as human flesh was on show for them.

  The woman continued to lead the way with the others obediently behind her, and as she got nearer I could see that her face looked reasonably fine, apart from the ashen look and sunken eyes. There didn’t seem to be any mutilation on her body and it baffled me how she had turned into one of them in the first place, and then I saw a huge scratch on the left side of her neck. The only thing I could think of was that she had been attacked, fought them off and ran or hid somewhere, unaware that she was minutes or hours away herself from turning.

  A lot of the small snippets of reports I had seen, before I hastily jumped into my car to find my daughter, claimed that infection was ‘possible’ if scratched but reanimation was almost imminent if bitten. I think they were pretty unsure themselves, and guest speakers on the TV channels, that were actually working, had done little to clear things up. If a scientist was being interviewed, it was a virus. If a religious leader was being interviewed, it was an act of God who had finally had enough of the selfish and destructive human race experiment he had created.

  I waited a few more seconds until the flip flop-wearing female was a matter of yards away from me, and once she was close, I ran my heavy thighs around the group, all slowly heading in my direction like pins to a magnet, but I managed to bypass them without using the tyre iron once. I looked behind me, and although the twelve things were stumbling towards me, the small bridge was in sight and I was nearly home.

  Unfortunately, it never ended there, as another nasty surprise was waiting for me.

  Chapter Six

  As I stomped my way over the bridge, I let out a shriek when two bodies emerged from around the corner. I was trapped. If I hadn’t known that these things were switched off to the real world and their only function was to feed, I would have sworn that they had planned this.

  The two little surprise ambushers were in a terrible state, as if they had been munched on right up to the point they started to reanimate. They headed towards me in single file; the one in front was dressed in pyjamas and had a huge bite mark into the left side of his cheek with an assortment of scratches on its face. The one behind was almost blue in the face; its face had been half-torn off revealing some skeletal features as well as its left eye missing from its socket, and as its mouth opened, it revealed a long gasp.

  I couldn’t understand why this had happened as they were supposed to be dead, apart from the brain. If they weren’t breathing anymore, and there was no air getting into their lungs, how did they make that sound? In normal humans the brain controlled the breathing, and I assumed that although their brains were working to a point and didn’t need oxygen to survive, they might still be sucking air into their lungs, which created the moan that I heard.

  The pair of them were no more than five yards away from me, and as my heart began to trot rapidly, I was overcome with cowardice and decided to run back the other way. This little plan had been foiled somewhat, when I could see the other dozen from the roundabout almost upon the bridge. The drop to the stream from the bridge was doable, but climbing off it was more of a quandary than the jump itself, as it was an enclosed bridge and to the side and above me was metal, as if there was a climbing frame above it.

  Oh, fuck it!

  Although I had managed to outrun my attackers so far, it seemed at this point that I had no choice. If I didn’t do anything now, I would experience a pain I could never imagine. Apart from being burned alive, I think being eaten alive would be possibly one of the worst ways to depart this earth and I wasn’t prepared to die anyway, never mind in that kind of way. I had never been in a fight in my life, and knew that the more I hesitated, the stronger the possibility that I was going to die on that bridge.

  I turned to face the two at the end. Remembering the tips that were broadcasted on how to kill these things if ever a person should encounter one, I ran at the first one with the tyre
iron, gripped tightly with both hands, and swung at the skull of the first one. To my surprise, it fell straight away and I had taken a large chunk out of its skull. Some skull and matter flew behind it from the trauma I gave it, and it immediately dropped to its knees and fell face down with a thump onto the floor. The top of his head revealed some of the skull that had been ripped off, and the remainder of its black diseased brain oozed out a little dark gunk as it lay on the floor. I didn’t have time to dwell on my first kill too much as I had a small matter of needing to kill the next one in order to get home, and the fact that there was another twelve on the bridge only ten yards away, behind me.

  Knowing that time wasn’t on my side, I ran at the next one with the half a face and was surprised that after one strike, it fell backwards but never died.

  Maybe I had put all my strength into the first kill.

  As it writhed around on the floor on its back, I decided to run by it, but was taken aback when it grabbed my leg, making me fall to the ground and dropping the tyre iron. My fall seemed to have excited the other twelve who were now halfway across the bridge. I can tell you now; my bowels were ready to release whatever was inside me right there.

  While still on my backside, I frantically kicked at the other ghoul that had still a hold of my right ankle, and I could feel its awful grubby nails digging into my skin. One final kick forced the thing to let go and I quickly got to my feet and began running back home, but without the tyre iron.

  Chapter Seven

  With my heavy thighs and throbbing calf that had been grabbed previously by my bridge attacker, I hobbled home, hoping that the encounter I had just experienced would be my last—for that day at least.

  Once I got into my street, I was surprised that there was a little activity going on. Two cars drove past me, and over the road, a family was packing clothes and food into the boot of their Nissan Jeep. The information told people to stay indoors, but the need to be with their family seemed to be too strong for some of them. Of course I had been one of them, but it had turned out that running all the way to the city centre just to see and be with my daughter that I loved more than anything in the world, was a desperate thing to do, and in hindsight, had turned into a pointless exercise.

  I hoped she’d be okay with this new man she had met, and I hoped that my other daughter, Karen, would be fine too. But Karen was more like her mother—my ex—than me. Karen was a lot feistier than Kelly, and Kelly wasn’t anything like her half-sister and more like me and my deceased wife, as we were a lot gentler by nature.

  I continued to run along my street and saw a hundred yards away, Jeremy Islington, who lived six doors down from me, stumbling out of his front door. All that he had on was a pair of boxer shorts and his body was half-saturated with blood. As he fell to the floor onto the pathway, I could see his wife and two children exiting the front door of their house and even from that distance, I already knew what was occurring. I knew that they had turned and Jeremy was trying to escape them, but it wasn’t to be. He already looked wounded by his attack, and if they never devoured most of him there and then, he was going to turn anyway.

  I don’t know why I did it, but I stood and watched the whole horrific episode and allowed my eyes to see Jeremy being ripped, bitten and devoured by his own wife and his two daughters who were both under the age of ten. My watching of the macabre incident could have cost me my life when I now think back, just the same when I stopped and looked into the Radisson foyer. All it took was one of those things to sneak up behind me and tear into my flesh, but while this horror was unfolding before my eyes, everything else seemed oblivious to me.

  I think you have to remember that it had only been a matter of hours since the news of this epidemic/pandemic was sent to my brain, so I think on my part it was delayed shock, maybe a realisation of what was happening. When I first switched on the TV and the information was slowly being soaked up, my body went onto autopilot, and my only goal was to see if my daughters were safe, especially Kelly, as she was younger and had been out for the night.

  In the space of a few hours, I had ran to the city centre and back, witnessing all kinds of terrible and surreal images, then I was attacked myself and now seeing one of my own neighbours being eaten by his family. Without putting any light on the subject, it certainly was a different scenario to my usual Sundays, and after snapping out of my self-hypnosis, I realised that standing in the middle of the street during a nation-sweeping virus was probably the wrong thing to do.

  I went to my front door, opened the key with my shaking hands and shut it behind me, locking the door and leaving the key in. I released a long exhale and then the nausea hit me. I ran upstairs to the bathroom and released whatever was left in my stomach, which wasn’t a lot. I grabbed some toilet roll and blew my nose, grabbed some mouthwash off the sink and took a swig. I spat the contents into the sink and sat on the toilet and took a look at the smarting that was coming from my right ankle and saw a couple of tiny cuts where the attacker’s nails had sunk in when I was on the bridge. My heart galloped a little harder when my eyes saw the diminutive scratches.

  Did this mean I was infected? I was unsure.

  Unknown what was going to happen to me, I decided to switch on my PC and it was then that I begun to write exactly what you are reading now, although if I had my phone, a video message probably would have been better, especially for my daughters.

  I don’t know why, but I primarily wanted my daughters to read this and know about my last hours on this earth—if these are to be my last hours—if not, then fine, I’ll still let them read it anyway.

  After four hours of writing, I started to get throbbing headaches. It was now late Sunday afternoon.

  Now, I’ve never been a man that has suffered migraines in the past, so with these headaches and the scratches on my right ankle, my panic had increased.

  I ran downstairs to get myself a glass of water from the bottle sitting in the fridge, and took a handful of painkillers from the medicine cabinet. Then I thought about my nausea after returning to the house. Was my nausea really related to what I had seen in the street, or was it related to me being infected? Then I remembered that on TV they said it took roughly an hour, maybe longer, to turn. I had been scratched four hours ago. Maybe I was the ‘maybe longer’ statistic.

  I sat back at my desk, threw my head back and began to cry. I don’t know where it came from. There was no build up; it just happened, but I didn’t try and stop myself as I thought that in my position, there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. Crying was a great stress reliever.

  Before I started re-tapping away at my keys on my laptop, I decided to get to my feet and walked to my bedroom window. I heard sirens in the background, but didn’t see any emergency vehicle in my street. It had actually quietened down since I went inside. There was no screaming, people packing up cars, etc,. It was quiet, and the only thing that ruined the serenity of the view was the seven infected that walked around the street, and one of them was timidly slapping on someone’s front window as if they had seen movement inside.

  I shook my head at the scene and decided to barricade the house before attempting to write anymore. They seemed harmless in pockets, but in numbers, it could be a whole different story.

  Chapter Eight

  Okay, it’s now the late afternoon and it has taken me nearly five hours to write this journal, and as far as I’m aware the situation has got worse, not better. The last time I looked out of my bedroom window was ten minutes ago and it’s now impossible to count how many are out there. I’ve barricaded the house the best I can and fortunately they still haven’t managed to get in yet.

  It’s time to save this piece of work onto my USB and put it into a place that’ll be hopefully found one day, if I don’t make it. I’ve tried to call my family over the last few hours, but to no avail.

  My daughter is no longer picking up or texting back, so I can only hope she’s somewhere safe. I still have had no contact with my daughter
from a previous relationship when I was twenty-one years old. Her name is Karen, and although our relationship is far from close, we keep in contact now and again and I just hope that she has managed to come through all of this unscathed. She’s a nurse in Stafford hospital, and I have a feeling these places are possibly the worst places to be in with this kind of outbreak—any kind of virus outbreak for that matter.

  My nineteen-year-old daughter had been born in only the second year of my marriage. And although our relationship is very close, it has become even closer four years ago when my wife, and her mother, had passed away.

  I’ve just bathed my wound in tepid water and gave it a good clean, but according to what I’ve been watching on the TV, I don’t really fancy my chances. If I had been bitten, I probably would have just done myself in straight away, if I had the time. But a scratch still gives me hope. Our bodies have white blood cells to fight off infections, so I’m just going to have to play the waiting game.

  I have taken another look out of my window and the situation is still the same. There are many walking around the street; there are no signs of any police, army, or any vigilantism where the neighbourhood have come together to beat these ghouls.

  I think everyone is too scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but with one of my daughters safe, I can go to my bed with a more relaxed conscience. I will say a prayer for Karen and her fiancé, Gary—a man I’ve only met once, before I sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  It’s now twenty minutes since I last wrote anything.

  About ten minutes ago I felt a funny feeling in my stomach, and when I hobbled to the bathroom, I threw up a dark tar-like liquid from the pit of my stomach. I don’t know what it is, but I have a feeling it’s not good news.