Lockdown

by Stephen Lewis

  We parked and crept up to the cars and peeked in the windows – no one was inside. The Land Rover had a cooler box on the back seat – no doubt the source of the beer bottles. We walked up the brick walkway towards the entrance. I tried the door handle – it was locked.

  ‘Do you think anyone is still here?’ asked Stephanie softly.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe Walter came this way and scared them off.’ I looked over at Nkata and could see the pain on his face when he thought about his brother.

  We doubled back and passed the bushes that formed a hedge at the front and rounded building towards to patio. I was looking towards the lawn when I felt Stephanie’s hand clamp around my arm.

  ‘Lucas!’ she whispered.

  She was looking down the patio towards the outside bar in the far corner. Two figures were swaying against the bar, with their backs to us, moaning. More zombies. Somehow these people were also infected last night.

  ‘That’s not good, brah,’ Nkata sighed. ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘I don’t know, but at least they are distracted from looking this way,’ I replied.

  ‘Get your phone out and let’s get the video and get out of here,’ he said, impatiently.

  I reached into my pocket and took out my phone, launching the camera.

  ‘It’s just the back of them. You can’t even see they’re zombies. We need to get closer.’

  ‘No!’ Stephanie said, grabbing my arm again. ‘They’ll see us and then come after us. You saw what that last zombie did to those poor people. They won’t stop until they kill us.’

  She was right - getting a better video would put us in danger. Even though we were faster, zombies proved to be unpredictable and every encounter with then so far has not ended well.

  I sighed - my mind was racing as I looked around for a solution.

  That’s when my eyes saw it.

  ‘The tennis courts,’ I said, still keeping my voice low.

  ‘What about them?’ asked Nkata.

  ‘He wants to lure them in there and trap them. That way we can get our video and contain them.’

  I smiled at her.

  ‘Good plan, Boy Scout,’ she smiled back. ‘How do you want to do this?’

  ‘You two circle around the other way and open the first court. I’ll lure them towards you. Once I get them inside, lock the gate.’

  ‘What about you?’ Stephanie asked.

  If I didn’t know better, I thought I heard concern in her voice.

  ‘I’ll run to the other end and climb over the fence. Easy.’ I smiled again.

  ‘Okay, but be safe, Lucas,’ Nakata said, hugging me.

  ‘I’ll be fine Nkata,’ I replied, patting his back.

  Stephanie gave me a concerned look before turning and following Nkata back around the corner. I stood and waited for them to round the building and get to the tennis court. Nkata waved at me and I returned a thumbs up, watching him slowly unlatch the gate.

  I took a deep breath and walked onto the patio towards the two zombies. What was I going to say?

  ‘Hey zombies.’ I said, but it came out all croaky from my dry throat. They didn’t hear me.

  They were looking at the bar, moaning and grabbing at the counter. I swallowed to moisten my throat.

  ‘Hey Uglies!’ I called from about five metres back.

  I could see them more clearly now – two guys in shorts. One was in a blood-stained white t-shirt with a backwards baseball cap, while the other one had short dreadlocks and wore a Mamelodi Sundowns football shirt. The zombie in the baseball cap turned first. A big chunk of flesh was missing from his cheek, exposing his back teeth like some sort of skeleton creature from a horror film. As soon as he saw me, his milky eyes locked on me and he reached in my direction, following his outstretched arms. The soccer zombie followed, and I saw large open wounds along his side and arms where something had feasted on him.

  ‘That’s right, you two... let’s go,’ I waved my hands to make as much motion as I could.

  ‘HELP!’ a girl popped up from behind the bar. ‘Please help me!’

  She was in a strappy orange dress, with blood streaks down her arms. Her hair was messy and her mascara streaked down her cheeks from crying. She must have been the reason the zombies were attracted to the bar.

  ‘Please!’ she cried again from behind the bar.

  ‘Just wait there!’ I called back.

  I was momentarily distracted by her that I didn’t notice the baseball cap zombie was within arm’s length of me. He grabbed at my sleeve, almost getting a grip on me. I shook him loose and backed away, my heart pounding. He reached out again and I swung my axe in defence connecting with his hand. A finger came off and bounced on the tiles. The soccer zombie was right with him and was also reaching with his mutilated arms. In the background I could still hear the woman screaming.

  ‘I’m coming back! I promise!’ I called out and backed onto the grass, the zombies still in pursuit.

  Their mouths hung open, with pus and saliva dripping from their lips like they were salivating at the thought of eating me. Even though I was walking, I was out of breath by the time I got to the tennis courts.

  They both followed me through the gate onto the court, their dead feet shuffling on the asphalt. As we approached the net, I saw Nkata dart out and close the gate, shift the bolt in place and wrap something around the pole. Using one hand I vaulted the net and sprinted for the back fence. Throwing the axe over, I clambered up, swinging my leg over the top.

  I sat up there looking down at the court. The two zombies were still against the net in the middle, trying to walk forward, lacking the mental ability to realise they can walk around. I could feel the sweat on my face as I climbed down and retrieved my axe. Nkata met me as I walked around towards the front of the courts.

  ‘I wrapped some wire I found around the gate, so it’s secure,’ He raised his hand and gave me a high five.

  We both jumped as the baseball cap zombie clattered up against the fence next to us.

  ‘Here.’ I gave Nkata my phone. ‘Take the video. There’s a woman back there.’

  Stephanie joined me as I jogged back towards the patio.

  ‘Nice job, Boy Scout,’ she said.

  I told her about the woman who was still standing behind the bar.

  ‘You came back!’ she cried, cupping her hands over her mouth and nose, choking back the tears.

  ‘I said I would,’ I replied.

  ‘Are... are they gone?’ she asked, sniffing.

  ‘Yes, we trapped them in the tennis court,’ Stephanie told her. ‘I’m Stephanie, and this is Lucas. What’s your name?’

  ‘Siya.’

  ‘What happened, Siya?’ Stephanie asked sympathetically.

  She told us how her boyfriend (the guy in the soccer shirt) convinced her to sneak out and meet their friends at the clubhouse for a few drinks. After chatting at the front, they moved around to the patio and were sitting on the lawn when they spotted two figures walking on the grass. They called over and invited them to join them for a drink.

  ‘They looked strange. I think one guy was in his pyjamas and the other was a skinny white dude in jogging kit. They walked all weird and didn’t say anything. My friend Amber’s boyfriend thought they were making fun of us so he went to confront them with my boyfriend. Before we knew it those guys were biting them on the neck and on the face.’ She started crying again and I gave Stephanie a look.

  The guy in the pyjamas was Walter and he’d made a new friend. From how it sounded, it was another lockdown-breaking jogger who thought no one would notice if he ran at night.

  ‘You said you had a friend... Amber? Where is she?’

  Siya looked down at her feet. I opened the latch on the low door next to the bar and walked in. On the ground lay a blonde girl in an equally short strappy dress in a pool of blood.

  ‘Is she dead?’ I asked, not sure if I should feel for a pulse, like on TV shows.

  Siya nodded. �
�We ran and hid behind here while those two things walked around. We sat all night and then they seemed to walk away. Just as we were going to go back to the cars, our boyfriends were suddenly walking around – but looking weird, just like the two who attacked them.’

  ‘They were zombies,’ I said.

  Siya looked at me, puzzled. ‘What? That’s not...’

  ‘Then what happened?’ Stephanie asked, trying to get her to continue the story.

  Siya sniffed again. ‘Amber went out. I told her not to, that there was something wrong – they were covered in blood and also walking strange. When she got close to her boyfriend... he... he bit her on the arm. Tore the flesh off her wrist, right to the bone.’ She started crying again. ‘She rushed back here again, but I couldn’t stop the bleeding.’

  ‘How long ago did she die,’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know... a few hours.’

  I shot Stephanie a worried look.

  ‘I don’t want to scare you, but we need to get away from her. She may be dead now, but she’s not going to stay that way. She’s going to turn into a zombie, like your boyfriend.’

  Siya jumped, and together we walked out from behind the bar and closed the door.

  ‘Will that hold her if she... you know, comes to life again?’ asked Stephanie.

  ‘I think the correct term is re-animate...’

  ‘Thank you Mr. Nerd,’ she replied sarcastically.

  I smiled and ignored her comment. ‘No, I’m not sure if being back there is enough. Maybe we should tie her up to be safe.’

  ‘With what?’ Stephanie looked around.

  ‘Maybe there’s something in that Land Rover.’

  I ran around to the front of the clubhouse and opened the boot of the Land Rover, looking under the backboard. There was a tow rope coiled up, still in its plastic packet next to the jack. I grabbed it and ran back, meeting Nkata along the way.

  ‘I got plenty of footage, brah. Those things are nasty.’

  I told him about Walter and that he was travelling with someone else.

  ‘We’ll find him,’ I told him.

  Back at the bar we made introductions and I went behind the bar again with the rope.

  ‘Be careful,’ Stephanie said as I crouched down.

  I took a deep breath and looped the rope around the body’s legs, tying a clove hitch before trailing it to its arms to do the same. The arms were sticky with blood and that all too familiar stench was lingering in the air. I finished the knot and tugged on both ends to make sure it was tight.

  ‘You really know your knots, Boy Scout,’ Stephanie said from her position perched on the bar looking over.

  I smiled up at her. As I looked down again, the body thrashed in its restraints and almost growled as its teeth snapped at me. I jumped backward in fright, feeling a sharp pain at the back of my head. I heard Stephanie call my name before everything went black.

  ***

  I woke up on the tiles with Stephanie looking down at me.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘You hit your head on the cupboard at the back,’ she replied.

  ‘The zombie...’ I said, trying to get up.

  The back of my head throbbed.

  ‘Relax, your knots have it secure.’ She helped me sit up.

  ‘Steph got you out of there, brah. All Lara Croft style, dragging you and kicking that zombie in the face.’

  She smiled at me again – it was a sight I was beginning to enjoy.

  ‘I couldn’t let anything happen to the boy scout,’ she said, but when she said ‘boy scout,’ it didn’t sound like she was teasing anymore.

  ‘Can I tell you a secret? ‘I asked. ‘I really am a boy scout... at least, I was when I was younger.’

  I extended my arm to Nkata and he pulled me up. Stephanie laughed.

  ‘Really?’ she asked, not sure if I was joking.

  ‘Really. Until I was fourteen. I’ll show you the photos sometime.’

  ‘He was so adorable in his little uniform,’ Nkata chimed in.

  ‘Then I have to see them,’ she said.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was flirting. Is that how girls flirt? I haven’t been particularly popular with girls, so this was all new to me. I walked over to the bar and looked over. The zombie that was once Amber was still lying there moaning. It thrashed on the ground when it saw me.

  ‘Nkata, you got my phone?’

  He handed it to me and I took a video of the zombie, getting all the gory details. I then scrolled to the video Nkata took of the two zombies on the tennis court, groaning against the fence trying to get at him. We had our evidence! Unlike Bigfoot, we had enough to prove this was real.

  Back at the car, Siya sat on the pavement staring at the ground, no doubt reliving the horror of the night before. Her best friend and boyfriend were killed and turned into zombies that tried to kill her in turn. If I hadn’t seen it all myself, it would have sounded like the plot to a bad late-night movie.

  Stephanie looked over my shoulder as I sent the videos to my dad with the message

  ‘Send help.’ It took a few minutes to show he had read the message, then another two minutes for him to reply: ‘Ha ha. Very funny. I know you’re bored, but try to do something productive.’

  ‘He thinks I’m joking,’ I vented, the frustration mounting inside me. I dialled his number and it took three rings for him to pick up.

  ‘Dad...’

  ‘You nearly got me with those videos. Did you get it from social media – what are they called? A meme?’ He sounded tired and yawned into the phone.

  I rolled my eyes at his lack of social media knowledge.

  ‘No Dad, listen it isn’t a joke...’

  ‘Uh huh.’ He was humouring me, like I was trying to fool him.

  ‘Dad. You need to listen. This is not a prank. People are dead and those things in the video killed them. You need to send help because there are more of them and it’s spreading.’

  There was silence on the line.

  ‘Lucas... you’re scaring me,’ my dad finally said.

  ‘I am scared! Dad, I killed one of those things. Please, I know it sounds crazy, but there are zombies here. It started with Nkata’s brother injecting himself with medicine from the CSIR and it made him sicker and changed him...’ He could hear the panic in my voice.

  ‘Did you call the security?’

  ‘They’re also dead, Dad.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘They hung up. Please send help.’

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s at home. She doesn’t know this is happening, and we’re trying to keep it quiet to avoid panic.’

  ‘Who’s we?’ he asked, concerned.

  ‘My friends. And Freddy, some IT guy we met who’s keeping the gate closed at the front. And Nkata’s Mom broke her leg quite badly, she’s going to need an ambulance.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll make some calls. Just stay safe and don’t confront those things until we can figure out what’s going on. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too, Dad.’

  I hung up and sat down on the pavement near Siya, relieved that we finally got the video to my dad. Stephanie sat next to me and put her hand on my back.

  ‘We did it,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I looked up at her.

  Her blonde ponytail was all skew and her face had a smudge of dirt below her eye. It was hard to believe this was the same girl that I had had an altercation with about running during lockdown a couple of days ago.

  I was about to reach out to clean the smudge from her face when my phone buzzed and vibrated. It was Freddy.

  ‘Hey,’ I answered.

  ‘Did you get the video?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, we got it and sent it to my dad.’

  Freddy sighed in relief. ‘Great. Did he believe you?’

  ‘He took some convincing.’ I rubbed my eye realising that I was also tired. ‘But the bad news is that there are mo
re zombies. We managed to trap three, but there are still more on the loose.’

  Freddy swore as expected. ‘They better come quickly then.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘The security company came... someone must have called them about the gate still being locked. I managed to short out the motor, and played dumb when we couldn’t open it - but they’re sending electricians now. I can only stall them for another hour, max. Help better come quickly.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll be in touch.’ I hung up.

  We dropped Siya off at her house, asking her not to raise any alarms until we can get help. All she did was nod, saying nothing before slowly walking towards her front door.

  ‘Not even a thank you,’ Nkata said as we all watched her open the door and go inside without looking back.

  ‘She’s in shock,’ Stephanie replied. ‘How would you feel if...’ She stopped, remembering Walter was still out there as a zombie. He started all of this and it must be eating at Nkata. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

  ‘It’s cool, I’m sure when Lucas’ dad comes, we can find a way to help him... you know, make him better.’

  ‘Nkata, I’m not sure if there is a way...’ I started, but Nkata cut me off.

  ‘No! Don’t say that. You don’t have a brother... you don’t know what it’s like. We’ll find him and they’ll make him better!’

  Stephanie and I exchanged glances.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We’ll find him.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘I’d like to go check on my mom, if that’s okay,’ Nkata said after a short silence. He put the car in drive and we pulled off.

  ***

  Nkata’s house had a stone bench in the garden, positioned in front of a trellis that had white roses growing up.

  I don’t think I ever saw anyone sit on the bench before, although Nkata once mentioned something about a family photo for his grandmother who lived in Polokwane.

  Nkata went inside and Stephanie and I sat there on the bench as if we were posing for a photo. A morbid one on how to survive the zombie apocalypse: dressed in stained hoodies and armed with an axe and hammer. It reminded me of a famous painting of a farmer and his sister standing with a pitchfork... American something. I couldn’t remember the name.