The Undead Day Nineteen (31 page)

‘Fuck it,’ I curse staring down.

‘What? Oh,’ Blowers says, ‘another dick…’

‘Ground floor clear, going upstairs.’

‘Okay,’ I step back to let Dave and Mo get past, ‘you checked the garden?’

‘Can’t get in the garden, Mr Howie.’

I look at Blowers who goes ahead of me through the filthy grease coated kitchen and the worktops piled with dirty plates, cups and used pans. Scraps of food stuck to the floor and cupboard doors and the once cream linoleum floor is solid black down the middle from years of foot traffic. We get to the back door and look through the glass to see what Dave meant. The house is cluttered but the garden is worse. Fence panels, ornaments, wheelbarrows, windows in frames, old doors and just about everything including a kitchen sink is piled up and jammed in from side to side.

‘Dick on the floor,’ Marcy says from the hallway behind us.

‘Saw it,’ I call out.

‘Upstairs clear,’ Dave says coming down with Mo.

‘Terence Conway,’ Marcy reads from the front of a high stack of letters left unopened on a side table.

Another name. Another person. A dirty filthy bastard living in abject squalor but a person nonetheless.

‘We push on,’ I say bluntly and go outside, ‘where’s the trail?
Charlie, you got the blood trail?’

‘This way.’
I look down the road to see her waving ahead.

‘Marcy, take over driving the Saxon. I want Cookey on the ground from now on. Dave, Mo, drop the bodyguard thing. The focus is that blood trail. Blowers, you’ll keep your team on the bus but we stay fluid. Keep the bus guarded…’

‘I will,’ he says.

‘Roy, you’re free to move as you see fit.’

‘Do you want the loudspeaker thing?’ Marcy asks as she runs to swap with Cookey.

‘Not for the minute, we need to move fast. Everyone ready?
Charlie, push on…find the next one. We’re going to catch up with those fuckers.’

Twenty Three

She shifts with a wince. Using someone else’s saddle is like wearing someone else’s shoes. All the creases and folds are in the wrong places.

‘Easy,’ she murmurs, sensing the urge in the great horse to run like they did last night. Competition level polo is intense and exhilarating but what she did last night with Jess was a thousand times more than she has ever done before. It was the relationship between rider and horse having a perfect sense of balance and weight distribution and not being afraid to use that strength and power.

Charlie played competition level polo to a very high standard and hockey to a national standard. She had the world at her feet. Her family were wealthy but cold and chose to give love by the power of their bank balances and as the years went on and Charlie excelled so she became a trophy daughter. Something to show off at dinner parties. Something to boast about at the sailing club.

Now she sits on a horse in the saddle of a dead man in a deserted street somewhere in the south of England while holding an assault rifle and with an axe hanging by her leg. Times change. People change. Everything changes.

She thinks back to the days they hid in Finkton Academy. Staying quiet at night and growing less in number as the girls left to try and find families or those they loved. Blinky didn’t have anywhere else to go and no one to find and Charlie felt a greater allegiance to the other girls than she ever did to her own family. Not that she was spoiled or ungrateful for the chances she was given in life but to see the relationships the other girls had with their families only served to strengthen her own lack of familial closeness.

The world is over but the world has only just begun and now, every second of every minute counts for something.

She feels frustrated at being told to stay so close. Jess is fast and able to outrun anyone. She’s not in danger and besides, she’s got the rifle and the axe. Charlie was the captain of the England hockey team. She is independent, strong and knows her own mind and to be held back from doing something she knows she is capable of is annoying.

Then she saw them all running. Every single one of them sprinting flat out to catch her up. There was no immediate danger but they did it anyway. They ran. They ran for her and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up at seeing Roy vault to get on top of a car to hold his bow and arrow aimed and ready. These are strange days but in the darkest of days there will be light and inside her heart a light shines brighter than it ever has done before.

Her mind flicks back to yesterday and everything that happened until that final fight but everything from that point on is too great and too deep to even start to contemplate. She planned with Reginald. She fought with the lads and Blinky. She gave ideas to Mr Howie and Paula and they listened. Even this morning means something. Being with Paula and Marcy in the bathroom gossiping like normal women. Women never did that with Charlie. She was too well spoken, too polite, too clipped and too…too posh for them to even consider her the type of girl that would like a gossip. But they did. Paula and Marcy took her into their fold and treated her not as a trophy or someone with an expensive education but as a girl that wants to hear about the sex and all the mucky details.

Then that thing with Cookey in the bedroom happened and she smiles to herself in the saddle and quickly looks round as though expecting someone to see her smiling to herself.

Cookey. Never before had she met anyone like any of these people but Cookey? Cookey is something else. Posh people don’t make jokes like that and they certainly don’t show their emotions so clearly and without shame and never before has anyone ever made her laugh like Cookey makes her laugh. Everything he says is funny. His facial expressions, his tone of voice and the downright outrageous comments he makes that he gets away with because of that innocent grin and his blue eyes twinkling.

That thing with Cookey was life and death with blood and fear and sweat. It was dreadful and awful and terrible but it was something else too. It was beautiful in a way nothing should ever be called beautiful. He was naked. She was naked. They were covered in blood and gore but they fought side by side and he covered her with his own body and took the pain in his back. His humour was gone at that point and what remained was a man with an iron core who was prepared to give his life for hers.

She tries to imagine what it would have been like taking someone like Cookey back to meet her family. They would have been appalled. Oh they would have loved him, everyone adores Cookey but they would have also done everything possible to block any hint of a relationship with someone like that. It’s hard to remember her family now. She remembers them individually but not with any sense of togetherness. Not the same togetherness she has with these people after only two days. It’s conflicting, contrasting and too difficult to think about so she looks down instead and tracks the spots of blood then grins again as she remembers Blowers throwing the penis at Nick.

She only recognised it as a penis because she saw Cookey’s this morning. It was the angle and the light and…she shakes her head and blinks to stop thinking about Cookey being naked next to her in the room. He has got a nice bum though. Stop it. Focus and follow the blood trail.

Even in the Saxon when he was telling everyone he saw the tattoo on her bottom would have previously made her angry and ashamed but it was funny instead and she liked the way Cookey flinched and laughed as she punched his arm and seeing Blowers and the others all laughing.

She reaches a crossroads and stops. The street behind is a quiet residential road. The one ahead is the same but the road running left to right is a wide main road that must run into the town centre.

The blood was on the right side but crossed over to the left. It’s thinner now too. Whoever was bleeding was congealing or clotting the wound. The infected do that. They heal fast.

She turns Jess in a slow circle and works back to find the last blood spots on the pavement then works slowly back down to the crossroads. Nothing to be seen.

Left, right or ahead? She takes in each direction and urges Jess to go ahead and over the road. Twenty metres into the street and she turns back from the lack of any blood spots. At the crossroads she heads left and again after twenty metres stops and goes back before proceeding down the right side.

There. A smear across the front of a white van. Is it new or old? She gets closer and spots the sheen of the still wet liquid. This way then. Down the main road towards the town centre. She goes slower now. Checking each door to each house is harder as the road is wider and some of the doors are hidden from view behind hedges and walls.

Jess flicks her head up, a snort of air and a quiver of energy rippling through her as Charlie spots the smashed in window next to the open upvc front door. Blood on the windowsill and the curtains are ripped down inside. She goes out wider from the house and turns Jess round to gain a full view.

‘Mr Howie, I’ve found the next house…down the road you are on and turn right.’

‘Coming to you, hold position. Any signs of anyone?’

‘All clear at the moment.’

They jog steadily with a sustained pace marked by Howie at the front. The air filled with the sound of the Saxon chugging confidently, Roy’s van purring rhythmically and the minibus spluttering noisily. Feet trudging the ground. Weapons jangling and breathing coming a bit harder as the warmth and exertion grows.

They could have got back into their vehicles but the slow speed would put the people in the minibus at risk so there is no choice but to run alongside and keep it within the protective circle.

‘Sod this,’ Clarence grips the handle and jumps up to land on the ledge of the bus doorway.

‘Cheater,’ Paula calls out.

‘Older and wiser,’ Clarence calls back.

‘Water?’

‘Eh? Oh thanks very much,’ he says with a nod at Jane holding a bottle out, ‘er…’ he pauses, unsure of how to unscrew the lid while holding the rifle in one hand and the handle to stop himself falling back out with the other.

‘Let me,’ she says, plucking it back from his huge hand.

‘Ah thank you,’ he takes the opened bottle and a big swig before leaning out, ‘Paula?’

‘Cheers,’ she runs over, ‘budge up,’ she jumps up to squeeze past Clarence into the front of the bus.

‘Cheater,’ Nick shouts.

‘Older and wiser,’ she shouts back and takes the opened bottle held out by Clara, ‘thanks, sweetie…’

‘Almost there,’ Clarence says, looking ahead to the junction and the Saxon swinging out to make the right turn.

‘Duty calls,’ Paula says passing the bottle back to Jane, ‘don’t drink from that one.’

‘Okay,’ Jane says.

‘Thanks,’ Clarence says, passing his bottle back, ‘better not risk it with mine either…ready?’ He asks Paula.

‘Why not,’ they jump out and run on into the junction and round to see Charlie waiting by the house.

She sees them coming. Howie getting to the junction first with Dave and Mo either side and the Saxon a few metres behind them.

‘You okay?’ Howie pants, running towards her.

‘No movement, window’s smashed in,’ Charlie says, ‘am I moving up again?’

‘Dave and Mo…clear the…’

‘Doing it,’ Dave runs past him with Mo, both of them slinging rifles to draw pistols.

‘Fast, Dave,’ Howie shouts. The bus comes round the corner with everyone else running in front and to the sides.

‘Get some water,’ Howie says, pausing a second to get his breathing under control.

‘I’m okay, I’m only riding so…’

‘Get some water, we might get contact soon,’ Howie says walking towards the front door.

‘Ground floor clear,’ Dave’s voice comes clear through the open door and broken window.

Howie goes in and checks the door like Clarence did on one of the other houses. The lock is intact. He gets into the lounge and takes in the busted window, the curtains hanging down and the blood soaking into the deep pile carpet. Whoever lived here wouldn’t open the door so they came in via the window. Why are these people living like this? Why aren’t they in boarded up houses or strong defensive points? Why stay in the house you lived while the world crumbles to shit around you? Why do that? Why not run or fight back or join others?

‘Anything?’ Paula asks from the doorway as she walks in with Clarence.

‘Why stay here?’ Howie asks, ‘the fucking windows aren’t boarded up…the doors the same as it was…’

‘Body upstairs but it’s clear,’ Dave says, coming down with Mo behind him, ‘we’ll get fluids.’

‘What state is the body in?’ Paula asks.

‘Bad,’ Mo says darkly, following Dave outside.

Paula leads the way up the stairs to the bedroom door smashed through and the walls of the room beyond dripping blood. Three distinct areas of attack. One by the door. One further in and the last is obviously the body left by the window. A woman with her ears bitten off, her nose missing and her internal organs have been torn from her stomach to lie bitten and scattered about the room.

‘Think it’s a message?’ Paula asks.

‘Fuck knows,’ Howie says, ‘why stay here? Why are these people still in this town?’

‘It’s their home,’ she says.

‘Doesn’t make sense,’ Howie says, shaking his head at the corpse.

‘Nothing makes sense anymore,’ Clarence says heavily.

‘Fucking windows aren’t boarded…fuck me, they had a bat,’ Howie says in exasperation as he kicks the bloodied baseball left on the floor, ‘a fucking bat…’

‘Comfort in familiarity I guess,’ Paula says.

‘Did you stay in your house when it happened?’ Howie asks.

‘Me? No. I got a four wheel drive and kept mobile. I slept in a different field every night until I met Roy and then you lot.’

‘Doesn’t make any sense,’ Howie says again.

‘It’s people,’ Paula says with a shrug, ‘they never make any sense.’

Clarence tuts when he spots the penis left in a pool of blood by the skirting board.

‘Another one downstairs,’ Howie says, ‘in the lounge.’

‘Penis?’

‘Yep.’

‘Why are they doing that?’ Paula asks, ‘it’s got to be a message to you lot…come after me and I’ll bite your dicks off.’

‘Nasty way to go,’ Clarence says with a shudder.

‘Is there a nice way to go?’ Paula asks.

‘Yeah, either blind drunk or an old man asleep in bed…’

‘Could be both at the same time,’ Howie says.

‘We’d better go,’ Paula says, ‘we can’t be that far behind them.’

‘We could send Dave ahead,’ Clarence suggests as they go out into the landing.

‘No, we need Dave here in case the bus gets attacked,’ Paula says, ‘same with you and the lads…and Roy.’

Charlie waits for the vehicles to pull up and Roy to go ahead before sliding gratefully from the saddle with dull pains radiating through her backside from the unfamiliar creases digging into her cheeks.

‘You alright?’ Cookey says, his face flushed and with a light sheen of perspiration from running, ‘got you a water,’ he adds, holding a bottle out given to him by Jane.