The Z Word (A Zombie Novel) (10 page)

Chapter Thirty Two

I took out my house keys out of the front door and peered out. It was reasonably clear, with the exception of a few zombies that could be cleared and outrun pretty easily. Despite feeling my bowels loosening, I left my place and began to run along my road.

Kelly's brother had been carjacked, which meant that Kelly and Clare were on the grid-locked motorway, on foot. No one was allowing them into their vehicle for a safe refuge.

The beginning of the motorway was only a mile away, but I had already arranged to meet Clare and Kelly halfway, as they were heading back to my house on foot.

Clare had told me that Kelly's brother had been dragged out of the minibus and beaten up by some men while his kids screamed inside the vehicle. Her brother and her family were taken in by a man driving a BMW, but there was clearly no room for Clare
and
Kelly, so her brother borrowed them his phone to call me.

Chapter Thirty Three

I took the crowbar with me and managed to get out of my street with no fuss. The only thing that concerned me a little was that I had attracted the attention of a couple of deadheads, but at the pace I was going, they eventually slipped away from view.

I wasn't the fittest, but the adrenaline seemed to be getting me through this little unplanned, physical mission I had been given.

At last, I could see the girls in the distance. The road that we were on was devoid of life, and I could count on one hand how many vehicles went past by the time the girls and I had reached the end of it, together. We all hugged wordlessly, and headed back to my house.

We turned into my street without uttering a word to one another and kept on walking. Kelly was in tears; Clare looked shell-shocked, and I finally asked Kelly, "Is your brother and his family safe?"

Kelly nodded. "I'm glad he managed to get in tha' car; the kids were hysterical. Nobody else would let Clare and I in their vehicle."

I added, "But Clare said the motorway is grid-locked."

"Nothing's movin'. We should 'ave listened to ye." It sounded like the last sentence pained Kelly, but I was in no mood or position to say 'I told you so,' I was just pleased that they were still alive, especially Clare.

We saw two ghouls ahead in my street and, although out of breath, we managed to avoid them easily. I could see a fair few at the end of my road, but fortunately we didn't need to run that far to get back to my digs.

We ran past a few cars and we crossed the road to get to my side of the street. My right hand was beginning to get clammy and I could feel the crowbar slipping through my palm. I swapped the weapon to my left hand and reached the pavement. We were only a matter of yards away from my house.

I looked around the whole area to see that there was at least a dozen in all. God knows how many in the town, in the country, even! There were also many front doors left ajar, which gave me the impression some had got inside, and there were more in the street from what my eyes could see.

My feet began to stop once my eyes clocked two of them on my drive. One was stumbling around, as if it had no clue why it was there. The other one looked like a female from the back and appeared to be staring, or at least trying, through the frosted pane of the front door. I gestured with my hand for the girls to keep back while I dealt with the problem.

The stumbler headed my way as soon as it saw me, followed quickly by the other one. My two-handed strike to its head was brutal and as it fell, the embedded crowbar went with it. I tried to pull it free and it eventually did.

Before I could take down
Z
no.2—the starer, I heard a scream come from behind me. Kelly had fallen over with one of them on top of her. I was torn between dealing with The Starer and killing Kelly's attacker. I went over to Kelly and tried to pull the fiend off of her, but her screaming was attracting others as well as The Starer who was heading our way.

"Give it to me." Clare held out her hand, waiting for me to give her the crowbar.

"Watch you don't get anything in your eyes!" I said.

I had managed to pull the ghoul off Kelly and watched Clare as she struck out at the zombie that was on my drive. The first strike didn't put the thing down, but it did seem to stun it a little, giving Clare time to compose herself for strike two. It fell backwards a little, but managed to stay on its feet. It walked forwards and I could hear Clare cry out, giving herself the extra strength to put the thing down. She hit the thing at the side while I still tried to hold Kelly's attacker back.

The Starer fell against the side of the house and Clare gave it another blow. The bar hit the side of its head and its cranium took the blow and then bounced off the side of the wall, near my front door. It fell to the side and hit the concrete ground with a thump. Some of its head was missing, and dark liquid slowly trickled out from the gaping wound in its skull.

I then threw Kelly's attacker to the ground, who quickly got up, and took the bloodied crowbar off of Clare. I then went over to destroy Kelly's attacker as I feared that it would approach the front door and possibly attract many others from afar, but it seemed that it was happening anyway because of her screaming.

I told her, as politely as I could in such a dire situation, to shut the fuck up. She wasn't listening and I held the crowbar like a spear and rammed it into the skull of the middle-aged man—now-turned zombie—that had grabbed her. The weapon never made a dent. All it did was push the thing back and I cursed aloud and shook my head.

I decided to hold the crowbar like a baseball bat and took the messier method. One swing to the side pretty much took a third of its head off. The debris fell to the floor, but it was still moving. The head was damaged, but the brain was untouched and still fully operational. Its hands went to grab me and my presence seemed to be enticing it away from the girls, and thankfully Kelly's screaming had now stopped.

I took a step backwards and could see over the shoulder of the thing that at least seven were heading in the direction of my house.

With the crowbar in hand, I was ready to take another swipe, but once the bar hit the side of its face, it slipped out of my hand and the thing stumbled and fell on top of me. I was a matter of inches away from its face and screamed at the girls to help me. I was lying on top of the crowbar and could feel it painfully digging into my back.

Kelly immediately ran over and grabbed its clothes, trying to pull it off, whereas Clare was in the front garden looking around for something. Before I had the chance to scream at Clare to give Kelly a hand, she came over with a small branch in her hand that she had taken off the rose bush and grabbed the hair of the thing very calmly.

She then started stabbing at the exposed part of the head, stabbing its brain, and once it stopped moving, the girls dragged it off of me.

"Thanks."

"We've got bigger problems now," Clare spoke up and pointed at the small horde heading towards the house; the one closest was only ten yards from my drive. I placed my quivering hand into my back pocket and took out my house keys.

"Let's get inside," I said.

"A-fucking-men to tha'," Kelly spoke with a shiver in her voice. "I need to change this underwear."

I placed the front door key into the door and stared in confusion once Kelly made her 'underwear' remark. Looking at my perplexed face, she said, "Let's just say: I'm a bit damp, and not in a good way."

Her explanation didn't help me, then I heard Clare sigh, "For God's sake, she's pissed herself. Now open the fucking door; those cunts are right behind us."

As soon as we got inside, I locked the door and left the keys dangling from the lock.

"So what do we do, what do we do?" Clare quizzed, her adrenaline was making her body quaver uncontrollably. We were all feeling the same effects.

"I'm not taking any chances," was my response. "Make sure every drop of water and food is in the attic. We stay in there for now. And barricade the downstairs the best we can."

Clare said, "I thought you said barricading was a waste of time."

"Just do it."

Chapter Thirty Four

The day was coming to a close, and the bottom of the stairs was barricaded in case our little melee had attracted enough of them fuckers to force their way in. It had been hours since I had been downstairs and the hatch in the attic was up, ready for our sleep.

We were all sitting in the attic, surrounded by boxes of stuff, bedding, food and drink from downstairs as well as kitchen utensils and a sports bag. Kelly said to me, "I was thinking about what ye said before to Clare, ye know, tha' ye think these...things are zombies."

I nodded in response to Kelly's question. "I had already been through this with Clare. The signs are the same that you'd see in the movies, as well as the way they have to be killed."

"I think ye might be right." Kelly scratched her overhanging belly that was poking out of her 'Easy Tiger' T-shirt.

Clare released a muffled laugh and I ignored it.

The evidence was staring at us right in the face, but she was refusing to believe it.

A silence engulfed us and Kelly had decided to shatter the silence. "So what's your favourite movie, John?"

"Jaws."

"Zombie movie?"

"Probably...Dawn of the Dead," I said with no hesitation. "The original."

"We've got to survive. Somebody's got to survive."
Kelly then released a laugh after her pathetic attempt at an American accent.

I smiled. "That's the one."

Kelly wasn't finished there. "What about:
It's all in the tongue
."

I answered, "Return of the Living Dead 3."

"Very good."

I held my hands up, trying to think. "Right, my turn.
They're coming to get you
—"

"Night of the Living Dead. Too easy."

Shaking my head at myself, I said, "Let me have another go.
We're sitting here, like sitting ducks.
"

"Rise of the Zombies." Kelly had a conceited smirk on her face.

"Wow. You're pretty good."

"Or pretty sad, " Clare guffawed in the background.

It was Kelly's turn. "
You're all going to die down here
."

"Resident Evil."

"Okay, let me have another go." Kelly was lost in thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers when she had one. "
Don't look back, Carl
."

"That's not a movie," I laughed. "I thought we were doing movies?"

Kelly sniggered. "Oh, I'm sorry, John." There was huge sarcasm wrapped in her words, but the mood was being lifted a little. "Next time, give me the rule book before we do this again."

"My turn," I insisted; I cleared my throat. "
You've got some red on you
."

Kelly had a blank look on her face.

I added, "Oh, you've got to be shittin' me."

Then we all suddenly heard a crash. We looked at one another. I opened the hatch and the girls began to protest and was asking what the fuck was I doing.

"Relax," I tried to appease them. "I'm just going to have a look outside the bedroom window."

Once I had managed to make the first floor, I walked over to the bedroom window and peeked out. I could see a hundred bodies, at least, around the house, trying to get in. I heard another crash coming from underneath me—my front room window, I presumed—and I quickly went back to the attic, pulled up the ladders, then locked the hatch.

"What is it?" asked Clare.

I answered, "They're in."

"Who?"

I raised my eyebrows at her. "Seriously?"

Chapter Thirty Five

When I looked at my watch, it was nearly 6am. My bladder was heaving and I was now wide awake. I think I had only managed two hours sleep, whereas the girls maybe had an hour more than me.

It's fair to say that little sleep had been made on this particular night, but we were a little appeased that we were in the attic, and there was no way they could reach us. The thought of eventual starvation and dehydration seemed more of a threat than those freaks that were in my house, but their presence on the ground floor still gave us insomnia for a while.

I sat up and looked over to where the girls were sleeping. I didn't want to wake them up by opening the hatch and lowering the ladders. Also, I wasn't sure that that was such a good idea anyway, as I was unsure whether the creatures that had made it into the house had managed to force their way through our average attempt at a barricade and were now crawling or walking their way upstairs.

Although still convinced with my 'they can't climb' theory, it had crossed my mind that they could already be on the first floor and could be below us. I wanted to check it out, but wanted to discuss it with the girls first. It was my house, but it was their safety I was messing with if I went along with my idea without discussing it.

There was one problem, however, that I needed to deal with right away: The heaving bladder. There was a small, empty bottle of coke that sat on the floor that I'd drunk, but I knew that was never going to be enough. When I went camping a year ago, I had to step out of the camp to drain my bladder and had managed to almost fill a two-litre empty bottle.

I then saw the plastic bucket sitting on its side on top of some of the boxes and thought, fuck it. I crept over to the bucket, almost doubled over with the pain, took my jogging bottoms down and went for it.

In hindsight, avoiding the coke bottle was a good idea as the yellow stuff was flowing out of me like one of those water fountain statues; it was never-ending. I heard Clare stir as the sound of me peeing was becoming a little noisy now. She quickly looked up at me and I could feel the heat in my cheeks.

Clare started her sentence, but I never gave her a chance to finish it. She said, "What the—?"

"Morning," I said with a whisper.

Clare yawned and then said, "What are you doing?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I'm pissing."

She shook her head and went back to sleep.

Once I was finished, I opened the attic's window and poured the contents of the bucket out and watch as it hit the roof's tiles and eventually trickled down into the guttering. Once I closed the attic's window, I was at a loss what to do next. The girls were still fast asleep and I was bored stupid. I sat in the corner of the room and closed my eyes.

I must have been still tired and had dropped off, but I suddenly jumped when Clare was prodding me with her forefinger. I almost slapped her hand away and moaned, "What is it?"

"I thought I heard a noise."

I yawned and then shrugged my shoulders at Clare. "And? So what?"

"Well—"

"Well,
what
? You want me to go down there, is that what it is?"

Clare gave me a dirty look and released an exasperated sigh. "Forget it. I just wanted to know if the barricade at the bottom of the stairs is working."

Feeling like a twat for being snappy with Clare, I said, "We'll check it out. If the barricade downstairs is holding, it's probably because they don't know we're up here, and that they haven't even tried to get through it yet."

Clare nodded, and we both could see that Kelly was finally stirring.

"Look, I was going to check it out anyway." I continued, "If it's safe, I can sit at the top of the stairs and keep an eye on the barricade while you and Kelly freshen up in the upstairs bathroom. Probably be best now to not use the flusher, or use the shower. I've got plain T-shirts in my wardrobe you could have, if you want fresh clothes."

"Just make sure they don't see you," Clare began. "If they see you through the gaps of the barricade, it might go tits up."

"I'll just peek every ten seconds or so. If they somehow pull down the barricade and start crawling up, we'd hear it anyway."

"If one of us keeps watch, we could still live on the first floor of the house during the day."

I nodded in agreement. "It's not that we have much of a choice. I was just thankful that we've moved all the food into the attic when we did."

Kelly sat up and yawned. She stretched out her arms and checked her breath; her facial expression suggested that she was less than impressed of the effluvium from her mouth.

"I'm gonna have a look around," I announced, and was surprised that Kelly never protested.

Kelly nodded. "Good. I need to brush my teeth."

Added Clare, "And I could murder a glass of water."

"Right," I began to take off the latch, "I'll let you know if it's clear."

With shaking hands, I opened the hatch to the attic and lowered the ladders down. I took a paranoid look around the bedroom before descending, and once I got to the floor, I braced myself for something macabre. The bedroom door was shut, and I knew that opening this door could lead to two scenarios.

The first scenario would be a view of my empty first floor hallway, with one empty bedroom to the left, and another empty hallway to the right that led to the empty upstairs bathroom and my main empty bedroom where Abbie had died. The second scenario was to see exactly the same view, but littered with zombies that had broken through the downstairs barrier and had made their way up.

I slowly opened the bedroom door and braced myself for the worst case scenario. As soon as the door was away from the frame by about ten to twelve inches, I took a nervous peep to see, to my relief, that 'scenario one' was occurring. It was clear on the first floor. Just to make absolute sure, I checked the bathroom and two bedrooms. Then I got to the top of the stairs that curled tightly to the right and peered around the wall to see if the barricade was still holding.

It appeared that among the two cupboards, a dressing table and a few chairs that were stacked up, everything still seemed in place. I could see through the cracks of the stacked furniture, the ghouls moping about in a dead daze. It was hard to tell how many were actually on the ground floor of my house, but there certainly seemed enough to make me flee if ever they got to the top of the stairs.

"Fuckers," I muttered under my breath. I made my way back to the ladders leading to the opened hatch of the attic, and quietly called on the girls. Clare was the first to peer over and look down on me. I said, "Tell Kelly, if she wants to...freshen up, tell her to be quiet. And no showers."

Clare sarcastically saluted me and I knew that once she saw what was happening on the ground floor, her sarcasm would deteriorate.

Before the girls got to the first floor, I changed my clothes, sprayed deodorant, washed my face and brushed my teeth, running the water very gently. I sat on top of the stairs, out of view from the fiends, and remained there for an hour while the girls eventually made it to the first floor and freshened themselves up.

I suddenly heard a clatter and recognised the sound of an object being dropped on my laminate flooring on my ground-floor hallway. I took a nervous peep to see two chairs had fallen. I had no idea how this had happened. Maybe a few of them had brushed past the stacked object and had eventually brushed past it too hard.

Whatever the reason, it appeared that their interest of the stairs, that they hadn't seen before, was growing. Most still walked past, but a particular one glared up the stairs through the wide gap and I immediately pulled my head back in, paranoid that it might see me.

My worst fear was confirmed when I heard another clatter, but this time it was a sound like a cluster of objects. I took a one-second look around the wall to see three of the things crawling over the partly-collapsed barricade.

"Oh crap."

Then I heard Kelly whisper behind me, "John, ye got any toilet roll? I feel tha' the world is about to fall out my arse."

I dropped my head in my hands. "Really?" I turned to Kelly and said, "Try the towel cupboard. And you'd better hurry up; we don't have much time."

Clare crept behind me and had a short look herself. "Where to now?" she said calmly.

"Back in the attic. Once Kelly's..." I decided not to finish the sentence.

"We can't stay in the attic forever," Clare stated the obvious. "Being cooped up in that small area, with no sanitation—"

I interrupted, "I know."

"We'd either end up killing each other, or we could go mad. Or both. And what about the eventual starvation and the dehydration."

Once we heard the door to the bathroom open, that was our cue to get our arses back into the attic. Kelly shut the bathroom door and spoke, "Tha' food last night went straight through me."

Clare released a nervous giggle.

I was less than impressed and "For fuck's sake," was all I could muster.

*

Once the hatch to the attic was closed, we sat against the wall of the room and remained silent, listening out to see if the horde were able to progress to the first floor.

I looked at both Kelly and Clare, who sat with their heads lowered, despondent and frightened of what was happening.

"I wonder how my brother is?" Kelly spoke to no one in particular.

Clare responded, "I'm sure your brother and his family are okay."

I picked up the crowbar and said to the girls, "We need to go before this thing gets worse."

"Worse," Clare guffawed falsely. "How can this possibly get worse?"

"We can't stay in here forever."

"Why not?" Kelly had become teary, and it appeared that the whole situation was making her body quake with nerves.

I explained, "Look, if they don't get us down there, then dehydration and starvation will get us up here." I looked around and noticed that with three people in the house, we'd be lucky if the food would last us more than two days. The girls looked at one another, unsure of their next response, so I added, "If we can somehow walk across the roofs of the houses and get to the bottom of the street, we can run to Fair Oak, and lay low in there."

"Fair Oak?" Clare looked perplexed. "The school?"

I nodded. "It has canteens, probably full of food."

"I can't walk on a roof, for frig's sake." Kelly folded in her arms like a petulant child, and pointed up to the window of the attic. "I won't even make it through tha'."

"Well, I'm sure you'll make a terrific meal, but
I'm
going."

"And leave ye house?" Kelly laughed mockingly, thinking I was all talk.

"I've got a ground floor littered with zombies, and some trying to get to the first floor. I think it's fair to say this place is pretty worthless now."

Clare then snapped, "You said they couldn't climb."

"Well, they cant...well...not really...I don't think." I was unsure. "Anyway, they probably won't make it to the first floor, but it's a little risky to just assume that'll be the case."

"Ye have no idea, do ye?" asked Kelly.

I ignored her query and said, "We're gonna have to leave."

As soon as I made the statement, Kelly's smile had evaporated. "Ye really are serious?"

I nodded and she huffed nervously, looking back up at the window that she would need to climb through in order to get onto my roof to make the walk across.

"Well, you'll have to hold my hand." Kelly gestured over to me with her head. "I suffer from vertigo, so just one slip and I'll be pissing myself like the Niagara falls."

"Does anyone need the toilet before they make their way up?" I asked.

I didn't get a response. "Right then. Time to go." I then took a bag and filled it with tins and drink and decided to leave.