This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (17 page)

“Nothing. The people who left took everything useful they could carry.”

“Oh, c’mon,” said Theo. “You’re starving and you were holed up in an empty house all night with dogs howling for your skin and you didn’t take a look around?”

“I’m just saying I’m no looter,” Bently said.
 

“The man didn’t say you were,” Oliver said. “It’s not looting if you leave a nice note saying you’ll pay it back. That’s the new rule.”

“Look, fellas, I appreciate the food but I need to get back to my family.”

“We’re just looking for a little quid pro quo,” Oliver said.

“A what?” Bently said.

Oliver seized the bag of groceries from Theo’s hands and whipped it across the man’s face, opening up a gash over Bently’s right eye. The plastic bag burst and the cans rolled around the patio with a tin and liquid clatter.

Bently did not fall down but staggered back, holding the wound over his eye. In shock, his mouth hung agape with one hand to his forehead. He held his head like a man who had just experienced a terrifying epiphany. After a moment’s hesitation he bent and picked up the cans of food.

“Doug!” Jack yelled from her seat at the table. “What are you doing?”

Bently scurried, wary of Oliver but picking up the groceries as fast as he could.

“There’s nothing more here for you, raccoon! Don’t come back! Don’t
ever
come back!”

His arms full, Bently ran for the gate. “You shouldn’t have done that! I know where you live! I know where you live!”

“Raccoon!”
 

Theo and Oliver followed him out to the front yard. Bently walked away as quickly as he could manage. He retreated up the street toward the intersection with Fanshawe Park Road. Soon he disappeared out of sight.

Jack met them on the front lawn. Anna followed, pulling Jaimie behind her. He was still chewing some steak but, for once, he was not carrying any kind of dictionary in his free hand.

“Why did you do that?” Jack Spencer looked pale. Her lower lip trembled.

Theo patted Oliver on the shoulder. “A tax attorney who doesn’t know the phrase quid pro quo?”

“Not bloody likely,” the old man said.
 

“He recognized Jaimie!” Anna interjected. “He may not be who he says he is, but he’s from around here.”

“Don’t worry about that too much, honey,” Theo said. “We’re quite memorable when I walk around the mall holding the hand of my sixteen-year-old. I’ve had a lot of ugly sneers directed my way. They don’t ease up unless they notice Jaimie’s — ” he struggled for the right word.

“Distracted retard look?” Anna said.

Jack swatted her lightly across the back of the head. “Your father was probably going to say something about Jaimie’s other-worldly manner.”

“Yes,” Anna said, rubbing the back of her head dramatically. “Ears is positively
ethereal
.”

“Actually, I think that’s exactly the right word,” Oliver said. The old man turned to Jack and held out the big gold ring that had been on the third finger of his left hand. “For your hospitality,” he said.

Jack put her hands up. “No, Doug. No.”

He held it out to her, waiting. “Barter is the new currency and I have to distinguish myself from that, that — ”

“Raccoon?” Anna said.

“Yes,” Oliver said. “Bandits and vermin, rifling the trash cans with small, clever hands. If the new economy is going to work so things don’t descend into chaos, we’ve got to work with what we’ve got. I was going to offer you some of my weed but I don’t have it on me at the moment.”

“I have another idea,” Theo said.

“What?” Oliver said.

“Let us move into your house. I don’t feel like my family is safe at home.”

“Theo! Don’t you think we should discuss this? I don’t think Douglas — ”

But the old man was already nodding. “That’s not a bad idea. He thinks I live here, too. Prolly thinks I’m the mean old grandpa. Since I opened the bugger’s head, he might decide to come back and do something uncivilized. Like he said. He knows where you live.
 

Besides,” Oliver shrugged, “I’m shacked up with the Widow Bendham most of the time, keeping her company. There’s room at my house. I bluffed about having another couple dogs in reserve, but I don’t know if he bought it. It sounds kind of silly now that I think about it, though in the heat of the moment…you know. Best lie I could come up with since I didn’t have advanced notice.”

Jaimie watched their neighbor’s aura, curious. The old man
did
have advanced notice.

Theo ignored his wife’s protests. “It’s for the best. It’s not like we have a machine gun nest on the roof if he does come back. And we don’t have so many food supplies that we can make deadly weapons out of grocery bags full of cans, though that was surprisingly effective on that guy.”

“He’s right, Mom,” Anna said. “I don’t like the way he looked at us. I
really
don’t like the way he looked at me.”

At that, Jack relented. She turned to Oliver. “What does rent go for in apocalyptic times?”

For the first time, Oliver looked down, at a loss. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. What do you think is fair? Make me an offer.”
 

“We share our food with you,” Theo said.

The old man didn’t hesitate. “That’s a grand idea! Don’t worry. I’m an old man, so I just take a senior’s portion…but I must agree with one caveat.”

Caveat
, Jaimie thought. Why wasn’t there one English word that was that succinct for the idea behind it?

“Yes?” Jack said.

“Well, no offense, but you folks haven’t exactly been much in survival mode. You loaded up on lots of canned groceries but I bet you’re eating through the supply fast. In our conversations, I’ve had the distinct impression that you are all waiting for the cavalry to come over the hill any moment. As we discussed, I don’t think that cavalry is coming.”

Deus ex machina
, Jaimie thought. Another succinct phrase that English couldn’t match.

Oliver balled his fists and shook his head at the same time, looking like a man who needed something to hit. “This isn’t a fire drill. This is the real thing!”
 

Jack sputtered. “I call it having faith and hope that things are going to work out soon.”

“That’s good. I wish I had the comfort in faith that you seem to have. I’d sleep better at night. However, when God sends the flood he expects you to have your ark packed and ready.”

“What exactly are you proposing?” Theo said.

“For your safety, strict rationing and beefed up security of some kind,” he answered. “Don’t get me wrong, Jacqueline. I think you’ve done a marvellous job so far, thanks to having the good sense to heed that warning from your brother-in-law early on. However, we can’t assume your stocks are going to last as long as the crisis.”

“Theo’s brother said The World Health Organization’s recommendation was for two to three
months
worth of stocked food. We’ve got that and we’re putting in a garden.”
 

“I wonder if the WHO even exists anymore? And what if the seeds don’t take or the weather’s bad? One bad crop and we’re out risking our lives, scrambling for old cans of tuna in booby-trapped houses…or homes full of bodies and viruses and bacteria. I’ve survived Sutr, but cholera comes next. We’re going to have to secure a clean water source and really make sure it’s filtered. It’ll be hard but we do need to band together against looters. I believed Bently’s story about the wild dogs, too. That might become an issue, too. If my dog is with the pack, I hope he remembers his old master.”

“Of course, you’re right,” Jack relented. “We should move in to your house. Bently might come back. From your house, we can watch our house and stay safe.”

“If he comes back, maybe I’ll get a chance to sneak up behind him and smack him on the head with a shovel,” Theo said. “Or my wife could hit him with a purse full of soup cans.”

Jack noticed her daughter shaking and gave Anna a hug. “Screw that,” Jack said. “I’ll use the meat cleaver.”

Jack and Theo shook hands with their old neighbor. Oliver threw Anna and Jaimie a friendly smile as he put his gold ring back on.

Jaimie had watched the rusty edges around the old man’s words as they rolled out. He had the distinct impression that Oliver had planned this all along. He had somehow led his parents to this conclusion. They thought moving across the street was their idea and to their benefit.

The boy was sure his mother and father were wrong. Jaimie watched the old man. He thought Plautus, the ancient playwright, might have sent him a warning about Mr. Douglas Oliver from 200 years before Christ:
lupus est homo homini. Man is a wolf to man.

An army rises and the dead will have their way.

I
n a converted industrial building off Riding House Street, Pete Grimsby had a fever. He told his family about the woman in red biting his neck. His sister-in-law cleaned the wound and bandaged his neck. The children were fascinated with the injury at first. As he told and retold the story (leaving out the part about kissing the woman’s neck) the kids shrank away, clutching their toys, their stuffed animals and each other.
 

His older brother, Leland, insisted he take his bed. However, as soon as Pete agreed, Leland locked the door behind him and taped the crack at the base of the door closed. A moment later, Pete heard the rustle of plastic as his big brother secured the sheeting to the door frame.

“I’ll suffocate, Lee!”

“Breathe out the window all you want, you fool. I just don’t want you breathing our way. Settle down and we’ll get you some soup to ride this thing out. People get sick of this thing. They get well, too. Don’t be a git about it.”

He peed in a bucket and his piss was hot. An hour later, the thirst hit him. It was an overpowering thirst and he clamped his mouth on a bathroom faucet. Pete drank and drank but couldn’t seem to slake the dryness. He went back and forth from the sink to the toilet, drinking and pissing for so long he got bored of it. He yelled through the door, “I think that biter gave me diabetes!”

“Piss off and get some sleep! You’ll be alright in the morning!” Leland yelled. “This is embarrassing. You’re being a baby!”

The fever took Pete down until he became too weak to get up from the toilet. He slumped there, pants around his ankles and slipping into a dream. He saw the woman in red again. She had long fangs. He thought she must be a vampire, but somehow he knew she didn’t just want blood. She wanted
meat
.

In the dream, he called out to her for help. She knew something he needed to know. At the pub, she’d said something about no more worries. He held to that idea now, worrying at it but coming no closer to understanding.
 

The woman in red called back to him, inviting him to dinner.

“But I hate you,” he told her. Even in sleep, his empty stomach answered her with a rumbling, gnawing hunger.

“You won’t care about anything soon. You worried about money and your job and your health and what made you sad and what might someday make you happy. No more…just take one bite. One bite is best for now.”

When Pete Grimsby awoke, he wasn’t Pete Grimsby anymore. He did not worry about money and comforts. The torn flesh at his neck was nothing more than an annoyance. He didn’t have a coherent thought in his head. His only concern was feeding himself. Nothing was left of Pete Grimsby but overwhelming hunger. He had no more conscience than wolves. Perhaps, much less.
 

The rooms next door were full of children. A thin door and bits of plastic sheeting and tape were no match for that ravenous hunger.
 

* * *

Across London, in a fourth-floor room with a view of Buckingham Palace, the woman in red waited in the dark for her legions to assemble. She knew her emissaries were out in the night somewhere, recruiting. Her army would soon outnumber the many at her feet.

The baby kicked and she placed a hand to her abdomen. A shoulder passed beneath her palm. She felt it roll over in her womb.
 

“Still here? That’s a surprise, baby girl, but that’s okay. By the time you arrive, Mama’s going to make it a brave new world for you. No more bankers…no rich or poor. No undeserved pain.”
 

She stared out the window at the palace grounds, lit so brightly. Silhouettes and shadows of security men patrolled the perimeter. “No more queens and kings…unless you count me, of course.”
 

The next mutation of the Sutr plague claimed London as the infection spread: man to child; child to woman; woman to man. Wolf to wolves.

No,
she thought.
Sutr-X was a sad infection, a failed experiment.
Sutr-Z is an infestation, a brilliant invasion.
 

Only Shiva knew why.

The woman in red smiled wider. She wondered how Corgis might taste. A delicate little appetizer before the royal feast to come? She toasted the moon with a glass of red wine and waited for the big show to begin.
 

Season 1, Episode 3

I am the zombie queen!

~ Notes from The Last Cafe

Zombies are the New World Disorder

T
he Tube’s automated command to “Mind the Gap” still worked. It was a tiny reminder of the normalcy London had lost.

Aadi Vermer walked to work from Knightsbridge station, limping a little in worn shoes. Officially, the Tube was closed. However, Aadi’s manager had procured a pass so Aadi could keep his job. Most of the other people who traveled the Underground were police or military. Passengers stayed away from each other and breathed shallowly, as if that would protect them.

His cheap black shoes cut at his heels. He stuffed newspaper around his socks for comfort in the long hours ahead. Aadi had to put off buying new shoes for another month or so. His two girls, Aastha and Aasa, were six and seven and growing fast. If there was extra money to be spent on shoes, his daughters came first.
 

His wife, Riya, died in the early days of the plague, but with the help of some neighbors, the girls were cared for while he put in a shift to protect Harrods.