Once inside, I relit the gas lamp and saw what was once a nice family home but what was now a dusty, dank and filthy hideout. Food wrappers and the trashed belongings of the former occupants littered the floor. Sean staggered through to the living room and Kay helped him lay down on the brown leather sofa, after sweeping empty beer cans onto the floor with her left arm. I sat on an armchair, deflated. It dawned on me that until we cleared Sean’s name and found the murderer me and Kay couldn’t go back to our camp … to Misfit.
We had become fugitives.
Entry Twelve
I watched Kay dabbing Sean’s wounds with cotton wool and some disinfectant she found in the bathroom cabinet. I moved forwards so that I perched on the edge of the armchair. ‘I think it’s time you told us what’s going on, Sean,’ I said, rolling a cigarette. I looked at the small amount of baccy left in the pouch and screwed up my nose, thinking of all the tobacco and packets of cigs I’d left behind at the camp. But if I had it on me, I’d swap all of it if I could have Misfit here.
‘I’ve been accused of a murder I didn’t commit,’ he said.
‘Yep, I got that. And the fact that me and Kay have risked our necks breaking you out means we believe you. But why didn’t you just tell the St Andrews lot the truth?’ I said. ‘We believed you, they probably –’
‘They didn’t exactly give me the chance to explain before they beat the crap out of me. As far as they were concerned they had their man.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said, horrified. ‘Chris wouldn’t –’
‘It wasn’t the red headed one. Just that one I punched when you broke me out of that place.’
‘Josh,’ I said.
‘Yeah, him and the one with the shaved head and big nose.’
‘Max?’
‘Whatever his name is. The red head said I deserved a fair trial. Max and Josh said they’d question me but instead they tortured me with my mouth gagged. I heard them say they were going to kill me and tell the others it was self defence. They just wanted to make me suffer first.’
‘No fucking way,’ said Kay.
‘OK, gag’s off now and we’re listening. You need to tell us everything if we’re going to help you,’ I said, putting the cigarette in my mouth and lighting it.
‘It was my sister,’ Sean said slowly, his voice low.
‘Your
sister
?’ said Kay, sitting back on the floor beside the sofa and looking at him.
‘Yep.’
‘Your sister murdered Lucy?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘Details,’ said Kay.
‘Look, my sister killed that girl. I couldn’t stop it … I tried but there was nothing I could do. She killed that girl and then turned on me.’
‘And that’s how you got the scratches on your arms and the blood on your hands,’ I said.
‘Yep. She attacked me and ran off. I was trying to find her when you found me on the beach.’
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Yeah, it’s shit,’ said Sean.
‘But why did she do it?’ I asked. I watched Sean rest his head back onto the arm of the sofa as he laid down and closed his eyes. ‘We need to know everything if we’re going to help you find her.’
‘I don’t need help. You’ve helped me enough by getting me out of that place. But leave me to deal with this and go back to your people,’ said Sean. His eyes had opened to slits as he spoke and he struggled to keep them open.
‘Sean, don’t you get it? Me and Kay can’t go back. What do you think will happen if we go back after we helped a
murderer
escape?’
‘I’m not a murderer,’ Sean growled, his eyes opening wider.
‘I know, but they think you are. We can’t go back,’ I said. ‘Not without a murderer.’
‘I’m not going to let you hand Anna over to them,’ said Sean, wincing as he pushed himself up on his elbows. ‘You saw what they did to me. I’m going to find Anna and get the pair of us out of this psycho town.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘We’ve just risked everything to get you out of St Andrews because we believed you were innocent and could help us find the murderer. You can’t just fuck off and leave us in the shit. She might be your sister but she has to pay for what she did.’ I watched as Sean lay down and rolled over onto his side, his back to me, a sign that he considered the conversation to be over.
Kay took the master bedroom and I got a little kid’s room. The only other bedroom must have belonged to a teenager: posters of boy bands I’d never heard of lined the walls and make-up littered the dressing table by the window. But it stank of piss and something else really disgusting. The bed was unmade and the crumpled sheets were stained. The contents of the wardrobe lay strewn across the floor, with some of the clothes having been torn to shreds. The wardrobe door hung open and the mirror on the inside had been smashed. Shards of glass lay on the floor below. Books with bright pop art covers in candy colours lay among the torn clothing, some had had their pages ripped out, others had been bent back on their spines. There was something brown smeared on one of the walls. I gave the room a miss.
I lay on a small bed, just long enough for me, a Thomas the Tank Engine quilt over my body. I rested my knife on a blue bedside table, next to a Thomas night light. Posters of different coloured engines, all with chubby cheeks and smiling faces, lined the walls.
The room reminded me of Jake. Not because he used to like Thomas, he didn’t. I don’t remember him ever being into babyish stuff. The room reminded me of Jake because of its cosy boyishness and dedication to its theme. Jake had been a superhero fanatic since before he turned two, after he saw the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie on TV. That was it, everything had to have Spider-Man on it – his quilt cover, curtains, his lunch box, pyjamas. In fact, he wouldn’t get dressed unless Spider-Man appeared somewhere on his t-shirt, trousers, socks, pants …
Then he discovered other superheroes and the Spider-Man obsession got watered down with Batman, The Hulk, Iron Man and the Green Lantern to name but a few. But Spider-Man always remained the strong favourite. I groaned every time Jake asked – moaned, whined – to put a Spider-Man movie on. I think I could probably recite every one of those damn movies off the top of my head, Jake played them so often.
I wanted so much to curl up on the sofa with Jake and a big bowl of popcorn and watch Spider-Man right then, so much so that I couldn’t stop the tears rolling down my cheeks. For fuck’s sake, where were the superheroes when you needed them? In the zombie apocalypse, my money would be on Iron Man – he’d be the ultimate zombie slayer.
I wondered what would happen if Spider-Man got bit by a zombie … would the zombie virus counteract the radioactive spider venom that gives him his powers or would he become some weird and powerful zombie/spider hybrid that climbs walls really, really slowly and pounces on humans from above to bite them and … and would the humans he bit also get infected with the hybrid virus?
My thoughts turned from infected superheroes to Misfit. Did he know what me and Kay had done yet? It must have been the early hours of the morning, but the sun hadn’t yet risen. Had Chris and Soph already gone to our camp to look for us and woken the others? What would Misfit think … would he hate me? I guessed he would. I had left my heart, my soul, my lungs in that camp. Fresh tears ran down my cheeks. I sobbed until exhaustion yanked me into sleep.
A knock on the door woke me. It had been gentle, more of a scuff, but it had been enough to spring my brain back to the waking world. I pushed the covers off my skinny body, sat up and swung my socked feet to the floor. I rubbed my eyes. The knock again. I guessed it must be Sean; Kay wouldn’t bother knocking, not with me. ‘Just a second,’ I said, standing and stumbling over the toys scattered on the floor, making my way towards the door.
I opened it to see a zombie standing there. My eyes widened and my jaw dropped as I took in the unexpected site. Shock made my body immobile for a moment, then my hands finally caught up with my brain and I tried to push the door shut. But, too late, the zombie lunged at me – more of a morning zombie than I was. ‘Fuck off!’ I yelled at it as I pushed against the white painted wood. The door began to close, when another zombie staggered down the hall and added its rotting hands to the other side. The added weight caused the door to surge inwards, throwing me onto the floor on my back.
The two zombies lurched into the room, their dirty, decaying hands grabbing downwards for me. One wrapped its fingers around my left ankle. I rolled over onto my stomach and kicked my leg out, trying to dislodge it, but more dead hands grabbed the waistband of my jeans.
I used my arms to crawl across the floor, desperate to get to my knife on the bedside table, but the zombies pulled me back faster than I could go forwards. One put the weight of its body on my legs and pinned me to the ground. I could smell dried rotting meat as I dug my nails into the dark blue carpet, clawing at it in frustration.
Stuck, and with gooey zombie jaws about to bite down on me at any moment, I flailed my arms about the toy littered floor. I felt something soft and fluffy and batted it out of the way. I touched something else made from squishy foam. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ I yelled. Then the fingers of my left hand touched something cold … metal, long and thin. I grasped it, held it up and saw I held a toy plane, about eight inches long, its nose nice and pointy. I turned my upper body. The zombie on my legs lower its mouth to my right side. I thrust the pointed end of the plane into its ear, ramming it in as far as I could, a grunt escaping my lips.
The zombie’s body fell on top of me and I shoved it off. The other one still had my foot and it pulled up at the same time as bending down towards my ankle, exposed without my Converse on. I saw another zombie staggering into the room behind it. I kicked out with my free foot and delivered a hit to the first zombie’s chest. It staggered back into the newcomer. I sprang to my feet, lunged towards the bedside table and picked up my knife. I span round, bounced forwards and drove my blade through the first zombie’s eye. Pulling out my knife, I stabbed the next one up through its open mouth.
I shoved my feet into my baseball boots, grabbed Misfit’s jacket from where I’d left it on a chair by the window, slipped it on and darted out of the room. A zombie stood outside the door to the master bedroom, its back to me. I strutted up behind it and stabbed it in the back of the head before it had chance to turn. It fell to the floor just as the door opened and Kay appeared, looking sleepy. ‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Just a typical day in the zombie apocalypse, eh?’
‘Kay … Sean’s downstairs,’ I said. ‘If the zombies broke in and managed to get this far …’
‘What? Shit!’
She disappeared for a second and returned with her axe and the both of us flew down the stairs. A couple of zombies staggered around the hall as if deciding which room to take, and another stumbled in through the front door which stood wide open. Me and Kay sliced and diced them, before heading into the living room. There was no sign of Sean on the sofa or anywhere else in the room … not even half munched pieces of him.
A zombie clawed at the flat screen TV. Kay took the back of its head off with her axe. ‘Sean!’ she called. Silence.
We trotted out of the room and down the hall. We couldn’t find Sean in the dining room or the kitchen. The back door was locked, but we glanced through the kitchen window to check the garden – a small concrete courtyard, surrounded by brick and concrete walls taller than me – but no sign. Inside, Kay called for him again. We checked upstairs in the stinking piss bedroom and the bathroom. Empty. ‘Where is he?’ asked Kay as we walked down the stairs.
‘I guess he decided to leave us in the shit after all,’ I said, slipping through the front door and down the steps to the street. I stood with my hands on my hips, scanning the street in both directions. ‘The bastard’s ditched us to go and look for Anna.’
The sun was only just rising. I guessed that I hadn’t slept long, so wherever Sean had gone, he probably hadn’t got far. Me and Kay jogged back the way we had come the night before, back into town, both of us snapping our heads left and right for any sign of Sean or zombies. As we turned into Rendezvous Street, I spotted a few zombies staggering down Church Street but they were far enough away for us not to worry about at the speed we travelled.
We turned into the Old High Street, and jogged down towards the harbour. Ahead of me, about halfway down the street, something sticking out from around the corner of a building on the left hand side caught my eye. ‘Wait,’ I said to Kay, coming to a stop, just short of the building.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
I could see a trainer-wearing foot protruding from a set of steps between two of the tall old buildings. I darted towards it, Kay following. We stood at the top of the steps and looked down to see a body laying on its stomach, head first down the steps. Its other leg was twisted at an unnatural angle and obviously broken. I trotted down a few steps, knelt beside the body and rolled it over onto its back. ‘It’s Josh,’ I said, looking up at Kay. ‘His throat’s been cut.’
‘Shit,’ said Kay, putting a hand to her mouth.
‘He must have been out looking for us. I don’t think he’s been dead long.’ I put my hand under his shirt. ‘He’s still a little warm.’ I stood up and turned to face Kay. ‘I’m not
Columbo
, but I think Anna has been here.’
Entry Thirteen
Keen to be out of the area before a search party from St Andrews showed up, we left the body and sprinted the rest of the way down the street. At the restaurant on the right hand corner at the bottom of the Old High Street, I spotted a red, bloody hand print on the glass front. The print smeared around the corner of the glass, making it look as though who left it had spindly, spider leg fingers. It led towards the harbour. ‘Kay!’ I said, stopping and nodding to the bloody streak. She looked at it, then back at me. We had a direction to head in. I wondered if Misfit would be proud of my tracking skills, and realised – under the circumstances – he probably wouldn’t be.
A thought occurred to me. I pulled off my leather jacket and spat at the drying blood.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Kay as I used the sleeve of my jumper to rub at the spidery print. Without answering her, I spat at the window again and wiped off as much of the blood as I could, leaving only the faintest smudge. I put the leather jacket back on, darted up the hill and down the steps to Josh’s body. I crouched beside him. Placing my hand on his throat, I coated the palm of my hand with his cooling blood, grimacing as I did so. I trotted up the steps, turned right and slammed my palm against a shop window. I ran my hand a little way along the glass, moving in an upwards direction before removing my hand and jogging a little further up the street. I repeated the exercise on another shop window, leaving a fainter but still noticeable bloody hand print. ‘What are you doing, for fuck’s sake?’ Kay asked again as she followed me.
‘Making sure we don’t get followed,’ I said. ‘If the others are searching for us, they’ll follow the blood trail up into town. Come on.’ We sprinted back down the street and turned right, following the original, now missing, hand print.
With no sign of any more bloody hand prints to follow and feeling exposed out in the open, I darted into the alley behind the True Brit Pub. Kay followed. Behind the True Brit stood another pub, abandoned long before the outbreak, its door and ground floor windows sealed up with metallic boards. I stopped at the bottom of some old stone steps to the left of the pub. ‘Up here,’ I said, needing somewhere quiet to think.
Up the first set of steps, I saw a busted in door set in the graffiti covered wall at the
side of the old pub, and stopped to take a look. The dingy, dank brick wall lined courtyard inside belonged to the abandoned pub. It looked like a health and safety nightmare. I saw a rubbish strewn, uneven dirt floor with a warped wooden board laid over it, leading to a concrete walkway to the rear of the beige pebble-dashed building. The back door of the pub had been sealed up with more of the metallic board.
I ducked inside the courtyard, jumped down onto the dirt floor, avoiding the wooden board, and walked towards the rear of the pub. I slumped onto the cold, damp ground. With my back resting against the dark blue painted railing behind me, I glanced behind to see large holes running either side of the concrete walkway, down into the pub’s dark cellar. I guessed there must have been some sort of covering over them once, and maybe a trap door where the beer barrels were loaded down.
Kay sat next to me and we both took a moment to catch our breath.
‘Looks like Sean has dumped us in it,’ I said eventually. ‘Which means we’re in a fuck of a lot of trouble.’
‘You think?’ Kay said sarcastically. ‘What do we do now?’
I chewed my lip while I paused for thought. ‘If we’re going to stand a chance of ever being accepted back, we’re going to have to find Sean and convince him to hand his sister over to St Andrews,’ I said after a moment.
‘He won’t do it.’
‘We have to try.’
‘But where the fuck do we start?’ Kay asked, looking at me. ‘He could be anywhere by now.’
‘I guess we should keep moving to the right, away from the harbour. We’ve got that hand print to go on,’ I said. ‘And I don’t feel comfortable hanging around here, so close to St Andrews. I think we should just head out and keep moving.’
‘And if we don’t find him, I reckon we should just keep moving – straight out of town,’ said Kay.
I screwed up my face. ‘We’ll find him.’ I used the railings to hoist myself up to standing. Kay did the same and we climbed out of the courtyard.
At the bottom of the steps, back in the harbour, I stopped when I heard a dragging noise from around the other side of the True Brit. I put a finger to my lips to warn Kay to be quiet, then pointed in the direction of the sound. From around the corner emerged a zombie, followed by two more. I gasped – the front runner was Sam … my Sam, his white t-shirt, the one he wore for our wedding, stained with black blood. His jaw hung open. ‘
Sam
?’ I couldn’t help myself calling to him. He snarled and lumbered towards me, his filthy, rotting fingers reaching out for me.
‘Sophie, get back and don’t look,’ said Kay as she sprang forwards with her axe raised.
‘No!’ I snapped, grabbing her elbow.
‘Sophie, he’s a fucking zombie – a full blown, will-tear-your-throat-out-and-guzzle-your-brain zombie,’ said Kay. ‘I’m going to put him down. Don’t look!’
Sam staggered close enough to touch the tip of Kay’s axe. I shoved her sideways so hard that she hit the back wall of the True Brit with her right shoulder. ‘Sam!’ I called. I turned and darted for the steps me and Kay had just climbed down. I waited on the bottom step for Sam to catch up with me. I glanced over Sam’s shoulder to see Kay steady herself after my shove and launch herself at the other two zombies. While the zombies kept Kay busy, I turned and trotted up the steps and waited again by the door to the courtyard. ‘Sam,’ I said gently. Sam snarled and swiped at the air. His dark floppy hair was matted with dried blood and dirt, and yellow drool dribbled from his chin.
I leapt down the step into the courtyard. I heard Kay yell up the steps, ‘What are you doing, you fucktard?’ Sam stood at the edge of the step down into courtyard. I saw his head jerk towards the sound of Kay’s voice. ‘Sam,’ I said again. ‘This way. Come for me.’ He turned back to me and flopped down onto the dirt floor, regaining himself clumsily and staggered across the uneven ground towards me. I stood with my back pressed against the blue railings. There was nowhere else for me to go. As Sam approached, I slid my knife into my belt to free my hands while I waited for him.
Kay appeared at the door. ‘Sophie! For fuck’s sake …’
Sam’s head jerked around. ‘Sam!’ I said. He turned back to me, staggered a few more paces and lunged at me. I sidestepped and Sam hit the railings with his stomach. ‘I’m doing this for you,’ I whispered as I grabbed the waistband of his skinny jeans and hauled him up and over the railings. He flailed and groaned as he fell down into the dark cellar. I prayed the fall wouldn’t smash his head open. When I heard a thump, I leaned over the railings. I couldn’t see a thing at first. But as my eyes got used to the gloom, I saw movement, then Sam’s arms appeared, reaching up towards me.
I heard a thud behind me, feet hitting hard ground as Kay joined me at the railings. ‘What the fuck?’ she said as she peered into the cellar.
I didn’t take my eyes off Sam’s gaunt, grey face. ‘Sara holds the cure, Kay,’ I said.
‘The cure to zombieism?’ she said, looking at me. ‘Sophie, this is real life. Not some Sci-Fi movie with men in white coats in high tech labs creating antidotes in test tubes. Most human beings are dead and those that aren’t dead already are dying and will soon be dead. Sorry, but if you think you can save him, you’re fooling yourself.’
I turned my head to look at her. ‘I’m keeping him safe, just in case.’