Authors: Nathan Kuzack
They returned to the living room, where the boy asked, “Will we be back?”
“I don’t know,” David said, before adding gently, “I don’t think so, little man.”
The boy’s gaze swept around, his eyes mournful. The look he gave the place might have been the same look a shipwrecked sailor gave to their desert island as they watched it recede into the distance from the stern of a rescuing ship: glad to be leaving, yet ineffably saddened, conflicted by the equal measures of gratitude and resentment they felt towards the tiny patch of terra firma that had both saved their life and held them prisoner. Even though, by now, his desire to get out of there was verging on desperation, David didn’t have the heart to rush the boy. He could sense the importance of this moment. The boy’s departure from his warren had to have a certain decorum about it, so as to ensure a proper sense of closure. A dreadful chapter in the boy’s life was coming to an end, and their leaving would signal the turning over of the final leaf.
When they eventually stepped outside, laden down with their haul, it was still raining.
The boy didn’t look back so much as once as they walked away.
* * *
They spent the next fortnight talking and playing games in between lavish – by
sans-morpher
standards – meals and sporadic spells of redecorating Shawn’s new room. Above all, the time was spent simply getting to know each other. David was impressed by the boy’s resilience. When they’d first met he’d envisioned a painful, protracted struggle to reach him through a haze of post-traumatic stress, but thankfully it wasn’t so. The boy effortlessly engaged with him, his de facto guardian, laughing at his feeble jokes and asking him a never-ending stream of questions. Although there were moments when he seemed to drift off, disconnecting from his surroundings, undoubtedly thinking black thoughts, moments were all they amounted to. He didn’t tend towards long periods of moroseness or introspection, nor did he appear to be frightened when they ventured outside; as long as they stayed together, often hand in hand, he appeared to be quite at ease. It was hard to believe he was dealing with the same kid who’d hid, crying and wailing, under a lorry, and who’d sat, stony-faced and lifeless, in his bath. Shawn had adjusted quickly to his changing circumstances, welcoming the good and accepting the unavoidable, displaying the wondrous adaptability of youth. In all likelihood, he had adapted to the whole nightmare of Armageddon in a way only a child could.
Any worries David had had about what had happened to the boy during the time he’d been alone faded away along with the thousand-yard glaucoma that had haunted his eyes, like scales falling from a snake’s eyes, revealing the renewed health beneath. He seemed to have stayed one step ahead of the zombies at every turn, more by luck than design, and for that he almost felt like thanking his Petri dish-gazing God. Even so, some topics of conversation brought the cold glaucoma back in full force, especially when he talked about members of his family or his pet dog Tammy, the black Labrador who’d been both adored and adoring, and whom his mother had killed with her bare hands the first day of the virus. Acyberneticism was also a subject that turned him glassy-eyed, something that David understood and accepted without question. He could feel the boy’s internal conflict, his awkwardness and embarrassment, his immature psyche branded with the shame of being different in the same way his had been. Such was Shawn’s discomfiture with their common affliction – now their common deliverer from death – that they barely spoke about it. When questioned about pills the boy just shrugged and went silent, eventually declaring that he “didn’t take them anyway”. David knew this was a lie, but didn’t pressure him, eager to avoid every topic Shawn found difficult lest he find himself groping around for a way of banishing the thousand-yard blankness again. They had all the time in the world to talk about such things when Shawn was ready.
Although more streetwise and grown-up than an ordinary kid his age, Shawn had lost none of the quixotic enthusiasm of youth, which was as infectious as the virus that had wiped out every other instance of it. He loved playing games; any type of game, but especially those based on numbers or words, which he excelled at. David had an old flat-screen games compendium that still worked, and the boy amazed him by consistently solving anagrams and working out sums before he could. In terms of physical games the best they could do was playing with a ball on the second-floor landing, an activity the boy seemed to enjoy nonetheless.
Getting Shawn’s weight back to normal came high on David’s list of priorities, and he spent more time preparing meals than he’d ever done in his life; the months spent alone hadn’t been conducive to cooking proper meals, and he had much to learn. He pottered about the kitchen, bouncing between a pile of old cookery books and his cooking appliances like a tennis ball between racquets, the boy watching the proceedings with hunger in his eyes and questions on his lips. Shawn would then be banished to the dining table five minutes before the serving of the food, which he would greet with wide eyes and clapping hands, wolfing it down gratefully, as amazed at the riches being bestowed upon him as Cedric in
Little Lord Fauntleroy
. For his part, David felt his appetite and his palate returning, and there was always the boy’s excited delight as reward for his efforts. For the first time in ages David found himself looking forward to mealtimes.
With Shawn’s input the second bedroom, so long neglected, soon took on a different look altogether: one of unapologetic boyishness. He changed the curtains and bedcover in favour of light-blue shades and arranged his action figures and dinosaurs on the windowsill, some facing out towards the zombie-strewn streets as if on watch. He rejected David’s suggestion of a bookcase, an item which had been a vital fixture of his own childhood. While his mobile computer containing his library of e-books had been his most prized possession, he’d still collected old-fashioned hard copies. There was something wonderful about them. The heaviness of them in his hands. The way the leaves turned. The smell of them. He’d been the epitome of an unhappiness-driven bookworm, treating his bookcase as if it were a shrine, the holy objects it contained the lined-up repositories of their authors’ imaginations. He hadn’t quite realised it at the time, but he’d been seeking to avoid reality via the classic ploy of engrossing oneself in the manifold escape hatches of fiction.
* * *
The days grew noticeably shorter and temperatures dropped, though it was still mild for the time of year. The zombies, of course, were oblivious to the changing seasons. They didn’t wrap up warm because there was no warmth left in them to lose. If the temperature had been below freezing they wouldn’t have even shivered.
The third week after the trip to the flat on Tennyson Road brought heavy rain, and David raised the possibility of going to the Lighthouse, a suggestion the boy jumped at when he discovered that David had left a note for him there; for some reason he was anxious to see it.
When they got there the note was just as it had been left. The boy peeled it from the window with great gentleness, as if it were an ancient manuscript that might flake into dust at the slightest mishandling. A grin played about his lips as he read and reread it, entranced. Then he looked up at its writer and said, “Thank you.”
Bemused, David said, “What for?”
The boy shrugged his shoulders and shook his blond head; even he couldn’t verbalise the what for. Clutching his letter, he ran off, clattering up the wooden steps to the first floor. David followed him. When he thought about it more, he realised the thank you had been for the simple act of sending a message, once so common an occurrence and now so rare. The message had been intended solely for the boy, something he hadn’t experienced in a long while, and therein lay the root of gratitude, like the way you felt towards an old friend who’d sent you a birthday card when all others had forgotten – the power of a few words addressed only to you.
On the first floor Shawn stood peering out of the drawing room window. “This is where I saw you first,” he said, looking in the same direction David had been, taking in the exchange of vantage points.
“It was the second time you’d seen me – remember?”
“Yes, I meant up close.”
David showed the record player to the boy, who somehow seemed acquainted with how the otherworldly contraption worked. A record was already on the turntable from his last visit, and after he’d put the needle to it the boy said shortly, “That’s Ella Fitzgerald.”
“That’s right. How did you know that?”
Shawn merely shrugged again and changed the subject. “They really didn’t have a morpher? Even before?”
“Nope. You’ll see for yourself.”
“If they liked all this old stuff so much, did they have an old car that works too?”
David was momentarily taken aback. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’d have been driving around in it looking for you if they did.”
He had to admit it was something he hadn’t really thought about, but it stood to reason: if anyone was going to own a vintage, petrol-fuelled car it would be the owners of this place. Maybe it was in a garage nearby, waiting to be discovered as the house had been, clues to its whereabouts squirrelled away if only you knew where to look.
Shawn hurried off, intent on checking out the other floors.
“What about the grand tour I was going to give you?” David called after him.
“I just want a quick look first,” he called back.
David left the music playing and went downstairs to the fill the holdall with items from the kitchen’s ever-dwindling supplies. Cooking for two, and cooking so well, had meant a dramatic change in his food-gathering routine. If he didn’t keep on top of it they’d be in serious trouble, even if Shawn proclaimed every time they ate that he was sitting down to a banquet that would have sustained him for several days during his time alone. There was no telling how much more malnutrition his system could take before he succumbed to some biological ailment, especially in the absence of prophylactic pills.
He’d just slammed a cupboard door shut when something caused him to freeze, his eyes staring off towards the front of the house. Drifting from upstairs was a faint sound; a moment passed before he could separate it from the music, and another before he understood what it was.
It was the sound of the boy screaming.
David’s senses told him that his feet were carrying him fast – faster than he could remember, and there’d been times in the recent past when he’d had to
move
– while his brain told him something else: that he was moving in slow motion, slower than if he’d been running through water, and far too slowly to save the boy. The minimal reassurance he gleaned from each stair as it passed by beneath his feet was tempered by the fact that another replaced it. Ella was singing
That Old Black Magic
as he passed the drawing room, her voice swelling and then receding beneath him, being replaced by the boy’s cry for help, which to his ears was one long, unbroken ululation that made the back of his neck tingle. It proves he’s still alive, he thought fleetingly. Keep screaming, little man. For God’s sake keep screaming.
When he reached the third floor he was out of breath but barely noticed it. The boy’s scream was coming from the first room, the small bedroom. Hyper-alert, he immediately took in what was going on. A male zombie stood with its back to him, its arms outstretched towards the boy, who was crouched on top of a wardrobe, his face bright red and streaming with tears of fear as he kicked out at his attacker. Fortunately, the zombie was shorter than average, but it was no less fearsome for it.
David went to grab the rolling pin – and realised it wasn’t there.
Shit!
It was still in his jacket pocket, and he’d taken the jacket off downstairs. The gun was down there too. His eyes cast around frantically for an alternative weapon and locked onto one: an ornate brass candlestick sitting on a windowsill – yet another gift from the house’s owners. He grabbed it and stepped into the room. The zombie didn’t notice him and kept groping for the boy, a hiss of seeming agitation emerging from its mouth as its gaunt, jagged-nailed hands fought for purchase on the boy’s flailing legs. David moved behind it and raised the candlestick, gripping it by the holder so the weighted base would do the damage. He stood poised, the peculiar stench of the thing assailing his nostrils. It was the perfect opportunity to strike while it was unawares, but something stayed his hand. For some reason attacking from behind felt wrong – dishonourable almost, as if such a concept as honour applied to these bastard things. Maybe it was just because the boy was there; attacking from behind ran the risk of lowering the boy’s estimation of him. But deeper down was the desire, creeping and unspeakable but undeniably there, to see its face as he finished it off, to revel in its demise.
“HEY!” he bellowed.
The zombie turned, its sick, gimlet-eyed gaze falling across him like the shadow of a tombstone. Man and former man regarded each other. David stared into its eyes, both transfixed and repulsed. Looking into the eyes of a zombie was like looking into twin pools of evil; it was painful and soul-destroying, the Medusa-like stare turning a piece of your soul to stone with every passing second, hardening it into a lifeless mass, a state as irredeemable as the eyes’ owner itself. The boy stopped screaming, and the zombie opened its cavernous mouth and said something; it sounded like “who?”, but it might have been a thousand other things or nothing at all.
David let loose with the candlestick, swinging with all his strength. Brass struck skull, producing a terrible bone-cracking sound, and the zombie’s legs went from under it. David continued the attack as it fell to the floor. He clubbed it furiously about the head with a regular rhythm like a jackhammer, the candlestick transcribing a great arc through the air, aiming for the source of all the trouble: the zombie’s virus-addled brain. He kept on pummelling as it lay prone, not relenting even after it had stopped moving, ignorant of the blood and gore and the boy’s tears, his mind hollering things like “
how dare you lay a finger on my boy, you disgusting fucking thing
”, and the more prosaic “
die, die, die!
” He might have been raining down blows on a cockroach for all the emotion he felt for the creature beneath them. He was conscious of nothing but the fact that he was an avenging angel, empowered by his need to protect the boy, insensible with indignant fury. Meanwhile, two floors below, Ella was now gliding through her rendition of
I’ve Got The World On A String
, the sound of it seeping through the floorboards, its graceful beauty contrasting horribly with the violence going on in the room, adding to the surreal horror of it all.