A minute’s effort and the family was in our home after they had pulled their Citroen onto the narrow verge opposite the gate, virtually in the trees. I recognised them from the village, Nick and Jenny Williams and their three children: Rob, the eldest at ten years of age, and his two sisters, Sally and Jayne.
We had the space and the supplies. We had the chance to help and, yes, the thought of our parents pleased at the action we took played a part. While Nick and Jenny settled in, Danny taught the kids how to play his games, and they seemed happy.
It had been a little around four when the Williams family arrived, and earlier, around midday, when the early reports had come in, when I had watched the first glimpses of the escalation of the situation via the internet. We had seen and heard cars fleeing Usk all day, idiots blatantly disobeying the advice being offered by the authorities. Lock the doors and settle in, that was the message. With the gates sealed, it was a no-brainer; be safe and stay safe.
I was standing outside the front door, just getting some air to alleviate the claustrophobia I was starting to feel with the house being so full. I enjoyed the quiet for all of two minutes before Nick joined me. The driveway was about ten square metres, covered in chippings with a double garage, its back wall actually part of the boundary perimeter to the left of the house from where I was stood.
Our house was old, with five large bedrooms and a whole series of lounges, dining rooms, and studies downstairs. It was made out of huge, grey slabs and looked a little like a picture a child would draw of a house, but on a dark and drizzly day. Both Danny and I had en suites and the general bathroom was huge. The Williams family was given the use of the two spare rooms.
I turned to face Nick. ‘So how come you decided to leave the village? You know, going against the orders and all that? Nothing would make me run. I mean it. Nothing.’
The man glanced up at me. He was short with small, round glasses, and although he had lived in Usk for quite some time, he had never fully lost his Liverpool accent, which meant he had sharp urgency about him when he spoke to me.
‘You haven’t seen them. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Nick was interrupted by a rattle from the gate. He looked over and gasped. He pointed, taking an instinctive step back over the threshold and into the house. I followed his stare and realised he was right; I hadn’t seen them, but now I had, and all I wanted to do was run.
I couldn’t blink. I could feel my eyes drying out, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His left arm gripped one of the metal struts of the gate. His right hung limply at his side, severed at the elbow. It hadn’t been cut off, it had been torn away, and the ragged flesh of what was left of his bicep was covered in black, congealed blood. A shard of bone poked through the mangled mass of flesh.
Surely such a wound should still be bleeding?
The clothing, jeans and a white shirt, were torn in other places, and as my gaze drifted up I saw he had a chunk missing from his neck. His face…
I pulled my eyes from him and turned and vomited on the gravel drive. This was someone I knew. I’d seen him around Usk, at the petrol station, in the shop. He shook the gate, released his grip, took hold and shook once more, unable to understand why it wasn’t opening for him. His whole body vibrated with the exertion. Then he looked across the bonnet of the Range Rover and saw us, stretched his mouth wide and let out the noise that surely, across the country, was chilling people to the bone. It was somewhere between a growl and a moan, and it intensified as he began to shake even harder at the gate.
While I was hypnotised, Nick fled inside and slammed my own front door in my face. Suddenly, it was the open, exposed space around me making me feel claustrophobic. I began to panic. I clawed at the door, still unable to take my eyes off him, off it. The door flew open and I screamed into Danny’s face as he pulled me inside.
* * *
‘You’ve gotta check this out, bro, seriously.’
Danny had Sky News on. The volume had been pumped up to drown out the wailing of what was left of the man at the gate. The reporter on screen was talking about unprecedented acts of violence breaking out across the whole country. Something about an infection, a virus, that was making normal people aggressive, that if you were bitten, you became like them. First thoughts were that whatever it was could be spread via saliva.
I couldn’t take in what was being said; I wasn’t even hearing the words coming from the television. A state of emergency had been declared. The military had been mobilised and everyone was to stay inside. I looked at Danny. He had a grin on his face that made him look insane. He was inches from hysteria.
Nick and Jenny had taken their kids away from the screen, which was now showing armed police shooting at an advancing mob. Only some fell, the rest kept walking forward, arms by their sides, making no attempt to protect themselves or avoid the shots. Finally, the police dropped back and the clip ended with a gloved hand of an officer shoving the lens of the camera backwards. The studio reporter, a middle aged man with no tie, no makeup, and an air of desperation, spoke without the usual eloquence of a newscaster;
‘And this scene is mirrored all across Britain tonight. Please stay in your homes. Barricade yourselves in. Do not try to reach family or friends. The government has launched counterterrorism measures and will have the situation under control in due course. Once again, it would appear that Britain is in the grip of a protracted and violent attack of some sort. We do not know who or what has caused this, but for now, consider your own safety and we will update you when we can.’
I hit the mute button on the remote and sat on the floor. Danny’s grin subsided and he became my baby brother again, the little guy I would always look out for, the person who had been at the forefront of every decision I had made over the last three years.
Had I given up the fun of my teenage years to be there for him?
Maybe.
Would I change a single moment?
Never.
He crumpled down on the floor next to me and rested his head on my shoulder. I put my arm around him and pulled him close, and we sat there in front of the television.
‘We’ll be okay, buddy,’ I murmured. ‘We’re safe here. By the time that gate gives out, this will all be over.’
I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince, me or my little brother.
Let’s get something straight: the way the movies depict the end of the world is not how it actually goes down. The media kept pumping out the news, so we were constantly aware of what was happening. The internet, water, gas, electricity supplies, they were never in danger of failing. Our telephone was out, but that turned out to be a localised issue, and all the mobile phone networks were still giving full coverage. The government had an action plan, a response to the situation, and they were implementing their control measures almost immediately. There was a confidence that it was not a question of
would we be rescued
; it was simply a matter of
when
.
We had plenty to do in order to ensure our minds didn’t stray too much to the terrors of the outside world. Nick and Jenny’s three children played games, watched movies, and, surprisingly, slept pretty well—surprising because the noises from outside never abated. Mostly it was moaning, but every now and then a more frenzied howl would stop us all in our tracks. We kept the children upstairs, mainly in Danny’s room where his multimedia nerve centre set up. His room was at the back of the house, so it meant that if the volume was kept up loud enough, they didn’t have to hear the constant cacophony from the front gate.
The internet was awash with rumours, but the BBC delivered a measured update on the hour, every hour. We were the only country where this was taking place, and whilst help was arriving from other nations, it was a one-way street; Britain had been sealed off from the rest of the world. The World Health Organisation apparently had a bunch of experts in a room in Geneva with a specially designed search engine that picked up on any potential outbreaks from news reports across the planet.
According to them, so far we were alone in this. The Global Alert and Response network was working closely with epidemiologists in Britain to nail the source of the problem and try to shut it down. It would seem that all of the first cases stemmed from a flight from New York into Heathrow, but that was as much as they were giving us right now. The military had a key role in control and quarantine of those infected.
Nick, Jenny and I had sat for hours, gleaning as much information as possible while Danny took the role of child’s entertainer. He was good at it, too, but then Robbie, Sally and Jayne liked most of the same things he did. He only started paying attention when a special announcement was put out across all channels at the same time.
We kept the curtains to the lounge closed. The room was off to the left of the house and therefore the closest to the front gate, so we didn’t want the children wandering up to the window when they were down here to be greeted by that
thing
in front of our house. There were three big, deep, comfortable sofas, none matching, centred on a massive television. Along the left hand wall were bookshelves with a wide array of titles from technical manuals to sporting biographies. Halfway along was the now-disused open fireplace, blocked up because squirrels and birds would get trapped and die in there, filling the house with a putrid stench. The room had two doors, one leading to the stairs, and the other, to the back of the room, leading into the kitchen.
Although there was also a dining room and Dad’s study downstairs with all his historical memorabilia, as well as a loo, this was the room that had always been occupied the most, had always been the centre of the house and full of vibrant life. With the windows covered and the lights off, however, it was a dark and eerie place, the glare from the television screen casting strange moving shadows upon the walls and floor. In every dark movement, especially on the uneven surface of the bookcases, I saw that hand rise up and shake the bar of the gate.
A change on the television screen brought my attention back into the room. I recognised the newscaster; she was the one who always popped up in the middle of dangerous conflict zones.
‘Thanks to ongoing investigations, we are now able to bring you up-to-date information on the situation engulfing Britain,’ she announced. ‘Do not approach any individual that you suspect has been infected. They will be highly contagious and direct contact must be avoided. The incubation period varies according to the individual, but when symptoms occur, they are severe, and as of this moment, there is no cure. First, those infected will become faint and may black out. This is followed by what most of us have already witnessed: extreme violence. If a member of your party, whether family or friend, becomes infected, you need to isolate them immediately and restrain them if possible.
‘There appears to be no other way to stop the infected except to inflict damage to the brain. Help will be with you all soon, but you must remain calm, stay inside, and ensure that the infected cannot gain access to you. We will keep you updated when we can, but for now, keep safe.’
As if on cue, the creature at the gate let out a roar. We all jumped.
The screen went black and Danny sprinted out of the room. Jenny made to follow him, but I raised a hand to stop her. I knew him too well; if he was truly upset, he’d want to be left alone. His footsteps thundered up the stairs, but within seconds he was back down again. He had a manic look on his face and an armful of DVD cases and books.
‘Zombies!’ he shouted, and dropped his bounty onto the floor.
Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later
, novels by Max Brooks and David Wellington; Danny took one of the disks out of its case and fed it into the player.
‘I’m telling you, the dead have risen, guys. It’s just like in the movies, look.’
He had fast-forwarded to a scene where dead bodies sat up from their ambulance gurneys and attacked the medical staff wheeling them out of a block of flats. The police opened fire, but they kept advancing until one of the cops pulled off a headshot and the reanimated corpse, with a spurt of crimson blood, went down for good. Danny paused the movie just as a second corpse was hit in the shoulder and spun away from the camera.
‘See’, he said. ‘Head shots, blank looks, a desire to eat human flesh.’
I was glad the kids had stayed upstairs.
‘For crying out loud Danny, we don’t know they eat flesh.’
‘Yes we do,’ said Jenny. ‘We saw it happening. We saw our neighbours get bitten. They just…’ she trailed off, and Nick rushed to her, wrapped his arms around her.
‘I don’t care what they are,’ he said, his gaze drifting towards the stairs, clearly thinking of his children. ‘I’m just glad we’re in here.’
* * *
Within the hour, Nick’s external calm broke. I don’t blame him. I would have punched Danny, too. Nick and I had been in the lounge, trawling through the channels to find the latest updates. Apparently the royal family had been in the process of evacuation to a safe venue when the Queen collapsed. Some reports said she’d suffered a heart attack and had actually died, while others claimed that it was just a sign of stress and that she was going to be okay. Turned out it was the former.
Jenny called from the top of the stairs, asking if the children were with us. We were both on our feet in a second and in the hallway by the time she was halfway down from the upper floor. We could hear laughter, which for the shortest time made us all smile and breathe again, until we realised the sound had come from outside. I flung open the front door and took in everything in a split second.
There were now ten of the infected at the gate. They stood there, groaning, but hardly moving, just rocking from one foot onto the next. Rob, Sally, and Jayne stood about one and a half metres from the Range Rover, while my genius brother perched on the bonnet with the heavy, decorative sword from our father’s study wall in his hands, stabbing at the faces of those the other side of the gate.