“Yeah, people always react like that. I was an engineer. Astronautical. I dreamt of building space ships. It turned out that there wasn’t much call for that kind of thing, but people always need their toilets unblocked.”
“But how do we get the water out?” Jay asked.
“That’s simple enough,” she replied, standing up. “We just need a power supply. A car battery will do it. Do you think the pavilion has toilets?”
“Yes, in the changing rooms.”
“That’s something. I think, with a bit of work, we can isolate that block. The water’s not going to be clean, but I can get it coming out of the tap.”
“What about the noise?” Jay asked.
“Noise?”
“Because of the undead,” he added.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, but” she added, “we can insulate the walls here easily enough.”
“And what if the pump breaks?” Nilda asked.
“Well…” Tracy blew air out through her teeth. Nilda almost smiled. “It’s not a complicated system. We can easily replace the electric motor with a hand pump.”
“So we’ve got water,” Mark said.
“And since I’ve got a stove, perhaps now would be a good time to have a cup of tea.” Sebastian suggested. “And get to know one another.”
“What is it with you and tea?” Jay asked.
“I’m an Englishman,” Sebastian said. “It’s hardly an apocalypse whilst you still have tea and the wherewithal to brew it. Perhaps we should go back outside so we can see anything that approaches.”
“I doubt anyone will,” Mark said. “It’s unlikely the government will come back any time soon. It’ll be months before those enclaves are anything but chaos and disorder.”
“I didn’t mean the government,” Sebastian said. They went back outside, and whilst they waited for the water to boil, he told them what he’d seen at the Muster Point.
“Murdered? I can’t believe it,” Mark said.
“It’s true,” Sebastian said. “There’ll be no one coming. Or we have to hope there won’t be.”
“So we’re on our own,” Tracy said.
The conversation stalled until the tea had been poured.
“We’ve been cooking on an old barbecue,” Mark said. “It works well enough, but everything tastes of smoke.”
“He was never very good at outdoor cooking,” Tracy said, stretching her legs. “Or indoor cooking, come to that.”
Mark shrugged affably. Their good-natured bickering tugged at Nilda’s memory, bringing up memories she’d long tried to bury.
“You think we can redirect the water to the pitches?” Jay asked, pointing at the green field interspersed with mud.
“Probably,” Tracy said. “Why?”
“Because that’s where we’re going to grow all the food,” he replied.
“Well, we’ve uh…” Mark glanced at Tracy.
“We’ve got food,” she said. “We’ve been raiding the houses I used to get emergency call-outs to which I remembered had a second freezer. I figured if they stocked up on frozen food, it was likely they’d have kept a store of cans and packets as well. Mostly, I was right. We’re happy to share. Split five ways it should still last us a couple weeks.”
“Oh, no. We’ve got food for now,” Jay said. Nilda gritted her teeth. “I meant for the autumn and winter. But,” he added, “is yours human food?”
“What do you mean?” Tracy asked with genuine suspicion.
“All we’ve got—”
“We’ve been raiding the vet’s and pet food stores. We’ve got cat food, dog food, bird food. Pet food, that’s what he means,” Nilda said quickly.
“Oh,” Tracy nodded, relieved understanding clear on her face.
“I didn’t think of that,” Mark said. “But food’s food, right? What does it matter which animal is on the tin?”
“So, we’re alright for food and water,” Jay said. “What else do we need?”
“We should check the Refectory. That’s the dining hall,” Sebastian added. “I doubt we’ll find anything to eat, but there’ll be pots and pans there. And we’ll find clothes in the boarding houses. Men’s and boys’ clothes, but that would do in a pinch. It’s the library that will be of most use. All those textbooks on how civilisations developed. On how our ancestors lived in the ages before electricity. Yes, those will be a real boon.”
“So this might work, then,” Mark said, slowly. “The five of us, here, ploughing up the fields, growing food. We’ll work together. Agreed?”
Jay and Sebastian looked at Nilda.
“Yes,” she said, trying not to show the doubt she felt.
“Then there’s no point hanging around,” Tracy said, standing up, “I’ll need my tools if I’m going to get that pump working.”
Nilda nodded. “And we better go back and start ferrying up the food. We’ll… Well, I suppose we’ll see you later.”
“We won’t bring all the food back with us,” Nilda said when they were a mile away from the school.
“You don’t trust them?” Sebastian asked.
“I wouldn’t go so far as saying I distrusted them,” she replied, “but I don’t trust anyone right now. We’ll leave a third of the tins upstairs under the floorboards. If this all goes wrong, then we’ll still have a few months of supplies. We’ll just say that we’ve cleared out all the houses around there, and there’ll be no reason for them to investigate too hard.”
“Others might,” Jay said.
“They might,” Nilda said, thinking about Rob. He was a problem that would have to be dealt with. “We can’t plan for every eventuality, but we can try.”
When they reached the house Nilda went upstairs, pulled up the floorboards and began hiding one third of the tins. Jay and Sebastian started packing the rest into bags.
“It’ll take an entire day to move all of these,” Sebastian said, when Nilda returned downstairs having finished hiding one third of the tinned food. All of the bags were now filled, but the kitchen and living room were still cluttered with cans and packets.
“Not if we get Mark and Tracy to help,” Jay said. “And why shouldn’t we? I mean, the rest of the food’s been hidden, right? And if you’re worried they’ll find out where the house is, well, if we’re just going back and forth tomorrow, they could easily follow us.”
“He’s got a point,” Sebastian said. “The hidden food notwithstanding, you have to trust someone sooner or later.”
“You said that the night before you went on the evacuation,” she reminded him. “But, okay. Better to get it done quickly.”
Their bikes heavily laden, they cycled slowly away from the terrace. Jay occasionally stopped to pick up a discarded phone. Nilda tried to stop him the first few times, but he’d pointed out that if it was unlocked, he could watch whatever videos and listen to whatever music had been left on it, at least until the battery ran out.
“It’s like when I was teaching him to ride,” Nilda said. She and Sebastian had stopped at another junction, waiting for Jay to catch up.
“You taught him yourself?” Sebastian asked. “You never told me what happened to—” Sebastian began, but was cut short by a yell from back down the road. They turned to look. Jay had nearly fallen off his bike. Both his feet were on the ground as he pushed, rather than pedalled, his way along the road. His frantic desperation was as clear as the reason for it.
A man - no, Nilda realised, a zombie - had half fallen through the hedge just behind her son. She threw off the bags hanging from her handlebars and pedalled furiously back down the road. She’d made it twenty yards before Jay remembered the pedals. A scant few seconds later, he shot past her.
“Seb!” she barked over her shoulder, after a moment’s frantic calculation. “Catch him!”
“What about you?” Sebastian called back.
“Just go!” she yelled. The man turned and followed after her son.
Nilda stopped the bike in the middle of the road, two houses from the creature.
It was caught in the hedge. As it thrashed, red-brown pus oozed out of great rips in its face where branches had torn through its skin. It was monstrous, yet had to have been human only a few days before. She dismounted, letting her bike fall to the ground, and pulled the cricket bat out from the bag over her shoulder. It seemed like a wholly inadequate weapon to her now.
Slowly, she walked down the street towards the zombie. As she approached, its writhing became more manic. When she was twenty feet away, there was a cracking of branches and a tearing of soil as the creature’s violent flailing ripped the bush, roots and all, out of the ground. The zombie tumbled over the low wall and out onto the road. She gripped the bat, then re-gripped it, trying to find reassurance in its heft.
The creature tried to stand. No, she realised. Its legs kicked, and its hands clawed. It was trying to walk towards her, with no comprehension that it had to stand up first.
She was ten feet away when, with an accidentally timed pivot of its arms and legs, the creature got to its knees. She was five feet away when it staggered upright. Never taking her eyes off the zombie, she brought the bat up and over her head and swung it into the creature’s face. Bone broke. Teeth flew. The zombie staggered backwards, but it didn’t fall. She swung again. This time the creature’s out-flung arm took the brunt of the blow. Its forearm snapped, white bone stabbed out through the remains of a woollen shirt. There was no pain to distract the creature as it swung its arm forward again. Nilda skipped backwards out of range of its clawing fingers. The broken arm sailed harmlessly past, brown pus oozed out of skin pierced by jagged bone to splatter down onto the pavement.
Nilda backed away, changed her grip, and swung at the creature’s legs. The bat smashed into its kneecap, and the creature fell forward. Nilda jumped to get out of the way, pivoted in mid-air, and brought the bat down on the zombie’s spine. There was a sickening crunch of bone. She brought it down again on its neck and then on its skull, again and again until she was beating blood and brain into the asphalt.
Then she stopped and backed away from the twice-dead creature. Taking long slow breaths, trying to calm her racing heart, she looked around. She listened. Nothing. She was alone.
She looked at the bat. It was covered in gore. Splinters of wood stuck out from the side, and that brownish pus had seeped into the cracks. There would be no way of cleaning it. She tossed it aside.
Her hands were covered in spots of that same red-brown blood. So was her jacket. She ripped it off, wiped her hands clean on the lining, and threw it away. Cold air cut through her as she returned to the bike and headed back to the school. She’d made it a street and a half before meeting Jay and Sebastian heading back towards her.
“Are you alright?” Jay asked, relief mixing with embarrassment.
“I’m fine. Running was the right thing to do. You just ran a bit too far, a bit too fast.”
“And you?” Sebastian asked. “What happened?”
“It’s dead. But when they said destroy the brain, they really meant it. You have to cave their skulls in. The creatures are impossible. They have no right, no reason to live. It’s…” She saw the look on her son’s face. “I had to,” she said. “We couldn’t leave it there. It’s between the house and the school. It had to be done. And better it were done quickly. Now, let’s get this stuff to the school.”
There was no sign of Mark or Tracy when they arrived.
“You unpack those bags,” Nilda said. “I want to find some bleach and clean my hands properly.”
“What now?” Jay asked, when she’d returned and they had stacked the tins inside the pavilion.
“Now we go back. We have to get that food.”
When they returned after the second trip, they found the other two walking along the road towards them; each wore an overloaded backpack, with another bag in one hand, and a crowbar in the other.
“You didn’t cycle?” Sebastian asked.
“I don’t know how, alright?” Mark said, testily. From his tone they guessed this was a topic the couple had discussed a lot that day. “And I didn’t think this was the time to…” He finally noticed Nilda’s expression “What happened?”
“Zombies,” she said. “Or one of them. About a mile from here.”
They looked around the school, at the vast buildings they had yet to ensure were empty, then at the gates. They suddenly didn’t seem as high as they had a moment before.
Part 2 - Fortification
Cumbria, and Dumfries & Galloway
13
th
March
“We need weapons,” Nilda said.
They had spent a fraught two hours the previous day going through the school, room by room, confirming it was empty. They’d then had a frantic three hours going back and forth collecting food from the terrace. Even with the five of them - Mark pushing himself along as much as he was pedalling - they’d not collected it all.
“Where do we look?” Mark asked. “A farm? I doubt there will be any left in the police station. Though since they had the police all kitted out with Army rifles there might be.”
“No,” Nilda said flatly. “Guns would be useless once we ran out of ammunition, and where would we find any more? That’s not to mention the noise. I was thinking more like spears and swords.”
“Or bows,” Jay suggested.
“They need as much practice as a rifle does,” Sebastian said. “More, really, as you’d have to be good enough to get an arrow right through a creature’s eye socket.”
Jay nodded slowly. A small voice inside Nilda cried at how quickly her son seemed to have embraced the violence of their new world.
“Swords and spears, where do we find those?” Tracy asked. She looked at Sebastian; so did everyone else.
“Well,” he said slowly. “Museums and country houses are the two obvious places. But those are antiques. They may be more rust than metal. We could spend a whole day searching and not find anything actually usable. I think we’re better off sticking with what we know.”
“Tools,” Tracy said. “That’s what we know. Axes and crowbars. And a manual pump would be useful for when the batteries die. Seems like the obvious place to try would be the fire station.”
The fire engines were gone. The station appeared hurriedly abandoned.
“This coat,” Nilda said, taking a jacket from the peg. “Do you think it’s bite proof?”
“Probably,” Sebastian said. “If it’s designed not to rip or tear when caught by jagged debris.”
“Good enough. Here, Jay. Put this on.” She threw it to her son. He did, without hesitation. She took one down for herself.
“Here. Found it,” Mark said, after he’d levered off the bolts to a long metal cupboard. “This is what we want. Fire axes and crowbars. And not the kind you’d find in any old store.”
They each took one, improvising slings and harnesses to carry them.
“Might as well have some spares,” Nilda said, as she took down another axe and strapped it on to the back of the bike. “In fact,” she added as she took down a third, “we might as well take them all.”
“Did you find the pump?” Jay asked Tracy.
“No. I think they must keep them on the engines. Which, I guess, makes sense. It’s not a problem for now, and honestly, we can just as easily make one. What about first aid kits?”
“There was only the one left,” Sebastian said.
“We’ll need more than that,” Tracy said.
“We’ve got some supplies from the veterinarian’s,” Nilda said. “Though not much.”
“Well, what about the hospital?” Mark asked. “Have you tried there?”
“Not yet,” Nilda said. “I figured they’d have taken everything of use.”
“Worth a look though, don’t you think?”
It was only a short distance from the fire station to the town’s small hospital. To appease Mark, they walked, pushing their bikes with them. They kept quiet, their eyes open. At each house they passed, Nilda couldn’t help be aware that their owners were probably dead, and the homes would now be forever vacant. But it wasn’t the loss of life that was bothering her. The only thing that mattered was keeping Jay safe. Each empty house she saw represented another family of the undead that would have to be killed before her son could have a normal life. So lost was she in her thoughts, she didn’t notice the noises until they had rounded a corner.
“Oh no,” she murmured, too softly for the others to hear. It didn’t matter. They had seen the danger. Up ahead, the road branched. At the junction was a detached house. Clawing at the doors, their arms already pushing through the broken window were nine of the undead.
“Back. Let’s go,” Sebastian whispered. “Quietly!”
They pushed their bicycles away and behind a wall.
“Did they see us?” Jay asked, too loudly.
“Shh!” Nilda said, gripping his shoulders.
“No,” Tracy said, peering around the corner.
“Okay, so we find another way back to the school,” Jay said.
“No,” Sebastian said. “There’s someone in that house. There has to be. Why else would those creatures be trying to get in?”
“You want to go and help them?” Mark asked.
“Do we have a choice?” Sebastian replied. “If you were trapped wouldn’t you want us to help you?”
“No, we don’t have a choice,” Nilda said. “The undead won’t go away. We deal with them now so we won’t have to do it later. Listen, Jay, I want you to stay here.”
“No way,” he said, though his protest was half-hearted.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “You stay here. We’re going to go in and try to kill them, but if we can’t, we’ll run back here and cycle away. Just make sure the zombies don’t follow you back to the school. Understand?”
Leaving Jay with the bikes, she headed towards the house. The others followed. She tested her grip. The axe was well balanced but heavy. When she was fifty yards away she called out.
“Hey!”
One of the creatures turned. She yelled again. The others joined in. For a moment the zombies seemed uncertain, torn between the prey that was close-by but difficult to reach, and that which was out in the open but further away.
Nilda wondered, as the creatures stumbled away from the house, whether they really did think like that, whether there was any spark of reason left in them, or whether they were acting on instinct alone.
And then there was no time for either thought or doubt. The first of the zombies was ten yards away. Its face was scarred, the nose flattened and broken. Its clothes were shredded as if it had fallen through glass. She stared at its forehead - she didn’t want to look in its eyes. She swung the axe up and down. It crushed through the creature’s skull, cleaving into its neck. She pulled it out, taking a step backwards. The zombie fell, but there was another just behind it. There wasn’t time to swing. She punched the axe head forward into the creature’s face. It stumbled with the impact. She swung up and down, the blade chopped through the zombie’s collarbone, deep into its chest. The blade stuck, the creature fell, but it kept moving. She grabbed the crowbar from her belt, took a step forward, and smashed it down on its skull.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sebastian swing the sword. He mistimed the blow. The blade bounced across the zombie’s head, neatly scalping it. Sebastian lost his grip. The sword flew out of his hand, skittering across the street. The old teacher’s gaze automatically followed the weapon, and then the zombie was on him. Its flailing arms knocked him to the ground. Sebastian fell on his back, the snarling creature on top. Nilda started to run. She saw the creature snap at Sebastian’s face. She could see him struggling, his arms trembling as he held the zombie back. He didn’t have the strength to hold back that undead weight.
Then, out of nowhere, Jay came running up the street. He grabbed the sword from the ground. One hand gripping the hilt, the other around the pommel, he took another two leaping strides and swung the blade into the creature’s neck. It stuck. Momentum carried the creature off Sebastian, taking the sword with it. Jay didn’t pause, he leapt over the older man, grabbed the sword and pulled and twisted, nearly decapitating the zombie. He changed his grip and stabbed the blade down through the creature’s temple. Nilda had time to notice the brown red ooze dripping from the blade as he pulled it out, seconds before she saw another creature heading for her son. Still running, she took a skipping half step and dived forward, knocking the creature to the ground. It thrashed underneath her as she punched and pushed and tried to find the purchase to swing the crowbar. And then, its edge still dripping brown blood, the sword plunged down into the zombie’s eye, inches from her face. The creature stopped moving.
“Come on, Mum, get up! Quick!” Jay said, pulling her to her feet.
She spared a glance at him. He seemed fine but… different. She didn’t have time to think about that. She looked towards the house, in time to see Tracy swing her axe into a zombie’s legs, then Mark stepped forward, bringing his down on its skull. Another creature, messily decapitated, lay a few yards from them. She looked around for the other three. They were still by the house.
A broad-shouldered man, with a flat stomach hidden under a potbelly, stood in the doorway. A poker was in one hand, a dead zombie at his feet, with two more trying to claw their way in. Nilda changed her grip as she sprinted towards the house. Holding the crowbar out in front, she speared it forwards, using her weight and momentum to smash through bone. The zombie’s skull was crushed. The creature collapsed.
Now only facing one foe, the man swung his poker down. It narrowly missed Nilda before impacting against the zombie’s shoulder with enough force to knock it to its knees. She ducked out the way at the same time as Mark barged past, swinging his axe down on the fallen creature’s head. Nilda looked around again. Only the living were still moving.
“Jay, are you okay?” she asked, walking quickly over to him.
“I’m alright,” he said with a shrug. The sword was still in his hands.
“Sebastian?”
“Fine. I’m fine. Just a little… I wasn’t, uh… I’m fine,” he wheezed.
She glanced at Mark and Tracy, then at the man with the poker.
“Thank you,” the man said. “I knew someone would come along. I knew we’d made the right choice. Wasn’t expecting firemen. I thought they’d send the Army.”
Nilda glanced down at the firefighter’s jacket she was wearing.
“We took these from the fire station half an hour ago,” she said simply. “There’s no help coming. We’re on our own.”
“You’re not part of some relief column?” the man asked, disbelief battling despair on his face.
“There won’t be one,” Sebastian said. “I went on the evacuation. The vaccine was a poison they used to cull the population. I think they thought if there were no people, there would be no zombies. It hasn’t worked.” He shrugged, and turned to follow Nilda.
“Wait. Where are you going?” the man called out.
“The hospital. There might be supplies there.”
“There isn’t. That’s where we went and we barely escaped. These creatures followed us. That’s how we ended up here.”
“We?”
The man nodded, then turned to the house.
“Sylvia!” he bellowed. A woman came out, pushing two children in front. Nilda guessed their ages somewhere between seven and nine. She didn’t ask. She just turned and walked down the road. Jay followed.
“What’s wrong, Mum?” he asked.
“There were two adults in that house, with eight undead outside the front door. The front door, Jay, not the back. They let themselves be trapped, and when it came to it, only that man came out to help in the fight. And now they’re going to come with us. We can’t stop them.”
“But if everyone does their bit, if we work together, then it’s four more people to share the work.”
“The two children will be nothing more than two extra mouths eating our food. And they’ll need protecting, which means one less person doing something useful.”
“So what are you saying?” he stormed. “You’d rather we’d just left those kids to die?”
“No, Jay, of course not,” she replied, shaking her head. “But if it comes to a choice between you and anyone else, that’s no choice at all.”
It was Jay’s turn to shake his head, and then he walked off, heading towards Sebastian. He held out the sword to the older man.
“Oh no, I think that’s yours,” Sebastian insisted. “You made far better use of it than I did. Here.” He unbuckled the scabbard he’d improvised and handed it to Jay. “Now, what advice can I give you? The pointed end goes first, and remember that it is pointed. That’s a stabbing blade not a hacking one. Twist when it goes in, you don’t want it to become stuck again. Keep it clean. Keep it sharp. More than that, learn from my mistake; try and keep a hold of it.”
And another little part of Nilda’s soul ached at her son’s solemn expression as he sheathed the sword.
Without discussion, the plan of going to the hospital was put on hold, and they headed back to the school. This new family were the Harpers; Andrew, Sylvia, Chantelle aged eight, and Christof aged nine. They had driven from Kendal, heading north. Not to anywhere in particular, just with a vague idea that things would be better in Scotland. Nilda couldn’t quite understand why they had gone to the hospital, but that was where they had run out of fuel. She found it telling that they had left without either a set destination or the petrol to reach it. There was more to the story, something to do with neighbours and the days leading up to the evacuation. She tuned it out. Her mind was focused on the undead, on her son, and what she would need to do next to ensure he stayed alive.