I Dream of Zombies (9 page)

At the crack of dawn, Tommy packed his stuff into the back of his car and drove off towards Birmingham. Not one for goodbyes, even temporary ones, he simply left a short, scribbled note in the kitchen. The roads seemed busier than usual, as if many people had the same idea: get out of London and fast. Sitting in yet another traffic jam, Tommy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and turned on the radio. Switching channels, he grimaced as yet another sad driver hooted his horn behind him.
What is the point, man?
Tommy hadn’t got anywhere near the M25, yet it seemed as though he had been on the road for hours. Hitting a dance music station, he scowled until he found some classic rock.

Leaning back in his
seat, he glanced outside. Some people were going about their business, heading to work as usual, except for the drivers who were not going anywhere it seemed. But there were noticeably fewer pedestrians. He guessed that many had taken their holidays and were leaving the city, if they had not done so already. Tommy checked his mobile phone for messages, but found none, so he drummed his fingers again before blowing air out of his mouth and seeing if it would flick up his hair in the process. Boredom did not begin to cover it. Traffic jams sucked, especially when you were in a hurry to get some place.

A rapping sound
on the glass behind him caught Tommy’s attention and he glanced over his shoulder. Hands trailed along the back window and they were red.
Is that paint?
Screams filled the air outside and Tommy saw a woman in a suit charge down the street, dropping her briefcase and not bothering to pick it up. He jumped as the hands banged on the window again and then disappeared from sight. Feeling slightly freaked out, he pondered whether to get out of the car and see who was there, to find out if they were hurt, but he remembered the video of the supermarket and he suddenly lost any confidence in doing so. He stayed put, but turned off the radio. The hands did not rise again.

The line of cars ahead began to move. “At last,” he said and put his foot down. The car lurched a bit and then he was driving smoothly until the vehicles paused again after a ten-minute
sprint.
What’s the problem?
Tommy glanced in the rear-view mirror and studied the guy in the car behind, who looked seriously stressed out. Two kids were play-fighting in the back. Tommy looked forward again. He had a funny feeling that he was going to be stuck here all day. A noise from above made him peer out of his side window. Unable to see anything, he opened it and craned his head out. Helicopters: two of them. That was odd. He had never seen more than one in the air at once in all the time he’d lived in London.

A
screech made him turn his head. Along the pavement an elderly man was running, followed by a woman of the same age, but she could not move as fast. Behind them was yet another man, but he was too far away to see his face clearly. The woman was screaming in terror and the guy was so pale that he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Then Tommy saw the person who was following. Freakish was the word that shot into his mind. Whoever it was wasn’t running straight, like normal, but lurching from side to side heavily, yet not slow on his feet. Something red dripped from his mouth.

Without thinking twice,
Tommy unlocked the doors. “Get in the back,” he shouted to the couple, aware that no one else in the queue of cars had offered. Perhaps they were in shock, he surmised, or just plain mean. The elderly man glanced his way and his eyes grew wide. He paused and grasped the hand of the woman, and almost dragged her towards the car. The freak was gaining ground. Tommy turned around, leaned across the back seat and pushed the door open. With trembling hands, the stranger gripped the door and held it for the woman as she slid inside. Quickly, without turning, the man jumped in and slammed it shut.

Tommy locked the doors
instinctively before turning around. “Are you alright?” he asked. The woman could not talk because she was breathing so hard. Tommy realised she was older than he first thought, probably sixty.

“Thank you,” said the man. “We owe you our lives. I just saw him kill someone. He was biting
another man. It was terrible...” His voice broke off into silence.

“Ugh!” Tommy
cried out as the freak banged on the passenger door window, glaring at the couple who looked terrified. He hit the button to close his own window as the thing staggered towards him. It wasn’t a man; it couldn’t be. It resembled a corpse in every aspect, except that it was moving and breathing, and clearly wanting to attack them. The window sealed and the bloody face pressed itself against the glass. One eye stared out of a misshapen face, most of which was gone. The empty socket stared back at him and blood spilled from the gap that was once a mouth. Tommy stared into the chasm and then dragged his eyes away.

“What is going on?” he asked, turning
around in his seat to face the couple.

The woman was trembling. “The dead come back to life,” she said. “I saw it.”

“But that’s impossible,” Tommy argued.

“It’s real. It’s there, right beside you,” said the man, speaking in a tone of calm that was surreal. “He used to be my neighbour. Now look at him.”

“You know him?”

“Knew,” the man
corrected. “I don’t know what he is now. He doesn’t recognise me. It’s as if he’s acting on instinct, like an animal, and he hunted us.”

Tommy turned around and slumped
in his seat. The bloody face was still staring at him with its arms spread wide against the glass. A deafening shot made him jump and the freak disappeared. “What the hell?” he gasped, looking in front of him. A mounted policeman on horseback gestured to two soldiers who walked to the side of the car, hauled the body on to the pavement and dumped it unceremoniously by the side of an office building.

As Tommy stared in disbelief, one of the soldiers walked back and gestured for him to open the window. He did it.
Removing his sunglasses, the man asked, “Are you all alright?”

Tommy nodded. “What is going on?”

“We’re trying to get people to turn back. London has been sealed off – quarantined. We can’t let anyone leave and we can’t let anyone in either.”

“What? I have to leave. I’ve got to reach my family...”

“I’m sorry. We have orders from the government. If you could turn your car around and go back home, sir, it would help a lot. We’re going to start making announcements soon and you will be safer inside your home.”

“But why?”
asked Tommy.

“You’ve just seen why. The city is quarantined,” the soldier repeated, tapping the gun that hung from his belt.

Tommy saw there was no point in arguing and closed the window. He picked up his mobile to call his ex-wife and then thought better of it. She would still be sleeping. It was going to be a difficult enough phone call without stressing her out by waking her as well. “Where do you live?” he asked, turning to his passengers.

“Not far. Just a ten-minute drive back the other way,” said the man.

“Can you direct me?”

“Sure,” he replied. “Thank you. I don’t know what we...”

“Don’t think of it,” said Tommy. “Best not to.”

He
waited until the car in front moved forward, enabling him to make a tight right-hand turn out of the queue of traffic, before heading back in the adjacent line. Three helicopters hovered in the sky ahead. That made five. Behind him someone was talking into a loudspeaker: “London has been quarantined. You are advised to make your way home and stay inside. There will be an announcement on the news of measures to evacuate the city. Please go home. London has been sealed off by the army. Any protest or rioting will be dealt with. These are our orders from the government.”

Tommy glanced in the rear-view mirror.
Several cars turned around straight away while some drivers were stepping out of theirs to argue. Soldiers stepped forward, accompanied by armed police and officers on horseback. He glanced at his companions. “Do you know what happened to your neighbour?”

The woman looked away and stared out of the window.
“He changed after he was bitten,” the man answered. “You need to turn right here.”

Tommy blinked. “Bitten?”

“Yes. He was bitten by a woman in the street one night. We heard him shouting and came out. Left here... The woman ran off, luckily. I realise now I was really lucky. I have no idea why she ran. Maybe it was my torch or a noise. Who knows,” said the man.

“Did you ring the police?”

“Yes, they showed up real fast. They told me to take my neighbour to the hospital, so we did. They bandaged up the wound and sent him home. You just go straight here as far as you can go. Anyway, he seemed fine, but then he got this fever and couldn’t sleep. When we checked the bandage to see if there was a problem, I couldn’t see anything wrong. They had stitched it up in the hospital. Looked fine to me,” the man remembered.

“I offered to take him back there to see the doctors
, but he wouldn’t move and I couldn’t move him. He said he felt hot and sick – asked for painkillers and water. Ah, please take a right here. Then, God help me, I left him there and went back to my own house. In the morning I knocked on his door, but there was no answer. I thought he’d gone out, that he was fine, you know. Then, today, well it was earlier, so it was still dark, I heard these noises... Oh, please stop here. That’s great. We live just there,” he said, pointing to an attractive looking house with a well-tended garden.

Tommy wanted to compliment the couple on their home, but it seemed inappropriate under the circumstances. “What happened next?” he asked. He could tell that the woman wanted to get out of the car, but she wasn’t daring to do it alone.

The man shrugged. “It got weird from there. I told Annie here that I was going to check on our neighbour. I could hear these strange cries, you see. Well, she didn’t let me go alone. She came with me.”

“Did you have any protection with you?”

“No, but Annie had her rolling pin,” he replied, raising his eyebrows. “I knocked at the door and there was no answer, but I could hear these God awful moans and groans, so I called the police. While I was talking the door opened and he came out, only it wasn’t really him. I said his name and he didn’t recognise me. His eyes…” He paused and sucked in his breath. “His eyes were lifeless. He looked dead, believe me, but he wasn’t.”

“Oh, I
do believe you. I’ve seen it – on a video. My friend saw it in person.”

“I feel sorry for her,” the man continued. “We panicked then. He tried to attack us and we
panicked. We should have just run back into the house, but I fumbled with my keys and dropped them, and we just ran. But we couldn’t outrun him. It took him a while to come after us, as if he’d woken from a sleep or something, and he stumbled. He didn’t run straight like you’d expect someone of his age to do. I knew it wasn’t him. It was like he was in a trance and he followed us. I got the feeling he was on our scent, like he could smell us or something and hear us, because we lost him for a while, yet he caught up. No one opened their car door for us. If it wasn’t for you...”

Tommy smiled. “I’m glad I was there. Are you going to be alright here?”

“I hope so,” he replied honestly. “My name is Fred and this is Annie. Fred Wilkins. In case we ever bump into each other again.”

“Well, good luck. Go inside and lock everything. Wait for the announcement – the soldier said they will let us know about evacuation procedures. I was in the army. You can trust them.”

“So was I, young man, so was I,” said Fred as he opened the passenger door.

After getting out,
the old man closed the door and walked around the back to open his wife’s. She smiled a shy, sad smile and stepped out. He closed the door after her. Tommy watched as the couple walked up the path to their house. Halfway there, Fred paused, bent down and picked something up. He turned around and held up a shining key. It glinted in the dawn sun. Tommy nodded and the old man waved, before leading his wife into their home. Tommy continued to sit there for a few moments before starting the engine and reversing out of the close. As soon as he got home, he would have some phone calls to make.

***

By the time Marla and Ellen got out of bed, Tommy had phoned his parents and ex-wife, and
he was sipping a coffee in the lounge while browsing the web on his laptop. “Hey,” said Marla, walking in with her sister, “weren’t you meant to be visiting your son today?”

“Yeah, I was,”
he replied with a sigh. Not knowing where to start, he put down his mug and turned his laptop so that they would see the headline on the screen: ‘London quarantined.’

“What the fuck?” screeched Marla as she knelt down on the floor and read the article. “What the hell? Can they do that?”

Tommy shrugged. “Well, they have, so yeah, I guess. The demo in Trafalgar Square is still going on and looting has spread. People are going ballistic. Can’t say I blame them.”

“What do we do?” asked Ellen. “Have they said how long
it’s for?”

“No,” he replied. “They’re trying to stop the ‘flu’ spreading to the rest of the country.”