The Z Word (A Zombie Novel) (3 page)

Chapter Eight

Clare Conway had almost drained my phone battery and had kindly placed it back onto the charger. I had no idea how long the electricity was going to last, but was sure that if this thing continued for weeks, it would die on me one day.

I made sure that I had matches in my kitchen drawer and went into the small cupboard in the bathroom, under the stairs, and was pleased that there was still a tin of assorted candles that were practically unused.

I walked back into the room and asked Clare if her friends and family were okay.

She didn't give much away and was naturally upset. "I got through to some, but some of them...I couldn't get through."

"The network's probably going crazy right now. Probably some kind of meltdown."

That was all I could think of. I thought it sounded better than: "They're probably dead."

In a pathetic attempt to distract her attention that we were more than likely living in an apocalyptic world and that some of her loved ones could be no more, I asked if she wanted a tour around the house.

"Okay," was all she could muster.

"Look," I sighed. "I know I hardly know you but..."

Her face looked a little worried, which I think was fair enough starting with a sentence like
that
and not finishing it. My pause was a little too long and wondered what she must have been thinking:

I know I hardly know you, but what?
Can I take you upstairs and play 'hide the sausage'? After all, we could be dead by tomorrow
.

I eventually finished off my sentence. "But you're welcome to stay here the night."

"Thank you," she said. "My house is a no-go area now, and I don't know where else I can go on foot."

"That's sorted then. Let me show you round the house."

She got to her feet and her five-four, thin frame walked over to me. I guessed that she may have been a runner of some kind, but I didn't ask as it didn't seem that important. She looked at the front door, then looked at me.

"It's solid." I reassured her, as if I could read her mind. "If they can get through that, then a little barricading ain't gonna make any difference."

She gawped at me strangely. "It wasn't that. It's the same door I have in
my
house."

I could feel the heat in my cheeks. "Oh, right."

We walked through the reception area and I showed her the old living room that looked out onto the front. The blinds were closed, a TV and a dining table was in there, as well as a red and brown rug that sat on top of the laminate flooring that was present throughout the whole of the ground floor.

Opposite the old living room door, across the hallway, was the downstairs bathroom. Inside, was a small bathroom with a sink, a toilet, and a little cupboard that led under the stairs where I kept all kinds of crap like extra toiletries, a tool box, decorating utensils and other things that are too long and boring to list.

The kitchen was at the end of the hall; it was quite a small one and had the usual fridge, cooker, sink, blah, blah, blah. I didn't say anything while showing Clare around—I wasn't selling the damn thing, and took a walk up the stairs to the first floor.

My stairs curled to the left, and once on the landing there was a bedroom to the right, one straight ahead, and another hallway on the left that led to my bedroom, the boiler and another room with a toilet, sink and a shower cubicle.

"It's bigger than mine," she admitted.

"I had an extension a while back," I explained.

"I thought so."

After checking the first floor, I showed Clare a hatch in the front bedroom. She looked above her at the hatch. "An attic?"

I nodded. "I've used it mainly for storage, but if we can clear it out later, we could use it as a room to sleep in, just in case..."

"They get in?" she guessed the end of my sentence.

"Yep. Sorry; don't mean to be negative."

"No, you're right." She smiled thinly, and that was the first time that I felt attracted to her. It seemed a bit ridiculous considering what was happening, but I'm just being honest.

I pulled out a light metal pole with jagged metal edges at the top. I used the pole to slip the bolt from the latch, then kept the pole behind the hatch as it swung down revealing a square, two feet by two in size. I then used the pole to hook the metal ladders and brought them down carefully.

I turned to Clare. "We'll keep the ladders down from now on; unless something drastic happens and we need to live in there. You want a look?"

Without answering me by words or body language, she began to climb the ladders to the attic. I followed her up and explained, "As you can see, there's a lot of crap up here."

I watched her as she gazed at the boxes of CDs and DVDs that had been packed away. A semi-acoustic guitar sat on a guitar stand with a B string missing, and in the other corner was a fake treasure chest that had photo albums in it, as well as pointless certificates I had received when I was in college and university.

Clare looked at me and spoke at last. "'We should move tins up here, fill bottles full of water—"

"I was thinking about blocking the upstairs off and just living upstairs."

She didn't look convinced and pulled a face. "I agree with sleeping in the attic on a night, but we might as well make use of the amenities downstairs such as TV, because there's no point living as prisoners unless it's absolutely necessary."

I could see her point. If we were sitting in the living room, minding our own business, and suddenly the front door or the window caved in, it would only take seconds for the both of us to run upstairs. Due to atrophy, I was guessing that these things weren't fans of any kind of climbing, but I wasn't taking that theory for granted. I then, for some bizarre reason, began thinking about one of the Dr Who villains, the Daleks.

For those who had never heard of these things, the Daleks were basically very aggressive tin cans on wheels. But scary? Fuck, no!

Question: How to avoid being killed by a Dalek? Answer: Go upstairs.

Simple. Daleks can't climb stairs.

I was hoping it was going to be the same for these things as well; but then again, a scene of Clare and I bolting upstairs while a horde of zombies piled into my house was something that I hoped wouldn't happen. Only time would tell.

I then showed Clare how to open the skylight in the attic and told her that if we had no choice, we could use it to escape and break into other people's skylights if we became desperate.

Clare released a laugh when I told her this, but then stifled it once she knew I was being serious. She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever words that were about to tumble out of her lips were put on hold once we both heard a screech of tyres coming from outside, followed by a crash.

Chapter Nine

After hearing the screech of tyres, we suddenly left the attic down the metal, rickety ladders and headed for the bedroom window that looked out onto the main road. It was a beautiful June day, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun shone down. This was ruined by the terrible news that had been broadcasted, and now had been ruined even more by witnessing a crashed Ford on its side and a small army of the dead surrounding the car.

The car had rolled onto its roof and ten or so zombies were surging forward, desperate to get inside. I opened my bedroom window to be greeted by a mixture of screams and strident car alarms. The street didn't seem so peaceful now.

The car's windows were shattered and I could see some of the things crawling into the car. At this point, Clare turned to me. "Shut the window. I don't wanna hear this."

I shut the window while Clare trotted back downstairs, but my eyes refused to move away from the scene of seeing three people, a family consisting of two adults and a minor, being eaten in their own cars. I couldn't see much from the angle the car was facing and where I was standing, but it was clear from the screams, that still managed to find its way into the bedroom, that this family were experiencing an unimaginable death.

I looked out to the houses across my street to see other people, mainly from their bedrooms, also witnessing this macabre sight. It was like a really bad car crash—horrific, but disturbingly engrossing to gawp at.

I felt for the family, I really did, but what worried me the most—selfish, I know—was the increasing number of zombies there were. The screams were probably the main cause of the attraction, and l knew that my street could be in for a bumpy ride.

Although it appeared that some residents had left their homes, including my neighbour to my left who had ignored warnings to remain indoors and not to travel, I had a feeling if this thing got any worse, then the remaining survivors in my street would be spending many a day cooped up in their own attics.

I had no room to complain really. I knew this was a family street and I knew that being stuck indoors with little food, having hungry infants, and screaming babies who needed baby food, nappies, etc, would be an absolute nightmare for the parents.

I even thought about the Thompson family that lived three doors down, and wondered how they were coping. They had a son and a young daughter who I hardly saw, and probably didn't understand why mummy and daddy were behaving so strangely, why they wasn't allowed to go out anymore and play with their friends, and why their parents were piling furniture against the windows of the house.

Chapter Ten

Clare had come back from downstairs to stand next to me and said that she didn't feel safe downstairs. She took a look outside at the aftermath. After five minutes had passed, we eventually managed to pull ourselves away from the bedroom window. We kept the ladders of the attic down, and I promised her that I'd move food and fluids into the attic once we sat down and allowed our shell-shocked bodies to recuperate.

I went downstairs and made Clare a cup of coffee, but at first she refused to come downstairs claiming it was now too dangerous. I tried to reassure it was perfectly safe and if these things so much as bang at the door, we would go upstairs and lock ourselves in the attic if need be.

I kept the TV on, volume number six, and kept the SKY news channel on. I watched as a pasty Charlotte Hawkins nervously rambled through the only topic that was being covered.

At the left hand side, bottom of the screen, the title was:
UK in crisis
.

No shit, I thought.

Then, as usual, there were mini headlines that slowly ran across the bottom of the screen in black letters with a yellow strip background. I concentrated more on the mini headlines that were summarising what was happening than what Charlotte was saying. The main three headlines that ran across the bottom of the screen:
Reports claim army has quarantined some parts of the capital
—
41 people taken to hospital after Brixton riots
—
Government still urging people to stay indoors.

Clare eventually came into the living room with the coffee in her hand. She sat down on my brown leather suite that cost me twelve hundred pounds from a Scouser in Land of Leather. I had made the mistake of telling him that I was a Liverpool fan. Once I had told him this, he pulled out his phone and excitedly showed me goals by Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard.

Although a fan of the team, he was obviously obsessed with them. I agreed to buy the couch just so I could escape the place before I stayed there too long and accidentally inherited a best friend that I didn't want.

I took a quick peep at Clare, and could see that tears continued to fall from her eyes as she wrapped her hands around the cup and shivered a little. I sat next to her, to comfort her, and she asked me a question I had no answer for. "When's this going to stop?" She wiped her eyes with her forefinger and brushed her brown hair behind her ears.

"I don't know." With my arm around her shoulder, I rubbed the front of her deltoid. "The best thing to do is sit tight, continue to stay in the house, and hopefully the government should re-take control." I pointed to the TV screen. "Look, some parts of London have already been quarantined."

"So? We live in Tentworth, a small town. We're hardly going to be top priority, are we?"

I looked at my watch. It was getting late in the afternoon and I asked Clare if she fancied a game of tennis on the Wii. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind, and shook her head. I think she was still being suffocated by shock, and it was my feeble attempt to take her mind off things and focus on something else.

I walked over to the patio door to double-make sure it was locked. I peered from behind the roller blind that I had put to the floor and was relieved to see the back garden was still clear. Although I had a three-foot gate at the side of the house near the back garden where the alleyway was, I was aware that it wouldn't take too much effort to force the thing open, as it just relied on a latch to keep it closed.

I turned to Clare. "Here," I called.

She stood to her feet, eyes still gazing on the TV at an almost tearful Charlotte Hawkins on SKY News.

"I'm gonna show you how to open and lock this patio door."

Still gazing at the TV, Clare never responded to me. I puffed out my cheeks and switched the TV off. I suppose it was like striking up a conversation with your passenger while you drove past the aftermath of a car crash. I needed her full attention. She was in a different world.

She gaped at me with confusion. "What?"

I repeated, "I'm gonna show you how to open and lock the patio door."

"Why," she gasped. "Where're you going?"

"Nowhere for now. But I'll show you anyway, just in case..."

I never finished my sentence.