Zombiekill (4 page)

“Okay, Rilla, I wish we were home, too, but we’re not are we? So let’s just deal with what we’ve got. You want to go back to that motel?” Schafer closed the curtains. It was only two or three miles away, but getting from there to this house had been a nightmare. “You really think we’d be better off if we had stayed there? I remember how hungry you were after the third day. I remember how frightened you and Magda were when those men knocked on the door. I remember having to…” Schafer looked at his wife, her round eyes sad and tired. “Look, we are better off here. And if Jeremy says we stay, then we stay.”

“Wir sind so weit von zu Hause,” muttered Magda.

Rilla glared at her mother. “Yeah, Mom, I know how far away we are from home. Like that’s helping.”

“Rilla, Jeremy thinks we can wait it out,” said Schafer. “He is adamant that we have enough food. I know this isn’t what we wanted, but we can’t exactly get back to the car, drive the three hours back to Portland, and jump on a plane back to
Nürnberg
. We stay here, and that’s the end of it.”

“It’s not just the food, Dad.” Rilla looked at him. “It’s what’s out there. Those people, those corpses—they’re not going anywhere. They
know
we’re here. Don’t tell me you can’t hear them at night, because I know you can. The way their fingernails scratch at the brickwork, the moaning sound they make, and the grinding of their teeth. One day they’ll figure out how to pull down that fence, or get over it, or get under it, or something, and then we’re fucked.”

“Language, Rilla,” said Magda quietly.

“Es tut mir Leid.” Rilla sat up and rested her head on her mother’s back. “Sorry, Mom.”

“I know, I tried to explain to Jeremy, but he thinks it will hold.” Schafer peered at the fence panels through a crack in the curtains. They might hold, but he wasn’t prepared to gamble the lives of his wife and only child on ‘might.’ The fence was the only thing that was separating the house from being invaded by a hundred dead people. Rilla was right. If the dead found a way in, they were screwed. There was no back way out. Jeremy had ensured the house was protected on all sides, and the fence doubled as the main entrance to the property. The door in it had been nailed shut ensuring the only way in was gone. Rilla was right about another thing too. Schafer did hear them at night scratching and clawing at the wood as they tried to get in. He had become accustomed to the noises, but that didn’t mean he had gotten used to it.

“Okay, so what do you think, Magda? You want to go or stay?”

Magda brushed a hand through her daughter’s hair and looked forlornly at her husband. “I think I want to stay. If you and Rilla stay, then I stay.”

Both Schafer and Rilla knew that their mother would go wherever they went. It wasn’t that she had no opinion, but she was too far out of her comfort zone. Her grasp of English was tenuous, and ever since the zombies had appeared outside their motel room, she had become more and more withdrawn.

“Dad, let’s go. You know what I’m talking about.” Rilla sat bolt upright, her deep brown eyes lighting up when she spoke. “That house on the hill is our best bet of seeing this through. I know that getting to Portland or Washington—or even back home to Germany—is out of the question. For a long time, it would seem. So for the next few weeks or months, or however long it takes for this situation to be resolved, we need to be somewhere safe. This isn’t the place. Jeremy and Lynn took us in. But like the motel, it’s just another stop on the road.”

Schafer looked at Rilla with a heavy heart. She spoke the truth. “Mr. Attwood’s place?”

“Sure. The mansion. Why not? Jeremy said it was like a fortress. You heard what he said. Attwood was a rich old man who built himself more of a castle than a home. High perimeter fencing, security cameras, even a moat fed by the nearby river. You know he’s there; the lights still come on at night. We’ve all seen it, so I don’t know why Jeremy can’t see it too.”

“Rilla, I’m not sure…” Schafer knew the house his daughter spoke of. He had seen it, too, and discussed it with Jeremy. There was nothing else like it around for miles. Jeremy had told them how Attwood had built it a few years back. He was a millionaire and had spared no expense, buying up all the land around it too. Getting there wouldn’t be easy, but if they could get inside, then there was no doubt they would be safe. Schafer wanted to go, but it wasn’t the right time.

“Dad, it’s the best place for us. You know it, and I know it. If you can’t convince Jeremy, then I can.” Rilla got off the bed and walked toward the closed door. “Let me talk to him. I’ll make that idiot listen to me.”

Schafer turned away from the window, the sun warming his back as he approached the door. Rilla hadn’t opened it yet, and he needed to make sure their conversation stayed private. “Just remember who took us in, Rilla. When the motel was overrun, when there was nowhere else to go, Jeremy and Lyn opened their doors to us. You know what would’ve happened if they hadn’t, and you also know that they didn’t have to do that. They put themselves and Vicky in danger when they did that.”

“I know, but—”

“
We
are the reason those corpses are mounting up outside that fence; outside this house.” Schafer remembered the day they had turned up on Jeremy’s doorstep no more than minutes from death. Escaping the motel had taken all their energy, and they had not known where to turn. There was no help, no police, nowhere to run except away from the zombies, away from the motel; they had run through the streets of Peterborough aimlessly, at one point circling back on themselves in error. They didn’t know the area, and it was only a fluke they found Jeremy’s house. Schafer saw movement in a window and had dragged Magda and Rilla with him, hoping it meant someone was alive inside. As it turned out, he was right. Jeremy had let them in with caution and locked the fence behind them. The zombies chasing had been barricaded outside and had not gone anywhere since. It had been a beautiful sunny day, just like today, and the memory of it was still fresh in Schafer’s mind. He thought he was going to lose his family that day. He thought he was going to watch Magda and Rilla torn apart at the hands of the corpses that now populated the world, and yet Jeremy had shown kindness and let them in. He owed Jeremy, they all did, and that was why they had to respect his wishes now. Stay in the house; stay where they knew they had food and water. There was a certain logic to it, Schafer had to admit. What Jeremy couldn’t see was that one day it would all come tumbling down. Schafer just hoped they weren’t there when it did. In the meantime, they had to play the waiting game and show to Jeremy that they weren’t about to jeopardize what he had created: a safe haven, an island surrounded by a storm of death that refused to dissipate.

“We cannot throw away all the trust we’ve built up over the last few months,” said Schafer firmly. “Let’s not burn our bridges yet, Rilla. We can wait a bit longer. I’m worried about the future too. I’m worried about tomorrow and the next day and the next. But this is the way it is now, Rilla.”

The bed creaked as Magda got up, and she joined her husband’s side. “Please, Rilla. We must stick together. Ich vermis
Nürnberg
. I want to go home. For now, we must do what Jeremy says. So please, listen to your Father. Werden Sie es f
ür mich tun?
”

Schafer kissed his wife on the cheek. Having her on his side meant a lot. If she had sided with Rilla, then he would’ve had a great deal of difficulty in stopping her from talking to Jeremy. It wouldn’t have achieved anything except create more tension between the two families. They might be living under the same roof, but they were a world apart when it came to decisions on how to live.

Rilla’s shoulder’s dropped, and her eyes hit the floor. Schafer knew she would calm down and realize they were doing the right thing. He wanted to offer her something; a sign that she wasn’t completely in the wrong, a glimmer of hope that they weren’t trapped in a stranger’s house forever. “Rilla, maybe when the food and water start to run out, maybe then I can talk to Jeremy and Lyn again. I’ll make him see. Maybe—”

Rilla snapped her head up and looked at her parents. Her hand hovered over the door handle, and she wanted to rush out and scream at Jeremy. She wanted to run away, all the way home to
Nürnberg
, but she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. Every day they spent here, every night she slept in a strange house in a stranger’s bed, she felt not just afraid but frustrated. “Maybe when the food and water have run out we’ll be too weak to go anywhere. Maybe we’ll just have to start eating each other. Maybe the fence will give way tonight, and none of us have a tomorrow to worry about.”

“Rilla…”

A knock on the door interrupted them. Three soft taps told Rilla exactly who it was, and she opened the door, pleased that Vicky had given her a reason to leave. Jeremy and Lyn’s daughter had celebrated her tenth birthday last week, and they had strung up balloons and banners inside the house. Lyn and Magda had even managed to make a cake with what few ingredients they could muster, and they had played games until it got dark. It was after they had all eaten that Vicky had asked why none of her friends had been able to come to her party. She knew it was something to do with the dead people outside, but couldn’t understand why they hadn’t at least telephoned to say happy birthday to her.

Vicky was the one thing that gave Rilla hope. Vicky was such a cute girl. Her curly brown hair still ringed her freckled face, and her naturally outgoing attitude meant she enjoyed spending time with her. Rilla was an only child, and Vicky had become like a younger sister to her. She displayed none of the mistrust that her parents did and simply enjoyed every day. She had her moments, of course. There were the days when she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to go to school or why she couldn’t go swimming down in the lake as she had done last summer, but on the whole, she was a good natured child, and a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak situation.

“Hi Vicky, what’s going on?” Rilla knew there was no point in arguing with her parents anymore. Schafer had made his mind up which meant that Magda had made hers up too. Rilla would rather spend the rest of the day with Vicky than discussing something that wasn’t going to happen.

“What are you all doing in here?” asked Vicky, innocently.

Schafer smiled. “Nothing, my dear, just having a little talk. Are you all right? Where are your parents?”

“They’re in the garden.” Vicky sighed. “Booooring. They’re planting seeds. Mom said it was something called zookeenee. I don’t know what it is, but it sounds horrible.”

Rilla bent down to Vicky. “You want to play hide and seek?”

Vicky’s face brightened up, and she clapped her hands together. “Yes, yes, yes, yes. I’ll hide first. You have to find me.”

“Okay,” said Rilla as Vicky darted off downstairs, “but remember you have to stay in the house.”

“Yeah.” Vicky’s voice was lost as she ran down the stairs.

“Rilla, watch out for her, don’t let her go—”

“I know, Dad. I’ll be careful. We’ll talk later.” Rilla smiled at Magda. “Right now I’ve got a ten-year-old girl to find.”

“Ich liebe dich,” said Magda quietly as her daughter left the bedroom.

“It’ll be fine, Magda,” said Schafer, as he put an arm around his wife. He heard the zombies banging on the fence below, recalling how close they had been to getting in the day they had arrived here. He felt nervous, as if he could feel them getting closer, scratching one more layer of paint off the fence with every day. One day the wood would get too thin, it would crack and shatter, and ten thousand corpses would pour into Jeremy’s house. He pulled Magda to him and hugged her, burying his face in her hair. When he spoke he tried to keep his tone light, hiding the fear he truly felt. “Gott meine Familie zu sch
ützen
. It will all work out, you’ll see. Rilla will come around. It’ll be fine.”

CHAPTER 2

Charlie picked up the linen basket full of wet clothes and trudged outside with it. . The washing machine had long since stopped working, so everything was done by hand now. When enough rainwater had collected, she would soak their clothes in the bathtub and hang them out to dry, letting the sun do its job. They didn’t bother with washing often; it was far too arduous, and quite frankly it seemed all rather pointless. They never saw anyone, never went anywhere, so why should she worry about how she looked? Sighing, Charlie went out to the small garden they had. When she reached the clothesline, she began to peg the clothes up one by one. She started to hum a tune, an old song by an old band that she used to like. She hadn’t actually listened to music for months now, not since they had run out of batteries. She still remembered, though; still had the music in her head, and sometimes she thought she could hear it floating across the wind, as if her favorite bands were all lined up outside, playing in Peterborough just for her. The music would get so loud she had to force herself to stop listening. It was all in her head, of course, and when the music stopped she wondered why her brain did that; why sometimes she would wake in the middle of the night with a rock song blasting out so loudly that she had to muffle it with a pillow over her head. Eventually her brain would turn the music down, but it took a concentrated effort to make it do so. It was as if she was stood in front of the radio, her fingers barely touching the dial, unable to change the setting. Today, however, as she picked out one of Kyler’s freshly washed shirts from the basket she wanted the music. She needed to block out the sounds, the noise that
they
made. It was like a foreign language, all the moaning and groaning that passed their cracked, dry, dead lips; she hated it and turned the volume up. A song came into her head, one about a girl falling in love with a boy who already had a girlfriend, and she started humming along, breaking out into a smile when she remembered the singer and how much she fancied him.

‘
I want to kiss your mouth, hold your hand, and all I feel is the distant wind as you turn your back on me
.’

That was over a year ago now. The singer was probably dead, and as much as Charlie wanted to grieve, to feel sorry for him and his family and his fans, the truth was she didn’t really care. He was like a cartoon character. Had he ever been real? He was only ever in a magazine or on the TV, just like the rest of them. It was as if her old life had been just an illusion.

Charlie heard the zombies rattling the fence and groaning, and she turned the volume up louder. “Jesus, can’t you just be quiet for one fucking minute?”

When she’d finished putting the last shirt up on the line, she turned the basket over and left it on the grass, and then made her way over to the long driveway. It had been three weeks since she had last stepped foot on the drive. It had been three long weeks since she had lost her mother, and neither she nor her father had gone back to the fence, to that spot where she had died.

They were loud today, the deadly sounds of the walking corpses filling her head until she couldn’t hear the singer’s voice anymore. Who gave them the right to take over? Who had decided to let them in and turn the country over to them? It wasn’t fair. Charlie was annoyed and angry. She had woken up with a headache, and the sky was a dreary gray. Kyler had made her do the washing and then proceeded to open a bottle of wine whilst giving her a list of chores. It had become something of a routine in the last couple of weeks. Ever since it had happened, since the screaming woman had destroyed their world, Charlie had been forced to watch her father drink all day and night. He refused to talk about what happened that day, and from his attitude, Charlie could only assume he still blamed her. He had shut her out, speaking to her only to trade insults or order her to do some menial task around the house. Since that day, she had become a tenant in her own home, no more than a live-in cleaner on hand to serve her master.

“For fuck’s sake, quit it.” Charlie turned the music off. It was impossible to hear it over the racket they were making. “What do you want?”

Charlie strode purposefully onto the drive, turned the corner of the house, and stared at the fence. It was
them
: the invaders, the foreigners who had just taken over the country with no regard for any of its people. It was
them
who had ruined everything. Charlie looked at the motley group of bodies, at the disparate people torn from their own lives forced into destroying others. Some days they seemed quiet, withdrawn, yet other days they were noisy. Today they were noisy. A crowd of around thirty were gathered futilely around the gate as they tried to get past the lock to her and Kyler. Charlie walked slowly down the driveway, trying to keep one ear out for her father. If he caught her he would only say she was shirking her duties to pleasure her own morbid curiosity. She was curious, true, but only as to why they kept coming. There was no logic to it. They couldn’t get in, it was impossible, and yet they kept trying.

Charlie wondered if they were being led by something or someone. Perhaps an invisible force that somehow drove them here to the house where they lived. It had stopped feeling like Charlie’s home and was just a place she lived now. More than that, it was a place to exist. Living would imply a sense of being, of working toward something, a future, a life; her father had ensured that any hope had been extinguished alongside the death of her mother. As Charlie ventured further forward down the driveway, she spotted the crowbar lying on the road where her father had left it. Not far away, there was a dark stain on the concrete, just a small circle of dried blood that hadn’t been completely erased by the wind and sporadic rain yet. It was the last evidence of her mother’s death.

Charlie looked at the zombies straining to reach her, their arms all pushed through the small gaps in the fence. Their hands were clutching at the air, grasping at nothing, reminding her of babies, feeble hands curling up and unfurling as they desperately tried to find something to grab hold of. But there was nothing. Charlie knew well enough to stay well away from the fence. The men and women there could kill her with a single scratch. Once the dead got hold of you, there was only one end. In the early days, they said it was a biological parasite that was transferred in the blood of its victims, much like the Zika virus that had left so many deformed and dead in South America. Then the guesses stopped, and the focus turned on how to survive, how to avoid the dead. Finally, everything stopped. It didn’t take long for
them
to take over and ruin everything.

“I hate you,” muttered Charlie. Her eyes scanned the corpses standing at her fence. There were men and women, partially dressed, some still wearing blood-stained clothes, some with arms and hands missing, some with chunks ripped from their necks or torsos, and some rotted away so they appeared more like ghoulish cartoon versions of their true selves. There were children too. Those were the ones she hated the most. They hadn’t been able to defend themselves. They had suffered the most, and now they were stood outside Charlie Gretzinger’s home, their small hands trying to grab a piece of her to shove into their rotten mouths. As they lined up to eat her, their faces pressed up against the fence, they reminded her of refugees from another country, as if they were just people looking for somewhere to turn, their hands outstretched for mercy and a hand-out, their open mouths waiting for food. She hated them for what they had done to her family, to her town, and what they had done to the world. She thought about picking up the crowbar and ramming it into their heads, thrusting it through all of their brittle skulls until a mountain of bloody zombies lay at her feet. She should, she knew, but she couldn’t. What purpose would it serve? It wouldn’t bring her mother back, and even if she killed these, then more would come. They always did.

The dead were dressed in rags, faded clothes that over the months had lost all their color, and yet in the throng she caught a glimpse of bright red. It was just a flash of color, but it was definitely there, hiding behind a fat woman with half her face missing. Charlie’s heart pounded. Could there be anyone alive out there? Charlie took a step forward, trying to find the burst of color again, and then she found it, this time appearing briefly behind a man with nothing below the elbows except for a straggly piece of meat and tissue that looked like spaghetti.

“Hello?” When Charlie spoke, her voice sounded faint and pathetic. She wanted to shout, but she was scared. Even the single word she spoke had aroused the dead, and they pulled and pushed against the fence with more force. They wanted her, but they weren’t going to get her.

“Is anyone—?”

Charlie turned the music up to full volume quickly, filling her head with snippets of her favorite songs, of thrashing guitars and piano chords, desperately trying to take her mind off what she could see. The glimpse of red from earlier was now in full view. It was part of a dress, part of a bright red dress that had been torn and ripped, but the owner was still wearing. The person wearing the dress was now at the driveway entrance, their hands pushing through the small gaps, and their bare feet kicking at it as they tried to get to Charlie. The zombie’s teeth clacked together loudly, and Charlie tried to focus on the music. It was impossible.

“Mom?” Charlie hated them all.
They
had done this, changed her, killed her, and taken her away from her family for what?

Jemma no longer resembled the beautiful woman who had married Kyler, but was a skeletal figure missing huge chunks of flesh. There was a gaping hole in her stomach, moist red tissue surrounded by patches of dark brown and purple skin where she had started to rot. One breast hung low over her abdomen, whilst the other was missing, eaten away exposing her ribcage. A silver pendant still hung around her crooked neck, and her face was riddled with bite marks. One eye had been sucked from its socket and eaten whilst the other swung loosely upon her cheek, hanging on by a thread. Patches of hair had been pulled from her head, swathes of skin ripped off, leaving her head a patchwork quilt of bruises and bloody flesh. Odd white pieces of her skull poked through the remaining thin hair. As Jemma pushed her arms through the fence, her body stuck on the other side, one of her hands opened out revealing there were only two fingers left, the others now just short bony stumps.

Charlie gasped, turned away, and began walking quickly back to the house. How could this be happening? Had her mother returned because she was drawn there by the crowd or corpses, or had she led them there? Her mother was dead, dead and gone. Charlie couldn’t reconcile what she had seen with her loving mother. They weren’t the same person. Her mother had died, and whatever was stood at the fence now was just a Doppelganger, a freak, a parody of the real woman. Her body might be moving, her legs walking, but that thing was not her mother.

Returning to the clothesline, Charlie sank onto the grass, and grabbed hold of the empty basket. It was real, something she could feel in her hands. That thing back at the gate that looked like her mother wasn’t real. It was one of them now, not a real person. Charlie was trembling, her breath coming in quick gasps, and she knew she had to contain her anguish. She didn’t want her father to see her like this. He would want to know what she had been doing, and she couldn’t face having to tell him what she had seen. Charlie stayed on the grass, focusing on the music in her head, letting it soothe her until she managed to calm down. Every time the vision of her dead mother popped back in her head, she forced herself to concentrate on the necklace that was still around her mother’s neck. If Charlie forced her eyes to look at the necklace, she found she could ignore the terrible wounds on her mother’s body and ignore the terrible pain she knew that her mother must have been in when she died.

Eventually the music faded away, the guitars stopped playing, and the call of the zombies became background noise. She didn’t know how long she had been sat out on the garden like that, but it didn’t really matter. As she looked at the house that she still called home, she realized that her father hadn’t come out to look for her. Had he even noticed she hadn’t returned? Did he care? Charlie felt like staying out there a while longer. What was the point in going inside when all that faced her was more work? And for what? Kyler clearly didn’t give a shit about her anymore, and the truth was, she beginning to resent him. She loved her father, but he had changed. Since that day, he had become withdrawn, drank a lot more, and treated Charlie like she was worthless. She didn’t want to hate her father, but he was making it easier with each day that passed.

A muffled bang broke her thoughts. Looking up at the house, it took her a moment to work out what it was. The house looked quiet, empty even, yet she knew her father was in there somewhere, working on getting drunk enough to make it through another day. On the ground by the back door there was a bird. It had jet black feathers, and as Charlie stood up to look at it, she realized it was a crow. It was hopping around on the floor, turning around in circles, unable to get off the ground. Charlie looked at the large window that now had a thin crack in it and understood that the bird must have flown into it.

“You poor thing.” Charlie wondered if she should approach it or leave it be. If she spooked it, then it might do itself more harm. But if she didn’t attend to it, would it be able to fly again? There was a good chance it had broken a wing, and she knew it might need caring for. Wasn’t that the right thing to do? There was probably an old shoebox in the garage she could use. She could find worms for it in the garden, provide it with a little water, and coax it back to life. Here was a chance to do the right thing. Her mind made up, Charlie slowly began to approach the bird. It had stopped flapping around and was sat on the ground with its feathers puffed out as it watched her.