Zombies: The Recent Dead (11 page)

Story Notes

Elsewhere, the author has said this story “came about from a very simple idea . . . that the end of the world as we know it might not come as either a big change to some people or even seen as a bad thing.” Encouraged by the media we focus too often on “the Next Big Thing, the Oncoming Big Disaster. But the truth of the matter is that in our heart if hearts, where we really live, the biggest and most destructive events of our lives may already have happened.”

Tim Lebbon

“A child grows up when they realize that they will die.”—Proverb

That night, something tried to break into the house. Jack heard the noises as he lay awake staring at the ceiling, attempting to see sense in the shadowy cracks that scarred the paintwork. The sounds were insistent and intelligent, and before long they were fingering not only at window latches and handles, but also at the doorways of his mind.

He liked listening to the night before he went to sleep, and out here in the country there was much to hear. Sometimes he was afraid, but then he would name all the different parts that went to make up that fear and it would go away.
A sound I cannot identify. A shape I cannot see. Footsteps that may be human, but which are most likely animal. There’s nothing to be afraid of, there are no monsters. Dad and Mum both say so; there are no such things as monsters.

So he would lie there and listen to the hoots and rustles and groans and cries, content in the knowledge that there was nothing to fear. All the while the blankets would be his shield, the bedside light his protector, and the gentle grumble of the television from downstairs his guarantee.

But that night—the night all guarantees were voided—there were few noises beyond his bedroom window, and with less to hear, there was more to be afraid of. Against the silence every snapped twig sounded louder, each rustle of fur across masonry was singled out for particular attention by his galloping imagination. It meant that there was something out there to frighten everything else into muteness.

And then the careful caress of fingertips across cold glass.

Jack sat up in bed and held his breath. Weak moonlight filtered through the curtains, but other than that his room was filled with darkness. He clutched at his blankets to retain the heat. Something hooted in the distance, but the call was cut off sharply, leaving the following moments painfully empty.

Click click click
. Fingernails picking at old, dried glazing putty, perhaps? It sounded like it was coming from outside and below, but it could just as easily have originated within his room, behind the flowing curtains, something frantically trying to get out rather than break in.

He tried naming his fears, this time unsuccessfully; he was not entirely sure what was scaring him.

A floorboard creaked on the landing, the one just outside the bathroom door. Three creaks down, three back up. Jack’s heart beat faster and louder and he let out a gasp, waiting for more movement, listening for the subtle scratch of fingernails at his bedroom door. He could not see the handle, it was too dark, it may even be turning now—

Another creak from outside, and then he heard his mother’s voice and his father hissing back at her.

“Dad!” Jack croaked. There were other sounds now: the soft thud of something tapping windows; a whispering sound, like a breeze flowing through the ivy on the side of the house, though the air was dead calm tonight.

“Dad!” He called louder this time, fear giving his voice a sharp edge to cut through the dark.

The door opened and a shadow entered, silhouetted against the landing light. It moved towards him, unseen feet creaking more boards. “It’s okay, son,” his father whispered, “just stay in bed. Mum will be in with you now. Won’t you, Janey?”

Jack’s mother edged into the room and crossed to the bed, cursing as she stumbled on something he’d left on the floor. There was always stuff on the floor in Jack’s room. His dad called it
Jack debris
.

“What’s going on, Dad?” he asked. “What’s outside?”

“There’s nothing outside,” his father said. His voice was a monotone that Jack recognized, the one he used to tell fatherly untruths. And then Jack noticed, for the first time, that he was carrying his shotgun.

“Dad?” Jack said uncertainly. Cool fingers seemed to touch his neck, and they were not his mother’s.

She hugged him to her. “Gray, you’re scaring him.”

“Janey—”

“Whatever . . . just be careful. Be calm.”

Jack did not understand any of this. His mother hugged him and in her warmth he found the familiar comfort, though tonight it felt like a lie. He did not want this comfort, this warmth, not when there was something outside trying to get in, not when his father stood in his pyjamas, shotgun closed and aimed at the wall, not broken open over his elbow as he carried it in the woods.

The woods. Thinking of them aimed Jack’s attention, and he finally noticed just how utterly silent it was out there. No voices or night-calls, true, but no trees swishing and swaying in sleep, no sounds of life, no hint of anything existing beyond the house at all.

His father moved to the window and reached out for the curtains. Jack knew what he would find when he pulled them back—nothing. Blankness, void, or infinity . . . and infinity scared Jack more than anything. How could something go on forever? What was there after it ended? Occasionally he thought he had some bright idea, but then sleep would come and steal it away by morning.

“Dad, don’t, there’s nothing out there!” he said, his voice betraying barely controlled panic.

“Shhh, shhh,” his mother said, rocking him.

“I know,” his father said without turning to offer him a smile. He grabbed a curtain and drew it aside.

Moonlight. The smell of night, a spicy dampness that seemed always to hide from the sun. And the noises again, tapping and scraping, tapping and scraping.

“Mum, don’t let Dad open the window,” Jack said, but his mother ignored him because she was hugging him, and that was usually enough. He would forget his bad dreams and go back to sleep, Mum would smile at the foolishness he’d spouted, but didn’t she know? Didn’t she see that they were all awake, and that what he was thinking was not foolishness because his dad really was standing in his room with a shotgun, opening the window, leaning out now, aiming the weapon before him like a torch—

There was an explosion. Like an unexpected scream in the depths of night it tore through Jack’s nerves, shred his childish sense of valour and set him screaming and squirming in his mother’s lap. Her arms tightened around him and she screamed too, he could smell the sudden tang of her fear, could feel the dampness between her breasts as he pressed his face to her chest.

“Gray, what the fuck—”

Her words shocked Jack but he could not lift his face to see.

“What the hell? What are you doing, what are you shooting at?”

Somewhere in the blind confusion his father came across and offered soothing words, but they were edged with his own brand of fear. Jack could not see him but he could imagine him standing there in silence, staring at a wall and avoiding his mother’s eyes. It was his way of thinking about what to say next.

He said nothing. Instead, Jack felt his dad’s strong hands under his arms, lifting him up out of the warmth of his mother’s fear and letting the dark kiss his sweaty skin cool.

“Dad,” Jack sobbed, “I’m scared!”

His dad rocked him back and forth and whispered into his ear, but Jack could barely hear what he was saying. Instead he tried to do what he had once been told, name the parts of his fear in an attempt to identify them and set them open to view, to consideration, to understanding.

Something, outside in the dark. Dad, he saw it and shot it. The sounds, they’ve gone, no more picking, no more prodding at our house. Monsters, there are none of course. But if there are . . . Dad scared them off.

“Gray,” his mother said, and Jack looked up sharply.

“They weren’t monsters, were they, Dad?” His father did not say a word. He was shaking.

“Gray,” his mum said again, standing and wrapping them both in her arms. “We should try the police again.”

“You know the phone’s dodgy, Janey.”

“You shot at someone. We should try the police.”

“
Someone
? But you saw, you—“

“Someone,” Jack’s Mum whispered softly. “Robbers, I expect, come to steal our Jackie’s things.” She ruffled his hair but Jack could not find a smile to give her.

“I heard them picking at the putty,” he said. “Robbers would just smash the window. Least, they do in
The Bill
. And there’s nothing else making a noise, like the fox in the woods. I always hear the fox before I go to sleep, but I haven’t heard it tonight. Dad!”

His father turned and stared at him, his face unreadable.

“Did you shoot someone, Dad?”

His father shook his head. He began to smile as he pulled Jack’s face into his neck, but the expression was grotesque, like one of those old gargoyles Jack had seen on churches when they were in France last year. “Of course not, Jack. I fired into the air.”

But he had not fired into the air, Jack knew. He had leaned out and aimed down. Jack could not help but imagine something squirming on the ground even now, its blood running into the gravel alongside the house, screams of pain impossible because it had no jaw left to open—

“Come on,” his dad said, “our room for now, son.”

“Didn’t you try the mobile?” Jack asked suddenly, but the look on his mother’s face made him wish he hadn’t.

“That’s not working at all.”

“I expect the batteries have run out,” he said wisely.

“I expect.”

His father carried him across the creaking landing and into their bedroom, a place of comfort. He dropped him gently onto the bed, and as he stood the telephone on the bedside table rang.

“I’ll get it!” Jack shouted, leaping across the bed.

“Son—”

He answered in the polite manner he had been taught: “Hello, Jack Haines, how may I help you?”
It’s the middle of the night
, he thought
. Who rings in the middle of the night? What am I going to hear? Do I really want to hear it, whatever it is?

“Hey, Jackie,” a voice said, masked with crackles and pauses and strange, electronic groans. “Jackie . . . the town . . . dangerous . . . get to Tewton . . . Jackie? Jackie? Ja . . . ?”

“Mandy,” he said, talking both to her and his parents. “It’s Mandy!”

His mother took the receiver from his hand. “Mandy? You there?” She held it to her ear for a few seconds, then glanced at Jack. “No one there,” she said. “Line’s dead. It did that earlier.” She turned to his dad and offered the receiver, but he moved to the window and shaded his eyes so he could see out.

“She said we should go to Tewton,” Jack said, trying to recall her exact words, afraid that if he did he would also remember the strange way she had spoken. Mandy never called him Jackie. “She said it was safe there.”

“It’s safe here,” his dad said without turning around. He was holding the shotgun again and Jack wanted to believe him, wanted to feel secure.

His mum stood and moved to the window. “What’s that?” Jack heard her mutter.

“Fire.”

“A fire?”

His father turned and tried to smile, but it seemed to hurt. “A bonfire,” he said, “over on the other side of the valley.”

“At night? A bonfire in the middle of the night?” Jack asked.

His parents said nothing. His mother came back to the bed and held him, and his father remained at the window.

“It
was
Mandy,” Jack said.

His mother shrugged. “I didn’t hear anyone.”

He tried to move away from her but she held him tight, and he thought it was for her own comfort as much as his. He didn’t like how his mum and dad sometimes talked about Mandy. He liked even less the way they often seemed to forget about her. He was old enough to know some stuff had happened—he could remember the shouting, the screaming, the punching on the last day Mandy had been with them—but he was not really old enough to realize exactly what.

It was so quiet, Jack could hear his father’s throat clicking as he breathed.

They stayed that way until morning.

“There are secrets in the night,” Mandy once told him. She was sitting next to his bed, looking after him because he’d been lost in the woods. He usually liked it when Mandy talked to him, told him things, but today even she could not cheer him up. She and his parents were hardly speaking, and when they did it was to exchange nothing but nastiness.

“What do you mean?”

She smiled. “You know, Jack. Secrets. You lie awake sometimes, listening for them. Don’t you? I know
I
do.”

“I just like listening,” he said, but he guessed she was right. He guessed there was more going on than most people knew, and he wanted to find out what.