Zombies vs The Living Dead (An Evacuation Story #1)

Zombies
vs The Living Dead

An
Evacuation Story #1

Frank
Tayell

Copyright 2013 by Frank Tayell

All rights reserved

http://theevacuation.blogspot.co.uk/

Contents

Part 1: 5
^th
March

Part 2: 6
^th
March

Part 3: 7
^th
- 10
^th
March

Part 4: 11
^th
March

Waverly-Price Retirement Home, England

5
^th
March.

George
Tull glared at the television as the Foreign Secretary pontificated
on the need for... George wasn't sure. He'd turned the set on hoping
to hear the news but expecting to hear nothing more than the oft
repeated phrase “There are no major outbreaks in the UK or
Ireland”. Instead he'd had to endure yet another rambling
speech from the ageing politician.

“What's
happened to the PM?” George asked himself quietly. “Haven't
heard from him in, what, a week?”

The
Prime Minister had appeared on television on the evening of 20
^th
February, as the world was reeling from the news of the outbreak in
New York, but George couldn't recall having seen or heard of him
since. Not when the curfew was announced and the army started
patrolling the streets shooting anyone they found out at night, nor
when the supermarkets were closed and rationing started. Not even
when the BBC started broadcasting the video of that plane being shot
down by the RAF over the Channel.

Now
he thought about it, the government announcements were made either by
the Foreign Secretary or, since the establishment of the cross-party
Emergency Cabinet, Jennifer Masterton. George liked her. She'd always
seemed trust worthy, honest even, at least for a politician. Now
though, he wasn't so sure.

A
small part of him, the part George liked to think of as his internal
optimist, had been surprised at how quickly Britain had been turned
into an armed camp. The cynical part, a much larger part since his
wife died and he'd had to move into the home, was surprised that
they'd waited until the undead walked the streets before they'd
abolished the rule of law.

“The
Super-Rabies Pandemic is a challenge to us all...” the Foreign
Secretary went on.

“Bloody
liar” George muttered as loudly as he dared “Call it what
it is. They're zombies. Even I know that.”

He'd
only learnt what a zombie was after he'd persuaded Mr McGuffrey, the
home's manager, to allow him to have a television in his room. That
was about a month after his arrival at the home two years ago. The
rule forbidding them in residents' rooms was bent for George on the
strict understanding that this would keep George out of the Sun Room
and away from the other residents. Watching the plethora of late
night films was one of the few new pleasures he'd discovered since
his wife's death. Before, when he'd had a house of his own, he hadn't
watched horror movies. His wife hadn't liked them. Even old Hitchcock
films had her leaving the room.

“Poor
Dora” he murmured.

His
wife had died four years earlier, when he was sixty three and she
fifty nine. He'd lost his job a few months later when the company
he'd worked for went under. It was just one more victim of the
recession, whose demise rated no more than a few lines on the local
news. Most of their savings had been spent on every possible
unapproved procedure, foreign specialist and overpriced herbal remedy
the internet could discover. He'd even,
unbeknownst
to his wife, re-mortgaged the house. When it was repossessed he'd
sold almost everything they had owned, scraping together just enough
to cover the road tax, petrol and the monthly payments for his
private health insurance.

His
secretary had let him live in her summer house for most of that year
but when illness had forced her mother to move into the three bedroom
semi, he'd moved out. He didn't want to be a burden, not to anyone.
He'd left in the middle of the night and drifted south, sleeping in
his car at grubby lay-bys, until he arrived at Dover on his sixty
fourth birthday. It was only the sturdy construction of the barriers
that had stopped him driving his car over the cliffs.

He'd
taken it as a sign. Of what and from whom, even now he wasn't sure.
He spent that year living in his car, stretching the little that he
had, waiting for his sixty fifth birthday. His insurance policy, the
one he maintained even when he didn’t have enough to eat,
guaranteed him a place in a retirement home at the age of sixty five
subject to a medical exam. After a year of little food and virtually
no sleep he'd failed the physical with flying colours.

“Liars!”
George muttered as the picture changed to a segment on a former
supermarket now part of the nationalised chain of Food Distribution
Centres. “That's the same one as yesterday. Same people too.
That one there, the one with the scar, I remember her. And yesterday
you said it was Crewe and today you say it's Bournemouth. Liars”
he muttered again.

He
hated muttering. He wanted to shout. He loved to shout at the TV.
That used to be one of the few pleasures he'd allow himself. Always
make sure your desires are attainable, his old man had told him. It
was almost the last thing he'd said before he'd dropped dead from a
heart attack aged 41.
George had
lived his life by that aphorism, eschewing dreams of sun-kissed
islands for less lofty, but more easily attainable homely comforts.

Whenever he'd
start ranting
at
the weatherman or some hapless presenter, Dora would head off into
the kitchen 'to make some tea'. She knew it was a sign of a bad day
at work needing to be vented away, but the sight of his
blustering
tirades always made her laugh and whenever she'd
start laughing, so would he. That had been the secret of their happy
marriage, knowing when to laugh together and when to do it alone.
Thirty happy years and two thoroughly miserable ones as he helplessly
watched her waste away.

He
checked the time. 11:30. Lunch was served at 12:10 sharp. You weren't
allowed to be early, that was frowned upon, but these past few days
if you turned up after quarter past you'd probably find the staff had
disappeared back to their lounge, leaving those residents who were
there to freely help themselves to food meant for the late comers.

“Bloody
thieves.
Carrion
, that's
what they are, picking over the carcass whilst it's still warm”
he muttered, but more quietly than before. He wasn't sure if they
could kick him out now there was a curfew but he wasn't going to risk
it. He knew for certain that there was enough food in the home to
last everyone for weeks. He'd seen the store room.

“We've
got to prepare, Mr Tull.” McGuffrey had said. “We don't
know how long it will have to last. This crisis could go on for
weeks. Months even, and what will we do then, eh?”

Except
that George had seen McGuffrey load a tray of tinned sweetcorn and
another of broad beans into a suitcase and wheel it down the drive
and up the path towards the grace and favour cottage he had at the
top of the cliffs. George tried to remember when that was. The 24
^th
,
he thought. Time was so hard to keep track of in the home, where
weeks just merged into one another and months weren't as important as
seasons. He'd watched McGuffrey go back and forth three times that
day and twice the next. On the 27
^th
he'd confronted him.

“Just
keeping it safe, Mr Tull. Besides” McGuffrey had added with a
wink, “it's not like the old dears need all these calories, is
it, eh?”

Then
he'd just smiled and walked off. That evening there had been a knock
at his door. “Your medicine Mr Tull.” The nurse had said.
Thanks to a private exam, courtesy of his insurance plan, George had
ensured he was prescribed nothing stronger than vitamin tablets,
which he got from the chemists at the shopping centre in Lower
Wentley. He didn’t have medicine, certainly none in the evening
when all they doled out were sleeping pills to keep the residents
quiet. The nurse had walked in carrying a tray covered with a metal
warming dish.

“Mr
McGuffrey says you're to take this, as required, before bed.”
She'd lifted the cover, as if she was a magician doing a trick and
there on the tray was a half bottle of scotch. He didn't drink, not
since the week after he'd arrived at the home and began to work out a
plan of escape. He'd given the bottle to Mrs O'Leary instead.

George
changed the channel again. ITV were showing a match. He bent forward
and peered at the top left hand corner of the screen. Arsenal 1 -
West Ham 2. The elapsed time read 56:18. He lent back in his chair
and tried to
lose
himself in
the rest of the game. It was hard. His mind kept turning to the world
beyond the Channel and the Atlantic. There wasn't much news coming in
from overseas any more, but reading between the lines it seemed as if
Britain was one of only a handful of functioning societies left.

It
was a week since McGuffrey and the nurse had tried to bribe him, as
if a cheap bottle of whisky was going to keep his silence. He'd tried
to complain. He'd waited till he was sure the staff had either gone
home or had retreated to their break room for the evening and then
he'd called the hospital. He'd called Help the Aged, he'd called his
MP, the police, the local paper and the BBC. At least he'd tried to.
None of the numbers worked.

He
checked his watch again. He'd never been one for eating lunch,
preferring to work through and leave work early to spend more time
with his wife. He didn't want to be late, though, because the food
wasn't for him, it was for Mrs O'Leary.

She'd
gone in for an operation in January. The week she was away was the
loneliest of George's new life. He'd visited her twice, the first
time he'd got a lift from the Vicar, the second time he'd taken the
bus. Or, to be precise, three buses and a long wait in the rain. When
he'd arrived he'd been soaked. The nurses had made such a fuss he
wasn't sure they were going to let him leave. In the end one of them
took him home at the end of her shift. Mrs O'Leary had found the
whole thing hilarious and not a day went by since then that she
hadn't reminded him of it.

Since
her return from the hospital, she had been confined to bed except on
the days when the physio visited. After he left and before having to
suffer through the indignity of the hoist to return her to bed,
George would take her for a walk in one of the home's wheelchairs.
She could manage pushing herself a short distance, but after a couple
of circuits of the one storey complex George would have to take over.
The visits by the physio and their promenades outside had stopped
after the petrol stations had been closed. Since then the only staff
who came in were the ones who lived in the village. He'd asked them
to move her out of the bed, but, hiding behind some non-existent
health and safety regulation, they'd refused.

He'd
been hoping that perhaps someone would come and collect her. She had
a grandson in Ireland who had visited just before Christmas. He'd
stayed for a week at the pub in the village, hired a car and taken
them both out every day. George had tried calling him too, but to no
avail. He wasn't sure what the grandson would have been able to do
anyway, now that the airports and ferries had been closed.

He
had tried, on his own, to lift her into the wheelchair and he thought
he could manage it, but; “If you can barely lift me down, how
on Earth are you going to get me back up to the bed?” she'd
asked, in her soft Irish brogue.

Arsenal
scored an equaliser. He checked the time again. 11:47. Still too
early.

There
were
seventeen
residents
left in the home. The living dead, he'd called them up until a few
weeks ago, but only within Mrs O'Leary's hearing. That didn't seem
quite so funny now.

She
was sixty nine years old and the only resident confined to a bed.
George, at sixty seven was the youngest. The others were old
enough to remember the War, but young enough that none of them had
had an active part in it. To them it was a time of rose tinted
rationing and halcyon summers where adults had far more to concern
themselves with than truant delinquents. They'd grown up in a time
when it was more than acceptable for places like the home to display
signs reading “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish”. By the
disdainful way that he and Mrs O'Leary were treated it was clear that
they wished they were still living in them. George didn't mind so
much, not since he'd come up with his plan.