The Undead Day Nineteen (19 page)

‘Of course I did,’ Marcy says, trying to remember if she did clean it, ‘we just talked quietly then got into an argument.’

‘Argument?’ Paula asks, darting to grab her wash bag, ‘what about?’ She slides into the bathroom and runs the cold tap to rinse her toothbrush off before adding a dollop of paste, ‘don’t mind me, what was the argument about?’

‘Lani,’ Marcy says, pulling a face, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything but…’

‘Marcy,’ Paula tuts with a mouthful of toothbrush.

‘I know, I feel bad now but…well I asked him if he had sex with her in that room?’

‘Oh,’ Paula says, rolling her eyes, ‘I bet that went well.’

‘Not really. Charlie, you know who Lani is?’

‘You explained before,’ Charlie says, ‘did he say if he had sex with her? I mean, if I may ask that.’

‘Bless, you’re so polite,’ Marcy says with a warm look at Charlie, ‘but he did…I mean yes,
they
did,’ she adds darkly.

‘Well he did come running out with his pants down so we all kind of figured that bit,’ Paula says, spitting in the bowl and rinsing her brush under the running water, ‘oh don’t look like that, Marcy. These are strange days. Don’t get hung up on the little things. Remember what I said,’ she adds, pointing her toothbrush at Marcy.

‘What did you say?’ Charlie asks.

‘Take comfort when you can,’ Marcy says then looks at Paula, ‘was that what you meant?’

‘It was,’ Paula says, rooting through her wash bag and pulling out bottles of shampoo, hair bands, brushes and a safety razor.

‘What would you do if Roy did that?’ Marcy asks.

‘If he did it now I’d chop his penis off…but if he did it before we were together? Well, that’s not my business,’ she says bluntly, ‘Marcy, Howie is crazy about you, anyone can see that. Seriously, take my advice and don’t get hung up on the small things. Right,’ she says, pulling her top off, ‘I’m going next before that lot start fighting over clean socks.’

She eases herself from the sleeping form of her children and pads quietly across the room. Paintings of golfers adorn the walls. Water colours and prints of flags fluttering in the breeze as men and women swing sticks to strike balls. In the bathroom she lowers the seat and squats to empty her bladder. Her eyes glazed and unfocused. Her clothing stained with the filth of the night. She sits for long minutes staring at nothing and seeing too many things until she blinks and reaches automatically for the toilet paper. She wipes, closes the seat cover and moves to the basin. Her own reflection scares her. The person she was to the person she is now. Bags under her eyes. Dark and puffy. Grime ingrained in the lines of her face. She feels drained. Exhausted. Emotionally and physically weak. She feels guilty for her own two children having survived when so many didn’t.

She twists the tap and stares down at the pure clean water pouring into the white ceramic bowl. Cool water that she uses to rinse her hands that rub at her tired face. Refreshing water that has been carbon filtered to remove scent, taste and colour and she bends over to hold her mouth close to the flow. She sucks the water into her mouth and drinks deeply. She drinks long and quenches the dryness of her throat. She swallows and feels her body respond to the intake of fluids and finally stands upright to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand as her mind thinks of what will happen now. Will they stay here? Go somewhere else? Maybe the fort everyone has heard about, maybe they will be taken there. She doesn’t know but she does know her own children are safe and alive when so many others perished. She goes back into the bedroom and eases down into the space between her children. Her arms reaching out to envelope them both as she lies still and listens to the sounds of other people waking in the rooms around her.

The man sits in the corner of the room. His eyes bloodshot and sore from hours spent sobbing at seeing his wife slain and being dragged screaming from her corpse. He wanted to die with her. He wanted to end it right there but the big man wouldn’t let him. The big man clamped a hand on his arm and pulled him away like he was nothing, like he was weightless, like he was a ragdoll. Guilt inside at being denied the chance to stay with his wife and guilt at the deeply hidden feeling inside that gives a perverse sense of pleasure at having survived.

Other men in the room cried too. Grown men put together in one small room in the golf hotel to cry and weep or to stare at the walls. Eventually those other men fell into broken and fitful sleep but he stayed in the corner. Biting into his own knuckles to silence the crying.

Pain like he has never felt grips his heart. His mind twisting as the memories play over and over. He kept her safe for so long. So many days and they survived. They stayed quiet. Hidden. They were clever and didn’t take risks. They had each other and in those darkest of days they heard of the living army and Mr Howie. People came through the town and stopped to take refuge to hide in the long hours of night. People who whispered of a small group that were not only fighting back but were winning. They couldn’t be stopped. The names were repeated again and again. Mr Howie. Dave. Clarence the giant. Blowers. Cookey. Nick. Mo Mo. Paula. He heard they lived in a fort on the coast and they had killed hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.

Then the things massed. They came all day to gather in the square. The people stayed silent, not fearing to move or speak and yet still more came. They came in from all sides and all roads and they gathered to wait for the living army that came to sweep them away. The rumours said the living army can’t be killed but normal people can. His wife died. His wife was cut down and Clarence the giant dragged him away.

‘Drink,’ he blinks up at the man holding the glass of water, ‘drink it…you’ve been awake all night.’

He turns his head. He doesn’t deserve water. He doesn’t want water.

‘Fucking drink it,’ the man holding the glass is tired. He saw his wife and children taken when this first started. He killed them himself after they turned and that made him cold inside. Then slowly over the days that followed he started to see the spark of humanity in others that were trying to survive. Everyone had lost someone. Everyone was the same but within that shared angst there was a cathartic healing. You had bad days when others counselled you and in turn, on the days he had strength, he gave counsel and words of comfort himself.

He saw them massing yesterday and like the others, he hid and stayed quiet, fearing this was it. There was no way out. Then Mr Howie and his group came and for all the death that was suffered those weird, joking, cold yet inseparable bastards armed to the teeth slaughtered the lot of them. The rumours were true. They were unstoppable. They were ethereal. Something from a story of olden days. He grunts as the man in the corner finally takes the glass and drinks it down in one long thirsty gulp before holding the empty glass out that is taken back into the bathroom to be filled from the running tap. He drinks himself. He drinks to survive. He drinks because his body needs hydration to live. Inside he is cold again. Cold and numb from the shock but he also knows they can recover. They will recover. He drinks so he can do what it takes to see Mr Howie and the living army kill the things again. He drinks to live so he can do whatever small task he can to help the cause and feed his desire for revenge.

The girl stands in the shower. Five years old and she stands under the cold water as her mother scrubs her hair with soap. She shivers and her teeth chatter. Goosebumps on her skin.

‘Not long,’ her mother says, scrubbing every inch of her daughter to be sure the filth and gore from last night are washed away.

‘Cold,’ the girl says, shivering again.

‘One minute.’

‘You said that one minute ago.’

‘Shush, I’m almost finished.’

‘Can I drink it?’

‘Drink what, baby?’

‘The water, can I drink it?’

The mother looks up at the shower head and shrugs, it’s cold water from the same main pipe that feeds the taps, what harm can it do?

‘Yes.’ She adds more soap and lifts her daughter’s hands to work at the nails. Germs are tiny. Microscopic. They can hide under the nails and she knows her daughter likes to bite her nails so she takes great care to scrub and wash.

She’d killed. She’d killed in the days after it all started and she killed last night. With a kitchen knife kept tucked in the waistband of her jeans. She stabbed and slashed at anything that came near her daughter. She killed a man who came into her house because he had the wrong look in his eye and asked if there were other men about. She left the house that day while he bled out on the living room floor. She found the square in the centre of town and joined the people living there but she kept that knife sharp and close. When they massed she held it ready and the fear grew by the hour as more and more poured into the world outside.

Then they came. Mr Howie and Dave. Clarence. Nick. Paula and the others. A thrill at knowing the rumours were true but also greater fear as the fighting intensified. She stayed with them. Doing as she was told. She stayed closest to the big man, Clarence the giant. Inching always close to be near his reassuring size and the calm that he exuded. When they had to go she ran with the others and got herded into the middle as those few gave everything to keep them alive. She killed again. When the fire engine broke the lines and it was chaos. Two got close and she stabbed one through the eye and the other through the heart.

Through all of that night, the greatest fear came when the woman Charlie started running the children away on the great horse. Just the mere thought of being separated made her legs go weak and her heart thud and her hands tremble but the big man eased her daughter from her arms,
she’ll be safe, I promise you
, and his voice was so deep and so calm. In that second she felt it. She
felt
the bond between them. She glimpsed the pulsing energy. The power of Howie. The snarling cold utter capability of Dave. The passion of Paula and Marcy. The fierceness of them all and through it all she felt the dog driving them on and like a static charge it touched her soul. She knew at that point that the safest place for her daughter was with any one of those few and she let her daughter go.
Trust us
the young woman Charlie mouthed as she wrapped her arms around her daughter then they were gone. Galloping away to safety and a future and the woman gripped that knife as tears of hope and pain streamed down her cheeks.

They got through it. Charlie said
trust us
and they got through it. Not all did but she did and now, the morning after the night before, she scrubs her daughter’s skin with a knife lying close and sharp as the others in the bedroom behind start to wake.

He’s a big man. Broad, heavy boned and possessed of a nature so gentle it defies the bulk he carries on his frame. He couldn’t kill but sometimes the greatest strength lies in the gentle touch of a warm heart and in those dark days when there was no light he gave strength with gentle words and a gentle smile. Warm eyes that softened and listened to the pain of others. He held them when they wept and sobbed for those they had lost. He brought them water and covered them with blankets at night. He foraged for food. Went out for supplies and played with the children when the parents were too exhausted and broken to function. He was there when the visitors spoke of the living army and a man called Mr Howie. He regaled in the idea of it. Of the sheer heart-warming hope it gave. He listened with rapt attention about a man called Dave who couldn’t be killed or even touched by the infected. He heard about a woman called Paula and a man who could fire a longbow over a mile and hit the infected through the eye. He heard of Blowers and Nick and Cookey and Mo Mo. Names that resonated and conjured images in his mind of heroes sweeping the lands to rid the beasts. They had a giant! A giant called Clarence who could lift a car with his bare hands and who could throw big men like they were made of nothing. He seized on it and when the hope dwindled he spoke of them. Re-telling the stories and keeping that flame alive.

When they massed outside he helped keep the children quiet and waited knowing they would come, and they did come. The living army came and swept the demons away and every rumour was true. They were unstoppable. They laughed and joked at the points of absolute desperation. They carried children and still fought one handed with lips snarling and eyes blazing. He saw Howie the softly spoken man who became a thing that shouldn’t exist. The sheer power of the man seemingly holding the infected back. He cried when the screams of the little girl came into the room and he feared the worst and that it was done. Right there it was done and the strength drained from every man and woman listening to those awful wails. Only it wasn’t done. He was close. He saw it. He saw Howie grab Marcy’s throat. He saw Marcy trying to cover Howie’s ears as though to protect him from the noise. He saw Howie go down onto his knees. He saw the dog inching closer. Licking Howie’s face and whining with an urgency that grew. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and a shiver ran down his spine in the thick air that was charged with static when he saw Howie and those few surge to their feet and run from the room but not as people, as something else, something animalistic.

What came after was terrifying beyond comprehension. It was a never ending nightmare of carnage and death and faces lurching in with teeth barred only to be cut down inches before they could bite.