This is a slightly different blog this time ... As you know, I'm writing as many short stories as there are short story competitions out there, and I wanted to share this one with you all to get some feedback on it before I submitted it.
It's just over 7,000 words in length, so might need more than one sitting, but I'd really value any feedback you've got (good or bad) about it; zombies aren't something I write a lot about (actually, this is my first time), so expertise from anyone who loves the genre (and there's a few out there!) or just loves reading would be extremely welcome.
The Life & Times of a Zombie
The Apocalypse is over. It lasted for eighteen months – and it was hell.
Up to a fifth of the population carried a rare genetic marker that activated one day, without any warning. The news reporters said things about “mutating viruses” and “environmental factors”, but to the majority of people, it was something that was happening outside their own front doors.
The genetic marker killed – instantly – all those who had it; and then, six hours later, reanimated them with their consciousness intact. Zombies walked amongst humans.
There was a problem, though. These zombies weren’t the slow-moving, brainless creatures of folklore; they were fast, they were quick … and they were angry. Angry at what, no-one knew – not even the zombies.
Finally, after eighteen relentless months of non-stop attack, when civilisation had almost fallen apart, scientists were able to develop an antibody that arrested the anger.
It stopped the killing, but the world had changed. A quarter of the world’s population were dead – either permanently or reanimated as a walking corpse with memories. Those who survived were survivors of a global terror that no-one could ever have imagined; they were war-scarred and devastated. No-one was unaffected – everyone had lost someone. What made it more painful was that some of them were still walking around.
The world is a barren place, even now. It’s 369 days since the vaccine was released into the atmosphere and my life changed ... again.
The first time my life changed had been when I had died. I had the genetic marker that turned me into something different and alien. I remember my death day clearly; I was in the supermarket with my wife. We were talking about mayonnaise, of all things. I’d hoped my last words might be a little more profound, but you never know when you’re going to die, I guess. It’s weird how the mind remembers the little things. I still can’t remember the colour of my wife’s eyes, but that’s another story.
Anyway, mayonnaise.
“I don’t see why you’re so fussed about buying a brand,” I said to her. “Mayonnaise is mayonnaise.”
“Except that this own-brand stuff tastes cheap.”
I couldn’t argue; it tasted cheap because it was cheap. We needed to think about cheaper stuff, as we’d just started a family. With three-month old twins – Robert and Sarah – demanding our attentions and our wallets, as far as I was concerned, we could do with a few more own-brand products.
“Becky, it’s not as if -”
I gasped as a shaft of pain shot up from the base of my neck up into my head. It felt like a poker had stabbed in and out of my brain; it was such a shock that I was left speechless; I put a hand to the back of my head to see what had happened.
I blinked in surprise – there was nothing there.
“Babe?” Becky asked, her face a mask of concern. “What’s wrong?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but my eyes rolled up in my head, and I died, right there in the supermarket.
Trust my last words to be about mayonnaise.
Atheists tell you that there’s nothing beyond death. Mine should have ended there, in the middle of the sauces aisle of the supermarket, with my wife screaming for help as she cradled my body in her arms. Little did she know that, all around the globe, millions more families were going through the same thing – loved ones dying, without any warning, leaving behind parents, lovers, children and friends who were confused and grieving.
My life, however, didn’t end there. It ... paused ... for six hours, then restarted in a morgue’s cold storage unit. Why six hours? I wish I could give you more of an answer, but I can’t ... except “why not”. Why not five, or seven ... or six, I guess.
I woke up in a strange, unlit tube-like room with no light and bloody cold. There was no way I would be able to sit up – while it was about eight feet long, it was barely a foot in height. I felt instantly claustrophobic and confused; looking back, I couldn’t imagine that the designers of these units didn’t expect many people to wake up after dying.
The last thing I remembered was being stood in a supermarket with a bottle of mayonnaise in my hand and now I was freezing my … well, I was in this weird compartment and didn’t know where I was.
I suddenly heard the muffled voices of two people outside the compartment; I felt a surge of anger well up inside me at their sense of freedom. They were out there, and I was stuck away in this stupid, sodding little box.
I flipped onto my stomach and looked at the small door in front of me; it was securely locked from the outside with no key or handle for me to grab.
I can’t imagine there’s much call for people needing to get out.
“Hey!” I yelled out. “Can anyone hear me?”
I waited for a reply, but none came. The two voices had obviously gone. I suddenly felt very scared … and very alone. After a moment, though, those feelings subsided and were replaced by something else … an anger that began bubbling away in the pit of my stomach, and then blossomed out to my chest and throat. I felt my fists clenching and my teeth ground together as the anger continued to throb deep inside my body.
It felt good.
My left fist lashed out and hit the door. It went through the hard, cold metal like paper and I instantly felt the warmth of the room beyond. Looking back, I doubt it was that warm, but it felt like Barbados compared to the temperature inside my … well, cell, for want of a better word.
I fumbled around for the lock. My fingers felt thick and clumsy, as if my brain was struggling to understand how to use them, but the anger I was feeling pushed those thoughts to one side ... and consumed me.
I could see a room beyond the small door that looked like the morgues I’d seen on TV shows; cold and clinical, with a couple of tables near to each other and various pieces of electronic equipment and knives and things dotted around the room. A couple of women were stood in the middle of the room, staring at me in shock.
I don’t remember what happened next, although flashes occasionally come back to haunt me. More than anything, I remember the blood … and the feeling of power, surging through my veins as the adrenaline of the anger overrode any rational thought.
The next thing I remember clearly was thinking that I should feel out of breath, but actually feeling as fresh as a daisy. As the savage feeling of anger gradually subsided, I leaned against a smooth, cool wall and opened my eyes.
A different feeling began to churn inside my stomach. This time, it was horror. On the floor were three corpses, all ripped to pieces. Limbs were torn from torsos and heads from necks – and there was the smell of death and blood everywhere. Two of them were the women I had seen when I had punched through the door; they must have been doctors, judging by the white coats ... or what was left of the coats. The third person – a man - had some sort of uniform on.
Was he a security guard? I wondered.
My eyes wandered over the gore and blood scattered all over the floor. Nausea began to overwhelm me; I felt my shoulder blades pushing deeper into the wall. My body was tense with fear and I felt sick and afraid. I glanced down at my hands
I need to get out of here, I thought. I’ve killed people, oh my god, I’ve killed people, I’m a murderer, I’m a killer, oh god.
I realised I was becoming hysterical and needed to get myself under control. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and ran a hand through my hair. I needed to get out; the stench was getting further up my nose and I knew I would be sick if I stayed in here any longer.
There was a set of automatic doors near me. I ran up to them, but there was no power to them. In desperation, I pounded at the doors – and I stepped back in shock as they folded in on themselves under my fists. It was like they were made of paper.
“What the hell …?” I muttered.
I stared dumbly at the doors, trying to figure out what I had done to make them cave so easily. Gingerly, I reached out and touched a piece of the door, which was now folded back so it showed the corridor beyond it. It felt like metal – cold and smooth – and looked like metal.
Most likely is metal then, I thought. But how did I break through?
I looked over my shoulder and swallowed; I’m not that strong, I know it. Was that actually me?
The sight of those people, dead and ripped apart, made my head swim and I wasn’t able to control my nausea this time. I felt ashamed at losing control so vividly.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked away from the mess I had left on the floor. There was no way I could clean it up; while the room itself looked like it had been quite sterile before I had … killed three people, a pile of sick in the corner wasn’t going to make much difference to it now.
I stretched the doors apart a bit more to get me out and I stepped into the corridor. It was empty, with each end curving away in different directions.
I assumed this was my local hospital, the Queen Elizabeth, but since I had only been here a couple of times in my entire life, I didn’t know how to get around very easily.
I hesitated, not sure what to do. Part of me wanted to stay here and wait for someone to walk past, but then I realised that they would then start asking awkward questions about what had happened in the morgue – and I wouldn’t know what to say. How could I answer their inevitable questions when I genuinely didn’t remember what I had done?
I was suddenly conscious that I was naked; up to that point, it hadn’t even occurred to me.
“I can’t go round like this,” I muttered to myself.
I glanced around; there was still no-one walking down the corridor from either direction. I don’t pretend to be an expert on hospitals, but I started to get a weird feeling; surely this was unusual? Hospitals were busy places, everyone knew that. There should be people everywhere, shouldn’t there?
I chose to go right – for no real reason, to be honest, I just thought I’d see where it led me.
There were a few side rooms along the way, but they were either locked or there was no-one there. I seemed to be in the basement level as I didn’t come across a single window while I was there. Thankfully, one thing I did find was an open laundry cupboard near the lift at the end of the corridor, its contents spilling out over the floor.
I couldn’t work out why they would leave so many sheets and towels just lying on the floor in a heap. I wasn’t going to complain, though, as there were a few sets of pyjamas in there as well.
After I’d dressed myself, I walked over to the lift and pressed the call button. I thought I’d be waiting for ages for it, but it made that “ping” sound almost immediately and the doors opened.
Before I knew it, I was on my back, feeling the tiled floor slamming into my back. I called out in shock; the jarring pain that juddered down my back was almost too much to bear, but I gritted my teeth. There were bigger problems to deal with.
A snarling, furious face was directly over mine, my body pinned to the floor by their strength. My mind remembered the doors back in the morgue, and I realised that this person must be equally as strong to be able to hold me down so well.
“Stop it!” I yelled. I was being battered by my attacker’s arms, and I suspect that I would have been bitten if my hands, placed firmly against a growling throat, weren’t keeping those teeth away from me.
Abruptly, the attack stopped, and the face changed, became immediately more placid. It was in that instant I realised that my attacker, despite the boyish haircut, was female. The cheekbones, eyes and shoulders were too slim to be male.
She was shorter than me by at least a foot and quite a lot slimmer – I was 6’ 4” and fairly stocky from my days playing rugby league – and we looked like polar opposites. Where I had dark hair and green eyes, she had blonde hair and blue eyes. I was still confused and nervous, she seemed calm and collected.
As she climbed off me, I pushed myself up off the floor and checked that nothing was broken. In all honesty, I felt stupid more than anything; I tried to rationalise it as her being startled by me as the lift doors had opened. Seeing a guy, a lot taller than her, dressed in nothing but hospital-issue pyjamas, must have been a weird sight.
“Sorry about that,” she said abruptly. “I assumed you were one of them.”
I blinked in surprise; I had been all ready to give an apology myself, and yet here she was apologising to me. I couldn’t work out what was going on, so I just shrugged.
“No problem,” I replied. “It could have happened to anyone.”
One of “them”? I thought. Who are they?
It was strange; the woman had changed completely. A few seconds before, she had been ready to kill me, and I knew she could have done it. The rage ... the anger ... in her face was breathtaking, and I found myself wondering if I had looked like that to the people back in the mortuary.
Was I that angry? I wondered. I can’t remember. I just ... Why can’t I remember?
“What’s your name?”
I blinked. “Huh?”
The girl snorted with laughter.
“I doubt it,” she said sarcastically. “What were you thinking about?”
I hesitated in replying; this girl was a stranger.
But you want answers, don’t you? I asked myself. What’s stopping you?
An answer immediately came to me: Because she tried to kill you a minute ago!
I ignored it. What did I have to lose?
“I was wondering what’s going on,” I admitted. “I don’t know what’s happened to me ... and my name’s Ryan, in answer to your first question.”
The girl shrugged disinterestedly, although I couldn’t work out where it was disinterest at my name or at my worries.
“Mine’s Alexandra,” she said, “but I’ll break your legs if you call me that. Alex will do.”
I nodded. “Do you know what’s happening?”
“Not a clue, my friend.” She smiled as my face fell. “Sorry. I don’t think that’s what you wanted to hear, was it?”
“How did you guess?” I answered, a bit too sarcastically. I instantly regretted it.
“I was a psychologist ... you know, before.”
I thought I was confused before, but now I was even more confused.
“What do you mean, ‘before’?” I asked her.
She gave me an odd look, as if I were somehow stupid. “You know ... before I died.”
I didn’t react; my face froze as my brain tried to process what Alex had just said. Her eyes widened as she realised that I hadn’t yet come to the same realisation as her. I stumbled back in shock.
“Ryan ...” she said, “you’re ... dead.”
“I’m the most useless corpse in the history of corpses. I was just sick at the sight of those corpses in the morgue.”
“That’s just your body getting rid of all of the stuff in the gut. You’ll be alright now; you might get one more reflux, just to clear out your system, then it’ll be gone for good.”
I took my head out of my hands and frowned.
“For a psychologist,” I snapped, “you’re not very sympathetic.”
Alex laughed and shook her head. She drew in a breath of cold air and slowly released it as she looked out over the car park. We’d gone there after I had almost passed out. It was strange, because we’d only passed three people – two patients in gowns and slippers like me, and a female nurse. They had all nodded at us, apparently recognising us – although I didn’t recognise any of them, Alex returned the nod and smiled at each of them in turn.
“It’s a lovely evening,” she said.
I looked up. Yeah, it probably is ... somewhere else, I thought. The night sky was clear; with no clouds in the sky, stars and the moon were casting a bright pall over the ground. Normally, I would have been fascinated by the sight of all this ... but today, I couldn’t think of anything – except one thing.
“I’m dead?”
Alex turned to face me; her face was brightened up by a beautiful smile that was not what I expected to see, given the circumstances.
“Why are you so happy?” I demanded. “You’re dead too.”
Alex shrugged. “I’m still walking and talking, aren’t I? This way, I don’t have to worry about breathing and eating while I’m doing it.”
That was the other thing that was taking some getting used to; I exhaled onto the palm of my hand, but couldn’t feel anything. All the air had been expelled from my body as I had hit the floor of the supermarket, and my dead body didn’t need it in order to ... uh, survive.
I chuckled at my bad joke.
“See?” Alex said, the smile on her face broadening as she listened to my laugh. “Why worry? Let’s just enjoy it. We’re so much stronger and less dependent on human weaknesses.”
At the mention of the word “human”, I felt myself tense. Bile blocked the back of my throat for a moment and I growled. My eyes darted around the empty, peaceful garden, reassuring my brain that there was no-one there apart from us two. Only when I was fully reassured did I relax again.
“What’s wrong with me?” I breathed. “Why do I get so angry when I think of ...”
I couldn’t finish the sentence, as the bile started to rise again in my throat; I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but no words could come out.
I looked up at Alex, needing answers; the smile had vanished from her face and replaced – finally – by sympathy.
“What’s wrong with me?” I pleaded. “You know, don’t you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” she replied. “You’re more alive now than you ever were. Your body feels ... it knows what it wants. It doesn’t like the living ... they feel wrong, don’t they?”
Hating myself for admitting it, I nodded.
“My wife …” I croaked. “My children. I -”
I couldn’t control it any longer; I was on my knees, vomiting with all my might. My throat felt red raw with the violence of the nausea, the vomit and the hatred that was welling up inside me – but I still couldn’t stop being sick while I thought of my living, human family.
“What’s wrong with me?” I demanded.
I felt a hand on my back, gently comforting me; although the tears continued rolling long after the nausea stopped, I found the hand strangely comforting.
“You’re free,” Alex said. “Enjoy it.”
I took Alex’s words to heart. I saw my death and rebirth as just that; a new-found freedom. I fell into a new life ... and forgot about the old one.
I savoured the anger; no, relished it. I had never thought that death could be this much fun. I blame it on the virus – even now, after everything has stopped. All morality amongst the dead vanished overnight; we became killers. Hardened, angry, hating killers that sought to destroy life wherever it could be found.
We failed.
Life has a habit of continuing in the most annoying ways. Despite our best efforts, humanity survived. Scientists worked desperately on a cure and, despite our best efforts, partially succeeded. I say partially, because I’m still talking to you, aren’t I?
The vaccine removed the hatred and anger from our genetic code and made us calmer. It removed the overwhelming nausea that many of us experienced whenever we thought of humans.
It should have restored our moral code as well.
But morality isn’t entirely genetic; it’s something that is learnt as well, from our family and friends. Being dead, and consumed with rage, we lost that sense – or, at the very least, it was overridden by that hatred.
Each of the zombies have had to relearn about morality. Many of us don’t want to admit it, but it doesn’t sit easy, the morality of the living – not anymore. I live in fear of being found out, of someone discovering that I just don’t care in the same way; that I feel so … so free.
It bothered me, though. I’ve never been able to fully explain it; a part of me is sad that I didn’t just die when the vaccine worked its magic. I’ve spent a lot of nights wishing that death would just take me away into oblivion. I wanted a proper death, not this stupid half-death that I seemed to be living through – not caring about anything. I couldn’t bring myself to care and it occurred to me, one day out of nowhere, that I probably should.
If I’m still alive … sort of, I thought, I should probably do something with it.
Too many of my compatriots – my fellow zombies – just wandered round aimlessly. They slept wherever they could find a corner – it didn’t even have to be a comfortable corner, truth be told – and they just walked, either round and round in circles or in a straight line until they reached water … and didn’t stop even then.
One day, something clicked inside me; I knew I wanted something else. I wanted to care about something again. If I was going to be stuck like this for eternity, then I thought I should have a purpose to my life ... or death.
I decided to find my family, and let that be my purpose. I needed to get out of this apathy towards … well, everything.
The majority of people had moved into special camps during Armageddon, to protect themselves and each other from the terrors going on in the surrounding countryside and towns. But now, after the terrors had faded, our roles in life were shifting; people were beginning to return to their homes and my kind were being rounded up like sheep and herded into pens, barely big enough for human dignity.
We’re not human, though, are we? I remember thinking one day as I walked somewhere along the east coast, across a barren landscape charred by spent flames. We’re decaying, rotting corpses that used to be human.
I stopped right there in the middle of the field. All I could see ahead of me were the remains of a once-fertile wood, plus some slowly-rotting corpses that hadn’t yet been cleared away by the army.
My family are at home, I realised. They’ll have gone home.
Without any more thought, I began searching out my home. I was far away, I knew that, and had a long walk ahead of me. I walked past ash-field after ash-field, burial pit after burial pit - and half-filled towns blurred past me. I lost track of time, but to someone that’s dead, time doesn’t make much difference. One day is the same as the next.
I ignored the fearful looks of the living; they were strange, now that I didn’t feel the nausea and anger when I even thought about them. Now, they were just oddities, things on the periphery of my vision that I didn’t care about. I was focused on one thing only; getting home to my town and to my family. I was curious to know my reaction when I saw them again – I was intrigued and worried in the same breath.
I laughed. Breath. I can’t remember the last time I took one of those.
I paused … and stumbled on my footing for a moment. Yes, I can. I was in that supermarket, talking about mayonnaise. Mayonnaise! That was my last breath.
I hadn’t thought of that day in ... a long time, and it felt odd to be thinking of it now, on the edge of a plague pit where endless corpses had been thrown in the aftermath of the war. The layer of earth that had been piled on the top was slowly collapsing in on itself as the spring rains fell. I was relieved that there weren’t any corpses showing through the thin covering; it would be like rubbing salt into the wound, that the people who had been killed here had been able to die, just die and leave their bodies behind.
And here I am, still stuck in mine.
I heaved a breathless sigh, turned away from the pit – and my memories – and carried on walking.
Occasionally, humans would try to stop me; either because they felt sorry for me or because they wanted to attack me, angry for what I and others like me had done. I didn’t have the rage and hatred burning away inside me like I once did, and so I just kept on walking.
A lot of people didn’t want me to just keep on walking; they wanted me to stop. For good. They just didn’t understand what it was like to be a zombie – but, then, neither did I, if I’m honest. No serious attempts had been made by scientists to study our condition, but I strongly suspected that pulling my limbs apart wouldn’t be enough to stop me from being ... well, me – and conscious.
Living humans didn’t understand that, and I lost count of how often I was attacked. I had learnt, during Armageddon, that I had to be careful about defending myself; dead people don’t heal. I had already lost two fingers on my right hand and my left ear had spent a long time hanging on by a thread before I got fed up with it and yanked it all the way off. I would never be able to heal, in the way that I used to before shopping for mayonnaise, so I had to protect myself.
I hated it, having to fight, but fighting for my own survival meant I had to focus on staying alive – and it began to teach me that I wanted to stay alive. I wanted to live, for the sake of my family.
As the days turned into weeks, and I met more people determined to harm me, that fear and anger started to change me. Whereas before, I would travel all through the day and night, not stopping for anything, I began to hide during the day, and stole a jumper with a hood so that, when I did travel, I wouldn’t be recognised.
Although I didn’t recognise it at the time, this was part of my journey to rediscover who I was. When I travelled during the day, I had to hurt people to stop them from pursuing me. If I travelled purely at night, I reasoned, that would be less of a problem.
I was beginning to care again. It made me feel alive.
It was a couple of days before I thought I’d be home.. The scenery was becoming more and more familiar with each passing hour, and I was feeling strangely nostalgic, remembering random portions of my old life. Driving out to my parents’ house, out here somewhere in the suburbs, or going to the Lakeside out-of-town shopping centre ... or just going out for a drive with Becky, back when we were dating.
It was late evening – about eight o’clock or so – and night was rapidly descending; I decided it would be safe to start walking again. I had hidden myself in an abandoned farm building, not sleeping – just ... thinking about my family, my wife and beautiful twins. The nostalgia of the past few days had started bringing back feelings of desire for my wife. I also wanted to see my children; they would have grown so much, and surely needed their father in their lives?
I hadn’t even been walking for twenty minutes before I reached a small village. It looked familiar; I hesitated for a moment, then realised that this was where I had taken Becky on our first date, to that very pub over there in the corner.
“The Bull’s Head,” I muttered, chuckling as the memories came flooding back. I had been half-an-hour late picking Becky up because my mum couldn’t find the cat and she had asked me to help her find it. When I finally got to Becky’s house, she had initially refused to come out with me, but I had finally convinced her after promising that we could go wherever she wanted – and she chose here.
The lights were blazing, and the sounds of laughter rang out from the beer garden at the back. I found myself taking a few steps towards it before I realised what I was doing; the smile dropped off my face in an instant and the brief surge in happiness was again subsumed by an overwhelming feeling of pointlessness.
What the hell am I doing? I remember thinking. I’ll never lead a normal life. I’m a freak. Becky won’t want you back after all this – she’ll be disgusted by you. You’re dead, for Christ’s sake, you just don’t know how to die.
I turned away, suddenly unsure what to do. For a moment, I had been lost in the happy fog of memories and wanted to be there again, making new memories with the people I loved – and who had once loved me. But now ... hearing how people were moving on with their lives – laughing, drinking, loving – I couldn’t honestly see how I fitted in.
“Evening!”
I was startled out of my maudlin reverie by the cheerful voice from behind me. I checked that my hood was still in place – it was – and it was still hiding my face. The tell-tale red eyes and pallid complexion would be instantly recognisable to anyone, even in this small village.
The voice had come from a middle-aged man across the other side of the small green; he was out walking his dog, a small Jack Russell that was straining to get off the leash. I knew how it felt. Its owner was kneeling down beside it, fiddling with the leash, and then glanced up at me again; he was clearly expecting a response.
“E-evening,” I replied halting. This was the first conversation – such as it was – in a long time, especially with someone living.
I assumed that would be the end of it – that he was let his dog run loose and that would be that. As the Jack Russell darted off across the green to the few trees that were scattered around, I turned to go.
“Are you new to the village?” the man called over to me.
I looked over my shoulder and, before my brain caught up, replied; “Erm, no, I’m ... just a visitor. I’m passing through.”
In the rapidly-fading dusk light, I could see the man’s open, friendly face nodding. He was walking towards me, and my stomach did a back flip. Quickly adjusting my hood, so that it covered as much of my eyes as possible, I took a step back and looked down.
“A lot of people do,” the man said. “Visit, I mean. It’s a nice little village – always has been, despite the recent ... problems.”
Oh god, he knows, I thought. Panic started to set in; although it was still strange not to get any of the physical symptoms now – rapidly beating heart, flushed cheeks, etc – I still felt uncomfortable.
The local stopped a foot or so away from me and glanced out over the green, searching for his dog.
“I can’t even see Henry now,” he muttered, peering into the gloom.
Neither could I, but I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to engage the man in any more conversation than was absolutely necessary. The sooner I could get away, the safer I would be. I began wishing that I hadn’t paused to look at the pub.
“It was a terrible time, wasn’t it,” he said quietly. “All those ... dead people, just walking around and killing everyone they could get their hands on. We lost ... well, we lost more than we deserved.”
I was glad I had hidden my hands in the pockets of my jeans; I really didn’t want to get recognised here, not when I was so close to home.
“Yeah,” I replied, “they were bad days.”
“Did you lose anyone?”
“What? I – er, what?”
The question had been so out of the blue that I hadn’t got an answer readily to hand; it wasn’t one I had expected to be asked.
As I fumbled for a decent lie, the man glanced over at me, obviously thinking I’d just missed the question. “I asked if you’d lost anyone during the outbreak?”
“My wife,” I said, hating myself for the lie, “and my two children. They all died.”
“I lost my brother and his wife,” he replied. “They were butchered, just over there by the post office. I didn’t see it happen, thankfully.”
I remained silent, looking out over the green. Dusk was quickly giving way to night; I heard the Jack Russell barking away excitedly in the distance and found myself wishing I could be that carefree.
The man a breath and turned back towards me, a faint smile on his face. He stuck out a hand.
“Samuel Hiller,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr ...?”
He deliberately left his question – as well as his hand – open, obviously expecting a normal response to both. Inside, I felt a surge of panic; the second I put my hand in his, he would know what I was. The cold clamminess of my hand was a certain giveaway; I had managed to keep my skin in fairly good condition, but already pieces had been starting to flake off.
Shit, I thought. I’m done for – he’ll raise the alarm and I’ll be attacked again. I don’t want to keep fighting. Please ... don’t keep doing this to me. Please.
A slight look of confusion had appeared on Hiller’s face – I realised that the pause had gone on for a fraction of a second too long and my awkwardness was more palpable than ever now.
I was saved from making a choice by Henry, the little Jack Russell. He came bounding back across the green, still full of energy and excitement. Both Samuel and I looked round at the barking and yapping; the dog appeared from the gloom and, his own sight obviously impaired by the darkness, barrelled into my legs. He immediately righted himself and began weaving himself in and out of our legs.
I laughed at this little dog, full of energy, obviously happy to be back near his owner after losing sight of him. I knelt down and reached out to stroke him. As soon as I touched him, however, he yelped in shock and jumped back, quickly moving behind Samuel’s legs to hide.
“Henry?” Samuel said. “What’s wrong with you, you silly boy?”
He knelt down and grabbed hold of Henry, stroking him to stop the little dog from shaking. Samuel looked up at me and smiled.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s never normally like -”
I instantly knew why he had stopped. Knelt down there opposite Samuel, my hands were visible. Pale white with occasional purple patches showed up even in the darkness of the evening, and Henry had managed to bite and puncture the skin of my left hand; a row of tiny teeth marks were embedded in my skin ... but no blood was coming out.
Henry, emboldened by being in his owner’s arms, started to growl; his teeth bared and his eyes took on a wild aspect that scared me. Samuel, however, kept a tight grip on his dog; he obviously didn’t trust me anywhere near the pet, despite the dog’s obvious willingness to attack.
“You’re an abomination,” Samuel whispered angrily. “You don’t belong here.”
“I don’t belong anywhere!” I exclaimed, a rush of emotions suddenly coming to the surface. “I’m scared and I just want to go home!”
Samuel scoffed. “You don’t have a home – except in a cemetery. You belong in hell.”
He stood and began to back away, being careful to keep me in his eye-line.
“Freak!” he spat.
“Please don’t raise the alarm!” I begged, standing up as well. “Please ... just let me leave. I don’t mean you any harm. I just want to find my family.”
“Why shouldn’t I call for help?” Samuel demanded. “That would be the best thing, wouldn’t it? Getting rid of one of your kind ... it’d be one less the government have to hunt down and exterminate.”
I flinched at the word exterminate; it sounded so harsh and final.
Except that it wouldn’t be, would it? I thought. Even if you dismembered me, I wouldn’t die ... I’d just be a living corpse with his limbs scattered across this bloody green. Then I really couldn’t get away.
“Please ...” I pleaded, the begging in my voice palpable. “Please, just let me go. I’m travelling to Dover to find my family. I don’t want to hurt anyone. The virus cured me of all that hate.”
Samuel was looking at me curiously; not in the fearful, hate-filled way of a moment ago, but with the look of someone who was truly surprised at something.
“Dover?” he repeated. “You’re going to Dover?”
I nodded. “That’s where I lived before ... well, before this happened to me. It’s the only place I can think of to start looking for my wife ... and my children.”
I knew I had just shown up the lie that I had made earlier about my wife dying, but I didn’t think that would be much of an issue now that Samuel knew who I really was. He was still looking at me in that same, curious way.
“You ... you haven’t heard?” he asked. There was a quaver in his voice. His fear seemed temporarily forgotten.
I frowned. “What do you mean, I haven’t heard?” I asked. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m a goddamn zombie, Samuel! I don’t really keep up with the news!”
Samuel backed away some more, the terror and fear showing in his eyes. His grip on Henry tightened; the dog itself kept snarling at me, although in that instant, I didn’t care.
As quickly as my anger started, it dissipated again. I realised how it must look to a living human; a zombie getting angry, just like it had done in the beginning of Armageddon.
“No, look, I’m sorry,” I said, holding my hands up to show that I didn’t mean any harm. “I’m ... tired. I’m tired of everything. I just want to see my family again.”
Samuel swallowed, a hard lump in his throat clearing as his fear receded slightly.
“I don’t think you’ll find them,” he said quietly. He seemed frightened to tell me anymore, as if that simple act would somehow bring back the virus that I had been so recently been cured of.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
I was trying to be careful with what I said, and how I said it, because I wanted him to keep talking. There was something I didn’t know about – and that something affected my family.
“Please tell me, Samuel,” I asked. “What do you know?”
Samuel swallowed again. He glanced down at Henry, almost for reassurance. The dog had stopped growling for the moment, as if it had somehow picked up on my desperation. He looked back up at me.
“Dover was badly hit by the virus,” he said. “Over two-thirds of the population were affected by it. We know that some ... zombies left the area, went onto the killing fields in London, but a lot stayed.”
I nodded; I knew all this. I was one of the zombies that left. There were too many other zombies there, and it seemed pointless staying in an area where there wouldn’t be enough good hunting to go round. I had travelled to the countryside, where I had thought I would be able to pick off isolated bands of villagers. When the virus was cured, and I regained control, I was in the far north of Scotland, feasting on back-water hamlets.
“What happened after I left?
“The government couldn’t control them all,” Samuel replied. “The army were overwhelmed; there were just too many of them. So they scorched the town.”
My knees buckled and I fell to the ground. The earth and grass were soft beneath my knees but I didn’t notice – or care.
“They ... scorched ...” I tried to process what Samuel had said, but I couldn’t. “No ... they can’t ... my family ...”
Samuel stood there, a few feet away from me, unsure of what to say. He nodded. His eyes had suddenly filled with tears; it was clearly a painful memory for anyone who had seen it happen, but in that moment, I didn’t care. All I could in front of me were the faces of my wife and my gorgeous children – burning in flames.
“No-one survived,” Samuel went on. “The zombies all burned. Anyone trying to leave the town’s boundaries were shot on site, human or zombie. They couldn’t tell who was who. I’m so sorry, my friend.”
I doubled over in agony, wishing in that instant that I could cry – my tear ducts had stopped working the moment I had died.
I’ve got my wish, I thought. I feel alive again. But I wanted happiness. Instead, I get this ... this pain!
I had got what I had been searching for: answers, and an end to my apathy. Suddenly, I wanted neither.
I screamed in grief.
I want to die.
