The Z Word (A Zombie Novel) Read online

  Without answering me by words or body language, she began to climb the ladders to the attic. I followed her up and explained, "As you can see, there's a lot of crap up here."

  I watched her as she gazed at the boxes of CDs and DVDs that had been packed away. A semi-acoustic guitar sat on a guitar stand with a B string missing, and in the other corner was a fake treasure chest that had photo albums in it, as well as pointless certificates I had received when I was in college and university.

  Clare looked at me and spoke at last. "'We should move tins up here, fill bottles full of water—"

  "I was thinking about blocking the upstairs off and just living upstairs."

  She didn't look convinced and pulled a face. "I agree with sleeping in the attic on a night, but we might as well make use of the amenities downstairs such as TV, because there's no point living as prisoners unless it's absolutely necessary."

  I could see her point. If we were sitting in the living room, minding our own business, and suddenly the front door or the window caved in, it would only take seconds for the both of us to run upstairs. Due to atrophy, I was guessing that these things weren't fans of any kind of climbing, but I wasn't taking that theory for granted. I then, for some bizarre reason, began thinking about one of the Dr Who villains, the Daleks.

  For those who had never heard of these things, the Daleks were basically very aggressive tin cans on wheels. But scary? Fuck, no!

  Question: How to avoid being killed by a Dalek? Answer: Go upstairs.

  Simple. Daleks can't climb stairs.

  I was hoping it was going to be the same for these things as well; but then again, a scene of Clare and I bolting upstairs while a horde of zombies piled into my house was something that I hoped wouldn't happen. Only time would tell.

  I then showed Clare how to open the skylight in the attic and told her that if we had no choice, we could use it to escape and break into other people's skylights if we became desperate.

  Clare released a laugh when I told her this, but then stifled it once she knew I was being serious. She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever words that were about to tumble out of her lips were put on hold once we both heard a screech of tyres coming from outside, followed by a crash.

  Chapter Nine

  After hearing the screech of tyres, we suddenly left the attic down the metal, rickety ladders and headed for the bedroom window that looked out onto the main road. It was a beautiful June day, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun shone down. This was ruined by the terrible news that had been broadcasted, and now had been ruined even more by witnessing a crashed Ford on its side and a small army of the dead surrounding the car.

  The car had rolled onto its roof and ten or so zombies were surging forward, desperate to get inside. I opened my bedroom window to be greeted by a mixture of screams and strident car alarms. The street didn't seem so peaceful now.

  The car's windows were shattered and I could see some of the things crawling into the car. At this point, Clare turned to me. "Shut the window. I don't wanna hear this."

  I shut the window while Clare trotted back downstairs, but my eyes refused to move away from the scene of seeing three people, a family consisting of two adults and a minor, being eaten in their own cars. I couldn't see much from the angle the car was facing and where I was standing, but it was clear from the screams, that still managed to find its way into the bedroom, that this family were experiencing an unimaginable death.

  I looked out to the houses across my street to see other people, mainly from their bedrooms, also witnessing this macabre sight. It was like a really bad car crash—horrific, but disturbingly engrossing to gawp at.

  I felt for the family, I really did, but what worried me the most—selfish, I know—was the increasing number of zombies there were. The screams were probably the main cause of the attraction, and l knew that my street could be in for a bumpy ride.

  Although it appeared that some residents had left their homes, including my neighbour to my left who had ignored warnings to remain indoors and not to travel, I had a feeling if this thing got any worse, then the remaining survivors in my street would be spending many a day cooped up in their own attics.

  I had no room to complain really. I knew this was a family street and I knew that being stuck indoors with little food, having hungry infants, and screaming babies who needed baby food, nappies, etc, would be an absolute nightmare for the parents.

  I even thought about the Thompson family that lived three doors down, and wondered how they were coping. They had a son and a young daughter who I hardly saw, and probably didn't understand why mummy and daddy were behaving so strangely, why they wasn't allowed to go out anymore and play with their friends, and why their parents were piling furniture against the windows of the house.

  Chapter Ten

  Clare had come back from downstairs to stand next to me and said that she didn't feel safe downstairs. She took a look outside at the aftermath. After five minutes had passed, we eventually managed to pull ourselves away from the bedroom window. We kept the ladders of the attic down, and I promised her that I'd move food and fluids into the attic once we sat down and allowed our shell-shocked bodies to recuperate.

  I went downstairs and made Clare a cup of coffee, but at first she refused to come downstairs claiming it was now too dangerous. I tried to reassure it was perfectly safe and if these things so much as bang at the door, we would go upstairs and lock ourselves in the attic if need be.

  I kept the TV on, volume number six, and kept the SKY news channel on. I watched as a pasty Charlotte Hawkins nervously rambled through the only topic that was being covered.

  At the left hand side, bottom of the screen, the title was: UK in crisis.

  No shit, I thought.

  Then, as usual, there were mini headlines that slowly ran across the bottom of the screen in black letters with a yellow strip background. I concentrated more on the mini headlines that were summarising what was happening than what Charlotte was saying. The main three headlines that ran across the bottom of the screen: Reports claim army has quarantined some parts of the capital—41 people taken to hospital after Brixton riots—Government still urging people to stay indoors.

  Clare eventually came into the living room with the coffee in her hand. She sat down on my brown leather suite that cost me twelve hundred pounds from a Scouser in Land of Leather. I had made the mistake of telling him that I was a Liverpool fan. Once I had told him this, he pulled out his phone and excitedly showed me goals by Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard.

  Although a fan of the team, he was obviously obsessed with them. I agreed to buy the couch just so I could escape the place before I stayed there too long and accidentally inherited a best friend that I didn't want.

  I took a quick peep at Clare, and could see that tears continued to fall from her eyes as she wrapped her hands around the cup and shivered a little. I sat next to her, to comfort her, and she asked me a question I had no answer for. "When's this going to stop?" She wiped her eyes with her forefinger and brushed her brown hair behind her ears.

  "I don't know." With my arm around her shoulder, I rubbed the front of her deltoid. "The best thing to do is sit tight, continue to stay in the house, and hopefully the government should re-take control." I pointed to the TV screen. "Look, some parts of London have already been quarantined."

  "So? We live in Tentworth, a small town. We're hardly going to be top priority, are we?"

  I looked at my watch. It was getting late in the afternoon and I asked Clare if she fancied a game of tennis on the Wii. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind, and shook her head. I think she was still being suffocated by shock, and it was my feeble attempt to take her mind off things and focus on something else.

  I walked over to the patio door to double-make sure it was locked. I peered from behind the roller blind that I had put to the floor and was relieved to see the back garden was still clear. Although I had a three-foot gate at the side of the house near the back garden where the alleyway was, I was aware that it wouldn't take too much effort to force the thing open, as it just relied on a latch to keep it closed.

  I turned to Clare. "Here," I called.

  She stood to her feet, eyes still gazing on the TV at an almost tearful Charlotte Hawkins on SKY News.

  "I'm gonna show you how to open and lock this patio door."

  Still gazing at the TV, Clare never responded to me. I puffed out my cheeks and switched the TV off. I suppose it was like striking up a conversation with your passenger while you drove past the aftermath of a car crash. I needed her full attention. She was in a different world.

  She gaped at me with confusion. "What?"

  I repeated, "I'm gonna show you how to open and lock the patio door."

  "Why," she gasped. "Where're you going?"

  "Nowhere for now. But I'll show you anyway, just in case..."

  I never finished my sentence.

  Chapter Eleven

  An hour had passed and Clare had decided earlier to go for a nap. Time was dragging and although grateful to be alive, I thought that even if I had all the food and water that I needed and this virus continued, I would still lose my mind with boredom.

  I then heard Clare's voice. "John!" she called down. "Come and see this."

  I ran upstairs from the kitchen and was expecting to see more bloody carnage. I stood next to Clare and we both watched out of the front bedroom window as a slow moving convoy was driving through the street.

  Asked Clare, "Where're they going? Do they know something that we don't?"

  I had no answers to Clare's questions, and she added, "I wonder if we should flag it down, get a ride somewhere."

  I looked at her to see if she was being serious
.

  She was.

  "They won't stop." I then pointed out to the road where a few of the dead were walking. "And if they did, I still don't think it's a good idea, do you?"

  "Maybe not," she spoke with a smile on her face, as if she had just realised her ridiculous question.

  "Oh, shit. Look at that." I pointed to one of the ghouls who began walking away from the small crowd and walked onto my drive.

  "Shit." Clare began to panic. "Where's it going? For the front door?"

  I never answered her and remained silent, while watching the lone zombie walk down the alleyway at the side of my house. Now I was panicking! Where was it going? And why was it going there?

  I just hoped it didn't manage to force its way through my flimsy gate. If it did, then it would end up in my back garden. And that could end up with a whole bunch of them in there, just yards from behind my patio door in the living room.

  I craned my neck to see if I could see it coming back out, but nothing was happening. I then saw the neighbour's cat darting out from the alleyway and guessed that the cat was what drew the thing to my house in the first place. Thankfully, the zombie reappeared and walked back onto the road.

  I looked out onto the street and could see that there was more of them, but where were they coming from? "The group is getting bigger." I rubbed my hands across my face and released a defeated sigh.

  "Why don't they just go away?"

  It was a very good question of Clare's. Why didn't they just go away? What were they hanging around for? Did they know there were others still trapped and was just biding their time? There were about twenty of them all shambling about in the street, but not really going anywhere in particular. They certainly weren't leaving the street!

  "What's that noise?" Clare turned to me and glared with those beautiful blue eyes. Her brown hair was still tucked behind her ears and I could see a couple of pearly drops of sweat on the twenty-eight-year-old's forehead.

  I listened and was tempted to open the window, but fought against it. Within a few seconds, we saw four cars drive down the main road and this alerted the senses of some of the freaks that were out there, meandering around in an almost hypnotic trance.

  The cars slowed down a little and the things refused to move out of the road. I could see some of the people inside and could see they were nothing special, just normal people who seemed to be family and friends, I guessed. They were travelling close together so I assumed they knew each other. Their vehicles struggled a little, but they eventually managed to go round—and on one occasion, through—the dead.

  Clare and I watched as they eventually drove away to safety—or another new danger, it depended where they were heading—and I almost felt like cheering for them, as all four vehicles had managed to escape with no human fatalities.

  Clare drew breath as if she was about to say something, but her sentence had to wait as a scream filled the street. The windows were closed, but we still heard the terrible cry.

  A woman ran over the road from her house and stumbled. She was wearing a yellow, fluffy dressing gown, and I assumed wearing the slippers may have been the cause of her stumble. She was running from, what appeared to be, the man of the house who stumbled behind her, but what she hadn't done was taken into consideration of how bad it was outside.

  It was too easy for the zombies. She basically ran out of the house, stumbled to the floor, and was surrounded within seconds by the ravenous horde.

  Clare looked away, but never moved her body away from the window. I was transfixed. I couldn't help but look as they tore her to pieces, like ravenous lions around an antelope. It was a hideous thing to witness, yet engaging, and I know that may sound a little sick to some people, but I'm just telling the truth how I felt.

  Once the 'show' was over, I realised that my heart was smashing quickly and rapidly from the inside of my chest and my legs felt light. Was I in shock? Again? I wasn't sure, but the scene had made my body quiver and I was pleased that there was no feeling of sickness.

  We both stood in silence and I suppose this episode had brought this catastrophe to life. I never doubted the TV, and was aware with these things shambling about that it was a terrible situation we were in, but seeing somebody die for real was a reality check for the pair of us. Earlier, with the family in the toppled car, screams were all we could hear, but with this episode, I saw everything.

  I looked out to the skies and all I could muster was, "I need a drink."

  Clare never said a word, but she nodded in agreement with my statement.

  Said I, "Red wine?"

  Again, she nodded.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was nearly seven in the evening, and after another breakdown from Clare we sat and thought that it was mildly amusing that the world was going to shit, but here we were sitting in the living room, blinds down, and watching re-runs of The Inbetweeners—the volume at a low number six, of course.

  I knew it wasn't the greatest idea ever, but I cracked open a bottle of Merlot. We needed to keep our wits about us in case they got in, but at the same time, I was sure the house was pretty solid. All we seemed to have done most of the afternoon was peer outside, and it wasn't doing our mental health any favours at all.

  A bottle had been quickly drained between us and I asked Clare more about her family. Her explanations were very brief and I took the hint and decided to pursue this interest no further. I got off the couch and walked towards the cupboard to grab another bottle. I turned my head to the right and saw down the hallway a hideous sight.

  My stance had frozen and Clare asked what was wrong. I never answered her. She got to her feet and looked in the same direction I was looking. The face of a ghoul was pressed against the frosted glass of my front door.

  "Who is it?" Clare asked.

  "Well, I haven't paid the window cleaner for a few weeks."

  She huffed, "Seriously?"

  "What do you think? It's one of them, isn't it?"

  "What do you think the cunt's doing?"

  I winced when she asked me the question, simply because she had used the C word. I hated that word, especially when a woman used it. Does that sound a little sexist? I don't know. For me, it just sounded worse coming from a female.

  I never answered her question, because I had no clue what the thing was doing, I just hoped that it was going to go away. I just didn't want the thing attracting others to my house. It slowly moved away, leaving a small, bloody smear on the outside pane. We both looked at one another and I sat back down onto the couch.

  "Well, bugger me." Clare was clearly shaken. "That was scary shit."

  I stood back up.

  "Jesus!" Clare said sharply. "You're like a jack in the box."

  "Well, forgive me for being a little on edge, Clare. I've just seen a woman being ripped to pieces in my street; the news is telling me the world's going to the crapper and...I think I may have the shits. So, if you'll excuse me."

  "I saw it as well, you know." Clare called out as I began to jog to the downstairs bathroom. She added, "I live in this world too, you know, selfish prick!"

  I was about to tell her to keep her voice down, but by then she had finished. I closed the bathroom door behind me. My stomach was doing somersaults and I wasn't sure if it was the days of alcohol, my nerves, because of what was happening outside, or a mixture of the two.

  As my backside decorated the toilet pan, I could hear Clare beginning to cuss again. She had more family members to be concerned about compared to me, and she had also seen her boyfriend become one of them. I feel it's fair to say that my outburst was a little selfish and I think I touched a raw nerve.

  Once I was finished, I flushed the toilet. I had no idea if that was the right thing to do, but I massaged my mind by convincing myself that it wasn't that loud anyway, and I could hardly leave the stink lying there.

  After washing my hands, I walked into the hallway and trotted upstairs. This time, instead of looking out of the front bedroom window that looked out onto the main road, I went to my own bedroom and peered out to see people's back gardens.

  I opened my bedroom window slightly to be greeted with a mixture of sounds like sirens, car alarms, dogs barking and human screams. It was horrendous, and I saw people in their bedrooms, waving at me, scared for their lives. It seemed they weren't happy where they were. I guessed there was probably an infected family member inside, or they had zero supplies to keep them going. But what could I do? Take them into my fully-stocked house and tell them to make themselves at home? I wasn't about to embark on a crusade to save people's lives and risk my own. I'm sorry, but that wasn't going to happen.