Year of the Zombie (Book 2): The Plague Winter Read online

  He muttered something, unintelligible even to himself, and fidgeted.

  The woman’s red lipstick-smile was replaced by a frown. She pushed a strand of black hair behind one ear. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

  He cleared his throat and sucked in his stomach. Tried not to stare at the cream floral dress tight against her chest and hips. She was beautiful, framed by the sunlight, and dulled everything else around her: the drone of the cars driving past the shop, the people chattering on the pavement, and chattering old women at the back of the shop.

  When he realised he was staring at her, he looked away and swallowed a knot in his throat.

  ‘Sir, are you okay?’ There was a note of concern in her voice and he adored her for it.

  ‘Shoes, please.’ He spat the words and his face flushed red. His insides fluttered, dipped and climbed.

  She smiled. Then Eddie smiled too, because that was all he could do.

  ***

  Eddie woke from those dreams of old memories and knocked his hip flask to the floor. He scrambled to pick it up, worried that whiskey was being wasted, but then realised the cap was screwed on and he slumped back in the armchair and breathed a sigh that scraped inside his throat. A blanket had been placed over his lap.

  Grim daylight spilling through a window. The sound of movement in the kitchen. He rose from the chair and tottered for a moment, rubbing his head. His vision swayed. The walls closed in like unwanted friends. The ceiling reached for his head. At least the rain had stopped.

  He went into the kitchen. A pot of water boiling on the camp stove. Sam turned to him.

  ‘You’re up early,’ said Eddie.

  Sam eyed the hip flask in his hands. ‘You slept late.’

  Eddie saw him notice, and put the flask away. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Almost midday.’

  ‘You should have woken me.’

  ‘You were dreaming, Grandad. Did you dream of anything good?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ he lied.

  ‘I had bad dreams.’

  ‘I’m sorry, lad.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Grandad. Do you want a cup of coffee?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ***

  They sat across from each other at the dining table. Sam appeared slightly comical in the wooden chair, like an oversized doll in dirty clothes, his chin barely above the rim of the table. His crayons and colouring pencils were spread around him. He was drawing a robot in his sketchpad.

  Eddie gulped coffee and rubbed his head. Bits of powdered milk stuck in his teeth. ‘Who’s that you’re drawing?’

  ‘Optimus Prime.’

  ‘Is he one of the good guys?’

  ‘He’s the leader of the Autobots.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He’s a good guy.’

  ‘Ah, right.’

  ‘You’re too old to like Transformers, Grandad.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Eddie laughed, and then stifled a cough in his throat. ‘Did you ever watch the films?’

  Sam’s face creased in concentration at the paper. ‘I didn’t like the films. They weren’t very good. I like the cartoons.’

  ‘Fair enough. I haven’t seen any of them.’

  ‘Maybe we can watch the cartoon one day, Grandad. If we ever have electric again.’

  ‘I thought I was too old for all that.’

  ‘Nah, I thought about it again, and you’re not that old.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  Eddie felt the scratch of Sam’s pencil inside his skull. He put one hand to his face and grimaced.

  ‘Mum always said you drank too much,’ Sam muttered.

  Eddie raised his face from the steaming mug and wiped coffee from his beard. ‘Your mum was right.’

  ‘Do you drink to forget the bad things you’ve seen?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Can I have a drink? Then I might forget some of the bad things.’

  ‘You’re too young. And it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it makes you remember the bad things you think you’ve already forgotten.’

  ‘Does it stop you feeling sad?’

  ‘Sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes it makes you feel worse.’

  ‘Then what’s the point of drinking if it makes you feel worser?’

  Eddie finished the coffee and put the cup down. He noticed the mug rings overlapping on the table top. ‘You’ll understand one day, I hope.’

  Sam looked at him for a while then went back to drawing his robot.

  ***

  Later, Eddie stared at the television and tried to remember what programme would be on at that time of day. The usual turgid daytime TV. Doctors or some generic quiz show fronted by an ex-footballer in a bad suit.

  Sam was lying on the sofa, reading one of his comics.

  Eddie took his flask from his pocket and checked to see if the boy was watching before he unscrewed the cap and took a sip. The small mouthful only made him want more, and before he knew what he was doing he had downed half of the flask’s contents. His eyes watered. Fire inside him, pure and true. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them a moment later, Sam was looking at him in silence, and Eddie had to turn away.

  ***

  Eddie knelt before the cupboard where he kept his drink. His palms were greasy and it took a few attempts to put the key in and unlock the door.

  The cupboard was empty.

  The blood left his face. He ground his teeth until they ached. He shook his head as though this wasn’t possible and reached towards the back of the cupboard and pawed about, in case a bottle was hidden in the dark. But there was only a chipped vase and an old food blender covered in dust. When he withdrew his hand there was a splinter in his right index finger, although he barely felt it. He pulled the splinter out and sucked the blood from the tiny wound until it stopped bleeding.

  He glared into the cupboard and scratched at a patch of skin on his neck. He swallowed and thought about things. Then he stood, wincing as his spine clicked and straightened. He touched the flask in his pocket and for the first time in a while its shape was not reassuring. His insides were hot and loose. Panic boiling under his ribs. He rubbed at the pressure in his eyes. Clenched his hands into whitened fists.

  How had this happened? Had he forgotten to restock?

  Eddie threw the key away and slammed the cupboard door shut.

  ***

  For the rest of the day Eddie rationed the whiskey that remained in the flask. The little sips barely sated him, and the time between the small mouthfuls, when he was anticipating the next drink, only increased his thirst.

  He found a bottle of mouthwash in the wall cabinet above the bathroom sink and managed to down a few mouthfuls before he gagged and vomited most of it into the toilet.

  He sat in the living room and watched the ceiling. Pencil-line cracks and flaking paint. In its silk web, a spider was busy wrapping hollowed carapaces.

  Eddie looked at his flask. Little sips, little sips. When he realised there was only a small amount left to last him the night, he screwed his eyes shut and listened to the noise of his heart.

  ***

  Eddie jolted awake from nightmares of prolapsed faces and mouths with lips shredded to strips of skin. He took a breath that tasted of dust.

  Sam was by his side, eyes pale and wide in the dim light of the room. When the boy spoke, his voice was so low that Eddie had to lean forward to hear him.

  ‘I found something outside, Grandad.’

  ***

  They stepped out into the cold dawn and walked to the riverbank. Sam shivered beneath his fleece and coat. They halted at the top of a short slope leading to the dark river and looked down at the figure sprawled on its front in the mud.

  ‘I found her when I came to get some water. I just wanted to see if there were ducks on the river.’

  ‘You know you’re not supposed to go outside.’

  The infected girl raised her face from the mud and open
ed her mouth. She was no older than ten or eleven; her clothes were clotted, filthy rags on her starved bones. Soaking wet and trembling. The flesh of her face was puffy and looked soft enough to pull away. Her left arm was bent the wrong way, limp and skeletal, trapped in the dire mud. The hand at the end of the arm curled into a putrid claw.

  ‘Christ,’ Eddie said under his breath.

  The girl was trying to drag herself from the mud, but the odd angle of her back suggested something wrong with her spine.

  ‘She can’t move.’ Sam let out a deep sob. ‘She’s just a little girl.’

  Eddie’s eyes locked with the girl’s, and she reached towards him with her working arm mottled with black rot and encrusted cysts. Her hand opened and shut, then opened again, and the splay of her fingers was like a pale spider unfurling itself.

  ‘How did she get here?’ said Sam.

  Eddie looked down the river. ‘Probably fell into the water and was carried here.’

  ‘I wonder where she came from.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Will she die without a name?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We should give her a name, Grandad.’

  ‘She already has a name. We just don’t know it.’

  ‘That’s just as bad as not having a name.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. We can’t give her a name.’

  ‘Because you’re going to kill her.’

  Eddie nodded and couldn’t meet Sam’s eyes.

  ‘Are all the children dead?’

  ‘You’re alive.’

  ‘I mean, apart from me.’

  ‘Go back to the house.’

  Sam didn’t move.

  Eddie turned to him. ‘Did you hear me?’

  Sam looked down. His mouth moved silently. His gaze drifted over his feet. Then he raised his head and his eyes were damp. He looked from Eddie to the girl and back again. One hand fidgeted with his ear.

  Eddie’s voice softened. ‘Do as I say, lad.’

  His shoulders sloped downward. ‘Okay, Grandad.’

  ‘Good lad. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Eddie waited until Sam was inside the house before he took the pistol out. He looked at the girl. Dark blood dripped from her lips. Bleeding gums in her carnivorous mouth. The remaining strands of her hair plastered to her pale scalp. She could only raise her head from the mud for a short time before she slumped back down again. Pinned by gravity, mired in the thick mud. Spat from the dark river.

  Eddie stepped forward so that he stood at the edge of the mud. He raised the pistol. At a distance of less than five yards, he centred the gun on the girl’s head. His voice was faint as he apologised and spoke words of comfort.

  The gunshot scared the birds from the trees.

  ***

  He dragged the girl from the mud and laid her down near the willow tree at the foot of the garden. With the spade he’d found in the back of the house he dug a hole for her as the light burned on the horizon and the sky became white and flat. He placed her in the grave and covered her with loose dirt. He marked the grave with stones and said the words he remembered once spoken at a funeral long ago. He was choked with guilt and despair. Then he crouched and laid one hand upon the grave. Another body lost to the earth. His clothes dampened with sweat. Aching limbs. A throbbing heat in his calves. The world was cruel and it made him sick. He’d hoped the sun would appear to see her into the ground, but there was no sun and everything was dull and silent around him.

  ***

  They faced each other across the kitchen table. Eddie craved a drink. His skin was clammy and he kept thinking of the girl.

  Sam was eating baked beans from a plastic bowl. ‘How long are we going to stay here, Grandad? Are we going to leave one day?’

  Eddie looked up from tracing his finger along a crack in the table. ‘Maybe one day, lad.’

  Sam nodded and scooped beans into his chewing mouth. His hair was getting long. Eddie tried to remember where he’d put the scissors. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, Grandad.’

  ‘I’m sorry I was angry with you earlier.’

  ‘You didn’t mean it.’

  For a long while Eddie said nothing and watched the boy eat as he scratched at the table top with his fingernail. Nothing but silence outside. The sound of Sam mashing beans between his teeth and slurping at the tomato sauce.

  Eddie smiled at the boy then stopped because a smile felt like an obscene thing when all was gone and children had been murdered.

  ***

  It was mid-morning when Eddie came to a decision. He was getting the shakes, restless and jittery, and he realised he had to do something when Sam caught him inhaling the leftover fumes from an empty whiskey bottle. The look of disappointment in the boy’s face would stay with him for a long time.

  Eddie told the boy they needed supplies, which was not a complete lie. Essential supplies.

  Sam only looked at him and nodded.

  ‘Lock the door behind me,’ Eddie said. ‘Keep the curtains closed and stay away from the windows.’

  ‘Yes, Grandad.’

  ‘What do you do if someone comes around here?’

  ‘Hide.’

  ‘What do you do if they know you’re in here?’

  ‘Don’t let them in.’

  ‘And if they get in?’

  ‘Show them my knife.’

  ‘Good lad.’

  ***

  The sky so pale and full of nothing. Eddie trekked across the fields, struggling against the ground that slowed him to awkward steps. He paused on a worn slope to catch his breath. The countryside silent and forlorn, coloured in decay, exhausted by the winter. Black branches of tall trees creaked in the wind. He moved on, the rucksack swinging against his back, rustling like cloth. He was inured to the sight of bones in the fields. Remnants. The forgotten dead.

  He stepped around animal holes and jagged stones. Creeping movements in thickets. A fleeting shape in the treeline; possibly a deer.

  Nearing the village, silent and dark in the shallow valley below. Walking and watching. Moving through brush and briars, the damp ground impeding his steps. Small lanes blocked by floodwater and fallen trees. The wind rushing through weeds and long grass to howl past him.

  Sometimes, if he listened, there was music on the wind that fell across the fields.

  A bare orchard. Whispering leaves. An overgrown cricket pitch and a white-walled pavilion falling into disrepair, its thatched roof rotting and blackened. He had played cricket in his youth, and an image came to him of men wearing white in the outfield while a fast bowler ran towards the wicket. Sunshine and the crack of the cricket ball upon a bat. Eddie stood at the edge of the outfield and imagined the crowd applauding a wicket or a well-struck boundary. And in the long grass he found an old cricket ball and picked it up and tossed it in his hand. It was coated in slimy grime. In the days before the plague it must have been lost when it was hit into the undergrowth. He threw it towards the centre of the pitch and thought it would stay there for the rest of time.

  Despite each fresh reminder he still couldn’t grasp the enormity of what had happened.

  Everything is gone.

  He passed a crossroads marked by a tall oak scarred and withered by winter. A signpost. Alderbrook. A child’s rusted bicycle in the undergrowth, strangled by vines and weeds. Novelty reflectors on the spokes. A torn denim jacket hanging on a chicken wire fence.

  He stopped in the road to catch a glimpse of the sun.

  ***

  At the outskirts of the village a car had crashed into the front of a house, damaging the wall and cracking one of the windows. The doorway was blocked by the car, which was empty and slowly rusting.

  Eddie stood before the house and looked up at the windows; no movement, although he imagined pale forms bristling with tumours and black spines mewling behind the net curtains. Perhaps watching him, with their mouths forming squeals of delight. He moved to the side of the house, where he man
aged to climb through an open window with some difficulty. And with a groan he lowered himself into a laundry room and crouched on linoleum flooring between a washing machine and a tumble dryer. He froze and listened. A shelf lined with fabric conditioner, washing powder tablets and stain remover. Piles of folded towels, two of which he took and placed in his rucksack once he had risen from the floor.

  The rooms opened to him as he moved deeper into the house. He felt mildly ridiculous with the pistol, like an imitation of a capable man. A man stuck in a nightmare.

  He went through the kitchen cupboards and found a tin of strawberries in syrup, and one each of sweetcorn and marrowfat peas. A jar of coffee. A half-empty box of PG Tips. He searched for whiskey, grinding his teeth and scratching at the corners of his mouth. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.

  In the living room, the skeleton of a man reclined in an armchair, dressed in a funeral suit with a plastic rose in the breast pocket. Held together by leathery sinew. The air was thick with the man’s decay. No clue as to how he died.

  Eddie admired his shoes.

  He kicked the empty vodka bottle across the floor and it rolled against the far wall.

  ***

  A potato peeler and a wrapped stack of paper plates both went into the rucksack. When he realised there was no alcohol downstairs and how that filled him with anger, he felt such a depth of self-loathing that it was all he could do not to bang his head against a wall. Bile and acid like serpents inside him. He watched his hands tremble. Then a bout of intense frustration and helplessness overcame him and he sat down opposite the skeleton of the man and saw himself in some similar near-future where his bones would be found in some squalid room.

  He left the living room and climbed the stairs, the steps creaking under his boots, his hand trailing through the dust covering the banister. When he reached the landing, something began pawing and slapping at the other side of a bedroom door. Self-adhesive plastic letters stuck on the door. NATHAN.