Ace of Spades Chronicles : Book One (10 page)

As I turned away, the store’s P.A system ordered in a low-key tone, very unemotionally… "
Clean up in aisle thirteen please, clean up in aisle thirteen
." And I found myself feeling extremely sorry for the poor sod on minimum wage who was going to have to mop up this mess, whether they liked it or not. People were still trying to get a glimpse of the drama as I headed back to the rear of the store; but I needed to get away from the smell before I threw up, too. I quickly weaved back to the fresh vegetables, picked up a bag of onions and headed for the check outs. I was concerned that Moya had been outside for some time and I was worried that someone might take a fancy to her good nature and steal her. When I joined the line of people waiting to pay, I saw the small boy who had taken a face load from the female doctor. His slightly over weight mother was struggling to hold him upright, and he was complaining in a whiny voice that he was thirsty. The queue was jittery, made worse by the fact that two paramedics were now rushing through the store towards
aisle thirteen.
I glanced in that direction and saw the young couple who had been in the middle of the carnage. The woman was shaking whilst the man wetted his t-shirt with the tip of his tongue and wiped speckles of blood from her flushed cheeks. It only occurred to me much later that he was essentially licking the infection from her face. He would have been much better off putting the barrel of a loaded gun into his mouth and blowing his brains out. As for the small boy, I watched with alarm and bewilderment as he took the cap off a bottle of fabric conditioner and gulped back its sticky blue contains as if it were a milk shake.

Trolleys bashed into each other as people rushed to get out. The anxious crowd jostled me outside and I collected Moya, all the time my ears were assaulted by the siren of an ambulance, parked just outside the entrance. I was amazed by the amount of people who were still entering the store, regardless of, and unmindful of, the sheer number of bodies who were exiting the foyer stacked high with summer goods in absolute, bloody panic.

It felt like I was surrounded. I got across the road and shaking, rolled a cigarette, watching everything around me. Two police cars escorted a police van away from the hospital. I saw a thin column of smoke tapering into the sky from one of the medical out buildings. Numerous people blocked the hospital gates and a fight had broken out between three uniformed police officers and a heavy set male dressed in olive green pyjamas. They strong-armed him into the back of another police van and clambered in after him before pulling the van doors shut. The van shook from side to side as the struggle between law and disorder continued within. I turned and saw shoppers running across the customer car park to their vehicles. A man pushed an old lady over as he ran for the departing number thirty six bus. And there were more sirens.

An angry traffic jam waited to fill up at the petrol station, and the exit lane leading to the roundabout was heavily congested. People who had just left the store threw up out of open car windows. Others were opening their boots and raiding their shopping for something to drink. People were actually fighting in the road over a can of coke.

By the time we reached the reserve, the constant whine of the hospital alarm was making my ears vibrate; and the traffic, that now stretched bumper to bumper in both directions for a half mile, growled and hissed, clogging the clear, morning air with noise and exhaust fumes. An ambulance manoeuvred its way along the central white line towards the supermarket, forcing drivers to pull over just that little bit more. One driver saw this as his chance to advance along the queue. Taking full advantage, he pulled out and followed the ambulance. More cars followed; but when they reached the roundabout, they were met with aggressive disapproval from puke splattered drivers, who stood in the road and blocked their path. I heard the distinctive crunch of metal hitting metal. To make matters worse, the traffic lights ahead of me were being upgraded and a temporary set was in place. They had been causing problems for almost a week now and it looked like these had failed and were for the time being, permanently stuck on red in all directions. Horns and music from car stereos filled the air, and the occasional snippet of fearful conversation over a mobile phone added to the surreal, chaotic vehicular monster that was growing before me. Somewhere in the traffic I could hear ‘Doom and Gloom’ by The Rolling Stones.

I spent the next few hours sat on the kitchen step, slowly getting drunk on the cold Special Brew from the fridge and I might have smoked a fat joint or two; stoned and pissed, I watched the traffic jam that was going nowhere. Moya sat next to me and growled as remote sirens from every bearing enveloped the borough. People were fighting and collapsing in the road.

As my body gave in to the combination of booze and weed, I hummed The Imperial March from Star Wars. I always hum to myself when I'm anxious or nervous or self conscious. If not Star Wars then The Map Room from Raiders of the Lost Ark or anything with a John Williams theme. That or some random, tuneless melody. I find it comforting. Don't ask me why.

I never did get that bottle of spicy rum.

2.2

Ace of Spades

DAY TWO

'Wake me up when September ends...'

Green Day... Wake Me Up When September Ends

Looking out of my window on the morning of that second day, the road was scattered with abandoned vehicles. I saw bodies lying on the tarmac. They looked peaceful, yet; unreal. The car park below me was empty except for a police cruiser. I couldn’t remember that arriving during the night. Its doors were open but I couldn't see anybody inside.

I hadn't slept much the night before. I just lay on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, listening to the world unravel.

Moya sat patiently by my feet, waiting for her morning piss. I scanned the road for movement; and considering the mayhem heard through the night, I expected to see at least some activity, but nothing stirred. No traffic moved. No one walked the street. Even the constant drone of sirens had stopped.

I'm lying.

The only thing that moved was a single carrier bag dancing on the gentle morning breeze. It loopdelooped and dived beneath the blue, white and yellow shell of the Police cruiser and got wedged under the exhaust pipe. It reminded me of that famous scene from Donnie Darko.

Loopdeloop...

I went down the stairs to the kitchen. Moya got there before me. I got us ready. I opened the kitchen door. I remember how silent it was; compared to the night before. Nothing moved. I slowly peered into the police cruiser as Moya sniffed the air. The driver and passenger doors were open and there was a splattering of dried blood on the body work. The keys were still in the ignition. Moya tugged on her lead, and I let her pull me away.

There was a Police van with a dark figure sat at the steering wheel, the same Police van I had seen parked outside the hospital gates; it must have forced its way through the traffic until it got blocked where it now stood, and in front of this, a man lying on his face next to a blue Vauxhall Corsa. He looked like he had taken a step from the car and tripped. There was vomit spray within and around the vehicle and his head was bleeding profusely from where he'd face slammed the road. That must have hurt. Years ago, my mother, who had been in her seventies at the time; tripped and head butted the pavement, fracturing her eye socket and cheekbone. The physical recovery took about six weeks but the mental recovery lasted for the rest of her life. I remember wincing as I thought of this and for the shortest time I considered approaching to see if he needed medical assistance; I didn't though, deciding otherwise in an even shorter time period.

I have learnt that the infection has more than one phase; I had already witnessed
Phase One
in the supermarket, though at this juncture I didn't know it. Once infected, the incubation period is expeditious, though it does vary from person to person according to age, general fitness, health and well being. Those who are very young or old, or with an existing illness, are particularly susceptible, no matter how mild that illness might be. It's different for each person, but the symptoms are the same and can take a matter of minutes to a few hours, possibly even a couple of days to take hold, and is dependent on how the virus enters the body. First, the body's internal thermostat goes haywire;
I call it meltdown
. Hot flushes are followed by an intense thirst. Any liquid will do, even fabric conditioner. As the body temperature rises, the victim becomes irrational, usually violent. The need to drink something, anything, becomes so overpowering that nothing else matters. By this point the virus has already colonised within the brain and is busy rewriting DNA. The victim will have seizures, vomit, strike out if approached and eventually collapse. Any injuries incurred during this period will not slow them down. I've seen infected with broken limbs thrashing about; they don't care. They feel no pain. The primary somatosensory cortex must get destroyed or by passed in some way. With the virus now in complete control, they are beyond help and will not respond to your words or any gesture of aid. They are…

(a) Best avoided or

(b) Put out of their misery before
Phase Two
can activate.

(For the record, I prefer option b.)

As I looked down the street I could see more bodies lying in the road next to their vehicles or slumped in a fallen position, shopping strewn from their cars and across the tarmac. My focal point was drawn towards the number thirty six bus and the driver; his face smeared across the windscreen, frozen against the glass in a half comical, half monstrous manner. The rear panel of his cab was covered red with blood, as if his vertebrae had been ripped out. Behind the bus, a pick up truck, behind that, a home delivery van from the supermarket; behind that an SUV, behind that a sleek saloon, behind that a Range Rover and on and on and on, down towards the supermarket roundabout.

On both sides of the road, cars were standing with engines barely running or had long since spluttered to a silent shell of metal, waiting for their owners to wake up or return from where ever they had fled to.

Moya edged her snout towards blue Corsa man and I yanked her away, pulling her back in the direction of the house. I experienced sudden panic, rising up in my gut, and an all consuming desire to lock the compound gates and retreat to the safety of my lounge, two floors up.

Moya was desperate for a piss. I let her off the lead and she pelted up the lane that runs behind our neighbour’s houses and sniffed around for a place to do her business. I heard three, very loud bangs somewhere in the distance, followed by a series of screams, some shouting; then total silence. The kind of silence that has personality. It wasn't the usual kind of rare calm you hear in a city. Not a Sunday morning stillness, not a New Year’s Day hush. My Special Brew pickled brain told me it was gun shots.

Moya trotted back to me and we both entered the compound with an unspoken urgency. She knew something had spooked me and we shared that unspoken bond between man and dog that says "I don't like this." Moya watched me as I closed the gates, her tail curled between her legs; hers ears, flat to the side of her head. Galvanised metal
clanged
shut as I locked the gates with heavy duty chain and a pair of fire brigade padlocks that had hung there uselessly overnight. Three metres of spiked palisade fencing with the usual anti-vandal fixtures now stood between us and the outside world. A blazing hot knitting needle of pain melted through my left shoulder as I missed my footing going up to the kitchen, grating my shin, hard, down the coarse cement steps. I felt sick.

...Loopdeloop...

I had ringing in my ears, a throbbing in my shin and an invisible claw squeezing my shoulder bone. With the kitchen door shut firmly behind me, I crouched on one knee and pulled my jeans up to inspect my leg. There was a four inch gouge running up my shin bone, the torn flesh pale white and dark blue, slowly pooling with blood. It stung and sang like a siren, and I winced and held my breath as the blood percolated to the surface and dribbled down my pale shin. Moya jumped up onto my back and quickly sat, and in one smooth gesture, put her paw on my shoulder and licked my ear. 

Upstairs, I went into the front bedroom to look out of the window, glancing at the bed that hadn't been slept in for two nights; the same bed that hadn't seen a lover in over a year and hadn't had fresh sheets for over a month. Instinctively, I raised both arms to pull the curtains back, and my left shoulder screamed in protest. Cars were nose to tail, blocking the intersection in four directions. Doors were open, bodies were strewn. Smoke billowed from several grills and one of the traffic lights blinked its one good red eye. From here, the cars looked like discarded toys and reminded me of when I was a child, playing with my battered collection of Corgis and Tonkas, lining them up in the largest traffic jam known to man; clogging up the shag-pile road systems of the landing carpet, but moving slowly and with deliberate persistence to my bedroom and the inevitable earthquake that would result in their unceremonious return to the toy box.

I ran...

...hobbled...

...into the lounge and switched on the TV, turning my cell phone on at the same time. To my surprise it was barely 7am. The events of last night were a thousand years away. Images of people leaning from their cars and throwing up in the street came bobbing up to the surface of my memory. The condensation inside the number thirty six bus blurring the chaos within. Sirens screaming to assist, only to get caught up in the endless, immobile traffic snarl.

My phone alerted me to a text message. The vibration made me jump and I dropped it.

Is that important?                                                                                          No,that'snotimportant.                                                                                                       What'simportantisthedetail.                                                                                                         Yes.Thedevil'sinthedetail.                                                                                                                     Stay on track.

I looked out of the window and saw movement in the cab of the police van. The dark figure sat at the steering wheel shifted its position; then the TV had warmed up enough for the volume to kick in, blasting out nothing but chaotic white noise. It made me jump and I juggled phone and TV remote whilst still looking out the window; muting the TV, quickly checking the text message to see it was from my friend Jonny B, and then returned my gaze to the police van. The dark figure sat at the steering wheel was leaning forward and looking right at me through the windscreen. I pulled the net curtains aside and frowned back at the female officer, her gender now obvious by the way her auburn hair fell about her deathly ashen cheeks. I realised that she must have had a front row seat to the nightmare of the previous evening. We stared at each other like this for several minutes, until she waved, and I waved back. It was very surreal, like two strangers making a tacit connection across a bloody theatre of war. Then, with gradual consciousness, the whole street came in to view, and my mind quickly processed the extent of last night’s inhuman revolution.

I estimated around fifty bodies lying in the road closest to my vantage point, with more lying on the pavement and even a few collapsed in gardens or across garden walls. At least five houses that I could see had their front doors wide open and one had a broken front window. Almost every car sat with one or more of its doors open.

The female police officer slowly got out of the cab and looked around. She looked up at me and shrugged. I remember smiling and shrugged back. She touched her head, shrugged again and raised both hands, using the international sign language for ’
huh
!’ I shook my head and she shook hers. 

I settled against the window sill and watched her as she took out her telescopic baton and slowly moved around the police van. She was careful not to approach any of the fallen bodies, but at this point I didn't know why and at the time, I'll be honest, I didn't really care. I was just happy to see another person. She put her ear to the police van and tapped the side with her free hand; paused, then repeated the action. Then she moved to the rear of the transit and reached for the key chain that dangled from her belt. She opened the rear door, and was blocked from my view as the door swung open. I could see her boots, nothing more. She reappeared a couple of seconds later, backing away from the vehicle; the back of her legs made contact with the car positioned directly behind the transit and she side stepped into the middle of the road as another police officer emerged from the van’s interior. He arched his shoulders and neck as if stretching from an uncomfortable night’s sleep, then lashed out. The female officer span ninety degrees and jumped out of striking distance as another police officer fell from the van and slowly pushed himself up from the road. The WPC adopted a defensive stance, her telescopic baton raised to shoulder height, her free arm poised with clenched fist. She was obviously speaking to the other officers who seemed to tower above her, but the words were silent to me.

Another figure emerged from the van; not a police officer this time, but the large male patient I had seen, dressed in olive green pyjamas. He was followed by another police officer. This one was painted from head to stomach in puke coloured matter, and I realised that all of the van’s occupants had some degree of vomit on them. The female officer was now moving backwards in my direction. She stepped over a fallen body and almost immediately, it grabbed her ankle. She tripped and fell back, swinging the baton at the other officers as they descended on her like a pride of lions. A few feet away, blue Corsa man was crawling across the tarmac towards them. I saw an eruption of blood as collectively, in a matter of minutes, they ripped her open. Her screams were like nothing I have ever heard; or ever want to hear again.

And as the lions settled around their fresh kill and savoured the warm flesh, others stirred. Bodies began to sit, to loosen and rise. Within a very short period, the street was filled with stumbling, hobbling, puke covered spectres, and I was a frozen husk; staring, holding my breath, as the world through my window went to hell.