All the Dead Are Here (17 page)

The ‘plastics’ that my dick thought it wanted are all dead. They couldn’t climb chain link fences with their false nails. Cold rotting hands could grab the hair extensions as easy as pie. Their tottering heels stuck in drain covers, their owners too stupid to leave their precious Jimmy Choos. They tried to save their little toy dogs and died because of it, calling out to their rich fathers to buy their way from death. Their pouting collagen lips ripped off their sneering faces as I watched. The women here are hard, many of them are mothers who have had to decide who lived and who died, this has made them fierce and practical; this has made them demand more from the men, more protection, more ammo and more food. Strangely, this has redressed the balance. Men fight, women protect: as it was in the Stone Age, not saying that the women can’t fight. One petite little girl here, Aileen I think her name is, was seen to rip the head from a Zombie. It went for her girlfriend so she just ripped its fucking head off, sinews and windpipe stretched taught like a drum before the spine released with a ‘pop’. Good girl. Scratch that, we are all becoming hard, what’s left of the human race is changing, and we are warriors now, survivors. Maybe this is what God wanted to show us, what we really were, not the soft corporate metrosexuals and plastics that were obsessed with possessions, reality TV, and vapid fashions, but the survivors we once were. For the first time I realise that it feels right, I’m not only different on the outside, I’m different on the inside.

I look down at my white legs, my calves and thighs are sinew and muscle. Vaguely, I recall I used to get pains in my knees; I haven’t had those in months, probably from too much time in office chairs. I rub my hands up and down, the resistance of the hairs tugging at the pallid skin and now they just ache from exhaustion. Five days ago, when the kids and I ran here, all those miles in the open chased by one, then two, then three, then six, then twenty, then two hundred, then too many to count, the people here behind the gate couldn’t believe what they saw. I was running along holding
the
twins in my arms with the other kids holding onto my clothes, exhausted and dehydrated but still running.

The twins are three years old, Tommy, my right hand man, five, and Princess Celia, my warrior queen, seven. The Z’s were so close that if we stumbled they would have us and the people fucking poured out of the gate of this place. They didn’t think about themselves or me just ‘Get the kids inside!’ was all I could hear over the percussive shotgun rounds that split the air around us as the kids clung tighter to me, and as I fell the to the floor, the people swarmed around me, lifting me up before sweeping back into the compound, closing the gate behind them. The fighting lasted for days apparently, but we won and no-one ever questioned the fact that I lead thousands of Zombies here. Not when I had the kids in tow. Three days later I could walk but I ached and when I left the tent that was when the men started to nod to me with respect.

One old guy shook my hand and called me a hero, I was confused and didn’t realise what he meant. Running down the highway with the low moans of the dead like a slow, inexorable tsunami behind us. I had resigned myself to dying on the highway with the kids. The car had broken down and there was nowhere to hide. Then, when little Celia walked up to me outside the tent, she smiled at me and I smiled back. Then she looked at the woman whose hand she held and said, ‘This is my Mum’. I looked the woman in the eye and she mouthed the words ‘thank you’. I fell to my knees, racked with sobs. These tears weren’t the shocked sobbing that hit me at night when I realised I would never again eat at McDonald's or use a PC; grief at the loss of the things we took for granted, intransigent stuff that meant nothing. Lying in the dirt my soul cried tears at the loss of the world and the randomness of life that allowed this miracle to happen. I had no relatives, no friends except online, and had lost nothing, but to re-unite a girl and her mum, my fragile mind couldn’t reconcile the odds, it was just impossible to believe that through all this I could help a child find its mother. I thought having nothing had made me immune to the horror around me and standing here now I realise that what I had lost was myself, I had become a drifting shell doing nothing but survive and, if I’m honest, before I met the kids I wasn’t even doing that very well. I mean I’m not stupid or arrogant enough to realise that a lot of my survival was down to luck, Z’s choosing to nom on someone else instead of me.

All of our souls had been cast into the furnace of the apocalypse to be beaten and worked by each new horror like beads on a rosary until the soul either shattered, taking the mind with it, as I had seen so many times, or in my case, to leave the furnace white hot with rage and shock only to be quenched by my tears to form a new thing. A new, harder, tempered, soul that stood here naked in front of the mirror. I realised finally it had taken twenty-nine years, a child, and an apocalypse to make me a man.

I started to dress myself in a mix of clean and dirty clothes I had with me. The feeling of elation at my recollections had faded now and I felt slightly numb, but calmer than I had in months, more resolute, determined.

I pulled up my 501’s that I acquired when my designer jeans fell apart in days. I laced up my steel toecap boots and dropped a fresh white t-shirt over my head. It occurred to me that maybe I had stumbled over the reason for the popularity of Zombies before the fall. It wasn’t the shooting a Zombie in the face, as I assumed - which is a far more gruesome and horrible thing than any of the films ever made out. Perhaps it was the subconscious realisation that living like this freed you from the credit crunch, car payments, mobile phones, social networking and all the crap that means nothing to the instinctual man that evolved in caves and hunted meat. Perhaps it is a secret yearning to return to something simpler where the stress is immediate and decisions have life or death consequences. Where a man has a real role as a warrior, a provider and a protector in a real first person way and not the abstract third person, pay your bills by direct debit and buy your food from a supermarket, kind of way.

As I pulled on the leather jacket, I thought about my old life, my old self, and realised that this figure was fading from memory, as were my hang-ups. I had convinced myself that Celia’s Mum had asked me to dinner out of gratitude, and the shyness and poor self esteem I tried to cover with my nice possessions and metrosexuality had convinced me not to go. Now I wanted the company of another, just to talk and feel normal for a change and so I resolved to take up her offer, as a friend, and see what happened. She is a beautiful woman under all that muck and not ‘plastic’ in any way. She is a warrior woman like the rest of us. Maybe that was my ‘type’ now.

The bandolier of shotgun shells goes over my shoulder, my Ray Bans on my face and I pick up the shotgun. I take one final look in the mirror and see an action hero, a Marlboro man, Mad Max. Snake Plissken. For effect, I cock the shotgun with one hand and leave the bathroom. I am a free man, alive in a reality where I could die at any time and should live each day like it’s the last. This epiphany makes me smile so hard my scar hurts.

P.S: I had dinner with Celia’s mum. She made chicken curry. It was the best I’ve ever tasted.

Mummy and Daddy have stopped shouting at each other and now I am just bored again. My DS has run out of battery and dad didn’t pack the charger for the car. He shouted, “There are more important things than your bloody DS!” at me when I asked if it was in the boot. In fact this is the worst car journey I have ever been on. We have been stuck on the motorway for hours with nothing moving, and the girl in the car next to ours keeps making faces at me and sticking two fingers up at me. Spotty cow.

I thought about asking for my CD again, but I know they will just shout at me or at each other like before. They have had Radio 4 on since we left this morning with this boring bloke going on and on about “infection rates” and “demilitarised zones,” whatever they are.

I still need a wee as well.

“
Mum.”

“
Yes, babe?” she replies, sounding bored too.

“
How long have we been in the car now?” I ask.

She looks at the clock,
“
Six hours.”

“
Mum I need to go to the loo.”

“
So do I babe. How badly?” she asks.

“
I’m alright for a bit.”

“
Good. We’ll be moving in a while, I’m sure, and we can stop at the next services.” She said the same thing last time I asked.

“
Dad?”

“
Yes mate?” says Dad.

“
How long until we get to Auntie Cassie’s?”

I should be on the beach at Auntie Cassie’s now. Eating an ice cream and scaring Mum with crabs and gippy things found in the rock pools. We had such an ace time we went to Cornwall last year that I was really excited when Mum said yesterday we were going to visit for a while.

“
Satnav still says three hours but it depends on traffic,” he says, sounding annoyed.

“
Why aren’t we moving?”

“
I don’t know mate, must be an accident or road works or something. Same as the last time you asked.”

“
Sorry,” I say, but don’t mean it.

“
Dad, can I get out of the car?”

“
No son, if a motorbike comes down in between the cars he might hit you.”

“
Well, can I get out of my seat then and lie along the back? My bum’s gone to sleep.”

“
No,” says Dad.

“
Oh let him stretch out, it’s not as if we are going anywhere,” says Mum.

“
Fine,” says Dad sighing and rubbing his face. He looks tired.

I unbuckle my seat and scramble to the other side kicking newspapers and bags to the floor. I stand up on the seat and look out the back, past all the camping gear and boxes of stuff we brought from the house. What was weird is when we went on holiday before we didn’t take boxes with wedding albums and the pictures off the wall.

I look out the back and see the lines of cars stretching back up the hill behind us for miles. Some people are sitting on the bonnets of their cars, some of them are standing around in groups talking. Everyone looks bored.

Suddenly, there is a massive bang and I turn round to see a mushroom cloud of smoke and fire out of the front window. It’s a big explosion like you see on the telly on Yu Gi Oh or Dragonball Z, but it’s a fair distance away.

“
Wow!” I say.

“
Fucking hell!” says Dad.

“
Dad!” I can’t believe he said the F word! Mum looks at Dad, they both look scared.

“
You don’t think they are here do you?” says Mum.

“
Who? Who’s here?”

“
Shut up you. No, it’s not them, they haven’t reached this far west yet, it’s just an accident. I’m gonna go and see if anyone needs help,” says Dad, opening the door.

“
Jamie, no!” says Mum, grabbing his arm.

“
I’m just going to go and have a look. If I see any of them I’ll come back. Besides, someone might need first aid.” Dad pulls his arm away from mum.

“
Jamie you aren’t a bloody paramedic, you’re a first aider at work.”

Dad steps out of the car.
“
It’s ok, hun, I’ll be back in a minute. I promise,” he smiles at her. He closes the door. She gets out of the car and calls him back. I can’t hear what they are saying. Eww, they are kissing now, that’s grim. Mum gets back in driving seat and winds the window down. Dad disappears in between the cars, jogging towards the cloud of smoke.

“
Where’s Dad going?”

“
He is going to see if the traffic jam is clearing and we can go to Auntie Cassie’s. When we get there we’ll have fish and chips for tea. Sound good?” She smiles but it’s not a proper smile, it’s only her mouth that’s smiling and not her eyes.

“
Yeah,” I say, doing that sort of half smile as well. I clamber over and get into the seat next to her,
“
Mum?”

“
Mmm?” she says, staring down the road after Dad.

“
What’s going on?”