Summer Of 68: A Zombie Novel (21 page)

‘My God!
At least you don’t see the dead turning on each other,’ Liz exclaimed when Alice had first told her.

‘No… and no matter what anyone says, at least they don’t have control over what they do. They’re like a computer running through the same program over and over again. Feed, that’s all they can do. It’s just our bad luck that we happen to die while that program is running.’ Alice replied, ‘No, the world may be filled with monsters, Liz, but not all of them are the Dead.’

‘Do you want some porridge, Liz?’ Sister Rebecca asked, as she ladled some in to a bowl.

At seventy, Sister Rebecca had been lucky to have been cloistered in the convent with the other nuns when the world fell apart seven years ago. Having lived so long on the outside of society, the nuns way of life hadn’t really changed that much. They still farmed their own vegetables, raised their chickens and goats, and collected the honey from the beehives. The only difference now, was that there was no electricity and that they now had the horses that had been found abandoned in a field. They had used the last of their petrol collecting them, but they were certainly worth their weight in gold now. Luckily, the Dead were relatively scarce in the surrounding countryside then, and with Sister Claire growing up on a farm, they had collected them swiftly without drawing attention to themselves. After the water went off, the convent sisters collected rainwater for a long time, until one of their visitors had rigged up a manual pump drawing water from a nearby stream.

‘With the grace of God and our Holy Mother, we will survive,’ was a constant phrase at the convent, and it seemed the Lanherne Convent was one of the few places God seemed to look upon favourably.

Liz gratefully took the bowl of steaming porridge from Sister Rebecca.

‘Do we have any honey?’ She asked.

She knew she had grown soft over the last year, enjoying many luxuries she never thought possible in the years of barely surviving. Not just the big things, like a place to sleep without the constant fear that Dead hands and teeth would come out of the dark claiming you, or those you loved, but simple things like warm food in your belly and a chance to wash that was more than a dip in a cold river. She had grown into an attractive young woman, but thought nothing of stripping off her clothes in front of Charlie for a brisk river wash, as did he. It was just normal. It could mean the difference between being clean and alive, or hanging around behind a bush waiting to be alone. When you were naked and alone, alone could get you killed damn quickly. Privacy and prudishness were now just one of the many forgotten things of an old world. 

‘One washes, one watches,’ Charlie always said.

So to be able to have a warm shower or bath, and washed clothes, now seemed like heaven. Yes, you had to pump the water yourself, and fill the old metal claw-foot bath bucket by bucket as it boiled on the range. But Boy! Was it worth it?

‘Here,’ Alice said, as she pulled the jar from the cupboard, ‘and I thought I was going to have to shake you out of your bed this morning. Only half an hour early for shift, that’s practically slovenly for you.’ A smile creeping across her face.

Liz was well known for always being last off shift and first on. It was if she still couldn’t relax. In her head, she doubted she ever really would. With Anne to protect, she just couldn’t trust other people with their lives. What if they fell asleep on watch? What if they thought that shadow by the tree was just a shadow, when maybe it wasn’t.  No, the only eyes and instincts she truly trusted, were her own and Charlie’s. The Dead mainly moved slowly, but if you didn’t keep your wits about you, they were on you before you knew it and then you had a new fast and very angry corpse to deal with, too. That was the odd thing about the Infected, for the first few hours when they first came
back, the Dead would be wild and fast, tearing at everything and everyone to get to flesh. These were the most dangerous.

In the beginning, whole communities were wiped out overnight as the
Dead fled hospitals and field stations, wild and bloody, attacking all they came in contact with. The infection spread outwards like the ripple on a pond surface, their numbers increasing exponentially with every ripple. Then after the first few hours, they slowed like a spent wind-up toy, the speed in their limbs evaporating. They would still kill you if they got you cornered or outnumbered, but at least with these, you had a chance. If you kept calm, you could even walk right past them, their strained, tortured movements slow to react. Charlie thought it was because when the Infection first brought the Dead back, the brain was still fresh, with more or less normal motor control. Over time, this would deteriorate as the brain itself decayed. They had seen many of the infected Dead from the early days, who had been so exposed to the elements that their brain could only be little more than a soup in their skulls. Corpses in fields with parchment thin skin, unable to do little more than follow them with their dry filmy eyes, if they had them, would still let loose a faint deathly moan from their withered lungs. You were vigilant where you stepped through high grass. Each step you took a careful one, for ankles were just the right height for slow Dead mouths with death on their hungry, shrivelled lips.

People had given up trying to find out why the Dead had refused to stay dead.  As always, religion and science fought with each other, saying they knew best. A mutation of the Syphilis virus becoming air born and then staying dormant in the cranial fluids until deprived of oxygen had been quite popular for a while. But they had had their pick, ranging from bio-terrorism
to an extra-terrestrial bacteria, and of course, every Government under the sun was to blame. But at the end of the day, when the Dead were fighting over bloody organs ripped from a chest of someone you loved, the ‘whys’ didn’t really matter all that much. As always, the wrath of God argument came and went, but was never truly popular. In a world filled with such tragedy, no one liked to think they had been so completely abandoned and punished by the Divine. 

‘Thanks,’ Liz said, as she spooned the dark, golden honey over the porridge, ‘are you on patrol with me then?’

‘Yep, just you and me for the next six hours, walking the wall… Can’t wait,’ Alice said, reaching for her coat. 

Alice’s
favoured weapon was a metal baseball bat, which always seemed to be within arm’s reach, no matter where she was.

‘Come on, we might as well get going,’ she continued picking up her bat, as Liz finished off the last of her warming porridge.

‘Thanks, Sister Rebecca, lovely as always,’ Liz said, handing back the now empty bowl with a smile.

‘You’re welcome, dear. Now off you two go. I tell you, I always feel safer when you two girls are watching out for us on the walkway. Damian and Sally are up there at the moment, and I think they’re more interested in each other than if the Dead are pawing the walls,’ the Nun said, rolling her eyes. ‘You should have seen the love bites on her neck this morning. You’d have thought the Dead had been at her already.’

Sister Rebecca had a surprising talent for gossip for a woman who had spent a good portion of her life in a convent, but there was no malice behind it.

Damian had joined their small community six months ago, making his attraction for Sally quite obvious. With Damian only twenty-two and Sally in her late forties, they were a bit of an odd couple. They had taken solace in each other’s arms, despite the age difference. Of course, Liz couldn’t blame them, but she wished they could show more control when other people’s lives were on the line. Liz had found similar comfort with Imran. His soft touch and dark sensitive eyes had calmed her in a way she never thought possible. She loved the secret moments they stole together. Their love making brought joy into a life of tragedy and struggle, even if just for a short while.

‘Okay then, let’s go and see what’s happening in the big, bad world,’ Liz said, following Alice out of the Kitchen.

Six Days With The Dead is available from Amazon
here