2 HOW TO KILL A ZOMBIE
The thing about being confronted by zombies is that we all think we’ll know what to do. We’ve all seen the movies, watched the TV shows. To kill a zombie you need to splatter the brains all over the shop with a gun. But the reality is different for those of us living in Scotland where we don’t have guns in our wardrobes or locked in a box, because we don’t keep guns, period. That makes killing the zombies damn difficult.
My boyfriend is useless as a handyman, so there’s no toolkit in our third floor tenement flat. We have no hammers, chisels, or drills to destroy the brain of the zombie who used to be my boyfriend’s best pal.
Okay, this so-called pal drives me mental, like the time he got Scott, who’s not a big drinker, steamboats one night and dragged him along to a lap dancing bar where he ended up slipping crisp twenties into Monique or Cindi’s g-string. (I know this because he kindly recorded footage on Scott’s mobile phone.) I’m still pissed about that, but I don’t hate him to the extent that I want to cave his head in.
So when the thing that used to be Archie, struggles to its feet and lumbers towards us, arms outstretched, as if pretending to be rent-a-ghost, I snatch the first thing I can get my mitts on, an iron I’d forgotten to turn off, and I scud him across the head with it.
There’s an almighty hiss as it scorches his flesh, accompanied by the smell of burnt barbecue. The iron trundles onto the floor where it lies, scorching the carpet. I can’t believe what I’ve just done and my hand goes limp.
Archie’s makes a throaty noise and lurches towards me. That's when Scott gets busy, bludgeoning his best mate over the head with an ugly, heavy lamp his parents had bought us as a housewarming present.
Globs of sticky brain matter splatter the wall as though someone dumped mince in a blender without the lid on and switched it to turbo, but Scott still keeps whacking dead Archie, because dead Archie keeps coming at me.
My back's to the wall. Will he not die, again?
Scott’s yelling obscenities, including ones I’ve never heard before. I’d have made a mental note to pull him up about it later, but this wasn’t the time for points scoring.
As Scott struggles to do in Archie with the heavy lamp, an idea flashes across my brain.
My parents had gone to Florida a while back, and knowing Scott loves baseball, they’d bought a bat for him: a Louisville Slugger. He’d celebrated by hitting a baseball against the wall of our flat and smashing the place up, "pretending to be Derek Jeter."
I’d swiftly lost the bat under our couch to stop myself from beating him to death because he was wrecking the house.
The zombie formerly known as Archie, is staggering about now with most of the top of its head a bloody pulp and a remaining eyeball hanging by a thread like a yo-yo.
Reaching under the couch, I hauled out the bat. Scott stupidly gave me the focus of his attention.
“You...”
One word is all he gets out because dead Archie dives at him, gums pulled back rabid-dog style, a bubbling, foul smelling drool dribbling from his cavernous mouth.
Lifting the baseball bat above my head (which isn’t easy because it weighs a freaking ton), I roar a battle cry Boudicca would have been proud of and bring the bat down squarely on Archie’s head, pretending its a coconut instead of a man’s skull I’m hitting. It howls as I crack him over the head, again and again.
When the howling stops and the thing in Archie’s clothes lies motionless on the deck, the bat slips from my hand, and I sink to my knees. My face, hair, and clothes are covered in human minced meat. It's sticky and smells foul.
I’ve killed Archie.
As I lie slumped on the floor, I keep expecting Scott to throw his arms around me, to tell me he doesn’t hate my guts for killing his best friend who’s lying just a few feet away with a halo of blood framing his pulped head. But he doesn’t, and I wonder why the hell not. It was him or us. I had to do it.
Scott’s standing in the doorway, his face the colour of putty, surveying the carnage. He’s shaking his head and muttering away.
Amidst the angst-ridden gibberish, I make out the phrase, “...we’re fucked,” and I agree. Somebody had attacked Archie, and that somebody must have been a zombie because, last time I checked, the dead didn’t wake up, stinking of putrefied flesh and try to bloody eat you. No even in Glasgow.
After I throw the duvet back over what’s left of Archie, Scott finally speaks. “Emma, this isn’t what I think it is? This is some wind up.” He pauses to take a frantic breath. “It’s got to be.”
His eyes flick between me and the dead body and then he sinks to the floor and starts crawling towards me.
Dread seizes my chest. “Scott, are you all right?” I crawl towards him through the gore on my carpet, the vein in my forehead throbbing like the alien’s gonna burst out of it.
We meet halfway, and we cling to each other, survivors of the shipwreck that was once normal everyday life. We’re so close to each other we can hear the pounding of our hearts; they sound like bass drums.
We stay that way for a few minutes. The stench in the room starts to sicken my stomach. We’ll have to leave, but I fear what other horrors lurk outside our flat. What dangers.
“Scott.”
He lifts his eyes to the ceiling as if he’s praying before he meets my gaze. “What?”
“We need to find out how bad this is. If this has spread.”
He closes his eyes, lips pursed, perhaps pretending to be at some point in time other than the here and now.
I press, “We need to know if there’s any civilisation left.”
He opens his eyes again, still a blank stare.
“And we have to get to Fiona’s, somehow, and see if she’s all right. And your parents and your sister? How are they?”
“You’re right.” His lips relax. “But let’s sit for a bit and pretend everything’s okay. We could go back to bed. Snuggle up. Pretend that when we wake up all of this will have been a nightmare.”
As tempting as it sounds, something else occurs to me: the split condom.
“Scott, I need the morning after pill. Remember?”
Horror spreads across his face. The sudden influx of colour makes it appear as if he’s wearing blusher. Then his shoulders slump. “Does that even matter now?”
Not the reaction I was hoping for. It’s okay for him. He won’t be the one trying to survive in a city full of cannibals and being up the duff.
I push him away, get to my feet, and stomp off to the bathroom, where I fill the sink with warm water. Haunted eyes stare back at me from the mirror. I almost yell for Scott because one of those freaks from the television reports must have gotten in, until I realise the haunted eyes are mine.
Using a cloth, I wash the blood and gunge from my face and hair, scrub the blood from under my fingernails until the cuticles start to sting, and dab Vick’s vapour rub under my nose to cover up the smell of this human slaughterhouse.
My gaze falls to the packet of razor blades beside the sink, and I have this fleeting thought of needing them later to cut my own stomach open and dig out my baby, because I’ve been bitten by one of those things, and I feel myself changing, becoming a monster who’ll devour my own baby. There’s no way the baby will be safe...from me.
As I blink away the image, Scott’s calling my name, asking me if I’m alright.
I lie and say I am.
As if any of us will ever be okay again.
3 REMAIN INDOORS
We’ve been sitting in the living room for half an hour now, trying to figure out what the hell we should do next. We need to start by finding out what’s happening; are the authorities doing anything to help us, or have they left us to stew? Scott says there should be plans for quarantine, for safe places for the non-infected like us to go.
“Try the phone again, Emma.”
“I’ve already tried it a dozen times. All I get is an engaged tone or an automated voice saying, "You cannot be connected, the lines are busy." Or a message to hold on the line and some dreary music they play in shopping centres.
Through gritted teeth, I say, "If I hear that music one more time I’m going on a killing spree myself.”
But Scott's insistent. “Try again.”
I want to hurl the walkabout phone at him.
The mobile phone networks are down, and we’ve been trying to get hold of family on the landline, but so far we’re out of luck. All over the city, other people are probably in the same boat, sinking in the same stretch of water known as shit creek.
All across Glasgow we hear sirens from police cars and ambulances and people screaming and wailing.
As I’m trying the phone again, Scott sits on the couch with his laptop perched on his knee, trying to get online. He has about as much chance of getting a connection as I do of getting someone to answer a phone. But I don’t say that. We have to believe we can make contact with whoever’s in charge so they can tell us where we can go that we’ll be safe.
I ring Fiona several more times. She doesn’t answer. My chest tightens with dread, a stranglehold on my heart. She’s defenceless without me. She won't survive.
We’d turned off the telly ten minutes ago, but now we can’t bear to listen to the chaos outside any longer, so we switch it back on. A bad idea as it turns out, because the reality of what’s happening swamps us, and any lingering doubts we have about what’s going on are swept away in a deluge of proof: dead people are really coming back to life and eating people.
Every TV channel regurgitates the footage of Cameron being devoured as though it’s set to continuous re-run. After I’d seen it a dozen times, it loses it comedic value, especially the part where the British’s leader disappears under a red mist. Abracadabra, the man in charge of the country has no arm, and his gushing blood’s spraying his sycophants in the front row. The screen goes blank for ten seconds, and the whole thing plays out again and again on high definition TV.
The worst thing we see is a report delivered by Britain Today newsreader Sheila Stuart. We'd already seen it five or six times, and it never fails to freak us out. With her perfectly groomed hair and red carpet frocks, Sheila usually resembles a Hollywood star. Now she has out-of-bed hair and isn’t wearing a scrap of make up. We think she’s been holed up in the studio since the outbreak happened. She’s talking to well-known reporter, Gerry Rae, who’s standing outside the House of Commons, his shoulders hunched against the cold and wearing his trademark black trench coat, belt tied tight over his protruding belly that spoke of far too many liquid lunches.
Police armed with big guns are visible in the background, and something else we don’t normally see in front of the seat of British democracy: tanks surrounded by soldiers wielding machine guns. There was something on the news earlier about our troops being recalled from Afghanistan and wherever else they were in the world because their country needed them at home.
Sheila’s lips are visibly thinning with each question she asks. “Do you have any advice for those watching this at home, Gerry?”
He drags his fingers through his hair. It’s snowing, but he’s not wearing a hat. “Sheila, the authorities are advising people to remain indoors to avoid being infected.”
“But, who are the authorities?”
Sheila’s broken free of the Autocue, or maybe she’s been winging it all along because her script editor has become a zombie and is off feasting on the producer.
The camera zooms in for a close-up on Gerry. “Nobody really knows who's in charge, Sheila.” His face drips with sweat, and I wonder if there’s anything left of his home; his family.
Behind him, a ra-ca-ta of gunfire erupts, along with cries that will echo inside my brain long after I’ve heard them. Not everyone the troops fire on will be infected.
Gerry’s lips thin. The wails of the dying are followed by the sound of a man sobbing from somewhere off camera. The camera’s shaking and Gerry’s face is now out of focus.
“Good luck, Gerry. Those are the last words we hear from Sheila before the screen goes blank.
Scott and I stare at the TV, expecting it to come back on. When it doesn’t, I throw the phone against the wall. “Screw it. We need to get out of here. Find out if Fiona is okay.”
Scott winces. “We’re going to get killed out there.” Then he clamps his mouth shut.
“Don’t say that.” There’s a tremble in my voice. “We’re going to be okay. Fiona’s going to be okay. Your parents and sister too.” I need him to stay positive. I need him to be his usual calm self under pressure: analysing all the possibilities, finding logical solutions, and deciding on a course of action.
But he just sits there, staring at his blank laptop screen.
I add, “And we still need food.” Yesterday, when everything was normal, I’d done an inventory and written out a shopping list. “We only have a pack of Cup-A-Soups, some stale chocolate chip cookies, and a packet of dried spaghetti.”
Scott's mouth tightens. “You were meant to go shopping yesterday.”
An accusation, a completely unfounded one. I stare at him the same way my mum stares at my dad whenever he forgets to eat the sandwiches she puts in his golf bag. I missed them now they were living in Spain.
“You were going to do it, remember? I left a note and a shopping list. Even the money. You knew I had to work late.”
The venom in my voice shuts him up. He shrugs, holds out both his hands, palms up, and mouths sorry.
“You should be.”
Scott makes a face. “Hey, I don’t know how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse. They don’t teach you that at university.”
That’s when I laugh.
Scott eyes me as if he’s going to tell me it’s not funny. Instead, his face contorts, he chuckles, and before we know it we’re both pissing ourselves laughing. We know we shouldn’t, but that only makes us laugh harder. This whole situation is ridiculous. Dead people are supposed to stay dead. They don’t bloody well get back up again and go on a feeding frenzy.
When we stop laughing, our eyes lock, and my lip trembles as I fight back tears. The stench coming from Archie is making me ill. Not even spraying a whole can of air freshener can mask that smell.
“We need a car,” I tell him. “It’d be madness going to Fiona’s on foot, in this snow with all the crazies out there.”
Scott stands up straight; he looks a bit green and I don’t blame him. “Take some stuff with us. Any food we’ve got, water, torches because the lights will go out. That’s the one thing I’m sure about. We’ll go to Dan's and get his car. I know where he keeps the keys while he’s away.”
We won’t have far to go on foot. Dan’s home is a short distance away, but going out there terrifies me. But we have to get to Fiona’s. She’s all alone in that house, and she has issues. She can’t leave. She won’t. Not since the attack that almost killed her.
And I need that morning after pill. Now is not the time to get pregnant. I’ve always wanted kids, but there’s a time for that and that time isn't now.
A scream from the flat below us stops me from thinking about my problems. Then there’s a thud as something heavy falls. I know what it means, but I don’t want to believe it, because a young couple with two toddlers live downstairs. I’m sure they’re dead now, meaning the zombies have gotten into the building.
We’re running out of time.
We change out of our blood-soaked clothes, put on some jeans and fleeces, and set to work, running around the flat, finding anything we can think of to take with us that might come in useful. I pocket the keys to Fiona’s house and grab the solar powered radio we’d stashed away in a cupboard, the windup mobile phone charger, and one of those new age torches. We’ve never used it before, but it’s damn heavy. If it doesn’t work we can always use it to smash in a zombie’s skull.
Whilst I check the kitchen for supplies, dumping everything we need in a backpack (it doesn’t amount to much more than a few bottles of mineral water and the scraps of food we had left), Scott searches for anything he can use as a weapon because I’ve got first dibs on the baseball bat.
When he comes into the kitchen, he shows me a face resembling a well-kicked backside. “I’ll take the Stanley knife, although it could be risky getting that close to one of them to slit its throat.”
I retrieve the Stanley knife from the sink cupboard and hand it to him. Its razor-blade sharp, and should do some damage.
Before we leave, Scott announces he has a surprise for me. I’m hoping it’s the location of an underground bunker full of food and machine guns, but when he appears from the bedroom, he’s wearing a catcher’s mask. In the other hand he has the old helmet from the motorbike he used to ride. He holds the helmet out for me to take.
I give him a blank look. “What’s this for?”
“Protection.”
***
My heart’s banging away like a tin toy as we leave decaying Archie and enter the vacant hallway – we knew it was empty because we looked out the peep-hole before we left. I’m holding the baseball bat so tightly anyone who wants it will have to pry it from my fists. Every muscle in my body is straining, and I’m not ashamed to admit I’m terrified. We don’t know what’s out there, but we have a fair idea. Death.
Feeling ridiculous in the motorbike helmet and following a peely-wally Scotsman who looks like a baseball catcher, I creep down the stairs.
We stop dead every time we hear a creak, every sinew of my being tensed for attack.
We come across no one all the way down to the ground floor. I step over a pool of blood congealing on the bottom step.
Scott has the key for the maintenance cupboard. Everybody in the building has a key, and the cupboard is full of tools and supplies we can borrow. Scott lets out a quiet whoop and comes out carrying an axe propped on his shoulder lumberjack style.
When we reach the main door, we stand there like a pair of dumplings eyeing each other, neither of us relishing the prospect of going outdoors. Of finding out what’s out there. My heart’s on loudspeaker as I exchange worried glances with Scott, and I want to turn it down, to tell it to shut the fuck up so those dead things won’t fucking hear me.
Finally, I take a deep breath, and in spite of the fact that I want to grab Scott’s hand and sprint back up the stairs where we’d jump into bed and hide under the covers until life goes back to the way it’s meant to be, I say, “I’m ready now.”
Shivering, I squeeze his hand and diverting my gaze from a trailing bloody handprint on the glass, together we push open the door.
We step out into the dazzling light. Against the backdrop of falling snow, the light stings my eyes and two of those waker things come into focus, straddling someone who’s writhing on the deck. From here, I can’t tell if it’s a man or woman.
As we go the long way round, their feral eyes stare up at us. Blood drips from their mouths and there's flesh on their teeth. Once they seem sure we pose no threat to their meal, they go back to devouring their victim who’s no longer moving.
I know there’s nothing we can do for whoever they’re eating, but I’m still ashamed when we stride off in the other direction towards the street where Dan's car is parked.
As we scurry by, I say a silent prayer asking God to forgive me. It’s the first time I’ve prayed since I was a wee girl. I’ve always considered myself to be an atheist. But right now, I'll take all the help I can get.