Class Four: Those Who Survive (22 page)

May 14
th
2014

20:57

Francis lay down on Diane’s lap. His eyes were red and puffy. Diane stroked her tummy bump with a gentle reverence.

We were going to call you George, after your Grandad. You never knew him, but you would’ve liked him.

Her hands caressed the taut skin of her belly. The ultrasound gel had given her skin a waxy surface, shiny and gleaming.

We were going to buy a house in the country, a little cottage or something, away from the town, a big garden for you and Daddy to play football in.

Fingers splayed over her distended belly button, a mound of knotted flesh on top of her stomach hill.

On Sundays, we’d have a roast dinner, and then after, we’d all go for a walk around the fields, perhaps head into the forest and feed the ponies.

She traced a line from the crest down to the pit of her breasts.

On your first day of school, we’d pick you up and take you out to wherever you wanted to go for dinner, treat you to pudding afterwards, too.

Your favourite.

Her fingers ascended to the summit of her tummy again.

And when you grew up, I’d vet all your girlfriends, make sure that only the best would do for my Ge—

Diane’s hand stopped moving. Francis bolted upright, his face white with shock. “Did…did…did you just…”

Diane nodded and placed both of her hands on top of the baby bump. “George just
kicked
. H…he…he’s still
alive
.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Bastard must’ve come around after and carted him off in the night,” Zena said, looking at the depressed area of long grass where they had dumped the old man the previous night. “Told you we should’ve dealt with him.”

Francis shrugged and headed off down the train tracks. Russ had resumed his daily plodding and was a little way off already. “Just because you
can
kill someone without legal consequences, doesn’t mean you
should
. C’mon kid.”

Nate looked from the man to Zena and then to the train tracks. He huffed and started to hop from sleeper to sleeper.

The track wound its way through the countryside like an irrigation channel. With no speeding metal snake travelling down the line for the best part of a year, nature had taken the opportunity to claw back some of its territory.

The tall grass verge had crept from its borders, across the mud and gravel no man’s land either side of the railway, and taken first dibs. Patches of thistles and dock leaves made new homes amongst the flourishing grassy path. In scattered patches the track was almost completely covered.

Birds tweeted and chirruped in the branches, unseen. The fresh verdant reclamation now provided ample sustenance for them approaching mating season. The sounds of human commerce were being forgotten, relegated to a historic time period.

“Without meaning to sound like a damp squib, how far into town is your house?” Francis asked Zena, stepping over a pile of rabbit droppings which he had to stop Nathan from eating, thinking they were Maltesers.

Zena laughed as Nate rubbed his hands down his trousers, smelling his fingers, his nose wrinkling with the smell of shit. “From the station, there’s a hill which leads to a bridge and a row of houses. We’re up there, number thirteen.”

She handed the kid a bottle of water to wash his hands. “We hated living so close to the station sometimes, especially early morning. The sound of them going by, you got used to. It was when they sat at the station and then moved off. The bloody sound of them, especially after a few bottles of wine the previous night.” Francis smiled and looked a little relieved.

“Don’t worry, we won’t have to fight our way through town to get back to my place. Look, there’s the bridge.” Zena pointed.

Russ had stopped in the middle of the tracks. Looking back to the others, he pulled his cap off and ran a hand through his hair. Zena turned the key around in her pocket, feeling the warm metal rotate between her fingers. “All looks the same, but different, does that even make sense?”

“It does. Some places, you leave a piece of you in. You can go back after years, and even though things have changed—different shops, new buses—the feelings you had are always the same,” Francis said, rubbing his beard with his hand. His dry skin rasped against his bristle like hair.

They climbed up onto the platform, which was even more spartan than the one they had stayed at the previous night. A graffiti-scratched, mossy, plastic shelter looked pretty depressed. Its sole companions were a blistered and decrepit ticket machine and signs welcoming people to;

Francis pulled Nate up as he had tried, and failed, to scrabble up the sheer wall where trains once sat, waiting for people to get on or leave; engines ready to grumble loudly, waking up the hungover residents living nearby.

Russ walked through a set of metal barriers designed to stop cyclists from bombing down the hill and taking out the returning pensioners or pissheads. A few feet away lay a badly decomposed body. Bones were strewn around.

Wispy grey hair waved in the mid-afternoon breeze. A worm slid through the neighbouring eye sockets, their contents long since pecked out and fought over by gulls.

The group walked through another set of barriers at the top of the hill. The climb was short in distance, but made up for it in steepness. As they neared its peak, each of them was panting and looking forward to some respite.

Standing on the road, just shy of the bridge, Zena was doubled over, hands on her knees, trying to suck air into her lungs. “Gimme… a…minute. Bloody….hill…always…hated…it,” she wheezed. “I’m good…let’s…go…”

A waist-high brick wall, broken up by squares of wrought iron, ran off towards the bridge, where it ended. The other side headed towards the town, disappearing round a corner.

None of the gardens they passed were going to win any awards. Even those who had painstakingly removed all greenery had surrendered it back to rebellious weeds and strands of invading ivy.

A few houses before the bridge, Zena stopped by a faded blue gate. Shaky hands fumbled for the latch. It opened with a rusty creak and came to rest in a nettle bush. She nervously withdrew the brass key from her pocket, looking from it to the house in front of her. It, like the rest of the abodes, looked deserted, stripped of life and motion.

“I…I’m scared…” she said softly. A tear tracked down her face, pooling on her jawbone before falling to the floor.

Francis lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, take your time, it—”

Zena’s head darted to the living room window. A large single-glazed aspect, divided in four by thin metal. “Did you see that? The curtains moved, someone’s in there. It’s
Tom
, it must be.”

She fought to get the key into the lock. Pausing momentarily as she heard it click into the housing it was made for, she turned it slowly. “I’m home.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

For a moment, Zena was swaddled in a supernova of emotion and memory. The door swung open and the light faded away. She looked to the hallway table where a few unopened letters lay in wait. A takeaway menu for ‘Pearl River’, the local Chinese restaurant, sat underneath them like a Kanji printed carpet.

The old style telephone sat on the cradle, its numbered faceplate looked back with a surprised expression. Tom’s muddy football boots still sat on an old copy of the Metro. Zena made a mental note to have a quiet whinge about them a bit later on. The floorboards were polished and looked immaculate, like they had been scrubbed just for her arrival.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. A vase of fresh flowers sat on the windowsill, halfway up the ascent.

Aww
.

She walked down the hallway, her shoes click-clacking on the hard floor.

The doorway to the kitchen was open and she could hear the kettle whistling away. Her South Park mug sat on the worktop with a teaspoon resting inside it. The smell of toast and bacon wafted down the corridor. She closed her eyes and breathed it in.

It had been so long since she had eaten properly cooked food, she thought she might never have gotten to savour such sensations ever again.

The living room door was pulled to, and from beyond she could hear the strains of Kim Deal singing ‘Here Comes Your Man’. Her heart beat faster. She had to put a hand to her chest, as at one point she was sure it was about to be propelled from her insides. She placed the palm of her hand on the door and gently pushed it open.

Inside, the curtains were still closed, but the room was lit by hundreds of church candles. Little bobbles of melted wax ran from the top, forming lumpy scars which slid down to the base.

And there he was. Tom. Standing with his back to her, peeking through a crack in the curtains, on the lookout for her, no doubt. She stifled a snigger.
He’s wearing his bloody Rick Grimes cowboy hat again
.

Zena closed the door behind her gently, seeing her chance to repay Tom for all the times he had sneaked up on her whilst she was doing the washing up and scaring her half to death.

She tiptoed her way across the thick brown carpet to him. He was still wearing his knackered jeans, the ones with the hole in the gusset. she could see the top of his leg through the tear. Even with his back turned, she knew he was wearing his Ramones t-shirt; the dried specks of magnolia paint on the collar gave it away.

She snuck up behind him and wrapped her arms around his torso, pulling him into her. She savoured the moment her head had told her so many times would never happen.

She nuzzled into his neck and whispered into his ear, “Hi T. I’m home.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Francis stood back and let Zena enter the house first. He wanted to give her as much time as she needed to deal with the fact that she had made it home. As he crossed the threshold, the stench struck him like a flyswatter. It was spoiled meat, sour milk, bacterial spores having had free reign for too long and creating their own kingdom in the absence of cleaning products.

He looked down at a table where stacks of unopened mail lay strewn across its surface. Government leaflets imparting next to useless advice were the crest of the mound. Paper mulch hill was covered in a thin film of dust and dead insects. Flies lay on their card thin backs, wings neatly tucked back and legs pulled together as if they were hogtied.

At the foot of the stairs, Francis looked up and saw thick brown smears along the walls and on the carpet. Dried puddles of blood sat on top of the pile like plates of basalt. At the top of the stairs, through the balustrade, a grey shrivelled hand hung in the air. It looked like someone was waving to him. Francis shuddered.

Zena, though, appeared to pay none of this any heed. She seemed to float around the grime and gloom like it was some spellbinding archaeological discovery. He could hear her tutting in surprise and amazement.

The kitchen door was open, and this appeared to be the main source of the overpowering aroma. The fridge door was ajar and stuck out into the room. Even from distance, Francis could make out a bloody handprint on the face of it. Trickles of liquid had dribbled down from the impact site, giving it the appearance of red string attached to the fingertips.

Zena had stopped by the living room door. Francis patted her shoulder and walked to the kitchen. As he reached the doorway, he saw the desiccated husk of a person, gender unknown. The skin and clothing had sunk into the skeletal frame, almost like it had melted over the bones. A large browny-red stain had become one with the floor tiles, spanning the width of the kitchen.

On the worktops, amongst the rotting food and broken crockery, were piles of soiled tissues and tea-towels. The window which made up half of the back door had capillary cracks spreading out from an impact in the middle. His search was interrupted by a man shouting, “HEY!” from behind him.

Nathan was standing just inside the doorway. “Close the door, Nate. Keep on the lookout, okay?” Francis wheeled down the corridor to an open door where the shout had come from.

Inside he could just about make out three figures. Russ was standing inside the room. The smell from within was even worse than the one bathing the rest of the interior. This was the epicentre – Stink Central.

Russ was standing, braced, holding a crowbar, which he had chosen from the weapon stockpile. As his eyes grew accustomed to the murk, Francis could see that nearly every scrap of flat surface had nubs of melted candle on. Tiny burnt-out wicks were the noses in glossy faces of wax. Discarded pizza boxes were sown over the rancid carpet. Silhouetted through a chink of light between the curtains were Zena and a man.

Zena screamed. Russ leapt to the window and heaved a heavy curtain down its runner. With every agonising inch revealed, the room took on an even more disturbing vibe. There was dried blood sprayed everywhere; over the curtains, the floor, the ceiling. It looked like the room itself had been slashed over and over again, bled dry.

A dead body was stuffed headfirst through the flat-screen television, its grey skin crispy like old leather. Its hands were caked in yet more dried blood. Strips of skin hung from broken fingernails like fly paper.

The silhouetted man was a grey waif of a revenant; dead eyes looked out over saddlebags of sagging skin which made up his face. One arm was wrapped round Zena’s waist, while the other hung slack at the side. A grievous wound on the front of the shoulder had left the bone and rancid meat exposed. It swung listlessly as the zombie tried to manoeuvre to get a better hold.

Zena held a bloodied hand to her ear as she fought to escape the unrequited tête à tête. Russ, with his fist still clenched round the crowbar, punched the zombie square in the face as it loomed in for another bite. The sound of breaking bone overrode the sound of screaming, and the zombie staggered backwards, coming to rest against the now revealed window.

Zena took a step or two back. She glanced wildly around the room, as if she had just been brought out of a trance. She stifled both upchuck and the scream which threatened to envelop them all.

The crowbar was pulled back over Russ’ head. With ruthless dedication, he brought it down repeatedly against the stunned cadaver. Splatters of thick black ichor and shards of bone showered the window and surrounding area with each strike.

The zombie’s face had a huge crater in it, right down the middle. The sides of his eyes were on show as the crowbar was pulled from the impact site with a gut-wrenching slurp.

The signs of unlife started to waver within Tom. The brain, or at least the remaining slop which was still connected to the central nervous system, tried to send signals to tremorous limbs, none of which responded with any real alacrity.

A final hearty crack put Tom out of his misery, and the ruined remains of his skull slid down the window. As it squeaked against the glass during his final descent, it left a smear of black lumpy goo, splinters of bone and nodules of putrescent meat.

“Are you okay?” Francis asked. He pulled out a clean handkerchief and pressed it against the side of Zena’s head, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the bite.

She nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, I’m fine…just…it all looked like it used to be. Like the last time I was here, it was like a dream, or something.” she looked down at the brutalised remains of her husband and started to well up. “I made it back, T. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

Zena crouched down by her husband’s body and wept. Russ, still wired from the confrontation, stood immobile. Strands of black gunk ran from the end of the crowbar and onto the floor.

Nathan hugged the doorway, impassively studying the grisly sight. “I’m hungry, Francis,” he muttered, before disappearing back into the hallway to read his comics.