Year of the Zombie (Book 8): Scratch (3 page)

Jody side-stepped, and
the infected man hit the wall hard.

And then she was behind
him, and he was lost, and she grabbed a fistful of hair and smashed his face
repeatedly against the woodwork. Again and again and again. She felt bones
crack. Blood began to puddle.

She let him go and he
crumbled to the ground. She stood over him for a couple of seconds longer until
she was sure she’d done enough.

No keys.

She panicked
momentarily, then looked up when she heard Jenny banging on the car window
again. ‘Over there,’ she mouthed, and she pointed across the car park to where
the skirmish with the dead man had begun. There were the keys. Jody ran and
snatched them up, then got into the car and drove like hell, swerving first to
miss the infected man (who was, impossibly, getting back up again), then
swerving again to avoid a car coming from the opposite direction at even
greater speed.

It was quiet inside the
car for a while until Ben spoke. ‘That was awesome, the way you smashed that
bloke’s face in.’

‘It wasn’t. It was
vile.’

‘How did you do it?’

‘I just imagined it was
someone else.’

***

The origin of the deadly infection, its purpose,
its reason for being here and doing what it was doing... all these unanswered
questions were unimportant. Jody heard uninformed experts on the radio trying
to explain the inexplicable, but their empty, pointless words just made things
worse and added to the nauseous fear she felt this morning. Everything that
mattered was in this car.

It was the speed of
everything that caught her off-guard. In horror books and films you usually had
a little warning, but not here, not today. From the moment that first infected
had crashed down onto their tent, the morning had been a desperate, non-stop
flight to safety.

Problem was, nowhere
felt safe anymore.

The light on the fuel
gauge had just started blinking. The handbook said there was about thirty miles
left in the tank when that happened, but she couldn’t afford to take any
chances. She reckoned half that distance was a safe bet, and that left nowhere
near enough fuel to get them home.

There was another
option.

Trouble was, it was her
least preferred option. Her absolute last resort.

‘Okay, kids,’ she said,
her throat dry and her legs feeling weak with nerves, ‘we’re going to have to
make a detour. We don’t have enough petrol to get home.’

Groans and protests from
the girls. ‘Can’t we just get some more?’ Jenny sensibly asked.

‘We’ve only passed one
petrol station this morning,’ Ben reminded her, ‘and there was a massive fire
there, remember?’

‘That was a petrol
station?’

‘Before it exploded,
yeah,’ Jody told her daughter, remembering the chaos they’d recently passed.
Strange, she thought, how billowing flame, charred wrecks and panicking people
had already become par for the course today.

‘There might be another
one soon.’

‘And there might not.
You’re such a dummy,’ Ben sneered. ‘Mum, what happens if we run out in the
middle of nowhere with them zombies running about?’

Jody saw panic on her
daughter’s face in the mirror. ‘Thanks, Ben,’ she hissed at him.

‘Are we gonna run out of
petrol and get stuck?’ Jenny asked, panicking.

‘No,’ Jody told her.

‘And are they zombies?’

‘No,’ she said again.
‘There’s no such thing.’

‘So what are they?’

Jody couldn’t answer, so
she said something else instead. ‘Okay, look, we’re going to call in and see
your dad.’

For a few seconds there
was a numb, subdued silence. No discernible reaction. Then all hell broke
loose. The kids erupted like it was Christmas.

‘Yes!’ shouted Holly,
and Jody looked back at her. She had a broad, toothy grin on her face.

‘But Dad hates you,’ Ben
said to his mum with his customary lack of tact.

‘I think that’s a bit
strong.’

‘No it isn’t. He told
me. He said it in a text.’

‘Yeah, well, whatever
your dad might think about me, it’s you three I’m concerned about.’

‘I don’t think he’s
going to let you into his house,’ Jenny said from the back.

‘As long as he lets you
in, that’s all that matters.’

And Jody turned up the
radio again in a vain attempt to drown out the kids’ excitement and her own
disappointment.

***

Nice place, much to her chagrin. Very nice
place, actually. In need of some work, but it definitely had potential. The
house was bigger than she expected, and far grander. It had an ornate metal
veranda right across the front and a double garage with his bloody huge red 4x4
parked outside.

Jody looked up and down
the street to check it was clear before releasing the locks. She tried to tell
them to wait until she was sure it was okay before getting out of the car but
their effervescent excitement was impossible to contain and the three of them
bounded up the steps to the front door with an ease and familiarity which
saddened her greatly. Until now, this was a place she’d only ever heard them
talk about when they got back from spending time with
him
. To them,
though, it was home from home. It was hard to accept that everything she was
feeling inside – the nerves and anger, the hate (
was that too strong a
word?
) – was the direct opposite of how her children felt.

One of them rang the
bell. She couldn’t see which one, such was the forest of overly enthusiastic
hands which reached up to compete to press the buzzer.

Maybe he’s out. Maybe
he’s not home. Maybe he’s done a runner. Maybe he’s infected?

A delay. Twitching
curtains. Then the door opened inwards and a woman answered. Jody got out,
convinced the kids had got the wrong house.

‘Hi, Charlie,’ said Ben,
and the woman Jody had never seen before reached out and gave her son a hug.
The girls weren’t far behind.

Jody held back at the
bottom of the steps and eyed up the woman with caution.
Who the hell wears
that much makeup at this time in the morning? The rest of the world is falling
apart, and this bitch looks incredible...
It annoyed her far more than it
should have.

The kids were already in
the house. Charlie made eye-contact with Jody and smiled awkwardly. ‘Hi,’ she
said, ‘you must be...’

‘Jody,’ she answered,
and she reached out to shake Charlie’s already extended hand. ‘I’m their mum.’

‘Yeah, I know. Come in.’

‘Are you sure...?’

‘I’m sure of one thing,
love, and that’s that you don’t want to be standing around on ceremony outside
this morning, not with everything that’s been going on.’

‘That’s why we’re here,
actually.’

‘I guessed as much,’ she
said, and stood to one side to let Jody through. Jody crossed the threshold and
even though she felt impossibly uncomfortable and this truly was the last place
on earth she wanted to be (she thought she’d rather be back in her collapsed
tent on that grubby campsite at the arse-end of Wales than here), when the door
closed behind her it was a relief.

Ben and Holly had
disappeared, but Jenny hovered awkwardly in the hallway. ‘Charlie is Dad’s
girlfriend,’ she explained.

‘I’d made that
connection,’ Jody replied, a little embarrassed.

‘The kids have told me
loads about you,’ Charlie said.

‘That’s funny, until
just now I didn’t even know your name.’

Charlie shrugged.
‘That’s kids for you, I guess. Must be difficult for them. Anyway, come in. Let
me get you a drink or something. How comes you’re here?’

‘Long story. We were
camping and all this kicked off. I’m guessing you’ve seen the news? I just
shoved the kids in the car and made a run for it. Didn’t have enough fuel to
get home.’

‘That’s probably for the
best. It’s quieter out here. I’d stay away from city centres for a while if I
was you.’

‘I need to get back.’

‘You can stay here as
long as you need to.’

‘All due respect, I
don’t think that’s going to go down well with certain parties.’

‘You leave him to me.’

‘With pleasure,’ she
said.

Jody could hear his
voice already, and it made her feel sick to the stomach. She thought about how
uncharacteristically, instinctively physical she’d been this morning since the
nightmare at the campsite had begun, and she wished she’d had some of that
strength and confidence before today. She felt helpless again now, the way
being around him always made her feel. She didn’t even know if she’d be able to
speak to him.

He was sitting in the
corner of a huge lounge in a comfortable-looking leather armchair, all the kids
piled on top of him, competing for his attention.

He glanced up. ‘You’re
the last person I expected to see this morning,’ he said when he saw her.

‘Hello, Gary. It’s great
to see you, too.’

‘We were camping, Dad,’
Ben said excitedly. ‘This manky old woman was trying to get at us.’

‘Your mother was
camping?’ he said, incredulous, as if that was harder to believe than the fact
they’d been attacked by a rabid infected woman. ‘I didn’t think that was your
scene, Jody.’

‘Well the kids needed a
break and I didn’t have time to arrange anything else,’ she answered quickly,
deciding that was all the explanation he needed.

‘Daddy’s taking us to
Disneyland soon,’ Holly said, eyes wide with enthusiasm.

‘Is that right?’

‘Yeah, in America,’
Jenny added, equally excited. ‘We’re going on a plane.’

‘You should see the
hotel we’re staying in,’ Ben said. ‘It’s amazing. It’s got at least four pools
and there’s this massive slide...’

‘You can show your mum
later,’ Gary said.

‘And were you planning
on telling me you wanted to take the kids out of the country?’ Jody asked.

‘I’d have got round to
it, but only because I have to,’ he quickly replied.

‘Don’t get their hopes
up,’ she warned, then she looked directly at Ben who was looking distinctly
unimpressed. ‘Your dad has a habit of making promises and not delivering.’

‘I bet you could do with
some coffee,’ Charlie said, interrupting at just the right moment. She led Jody
out to the kitchen. ‘Probably not a bad thing to let them daydream at the
moment. Take their minds off reality.’

Jody sighed. ‘I know.
I’m sorry. It’s just they’ve already had enough broken promises to last a
lifetime.’

Charlie handed her a mug
and Jody held it tight with both hands. The heat was welcome: just on the right
side of painful. She hadn’t realised how cold she was. She hadn’t realised she
was shaking, either. She hadn’t realised she’d lost a sandal and that she was
still in her pyjamas and they were soaked with other people’s blood. She hadn’t
realised she was sobbing.

‘Let it all out,’
Charlie said and she sat her down in the nearest chair. ‘I’ll go get you
something warm to put on.’

***

Washed and showered and fed and watered.

Jody sat in the
kitchen-diner and watched the huge TV on the wall in disbelief. It wasn’t even
the biggest TV in the house, according to Ben. Apparently Dad had four TVs,
which seemed pointless to Jody as there were only two people living here most
of the time. And Ben said they were all bigger than the TV they had at home,
which made her feel like a failure because they only had thirty-two inches when
all of Dad’s TVs were at least forty. Fortunately the kids were currently
distracted by another TV on another wall and Netflix, a Playstation, and Dad.

The news had begun to
resemble the trailer for a horror movie. The panic she’d sensed earlier in the
day showed no sign of abating, but at least she could now see some kind of
authoritarian response to the crisis beginning to emerge. The infection was
spreading east, but appeared to be gradually being contained. The military were
taking control of the affected areas and isolating (and presumably destroying)
the infected. Some cities, as Charlie had said, were like warzones. Hazmat
suited soldiers were going door to door in scenes which would have looked
hackneyed and clichéd if they hadn’t been so absolutely fucking terrifying. A
camera crew followed one group as they entered a remarkably ordinary-looking
house and virtually strip-searched its terrified occupants, looking for
scratches and other tell-tale signs of infection. Unrelenting shaky-cam images.

Jenny was beside her.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there.

‘Is it because of the
scratches? Is that how it gets them?’

‘I think so, love,’ Jody
replied.

‘Are they dead?’

‘That’s what the man on
the TV’s saying.’

‘Gross,’ she said, and
she screwed up her face then disappeared back to find Dad.