Autumn Page 10

  ‘Give it a fucking rest,’ she shouted across the room, but Ellie was making too much noise to hear. She just sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at the ice-cold kid in the cot. Sometimes she’d go to touch it, then pull her hand away at the last second.

  Ellie hadn’t wanted to be a mom. She hadn’t planned it. The dad hadn’t been any help. She still wasn’t completely sure which one of them it was; they’d both pissed off as soon as they heard she was pregnant. Fuck, she’d cried herself to sleep for night after night when she found out she was expecting. She’d been to a clinic for an abortion, only to back out at the last minute. Thing was, she’d realised on the way there, when she was pregnant, people noticed her… talked to her… The baby gave her something to focus on, a reason to keep going. Sitting here now, looking at the little girl’s tiny body which hadn’t moved for over twenty-four hours, she couldn’t begin to make sense of the turmoil she was feeling inside. It had hurt so much when she’d pissed on a stick from the chemist and found out she was pregnant, so how come it hurt so much more now she’d lost her?

  Anita needed a break, but she couldn’t go out. She went to the kitchen, lit a fag and hung her head out of the window, the next best thing. The view from the third floor up was too clear, stretching out over miles of stuff she didn’t particularly want to see. And the silence… the never-ending quiet out there was harder to handle than the noise coming from the other room. Cold, pissed off and frightened, she checked the cupboards for something to eat then took some crisps and a bottle of Coke through to Ellie. Ellie didn’t even look up. Anita sat down and watched her. Fuck, what she’d have given for some interaction. Someone to talk to. Something to look at on her phone. Someone to text. Something on TV. Anything…

  #

  Lorna decided against taking a car. She’d spent a long time thinking about it – several sleepless hours during the night just passed. It was the noise that put her off. With everything else so deathly quiet, did she really want to advertise the fact she was still alive? Everything on the estate was in walking distance, so the risks seemed to outweigh the potential benefits. And anyway, there was so much shit littering the roads – so many dead people and driverless vehicles – that she didn’t think she’d be able to go much faster than walking speed.

  A couple of hours out there maximum, she decided, then back home. Maybe try and get a little more of the local area covered every day until she’d made a full assessment of the situation. Did she even need to make an assessment of anything? She thought about all the films she’d seen before that had started like this. People in the movies were always making the mistake of trying to work out what had happened. Idiots. What did it matter? What difference would it make? Even if she found something somewhere which explained everything, how was that going to help her? All that mattered now was staying safe and staying alive. Fuck everything else.

  There were a few false alarms. A cat jumping out of an open window scared the crap out of her, and The Jockey – that shit-hole of a pub you never went into unless you were already pissed and had absolutely no other option – was burning. She’d seen the smoke and heard the crackle and pop of the flames and had been transfixed. She’d stood there for a while, just staring, hypnotised by the constant light and movement and soaking up the heat. The fire was a welcome interruption in the otherwise never-ending sea of motionless grey. And then there were the birds. Picking at scraps. Squawking. Fighting. Crows and seagulls acting like vultures.

  She’d lived here for years, but she still sometimes managed to get lost. All the roads looked the same, all the houses just variations on the same few red-brick themes. They were arranged in nests of roughly semi-circular crescents, branching off a few main roads. Here the side-roads were named after royalty, which always made Lorna laugh because if a fucking royal ever ended up here by mistake, they wouldn’t have dared get out of their bloody car. She went the wrong way when she emerged from a convenience store where she’d been looking for food, and now she was halfway along Princess Margaret Crescent when she wanted to be on Prince Albert Way. She could double-back, or she could just keep going. Changing direction took too much effort.

  When Lorna reached the junction where Prince Albert Way met the main Wildboar Road, she heard the screams. Distant. Carried on the wind. She wasn’t sure if they were real or a figment of her imagination, or even if it was just the wind itself. She kept walking and then, a minute or two later, she heard them again. It was a woman, howling in pain like she was being tortured. Christ, the noise was fucking terrifying. So bad, in fact, that Lorna turned around and started walking home. I’ve got enough to deal with, she kept telling herself. I don’t need anyone else giving me more grief.

  And yet, a part of her desperately wanted to find the woman who was crying. She wanted to see her, maybe even talk to her… she just wanted to know for sure that, perhaps, she wasn’t the only person left alive. Just a few minutes with her, that’d be enough. If she could get an idea how many others might be left, she’d be better placed to come up with a survival strategy. I’m not going to help her, Lorna tried to convince herself, I’m going to help me. I’m just going to check things out… find out where she is, who she is. Forewarned is forearmed. And on the subject of being armed, she thought, I need to take precautions. She stopped walking and swung the bag she’d been carrying off her shoulders. She took out a large kitchen knife she’d brought with her from home.

  In the event, Lorna was the one who was found. Evidently, the screaming woman wasn’t alone. Another girl who’d been with her came pelting down the stairs as soon as she saw Lorna approaching. Kitchen knife or no kitchen knife, she ran straight up and grabbed hold of her. ‘You gotta help me,’ she said. ‘I can’t fucking shut her up. She’s doing my brain in.’

  Lorna cautiously followed Anita up to Ellie’s flat, exchanging names on the staircase and getting the obviously unanswerable questions out of the way quickly. ‘No, I don’t know what happened,’ she told Anita. ‘And yes, you’re the only other person I’ve seen.’

  Lorna’s arrival distracted Ellie momentarily. The silence was bliss. ‘Thank fuck…’ Anita said under her breath.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Lorna asked.

  ‘Dead kid.’

  ‘You a doctor?’ Ellie asked, the first coherent words she’d spoken in almost a day.

  ‘Do I look like a doctor?’

  Lorna took a few hesitant steps forward and peered into Ellie’s baby’s cot. She couldn’t bear to look for anything more than a couple of seconds. The child was curled up tight, its knees drawn up to its chest, hands in tiny fists in front of its face. Its skin was mottled blue-green. Its bedding was soaked with blood and other leakage. Ellie, not listening, tried to explain.

  ‘She just started choking. She was asleep, and she just started coughing. Hadn’t fed her or nothing… I tried to help her but I couldn’t get her to breathe. Didn’t know what to do. And she was crying and I…’

  Her words dried up. She started to sob, but not yet to scream. Lorna crouched down beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder, making eye contact and keeping it. ‘You did your best. There was nothing you could do. It wasn’t your fault.’

  Ellie nodded and sniffed, then wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. ‘I did my best.’

  ‘It’s not just your baby, you know. It’s everybody. They’re all like this outside.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘What are we gonna do?’ Anita asked, standing a short distance back.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do,’ Lorna replied, standing up, ‘but I’m going home.’

  ‘You can’t leave us here.’

  ‘You’ll be okay.’

  ‘Can’t you stay with us?’ Ellie asked, still sobbing.

  ‘I want to get back before it gets dark.’

  ‘Ellie’s right,’ Anita said, ‘we should stick together, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘Maybe, but I—’

  ‘It’ll ma
ke it easier when help comes, won’t it?’

  ‘I don’t reckon there’s much help coming. Christ, people used to avoid coming to this estate at the best of times, and this definitely ain’t the best of times.’

  She started towards the door. Anita blocked her. ‘Don’t go,’ she said, voice low. ‘Don’t leave me on my own with her.’

  Lorna looked back at Ellie who was now stroking her dead baby’s cheek with her finger, whispering to her.

  ‘I don’t want to stay here.’

  ‘Let us come with you then. Please. I don’t know what you did, but she’s calmed right down. Please… I can’t take it if she starts screaming again.’

  Lorna considered her options. Every possibility felt like the wrong choice. Even though she tried to deny it, the thought of going back to her empty home alone now felt less appealing than it had when she’d first set out. Maybe they should stick together? Even if it was just for a day or two… by then they’d have found more survivors, wouldn’t they? Then she could just palm this pair off on someone else and not feel bad about it.

  ‘Get your stuff together,’ she told them both. ‘You can come with me. Just until we work out what’s going on.’

  #

  Ellie refused to leave her baby.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, she’s dead,’ Lorna yelled at her, all tact, decorum and sympathy out the window. ‘We’re not taking a dead baby.’

  ‘I can’t… leave her…’ she sobbed, struggling to breathe and form sentences.

  ‘Well stay here then. You can’t bring her.’

  Lorna and Anita were standing by the door, ready to go. Ellie hesitated by the crib, loyalties divided. This pointless stand-off was dragging unnecessarily. Lorna glanced outside at the increasing darkness. The street lamps had come on as usual, but every other flat and house remained dark and unlit. Fuck me, she thought, is this really all that’s left?

  Anita returned to her friend’s side and tried to drag her away, but all that did was make matters worse. Ellie began to scream again, louder than before. The hideous sound cut right through Lorna, piercing her skull. Then Anita started shouting, more through frustration than fear.

  ‘Wait here,’ Lorna said. She didn’t know if either of them heard her, but she was past caring. She slipped out of the front door and ran downstairs.

  #

  Lorna returned to the convenience store she’d visited earlier. She stepped over the body of an old guy she thought she vaguely recognised, and crossed to a narrow display unit next to the magazines and greetings cards. She found what she was looking for, grabbed it, and ran back to the flat.

  ‘Right, we’re going,’ she announced when she arrived back at the flat. Ellie was still wailing, but she quietened slightly when she saw what Lorna was carrying. Lorna bit into the polythene packaging of a cheap plastic, shrink-wrapped doll and tore it open. The doll was light and hollow – a rudimentary, cut-price toy – and she passed it over to Ellie who immediately shut up. ‘Get her ready, get her in her pushchair, and let’s get the fuck out of here.’

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ Anita said. The sudden silence was beautiful.

  #

  On the way back to Lorna’s place they stopped and looked out over a large swathe of countryside, buried in darkness save for lines of streetlights. ‘See that?’ Anita asked.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Right over there… there’s a house with lights on.’

  #

  Lorna’s gut reaction had been to wait until morning, but she knew it would be almost impossible to find the house in daylight. The steadily increasing gloom tonight was actually helping. Though she knew roughly where they were heading, the dark was also disorientating. Distances were impossible to gauge. A walk they thought wouldn’t take long actually took more than an hour. Cold, tired and scared, they eventually reached the road with the single illuminated house halfway along. Feeling increasingly unsure, and wishing she’d stuck to her original plan and stayed home alone, Lorna rang the bell. The noise cut through the unnatural silence of everything else, sounding over-amplified and out of place. The curtains twitched. She could see movement through the frosted glass and her pulse began to quicken at the thought of what might be about to greet her. As it was, it was the normality of the person who answered the door that she found most surprising: an apron-wearing, middle-aged woman. A brief and unsurprisingly awkward doorstep conversation followed. The woman introduced herself as Caron and ushered them inside, appearing genuinely relieved to see other people. The house was reassuringly ordinary, an unexpected oasis. Full of unnecessary ornaments and hideously over-decorated. Unmistakeably middle-class.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Caron asked. ‘We were just about to eat.’

  ‘We?’ Lorna said. ‘There are more of you?’

  Caron led them into the dining room. ‘This is Mr Webb,’ she said, introducing the scrawny-looking youth sitting at the head of the table, shovelling food into his mouth. Webb just grunted.

  DAY THREE

  AMY STEADMAN

  Part ii

  Almost fifty hours have passed since infection. Amy Steadman has been dead for just over two days.

  Minutes after death, Amy’s body began to decompose. A process known as autolysis has begun. This is self-digestion. Starved of oxygen, complex chemical reactions have started to occur throughout the corpse. Amy’s cells have become poisoned by increased levels of carbon dioxide, changes in acidity levels and the accumulation of waste. Her body has begun the slow process of dissolving from the inside out.

  There has already been a marked change in Amy’s external appearance. Her skin is now discoloured; her once healthy pink hue has darkened to a dull, dirty grey. Her veins are considerably more prominent and, in places, her skin now has a greasy translucency. Amy died lying on her back, with her body arched across the feet of a metal display unit. The parts of her which are lowest to the ground – her feet, legs and backside, and her left arm – now appear swollen and bruised. Blood, no longer pumping, has pooled in these areas and coagulated.

  The outward signs of the chemical reactions occurring throughout the corpse are becoming increasingly apparent. Fluid-filled blisters have begun to form on Amy’s skin and, around some areas of her body, skin slippage has also occurred. Her face now appears drawn and hollowed.

  To all intents and purposes, Amy Steadman is dead. As a unique and identifiable human being, she has all but ceased to exist. All that remains of her now is a decaying carcase and all traces of the personality and character she once had have disappeared. Her heart no longer beats, she no longer breathes, blood no longer circulates. The infection, however, has not completely destroyed her. Part of Amy’s brain and nervous system has continued to function, albeit at a virtually undetectable level. There are several other corpses nearby in a similar condition. Until now, their function has been slight and unnoticeable. Amy has, however, finally reached the stage where her brain has become able to again exert a degree of basic control. She is only capable of rudimentary yes/no decisions. She no longer feels emotion, nor is she aware of who – what – she now is. She has no desires or needs: she is driven purely by instinct. The brain’s control over the rest of her body is improving, but at a phenomenally slow speed.

  Amy’s body is beginning to move. The first outwardly visible sign of change is in her right foot which begins to twitch at the ankle. Over the next few hours this movement gradually spreads to all four limbs and across the torso until, finally, the body is able to lift itself up and stand. Amy’s movements are clumsy and uncoordinated. Coagulated blood and the gelling of the cytoplasm within individual cells (because of the increased acidity inside the body) is preventing free movement. Her eyes are open but she cannot see. She cannot hear. She cannot feel anything or react to any external stimulation. The combined effects of gravity, physical deterioration and the uneven distribution of weight across her corpse after two days of inactivity causes Amy to move. Initially she trips and falls on unste
ady legs, like a new-born animal. Soon, however, her level of control is such that she is able to distribute her weight enough to manage a rudimentary walk. Devoid of all senses, Amy’s corpse simply keeps moving forward until it reaches an obstruction and can go no further. She then shuffles around until she is able to move freely again.

  Amy’s body remains in this state for a further two days.

  PHILIP EVANS

  Part ii

  This is the best day! I can’t believe it – it looks like Mom’s going to be all right!

  She woke me up this morning. I opened my eyes and she was standing at the end of the bed. Scared the life out of me, she did. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I was sure she was dead, but she must have been in a coma or something like that. I saw a programme about that once on telly. Anyway, she wasn’t talking and she wasn’t very steady on her feet but at least she was up and about. I knew Mom wouldn’t leave me. She’s still very ill, mind. She doesn’t look well and she smells really bad, but that’s nothing a good soak in the bath won’t cure.

  She’s been really shaken up by all of this, has Mom. She’s not herself at all. I’ve had to shut her in her room to stop her wandering off. She just keeps walking around, banging into things, and she won’t sit still. I keep telling her she’ll do herself an injury if she’s not careful, but she won’t listen. She won’t sit in her chair or lie on the bed or anything. I expect she just needs to keep moving for a while after being still for so long.