Autumn Read online

  Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places? Maybe I need to think about the places people didn’t used to go?

  The problem was, she decided, she didn’t know enough about this locality. She’d never been that interested in what went on outside the immediate area where she’d lived and the places she needed. Her world had been restricted to a few streets and a few faces, and that was how she’d liked it. She’d never had any aspirations to see the world or to… Her train of thought was interrupted by a flash of light. It was gone in a second and could have been caused by anything, just a brief glint of sunshine on metal. She watched for a while longer, but it didn’t happen again.

  This house is like a cocoon, she thought, and that might not be a good thing. Between Caron’s double-glazing, the bodies outside and the morons downstairs, the rest of the world had effectively been blocked out.

  Lorna kept watching and, just over an hour later, she saw movement again, in the same place as before. She was half-asleep, eyelids drooping, and she didn’t fully realise it was there until it had gone. Sat upright, immediately wide awake, she saw a flood of slow-moving corpses following in the wake of whatever it was she’d just missed.

  The next time around, watching from another window this time, she saw exactly what it was. It was hard to believe. It was its normality which made it so surreal. She walked back downstairs, not sure how to tell the others.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Caron asked, stopping in the hallway on her way to deliver a cup of tea to Webb. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Not a ghost,’ she said. ‘A bus.’

  #

  Almost time. The bus was due around again. She’d left Ellie upstairs watching for another couple of hours (figuring that, for some bizarre reason, whoever was driving the bus seemed to be following an established route) while the rest of them stripped Caron’s house of anything of value. Lorna had pacified Caron by lying to her, telling her they’d come back later and that everything was going to be okay, when the truth was she had no intention of coming back, and she didn’t know if anything was going to be okay anymore. The nervousness was palpable, and even though they outwardly continued to bicker and moan, they all knew this was the right thing to do. They waited by the front door, all loaded up.

  ‘What are those?’ Lorna asked, looking down at Caron’s feet.

  ‘Shoes,’ she answered. Trick question?

  ‘You’re wearing heels? Bloody hell, Caron. We’re about to sprint through a crowd of corpses, and you’re wearing heels?’

  ‘I’ve nothing else that goes with this jacket.’

  Lorna just looked at her. A combination of her own nerves and a genuine affection for the stereotypically middle-class woman kept her from yelling. In a way she envied her naivety. She wished things like fashion sense still mattered. Caron grumbled to herself as Anita berated her and forced her to change into more sensible, flat shoes, even though they clashed.

  Lorna checked the time on her phone. They needed to move. ‘Right, once we’re out there, we just run for it, understand? They’re still slow enough. They won’t know we’re there until we’ve gone.’

  ‘You’re having a fucking laugh, ain’t you?’ Webb said, his uncertainty clear. ‘There’s fucking hundreds of them.’

  She quickly corrected him. ‘Less than eighty. I counted.’

  ‘Where are we going, Lor?’ Ellie asked, plastic baby held close.

  ‘I already told you.’

  ‘No you didn’t. You said about the bus, that’s all. You never said where we’re going.’

  ‘We want to get on a bus, so where do you think we’re going? The bloody bus stop.’

  Someone asked another pointless question, but she’d had enough now. They were just delaying tactics. And the thing was, if that bus continued driving the same route all day, missing it this time around would give them at least another hour to wind themselves up still further. Christ knows what state they’d be in by then.

  But the bus might not come back around.

  It might be one of those things behind the wheel, somehow driving on instinct.

  It might go a different way this time.

  It might have run out of fuel…

  Too many questions. Too many ifs and buts.

  Lorna shoved Caron’s front door open and started running. The nearest of the dead immediately turned towards her and began to advance. She pushed the first few away, then dropped her shoulder and charged through the rest of them like a rugby player. The others followed behind her, though she gave them little thought. Caron stopped to lock the door before Webb dragged her away.

  Thankfully the dead were as slow and useless as they’d appeared from the upstairs window. It was almost as if they were operating on a time delay of a few seconds. Lorna almost laughed as she ran. Down here at ground level, their lethargy was bordering on comical.

  Quickly free from the bulk of the foul-smelling crowd, she allowed herself to glance back and check on the others. What she saw was what she expected: the four of them running at varying speeds, three with their heads down sprinting, Caron struggling to keep up, all arms and legs and panic. But even she was having no problem outrunning the corpses. The dead followed in an unruly, ragged mass, occasionally colliding with each other, arms outstretched as they reached for the gaps where the survivors had just been.

  At the end of the street, Lorna took a right. There was a bus stop about another fifty metres ahead. There were also more bodies, too; a couple of them on this side of the road, several more crossing from the opposite pavement. One fell as it stumbled down the kerb, hitting the tarmac face-first with a nauseating wet thud.

  She was at the bus stop in seconds, the others catching up within a minute or so. The nearest of the dead weren’t far behind, and it was then that the obvious limitation of Lorna’s plan became painfully apparent. ‘So what now?’ Anita demanded, panic all too evident in her voice. Lorna didn’t answer, because she didn’t know. Maybe try and get into another house so they could see the bus coming? Just fight off the dead until it arrived?

  ‘Let’s go back,’ Caron wailed. ‘This was a mistake. Let’s go back to my house and I’ll cook us something nice. I’ll make some tea and we can think again about what we should…’

  Her words trailed away as both Lorna and Webb sprang into action. Three corpses were close. Lorna grabbed the extended right arm of the first and swung the dead woman around. She offered surprisingly little resistance. Webb did the same with the corpse of a small boy, hurling the ragdoll body into another dead woman who collapsed near Caron’s feet. Caron looked down at the miserable creature. ‘Joan?’ she said, bemused and appalled in equal measure. ‘Joan Deeley, is that you?’

  More of them now. Anita joined in the fight as the creatures began to swarm around them. Their miserable speed and lack of strength was laughable, but their relentless intent was truly terrifying. There seemed to be nothing else left in the world to distract these hideous things…

  Except the bus.

  They heard it before they saw it through the chaos, trundling steadily down the road towards them, its paintwork smeared with reds, browns and black. It was immediately obvious why: the dead were literally throwing themselves at the huge vehicle. Some simply bounced off and landed in the road, others were dragged under its wheels and crushed. Lorna hadn’t noticed it before – she’d had enough to deal with – but much of the road was coated in a layer of tyre-track streaked gore.

  She stopped fighting and ran out into the road and began waving her arms furiously, slipping in the foul sludge under her boots. Had the driver seen her? Had he seen her? The bus just kept on coming, closer and closer, the driver’s view obscured by the constant stream of corpses criss-crossing in front. Lorna didn’t know what else to do. She stood her ground and screamed at the driver to stop. She thought she could see two men inside the bus, their faces obscured by the wipers which smeared blood and grease across the windscreen rather than clearing it.

&n
bsp; She screwed up her face with effort and heaved another insipid body out of the way, then screamed out loud again. ‘Stop the fucking bus!’

  A hiss of air brakes. Doors opening. Warm air. Strong hands dragging her inside.

  ‘That was a bit stupid, love,’ a balding, large-bellied man said as he helped her up the step. His hands lingered on her too long and she angrily batted them away.

  ‘Four more out there,’ she said, but she didn’t need to explain as Caron, Ellie, Anita and Webb were already pushing past, desperate to get to safety. They buffeted Lorna further down the bus, which was filled with loose supplies and all kinds of other rubbish. She found an empty seat as far away as she could from everybody else and sat down heavily. The bus began to move, and the rough, rattling, stop-start movement was immediately familiar and reassuring. She leant her head against the glass and watched the dead world go by, not knowing where she was going, and not caring either. Outside looked like a place she used to know, but it wasn’t home. Not anymore.

  Webb was standing at the front between the fat man, whose name was Stokes, and the driver, offering all manner of useless advice. He was telling them how he’d looked after these four girls, kept them safe from the dead outside. Stokes seemed suckered in. He leant across and rapped on the Perspex window of the driver’s cab with his knuckles. ‘Told you we’d find someone else if we kept driving, didn’t I?’ he said. Driver didn’t say anything.

  PENELOPE STREET

  Penelope Street is nearing the end of her life. She’s very weak now and it’s an effort for her just to keep her eyes open. It’s easier to stay head bowed and eyes shut because she doesn’t want to see what’s happening around her. There’s nothing she can do about any of it. Penelope wants the end to come quick, but every single second seems to take a cruel eternity to pass. She just wants it to be over now.

  #

  One hundred and thirty-three.

  I’ve been here for one hundred and thirty-three hours now. How much longer will I last? Will I reach one hundred and thirty-four or one hundred and thirty-five? Christ, I hope not. I can’t take much more of this. I wish I could make the end come faster. The frustration’s worse than the fear now.

  I feel so weak. I haven’t got my medication and I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since first thing Tuesday morning. That’s more than five and a half days, surely I can’t last much longer, can I? I can’t do anything but sit here with my head hanging down, looking into my lap. Sometimes I look up and around but it’s all too much. Everything has changed and I don’t know how or why.

  Arthur’s body is just in front of me. I can see his feet sticking out from behind the sofa we were here to buy. He’s still, but they move all around me, oblivious to the fact I’m here. They are the dark, decaying shadows of dead people. They are cold, empty, emotionless bodies. When I look up I see the streets outside are full of them. I can’t move so they don’t see me, but if I make any noise they stop. I screamed and shouted at them to begin with because I thought they’d be able to help, but now I know they can’t. When they hear me they stop and bang on the glass, then even more of them come. I’m used to being stared at so I don’t move. I don’t react. After a couple of hours they start to drift away.

  Arthur brought me here on Tuesday to choose a new sofa, not that he needed me to come. There wasn’t any point in me getting involved in the decision. It was down to him to choose one and try it out and decide whether or not we were going to have it. We got here early to avoid the crowds. If there are too many people then my chair just gets in the way. We’d just got through the door when it happened. I watched it get him and everyone else. I watched them all die and I wish it had taken me too. I kept waiting for it to come, hoping and praying it would, hoping and praying this impossible life would soon be over. I can’t stand being alone like this. It makes me feel more helpless and vulnerable than ever.

  I’m so hungry. Thirsty too. My mouth’s dry and I’m so dehydrated that it feels like my tongue’s swollen to ten times its normal size. I can’t talk properly now, not that there’s anyone left to talk to. There must have been a fire near here, and people must have been trapped inside. I smelled the smoke first, then the burning bodies. It was like sitting in the middle of a damn barbecue, the whole world stinking of roast meat. Every so often I can still smell it and even though I know what’s burning, it still makes the hunger pains worse.

  The very worst part of all of this is not having any control. I’ve not had much control for a long time, but now I don’t have any. I can’t do a bloody thing about the situation I’m in. I can’t do anything to help myself or to bring the end any closer. Help might be just around the corner, but I can’t even get myself out of this damn building, never mind anywhere else. An inch might as well be a hundred bloody miles for all the good it’ll do me now.

  Just trying to look up takes so much energy. There are more bodies outside now, gazing in at me with their cold, vacant eyes. I feel like a bloody shop window dummy, but then I have done since the accident. People always stared at me since then. Perhaps I should have got used to it, but I’ve never been able to handle the sideways glances and the way they avoid me. They either used to patronise me or ignore me altogether and talk to Arthur instead. Either way, they made me feel like a freak. People always saw the wheelchair before they saw me sitting in it. I’m paralysed from the neck down, not up. I can’t move my body, but that was the only difference between me and everyone else. My arms and legs might be frozen, but I’ve always been able to feel hurt and to get scared and feel panic like everyone else. Christ knows I’m scared now.

  I would have been all right if it hadn’t been for him, that stupid bloody husband of mine. If he’d left me there after the fall instead of trying to be a hero I would have been okay. It would have taken time to get well again, but I would have been okay eventually. But no, Arthur knew best, didn’t he. It was him trying to move me that did the real damage to my neck. He blamed himself and so did I. And now here I am, trapped in this cold, dark, empty place, starving to death with just his corpse for company. I can’t move an inch. What did I do to deserve this?

  Come on death, hurry up. The joke’s over. I want this to finish now. I’m sick and tired of sitting in this bloody chair just waiting…

  DIGITAL

  Emily lived her life on the Internet. It connected her world, made her feel less alone. She thought it strange that the people closest to her were usually thousands of miles away, while the people she was physically nearest might as well have been in another universe. The Internet put Emily in contact with the people who knew her better than the rest of them. It made fantasy worlds feel real. And in those make-believe places filled with virtual versions of people, it made her feel like she belonged. Even now, even after everything that’s happened to the physical world, she’s still doing all she can to cling onto her virtual reality.

  Without the Internet, Emily is just Emily. She lives with her nan in just another house on just another street. By looking at the faded blue front door, you’d never know that the girl upstairs in her bedroom is a fucking awesome killer, or that she races so fucking hard and so fucking fast that last month she ranked seventeen on a league table of several hundred thousand racers.

  Nan says to Emily, you should get out more, find yourself a nice boy. Nan says she doesn’t spend enough time mixing with other people, even though Emily tells her she spends all her time with other people. How can she expect her to understand? Nan can’t even set up a programme to record on the bloody satellite TV box. She still checks the listings in the paper then sits there waiting for programmes to start instead of time-shifting and catching-up on demand like everybody else.

  Or, at least, she did.

  Nan doesn’t do anything anymore. Like the rest of the world, it seems, Nan’s dead. She went out to the shops last Tuesday morning, and never came home. There’s a part of Emily that thinks she should have gone out looking for her, but what’s the point? They’re
all dead out there. As far as she can tell, she’s the only one left.

  It happened in the online world too. One minute she was up to her neck in the middle of a grudge match with that little bitch Oko575 from Hiroshima, the next she was alone. She could still see Oko575 on the screen, of course, but she was frozen in space like a screen-cap. It was the same everywhere Emily looked, every game.

  She tried to follow the progress of events via all her usual online social outlets, but it wasn’t the updates and tweets she tracked, it was the silence. One minute there was the usual chaos of activity coming from all directions, then there was nothing. A wave of quiet had spread out across the world. Nothing trending. Nothing happening. No one else left online.

  Emily was comfortable with the real-world isolation. She was used to it. She didn’t need anyone else. She actually liked being alone like this. Okay, so she wasn’t so keen on the number of corpses she could see from her bedroom window, but that was something she knew she’d get used to eventually. The online quiet, however, was a different matter altogether. Wherever she went, whatever game she tried, she was alone. It was unnerving. It was unnatural. Online, she’d always had company available on demand.

  It was several days in, long after the dead had begun to rise outside, that she finally found someone. An eight year old kid in Texas, by all accounts, as scared as she herself was beginning to feel. Emily found him by chance as she wandered the desolate streets of a virtual town once full of orcs, wizards and warriors. It was unsettlingly quiet there now, just a handful of frozen characters in view almost all the time. Those avatars she could still see, she decided, were the poor buggers who’d died playing.

  Emily turned the music up to full in her bedroom to try and counteract the lack of noise everywhere else, then kept herself busy building an empire unchallenged, stripping virtual corpses of anything of value after one-sided battles, hoarding worthless treasures. She’d caught a glimpse of unexpected movement in the corner of her screen, and in the stillness of everything else it was as startling as if someone had sneaked up behind her in the real world and yelled in her ear. She chased the avatar through the streets, desperate not to lose sight of it. It didn’t feel like a game now. It felt like it mattered, that there was far more riding on this than achievements, experience points and upgrades. She was too fucking good for the kid in Texas. She knew this virtual place like the back of her hand and she soon had him cornered. They had a desperate conversation by text: