SCRATCH

and other itches

by David Moody

“Moody is as imaginative as Barker, as compulsory as King, and as addictive as Palahniuk.” —Scream the Horror Magazine

“Moody has the power to make the most mundane and ordinary characters interesting and believable, and is reminiscent of Stephen King at his finest.” —Shadowlocked

“In his evocation of fear and unease and the speed with which he grips you, he brings to mind old Brit horror writer James Herbert. And that is some recommendation.” —London Lite

“Moody is an inarguably talented author... one of the best horror authors of the new decade.” ―Bloody-Disgusting.com

“British horror at its absolute best.” —Starburst

Copyright © David Moody 2018

All Rights Reserved

The right of David Moody to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organisations and events portrayed are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

"SCRATCH" first published as part of the “YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE"

(Infected Books, 2016)

"THE DEAL" first published in “THE LAST BIG THING”

(Infected Books, 2019)

“ANGEL” first published in “AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION”

(Infected Books, 2013)

This edition published in 2021 by Infected Books

￼

www.infectedbooks.co.uk

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for your interest in my work and for downloading this eBook. I wanted to produce something that would a). let me tell you a couple of good stories, b). tell you more about me, b). let me tell you about my other books and films. I thought this would be the ideal format to do all three things.

I hope you enjoy what you read here. Please follow me for regular updates about my work (relevant links below) and don’t hesitate to get in touch with any feedback or questions.

Best wishes,￼

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SCRATCH

In 2016, to celebrate both the 10-year anniversary of Infected Books and 15 years since the original release of AUTUMN, I curated the YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE project. Each month saw the publication of an original zombie-themed novella from some superb authors including Adam Baker, Iain Rob Wright, Rich Hawkins, Mark Tufo, Matt Shaw and Wayne Simmons. Here’s the novella I wrote for August – a timely tale of a single mum and a school holiday apocalypse.

The body of the early morning swimmer had been facedown in the sand long enough for any footprints to have been washed away. He lay on the beach like a washed-up jellyfish. Flabby and unnaturally pale, wearing unflattering speedos and not a lot else. Lank hair splayed like seaweed.

Colin walked the dog here every morning, whatever the weather. He liked to see what the surf had dredged up. He’d found plenty before now, but never anything like this. Even from this distance he could tell that the man on the sand was dead. It was the way he was lying there with his right arm unnaturally buckled, folded under his bulk, and how he failed to react when the ice-cold waves scampered up the beach and tickled the wrinkled soles of his feet.

Arnold, Colin’s dog, couldn’t contain his excitement. He bolted. ‘Come back here, you little shit,’ Colin yelled after him, but Arnold wasn’t having any of it. He sprinted over to the corpse and sniffed around the dead man’s face, burying his muzzle under his chin and pushing upwards.

Colin finally caught up and grabbed his dog by the scruff and reattached his lead.

He stood a little way back from the cadaver, uncertain. He glanced over his shoulder to check if anyone else was around, keen to find someone else to share the burden of his grim early morning discovery, but there was no one. The beach was deserted; the early hour and heavy clouds confining holiday makers to their caravans and tents. He thought about just walking away, but when he looked down and saw his heavy footprints in the sand leading up to this point, he knew it would be impossible to disappear and pretend he’d never been here. He really could have done without this. He came down to the beach each morning to clear his head and de-stress. Finding a washed-up stiff was the very last thing he needed.

Wait. Was the man actually dead? The fact he hadn’t moved and wasn’t reacting either to the cold or his badly injured arm indicated he most likely was, but Colin thought he should do his civic duty and check. He fished his phone from his pocket and crouched down. He dialled 999, and as he waited for someone to answer he gingerly shook the body and checked for signs of breathing. He noticed three vicious-looking marks on the man’s exposed right shoulder. Bloody gouges. Deep, raking scratches.

Still no answer, just ringing in his ear. He checked the display then cancelled the call and dialled 999 again.

Arnold was acting up, keen to keep moving. He made a dash for the water and Colin pulled him back, almost losing his balance. He cursed his dog who then ran the other way, jumping the corpse. The second change of direction caught Colin off-guard and he fell back, landing on his backside in the damp sand almost on top of the dead man. He swore again and let go of the dog, then tried the phone a third time. Still no answer. Bugger.

There was something moving in the scratches on the man’s back. Colin thought it was his eyes playing tricks at first, but when he looked a little closer he could see teeming movement. Hundreds of tiny, writhing things. They looked like minute, translucent maggots; almost amoeba-like in their simplicity. A visible infection.

He knew it was a stupid thing to do, but he did it just the same. Phone gripped tight in one hand, with the outstretched fingers of the other he prodded dead flesh. He jumped out of his skin and scrambled back to his feet when the corpse reacted. The longest of the three scratches appeared to move in response to his touch. It briefly closed up then pulled apart and widened again like a grotesque and impossible sneer.

Colin staggered away, looking around frantically for help but still seeing no one. With 999 still ringing out unanswered, he tried another number. He called home, hoping Marj would come to his rescue as she usually did.

By the time his wife picked up the call, Colin had dropped the phone and it was lost in the surf.

The corpse was moving.

Unsteady, like a new-born animal, it picked itself up and came at him. The dead swimmer stumbled as if learning to walk for the first time, legs stiff and unresponsive, uncoordinated. Its broken arm flapped uselessly at its side.

The creature’s movements were unnatural. All wrong. It was as if the body was leading the head, not the other way around. It was bizarrely puppet-like in its behaviour. Stiff and staccato. A strange approximation of a person. An imitation of normality which looked the part but acted anything but.

As Colin slowed down, the dead man sped up.

The infected figure came at him with sudden, predatory speed, its good arm clawing through the air. It was on him in seconds and though he was initially able to push it away, it came at him again and again, relentless.

Arnold scampered behind Colin, barking furiously, and inadvertently tripped his owner up. Colin found himself on his back in the wet sand with the corpse on top of him, pinning him down. The lifeless swimmer dragged its numb fingers down his face, leaving a series of deep and bloody diagonal grooves from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth.

And then it left him.

Job done.

It got up and staggered away.

The dog wasn’t barking now, he was growling. And the object of his attention was no longer the dead man, instead it was his owner. The attack may have been brief and deceptively ineffective, but sufficient damage had been done.

Colin wasn’t Colin anymore now that there were things burrowing deep into his brain and flooding his circulatory system. Multiplying. Consuming. Taking over. Controlling.

***

Jody Phelps panicked in unfamiliar surroundings, and when she found she couldn’t move, she panicked again. Cocooned in a sleeping bag, wedged between two sleeping kids and fighting claustrophobia, she screamed as hands clawed the outside of the tent, dragging the canvas down until it was just inches from her face, fingers desperately scratching to find a way inside.

‘Mum, where’s the zip gone?’

She relaxed when she heard his voice. It was just Ben. ‘You’re at the wrong end of the tent, love,’ she told him. ‘Try the other end.’ Her heart thumped in her chest like crazy.

Ben undid the zip, filling the tent with dull morning light, then lifted the flap and crawled inside. Jody propped herself up on her elbows and watched as he struggled to shut it again.

‘Just leave it,’ she said. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘For a piss.’

‘Don’t use that word.’

‘Whatever. I hate this tent. It’s stupid.’

She lay back down again. ‘I know you hate it. You’ve told me about a hundred times since we got here.’

‘Why couldn’t we have stayed in a hotel like last year?’

‘You know why.’

‘It’s not fair.’

‘Life’s not fair.’

‘Can I go out and play?’

‘No.’

‘What are we going to do today?’

‘Don’t know yet.’

‘It’s boring here. There’s no pool. And I’m freezing.’

‘Get back into bed then,’ she said, and she pulled her sleeping bag over her head and rolled over to try and get back to sleep. She checked her phone under the covers, the bright light hurting her eyes. Christ, it wasn’t even half-seven. It was early. Too early.

***

Jody managed to doze for a while longer, but it was difficult to switch off fully with a head full of crap and a tent full of bored kids. Jenny and Holly had been playing with their dolls at the end of her sleeping bag, squashing her feet, and she’d heard Ben playing games on his phone. She hadn’t wanted him to bring the phone because of who he might contact, but she was glad she’d reneged because it was keeping him quiet. She kept telling herself I should really get up and do something with them, but the longer she stayed wrapped up, the less she wanted to move.

She must have clocked out again, because when she woke up this time the tent was quiet. Ben was outside, struggling to get back in again. Bloody kid. Ten year old boys – even her own son – were a complete enigma to her. She didn’t understand the way they worked. ‘For Christ’s sake, Ben,’ she yelled, ‘how many times do I have to tell you? The zip’s at the other end.’

He was leaning right against the canvas again, his full weight pushing down on the tent, threatening to collapse it on top of her.

‘I’m here, Mum,’ he said, and she looked up fast. Ben, Jenny and Holly, all in the tent with their faces buried in books and magazines and phones.

‘Shit.’

She got up fast, still struggling to get out of her bedding in the tight confines of this three-man tent occupied by four. As she sat up, the back end of the tent crashed down. Whoever was outside had fallen on top of it.

‘Oi!’ she yelled, furious. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

She manhandled the kids out of the way and grabbed her sandals, then fumbled with the zip and burst out into the light.

‘For Christ’s sake, what the hell’s going on out here?’

She’d seen the woman elsewhere on the campsite with her husband last night. Elderly. Silver-haired. Prim and proper. Professional campers, the pair of them. One of those couples with all the right kit and a gadget for everything. They’d watched from a distance (and hadn’t lifted a finger to help) as Jody had struggled to get her tent erected and cook a half-decent meal on a less than adequate stove.

Except the woman looked completely different this morning.

She slowly disentangled herself from the wreckage of the tent like she didn’t understand. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused and yet, when she turned her head, there was absolutely no question she was looking straight at Jody. A string of thick, blood-stained drool dribbled from the corner of her mouth, and when she managed to fee herself from what was left of the tent, Jody saw that she was barely half-dressed. Her towelling dressing-gown flapped open, revealing unsupported, sagging breasts. She had a dirty scratch running between them, roughly in line with her breastbone; a rough-raw, bloody groove like she’d been mauled by a one-clawed bear.

‘Oh my God, are you okay?’ Jody asked, but there was no response. ‘Do you need help?’

The woman walked over the tent and over the kids. They howled in protest from inside, but she paid them no attention. She was coming straight for Jody now, clear vicious intent in her unclear eyes. Jody backed away but the woman kept on coming, held back momentarily when one foot became entangled with a guy rope.

Her head clicked and ticked. Random, repeated movements. Alien-looking. She picked up her stilted, awkward pace, only to stumble again, tripping over the sleeping bag Jody had inadvertently dragged outside with her.

‘Back off, love,’ she warned, and when the woman picked herself up this time, Jody clouted her around the side of the head with a camping gas cylinder.

Got to get out of here.

Jody reached into the front of the collapsed tent and felt around inside for the kids, yanking them out into the daylight one by one, blinking against the brightness. She pushed them towards the car. ‘We’re leaving.’

Holly, clutching a limp rag doll, stopped just short of the old woman sprawled on the grass. She peered down at her, feet together like she’d pulled up on the very edge of a hundred metre drop.

The woman began to move again. Fistful of fingers crawling like a crab.

Jody grabbed Holly’s arm and thrust her towards her older brother. ‘Get your sisters into the car, Ben,’ she told him.

‘Did you do that?’ he asked, unable to take his eyes off the battered creature on the ground.

‘Get your sisters into the car!’ she screamed at him again, and this time he didn’t argue.

Jody checked her pockets.

Fuck. Pyjama trousers. No pockets.

Fuck. No keys.

She reached back into the tent and felt around in the darkness for her handbag. Bedding, books, toys, discarded clothes ...no bag. She’d kept it at the other end of the tent for safety, away from the zip. Crawling in deeper, up to her shoulders. Deeper still, all but her ankles inside.

Got it.

By the time Jody had reversed out, bag in hand, the dead woman was almost back on her feet. Her jaw had been horrifically dislocated – locked to one side like a freeze-frame picture of a cow chewing the cud – but she seemed not to notice. It wasn’t her ghastly deformed face that Jody focused on, instead it was the hideous gash below her throat. It looked different now. Wider. Glistening with blood and pus.

Jenny screamed, ‘Mummy!’

The kids were cowering around the back of the car, and as Jody ran towards them, she saw two loping figures coming the other way. They too had been children once. She remembered seeing them around here last night, loitering by the swings. A loud and obnoxiously fat kid and his mate, a lanky strip of piss. They’d looked like a bad comedy double-act, but this morning they were anything but funny. Fat kid stumbled towards the car, thin kid zeroed in on the girls. Jody fished for her keys in her bag then clicked the fob and the car unlocked with a reassuring mechanical clunk.

‘Get in,’ she yelled, and Jenny and Holly did exactly as they were told, fighting with each other to get in first. Ben, though, had frozen. Jody ran over to him, dragged him from the back of the car to the front, then shoved him into the passenger seat. She felt the fat kid’s fingers on her back, dragging down her anorak. She’d been freezing cold last night and was still wearing the waterproof coat she’d slept in.

She slammed the car door shut and spun around just as the kid came at her again with a speed which belied his bulk, claw-like fingers lashing out. She pushed him away and sent him tripping backwards. He fell over his own feet, too slow to react, and lay on his back on the ground like a turtle on its shell, unable to right himself, arms and legs thrashing wildly. Jody allowed herself to get a little closer to fatboy. His grubby T-shirt had ridden up in the fall, exposing his wide, white belly. The area below his navel was covered in a crosshatch of scratch marks, raw and infected.

Ben was hammering on the window.

Jody looked up and saw her son gesticulating wildly. It was the old woman with the crooked jaw again. She was getting dangerously close. Jody ran around to the driver’s side and let herself in, then double-locked the doors and started the engine. ‘Everybody okay?’ she asked. ‘No one hurt?’ No reply. Just muffled cries from the back.

The lanky kid walked clumsily into the side of the car, slamming into her window and smearing it with oily discharge.

‘What’s wrong with them, Mum?’ Ben asked, eyes wide and terrified.

‘Don’t know. Put your seatbelt on.’

‘But why are they—?’

‘Put your bloody seatbelt on!’ she shrieked at him as she slammed the car into reverse. She put her foot down and sent them careering backwards in a wild arc which just missed what was left of their tent.

‘My dollies,’ Holly whined.

‘We’ll come back and get them later,’ Jody told her, although she already knew they never would.

Into first gear, ready to disappear.

She stopped.

The dead old woman with the fucked-up face was blocking their way. ‘How can she still be standing?’ Jody asked no one in particular. The woman had looked paper-thin and frail when she saw her last night, so where the hell had all this strength and hostility come from?

‘You think they’re sick?’ Ben asked.

‘Very sick,’ she mumbled, still watching the woman who seemed as strong now as the two kid attackers some fifty or sixty years her junior.

The woman wasn’t giving ground. It was a bizarre stand-off which lasted only a few seconds until she made a single lurching step forward. Jody responded with a sudden burst of wheel-spin and speed. She hit the woman hard then immediately braked again, the impact sufficient to send her flying several metres through the air and inflict enough damage to make it impossible for her to get up again. Though she tried. Both legs now broken, bones protruding through ripped skin, spine snapped in two, yet still she tried.

Jody put her foot down again and this time she didn’t stop.

***

‘Where are we going, Mum?’ Ben asked for what felt like the hundredth time in the half hour they’d been on the road. Jody had long since given up trying to answer. The speed with which everything had happened this morning was incredible. She was still trying to catch up and process it all.

‘Are we nearly there?’ Holly whined from the back.

Ben turned around and snarled at his sister. ‘She don’t even know where we’re going, dummy.’

‘Mum, Ben called me dummy.’

‘Don’t be rude to your sister.’

‘Tell her to stop being stupid then.’

‘She’s only four.’

‘She’s still stupid.’

‘I don’t like that word.’

‘Okay, then, she’s a retard.’

‘I like that word even less. Now shut up, all of you. I need to listen to this.’

The roads around the campsite had been mercifully quiet, though here in the Welsh mountains they weaved and snaked continuously through the landscape, never letting her get up quite enough speed. Still, the lack of traffic meant Jody could focus a little more attention on the radio. The stuff she was hearing was bizarre, like something out of those third-rate zombie horror novels Gary used to read.

A deadly infection, the likes of which hadn’t been seen before.

Source unknown.

The disease kills the hosts, then reanimates them.

Spreads through physical contact. Usually with open wounds.

The infected break the skin of their victims by scratching or clawing (or, in unconfirmed reports, biting).

Short incubation time – usually between one and three hours.

Widespread, and spreading wider.

No known cure.

Stay indoors. Stay calm. Stay safe.

‘That man said stay indoors,’ Ben said.

‘I know.’

‘We going home then?’

‘That’s the plan.’ She glanced at the fuel gauge. She’d planned to fill up on the way to the campsite last night but she’d had enough of being stuck in the car with three squabbling kids. ‘Don’t know yet,’ she added.

‘Where else we gonna go?’

‘You shut up and play with your phone. Leave the planning to me.’

‘My phone’s still in the tent.’

‘Shit. Sorry, love.’

‘I need it.’

‘You don’t need it. You want it. There’s a difference. You only use it for games.’

‘Not just games,’ he said without thinking, sounding unexpectedly aggressive. Jody looked across at her son.

‘Shit, Ben, have you been texting him again? What have I told you about texting him?’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘No, you don’t understand. He shouldn’t put you in this position. It’s not fair.’

‘I need a wee,’ came a small voice from the back.

‘Can you hold on, Hol?’

‘For a little bit. Can you hurry up?’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

More radio noise: frantic eyewitness reports, floundering politicians using hundreds of words to say nothing, phone-ins and social media round-ups. Everything tinged with an air of resignation and desperation. An edge of raw panic, barely supressed. Inevitability. The end is nigh? The end is now.

Or maybe not.

Out here on the road, surrounded by absolutely nothing and no one, Jody found it increasingly hard to accept the unacceptable. She knew what she’d seen at the campsite, what she’d done, but with every mile she drove away from the place, it was harder and harder to believe what had happened. The last year and a half had been horrible – the hardest eighteen months of her life – so was this a side-effect of that? Had she lost her mind? That seemed marginally more plausible than the things she was hearing on the radio right now.

‘Really need a wee.’

‘I know. You already said.’

‘Yeah, but I need one now.’

‘Do it out the window,’ said Ben.

‘Shut up, Ben,’ said Jody. ‘Hold on, Hol, there’ll be somewhere we can stop soon.’

Another ten minutes and she found it. An outwardly well-kept toilet block in a National Park car park. Jody slammed on the brakes and brought her tired car to a juddering stop, then crossed the carriageway and pulled into the car park. Ben reached for the door handle. She told him to wait.

There was one other car in the car park. A dirty blue Ford Focus. Doors shut and all locked up. Empty.

She told the kids to stay put and checked out the toilets and surrounding area. There was no one about.

‘All of you, with me,’ she ordered as she marched them out of the car. She herded them into the toilet block like sheep. Ben pushed back when he realised which door they were heading for.

‘I’m not going in the girls’ loo,’ he protested.

‘Yes, you are,’ she said as she pushed him inside.

Two cubicles, four people.

‘I don’t need to go,’ Jenny said.

‘You’re going. I don’t know when we’ll get chance to stop again.’

Less than impressed, she trudged towards the remaining cubicle, the firehouse-like noise from the other indicating that Holly’s need had been genuine. Ben leant against the solitary sink and glared as his mum. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘Absolutely no idea.’

‘Those people at the campsite... what was wrong with them?’

‘You heard the radio. They’re sick. Infected.’

‘Something to do with the scratches.’

‘I guess.’

‘You really messed up that old woman.’

‘I know. I didn’t have any choice.’

‘Were they going to eat us?’

She laughed out loud at that, then stopped and checked herself. He wasn’t far off the truth. ‘Something like that.’

‘How did you do it?’

‘Do what? I didn’t do anything.’

‘You beat them up. You drove the car into the woman.’

‘Did I? I don’t remember. It all happened so fast.’

‘It was pretty cool.’

Coming from Ben, that was one heck of a compliment, if misplaced. ‘It definitely wasn’t cool. It was horrific. I’m not proud of myself.’

‘I would be.’

The two toilets flushed within seconds of each other and the girls reappeared. Jody told them to wait where she could see them and left the door open while she did what she had to do. Ben went in the cubicle next door. A minute or so later and the four of them were finished.

‘Ready?’ she asked. Three heads nodded back.

Jody guided the kids out, protective arms around all three of them. Something caught her eye way over to her left. Shit. Standing in the trees a short distance away was a solitary figure. Male. Late forties, maybe early fifties. Overweight. Shabby clothing. Scruffy beard. Clearly infected.

He was watching them.

His head remained still, but his eyes followed their every movement.

She didn’t tell the kids, and she pretended she hadn’t noticed.

‘Are we going back to the holiday now?’ Jenny asked.

‘Shh...’

A twitch of movement from the man in the trees. Ears pricked up.

‘I want my things from the tent.’

Sing-song voice. Everything’s okay.

‘We’ll talk about it in a minute, love. Just get into the car first.’

‘But Mummy, what about my bye-bye blanket?’

Almost there. Key fob pressed. Central locking clunk.

‘I told you, in the car first.’

Jody reached for the handle just as the man in the trees pounced. He came at them with vicious speed and impossible athleticism, launching himself into the air and virtually clearing the length of their car in a single inhuman leap.

She managed to get the girls safely inside and shut the door, but he caught hold of her shoulders and pulled her away. Flat on her back with a sick bastard leering over her. She could hear the girls screaming and she pressed the key fob in her hand involuntarily, locking the kids in.

The man on top of her was a dead weight. Literally. Bizarrely cold and lifeless, yet somehow still volatile. He (it?) tried to raise his hands to get at her face, but his oversized belly and low centre of gravity made it almost impossible for him to move freely. Driven by instinct and repulsion, Jody turned her face away from his then forced her hands under his shoulders and hefted him up and over. She rolled one way and he rolled the other, slapping hard against the tarmac like meat on a butcher’s slab. Their legs were still entangled, but she managed to kick and thrash and free herself.

Jody got up, and so did the dead man.

She was disorientated and had her back to the toilet block. The kids in the car screamed in absolute terror, and when Jenny banged her fists repeatedly against the window, the dead man turned to face her. To Jody’s horror, he began lumbering towards her children.

‘Oi, you,’ she yelled at him. ‘Leave them alone, you greasy fucker.’

But it was too late, and he was up against the car now, scraping at the metal and glass with numb, germ-carrying fingers. Jody ran at him and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around.

‘I’m here,’ she screamed in his face. ‘Leave them alone.’

And to her surprise, he did. When she was absolutely sure she had his full attention, she slowly backed away and he followed. To her immense relief the kids had shut up, but that relief was short-lived as he launched another attack. She kept backing away and he kept coming towards her, matching her pace almost step-for-step. And then, when she reversed into the wall of the toilet block and could go no further, he came at her with another uncharacteristically athletic leap.

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.

‘Pretty grim, eh?’ Charlie said, sitting down next to Jody.

‘You can say that again.’

An overlong pause.

‘Look, I just wanted to say that—’

Jody silenced her with a wave of her hand. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’

‘I know that, but I want to say something. It’s important to me. I know more about you and what happened between you and Gary than I probably should, and I want you to know it’s because he’s told me and not because I’ve asked.’

‘Then I hate to think what you’ve been told.’

‘That doesn’t matter. But I also know it must be really hard for you being here, and I don’t want to do anything that makes you feel more uncomfortable than you already do.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I mean it.’

‘I know you do. I’ve got nothing against you. Christ, I didn’t even know your name until this morning.’

‘Yeah. It must be difficult for the kids, though. I remember when my mum and dad split up and I—’

‘Spare me, love, please. Not today.’

‘You’re right. Not today.’

On the TV now was a clip that had been running every fifteen minutes or so: a guide to spotting (and avoiding) infection. Jody thought it was amusing (and slightly terrifying) how even something as serious as this had been reduced to a viewer-friendly package – a quick burst of flashy edits, funky graphics and attention-grabbing soundbites.

Stay indoors. If you must leave your home, cover up.

Don’t take any chances. The infected may look like your friends and family and other loved ones, but they’re not them.

The incubation period is generally thought to be between one and three hours, but there have been unconfirmed reports of people ‘turning’ up to ten hours after an attack.

If anyone you are with has any unexplained scratches, cuts or other skin lesions, isolate them.

If a person you believe may have been infected is still docile and able to talk, tape up their hands.

Both Jody and Charlie laughed out loud at that one. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Charlie said. ‘You think that’s going to help? Who writes this shit?’

‘You know what it’s like... half the stuff we hear on the news is bullshit. They’re empty words designed to stop people panicking, that’s all.’

‘Mind you, I think panic is perfectly justified today.’

‘I think you’re absolutely right.’

Gary entered the kitchen, and the conversation abruptly ended. He fetched himself a coffee from the pot. ‘Not talking about me, I hope.’

‘She wouldn’t want to hear what I’ve got to say about you,’ Jody answered quickly, then regretted it.

Gary grinned broadly, then disappeared again.

‘Sorry,’ Jody said.

‘Not a problem.’

‘Yes it is. It’s my problem. I’m the only one here who despises Gary.’

‘He can be a real pain in the arse at times, I’ll admit.’

Jody bit her tongue and resisted the temptation to say anything more.

An instantly familiar, instantly recognisable high-pitched scream came from somewhere deep in the depths of the house. Jody was on her feet instantly. ‘It’s Holly,’ she said, and ran to find her youngest daughter.

She wasn’t with the others. Jody found the unfamiliar house maze-like, and her panic increased with each empty room she checked. Charlie found her in the upstairs study, standing on a chair and bawling her eyes out. ‘Spider,’ she wailed, pointing down at the ground. Jody stamped on it then lifted her daughter down, relieved.

Gary, Ben and Jenny weren’t far behind. Holly pushed away from Jody and ran over to her dad who scooped her up and swung her around. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe here, little one. Daddy won’t let anything hurt you.’

***

This was turning out to be a peculiarly well-contained apocalypse. Because of the geography of the outbreak, its progress had been slowed almost to a (dead) stop. The effort of the authorities and military had been concentrated on preventing things getting any worse, and the focus of their attention had therefore been those outlying areas on the very edge of the infection. This left Jody, Gary, Charlie and millions of other people effectively stranded. They were in the eye of the hurricane and though it might have been safer elsewhere, getting anywhere else today was going to be nigh on impossible.

The area around the house was crawling with dead people. The first attack came several hours later.

Three infected, attracted by a flickering TV screen burning bright on an otherwise dull and overcast day, forced their way through a gap in the vegetation at the bottom of Gary and Charlie’s long garden. They made their way towards the house in silent unison, alone but together, driven by an unspoken collective intent. They scuttled, walked and crawled, making no effort to disguise their ominous approach, yet were completely unnoticed.

Gary was lying on the living room floor with the kids, playing a board game. Charlie sat next to him and watched, occasionally offering advice and keeping Gary in check. He was a bad loser, even when the stakes were this low.

Jody was on the other side of the room, staring into space and trying to work out how and when she was going to get home. If she’d even have a home to get back to.

Ben was the first to notice them. He initially thought it was his eyes playing tricks. He should have been wearing his glasses, but he never did because of that time Stuart at school took the piss out of him and threatened to stamp on them and break them and Mum would have gone crazy if that had happened because they cost her half a month’s money from Dad and... and wait... was that the wind blowing the trees? Was there something in the garden he hadn’t noticed before? Had someone hung some washing on the line?

They started to come into focus.

Ben was too scared to say anything in case the monsters outside heard him (even though he knew that was stupid). The words were stuck in his throat and the longer they were there, the harder they were to dislodge.

‘Mum...’ he eventually said.

He glanced over at her but she wasn’t listening. She’d zoned-out. She was tracing patterns in the wallpaper with her eyes, doing everything she could to forget she was trapped in her ex-husband’s huge new house with his fucking drop-dead gorgeous new girlfriend.

‘Mum...’ Ben said again.

He could see them much more clearly now. They didn’t make sense. There was skin where there should have been clothes and bends in their bodies where there should have been none. One had a broken neck and its head was all over to one side but it kept walking like it didn’t matter.

Another one looked too tall to be real. Its arms and legs seemed to go on forever.

The last one – the smallest one – was the one that scared him most of all. It was its face... he already knew that when he tried to get to sleep tonight, the grotesque face he currently couldn’t take his eyes off would be staring back at him from the darkness. Huge, hollowed eyes, black as night. A naked torso covered in deep, dark scratches. A twisted mouth which had become a slanted, humourless grin.

‘Mum...’ Ben said once more. Louder this time.

Jody didn’t hear her son, but Gary did. He turned around and saw that the nearest of the infected was almost up against the glass. ‘Fuck!’ he shouted, scrambling to his feet and kicking bits of board game everywhere. Jenny tried to catch the tokens, dice and cards but her little hands hadn’t got anywhere near any of them before the first of the three creatures walked straight into the patio window, making her jump with fright and scaring her half to death. She screamed, and when she screamed, Holly screamed too.

The girls cowered behind their dad as he retreated deeper into the room.

On her feet now, filled with a now-familiar sense of overwhelming dread, Jody too backed away. The six of them stood up against the wall together, hiding in plain sight and pinned into position with fear. ‘What the hell do we do?’ Charlie asked, her voice a panicked whisper.

‘Just wait,’ Gary suggested. ‘They’ll disappear soon enough.’

‘You think?’ Jody said. ‘Are these the first ones you’ve seen? Because I’ve got news for you, they’re not going anywhere.’

‘Fucking great.’

‘Mind your language, Gary. The kids don’t need to hear it.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do. We’re not married anymore, remember.’

‘Thank Christ.’

‘This isn’t really the best time for a domestic,’ Charlie warned them both.

‘You’re right. Sorry,’ Jody mumbled.

Two of the three things outside were watching the people inside. It was clear from the way they moved their heads – inhuman and animal-like, but definitely interested – that infecting the uninfected was all that mattered. The third of their number was trapped a short distance away from the house, its clothing snagged on a low-hanging fruit tree branch. The smallest creature – the hideous, nightmarish one which Ben still couldn’t take his eyes off – was trying pointlessly to claw its way through the glass. Its fingers squeaked against the window ceaselessly. When it realised it couldn’t get through, it began to hammer with heavy fists. And when it became clear its fists weren’t going to make any difference, it tried another tactic. The damn thing craned its head back on its shoulders, impossibly far, then butted the window. The noise was nauseating. Jody wasn’t sure whether it was the glass or the infected thing’s skull which would give way first. The door rattled and shook with every vicious impact, and every time it drew its head back, the creature appeared even more deformed than before. Its forehead was becoming flattened: brain and bone being mushed together.

‘Are they going to be able to get in?’ Gary asked.

‘They won’t, will they?’ said Ben, panicking.

‘Depends how long that one’s head lasts,’ Jody answered from a position of zero authority.

‘We have to do something,’ Charlie said.

‘Like what?’ Gary asked.

‘Like get rid of them.’

‘She’s right,’ Jody said. ‘It’s our only choice. We can’t risk the kids’ safety.’

‘Jesus, what about our safety?’ Gary said.

Jody lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘That goes without saying. They’re screwed if we are.’

She wasn’t waiting around. She left the room. Charlie and Gary exchanged glances then followed her out. They found her turfing through the coats hanging up in the hall. She found a long leather ladies coat and put it on and zipped it up. It looked expensive. It was really nice. She hoped Charlie had bought it herself because Gary had never bought her anything like this in the eleven years they were together.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Gary demanded, though the answer was obvious.

‘You going to help me or just stand there looking useless?’

Gary glared at her. ‘Do you really think this is a good idea?’

‘No, but I think it’s the only idea I’ve got.’

‘We need to think very carefully about this. If we go out there we could end up—’

His words were truncated by more noise from the room they’d just left. The kids screamed. Was the door becoming loose? Was the glass weakening? Was it about to shatter? He checked on the children and saw that the infected thing’s head had popped like a balloon, but it was still attacking like it hadn’t even noticed. It continued to smack its bloody neck-stump against the glass again and again and again.

Out in the hall, Charlie grabbed another coat from the rack, keen to help. ‘What are you planning?’

‘Don’t know,’ Jody admitted. ‘If I think about it too hard I don’t reckon I’ll be able to go out there.’ She rummaged through a drawer and found a pair of gloves and a hat, then found a scarf and wrapped it around the lower part of her face. ‘Make sure they can’t get to your skin,’ she explained, voice muffled.

Gary returned. Shamed into action, he put on his own coat and gloves. ‘You stay here and look after the kids, Charlie. I’ll go.’

He marched to the back door, muttering under his breath. Jody wormed her way in front of him, preventing him from getting out until she’d given him his orders. ‘It’s like they said on TV, okay? They don’t want to kill you, they want to infect you. Make sure you stay covered.’

She went out and he followed.

Outside it was cold and windy. The sounds of distant fighting were carried on the breeze. The smell of burning. Far off sirens and screams.

Gary tried and failed miserably to play down his nervousness. There was nowhere to hide out here. Real and present danger. ‘Can’t believe this is happening,’ he said.

‘Well it is. Deal with it.’

‘So how do we get rid of them.’

‘We ask them to leave.’

‘Really?’

‘No, you fucking idiot, not really.’

‘What then?’

‘Incapacitate them.’

‘How?’

‘Break their legs. Cut them up.’

‘What is this, the fucking Evil Dead?’

‘As close as we’re ever going to get to it, yes.’

‘What about fire? We could burn them.’

‘Good shout. Got anything flammable?’

‘Stuff for the barbecue.’

‘Where is it?’

‘What, the barbecue?’

‘No, you arsehole, the lighter fuel.’

‘Everything’s in the shed.’

‘Great. Where’s the shed?’

‘Bottom of the garden.’

Jody peered down and could just about make out the edge of the shed in the bottom right corner of the garden. It was less than fifty metres away but it felt like miles. ‘Is it locked?’

‘Nope.’

‘Good.’

Jody pulled the scarf back up over her mouth. She started to jog along the grass but stopped when she was distracted by movement. The two infected still banging against the patio door hadn’t spotted them, but the rogue one had. He (had it been a he? She thought so, but it was difficult to say with any authority) was heading straight for her.

At speed.

Gary grabbed a garden fork he’d left in a flowerbed overnight. The infected was focusing on Jody and she looked past it towards her ex-husband for help, hoping he’d come to her rescue (that’d be a first). Her lack of faith in Gary was well-placed. He was frozen to the spot, feet rooted to the ground like the trees and shrubs he was now doing his best to hide among. He threw the fork over to her like a javelin, shouting ‘here!’ so she knew it was coming.

Not a bad effort. It landed a metre or so in front of her feet.

The infected’s mode of movement changed. It appeared almost insect-like now, on all fours and face up, scuttling. And then it launched itself into the air. Jody grabbed the handle of the garden fork and lifted its sharp tines skyward, just in the nick of time. The creature landed on top of it and was skewered through the groin.

Jody dropped the fork and stepped away.

The infected monster still fought, still tried to scratch at her, but it was struggling to work out why it could no longer get about with the same degree of freedom as before. It was like having an inflexible extra leg, an unwanted extension. Such was its angle that whenever it tried to take a step forward, the handle of the fork dug into the ground and pivoted the whole body around, at the same time driving the spikes deeper into its diseased flesh.

Gary was already in the shed. Jody followed him into the cluttered little wooden building. She pulled her scarf down to berate him. ‘This place is a fucking pigsty.’

‘You can stop nagging me now,’ he said as he began to ferret through a mountain of crap. ‘We’re divorced, remember? I’ve got Charlie to moan at me now.’

‘So I guess there’s still plenty to moan about then?’

‘Shut up, Jody,’ he said, and he passed two bottles of barbecue lighter fluid to her, carrying two more himself.

‘Why so many?’

‘Because we have – we had – a lot of barbecues. We’re not all bitter and twisted and antisocial like you.’

‘I’m not antisocial. Some of us have responsibilities.’

‘We both have responsibilities, now let’s get this over with and get back inside.’

‘Fine. You got a match?’

He scavenged about on another cobwebby shelf and found a barbecue lighter: a long, bizarre-looking gas-fuelled thing like a cigarette lighter with a barrel. ‘This’ll do it.’

‘Hardly standard zombie-killing kit, is it?’

He laughed at that. Was he laughing with her or at her? She wasn’t sure. ‘Zombies,’ he repeated, shaking his head.

‘Well what else are we supposed to call them?’ she asked as she squeezed past him to get back outside. ‘They’re dead and they’re infected and they want to kill us. Therefore, they’re zombies.’

‘You really could turn anything into an argument.’

‘That’s because your default setting is to pick holes in everything I say.’

He was about to correct her, but she’d already gone. She was halfway up the garden, heading for the impaled creature which was on its back now, unable to get up. She doused it with lighter fluid then stepped back and watched with satisfaction as Gary lit it up. Typical bloke, she thought, always got to be in control of the fire.

Between them they then drenched the figures at the window from behind with the flammable liquid, Jody tried gesturing to the kids and Charlie to avert their gaze, but the frantic, random movements of the infected corpses got in the way. The dumb things didn’t notice the liquid splashing against their backs, didn’t react at all. They didn’t react when Gary lit them up like scarecrows either. The one that still had a head did eventually turn around, though, swivelling on leaden legs. It came towards Jody but lost its footing as flames overwhelmed it. It picked itself back up again, but Jody stood her ground, ready to repel its attack with a melon-sized rock taken from a nearby overgrown rockery. She shifted position awkwardly as she waited for it to reach her and she lifted the rock high, ready to bring it crashing down on the back of the abhorrent thing’s head.

It didn’t get that far.

Consumed by billowing flames, the monster dropped to its knees then fell flat. Jody watched the fire for a while longer, hypnotised by the bright light and unexpectedly comforting heat.

When she looked up, she realised it was getting dark. It was spitting with rain, too. She was on her own. Gary was back inside with Charlie and the kids. Her kids.

***

The children were alternately scared and excited. Being here was an adventure. Most importantly, they were with Dad. The time they spent with him had been at a premium since he and Mum had had that big falling out after the Christmas before last. Being with him now helped them block out everything else that was happening.

In some ways the three adults were more scared than the kids. Emotions, grudges and regrets had been put to one side and temporarily forgotten; conveniently shelved until normality returned. If normality returned. But cabin fever was setting in, and the atmosphere frequently became fractious. ‘You don’t really need to stay here, you know,’ Gary said, watching his ex-wife across the kitchen table.

‘What, you think I’m going to leave my kids with you? No bloody way.’

‘I’ll be here too,’ Charlie said (and immediately wished she hadn’t).

‘No, thanks,’ Jody snapped. ‘No offence, love, but I hardly know you. Like I said, I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Great,’ Gary said, and he shoved his chair back and fetched himself another beer.

‘Is that a good idea with everything that’s going on?’ Charlie asked.

‘Fucking great,’ he said as he stormed out of the room. ‘Now I’ve got both of you moaning at me.’

They watched him leave. ‘Sorry,’ Jody said to Charlie. ‘That was my fault.’

‘Not a problem,’ she said, and it was clear it wasn’t. ‘As it happens, I’m with you. If it was my kids I wouldn’t want to go anywhere either.’

‘We can’t stay here indefinitely, though.’

‘You can. At least until things have calmed down again, anyway.’

‘I think he’d have something to say about that,’ she said, gesturing at the door through which Gary had just disappeared.

‘Leave him to me.’

‘With pleasure,’ Jody said instinctively. She stopped herself. ‘Sorry. My bad. It’s just that he’s caused me so much shit over the last eighteen months, so much hurt... it’s hard to change my tune just like that, you know?’

‘I know. If it’s any consolation, it’s been as hard on him from what I’ve seen. He acts the big man, but I’ve seen him in tears over those kids on more than one occasion.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you have...’

‘Anyway, no more arguments, you’re staying here until this whole sorry mess gets sorted, agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

The conversation faltered, and for a while the silence weighed heavy on the room. ‘So what do we do?’ Jody eventually asked. ‘Do we all just sit here and wait?’

‘Don’t see we have much of an option,’ Charlie replied. ‘Way I see it we should—’

More screams. Upstairs this time. Jody thundered up to the bedrooms, but Gary was there before her. Holly was standing on the landing, soaked through. ‘Nightmare,’ he explained. ‘She wet the bed.’

‘Oh, sweetheart. It’s okay.’

Jody instinctively reached out for her daughter but Gary blocked her. ‘I’ve got this,’ he said as he picked up his little girl. She buried her face in his chest, still crying.

And Jody could only look on helpless as he carried Holly into the bedroom he and Charlie shared and shut the door behind him.

***

When Jody next opened her eyes, the unfamiliar house looked more unfamiliar still. The morning light was cold and grey and it felt as if it was being filtered... blocked somehow. After Holly’s nightmare and Gary’s response last night she’d been left feeling unequivocally redundant and had fallen asleep at the kitchen table, head down on a wicker placemat which had covered half her face with indentations and lines. It had hurt being shut out. She struggled with seeing Gary with her children and had to remind herself constantly that they were his kids too. The connection between him and her had been irreparably broken, yet the bond between him and the children was as strong as it had ever been. It made her feel like an intruder. This place where she’d only spent hours, they’d spent days. She was a visitor here, but this house was a part of her children’s lives. It hurt far more than she thought it would have. It bothered her more than anything else that was happening.

The light down here this morning was weird, though.

The back of the house was clear. She got up and checked. The garden looked completely normal, save for the surreal remnants of yesterday’s battle: three charred corpses, one all but headless, another still impaled on the garden fork. In her fitful sleep last night, when she’d been flickering between the conscious and unconscious, she’d dreamt they were still coming for her, all crispy skin, burned away muscle and shrivelled up hair. But the infected hadn’t moved, thankfully, and no more had arrived.

She drank a glass of ice-cold water as she walked through the downstairs of the sprawling house. At the front of the building was a dining room in the middle of renovations. The paper was half-stripped from the walls and a large chimney breast had been knocked out and was in the process of being re-plastered. At first she was distracted trying to imagine what the room would look like when it was finished, but such thoughts were immediately forgotten when she saw a crowd of dead faces gathered at the window. She slowly retraced her footsteps out, praying they hadn’t seen her. She counted six of them up against the glass, blocking most of the light. Clawing. Salivating. Drooling.

No need to panic, she thought. It was no surprise really. After what had happened in the back garden yesterday, this was only to be expected. It was good in a perverse way, she thought, because by drawing those horrific sick things out into the light, it made them easier for the authorities to round up and get rid of when they finally made it to here.

Jody climbed the stairs. She needed to pee and to shower so she could start to feel human again. Maybe then she’d check the news and see if progress was continuing to be made or whether the human race was still teetering on the edge of the apocalypse. With a bit of luck, she thought, she might be out of here with the kids and on the way home by the end of today. Funny how the thought of prising the children away from their dad – prolonged goodbyes, tears and tantrums, them not wanting to leave him and him not wanting to let them go – made her feel more anxious than the chaos outside. At least she had Charlie here to help. She seemed a sensible girl (save for the fact she’d shacked up with Gary).

Jody paused at the top of the stairs and fiddled with the venetian blinds. She had trouble getting them to open – the unfamiliarity of being in someone else’s house. She immediately wished she hadn’t bothered.

The crowd outside this house wasn’t any worse than it had appeared from downstairs, but there were other small pockets of infection around other houses. One house in particular she noticed, across the road and down a little way, appeared to have been completely surrounded. If there were ‘normal’ people trapped in there, she thought, they had little chance of getting out. Every exit was blocked. Infection and disease at every door and window.

But it was another house which caught her eye. Directly opposite. The infected there were clamouring around the front door, scratching at it, appearing almost to be squabbling with each other to get inside. And as she watched, she saw it was because the people in the house were reacting. Panicking. An elderly man was visible through a downstairs window. He was brandishing a golf club, ready to use it as a weapon. ‘That’s Derek,’ Gary said, startling her. She spun around and saw him standing behind her, dressed only in a pair of boxers, carrying Holly. He handed her over to her mum and Jody turned back to the window.

‘He’d better not be about to do what I think he is,’ she said.

‘He’s an arsehole. Proper angry bastard.’

Jody scowled at his language, but she had to agree. Derek certainly seemed to be an arsehole or at the very least incredibly stupid. He was outside now, having climbed out through his dining room window so he could get behind the infected bodies converging on his front door. Jody covered Holly’s eyes and looked away herself as he started swinging his golf club at the nearest of them, hacking it down.

Neighbour Derek appeared to be venting all his considerable frustrations on just one of the undead. Think about the blood, you idiot, she silently warned him, but it was too late. The figure was on the ground at his feet now, and what was left of its head was like a deflated football, concave. Contaminated blood was splashing everywhere, soaking Derek’s slippers and his pyjama bottoms.

The other infected were responding now. It was as if they shared a hive mind, but there was no complex connection between them and no real communication, just the shared instinctive desire to spread their foul disease as far as possible. While Derek was distracted with one of them, four more surrounded him. He realised at the last possible moment. Using the head of his bloodied golf club to push another one of them out of the way, Derek tried to fight his way back to the dining room window. The way through was blocked. His wife – ‘Sandra,’ Gary whispered, ‘a real busybody’ – watched helplessly from inside, desperately wanting to help him get in, but at the same time knowing she couldn’t risk opening the window. She gestured furiously towards the front door and, in the midst of the bodies and the sudden madness, Derek ran for it, shoulder-charging more of the creatures out of the way as he did.

He almost made it, too.

He reached for the door handle and opened it, just as one of the infected struck. With one outstretched hand, a hideous, loping thing which used to be a woman of similar age and build to Jody grabbed the collar of Derek’s dressing gown and pyjama top and pulled them down. With the other hand she dragged her claws down his back, carving four deep red furrows in his pale and flabby flesh.

In the end, the fact Derek was now infected didn’t really matter. It was all academic as far as the rest of his family was concerned. He managed to get the door open and half-ran, half-fell inside. He tripped up the step and lay sprawled in his hallway, unable to get up because a veritable flood of crazed dead creatures were trampling over him to get to the others inside.

Jody turned away, sick to her stomach.

***

It was only seven am, but it felt much, much later.

This uncomfortable, unnaturally extended family had already exhausted all options for the day. Jody found it increasingly difficult to keep up the pretence. Everything’s going to be all right... Mummy and Daddy are getting along just fine...

Like fuck.

At least there were promising signs on the news. The fight against the infection had continued overnight, and the spread of the disease had been virtually halted. It was a question now of clearing the infected zone (as they were calling it on TV). Gary and Charlie’s house was smack bang in the middle of the zone, Jody’s house was just on the clean side of the border. Those trapped alongside the infection had two options – stay put and wait for help, or drive to one of the decontamination checkpoints and get the hell out of Dodge. As frustrating as it was, Jody thought the sensible option was to wait.

She was just about managing to keep her emotions in check when Ben kicked off. He was a smart kid, but prone to losing his temper when things didn’t go his way. And this morning, they hadn’t. It was a load of noise over nothing – an argument over a game controller and who was watching which TV – but all six of them were involved. Jody tried to pacify Ben, then Gary criticised the way she was speaking to him, then Charlie told Gary he was out of order, then Gary told Charlie to butt out, then Jenny told Gary not to be mean, then Ben screamed at Holly because while they’d all been arguing she’d started watching a DVD on the TV he wanted... and so it continued.

It didn’t matter who started the argument or what it was about, the focus inevitably shifted to Gary and Jody. ‘I need to get out of here,’ Jody said in frustration.

‘Probably for the best if you go,’ Gary agreed.

‘Is that a good idea?’ Charlie asked.

‘I can’t stay here.’

‘You can. We’ve already had this conversation.’

‘No, I can’t. I can’t stay here with him.’

‘Best news I’ve heard all morning,’ Gary muttered.

‘I’m on fumes, though,’ Jody said, turning her back on her ex and speaking directly to Charlie.

‘Not a problem,’ Gary answered, quick as a flash. ‘Charlie’s car’s in the garage. Fill your car from hers.’

‘Or just take my car,’ Charlie suggested.

‘Even better,’ Gary said.

‘I’m not planning on going anywhere for a long time. The keys are hanging up in the kitchen.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Cool. Okay. Thanks. I’ll get all our stuff together and we’ll be out of your way.’

Gary’s expression changed and he manoeuvred himself back into the centre of the conversation. ‘Wait, wait, wait... what do you mean, we?’

Surely that was obvious?

‘What do you think I mean? Me and the kids.’

‘You think I’m going to let you take my kids out into that madness outside?’

Another trick question?

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I think. It’s not really up to you, is it?’

‘Not happening.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Christ, I’m not happy about you looking after them as it is. Especially not now with all this shit going on.’

‘Well the judge was happier with me looking after them than you, remember?’

Charlie sensed the tension rising rapidly. She’d felt less uncomfortable when the infected had attacked the back of the house yesterday afternoon. She ushered the kids out of the room. ‘Come on, you three, let’s go get you some breakfast sorted.’

‘Things have changed...’ Gary started to say before Jody cut across him.

‘The judge ruled that the kids stay with me. He said you couldn’t give them the stability or care that I could, remember?’

‘That was before all this shit kicked off.’

‘What, you think we can forget about the law because the outside world has turned into a horror movie? You think you’re somehow better equipped to cope now?’

‘I didn’t say that. The judge made his decision based on the information he had at the time. I’ll admit, I wasn’t in a good place back then.’

‘And you think we should reassess now because we’re all in a bad place?’

‘I’ve turned things around, Jody, and we both know it. I’m with Charlie, we’ve got this place...’

‘She’s got this place. It’s her house, not yours.’

‘Yeah, well I’d be able to buy into it if all my money wasn’t still tied up in our old house. If you got off your arse and bought me out then—’

‘If I got off my arse?!’ she screamed at him, incensed. ‘You total shit. I can’t go to work and you know it. I’ve got the kids to look after.’

‘There you go, then. You piss off and start earning a living, I’ll look after the kids.’

‘You absolute fucker. Do you really think it’s that straightforward? It’s not all about material possessions, you know. There’s more to being a parent than that.’

‘Oh, spare me.’

‘No, you need to hear this. Those kids need a damn sight more than just a roof and a frigging Sony Playstation. They need—’

Sudden desperate noises from elsewhere silenced their pointless argument. Screams and shouting. Glass shattering. Jody and Gary looked at each other for a split second then ran towards the source of the commotion. It was coming from the dining room. One of the windows in the wide front bay had broken under the weight of the infected pushing in from outside, agitated by the raised voices. A diseased hand was now sticking through the shattered pane, clawing through the air, desperate to get at the untainted people inside. The kids were all in here. Charlie too. She was trying to block the broken window with a plasterer’s board but was struggling to force the diseased arm back out.

‘What the hell were the kids doing in here?’ Gary demanded.

‘Trying to get away from your arguing,’ Charlie said, pushing hard against the feverish body again. ‘Someone help me for Christ’s sake!’

Jody moved fast. She pushed the kids in Gary’s direction, then added her weight to the wooden board Charlie was trying to use to block up the window. Between them they managed to cover the hole and hold it tight.

‘I’ll sort it,’ Gary said, and he disappeared, all three kids in tow.

Jody looked over at Charlie, both of them still just about managing to hold the board in place and keep the infected at bay. ‘You okay?’

‘Think so.’

‘Your boyfriend’s about as useless in a crisis as my ex-husband.’

‘Funny that,’ Charlie said.

The infected shoved against them, and they shoved back.

‘So do we just stand here like this all day until they get bored and piss off?’

Before Charlie could reply, Gary returned with a hammer and nails. He pushed his way between them. ‘Hold it steady,’ he said.

‘Where are the kids?’ Jody asked.

‘Upstairs safe. They’re in Ben’s room. I told them to keep quiet and stay away from the windows.’

‘Good.’

He hammered the board into place, securing it with nails of varying lengths wherever he could – into the wall, the window sill and the window frame itself – and only stopped when he was certain it would hold. Charlie and Jody stepped away, leaving him admiring his own handiwork. ‘That should do it,’ he said, sounding undeservedly smug and self-assured.

‘First time I’ve seen you do any DIY in a long time,’ Jody said. ‘Christ, when I think of the grief I used to get whenever I asked you to do anything around the house.’

‘Maybe that had more to do with the grief you were always giving me,’ he quickly snapped back, annoyed. ‘You were always on at me... do this, fix that... fucking nagging all the time.’

‘Yeah, well that was the problem, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have had to nag. You should have just done it when it needed doing.’

‘Fuck’s sake, here we go again. You really can’t help yourself, can you? The world’s falling apart and you’re still trying to score points.’

‘I’m not interested in points, I just want to keep my kids safe.’

‘And I’ve already told you, they are safe. And they’re staying here with me.’

‘Over my dead body.’

‘That can be arranged. No one’s going to notice one more corpse at the moment.’

‘You wouldn’t have the bloody nerve.’

‘You reckon. Just you try me and I’ll—’

‘Will you two just shut up!’ Charlie screamed at them.

Jody noticed that Charlie was standing on the other side of the window, illuminated by the early morning light. She looked like a little kid lost. She was clutching her arm.

‘What’s the matter, love?’ Gary said. ‘You okay?’

It was clear Charlie was anything but okay. She was shaking. Nerves, fear, anger, shock... Jody couldn’t tell what was wrong.

She noticed that blood was dripping between Charlie’s fingers.

Gary reached out for her but she pulled away.

And then, slowly, she lifted her hand.

There was a deep gash running the length of her forearm, almost from elbow to wrist.

‘How did that happen...?’ Gary asked, although they all knew the answer already. Charlie sniffed back more tears. She didn’t want to tell him because if she didn’t tell him, if she pretended it hadn’t happened, she’d be okay, wouldn’t she?

She sobbed. The deep scratch was burning with infection, though the physical pain paled into insignificance alongside her fear. ‘One of them got me,’ she said, struggling to keep control. She looked down at the cut and picked at its raw edges.

‘How do you know?’ Gary demanded. ‘You might have just cut yourself on the glass or something?’

‘It would have been cleaner if it was a glass cut,’ Jody said, sounding clinical and cold, detached. ‘One of them did that to her. One of the infected.’

Charlie stifled another deep sob as the inevitable enormity of what had happened began to fully sink in. She looked at Jody. ‘What do I do?’

‘There’s got to be someone we can contact? Somewhere we can take her?’ Gary said, and he too looked to Jody for answers.

‘There’s nothing and you know it. We all saw the TV reports yesterday. Sorry, Charlie, I truly am.’

‘But I don’t want to be like one of them,’ she cried, shooting a sideways glance at the swarm of squabbling infected on the other side of the boarded-up glass. ‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you...’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jody said again, and she too wiped away a tear. She’d had plenty of reasons not to like Charlie, but had quickly warmed to her. What she was going through now and what lay ahead was too awful to even contemplate. Jody couldn’t begin to imagine what she must have been feeling.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Gary announced, and he took a couple of steps closer to his girlfriend, then checked himself and held back. ‘We don’t know for sure it was one of them, do we? The window frame’s damaged... maybe you just caught your arm on some wood.’

‘Come on, Gary,’ Jody sighed. ‘Don’t be so frigging naïve.’

‘It was one of them,’ Charlie said. ‘I know it was. I saw it happen. I’m infected. I should go.’

‘You’re not going anywhere.’

‘I have to, Gary.’

‘No you don’t. Not until we’re completely sure.’

‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ Jody barked. ‘Seriously? For fuck’s sake, Gary, our kids are in this house. We can’t take the risk. Look, Charlie, I’m truly sorry, but...’

‘It’s okay,’ Charlie said. ‘I get it. I’ll go. And if I’m okay in a few hours, I’ll come back. At least then we’ll know for sure if—’

‘Did you not hear me?’ Gary interrupted, furious. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

‘She heard you all right, she’s just choosing to ignore you,’ Jody said, glaring at him.

‘You, on the other hand,’ he shouted at his ex, ‘can fuck off right away.’

‘I’m not going anywhere without the kids.’

‘Take my car,’ Charlie said, struggling to think straight but managing to recall the conversation they’d had earlier. She seemed short of breath now, face ice-white, clammy. ‘The keys are on the... hook in the kitchen. Just go. Get safe.’

‘Thanks, love,’ Jody said, and she went to leave the room but Gary blocked her way.

‘I’ve got the keys to Charlie’s car,’ he said, dangling them in front of her. ‘If you’re leaving on your own, you’re welcome to them. If you’re still thinking about snatching the kids – which I really wouldn’t recommend – then we’ve got a problem.’

Their latest argument was interrupted before it started proper by Charlie. She dropped to her knees and doubled-over in pain, clutching her stomach. She looked up at Gary and Jody, her face screwed up in agony. ‘It hurts,’ she gasped. ‘Really hurts.’

‘So there’s your answer,’ Jody said. ‘That can only be infection. I saw it on the news – this is how it starts. She’ll lose consciousness for an hour or two now, maybe longer, and when she wakes up she’ll be one of those fucking things outside and she won’t stop until she’s infected every last one of us. You, me and the kids. Is that what you want?’

Almost on cue, Charlie passed out. She slumped forward in an undignified heap, the rancorous gash on her arm exposed.

‘Help me get her outside.’

‘Don’t you fucking touch her,’ Gary warned, and before she could react he grabbed her arm and manhandled her out of the room. Jody didn’t fight back, but she continued to protest. She dug her heels in and clung onto the sides of the door frame as he tried to push her through.

‘Think about what you’re doing, Gary. I know you’re hurting, but Charlie’s gone. There’s nothing you can do for her.’

‘We don’t know that for sure. Not yet.’

‘Oh, come on. What are you going to do? Keep her locked up in there until she’s scratching at the door, baying for blood?’

‘I’ll deal with her when the time comes.’

‘Deal with her now.’

‘No.’

He shoved Jody in the small of her back and sent her flying across the hallway. She hit the wall hard and rebounded. By the time she’d picked herself back up he’d slammed the dining room door shut and was leaning against it to stop her getting anywhere near.

‘You stay here with your dead girlfriend. I’m leaving and I’m taking the kids,’ she told him.

‘You’re not going anywhere with my children.’

‘Our children.’

‘Whatever. Right now they need to be with their dad more than ever.’

‘No, you prick, they need to be safe.’

‘Yeah, and they’re better off with me.’

‘How d’you work that out?’

‘I’m not the one who took them camping when all this shit kicked off, for Christ’s sake.’

‘How was I supposed to know?’

‘They’d have been better off with me from the start.’

‘That’s not what the judge said.’

‘Yeah, well the judge is probably in as shitty a situation as we are right now. He’s probably one of those diseased things walking the streets.’

‘Like your girlfriend?’

‘Priceless. You absolute bitch. I know your problem. You’re jealous.’

She’d heard it all now. ‘Jealous? Christ, Gary, you’re deluded. I’m not interested in you or anything you’ve got. I couldn’t care if you were the—’

‘Can’t you just stop?’ a quiet voice asked. Jody looked around and then up. It was Jenny. There were three small faces at the top of the stairs, peering down between the balustrades. Seeing them there immediately took Jody back eighteen months to when things had been at their absolute worst with Gary, when every single day had been miserable: a never-ending succession of fight after fight after bloody pointless, energy-draining fight.

‘Sorry,’ she said, and she genuinely was.

‘So you should be,’ hissed Gary.

Jenny cautiously crept downstairs. ‘I’m scared,’ she said.

‘We’re all scared,’ Jody told her, and she immediately regretted her candid admission.

‘It’s okay,’ Gary said, sitting down on the step next to his daughter. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

Ben and Holly were a few steps further up still, hanging back. ‘Where’s Charlie?’ Ben asked.

‘She’s not feeling too good,’ Gary answered quickly, getting in quick before Jody had chance to speak.

‘She sick like them?’ Ben demanded, unexpectedly abrupt. He pointed in the direction of the grey figures which milled around outside, visible through the frosted glass window in the front door.

‘No, no, no... nothing like that,’ Gary said and, out of sight of he kids, he glared at Jody. The intent behind his eyes was clear: don’t you say a fucking word.

‘We going home soon?’ Jenny asked.

‘This is your home, love.’

She looked from face to face, sensing trouble.

‘Are we staying here then?’

‘I don’t know what we’re doing yet,’ Jody said. ‘Your dad and I need to talk about it.’

‘I don’t want you kids going anywhere.’

‘What about Mummy?’ Holly asked.

‘That’s for the grown ups to decide, isn’t it, love?’ Gary said.

‘Suppose.’

‘You three hungry?’ he asked.

In spite of everything, they were. He took the children into the kitchen and found them something to eat.

When he returned to the hallway a few minutes later, the dining room door was open. Jody was standing over Charlie, holding the hammer he’d used to board up the window.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘What do you think? I’m watching your bloody girlfriend to make sure she doesn’t come back and start trying to infect us.’ Jody stopped and took a breath. ‘Look, Gary, this isn’t doing any of us any good, especially the kids. I know you’re hurting, but you need to get over that and think carefully about what might happen here. Be ready for the worst.’

‘You quite finished?’

She ignored him. ‘Don’t forget, I was out there yesterday. I’ve seen what they can do. I’ve seen how they attack and what you become when you’ve been scratched, and it’s not pretty.’

‘I get that,’ he said, dropping the bullshit and bravado momentarily, ‘but I can’t write her off until I know for sure, okay?’

‘I think we’re already at that point. She’s been infected. You have to face facts.’

‘And when the time comes, I will.’

Charlie began to stir. Jody gripped the hammer, ready to use it if she had to. Both she and Gary edged back cautiously. Ice-cold and sweat-soaked, Charlie’s eyes fluttered open. Her throat was bone dry. She tried to clear it, but the effort was too much.

‘I’m okay,’ she said, her voice a bronchial croak, and with considerable effort she rolled over onto her front and picked herself up using a high-backed wooden dining chair for support. She plonked herself down heavily in the seat, exhausted. ‘Really thirsty.’

Gary went to get her some water, but by the time he’d filled the glass she was out cold again.

‘We should tie her up,’ Jody suggested. ‘Tape her hands like they said on the news. Just to be sure.’

‘Don’t you fucking touch her.’

***

He stood guard outside the dining room whilst Jody sat in the kitchen. The kids moved freely between them, diving their time and their loyalties, hypersensitive and not wanting to do anything to upset either of their parents.

The situation felt on a knife-edge, both inside and outside the house. On the TV news, reports were coming in of trouble as people tried to escape the infected zone. The endless snaking queues of traffic were being patrolled by security forces which were already severely depleted. There were unavoidable bottlenecks and delays at the checkpoints, and the terrified public were not responding well to being left waiting in their cars indefinitely while the infected prowled nearby. Jody kept reminding herself that this was infinitely better than the outcome of most of the horror movies she’d watched over the years. Nine times out of ten in a horror flick the survivors would have been reduced to killing each other to stay alive by now. All things considered, and apart from poor old Charlie, they were actually doing pretty well.

It was quieter outside, too. Still no sign of any governmental or military interventions on this particular street, but the number of infected hadn’t increased. They hadn’t reduced either, but no net gain was still a good result in Jody’s book.

The kids had been gorging themselves on sweets and chocolate. Jody’s stomach churned with nerves and the thought of eating anything made her want to vomit. Holly, on the other hand, had eaten far too much and was feeling the effects, but having a free pass to the kitchen cupboards was something she was determined to make the most of. She dragged a chair over to a cupboard and stood on tiptoes to look inside. ‘Can I help you, young lady?’ Jody asked. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

‘Want another Mars bar.’

‘Maybe later.’

‘Want one now,’ she said, elevating the last word of her demand to an uncomfortably loud volume. Jody cringed, remembering the effect she and Gary’s argument had on the creatures outside earlier.

‘Keep your voice down.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Gary asked, concerned.

‘No problem.’

‘I want another Mars bar,’ Holly told him.

‘So let her have one.’

‘I’ve already told her no.’

‘What’s the harm in the kid having more chocolate?’ Gary said, and he reached into the cupboard and brought down another multipack.

Jody seethed with anger. ‘How about trying to show a united front?’ she hissed at him once Holly had disappeared.

‘And how about not being such a fucking drag,’ he quickly countered.

And they were at it full-throttle again.

‘Why are you always pulling in the opposite direction to me? Do you do it on purpose?’

‘Yeah, well you’re not always right, you know. You seem to think you have a monopoly on common-sense, coming at me from your bloody moral high ground.’

‘It’s not about common-sense, it’s about putting the kids first and not scoring points. I don’t think you can do that.’

‘Of course I can.’

Jody lowered her voice and moved closer to him. ‘Then why is your dead girlfriend still in the dining room? We should have got rid of her.’

‘She’s not dead.’

‘As good as.’

‘Maybe I’m just not as quick to give up on people as you are.’

‘Why do you keep turning everything around like it’s my fault? You’ve always done that, and you did it again just now with the chocolate. You’re always undermining me.’

‘It was just a bloody chocolate bar.’

‘Yeah, but it’s the message you’re giving out. Mum’s wrong and Dad’s right. You’re always making me out to be the villain.’

‘That’s ’cause you’ve always been a fucking killjoy.’

‘Can’t you both just stop?’ Jenny asked. Her innocence and honesty was heart-breaking.

‘You need to tell your mother,’ Gary said quickly.

‘I’m talking to both of you,’ she replied with a clarity which belied her years. ‘You’re always fighting. I know you don’t like each other, but you don’t have to keep fighting all the time. It’s embarrassing.’

‘That’s us told,’ Jody said, feeling awful.

Holly peered out from behind her older sister. ‘Daddy, I think Charlie’s awake. I heard her.’

Both Jody and Gary bolted towards the dining room door. Gary paused with his hand almost on the handle. Almost, but not quite. ‘Stay back,’ he said to the children, and Ben and the girls moved away without protest.

Gary’s hammer was on the hall floor. Jody picked it up and handed it to him. ‘You know it’s the right thing to do,’ she said, and for once he didn’t argue. He cautiously pushed the door open.

At first he couldn’t see her.

With the light coming in from the partially-boarded up window, it was hard to make out much in the shadowy dining room. It was only when she twitched and shook that he realised where Charlie was: crouched in the corner, all arms and legs and hate, spiderlike. She didn’t look like Charlie anymore. Instead, she looked like every other damn infected. Her movements were awkward and unnatural, stop-start, and her limbs twisted in ways they shouldn’t. Her head ticked like a chicken pecking corn. The smell in the room was enough to make his eyes water. Death, decay, disease and defecation, all wrapped up in a single stifling stench.

Jody was on his shoulder. ‘Close the door,’ she whispered, quietly and carefully.

‘I need to see her,’ he said, edging in the other direction.

‘Don’t be stupid. She’ll kill you.’

‘She won’t.’

‘She will. And then she’ll kill the rest of us.’

Gary’s arrogance continued to astound her. Even now he was ready to tell her how wrong she was. He turned to push her away and—

—Charlie attacked.

It was sudden and swift. Deadly. The creature’s speed and ferocity compensated for the awkwardness of its barely coordinated movements.

The Charlie-thing leapt forward and was fully illuminated by the light. The gash along her forearm seemed deeper and wider and it glistened with overflowing disease. She was coming straight at Gary and the bloody idiot was just standing there, dumbstruck, waiting for it to happen. In half the time it took him to react, Jody grabbed his hand and dragged him out into the hall. She turned around to pull the door closed and barely managed to shut it in time. Dead Charlie was on all fours, scuttling like a crab towards her, head lolling back but eyes fixed forward.

Jody shut the door and clung onto the handle as it rattled in its frame. The noise was terrible and filled the house – dead Charlie hitting the woodwork again and again and again.

‘Want Mummy!’ Holly screamed, her high-pitched wail cutting through the panic and everything else.

‘Get them out of here,’ Jody screamed, but she needn’t have bothered because Gary was already halfway up the stairs, pushing and dragging the kids to safety. In the split-second she was distracted, Jody almost let go of the door. Charlie yanked it open from inside, spindly fingers wrapped around the handle, pulling Jody into the dining room. Jody pulled it back at the last possible second and clung on for dear life. ‘Help me, Gary!’

Gary feigned deafness, but then looked back out of guilt. Momentary eye contact. Jody pleading for help she knew she wasn’t going to get. Ben tried to turn back, but Gary kept him moving forward.

Dead Charlie yanked at the door again, and this time the hideous thing’s strength was such that the handle was snatched clean out of Jody’s hands.

The door was wide open.

Jody and the Charlie-thing, face-to-face.

Gary glanced back once more as the dead girl lunged and knocked Jody clean off her feet.

Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving.

Into the bedroom he and Charlie had shared. The kids were crying, all of them, even Ben. ‘It’s okay,’ he told them. ‘It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be all right.’

He herded them over to the far side of the king-size bed, then went back and shifted Charlie’s bedside table, knocking her jewellery, makeup and creams everywhere. Didn’t matter. She had no use for any of them now. He hefted the table out of the way then ran back around again and shoved the bed frame against the door to block it. Ben helped, quickly realising what his dad was trying to do.

‘What about Mum?’ asked Jenny.

‘Sorry, love.’

‘Will she be all right?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Can we help her?’

‘It’s too late.’

‘But we have to help her.’

‘I don’t think we can. Mummy stayed downstairs to stop Charlie getting us. She’s really brave.’

‘I want Mummy,’ Holly whined.

‘I know you do, love. You have to remember, though, Mummy wanted you three to be safe more than anything else in the world. That’s why she stayed downstairs, and that’s why she brought you here so we could both look after you together. She got hurt taking care of all of us. She was really brave, your mum.’

‘We should go back,’ Ben said.

‘We’re not going back.’

‘She dead?’ Holly asked.

‘She one of those things?’ Jenny asked, sobbing.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think she’s dead,’ Holly said.

Jenny started howling. Ben started shouting, kicking out in frustration. Gary wrapped his arms around all three of them and sat them down on the floor in the space where the bed had originally been. ‘Shh... all of you,’ he whispered. ‘We have to keep the noise down so the sick people don’t hear us, okay? We can’t let anything happen now, because if we do then all of Mummy’s effort will have been for nothing.’

Noises downstairs. Awful screaming noises. Bangs, crashes, breaking glass. Death throes. Gary pulled the kids closer still and covered their ears as the ground floor cacophony continued in the rooms beneath them. They could feel the fighting. The whole house seemed to shake.

‘It’s gonna be all right,’ he told them when the noises eventually began to subside. ‘Mummy was really brave, and now it’s your turn to be brave. All of us. Daddy too. I’m gonna look after you all the time now.’

Nothing but shock and sobbing. He relaxed his grip but the kids didn’t move. Too scared. Paralysed with fear.

Gary filled the silence with nervous chatter. ‘We’ll wait here until it’s safe, then I’ll go down and sort everything out. The police will come and help us, maybe even the army. I know it’s been horrible this last couple of days, but things are gonna be okay. It’s just the four of us now, like you always wanted. We’ll go to Disneyland like I promised. Everything will be okay.’

Still nothing.

‘We can go and see Gramps and Nanny. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet they’re keen to see you. It’s been ages since I’ve seen them.’

‘Mum takes us,’ Ben said.

‘What?’

‘Mummy takes us to see Gramps and Nanny, and Granny and Pa,’ Jenny explained.

‘What? Wait, your mum’s been taking you to see my parents? You never told me.’

‘We thought you’d get cross.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t.’

‘You said you didn’t care what Mummy did and you didn’t want to hear about it,’ Jenny said, repeating parrot-fashion.

‘They’re still all friends, even though you and Mum hate each other,’ Ben said. ‘Nanny said just because you’ve fallen out, doesn’t mean we can’t all still get on.’

Gary was shocked. ‘My mum said that?’

‘Yep,’ said Holly.

Jenny continued. ‘Gramps said he thought Mummy was doing really well considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘Don’t know. They usually stop talking when they know we’re listening.’

Gary got up from the floor, incensed. ‘That bloody woman. Out to get the bloody sympathy vote from my parents. How low will she go?’

‘That’s not fair, Dad,’ Ben said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Gary turned on him.

‘Adult business, son. Keep your bloody nose out.’

‘I’m only trying to—’

‘Well don’t. When I want your advice I’ll...’

Ben looked up to see why his dad had stopped talking, and then he saw her.

Mum.

At the window.

Clothes torn and blood-soaked.

Infected.

Gary staggered back in fright as she hauled herself up onto the veranda, using the roof of his car to get up. She beat against the glass with leaden hands, fists smearing grease and germs.

Gary grabbed the kids, but Jenny slipped his grip. As he dragged them away from the window, she ran towards it. ‘Mummy!’ she shouted, thrilled to see her again. Gary tried to stop her, but Ben and Holly were in the way and he could only watch helpless as Jenny slipped the latch and let Jody inside.

The Jody-thing watched him from the other end of the room. The gusting breeze from the window caught her shirt, and when it flapped open Gary saw the scratch. Long, deep, dirty, uneven. It ran from her left shoulder down her bicep, a vicious zigzag line, dripping with blood.

‘It’s not Mummy,’ he told the kids. ‘She’s got the disease. Don’t go near her.’

His dead ex-wife stood her ground. Unmoving. Glowering.

And then she attacked.

She launched herself at Gary and he panicked, remembering the things he’d seen on TV and the things they’d fought in the back garden of the house. Abhorrent, cursed, infected creatures. He remembered what Charlie had become.

Gary reached for Jenny and Holly’s outstretched hands, but infected Jody stood between them. And in the ensuing chaos, as Gary did everything he could to avoid her savage, poisonous claws, their positions were steadily reversed.

Jody with the kids cowering behind her now.

Gary next to the open window.

She came at him again, and his decision was made.

‘Sorry, kids.’

He dived for the open window as she lurched towards him. Heart-racing, desperate, terrified, he climbed over the veranda then dropped down onto the roof of his car. He half-rolled, half-fell to the ground then immediately picked himself up. He checked his pockets. Car keys, but for the wrong car. Charlie’s motor was locked in the garage, blocked in by his own useless vehicle, and there were infected approaching. Three of them. Wait, no, four. Six! Eight! He looked up at the house he’d just escaped from, then ran.

As fast as he could. As far as he could. Not stopping. Not looking back.

Gone.

Jody watched from the upstairs window until he’d disappeared, then turned back to face the children. Ben, shaking with fear, positioned himself in front of his two younger sisters, ready to defend them from the vile creature that had once been his mother.

‘It’s okay, love,’ she said. ‘It’s me. I’m all right.’

‘Don’t believe you,’ he said, voice trembling as badly as his legs.

‘I swear. She didn’t touch me. I’m okay. Not sick.’

‘What about the scratch?’

‘I did it.’

‘You did it?’ Jenny asked, peering around her brother’s stocky frame.

‘Yep.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted to see what your dad would do. I wanted to know if he was really going to look after you.’

‘Daddy ran away,’ Holly said.

‘Yep. Pretty much exactly what I expected.’

‘And you’re not sick?’ Ben asked, still clearly unsure.

‘I’m not sick.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘What about Charlie?’

‘I couldn’t help her. She’s okay now, though. She’s not hurting anymore.’

‘She dead?’ Holly asked.

‘Yes, she’s dead. Sorry, love.’

‘I liked Charlie.’

‘Yeah, I liked Charlie. She deserved much better. Shall we go home now?’

‘Yes, please,’ Ben said.

‘Cool.’

With a grunt of effort Jody moved the bed away from the door then led her children downstairs, distracting them from the wreckage and the blood and what was left of Charlie. She found the keys to Gary’s 4x4 in a bowl on the kitchen table, and she drove the kids out of the infected zone.

And they felt safe.

And they were safe.

***

THE DEAL

In 2019 I released THE LAST BIG THING, a collection of some of my favourite short stories from the last twenty or so years, along with several new shorts I’d written. Here’s the nastiest of the bunch.

I have no idea where this horrible, seedy little story came from. Every now and then you get a germ of an idea that implants itself into your brain and won’t go anywhere until it’s finished. That’s what happened with THE DEAL. It started as a what if and ended up becoming something I didn’t expect at all.

I must be out of my mind. I never thought it would come to this. I mean, I knew I was in trouble, that I had to do something, but this is like something out of one of those shitty made-for-TV crime movies. I’m seven floors up in an otherwise empty high-rise that’ll be rubble less than a month from now, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.

The waiting is endless. All this space and silence gives me too much time to think.

This isn’t fair. It’s not my fault, it’s just how I am. It’s all about perspective, that’s what I keep telling myself. What turns one person on might repulse another. You can’t choose your kink, but by God I wish you could. Maybe then I’d have found something that wasn’t such a taboo, something that wasn’t so likely to get me locked up. If she hadn’t found out what I like then I wouldn’t be in this fucking mess right now, she wouldn’t have any hold over me and I could have just kicked her out. And what pisses me off most of all is the fact that she’s been sleeping her way through the male population of the city for the last few years and no one gives a damn. She’s the one who cheated on me.

I’ve done nothing. I don’t hurt anyone. I keep myself to myself. I just look at pictures.

I tell myself I’m a frigging idiot and I should get out of this place before it’s too late, but I’m out of time. He’s here. I hear footsteps right behind me.

I smell him before I see him.

I go to turn around, but he reaches out a hand lightning fast and grabs the back of my neck, stopping me from moving. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he hisses. ‘Don’t you fucking look at me. You don’t need to see who I am. Understand?’

I whimper. I fucking whimper. A fifty-two-year-old man whimpering like a fucking baby. It’s pathetic, but I do what he says. I don’t argue and I don’t turn around.

Why am I putting myself through this?

I should have just walked away when she found out, should have thrown in the towel and admitted defeat. I could have gone to Thailand or somewhere like that... could have disappeared. But now it’s too late because he’s here and contact has been made. I try to look at his reflection in the cracked window but he’s directly behind me and I see nothing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. I can smell him, hear him, feel him, but I can’t bloody see him.

And Jesus Christ, he smells so bad. It’s a grubby, unwashed stench: booze and bad breath and frequent whiffs of worse things... he makes me want to heave. I swallow down bile and try to compose myself. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think, I just—’

‘I don’t want your apologies,’ he says, his mouth against my ear, ‘I just want you to do exactly what I say. Follow my rules and I’ll do your job for you, screw up and you’re on your own. It’s that simple.’

‘I understand.’

‘You’d better. The fact we’re having this conversation at all tells me you’re already in a shit-load of trouble. Pissing me off is only going to make things far worse.’

I keep telling myself to stay calm, but all I want to do is turn and run from this vile bastard and not look back. I’ll go to the house, grab some things then disappear into the night like I should have when she first found out. But I know I can’t. It’s too late now. He won’t let me. He’s a killer. A hitman. Christ, it even sounds stupid, like something out of a third-rate crime novel. Is this really worth the risk? Does Moira deserve to die? That’s debatable, but she’s backed me into a corner and taken away all my other options. If she tells anyone what she knows about the things I like to do, my life’s as good as over. I’ve heard what they do to people like me in prison.

‘So who is it?’ he asks.

‘My wife.’

‘You don’t say. Now there’s a surprise. Been cheating on you, has she?’

‘Pretty much constantly for the last ten years, but that’s not the problem.’

‘I didn’t think it would be. So why get in touch with me now? Tell me the full story.’

‘Why do you need to know?’

‘Because I need to be sure you’re serious. I need to know you’re as desperate as you seem. This is a risk for both of us. I need to know you’ve got as much at stake as I have, as much to lose.’

‘Believe me, I have. She... she knows things about me.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Things I’ve done.’

‘Business deals?’

‘No, more personal than that. The kind of things I like...’

It’s hard talking about this stuff – about my acquired tastes – even when I’m on my own in the house, chatting online with like-minded people. Tonight, though, it’s nigh on impossible. When I don’t immediately give him an answer, he starts taking random pot-shots. ‘I’m guessing it’s either kids or animals,’ he says wearily. ‘It’s usually one or the other. Sometimes both.’

‘Both?’

‘Don’t sound so righteous. You’re in no position to judge.’

‘She’s got evidence...’ I start to explain, telling him as little as possible, neither confirming or denying.

‘And if that evidence was to come out...’

‘I’d be screwed.’

‘Job gone, house gone, wife gone, cash gone, freedom gone. Straight to the slammer for you, you dirty little pervert.’

‘That’s about it.’

‘So why haven’t you just done a runner?’

‘What, and leave her with everything? Do you have any idea what I’m worth?’

‘I do, actually. I knew money would come into this somewhere, it usually does. It’s the root of all evil, you know.’

‘Is that right?’

He just laughs, and finally relaxes his grip on the back of my neck. ‘Okay, okay... I get the picture. I know where you’re coming from. Perversion’s in the eye of the beholder, I say. One man’s meat is another man’s murder, and all that bullshit.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, friend,’ he says, his sudden unexpected and unwelcome familiarity making my skin crawl, ‘you’re in good company. We’re both in the same boat, to a certain extent. If people knew how I get my thrills they wouldn’t be too happy.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Doesn’t take a genius to work it out, does it? Let’s just say I enjoy my work. Probably a little more than I should do.’

Shit, is he into necrophilia? Will he want to have sex with Moira after he’s killed her? I almost laugh out loud at the prospect of that. Good luck to him. Who am I to judge? For all I know, my particular quirks might still rank higher up the deviance league table than his. Is screwing a corpse more socially acceptable than—

‘Okay,’ he says, derailing my bizarre train of thought, ‘here’s the deal.’ The tone of his voice has changed again. This is deadly serious. He means business. ‘Fact is I get off on killing. Can’t tell you why or how it started, but that’s how it is. There’s something about doing someone in that drives me fucking wild. This is more of a hobby than a job for me, so I’m more than happy to help you out with your little problem. Now I’ve made a few enquiries and I know a fair bit about you and your situation and, even more importantly, I know you know nothing about me. I know you can afford my fee and I know you wouldn’t be here unless you didn’t have any other option, so all you need to do is agree to my terms and we’ll get the ball rolling.’

‘Your terms?’ I ask, my throat dry and my voice barely audible. ‘I thought I was just supposed to pay you in cash. I didn’t know there were terms and conditions.’

‘There are always terms and conditions,’ he says, then he pauses ominously. ‘Bit embarrassing, really,’ he explains, sounding sheepish now, like I’ve caught him playing with himself. ‘I have superstitions. I’m a little bit OCD, I think.’

‘Superstitions?’

‘Just a couple. Nothing too weird in the overall scheme of things.’

‘Go on.’

‘I only kill when I’m specifically asked to.’

‘Okay.’

‘And I only kill in pairs.’

All I hear is his second point. ‘You only kill in pairs?’

Alarm bells are ringing again. Fucker’s going to kill me too once he’s got rid of Moira. I try to make a run for it but he anticipates and, anyway, he’s far faster and far stronger than me. He shoves me up against the dirty glass and now I can’t move.

‘It’s really not what you’re thinking. I don’t like odd numbers. If you ask me to do a job, you have to ask me to kill two people.’

‘But there’s no one else I want dead.’

‘You don’t have to name them, you prick, just tell me to do it. Look, I’m sorry, but this is just how it is. Some people can’t stop messing with light switches or washing their hands, others won’t step on the cracks in the pavement. Me, I get freaked out when I’ve killed an odd number of people. It’s two or none, that’s the rule.’

‘You’re talking about me, aren’t you? Makes sense – take me out and there’s less chance of anyone linking back to you. Forget it. Deal’s off. This is bullshit. I should have—’

‘Calm down and take it easy, sunshine,’ he says, leaning up against me, his face too close for comfort, suffocating me with his halitosis. ‘I’ve really got to come up with a better way of selling this to clients,’ he mumbles to himself. ‘Look, it won’t be you, right? I’ll find the second victim for myself, I just need your permission to kill them, okay?’

‘My permission?’

‘Just tell me I can do it,’ he yells, getting frustrated. His sudden anger makes my bladder weaken. ‘All you need to know is it’ll be someone you don’t know. Someone you’ve never had any connection with. Someone who doesn’t mean anything to you...’

‘But I don’t understand.’

He shoves me against the window again, my face pressed so hard against the cold glass I think it’s going to give.

‘It turns me on, okay? We all have our little quirks, don’t we? Some littler than others, if you know what I’m saying. Well this is mine. You want one killing, but you have to order me to do two. Buy one, get one free. There’ll be no repercussions for you, I swear. You won’t know anything about it. Your only link to the killing will be me, and believe me, I’m not about to go public. I’ve got as much to lose as you have, probably more.’

He eases off, releases the pressure, steps away.

‘I don’t know about this...’

‘You still married?’ he asks.

‘Just about.’

‘Is she insured? You still paying the premiums? I’ll make it look like an accident. You could come out of this with a profit.’

‘Everyone’s a winner.’

‘Everyone but your missus,’ he says ominously. Then he becomes quiet. Too quiet. ‘Oh, and I forgot to say, I only kill on Mondays, that okay?’

‘What? You’re taking the piss...’

‘You got me!’ he laughs, filling this ruin of a place with his foul noise. ‘Just kidding. Look, pal, I know this is a big deal for you. I expect you’ve never been involved in anything like this before and chances are you won’t ever be again. Your life must be a real fucking mess because when people call for me, I know they’ve hit absolute rock bottom. I understand. I get it, I really do. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I know what you’re going through, so I’m gonna make this easy on you. I’m leaving now. If you want, you can do the same and you’ll never hear from me again. But if you decide you do want my help, come back to this place before the weekend and leave me a sign.’

‘What kind of sign?’

‘I don’t know, use your imagination. Write something on the walls. Leave the cash here, too.’

I’m in a no-win situation. My options feel like they’re reducing by the second. I can either trust this sick bastard – and I’ve never felt like trusting anyone less – or I can hope Moira keeps her mouth shut, but we both know that’s not going to happen. Which is the lesser of these two evils? I stare out into the night through the grubby window and try to make sense of the chaotic thoughts filling my head.

‘Okay,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll be back before the weekend.’

He doesn’t answer. I turn around to look for him but the sly fucker’s already long gone, disappeared into the darkness.

***

Fuck it, I need a drink. I stop at a bar on the way home, trying to work out what the hell I should do. I could always just disappear, I tell myself again for about the hundredth time tonight. Maybe I could fake my own death? Neither option is definite enough. There’s always a chance I’ll be found, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my days constantly looking over my shoulder. I’ve been doing enough of that as it is.

I want Moira dead. That much is certain. I don’t trust her and I can’t pay her off. I need her gone.

There are too many people in this bar. It’s packed and I find myself looking from face to face to face, staring at each of them, hoping I won’t see anyone I recognise or that anyone recognises me. I don’t, of course, and that makes me feel a little better. I’ve never been here before, probably won’t come here again, and for a few precious minutes I’m anonymous; innocent and free. I’m right in the middle of everything that’s happening but strangely disconnected from it all.

See that woman on her own over there? Who is she? Why’s she here? Why’s she on her own? Is she waiting for someone? Has she been stood up? Does she live alone? Is there anyone waiting for her at home tonight? If she never made it back, would anyone notice? Is she the one the hitman’s going to kill if I ask him to do the job? Should I even give a shit? If she knew what got me into the mess I’m in, she’d be disgusted, but who’s to say any of the other fuckers in here are any better? Who knows what goes on behind closed doors. There are tattooed freaks in here, others who look like alcoholics and addicts. In this bar there could be rapists, gang bosses, traffickers, perverts who make me look like an angel... in comparison to this lot, I’m not hurting anyone.

All I do is look at pictures on a screen.

***

The bitch has got me by the balls. She’s turfed me out of the house now and she says she’s going to the police. I know she’ll do it soon if I don’t take control of the situation. I’ll give her her due, sometimes Moira’s business sense is almost as good as mine. She’s biding her time, waiting for the right moment to strike and make the optimum profit. She’s doing everything to maximise the damage and get the most out of me she can before my inevitable fall from grace.

I need to stop this.

I need to take action.

I went back to the ruined high-rise this afternoon, straight from the solicitor’s office. The bitch really got to me today, really got under my skin. I made myself do it while I was still angry, before I’d had a chance to calm down and talk myself out of it. I climbed the stairs back up to the seventh floor, left the cash where he told me, then spray painted a message on the wall that no fucker could miss.

***

Nothing.

Two weeks waiting. Two weeks of silence from him and non-stop grief from her.

I’d managed to convince myself that I’d been fucked over again, either that the hitman was someone Moira had paid to set me up, or that the meeting had never happened in the first place. Had it just been a deluded, drink-fuelled fantasy? I was on the verge of giving in when everything changed.

I was starting to think I should just pay her off and damn the consequences. I’d agree to the divorce and all her terms and if she still went to the police, I’d decided I’d go kicking and screaming. I’d tell them she knew everything. I’d tell them she helped me feed my various unsavoury habits and implicate her somehow. But all that’s academic now, because everything changed today.

He’s done it. She’s dead.

A police officer knocked on the door an hour or so ago, and if I hadn’t been so numb with panic I’d have probably tried to make a run for it. I thought he’d come for me, that she’d told them everything, but I could tell from the way he approached me – submissive body language, voice low – that wasn’t the reason he was here. He asked if he could have a word, that he was sorry but he had some terrible news, and when he asked me to sit down it was all I could do not to jump up and punch the air. I knew what was coming next. The hardest part was pretending I gave a shit. I just sat there, head bowed, looking down at the carpet, biting my lip to stop myself grinning.

‘How?’ was the only question I could ask.

‘The investigation’s still on-going,’ he explained, running through the usual disclaimers, ‘but on the face of it, it looks like it was a tragic accident. It’s going to take a while to piece things together, but it seems her car got stuck on a level crossing. There was no one else about. Seems your wife was trying to get it moved when the train hit. If it’s any consolation, she died instantly...’

That was no consolation at all, actually. I wanted her to suffer. It was a struggle to hide my emotions. I could have kissed the police officer (but that’s really not my thing).

***

In the two months since Moira died, I’ve experienced every emotion imaginable. Relief, guilt, paranoia, unadulterated joy, loneliness, regret, sorrow... even now, almost eight weeks on, and the way I feel about her continues to change virtually by the hour. We had some good times before the bad. I miss the woman I originally fell in love with, but we both changed. I know what I had done to her was wrong, but she didn’t leave me with any choice. She could have just walked away – I’d have seen her okay, truly I would – but she took away all my other options and left me with only one. Now she’s gone the constant fear and uncertainty I’ve been struggling with for months has finally lifted, but I don’t feel good about what I did.

The coroner’s verdict was that her death was accidental. Credit where credit’s due, my “friend” knew exactly what he was doing. He covered his tracks impeccably and left nothing to chance. But then again, that’s something else we have in common. When your personal tastes aren’t socially acceptable, you do whatever needs doing to be discrete and keep things hidden. Who knows, if I’d been as thorough as him in the first place, maybe I’d have avoided all this mess?

There’s no evidence of the hitman left at all now. Even the derelict flats where I met him have gone, demolished along with every trace of our meeting and agreement. I’m glad. If I never see him again it’ll be too soon.

But the guilt’s still there. I have to keep reminding myself what Moira could have done. She’d had the power to destroy me on every level with just a few words whispered to the wrong people. I tell myself daily that I did what I had to do and that, in her own way, she was every bit as bad as me (albeit in a far more socially acceptable way). She fucked scores of men in my bed and showered them with my money. My liaisons, on the other hand, were all virtual. And I just paid for access to the pictures and videos I wanted, I didn’t even take them, didn’t meet anyone.

I need to get over this and accept, once and for all, that she got what she deserved.

It’s odd, though, I’m actually beginning to feel more remorse over the hitman’s other killing now, the one I was forced to sanction. Some days I feel the guilt growing inside me like a cancer. I keep telling myself that nobody’s perfect, and chances are whoever he killed was as flawed as me in one way or another, maybe even more so. In this sordid, shitty little world we live in, you’re hard pushed to find anyone who is completely, genuinely, one hundred per cent pure. We’re all as bad as each other. Our so-called society breeds deviance and corruption like a disease, encourages it even. For fuck’s sake, you can get whatever filth you like pumped directly into your home via the ’net. Kids in their bedrooms can get hold of worse stuff than I’ve watched with just a few clicks of the mouse.

In public I’m playing the grieving ex-husband, and I’ll continue to do so until people stop watching me, until they stop checking I’m okay and asking how I’m coping. They mean well, but I could do without their offers of support. When I need a shoulder to cry on, I’ll pay for one.

***

It’s late. I light a cigarette and slump back in my seat. A perfect evening draws to a close: some ‘me’ time in front of the computer with a few drinks and no interruptions. I sink into the chair and relax. My eyelids are getting heavy.

There’s a sudden sharp stinging pain in the side of my neck. I go to slap the bug or whatever it is away but I can’t. My arms are heavy and I can’t feel my hands. Can’t even move them now. I try to get up but I can’t move. Whole body frozen. What the fuck...?

I smell him before I see him.

It’s the same foul reek I remember from before, filling my nostrils, and I know it’s him. His stench is indescribable but also instantly recognisable. I manage to move my head slightly but it locks mid-turn like rusted machinery. I can see him moving out of the corner of my eye. He takes a couple of steps forward until he’s in full view and he grins at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him properly and I physically can’t look away. There’s no doubt it’s him. And weirdly, the thing I feel most of all is disappointment. He’s so ordinary, so unexpectedly unimportant looking. He’s no different to me. You’d struggle to pick either of us out in a crowd. My head droops down slightly and I can’t lift it back up. I’m left staring at his crotch. Sick bastard has a hard-on.

‘Good evening,’ he says. ‘How are you? It’s been a while.’

I try to talk but my mouth has seized. Some sound comes out. Single words at a time. ‘What... doing...?’

‘What am I doing here? Do you really have to ask? I’m finishing a job.’

‘But...’

‘Haven’t you worked it out yet?’ he continues, slipping his hand down the front of his trousers and starting to feel himself up. ‘I was very careful to explain it all at the outset. Remember what I told you?’

He crouches down so we’re at eye level. Wish I could look away but my eyes won’t move. Can’t even blink now.

‘You... said...’ I start to say, every word an effort, having to work hard to make any noise.

‘I’ll remind you,’ he says, catching my cigarette as it falls from my frozen fingers. He takes a long drag, his hard cock gripped tight with his other hand. He pauses for a second and stops wanking, almost losing control. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I fucking love this.’

‘Why... here...?’

‘I told you I only kill in twos, and I said I only kill when someone asks me to do it. It’s a bit weird, I know, but that’s just how I roll. You should know better than most, my friend, you can’t control what gets you horny!’

I suck in more air, forcing my jaw to move again, managing to spit out a few more words. ‘You... said... not... me...’

‘And that’s exactly right,’ he says. He grins as he leans closer, my cigarette between his teeth. He knocks my drink off the table next to the chair and onto my lap with his free hand. The whiskey soaks my clothes, but I can’t feel it. The bottle rolls off the table and hits the floor. ‘I killed your wife and some other loser, just like you asked.’

‘Then... why... you... here...?’

‘Oh, I’m on another job now,’ he says, as he lets the cigarette fall from his lips. He grins and rocks back on his heels. I see wisps of smoke, then the flicker of the first few blue flames, almost invisible. He pulls my head up, then steps back as the fire takes hold. He’s watching me as he’s jerking off, face screwed up with concentration. ‘The guy who asked me to do this job was a lot like you, actually. Desperate, self-obsessed, completely broken. You’re someone else’s murder number two now, my friend. He didn’t know you. Didn’t know anything about you. You mean nothing to him, and he means nothing to you. Sound familiar? Don’t worry, though, I’ll get to him eventually. That’s the deal.’

ANGEL

When I was writing the original AUTUMN series, I had a vast cast of characters and no way of explaining where they all were on the day the world ended without constantly deviating from the plot of the five novels. Instead, I wrote a collection of short-stories, AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION; snapshots of lives being rudely interrupted by the apocalypse. The number of stories grew and grew, and I added a few standalones – characters who didn’t feature in the books. This is my favourite of those stories.

It’s been over a month now, and the situation shows no sign of improving. It’s getting worse out there if anything. He expected that, really. Each day it’s harder to do this, but he has no choice. If he could, he’d find somewhere safer and lock himself down, sit out the storm, but that’s not going to happen. He has no option. For now, it’s out of his hands. He has responsibilities.

He readies himself to face hell again. He’d already seen more than his fair share of trouble before the end of everything – the sick, the injured, the dying and the desperate – but never anything on this scale. He’s doing all he can, but he’s known since that first morning it was never going to be enough.

There’s no sign the infection is contagious, and that’s something of a comfort. It means he can think more about practicality than protection. He dresses himself like he used to when he went out running in the winter: lots of thin layers, breathable, keep the heat in and the cold out.

He swings the empty rucksack onto his back and stares into space, going over the route he’s going to take in his head, making sure he remembers the twists and turns he needs to follow to get there. His route has been planned to avoid the areas where the dead still mass in large numbers, to take advantage of the short-cuts he’s discovered over the last thirty-or-so days of scavenging. But even though he always does what he can to avoid them, he knows some contact will be inevitable. It always is. There’s always some foul, rotting fucker that manages to get in the way somewhere along the line and, for that reason, he doesn’t go anywhere without weapons. Quiet, efficient, deadly weapons. Several blades hang in their sheathes from his belt. He runs with a machete-like knife in each hand, taken from a butcher’s shop early on. He’s so used to carrying them, they’ve almost become extensions of himself. He doesn’t have to think, he just cuts. He hates what he has become. This endless brutality goes against everything he’s ever believed in, but he has no choice.

He’s ready.

Time to do this.

He’s on the ground floor of the building. It’s surrounded as it always is, huge crowds, but there are more of them to the south and east today. The west exit is his best option. He psychs himself up then lets himself out and secures the door from the outside. He can see seven of them. Seven is good. He’s had to get through many times that number before now. The longer he waits, the worse he knows his nerves are going to get. He starts running, and it begins again.

His footsteps pounding the road are loud enough to give him away. The first corpse comes at him hard. Despite the fear and the need for speed, he still instinctively tries to look beyond the decay to see who these people were before it happened. This one was a professional man in a business suit. His face is blackened by decay, ruptures and pustules around one eye swelling the skin until it’s almost shut, dribbling yellow, pus-filled tears. When he lurches at him he anticipates the dead man’s awkward movements and chops down at his neck, slicing through the cold flesh and doing enough damage to his spinal cord to stop him. He kicks the corpse away, yanks the blade free, then runs on.

This one looks older than it probably was. Another bloke, wearing some kind of overalls. He stabs it in the gut with his left-hand blade, hitting it with enough force to shove it back against the wall, then slides the other knife across its throat, virtually decapitating it. The cadaver slumps against him, its innards emptying out through the new holes he’s made in its flesh. He shakes himself clean as he avoids the third corpse. Four, five, six and seven go down easy.

Checkpoint.

These short stops are important. They make him feel like he’s still in control. He could run the entire distance in one go, but he thinks that’d be a risk. He needs to be careful. He needs to get this right. There’s too much at stake to fuck this up. Breathing hard, he stands perfectly still and composes himself, doing what he can to blend into his surroundings, wishing he was back inside and that this was done.

He peers around the corner. Shit. Between here and the store, the next street is swarming. He didn’t expect it to be like this. Something must have drawn them here. He now has three choices. He rules out the first option – taking the long way around, working his way from building to building. It’d be safer for him, but it’d take time he doesn’t have. He’s up against the clock as it is. He needs to get back. Option two is to just give up. That’s never going to happen.

Okay, option three it is. Straight through the middle of the fucking lot of them. He’s done it before, but it’s hard. Makes him feel like he used to on the start line of races. Nervous anticipation. Adrenalin rush. He can’t believe he used to be able to run for fun. Nothing’s fun anymore. Nothing’s done for pleasure. If it was he wouldn’t be out here now, risking his neck again.

You’re procrastinating, he yells at himself. Just fucking do it.

Blades gripped tight, he turns the corner and charges at them. He cuts them down at an astonishing rate, like he’s harvesting a crop that’s been left to go bad. He’s not interested in ‘killing’ them (he still doesn’t know how you’re supposed to kill something that’s already dead), just incapacitating them. He flashes the knives at limbs. He cuts below knees, into necks, across shoulder blades, hacking through muscle, gristle and tendons... anything to slow them down and stop them fighting. He’s gradually becoming covered in the same foul brown soup as always – a mix of blood, bile, shit and decay. He tries not to think about it, though the stench makes it impossible not to. The road is littered with body parts now, covered in gore, and that just makes his mission so much harder. He has to divide his attention equally between his attackers, the carnage all around him, and his objective. And at the same time, he has to do everything he can to stop himself from panicking. It’s hard not to scream out in horror or disgust. It’s equally hard not to just stop and give up. It hurts. It fucking hurts. It all takes too much effort, but he knows he has to keep fighting because there are more important things at stake than him. This isn’t me, he thinks as he shoves a blade between the eyes of a corpse of similar height and build to himself. How long can I keep doing this?

But he has to. He doesn’t have any choice.

Checkpoint.

A staircase. They struggle with stairs. They’re like Daleks in Dr Who. Remember them? Remember TV? They can fall down steps okay, but they can’t easily get up. Can’t control themselves well enough to climb. The sudden height advantage lets him stop for a second and catch his breath again. To focus.

He looks back down the street he’s just run along, and he’s impressed and appalled by what he’s done in equal measure. It’s a fucking bloodbath.

Okay. Nearly there. Last push.

He can see the building he’s been aiming for. Back down to ground level, then straight across at the crossroads and he’s pretty much there. Getting to it shouldn’t be a problem, nor should getting inside. He’s worried about what he’ll find once he gets in there, but he’s probably already had to deal with much worse. Some of the things he had to do during those first few days and weeks... to the bodies of the people he knew, and the girl he’d loved...

You can cry yourself to sleep again when you get back, he thinks. Get this done first.

The building he’s heading for is tall and narrow. From memory, he wants the second floor, maybe the third. He hopes he can find what he needs there, he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he can’t. He can see that the door is open slightly, but he hopes it’s shut enough to have kept the bulk of the dead out. If he gets in there and finds the place full of corpses, he’s going to have to look for somewhere else. He can’t go back empty handed. He won’t go back empty handed.

He runs down the steps, then sprints across the street, focused completely on reaching his objective. There are hardly any bodies here, save for a couple which immediately turn and walk towards him, desperately slow, but filled with unstoppable intent. He flashes his right-hand blade at the nearest of them, slicing open its gas-filled gut, but he keeps running, desperate to get inside as quickly as is humanly possible because he knows the more of them that see him now, the larger the welcoming committee he’ll have to deal with when he emerges from the building later. In some ways that’d be worse – to get what he needs, then be unable to deliver it. That’d kill him.

Three more, but he runs past them so fast they haven’t even realised he’s there before he’s gone. They look around uselessly, trying to track the sudden blur of movement with tired, empty eyes. And then he’s at the door of the shop. It’s wedged open by a dead woman’s head, and in spite of all his training and all he’s seen and done, the crushed skull and broken, bloodied nose makes him feel nauseous. He screws up his face in disgust as he picks up the corpse and hurls it outside. The door swings slowly shut and he blocks it with a display rack as the first few bodies slam against the glass. Their noise is enough to attract more. He needs to get out of sight, fast. He goes deeper into the dark building and climbs the stairs.

Straight up to the second floor. It’s deathly quiet in here, and the space is filled with shadows. The shelves make it difficult to see anything much. He checks the dust-covered signs. This is it. His heart sinks when he detects movement nearby. There’s at least one of them up here with him, maybe more. He stands his ground and waits for it to come to him this time, tapping the tip of his blade on the frame of a metal trolley to make a little noise and make the creature move faster. It lumbers into the light and, once again, he’s doing all he can now not to look at the person this thing used to be. Much shorter than him, overweight, long dark hair falling in greasy curls around its yellowed jowls, it used to be a teenage girl. Its bulging eyes and black, gaping mouth give the impression of madness, though he knows it’s incapable of anything other than the most rudimentary of controlling thoughts. Its tongue rolls sickeningly around its swollen lips, looking bizarrely like it’s puckering up to kiss him. He used to get a lot of attention from girls this age. It was part of the job, he thinks. It was because he cared. Because he made them feel better.

The body of the horrific thing in front of him has ballooned with the juices and gases produced by decay. She’s still wearing a dark blue store uniform polo shirt, but it’s too tight now, and he can’t see where her breasts end and her gut begins. She has a badge pinned to her top. It says ‘My name’s Joanne, how can I help you?’, and he thinks sorry, Joanne, there’s nothing you can do. I think it’s my turn to help you now...

She comes at him with arms outstretched, a classic pose, he thinks, and he slices across the top of her head like a hard-boiled egg. She stops – looks hurt – then drops to her knees, dead eyes still fixed on him. She falls forward, face-plant, and the liquefying contents of her open skull spill out over his feet. He jumps back, straight into a wall of shelves, and the noise startles him. He holds completely still, listening to the rest of the building. Some movement on another floor, nothing else on level two.

He’s clear. Time to get to work.

He slips the rucksack off his shoulder as he paces the floor, working through the department, looking for the right section. And when he reaches it, he fills the bag.

***

Made it back. Thank fuck for that. It’ll be a while now before he needs to go out again. The relief is immense.

Still on the ground floor, he peels off his blood, gore and sweat-soaked clothes and disposes of most of them. The trainers and socks he can re-use. A couple of the undershirts should be okay after a quick rinse with rainwater. The rest he’ll chuck away.

He dresses quickly, keen to get back upstairs. He’s hungry, and he wants to see if she’s okay. He puts on his other uniform, his old uniform, wishing it was cleaner, but knowing it’ll have to do. It feels comfortable; as reassuring for him as it is for her. He picks up the rucksack and begins the slow climb up to the top floor.

More tired now than ever, soaked with sweat again, he stops off in the small kitchen and turns on the gas ring to heat dinner. Then he goes onto the ward. ‘Hey, Jen, you okay?’

She looks up, and grins that toothy grin. ‘You took your time.’

‘Sorry about that. It was busy out there today,’ he tells her.

‘Did you get anything?’

‘I got loads.’

He empties the rucksack onto the end of the bed. Jenny grabs at the books with eyes like saucers. ‘Oh wow, I really wanted to read this one!’

‘Well now you can.’

‘Thank you!’

‘My pleasure. You start reading, I’ll get dinner sorted.’

He watches her, and all the effort of the last hour is rewarded. Jenny is eleven, but she won’t make twelve. She’s terminal, doesn’t have long, and there’s no medicine that can help her, save for some pain relief when things get really bad. The best thing he can do – the only thing – is keep her busy and keep her shielded from the hell outside until her time comes. He’s the last nurse left in this hospital, and she’s his final patient, and as long as she needs him, he’ll stay on duty.

***

BIOGRAPHY

David Moody has an unhealthy fascination with the end of the world. ‘People tend to just float along on the day-to-day and assume everything’s always going to stay the same,’ he says, ‘but that’s not the case. Sooner or later something’s going to happen to screw everything up. Whether it’s a plague epidemic, an asteroid hitting the planet, climate change or the meltdown of the global economy, something’s going to get us eventually!’

Moody grew up on a diet of horror movies and post-apocalyptic fiction. After reading John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids and H G Wells’ War of the Worlds when he was far too young and watching the original Night of the Living Dead in the middle of the night during an epic thunderstorm, he was hooked. ‘It was the power of those stories which really got to me, the way that events outside the control of any authority might one day impact on absolutely everyone.’

After leaving school and ending up working in a high street bank (enough to make anyone contemplate Armageddon on a regular basis), Moody decided he wanted to make the kind of films he spent so much time watching. Unfortunately, with no relevant training or expertise, it was never going to be easy (we’re talking pre-Internet, pre-PC and smartphone days here), so he looked for an alternative route and found one. ‘I’d always enjoyed writing, and I knew I could string words together and make them entertaining, so putting the stories I’d wanted to film into novel form was a logical solution.’

Within six months he’d written Straight to You which was published by a small UK publisher in 1996. Sales figures were microscopic, but Moody immediately started work on several other books.

The unexpected arrival of a family and all the associated trappings (no time, no money, mortgage etc.) kept Moody away from writing for a while. By the time his next book Autumn was finished in 2001, the Internet had begun to change the way information and media was being shared and he saw an opportunity. ‘I figured I had two choices,’ he explains. ‘I could either try and sell the novel to a publisher and hope for more success than last time, or I could resign myself to the fact I probably wasn’t going to sell thousands of books and do something different. I decided to give the book away for free and use it to build up a readership.’

Autumn became an on-line phenomenon, racking up more than half a million downloads and spawning a series of sequels. In 2005 Moody formed Infected Books – his own publishing house through which he independently published his books as paperbacks and eBooks. ‘I used to hate the term ‘self-published’… it conjures up images of awful books which really shouldn’t be published. The reality is that lots of authors who could get their books ‘traditionally’ released, now instead choose to retain control and publish their books themselves. The availability of print on demand technology and the increasing popularity of eBooks makes it possible for any writer to get their work onto the shelves of bookstores and online retailers.’

Moody sold tens of thousands of his ‘Infected Books’ and went on to publish a novel called Hater in July 2006. Within three months of its release he’d had contact with a major US production company who were interested in acquiring the film rights. A deal was done, and the rights were sold to Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth) and producer Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad). Within months of the Hater deal, the film rights to the first Autumn novel were sold to Renegade Motion Pictures in Canada. Their film, starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine, is available on DVD around the world.

‘I’ve created a monster,’ Moody said in an open letter to his readers in late 2007. And he had. The success of Infected Books was beginning to cause problems: the running of the business was taking up an ever-increasing amount of time. ‘It meant that I didn’t have enough time to write, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that for a writer, that’s not good!’

In November 2007, Moody sold Hater and its two planned sequels to Thomas Dunne Books, a division of St Martin’s Press in the US. Subsidiary rights were subsequently sold to the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy, Russia and many other countries. In the summer of 2008, Thomas Dunne Books acquired the Autumn series and Moody mothballed Infected Books.

‘I’d been leading a bizarre double-life for years,’ he says. ‘I’ve literally had Hollywood producers on the phone while I’ve been standing in the living room trying to get the kids to bed and stop the dog barking! Now I’m able to write full time and I’ve been given an incredible opportunity to get my books out to a vastly increased audience with the powerful and professional support of some of the most important publishers and filmmakers working in the fields of horror, fantasy and science-fiction today.’

In July 2012, with his immediate contractual obligations complete, Moody returned to his independent roots, publishing a new edition of an earlier novel – Trust – through Infected Books. ‘I’ve been fortunate to have been published traditionally in a number of different countries, and I’ve sold more books than I ever dared dream. But I still get asked constantly about my self-publishing days, and I’ve often found myself wondering what would happen if I did it again today. The marketplace has changed so dramatically over the years and has grown so much… I thought it was time for an experiment!’

These days Moody straddles the mainstream with one foot in both the indie and corporate camps. He recently returned to the world of Hater with the release of a second trilogy and a return to Autumn is on the horizon. In the meantime, the long-gestating movie adaptation of Hater remains in development.

THE BOOKS

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HATER

“A head-spinning thrill ride, a cautionary tale about the most salient emotion of the 21st century... HATER will haunt you long after you read the last page...” ― GUILLERMO DEL TORO (director of PAN’S LABYRINTH, THE SHAPE OF WATER)

￼

By the end of today you could be dead. By the end of today you could be a killer. Attack first, ask questions later ... but the answer might not be what you expect ...

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

DOG BLOOD

“If Hater gives you nightmares, Dog Blood will rewire your brain.” ―Bookreporter.com

￼

The world has suffered a catastrophe of unknown cause, dividing humankind into two: the Haters and the Unchanged. Each group believes the other to be the enemy; each group is fighting for survival. Only by working together can the enemy - whoever that enemy is - be defeated. There are no other choices.

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

THEM OR US

“Puts most post-apocalyptic novels to shame by facing a reality not commonly dealt with.” ―SFSignal

￼

Danny McCoyne finds himself at the very centre of a pivotal confrontation. The outcome will have repercussions on the future of everyone who is still alive. It's down to him alone: will it be Them, or Us?

Print | eBooks | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD BY MORNING

"Moody really knows how to write creeping, claustrophobic terror, effectively sneaking up on his readers and, finally, scaring the life out of them. Top-drawer horror." ―Booklist (starred review)

￼

David Moody returns to the world of his Hater trilogy with a new fast-paced, and wonderfully dark story about humanity’s fight for survival in the face of the impending apocalypse. The fewer left alive, the higher the stakes. Kill the others, before one of them kills you.

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

ALL ROADS END HERE

“The magnitude of the utter desperation painted in blood across its pages is like no other. Trust me, I don’t say this lightly, but the ‘Hater’ series seems to keep getting better and better.”—DLS Reviews (10/10)

￼

It’s taken Matthew Dunne almost three months to get home. Never more than a few meters from the Haters at any time, every single step has been fraught with danger. But he’s made it. He’s always done his best to avoid trouble, but sometimes it can’t be helped. The shit’s about to hit the fan, and this time Matt’s right at the epicentre.

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

CHOKEHOLD

“Desolate and relentless, no one is safe here. David Moody has put together a completely satisfactory end to this trilogy.” —Ain’t it Cool News

￼A close up of a sign Description automatically generated

A series of nuclear strikes has left huge swathes of the country uninhabitable. It’s a level playing field now: both Hater and Unchanged alike have to fight to stay alive. Both armies are ready to fight to the death, each of their leaders hell-bent on victory. Their tactics are uniformly simple: strike first, get the enemy in a chokehold, then strangle the life out of them.

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN

“The best survival horror since Richard Matheson’s I am Legend” —Wayne Simmons, author of FLU and PLASTIC JESUS

￼

After 99% of the population of the planet is killed in less than 24 hours, for the very few who have managed to stay alive, things are about to get much worse...

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN: THE CITY

“Moody is a master of the human condition... a must read for any post-apocalyptic fan.” —2 Book Lovers Reviews

￼

A disease of unimaginable ferocity has torn across the face of the planet leaving billions dead. A group of survivors shelter in the remains of a devastated city, hiding in terror as the full effects of the horrific infection start to become clear. The appearance of a company of soldiers again threatens the survivors' fragile existence. Do they bring hope, help and answers, or more pain, fear and suffering?

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN: PURIFICATION

“Not for the gore-hounds who can't think past a pile of entrails, but the rest of the readers in the world (including the legion of zombie fans with working brains), this is a perfect next chapter in the wonderful AUTUMN series. Landmark.” —Jonathan Maberry

￼

Trapped between the military and the dead, the survivors carve out a fragile and uncertain existence. In a moment of madness their safety and security is jeopardised. All hope is gone, but in the rotting shadows of the past, they find the key to what remains of their future.

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN: DISINTEGRATION

“Moody has succeeded in not just driving forward the thread of the series but expanding his Autumn universe in admirable fashion.” —Andy Erupts

￼

A series of horrific events force two radically different groups of survivors together. Backed into a corner and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of corpses, their final battle with the dead – and each other – is about to begin.

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN: AFTERMATH

“As demonstrated throughout his previous novels, readers should crown Moody king of the zombie horror novel, and his final book in the Autumn series adds a much-deserved jewel to his crown.” —Booklist

￼

It's been almost one hundred days since a killer disease wiped out 99% of the population. Three months since the dead reanimated. Survivors are few and far between. They are the last of the living. In the aftermath of the disease, will the last survivors destroy each other, or will the dead destroy them all?

Print | eBook | Indie |Goodreads

AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

“Takes the genre in a fascinating new direction. If John Wyndham was alive and writing zombie novels, they'd read like this” —Jonathan Maberry

￼

Mankind is all but dead and only a handful of frightened individuals remain. These people have survived through chance, not skill, and they are a desperate bunch. Part-companion, part-guidebook and part-sequel, AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION follows the stories of these desperate survivors through their final dark days.

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN: DAWN

Book 1 of the London Trilogy

"David Moody's AUTUMN: DAWN breathes new life into my favourite undead series." --Craig DiLouie, author of THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK

￼

WELCOME TO LONDON - population seven million • 99.9% of them dead • the survival of the rest balanced on a knife-edge.

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN: INFERNO

Book 2 of the London Trilogy

￼

There are now more than three hundred people grouped together on the banks of the Thames in the shadows of the Tower of London. On one side, the river. In all other directions, nothing but the dead.

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

AUTUMN: EXODUS

Book 3 of the London Trilogy

￼

To stand any chance of a future, the group will have to trek through the harshest of winters, across a land ruled by the living dead.

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

STRAIGHT TO YOU

"Straight to You deserves to be ranked alongside such classics as The Stand and Swan Song." —Ginger Nuts of Horror

￼

The sun is dying. The temperature around the world is rising by the hour. At this rate the planet will soon become uninhabitable; all life extinguished. It might be weeks, it might be days... we may only have hours remaining. Steven Johnson's wife is hundreds of miles away and all that matters is reaching her before the end. He has to act now, no time to stop and think. Every second is precious. Tomorrow is too late.

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

TRUST

"Trust is a slow-burner and all the richer for it. It's an outstanding novel, delivers in more ways than one, and is worthy of a place on the discerning fan's bookshelf. 10/10" —Starburst Magazine

￼

The most important event in human history takes place in the middle of nowhere. Perspectives are altered. Perceptions are changed. Nothing will ever be the same again. Is this a moment of deliverance for the human race, or the beginning of its end? Tom Winter thinks he knows, but if he's right, then seven billion other people are wrong.

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

STRANGERS

“Strangers is easily Moody’s best work to date, a dark, disturbing and visceral book that gives him a legitimate claim to the title of Britain’s Best Living Horror Author.” —This is Horror

￼

A spate of brutal murders occur in and around the small town of Thussock. The bodies of the dead - savagely mutilated, unspeakably defiled - are piling up with terrifying speed. There are no obvious connections between the victims, but the killings only began when Scott Griffiths and his family arrived in Thussock...

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie | Goodreads

LAST OF THE LIVING

INCLUDES “THE COST OF LIVING” & “ISOLATION”

￼

LAST OF THE LIVING is a collection of novellas and short stories focusing on those who’ve survived the unthinkable. Some thrive while others disintegrate; some fight while others capitulate. But no matter how each individual survivor reacts, one thing is certain: nothing will ever be the same again.

Print | eBook | Audio | Indie |Goodreads

THE FRONT: RED DEVILS

“brilliant action scenes, a fantastic setting and atmosphere, and an exciting plot that ratchets up the tension until the last few scenes.” —SciFi and Fantasy Reviewer

￼

The German stranglehold on Bastogne has been released, only for the living dead to rise and take their place. A crack team is dispatched to an ominously silent concentration camp at Polonezköy, Poland, where the outbreak began, to find a way to halt the undead advance. The fate of the world rests on the shoulders of just a handful of men.

Print | eBook |Audio | Goodreads

THE LAST BIG THING

“a deeply impressive and highly accomplished set of short story Horror fiction… firmly cements Moody’s reputation as one of the masters of British Horror writing.” —The SciFi and Fantasy Reviewer

￼A close up of a sign Description automatically generated

We sit in our own little bubbles, watching the rest of the world go by. We think ‘it’ll never happen to me’ but guess what? At some point it probably will. In the spirit of The Twilight Zone and Tales of the Unexpected, cult author David Moody presents eleven stories about life, death and everything in between (and after).

Print | eBook | Indie | Goodreads

MOVIES

HATER

Currently in development.

AUTUMN

￼

Starring Dexter Fletcher as Michael, Dickon Tolson as Carl

and David Carradine as Philip

Written and directed by Steven Rumbelow

Renegade Motion Pictures 2008

Read my thoughts on the film here.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

These random responses are taken from some of the many interviews I’ve done over the years. You can find a comprehensive list of interviews here.

Want to know what books and films inspire me? Check out this list of recommendations.

Autumn is a zombie novel that doesn’t have the usual “tropes,” of flesh eating/cannibalism and the like, yet it is still just as terrifying, why did you decide to go the opposite route with the greatest of all monsters?

I’ve always been a huge zombie geek, but there were aspects of the traditional mythos of the genre which I didn’t understand. I know these are moot points (we’re talking about the reanimation of dead bodies here!) but I’ve never been able to understand why the living dead needed to eat? You never saw them doing anything else like that… they didn’t have to drink, use the toilet, sleep… so why do they need to eat? I decided to take a different approach with Autumn to try and make the story a little more plausible (again, a bit difficult when we’re talking about the living dead!). After making that decision, I also started to look at some of the other zombie clichés and trying to avoid them. There’s a scene in almost every zombie book or film when someone gets bitten and then hides the wound until the least opportune moment when they ‘change’ and then bite and infect almost everyone else. In Autumn, people are either dead or they’re immune by the end of the first chapter, so those situations were removed from the equation. That allowed the story to develop differently. Finally, the zombies in most stories are the same at the end as they were at the beginning (although maybe a little more decayed!). In Autumn, the living dead change as the series progresses. They’re initially dumb, lumbering hulks of flesh, but, throughout the books, their mental strength slowly returns as their bodies continue to decay. I think it makes the dead more interesting as characters – the threat they present is increasing constantly.

Are you more classic horror orientated or do you enjoy modern horror?

I think that depends on your definition of horror. I’m very much a fan of realism in horror – I’m not one for ghosts and demons etc. I think it boils down to the fact that, to my mind, people are the source of 99.9% of the horror in the world today. My stories are about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations, and the interest comes from seeing how they deal with everything that’s thrown at them. I’ll watch and read anything but, I have to say, a lot of modern horror movies turn me straight off. A succession of jump scares does not make an involving story!

If you found yourself in the Hater world, how long would you survive?

Probably not as long as I’d like to think I would! My end of the world survival scenario is very boring, and definitely wouldn’t make a good book or film. It goes like this: 1. check what everyone else is doing, 2. do the opposite, 3. find somewhere quiet to hide for 6 – 12 months until it’s all blown over!

You’ve talked about the difference in lead times between indie publishers and traditional publishers. You straddle the line between the two. What other major differences are there?

The main difference is control. With independent publishing, you have complete control – complete autonomy if you want it. With mainstream publishing, you’re a cog in a much larger machine. That can be both a blessing and curse. I think the other difference is marketing and bookstore representation. Indie publishers are severely limited in this regard, whereas traditionally published books are more likely to end up in bricks and mortar bookstores. As a hybrid author, I’ve historically benefitted from that. My traditional releases have been given large amounts of publicity by the publisher, and my indie releases have benefitted as a result.

Your second book, Autumn, was a big hit with over half a million downloads – how did you achieve such a phenomenal download rate with this book, and have you managed to replicate it since?

Luck! I’ll be honest, there was an element of good fortune and ‘right place, right time’ involved, but I worked damn hard to get those downloads. You had to back then (we’re talking 2001 – 2005) because the eBook market was virtually non-existent. At the beginning it was a case of building a mailing list and readership – which I did by serializing the book online – and literally mailing Word and PDF documents out to people who were interested. Back then, giving a book away for free was pretty much unheard of, and I benefited from that. In answer to your second question, I haven’t tried to replicate the success of Autumn in the same way, primarily because the market’s changed beyond all recognition.

What inspired you to write your first book?

Frustration! When I left school (a long, long time ago now) I wanted to be a film director. Unfortunately, back then it was incredibly difficult to get into any form of movie making at all. The technology just wasn’t there, and university courses were few and far between. I did save up and buy a video camera, but it was a damn heavy brick-type thing that sat on my shoulder, and the quality was awful. I ended up working in a bank - about as far from my intended vocation as I could get! But the stories I had planned for films just wouldn’t go away. I began to write screenplays, but that was’t something that originally came naturally to me. I’d always had a flair for writing, so the logical solution was to try and tell those same stories as novels. After a few false starts, I set myself a number of ground rules: 1. plan the outline in advance, 2. write at least a page a day, and 3. don’t go back and re-read or edit until a draft was complete. I started on 1st January 1994 (I remember the date clearly). By the end of May that year my debut novel, Straight to You, was finished.

What is it that fascinates you so much about the idea of the apocalypse?

I think there are a number of reasons why I’m fascinated by the apocalypse. I believe a lot of it is due to growing up in the 1980’s, when the Cold War tensions between the USA and USSR seemed to be at their peak. It seemed possible – perhaps even probable – that in four minutes time we might all be vaporized as the superpowers indulged in a spot of mutually assured destruction! It’s easy to laugh about now, but as a teenager, it scared me witless. In fact, given the state of the world at the moment, it’s actually not that easy to laugh about it anymore... But I think the real reason I’m interested in the end of the world is down to the effect it has on normal people and their lives. I’m an avid people watcher (which I know makes me sound like a voyeur). I like watching how people react and interact, how they get on and how they don’t... Generally we all seem to surround ourselves with a bubble of bullshit – doing what we think we should do, behaving according to expected standards and morals etc. etc. At the end of the world, though, I think all of that would be stripped away and you’d see people for what they really are.

So should zombies run or shamble?

Shamble. No question. They’re dead!

What inspires and motivates you to write?

This sounds clichéd, but I have a head full of stories which I have to get out one way or another! I always wanted to be a director (still do, actually), and I fell into writing as a means of telling the stories I had no way of filming at the time. I also find it a cathartic and absorbing experience. I get the same enjoyment from writing as I do reading a good book or watching a film, but it’s far more intense because you’re in complete control of every aspect of the story. And my inspiration can come from anywhere – dreams, my family, something on the news, watching a movie… I keep an ongoing folder of ideas. Usually it’s the end of stories which come to me first, and I then work my way back to the start.

Who do you admire in the horror world?

I think the one person who’s had the biggest impact on me in terms of horror is David Cronenberg. He’s been responsible for a vast number of incredibly original horror stories over the years. He has a unique talent for making stories which are grotesque, startling and disturbing, but at the same time deeply emotional and affecting. Shivers, Rabid, Videodrome, Scanners, The Fly, Dead Ringers to name but a few… phenomenal.

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