Joe and Jack hung around aimlessly at the top of the metal stairway. Everyone else had gone off to get changed for the party, but they didn't feel the need. Never ones for dressing up, or even changing their clothes too often, particularly in Joe's case, they didn't see much point in getting made up. It was only for the same group they saw day in, day out anyway. In an awkward silence they leaned on the hand rail of the crusting, warty metal stairway that was many things – brown, green, grey, orange, nicotine yellow, but no longer white.
Impulsively, Jack clambered up on the hand rail and made the short jump onto the roof of the next house, which came level with the top of the stairs. Joe followed with a hefty thud and the pair of them sat on the roof, legs on either side of the ridge.
They glumly surveyed their home which they dubbed The Castle. It was formed of a trapezoid shape of terraced houses around the block with an inner 'courtyard' made from an organic sprawl of patchwork gardens, paths, stone walls and wooden fences. A few driveways punctuated these outer walls, which the friends had barricaded shut over time with salvaged scrap and furniture.
There was the main road, Church Street, on one side of the block, and on their right was a quiet back road that crumbled in disuse and a scruffy shamble of allotments before a steep drop down a railway embankment. The tracks down in the gulley reached off to the distance of the Yorkshire countryside and separated the two districts of Paddock and Crosland Moor which was spread over the far side of the valley.
All was silent and dull as it ever was, and the pair of them were at a loss for what to do.
'Fancy a quick game of Empire?' asked Jack.
'No, there's nothing quick about it. Our last match lasted three days,' replied Joe. The game they'd invented and refined through many days and nights as they smoked the Herb combined chess pieces, playing cards, dice, coins, poker chips and tarot cards. Sometimes the game escalated, with them expanding new territories so far that the playing field spilled off the table top on to nearby chairs and the floor, where the frontline reached a deadlocked, unwinnable stalemate after days' worth of playing.
'Fancy a trip down to the off-licence then?' Jack suggested.
'Yeah, can do.' Joe forced himself to smile.
They made sure no one was watching then went down to a garden shed. In the musty gloom a congregation of motorcycle suits hung off pegs, or were scattered across the floor. Heaps of boots, helmets and gloves were also collected, grim and pungent in the dark, decorated in the personalised colours and patterns of their owners. Various accessories such as hammers and mallets, a length of metal piping or a fire poker were collected in separate buckets, grimy and uncleaned in the friends' armoury.
'We're not going to bother with suits, are we?' said Joe.
'Nah, we've just got to be sly,' Jack said, doing his best to sound chipper. They picked a hammer that felt reassuring, or at least was not too disgusting.
'Right, pretend to not be getting up to any irregular level of getting up to no good,' said Jack as they concealed their weapons. The two of them took a tour around the winding paths of the gardens until they came to a barricade along the rear side of The Castle which led to the scruffy allotments. Joe removed a loose plank from the bottom and pulled aside a set of tin cans on a string, careful not to let them knock together. He and Jack then slid under the ramshackle mass that combined a corrugated iron sheet, a door and a dinner table on to the other side.
'I prefer the old barriers, like the first one we ever made,' said Joe as he hauled himself out to the other side. 'That one on the main road was an absolute beast and will never be budged for the rest of time. Not even if the Plebs learned to drive a tank.'
'Yes, but, it's a bit tricky because we could never dismantle it even if we wanted, and while it could keep them lot out it could also trap us in. And it took forever to build and because it was such a huge mess someone could climb over it,' Jack reasoned.
'I don't know, it was really badass. I felt safer with it there and it was really fun to make,' replied Joe as they set off along the back road. 'I put my heart and soul into that one and made all signs that said 'PISS OFF NO ONE'S HOME' or 'FUCK OFF KEEP OUT'. This one just looks like scruffy shit.'
'Well, that's kind of the point. It's supposed to look like a heap of rubbish, an unlit bonfire; a fly-tip or something. That's why we nailed plastic bags and old clothes and curtains to it and so on. It's supposed to blend in,' said Jack.
'But what's the point of camouflaging the barriers?' Joe complained. 'I wanted to decorate them like the first one. I had a great design for a fist, but with, like, its middle finger up. Right in the middle.'
'I know, I don't get it, really. Iit's not like there'll be any people around to see it, and even if they did, I thought we wanted someone to rescue us, or at least help us until we all got saved,' Jack replied.
'When they said they wanted it camouflaged I splashed green, brown and black paint all over one barricade when we were done, you know, good old camo colours, and I was going to put a big stencil over it, in the shape of… well… a giant fist with its middle finger up, then chuck a load of red paint over it to fill the shape in, only I forgot to put on the stencil first. Matt went ballistic,' Joe reminisced.
'I remember.'
'And I said, well those are camouflage colours, aren't they? Matt made me put a whole new facade on it by myself. I mean, who would see it anyway? The Plebs can't tell, and we want to be found by other people. It makes no sense.'
'Good old, stupid dead people,' Jack said. 'They don't have the wit to notice something incongruous like a barricade made of doors, tables and Auntie Mabel's tea chest. Hmm, who might have put such a thing there, and for what purpose? is the thing a canny young man such as yourself may wonder, but not them.
'I think the barricades don't have to be strong as long as they can't actually see you through them, because to them any solid object is an impassable barrier, and as long as they don't think there's dinner on the other side they just stroll on by. For that I am truly grateful.'
'Imagine how bad it would be if they all got smart,' said Joe, as they peeked on to the main road before carrying on, voices lowered. 'Perhaps if they all founded "Zombie High" and took classes to find their next well-baked studenty meal…'
'Go on…' said Jack, grinning widely.
'"I, good sir, got myself a GCSE in woodwork deconstruction and smelling bad, and an A level in common sense." Yes, they would deduce where we live and come round with a big chuffing can opener so they could get in. The A-grade students would quote goddamn Oscar Wilde and bring cutlery. '
'That would be awesome.'
'How about we try one of these shops?' Joe asked.
'We can't,' said Jack. 'We went in there a couple of days back. The fridges and freezers are rotten. The stink was so bad that we had to take a breath, dash in, snatch what we could and dash out again. I know just the place though, at the top of the road.'
The top of Church Street concluded in a small roundabout. The roads from there diverged in several directions and at the peak of the hill there was a tiny village green. It wasn't so much a village green as a misshapen chunk of badly planned dead space that could only be used to grow grass. A small off-licence was on the other side, which smelt faintly of spoilt milk from a freezer full of melted ice cream.
'Same rules as before?' Jack proposed.
The two of them ran and jostled inside to the forbidden space behind the shop counter, where they scanned the rows of bottles of spirits on the shelves.
This one!' Joe shouted, and he pointed to a bottle on the top and traced a vertical line down with his finger. 'That one!' said Jack, pointing to another bottle and its row downward.
Jack looked at Joe's column and read aloud: 'Amaretto, Cointreau, rum, Campari, Baileys, ugh – Ouzo? Then gin. Oh, that's gonna be grim.'
'It's a sweet start, but… actually, yeah, the Campari–Baileys combo looks pretty heinous. I really hate gin but… oh my God. Campari, Baileys, then Ouzo, then gin. That's bad. That's really bad. I didn't think this one through. I kind of made my mind up as soon as I saw the first ones. Can I change it?' Joe asked.
'You know you can't,' said Jack.
'Man, I'm going to regret this,' Joe said. 'Anyway, let's see what you've got. Brandy, vodka, port, dirty old man whisky, Kirsch, Aftershock and more vodka? That's terrible! Why did you pick that one?'
'Because I'm hardcore!' said Jack, laughing. 'It'll be rough, but the flavours shouldn't clash too much. Considering. Nice sweet little break with the Kirsch in the middle.'
They loosened the caps on their row of bottles.
'You ready?'
'Go!'
The two friends grabbed the top bottles and upended a mouthful before they slammed them back, grimaced and grabbed the next. Jack steadily took the lead as they gulped, gurned and sometimes choked their way down their line of spirits and reached the finish a couple of bottles ahead of Joe.
'The champion!' Jack cheered and thumped his chest. He gulped, pulled a face and sucked air through his teeth. Joe downed his last excruciating shot then ran outside, where he dropped to his hands and knees on the green. Strings of phlegm ran from Joe's face paint. It had lion-like chops and whiskers with an outer mane of swirling green and blue. The navy circles around his eyes he wore often made him look less like a lion and more like a dopey panda.
'I'm alright. I'll be okay,' he said. 'Thought for sure I was gonna chunder. I'll beat you one d—' Joe panted and fought back a horrible wave in his belly. '…One day. Urghh. But not today,' he said. 'Literally, I'm literally… literally…'
'Literally?'
'Yeah,' Joe said, forgetting what he was going to say.
Eventually Joe got up and pulled his friend towards him. Jack's smaller body submitted to the hug and he let himself be squashed into his friend's cushiony side. Jack was a bit uncomfortable at being grabbed in that hug so tightly, but nevertheless he was happily half-smothered in that damp, strong grip. He beamed the wide, toothy grin that he would so often do. It creased the edges of his face paint, which was chequered like a harlequin.
The two of them supported each other as they meandered drunkenly back to the quiet little road by the allotments, chuckling, burbling and shushing each other along the way.
They were outside the barricade when they heard two banging noises echoing over on the far side of the valley, past the railway embankment. They spun round to look. There was a distant squeal of car tyres and they saw a flash of sunlight from a car window as it sped out of sight.
'Whoa, I didn't know there was anyone out there,' said Joe.
'Me neither,' Jack said. They both shielded their eyes and squinted over at the far slopes but everything was still and silent again among the abandoned suburbs.
A sense of loneliness cut through the fun of their silly game. The excitement was gone.
'It makes you realise how alone we are out here,' Joe said, the joviality gone from a moment before. 'I mean, there's everyone in the group but I haven't seen anyone else for… so long. I don't know.'
'No one has,' said Jack. 'Do you suppose it's safe to be over there? I mean, we only assume it's safe to be here because, well, we are still here, you know… alive… and stuff. When it all happened I think I saw a huge column of smoke to the north, I suppose over Brighouse or Halifax, and another east towards Dewsbury.'
'They were mushroom clouds,' said Joe. 'One over that way, that way, and over that way. Them was nukes, boi.'
'No, no, they weren't. I'm pretty sure it was just ordinary smoke to the north, and there was only one other cloud in the east. It was just that the wind took it,' said Jack. 'It was biological or chemical weapons that did for everyone.'
'Look, let's not start all that again,' said Joe, as they came up to their barrier and had to lower their voices. 'It was one hell of a party, though. I can't believe we were so high we missed it all, whatever it was.'
'Yeah, it was the "Apocalypse Party", the party that ended the world!' Jack said, laughing.
'No, don't say that. There must be loads of other people who lived through it like us. We'll find where everyone went. Maybe they'll find us, the army, the police, rescue services, whatever. Maybe they'll come by and find us any day now.'
There was a moment of quiet as they kept looking.
'I miss my girlfriend,' Joe said. 'And my family. I hope they're okay.'
Jack murmured something but didn't share Joe's sentiments. 'I don't think we should tell anyone what we saw just now. They'll know we've been out.'
Yeah, let's not,' said Joe. 'How long have we been, anyway?'
'Who knows? Say, do you reckon we have enough time for another race?'
'Go on then, round two. For Ryan.'
'For Ryan.'
The two friends ran back up to the off-licence.