If before had been a slump and a state of depression, it didn't match the feeling of alienation and desolation among the group now. People split off in their fragmented groups more than ever.
Joe had no one else to be with but Jack, and they played another game of Empire for lack of anything else to do. Jack, having been humbled at the funeral, got involved with the escapism of the game, but Joe wasn't pleased to be stuck around him, his most recent humiliation too fresh in memory. Jack was socially toxic.
Jack frowned at the gaming table and agonised over his next move as he had done for far too long now. He thought he was really smart and good at games like this, but he lost as many games to Joe as he won, not counting the ones that ground out into stalemate or stagnation as they went on for far, far too long. He mostly lost in games like blackjack, not having the focus or presence of mind to count others' cards, and he never won at poker, but still, Joe thought he maintained an insufferable air of thinking himself devastatingly clever. You could tell, especially from the haughtiness and deliberation with which he talked to other people, and he never passed up an opportunity to use a long word if he could. Joe was getting sick of it. All Jack wanted to do was play games, prat around and consider himself some form of prodigy, somehow.
With his most recent moves after nearly three hours' play, Joe had bought more cards' worth of land, advanced his territory, expanded his market with two more diamonds to increase its output and paid enough in food and coin to train a bishop up to a rook in his castle.
Jack frowned some more at the playing area.
'It's your move!' Joe shouted.
'Is it?'
Jenny appeared at the door and had evidently been crying.
'You disgraced yourself at the burial by taking it upon yourself to try and show everyone how it should be done, then stormed off in a tantrum. You single-handedly nearly spoiled the whole thing by causing your little scene,' she accused Jack through her tears. 'You missed the funeral and lost the chance to pay your last respects to one of my best friends. How could you be so selfish and so uncaring of others?' Jenny slammed the door and the next one after that in her bedroom.
Joe couldn't defend him. The game was ruined.
Prior to this, Jenny had been spending some time with Nick. They went on a walk around the gardens, and they sneakily paid a visit to one of Andy's greenhouses, which he had neglected to lock, to have a look inside. After that, they crept out under a barrier to the allotments behind the Castle on the hill.
It was bright and chilly. The sun glowed a deep orange behind a wispy veil of clouds, the breeze was up, and it ruffled through their hair and tugged on the jersey that Jenny hugged close to her. It was dry and crisp and so pleasant to be outside the confines of the houses or the overly familiar mess of the gardens, with its deckchairs and empty bottles and cans.
The two of them admired the view over the train tracks down in their embankment, out over the fields, hedgerows and trees and clear across to the far valley where the leafy conurbs of Huddersfield were peaceful and still. Nick showed off by hurling rocks out as far as he could across the void and booted some allotment veg that he pulled up the same way too, which scattered a shower of dirt over them both as Jenny squealed and they laughed.
Nick broke into a garden shed and had a rummage round for anything useful. He explained why he thought various tools may or may not come in handy, such as spanners, saws, spades and mallets, and what in his experience he thought was good or bad about them.
Nick felt great. He kept Jenny close and protected her as the dark of the evening crept in. He made them stay outside long after she said she got nervous to show he wasn't afraid.
Back inside the Castle walls, he cruised around his territory in the gardens as he held Jenny by the hand and told her of his plan to knock through this wall or that one between the houses so people could pass freely right around the Castle wall's perimeter and make bridges across the gaps between the terraces over the driveways.
Anyway, this idyllic scene lasted until Sarah arrived. She came burning with fury and found Nick and Jenny arm in arm.
'You cheating bastard!' Sarah screamed at him as she pounded him with her fists. 'You never told me! You never told me you shagged this scrubber back at the bar!' Sarah yelled, punctuating each word with a slap at Nick and then a bodily shove towards Jenny. . 'Then you slept with me, you lying, cheating rat!' she screamed, and she grabbed a chunk of Nick's hair.
'Is this true?' Jenny screamed at him.
'Get off me! Alright, yeah that kind of happened. I never said I didn't sleep with anyone! You didn't ask!' Nick said, which incurred the wrath of both girls. Jenny landed stinging kicks to his leg and side. He tried to fend off blows from both Sarah and Jenny as he tried to restrain the two of them, who also traded slaps and shoves with each other.
'We aren't a couple! We weren't going out!' Nick protested. 'Why should I have to tell you?'
This was met by more mouthfuls of abuse and kicks to his shins and knees, a raking of nails and a clout to the ear.
They left him and went their separate ways, furious and tearful, Sarah to decry her rage to Katie and Emily, Jenny to go to Emma and Jane and vent on Jack as she passed. In one swift move, Nick had gone from being on top of the world, the alpha male he'd always wanted to be, to a social outcast, having estranged both girls and all their friends and lost the confidence of everyone else. It was to be a long, lonely evening for him.
It was near midnight when the friends gathered in a den for a get-together and night-time session. Matt was there, trying a new recipe to make flatbreads for the Balti and the other friends sat, played cards, talked loudly or watched him cook as they drank and smoked and he kept asking them not to breathe on what he was trying to make on his gas stove and in his wok.
Nick burst into the room and the door smashed against the wall as he booted a mostly empty can of Special Brew at those seated at the table. It hit Tom in the face and showered the rest of them with its sour, putrid rain.
They cried out in protest as they shielded themselves. Nick snatched a joint from someone's hand and took a swig from a bottle of vodka without even grimacing.
'Alright, playtime's over. Shut up and listen,' Nick bawled at them. 'We've been here far too long messing around. Nothing's happening. This has to change. You're just sitting around playing games, wasting time. We're sitting ducks right here. Today we got visited by someone, another survivor who knew of at least two other camps, and you idiots scared him off. You're all such a bunch of morons. I can't believe I'm stuck with you. You need to sort yourselves out right now.'
'Shut your face, Nick! No one wants to hear anything you have to say right now! Go to hell!' Sarah yelled back.
'You're all pathetic. Look at the state of you. You're content to just sit here and wait for the end. You just want to get drunk and high all the time, sit around playing endless rounds of cards, the same God-damn card game over and over again. You raid the shops for some leftovers to scrape by on and hope things will be okay. What a bunch of idiots I'm burdened with! If Ryan was here you would get it together to do something and we could get out of this mess,' Nick shouted.
'What's up with you and Ryan? He's gone. It's over,' Jenny shouted back.
'Don't talk shit about Ryan! He was ten times better than all of you! If he were here we would get this sorted because none of you lot have a bloody clue!' Nick screamed.
Jack felt the need to speak up. He was so sick of being overlooked that he decided he was going to stand up to Nick. Maybe then everyone would see that they were wrong about him. Before he knew it, he found himself rising up out of his seat and the words just came out of his mouth in a rare moment of bravado.
'Why do you think you get to talk to anyone like that? What gives you the right? The only one who's out of order here, Nick, is you. We've got good people and we're doing okay. All we need to do is stick to the original plan.'
'Oh shut up, Jack! You two clowns really are a pair of idiots,' said Sarah, looking over Jack and Joe in contempt.
'Me? What have I done? I didn't even say anything!' Joe complained.
'Joe's been here the whole time and done so much for the whole group, and he always helps out as part of the team…' Jack tried to defend him.
Nick continued laying into Jack. 'You're the worst one of all. Why are you even here anyway? No one likes you, creep. You always ruin things when you're around. You always make an ass of yourself, you feeble, drunken little clown. I'm pretty sure you tagged along and invited yourself here in the first place. And what was it you said to the old fella – oh, "we're the merry court of tricksters in our castle on the hill!" or some shit. What the hell's wrong with you?
The insults stung but Jack bravely held his ground. 'We stay here, make it safe and get rescued and we're going to do just fine. We have all we need materially, and the only thing we need as a group is some unity, a little care and compassion and a restructuring of the way we-'
'Oh my God, don't you start. We've heard enough of your little theories,' said Andy.
'Something about ditching all the females?' Jenny said scathingly.
'You're best to keep quiet on this one. You have least say here,' said Tom.
'If anyone's going to be dropped it's you. Tiny, stuck-up little idiot. Who invited you here anyway? You're the least popular person and would be the last to be picked on anyone's team,' Emma sneered.
'You think you're clever, but you're not. You think you're one of us, but you're fucking not. You think you know it all and could make it by yourself, but you can't. You reckon you're capable and could take on the Dead, but you're not.
'You think you're one of our friends, but you're fucking not. You think you're clever, but you're fucking not. You're tiny, you're weak, you dress like shit, you're socially retarded, you're ugly, you look like a frog, you've got a massive forehead, a big nose and no chin, you're an idiot and no one. Likes. You,' Jenny said, and she took a savage glee in reeling off Jack's insecurities with an encyclopaedic accuracy. People started laughing as Jack crumpled.
Joe glared at Jack as well now. 'Just stop talking, Jack. This isn't your argument. I really don't think you should be weighing in right now.'
'You humiliated yourself at Ryan's funeral as well. I've never seen anything so pathetic in my life. I can't believe you even started crying. Like a little baby,' Sarah said coldly, mockingly, to Jack, as she expertly twisted the dagger with a sneer of contempt reflected around the group.
Jack sat down in his chair. He wished he could fall lower, straight through the chair, the floor, the ground, so that the earth might just swallow him.
Well, that answered all his questions about what the others thought of him. Now he knew.
Yes, everything he suspected that was wrong with himself was true, and they all knew it. It was no secret. They did notice. Now he knew. Now he knew.
Jack felt like he crumbled down on the inside. He felt so small, so worthless, and he felt himself lose control against the burning tears of shame at his public castigation and how everyone had showed their true nature as they turned on him. He quickly got up to leave.
'Ohh! He's off again! He's off again!' Nick jeered in delight. He deliberately stood in the way so his shoulder barged into Jack as he tried to stride past him and knocked him against the doorway.
Jack fled out to the merciful dark of the night air. He blundered down the metal stairway and gripped the bannister so hard along the way that the blistered warts of rust ground into his fingers and palms. He landed at the bottom after he took another jolting step down onto the hard stone of the yard after he found the stairs had ended.
He picked himself up and escaped out along the garden paths to flee the burning light from the window upstairs and hide from sight.
The stinging words from the others reeled around his head. Over and over they played. 'You're wrong! They're wrong!' He ground his teeth at the stupidity and hypocrisy of them all. They never listened to anything he had to say. They always thought themselves above him and whatever he did.
'Typical! This is so typical of them, so wrapped up in their moronic, conceited, self-centred egotism that they never listen to what anyone else like me has to say. They're so self-involved and aggrandising with their own opinion they never lower themselves to heed anyone who isn't part of their little in-group, so obsessed as they are with their own little pecking order, a hierarchy with the biggest, crudest, loudest, most bullish morons at the top of it. They step all over anyone else who isn't as rude and stupid as they are. How highly they value themselves! And they push me out any time I offer a hand in friendship. They black my eye for it in return and repay it in contempt.'
'Life gives to those who have, takes from those who do not, and kicks them when they are down,' Jack said aloud to his audience, the stars and the moon, so silent, cold and unreachable. 'And what names it gives them, those it so abuses.'
All the things Jenny said stuck in his mind and replayed again, over and over. How could she say things like that, which hurt so much? She was the vilest trollop in the whole group and yet thought she was someone who could criticise him? How could she? How could she be so oblivious to her own faults? Did she lack even a primitive self-awareness to think she was in any position to say such things?
No, she must know. She must know how repulsive she is. She must have some vague idea in that low, little reptile brain of hers. What she said to him stung him so much, and he couldn't help but replay it in his mind over and over. He would remember it forever.
Maybe they were right. Maybe all those things were right about him. Maybe he really was an outcast and would never fit in with anyone? To be with each other and enjoy life with each other was something that came so easily to them and was denied to him. They always had their idiocy in common. Loads of things to talk about, none of it worthwhile saying.
He still had his old wallet in his pocket even after all this time. He felt the lump of it on his thigh, and with difficulty he prised it out with his numb, aching fingers, which were scratched up from the bannister. A flap of skin bent back and the bare flesh underneath nudged painfully into the rough seam of his trousers.
Jack ripped the wallet from his pocket. It had his keychain attached with the keys to his old student flat in the town centre and a LED torch with his name inscribed on it.
'What do I still have this for?' he mumbled aloud. He made the torch blink on and it illuminated the gardens in a ghostly luminescence.
He felt naked without his old wallet, he remembered. It had the keys to his old flat in town, which they could still use one day, and which might come in useful if they needed some place to stay, like a safe house in town.
All his valuables were still in there. He got a flashback of it all – his quilt, desk, computer, and his bass guitar, clothes on the chair and floor, scattered notes from uni work, glassware and dinner plates. Pieces from home. A little piece of home. How he missed it, he thought. It was a link to the past. Maybe that's why he kept the wallet.
'Goddamn it!' he snarled, and he ripped the keychain off the wallet then hurled the battered old thing straight over a nearby roof – ties to the past and all. To hell with the past and everything he used to be. He wanted to cut himself free of all of it, to be someone new, someone else, anyone else but the one he was stuck being. He wanted to be back home. He wanted to live a day when he didn't wish to be invisible, and to be somewhere, anywhere he could be free of other people and not be made to feel inferior to them.
They were wrong. They were all wrong, and they were going to be the death of them all, but not him. No, he would show them. The injustice screamed to be righted. He would show them all and they would be sorry.
He didn't need them, those idiots, those back-stabbers. They only dragged him down. He would go out. He would leave and make it on his own. From now on, it was just him on his own versus the world. Jack blundered through the quiet silence of the gardens. He crashed into a rose latticework. The thorns scratched his arm.
In the garden shed where they kept the gear, Jack put on his stinking, grime-spattered biker suit along with a helmet, gloves and boots. He grimaced as he choked down mouthfuls from a bottle of vodka that someone had carelessly left on a picnic table. The cap was on loose. Air had got to it and it tasted rank. He went to Andy's shed and stole a tin with tobacco and papers, and he ripped a handful of Bhuna leaves left to dry on the wall. He lit a stub he dug out from an ashtray and sucked back the dry smoke.
By the time he crawled under the barricade to the street he was burning with rage, Bhuna and the alcohol. I'm going to make it on my own and purge this entire town of all the Dead by myself if I have to, Jack swore. I don't need anyone. I can do it all by myself.
He held a sledgehammer with both hands and had a tool belt with two steel mallets in holsters, with the Bhuna tin zipped inside.
'I've got all I need,' he burbled to himself. 'Anything extra will just weigh me down. It will be just like I was on my own, just starting out after The End happened, with nothing, no safe house and no one else. I'm going to go out there and make my fortune and see what's out there in the world. A whole world, a dead world, all for me. A world to take revenge upon, to take what is mine, to own it and make it feel my anger. I'll be at peace, with no one else on earth except myself. I'll make it on my own.'
Jack's way was lit by the glow from the torch, which bathed only a few metres ahead in a white glow from the LED lights inside and reflected eerily from the windows of cars and houses that he passed. Jack turned right from the house and crossed over to where he headed towards the town centre through the grave-like suburbs. They were lifeless, corpse-like and settling down to slow years of decay in their black, spinal columns where they'd been abandoned. The orange glow that had lit the sky from the thousands of electric lamps when the town had life was gone. The houses and cars brooded in absolute dark and stillness.
It felt haunted, and Jack felt like he walked with ghosts, who were his only company. They were the only company he cared for, as the presence of other people became so intolerable. He was content now at this level of rage. Not happy, but content. This was the way things were supposed to be. Loneliness hurt, but it was liberating. The hurt from the unforgivable, barbed presence of those he thought were his friends subsided. They weren't his friends, they were his worst enemies, and he kept a special flame of hatred reserved just for them. The hurt from their grievous, malicious insults subsided to a low ache and a burning desire to prove everyone wrong. Jack wanted to break something, hit someone, take things withheld from him, because that would be a giant middle finger to all they said about him. He would get his revenge.
He turned into another dark and silent street. Everything had an unnerving stillness.
Buildings appeared out of the gloom, their architecture made by forgotten people who had been and were long gone. The familiar town had turned into a mummified necropolis, some relic of the past. Its mundane goods were little treasures now, ripe for the taking by anyone bold enough to do so.
All the footsteps and voices were silenced now everyone had vanished, and there was neither drone nor engine-thrum. Road signs loomed with none to see them and the only noise was the thump of Jack's feet on asphalt, the swish of his armoured suit and his ragged breath with no one to hear it. The only living breath. He might as well have been alone on an alien planet under that starlight and the endless reaches of space.
The town had a sinister atmosphere of malevolence and secrecy, but there was also the most fantastic and profound sense of loneliness that Jack had ever known. There was no one else's sight to wither under, to be judged and evaluated by, none to bestow words of contempt or criticism, nor to control or manipulate him. He was free.
It was a strange feeling of transgression, of doing something forbidden, to feel free to run along the middle of a road and know that no car would come. The road had been here all this time, but no-one had run headlong down it and seen things from the perspective he saw them now. As he went, Jack could goad oncoming traffic, spread his arms, close his eyes and spin around. He could break all the taboos of the old world. It was a thrill to defy his instincts and dare to break the rules of what he should or should not do.
There was no sign of any of the inhabitants of the town, just the muffled roar of his breath in his helmet. Jack ran down a different road that led through a sleepy housing area and realised he'd forgotten to put gloves on. He faltered and almost went back. Hands and fingers, he found, were very bite-able, and his had become numb to the cold air. He grunted his annoyance but made himself press on.
'Damn it, I'll find you,' he said, making a bloody oath through his clenched teeth. His feet hammered the road. He ran straight down the middle. The buildings here were small and unremarkable. There was nothing enviable to find here. So far, no street had shown any sign of life, or any movement. The solitude, once craved for, began to test his nerve. Jack snarled and bared his teeth at the air and drove on faster. 'Where are you?' he growled.
There was no need to hold back his hatred of the others, their low cruelty and stupidity, the way they were freely malicious against others, so smug in the satisfaction of their safety and how much they sanctioned themselves the right to do as they wished. Oh, what it would be to shatter that illusion! How glorious to correct them of their error. How wonderful it was to imagine smashing that hammer down again and again into the faces of Nick, of Matt, of Jenny, of Sarah, to line up his tormentors and slam the mallet down on limbs, bodies and skulls in righteous punishment. He would gladly set about the task with satisfaction, dispensing justice with a furious grin as their vapid, self-satisfied expressions of conceit turned to terror.
Jack burned with fury at all he thought and imagined. He couldn't wait to find one of the Dead, who terrorised them and oppressed them all into hiding. He reached the crest of another hill and felt the weight of his weapon, the tool belt with its mallets, the suit and his boots, which weren't designed for this kind of exertion. He took painful gasps of the stinging air. The pain of his exertion made him feel mean, low and determined.
Finally there was a figure ahead of him on the pavement that stood and tottered about, a hunched shape, sunken into an old cagoule that slowly turned his way. Jack's torchlight illuminated the sunken, decrepit features of its face as the shade turned. It wasn't a very big figure and its feet scuffed the floor in an unsteady shuffle as it turned itself and came Jack's way. The ghoul muttered some incoherent curse from between its toothless lips. Jack walloped the sledgehammer down on its head as hard as he could and roared a victory cry over the body of his defeated foe as it flopped to the pavement. That showed him. Let that be the first of many.
The road ahead curved round to another street, of a different quality, where the houses were no longer the stubby, low terraces and sooty cottages of before. Now they were taller and more ornamented. Detached and proudly aloof from one another, they were separated behind the jealous walls of privet and laurel hedges that concealed them from the common eye. They were fashioned in a variety of styles, not like all the samey, mass-produced, humble little dwellings around Paddock. Jack didn't want to trouble himself with those. Those were small fry. He was worthy of a greater prize.
There was one that caught his eye not too far ahead, at the corner of the street. It stood up arrogantly and apart from the others, the proudest, tallest, and vainest.
This was what he was looking for. Jack's torch illuminated the elegant nineteenth-century design, the soot-blackened sandstone handsomely wrought to a porch vaulted like a church, even replete with a stained-glass window over the doorway. It held itself three storeys high and was ornamented with tower-like barbican protrusions and a pretty conservatory extension.
The cars parked outside were a Land Rover and a Jaguar, things Jack had no hope of ever owning for himself. These things had belonged to people like them, not him, in the old days. But it was the old days no longer. These would be Dead worth killing. Jack scraped the head of his weapon along the Land Rover's paintwork and entered the house through a conservatory window. Maybe the keys to it would be inside.
Jack noted the tasteful collection of herbs and shrubbery in the conservatory, all brown and desiccated now, and the richness of the interior décor of the home. An enormous television, shelves full of antique books, a grand fireplace, and a collection of China vases on a glass cabinet that smashed in one hit, straight down the middle.
'Anyone home?' Jack roared.
Oh, the exploitative rich who 'earned' their place by connections, nepotism and opportunities free to them and unaffordable to everyone else. How many people did it take to support a house like this in society? Fifty, one hundred hard-labouring souls? They saw the better part of the profits they made go to people such as these so they could live in luxury while the workers went home to their slums until it was time to labour for them again. It afforded these rich an opulent tomb.
'Come on then,' Jack bellowed, and he spread his arms to reach all around that stolen space they thought was their own. 'Call the police, who will always take your side and give you preferential treatment. If not, you could always afford their bail fee while the poor man lost his freedom. You would buy the best lawyers and have charges overturned, sentences commuted or simply price the victim out of a legal battle. Justice for those who could buy it!'
There was a sound of movement upstairs. 'Ah, wakey wakey,' Jack said with a malevolent grin. 'Who will you call on now?' Jack growled, and he wrenched open the nearest door. 'Which poor men would defend you with their lives for a pittance?' Who really was the thief, and who defrauded, scammed and connived their way to riches?
It was difficult to aim the torch and see with it at the same time as carrying a two-handed sledgehammer. He wasn't going to move further into the house; he would wait for the occupant to come to him. Jack set aside the sledgehammer in favour of a mallet from his tool belt. There might not be enough room to swing the bigger weapon. Jack turned his reflection in an expansive gilded mirror to a thousand glittering fragments to draw them in.
Jack heard a thumping, skittering sound, then two mangy dogs bounded at him. They slowed to bank the corner then leapt up to snap at his arms and head. It afforded him a bare second to react and swing the mallet at one hound. It crashed to the floor and writhed but the other launched itself at him and snapped at his arm. The dog's teeth tore down his suit and Jack kicked the dog to the floor and pounded his weapon down on it.
The first dog got back up and sank its teeth down on to Jack's leg. Jack kicked and struggled to get free of it then had space to slam the mallet and gave the snarling beast a crack between the eyes that took it to the floor. There was a grinding and scraping sound as the other dog leapt and gouged its teeth across the chin piece of Jack's helmet, right in front of his face. He flinched and dropped his torch. Jack managed to hold the beast by its neck and a few hits from his weapon dropped it to the ground and left it lying still next to the other dog.
When he caught his breath and picked up the torch it shone straight into the visage of a deathly, sunken face that stared back at him with white eyes and a gleaming wet mouth, black as coal, less than arm's length from him. Jack jolted in surprise and dropped the torch again.
The ghoul came at him with outstretched arms that clawed and grabbed at him, and Jack landed a series of blind strikes in the darkness at the awful, staring head, pummelling down a dozen times until he brought it down to the ground and was satisfied it would move no longer.
Jack fumbled and patted around in the blackness until he found his torch again. The pearly, luminous light shone down on the body of an elderly lady, and nearby was another corpse who appeared to be a similar age. This body was mummified, dried out, but with no visible cause of death he could see. Maybe that had been the lady's husband. It didn't seem like much of a victory.
Across the hallway was a dining room. It had its own minibar and a dresser full of crystal glassware. Jack was parched, and he helped himself to a swig from a few bottles. This room smelt bad, as had the last, where he'd encountered the occupants and the dogs. The smell had hit him when he opened the door. This part of the house was musty with the smell of decay, and it had the smell of sewage as well. It really killed his enjoyment of the bottle of port he'd found, so he took it with him for a cautious exploration upstairs.
It looked like the old couple had holed themselves up on the second floor until the sickness got them. This floor showed signs of having been lived in for some time. There were bags of refuse and other scattered rubbish around. Jack passed this, made his way through their bedroom and out onto a balcony through the sliding French windows. The fresh air was pleasant. He took a swig from the bottle of port and took out his Bhuna tin. With a joint in his mouth, he dug around in his tool belt for a while. It seemed he hadn't thought to bring a lighter.
Jack rested his hands on his sledgehammer, and with the torch off, he let his eyes adjust to the blackness. By the faint light of the stars behind the silhouette of the trees he looked around the neighbourhood. His neighbourhood. He was lord of all he could see, without any to contest his reign. He stood up on the balcony's stone railing and produced a scattering arc of golden liquid beads over all that he owned.
When he went back inside he found more boxes of goods. There were crates full of stuff like non-perishable foods, camping, cooking, medical and outdoor wares. It couldn't possibly have all been theirs. Jack was outraged. As if these two weren't greedy and materialistic enough, it seemed they stole from their neighbours' houses. They were so jealous, so consumed by all their money that they couldn't bear to leave their little castle behind, their property and all they owned. They would rather stay, cling on to it and get sick! They had stolen so much he wondered how they managed to carry it all in their old age. Oh, how they must have sweated and strained to hoard up so much loot for themselves. Maybe that's what finished the old man off!
After a bit more of a look around, Jack found evidence that more people had stayed in the house and slept in the guest bedroom. Maybe they'd helped the elderly couple and brought in all this stuff for them to share. Perhaps the old couple had been ill and these younger adults had looked after them. It took the edge off his victory somewhat. Heck, maybe the old folks worked hard to retire with all they earned in their life.
There had to be somewhere better for him out there. This place smelt bad. Jack decided to leave.
As Jack wandered, mind in a fog, he found his feet had taken him on a familiar route back into town that he'd taken before at some point in the past after a session at Nick and Ryan's. Jack held his torch in front of him to illuminate the way but it was small and barely produced any light beyond a few steps ahead in the endless dark. Across a roundabout and over to the next street, Jack came up to the railings of the public park. The old ironwork bars rose up high with pyramid-shaped railheads. Through the trees and hedges that bordered the enormous park he could just see the huge cenotaph monument against the faintest starlight in the night sky.
Jack's ferocious charge had long since slowed to a plod, on legs that grew numb and heavy. He was aware of his footfalls and the echo they made but the streets were so far deserted. Jack put aside the nerves that bubbled up from his stomach and tried to make himself as angry as he was before, but it was hard when he was out here so far out and perfectly alone in the black silence.
There was a sound of movement ahead and Jack was taken aback when he shone his torch into the glowing eyes of a fox. They stared at each other for several seconds before the fox turned and ran off. It had been eating from a dark shape on the pavement, which the torch beam showed to be a skeletal arm, chewed to the bone where it reached through the bars of the park.
Jack knelt beside it for a closer look. If the fox was eating it, it must have been fresh. The person must have still been alive until quite recently, and not one of the sick Dead that inhabited the town.
It appeared to be a middle-aged man, fattish and quite unhealthy-looking, well, before he'd died at any rate. He looked bloated and sick, to judge by half his face; the other side was drained white flesh and exposed bone. There were countless bite marks along his arms and through his ripped shirt, which was dark with old blood.
'What's your story, fella? Where did you come from?' Jack mumbled aloud as he shone the torch over the man.
'Who's there?' someone called out. Jack gave a start and got to his feet. Several powerful lights blazed from along the road and dazzled him. He tried to shield his eyes from the glare but couldn't see who the people were. Before he could say anything, a different voice shouted, 'He's one of them!'
Jack was surprised, amazed that he'd found other people out here. He was going to call to them and say he had been looking for other survivors when he heard something whizz by him out from the light. Projectiles whipped by and impacted against the railings and pavement behind him.
'Hey! Wait, no!' Jack cried out as he turned and ran.
There was a deafening blast and a liquid howl as something scattered and ricocheted off the metal railings next to him. Several burning, metallic wasps smacked up his side, and on his arms and legs, whipping and stinging into his biker leathers. It made him duck and yelp and as he ran away.
'Did you just shoot at me?' Jack yelled and ran harder.
Jack switched his torch off so they couldn't see where he was, but then he, too could see nearly nothing ahead of him in the night. Before he turned the torch off he caught a glimpse at one of the objects they were shooting at him. It was an arrow. Were they crazy? Jack ran as fast as he could up the pathway and reached out in the dark to run his fingers along the railings to guide him. He stumbled, already in agony and breathless halfway up the hill, and ran into the side of a car. The alarm wailed and the lights flashed.
The people shouted other things at him, he couldn't tell what, but there was no mistaking that they were death threats and orders to hunt him down. Who did they think he was?
In a desperate bid for freedom, Jack threw the sledgehammer over the railings. He jumped and made a grab at the top of the bars. With his left hand he gripped the horizontal bar that ran along the top and with his right he held the top of one of the pyramid-shaped railheads for grip and pulled himself over.
The railing dug into the fleshy part of his palm between his fingers, and as he reached the point where his body was over the railings with its weight pressing down on his hand, he felt it slip and the point press in some more.
Jack landed with a thump onto his backside in the park on the other side. It hurt his ankle. His hand stung. Jack thought that the points of the metal bars would be blunt but that one really dug into his hand. He groped around on the grass but the sledgehammer was nowhere to be found. The car alarm was still wailing and he could hear several heavy footsteps coming towards him. He made a break for it and ran further into the park.
He crashed through bushes and more than once collided painfully with the trunk of a tree. A couple more projectiles hissed and spun past him, as the people followed the noise he made. Jack slowed his run and hunched over, scuttling to present a smaller target and make less noise, as he waved his arms around to feel through the tarry blackness in front of his face. The people who were chasing him came up to where he'd vaulted the railings, and to his dismay he heard them hoisting themselves over them too.
He couldn't help but look back, and he saw torchlights scything about through the air as the pursuers climbed and landed on his side of the railings. They would catch up with him in seconds. They were faster and he could tell they were bigger and stronger than he was. He hid behind a bush and lay on the ground.
The figures ran his way with alarming speed, with shouts of 'This way', 'Follow me' and 'Come on, he's right over there.' Their footfalls were heavy, energetic, and there was no mistaking the aggression and malice in their voices, which closed in by the second. He had no hope of outrunning them.
Jack was breathless and his chest burned. The adrenaline of surprise, the exhaustion and the pain in his legs, his ankle and the injury to his hand made him fight to stifle the raw, gasping breaths his lungs took from the air. He curled up. It was beyond his power to run further or control the noise of his breathing, while each was agony to suppress for even a moment. Jack buried his face in to the crook of his elbow to muffle the sound. It smelt horribly of its metallic, sulphurous odour of old blood and dirty leather. He was panicking. His heart raced, his chest burned and his head spun. His former rage was gone, and suddenly, going out by himself really didn't seem like a clever idea.
'Sick bastard!' one furious voice screamed.
'You're dead!' said another.
'Murderer!' one roared.
They would surely see or hear him as they got closer, if they hadn't already. Should he run? Should he keep still? Jack fought the urge to flee or surrender. They would surely catch him if he did make a bolt for it. They seemed intent on killing him if he gave up. The madly swinging arcs of torchlight and their invisible wielders drew in closer. They shouted and the car alarm screeched.
Jack heard noises ahead of him, out in the cavernous dark of the lawn ahead.
There were footsteps. The noise was the unmistakable, irregular shuffle of many feet, feet that travelled in a group and moved with a broken, lurching stagger. They were coming quickly, drawn to the sound of the voices, the car alarm and the gunshot.
Jack froze and his eyes roved blindly round, staring in the darkness as ice pumped through his veins that rendered him weak and paralysed. Not now. Surely not now.
The torchlights snapped up and illuminated the hideous grey people, grim and diseased, skulls fixed in their horrific death masks as a dozen, maybe two dozen, running, stumbling bodies rushed at them from the depths of the night. Jack was left helpless and wide-eyed as he lay there. He was stuck, caught down on the ground, not thinking, not moving, not able to do anything as the Dead stampeded. Their heavy feet pounded the earth. The hoarse breath that escaped each loose mouth and throat soughed and groaned as the mob of corpse-like figures rushed at them.
'Look how many there are!'
'They're coming right at us!'
'Stay and fight!'
'Run!'
The whole scene tipped back into total darkness as the pursuers turned and fled. It was pitch-black all around. Jack could only hear the grey, deathly people rushing in on all sides. They ran right at him, and then past him.
They trampled by and went right past where Jack lay, prone and defenceless, and chased the noisy, violent people who just a moment ago had hunted Jack but now called for a retreat. Shoes and bare feet landed heavily by his side, by his arm, even right between his boots as one stepped straight overhead. All Jack could see was the black shapes flash past against the dim starlight.
Jack shook, as all he could do was lie there, watch, and kick his heels against the grass in mute terror.
'Cowards!' one voice shouted, but Jack could hear by the direction of the voice that the person must have turned and fled as well.
Then the next moment they had all gone past. There was the sound of the pursuit going back towards the railings and the noise of a struggle, but Jack was left in silence, all alone. Shaking, he got up and limped away across the park.
Jack's right hand had been clenched tight throughout all of this. A throb of pain from it made him remember his injury, and when he tried to open his hand, his fingers felt slimy and stuck together. After he checked no one was around, he dug around for the torch with his free hand and shone it on his hand, which ached with deep, relentless pulses. It was thickly covered in dark red blood that had coated his skin and glued the index and middle finger of his right hand together. It was a deep cut. Maybe he could fix it. He could hack it.
Jack could feel the wasp-like stings caused by the ricochet of the gunshot down his left-hand side. There were five, maybe six wounds, scattered about his leg, shoulder and hip. He could feel tiny holes in the tough leather of his suit. The inside of it felt tacky and clinging, and needless to say, it really hurt. Constantly. He tried turning his body one way or another to relieve the pain, but it hurt more whatever he did.
Why had he forgotten his gloves? How stupid! When he looked down, the damp gleam of blood was all over his sleeve, tool belt and trouser leg. He could have sworn that the small pyramid-shaped railheads on top of the railings wouldn't be sharp. Just one moment's misjudgement and now look what had happened.
Jack groaned and tried to spit. Darkness was all around him, but at least he could see the faintest reflection of a tarmac pathway ahead. There seemed no other way but to go on. He couldn't go back, towards the Dead and the crazy people that had attacked him for no reason. Jack felt his way down the path. He rubbed his eyes against his blurred vision and was left with only a puny LED torch to light the way. His mouth and throat were so dry he couldn't spit. He was badly in need of a drink and could really use a smoke.
He passed over a bridge with a bandstand on his left and a dried-up, crusty paddling pool on his right. There was a pavilion tea room ahead. They might have a first-aid kit. All its doors were locked and the windows intact though, and Jack didn't want to make noise by breaking in. His shoulder stung, and he could feel he was getting weaker.
He'd made it to the other side of the park at least and now came up against its main gates. They were locked, though, and all the steel railings were topped with more pyramid-shaped spikes.
'You've got to be shitting me,' Jack croaked.
By a sweet mercy, the gateposts were pillars of carved sandstone sculpted into layered tiers that sloped and pointed heavenward like cathedral rooftops. Jack grappled the upper tiers with his bloodied hands to haul himself up and scrabbled with his muddy boots to scrape his backside above the railings. He swung his leg over and fell down onto the pavement on the other side. The spike had been perilously close to his scrotum on the way over. Jack cried out as he hit the pavement, his sore ankle jolting with a thud, and it took a while for him to pick himself up.
Swinging the torch around revealed that he was on a main road that ran towards the town centre or branched off on either side to other places in town he didn't know. More grimy terraces made from the fume-tainted sandstone of the town lined each street, with little to tell them apart from any other.
Jack was disorientated and unable to think straight, but his feet carried him towards the town. It was the only way he knew. He stopped to wipe some excess blood on a traffic sign along the way.
The windows of the houses were black depths, sinister hollows that stared out at him from the choking darkness of the night. TO LET and FOR SALE signs stood for no one to see. Long-forgotten litter was scattered and had collected in the gutters.
To walk through the town in the smothering, all-encompassing dark of the night felt like being underwater, fathoms deep, in a sunken city where the light never reached. Jack only had the equivalent of a tiny diver's lamp to guide him through the looming, monolithic structures on all sides in the Atlantean depths. His feet were heavy in the clumsy boots of his biker suit and his breathing was the only human sound in the forgotten black necropolis of the town.
Jack staggered along, wilting from the pain and exhaustion. He couldn't rest here, far from home and with no shelter. It would be deadly to give up here.
'Come on, I can do better than this. I'm resourceful. I'm smart.' Jack grunted out his anger and frustration, psyched himself up and bashed the windows of the very next house he saw. He forced himself to do it and not to think twice. He pushed apart the gap in the broken pane and climbed through, helmet first, through the glass. At least he was small enough to fit through the window with ease. That was one advantage of being a proper size. He rolled on to the broken glass on the carpet, the shards grinding into the armour of his suit.
The house seemed empty, but he found a bottle of fruit juice, water and two tepid beers in the fridge among the shrivelled packs of mould. He washed his hands, drank from each of them and smoked a terribly made joint he had to light no fewer than five times.
Jack lay back against the worktop and slid down to the floor and lolled against the cupboards as he listened out for movement in the house. None came. He grumbled and looked at the injury on his hand. He opened it and he closed it and stared grimly at the flapping, gory wound.
'You think I can't take it. I can take it. You never thought I could handle this and so much more. SO MUCH MORE!' Jack shouted a semi-coherent challenge to the world, to someone's kitchen table, chairs, sink and empty cat basket. 'I don't need you. ANY OF YOU! AND I DON'T WANT YOU!'
Jack readjusted his helmet, got up and left via the open front door. He did a double take and looked back. It had been open the whole time. 'For fuck's sake!' he whined. He leaned against the wall of the house and spat. He brushed bristling splinters of glass out of his suit. They prickled the palm of his one good arm, his left, which still ached when he moved it too far this way or that because of the shotgun pellet that stung his shoulder. It felt like it had bruised him and may have broken the skin, but he wasn't sure it had actually gone in.
There were lots of bones scattered around this street. Some rodents, some birds, the occasional household pet, but many were human bones. Often they were still wrapped in shreds of clothing.
Jack stumbled along and his torch lit up a skeletal figure that was clothed in a shroud of tattered rags. It turned its dry, de-gendered skull his way. It was among more ragged spectres that stood up and turned to face him from the other side of the street.
Jack dipped the torch and held it against his leg so it only let out the faintest glow as he tried to edge past them. It was too late. A flabby, corpulent woman, perhaps in her forties, came over, bare feet slapping on the tarmac. She had a collection of blackened, infected bite marks up her forearms and meshed lines where fingernails had scratched her. Her skin was a dark, patchy grey, to the point of black, and crusty blood lined her mouth.
The woman drew in too close, and in a split second Jack cracked her over the skull with his mallet and made a break for it. He regretted it in an instant as more of the Dead came at him out of the dark. A man with dreadlocks and a crusty gore-matted beard rushed up and swiped the air near his head with a grunt, and a muscular, bald man barrelled past as Jack managed to step aside at the last moment. An old lady in a sari clawed his back, hissing and spitting, and he got a fright when a young girl collided with him, and she yowled and pummelled at his side, out from nowhere.
Jack spun and smashed one ghoul down with a clear thump across the temple, but he was rammed into by the other and they fell. He kicked the girl away and ducked under the slashing nails of the old woman, who raved at him and reached out to grab at his suit.
The noise only drew more of the monsters out from the dark. Jack ducked and weaved a path down on to the main streets of the town centre and tried to run. He struck at another of the Dead without success and received a series of punches in return. He struggled to get much power behind his strikes any more. Both arms ached, but he managed to spin and clip the bald man over the skull before he ran.
The commotion woke the crows that populated the town along with the rats, free to openly feast on their one-time human oppressors. Jack got a shock when he saw so many of them out in the open on the street as he turned a corner. They screeched and squeaked by the thousand as his torch picked them out as they washed over human bodies and bare skeletons, the rat's own dead and a cat's carcass. Jack could hear but not see the vast congregations of the crows up above on the rooftops as they cawed and flapped at his approach in anticipation of a fresh meal.
One of the Dead crashed into his back and sent him sprawling as Jack tried to dodge between them and others grabbed at him and pulled him back. Jack tore himself away as he kicked and flailed back at them to get free. There had to be somewhere to escape to on the other side, any moment now.
His lungs burned anew, his legs were shaky and weak and he could feel his energy draining fast. He knew he couldn't last much longer. In the mad whirl of his flashing torch he was lost in the confusion. There were hands reaching for him, lurching bodies, and pain as the hard pavement seemed to rise up to meet him with a thump, over and over. The hideous, bloated and withered faces, the waxy, diseased death masks the Dead wore, swung erratically from dark to light in the confusion and the gust of their foul stench made Jack cough and gag.
A woman in a Day-Glo police uniform snared his arms. Jack struggled, fell back and dropped his torch. The mallet was cold and slimy in his grip. Then Jack misjudged a swing and his hand knocked against one of the Dead. The weapon was knocked from his hand and fell to the floor.
The mallet might have been down in a well for all he could see. It was all he could do to try to flee, his hands feeling out into the darkness ahead of him.
Jack felt blindly ahead of him as he knocked into lamp posts, walls and railings he seemed to have made it away from the crowd. His eyes rolled in his head as he fought to see where the early dawn turned the sky a deep navy, and he desperately searched for the silhouette of rooftops to guide him. He was so exhausted that his legs folded limply, unable to keep him upright, and the burning ache of his whole body made each breath a raw, ragged gasp.
Jack turned a corner and headed down another unrecognisable street. He had no idea where to run to, only that he should keep going. There was one building that came into view that was distinct from the others: a tall, pointed building that jutted needle-like into the sky. Somehow, miraculously, Jack managed to barge open the heavy door with his shoulder. Inside, Jack slid down to his backside and propped it shut.
He must have blacked out, because the next thing he knew, a faint glow was shining through the windows. He sat up, numb, bleary and uncomprehending as he looked around, resigned to his fate, but it seemed still in the building, and it was perfectly quiet.