That was the end of the boat trip. It was over and forgotten about, and the next day everything seemed to go back to how it was before, Nick observed to his bemusement.
Frustration and boredom set in quickly when they returned from their impromptu sailing adventure. Andy ambled off to the sheds to be with his plants and the two clowns had vanished off somewhere as they always did. The girls who'd got canal water splashed on them went and occupied the bathrooms and used every last drop of the remaining water to shampoo their hair and get themselves smelling nice and fruity again. They helped their best friends and themselves and didn't spare a thought for anyone else. This included Jenny, who he'd saved from drowning in the canal, who he'd saved from the monster waiting at the bottom to grab her foot, no less – don't make me laugh. Dumb bitch. It was a given that he never got a word of thanks, but at least they could have saved him some water to wash in. They left him to scowl, itch and stink for a good long time before they flounced off and left him to find out that he had to go out and find some more water for himself.
The only thing he'd done since then was take Jack and Joe out to play bumper cars around the car park of the burnt school and the playing fields next to it. The plan was to dig people out of the inactive rut again and get Jack a little more driving experience, but it was a waste of time.
Nick took it upon himself to start his project of linking all the houses of the Castle's outer walls with a passageway he would knock through the attic level of each house along the front terrace. He hammered away at the walls, and the plaster cracked and the paint spilled flakes and chips over someone's bedroom carpet and furniture. The bricks came loose from their ancient mortar and fell out in satisfying chunks of twos and threes from time to time.
The general merriment and good humour of the group dissipated quickly. Jenny still held a grudge against him because they'd had sex, for some reason. So did Sarah. Both seemed to pretend he didn't exist and neither would talk to him beyond curt, one-word replies. Nick hammered at the wall again.
Actually, that wasn't true. Sarah did talk to him more than Jenny, typically in a raised voice in a sort of shouting, scolding kind of way. At least the two groups of their horrible little mates had stopped fighting with each other – perhaps in some way their sheer spite towards him had brought them together. He thought about Ryan and his seemingly endless network of friends, and even the not-so-secret flings on the side that he'd had when he was with Suzie. She was always the last to know about them and just seemed to look a bit depressed when she found out, like she took it as a given. That was just Ryan. That's what he was like. She'd known that before they started going out. Good old Ryan. Why did Ryan get to do that and get away with that kind of thing when he wasn't allowed? On the other hand, he was surrounded by this fucking circus, who were determined not to help themselves when the whole world had gone to hell.
'Morons. Morons!' Nick hissed to himself.
A group of the others booted open the door, armed and looking frightened at the noise. 'What's going on?' they demanded.
Nick turned on them with disdain, sweeping the damp lengths of his fringe from his eyes. He looked them over as they stood there, weapons at the ready. They had obviously just grabbed the first things that came to hand.
'What's this, a couple of joinery hammers, a screwdriver and a fucking bread knife – have you come to put some shelves up or make me a sandwich?' Nick shouted. 'Is this what you bring when you hear them lot coming, or have you truly learnt nothing after all this time?'
'What the hell do you think you're doing, bashing a wall down?' Sarah roared at him.
'I told you all that I was going knock a hole through the walls and make a passageway through the houses right before I began!' Nick screamed.
'Look what you've done! You're giving them more ways to get in you idiot!' Emma screamed.
'No, I'm giving us more ways to escape, you god damn morons!' Nick screamed back.
'Uh, don't you think it would work both ways, Nick?' Emma said with a snideness that took Nick to the next level of rage.
'It's up on the attic level! They wouldn't be up here in the first place! Only we would know about it!' Nick looked like he was fit to burst a vein.
Eventually they parted ways, even more hostile and alienated from each other than before. A couple more angry blows with Nick's sledgehammer widened the hole and revealed that he'd come up behind a very solid work surface and set of drawers.
Nick screamed once more in frustration and threw away his hammer. He flopped down on the bed of whichever mysterious, vanished stranger had lived there before.
Only Jack had turned up with any kind of decent weapon: a steel mallet.
'Hey Nick, do you know what a load-bearing wall is?' Jack said with a toothy grin as a parting shot before he and Joe ran away giggling. Nick had scoffed at the time, but now he was uncertain. That wasn't a load-bearing wall he'd just knocked a hole through, surely? What if he brought the roof down on top of himself? No, of course not. That was daft, Nick thought, but doubt was sown.
He stretched back and looked at a family portrait next to the bed he was lying on. There were grinning schoolchildren in uniform with a stressed-looking older couple.
'What a dull, ordinary family, with dull, ordinary lives and dull, ordinary problems. Lucky you,' Nick said.
He closed his eyes and murmured aloud. 'God Himself laughs at me.' He reached his arms heavenward. 'You're laughing at me. I'm a joke to you. Setback after setback, encumbered by the fools that surround me, and they refuse to see the bigger picture. What can I do to make them realise that the time for fun and games is over and they should take this seriously?' Nick let his arms flop by his sides.
They'd got together for another meal yesterday. The rice bubbled and simmered on the stove and Matt had opened a jar of preserved meat, but the contents were grey and slimy. It didn't smell too bad, although after a big discussion about whether they should chance it anyway, with great regret they decided it had spoiled and they threw it all away. This was followed shortly by the sauce and rice, so pointless and unappealing on its own. Now they were hungrier than ever, all enthusiasm was crushed and a despondency set in as they all whined and demanded to know where their next meal would come from. Some tried picking at a tin of beef stew or beans but it was like chewing cardboard mush and couldn't be swallowed. Nick couldn't remember the last time they'd eaten. He felt very weary.
Nick liked how the boat trip had incited the rest to proactivity, because to be stuck inside would surely be the death of them. He wanted to take a cruise down the canal to see how far they could go, to see if they could chance on any untouched parts of town, but by the evening people's enthusiasm had waned and they'd wanted to go home. He'd missed his chance. The group slumped back into inertia and the idiots wanted to hear no other opinion than their own. Jenny had been taken ill and hadn't been seen since, like Jane. There was no way they would take back Huddersfield at this rate. If he was to be the saviour of this town then something drastic would have to happen to the group. Since the girls had revealed that something had made them go barren, they had at least lost some fear of venturing out, but it never led to anything.
'I hope I haven't gone sterile too,' Nick groaned and squeezed his testes through his trousers. The thought of it made him feel sick. 'And there's no damn way of knowing.'
He dearly wished there was some way he could know if they really were useless now, if he was unmanned. They seemed to still be in working order, not to put too fine a point on it. Right now, achingly so, to be honest, just when he had run out of options.
Perhaps making up names and inventing stories about the Dead when they were on the barge had been a mistake. He'd started it to show he wasn't scared of them, but now he thought it had probably killed any feeling of threat about them. People would get complacent when there were jokes made about 'Barry' or 'Trevor', their adopted Dead, and wondered what they were up to right now. Maybe they were getting it on with 'Trudy' or were involved in the drama of the ridiculous, polysexual, necrophiliac love triangles that were invented between them. Others expressed sympathy for 'Barry' or 'Tracy' and said they hoped that nothing bad would happen to them. Some even said they wanted to look after them.
'God damn them all! They're so complacent. They waste day after day not doing a thing to help themselves or anyone else in any meaningful way. Then they sit around and complain that they feel hungry.'
Nick was glad that he'd carefully frayed the underside of Tom's nylon guitar strings with a pocket knife. The next time everyone had gathered in an audience around him and he'd strummed and tormented the damn things they'd snapped in his hand! He couldn't help but feel amused at how disappointed they'd looked. Even though he'd dispensed with that distraction for them, they still hadn't been motivated to do anything. Nick vowed that the next thing to go would be the hi-fi player, even though he would miss it himself.
Nick's stomach rumbled. He was angry. He was hungry, and he tried to vent some of that on the house walls, but now even that was frustrated. Nick smoked some of the Herb hoping it would take the edge off his appetite but he didn't feel any better. Maybe there was more livestock out there, somewhere, but he couldn't go on his own. The only other semi-dependable person was Matt, and now the two of them hated each other so much they couldn't look each other in the face.
'Goddamn it! I have such brilliant ideas, such great plans for us all, but they won't let them succeed. They're spoiling it for themselves. They're spoiling it for everybody. They're their own worst enemy.' It would take something else to hoist them out of this rut, some kind of wake-up call. A spur to action. Nick got up and looked out of the window. It had gone dark now and he could see little more than the reflection of the vivid patterns of his paint, the thinness of his arms, and the dark hollows of his eye sockets looking back at him. Nick sighed and clenched his fists.
'If no-one else will do it, it's got to be up to me. Ryan be with me.' Out there was an unknowable world full of the threat of the waiting Dead, and those of the living who had it in for them too. He had to get out of this place and go outside.
That evening Matt kept watch in the gardens. It wasn't just that it needed to be done, but it was also something that would get him out of the house. Jane had been making him angry. There had been a lot of arguments. A lot of shouting.
'All you do is lie around the house. You do nothing and complain about everything,' he'd said. 'You don't even bother to change out of your pyjamas and hoodie the whole day long. You say no to everything I suggest we all do, all the things we need to do, and then bitterly moan that everything's a mess, that nothing changes and that life's going nowhere.'
She just lay there. Lay there and moaned. She worked herself up into a pitiful hypochondriac frenzy, complaining about being depressed and how meaningless her life was and fake sniffling, shivering and displaying crocodile tears. She profited from everything other people worked for, like him. She used the water they went out and got from the stream, enjoyed the security of the home they made, smoked the Herb they grew and ate their food. Then she lay in bed, got high and watched the ceiling, or wrapped herself in blankets and sat on the sofa for fourteen hours a day, as she gossiped with her stupid bitchy little mates about how bored she was, and depressed.
'Goddamn dumb bitch,' Matt said aloud. He swiped at some bushes with his hammer as he went by. He took a circuit around the gardens and inspected how well the barricades held up.
He'd barred her from leaving their room. She wasn't going to sit around the house, get high and gossip idly all day any more. If she wanted to mope around and play at being poorly then she could stay in the room until she got better. That would give her something to think about. She could stay in that room until she was ready to snap out of it and stop being so stupid.
'Just like all the rest of them. They complain they don't like how things are but do nothing about it.' Matt shook a section of the barricade to see how firm it was. 'Every idea I have, every plan I make; they always say no and refuse to do the basics to even help themselves.' People were always falling out with each other, they were getting hungry and unwilling to do anything other than loiter about the house. They played games or did their idiotic doodling that just looked ugly and weird and made the place look a mess.
Then, to cap it all off, they announced they were going on this stupid boat trip, and he lost his goddamn mind. Jane was halfway out the door, cheerily carrying off his last premium bottle of reserve rum. She had no energy to help with the barriers, to tidy any of the pigsties that they wallowed in, to arrange and take stock of supplies they had, but no, she had the energy to go out on a moronic boat trip and play at pirates. She had the energy to expose herself to unnecessary danger and maybe get herself killed. It was the first time she had bothered to get herself dressed since he could remember.
'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' he'd screamed in her face. 'You've got no energy to help with the barriers, tidy this shithole you wallow in or sort out supplies for us all, but no, you've got the energy to go out on a moronic boat trip and play at pirates! You've got plenty of energy to expose yourself to unnecessary danger and maybe get yourself killed! What is going through your tiny mind right now?' He'd had to really hold her tight against the wall to stop her wriggling away to join the others. He'd even had to bounce her against it a couple of times to make sure she was actually paying attention and got the message.
He watched her vapid enthusiasm turn into an infant's snivelling tears; then and only then was she ready to listen to sense. She had to stop hurting herself. Sarah entered the house and called up the stairs for her. Jane wiped her eyes and called back down that she didn't feel well, she was going to sit this one out. He made sure of it.
'How am I supposed to do anything when I can't leave the room?' Jane whined.
'You can stay here until you're ready to get your act together,' he replied and slammed the door.
Matt peered in through the windows of a shed. There was a thin gap between the insulation that Andy had put up inside. A narrow slit of light shone through, and he could see the weird, tangled bushes of the Bhuna Herb growing. What the hell did Andy even do in there all the time? It was strange, Andy was another of the idiotic students but he was probably the only one he could get along with. At least Andy's degree in nursing was useful in the real world sense. Even if it was a girl's job.
He was disappointed in Andy when he went out with the others in fancy dress costume and left the houses undefended. He had tried to stop the rest of them going out as well but they'd just flipped him off and went anyway.
Nick led the fool's parade all the way like a piper leading all the little rats. It was so predictable by now. They wanted to do all the things he said. Anything that was irresponsible, dangerous and stupid, that's what they wanted to do. They were straight there. It was the only thing they listened to.
Nick told them what they wanted to hear and off they went and did it, not anything that they actually should do, as he suggested, but only what they wanted. The look of smugness Nick shot back filled him with the cold certainty that one day he would get his revenge. He didn't know how, didn't know when, but that time was coming. At least it was something that would keep his mind occupied through the long, cold, slow hours of the night.
Matt felt weary, but he wasn't sleepy, so he sat in one of the empty sheds and kept watch. He had to at least follow his own advice even if no one else would. He needed to lead by example. He cracked a beer and pulled a blanket around himself even though he couldn't really feel the cold, only a bit of numbness. The last thing he needed was to catch a chill.
Nick. He thought he looked like an actor or something. Clearly he drifted through life with no cares and got by on his looks. He'd had so much handed to him that he thought he could get away with anything. He wasn't a man. Him and his permanent arrogant sneer. He was so feminine. Nick wasn't a man. He always acted so casual and aloof and tried to look so cool. Matt flexed his arms and squeezed his hammer tight and imagined it was Nick's skinny arms. He was much bigger than Nick, much stronger and heavyset. He could take him any day and looked forward to the chance.
Matt heard something shift in the shed behind him, a scrabble of claws and the squeak of a mouse or rat or something. He picked his feet up off the ground and rested them on the lower bar of the chair legs and took a deep draught of his beer. At least the beer wouldn't be warm tonight.
The rest of them laughed and joked about it all. They were so pleased with themselves in their conceit. It was so typical of students; they treated it all as a game, and thought they knew everything when all they wanted to do was fool around, party and tomorrow be damned.
What use were any of their degrees anyway? Those who fancied themselves as academics, or at least fancied the lifestyle, were so self-congratulatory, and they had little or no relevance to the real world and how things worked. How many students actually got jobs in their field of study? Few to none it seemed, from those he had asked.
What really got him mad was that there were so many jobs out there where if you wanted to apply for the manager's scheme then you had to have a degree, any degree. No reason; you just had to have one. Completely arbitrary. They needed you to have one, whether it was in so-called sports science or the ancient fucking Greeks. What if he didn't want to waste years of his life and run up huge debts? What if he just wasn't good at exams and absorbing useless facts? He knew he could do a managerial job like that but they barred the way to him. They were probably just bitter that they got stung by the higher education scam as well.
Any time he said any of this, the students all said yeah, yeah, and brushed it off. He knew what they were thinking. They thought they were better than him, cleverer than him just because he wasn't academically able, when the real reason they attended 'yoony' was just to party and fuck about. They didn't really care about their chosen subjects any more than they found themselves barely competent at them by sheer coincidence. Then they left the scam-factories with only a passing knowledge of their chosen subject after having got themselves into staggering amounts of debt, naively sheltering some vague hope that they would never have to actually pay it off.
The universities were just paper-mills that churned out extremely expensive, worthless sheets of bog roll. It was a total scam. A real idiot tax. Then they called him stupid, when they thought he couldn't hear. Jane was just another one of them, and he wasn't sure she even had any potential worth saving any more.
He'd managed to get a couple of them to help renovate a barrier across a driveway for a few hours the other day. At least that was a small step in the right direction. Matt had a good view of it from the thin Perspex window of the shed. The others with him had soon lost interest, and it had been left to him to patch up the only real result of the day's work – a great big hole in the barrier they'd deconstructed and intended to rebuild. He'd tried to tack a sheet of plywood over the gap so at least it wasn't possible to see in, but the stupid wood had other ideas. The nails wouldn't go in properly and it was hard to line up with the rest of the supports. It kept hanging loose and coming off in the wind. He hit it out of frustration, so now the wood was broken and there was just a huge gap.
Why did he even bother? Matt gave up and went inside. Incredibly, the front door had been left open and the key was nowhere to be found, missing from the hook inside where it should be.
Stuff it. He was going to bed.
Emma awoke to the sound of shouting, doors being slammed and people running up and down stairs. She sat up in her sleeping bag, pulled it tight around her and brushed the hair from her eyes. Emma looked around, trying to pick out any detail in the dark of the room she shared with Jenny while she listened out for what the sounds were.
The room used to be a family lounge. The pair of them slept on the sofas and their belongings mingled with the home furnishings, books and toys around the room. Emma heard a rustle of fabric beside her. Jenny was awake and heard it too. There was a flash of light that swung around the room as she turned on a torch. They tried to make out what the noises were and what the voices were saying. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on but it was hard to say what.
They had been sleeping top-to-tail that night as they often would on the nights when they actually slept. She'd had an argument with Tom about it earlier that day.
'How come you're always going off to spend the night with her and leaving me on my own?' Tom had whined.
'You know Jenny has long-running issues with depression and anxiety. She had a prescription back in the old days but now she has to make to with self-medication and the help of friends,' Emma retorted. 'One time she even called the suicide hotline. You know all this. She needs someone to help talk her through it.'
Tom muttered that she was probably faking it for attention and only did it so she wouldn't have to sleep alone. Emma reprimanded Tom for his lack of consideration for others.
'This means you're always leaving me by myself for the sake of one of your mates when I'm supposed to be your boyfriend,' Tom whined.
Tom could always stay with his friends Jack and Joe if he was lonely, she'd replied. They could amuse themselves with stupid games and their vast collection of obscure, unfunny in-jokes, otherwise he could man up and deal with it.
'Are the lads playing indoor footy again? They knew we wanted to get some sleep,' Jenny whispered. They listened to the raised voices through the floor below and the sound of crashing, banging and things being knocked over. It didn't sound like people having fun.
'No, it's Sarah. I can tell it's her voice.'
'It doesn't sound much like a game.' Like Jenny, Emma's voice took on a frightened edge.
Sarah burst into the room. 'Get up, they're here! They're inside!'
'Who?'
'Them! They are! Get up!'
Emma and Jenny leapt out of their sleeping bags, feeling very vulnerable and bare in just their underwear. Out on the landing they saw a crowd of the Dead coming up the stairs. The hideous mask of each slack, pallid face turned towards Jenny's torchlight. Their arms flailed in the dark and clawed at the walls and bannister as they came up after them. The girls screamed and ran upstairs.
They gave another scream when they were startled by Katie and Emily as they hesitated on the floor above, also half-undressed for the night. Katie and Emily screamed and jumped right back, then together they pushed each other along up the next flight of stairs to the floor above.
The Dead followed. The only way to get away from them was to climb higher, but after this storey there would be no more places to run and no way out.
'We're trapped!' Jenny screamed.
Matt opened his bedroom door up on the attic floor to see what the noise was. He was bewildered as to why there were half-undressed females hammering on it at this time of night.
They barged past him into his room. They all yelled at him in a breathless panic as Sarah held the door shut and started to pull his bookcase over to it, which spilt his prized collection of survival guides and military histories to the floor.
Eventually, he grasped what they were trying to say and cleared everything off a desk with a sweep of his arm, sending stationery, maps and cups to the floor. Then he picked it up and hefted it under the attic skylight. It gave an ominous creak under his weight but he flung the window open and from there was able to heave himself out and on to the roof. He shouted back at the others to follow him.
Jenny gripped the arm Matt held out for her to pull her to the rooftop. It had been a while since they'd last sat on the roof and smoked under the starlight. She steadied herself in the cold wind to make way for the next person to follow her.
They climbed out on to the roof, swayed and tried to keep their balance against the breeze. Sarah was the last to join them after holding the door shut until the last moment and keeping the bookcase tight against it as pounding and battering began on the other side. She dashed up on to the desk, ignored Matt's arm and pulled herself outside.
Precarious and frightened in the cold and dark of the night, they could hear the sound of footsteps down in the gardens and around the houses below. Figures below them swished through the grass and bushes, crashed against the gates and fences, hurling over tables and chairs and scattering cans and bottles. Together they stared down into the dark but could see nothing but the faintest movement from the Dead who swarmed all around them in the gardens. Much louder was the collective sound of the Dead's voices that rose in a chorus of wails and moans and the ringing, arrhythmic pounding of their footfalls as they climbed the metal stairway up to the other house and through the open doorway. Some of the Dead sensed them on the roof and turned to snarl and bellow in their violent outrage but were carried along by those that pushed behind them. All they could do was turn the torch off, huddle down and stay quiet, blind and helpless, as a whole procession of the Dead piled into their houses.
There was a crashing and thumping in the next house as it sounded like the Dead were wrecking everything they met in their rage and were pounding on doors to gain entry. Jenny heard raised voices, shouting and desperate, and strained to hear closer.
Jenny felt naked and frightened. She prayed for herself and all those in the next house as she clung to the slick, cold roof slates perilously high above the ground. She whispered the same words of her prayer over and over beneath her breath, and the Dead still piled in to the house, their footfalls pounding up the stairway. Surely no more could fit into the house, Jenny thought, but they just kept coming, and still they heard a constant pounding at the door of Matt's bedroom, but for now the bookcase held it firm.
One thing puzzled her, briefly, was how when they entered Jane and Matt's room, Jane snatched up a jumper and tried to hide any exposed skin from them. Come to think of it, Jane always seemed to wear things that covered her arms and legs, but there was no time to wonder about it.
For a while there was a pause in the growling, wailing figures who climbed the stairway. There were no more shouts from inside, just the sound of their home being ransacked. They started to despair for those left in there. Jenny shone her torch over to the roof when the skylight opened. Jack and Joe climbed out and shut the skylight behind them.
Emma started panicking. 'Is Tom still in there?' yelled to them. Both were breathless from their narrow escape.
'I don't know,' Joe called back. 'I didn't even know he was in here.'
'Well get back in there and find him! Don't just leave him in there, you idiots! Get back in there and help him out!' Emma screamed at them until Jenny and Jane grabbed her and hugged her close to them. Emma shook with tears.
'What about Nick? Where's is he?' Sarah called out. Jack and Joe shrugged again. They didn't know.
'Useless!' Sarah hissed.
For now, it seemed there were no more of the Dead coming up the stairs. Without warning, Katie jumped between the others and on to the metal stairway.
'What are you doing? Come back!' the others called to her. Katie didn't pause as she reached into the shadows of the doorway and slammed the door shut to trap the ghoulish townsfolk inside. From there, she climbed up onto the stair's railings and to the roof where Jack and Joe were.
'Come on, we can escape this way!' She beckoned the rest of them over and hurried along the peaks of the terrace roofs, balancing with her arms outstretched. They tried to call her back and told her to slow down but she kept on going.
Jack hesitated but Joe made to catch up with her, doubled over and often crawling on all fours, but he couldn't keep pace, his own torch swinging about in the dark. He finally caught up with Katie as she stood and hesitated over a sheer drop down on to one of the driveways.
Below was the jagged mass of one of their barriers, a jumble of doorways, tables, posts and corrugated iron salvaged from a shed.
The jump over to the next terrace and possible freedom was a few metres away.
'I can make it! We can make it if we jump, or drop down from here,' Katie said. It was close, but as Katie toed the edge, it seemed so far away. Now she didn't seem so sure. Certain death lay in wait if she missed her one shot.
Joe stood up and edged over to her, wobbling on the roof's peak. 'Katie, come back,' he pleaded. He reached for her elbow and nearly overbalanced in doing so. Katie pulled away. Maybe she could make that jump, but not with Joe right behind her. She would need a run-up. Katie knew she could be brave, like Sarah was brave. She wasn't feeble or helpless, someone who had to be looked after all the time. She was sick of being frightened. Joe could never make that jump, however. All around there was still the guttural moaning of the freely roaming Dead that weren't shut inside, invisible, down in the dark of the gardens and the main street below. There was no way to escape from here.
Katie turned and crawled back with Joe along the rooftop, past where the cold, senseless hands of those that beat at the skylight window pane, and they dropped down to the stairs even as more Dead started to climb them.
There was no sign of Tom. They made a swift return to join the others on the rooftop along with Jack. Emma kept trying to call out to her boyfriend between her tears and her friends' hugs. There was nothing they could do.
Jenny shone her torch down over the edge of the roof. 'The only way down is to climb on to this bit – there's a lower section of the roof on the next level down. We could drop down on to the porch and then make a break for the back road,' she said.
'No! There's no way I'm leaving without Tom!' Emma cried.
While the others tried to persuade Emma to see that there was nothing they could do and they needed to get out of there, Jack got a head start on the inevitable and volunteered to go first. From the rooftop, he held on to the edge and let himself drop down to the next. He landed heavily, the next storey down being further than he thought, and he nearly fell off.
With a quick prayer that he didn't get noticed and that he was sprightly enough to outrun any of the Dead below, he made the last drop down from the porch and was immediately tackled to the ground.
Jack and his assailant wrestled and rolled on the path but the attacker had Jack's arms pinned to him in a powerful hug and he couldn't break free. He heard teeth snapping close to his ear and felt them chewing and ripping at his jumper. He felt teeth graze his earlobe, mere millimetres from biting into it, when he was winded by the weight of another body on top of them both, then another. Mercifully, two pairs of arms appeared to wrench the attacker off him and throw it back into some bushes. In the dazzling confusion of torchlight, he saw Katie and Matt hook their hands under his arms and they hauled him to his feet. Now joined by Emily, Jane and Jenny, they ran for the back road over the railway and waited for the others.
Joe hesitated at the roof's edge.
'Hurry up and get down here!' Sarah called up to him.
'I can't do it,' Joe said. 'I'm too heavy. If I tried I think I'd break something. Maybe the roof. I'd go straight through.'
'You've lost… some weight since all this…' Sarah tried to reason.
'Emma's in no state to go anywhere,' said Joe. It seemed as though she had gone past the point of tears and out the other side. She was shaking, hugging her knees and looked numb and unresponsive, staring ahead of her into space. Every so often she made a little gasp of air between her trembling lips but otherwise said nothing.
Joe peered down into the skylight into Matt's room. The Dead were pounding against the door but hadn't made it inside yet.
'You go on ahead. We'll stay here, lie low and wait for you to come back and bust us out. Don't forget about us,' Joe called down. He guided Emma back through the skylight then climbed down after her.
Sarah had no choice but to accept. She was out of time. It was a tricky one to explain to the rest when she caught up with them but they had to hurry on, and they pushed each other under the secret panel beneath a barricade until they emerged out on to the back road.
There was only a small pocket torch between them that emitted a thin beam of light that bobbed around in the dark. Jenny kept it pointed to the ground to try not to give them away. There was confusion, darkness and frightened whispers between the group as they called to each other. They could still hear the noise of the Dead back in their homes and the destruction they were causing.
They got a fright when someone ran into them from around the corner. It was Nick.
'Where the hell have you been?' they hissed.
'Get that light out my eyes,' Nick said. 'Follow me, there's no time!' Nick took the first of them by the arm and pulled them after him as he took off down the street. The light from the torch he carried danced ahead of them on the pavement. From it, they saw he was wearing full biker leathers and helmet while they were only wearing casual clothes, or less, and the bare feet of each girl slapped on the tarmac.
They shook with adrenaline and fright and they had little choice but to follow. The sound of the Dead's moans and wails faded away, along with the smashing of all their possessions in their homes. They could only leave a prayer for Emma, Joe, Andy, and Tom that they left behind.
Nick guided them out onto Church Street and urged them to keep low and quiet as they moved into another street further away. From there they came up to a crossroads in a new part of the suburbs but weren't sure exactly where. Disorientated, the group crouched low, feeling vulnerable and defenceless in the dark.
There was the sound of more scraping feet and the slack wheezing of dead lungs nearby.
'Stay put and don't make a sound,' Nick whispered. He scouted ahead a little, then led them on to where they crept to a new street that was silent and still.
Sarah heard a discussion up at the front of the group, mostly between Matt and Nick. She'd had enough of being dragged along in the pitch-black without knowing where they were going. Sarah heard the words 'no idea where we are right now' and crawled up to the front.
'What's going on and where are we going?' she demanded. There was a sharp intake of breath from those around her and people hushed her.
'I just got us out of there, but I've lost track of where we are,' said Nick.
'Let me have the torch,' said Sarah.
With reluctance, Nick handed it over.
Sarah shone it around. 'We're only in the next block along from where we started,' she whispered. 'If we turn left here we're straight back to where we began. Where are we actually going?'
'I don't know! I just got us away!'
'I thought you were taking us somewhere!'
'We need to find somewhere to stay the night,' Matt whispered.
'No kidding! I know where we are. If we double back and go up the hill, there's a bunch of houses we've been into before. We could stay there,' Sarah replied.
'Keep that light down!'
Sarah pulled Nick back by the shoulder and went ahead of the group. 'There's places that are open down here. I guarantee it,' she told the others in a low voice. They made their way along, and clung to each other in their procession of the blind.
Nick went ahead and tried the first door of the next terrace. It was locked. He tried the next, which opened, but they heard him cough and gag from inside.
'That one's no good,' he told the others.
They tried another house a couple of doors down.
'No good,' Nick said.
'For God's sake, why?' Sarah hissed.
'No-one needs to see inside there,' Nick muttered to her. They moved on.
They came to the end of the street, out of options.
'Why didn't we have the bright idea of making a safe house?' Sarah held her head.
They racked their brains for where to go as they crept down the roads, meandering from one to the next in the near perfect dark. They realised how disorientated and lost they were when they found they were about to go back onto Church Street where they'd started so resolved to head straight in the opposite direction to stop going round in circles.
After an age, they came across a small cul-de-sac of neat little bungalows. The one on the corner was fully detached and had a conservatory extension with wide glass panes. They didn't recognise it at all but muttered a praise of thanks to all the gods they didn't believe in when they considered how perfect it was. A conservatory window was bashed in, and the air that wafted out was clean from the scent of decay.
They covered the window ledge with the house's doormat and were inside within minutes. Nick chucked down a couple of sofa cushions over the broken glass for the barefoot girls to step on, and then they crouched low in the dark of the house and listened out for any movement. None came. It all remained quiet and still after the shattering of the window pane.
'Let's have a look around, make sure the place is clear,' Nick told Jack. They returned a little while later to confirm they had the place to themselves. They scattered to see what they could find.
A while later they regrouped in the lounge. By candlelight they took an inventory of their discoveries: some clean towels, some bottled water and juice, some tins of food, cereal bars, some surgical spirit and a few tubes of salves and lotions. Matt dropped a stone rolling pin, a frying pan, a cricket bat and a metal pole that he'd unscrewed from between the legs of a table. He wielded it in one hand and tested its weight.
'It's the best I can find for self-defence. There's nothing else here,' he said.
Katie, Jenny and Emily returned with the clothes they found.
'I can't wait to put something on,' Jenny muttered, and she ran a hand over her numb skin. 'Jack, do you mind?' she snapped. Jack tore his eyes away and gazed heavenward.
It was apparent that the house belonged to an elderly couple. It had been perfectly preserved since everyone had vanished, leaving a film of dust over the contents. The spiders, emancipated from the persecution of the feather duster, had spun their straggling webs between it all.
The girls picked at the pile of clothes and peered at them in the flickering light. The only ones they had managed to find were of a charity shop kind of vibe and were for the most part a collection of cardigans, blouses, long skirts and cotton stockings.
Katie found some corduroy trousers, braces and a flannel shirt. 'I would rather wear these,' she said.
Nick presented a bottle of vodka and started tearing up some sheets for bandages. 'This is to clean up any injuries, mind. Don't get drunk off it. That's the last thing we need right now.'
'Goddamn. How did that happen?' Sarah peeled away her t-shirt from where it stuck to a long gash on her back. She had only been wearing that and pyjama bottoms the whole time.
Jenny examined bloody speckles on the soles of her grime-blackened feet and scratches up her forearms. She tutted. Emily looked over her elbows which were skinned and raw.
Katie splashed some vodka on a towel and helped people dab at any cuts and scratches. There were a lot of rake marks from fingernails and bruises that were beginning to swell and change colour.
'Aren't you going to see to that?' Emily pointed to Jack's arm.
'What? Oh, bloody hell!' On the underside of Jack's forearm was a clear imprint of teeth that had sunk into his arm and still oozed blood. It had smeared and dripped all over the leg of his trousers and he hadn't even realised.
The boys inspected the tubes of lotion and salve with incomprehension, grimacing and turning them to the light like they were something they'd never seen before. 'Some of us took a bit of a bruising back there?' they were told. They shrugged and chucked them back in the pile.
It was still some unknowable point deep in the night. It was all they could do right now to nurse their wounds, sip at the water and the sulphurous, acidic juice from the room-temperature fridge to rehydrate themselves and rest up for a bit to catch their breath. Drained, exhausted, starving, they knew their blood sugar would be lower than ever. The juice was unpleasant enough to force down, and despite its lack of appeal, a couple tried to chew on the end of a cereal bar. It was no use. Despite their hunger, it felt like sawdust between their teeth and tasted much the same. They wrapped the bars back up as they ground the ashen lumps between their teeth. It was like trying to swallow coal.
'I wish we had some Bhuna right now,' someone muttered, quavering through clenched teeth from their tiredness and the memories of the surreal horror of the night.
'I wish we had some Balti right now. I'm so hungry,' said another.
All they could do was settle down to sit in silence and massage their injuries while they watched the candles flicker.
Matt held his face in his hands. 'All of those freaks are in there right now, wrecking our home and we can't do anything about it. How could this happen?' he mourned.
'Weren't you going to keep a lookout?' asked Jack.
'Oh my God Jack, shut up,' said Jenny.
'Really?' Sarah scolded Jack, and put out an arm out to hold Matt back who had already gone purple and begun to yell.
'Sorry, I thought maybe you might have seen something… I meant nothing by it…' Jack muttered.
'Jack, just be careful what you say,' said Emily.
They sat in silence.
They looked over the meagre pile of items that they'd scrounged: the stinking lotions, the stale bottles of water, the out-of-date juice, the vodka right there in front of them. They needed to keep clear heads, so that was just for disinfecting with. It was the last thing they needed right now, was what had Nick said.
Jack was the first to move. He grabbed the bottle when everyone else pretended to pay it no attention and didn't want to be seen to be first to go for it. He swigged from it and held the bottle out. It was grabbed the moment he did so, a mouthful taken from it and passed along. Soon the bottle was emptied and there was nothing to do for them but sit, feel the warmth of the spirit spread through their belly, and wait for the dawn.
'I wonder what's happened to Joe and Emma and Andy and Tom,' Jack murmured. 'Did anyone see Andy? There's always a chance for Tom, isn't there? I mean, he was a well-built guy, pretty strong. Although he was a heavy sleeper…' He saw tired red-rimmed eyes glowering at him through their crusty smeared face paint and stopped talking.
Jenny lay back with her head against a sofa and thought of home. She thought of the vintage-themed kitsch jewellery she used to make and sell online. She thought of the earrings, necklaces and bracelets she used to make using recycled and retro bric-a-brac, bottle caps, broken glass, pottery or old toys. If it was damaged, discarded, unwanted and forgotten, then, and only then, could it become a material she would use. That was the rule. The jagged edges would be buffed, the surfaces cleaned and polished, and they would be incorporated into a design she would sell on the net. Mostly, it seemed, to friends and friends of friends, but she had been convinced one day she would make it.
They went well with the dresses she made, which the uninitiated used to point out looked like they were made out of curtains or tablecloths and thought they were being astute or original. That was the point, they had to be told. Very often that's precisely what they were.
She even got a little nostalgic about her crap job at the local pub. It left her little time for her creativity and she'd resented that it was necessary. All the old fellas would be alternately sweet and conversational or leering and creepy. At least it was where she met all her friends. They were the best drinking buddies.
Jenny thought about the designs she hadn't finished, the materials she treasured but hadn't yet used, and wondered if she ever would. She thought about her mother and her boyfriend.
'I miss TV,' Jenny said. She made her voice clear and loud so it didn't waver.
'I miss electricity and lights,' said Katie. There were murmurs of agreement around the group.
'I miss hot food and cold drinks,' said Matt.
'I miss new music and going out,' said Sarah.
'I miss calling people and texting,' Jane said.
'I miss my cat,' said Emily.
'I miss the internet,' said Jack.
'I miss my mum,' said Jenny as her voice cracked up.
There was a pause at that last turn, but then the game continued around the group. They picked mundane things, little things that they missed. It passed time until the dawn.
By the time the sun became bright in the sky, many in the group had fallen quiet and slouched back where they sat, eyes drooping and heads nodding. They swept tongues round dry mouths and all had complained at some point of headaches. Morale was low, and so was motivation.
Nick asked Matt if he could have a word. They went and stood in the conservatory with the smashed glass over the floor and the dead plants in their pots and shut the door.
'The others look like they're not up to much. They need some encouragement,' said Nick. 'I found us something to eat.'
'What?'
'We have pony. Back at the house. I got some.'
'Nick, what have you done?'
'Listen, we're all starving. The rest of them look like they're going to give up hope. If we say there's a hot meal waiting for them, that will motivate them. Maybe they won't believe me if only I say it, but if you're with me on this one and agree with me, then they might do.'
Matt could only follow Nick's lead. Absolutely stumped, he had no choice.
'Alright everyone, listen up. I know you're hungry. You're tired. But right now there's people who need your help,' Matt announced, back in the lounge. 'Our home has been ransacked by these freaks and it's up to us to go and clear them all out. I know you're at a low ebb, but if you're the friends I have come to know then you are the bravest people I have ever met. You're resourceful, you're tough, you're capable. We've taken a beating, we've lost people, but we've stuck together and kept on going. We're a team. I need you to gather that last tiny bit of energy and follow me. We'll take back what's ours and save the lives of our friends. I understand there's things you want to know and I promise you answers. And something to eat. We'll take back what's ours and I promise you a hot meal at the end of it.'
The others sat up. He had their attention.
'You mean the Balti?'
'Yes, I do,' Matt said.
'But how?'
'I promise you the answers to all your questions. And food. When we get back and have time.'
'You mean there'll be a proper curry waiting for us at the end of it? With everything in it?'
'We do. I promise it. I swear there will be the best curry you ever had, with everything in it and all the Bhuna you can smoke. I swear to you,' Nick said.
Nick looked to Matt. 'Well said,' he murmured. Matt had to swallow the resentment in his gut. Well played to Nick, he finally held all the cards.
The group pulled themselves and each other to their feet. They wavered unsteadily and staggered around, dragging themselves along as they walked and groaned with their aches and exhaustion, but they were upright. They squinted in the growing brightness of the dawn outside the house, held their clumsy, impromptu weapons in their limp arms and were ready to venture out one last time, some of them wearing old peoples' clothes.
In the morning light they could see plainly where they were and it didn't take them long to get back to their street. When they'd crawled around in the dark it had seemed they'd travelled so far, and for so long, as they'd meandered blindly in circles.
Along the road they encountered a bald, toothless man in a ragged suit that lumbered along and snarled at them. With a growl of rage, Katie ran at him and bludgeoned him with the stone rolling pin. Sarah and Emily rushed a pair of teens who appeared around the street corner and Matt swung the cricket bat at an obese woman in a security guard uniform as hard as he could.
'I've got no energy. I'm running on empty,' Matt gasped and fell to his knees. Jack grit his teeth and strained to help him up.
'Come on, we can do this,' he said.
There were still some of the Dead back at their houses on Paddock hill and around the back road where they'd escaped. Although many of the Dead turned to flee from the friends, they were pursued, beaten down mercilessly and pounded while down on the ground.
Some of the Dead had more vigour, and although the friends managed to draw some of them out towards them one by one, there was no getting around the fact that they were all exhausted.
Jenny faltered, and what was intended to be a swipe at the head of a grey, snarling woman in her tracksuit limply missed its mark and she got taken to the ground. Jenny screamed and rolled but was pinned down under her attacker's weight. The others rushed to her aid and let loose a flurry of blows, but not before Jenny had received a few strikes to the head and chest and a nasty bite to the wrist where a sharp incisor lifted a flap of skin.
In the fight to retake the gardens, Jane was concussed by thump to the head from a big man who looked like a body builder and all of the others took painful hits, kicks and bites from the ghouls that remained outside their houses.
'Take her to go and lie down out of the way. Please. Stay with her and make sure she's safe,' Matt asked Katie and Emily, himself dazed from a head-butt over his eye that ran a trickle of blood down his face. Katie and Emily nodded, breathless and walked Jane off to a bench.
'Looks like – they came in through a southern barricade. The one we didn't manage to finish repairing. The whole thing's been torn apart,' said Jack, as he doubled over, grimaced and spat. A girl had bitten two of his fingers down to the bone.
Matt groaned aloud in dismay. It was the same barricade he vowed to guard on his night watch, before he gave up.
Nick, Matt, Jack and Sarah bludgeoned down the growling, thrashing townsfolk left around the gardens before they lay about gasping wherever they dropped.
Jack crawled over to the sheds where the Bhuna grew. The doors remained locked. He leaned close to one door and got a whiff of something that smelt familiar. Incredibly, it was Bhuna being smoked. He knocked on the door and Andy came out.
Andy came out, shielding his eyes and did a double-take at the torn-up plants and flowerbeds, the corpses all over the ground and the bloodstains that flecked the grass and streaked over his friends. The joint dropped out of his mouth.
'Bloody hell? What happened last night?' He held his head.
'Well, we got invaded. The whole bloody town got in and trashed the place. I guess you missed it,' Jack scowled.
'Jesus, I heard all this commotion.
I came outside and saw all these people in the garden. I didn't know who they were. I thought you were having a party. I looked around, considered joining but then went back to bed and locked my door. I was wasted. Absolutely Bhuna'd, mate.' Andy held the doorway and swayed.
'Andy, just get it together and do something. Try to help?' Jack wheezed.
When Matt and Nick went to the house where they'd left Joe and Emma they found two Dead standing outside the door of Matt's room, still thumping away at the door. They must have kept at it the entire time. They had dented the door and beat their hands bloody on it, but it had held firm. Matt and Nick grabbed them, threw them down the stairs then pulverised them.
After they called out to Joe and Emma, they heard the book case being dragged aside and when the door opened they breathed a sigh of relief. Joe was upright and unharmed. He looked hollow and dead-eyed from the stress of the night, but unharmed.
'I sat with my back up to the wall and kept it shut with my legs,' he stammered with a weak voice.
Emma was curled up on the bed, likewise shaken but unharmed. When she saw they were being released, they had to restrain her as she got up and tried to rush past them out of the door. 'Where's Tom? Has anyone seen Tom?' she gabbled.
The friends' other house with the flats above the shop posed the greatest problem. The issue was that the door opened inwards and numerous bodies of the Dead were pressed against the other side, trying to get out.
'I've got a plan,' Jack said.
On legs that shook with fatigue, Jack climbed up on the handrail of the metal stairway and then up on to the roof, the same way Katie went. He urged the others to keep quiet then knocked against the skylight window that he and Joe had escaped from. Jack waited until the Dead came to investigate the noise. Once he was satisfied that enough had been drawn away he ran back over to the stairway, jumped down and opened the door.
'Come on then, this way! What are you doing over there you idiots?' Jack called and banged on the door. As quick as he could, Jack climbed back up on to the roof and laid down out of sight.
The Dead, riled up to hissing, spitting anger lumbered back and started to make down the stairs. They could see Nick and Matt waiting at ground level below, each tapping their weapon against their palm with a nasty grin.
Jack waited until the last of them came out, and then dropped down behind it. As it turned to face him Jack took a short run and a flying jump to kick it as hard as he could. The whole line of the townsfolk went tumbling down the stairs, knocking each other along like dominos.
Nick, Matt clubbed the Dead as they lay in their sprawling heap and made doubly sure that they left none alive.