The inside of the houses were wrecked. All their possessions, all their items, their loot, their booze, their artwork, was devastated, scattered around, smashed apart and torn to pieces by the Dead that had invaded their home. They found Tom by his bed. They could only tell it was him by the tufts of bright hair that poked through the crimson pulp. His skin was gouged all over with fingernail scratches. He had been battered by the hard hands of the Dead and they had chewed and pulled at him until there was no way he could live from all his injuries. Emma fell to her knees and wailed.
They sat outside, unable to bear staying in the ruined desecration of their home or stand the sight of their friend's body. They gulped down water from one of the last unpunctured bottles they found and lay on the grass. They breathed hard, with broken, racking gasps and sometimes slipped off to something between sleep and a dead faint. Andy did what he could to tend to people's injuries – bandaging, stitching and gluing – and he passed around the smouldering herbal remedy to ease them.
After a while, Matt sat up and gestured for Nick to follow. Nick lay there and shook his head. His eyes rolled, looking blankly up at the sky, and he gagged, looking nauseous. Matt grabbed him by the arm and hauled him away along the ruined garden paths.
Emily watched them go. She knew there was a lot of things she wasn't told about and was sick of wondering what they were. That especially went from those two and their big schemes for everyone. She squeezed Katie's hand as she lay in a dead torpor beside her on a sun lounger.
She looked around the garden. It was pure devastation. One nearby body regained consciousness despite its wounds and tried to get up.
Emily picked up the steel bar they'd taken from the old couple's house and strode over. The figure was a man in his twenties with braids in his frizzy, matted hair, a baggy sport sweater and shorts. Emily smashed the bar down onto those braids again and again, and then again twice more to be certain. That's how it was done. She went back and sat with Katie, who was still asleep, and resumed holding her hand.
'There, that wasn't so hard,' Emily whispered. The bar weighed heavy in her hand but it wasn't reassuring.
'What a stupid piece of junk,' she remarked and spun it into the bushes with a dismissive backhand. She wished they had something proper to defend themselves with.
The damnedest thing was that Nick 'the dick' was the one who spoke the most about arming themselves and taking the fight to the Dead. It was sickening to think that he might be right. Emily massaged a welt on her arm that Andy had bandaged over. She knew she wasn't a good fighter but she vowed right there and then that she wouldn't get pushed around or overlooked any more.
Maybe she was surrounded by people who really knew how to not make her feel good about herself – she glanced at Jack, who sat hugging his knees with his mouth open, staring into space– but one thing was for certain. She had a burning resolve that she wanted revenge on these ghouls and wanted to see every one of them gone. Emily adjusted the itchy pleated woollen skirt and blouse she was still wearing from the old couples' house.
Matt and Nick made a reappearance after a while and called for everyone to gather in the next house along from the one that was ruined.
All other thoughts were put out of the friends' minds the moment they saw what the two of them carried. It was crude, it was sloppy, it was obviously made with a jar of the most basic sauce and they hadn't even bothered to cook any rice, but steam wisped off what was unmistakeably a huge wok full of the Balti. Matt dumped it straight down on a table. They were passed a fistful of spoons and then they remembered no more.
Emily came to with a sharp little intake of breath. She coughed and swept her tongue around her teeth. They still tasted of Balti, and she saw that she had her spoon stuck to her hand where it was encrusted by curry sauce.
She wasn't the first awake. Some of the others were already up, moving about the house and talking among themselves. Emily didn't pick up on what they said. She regarded everything about her in abstraction, not understanding, and watched things as though they were happening to someone else. There was a thick, warm feeling of being fully fed that drowned everything out. It was heavy, completely satisfying and numbed her to everything else.
This came at the same time as remembering her reality came like a stab in the chest. Tom was dead, Ryan was dead, the world was dead. They were Dead.
Their home had been ruined, and now there was nowhere they could stay. Emily thought about never moving from where she was, slumped back on the sofa. Sleep was so sweet, so peaceful. Dreamless. Better than this.
'Morning, princess,' Sarah said from next to her, and she passed her a plastic beaker full of wine. Emily groaned. Escape was impossible.
Something had finally come to shatter the inertia of the house that trapped her. It came with such a shock and such a terrible cost that there was no way she could feel glad about it. She had grown to hate the place and wished she could smash it up herself but now there was only a feeling of emptiness. What now? Now they had to find a new home, but who knew where, and would it be any different?
'Where we gonna go?' she mumbled, unable to think straight.
'Dunno, hun. Anywhere we like,' said Sarah in a flat tone, like one might use for schoolkids or annoying customers.
Emily breathed in a waft of Sarah's Bhuna smoke and sipped the wine. 'There has to be so many nicer places to stay than this dump – we have the whole country to ourselves. The whole world maybe. How many hotels are standing empty where we could live now, how many stately homes and mansions, perhaps even a castle, a real castle, would be empty for us, and those were designed to be well defended.' Emily was half-conscious that she was rambling.
'Now that would be a worthy place for us to live! Oh, the thought of it. After all, if all the buildings in England were just there for the taking then what's to stop us? I always had a lifelong love for history, period dramas, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. It was something I couldn't even keep a guilty secret. Mum 'n' dad sometimes said I 'had an "old soul"', which, while it was pretty annoying, barely did justice to my yearning for it all.'
'What on earth are you chuntering on about?' said Sarah. 'You want to go and live in stately home or a castle – would you really though? Would you actually go and do it? You're welcome to it mate.'
Emily frowned and grumbled.
'You might want to get that,' Sarah said, and she pointed at her chin. Emily ran a nail along where some Balti had dried and crusted near her mouth.
It felt like she had slept for an age. The sun was still bright and high. It glared through the drawn curtains, unwavering like a spotlight. When they had started eating it had been sometime in the late morning, and they had stuffed themselves to bursting and fell into the bliss of an exhausted, comatose sleep.
When she asked, no one could say how long they'd been out. Some guessed it must have been at least a day.
'Oh,' Emily said, and sipped the wine.
Sarah posed into a hand mirror. She turned her head to one side then the other and pouted her lips with a make-up brush in the other hand. She dabbed it into white face paint and carefully traced a triangle shape between her eyebrows then similar ones below her eyes and in a line down the middle of her chin.
Emily kept her eyes down, looking at her plastic beaker, but she could see in her peripheral vision how Sarah took a different brush and started to artfully blend the lighter shades with darker ones to the side of her forehead and around her chin.
Wearing face paint like anyone else wasn't good enough for Sarah. She had to contour it, polishing highlights to a beautiful shine then adding a gossamer-like frosting of silver glitter over it that made her gleam. Sarah's design was doll-like, or like a geisha girl, but with something feline about the angular purple shadowing under the high arch of her eyebrows and the tiny black tip on her nose.
Emily could see Nick watch her, and knew that Sarah knew. She drank up the attention while she made herself beautiful, buffed like a gemstone. Emily became acutely aware that she, on the other hand, was still wearing the geriatric blouse and skirt she'd found in the old couple's home. Something about that pierced through the post-eating numbness like the point of a needle.
The last remaining few of the friends came to their senses. A trip outside for air proved that it wasn't all a bad dream. Garden fences hung broken and sagging, the bushes and flowerbeds were snapped and trampled, and they, the grass and the pavement were streaked with dark blood from the bodies that lay scattered around the lawns.
There wasn't much to salvage from the wreck. The friends set about forlornly picking through the mess and dragged bodies to a pile in the allotments. They didn't stay long outside the walls and made sure they stuck together. Some deathly, scarecrow-like figures watched them from down the street. They peered from behind walls and over fences then drew back again if they were looked at. The group spat and swore at them but didn't give chase. They stayed wary as they laboured away, always with someone to keep a lookout, uncomfortable in the knowledge that they were being observed.
Their sanctuary was ruined. The invaded buildings were filled with the strange, pungent odour of the foul bodies of those who'd ransacked them. Oddly, while Andy's sheds were untouched, the shed they used for their armoury had been demolished. One of the walls was rammed through, the roof had collapsed to one side and the tools, weapons and suits inside weren't just scattered all around the gardens, but for some time they couldn't be found because they were thrown over fences, concealed in bushes or even submerged under a thin layer of soil, almost like they had tried to hide or bury them. Ryan's grave and Suzie's memorial were left without a mark. The group didn't know what to make of it.
'Nothing about this place will be the same,' said Matt. 'This was where they killed Tom and where Ryan died.' He spoke for the rest of them. They murmured agreement among themselves in bitter tones. They were angry, grief-stricken, and their thoughts turned to revenge.
It was now the early evening. There were many set, grim faces among the group, a seething fury in their downturned gazes, a wet shine to reddened eyes. Emma was in the next room being comforted as best as Andy and Jane could manage. There was quiet. The hi-fi had been destroyed. There would be no more music. Maybe no more music in the whole world, Emily thought, not recorded or even played on a guitar covered in so many stickers you couldn't see the wood underneath.
There was nothing left for them there, just ruins. Ruins and a lot of spoilt memories. Now the Dead knew where they were and their safety was compromised. There was the shock of finding personal possessions trampled, smashed against a hard surface and flung in bits across the room, the furniture torn apart and the imprint of dead grimy hands and trampled footmarks over everything they had left to call home. It felt like a violation. They were left with nothing, and nowhere was safe for them.
'What are we going to do now?' Nick said aloud, to no one in particular.
'We need to find somewhere else,' Jack said, as simply and as matter of fact as the awful truth was as he breathed out a ghost of smoke.
'There's nothing for us here,' Emma said.
'We can't live under their threat any more. We need to fight back,' Emily said, speaking up.
'Bravo,' said Nick.
'We should get some proper weapons and organise a plan to get rid of them all for good.' Sarah's voice came through clenched teeth.
The more that people passed around the joint and breathed the Bhuna smoke, the more they voiced their support, the confidence in their righteous anger growing.
'We'll pay them back for what they've done,' said Jenny.
'I've had enough of being pushed around and being scared,' said Joe.
'We should retake this place, make it ours again,' said Jack.
'Let's bust out of here, find somewhere new and link up with other people out there,' said Jane.
Matt sat with his head in his hands.
Nick produced a map, open at a page that showed Huddersfield and the neighbouring towns and cities. An area in Leeds was circled in marker pen.
'Here's Leeds, where the old man said there was a rescue operation. It's the best place for us to look for somewhere new. We don't want to go out unprepared and it so happens that on our way is the Royal Armouries,' Nick said. 'It's a museum for military history, specially medieval history, and it's crammed full of weapons and armour. Swords, shields, maces, spears – the lot. Surely we'll find something we can put to good use, something better than old kitchenware and DIY tools.' Nick looked round. He had their full attention. There were nods around the group already.
'We don't know what the roads will be like. I think it's likely that we'll run into blocked roads as we get closer into town, and there's no saying who or what could be there and might get the drop on us,' Nick went on.
'The way I think we could go in best is by a way we've already come to know.' Nick traced a finger along a blue line on the map. 'The canal goes straight through Leeds, and right outside the museum. I can pretty much promise you that there will be lots of barges along the way that we can "borrow". We'll sail straight in.'
People were thrilled. Revenge was set in their minds with the bold plan to take destiny into their own hands.
They traced over the route and discussed what provisions they would take. They tried to imagine what this journey would bring and how they would pay the Dead back with an invasion of their own.
'We'll be pirates.'
'We'll be Vikings.'
'We'll be knights and Crusaders.'
This voyage would have to wait until daylight, and now, as the fading light of evening set in, there was one task that remained for them to do before nightfall. They wrapped Tom in clean white bedsheets, and in a solemn procession they carried him out into the gardens and buried him in the flowerbed next to Ryan. Now they had more experience in digging a grave for a friend it took them less time. They let Jack take the first turn, and indeed let him do most of the work to prove to them that he was capable. Andy led an impromptu funeral ceremony held by candlelight as they heaped soil over the body. He planted a young Bhuna shrub over the mound, as he had done for Ryan. The plant over Ryan's grave grew very well.
That night they cleaned their armour and weapons with whatever stream water they had left ready for the next day. They sprayed and scrubbed them down to cleanse them for what would be their hallowed mission. Some of the gear had taken a long time to find after the Dead had hidden it, and some pieces remained unrecovered. This behaviour was something they puzzled over as they scrubbed at the suits and took turns to dunk them in the bathtubs upstairs. A whole load of their gear was found deposited in a dustbin, and more puzzling, Jack found his biker suit, by far the one most fouled with gore, in a house oven. Its door was closed, and he noted with disconcerted fascination that the temperature dials were turned on full, although the dead, powerless oven never warmed.
'Retake the town,' 'Do it for Ryan,' and 'Revenge for Tom' were phrases that caught on that night, repeated mantra-like between them. They were said with growing vehemence as the pipe, joint and bottle made their rounds well into the small hours. The friends spritzed their leathers with various deodorants and soaps to obscure any lingering odours and towelled them dry. They noted with dismay when a lot of their decorations washed off, but the task of reworking their old designs, making them bigger and better than before, was taken up with a vengeance.
Jack and Joe spirited themselves away up to the converted attic room along with a pipe and some Herb they craftily liberated. They studied a town map of Leeds city centre as they swabbed down their leathers. They tried in vain to shift the stink that permeated the suits with anything they could find that smelt better than bilge, sweat and decay until the air was thick and hard to breathe. Once they returned from holding their heads out of the skylight and had done spitting and gasping, they lit up and speculated about what they might find in Leeds.
'There'll be loads of shops in the city centre, dozens of supermarkets that will provide all we could need for time to come,' said Joe. 'I imagine the place will be stuffed full of goodies.'
'But that's what everyone will want and they'll fight over it. It'll be a warzone if nothing else, and will be picked clean anyway if not. Anyway, supermarkets and shopping malls are deathtraps if the horror movies of old are anything to go by,' Jack reasoned.
'Nah, life's not like the movies. After all that happened, with all the loss of life and ruin that came with it, people would form communities stronger than ever. They wouldn't kill each other over groceries. They'd probably just live life and try to get on. Maybe even appreciate life more than ever. They'll be singing 'Kum By Yah' around burning dustbins and grilling whatever they find in the pet shops.'
'Your naïve faith in humanity disturbs me. They probably have factions and warlords and ration goods out or hoard them up to barter with. They would trade them for family members or sell their body for a tin of beans. They'd probably keep slaves and work them for hours to earn a sheet of rough bog roll to wipe their arse with or go to war for a crate of beer.'
'Bleak. Anyway, who's to say there's anyone left alive? They could well all be dead. As in, like, vertically Dead. Would that be worse? The old fella said there were some people out there, but I don't know, I think a civilisation we can rejoin would be too much to ask for,' replied Joe.
'Actually what kind of normal, ordinary, responsible community would have us around the way we carry on – I mean, there is the little issue of the constant drinking and smoking going on. Imagine if they have kids! You couldn't have us lot round kids,' said Jack.
'But we will have all these badass medieval weapons.'
'We will. We will indeed. That's what we shall have, my friend, and I cannot wait.'
Jack finished painting inside the guidelines he'd sketched over his biker suit. 'Check this out,' he said. 'I've been wanting to get round to doing this back piece for a while now.'
In bold capitals across the shoulders were the words 'GET SOME' and beneath a crude rendering of a knife and fork were the words 'BRING CUTLERY'.
Joe laughed. 'Brilliant,' he said. He put the finishing touches to his design. Over the left shoulder was the word 'VERY' and over the right was the word 'EPIC'. In the centre was a skeletal fist, with its middle finger sticking up.
'Subtle,' Jack said, laughing, and they painted away until dawn.
'Keep quiet,' Nick whispered. 'If you can't carry it in two arms, you're not bringing it.'
The last of the friends bumped, scuffed and shushed each other as they set their things in the van and squinted to see in the first light of dawn.
The strength and energy of the Balti meal and the euphoria of the night's Bhuna consumption raised enthusiasm to a near fever pitch that could be seen in the wild flash in their eyes, on their faces under their freshly reapplied warpaint and heard in the rising hubbub.
'Are you okay?' Jenny asked. Emma nodded but didn't say anything. She shared the grim belligerence of the others. Her expression was one of grief, burning anger, and a bitter craving for revenge.
Despite being told that they could only take one bag's worth of essentials, the van rapidly filled up with all kinds of junk.
'Andy, really?' Matt said. He picked through nearly half a kilo of dried Bhuna and a variety of paraphernalia with which to ingest it, which was set topsy-turvy and spilling out on the van floor. 'Why do we need this much alcohol in here? Has someone even brought water?' Matt's voice was hollow and defeated.
'We're travelling light. This is essential.' Andy's brow furrowed.
'Why are there all these paints, brushes, make-up and glitter?' Matt's voice rose. He put his head in his hands and yelled in frustration, 'I can't believe I'm doing this!'
No one paid him any mind. He was caught up in the wave of enthusiasm and powerless to change the tide.
They set off in full light. Nick revved the engine in a high gear. The friends stamped their feet and thumped their chairs. They cheered and psyched themselves up with a war cry. They called out their goodbyes to their old home, to their friends Tom and Ryan and began to sing.
They turned right at the roundabout near the little misshapen green, climbed the hill and passed the school.
'When did that burn down?' someone asked at the smouldering ruin. Nick, Joe and Jack remained quiet.
They drove to the main street of the Marsh district, where the grim terraces were like sets of decaying teeth. Colourful shopfronts tried to be bright and bold among the drab shades of nicotine and soot but only seemed more depressing alongside the tarnished squalor of the grubby stone, the unlit windows and the breeze that picked through the desolate scree and litter on the streets.
They passed a shop that had its front windows smashed and contents spewed out across the road.
'SOMEONE'S THERE! IT'S A PERSON!' a cry went up.
Nick didn't say anything. He checked his mirror and hit the accelerator as the others told him to stop.
'That was a person, a live one! Why didn't you stop?' Emma cried.
Nick mumbled something about how they were probably one of the psychos and sped off.
Their route took them down into a residential area where the pavements were lined with low stone walls and rows of privet hedges. Turn after turn down the narrow, winding road peeled away to show more stone houses, all dead silent, and with no motion anywhere they could see. The friends peered around at their alien surroundings. The singing had stopped.
They passed along a long, broad road with huge trees that towered either side, whose branches reached overhead to join in the middle like a tunnel, and after that a roundabout, on the outskirts of Huddersfield, that linked to the motorway.
Winding tyre tracks criss-crossed each other. Abandoned cars littered the road, often following head-on collisions when they should have been driving the same way. Nick started to drive in jumps and starts as he revved in the wrong gear and wobbled the van. He rode over the corners and up on the verge to bypass cars to take them down a road that led them to the motorway. He wrenched the wheel at a hairpin bend when the road was straight.
'Short cut,' Nick said, eyes wild and with gritted teeth and he drove them the wrong way up the M62 and weaved between the stationary wrecks of cars. Matt prompted the others to open their windows to get some air and forbade anyone else from smoking inside the van.
A line of trees parted along the roadside and presented them with a wide, sweeping view of the dales. The rhythmic stamping of feet and clapping of knees in excitement started up again as their journey brought them on to the broad, grey ribbon of a motorway. Every time they saw the bright blue signs that said 'Leeds' they all called it out.
'Leeds!' 'Leeeds!' 'LEEDS?' 'LeEEeds!' 'LeeeeEEEEEDS!' they called in various shouts, whispers, barks and yelps, making a silly game of it. The long road ahead of them wound and peeled away.
Matt read off the map and mumbled something.
'What did you say?' Jenny said.
'God sake.' Matt repeated himself but louder; 'Not long now. First, we want to go to a place called Woodlesford. From there we should be able to make our trip into Leeds,' Matt shook his head and looked out of the window.
They passed under a motorway variable message sign, once used for information about traffic and delays.
'Look! Look! Did you see that?' Andy got up out of his seat. He turned to point and shout excitedly. 'There was a message!' People jumped and turned to look, perplexed.
'That one said "Salvation!"' Andy exclaimed.
'The signs come in multiples! They're all fives, this is definitely the way. Did you see that traffic sign? It wasn't green, yellow or red – it was purple! There's someone out there and they're sending messages to us.' Andy looked enraptured. His eyes roved over the road ahead to look for any more messages that might appear to those with the eyes to see them.
'O-kay.' No one was quite sure what to make of that one.
Views down over the country hills whipped by, leaving little time to crane necks and wonder know who or what may be out there in those unknown places glimpsed at between the embankments and bushy jumbles of trees. The arches of flyovers and footbridges loomed like ribcages. They passed another variable message sign, and despite how irrational they knew it to be, they couldn't help but look. The sun glared off it and they couldn't see anything. Andy whispered, 'Just a full stop.'
They encountered a mobile home that had dislodged from the back of a lorry and lay across the road. A hole had been smashed in the side of one wall, and the opposite one had folded down onto the road. The only way on was to drive through it. Nick rolled the van up over the floor and over the strewn mess of the contents with a quick prayer for the tyres. They urged him to go slower so they could see inside.
'There's a body, sat on that chair!' Jenny said. The others crowded to see in the gloom. They could see right inside this little home and see all the people's belongings inside as the innards had been smashed apart and dispersed across the road.
As they drove on the friends passed around numerous bottles and worked themselves up into a frenzy of excitement and aggression. They stamped, clapped and cheered as they sang, each taking a turn to sing a line and then they belted out a chorus together.
Matt had the map on his knees. He mumbled 'here' and pointed. They turned off onto a narrow road bordered by flat farmland fields and scruffy hedges, as they arrived at their destination.
The greater part of Woodlesford, when they came to it, was a small, newly constructed village of near-identical red-brick houses that the black tarnish of England's damp hadn't yet corrupted. Some of those on board gave a little cry as they saw ghostly figures watching them from the windows of the houses or stopping their slow procession to turn and stare at their arrival. Nick rolled the van along quietly and they all ducked low and hushed each other down to silence.
'No sudden movements and don't approach them,' Matt cautioned, and he pointed Nick off down to one last road, where they pulled up in a deserted car park by the side of a canal.
'This is it! We have to go on foot from here until we can find a barge. Don't leave anything behind because we're not gonna come back for it,' said Nick in a low voice. 'If anyone else slams their door they'll be swimming.'
Luck was on their side. Only a short distance away were several boats moored up along the canal side, waiting just for them. After persuading one to start they cruised along and started to sing again, this time more gleefully aggressive.
They gave the royal wave and gestured rudely to a couple of the Dead who glowered at them from the village as they pulled away. The friends cruised through the tranquil countryside, surrounded by nature and the unspoilt farmlands from the quiet peace of the waterway, and the still waters overhung by the trees split before them and rippled like glass.
They clambered on top of the stolen boat in their biker suits with all the livid tribal markings and brandished their weapons. They passed around the booze, flung the empty bottles overboard and broke the tranquil quiet with their raucous singing as they blew a fog of pollution into the pure country air. The barge chugged along.
'Can't this thing go any faster?' Jenny asked.
'No. No, it could not,' Matt growled from the helm.