So anyway, I was talking about Billy. Billy, he was first generation through and through. I don’t know what his story was, but when he turned up about two weeks ago he was wearing a suit, a real nice suit, he even still had a carnation in his buttonhole. I don’t know, maybe they was burying him when it happened. You’ve got to wonder what they’d have thought, when they was burying him and he got up like that.
Anyway, he cut quite a figure when he walked up of Main Street in that suit. Well, not walked, y’know, I guess he shambled as much as the rest of them, but somehow he seemed kind of smarter than the others—more alert. And in that suit, he reminded me of my kid, when we buried him. That’s why I named him Billy.
Billy made himself at home pretty quick. It didn’t take him long to figure that there were just two houses with people in, mine and the place over the road. Both of us had boarded ourselves in pretty good. Actually, I shouldn’t go taking the credit for that—when I got here, after my car came off the freeway a couple of miles up, I found this place pretty much like it is now. They’d got in through a window and it was still left open—a couple of them had got in and then I figure the other two must’ve been the ones whose house it was. Four’s about as many as you could handle, up close like that—I had my old revolver still on me. I guess I was lucky though, getting them before they got me. Guess it could have easily gone the other way.
I hauled the bodies out the window and boarded it up again before the others figured out what’d gone on. All in all, I was real lucky—there was a rifle here with one of those telescopic sights, and a whole load of tins, all sorts of things. They was all set to wait it out, and then they just must have got careless. It can happen. It ain’t easy to keep concentrating all the time, not with things the way they are. I’ve tried not to mess with their property too much—it wouldn’t be decent. That gun and the food’s all I really need.
But I’m getting off the subject again—this is Billy’s story, it ain’t mine. And the thing was, as soon as he’d walked into town like that, you could see that something was different. I guess I should have known that he meant trouble, but you get bored, with nothing to do all day and the radio and TV giving out nothing but static. I should have just shot him right then. At first, y’know, you take every shot you can get—but after a while you get to realizing that there’s always gonna be more of them than you got bullets. However many bullets you got there’ll always be more of them.
So, maybe that’s what I was thinking when I didn’t take my shot on Billy. Or maybe it was because he’d looked so much like my kid when he was walking up Main Street. Or maybe it was just that I was bored and here was something happening. I suppose it don’t matter much.
Either way, you could see that he was a bit smarter, that he wasn’t just gonna settle down to blundering about with the rest of them. First off, he walked all round the house across the road, and every so often he’d bang on a board or something, like he was testing the place. Then, when he got done with that, he came and did the same to mine—I could hear him scratching on that window where I’d got in. I got to say, I was impressed. You get sick of the stupid way they act, they’re like dumb, lazy children, and it starts to grate on your nerves after a while. It was nice to see one of them showing a bit of initiative; even if it did look like it was gonna spell trouble.
I wasn’t too worried for myself—I checked the boards every morning, and every so often I’d hammer up another couple, more for something to do than anything, ’cause like I said they’d pretty much given up on trying to get in. But I didn’t know about the family across the road; I didn’t know whether they were taking precautions or not. The place looked okay from the outside. Sounds kind of stupid now, but I didn’t like to pry too much. I knew that there were four of them, I figured they were a husband and wife and two kids, but that was as far as I’d got. It’s a wide street, I couldn’t see much without the sight, and that just felt too much like—I don’t know—like I was some kind of pervert. Even with everything all screwed up like this, people have got to have some right to privacy, haven’t they?
There wasn’t any way we could talk to each other, if the phones had been working then I could have just looked them up in the book I guess. Or maybe I could’ve put a sign up, but I didn’t know if they’d have any way to read it. So, I just tried to leave them alone as much as I could.
Billy obviously got it into his head that they were a better bet, because after the first day he didn’t bother with me too much. But I kept my eye on him, ’cause he was interesting—least he was compared with the others, and because they were everywhere, as far as you could see, they were about all there was to look at. It was the same for them, they were curious, as much as they could be—who was this, walking around like he had some kind of an agenda or something?
In the meanwhile, Billy had taken a project on himself—the second day after he walked into town, he picked himself out a particular window, round on the right-hand side of the family’s house, just after where the porch ended. Even with the scope, I could barely make him out there. There was the porch, and a big old tree in the way, and I could just about see him moving around but that was it. ’Course, I could guess what he’d be up to—he must have decided that there was a weak spot, he thought maybe if he kept going at it he’d be able to get in sooner or later. I didn’t give much for his chances. There was no way they wouldn’t have heard him there, and if they thought there was any chance of him getting through they’d be hammering up two new boards for every one he managed to get off—least, that was what I’d of been doing.
Probably he’d get bored after a day or two, and go to sitting and wandering like the rest of them. That thought made me kind of sad, somehow. I mean God knows it wasn’t like I wanted him to succeed or nothing—I just didn’t want to have to watch him give up either. Shit, I don’t know, maybe it was like I wanted to see him make something of himself; I didn’t want him to wind up like my Billy did. Yeah, it sounds pretty stupid, I know that. I guess I don’t know what I was thinking—just seemed like it would of been a shame is all.
When I got up the next day, he was still at it. But it wasn’t just that—he’d gathered himself an audience as well. A lot of the others—maybe there was a hundred, maybe even more—had gathered about on the lawn. Some of them were standing but a lot were just sitting around, like he was putting on a performance for them or something. I still couldn’t make out exactly what Billy himself was up to. It got to be frustrating—what could he be doing to get all of their attentions like that? After a while I started hunting around for a better view, and then I remembered there was a ladder to the attic, and sure enough once I got up there, there was a big window looking out over the street. The room had been converted, looked like it was a kid’s room but then the kid had left and the parents hadn’t wanted to change it any.
The window was so big that I could sit up on the ledge. And from there, sure enough, I could see Billy pretty clear. It was quite a shock. I ain’t ever seen one of them go at anything the way he was at those planks—tearing at them with his hands, over and over. His fingers were all bloody; with the sight I reckoned I could make out bits of bone where he’d torn the ends clean off. He was a mess, but that wasn’t slowing him any—I guess he wasn’t even feeling it. He just kept tearing at the planks, not paying any attention to anything else. He’d got a couple down already; they were lying on the grass next to him. I didn’t figure it was gonna do him any good though—the family would put up more on the inside, and if he started on those they’d just have to put up some more. Even if he was a bit stronger and a bit smarter than the rest, he still wasn’t about to keep up.