At first, it had seemed like an American problem, (as many things on the news were these days), reports of sudden outbreaks of violence and mass murder. Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and New York. Then came the footage. The dead walked, talked, and killed. And not just in the States, either. It was a global event; and within two hours, the epidemic was in Australia as well. The first reported case was in Coober Pedy, and the second in Sydney. Then a dozen more. After that, he lost count.
The cities became war zones, then cemeteries. The madness spread across the world. Military forces turned renegade. Nuclear reactors melted down. Anarchy was the norm. Bullets were currency. Chaos ruled. And in the space of seven days, Western civilization collapsed. The British Parliament fell first, followed by the Russian and American governments. Leigh wasn’t sure about Australia’s leaders. The power in Melbourne went out on the third day, and neither of them had ventured outside since.
Penny stopped wheezing, and Leigh assumed she’d fallen asleep. Suddenly, she began to thrash on the couch, clawing her throat. Penny’s eyes bulged. Leigh ran to her side.
“Breathe, Penny. Breathe!” He sat her up and pounded on her back. A wad of yellow phlegm the size of a golf ball splattered onto the floor. Gasping, Penny sank back down onto the cushions.
“You okay?” Leigh asked.
She nodded, scratching her throat. When she spoke, her voice trembled. “Cold…it’s so cold in here.”
Leigh felt her forehead. His hand came away slick with perspiration. She was burning up, the fever spiking again.
“You need help,” he muttered. “Medicine.”
“No.” She clasped his hand and squeezed. “We can’t go outside. You know that. We’ve seen—”
Penny broke off into another fit of coughing. Frowning, Leigh fetched a washcloth and ran it under cold water. Then he came back, knelt beside Penny, and mopped her face.
“They’ll fix it soon,” he promised. “The army or the police. You’ll see. They’ll ride in, just like the cavalry.”
She touched his face with her fingertips. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. Now rest.”
She nodded, then closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Leigh envied her. Though physically and mentally exhausted, he couldn’t sleep. Every time he tried, he heard the screams outside. And the gunshots.
And smelled the dead.
On the fourth day, a zombie came to their door. It knocked, politely at first, but then insistent. When Leigh and Penny didn’t answer, it broke into the house. They’d killed it with a kitchen knife, jamming the blade through the creature’s ear and into its brain. While disposing of the corpse, Leigh noticed that the zombies were marking houses. A bright red X spray-painted on the front doors meant that no living creatures were left inside. He’d painted their own door immediately, and since then, they’d been left alone.
Alive.
As long as they didn’t go outside.
But if they stayed inside much longer, Penny would die anyway.
Leigh Haig didn’t feel very brave. He felt scared, and sick with worry for his wife. He wasn’t an action hero. He and Penny worked in the IT department for Hewlett-Packard. If this were a book or a film, he’d brandish a shotgun and go searching for help. But this wasn’t a book, and they weren’t fictional characters. He and Penny were real. The creatures outside were real.
The danger was real.
He glanced back down at Penny. Her breathing was shallow, her expression frozen in a grimace. He had to try.
The closest drug store, located at the Forest Hill Chase Shopping Centre, was two kilometers away. Surely he could make it that far. They’d have medicine there, if the looters hadn’t cleaned it out. And if he needed to, perhaps he could even make it as far as the Box Hill Hospital. Find a doctor or a nurse. Antibiotics. It was only ten kilometers. When he looked at his sleeping wife, and felt his love for her stirring in his breast, that didn’t seem far at all. He could do it. He had to do it. Leigh searched the house for weapons, and found a wooden mallet and two long, sharp kitchen knives. They’d have to do. He embedded the blades into each side of the mallet, fashioning a crude but effective double-edged axe, and swung it to test the weight.
“Fucking Conan.” He grinned. “Have at thee, dogs!”
He whirled the weapon over his head, and accidentally hit the lamp.
“Shit.”
On the couch, Penny stirred, mumbled, and then went back to sleep.
He went to the window and peeked outside. An undead cat lay twitching in the road, unable to move. Its spine had been crushed and a fresh tire tread stood out in its burst stomach. There were no other zombies in sight. The flock of birds, living or dead, had vanished.
Leigh considered his options. He could sneak into the garage and drive his Honda Integra to the drug store. After a moment, he decided against it. Not only would the engine’s noise wake Penny, but also, it would draw more attention from the things outside. Better to go on foot, stealthily, moving from one hiding place to another. It would be easier to avoid detection that way.
Leigh wrote a note to Penny, and laid it on the table next to the sofa. He kissed her forehead, and whispered softly in her ear.
“I love you. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
Then, taking one last look out the window to make sure the coast was clear, he unlocked the door and crept outside.
The street was quiet.
“I promise. An hour. Maybe less. Just like nipping off for some smokes or the newspaper.”
Gripping his weapon with both hands, Leigh Haig took a walk through Hell.
HELLHOUNDS ON
MY TRAIL
The Rising
Day Nine
King’s Lynn, England
It wasn’t a good plan. He knew that. But it wasn’t an awful plan either. In fact, it wasn’t so much a plan as it was a final option. Reach the Boal Quay docks without getting killed or eaten, steal a fishing boat, and be well away from land before dark. The docks were three miles from the Queen Elizabeth hospital, where they both worked. Going on foot would take just over an hour. It would be tough with those things outside, but what choice was there? They had to try.
Before they left, Jason Houghton wished (and not for the first time) for a gun. Nothing fancy, just something to even the odds a bit. It wasn’t that guns were non-existent in England. They weren’t. But you had to know somebody who could get you one, and he hadn’t. He was a hospital computer system administrator, not a criminal or a soldier. Even if they reached Boal Quay, neither of them had any idea how to pilot a boat, but they’d learn fast. Hopefully. Still, the open sea was better than staying here. King’s Lynn (or just “Lynn” as the locals called it), located on England’s east coast, was a historic port town with a population of just over 36,000 souls. Now, most of those souls had departed, and something else had taken up residence inside their bodies.
They’d left the hospital fifteen minutes ago. Catherine, his girlfriend of nearly ten years, was armed with a meat cleaver from the hospital’s cafeteria, and Jason carried a makeshift propane bottle blowtorch.
The hellhounds had followed them every step of the way.
Jason had encountered plenty of zombies in the last nine days. The first, on day two of what society called “The Rising,” had emerged from a restroom stall when Jason was at the cinema. He hadn’t even realized it was dead at the time. The fat bastard suffered a heart attack while sitting on the bog. Then he’d tried to eat Jason and another patron. Since then, he’d seen hundreds more. But nothing like what cornered them now.