I spent a good two hours in there, because there were racks and racks of fancy dress costumes; cheap shit ones for purchase made in China that could likely be bought from eBay for a fiver, and some high-quality ones that were rentals. That was where my attention was.
I was extremely happy with my selection of fancy-dress attire for our little apocalypse family. Yes, Freya… all our little family. All. Of. Them.
Mu-ha-ha-haaaaaa.
I got balloons, some little cans of helium to blow them up, sparkling birthday banners to hang up (plus some blu-tac to stick them up with), and I also grabbed a handful of birthday cards so everyone could write one out, making sure I got a massive one that would stand out from the rest that Mark could give his birthday boy.
It’s a simple thing, I know, but it feels bigger. We can’t do this all the time, but with everything Charlie has been through, it just feels right. He’s had to – and will continue to have to – grow up much quicker. He won’t go to high school, he won’t get nervous before asking a girl to prom, and he won’t experience college or university to make the happy memories that most of us are blessed with. He’s never really going to enjoy just being a kid. In a couple of years, should we live that long, he’ll be twelve and it won’t surprise me at all if he’s walking round carrying a small calibre revolver on his hip, or pot-shotting undead with a small rifle. He’s the first of a new generation where his ‘firsts’ will be the first life he saved, the first wound he took, the first zombie he killed, and the first bullet he fired.
Shit, what a depressing thought that is. Before all this shit went down, if you told a twelve-year old boy he’d be carrying a live firearm to kill zombies, they’d probably high-five and air punch thinking it was the coolest shit in the world. The reality of it is far more distressing.
So, in light of him losing his childhood quicker than most, we can still mark the big one-zero with a fancy-dress party. One little light of humanity in a dark inhuman world.
After I gave Nate the nod I was done, he looked visibly relieved as we loaded up and rolled out. The last part of our little sojourn still had to be tested though. We needed to find an undead or two and test their reaction to me and we weren’t enamoured with the idea of heading to the great wall of hate uptown.
As we’d rolled out about 7.30am, and now it was only a little after 10.30am, we still had the best part of the day left, so on the very edge of town we decided to pull into a little cul-de-sac that had some high-end detached houses. There were five houses in the little circle at the end of the road, three of which still had vehicles on the driveway. We surmised that people in these houses had decided to lock down and we would either find survivors we could possibly help, or at least some undead to run my little test.
Sadly, we did not find survivors.
I was in a good mood on our journey back from the party shop. High spirited, you might even say. One of those houses, however, sucked all the joy out of me. I was brought crashing back down to reality with a hard stop.
Four were devoid of presence, either living or dead, two of them being the houses without vehicles out front. The two that did have a vehicle outside - but no sign of living or dead inside - we assumed escaped on foot or were away on holiday when all this bullshit went down.
Bing bong. “All flights into the UK are cancelled due to unforeseen global apocalypse. The team at Undead Airlines apologise for any inconvenience.”
The last remaining house in the circle was a stark reminder of the horrors hiding behind closed doors. Once we experienced that house, all I wanted to do was go home.
We knew it was bad when we popped the door open. It was like the halitosis of the dead exhaling out of the doorway. There was no doubt there were undead inside because the cloud of fetid corruption that hissed out of the open doorway was straight up evil.
There’s no other way to put it. It wasn’t just rotten, but aggressive and acidic, like a targeted assault against your senses. I can never find the right words to describe the putrescent stench of the undead, even though I keep trying. The best single word I can think of to convey its foulness is violating. It violates your senses, burning the eyes, souring the tongue, and invading your nostrils to squat there like a hobo that’s shat himself.
Just fucking dreadful.
Nate didn’t need to whistle test. The moment we peered into the hallway we saw a dead couple who I guessed were in their mid-thirties when alive. They were skinny though, like way too skinny, as though they had slowly starved these past few months. Their faces were sunken and sharp, their fingers skeletal with thin layers of pale skin stretched over the bony digits.
I couldn’t help but feel remorse when I saw the state of them. This little cul-de-sac was literally two miles from the lodge on the wealthier outskirts of town. We’d driven past this little avenue of houses so many times on our various runs beyond the gate. They must have heard the throaty engine of our pickup pass them by on numerous occasions, or the gunshots of our firearms training in the distance, and cowered behind their curtains, fearful that bandits or raiders were coming to assault them.
After hearing Nate crack open the front door with the halligan, the undead couple
