Hi there! I've no news to speak of at the moment, so I thought I'd entertain you with an old short story of mine. This was previously published on the zombie movie website www.homepageofthedead.com . If you like zombie fiction, they have tons of it! Enjoy!
‘Courage’ by Pete Regan.
Even now it seems somewhat unreal.
It was less than a fortnight ago that the first reports of the attacks came in from the States, alleged groups of madmen killing everything they could get their hands on. As we quickly discovered, it was more than insanity. It was a plague, the plague which would soon spread to our side of the Atlantic. There was of course isolated cases, the recently deceased making a comeback. The advice from our American counterparts who were beginning to suss things out, gave us a little heads up. As soon as anyone passed away we dutifully disposed of the corpse before reanimation took place. The television told us to stock up on lighter fluid, hammers, and saws, pluck up the courage to mutilate our dearly departed. Things would not go according to plan naturally, but things appeared to go smoothly enough for us to think that we would avoid the nightmare happening in America. How naïve we were…
The images of the massacre at Manchester will be burned into my consciousness until the day I too succumb to the madness. No one saw it coming; the US authorities were spot on. They safely got the evacuees onto the plane and out of the country before the airport was overrun, there should have been no infected on the plane! Of course we know what happened next, they were infected, we are all infected, it’s just that no one knew because they were still obviously alive. All it took was for someone to have a fatal heart attack or brain embolism or whatever, followed by the now familiar process of reanimation. The plane crashed of course, but it had already reached British soil, crashing into a Manchester housing estate.
I wish I hadn’t been watching the news bulletin that evening. It was like some kind of horror movie, but with the usual TV news readers and such. As with most viewers, I knew this was no hoax, yet still expected it all to turn out to be something along the same lines of the Halloween special that was on the BBC a few years back, or the infamous ‘War of the Worlds’ radio broadcast. There seemed to be an air of parody about it, the way the outside broadcast crew panicked on screen, running for their lives. They got too close. It spread too quickly. Like I said; unreal.
I’m still at my sister’s home, hiding in the attic with my niece. My sister is rummaging around downstairs. We prepared quickly, and well. We have enough tinned food and water to keep us going for a while, a portable radio, blankets, books for me, paper and crayons for Isobel. Mark went into town to buy a rifle or gun or something three days ago, not that any of us would know what to do with one! I’m sure everyone else thought about weaponry too, but our town has one little shooting and fishing supplies shop that I’m sure would have been raided long ago. I have a large kitchen knife and my wits!
Isobel wants her mummy, she’s been weeping and wailing and drawing those things to us like blood draws sharks. Mummy wants her too. Mummy decided to go downstairs to see if Mark was on his way back. It was the last thing that Mummy did and now Mummy isn’t Mummy any more. The thing that used to be my sister is staring right at me from the stairs, head tilted at an unusual angle. Thank God that Isobel isn’t looking at this. The ladder is still at the bottom of the stairway where I kicked it, neither Mummy, Mr. Leeming from down the street, or the other man have figured out how to use it. They just wait, clawing at the air between us, moaning.
I want to leap out. I want to grab Isobel and run to my car. I want to drive away from here and find someone else to share the burden of our new world. I want to escape our prison. I want to be the superhero who can evade monsters with only a kitchen knife in one hand and a toddler tucked under the other arm. Well, I don’t have that courage, this is not a movie. I may have the courage to use that knife on ourselves but for now I’m telling myself that there is still hope for escape. I don’t really believe it, even if we do get out, what then? The radio broadcasts stopped four hours ago; nothing dramatic, it just stopped. But it makes you wonder how it happened. Has the station been overrun? Is the local refuge (an army base approximately five miles out of town) still in operation? My mind is racing, fighting exhaustion with plans of escape, plans of defeat, plans of anything but staying in a cold dark hole on top of a crumbling council house. I’m going to try to sleep now; maybe things will look easier in the morning. Maybe Mummy will tire of waiting.
(C) Pete Regan
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