Meadowside (14 page)

Kylie stood staring at the doorway, willing Mike and Britney to walk through it. She shouted their names when they didn’t appear, and when nobody else came out she ran to the opening.

Inside, the entrance to the play area was awash with the bloodied remains of dismembered crazies and their fallen, partially-consumed victims. More bodies lay beyond them, lying near the walls among splinters of broken furniture they had tried to hide behind. A few of the remaining fighters were crouched over them, searching for survivors, their weapons abandoned.

“Mike! Britney! Where are you?” Kylie yelled.

One of the fighters, his face drenched in blood, looked up and locked eyes with Kylie. The body he was crouched before gave out a gurgling groan.

“Kylie?” he said with a shaking voice.

“Tom!” Kylie yelled, and rushed into the play area.

“No, wait there,” Tom said.

Kylie hesitated, then stepped gingerly between the corpses, looking down so she wouldn’t lose her footing in the slippery mess. Once she was past them she looked up at Tom. He had his hands around someone’s neck, blood spurting between his fingers.

“Tom, who–” Kylie’s voice trailed off when she saw patches of pink between the splashes of blood covering the girl’s clothing. “Britney? BRITNEY!” She rushed forward and knelt by her side. “Oh god, Britney!”

Britney’s eyes flickered open. Her breath came in a rasping gurgle. Most of her nose was missing, the rest of her face a mass of raw, torn flesh. Blood bubbled from between Tom’s fingers as she exhaled.

“What do we do?” Kylie asked, frantic.

Tom shook his head slowly. Tears rolled down his face. “I’m sorry Kylie, it’s too late for that.”

“No, it can’t be,” Kylie said, rising to her feet. I’ll go and get that police woman, she’ll know what to do.”

“You need to say goodbye. It’s too late for anything else, she hasn’t got long left.”

Kylie looked down at Britney as she gave out a final, rasping breath. Her eyes stared up, unseeing. Kylie dropped to her knees, the baby cradled in one arm. Tom wiped his bloody hands on his tracksuit bottoms and reached out to embrace her. Kylie sobbed into his chest, not caring about the sticky blood smeared there.

She broke away when the baby pressed between them started crying again. “Where’s Mike?” she asked. But the look on Tom’s face told her everything she needed to know. She melted back into his arms and he held her tight.

Outside, the police woman shouted for everyone’s attention. Kylie raised her head and looked at Tom.

“We’d best go and see what she wants,” he said softly, and pulled Kylie to her feet. He opened a fold of the baby’s blanket and peered at its face. The baby gurgled up at him, oblivious to the horror around it. Tom wiped his nose and attempted a smile, but it seemed forced. “Come on then, Kylie.”

As they left The House of Fun Kylie saw the police woman surrounded by dozens of people, their weapons discarded as they listened to what she had to say. Only Smiffy seemed uninterested, and leaned over the balcony looking down, the chainsaw propped up by his feet.

“The police or the army will be here to sort thing out soon,” the police woman said, “so until they get here this is what we’re going to do. It might take them a few days to reach us, so we may need to take emergency supplies from some of the shops while we wait. We’ll keep a record of anything we take so the shop owners can be reimbursed at a later date. I’ll also need a list of everyone’s names and addresses, so that–”

“Fuck that,” Smiffy said, turning toward her and shaking his head. He pushed himself away from the balcony and stepped forward. “Who the fuck put you in charge, lady? The way I see it, we just saved your fucking life so that means we tell
you
what to do, not the other way round.” He pushed his way through the crowd, nudging people out of the way until he stood before the police woman.

“I’m a police officer. In a state of emergency like this I have the power to–”

Smiffy lunged forward and grabbed her by the neck with one hand. “Lady, I don’t give a fuck what you are,” he said with a sneer, “I’m in charge here, not you.”

The police woman’s eyes bulged. Her tongue lolled from her mouth as she gasped for air. She grasped at Smiffy’s hand and kicked out at his ankles, squirming to free herself from his grip. Smiffy punched her in the face with his free hand, then punched her again. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets and her arms fell limp by her sides.

Someone tried to pull Smiffy off her, shouting for him to let her go. Smiffy backhanded the man and sent him spinning away. He dragged the police woman by the neck up to the balcony and pushed her back against it, then punched her in the face again a few more times. Still holding her by the neck with one hand, he bent down and crooked his other arm under her knees, then lifted her onto the balcony’s edge and hurled her over. She fell silently, tumbling through the air, and landed in a tangled heap of splayed arms and legs.

Smiffy nodded to himself, then spat over the balcony at the crumpled body below. He turned to face the shocked crowd, who were edging away from him. He rubbed his hands together and smiled.

“Right then, this is what we’re
really
going to do.”

A man picked up an axe and raised it above his head, then ran at Smiffy with a roar. Smiffy spun to face him, his fists raised. His eyes widened when he saw the axe hurtling toward him. He raised his hands to protect his face and the axe thudded into his chest, shattering through his ribcage. Smiffy fell to his knees, staring down at the axe embedded in his chest, the blood pouring down its wooden handle. He looked up at the man who had put it there with a confused look, then toppled forward.

Kylie turned away and reached out for Tom. He held her tight and she hoped he would never let go.

Epilogue

Kylie sat on a luxury leather sofa near the war memorial statue, watching Tom and Britney playing together in the dim emergency lighting. Expensive toys of all kinds were scattered everywhere, but Britney favoured the small die-cast cars and green plastic soldiers she had found in a bargain bin several months ago. She stood the soldiers in a line, then ran them over with the cars. When they were all knocked over she would stand them up again and start over. This was the only game Britney had played since finding the soldiers, her other toys lying forgotten all around her. Kylie had asked her once why she had stopped playing with her other toys. 

“Bad men outside,” was Britney’s response. “Need to kill them.”

That had been the first time Britney had ever mentioned the crazies. Kylie and Tom had done their best to shield them from her by never going anywhere near the exit doors, where they still pounded relentlessly, day and night. Kylie wondered what else Britney had picked up on during her short life in Meadowside. 

Britney was almost two years old, and full of curiosity about everything. Several times now, Kylie and Tom had woken to find her missing from her cot. They had no idea how she got over the bars, and the first time it happened they thought she had been stolen by one of the other survivors. After a frantic search they found her by the war memorial statue. Something seemed to draw her to the bronze soldiers, because that was where she would end up every time she went missing. So eventually Kylie and Tom moved their home into one of the nearby shops, and the area around the statue became Britney’s permanent playground. 

After the last of the crazies had been killed, there was the problem of what to do with them. They couldn’t just leave them to rot, the smell would have been too overpowering, and the risk of disease too great. At first someone had suggested burning them in the open space around the food hall, but that idea was soon dismissed due to fears of the fire spreading. Someone else suggested throwing them off the roof, which sounded like a good idea, but nobody knew how to get up there. In the end they had smashed the outside windows of a few upper floor shops and tossed them out to the hungry crazies below, then boarded the windows up.

After that, everyone had gone their separate ways and found their own little corner of Meadowside to live in. Tom and Kylie hardly ever saw any of the other survivors, except the odd one or two while they were out shopping for supplies. They nodded in recognition, but nobody ever engaged in conversation anymore. They knew the only topic would be what they had all gone through, and nobody wanted to be reminded of those days. 

“Need a piss,” Britney announced, standing up.

Kylie was about to rise herself when Tom said he would take her. She settled back down into the sofa and smiled as she watched him lead Britney away. Tom had been a great father to the child, and it made Kylie love him all the more for it. He was nothing like Kylie’s own father, who had just been a pissed up waster all her life. She knew Tom would be over the moon when she told him she was pregnant. She had done the test earlier that morning, and was just waiting for the right moment to tell him the good news. 

Rapid gunfire came from somewhere in the distance. Kylie jumped up and looked around, trying to locate where it had come from.

“Tom?” she yelled.

When he didn’t reply, Kylie ran to the nearby public toilets and burst through the door. Tom leaned against a sink, watching Britney perched on the edge of a toilet in one of the cubicles, swinging her legs backwards and forwards.

“Did you hear that?” Kylie asked.

“Hear what?” Tom said with a shrug. 

Britney climbed off the toilet and bent down in front of Tom. “Arse wipe,” she demanded. Tom picked up one of the stash of toilet rolls they kept in there and wrapped a wad of paper round his hand. He wiped Britney clean, then tossed it into the toilet and flushed it away.

The rapid gunfire came again, closely followed by a loud explosion. 

“What the fuck was that?” Tom asked, turning to look at Kylie.

“Bang bang,” Britney said. “Kill bad men.”

“I don’t know,” Kylie said, shaking her head, “but we’d better go and see.”

Other survivors had heard it too, and several were congregated near the north exit when Kylie, Tom and Britney got there. Some of them brandished tools as weapons, and looked at each other nervously. The crazies had moved away from the doors, giving everyone a clear view of the car park beyond. The tarmac was pock-marked with explosions, littered with the charred remains of dead crazies. Some of the living crazies were feeding on them, but most were shuffling away into the distance, where sporadic gunshots still rang out.

“It’s got to be the army,” a man said, excitedly. “Who else would have guns and bombs out there?”

There were murmurs of agreement. “They’ve come to save us!” a woman shouted.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you,” Dan Foster said, leaning on his walking stick. Everyone turned to look at him as he raised the walking stick and pointed at the exit door. “It could be any fucker out there for all we know. All I’m saying is, we shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to welcome them, whoever they are. We should stay out of sight until we know who they are and what they want.”

“Oh come on,” the woman argued, “you can’t be serious? After all this time there’s been nobody, and now when we’re rescued you want to hide away from them?”

Dan shrugged. “Well it’s up to you. If you want to take the risk, you go ahead. Me, I’m going to wait and see. Besides, even if they are army, if you go running up to them they’ll just assume you’re a zombie and shoot you.” 

“He’s right,” Tom said. “They’ll shoot first and ask questions later, that’s what I’d do in their position.”

While they were arguing, Kylie heard a vehicle approaching at high speed, its tyres squealing around the bend leading into the car park. She picked up Britney and ran into a nearby shop, closely followed by Tom. The others looked at each other in silence, then peeled away to find hiding places of their own when they heard another gunshot. The last of them was just out of sight when Kylie heard one of the glass doors shatter. She put Britney down and crept to the front of the shop, then peered through the shutters to watch. 

A small boy crunched over the broken glass into Meadowside, closely followed by a young woman in army fatigues. She looked around, pointing the rifle in all directions, then picked up the boy and ran toward a nearby escalator.

“It’s the army,” Kylie said. “They’ve come to rescue us.”

Tom joined her at the front of the shop. They watched through the shutters together as another man stepped through the door into Meadowside. At first Kylie thought he was one of the crazies, due to his wild, staring eyes and his dishevelled appearance. But he was overweight, whereas all the crazies outside were emaciated, and he carried a baseball bat and an axe with him.

“What do we do?” Kylie whispered.

“I don’t know,” Tom said, “let’s wait and see what happens.”

But others were already emerging from their hiding places. The dishevelled man stood still and watched them, his eyes flitting nervously between them. He raised his axe and stepped toward them.

“No, it’s okay,” a woman said, palms held out to the man. “You’re safe here.”

The man stopped again, then licked his cracked, dry lips. “Are you, um… I mean, are…” His face turned red and he looked down at his feet. “Are you… um… well?”