Year of the Zombie (Book 8): Scratch (6 page)

But it was another house
which caught her eye. Directly opposite. The infected there were clamouring
around the front door, scratching at it, appearing almost to be squabbling with
each other to get inside. And as she watched, she saw it was because the people
in the house were reacting. Panicking. An elderly man was visible through a
downstairs window. He was brandishing a golf club, ready to use it as a weapon.
‘That’s Derek,’ Gary said, startling her. She spun around and saw him standing
behind her, dressed only in a pair of boxers, carrying Holly. He handed her
over to her mum and Jody turned back to the window.

‘He’d better not be
about to do what I think he is,’ she said.

‘He’s an arsehole.
Proper angry bastard.’

Jody scowled at his
language, but she had to agree. Derek certainly seemed to be an arsehole or at
the very least incredibly stupid. He was outside now, having climbed out
through his dining room window so he could get behind the infected bodies
converging on his front door. Jody covered Holly’s eyes and looked away herself
as he started swinging his golf club at the nearest of them, hacking it down.

Neighbour Derek appeared
to be venting all his considerable frustrations on just one of the undead.
Think
about the blood, you idiot,
she silently warned him, but it was too late.
The figure was on the ground at his feet now, and what was left of its head was
like a deflated football, concave. Contaminated blood was splashing everywhere,
soaking Derek’s slippers and his pyjama bottoms.

The other infected were
responding now. It was as if they shared a hive mind, but there was no complex
connection between them and no real communication, just the shared instinctive desire
to spread their foul disease as far as possible. While Derek was distracted
with one of them, four more surrounded him. He realised at the last possible
moment. Using the head of his bloodied golf club to push another one of them
out of the way, Derek tried to fight his way back to the dining room window.
The way through was blocked. His wife – ‘Sandra,’ Gary whispered, ‘a real
busybody’ – watched helplessly from inside, desperately wanting to help
him get in, but at the same time knowing she couldn’t risk opening the window.
She gestured furiously towards the front door and, in the midst of the bodies
and the sudden madness, Derek ran for it, shoulder-charging more of the
creatures out of the way as he did.

He almost made it, too.

He reached for the door
handle and opened it, just as one of the infected struck. With one outstretched
hand, a hideous, loping thing which used to be a woman of similar age and build
to Jody grabbed the collar of Derek’s dressing gown and pyjama top and pulled
them down. With the other hand she dragged her claws down his back, carving
four deep red furrows in his pale and flabby flesh.

In the end, the fact
Derek was now infected didn’t really matter. It was all academic as far as the
rest of his family was concerned. He managed to get the door open and half-ran,
half-fell inside. He tripped up the step and lay sprawled in his hallway,
unable to get up because a veritable flood of crazed dead creatures were
trampling over him to get to the others inside.

Jody turned away, sick
to her stomach.

***

It was only seven am, but it felt much, much
later.

This uncomfortable,
unnaturally extended family had already exhausted all options for the day. Jody
found it increasingly difficult to keep up the pretence.
Everything’s going
to be all right... Mummy and Daddy are getting along just fine...

Like fuck.

At least there were
promising signs on the news. The fight against the infection had continued
overnight, and the spread of the disease had been virtually halted. It was a
question now of clearing the infected zone (as they were calling it on TV).
Gary and Charlie’s house was smack bang in the middle of the zone, Jody’s house
was just on the clean side of the border. Those trapped alongside the infection
had two options – stay put and wait for help, or drive to one of the
decontamination checkpoints and get the hell out of Dodge. As frustrating as it
was, Jody thought the sensible option was to wait.

She was just about
managing to keep her emotions in check when Ben kicked off. He was a smart kid,
but prone to losing his temper when things didn’t go his way. And this morning,
they hadn’t. It was a load of noise over nothing – an argument over a
game controller and who was watching which TV – but all six of them were
involved. Jody tried to pacify Ben, then Gary criticised the way she was speaking
to him, then Charlie told Gary he was out of order, then Gary told Charlie to
butt out, then Jenny told Gary not to be mean, then Ben screamed at Holly
because while they’d all been arguing she’d started watching a DVD on the TV he
wanted... and so it continued.

It didn’t matter who
started the argument or what it was about, the focus inevitably shifted to Gary
and Jody. ‘I need to get out of here,’ Jody said in frustration.

‘Probably for the best
if you go,’ Gary agreed.

‘Is that a good idea?’
Charlie asked.

‘I can’t stay here.’

‘You can. We’ve already
had this conversation.’

‘No, I can’t. I can’t
stay here with
him
.’

‘Best news I’ve heard
all morning,’ Gary muttered.

‘I’m on fumes, though,’
Jody said, turning her back on her ex and speaking directly to Charlie.

‘Not a problem,’ Gary
answered, quick as a flash. ‘Charlie’s car’s in the garage. Fill your car from
hers.’

‘Or just take my car,’
Charlie suggested.

‘Even better,’ Gary
said.

‘I’m not planning on
going anywhere for a long time. The keys are hanging up in the kitchen.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Cool. Okay. Thanks.
I’ll get all our stuff together and we’ll be out of your way.’

Gary’s expression
changed and he manoeuvred himself back into the centre of the conversation.
‘Wait, wait, wait... what do you mean,
we
?’

Surely that was obvious?

‘What do you think I
mean? Me and the kids.’

‘You think I’m going to
let you take my kids out into that madness outside?’

Another trick question?

‘Yes, that’s exactly
what I think. It’s not really up to you, is it?’

‘Not happening.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Christ,
I’m not happy about you looking after them as it is. Especially not now with
all this shit going on.’

‘Well the judge was
happier with me looking after them than you, remember?’

Charlie sensed the
tension rising rapidly. She’d felt less uncomfortable when the infected had
attacked the back of the house yesterday afternoon. She ushered the kids out of
the room. ‘Come on, you three, let’s go get you some breakfast sorted.’

‘Things have changed...’
Gary started to say before Jody cut across him.

‘The judge ruled that
the kids stay with me. He said you couldn’t give them the stability or care
that I could, remember?’

‘That was before all
this shit kicked off.’

‘What, you think we can
forget about the law because the outside world has turned into a horror movie?
You think you’re somehow better equipped to cope now?’

‘I didn’t say that. The
judge made his decision based on the information he had at the time. I’ll
admit, I wasn’t in a good place back then.’

‘And you think we should
reassess now because we’re all in a bad place?’

‘I’ve turned things
around, Jody, and we both know it. I’m with Charlie, we’ve got this place...’

‘
She’s
got this
place. It’s her house, not yours.’

‘Yeah, well I’d be able
to buy into it if all my money wasn’t still tied up in our old house. If you
got off your arse and bought me out then—’

‘If I got off my arse?!’
she screamed at him, incensed. ‘You total shit. I can’t go to work and you know
it. I’ve got the kids to look after.’

‘There you go, then. You
piss off and start earning a living, I’ll look after the kids.’

‘You absolute fucker. Do
you really think it’s that straightforward? It’s not all about material
possessions, you know. There’s more to being a parent than that.’

‘Oh, spare me.’

‘No, you need to hear
this. Those kids need a damn sight more than just a roof and a frigging Sony
Playstation. They need—’

Sudden desperate noises
from elsewhere silenced their pointless argument. Screams and shouting. Glass
shattering. Jody and Gary looked at each other for a split second then ran
towards the source of the commotion. It was coming from the dining room. One of
the windows in the wide front bay had broken under the weight of the infected
pushing in from outside, agitated by the raised voices. A diseased hand was now
sticking through the shattered pane, clawing through the air, desperate to get
at the untainted people inside. The kids were all in here. Charlie too. She was
trying to block the broken window with a plasterer’s board but was struggling
to force the diseased arm back out.

‘What the hell were the
kids doing in here?’ Gary demanded.

‘Trying to get away from
your arguing,’ Charlie said, pushing hard against the feverish body again.
‘Someone help me for Christ’s sake!’

Jody moved fast. She
pushed the kids in Gary’s direction, then added her weight to the wooden board
Charlie was trying to use to block up the window. Between them they managed to
cover the hole and hold it tight.

‘I’ll sort it,’ Gary
said, and he disappeared, all three kids in tow.

Jody looked over at
Charlie, both of them still just about managing to hold the board in place and
keep the infected at bay. ‘You okay?’

‘Think so.’

‘Your boyfriend’s about
as useless in a crisis as my ex-husband.’

‘Funny that,’ Charlie
said.

The infected shoved
against them, and they shoved back.

‘So do we just stand
here like this all day until they get bored and piss off?’

Before Charlie could
reply, Gary returned with a hammer and nails. He pushed his way between them.
‘Hold it steady,’ he said.

‘Where are the kids?’
Jody asked.

‘Upstairs safe. They’re
in Ben’s room. I told them to keep quiet and stay away from the windows.’

‘Good.’

He hammered the board
into place, securing it with nails of varying lengths wherever he could –
into the wall, the window sill and the window frame itself – and only
stopped when he was certain it would hold. Charlie and Jody stepped away,
leaving him admiring his own handiwork. ‘That should do it,’ he said, sounding
undeservedly smug and self-assured.

‘First time I’ve seen
you do any DIY in a long time,’ Jody said. ‘Christ, when I think of the grief I
used to get whenever I asked you to do anything around the house.’

‘Maybe that had more to
do with the grief you were always giving me,’ he quickly snapped back, annoyed.
‘You were always on at me... do this, fix that... fucking nagging all the
time.’

‘Yeah, well that was the
problem, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have had to nag. You should have just done it
when it needed doing.’

‘Fuck’s sake, here we go
again. You really can’t help yourself, can you? The world’s falling apart and
you’re still trying to score points.’

‘I’m not interested in
points, I just want to keep my kids safe.’

‘And I’ve already told
you, they are safe. And they’re staying here with me.’

‘Over my dead body.’

‘That can be arranged.
No one’s going to notice one more corpse at the moment.’

‘You wouldn’t have the
bloody nerve.’

‘You reckon. Just you
try me and I’ll—’

‘Will you two just shut
up!’ Charlie screamed at them.

Jody noticed that
Charlie was standing on the other side of the window, illuminated by the early
morning light. She looked like a little kid lost. She was clutching her arm.

‘What’s the matter,
love?’ Gary said. ‘You okay?’

It was clear Charlie was
anything but okay. She was shaking. Nerves, fear, anger, shock... Jody couldn’t
tell what was wrong.

She noticed that blood
was dripping between Charlie’s fingers.

Gary reached out for her
but she pulled away.

And then, slowly, she
lifted her hand.

There was a deep gash
running the length of her forearm, almost from elbow to wrist.

‘How did that happen...?’
Gary asked, although they all knew the answer already. Charlie sniffed back
more tears. She didn’t want to tell him because if she didn’t tell him, if she
pretended it hadn’t happened, she’d be okay, wouldn’t she?

She sobbed. The deep
scratch was burning with infection, though the physical pain paled into
insignificance alongside her fear. ‘One of them got me,’ she said, struggling
to keep control. She looked down at the cut and picked at its raw edges.