Read Year of the Zombie (Book 8): Scratch Online

Authors: David Moody

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

BOOK: Year of the Zombie (Book 8): Scratch
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‘Of course I can.’

Jody lowered her voice
and moved closer to him. ‘Then why is your dead girlfriend still in the dining
room? We should have got rid of her.’

‘She’s not dead.’

‘As good as.’

‘Maybe I’m just not as
quick to give up on people as you are.’

‘Why do you keep turning
everything around like it’s my fault? You’ve always done that, and you did it
again just now with the chocolate. You’re always undermining me.’

‘It was just a bloody
chocolate bar.’

‘Yeah, but it’s the
message you’re giving out. Mum’s wrong and Dad’s right. You’re always making me
out to be the villain.’

‘That’s ’cause you’ve
always been a fucking killjoy.’

‘Can’t you both just
stop?’ Jenny asked. Her innocence and honesty was heart-breaking.

‘You need to tell your
mother,’ Gary said quickly.

‘I’m talking to both of
you,’ she replied with a clarity which belied her years. ‘You’re always
fighting. I know you don’t like each other, but you don’t have to keep fighting
all the time. It’s embarrassing.’

‘That’s us told,’ Jody
said, feeling awful.

Holly peered out from
behind her older sister. ‘Daddy, I think Charlie’s awake. I heard her.’

Both Jody and Gary
bolted towards the dining room door. Gary paused with his hand almost on the
handle. Almost, but not quite. ‘Stay back,’ he said to the children, and Ben
and the girls moved away without protest.

Gary’s hammer was on the
hall floor. Jody picked it up and handed it to him. ‘You know it’s the right
thing to do,’ she said, and for once he didn’t argue. He cautiously pushed the
door open.

At first he couldn’t see
her.

With the light coming in
from the partially-boarded up window, it was hard to make out much in the
shadowy dining room. It was only when she twitched and shook that he realised
where Charlie was: crouched in the corner, all arms and legs and hate,
spiderlike. She didn’t look like Charlie anymore. Instead, she looked like
every other damn infected. Her movements were awkward and unnatural,
stop-start, and her limbs twisted in ways they shouldn’t. Her head ticked like
a chicken pecking corn. The smell in the room was enough to make his eyes
water. Death, decay, disease and defecation, all wrapped up in a single
stifling stench.

Jody was on his
shoulder. ‘Close the door,’ she whispered, quietly and carefully.

‘I need to see her,’ he
said, edging in the other direction.

‘Don’t be stupid. She’ll
kill you.’

‘She won’t.’

‘She
will
. And
then she’ll kill the rest of us.’

Gary’s arrogance continued
to astound her. Even now he was ready to tell her how wrong she was. He turned
to push her away and—

—Charlie attacked.

It was sudden and swift.
Deadly. The creature’s speed and ferocity compensated for the awkwardness of
its barely coordinated movements.

The Charlie-thing leapt
forward and was fully illuminated by the light. The gash along her forearm
seemed deeper and wider and it glistened with overflowing disease. She was
coming straight at Gary and the bloody idiot was just standing there, dumbstruck,
waiting for it to happen. In half the time it took him to react, Jody grabbed
his hand and dragged him out into the hall. She turned around to pull the door
closed and barely managed to shut it in time. Dead Charlie was on all fours,
scuttling like a crab towards her, head lolling back but eyes fixed forward.

Jody shut the door and
clung onto the handle as it rattled in its frame. The noise was terrible and
filled the house – dead Charlie hitting the woodwork again and again and
again.

‘Want Mummy!’ Holly
screamed, her high-pitched wail cutting through the panic and everything else.

‘Get them out of here,’
Jody screamed, but she needn’t have bothered because Gary was already halfway
up the stairs, pushing and dragging the kids to safety. In the split-second she
was distracted, Jody almost let go of the door. Charlie yanked it open from
inside, spindly fingers wrapped around the handle, pulling Jody into the dining
room. Jody pulled it back at the last possible second and clung on for dear
life. ‘Help me, Gary!’

Gary feigned deafness,
but then looked back out of guilt. Momentary eye contact. Jody pleading for
help she knew she wasn’t going to get. Ben tried to turn back, but Gary kept
him moving forward.

Dead Charlie yanked at
the door again, and this time the hideous thing’s strength was such that the
handle was snatched clean out of Jody’s hands.

The door was wide open.

Jody and the
Charlie-thing, face-to-face.

Gary glanced back once
more as the dead girl lunged and knocked Jody clean off her feet.

Keep moving. Keep
moving. Keep moving.

Into the bedroom he and
Charlie had shared. The kids were crying, all of them, even Ben. ‘It’s okay,’
he told them. ‘It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be all right.’

He herded them over to
the far side of the king-size bed, then went back and shifted Charlie’s bedside
table, knocking her jewellery, makeup and creams everywhere. Didn’t matter. She
had no use for any of them now. He hefted the table out of the way then ran
back around again and shoved the bed frame against the door to block it. Ben
helped, quickly realising what his dad was trying to do.

‘What about Mum?’ asked
Jenny.

‘Sorry, love.’

‘Will she be all right?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Can we help her?’

‘It’s too late.’

‘But we have to help
her.’

‘I don’t think we can.
Mummy stayed downstairs to stop Charlie getting us. She’s really brave.’

‘I want Mummy,’ Holly
whined.

‘I know you do, love.
You have to remember, though, Mummy wanted you three to be safe more than
anything else in the world. That’s why she stayed downstairs, and that’s why
she brought you here so we could both look after you together. She got hurt
taking care of all of us. She was really brave, your mum.’

‘We should go back,’ Ben
said.

‘We’re not going back.’

‘She dead?’ Holly asked.

‘She one of those things?’
Jenny asked, sobbing.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think she’s dead,’
Holly said.

Jenny started howling.
Ben started shouting, kicking out in frustration. Gary wrapped his arms around
all three of them and sat them down on the floor in the space where the bed had
originally been. ‘Shh... all of you,’ he whispered. ‘We have to keep the noise
down so the sick people don’t hear us, okay? We can’t let anything happen now,
because if we do then all of Mummy’s effort will have been for nothing.’

Noises downstairs. Awful
screaming noises. Bangs, crashes, breaking glass. Death throes. Gary pulled the
kids closer still and covered their ears as the ground floor cacophony
continued in the rooms beneath them. They could feel the fighting. The whole
house seemed to shake.

‘It’s gonna be all
right,’ he told them when the noises eventually began to subside. ‘Mummy was
really brave, and now it’s your turn to be brave. All of us. Daddy too. I’m
gonna look after you all the time now.’

Nothing but shock and
sobbing. He relaxed his grip but the kids didn’t move. Too scared. Paralysed
with fear.

Gary filled the silence
with nervous chatter. ‘We’ll wait here until it’s safe, then I’ll go down and
sort everything out. The police will come and help us, maybe even the army. I
know it’s been horrible this last couple of days, but things are gonna be okay.
It’s just the four of us now, like you always wanted. We’ll go to Disneyland
like I promised. Everything will be okay.’

Still nothing.

‘We can go and see
Gramps and Nanny. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet they’re keen to see you.
It’s been ages since I’ve seen them.’

‘Mum takes us,’ Ben
said.

‘What?’

‘Mummy takes us to see
Gramps and Nanny, and Granny and Pa,’ Jenny explained.

‘What? Wait, your mum’s
been taking you to see my parents? You never told me.’

‘We thought you’d get
cross.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t.’

‘You said you didn’t
care what Mummy did and you didn’t want to hear about it,’ Jenny said,
repeating parrot-fashion.

‘They’re still all
friends, even though you and Mum hate each other,’ Ben said. ‘Nanny said just
because you’ve fallen out, doesn’t mean we can’t all still get on.’

Gary was shocked. ‘My
mum said that?’

‘Yep,’ said Holly.

Jenny continued. ‘Gramps
said he thought Mummy was doing really well considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘Don’t know. They
usually stop talking when they know we’re listening.’

Gary got up from the
floor, incensed. ‘That bloody woman. Out to get the bloody sympathy vote from
my
parents. How low will she go?’

‘That’s not fair, Dad,’
Ben said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Gary turned on him.

‘Adult business, son.
Keep your bloody nose out.’

‘I’m only trying
to—’

‘Well don’t. When I want
your advice I’ll...’

Ben looked up to see why
his dad had stopped talking, and then he saw her.

Mum.

At the window.

Clothes torn and
blood-soaked.

Infected.

Gary staggered back in
fright as she hauled herself up onto the veranda, using the roof of his car to
get up. She beat against the glass with leaden hands, fists smearing grease and
germs.

Gary grabbed the kids,
but Jenny slipped his grip. As he dragged them away from the window, she ran
towards it. ‘Mummy!’ she shouted, thrilled to see her again. Gary tried to stop
her, but Ben and Holly were in the way and he could only watch helpless as
Jenny slipped the latch and let Jody inside.

The Jody-thing watched
him from the other end of the room. The gusting breeze from the window caught
her shirt, and when it flapped open Gary saw the scratch. Long, deep, dirty,
uneven. It ran from her left shoulder down her bicep, a vicious zigzag line,
dripping with blood.

‘It’s not Mummy,’ he
told the kids. ‘She’s got the disease. Don’t go near her.’

His dead ex-wife stood
her ground. Unmoving. Glowering.

And then she attacked.

She launched herself at
Gary and he panicked, remembering the things he’d seen on TV and the things
they’d fought in the back garden of the house. Abhorrent, cursed, infected
creatures. He remembered what Charlie had become.

Gary reached for Jenny
and Holly’s outstretched hands, but infected Jody stood between them. And in
the ensuing chaos, as Gary did everything he could to avoid her savage,
poisonous claws, their positions were steadily reversed.

Jody with the kids
cowering behind her now.

Gary next to the open
window.

She came at him again,
and his decision was made.

‘Sorry, kids.’

He dived for the open
window as she lurched towards him. Heart-racing, desperate, terrified, he
climbed over the veranda then dropped down onto the roof of his car. He
half-rolled, half-fell to the ground then immediately picked himself up. He
checked his pockets. Car keys, but for the wrong car. Charlie’s motor was
locked in the garage, blocked in by his own useless vehicle, and there were
infected approaching. Three of them. Wait, no, four. Six! Eight! He looked up
at the house he’d just escaped from, then ran.

As fast as he could. As
far as he could. Not stopping. Not looking back.

Gone
.

Jody watched from the
upstairs window until he’d disappeared, then turned back to face the children.
Ben, shaking with fear, positioned himself in front of his two younger sisters,
ready to defend them from the vile creature that had once been his mother.

‘It’s okay, love,’ she
said. ‘It’s me. I’m all right.’

‘Don’t believe you,’ he
said, voice trembling as badly as his legs.

‘I swear. She didn’t touch
me. I’m okay. Not sick.’

‘What about the
scratch?’

‘I did it.’

‘You did it?’ Jenny
asked, peering around her brother’s stocky frame.

‘Yep.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted to see
what your dad would do. I wanted to know if he was really going to look after
you.’

‘Daddy ran away,’ Holly
said.

‘Yep. Pretty much
exactly what I expected.’

‘And you’re not sick?’
Ben asked, still clearly unsure.

‘I’m not sick.’

‘Promise?’

BOOK: Year of the Zombie (Book 8): Scratch
2.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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