“Really?” I asked with mock shock as I let out a sigh. I watched the figure for a couple heartbeats and just as I was about to turn to look down at the kick-start I noticed another figure walk around the corner a couple meters behind the first. “Great,” I mumbled as the first figure burst into a sprint and a heartbeat later the second one did the same. “Drive,” I shouted at Molly who was engrossed by the oncoming people this surprised her and she turned to look at me. “Now,” I growled at her and she paused for a moment then nodded and without a word drove off down the street as she drove passed I turned and watched her and after a moment I faced forwards to see the first man was now ten meters away from me and running towards me fast with the second man close on his heels. I raised my right foot and put it on the kick-start all the while watching the men. I let out a sigh and kicked one last time causing the bike to let out another purr which made my heart sink but a couple heartbeats later the purr turned into a roar. “I don’t have time to turn the bike around,” I thought to myself so I waited for a couple seconds for the first man to get a little close and then gunned the accelerator and popped the clutch which sent the bike lurching forwards and up towards the first man as each centimetre passed the front tire lifted off the ground higher and higher until eventually there was no distance left and the front tire hit the man in the chest send him flying off to the side but this also set me off balance a little. I pulled in the clutch and let go of the accelerator for a second to reset it back to idle as I braked with my right foot which caused the front of the bike to slam down on the road and as it did I put out my left leg to stop the bike falling over. The second man didn’t falter and continued to run towards me. I gripped the front break and accelerated causing the back tire to spin in place and with the angle of the bike it cause the whole bike you spin around in a pivot around the front tire. I turned my head and looked down the road and as I did a hand slapped against my visor but with the momentum of the bike and me turning away it slid off with a sickening squeal. I let go of the front brake and shot forward away from the offending hand and towards freedom.
I didn’t look back as I sped away from the Zombie and only focused on what was in front of me and that’s when I saw Molly sitting on her scooter on the side of the road watching me as I approached her I slowed down until I stopped right next to her which by some coincidence of the universe was right outside the couple’s house from earlier. The woman was standing on the pavement and had been watching me. I flicked up my helmet and looked at her and said, “Sorry to disappoint but it turns out they prefer the other white meat”. She looked down the road at the second man who was apparently still chasing me and then ran back into the house.
“Where did you learn to drive like that?” asked Molly with what sounded like a tinge of awe.
“I got my first bike when I was sixteen and like all sixteen year olds this was the sort of stuff I did when my parents weren’t looking but that’s a story for another time we should go now,” I said. and closed my helmet and pulled off not wanting to be caught by the second zombie.
The events of the previous couple minutes made me realise that we had just run into the tide again but it was too late to turn back all we could do was push forward and take it one block at a time. We managed to get back on to the main road after a couple blocks without incident and slowly made our way north. The journey became tedious with slowing down a couple hundred meters from every intersection to check for any movement and then when we thought it was safe speeding through the wreckage and traffic in between and as the journey progressed Molly became noticeably more proficient with her little scooter.
About halfway through the journey we were making out way down a large hill when I looked up and saw the intersection on the other side of the dip was covered by a huge mass of people and they looked like they were heading in our direction. I cursed softly and quickly thought and what to do next but thankfully this was part of my root home every day so I knew it well and knew that in two intersections time there was a park with a stream through it and a little bridge over the stream strong enough for possibly a car but it wouldn’t allow the mob to follow us easily because of its width. With every second the mob moved closer so I didn’t stop to tell Molly what I was planning and just hoped she would be able to keep up with me because the park wasn’t kept as well as it should have been and would be a good test of the little scooters off-road capabilities. I sped up and we went through the two intersections as fast as circumstances would allow but still making sure we weren’t diving into a dangerous situation. As we passed the second intersection I motioned to my left as we came across the park and I looked for an opening in the knee high wooden fence and as soon as I spotted it I manoeuvred the bike through it and made my way towards the bridge in the middle of the park slowly. I heard the little scooter behind me and looked over to the other end of the park where the mob would be appearing any second but didn’t see anyone.
We approached the bridge slowly and as we reached it I looked back again but this time there were people there and they had spotted us but thankfully once we had crossed the bridge there would only be a couple hundred meters of park and then we were on the road again. I looked forward and sped across the bridge and homed in on an opening in the fence to make our exit all the while the scooter sounded behind me. “The tides coming in,” I thought to myself as I exited the park and turned down the pavement and decided that worrying about one or two Zombies at every intersection would waste too much time and with daylight draining away and these mobs forming that was something we didn’t have.
We continued at a faster pace than before but it proved useless as the daylight started to fail as we made our way over the last big hill before my house but still had to travel for another twenty minutes or so to get there and I knew this would be the hardest part of the journey because we would have to drive past a dual carriageway that led to a motorway and that meant more cars than we had had to deal with already. As we drove down the hill which was packed solid with stationary cars I could see the intersection with the dual carriageway and it didn’t look pretty and there seemed to be something on fire in the middle of it but I didn’t see anything moving around but with the smoke I couldn’t see much. We approached this intersection cautiously because of the smoke blocking the view of the other side of the road but that didn’t matter too much I realised when we got close. There was no way across the intersection because of a huge accident in the middle of it with what looked like a petrol tanker and a bus as well as a lot of cars. I looked down the dual carriageway and saw a break in the cars about five hundred metres down the road and turned towards it while trying to dodge the bigger pieces of debris lying on the pavement. When we were about to enter the gap between the cars to get across the road I looked further down the road to the next intersection and spotted another mob. “Why are they always in the middle of the road,” I thought to myself and moved off between the cars and quickly wove through them to the other side of the road and turned back towards the intersection. “Only three more roads,” I thought to myself as we turned left which had us going in the same direction as before the detour and as I thought the roads in this area were hell which was to be expected with one of the main arteries of the city just a kilometre down the road. The second last road was long and straight which meant we could have moved faster if there weren’t for the parked cars or crashed cars on the pavement which slowed us down to a snail’s pace.
My arm was killing me with the stop starting we had to do but I did my best to mask it because I didn’t want to worry Molly but the journey was almost over we were two blocks, one intersection and a couple hundred meters away from my house. As I was making my way around one of the wrecks my hand went into spasm causing me to let out the clutch and stall the motorbike. I looked down at my hand when suddenly a force hit me on my right shoulder sending me falling with the bike to the left and before I knew it I was laying on the floor with my leg pinned under the bike and someone grabbing on to my jacket and yanking it. I turned my head and there was a shooting pain down my neck which caused me to groan. “Must have pulled a muscle when I fell,” I thought as I forced myself to turn to look to my right where I saw a zombie with my jacket in its mouth as it vigorously shook its head to tear it but this meant I couldn’t use my right arm and with the way I was lying I couldn’t move my left either because my shoulder was carrying mine and the bikes weight. After a second I heard the little scooter right next to my head but couldn’t turn my head to look at Molly but guessed she was trying to help me because I felt some tugging from my back and after a second the tugging stopped and I saw the end of a thick round piece of wood swing into view and hit the zombie on the side of the head causing it to fall where it was which was a problem because it was on top of me at the time.
With the attack over I wiggled my left leg free and rolled over on to my back causing the zombie to fall off of me and on the floor but it still had my jacket sleeve firmly in its mouth. I started to stand up as far as I could with the zombie still attached to my right sleeve and put my foot against its head and yanked hard. It took a couple hard yanks to get my sleeve free and by the time I was finished I was panting and wildly looking around for anything else that was going to attack us but didn’t spot anything. I looked at Molly and opened my visor and said, “Thanks for the save.”
“A pleasure,” she replied with the table leg still in her hand.
“Got to love Kevlar,” I said and looked about and then continued, “We are almost there it should be another five minutes or so once I get the bike back up. You mind helping with that?” I asked knowing that my left arm couldn’t take the weight anymore. She looked at me for a second and then put down her stand and got off the scooter and together we righted the bike and I got on and said, “Thanks”. The bike started first time but at a cost and that cost was pure agony in my left forearm. I looked down the pavement and it looked like this was the last obstacle we would have to pass before the road curved out of site and into the last intersection before home. As we rounded the curve and came up to the intersection I realised that my neck was wet and I reached back with my right hand and grabbed my neck which caused a shooting pain through my neck the same type as earlier. The pain caused me to jerk my hand away from my neck. I brought my hand back in front of me and looked at it and it was wet but I couldn’t tell what it was because of the black leather gloves so I put the bike into natural as Molly pulled up next to me.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Not sure yet,” I replied as I took my glove off and gently felt my neck again which still hurt but not as bad before. When I pulled my hand forward my fears were realised and Molly gasped.
“Oh my God Mark what happened,” she asked surprised.
“I think that Zombie bit me,” I said and noticed that my hand was trembling badly and I was feeling a little feverish.
“But it got your sleeve,” she said as she grabbed my left shoulder causing me to let out a grunt, “Sorry,” she said as she pulled her hand away.
“Look and tell me if it’s a bite mark or not,” I said and leant forward causing pain to shoot through my neck again. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stand up and then heard a gasp and then silence. “I guess that means it’s a bite,” I responded and started looking around.
“I am so sorry,” she said eventually.
“Even if it were your bite you wouldn’t have to apologise,” I said and began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“My house is six houses down,” I replied and pointed down the road.
“Let’s hurry then once we are there we can take care of the bite,” she said with worry in her eyes.
“That’s why I am laughing, I can’t go there anymore,” I said as I continued to laugh.
“Why not it’s so close,” she pleaded.
I didn’t answer her and looked at the house next to us. There was a one and a half meter high white wall surrounding it with a small garden right next to us which led to the front door to the house which was wide open. “As good a place as any,” I thought to myself and turned the bike off and dismounted it while taking the key out of the ignition.
“What are you doing,” asked Molly and it sounded like she was crying.
I didn’t respond again and walked over to the wall and climbed over it and walked towards the house. I heard the scooters engine cut off and the rustling of material, a thud and then more rustling and then Molly ran passed me and stopped in front of me and at some point had taken her helmet off.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Looking for somewhere to wait,” I said as I side stepped her and walked up to the entrance to the house.
“Wait for what?” she asked from behind me.
“Death,” I replied flatly as I looked into the entrance hall which had a little foot chest on the one side, a coat rack on the other and a closed door at the end of it.
“What?” she shouted which caused me to look back and see her looking really surprised with her hand against her mouth like a small child.
I turned back towards the entrance hall and stepped in while I examined it more closely. As I looked around I took my other glove off and threw it into the corner and then undid the zip to the jacket. I then shrugged the jacket off with the backpack which hit the ground with a thud and took a seat on the foot chest.
“What happened to your arm?” asked Molly as she rushed into the room.
“When I saved that woman I fell on it and either fractured it or broke it,” I replied at I looked at my forearm for the first time and it had swollen to twice the size of my right forearm. There was no blood but the whole thing was enflamed badly and red.
“You said you weren’t injured,” she said as she knelt down in front of me and looked closely at my arm.
“I lied,” I replied softly and held out my right hand which was now trembling worse than before.
“Why can’t you go home and what do you mean by death?” she asked looking up at me.
“I can’t go home because of the bite. I don’t know if it’s going to turn me into one of those things but if it can re-animate the dead I am pretty sure it’s not healthy also my whole body has started trembling and I am pretty sure I have a fever,” I said and lowered my hand down.
“But you can’t die,” she pleaded with me as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“It’s not like it’s my choice and anyways it’s not like I am going to be dead for long,” I chided.
“But,” she started to say but I stopped her by putting my right hand on her shoulder.
“It’s not safe here but I have a favour to ask before you go,” I said to her.
“I am not going anywhere,” she said while shaking her head.
“You have to otherwise this whole journey will have been a waste, hand me my jacket please,” I asked her and she did so without saying anything. I undid the backpack from the sleeves and opened it and looked inside and pulled out the three pairs of handcuffs I had found earlier at the office and my cell phone all the while Molly sat quietly and watched me. I took the handcuffs and locked them together and then locked one and to the thick brass handle on the side of the foot chest and the other to my left wrist.
“Why are you doing that,” she asked.
“So that if I change I can’t run around and hurt people,” I said as I tugged the chain of handcuffs a couple of times and each time there was a solid twang of the metal cuffs against the brass handle. I then fished in my jacket and pulled two sets of keys. One was my house keys the other was the keys for the handcuffs. I put the handcuff keys into my pocket and handed my house keys to her and said, “It’s the house with beige two meter high wall with a two meter high silver checker plate front gate,” at first she didn’t want to take the keys but I stared her down and offered her the keys again and this time she took them meekly from me.
“If I change before I finish then just go but I would like to record what has happened to me so far and would like you to take it with you if you don’t mind,” I said as I picked up the call phone and turned it on.
“Of course,” she said as she wiped her eyes with her thumb.
“Thank you but before I start when you get to my place ask my parents to show you my computer and check it for any messages from Beth,” I said and then navigated to the voice recorder application on my phone and turned it on and started to recount my day which is this message you are listening to now.
“Mom, Dad I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home but I tried my best but luck was against me. Please look after Molly the lady who delivered the phone she is a brave woman who only needs a place to stay am I sure you would have been so ecstatic that I finally brought a woman home after so long that you would have forgotten about the Zombies. There is a chance that I won’t turn into one of them and have kept the keys to the handcuffs so that if in a couple days I haven’t turned I can unlock myself and come home. We uh We have never been a touchy feely family but I uh love the both of you and hope you are able to be safe. Goodbye.”
Epilogue
Once Mark had finished his message he handed me the phone and said, “Time for you to go kiddo.”
“I want to stay with you,” I protested.
“I would prefer you didn’t watch as I died,” he said to me as he pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and a lighter and lit one up and puffed out a smoke ring.
“I will never forget you,” I said to him as I grabbed his hand.
“And I will remember you for as long as I live,” he replied with a smile and i couldn’t understand how he could smile in that situation.
After what felt like an eternity I stood up and started walking away and couldn’t help but cry. He was a scary man to look at most of the time with his piercings and black clothing covered in skulls and his attitude was also very abrasive and he came across as being very aggressive but underneath that he was a good man and I wish I could be more like him. As I reached the door I turned back and said, “Goodbye Mark,”
“Goodbye Miss Molly,” he said and nodded his head.
I am not sure what happened next because everything is a blur but I ended up at the house he had described to me. I fiddled through the keys until I found one that worked but by then the dogs on the other side of the gate were barking wildly.
“Can I help you,” asked Mark which caused me to spin around and wildly look around for him but there was no one there. “Up here,” said Mark’s voice and I looked up to see the head of on older man looking over the wall.
“I ah he I mean Mark sent me here,” I replied not knowing what to say.
“Where is he?” the man asked.
“Uh he gave me a message for you,” was all I could think to say and the man disappeared and after a couple seconds there was a clinking sound from the gate and then it opened up to reveal an older version of Mark standing there.
“Come in quickly,” he said to me as he moved to the side to allow me space to walk inside.
Everything happened so quickly after that. I was ushered into the house by Mark’s dad where I was introduced to his mother but I couldn’t handle breaking the news to them so I gave them the phone and they listened to his message. By the end of the message his mother was bawling her eyes out and his father sat stoned face with a single tear rolling down his cheek. His mother wanted to go the house where Mark was but his father stopped her saying that what he did was to protect them and going there would do the opposite. After a while he managed to convince her that Mark could look after himself and that in a couple days he would probably appear as if nothing had happened.
Three days after I arrived at Mark’s house he still hadn’t arrived and his dad and I decided to go look for him at the house on the corner but when we arrived we were greeted by a grizzly scene. The foot chest was in the garden with the handcuffs still attached and covered in blood. Next to the chest was a half-eaten hand which made me wanted to cry but I held it in because Mark wouldn’t have cried in front of others if he could help it. Mark’s dad to his credit didn’t panic and walked into the house and called out to me so I went into the entrance were Mark’s dad turned to me and said , “Do you know what that means?”
“I have no idea,” I said as I looked at his last words scrawled on the wall in blood.
“I died Defenceless, Helpless and Alone after all that but at least it was by choice –
Mark was here”
The End
------------------------------------
If you would like the ebook version of this for free please leave your email address as a comment and i will send you the kindle version.
No comments:
Post a Comment