Left Behind: A Short Story Read online

My heart lurches and I do the only thing I can think of. I run.

  The seconds seem like minutes. I expect every step to be my last, to feel their cold, dead hands pulling me down. The possibility of escape seems remote, but I am determined to run until my legs give up. I don’t keep track of where I turn because I don’t believe it will matter. There won’t be any need to find my way back once they get me.

  Eventually I can’t catch my breath and my legs feel like lead weights. They still haven’t caught me, so I turn. There is nobody there. Dead or living.

  If you have never lived in a big city then you can’t really appreciate how unusual it is to stand on a street and not see anyone else. It is this, almost as much as my narrow escape, that finally makes me appreciate how much has changed. How much has been lost. I stand alone on the street, hands on my knees, and watch my tears fall onto the pavement.

  What am I going to do? My family has gone, my whole world has fallen apart. I am lost and alone. This might as well be the end.

  I walk along an unfamiliar highstreet near Olympia. The shops are all small boutiques, the kind of places I would never shop for myself, but might get Christmas or birthday presents from. The glass has gone from most of the windows, the delicate displays destroyed. I don’t know why anyone would want this stuff now, but they’ve taken it just the same.

  Further along the same road I see a burned-out car. It looks as if it crashed into a wall. I don’t look inside. If there is anyone there I can’t help them, and I don’t want to see what they look like now.

  The sky begins to darken and I am still walking. Every so often I catch a glimpse of a zombie, but they are easier to avoid when they are on their own. I keep moving. Night comes and in the distance I see the glow of fires. For better or worse, I am nearing other people.

  Soon it is too dark to see more than a few metres ahead. I am still some distance from the firelight and feel disappointed. I hadn’t realised how much I miss the company of other people until I’d gone without it. But it would be better for me to arrive during daylight, I don’t want them to think I’m a threat.

  I find an old pub. The door isn’t properly locked. It has a couple of rooms upstairs. After checking that it’s empty, I make myself comfortable on a grubby double bed. A day of non-stop walking has exhausted me and it is a relief to climb beneath the covers.

  I dream about Michael, Penny and Bailey. They are still on the boat, but I know it’s a dream because they are being towed through the dark ocean by a team of seahorses as big as elephants. I tell them that I will find them, but they don’t hear me. I start to scream at them. Then their boat is attacked by a monstrous fish that is rotting like a zombie.

  I wake with a start. I tell myself it was just a dream but can’t stop shivering. The sun has barely risen, but I know I won’t sleep anymore.

  I take more than I usually would from the kitchen. There is plenty there. Before I step outside I check to make sure there are no zombies. When I’m satisfied, I start all over again.

  It isn’t easy to remember where the fires were. In the darkness they appeared close enough to touch, but after an hour of walking I seem no closer. It is well past mid-day when I see the first sign of human habitation.

  A small boy watches me from the second-floor window of an old house. His face is obscured by the dirty glass and when I look up at him he ducks out of sight. I stop in the middle of the narrow street. After a moment he appears at the window again and this time I am ready with a smile.

  The front door opens but it isn’t the boy standing there. It is a man, perhaps thirty years old. He looks strong and capable and enough like the boy that I’m sure they’re related.

  "Clear off!" he says.

  I don’t move.

  "You hear me? Get lost!"

  It would be easier to go, but he is the first person I’ve spoken to since Michael. "I’m sorry. It’s just..."

  "Just what?"

  "I have food," I say. "I’m happy to share."

  "Does it look like we need food?"

  "I’m on my own," I say. Of course, that’s what I would say if there was someone waiting around the corner to attack him and steal whatever he has hidden in there. Maybe the boy. "I don’t want any trouble."

  "Then clear off," he says. This time he doesn’t wait for me to respond. He slams the door and I hear locks turning.

  I consider trying again, but he has made it clear he won’t help. As I walk away I look up at the window, the boy watches me until I stop watching him.

  It was the first place I tried and there are plenty more. I saw at least twenty fires last night and there must be someone who will help me. Even if they can’t take me to The Isle of Wight, they might be able to point me in the right direction.

  I walk through the unfamiliar streets trying to maintain a positive outlook. There is no reason to believe that everyone will act the same way.

  An old church stands before me. Smoke is coming from behind it and there are lights in the windows. I try not to get my hopes up.

  I cross the road and wonder whether I should knock on the door or walk around to the fire. What would make the best first impression? I don’t want to startle whoever is there, even a vicar might be driven to violence if he thinks his life is in danger. I decide to go around the back and look at the fire first, just to make sure they’re friendly.

  I pick my way through the long grass and trip over half-buried gravestones. At the back of the church the grass has been cleared by fire and is now little more than patches of dirt.

  The fire is much bigger than needed for cooking or warmth. Even from a distance I can feel it on my face. I press myself against the cold stone wall and wait to see the person who built it.

  A figure walks out of a large shed carrying a pile of wood. When they are closer to the fire I see that it is a woman. She’s barely my age and might be much younger. Her dark hair is short but dishevelled. She has pale skin but her cheeks glow with the effort of the work she is doing. She drops the wood on the fire and it crackles immediately. When she turns I see she is wearing a dog collar on her loose black blouse.

  She is everything I could have hoped for. Not only a woman, but a vicar. I couldn’t be safer. She stands there watching the fresh wood catch for a moment, nods to herself and then turns and walks away. A few minutes pass and she returns with more wood to repeat the process. I can’t work out why she wants a fire this size. All it will do is draw attention, my being here is proof of that.

  When she walks away again, I follow her. As I get closer to the fire, I see that it has been built in a semi-circle, with high walls and a space in the middle large enough to park a car. I don’t understand, but it doesn’t occur to me that there is anything sinister in its design.

  I find her in the stone building. We meet each other at the door and I gasp in surprise.

  "I’m sorry," I say. "I didn’t mean to startle you."

  She smiles and I see that my guess about her age was off by a few years. There are strands of grey in her hair and smile lines around her eyes. "You didn’t." Her voice belongs to a twelve-year-old girl. It surprises me enough that I don’t respond. "I saw you watching."

  "You did?"

  She nods, looks me up and down, then turns to continue her work as if I’m not there. She takes pieces of wood from a shelf and places them on a block in the middle of the room. Then she splits them with an axe. I watch her do this three times.

  There is a strange smell in the building. I can’t place it. I don’t want to be rude, so I don’t say anything, but it lingers in the back of my throat like a bad piece of meat.

  "Take this," she says, handing me a bundle of wood. I follow her out of the shed, back to the fire. "Just put them down here." She drops her bundle and I put mine on top.

  As we are walking back towards the shed, I find my voice. "I’m looking for help."

  "Are you now?"

  "My husband and children are on a boat to The Isle of Wight. I need to get there."


  We enter the shed and the smell fills my throat again. We pick up more wood and leave. "Well you’ve come to the right place."

  "You’ll help?" I am surprised that it is so easy.

  "The Lord brought you to me for a reason."

  As a lifelong atheist, that sort of talk makes me uncomfortable. I imagine holding my daughters again and manage to keep my mouth shut.

  She goes back into the shed and I follow. There is no more wood to chop. She walks to a door at the other end. It has a heavy chain across it. The vicar takes a key out of her pocket, removes the lock and opens the door. I finally find out what the smell is.

  I am too surprised to scream. The bile rises in my throat. A dozen zombies lurch towards us and, if they weren’t chained up, they would kill me, because I am unable to move.

  The vicar steps into the room. She grabs the first zombie and it tries to bite her, but she is too quick for it. She pulls the creature towards us and once it is out of the room she kicks the door closed.

  "Lock it," she says to me.

  I don’t understand what’s happening. The vicar is already at the other end of the shed, dragging the screaming zombie behind her.

  "Lock it," she says again. "Unless you want them to escape."

  There is nothing I want less. It takes every ounce of willpower I have to move closer to the door. I can hear as well as smell the dead bodies now and they strain against their chains to reach me. Somehow I manage to pick up the two ends of the chain and lock them together. Then I back away from the door and out of the shed.

  Outside the vicar is already halfway towards the fire. I catch up with her and hear her muttering a prayer. The zombie is no longer trying to bite her, but doing everything it can to stay away from the flames. Its efforts are in vein, however, the vicar is remarkably strong.

  They stop in front of the fire and I hear the end of her prayer: "May the righteous flames of the Lord purify thy soul and bring you everlasting peace. Amen."

  The zombie stops struggling. It looks as if it has been hypnotised. When the vicar lets go it just stands there looking at her. She removes the chains from its hands and throws them to the floor. She stands toe to toe with the creature and looks at it. Then she shoves it hard in the chest and it flies backwards into the flames.

  The scream is the essence of agony. My legs go weak and it is all I can do to keep standing. The smell of burning flesh fills the air and I see the zombies blackened limbs struggling against the fire.

  When I can move again, I look at the vicar. She is throwing more wood on the fire and muttering another prayer.

  The screaming finally stops, but I can still hear the echo of it in my mind. I have little sympathy for zombies. They terrify me and I would be happy if they were all wiped out. If you had asked me ten minutes ago, I would have said it was fine to burn them alive. But that scream...

  The fact that the vicar seems completely unaffected makes me question whether I should trust her. What kind of person can listen to a creature make that noise and not feel something? Now that her prayer has finished, she starts to whistle. I recognise the hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful." She goes about shifting wood around as if it is the most natural thing in the world.

  I imagine watching another zombie burn and know that I can’t. I don’t want her to release them, but burning them alive is inhumane. It might be evil.

  I turn away and don’t look back. I stumble across the graveyard. The vicar doesn’t call me or come after me. I don’t stop until her dreadful church is far behind me.

  The further I get the more zombies I see. It is as if they know to avoid the area. That kind of self-preservation instinct is not something I expect from them and it troubles me for a few minutes. Eventually I decide that if they do have intelligence, it is of the animal variety. Not great enough to consider them equals, but enough that they shouldn’t have to suffer burning alive. I put it out of my mind and keep going, avoiding getting close enough for the zombies to notice me.

  The days that follow are unremarkable. I walk through filthy streets with no destination in mind, avoid zombies and beg strangers for help. Most won’t even speak to me. Those who do are invariably crazy like the vicar. I expect it to go on like this until the hope drains out of me. Then I meet a man called Charlie.

  I have just been turned away by a group living in a Tesco Express. They weren’t even willing to talk, preferring to chase me away with threats of violence if I tried to steal what was theirs. I chose not to argue, nor to point out that neither the building, nor its contents, belonged to them.

  It is early afternoon. There is still plenty of time to visit more places and be refused help. Instead I sit on a bench and think about my family. I have moments of despondency, but I believe I am a long way from giving up hope. Eventually someone will agree to help.

  "Rough morning?"

  I look up and he is standing in the road a few metres away. A man in his mid-thirties, well dressed in a grey suit. He looks clean and therefor out of place. For a moment I wonder whether I am imagining him.

  "Do you need something?" he says. "Food? Water?"

  Slowly I shake my head, but he has already turned to remove the bag from his back and doesn’t see me. A moment later he holds out a bottle of water and a Mars bar. I still have plenty of food and water, but it has been weeks since I’ve tasted chocolate. I take them both.

  "Go ahead, eat," he says. "You look like you need it." He sits on the bench next to me. "Charlie."

  "Samantha."

  He nods and opens his own bar of chocolate. I look at the wrapper on mine and try to see if there’s any way he could have tampered with it. "I got it in a service station this morning. There’s nothing wrong with it. Go ahead, eat."

  Unable to resist the temptation of chocolate, I do as he suggests.

  "Are you on your own?" he says.

  I shrug.

  "It’s okay," he says. "You don’t have to tell me."

  "My husband and daughters escaped."

  "And left you here?"

  "No. I mean, yes, but it wasn’t like that," I say. The feeling in my chest suggests that he is already closer to the truth of how I feel than I am after all these days alone. "There was a big crowd. I couldn’t get through. I’m glad they got away. They’re safe now."

  "And you?"

  I say nothing.

  "It’s none of my business. Forget I said anything."

  "What about you?" I say.

  "Ah," he says. "Well I suppose I’m in a similar situation. Only it’s been a bit longer in my case."

  I should thank him for the chocolate and leave. But I am tired of walking. I could sit forever. When I don’t say anything, he continues.

  "Maxine, my wife, and our son, left when the zombies first arrived."

  "They went to The Isle of Wight?"

  Charlie shakes his head. "No. Although I suppose they might be there now. They went to her mum’s house."

  "You didn’t go with them?"

  "I wanted them to stay here with me. I didn’t think it would get this bad. The army were going to sort it out. She wanted to go, begged me to go with them, and I refused. Then I woke up one morning and they were gone."

  "Why didn’t you go after them?"

  He reaches into his pocket and removes a piece of paper worn thin from repeated handling. I can see the feathered ink before he opens it. "This was on the dining room table." He looks down at the letter, reading it for what I suspect is the thousandth time. "She didn’t want me to go after her. Said she wanted time apart."

  If I had ever written such a letter to Michael it would have been a test. Charlie hasn’t taken it that way though and I’m not sure Michael would have either. But if she was begging him to leave with her one day and the next she was telling him she didn’t want him, then surely it was obvious?

  "I know what you’re thinking," he says. "And you’re right. I should have gone after her anyway. I was too stubborn, I suppose." He folds up the
letter and puts it back in his pocket. "But you see, I still thought the army would fix things and she’d come back realising I’d been right."

  "And now?" I say, because no one could possibly believe that everything is going to be okay now.

  He opens his mouth to start speaking and then stops, as if unsure what he’s going to say, or how he’s going to say it. After a long pause he says, "What if they aren’t okay?"

  It is a good question and I haven’t considered it until now. I have gone through the last few days assuming that Michael would get Penny and Bailey to The Isle of Wight but what if he can’t? The boat could have been attacked. Or they might have arrived and found the island wasn’t as safe as they’d hoped.

  "I haven’t heard from them since they left." He shakes his head. "I think I’d rather not know. At least this way there’s a chance."

  What would I do if I reached The Isle of Wight and found they hadn’t made it? I’m not sure I could live with that. It might be better to stay here and not know.

  "Samantha?"

  I turn to Charlie. He’s been talking but I haven’t heard a word of it.

  "Are you okay?" he says.

  "Fine," I lie.

  "Do you have a place to stay tonight?"

  "I’ll be okay," I say.

  He stands up. "In that case I’ll let you go. You’ll want to find somewhere before it gets dark. I advise you not to go near Cliff Street. There are some nasty folk down that way."

  We say our goodbyes. I watch him walk until he is out of sight and I am alone again. I screw up the chocolate wrapper and stuff it in my pocket. Time to be on my way.

  That night I find a room above a shop. There are no curtains, so I don’t switch on my torch. I don’t even eat because doing so will take away the taste of chocolate. I lay on the creaky old bed and listen to the zombies moaning on the street below. I try my best not to think about whether Michael and the girls made it, and whether I would be better off if I never found out.

  Eventually I sleep. At least I close my eyes and when I open them again the sun has risen.

  I manage to drag myself off the bed and force down one of the high energy bars from my bag. I’m running low on water, but I finish it off anyway. What’s the point of saving it now?