Inevitable: A Short Story

Charlie

There were those who refused to believe it of course. They stuck two fingers up at the television and continued to drink it anyway, gulping it down, down, down like they couldn't get enough of the stuff.

Contaminated water? Who are they trying to bloody kid?

And for some, it was just too late anyway. The deed was done. Some said they'd been shoving that stuff in the water for ages. Pumping it into the supply and sticking their fingers right back up at the world. If it's good enough for the lab-monkeys, then it's alright for the rest of you. Some even said it was the government themselves who'd done it, but Charlie knew that was bullshit, because it wasn't long before the government lost control completely. People had marched on Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament. The masses descended on the Establishment and tore it down. They occupied Trafalgar, Westminster, The Mall. And when the police tried to force them back, the riots began. Only these riots were different to Brixton and Tottenham. These weren't just the forgotten youth ripping and burning out the heart of the city. They came from all different walks of life, all races, all religions, all cultures, blending together and charging like one entity, swarming the department stores, the restaurants, the bars, leaving nothing but shattered glass and broken bones in their wake, all motivated by one thing only: fear.

Of course, that had been before the Change took hold. Then they had known what it was to be afraid. Then they had known true fear, the kind of fear that gripped you like a vice, the kind that grabbed you by the balls and squeezed, the kind that raged through your veins.

The kind that shattered your sanity.

For a while, glued to the television while sitting in his armchair in the front room of his tenth floor flat, Charlie thought he had gone mad. He watched it all unfold on the screen. Reports of sightings. People, ordinary bloody people suddenly turning - no, changing, they called it - and attacking their loved ones, strangers, anyone they could get their hands on. Mother turned against child. Husband against wife. Sibling against sibling. Neighbour against neighbour.

Cannibalism, the TV said.

No, Charlie had whispered back, gripping the arms of the chair until his knuckles protruded white through stretched skin. Not cannibals. Zombies. Real life fucking zombies.

He'd seen them. Seen them.

**********

Unfortunately for Charlie, he didn't have a stockpile of tinned food like his Grandad. By the end of the week, they usually only had half a block of cheese, a pint of on-the-turn milk and a couple of eggs in the fridge. The cupboard might have had a box of cereal, some tomato ketchup and a few chocolate digestives if they were lucky. When the riots hit, Charlie knew he needed to get out and take what he could before the whole city went to the dogs. Juliet from next door had knocked and said he'd better get his arse down to the Co-Op quick because Ivy, who worked behind the counter had told So-and-So that they hadn't had a delivery in three days and they didn't know if they were going to get one. Grabbing his rucksack, Charlie had hot-footed it down to the corner store, breaking into a run when he saw people fleeing the shop, with bag-fulls, arm-fulls, anything-fulls of groceries.

The Co-Op, local hang out for the afore mentioned forgotten youth who'd threaten shoppers to buy them booze and fags, was now the local hang out for the looters. Of course, a tiny corner shop wasn't going to fund the looters for long and when Charlie ran into the store, out of breath and panic fuelling his system, he realised that he really should have got off his arse much sooner. There was no bottled water, naturally, but Emily had covered that already, lugging home multi-packs a couple of weeks before. But there wasn't much else either. Wild-eyed and sweating, Charlie had run round the store, sweeping whatever he could find off the shelves and straight into his open ruck-sack all under the watchful eye of the CCTV camera which blinked pointlessly at him. Reaching the back of the store, he began rummaging through the left-overs in the fridges, feet skidding on the spilt yoghurt and crushed milk containers and it was then that a noise caught his attention, forcing him to glance up.