TILL DEATH

Episode Four

DAY 12

When I wake the sky is blue and the air smells of the thin smoke that still rises from the embers of last night's fire. The bandage over my eye feels loose, and the eye beneath it less swollen. My good eye aches and squints. I breathe out and my breath hangs in the air. I stand and collect the broken clock from the floor. The face smiles at me and tells me it's 9:36 am. I look around the room. Water stains from the burst pipe upstairs run faint orange down the beige wall to a soggy carpet, covered in broken glass. Fresh air breathes in through the broken window and the light that follows it in is unfiltered. It's all real, isn't it? The events of last night, they happened, didn't they? Shattered glass writes last night's story on my damp rug and the sun broken across sharp triangles illuminates the room. It's so strange, isn't it? How daylight gives gravity to the events of the night before. If I had cleaned all this away before I fell asleep maybe I could have pretended it didn't happen, let the night keep its horrors, but here in the daylight it all has to exist, doesn't it? I have no choice but to accept it. My wife hated me, and now she's dead. A zombie killed her. And there are zombies now, or something like them. Isn't that strange? Isn't all this strange? "Ha!" I laugh at the absurdity. Is it strange that I'm amused? I suppose it is. I suppose it is. I suppose I should feel fearful, but I don't. Not yet, at least. Using the keys now in my possession I unlock the front door and step outside. The unbroken sun is bright and its heat is thin, but it's enough to remind me that it exists. I raise my face to it for a moment and feel its heat, then I set about boarding the broken window and fixing the burst pipe.

In the afternoon I make a tuna sandwich and eat it alone at the kitchen counter. I spread the butter thick and pile enough tuna and mayonnaise for two people between two thick slices of white bread. The filling oozes out of each side. I bite down on my fat sandwich and it tastes like the first thing I ever ate. Chewing, I look out of the window toward the place I know her remains and the mangled body of the zombie still lie. I have no appetite to see either again. I think of the scrambled jets and the empty town, then swallow hard. I should build those fences.

DAY 13

1.00 am. I can't sleep. Images of her. Memories. Vows. Promises. Eulogies. They drift out of the darkest corners like mist in a breeze. I get out of bed and I sit naked in the window. The moon is bright over the distant sea and shines a spotlight on my windswept clifftop. This place was supposed to be our escape. Our perfect dream of self-sufficiency. We told ourselves we had raced with the rats for long enough. London was full of them. Someone once told me that in that greasy city you're never more than a metre away from one, and I crossed paths with my fair share. Burned out and cynical, we abandoned our Blackberries and laptops and ran from that rat race, all the way down here to this place, here on the very edge of everything. We sold all we owned. No more satellite dishes. No more Swedish furniture. No more cocktails or cocaine. This was our new start. A reinvention of ourselves as clean living, self-reliant citizens of a new earth. She still had her art of course, and all of her parent's money. Piles and piles of the stuff hidden from the sight of our quizzical friends. We're just not money orientated, we'd tell the dinner party guests that made it down here to eat our foraged meals and gawk at our self-inflicted austerity, and later, at the new baby. Some good that money would do us. All the trust funds, golden geese and nest eggs in the world couldn't save us from the misery that waited for us here. I wonder about the rest of the world for the first time. I picture the city. Gone? Maybe. If they've made it here, they've made it everywhere. Good. Nothing of value was lost. Sure, our austerity was a facade, but my hate for the life we left behind was real. I hope it is over. I hope this is the end.

DAY 14

The sun rises. Last night, deep sleep never came, so this new day develops under the weight of that strange feeling that follows a late flight across two time zones. Slightly too bright. Slightly too real. I unwrap the falling bandage from my damaged head and let it fall to the ground. I watch the sky bloom through aching new eyes. No trespassers on the horizon. No monsters at the door. At least not yet. I read. I eat. I please myself. I don't clean up. Later, I return to the place I lost her. What remains of the two of them lies knotted in the blackened grass, wrapped up like lovers in some grisly final embrace. I kick the parts into a pile. I find the knife lodged inside him, dirtied but not dulled. I bundle up the bones and dried matter, then discard them into the sea, with a sentiment that I don't feel in my heart, and an ancient prayer that I don't mean on my lips.

I tire quickly, so I stay indoors. In the late afternoon I make a bed in front of the fire with pillows and blankets, then I fall asleep to the whistle of the cold wind as twilight hides what remains of the day.

DAY 15

The frail wind still blows. I sit by the fire and listen to it complain through the trees and watch the clouds roll beyond the window, the overcast sky desaturating everything that lies beneath it. Yes, I think, this looks more like an apocalypse, then I smile at my own wryness. Still, for all my cynicism the day forebodes relentlessly and the creeping unease seeps into me until I am motivated away from the comfort of the fire. Out under the weight of those telling clouds I make my plans to secure this place. I'll do what she said. I'll reinforce the wall. Maybe then I'll sleep a little easier at night. The wall itself begins by the hawthorn hedge that lines the lane, then runs along the edge of the neighbouring field before dipping down gently toward the outcrop, where it terminates above the crumbling cliff face. The rest of the perimeter of our property meets that same cliff face, dropping down to the shore abruptly enough that even the most able-bodied person wouldn't be able to make it up here from down there. The hedge by the lane is so ancient and dense I doubt even I could get through the tangle of twigs and thorns without a scythe and secateurs. The graceless dead wouldn't stand a chance. A wrought iron gate splits the hedge halfway, an obvious vulnerability, but it's double height and sturdy and sound, it just needs a lock of some kind to make it fully secure. The lane that leads here terminates just beyond that gate in a small, dusty turning area surrounded by the same dense, knotted hedge. So every other side is secure, only the dry stone wall is a problem. The wall itself is in good condition, but it's low. It was built to deter errant sheep, not protect from a horde of bipedal brain-hungry monsters, and, as I have already established, one of those things can fall over it easily enough. A small crowd would be over in seconds. Whatever new structure I build needs to add height and needs sideways strength. With the right timber posts I think I could easily create something that is the height of a man, and if I add a reinforcing strut at forty-five degrees to each post and wrap the whole thing in chicken wire it'll take sideways force from the far side too. So that's the plan for my defence. Rely on the cliff to keep me safe on two sides, the unruly hedge and locked gate to protect the access from the lane, and reinforce the dry stone wall with a wire and timber fence that straddles it. All I need are the materials, and I know they have them at Charlie's. She told me as much. I walk through the grey day as I plan this, striding around my land like a man unafraid. I head down the driveway toward the external gate. It's out of view of the house and I am eager to know if she closed it behind her the last time she came home. The sun is setting at a pace and before I complete the two-minute walk into the trees that line the opening of the drive the day has gone from dark grey to navy blue. I get to the place under the tall trees that meet the hedge that lines the lane. There I see the bars of the gate hatched in black across the shadow grey. It's closed, thank goodness, and the latch lays still in its metal bed. But, I wonder, can they open a dropped latch? Doubtful, but I realise I am making assumptions. I don't really know anything about these things. I can't assume to know all about them just because I watched some schlocky film in the eighties. I do know they want to hurt us, and I know they can be destroyed, but beyond that nothing can be assumed. Do they think? Do they sleep? Do they die if they don't eat? Can they use tools? I don't know. I don't know, but here now in the looming dark I know this gate isn't secure enough. Not anymore. A lucky fumble with the simple latch and the thing would just swing open. The shadows here are long. Too long. Too deep. I'm too far from the house here, and with no defences. No light. No weapon. I rub my neck and feel the thin scabs there. With wide, sore eyes I walk quickly back down the crunching gravel drive toward the pale yellow light that is cast from the cottage door. I get back inside, pull the heavy door behind me, then lock and bolt it. Tomorrow I will make the journey. I'll go to town, I'll get what I need, and then I'll make this place safe again.