Charlie stood on the roof of his thirteen-storey apartment building, his toes peeking over the edge as he looked over the city. He waggled them, feeling the cool night breeze tickle between each toe, contrasting with the sensation of the rough granite under his heels.
The city had gone to Hell. For all Charlie knew, maybe the whole world had by now.
He watched the lights twinkling and remembered a time when he'd looked across the skyline, fingers intertwined with Emily's and thought how magical it all seemed from up high. Away from all the dirt and grime, the congestion and the hustle-bustle crowds, the half-crazed sale shoppers and hysterical tourists, the city was a creature of beauty, its skin bejewelled with thousands of sparkling fairy lights. But not now. Now the city was burning, all aflame as if some great dragon had swooped down from above and laid waste to the infected streets and diseased populace. From up here, Charlie could see the pockets of fire, like a field of bonfires alighting the city. Only these fires weren't for toasting marshmallows and sausages, these were for toasting houses, shops, high-rise blocks and flesh.
He thought about his Grandad, grumpy old sod that he was, and wondered where he was now. He wondered whether he was safe, locked away in his flat, away from the madness and the carnage, cowering behind drawn curtains and dead-bolted doors, living off those tins of spam and fruit cocktail that he had always hoarded in his larder just in case.
It's war mentality, son, he had said whenever Charlie had mocked those cans stacked high in the cupboard, lined up like row upon row of little tin soldiers. You never know when those bastards are going to drop them bloody bombs again, better to be prepared.
Gramps, the Germans aren't coming back, you know, Charlie had laughed, shaking his head. It's not 1939 anymore.
Don't bloody matter, Chuck, his Grandad had replied, wagging his finger. They'll be back. And if it's not them, it'll be those bloody Japs. And let's not forget the Yanks, trigger-bloody-happy, them lot. Especially that Bush bastard.
It's not Bush, anymore, Gramps. It's Trump.
Don't bloody care, sniffed Grandad. It'll be some bugger, you mark my words.
And he'd been right. Only it hadn't been the Germans, the Japanese or even Trump. And it definitely hadn't been bombs.
The word was that it had been social terrorists; working together with some former government vivisectionist who'd turned his back on the mighty establishment in an effort to bring it to its snivelling public schoolboy knees, only it had all gone horribly fucking wrong. Threats had soon become very real. So real that soon they were telling everyone not to drink the water. They were even showing warnings on the television, a bit like those boring party political broadcasts, the ones they used to put on instead of Eastenders and Corrie, pissing everyone off in the process.
Some people had rushed straight out and decimated the bottled water aisles in the supermarkets and mini-marts, leaving with trolleys full of Evian and Highland Spring. Charlie had even been there one night after the first warning had aired, oblivious of the threat while he bought one of them Dine-In-For-A-Tenner meals for him and Emily, carrying a basket containing a family size lasagne, garlic bread, a cheesecake and a cheap bottle of plonk. Feeling quite proud of his bargain purchase, he'd been distracted when suddenly two blokes had caused a riot over in aisle thirty, punching ten shits out of each other over a two-litre bottle of mineral water. They'd literally been rolling around on the floor, going at each other like animals, spraying blood over the empty shelves. Rolling his eyes, Charlie had paid for his stash at one of those annoying automated tills and left the store, getting home to find Emily crouched in front of the television, one hand clapped over her mouth and the other constantly hitting the rewind button on the Sky Plus remote, playing the transmission over and over again. By her feet, a glass of water had been knocked over, leaving a sodden stain on the carpet.
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.
To his left was a door slightly ajar, marked STAFF ONLY in big black letters. A strip-light flickered within, making that horrible buzzing noise like a bluebottle stupidly head-butting a window again and again. Charlie heard a shuffling sound and a moan, almost as if someone were whimpering in pain. Zipping up his rucksack, he flung it over his shoulder and slowly crept towards the door, hand outstretched, he pushed gently against it, wincing as it creaked open to reveal a lady standing there with her back to him. Directly in front of her was a shelving unit, filled with store paraphernalia like till rolls and cleaning supplies and she shuffled in front of it, as if she was trying to walk right through the damn thing, her head hitting one of the wooden shelves again and again. Her hands waved uselessly in the air by the side of her body, fingers wriggling like spiders legs. It took Charlie a couple of seconds to realise who she was, taking in her standard Co-Op uniform and greying curls.
"Ivy?" he said, stepping into the doorway and Ivy, Co-Op stalwart for more than twenty years, turned round, a deep graze scarring her forehead and blood dripping down over her eyelids like some kind of garish eyeshadow. "Ivy? Are you alright?" he asked again, but very soon he realised that she wasn't alright. In fact, there was nothing right about Ivy at all.
Her skin and the whites of her eyes were jaundiced and Charlie could see a network of blue veins protruding on her throat as if someone had injected that funny dye into her and he was watching it slowly moving through her body, creeping under her skin. Her mouth formed silent words, but it was her yellowing eyes that stabbed fear into his heart. Mostly they appeared glazed, as if she were looking at him, but not really seeing him, but then there was this flicker of recognition, a flicker of awareness and to Charlie that seemed so much worse than a vacant stare. It was as if she knew; she knew what was happening to her and she knew exactly what she was doing. Ivy took a shuffling step forwards. Charlie retreated through the doorway and when she opened her mouth, releasing a groan of such agony and want, drool snaking from her lips, Charlie stumbled backwards, slipping in the yoghurt and landed with a splat, staring at the old cashier as she staggered towards him.
Ivy's foot slipped out from underneath her, her Clarks wide fitting brogues skidding in the dairy mess and she fell onto her stomach, her chin hitting the floor with a sickening crunch. Reaching a hand forward, she clawed at his leg, managing to catch hold of his ankle. Shrieking, Charlie tried to drag himself backwards but kept sliding on the wet floor, his hands slapping uselessly in the mess and all the time, Ivy tried to pull herself forward, her lips smacking together as she fixed that awful yearning gaze on him.
"Let go," he cried, shaking his leg in an effort to loosen her grip but she just dug her fingers in deeper. "Let go, you crazy bitch."
But Ivy wasn't crazy. Ivy was Changed. And Ivy wanted Charlie, oh she wanted him more than anything in the world.
Lifting his other leg, Charlie kicked out, hitting her in the cheekbone and hearing the crack of bone. Charlie kicked her again, his boot making contact with the bridge of her nose and the blood spurted across her face, dripping down her chin. Again and again he kicked, remembering the time she congratulated him on his engagement to Emily, remembering how she often used to ask after his Grandad, remembering how she always had a smile for him. She was smiling at him now, lips peeling back from receding gums and nicotine stained teeth. With one final kick that exploded her eye socket, she let go and clinging onto the side of the fridge, he managed to pull himself to his feet.
Stumbling down the aisle, he turned and looked back to see Ivy still laying there, trying to lift her broken bloodied face out of the yoghurt and milk, her legs still moving sluggishly. Finally, her head dropped and she just stared at him with one jaundiced and blood-shot eye, but her hand still reached for him, grasping at nothing but air.
Running out of the store, Charlie headed for home, barely believing what he had just done. The streets were chaotic, cars sped through the traffic lights, ignoring the red warnings, people ran here and there. He passed someone pushing a pram full of booze, vodka bottles clinking together as the guy tried to push it up a troublesome kerb, muttering curses under his breath. The man glared at Charlie as he walked by and Charlie pulled his hood up and avoided his angry gaze, but couldn't help but think the guy had the right idea. Getting catatonic seemed like a damn good idea right now.
Hearing a piercing scream to his right, Charlie flinched and looked over towards the children's playground. A teenage boy lay curled up in a ball on the blue polysoft ground near the climbing frame and Charlie watched in horror as a group of five teens circled him, taking it in turns to kick him, like some kind of macabre tag team event. They backed off when they saw that Charlie had stopped and was watching them, his mouth open in horror, and the injured boy took the opportunity to stagger to his feet and start to stumble across the park towards the railings were Charlie stood.
Like a pack of wolves, the teens began to follow, fists clenched by their sides, their faces twisted into challenging sneers. Charlie opened his mouth to tell them to back off, stupid really as he knew he would easily find himself on the receiving end of their Nikes, but as the boy got closer, Charlie could see the tell-tale blue veins snaking a pattern up his throat.
"Please," croaked the boy, holding out a hand to Charlie. "Please...."
Turning away, Charlie walked on. When the screams resumed, he broke out into a run and didn't stop until he had reached home and bolted the door securely behind him.
*********
The Change didn't happen quickly. Not like the films all said anyway. It was like a slow rot, decaying you from the inside out and staking claim to your body day by day. They said the mind was the last thing to go and that was the most awful thing about it, because you had to watch yourself Changing, knowing that there was not a damn thing you could do about it. It was inevitable, you see. As inevitable as the sunrise. As inevitable as the thunder after the lightening. As inevitable as the city would soon burn to nothing.
They found out that burning the Changed would kill them. It was an agonising death, that was for sure, they'd roll around for ages, hell, some would even keep walking, their feet still shuffling forward until you could see the flesh shrivel and melt off their faces and until you saw their eyeballs pop from the heat. The problem was that people weren't waiting until someone was fully Changed. Just yesterday, Charlie had watched a news bulletin, showing how some people had burnt down a house in their street because they'd heard that the family living there were Changing. They'd stood outside, like some kind of medieval lynch mob, chanting and jeering as the flames consumed the three-bed detached house in their nice middle class suburban neighbourhood.
We're good people, one woman in her cashmere twin-set and beige culottes had insisted to the reporter. I'm a deputy head teacher and my husband is a banker in the city. But this is our home. And we can't have that kind of thing spreading here. We're just protecting ourselves.
Two adults and three children died in that fire. Only one of the children, a girl aged twelve, was reported to have been fully Changed. Rumours afterwards said that the rest of the family were either only partially Changed or not affected at all, because onlookers said they saw them trying to flee the house, only to be herded back inside by the mob, who then barricaded up the doors so they couldn't get out.
It was funny how people coped in times of extreme fear. Charlie couldn't get another of the news coverage. He drank in every bulletin, every broadcast, every You Tube video posted online, every Facebook status update. Each day, Charlie's Facebook friends dwindled one by one, gone from posting inane updates about what they had for dinner or checking in at their local pub and announcing it to everyone who would listen to posting about how many Changed they had seen that day, how many Changed they had burned, how petrified they were because some of the Changed had tried to get into their house the night before. And then nothing. The servers went down and Facebook just faded into oblivion as if it had never existed at all.
For a while the television channels had just aired repeats of old comedies like Allo Allo and Last of the Summer Wine punctuated by lengthy news bulletins and eventually everything was replaced by government warnings about what to do if you thought you were infected.
Stay in your house. Bolt the doors. Stay calm. Help will come.
Charlie knew that was bollocks. No one was coming. There was no help. Now, it was every man for himself. The best you could do was hope that the Changed wouldn't find you. The best you could do was hope that no one would find you, because it really was every man for himself and that meant everything you had, from your home, to your possessions to the people you loved was fair game to the looters and the rioters.
All he and Emily could do was huddle inside their apartment, listening to the odd scream echoing down the hallway or drifting up from the streets outside. They kept their curtains closed and resorted to candles and extra blankets when the electricity went out, not that it was a good idea to have the lights on anyway. Lights just drew them in, like moths to a flame. No, much better to hide away, shrouded in darkness and pray for the morning to come quickly.
Emily spent more and more time in bed. At first, after that first bulletin about the water which she had watched over and over again until Charlie had gently prised the remote from her clammy grip, she had clung to him under the covers, wrapping herself around him whenever she could, seeking solace in the warmth that inevitably mushroomed between them, in a way that eventually became less about love and more about endlessly rutting against each other because it was the only way to forget about what wandered the corridor outside their door and what stalked the streets ten storeys below.
More recently, Emily no longer reached for him. They no longer rutted like animals, sweating out their fears under the sheets. They no longer sought solace in each other, in fact, Emily barely moved at all other than to get up and shuffle to the toilet and shuffle back to the bed again. She was still eating, but her interest in the meagre portions that Charlie served up was growing less and less every day and he could see how gaunt she was getting. Dark rings encircled violet eyes that he had once been mesmerised by. Shadows haunted a face which he had once enjoyed plastering with soft kisses. Slowly, the Emily had had known was leaving him, replaced by this ghoul, a ghost of the girl she once was. She was becoming someone he hardly recognised anymore and no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise, he knew it was happening and the worst thing was that he knew that she knew it too. He could see it in her eyes every time she looked at him. Of course, she tried not to look at him, or at least pretended not to, but sometimes, Charlie would feel the burn of her stare upon him and he would turn to glance at her and see it there, clear as day. And he knew that there was nothing now he could do to stop it.
It was inevitable, after all.
*********
He'd been up here so many times before but not like this. Never like this.
Charlie had never understood those who decided that death was the only option. He could never have imagined reaching that point where you said fuck it, life is just so terrible that there's no point anymore. Because there was always a point, wasn't there? And if there wasn't a point at that moment, maybe there would be, maybe if you held out a little longer, something would change, life would get better?
But life wasn't going to get better for Charlie. Life wasn't going to get better for any of them now. This was it. The cities would burn. The people would burn. And what was left from the ashes would be no Phoenix, it would just be a desperate attempt at survival in a world where fear reigned, a world where what was left of Man would fight it out against the Changed. There would be nothing more than that.
Shuffling closer to the edge, he swayed and felt the nausea rock him when he glanced down, watching the sluggish figures of what was once people moving about far, far below him. Tears streamed down his cheeks, snot bubbling from his nostrils as he sobbed, the phlegm pooling in his throat and making him want to retch.
He thought about his Grandad again, that damned miserable old bugger with his stockpile of spam and tinned fruit and his lips curled up into an ironic smile.
"I wish it had been those bloody Germans, Gramps. I really, I really do."
And then he stepped off the ledge, feeling nothing but air under his feet.
He thought about Emily. He thought about waking up that morning and looking upon her beautiful, gaunt face. He thought about how he had pulled back the covers and watched her as she slept, his eyes wandering over her body and seeing how bony it had become, ribs visible and shoulder blades poking through the same t-shirt she had worn for two weeks already. He thought about how much he had wanted her then, how much he had yearned for her. He thought about how she had opened those big violet eyes of hers and how she had blinked off her slumber, her gaze turning from dazed wonderment to awful realisation. He thought about how she had struggled to move, her weakened body unable to fight him off as he straddled her. He thought about how she had screamed when he had sunk his teeth into her face, the sound somewhere between an injured animal and a tortured child. He thought about how he had ripped at her flesh with his teeth, again and again and again.
But most of all, he thought about how damn good she had tasted.
As he fell, still sobbing, Charlie looked at his hands, noting the blue veins that protruded from his jaundiced skin. He felt it inside him, this thing that he was becoming, slowly rotting him from the inside out.
The ground grew closer and closer, the impact imminent, when suddenly another thought spiked into his head.
What if the fall doesn't kill....