name’s Eddie, sorry to disturb, but I saw the clothes and thought I should say… Ah, don’t worry about it, it’s probably just some kids having a joke. Pretend some guys walked out into the sea, like that movie, you know?’
‘I didn’t think anyone else remembered that one… Arcy, stop that!’ Arcadia looked up guiltily from where she’d been sniffing around Ed’s trainers, ‘This is Arcadia, the only person I care about enough to get out here before work every morning. Oh, and you can call me Lily.’ She half expected Ed to give a perfunctory ‘pleased to meet you’ and jog on, but he stayed with her for ten minutes of walking down the beach and even threw a ball for the dog a few times as they got to know each other. It was Lily who had to break off the chat when she realised it was time to get changed for work.
‘Oh, but I’ve got the afternoon off,’ she said on impulse, hoping that didn’t come out sounding as desperate as it did in her head, ‘If you fancy grabbing a bite of something to eat, I mean. You seem like a nice guy, and I’ve not met so many people since I moved up here, it’s always good to make a friend.’
‘I’d love to.’
The rain slowly petered out over the course of the morning. Lily was looking a whole lot more presentable after changing out of her work uniform in the back room. She hoped it wouldn’t be obvious just how long she’d spent carefully fixing her makeup. This Ed seemed like a nice guy, and that was all, there was no reason for her to go to such lengths with her appearance. But she couldn’t bring herself to show up to meet someone looking scruffy, whether it was a date or not.
It was after two by the time she strode towards the café with a confidence she really didn’t feel. She could at least be proud of her hair, though, it having dried out and changed from lank, muddy brown to gentle waves of glossy dark-blonde. She could see Ed sitting just inside the window, a choice seat with a perfect view out over the beach. But as luck would have it, the heavens opened again in the last hundred yards, and by the time he saw her burst through the door, she was back to looking like a drowned rat and dripping all over the tiled floor.
A late lunch was just what Lily needed to rejuvenate her after a hard morning, and Ed thoughtfully offered a large cocoa to warm her up after the sudden appearance of rain. He complimented her outfit, even though the weather must surely have destroyed any claim she had to style. It was amazing that they managed to get on so well, when they’d only met that morning, and everything was going perfectly for almost half an hour.
There were a couple of old folks sitting in an alcove beside the counter. The kind you get used to seeing around if you live in a town like this: they’d chosen their table years before, where they wouldn’t get overly disturbed by tourists barging past or other people knocking them. A tiny table for two, sheltered from the rest of the room, where they could sit and drink tea all day long and reminisce about the old days while she did the crossword in the local paper and he wrote letters to the editor about declining moral standards in the youth of today.
This one day, however, their ritual was interrupted when the white-haired lady jumped bolt upright and threw the entire table, tea service and all, out of her way. Everyone turned to stare, but the old man was more concerned with trying to prise his wife’s teeth out of his neck. You couldn’t believe he’d ever been a man of violence, but with fear distorting his face he was desperate enough to grab a steak knife from a nearby table and stab frenziedly at the woman’s face and neck.
The other patrons stared in shock; somebody was screaming, and somebody was yelling to call the police. The old woman stood up, apparently oblivious of the blood pouring from her wounds, and glared at the spectators. Her husband was on the floor now, crumpled like a rag doll. Nobody could lie in that position and still be alive. She muttered in a cracked voice that was barely audible. Lily didn’t hear because of the crash from the window as Ed hurled a chair out. He moved like some kind of action movie hero, wrapping her in his arms and barrelling out of the window while she was still too shocked to respond.
On the pavement outside he pulled her to her feet. She was going to scream in surprise or ask why they couldn’t just have used the door, until she saw the logjam of people now trying to re-enter the café. They were confronted by a blood-spattered stranger, an axe in his hands and eyes staring madly at the fleeing patrons. He was bleeding from one arm, though Lily’s imagination immediately suggested that most of the blood around his mouth wasn’t his own. There was something about the gaunt figure, and the clear hatred in his cold, sunken eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking the word, ‘zombie,’ as ridiculous as it would have sounded even a couple of hours ago.
‘Come on,’ Ed whispered, dragging her roughly into the closest alleyway. Behind them, she could hear the screams as the axe-wielding zombie ploughed into a cluster of terrified tourists, its hunger for flesh overwhelming all rationality.
‘Did that one really moan… ‘brains’… It can’t be, can it?’ Lily gasped, nearly hysterical as they emerged onto a street where tourists were talking and shopping normally.
‘I think he did. And I don’t think it was a joke. It’s like something out of a crazy movie, I keep thinking this can’t be real, but we know what we saw. They turned into zombies, all those movies are coming true.’ He took a deep breath, and changed the topic to something they could at least understand: ‘Now, are you okay? We need to call the police, or the army or something, in case nobody managed it yet. And just hope there aren’t more of them around.’
That optimism was short lived, as the bustle of a busy street was interrupted by a scream. Suddenly there were pedestrians on the road, no longer keeping to the shelter of the shop awnings. People were running in terror from the direction of North Pier, too, but nobody seemed to know where they were running to. Calling the police for help was no use: they were clearly swamped by calls, and you couldn’t even get through. Lily and Ed soon stopped running, and instead tried to find a safe space where they could shelter for a few moments. Well before the clocks hit 3, every person they saw was running for their lives in one direction or another.
The station and the bus stands on Talbot Road were always busy during the day, so the odds were high that by heading in those directions they’d either run into a zombie or a panicking mob. Instead they headed for a refuge likely to be a bit quieter: the library. There were people – both living and dead – running between the aisles of books, and it looked like a small war was in progress. They actually saw one employee loading whole armfuls of books onto the top shelf of a trolley, before ramming it into the first zombie to come towards him. The trolley toppled, pinning the undead’s legs to the ground. Ed and Lily quickly joined the man in throwing on more books. If injury didn’t stop these things, then maybe a massive weight of paper would at least slow them down for a few minutes.
‘Thanks,’ the man in the library shirt warmly shook Ed’s hand. ‘I’m Colin. Looks like it’s every man for himself around here, so I appreciate the assist.’
‘Ed, this is Lily. Is there anywhere we can hide out around here? I’d rather not be fighting these things if there’s a chance the army might come in with some way to cure them.’ Colin nodded and led the way to a staircase. The upstairs of the library was a maze, and it only took them moments to find an unoccupied meeting room.
Finally, they could sit and talk. Nobody had any idea what had happened, just that some people had gone insane at half past two. The news on the radio had reported similar transformations all around the country, until every station went off air. First, people had assumed that the one they could see was some kind of psychopath. But then they realised that so many people were reacting in the same way. Looking out of the windows now, the number of zombies was slowly growing, and they looked less and less human. Their eyes came out of their sockets, and they kept on moving just the same. Where they were injured, they bled until there was no blood left, and it still didn’t stop them. Pale skin sloughed off to reveal bare muscle and bone, or for some their flesh looked to be dec
aying already.
‘It’s not some kind of virus or something, or a toxin,’ Colin shrugged, ‘I checked online before my phone stopped working. Japan, Netherlands, America. Everywhere at once. I got no ideas what else it could be, though. Some kind of supernatural apocalypse? Aliens? There’s maybe a few possibilities, but all things I would have called crazy if you’d mentioned them yesterday. Hell, I’d have said you’re crazy if you mentioned zombies.’
‘Shambling around like in the movies,’ Ed sighed, ‘Even moaning ‘braaaaains’, some of them.’
‘Sounded more like ‘remains’ to me,’ Colin answered, ‘Though I guess that makes even less sense.’
‘Can the church do anything?’ Lily piped up, eager to have something to contribute, ‘I mean, I’m not religious, but there are dead people coming back to life in the bible, aren’t there?’
‘I think so,’ Ed furrowed his brow, ‘In any case, vampires can’t stand to look at a cross, right? Maybe zombies are the same. What’s the difference, anyway?’ Colin opened his mouth to answer, but then thought better of it. Whatever he knew from the page and screen was irrelevant now, at best a guess. He