#Zombies
By Leigh Keating
‘Mum! Mum! Mum!’
‘Just a minute, Ed! Mummy needs to do this.’ -Facebook quiz to check which Strictly celeb I'm most like, Lily added silently, flicking through the questions on her phone.
‘But Mum, there's zombies coming down the prom!’
‘No there's not,’ said Lily. ‘They wouldn't be coming to Wetherspoons, would they? They drink blood.’ Flecks of rain dropped on the phone screen. She tried to wipe it clean and accidentally picked 'Ghostbusters' as her favourite 80s movie. ‘Damn it.’
‘Brains, Mum. Zombies eat brains.’
‘Ed, eat your lunch.’
‘I finished my lunch ages ago, it's starting to rain, and there are zombies coming. Can we go inside now?’
‘In a minute.’ After I've shared this hilarious lolcat. And I've probably got time for another ciggy, she thought. Ed tutted loudly as she lit up another cigarette. Lily didn't need to look at him to know he would be glaring at her. The last thing she wanted was a scolding from an eight-year-old, so she just didn't look.
‘Mum, you're not listening about the zombies, are you?’
‘Ed, this is Blackpool,’ she sighed, ‘it's a stag party.’
‘At 2.30?’
‘You believe in zombies but you don't believe men drink in the afternoon?’ Ooo, 23 photos of bricks that will change the way you see the world...*Click*.
‘They've just ripped a guy's arm off!’
‘They're buskers then! Just sit back down. Why don't you do some colouring?’ Oh, I haven't checked what Katy Perry's tweeted today...
‘Mum, they're locking up the pub. We've got to go inside now.’
‘They're not locking the pub, Ed. They're just shutting the doors because of the rain.’
‘Or the zombies.’
‘There are no zombies.’ Retweet Katy Perry...
‘They're moving tables in front of the windows!’
‘Ed...’
‘Mum, please, just come inside.’
‘Yes, Ed, in a minute, when I've finished this,’ she said. Reply to Katy Perry 'OMG, that's so true! #YOLO'.
‘Fine,’ said Ed. ‘I'm going inside. I'm not getting eaten by zombies.’
‘Yes, fine, go! I said I'll be right there.’ Just need to see if Katy has replied to me. Nothing yet, but she's famous, she must be busy. Lily finished her cigarette. She should probably go inside now. Ed would be waiting. She could just check twitter one last time though. Hmm, that's weird. Why is #zombiesinblackpool trending?
Leigh aspires to be a writer/psychologist/rock star. She writes novels, scripts, short stories and can speed write flash fiction on anything in under 30 minutes. She lives in Lancaster with her husband and three young sons. She's currently completing her MSc in Psychological Research Methods while trying to decide which novel to edit first.
She may have to compromise on the rock star thing.
Twitter: @LeighKeating
Website: www.leighkeating.me
the violence calls up silence*
by Mark Keating
Ed looked into Lily's eyes and saw nothing, nothing of her, nothing of what she once was. Once her eyes had been filled with laughter, love, intrigue and sometimes sadness. Her eyes were truly the gateway to her soul, they would reflect every inner thought. In the throes of passion and in each tumultuous fight he would know her inner feeling just by looking into those green seas.
Seas, the ever shifting landscape that they both loved, it is why they stayed in Blackpool. For all its cheapness, bright lights, wailing sirens, dilapidated arcades with wind-faded signs and streets littered with bargain shops. They loved the seas, the winds, the dunes near to Lytham, it was change and decay in equal measure. Like a fading relationship filled with contradiction and melancholy. You could come to Blackpool and just let yourself merge into the miasma of broken dreams and empty promises. Here you could let things fade away slowly hanging onto a facade filled with wild smiles and madness with nothing underneath.
Blackpool seemed to stay the same whether in the days of Austerity or boom. It was perpetually icing a facade over mismanaged investments, council desires culled and ambitions slaughtered
The town survived. Every boarded shop, each for sale sign patterned with a thousand billboards and stickers, moated in vomit. Empty holes like the sockets where teeth once stood. The rest of the teeth kept all bright white and artificially straightened to hide the decay inside, the rotting core and receding gums.
Blackpool was a period piece that was condemned repeatedly yet still survived. A dinosaur with the tenacity of a turtle, out evolved but still plodding along cocooned in a hard shell. That was what Ed and Lily loved. To them it was a treasure. A peasant in a toilet who knows that even princes have to piss. Blackpool was not restrained by its past, it was proud and even mocking.
Blackpool saved them. It brought them back together all those years ago. They had returned to this town, near to their birth and closer to their hearts than each other and had found themselves. The fading matched the shift in their lives. The decay, hidden beneath the apologists’ polish, a match for the hole in their lives.
The ever-shifting seas, the sands and the skies.
The rich pink skies of morning, the deep reds of night, had rekindled a deeper understanding. They saw themselves as a part of the tapestry, they were matched to this scene and as Blackpool’s fortunes shone and dimmed, so could their love. But it still went on, the tides would never stop, the winds would blow, the skies shift and the world would turn and they could see that together.
But now her eyes, those emeralds highlighted beneath the gathering brows of age were dulled. They no longer shone. No longer danced with laughter. No longer held that love for him.
But he held no love for her.
Ed had loved Lily more than he knew. He had held her in his arms through all of life's rich melody. They had come to understand each other's needs so perfectly that they could explore the deeper relationships. He knew that he would stay with her until the end of his life, that without her life itself had no value. He just did not want it to be so soon.
Endings are inevitable, not even the universe would last forever. Lily had said that mankind's destruction was itself and she was right. It was man who made the compact with the forces of darkness and unleashed the apocalypse upon the world. It was man who sold his soul to a devil of science. It was science that created the virus and hell the creatures that caught it.
As the world went insane and the virus spread Ed and Lily had prepared for the end. They had shored up supplies and built defences and held each other in the dark as the lights all faded and Blackpool went dim for the last time. They could not hold out for ever.
The creatures did not stop, did not pause, did not feel. Finally, the barricades fell and they came in and Ed and Lily fled. They came here to the seafront, to their special place in the dunes, to look at the seas and watch the sunset of mankind.
But even here in the stillness they had come.
The creature had launched itself at Lily but Ed had got to it first. The fight that followed had been beyond belief, even now Ed could not believe his own anger, hatred and fear. He had taken the life of a woman, an infected near dead creature, but still a woman, a mother or a sister, a daughter at least.
But she had already killed him first. She had bitten his arm and transmitted her filth into him. Impregnating him with a hateful seed that would turn him into a monster. Lily had cried and held him as he started to turn and in his last moments of conscious thought. Before he became an unthinking thing, a zombie he had made his decision. They would be together still. He could not exist without her and he gave her no choice to be without him.
That was when Ed had bitten her, had sunk his teeth into her flesh drawing blood despite her screams, impregnating her one last time.
Ed looked into Lily's eyes and saw nothing. Just the milky white of death as her limbs twitched and she
lurched upwards. Deep inside of him the last of his humanity went away, and milky-eyed he stood next to her and stumbled across the sands.
(* Zombie, The Cranberries)
Mark Keating is a Lancashire-born, Lancaster-dwelling, individual of roughly five decades. Although he identifies as male and British he otherwise refuses to be easily defined. Mark is an advocate of; change, equality, aspiration, opportunity and community. Mark is by equal turns married, parent, pet owner, omnivore, writer, dreamer and child.
The Pier
by Bec Pearce
Lily knew she had to get off the street. The smell of rain was in the air and the creatures seemed to like the rain. Maybe it was something about the sound all around them, they were always attracted to any kind of sound. Lily learned that when her phone had gone off with a spam text message offering to get her compensation from the car accident she had never had. She had shut herself in an abandoned taxi and waited until another sound had drawn them away.
It was quieter since this morning when the promenade had been swarming with them, but, if the piles of bodies were anything to go by, one of the roving gangs seemed to have been through again. The gangs were almost as dangerous as the creatures. More so. At least the creatures would just kill you. Lily had got into the habit of running and hiding whenever she heard the sound of an engine.
She was so hungry and just wanted a couple of hour’s peace before nightfall. She looked up at the clock face on the building opposite her - 2:30pm - she’d better find shelter fast. Running quietly up to the pub on