“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“They break the window, they might reach in and turn the key,” I said.
He nodded at me. “Too clever for your own good, Wes. Good boy. Should be safe now. Front’s all boarded up and there’s no sign of them out back.”
“We need to barricade the doors,” I said. “You know, with chairs and stuff.”
“I’m on it,” Dad said, going back to the lounge and upturning an armchair.
“… still no official word on where it came from,” a reporter was saying on TV. He’d been saying the same thing for hours, and they kept showing a clip of zombies lumbering after a cameraman before they cut to the studio where they asked a bunch of stupid people the same stupid questions and got the same stupid answers. While Dad dragged the chair to the front door, I watched another scene of blue-grey zombies walking all stiff and creepy-like along a London high street. People were screaming and running from them. Then there was a shot of pigs and birds and it was back to the studio.
“Professor Worsley,” Will Turner was saying. “We’ve had dozens of emails asking whether the virus—that is what it is, isn’t it?”
“Possibly,” said a little round man with a silly beard and glasses. “It’s still early days. It could be a bacillus; it could be a freak manifestation of a latent mutation; it could be terrorists. No one knows.”
“But do we know if it’s spread by animals?” Siobhan Smith asked.
“It could well be.” Professor Worsley took off his glasses and rubbed them on his jacket. “But it might not be, as well.”
“Richard Dawkins said it was an act of God,” Will said.
Worsley huffed at that and put his glasses back on.
“Professor Dawkins was being ironic.”
“What do you say to the people who claim it started in a Verusia Labs facility? Do you think it’s fair to blame Dr Otto Bligh—”
I switched the TV off.
“What’s ‘ironic’, Dad?”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” he said, walking into the lounge and looking like he’d forgotten what he was doing, same as Granddad John used to.
“The back,” I said with a tut.
“Oh, yeah, right.” Dad dragged the other armchair through to the kitchen.
“Fuck!” he yelled, dropping the chair as the cat flap banged shut and Watson hissed. His fur was standing on end like he’d seen a ghost, and his eyes were all white and milky. Dad let out a sigh and bent to stroke him.
“You scared the crap out of me, kitty-cat,” he said. “Ow!” He snatched his hand away and covered it with his other hand. “Fuck,” he swore again. “Shit. That really hurt.”
Blood was seeping between his fingers and pooling on the floor. He grabbed a tea towel to wrap around the bite, but Watson hissed again and pounced. Dad fell backward into the armchair and the cat was on top of him, biting and scratching.
“Get him off me!” Dad cried, thrashing about with his arms and legs. “Wes, get him off!”
I half screamed, half cried as I grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack and clubbed Watson with it. He turned and snarled at me and I hit him again, right in the face. Blood sprayed onto the cabinets, and Watson flopped to the floor. Dad pushed himself out of the armchair and crunched his foot down on Watson’s head and kept it there until he stopped moving.
I put my hand to my throat as sickness burned its way up my windpipe.
“Go upstairs!” Dad shouted.
His face was all scratched up, and his neck and arms were bleeding.
“But he’s dead.” I looked down at the cat’s splattered head and dry heaved.
“Now!” Dad yelled, and shoved me back into the lounge.
I stumbled at first, but then turned and ran upstairs. He followed me, and he had that look about him you didn’t want to argue with. When we reached the landing, he fetched a chair from his room to stand on. He reached up and unbolted the trapdoor to the attic, then pulled the wooden ladder down.
“Up,” he said.
I did as I was told while he threw the chair aside.
“Dad—”
“Just go!”
When I reached the top, I looked back and saw him head downstairs.
“Are you coming?” I called, but there was no answer.
I paused in the opening, straining to listen. Dad was crashing about in the cupboard under the stairs by the sounds of it. When I heard his heavy footfalls returning, I crawled into the attic and lay on my tummy so I could watch. He appeared on the landing with the big hammer he’d used to break up the decking last winter, when it went all rotten and slimy and someone might have slipped on it and broke their neck. When he reached the ladder, he didn’t start to climb up like I’d thought, but he took a swing with the hammer and went right through the wood. He swung again and again, cracking and splintering the ladder until the bottom half fell away.
“Dad, please!”
He kept on bash, bash, bashing till there was a pile of broken wood in the middle of the landing. Then he righted the chair and climbed on it.
“Love you, son,” he said with tears in his eyes as he started to close the trapdoor. “Stay still and keep real quiet. Everything’s gonna be OK.”
In that moment I realized what he was doing. Dad, my daddy, always said he’d protect me from everything. He knew what was going to happen. I did, too, only part of me didn’t want to believe it. It was like when I kept trying to believe in Father Christmas even after everyone at school said it was just my parents pretending. As the trap shut and he slid the bolt across, I was left in the dark.
The air was dusty and smelled of woodchips. I heard Dad jump down from the chair, then there were more bangs, cracks, and snaps. He was smashing the chair so he couldn’t climb up. Making sure I was safe.
I did as he said and kept as still as a statue, not even daring to breathe. I could hear him moving around for a bit, but then there was a loud thud and nothing more. I sat back against something soft and giving. It rustled like a plastic bag. I lay there for a while, my mind all horrid pictures and no thoughts, body shaking so much I had to hold my knees tight to my chest and rock myself to make it stop. I kept seeing Mum’s crazy face, those empty eyes like puddles of milk; the dribble running down her chin. I imagined what it must’ve looked like when her head exploded all over the door. My brain wouldn’t stop playing it over and over, as if I’d really seen it. Bang. Splat. Bang. Splat. Bang.
I became aware of the rain crashing against the roof. There was still the odd gunshot, muffled and far off. People occasionally cried out, but the moaning and groaning never went away. I went from only hearing the sound of my breathing to being deafened by the noises from outside. I wanted them to stop. I needed to hear what was happening indoors. I needed to listen out for Dad. I got back on my tummy and pressed my ear to the trapdoor.
“Dad?” I called out in a shaky voice. “Daddy, are you there?”
My heart started flapping about in my ribcage like a bird in a chimney. I sat up and tried to suck in some air, but none came. I squeezed in a tiny breath, then another, and another till I was panting like a dog. As my breaths got faster and faster, my heart sped up, too. I could hear it inside my head, big sloshy whooshes, like when you’re underwater. What was happening to me? Was I ill like those people on TV? Had I got Watson’s blood on me? Was I gonna turn into one of them? I needed to see. Had to see. I tore into a plastic bag, spilling its fluffy contents. I rummaged about, looking for anything that might help me see, but it was useless. They were just teddies. My old toys that Mum had put out of the way. I recognized them all by touch, ran my hands over them, worked out who they were by the feel of their fur, the size of their eyes. Mr. Penn! I found Mr. Penn, my old green dog teddy and hugged him tight. I let out a big sigh and felt my eyes tearing up.