This chapter gets a bit weird and I think it reflects where I was at when writing it. I think I had realised that I need to start thinking about the end of the book and heading in that direction, so I did.
If you have come here randomly by searching for Cay (and I know that you are out there, I have proof) then this is part of a long running story and you can find all of the chapters here.
6: Present
Dan was sitting opposite Nufonia and George in a small 24 hour diner. The whole place was lit by neon lights the kind used in cheap horror films, the sort that get splattered in blood and gives the whole place a red tinge while whatever mutilation is going on, continues.
Sam, Isaac's sister, was sitting next to him, he realised that her arm was looped through his. He glanced at her and she smiled warmly back at him.
He looked around the greasy spoon; it was just as he remembered it from a year ago. There were people ordering 'gut busters': huge oily platters of beans, bacon, eggs, toast, black pudding and eating them like there was no tomorrow.
“There is no tomorrow.” George said, then smiling he kissed Nufonia on the cheek.
“This is weird.” Dan replied. “This dream is wrong.”
Everything changed, Nufonia changed places with Sam, the diner became quieter, and there were only a couple of guys sitting in a booth opposite them complaining about Brighton and how much they hated it. Bizarrely, one of Dan's old friends walked in with a girl, a girl that he knew, used to know. They did not recognise him and sat down in another booth.
“I feel weird.” Sam said rubbing her arms stiffly as if she were cold.
“That's because you are dead.” Dan pointed out.
“No she's not.” Nufonia gently punched him in the arm.
“You're all dead.” Dan said. “Sam you got sick, Phillip shot you in the head when you came back-
“Fuck, man. Calm down.” George exclaimed.
“You're dead too. George, you died, I saw it.” Dan turned to Nufonia, who was looking very hurt. “And you died.”
He stopped, why was he doing this? The two men who had been talking about Brighton at the other booth were looking at them.
“If it helps, I've been dead for years.” The blond male from the other booth said. “Just call me the dopest ghost in town.”
“So,” George drew Dan’s attention back. “If we are all dead, what are you doing here?”
*
Dan awoke, he wasn't sure what was going on, he lay very still for a few seconds, he could hear noises in the distance that might have been shouting.
There were some crashing sounds; these were more muffled than the shouting.
He attempted to open his eyes, but quickly closed them again as the light from his bedroom window stung his eyes. He carried on lying there waiting for something to happen
Dan tried to move his head and found it easier than it should have been. Shouldn't I be dead? He thought.
He opened his eyes again and this time the glare was tolerable.
Every day I wake up and it is the same, Dan thought, it's like the end of the world never had to happen.
He slowly reached over to his portable CD player and pressed play. The tinny music from the speakers blocked out the shouting. It was the same song he always listened to, a Clash song covered by an indie band from the 90s.
Dan glanced at the clock next to his CD player; it was 4 in the afternoon.
He lay there for a while longer, wondering what to do with his day. There were no festivities, no raids, nothing to do for days except drink, get high and wait.
There was a knock at his door.
“Come in.” Dan said over the music.
Isaac prodded his way in and gave Dan a dopey look.
“Hey.” He said half asleep with his typical half stoned drawl.
“Hey.” Dan returned.
“You fancy a smoke?”
“Has all that shit downstairs stopped?”
“I think so.”
“Sounds good.”
*
The weather was miserable outside, the wind hurled itself across the rooftops and smacked into Dan's face as it passed, dragging moisture with it as it buffeted his shoulders. The rain was doing its typical approach and spitting pathetically down from the sky only to be twisted around in a fine film by the gusts, never reaching the ground and keeping the atmosphere permanently damp. As he walked across the roof Dan noted that most of the smaller buckets on the floor that weren't propped up against the walls were now on their sides and rolling around sounding hollowly on the concrete. Dan thought about picking them but decided that it would have been pointless; he was wondering who had brought them back out after yesterday. He followed Isaac to the greenhouse to take refuge from the spitting weather and rattling plastic.
As soon as they got in, Dan realised that they were not alone. It saddened him a little as he had hoped to get ripped with Isaac like they had used to in the old days. Back when the greenhouse was just a fledgling and the pot had mainly been taken from dead drug dealers.
Instead there was Craig and the girl from the day before. The girl, casually holding a joint and gesticulating and laughing in that relaxed way that most people can only do when they get stoned.
“Hey Lane, this is Dan.” Isaac turned sideways and made space for Dan to walk in and sit down.
She leaned forward and extended her free hand, which threw Dan as it was her left, he awkwardly reached out with his right hand tried to withdraw it, but she clasped his hand like she was going to ask for his hand in marriage and shook it up and down.
“Yeah we've met before.” She smiled, her accent was thick midlands accent like she was from Birmingham. “You pushed me up the stairs. Firm hands.”
Dan had no idea what she meant but smiled anyway. She turned away from him and carried on talking with Craig who restarted his story.
“Where was I?”
“You were saying that Alison and Phil B. met and it got weird.” Lane helped.
Dan sat down on an overturned pot; Isaac sat opposite him in the slightly claustrophobic green house as the wind wailed past it.
“Yeah that's right. She seemed a nice lass, a bit chubby but that's what Phil seemed to like, so I just thought 'what the hell'. But it was about a couple of months after they started getting serious. He started saying he couldn't come down't pub. He started fobbing off mates.” Craig shrugged. “She were always nice to me like. But Phil lost most of his friends in that period.”
“What happened?” Lane asked, taking another drag from the joint.
Dan looked at Isaac who had already started his spliff and was rolling another one for him. A particularly nasty blast wind shook the greenhouse's frame.
“Once she had him to herself, well I don't know do I?” Craig shrugged. “The end of the world happened, no more friends, naught. I thought that she was sort of fun, but then after this morning. Who fucking knows?”
“What do you mean 'after this morning'?” Dan asked trying not to sound to strange. Not that it would have mattered as the company around him were all pretty stoned.
“Woke up.” Craig said. “They left me a note.”
The door to the greenhouse swung open violently letting a thrust of wet air push itself inside and into Dan's face.
“Where are they?” Phillip's voice came through the door seconds before he did.
He pushed past Dan and Isaac and leaned over Craig.
“Where are they?” He said menacingly, his shoulders hunched high so that he cast a shadow over Craig.
“Look I don't fucking know.” Dan could see Craig push himself to a standing position and was surprised when he and Phillip appeared to be about the same height.
“You're lying.”
“Phillip, calm down, jeez we're just having a smoke.” Isaac protested.
Phillip turned to eye Isaac and he shut up immediately. Dan was chilled a little by what he saw, the tall boy was furious, he hadn't looked like that since the early days; this sort of pure rage that you only saw in crazy people.
Dan looked at Isaac questioningly, Isaac mouthed: 'Phil', 'Alison', 'Gone'.
The couple had left; the crazy girl had dragged her boyfriend away without even saying goodbye to his brother properly.
“Where are they and where are they going?” Phillip sneered.
“I don't fucking know Phillip. I don't.”
“They aren't within two or three streets of here, but they don't have a car yet. Where are they getting one?”
“Wait a minute.” Dan said finally catching up with the conversation. “You went outside on your own? Phillip no one is supposed to do that.”
“I had to. They left.”
“Why do you even care?” Dan rebuked.
“They took 4 bottles of whiskey with them. It doesn't belong to them.”
“We can get some more.” Dan pointed out.
This time Phillip turned back to look at him, his eyes were outright murderous. It reminded Dan of this encounter he'd had a few years back, he'd been walking home and some guy had randomly punched him in the face. As he was drunk he'd turned around and tussled with the man, who must have been in his mid-forties. Eventually they ended up with Dan's handed locked around the man's throat with the man shouting at him “Kill me!” over and over until Dan let go of him. While he had been shouting the man had possessed the same crazy eyes staring at him right at that point in time.
“What the fuck?” Phillip leaned into him. “What the fuck did you say to me?”
“Phillip.” Dan tried to sound calmer than he felt. “Phil and Alison have gone, that sucks, but it was their choice. Them taking the whiskey is harsh, but we can't go searching for two people in a city full of zombies for some booze.”
“You don't think so?” Dan could smell his breath, it stank of Jack Daniels.
“Come on Phillip,” Dan smiled, hoping he could pull it off. “It isn't Craig's fault any way, he's still here. He didn't steal the whiskey.”
Phillip smoldered a little, but seemed to be calming down. He walked back to the door gruffly and pushed it open violently letting more rain into the glass house.
The rest of them looked at each other; Dan could see that both Craig and Isaac looked a bit shaken, Lane didn't.
“He always a dickhead like that?” Lane snorted, blowing plumes of smoke from her nostrils as she did so.
“No, usually he's worse.” Dan smiled taking a joint from Isaac.
“Used to have a boyfriend like that, violent fucker, into metal and drug dealing.” Lane frowned flicking her ash into one of the pots.
“A bit like Phillip then, except he likes drinking rather than drug dealing.” Craig pointed out.
“When I was younger, I used to stay at his flat in the center of Birmingham. One night, two guys broke into his flat looking for him. He beat the shit out of both of them, threw them down the stairs. Then when he came back to bed, he's got this big fat grin on his face.” Lane took a long drag on her joint the burning end almost touching the tip of her index finger. “It was like someone’d told him the funniest joke in the world.”
Dan remembered the look on Phillip's face that first day when they had smashed their way into the building.
“Just like Phillip, I bet you that somewhere right now, that my ex is having the time of his life killing these fucking things.” She stubbed out what was left of the blunt and leaned back slightly using both her hands as support. “That is, if he didn't get’t disease.”
Dan found himself looking anxiously at Isaac. After Sam's death her brother had become a little weird for a while and wouldn't touch people or objects that other people had touched without having them washed thoroughly first. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it hadn’t wanted to deal with it and he had retreated inside himself.
If the mention of the plague had bothered Isaac, it wasn't registering on his face.
“What did Phillip do before this?” Craig grunted as he puffed out.
“Caryn told me he was into.” Isaac took a puff of his own spliff. “That he was working in an off-license, selling alcohol and doing fuck all else.”
“Oh yeah, I knew that already.” Craig
“That is probably why he hates people stealing booze.” Lane giggled.
“Why is it exactly?” Craig smoked a little more then continued. “Why is it that we let him tell us what to do?”
By this point Dan was on his second rolley and starting to feel the effects, all the same the comment sent the hairs up on the back of his neck.
As if agreeing the wind smacked angrily against the greenhouse.
“Oh come on, don't talk shit.” Isaac spluttered as if the intake had gone down the wrong way. “We'd be fucked without him. All of us.”
“I know, I know, it isn't that like I don't know.”
“You're right though.” Dan's head was starting to feel light as he spoke. “Phillip can be fucked up sometimes. Not all his fault...”
Dan trailed off, trying to remember where he was going. He had a flashback to the day when he'd been sitting next to Phillip in the car, driving away from Phillip’s parents' house. This rage contained inside his body to the point that he was shaking. Dan had known not to say anything and instead waited for it to all bubble over. Instead, after 5 minutes, Phillip stopped shaking and looked at Dan. The look only lasted a second before Dan had to bring his attention back to the road. Dan was taken aback by the sorrow in that look, after expecting some kind of angry outburst he was even more surprised by what Phillip said next and the way it was delivered:
“What a way to say goodbye.”
Dan shook the memory out of his head and tried to bring his attention back to what was happening in the greenhouse. Another couple of drags nullified all of that.
He was vaguely aware of going out into the rain and the dull sound of someone talking about something, then nothing for a while.
He came to, in his room, sitting on his bed. Looking down he realised he was holding a bottle of vodka. The sound around him came rushing back at that point. Lane, Craig and Isaac were in his room talking and music was playing, some kind of slow ska. The lights were on, which meant that the generator was running.
Dan looked across the room at where his television used to be. The three of them were sitting on his sofa, it had been turned around so that it was facing him and he could see all of them clearly. They each had a bottle for themselves, Lane was leaning against Craig and looking at Isaac drunkenly. Finally, Dan managed to distinguish words.
“I don't know how you guys do it.” Lane said, drinking a little of her red wine.
“Yeah, I don't go out often though.” Isaac said. “I've got things to do here that make me too important to go out. If I died it would make things harder on the house.”
“We mainly stay in, it makes sense. But sometimes it makes me nuts being stuck here.” Craig acknowledged. “I don't get to see outside this place often.”
“Do you remember the time with the cow?” Isaac grinned dumbly, Dan noticed that his hand had slipped down to Lane's leg and he was idly stroking her knee with his thumb.
“Oh yeah, the cow.” Craig was also grinning now.
“What was that about?” Lane asked, playfully flicking Isaac's digit away, it returned a few seconds later and she didn't push it back.
“We went on a trip with this guy we knew, George, as well as Phillip and Dan. We went up on to the hills. We saw a cow, it was untouched and just wandering around.” Isaac was almost whispering at this point. “Phillip wanted to kill it but George argued with him and said it would be a bad idea.”
“So Phillip shot it anyway.” Craig laughed.
“And after that about three million zombies came rushing after us.” Isaac chuckled then took a sip of his bottle of Campari. “I almost shit myself.”
“This is what I'm talking about, the last two months have been so crazy.” Lane smiled lazily. Her left hand was brushing against Craig's leg. “I could barely slow my heartbeat for a second, just the idea of going out there scares me.”
The room went quiet, Dan's mind had wandered off. He found himself thinking about Phillip and his parents. He wondered what he would have done with his own parents. This led him to thinking about all the things he should have told his parents before the end, how he had wished he'd called them to let them know he was still alive and that for all their shit he'd missed them.
It was then that Dan realised they were all looking at him. He wasn't even sure why.
“Huh?” He muttered, worried that he had been thinking out loud.
“How do you cope with it?” Lane asked. “How do you deal with going out there all the time.”
“I think about this girl.” He managed.
“Nufonia.” Isaac nodded.
“Who's Nufonia?” Lane asked, sounding a little more alert. “Is it that girl with the dreads?”
“No that's Jo, Nufonia is his ex-girlfriend-
“You make it sound like we broke up.” Dan muttered bitterly, he could feel himself getting a little angry and a little sad. “Nufonia died. I don't think of Nufonia, it wouldn't calm me down.”
The group went quiet, Dan saw the room swim, he wasn’t sure if he was going to pass out or throw up.
“Who do you think about?” Craig inquired.
Dan managed to get his eyes to focus on a piece of wall behind the sofa, the top of Craig's head a brown blur in front of the super defined white wall-turned-yellow thanks to the light.
“There was this porn film Oli found on a laptop, had three girls in it. One of them was this pretty blond,” Dan drifted off then dragged himself back his train of thought. “She had these crisscrossing scars all over her wrists. When I find myself losing the plot I think about her and why she did it. Distracts me, I mean, why does she have those scars, what brought her to the point of doing of , the point of doing- You know Porn. Is she cutting herself because of Porn or is there something else?”
No one really said anything so Dan continued.
“I don’t know, it seems so far removed from what is happening that, I don’t know. It just makes me think about something else and I can then deal with it.”
No one said anything for a bit, then from Lane:
“A bet you guys have a lot of porn lying around, especially after a year of no women.”
“I've not been here that long.” Craig protested.
“Oh come on.” Lane teased. “You men are all the same. Andy was climbing the walls after a week.”
“Well-
“Hey, I don't care, it's natural. We all do it.” Lane laughed.
The lights went out. Dan almost thought he had fallen asleep, but Lane immediately screamed.
“Relax,” Isaac reassured. “The generator just went out.”
“Oh thank Christ, I thought they were in here, I thought they were going to get us. I thought-
“Don't worry we're here to protect you.”
Then Dan really did pass out.
*
He was falling and for a few seconds he was scared, but then he realised he must be dreaming so he stopped himself and lay there. He got this urgent urge to piss and his penis turned into a giant hose that started pouring down on Holland and caused giant flowers to bloom.
*
Dan opened his eyes, still squinting he reached out for something, anything. There were noises coming from somewhere, his head throbbed.
He rolled quickly to get out of bed, they were in his room, he knew it. He fell off the side of his bed and landed heavily on the floor, knocking the wind out of his lungs and causing a white blast of static to flash over his eyes, he struggled to move but it hurt too much. They were going to get him. Dan grasped wildly for something, anything. He felt something brush against his finger tips that wasn't recognisable. Quickly, he recoiled and tried to roll away. His shoulder hit a solid object, a wall.
As he scrambled he tried to hear if the zombies had gotten any closer. All the noise he had heard were human groans.
He managed to force his eyes open, and he saw Isaac, Craig and Laine/Layne locked together.
Dan blinked a couple of times at the copulation then it went black again.
He opened his eyes again. A dream had been floating inside his head Nufonia had been talking maybe not Nufonia, maybe...
He realised that he was in bed, for some reason he had this impression that he wanted to shoot Phillip, why did he want to shoot Phillip?
Slowly he raised himself, mindful of the hangover, looking to his right he saw Lane lying next to him, fast asleep. Some random images returned to his head of Layne, Craig and Isaac fucking or something. He hadn't been involved.
“Oh, fuck this.” He muttered with a disgust that confused him.
Dan climbed out of bed, still fully clothed and wandered through his apartment and out into the hallway. Still feeling drunk, this fuzzy feeling cushioned his brain from sounds and smells, he slowly walked to the roof.
The weather had cleared up, the skies were light grey but the air was warm.
Dan sat down on the floor, immediately regretting this action as the floor was still wet. He resigned himself to a damp arse, and leaned against the stone frame of the entrance to downstairs.
He'd only been sitting there for a while, water seeping through to his boxers, when someone spoke.
“Sh-sh-sh-she's gone.”
Michael was stooped next to the boundary of the roof looking very sad.
“Alison.” Michael's head bobbed jerkily. His eyes squinted, a grimace on his face.
From this vantage point Michael's visage was roughly level with Dan's.
“She was a g-good person, a nice lady, nice lady she was. A good p-p-p-p-p-person.” Michael spluttered.
Dan almost laughed. Instead he just sighed, the clouds started to part and the sun shone down on him.
“What's the matter?” Michael asked, almost concerned.
“Nothing.” Dan smiled to himself, tilting his head back, wishing that the old man would leave. Dan’s saturated trousers were now warm, and it made him feel like getting stoned or drunk, or anything.
“We, we, we all have problems. You see problems, problems, problems.” Michael said gravely.
“Really Michael?” Dan said sarcastically.
“Course! Problems make p-p-poetry.”
He couldn't help but grin. Michael was so fucking crazy.
“I know about the g-g-g-g-g-girl.”
“Lane?” Dan found himself turning to confront the old man almost angrily. Nothing had happened.
“No,” Michael shook his head fiercely, or at least as fiercely as he could.
“I don’t know who you mean.” Dan said, starting to get confused.
“Her favourite colour was P-p-p-p-p-purple.” Michael’s twisted into a deep wrought sadness as he did so the multiple wrinkles that made up his face furrowed into each other making him look like a deflated air balloon.
Dan felt like someone had punched him in the stomach.
“She did love you and she n-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuhver meant to leave. She did.”
Michael extended a shaky hand towards Dan’s face.
Michael’s hand touched him, he saw stars flash before his eyes, it was the first time he had experienced a white out as opposed to a black out. It was strange he could feel himself shiver all over.
“Nuh, nuh, nuh, no one believes in me.” Michael said quietly.
The next thing he knew, Dan was lying on his side, damp from the water on the concrete floor beneath him. He managed to get up and stagger to the edge of the roof and throw up over it, the bile and what tasted like vodka, but could have been almost any spirit, spilling out of him in a long yellow stream down into the alley below him. His stomach seemed to be trying to push all his organs out of his body at the same time.
When all he had left to heave was thin air he finally managed to lean back down onto the water soaked floor.
He wasn’t sure how long after that it was that he came to, when he did Joshua had picked him up and was carrying him inside.
“Where is Michael?” He asked.
“Are you alright?” Joshua asked, ignoring his question. “Too much to drink last night?”
“No,” Dan tried to gather his thoughts. “I found something out, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Right.” Joshua managed to sound sympathetic and doubtful at the same time.
They managed to make it into Dan’s room, Lane was gone.
“Have you seen Michael?” Dan said as Joshua laid him down on the bed.
The man did not say anything instead he sat on the sofa opposite Dan’s bed.
“I don’t think you want to sit on that sofa.” Dan managed to smile, the dried vomit cracking around his lips as he did so.
“Did you puke on it as well?” Joshua cracked back smiling.
“No, but I think some kind of orgy happened on it.”
“Really?” Joshua’s eyes twinkled. “Was Jo feeling particularly excitable?”
“No it wasn’t me, it was someone else.” Dan managed to wipe away the remnants of the night before from around his mouth, his throat felt like someone had made him swallow cheese graters.
“Shit, it is like you are some kind ladies’ man or something.” Joshua grinned. “It must be the pheromones; or the fact that you are such a moody fucker, that all the women think you are deep.”
“Have you seen Michael?” Dan tried again.
“No one knows yet,” Joshua leaned forward. “But I found Michael dead in his hut, just before I found you. Don’t worry I put a knife through his head already. He won’t be coming back.”
Dan sat up feeling weak.
“How?”
“It looked like he just curled up in his bed and died. In amongst all his pigeons.” Joshua shrugged. “I went in to ask him if he wanted any food, and there he was.”
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