Part 29 – Neurons Like Brandy - Chapter 12: Present

Neurons Like Brandy is a long running project of mine that I have been trying to finish for about 8 years. It focuses on a house in Brighton after the zombie apocalypse has passed, with flashbacks told by one of the remaining survivors every other chapter.

The chapter numbering is a little confusing so if this is your first time here and you are interested in reading more then I would recommend starting at the index where each of the chapters are ordered in the manner that they are meant to be read.

This chapter return to the present with Joshu and Dan driving through Brighton

Chapter 12: Present

“So, why do you want to go back?” Joshua asked

They were driving out of Brighton heading to one of the suburbs called Peacehaven as that question was proposed.

“ Because it is safe.” Dan replied.

“Yeah, but there is a good chance that you could find somewhere just as safe but without the stress.”

“I want to prove that I can do something .”

“Why?”

“I am not even sure why.” Dan conceded. “I guess it is the idea of bringing DJ Henry Kissinger back that appeals. That I can contribiute.”

“It sounds stupid.”

“It probably is.” Dan said, starting to feel anxious.

“I used to wonder why I survived.” Joshua said. “There were others that were more capable than me, they were in better shape than me and defintely smarter than me.”

Joshua gesticulated weirdly as if he was trying to loosen up his writsts. He then proceeded to fiddle with something in one of his pockets. He fiddled in there like he was germinating a seed and once satisfied he stopped.

“I never came to a satisfactory conclusion.” Joshua said. “When I started talking to you guys, I began to think about how I was genetically selected. That I was special, or that we were.”

Joshua stuck his hand out of the window of the car.

“The truth of the matter is that I could be just like Isaac; my reaction to the disease is just a waiting game.” Johua laughed in a way that felt unconvicing. “Same for you. So, why would you spend it in a place that you aren't welcome”

Dan didn't respond.

Joshua shifted uncomfortably:

“What're you going to do when you find him?” Johsua asked when Dan didn't answer him.

“Talk to him, convince him to join us and then try and move his gear to the house so that we can start broadcasting to other survivors.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Caryn is right, we have been spending most of our time just trying to get by.” Dan asserted, gripping the stearing wheel. “ We should be trying for more.”

“Sure, but why are we doing it alone? More specifically, why are you doing it alone?”

“Because I want to be a part of the house.”

“More like you want credit for becoming bigger. Something that will make you look good.”

“It is not like that.” Dan said, flustered.

“Fine, then don't do this.” Joshua responded.

“No.” Dan replied.

“ Why not?”

“Because this is what I want.”

“Well, my advice would be to come along with me. We'll go find a town or village that was hit and has no survivors. There has to be places like that and there will be food there. The houses out in the country tend have generators too, sometimes wells and other commodities like that.”

“Yeah, but we would be alone.”

“Wouldn't be much different from the way you have been for the last few months.”

“I think.” Dan paused, trying to justify what he was saying to himself. “I think it is because I want show that I am still capable of doing good.”

“This world is not measured by good and bad anymore.” Joshua replied.

Dan said nothing.

“Well, at least I can say that I tried to talk you out of it.” Joshua said.

“Who will you say that to?

“No one but myself.”

Joshua became more animated. He looked at the surroundings then back to Dan.

“You can let me off here.”

Dan brought the car to a stop.

Joshua reached into the back seat and wrestled with his bag before giving up and climbing out of the passenger side and in with his luggage instead.

Dan turned to look at him.

“Did you not want to meet him?”

“No!” Joshua laughed. “Henry Kissinger is probably crazier than I'll ever be.”

Joshua exited the car, still struggling with the bag. Dan watched him look around, seemingly getting the lay of the land. Dan, himself surveyed the area.

They were near an overgrown field that he thought had once been a golf course, in the distance was an old building that he remembered being a school.

Joshua came over to the driver's seat and Dan wound down the window.

“I should be alright.” Joshua nodded.

“Good luck.”

“Won't need it.” Joshua shot him an awkward, self-conscious smile. “Or whatever it is you are supposed to say in these situations.”

With that he turned and started walking, fiddling with the bag straps on his shoulders as he went. Dan stayed and watched him for a while as his stocky figure got further into the countryside. He kept expecting Joshua to stop, reconsider and come back to the car. Instead he kept shuffling further and further away until the waving overgrown grass blocked Dan's view.

Dan started the car up again and set it in motion.

The trip, before the end of the world, would have taken under an hour. Now that large portions of the wild, in the form of roaming livestock and trees, had started to take over the roads, cars had been abandoned and random pockets of undead had to be circumvented; the journey now took closer to three hours.

By the time he arrived in Seaford it was already mid-afternoon. He parked his car just outside the train station at the edge of town and ate a can of beans. He had not seen this town since he and Isaac had hung out there when they were in their late teens but as he sat with his elbows against the steering wheel forking food into his mouth he started remembering things in stuttering starts and stops in the way that teens who smoked too much weed and drank too much beer.

They were nights of hanging out with the local grunge kids listlessly wandering the streets looking for a pub that might have a member of staff that was either new, and therefore wouldn't know they were underage, or a landlord who didn't care. If the pubs weren't welcoming then someone would try one of the two off licenses in the hope of getting by the people who worked there. If successful, then the group would retreat to the graveyard and split the cheap cans of beer (Hoffmeister and Heineken Cold Filtered were the staple) and 35ml of own label vodka (or gin). They would then try and convince whichever alternative girl that happened to be with them that they were cool or deep, or interesting, or anything.

If even the offlicense failed they would go to one of the local kids' houses. Despite all of their down trodden, scruffy looks and worn-to-the-knees jeans most of them were sons and daughters of middle and upper-middle class families. The houses they lived in were close to being mansions and every parent had a drinks cabinet that was worth raiding.

Isaac and Dan would frequently just sit up getting drunk and stoned, with vague attempts to try and get laid but really it was more about the consumption. In the morning they would stumble along the road he would now drive along, to catch the train back into Brighton.

It was during this period of his life that he first met Caryn.

He had been in some dive pub on Kensington gardens in Brighton. The place had a regular fixture of LSD and Exstasy dealers so they didn't give a shit if some of the drinkers were underage. He could remember clearly the sound of a Dead Kennedy's album playing as he had drunk down his first pint of Fosters. Both things had been potent memory because of the funny look the staff gave him when he asked for Fosters and the disapproving look they had given him when he had nervously asked what was playing and they had turned their noses up at him when they responded with 'Holiday in Cambodia' mate, shits all over whatever Green Day crap you are listening to'.

Caryn had been sitting with some friends when she first started exchanging glances with him. He smiled at her not really sure how to do anything else but get through his second pint. Somewhere around his fourth she got up and came over to talk to him. She had openly flirted with him and he had returned it in a half panicked manner he got when he realised that he was out of his depth.

He couldn't recall a single thing they had talked about but he could still picture the look on her face when she had leaned forward and kissed him. The soft feel of her lips on his, moist with a slight hint of strawberry lip gloss and the coolness of her tongue as it darted into his mouth were indelibly marked on his brain.

Dan started the car again and went into the centre of the town, which consisted of a couple of trashed shops, a post office and small super market that looked as trashed as the shops. Travelling further in, he recognised a road and turned onto it, knowing that his destination was less than a few streets away made his heart beat increase.

He turned the corner to his destination and was crestfallen to find 30-40 drifters in a tight pack ahead of him.

Some had already started to walk in the car's direction before he had got around the corner but the rest soon followed. Instead of trying to pile through them or retreat Dan waited.

Once they got within 10 feet he backed the car away slowly letting the forerunners get closer and making sure the stragglers didn't lose interest. He turned to look out his window as he continued to reverse away, occasionally glancing back at them to make sure that they were still following. He returned as far back as the station and then accelerated forward.

The group had been stretched out by this point, the first three got treated to being dispatched by the bonnet.After that Dan tried to weave through of them as much to avoid damage to the car. As he got to the final stragglers he ran them over to try and make sure there were none to follow. Looking in his rear view mirror he saw none but he made a mental note to keep an eye out when he and DJ Kissinger came out.

He pulled his car into park outside the address on the transmission. He hesitated as he looked at the building.

It was a normal house and that was exactly the problem. The widows weren't boarded up, the curtains weren't even closed and there didn't appear to be any sign of conflict around it. Worse, the garden looked like it had been tended, the hedges that crowned the brick and concrete front garden walls were trimmed and he couldn't see the rampant weeds poking through unlike the two adjacent houses.

What if I am wrong? He asked himself. What if this is a mistake?

Henry Kissinger was clearly insane but how insane did you have to perform topiary in the midst of the end of the world?

The hesitation passed, the logic was that he had come to far not to go the final steps.

As he left the car he scanned his surroundings, a rounders bat in his hand, and there was no sign of the zombies from earlier.

He reached the front gate and pushed it open, it was not even bolted.

As he headed towards the front door with cautious steps he could see that the lawn was mown to within inches of the soil.

He had a quick look through the front window, not sure what to expect. The inside was well lit by the afternoon sun and it revealed a sofa and piles upon piles of newspapers stacked as high as the room. He could not see every corner so that left opportunity for something to be lurking.

He returned to the front door and tried the handle and it gave and opened. Not knowing what to expect he walked into the hallway.

The walls were lined with 1950s kitch wall paper, the kind that portrayed a sunset and had ducks flapping their wings; the texture on each strip was almost furred. To the left was the entrance to the room that he had looked into, a little closer, to his right was another door that was closed as no light peeked in. Beyond that was a flight of stairs illuminated by a doorway into a room in the back of the house.

Dan moved towards the door on the left, preparing himself for an encounter. None came as he the only corner he hadn't been able to properly discern contained no attackers. He noted that the room smelled like a library.

He went back to the door on the right, it moved but had to be forced as there was some kind of tape around it. He forcedf it open and was greeted by a stench that smelled as rotten as the fridge he had walked into less than a month ago.

Covering his mouth he took further steps into the room to discover the source of the stench and why the door had been sealed.

There were two corpses in wheelchairs, one was in worse decomposition that the other, both had puncture wounds through their skulls.

He stared at them and tried to reason why these two bodies were here given that the front garden was immaculate but the living room was stacked high with rubbish. For a moment he wondered if maybe DJ Kissinger had been one of the dead he saw but it was clear that the fresher of the two cadavers was female and not likely to have been able to produce the broadcast only the day before.

Dan closed the door, the tape dragging across the carpet in its wake, in an attempt to close some of the odor out. He continued to the back room, checking out the stairs to make sure there wasn't anything waiting for him.

The back room was the kitchen, it had a sink and defunct gas cooker in it. There was also scant evidence of food having been consumed. If Kisinger had been eating he had tidied after himself.

There was a door at the other end of the kitchen that Dan went through to find a bathroom. There was a bath with plastic, see-through pouches littered in it. To the right there was a toilet that gave off the faint smell of defecation. He checked out its basin and there was no water left in it, there were also limited amounts of human waste.

Maybe he is already dead, Dan thought, or maybe he has already left.

He returned to the hallway and looked back up the stairs. The narrow walls led up to two doors either side of it, both were closed.

He paused again, part of him aching to run back out of the house and into his car and find Joshua. Instead he craned his neck in an effort to try and discern any telling noise coming from upstairs. He was greeted by wood creaking and the sound of wind blowing through cracks in windows, nothing that would confirm either way whether there was anyone alive or dead in there.

To try and get a response he tapped the rounders bat against the wall to see if anything would respond to the sound resonating through the house. Nothing did.

He slowly started to walk up the steps, the carpet under foot masked his ascent. He went for the door on to his right.

Pushing it open a crack, he peeked through it. The room was barely lit and was hard to see if there was anything in it. Satisfied that he wasn't going to be immediately attacked, he opened the door properly.

There was a desked to his left that was encumbered with equipment that looked like the sort that you would need to record radio. Directly opposite the desk was a double bed and at the far right corner there was a window enshrouded in cloth that only let minimal light in. Next to the window there were 4 columns of standard televisions, all defunct.

Dan looked back at the bed and noticed movement in it.

“Hello?” He manged despite the fact the tension had caused him to be unable to take a proper breath.

The shape didn't move.

With a little more courage Dan repeated the greating.

The figure jerked up, pulling up the rags that covered it. Dan could vaguely see a head protruding from the top of the fabrics that surrounded it.

Dan felt stupid just saying hello again so he tried 'hi'.

The familiar voice of Henry Kissnger responded:

“Oh wow, it worked.”

Dan felt this sense of well being wash over him.

“I heard your broadcast.” He volunteered.

“Awesome.”

“Have some food for you in the car.” Dan said walking towards him.

“Don't I know it.” Kissinger replied. “ How did you get here?”

“I drove here.” Dan replied.

“How did you hear my broadcast?”

“ We have a receiver.”

“We? You mean there are more of you?” Henry Kissinger discarded the things surrounding him and leaned forward, pushing over the foot of the bed towards Dan. Dan flinched but did not talke a step back.

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Brighton.”

“Where?”

Dan frowned this was not how he had expected it to go. He had seen himself as guiding Henry Kissinger, but there seemed to a certain level of control on the DJ's part.

“Why do you want to know?”

“In case you die and I want to be able to get there.”

Dan felt weird about it. He still felt like he was being interrogated.

“Why would I die?”

“ I don't know, it could happen though.”

“Fine, but are you going to come along?” Dan asked.

“For sure. I have been waiting for someone like you, so there is no way I wouldn't accept your invite.” Henry replied. “So, where are we going?”

Dan told him, he couldn't quite place it but there was this feeling like he had become detached from the situation and as if eveything had become made of marshmallows.

“Could you write that down?”

Dan turned around and felt his way on the now, far softer ground, towards the desk with the radio gear and found a pen and paper on it and scribbled down the address for DJ Henry Kissinger.

“Why did I do that?” Dan asked, he felt like he was drunk and bouncing off the marshmallows that now seemed to be floating around him.

“Because I asked you to.” Henry replied.

Dan tried to shake the feeling of being in low gravity, worse, the feeling of being the guy who gets knocked away from the spaceship and floats off into space.

“Hey.” Henry Kissinger managed to pull his attention away from the dilemma.

“What is it?”

“I am so hungry.”

“I have food in the car.” Dan replied.

“I would like to say that I am sorry but I am not.”

Henry Kissinger moved so quickly that Dan barely had time to register what was hapening before he blacked out.