TODAY WE ARE FEATURING A SHORT STORY BY OUR TEAM MEMBER, JANE MURRAY, WRITING AS AUTHOR D.C. CUMMINGS

LILY

How it had happened was never reported, a news blackout had begun almost as soon as the first killings had started. Not content with returning to life, it seemed the dead wanted their revenge. Soon, the end of everything began. Across the globe, the dead evened the score, mercilessly hunting down the living and making sure their lives were brought to a sudden and terrifying end. Society collapsed. You can’t carry on when the dead wanted you to stop and very soon, lawlessness prevailed. Towns and cities became no go areas, those that fled to the country were met along a quiet country path by dead cousins, waiting to extract an eternal revenge for some childhood prank, long forgotten – or so they thought.

Armies were alerted – the dead just couldn’t come back to life – there must be something the armies, the air forces, the police forces could do. The living could not just become the next victims of the dead! But very soon, the defence forces were fighting themselves as long dead colleagues took their seats in the police station or were found asleep in the mess room.

The terms ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ became juxtaposed as the world fell into disarray. The dead were not friendly. The dead wanted company. They tore down doors, smashed windows, beat down barricades in their determination to add to their numbers. Their decaying, rotting limbs carried them to their friends, their families, their colleagues; the stench of their souls filled the air in a world where the daylight turned black as rivers ran with blood and fear.

‘Living’ became just a word. No-one was truly alive anymore, people merely existed in a futile effort to carry on doing so. Homes were abandoned as new places to hide were sought. People ran to the hills, the oceans, the deserts; and the dead followed them, claiming their victims effortlessly and endlessly with a grasp around the throat, a twisting of the neck in a sickening snap and a hideous smile of victory as another mortal was claimed.

The terror was absolute. Escape was not possible. Those alive knew they would be claimed. Their only hope was to survive long enough for someone, somewhere to save them. Men and women in underground concrete bunkers switched on emergency generators and planned how they could defeat the dead. The dead always seemed to have the answer. You couldn’t.

Chaos swept through cities, fields, houses and factories, smelling of defeat and abject, unutterable dread.

I’d been lucky, so far, I suppose. If you could call it lucky, being holed up, barricaded into a small, dark and smelly outhouse in a field miles from anywhere, drinking water diluted with the blood of victims from a small standpipe in the corner; picking lice, spiders any other insects I could find and forcing myself to eat them, because if I didn’t I would die anyway and so would Lily.

I watched her intently in the semi darkness. She’d stopped crying now, stopped the hiccoughing, heart breaking sobs of a small child in true distress. She’d stopped making any noise now, after being constantly shushed by me, as my ears listened out for a dead visitor, coming to claim us – so far, so good, no-one had wanted me or my daughter. She accepted bits of dead insects to nibble without clamping her lips shut with a determination I could only admire, but which grew weak after two days without food. Eventually her desperate hunger won, and spiders became something of a delicacy. Her beautiful ringlets no longer curls, but dirty blonde rats’ tails framing her grubby face, which had now lost its baby chubbiness and been replaced by a world-weary look seen on old people when they grew too tired of living.

I knew my face had the same, haunted fearful look. I could smell my fear, in the stench of stale sweat and icy terror which ran down my back, my breasts, my legs whenever I heard a scuttle, a scurry. Was it an insect? An animal? Or a dead person, come to claim us both as their own.

I shuffled more closely against my daughter’s insubstantial form. Hunger and fear and distress had made her somehow smaller, less significant. I held her small, dirty hands and smiled weakly. We never spoke anymore. We survived in our wooden outhouse through a series of unspoken gestures. We slept fitfully and awoke in fear and uncertainty.

Were the noises getting nearer? Was that a plane I could hear overhead? Gunfire being carried towards us on a wind that was a precursor to certain death? I pulled her close. Maybe the banging noise was my own heart, I didn’t know, just as I didn’t know what day it was, or the date or the time. All I knew was now. All I could feel was fear.

Lily started to shake as the noises grew louder. Rumblings. Definite now, in the space where silence had been the only sound. Rumbling. Banging. Groaning. Screaming. Getting closer.

With what little strength my insect and arachnid diet afforded me, I dragged myself to the barn door, and feebly tried to gather any pieces of heavy wood, or tools that I could see in the semi darkness. I tried my best to barricade the door, putting whatever I could between myself, Lily and the dead. They were coming. I know they were coming.

Lily was now moaning under her breath – a low keening noise, like a dog in pain, such was her terror. The shaking became stronger, her body was lifting off the floor with tremors. I was sobbing, weeping for the life I was not going to live, with the daughter I knew was not going to grow old.

Footsteps. Screaming. Shouting. Banging. The crack of the wooden barn door frame splintering beneath a punch. A rotted hand appeared, pulling away broken bits of wood, the door caved. I dragged myself in desperation towards Lily, now screaming with a strength I did not know she possessed, after days of inertia. Her back arched, off the floor, almost inhuman. I cowered beside her as they came.

Our sanctuary suddenly became our nemesis. There was no escape – my head flitted around the room in quiet desperation as they came, they came. I tried to grab hold of Lily, but suddenly, she rose, stood up, screaming at the top of her voice until I thought her lungs would burst.

‘Lily!’

One last desperate sound from my lips as my daughter’s hand went around my throat. The snap I heard was my own neck, broken by the love for my daughter.

My last thought…I had no time for any other…

‘I know who is doing this now…I know why she survived’

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COMING SOON: On Wednesday, 9th July, our guest author, Linda Jones, is sharing chapter one from her novel 'Shattered Web' - second book in the Sarah Allerton series.