It was raining. Claire was staring out the front window; the heavy pounding against the roof of their bungalow provided an eerie calm. She asked if they would be going somewhere today, as she was 'bored'. Liam told her that in order to be bored, she would need to have nothing to do, which was contrary to the facts.
"Help me with this Claire." He barked, irritated.
She wandered over to the kitchen table, where Liam had dissembled an old radio. He had all the parts spread out across a towel, and seemed to have no idea what he was doing. There was an old book opened in the middle – published in the 70s – which was an amateur's guide to deconstructing and putting back together all manner of things. He had taken it from the village library a couple of weeks ago. That, along with a few books on horticulture and Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'. He figured he would have a lot of time on his hands, so why not catch up on some of the old classics? Anyway, he didn't know anything about electronics and his attempt to put the radio together again inspired a fair amount of derision in his little sister.
"Ha-ha, what do you even know about this stuff?"
He sighed. He didn't have a clue what he was doing. He thought that since the digital radio in the kitchen had stopped broadcasting just after the breakout, he might be able to get this old antique he found in the attic operating again.
"I know Claire. It was a waste of time really." He smiled at her as he threw all of the component parts in to a bin bag. As he sat down, he looked at her again. She was bored, and in spite of the raw terror those things caused (both) of them, she liked hitting the back roads and checking out the houses. "I'm not sure if it's a good idea to waste petrol on our little runs. We've enough to see us through winter as it is." He didn't want to alarm her, but what really troubled him was that the stragglers had been more and more frequent over the last couple of days. It was like they heard or sensed them or something. He guessed that the noise of their old landrover was drawing their attention in some way.
Claire nodded, and went to go outside.
Liam was a bit distracted by the mess he had created, but when he noticed Claire with her hand on the door he turned around, quite startled. "Claire… You know I don't want you to go outside by yourself. It's not safe."
"But I just want to do something! Just to get out of here! Please Liam…" Her voice was whinier than usual. Cabin fever had begun to take its toll in recent days.
He relented. "Ok. I'll come out with you, but stay alert."
Liam stepped out first, grabbing the hatchet that he kept beside the outside door. The rain had stopped. Irish weather, always changing. Yesterday morning he awoke to find two creatures banging against the back gate, the freaks not having the intelligence to work out how to open the thing. Although the entire back garden – and it was a considerable space, maybe half an acre – was fenced and topped with barbed wire, Liam was still nervous about what would happen if more than a couple of those things tried to force their way through it at the same time. They'd nearly certainly knock it down by sheer pressure alone.
Claire went over to the wet swing to play while Liam checked out the perimeter. No nasty surprises. He went to the front of the house, opened the gate and looked out the road. Quiet. Nobody, dead or alive, was there. Unfortunately their home didn't give them much of a view; they were crammed in between two little drumlins and could only see up the sides of those hills surrounding them. They were more or less at the bottom of two hills – locals traditionally referred to the area around the house as 'the hollow'.
Just as Liam shut the gate again, he could hear something. It was far off, over the horizon. He ran straight over to Claire. He was always worried whenever she was out of his line of sight. She could hear it too. What was it? With a tone of excitement he hadn't had since he was a child, he declared, "It's a helicopter!"
Claire's face lit up. Both of them stood transfixed, waiting for the thing to come in to their sight. Liam had an idea.
"Claire, when you see it come over, wave you arms as much as you can, jump up and down, just get the damn thing's attention!" she was really excited now. She started jumping around like a maniac even before the helicopter was visible.
"That's it, keep it coming Claire!"
He ran in to the house and grabbed a can of deodorant and a lighter.
When he came back, Claire interrupted her wild dancing to give him an incredulous stare. "What are you going to do with that? Do you think they'll even see it?"
"If they look down, they'll be able to tell that we're human and not one of those things." he said emphatically.
It wasn't a windy day, so he was able to light the mini flamethrower easily. Now both of them waited.
The noise was getting closer. Both of them were gawking over the horizon, as if expecting a fleet of American or NATO helicopter gunships to come swooping in and save them from this misery. Eventually, in what seemed like a lifetime, the thing came in to view. Liam lit the aerosol and faced it up towards the sky. Then he extinguished it. He repeated this a couple of times. It was flying low, so low they could make out that it was painted red, but little else. It was a medium sized helicopter, like something the mountain rescue would have. Is that what it was? Claire was hopping around even more manically then she had been. He kept repeating the trick. He even worried that he might be accidentally spelling out something in Morse code. He allowed himself a private chuckle at the thought that he might inadvertently be telling them to 'go fuck yourself'.
They were both aghast as they watched it swoop almost directly over their heads and it seemed that it was about to depart beyond the other hill.
"NO!" He screamed, throwing the deodorant on the grass. "For fuck sake, COME BACK!" he roared madly at the thing in the sky, throwing his arms around. "We're right here!"
In his agony, he didn't have the strength to conceal his frustration. His quiet positivity, his resilience and his stoicism, it all evaporated. All that was a front for Claire of course – he knew the gravity of their position. But he pretended to his little sister that they would get through this in no time and that they would be reunited with their parents who had been on holiday in Spain and that everything would be ok in the end. But just as he reached the depth of his despair, just as he began to lose hope, the helicopter turned back towards them.
He was on his knees at this point, banging his fists on the cold earth beneath him, when he felt Claire grabbing his arm. "Liam, look!" Her eyes had the same sparkle they had when he found her that first time huddled upstairs on her own in the attic, her hands covering her head, shivering in pure unalloyed fear. But then she saw her older brother and everything was ok again.
The helicopter hovered over them, preparing to land. There was more than enough space in the garden. They got out of the way, and waited.
It landed, and Liam was in a daze. On its side it said 'Mountain Rescue'.
Three men stepped out. They were all bearded, tired, and confused looking. One of them was wearing a mountain rescue jacket. All of them had automatic rifles strapped around their shoulders. Could be AK-47s, in truth he wasn't able to tell. They started walking over towards them, and a tall blond man shook Liam's hand vigorously. The engine noise slowly died down and they were able to talk.
"I tell ya, it's nice to see somebody who doesn't want to eat my brain, that's for sure!" All the men then proceeded to laugh. Claire stood behind her brother, appearing both happy and suspicious at the same time. Liam returned the overly enthusiastic handshake with a grin.
"Its good to see you too!" He awkwardly ended the handshake ceremony and had a quick glance at the other men. They seemed friendly enough as well. "Sorry, not used to seeing people with guns. Hence the sister." He gestured towards Claire. The men smiled. "You're welcome to come inside for something to eat if you're hungry; I'm dying to know whatever it is that you know."
When they got inside, the blond man introduced himself as David Mc Eneany; his friends were called Paul and Simon. They didn't feel like going into detail about how they came across each other, but Liam gathered that Simon – who had a sharp, skeptical rodent-like face – was a military man of some kind. They all stank, a quality that his sister had noticed as soon as they came within the appropriate distance. He wondered how long they were up there in the sky. When he asked, they didn't give a direct answer. As they were talking, Liam opened a few cans of soup and heated them on the stove. He had even baked some bread the day before, using up the last of their flour. Considering he didn't know so much as how to cook a casserole three months prior, he was rather proud of the slightly burnt loaf. They thanked him for the makeshift meal, expressing surprise and gratitude for the bread – though they did try their best to conceal their amusement at the poor quality of it all. Clearly prepared and produced by a college student. David muddled over the oily looking tomato soup with his spoon, his eyes fixated on it. Liam wondered if it reminded him of something, of blood maybe. They mustn't have had a stove to cook things on and had probably been eating cold soup out of a tin for some time.
"We're fucked". David looked towards Claire and looked slightly ashamed. Liam mused that his kindly face strongly contrasted with the tone of his voice, which was angry. "Sorry missus, I should mind my language a bit more."
Liam informed him that his sister swore like a drunken sailor, and that he shouldn't worry about it.
"I think you should ask your sister to leave the room, there are some things a little girl shouldn't ever hear."
He indicated to his sister and told her to vanish down the hall. She put up a token resistance, but knew better than to protest. She didn't like to be on her own for any length of time, an understandable fear for a nine year old girl caught up in an apocalypse. When she left, Simon began to speak.
He told Liam that life would be hard now, that there were many more of them than there was of us. In order to survive, people would need to unite and find a safe haven.
"With respect, chief, this place is not safe."
The matter of fact way in which he said it combined with the gruff scratch in his voice slightly alarmed Liam and he felt like disputing the assertion, but he remained calm and listened respectfully to what they had to say. David took over. He had a very distinct Mayo accent.
"We flew over Dublin after taking a right merry round trip around the country. No government. No law. Few people. Those that are left are scared and they are nearly certainly going to die unless somebody can organize them."
"We spoke to a few people, people like yourself and your sister. You're smart enough, this place is rural and remote. If it were a normal army, you might even pass out your days forgotten and un-noticed. But these… things… they don't act like normal people. They just wander around. And eventually, they will find you and they will eat you."
Simon chipped in again.
"I'm sure you've figured it out already, but the only way to kill them is a blow to the brain. There ain't nothing else alive in those corpses. One on one, they're easy. I'm a good shot. I've saved a few people just by flying over them and creating a gap for them to run through, by shooting the bastards from above. But when they encircle you, that's when you know there's nothing you can do. It's the bites you see. Just one and you're dead meat."
Liam knew all of this, of course. He liked to think that maybe the government might be able to salvage something, but he himself had undertaken a grim odyssey through a good chunk of the country just to find his way home. He knew how totally civilization had been over-run. He had seen people die in their thousands. He had seen people… reanimate.
Paul interrupted Simon. "We've had a lot of time to think up in the sky Liam. A lot of time. But we've nearly used up all our diesel. We've run out of places to get it. We still come across the odd helicopter or plane flying around, but God only knows where they're going. There is no community. There is no organization. When we tried to make radio contact, they'd usually ignore us."
Liam realized that rather than him be relieved that they found him, they were relieved that he found them. There was desperation in their voices now, moreso because Liam dug up a bottle of Jameson he had kept for himself, for 'medicinal' purposes. As they began to drink, they spoke more openly. They told him about all the things they had seen, the chaos and the madness and the people turning on each other. They told him about some of the people they had stayed with, many of whom were decent but almost certainly going to die.
"Why don't you go up to a mountain? Somewhere really remote? Or an island off the coast?" Liam asked.
They told him that every island off the western seaboard was infested with the infected. It seemed that most people had the idea that an island was the safest place to be. Then one of them got infected, and soon they all did.
The whiskey poured more readily now, the men around the table beginning to enjoy each other's company. They spoke of times before the plague, of their wives, of sex, of all of the things men talk about when they drink. Simon confirmed that he was indeed a military man, a rank and file soldier in the army who had deserted his post once events began to overtake themselves. The automatic rifles, which the men had set down on the worktop, were loaded. They weren't AK-47s Liam had learnt, but government issued weapons. Simon had taught them how to shoot, and had thousands of rounds tucked up in the chopper outside.
David was in the mountain rescue, still wearing the same distinctive rain jacket he had worn when the plague broke out. Paul was David's nephew. Tall and slim, Paul didn't say much other than to say that before all of this happened, he was a simple farmer who minded his own business and enjoyed a pint on a Friday night.
Liam remembered his sister, who he sent down the hall hours ago and who had not returned. He excused himself, and went looking for her.
He wandered around the house, eventually going upstairs in the attic conversion where he found his sister quietly reading a book. It was beginning to get dusky outside, and there was an unlit candle beside her. This was the room she had barricaded herself in before Liam found her just after the outbreak.
"Everything alright?"
She nodded her head. Though she didn't want to say it, she was frightened and did not trust these new people.
"Where are they going to sleep?"
The two of them slept in the kitchen near the stove. The couches were pull out beds. They did both for the warmth as well as the reassurance they both provided each other during the long, dark nights.
"There's plenty of room in this house for them, a bed each if they want. Don't worry Claire. I was beginning to think that we would have to find others to settle with if we want to get through this. And they're good people too. Open people."
She trusted him and his judgment, and so she accepted their lodgers. Although famously impractical with his hands, Liam was a strong and burly man. A good fifteen stone weight, he had the innate strength of a man his size. Though he hadn't fought since his early schooldays, he reckoned he could put up a good fight if needs be. He scratched his brown hair nervously and contemplated how difficult it would be to disarm three men with automatic rifles, if it should ever come to that.
Liam was ready to take her back down to the kitchen when he heard the noise.
It was a noise he had only ever heard in films and video games, and it terrified him. They were firing their guns. The undead were here.