David Moody - Autumn

‘So what do we use to build this fence?’ Carl asked again.

I thought for a few seconds.

‘Doesn’t have to be a fence, does it?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, confused.

‘It just has to be a barricade,’ I explained with a hundred and one ideas suddenly flooding into my mind. ‘All we want to do is stop those things getting close to the house, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter how we do it. We could build a fence, dig a trench or just park cars and tractors around the place. That would be enough to keep them out.’

‘You’re right,’ Emma agreed.

‘Okay so they’re strong in numbers,’ I continued, ‘but individually they’re easy to stop. Emma, I watched you shoulder-charge the body of man twice your size today and you virtually threw it across the room.’

My mind was racing. It all seemed so simple and so obvious. Build a fence down from the side of the house to the bottom of the yard and then across until it meets the stream. Use the bridge as an entry point and block it off somehow. Do the same at the back of the house and take the barrier out far enough to enclose the generator shed and the gas tank. Simple. Safe.

I took the paper and pen from Emma and began to draw over her basic markings. Perhaps feeling as if I was taking over, she stood up and walked away. Sensing that the conversation had ended (not that he had contributed much anyway) Carl also got up from his chair and left the room.

For a short time my planning and sketching brought a welcome distraction from the nightmare that was the outside world.

With my mind occupied the time passed relatively quickly. Before I knew it the morning had ended and we were well into the afternoon. Both Emma and Carl had found other ways and means to occupy themselves and I had been left alone in the kitchen to think and to plan.

By half-past two I had reached the stage where I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, but I wasn’t sure what materials we had to use. Perhaps foolishly, I picked up the rusty rifle from where we’d left it lying on one of the kitchen units and went outside.

There were no bodies to be seen. The afternoon was dry and clear but cold. As summer had faded and died and autumn had arrived the temperature had dropped steadily. There was a light breeze rustling through the trees and bushes but otherwise the world was silent.

In the two large barns at the side of the yard I found some timber and a few fence posts. There was also some barbed wire. While I was there I looked at the barns themselves. They appeared strong but not indestructible. The wooden walls and the sheets of corrugated metal on the roof of each of the dull buildings also looked like they were going to be useful. On top of all of that I discovered numerous bits and pieces of farm equipment scattered around the place. I didn’t know what half of it was for, but I knew that all of it could be used in someway to build a barrier between us and the rest of the diseased population.

I began to walk back towards the farmhouse feeling unusually calm and assured. The terror and stomach-wrenching fear of the morning had, for a time at least, subsided and been put to one side. The respite didn’t last long. The light was beginning to fade and, as night rapidly approached, a single innocent and unexpected thought wormed its way into my tired brain and slowly and systematically destroyed the confidence and sense of purpose that I had spent the previous hours silently building up inside me.

I thought about a friend from work.

Just for a fraction of a second I pictured her face, and the memory of all that I had lost and left behind suddenly returned. With this torrent of unexpected memories came an equally unexpected torrent of pain and raw emotion.

For what felt like hours I sat alone on the steps outside the porch of the farmhouse and wept. I pictured the faces of my family and friends, of my colleagues from work, my customers, the people at the garage who had fixed my car a couple of weeks ago, the woman who’d sold me a paper on the morning it had all begun… as I saw each one of them the bitter realisation that they were gone forever felt like nails being driven into my flesh. And each dull pain was followed by a second hurt. While everyone I knew lay rotting in the streets – either lying motionless on the ground or dragging themselves around in endless agony – I had survived. Why me? Why should I have lived over all those others? I thought about my two brothers – Steven and Richard. I hadn’t seen them for a couple of months. I hoped that they were like me and that they had survived. The thought of them being like those fucking monsters I’d seen this morning was too much to take…

But what could I do?

Why should I feel this way?

There was nothing I could have done to have changed any of it.

I picked myself up and went indoors. I was filled with a deep hurt that I knew would never completely disappear. But I owed it to myself to try and build something from what was left.

The barrier around the house took the three survivors all of the following day to complete. They worked almost constantly – beginning just after the sun first rose and only stopping when the job was finally done. As the light had faded the work had become harder to concentrate on and finish. Carl, Michael and Emma had each individually struggled to keep focussed on the task at hand and to ignore the mounting fear that the approach of darkness brought. The fear of drawing attention to themselves was constant and relentless. Throughout the day the generator had remained switched off. As far as was possible they worked in the safety of a shroud of silence.

Despite his earlier apparent apathy, Carl worked as hard as the other two to complete the vital barrier. For much of the time Emma stood guard with the rifle and, in some ways, that job proved to be the hardest of all. She had never held a loaded firearm before and, although Carl had shown her how to load, prime and fire the weapon, she doubted she would actually be able to use it should the need arise. Frustrating, often contradictory thoughts flooded her mind with an infuriating regularity. She had come to despise the wandering corpses which dragged themselves lethargically through the remains of her world. They were now so sick, diseased and dysfunctional that it had become almost impossible for her to comprehend the fact that a short time ago they had each been human beings with names, lives and identities. And yet, should one of them stumble into her sights, she wondered whether she would be able to pull the trigger and shoot it down. She wasn’t even sure whether a bullet would have any effect. She had witnessed those creatures being battered and smashed almost beyond recognition, only to continue to move constantly, seemingly ignorant to the pain that their injuries and sickness must surely have caused. No matter what physical damage was inflicted, they carried on regardless.

It was fortunate that the house was so isolated. In the long hours spent outside only a handful of bodies had appeared. Whenever they became aware of movement the three survivors would drop their tools and disappear into the silent shadows of the farmhouse and wait until the withered creatures passed or became distracted by another sound and drifted away again.

Michael had impressed himself with his ingenuity and adaptability. As he had planned, they had used the stream as a natural barrier along one side of the farmhouse, building up the bank on their side with rocks and boulders from the water. Using the tall doors from one of the barns they had created a strong, padlocked gate across the stone bridge which spanned the width of the water. Two thick and removable crossbeams provided additional strength and security for the hours they would spend locked away inside the farmhouse. Much of the walls and roofs of the two barns had been stripped to provide extra materials to construct and reinforce the vital boundary. Now the remains of the buildings stood dejected and abandoned outside the fence, the bare bones of their empty frames reaching up into the air like the ribs of an animal carcass stripped of flesh.