Walkers

The gardening trowel clinked against a stone, bouncing off like a man mistaking a ‘pull’ door for a ‘push’ one.

Digby Woodward growled, pain shooting up his arm and into his elbow. He shouldn’t be the one doing this, damn it. But what could Digby do? The contractor he’d looked up in the Yellow Pages had looked at him funny when he’d asked. ‘Mate, I only do conservatories,’ he’d said, scratching his head. Digby had left messages for the others, but none had returned his calls. So, it looked like he was going to have to build this nuclear fallout shelter himself. Digby armed the sweat out of his eyes and then shovelled another trowelful of dirt off to one side.

The pile of soil he’d displaced could fit within a one-kilo bag of sugar.

He frowned. This project was going to take a while.

Across the road, a curtain flickered behind the Nicholses’ front window.

Jack and Jacqueline were always making fun of him. So did everyone else who lived on this street. ‘Why’d you need a boat for? You live in suburbia!’ ‘Do you really have a crossbow?’ ‘Kinda a waste of money buying multiple generators, isn’t it?’ ‘You spent how much on bottles of purified water?’

Digby squinted through the window.

Jack and Jacqueline were laughing it up behind the sun’s glare against the glass. They’d even gotten their son, Jacques, to join in on the bullying.

Digby shrank. He was a deer in headlights who’d decided the best way to survive this truck was to stay right where it was. That little hellspawn of theirs was going to be as nasty as his parents once full-grown. Digby corrected himself: if he grew up. The thought settled him a little. Yes, if his calculations were correct, the end was bloody nigh. If there were a God, it’d come before the Jacques of the world proved they could be even bigger jerks than Mum and Dad.

But Digby was ready for it.

Why did he have a boat? In case of rising ocean levels and asteroid-induced tsunamis, a la ‘Deep Impact’. Digby needed his crossbow to hunt for game in case the food supply chains collapsed. He had a generator for power in case a solar flare took down the electrical grid, setting them back a hundred years. He also had a backup generator for that generator because it made good sense. And they’d see who was laughing once the water reserves ran dry or their enemies poisoned their supplies. Yes, the end of everything was coming in some shape or form. And no matter what guise it came under – war, famine, plague – he, Digby Woodward, would be ready for it. He smiled and waved to the Nicholses, now watching him from behind their curtains. ‘Yuk it up, yo-yos,’ he whispered under his breath.

At the end of the street, there shuffled along a silhouette.

Great, more people to laugh at him and his ingenuity. ‘C’mon, Dig,’ he said as he plunged the trowel into the soil. ‘Don’t let it get to you. They’re just jealous of you, remember what Mother said.’

The figure shambled closer, unsteady on their feet. The morning breeze carried a sound from the stranger towards Digby.

A moan.

Digby paused, trowel half tilted, soil trickling from the tip.

Another shadowed person joined the first, shambling along the road towards him.

His heart tripped down the stairs of his chest and slid down the last few steps on its bum. They were shambling along the road, not the path. They weren’t aware of the danger of cars and didn’t understand that they ought to stroll along the pavement. And why was this? Why did they have no self-preservation instinct? Realisation chilled him like that bugger of a raindrop that managed to drip down the back of your shirt.

They were zombies.

As if on cue, another dry, dusty death growl whispered along the tarmac in his direction. The first zombie staggered into view. Behind, a third undead had joined them.

Digby bared his teeth. God, they were grotesque! He dropped the trowel with a clatter and rose to his feet.

The shambling corpses stumbled closer, sighing and wheezing, oozing death from every pore.

For a moment, his thoughts bottlenecked. Zombies! Honest-to-goodness zombies! He’d known the end was coming, but he hadn’t foreseen it would be a zombie apocalypse. There was still so much left to do, so much more he wanted to prepare. He had to board up the windows and doors. He had to get some melee weapons, like a baseball bat wrapped in chains. He needed bite-proof clothes – would denim work? Digby stood there, frozen. His hands clenched and unclenched. His mouth worked like a goldfish’s.

And still, the walking dead swayed closer and closer.

It was only when the stench hit him, a postmortem perfume, that Digby broke free from his paralysis. He needed to defend his house and home. Hell, Digby had to protect his neighbourhood. He’d seen the shows. Soon, some tyrant would encroach upon his turf to prove to viewers that humans were the real monsters. An idea popped into his head with the sound of a gardening trowel clanging against a stone. Digby sprinted for his house, slamming the front door hard enough to dent the wall’s plaster. He emerged thirty seconds later, shirtless, a Rambo bandana askew, panting for breath.

In his hands, Digby held his crossbow.

The zombies were already at the Cooks’ house, two doors down.

Here was his moment, the point he’d spent years prepping for, the time he’d waited his entire life for. For the history books to quote fifty years from now, he should say something cool. He spat into the grass. ‘Time to take out the, ah— To clean up the, um— No more Mr, uh—’ Digby paused. ‘Time to kill zombies?’ he said, with a rising inflexion that made it sound like a question.

The lead zombie, a decayed man with papery skin and whisps of hair clinging to his skull, bounced into the fence.

Too late. Digby would lie and come up with something better in the interim. He lifted the crossbow – he’d also need to think of a badass name for her – and aimed down the sights. ‘Here we go, the first of millions, Digby Woodward, hero of the zombie wars.’

A look of something akin to recognition flashed in the dead man’s eyes.

He sucked in a breath. This cruel plague! Turning families into mindless, undead cannibals. Digby pulled the trigger. ‘Goddamn you!’ he cried to the heavens.

The thousands he’d spent on lessons and the hours he’d spent at the range had paid off. The crossbow bolt flew right and true and found its target: the zombie’s left eye socket. The arrow plunged through, popping the eye and exploding out the back of the skull. Goop and bone fragments rained. The zombie lurched backwards, the bolt sticking out both sides of his head, tumbling to the ground. ‘Gak!’

A taste of metal flooded Digby’s mouth, and the world’s colours drained away. A cold calmness settled over his mind, and his breathing slowed. He fired his next dozen shots at the growing horde without so much as flinching.

‘Ungh!’

‘Gurk!’

‘Bleh!’

‘Ergh!’

‘Aahh!’

One, two, three, four, five. The bodies dropped, bolts embedded in their heads. Blood and gore painted the road like a hopscotch grid from Hell.

Digby’s temples throbbed. So, this was what it felt like to find your true calling finally. He pulled a disgusted face at the corpses at his feet – they were somehow nastier than he’d ever imagined. He planted his foot on the dead man’s face and yanked free the bolt.

Up ahead, something squeaked, and something tapped.

Digby looked up to see two zombie stragglers who’d been too slow to join the rest of the herd. One was in a wheelchair, the other using a Zimmer frame. The one in the wheelchair pulled itself forward with lurching movements. Its face was a picture of sorrow. The woman with the walker staggered forward. She stabbed the walker’s feet at the ground like a baby boomer typing on a mobile phone with their index finger.

Digby’s mouth opened, his lower jaw hitting his collarbone. ‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘They’ve learned to use tools. They’re evolving so fast!’

In the distance, somebody was shouting.

For the first time in his lonely life, Digby no longer felt like the outsider, the weirdo. Here was his chance to reinvent himself and become this story’s hero. He aimed and fired.

The first bolt went straight through the wheelchair zombie’s forehead. They snarled and flipped over backwards, brains spraying. They landed on their back, wheels spinning in the air. The second bolt went wide and took the dead woman in the frilly cardigan in the shoulder. She pirouetted away and collapsed to the road, screeching. Her walker remained upright in place.

As the dead woman clawed at the sky and squealed, Digby went – one by one – and collected his crossbow bolts. He wiped them clean on the dead people’s clothes. When Digby got to the writhing one on the ground, he planted a foot in her chest and pulled the arrow free with a grunt. Digby gazed deep into her eyes but could find no life there. Whatever humanity this poor vessel had once contained was now long gone. He raised his boot above her head. ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you.’

The yells were now nearby.

Digby finished wiping his boots clean on the Cook’s perfect lawn. Before he broke into a sprint, he stopped and spoke aloud to the lifeless street. ‘Don’t worry. Papa’s a-comin’.’

The calls became more intelligible as they drew closer to one another. ‘HELP! HELP! WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP?’

Digby followed the cries. He took a left, a right, ran straight, took another left, and then collided with a woman in hospital scrubs.

She grabbed his arm, a wild look in her eyes. Sweat had plastered her hair to her forehead. ‘HELP ME! YOU’VE GOT TO HELP ME!’

He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Dig’s here, baby.’

She shook her head back and forth, ponytail whipping. ‘GOT OUT! THEY GOT OUT! THEY—’ She stopped and looked at Digby’s crossbow. And then she looked at the gore-strewn bolts. ‘What’s that?’

But Digby was reeling. He’d anticipated the end, but not like this. ‘You mean to tell me this was your doing? You goddamn scientists cooked up something in a lab and now its broken free, dooming us all, huh? When will people learn from ‘Jurassic Park’?’

She frowned and took a few steps back from him. ‘Scientists? Lab? What the hell are you talking about? Someone left the door unlocked at the Pearson’s Care Home and some of our residents got out! Have you seen them? And is that— Is that blood?’

Digby’s mouth went dry. He’d prepared so much for the end and had acquired all the skills and tools needed. But everything looked like a nail when all you had was a hammer. He fiddled with the blood-stained crossbow bolts. ‘Ah. Oh. I see.

‘Well, that’s my bad.’

---

Monday, 21 April 2025

Written for the April 2025 #BlogBattle: ‘Whisper’