Free Zombies vs The Living Dead (An Evacuation Story #1) by Frank Tayell

Waverly-Price Retirement Home, England

    5 th March.

    George
Tull glared at the television as the Foreign Secretary pontificated
on the need for... George wasn't sure. He'd turned the set on hoping
to hear the news but expecting to hear nothing more than the oft
repeated phrase “There are no major outbreaks in the UK or
Ireland”. Instead he'd had to endure yet another rambling
speech from the ageing politician.
    “What's
happened to the PM?” George asked himself quietly. “Haven't
heard from him in, what, a week?”
    The
Prime Minister had appeared on television on the evening of 20 th February, as the world was reeling from the news of the outbreak in
New York, but George couldn't recall having seen or heard of him
since. Not when the curfew was announced and the army started
patrolling the streets shooting anyone they found out at night, nor
when the supermarkets were closed and rationing started. Not even
when the BBC started broadcasting the video of that plane being shot
down by the RAF over the Channel.
    Now
he thought about it, the government announcements were made either by
the Foreign Secretary or, since the establishment of the cross-party
Emergency Cabinet, Jennifer Masterton. George liked her. She'd always
seemed trust worthy, honest even, at least for a politician. Now
though, he wasn't so sure.
    A
small part of him, the part George liked to think of as his internal
optimist, had been surprised at how quickly Britain had been turned
into an armed camp. The cynical part, a much larger part since his
wife died and he'd had to move into the home, was surprised that
they'd waited until the undead walked the streets before they'd
abolished the rule of law.
    “The
Super-Rabies Pandemic is a challenge to us all...” the Foreign
Secretary went on.
    “Bloody
liar” George muttered as loudly as he dared “Call it what
it is. They're zombies. Even I know that.”
    He'd
only learnt what a zombie was after he'd persuaded Mr McGuffrey, the
home's manager, to allow him to have a television in his room. That
was about a month after his arrival at the home two years ago. The
rule forbidding them in residents' rooms was bent for George on the
strict understanding that this would keep George out of the Sun Room
and away from the other residents. Watching the plethora of late
night films was one of the few new pleasures he'd discovered since
his wife's death. Before, when he'd had a house of his own, he hadn't
watched horror movies. His wife hadn't liked them. Even old Hitchcock
films had her leaving the room.
    “Poor
Dora” he murmured.
    His
wife had died four years earlier, when he was sixty three and she
fifty nine. He'd lost his job a few months later when the company
he'd worked for went under. It was just one more victim of the
recession, whose demise rated no more than a few lines on the local
news. Most of their savings had been spent on every possible
unapproved procedure, foreign specialist and overpriced herbal remedy
the internet could discover. He'd even, unbeknownst to his wife, re-mortgaged the house. When it was repossessed he'd
sold almost everything they had owned, scraping together just enough
to cover the road tax, petrol and the monthly payments for his
private health insurance.
    His
secretary had let him live in her summer house for most of that year
but when illness had forced her mother to move into the three bedroom
semi, he'd moved out. He didn't want to be a burden, not to anyone.
He'd left in the middle of the night and drifted south, sleeping in
his car at grubby lay-bys, until he arrived at Dover on his sixty
fourth birthday. It was only the sturdy construction of the barriers
that had stopped him driving his car over the cliffs.
    He'd
taken it as a sign. Of what and from whom, even now he wasn't sure.
He spent that year living in his car, stretching the little that he
had, waiting for his sixty fifth birthday. His insurance policy, the
one he maintained even when he didn’t have enough