Doomware by Nathan Kuzack Page B

looking around apprehensively for the source of the sound. There were definitely no zombie cataracts in his eyes, the surest sign that the boy was uninfected. David pummelled on the window again and waved furiously, and the boy saw him. He looked scared. Even at this distance, he could see fear on the boy’s face and in his body language.
    Zombies didn’t show fear.
    David swung the window open and the gentle tinkling of the rain amplified into something like the roar of a waterfall.
    “Hey!” he shouted over the rain. “Hey! Up here.”
    The boy said nothing; he just peered out from under a curtain of dirty-blond hair gone straggly in the rain with wide, wary eyes. Then he reached up, pulled on his hood, and started backing away slowly, as if worried that sudden movements might provoke some kind of retaliation.
    “No! It’s okay,” David called, trying to force what might be taken for friendliness into his overstrained voice. “Don’t be afraid. It’s all right. Come on up here.”
    At that, the boy turned on his heel and ran back the way he’d come.
    “ NO! ” David roared.
    He tore from the drawing room and onto the wooden stairs, nearly tripping headlong as he thundered down them.
    Outside, the boy had already disappeared around a corner where the street turned sharply to the right. David ran as fast as he could through the rain, rounding the corner onto Richmond Road. Here there was a left turn onto St Mary’s Road, quickly followed by turnings onto Twickenham Road and Francis Road. David ran along St Mary’s Road, his eyes darting to and fro urgently, his mouth calling out greetings, but even to him they sounded hollow and half-hearted. He could sense it was no use. The boy had been quick on his feet, and he’d had too much of a head start. There was no sign of him, no telling which direction he’d gone in, and the weather hampered both vision and hearing. The torrent was coming down so forcefully it was creating a kind of grey haze, one that hovered above the ground and was capable of swallowing up the figure of a retreating boy in no time. Moreover, he’d run outside without stopping to put on his raincoat; he was getting absolutely drenched through.
    After a short period of fruitless searching David reluctantly accepted that the boy was gone. Crestfallen, he returned to the Lighthouse with a limp body and an even limper morale, compelled to look over his shoulder every few seconds in the vain hope the boy might reappear. He castigated himself for not thinking before acting; he should have made his presence known far more subtly than beating on the window and hollering at the poor kid.
    Back in the Lighthouse he stripped off his wet clothes, dried himself using a towel from the ground-floor cloakroom, and put on dry clothes he found in one of the bedrooms. All through this he shivered violently, shaking with a sense of angry self-recrimination as much as the cold.
    In the kitchen he made himself a hot drink using an old-fashioned kettle, and sat warming his hands on the mug as he sipped from it.
    “Stupid!” he muttered to himself. “So fuckin’ stupid.”
    For a long time his thoughts were nebulous, clouded with dismay, exacerbated by his low opinion of himself. Deep down, the boy’s running away felt like yet another rejection. No one but freakish, murderous zombies in the world and the boy would rather go it alone than be with a freak like him. No, that bordered on blaming the boy. You couldn’t fault a child, especially when their reactions were born of fear in this hellish world adults had created. The boy would naturally harbour a distrust of all adults; he hadn’t understood they were both survivors – islands of humanity in a sea of the soulless. The fact alone that another survivor had been revealed to him ought to be buoying his spirits.
    Look on the bright side, he instructed himself. So he’d fouled up their first contact – he was only human. Still human. Next time he’d know