Dead Dayz

Prologue

The sound of groaning had woken her up, but Helen Davies was thankful to be taken out of the nightmare she was having about being attacked by two men.

Once her eyes were open and she realised she had been dreaming, she stretched out in the double bed and enjoyed the room she had—one of the benefits of being recently separated to that cheating rat—and saw her bedroom door slowly open. Her little girl then entered the room.

Oh, not again, she mumbled. She slowly sat up. Carla, you need to start sleeping in your own bed. You're not a baby anymore, you're eleven years old. You can't keep coming in here and waking me up.

Carla had been affected by her mum and dad's recent separation and her schoolwork had also suffered. It had been four months since he had told his wife that he didn't love her anymore and was seeing a young receptionist half his age. He had left behind a distraught and confused daughter and a son who was eight months old at the time. Four months on and Helen still hated him for what he did, and was trying her best to keep it together and afford the house's mortgage on her low-income wage.

Helen looked at the digital clock. 2.14am. Her daughter had now stopped walking and stood at the bottom of her bed, looking in her direction in the dark bedroom.

The mother sighed and said in defeat, Did you have another bad dream? She reached over and put her bedside lamp on. She looked over and once her eyes clocked Carla's face she screamed out.

She jumped out of bed, wearing only her pants, and went over to her daughter. Carla was wearing her yellow nightdress, but it was covered in blood and so was her chin. The daughter snarled and Helen took a step backwards, investigating her daughter's features. The eyes were milky, her face was ashen—it just wasn't Carla.

The daughter took a step forwards and tried to grab her mother's face, but Helen pushed her daughter back.

Drenched in fright, Helen jumped onto the bed to avoid Carla and ran out of the room. She closed the bedroom door behind her, and bolted it, panting and crying in disbelief. She remained motionless, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Carla had been feeling unwell since nine o'clock, so Helen put her to bed and decided to call the doctor if her condition didn't improve. She had been playing on her bike and had come back to tell her mother that some boy had bitten her on the hand. She managed to fight him off and cycled away from him.

Helen remained by the door and then thought of Jack. Oh shit. She ran from the door and went to see her one-year-old. She put the bedroom light on and took a look in his cot.

Her knees buckled once she saw the bloody remains of Jack.

He was unrecognisable and apart from a leg and some intestines, there didn't seem to be much left of him. Helen fell to her knees and released a scream that could only be made by a woman that had lost her child—in this case, two. She didn't understand what had happened. There was only one explanation: Carla.

The heartbreaking cries were enough to wake half the street, and Helen wanted to reach out and touch Jack, but there wasn't much left of him to touch. She noticed in the right corner of the cot was the remains of his little head.

Still sobbing, she turned to the side and threw up.

*

His tremulous finger pushed the button on the remote as he flicked through the channels manically. He wondered if it had finally arrived. Every channel had an anchorman, reporter or expert who was giving their opinion on the events that were occurring on this early July.

He called in his partner and she came in with two hot cups of teas and placed them on the floor and sat next to him. Is this about those riots the other day? she asked.

He shushed her, something he never did, and instead of becoming offended, she immediately knew that something was bugging him.

Just watch, he ordered.

The first channel he put on was SKY NEWS, followed by BBC1, and this was followed by other channels that were available on his cable. His face was ashen with the shock as he started channel-hopping.

SKY NEWS: Rioting have hit major cities, but the government have played down the events. BBC News: Documents leaked from the science institute of London contradict government figures... FOX News: Little is known about the virus that is sweeping Asia. The government have said that the cases in Asia were isolated incidents and pose no threat to the residents of Europe. RT: The Russian government have been criticised in the press for playing down the pandemic, and the media claims that figures have been grossly underestimated at what is happening. CNN: To my knowledge there hasn't been a single case reported in America, Great Britain, or Western Europe. These figures have been taken completely out of context, and threat to human life... ITV News: Scientists in Newcastle have accepted that they could be three months away from producing a vaccine to what they're now calling, The Summer Virus.

It appeared that in some quarters of the globe and in the UK, some were accepting that it was happening, whilst others were still in denial. It had been brewing for weeks, but it was officially announced on this day in July, and it appeared that this was something that could be detrimental to the safety of the human race.

He kept it on one channel, and once the anchorman had finished, it cut back to a selection of six short interviews by random people that were filmed on the streets of London the previous day.

Person One: As far as I know, it's happening elsewhere and not here at the moment, but I wish they would tell us more. If it wasn't for social media like Facebook and Twitter, we'd know nothing about it. Person Two: It's probably a joint-government experiment. You kill off half of the ever-growing population, and you save a fortune on food, water and gas. Person Three: We're an island. We should be okay. Person Four: I don't think the government are doing enough. If they are, they're not sharing with the public what they're actually doing. Person Five: I don't think the government are taking it seriously. They're in denial. And it's denial that is going to get people killed. Person Six: I heard it's not airborne, and spreads from bite-to-bite. With aviation, it's probably already here. It's probably already global.

The channel was then changed once more to the local news, and a female politician, The Secretary of State for School, Children and Families, was expressing her concerned views on what was happening.

The TV was then put on standby and the man of the house, Brian Davidson, dropped his head in his hands. After a minute of silence, with his partner sitting next to him, he raised his head back up and gazed at her with a thin smile sitting under his nose.

He stood to his feet; the man's muscular frame towered over his partner and said with a defeated sigh, Well, it's finally arrived. It's time to move.

His partner, Laura, nodded her head in agreement. You were right all along.

He nodded slowly. Yep. Unfortunately I was.

AUGUST

ONE MONTH LATER

Chapter One

Officially, it started on Thursday 3rd July, and it was a living nightmare that went by so frantically that David Johnson's recollections of the first days were sometimes a little hazy looking back. Those days went by so frenziedly that it felt like a dream, or a nightmare, which David had no way of waking up from.

It was now Monday 4th August, and it was a glorious day as far as the weather was concerned, and after a restless night, plagued by macabre dreams of the recent past, David finally woke. It was after nine, according to his Citizen-Eco watch, and he stretched out his arms and yawned a little too loudly. His sticky eyes took a while to open properly, and once they did, he could see his bedroom ceiling that could have done with a fresh lick of paint.

A few months ago this would have bothered him a little, but he had more pressing issues to contend with. His primary concern was for the little man lying next to him in his bed.

Harry Johnson was seven years old, had strawberry blonde hair and an amazing pair of green eyes, which was a mixture of David's brown and his wife's blue eyes. It was just David and Harry. He had no idea where his wife and daughter were.

As normal, on any day he awoke these days, David's day started off with sadness as he thought about Day One.

They—the media—called it The Sickness, or The Summer Virus.

The news on the TV broadcasted horrendous images of the vicious outbreak that had suddenly occurred, and nobody had an explanation where it had come from.

Once David came out of his shock, he tried to contact his wife, but to no avail. She had gone out to the shops with his five-year-old daughter, Sarah, an hour after the announcement. It was Thursday, and all the kids were off school for their six-week holiday.

David and his wife, Jane, had taken a few weeks off work so they didn't need to rely on childminders. That day, July 3rd, in the little town of Hardridge, was like any normal day for David Johnson. The children, especially Harry, were up too early for his liking. He wished his son would have a lie-in, but he had always been like that ever since he was a toddler. David and Jane had tried everything to let their son sleep longer on a morning, especially on a weekend, which meant that they would also get a decent sleep.

They'd tried keeping him up late.

At one time, on a Friday night, David and Jane gave the kids a movie night, which consisted of watching a movie from the iPad and having a bowl of chocolate treats halfway through the movie. The children went to bed just after ten, and Harry still woke up at 6am and looked fresh as a daisy. The trouble with a bored and lonely Harry at 6am was that because his parents refused to get out of bed, he would go and wake his sister up. This would be followed by arguments, the use of the toilet, and storming into their parent’s bedroom every now and then, and telling on one another: Mum, Harry hit me. Daddy, Sarah said I'm a big baby. Mummy, Harry spat on my pyjamas. Daddy, Sarah's peed all over the toilet seat.

The result was the same every morning. One of the parents would get up, and the one that had a lie-in would allow the early riser to go back to bed for a couple of hours later on, sometime in the morning.

On that July morning, the last day he saw his wife and daughter, nothing seemed different when his kids got up. His seven-year-old boy and five-year-old girl were downstairs, and they were arguing with one another once they sat down in the living room.

David hated Harry and Sarah's love/hate relationship at the time, and most mornings he would have to send them to their bedrooms because of the severity of their verbal disagreements.

Still lying in bed, David's eyes began to fill up, and he pined for those days that he used to dislike to come back. It still irked him that his wife, after being out for an hour with Sarah, never answered her phone once the outbreak was announced on the TV. After four weeks, the not knowing if his wife and daughter were alive was still killing him from the inside.

But he had to be strong. He had to be strong for Harry.

David looked to the left of him and noticed that the little man was stirring. It seemed ironic that since the disappearance of his mother and sister, he was now beginning to have lie-ins. His seven-year-old's eyes were trying to open up, and the little man puffed out his red lips before he managed a wide yawn.

It was time to get up.

Chapter Two

Young Harry had taken a while to get accustomed to the new life that he had. He had no more school to go to, but would spend at least two hours a day with his dad, doing sums and reading; he had no friends anymore to see, and had to make do with playing with his dad or with himself. He was a lonely boy, and missed his mum and little sister terribly.

For the first three weeks Harry would ask his dad every day where his mum and sister were, and this was answered by David with a I don't know or a not sure. For the last six days Harry had stopped asking, and in a strange kind of way, the usually-annoying questions that were no longer being asked had worried David.

Was Harry already forgetting that he had a mother or sister? Or had he just given up, and was certain that he was never going to see them again?

David Johnson was mooching about in his bedroom and took a look in his mirror. He had lost weight, and the grey at the sides of his hair were growing. He appeared to look old as well, and sighed at his overall appearance. Without his wife, his body was looking shabby. It was Jane that usually gave David a haircut with the clippers; she'd also cut and file his toenails. She would also remove the hair off his shoulders and back with either the clippers, on a grade 0, or with her waxing kit, if it was already on and she was doing her legs.

Harry was now in his room, playing with his toys, whilst David took a look in his cupboard. He still had plenty of clean T-shirts hanging up, as he had been using his clothes sparingly and had been using the washing machine up until the power went out on the 19th. Two days later, the water was next.

David began thinking about his sister and hoped she was okay. The last time he had spoken to his sister was the day before the power went. Like most other people, she stayed in her house and barricaded the entrances. Both David and