DEADLAND - DOWNPOUR

In our day to day life, we have to try and and blend in with the walking dead ... but some days it's harder to do...

I match the steps of the horde around me, who move in a single, unending rhythm. The crowd of the stinking, shambling dead trudge back up the main road leading to and from the city, weaving between the crashed cars, to a chorus of flies singing joyfully all around them.

This is the beginning of the stream, they will continue the steady march until well past sunset. Part of me wishes I knew where they all went every day. Do they go back to houses where they used to live? Groan at rotting husbands, wives and children that groan back at them? Do they just wait in the streets until dawn, only to resume the march again?

I have to keep my breaths shallow, or the sounds of my gagging, and certainly my vomit, will draw attention to me. I have never managed to get used to the smell, and my stomach has never gotten used to what I am forced to eat in the school cafeteria when I have to. Today especially … recognising who lunch had been …

I try and stop thinking about it, but I can feel the sweat forming on my brow. I try to steady my breaths, keep them shallow, but my head is beginning to spin. My eyes fill with tears.

One of the dead around me grunts. Her milky, sunken eyes sweep around in my direction.

I fix my own gaze ahead, keeping her in the corner of my eye. Another one on the other side of me lets out a long, drawn out groan.

Every day I see them tear someone apart. Even if they’re out of sight, the screams echo around the silent skyscrapers and through the dead streets. Every time, I feel it as if it’s happening to me.

That thought makes the sweat fully form and run down my face.

Another one moans.

I try and shut my mind down and focus, on something, anything ahead of me. My eyes trace up the buildings, and I spot something I have never seen before. A flash of white on a rooftop, next to an air conditioning unit covered in rust. Then there’s a flash … and a rumble that passes over the horde, over the remains of the city.

I blink, and realise that the white shape is an umbrella. A moment later, the first raindrop hits the top of my head.

Then the heavens open. The downpour lashes from above, tiny swords of water that make the army of flies flee in terror. The smell of rot is overpowered by the smell of petrichor, the dry dusty road brought to life.

The sweat is washed from my brow. The filthy business suits, pencil skirts, overalls and polo shirts are soaked in seconds. My school uniform sticks to me like a second skin.

The grunts and groans and sounds of hunger die away, the rain casting around me like a cloak. At the same time, it washes some of the grime from my body, soaks my filthy hair. I slowly look up at the roof again.

The umbrella is being held by a figure, standing still. A woman, wearing an overcoat, like a detective from one of dad’s books, the ones he doesn’t let me read. Her skin is almost bone-white, her hair chestnut brown and wild about her head and slender neck. I can’t tell if she’s living or another of the dead from here. The white umbrella is held behind her back, sheltering her from the cascade, and she holds her pose as a statue would.

In my mind, she’s alive, as dad and I are. Another living soul, but one with dominion over the rain, a superhero, a goddess, one who would save us all from the clutches of the dead, washing them away in a flood.

I have never had any real hope before, at the end of a day. The small prayers, maybe: that tomorrow the dead won’t look at me in the cafeteria, that I won’t have to eat what they eat to blend in, that mum won’t be shuffling around anymore, that she’ll have finally been laid to rest properly.

This hope could be just as false, but it doesn’t feel like it. For once, it’s something that turns the corner of my mouth up in a smile.

Maybe me and dad aren’t alone.

.