The Dead Are Coming: Jim and the Old Man Part 1

THE DEAD ARE COMING

Nothing moves, except the condensation on the glass. The frost trickles slowly downward. Drip. Drip. Run. All frosted. The cardboard covering the window is damp and sits poorly fixed, obscuring all but the tiniest light from outside, the world. An eye peers inquisitively through this portal. Outside it is dawn, cold and peaceful in appearance, the light is good and almost gives the impression of summer, except that the cold rivals it.

Trees and branches; no leaves, no birds, no noise. Definitely no cars or people. Living people. The old man’s crinkled slit is peeping out still, squinting. Outside there is a young man. A young dead man, recently deceased and slowly shambling around seemingly aimlessly.

 If the cold could jump into his eyeball, it would. The window is barely a defence anymore from the onset of winter, it almost appears ice itself now. The old man’s face is tough, though, skin which couldn’t freeze in the tundra. An appearance which has said “come get me world” for decades. He is old for a reason, the man is a survivor.

His eye does not move from the young, dead man outside. Although the world is well lit, the old man is comfortably hidden in his den. Dew glazes the grass, there is wind but not much. The world has been paused. 

The world has not been paused. What seems like a halt is in fact the retreat of life. The outside is for the dead, for they walk now. Animals, humans, civilisation; all remain mute to keep from unwanted attention. Many of those people not slaughtered in the initial carnage and confusion of the plague are dead through the mistakes of their friends, family or the selfishness of strangers. Those still breathing are boarded up, quiet or living like nomads, always on the move. They are all very, very scared. Britain is eating itself from within.

The grizzled geriatric grumbles to himself and moves away from the window, replacing the small corner of his lookie hole. He wanders towards a back room, carefully shutting doors quietly and locking them behind him. This darkened den is his ward, and he is Matron. It is empty and droll. This is a care home, formerly for the elderly, but it is desolate. God’s waiting room is now fully departed. Almost.

Does God hate his creation this much?

In the kitchen he slowly, cautiously enters, are two old women, decrepit as the corpses hunting the outside world, but mad as badgers on stilts. They are bickering over something. The old man mutters.

“Fuckin’ jungle bunnies.”

“Ey?”

“Oh leave him Ethel, he’s just a nasty old racist. Now try channel 5.”

“Channel 5’s never worked!”

The two women return to their tug of war over the remote control for the small television, mounted up in the corner of the stainless steel, care home kitchen. Its screen stares blankly down on them. Grumbling, the old man wanders over, beneath the telly and picks up a walking stick. He hoists it to the machine and cracks the glass on its screen.

“What ‘ave you done that for? We was watchin’ that!”

“You’ve been fighting over the damn thing for days. There’s no electricity and the channels were down long before that went. You’ve both dementia, and can’t remember, or won’t. It is driving me crazy, as if there ain’t enough to worry about.” He spits with anger.

The old man's patience was gone with the two bundles of jackets, glasses and grey hair that stood bent double in front of him. Pathetic creatures really, but then lack of food on an already frail frame and the cold meaning anything warm must be welcomed hardly help the grooming process.

“I don’t have dementia. Do I?”

Ethel looks sadly at Agnes for an answer. Agnes turns away to the old man.

“Why isn’t the leccy working anyway?”

“Cos of this flaming African flu! You’ve seen them, dead in all but they’re still walking. The staff, the others, in the other room. They don’t breathe, they don’t sleep, they just eat.”

“They eat what?”

The man sighed. A week, maybe, since they’d had the last encounter. Probably too long for the women to recall. Sad that even an event so strange was gone in a few days to them. Or was it better?  Ethel went in to a cupboard and pulled out some tins.

“Shall I cook dinner? It is dinner time isn’t it?”

“I expect so love. Mr Grumpy do you want some food?”

Silence and a stare at the floor.

“Listen here, there’s no need to be rude. We’re making do on our own now, without the youngsters, without the others, and we’re going to have to be a bit civil. It isn’t nice being on our own but as you won’t let us out…”

His face shot round, a sneer saying he thought she knew better. He hadn’t said they couldn’t go out for some days. He hadn’t said they couldn’t go out since…

“I’m going to see Jim. Remember him? You two stay ‘ere an’ cook.”

The old man dimmed and growled while heading out the kitchen-prison and locking it behind him. A bolt he was pleased they couldn't break. They didn’t want to break. The old women were useful, as long as they were the same as him. This apocalypse had become tiresome to the elderly. Death was already coming for the old, now it was physical, an actual fight.

Struggling, the old man limped down the corridor- one which buzzes from a shut door. Flies, they would survive the end of humanity. Maybe them and the cockroaches will inherit the earth. He passes this door, covering his nose as he does. Breath visible in the hallway, he huddles his arms with his slow walk, not wearing as many layers as his dotty companions in the kitchen. No need for them now. Around a corner another door. He stops. Knocks and waits. What is left on the other side?

Knock, knock.

Quietly.

The old man whispers.

“Jim?”

“Jim mate?”

Inside the room a rustle. The old man’s face drops.

“Jim. How you feeling?”

From inside the room, more noise. No, no not Jim too.

Weakly, a response.

“Hello old boy.”

The old man reaches into his pocket and removes a key. Taking hold of the cold handle he unlocks and opens slowly. The room is dark, boarded up. The smell is awful, but crucially not rotten, not totally. Not yet.

In bed is Jim, ghostly pale and in bad health. The pictures on the wall tell his tale, but his face portrays Jim’s awful now. The old man’s nostrils are stung with the smell. He stares Jim up and down, even under what could be several duvets and wearing a winter hat to keep warm, he still appears frozen. Jim speaks again, his breathing heavy and voice croaky.

“Is the world still going down the drain? I heard a bang.”

“TV. Was me. Fed up of them two arguing over it all the time...

How you feeling? How’s the cheek?”

Leaning over Jim, kneeling on the bed and with a gentleness not expressed by his usual demeanor, the old man moves Jim's face toward him. On the left side of Jim’s face he has a bandage, which has dark blood soaked through in a small oval stain. As it is moved, as dry scabs pull from his translucent, elderly skin, Jim moans. With the disinterest of a bad nurse the old man ignores the obvious pain. This is no time for empathy.

Jim’s left eye is swollen, purple, half shut and bloodshot. Under the bandage is a wound, not very big but nasty and deep, as if a piece of Jim’s face has been clumsily removed. Being too old to heal quickly Jim has forged a visceral portrait of death. The gouge has turned a dark shade of blue, the veins in his cheek leading away from the ghastly gash emphasising their insidious implication under his paper thin skin. 

“Nasty.”

“I’m dying.”

The old man sits down in a chair pulled up next to the bed. He stares at Jim and lets a breath in deeply. Holds it, then blows it out.

“I’d say so. Slower than the others but dying none the less.”

“What’s left eh pal? I’m nearly gone, then it’ll be you and those two idiots. You’re no spring chicken, tough as an old boot but…”

Jim weakly clears his throat and grimaces. Then carries on.

“The world’s a mess. That flu is no flu. Making people do that, live on, Y’know. How you going to survive?”

“There’s nothing left. Not within reach I doubt.”

“Exactly. I don’t blame them, you know, the youngsters. Leaving when they did. They set us up best they could. We didn’t know Bill was sick, he hid it, ‘till he came at us. Got me. They could move, get free, get help for themselves. We’re all close to death anyway, making the last step shorter doesn’t matter does it?”

“They left us for dead.”

Jim sits up, sucking air in, expending a lot of energy he says,

“We’re already dead. This is no life. Those people outside look at them, unstoppable.”

“That’s no life either.”

“But it is a death. It is a death.”

“Are you saying that’s better?”

“You’re old, you’re dying. Did you expect to get up again?”

Jim bristles in his bed. His head lolls round exposing his darkened left eye and bloodied dressing. He is serious and lets hit points go,

“The room out there. What did we have to do to those bodies? To those people?

We smashed their heads in. To stop them getting up, comin’ at us.

Where’s their grave, where’s the mourners at their funeral. Where’s the nice coffin, and church and Priest.

This isn’t a war, mate, we don’t die as heroes now. It’s impossible. I’ve been thinking, it’s all I can do now, think.

The best you can hope for is not being torn apart. There’s no nice, quiet death we all wished for, not  in this new world. There probably wasn't ever. This is lying, rotting, in a poxy room with your head smashed in so you don’t get up.”

The chilled, calm threat of the world outside is overwhelming, palpable even, as then men look at each other. They are close but this is unchartered territory. Jim speaks first, again,

“I’ve hours left with this poison in me, maybe more but who knows. You have days, perhaps weeks. When I go and get up you’ll have to smash my head in like we did Bill.”

The old man gets up, and begins to pace, albeit at his age restricted speed. He plays thoughtfully with the shoddy, charmless curtain covering the boarded up window. There aren't the words in him. He's hateful, upset and sad; like many people facing the last breaths of their generation. What to cling on to now? Again, Jim beats him,

“I’m fed up of this home. I’m fed up of dying, let me go.”

“You’re asking me to kill you.”

Jim smiles.

“Perhaps. In a sense.”

“What?”

“In a sense I’m asking you to join me.”

“You’re mad.”

“Think about it…”

“Fuck off Jim.”

The old man leaves, locking it all up behind him. In the corridor he leans against a wall by the buzzing door, his perma-sneer worsening at the smell. Reaching into his inside coat pocket he takes out a packet of cigarettes. Four left. Putting one in his mouth and the pack carefully away he goes to light it but his fingers aren’t quite dextrous enough to spark the flame first time.

The cold. The cold and the age. Annoying. Finally lighting up, the flame illuminating the flies around him briefly, he inhales and breathes out ensconced in his thoughts.

Everything he does these days is slower. Not like it used to be. He’d no interest in much, even before all this happened, and certainly now. He was angry at the world, but more at himself. Knees all creaky, back stiff, easily tired and he hated Agnes and Ethel. But they are all he has to cling to, to be responsible for. He hated them not for who they were but what they had become, with age. Time heals all things, until you get old, then it’s your worst enemy.

You want time to slow down, stop or go backwards but it won’t, it just keeps noting every more minute gone. Every bug going round, gang of petulant youths, the weather, the health service; you fear for your life over everything these days. Or those days. Now the big fear is on the doorstep and soon to be in Jim’s room, looking like him, dead but walking. Hungry and insatiable, unstoppable.

READ: JIM AND THE OLD MAN PART TWO