The Line - Part 1 - An Original Short Story by K H Simmons

Photo by Adrian Moise on Unsplash

It was just a nightmare, wasn’t it? A terrible dream that made me wake up covered in sweat, my heart racing, that’s all it was, wasn’t it? It felt like a dream, the feeling was still there, the fear, the adrenaline, but the rest was a blur of something that didn’t feel quite like reality. It wasn’t reality was it? I reached over to click on the bedroom light only to find my bedside table missing. My hand fell to the side, clunking against the floor. I sat up, blinking until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was no noise beyond the room I was in. No traffic, no drunken shouts, no airplanes travelling to sunnier destinations. The silence did little to calm my thundering heart beat.

I pulled the covers off me, it clung to my sweat covered skin as if trying to save me from the reality beyond the bedsheets. My feet bumped against the next mattress as I tried to swing my legs out. The whole floor was covered in mattresses and restless bodies. Very few people were sleeping, those who were tossed and turned, nightmares plaguing their minds. I took a deep breath.

‘Hasn’t sunk in yet, has it?’

I looked over my shoulder to see a woman lying on a camp bed scrolling through her phone.

‘You have signal?’ I asked.

She shook her head, turning her phone around to show me. She was scrolling through her pictures. Three children, two girls, one boy, smiling, laughing, playing football together. It looked like a different world.

‘They’re not here?’

She shook her head again. ‘They’re at their dad’s. Every other weekend. If I’d known…’ she trailed off as she glanced back down at her phone. I knew what she was thinking if we’d known, if we’d known would anything have been different? What could we have done? Would we still have been sat here on borrowed mattresses in the middle of a basketball court of the leisure centre? Would this lady’s children have been here too?

‘They’ll be ok,’ I lied. She gave me a brave smile, recognising the lie, but appreciating it nonetheless.

‘Are you here with anyone?’ she asked.

I shivered as finally my body recognised the cool air of the hall and I tucked myself back under the blanket. ‘No, I just moved here a few weeks ago. New place, new start, all that, you know.’

‘Well, this is new alright.’ she replied. ‘I’m Milly.’

She held out a hand for me to shake. I grasped it, surprisingly grateful for something so solid, so normal as a handshake, for another human to touch to keep me grounded.

‘Ashe,’ I answered. Our hands lingered for a moment longer than should have been comfortable under any normal circumstances. For now it felt like that touch held so much weight and hope. ‘Do you know what the plan is?’

‘Apparently they’re evacuating us in the morning, they’re meant to be sending the military to take us to some refugee camp or something like that.’ Milly said. ‘I have to find them though.’ her eyes flicked back to her phone again.

‘Where’s their dad’s?’ I asked.

‘Hull.’

‘That’s not too far, they’ll get evacuated to the same place, I’m sure.’ I didn’t say if they made it to the Evac point. I didn’t need to. She knew that big IF was there without me telling her. What she needed now was hope. Since humankind took its first upright steps hope is what has kept us going. Hope that there’ll be a next meal. Hope that we can keep warm during the winter. Hope that we’ll make it another day. Now, more than ever, it’s hope that we need. ‘Listen, you’ll not do them any favours by running off on your own looking for them. Let’s get to the refugee camp, find out what’s happening and go from there.’

Laying awake staring at the high ceiling, following the various ducts and wires with my eyes, I found it impossible to still my brain. It must be nearly dawn but it was impossible to tell, there were no windows in the hall and the doors were all closed. At the far end some military types were whispering in hushed voices. Meanwhile a woman was tiptoeing through the assortment of beds flashing a torch at people’s faces. People groaned and complained as the light woke them. I sat up and glanced at Milly who was still awake as well. The woman strode closer, the torchlight passed across our faces, I flinched and squinted, holding a hand up to block it, then she moved on to the next bed. Only as she turned away did I see the gun hanging from her belt. I guessed she must be some kind of military, only she wasn’t wearing a uniform like the rest of them.

‘What are they doing?’ Milly asked. She got up and perched on the edge of my mattress. ‘They already checked everyone when they came in, didn’t they?’

The woman froze a couple of beds away from us. She was pointing her torch right in the face of a man curled up on a pile of blankets. He didn’t stir. The woman flicked the torch left and right back onto his face. Still nothing. I pulled the covers away from me as the woman reached for her radio. She needn’t have bothered though, two of the soldiers had seen her and were heading her way. One held up a hand to signal her. She nodded in response, her eyes darted around the hall. She locked eyes with me and Milly and indicated for us to be quiet. We kept our lips sealed but my heart at least was thudding against my chest. Whether it was the light, the movement, or pure unfortunate coincidence, the woman beside the man with the torch in his face woke up.

‘What are you-’ she started. The woman with the torch waved her hand gesturing for her to be quiet. I glanced back down at the sleeping man. His eyes were open, albeit rolled back in his head so you could only see the whites. He sat up like a man in a dream, his mouth open, drool dripping down his chin. The soldiers were close, but not close enough, the maze of bodies and beds was slowing them down. The woman with the torch pulled the handgun from its holster. A hiss came from the nearest soldier.

Have you ever shot a gun? I have once, at a gun range, wearing ear defenders. There’s a reason they make you wear those. In the echoing space of the sports hall the bang is deafening. It leaves my ears ringing. I can hear the screams though and the shouts, like I’m hearing them from underwater. I stare around the room. The soldiers are aiming their weapons. Everyone is sitting up and it’s impossible to tell who is awake and who’s not. The woman with the torch is shaking as she turns her gun on the woman in the bed next to the man with his brains splattered all over the blankets. It must be his wife, she’s screaming and crying, unaware of the gun being pointed at her.

I feel a tight hand grip my wrist and pull me from the bed. It wakes me from my stupor and suddenly I realise that we’re in the middle of what’s about to be a massacre. Another one. My second in as many days. Milly pulls me towards the nearest exit. We pass a soldier who is pointing his gun aimlessly without pulling the trigger. More shots go off. More screams. We pass another person stood by a tent, their eyes white and staring, their teeth gnashing as their head lolls. We rush by, careful not to touch it. Then we’re at the exit. Not everyone had reacted as quickly as us. Milly slams her palm against the fire exit and a rush of cold air meets us. I glance back in time to see the white-eyed man shot in the shoulder. He didn’t even flinch, he just began walking towards the nearest noise, a woman screaming. When he reached her he took hold of her head in his hands and just squeezed. Milly slammed the door shut.

‘What are you doing?’ I gasped as she grabbed one of the big bins from the side of the building and shoved it in front of the door. ‘There are people in there that are still alive. Stop!’ I grabbed her hands and pulled them off the bin handle. ‘You don’t have to do that. Don’t do that. You won’t forgive yourself.’

Milly stared at me, her chest heaving as adrenaline coursed through her veins. Inside more shots were sounding.

‘Come on. We need to move. The sound…’ I trailed off.

After a moment staring at the wall as if she could see through it into the carnage within, she nodded. ‘It will draw more of them.’

I tried not to think about it as the gunshots echoed through the night. It’s one of those fight or flight things and you just hope that your brain has enough sense to choose the right option. The only option. What could we have done? We had no weapons, no training. Hell, we don’t even know what those things are. We did the right thing. We did the only thing we could. We survived. Yet, I can’t help it. There’s this crushing feeling of guilt like a vice around my chest. I kept trying to tell myself that maybe others had got out. Maybe the soldiers had got it under control. Then I would remember the way that man...that thing had been squeezing that woman’s head and then all I could think was that all of those people were dead, one way or another. As we made our way somewhere, anywhere away from there, we saw them. They were walking there, like people sleepwalking, only a few at first, then more and more, all drawn by the noise. We let them go. We went around them, keeping our distance and keeping quiet so as not to draw the attention of their white-eyed stare. It was daylight by the time we stopped to consider where we were going.

We were on a street somewhere in the suburbs. Once I would have described it as quiet, but that described everywhere now. There was no movement beyond any of the windows, barely any cars sat in the driveway. It was like everyone had just vanished. I picked a house about halfway down where the door had been left wide open. I hoped that meant that there would be no one inside, awake or otherwise. My heart pounded against my chest as we went through the house room by room. Milly took the upstairs while I checked downstairs. A bowl of cereal had been left half eaten on the breakfast bar and the milk was starting to smell. I picked it up and went to tip it away. Halfway through the act I wondered why I was doing it. It wasn’t my house. It felt wrong just to leave it there though as a reminder of what was before.

A family had lived here. Their photos hung on the walls. A picture of middle-class life, two kids, a husband, a wife, holidays somewhere sunny. Their image gave no indication there was anything wrong. They were happy. Until this. I wondered where they were now. Had they been in the leisure centre awaiting evacuation too?

‘Ashe!’ Came a shout from upstairs. I put the bowl in the sink and hurried upstairs towards where Milly’s voice was coming from. She was frozen in the doorway to the master bedroom. She didn’t say anything, she just stepped to the side. The smell of blood and death was instant. Only the smell of off-milk downstairs must have masked it. The sickly stench of blood clung to my throat, but it wasn’t that which made me wretch. It was the scene that had been left on the bed like something out of a horror movie. I turned away. It couldn’t be real. None of this could be. It was all a nightmare, it must be. The man laid on the bed barely resembled a man anymore. The pen knife that had been used to deface him lay on the sheets beside him along with one of his eyes. I gagged again and took hold of the door handle.

‘Shouldn’t we...?’ Milly trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence. Shouldn’t we - what? Bury him? Cover him to provide him with some kind of dignity? I don’t know. Maybe we should, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t know this man. I don’t know what he thought when he woke up and his wife didn’t, and in her sleep, she took the pen knife that had only ever been used to open parcels and instead used it to open his flesh. I don’t know where his wife was or where the children in the photos were. I don’t know. I slam the door shut and take a deep breath to steady myself.

‘Come on, the car was still in the driveway.’ I say, trying to blink the image of that man out of my mind. Milly gave a slow nod.

‘We should pack supplies.’ she said, after a long pause, she added, ‘We don’t know if the refugee camp is safe.’

‘Let’s be quick. The sleeper might come back,’ I caught myself. They hadn’t been given a name yet. The news had been saying it was some kind of chronic noctambulism - they were sleepwalking, only they couldn’t be woken up and the things they did...Even the news readers struggled with how to describe it. Words like zombie were thrown around but these people weren’t dead. They were asleep, trapped in their own bodies in some kind of nightmare. A chill ran down my spine as I wondered if they were aware of it, if they knew what they were doing but couldn’t stop it. I pushed the thought away as we made our way back downstairs. We hadn’t been told much, only to stay away from them, if you were in one of the red areas, all you could do was get to an evacuation point and wait to be taken to a refugee camp. We were reassured they were safe and the situation was under control. Yet, we had seen first hand what that control looked like.

About Me

I'm Katy, but go by K H Simmons officially. I write a lot of sci-fi, dark fantasy and dystopian fiction. If you're here for sparkly vampires, you're in the wrong place ;)

I frequently post short stories on my Facebook page, as well as work on full length novels. If you want more short stories like the above - check out my anthology Death, Demons & Dystopia available on Amazon/Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YN5DY98

When I'm not writing, I can usually be found cuddling dogs, reading, at the gym or playing video games.