The Attic by Derek Prior Page A

said.
    He nodded at me. “Too clever for your own good, Wes. Good boy. Should be safe now. Front’s all boarded up, and there’s no sign of them out back.”
    “We need to barricade the doors,” I said. “You, know, with chairs and stuff.”
    “I’m on it.” Dad went back to the lounge and upturned an armchair.
    “… still no official word on where it came from,” a reporter was saying on TV. He’d been saying the same thing for hours, and they kept showing a clip of zombies lumbering after a cameraman before they cut to the studio, where they asked a bunch of stupid people the same stupid questions and got the same stupid answers.  
    While Dad dragged the chair to the front door, I watched another scene of blue-grey zombies walking all stiff and creepy-like along a London high street. People were screaming and running from them. Then there was a still picture of pigs and birds, and it was back to Will Turner in the studio.
    “Professor Worsley,” Will Turner was saying, “we’ve had dozens of emails asking whether the virus—that is what it is, isn’t it?”
    “Possibly,” said a little round man with a silly beard and glasses. “It’s still early days. It could be a bacillus; it could be a freak manifestation of a latent mutation; it could be terrorists. No one knows.”
    “But do we know if it’s spread by animals?” Siobhan Smith asked. She always did the show alongside Will. She had plastic hair and fake teeth, Dad said, and her chest weren’t natural.
    “It could well be.” Professor Worsley took off his glasses and rubbed them on his jacket. “But it might not be, as well.”
    “Richard Dawkins said it was an act of God,” Will said.
    Worsley huffed at that and put his glasses back on. “Professor Dawkins was being ironic.”
    “What do you say to the people who claim it started in a Verusia Labs facility? Do you think it’s fair to blame—”
    I switched the TV off.
    “What’s ‘ironic’ mean, Dad?”
    “Metal,” he said, walking into the lounge and looking like he’d forgotten what he was doing, same as Granddad John used to.
    “The back,” I said.
    “Oh, yeah, right.” Dad dragged the other armchair through to the kitchen.
    “Fuck!” he yelled, dropping the chair as the cat flap banged shut and our cat, Watson, hissed. His fur was standing on end, and his eyes were all white and milky. Dad let out a sigh and bent to stroke him.
    “You scared the crap out of me, kitty-cat,” he said. “Ow!” He snatched his hand away when Watson bit him. “Fuck. Shit. That really hurt.”
    Blood was seeping between his fingers and pooling on the floor. He grabbed a tea towel to wrap around the bite, but Watson hissed again and pounced. Dad fell backward into the armchair, and the cat was on top of him, biting and scratching.
    “Get him off me!” Dad cried, thrashing about with his arms and legs. “Wes, get him off!”
    I half-screamed, half-cried as I grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack and clubbed Watson with it. He turned and snarled at me, and I hit him again, right in the face. Blood sprayed onto the cabinets, and Watson flopped to the floor.  
    Dad pushed himself out of the armchair and crunched his foot down on Watson’s head. He kept it there until the cat stopped moving.
    I put my hand to my throat as sick burned its way up my windpipe.
    “Go upstairs!” Dad shouted.
    His face was all scratched up, and his neck and arms were bleeding.
    “But he’s dead.” I pointed at the cat’s splattered head.
    “Now!” Dad yelled, and shoved me back into the lounge.
    I stumbled at first, but then turned and ran upstairs. He followed me, and he had that look about him you didn’t want to argue with. When we reached the landing, he fetched a chair from his room to stand on. He reached up and unbolted the trapdoor to the attic, then pulled the wooden ladder down.
    “Go on,” he said.
    I did as I was told while he threw the chair aside.
    “Dad—”
    “Just go!”
    When