Bubbles
Bubbles ran, her feet pounding the tarmac as she passed by the shops on Ash. There were more of them there. Zombies. Loitering, as if they didn’t know what was going on, which Bubbles supposed, they didn’t.
Her feet hurt. She had been wearing her slippers when she left the house, not having had the opportunity to bring anything else other than what she was wearing; hardly suitable attire. She’d lost her slippers somewhere along Chestnut and she was pretty certain the soles of her bare feet were cut to ribbons, but the state of her feet really was the least of her worries. She couldn’t even afford to worry about the fact she had been chased, although it appeared the creatures were on the slower side of things, despite obvious persistence, out of the door by her zombified children. Not that they were her children any more. On some level she understood that and she would grieve for them later, when she had time, when she was safe, assuming either of those things came to pass.
For now, Bubbles was concerned with only one thing; her immediate safety.
She turned off Ash and onto Larkfield, taking the shorter route offered by the grass verge. She wasn’t sure whether it was mud or dog shit that she trod in, not that there was a great deal she could do about it either way. With a quick glance over her shoulder as she rounded the corner she could see the number of zombies in her wake was growing, their ranks already swollen by those who had been milling around outside the shops. They were not fast, Bubbles was able to keep ahead of them, but their drive and numbers made even their modest pace daunting.
She avoided Maple, even though it was clear as far as she could tell, but there was a three-bed detached she refused to pass by. There were too many painful memories, too much trauma that even though she had spent years of therapy dealing with, not even running for her life could convince her to pass that house, just in case he was there. He wouldn’t be, it was a literal impossibility. He had electrocuted himself in the garage almost twenty years prior but it didn’t matter; she couldn’t deal with that now.
Instead she continued along Larkfield, instinct telling her to keep to the middle of the road, following the white lines. It was a tactic that proved to be a sensible one, as moments before she was set to cut the corner onto St Patrick’s a zombie staggered out from behind a hedge, right in the spot where she would have been had she been taking the perceived shortest route. But giving the creature a wide berth, Bubbles made the turning easily enough.
The stinging of her feet was becoming close to being unbearable. With every footfall she felt it might well be her last but she put such thoughts to the back of her mind and pushed herself harder, grateful beyond all measure that she regularly spent eight hours a week at the gym.
Soon, although not soon enough as far as she was concerned, Bubbles reached the junction with Maple, a few hundred yards or so beyond the trauma-ridden house. Up until that point she’d had no real idea where she had been going while running for her life, but at that moment it hit her. The park. It was secure, or it could be secured. It had heavy iron gates at either end of the road that served as its only access point. If she could get the first gate shut and latched, run across the park while simultaneously checking, as best she could, that the park was zombie free, and get the opposite gate latched, then maybe, just maybe, she would survive the morning.
The gate was open. She’d known that would be the case, it always was, but she didn’t have time to go celebrating that fact. She grabbed one side of the gate. It was stiff and creaked like a bastard but it moved, and she managed to wrestle it into position and drop the bolt into its designated hole in the ground. Then she turned her attention to the second gate. It was stiffer, and by some margin. The pressure she was having to put on her feet to get her entire weight behind the gate caused excruciating pain but slowly, surely, the gate was moving.
She could hear the moaning and groaning of the zombies, the irregular shuffling of their feet, even above the noise of her own, ragged breaths, and the creaking of the rusted hinges. Within seconds the horde’s forerunners were visible, not twenty yards ahead of her as they made their way towards the slowly closing, wrought-iron gates. Bubbles pushed with all her strength and let out an almighty grunt of effort. The gate closed. The latch fell into place, more by luck than judgement, and she quickly dropped the second bolt into the ground.
Bubbles wanted to rest. As she backed away from the gate and the relief washed over her that it was managing to hold the zombies back, even as their combined mass pressed against it and arms snaked through the narrow gaps between the iron bars, she had to resist the seat offered by the raised turf verge. Instead, she forced her tired and aching legs back into action and walking quickly, made her way into the park proper.
As soon as she reached grass to walk upon she did so. To her right, beyond a large square of grass where numerous times she had parked her car, was a pair of fenced tennis courts and beyond that, a bowling green and attached pavilion. She forced herself to focus despite the combination of pain and fatigue, checking and double-checking that there was no sign of anyone or anything; the latter definitely being the more important. The last thing she wanted was to trap a zombie or zombies inside the gates of the park with her.
Satisfied that there was no sign of movement there she continued, crossing a sand-covered footpath and then onto the large expanse of grass that comprised the football field and cricket ground. Bubbles was hobbling but she pressed on, her eyes constantly on the move and her head on a swivel. The football pavilion, more of a village hall with changing rooms, was shut up with what looked to be net curtains on the windows. As far as she could tell there was no movement there but she knew she would have to be careful when she came to check inside, as was the case with any of the on-site buildings and structures she explored.
Far to her right was a large fenced-off play area. It was entirely secure, she knew. The fence itself was some twelve feet in height all around and unlike the main gates of the playing fields, its gate was well-maintained with a latched, default status.
Through a break in the cloud cover the sun shone down upon Bubbles as barefoot, she rejoined the road that went around the football pitch and between high walls, carefully made her way down the steep, winding drive, that led to the gate and the main road from Watnall that skirted Nuthall village, beyond.
To both her surprise and relief there was no sign of any zombies and she was able to take her time with the gate; a single unit, rather than the double affair at the other side of the park.
The area secure, Bubbles made her way away from the gate. At the very first bench she came across she took a seat that she might rest her knackered, aching feet.
