Diary: 2015 February PART 20.

28th Feb cont’d

On the count of 3 we launched ourselves at Mair. She still had the carving knife in her hand. Ashley hit her from the right, Rob hit her from the left. I was a second behind them as I swept her feet from under her. As she hit the floor the knife dropped from her hand. Rob had her left arm and leaned over to pin her right arm to the floor aswell. Ashley crawled over and sat on her legs to stop her kicking. I knelt down and held my hunting knife in her face. She was wriggling and screaming, banging her head on the carpeted floor. I quickly glanced behind to look at the girls. “Carys put the lid over his head” She got up and covered Johns head. Seren had her hands in the veg, about to eat some. I told her not to eat or drink anything and turned back round to face Mair. “Calm down” I told her. She stopped struggling and looked at me. “Tells us what happened”.

She said she’d tried to talk to John again the night before about killing the boys. He’d reacted badly as expected and lost his temper. He was about to hit her when little Rhys came downstairs. He screamed at his Daddy not to hit Mummy. Usually John calmed down if the boys came but last night had been different. He’d turned and slapped Rhys full across the face, the poor boy is only 6. He’d fallen to the floor unconscious. Mair said she saw red and ran at John, pushing him hard from behind. He stumbled and fell, hitting his head on the door frame. Mair had run past him into the kitchen and grabbed the first knife she found. When John staggered into the kitchen after her she was waiting for him. They argued and he tried to get the knife off her but she dodged him. He was still unsteady after hitting his head and stumbled again. Mair stabbed him in the chest, again and again and again. She said she didn’t remember anything more until this morning when she woke up on the kitchen floor in a pool of Johns blood. She knew he was obviously dead, there was no sign of Rhys. She searched the house and farmyard but couldn’t find him. In her grief she returned to the house and decided to ask us to help her but couldn’t face admitting she’d killed John. She thought the best way to dispose of him would be to feed him to her 2 zombified sons in the cellar.

A mad light was in her eyes as she was telling her story. She kept smacking her lips and the side of her mouth would twitch after every sentence.

Once she’d decided to give him to the boys she tried to move his body. It was much too heavy so she had to chop him up into smaller pieces. As she was butchering him it had dawned on her that he was good fresh meat, as good as a fresh pig even. It seemed such a waste not to share the bounty and she made a decision to invite us to tea. There was way too much meat for one. Unfortunately she had to give the best cuts to her boys of course and that really only left us with the head and guts.

We listened in disbelief, the strain of the last month had obviously been too much for Mair to bear. She was crazy, she’s snapped. I asked her if Rhys had come back yet. “Oh no, he’s scared of his brothers, but it’s ok, they’re full up now. They won’t eat him for a few days.”

I was still kneeling on the floor with my hunting knife pointed at Mairs face. I looked up at Rob then Ashley. “What do we do?” I asked. They both looked at me with blank faces. Mair was lying still and calm now. I looked back at her, into her eyes. I saw nothing, no emotion. She said “Please don’t press so hard on my arms, you’re hurting me” Rob loosened his grip slightly. I saw her windmill her hands and wriggle her fingers, feeling the blood rushing back then lay still and closed her eyes. She started breathing more slowly, deeply. I sat frozen wondering what she was going to do when before I could blink she threw her weight upwards towards me. Instinctively I extended my arm to stop her, impaling her right eye on my hunting blade. She took a deep breath and relaxed and slowly sank back down onto the floor. My blade was 7 inches long deeply serrated and had turned her eyeball to mush. There was about 4 inches of the blade still protruding from her head, the other 3 inches deeply buried. Her eye was leaking a clear jelly like fluid as her eyeball deflated. She wasn’t breathing now. I let go of the handle on put my hand to her throat to feel for a pulse. Rob and Ash were like statues, mouths open in shock and disgust. I felt no pulse. “She’s dead” As I pulled the knife out of her eye it came with a wet sucking noise, her deflated eyeball came with it, the optic nerve partially severed along with some veins. A pool of blood was forming in the cavity of her eye socket. I wiped the knife against her face as it came free to get the eye off it and then wiped the blood off on her cardigan.

“Lets get out of this awful place” I said. Nobody argued.

We went straight to the landrover and drove home. On the way we saw a group of 3 zombies at the side of the road eating what looked like the remains of a sheep. It was nearly full dark when we arrived back at the farm. We went inside and sat at the kitchen table. “We’re hungry Mummy” said Carys. I made them jam baps and orange juice and sent them to bed. Rob went with them to do our nightly checks to make sure nothing had gotten into the house. Ashley slumped his head onto his arms and sighed deeply. “We should have got her coffee before we left”

Priorities eh!

This morning we’re all feeling pretty subdued. The girls helped me milk the cows, Rob is still working on that bloody pig sty and Ashley has taken the transit out saying something about having an idea. It had better not involve animals again because if he comes back with any more livestock I swear I’ll stab him in the eye too!

I can’t help thinking about little Rhys and where he’s gone. In a week or so he’s lost his entire family. In the last month he’s lost his entire world. we all have. Hiraeth, yeah that fits, it fits just right. I really want to go home. I want to know where mum and dad are and if they’re alright. I want to know where my family is, if I have any left. We all feel the same. Rob wants us to take a trip to his parents village, maybe we will soon. We’re all tired. This has been the most bizarre month of our lives. So many have died, we’ve changed beyond recognition. We now murder people on an almost daily basis, we loot shops, we get shot at in the daylight and zombies try to eat us at night. What kind of world is this for my girls? They’re coping really well I think. Seren is still a bit young to understand, Carys is old enough to understand some but not all. I don’t know whether I understand it myself.

9pm I’m in the bath, surrounded by candles. Once upon a time it would have been quite a romantic little treat. Now it’s daily life with no electric. The bath is a bit cold. By the time you heat up the second bucket of water the first is going cold and so on so we only ever have a lukewarm bath. We make up for it with bubbles. I can hear Rob and Ash laughing downstairs. I might need a little cry, for all the things we’ve lost. We’re the lucky ones. We survived. We have each other.  I love my family so much. I think I’ve figured out why I feel so down today. Mair was the first person I’ve killed that wasn’t a zombie. I know I didn’t mean to kill her but it still counts. I guess we’d have had to do something with her. A crazy murderer is quite probably more dangerous than the zombies. We must go back to her house tomorrow and deal with her body. We also need to deal with her boys and try to find Rhys. A 6 year old boy can’t stay missing for long surely. He’ll be cold and hungry. I just hope he doesn’t find his mum, we should have gone back today and moved her. It’s too late now anyway. First job for tomorrow.