The Last Christmas
By mikemazza68
- 442 reads
Jack reclined on the burgundy Chesterfield settee watching The
Morecambe And Wise Christmas Show, his lips mouthing the words
simultaneously with Eric Morecambe shouting them at Andre Previn from
the widescreen TV. "I'm playing all the right notes, but not
necessarily in the right order !"
He chuckled and took another sip of the twelve-year malt. Christmas
wasn't Christmas without Eric and Ernie.
Jack's smile drifted and he stopped the tape. He sighed and rummaged
through the DVD collection spread around his feet, most of which he
hadn't watched since he had liberated them from the smashed, burnt
shell of the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street.
Maybe he should watch "The Great Escape", "The Italian Job" or "The
Wizard Of Oz", bring back those childhood memories.
He frowned, letting the Special Edition of "Star Wars" drop onto "The
Seven Samurai". He shouldn't be wasting valuable energy on such trivia,
not when he could die at any time, not when life was at such a
premium.
The frown became a wry smirk; it was because life was at such a
premium, that he had taken time out to celebrate Christmas. He shuffled
across to the pile of CDs and flicked through them before finding just
what he wanted.
He lay back on the sofa and retrieved his whisky, closing his eyes and
grinning warmly as "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" by The Ronettes,
blasted from the huge speakers. Well, it certainly made a change from
"The End" by The Doors.
Jack was disappointed by the fact that he hadn't managed to get himself
a humungous turkey, but when the National Grid went down, all the
frozen food stores had turned into swimming pools overnight and,
besides, he knew that they tended to hang around inside the chest
freezers.
He had been living out of tins and on dehydrated food for the past
twelve months. He couldn't travel far enough out of the city to get
fresh food in the short time he had each day. He only ever saw cows and
pigs on videos these days. Of course, he could cook dog, cat, rat or
pigeon; there was certainly no shortage of them on the streets, but the
specimens he had seen looked riddled with a cocktail of diseases. He
wasn't that desperate.
Not yet.
As "Winter Wonderland" began to play, he heard the wails and shrieks,
heard the eerie voices shouting his name, urging him to come out from
beyond the electrified fences, his generator churning out power by the
kilovolt.
They were out early tonight. Jack turned the music up louder and cursed
himself that the speakers on the outer walls had been torn down; they
would have hated these songs.
He stood up and stretched before wandering into one of the bedrooms. He
yawned and swung open a couple of wardrobe doors, stared at the
glittering, silver-plated blades, at the samurai swords, knives and
coils of razor wire. It looked like a millionaire's torture
chamber.
Jack checked the other cupboards, studying the racks of weapons, the
automatics and sub-machine guns. He checked the huge boxes of
ammunition, the silver-tipped bullets and the hollow-pointed shells
filled with silver filings.
He was rather pleased with himself, having looted every extravagant
jeweller's in the West End, removing each scrap of gleaming silver to
put it to a much more rewarding use.
He thought of them, nesting in the dark vaults beneath Threadneedle
Street, in the dungeons of the Tower, in the food halls of Harrods' and
Selfridges'.
And, of course, in the icy labyrinths of the Underground. That was
where he knew they congregated in their thousands; a land of eternal
night. And now he knew exactly where they were, where they had always
been, lurking in the Northern Line, deep beneath Camden Town.
He heard "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" crank up and he smiled again
as he returned to the lounge, fished about in the heaps of videotapes
and DVDs, and put on a Wallace And Gromit feature, "The Wrong
Trousers".
Jack ignored the sounds of mayhem and destruction outside, ignored the
screeching and the howls as he watched and chuckled at the television
set. Buried deep in his mind was the thought that it might all be over
tomorrow, or even within a matter of hours, when he'd take the
Discovery, packed with silver weaponry, out into North London and
venture down those long, dark staircases into longer, darker tunnels.
He had put it off for far too long, but he had been too terrified,
especially since he was the only one left.
He stared up at the calendar. It still read "July" and he'd forgotten
how long it had been like that now. Each day had diffused into the next
until he wasn't sure what day it was, let alone if it was December
25th.
What he was certain of was that he would not get another chance. He
grinned and finished his whisky. When it was probably going to be your
last day alive, you could have Christmas Day whenever you wished.
With a sigh, he packed holdalls full of weapons, placed the crucifix
round his neck and left the video and CD running as he slowly walked
out through the door, letting it swing closed with a hollow finality
behind him...
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