The Perfect Island

The Perfect Island

By: Hubert L. Mullins



Granvarra wasn’t a tourist castle like most others in Ireland. County Sligo had its share of gutted monasteries and abbeys but Granvarra was home to a family at the time of the Rising. An important family, Thomas noted, looking at the large oil canvases littered throughout the cold, winding corridors. Most depicted a regal man with graying hair and a hawk-nose, smiling like he owned the world. Probably an IRA dignitary or something, he thought. The gray haired man’s eyes were hollow, like he looked at Thomas with scorn—with anger. After all, Thomas had helped himself over the wall, had helped himself to all the food and comforts for the past two weeks. Why shouldn’t he? Gray-haired man and his wife certainly weren’t coming back. They were dead—shot—in the basement. Not reanimated dead. Just dead.

That was how most people handled the undead apocalypse. They couldn’t cope with watching their loved ones die and then rise again with a shake and a twitch. Even now, Thomas looked over the wall, into the foggy gloom of the morning. It was still dark, the sun purpling the mountains in the east. The wind carried the same smell as it always did—burned and rotting flesh. Thomas had grown accustomed to it. For days, he carried a handkerchief over his face whenever he walked the battlements, coffee cup in hand, but now he barely noticed it. He’d already resigned the fact that it would always be there.

The streets beyond were choked with cars, litter, pieces of the dead and a darkness that seemed to cling to everything—like cotton candy made of shadows. Thomas could see the shuffling of several dark figures beyond a pileup of vehicles. Dead croaks came from dead throats as they aimlessly stumbled over one another. He could get used to the smell, but he could never be at ease with that sound. It was just awful. Why did they have to make that noise, anyway?

Thomas was satisfied with his castle. It was extremely safe. Unlike other castles-turned-home, this one had not had windows cut into the ground floor. That was a very good thing. The dead couldn’t climb. All they could do was scrape their grimy fingernails on the cold, gray stone below.

In addition to fortified walls, Thomas had enough food to last three lifetimes. The gray haired man feared civil uprising more than anything. He kept weapons, canned food, a generator with enough propane to fuel the entire island and even a state-of-the-art desalinizer that pumped ocean water from beneath the castle up to a reservoir where it became fresh water. He’d had hot baths every night this week to the sounds of thumping against the massive oak doors. The one thing that bothered him was the thought of the previous owners. Why did they shoot themselves when they were so able to protect themselves? Thomas thought: They had everything they needed to survive, except the will.

The next morning, Thomas was walking along the east rampart and lost his breath for a moment, for when he looked out into the early haze, he saw a freeway stretching as far as the eye could see. On it, came the pressed bodies of the dead. He’d never seen so many. Surely, this road most have led straight to Dublin. Where did they all come from? Thomas calmed himself and noticed that the road ended abruptly some fifty yards away. At one time, it probably wrapped around the castle, but now looked as though it had been taken out by explosives. A smart move, he thought. Now, the dead were dropping off the end of the road, rolling down the hill and piling up at the foot of the castle, some fifty feet down. Thomas laughed as he watched them. They looked like turtles on their backs as they struggled to get up. He lingered a while longer, watching them watch him—their cold, dead eyes marking him. Their outstretched arms reaching. They kept coming and kept falling into the pit. The line of dead, ten abreast, disappeared into the quiet distance.

A few nights later, Thomas was eating cereal in the downstairs kitchen with a roaring fire at his back. He felt odd. A shiver went down his spine. For the first time since finding the castle, he felt strangely unnerved. The fire made a loud crackle and he found himself going out of the room to cast himself in silence. He didn’t even have a gun. Why not? Had he grown this confident that he didn’t need to carry a firearm?

Then he heard it.

Somewhere upstairs, something was moving—dragging. He was certain of it. Thomas tried to remember where the nearest gun was, and uttered a small curse when he realized it was by his bed—upstairs. He gritted his teeth, mounted the stairs—and came face-to-face with one of them. It was a large, burly man with singed clothes and a large gash across his face. Thomas narrowly avoided its arms as it fell across him. He wriggled his way by and ran up the stairs to get to the battlements.

As he passed his bedroom, he saw three of them hovering over his bed—attracted by the warmness of his blankets. They were smelling him out. They’d just turned to face him when he took off again, hammering up the deathly cold stairs as fast as he could.

How did this happen? He would have heard them come in, right? A crash? A bang? But no. When he got to the eastern side, he saw where the dead were coming from and realized he knew what the gray-haired man had known all along.

The dead were still coming down the freeway from the east. They were still dropping off the edge like lemmings but now that so many were in the pit, they were creating a ramp from the road to the battlement. The newest wave of zombies simply walked across their brethren and stood atop the wall with Thomas.

He turned around and started to run, but there were three already there. They’d infiltrated the whole place, like a plague. How he wished he had the gun! But not for them. Thomas stood on the battlement, then hopped and skipped along it, dogging rotting hands and fingers until he hovered over a place that didn’t have dead at the bottom. He surely hoped he’d be dead before they could get to him and make him . . . like them. Thomas took one last breath, wished for a cigarette and then fell back off the wall, letting the quiet darkness below take him.

(1124 Words)