Flu (28 page)

    The little girl was walking around the room, now, picking things up and putting them down again. In her hand, she held a bottle. She sipped at its tip it like a comfort dummy every few seconds, hardly draining much of the juice inside.

    She wandered over to the window, standing on her tip toes to look down at the ever-increasing tide of bodies below.

"Mirtis
," she said, pointing.

    Pat looked at Karen. It was the first they'd hear her say since finding her.

    "Mirtis," she said again, a sad look drawing across her dark eyes.

Chapter Twenty Five

    They left the house on the Lisburn road almost immediately, Lark keen to get away before they heard the inevitable gunshot from within. It was dark, though, and it seemed foolish to do anything brave in the dark. So the unlikely duo found a safe-ish spot in which to park, halfway down the Ml motorway, tucked under a recently constructed underpass. They settled down for the night, feigning sleep in an attempt to coax in the red-stained dawn.

    Geri didn't think she had slept at all. Her eyes felt too alert for sleeping, even when they were closed. But she must have nodded off at least briefly, finding herself dreaming as the gentle light of morning roused her stiff body.

    It had been a different dream than before. This one featured only her and Lark, sailing the Land Rover as if it were a boat, through a sea of flaming bodies. She thought back to the petrol station from before. How it had flared up, loudly. Noxious, black fumes bellowing into the blue-sky palette like black ink. And the dead, moving towards it as if hypnotised. Her dream was just a replay of that, she reckoned. Nothing more, nothing less.

    "You awake?" she said to Lark. But she knew he was. His reflection in the window gave him away, his eyes hanging open, as if held there by clothes pegs. His pupils hardly visible, the whites heavily bloodshot. He looked so bad that Geri considered, for a moment, that he might have taken ill during the night. Contracted the flu, just like everyone else she had known.

    He turned around, looking at her and smiling faintly, before rubbing his face with his hands.

    "Fuck," he said for no reason at all, then yawned loudly. "Did you sleep?"

    "I think so," she said. "Not much, though."

    "Me neither," he said.

    Geri looked out the window, surprised to find none of the dead hovering around the vehicle.

"They
must have slept, though," she said, smiling.

    Lark laughed, "The sleep of the dead."

    They sat silently for a few moments, staring out at the.empty space around them. It was comforting to see none of the dead there, for once. You could almost pretend that they no longer existed. That they had rotted away in the night. Or evaporated, somehow, like ghosts. Sucked up by the rising sun like the shadows of life they were.

    "Geri," Lark said, and she realised it was the first time he had addressed her by her name. "What happened the other night -"

    "Don't," she said, turning her face away from him. "I don't want
that
to define me. I don't want the pity, the stigma or any other bullshit that comes with being a 'victim'… so don't…"

    "Okay," he said, simply. "I won't…"

    "It never happened," she said sternly, turning and point a finger at him.

    "Right," he said, hanging his head.

    For another moment, nothing passed between them. They both stared at the empty motorway in front of them, as if they were alone. As if they were separate, in some way, from each other. Like two trees standing side by side.

    But then Geri leaned forward, gently kissing Lark on the cheek.

    "Thank you," she whispered. "For what you did…"

    His eyes glistened as he continued to stare ahead, unflinchingly. It was as if her kiss had turned him to stone or ice. Geri suddenly felt very aware of herself, aware of how the dynamic between them was shifting and how uncomfortable that made her.

    "Will we hit the road?" she said, purposely killing the moment, busying herself with keys and seatbelts.

    Lark turned his head, smiling cheekily, the way he always did. It was as if the moment were forgotten to him, also.

    "Sure," he said. "Let's see if your porky pie mate's still in the land of the living."

    Geri shook her head, laughing. The joke was in poor taste, but she welcomed it as a return to their normal rapport. She turned the ignition, firing up the Land Rover and moving it quietly out onto the main Ml motorway. The roads were empty. The real reason for this, of course, was nothing to do with ghosts or shadows or the sun. The stark reality was that few of the dead saw much point in wandering too far from the sparsely populated life that the city boasted. There was nothing on a motorway that would normally be of interest to them, and they clearly hadn't found their way to Lark and Geri as yet. Geri wondered, briefly, how far and wide their sense of smell - or vision - could reach. They already suspected they were pretty much deaf. Had their other senses been heightened, therefore, overcompensating for a bereavement of sound?

    Before long, they pulled up just shy of the storehouse where they had left the two cops. It was obvious that the cops had attracted some unwanted attention, a band of the dead accumulating by the shutter doors, as if awaiting some great event. As if queuing for the opening of a shopping centre or some concert. Geri almost felt sorry for them. Their heads were hanging limply from their necks. As if they were fast asleep on their feet. They looked tired, bored. Geri began to wonder what it would be like to be one of them, to be trapped in a body that seemed somehow familiar, yet ultimately alien to you. To be a pale imitation of that which you crave. Warm flesh, human blood. Was their tireless campaign motivated by mere jealousy?

    But Lark didn't seem to see anything in their hapless poise, apart from inconvenience.

    "Great," he said, shaking his head. "Just what we fucking need."

    Geri laughed her plaintive thoughts away.

    "What?" he said, as if she were laughing at him.

    "Oh, nothing," she said. He was clearly a man to bring you right back down to earth, were you ever to need it. "How's your aim?" she asked him.

    "Eh?" he replied, looking bewildered. She wondered if he was still waking up.

    "Your
aim,"
she reiterated, handing him the rifle from the back. "I found this in the glove compartment," she said, feeling around and then retrieving a telescopic scope. "It probably attaches onto the rifle, some way."

    As she watched, Lark fixed the scope into place. He pulled the cocking handle of the rifle back halfway to lock it into place. He slapped in a fresh magazine and pulled the handle loose, allowing it to shift forward again, chambering a round. Geri wondered how Lark seemed to know so much about firearms, recalling the mini-lesson he had given to her, earlier, regarding the handgun. Although he didn't seem as proficient with a rifle, he still appeared to know how to fit it together.

    "Two months in the Army," he said, as if reading her mind. "They threw me out for dealing dope."

    Geri laughed.

    "Were you ever
not
a dick?" she asked facetiously.

    "Okay, wind down that window," he said, once the rifle was ready.

    Geri did as she asked, Lark having climbed into the back seat to lean across, allowing the lengthy rifle barrel, with fitted silencer, to slide out of the window. She watched as he struggled to find a suitable position, to get the rifle where he needed it to be in order to freely move.

    "Comfy?" she asked, sarcastically.

    "Not really," he said. "Look, I'm going to have to get out. I don't have enough free rein in here. Not when taking out that many." He scrambled back into the front seat, rifle slung by his side. He reached for the door handle.

    "Be careful," Geri said, touching his arm.

    He looked at her, shocked, as if she had spat on him.

    "Listen, I'm a crack shot with this bad girl," he said, protesting.

    "Like hell you are," Geri scoffed. "Maybe the pistols, but you're shit with a rifle!"

    "The fuck I am!" he said, laughing with her. "Just you watch, sweetheart. I'll have those filthy dogs downed in seconds."

    He climbed out of the Land Rover, running around to the other side in order to lean across the bonnet, facing his targets. His first shot surprised Geri. Regardless of the silencer, she still felt herself jump with the rifle's slight shake reverberating through the vehicle. It was a good shot, though, tearing a clean hole through the head of a middle-aged woman on the periphery of the main pack. Her body fell without protest. None of the others seemed concerned.

    Lark began to carefully work his way through the rest of the pack, aiming for the heads each time. His shots were mostly on target, picking the dead off one by one like grazing cattle. Some strayed wide, though; Geri heard Lark swear as he no doubt felt the pressure of his boast to her. The last few began to stumble towards the Land Rover, seeming to sense the danger was coming from there.

    "Shit," she heard him say as he couldn't seem to get the next few shells to hit anywhere close to their targets. He was panicking, and it was making
her
nervous, as well as him. His next shell hit one of them in the chest. As Geri watched, it stumbled backwards, tripping, before scrambling back onto its feet, drunkenly. She watched as Lark struggled with his rifle, the dead thing ebbing ever closer to the Land Rover.

    "Shoot it!" she shouted, unhelpfully, out the windscreen as she locked her door.

    "I'm trying to," she heard him say back," but the fucking gun's jammed!" She watched the wounded dead fuck move towards him, its eyes as blank and lethargic as ever. As it drew closer, she realised it was wearing a police uniform, and for a horrible moment she thought it might be George (it was too small to be Norman). But it was bald and older. That much she could tell beneath the calloused face and ground-in gore.

    Lark continued to struggle with his rifle, aiming then shaking it when the shell didn't fire. Eventually he turned it around, approaching the dead cop with the rifle acting as a club. He struck it across the head, using the rifle's butt. It fell to the ground, landing on its back, arms stretched up as if to protect itself from further blows. Geri watched Lark club it like a wounded dear, the sounds of each blow growing softer. She noticed the rifle butt get thicker in rich, scarlet grime, each time he lifted it. But Lark kept going, pouring a lot more effort into the action than seemed to be required.

    "Stop it! She cried through the window. "It's dead, for Christ's sake!"

    She could see another one coming for him, but he still seemed lost in the moment, as if caught in some kind of death trance. He continued to beat on the dead cop's head with a fervour she had never seen before. It was as if all his anger, all his frustration was being taken out in this one brutal, repetitive action. And he seemed to be enjoying it, too. Maybe that's what worried her the most.

    She yelled at him again, more furiously, still too frightened to open the Land Rover door. Yet her shrill, banshee-like shriek seemed to be enough to snap him out of the trance; Lark turned to face the nearing dead fuck at the last moment. He stepped back, pulled the rifle into place and aimed towards its head. Miraculously, the clubbing seemed to have cleared the gun's jam, two shells finally leaving the barrel to hit home, blowing chunks of hair and brain out of the dead fuck's head with final, angry precision. Still aiming, he turned on the remaining pack, downing them with similar success.

    As Geri looked upon the ten or so bodies scattered across the tarmac grounds, she breathed out a sigh of relief. Finally, she opened the door and stepped out of the Land Rover, noticing how her entire body was shaking from head to toe. The sun was still beaming in the sky, and she could feel its heat on her face. It would give her more freckles, and she had far too many already. Plus, it was meant to age you, she thought. As she looked upon the nearest dead faces, lying before her, she could make out sun damage on their faces, too. The rays hadn't been kind at all, scorching their already parched, prune-dry skin, creating little bubbles. Geri looked up at the sun, narrowing her eyes against its fierceness. She wondered briefly if it were somehow on their side, equally as angry as humanity was at the ugly, messy dead littering God's Great Earth.

    She looked to Lark, noticing he hadn't moved or spoken since she had got out of the car. He was still standing over the cop's body. She walked towards him, and he turned to face her.

    "I think I knew that one," he said, quietly. "He picked me up downtown, once. He was a real prick."

    Geri laughed, pushing a hand against him, playfully. Soon Lark was laughing, too, all previous signs of malice having faded away.

    George woke to see the sun shining in from an opened shutter. He could make out some blurred shapes and grabbed his handgun, thinking the dead had somehow managed to breach the storeroom. But as his vision cleared, he realised it wasn't the dead who had disturbed him. He first noticed the bright red hair of Geri, reflecting the sun. She was standing in front of him, also holding a handgun, as if prepared for the worst. He next spotted Lark, the tattooed freak standing on the edge of the entrance, nearby, smoking a cigarette.

    "You came back," he said before adding, sarcastically, "how nice."

    "I felt bad," she said. "Listen, what I did was very wrong, George. I know that now." She seemed sincere. He could almost read the guilt in the freckles scattered across her face. Like Braille. "But I got scared, God help me. Surely you can understand that?"

    But George gave her nothing.

    "And what about him?" he said piously, pointing at Lark. Lark looked up briefly, but said nothing. He took another drag of his cigarette, looking out into the sunshine. George noticed Norman's rifle slung across the tattooed man's shoulder. A number of bodies lay across the ground, outside.