Remains of the Dead (24 page)

The carpeted step creaked under his weight, not the worrying sound of rotten wood, just the natural expected groan from an old staircase. But it was a louder noise than Cahz would have liked and it precipitated an upsurge of noise from the creature ahead.

Cahz swiftly climbed the stairs. The wallpaper had waist high dirty drag marks in random patches all the way up. Behind him he heard the heavy footfalls of his comrade.

At the top of the landing the source of the moans became apparent. Although there were three doors on this floor, two were open and the sound was definitely coming from behind the closed door. Pinned to the closed door at eye level was an envelope, its white paper yellowed, and even though the writing was obscured by a thin layer of dust, the name ‘TONY’ was still visible in bold black letters.

“Cover the door,” Cahz whispered.

Cannon nodded and took up position.

Cahz ducked down the hallway and peeked into the first room. The unkempt double bed and the ransacked dresser made the room look like a crime scene, but other than the mess it was empty. He moved on to give the second room a brief examination. Even with the cartoon character adorned curtains closed, there was enough light to see the child’s bedroom was also empty.

“Looks clear,” Cahz informed his partner.

“It’s definitely coming from in there,” Cannon confirmed.

“You kick the door open. I’ll blow its brains out.”

Cannon nodded.

Cahz mouthed a countdown, the culmination of which was Cannon’s sharp kick.

The force of the kick shattered the feeble lock and threw the door flying. A blizzard of paper whipped up into the air, carried by the gust from the swinging door. But before the door could open fully it smacked against something and reverberated back.

Cahz raced through the opening. The small bathroom was littered with sheets of paper and the white enamel surfaces were smeared with brown smudges. He turned into the blind spot behind the door just as a pair of dead hands grabbed for him.

The woman’s long black hair obscured most of her face, but one pale dead eye had locked its gaze onto his. Her head cocked slightly to the side and her raw lips parted, revealing glistening teeth in a black mouth. With a hiss of putrid breath she lunged.

Cahz was well prepared for this encounter and as the zombie lurched forward he fired.

With most of her brains splattered against the shower curtain, the zombie toppled to the floor. She smashed off the edge of the bathtub, spilling more of her contaminated juices before crumpling in a heap on the bathroom floor.

Cahz drew a sleeve across his lips, the bitter tang in the air a sharp reminder of the rancid taste in his mouth.

“Clear,” he said.

The creature lay there spent and unmoving. Her ragged hair lay clear of her face, vacant dead eyes staring off into the distance.

Cahz heard a splash as a droplet of ickier fell onto a sheet of paper on the floor. Strangely, pages of plain white paper littered the room. He knelt down and picked one up. There was a crude doodle on the sheet, a knot of orange and green and blue. He picked up a second from the dozens. There was again a profusion of lines snaking their way around the sheet in every imaginable colour. As Cahz looked closely, all of the pages had some adornment of splodges and scribbles.

“You okay in there, boss?” Cannon asked.

“The note on the door,” Cahz said in a shaky tone. “Read it.”

“What?”

Cahz marched out of the bathroom and snatched the letter down. He ripped it open and whipped out the contents.

“What’s it say?” Cannon asked, baffled by its sudden significance to Cahz.

“Tony, I’m so sorry. I know you told us to stay inside but you’ve been gone so long. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was worried about you. Don’t open the bathroom door.” Cahz looked back at the scattered paper on the floor. He continued reading, “I’ve been bitten. I know what will happen next so

I’m going to lock myself in. I’ve left out sandwiches and juice but I’m dreading the next few hours. I love you, Tony. Take good care of Jacob for me. Tell him every day his mummy loves him.”

“That’s tragic,” Cannon let slip.

“Wait,” Cahz interrupted, his finger scanning the note. “You told us to stay inside.”

“She should have listened,” Cannon said.

“No, ‘
us
’.” Cahz dropped the letter and leveled his pistol. “Us! She wasn’t alone.”

“Fuck,” Cannon snapped.

Both men scanned the hallway for signs of movement. The house had taken on an eerie silent quality. Since the zombie in the bathroom had been dispatched the only sound was the rasp of their own breath.

“I’m going to check the bedrooms again,” Cahz said. “Keep my back,”

“Yes, sir,” Cannon replied in a crisp military tone.

Cahz strode purposely into the master bedroom. The décor was a mix of dark woods and cream fabrics. The bed clothes were thrown back and the linen crumpled.

Cahz checked each side of the bed. Nothing but wayward pillows and discarded clothes. He lent over and checked the side of the open dresser but it was clear.

With a hard swallow he got down on the floor to check under the bed. His heart raced. He knew how vulnerable a position going prone was. All his years of army training had taught him to get down and flat, stay low stay alive. But the tactics for surviving in this new theatre was to stay mobile.

His breathing still heavy, Cahz scanned the murky space under the bed. There was something there, something drawing the light away.

“Fuck it,” Cahz whispered, getting to his feet.

He backed up and closed the door as he left the room.

“I couldn’t see anything,” he reported. “But there’s no point securing the room when a closed door will do.”

Cannon nodded his agreement as Cahz entered the child’s room.

Again the cupboards and drawers were wide open. Clothing and toys scattered around the room. But the room was less cluttered with furniture than the adult equivalent next door. In only a few seconds it was obvious the room was empty.

“Downstairs. We’ve yet to check the living room,” Cahz said as he passed his colleague.

“Maybe she’s the only one?” Cannon said hopefully.

Cahz was ahead of him on the staircase, his gun sweeping, ready to snap off a shot at any second. “Maybe, but you know better than to work on maybe’s,” he said without looking back.

The stairs protested with loud creaks and groans as the two soldiers worked their way down. They knew that the noise they made would mask the sounds of a zombie creeping in the rooms below and even though the element of surprise was long gone they kept their voices low.

As Cahz reached the living room door he took up position on the right side.

“Take up the left. After me you cover left.”

“Yes sir.”

“Three, two, one.”

Cahz whipped the door open and dived round the corner. Behind him he could sense Cannon doing the same thing, mirroring his actions.

Cahz swept his aim around the living space. The room had the usual array of expected furniture: sofa, TV set, DVD player with the disc drawer open. There was a photo frame-laden mantelpiece with an electric fire nestling beneath it. The room looked like the aftermath of a burglary just like the bedrooms upstairs, but there was something wrong.

The room hadn’t been looted. The valuable items were still here. The place was just a mess. The missing cushions from the sofa, toys cast among the scattered DVD cases and empty food wrappers. At his feet lay an empty blackcurrant cordial bottle.

“Ah, Christ,” Cannon gasped.

Cahz turned round to see what caused Cannon’s exclamation. The other half of the room had been used as a dining area and he could see the edge of a large table, but Cannon’s massive shoulders blocked the rest of the view.

Cannon slipped his weapon back into its holster and turned round. He took a deep breath and wiped his chin. “There was someone else in the house.”

Cahz brushed past him. The dining room table was covered in sheets of the same white paper he’d seen in the bathroom. Crayons and felt tip pens lay higgledy-piggledy on the tabletop. There were a couple of empty glasses stained red from the remains of the blackcurrant drink.

Cahz’s gaze fell and he spotted something under the table. Curled up in a ball, embracing a brown and white fluffy toy rabbit, was a half naked child. A blue pacifier was firmly stuck in his mouth. Wearing only underpants and socks, he lay on a bed of cushions surrounded by a nest of die cast cars and garish plastic toys. The boy’s curly brown hair looked matted and unwashed. His grey dead skin stretched over the prominent ribs. A pair of blue, white and black camouflage cotton socks were on his feet, the soles blacked. A sob broke out from behind him.

“Cannon?” Cahz called as the big soldier stormed out of the room.

He turned back to the child. Coloured streaks of felt-tip pen covered his hands and mouth. In that tiny grasp he still clutched an orange crayon and beside him the last piece of art he’d failed to post under the bathroom door.

Cahz picked up the scribbled artwork and felt his heart sinking deeper in his chest. Breaking away from the pitiful sight, he followed his colleague out of the house.

“You all right?” Ryan was asking.

“Cannon,” Cahz called absently, stuffing the drawing in his pocket.

Cannon stumbled into the garden, weeping, the rain bouncing off his thick padded body armour.

“Is everything all right?” Ryan asked.

Cahz stayed silent and walked past him.

“Can we go into the house?” Ryan asked. “Is it safe?”

Cannon ripped off the fastening on his chinstrap and hurled his helmet at the ground. He brought his hands up to his face and collapsed to his knees, his shoulders heaving under the weight of the sobs.

“Cannon?” Ryan’s voice was weak and uneasy. The baby strapped to his front was awake and sucking furiously on her father’s pinkie.

“Get in under shelter,” Cahz instructed Ryan as he emerged from the house. “But don’t leave the kitchen.”

“Why? What is it?”

“Get inside and feed the baby. Just don’t leave the kitchen,” Cahz reiterated more forcefully.

“Why?”

Cahz whipped round, tears streaming from his eyes. “You don’t want to know.”

Ryan’s expression dropped to see the emotion in Cahz’s face. He nodded and made his way into the house.

Cahz stepped up beside Cannon and took a deep breath.

Cannon sat there in the overgrown grass of the neglected garden. He sniffed back a tearful snivel and tried to talk, but the pain grabbed his throat and the sobs burst back.

Cahz sat down in the wet grass. The moisture soaked instantly into his fatigues and drew the heat away.

“I must have shot a hundred W.D.s today,” Cahz said softly. “You forget who they were.”

“I left them,” Cannon blurted out.

“You left who?”

“My little boy and my wife,” Cannon said.

“I don’t understand, buddy,” Cahz said.

“We were always arguing,” Cannon wept. “About everything. About when I’d come home, about money, about getting a job. I was fucked up when I got back to the real world. You know the score; the stuff we went through and they expected us to go back to our wives and families and jobs. I stormed out one night, her screaming at me and my boy in tears. I never went back.” He looked over at Cahz with doleful eyes. “I swear I always meant to. I wanted to go back home. Once I’d spent that night away I just didn’t know how I could go back.” He waved a hand at the deserted and overrun garden. “Then all this shit happened. By the time I got home they were gone.”

“You never said,” Cahz whispered.

“No note. Nothing. House was empty.” Cannon pointed an accusing finger back at the house. “I don’t know if my boy died waiting for his daddy to come save him! I don’t know if he died alone, cold and helpless cause I wasn’t there!”

Cannon was sobbing uncontrollably. Cahz put an arm around his shoulder.

“I wasn’t there.” Cannon gasped for air between the tears. The deep heaves of his shoulders grew softer. A few bellowing snorts of air pushed out from his nostrils.

Cahz ran his tongue round his foul-tasting palate. He decided it was time to confess about the mouthful of contaminated vitriol fluid he’d swallowed this morning. He took his arm from around Cannon’s shoulder and clasped his hands on his lap.

Cahz took a breath and began, “Look, Cannon, I think…”

“I can’t do this,” Cannon butted in with an oddly cold voice. He snapped open the Velcro on his holster and pulled out his pistol. He pushed the muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The crack of the pistol filled the forsaken garden.

“Fuck!” Cahz jumped back fuelled by pure reflex.

Cannon’s body toppled over and lay sprawled on the ground.

Cahz sat motionless and shocked. A light spray of blood coated his right cheek.

Ryan came running out of the kitchen to stand frozen in the garden.

The body lay twisted back on itself, blood steadily pumping from the massive exit wound in the back of Cannon’s head.

Cahz could feel his head nodding from side to side as if his subconscious were screaming out
No!

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan mustered.

Cahz put a hand to his cheek, partially covering his mouth to try to stop the shake and stifle his disbelief. When he pulled it away his fingers were coated in bright red smears.

He took a trembling breath and tried to compose himself.

“Come on,” he said, standing up. “Let’s get moving.”

* * *

Cahz was cold. The foul taste still clung to his tongue. He shivered and opened his eyes. For a moment he didn’t know where he was and then he recognized the house.

Ryan was sitting propped up against a kitchen unit, his child cradled in his arms.

“How you feeling?” he asked the groggy Cahz.

“What happened?” Cahz asked, still dazed.

“You stood up and passed out,” Ryan said. “I dragged you in here.”

“How long?”

Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “I guess thirty minutes.” He held out a bare wrist. “I don’t have a watch.”