The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (15 page)

“We
need to climb up and break in,” she said.

Ed
took a look behind him. The two infected had become four, and they had cut the
distance between them and the survivors by half. He could make out their faces
now, but he didn’t want to say their names. The infection had turned their skin
grey and given them faraway stares that lacked the trace of life.

Ed was
the first to climb up the drainpipe. He’d always been a good climber since he
and James used to make a sport of scurrying up the wall of their house and
sitting on the roof. James sometimes stole a couple of beers from dad’s never
ending supply and they’d drink them silently and watch the sea.

Judith
insisted she was next, and her climb was more laboured than Ed’s. In the time
it took her to reach the ledge the infected had gotten even closer until they
were only fifty feet away. Ed put his hand out and hauled her up next to him.
As soon as she sat on the ledge she pulled her hand away and rubbed it on her
coat as if it was dirty.

“You
go next,” said Gary, and nodded at Bethelyn.

He was
trying to be brave, Ed realised, and he probably regretted it as soon as he
said the words. Bethelyn didn’t move. Instead she stared at the hill behind
them as the infected walked relentlessly on.

“Bethelyn,”
said Ed.

She
turned, and for a second the emptiness of her eyes sent a shudder through him.
He’d seen that kind of look before, but it was back in school. It was the
expression he’d seen in a history book when they learnt about the first of the
old wars. He remembered a grainy photograph where a soldier lay in a trench with
a stare as empty as the muddy hole around him.

“For
god’s sake hurry up,” said Judith, with more irritation in her voice than
panic.

Bethelyn
climbed up the drainpipe and joined them at the ledge, leaving Gary alone on
the ground. The infected were ten feet away now, and the closer they got the
hungrier they looked.

Gary
took hold of the pipe and lifted his feet. As he climbed the infected got
closer, and their groans sounded loud. It reminded Ed of the wail of the wind,
but it was worse because it came out of mouths that were once human.

When
Gary was halfway up the pipe the infected had closed the gap until they stood
underneath him. They stretched their arms toward him and cried out. The look on
their faces was desperation, the hunger in their voices enough to make Ed feel
pity.

Gary
lifted a leg and tried to hook it on a gap in the wall, but his foot slipped.
While the infected reached out for him, Gary started to lose his grip on the
pipe. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but instead of words he only
screamed. Ed reached forward, grabbed the man’s hand and pulled. He felt his
arms strain as he tried to haul him up on to the roof, but with a sense of
defeat he knew he couldn’t hold him.

The
infected opened their mouths like lions expecting meat, and Ed’s muscles burnt
to the point where he thought he might drop Gary and give them their meal. A
cold sweat made his forehead wet, and he made a grunting sound as he put in one
last effort. Judith reached forward, took Gary’s other hand and helped pull him
up. Together they got him onto the ledge.

Gary
lay on his back and took shallow breaths. The groans of the infected drifted up
to them. Ed sank back against a wall. He held his arms out in front of him and
felt his muscles ache. He’d never been a strong man and he’d never wished for a
better body, but it shocked him that his own weakness had nearly killed someone.

“Thanks,”
said Gary, his voice wobbling.

The
windows were less than an inch thick and they smashed with a kick of Bethelyn’s
boot. The drop to the floor was small, and none of them had a problem lowering
themselves down. Inside the town hall everything was black, and their footsteps
echoed as they walked through corridors that had seen happier times.

As
they walked it seemed like they all stepped softer, as though the silence was
something they shouldn’t disturb. Judith was the first to break it.

“I’m
still trying to get my head round this. How did the infection get here?”

“Someone
must have got bitten,” said Gary.

Bethelyn
held a hand in the air and motioned for them all to stop. They were outside a
wooden door with frosted glass, and a sign next to it read “Bursar’s office”. Bethelyn
pressed her ear against the glass. She listened for movement for a few seconds,
but when none came she seemed satisfied. They walked down a hallway that
smelled like chalk.

“For
someone to get bitten,” said Judith, not caring to limit the volume of her
voice, “Someone had to be infected in the first place. And there’s been nothing
for years, so it doesn’t add up.”

“Maybe
there’s another way of getting infected,” said Ed.

The
television and radio reception on Golgoth had been terrible at the best of
times, but when the outbreak got into its stride things had faded fast. It
didn’t take a long time for Golgoth to be cut off from all lines of
communication. Add to that the fact that the government rarely told all they
knew in the newscasts, and it wouldn’t have surprised Ed to learn there was another
way of getting infected.

“It’s
the storm,” said Bethelyn. “Something about the storm.”

Bethelyn
led them through hallways, down a stairway and into the depths of the building.
They didn’t hear any movement nor did they come across anyone else, living or
dead. The cellar door stood in front of them.

“I
always hated coming down here,” she said. “But man, am I glad we stocked it.”

Ed couldn’t
help but agree. He’d seen enough films to know that when disaster happened, it
usually caught people with their trousers down. The Golgoth council had the
foresight to plan for infection on the island, and their actions gave Ed,
Judith, Gary and Bethelyn a chance. It was a small chance, so frail that the
lightest of touches could break it, but it was a chance.

“Let’s
stock up and then find the others.”

“And
then what?”

“Then
we fight our way off Golgoth,” said Ed. “An island of infected isn’t so big a
number when you have guns.”

Bethelyn
pushed open the cellar door, and as soon as it swung open Ed felt a rock sink
in his stomach. For a second stood motionless, not able to speak, unable to do
anything but stare at the sight in front of him.

The cellar
was full of provisions and guns, just as Bethelyn had promised. Only now they
sat under five feet of rain water. The window at the far end of the cellar was
smashed, and water trickled down the stone wall. Their fragile hope had been
weaker than they thought.

12

Charles Bull

Inside the Dome

The
bounty hunter found it hard to choke back his disgust. He stood in the centre
of the cavernous Great Hall. The marble floors and faraway walls echoed the
slightest sounds and meant that every word he spoke came back again as though
dangled in front of him for judgement.

In
front of him, screened by a twenty metre sheet of bullet proof glass, were the Capita
Five. They sat along a table that reminded Charles of the last supper. A shadow
obscured them but he could just about see the masks on their faces and cloaks that
hung on their shoulders. Nobody had ever seen the Five without their costumes.
They were as anonymous as it was possible to be in this world, never taking off
their masks, never speaking in public. It was rumoured that if one of them ever
died, they had all made a pact to disfigure the corpse’s face with acid, and
that each of them carried a vial in their cloaks.

In the
centre of the table was Grand Lord Ishkur, and around him were Marduk, Nabu,
Sin and Tammuz. The other four looked like Ishkur’s disciples, nodding at his
decisions and waiting on his words. Outside of the Great Hall they all wielded
power of their own in the Capita, but in here they answered to one man.

Their
names didn’t fool Charles. Nor did the gentle heartbeat which sounded faintly
across the Hall, something he knew to be a psychological trick. He knew that a
lowly Capita worker stood outside the Great Hall beating a drum to make the
sound effect. He knew that the Board, underneath their masks, probably had bad
breath, wore glasses, had acne and were unhappy with how their nose stuck out
or how their bodies looked. They were just people, and behind the act they
weren’t called Ishkur or Sin. They were probably called Clive and Sue, and
James and Kelly. Ishkur was the only one who bothered Charles. The number of
people in the world who could make Charles pause to think were few, but he
always watched how he acted around the Grand Lord.

Charles
approached them and stood forty feet away from the glass. The five shadowed
faces watched him.

“The
farms are ready for production,” said Ishkur.

His
voice was a tremor, a mini-earthquake that could tear down the Hall if he cared
to raise it loud enough.

Another,
Nabu, placed his hands in front of him on the table and folded his fingers.

“We
need you to round up as many of the Darwin’s Children as possible.”

It was
something Charles had already been doing for the last few months. The mouth
breathers were easy to find, really. They were the ones who tried too hard to
blend in. The ones who learned all the Capita’s pathetic slogans off by heart,
the ones made a show of saluting any Capita soldiers they saw. Charles had
become so good at finding them that he could almost smell their genetic
mutation.

It was
like when he had met the family on the meadow. They were lovely people. They
all maintained respect when they saw him, and they all wore their masks. It
almost made him upset to tear the unit apart. But within seconds of meeting
them he’d known they were DC’s. They tried to trick him, but he was too savvy
for it. Now the girl and the mother were on their way to the farms. He’d find
the boy too, before long.

He
hoped that he could stop soon. All the heartbreak he’d caused, all the families
he’d broken up. It was beginning to put a strain on his soul. He always thought
of himself as a practical man, but he was beginning to see that extreme
practicality had extreme spiritual consequences. He was starting to think that
god, or gods, existed and that they looked down on him with stern eyes. That
they wrote his down his deeds in a tattered notebook, the same way that Charles
kept record of the memories which made him smile.

It was
theft, really, the notes he kept. The family on the meadow had made him happy
with how content they all were. It reminded him of better times, ones that he
fought hard to forget but all the same didn’t want to see vanish. He’d written
a page about them in his book, describing them the best he could so that later,
alone in his room, he could read it and relive the experience. Only straight
after meeting them, he’d ordered the father killed and sent the mother and
child to the farms. He’d stolen some of their happiness and written it in his
book for his own benefit, and then he’d destroyed the family.

“I
wonder,” he said, not caring how much his words echoed in the chamber. “How
will we be judged in history?”

Ishkur,
in the middle of the table, larger than the rest of them, spoke.

“Are
you having an attack of conscience, hunter?”

“I’m
wondering where my place will be in the annals of time. When they weigh up how
cruel we were and the things we did.”

“Your
place is in the Dome.”

“That
is,” said Marduk on the far left. “If you can prove yourself further. You still
have … part of your family, do you not?”

“I
do.”

“And
wouldn’t you like to be in the Dome?”

It
wasn’t a question of like for Charles, it was a question of necessity. After
everything he had done, and with all the power he had, they still wouldn’t let
him in the Dome. He knew exactly why. A long time ago, one of them had told him
the reason.

“If
your daughter were no longer a variable,”
they said, “
Your entry to the Dome
would be a lot swifter.”

For
the Board, those in the Dome and in the areas surrounding it weren’t people.
They were numbers; resources to be shifted from one part of a map to the next.
If a town needed clearing from the infected, a hundred residents would be sent
with knives and clubs. If only twenty returned, it was no bother.

In
truth, Charles didn’t enjoy his work. He didn’t agree with the principles of
the Capita nor did he hate the mouth-breathers. He simply had the foresight to
know that it was his only option, and he had the ability to turn his conscience
off and on.

He looked
at the silent, unmoving Board.

“I’ll
round up as many as I can,” he said.

***

He
left the Dome behind him and rode to the furthermost corner of Capita
territory. His horse, Ken, knew the way on his own by now. He understood when
to cross the busy stream and when the slope of a hill dropped sharply and he
needed to slow down. Charles could probably have shut his eyes and let Ken
guide him all the way home.

He
brought the horse to a halt in front of a cottage. The exterior walls were
painted white but the process of fading had begun years ago. There used to be
dozens of holes in the brickwork but one by one Charles had filled them in to
stop a family of rats from taking residence in their attic. Despite its age it
was a sturdy house, and it had probably been home to many a family before
Charles had found it. It was the kind of place he loved; somewhere so far away
from everyone else that if he wanted to, he could just stand outside his house,
look into the night sky and shout obscenities at the top of his lungs. There’d
be no complaints. His only neighbours had been the infected, and the week he
spent mercy killing them had stopped their grumblings.

From
outside it seemed like nobody was in the house. Behind the windows, the rooms
were dark and still. Charles took his AVS out of his pocket and held it in
front of him. He thought about testing the air out of curiosity, but what was
the point? He was becoming sick of pretending, sick of being part of the
pantomime.

He
knew his role in this world. He was to be the villain. If that is what it took
for him to protect who he loved, that was fine by him. He used to watch the
news and see videos of killings and massacres, and he’d wonder how people were
capable of such things.  That was a different Charles. That was the young Charles
who stood with a crowd of thousands and shouted his protest at the Oil War.
That was a Charles who saw morality as an absolute.

Since
then he’d learned better. He knew now that morality had a context, and that a
person can justify anything if they have a reason. Charles did the things he
did because he needed to, because it was the only way to get himself and Inez
into the Dome. If he was alone, would he have done the same? If he didn’t have
a sick child, would he still hunt the DC’s? The answer was no. He’d retire to a
place far away from the Capita, get a stable full of Kens, grow crops and sit
and watch the seasons turn.

He
opened his fingers and let his AVS fall to the ground. He lifted his boot and
brought it down as hard as he could on the sensor, smashing the plastic and
circuitry into the mud. Then he reached to his neck and began to uncoil the
tail of his mask, unwinding the straps until finally he felt the wind on his
neck. He unstrapped it at the back of the head and with one heave pulled it
free from his face. The breeze washed over him and bathed skin that had sat
under leather for too long. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and drank in
the air.

The
front door of his house opened. The front wheels of Inez’s wheelchair rolled
over the doorstep and Charles felt a rush of energy in his chest when he saw
his daughter. He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face, though
the sensation felt strange, as though his muscles weren’t used to it.

He
walked across the tarmac path that winded towards his house and he stood in
front of his daughter. She wore a dress today, and he could see the scratches
and bite-marks which covered her bare arms and legs. He looked at her face. Her
beautiful eyes – her mother’s eyes – her blonde, curly hair. She had her
mother’s face; that much was certain. There was little of Charles in the way
that she looked. Not now, anyway.

She
had had Charles’s nose, once. Now when he looked at the stub where her nose had
been he felt a welling of sadness mixed with anger. The feeling of wanting to
cry, but wishing there was a wall he could punch. He looked at his daughter’s
face and saw her half-eaten nose, and he wanted to scream into the sky.

“Hi
daddy,” she said.

He
gave his daughter a long hug, pressing her close to him. When they separated,
he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a clear plastic bag. The inside of it
was splattered with blood, and a lump of meat rested in the bottom.

“Is
that for me?” she said.

Charles
nodded. “You need another dose.”

“It’s
been a month already?”

“It
has.”

This
was their life now. This was why they could never be far away from the Dome.
This was why Charles, more than most people, needed to stock the farms. Immune
flesh was a difficult thing to find, but Charles knew all the hiding places.