The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (21 page)

19

Ed

In the
morning Ed felt a sense of shame that he used to associate with waking up with
a hangover. As the light outside the window fought its way through the stubborn
Golgoth sky, Ed knew his head was clear. He didn’t have the throbbing temples
of a hangover nor the blanks in his mind where his memory had been sucked into
a black hole.

From
his spot on the floor he could see Bethelyn’s form in the bed, and he felt the
shame wash over him. He replayed what he had told her the night before, and he
could say it word for word in his head. He’d told her how he’d felt about
everything. First about his brother, and then about his father. He’d let the
whole mess spill out, and Bethelyn, a woman who had lost her girl hours before,
had been more than happy to help clear it up.

He
shook his head. Why should he feel like this? Why should he be the person who
never had anyone to talk to? His dad had never shown his feelings toward him,
and he’d always made James and Ed feel weird whenever they did so. Year by year
Ed learnt that feelings started in your mind and that’s where they were best
kept.  The thing was, shame or no shame, he felt lighter. He had the strange
feeling that for the first time in his adult life he’d had a real conversation
with another person.

He
stretched out his legs and felt his knees crack. The room stank of sweat, and
Ed came to the realisation that he hadn’t been to the toilet in over twelve
hours. Not that it mattered; it was just strange how your body clock could be
put on stop when it looked like you could die.

He
walked to the window to let some air in, but as he reached for the latch he saw
movement. He pushed the window open slowly and felt a gust of air smooth his
rough skin. He watched as a figure ran down the street near his house. It was a
man sprinting down the sloping hill, arms flailing and legs galloping at a
speed that could rival a racehorse. As the person got closer, he realised that
it was Gary.

The
bedsprings groaned as Bethelyn sat up.

“Come
look at this,” said Ed.

As
Bethelyn got out of bed, Ed turned his attention back to Gary. As soon as he
reached the road outside Ed’s house, he fell face-first into the ground without
even putting his arms out to stop himself. There was a second where Ed’s brain
registered the movement as a simple trip, but then he realised he was wrong.
Gary’s mouth was wide open as if in mid-scream, and there was a spear sticking
out from his back.

More
figures emerged at the top of the street and began to make their way toward
Gary. There were eight of them. All of them wore masks on their faces and thick
fur-lined coats that reached down to their boots. It looked like the coats had
been taken from the pelts of animals that the strangers had hunted, but for all
Ed knew they may have simply raided a clothing store on the mainland. He
assumed that was where they were from. There were other islands, thousands of
miles across the sea, but it seemed more logical that these men and women were
from across the channel.

One
man walked in front of them all. A good foot taller than the rest and with a
thicker coat, he walked with the ease of a man on a sunny afternoon stroll.
Though he couldn’t see his face properly, Ed could almost imagine him whistling
to himself as he took in the view of Golgoth.

The
rest of them lifted their feet in uniform steps that reminded Ed of a military
unit marching in a parade. As they went by Gordon Rigby’s house an infected
sprang from behind a bush, arms raised. The leader of the strangers spread his
right hand and grabbed the monster by the forehead. It looked like he was going
to crush its skull between his fingers, but instead he pushed it away. Another
of the strangers stepped forward with his knife and dispatched the creature.

The
leader stopped outside Ed’s house. He stood over Gary’s body and took hold of
the spear that stuck out of his back. He put his boot on Gary’s calf and
pulled, and Ed saw a spray of blood as the spear left his back.

Ed
moved away from the window and to the side so that he could see what was
happening outside without being spotted.  Bethelyn lifted herself off the bed,
but Ed raised a hand in the air. With the window open, Ed could just about hear
the conversation outside.

“Do
you think this will work, Savage?” said one of them, looking at the leader.

The
Savage wiped his spear on his pants.

“We’ve
seen it plenty of times before.”

“I
know but it’s been so long since he got bit.”

“We
have to try.”

“We
might not have got to him in time.”

The
Savage put his spear behind his neck and then rested the crook of his elbows on
it. In a way he reminded him of James and the way he used to lean his cricket
bat behind his head during the games they played in summer. James had never
been a serious sportsman and found it hard to get emotionally invested in the game,
and most people on the island saw him as easy going. Ed knew different. He’d
catch glimpses of his brother’s face when the cheeky expression dropped, like
the fall of an actor’s face when the camera left him.

“We’ll
know soon enough.” The Savage nodded at Gary’s lifeless body. “Was this one
definitely immune?”

“You
saw him, Savage. Guy was running like a girl. He hadn’t turned.”

The
Savage turned around and made a beckoning gesture to his people. Two of them
carried another man between them and laid him at their leader’s feet. This one
was dressed like the others, but his long grey hair marked him as much older.
He had the skin of a fisherman who had spent years at sea with salt water
lashing at his face. His eyes were weak, the pupils so diluted it looked like the
whites were going to swallow them.

The
Savage bent to his knees beside Gary’s body. He turned him over, and for a few
seconds gazed into Gary’s dead eyes as though communicating telepathically. He
took a knife out of the inside of his coat, and without a pause began to saw
off Gary’s right arm. Ed looked away to spare himself the sight of it, though
he wished he’d had enough warning to miss the knife slicing into skin.

When
he looked back he saw that The Savage cradled a piece of flesh in his hands.
Blood trickled over his fingers and ran down his arm, where it disappeared
under the sleeve of his coat. The flesh looked soft, almost like jelly, and Ed
was surprised how much like beef it seemed.

The
Savage bent next to the grey haired man. He put one hand on the man’s leg, and
with the other hand offered the meat to him.

“Open
your mouth.”

The
man chewed Gary’s flesh, his face turning into a grimace with the gnashing of
his teeth. The Savage watched in silence, while some of the other strangers
began to hum a tune. It sounded like some sort of old sailing song, the kind Ed
expected fishermen to sing in a storm. As the old man ate Gary’s arm and the
strangers, in their masks and fur coats, sang wordlessly, Ed felt like he’d
been sent back in time. It felt like he’d fallen into a portal and in a
dizzying few minutes had seen the centuries rewound.

The
grey haired man brought his hands to his eyes. Seeing that they were covered in
blood, he started to cry as if the realisation of what his meal was had just hit
him.

“You
know it was the only way,” said The Savage.

Ed had
been so mesmerised by the scene that he forgot Bethelyn was watching too. He
almost gasped at how white her skin was.

“Shut
the window,” she said. “Please.”

“What
the fuck did we just see?” said Ed.

Bethelyn
interlocked her fingers behind her head. Her eyes stared out of the window but
it didn’t seem like she focused on anything.

“I
mean,” said Ed. “He just ate part of Gary. Sliced off some of his arm and fed
it to his friend.”

“He
was sick,” said Bethelyn.

“What?”

“The
old man was sick. Don’t you get it, Ed? They were talking about people being
immune. We’re all immune.”

“Give
me some credit. I had that much figured by now.”

Bethelyn
looked angry. “How are you not getting this? The man out there was sick. Gary
was immune. They made the man eat part of Gary.”

The
clues came together so suddenly they knocked the breath out of him. Two days
ago he had never even come into contact with the infection. Now, most of the
residents were infected and a group of strangers were eating the ones who had
survived. He realised why, though it didn’t make him feel better. The strangers
weren’t cannibals. If they were, they would all have eaten Gary. They’d have
had themselves a good old feast. Instead, only the sick old man had tasted
flesh.

“They
made him eat the immune to stop his own infection,” said Ed.

Bethelyn
nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense, screwed up as it is.”

Ed was
stuck so fast in a quagmire of thoughts that he didn’t realise he had moved
into full view of the window. He looked down at the street again and almost
collapsed to the floor. The strangers were still on the street below, but they
weren’t singing and we’re focused on the old man. Now they all stared back at Ed.

***

The
run to the harbour was a short one but it meant a descent down a hill made
slippy by days of rain. Ed imagined that he heard shouting behind them as the
strangers pursued them, but he knew this it was probably his panicked mind. By
the time they reached the bottom of the hill, though, he knew the shouts were
real.

The
harbour was in front of them but it didn’t offer any promise of escape. Instead
Ed felt the breath leave his chest as he looked at the boats tethered to the
dock. All of them still floated on the water, but it was clear that inch by
inch they were sinking into the sea. One, a leisure yacht called the Claret
Princess, had a hole in the hull which looked like the work of an axe.

“Someone
did this on purpose,” said Bethelyn.

“No
prizes for guessing who.”

As if
summoned, the strangers appeared at the top of the hill. They looked like
natives seeing off a raiding party, and Ed had to remind himself that they were
the strangers on the island, not him. Yet it was him being chased off it and
away from his home. The Savage stood in the middle of the group and leant on
his spear. He could have been a golfer surveying the range of a course.

“What
now?” said Bethelyn.

The
Savage shouted into the air. Perhaps he had meant it to be a menacing cry of
war, but instead his delivery was too high pitched and the sound didn’t scare
Ed. It was only when the strangers began to clamber down the hill that he felt
adrenaline run through him.

The
boats were ruined, and the strangers were running down the slope that was the
only way back to the island. Ed realised that their already limited options had
narrowed to a single choice. He reached grabbed Bethelyn’s hand. She seemed
surprised at first, as if not expecting the contact.

“Let’s
go,” he said.

He looked
ahead of him, all the way across the wooden planks of the harbour to where the
wood met the lapping sea. The boats were gone, but the sea remained their only
escape. He knew they wouldn’t be able to stay in it too long in the cold
climate, but there wasn’t a choice.

Together
they sprinted across the pier. As they approached the end of the small
boardwalk they lifted their legs in unison and jumped into the freezing sea.
Mid jump, like the freeze frame in a movie, Ed realised how close to death they
were. As his legs crashed into the icy sea and the cold slid up his skin, he
kept a tight grip on Bethelyn’s hand.

20

Heather

It
wasn’t hard for them to sneak out of Wes’s house. A medley of voices drowned
the silences that might otherwise have betrayed them. Men and women screamed
out in fear of the infected. The Capita soldiers issued commands filled with
curses. The groans of the monsters travelled with the wind.

For Heather
it was an echo of the last weeks before the outbreak. Until then people had
clung on to their routine. Some people still dressed in the mornings and went
to their jobs, and others continued to save their money in the naïve idea that
they’d ever have a use for it again. Restaurants kept their doors open with
whatever skeleton staff they could find. Bus drivers wedged themselves into their
seats, post men shouldered sacks off mail and everyone wore painted smiles. Then,
like scissors snapping a thread, the whole thing broke.

The
newscasts gave their final broadcasts and then shut down. The government
airdropped millions of masks. People ventured out less and stayed at home more,
but those that did go outside found themselves trapped in a cyclone of violence
and looting. There was widespread abandon as people realised that laws were a
forgotten concept. Some, their minds clinging to the idea of a government
conspiracy, wandered the streets with their mouths and noses unmasked. There
were shouts, screams, cries. An orchestra of human emotion played all around
them, and it got so bad that the idea of walking the streets made Heather lose
her breath. In the last few days, she locked her doors and closed the blinds on
her windows. Cut forward just a month, and the streets were empty.

A Capita
soldier shouted for someone to stop, but Heather didn’t see anyone nearby. She
put her arm around Kim and supported her daughter onto the street. Eric looked
around him, so on edge that he was like a fly buzzing in the breeze. Wes followed
them like a ghost, with one hand tucked in his pocket gripping his gun.

“If
we’re quiet, we can slip through the streets,” said Heather.

“Where
are we going?” said Eric.

They
moved east away from Wes’s house now, along a street that had four
semi-detached houses with big spaces out front, some of them still home to
family hatchback cars that hadn’t been driven in years.

Heather
held her daughter close to her. Kim could just about walk by herself, but she
felt as frail as a leaf at the end of autumn where even the slightest motion
could make her flake away into dust.

“We
just need to get off the estate, that’s all I can think about right now. Where
is a big question, and I don’t have the stomach for it.”

It
wasn’t a big estate. Years back it had been the type of place where ten-child
families lived, the parents paying rent by filling out a form at the benefits
office every Wednesday. It was the kind of the estate that was spatially small
but made even smaller by how everyone knew each other’s names. Those days were
long in the past now, and most people stayed nameless to each other.

It
wouldn’t take them long to leave. If they were sure-footed and walked close to
the buildings they should have been able to slip the eyes of the Capita
soldiers and their chained infected. Charles was somewhere, on his horse, but
even he couldn’t see though walls.

They
carried on along the street. Next to one stretch of pavement, a metre away from
a drain by the roadside, were the rusted remains of a pram. The black mesh was
torn and twisted wires stuck out. It was like a ribcage smashed open from the
inside. Drips of rain ran off it and soaked into the fabric where once, a baby
would have slept.

Kim
slumped against Heather. Eric joined at her side, lifted her arm and hooked it
around his neck. Together he and Heather carried Kim away, though the
differences in their heights meant Kim was slightly off balance.

“Not
far now,” said Heather.

The
groans and shouts became something they were accustomed to, as if they were
part of the background noise that a person should expect to hear every day. Heather
even began to feel the rushing of her pulse slow into a smooth flow. It was
short-lived. When she heard the barking of the dogs, it accelerated again, and
the pounding of her heart became so hard she could hear it. Wes turned his
head.

“Sounds
like a pack,” he said.

Heather
adjusted Kim so that she leant more easily against her.

“I saw
a stray in Cresstone,” she said. “They’re getting angrier every day. Thought it
might attack me.”

“These
aren’t strays. They’re Capita dogs.”

Wes
ran his hands through his hair as if it gave him comfort. Then he took his gun
out of his pocket and gripped it as a good luck charm. The paint of the barrel
had worn away and a slice of duct tape stuck around the handle was the only
thing stopping it falling apart.

“Oh
shit. Oh fuck,” he said.

He
looked like he might tear his hair out. The person she used to know, so calm
and collected behind his desk, was gone, replaced by a beaten excuse of a man
who had bitten his nails to the skin and gripped his gun so tight his knuckles
were white.

“What
are you so worried about? You sell to them, don’t you?”

He
scoffed. “Think how it looks, helping a woman sneak away two DC kids.”

“I
think you owe it to the DC’s after what I saw in your room.”

“I’m
not a monster, Heather.”

“Maybe
not, but you’re feeding the monsters.”

An
infected made a rasping sound as it turned the corner in front of them. A metal
bracelet cut into the skin on its neck, and a loose chain link flapped with
each jerk of its head. It saw Heather and her group and stretched out for them.

The
barking of a pack of dogs came from nearby. A Capita solder shouted but Heather
couldn’t tell what he said. Here, with the estate as small as it was, it
wouldn’t be long until they were found either by the nose of a hound or eyes of
a soldier. In the background of it all, as sure a thing as the wind in the air,
the groans of the now-loose infected drifted.

“Check
your masks,” said Heather. “And your skin. Have any of you got cuts?”

“Nope,”
said Eric.

Kim
wheezed out an answer. “No”.

Wes
shook his head. His injuries were to his nose, but his nostrils were covered by
the pollution mask strapped to his face.

The
infected stepped a foot closer to Heather. She grabbed it by the shoulder,
surprised by how much its bones stuck out. It turned its head to bite her but Heather’s
hand was too quick and she managed to lodge her broken bottle in its brain. She
let the infected fall to the floor.

“Here,”
she heard someone shout.

The
barks grew louder and more frenzied as if the pack of dogs spoke to each other
as they hunted across the estate. The feeling of having pursuers was enough to
wish she’d never risked herself in helping Eric. Without him, her life would
have been untroubled.

But was
that really true? She thought back to class, to seeing Jenny escorted from her
classroom and the way it made her feel. She couldn’t have lived without doing
something, so perhaps it was wrong to blame the boy. It was a thought she kept
turning in her head, never sure which side of it she stood on. Even she was
growing sick of it.

More
yapping focussed her attention about what she needed to do. She lay the
infected out on the pavement, arms and legs spread-eagled. She felt as though
she was arranging a dummy in a shop window.

“What
the hell are you doing?” said Wes.

She
twisted the bottle in her hand to see how sharp the glass was. The infected’s
skin was weak from illness, so she had no doubt it would tear under the
slightest of cuts. She unbuttoned the ragged shirt sleeve on its right arm and
rolled it up to the elbow. Holding her breath, she stabbed the glass into the
infected’s flesh and dragged it down. With her eyes closed it felt no different
to cutting through a chicken breast, and she found that was more adapt a
butcher than she thought.

When
she was finished it didn’t resemble an arm anymore. The skin was peeled away to
reveal the gory insides, and blood dribbled over the edges and stained concrete
paving that had spent decades as the same shade of grey.

“Rub
this on yourselves,” said Heather.

“Have
you lost your mind?” said Wes.

More
barking. More groaning. The shouts of the soldiers. Heather looked around her
but saw nothing.

“It’s
for the dogs,” she said.

They
could hide from the eyes of the soldiers and they could dodge the blundering
infected, but the nose of a dog was hard to trick. The only way to evade it was
to disguise their smell. By painting themselves with infected blood they would
be able to drown their human stink enough to let the Capita’s dogs pass by.

Wes
looked around him. His cheeks were blotched. There was something nearby that he
seemed to be searching for, but Heather saw nothing. He had the same look on
his face as her pupils usually got just before they did something wrong. Wes
might have been a  grown man, but it seemed like the human range of expression
made everyone less unique than they thought.

“Looking
for something?” said Heather.

He
rubbed his neck.

“I
just…no.”

“If
you want to get out of here you better follow my lead.”

Eric,
with the bravery only a child could have, had already coated his neck and arms
in blood. He looked like a butcher’s apprentice who had lost a battle with a
steak. Heather scooped a palm full of blood and swabbed it across her
daughter’s forehead, around her face – careful not to get any in her eyes – and
followed the curve of her jaw and down her neck. Soon her face was a dull red,
with tiny red lumps in places like the pulp from a glass of orange juice.

Kim
wrinkled her nose. She coughed, and then the parts of her face which weren’t
covered in blood turned whiter than snow. She leant forward and retched. Heather
rubbed her back with one hand, and with the other gave herself a bloody
makeover.

The
yap of the dog’s voices placed them only seconds away now. Heather picked up
Kim and supported her off the pavement and next to a house, where a wood fence
shielded them from view. Eric followed, letting his hand slide along the fence
as he walked and leaving a trail of blood on the wood. Wes came last. His chin
was red and his cheeks had some blood on them, though nowhere near enough to
disguise the smell. With his sad face and half-done paint job, he was the
circus clown who couldn’t commit wholeheartedly to his disguise.

There
was the patter of small feet on the road as the dogs walked by. Heather
strained her ears so as to hear everything, and she fancied she could even hear
the sniff of their noses as they tested the scent in the air. Her heart rattled
in her chest and she found herself gripping Kim’s arm. She knew it took only
one curious hound to wander their way and the whole pack would find them. From
there it would be seconds until the Capita soldiers had them under arrest.

She
held her breath as the dogs filed by them. Kim stood so close to her that there
was barely a centimetre between them. A tension filed Heather’s hands but she
couldn’t grip Kim tighter because she didn’t want to risk her daughter making a
sound. Had the dogs gone passed yet? What was taking them so long?

Eric
glanced at her and slowly started to turn around. Heather wanted to tell him to
be still, but she daren’t risk movement. Now, facing the fence, Eric peered
through a tiny hole in the panel. Heather’s pulse fired at the rate of a
machine gun. Seconds later, hours in Heather’s head, Eric lifted his thumb in
the air. With the dogs gone she let the air out of her chest, and she relaxed
her fingers away from Kim’s shoulder.