The Dying & The Dead 2 (36 page)

He was on all fours like an animal but
it was clear that anatomically, he was human. His skin was mottled and grey,
marked by the blisters and craters that the infection always brought. There was
something human about his face, though his cheeks had bloated as much as his
body, and his expression was mangled in anguish. He shrieked as he tried to
pull his hands away from the bear trap that devoured them. The noise shuddered
through Ed’s whole body, and he couldn’t believe that a human throat was
capable of making it.

Seeing that he couldn’t free himself,
Ripeech collapsed back onto the floor. Although rags clung to some of his
dirt-covered body, his entire torso and legs were naked. His penis and pubic
hair were covered in mud from the trees, and every crevice and wrinkle in his
body was marked by stains of the forest.

Ripeech looked at him. His face
straightened for a mere second, and in that short time, Ed saw a glimpse of the
human in him.

“
Let it out,”
said Ripeech.

Ed shivered at its rasping tones. He
stood silent, unsure of what to do.

“
It wasn’t always like this.”

He stopped pulling his arms now, and
gritted his misshapen teeth as his whole body twitched in pain. Something about
it was so pathetic that Ed almost had to look away. He didn’t know what to say
or do. Even the wind stopped blowing through the pine trees, as if it had
decided to stay still and watch the creature struggling on the floor.

Ripeech gave a drawn out breath.

“Kill it, if you must. But don’t
stare at it…it doesn’t like your eyes.”

“What are you?” he said.

Ripeech flopped back onto the forest
floor and stared up at the sky. Ed saw the hint of a jawline along his face,
but the bones seemed to be broken, lending a misshapen look to his head.

“
It was a man, once. Not always
like this. But it was bitten by one of the creatures, and it felt the infection
take hold. It tried to stop it…”

Ripeech broke into a series of
coughs, and blood leaked from his mouth and covered his bloated chin.

“It did not work. It never meant
harm… much. But it needed company. The forest is lonely, except for the other
creatures and it isn’t like them. It needs others like it. It needs men that
are the same. It thought that the hunter could, for a while. But he died like the
rest.
”

Ed reached to the floor and picked up
a rock. It felt hefty in his hands, and his body was so drained that it was a
struggle to keep hold of it. He took a few steps toward Ripeech. Somewhere in
the distance, he heard The Savage yell.

He moved cautiously, conscious of
every jerk of Ripeech’s body. Soon, he stood above his head.

Ripeech looked up at him. He had the
ears of a man. His nose was human, and his head still had patches where strands
of hair clung to his scalp. His hands were thick with callouses from where he
had walked across the forest on all fours. Despite the greying of his skin and
bloating of his body, he was still a person. Ed looked into his eyes and he saw
something staring back; something that still knew what it was to be a person,
yet day by day was losing the battle to remain so.

He felt an overwhelming pity flow
through him. Ripeech had been infected. Once he had been a man, but the
creatures had tainted him, and he hadn’t been able to accept what would happen.
Somehow he had found a way to fight through the infection with a shred of his
brain intact, but what he had become was an abomination. Ed watched the
creature squirm at his feet, and knew that it couldn’t be allowed to exist.

“
Free it,”
said Ripeech. “
Let
it go, and it will leave you.”

He thought about the mutilated deer
they had seen on the way here. He remembered Cillian, his chest torn open,
worrying about his dog Saxon and knowing that he would die. What if he let
Ripeech go? Soon enough the monster would recover and it wouldn’t be long
before someone else stumbled into Loch-Deep and Ripeech tried to make them like
him.

He remembered what The Savage had
told him. The world was a dark place, and he needed to toughen up. The Savage
was right. He looked down at the mangled creature at his feet, and he knew
there wasn’t beauty in the world anymore. There was only darkness and shadow, blood
and death.

He raised the rock in the air. His
arms threatened to buckle under the pressure. They ached at him, and his
muscles burned. He looked deep into the darkness of Ripeech’s eyes. As the
creature let out a pain-filled cry, Ed threw the rock down onto its skull.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Ed

It wasn’t until they reached the
outskirts of Loch-Deep that any of them even considered resting. The treeline
was fifty metres ahead. Sunlight streamed through the gaps, promising sight of
a land where dead deer didn’t bleed out onto the ground and the lonely wind
didn’t swirl around them.

Although the forest was mostly silent,
Ed heard a noise drift through the trees. He knew that it was in his head, but
he couldn’t shake the sound of Ripeech’s wheezy voice. He heard the words that
dripped with hate and pity as they left his bloated throat.

It didn’t matter what haunted him. He
knew that he was strong enough to survive on the Mainland. He didn’t need a map
or a guide, and for all he cared, The Savage could leave them. Nothing the
post-outbreak world could throw at him would stop him from finding James. The
Savage had told him that James was different, and that he wouldn’t like what he
saw, but it wasn’t going to stop Ed from searching.

They stood at the edge of the
clearing. It seemed like none of them wanted to take the first step out of
Loch-Deep, as though something held them back. Bethelyn’s skin and clothes were
covered in blood from fighting the infected, but there was an expression on her
face that had been missing. Ed liked it. For the first time since Golgoth,
there was something there, as if something was filling the hollowness inside
her.

“You two need a rest?” said The
Savage.

He had walked by their side since
they trampled through the forest. His voice was softer around the edges now and
although he still threw insults at them, they were less barbed.

Ed shook his head.

“No. Let’s just get out of here. I’m
guessing that we’ve still got a long way to go.”

The Savage rubbed his arm. In the
fight at the meditation centre, one of the infected had bitten him. It didn’t
matter. It wasn’t as if infection was a danger to him.

“The end of the rainbow’s a while
away. Hope you’ve got the stamina.”

They walked toward the last line of
trees. Ed felt weak sunlight hit his skin as soon as they broke past the last
branch. Despite the wind around him, he felt warm.

“What’s that?” said Bethelyn.

She pointed across from them. Beyond
the trees there was a grassy plain, and rows of metal ran across it. Ed
realised that it was a train track. He followed Bethelyn’s outstretched finger
and saw a train resting on the tracks. Two of the carriages had turned over,
and the last one had decoupled.

There was a group of people near the
first carriage. He saw men and women sat on the ground. One man leaned against
the metal and stared at the sky. Beyond them, near the driver’s carriage, was a
boy.

The boy was stood on the tracks. An
old man advanced on him with a knife in his hand, and even so far away, Ed
could sense the aggression in the way he moved. The people on the carriage
hadn’t seen what was happening. As the old man took menacing steps closer to
the boy, Ed knew he had to do something.

Summoning the last of his energy, he
sprinted across the plain. The man near the carriage sprang away from the metal,
pointed at him and shouted. Ed ignored him, gaze fixed firmly on the boy and
the old man.

Just as the old man reached the boy
and grabbed him by the neck, Ed got close enough to shove him. The old man’s
grasp was strong, and he squeezed his hand so tight around the boy’s neck that
he couldn’t breathe. The boy clawed at the man’s arms but it only served to
make him tighten his grip.

Ed punched the old man in the face.
The knife clattered from his hand and fell to the floor. His head jerked back
in surprise, and for the first time he noticed that Ed was there. It was as if
he had been lost in a fugue of violence as he strangled the boy, and Ed broke
it when he struck him.

The man lurched toward him with hate
burning in his gaze. Ed punched him again and knocked him to the floor. He grasped
at the ground to get up, but Ed swung his boot at his face, and the back of the
man’s head hit the rim of the metal track.  He stopped moving.

The other group of people walked away
from the carriage and toward Ed. They all wore the same clothes, and the fabric
was so delicate that some of them sported holes in their sleeves and trousers.
There were children with cheekbones pressing against their skin. From the way
their clothes hung from their limbs, he could tell most of them had lost a lot
of weight in a short time.

He turned to the boy.

“What’s your name?” he said.

The boy glanced over to the carriage
where a girl sat on a step.

“Eric.”

“Where have you come from?”

“Camp Dam Marsh.”

“Is that a holiday resort or
something?”

He knew the question was stupid
before it even left his lips. He just had to look at the people with their
malnourished faces to see that they hadn’t been sat around a pool enjoying
cocktails. He couldn’t understand why they all wore the same clothes, but that
wasn’t all. There were too many questions. Who was the old man? Why had he been
trying to kill the boy?

The Savage walked over to the old man
on the tracks. He stood above him and stared down at his face. He got down to
his knees and lifted the man’s head close to his, cupping his hands around his
sunken cheeks and turning his head from side to side.

The Savage’s face was wide with
surprise for a split second, but the expression soon faded, replaced by the smoldering
of anger. He stared down at the old man. He still hadn’t stirred. Ed didn’t
feel even a trace of guilt about kicking him.

“Dad?” said The Savage.

It was Ed’s turn to be surprised.

“This is your dad?”

The Savage didn’t seem to hear him.
He slapped the old man lightly on the face.

“Wake up, you old bastard,” he said.

Bethelyn walked over to the group of
people near the carriage. She ignored the adults, and instead kneeled in front
of two of the children. She turned their faces toward hers, inspecting them
intently as if she was giving them a health check. One of the boys wrapped his
small arms around her shoulders. Bethelyn smiled and then returned the hug.

Ed hung back, wary of the old man on
the floor. When he looked at the man, Eric’s face changed. Although he was
already pale, seeing the man seemed to suck even more of the colour out of his
cheeks. Ed put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“I’m Ed,” he said. “This here is The
Savage, and the lady over there is Bethelyn.”

Eric glanced behind him and looked at
the girl by the carriage again.

“Who’s she?” asked Ed.

“My sister, Kim.”

He said the word sister hesitantly,
as if trying it out for the first time. Ed thought that they didn’t look much
alike. Even so far away he could see the girl was older, and her face was the
palest of the group.

“Is she okay?”

Eric shook his head.

“We need to find her mum.”

“Her mum? Isn’t she your mum too?”

Eric shook his head again.

“Okay. Where is she?”

“Near the Dome. I think she is,
anyway.”

“What’s the Dome?”

The Savage turned his head.

“It’s a hell of a long way from here,”
he said.

He looked at Eric and tried to feign
a pleasant expression, but it didn’t fit his face. The Savage needed to take
baby steps, Ed decided. It was enough for now that he had stopped calling Ed
Wetgills and had started playing nice, but nobody expected him to turn into Mr.
Smiley.

“Mind telling me why my old man was
trying to kill you?” said The Savage.

Eric sighed.

“It’s a long story.”

Ed looked at the wreckage around him.
The train had come off the tracks and turned over, and through the windows he
could see a couple of motionless bodies propped against the walls. Wherever Dam
Marsh was, it seemed like these people had left it in a hurry. They didn’t
appear to have any sort of food or supplies with them, and with a dozen people
to feed, that was going to be a problem.

Bethelyn stayed on her knees and
consoled some of the children. It made Ed happy to see the faint crease of a
smile on her lips. Eric’s sister sat on the carriage step, watching the scene
as if she was detached from it.

He knew what the world was now. He
might not have known the geography or heard of a place called the Dome, but
that wasn’t the point. He was going to find his brother. After seeing these
children, he knew that there was more he could do, too. There were survivors on
the Mainland, and that meant there would be towns. Maybe even cities. It didn’t
matter; he just wanted to find somewhere worth staying.

“Want to know where your brother is?”
said The Savage.

It was the last thing he’d expected
him to say. He had assumed that The Savage would hold back on anything to do
with James, keeping the information secret and trading little bits of it in
return for the cure to his infection.

“Aren’t you going to blackmail me for
my blood?” he said.

“I can’t live like that anymore,”
said The Savage. “If you give it to me, I’ll take it. But I won’t be a monster
again. I know I didn’t see Ripeech, but I heard him. I won’t become like that.”

For the first time ever, Ed felt
affection for the man. It made him shudder to think of it, but he knew that
without him, he wouldn’t have made it through Loch-Deep.

“Okay,” he said. “Where’s James?”

The Savage paused. He drew out the
silence and gazed at the faces around him. Eric gave him a blank stare. Ed
sighed in irritation.

“Still doing the dramatics?”

“You can’t change some things,” said
The Savage. “Okay. We need to get to the Dome. That’s where James is.”

“While you’re in the mood for
questions, how about you tell me your name?” said Ed.

The Savage thought about it. After a
few seconds, he shook his head.

“I don’t think our relationship is at
that level yet.”

Eric shuffled on his feet. He glanced
back at his sister, and then at Ed.

“What about us?” he asked.

Ed looked around him. The overturned
train looked foreign against the backdrop of the plains. The grass under their
feet was yellow and dry, and the forest behind them was full of spindly limbed
trees and darkness. There might not have been beauty in the world any more, but
he didn’t need it.

He crouched down so that he was eye
level with Eric. He put his hands on his shoulders.

“If we’re going to the Dome, you can
come with us. We’ll help you find Kim’s mum.”

He stood up. His knees cracked and
his calves ached, and he still heard Ripeech’s voice echo somewhere in the back
of his mind. The grass seemed to stretch out for endless miles beyond them, and
he got the sense that his legs were going to hurt a hell of a lot more in the
weeks to come. It was okay, though. It was better than being on the boat.

The Savage stood up.