Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent (19 page)

             
He felt a tooth crack and the nose flattened against his fist.

             
Pain shot through his knuckles, but he had managed to unbalance the monster, and it fell backwards.

             
Will spun his club round, stabbed its sharpened end into the gaping mouth, and pushed it inwards with all his weight.  The club squished through the back of the creature’s head and into the soil beneath, effectively pinning the zombie to the ground.

             
“Feck you, you fecking bastard dead fecker”  Will shook his hand, he felt like he had broken every knuckle.

             
He sniffed and ran down the hill towards the human chain of survivors which had formed to empty the lorry at an impressive speed.

             
Suddenly the dead started to scream.  They had collectively experienced a moment when they seemed to realise what they had become.  From past experience Neil knew this was likely to last somewhere between thirty seconds and a minute.

             
He had no time to think.  If he was going to take advantage of this opportunity he had to act now.  He leapt down from his lamppost.

             
The moment he hit the ground he realised his mistake.  He had underestimated how high he had been. His foot crunched and an excruciating pain shot from his foot to his knee.  The pain continued to linger in his foot.

             
“Shiiiiiiiiiit!” he yelled.

             
He had never been this close to the undead.  Their eyes looked terrified, angry, bewildered.  Their usual snarls had turned to cries of pain, despair and confusion.

             
Even if he hadn’t just broken his foot he couldn’t have gone far.  They reached out to him.  A middle-aged women wearing a ripped, pinstripe business suit clutched has arm with her bony, blood-stained fingers.  She was holding him tightly, but not to attack – it was an appeal for help.  Her voice was a gurgling rasp, but he thought she had tried to ask, “Where am I?”

             
Neil breathed heavily, and said, “I’m so sorry, you’re lost.  We all are love.”  He put a hand on her shoulder.  It was as icy cold as her fingers.

             
The woman in the suit was trying to form more words, “My, my, my son?”

             
Neil only had a short time to register what she was saying when the moment passed and the zombie’s hunger returned.  He was still trying to smile sympathetically at her when she lurched forward and took a bite out of his shoulder.

             
Then all Neil knew was hands and teeth and the unravelling of his flesh.  The last thing he saw was the woman in the business suit chewing on a large lump of his torn flesh, his dark red blood splashing down on his face.

             
My blood
, he thought,
is warm, but everything else is so cold
.  And after that there was only darkness.

*   *   *

Siobhan only realised how tense she had been during her time outside once she had returned to the relative safety of the Bunker.

             
The release of tension in her muscles was almost painful, as her whole body unclenched.

             
Summer was pleased to see her, and hugged her so long that Siobhan started to want to pull away.

             
Will looked at his hand and cursed.  He had punched that thing in the face, but its teeth had broken the skin of his hand.  The small wound was bordered with angry swollen skin: he was infected.

             
For the first twenty-four hours in the Bunker he attempted denial.  Maybe he wasn’t infected, maybe it the cuts had been too small to be contaminated, maybe his immune system could fight it off.  But as he started to feel feverish he knew he had to tell the others.  He couldn’t allow himself to hurt them.

             
He would call a meeting.

*   *   *

             
As they set connected the solar panels they realised that rainwater would come down the pipe.  This was not life-threatening, but would be inconvenient, and potentially damaging to the room’s electrical equipment.  The solution was devastatingly simple: they sent an umbrella up the pipe, and opened it once the end was outside.  It was far from airtight, but as long as the umbrella was anchored so that it wouldn’t blow away, it should give them a solution that lasted months, if not years.

             
The panels worked perfectly, but Max could only use his computer in daylight hours, when the panels supplied power.  Since becoming an adult he had never felt such a connection with the cycle of day and night.  His laboratory in the University of Rochester used to operate twenty-four hours a day.  He would work and eat pizza until he was tired, and then he would go home to bed, setting an alarm for six or so hours later.  He would sometimes find himself slipping into a nightshift, or sometimes the pattern would be more chaotic, working for twenty hours one day and six the next.

             
Now his hours were fixed by the times when light and power were available, and in this life-pattern he felt something new: he felt well-rested.

             
It was the End of the World, and he should be feeling wretched, struggling to survive under ground.  But he skin was clearer than it had been in fifteen years (no more pizza), and proper sleep was slowly clearing the bags from under his eyes.

             
The worst thing about the End of the World was the distinct lack of recognition that his was the most important work that was happening on the planet.  While the others were cooking, cleaning and trying to make life more comfortable, he was actually working to save the world.

             
Why couldn’t they see that nothing they could do mattered a fraction as much as his efforts on behalf of humanity?  He was like Batman: and they were not even as important as Robin, they were like Alfred, Batman’s butler.  Sure Alfred was helpful to Batman, but everything Alfred did was given meaning only by the vital work Batman could do on the streets of Gotham City.

             
He was looking at himself in the mirror as he reflected on the situation. “I am not being arrogant,” he said to his reflection, “its just the truth.  Nothing in the world is as important as my work.”

*   *   *

Will’s hand ached with every strum.  His fingers had lost the agility to finger pick and he had to concentrate to form the chords that would once have just flowed.  He focused on the riff: C, G, F and G, and then started to sing aloud.

             
He was surprised that his voice was still able to be so strong, and was thrilled to be making music, even though every sharp movement of his hand caused pain:

             
“
We are the Village Green Preservation Society,

             
God save Donald Duck, Vaudeville and Variety
...”

             
Since the End of the World many songs caused tears, and singing till everyone sobbed was the way many of Will’s nights of song and dance ended.

             
He sang the chorus, his face wet with tears:

             
“
Preserving the old ways from being abused

             
Protecting the new ways for me and for you

             
What more can we do?
”

             
Will had avoided this song for some time, its words were unbearable in the New World Disorder.

             
He stopped half way through the second chorus, pain competing with emotion.

             
“Me guitar playing days are done.”

             
The hand he had been strumming with was now wet.  Blood and black pus had soaked through the bandages.

             
“The rock star in me wants to finish by smashing up me guitar.”

             
Summer looked shocked.  Will had been teaching her to play, on and off, since they had arrived in the Bunker.  Will smiled at her kindly, “But it would be a shocking waste, especially with you, Joan Baez the Second, here.”

             
Will knelt in front of Summer, his head swimming at the movement.  He held his battered old guitar aloft.

             
“I pass the music to you young lady, you are the new Euterpe, the Muse of music.”

             
Summer took the guitar reverently.  For an instant her hand touched his bandaged fingers.

             
“I’m sorry, Will, I’ll not forget anything you taught me.”

             
“You’d better not.  If the world loses the music of Bob Dylan there is no fecking hope for us.”

             
Summer forced a smile, and setting down the guitar kissed Will on the forehead.

             
He tried to back away, “Aw no darlin’, keep your distance, I’m not safe.”

             
Summer affected his Irish accent, “What the feck?” and shot forward, locking Will in a tight embrace. “You’re not going to get away that easy.”

             
Jim looked on with a mixture of pride and fear.  Summer had taken on so much in the last few months.  As the youngest member of their group she seemed to have become the one who carried all their hopes and dreams for the future.  The Priest they had rescued from an old church had passed as much of his knowledge to her as he could before he died of the infection.  He had even ordained her as a Priest.  Now she had everyone come to a room she had decided would be the ‘chapel’ every Sunday for a time of reflection, and to remember those who had died.  The walls in the chapel were covered by the names of everyone whom the survivors could remember from their old lives.  It began as one wall, with just friends and family, lovers and co-workers; but slowly it expanded to old school friends, the receptionist at the doctor’s surgery, the lollipop lady at the crossing outside the local school.  On the walls friends were joined by enemies, celebrities, and people with only the vaguest connection to their lives.

             
The survivors gathered the next day in the Chapel where Will had been the first to write his own name on the wall.  He smiled at Summer, who was sobbing quietly at his side while he wrote.

             
“Don’t worry, darlin’,” he said softly, “I’m in good company; and you know this New World is so tiring, I’m ready for my long sleep.”

             
Max coughed loudly.  He had been standing at the back, and not everyone was aware he was in the room.  He was the only survivor who didn’t come to pray every week.  He was not the only one who didn’t believe, but Rob, who was also an atheist, came to support Summer.

             
Max spoke, “Will, I have to ask you this, and I have to ask you with everyone present so there can be no confusion afterwards.  You can
still
play a vital part in saving the world, Will.  It’s not over for you.  Would you leave your body to medical research?  My research desperately needs a test subject.  I have a few samples of nanites from the corpses, but to see how they are operating in an active specimen is exactly what we need.”

             
“Summer broke her embrace and turned to face Max, her eyes wide with horror.  “No you cannot take his body away for experiments!  Give the man some dignity in death.  He has saved all our lives; we have food here for years; we owe him.  He’s got to rest in peace.”

             
Will slumped forward, his face in his hands.  He really did not like Max, he thought he was a creepy little shite.  But if he could save everyone else?  Coming back as a zombie was a fate far worse than death.

             
Will put a hand on Summer’s arm, “you’re an angel pet, but Max has a point.  I don’t think I could rest in peace if I hadn’t done everything in my power to sort this out.  It’s only my body: my soul will be far away.”

             
“Good man!” Max beamed and clapped his hands, “I knew you’d see sense.”

             
“Just two conditions,” Will spoke forcefully over the protests of the other survivors. “You make sure I’m secure: tied, strapped, chained or whatever.  I don’t want to get out and harm any of you.”

             
“Absolutely,” Max spoke quickly, “we’ll take every precaution possible.”

             
“And second,” Will continued, wincing in pain, “the second condition, is that you destroy me after the research has finished, whether it’s a success or not; I don’t want to spend eternity as one of them.”