First Person (7 page)

I’m
shaking with excitement as I start to move again. We reach the roller door.
It’s up at my chest. Gus and Lisa position themselves with their backs to it,
their weapons at their shoulders. Cautiously, I crouch down and peer into the
building. Silent inside, there is a hellish smell. It’s not just the discarded
trash. Lisa lowers her weapon as she turns to me. I nod. With a glint in her
eye, she nods back. I step inside and straighten, raising the gun. Lisa comes
in straight after me, with Gus following.

Everything
is ruined. What isn’t broken has been burned. The few small shops have been
long looted. Bizarrely fresh and blue, a display stand from an earlier lottery
system sits outside the door of an old newsagent. A few tattered magazines are
on the floor of an otherwise empty shop. We make our way through, Lisa just
behind me, Gus covering the rear. Halfway through, we catch each other’s eyes
and make an agreement.

Gus
is the first to speak. “Ain’t nothin’ here, guys.”

Lisa
nods. “Shall we go?”

I
relax. We all do, changing our postures and beginning the walk back to the
roller door. Just as I’m about to say something, we hear a shuffle behind us.
In one movement, we all whirl round, weapons at the ready. I can feel sweat on
my body and can even smell myself, clammy and unclean. There is nothing for a
moment, but then an Infected woman shuffles out of the old post office. She has
no shoes on and her feet are all ragged from having shuffled around here for
months. Her grubby outfit is an old skirt and top. Her hair is lank and falling
away from an exposed scalp. I’m ready to run.

“You’re
on, point.” Lisa taps me on the shoulder again and steps back.

My
breakfast of eggs and bacon starts to lift in my stomach and I just want out of
there. The smell has gotten worse since she appeared; a foul rotten stench.
Trying to move my feet, I somehow can’t shift. I swallow in a dry throat even
though I feel like heaving. The infected woman stops and just looks at us. It’s
like her eyes are focused on us but it’s also like there’s nothing behind those
eyes. Whatever was there before has been replaced by a cold emptiness. I want
to help her somehow, but keep staring at her down the barrel. I pull the weapon
closer to me, trying to decide what to do. I try to think about my training:
head shot lethal, chest shot will slow them down.

“You
got this, kid,” says Gus, quietly. “Take the shot.”

The
infected woman cocks her head to the side and her eyes narrow, almost like
she’s thinking about something. Then she comes at me, fast.

I
pull on the trigger and straight away I know I’ve done it too quick. I’ve
jerked on the trigger instead of squeezing it. A massive crack thunders around
this enclosed space and the infected woman is rocked on her heels. Somehow,
I’ve hit her in the chest. But she recovers quickly and comes at me again. A
howl comes out of her. I take a couple of steps back and feel Lisa’s hand on my
back, stopping me. Gus is stepping forward, sighting the infected woman, but I squeeze
the trigger and I take the infected woman’s head off. There’s a spray of grey
blood and she falls onto the tiled floor, her howl silenced.

I’m
breathing heavily. The MP5 is still at my shoulder. Gus is going forward,
passing the infected woman, scanning the other shop units for more Infected.
Lisa puts a hand on my left shoulder. I think about the weapon but I’ve already
flipped the safety back on and my finger is off the trigger. All I need to do
is relax.

There
are no other Infected people in The Mall. We head back to the roller door. Lisa
is on point. She ducks down and we follow her. Outside, I’m glad of the fresh
air. We stand with our backs to the roller door. The three of us are ready, but
our weapons are pointing down. We’re facing a downwards slope. In the distance,
we can see the Pentland Hills, covered in grass and heather. Nearer to us, we
can see the town of Livingston spread out before us. Once, it was a town in
Scotland, now it’s the playground of ZP Incorporated: Zombie Park.

A
scattered group of the Infected are shuffling towards us, awoken by the sound
of gunfire and the scent of our fresh blood.

“You
ready?” Gus asks.

“I’m
ready,” I say and we look at Lisa.

She
gives us her wolfish smile. “Let’s go kill some people.”

“
G
iants live under
here,” said Dad.

I
laughed and shook my head. “They do not.” Smacking the back of my spade on the
vent caused its slats to close and the hissing stopped. It was an easy one.

Dad
did the next one. It was bigger for a start, broader and wider. He raised his
much larger shovel and smacked it down. The smaller vent next to it hissed and
struggled, wisps of steam threaded through the gaps. I raised my spade in
readiness but Dad held out his hand. “Wait! That one needs opening.”

I
groaned, slumping my shoulders. Already at fourteen years of age, I must have
been becoming stroppy and difficult to deal with. “How can you even tell?”

Dad
came over, his boots scraping the grass. He was grinning at me, his massive
frame silhouetted against the grey sky. We were near one of the seven stone
pillars dotted across the land which marked where the groups of vents were. He
crouched down beside me as I rested hands on both knees, staring down at the
vent. He held out a weathered hand and pointed a grimy fingernail at fatigued
metal. He spoke gently to me. “It’s the steam coming out. It needs to escape.
Once it’s done, the vent will attempt to close. When air is being drawn back
inside, you get a different sound, like breathing in.”

He
gestured for me to do it. I breathed in, the backward sigh sounding in my
chest. I held it in.

“That’s
when it needs closed,” he went on. “Now breathe out.”

I
needed to anyway and the air in my lungs burst out through my mouth. It felt
hot and I had to try and catch my breath afterwards. Dad laughed, “So what do
you think is happening? Under here?”

I
looked around. As far as we could see, the mound of grass dotted with vents was
just that, a mound, but I was beginning to learn it was more than that. There
was something under here. The vents led somewhere. I thought about my breath
and looked into the kind eyes of my father as he tried to coax from me the
truth of what we were doing. I said, “It’s hot under here and we let the heat
out.” I tried to sound smart but couldn’t help my eyes travelling from side to
side; scared I was getting it wrong.

Dad
nodded. He reached down and pulled up a tuft of grass. “You’re the first girl
ever to do this job and you’re smarter than anyone.”

I
wrinkled my nose. “Apart from you.”

Dad
shrugged his eyebrows which I took to mean that was already implied. He threw
the grass into the air and the cool autumn breeze tugged it off to the side.
When he stood, he rested a hand on my shoulder. “Our family has done this job
since we arrived here from the north. We’ll keep doing it until the giants wake
up.”

Behind
us, far away, another vent choked and tried to close. We made our way across
the grass, Dad with his shovel on a shoulder, me dragging mine behind.

Back
at the village and Mum had dinner on the boil. I was sure I could smell it the
moment we came into the settlement. It was nearly dark, and rain-heavy clouds
were fading to black. Mum had stepped outside to look for us. Mima, my young
sister, pushed brown hair from her face as she crouched down in the drain to
watch a leaf being carried by the stream. Mum smiled at us as we approached and
opened her arms to Dad as he made the last few steps a run. He kissed her
before  scooping Mima up. She squealed as Dad spun her around. I had a moment
of jealousy, remembering him doing that to me. By this point, I was carrying
his shovel too.

I
squeezed through the narrow door just as a few spots of rain start to spit on
me, and by the time we were eating delicious rabbit stew, the rain was
hammering on our corrugated iron roof. When it was like this, we just sat
quietly and waited for it to pass. Mima placed hands over her ears to block out
the sound and pulled a face. We laughed at her antics.

After
dinner, we sat round the fire and I told Mum about our day. As I explained
about the vents and the heat inside, she nodded in interest and occasionally
shared a smile with Dad. I’d begun to recognise this thing she did where she
listened like I was telling her something she didn’t know but then I would
catch her looking at Dad as if to say:
she’s so cute when she’s learned
something
. When she was like this, Dad never tried to bring anything new
out in me, or teach me anything. He just smiled at Mum and let her decide how
he should think.

“I
would have loved the opportunity you have,” she then said, as she often did
with a regularity I had already resigned myself to. I tuned out though, to the
story of fifteen generations since the virus and how our people fled south.
They found the giants in their cave and discovered a purpose for themselves
supporting the engineers who tended the facility but were too sick to continue.
Instead, I looked at Dad as he smiled at Mum as she told us she was brighter
than the other girls in her class but she still had to have a family and cook for
us while the men did all the interesting work.

I
exploded. My anger at that age still surprises me. I’d tuned out that evening
but still her incessant going on triggered something in me and I couldn’t hold
it. “But there are no boys left are there? There’s only girls like me and Mima,
and one day we’ll run this whole place and no-one will ever criticise us for
being clever.”

Everyone
looked at me. Mima was holding a spoon to her mouth and round clear eyes stared
blankly at me. Mum just shook her head and sighed, like she was trying to put
up with something day in day out. Only Dad seemed interested. His head was
slightly bent forward. Light from the fire we sat around flickered across his
face. I couldn’t understand his expression but in his silence my outburst
seemed suddenly pointless; noisy for its own sake. Yet, something stopped me
apologising. Mima started chewing again, ignoring the drama. We finished our
meal in mostly a quiet and strained atmosphere, until some small talk between
Mum and Dad resumed. Mum insisted I didn’t need to help tidy up, so I sloped
off, upset at this final snub. Wasn’t I good enough to do the dishes?

Strolling
through the village I heard laughter and chatter, even through the concrete
blocks of each building. Cold and dark kept people indoors even though the rain
was off. I wandered over to the facility. I could hear something scraping on
the pavement before I could see it was Lewis, a boy whose family tended this
area. He was sweeping up some leaves from around the wide road leading to the
doors. Dad said these were the main doors into the facility, closed for over
fifteen generations. Lewis and his family tended to the doors. Even in the
darkness I could see Lewis lift his head to see me but he continued his task.
Another person ignoring me, I thought, but I continued to approach him anyway.

“Hey,”
I called out, “You still got some chores to do?”

“Nah,
just doing it.” He continued sweeping. I stood watching him. His movements were
slightly lit by a glow from the far off boundary lanterns which the picket
guards leaned over instead of watching out for bandits. I could see he had that
usual scowl on his face he had when teachers, or girls, or boys, or anyone for
that matter, spoke to him. Still sweeping, he moved off, so I followed him. The
grassy dome above the doors was a black silhouette against the sky. He kept
quiet and I never said anything but he kept looking at me like I was annoying
him. I was only standing there. What was his problem?

In
front of the doors, he swept up the final debris of who knows what in the dark.
He blurted out, “Well don’t just stand there, give me a hand.”

I
growled a sigh at him. “Okay. What is it you want me to do?”

“Grab
the shovel.” He pointed over to a spot beside the door and I stepped over,
trusting there was no obstruction to my walking and fumbled about in the dark
until I found a shovel. I held it out while he swept the stuff onto it. He
showed me a bin where I was to throw it in. He footered about with the bin, his
brush, and the shovel until they were all stowed away. Lewis slumped down on
the grass next to the massive metal doors. The grass led down from the dome
above the facility, the one where I did my work with Dad on the vents.

“Is
it not a bit pointless doing that in the dark?” I couldn’t believe someone
would be out working at night. I looked over to the settlement. My eyes were
completely adjusted to the dark, and Lewis had found us a sheltered and quiet
spot. It was quite beautiful actually.

Lewis
sighed, and I could tell he was aggrieved at my barging in on him. “Nothing’s
pointless. When the giants awake, we need to be ready. They’ll show us what to
do next.”

“You
don’t really believe there are giants in there?” I was making fun of him, but I
really wanted to know. I could feel the presence of the massive doors behind
me, intertwined steel and locked, it was said, with the strength of a hundred
men.

“I
believe what my old man tells me.” He sounded so sure, like his faith in the
legend of the giants was pure; untainted by doubt or questions. He spat
something from between his lips and looked out across the buildings of our
village. Our voices were quiet but they filled this large area.

Without
being able to help myself, I found I was pressing him. “But it was his Dad that
told him that, all the way back to the engineers we found here, tending this
place.”

“So
why should we doubt it?” He turned to me, and his scowl was gone. “You know the
history. Our people fled the virus and the fighting. When they got here, the
engineers were few in number and needed help. Why would they lie?”

“But
why would we spend our lives tending to them?”

“Not
to them,” Lewis said, conviction in his young voice. “To the facility. The
engineers were not giants’ slaves. And nor shall we be.”

I
recognised the words. “That’s right out the school books.”

Lewis
leaned over and placed his wrists on his knees. “Grown-ups criticise you for
not learning while kids give you stick for paying attention.”

My
own legs were stretched out and I wiggled my feet in response to his
exasperation in me. Realising I had been patronising, I changed the subject.
“Me and Dad tend the vents.”

“Because
of the heat inside?”

“Yes,
do you know about it?”

Lewis
jumped up and told me to follow him. Scrambling to my feet, I skipped after him
as he went up to the door. It was massive and don’t think I had been that close
before. He stood really close to it, and rested an ear on the metal. He ran his
hands over the surface, like he was smoothing a blanket. “What do you feel?”
Lewis asked, quietly.

I
stepped up and followed his lead. The door was cold against my head. I found
myself giggling with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment. He gently
shushed me. “You have to listen,” Lewis said. “Try it for once.”

I
tutted but closed my eyes. Hearing his hand slide along the surface of the door
like the rustle of grass in the breeze, I placed my own palms on. Though it
looked smooth from a distance, I could feel the indentations of the metal, its
imperfections and points where the weather had bitten at it. Little crumbles of
rust pattered through my fingers and I thought of Lewis sweeping them up
tomorrow.

Lewis
was whispering now, his gentle voice repeating a fairy story Mum told me and
Mima. “We live in a time of legend. Deep inside, far underground, lie the
giants. They wait for the day they will wake up and show us the way. We tend
the facility, in the tradition of the engineers. The giants watch over us,
keeping us safe, and free of the virus.”

His
voice made me feel sleepy as I drifted into the door, feeling like it could
swallow me and I would fall asleep amongst the giants to awake in a place far
away, unrecognisable as home. My mind went deep underground, imagining their
slumber. Lewis said, “The giants live in an ice palace, surrounded by treasure,
guarded by us. The cooling system needs to let out steam, so you open the
vents, and close them again to prevent contamination getting in. And far
beneath us, you can hear a clock ticking down the time until they awake.”

I
listened. My head seemed no longer on the door, but beyond it, exploring the
passages and I could see a machine, like the clock in the engineers’ lab with
its swinging pendulum. Yet the one I pictured was massive and filled with
wheels of varying sizes. When the hours struck, clockwork people moved inside
its mechanism striking bells with tiny spades. And then I could hear it, really
hear it, not some imagined sound from my dream timepiece. It was ticking. I
opened my eyes and I could see Lewis looking right at me. He knew I could hear
it. “It’s the giants,” he said. “Their breath powers it. No springs, no
pulleys, just their breath. You can only hear it from the door.”

“I
hear things at the vents, but I thought it was just the steam.”

I
smiled and he grinned back at me. I was thrilled to be sharing this moment with
him. Then there was a low thud which seemed to startle him. Lewis jumped back.
My shoulder shuddered in fright like someone gripped them as I too hopped away
from the door. Clanks and thumps from beyond the door picked out a rhythm in
time to the sounds we heard inside. I was terrified. Then we were lit up.
Framing the door were a series of rectangular holes I had seen many times, but
it was like someone had lit a fire inside each one. They began to glow. A
purple bruise at first, the light soon changed to a sort of orange.