Holiday of the Dead (2 page)

13.20pm

By now I felt awful. A headache thumped away inside my skull like a demonic parasite and a fever made me feel delirious. Mother sent for the doctor, but it appeared that I was not the only one to have been bitten by the rats, and he was busy elsewhere.

Although I couldn’t be sure, I think my mother’s more worried than she’s letting on. I heard her whispering to my father (which is never a good sign), and they won’t let Jake in to see me.

17.30pm

Time felt as though it had stopped. The last few hours seemed to have dragged on for days. I think I’ve been sleeping, but I’m not sure.

A shadow moved into my field of view, and the doctor’s face appeared above me like the angel of death. He shook his head and then closed my eyelids. Dark inside, I felt strangely numb.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, a few hours after leaving Haiti, we picked up a vessel that was floating adrift. Unfortunately, the vessel was harbouring a quantity of rats that have now entered the ship. These rats have bitten a number of people, and it has been found that the rats are carrying an unidentified virus. You are advised not to leave your cabins until further notice. But rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to contain the situation.”

Virus. The word made me think back to a recent biology class. Virus: any of a group of sub microscopic entities capable of replication only within the cells of animals and plants.

That didn’t sound too good. As I contemplated my predicament, I heard more voices in the room, strange voices, and although I couldn’t move, I felt them lift my body and carry me through the ship.

I heard people talking in the background; some cried. Far away, I heard a scream.

19.02pm

When I opened my eyes, the darkness didn’t fade; it took me a moment to realise that something rested lightly on my face. I instinctively reached up, glad that my ability to move had returned, and tugged off what turned out to be a white, linen sheet. Light from a bare bulb above cast a veil of luminescence, revealing the room to be some sort of storage facility piled high with boxes.

Before I fell into what I can only assume was a coma, I had felt someone touching me up. I had wanted to scream at them to stop, but of course I couldn’t. To all intents and purposes I was dead. That’s what made it so sickening. I don’t know how far the person would have gone if they weren’t interrupted by someone entering the room and announcing another dead body needed collecting – I couldn’t help but think that it had been doctor death copping a quick feel.

I now felt hungry. Ravenous. It not only manifested itself as a burning sensation in my stomach, but as an overpowering urge to feast.

I sat up. My body felt different, my muscle fibres tighter, as if they had contracted, and my skin felt leathery. Red blotches marred my arms; where the blood had pooled my body looked bruised. I probably looked as bad as I felt.

Swinging my legs over the side of the trolley, I stood up and then almost collapsed. At first, walking proved difficult; I felt reborn, having to learn all over.

There were other bodies in the room, but I sensed that they too weren’t dead, that we had been pricked like Sleeping Beauty and had fallen asleep. But no Prince came to awaken us.

19.21pm

Upon leaving the room, my family came to mind. It took a while to get my bearings, but once I did, I made my way back to the cabin we shared.

The ship seemed unnaturally quiet. In the distance, I heard the slap of waves against the bow, and felt the steady throb of the engines vibrating through the floor. My whole body felt attuned.

With no sign of Father and Jake, I guessed they were out somewhere. Perhaps Father was trying to explain the concept of death to my brother, but he would be ill-informed.

I opened my mouth and tried to speak, but no words would come – at least nothing that sounded intelligible.

Impelled to move, I staggered forward and grabbed my mother. Apparently too shocked to stir, she gurgled something as incoherent as my own effort at communication, but I wasn’t really listening. I needed to quench the burning in my stomach.

I sank my teeth into Mother’s neck and clamped them together and ripped out a chunk of flesh as sweet as any prime steak. She gurgled something and for a brief moment, she struggled. But it was futile. Death had empowered me.

It felt almost karmic – seemed only right that Mother nurtured me in death as she had in life.

Footsteps echoed outside the door and then stopped; the handle started to turn. I heard voices: my father and brother. I would never make Jake laugh again.

Soon, everyone would be dark inside …

THE END

SQUAWK

By

Remy Porter

I could taste dirt and blood in my mouth, sprawled out and face down. Always the clumsy boy. Back on my feet I picked up the sound of my brother Daz’s bellow ahead somewhere, ‘Where the fuck are you, Conrad?’

I ran for the centre of the field, brushing the high grass away from my face. It was dark; the only light, a quarter moon, lost in a cloudy sky. Stumbling, I found the silhouette of Daz’s broad back. There he was, driving a wheelbarrow forward in wild, weaving steps. Heaped in it was a stolen generator and some copper pipe; metal clanking on metal. ‘I’m here,’ I hissed and took hold of one handle.   

I shot a glance back at the farmhouse. A cacophony of voices, farmer and farmer’s sons I guessed. Blinding spot lights shot over the field like lasers, illuminating the woodlands, the fields and fences. Our transit van was suddenly no longer in the shadows, but stuck out like a white blinding beacon.

The throaty roar of a tractor engine started behind us. ‘Let’s leave it here, Daz.’ Moonlight caught my brother’s incredulous look – like I was the crazy one. We pushed forward, the balls of our trainers slipping and churning in the mud. Miscellaneous metals fell out either side of the barrow. ‘Come on will you!’ pleaded Daz.

‘Trying.’

Forty feet from the van the back doors sprang open. There he was, the stick thin nicotine-stained midget that was our Dad beckoning to us. He was in his favourite Magic Johnson athletic top that was a good size too big for him. A lifetime of grime, from his wig, all the way down to his Doc Martin boots. He was green blood Irish gypsy stock, and he once chewed a man’s ear off. He was proud of that. A yellowing scar bisected his nose, a keeper from a 70’s knife fight. A family dispute settled the old way.

‘You two eejits ne’er learn. Not a clever bone in either one of yous.’

The tractor ripped across the field for us, people shouting over the din, ‘We’re coming, you fucking gypos.’ Inbred pig farmers for sure.

Me, Dad and Daz had our hands on the heavy gennie, sliding it into the back of the van. Something like this was pure gold dust to us. Transient folk had one hundred and one uses for these units. It would be a big fist of cash, no questions asked.

Something sharp brushed over my hair, a black shape zooming past my peripheral vision. ‘What the hell was that?’ Daz said, looking up with me.

‘Lads, we don’t have the time for star gazing,’ Dad shouted and scuttled back into the driver’s cab.

A new noise, a raw ‘SQUAWK’. A crow hit the metal roof of the transit with enough force to leave a dent. It stood up proud and stared down at me and Daz like some pagan god. There was enough light around to see black marble eyes. Intelligent. Watching. What the fuck?

‘Fucking have your wings in a satay sauce,’ Daz shouted, jumping in the van. I could tell he was spooked; the tell-tale tremor in his voice gave it away.

I looked back to the field. The farmers in their tractor were still a hundred metres away. It seemed every light in the farmhouse was on now. Women and children were stood in the yard watching and throwing half-heard abuse our way. Trust Dad to go and find us the bloody Waltons to go and rob.

As I went to jump in the passenger door, the crow reached its black head down from on top of the roof. It was no more than an inch from my face when it clacked its beak together, a sharp metallic sound. Another ear-piercing screech. I couldn’t get past. I threw my hand up to brush it away and its talons raked over my forearm; an angry bloodied line through my rose tattoo. ‘You bastard.’ The crow retreated two steps. It seemed to be laughing at me.

‘Have you got a clean shot?’ I clearly heard one of the farmers say.

I looked at Daz and Dad, ‘Floor it, floor it now!’ The transit wheels spun in the clay mud and I was hanging half in, half out of the passenger door. The van found purchase and shot forward over a cattle grid. Daz grimaced as he held me by both armpits, his grip tearing at my skin. A shot rang out and shotgun pellets clanged into the van’s metal side panels.

‘They can’t do that to us,’ our Dad shouted over wild engine revs. ‘That’s god damn criminal!’

I finally got my feet inside and closed the door. I nodded at him and watched the black woods blur by. Two posts marked the end of the farmer’s drive and we lurched back onto tarmac and open country road.

‘Are you shot, Conrad?’ Daz asked me, holding my arm up for inspection under the cab light.

‘The crow got me good,’ I told him. I looked up at the quarter moon and clouds and wondered if that fucker was up there watching. Next time it’d get a noose around its oily neck. 

The steady tappeting engine had sent me to sleep on the motorway somewhere north of Bradford. I woke to see us back on the small roads between Kendal and Penrith. Daz’s heavy head was leaning on my shoulder, squeaking-snores coming from his nose like a congested door mouse. I gave him a nudge and he awoke with a start.

To most people who didn’t know my brother he was basically a bruiser. In a certain light you could see Dad’s pinched, ferreting face, but instead of skin and bone Daz was all meat. He had big veined, sausage-fingered hands. His build was pure bulk, muscle all the way apart from a protruding pot belly. He would have made the perfect gypsy bare fisted brawler if he hadn’t been a bit of a coward when it came to risking his own neck.

Dad had tried his best to push him into fighting in the early days, but Daz quickly learned the art of playing dead. Put him in a ring, with even a boy half his size, and if his first punch missed he could curl up in a ball quicker than a hedgehog on a croquet lawn. In the end Dad let him be. He knew when he was onto a loser.

I looked away from Daz and over at the neat pine tree forest lining one side of the road. The orange glow of sunrise was peeping into view. The road was straight and undulating, and almost empty. No more than a metre from the front bumper sat a small silver sedan. This was one of Dad’s favourite games. I’d seen him play it many times. ‘Look at those two fuckers. Can you see them, Conrad?’

Dad used the overtaking lane and pulled alongside. I looked down into the slightly worried faces of a bearded middle-aged man in the driver’s seat and his presumed wife next to him. To Dad this was like a red rag to a bull. It made no sense of course, and there was no explanation. They were there to be toyed with, like a cat and a canary. The bearded man threw another scared glance up. I could see his white knuckles on the steering wheel. My face was stony – it gave nothing away to him.

Daz was getting excited, leaning over me. ‘Pull over, pull over,’ he shouted down to the driver. Already he was reaching for his iron bar. ‘You are a sick puppy,’ I said. I couldn’t help but smile, just a little. My brother was mental and I loved him for it. He never knew any better.

Dad kept pace with the sedan driver, constantly making the transit do little swerves their way. He wasn’t trying to hit them, that would be far too messy. Finally, the sedan did as expected and came to a complete stop. It always seemed the safest thing to do given the circumstances – who wouldn’t stop when three crazy men in a van were trying to run you off the road?

I could see the wife fumbling for her phone, no doubt ringing the police. The bearded man was shouting to her. I couldn’t make it out. We felt quite safe; the number plates on our van were stolen. The van itself belonged to a very distant relative. It would be a quagmire for any officer of the law to plough through. Anyway, we weren’t going to hang around to get caught that was for sure.

Daz couldn’t help himself. He leaned over me and out of the passenger window holding out his iron bar. With a quick swipe he sent the sedan’s wing mirror fifteen metres into the trees. He followed up on the windscreen, sending a spider web of cracks shooting across it. ‘Good shot there Daz, my son,’ Dad said. ‘Can’t let those beards get away with anything.’