Breeding Ground (20 page)

“What happened to him?” Maine’s question was directed at Katie, an indication of how bad Dave’s condition had got. His pale face was sweating badly, and his eyes shook slightly, glazing over as if they were unable to focus.

“He got bit by a widow.” Katie didn’t look up, gently unwinding the layers of bandage.

“What the bloody hell’s a widow?”

“That’s part of the long story. Here, take the bandage. I want to get the dressing off.” Her voice was soft, the kind of softness that could never be found in a man’s voice, and it made my heart squeeze. The surprised, sharp breath that followed made me stop my search and turn.

“Shit.” She exclaimed. “Shit. Oh, shit”

“What the hell is that?” There was no hint of joviality in our new comrade now, and keeping hold of the packet of antibiotics designed to treat fuck only knew

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what that I’d found, I came quickly round to join them.

“What? What’s happened?” No one spoke and I followed their eyes to the uncovered wound.

I stared down in disbelief and more than a small amount of disgust, not sure I knew what I was seeing, my mind scanning its memory banks to see if there were any images locked away that were even vaguely similar. It drew a blank.

His arm was red, an angry crimson spreading out from the injury. There were deep cuts in his skin where the mandibles had clamped down on him, the rivers of poison blaring out against the pale inner arm, but that I could deal with. That I could understand. What was new, what was so alien, was the stuff that oozed from the bite, the white, thin, stringy substance that erupted outwards, coming from within his arm, that spread, winding its way along the limb and under his wrist, reaching down to his fingers and stretching up towards his elbow. I felt escaping air catch in my throat as my eyes slowly crept up to look into Dave’s sweaty face.

A weak smile attempted to take hold of his lips, his own voice wet and breathless. “If you try and tell me that’s normal, I’ll punch your face in.”

Katie ripped open the box of pills and pressed some into his mouth. “These look pretty strong.” She tried to smile, but her attempt wasn’t as good as Dave’s. “At least the packet says you can’t drink with them, so I’ll take that as a sign they’re good for you.” Her patient took them and swallowed, his grimace betraying how they stuck dryly in his throat, and Oliver pulled a Lucozade from the shelf, opening it for him.

“No alcohol? That can never be good for you.” He

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passed the bottle of golden, sugary liquid. “Get that down you.”

Scurrying off behind the counter, Katie scrabbled at bottles in a random panic. “Maybe if we can find some liquid antibiotic, something we can put straight into the wound, or some kind of bleach or antiseptic, maybe that could stop it. Maybe if we-“

“Stop it.” Dave’s tired voice cut her off, his calm the antithesis of her manic rambling. “Just stop it, Katie.”

Despite his words, she continued to peer into the shelves around her for a few moments until her movements slowly wound down like a clock and finally she stopped and turned to face him, leaning across the counter and resting her face in her hands.

Dave coughed two or three times, a too-wet, phlegmy sound coming from deep in his chest, and then breathed raggedly before speaking.

“That’s not going to work, and we all know it.” His eyes shook slightly with fever, but behind them his clear mind was apparent.

Slowly, Katie straightened up and came back round, leaning next to me against the counter. “But there’s got to be something we can do. There must be.” Her voice sounded more like Jane’s, the hopelessness and fear making her quiet words sound childlike. The seconds ticked by in silence, and I stared at the walls, the shelves of shampoo and baby lotions, anywhere rather than at Dave or at the others.

Finally Dave let out a long sigh. “There is something you can do. It is the only thing you can do.” He stared at Katie and then at me. “You can cut my arm off.”

His quiet words took a couple of seconds to sink into my tired brain.

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“No fucking way.” My head shook. “No fucking way. There must be something else.”

“Look at my arm, Matt. Look at it.”

I did, and a wave of revulsion again washed over me as I stared at the white strands that I was sure wriggled slightly with life as they twisted around his limb. “If you don’t amputate, this is going to kill me. I know it, and you know it.”

His shoulders slumped forward, shrinking inward in the plastic chair, as if his body had got smaller since the bite, smaller with the awful acknowledgement of the truth that he’d come to before the rest of us.

I wasn’t sure the counter could take the weight of my body and soul, but it stood up to the task, and leaning against it, I rubbed my face, feeling the itch of unshaven stubble, my hand resting across my mouth for a moment.

“Where are we going to do it? How?” I looked at Katie and Oliver. “The hospital’s miles away, and I don’t think small town doctor’s surgeries have the equipment we need.”

“I don’t really fucking care, I just want you to cut it off.” The monotone and tiredness that oozed from Dave was scarier than if he were screaming. “I need to get it out of me.”

Oliver waved one of his gangly arms at the cigarette pack sticking out of my jeans pocket and I opened it. We all took one and ceremoniously passed the lighter round. It was our new friend that broke the silence.

“There’s a vet’s at the other end of Willow Grove.” Using the glowing end of the cigarette, he pointed out towards somewhere through the left wall. “It’s about a mile or so out that way. I used to have a dog.” He smiled slightly and shrugged sheepishly. “I loved that

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dog. Border collie. Anyway, he got sick.” Cigarette smoke was thickening the air, but the sting of it almost felt good. “They were good to him up there. They’ve got a hospital out back where they do operations. That could be a good place.”

Glancing first at the sky outside and then at my watch, I stood upright. “Well, if we’re going to do it today, then we’d better do it soon. It’s midday already, and we need to get to Hanstone by the time it gets dark.” None of us wanted to spend another night like the one before. Hanstone Park seemed like a haven in my mind, a place where we would be safe, and I imagine it was the same for the others.

“Tell me, Oliver.” Dave pulled on his cigarette, his hand trembling, his tone light. “This dog of yours. When it got sick and you took it to this vet’s…”

“Yep?” Maine hooked his hand in one of Dave’s armpits and pulled him up.

“Did it live?” The rattling in his chest forced his words out in a wheeze.

“Nope. But it was a bloody old bugger. And anyway, he had a vet operating on him. You’ve got us.” Cigarette clamped between his teeth, he smiled. “Which makes about a million to one chance of us doing it right and you surviving.”

“Oh, good.” Dave grimaced slightly as Katie rewrapped his damaged arm. “I feel so much better now.”

Maine chortled out loud, slapping the injured man heartily on his back. “Oh, but you should. Don’t you watch the films? The million to one shots always come in.”

The door behind then flew open and Jane erupted in, all excitement and energy. “We’ve found who was

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driving the minibus! It’s a woman!” Her shining eyes shot round each of us, unaware of the surreal madness that had been taking place only moments ago. Our silence obviously frustrated her.

“Well, come on!” She huffed impatiently, before turning on her heel and heading back outside.

Dave was still trembling a little as Katie safetypinned the bandage, hiding the monstrosity that was spreading underneath. “It’s time we got going, anyway. Matt’s right. We need to get this done quickly. So let’s go.” Oliver helped him to his feet and Katie filled a carrier bag with a selection of pills and liquids that she must have felt we would need.

Pushing away from the counter, I followed Jane and led the others out, unable to match the child’s enthusiasm, the knowledge of what we had to do shortly turning my stomach, preventing me from feeling any kind of joy at a new survivor, instead only a grim anger at what this new world was throwing at us, at me.

The rain was still warm and thick, but coming down slightly slower than earlier, small patches of sky clearing above. Standing by the front of the minibus, John twisted and smiled at us. The slim darkhaired figure next to him didn’t, but continued leaning forward on the bonnet, writing on a small notepad. Jane tugged at my sleeve.

“I think she’s deaf.” She smiled, pleased with herself. “I figured it out. No one else.”

Gently drawing the girl’s attention to us, John took the notepad and held it up. “This is Rebecca.” The name was written in beautifully shaped, even letters across the plain paper. The author smiled nervously, her full features and dark eyes complemented by the

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olive skin. Although she was slim, there was something athletic in her build and she looked strong in her jeans, tight-fitting maroon polo neck and leather jacket. A deaf girl. A beautiful deaf girl. There was no doubt about that, all cool tall elegance.

My head suddenly filled with her beauty and Dave’s wound, images of that living whiteness cutting through her skin as it strangled her face, and then her face turned into Katie’s elfin one, the strands eating into that, and I wondered if perhaps loneliness may not be the worst thing about all of this. Maybe the worst bit was having people to care about, to fear the loss of, especially now, when human company was so rare and precious.

When I spoke, the harshness in my voice surprised all of us. Apart from Rebecca, of course, although she could probably “hear” it in the faces of the others. “That’s great, but we’ve got to get going. Everyone on the bus. Sit in the front with me, Oliver. I need you to direct me to the vet’s.”

A flash of something like annoyance seemed to surface in Rebecca’s eyes as I pulled open the door and got in behind the wheel. I guess she still saw it as her car, but this was a brave new world, and if someone was going to drive us then I wanted it to be someone that could react quickly to any kind of warning. I didn’t look at her again as I adjusted the seat, but she must have figured that it wasn’t that big of a deal, not worth being left behind alone for at any rate. The door at the back slid shut and I pulled away, the heavy slow chug of the minibus miles away from the smooth ease of the Mitsubishi.

“The vet’s?” Nigel was in the seat directly behind mine, and even the rustle of his ridiculous suit was

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irritating. “Why are we going to the vet’s? I thought we were going straight to Hanstone. That’s where we need to be going. We need to be going there right now.” His index finger jabbed at the back of my shoulder blade, as if to add emphasis to his words in case I chose to ignore them. “There’ll be people there. Proper people that can sort all this out.”

Staring forward and ignoring him, it was only my grip on the steering wheel that stopped me from turning round and punching him in the face.

An uneventful twenty minutes later and we stood in a nervous huddle in the centre of the reception area of the small practice. Even Nigel had stayed silent since Dave had explained just why we needed our little diversion. The air smelled damp from the warm water that had quietly soaked us outside, hiding in the fibres of our sweatshirts and jumpers.

“So, who’s going to do it then?” Dave opened the clinical white door that should lead into the small consulting rooms and the hospital, if the sign above was to be believed. Nigel hovered at the back of our small bunch, as if trying to make himself invisible, but his efforts were unnecessary. I would have guessed that Dave would rather have chewed his own arm off rather than let Nigel anywhere near him.

George caught my eye, and we nodded to each other, my heart sinking. If George was our leader, then I seemed to have become his general, and I wasn’t sure if it was a responsibility I was ever going to learn to enjoy.

“That’ll be me and George, then.” The smile I tried to give Dave must have looked more like a death mask

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stretched tight across my skull, but it was the best I could do while trying to quell the rush of fear that sent a hot flush racing out of every pore of my skin.

“The rest of you might as well get a bit of a rest.” George was right behind me. “John, you keep that gun. Come with us to the operating room, just in case, and then come back and keep an eye out. Katie can look after the other gun. If there’s any trouble, shout, but I’ve got to warn you, depending on how we’re getting on in there, it’s unlikely that we’re going to be able to come out and help.” His words were greeted with a round of silent nods, apart from Rebecca, who had been trying to communicate something to John, and finally resorted to scribbling on the small damp notepad she’d used outside. She held the sheet up firmly in my face, her expression fiercely determined to be heard.

I have some medical training. I am a nurse for the handicapped. I can help.

My heart raced slightly. “So you know about amputation?” The pen scribbled furiously again.

No, I’m not a doctor. But I know a bit about drugs. He’ll need painkillers. And something to knock him out.

I stared at her words for a second or two before shrugging. “Well, I suppose that’s better than nothing. As long as you think you can handle it.”

Tucking her pad into the back pocket of her jeans, her dark eyes glared at me with disdain. I didn’t know why I felt the need to somehow be angry with her; maybe even then I sensed that she was different from me, Katie, Jane and the rest of us, that she was somehow outside of this nightmare. Whatever it was, I was out of patience and good feeling and she was the easiest person to take it out on.

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With enough of a nudge for me to feel her annoyance, Rebecca took Dave’s arm and smiled gently at him before following John through the doorway.