Flu (4 page)

    DEFINITELY everywhere, now. She struggled to get up, reeling against her scorched, moist foot. It wouldn't touch the ground. She tried to walk, but ended up hopping. Her head was spinning. Her balance surprised her.

    Balaclava had exited the car, now struggling with the lock on the door of a house in front of her. She struggled in his direction, cursing him as she moved. Yelling at him to stop. But she could understand why he hated her. Only a mad bitch would hang onto a car like that. A stupid, annoying, mad bitch. She was even starting to piss herself off.

    Balaclava finally managed to get the door open, looking left and right before darting in and closing it behind him. Geri heard the door lock tight just as she reached it. She beat her bruised and bloodied hands upon it, yelling at the top of her voice. There were
other
voices, now. Drawn to the excitement, their footsteps getting closer. Panic ran through her blood like poison. She turned her attention to the front window, noticing how it was covered by a metal grill. She went back to the door, beating against it and screaming like the crazy bitch she truly had become.

    They were almost upon her. She refused to look around, but she could feel them, smell them, almost taste their heavy, acrid stench in her mouth.
This is it,
she thought to herself.
This is your swansong, Geri- babes. Kiss your bye-byes,
as her mum used to say.
Rest in peace, you crazy, mad bitch.

    Geri closed her eyes tight, bracing herself for the inevitable embrace of a sweat-stained, flu-ridden death. She hoped it would be quick, painless. She hoped, but she knew that hope was not enough. Not anymore. Not when the odds were so readily stacked against her.

    But then, when it seemed lost, the door opened, again. A hand grabbed her, roughly, pulling her through.

Chapter Two

    Balaclava manhandled Geri through the small hallway of the house, his eyes wide, and his gun hand ever threatening. He never spoke, instead keeping his head and mouth, purposely, away from her. He half dragged, half pushed her. Her torn foot was grating against the rough-fibred carpet, causing her to cry, and she hated crying in front of this bastard. They reached the small cubby hole under the stairs. He opened its panelled wooden door and threw her against the hoovers and brushes inside. She landed hard against her shoulder, scattering the various household junk. He closed the door, before she could even as much as take a breath, leaving her in darkness. A key turned, a lock clicked.

    "You fucking bastard!" she called out, slamming her fist against the door.

    From outside, she heard activity. Balaclava swearing loudly. Footsteps on the stairs and another voice, agitated, challenging Balaclava. An ensuing argument between the two voices, with only a few words made out. Words like 'flu' and 'girl' and, most worryingly, 'dead'.

    Geri fumbled around in the dark, mouldy cubby for something that could be fashioned into a weapon. She found a brush shaft and gripped it like a gladiator, aiming at the door. It would be no match for a gun, but she'd spear the first bastard to open that door, then sprint down the hall…

    (to where?)

    Her heart sank when she considered the options. Back outside? Where the streets were becoming more and more dangerous, more and more populated by the sick, the dying, the dead and the…

    She thought back to only a few days ago. When there had been four of them, none being people she'd ever known before the flu had struck. One by one, they had developed symptoms. Just like everyone else - the sneezing, the coughing. The temperature. The vomiting and diarrhoea. The mucus (oh dear God, the mucus!). And then the blood. Congealing with phlegm and excrement to gargle from every orifice. Draining their bodies from the inside out. Strangling and melting them. Stealing their breaths, their pulses, their lives.

    But that wasn't all of it. Dear God, that wasn't even close. The bodies didn't stay down. Nobody ever could explain it properly, but some people on the TV had said the flu had mutated, evolved. Set up shop in the bodies of their victims, even hijacking basic functions. It was like the stuff of horror movies. First, their eyes opened. Then their limbs started moving. Finally, they were up and about, moving around and reacting to one another. Hunting together, like packs of tired, hungry dogs.

    And that's what was outside for her. That's what was waiting, what the alternative to the cubby hole was. She'd seen it. She'd felt it.

    But she'd survived it.

    So, she wasn't going to let go, just yet. Heart racing, head pounding, Geri gripped the brush shaft even tighter and with more resolve. Staring at the door, she waited.

    The man with the tattoos and piercings bounced down the stairs with purpose. His eyes were red and blotchy from sleeping. Charcoal eyeliner lended his face a gaunt, sickly appearance.

    "Did you just throw some girl into our cubby hole?" he quizzed, brow furrowed with bemusement. He wasn't sure if the scene had been part of his dream (nightmare?) or if he'd really seen it.

    "Yeah…" replied Balaclava. "I think she might be… sick."

    "Sick?!" said Tattoo, with mock excitement. "As in, 'that's soooo sick, man' type sick?! Or, and let me be sure to articulate this in a manner most appropriate, FUCKING FLU SICK!"

    "I don't know!" protested Balaclava. "She sneezed, so I -"

    "SHE SNEEZED!" interrupted Tattoo, his whole face almost bouncing with disbelief and anger. "And you brought her here?! TO OUR FUCKING HOUSE?!"

    He threw his hands into the air, dramatically. He'd known this idiot for long enough to know he wasn't the brightest spark in the plug. But this was taking the biscuit…

    "I didn't have much of a choice! The bitch was hard to shake off. She was banging the door, and those bastards… they're everywhere, now! They would have found where we were, and then…" Balaclava's muffled cries broke off, reluctant to spell out the obvious.

    "FUUUUCK!" shouted Tattoo, raising his hands above him, again, as if petitioning God. "FUUUUUUCCCCCK!"

    Balaclava gave up mitigating for himself, setting his large frame down at a telephone table in the hallway. To the tattooed man, he looked like he was going to cry. Dampen his stupid woollen face with his clownish tears. But Tattoo had little pity for him. He had little pity for anyone who was an idiot. It just made him impatient, and when he was impatient he got irritable.

    "Take that
stupid
thing off your head," he said, sitting himself down on the bottom stairs.

    "It stops me from getting the flu."

    "No it doesn't." Tattoo said, sighing.

    It was a conversation they'd had many, many times before.

    "It does. The news people said that you should always keep your nose and mouth-"

    "The news people are dead," Tattoo said, shortly. "The scientists are dead, the police are dead, the fucking provos are dead… and all those idiots up at Stormont?" he asked, rhetorically. "That's right. Dead." He ran a hand along the stubble on his head, working the back of his neck as if a kink had developed. "So why don't you just take off the stupid fucking balaclava," he said, softly, "And tell me -
clearly
- how we're going to sort out this mess."

    Minutes felt like hours. The darkness engulfed her, allowing little or no vision within the small cubby hole. Eventually, she gave up on the waiting game, considering the fact that they were going to leave her here for a while. Which sucked, of course, because Geri really needed a piss.

    She groped around in the dark, looking for anything of interest. She didn't know what she was looking for or why. It was probably just a way to relieve the boredom (and take her mind off her bladder). It wasn't that she thought the cubby hole, under the stairs, held any treasures. Good God, she wasn't that deluded. She'd read CS Lewis as a child, but she knew it was fiction. Fairytales were made-up, right? And monsters weren't real, either.

    (right?)

    Her hands worked their way through all the familiars - the hoover, bicycle wheels, shoes, old tools and things that felt so… odd… that she really didn't want to know what they were. Eventually she found a tin. It jingled, as if full of coins. Instinctively, Geri reached inside, finding something smooth, metallic and what to her untrained mind felt bullet-shaped. She'd watched the movies. She knew what a bullet looked like, and she reckoned she'd know what it felt like, too. This definitely fitted the bill. Quickly, she shoved the bullet into the front pocket of her skinny jeans. It stuck out, uncouthly, from the denim. She pulled her t-shirt down to cover it.

    The noise of a key turning startled her. She threw the tin to the other side of the cubby hole, fumbled for the brush shaft and readied herself.

    "Hang on a minute," Balaclava said, stepping back and aiming the gun toward the cubby hole. "Just in case she's turned…"

    Tattoo sighed, unlocking the door.

    "Are you ready?" he asked the other man.

    "Yep," came the reply.

    Tattoo pulled the door wide open, as if trying to surprise the girl. It ended up doing exactly the opposite, Tattoo himself surprised to find his jollies at the business end of a brush shaft. He stumbled back, the all-too- distinctive pain of being kicked in the groin descending upon his legs and abdomen, buckling him over.

    Balaclava hesitated instead of firing, perhaps worried about hitting his friend. The second's hesitation was all that the girl needed, bringing the brush shaft crashing against his jaw with an almost feral force. The heavier man fell back against the hall wall, slamming against its magnolia naffness, dazed and confused.

    The girl dropped the brush shaft to descend upon him, her long frame bent double over his short, stubby body as she struggled for the gun. Balaclava wrestled, bitterly, his eyes wide with panic as the threat of INFECTION clearly terrorised him. He began to scream like a girl. She was screaming too, their voices harmonising with each other, insanely, like some crazy death metal song.

    But her glory was short-lived. The brush shaft that had caused him such red-faced, bulging-eyed and screw-faced pain became Tattoo's friend, swinging with vengeance to connect with the girl's jaw, cracking a tooth and knocking her off Balaclava. She tumbled, roughly, towards the kitchen door across the hall. Her lanky form sprawled half-in, half-out of the kitchen, face flat on the ground. She was soundlessly out cold.

Chapter Three

    Some miles south of Geri's whereabouts, another young woman also felt trapped. The circumstances were different. The women, themselves, were completely different. This young woman had no captors as such. She also retained all of her teeth. Yet she still felt trapped.

    Karen Wilson looked from the window of her flat, situated close to the top floor of one of Finaghy's tower blocks. The view was breathtaking - fresh blue sky stretching as far as the eye could see. A patchwork of flame-red brick and white, parched plaster mixing with chimney tops and roof slates. The greenery of gardens and sporadic colour of flower beds.

    Hundreds of dead people. Walking.

    A door opened behind her, causing her to jump. It was only Pat. Behind him trailed a wheeled suitcase, large and heavy, by the looks of the sweat breaking on his constantly furrowed brow.

    "God, you scared me…" Karen said, pressing a single hand against her beating heart, as if to calm it.

    "Didn't you hear the car?" Pat said without looking at her. He was a man of few words - she knew that already from the weeks she had spent under his care. Today, of course, he was a man with a mission, and it seemed like he'd accomplished it. He wheeled the formidable looking case into the middle of the room.

    "Yeah, ages ago… What took you getting up here?"

    "Lift's broke," Pat said, shortly. "I had to carry this thing up the stairs." He looked at her, briefly, adding, "It's heavy."

    The lift had been the last thing that she'd known to work. Neither she nor Pat knew why, but it outlasted the television, electric, gas and telephone. As everything else ceased to function, the lift soldiered on, responding to every call like a loyal dog. Kicking into gear, metal rubbing against metal, cogs and coils grinding against each other like reluctant lovers. It was noisy, and, in a world where noise was as scarce as life itself, Karen had found comfort in that.

    "Get everything you needed?" Karen said, keen to see what was inside the case. She suddenly noticed how she tailored her conversation for Pat, trying to sound more adult and serious. It wasn't the way she would have talked to her friends. It wasn't the way she would have talked to anyone, but then again, she wouldn't really have said much of anything to a man like Pat, before. She'd have considered him boring, truth be told, and maybe a bit uncouth.

    "Pretty much," Pat replied, answering her question as economically as she expected him to. He stretched his back, pursing his lips as if strained. Sighing, he bent down again to the latch on the case and unzipped it. The sound of commotion, from outside, caused his ears to suddenly prick up. He looked to Karen, narrowing his eyes. "There's more of them, today. Don't you hear them? Made it harder getting around."

    Karen listened more acutely. She could hear the slow, gruff rumblings from the dead. A gentle, bass- toned moan carried along to their perched view via the summer breeze. It came from the streets and gardens and houses below, as well as other flats in their block. Some of the dead were locked inside their homes, the result of desperate measures by crumbling authorities to quarantine the sick towards the end. It hadn't made any difference. Those quarantined died then got back up again, just like all the others. The only difference was that they were trapped in their own deathbeds, unable to get out.

    "God…" she whispered, shuddering at the thought of more of them. She'd seen quite enough of the poor souls since it all kicked off.