Only The Living (Lost Survival Series Book 1) (12 page)

In the hour or two that Mitchell left us on our own, infected and immobilised, I had plenty of time to hang there and think. Wondering about Millie and Beth, whether or not they’d managed to escape. Ian, who was still waiting for Harry to come to his rescue. How my mum would handle being thrown out of the community centre against her will.

That bastard, Burkley... He had no intention of letting us return safely. Somehow he’d contacted this bizarre gang, tricking them into capturing all of the scavenger teams he sent out.

The question that remained, was why he would purposely drain his own shelter of its resources. No matter how many answers I came up with, there wasn’t a single option that made me feel comfortable. Not that it would matter for much longer.

I could feel a dark, heated presence spreading throughout my entire shoulder, right where I was bitten. It almost burned as my body fought against the dropping-off point, the urge to sleep.

A grim snarl arose from the other side of the room, alerting me to the change in its living population. The suited man had already become Lost.

“Not... Not much... time now...” Harry uttered. He was starting to give up, I could hear it in his voice. I had to keep him talking, to remind him of what he needed to stay for.

"...It was you, wasn't it?"

"Hmm?"

"Ian told me that he almost got stabbed once. By one of his bullies." I nodded to Harry’s switchblade that Mitchell had confiscated, lying under his feet. "There's something more to it, right? What happened?"

Harry didn't even seem surprised that I'd connected the dots. It was our habit now, to weigh in regardless of whether it was welcome or relevant to the current predicament.

“That’s not important right now.”

“I know. Tell me anyway.”

"Right, jeez... We had a fight.” His throat swallowed itself, a labour on its own. “I really wanted to see him. He didn’t want to see me. That’s all there is to it.”

“So you beat him up?” I asked, forcing a dry laugh.

“Is that what he told you?” After the conversation dropped like an anvil, I heard him exhale with a hint of understanding. “Man, all I did was show up on his door. When he saw me standing there, he smacked himself red-raw and yelled to his dad that ‘someone’ was trying to break in.”

“Ouch. And I thought I had it rough.”

"...Yeah, that's Ian for you. He'd rather make up stories and excuses than face—” Harry paused, letting a sly grin distract him from our doomed fate. “Wait,
you’ve
got it rough? Trouble getting in with Big M, eh?”

“W-What, Millie? She’s just a friend! A girl, who’s a friend—”

“C’mon, she’s pretty fit. If we weren’t about to die in a minute or two, you’d still be drooling all over her.”

“Right. Dying, I forgot about that…” I wriggled against my restraints a little, feeling how much strength I had left. “Is it just me, or should this be going a lot faster?”

He seemed to think so as well, but our confusion was short-lived. My bed tilted forwards of its own volition, throwing me to the floor along with the thug a moment after. Our straps seemed to have unbuckled themselves, almost by magic.

As soon as I realised it wasn't dumb luck, I was already staring at the feet of our petite liberator. Wearing the trademark red hoodie, the short female O-Saint fixed her glasses as she pretended not to show remorse for her deceased friend in the business suit. He was still trying to bite at her, all the way from the other side of the room.

“You again,” I spat bitterly at the scavenger girl I'd met on the train tracks; the smiley brunette, who gave me a metre stick as a weapon to defend little Beth. “That man over there was your friend! How could you let him die? How could you let us... die...”

Before I could draw any more of my own conclusions, she silenced me by tending to my wound, and then Harry's with fluffy-white bandages. “Listen, I'm
really
sorry that this happened. It's not what you think, okay? We don’t have a lot of time before the Pastor comes back.”

Raising my eyebrows, I had to wonder whether Burkley was sending people here with the intention of being captured by the O-Saints. Whatever she was doing in this basement, it didn’t seem to be of her own free will.

I rolled my eyes over her for a second, and noticed a badly-covered dressing on her ankle. “You're hurt... That freak had you bitten, too? How long ago?” I was concerned that our 'saviour' was going to turn on us at any moment, now for two reasons.

“Don’t worry about it. My name is Serah, and all you need to know is that I’m not working for that awful cult anymore. I thought they were intellectuals, holed up in my old university... but then they started preaching about being ‘the chosen ones’, infecting my friends with that damn virus. I'm heading home, and you’re both coming with me. Can you run?”

While I felt obliged to answer after she’d saved my life twice in a row, my short attention span refused and shifted towards Harry with alarm. “Ian’s still locked in that cupboard, isn’t he? He’s gonna bleed out!”

I motioned towards the iron door of the basement, and we both burst out of the room before the mad Minister could come back and feed us to his pets again. The medical student followed after us; seemingly, she knew a thing or two about nursing wounds. We could only hope that she’d get Ian on his feet as quickly as possible.

I glanced worriedly at my shoulder, but Serah — who had since ditched her red jumper — reassured me of my living status. “There’s no time to explain... but don't worry. If you were affected by the virus, you’d know it by now.”

We finally reached the storage cupboard, and we were glad to see that most of the Lost had dispersed. Harry took care of the two souls still sticking around with his reclaimed switchblade, while I tried rattling the door handle.

“It's... It's not opening! Ian, let us in! It's safe now, they're all gone...” No one replied.

Harry was immediately concerned. He took a runner at the rusted hinges, screaming Ian's name over and over. On the third try, he busted the door open... Ian was nowhere to be found. I stepped inside, and a peculiar smell filled the dank basement air.

“I-Ian?” I wish I hadn't turned around, but when I did, my single greatest fear came true. I didn't even know how terrified I was, until it happened... I looked speechlessly towards Harry, then back at the shadow behind the door.

Tears welled up in my eyes, having no idea how to approach this. I fell to my knees, torn. The thug came in to see what I was looking at, refusing to believe it.

Serah stood outside, almost as if she knew what our friend had done. Harry gently closed the door over in disbelief, sliding the attached Ian into the centre of the room.

His belt was wrapped tightly around his neck, digging in hard enough that it almost cut his chalk-white skin. The strap was attached to the door handle, which he had used to slowly choke himself while he lay on the gritty basement floor. His expression was agonised, but calculated.

Ian had committed suicide.

Harry brushed the boy's face, taking the belt off and laying him flat on the ground. He attempted to do some CPR clumsily in a panic, but Serah, who was watching from outside bluntly told him that it was no use... Ian had been dead for hours.

“I-I don't... understand...” Harry whispered, with a catch in his throat. “We were coming back... We would never have left him like this. Why did he...”

As he stroked Ian's golden-brown hair, I noticed a strange light coming from Ian's hand. My phone... I’d just realised that he still had it after last night.

On the screen was the group photo we had taken, covered in sticky clear droplets. He had been crying, but the tears were already dried in. Exiting from the photo gallery, I noticed a new memo I hadn't seen before, titled 'SICKOFIT'.

A suicide... note? I recalled the time when Ian had left me a document like this after the train crashed, kindly letting me know where he and Beth went. This was likely anything but a pleasant message. Looking up at Harry, I discreetly opened the file while trying not to burst into wails myself.

My eyes widened at the contents, and I threw a horrified look into Ian's icy-blue face.
This couldn't be... what Ian was really thinking?

Unfortunately, Harry realised what I was looking at and snatched it off me. “No, Harry— You really don't want to—” It was too late, he'd already seen it. The message was long and seemingly addressed to himself, as though he had been typing his thought process leading up to his death.

“i cnt do this anymor. its nevr goin 2 stop, i can hear them scratching, go away. they r always coming 4 me, i wont let them kill me I WONT. this world = fuckd, wish id died b4. cnt do this harry, im soz. u deserv the best, it hurts 2 be around u. im sick freak, mum & dad h8 me im GOIN2HELL fuck… gdbye man. ill see u ther”

I could see Harry's mental state deteriorating, his dimly-lit eyes skimming over Ian’s last words repeatedly. Over and over again, letting the morbid note sink into his very core.

To think that Ian was going through all of this alone, and not one of us did anything to stop him... It made me sick to my stomach.
I could've done something, I could've…

Serah dragged Harry and I out of the small cupboard; neither of us were in any sort of mood to fight back. We just sat against the wall, trapped in a daze as she went back for her jumper, wrapped Ian’s body up in it and dragged him into the hall.

His face was covered, but that look of loneliness and pain still imprinted itself in my mind. Ian was dead... I still hadn't accepted that. No matter how many times I said it to myself, the words felt foreign, alien.

Serah sighed sombrely, almost upset over the sheer empathy of the situation. Walking over to us, she bent down to our floored eye-level as though we were toddlers.

“I know he's important to you guys. I'm very sorry for your loss... If you come with me and take his legs, I can show you where we can bury him. Peacefully. C'mon, let's go.”

----

Without even realising it, I was suddenly outside with Millie and Beth by my side. Harry lay on the grassy patch beside the body, just outside of the school's entrance. No one even dared to comfort him.

There was a hole under my feet.
Oh, right,
I thought. I carried him up, we met the girls, they cried, and I dug the hole.

I looked at my fingernails, all black and jammed with dirt. It felt like we were just going through the motions, that none of this was really happening. Any second now, I would wake up at home and realise that this was all one horrible nightmare.

Our new friend Serah rolled the corpse slowly into the shallow grave, and asked if anyone wanted to say anything to him. Harry stood up with wobbly knees, still shaken from what he’d read on my phone.

“I... I wanted to be there... for him...” He wiped his eyes clear, screwing his nose up at the dead body. “He... was weak. Ya hear that?! You were weak! Stupid fuck!! Why didn’t you—”

He didn't finish. Instead, he bolted off into the darkness without saying another word. The nearby Lost were beginning to drift in our direction, while Harry pulled his blade out and repeatedly stabbed one of them to the ground…. and just kept on attacking. He wasn't dealing with Ian's death at all. He just wanted to vent.

Beth was almost catatonic, having no clue about what happened down there. “Mister Daniel...” she sniffed, hugging onto Millie for support. “Why did Mister Ian have to... Why did he… Uaaah!” she started crying. All I could choke out, was a lie.

I told her that the stab wound was too much, and that he bled out before we could reach him. I looked to Serah, and she nodded approvingly.

Ian was Beth's hero, after all. I couldn't let his final moments taint the kindness, the happy memories he brought to us. I would tell her the truth eventually, but all I wanted was to mourn my friend with the respect he deserved.

I played back all of our conversations in my mind, like a sad little slideshow. He once told me that it was his choice to keep on living, and no one else could take that from him — was this what he meant? How long had he been planning on doing this?

After Serah finished burying Ian, I deleted the final message he left for us. Harry eventually came back, standing over his boyfriend’s grave. He stayed there for a while, holding out his red-stained knife as he let it drip into the upturned soil.

I couldn't tell what he was thinking exactly, but I guessed that he was trying to show Ian the Lost's blood... saying in his own way that they wouldn't be coming for him anymore.

Millie cleared her throat, still choked up even though she barely knew Ian. “W-What... should we do now? We still need that medicine, or else Burkley might actually throw everyone out. We’re almost out of time.”

Upon hearing this, Harry tore himself away from us with a furious roar. Trapped in his own grief, he ran alone towards the gates of the Medical School. It only took me a few more seconds, until I realised the direction he was going.

“Shit, after him!!” I yelled, letting the aching tears roll off my cheek as Millie and the others scrambled after me, confused at the sudden turnaround.