Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (7 page)

“S
o what did you bring me?” Poppy
asked excitedly.  She and Garfield were sitting inside the ice cream shop
where they lived.  Behind the long refrigerated counter was Poppy’s space,
with her toys, games, and old mattress, while Garfield slept on the shop’s
tiled floor in a simple sleeping bag.  Right now, both of them sat on
stools beside a bench that ran the length of the wall.

Garfield almost smiled at her; he never managed a full
one, but Poppy had begun to read the subtle signs of whether or not he was
happy.  Right now, Garfield was happy.  “I may have a thing or two I
found on my travels,” he said, delving into the rucksack he had with him. 
“Let me have a quick look.”  Poppy placed her hands on her knees and
waited anxiously.  The first thing Garfield pulled out was a pair of
toothbrushes, still in their packaging.  “How about this?” he asked. 
“You need to look after your teeth, Popcorn.”

Poppy frowned and shook her head.

The next thing Garfield pulled from his bag was a
stapler.  “Can never have enough office supplies,” he said.

Poppy growled.

“Okay, okay.  Let me have one last look and see
if I have anything inside my bag.”  He fumbled around inside for a long
time, tutting occasionally and raising his eyebrows thoughtfully. 

Poppy could contain her excitement no longer. 
“You’re killing me,” she spluttered.

“Got it!”  Garfield pulled out a colourful stack
of glossy paper and held it in front of her face.  He gave another of his
brief almost-smiles to go with it.

Poppy glanced down at the magazines and frowned. 
There were pictures of women on the front covers, along with makeup and perfume
adds.  “What are these?” she asked.

Garfield flicked the top one open, revealing an
article about weight loss.  “They’re women’s magazines.  They have
all kinds of articles.  They were really popular, before…well, you know.”

Poppy took the magazines and leafed through
them.  There were lots of articles full of words, and pictures of food,
lipstick, mobile phones and other boring stuff.

“You don’t like them.” Garfield said.  His
eyelids drooped like a sad puppy’s.

Poppy shrugged.  “I…yeah, they’re great.  I
just didn’t expect them.”

Garfield sighed and looked away.  He always
looked away when he felt bad.  Poppy was the only person he ever kept eye
contact with for more than a few seconds.  Poppy’s mummy always said it
was rude not to hold eye contact, but Poppy thought it was because Garfield was
shy, not rude. 

“I just wanted to get you something you can use,” he
muttered.  “You’re growing up so fast and…and I don’t really know what
you’ll be going through.  Your body will change, for one thing.”

Poppy blushed.

Garfield blushed too.  “Sorry, it’s just…I…”

Poppy reached out and touched his wrist.  “I
know.  You want me to read about woman’s things.”

“Sorry you don’t like the magazines.”

“I would just rather have you around to teach me
things, than read about them in a bunch of old books.  We haven’t spent time
together in ages.”

“I have to go out, Poppy.  I have to feed us.”

“I know you do.  But
I’m
growing up
,
you said it
.  You got me these
magazines because I’m growing up, so let me come with you.”

Garfield shook his head immediately.  “We’ve
spoken about this.  It’s too dangerous out there.  The dead…”

“I want to come with you, Garfield.  I hate it
around here.  We were fine on the road before we found this place.”

“We almost died a dozen times and you barely spoke a
word you were so traumatised.”

“I’m older now.”

“Less than a year.”

“But-”

“Enough!”  Poppy was startled.  Garfield
never raised his voice to her.  “I won’t take you out there, Poppy. 
It’s too dangerous.  I won’t let you get hurt.  I can’t…”

Garfield never showed how he felt, but right then it
looked as if he were about to cry.  Poppy suddenly felt very guilty. 
She nodded slowly and looked down at the floor.  “I-
I’m
sorry.  I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

Garfield huffed.  “I’m not mad, you silly
girl.  I’m scared.  It’s my job to keep you safe, but you’re growing
so fast that I can barely keep up.  I’m worried I won’t be able to look
after you soon.  The others will have to help me.”

“I don’t need looking after,” said Poppy.  “I
just need
you
, but you keep going away.  You keep leaving me and
sometimes I wonder if you’re ever going to come back.”

 Garfield looked at her, keeping eye contact the
whole time he spoke, even though she knew he would have found it hard. 
“I’ll never leave you, Popcorn.  I’m always thinking of you and I will always
come back.  Everything I do, I do because I have no choice.  I do it
to keep you safe.  I made you a promise, didn’t I?  When I cooked you
bacon in that old hotel outside Oxford and we played eye-spy all night,
laughing.  When we set out the next morning, you told me you wanted to
live at the hotel because you liked it there.  I told you that it wasn’t
the hotel you liked, it was the fun we had had the night before.  I said
that we could have fun wherever we went but that we must keep moving. 
When you said you were scared, I promised to keep you safe.  Remember?”

Poppy nodded and smiled.  She looked back at
their time on the road fondly – it hadn’t all been bad, not after they
got used got it.  They had never been apart back then, and towards the
end, before they had found the pier, they were always giggling.  It never
mattered that they were always in danger and that terrible things surrounded
them every day, they would always cheer each other up.  Now, neither of
them ever smiled.  Garfield was always foraging and she was always
alone. 

There were tears in her eyes as she spoke, she
knew.  She had to stop crying all the time.  “I love you,
Garfield.  I miss you when you’re gone.”

Garfield’s eyes went wide as she said the word
‘love’.  She had never said the word to him before, had not said it at all
since her parents died.  She did love him, though.  He was all she
had.  The only person she could rely on and her only friend.  He had
looked after her for more than three months on the road and she would be dead
if not for him. 
He took me away from that horrible place where my
mummy and daddy were monsters.  He brought me here where it’s safe. 
Even if the pier is boring, it is safe.

For a moment, Garfield looked as though he was going
to say the word back to her, but instead he just said, “I miss you, too. 
Now go get ready for bed.  I have to leave early in the morning.  One
game of eye spy and then we sleep.”

Poppy nodded.  She slid off her stool and walked
away silently.  Tears tried to spill from her eyes, but she fought them
away.  She didn’t want Garfield to go.  He was always leaving her and
she started to wonder if he really did care the way he said he did. 
Why
didn’t he say it back? 
She climbed onto her mattress and closed her
eyes to sleep.  She didn’t want to play eye spy.

Why didn’t he say ‘I love you’ back?

G
arfield packed the last of the
smoked mackerel into his backpack and placed it next to his bottled
water.  It would not be enough to sustain him permanently, but he intended
to find supplies on the road.  The infection had ravaged the country so
fast that most supermarkets and petrol stations were still well stocked. 
There had not been enough time, or enough survivors, that looting had ever
taken a firm hold.  The world had died on its feet before people’s minds
ever had a chance to turn to long-term survival.

The chef’s knife in Garfield’s belt
was accompanied by a claw hammer, a screwdriver, corkscrew, and a metal pipe
all hidden about his person
.  It was foolish to rely on a
single weapon.  Garfield had seen good men perish who had.

The other foragers – they could be called
his
men, although he would never say so himself – were all ready and
waiting.  They stood with heavy backpacks and had armed themselves with
various weapons.  The plan was to make haste to the church on the edge of
town and get a couple of vehicles working.  There were ten foragers plus
Garfield.  Lemon was their master of unlocking, a shy, stumpy man, who
stuttered when he was stressed.  There wasn’t a door he couldn’t get
through or a car he couldn’t hotwire.  His bag of tricks contained
everything from wire cutters to hacksaws.  Kirk was second-in-command and
the group’s resident badass – if a little too cocky for Garfield’s liking. 
Cat was the only female member of the group, and tougher than all of the
men.  She travelled with David, her lover.  Squirrel and Danny were
the pier’s screw-ups, lazy and stupid, but agreeable and humorous.  Last
came Luke, Tom, Gavin, and Lenny – a group of sensible middle-aged men
that made up the reliable backbone of the foraging party.  Each of them
insisted on wearing a bunch of red football shirts they had found in a sports
shop.  They believed the bright colours made it easier to see each other
in the field.  Perhaps they were right. 
Our little band of
brothers
, Garfield thought. 
Closest I’ve ever had to friends.

The group would need to get the largest vehicles it
could find and pray that the batteries still had a spark, and that the petrol
in the tanks had not evaporated.  The foragers would be leaving behind
their sleds, so whatever vehicle they found would also act as the carriage for
whatever supplies they managed to scrounge. 
Guns and
ammo, hopefully.
 
And Doritos…

The morning tide was out and there was nothing but
moist sand and seaweed beneath the front section of the pier.  It had
started to rain and the smell of salt was thick in the air.  Garfield
would be glad to be rid of that familiar smell for a few days.  He missed
the old smells of car exhaust and greasy spoon cafes, but those things were no
more.  They had been replaced by the stink of death.

Anna headed towards Garfield, holding something in her
hands.  When she got close enough, she offered the item to him.  “For
the road,” she explained.

Garfield took the can opener from her and
smiled.  “Good thinking.  I’m so used to bringing canned food back
that I forgot I’m going to need one for the journey.”

“No point finding a tonne of food if you can’t get at
it.  Sometimes it’s good to carry something other than a whole bunch of
weapons.  How many do you have on you right now in that magnificent coat
of yours?”

Garfield shrugged.  “Weapons?  I’m not
sure.  Seven, maybe…no, eight.”

Anna laughed.  “Well, I hope that you won’t need
any of them.  You be safe out there.  There’s no way of telling what
you’ll find.”

Garfield knew well enough what he would find in the
towns and cities.  “I expect to find the dead.”

“For starters,” said Anna.  “But I worry more
about any people left alive.  Take it from me, the living are just as
dangerous as the dead.”

Garfield nodded – he knew that well enough
already.  Several times on the road he had caught hungry-eyed men spying
Poppy from a distance, hoping to take her.  A handful of them had tried,
but Garfield had dispatched each one without mercy.  He would not allow
Poppy to be used and spoiled like a can of beans.  Her innocence was more
precious than anything else left in the world, and Garfield would kill a
hundred men to protect it.  Finding the pier and the relative safety of
the group living there had been a true blessing.  Poppy had been safe from
the leering gaze of feral men ever since. 
But she’s fighting me all
the time to go back out on the road.  She doesn’t remember how bad it
was.  She looks at the past through rose-coloured spectacles.  Not
that I blame her after all she’s been through.

Garfield bent over and placed the can opener inside
the shin pocket of his cargo pants then straightened back up.  “I plan to
stick to the countryside as much as possible.  With a bit of luck I’ll be
able to bypass any trouble.  There’s no need to worry.”  Anna looked
at him oddly for a moment, as if she wanted to say something.  “What is
it?” he asked her.

“It’s…it’s just something the injured man you brought
back said.”

“Oh, yeah.  How’s he doing?”

“He’s been pretty stable over night, but just after I
patched him up he said something strange.”

“What did he say?”

“He said…” Anna stopped and chuckled to herself. 
“You’re going to laugh at me, but he kept saying the word ‘Roman’ over and over
again.  It went on for nearly an hour before he fell unconscious.’”

Garfield smirked, but not because he thought it was
particularly funny.  “Don’t people say all sorts of things in that kind of
condition?  Couldn’t the pain have made him delirious?”

“Yes, it could have.  In fact, that was probably
the reason.  Gave me a bad feeling, though.  Whoever shot him is
still out there.  Be careful, okay?”

Garfield had thought about the group that might be out
there with guns.  If they were a threat, he would much rather encounter
them away from the pier where it would not endanger the others.

“I’ll be safe, I promise.  You look after Poppy
for me, okay?  She’s…growing up.  It might help her to spend some
time with a woman for once, rather than hanging around rooftops waiting for me
all the time.  Where is she, anyway?”

“She’s coming, don’t worry.  She told me she
needed to get something and that you weren’t to leave until she saw you.”

Garfield rolled his eyes.  “As if I would. 
Silly girl.”

Like a genie summoned, the talk of Poppy brought her
racing around the corner of the
Sea Grill
restaurant and over to the
open walkway leading up to the gate.  Her white-blonde plaits trailed in
the air behind her like tentacles from a squid.

“Hey, Popcorn.  I was just about to leave. 
You almost missed me.”

Poppy scowled.  “You would never leave without
saying goodbye.  I would kick your butt as soon as you was back.”

Garfield fought a smile.
 She’s not
kidding. 
“You’re right.  I wouldn’t dare cross you,
Popcorn.”  Poppy giggled.  She jumped the two feet between them and
gave him a great big hug around his waist.  “Careful,” he warned
her.  “You’ll cut yourself on my knife.”

Poppy broke off from the hug and looked up at
him.  She was still such a tiny girl, but had grown nearly half-a-foot in
the time he’d known her.  Eventually she’d start to become a woman. 
He dreaded to think how he would keep her safe then. 
She’s already a
handful at nine.  Last night she said she loved me.  Should I have
said it back? 
Saying ‘I love you’ to a child that wasn’t his own felt
wrong somehow.  In the old world, the relationship he had with Poppy would
have been scrutinised, but the truth was that he felt for her the same way as
any father would.  He could never replace her real parents, but she was
his to love and protect, and he would do the very best job he was able. 
So
why didn’t I say the word back to her?

“I did you a drawing,” Poppy said, handing over a
curled sheet of sketch paper.  Three months ago, Garfield had found an art
set in one of the abandoned shops on the sea front, along with a few reams of
paper.  He’d given it to Poppy as a gift.  With so little to do
around the pier, the girl had become quite the accomplished artist.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“Well, if you looked at it you would know, dummy.”

Garfield studied the sketch and saw that it was a
finely detailed drawing of a pond.  There was a large overhanging fern
tree, shaded in multiple browns and greens, and a slick sheet of moss across
the water.  In the foreground was a family of what looked like moorhens
– their beaks red with a pointed tip of bright yellow crayon.  “This
is great,” he said, truly meaning it.  “When did you get so good?”

Poppy blushed.  “It’s the pond by my house
– my
old
house.  My mum used to take me out to feed the
birds.  I think about it whenever I’m sad.  I thought you could look
at the picture whenever
you
get sad.”

Garfield felt a lump in his throat but swallowed
it.  He pulled Poppy close and kissed the top of her head.  “Thank
you.” 
I should say the word now.  I should tell her that I love
her. 
“Poppy, I lo-”

“Ready to go?” asked Alistair, marching towards them
with a grimace on his face.  “I still think this is a bad idea, you
know?  If it was just you and a few others leaving, Garfield, then perhaps
it would be okay, but you’re taking half the camp with you.”

Garfield sighed.  Alistair could let nothing go
without an argument.  “We’ve already discussed this, Al.  You’ll be
fine.  The more supplies I can carry back with me the better.”

“I just think it’s selfish.”

“Selfish?  How?”

Anna interrupted.  “It’s decided now, so let’s
not bicker.”

Alistair folded his chubby arms across his fat chest
and looked comically irate, like a red-faced cartoon villain.  “I suppose
it
is
decided,” he muttered.  “Doesn’t mean I have to like it,
though.  Just make sure you bring back something useful,” he said to
Garfield.  “We’re running low on salt, for one thing.  We need it to
cure the fish we catch.”

“Grab some multi-vitamin pills, too, if you get chance,”
Anna told him.  “People are starting to get sickly.  All we eat is
fish and beans.  There’s stuff our bodies aren’t getting.”

Garfield nodded.  “Salt…vitamins…got it.” 
He turned around and did a quick head count of the foragers.  Alistair was
right: he
was
taking more than half the camp with him –
eight,
nine, ten, plus me.
  Everyone was present and ready to go. 
Garfield was the only one holding things up.  Poppy’s picture went into
the breast pocket of his heavy woollen overcoat.

Anna folded her arms and sighed.  She was usually
a stern and unemotional women, but she seemed unusually apprehensive.  It
would be the most dangerous forage Garfield had embarked on, so he supposed a
few nerves were understandable.  “Looks like it’s time to go,” she
said.  “You take care out there, okay?”

“Yeah,” said Poppy.  “You promised me you would
always come back, so don’t die.”

Garfield huffed.  Women did like to worry. 
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he assured them.  “I’ll be
fine.  Before you know it, I’ll be back with a truckload of supplies.”

“And hopefully some guns,” said Alistair.

Garfield nodded.  “That’s the plan.”

Poppy was beginning to sniffle.  There were tears
brimming at the bottom of her eyes, but she was chewing on one of her blonde
plaits to keep from crying – she often did that lately.  Garfield
forced a smile onto his face.  Happy expressions weren’t something he wore
well, but he knew the girl needed a gesture from him right now. 
Like
telling her that I love her. 
She spat her hair out.  Her bottom
lip quivered.  “I-I don’t like it when you leave.” 

Garfield bent down so that they were eye to eye. 
“I don’t either, Popcorn.  While I’m gone, you need to listen to Anna,
okay?  She’s going to keep an eye on you for me.  Part of being a
grown-up is being able to listen to other people, okay?  Will you listen
to Anna for me?”

Poppy nodded.  Anna patted her on the
shoulder.  “We’ll be fine.”

“Good.”  Garfield straightened up and cleared his
throat.  “And stay off those bloody rooftops.  You’re gunna have a
fall one day.”

Poppy grinned.  “Never.  Climbing is one of
the only fun things to do around here.”

“Just be careful, then.”

“Garf,” Kirk shouted from over by the gate. 
“We’re wasting light, man.  Let’s get our arses in gear.”

Garfield nodded.  He gave Poppy one last smile
and then turned around.  He could hear the girl begin to sob behind him,
but he didn’t turn back to look at her.  The sight of her crying wasn’t
something he wanted to take on the journey.  It hurt badly enough just
knowing that he was the reason for her tears, without having to see the pain
etched on her innocent face and remembering it every time he closed his
eyes. 
Rescuing her that the day was the best and worst thing I ever
did.