The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (12 page)

What
are my odds?

9

Heather

The
sun crept up but the sky looked mean. Heather stood at her bedroom window and
saw that the storm had finally stopped, but not until it had emptied days’
worth of rain over the green fields and concrete streets that made up the Capita
lands. Somewhere near the Dome, almost behind it, black smoke curled up in to
the air. Heather felt her eyes burn, but it wasn’t from smoke that was miles
away. It was from a night of lying on her bed staring at the ceiling, with her
thoughts turning over like a cement mixer.

They’d
only met each other for minutes, but the face of the boy in Cresstone burned a
silhouette in her mind. Leaving him there had been a mistake, and she hoped she
wasn’t too late to correct it. Maybe if she went back to Cresstone she’d find
him there in the same room surrounded by even more rotten apples cores. She
could get him out of there and take him to Wes. The trader had good contacts
and a corrupt heart, and she was sure that he could get him to the Resistance
somehow. Then her part would be done and she could pick up whatever was left of
her conscience.

Dressed
and at the front door, she picked up a pair of waders and pulled them over her
feet and up to her knees. The material was thick and it meant that she could
get through any flooded parts of the town without worrying about disease ridden
water splashing around her legs. She picked up a crowbar that was leant against
the wall and hoped she wasn’t going to have to use it.

***

At
Cresstone it seemed like the waders were needed but the crowbar wasn’t. The
non-stop drenching had washed up all the debris from the streets, which had
been carried along to drains that quickly became blocked. As the rain carried
on unabated the water levels rose until now it reached almost to the top of her
waders.

The
stench of sewage was heavy in the air and Heather got the sense that as well as
the scum that floated on the top of it, a significance dose of disease was
carried by the flood water. She looked across the village ahead of her and then
down at her waders, and she wondered if the boots would be enough to keep the
water out. Part of her didn’t want to test them.

She
pushed away the selfish thought and took her first sloshing steps through the
water. As the dirty liquid lapped against her like a soiled tide, she suddenly
felt like she was in a dream. It was one she used to have often as a kid,
mainly in the years before she took up sports and became popular. In the dream
it wasn’t disease ridden water but a swimming pool that the school used for
lessons, and she was in the middle of it.

At one
end, where the ladders hung, a group of boys and girls knelt and watched her
paddle. They wore grins that stretched impossibly wide across their faces and
they shouted things at her, but the words twisted on route and became nothing
but grunts. One of the kids reached down, grabbed hold of a metal gate and
pulled it up. There was a darkness behind it that seemed to stretch outside the
pool as though connected to something by a tunnel. Something emerged from the
darkness, and Heather’s heart lodged in her throat when she realised it was
grey and long, with a jagged fin that pointed out of the water like the mast of
a pirate ship. It slinked through water that was just murky enough to keep it a
silhouette. As it got closer Heather felt the need to flee, to get to the other
end of the pool and escape. She tried to get out of there but the water slowed
her down, and with every step her movement slowed until finally she was frozen
in place and the shark was getting closer and closer.

She
closed her eyes and let the dream dissolve. As horrible as the water in
Cresstone was, it wouldn’t hide any sharks beneath it.
Come on you dick,
she thought.
Stop being scared.

Progress
through the village was slower than she would have liked and at one point she lost
her balance and disturbed the water, splashing a drop of it onto her face.
Eventually she reached the street next to the one where she had seen the boy,
and she was glad that the trip was nearly over. She would treat herself when
she got home and boil enough water for a bath. It would be the first she’d had
in months.

She
turned the corner and saw that something was wrong. Across a street that
resembled a council-house Venice she saw a small figure near the door of a
house. It was the boy, and he had his back to her. The water rose all the way
up his back and to his shoulders, and he looked to be tugging on something.

She
waded over to him and saw him flinch as she approached. He turned, though not
all the way, and when he saw her he screwed his face up. He splashed a hand in
the water and for a second she thought he might try to get away from her.

“I’m
sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have left you.”

She
waded closer but he thrashed in the water. The village seemed silent as though
it were watching them both and waiting for something to happen. Heather felt
like unseen eyes were trained on her. She looked behind her and half expected a
shark fin to tear through the river of sewage.

“I’ve
come to take you back,” she said. “I know someone who can help you.”

There
was something wrong with the way the boy wouldn’t turn fully to look at her.

“My
foot’s stuck,” he said.

“What
on?”

“What
do you care? Leave me alone.”

He
didn’t resist as she walked up beside him. She took another look at the brown
water and she was glad she hadn’t eaten breakfast.
What am I doing?
  She
reached into the water and felt a shock of cold cover her skin. She felt around
until she grabbed the boy’s foot, and she knew there was something wrapped around
it. How he’d gotten into this position she had no clue, but whatever it was, it
was wrapped so tightly round his foot that she needed both hands to get him
free.

“Hold
this,” she said, and passed him her crowbar.

She
was ready to use both hands to free him when she felt something snag on her
waders. She thought it might have been underwater debris so she kicked her leg
back, but something seemed to drag on her. As she tried to shake herself free
the force of the thing on her wader became stronger.
What the hell is it?

With
as much force as she could she pulled her leg up and lifted it away. She took a
step back. The water around her bubbled, and something shot up in front of her
with a great splash. When she saw that it was an infected, she let out a sound
that would have been a scream had she not choked most of it back.

It was
a male infected. His skin was wrinkled from the water, and brown drips ran off
his hair and over his face. He fixed a bestial stare on Heather and opened his
mouth to show teeth not far from falling out. He cried out, almost in
desperation, and lurched across the water to get at her.

All
around them the water was disturbed as infected rose from it. Everywhere she
looked the surface of the flood reservoir lapped and splashed as bloated
infected stumbled toward her. Their steps were slow, as thankfully one part of Heather’s
old nightmare was true; being in water did make it harder to walk.

The
infected closest to her reached out again and came within an inch of grabbing
her arm. She pushed him away and held her hand out to the boy. She felt the
cold touch of metal as he pressed the crowbar into her palm, and as the
infected strained for her again she swung the metal at his head. The infected’s
neck snapped back but it reached for her again. Heather tensed her arm and
guided the metal toward his skull, connecting with a blow that snapped through
bone.

“You
need to get yourself free,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her
voice.

“What
do you think I’ve been trying to do?” said the boy. It was the first real show
of emotion she’d seen from him.

She
passed him back the crowbar and again tried to get him free, but whatever was
around his foot didn’t want to let him go. The infected around them moved
slowly through the water, all of them honed in on the only two humans stupid
enough to be there. It would take them a while to close the gap, but eventually
they would. They had nothing but distance as their defence, and every second
that went by eroded it.

“I
need to get at whatever’s got your foot.”

“What’s
wrong?”

“Nothing.
Don’t look behind you.”

Thoughts
of Kim flashed in her mind, and she knew what she was about to do was stupid.
She couldn’t leave him here again though, especially not like this. Not when
the boy couldn’t even run. She took a deep breath and thought about what an
idiot she was. Then she blew it out and took an even deeper one. She held it
in, took off her mask and handed it to the boy.

Being
underwater was no clearer than being above and staring into it, but then she
realised that was because her eyes were shut. The seconds it took her to trick
her brain into opening them seemed to stretch into minutes, and felt a
discomfort in her lungs as they drained the air they held. She felt a sting on
her eyeballs as the water splashed against them, but through the murky brown
soup she saw the boy’s foot. A branch of ivy had somehow wrapped around it like
a thread, and in a few seconds she was able to untie some of it. As she unwound
it a pressure began to build in her chest until she thought that any second she
might take in a gulp of dirty water.

She
broke the surface like a whale jumping out of the sea, and the water splattered
around her. She reached out for the mask, attached it and sucked in a lung-full
of air. A shot of panic hit her when she looked around and saw that the
infected were getting closer, their eyes hungry and their mouths open.

“Swing
at anything that moves,” she said through the mask.

“Get a
move on,” said the boy.

She
took another breath and sunk once again into the flood. She opened her eyes underwater
and felt the water sting her eyelids. It was like being in the swimming baths
again and feeling the chlorine burn her, except there was the real possibility
she could get some kind of bacterial infection from the sewage. Somewhere away
from them, she saw two heads bob under water. Her eyes adjusted and she realised
it was two infected children walking through the water.

She
reached for the boy’s foot and worked faster to get him free. Finally she unwound
the last of the ivy. He started thrashing in the water and she almost took a
foot to the face. She stood up out of the water, only to see an infected woman
with swollen bingo-winged arms stretching out towards the boy. Heather’s chest
began to burn again and the need for air built in her. She reached out for her
mask, but as the boy went to pass it to her, the infected woman lunged. In his
panic he opened his hand, and Heather watched as her mask hit the water and
started to sink beneath it.

Her chest
was burning and her lungs were screaming out for her to breathe. She reached
across to the boy and unhooked the mask from his face. It was taboo, the idea
of taking a mask off another person, but she knew that he didn’t need it. For
him it was just for show, just a symbol so that he could pretend he was like everyone
else. She slipped it around her face and chugged as much air as she could.

“Let’s
go,” she said, panting. “Don’t let them touch you.”

***

At
home Kim boiled water and filled the bath with it. It took at least ten boils
to fill the bathtub, and they could only spare the water for one of them. It
was with some regret that a shivery Heather pushed the boy into the bathroom.

“Take
as long as you need,” she said, and shut the door behind him.

She
went into the bedroom, stripped out of her clothes and put on as many dry
layers as she could. Kim stepped through the doorway and took a seat on the
bed.

“What
are we going to do with him?” she said.

To her
credit, when Heather had arrived home with a mask-less boy drenched in flood
water, her daughter hadn’t said a word. Without needing to be asked she’d
started to boil water to fill the bathtub. Her daughter was more resourceful
than she gave her credit for.