The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (14 page)

“Are
what... Oh. No, not yet.”

Heather
couldn’t help it, but every time Wes spoke she felt a resentment grow inside
her. The way he acted with Charles, the way his voice changed. It was pathetic,
but the worst thing was the realisation that she sounded exactly the same. For
all the battles that she fought against the Capita in her head, she wilted when
she was faced with a man like Charles Bull. She said the things he wanted to
hear, no matter how much the words stung her throat.

“How
long until they’re ready?” said Charles.

“A day
or so I reckon. Then we’ll know.”

Heather
shifted her body closer to the gap between the door and the wall to try and
hear their voices clearer, but she had to be careful not to make a sound. She
shifted her left foot a little and then moved her body across. She heard
Charles cough, and then he spoke.

“Where
are they?”

The
trader’s voice was quieter this time.

“Just
through there.”

“Maybe
I should take a look.”

If Heather
had a mirror in front of her she would have been staring into a pair of wide
eyes. She regretted coming to the trader’s today, and she wondered if she had
the strength to push on the door and stop Charles from coming in. Maybe if he
thought the door was broken, he would give up and go home.
What a stupid
idea,
she thought.
Maybe your head’s broken.

This
time Wes spoke louder.

“Maybe
you should get a warrant.”

“I’m
not a policeman, Wes. I don’t have policies or procedures. If I wanted to take
everything you own, I would.”

Heather
held her breath as if it would stop Charles from wanting to come into the room.
The consequences of being caught flashed by in a sequence of images which
started with her arrest and ended in a cell in the Capita’s dungeons. Worse,
she pictured Kim waiting at home and wondering where Heather was.

Something
moved in the room. Though her eyes had adjusted enough that she could make out
basic outlines, she couldn’t peel back the darkness to see details. Her ears
were perfectly attuned, and now they registered sounds. The groan of bedsprings
as a weight moved over them. The slap as bare feet touched the hard floor.
Uneven thuds as footsteps were taken. A couple at first, then more.  She saw a
black mass move in the darkness. It walked toward her, and for a second made
her wonder if it would be better just to run out of the room and give herself
up.

Instead
she shrank back against the door, bit her lip and peered into the black as the
figure stepped toward her.
What the hell is it?
With her left hand she
felt her way across the door and brushed the handle. She didn’t want to use it,
but she needed to know it was there.

The
figure got closer, and Heather’s hand twitched on the door handle. Finally, the
black shape stopped ten feet away from her. In the darkness she couldn’t see a
face, but somehow she knew that it stared at her. Her skin crawled with
hundreds of invisible bugs. A voice cracked through the darkness.

“Where
am I?”

She
couldn’t take it anymore. The darkness was becoming so heavy she felt like it would
crush her, and she felt the gaze of the thing in front of her as sure as a
physical touch. She knew the danger she was throwing herself into, but the
shudder of fear that ran through her made staying in the room impossible. She
grabbed the handle, turned it and opened the door.

The
light of the trader’s room was like a warm bath on tired skin. She felt her
breath catch in her throat and she looked around with wild eyes. The long beak
and hideous leather of the bounty hunter’s mask was gone. Instead, there was
just Wes, sat for the first time on the other side of his desk. Seeing Heather,
he got up, walked to the door and locked it.

“What
the hell is in there?” said Heather, fighting to control her breathing.

Wes
walked back to his desk and sat in his usual chair. Somehow, he seemed smaller
in it, as though the chair had grown in his absence from it.

“Take
a seat,” he said.

“I’ve
spent enough sat at your desk. Tell me what the hell is happening because I’m
freaking out.”

He put
his hands across the table. “I’m taking credits off the Capita,” he said.

“By
doing what?”

“It’s
a good thing, really. You’ll understand.”

Heather
had a growing urge to hit him, and she was worried she couldn’t make it stay as
an urge.

“Go
on.”

“They’re
trialling a cure. I agreed to keep the guinea pigs hidden, and the Capita helps
me out.”

Heather
paced over to the window. At the edge of town she saw Charles and the Capita
soldiers as their horses took them away. A few people gathered in the streets
to watch them go, and at least one man looked to have blood pouring from his
forehead. She turned back to face Wes.

“You
didn’t do a very good job hiding them,” she said. “Considering you didn’t even
lock the door.”

“We
both know enough about each other to know when to keep quiet.”

Heather’s
hand felt restless, so she squeezed the windowsill.

“All
the bullshit you talk about. The town you’re building, one free from the Capita.
And all this time you’re sucking them off. What do they say about your black
market stuff?”

A
smile spread on Wes’s lips. “Every ruling body needs their dirty secrets. They
need someone they can turn to for the things they don’t want others to see.
What they don’t know is that I funnel money into the Resistance.”

“How?”

“I
have a guy on the inside. He works for the Capita, but he’s part of the good
fight.”

“Who
is he?”

Wes
shook his head. “Come on. I can’t tell you that.”

“I’m
out of here.”

Heather’s
patience was a fraying thread, and she knew she had to leave the trader’s house
before it snapped. She reached the door and was about to turn the handle when
she heard his chair move. She looked at him and saw that he had stood up from
behind the desk, showing once again his marathon-running businessman ensemble.

The
trader had a look in his eyes of a hunter who had caught a rabbit in a snare.

“You
know,” he said, “The Bull was asking about a DC boy, and you showed up here
today trying to bleed me for information on the Resistance.”

Heather
went to protest, but Wes held his hand in the air. “Oh come off it, Heather. I
knew exactly what you were doing. Nobody wheedles anything out of me. You need
the Resistance for something, and I have the contacts. But guess what? The
information just became a lot more valuable.”

“What
do you want?”

“If
you want to get the boy to safety, I want all the food you’ve been growing.
Every bit of it.”

11

Ed

Being
in the town hall usually meant you were getting married, getting sentenced or
attending a town meeting. In his years on the island, Ed had managed to avoid
all three. He’d had a girlfriend a while back, but when her dad had gotten a
job on the mainland he’d put his family on the first ferry away. Ed wrote to
her once or twice but the silence from her end made him stop halfway through
his third letter and throw it in the bin. He’d come close to a sentencing once
after a drunken night ended in monkey-like vandalism of a neighbour’s car, but
his dad had taken the local policeman for a pint and persuaded him to look the
other way.

There
was a time when the building represented everything he was terrified of in
life. Housed within its stone walls were the things that adults had to deal
with; lifelong unions with another person and the emotional ties that went with
it. Consequences for actions no matter how ill-planned. It was a place you went
when you grew up, and there was a time when Ed didn’t think that would have to
happen to him. He was perfectly happy to have dad cook his meals with the food
that James worked to buy. Neither of them questioned Ed or pushed him out, and he
once thought that he could get through his entire life without taking care of
himself.

The
town hall didn’t represent terror today. Standing at the top of the street,
black bars lining the side and with spirals and patterns cut into the
stonework, today it meant salvation. It represented a light that could cut
through the fog of the last twenty four hours.

The
four of them constantly turned their heads to scan the area around them. Aside
from isolated houses and crumbling walls, there were few places to hide in
Golgoth. That comforted Ed because it meant they should be able to see any
infected coming their way, but it also worried him. Where were they all? Had
some of them not woken from their comas yet? Were they on the floors of their
houses waiting to turn?

Bethelyn
walked just in front of him and set their pace. She looked like she had
purpose, but every so often Ed would glance at her and see an expression on her
face. It was vacant, like the darkened windows of a house abandoned long ago.

Gary
and Judith walked behind them. Gary was older than Ed, older than his brother
James even, and their social circles had rarely collided. He remembered Gary
calling on him one night after everyone on the island had heard what happened
to James’s ship. He turned up at the door with the faint smell of beer on his
breath. He folded his arms tightly against him, and it seemed like he couldn’t
look Ed in the eye. He had a shaved head and thin body, and he wore a belt with
a metal buckle in the centre that looked heavy enough to pull his trousers
down. There was something fidgety about him, like a dozen itches formed on his
skin at once and he wasn’t sure whether to scratch them or not.

“Heard
about James,” he said.

Ed
didn’t say anything. He’d heard the start of enough of these sorrowful speeches
to know that his input wasn’t required. It was like people needed to tell you
how sorry they were because it was an energy building inside them, like a
breath they’d held too long, and they just need to let it out and they could
feel better about themselves.

“Just
wanted you to know there’s always a beer waiting for you at my house. If you
ever need someone to talk to. Almost lost my cousin this year, so I know what
you’re going through. Kinda.”

Years
later Gary had put a little weight on his bones, so it seemed like the outbreak
agreed with him. It was a strange feat to accomplish, given the food situation
on the island, but somehow Gary’s body had stored enough of a calorie surplus
to put some meat on him. Walking behind Ed with his head shifting from side to
side and hands dug deep in his pockets, he still seemed like the same old Gary.

“Ed,”
he said.

They
stopped. There was no movement around them, and the wind had completely
stopped.

“Yeah?”

“I
need to check on my cousin.”

Ed
looked at the town hall. He’d bought into Bethelyn’s idea, and he wanted to get
into the cellar and see what they’d prepared. He had the vague idea of staying
there for a while in relative safety, but an even bigger part of him wanted to
get off the island.

“You’ve
not been to see him yet?” said Ed.

Gary
scratched his ear, and then his cheek. He wasn’t rough, but even the slightest
contact of his fingers on his skin seemed to leave red prints.

“I
didn’t dare. I heard screaming and I just shut my door. I didn’t know what the
hell was going on. I only came out because I saw you guys.”

Ed
knew how he felt. Only an hour earlier he’d found Bethelyn and her daughter in
comas in his bedroom, and he couldn’t bring himself to check on them. Gary
wasn’t a coward; he just had the same reaction to things as any sane human.
People think being brave is great, but being scared is just as good a survival
mechanism.

He
knew about Gary’s cousin, of course. About the cancer and the treatments and
how his battle to survive it tore his family apart. He had no doubt that at
some point Gary had been in the same position as Ed. He’d probably sat on his
sofa with a well-wisher across from him and prayed they’d just get the hell out
of his house and leave him alone.

He
shrugged his shoulders. “Sure. We can go check.”

Judith
coughed into her hand and then spoke. “I think we should get to the hall first.
Set up a base.”

She
looked around her. The area was deserted, but there was something in the air.
Anticipation, static. The sense that something was coming. Ed knew that they
all felt it. It was like being in Pompeii hours before the eruption.

“I
can’t leave him,” said Gary.

“You’ve
left him once already, what’s the difference?” said Judith.

Judith
Plum was a name well-known on the island. In a population as small as theirs it
was hard for people not to know who you were, but even on the island she’d
gained herself a kind of celebrity. It was Judith who had argued for imposing
an entry ban shortly after the outbreak. It was Judith who proposed rationing,
and it was Judith who said families who didn’t grow crops should get a smaller
share of food. She had been an outspoken voice for decades, but her opinions used
to be limited to what should be on the school curriculum and who should be on
the council committee. Now her ideas stretched to how they should shape their
survival.

She
had a sharp tongue and a loud voice, and in Ed’s experience the people who
shouted loudest usually won. If you could look someone in the eye and drown out
their words with your own, it didn’t matter if you were right or wrong.

Gary
pulled his hands out of his pockets. He drew his coat closer to him.

“I
need to check on him. For Christ sake, Julie. What if it was your family?”

“We’ve
all got families, Gary.”

Bethelyn
threw her arms out as though in desperation. From the way she clenched the
poker in her hand, Ed was worried she might lash out with it. She seemed like
an elastic band that was being prised apart inch by inch until the rubber
started to perish and it threatened to snap.

“This
is how people die,” she said. “They split up and go their own way and think
that by some happy fucking coincidence they’ll all wind up alive and together
again. If you go and look for your cousin, who’s probably already dead, then
you’re done. I’ll make sure I put this poker in your skull when you come after
me, and then I’ll stab you again just for your sheer stupidity. We stick
together.”

Not
even Ed knew what to say. They’d all seen on the news how dangerous the
infected were, and Ed had witnessed it first-hand today. Within an hour of
waking up he’d seen a woman kill her husband, a mother kill her child.

“We’ll
get set up in the hall first,” he said. “Make somewhere safe. Then we’ll check
for survivors. Your cousin will be the first.”

Gary
seemed like he was going to protest, but then he looked around him and said
nothing. He could have gone on his own, of course. Nobody could stop him. The
way he fell in line told Ed how scared he was.

Ed saw
movement in the corner of his eye. At the bottom of the hill, shambling up the
gentle slope, were two people. For a second he hoped they might be alive, but
the way they carried themselves meant they weren’t.

“How
many of us are on the island?” he said.

“Forty
men and women by last count,” said Bethelyn.

“It’s
more than that,” said Judith.

Bethelyn
fixed her a look. Without words, she told the woman to shut up.

Judith
didn’t seem fazed by it. “I’m telling you it’s more like sixty.”

“We
did a census. I know damn well that there are forty.”

Judith
gave a mocking smile. “Oh, look at you. Miss I’m-on-the-council. Whatever. It
doesn’t make you special, you know.”

“You
were on the council weren’t you?” said Bethelyn. “Until they kicked you off for
being a mouthy bitch.”

The
harsh tones and raised voices made Ed tense. He’d always turned from conflict
when he saw it coming. When James and dad used to argue about him joining the
navy, which got especially bad when they’d had a drink, Ed used to go upstairs,
go into his room and blast music in protest.

“Do
you guys not realise what’s happening?” he said. “There’s a chance that we
actually might die. This isn’t the newscasts, you know. You can’t just turn off
the TV and see it disappear. We’re in trouble, and we need to help each other
get out of it.”

Judith
raised a finger in the air and was going to speak when Ed cut her off. He was
sick of it. All those years of arguments in his house and he’d never said a
word. He was done with it.

“Shut
up.” He turned to Bethelyn. "So there are forty adults. How about
children?”

“Twelve.”

“There
are four of us. We’ve killed three infected. There are two at the bottom of the
street. So where the hell are the others?”

He
suddenly realised that he had included April in the number of infected. He’d
reeled it off like she was just a statistic, and the coldness of it made him
want to scream at himself.  He wanted to dig a hole and bury himself in the
soil.

He was
about to apologise to Bethelyn, when he remembered the slap.
She’ll grieve
in her own time,
he reminded himself.
Could anyone in the world have
told you how to grieve when James went?

“
Maybe they’re all in
their houses,” said Gary.

Ed
thought about it. The infected were stupid, so they probably didn’t have the
brain power to figure out how to open doors. That meant some of them, at least,
couldn’t get to them. The only problem would come if they started to try and
break through their doors. Most houses on Golgoth were decades old, and a lot
of the builders were amateurs at best. He doubted the cheap, ancient wood would
survive long under stress.

“Let’s
hope they stay that way. Come on. Let’s get the guns, that’s the first step. I
don’t want to think too far past that.”

When
they reached the town hall they found that nature had blocked their way. An elm
tree had blown down in the storm, and the thick trunk covered the entrance
doors. Golgoth had always been a place of mild climate, and it seemed like in
the last twenty four hours the forces of the world had spent their pent up
aggression on the surface of the island. A storm strong enough to uproot an elm
had to be something spectacular.

Bethelyn
pointed up at the first floor, where a row of windows were cut into the stone.
There was a ledge outside it, and the gutter than ran along it was full of
leaves.