The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (18 page)

He
couldn’t believe it. He thought that in the last few seconds before death his
brain was playing a trick on him. Then he remembered, and suddenly it made
sense.

The
boat in the storm. So he had seen it, then.

The
strangers who walked the street turned the attention of the infected away from
Ed and Bethelyn, though that didn’t lessen the fear in his chest. He looked at
these strangers with their fur coats and the masks covering their faces, and he
felt his blood freeze.

Somehow
he knew that no matter the fate they had just saved him from, the strangers on
the island were much worse than the infected ever could be.

15

Heather

Heather
knew all too well the feeling of taking just a step too far. It was too easy to
let a word stray from her mouth that was best left in her head, to take action
on something should have stayed a thought.

There
were no words to describe her latest mistake. In Kim’s room was Charles Bull,
tied to a chair by rope she’d found in a crate in the garage. The most feared
bounty hunter in the Capita, a man who made the mercury drop when he walked
into a room, a man who made the bravest people turn away as he passed.

His
eyes were closed. Heather had tied a rope around each arm and each leg, and
another around his waist to be sure. Charles had strength in bulk, and though
his body wasn’t trim there was a lot of it. To keep him secure she had used a
knot taught to her by her father. She couldn’t remember the name of it, but she
could remember the stink of her father’s cologne as he showed her how to make
the loops. Trying it again years later, her muscle memory kicked in and she
could almost hear her dead father whispering in her ear.

She
walked to the window and stared at the street outside. The house was in an area
that years ago would have been described as up-and-coming. Just thirty minutes
commute from what used to be the Capital city in the mainland, it was an area
where young families hunted for bargain properties that had low prices and lots
of character. The room behind her reflected dimly in the glass, and she could
just about make out the black outline of Charles. There was no escaping him, it
seemed. No way out.

What
the hell have you done?

She’d
been putting off the day of their Great Escape, and now she wanted to slap
herself. She had fussed and worried over one detail or another until the point
where it had been too late. Charles’s soldiers had taken all their food, so
that meant they couldn’t travel for long without needing to find some. Yet
there was no way they could stay. If she let Charles go, he would come back for
revenge. If she could bring herself to kill him, then she’d have half the Capita
looking for her. It was fire on one side and a volcano on the other.

She
heard a raspy sound, and when she turned around she saw Charles shoulders move.
It was a tremble at first, but then his head jerked up. His body tensed, and he
shook himself from side to side, his movements becoming quicker as he realised
he was tied up.

Heather
picked the end of his pickaxe off the floor, gripped it with both hands and
grunted as she dragged it even further away from him. How he managed to walk
around with this thing, she had no idea.

Charles
stopped struggling and became so still it seemed like he could have been
asleep. Heather walked across the room until she faced him. Charles’s eyes were
open, the creamy white of his eyeballs staring back from the holes in his mask.

“You
understand what they’ll do to you?” he said. “When they find you? And what
they’ll do to your daughter?”

Heather
hugged her arms close to her chest. All she could worry about was what she was
going to do, yet thinking didn’t bring her any closer to an answer. She
couldn’t come up with a single solution that didn’t end in the depths of a Capita
dungeon.

“Unless
you kill me, that is,” Charles carried on. “Because if you let me go I’ll come
back with the full force of the Capita and I’ll cut your daughter’s throat
while you watch.”

He
nodded as if in agreement with himself, and the beak of his mask rose and fell
like a vulture pecking a corpse.

“If
you kill me, your problem goes away. For a while at least.”

She
couldn’t work out what his game was. She thought he’d be angry, but his voice
was so calm. It was so cold it chilled the room, a wind sneaking in through
cavities in the wall.

“Do
you want to die or something?” she said.

“Don’t
we all, in a way?”

She
ran her hand through her hair. “Just shut up a minute.”

She
walked to the doorway and stared into the hall. Kim and Eric were downstairs in
the living room. The afternoon sun was setting and darkness had started to
stream in through the windows and cover the walls and floors. Behind her,
Charles spoke.

“You
have my knife, Heather. Don’t deny it. You found it while you tied me up.”

He was
right. As well as the pickaxe on his back, Charles carried a machete which hung
in a leather strap around his torso. The handle was brown and had stickers of
yellow smiley faces on it, and along the blade was a manufacturer’s mark
printed in Chinese.

“Pick
up the knife, Heather.”

Maybe
he was right. Perhaps Charles dying would solve all her problems. She picked up
the machete from Kim’s bed. The handle felt cold against her palm, and she
wondered how many skulls it had cleaved and how much flesh the blade had
sliced.

“Now
stand in front of me and take off my mask,” said Charles. His voice was goading,
and he spoke so quietly that she thought it may have been a voice in her head.
“Come on, Heather. You don’t have all day.”

She
grabbed hold of the sides of his mask. The leather was slippery, and it felt
like something that was living. It was as though it was a creature which had
attached itself to his face, and rather than fight it the bounty hunter had
accepted it and over the years they had fused as one. Plenty of people these
days felt uncomfortable in their masks, and she knew that many took theirs off
in their own homes despite the risks. There was an unnatural feeling about
covering their mouths and noses that their human instincts hadn’t shaken off
yet.

“Untie
the straps,” he said.

She
wondered why she was listening to him, but at the same time couldn’t stop.

“Don’t
worry,” said Charles, his voice almost a whisper. “The air in here is fine.”

She
started at his neck and felt for where the straps were tied. She unravelled
them and then unwound the mask from his neck. She took hold of a fleshy part of
the mask underneath his chin and lifted, and she swore she heard a hiss as she
pulled it away. She saw Charles Bull for the first time.

His
skin was grey and looked clammy, and the bridge of his nose was red from where
the leather had pressed. That aside, his face was shocking only for the fact
that there was nothing surprising about it. For a second, and she knew it would
last no longer than that, Heather felt like she was looking at a human being.
His cheeks puffed out like he was storing air in his mouth, and his nose
reddened at the top. His jawline was still visible but it was losing the fight
as his skin fattened.

He
lifted his head and she saw the skin below his chin wobble. The lack of a mask
robbed the menace from his face but replaced it with sadness. Heather had the
sense that she was staring deep inside him where an endless tunnel ran in
darkness.

“See
the red lines that run across my Adam’s apple?” he said.

Without
the mask, even his voice was different. It was clearer, for one thing. Seeing
his lips move made his voice less threatening and more like the whisper of a
desperate man. It reminded her of seeing her grandfather an hour before he
died. The man had lived a life filled with fists raised to his wife’s face and
abuse shouted at the rest of the family. Heather dreaded visiting his house,
and plenty of times she had faked stomach aches and sickness to avoid going.
Despite a life of temper, an hour before he died the volume of her grandfather’s
voice dropped lower than it ever had before, and he whispered tender words to
his family.

“Heather.
My neck.”

A
jagged red line ran across the flappy skin on Charles’s neck. It crossed it,
starting at one side, bridging his Adam’s apple, and ended at the other. It
looked like a smile had been drawn across his neck, except it had been drawn by
a knife.

“Is
that - ?”

He
nodded.

“There’s
nothing you can do to me that hasn’t been done already.”

She
knew then that she couldn’t kill him. It wasn’t that he was invincible; she
didn’t care that his throat had been cut once before, it didn’t mean it
couldn’t be done again with a little more determination. It was something
inside Heather. She knew that no matter how close she brought the knife to his
skin, something would always stop her from making the cut.

She
walked out of the room and down stairs. She wanted nothing more than to grab
her daughter and give her a hug so fierce that it hurt. After that they’d
gather together whatever supplies they could, and then she, Kim and Eric would
have to get out of there. Maybe Wes knew somewhere they could go.

She
wondered where the kids were. The soldiers were long gone with Heather’s food,
and she realised that downstairs had been silent for a long time. She walked
through the hallway and into the living room.

“Kim,
Eric?” she said.

The
living room was empty, and so was the kitchen. It wasn’t a large house, so
there were precious few places to hide even if that had been their intention.

“Don’t
mess around,” she said.

She
walked around the living room and checked behind the arm chairs and couch as if
the kids had somehow learned the octopus-like ability to squeeze into small
spaces. Movement flickered in the corner of her eye, and through the patio
doors she saw two small figures with their backs to her.
 

At
first she wondered what the two of them were doing in the garden. When she
realised, her heart froze in her chest. Ice spread over her arms and down her
legs, and she was so tense that the slightest movement might shatter her into a
thousand pieces. Outside, Kim and Eric stood hand in hand and looked up at the
sky. In each of their free hands, they held their masks.

She
opened the patio doors with such anger that she thought she might smash them.
She stepped out into her garden and saw the mess of splattered mud that had
once been her crops. Kim turned round, saw her mother, and opened her mouth.

Heather
almost gasped. It was the first time she’d seen her daughter’s bare face
outside the house. She never let her take her mask off in open air, and she
rarely took it off even indoors. To see her breathing unfiltered air made her
feel sick.

“Get
your masks on and get inside, now.”

“Don’t
worry it’s –” Eric began.

Heather
cut off his words by grabbing his neck and throwing him behind her. He shook
himself free and, with a reddening face, adjusted his collar. Heather turned
back to her daughter. The ice was melting now and the anger was subsiding.
Replacing it were stabs of fear that poked up and down her body.

She
needed an AVS. She needed to test the air and see if it was infected, but she
hadn’t been able to find hers for days. She enforced a mask-indoors policy and
always sealed their bedrooms at night as much as she could, so it hadn’t seemed
much of a pressing issue. She knew she’d be able to get one from Wes or one of
the other traders easily enough. She thought it wasn’t a big deal, but how
wrong she was.

The
rational part of her mind ran away and hid while another part flew into crisis
mode. The outside of her vision seemed to blur, and thoughts flashed through
her brain too fast for her to catch hold of. She made sure Kim and Eric were in
the living room and then locked the patio doors. She walked away from them
without saying anything, because her throat was so choked that she didn’t think
the words would come.

She
walked upstairs, each thud getting louder as she brought her feet down on the
wood. It was windy outside. That much she’d noticed. That meant the virus could
easily have been airborne. It meant that as Kim stood outside and took deep
breaths the virus was crawling into her mouth, slivering down her throat and
infecting the cells of her body.