The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (25 page)

“What’s
your name?” said Heather.

The
old woman straightened the necklace on her neck. The blouse she wore was baggy
around her waist. Maybe it had fit once, but now it was more like a tent.

“Mary,”
she said. “But it’s not the time for life stories, Heather. They might have
buggered off for now, but the guards will be round to check in a few hours.”

“How
do you know my name?”

“The
lad and the lass were going on about you. I’m no genius, but my brain’s not
rattled yet. And I’m not as old as I look, so you can take the pity out of your
eyes.”

She
looked at the door. The chair held it tight, but she knew that they couldn’t
leave the cabin that way. Her pistol would afford some protection from the
infected, but it wouldn’t help her swim through the tide. Eventually it would
give out, and Heather would have nothing left.

“You
got a better way out of here?”

Mary
smiled. It was the kind of grin given to a child full of naïve questions.

“Thought
the door, of course.”

Heather
shook her head. “We won’t make it.”

“Look
at the chair. Is it moving now?”

She
was right. The chair was still, and the door no longer rattled. Perhaps, as
Mary had said, the infected had gotten bored and drifted away. From her
experience they were remarkable for their one-track minds and unwavering
determination, and if they sensed a potential meal they could happily hammer at
a door for days. Was it possible that over time, knowing they couldn’t get into
the cabin, they had become conditioned to give up?

She
moved the chair way from the door. As she grabbed the door handle, she felt
something tug on her back. She turned and saw the man who had been rolling a
cigarette. He had the thin wrists of a skeleton covered in Clingfilm.

“Take
us with you.”

Others
rose from their beds and stepped out of the shadows. Their eyes were large,
their expressions lost. It made Heather want to cry when she saw how much they
resembled the infected. This was what it had come to. The Capita gave safety to
some, but took the humanity away from others. She felt the fire of anger and
ice of sadness in her chest at the same time, and it was overwhelming enough
for her to want to sink to the floor.

“Leave
them, Heather,” said Mary.

“What?”

“You
can’t save them all. Most of us already made our peace with what will come.
Those who haven’t, well that’s tough shit.”

She
didn’t see her grandma anymore. The kind old lady was gone, replaced with a
selfish woman letting her survival instincts guide her actions. She had
misjudged her, and she realised that merely being old didn’t bestow a person
with an inner sense of goodness. You didn’t suddenly become a saint because you
were old enough to collect your pension. People of great ages were capable of
the darkest things.

“We
can’t leave them here,” she said.

She
waved her hand in the air and gestured for all of them to follow her. The girl
on the top bunk threw back her covers, swung off the edge of the bed and
dangled herself closer to the floor. She let go and dropped. Others moved from
the other side of the room and joined Heather at the door.

“Get
ready,” said Heather. “When we leave, they’ll sense us. Just keep moving.”

She
felt a glow inside her. She was doing something, finally doing something. She
imagined the faces of the Capita soldiers when they opened the cabin doors to
find it empty, and she grinned. If she could lead the DC’s away and find Kim
and Eric, she would finally have done something worthwhile.

She
turned and gave them all a smile that she hoped was reassuring.

“This
is it,” she said. “Watch your arses and don’t let the bastards bite you.”

She
moved the chair away from the door and started to turn the handle, when a hole
exploded in cabin wall. She heard popping sounds, dozens in succession, and
more holes dotted the plasterboard. The cigarette man clutched his neck and
fell to the floor, blood spraying over his chest. The little girl scrambled
underneath her bed. Another man cried out, and three people sprinted down the
hallway and into the bathroom at the end.

As
more cracks rang out and the wall became a sieve, Heather opened the door a
crack. A line of Capita soldiers stood at the edge of the complex, just past
the gate, with their rifles raised. Two of them in the middle parted as someone
walked by them, and Heather watched with wide eyes as Charles Bull walked into
the compound.

25

Ed

Pain
flowed through him and blood gushed out as he pulled the spear from his calf.
Behind them he could hear the shouts of The Savage and his men, and when he
turned he saw that they moved forward in a uniform line, knives and axes raised
in the air, like a hunting party trailing a hog. Ed tried to limp but his calf
burned as though someone held a piece of hot coal against it. He sank to the
floor, bit back on the urge to scream, and rolled up the leg of his trousers.
There was a hole an inch wide where the top of the spear had punctured the
skin, and the bottom of his calf was becoming covered by a film of blood.

The
stranger’s boat was fifty feet below them at the bottom of the cliff, and Ed
knew that without it there was no way to leave the island. There was a pathway
down to it where the cliff was less severe, but it was rocky and it sloped in many
places. Gordon Rigby had once vetoed plans to install a handrail with the
excuse that it would ruin the beauty of the island, but Ed would have gladly
swapped aesthetics for a sturdy piece of metal. In its absence, there was no
way he could make it down there.

“Bloody
Gordon Rigby,” he said.

The
Savage made a bellow so loud that not even the wind could drown it out. He
reached behind him and pulled another spear from a holster on his back as
though he were an archer drawing arrows from a quiver.

“Ed…”
said Bethelyn.

He
rubbed his calf and wiped away some of the blood. The wound was raw but the
blood seemed to be thinning into a dribble. The stinging of pain didn’t follow
suit, and if anything it felt like a blowtorch was breathing fire on his skin.

“I
know, I know,” he said in between gasps of pain.

The
pathway down to the ship wasn’t an option. As brave a face as he wanted to put
on it, he wouldn’t be able to hobble down before the strangers caught up with
them. They were going to be caught, and rather than whimpering about it, Ed
wanted to stand up. It wasn’t fair that he should doom Bethelyn to the fate he
was surely going to face.

“You
should go,” he said.

“You
think I’m leaving you?” said Bethelyn. “Don’t you remember my big speech at the
town hall? If we split up, we die.”

“And
since then Gary and Judith aren’t doing too good, are they?”

Bethelyn
pout her hand out toward him. “Come on Ed. If you’re gonna give up, then I’ll
join you. So you won’t just be screwing yourself if you’re a coward about
this.”

He
felt a rush of heat in his face. Did she really just call him a coward after
everything they had been through? He knew that nobody on Golgoth had faced the
outbreak until now, but he’d handled it pretty well. Sure, the fact he was
immune was pure luck. Everything that had happened since, and the fact they’d
survived as long as they had, must have been at least partly down to him.

Bethelyn
moved her hand closer to him. Ed brushed it away, pressed his own hand on the
ground and tried to push himself up. When his weight fell on his wounded calf,
the fire burned in him again. He collapsed back down to the grass.

“Okay
you stubborn sod. You’re not a coward. But you’re not exactly an action man.”

This
time he let her help him to his feet. The strangers were skirting along the
cliffs, creeping as though they thought they could sneak up on them. It didn’t
make sense given that The Savage had already screamed his lungs out.

His
calf still throbbed, but once he was on his feet he found he could stay there,
and he could even limp along. He still wasn’t sure-footed enough to brave the
cliff pathway, but he could walk enough so that they could at least go
somewhere.

“We
need to hide,” said Bethelyn. “Let’s go into the village.”

“Back
there again?”

“I
know this is probably the worst day of your life, having to spend time outside
your bedroom and all, but if there’s another way then I’m missing it.”

Ed had
to agree. On the cliff edge, surrounded by patchy Golgoth grass that never grew
more than a few centimetres before falling out like an alopecia stricken head
of hair, they were asking to be caught.

The
strangers were a stone’s throw away now, slinking across the cliff with their
fur coats flapping in the wind. They moved deliberately and aggressively,
tigers hunting on the plain. Ed limped away from the edge with Bethelyn
supporting him and tried his best not to act like the wounded antelope that the
strangers had obviously mistaken him for.

They
reached the edge of the village. There was a cobblestone wall that didn’t
support or join on to anything. On the edge of it was a post box which Ed had
never seen emptied, even before the outbreak. He had the strange thought that
he had never actually mailed a letter to anyone. Not even once in his entire life.

Ahead
of them was Ed’s house and Bethelyn’s cottage. Scattered around were a handful
of other decades-old buildings that had once been people’s homes, but which
were now empty and would stand for years to come as museums of what had once
been. The main street, with its uneven cobbles and poking weeds which Gordon
had battled endlessly, was never busy at the best of times. In such a small
population it was rare to see anyone else lurking because they would usually be
working during the day and at home by night. The residents of the island had
always kept private lives, which was partly the reason why most of them had
moved here. Now, for the first time, all the residents of Golgoth walked down
the street together. Only, they were no longer people. They breathed, they saw,
they heard and they walked, but any trace of their humanity was gone.

The
village was lost to them, and even if he could run at full sprint Ed wouldn’t
have liked to dodge his way through the crowd of infected stumbling down the
cobbles. They were trapped between monsters both sides. One crowd of them was
slow and stupid, the other agile and cunning. It was a choice, then, of which
way they were going to die. Maybe Ed hadn’t been a coward when he sat on the
floor and thought about giving up. Maybe he was just a realist.

“You
in the mood to fight?” said Bethelyn.

She
rubbed her shoulder and grimaced, but she hid the expression within seconds of
making it. It seemed to Ed that everyone made attempts to hide their pain, be
it of the mind or of the flesh. Ed had hidden the emptiness he felt after dad
and James had gone by cutting himself off from everyone else, and Bethelyn had
disguised the pain of losing April by forcing herself into action. It was as
though feeling something was a thing to be ashamed of. Pain and fear were the
most basic emotions, yet everyone tried to pretend they were numb to them.

He
looked at the infected and he saw the faces of people he once knew, though they
didn’t seem real. Between their snarls and the gnashing of their teeth they
looked as though they were made-up to feature in a horror movie, like the
population of Golgoth had been cast as extras in a monster feature. He knew
that Bethelyn would fight until her body gave out and he would do the same,
though his damaged body would give sooner than hers. Between them they could
probably take down five or six infected, leaving a good thirty more ready to
bite feast on them.

“We
need to go back to the cliff,” he said.

Bethelyn
held her poker in her hand, her thumb wrapped around the handle.

“Not
your greatest idea,”

“We
don’t exactly have many to choose from. What else can we do?”

Her
forehead creased.

“Not
give up, perhaps?” she said.

He
limped over to the wall that wasn’t connected to anything, and despite how
pointless a structure it was, he was glad of something to rest against. The
infected walked toward them without urgency, like predators sure they would
have their feast.

“At
least we could talk to them,” he said, looking at the strangers who approached
them from the cliff.

“And I
bet a fish could talk to a shark.”

“We
might be able to reason with them. We can’t reason with the dead.”

Bethelyn
looked at the infected. Ed followed her gaze and saw that they were closing in
on them, an army regiment with dead eyes but a never-ending hunger. Behind them
the strangers trampled along the grass. The vice was closing on them.

“They
aren’t dead,” said Bethelyn. “At least I don’t think so.”

“Might
as well be.”

Bethelyn
nodded. “Okay,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything else left to do,
does there?”

Bethelyn
took his arm and wrapped it around her shoulder. The movement made him feel
helpless, but he realised that her support was something he would just have to
accept. They walked away from the village and back toward the cliffs. The
strangers headed directly toward them now so that they became two armies
meeting in the middle of a battle field, though one was outnumbered beyond
hope.

The
sky was clearer that Ed had expected to it to be. For the last sky he might
ever see, it wasn’t such a bad one. If only the day before hadn’t brought the
infected winds. He wished for a time when Golgoth was still untouched, but he
wished that he could have lived differently. Instead of shutting himself away
when he found himself alone, he should have opened his doors. It was still true
that people could come and go without warning, but if you never let them in
then there was never a chance they would stay.

As
they walked he looked at the ground. He had to say something, but couldn’t look
at Bethelyn while he did.

“I
just want to say thank you, and stuff.”

“There’s
nothing to thank me for.”

“You
didn’t have to try and help me.”

“I
always thought about it, Ed. when your brother went I was going to knock on
your door. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner.”

Only a
narrow section of the plain separated them from the strangers now.  The cliff
edge was behind the men in furs, and from this angle it looked like one push
could send them all toppling into the sea. Ed knew that it was a trick of the
sight and that there was at least ten feet separating them from the chalky
edges.

Now,
closer than he wanted to get, he could see their faces. Some had beards that
grew over their cheeks and necks and had started to puff away from their face
like dirty candyfloss. A couple of the men had shaved, and from the red slashes
on their cheeks it was clear they’d sheared their growth with the edge of their
weapons. The men had the eyes of youth but wrinkles that you could only get with
age, and some were so creased that their faces looked like folded leather. He
wondered how their eyes could retain that youthful glimmer when their skin had
taken a battering. Perhaps it was due to the life they now led. Maybe away from
the trappings of office jobs and factory work, they had found a purer way of
life. It was tougher, sure, but it made them feel more alive.

There
were a couple of women in the group, and their faces fared demonstrably better
than the men’s. Though smaller in frame they were no less imposing, and a woman
with thick eyebrows and hair that curled across her face carried an axe that Ed
wouldn’t even have been able to lift.

Despite
the furs that made them seem like wild animals, Ed got the sense it was all
costume. Years ago, before the outbreak, these men and women were normal like
him.  The world had changed in the years since and no doubt it had altered
these men and women, but they were still people.

The
Savage pointed at Ed and Bethelyn. The strangers held their weapons in the air,
screamed into the sky and then ran at him. This was it now. The doors had
closed and left them trapped, and there was nothing to do but meet their end.
Ed was just glad he had someone to face it with, and he couldn’t have imagined
having that thought a few days earlier. As if thinking the same thing, Bethelyn
tightened her grip around his shoulder.