The Dying & The Dead 2 (3 page)

He wore a long coat that went down to
his thighs. It was clear and plastic, and there were red and yellow stains
splattered on it. The buckles squeezed the material tight against his
stick-like frame. Despite the heat in the carriage, the man’s face looked cold.
His nose seemed sharp enough to tear a hole in his mask, and his forehead bulged
out just a little bit too much. He stood tall in the doorframe, his head only
inches from the ceiling. His boots made clanging sounds on the metal as he took
a few steps forward. A guard closed the door behind him.

Cold seeped through the carriage. The man
took in the faces of all the people around him, but if there was any emotion in
his stare, it was faint enough to be invisible. His gaze stopped on the woman
who had collapsed and died. Next to her, with the shock of adrenaline wearing
off, the man held her baby.

The man in the doorway spoke.

“What happened to her?” he said. Even
through his mask, his voice was sharp.

One of the guards shrugged.

“Just collapsed.”

“For God’s sake, get her some water.”

“She’s dead.”

“Then get her out of here.”

Everyone else in the carriage seemed too
scared to meet the man’s stare. Eric wondered if they knew something that he
didn’t, or if he was supposed to recognise the tall and cold-looking man. Well,
if the rest of them were too scared to talk, Eric certainly wouldn’t be.

“Where are we going?” he said.

The man tilted his head. Eric felt like
a worm wriggling under the gaze of a hawk.

“You’re going to Camp Dam Marsh,” said
the man.

One of the guards shifted on his feet.

“Do you think we should be telling them
that, Dr. Scarsgill?”

“What?” said Scarsgill. “Would you lie
to them as well as kidnap them? Let the poor people know where they’re going,
at least.”

He turned his attention to the DCs in
the carriage.

“We’ll be there soon. When the train
stops, I suggest you wait. I don’t condone violence, but nor can I control it.
And trust me; a baton to the head soon puts thoughts of unrest to bed. Until we
stop, conserve your energy.”

He turned to leave. Without thinking,
Eric stood up. As he approached Scarsgill, one of the guards stepped forward.
Eric grabbed Scarsgill’s plastic coat and pulled him back. The doctor stopped
and turned. When he looked at Eric he didn’t show annoyance, and he didn’t
speak. Instead a silence hung between them, broken only by a wheezing coughing
fit of a woman at the back of the train.

“Are my mum and my sister in camp?” he
asked.

Scarsgill smiled.

“And who are they?”

“My mum’s tall. She’s got curly hair. My
sister’s called Luna. She looks like me, she’s my twin.”

“So you’re looking for a woman with curly
hair and a little girl? That doesn’t give me a great deal to go on. Are they
immune, like you?”

“My sister is. My mum, I don’t know.”

“If they are, they’ll be in Dam Marsh. I
hope you find them.”

Scarsgill left the room, and with it
went the cold. Eric wandered back over to Kim and Allie.

“That was stupid,” said Kim.

“I know.”

“What’s Dam Marsh?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t think I want
to. But if my mum and Luna are there, we’ll find them.”

“And what about
my
mum?”

“We’ll find her too, sometime.”

Allie moved his head away from Kim’s
shoulder. He had a dent in his chin, maybe from an old accident, and there was
a red blotchy birthmark on his neck.

“And what about my grandma?” he said.
“She’s alone now. Her hip locks when it gets cold, and she’ll need me to let
the chickens out of the hutch.”

Before Eric or Kim could answer, a
screeching sound rose around them. It was so loud that Eric’s ears hurt.
Gradually the train slowed, until finally it stopped. With the rumble of the
train gone, Eric could hear his own pulse as it beat in his ears.

“Okay,” said one of the guards. “It’s time
to go.”

When the door opened and the breeze
floated in, Eric leaned his head into it. He felt it chill his skin, but it
didn’t do anything to calm his heart rate. He got to his feet and stuck his
hand out for Kim. When she gripped him, he noticed how sweaty her palms were.
Allie stayed on the carriage floor, looking at them. Eric outstretched his other
hand and pulled the boy up.

They left the train in single file. When
he got down onto the platform, Eric couldn’t see anything through the steam of
the train as it hung around them. It dispersed into the air, and slowly things
started to clear. For the first time, he saw Camp Dam Marsh. As Eric, Kim and
Allie stared at it, they held hands.

The camp was a few acres long. It was
surrounded by two fifteen foot-high chain fences, in between which crowds of
infected shambled back and forth. Seeing them made Eric flinch, and he felt Kim
grip him tighter. There were two brickwork chimneys which reached high into the
sky, and black smoke drifted out from the ends of them. Beyond the fences were
rows of flimsy-looking wooden cabins with overgrown grass around them. The
majority of the camp was taken up by a yard filled with loose stones. Men and
women walked across it, some pushing wheelbarrows full of rocks, others swinging
pickaxes at the ground. They stared rigidly in front of them, avoiding the
gazes of guards who waited on the sidelines. Clouds seemed to group overhead,
fat and grey as if it was their job to cast a shadow over the camp.

Someone yelled to the right of Eric. A
boy struggled under the grasp of a burly guard. He wriggled as if he was having
a fit, and eventually his movements were enough to free him from the man’s
hands. The boy took off in a run, sprinting away from the train and away from
the Camp in front of him, going any direction but Dam Marsh.

Eric saw movement in a tower on the
corner of the yard. A guard propped up a rifle on a metal railing and squinted
down the sights. The boy ran away with pattering feet, his arms stretched in
front of him as if he was reaching for something.

A crack cut through the air. Everyone
was silent. Even the idling engine of the train seemed to calm into submission.
The boy slumped face first into the floor and smashed his head against the
stone. He squirmed on the ground as blood seeped from a hole in his back.

Another shot was fired, and another hole
appeared in the body. As the immune men, women and children watched, the boy became
still and his blood spread in a pool around him.

Chapter
Three

Ed

The sea opened its watery mouth and
started to swallow the ship. Ed watched it from the shore, shivering so much
that he thought he would never get warm again. Warnings of hypothermia and
pneumonia flashed in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t think of himself yet.

The bow was submerged, and the rest of
the ship would soon follow. His body was soaked and his lungs ached from the
effort of swimming away from the ship and against the tide. With the adrenaline
wearing off, a shudder ran through him and made him wish for electric heaters and
warm hearths. 

The Savage lay next to him on his back
on the sand. He had his hands over his face, and he panted as he caught his
breath. Ed looked around him. They were on a beach. The sand was damp and brown,
and behind them was a hill with a path winding up through it. There was a metal
sign fifty metres to their right warning them of a high tide.
Thanks for the
heads up,
thought Ed.

“Where’s Bethelyn?” he said, the words
straining between gulps of air.

The Savage sat up. His trousers were
covered in wet sand, and grains of it were matted in his hair. He looked out to
the sea where black waves swept up and down, splashing foam everywhere as they
crashed.

The storm had hit them full on, and
rather than sailing through it, the ship had submitted. The waves had punctured
the hull and water poured in below deck. The vessel soon started to sink, and
the three of them hadn’t had time to grab anything before jumping overboard.
Plunging into the sea in the middle of the night wasn’t ideal, but it was
either that or take a trip to the bottom of the ocean.

“I can’t see her,” said Ed “Where the
hell is she?”

 He got to his feet. Despite being
drenched with freezing water, a nervous energy filled him and anxiety wrung his
stomach. He gazed across the beach but couldn’t see Bethelyn.

“Wasn’t she with you?” said The Savage.

“I was holding her hand, but a wave took
her.”

“Ah. Give her a minute or two. She’s a
grown woman.”

“And we just jumped ship in the middle
of a storm. Where is she?”

The Savage patted his leg and scraped
the sand off his clothes.

“Just leave her,” he said.

Ed couldn’t believe that even The Savage
would say something like that. Fury started to boil in him, but now wasn’t the
time to deal with it. His breaths came shallow and fast. As he scanned the sea
in front of them and tried to pick out Bethelyn among the waves, he noticed
that he was wringing his fingers.
Come on,
he thought.
Where are you?

The Savage put his hand to his forehead.
He stared at the sea intently for a few seconds.

“She’s there,” he said, and pointed.

Ed looked, but he couldn’t see anything.
The Savage must have had better eyesight than him.

“See the mast?” said The Savage. “Swim
toward that. Keep a straight line. If you see a fin, pretend to be a fish. I’m
told that does wonders.”

It took him ten minutes to swim out to
her and get her back, but it seemed to stretch on for hours. Finally he dragged
Bethelyn ashore. There was a point when, swimming toward the mast, he thought a
wave was going to take hold of him and drag him away. The desire to save his
friend won out. When Ed got her to the beach, he wanted to just sink into the
sand and sleep for a month.

He laid Bethelyn on her side. She was
breathing, so she didn’t seem to have inhaled any water. That was more than
could be said for Ed. He had a bitter taste in his mouth, and his throat burned
through the salt water he’d accidentally drank.

“You okay, Wetgills? You’re turning
green.”

Ed bent over and coughed. His stomach
bubbled, and he felt vomit flow up this throat. He coughed and then spat a
spray of salt water onto the beach.

Bethelyn sat up. She reached into her
pocket and pulled out a crumpled sheet. As she unravelled the sodden paper it
started to tear, so she did it more carefully. Instead of the soot-drawn
likeness of her daughter, it was just a black smear on wet poster paper. She
threw it to the ground and then looked out to sea, where only the stern of the
boat was showing.

Ed coughed again. He’d expelled the salt
water from his body, but his throat burned even more.

“What the hell, Bethelyn?” he said,
vocal cords stinging. “You weren’t even trying.”

She looked at him, but her expression
was blank.

“Sorry?”

“You weren’t even trying to swim. What
the hell’s wrong with you? It was like you were just letting the tide take
you.”

“Maybe she can’t swim,” said The Savage.

Ed rounded on him.

“And you. What the hell were you
thinking? ‘
Just leave her
.’ Do you actually give a shit about anyone
else?”

The Savage shook his head.

“I put my neck out for myself. That’s
about as far as it’ll stretch.”

They moved along the beach, sticking
close to the rocky hill until they found a gap cut into it where the wind
didn’t reach. The cold was setting in now, but the enclosure offered them some
protection from it. Ed had watched enough rescue shows to know that if you
stayed in wet clothes, you got hypothermia.

“We need to build a fire,” he said.

The Savage leaned against the side of
the enclosure. He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing his torso. His ribs
stuck out against his skin, but he looked more toned than malnourished. It was
as if his body had adapted to a meagre diet and learned to take exactly the
calories it needed from it. There was a bump on his chest that could have been
a scar, or may have been a third nipple.

Bethelyn sat on the floor. Ed gave her a
hug and pulled her close to him. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll get some
wood.”

He walked up and down the beach and
tried to find pieces of wood that weren’t completely soaked. A cast of black
crabs saw him approach and scuttled away. The tide lapped in over the sand,
reaching far enough to cover his shoes. When he returned to the enclosure he
had only collected a pathetic haul of wood, but it would have to do. Now there
was just the matter of actually starting a fire. He stood and looked at the timber.
He realised that he didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do. Would it just
light itself? That would have been handy.

“Is the wood dry?” said The Savage.

Ed wasn’t in the mood for more mocking
lessons from The Savage. He ignored him, and began to arrange the wood in what
he imagined was the best way to get a fire burning. He put the smaller pieces in
the middle and arranged some thin kindling around the edges.

“Suit yourself,” said The Savage. “You
might need this though.”

He threw something to the ground. Ed
picked it up, and looked at it. It was a thin grey stone of some kind, attached
to a keychain.

“That’s a flint and scraper,” said The
Savage.

“I don’t need your help,” said Ed.

“Do you just carry that around with
you?” said Bethelyn.

The Savage put his hands in his pockets.

“I’ve survived on the Mainland for
years. You don’t manage that without being prepared. There are three basic
things you need to survive anywhere, doll-face; water, food and fire. Luckily,
if you have fire, then you can boil any water you find. It doesn’t really
burden me to carry a small flint in my pocket.”

Ed picked up the flint. He started
scraping it onto the kindling and wood arranged in front of him. Aware of The
Savage watching him, he rubbed faster until he felt his face turn red, but the
only thing that got hot was his cheeks. He flicked the flint across the scraper
again and again, aware of the howling wind that threatened to sneak in and ruin
any progress. After minutes of getting nowhere, he wanted to fling the stone
into the sea.

“Screw it,” he said.

The Savage shook his head.

“Want to see how it’s done?”

If The Savage felt the cold, he did a
great job of hiding it. Bethelyn, on the other hand, shivered into her clothes,
and her face had turned pale. Ed didn’t want to accept any help from The
Savage, but he couldn’t let Bethelyn freeze.

It was strange how strongly he felt
about it. When he was growing up, he would hang on James’s every word. It
didn’t matter what lessons he tried to give him, Ed would listen to him as if
he was telling him the secret of life. If The Savage, on the other hand,
offered advice, the back of his neck prickled in irritation.

“Fine,” he said, and moved away from the
fire without making eye contact.

The Savage bent down and started
scraping. It gave Ed some satisfaction to see that he didn’t start the fire straight
away, but at least The Savage looked like he knew what he was doing. He turned
his head and spoke to Ed as he tried to scrape a spark.

“How is it you never learned to do this
stuff? Didn’t they have Boy Scouts on Golgoth?”

“I never had to learn. What good is
being able to make fires when you can just turn your heating on? It never even
occurred to me.”

“Well it might have been useful for
situations like this, Edward.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The Savage shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t you think the apocalypse has proven
just how useful ‘stuff like this’ is? You might not have noticed, but you can’t
just get up and press a button anymore to get things warm. You can’t pop food
in a box and spin a dial and have it heat up in front of your eyes. The worst
has happened, and it’s showing you up for what you really are, Ed; a naïve,
spoiled guy who would be dead in a day if it wasn’t for me.”

“All this was never meant to happen,”
said Ed.

The Savage rubbed the flint. Despite
wanting to see The Savage fail, Ed hoped for a tiny spark to shoot out in the
darkness. Part of him wanted to be right but another part of him, the colder
part, needed a fire.

“But it
did
,” said The Savage.
“So you better get used to it, or the world is going to chew you up like a
dried arsehole.”

Bethelyn stood up.

“For God’s sake,” she said. “Give that
here and move out of the way.”

Bethelyn sat down next to the kindling
and got to work. Within ten minutes, a tiny fire smouldered. Ed rubbed his
hands against it, careful as to not make a draught and blow it out. It wasn’t
going to be enough to dry them completely, but it was something.

“Where’d you learn that?” said Ed.

“Apparently my dad always wanted a son.
When I came out with nothing dangling between my legs, he had to make do. Used
to take me on camping trips all the time.”

“You’ve been sheltered all your life,
fella,” said The Savage, looking at Ed. “You won’t understand how bad it really
is until there’s so many infected around you that you daren’t even squat in a
bush to take a shit.  You need to learn how dangerous this is, Ed. This isn’t
one of Bethelyn’s camping trips with marshmallows and songs around the fire.
God took a big shit on the world, and soon enough you’ll be up to your elbows
in it.”