Archie licked his owner’s face and the man lifted a bony hand to stroke his dog before regarding his visitors. He managed a pained smile when he saw Emma.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, the suffering clear in his demeanour. He tried to answer her but was then racked by a coughing fit.
“He was bitten while helping us fight a crowd of snappers,” Kingsley explained. “I met him on the street, said he was looking for a woman who’d saved his life. And from his description, I knew it was you. I was on my way to find you when Mark sidetracked us.”
Emma knelt in front of Terry. “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she said.
Terry's voice came out no louder than a whisper. “Did you find your sister?”
“Not yet. We’re getting there.”
“Sorry… I couldn’t help.”
She held his hand. “You helped me when I had a panic attack in the shop. You calmed me down. I shouldn’t have left you while you were sleeping, I was just scared. If there’s anything I can do…”
Terry scratched Archie behind his ear and she looked at the rottweiler.
“Take care of him for me,” Terry said. “And… and don’t let me turn into one of them, please.”
“Sure. My sister loves dogs.” Emma hoped her reassuring smile didn’t look as weary as it felt.
The dog didn’t want to leave it’s master’s side, so Terry grabbed hold of the empty toilet roll dispenser and hoisted himself to his feet. Digging into his backpack, he came out with a lead, which he clipped onto Archie’s navy blue collar so he could walk the dog with slow, dragging steps out to the van.
“God, I’m dizzy,” he said as he trod outside.
Kingsley opened the passenger door and Terry stopped in front of it, bending down to place one last kiss on his dog’s head. Then he patted the passenger seat, croaked, “Up,” and the dog obediently hopped into the footwell and then onto the seat. They closed the door and went back inside the restroom.
*
A bolt through the back of his head, and they left Terry’s body in the cubicle.
Kingsley could barely steady his hands enough to turn on the tap at the sink so he could wash the blood from them; he kept thinking about James, seeing the same bolt sticking out of his eye.
Kingsley and Emma rinsed their hands and faces, scrubbed them until there were only faint smears of pink left. They then refilled every water bottle they had and set off, speechless.
With the big rottweiler lying awkwardly across his friends’ laps, Kingsley drove.
Not a minute into the journey, his ears began to ring. His neck ached. His chest felt tight. He wanted to scream.
6.
They made it.
Ten feet from the bumper of the van – a gap in the long, straight hedgerow with the turning of a pebbled concrete driveway. Just out of view was the gate that fronted Brian’s property.
Kingsley threw open the door and practically fell out of the van, eager to be out of the stuffy vessel. He went to the passenger door and took the dog from Emma’s lap, holding on to it’s lead as he helped Emma out.
They shuffled up to the black wrought iron gate. Peered between the bars at the broad, modern two-storey red-brick – white-columned porch with rustic double doors, eight windows to the front, every curtain drawn. Behind the white poplar trees lining the driveway, they could see a vehicle parked in front of the wide garage. A silver family SUV.
On the left gate post was a metal pad with a buzzer and speaker on it. Emma pressed the buzzer, heard an electronic chime, waited… Fifteen seconds passed and there was no answer. She pressed it again, stared at the pale ivy spiralling up the brick posts and strangling the granite finials.
“Hello? Who’s there?” came the voice of a well-spoken man who sounded somewhere in his fifties. Kingsley was pretty sure it was Dave’s uncle, but it was hard to tell when hearing it over the tinny speaker.
“Brian,” Emma spoke into the pad. “That’s you, isn’t it? Is Leena there? It’s her sister, Emma.”
No answer.
“Hello?”
Kingsley started to worry that it wasn’t Brian at all – that it was someone who’d broken into the house and that Brian, Leena, Dave and the kids were all dead – when a different voice came through the speaker.
“Emma? Is it actually you?”
“Yes, Leena – I’m here! Come outside!”
The front door flipped open and Leena ran down the driveway, blonde hair streaming behind her. She fumbled with the bolt and tugged the gate open, then she was in Emma’s arms and they were both crying, breathless with emotion.
“I was so worried about you,” Leena choked. After a minute she held her sister at arm’s length and looked her up and down, noting the bruises, the stiff leg. “What happened to you?”
“It’s a long story.”
Leena nodded, glanced at Kingsley and the dog. He could see the question in her wet eyes – Why are you here?
Emma said, “Kingsley’s friend Eric is with us. He’s in the van, but he’s in a bad state.”
More questions in Leena’s eyes as they flitted back and forth between her sister and Kingsley. “Okay,” she said. “Bring your van in so I can lock the gate. You can tell me everything over dinner.”
Kingsley steered the van into the driveway and parked up behind the SUV, then he helped Eric out. The four of them walked toward the front door where two other men were waiting on the porch, having emerged from the house shortly after Leena; Brian, a thin-faced man with glasses and a greying mullet. Dave at his shoulder, his short stocky figure accentuated next to Brian’s gaunt frame.
Brian didn’t say a word as they filed in before him. His face was unreadable, just as it had been the first time Kingsley had met him here at Dave’s thirtieth birthday party. The man was a true stoic.
The kids, Jacob and Sydney, slunk back into a room off the hallway as they entered, visibly unnerved by the beaten look of the newcomers, though they must have recognised Kingsley and Emma; it was to be expected from a five- and seven-year-old he supposed, especially considering their parents had probably been shielding them from most of the horrors outside.
Nevertheless, it was great to see the kids.
In the living room, Emma sank into a plush armchair and Eric lay down on one of the two long sofas, their eyes adjusting to the gloom inside with all the curtains closed.
“Let’s have a look at that leg then,” Leena said, switching on a lamp on a nearby table and propping up the footrest on Emma’s chair. She winced as her sister rolled back her trouser leg and prodded the tender flesh which had swelled up quite a bit.
“We’ll get you an ice pack to ease the swelling. And I’m sure with a sprain you’re supposed to wrap a bandage around it to keep it supported.”
“Worry about me after,” Emma said with a nod toward Eric, who had passed out on the sofa. “He’s worse off than I am right now.”
“What happened?” Leena asked.
Kingsley explained how Eric had been stabbed while trying to save Sammy’s life and gave a brief rundown of the events leading up to that moment, everything that had happened since discovering the car wreck near their campsite two days ago – days that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, normality a fleeting memory.
Then Emma told her part of the story, how she’d injured her knee while trying to outrun the snappers, how she had crossed paths with Mark’s group and ended up in that house with Kingsley. It was the first time he’d heard any of it; it was crazy to think that, had he not bumped into Terry, he never would have found Emma. As much as he hated to blame things on luck – to buy into the idea that pure chance could dictate so much of your life – some things just were undeniably a matter of probability. And maybe – just maybe – they had been very fucking lucky to find each other.
*
They made ice packs for Emma and Kingsley and bandaged Emma’s knee. Then Brian showed the three of them to a clean, spacious guest bedroom where they co
uld put their bags down and Eric could get some sleep in an actual bed.
That was when Kingsley realised just how tired he was. His eyes wanted to shut almost more than his stomach wanted food. But dinner was close to ready, so he went back downstairs to join the others at the dining table.
His sense of smell was almost completely gone, along with his ability to breathe through his nose, but he could still taste how rich the beef and red wine stew was.
He was so absorbed in the tastes dancing around on his tongue that he didn’t pay much attention to the conversation Leena and Emma were having next to him. All he heard was the end of it, Leena telling her sister, “You’re home now.” He looked over and saw them hugging. But when he caught Emma’s eye, what he saw on her face was the shadow of uncertainty and fear, not the relief and happiness of homecoming.
Having lived with her for over a year and having got to know her very well, Kingsley knew right away what it was.
Home was the one place where Emma allowed herself to feel safe, but with that safe space came the anxiety associated with the possibility of losing it. The knowledge that at any moment that safety could be pulled out from under her feet.
It had already happened once.
7.
On the second day of them staying at the house, Eric’s stab wound began to look infected, the skin around it turning puffy and red with pus leaking from the wound itself. He had hardly left the bed at all since arriving, Kingsley bringing food up to the room for him. And now he also had a fever.
Brian had some spare co-amoxiclav prescription antibiotics from a harsh bout of pneumonia last winter, so he gave them to Eric; the leaflet inside the box said they could be used to treat skin and soft tissue infections. But his wound had been clogged with dirt before Kingsley had cleaned it out, which meant a lot of bacteria had gotten in there. They weren’t sure if the co-amoxiclav would suffice.
They could only hope.
*
It was quiet here. They saw quite a few snappers, but they were all lone ones or only in pairs, never in groups large enough to pose a threat. The curtains were kept shut and the lights switched off as much as possible, but as the house was set quite far back from the road, the survivors didn’t need to worry too much about noise.
Most of the snappers ambled up to the gate and seemed to inspect the driveway and the hedges – some of them grabbing and pushing against the iron bars of the gate as if they knew there were survivors beyond it – before meandering back to the road.
The ones that stayed at the gate for several minutes, usually because they had sensed activity in the grounds of the house, were safely dispatched with a knife between the bars. The bodies were then moved to a ditch not far down the road so they wouldn't fester in the driveway.
Occasionally the survivors would hear the faint rustle of a snapper moving through the grass on the other side of the hedges that surrounded the property.
Kingsley had taken to walking laps of the circumference of the property along the inside of the hedges; Brian had near enough an acre of land and it gave Kingsley the chance to stretch his legs and get some fresh air.
It was during one of these walks on a calm, pink-skied evening that, as he was coming along the back hedge near the empty stables, Kingsley heard a startling splash and spun to face the rear of the house where he saw that Archie had just jumped into the pool. The dog paddled to the middle of the pool and then came back to the edge and hopped out of the water with something in his mouth.
Hearing Emma swear in frustration from beside the pool, he realised what had happened; she’d been playing fetch with the dog and had accidentally lobbed the stick she was using into the pool.
Emma knew that she would now have to dry him off with a towel before he went back into the house, and she was probably also wondering how long it had been since the pool had last been cleaned.
Archie trotted up to Emma and dropped the stick at her feet.
She didn’t pick it up though. Instead she moved away from him as quick as her sprained knee would allow – too slow to avoid the catapult of water droplets as Archie jiggled himself dry.
“Shit. Bollocks – oh for god’s—” Emma began. But then she burst out laughing.
It was a pleasant sound. One that Kingsley hadn’t heard in months. One that he’d missed, a lot.
He only realised that he had chuckled out loud himself when Emma went quiet and turned around to look at him. Suddenly he felt awkward.
Kingsley had always found her laugh contagious – loud and somewhat maniacal, the complete opposite of how you would expect it to sound; his own laughter just now had been more a response to hers than a reaction to the comical sight of the dog flinging water all over her. And when Emma looked at him he felt like she saw right through him. That she knew he was enjoying the sound of her laugh. That she knew her smile still flooded his chest with warmth.
That she knew he wasn’t over her yet.
He could have pretended that the reason he’d come back to Colchester to look for her was that he still thought of her as a friend, and he had been worried about her, knowing she lived alone. But he doubted anyone would have believed it.
Kingsley and Emma both knew there was no chance of them ever getting back together. They just weren’t compatible. Yet here he was, sleeping under the same roof as her. Even though the pain of their breakup had dissipated and they had put their differences aside and recognised that they were both now just survivors in a messed up world, he couldn’t help feeling like an intruder sometimes. Especially when he was surrounded by Emma’s sister and her extended family. A family he was no longer a part of.
After a pause of awkward staring, Emma just smiled, looked at the ground and shook her head. Then she limped back to the house with Archie padding behind her.
*
After five days, Eric didn’t seem to be getting any better. He was bedridden, sleeping through most of the day, only waking long enough to eat, drink and use the toilet. He was slow, untalkative and weak, constantly tossing and turning in bed, plagued by fever dreams. The wound on his belly hadn’t improved either.
If the co-amoxiclav was working, surely there would be some visible improvement to Eric’s condition by now? Or would there be?
Kingsley had considered going on Brian’s computer and searching for the answer on Google.
The national grids power supply to the area had faltered the day after their arrival at the house, plunging Colchester into darkness, but Brian had solar panels generating conservative amounts of electricity for him. And knowing it could help Eric, he would be okay with Kingsley using the computer.
However, Dave put the idea to rest when he told him that he’d already tried loading up Google a few days ago and had been met with an error page; he explained that this was because every web page on the internet was made up of information stored on a physical server, and as no workers were maintaining those servers anymore they were shutting down.
This hadn’t come as a surprise to Dave who had been a web developer before the apocalypse and knew his shit when it came to anything IT-related.
So instead Kingsley found himself browsing the selection of non-fiction titles on the bookshelves in Brian’s study, looking for medical textbooks or anything that might have information in it that could help.
Meanwhile, Dave was fiddling with an old radio on the desk.
Not having noticed it there before, Kingsley asked, “Where’d you get that?”
“Oh, it’s my dad’s old shortwave receiver.” Dave perked up at the question, and Kingsley wondered whether he would regret asking; the man could go on and on about the most mundane things without realising he was boring you. When he got onto a subject that interested him, there seemed to be no end to the information he had stored in his brain about said subject. And it was hard to get him to stop talking when Leena wasn’t there to bluntly let him know that no one wanted to hear it.
“It can pick up signals across continents,”
Dave went on, the speakers fizzling with static as he twisted a knob. “When I was a boy, dad used to love listening to broadcasts from different countries, even ones in languages he couldn’t understand. I think it was his way of escaping, closing his eyes and pretending he was somewhere else, far away across the ocean, just tuning in to the radio.
“Mum left it in my possession after he died, in a box along with a few other items of his which I grabbed before we left our home. It holds a lot of sentimental value to me. But I also thought it might be useful at some point to have a radio receiver. If, say, the military was to set up a safe zone or an extraction point for survivors and broadcast the location over the radio. Something like that. I only remembered I’d brought the thing with me when I was telling you about the web servers earlier.”
“Is that what you’re doing with it?” Kingsley said. “Listening for the military?”
“Not just the military. I’m listening for anything. There could be survivors anywhere in the world with important information about the virus. There might even be a place the virus hasn’t reached where we could go.” Dave shrugged.
He was silent as he turned a dial to adjust the frequency and listened for something breaking the static. That was another thing that could get him to shut up – giving him something else to concentrate on.
There was nothing useful on the bookshelves. It was full of all the philosophy textbooks that Brian used in his lectures at the university where he taught. So Kingsley started to walk out of the study.
But a sudden barrage of noise from the radio speakers stopped him in his tracks.
A voice. Speaking in a foreign language. He couldn’t even tell what language it was because of how hysterical the person speaking sounded. Maybe French, he thought, and it was definitely a female voice. She was almost babbling, and she kept repeating herself. Though he didn’t understand the words, Kingsley guessed it was a cry for help. Beneath that was the sound of something pounding fitfully against a wall or a door.
Thrive | Season 1 | Episodes 1-5 Page 19
