by Brady, Eoin
Rebecca looked at him with horror, but she could not object.
Fin’s stomach ached as he struggled to lift his part of Dara.
“Let me take a look at that.”
“Not until this job’s done.”
Once they dragged the body to the door, they left it to search for a wheelbarrow. There was one full of sods of turf behind the house. The tyre was partially deflated, but it was better than carrying him across the sucking sand. Fin was sweating by the time they hoisted Dara into the barrow. Each breath brought less nourishment than the last, but he was determined to keep moving. If he stopped long enough to let what he was doing sink in, he would not be able to go through with it.
They managed to get onto the hard-packed, earthen road that led down to the pier. Fin found great distraction in weaving the barrow around potholes. The weight strained his shoulders, already sore from the paddle. Together, they filled reusable shopping bags they found beneath the sink with smooth shore stones. With two bike locks and a length of rope, they weighed down the body.
The water was clear enough that it was hard to judge the depth. Looking over the edge of the old pier, Fin saw something obscured by wind ripples. When there came a break in the breeze, he stumbled away from the edge. “Zombies in the water.”
Rebecca dropped her bag and ran towards him, knife at the ready. Her hand lowered after a few seconds watching the bodies. She took a stone out of the bag and dropped it with a loud plop, it struck one of the corpses and sank in front of it. “They’re tied down, Fin. No wonder we couldn’t find any decent rope, Dara already used it on them. It’s a man and woman with the same colour hair as the people in the photos.”
Fin did not look again, he did not need to. The image played vividly in his imagination. They finished preparing the body, checked that the bags were secure and pushed Dara into the water. Fin saw no justice in what they had done. He just felt sick that he had thought to do the exact same thing as Dara.
“Let’s fix you up now,” Rebecca said.
Fin agreed only because it was something to do. There was a first aid kit in the cupboard beneath the stairs. There were blue plasters as well as pink ones with drawings of rabbits. Rebecca poured antiseptic ointment over the wound and rubbed the dried blood away.
“I don’t know if it needs stitches,” she said, scrutinising the damage. “It does not seem all that bad. I mean the knife was small enough and the hot water bottle took most of it. This is good, I don’t think he caused serious harm, just cut into the fat.”
She lathered on half a tub of antibacterial cream before applying the gauze and glued it all down with plasters.
“If we were in the hotel right now, you can bet there wouldn’t be a drop of the fine whiskey left,” he said.
Rebecca threw him a looted tee-shirt from the laundry basket. “It’s probably a good thing we’re no longer there. We can’t drink our way through this.”
“Feels like the only ones that will see this through are those that dig in and drink up. We’ll have to stay here tonight,” Fin said. “I might start cleaning.”
They found a CD player and put Christmas music on as they mopped up Dara’s blood and cleaned the broken plates and uneaten breakfast from the floor. The scent of pine bleach masked the fading smell of cooked sausages and crispy rashers. The thought of food made him queasy. Rebecca poured a whole bottle of bleach over the bloodstain that had seeped between the tiles. When the kettle boiled, she spilled it over the blood. Fin mopped. In the utility room they discovered fresh, folded, bloodstained towels above the dryer.
Rebecca threw the kettle in the sink. Fin emptied the rusty water from the bucket and put the mop outside to dry.
“This seems wrong, cleaning a crime scene,” she said.
“He attacked us.”
“I meant what he did to the owners. Did he know them? Why’d he do it? It’ll be a crime that will never be solved. They’ll just join the ranks of ‘dead’ when this is over. How many similar cases do you think have happened and will continue to happen before this ends?”
“There’ll be plenty of work for those that come after.”
When there was nothing left for them to do inside the house, they went through the wardrobes and borrowed clothes. Sitting in the shelter of a dune outside they sent the drone up. Rebecca wrapped a blanket around them. He could imagine staying here with her and George. Making a home, living a lie until it was safe to return to the truth, but Dara had tainted island life. They were exposed, people could land anywhere and they would not know they had guests until they knocked on the front door. The noise of the drone would have made it foolish to use on the mainland. How small the island looked from a few feet in the air. Fin pointed the camera towards the other islands and sent the drone over them.
Some ships were anchored in sheltered bays. Others were forced aground and washed onto rocks. One trawler was completely submerged. Most vessels were small engine ribs and fishing boats. Two islands away from them, there were fire pits, tents and infected.
After a while it was clear that there was no one left alive to dispute ownership over boats. A few trawlers had lights on in cabins. There was small hope that survivors were onboard, waiting for things to clear. Not many zombies moved quickly on the islands, the weepers had died off a while ago. Fin brought the drone home and put it back into the waterproof bag. Even with the sun well up, his breath was still visible in front of him. The footage was saved on his new phone. “What now?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Want to watch a movie?”
She helped Fin to his feet. “The view from out here is beautiful,” he said. The mountain dominated the land. He thought of taking pictures and sending them to his family, to let them know where he was, but then he thought of talking to them. How could he keep what he had just done a secret? Was he not changed in some irrevocable way? I just killed a man.Why don’t I feel like I have? “I want to try and get in contact with whoever is living on Croagh Patrick. Let them know about the camp. What if they’re all alone?”
“Why? Look what happened when we tried the island,” Rebecca said. “There are too many people that need help. We have to think about ourselves.”
“We know the islands aren’t safe. If one infected person reached Clare Island, then that’s a graveyard too.”
“Anybody unstable enough to climb that mountain every day is somebody I want to avoid. We promised we wouldn’t do anything unnecessary.”
“How is it unnecessary? What if…”” His mind raced as he sought out a valid excuse. “What if we could live up there too?” He heard his voice and knew it sounded overexcited.
“I’m not going with you. I have to stay here in case that child comes back. Maybe I could charge the drone up and send a letter out to those trawlers. I’m so close to home.”
They argued until it was too cold to stay outside. Once they were in the house, they locked the door and barricaded it. Neither wanted to put the animated movie off in favour of the news. Fin lost hope long ago that while he was away from the screen a cure was discovered and order was restored. Rebecca went through the DVD collection and took out a few for Fin to choose from.
The pantry was fully stocked. George had made the point that they should live off the supplies they scavenged before using their own. They ignored the healthy stuff and opened a box of sweets, hidden on the top shelf. There was a little post-it note stuck to the top that read ‘Not to be opened until Christmas’. It came off easily. Rebecca found the remote and wrapped herself in blankets. Despite the heating being on, she still shivered.
“I just want to see if there’s anything good on the news,” she said.
Fin lay down on the other half of the couch. “In my house, sweets wouldn’t last a day,” he said through a mouthful of jellies. “The healthiest out of the lot of us is probably the sister, she was never quick enough to get any.”
They did not recognise the newscaster. Images flashed across the screen of different cities in Irelan
d, people crying with their hands out, looking more like an advert for a charity collecting money to help a third world country.
“Operation Piper is being hailed as a success and the first step on the road to recovery.”
That caught Fin’s attention. Video showed military helicopters flying slow and low over Galway. Part of the city burned. Smoke furled into vortexes beneath the rotors. The recently infected filled the streets, knocking the slower ones down and trampling them underfoot. They followed the helicopters.
Fin remembered his favourite restaurants there, overlooking the cobbled Shop Street, the cold pints and warm evenings in the Latin Quarter listening to music. “If they can burn a city…”
“Earlier attempts at luring the infected from the city failed.” They showed footage of a boat in the port blaring a horn. The zombies walked towards it and fell into the harbour, but there were too many of them. Fin just saw human lemmings.
It showed footage from all over the country; a military ship sounded sirens at sea and the camera caught the dead stumbling off cliffs.
“That’s a great tourism clip,” Fin said. “Zombies tumbling off the Cliffs of Moher.”
Dublin was unrecognisable. Around the port were fortifications. Buildings had been collapsed to block off major roads. The only people visible were in hazmat suits. There was a shot of a line of massive ships pouring into the port. Aid from other countries. It gave Fin a little hope that this horror had run its course.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Irish people…”
“That’s how hope dies, with thoughts and prayers,” Rebecca said.
The president of the United States stood before a podium. “Countries around the globe have joined to fight the Irish Epidemic. We have sent a united front to combat the spread of this pestilence.” There were cheers from the crowd, but it sounded to Fin like a recorded sound clip of cheering. “May we succeed so that our future is assured. Let those that are born into this new world have mercy on us, for if not for our actions, there will be no future generations.”
“That sounded ominous,” Fin said. “He’s probably in a bunker somewhere.”
“Let’s watch a film now.” Rebecca picked the closest one to her and put it on.
They finished off the box of sweets before they put the second movie on. Fin found it difficult to leave the comfort of the couch, and the only times he did was when Rebecca asked for something or his full bladder demanded it.
“Do you think I’ll be put in prison for it?” he asked when he came back from the bathroom.
“No, Fin, I don’t think that’s likely. Will you put another film on?”
Light outside the house withered while they made their way through the library of movies.
29
Pilgrimage
The only alcohol they came across in the house was a sweet summer cider. They put it in the fridge for a few hours and took it out to watch the sunset. “What day is it? It’s the new year, right?” Fin asked.
“I don’t care.”
Fin considered lighting a fire, but the prospect of drawing the attention of dead eyes on other islands was not worth the added warmth. He found a hot water bottle in the parents’ bedroom. He filled it and wore it like armour and topped Rebecca’s one up.
When the sun was only a purple hue on the horizon, the lamp of the climber on Croagh Patrick came on a little under halfway up. Fin held his finger over the speck of light for a few seconds to see if the climber was making any progress. He was, but only in tiny increments.
Stars filled the sky, ribbons of them unfurled in unimaginable expanses of space. “A lot of those stars are gone,” Fin said. “They’re so far away that the light we see could be coming from a long dead star.”
“Fin, shush. I don’t want to think of dead and dying things, just enjoy them,” Rebecca said.
“People are scared to turn on the lights,” Fin pointed to the lantern on the mountain. “It feels like us and whoever is living up there are the last people left in the world.”
“So you’re still set on going over?” Rebecca asked.
“I’d like to try.”
“You’re a fool.” She left him alone and returned to the house. Fin downed the rest of his bottle and flung it as far as he could into the bay. He did not know Rebecca long. At the hotel he only ever saw her in passing really. He was more comfortable with the late night bar staff because the managers were never around and they could loosen their ties a bit. In a short time, circumstances brought them closer. She had helped him try to drown the weeper on the Greenway and she saved him from Dara. Though her words were said in anger and he knew that to be fleeting, it still hurt to think she thought him a fool. Then it dawned on him. I might be all she has left of the old world. Her and George might be all that I have. I’d not be happy about her heading off with no real need. Fin watched until the lantern reached the top of the mountain and went out. An arduous hike, but not even the sound of weepers would make it up there.
He locked the door behind himself and put their barricade back in place. Rebecca lay on the couch, nearly completely covered in blankets. Silent tears ran down her cheek into the cushions.
“What do you fancy watching now?” Fin asked.
“You choose.”
He sat down beside her. “Me going isn’t about atonement for what happened today, that’s not necessary. I just need to do something. I think if I can keep my mind busy, I’ll still have it when this ends.”
“I wish you’d stay.” Her breathing was hard; she wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder.
Fin held her close, one hand rubbing her back, the other stroking her hair the way his mother did when he was sick as a child. “We’ll be okay.” I hope she still has family left. After all that has happened, we're family. The three of us will see this through together. He rested his head on top of hers. “Things will get better.”
“I don’t need you to lie to me.”
They had brought their own toothbrushes but used the household’s toothpaste and mouthwash, the latter so strong it made Fin’s eyes water. The television was just company now. They did not care about the stories and it made them wonder if those wealthy actors were squirreled away in bunkers, hiding from this plague. He told her that he would stay up and keep watch and promised to wake her for her turn. He had no intention of doing that, he would find no peace here. While Rebecca snored softly on the couch, he crept over to the chair he sat at during breakfast, to question the spectre of Dara that haunted him.
Fin packed in the night. He left George’s drone behind, using the space for more water and food. Had there been drink in the house to distract him, he might have stayed. When he changed the bandages, his wound opened and started bleeding again. With fresh ointment and a clean cloth, he scrubbed the area before dressing it. No death seemed preferable, but going out because of an avoidable infection seemed an ignominious end in a zombie apocalypse.
In the twilight before dawn, he wandered the upstairs bedrooms to see if he could get a feel for the previous owners. It still felt like trespassing, even though he knew their fate. He found a Polaroid camera in Esme’s room. Her desk drawer was full of rolls of tape for hanging pictures up. There was hardly any wall space free of photos of friends, family and holidays. All her years of growth captured in mute memory. He had no idea who she really was when he left.
The unfamiliar stairs creaked, rousing Rebecca. “Fin, I trusted you to wake me. Did you sleep?” One look at his face was all the answer she needed.
He sat on the sofa and held Esme’s camera in front of them. “Photo?”
“Sure.”
They looked at the lens. Fin pressed the button and it hummed as a polaroid printed. They waited for the darkness to fade and their faces to show. Neither of them was smiling. “I think I’ll call this one ‘Shell-shock’.”
“I feel better having slept,” Rebecca said. “Do you want to lie down? I’ll keep watch.”
&n
bsp; Fin put the photo in his pocket. “I’ll sleep tonight. My mind is set, I want to try for the mountain. I’ll be okay,” he added.
Rebecca massaged her face with her hands. “You better go now then and not waste light.”
Rebecca did not watch him leave. A blustering wind meant only the scorched skin around the hot water bottle was warm. Rebecca slammed the door to the house before he reached his board. The water was more lively today. He stood in the shallows, acclimatising to the chill, watching white-capped waves rise beyond the shelter of the islands. Undeterred, he set off. Like clockwork, the mountain climber’s lamp turned on and it crawled down Croagh Patrick like a growing glacier.
The sight of it made Fin too hasty. Thinking he could be at the base of the mountain before the lantern wielder was, he put more energy into each paddle. Arms burning from the effort, he pushed on. The beaches of the islands he passed were lined with unmoving bodies; infected that had been lured by the song of the sea, only to be washed back up on shore. He dared not risk investigating the ships, not without George and his fireworks.
Overconfident in his limited experience from the previous day on the board, he lost his balance. A gust of wind unsettled him just as he struck a wave, tossing him into the bay. He experienced profound shock, gasping for air, inhaling water while the cold stunned him. He kept slipping from the surface. He was losing control of his breathing. In a matter of seconds, he became completely disoriented. His clothes and the backpack absorbed water, diminishing his mobility. The indifferent pull downwards filled him with terror, only worsening his situation. The straps of the lifevest were too loose. In his panic, he blindly struck the board and sent it out of reach.
Everything he needed was in the backpack, but he slipped the straps from his shoulders and let it sink into darkness without a care. He had a moment of vertigo, imagining how high he was hovering above the seabed. Relax or die. His numb hands shook, but he managed to pull the life vest tight and secure it. He lay on his back to wait out the cold water shock, remembering rudimentary lessons from the swimming pool. The waves around him rose and fell like a time lapse of mountain formation. He felt eons pass before he corralled his racing thoughts. Shouting for help would do nothing, the dark and impatient clouds above did not care, he was alone. If he did not act quickly, he would die, slipping from light into the dark, unfathomable bay.
