Contamination

by Ryan Casey

  That sour smell to the air.

  Flies buzzing around him.

  Noah tasted vomit. He backed up a little. “We should...”

  Then he realised something.

  This man.

  He thought at first he was a virus victim. He had to be.

  But then he saw the bullet hole at the front of his skull.

  He stood there, totally frozen, when he heard footsteps from the storeroom.

  He turned to Jasmine. Rushed down the aisle. “There’s someone here.”

  Jasmine frowned. “What—”

  “There’s someone here. We need to get out of here. Now.”

  She stared at him, bemused for a few seconds.

  Went to speak.

  And then they heard the voices, and her face dropped.

  “Swear I heard summat,” one man said. “Really need to get those doors boarded up.”

  Noah crouched and walked as quietly as he could down the aisle, Jasmine by his side. He focused on the doors. Heart pounding. That man’s voice getting louder, closer. His footsteps closing in.

  He had to keep going.

  They had to get out of here.

  They reached the end of the aisle. So close to escape. So close to safety.

  When Noah heard something clatter to his side.

  A pan falling from the shelf.

  He stood still.

  Froze.

  No more footsteps.

  No more voices.

  And then he heard movement right at the shelf at the side of him.

  He looked around and saw a man peering through.

  “Hello.”

  A blast. A blast so sudden, he dropped his rucksack. Grabbed Jasmine’s hand, yanked her out of the aisle, towards that door.

  And as he ran, more blasts cracked out. Shouting.

  No other goal now.

  Just getting out of here.

  Just—

  Jasmine yanked back.

  The rucksack.

  Caught around the shelf at the end of that aisle.

  “We can’t leave it,” Jasmine said. “We can’t...”

  Noah saw the rucksack caught around the shelf.

  And then he heard the footsteps closing in.

  “We have to,” he said.

  And then he yanked Jasmine away and ran towards the doors, and outside that store.

  He held her hand and ran out into the car park. Across the street. Up that hill and into the trees.

  He kept on running as those footsteps chased them.

  As those blasts cracked behind them.

  He kept on going until he was sure they were in the clear, and then he dropped to his knees.

  He sat there. Panting. Jasmine opposite him. Sweat trickling down her face.

  And then she looked right up into his eyes and said the words that were echoing through his own skull.

  “We failed,” she said. “We failed again.”

  Chapter Three

  Jasmine stared at the contents of the cupboard, and her stomach sank.

  It was late. The only light came from the flickering candle in the corner of the room. They were running out of candles at this point, too. Something Kelly found hard to believe, especially with how much of a “candle enthusiast” she claimed to be.

  But it stood to reason. They were running out of every-fucking-thing else. Candles were the least of their concerns.

  When they got here a week ago, the cupboards were full. Pot Noodles. Tuna. Beans. Crackers. Tins of chunky chicken and bags of rice. Enough to get by. Seemingly plenty to carry them through until some kind of help came their way.

  But the days rolled on. Feeding four people and a dog was a more resource-intensive task than one would imagine. Two small meals a day became one. And now they were halving their meals.

  She closed the cupboard door. Even though her stomach rumbled, she knew if she got to sleep soon, she could ignore the hunger. She was never hungry in the mornings anyway, so that would buy her an extra few hours tomorrow, at least.

  She turned around and saw Barney staring up at her. Tilting his head. Wagging his tail. An expectant look to his face.

  She sighed. Crouched down, ruffled his fur. “I’m sorry, lad. Not yet.”

  She walked past him and headed back into the lounge.

  Kelly sat on the corner of her long, white leather sofa. Eddie lay on the floor, tucking into a pack of cheese puffs, the crumbs falling all over his immense belly; a belly that didn’t seem to be reducing at all even despite all this hunger.

  On the chair, on his own, Noah.

  He was quiet. Staring into space. He still hadn’t got over the incident at the supermarket earlier. Clearly playing on his mind.

  She wanted to tell him to get the fuck over it. It was life. The nature of this messed up world they lived in.

  But at the same time, she was pissed with him.

  They could’ve held on to those rucksacks.

  There was no reason why they had to drop those supplies. No reason why they had to lose what they’d worked so hard to gather.

  She caught him looking up at her, and looked away right away, as ruthless as she knew it was.

  She sat down beside Kelly. Barney jumped up, sat beside the two of them.

  The sound of Eddie crunching.

  The lounge so quiet, but for the wind outside, and the rustle of a breeze.

  A conversation that needed to be had, hanging in the air, like a bad smell.

  “We’ve tried all the stores close by, then,” Kelly said, breaking the silence. “And we’ve had no luck at any of them.”

  A knotting in Jasmine’s stomach. An acknowledgement of the reality, never nice to hear. “We were close. There’s a chance we can still take the supplies from that place. We—”

  “You said they were armed,” Kelly said.

  Jasmine nodded. “They were.”

  “Then forgive me for being a health-and-safety freak, but I’d say charging into a store run by armed people is definitely a no-no.”

  “Then what else are we supposed to do?” Jasmine asked. “Just sit back? Wait until half meals become quarter meals, and then quarter meals become no meals at all?”

  “We can always just eat cheese puffs—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Eddie,” Jasmine said.

  Eddie raised his eyebrows. Looked like he was going to argue for a moment and then closed his mouth and sighed. “I’m just trying to lighten things up. Always so fucking down in this place.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said. “I mean, if we really wanted a clown, I’m sure there’s plenty of freaks with makeup willing to dance for food out there in the world right now.”

  Eddie sighed, turned away. Jasmine felt a bit guilty for snapping at him like that. They were lucky they had him around at all. They were convinced he was dead. And then he showed up. Uninfected. Recovered. A miracle in itself.

  But he was just so immature. Ever since they’d got here, he didn’t really seem to take the sheer magnitude of the situation as seriously as was required. Sure, everyone had their ways. Everyone had their coping mechanisms. But Eddie’s coping mechanisms had a way of grating on everyone else.

  “The fact is... we can’t just hang around here and wait for someone to bail us out anymore,” Jasmine said. “We’ve seen what it’s like out there. The streets are already turning to shit. Supplies are running low. And we’ve seen no evidence at all that any government or army or police or whatever are actually helping people. We’re on our own. And if we don’t start standing on our own two feet... we’re going to die in here.”

  Silence fell over the room. Even Eddie looked alarmed.

  She looked around at Noah. Saw him staring into space.

  “Nothing to say, Noah?”

  Noah looked up. Blushed a little. “What?”

  “We’re having a serious discussion here, and all you’ve done is sat there and stared into space. Are you actually going to join us in this room, or are you going to be absen
t for another important conversation about our future?”

  Noah’s jaw dropped a little. “I think you’re being a bit harsh.”

  “And I don’t think you’re being harsh enough.”

  “Is this about the supermarket? Because if we hadn’t run away, we’d have died. We wouldn’t even be here.”

  “It’s not about—”

  “Will you two just shut the hell up, seriously?” Kelly shouted.

  Her voice cut through the chaos like a much-needed slap to the face.

  “The truth is, Noah, you’re a fucking wimp whose indecisiveness is going to be the death of us. And Jasmine, you’re a ruthless bitch who’s never changed. The pair of you are going to drag us all under.”

  “Nice of you to keep me out of this,” Eddie muttered.

  “That’s because you’re so irrelevant you don’t even bear mentioning. Don’t take it as a compliment, mate.”

  Eddie’s face dropped.

  Kelly stood up. “Look. We only have one choice here. We stay here, and we wait to die. Or we get out there. We start looking for supplies. If we don’t find supplies... we have to find somewhere that does. Even if it means leaving this place, which pains me to consider. But it’s about time we stepped up and faced reality, here. If we don’t stop fighting with ourselves, we’re going to die. If we don’t start living in the real world, we’re going to die. I’ve already survived this damned virus once. So too has Eddie. We don’t know what that means. We don’t know whether it means we can get it again, or whatever. But it won’t be the virus that kills us if we wait here and pretend everything is okay.”

  She looked around at Jasmine. Jasmine looked back at her. That resentment over what she’d done to Kelly, firing her best friend, still bubbling under the surface.

  “So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to sit back and mope? Or are we going to step up?”

  Jasmine swallowed a lump in her throat.

  She looked at Eddie, searching the bottom of that crisp packet for any scraps, looking disappointed.

  Then at Barney, tilting his head, whining to be fed.

  Then she looked at Noah.

  He stared back at her. Like he was afraid of her.

  Or afraid of losing her.

  And she felt it too.

  She took a deep breath.

  “I don’t see we have any other choice,” Jasmine said. “We go out there. We find supplies. Or we find a new home. We find something. Or we die.”

  Chapter Four

  Bruce Wright held on to his daughter’s hand and stared at the terraced house up ahead.

  It was late. He always waited until late at night before he raided anywhere. Sure, there was a chance someone was on night watch. But there was less chance of running into someone at this time. More chance they were asleep. A better opportunity to gather supplies for himself.

  And for Sadia.

  He kept on looking at that terraced house in the distance. He’d been watching it all day. It seemed like a couple lived there. An old couple. They seemed like good people. Decent people.

  But Bruce knew nobody could be trusted.

  He knew he had to keep his guard up with everyone.

  All because of what had happened with Samantha.

  He thought about his wife, and he felt his eyes stinging with tears. It was still so fresh, still so raw. Four days ago, she was by his side, surviving this awful changed world together with him. And then he’d woken up one morning and found her dead beside him. Bleeding from her nostrils. Lips chapped and blue. Crying crimson tears.

  And he’d tasted blood in his throat soon after, too. He’d lay there by her side, held her, and begged the virus to take him too. He thought he’d got his wish when his nose started bleeding. Turned out it was just a false alarm. He hadn’t fallen sick. Hadn’t gone psychotic. In a weird way, he felt more alive than he’d ever felt.

  And that was the cruelest joke of all. He just wanted to be with his wife.

  But then there was Sadia.

  He looked into his daughter’s glowing green eyes, and he felt so guilty he’d ever had any thoughts of abandoning her. He saw the way she looked back at him, so trusting, so fearful, and he wanted to promise her everything was going to be okay. That Daddy was going to do everything he could to protect her. To look out for her. To make sure they both made it through this world.

  But he couldn’t make promises like that.

  They were too painful.

  And it wasn’t something he could promise. Nobody could make promises like that in a society that had totally spiralled out of control.

  “You’re going to wait here, okay? You’re going to hide in this bush and wait for me to come back outside. When I do, the second I tell you to run, you run. Okay?”

  Her eyes darted around his face, searching for some kind of answer. “I don’t want to stay out here.”

  “You’ll be okay, Sadia. You’re strong. But Daddy really has to do this right now, okay?”

  “I want to come in there with you. I don’t want to stay out in the rain and the wind.”

  “Sadia,” Bruce said, planting his hands on either shoulder. “I know. I get it. And I’m sorry this is how it has to be. But Daddy’s going to get some food for both of us. Some supplies for both of us. And it’s all going to be worth it in the end, okay? It’s all going to be worth it in the end.”

  She shook her head. Cried, as the rain fell from above.

  And then reluctantly, she nodded. She walked over to that small bush, and she looked at with fear in her poor, wide, ten-year-old eyes.

  “You just have to wait in there,” he said. “And Daddy will be out in no time. I promise. Okay?”

  “Pinkie promise?”

  Bruce smiled. “Pinkie promise.”

  He hugged his daughter. Held her like it was the last time he’d ever get the chance.

  And then he stepped away without looking at her, so she couldn’t see the tears in his eyes, and he turned towards that end terraced house and walked towards it.

  Knife in hand.

  Ready to attack, if he had to.

  Ready to do whatever he had to do.

  Bruce walked around the side of the house. He checked under the flower pot, found the key straight away. He’d learned that back in the old days, the days before he got his life straight, the days of burgling. People were stupid. They assumed nobody else in the damned world kept spare keys underneath plant pots at the door, or under the doormat. They assumed they were the only fucking people in the world who were genius enough to go down that route.

  When he saw the spare key, he felt guilty right away. It was a sign of naive people. Usually good, honest people.

  But people who had supplies that he needed. For his daughter.

  He opened the door and crept inside the kitchen. Kept his footing as light as he could. He looked around the kitchen for as many supplies as he could. Canned food. Peanut butter. All the kinds of high energy foods that would get him far.

  And then he grabbed a few bottles of water.

  But it wasn’t these supplies that he was really here for.

  His daughter was diabetic. She needed insulin to survive. Finding insulin in a world like this was an almost impossible task. Because supplies were limited. And they were dwindling by the day.

  And Bruce knew the truth. He understood the reality. One day, if this virus situation wasn’t resolved, insulin supplies were going to run out entirely. Which meant his daughter would get sick, and then she would die.

  And there was nothing he could do about that.

  There was absolutely nothing he could do to stop his daughter slipping away from him, just like Samantha had days earlier.

  So he had to do everything he could to make sure that day didn’t arrive any time soon.

  He had to do everything he could to keep her alive.

  He’d seen the list of addresses in the pharmaceutical delivery van a couple of days ago. Addresses where insulin deliveries we
re being made. He’d crossed one off already. This was his second. A chance to gather a large stash.

  He searched the kitchen. Then he crept through the hallway. Tried not to look at the family photographs covering the walls. Tried not to look at the ornaments, or smell that faint hint of humanity in the air. He just told himself this was something he had to do for his daughter. He couldn’t allow himself to think of the consequences of what he was doing on other people. He was guilty enough as it was.

  He went into the lounge when he saw the box of insulin right beside a leather chair in the corner of the room.

  His heart fluttered. He rushed across the room. Grabbed that box. He couldn’t think of the consequences anymore. Couldn’t think of the ramifications.

  He just saw the prize, and he knew he what he had to do.

  When he grabbed it, he heard footsteps behind him.

  His heart raced.

  He turned around. Slowly.

  A man stood there. An old guy wearing grey pyjamas. Skinny. Wide-eyed.

  Looking at that insulin in Bruce’s hands.

  “You’ve got something of my wife’s,” he said, his voice a bit shaky. “Why don’t you put it down, and we can figure something out here?”

  Bruce wanted to come to some kind of agreement. He wanted to lower that box of insulin. He wanted to take just half of it for his daughter, maybe. He wanted to do the right thing.

  But then that rival force kicked in.

  That rival urge.

  That thought of losing his daughter.

  And as much as he knew it was the wrong thing, he didn’t see this old man as an old man anymore.

  He saw him as an obstacle.

  An obstacle standing in his way of saving his daughter’s life.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, keeping as calm and composed as he could. “But this doesn’t belong to you anymore.”

  He walked across the room. Went to barge past the old guy.

  But the old guy stood in his way.

  He looked right into his eyes.

  Stared at him, closely. Tearful. Eyes bloodshot.

  “Please,” he said, his voice shaky, begging. “Don’t do this to her. Give her a few more days. A few more weeks. Please.”

  And Bruce felt that guilt.