Contamination

by Ryan Casey

He looked down at that fallen man with wide, dazed eyes. Like he couldn’t actually believe what he’d just done.

  Then he looked over at Kelly. Walked over to her. “I, erm... I suppose I should offer you a hand. Or something.”

  Kelly blushed a little. Pulled herself to her feet. “No need.”

  “You sure?”

  “Really.”

  She stood there by Eddie’s side. She was still amazed at what’d just gone down. She regretted ever thinking about leaving him, abandoning him. Because he’d saved her. The useless bastard had actually saved her.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “You know,” Kelly said. “Don’t let it get to your head or anything. But that might’ve just been the best thing you’ve ever done in your life.”

  Eddie tilted his head to one side. Smiled a little. “I’ll take it, I guess?”

  Kelly looked down at her attacker’s twitching body. Blood pooling from his skull. That white coat smeared with blood. Legs shaking. Hard to tell whether he was dead or not.

  And then she looked back around at the wreckage of the truck. She didn’t know what’d happened here. She could only assume this guy had fallen sick and caused the accident. Then somewhere inside his infected mind, he’d managed to get to the back of the vehicle and open the doors.

  One final act of kindness.

  She looked into the darkness.

  Quiet now.

  Burning.

  A few people rushing along the road, dripping blood.

  But the bulk of people still trapped in there.

  Dying or dead already.

  “Seriously,” Kelly said. “I appreciate what you just did for me.”

  Eddie shrugged like it was nothing. “Sure you’d have done the same for me.”

  Kelly didn’t say a word.

  Eddie raised his eyebrows. “Yeah. Not a good time for an awkward silence.”

  “Nothing awkward about it,” Kelly said. “Can’t say I’d have done the same for you.”

  “Charming.”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  She looked at Eddie. Smirked. Just a little.

  And when he looked back at her, despite all her instincts telling her otherwise, despite everything in her logical sphere of sanity screaming at her that there was no fucking way she could possibly be feeling this way, she thought she felt butterflies in her stomach.

  And then she looked away, and let those weird fucking butterflies flutter away.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s head back home. Pretty sure Jasmine and Noah will be wondering where the fuck we’ve got to.”

  Eddie looked at the road ahead and sighed. “I know you’ll hate me for saying it, but I’m just disappointed we didn’t manage to find any cheese puffs along the way.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Noah watched the man with the baseball bat edge towards him and Jasmine.

  This bloke was tall. Unthinkably tall, actually. Had to be at least six-five. He was really skinny, with narrow cheekbones and a long, thin face. His arms were elongated, and his legs were the same. Reminded Noah of a guy he went to school with. Matt, he was called. Supposedly had some condition that affected his bone structure and heart. Noah and the others kids knew it was wrong to tease someone for their appearance, especially when they had a condition. But Matt got a real tough time of it.

  Until he died suddenly one day. Heart problems due to underlying medical conditions.

  The laughing stopped then when the severity and the reality of life reared its ugly head.

  Until the kids just moved on to the next victim to bully.

  The man walked towards Noah and Jasmine. Behind him, Noah saw the streets of Longridge. The abandoned cars. The stack of bodies. The crows swooping down and gnawing at whatever remains they could. They were so close to getting out of this place. So close to getting out of it and back on the road to Kelly’s, where they could focus on moving forward, on moving on.

  But it was just typical, wasn’t it? They always ran into some kind of trouble. If it wasn’t a bus slamming into him, it was a nutter with a baseball bat. If it wasn’t a bunch of troops in quarantine masks, it was a virus-riddled lunatic.

  “You gonna just stand there and gawk at me?” he said. “Or are you gonna answer my question? Where you guys from? And what are you doing here?”

  Noah looked at Jasmine, then back at this bloke. He didn’t owe him an explanation. His hackles and his protectiveness over Jasmine rose.

  But there was no point messing with a guy who towered over him like this. Nothing to be gained from being a dick.

  “We’re just passing through,” Noah said. “Heading back to our place. We don’t want any trouble.”

  The man smiled. His teeth were long, far longer than looked natural. They were bright white, too, but not in a healthy-looking way. Artificial. Hell, it was hard to put an age on this bloke at all. “Course you don’t want any trouble. Nobody ever does, right?”

  “We’re just heading home. If we wanted trouble, we’d have caused it.”

  “Your palms,” the man said.

  Noah frowned. “What?”

  “Your palms. Show me your palms.”

  Noah frowned. He didn’t know what the hell this guy was on about, whether it was some kind of cue to drop their rucksacks or knives or what. “Look, we don’t—”

  “Show me your palms right this second, or I’ll beat ten shades of shit out of the pair of you.”

  Noah’s heart raced. This creep wasn’t messing around.

  He lowered his knife. So too did Jasmine.

  And then he lifted his hands above his head. “There. Better?”

  The man studied them. Really studied them closely. Like he was trying to read them.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a fortune-teller or something,” Noah said. “You going to tell me I’m cursed and you need another fiver to exorcise the evil from my body?”

  The man sighed.

  Then he did something Noah didn’t expect.

  He lowered that baseball bat and nodded. “You look clear.”

  Noah frowned. “Clear?”

  “If you were infected, your hands. They’d be purple. One of the first signs in people with delayed outbreaks. At least from what we’ve noticed, anyway.”

  Noah looked down at his palms. They were pale. Anything but purple.

  “Where’d you figure that out?”

  The man turned around. His interest in them had dropped dramatically in lieu of this latest revelation. “You really asking that question?”

  “It’d help if we knew what we were looking out for—”

  “First, a bloke called Paul. Banging on about how his hands were tingling. How they’d gone this funny colour. A day later, he’s spewing blood. Then a kid. Harry. Same thing. Purple hands. No other symptoms. Not until it hit. And then…”

  The man looked away. His voice caught in his throat a little.

  “And then Jasper. My… my fella. I remember holding his hands when we went to bed. Feeling how cold they were. Looking at them. Seeing how purple they were. And… and knowing deep down what it was. What it meant. He died the next day. That was four days ago now. My hands… my hands haven’t changed colour yet.”

  For the first time since meeting this bloke, Noah felt sympathy for him. Because he was just scared, too. Just terrified of someone threatening his home. Or risking bringing the virus into his territory.

  And he had lost, too. He was hurting.

  He got it.

  “What’re your names?” the bloke said.

  It caught Noah by surprise. He wasn’t expecting that question of all questions.

  He looked at Jasmine. Uncertain. She looked back at him, similarly reluctant.

  “Fuck it,” the bloke said. “Mine’s Steve. Apologies for the dramatics. But if you want to crash here a while, get some food in your belly, it’s pretty virus free. As far as we can tell, anyway.”

  Initially, Noah felt that reluctance r
ight in the pit of his gut. They had to get back to Kelly’s. They had to start surviving again, just as they’d planned.

  But then another voice in his head spoke out to him.

  What about this place?

  There seemed to be a bunch of people here. And as threatening as Steve came across when they first ran into him, he was clearly just pragmatic rather than some kind of savage.

  Noah wanted to hold back.

  He wanted to resist.

  But he heard that voice in his head telling him he needed to start trusting people. He needed to start opening up to the possibility that it might not be just him and Jasmine going forward. They might have to start opening up. Start letting people in.

  “It’s Noah,” he said. “And this... this is Jasmine. The dog’s Barney.”

  Steve turned around. Looked at Noah, right into his eyes.

  “Maybe we’ll join you for that meal,” Noah said.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Eddie tried not to think about the bodies in the Land Rover.

  It was afternoon. Boiling hot. He always felt sweaty, in all truth. One of the downsides of being a fat bastard, he figured.

  But the grease and the sweat on his body felt like it was clinging to him. Like it was a film, smeared over him. A film that no amount of showers would be enough to wash away.

  He and Kelly had been walking for a good couple of hours when they came across the car. There was nothing totally different about the scene. He’d seen more bodies than he cared to think about these last few days. That smell of death, rotten and sour, felt wedged inside his nostrils. Like the greasy film across his skin, it was something no amount of scrubbing at would ever eliminate entirely.

  But it was the sights he’d seen that he knew would stay with him longer than anything else.

  They were in a suburban area now. The sights were much the same as every suburban area. People had boarded up their houses to stave off looters. Curtains twitched as they walked through these streets, paranoid eyes always on watch. The few people who were still on the streets were keeping their distance, covering their faces. All so quiet, but for the sounds of birds. The sound of the wind. The sound of his and Kelly’s footsteps, echoing in the silence.

  “You okay?”

  Eddie looked around. “Huh?”

  Kelly looked at him. She was a strange one. Had a way of knowing exactly when he didn’t seem in such a talkative mood, or whatever. “You’ve gone quiet. Which is weird for you. You’re barely ever quiet.”

  “Missing me?”

  “Quite the opposite, actually. Enjoying the silence. Just checking you’re all good.”

  Eddie nodded. “Appreciate the concern. Whether you mean it or not.”

  “It’s that car, isn’t it?”

  The hairs on the back of Eddie’s neck rose. “What?”

  “That car,” Kelly said. “The one with the couple in the front. You’ve been acting off ever since we saw it. That what’s got to you?”

  Eddie didn’t like being confronted about his emotions, especially not when that confrontation was so on point like this. He wanted to be the guy who made other people laugh. Even if it meant he was the butt of the joke. He wanted to make people smile. He didn’t like it when things got serious.

  “You’re way off track,” Eddie said, turning away, looking back at the road ahead. “I’m just gutted we didn’t find any—”

  “Do not mention cheese puffs one more time as some kind of crazy defence mechanism, okay? Like... seriously, don’t pull that shit with me again. I know what happened with your parents.”

  I know what happened with your parents.

  Eddie felt himself transported back.

  Sitting at home. Playing Call of Duty online. A normal day after work. His life was actually going places. Chatting to a girl online. Things actually seemed good for once in his life.

  And then the police at his door. Worrying what it was about. Worrying if he’d done something wrong, something he wasn’t even aware of himself.

  And then they told him the news that changed his life entirely. That broke him completely.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Your mum and dad have been involved in a serious accident...”

  The rest of that day was blurry. The week that followed, waiting beside those two beds in intensive care, even blurrier still.

  But the years that followed weren’t blurry.

  The panic attacks.

  The shame.

  The suicidal dread he woke up with, every single day.

  Those weren’t blurry.

  They were real.

  They were his life.

  And he could only keep smiling, keep joking, keep pretending everything was okay.

  Because it was the only way he could trick himself that his life wasn’t a disaster.

  He felt tears welling up in his eyes. Looked away from Kelly. Looked ahead, at the road.

  “We should get a move on,” he said, his voice cracking. “You know how messy Noah is, right? He’s actually the messy one in our flat. I dread to think about the state of your house right now—”

  “Eddie,” she said. “It’s okay. To vent. If you have to. I’m... I’m here for you. Alright?”

  Eddie opened his mouth to make another joke. To make another wisecrack. To just say something—anything—to break out of this situation.

  But in the end, he found himself stopping.

  Looking at Kelly.

  “My life,” he said. “Since my parents. I always struggled with responsibility. But since they went away, people said I’d have to stand up. I’d have to take responsibility for myself. But I... I’ve found it harder. I’ve found it impossible, sometimes. This... this is going to sound weird. But since the outbreak... I’ve felt more responsible than I’ve felt in a long time. I’ve felt less useless than I’ve felt in a long time. I know I’m not perfect. I know I’m a bit of an idiot. But I’m trying my best. For myself. And for all of us.”

  He looked away from Kelly. Expected her to make some kind of dig at him. Some kind of jibe.

  Then he felt something.

  A hand.

  On his shoulder.

  He looked into her eyes, and he saw she was tearful.

  “You’re not useless, big man. You’ve got a lot going for you. Hell. With what you’ve been through... you might be the strongest frigging person of the lot of us.”

  Eddie wasn’t sure what it was. The kindness. The closeness between them. The fact he’d never opened up like this to anyone except Noah before. Or the fact nobody had ever said just the right combination of words to him with such sincerity. Like they actually meant it.

  But when Kelly said those words, he wanted to lean over to her.

  He wanted to kiss her.

  But then he just nodded.

  He let her keep her hand there, and he nodded.

  “Thank you for saying that,” he said.

  Kelly took her hand away. “It’s cool. As long as you get back to your useless, jokey self asap. Not sure I’m keen on the new, intense Eddie. Noah’s hard enough to handle.”

  Eddie laughed. “Isn’t he just insufferable?”

  “Totally.”

  They stood there in the road together. Smiled at one another. Gentle breeze brushing against them both. Birdsong all around them. And the smell of grass in the air.

  This moment—this one moment—felt perfect.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jasmine bit down into the barbecued squirrel and had to admit it was actually pretty tasty.

  The afternoon seemed to be getting hotter and hotter. Probably didn’t help she’d been sitting in front of a fire for the last however long. Still couldn’t believe she was actually sitting here, in all truth. Especially not when there were four other people sitting around the fire other than her and Noah, tucking into food, too.

  It went against all her instincts. Every instinct inside told her this was a bad idea. That she couldn’t blindly trust outsiders. She knew
it was just that ruthless streak talking. The same one that’d haunted her for years. That’d ruined her friendships. Ruined her relationships.

  It wasn’t easy. But she knew this wasn’t easy for Noah, either.

  And these people seemed good. As much as she didn’t want to admit it.

  They actually seemed alright.

  Steve bit down on a small piece of squirrel. Well, she said small. Truth was, anything looked small between his long, spider-like fingers.

  The others around the fire were pleasant. Talkative. A woman called Maive, in her late sixties. She’d lost her husband to the virus on the first day. Found him convulsing on the kitchen floor, apologising, screaming out as he begged her to let him live.

  There was a young lad, too. Damien. Sixteen years old. Lost both parents a few days ago. Quiet. Didn’t say much.

  But the one thing that got to Jasmine was just how ordinary these people were.

  Just how... like her and Noah they were.

  “So where is it you two are heading, anyway?” Steve asked.

  Defensiveness immediately built up in Jasmine. She didn’t want to give that information up willingly. Not like there was anything at Kelly’s this group would really want.

  “I guess the answer doesn’t really matter either way,” Steve said, chomping down on that squirrel with his enormously long teeth. “You got it good there?”

  “It’ll do,” Noah said. “For now, anyway.”

  Steve tilted his head. Raised his eyebrows. “Well we’ve got more than enough people here. More than enough food to get us by, too. We’re well located. And we’re good workers, the lot of us. Tight-knit. And you two. You’re a young, healthy couple. Sure you could offer us a thing or two.”

  Jasmine’s cheeks flushed. “Oh, um... we’re not a couple.”

  Steve frowned. “What?”

  “We’re... we’re not a couple. Just... just friends.”

  Steve puffed out his lips like he’d just been delivered the most unbelievable news possible. “Why the hell not? Two good looking young folks like you. Besides. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, love. Reckon he’s just shy.”

  Jasmine glanced over at Noah. Saw he was blushing probably as much as she was.