Breeding Ground

by Sarah Pinborough

  “Over there! Look!” I followed the excited pointing finger that bounced up and down as she jumped with the kind of energy that only a child could have after everything we’d been through in the past twenty-four hours. “Look!”

  It was white, but it wasn’t a van. It was a minibus parked outside the little parade where the chemist was, and it only took a second or two for all of us to catch on to what Jane had seen that had sent her bouncing. The engine was running, the sound coming over the silent air towards us in a steady thrum, and from the exhaust a grey mist pumped out into the haze of rain. The deadness in my legs lifted as they instinctively picked up the pace.

  “There’s people.” Turning around, I grinned at George and the others behind me. “There’s people in a shop up there! Come on!”

  The straps of the rucksack dug painfully into my shoulders as I jogged, but that wasn’t going to stop me from running. Just the idea of other people alive out there sent a shockwave of anticipation through my system. I don’t think I’d have slowed down even if I’d accidentally fired the shotgun, which I was waving around in a cavalier fashion, trying to manage its length and weight and not succeeding. As George caught up with me, I almost felt a pang of envy at his grace, the weapon tilted into his shoulder. Even for a tired old man, he was managing a whole lot better than me. I could hear Nigel puffing somewhere behind my ears. It didn’t surprise me that he’d abandoned Dave in order to keep up with the guns. Maybe that made him more of a natural survivor than the rest of us, but I’d take my chances as I was.

  “What if they’re not friendly?”

  George sent a disparaging look over his shoulder. “As long as they’ve only got two legs, they’ll be fine by me.”

  By the time we’d trotted the couple of hundred yards up the slight incline, the minibus slowly getting larger and larger, all our eyes focussed on it, no longer any thought for what might leap out at us from the recessed doorways or windows around us. My breath was hot as it raced in and out of my lungs. My face glowing, I stopped and almost leaned my gun against the wall before realising how stupid that was. Nigel was beside me, way more out of breath than I was, and looking behind me, I could see that George had slowed down to wait with Katie and John, who between them were trying to keep up and support Dave’s weight.

  “There’s no one in here.” Disappointment flattened Jane’s voice as she peered on tiptoes into the slightly tinted windows. The green letters on the side read MEADOWBANK SCHOOL, and I figured by looking at the painted flower that it was a primary or middle school. My heart ached for Jane, suddenly aware of just how lonely she must be. No other children to play with, to share her fears with without being patronised or smothered in platitudes.

  I stepped back and stared into the face of each of the shops. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  There was a dry cleaner, an off-licence two doors further up, a small co-op and the chemist we’d been looking for. The only one that didn’t look broken into was the dry cleaners and that didn’t come as much surprise.

  “Hello?” I called out again. John echoed my call with his own, but there was no answer, and my heart started to sink. Maybe we were too late. Maybe there were widows lurking inside that had killed whoever had left the engine running out here. I stepped forward and was about to try searching in the co-op when a voice startled me.

  “About bloody time! Are you the cavalry?”

  Peering out of the off-licence doorway, an arm waved in our direction, a bottle of beer gripped in one hand. Attached to the arm was a middle-aged man, his face hidden behind an overgrown, curly silver-grey beard, his body tall and lanky, thin apart from a small paunch jutting out under his cable-knit sweater. Great. Another born survivor. Where were all the Arnold Schwarzeneggers when you really needed them?

  Grinning, he made his way towards us, and we met him halfway. He held out his hand, his skin slightly leathery from what I imagined were too many Spanish holidays, and a thick gold chain bracelet shone conspicuously on his wrist. Twinkling, his bloodshot eyes were blue at the centre, and despite the slight drunken sway in his stance as he pulled himself straight, I found myself warming to this stranger.

  “Oliver Maine. Nice to meet you.” His rough-edged voice had an upper class accent that oozed private schooling, a contrast with the bottle of Carling Special Brew by his side. Despite his age, there was something of the teenager about him. “Now can anyone bloody tell me what’s been going on? Where the hell is everybody?”

  “Don’t you know?” Katie was incredulous. After all we’d seen and been through, it was hard to believe that there was someone alive who wasn’t all too aware of the widows.

  He shook his head, helping himself to a cigarette as I opened my pack to take one for myself. I lit it for him, cupping the light to protect it from the wet, and he took a long drag, shaking his head.

  “What is it? Some kind of chemical warfare? A plague?” He stared at our blank expressions and shrugged. “I’d had a bit of a drink. I thought it’d help me get rid of the blasted headache I’d had for a day, which I’m pleased to say seems to have disappeared, and I remember being in the pub, and I vaguely remember leaving, but after that it’s a blank. Woke up a couple of hours ago in my flat. I’d slept a whole day and night. Anyway, I decided a hair of the dog was required and when I came out, it seemed to me that every other bugger had disappeared off somewhere. So where the hell are they all?”

  Watching the slight shake in his hand, I knew that a hair of the dog was probably the way that most of Oliver Maine’s days started. The shake wasn’t the only thing that gave his drinking problem away. It was his choice of drink. Carling Special Brew was lethal. A bottle of that would knock my socks off, and our new friend was drinking it first thing in the morning.

  “It’s a long story.”

  He grinned again, refreshingly undisturbed by the lack of human company. “Well, if it’s a long one, it’d better be bloody interesting. Is that your bus?” He laughed, a bubbly warm sound. “Not exactly army regulation, is it?”

  John frowned, the rim of his baseball cap darker where the constant rain had slowly soaked it. “It’s not ours. Our cars got wrecked. I thought it was yours.”

  “No, nothing to do with me. I only live round the corner. I walked.”

  I turned round to look into the other shops, Nigel and John doing the same. If the van wasn’t Maine’s, then who the hell had driven it down here? The question was momentarily forgotten as Dave, leaning against the bus, threw up, clear liquid spewing down the front of his clothes.

  “We’ve got to get him some medicine.” Katie nodded in the direction of the chemist.

  She was right. Dave’s medicine was what we’d come here for in the first place. “John, why don’t you and Jane go in the co-op and get some supplies. Put them in the minibus. If the driver doesn’t turn up, we may as well take it.” No one argued with me. We were like scavengers now—the morality of taking what wasn’t ours no longer applied. A lot of things no longer applied. “Nigel, you keep your eyes open out here with George.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do I get a gun?”

  No fucking way, you whining selfish fucker, was what I wanted to say to him, but I bit my tongue. “No, George has got his, and John can take the other one. He’s got Jane with him.” The slight black look that Nigel sent in the direction of the despondent child may have been missed by some, but I definitely saw it. Turning away, I pushed open the broken door into the chemist. “Come on, Dave. Let’s get that arm seen to.”

  Oliver Maine hadn’t needed asking to help Dave through the door, and he watched with concern as Katie started to carefully peel the bandage from the wounded arm. I’d stepped behind the counter and begun rummaging through the various books and medical catalogues, desperate to find some kind of information on all the boxes and bottles of pills that surrounded me in the pharmacist’s area. I scanned for animal bites and blood-poisoning, or any all round antibiotic.

  “What happened to him?” Maine
’s question was directed at Katie, an indication of how bad Dave’s condition had got. His pale face was sweating badly, and his eyes shook slightly, glazing over as if they were unable to focus.

  “He got bit by a widow.” Katie didn’t look up, gently unwinding the layers of bandage.

  “What the bloody hell’s a widow?”

  “That’s part of the long story. Here, take the bandage. I want to get the dressing off.” Her voice was soft, the kind of softness that could never be found in a man’s voice, and it made my heart squeeze. The surprised, sharp breath that followed made me stop my search and turn.

  “Shit.” She exclaimed. “Shit. Oh, shit.”

  “What the hell is that?” There was no hint of joviality in our new comrade now, and keeping hold of the packet of antibiotics designed to treat fuck only knew what that I’d found, I came quickly round to join them.

  “What? What’s happened?” No one spoke and I followed their eyes to the uncovered wound.

  I stared down in disbelief and more than a small amount of disgust, not sure I knew what I was seeing, my mind scanning its memory banks to see if there were any images locked away that were even vaguely similar. It drew a blank.

  His arm was red, an angry crimson spreading out from the injury. There were deep cuts in his skin where the mandibles had clamped down on him, the rivers of poison blaring out against the pale inner arm, but that I could deal with. That I could understand. What was new, what was so alien, was the stuff that oozed from the bite, the white, thin, stringy substance that erupted outwards, coming from within his arm, that spread, winding its way along the limb and under his wrist, reaching down to his fingers and stretching up towards his elbow. I felt escaping air catch in my throat as my eyes slowly crept up to look into Dave’s sweaty face.

  A weak smile attempted to take hold of his lips, his own voice wet and breathless. “If you try and tell me that’s normal, I’ll punch your face in.”

  Katie ripped open the box of pills and pressed some into his mouth. “These look pretty strong.” She tried to smile, but her attempt wasn’t as good as Dave’s. “At least the packet says you can’t drink with them, so I’ll take that as a sign they’re good for you.” Her patient took them and swallowed, his grimace betraying how they stuck dryly in his throat, and Oliver pulled a Lucozade from the shelf, opening it for him.

  “No alcohol? That can never be good for you.” He passed the bottle of golden, sugary liquid. “Get that down you.”

  Scurrying off behind the counter, Katie scrabbled at bottles in a random panic. “Maybe if we can find some liquid antibiotic, something we can put straight into the wound, or some kind of bleach or antiseptic, maybe that could stop it. Maybe if we—”

  “Stop it.” Dave’s tired voice cut her off, his calm the antithesis of her manic rambling. “Just stop it, Katie.”

  Despite his words, she continued to peer into the shelves around her for a few moments until her movements slowly wound down like a clock and finally she stopped and turned to face him, leaning across the counter and resting her face in her hands.

  Dave coughed two or three times, a too-wet, phlegmy sound coming from deep in his chest, and then breathed raggedly before speaking.

  “That’s not going to work, and we all know it.” His eyes shook slightly with fever, but behind them his clear mind was apparent.

  Slowly, Katie straightened up and came back round, leaning next to me against the counter. “But there’s got to be something we can do. There must be.” Her voice sounded more like Jane’s, the hopelessness and fear making her quiet words sound childlike. The seconds ticked by in silence, and I stared at the walls, the shelves of shampoo and baby lotions, anywhere rather than at Dave or at the others.

  Finally Dave let out a long sigh. “There is something you can do. It is the only thing you can do.” He stared at Katie and then at me. “You can cut my arm off.”

  His quiet words took a couple of seconds to sink into my tired brain.

  “No fucking way.” My head shook. “No fucking way. There must be something else.”

  “Look at my arm, Matt. Look at it.”

  I did, and a wave of revulsion again washed over me as I stared at the white strands that I was sure wriggled slightly with life as they twisted around his limb. “If you don’t amputate, this is going to kill me. I know it, and you know it.”

  His shoulders slumped forward, shrinking inward in the plastic chair, as if his body had got smaller since the bite, smaller with the awful acknowledgement of the truth that he’d come to before the rest of us.

  I wasn’t sure the counter could take the weight of my body and soul, but it stood up to the task, and leaning against it, I rubbed my face, feeling the itch of unshaven stubble, my hand resting across my mouth for a moment.

  “Where are we going to do it? How?” I looked at Kate and Oliver. “The hospital’s miles away, and I don’t think small town doctor’s surgeries have the equipment we need.”

  “I don’t really fucking care, I just want you to cut it off.” The monotone and tiredness that oozed from Dave was scarier than if he were screaming. “I need to get it out of me.”

  Oliver waved one of his gangly arms at the cigarette pack sticking out of my jeans pocket and I opened it. We all took one and ceremoniously passed the lighter round. It was our new friend that broke the silence.

  “There’s a vet’s at the other end of Willow Grove.” Using the glowing end of the cigarette, he pointed out towards somewhere through the left wall. “It’s about a mile or so out that way. I used to have a dog.” He smiled slightly and shrugged sheepishly. “I loved that dog. Border collie. Anyway, he got sick.” Cigarette smoke was thickening the air, but the sting of it almost felt good. “They were good to him up there. They’ve got a hospital out back where they do operations. That could be a good place.”

  Glancing first at the sky outside and then at my watch, I stood upright. “Well, if we’re going to do it today, then we’d better do it soon. It’s midday already, and we need to get to Hanstone by the time it gets dark.” None of us wanted to spend another night like the one before. Hanstone Park seemed like a haven in my mind, a place where we would be safe, and I imagine it was the same for the others.

  “Tell me, Oliver.” Dave pulled on his cigarette, his hand trembling, his tone light. “This dog of yours. When it got sick and you took it to this vet’s . . .”

  “Yep?” Maine hooked his hand in one of Dave’s armpits and pulled him up.

  “Did it live?” The rattling in his chest forced his words out in a wheeze.

  “Nope. But it was a bloody old bugger. And anyway, he had a vet operating on him. You’ve got us.” Cigarette clamped between his teeth, he smiled. “Which makes about a million to one chance of us doing it right and you surviving.”

  “Oh, good.” Dave grimaced slightly as Katie re-wrapped his damaged arm. “I feel so much better now.”

  Maine chortled out loud, slapping the injured man heartily on his back. “Oh, but you should. Don’t you watch the films? The million to one shots always come in.”

  The door behind then flew open and Jane erupted in, all excitement and energy. “We’ve found who was driving the minibus! It’s a woman!” Her shining eyes shot round each of us, unaware of the surreal madness that had been taking place only moments ago. Our silence obviously frustrated her.

  “Well, come on!” She huffed impatiently, before turning on her heel and heading back outside.

  Dave was still trembling a little as Katie safety-pinned the bandage, hiding the monstrosity that was spreading underneath. “It’s time we got going, anyway. Matt’s right. We need to get this done quickly. So let’s go.” Oliver helped him to his feet and Katie filled a carrier bag with a selection of pills and liquids that she must have felt we would need.

  Pushing away from the counter, I followed Jane and led the others out, unable to match the child’s enthusiasm, the knowledge of what we had to do shortly turning my stomach, preven
ting me from feeling any kind of joy at a new survivor, instead only a grim anger at what this new world was throwing at us, at me.

  The rain was still warm and thick, but coming down slightly slower than earlier, small patches of sky clearing above. Standing by the front of the minibus, John twisted and smiled at us. The slim dark-haired figure next to him didn’t, but continued leaning forward on the bonnet, writing on a small notepad. Jane tugged at my sleeve.

  “I think she’s deaf.” She smiled, pleased with herself. “I figured it out. No one else.”

  Gently drawing the girl’s attention to us, John took the notepad and held it up. “This is Rebecca.” The name was written in beautifully shaped, even letters across the plain paper. The author smiled nervously, her full features and dark eyes complemented by the olive skin. Although she was slim, there was something athletic in her build and she looked strong in her jeans, tight-fitting maroon polo neck and leather jacket. A deaf girl. A beautiful deaf girl. There was no doubt about that, all cool tall elegance.

  My head suddenly filled with her beauty and Dave’s wound, images of that living whiteness cutting through her skin as it strangled her face, and then her face turned into Katie’s elfin one, the strands eating into that, and I wondered if perhaps loneliness may not be the worst thing about all of this. Maybe the worst bit was having people to care about, to fear the loss off, especially now, when human company was so rare and precious.

  When I spoke, the harshness in my voice surprised all of us. Apart from Rebecca, of course, although she could probably “hear” it in the faces of the others. “That’s great, but we’ve got to get going. Everyone on the bus. Sit in the front with me, Oliver. I need you to direct me to the vet’s.”

  A flash of something like annoyance seemed to surface in Rebecca’s eyes as I pulled open the door and got in behind the wheel. I guess she still saw it as her car, but this was a brave new world, and if someone was going to drive us then I wanted it to be someone that could react quickly to any kind of warning. I didn’t look at her again as I adjusted the seat, but she must have figured that it wasn’t that big of a deal, not worth being left behind alone for at any rate. The door at the back slid shut and I pulled away, the heavy slow chug of the minibus miles away from the smooth ease of the Mitsubishi.