Breeding Ground

by Sarah Pinborough

  “The vet’s?” Nigel was in the seat directly behind mine, and even the rustle of his ridiculous suit was irritating. “Why are we going to the vet’s? I thought we were going straight to Hanstone. That’s where we need to be going. We need to be going there right now.” His index finger jabbed at the back of my shoulder blade, as if to add emphasis to his words in case I chose to ignore them. “There’ll be people there. Proper people that can sort all this out.”

  Staring forward and ignoring him, it was only my grip on the steering wheel that stopped me from turning round and punching him in the face.

  An uneventful twenty minutes later and we stood in a nervous huddle in the centre of the reception area of the small practice. Even Nigel had stayed silent since Dave had explained just why we needed our little diversion. The air smelled damp from the warm water that had quietly soaked us outside, hiding in the fibres of our sweatshirts and jumpers.

  “So, who’s going to do it then?” Dave opened the clinical white door that should lead into the small consulting rooms and the hospital, if the sign above was to be believed. Nigel hovered at the back of our small bunch, as if trying to make himself invisible, but his efforts were unnecessary. I would have guessed that Dave would rather have chewed his own arm off rather than let Nigel anywhere near him.

  George caught my eye, and we nodded to each other, my heart sinking. If George was our leader, then I seemed to have become his general, and I wasn’t sure if it was a responsibility I was ever going to learn to enjoy.

  “That’ll be me and George, then.” The smile I tried to give Dave must have looked more like a death mask stretched tight across my skull, but it was the best I could do while trying to quell the rush of fear that sent a hot flush racing out of every pore of my skin.

  “The rest of you might as well get a bit of a rest.” George was right behind me. “John, you keep that gun. Come with us to the operating room, just in case, and then come back and keep an eye out. Katie can look after the other gun. If there’s any trouble, shout, but I’ve got to warn you, depending on how we’re getting on in there, it’s unlikely that we’re going to be able to come out and help.” His words were greeted with a round of silent nods, apart from Rebecca, who had been trying to communicate something to John, and finally resorted to scribbling on the small damp notepad she’d used outside. She held the sheet up firmly in my face, her expression fiercely determined to be heard.

  I have some medical training. I am a nurse for the handicapped. I can help.

  My heart raced slightly. “So you know about amputation?” The pen scribbled furiously again.

  No, I’m not a doctor. But I know a bit about drugs. He’ll need painkillers. And something to knock him out.

  I stared at her words for a second or two before shrugging. “Well, I suppose that’s better than nothing. As long as you think you can handle it.”

  Tucking her pad into the back pocket of her jeans, her dark eyes glared at me with disdain. I didn’t know why I felt the need to somehow be angry with her; maybe even then I sensed that she was different from me, Katie, Jane and the rest of us, that she was somehow outside of this nightmare. Whatever it was, I was out of patience and good feeling and she was the easiest person to take it out on.

  With enough of a nudge for me to feel her annoyance, Rebecca took Dave’s arm and smiled gently at him before following John through the doorway.

  Bringing up the rear, I flicked on the wall switch and banks of strip lighting hummed into life above us. Leaving the others, I consciously avoided glancing back into their wide eyes, not even Katie’s, not wanting to see their dread at what we were about to do. I followed John as he cautiously checked each room we passed, shouldering his responsibility well for such a young man. I wondered wryly if some of it were for Rebecca’s benefit. I wasn’t the only red-blooded male left alive, that was for sure.

  Well, I thought as I watched them both moving ahead of me, I’d give him ten out of ten for trying, but I’d guess he was a little young for the cool-headed Rebecca.

  We turned to the left, where the corridor thinned slightly, a bank of empty cages running down one side, and my mind drifted back to the dead cats at the farm; I wondered for an awful moment if all the pets in England had gone the same way. All the pets across the world. We certainly hadn’t seen any strays since yesterday, and I couldn’t remember hearing any barking. My heart constricted with the thought, and I tried to retain some optimism. The birds had survived. And so had we. Maybe some of our four-legged friends had made it through, too. Only time would tell.

  “This must be it.”

  At the end of the corridor, next to a small bathroom, a kitchen and a room with a narrow set of bunks probably for when vets or nurses needed to stay over, we found a room not dissimilar to the smaller consulting rooms, but with a much larger examining table and adjustable lights above it. Taking her leather jacket off, Rebecca made a pillow for Dave and helped him to lie down, keeping one of her hands wrapped round his in support. Her naturally olive skin had paled, and for the first time I allowed myself some sympathy for her. She hadn’t needed to volunteer her assistance; there was no way in hell we’d ever have known she was a nurse, and God only knew that changing a few bedpans and dressings on ulcers wouldn’t compare with what we were going to do now. Despite myself, I had to admit she had some bollocks. Metaphorically, at least.

  John left us to go back to the others, and I shut the door as George and Rebecca rummaged through the equipment and medication. Rebecca found something that she obviously recognised and filled a syringe, flicking the end professionally before squeezing out the bubbles of air. Smiling at him in the way only a professional could in this situation, she slapped his good arm until a vein rose. The needle slipped in easily.

  “Will it put him out?”

  She shook her head.

  “But it’ll stop the pain?”

  She nodded, but it was more hesitant than I would have liked.

  Dave grabbed my hand. “From the shoulder, Matt.” His bloodshot eyes were desperate. “Take it all off. Not just from the elbow. No chances.” His head lolled back, his pupils dilated. “No chances.” The words came out in a rush of breath and spittle, and despite his head rolling away from me, his grip stayed firm.

  I returned the squeeze. “Okay, mate. Try and relax. That’s what we’ll do.” Slowly, as the seconds ticked by, George pulling open cupboards and doors behind me, I felt his sweaty palm reluctantly relinquish mine as he drifted off into a semiconscious state.

  “What was that?” I tugged on Rebecca’s sleeve so that she could read my lips. “Morphine?”

  She shook her head and held up the bottle. Ketamin. It meant nothing to me.

  It works on animals. I’m hoping for the same with Dave. Not sure on dosage though. Guesswork.

  The paper was tilted just in case Dave could read it. It didn’t read too promising for him.

  “This should do us.” George pulled a small surgical saw from a drawer on the far side of the room. As he pressed the button on the side, the small blade buzzed into life, rotating faster than I could see, like a baby circular saw, all high-pitched noise and tinny action.

  George’s face had greyed close to the colour of his hair, and looking at the gleam on his wrinkled forehead, I knew I wasn’t the only one breaking out into a cold sweat.

  “We’re going to have to heat this up somehow. To cauterise the wound. Otherwise he’ll bleed to death. The wound’s going to need sealing as we cut.”

  “Well, how the hell are we supposed to do that?” I looked around me in frustration, as if expecting a blow torch to appear miraculously on the sterile benches running around the white walls.

  “I don’t know, Matt. We need to think.”

  Rebecca started to cut away the arm of Dave’s jumper and even the short sleeve of the T-shirt beneath, not bothering to unbandage the wound. For a brief moment I wondered how we would keep his arm warm afterwards, now that she had damaged his clothes,
wrecked them; then came the surreal sickness of reality, the dawning thought that we would not be taking Dave’s arm with us when we left. It would lie here and rot. Another piece of debris from a demised world. Depending of course on whether that stuff inside it would let it rot. Or maybe it would sprout eight legs and come after us for revenge. In the new world in which we lived that didn’t sound so ridiculous, and the revulsion of the thought cleared my mind.

  “The kitchen. There’s a kitchen just outside. There was a cooker. You can heat it up there.”

  “Good thinking. I’ll go. Get everything ready. I’ll heat it till it’s blue, but I don’t know how long the metal will keep the temperature.” George smiled, but there was no joy in it, and he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead with a trembling hand, staring at the saw in his other. “I mean, Jesus Christ, what am I saying? I don’t know anything. What the hell are we trying to do? Why couldn’t someone else do it?”

  “We’re the best chance he’s got, George.” I grabbed his arm, forcing the old man to look at me, lowering my voice, just in case Dave could hear beyond the spaced out delirium he seemed to have drifted into. “And if it was me laying there, I’d be very glad I had you panicking about how best to do this. And you know why? Because I didn’t even think about cauterising the fucking wound. If I’d been on my own doing this, Dave’d be fucking dead by now.”

  He nodded at me, his eyes glittering slightly, but that moment of mild hysteria seemed to have passed. By the time he’d taken a couple of deep breaths his shaking had calmed down.

  “I’ll go and get this hot. Have some bandages ready. And something to stitch him up with. We’ll have to try and leave some skin to cover it.”

  Rebecca must have been watching us speak, because she held up a box to catch our attention. Sutures.

  “Good girl.” George’s smile was genuine as he left us.

  The few minutes that he was gone passed too quickly, and suddenly the moment had arrived, Rebecca standing by to seal up the stump, George with his glowing, buzzing saw, and me holding Dave’s arm slightly out from his body. I could feel sweat on the inside of the tight latex gloves, and as George lowered the metal to Dave’s skin, I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t help myself. What the hell were we doing? This was crazy. This was more than crazy. The world spun in those next minutes, spun around me, dragging me into it, forcing my eyes open for fear I’d otherwise fall over.

  I’m not sure what was the worst part of it. It was all terrible. Etched indelibly in my mind where it’ll stay until the day I die. It could have been the sound of the saw, inhuman and relentless, or the feel of that infected arm vibrating in my hands as George wielded our so-called operating equipment, sending it crunching through Dave’s flesh and bones. And then there was the thin high-pitched scream he let out as the blade started its job, too late for Rebecca to add to his medication, his chest rising up from the table in sheer agony, just before he blissfully passed out. And finally there was the awful thump as the arm hit the table, no longer attached, no longer a part of Dave Randall.

  I let go as quickly as I could, wanting to rip off the gloves and disinfect myself, decontaminate my body and soul from the whole experience. I fought the urge and as George moved away and dropped the saw in the sink, I used all my strength to pick up the heavy, lifeless limb and deposit it in the tall bin in the corner.

  Rebecca took over after that, tight determination on her face as she stitched his arm back up, stretching the untidy loose flap of skin George had managed to leave over the burned raw flesh and antiseptic cream she’d covered the crisp wound with. I didn’t watch for long, instead going out to the small bathroom where I splashed cold water over my face and then threw up violently in the sink, my legs threatening to crumple under me, hot sweat erupting out of every pore. I didn’t take much pride in the fact that I remained standing. Not when I thought about George and Rebecca and the more gruesome parts they’d played in this operation.

  I wet my face again, needing the coolness to soak and calm me, and then straightened up, taking a few long shaky breaths. Looking at my face staring back at me, haggard but at least sane, I let myself off the hook. This was serious shit, and I was getting my fair share to handle, but at least I wasn’t cracking up. Not in anyway that I, or anyone else, could notice. Not like our friend Phelps out there at any rate. Running my wet fingers through my hair, I let the water drip down my tired, pale forehead and into my bloodshot eyes. And then I retched again. And again. And this time I allowed myself to slide down the wall and rest against the cool tiles as my head spun. In the quiet outside, I could hear that someone was doing pretty much the same thing in a much more gentle way in the kitchen next door. Perhaps Rebecca wasn’t so tough after all. As my sides ached with heaving, I found that I warmed to her with that realisation.

  We let Dave rest for an hour before moving him, but that was as long as we could allow. Rebecca had injected him with more God knows what, and it calmed him down, knocking him out for small periods of time, but every fifteen minutes or so he’d gasp into consciousness and cry out, the agony clear for all to hear, and then he’d sob, long, soulful sounds, worse than the cries of pain, and then Rebecca would soothe him and he’d quiet down. She packed a bag of dressings, lotions and drugs, and eventually, the time came for Dave to be half-carried, half-dragged out to the van, his good arm slung over my shoulder, his whole body weight leaning into me. He screamed a lot then, and all I could do was grit my teeth and ignore it, George up ahead, opening the doors and sending the rest out to open up the bus, Rebecca following behind with her bag and a couple of blankets designed for use with injured animals.

  Outside the weather had changed again, a far more tropical feel hovering about us. For the moment all was quiet. There was thunder in the air, but no rain, and for now all we were beaten with was a hot wind more suited to the plains of Africa than the southern English countryside.

  My shoulder straining, I carried Dave out to the van, where John and Oliver helped lift him awkwardly inside. Thankfully, he’d passed out again somewhere along the way, his body a blood-soaked wreck.

  “Will he be all right?” Katie took my hand as I stepped back onto the pavement, but it didn’t bring me much comfort. Not after all that.

  I didn’t look at her, but stared ahead at everything and nothing, not wanting to see her beauty just now. “I don’t know. He lost blood and we couldn’t give him any more. And then there’s the possibility of infection.”

  And then there’s the bite. The words screamed silently in the quiet of my own head. I didn’t share them. I didn’t think any of us needed to hear them out loud.

  PART II

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  By the time we arrived at Hanstone Park it was late afternoon, and although the sky had darkened overhead, as yet the rain had stayed off. Pulling up the heavy handbrake of the minibus, I felt the muscles across my back and shoulders scream slightly, tight with the tension that had been building up through the day and the slow drive from Woburn. Although the trip had been uneventful, I had been certain every time we came through a tight blind bend there would be a barricade of angry, hissing, all-knowing widows waiting for us.

  Help me . . . please . . . I shuddered just thinking about it.

  While driving, I’d shared my experience of the widow taunting me in the farmhouse and it seemed that no one, not even Nigel, could come up with a different theory than mine—that the widows were somehow telepathic, or shared some other kind of collective consciousness. It wasn’t a comforting thought as we drove through the silent towns and hedged fields, eyes peeled for signs of life. We had seen a couple of people as we’d driven through a small village, but they ran away as we stopped. We didn’t go and look for them, but instead Katie shouted out the window that we were going to Hanstone Park, and that it would be safer for them to try and get there, too. They didn’t come out, and after a few minutes we drove away. Their survival plan was their business.

&nbs
p; Katie and Rebecca had kept Dave dosed up with painkillers on the journey and tried to keep him as comfortable as possible, but he’d been coming round for the last twenty minutes or so, and as I slid open the door to the back I could see that he was conscious.

  “Stay there till we get inside, mate.”

  He nodded slightly, his face grey and in obvious pain. George was already out from the passenger side, and John, Oliver, Jane and Katie climbed down from the back, followed by a very crumple-suited Nigel. Rebecca stayed inside with Dave.

  I lit four cigarettes and passed them round, inhaling my own hard. God, that tasted good. We hadn’t smoked in the bus, not wanting to add any more chance of infection to Dave’s already poor odds.

  “It may seem like a stupid question, but just how are we supposed to get in?”

  Nigel stared at me with a blend of disgust, amusement and sheer victorious hatred shining in his eyes. I wondered if he’d rather we all died out there if it meant that he could make me feel that I’d got it all wrong. It was as if he blamed me for the whole stupid mess the world had become. Because that would make sense. Maybe it did in Nigel’s mad, mad world. I tried to hide my tired irritation by turning my back to him and taking a long look at our situation.

  The worst part was that as we’d driven round the perimeter I’d had the same thoughts. The whole complex was surrounded by high metal fencing of at least fifteen feet and topped with barbed wire, and large signs painted onto the grey surface at regular intervals declared it electrified. We could only assume it still was, and even if it wasn’t, we hadn’t brought a ladder and a leg up wasn’t going to get us over this one.