by Luke Duffy
“Shit, been a bit of a rough one then.”
“Yeah, you could say that. Get the guns pushed out on the perimeter and covering the likely approaches. Make sure that one of them is covering the road, and get me an accurate ammo state.”
“No worries,” Taff replied and then looked towards the survivors. They were a pathetic looking bunch. “What about this lot?”
Stan shrugged and turned to look at them as they collapsed into heaps around him.
“What about them? Just keep them quiet.”
Before the evacuation each and every person had been carrying their ‘bug-out’ bags containing some food, water, and warm clothing that would help to sustain them for a period of approximately twenty-four hours. However, it soon became apparent that during the chaos and panic many of the civilians had tossed their belongings away in fear of being slowed down by the weight. Now the survivors sat huddled together in the open air, shivering uncontrollably and suffering from thirst and hunger. There were a number of wounded amongst the group and with most of the medical supplies, including all of the staff from the clinic being left behind, there was very little that Tina and the rest of them could do to help.
“You’d better come and take a look at Greg,” Paul advised her. “He’s in shit state, and I don’t think he’ll last much longer.”
He was holding the lead attached to the one remaining dog, ‘Lucky’, the Border Collie. Since the loss of his master, he had instinctively kept himself close to Paul, adopting him as his new owner. Tina glanced down at him. The dog was evidently mourning the loss of Sebastian, and the sorrow and uncertainty in his eyes was clear to see. Tina placed a hand on his head and ruffled his fur in an attempt to comfort him. Lucky whined and licked at her fingertips, grateful for the moment of reassuring contact between them.
Greg was lying on the cold ground, shivering and sweating. Flash was kneeling beside him and ignoring the pain he felt from the wound in his side as he tended to his dying friend. The infection had spread through Greg’s body much quicker than it normally would have done. With the adrenaline and exertion helping to carry the virus along his bloodstream at a rapid rate, the effects had taken hold and deteriorated his condition prematurely. He was thrashing his head and groaning, becoming noticeably delirious as he babbled incoherently.
“There’s nothing we can do for him now,” Flash sighed as he looked up at Tina. “He’s completely gone.”
They stood and watched him for a moment, knowing what needed to be done but no one wanting to bear the responsibility of even suggesting it. The man was still alive, and although he was surely going to die, he was one of their own and killing him before his time, even out of mercy still felt like an abhorrent crime to them. Tina had a sudden flashback to the incident in the complex and saw the smoking barrel of Stan’s rifle and the deformed and bloodied face of Ben. It had been a mercy killing, and she understood that now, but nevertheless, it had been a horrific thing to witness, especially when she saw the cold look in Stan’s eyes. There was not a trace of remorse. She would not allow for Greg’s passing to be treated with such indifference. He was one of their own, and he deserved more than a bullet to the head and being discarded and left for the dead to devour.
Greg suddenly reached up and forcefully gripped Flash by the arm and pulled him close. In that moment the dazed and confused appearance seemed to lift from his eyes. He became focussed and coherent again.
“Do it, mate,” he snarled through pain gritted teeth and staring at him with pleading eyes. “It hurts. It really fucking hurts. Don’t let me come back. Do it.”
His grip loosened and he dropped back down as the mist of delirium drifted over him once again and sent him back into his fever filled abyss. He twitched and groaned, mumbling something that none of them could understand.
They all turned to look at one another. Their grimy exhausted faces and red-rimmed eyes reflected the horror that they had all been through, and they knew that the horror was not yet over. One of their friends lay dying and begging them to end his life. It was a responsibility that they all feared, but each of them felt that they must burden. Flash moved to carry out Greg’s final wish, but Tina reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. She shook her head, and he stepped back. He nodded solemnly.
Tina crouched down, and cradling Greg’s sweat soaked head in her left hand, she lifted him from the ground slightly. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead as she brought her knife around with her right hand.
“Sorry, old friend,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Greg’s body stiffened and his head snapped back, his eyes springing open and staring up at her as Tina thrust the long blade through his ear canal. He slumped in her arms again and became completely still and silent. She quickly returned the knife back to its sheath, refusing to look at the blade and the blood that dripped from it. She sat holding him for a while, rocking him gently as though she was sending him to sleep.
“We should bury him while we have the chance. We can’t leave him lying here like this,” Flash insisted.
Stan was standing by the two SUVs with his men, talking quietly while the civilians remained centralised and doing all they could to keep warm. Time and again someone from amongst the group would hiss and demand that a whimpering voice be silenced. Fear had a strong hold over the survivors. They were in the open and vulnerable, no longer having the walls and machineguns of the base to protect them. Many of the children within the group had never set foot outside of the FOB in their entire lives. Now, to be out in the open where the dead roamed and dominated the ground, was a terrifying reality that none of them had ever wanted to face.
“Anything from Charlie?”
“Nothing yet. We tried contacting him, but I think this radio may be fucked,” Taff grunted, rapping his knuckles against the VHF set that was sitting on the hood of his vehicle.
“What about the HF? Anyone spoken to Steve?”
“Yeah, we sent a sit-rep to the ship about half an hour before you turned up. Told him that we’re bugging out, and that he’s to put the kettle on,” Bull added.
“What do we do now then?” the veteran asked.
“We wait, as per the SOP,” Stan replied with a shrug. “If Charlie doesn’t make comms by first light then we start making our own way out on foot.”
“I doubt that there’ll be many of this lot left by then. They all jacked and threw their grab-bags away, didn’t they? Look at them, they’re already turning blue.”
Stan looked at the clusters of people that were sitting around on the freezing ground. They were a sorry sight, and it was clear that staying out in the open for too long would have catastrophic consequences on the ill-prepared and untrained civilians. Lighting a fire, no matter how small, was out of the question. In an otherwise dark landscape it would be a beacon for the dead to close in on. For now, they needed to sit tight and hope that Charlie managed to make it out of the city with the vehicles they needed.
“Fucking civvies,” Taff grumbled.
“How’s your shoulder?” Stan asked, nodding to Kyle.
“Hurts like a bastard. I think I took some shrapnel when the charges blew. I can feel it moving about in there.”
“Here, let’s have a look,” Bull coaxed.
Stan helped him to remove his assault vest and jacket, and exposing the wound in his shoulder. As Taff held up his light allowing Stan to get a better view of the damage, he instantly recognised the foreign body that was embedded into the veteran’s flesh. At first he thought that Kyle may have shattered his clavicle with fragments protruding from the ripped tissue, but then he quickly realised that the object was never a part of the man’s make up.
“That’s bone,” Stan grunted. “And it isn’t yours, mate.”
The veteran frowned and looked down at the wound. To his horror he saw that there was a shard of white bone sticking out from his skin. Most of it had been buried deep into the muscle and leaving only the tip visible, but it was undoub
tedly a bone fragment, and he knew in his heart that did not belong to him.
“Fuck,” he hissed with terror and revulsion. “Get it out. Get it the fuck out of me.”
“Grab the med kit,” Stan snapped at Mark as he took a tight grip on the panicking Kyle. “Get me all the ethanol we have.”
In a matter of a few short seconds Taff and Bull had taken a strong grip on the veteran and wrestled him to the ground, pinning him in place while Stan drew his knife, thrust it into the wound, and wrenched the bone fragment from his flesh. Kyle kicked and growled, biting down on the piece of cloth that had been shoved between his teeth to prevent him from screaming out. The operation had been a complete surprise to him, and for a spilt-second he was not sure whether the blade of the knife was headed for his damaged shoulder or intended for his eye socket.
“Easy,” Stan ordered. “Keep him still.”
He reached in with the knife again and began sawing away at some of the tissue around the hole, wanting to be sure that he had removed all of the bone fragments and any potential infection.
The veteran let out muffled, gut-wrenching howl from beneath the gag. He could feel the sharp blade slicing through the muscle tissue, sending his mind reeling and spinning as the pain intensified. He writhed and thrashed against the hands that were holding him down, his consciousness threatening to slip from him as the pain receptors in his brain flashed repeatedly and went into overdrive.
Stan leaned back, sweating and breathing heavily from the sudden flurry of action. Kyle’s blood glistened on the shining blade of the SS dagger he held in his hand, dripping from the point like a warm, black liquid.
“I think that’s all of it,” he huffed.
Kyle settled while tinkering on the edge of reality as the white hot pain of the knife cutting through his flesh slowly abated. The rag fell from his mouth, and he sat there for a moment gasping loudly with his eyes shut tight.
“Fuck that hurt,” he groaned. “You’re a butcher, Stan.”
Without warning Stan snatched the bottle of surgical spirit from Mark and doused the wound. Kyle’s body arched as he let out a silent scream, unable to form any sound as the pain swept away his breath and his voice. His eyes bulged as the liquid flowed into the open wound and attacked the raw flesh. The pain was worse than the knife, and he kicked at the gravel beneath him while Taff and Bull continued to hold him down.
Stan began packing the hole in his shoulder, shoving in clumps of gauze and then holding a field dressing over the swollen, bloodied tissue. Kyle slumped back, the sting of the alcohol subsiding and being replaced by a sickly churning feeling in his stomach. He gasped, finally able to regain his breath.
“You could’ve warned me, you cunt,” he scowled.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Taff sneered from beside him as he released his grip on Kyle’s arm. “We wanted to see you act like a pussy.”
As Stan finished up dressing the wound the veteran sat up and inspected his throbbing shoulder, still wincing from the dissipating sting. He rotated his arm, checking his mobility and grimacing. Bull was kneeling beside him and shining his light into his palm as he studied the shard of bone that had been removed from the gash. Kyle leaned across to take a closer look. It was roughly ten centimetres long, white, and with a few strands of sinew still clinging to it. Otherwise, it was impossible to tell what part of a body it had come from. It could have been from Sebastian, or Ron, or maybe even one of the dogs. They had all been caught in the centre of the blast and instantly torn to pieces and scattered in all directions.
Kyle’s face suddenly paled and his eyes grew wide. He realised that the bone could even have come from one of the infected. If they had made it to Sebastian’s position then they, too, would have suffered a similar fate, and it could have been a fragment of one of their bones that had whizzed through the tunnel and embedded itself into the shoulder of the veteran.
“I don’t think it’s from one of the pus-bags,” Stan reassured him, reading his thoughts and seeing the fright in his eyes.
“How do you know? It could be. It could’ve been…”
“Looks too fresh to me. The marrow is still pink.”
“Can the infection be passed on through something like that? If their blood and bites can kill you, then so can their bone and tissue, right?”
Kyle was becoming more worked up and on the verge of panic as he looked from the bone fragment to his shoulder alternately.
“Here,” Mark grunted, moving towards him with a syringe. He jabbed it into the opposite arm. “It’s penicillin and should help with any secondary infection.”
“Shit, shit.”
“Calm yourself down,” Stan ordered as the veteran became more agitated. He reached forward, grasping Kyle by the back of his neck and pulling him closer. “Take it easy, do you hear me? We have enough shit to deal with without you losing the plot. Keep an eye on your wound. If it gets any worse, then we’ll deal with it.”
“How? How the fuck will we deal…”
Stan pushed him back, unwilling to spend his time pampering to the veteran. Internally, he sympathised with the man, but at that moment they had other concerns. Personally, he felt confident that the bone belonged to someone or something that had been alive at the moment of its obliteration, but that was not enough to console Kyle. He looked to Taff and silently beckoned him across to him.
“What do you think?” Taff asked in a hushed voice while Bull kept the veteran under control and began trying to reassure him.
“Fuck knows. If it came from one of the infected, then he’s a dead man. We won’t know for a few hours, but in the meantime I don’t want him losing his head and spreading panic.”
“What should we do?”
Stan shrugged and looked beyond him to where Kyle was still sitting, talking in a frantic whisper with Bull.
“We still got some morphine left?”
“Yeah.”
“Dose him up,” Stan ordered.
Taff looked back at him in surprise.
“He’s hurt and won’t be much use to any of us for the time being. Dose him up, and put him to sleep. Throw him in the back of one of your vehicles, and keep an eye on the wound. If he’s infected, we’ll soon start to see the signs. If he isn’t, wake him up, and give him the good news. He’ll be the best of all of us if that’s the case.”
Taff grunted, a smile involuntarily stretching across his face. Stan had not meant his remarks to be amusing, but nevertheless Taff found a strange comedy in his commander’s cold and calculating form of reasoning.
“What about Charlie and the others?”
“We’ll just wait,” Stan replied, his attention being snatched away as he noticed that a small gaggle of people had congregated by the trees and away from the rest of the survivors.
“Burial,” Taff said, looking into the area where Stan was watching. “One of their guys has just snuffed it.”
“Keep trying the radio.”
Stan headed for the group of silhouettes that he could see moving about in the cover of the trees. As he drew nearer he could hear the sound of laboured breathing and the unmistakable crunch of a shovel being slammed into the dirt. He recognised Tina and Paul from their silhouettes and muted voices, but the rest were hidden within the gloomy shadows.
Tina noticed him first and stopped, holding the shovel out to one of the others for them to take over. She sighed, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she walked towards Stan.
“It’s Greg,” she informed him when she saw him eyeing the human shaped mound stretched out in the dirt behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder at the man’s body that was wrapped in a blanket. “We thought we should bury him while we had the chance.”
Stan nodded. It made no difference to him whether they buried their dead or not. He did not really know any of them, but he saw no harm in them affording a little dignity to their fallen when and if they had the chance. He watched her for a moment, the sound of the shovel striking the hard soil
echoing a little too loudly for his preference.
“The ground’s too hard,” she continued, feeling uncomfortable about his strange silence. “I think a shallow grave will be all we can manage.”
“Better than nothing.”
Stan looked up at the vast, cold sky and stars above them. His breath was coming in thick, white clouds, and he wondered how close to freezing the temperature now was, and how much longer they would be able to wait before survival dictated that they begin moving, if only to keep warm. He looked around him. He was unsure of exactly how many people they had saved, but he had seen a number of small children amongst them, even babies, and no one seemed particularly well equipped against the cold.
“I’m thinking about sending the advance party forward,” he said turning back to her. “If we strip them down to the bare minimum, they could possibly take the weakest of the survivors with them. At least they’d be warm in the vehicles.”
“I think that would be a good idea. We can…”
Stan shifted suddenly, jutting his neck forward and moving into a semi-crouch as though readying himself to spring at her in an attack. A faint light flickered across Tina’s face, illuminating her features for a moment as Stan spun on his heel, expecting to see someone disobeying his orders and holding an unshielded light. The area around them remained dark with the dim shapes of the survivors barely visible against the ground and the surrounding trees. Beyond them was the large dome of the observatory perched on the summit of the hill. The sky beyond was glowing.
Stan and Tina rushed forward, bounding over the people who were sitting around in silence and huddled together for warmth and comfort. Some of them took notice and began dragging themselves up from the ground and followed after their leaders, curious and frightened from their sudden burst of activity.
“Holy shit,” Tina gasped as she reached the area where Stan had come to a standstill and stood staring out towards the built-up area.
