by Wood, Rick
Honestly, why did he save the kid again?
“Oh, wow. Okay. Well, you know, you got to sleep sometime, and we need to get there ASAP – so if you change your mind, I’m here, ready to put my foot down and take us from A to B. After all, I’m not the one who crashed us – just saying! Not meaning anything by it, just saying, pointing a few truths out.”
If this kid did not stop rattling on…
Gus considered throttling him. Punching him. Kicking him. Tying a bit wad of duct tape around his gob so he learnt to keep the damn thing shut.
Whatever it took.
“I’d look cooler driving in shades, mind.”
Mention those shades one more bloody time…
“So, tell me more about yourself,” Donny prompted, only to be met with more vehement silence. “Right, okay. Look, I just thought we should get to know each other. What about family, you got one?”
Gus’s hands gripped the steering wheel. Tension filled his arms, his muscles poised, his teeth grinding.
“Oh, crap, I forgot, sorry, I knew that they had… Sorry.”
Gus closed his eyes and attempted to gather himself. To do all he could to remain calm.
“So what actually happened to them, anyway?”
Gus slammed his foot on the brake, bringing the car to a screeching, sudden stop.
He placed his finger on the button beneath the passenger side’s window, and the window beside Donny’s face travelled downwards. Donny was instantly met with the groaning of a few nearby infected who, hearing the noise, came closer.
Donny frantically tried to push down on the button on his side but, with Gus holding his down, it overrode any power he had.
“What are you doing?!” Donny cried, desperately clicking on the button beside him. “Come on, man!”
The zombies raced toward the open window, enticed by the smell of Donny’s flesh, by the sound of him wildly screaming.
“Come on, man!”
“If you ever talk about my family again” – Gus spoke in a low, husky, aggressively quiet voice – “I will feed you to them.”
Donny’s eyes met Gus’s. They filled with fear. He looked back in those steel pupils, understanding that Gus meant every word he said.
“Okay, okay, I understand!”
Gus let go of the switch.
Donny pushed down on his, watching his window shut just in time for the closing zombies to slam their bloody faces against it.
Gus put the pedal to the floor and sped away.
They drove for the next few hours in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gus’s legs were aching with the stiffness of a four-hour drive. This was only exasperated further by the bullet lodged inside his calf. The pain always became more apparent during stages of cramp or coldness. Like a solid intensity pushing a warm spike against his muscle.
He stretched his leg out, wincing at the pain of his ache.
He grabbed the petrol pump, hoping there was something left in it. The station looked as if it had been deserted for a long time. Dust blew from the top of the pump, settling on a cement floor adorned with mossy tufts declaring themselves through the cracks. The shop beside him was a wreck. Smashed windows with ransacked shelves, crawling with insects parading beneath the door.
He squeezed the pump trigger.
Yes, finally some luck.
He put the pump into the car, squeezed, then stood back and surveyed the surroundings.
An uncomfortable silence descended on the station. It was too deserted, too derelict. He reminded himself to be aware; the undead enemy could spring an attack on him at any time.
Through the dirty window he could see Donny turning around and engaging Sadie in conversation. She was laughing. Whatever he was saying, it was entertaining her, and she childishly giggled in response.
He hadn’t seen her guffaw like that. It was nice, seeing her happy. Seeing her saved from the reality of her situation.
She was sweet. She brought on that fatherly instinct that made him want to nurture her. Which, of course, was a stark contrast to the explosive violence of her earlier fighting. The way she tore apart those zombies that attacked the cottage…
The speed of it – he’d blinked, and she’d already torn through another three. The agility. The strength to dig her nails through the face of the undead.
But most of all, the sheer violence. The immunity she had to the splatter of blood and guts over her. She had finished tearing them from limb to limb, drenched herself in red, then turned back to Gus as if seeking a father’s approval for drawing a good painting.
“Donny, my name is Donny,” Donny was telling Sadie.
Sadie nodded.
Gus watched as Donny searched the car for another item, something he could point out, some way he could teach her the language that, in all likelihood, she once spoke fluently. With a lack of options, he pointed at the steering wheel.
“Wheel,” Donny slowly told her. “Wheel.”
Sadie looked confused.
“This is a wheel. Can you say wheel?”
“Whe–”
“Wheel.”
Sadie took a second, then without hesitation, announced, “Wheel.”
“Yes!” Donny exclaimed, looking for something else to point out. “Seat.”
“Seat,” she repeated.
He pointed at himself. He smiled.
“Friend,” he said slowly and sincerely.
“Friend,” Sadie replied, with a smile, placing a hand on Donny’s heart. She turned her finger toward Gus, who watched from outside. “Friend?” she asked.
Donny looked to Gus.
Gus looked away. He didn’t feel like much of a friend.
“Yeah,” Donny confirmed, nodding after his hesitation. “Friend.”
Gus finished pouring petrol into the car and directed his limp toward the shop. The bell still jingled as he opened the door.
Walking down each aisle, he found little to salvage. The shop appeared to have been looted a long time ago, and there was little left for him to ration.
His orders came from the prime minister. The government had re-established itself. Most survivors had homes, they had plans in place to solve the country’s situation – but when Gus walked through a ransacked shop with dirty shelves left to grow mould, it reminded him how much the world had still all gone to shit.
They could make out like they were on recovery, but they weren’t. It was just the best of a bad situation. Things weren’t looking up. There was never going to be a true resemblance of society again. Because they could bomb London and destroy the quarantined zone – but the virus still existed.
Just as he turned to leave the deserted shop, he felt something crunch beneath his foot. He pulled his shoe away and looked down.
An abandoned pair of sunglasses lay on the floor.
He picked them up and left the shop.
He got into the driver’s seat and felt the mood of the car instantly change. Whatever happy conversation was going on had abruptly ceased. Donny turned back to face forward, and Sadie returned to gazing out the window.
Gus paused.
He threw the sunglasses onto Donny’s lap.
Donny lifted them up, then turned his inquiring gaze to Gus.
Gus didn’t look back. He couldn’t. He wasn’t one for apologies.
He didn’t plan to live long enough to ever have to grow to like this kid. He just had to tolerate him.
Donny wiped the dust and debris off the glasses and allowed a twinge of a smile to creep to the corner of his mouth.
Gus turned the ignition and sped away.
Minus Eighteen Hours
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gus enjoyed the enticing serenity of silence that filled the car as a result of Donny’s submission into a nap, and he drove idly with little distraction. The open road was his path, and he soaked up every turn of the wheels. Occasionally, he had to swerve the car for an infected, or slow down to avoid a group of
undead feeding off the open body of a helpless soul. That’s why he didn’t drive too fast. Just fast enough not to be tedious, and slow enough to avoid any unexpected obstacles placed around the corner. The perfect speed.
Movement twitched behind him. He looked in the rear-view mirror and watched as Sadie stirred. Within seconds of waking she became agitated. Fidgeting, looking out the window, quickly shifting back and forth across the seat.
She reminded Gus of his daughter’s kitten. So restless that it had to be entertained or it would destroy the house. If you ignored its movements for a minute, it would end up climbing up the curtain or tearing up the furniture. Gus never really cared, as all this stuff was replaceable, but the look on his daughter’s face when the kitten sat purring on her lap wasn’t.
It was just the rapid movements, the restless nature of her fidgeting that reminded him of that kitten. Something about her that just meant sitting still was not possible. It was more than a simple case of ADHD. It was as if she needed to hunt or eat, and being stuck under a seatbelt was not satisfying her.
“Cool it,” Gus calmly instructed. “You’re going to wear yourself out.”
Sadie’s eyes abruptly shifted to Gus’s in the rear-view mirror. They were startled, like she had been caught in the headlights.
“Don’t you ever chill out?” Gus asked. “You know, relax, or stop frettin’ or nothin’?”
Her eyebrows narrowed in a state of confusion.
“Can’t you talk?”
“Talk?” she grunted.
“Yeah, like, have a conversation. Surely you could once.”
She shrugged.
“You got a family?”
She looked down.
“Can’t remember them?”
She shrugged again, with her body loose, staring at her fingers that fiddled with one another.
Gus sighed. He had enough trouble trying to communicate with Donny, and that guy could speak English.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand him – at least, she did on a basic level. It was just the complete inability to form sentences or to avoid moving, it was so…
Zombie-like.
She lifted her top up to wipe her greasy face. As she did, Gus glimpsed the sight of her navel. All around her belly were bite marks. Scars in the pattern of teeth, wrapped around the circumference of her body. Each one of them had partially healed, open wounds covered with scar tissue, like the bullet wound on his calf. These bites were not fresh. Far from it, in fact – they were old. How old, Gus wasn’t sure, but they were old enough to have been done at least a few months ago.
So how was she still alive?
And how was it she could move so quickly? Even quicker than the infected.
How was it she had more strength than a little woman should have?
And were there more like her?
It was as if she had been infected with the zombie gene and it had amplified her instincts. Instead of turning her, it had created something else, something more powerful than the zombie.
As if she was what the virus was originally built for.
A super soldier.
No. This is ridiculous.
Gus had managed to buy into the idea of there actually being a zombie apocalypse – but to start going into government conspiracies was even too far-fetched for him.
“Do those hurt?” Gus asked.
Sadie looked at him, realised that he was talking about her bite marks, and instantly covered them.
“Whoa, easy. It’s okay. I was just asking.”
She frowned at him through the rear-view mirror.
“You got pretty good instincts, by the way, I got to say,” he told her.
She listened.
“See, instincts are a funny thing. When I was fighting the Taliban, back in Afghanistan, instincts played a big part in our survival. So when your instincts are bigger, you must be better at surviving.”
She looked back at him. He wondered if she even understood what he was on about.
“That’s the difference between a weapon in your hand and a weapon that ain’t, you know. The guns and the fists and the knives, they all did some damage to ’em – but it was the bombs and grenades that really showed us who they were. Cowardly instincts of an animal told ‘em to run, so they did. They knew then…”
He trailed off, realising he was just aimlessly rambling about nonsense, and continued to enjoy the quietness of the drive.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Light hadn’t graced the basement of the school for so many months now, their eyes were becoming acclimatized to the darkness.
There are so many things one can get used to, should the situation force it.
Such as the bucket in the corner used as a toilet, the smell of which no longer infested their nostrils but mixed with the clogged air. The cold and damp, accompanied by distant drips that they couldn’t place, had sunk into the background, along with the constant knowledge that they were probably going to die.
Laney was too young to fully realise the reality of the situation. She had understood enough not to complain about the lack of light or the potent odour drifting from the corner, but she had not yet faced the likely potential demise they were going to confront should they be trapped there any longer.
Mrs Kristine Andrews, Laney’s caring teacher, understood it all too well. She had enjoyed Laney’s company, with her being one of the more delightful personalities in her class. Yet there was a distant glint in her eye, blurred by the oversized glasses she wore. Her frilly skirt was becoming stiff, forced to grow dirtier and dirtier with the moisture of the basement. There was nowhere she could sit or lie that would allow her to be free of residue, and she was starting to wonder what the point of them living was.
She didn’t have any idea how long they’d been there, but it felt like years. It couldn’t be, surely, but it felt like it. Daylight was a distant memory and, with the battery gone on her watch, there was no way to even know whether it was day or night.
The only thing she knew was that the groaning on the other side of the door was from undead wanderers who would pounce on them and eat them in a heartbeat.
Do they even have heartbeats?
Maybe some scientists had answered that question. Maybe they’d even found a cure, and they were depositing it aerially for everyone to self-medicate. A vaccine that would protect them, and they did not know.
Or, maybe, it was far worse out there than it was in the basement. They could even be the only survivors.
There was no way that she could be sure, so she waited.
But for what?
If no one knew that they were there, what were they hoping would happen?
The more that time drifted onwards, the more she understood staying in the basement was becoming less of an option. No one was looking for them. No one was going to find them. They were running out of tinned goods, and were being forced to ration the very last of what they had.
The options were either wither away down there, or get eaten as soon as they opened the door.
“Mrs Andrews?” Laney’s innocent voice perked up. “What are you thinking about?”
“I’ve told you, Laney, call me Kristine,” she insisted. If they were going to rot together, they may as well be on a first-name basis.
“I’ve finished my colouring book.” Laney lifted a book that she had already coloured in, and had coloured over the same colours. The colours were faint, showing that they were running out of ink – but bless the child, she was making the best of the bad situation.
“Mrs Andrews – Kristine – when are they coming to find us?”
She was so sweet. She really was. A terrific child. But she was desperately naïve.
What should Kristine do? Tell her the truth? That they were going to decay until they were just bones?
Or keep her hope up until she dies?
“I don’t know,” Kristine answered longingly. “I really don’t know.”
“What the fuck is g
oing on?” came a loud, aggressive voice from the opposite corner of the room.
And that was the other problem.
The other thing that may kill them.
Bill. The school caretaker. God knows why he ever worked in a school, what with the utter contempt he had for children of all ages.
“Nothing, Bill,” Kristine replied, unknowingly grabbing hold of Laney.
“We need to open that door,” Bill declared, standing up and stretching, his pot belly seeping over the top of his stained trousers, trousers that had been stained before they even got trapped down there.
Bill was probably the only person who could retain a pot belly whilst he starved.
“I’ve had enough of this shit, I’m leaving!” Bill decided, rubbing a trail of snot from his nose with the back of his arm.
“No!” Kristine jumped up and ran toward him, gently placing her hands on his arm.
“No?” Bill replied, looking at her deviously, with wandering eyes and excess drool. She knew what he was thinking.
“We still have food, we can last a little longer.”
“Well, babe, there’s only one way I’m not opening that door.”
“Please, Bill, at least wait for Laney to be asleep.”
Bill looked over her shoulder at Laney, who continued to draw in the corner with her back to them.
“She’s occupied.”
“Please, Bill.”
He turned to open the door.
“Fine, fine!” she declared, holding his arm as she stood between him and the door. “Just, please… Don’t let her see…”
“She won’t see a fucking thing.”
She turned around. Bent over. Allowed him to hike up her skirt.
As she watched Laney playing with her back to them, blissfully unaware, a tear trickled down the side of Kristine’s cheek.
And she wondered who would be more likely to cause their death – the infected, or Bill.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gus closed his eyes and enjoyed his first few moments of solitary peace for hours. He’d been dying for nature’s relief, and this was the first moment of isolation he’d had, where he could stand in front of a view and urinate into it.
