The Dying & The Dead (Book1): The Dying & The Dead

by Jack Lewis

  “Maybe the new guys brought the infection,” said Bethelyn.

  Ed shook his head. “It was here days before they got here. It was waiting in the air.”

  “What?”

  “The storm, Bethelyn. It didn’t just mess up your roof. The virus is airborne.”

  Ed knew that from where Bethelyn stood she would be able to see the harbour, and beyond it was the raging sea. Ed’s dad used to bring him to the window when he was a kid. Before he grew too big, he would lift him up so that he could stare out across the island. This landscape was all Ed knew, and more than likely all he’d ever know. Back then his father had been able to name every constellation that sat in the night sky, and he’d tried to teach them to Ed. He wished he’d listened.

  Night had come on so suddenly it had taken Golgoth by surprise, though not Ed. It had always been this way on the island. The sun strained through the clouds and slowly lit up the mornings like a man grumbling his way out of bed. The afternoons would see clear skies, and then out of nowhere it would darken. No doubt if Ed sat outside and stared into the sky for hours he’d be able to watch the sun fall, but it was amazing how much the onset of night caught the island’s residents off guard.

  “We need to get down there first light,” said Bethelyn.

  “There?”

  “The harbour. I can’t stay here another minute. “

  He got the sensation of being stared at by empty eyes. It was strange how a person could be present in the flesh but be somewhere else at the same time. Her body stood across the room from him and leant against the windowsill, arms hugging her waist, but her brain had travelled to a place he couldn’t follow.

  “We’ll find a way off,” he said. “I’ll try and remember how to sail.”

  “Did you ever think about leaving when your brother died?” she said.

  “Come on Bethelyn…”

  “Just talk to me. I need this. I need the distraction.”

  Distraction didn’t work. Ed knew that all too well. There was no avoiding something like this, and the fact that Bethelyn could even talk like that meant that it hadn’t even begun to sink in yet.

  Ed looked at the floor. Was he really going to talk about himself? He’d kept the door locked so long he was scared how large the monster inside it had grown. He’d tried to starve it, but every stray thought was like food being slid under the doorframe. He took a deep breath and thought about what to say. It was stupid, but when he opened his mouth he actually felt nervous.

  “After he was gone, people always used to talk about what a hero James was,” he said. The words came easier than he expected. “They thought it’d make me feel better or something. People always think they know what’s best for you, like there’s a user manual to the mind and all it takes is the right combination of words and someone will magically feel better. The fact was, if my brother was such a hero, why did he kill himself?”

  Bethelyn jerked back so quickly she almost hit the window.

  “I didn’t know that he – “

  Ed nodded. “As good as. You know he was in the navy, right? He fell for some girl on the mainland. I never met her, but I know her name. It used to be a swear word for me. I used to say her name and feel my body fill up with hate so much that I’d feel like smashing everything in the fucking house.”

  “Jesus Ed, you’re going red.”

  “James was stationed at a naval base on the east coast near Loxbrough and he used to head into the city on rec time. Think he met her in a pub, or something. By the time his tour was up and he had to come home, he’d practically glued himself to her. So when his tour ticked down and we knew he was coming back I thought I was going to have a best friend again, but instead all I got was a guy who had something missing. Like not all of him was really there.”

  Bethelyn hugged herself tighter, though it wasn’t cold in the room.

  “I think I remember him coming back,” she said.

  “After the infection broke he used to sit inches away from the TV and flick through the channels trying to get every scrap of news about the mainland. He was hoping for something good, but every day it turned to shit. When they finally pushed the big off switch and the TV’s went south, he went completely fucking doolally. He couldn’t cope, he was a slob. I tried to talk to him but he wasn’t my brother anymore. I thought he might have been infected or something, but pretty soon I realised he wasn’t going to eat me. Part of him was gone though.”

  “Sorry, Ed.”

  “So that’s what happened. A naval ship docked in the harbour to try and barter supplies and James put on his old navy uniform and got on board. Didn’t matter that he’d been discharged. Think in his loony mind he was going to smuggle himself to the mainland and go find her. A few weeks later the ship was back, except this time the tide brought it in piece by piece. No sign of anyone, no sign of James.”

  He hung his head. It made him want to go hide somewhere from shame, but he felt the heaviness of water around his eyes. It felt like he was walking a tightrope where the slightest push would tip him over, except instead of falling to the floor he’d be hurtling into a whole mess of emotions that he’d planned on hiding from forever. If he said anything else it was going to pour out of him.

  “Ed.”

  Across the hall was Ed’s room, which he and James had shared for more than a decade. If he wanted to, he could go in there, prise up the chipped floorboard and find the time capsule they’d hidden. The whole house was a museum where his family memories stared back at him like relics. One day he’d been a kid with a mum, a dad and a brother, and one by one they’d all left him.

  He felt off balance. He knew that his eyes were wet now. He felt a hand fall on his shoulder and rest there. This was usually the part where he’d shrug it off, but this time he let it stay. He felt himself let go of everything that he’d been holding in.

  18

  Heather

  Wes sat against the wall. Heather had found dry tissue from a shelf underneath the bathroom sink, and Wes had used it to wipe the blood from his nose and then plug his nostrils. His face was set in a grimace, and from time to time he’d throw sneaky glances at Heather when he thought she wasn’t looking. She’d see him out of the corner of her eye and somehow knew what he was thinking. He wants to kill me.

  Their Great Escape had once been a plan with a carefully maintained path, but it had turned into a muddy road blocked by fallen trees and pitfalls. She was lost in a maze where her options were leading her into dead ends. She couldn’t go home because Charles would have ordered it to be staked out. She couldn’t leave the Capita yet because that would mean travelling, and she couldn’t move with Kim in her present condition. She would wake up in a few hours, and whatever happened, Heather couldn’t be outside when she dealt with it.

  She felt different. It was like a switch had been flipped inside her, except that she didn’t know what the switch did yet. From second to second she bounced from the verge of a full blown panic attack to feeling the need to smash things.

  Wes glanced over at the window. He looked like a man in a doctor’s waiting room expecting bad news.

  “What are you still doing here?” said Heather.

  Wes held his hands out in front of him. His skin had always been so clean and soft and his nails were perfect, yet today his skin was covered in dried blood.

  “I’ve only lived here two years, you know.”

  “So?”

  “You never met my wife.”

  “I didn’t know you were married.”

  He licked his thumb and began rubbing the blood off his palm.

  “She died. Then my boy died. We live in a world where everyone dies,” he said. He nodded over to Kim on the floor. “She’ll die too.”

  “Don’t fucking start.”

  “I still remember the day that I knew things had collapsed. I saw the signs just like everyone else, but for the longest time I never really believed it. I remember the exact moment when I pulled my head out
of the clouds. Thomas was only seven months old. We were bottle feeding him, and we had to boil the bottles. I got up one morning and found that the gas in my mini-stove was out. No problem, I thought. Phil next door will have something I can use. So I went out of the house, and knocked on my neighbour’s door. I caught my reflection in the glass on his window and saw a big, dirty beard hanging from my chin. God knows how long we’d shut ourselves away.”

  “I was going to apologise to Phil for not calling round before now. I’d explain to him I was just scared. There was no answer, so I opened his door. Soon as I did, I heard a crying sound. I walked through into the living room and saw Phil on the floor. His wife was in front of him, crying, and Phil was on his knees with her hand in his mouth. He held it between his teeth and pulled at the skin between her thumb and index finger. I remember her on the floor, face white, eyes wide, almost dead. The fight had left her. She was dying and in shock. And then Phil turned his head and looked at me. And that’s when I knew.”

  “Everyone’s got a story,” said Heather.

  It was a fact of life now. It was one of those experiences so universal that, despite being a monumental event, had lost its uniqueness. It was one of those questions you asked people, like “Where were you when President Ginsberg got shot on his podium?” Everyone had their own story of how the outbreak had started for them, and everyone thought their own little emotional tragedy was unique. Truth was that nobody was special. Nobody’s loss was greater than anyone else’s. And losing people was no excuse for the way some acted after the world fell apart.

  Wes carried on undeterred.

  “After that we left our home and got out of the city. We spent the next year or so moving place to place, cheating death. Got to a point where we got comfortable with it, and then I made one too many mistakes. My wife and son paid for them, and for some fucking reason I got to live.”

  “This is the first place I’ve stayed in years. The only halfway stable settlement I’ve lived since people started eating each other. I hate it. It stinks and it’s dirty. But you know what, Heather? Now that it comes to it, I don’t want to leave.”

  He stood up, face wincing in pain with each moment. As he hobbled across the room Heather felt a pang of guilt, but just as quickly as she felt it, she let herself go numb. Wes walked to the wall opposite him and started tapping on it. Inch by inch he moved across, and at one point the sound of his taps became hollow. He pushed at the wall and a square part of it peeled away. Behind it was a cavity. Wes reached into it and took out a photograph, which he put in his trouser pocket. Next he took out a gun.

  “You better think about what to do about her,” he said.

  She knew he was right. Wes was a practical man above everything else, and in this matter his survival instincts were correct. Somewhere in her mind Heather knew what she might have to do. She tried to recognise this without letting her real mind enter the conversation. If she could pry open the door that housed her survival instincts but shut away every other part of the thing that formed her persona, she might be able to get through this.

  It was like she was looking through her eyes but watching another person control her body. There was a smashed bottle next to her on the floor. She took off her jacket, picked up the bottle and wrapped the fabric around it so that she could handle it without getting cut. She settled against the wall near her daughter with the bottle in her hand.

  Eric sat beside Kim, wiped the sweat away from the girl’s forehead and stared at her with unnatural attention. He held Kim’s hand in his own and stroked her skin with his thumb. For a second, despite everything, Heather was happy she’d saved him and felt a rush of affection in her chest.

  “Get over here,” said Heather.

  Eric looked at her and then looked away.

  “Get over here, now.”

  She knew it wasn’t Eric’s fault, but everything had collapsed when she met him. For so long she’d been frustrated at her own cowardice. She knew what the DC’s went through and she wanted to help them, but in her selfishness he didn’t dare. She wished she could have cultivated that selfishness even more, because if she had then her daughter wouldn’t be lying in a coma on the trader’s floor.

  It wouldn’t be long now. The door in her mind opened and she heard a voice call to her. You know what you have to do. Could she do it? The bottle in her hand felt too large, like it was swelling and soon she wouldn’t be able to grip it. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing she could use to…

  She shuddered, and almost dropped the bottle. It was a thought that she didn’t want to complete.

  Noises drifted through the open window. Wes snapped his head toward it but rather than trying to see what was happening, he slunk down against the wall and took the photograph out of his pocket. He looked at it for a few seconds and then sat still, photo in one hand and gun in the other.

  Outside, infected walked down the street. This would have been enough to worry Heather, but this scene was even worse. The infected, dozens of them, had bracelets around their necks. Twenty feet behind them, men in Capita uniforms held lengths of chains connected to the monsters. Even further back was a sight that chilled her. Charles Bull rode his horse behind them like a conquering general. He looked from side to side as he passed each house on the street, and Heather knew he was looking for only one thing.

  People had come out of their houses now. They stood on the edge of the pavements and stared, and she saw eyes go wide with surprise as the infected walked toward them, chains rattling along the tarmac road. One man, jeans unbuttoned as if he had dressed hastily, rushed toward his front door and waved his arms. Across from him a teenager settled onto a wall and watched with his hand across his forehead.

  She saw Charles’s mouth move as he shouted something. The Capita soldiers approached their infected with careful steps and one by one released their chains. Let loose, the infected lurched in all directions toward the district residents. The men and women turned from spectators of the scene to victims of it, and those who didn’t retreat into their homes were pounced on by the hungry monsters.

  Heather heard a groan behind her. She turned and saw Kim moving. Heather’s throat closed up so quickly she thought she might suffocate. She tightened her fists and felt her nails dig into her skin, but she didn’t care about the pain. She watched her daughter’s slow movements and she stared at her grey skin. She’s infected. She’s one of them. She tried to shake away the thoughts.

  Kim turned her head to her side and let out a sound that was something between a cry and a growl. She opened her mouth and coughed a spray of blood onto the laminate floor. Her eyes flickered now, though Heather couldn’t see her pupils.

  Wes stepped forward, raised his gun to shoulder height and then cocked it with a click.

  “Don’t you fucking dare point that at her,” said Heather.

  She felt like she could vomit everything in her stomach out onto the floor, and it still wouldn’t be enough to get rid of the nausea inside her.

  “Look at her, Heather,” he said.

  “Put the damn gun down.”

  Eric stayed against the wall. He eyes darted from Wes to Kim. He looked like he was torn between rushing to Kim’s side and getting even further away from her. Heather felt her hands shake. She gripped the bottle tighter.

  Kim gave another weak cough and a sprinkling of red hit the floor. She slowly raised her head. Her eyelids flickered and her fingers started to curl into her palm. By the time her eyelids opened, Heather felt like she was going to drop to the floor. Kim opened her mouth, and Heather expected to hear her groan.

  “Mum?” she said.

  She dropped the bottle to floor, not caring about the sound as it thudded on the wood. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms tight around her daughter. She knew she was squeezing too hard but it seemed like one of those times when there was nothing else she could do. She pressed Kim’s head into her chest and ran her fingers through her hair. Kim pulled away.


  “Mum?” she said with the weak voice. “You look scared.”

  Damn right she was. She’d just had the single greatest scare in her life. Not even seeing an infected for the first time had come close. Compared to this, that had been a happy memory.

  Life went on, but their life was changed now. No matter where they went the Capita would hunt them, and if they were caught it would be the slowest death imaginable. Eric, and now Kim since she was clearly immune, would be taken to the farms where the rich and powerful would drain their bodies. A selfish thought hit Heather. Am I immune too?

  Someone screamed outside. Heather got to the window in time to see two infected tearing apart a little girl while her mother stood at the side, legs paralysed by utter terror. Charles and two Capita soldiers waited and watched. Another solider, far enough behind to be out of Charles’s view, turned his head away.