by Jack Lewis
“So you’re really leaving me?”
“You’ve got your story, I’ve got mine. Let’s hope they cross again.”
She stepped off the cart and onto the ground. Although she had nothing but the clothes she wore and the gun in her hand, she had never felt heavier. It was only thoughts of Kim that let her step toward the distance. A horse neighed behind her, and when she turned she saw the wheels of the cart start to spin and carry the soldier and the trader away.
23
Ed
The sea threatened to whip one of them away but each time Ed or Bethelyn were able to throw out a hand and save the other. They skirted their way along the edge of the island by clinging to the jagged shoreline rocks and hoisting themselves forward. In waters like this, it seemed foolish to swim. Golgoth was not a large place, evidenced by the annual Hundred Lap Race where contestants would run the circumference of the island a hundred times. Trying to traverse it while covered in freezing water was a much tougher task. By the time Ed decided it was safe for them to climb onto land, he and Bethelyn collapsed on a grass bank like beach towels discarded in the rain.
They were on Picnic Point, a knoll near the beach where families used to picnic in the summer. In the winter, teenagers would gather to drink and smoke roll-ups until the tide washed in. Ed lay on his back and sucked in air, but it was like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom, and no matter how big a breath he took it still felt like he needed more. His soggy clothes clung to his skin and his hands were so numb that if he couldn’t see them, he could have believed they had been cut off.
He got to his feet. He stuck out a hand and offered it to Bethelyn. Her red curls stuck to the side of her head and her skin was blotchy in places as if she had been pelted by rocks. They hiked away from the knoll and up a gentle incline. A contrast to the cliffs on the opposite end, this was the softer side of the island. Families would often walk down the slope at a leisurely pace with fishing rods poking over their shoulders and picnic baskets in their hands. This was the lie that the island sold its residents, that it was an idyllic retreat from the smog of the mainland. When you walked across Golgoth, passed Ed’s house, you saw the truth. You came to a cliff with spiky rocks and a treacherous fall, and you realised that if it had its way, the island would throw you into the sea.
“My head is throbbing,” said Bethelyn.
They came to the edge of the village. The town hall was fifty paces in front of them, and beyond it were Bethelyn’s house, and then Ed’s. Even coming at it from the opposite end didn’t make the scene any brighter. The moon was hidden behind the hand of a cloud, and the dim light that shone down hit the slates on the roofs and disappeared. Somewhere on the island were the strangers, and Ed knew they would be hunting him.
“Destroying the ships,” said Ed. “A pretty bold way of saying they don’t want us to leave. They wouldn’t destroy their own though, right?”
“So?”
“We’re taking their boat.”
Bethelyn put her hand on her hip and became a school mistress scolding a silly child.
“How big was the ship?”
“I only saw it in the distance.”
“But it must have carried the group of them here. So we’re not talking a rowing boat, are we?”
“Guess not.”
She shook her head.
“Your sailing skills are getting better and better by the second. A few hours ago you vaguely remembered a lesson your brother gave you. Now you’re Captain No-beard who can sail a galleon.”
He knew she was right, but what was the alternative? If it came to it, there was no way they could fight the strangers. Even if they did somehow manage to kill all of them, it wouldn’t give them salvation. It would leave them stuck on an island full of the infected.
“I’m trying,” he said. “This isn’t easy.”
Bethelyn put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you are. I just wish you didn’t have to.”
“Let’s get some things. Provisions. Food, preserves, clothes. Then we’ll take the ship before they even realise it.”
They walked by the town hall and back to the familiar road that span toward their houses. Ed was against the idea, but Bethelyn suggested that they go to her cottage. He worried it would stir feelings that they, cruel as it sounded, didn’t have time for. For lack of an alternative, he reluctantly agreed.
“We can mess around in your house looking for something edible,” she said, “But I don’t fancy living on spoiled cheese.”
“Maybe we should take a cow on the ship. Otherwise we’re leaving them for the infected” he answered, but the joke fell flat.
They found Bethelyn’s front door half-open. She stepped onto the landing first and Ed followed. The hallway was full of a draft so cold that it seemed to have settled into the walls, and when Ed breathed out it left his mouth as steam. Bethelyn had painted the walls of the landing mint green, but glimpses of older decoration poked through in the spots she hadn’t coated properly. It looked like a paint job done begrudgingly, rather than with an aesthetic eye.
“You go into the pantry and gather jars,” said Bethelyn, “And I’ll go upstairs and get clothes.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Remember your little speech? About not splitting up? Let’s get the stuff upstairs together.”
“Fine.”
As they reached the top of the stairs their footsteps began to squelch on the carpet. Water dripped in from the hole in the roof and made a sodden mess of the fabric. It made the house smell like a dog that had been soaked in the rain. Even if nothing had happened after the roof first broke, the house would still have been lost because there was no contractor on the island who could sort out a mess like that.
There were footsteps in the bedroom beyond them. Ed stopped mid-step. Bethelyn paused at the top of the stairs and leaned into toward the door. Ed hoped it might have been a particular heavy drip sneaking through the roof cavity, but it became clear the sound was not water. It was something living, something large, and it was moving toward them.
As Bethelyn leaned closer to the doorway a figure burst through it, and it took seconds for them to realise it was an infected. It was Terry Slattery, a retired lumber merchant who lived with two cockerspaniels which followed him everywhere. He used to be captain of the darts team and a skilled angler, but now his desires didn’t move much beyond a yearning for flesh.
Reaching with outstretched arms, Terry gave a cry that was at once desperate and angry. Bethelyn fell back in shock and collapsed into Ed’s chest, and if he hadn’t kept a firm grip on the bannister they would have tumbled down the stairs. Terry swiped at Bethelyn’s head but she ducked away.
Ed began to back down the staircase and expected Bethelyn to follow him. Instead, she took hold of Terry by the leg and pulled him down to the floor. Bethelyn reached to her jeans pocket for her knife, but as she grabbed the handle Terry sat up and launched at her, mouth open and teeth bared.
Bethelyn screamed as Terry bit into her shoulder. Ed felt adrenaline dump into his veins but as Bethelyn blocked the staircase, all he could do was squirm in agitation.
“You bastard,” Bethelyn shouted.
She pushed the infected to the floor, took hold of its hair and smashed its head up and down on the carpet. Ed had never seen a rage like it before. Bethelyn lifted her fist and began punching Terry’s face until its features started to deform and blood began to spew out. Bethelyn was a boxer who carried on punching through the bell, and when Ed stepped in as referee he pulled away a fighter covered up to the elbows in blood.
Ed squeezed past her and walked across the landing and into the bathroom. He took a towel from a rack and threw it to Bethelyn. It flopped beside her and stayed untouched.
“You okay?” he said.
Bethelyn walked across the landing and stood outside a bedroom. Ed had only visited the house for the first time a few days ago, but he knew this was April’s room. Bethelyn hovered on the doorframe, a vampire unable
to cross the threshold without invitation.
“I need a minute,” she said.
Ed nodded. Bethelyn walked into the room and shut the door behind her. It felt strange to hover on the landing while she was in her daughter’s room, so Ed walked into the main bedroom and looked out of the window. He saw the cliffs as the end of the island. He’d spent a lot of time there, and none of it had been happy. He remembered sitting there as a kid with the salty breeze in his face, legs swinging over the edge, waiting for his dad to come back from a week of fishing. Years later he had stood a few paces away from the edge, smoked cigarettes and searched the distance hoping to see his brother’s ship.
Infection or not, he should have left Golgoth. Once he knew James wasn’t coming back, what was left for him here? While he stayed on the island he was lonely and the only company, if he chose to have it, was his grief. He’d let himself wither inside, wasting the life that his dad and brother didn’t have.
The bedroom door opened across the hall and Bethelyn stepped out. Her eyes were red, her skin blotched.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Outside there was the crashing of the sea and the groans of the infected. He couldn’t see the water yet, but the infected were difficult to miss. Men and women who he’d once known stumbled across the cobbles with blank eyes. One of them bent over, opened its mouth and let a torrent of blood flow onto the pavement.
They walked passed Ed’s house and toward the cliffs. As they stood on the edge with the sea below, it didn’t feel strange to be back again. It felt like he was drawn here, and that somehow things for him would end in this very spot. As he thought this he looked down, and forty feet below, idling in the water, saw a ship. It was drifting out in sea but a rope tied to the stern moored it to a rock.
“This is it,” said Ed. “Just need to get down the cliffs now.”
It was a forty foot straight drop and likely meant suicide even for a strong swimmer. Ed knew a different way down, one that he and James had used in daring afternoon trips that went against every reprimand their mother had ever given them.
“This way,” he said.
As he walked to his left, Ed felt a sudden pain tear through his leg as though he had been shot. It felt like his calf had been set on fire, and he couldn’t stop the cry that left his mouth. As the fiery pain seared through his leg he felt himself falling forward, and for a second thought he might topple over the cliffs. He hit the ground, looked at his leg and saw a spear sticking from the meat of his calf.
24
Heather
The last eight hours had drained her. As she walked the pathway across the wilderness she didn’t pass a single person, and by the time she saw the chain link fence she didn’t care enough to hide. She stood in the open and looked at the compound in front of her. A fence ran around a rectangle area half the size of a football pitch. There were various stone buildings scattered within it, and at the end, taller and wider than everything else, was a warehouse building with a jagged roof and a smokeless chimney that stretched forty feet into the sky.
This had been an industrial complex once. She couldn’t imagine how the workers must have felt having to see a structure like this every day. She thought about middle-aged men and women trudging towards the gates, plastic bags full of lunch swinging from their hands, already counting down the minutes despite facing the beginning of a twelve hour shift. She could almost the feel their desperation as every day they faced the grim reminder that this was their life, that they would meet these gates every day until they died.
People were worth more than this. They were better than just fleshy resources to be shuffled around according to the whims of management obsessed with targets and money. Before the outbreak, tens or even hundreds of years before it, people had lost sight of what life was about. She didn’t think badly of the people doing the jobs. They were honourable people giving up their most precious resource, the seconds and minutes that made up their lifetimes, to keep food on their family’s table. The outbreak had redressed the balance, but it had also brought something much worse.
As Heather approached the fence she scanned every part of the complex, but there was no sign of any guards. In front of her there was a gate that was double her size. A sign swung on the front with a red cross on it, and a padlock and chain locked it in place.
Was this their big defence? She gripped the Heckler in her hand and thought about blasting the padlock off. Deciding that would attract too much attention, she raised her pistol and brought the handle down on the metal. After five attempts the rusted steel split and fell to the floor, and Heather walked into the complex.
The yard was covered in black tarmac. The chain-link fence was grey and so were the buildings, making the place cold to look at. She still couldn’t see any sign of Capita soldiers.
From somewhere, a familiar groaning sound drifted toward her. Ahead of her, in the middle of the courtyard, was a porta cabin with a door on the front and a wall lined with windows which had been boarded up.
She walked into the courtyard and the groaning sound grew louder. She heard the rattling of metal, and when she looked to her left she gasped. There was a pen, surrounded by a fence, and in it were more than a dozen infected. Two of them had seen her and they gripped the metal and shook it as though they could tear it open. They gnashed their teeth and cried out as they tried to reach her, and Heather wondered how strong the chain link was. There were men, women and children infected, all with lifeless eyes and starving faces. Some were naked, and she watched in disgust as an infected man shambled toward the fence with his genitals swinging. He poked his fingers through the gaps in the chain-link.
When she looked closer she saw that there was an opening at the back of their pen, and this lead to a narrow passage which circled the complex. Stray infected wandered through it and walked aimless patrols around the outskirts. With a shock, Heather realised that at certain points there were gaps in the fence, and the infected would be able to walk through it if they chose.
This was their defence, then. There were no soldiers guarding the complex because they didn’t need them. Why employ men and women to keep guard when you can have a moat filled with the infected? People could get tired and lose concentration; the infected never would.
She heard groaning to her right. She spun round and saw a man, woman and a child who walked towards her as an infected family. Fifty yards ahead an obese infected squeezed through a gap in the fence, and stray wire scratched across his uncovered belly and ripped his skin as he wedged his way through. Behind him two more infected waited for their turn to pass. The groaning was louder than a raging storm, and she knew that the infected had sensed her. Some would have seen the tired woman as she passed through the gate. Others would have smelled her flesh. Some of them tasted her in the air, the unmistakable sensation of skin and blood that had not yet been infected and would be ripe for a meal.
She could have turned back, but she knew they would just follow her out of the complex. There was nothing but wilderness for miles, and she didn’t have it in her to lead a chase across the country with dozens, if not hundreds, of infected pursuing. She had made it this far and turning back was not an option.
Heather ran across the courtyard to the porta cabin that stood in the middle. It looked like a shed that was once installed in her school playground after the art department had flooded. Art class had been a sanctuary for Heather during the heights of her bullying, because what she lacked in social skills she made up for with creativity, and later, sport. When the department had flooded and the porta cabin became the new art studio, her favourite teacher had left. The new one, a stern woman who kept a notebook on the difficult children, had done away with creative programs. To her, free-thinking was a dirty word. That was when Heather’s love for art had died, and she hadn’t picked up a brush since.
She tried the porta cabin door but it stubbornly held against her hand. She tried pushing it forward and pulling it back, but it seemed tha
t the cabin didn’t want to give her sanctuary against the infected that were swarming toward her. One of them, a young woman with a bush of ginger hair twice the size of her head, was just fifteen feet away.
Heather pointed the Heckler at the lock. It didn’t matter about the noise now. It wasn’t as if she could attract anymore of the monsters than were already coming for her. She looked down the sights of the gun, took a breath and pulled the trigger. There was a bang, and she felt a pain in her shoulder as the gun jolted her. Where the lock had once been was now a hole, and the smell of spent fireworks hung in the air as she pushed open the door and stepped into the cabin.
The cabin was filled with nearly twenty thin people. They turned when they saw her. Some slid off beds and got to their feet, bodies taut and trembling in agitation. Heather wondered how many bullets were in the gun, and it took a few seconds to realise that she wouldn’t need them. The people in front of her, bodies stick thin and bones pressing into stretched skin, were not infected. Heather took a step forward and a woman, old with a bent back and a silver necklace dangling down to her breasts, backed away.
