The Undead Day Seventeen

by RR Haywood

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. He hates blood and he’s the most squeamish man I’ve ever known.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘He’s not a vampire, Howie,’ she cuts me off with a warning look, ‘he’s the same as me.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘What now?’ She asks and gives voice to the question no doubt running through everyone’s head.

  ‘Now?’ I lift my face to the glorious rain pattering down and the image of Lani rushes into my head. The image of her smiling and I can almost hear the way she laughs when Cookey gets her going. That changes to the snarling beast that was in the old armoury and the look of pure hatred she had for me. Except it wasn’t her. It was the thing inside. The infection. The hive mind at work as it saw me. But then Lani was still there and it was Lani I had sex with. The thought of it appals me. That we had sex while she clutched a live grenade. We tried to have sex before but I was too tired, too exhausted and didn’t perform. It grated on me when I heard Roy and Paula had done it five times in one night and like a cheap idiot I felt like I needed to prove something and right there, at that precise moment when my life was at stake I felt horny and took the chance. What the fuck was that about?

  ‘You okay?’ I feel a hand on my arm and look down to see slender fingers smudged with dirt and attached to tanned hands and slim arms. Marcy looking at me with what appears to be genuine care but she withdraws her gentle touch when the snarl touches my top lip. Blanching she looks away as though both hurt and ashamed.

  The intense hatred rears back up. Not at Marcy or at what she is or the fact she touched my arm but for everything we have become. I look over to the old armoury and the flames licking at the sky. The dead bodies on the ground offend me. The screams of the dying bring insult to the injury of our failures. We are but men and we are flawed but I always thought those flaws were what made us human. That the perfection lay in the imperfections. We fucked up but we meant well but then the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Isn’t that what they say? They? Who the fuck are they? They are the same fucking idiots that failed to stop bad things happening and right now bad things are happening. People are crying in fear. Real people who just a short time ago were leading lives so wrapped up in the day to day drudgery they had no concept of real life and death struggles. People who have fled, run, hidden and finally got to the place they were told was safe.

  Mr Howie and his army. They run the fort and it’s safe there. It’s the last bastion of the living and outside those gates we fought to protect this place and so many have fallen and given their lives so we few can remain. Big Chris gave his life. My sister, Sarah gave hers. Ted, Sergeant Hopewell. Terri. Steven and Tom. They fought and died and they did so that life can keep going and what have we done with it?

  Doing something wrong makes you human. Making mistakes is part of life. Making the same mistakes again and again makes you a dumb cunt.

  A spark of realisation brought by a memory of the safari park and the awful sight of the gorilla fighting the lion. Both wanted to survive. Both wanted to live. Both were willing to give the ultimate so their kind could continue and they did it with everything they had. There was no holding back.

  The fort has to remain and it has to be a place free from persecution or force otherwise all we’re doing is creating the same environment for mankind to fuck themselves over with again.

  Children with guns? What the fuck was I thinking? How did that happen? We poured scorn on news bulletins of African children forced into being soldiers and I’ve done the same thing here. How? I stare at Clarence and see the failure in his eyes. I look to Blowers and see it in him. All of them have failed but only because I have. I lead and they do as I do.

  The abhorrence sends a cataclysmic feeling of doom sinking in my gut only to rear up with the same stubborn refusal to be quietened that has kept me alive so far and a nagging voice pulls at the back of my head.

  Why would Lani kill herself? Why would the infection kill the one person who knows more about us than anyone else turned so far?

  ‘Shit! We’re putting the wrong fire out…’

  I burst away towards the old armoury and the fierce blaze roaring into the night sky. She wouldn’t kill herself. The infection prizes survival too much to simply let one of our team be blown up like that.

  I head to the closest section of wall near the raging fire and starting hunting for hoses and taps. The pipes are visible and it doesn't take long to trace the pipe to the nearest tap and I’m suddenly very aware this is the tap we used so much to clean up from our fights and work. I grab the tap and twist the spokes but nothing happens. I twist and twist and stare about failing to understand why the water won’t flow.

  ‘The pipe runs above the armoury,’ Nick gets to my side, ‘it would have burst when the wall blew out.’

  We run down and past the scorching heat until we find the wall on the other side of the old armoury and the pipe that runs along and disappears into the ruined mess.

  ‘GET MORE HOSES,’ I shout the order at the team and repeat it several times for the noise here is incredible. They run off as Nick finds the tap and twists it fully on. A new sound joins the cacophony, of water instantly turning to hissing with evaporation as the jet sprays from the unseen broken pipe directly into the blaze. I grab at the pipe and heave like Clarence did. It takes me longer but Nick helps and we ping the rusted brackets from the wall to free the pipe that we drag out until the red glowing end is in view. The broken section has already melted away but the spray of water now coming out cools the metal as fast as the heat tries to warp it. We can’t touch anywhere near the end for fear of the heat but we get it pulled out and working together we aim the jet at the wide section of missing wall.

  It isn’t enough. Not by far. The fire is so fierce that it seems the water is having no effect at all. Another hose is dragged up and already flowing it too is turned onto the blaze. The gap between the inner and outer wall only runs across the front and partially into the sides of the fort. This far round and there is only one outer wall separating the fort from the sea. It’s thick but no doubt the force of the blast has blown it out and given an escape route for Lani.

  Looking at it now and it seems impossible that anything, let alone a human being, could survive that blast but within my mind I recall there was the initial explosion then a slight pause before the rest went up. Lani would not kill herself and the infection would not kill a member of the team after trying so hard to get us.

  A third hose finally joins in but a botched job has been done connecting two lengths of hose together and the flow is far less than the other two. It does work but it’s painfully slow and the constant flow of water works to cool the closest section and the flames are beaten back inside the rooms and as my eyes adjust, so I start to see glimpses of the interior. The walls inside have been blown apart with huge gaping holes but enough remains to have given some cover. I was right too, the outer wall is blown and here and there I catch a fleeting view of the sea beyond. It’s ironic that just feet away is enough water to douse these flames instantly but we’re in here relying on things that are only marginally more powerful than garden hoses.

  Inch by inch we claw back the section from the fire. The water does part of the work but also the lack of fuel. With everything burnt away within the old rooms the fire has only brick, stone and plaster to eat. The wooden frames are gone. The furniture too. The fire is tamed but the heat remains too high for an entry to be gained and with only three hoses it renders us useless and impotent. We pace up and down. Nick hands cigarettes round and we smoke. We don’t speak other than to give commands or pass observations. Maddox joins us and we wait, we bloody wait for what feels like eternity until we can start inching closer to peer inside.

  ‘Soak me and Dave,’ I call out and wait for the hoses to be turned on us. Once drenched we start inching towards the ruined entrance and gain the first foothold inside the rooms. The smell is disgusting. Wet burnt chem
icals like rubber and oil. It reeks and brings tears to my eyes and I have to clamp my hand over my mouth. Dave doesn't seem as affected and gets further in than me. In the main room and the floor is covered with lumps of blackened slag that are totally unrecognisable of any form. The interior walls are broken and fractured and the humidity is awful. Water pouring in to an area of such high heat that it feels like a steam room.

  We use torches to shine down and round the floor of the main room. Into the corners of the wall that still stand and we toe the sodden steaming disgusting black heaps on the ground and search for anything that might resemble a human form.

  In truth the devastation within is so total that she could have melted into any one of the unrecognisable lumps or have been blown apart. It doesn't feel right though. It feels empty.

  Dave turns slowly shining his torch round the walls, ‘where was she?’ He asks.

  ‘There,’ I point to a spot a couple of feet to the side of him.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Er,’ I turn and look back at the entrance, ‘yeah…I think so…it looks so different in here now.’

  ‘The grenades were on the floor?’

  ‘Yeah, there I think,’ I point to the ground between us, ‘she wouldn’t have killed herself. The infection wants us too much to have let that happened. She got out that hole,’ I shine my torch through the gap in the broken interior wall and out through the ruined outer wall to the dark surface of the sea beyond.

  Dave holds the torch in front and motions as though pulling something from it and I realise he’s using it like a grenade. He holds it firm and turns to look at the doorway to the trapdoor room where the broken outer wall is. He nods and holds the hand holding the torch out.

  ‘Dropped…One…’ He pace quickly away to the door of the trapdoor room, ‘two…’ He disappears from view into the room then his head reappears as I look through the broken chunks. ‘Three….if she got down into that corner the blast would have gone past and…’

  ‘And what? She got out? Dave? And what?’

  He stands completely still shining his torch into the corner of the room where he indicated Lani was hiding before she got out.

  ‘Come in here.’

  The tone of his voice sends a river of ice through my veins. The command so gently given that it’s quite possibly the worst thing I have ever heard.

  ‘Dave?’ I croak the word out and cross the short distance to the doorway, ‘what?’

  He doesn't say anything but steps aside and shines the torch into the corner. Within a split second I have taken it in. All of it. The whole of it. My gut flips, twists and sinks down with such a wrench I stagger and lean against the still hot wall.

  ‘Fuck…’

  Lani dead. The knife still in her hand that was used to tear a slit in her guts. Blackened from the fire. All of her hair burnt away and the skin blistered and already peeling away from the bone. The innards scooped out by her other hand are cooked and smoke like burnt offal and the smell hits me at the same time as I my mind processes the view. I drop down and puke on the floor with hot bile that retches from the stomach. My eyes fill with tears and my throat burns but I make myself stare up and over at the corpse.

  That she ruined her own body in the last seconds of death is obvious. Was it her doing it to prevent the infection taking control or was it the infection doing it as a message?

  ‘She could have got out,’ I rasp and glance the few feet to the gaping hole in the outer wall, ‘it’s right there…she could have…’ I puke again and this time only acid comes out.

  ‘She disembowelled herself, Mr Howie.’

  ‘I can fucking see that.’

  He looks down quickly at the harsh rebuke, ‘I’m not fucking blind, Dave. I can see it. I can her guts have been ripped out by her own fucking hand.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What else has she done? Go on…tell me….what else has she done?’ My anger vents at him and a rare look of misery crosses his face. He shuffles position and looks first at me then away from my demanding gaze.

  ‘I can’t tell if you are asking a real question or not,’ he says so quietly and so wretched it rips the vehemence from my mind.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say in a whisper. Swallowing the bile I force myself to look at Lani and slowly get back to my feet. I aim the torch and slowly take in the horrible details. She got to the corner as the blast swept past and enough of the wall remains to have given enough shelter from the blast and initial debris. She would have been singed and possibly battered but there was a way out. A safe exit.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what, Mr Howie?’

  ‘She’s ripped her own guts out…’

  ‘And slit her wrists.’

  Another lurch of pain shoots through my heart but my wavering torch picks out the ends of her arms and the blackened pools beneath each wrist. They are dried out now from the intense blaze but I’ve seen enough pools of blood now to recognise what they were.

  Her left hand holds the knife and in the midst of the misery the abstract memory of Lani being right handed comes to mind. Not that it matters now. She’s dead. Either she took her own life in such a way to make sure she could never come back or the infection did it to prove something. Either way she is dead. Lani is dead.

  ‘Mr Howie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Up there.’

  I look at him as though in a dream. That none of this is real. Lani isn’t dead. Was that my wishful thinking that she got out? Was it a carefully disguised hope that she was out there alive and somehow we’d find her and she would be okay? That she would be like Marcy and come back to normal. All the energy has gone from me. All the fight and the need to keep going and do something worthy. I feel drained and exhausted to the bone. So bloody tired.

  ‘Mr Howie,’ he looks at me and motions with his head back to Lani.

  ‘I’ve seen enough, mate.’ I say the words wearily and slowly blink as the stress and tension finally all play out.

  ‘Look.’

  ‘At what?’ I turn and glance at the body then shrug, ‘what?’

  ‘Up there.’

  I glance up and that stress and tension ramp through the fucking ceiling and suddenly it all makes sense. The guts were opened as a message. Look what I can do. The wrists were slit so enough blood pooled out. The knife is in her left hand because she is right handed and the right hand was needed to write the message on the wall above her head where the plaster is still mostly clean and free from the fire.

  There, upon the wall and in thick letters of blood are the words that make me know Lani was fully turned.

  One race

  The e at the end is smeared as her body dropped lower from the exertion of holding herself up while her vital life blood pumped from her wrist. The spray from the arterial bleed is obvious across the wall. Underneath those words are three more. Three words that tell me this is not over.

  He is coming

  Two

  Day Six

  The body is dragged across the blood stained lawn by one ankle gripped and pulled with ease. The entrails stink and the air is filled with the stench of shit, urine, undigested food, stomach acids, blood and vomit. Rotten flesh left in the sun too long so it blisters and cooks. Boils that burst with puss that dribbles down and the flies swarm like a cloud above the cadavers lying strewn about.

  The boy heaves and pulls. He stops and grips harder then pulls again. His face bright red from the exertion. Leaning back and the body shifts position so he takes a step and tries dragging it but the bloated corpse is too heavy. Finally, and with a huff, he drops the leg and scouts about for a smaller body. A young woman, thin framed with her ribs showing through the thin skin of her abdomen proves an easier weight to handle. He scoops to grab a wrist and heaves back with all of his might. The arm detaches with a soft tearing noise. The boy staggers back and falls to his arse. Anger flares on his tanned face. In an instant he’s up and charging at the dead woman. The arm is lifte
d and slammed down so the torn end slaps at her face. A tantrum explodes and the anger unleashed is fed until rage builds and vents. Again and again he uses the woman’s arm to beat her with.

  ‘What you do?’ Gregori shouts from the far side of the front lawn.

  Ignoring him the boy continues to thrash the woman. Beating the arm down again and again until the ragged stump flays and spills goo down over her exposed abdomen.

  ‘BOY!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop this now.’

  ‘NO.’ He gets angrier and beats harder as Gregori drops the ankle and marches back across the blood stained lawn. The arm is dropped and the boy starts using his feet to slam into the woman. He kicks the ribs, hearing them break. He stamps down on the head and aims for the nose. When it breaks and splinters he retains enough sense to shift his aim and drive his heels into the eye sockets.

  Gregori wrenches him away to send him spinning off to the side. The boy is up the second he gains his wits and charges back with blind fury etched on his face.

  ‘Stop,’ Gregori orders and is ignored as the boy runs past to continue his beating of the already dead woman.

  ‘I count…’

  The boy continues unabated, slamming and kicking to hear the bones break and render the corpse as bloodied and broken as possible.

  ‘One…two…’

  Heedless of the words being uttered the boy carries on the destruction. As Gregori sounds the start of the next word he stops suddenly and spins round to glare up at the pock-marked face of the Albanian.

  ‘I stopped,’ the boy sneers.

  Gregori’s nose flares and his eyes narrow at the impudence of the tone. Never would he have dared speak in such a way to his trainers. The temptation to strike the boy is strong and as if feeling it, the boy lifts his head and offers himself to be hit. Defiance in his eyes. Goading and provoking. Anger is an emotion to be used not wasted. Gregori bites it down and shakes his head slowly before turning to walk off.