Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead

by Jacob Prytherch

  Open front door?

  The sounds from below were not what I had expected. There was no gnashing of teeth or desperate hands scratching but rather the sound of deep, laboured breathing interspersed with grunts of pain and disorientation. I slid the gun into the back of my trousers and went back to the bedroom to pick up the kerosene lamp. When it was lit, I slowly made my way down the stairs, watching the details emerge in the faint but welcome light.

  The lamp illuminated a thick set, bulky woman. Her face was twisted with emotion, a mix of fear, disgust and anger. She was very much alive. There was a patch of blood in her tightly drawn black hair, spreading towards her right ear and forehead and dripping onto the floor where she lay, with her left ankle twisted badly to her side. Her eyes blinked in the light as she pushed herself away from me along the carpet with her arms. She looked to be in her mid forties, her face showing laughter lines and freckles over lips tightly drawn in determination. She was wearing thick rubber waders covered in mud, a weather beaten leather jacket zipped up tight over her torso and a thick set of fishing gloves. A small anchor was lying on the floor a few feet away, four wicked barbs on a foot long steel pole, just outside the open door that was swinging gently in the breeze. Just in time I realised she was making for it, so I quickly circumnavigated her to grab it. She lunged for my leg to try and stop me but she was still groggy and I was able to stumble aside, stooping to pick up the makeshift weapon. Outside I saw the rain had stopped, although the wind was still whistling around the dead harbour, bathed in pallid moonlight. The sound of the sea provided a strange and soothing backdrop to the potentially violent situation as I looked down at the woman, the cold metal anchor heavy in my hand. She closed her eyes in resignation.

  “Well, go on then. I’m too tired anyway,” she said, her voice heavy with the weight of the condemned. I didn’t reply, feeling unsure how to begin this first human contact. I decided to close the door, as the breeze was chilling my bones. I placed the lamp on the side table along with the anchor, before rubbing my hands together, my mouth working silently as I tried to formulate my first words. In the silence, she opened her eyes again.

  “I said do it. If you want to try and play with me before you end it I will fight you every bloody step of the way you maniac,” she said, spitting the last few words out as if they were poison.

  “I won’t, I don’t... I...” I said, still lost for words. What did she think I would do? Why would she think that I’d hurt the first person I’d met for... ever? Well, perhaps it was understandable after what Marcus had done. I had to try to make amends somehow. A show of compassion, yes, that would help. I crouched down near to her ankle but she hastily backed away, pressing her back against the wall.

  “What are you doing?” she asked angrily, as if enraged that I hadn’t killed her yet. This question was easier to answer and I finally found some words.

  “Your ankle, it looks badly twisted. It might be broken, I can check...” I said, trying to keep my palms open to show I wasn’t a threat. Was that how it worked? It seemed right, so I did it, hands held out in a gesture of peace. She kicked at me with her right leg and fired a wad of spit at my outstretched palms.

  “I know it’s twisted, I can feel it,” she said whilst trying to crawl further away, even though she had no more room for movement. She shook her head, muttering to herself. “Crazy, absolutely. Should have...”

  I slowly approached as she watched me and gently lifted her foot, causing her to wince.

  “I can’t check through these waders, I need you to... ah...” I said. She laughed mirthlessly.

  “Of course. Is this really how you’re going to do this, shoving me down the stairs before trying to fix me?” she asked, arms held out in front of her to keep me at a distance. The blood was starting to drip down her forehead and over her eyes, causing her to blink repeatedly as she involuntarily tried to clear it.

  “I didn’t push you, it was Marcus. He’s... aggressive. We thought you were him, the brigadier, I mean... Isaac. The man in the cellar. Well, not a man any more... but anyway, we thought you were him and that you were going to kill us. I’m sorry, I’m...” I sighed, sitting down in despair at how it was going. “Please forgive us.”

  She didn’t answer for a while, pursing her mouth as she searched my features with her eyes.

  “Well, Marcus has introduced himself in his own special way,” she said at last, her voice softening slightly, “who are you?”

  “Me, I... don’t have a name.”

  “Everyone has a name.”

  “If I ever had one, I lost it a long time ago,” I replied. I glanced up to the top of the stairs. Marcus was still standing there, a black silhouette with pinpoint red eyes. His face bristled with spikes that moved in and out of his skin in time with his breathing.

  “Really,” she said, tilting her head to look up the stairs, before looking back at me. “So you’re saying you can remember how to diagnose a sprained ankle but you can’t remember your name?”

  “You can’t choose what you forget,” I said, starting to feel annoyed. I quickly quashed my irritation by breathing deeply and trying to control myself. This was going badly enough as it was without me getting short tempered with her.

  “You’re probably right,” she said, “but I suppose I’ll have to choose to forget just being thrown down the stairs and let you have a look at my ankle.”

  “We thought you were...”

  “Yes, yes,” she said in clipped tones. “Lets just get this over with. I’m not going anywhere like this, and if one of those things comes knocking I’m as good as dead.”

  She unzipped her jacket to reveal a thick woollen jumper, before pulling the wader straps off her shoulders.

  “You’ll have to help me,” she said, bracing herself up on her arms. I tugged at the waders as gently as I could but there was still enough traction to make her yell in pain as her foot slipped out of the boot end. She grimaced as I pulled the waders off to reveal some worn jeans underneath. When her ankle was freed I motioned for her to lay back and gently lifted it, giving support to the foot and calf. She was also wearing a pair of trainers, as the waders were quite large and had probably not belonged to her originally, so she needed them to fill the boots out. I slipped the left one off before gently checking the joint. There was some swelling and heat but a quick check of all the likely bones didn’t show any breaks.

  “Just a sprain, hopefully it won’t be too bad if we limit the damage. I’ll need to get something cold and strap it up,” I said, gently guiding the woman towards the stairs. I gently placed her foot on the second step to keep it elevated, and left her as I headed into the kitchen to try and find something to cool her injury. I had a quick look around the room just in case but couldn’t find anything suitable, as the freezer had long ago ran out of power and was just a rotting food depository. I hit on an idea and opened the door to the sodden garden, before selecting two pieces of rain soaked slate from an ornamental border. I brought them inside and headed back over to her, enjoying this strange new sense of purpose.

  She hadn’t moved, still frowning at me. I realised then that I had left the anchor close to her and she could have reached it if she had been quick, although she had decided not to. Maybe she simply had not realised her opportunity but I decided to take it as a peace offering of sorts nonetheless. It was time to reciprocate, so I picked up the anchor, bent down and handed it to her carefully. I could hear Marcus growling from the top of the stairs with anger and distrust but I chose to ignore him. The woman looked at the weapon in her hands for a few moments before folding the anchor down and laying it on the ground. I smiled as I handed her the two pieces of slate. She didn’t smile back, instead accepting them with a simple nod.

  “It’s the best we’ve got. Put them either side of your ankle and we’ll have to hope it stops the swelling getting worse for the moment. I’ll go and get something to strap the ankle up, so you might be able to walk on it if you’re lucky, and I’ll
also see if I can find something to help with that cut above your eye,” I said, feeling a bit better about the situation now that I had a role to play in her recovery.

  She watched me go upstairs, cradling her ankle with the slate. When I reached the top I had to stop momentarily as Marcus stood to block my way. The black hair had once again receded but his face still carried a dark expression. I thought better about asking him what the trouble was and motioned sheepishly that I wanted to get past. He eventually moved and I glanced backwards to see the woman still staring.

  Mercifully, Cato and Perdita were still asleep on the bed. I mouthed a silent thank you; I had no wish to explain the situation to them at the moment. I found a spare sheet in the main bedroom dresser and tore it into strips. I was was about to head downstairs when it all happened in a few loud, earth shattering seconds... the loud crash of a door slamming into a wall as it was thrust open. Cato and Perdita’s eyes jerking open in alarm. A yell of desperation. A wave of terror gripping me.

  I sprinted back to the landing in time to see the woman desperately trying to unfold the anchor and stand up at the same time as the large rotting shape of Isaac stumbled towards her, dripping with foetid mould and ichor. The electrical chord had snapped, just as I had dreamed, or maybe I had heard the snap and it had influenced my dream. Either way, the remaining stump of it hung down behind the matted silver hair that glistened on his rotting scalp. His footsteps were jerky and irregular. I could see his right foot bowing out at a sickening angle; he had obviously broken his leg when he had landed on the dark cellar floor. Maybe he had lain there for hours before my conversation with the woman had roused him...

  In a panic, paralysed by fear, I looked towards Marcus. He grinned as wide as I had ever seen, bristles bursting from his skin in a small shower of blood, before launching himself down the staircase, taking the steps two at a time and throwing himself at Isaac just as the creature reached for the woman. The corpse of Isaac was well built but Marcus was fuelled by a demonic rage and he slammed the dead man’s body into the door, before clambering off and picking up the side table one handed as if it were no heavier than a cricket bat. He brought the awkward weapon down hard on the rising corpse’s head with a sickening hollow sound that made me wince. The impact broke the table’s leg off, even though Isaac was still moving.

  “Let me,” said the woman, at last on her feet with the anchor’s blades extended. “Stand on his chest for me,” she said. I froze, wondering from my vantage point how Marcus would react to an order. To my amazement he capitulated, even with the black bristles of his fury covering his features. Maybe his desire for carnage was stronger than his desire for autonomy. He pushed the dead man’s chest down hard with his boot, as Isaac grappled ineffectually with Marcus’ leg, trying to grab it and pull it towards his ravenous mouth. This was the last time I would see Isaac’s still moving features but there was nothing left of the man who had cared so much for his granddaughter. The photographs I had scavenged were a more fitting legacy than this sack of maggots. When the woman brought the anchor down hard, puncturing the skull in a burst of liquefying flesh and bone, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.

  We buried Isaac next to Jane just before sunrise. There was little dignity in the way I had dragged his body into the hastily dug hole – leaving a trail of gore from the house – but it was the best we could do. Nobody said a word as I threw the earth on top of his ravaged body, with Perdita and Cato standing stoically either side of the woman, whose head I had bandaged with ripped sheets. Even Marcus managed to find some solemnity in his soul and stayed silent. I planted two crosses constructed out of planks nailed together at the head of the mounds and as an afterthought I went and got the hammer again, nailing a particularly fine looking medal on Isaac’s cross before wiping the sweat from my brow as the sun finally crept through the clouds above us.

  As I had been digging the hole, the woman’s tough shell had finally cracked, the relief after the violence acting as a strange aid to socialisation. She had introduced herself as Eliza. Her voice was generally calm and measured as she described a little about her past few weeks, though her account was understandably muddled. She had given up on trying to get more details about my own past and seemed content enough to do the majority of the talking, just for simply having someone to talk to. I was happy to listen, as it saved having to endure Cato’s endless disconsolate musings. Eliza told me a tale that somehow filled me with wonder despite it’s horror... it was a tale of rumours of sickness, moving on to reports of violence, culminating in a death of society amidst a desperate struggle to simply survive. No one had known exactly where or when the plague had started, yet it’s effects were deadly. She couldn’t be sure of the incubation period or how it was spread as there hadn’t been any teams of scientists, not here, just ordinary people trying to keep their families together. Some had called it witchcraft, others were sure it was a biological weapon. Whatever it was, it had worked fast.

  She had been running her small camping equipment shop when the first refugees had started to flood into the harbour with disease already spreading among them. Boats had come and gone but there had always been more people waiting, screaming and bargaining as they had tried to get on board. There had been ugly scenes as some male boat owners had openly stated they would only allow women on board. The payment they had obviously been angling towards had made Eliza sick to her stomach, but from what she had seen some had been desperate enough to accept the bargain. No boat had left without at least someone capitulating, as the blind terror of mortality had gripped them.

  Soon the deaths had begun and the boats had stopped coming. Maybe several people in the harbour had already had the symptoms and had tried to hide them, or maybe there had been simply one source of infection, there was no way of knowing.

  Eliza had helped at first of course, giving out tents, food and blankets to those ill prepared for the journey ahead, refusing to believe the nonsensical stories until she had seen someone rise with her own eyes. When she did, it had been a teenage boy, barely old enough to shave. He had thrown out an arm from the sleeping bag where he had died in the night and grabbed his mother, dragging her close and ripping out her throat with his teeth before anyone could stop him. She had watched with tears stinging her eyes as the boy's father had been forced the kick the dead boy – who was wriggling like a caterpillar in his sleeping bag – over the side of the concrete harbour and into the dark waters below before cradling his wife in her last moments. It had been too much for Eliza. She had retreated to the shop, hiding behind the locked steel shutters and refusing to come out as the scenes of violence increased and the gradual cacophony of the dead had started to echo around the cliffs.

  Eliza had watched as many more had been thrown into the sea by way of burial, before they had started to rise, lumbering out of the sea, crawling up the boat ramp. One of the more enterprising refugees had driven his van down the ramp to create a barrier with an old fence panel but it had only stopped the ones who had already died. Sickness had been everywhere, and there was nowhere to go as more and more people arrived.

  Every death that devastated a family had gone hand in hand with brawls, as Eliza had heard fights breaking out nearly every hour. Maybe those with a stronger self preservation instinct had tried to rid themselves of the risk by dismembering or burning the bodies, which in turn had led to the family of the deceased, presumably driven mad with grief, defending the body so that they could at least give them some sort of last rites. When more and more had started to rise it had been too late for arguments. Soon the ranks of the walking corpses had swelled, as people had even dived into the sea in desperation, trying to swim somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was away from the dead. From the window where Eliza had stared out across the bay, she had been able to see most of the swimmers being pulled under by the huge number of underwater corpses, with whoever had escaped their clutches facing almost certain death in the cold waters beyond. It had been a horrifying spectacle
but one that had morbidly held her attention long after she should have looked away.

  It was not long before she had been the only living person left, with all of the other residents having presumably left on the boats or died. She had even heard the family next door screaming in fear as the horde had broken into their house. Eliza had crouched down behind the counter with her hands over her ears, cursing her own weakness and fear and sheer inability to do more.

  When a corpse had managed to claw his way through her back garden hedgerow from next door she had been forced to act, for her own survival’s sake. She had tried to remain calm, opening the back door and brandishing a large kitchen knife, waiting for her moment. The corpse had turned towards her, hunger in its eyes, thick blood seeping from the gaping wound that used to be its jaw bone and dripping down a grubby floral dress. With a start Eliza had recognised what used to be Andrea Lomax, a pensioner from a few doors down. It had been hard to equate such a gory sight with the woman who had spoken with such passion about her gardening just a week ago. She had hoped that the dear lady had left on the first wave of boats, yet here she was, her pale skin turning to green, greying hair slick to her scalp, flabby arms reaching towards her. Eliza had tried to steel herself but as the corpse had come closer Eliza had started to shake with adrenalin, almost dropping the knife. Eventually she had aimed a wild slash at the thing's face but had only served to slice through some putrefying skin. The corpse had kept on coming. Eliza had needed to re-evaluate the situation again and quickly, running inside and grabbing the first useful thing she had been able to find, a folding kayak anchor she had used on various trips in her past. After she had unfolded it, she had paused under the weight of the enormity of what she needed to do, but not for long, eventually bracing herself and acting. As the corpse had shambled into her kitchen she had slammed one of the anchor’s spikes into its forehead and had watched in horrified fascination as all emotion had drained from its dead features. The body had slumped to the ground and Eliza had changed, gaining a new sense of purpose.