“I’m sure you could have done it yourself,” she started.
“Let’s leave this, shall we?” I said, as gently as I could muster within my rising anxiety. All three were now standing in the doorway, watching Eliza intently. Marcus cracked his knuckles. Cato’s mouth was drawn tight and flat. There was a faint smile playing at the corner of Perdita’s mouth. It was a strangely adult expression that seemed alien to her young features. At that moment I found her more unnerving than the other two.
“I didn’t want to cause offence, I’m sorry,” said Eliza, yet her eyes still searched my face for something. I had nothing to give her.
We spent the rest of the day batting small talk back and forth as I helped out with bracing the fences in the back garden against intrusion, cleaning the flat and making quick forays into the neighbouring houses to gather any usable food we could find, because while the houses seemed clear at the moment, they might not remain so. At Cato’s request, while we had the luxury of time (it was a good idea, even Eliza thought so) we got a couple of rucksacks ready with everything we would need if we had to leave in a hurry and placed them near the top of the stairs. I made sure that Isaac’s personal effects were secure in my rucksack, still intending to scrutinize them in more detail in the future.
We settled down to sleep when the sun was almost set, so as to conserve our dwindling light supplies. As I pulled the blanket over me on the sofa in her lounge – a simple white walled room, low roofed with beams criss-crossing it – I realised I wasn’t that sleepy. The days were definitely becoming shorter and it seemed to be turning colder lately... perhaps winter was finally on the horizon. I spotted a calendar on the wall, with crosses up to October 17th. Well, I finally knew the date. It cemented me a little more in the world. Had I endured a winter on the island? I didn’t think so, as I was sure the shack wouldn’t have survived it without some serious work. There was a television in the corner, a squat archaic model with a portable aerial and a single dial for tuning in the channels. I knew it wouldn’t work but still I slipped off the sofa and padded over to it, flicking the switch experimentally. It did nothing, of course, yet if I looked closely enough I could see my reflection and pretend it was a picture...
Marcus stood over me, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. His blonde hair looked a little more wild and unkempt than usual and his eyes bore a sort of rheumy manic energy, as if he had been awake for days and was desperately hanging on to the waking world.
“She doesn’t like us,” he said finally, grinding his teeth.
“Yes she does,” I lied, badly.
“Don’t care though, don’t need her to like us. Just need her to leave us alone,” he said. He sounded like a child and just like a child his mood could turn in a second. I needed to be careful. Behind him I could see Cato holding Perdita close as they huddled under a blanket on the floor.
“It’s better for us to be with her, she knows the mainland better than we do. You wanted to come here because you were bored, didn’t you? Well, hasn’t this been exciting?” I asked hopefully.
“She... wants... to... kill... us” he said, hissing each word as he came close to my face. There was no warmth in his breath. It smelt of damp earth after rain, and was as cold as the sea.
“Keep your voice down, of course she doesn’t,” I said. “You’re being more paranoid than Cato. With Eliza around, I don’t know... I feel like being alive has some sort of purpose. We never had a purpose, we just existed.”
“We have a purpose...” said Cato quietly, holding the map from Isaac’s house out to me with a trembling hand. I leant over and took it, before unfolding it onto the floor under all three pairs of watchful eyes.
There was now a rough cross drawn at a point on the coast line.
“That’s us,” said Cato, pointing a spindly finger. His long fingernail was filthy, the colour of rust.
“And that’s where Perdita says we need to go,” said Marcus, putting his own calloused finger on the map. His fingertip obscured the small cigarette burn towards the centre, surely a coincidence. I shook my head. This new-found sense of purpose within the group was bewildering.
“In the morning, all right? I’m too tired to discuss this right now,” I said, returning to the sofa and hastily pulling the blanket up around my shoulders, before turning my back on them.
“In the morning then, we’ll hold you to that,” said Marcus. I took one last glance towards him and saw his huge form by the window, staring intently out to sea.
I awoke sweating from a nightmare of black, brackish water and clawing hands to find Eliza standing over me, her face a mask of fear in the pale light of the torch she held. The room was otherwise almost pitch black.
“It’s still the night?” I asked, my words slurring a little through exhaustion. She firmly pressed a hand over my mouth and motioned with her eyes to the window. I slowly crawled off the sofa, fighting my body's aching muscles and managing to stay relatively quiet, before making my way over to see what she wanted me look at. As I got closer to the window Eliza pulled my arm and forced me to crouch, although I didn’t need much encouragement to hide as now I could hear them.
Deep and throaty, harsh and rasping, their moans echoed around the harbour. The dead were walking and we were surrounded.
4
fight Or Flight
“Where did they all come from?” I asked, my voice rasping in panic. Eliza shook her head slowly, either indicating she didn't know or else simply being paralysed by the situation. I couldn't blame her; after what I had seen I had collapsed against the wall as well, not wanting to believe the scene outside.
I risked another glance, slowly peering over the windowsill. The night was relatively clear and the pale moonlight revealed what had to be over a hundred corpses staggering throughout the small quayside. Their bodies were swollen with gases and what remained of their skin ran through various hues from white to green to black, though in many cases it was falling off their muscles in sickening swathes. Many of them dragged sea weed behind them, hooked over their limbs in rubbery tangles. The corpses glistened with dirty water and looking towards the harbour ramp I could see why. The rope to the van was gone and the van itself was for the most part submerged in the deep water, having rolled away from its duty as sentry. The fence panel was nowhere to be seen, presumably having broken apart and drifted away in the waves.
“They came up the ramp,” I whispered as quietly as I could. Eliza frowned, gave a quick glance outside then crouched back down, sitting with her back to the wall. She was wearing some jeans and a loose shirt, which I guessed she had been sleeping in. It was getting too cold for much less, especially with no way of heating a house without a fireplace. Her hair was a black tangle around her face.
“That doesn't make any sense, there is no way that rope would have broken. It was used to tether a fishing boat over four times the weight of that van,” she said, kicking her foot out aggressively. “I worked so bloody hard. It took me days! We were clear,” her voice hissed, as she tried to express herself while still keeping her voice down. She eventually gave up, not wanting to make it worse by drawing the horde. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wallpaper.
“Six years I've been here,” she said quietly, before opening her eyes again. They were red tinged with grief, yet her mouth was set firmly with the same determination that she showed in everything she did. She nodded towards the door to the landing. I knew what she meant. It was time to move on.
We packed as quietly as we could, pulling on the prepared rucksacks and adding anything we could pick up quickly and safely. I still had the gun tucked down the back of my trousers but wouldn't be able to get to it with a rucksack on, so I secretly shifted it into the pocket of a warm jacket that Eliza was kind enough to give me. I was quite sure that she didn’t know I had it, as it had been so dark when I had drawn it at Isaac’s house. If she did know I had it, then she hadn’t mentioned it and I was in no hurry to draw attention
to it. I didn't want her to think that I had been hiding the gun for some dark purpose. I knew I'd never use it, except on the dead, but maybe she'd assume the worst. She didn't need to worry about me anyway, it was Marcus who had a problem with her.
She had pulled her waders on and was zipping up her leather jacket when we heard the clattering downstairs. She started to hurry herself up, pulling on the rucksack briskly as I quickly jogged down the stairs before turning towards the shop. Although it was dark there was still just enough light coming through the slats of the shutters for me to see that they were bowing inwards, warping towards the windows under the pressure of the corpses who were scraping and scrabbling as they rabidly searched for us.
“How do they know we're here?” I asked myself quietly. They surely hadn't seen us as their corneas must be as milky and dead as Isaac's had been, maybe more so from all the salt from the water they had been submerged in for weeks. Even if this was not the case, the optic nerve must have liquefied by now. It didn't make sense. Well, none of this situation made sense, perhaps this was the least of it.
“Maybe they can smell us, oh God, if they can smell us...” said Cato, who had appeared with Perdita by my side and was shrinking by the second. “I don't want to die, please, don't let me die.”
He was almost the size of a rat now, tiny and indistinct. Perdita picked him up around the waist with her thumb and forefinger and popped him gently into a pocket at the front of her dress before skipping back towards the stairs. When I turned back to the shop I saw Marcus tapping one of the windows gently, tilting his head to one side.
“We're ready for you,” he mumbled, quietly. I noticed he had acquired a fold out knife from Eliza's stand and was holding it gently, rubbing the cold steel handle with his thumb. He turned quickly, spotted me and grinned widely. He paced towards me, closing the knife as he came, before slipping it into my hand forcibly.
“Take it,” he said. I nodded wordlessly, also grabbing a couple more cannisters of butane before crouching down and trying to stuff them into my already virtually full rucksack. I saw Eliza rounding the bottom of the stairs just as the glass in the windows shattered and the metal shutters fell inwards, snapping free of their housings.
“Get up, come on,” she shouted, grabbing my arm and hauling me to my feet. I grabbed the rucksack and swung it onto my shoulders as we made for the back door. Looking back I could see one of the undead had been unlucky enough to impale their shoulder on a shard of broken glass, and another had become caught up in the slats of the broken shutter and was scrambling around like a fly in a web. Behind them many more loomed, starting to claw their way over the others. Their moans sent a chill down my spine. As their black mouths gaped, some spilling sea water that had become so foetid and mixed with their own rotten secretions as to become almost gelatinous, I felt myself becoming lost in their unstoppable, insatiable hunger. Were we the ones living in hell, or were they?
At the back door Eliza pulled back three large bolts and quickly opened it, peering into the darkness beyond to try and judge if it was safe. As I watched her I felt myself almost waking up. She was resourceful, strong willed and intelligent, yet she was just one person and needed help to survive, just as I had needed help on the island. I needed to move. I willed myself to follow her, forcing my feet into action again. I had to keep Eliza safe now, if nothing else. I couldn't allow myself to lose control while she still breathed. Eliza had turned off her torch as she didn't want to draw any more attention – if indeed light did cause the undead to become aware of us – meaning the garden was a mass of shadows and indistinct shapes. The main issue now was that we knew so little about how these creatures functioned. If I ever gained the facilities to begin autopsies, then maybe I could work out more about them, pinpoint the origin of the virus, or even begin work on an inoculation...
The groans were closer. The dead who had made it into the shop had managed to struggle to their feet and were once again pursuing us. Those that couldn't walk were crawling, dragging themselves slowly and ineffectually across the lino. There was no way it would be more dangerous outside than in the shop now, so I ducked out ahead of her, hoping that my night vision was strong enough to spot any threat.
There was a gate in a tall hedgerow to my right, at the end of a rough stoned patio area slick with morning dew. It was nailed shut but was low enough so that we would be able to clamber over it. Eliza quickly closed the back door behind us and locked it, so we wouldn’t be surprised as we made our escape. The thought crossed my mind that I hadn’t seen the other three since the dead had emerged from the sea, but somehow I knew they would be safe. Indeed, I now spotted Marcus crouched on top of the gate as if he weighed no more than a feather. His brow creased when he saw Eliza was still with me and he jumped swiftly over to the other side, disappearing from view.
I approached the gate and grabbed the top of it, jumping a little to look over and see what was beyond. I could see a slate paved path lined with hedges and trees leading up a grassy ridge behind the house and also back towards the dock through a brick archway that joined Eliza's shop to the house next door. Opposite there was the splintered frame of a gate that had been torn off its hinges and lay strewn on the grass beyond. I also saw the shadowy silhouette of the corpse that had done the deed, clawing feebly at the already broken kitchen window of the neighbour's house. I ducked back quickly before it could see me, as we started to hear the incessant thumping of the corpses on the locked back door.
Eliza had pulled out the steel anchor and I followed suit, grabbing a nearby wood handled spade that had become rusty but still seemed solid enough. I placed my finger on my lips to keep Eliza silent and signalled that I would give her a boost over. She nodded, hooking the anchor onto a climbing carabina attached to her pack and letting me lift her. It was not an easy task as she was weighed down with her rucksack but I didn't want to throw our belongings over first as they would clatter on the slate beyond and we might not have time to retrieve them if it all went sour. When Eliza was half way over she nodded to me and dropped the rest of the way. She landed surprisingly softly but not quietly enough, as I heard the moan that signalled the corpse's interest having been piqued.
I grabbed the top of the gate firmly and tried to follow her but the rucksack was so heavy, too heavy for a quick escape. Maybe it was too big for me, as it was a green canvas army surplus affair, or maybe we hadn't packed the right things or the right quantities and now I was paying for it. I heard the footfalls of the corpse on the grass of the neighbour's lawn and the clank of Eliza's carabina as she readied her anchor. She would be fine, surely.
Wouldn't she?
I heard a grunt from the other side, a sigh, a low animalistic moaning, heavy breathing and a sudden yell from Eliza. I redoubled my efforts but I was too weak, too slow. So it had come to this, defeated by a doorway, after all I had...
A hand grabbed my wrists and started pulling me up forcibly, making the muscles in my arms scream out. I looked up to see Marcus, his eyes still somehow shining blue in the moonlight. His face was creased with effort, his feet on the fence posts either side of the gate, as he pulled me up from between his legs. When I was past the tipping point he leapt down off the posts and dissolved into the darkness cast by the tunnel between the houses. I saw some other movement there too, a shambling shape lumbering out of the gloom. I quickly swung my legs over, tumbling onto the freezing slate on the other side in a heap. As I cast my eyes around I couldn't see Eliza but I could see the body of the corpse I had seen a few seconds ago lay sprawled in the neighbour's garden, its brow a crushed mess, leaking black blood. I could tell now that it had been a woman wearing a sodden grimy flower patterned red dress. There was no way of knowing how old she had been now that her head was for the most part destroyed but I did notice that her right leg was in a plaster cast. The corpse had obviously been walking on the cast, but then, why not? Clearly pain was not issue for the dead. Did the signals no longer get sent to the brain? Was there only cert
ain functions that were retained?
Another step, closer... a ragged moan cut through my thoughts. It had only been a second but already the other corpse was almost upon me. I looked up at the shape rising out of the shadows, a huge corpulent sailor who's overalls had been torn and ripped, presumably when he had died. Cuts and lacerations lay across the flabby greenish grey stomach that hung out of its damaged clothes, forcing the skin to hang like tattered ribbons. Its face was a swollen mess, with bones showing through disintegrating flesh. Its eyes were creamy white, sitting in slick pools of putrescence. Its mouth lay open in wild hunger.
I realised that I had left the spade in the garden and was defenceless. I scrabbled backwards, trying to get to my feet and run at the same time, slipping on the stone and falling back down. It was then that it fell out of my pocket, clattering on the slate... the service revolver. I grabbed it manically and swung it round to bear on my attacker. I pulled the hammer back with my thumb, slick with sweat and grime... as the anchor's blade slammed into the sailor's temple, Eliza swinging it with deadly effect. The thing tried to turn towards her but the little hellish spark of life had been granted to it was already fading, as its knees buckled and it came crashing down, still wearing the anchor like a perverse devil's horn. Eliza put her foot on the body's back and pulled the weapon free with a sickening hollow sound, forcing the brain matter that remained in the skill to spill out over the path. She wiped the back of her gloved hand across her brow, pulling a few strands of her straggly hair away from her face, before staring down at me, her eyes wide.
I was still holding the gun and Marcus was grasping my fingers hard in his own huge hands, lying alongside me on the pathway. I tried to move my fingers but they were held fast. Marcus leaned in close, smelling of the grave, his lips pulling into a sneer.
Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead Page 7
