Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead

by Jacob Prytherch

  “It could certainly bring on some nausea, if nothing else,” I said, patting Arthur on the shoulder as I surveyed what he had brought me. “Even though dead bodies in themselves are in some ways less of a hygiene risk than those of us who are still alive, if they carried infection when they died then it could spread...”

  I quickly remembered myself and looked towards Dorothy, who was still staring at me, pulling the blankets back around her neck as if to shield herself. “I’m sorry, that was unnecessary. Besides, there are many things that could cause your fever.”

  She didn’t say anything, breathing deeply as a new wave of discomfort flooded her body. Arthur went to her side and held her hand, grasping it tightly as he kissed the sweat from her brow. She painfully raised her other hand to his face, whispering low but insistently. I only caught a few words of the conversation but it was obvious they were discussing me.

  “... seems... knew how... my arm...”

  “... others... could be... trust...”

  “... hope...”

  “I know I’m intruding,” I said, picking up the aspirin and twisting off the childproof cap, “but I really, truly only want to help.” I tapped the bottle against my palm, shaking out two pills which I handed to Arthur along with the bottle of water. He handed them to her one at a time and let her take tentative sips as she tried to swallow them.

  “What now?” asked Arthur after Dorothy was finished. She had settled back with her eyes closed, her breathing a little less shallow than when she had been sleeping.

  “I just need to ask Dorothy a few diagnostic questions,” I replied as I moved up next to them. I reeled off the classic symptoms of the common causes of fever, checking which applied to her and making a few mental notes to help my diagnosis. After a few minutes it became clear that she had already been suffering from several conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, which could cause fever by itself. She had been involved in a struggle with the walking dead as they had been surprised in their home after the initial outbreak, during which she had fallen heavily, which in turn had led to her becoming bed-ridden. Whether it had any bearing on her fever though was hard to tell. The light was fading fast so Arthur pulled the curtains closed again, whilst lighting a couple of candlesticks. The glow flickered across Dorothy's ghostly features as I stood up, rubbing my hands as I tried to piece it all together.

  “I need to check a few more things, then we can see what we need to do next. I’ll just go and sterilise my hands, it’s been a while since they’ve been washed,” I said, as I picked up a bottle of disinfectant and a few other useful items. “Where can I clean up?”

  Arthur pointed out into the corridor with his good hand. “Second on the left.”

  I nodded, picked up one of the candlesticks and made my way to the bathroom.

  It was a modest affair in white tile and blue paint. There was a toilet, a bath with a ruffled green shower curtain pulled across it and a basin with a mirror above it, probably concealing a medicine cabinet. I gently shut the door and set the candle down on a side table before my legs gave way and I slid down the door to rest on the ground. It wasn’t fatigue but some sort of strange moment of fearsome clarity. I was playing a dangerous game here and Dorothy’s life could be forfeit. Did I really know as much as it seemed I did? Had I been a doctor before? And if so, then what had happened to send me onto that island with no recollection of before except my disjointed knowledge?

  There was a sense of movement on the floor by my hip and I jerked aside instinctively as a rumpled mess of folded paper was pushed slowly under the door. It was a little torn and there was some rain damage but as I tentatively picked it up I could see it was the map from Isaac's house. I unfolded it carefully, teasing the folds apart to reveal the same burn mark towards the middle of the map. There was also something new. It was now circled many times roughly in red crayon, although that was not the only mark. The coastline still had a large red X drawn on a small village but it was now joined to a rough trail that led over some elevation lines towards a large town, stopping short at a farm...

  Someone was tracing the journey.

  I slowly placed my hands on the floor and lowered my face to the level of the bottom of the door, to find one of Perdita's large grey eyes staring at me, glistening as if it were some colossal cloudy quartz, cold, wet and unblinking. As I watched, she slowly stood up and I heard her bare feet pad away down the corridor.

  I sat up, carefully folding the map up as I tried to make sense of it all. Perdita had never shown any real sense of purpose besides simply being with us, shadowing our footsteps. What did this mark refer to that was so important to her? It was clear that without thinking I was heading towards it anyway, though did I really want to get there? Despite her small size, there was something... vast about her presence. No, it was more a potential for vastness, as if she were a blueprint for something so much more...

  I shoved the map into my pocket hurriedly, feeling a strange chill running down my spine. My heart was thumping from adrenaline for some reason, as if I feared the child. Did I?

  A twinge in my ankle as I stood up reminded me what I should focus on. I propped my foot up on the closed toilet seat and pulled my trousers up to survey the damage. The fingernails had ripped a couple of layers of skin off on the outside of the ankle but the injury that hurt the most was a deep piercing wound from the thumb nail. There was a small amount of swelling around the wounds, which could have been the beginnings of an infection but I had to hope I was being quick enough with my treatment to stop it.

  I undid my belt and removed my trousers and socks, before washing my hands with the soap by the sink, ready to clean the wound. After running my ankle under the tap in the bath for five minutes I scrubbed it with the wash cloth, wincing at the raw pain, before finally applying the wipes and disinfectant. I pressed a sterile pad over the wounds and wound a bandage carefully around my ankle and under my foot, making sure it was secure. I hoped it would be enough.

  There was a tentative knock at the door and I heard Arthur clearing his throat politely.

  “Doctor, ah... doctor, is everything all right in there?”

  “Yes, no problem,” I said, quickly pulling on my clothes. I ran my hands vigorously under the water again and applied some more disinfectant for good measure, before composing myself and opening to door to greet Arthur's mildly concerned face. I could see him glancing over my shoulder at the room to see if he could spot anything untoward, so I thought I'd offer him an explanation to put his mind at ease.

  “It was my fingernails, they took a lot of cleaning. You have to be thorough.”

  He nodded slowly, “Yes, of course. Silly me.”

  “Arthur,” I said, gently pulling the man by his sleeve into the bathroom so Dorothy wouldn't hear, “I don't know how much I can do here. I need proper diagnostic equipment, I may need antibiotics, I may also need a stronger antipyretic if the aspirin doesn't do the trick in reducing her fever...”

  I could see Arthur's face shifting as he tried to process what I was saying.

  “She may die if we can't get her some better treatment,” I said, my voice as low as it could be whilst still being audible. Arthur started to lose his balance and I put a hand on his shoulder to help steady him.

  “But it's dark now and there's nothing else nearby except town,” he said finally, his voice small and feeble.

  “Yes, it'll have to be tomorrow, first thing. It may take a while even though it isn't far to the town but we'll get her there, don't you worry. I'll need you Arthur, I don't know my way around this part of the world,” I said, trying to keep my voice firm and matter of fact.

  “Of course,” he muttered, coughing to clear his throat. “You can rely on me. I'll start packing, I suppose. I haven't left the house for years except for the shopping trips to town, we never... we didn't feel the need for a holiday. We loved it here, you know.” He looked at me, his eyes blinking in the candlelight.

  I couldn't find any more w
ords of comfort. We were having to go back out there, back into the rain and the flesh and the horror. I settled for a nod and together we started to pack for the onward journey. Outside, the first of the dead drawn by the gunshots began to moan. It would be a long night.

  When we were finally done the darkness outside was absolute. The cloud cover was so thick that not even a star was visible and the moans of the dead echoed around the farm, punctuating our every movement with urgency.

  “They won’t get in, will they?” I asked as we folded some blankets into one of the soft travel bags, which were the least cumbersome item of carriage they possessed. Arthur finished carefully laying the few cans they had left into another bag, working slowly with his one arm, before looking over to me and answering low and softly, the crackle and rumble of his voice reminding me of a gramophone.

  “I shouldn’t think so. They haven’t since that first attack and I’ve shored up the door since then. Look, I don’t want to be rude after all you’ve done for us and want to do for us but please... let’s not speak unless absolutely necessary. Dorothy and I worked that out long ago. They eventually wander off, maybe drawn by the noise of the town. We can sometimes hear it through the walls of the house. Explosions, the wail of car alarms, all sorts. Whether it’s someone alive, or otherwise...” he shrugged his shoulders, a strange movement with one arm strapped up.

  We finished packing in silence, after which Arthur showed me to a spare room on the second floor. My ankle pulsed painfully as I walked up the stairs but I tried not to show it in my stride, gritting my teeth behind my lips.

  As I settled down under the covers on the old brass bedstead, the pain intensified, as if the compression of my foot by standing up had somehow alleviated it a little. My sleep was disjointed, hot and sweaty despite the chill that the old stone house carried. My dreams were of wheat fields, teeth and bones, flesh and blood.

  Dawn arrived with cold fingers of light pushing their way into the room through a gap in the curtains, illuminating Marcus’ features, hard lines and sharp nose, stark eyes, firmly set jaw, with his hair lank and lifeless around his shoulders as if he had been standing in the rain for a day and a night. Though I had woken up to similar sights for as long as I could remember on the island, the sight of him still gave me a turn. I jerked awake, my heart pounding almost painfully in my chest. Marcus' eyes narrowed as he scrutinized his prey.

  “Something the matter?” he asked. His voice sounded different, distant somehow, as if being heard from the lip of a well.

  “I just didn’t expect to see you there,” I replied, pulling the bedclothes around my body against the chill. Marcus tilted his head to one side, studying me. His coat now seemed to be a strange patchwork affair made of brown, grimy leather and squares of black cloth, which was just as sodden as his hair. There was muddy water pooling around his heavy boots.

  “You should know by now that we’ll always be here, looking out for you,” he said, casting his eyes around the room. A flash of movement to my right drew my attention and I spotted Cato sliding out from under the bed and skittering across to the door. He opened it carefully and scanned the hallway outside before closing it again as quietly as he could manage. The room I had been given for the night was at the far end of the corridor from Dorothy’s room, so there was little chance of her hearing us. I wondered therefore what he was looking for....

  The shrivelled man shuffled over to the bed and bent close to my ear. “You need our help, you can’t carry on alone. Without us, you’ll suffer. Marcus can feel it...”

  Marcus strode forward and pulled the blanket away from my legs, tearing at the bandage and revealing the wound on my ankle. I tried to kick him away but Cato pushed down on my thighs as Marcus went to work, squeezing the flesh of my ankle to such an extent that brackish blood started to seep out. I screamed and punched out at Cato, trying to dislodge him. Despite his thin form he was immensely strong, spidery fingers gripping me like a vice.

  “That’s it, there... there we are,” said Marcus, grimacing as he dug his fingers into my flesh before slowly pulling out his prize and brandishing it aloft.

  It was a piece of the corpse’s thumbnail.

  “You would have lost your foot to infection, ‘Doctor’,” said Marcus, smiling proudly as he flicked the nail onto the bed covers, “or else would have become one of those sacks of maggots outside. We need you to be healthy.”

  Cato released me, nodding in satisfaction as he wiped a hand across his forehead, pushing his straggly hair out of his eyes. I noticed that he looked just as dishevelled as Marcus, with his baggy shirt torn in places to reveal his skeletal form beneath. His eyes suddenly darted to the door as I heard the creak of the boards on the stairs.

  Marcus snorted and threw my bedclothes back over my legs before pushing Cato to the floor, where the thin man scrambled back under the bed, his legs and arms pumping wildly. Marcus himself crouched down and powerfully pulled himself underneath just as the handle of the bedroom door turned and Arthur entered, shotgun weaving ahead of him, fear etched into his features. He scanned the room, swinging the gun’s barrel around as he spoke through quivering lips. “Is everything all right? I heard a scream...”

  I pushed myself up to a sitting position, trying to look as nonchalant as the pain that coursed through my leg would allow.

  “I’m sorry, it was... outside, I think the noise of the dead influenced my dreams. Do you ever get that, where the sound outside...”

  “Yes, I know what you mean,” replied Arthur, lowering the gun and shuffling over to the window. He pulled the curtain back carefully, glancing downwards at the scene outside. “One or two, not bad for a morning. We should be able to get them put down before we move on.”

  He cast a glance at me, before looking back out of the window.

  “I have to try and think like that. Put them down, like sick animals. As if it’s a kindness.”

  “It is a kindness,” I said, adjusting my leg a little. The pain was lessening slightly but I was eager to get to the bathroom and give the wound another wash. My hands felt sticky and I pulled one out of the covers to see why, before quickly shoving it back under. It was covered in blood, with clots caked under my fingernails.

  “I know it is, it must be. I don’t want to come back, if... when, I should say... when I die. I just wished they looked less, well... less human.”

  I nodded, watching as the man turned around and made his way back out of the room. He stopped at the doorway to Dorothy’s room and called back to me.

  “Five minutes, then we’ll go.”

  I waited for him to enter the room and close the door before quickly sliding myself out of bed and walking gingerly to the bathroom, wincing whenever my injured foot touched the floor. After going through the ritual of sterilisation again, I re-bandaged the wound, went back to the bedroom and folded up the bloody sheets. After looking around for somewhere suitable to place them, I slowly crouched down, looking under the bed. The two men were gone – as I always suspected they would be – but lying on her stomach, resplendent in her clean crisp blue dress, was Perdita. She was facing towards me, her features a blank mask of indifference, eyes blinking slowly. Her hands were spread out at her sides as she lay flat. They clenched and unclenched in a strange rhythmic motion. Suddenly I was struck by a strange impulse and I reached out and grabbed her wrist, turning the palm of her hand towards me.

  Somehow I knew I would find it, and there it was... a bite mark, raw and fresh.

  She pulled her arm away from me in a sudden motion and seemed to slide away without any movement on her part, as if she was stationary and the world was drifting away from her. She slipped out of the other side of the bed before standing up and hopping effortlessly up onto the mattress. When I raised my head to follow her, she was gone, with no sign of her or the others anywhere in the room. I hurriedly pushed the bundle of sheets under the bed and had every intention of going to check if Arthur was ready to leave, yet I found myself sitting down
onto the bare mattress, staring at the floor.

  I was missing so many things, points of reference, vital knowledge of exactly what was happening to me. The more I was starting to integrate myself into the world of newly met people – Eliza, Arthur, Dorothy – the more the other three didn’t seem to fit. Was I suffering some sort of sensory issues?

  “I don’t need them, I don’t...” I said quietly as I rubbed my temples, in an attempt to give myself the support that they claimed to be giving me. Maybe if I showed I truly didn’t need them, they’d go. Then I could concentrate on helping others through these dead days, instead of just playing a cautious game of cat and mouse with their feelings. I looked around, expecting them to be there, watching me.

  The room was empty, save for the shelves, books and ornaments of Arthur and Dorothy, my new family.

  Arthur told me his car was a battered brown Morris Minor Traveller, with wood lined windows and worn out cloth seats. He told me he hadn’t driven it for a month or so even before the outbreak but it had always been reliable in the past and he was sure it would be up to the task we were to ask of it. The car was safely locked away in a garage thirty feet away from the farmhouse, with three or four of the dead occupying the ground between us. I asked about taking the tractor but Arthur told me the engine was damaged. He tried to insist that he accompany me but I managed to persuade him that we would be better served if he covered me with the shotgun from one of the windows above, though I had no desire to face the dead by myself. We needed to get the car to the door and help Dorothy in, which would take time. We also had to get rid of however many corpses were here already without drawing others, so it would be down to my hands to do the deed. To “put them down”, as Arthur said. That was all it was, I told myself - as I hefted up a sturdy spade that Arthur gave me – it was simply putting them out of their misery.