Don't Be Dead- Heartache After The Outbreak

by Paul Wilcock

  “So…I’m okay?” I can’t believe it, I’m afraid that this is another one of my nightmares and I’ll wake up soon with the taste of someone’s flesh in my mouth, the thought triggers a memory and I gag as I recall the people I attacked, biting into them, tearing their flesh apart with my hands.

  The doctor has a concerned look on her face as she answers my question “Physically you’re fine, even immune from further infection, mentally, might take a while longer, I’ll get you scheduled in with our psychiatrist, you shouldn’t feel bad about anything you did when you were infected you know, you weren’t yourself, it was out of your control.”

  I suppose she’s right but I can’t help feeling shit about killing and eating people, the doctor takes out her clipboard again “Can I take your name and age, we’ve been calling you patient 17.”

  I have to think for a few seconds, but my memories from before the infection have returned and I do know who I am again “Dan Wedlock, what date is it now?”

  She checks her diary “April 15th, 2007.”

  I think for a few seconds again “Then……I’m 28, it was my birthday while I was infected.”

  She smiles “Happy Birthday! I went to school with a Dan Wedlock, a long way from here, where are you from?”

  I study her face, she does look vaguely familiar, I answer her “Near Sheffield, you do look vaguely familiar, what’s your name?”

  “Michelle Beaumont, I had a major crush on you in school, you were a year above me,” she comes in close, beaming, gives me a big hug “I can’t believe it’s you!” I try to think back, search my memories for her, struggle; find a possible match……

  I’m 16, it’s June 1995, I’m leaving school, running late for my bus, a voice from behind me as I’m going through the gates stops me and I turn around to see who it is, it’s the girl that sent me the Valentine’s Day card a few months ago, she’s a year below me, I’d never considered dating anyone outside of my own year group, always thought of them as too young, I do enjoy the attention though, except for when I’m close to missing my bus home.

  “Hi, how’s it going?” I say.

  She holds out her hand “I wanted to give you these!” She drops a handful of Loveheart sweets in my hand.

  “Thanks.” I say and throw the whole lot into my mouth “Shee u ater!” The words struggle to get past all of the sweets and leave my mouth; only as I’m walking away do I realise that each handpicked sweet had a meaningful phrase imprinted on the surface and she probably wanted me to read them before I ate them. Shit, I turn around but she’s gone and I’m late so I run down the street to the bus stop.

  I’m 28, it’s April 2007, I’m in a hospital somewhere being hugged by a sexy doctor.

  “Sorry about the sweets that time.” I say, she looks confused at me, laughs.

  “Okay, no problem! I’d best go and give your details to the Psychiatrist, I’ll come back and see you later, I’m so glad we found you!” She leaves and I smile to myself, happy for the first time in a long time, cured, immune, a hot doctor that used to have a crush on me, I’ll have to try and chat her up while I’m in here. I lie back in my bed and try to think, do I have any other memories of her….

  I’m 16, it’s June 1995, I’m on stage performing in the school talent show with one of my friends, singing Boom Boom Boom by the Outhere Brothers, it’s going down well, there’s a lot of screaming girls in the audience which is very cool and as we leave the stage they start chanting “Strip! Strip! Strip!” It’s been a popular chant all evening to be fair, it’s either been that or “Off! Off! Off!” Still, I was never one to leave a girl wanting so I motion to my friend that we should head back out onto the stage while the next act is being introduced and I start to do my version of a sexy dance, pulling my tshirt over my head; my friend follows suit and the person in charge of the stereo system plays The Stripper by David Rose, the girls in the audience go crazy and we continue gyrating and clumsily removing our clothes until…

  I’m 28, it’s April 2007, I’ve just been interrupted from a nice daydream by an unkempt doctor entering my room, I haven’t seen him before but then again I can’t remember a lot from the past couple of months; his face doesn’t fit though and his hair looks odd, I check his name badge for familiarity, Dr Beaumont, definitely sounds familiar but for the wrong reasons and I don’t know exactly what the story is but there’s definitely something wrong here and the doctor reaches inside his coat for a gun as I simultaneously grab the dinner tray from my cabinet and fling it across the room at him, he bats it aside but the distraction buys me enough time to throw myself out of bed onto the floor as silenced gunshots thwip, thwip, thwip and bullets tear into the mattress. I’m weak from months of inactivity and illness and won’t win in a fight so I roll under the bed and pull his ankle hard as he draws near, his shin scrapes along the metal bed frame and he slips off balance, crashing to the ground, his boot slides off in my hand and I throw it at him as he aims the gun at me, knock his aim out just enough for another shot to bury itself in plaster rather than my head. Using all of my strength I haul myself up and across the room towards the door but I’m still attached to machines and the wires pull taut causing me to slip face down to the ground as two more bullets fly across the room where my head was a second ago. I jerk the wires hard, back and forth and some of them wrench free from my body while others ping out of the machinery and trail after me as I hurl myself out into the corridor. My assailant tries to follow but finds the door slammed into his head and he drops the gun which I kick down the hallway out of reach and wrap one of the wires that dangles from my arm around his neck and pull it as tight as I can and hang on for dear life as he slams me, gasping and turning a deeper and deeper shade of red, against the floor and walls and I cling to him and pull the wire until my arms go numb and my hands start to cramp and my fingers turn as purple as his face and I scream out as loud as I can until he finally goes limp and slumps against the wall.

  All I can do is lie on the floor, breathing hard, my whole body burning with exertion; minutes pass before I can move my hands, nobody comes along to check on me or to see what all the noise was and this worries me. Eventually I drag myself to my knees and go through my would-be assassin’s pockets. They contain a knife, car keys with a dangling “M” keyring, a finger, 14 bullets, 3 bottles of morphine and a wad of laminated sheets which on closer inspection contain a sheet detailing my recent activities along with three others. I wonder which “fantasy” he’d had that needed him to attain four different fingers. I collect the gun and reload it, head down the corridor to look for Michelle or any other doctors; were there any other doctors? I suddenly realise that I’ve only actually talked to Michelle since I’ve been here and have no idea if anything she’s told me is actually true. I see blood coming from under the door to the locker room and carefully push it open, smearing the blood across the floor. Michelle is crumpled in a heap, the lockers are ransacked, she must have disturbed the assassin as he was stealing doctor’s clothing, including Michelle’s spare lab coat, and taken a bullet to the heart. I kneel next to her, her eyes bore into me with such sadness that tears spill down my cheeks and I gently close her eyes and leave her to search for clothing that will fit me in the jumble of uniforms. I manage to find surgeon’s scrubs, a lab coat and some slip on pumps which will do for now, and head back out to explore the rest of the building. I feel a mixture of relief and sadness as I find more bodies, doctors and technicians, it seems that this was indeed a medical facility and Michelle wasn’t lying. Patients hooked up to machines like mine still “live”, safe in their rooms for now but it’s beginning to look like their treatment won’t be continuing. A larger room contains three more dead doctors but these ones are different, they look like they’ve been torn apart rather than shot, a variety of infected fill the room, chained against the wall or strapped to beds, papers full of formulae, graphs and hypotheses litter the room, strewn around in whatever struggle took place here, spattered with blood, this room no d
oubt contained the cure and I wonder if anyone will be able to make sense of it and continue their work. Should I take it with me or leave everything here? One of the infected steps from the crowd chained against the wall, only this one isn’t chained, fresh blood coats his chin and he shuffles towards me reaching out, hungry. I knew that hunger once and a brief flicker of a memory delays my reactions for a split second but it’s not long enough for him to reach me and I raise the gun and shoot, he falls backwards still moving, the bullet went through his face but didn’t kill. I step closer and push the barrel up against his forehead, fire again. This time he stops moving. The machine behind him starts sparking, clearly not designed to have a bullet rip through its internal workings and I have to back away as it continues to pop and hiss and I look around for the fire extinguisher, just in case. It’s over by the door, but as I turn to collect it, some of the papers strewn carelessly around the floor catch fire and it spreads rapidly up the curtains that surround the nearby bed. My hand reaches for the extinguisher, withdraws; reaches again before I finally decide I have to leave, the fire is spreading too fast and most of the papers are already gone. I turn and run, looking for the exit as smoke starts to plume out of the room behind me. The car park contains a Navy Blue BMW X3 4x4, 0 to 60 in 8.4 seconds. Michelle’s car, I climb in and pull away as the building burns in the rearview. I’m not sure where to go now, my list is complete, and it turns out I am in fact a dick! I didn’t get chance to ask Rachel though so that probably skews the results doesn’t it? On the one hand, the fact that Rachel was the third girl to die because of me in the past few months should probably sway the vote to being a “dick” but on the other hand, she abandoned me for Brad when things got tough; so screw her, we’re even and I’m leaving her vote blank. Hang on a minute though! Michelle, the sexy nurse was technically kind of an ex in a way so if I add her to the list and she was definitely well into me and in no way thought I was a dick so……it’s a tie. With the revised scores I’m only 50% a dick, which is probably average right? Everybody is roughly 50% dick aren’t they? I think I do actually feel better about things now so I guess it was worth doing this, it’s not like I had anything better to do anyway.

  I start a new list in my head, people I want to shoot in the face, the fat man at Tussauds is top, the mayor from that camp I stayed at, Brad if he’s still alive, that old soldier guy from Brad’s camp, Mike and Richard if I can find them, Tony from Sales………