He’d become more wary, a cat that got bit by the mouse it was pawing, but he wasn’t scared until the gun swung in his direction with her angrily nervous finger poised on the trigger.
She was too frightened to experiment with the gun, to even mess around a little with it, figuring the odds were higher that she’d blow a hole in herself ahead of anything else. But just pointing it at a human threat had proved effective and, beyond that, she was determined to learn how to use it. As soon as the opportunity presented itself. That this new world would offer up opportunities to use it seemed a safer bet than whether she’d find a teacher.
That last incident, the man frantically fighting and failing to survive in the street outside, even though he was armed, had sickened her.
Made her want to get away from everyone and everything. She wanted to unsee it, if only that were possible. In most ways it was no worse than what she’d already witnessed. Maybe it was that she’d been removed from it. That she wasn’t directly involved. The immediate risk to her was more remote. It almost made it worse. She was helpless. All she could do was witness the man’s demise. His courageous defiance of the inevitable.
And even watching that seemed wrong somehow. Pornographic. With the ability to take action absent, it felt like intrusion into something private.
She totally got Caroline’s reaction to it and it made her like the woman. She’d been grateful to her and now she was beginning to think that she liked her as well. Could maybe trust her. She hoped she could trust Caroline because right at this moment, she didn’t have anyone else. It made her wonder if any of her friends from Isherwood had survived. She didn’t know and she might never know. She certainly wasn’t about to go back there to check it out.
She wasn’t sure that she trusted Ranjit yet but he didn’t strike her as a bad guy. Quite the opposite. He struck her as the type that would take a wide detour in the road to avoid the bad guys. He reminded her of a grown up version of some of the kids at school. The ones who kept their heads down and weren’t good or bad at anything. The ones who slid through school invisible and unnoticed without leaving any sign of their presence behind them.
<><><>
They found the walkie talkies first and had them working fairly quickly. Trawling that much office space for useful items and then locking the floors down took longer than they expected. By the time they’d done enough to be satisfied, early evening was beginning to darken the sky.
They’d collected a reasonable haul.
Food and drink proved easy to liberate from the machines scattered throughout the building and they discovered a selection of items that might serve as weapons.
They found two steel wrecking bars in the plant room that adjoined the maintenance manager’s workshop and office. Brand new, the crow bars were two feet long, wicked implements with a sharp, split claw at one end and a strong steel point at the other. They would double as weapons.
Ranj had claimed a pair of plumbing pipe benders. He gorilla taped the two handles together and was left with a passable heavy duty mace, the curved formers at the business end of the handles making for an unconventional but cruel head.
Adalia lifted a heavy pipe wrench from a bench strewn with a bewildering display of paraphernalia. It wasn’t quite as long as the crow bars but they felt too big. She placed the wrench into the shopper bag she’d found earlier and now carried on her shoulder. The wrench was a close quarters weapon, closer than she would have liked in any event, but still a substantial chunk of metal that she figured was capable of inflicting damage. It made the bag weigh heavy on her shoulder.
On the sixth floor, they’d created a small village of supplies around their original meeting area.
Dazed and fatigued, Adalia wandered to the balcony after they’d eaten. At her back, Ranj and Caroline discussed the general situation, things they’d missed and options for tomorrow.
Adalia felt too worn down and weary to be able to join their conversation with any enthusiasm. It was possible that some of their energy came from the half full bottle of brandy they’d found in one of the offices.
As she crept onto the terrace, daylight was lingering but fading fast. The upper stories of the nearby hotel glowed like a beacon in the approaching gloom. A beacon for what, she no idea. More windows had been blown out and flames could be seen raging within. The sad skeletal structure of what would remain was already there to see. She tried to imagine what this place would be like in a month from now, a year from now, and she wanted to cry.
A mausoleum. Vast and robbed of meaning. A diminishing echo of the past with those things prowling amidst the ruins.
She was about to edge back inside when she noticed the figures momentarily caught in the spill of automatic lighting from a café bar.
Creeping in the deepening shadows below her. Three of them. Unmistakeably human even in the waning light. One was being supported by another and the third wore some sort of helmet and carried a spear of some kind.
<><><>
In the end, Ranj volunteered to go out to them. He, Adalia and Caroline had raced to the ground floor, awkwardly clutching their newly acquired weapons. Then paused at the main door, unsure of how to proceed.
Terrified if they were honest with each other.
They were scared and nervous simply being in what felt like the overly vulnerable foyer, let alone venturing outside of it. Talking of helping others was one thing in theory but the reality was a different matter. To step from relative safety into unknown danger demanded something nobler than good intentions. In the encroaching darkness, automatic streetlights had miraculously activated lending the street a spectral and unreal quality. To willingly walk out into that would be noble alright, but that nobility carried with it the merest touch of embryonic madness.
“I’ll go,” Ranj said in a shaky voice.
“Wait by the door for me. If I can get them to come back I will, but I’m not going to fool about. They either come or they don’t, I’m not hanging around out there.”
Adalia and Caroline couldn’t help but notice that the hands holding the heavy pipe bender shook as he lifted the weapon in front of himself, twisted the lock catch and disappeared through the door.
The five minutes that followed seemed impossibly long. When Ranj suddenly reappeared at the door, Adalia gave a shriek of fright. He frantically motioned for them to open the door. The three people were behind him.
As the four of them hurriedly entered, Ranj moved off to one side and leaned against the wall there. Panting and biting his lips in between breaths. Impending panic haunted his eyes and when he spoke, his voice was strained and rough.
“Get away from the fucking doors. Quickly. There are some of them further up the road. I don’t think they saw us but I don’t know.”
Adalia moved to his side as Caroline shepherded everyone else away from the window area.
“You’re okay now,” she said quietly as she put a hand to his shoulder.
“You did good man.”
Ranj looked her and nodded his gratitude for the comment.
“I couldn’t find them at first. They’d hidden. Spotted some of those creatures in the distance and ducked into the café forecourt, the one by the canal. We were just lucky that none of those things were nearby.”
The three newcomers slumped in the corridor by the elevators. Two men and an older woman. The woman was a mess, effectively being carried by the younger of the two men. As Caroline looked at her, all she could think was that the poor woman had been savaged. There was no other word for it.
Savaged.
As if she’d been attacked by an animal. A big one. Which Caroline supposed was exactly what had happened to her. Attacked by a new order of animal that might once have been human, but an animal nevertheless.
The woman had to be at least sixty. Her grey hair was stained red by blood that had seeped and now sat sticky and drying in the wrinkles of her face and neck. Followed its natural course like a river follows declivities i
n the land. She wore a lightweight, sleeveless dress that displayed her wounds with an obscene honesty.
Her right arm was mangled and torn from shoulder to wrist. The right leg was in a similar condition. The dress was shredded from the waist down. Her modesty had been shredded along with the garment. Whatever underwear she’d worn below the skirt of the dress was gone. Her nudity was stark and wrong. A lesser violation than that which had been wrought on her flesh, but still wrong.
The man laid her down as gently as he could on the floor and did his best to rearrange the remains of her clothing to cover her nakedness.
He was about Caroline’s age. Powerfully built, the powder blue tunic he wore unable to conceal the breadth of his shoulders and bulging biceps. Dark haired and olive skinned. He seemed to manage the weight of the woman without any effort at all. He glanced up at Caroline.
“She is barely conscious and has lost a great deal of blood,” he said by way of explanation.
His English heavily accented and oddly formal sounding.
“Do you have a first aid box or anything of that sort? I am a nurse. I will do my best to disinfect and dress her wounds.”
He shook his head in a slow way that suggested resignation.
“She requires the attention of a doctor. I will do what I can. Thank you by the way. You and your friends. My name is Attis. I am sorry, I do not know her name.”
He went to offer his hand and thought better of it as he realised it was tacky with the woman’s blood.
Caroline nodded and fetched what first aid supplies they had. She also brought bottled water. Attis accepted a bottle gratefully and then turned to work on the unconscious woman.
The other man sat on the floor with his back against the wall. He’d removed what appeared to be a cricket helmet and a back pack and laid them on either side of himself. Next to his right hand lay a length of square section chrome metal that was covered with little balls down one side and sported jagged segments welded to one end. It resembled a hanging rail from a clothes store. Maroon clumps suggested a more recent and unintended use.
Ranj and Adalia were further down the corridor, watching the street. Caroline offered the second man water and sat against the wall opposite him.
He was older than the other guy, Attis. Mid to late thirties perhaps. Weirdly dressed. From the waist up anyway. Plain old jeans and boots below but his top half sported some sort of rig. Maybe some sort of bikers spine and chest body armour. Hard black panels on the chest, elbows and back. Sweat from the cricket helmet had plastered his thin fair hair to his scalp. His small pale eyes appraised her dispassionately.
He raised the bottle by the neck.
“Cheers,” he said before downing half the contents.
“I’m Caroline. I was one of the centre managers here before ...before all this happened. That’s Ranj and Adalia,” she said indicating the other two.
He nodded and finished the water before speaking.
“Philip Sault. We were trying to get out of the city centre. It’s proved to be rather ...challenging.”
Cold expression but the man’s eyes twinkled. Held an unsettling, unflustered humour.
“Are you a batsman?” She asked pointing at the helmet.
“Hah! Not of any worth. I acquired clothing I thought appropriate to the situation. It’s far from satisfactory.”
He unzipped the body armour and ruffled the garment to circulate air. His eyes flicked casually over her bare legs and trainers.
Caroline unconsciously pressed her knees more tightly together. Without thinking her fingers lightly brushed the crow bar.
And then the lights went out.
After a short period of absolute darkness, dim emergency lighting flickered into life. In the few seconds interval, the man, Philip, had moved. The armour jacket was zipped, backpack between his shoulders.
In one hand he held a long carving knife. The other grasped the chrome rail.
Caroline shifted both hands to the crow bar and used it to lever herself upright.
<><><>
Adalia squealed very quietly as the lighting failed. The street went dark at the same time as the internal lights blinked out. For a moment, there was only blackness. She was blind. Her night vision was slowly coming when a dim glow lit her immediate surroundings.
“Shit. Sorry,” she whispered to Ranj.
“It’s okay. I think I did a little bit of wee,” he replied.
Adalia couldn’t help herself. She giggled.
“Remind me to get you some panty-liners when I go shopping next.”
Ranj looked away from the windows.
“Thanks. Keep it to yourself though. I don’t want people thinking I’m a sissy ...or a bedwetter for that matter. That aside, we need to get upstairs. It’s only emergency lighting in here but if those things outside notice it ...if they see movement ...or hear anything. We’ll be in trouble.”
They scuttled into the relative safety of the corridor. Caroline and the strangely clad man were standing. On the floor, the other man still attended the fallen woman.
“We ought to go up, away from the windows down here,” Ranj said.
A distant scream and a crash tore the air as it to reinforce his statement. During the day, they’d periodically heard sounds like that, anonymous and awful, but the scream seemed worse in the darkness.
Caroline agreed and the man shrugged his approval.
“What about her?” He said indicating the wounded woman on the floor.
Attis stood and joined them, removing and balling the sterile gloves he’d found in the medical supplies.
“She is unconscious. I am afraid that I cannot do very much for her. I have done what I am able to and the bleeding has stopped but she requires hospital treatment. I think it might better not moving her for now.”
An awkward moment followed.
The nurse scanned their faces in the gloom.
“We cannot just leave her on her own. I will stay.”
Ranj glanced pessimistically back towards the doorway and foyer.
“I’ll get some stuff from upstairs and come back down to you.”
<><><>
They sat in the shadows, a little way from the woman, eating crisps and drinking coke without any great enthusiasm. Ranj liked the man, the nurse, despite there being something curiously paradoxical about him. The proverbial gentle giant. The body builder physique and his stated profession.
Ranj had a clichéd notion of nurses being female or at least gentle looking and this guy certainly look gentle on the surface. He could imagine those bulging muscles bench pressing something enormous, but the caring touch he’d displayed with the woman seemed at odds with shoulders that strained the fabric of his tunic.
“How did you meet up?”
Ranj indicated the woman. They’d covered her with a blanket. Unconscious, she moaned and twitched, her breathing overly loud and heavy in the stillness.
“In the city centre. I met her and then we met Philip. I was at the hospital, the General Hospital on the outskirts of the city. It is where I work.”
Attis spoke softly in the half light.
“I fled to the city centre when ...when things changed. When people regained consciousness. The hospital, it was very busy. With the illness. The City Flu. Many too many people. Patients in corridors. Very few staff. Of course the staff were not immune. There were only two doctors left in all of the hospital. Three nurses. A porter. It was ...very bad. When the patients began to get up ...it ...”
He paused, struggling to find the correct word.
“It was chaos. Very frightening. The doctors were attacked. Killed. Worse. I ran.”
Ranj nodded, thoughts drifting to his own first experience of those creatures. He shivered and asked another question, a diversion from his own memories as much as anything else.
“Where are you from Attis? Your accent, it isn’t local is it?”
The big man smiled.
“Greece. I came to England to
work ...two months ago. For the health service. They were recruiting in my country. I am very ...junior ...in my qualifications, but my English is good and I am very ...dedicated. My home country, it has problems. The wages, the jobs. It is difficult to earn money to live. The economy, it is not good.”
A deep frown crossed his darkly stubbled face.
“It is there as well. The illness ...the changing. I spoke to my uncle. He did not become ill but the rest of my family. They had it. They have collapsed.”
The obvious conclusion went unspoken and a despondent silence settled over them.
The woman shuddered violently and emitted a harsh grunt. A guttural sound. Throaty and full, almost muscular.
A queerly fierce sound considering her condition. She was in shadow but they could see her mouth opening and closing as she panted for air.
Her teeth gleamed wetly as they caught the scant light.
PART 4 ...LIVING NEEDS.
There is an inherent mystery buried in life. The mystery is life itself. We turn endless cartwheels attempting to define and quantify it and kid ourselves that answers are available.
Sooner or later, we will arrive at the only answer that there is.
We are temporary, in constant transition from one state to another.
Dr Clarissa Chandra Ph.D. FIBMS.
The Mysteries of Mutability 2005 Edition.
Courtesy of Carburgh Publishing.
<><><>
We’ll break boundaries.
No coming back.
We’ll end up where we’re getting.
No coming back.
The Heirloom Authority.
No Coming Back, 1988.
Courtesy of Smith Beater Publishing.
<><><>
Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse Page 35
