by Jack Lewis
They left the train in single file. When he got down onto the platform, Eric couldn’t see anything through the steam of the train as it hung around them. It dispersed into the air, and slowly things started to clear. For the first time, he saw Camp Dam Marsh. As Eric, Kim and Allie stared at it, they held hands.
The camp was a few acres long. It was surrounded by two fifteen foot-high chain fences, in between which crowds of infected shambled back and forth. Seeing them made Eric flinch, and he felt Kim grip him tighter. There were two brickwork chimneys which reached high into the sky, and black smoke drifted out from the ends of them. Beyond the fences were rows of flimsy-looking wooden cabins with overgrown grass around them. The majority of the camp was taken up by a yard filled with loose stones. Men and women walked across it, some pushing wheelbarrows full of rocks, others swinging pickaxes at the ground. They stared rigidly in front of them, avoiding the gazes of guards who waited on the sidelines. Clouds seemed to group overhead, fat and grey as if it was their job to cast a shadow over the camp.
Someone yelled to the right of Eric. A boy struggled under the grasp of a burly guard. He wriggled as if he was having a fit, and eventually his movements were enough to free him from the man’s hands. The boy took off in a run, sprinting away from the train and away from the Camp in front of him, going any direction but Dam Marsh.
Eric saw movement in a tower on the corner of the yard. A guard propped up a rifle on a metal railing and squinted down the sights. The boy ran away with pattering feet, his arms stretched in front of him as if he was reaching for something.
A crack cut through the air. Everyone was silent. Even the idling engine of the train seemed to calm into submission. The boy slumped face first into the floor and smashed his head against the stone. He squirmed on the ground as blood seeped from a hole in his back.
Another shot was fired, and another hole appeared in the body. As the immune men, women and children watched, the boy became still and his blood spread in a pool around him.
Chapter Three
Ed
The sea opened its watery mouth and started to swallow the ship. Ed watched it from the shore, shivering so much that he thought he would never get warm again. Warnings of hypothermia and pneumonia flashed in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t think of himself yet.
The bow was submerged, and the rest of the ship would soon follow. His body was soaked and his lungs ached from the effort of swimming away from the ship and against the tide. With the adrenaline wearing off, a shudder ran through him and made him wish for electric heaters and warm hearths.
The Savage lay next to him on his back on the sand. He had his hands over his face, and he panted as he caught his breath. Ed looked around him. They were on a beach. The sand was damp and brown, and behind them was a hill with a path winding up through it. There was a metal sign fifty metres to their right warning them of a high tide. Thanks for the heads up, thought Ed.
“Where’s Bethelyn?” he said, the words straining between gulps of air.
The Savage sat up. His trousers were covered in wet sand, and grains of it were matted in his hair. He looked out to the sea where black waves swept up and down, splashing foam everywhere as they crashed.
The storm had hit them full on, and rather than sailing through it, the ship had submitted. The waves had punctured the hull and water poured in below deck. The vessel soon started to sink, and the three of them hadn’t had time to grab anything before jumping overboard. Plunging into the sea in the middle of the night wasn’t ideal, but it was either that or take a trip to the bottom of the ocean.
“I can’t see her,” said Ed “Where the hell is she?”
He got to his feet. Despite being drenched with freezing water, a nervous energy filled him and anxiety wrung his stomach. He gazed across the beach but couldn’t see Bethelyn.
“Wasn’t she with you?” said The Savage.
“I was holding her hand, but a wave took her.”
“Ah. Give her a minute or two. She’s a grown woman.”
“And we just jumped ship in the middle of a storm. Where is she?”
The Savage patted his leg and scraped the sand off his clothes.
“Just leave her,” he said.
Ed couldn’t believe that even The Savage would say something like that. Fury started to boil in him, but now wasn’t the time to deal with it. His breaths came shallow and fast. As he scanned the sea in front of them and tried to pick out Bethelyn among the waves, he noticed that he was wringing his fingers. Come on, he thought. Where are you?
The Savage put his hand to his forehead. He stared at the sea intently for a few seconds.
“She’s there,” he said, and pointed.
Ed looked, but he couldn’t see anything. The Savage must have had better eyesight than him.
“See the mast?” said The Savage. “Swim toward that. Keep a straight line. If you see a fin, pretend to be a fish. I’m told that does wonders.”
It took him ten minutes to swim out to her and get her back, but it seemed to stretch on for hours. Finally he dragged Bethelyn ashore. There was a point when, swimming toward the mast, he thought a wave was going to take hold of him and drag him away. The desire to save his friend won out. When Ed got her to the beach, he wanted to just sink into the sand and sleep for a month.
He laid Bethelyn on her side. She was breathing, so she didn’t seem to have inhaled any water. That was more than could be said for Ed. He had a bitter taste in his mouth, and his throat burned through the salt water he’d accidentally drank.
“You okay, Wetgills? You’re turning green.”
Ed bent over and coughed. His stomach bubbled, and he felt vomit flow up this throat. He coughed and then spat a spray of salt water onto the beach.
Bethelyn sat up. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled sheet. As she unravelled the sodden paper it started to tear, so she did it more carefully. Instead of the soot-drawn likeness of her daughter, it was just a black smear on wet poster paper. She threw it to the ground and then looked out to sea, where only the stern of the boat was showing.
Ed coughed again. He’d expelled the salt water from his body, but his throat burned even more.
“What the hell, Bethelyn?” he said, vocal cords stinging. “You weren’t even trying.”
She looked at him, but her expression was blank.
“Sorry?”
“You weren’t even trying to swim. What the hell’s wrong with you? It was like you were just letting the tide take you.”
“Maybe she can’t swim,” said The Savage.
Ed rounded on him.
“And you. What the hell were you thinking? ‘Just leave her.’ Do you actually give a shit about anyone else?”
The Savage shook his head.
“I put my neck out for myself. That’s about as far as it’ll stretch.”
They moved along the beach, sticking close to the rocky hill until they found a gap cut into it where the wind didn’t reach. The cold was setting in now, but the enclosure offered them some protection from it. Ed had watched enough rescue shows to know that if you stayed in wet clothes, you got hypothermia.
“We need to build a fire,” he said.
The Savage leaned against the side of the enclosure. He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing his torso. His ribs stuck out against his skin, but he looked more toned than malnourished. It was as if his body had adapted to a meagre diet and learned to take exactly the calories it needed from it. There was a bump on his chest that could have been a scar, or may have been a third nipple.
Bethelyn sat on the floor. Ed gave her a hug and pulled her close to him. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll get some wood.”
He walked up and down the beach and tried to find pieces of wood that weren’t completely soaked. A cast of black crabs saw him approach and scuttled away. The tide lapped in over the sand, reaching far enough to cover his shoes. When he
returned to the enclosure he had only collected a pathetic haul of wood, but it would have to do. Now there was just the matter of actually starting a fire. He stood and looked at the timber. He realised that he didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do. Would it just light itself? That would have been handy.
“Is the wood dry?” said The Savage.
Ed wasn’t in the mood for more mocking lessons from The Savage. He ignored him, and began to arrange the wood in what he imagined was the best way to get a fire burning. He put the smaller pieces in the middle and arranged some thin kindling around the edges.
“Suit yourself,” said The Savage. “You might need this though.”
He threw something to the ground. Ed picked it up, and looked at it. It was a thin grey stone of some kind, attached to a keychain.
“That’s a flint and scraper,” said The Savage.
“I don’t need your help,” said Ed.
“Do you just carry that around with you?” said Bethelyn.
The Savage put his hands in his pockets.
“I’ve survived on the Mainland for years. You don’t manage that without being prepared. There are three basic things you need to survive anywhere, doll-face; water, food and fire. Luckily, if you have fire, then you can boil any water you find. It doesn’t really burden me to carry a small flint in my pocket.”
Ed picked up the flint. He started scraping it onto the kindling and wood arranged in front of him. Aware of The Savage watching him, he rubbed faster until he felt his face turn red, but the only thing that got hot was his cheeks. He flicked the flint across the scraper again and again, aware of the howling wind that threatened to sneak in and ruin any progress. After minutes of getting nowhere, he wanted to fling the stone into the sea.
“Screw it,” he said.
The Savage shook his head.
“Want to see how it’s done?”
If The Savage felt the cold, he did a great job of hiding it. Bethelyn, on the other hand, shivered into her clothes, and her face had turned pale. Ed didn’t want to accept any help from The Savage, but he couldn’t let Bethelyn freeze.
It was strange how strongly he felt about it. When he was growing up, he would hang on James’s every word. It didn’t matter what lessons he tried to give him, Ed would listen to him as if he was telling him the secret of life. If The Savage, on the other hand, offered advice, the back of his neck prickled in irritation.
“Fine,” he said, and moved away from the fire without making eye contact.
The Savage bent down and started scraping. It gave Ed some satisfaction to see that he didn’t start the fire straight away, but at least The Savage looked like he knew what he was doing. He turned his head and spoke to Ed as he tried to scrape a spark.
“How is it you never learned to do this stuff? Didn’t they have Boy Scouts on Golgoth?”
“I never had to learn. What good is being able to make fires when you can just turn your heating on? It never even occurred to me.”
“Well it might have been useful for situations like this, Edward.”
“Don’t call me that.”
The Savage shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t you think the apocalypse has proven just how useful ‘stuff like this’ is? You might not have noticed, but you can’t just get up and press a button anymore to get things warm. You can’t pop food in a box and spin a dial and have it heat up in front of your eyes. The worst has happened, and it’s showing you up for what you really are, Ed; a naïve, spoiled guy who would be dead in a day if it wasn’t for me.”
“All this was never meant to happen,” said Ed.
The Savage rubbed the flint. Despite wanting to see The Savage fail, Ed hoped for a tiny spark to shoot out in the darkness. Part of him wanted to be right but another part of him, the colder part, needed a fire.
“But it did,” said The Savage. “So you better get used to it, or the world is going to chew you up like a dried arsehole.”
Bethelyn stood up.
“For God’s sake,” she said. “Give that here and move out of the way.”
Bethelyn sat down next to the kindling and got to work. Within ten minutes, a tiny fire smouldered. Ed rubbed his hands against it, careful as to not make a draught and blow it out. It wasn’t going to be enough to dry them completely, but it was something.
“Where’d you learn that?” said Ed.
“Apparently my dad always wanted a son. When I came out with nothing dangling between my legs, he had to make do. Used to take me on camping trips all the time.”
“You’ve been sheltered all your life, fella,” said The Savage, looking at Ed. “You won’t understand how bad it really is until there’s so many infected around you that you daren’t even squat in a bush to take a shit. You need to learn how dangerous this is, Ed. This isn’t one of Bethelyn’s camping trips with marshmallows and songs around the fire. God took a big shit on the world, and soon enough you’ll be up to your elbows in it.”
“I get that,” said Ed. “But it can’t all be bad. There must be places that are safe. There must be areas where things are still good and…I don’t know…beautiful.”
There was a silence for a few seconds. Kindling crackled on the fire, and Ed stuck his fingers toward it. Suddenly, The Savage started laughing.
“Beautiful? You naïve sod. You’ll be dead by the end of the week.”
“Tide’s coming in,” said Bethelyn. “Better go.”
~
As the sun started to rise they followed the railed path behind the beach. It led a trail through the hill until the sand started to give way to mud and grass. Small foliage was dotted around them, and waist-high shrubs blew in the breeze. All of the leaves on the trees were dead and had fallen to the ground.
None of them knew where to go. The ship had sunk not far off the Mainland coast, though which bit of the coast was a question they couldn’t answer. Ed felt as if he was fighting a constant battle to keep his eyelids open, but walking warded away the cold, and there was no sense staying near the beach. Looking out at the sea one last time, Ed saw no sign of the boat. The sea had swallowed it whole. Right now the old timber vessel was lining the ocean floor where it would rest for the next few hundred years.
“How long before you need to, you know, do it?” said Bethelyn.
Ed and Bethelyn walked close to each other, but The Savage liked to keep a distance. Even though he was stuck with them, he didn’t want to be near the pair. The feeling’s more than mutual, thought Ed.
The Savage stopped. A grass plain spread out for half a mile in front of them, and beyond that was the start of a woodland area where the trees reached fifteen feet tall. The contrast between beach and forest was a strange one. It didn’t seem like they should be so close together. Then again, Ed had never left Golgoth. He’d spent all his life on an island of forty people, and it was clear that his world experience hadn’t even approached the surface, let alone scratched it.
The Savage, on the other hand, walked with the air of a man who always knew where he was. Nothing seemed to bother him, because in the back of his mind he always had a fix for it. When the ship was sinking, there was a trace of panic in his voice, but it vanished almost immediately.
“What’s that?” said The Savage, turning to Bethelyn.
“I was just thinking. When are you going to need…your cure?”
“We’re going to be spending a lot of time together unfortunately, Bethelyn. No point being coy about it. The words won’t bite you. You want to know when I’ll need blood or flesh.”
“If that’s what you need, yeah.”
“By my count, I’m due some soon.”
“And what happens if you don’t get it?” said Ed.
The Savage stopped walking.
“I’ll start to turn. I’ll fall into a coma, and when I wake I’ll want nothing more than some tasty flesh between my teeth.”
“So it’s flesh on the menu either way, then? You either turn into an infected and want to
eat us, or you stay human and still want to eat us.” said Ed.
“That’s the short of it. At least by having it now, I get to stay as me. I get to keep my thoughts and my brain, and I don’t become a mindless sack of crap.”
They started across the plain. The grass was sagging and brown, and it looked so dead that it might just grind into dust beneath their feet. From somewhere, a bird gave a piercing cry. It sounded like it had come from the woods.
