“Hot…”
She nodded, “That’s the fever from your infection. I gave you the last of our Ibuprofen and we’ve been cooling you as best we can with what we have.” A look of worry crossed her face before she continued, “The fever’s retreated a little but I fear it’s merely a lull and without more medicine, it’ll be back stronger than ever.”
“I’m dying,” I said and knew that I was speaking the truth. I could feel it, the heat was robbing me of my strength and threatened to pull me back into a slumber from which I doubted I would ever wake.
“If they can make it back with some medicine, you’ll have a chance.”
She sounded so hopeful but so forlorn at the same time, I wanted to pull her close and tell her it was okay but the little strength I had was needed to keep my eyes from closing. I’d survived this long against all the odds and it was just death finally catching up with me. I wasn’t particularly religious but knew that if I faced judgment afterwards, well, the things I had done, the lives taken, were for a good purpose. I would face whatever judgment came with head high.
“They’ll make it back, I’m sure they will,” she said and I managed a wan smile for her.
“You’re a doctor?”
“Not really,” she said. “Well, not a medical one anyway. Psychiatrist by trade and co-opted doctor by default because I was the best choice they had.”
“His sister,” I said and my smile widened.
“Evelyn,” she replied with a nod and a smile of her own.
“I was looking forward to meeting you.”
“And I, you,” she said. “Anyone who can affect him in such a manner… well, you must be an impressive woman.”
“No,” I said. “Just able to see him for who he is and not what he’s done.”
Her gaze narrowed at that and she opened her mouth as though to speak but closed it again as a knock sounded on the door. She stood up as it opened and Cass poked her head through. Her eyes were red as though she’d been crying and I could see how tired she was, but her face lit up as she saw me.
“Hey,” she said as she entered the room with a nod for Evelyn. “How’re you doing?”
“Been better,” I said. “You? Pat? The Baby?”
“All fine,” she said as she settled down next to me. Evelyn picked up the cup and filled it from a plastic jug before pressing it to my lips once more. I managed to drink without spilling and smiled my thanks.
We spent the next ten minutes speaking of inconsequential things as Evelyn replaced the cloth on my brow with a freshly dampened one that felt incredible as the coolness seeped into my skin. She lifted my arm and placed her forefingers against my wrist as she kept her eyes on a silver watch, counting the beats of my heart with a frown furrowing her brow.
After a short time, my voice faltered as weariness gripped me and I lay on the cot and listened to Cass speak until sleep dragged me under.
****
It was dark when I next awoke. Evelyn and Cass were gone while in their place was an older woman with greying hair that framed a narrow face. Lines around her mouth and eyes suggested a face that often showed a smile and a lifetime of laughter and joy.
Her eyes were hazel and when they caught mine, were full of kindness and what seemed to be a deep care for my pain.
She gently pushed me back as I tried to sit up and picked up the cup of water, placing it to my lips and cradling my head with one hand to hold it upright enough that I could swallow the tepid water.
“Drink slowly now young lady,” she said in a surprisingly youthful voice. “I’ll not be wanting to have you be sick.”
“Thank you,” I said as she removed the cup and let my head settle back against the pillow.
“Nae bother,” she said with a smile as she set the cup back down beside the bed.
“What time is it?”
“Past midnight now.”
“Stomach hurts,” I said as I tried to shift on the cot. All I did was send fresh waves of pain through my body. The wound in my stomach seemed to burn with the heat of a roaring inferno.
“I’m not surprised, what with you being stabbed and all.”
Silence fell as the older woman watched me and I shifted in an attempt to find some way to lie that wasn’t painful.
“Your friends speak highly of you,” she said finally and I blinked, surprised by the sudden break in the silence. “You must mean a great deal to them, they are fair beside themselves with worry.”
“They mean everything to me,” I replied with a sad smile I couldn’t keep from crossing my face. “They’re all the family I have.”
“The young lady, Cassandra, she told me of your journeys. What you’ve been through.”
“It was hard, but you’ve no doubt stories of your own,” I said through a grimace as pain shot through me. The other woman leaned forward and helped me to slide up to lay back against the pillow. I nodded thanks before I said, “No one who has survived this long will have done so without stories of horror they have witnessed.”
“True enough,” she said and her eyes had a faraway look as though remembering something. “We were lucky, most of my family were with me and we survived the first hectic days without losing ourselves.”
“Something few can say.”
“Your journey was worse by far,” she acknowledged with a nod. “These are dark days and you’ve been beset by the worst of humanity.”
“We did what we had to,” I said and tried to ignore the flood of images, the faces of people lost and those that I had been forced to kill.
“The young lady, the one who did this to you,” she said with a gesture to my bandaged stomach. “She arrived with you.”
“Yes, I think I remember that.”
“What would you have us do with her?”
“What do you mean?”
“She stabbed you,” the woman said as she watched me carefully. “Tried to kill you. It would be understandable for you to want revenge. To kill her outright or perhaps have a trial? We could just send her away, we’ve no use for a deaf girl who tried to kill someone.”
“No,” I snapped and she looked at me with a curious expression. “Leave her be. If I get better, she will leave here with us if you don’t want her around. If I die… my friends will take her from here.”
“To what end? Kill her in the woods as revenge?”
“God no! To keep her safe, to find her somewhere with people who will help her.”
The woman nodded thoughtfully as she stared hard at me and said, “You really mean that don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said with a smile that transformed her face. It was hard to not respond in kind. “I wondered what sort of person my son had taken up with and now I know.”
“You’re Ryan’s mum,” I said with a sigh as I settled back against the pillow. “I should have known.”
“I don’t see why,” she said with a burst of laughter. “My son is not much like the rest of us.”
“He certainly isn’t,” I agreed with a smile.
“No, he’s an odd one but I believe he’s got a good heart,” she said and my smile froze in place. “I always told my Bryan, he’s a good boy, just not able to show the world.”
“Oh.”
“I know he’ll have had to do some things to survive that I would rather he hadn’t, but I’m sure he did what he could to avoid it.”
It was suddenly clear to me that Cass and Pat had sanitized their versions of events and I could understand why. Who wanted to hear their child was a killer?
“I think I need to sleep,” I said.
“Of course you do,” she agreed. “You sleep and we can talk more in the morning. I want to know everything I can about you.”
She settled back onto the chair, a happy smile on her face and I realised that I would need to be careful and warn my friends about what they should and shouldn’t say. No way would we be responsible for destroying that poor woman's illusions.
&nbs
p; Sleep wasn’t long coming and the darkness dragged me under as I once more wondered if I would wake again.
Chapter 7 – Ryan
The house was quiet and empty of all but dust and forgotten memories. By my reckoning, it had been abandoned not long after the undead had reached a tipping point and become too many to withstand.
Many of the pictures had been taken from their frames leaving empty rectangles where once had been the smiling faces of the family that lived here. They’d had the time to take their personal effects, their treasured memories and I wondered if I wandered out onto the street, which of the abandoned cars filled with belongings were theirs. How far had they gone before they’d died or perhaps they’d made it and were holed up somewhere like the rest of us.
“Here,” Gregg said as he passed over a bowl of cold pea soup. I accepted it with a nod and placed it on the floor beside me. Jinx can have it, I thought as I settled back against the wall.
I was sulking and being petulant but it was understandable. I’d been denied the chance to kill and had wasted most of the afternoon. I glanced over to see my brother glaring back at me in the flickering candle light that was all we had to illuminate the living room of the house. I don’t know why he was so upset with me, he’d managed to get his way after all.
As my knife had barely broken through the skin at his throat, Gregg had thrown himself at me and wrestled me away. He’d pushed himself off of me with wide eyes and a wary look to the knives I held as my brother pressed one hand to his throat, mouth agape.
“Those guys are innocents,” he’d said, stressing the word innocent. A less than subtle reminder of my promise to Lily. “They aren’t actually a threat to us at the moment.”
Jinx, the loyal and faithful hound, had stood beside me, head lowered and pointed teeth showing in a silent growl as she watched the other two men. I patted her gently on the shoulder and she looked back to see me put away my knives. Apparently, that was enough of a signal to her to back down as well and she settled back on her haunches beside me, though she kept her eyes fixed on them.
The thing was, he was right. I could justify killing the other two because they had clearly decided they were going to stop us or at least delay us. That made them a threat to Lily and as such, no longer innocent. Those others though, knew nothing of us and weren’t necessarily bad people. My brother of course, was as innocent as anyone could possibly be and if she found out that I’d killed him… well, it didn’t bear thinking about.
So I had given in to their demand and instead of killing the two men on guard, we had climbed the wall and set out across the fields as fast as we could go. We’d made it barely a hundred metres before we were noticed and a cry was raised.
They’d given chase for all of five minutes and then turned back. Apparently deciding that we weren’t a big deal, though on the way back we would be better off avoiding them since they’d have found their dead friends by then.
The rest of the journey to Dumfries had been quiet. No problems, no threats and nothing to be concerned about. It was immensely dull. Neither Gregg nor my brother were in any mind to speak to each other and both refused to speak to me, which made it pleasantly peaceful at least.
As the sun departed and darkness filled the world, we’d found an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of the town and broken in. A quick check of the house for threats and supplies yielded neither and so we had barricaded the doors and settled in for the night.
Despite my desire to find the hospital and get back to Lily as soon as possible, even I could see that it was not the best idea to do so at night. It still rankled… and I had that itch in the back of my mind; that need within me that didn’t like being thwarted when it desired death.
“How far is this hospital?” Gregg asked to break the silence. In no mood to speak, I remained seated on the floor stroking Jinx. Actually not as unpleasant as I’d once imagined, even relaxing.
“It’s nae far at all,” Gabe said. His tone was sullen and he pressed his hand to the bandage he’d wrapped around his throat. A little much to my mind, I’d barely marked him, but he’d always been melodramatic. “Straight up the road and we’ll be there.”
“So that’s it? Walk into town and just pop into the hospital?”
“Well no… I mean, if we follow this road then in a short time we’ll have a housing estate on the left and the university on the right.”
“A university?” Gregg said his eyes wide. “Are you bloody kidding me? Do you know how many people would have been there?”
“Oh aye, there’ll have been a few but I can’t see them just hanging around.”
“Right, so we make it past the university and the housing estate… then what?”
“Well, there’s some fields like, and a holiday inn, church. Erm… some council buildings and then the Crichton…”
“What’s the Crichton?” Gregg asked. He’d shaken his head at each new place listed by my brother and his tone was weary.
“Used to be an Asylum but is part of the university now,” Gabriel said. “Big grand old building.”
“Big, as in lots of people would have been there.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Bloody great,” Gregg said as he rubbed at his chin. The dark stubble there made a scratching sound as he ran his fingers over it and he sighed. “Then the hospital yeah?”
“Aye.”
“So possibly thousands of students, townsfolk and then we get the chance to go to the hospital that was likely full to bursting with sick people who became zombies… fucking wonderful. I’m not looking forward to this.”
“Oh won’t be so bad,” Gabriel said. “Lots of trees, park area and the like to hide in. A golf course just behind the holiday inn where we can probably go if we need to.”
“And what’s the plan when we get there? Get in and out with what?”
“We need antibiotics first, Moxifloxacin is the one Evie told me to look for,” Gabriel said as he pulled out a ragged piece of paper from a pocket and held it towards the light so he could read it. “Painkillers, Codeine, Oxycodone, morphine that sort of thing. Epinephrine, apparently we have a couple of people who are highly allergic so that could save their lives.”
He paused as he squinted in the poor light, trying to read the handwritten note. “Antiseptics, Ibuprofen and Aspirin, Asthma inhalers as well as a wide variety of medical gear.”
“Like what?”
“Scalpels, stethoscope, gauze, rubbing alcohol, saline, Imodium…”
“Why Imodium?” Gregg asked.
“Apparently diarrhoea can kill you and the chances of picking up a bug with all the disease that the undead must be carrying as well as the insects and stuff as the weather warms… well, it’s best to avoid it if possible.”
“Damn, we’re going to need a truck to carry everything she needs. Anything else or is that it?”
“Few other bits and pieces, but that covers the most of it.”
“That’s a lot of stuff,” I said and two pairs of hostile eyes turned to me. I smiled and ignored their glowers. “Why the need for it all?”
“Best to be prepared,” Gabriel said though he looked away as he said it. Something was off and a twinge of excitement ran through me.
“People have been getting sick?” I asked and he hesitated before he shook his head. “Ah, people have died.”
“Are you surprised?” he countered. “It is the end of the world.”
“Yes, but enough people in a short time to have made you all feel the need for some kind of medical aid, what else is on the list?” I asked as suspicion flared. “Charcoal perhaps? Laxatives to be counteracted by the Imodium, good to flush out the system though if someone is poisoned and you don’t know by what.”
“What’re you saying?” Gregg asked. His brow was furrowed as he looked from Gabriel to me.
“Their sanctuary is not as safe as they thought,” I said.
“Some people got sick and a couple died,” Gabriel said. His tone
was defensive and my eyes narrowed as I considered the possible danger to Lily. “They probably ate something by mistake when we were foraging in the woods.”
“Or someone purposefully poisoned them.”
“Yeah, not everyone is at ease with taking a life like you seem to be brother,” Gabriel snapped. “Simplest reason for it is that they ate something.”
“Perhaps,” I said into the silence and settled back against the wall. My mind was open to the possibility that some idiots had picked the wrong berries but at the same time, a dark little part of my mind insisted that something else was at work.
He was a little too quick to insist it was accidental, a little too concerned with leaving all mention of it out of the conversation. I settled down to sleep with the thought that perhaps someone at their sanctuary was a little more at ease with killing than he suspected.
****
We left the cottage as the sun broke the horizon, each of us eager to get moving and make our way to the hospital. My intention was to get in and out as quickly as possible so that we could be back at their sanctuary before nightfall.
As we walked along the narrow roads dotted with abandoned cars, cast aside belongings and the occasional set of old bones, we were reminded that our previous months had been fairly easy. In the Lake District, we’d been out of the way of the main hordes of undead and my brother's sanctuary was even further off the beaten path than our own.
Dumfries had not had that same luck. As a rural market town, it had done quite well for itself over the centuries. The local bypass had pulled a lot of traffic from the town centre and as a result, many new and existing businesses had moved out to the fringe, towards the A75 motorway which ran past the town to the east and swung around the northern end of the town to head west towards the coast.
It had prospered and was home to fifty thousand people as well as the students from the university. That hadn’t been a benefit when the undead came.
For anyone who chose to look, the signs were all around. The panicked flight as people jumped in their cars and drove out of the town only to get caught up in long queues of traffic. Stuck there, until the zombies came for them.
Killing The Dead 9 (Season 2 | Book 3): Family Matters Page 4
