by David Moody
“I like your hair,” Hollis said unexpectedly. Lorna looked up and smiled momentarily before looking down again. She didn’t like it when he commented on her hair. She didn’t do it for anyone but herself. When Hollis paid her a compliment it made her feel like she was being chatted up by her uncle. She didn’t tell him. She didn’t want to upset him.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.
“You always make an effort,” he said. “You always look good.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“No reason,” he quickly backpedaled, worried he’d offended her. “I’m down to one shave a week.”
“Just because I feel like shit, doesn’t mean I have to look like shit, does it?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that you should…”
Nearby, Gordon looked away, embarrassed for Hollis. He was relieved when Caron appeared at the top of the staircase, carrying another candle. Taking care with her footing she slowly made her way down.
“How’s she doing?” Hollis asked, his whispered words amplified by the silence. Caron had spent the evening sitting with Anita. She shook her head and sat down.
“Not good,” she replied, her voice weary and low. “She’s worse than ever tonight.”
“What is it?” Lorna asked, knowing full well that Caron knew as little as she did. “Is she still being sick?”
“Nothing left for her to throw up,” she answered, “and she hasn’t eaten anything today. I tried to get her to take some water but she couldn’t.”
“I don’t like this,” Gordon said nervously. “It’s like a tropical disease or something. It’s come from the bodies, it must have. There are flies and maggots and germs out there and—”
“Shut up, Gord,” Hollis snapped, silencing him. “You’re not helping.”
“But it could spread. We might all end up catching it. For all we know she might—”
“I mean it. Shut up, Gord,” he warned again.
“I read something in a magazine once about outbreaks of disease after natural disasters,” Caron said, cutting across them both. “Can’t remember exactly what it said. Someone did a study after an earthquake or something like that when there were lots of bodies lying around.”
“And?” Lorna pressed.
“Didn’t pay much attention to it at the time,” she admitted. “I didn’t think I needed to. Wasn’t the kind of article I usually read.”
“Well, do you remember anything useful?”
“I think it said most germs were spread through direct contact with the bodies or through contaminated water. They weren’t airborne, I don’t think.”
“That’s just perfect,” Lorna moaned. “We’ve spent most of the day ankle deep in their shite.”
“Yeah,” Hollis said quickly, “but most of it was on the suits, and all of it got washed off, didn’t it? And we collect rainwater, don’t we. We should be okay.”
“Yes, but—”
“But nothing. I doubt if any of us have caught anything.”
“How do you know? Anita has.”
“So how did she get it?” Gordon asked, clearly agitated. “She hasn’t been outside for ages. She’s been drinking the same water we have.”
“She might have had it before she got here,” Hollis replied, clutching at straws. “Maybe it takes a few weeks to show itself? Or she could have just got unlucky and eaten something that was contaminated.”
“I don’t like this,” he grumbled. “What if we catch it off her?”
“Then we’ll just have to deal with it, won’t we.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“We’ll try and get her some drugs and keep her isolated. That’s all we can do for now.”
“But what if that doesn’t work?”
“For Christ’s sake, what do you expect me to do about it? Do you want me to go down to the edge of the crowd and see if any of the bodies used to be a doctor? Bloody hell, Gordon, just get a grip!”
“He does have a point, though,” Lorna said.
“I know he does,” Hollis admitted.
“We can’t just let her lie up there like this, can we?”
Hollis shook his head and stood up. He slowly paced away along the corridor, but then stopped and walked back. He stopped a short distance away where the light from the candles was just strong enough to catch the outline of his tired face.
“Maybe a couple of us should go out tomorrow and try to find her some drugs,” he suggested again. “Get some antibiotics or something. Hopefully that’ll do the trick.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Gordon shouted after him as Hollis walked away and disappeared into the darkness.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” his fading voice replied.
15
The early morning sun unexpectedly broke through the layer of dull gray cloud which smothered the land. Hollis waited in front of the flats for Lorna. Down below them, the cull had begun again. It was before seven but neither the early hour nor their tiredness after yesterday’s exertion seemed to have put a damper on Jas, Webb, Stokes, or Harte’s enthusiastic desire to try and obliterate another swathe of bodies. This morning, to his great surprise, Hollis noticed that Gordon too had found himself an ill-fitting set of bike leathers and joined the others at the edge of the crowd. Dodgy hip or no dodgy hip, he finally seemed to have overcome his pathetic fears and inhibitions and was facing the bodies head-on. Either that or he found the prospect of sitting waiting inside the flats more nerve-wracking today. Every conversation he’d overheard since waking up seemed to have been about Anita and her worsening condition.
A wash of golden sunlight dappled the heads of thousands of the writhing bodies at the foot of the hill. He wasn’t sure why, but the one-sided battle unfolding below him somehow seemed different from yesterday, more ferocious. Maybe it was nothing more than the different perspective from which he was watching the fighting. Perhaps the bodies yesterday had been just as violent and animated as these, but they’d seemed less so because he’d been dealing with them at close quarters. Maybe it was just because people like Gordon and Stokes were less experienced and less capable when it came to hand-to-hand combat? Or were the bodies more animated, ready to retaliate after yesterday’s slaughter?
“You ready?” Lorna asked, startling him. He turned around and saw that she was standing just behind him. He grunted and climbed into the grime-splattered van he usually drove. He’d spoken to Lorna again briefly late last night and they’d taken it upon themselves to go out searching for drugs. If they didn’t do it, as she’d quite rightly pointed out, no other fucker would.
“So where to?” he asked as she sat down next to him and slammed the door shut. She knew the area far better than he did.
“There are three pharmacies near here,” she replied quickly. “Head for the one at the bottom of Bail Hill first. That was a pretty big one. There should be plenty of stuff there.”
“Okay.”
“You got any idea what we’re looking for?”
“No,” he replied as he started the engine and drove toward the maze of garages, tracks and streets behind the flats. “I suggest we just get in there and empty the shelves into the back of the van. We’ll worry about what we’ve got when we get back.”
* * *
Hollis slammed on the brakes outside the pharmacy, leaving the van parked on the pavement, as close to the door at the far right of the front of the building as he could get.
“Five minutes,” he told her, “that’s all.”
Lorna quickly disappeared inside. He paused for a second before following, stopping just long enough to look up and down the road to see what effect their sudden unannounced arrival had had. He counted around ten creatures crawling slowly toward them from both directions. No doubt there’d be hundreds more by the time he and Lorna were finished.
Lorna was already working when he got inside, collecting bottles of medicine and
packets of pills in wire shopping baskets. She was nervously sweeping entire shelves clear with her arm and doing her best to catch what she could. She’d already filled three baskets. Hollis grabbed them and ran back out to the van.
Twice as many bodies as before now, maybe more. Christ, they were going to have to be quick.
“How are we supposed to know what any of this stuff is and what it does?” Lorna shouted across the shop as he returned. “Maybe there’s a book or something we could take?”
“Doubt it,” he said, grabbing the next two baskets and heading for the door again. “They’d have had it all on computer, wouldn’t they?”
“Suppose. Might be something, though. It’s worth having a look.”
He threw the baskets into the back of the van. Many more bodies now. Getting close. Too close.
“No time,” he shouted, collecting the final baskets. “We need to get gone.”
Lorna pulled open a heavy white door next to where she’d been working which, she presumed, would lead to an office or another drugs store. Maybe she’d find some information in there which would help her to—
A body lunged out from the shadows into the light, missing Lorna and throwing itself at Hollis, who stood in front of it, completely unprepared. Wearing the once-white coat of a pharmacist, now yellowed and soiled by seepage, the dishevelled corpse hurtled toward him with unexpected force and venom. Trapped behind the door for more than fifty days, its sudden release seemed somehow to energize and invigorate it. Its weight was insignificant, but its speed and velocity were enough to knock Hollis over. He tripped and fell back, smashing the side of his head against the back of the wooden counter. The pain was excruciating.
Lorna grabbed a fire extinguisher from a bracket on the wall and brought the base of it crashing down on the back of the cadaver’s skull with a sickening crunch. It collapsed on top of Hollis, black clots of blood and other foul-smelling gunk dribbling out of its mouth and nose. Hollis kicked and scrambled underneath it desperately, more aware than ever of the germs and disease which might be thriving in the stodgy liquids dripping over him. Finally free, he dragged himself back up onto his feet, gagging in disgust as the remains of the pharmacist slid onto the floor. He angrily put his boot through its face.
“Fucking thing,” he cursed, gingerly touching his left ear. When he drew back his fingers he saw blood.
“Let’s go,” Lorna said, carrying another basket and moving toward the door. She stopped when she saw that almost the entire width of the glass frontage of the pharmacy was now a solid mass of dead flesh which reacted violently as she approached. Parts of the crowd appeared to try and recoil from her; others pushed harder against the dirt and cobweb-covered windows.
“Bloody hell,” Hollis moaned under his breath. “How the hell are we going to do this?” They were used to being hounded by huge crowds of corpses wherever they went, but this felt different. Had they just managed to spook themselves by talking about the bodies getting smarter, or were some of the creatures on the other side of the glass really demonstrating behaviors which appeared conscious and controlled? It felt like they were waiting for the two of them to come out into the open, almost as if they knew they’d have to leave sooner or later.
“Are we going to stand here waiting for Christmas, or are we going home?” Lorna asked, trying to hide her mounting unease.
“No such thing as Christmas anymore,” he replied. “Ready?”
“Think so,” she mumbled, sounding far from sure.
“Get closer to the door.”
Without questioning him she moved forward. The bodies were just inches away now, separated from her by a single sheet of glass. One of them seemed to be pushing at the door. Fortunately it was pushing the hinged side and it was never going to open, but its intent was clear.
Hollis disappeared back into the shop and picked up the bloodied fire extinguisher Lorna had used moments earlier. Still wincing with the pain behind his ear, he lifted the red metal canister above his head and threw it at the section of window farthest from the door. It thumped against the toughened glass, cracking it but not breaking through, then dropped to the ground with a sonorous thump and rolled into a display rack. Many of the bodies immediately began to shuffle nearer to the noise. Hollis picked up the extinguisher again and this time slammed it into the glass like a battering ram, doing enough damage to shatter it and causing huge, jagged shards to fall out of the metal frame. The dead immediately began to force their way inside, ignorant to the daggers of broken glass which sliced their feet.
Without stopping to look back Hollis ran over to Lorna, pulled the door open and pushed her through. She dropped the basket of medicine she’d been holding, sending packets and bottles flying. With the bulk of the crowd distracted, pouring through the broken window, they barged their way through the rest of the bodies. Hollis dropped his shoulder and waded into them as Lorna crouched down and wormed her way through, managing to scramble back into the van first.
Hollis was surprised by the dead’s dogged resistance. Most of the dumb creatures had fallen for his ploy and were still pushing and jostling to get into the shop through the smashed window. Others were standing firm—still weak, still clumsy and still uncoordinated, but undeniably more determined than they ever had been before. He struggled with a particularly aggressive cadaver with a huge black hole in its face where its right eye should have been, until Lorna grabbed hold of his collar and yanked him back into the van. Many more bodies were shuffling toward them again. They needed to go.
“What the hell are you doing?” he jabbered nervously with surprise as he fell back into his seat. He knocked another rancid figure back onto the street and slammed the door shut. It was dark inside the van. Emotionless faces were pressed up against every window.
“We need to go,” she replied, watching through a gap in the bodies as the pharmacy quickly filled with dead flesh. “We need to get out of here.”
He started the engine—the noise immediately causing the still-growing crowd to become even more animated—and drove forward, dragging several of the rotting shells beneath the wheels of the van and churning them into the ground. Lorna turned around in her seat and watched as a smaller section of the crowd marched after them lethargically.
16
A frantic, unscheduled stop at a previously forgotten and well-sheltered medical center north of the flats allowed Hollis and Lorna to collect more drugs and pick up several medical journals and reference books. They didn’t know if the information would make any difference, but just having it made them feel marginally better. Caron, who hadn’t had any medical training other than a basic first-aid course at work some twenty years ago, gratefully took everything that was offered to her and shut herself away in the flat next to Anita’s. She found descriptions of numerous conditions and diseases which Anita might have been suffering from, but next to nothing in the way of treatment advice or guidance.
Just after midday Hollis appeared in the doorway of the flat, carrying with him more drugs which he’d found rolling around in the back of the van.
“Any good?” he asked hopefully. Caron put down the text book she’d been reading and rubbed her tired eyes.
“Not really,” she admitted.
“How’s she doing?”
“No better.”
“Is she still being sick? Has she eaten anything?”
She shook her head.
“She’s not doing anything. Her temperature’s sky-high and she’s barely conscious. It’s probably for the best.”
“Have you managed to find anything that might help?”
She looked around the room at the piles of drugs surrounding her.
“I’ve got no idea what I’m looking for,” she answered honestly, “and even if I could find the name of a drug which might help, how am I supposed to know what it looks like? I wouldn’t even know if it was a pill in a packet or a medicine in a bottle. And some of this stuff is out-of-date.”
“Point
taken,” Hollis said quietly as he walked across the room and stood at the window. “Do you know what I think?”
“I know what I think,” she interrupted abruptly. “I think I should just force as much of this stuff as I can down the poor cow’s throat and put her out of her bloody misery. Honestly, Greg, is it even worth her getting better?”
Hollis didn’t answer. He was staring out the window, trying to remember the last time anyone had called him by his first name. Natalie used to call him Greg, and his mom and dad, and Mark and all the others he’d lost.
“What the hell is that idiot doing now?” he said suddenly, glad of the distraction.
“Which idiot?” Caron asked, standing up and walking over to him. “There’s more than one around here.”
“Webb. Just look at the silly little bastard!”
Webb was walking precariously along the top of the uneven barrier of cars and rubble which was somehow still succeeding in keeping the dead at bay. As he walked, he emptied the contents of a fuel can over the heads of the repulsive carcasses which grabbed at his feet incessantly.
“He scares me when he starts playing with fire,” Caron admitted, her voice low.
“He scares me whenever I see him.”
As they watched, Gordon passed another can of fuel up to Webb, who immediately began tipping it out over the crowd, drenching some cadavers which had already been soaked once.
“Careful with that stuff,” Hollis muttered under his breath.
“He’ll set fire to himself if he doesn’t watch what he’s doing.”
“I’m not bothered about that, I just don’t want him to use up all our fuel. I’m the sucker who’ll end up out there fetching more.”
They watched as Webb finished emptying the second can, then jumped down to stand with the others a short distance back from the corpses. There was no denying the fact that they had worked hard again this morning—an area of land had already been reclaimed which almost matched the size of the patch they’d taken all day yesterday to recover—but their methods seemed to have become even more haphazard and less effective as time progressed. The diggers, which had previously been used to carefully move one abandoned car or lump of masonry at a time, now sat unused a short distance back. It was clear from Webb’s actions that the people remaining outside now were in the business of finding shortcuts. Safety and planning had been forgotten. It was now all about destroying the maximum number of corpses with minimum amount of effort.
