“Greg, we need answers, what happened, we know people are dead, we know that, but what the hell happened to you and where is Shannon?”
“They’re twice dead,” he said and he began to rock back and forth on the chair, “They’re twice dead.”
“Twice dead?” I repeated his words. Trying to make sense of them. This was getting weirder by the second. Not only weird but frightening too.
“They are just dead,” Mitch, said firmly, “We’ve seen that they are dead!”
Mitch’s head shot up though he did not stop rocking, his eyes crinkled and he rasped out, “They are twice dead, but they woke up, but they’re dead…”
Hope momentarily flared in my heart. Had the unknown outbreak we had yet to name just knocked people out? Put them into a temporary coma? That would be fantastic if it was just that…my hopes were dashed as Gregory continued, his voice rasping, filled with the horror of what he had witnessed, “Shannon’s went to her mum’s house, they were in bed, they looked like they were asleep, they were so grey, so cold, and their eyes, wide open, staring, oh dear God they were dead…they were…”
More tears, leaving dirty streaks on his face. His huge shoulders heaved under the weight of his memories, his head dropped downward into his chest, he was like a coiled spring and all we could do was wait.
We waited. Slowly he looked up, and for some reason he looked at me with his haunted black shot eyes.
“We tried to call for help, but the whole town…there was no one, we went outside, we walked about, but there was nothing, we heard dogs barking, we saw birds, cats, but people, no people…at least not then…we got into the car, Shannon was crying, she asked me to drive her to her boyfriend’s place, oh God I should have said no, should have come back here, but I hoped…” it was obvious what he had hoped. He had hoped he would find someone alive, that it was all a bad dream and that there was an explanation as to why his world, so ordinary and unchanging had turned upside down in a few seconds.
“What happened?” Mitch’s voice was gentle. No urgency in his words though the urgency was there, for all of us. Seb for once was silent, Adag was standing next to Gregory, the black custard like blood on his neck was leaking into the towel. A slow seep of black goo.
“We got to Ben’s place…Shannon’s boyfriend,” the Gorilla said hoarsely, “It was like her parent’s place, no life, we went into his flat, he was lying on the sofa, the TV was on, only it was just the white static like here, Shannon lost it then, she had been upset about her family, but seeing Ben…it was too much for her, she started tearing her hair out, screaming, she was hysterical…”
“I’m not surprised,” I muttered. I rubbed my arms and leaned heavily against the wall behind me. My leg was hurting and now so was my head.
“I tried to calm her down, I managed to drag her out of the flat, oh God if only we had come back here before…” he let out a low moan and began to rock back and forth in his chair.
“Go on,” it was Adag’s turn to urge Mitch to continue speaking.
“She didn’t want to leave him, she was crying, it took me ages to get her down the stairs, I had to drag her, I shook her hard, told her we had to get back, she wasn’t really listening, I was pulling her toward the car and then I saw him, not just him, others from the flats, they were coming out of the door, Ben was in the front, I should have realised it was wrong, they were shuffling, swaying from side to side, not walking like normal people, but I didn’t realise…and then Shannon saw him, she was so happy, she didn’t realise…oh God she ran to him, laughing, she was so happy…she ran to him…”
What Mitch told us next made me rush out of the room. I turned, and fled. My leg brace clacking loudly as I tried to run. I just about made it to the communal accessible bathroom two doors down from the office and promptly threw up in the toilet. My stomach heaved back and forth, as vomit spewed out of my mouth in a slick orange and red lumpy explosion.
Eventually my belly was empty; I was gasping for breath and blindly scrabbling around for toilet roll to wipe my mouth. I felt a hand grab mine and guide it to the roll of toilet paper and through streaming eyes I saw Seb, he had followed me in his chair, thank God for large accessible toilets is all I can say.
I moved from the toilet and sagged against the cool tiles of the bathroom and wiped my mouth with the scrunched up peach coloured paper and said in a voice that burned from the pain of the acid that had come up from my stomach, “No snide remark about me being a weak fucking cripple eh Seb?”
He didn’t reply, he just leaned forward and was equally as sick as I was, his vomit mixing with mine, splattering the toilet and the seat with equal intensity. I found myself leaning over him, grabbing more toilet paper and pushing it toward him.
He grabbed my hand, still holding the bog paper, two vomit stained people leaning over a toilet filled with our sick, sharing toilet paper and the horror of what we had both just heard moments before.
Oh, this didn’t make me and Seb best of friends right there and then, far from it, but what it did do was cement an understanding between us about who we were as people on a certain level. We might never agree on another thing in our lives, but we knew something important about each other right at that moment and in the days to come this was going to help us in ways we would have never thought possible.
“I think I chucked up more than you Lady of Shadows,” Seb said as he let go of my hand, taking some more toilet roll from me and wiping his mouth clean of the debris he had just heaved up from his stomach.
“You always have to be first in everything,” I said. I leaned over him again and flushed the toilet, watching the contents of our stomachs swirl out of sight.
“First counts for everything,” he replied, “Coming second means nothing.”
“Even in a puking contest?”
“Especially in a puking contest.”
“Let’s go back,” I said and he nodded his head. We left the bathroom, heading back into the office where Adag was sitting at her desk, her head in her hands, and Mitch was looking out of the office window onto the normalcy of the beautiful wild land that Thorncroft was set in.
“Sorry,” I said in embarrassment, “My stomach…”
“You must have the constitution of an ox,” Seb said to Mitch as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand for the third time.
“Not really,” Mitch took out his cigarette packet from his shirt packet and lit one, inhaling long and deeply, no one in the office objected, “But I was in the army, I did three tours of duty in the Middle East, you see and hear a lot of shit that you try not to think about too much, you adapt,” he let the smoke out of his lungs, “Mind you there are some things you see that are seared into your brain for eternity.”
What Gregory had just told us would be seared into my brain for the rest of my life. Seb and Adag’s too I suspected.
The Gorilla was hunched in his seat, still holding his cup of tea in both hands.
“I always did like horror films,” Seb exhaled, long and hard, “Found them great fun, the gorier the better, nothing quite like the Night of the Living Dead.”
“It’s supposed to be imaginary,” I said in a faraway voice, “Not real…”
“It’s real alright,” the Gorilla mumbled from his huddled seat, “They ripped her apart, her own boyfriend, he bit her throat open, oh God, she didn’t know what was happening, her face, her eyes…they….”
“Stop it,” Adag spoke, she lifted her head up, her eyes were filled with horror and guilt. I had a good idea what she was thinking and feeling. She had allowed Shannon to go with Gregory to Thorncroft; she had played a part in the young Auxiliary’s death, “You’ve told us, we know.”
Mitch moved from the window and held out his cigarette to the older woman. She took it, her hand shook, but she managed to take it and put it to her lips. Right then I really wished I smoked.
“Lucy,” Phoenix’s voice made me jump because he was suddenly right behind me. His tall angular
frame didn’t quite come into the office; he hovered on the border, not entering at first even when I moved so he could. Eventually he entered the office, gingerly, pulling the door behind him, but keeping his hand on the handle.
“What’s up?” I said.
“A Drone followed Gregory’s car, it filmed what happened.”
My brain seemed to freeze into a loop of information that I had to process in order to understand what came next. I thought of everything that Gregory had told us, about the attack and how Shannon had been ripped apart and devoured by her boyfriend and his neighbours.
How he, himself had been attacked, bitten on the neck by Ben, but had managed to escape because his car was nearby and he had left the keys in the ignition.
The Drone had filmed it all, and whoever was watching that film had done nothing to help. Nothing at all. A disturbing common factor. Mitch could be right, whoever was really alive outside of those who had ‘woken’ up dead potentially were not a friend to any survivors.
“We need to get out of here,” was Seb’s reaction to the news.
“And go where?” Mitch said sharply, “If the people from Thorncroft have woken up, what’s the bet others are waking up, Thorncroft is a tiny place…” he didn’t have to say any more than that. We all were blessed with pretty good imaginations.
“Did the Drone follow him back here?” I asked Phoenix suddenly.
Phoenix nodded his head “It was a long way behind Gregory’s car, but it will get here, if it follows the private road.”
“Shit!” Mitch swiftly moved from where he was standing, “I better put Greg’s car in the garage!” He shot out of the office whilst Adag moved swiftly over to the window and pulled down all the blinds.
Mitch got the car into the garage quickly enough and was soon back in the office with the rest of us. Seb and I looked at each at each other helplessly, not sure what to do next.
“It might not find us,” Seb said, hope in his voice, but it was a forlorn hope. No sooner the words were out of his mouth we all heard it. The whir of a Drone’s blades and the battery powering it. It’s surprising how loud it sounded to our ears, but then the world was now a silent place and subconsciously we had all been straining our ears for anything out of the ordinary.
It was a low hum at first, continuous and steady, buzzing almost, making me think of bees in summer and then it became a bit like the low level noise you hear of a well-oiled electric lawn mower on a smooth grass turf.
That sound changed eventually to the familiar sound of the battery powering the Drone’s blades, the sound of a remote controlled helicopter in fact. It eventually got louder, and louder, and I was puzzled as to why it was so loud. It was as if it in the building and not outside of it.
“The doors into the dining room are open, we didn’t shut them!” I said with the horrified reality as to why we could hear the blades so well “Oh God, Stevie…”
I started to move to the door, but Mitch shook his head, blocking my exit, “Stevie’s just asleep,” he whispered, “They will think he hasn’t woken up yet.”
I didn’t understand what he was saying at first, but Gregory did. He got up from his seat, unsteady, his skin was waxy and wet, he looked so ill, and his neck was leaking through the second layer of toweling.
“I’ll stop it,” he said. We all pressed ourselves away from the sight of the door, which wasn’t easy as Seb’s wheelchair was cumbersome, thank God he wasn’t in Lewis.
Phoenix stepped aside from the door and Gregory stumbled out of the office. We heard his footsteps as he headed to the dining room. There was silence for what seemed forever, then we heard a thud, as if something had been hit, hard, another thud, then another, followed by a high pitched screeching noise, and then the crash as something dropped heavily to the ground.
Then silence. We waited and then Gregory’s voice, “It’s down.”
Adag, then Seb and finally I was out of the door, followed Mitch. Stevie was still fast asleep on the sofa; whatever Adag had put into his orange juice was strong, thank God.
The Drone lay on the floor in several pieces. Gregory was holding one of Stevie’s exercise dumbbells, which he had used to bring the machine down with. He had managed to come in from behind its swiveling camera lens, which was focused on Stevie’s still body. He had struck it hard each time he said, the damn thing didn’t want to go down, but he had won in the end.
I noticed that Gregory’s eyes were dilated again and his tear ducts were now getting clogged with a greasy looking black goo, the stuff leaking from the wound in his neck had saturated the double folded towel around his neck. He sank down onto a chair, the metal weight sliding from his hand and onto the floor as Seb and Phoenix went to look at the shattered Drone on the floor.
I went and got more towels from the kitchen and with Adag changed the dressing on Gregory’s neck. I bought a black rubbish bag with me and we put the saturated towels into it. The flesh around it looked like it had been chewed on. I swallowed hard. That was what had happened. Gregory had told us. Ben had gone after him after…I refused to dwell on the thought.
Phoenix and Mitch had picked up the pieces of the Drone and taken them into Phoenix’s room. Phoenix said something about looking at the Hard Drive to see if there was information, he could extract from it other than the films and the photos it had been taking.
Seb went and closed the dining room doors; it was starting to get dark. He drew the curtains and as Adag tried to persuade an exhausted Gregory to sip some tea I went and made sure all the external doors were locked.
I came back into the dining room. Adag was watching Gregory who was shivering now. She had another duvet for him and he was wrapped up in it.
“I feel like shit,” he croaked. He looked like shit and I said as much. It got a smile out of him.
“Do you think anyone will come for the Drone?” I asked.
“More than likely,” Mitch’s voice was flat. He had lit another cigarette after he had left Phoenix with the remains of the Drone.
“What do you think they will do…with us if they do come?” I had to ask the question.
Mitch shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you think everyone; you know like the people at Ben’s place…” I stumbled on my words, but managed to blurt them out “They are like him, doing what he did…”
“That wasn’t Ben,” Gregory said from his chair, he wheezed as he spoke, “The body was Ben’s, but it wasn’t Ben who ripped Shannon apart, it wasn’t Ben.”
“A Zombie Apocalypse,” Seb spoke suddenly.
“Don’t be stupid Seb;” Adag said sharply, “We haven’t got time for your puerile jokes.”
“I’m not joking,” Seb snapped back, “I don’t know what else to call it, I mean Shannon is dead, more than dead in fact! There isn’t anything left of her to put in a coffin, so you tell me, what do you want to call it? A sunny day in Thorncroft town were Zombies bite your throat and then eat you?”
Adag couldn’t answer that. Instead, she headed for the kitchen saying she would make tea and toast for us all and could someone please check on Paul and the others to make sure they still asleep.
Mitch left the room, he didn’t look at Seb and Seb turned to me.
“What do you think?”
I didn’t know what to think, but I was looking at Gregory who had closed his eyes, his huge frame sunk into the recess of the chair. His skin was taking on a grey hue, his lips had a tinge of blue and his eyelashes were sticky with black goo. A thought entered my head just at that moment. A thought that so horrific I couldn’t believe it had entered my head in the first place.
Was it possible? Was what I was now thinking happening before our eyes?
I made the fateful decision to say something. I put my finger to my lips and motioned Seb to follow me into the office. He opened his mouth to be his usual belligerent self then decided against it when my hand swiftly signed the words, bad and danger. He followed me and I pushed the door partly shut, keeping a
n eye on Gregory and I said softly.
“The Gorilla was bitten by Ben,” I said, my hands fluttered as I found myself signing as well as speaking.
“So?” Seb said dismissively, “We know that, he told us.”
“What if he is infected with what Ben has been infected with,” there I had said it. I waited for Seb to tell me I was a stupid twat and swing his chair out of the office in disgust, but he didn’t. He stared at me mutely, the thought had not entered his head, I could tell by the expression on his face.
“It’s just a bad bite,” he said when he finally found his voice. Like me his hands fluttered out the words along with his speaking, that was a bad sign in itself, as he usually stopped himself from using it but as it was something that was a constant in the home, we did all tend to use it automatically, for some of us more sporadically than others.
“It’s not clotting,” I said, “At least not like a normal wound clots, and his blood is getting blacker, thicker in fact, his tear ducts are acting funny, when he cries, he’s leaking black goo, not tears, and have you seen the colour of his skin, it’s going grey… like those bodies on the ground.”
“Christ,” Seb was now seeing what I had seen.
“We need to quarantine him,” I hated having to say this but I couldn’t think of what else we could do, “Put him in a place where he can’t touch us, if I am wrong, then everything will be ok and you can call me a stupid cow, but if I’m not, he could turn into what Ben became…” the thought made my stomach boil but I had nothing left in it chuck up.
“And we all will be his very own smorgasbord,” Seb proved yet again he was still as irreverent and offensive as ever. I found this strangely comforting though part of me wanted to tell him he was a Dick.
Gregory was still breathing when we left the office though he was dozing on the chair, his head once again resting on his chest. I felt bad about thinking the worst of him, but instinct told me I was not wrong, I wanted to be wrong, but deep inside my primordial self I knew I was not wrong.
Adag, however, didn’t want to believe us. She called us both stupid and melodramatic, practically threw a tea towel at me, and told me to start washing up the dirty teacups. Gregory just had a bad wound to his neck she told us; he was going to be fine.
The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) Page 6
