The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion)

by Suchitra Chatterjee

  “Who are you protecting him from?” Wolf wasn’t going to let me off that easily.

  “The same person you are,” I said without looking up from my drawing.

  Wolf laughed softly but he didn’t ask me anymore questions. When I looked up a moment later he was gone.

  In the privacy of Adag’s flat, Mitch, myself, Adag and Seb that same evening discussed what we were going to do when the soldiers were gone and also our theories about the Twice Dead, the wild garlic and of course, why what had happened had happened. We sat around her dining table drinking coffee and picking at some toast I had made.

  Phoenix would come along to these meetings when he felt strong enough and so would Paul. We didn’t want to exclude, Cassidy and the others but they weren’t aware of the rise of the Twice Dead as yet. Until that was addressed, we all thought it best we keep them out of the loop.

  Adag was worried about the dwindling medical supplies for Paul, as he was needing more and more pain medication.

  “He needs something stronger than I am able to give him,” she said fretfully as she rolled her coffee cup in her hands, “There is stronger stuff in the Yellow Room but I don’t know how he will react to it, I don’t have enough medical training to make that sort of decision.”

  “Intravenous would be better for him,” I eyed the limp buttered toast in front of me and then slowly pushed it to one side, “It works faster,” I was speaking from my own experience with pain medication.

  “I can give injections,” Adag said, “But put in a line? No, I’ve never done that before.”

  None of us had. The home had fully qualified Nurses on rotation coming into the home as when needed, but Paul had not quite got to that stage where that was needed for him. It would have been soon but now with the end of the world as we knew, there was no one in our group with any medical qualifications, unless you counted the odd First Aid Certificate.

  “We can speak to Colonel Wolf,” I said.

  “Why the hell would we want to speak to him?” Seb said belligerently and he took my slice of toast and bit on it.

  “Because he has a Medic who is a qualified Doctor who probably has drugs we haven’t heard of that could possibly help Paul.”

  “I’ve not got a problem speaking to him,” Adag said, “If it helps Paul.”

  “That’s settled then,” I said and then I changed the subject and told them about Salter and how he would be staying in the home until the quarantine was over. Of course I had to explain why.

  “Why should we help that little shit?” Seb exploded, “He deserved all he got!”

  “He didn’t deserve what Duke did to him!” I snapped at Seb, “And he’s afraid of him, what does that say to you, one soldier afraid of another?’

  Seb opened his mouth to argue the point but Mitch interjected, “Lucy’s right Seb, that beating he took, it was done by someone who knows how to really make you hurt and not kill, he’s dangerous.”

  “All the more to keep out of his fucking way then,” Seb retorted.

  “I’m inclined to agree with Seb on this occasion,” Adag said, and she made a face as she spoke, “Oh my God, how the mighty have fallen…”

  “Charming,” Seb snorted, “I don’t think he should stay in the home.”

  “He stays,” I said flatly and before either Adag or Seb could argue with me, I said softly, “He was crying, when I found him he was crying, that Duke really hurt him, whatever you might think, that’s not right.”

  “Shit,” Seb said, he glanced at Adag and she nodded her head.

  “If this Duke murders us in our beds,” Seb growled at me, “I will come back as a Twice Dead and have your brains with a nice chianti…” he gnashed his teeth together to emphasise his point.

  We all laughed then. Breaking the tension that was building up in the room.

  Seb had begun to make a habit of joining Mitch in his garage most days and I watched as a warm and strong friendship began to form between the two men.

  Mitch and Seb had never really interacted per se when things were normal at the home. Before the end of the world Mitch was just the coach driver and handy man for Thorncroft, kind, but firm, never losing his temper, but when things change; they don’t change in a small way.

  Seb’s new friendship with Mitch was not surprisingly based

  on their shared love of all things mechanical, with the Gorilla it had been about the racing, but with Mitch it was about how things worked and how to make them better. And this wasn’t the only change in the status quo in the home that I noticed.

  Stevie had taken Cassidy under his wing, they spent a lot of time together, doing weight lifting, and watching wrestling DVD’s on the big screen in the lounge. Stevie also helped Cassidy with his volatile temper, taking him into the games room when he got upset and getting him to play Ping-Pong which he got quite good at and really enjoyed. I sometimes joined them and partnered up with Eden and we played doubles.

  Adag had said it would be good for us to keep as active as we could. I had never been one for exercise though I had enjoyed our fortnightly trip to the swimming pool in the town of Brightpine which was 20 or so miles away from Thorncroft in an easterly direction.

  I had considered swimming in the Monocot lake as it did have a swimming area but it hadn’t been used in years and I wasn’t sure how safe it was.

  Jasmine wasn’t really interested in sports, though she did like dancing and she and Eden now used the Wii on a daily basis in the lounge with one of their dance programs.

  Lieutenant Barnes checked on my leg and gave me some exercises to strengthen the calf muscle. It would never be completely OK, he said to me, like I didn’t know that, but there were some exercises that would help. If I persevered, then I probably could increase the muscle mass.

  Adag in turn spent most of her free time with Paul, his eyes hurt him a lot now so he didn’t like watching his DVD’s as much as he had done before. Adag started to read to him, and he seemed comfortable with her, she had replaced Shannon who had been one of his primary helpers. When he felt well enough, Stevie would go play checkers with him and tell him about Private Salter teaching not only him how to march but Cassidy too.

  Private Salter was put to work doing a variety of tasks. Even with one hand, he was able to do quite a lot. Drying dishes, doing the laundry and of course playing checkers and other board games with the residents in the evening before his curfew.

  He talked to me a lot, asking questions, trying to fill in the huge gaps of knowledge he had with regard to the complex world disabilities.

  He also ate his meals with us at the dining table because as Adag bluntly told him, he wasn’t a guest and she wasn’t having him taking his food into his room, only Phoenix and Paul were allowed that privilege.

  Private Salter got to be exposed to the other residents in an intimate way that slowly helped him understand more about disability.

  Seb made a point of not speaking to Salter unless he had too, but the others were more forgiving, and they included him in their conversations, their board games and of course their love of DVD’s.

  I had told Salter to evade any questions about when they would see their family and friends again, and to give him credit he obeyed me.

  Wolf used the office in our building during the day, and at night he joined his unit in the conference room billet. He often left the home late, I knew this because I would usually be curled up on the sofa either reading a book or watching a DVD when he left the building for the night.

  In the old days I went to bed at a certain time, my life had been well regulated as I said, but Adag had cut Seb and me a lot of slack since the end of the world. Seb liked going to work in the garage with Mitch after supper, and he often stayed with the older man in his quarters until midnight when he would head for his room via the kitchen.

  Wolf didn’t leave Salter with us totally unsupervised, Captain Lacks-Renton came in each day to check on him, and his curfew was rigidly kept to. He didn’t see much
of his comrades other than the Captain, the Colonel and occasionally Private Jasper and a female soldier called Topaz.

  I, myself got into a routine of going to see Phoenix in his room each day, going over what he was finding out during his monitoring of the Twice Dead and COBRA. He got used to me tapping on his door and entering and flopping down on his armchair.

  I usually bring a can of coke or some snack for him. We watched hours of Drone footage together. He made notes, I made a point of not writing anything down, consigning everything I thought potentially important to my prodigious memory.

  From what he was monitoring, Phoenix was seeing less and less survivors being found by the military. He was also seeing an increase of attacks on the military convoys that were out of the safety of what we now called the Elite Enclaves where the chosen were based.

  “Do you think they intended to stay underground if everything had gone the way they wanted?” I asked Phoenix, as we saw footage a group of Twice Dead prize open an overturn Humvee like a large sardine can to get at the contents, “I mean can you imagine the clean-up needed to make the world inhabitable for them?”

  “No,” Phoenix said as he watched a soldier being eaten alive by a group of Twice Dead. He had switched off audio. I had got used to seeing guts and carnage on Phoenix’s computer screen but I still had trouble with the sound.

  “No, what?” I said.

  “No I cannot imagine the clean-up to make the world inhabitable,” he replied.

  I laughed. Phoenix took things literally. Talking to him could be surprisingly refreshing rather than frustrating which surprised me.

  I chatted to Phoenix during our time together, most of the time he didn’t answer but I was happy with that, he was my sounding board in a way, and occasionally his logical mind would answer the questions or problems I was trying to work out.

  “I wonder if there were survivors in Thorncroft,” I mused my thoughts out loud.

  Phoenix looked at me almost quizzically, I remembered then he wasn’t aware of the smoke that had been seen when Wolf and I had gone to look for Stevie. I told him what had happened and also where the smoke was supposed to have come from.

  Phoenix remembered the café well because he had often gone to it when he was forced to leave his room and interact with other residents.

  “It stank,” he said bluntly.

  I laughed, “They like wild garlic.”

  “Yes,” Phoenix commented, “They did.”

  “That is if they are alive,” I pointed out.

  Phoenix tapped on his keys, accessing the now defunct web with pages that would never be updated again.

  “The Café’s page,” he said to me turning the computer so I could see the screen. It was a nice web page; the café owners had obviously spared no expense to make it look good. There was a high resolution picture of them standing outside the café with their two Jack Russell’s in their arms.

  Gabe and Percy Williamson. Originally from Brighton who had wanted to live a village life and run a quirky village cafe. Percy was the older of the two men, probably in his late thirties to very early forties. Both were slim in body build, though Percy was slightly bigger and taller. I suspected that Percy worked out. He had dark brown hair and smiling brown eyes.

  His partner was a red head, a “ginger.” it said on the website, it made me smile, mainly because there was a recipe for green frosted freckle cake, next to another photo of him, in honour of his freckles and green eyes. Gabe was 28, though he looked younger, both were informally dressed, Percy’s hairline was receding slightly I noticed but their smiles were warm and inviting.

  Unlike some of the small boutique shops in Thorncroft Village, the residents of the Home were made to feel welcome in the Tea and Herb Café. Being a Gay couple in a very White Middle Class environment could have made them a bit more tolerant towards those who were in a minority. Alternatively, they could have had disabled relatives. You simply didn’t know.

  “I wish we could find out if they were alive,” I said in a frustrated voice.

  “Why can’t you?” Phoenix stared at his computer screen.

  I opened my mouth to say how could we do that and then I remembered we had vehicles, the coach, the Land Rover, the Home’s van, Mitch’s own car and even Gregory’s car. Sometimes it took a person with a logical and clear mind to state the obvious. Phoenix did that often.

  I went looking for Mitch and Seb. They were in the garage. Their man-cave as Adag called it. Seb was sitting in a manual wheelchair and was working on Lewis whilst Mitch was under the hood of the coach. He looked up as I limped into the garage.

  “Slumming it Lucy?” he said as he prodded at something under the raised hood of the coach. The garage which was neat and tidy despite Seb being in it and I said as much.

  “It doesn’t have as much testosterone, as out there,” Mitch nodded toward the general direction of the soldier’s temporary billet.

  That made me giggle, “You shouldn’t know what a word like that means, Lady of Shadows,” Seb said severely.

  I stuck my tongue out at him and he threw a cloth at me which I caught and folded up before throwing it back.

  I then told them of my idea based on Phoenix’s suggestion. I waited for them to tell me “Not a chance,” and “Are you mad?” but they just stared at me and then Mitch wiped his oily hands on an old rag before saying, “When should we go?”

  “The Colonel won’t let you go,” Seb, pointed out the obvious.

  “It’s got fuck all to do with him,” Mitch responded tartly.

  “He will go nuts,” the thought of this made Seb smile after he said it.

  “What’s he going to do?” Mitch placed the rag on the engine of the coach, “Court martial us?”

  “Probably shoot us,” I said and I added, “We can go in the morning, early, talking of guns, I have one.”

  “You have a gun?” Seb said incredulously.

  “Yes and don’t ask where I got it from, but I do.”

  “Shall we tell Adag?” Seb asked.

  Mitch whistled softly and I shook my head. Adag was too cautious sometimes. She was a person of diametrically opposed extremes. Which could be good but it could also stunt what you wanted or needed to do urgently.

  “Best keep it between the three of us,” I said.

  “We’ll take my car,” Mitch decided, “It’s fast and quiet.”

  “You won’t need Wolf to shoot you,” Seb said with a grin, “Adag will do it when you get back!” The die was cast. We were going into town in the morning.

  Both Mitch and I were up as dawn slid over the landscape. Everyone was still in bed. I made us both some tea and toast and we sat quietly in the kitchen, our coats on, ready to leave once we had finished. Mitch’s own car was in the staff car park behind the main part of the building, right next to the garage that kept the home’s coach in it.

  “I don’t know who is going to be fucked off more,” Mitch said standing up, he tossed his keys into the air caught them, “Adag or the Colonel.”

  I made sure I had the Glock in my shoulder bag and Mitch had his machete. We left the home via the kitchen back door, we would cut through to the car park from behind the rubbish bins.

  Neither of us expected to find Private Salter sitting on the bench outside the kitchen door with a cup of coffee in his good hand. He was clad just in his regulation shorts and vest and was bare footed. I don’t know who jumped higher, me or him. As it was, Mitch banged into me because I stopped, he swore then he saw Salter who had scrambled up from the bench, splashing coffee all over the gravel as he only had use of his left hand.

  “Shit!” Mitch said grabbing my arm to steady both of us.

  “Aren’t you still under curfew?” I said in the hope of distracting him but he quickly noticed Mitch was carrying a machete and we both had our coats on.

  “What are you doing?” he said uneasily

  “None of your business,” was my tart response.

  “We’re under quara
ntine,” he said.

  “No,” I pointed out, “You lot are under quarantine, you personally are also under a curfew, a double whammy.”

  “If I shout for the morning patrol you won’t be going anywhere,” Private Salter was quick to realise what we were about to do.

  “How about I knock you out?” Mitch threatened him which we all knew he wouldn’t do because he had been the one who had carried the young soldier into the home and tended to his wounds not that long ago.

  Private Salter opened his mouth to shout for the patrol when I said softly, “They could be alive, can you imagine, being alive and not knowing what the hell was going on?”

  Salter frowned, “Who?” Salter’s curiosity overrode his need to call for back-up.

  “The people in the café, in town.”

  Salter knew about the smoke that had been seen when the Colonel and I had gone looking for Stevie, he also knew about the decision for nothing to be done about it. He hadn’t questioned that decision, he was removed from it as an enlisted man, but my words now troubled him.

  “He will rip me another one if he knows I didn’t stop you,” Salter said and he shuddered. I knew who ‘he’ was without even having to ask.

  “How will he know?” I said carefully, “You’re under curfew, aren’t you? At least another an hour before you can officially leave your room?”

  Salter bit his lower lip, and we waited, not sure what he was going to do, “Oh shit,” he said finally, and I knew right then he wasn’t going to call for back-up.

  I found myself smiling and before I could stop myself I reached out and gently stroked him on the cheek and then drew his face to mine so I could kiss his now almost healed cheek

  He looked stunned, “Thank you,” I said and he went even redder in the face but he grinned shyly at me. He had a sweet and cheeky grin. Mitch slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Get back to your room now son,” he ordered him, “Best not to be around for a bit.”

  “Be careful,” Salter called out to me and I waved to him and then Mitch and I were hurrying over to the staff car park.