"Climb!" he shouted at her, as if she was deaf. She seemed to understand, quickly disappearing up the ladder. "Come on!" he yelled to Geri. She had run out of bullets and was proceeding to throw the gun at the nearest of the dead. Turning towards his voice, he watched her run towards him, spotting the ladder almost immediately. "Go! Go!" he shouted in her ear.
Waiting for Geri to disappear, Lark booted the head of several of the dead closing in. They fell against their peers, not collapsing, due to the thickness of the crowd. He leapt quickly onto the ladder, following Geri's feet. Another one of the dead fucks managed a lucky grab at his ankle, but his DM boot - some of the most sensible footwear he'd ever known - did a fine job of pummelling the unfortunate back where it belonged. He continued to climb the short distance up towards the rooftop. Once atop, Geri and Lark flipped the rooftop lid over the ladder and sealed it as tightly as their human hands allowed them.
They fell back onto the roof, breathless. Lark looked at Geri, sweat drying on his skin with the cool air of the altitude. She looked back, and for some reason unknown to either of them, they both started to laugh.
They could still hear them, just below. Their grumbling coughs. Their aimless meandering from one end of the corridor to the other, confused and frustrated to have lost their prey. It was as if someone had called the game to a close. Hide and seek is over, kids. Everyone back to class.
The sound of the spitting flames had paled, but Geri was still worried that the whole building might eventually go up, the dead rebounding off each other like human firelighters. It was a small relief to feel the pitter-patter of rain. Geri quietly thanked whatever god was listening for that small mercy, hoping it would be enough to stall the flames. She sat on the rooftop, sheltering against a nearby brick enclosure as Belfast's run of warm weather broke in the inevitable down pouring of rain. For Geri, the rain not only fought against the onslaught of fire, it was also a sign that change was in the air. With so much bad having happened, she was hoping the change would be for the good.
She held the little girl in her arms, rubbing her exposed skin to warm her up as the rain strengthened. The child made no cry or complaint. She seemed still, content even, allowing the rain to bounce off her face as if it were bathwater. Geri knew nothing about the child. She didn't even know if the other young woman, the one she had communicated with very briefly before her untimely death, had been her mother. But she felt something radiate from the child, a positive energy. Even now, Geri felt warmed by her embrace.
But there was something special about this child on another level. A human level. As if, in surviving this whole mess, the child would be destined to view the world differently. The little girl lived in the moment, and there was nothing more magical than that. A warm embrace from a stranger or the cooling splash of summer rain upon her face was probably enough to lift her. And in lifting herself, she also lifted Geri.
She looked out onto the dampening rooftop, noticing a warm mist rising from the rainwater already. It reminded her of the moment, her omen, in the bath, just before George had arrived. He had later told her that they'd known there was life in the house due to the steam escaping the bathroom window. It was a change in her fortunes, then, and she was willing to bet that the mist lifting from the gathered pools, now, was equally promising.
Opposite them, Lark stood, legs spread-eagled, pissing over the side of the rooftop. Geri smiled, realising there was absolutely nothing magical about him. He was as grimy as the sludge gathering on around her, formed by years of rain and sleet and pollution. But he was suddenly precious to her. Salt of the earth, she thought, smiling to herself.
"Haha! Come and get it, you dead fucks!" he mocked.
"That's foul," Geri said, still smiling.
"Not half," he laughed, continuing to let out what seemed to have been building for far too long. "You know what's also foul?" Lark said, turning to look at her as he shook himself dry. "All of that " he said, casting an arm across the horizon in indication. "All of the world's loves, hates, joys and sadness eaten up by some flicking flu virus. And here we are, top of the fucking world, without a prayer of ever defeating them. Standing in the wind and flicking rain, while they're running around in the flats below. Warmer, dryer and probably a lot fucking happier." He looked across the skyline, and Geri could see a poignancy draw across his face. She wondered if he were thinking of McFall. "It just ain't right," he said, shaking his head before tucking his cock back into his pants.
But Geri hugged the child tight and smiled, no longer seeing their situation the same way as Lark. Perhaps he was right, in a way. Perhaps they would die up here, unable to fight their way past the dead lining the corridors. Or, maybe they'd think of some way out of this mess. A simple but effective solution. A keen sharpening of their human senses and intelligence to come up with an answer to a seemingly unsolvable problem. It was what humans always did in desperate situations. It was what would make them the more superior race, in the ongoing struggle between the dead and the living.
But it didn't matter, either way. In her mind, sitting here in the rain, she had already made it. She was a survivor.
But the same couldn't be said for all of them. Her heart sank as she thought of George. She didn't even know his surname. In fact, she knew absolutely nothing about him. They had shared little more than a fleeting glance across a table. A random and awkward conversation or two, played out on a bleak landscape. And then he had been lost to her, before the significance of him in her mind, in her heart, could be realised.
"Wait a minute " Lark said, drawing her out of her moment. He was looking at the surface of the rooftop. The rain bounced ferociously off his shorn head, yet he didn't seem to notice it, such was his concentration. He walked purposefully across the length and breadth of the rooftop, staring at the ground.
"What is it?" Geri said, standing up and shielding the child from both the rain and whatever threat Lark was anticipating.
"On the ground," Lark said. "There's something written on the ground "
Geri looked down, finding a huge stripe of paint at her feet. It seemed to spread across the entire rooftop, and she was unable to read what was written from where she stood. She thought suddenly of the other, now-dead, girl's paint-splattered clothes. Lark had climbed up on the small enclosure, looking down on the rooftop with better perspective.
"What does it say?" she asked him, shouting against the growing intensity of the rain.
"Wow," he said. "This is fucking mad "
"What is it?!" Geri persisted, growing impatient.
"It says 'WE HAVE THE CURE' " he said, looking at her, confused. "It's huge "
Geri looked down at the little girl. She didn't know how, but she knew, she simply knew the little girl was special. That the message on the roof had something to do with her. She pulled the child even closer to her, frightened in case she would somehow disappear, dissolving into the rain, as if made of ice.
"It's the child," she said to Lark, confidently. "It means the child."
Jackson's eyes flicked open, immediately stinging against the harshly lit room. He had been dreaming, and the dreams hadn't been good. In his dream, Gallagher and the other men were sitting at a long table, dining. It was a medieval style affair, and they were all dressed in their Sunday best. A silver platter arrived, brought in regally by the dead colonel, now seemingly a butler. The colonel lifted the lid with his skeletal hands, revealing Jackson's own head on the platter beneath. In his mouth was an apple, as if the he were merely a wild boar, slain and cooked for the pleasure of the gathered men. Gallagher seemed delighted, his intake of breath and polite applause encouraging the other men to join in and praise the main course. But Jackson was still alive, now able to see them from his new resting place. He tried to spit the apple from his mouth, but it seemed fixed there, as if glued to his teeth. He screamed with his eyes, noting how each of the men looked back at him, still clapping and praising him, as if he should be proud to be on the table, proud to be
on a silver platter.
He fought his way back from unconsciousness, his waking eyes straining to accustom themselves with the artificial light. He was in one of the interrogation rooms, strapped into a chair, naked. The last thing he remembered was being shot, and then waking on the floor of the control room. He couldn't remember how he'd got here. He felt terrible, nauseous. The room was almost freezing, the bite of cold air shivering through his tired, old body, clammy sweat breaking on his brow. He looked down at the wound on his shoulder, realising it was patched up. His eyes then fell upon the cold, undead stare of the colonel, strapped into a chair directly opposite him. Or what was left of the colonel. He was little more than a stump of flesh, a torso with a head, but little else. His limbs and organs were spread out in sealed, bloody plastic bags along a nearby table, where Gallagher was working. He turned as Jackson tried to shake himself free.
"Ah," he said. "Just on cue." He was still wearing the blood-stained plastic suit that seemed to now act as his surgical gown. He held a syringe in his gloved hand. "You are to be commended, sir," the doctor continued. "That shadow you spotted on the video monitor well, it was a little girl. " He walked over to another table, removing his gloves and setting down the syringe, carefully, before lifting a particular file. "Ah, here we are. Flat 23. Brigita Fico is the last name on record for residency of this flat. A Slovakian. As you're aware, we launched a pilot project with Home Office for keeping track of particularly irksome illegal immigrants. Just after the peace process broke, and our standard surveillance project was no longer needed. Miss Fico was one of our first targets. Of course, the funding was pulled before the project really got off the ground," Gallagher paused and looked into the air, regretfully, "but we never delete any of our files, as you know, sir. Information is power, in this game.
"Last we heard, young Brigita gave birth to a little girl called Brina, six years ago just before the project came to an untimely halt." Gallagher continued to study the file. "Brina seems to be your shadow," he said, finally looking up at Jackson. "Quarantined, having taken ill, but now, seemingly, alive and well "
Jackson struggled against the straps.
"She's just a child, Gallagher " he heard himself say, the words heavy in his swollen throat, like boiled sweets. He coughed, suddenly, thick phlegm breaking across his lips. "For God's sake, man " He was thinking about his own granddaughter. The alcohol in his system was all but spent, inviting back the things he had been trying to blot out. Things like how he hadn't talked to his own little princess since the shit had hit the fan. Or how he didn't know where she was, how she was.
But Gallagher looked at him as if genuinely hurt. It was the most emotion that Jackson had ever seen cross his face.
"The girl is vital to my continuing work, sir," he said. "Work that hopes to guarantee the very survival of the human race," he stressed, "so you can be sure that we will do whatever needs to be done to keep her safe."
"You're a fucking monster!" Jackson spat, looking at the results of Gallagher's experimentation with the colonel on the table. He had no reason to believe that he would be any less enthusiastic with the little girl. "You leave her alone, or I swear, I'll -"
"You'll do very little, sir," Gallagher interrupted. "Apart from assist me in my work." He sat the file down, walking to the corpse of the colonel, fondling his brittle hair affectionately. "He was a good officer," Gallagher said. "Perhaps even more useful after death than he was before it. I've learned a lot from the work I've done with him " Jackson thought he'd finally lost it. Gallagher was never the full shilling; he'd always known that. No one could be so consistently callous, so utterly without emotion, without having some sort of defect. It wasn't human. But as the doctor continued to caress the torn body of the still functioning colonel, as if the ragged rump of flesh and bone were his pet pooch, Jackson realised that whatever humanity had been retained by the doctor was all but gone. "Do you know that they will devour even their own bodies?" Gallagher mused, studying Jackson as if he were the audience in some sort of seminar. "Watch this," he said, waving a finger in the air. He walked back to the table, humming to himself as he went. He picked one of the bloody bags, retrieving an unidentifiable body part from it by carefully unwrapping the plastic. He then returned to the colonol, now writhing hungrily in his chair. As Jackson watched on, wanting to take his eyes off the scene, but strangely unable, Gallagher proceeded to feed the colonel what seemed to be the dead man's own flesh. The colonel ripped shreds from the bone, like a starving animal. "So, I know what you're thinking," mused Gallagher, still feeding the colonel almost maternally, as if he were a sick child. "You're wondering why they don't hunt each other, in the wild " Gallagher's hands were jerking dangerously close to the colonel's mouth as he continued talking. The dead man's hunger was ravenous, devouring every scrap of flesh vicariously. "Well," Gallagher continued, "my theory is that they have some sort of collective mentality. A respect for the herd, if you like. They don't hunt each other because they enjoy a certain sense of belonging, if you like." Gallagher raised an eyebrow at Jackson, as if to underline his next point. "Much like us," he said. "Only sheer desperation will force them to act as the good colonel is acting, therefore "
"Alas," Gallagher said, leaving the fleshy bone hanging from the colonel's teeth, "he's no longer of any benefit to my studies. I need another specimen, Major, and that's where you come in."
"W-what are you talking about?" Jackson gasped, struggling uselessly against the straps.
"I've injected you with the virus," Jackson said. "I need another dead subject, shall we say, to test little Brina's alleged immunity. So, in reality, it is not I who should be pressed regarding how gentle to be with the little girl. No, sir. It will be you."
"You bastard," Jackson said, tears dampening his eyes. His whole body became consumed by anger and fear.
"I didn't need to inject you, of course," continued Gallagher, unfazed by Jackson's outburst. "You would have risen, just like all the others, if I had left you to die naturally, shall we say. However, I want a specimen that is purely infected, if you get my meaning. A specimen that is completely and utterly consumed by the virus, so to speak."
"H-how could you do this?" Jackson spat bitterly at Gallagher. He could feel the flu racing through his system. He coughed suddenly, choking on his words as if they were sharp in his mouth. He felt himself gagging, about to vomit. A gob of blood seeped from his mouth like oil. He didn't want to be one of those things. He didn't want the guilt of destroying another child's life, after what had happened with Flynn's boy all those years ago. This was not what was supposed to happen; this was not how a man was supposed to die. He looked at Gallagher, searching for any hint of benevolence, any faint glimmer of humanity within his cold, sterile gaze. But the doctor simply looked back at him, as if answering a simple question with a logical answer.
"The greater good, sir," the doctor replied politely, in answer to the question. "I do it all for the greater good."
Epilogue
Edward Samuel McFall sat at the patio table, spent tissues gathering at his feet like fallen petals. Several cans of beer, crumpled up like old napkins, lay beside them. His balaclava lay on the table next to the golfing magazine. It was still doused in heavy-scented herbs. It was still useless.
He was drunk. Drunk as a skunk, as his old mates at the taxi rank used to say. He was also cold, shivers racing through his body like electric shocks. An all consuming wheeze shook his chest, like a box full of rice, and he almost gagged on the bloody phlegm that came with it, drooling through his lips and teeth like juice from a drinks machine.
He began to laugh, the delirious humour giving way to a coughing fit. He spat another glob of blood into a tissue and dropped it to the floor. And then, when he was done laughing and spitting, McFall began to cry.
He knew he was dying, and it made him sad.
The revolver sat squarely on the table, defiantly within reach. It was fully loaded, all six chambers carrying a shell each. McFa
ll was ready to use it. He didn't fear it. In fact, it comforted him. But he wanted to keep its saving grace for the very last moment. He wanted to rinse every last trace of life from his tired, unravelled body before picking that gun up.
You see, McFall didn't want to be one of them.
He looked out the back patio door, into the garden. The rain peppered the windows like sweat, but he could still see clearly out onto the overgrown lawn. It was still empty, still clean of them, apart from one. And she didn't count, because he didn't fear her. She was the one who looked like his wife, and she was glaring in at him through the glass, as if baying for his attention. She must have found a way through the next-door neighbour's fence. How she'd managed that, McFall didn't know. But love conquers everything, he said to himself, laughing. She didn't see the funny side of it, of course. She remained still, motionless, as if bored or huffing. It was just the way his wife would have stood, if she hadn't already fallen asleep, whenever he came home, late yet again, from taxi-driving.
She always wanted to go out, to go dancing, as she put it. Especially at the weekend. But that was his busiest time with the taxi-driving. It was the time you made the most money. Still, he'd promise to be home in time, phone her and tell her to get all dressed up, only to get that 'one last job' and find himself rolling through the door past 1:00am, finding her angry and upset, wearing her best togs. Or even worse, curled up, fast asleep on the couch. Because that meant the bollocking he was due would wait until morning. Maybe even get drawn out for days.
The dead fuck outside was still wearing the housecoat that he'd bought for his wife two Christmases ago. Through the dirty glass, she looked even more like his wife. He knew that it wasn't her out there, standing in the rain as if at some sort of protest, but for his last few minutes of life, he was willing to pretend it was.
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