Dead Beat

by Remy Porter

  ‘We should check on Toby,’ Summer said. We’d stared enough at the graffiti.

  Upstairs in the station you could smell Toby. Not the rot of the dead, but the musty reek of somebody who hadn’t left his room, let alone his bed, in over three weeks. Summer and I checked on him from time to time, but in the main we left his care to his Jean.

  The brutal injuries remained, the healing process inhibited by poor medicines and medical knowledge, compounded by our survivor’s diet. His shattered arm was the biggest concern. Too many fragments for even a jigsaw master to put right, we’d encased it in a mess of metal bars and papier mache cement. We gave him every antibiotic and painkiller we could find in the village. Toby’s hand and fingers still went black, and he still moaned and writhed constantly in his sleep. Never to wake, never to be whole again.

  Lester said he thought the arm should come off, but even the mad scientist didn’t have the heart for such a doomed operation. Toby’s face was a mash of crude stitches, Summer’s best work holding together what was left of a family man tortured into this near unrecognisable monster. Gouges in the body were covered with oozing, dirtied gauzes, hiding a multitude of wounds that refused to close or heal.

  ‘How long?’ Summer asked me as we hovered near the door, both of us spying through a porthole window. Jean knelt on the mattress, dabbing a wet cloth on the bare skin of her husband, trying to chase another fever away.

  ‘Not long,’ I said. The inevitable could not be postponed forever.

  Later, after we had eaten, Jefferson stood next to the half open window. ‘So dark tonight, no stars. The clouds are smothering up the sky.’

  ‘Good,’ Summer said. ‘It might keep us a little warmer.’

  Jefferson gave a little chuckle then. His slight old man’s frame had something of a pixie look about it.

  ‘Where do you go on all those walks, Jefferson?,’ I said.

  ‘I’m just a simple man Johnny. Walks take me out of my head for a little while. Stop me thinking too much about those things behind the fence. No big mystery there.’

  ‘But you’re the most mysterious person I know,’ laughed Summer.

  Afterwards, Summer and I laid back on our bed and talked in the dark. It was soothing just to talk, two discombobulated voices in the inky black, drifting towards sleep.

  ‘I don’t remember him you know,’ Summer said.

  ‘Remember who?’

  ‘Jefferson. In all my time walking through the village, all those community meetings, I never saw him. What about you?’

  ‘You’re right, I never saw him either. Strange ...’ I said, and sleep took me in her warm embrace.

  Waking with a start, I heard muffled voices and then the unmistakable sound of the front door slamming shut. Still groggy, I staggered to the office window and looked down. Under the dark shadow of the houses opposite I made out the silhouette of Jefferson walking away. I felt annoyed because he had promised to do a whole night shift on look-out. And now there he was walking away. Always with the walking. There would be words said later.

  Then I heard a second sound. A creaking on the floor boards, a stutter-step on the stairs. Somebody was moving on the ground floor, and now up the stairs. I went for my jeans out of modesty, and the delay saved my life. By the time I got out of our bedroom the zombie had already lurched into the Hanson’s room.

  What happened next was a blur of movement and screams. I shouted a warning for Summer and fumbled for the corridor light. Click, then nothing. The fuse box must have tripped again. Another scream, this time it was Jean and the boys together. A cacophony of fear and anger, trapped and scared out of their minds.

  ‘GET AWAY FROM US!’

  The floor of our bedroom was littered with four, maybe five weapons hidden in the blackness. Summer and I fumbled for something to use, anything. In the dark panic and adrenalin rush our hands kept coming up empty. Finally I found a machete handle. Summer had something smaller. I guessed it could only be her beloved hatchet.

  Running blind into the Hanson’s room I could make out a bundle of shapes against the outline of the mattress on the floor. Between the screams was the low bass sound I’d heard too many times, the sound of feasting, raw muscle and tendon being torn free from the living. My eyes adjusted enough to make out friend from foe. The body had gone for the easy meat of the comatose Toby, broken and dying, but still enough to excite the dead palate. Jean who had tried to stop it, had got in the way, and now her leg was being ripped to the bone. Blood streaked the floor like an abattoir.

  Phillip and Mark bolted past me and away into the corridor. They had seen enough, and I was glad they were safe. Summer and I stepped forward. She buried the hatchet with precision deep into the back of the body’s neck. The creature looked up, confused but still aware. Its shadowy, rotting face turned to me and tried to rise. My blade swept down and cleaved its head in two. It split like a rotten coconut, the stench overwhelming.

  Jean Hanson lay there panting, her arms wrapped around her husband. The tube lights flickered back into life on the ceiling. Blinking I looked over the scene in front of me, as Lester burst into the room.

  ‘I knocked the fuse box switches back into place ... Jesus,’ he said.

  Mrs Hanson’s leg was a ruin. At the bottom of the open wound I could see the white of her femur. Nearby, the zombie’s mouth was crammed with raw meat, like the end of a butcher’s mincing machine. The wet sheen was on Jean’s skin already, and the vacant look in her eyes meant her change was coming fast.

  ‘We need to ...’ I started to say, but Summer finished my sentence. Not with any words, but with her hatchet cracking down twice on Jean’s skull. She looked across at Toby too, slowly dying of gangrene or whatever blood infection was slowly killing him. Oblivious to everything that had happened. She glanced back at me for an answer, her blue eyes half crazed, half resigned to it all.

  ‘Leave him, I can’t see a bite,’ I said. The murder might have been a kindness, but it was Summer who would have to live with it, and carry its burden. Summer was all I had, she couldn’t break.

  The hatchet dropped and she held me; a deep sob against my ribs.

  ‘It will be alright.’

  ‘The switches were all flicked back,’ Lester said. ‘On the fuse box. Every one.’

  I tried to make some sense of what he was saying. In the refreshment room I could hear Phillip and Mark crying.

  ‘It’s Jefferson,’ I said at last. ‘I think Jefferson is a traitor.’

  CHAPTER 26

  At first light we carried Jean Hanson’s body the far end of the car park and set it alight next to the other body. The flames on her skin licked orange and yellow. I was glad Phillip and Mark were asleep, exhausted in mine and Summer’s bed. There was no ceremony of words from the bible, we had more immediate concerns. It was not enough that the dead walked the earth, it appeared the survivors wanted us dead as well.

  ‘Are you sure it was the farmers?’ Summer said quietly as we watched the pyre die down.

  ‘How could it not be?’

  Half an hour later and Summer and I sat in the 4x4. I knew we needed to see Jack, and his bastard son Griffin before things really got out of hand.

  ‘Are you sure this is a wise idea?’ Lester said through my rolled down driver’s window. ‘I mean, I’ve had my differences down the line with officers of the law. But Johnny, I’m the only person around here bar those damn crazy farmers that actually half-like this new world. And I like you being in that world, Johnny. Don’t go getting yourself and beautiful Summer here killed for no reason.’

  ‘We’ll be okay. I just need to have a word with them, and see if we can’t find some compromise. I mean, maybe Jefferson was just a crazy coot after all, and it has nothing to do with Jack and Griffin.’

  ‘I don’t have the answer to that conundrum, unfortunately. I do know old Jefferson’s room has been left neat as a pin. Fucker must have been sneaking his stuff away over the last few days when we weren’t looking. I
don’t think he’ll be back anytime soon. It has me worried, Johnny. Last night seemed pretty pre-planned to me,’ Lester said. ‘Just take care alright. I don’t want to go back to living on my own anytime soon.’

  ‘No worries, Lester,’ Summer said from the passenger seat. ‘Any hostility and we’re straight back here. Promise.’

  We took our time on the drive towards the farm. From the high vantage point before the road wound down I could see the crowds of dead. Too many bodies down there to count now, crawling over each other like the bugs they were. The fence couldn’t hold forever. My eyes flicked across to the woods to my right. I felt paranoid that people from the farm were watching us, expecting us.

  I was right.

  ‘Jesus, what the hell are they doing?’ Summer said squirming in her seat.

  Ahead, the road was blocked. A horse box was sideways in the road. There was barbed wire and sandbags. Bob Sack had a rifle in his hands. Two other men stood next to him, guns in their hands too.

  I stopped the Freelander a good seventy metres from where they waited for us. I figured if they were going to start shooting, at least the range would make it difficult.

  ‘Wait here,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wait here, I want to talk to them,’ I said sharply.

  ‘Okay,’ Summer said. She was as scared as me.

  I walked the distance between the 4x4 and where they stood. I felt exposed, like a man walking towards a firing squad. The morning air was crisp, biting at my skin.

  ‘Bob,’ I said. ‘Have you joined Dad’s Army?’

  Bob didn’t laugh. He looked pained, his round face a picture of turmoil. ‘Look Johnny, I’ve got my orders.’

  ‘What have they told you to do?’ I said, my palms clammy.

  ‘Nobody comes in anymore.’

  ‘Is that it, Bob? You know if you shoot me I’ll just come back as a ghost and haunt you forever.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Bob said. Half a smile.

  ‘Can I speak to you alone for a second,’ I said, drawing Bob away from the two goons he was stood with. ‘What can you tell me about Jefferson?’

  Bob paused for thought. Sweat globules standing out on his forehead. ‘He’s down there on the farm. Good friend of Jack’s.’

  I looked down towards the farmyard that was more like a building site; villagers industrious worker bees on the new accommodation block. I couldn’t see the traitor.

  ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ I said. ‘But one last thing Bob, what happens if me and Summer walk down there?’

  ‘You can’t Johnny. That’s all I want to say.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and walked away. I wondered if they would shoot me in the back.

  ‘That was bad,’ Summer said as we drove away. ‘We have to be so careful now.’

  Back at the station we had to face reality. The smell from Toby’s room was rich and pungent. I looked on him again and he seemed to have shifted on his mattress. Toby was face down on the bedding, and appeared to have soiled himself. Who was going to clear up his mess now his wife was dead and burnt I wondered? The carpet was still streaked iron-red with dry blood. I closed the door with a quiet click.

  ‘How are the boys doing?’ I said to Lester, who was stood at the refreshments room door watching me.

  ‘Good as can be expected I suppose. We just have to look after them the best we can.’

  It was Summer who came up with the idea to play football. She saw Phillip and Mark’s bleak faces, and told them to find some kit. We crammed into the 4x4 and set off to the local playing field, finding it untended and unloved by any grounds keeper. Weeds were rampant over the patchy grass, and the white frames of the goal posts were more rusted than ever. I suspected we were the first living people to enjoy this place since the outbreak.

  ‘GOAL!’ Phillip shouted, as he slotted another one through the bow legs of Lester. Phillip pulled his red football shirt over his head and ran celebrating headlong into his brother. They both fell into a heap laughing and play fighting. Summer and I looked at each other and smiled. Both of us in oversized athletic tops poached out of the lost property bin. She was right as always, this had been the right thing to do. It was helping us all forget where we were for the moment. I looked around us at the empty cricket pavilion and crown green bowling club, left to rot now. Derelict monuments to village times long gone.

  ‘Look,’ Summer said. ‘He’s watching us again.’

  I followed her gaze, and there was Griffin swinging on the child’s swing. He gave an exaggerated wave our way. It gave me a cold chill.

  ‘What do you think he wants?’ she said.

  ‘Just ignore him,’ I managed. ‘Let’s play some more.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But we can’t leave Toby for too long. He’s going to need us. We’re going to have to make him better for the boys.’

  I could tell from her face she didn’t really believe what she was saying. But she was right, we had to try.

  We played the game for another half hour. At some point Griffin must have left. The empty swing seat was rotating gently in the breeze, a forgotten relic once more.

  At the station we got the boys to help Lester prepare some food in the kitchen. Summer told them that their Dad was tired, and would see them later. Once they were out of the way it left us with the unfortunate task of cleaning Toby up, and getting some nutrition into him. He was still face down on the mattress, the fever burning up his skin. I went to the window and opened it wider, trying to rid the room of the stench.

  ‘We should burn these,’ Summer said, holding up the soiled trousers and underpants. ‘Help me with his top.’

  ‘You have a real knack for this,’ I said to her, trying hard not to focus on the awful green-black infection spreading beyond the crude arm cast.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t always in the police you know. Weekend job at the local old folk’s home, The Sanctuary Retreat.’

  ‘I remember now. You told me that just before we went in and cleared the place out. Those zombie grannies were pure evil.’

  Summer worked her magic, and in no time Toby was bed bathed and clean. He was stirring now. Not necessarily conscious, but in some netherworld in-between.

  ‘We should have let Lester cut that arm off,’ I whispered.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Toby, can you hear me.’ I said. ‘Come on Toby, we need to eat and drink. You need to get better.’

  He twitched and groaned again. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to communicate with us.

  Summer began to pour a little water in his mouth, but it ran out the sides and pooled on the mattress.

  ‘Tomorrow, we’ll ask Lester to sort out a drip. I’m sure he will know how. He’ll die quick without water.’

  ‘Maybe ...’ Summer started to say, but didn’t finish. I knew what she meant.

  The mood stayed sombre into the night. It was a blessing that the boys went to sleep fast in Jefferson’s old room. They didn’t ask too many questions about their Dad. They knew how bad things were. Part of me wondered what kind of parents Summer and I could be to them.

  Somewhere after midnight the power went down. One minute we were playing a half-hearted game of poker in the kitchen, and the next we were immersed in black.

  I stumbled down to the fuse box, a fire axe in my hand. I half-expected to see the front door swung open and more unwanted guests.

  ‘The door’s locked,’ I shouted up to Summer.

  Nothing in the fuse box was tripped.

  Later by the light of the candles we speculated. All the electrics in the station were out, as were the car park street lights.

  ‘It could be the wind turbines again. They were never going to last forever,’ Lester said.

  ‘It’s the farm,’ I said looking into Summer’s beautiful flickering face. ‘Bob Sack just fucked us over again.’

  In the morning I heard engines outside the station. I squinted into the morning light, and I knew what I said had been truth.r />
  Griffin sat out there on a tractor, behind him was a convoy of vehicles. Losing count of the number of guns on display, I ran the windows on the opposite side of the station. The farmers had surrounded us, trapping us. Summer ran into the room, hatchet in her hand. Always the fearless one.

  ‘Put it down,’ I said. ‘We can’t win this.’

  There was a loud bang of someone kicking the front door, and Griffin’s booming voice, ‘Little pig, little pig ... let me in.’

  ‘Blow his fucking head off,’ Lester said walking in.

  ‘We need to play this very cool,’ I replied, going for the stairs. ‘Stay up here. I think I know what this is about.’

  I took in a gulp of air and opened our door.

  ‘Greetings officer,’ Griffin said, his father Jack next to him. I counted fifteen others out of their vehicles with guns and assorted weapons. Bob Sack and Jefferson looked prominent in the pack.

  ‘Jack, Griffin. What can I do you for?’

  ‘We’ve come for a little justice,’ Jack said. His nose looked more bulbous and purple than normal, alcohol on his breath.

  ‘Justice is my department. Read the sign. You build fences and fuck sheep, I wear the shiny uniform.’

  ‘No need for profanity, John,’ Jack said. I could see Griffin straining at the leash. Mad dog on heat.

  ‘What do you expect Jack? Kick on my door, and then stand there like Mad Max and his fucking army. I thought the zombies were all outside the fence now. What’s the occasion?’

  ‘The occasion is, Johnny, we want a little word with your new house guest Toby Hanson,’ Griffin spat and waved his plastered arm my way. ‘What that fucker did to my arm will never be right. Community sentence or some bullshit, well that don’t cover this no more.’

  ‘Have you seen Toby recently? After what you did to him, you’ll be lucky he lasts the week. Guy’s basically in a coma. And while we’re on the subject, Jefferson’s little zombie took out Mrs Hanson yesterday. Mother of two kids, how you all feeling on that one?’ I said raising my voice to a shout. Jefferson looked unmoved, a fully programmed robot.