The Dead Boy

by Saunders, Craig

  Weak, she thought. But she couldn't be sure. Madness was full of cunning.

  Don't speak...just sneak. Look...get the fuck out if you have to...

  She argued with herself, but her mind was losing. She walked to the counter and looked over, half-expecting to see a weapon for a mere instant before it plunged through her eye.

  She didn't expect to see a man, arms and legs cut off. She didn't expect to see anything like the misery and agony (and fear) in that man's eyes. She didn't think she'd see it again.

  Like the man on the motorway.

  Like a gang tag?

  'Please...'

  She couldn't speak. She wanted to vomit, or run, but she couldn't do those things, either.

  'I can't help...I...'

  She turned away, her body winning once again, her mind shutting down, walking to the door.

  'Kill me...please...'

  She stopped. The basket was still in her hand.

  I can't go. I can't go, because we need medicine.

  She hated herself afresh for a moment. Survival over compassion.

  Her husband would have been proud.

  But he's probably dead, too, isn't he?

  They needed medicine. She didn't need to leave the man like that.

  She walked back to the counter. She couldn't figure out how to open the hatch without putting her crutches down and using both hands. She couldn't look at the man, and she couldn't break her crutches.

  Because she needed them, just as much as they all needing medicine and all the other sweet treats right here.

  Francis climbed over the counter. It was awkward and hard and it hurt, but it had to be done.

  'Just...'

  She didn't need to hear whatever he had to say, though. That would have made it worse. She put the edge of the basket against the man's throat and laid all her weight against it, while she closed her eyes and looked away. It would have been obscene, to look at him. She didn't want to hear, but that, she couldn't help.

  Francis thought she stayed that way for maybe two minutes.

  Long enough.

  She worked around him and took all the medicines she recognised, and then climbed back over the counter and filled another basket with bandages, scissors, butterfly staples, energy sweets, anything at all that might prove useful.

  When she got back to the car she emptied everything into the back seat and threw the baskets down.

  'Was it all right?' asked Edgar.

  'Shove over,' she said. 'No problem.'

  Later that day, before night fell, she felt George's eyes on hers in the rearview mirror. Without touching, they couldn't speak. Francis glanced at Edgar, head against the window, asleep.

  To George, she shook her head.

  Don't.

  She watched the road instead. Nothing come up behind them to worry about anyway, was there? She ignored George and drove on in silence and when night did fall it was a relief to have no eyes on her.

  *

  When they stopped, Francis did what she could with Edgar's arm. It smelled, but not as bad as she thought it would. Green and yellow and ugly, but not putrid.

  He screamed when she splashed the entire wound with iodine.

  'Sorry,' she said. She was, too. His face was a picture, though, looking at her with some fire and a ton of hate. She couldn't help a small laugh.

  'Here,' she said, popping antibiotics and codeine into his palm before strapping him with the broadest bandages she'd been able to find. 'Consider it my apology.'

  Francis let Edgar make George comfortable and busied herself with things she didn't need to do - like watching their surrounds for danger - so they could sleep in the car.

  She knew there was nothing out there. The only eyes she felt on her belonged to the strange boy behind her.

  It was cold - near freezing, even, and the windows misted with their breath. There might have been a thousand madmen outside and they wouldn't see them until it was far too late. But she didn't need to worry. Something inside her, like George had, maybe, and Edgar, too, told her it wasn't dangerous. It felt open and wide. The kind of place where people aren't.

  My senses are changing, thought Francis. I'm changing.

  Edgar slipped back into the passenger seat and closed his eyes. 'Goodnight George. Goodnight Francis.' Before the interior light switched itself Edgar opened one eyes and looked over at Francis. 'Thank you.'

  'It's okay,' she said. 'Night.'

  Lights off, George was invisible in the back seat.

  She didn't touch him - she wasn't ready for him to know, or say a single word inside her head. But after a few minutes of reaching out for sleep and missing it, Francis found she was unsettled, no matter how far away she pushed all the horror.

  She nudged Edgar.

  'I'm awake,' he said. 'What's the matter? Are you okay?'

  There, in the dark, it was easier to speak.

  'Do you think about your wife much?'

  He sighed. She thought he might have shrugged.

  'Her name was Sarah,' he said. 'I do...but...not all the time. I thought I would.'

  'I don't think about my husband at all. You know that? Not at all.'

  'I thought you weren't married...'

  'I don't think I am. Not anymore. I used to have a picture. In my purse. I lost the purse, and...I don't remember what he looked like. Is that cold, Edgar?'

  He stared out of the window.

  'I think it's what you need it to be, Francis, and that's okay, isn't it?'

  They sat like that, in the dark, for a while longer, both half-stoned on codeine.

  I killed a man with a fucking shopping basket, Edgar, she thought. I shot a policeman in the heart. I shot your wife. I killed a man with a meathook, or a bailing hook. I'm not sure it matters...what about that, Edgar? Are those things, those deaths, cold?

  Am I cold?

  Pain floated away. Sleep came, but it wasn't easier. Sleep was full of fresh new nightmares. She took more from the pharmacy than medicine.

  That's fine, though, she thought in the morning. The old nightmares were getting stale anyway.

  *

  XII.

  John Wake

  Francis drove with no real direction in mind but north. They were on their fourth car. Petrol, rather the car, being the problem - hoses for siphoning weren't as easy to find on the road than in gardens. It might have been two days, or three, when the three survivors passed something other than destruction. It might have been Cumbria, where they found the airfield, but the skies were darker, people rare, and in the grey sleet directions and time and even day or night became guesswork.

  Francis pointed. Edgar squinted through the windshield and a sheet of dark sleet. Behind a wire fence, the dim outline of aeroplanes - unmistakeable. Small planes, though, rather than the larger commercial jets and airbuses. A private airfield, for hobbyists and rich folk.

  'I can't fly, Francis,' said Edgar. 'George probably isn't quite up to it.'

  George, safe in his seatbelt in the backseat grunted.

  Edgar raised an eyebrow at Francis. 'Did he...'

  She nodded. They smiled. Both smiles were rusted.

  'Maybe there's someone there who can fly... If not, at least there's bound to be something useful. Take what we can, right?'

  'And what if there are people? They're probably insane, or dangerous.'

  'We're not dangerous, are we?' she said.

  Not you, Edgar. Not you, George.

  Me, I'm not so sure.

  She didn't voice these thoughts, but added, 'There must be other people like us.'

  George nodded, his eyes not missing a thing. Maybe two months since his neck was snapped and half his brain taken away...and he could move his hands, nod. Grunt.

  She reached in the back seat and held George's hand for a moment, to hear what he thought.

  'O'Dell's not looking for us right now, he says. But he will be. He says he's getting stronger...because he has help now. O'Dell's...George, w
ait, I don't know what you mean.'

  I don't, either, said George in her head. All I know is he's not O'Dell anymore...he's US.

  She let George go.

  'He says he's us.'

  'O'Dell is us?'

  'I don't know what he means. George doesn't know. Does it matter? Do we go in?'

  She waited while Edgar stared through the gloom at the planes beyond the fence.

  'Okay,' he said. 'First sign of trouble...'

  'I'll sic George on 'em,' she said. She pulled away and drove half a mile along the road, looking for a gate, or a break in the fence, until she tired of it and smashed the car through the fence.

  *

  A helicopter sat idle in a hanger at the strip. Outside, everything was covered in grey, cold sludge. The helicopter seemed to gleam after so long without shining surfaces.

  The pilot must have looked after it. Himself, maybe not so much. He laid out on a desk. They thought him dead until he groaned and puked out vodka-stinking vomit. His eyes were red, there was blood on his knuckles.

  'Fuck me,' he said, bleary-eyed, blinking.

  'Maybe,' said Francis. She imagined she looked a lot like some kind of tramp or beggar. Crutches held her up. She was covered in grime, in a mix and match outfit taken along the way. Stinking, greasy-haired.

  And I might still be the best-looking woman in the world, she thought. Eminently fuckable.

  'Can you fly that helicopter?'

  'Sure,' said the drunk.

  'Then we'll see about that fuck. Get us the hell off this island, and we'll see.'

  She had no intention of screwing the man, but...

  She wiggled her head, side to side, for him. Maybe, the gesture said. Maybe not...

  She put it out there, let him think what he would. Edgar, beside her, started to speak, but George, still in his chair but moving better then, laid a hand against Edgar's.

  He's not just moving, she noticed. He's moving quicker. His control's returning.

  She guess George told Edgar to shut up, because Edgar nodded, but didn't reply. George might be moving more each day, but he didn't seem able to make a word - not out loud, anyway. The words were there, in his head, but that's as far as his words got without someone to touch, and even then, conversation was limited to her and Francis. Maybe because they were different. She didn't know. They hadn't met any other people interested in conversation.

  She understood Edgar's caution. But caution wouldn't keep them alive forever.

  The pilot weighed up his options, then shrugged. 'I'd sure like a fuck,' he said, honestly. 'But keep it. I can fly the thing...but I won't.'

  'Why?' said Francis. 'Should I be offended?'

  The man laughed. Hungover (and possibly still drunk) or not, Francis knew they'd get along just fine.

  'No. Hell...no. Trust me. Finest looking woman I've seen in weeks. No. It'd be suicide.'

  'Why?' asked Edgar. 'The weather?'

  'Yeah. The helicopter's fine. Does what it's supposed to. Only thing is, it's not supposed to fly through a shit storm. In this weather, it'd work like a vacuum cleaner and be just about as useful.'

  'I get the picture,' said Francis. 'No way?'

  The guy shrugged. 'Maybe a short hop. Never make it across the channel.'

  'Fuck it, then,' said Francis. 'Got a drink?'

  He looked from Francis to Edgar, then down a short hop to George. He thought about it for a minute.

  'Sure,' he said. 'Coffee, too. Probably.'

  Francis raised an eyebrow at the man.

  He laughed again. 'Fair enough. Drink. Coffee'll keep.'

  Francis liked him, but she glanced at George before she let her guard slip even a little.

  George nodded. That sixth, or seventh, or whatever sense he had was far more reliable that her judgement.

  'Thank Christ. I really, really want that drink.'

  Edgar nodded. 'Can't say I'd turn it down, either.'

  They followed the man into the back of the building. There, in a cabinet beneath a paper-strewn desk, the man showed them his stash: Tequila, Whiskey, Gin.

  'Had more, a couple of weeks ago. But...you know how it is.'

  'End of the world, and all alone?'

  'Yeah,' he said as grabbed the tequila. 'That's how it is.'

  *

  The man's name was John Wake. He hadn't lied about making it to the continent. France was out of their reach. 'Oil rig?' he said. 'Maybe.'

  What did they have to lose?

  I think the real war starts soon, George said before they boarded the chopper. It doesn't matter where we are. But away is safer for our bodies. O'Dell isn't the only danger.

  Francis remembered the unmade man on the motorway and wire shopping baskets with grateful eyes dying inside that cage. She let herself remember and held George. She couldn't keep it from him. He was just a kid, maybe, but she didn't want secrets between them.

  Absolution was what she needed, but there is no forgiveness or peace from such things. Just living.

  You did what you could, and what you had to, Francis, he said.

  She wasn't sure he was right about her...but he was right about people. They could be dangerous. People did change.

  George, too, she thought when she release him.

  More often, lately, when they spoke inside their minds, he sounded older.

  Wake put them down on the rig in a storm suited for the ending world. The wind was stronger with the passing of each day. Off the ground in a flimsy helicopter, the gusting wind became terrifying. Their pilot wasn't wrong about the engines, either. They coughed and died before he switched them off.

  Francis sat in the front and wished she'd taken the back seat. George was just a boy, but she'd rather be holding his hand than anyone else's in the whole world.

  But while the weather tried to kill them, John Wake kept them alive.

  If he could do that drunk, she thought Wake might be the best pilot left on the planet. Her heart beat so hard her chest hurt. Beside her, Wake was pale. She turned and checked on George and Edgar. George managed his half-smile. Even Edgar smiled, though he wasn't pale, but green.

  'Good job,' Edgar told Wake and vomited down the front of his coat.

  Francis kissed the man beside her on the cheek.

  'Thank you, John Wake,' she told him.

  'Won't hold you to it, you know,' he said.

  'I know,' she'd told him.

  She almost wished he had. It had been a long time since she'd felt a man. Been a long time, she supposed, since she'd even thought she might want to.

  She screamed for the first time in months. A man stood out in the storm, and must have been freezing even under all the layers.

  He waved, hands wide.

  'Come inside,' he seemed to say.

  He proved no threat. Luck, and nothing to do with judgement. His name was Bors and he showed them they weren't the only people in the world not bent on killing.

  Francis, George, Edgar, Wake - they'd all assumed they would weather the storm or die starving, or even just drift away, lost inside their minds just like George. But it was good for men and boys to see what humanity could be before they went to war.

  *

  Out on the North Sea, it was always cold, and the seas, always rough. The green-brown waves ravaged the rig, high and foam-tipped.

  Riggers would stare down at the sea and imagine their families as they settled in for a four or six week stint on a platform isolated above the surface, where the wind whipped mercilessly around girders and scaffolds and abraded bare skin.

  In normal times.

  But these times weren't normal. The men on the rig wouldn't be going home. Maybe knowing that changed them. Maybe they were good men before.

  This storm, this cold, were harder than they should be. It was early for ice, yet any moisture in the air froze into stubble along the cables and the steel and the plates that made the platform itself; everything became dangerous. To rush was to slide. No one wanted to slide
high up on frost and ice covered steel, while cold winds battered them from the skies.

  It wasn't the nuclear winter of fable, yet. But it was a winter that was quick and dirty, and the sleet that assaulted the rig promise worse - bitter, evil weather to come.

  Inside, with everyone jammed into the cafeteria that served as a common room, it was as warm as it was going to get.

  Francis watched Wake doing his only party trick, saying his name like he was John Wayne, but with a broken nose. It was stupid, but it made her smile, at least. Wake must have been around Edgar's age. Who else would still make jokes about John Wayne? Youngsters like her probably never knew who he was.

  Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Audrey Hepburn, but Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson, Ethan Hawke, Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie. Actors in movies or television, singers and bands before their crowds in stadiums, long dead or young or someplace in between...the rich and the famous. Now, dead, or nothing, and never remembered.

  Would people, if they lived, even think of films or books or long-dead politicians, philosophers, poets?

  Wake wasn't a handsome man. He was short, slightly crooked. Did that matter?

  She could take him to a room, now. He'd come. She might. He'd do it because he wanted to, but she wouldn't because she wouldn't do that to a man she liked. Use him like a vibrator. If it wasn't right for a man to use someone like that, then it wasn't right for a woman, either, she figured.

  What the fuck am I even thinking about?

  She laughed at herself. The burly, bearded rigger Bors glanced, then laughed at her, laughing. She didn't begrudge him that. There was precious little joy out here.

  Outside, the wind howled, and even in the huts on the platform with tight steel doors and half-arsed insulation, it was cold enough to get into a person's bones. She wore a dead man's jumper. He died on the rig early on. No one spoke about it, but she thought he might have taken a few too many pills on purpose. At least he hadn't cut his throat or something. The jumper was clean enough though she'd have worn it even if it hadn't been.

  George turned nine on the rig. The cook (never a chef, he told them) made a cake. He didn't have icing, but George grinned and told the man thank you with a nod of his head and a happy smile. The cook seemed pleased enough.