The Dead Boy

by Saunders, Craig

  It was the little things that people still clung to, and those little things kept them going. Sometimes, they laughed.

  Mostly it was hard.

  But those little things were just enough. For Francis, always childless and perfectly happy about it, her thing was watching the kid heal. It was remarkable. By the time they'd landed on the rig, his arms were working just fine, his hair grown back. Ragged, uneven, but a good head of hair. Dark, probably like the boy's father or mother, though she never brought either up. God knew it was hard enough to live, let alone drag past sorrows around with you.

  Even his skin, despite the storms and the darkened skies, rebounded. Probably just being a kid, but he had colour again. He breathed, ate, took shits and pissed outside the toilet bowl like any other kid his age even though he sat to do it. How he managed to miss, sitting down, she had no idea.

  Feeling returned to his legs, though he wasn't walking. Another month, maybe two, and Francis thought he would be. The only shame was that his humour and his smart, quick way of talking in her head couldn't be shared. He couldn't talk at all, not even mutter a sound. There was nothing wrong with this tongue or throat. Whatever damage had been done to him in The Mill would take a long time...but one day.

  I hope so, she thought. She wanted to share him with the world. She was proud of the kid. Maybe even loved him a little. He was a remarkable boy, after all.

  Francis worried, though. The chances of anyone making it out there were next to none. But that went both ways. They might be safe from O'Dell's guns and bombs...but they were trapped.

  And O'Dell wasn't restricted to his body any more than George.

  I think the real war starts soon, he said. She couldn't get that out of her head, and the fact remained; the helicopter would never fly again.

  This platform was their tomb just as sure as any cell in a place called The Mill might have been. They would all die on the rig. Wake, too, and that was shitty payment for a good deed.

  *

  Part Four

  The Man with Fire in his Eyes

  XIII.

  Redman and Roo

  Sometime later, Kurt William O'Dell parked outside an old peoples' home in a small town near to the east coast. A woman called Rowena continued in her work with the elderly and infirm within. She was one of those infinitely good people who stayed because of a sense of duty. Mostly, the compound U+03BF created savagery. A rare few were unaffected, others changed in more subtle ways.

  Most of the old folk Rowena tended were dead, though one hung on. He wouldn't last much longer. He couldn't. She was running down and when she stopped, he would die. But until then, there was no one else.

  In the first weeks after the nuclear explosion that began it all, she buried the dead. Then she tore something in her back lifting one heavy old girl. After that, she just shut the doors to their rooms.

  The home smelled bad, but then, it always had.

  Rowena's back popped when she got out of bed the morning of her death. She had no idea what the time was, or what day, only that she'd finished sleeping and the old man downstairs needed feeding.

  She headed into the kitchen to make breakfast for them both.

  'Morning, Sasha,' she said. The cook, slumped with her head in a bowl of soup at the counter where she'd always eaten her lunch, didn't say anything.

  Rowena put a knife and fork on tray, busied herself with a gas stove she brought from home a week before she moved in with the old folks permanently. She cooked the old man's porridge in water and added a little salt. Milk was a thing of the past, now. Maybe someday a thing of the future, but that wasn't her problem.

  The porridge didn't look nice, but it was food. She managed two cups of tea with the water that remained, with plenty of sugar to cover the awful taste of the water.

  'Silly moo,' she said to herself when she was done. 'How's he going to eat porridge with a knife and fork?'

  She swapped them for a spoon, then carried the tray along the hall to Wayland Redman's room.

  *

  'Morning, Mr. Redman,' said Rowena in that bright voice the insane love so much.

  'Morning, Roo,' said Wayland, not turning around. He watched a crow and some kind of grubby seagull fighting over some small scrap. The crows feathers had mostly fallen out. He imagined it couldn't fly any longer. Feathers were important for birds.

  'Piebald, Roo. Is that word?'

  'I think so,' said Rowena as she placed the tray with cooling porridge and oily tea on his bed. She walked over the window where Wayland continued to watch the birds fight.

  'Why do you ask?'

  'Wondering what you call it when an animal's hair falls out. Or feathers. Piebald seemed like the right word. I'm not sure.'

  'I think...I think it's a kind of horse. Something like that?'

  'A horse?'

  'Sure. Like...the colour. Something.'

  'Oh,' said Wayland.

  'Porridge, Mr. Redman.'

  'Porridge?'

  'For breakfast. I managed a cup of tea, too. Dreadful thing.'

  'The tea?'

  I think he needs something else to eat. He looks...yellow. Might be the porridge. Or malnutrition. Probably malnutrition.

  Rowena wondered if there were multivitamins in the medicine closet, or something similar. Maybe one of those weight gain shakes. She took out a small pad from her pocket, and a biro pen.

  Check for weight gain the old man is dangeroUS, she wrote.

  'Can I borrow a sheet of that and your pen, Roo?'

  'Of course,' said Rowena. She tore a sheet free of the pad and passed paper and pen both to Wayland. Wayland gripped the pen like a piece of cutlery.

  He's pretty far gone. Cancer, dementia.

  'Mr. Redman...you're holding it wrong. You can't write like...look, you want me to write for you?'

  Still, he's got no one else. Come to that, neither have I.

  She'd decided right at the start to see it through.

  So had Wayland.

  Rowena leaned down to take the pen and paper back from Wayland. With the pen gripped as it was like a piece of cutlery, a knife, perhaps, he stabbed her three times in her throat.

  *

  O'Dell held the handle to Wayland's door in one hand. In the other, to his ear, a mobile phone.

  He wasn't really concentrating on the phone. He mostly listened to Wayland as he began to chat up the dying woman on the other side of the door.

  Interesting foreplay, he thought. Hell of a monologue. Hell of a thing.

  'O'Dell?'

  'Sir,' he said.

  'This Wayland...is he stable? Can you control him?'

  'Everything's in hand, Sir,' said O'Dell, and cut the connection to the boss.

  Is he stable? Of course he fucking isn't, thought O'Dell, and opened the door without a sound.

  *

  'Patronising cunt,' said Wayland as Rowena wheeled around his room, bounced off the bed and then lay on the floor gasping, blood gushing between her desperate fingers.

  Wayland did have prostate cancer, and dementia was just settling in, though the dementia didn't really bother him. He'd die from the cancer long before he started dribbling into his shitty porridge. All to be expected.

  His first boner in weeks was a pleasant surprise, though. Rowena writhing and bucking and all red and wet with her great heaving tits there on the floor.

  Sometimes, he drifted, largely unaware. Not this day.

  'Lucky for you, Roo, I still know my way around a lady.'

  He pulled his cock out. Truth was, he didn't know if it'd work all the way to the end, but he was willing to give it a go. She'd be dead in maybe a minute, probably less. But she'd be warm for long enough, he reckoned.

  His knee, hip, back popped as he knelt and swiped her kicking legs apart. He swore at the pain, but he remained hopeful enough. No sense in wasting a damn good hard-on, and a rare one at that.

  Hopeful.

  Rowena slowed, then she went still.

&
nbsp; 'Ah well,' he said to her. 'Show us your tits, then, eh? Don't mind, to you?' He yanked her blouse aside with one hand. The other was busy trying to keep his erection from shying away from the job at hand.

  'Never fucked a dead woman. I think.'

  He leaned back, smiled at the sight of her still chest, her nipples pert enough, still a bit of buoyancy there, even if she was pushing fifty. Not a bad rack. Not bad at all.

  He didn't hear the door open. He didn't hear the shot. The bullet tore off the first couple of inches of his cock and most of his palm, thumb, middle and index finger. For a second, Wayland stared, confused as to why blood spewed from him. Red come instead of white? Maybe his prostate? Then he saw the ragged mess.

  'Wayland. How the hell are you?' said O'Dell.

  *

  Wayland rolled to one side, leaking onto the woman's leg and the cheap carpet.

  O'Dell sat on Wayland's bed with a grateful sigh.

  Nice to take the weight off.

  'Nice,' he said, pointing his gun at the dead woman. He didn't have any designs on women or men. Sex seemed, to him, little more than a distraction. He said it appreciatively, though. Like one man might to another. How men of the world might talk, or so he imagined. As O'Dell spoke, he concentrated on removing the tip of a bullet that appeared between his fingers. A short knife in his left hand worked at the bullet in his right. He slipped, cut his fingertip, and stared at bead of blood growing there.

  'Look, Wayland,' he said. 'Try to help people, and look what happens. I cut myself. It really hurts. I cut myself trying to help you. Say thank you.'

  'Fuck you.'

  'Confused, obviously. Dementia, Wayland. It does that. But I accept your gratitude.'

  Finally, the bullet popped free of the casing. O'Dell sniffed the powder inside. 'Better than cocaine. Anyway,' he said, turning his gaze from the shell in his fingers, to the woman, to Wayland. 'I've got a job of work for you, Mr. Redman. End of the world and all that. I thought perhaps you might want to...go out with a bang?'

  Redman puked in response.

  'Fuck...cunt.'

  A dying man probably thinks he can get away with being rude, thought O'Dell.

  'I forgive you that, Wayland. As I was saying...'

  'You shot my fucking cock off!'

  'Please don't interrupt again. I have a job. A final job. We'll consider accounts between us closed amicably thereafter.'

  'I'm dying.'

  'You always were, Wayland. Now, don't be a baby about it. Here. Let me help.'

  'Fuck...fuck you!' Spittle flew from Wayland's mouth, which O'Dell ignored as he knelt beside Wayland. Then, with a finger tapping the shell in his fingers, like a man who's particular about how he salts his dinner, O'Dell covered the ragged end of Wayland's penis with powder, and lit it with a swift click of a lighter. The flash was hopeless. The powder was wet and didn't catch. The dry parts of Wayland's skin flashed and burned instead. The wound itself just carried right on leaking.

  'Well...fucked that up, didn't I?' said O'Dell, peering into Wayland's rolling eyes. 'I really thought that would work.'

  Wayland passed out and O'Dell smiled, all teeth, but a little mirth, too.

  'Oh, no. Not that easy,' he said to the unconscious man. 'Cunt? You don't know the half. One job, Wayland. Then I'll let you die like a good dog.'

  Wayland bled badly but O'Dell couldn't let him die. There weren't many people left he could call on any longer.

  O'Dell stood, old knees aching and popping, and went to hunt for something more medicinal than wet gunpowder. He found a gas stove, some incontinence pads, and no painkillers.

  Later, dragging Redman to his car, O'Dell tired almost instantly. Not because the old murderer was heavy. He wasn't.

  I got old, thought O'Dell, and though he knew it well enough, sometimes his age surprised him, still.

  *

  XIV.

  More than Dead

  Eleanor Farnham couldn't remember the last time someone came to her, or what they looked like. She remembered, oddly, what they said, even though back then she'd been...more not right.

  'Water will be fine. Food. You understand? Food. I'm sorry.'

  How long ago?

  It was difficult for her to think and to remember. She retained no sense of the passage of time. The lights were always on, so the room was always bright. But while the water wasn't going to run out, and while the toilet in her cell that she did not understand would continue to flush, those things alone would not sustain her.

  'You understand? Food. I'm sorry.'

  Then the woman left. Eleanor had only been able to stare after her. Perhaps she should have tried to get through that door, but she'd been unable to entertain such a thought. The steel door closed, and it had been loud.

  It was the last sound she heard until the Man came back.

  She ran out of toilet paper. There was a time when she hadn't known to use toilet paper, then a time when she did, and now she couldn't. She took to washing herself in the shining steel sink beside the toilet bowl, but had no soap. Even ruined and broken and once-dead, she understood filth, and stench, and disgust.

  How long had one roll of toilet paper lasted? How long had her food lasted?

  She didn't know but guessed one, maybe two weeks. A few days alone before she worked out how to open the foil packet with the powdered food. Another two days or so to figure out that adding water from the tap over the sink made the food edible.

  Three, four days now since she'd had anything but water?

  A long time, too, since she'd had any kind of medication.

  Every few minutes, Eleanor let out a horrible scream and her brain, pulsing within the permanent hole in her skull and scalp, shifted. Sometimes she remembered what they'd done. She cried until she forgot again.

  She began to think about who caused this, how she'd died, the woman who was sorry, who she might be, what had happened to all the people that had cut her or fed her.

  Her capacity for thought returned, and what she thought about was getting out.

  *

  Kurt O'Dell wasn't much of a doctor. His medical knowledge pertained to hurting people, not healing them.

  Wayland's cauterised wounds were full of local anaesthetic. O'Dell pumped some broad-based antibiotics into his patient before he splashed iodine over the wounds, and thick padding and surgical tape over that.

  He thought he'd done a pretty good job, considering. Wayland, though, proved to be an ungrateful patient.

  'Cunt...fucking cunt...fuck...'

  O'Dell tried his hardest to ignore the man strapped into a wheelchair.

  I could just shoot him, he thought, but idly. He knew he couldn't do everything himself. His anger had got him in this mess. And, frankly, when everyone else was dead, you didn't have much choice but to scrape up the leavings at the bottom of the barrel.

  I brought this on myself.

  He knew that was true, so he said nothing until Wayland sat before the wide window to Eleanor Farnham's room. O'Dell's arms and legs were tired from pushing Wayland's wheelchair. He leaned against the window and Wayland stared into the cell.

  'Christ... Why? What the fuck did you do? Thought I was a mad man... '

  'You are a mad man, Wayland. Sorry to dissent, but you really are insane. Me? I'm not mad. I'm...like a doctor. Old school, you know - Napoleonic, maybe. Big saws, bits of wood, burning pitch. Surgery, Wayland! The world was rotten, full of pus. Gangrenous. I merely excised the flesh.'

  'What is she?'

  'Once? She might have been the answer to all the world's problems,' said O'Dell, with a shrug. 'She came back from the dead, Wayland.'

  'What?'

  O'Dell nodded, smiling broadly. Grinning. 'Wonderful, isn't it? You don't need details, do you? Because I killed all the people who might have understood the science.'

  'Her head...'

  The woman behind the window cocked her head to one side, then screamed, though they couldn't hear anything until O'Dell
flicked a switch on a console and the scream came through speakers on the control panel.

  Wayland would have put his hands over his ears had he not been strapped down. He'd heard his share of screaming, but this...it hurt.

  'Turn her off!'

  O'Dell nodded. 'Fine. Pussy.' He flipped the switch again.

  O'Dell squatted beside Wayland. A man hunkering down, imparting great knowledge.

  'Wayland, I want you to understand, we're all going to die. Me, too. Her? Probably not. Imagine that, Wayland. In there, going mad, constant agony...unable to die. Are you imagining it, Mr. Redman? Are you?'

  'I get the point. I fucking get it. What do you want?'

  'I know this man, Wayland. He's a man who needs killing. I've gone to all this effort to bring about a glorious, magnificent end...only to find that I still have a boss. And Wayland - between you and I? That gets right upon my tits. I think it's time I set up on my own, so to speak. Obviously, I'll have to get some kind of accountant to sort out the taxes, things like that. I'm hopeless with numbers...'

  'You're insane, O'Dell. Insane.'

  'Oh yes, I know. Believe me, I know. No one as insane as US. They think I don't hear them.'

  O'Dell rubbed beneath his nose and looked at his finger.

  No blood. Good.

  'You kill this man for me and I'll let you die. You fuck it up...I'll bring you back. Maybe I'll put you in with her. Forever. Until you eat each other, or just sit dribbling or doing crosswords or whatever fuck-ups do with their spare time. And you'll have a lot of spare time.'

  O'Dell patted Wayland on the knee. 'Who knows? Maybe your cock will grow back and you and her can hump for all eternity down here.'

  'Who am I killing?' asked Wayland. He was a mess, but the medicine O'Dell had pumped into his veins gave his eyes a bright, watery sheen.

  'I took the liberty of preparing a file in anticipation. You'll take my car. The car is in the car park. The file is in the car. The gun in the car. The car swallowed the file to catch the fly...I don't know why.'