The Undead | Day 25 [The Heat]

by Haywood, RR

  And the end did come.

  It came twenty nine days ago when the world fell to a pandemic and society ceased to exist, and with it the loss of law and order and the ability to get medicine.

  That was the problem for Edith. She ran out of medicine a few days ago. The government used to let patients with chronic illnesses build stockpiles in case of supply problems, but new laws and new regulations put a stop to that.

  And so, a few days ago, she had no more medicine to take, and her heart grew weak. But then she was old. She’d reached ninety-five. She’d lived through the Second World War.

  So did Bert. He’d fought in the war. He lied about his age and enlisted. But then he was always big and strong for his age. Even now at the age of ninety-nine he still has enough strength to push the wheeled bed out through the front door.

  Edith always said she liked the rain.

  ‘Bert. When I go. I want to be out there in the rain. I want to feel it on my skin.’

  It was raining as he grunted and struggled to get the heavy bed down the garden path and over the weeds that were already growing thick and fast.

  It was hard work, but then his own body was dying too. From the pills he took washed down with brandy. The nice one from the liquor cupboard.

  ‘You and that brandy,’ Edith always said. ‘That’s your thing, Bert. Mine is the rain. I want to go out under the rain, but you can drink that bloody horrible stuff when you go.’

  Bert thought that was a good idea at the time, but he did wish he’d waited until after he’d got the bloody bed out of the bloody house and down the bloody garden.

  But then his plan came unstuck, because the wheeled bed the hospice had provided, wouldn’t fit through the garden gate. It was too wide, and that made Bert sad because the big willows and oaks he’d nurtured for the last fifty years had grown so big and spread so far they were blotting the rain out.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said as he sagged on the spot and looked down at the beautiful face of his wife of more nearly seventy years, and a great sadness came over Bert that Edith would never get to feel the rain as she slipped away.

  Then he heard a noise. An engine. Low and throaty, but not sounding so clean. Bert worked with engines all his life, and that one had clogged filters no doubt.

  It got closer, but the night had come, and the low cloud made it dark and so he couldn’t quite see it until it came into view a good twenty metres away. Driving slow and chugging. A squat military vehicle covered in dead bugs and maybe dead other things.

  Bert frowned at it as the vehicle stopped and he heard the sound of doors opening and boots crunching on the road, and he stood and waited until two men came forward close enough to see.

  One older and lean and with a bald head. Cuts on his face. Bruises and marks. An assault rifle strapped to his chest.

  One younger with curly dark hair and a face covered in scars and cuts, but he looked kind.

  They both did.

  ‘Are you okay?’ the older one asked.

  Bert nodded then looked at Edith then back to the two soldiers.

  ‘It’s raining,’ the younger one said.

  Bert nodded again while from somewhere nearby they heard a howl and a screech. The things were close. Bert had heard them for the last few days.

  The two men looked out as Bert heard more boots crunching and more men and women with guns came forward into the light. All of them cut and bit. All of them hurt, but not broken.

  ‘My Edith,’ Bert said as the older man with the bald head spotted the medals on Bert’s old tunic and the stitched stripes on his arm. ‘She liked the rain. But I can’t get her out. The gate, see. It’s too narrow.’

  The two men looked at the gate then at Edith as a giant of a man loomed over them. His right wrist wrapped tight in gaffer tape.

  The younger man nodded. He understood. ‘We can carry the bed out.’

  Bert nodded and the young man motioned with his head for others to come into the garden. A lad with blond hair smiled at Bert. His eye was swollen. Another one with an eye-patch. A black lad. One of them mixed race. A young woman with a shaved head. More of them. The big man too. They all came inside, and they all took hold of the wheeled bed to lift it over the gate and out into the road so the rain could fall on Edith’s face.

  Bert went after her as a beautiful young woman took his arm and smiled as she helped him over to the bed.

  Bert hesitated and looked at them all as the drugs and the booze sank into his system and made his eyes grow heavy and his legs grow weak.

  ‘Do you want to go inside?’ the beautiful woman asked.

  ‘Edith,’ Bert said. ‘I’ll stay with my Edith.’

  He tried to get on the bed, but his legs were too weak, and his body was too frail. He started to slip but hands caught him and helped him up.

  Another woman pulled the blanket from Edith as Bert cuddled into her side the way they’d done every night for over seventy years, and he felt it when the blanket was pulled back up.

  Then the things howled again. They screeched out and Bert lifted his head with a look of worry in his drowsy eyes.

  ‘You sleep, sergeant,’ the older man with the bald head said. ‘We’ll stand watch.’

  Bert wanted to tell them not to fuss and that they must be busy, but he was suddenly too tired and anyway. That rain was nice after the last few weeks of that unbearable heat.

  He cuddled into Edith and kissed her cheek and inhaled the scent of the woman he’d loved for his whole life, and as the rain fell and the soldiers moved out to stand in a circle around his bed there in the street of that quiet little town, he closed his eyes and slipped away from this brave new world.

  They stayed for a long time. Those soldiers in that street of that quiet little town. Bruised. Cut. Bit and hurt.

  But not broken.

  They kept watch because it was the right thing to do. Because there was nobody else to do it.

  Just them.

  Just those few.

  And a small man with glasses stood his corner with his swatter in his hand and he felt the rain pattering down on his head and he stared out into the darkness while knowing that was the game, and by then, they were all in.

  By fuck they were in it.

  All the way to the bitter end.

  49

  Day Twenty-nine

  It was a distance for Heather and Paco to walk in that heat, and they couldn’t go back through the safari park, so that meant walking all the way around to reach their SUV.

  ‘Those poor wolves,’ Heather said as she came to a stop after a good ten minutes of fast walking to burn the rage away. The rage inside that made her shout at Howie, but she needed to vent and express what was inside, and perhaps, on some level, Howie needed to hear it.

  Heather wasn’t sure about that. But that rage eased back enough for rational thought to creep back in, and with it a surge of guilt that they’d left one of the wolves on its own.

  Which is why she stopped to look at Paco and without a word being said they both sighed and turned to go back.

  But the wolf wasn’t there. Only the dead tigers, and the other two dead wolves. Only blood and gore and more carnage for the flies and rats to feast on. Nor was there any sign of Howie and the others. She tried to radio them to ask if they’d taken the wolf, and, you know, to say hey after the things that were said. But the radio wouldn’t work. The filthy waters from the lake maybe. The heat or the radio being dropped and bashed around in the stampede and the attack after.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said with another sigh as they once more turned and walked that long hot route back to their SUV, and so it was with some great relief that they slumped into the seats, started the engine, and then sat in silence for several minutes as the air-conditioning slowly reduced the temperature within the car.

  They’d left the windows open to try and avoid it becoming like an oven, but it was still oppressively hot. Hotter than either of them had ever known.

  ‘Zade?�
�� Paco said, holding a bottle out. She grunted and took it to drink, and the car filled with the sound of them both guzzling down the sugary contents until Heather lowered the bottle with a belch. Then Paco did the same. Belching from the gas. Both of them drenched in sweat. Battered and bruised. Filthy and torn. There in the SUV in that oppressive heat.

  Which is when the third belch came from the back, followed by the sound of rummaging and motion, and something moving. Something that was in the car waiting for them to return.

  They moved fast with both drawing pistols to aim at the red macaw on the back seat preening an outstretched wing for several long seconds before it turned to look at the two filthy faces glaring at it. ‘Who threw that?’ it asked in perfect mimicry of Heather as the two pistols lowered and the two faces turned to look at each other.

  They didn’t need to say anything. Heather drove while Paco split a bottle to make a well of water for the bird to drink from as the car left Stickleton and got back out into the countryside. Away from the death and carnage and once more back to their barn on the hill.

  They washed under the hose and scrubbed down with anti-bac. They drank water and cleaned their weapons in the shade while the bird explored the barn and flew up into the rafters. But Heather noticed it never strayed far for long. It flew outside at one point and went high into the air on the thermals. They stood in the grass shielding their eyes while thinking it would fly off and never return.

  But it was back within minutes. Back to mimicking Heather and eating nuts and fruit.

  Who threw that?

  They need food!

  ‘Jesus. Does it ever stop talking?’

  Fuck off!

  They didn’t leave the barn again because the heat got so bad that simply existing became hard work. It was like the air had become charged and the pressure in the sky was crushing them. Even the bird fell silent. They all did.

  Heather felt the tension inside too. That thing that told her the others were in trouble. But without the radio working she had no idea where they were.

  Eventually the sky grew heavy and dark, and the thunder started tumbling deep and long, and the sky flashed with arcs of light. They heard a distant explosion at one point, but from where or by what she did not know.

  Then finally the rain came, and the heat eased enough for them to settle in and grow drowsy. Paco drew the barn door closed and with only a small fire to give light they lay back on beds of straw covered with blankets and listened to the thunder rolling overhead while the parrot murmured quiet words as Paco gently rubbed its head.

  Then the night came. The night proper, and the rain fell upon the barn roof. Giving a song of sorts that helped them drift into sleep until they heard a single word whispered by the macaw.

  ‘Bear.’

  A word that had them both up on their feet reaching for assault rifles with hearts thumping in chests. The fire burning low. The noise of the rain still falling on the roof.

  Heather glanced to the bird. ‘Don’t fuck about,’ she whispered as it hopped from foot to foot and swung its head side to side.

  ‘Bear,’ the parrot said again. Low and quiet. A whisper and nothing more. A breath of air but a word they’d already come to know.

  The things had found them. The infected were outside.

  A silent nod shared. Paco heaved the door open as Heather aimed into the pitch-dark night and the rain still coming down. Waiting for the charge. Waiting for the howls and screeches.

  A pair of eyes glimpsed in the darkness from the light of the fire. The glowing eyes of a creature that tracked them for a long distance.

  A creature that had no place else to go.

  They didn’t say anything. They just stared at the wolf sitting outside in the rain. Alone for the first time in life. Alone and lonely. His head low. His soul crushed.

  They still didn’t say anything, but instead they retreated to their blankets to lay down to rest and listen to the rain falling upon the barn roof. Giving a song of sorts that helped them drift into sleep until they heard a single low word almost whispered by the macaw.

  ‘Bear.’

  And in the faint light of that barn, Heather caught glimpse of the wolf curled up next to the fire with its tail over its nose and those glowing yellow eyes staring fixed at her.

  Glowing yellow eyes that didn’t blink as hers grew heavy and outside, the rain fell in the pitch-dark night of a brave new world.

  50

  Day Twenty-nine

  ‘Thank you! Settle down please. I’ve just got a quick update for everyone then you can get back to your evening.’

  The conference room fell to silence as Alistair Appleton, the honourable Member of Parliament for Westminster called out. But then he was the Head Chair and so it was only right the others should go quiet when he asked.

  ‘Right. Well. We are here because today marks the end of day twenty-nine, which, I am sure we all know, means we have successfully reached the completion of the first month in our brave new world. Eh? Round of applause I’d say. That’s right. End of the first month,’ he said as the people gathered about the table clapped while those on the screen did the same. Some of which, Alistair noted, were doing so with decidedly less energy than the others. But that was to be expected. Especially given the circumstances of how it all came about. Not that Alistair cared one bit that it was early, and if anything, he was glad the release date was brought forward as it saved him from some embarrassing, and potentially career ending, questions concerning his finances, and specifically, his sudden wealth. Oh, and that thing with his daughter being kidnapped too. But the greedy slut probably arranged that herself.

  ‘Yes, well done, all,’ he said to quieten the applause. ‘Let’s get this over then we can go for a drink. Sound good? Eh? Right. The outward laying stations have sent their boys and girls out to poke about. Sorry. I should use the correct terms. The forward operating bases have deployed their initial reconnaissance patrols, that the correct wording, Colonel?’ he asked with a glance to one of the screens showing Colonel ‘Mary’ Poppins staring out into the conference room.

  ‘I’m sure we all know what you mean, Minister,’ she said without expression.

  ‘Thank you. Anyway. As I was saying. The first patrols have had a look around, and I think it is safe to say the results are what we expected with a ninety nine percent rate of infection. That’s right. Yes,’ he added to a few murmurs. ‘Tragic stuff but there we go, and it was what we were expecting. There are pockets of survivors. As we predicted there would be. Mostly in fortified locations. I believe our North-East FOB observed a high-security prison in good use, and North-West FOB have reported Chester Castle is being put to use by some locals, and SEFOB have reported that Spitbank fort is in use. That one came through you didn’t it, Colonel?’

  ‘It did,’ Mary said as she detected those in the room wanted more information. ‘SEFOB had a brief OP set up in a neighbouring boatyard overlooking the area and observed a concerted effort being made to fortify the location using shipping containers.’

  ‘I think somewhere else saw shipping containers being used,’ Alistair said. ‘Scotland maybe? Or was it in France? Damned if I can remember. But yes. I should image we may find more fortified places in time, and of course, we may discover those fortified places have become overrun as this whole thing plays out. But that does lead me onto the weather. I’m sure you’re all aware of the storms. They’ve had a significant impact on the geographical landscape with substantial damage reported from all areas. Every town and city has been affected. Fire damage is significant, as is structural damage. Flooding too, but we knew the weather patterns would be altered, and the prediction is the weather patterns will continue to be significantly different going forward. But at least it hasn’t prompted an ice age. Eh? Imagine that. Blizzards everywhere in August.’

  ‘Er, just to jump in here,’ someone said from the side of the table. ‘We don’t actually know what impact the cessation of humanity will have on the weat
her, so we can’t actually an ice age won’t happen. Even a small one.’

  ‘Right,’ Alistair said. ‘Never make a weather joke with a meteorologist in the room. Anyway. I wanted to give you all the idea of the bigger picture. We’re almost one month in now, and I think, unless command heads have any different input, that we’re largely on track for what we expected. That brings us to the next stage, which is intel gathering and getting the boys and girls out from our FOB’s to see what’s what and help us build a bigger picture going forward.’

  ‘We need to start gathering the immunes, Alistair.’

  Alistair cut off to smile and nod at Gudipta Patel. The honourable Member of Parliament for Islington. An Indian woman of stern countenance and a high-ranking shadow cabinet member for the Labour Party who sat on the same select committees as Alistair did in his role of Conservative Party minister for the Treasury Department.

  ‘That was on the original manifesto was it not?’ Gudipta asked. ‘We hunker down for the first month to let the initial devastation play out, and then we start gathering immunes.’

  ‘No. That’s not technically correct, Gudipta. We said once the first month was passed we would assess the suitability of starting to gather the immunes. Which is exactly what we are doing,’ Alistair replied.

  ‘We need to ensure we adhere to the timetable as prescribed,’ Gudipta cut in. ‘We’ve all put our lives on hold for this.’

  ‘We’ve done more than put them on bloody hold,’ someone else muttered.

  ‘And I am sure we will,’ Alistair said with a nod to Gudipta while thinking he might snort some coke off her back when he bends her over later. Alistair did have a thing for young men for a long time. But there’s something about Gudipta. The whole opposing political parties feuding enemies thing makes it all very sordid and sexy.

  ‘Anyway. Sorry. Where was I? Er, right. Well, I think that’ll do for now. Go and enjoy your evening. We’ll keep you in the loop with events, it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to go, is it? Yes. Bad joke. My apologies. Thank you all. Bye then!’