The Risen ( Part 2): The Risen, Part 2

by Smith, Adam J.

  Bells clamoured in the overhanging branches. I could see them clearly as dim moonlight glinted off their sides, but they were hidden with darkness. Come the leaves of spring, they’d be hidden completely.

  “Fuck, watch your step,” said Dale, planting his legs and drawing his shotgun.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Old Jack left the door open for us.” I stepped over the tripwire and into a carpet of leaves the wind had banked up towards the west side; broken branches snapped and my ears pricked. I raised a hand and moved towards the east side of the bungalow. Its whitewash had turned shades of green a few years ago, and hadn’t been cleaned since. The windows I could see were closed, filled with nothing. A stout wooden door at the entrance had a few claw marks gouged into it.

  “Something was here,” said Dale.

  “Something no longer here,” I said.

  Dale turned to the others and told them to hold their ground and keep their eyes open while he made sure it was safe.

  “Shouldn’t she have a gun if she’s going with you?” questioned Greg.

  “I’ve got her covered.” Dale took my flank, heading up to the front door. I kept going, though, around to the conservatory I knew was on that side. “Ffi!” he hissed.

  “There’s something here,” I said. I stepped over dead plants in plant pots and crossed a crumbling patio to the conservatory. It was darker than it should have been; only as I got closer did I realise it had been lined with newspaper on the inside. And from there, the faintest of groans emitted, like the last quiet howl of a horse’s expunged lungs (we killed one once, to put it out of its misery).

  Dale appeared at my side. “I said I had you covered,” he whispered, without conviction. He put an ear close to the glass of the conservatory and rapped with his fingertips. Moans and groans grew into a susurration of all that was wrong with this tainted world. “We should head back down the hill.”

  “Why?”

  “Cautionary.”

  “This is nothing. I’ll clean it out.”

  “There’s no need to take unnecessary risks.”

  I put my nose to a window jamb, smelled the corruption. “I won’t.” After shrugging off my backpack and placing it against the side of the bungalow, I returned to the front door, drawing my blade.

  “Like I said, he left the door open for us,” I said, entering the property. The smell was immediate, stronger from down the entrance hall, weaker if I turned towards the reception room on the left. The ceiling utilised the open space of the rafters, and so beams trailed all the way down to the closed off kitchen at the far end, with a dining room on the right that had glass doors. Just enough light from the outside dusk filtered in for me to be able to see Old Jack’s body, swinging from a noose. Swinging, because he had turned, the stupid old fool. At least he’d had the sense to tie himself up so he couldn’t harm anyone else. His kicks were weak, malnourished. As I approached, I could see long, blue stretch marks on his neck with even wider gaping holes, revealing bluer flesh beneath. He kicked again, feebly, emitting gasps in place of moans, sadness instead of hunger. Another kick, trying to twist midair to look at me. Then the neck could no longer take the weight, and it snapped. Old Jack sounded like a sack of spuds as his dead weight crumpled on the floor just in front of me. His head went splat by the dining room doors.

  “Great,” Dale said from the entrance. “Pleasant dreams, tonight.”

  “Stay,” I said. “I’ll clear it. The others need not know.”

  “They’ll know by the smell.”

  I sometimes forgot that others lacked my sensory control. “Hmm. I’ll open windows.”

  “A bomb, that’s what this place needs,” he said, crinkling his nose.

  “Just give me ten minutes.” Hopefully that would be enough time. I’m not too sure why I cared so much – perhaps because I had brought them here. It was odd, feeling responsible.

  Old Jack was light on my shoulder as I went through to the kitchen. The conservatory was off to the right, blinds covered, while the back door was straight ahead. I dealt with Old Jack first, unlocked the door, walking out into the garden, up to the fence, and lobbing him over. He crashed through bushes on the other side. Then I grabbed what remained of his head and lobbed that over too. I moved a rug from the living room to cover the blood splatter, and then took a peek inside the conservatory.

  Old Jack had stuck a note on the glass.

  I thought I could keep us all together. But I couldn’t even keep them safe.

  I thought I could keep us all together. But they ate each other.

  The view beyond was one of maggots and flies and sloughed flesh congealing and congealed on a near-invisible tiled floor. Somewhere in there was Betty and her two sons, but it was impossible to tell. Half a flayed hand twitched. An exposed ribcage pulsated, a lung inside blue and expanding, contracting. A noise came out of that. Something so strange as to be man-made, configured in a machine somewhere from the past. Only one puffed and torn face had a remaining jaw, which opened and closed slowly, so slowly. Something deep down in its open throat. Open anyway. So what did it matter? Ingestion... impossible. Impossible. Yet... the urge. It had lead to self-cannibalism. Self-annihilation. I now had a better understanding of what they said about cities becoming a river of flesh – of why mutates were solitary by nature. They’d just as happily eat each other as eat us.

  March 2029

  Is this the story of a monster? Get called it often enough and you may start to believe it. And if you believe it...

  ... how does that effect your decisions?

  Do you become the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy?

  It was a badge that whispered silently, following me wherever I went. If not at home, than in the village. If not in the village, than in my dreams. The caustic stares and sibling accusations. The private conversations not-so-private to my ears.

  ***

  We spent the night elsewhere; that night Old Jack kicked his final kick. I grabbed the handheld radio first, hooking it to my belt, and then we headed back down the hill to the terraced cottages stripped bare of furniture and even doors by Old Jack and his family. It had been a roof for our heads but sleep came uneasy for those who needed it. I slept in bursts in the frame of an open window on the first floor, while Dale, Greg and John rotated watch. That became the trend in the following days and weeks. I was never trusted to keep watch by myself – I couldn’t tell if it was an overbearing sense of masculinity, or simply that I was untrustworthy. Didn’t help that I might vanish for a few hours before reappearing in a clearing, or around the next corner. Dale stopped complaining, especially when I began to appear with fresh kills to roast over a fire.

  It was an odd time of year to be out, the twilight winter months before spring. Death accentuated in every deciduous offering to the earth that cracked or mulched beneath our boots. The dampness of the countryside; even after days of sun there could always be some dark, untouched shade where mud roamed between rushes of swamp water, reeds tipping their heads above the parapet. Out here; this was my castle. Crenulated boughs twisted their bare arms and waved flags of silken thread woven by wasp- and garden spiders. Oak and birch were falsely livened, bearers of climbing ivy. Dormice patted through moats. Squirrels climbed towers to escape my traps. Badgers dug deep and rats watched from afar, as if we were a band of roaming mutates and it was a sentry, warning others.

  We walked public bridleways still marked by coloured arrows, lead by Dale and his map. Where the arrows were no longer visible and the map wasn’t clear, we took educated guesses, eventually returning to an arrow to point us in the right direction. It was a map I hadn’t seen before, and in the evenings I liked to pour over it, memorise it, for these paths were paths of nature, cutting straight through it where roads so often had to divert. These paths were the highways now, the safest routes. Roads brought buildings and buildings brought people, mutated or still alive. Both the dead and the living seemed to worry the group, as they made sure to avoid signs
of activity. Every now and then Dale’s walkie crackled, picking up frequencies, and he’d dial it low and put it to his ear. Or sometimes use headphones, listening to the chatter of nearby neighbours.

  I hadn’t expected so many people, to be honest. I tended to turn my walkie on at night and move through the channels, enjoying the rainy crackle of its white noise in place of drizzle. Night-talk could get dirty sometimes, with the sun down and nothing better to do in their homes. You’d think the daily rhythm would acclimate people to head to bed at night, to wake up fresh and early for the daily chores. Wasn’t always that way, not up in the hills. Henry might want to be slapped on the backside, with sound effects, or Susan might want it deep, deep, deeper. Every now and then someone would say “Over” and I’d have to stifle a laugh. “Oohhhh, hit me harder. Over.” So ingrained was the precedent now.

  I avoided spoiling their fun. As tempting as it was. But strangely, so did others, even though for sure there must’ve been people besides myself listening in. In an odd way, it made me feel closer to my human nature. Less alone.

  ***

  Reading Father’s maps of Wales, I never appreciated the contour lines. Our little farm was near the top of a hill, but because we were relatively close the sea, our hill was on a downward trend, coming from the east where the hills touched the clouds. My legs had never felt so good. On one of my private exploration trips I came across a treehouse in a tree standing alone at the top of a slanting meadow. There was a farmhouse a little further up the hill, the sun reflecting off solar panels on the roof. But then that was the crest, the top of a hill that had taken all day to climb. My hamstrings were wound so tight I could’ve played them with a bow. They were as rock to my touch. A tyre swing hung from the bottom of the treehouse, and I was able to push it with so much strength that it landed somewhere in the top of the tree. I crouched, braced myself with one large gulp of air, and jumped. I caught the edge of the treehouse platform and pulled myself up, disappointed that there was nothing here but a few pallets screwed together to sit on. The view was something else, though. Like postcards I’d found on fridges. Perhaps even more than that. Like a painting that had not been painted before. Just for me.

  ***

  “Ffion.”

  I hmmed, keeping my eyes closed. I could hear the embers of the fire crackling to my left, and feel the sun’s morning warmth on my face. Pots and cutlery clanked as they were cleaned and put away, and feet scuttled through undergrowth. My sleeping bag was rolled out beneath me, and my head was resting on one of my bags. My stomach growled, as it so often did when I first woke, as if I needed reminding that it needed food.

  “Hungry?” asked Dale. “Saved you some pheasant.”

  Gravity was yet to weigh down his face or beard, so he looked more unkempt than usual. Bottom half of his face a dark, fluffy silhouette. I sat up and outstretched my arm.

  “Over by the fire. I’m no butler.” He walked off, asking if anyone had refilled the water bottles yet.

  “Sleep okay?” asked Adeline. She liked to sleep near me when were outdoors like this, and was in the middle of packing up her backpack.

  “Dead to the world.” I stretched my back and stood, mouth parched. I needed to relieve myself but the need to eat was even greater.

  “Dead to the world,” Adeline repeated. “Seems like I should know where that came from.”

  “Did it have to come from anywhere?”

  “Everything has a source. A meaning.”

  “Not everything.”

  “I don’t think dead to the world meant a good night’s sleep, not originally. Probably something about living for god, or some other spiritual pursuit. Ignoring the living.” She began squeezing her sleeping bag back inside her backpack. “Always the tricky part,” she mumbled. When I returned with my bowl of watery pheasant soup, she continued; “Seen you reading a few times now. What are they? Comics?”

  “Lighter to carry,” I said, sitting down.

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” She groaned as she tried the weight of her backpack. “Don’t suppose you wanna swap? This’ll be the death of me.”

  “Don’t carry so much.”

  “Easy for you to say, you’re not as… fashion conscious as I, shall we say? Nah, anyway, I’ll cope, been going this long, haven’t I? So reading? You do much of that? Back at the farm?”

  “If it had words, I read it.”

  “Ah yes, yes. Sorry, I forgot you wanted to find a library or some sort, didn’t ya? Well, maybe we can keep an eye open, yeah? Heading near to civilization. Might even be there by the end of today, should you stick with us. You will stick with us today, yeah? Might be getting into more dangerous territory. That mutate last night was a good sign of that, first one for a while.”

  I looked at the blood under my fingernails and ate the last of the pheasant. “Where you headed?”

  “Place on the map called Dolgellau.”

  “What’s there?”

  She glanced across the camp; Dale was busy with the firespit while Greg and John were visible through the thin woodline near the stream. Bessie and Elyse were combing their hair and doing a general tidy up. “Might be somewhere to add to our list. Rare for a town to be reclaimed. We need to check it out.” She smiled at me. “Might be a library.”

  There might be, I thought. And you might just want my help in case there’s any trouble. Nothing ever changes.

  “Or it’s up to you, you know. Maybe the thought of other people is too much for you now. I wouldn’t blame you. Other people… well, you don’t know if they can be trusted, no? Maybe you’d rather meet up with us later, as we pass through.”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  She gave me a nod and finished packing, and I did the same. Biting my fingernails, I could still taste the blood beneath them, which reminded me I still needed to relieve myself. I lifted my backpack and grabbed two of the blood-stained flannels that hung from the bottom on safety pins, just as John and Greg returned to camp.

  Greg saw the flannels and shook his head. “Are you finally going to clean those?”

  I had my jacket unbuttoned, and there was the glance again to my chest as I buttoned my jacket up. “Clean them and reuse them,” I said, honestly.

  “Good. Getting tired of looking back at them, I don’t see what you’re trying to prove with ‘em. Dangling there like red flags to a bull.”

  “I think it’s a good idea, actually,” said Adeline, standing up for me. “Maybe we could all start following her lead. Mutates are meant to be turned away by the blood of other mutates, acting like a kind of warning. Isn’t that what you said, Ffi?”

  “They’re animals, Jesus Christ, Ade. Beasts,” said Greg.

  “They are,” I said. “Warned by their own dead and spilled blood, that is.” I lifted the flannel. “But this is my blood. Should we get attacked, they’ll come for me first.” I crossed the camp for the stream, all pairs of eyes on me, to look for somewhere quiet and secluded.

  “Jesus Christ,” I heard Greg say.

  ***

  I was excited about the town, even if it was just a small one. We waited at the edge of a treeline above the town as Greg scouted ahead, the scent of yarrow filling my nostrils. John’s cough had disappeared completely, along with his pallid complexion, all of us a little browner from the exposure. He had binoculars to his eyes, watching the few streets he could see for movement, signs of life.

  And signs, there were aplenty. On the main road, at the point where two buildings first sat opposite each other, a barricade of vehicles had been rolled into place, some over-turned. The tarmac beneath was black from oil.

  “How’s it looking, John?” asked Dale.

  “No sign of life.”

  I disagreed; there were many. Hand-made signs were plastered over official signs: Keep on keeping on / if you’re a bad motherfucka. The arrow points thataway. Keep going for the holiday homes by the sea. This is a local town for local people – NOT YOU! All very friendly, I thought. One sign read
: The Brave Dolgellau / Closed for trade.

  “Greg’s returning,” John announced.

  Taking the picturesque route, Greg lapped the meadow before us, sticking to the hedgerow at the sides. When he reached us, he said; “No sign of sentries. I could’ve made my way inside and no-one would’ve stopped me.”

  “Great,” said Dale. “What does everyone think?”

  “Don’t mean no-one’s home,” said Elyse.

  “If their numbers have dwindled, they may keep themselves holed up, that’s true.” Dale turned to me. By now they had gleaned that I had a bit of sixth sense about these things.

  “Death has been here,” I said.

  “No shit,” said Greg. “How long were you holed up in that farm for, again?” He shook his head and lifted the rifle he’d been carrying. He brought the scope to his eye and took another look towards the town, scanning left and right. “I say it’s worth a gamble. At worst, the place is empty and we can rest up a while. At best, there are a few survivors left with the information we need. Must’ve been at least a two-thousand population here at one point. They obviously fought hard enough to retain it as a sanctuary, at least for a little while.”

  “That’s not the worst case scenario, though, is it?” stated Bessie.

  Greg shrugged. “Then we get to down a few of the bastards. What else are we out here for if not for that?”

  “Greg’s right,” said Dale. “Let’s assume this place is crawling, gear up, and lock it down. Then call it in.”

  “One more safe area,” Adeline smiled at me. “Our speciality.”

  Dale handed me his shotgun and a belt of ammunition. “If you’re with us down there, you’re with us, yeah? No wandering off. We lock this place down, you can do all the wandering around you want. But for now, we have five hours ‘til sundown and we need to know this place is clean. Okay?”