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

by Smith, Adam J.

  “Greg carried you here.” She waved an arm around the room. “Welcome to the town hall. Best we could manage in such short circumstances.” She peeled a bandage from my cheek, and said under her breath how well it was healing. “There’s been network chatter about people immune to the bites. Never had one with us, not ‘til now. Count yourself lucky you got away with just a few scars.”

  “Immune...” I said. Or already infected. Could I infect others? How did the other ones die? I had so many questions, and no-one but myself to figure the answers. I swallowed another bite of the meat and the knot in my stomach uncoiled a little more. A little more heat swelled against my skin. And a little more of the pain throbbed where the bites were. At least my headache was abating.

  “We gave you some antibiotics. Kept your fluids up. Feeling better after a few morsels?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Good, good. You should rest some more. Take as long as you need. There’s a chamber pot behind the couch... I...” she swallowed. “Your clothes were dirty. Wet. So I changed you. Door was locked and everything so no-one else was here, just me.”

  My fingers moved over my thighs, where the material was soft, not denim.

  “Just saying, you know. To keep open the channel of honesty. You’d have only asked the question yourself once you’d figured out someone had changed your clothes.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Mother used to say I was still one of God’s creatures.” Anything to ratify her shame.

  Adeline gave me a sympathetic smile, patting my brow again with the warm flannel. “Of course you are. God, with everything going on, it can be easy to forget how young you are. You’re still just a child. A child growing up in all this. It’s not right.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “This ain’t no world for a child, though.” She sighed heavily. “Makes our mission so much more important. To rid this world of the evil. How can we ask our little ones to join us until then? How long until it’s too late?”

  “My leg,” I said, trying to bend the knee.

  “Oh, your leg. We’re none of us doctors, but it looked like a muscle tear. Should heal enough you can stand again.”

  I moved it as though to try.

  “Whoa, now. Not so soon. Unless you need to pee?”

  I shook my head.

  “Rest some more, then, yeah?”

  “I’ll need more to eat.” My metabolism was working overtime – already I felt weakened by the effort my body had put in to heal me.

  “I’ll get you some more. It’s just...” she sighed again, then stood to go to the window. “I used to live in London. Do you know London?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She parted the curtain and looked outside. “I miss it so. These days, all it takes is a little slice of a little street to make me feel right back at home again. There’s a balcony here, just like I used to have, that overlooked Piccadilly. I could see its lights in the sky at night, sit there for hours in the evening sometimes, one smoke after another. Seems funny to say, but it’s the people I miss most – watching the hustle and bustle of people going about their life. I was stuck in an office and then stuck on a treadmill. Thank God for my holiday home in Cornwall. If I hadn’t been there I’d be dead now, for better or worse. Now I hate cities. And towns,” she added, drawing the curtain again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s more of those... apexes. Where we are... this town hall... it had a pretty secure barricade around it that we blew open. It was barricaded for a reason. Last stand, type of thing. We’re now surrounded.”

  As if on cue, I heard a double-tap in the distance, followed by a chorus.

  “They taunt us,” Adeline said, returning to my side.

  “They let us enter. The vehicles by the barricade.”

  She nodded.

  “The yarrow. They covered their scent with wildflowers.”

  “Did they?”

  “And they waited until one of us was alone to attack. Me.”

  “They got more than they bargained for,” she said, squeezing my hand again. “Let me see what food I can find, eh?”

  ***

  Mandarins from a tin, sweet and syrupy. There’d been no finer thing. Except maybe liver fried in wild garlic and onion. It was fair to say that food was as much of an issue for me as the siege. I had to remember that it needed to last – and be shared between seven of us.

  I discovered I could hobble by standing up and walking around with the aid of the couch, to use the chamber pot. I think the room was the Mayor’s office at one time, for the desk had a velvet green finish to the top of it, all walnut legs shaped like the pin-ups I’d seen in one or two magazines hidden beneath beds or at the bottom of drawers. The chamber pot was a pretty dainty little thing with flowers on it. I carried it to the window and peered out into the dusk. A latch flicked open with some wriggling, and then I managed to prise the window up to toss the pee to the ground below, where it landed with a soft splash. There was a courtyard between the street and the front of the town hall that previous residents had fortified with corrugated sheets of metal up to twenty feet high, maybe taller. Steel bracers had been cemented into the ground and welded to the fence, and there was no discernible door. The wall extended to the buildings flanking left and right, meeting at brick. Whoever had done this had done a good job. Of course, without going out there myself and testing it limits, I would have to hold further judgement.

  Now that I knew they were there I could smell them. Their floral scent was a mask. Their corruption undeniable. It reeked. I’m unsure how I missed them before –

  Carelessness.

  – perhaps they had simply been too spread out around the town, and only now that they had encircled us could I sense them. Four were dead, yet I could feel dozens more. I looked at the building opposite, windows dark, and wondered if they were watching me.

  Turning away, I felt the long, scabby slit up my left calf, and explored further, probing the bite on my neck, cheek and also... my stomach. There was a bite mark on my stomach, so it hadn’t all been cramping pain. There was a bit of me missing for each bite, noticeably; a gape of flesh chewed away. I turned back to the window and opened the curtain further, for the light to turn it into a mirror. Removing the bandage from my cheek revealed a long, scabbed over stitch, and I realised why there was tension in my jaw. A hole had been sewn up and stretched the skin there taught from ear to chin. I flexed and tongued the inside of my cheek, tasting blood and feeling the scar I would forevermore need to get used to. Scars can be reminders of the mistakes we made, and this one was going nowhere.

  My neck and stomach felt in a similar shape, only without stitches in them, just my own flesh and blood healing itself. Some kind of medicinal ointment smell remained on my fingertips when I brought them away.

  Three bites. And three unaccounted for kills.

  The truth dawned on me after considering the facts. I was alone. They don’t stop at one bite. There was no obvious cause of death.

  I sat on the edge of the couch and left up my top, revealing a flat, white belly, and a button more protrusive than normal. I needed to gorge. My body needed to gorge. The teeth marks were still visible around the edges of the wound; very little in the way of chomping or gouging. Mutates historically sucked as much blood as the flesh they ate, feeding off a need for both. Perhaps apex one and two had chomped on my neck and cheek, with a fourth one appearing to enjoy the delights of my stomach, only to become silent and still. I could imagine a fifth apex entering scene, hungry. Confused. Why were three of its friends immobile, slumped over this living flesh?

  Maybe it had pulled them off me and then inspected my wounds. Given my neck a sniff. I imagined its drool slathering my face as I continued to breath, breath, delicious blood pumping – and its reticence to have even the tiniest of tastes after seeing what had happened to the others. Did I have an audience? Were they banging their clubs in some kind of code that said; This one is past her s
ell by date?

  “That one’s not too bad,” Adeline said, returning with more food and water.”People have scars on their bellies for all kinds of reasons; appendicitis, C-sections, hernias. You found your stitching then, I see. I did my best with that. Luckily you’re young and still got a bit of baby fat on you.”

  I said my thanks, covering my stomach again. “I’m alive. Were my bags recovered?”

  “What was left of them. Afraid a few of those books won’t ever get read! They’re over behind the desk. Couldn’t find the shotgun, though. Strangest thing,” she shook her head, putting the food and water on the floor, and retrieving the emptied mandarin tin. “Eat some more, then rest some more. Doctor’s orders.”

  ***

  I didn’t sleep, but I did rest; eyes closed in a meditative trance. And then I slit my wrist.

  My arm dangled into the chamber pot, pouring blood, an iron-rich perfume filling the room. If the apexes couldn’t do the job properly, I’d finish it for them. I’d read that humans of old used to put leeches on skin to cleanse the blood of impurities. That blood letting had been a common antidote to many illnesses from migraines to sore throats. Perhaps this was the first time blood letting had ever been truly useful.

  As I felt tiredness creeping up on me, I tourniqueted my forearm and wrapped a bandage around the cut, pressing hard to stem the flow. Then I drank some more water and slowed my heartrate. It almost became so I could control each beat of my heart; certainly I could feel each convulsion and the blood’s warmth gushing in and gushing out of my extremities. Cold crept up on me again, so I wrapped the blanket around tight and waited for the weakness to pass.

  Dale found me on the cusp of unconsciousness. The door opened tentatively at first, and then when we was in the room and saw me, his steps quickened until he was at me side. He grabbed by wrist. I wanted to say the blood has stopped. It’s fine. But I could feel sleep coming to me.

  He said; “What have you done?” Perhaps thinking I wanted the end to come and had the kindness to think of whoever had to clean up the mess after me.

  “I am poison,” I moaned, before passing out.

  ***

  It seemed like a rational thing to do at the time.

  I won’t go through the whole waking and recovering process again; needless to say I was hungry. Adeline was angry and confused, and Bessie and Elyse visited to see how I was doing too. No sign of Greg, and Dale never returned.

  I woke fully in the middle of the night with John snoring on the floor beside me. I could hear footsteps on the roof, too purposeful to be anyone but Dale. There would be some other sentries too, probably, considering the danger we were in. Sleep came when sleep was allowed in situations like these.

  My chamber pot was missing and I needed it. For its intended purpose this time. So I rose from the couch, a lot warmer than I had been earlier. I was dressed in a black long-sleeve T-shirt from my bag, and a comfortable pair of pyjama bottoms. I still wore my elasticated bra but my underwear had been replaced. I noticed my jeans and previous boxer shorts washed and dried, folded on the desk.

  Barefoot, I crossed the room to the door in search of somewhere to go the toilet. Beyond, a dark corridor about ten foot wide stretched towards an open landing from where the stairs descended, shadows of a dark-wood balustrade cross-hatching the wooden floor. I favoured my right foot, the sponginess of planting my left foot down just a distant memory. At the time, I felt for sure that a tendon had gone.

  More snoring from the room opposite. A gold plaque on the door stated Assistant. The next door along had the universal bathroom plaque on it, so I went inside and found my chamber pot sitting in a bathtub. I guess the Mayor used to work late, I thought, wondering why there would be a bathtub in the town hall. Perhaps Adeline was wrong and this was the Mayor’s residence.

  At least the pot was still full. Unfortunately, the clotting process had begun to solidify it, and lumps floated around in the plasma like little rafts. I forgot the vinegar that Mother used to add to stop the pig’s blood from coagulating when she made black pudding. Hopefully it wouldn’t matter.

  After relieving myself, I opened the small bathroom window to allow the air and a little more light in, and splashed some water onto my face from a container sitting next to the blood. I removed the bandages on my cheek and neck completely, interested to see if I looked more like the monster they said I was. The left-side of my mouth inadvertently smirked, pulled by the stitches. The smiling monster. The half-Joker. A little make-up and this was something I could work with. If only I’d let Mother teach me how to use it. I used to watch her in front of her vanity mirror applying lipstick and mascara and powder her face, until she no longer looked like herself. What was the point of all that? I’d think. There was only Father around.

  And now my face could do with a mask.

  Thing was, I didn’t care. When I thought of make-up, it was experimental. A game. Something to play with. I’d more likely make the scar and the sneer worst through accentuation, than hide them. As far as I was concerned the scar would be a truer reflection of the inside. Mother, on occasion, sometimes after too much to drink, would turn from her vanity and slur; “You’re too beautiful for what you are, you know that?” And later act like it never happened.

  I heard Adeline’s voice in my head; “Don’t listen to her. Your beauty is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I don’t even care.

  That shut her up.

  Footsteps circled above, and I spent the next couple of minutes trying to figure out how to get up there. In the end, I found a small door that lead to the loft, and from the loft a door opened out onto the roof. It was stiff, so it wasn’t possible to open it silently, and Dale stood there waiting to see who would come through.

  He looked surprised to see me, then turned his back, returning to patrol. His face betrayed disappointment; for nearly dying once, or nearly dying the second time, it was hard to say. Probably both. He had a rifle in his arms and his woollen on his head.

  When I stepped up beside him, stepping in things I didn’t want to know (the smell of pigeon shit was strong), he grunted; “We’re not alone.”

  “I can sense them.”

  “I swear I keep seeing their eyes from the corner of mine, reflecting like a cat’s.”

  “Could be you do,” I said, looking beyond to the dark line separating the buildings around us from the sky and distant countryside. Some roofs were flat while others were pitched, and from anywhere and everywhere they could be lying low, hedging their bets.

  We walked slowly around the perimeter. Their scent was stronger up here in the open, with the wildflowers dead or discarded, and hung like a chemical warfare gas. “Can you smell them?”

  “They’re everywhere,” Dale responded.

  This was the tallest building around – still, the nearest building was practically only one good jump away, and just two or three stories lower. “They could jump that,” I said, pointing to a roof as we passed by.

  “It’s far from ideal. So far, they haven’t tested us. They fear our weapons. Speaking of... where’s my shotgun?”

  “If it wasn’t in my bag, than they took it.”

  “Fuck,” he shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on anymore. First you. Then them. Turned into goddamn ambush predators. Then you again. What was all that with the blood?”

  “The bodies when you found me. How did they die?”

  “Another mystery.”

  “I didn’t kill them.”

  “If not you, then who?”

  “Well, indirectly. Each of them took a bite out of me and then snuffed it. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” The moon blistered through a crack in the sky’s armour, and was then welded away. Two thumps echoed across the rooftops.

  “Always the same kind of distance. They don’t seem to be getting any closer.” Dale paused before turning to me. His eyes were black, deepened by shadows. Moving glints told me he was appraising me; little old me. Well
, not so little old me, I told myself. Almost grown and almost six feet, I reckoned. Small to him, though, by a few inches. He wasn’t looking in the same way that Greg did; it was like he was seeing me properly for the first time, a new species and he was the zoo-keeper that had to figure out how to keep me in check.

  “So you thought you’d collect a big pot of your blood, to what? Make blood grenades? Soak the bullets in? Make spitballs?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking down.

  “Do you know how crazy that sounds? You smashed your head pretty bad. You probably don’t remember how you killed them.”

  “I blew the first one’s brains out because I couldn’t get away quick enough, and then the next one blew me a kiss goodnight.”

  “Like I said,” he said, turning away. “I don’t know what’s going on anymore. You should’ve turned, but you didn’t, so maybe what you say is true. Why not? We’ve heard that there are rare cases of immunity – of a strange mutation period, even – so maybe you’re one of those and you are poison to them. It’s the freezing up I don’t understand. Every case, even those we’ve heard might be immune, they always burn up.” He turned back to me, again. “Who are you, Ffion Adie?”

  “I’m just me.”

  “Who were your parents?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve said that. But you must’ve had some clue? Some idea?”

  “I was found and traded like a commodity.”

  “I guess it don’t matter. The facts are the facts.” We walked another perimeter in silence. There was a breeze from off the hill, and a sky empty of dreams. Dead beds in dead rooms in dead houses on dead streets. Perhaps towns weren’t so enthralling after all.

  “Maybe now you’ll realise you’re not invincible. This ain’t no comic book fiction.”

  “Lesson learned,” I said.

  ***

  In the morning, Dale rested while Adeline and John patrolled the roof, with the rest of us camped in the doorway of the front entrance. The doors were open into the small courtyard and its imposing sheet-metal wall, with smoke rising from a small firepit dug into the earth. The March sky was blue and perfect weather for me, though the others zipped or buttoned their jackets up, even with the heat from the fire.