by Jack Lewis
“Thanks, Ed,” she said.
From the way she held her bear close to her, it was obvious she meant it. Despite the agony in his arms and shoulders, the feeling of getting gratitude made him warm.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Bethelyn walked back into the room and threw the duct tape onto the coffee table. Her sleeves were rolled up despite the refrigerator-level of chill in the house. She huffed and blew a stray lock of her hair out of her face.
“I see your theme is consistent in the rest of the place,” she said. “You’re going for the depressed-alcoholic-recluse vibe.”
He shifted in his seat, careful not to move any of his muscles too quickly. “I’m not much of a homebody.”
“You’re not a homebody…but you never leave it. Look, I can tell you’re hoping I’ll shut the hell up. I will, about that, anyway. I’m grateful for your help. You didn’t have to let us stay at your place.”
“I’m sorry about your house.”
Bethelyn paused. “My attitude towards crap like this is, what’s done is done. It isn’t going to help anyone if I scream about how fucked things are.”
Ed looked at April, then at Bethelyn. Did she always swear in front of her kid?
“What?” said Bethelyn. “Do you think I give a rat’s ass about swearing, with all the shit going on in the world? Kids need to grow quicker than they used to. Look, Ed. I could punch a wall and break my hand, or… I could try and think things through and do something. And that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“You’re a better person than me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a better people-person, but not a better person.”
“You hate us being here,” said April, staring at Ed.
“No, I don’t,” he said.
Bethelyn sat on the spare chair. “Come on, Ed. You’ve barely spoken to me before and I’ve lived next to you for years. Not even the end of the world forced you to knock on my door. I’m grateful for what you’re doing, but you don’t have to pretend around me. I’m not easily offended.”
“I know.”
“Thanks, anyway. That’s all I wanted to say. You’re a better guy than you think.”
The pounding in Ed’s shoulders spread through his neck, over his face and settled in his head. A vice squeezed his brain, and the pain grew until all the blood in his body rushed to his skull and swelled against it. An agonising wave rushed through him, and he closed his eyes and tried to ride it out.
“What’s wrong?” said Bethelyn.
He put his fingers to his temple. “My head’s throbbing” he said.
Another wave of pain crashed through him, and fuzzy dots danced in front of him. I’m gonna pass out. He held onto the arms of his chair.
“I didn’t want to complain, given how crappy you must be feeling, but my head’s pounding. Think me and the madam are going to hit the sack,” said Bethelyn.
She and April went upstairs and left Ed alone to curse his aching muscles and throbbing head. He shut his eyes and listened to the sounds of the disaster outside, and the wind as it blew through the cavities of his old house. Despite the pain, he was tired, and his brain lulled.
Something banged so hard upstairs that his ceiling shook.
Not my roof too. Two houses in one day? Surely nobody is that unlucky.
A voice shouted. “Ed!”
It was Bethelyn’s voice. It carried a panic in it that he never expected from her. He stood from the chair, but his stomach lurched with a feeling akin to sea sickness. His legs were so light he didn’t have control of them. They buckled underneath him, and he fell forward and cracked his head on the coffee table as his body met the floor.
Numbness spread through his arms and legs. They were phantom limbs that didn’t belong to him anymore.
“Get the hell up here Ed,” shouted a voice, but the sound of it faded.
He tried to move but his vision faded, and his body shut down. He pushed against the feeling but it wouldn’t budge. Whatever was happening upstairs, he couldn’t get there.
As his vision became fuzzier and his head lighter, fighting was useless. He was fading into nothing, and the world around him was fading too. He surrendered to the numbness, and the fingers of darkness closed his eyelids.
Chapter Five
Ed
A spray of water woke him. His eyes flickered, and daylight stung them. Pain twisted in his temple, so he tried his old hangover trick of wishing the pain and nausea away.
Nope. That never works.
He left the living room and faced the stairs. How long had he been out for? He’d hurt himself in Bethelyn’s house when the roof crashed, but surely not badly enough to pass out?
He climbed the stairs and then paused.
“Beth?”
The only answer was silence. He gripped the edge of his bedroom door and let it support him as he staggered into the room.
He stopped, frozen.
No. It can’t be.
His stomach twisted. If it wasn’t empty, he’d have vomited. He staggered back, grasping for the banister so he didn’t fall down the stairs.
Okay. Whatever I think I saw in there, can’t be true. Get your arse back in there.
He faced the room again, where he saw Bethelyn and April. They could have been asleep, if their eyes weren’t wide open. April lay on the bed with her arms above her head. Her chest rose and fell, but there was a stillness to her only found in photographs. Her skin was the grey of concrete dried in the sun.
Bethelyn lay on her stomach on the floor next to the bed, with her face buried in the carpet. Ed crossed the room and stood over her. He cleared his throat, but words wouldn’t come out. Should he touch her?
Dark conclusions poisoned his brain. God, please let me be wrong.
They could have been asleep. They weren’t asleep. It went deeper than that. He’d passed out as well. Whatever it was, given the state of Bethelyn and April, it had affected them all.
A thought pricked him. Are they infected? If they were, he needed protection. He needed to think practically first, and emotions could come later. Better still, not at all.
Downstairs, he went through his living room and stopped in his kitchen. Three knives hung from a metal rack, swinging in the breeze. He tapped his finger along them and settled on the longest one. His dad used to cut pork shoulders with it, so it was sharp enough. When he thought of using it, his throat dried. What should he do if they were infected? Kill them?
He’d seen the initial stages of the outbreak on television. Shaky-cam films of the infected shambling through cities, distracted by the delicious flesh running all around them, screaming and shoving each other into harm’s way. If zombies enjoyed a buffet, cities were an all-you-can-eat.
The public information newscasts told him what to expect from infection. You caught it through a bite or a scratch. Once you got it, you fell into a coma and you awoke as one of them. Why wasn’t he hungry for flesh? That was what happened when you got infected, right? How the hell had he gotten infected? He hadn’t been bitten, and neither had Bethelyn or April.
He needed answers, but he couldn’t face them yet. He left his house. The cool wind tickled him, and bright blue patches shone through cracks in the grey sky. The bulk of the storm had calmed, leaving a rear-guard breeze in its place.
He crossed the cobbled street until he came to Gordon Rigby’s house. Rigby was an old-timer, an ex-headmaster who had retired to Golgoth and let his mind grow as old as the island’s eroding cliffs. The aroma of cigarettes and coffee wafted wherever he went. The guy loved order, but he was losing the ability to achieve it.
Busy didn’t begin to describe Gordon. He involved himself in every social hobby and pastime on the island. You’d always see him at domino games, pub quizzes, knitting circles, and scouting trips, sporting his jacket and waistcoat combination that wasn’t - and had never been - in style. When he wasn’t indulging his hobbies, he ran the island council. Word was that he ruled it in the man
ner of a school classroom.
“What am I doing?” said Ed to himself, hoping someone else would answer.
He’d never gotten on with Gordon. They didn’t hate each other, but they’d never be drinking buddies. Still, the old man was useful. He knew ‘man things’, those little bits of knowledge men over fifty somehow acquired. He was one of two people on Golgoth who had keys to the town hall and the survival stash Bethelyn told him about. If anyone had a clue about what the hell to do, it was Gordon.
When his knocks weren’t answered, he tried the door. It opened freely, but that wasn’t surprising. Nobody bothered locking their doors on Golgoth.
“Gordon?”
Ed’s footsteps thudded on wooden flooring. Gordon had stripped his house to the essentials over the years. Dust lined the edges of the wooden panels on the floor, and his stone walls gave the place an unwelcoming feel.
When Ed breathed in, a rotten smell clung onto the hairs in his nostrils. It was the aroma of darkness, of something wrong. A stench of wet earth and the things buried in it, of dark bogs and rotten food. The aroma latched onto his clothes like mist.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, and coughed into his sleeve.
Flies gathered on the windowsill, forming a buzzing, oil-skinned squirming layer on the wood, their hum enough to make him want to get the hell out of there. In the centre of the room, was a dead cat. Its belly gaped open, with its pipe-like intensities strewn on the ground. Whites showed from its stretched eyelids, and its pupils stared at the ceiling.
The cat jerked its arm.
A rush of panic filled his chest. Shit – did it move? It couldn’t be alive. There were too many flies, and the smell – the smell! The ripe air was surely toxic.
Its paw moved again, and a furry, grey shape scurried away, glancing at Ed and pinching its mousy nose, before disappearing in a penny-wide crack in the floorboard.
A sickening crunch came from under his foot. It sounded like he’d stood on cereal, but it was nothing as nice as that. Great. More flies.
Acid bubbled in his stomach and sprang into his throat, burning a trail through his body as it went. He ran out of the house and into the street. He bent over and waited for the vomit to come, but it wouldn’t.
Gordon was gone. Infected, dead, missing, he didn’t know which, but the old man would never have left a dead cat in his living room. What about everyone else on the island? Were they okay? He wanted to check, but he was scared about what he’d find.
You’re pathetic, said a voice in his head.
It belonged to Dad. Despite how much he missed the old man, he’d never miss his insults. As his childhood years passed and Ed’s body grew, he felt himself shrink under his dad’s expectations.
Shut up, you bastard. This time, the voice was Ed’s. When James and I needed you, you left us. Even now I can’t bring myself to hate you.
A scream shattered the silence. Ed scanned the street, hoping it hadn’t come from his house. Another scream, this time leaving no doubt.
There was no time to think; he just ran. The path blurred by, and then he was at home, and he found himself running up his narrow stairs. Every inch closer he got to his bedroom, his pulse pounded.
He stopped at the top of the stairs with his knife in his hand. There were too many sounds; his own raspy breath, grunting, a bang, floorboards groaning.
At the bedroom doorway, he almost dropped his knife in shock.
Bethelyn was on her back on the floor. April kneeled on top of her, her eyes ablaze with hunger. Her snarl cut to Ed’s core, the predatory sound sending a rush of cold through him.
April strained at her mum and tried to overpower her. She gnashed her white teeth and tried to bite her mother’s fingers, but Bethelyn held her back.
Adrenaline shot into Ed’s system and brought him out of shock. He covered the distance in three paces, grabbed the back of April’s dress and yanked her away from her mum. The girl’s head twisted faster than it should. She snapped her stare on him.
“What the fuck…” he said.
Her skin was doll porcelain white, and her eyes the colour of puddle water. She jumped to her feet. ED gripped his knife tighter, the cold metal pressing against his skin. His temples throbbed. Is this what they look like? She could still be human. Maybe there’s a chance…
“Give me the knife,” said Bethelyn, getting to her feet.
April moved closer.
Ed tried to push her Bethelyn, hoping to get her out of the room. He knew what he had to do. It made him want to vomit, but he knew.
“Look away,” he told her.
April’s teeth made a clacking sound as she gnashed them. She screwed her nose, baring her canines. Her snarl was wolf-like.
Bethelyn knocked his arm away. “Give me the knife.”
Ed raised his arm. He swallowed. His throat closed. I have to do it.
“She’s my fucking girl,” said Bethelyn, desperation making her voice crack. She grabbed hold of the knife handle and tugged it away from him.
“Maybe there’s a cure,” he said. “We’re not infected, so there might be a way to stop it.”
A bestial cry left April’s throat, more demon than girl-like.
“Shut up,” said Bethelyn. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
She held the knife at chest height. April let out another growl. She lunged toward her mother. In another time, on another day, she might have been going in for a hug.
When April was inches away from her mother, Bethelyn plunged her knife into her daughter’s temple. The crunch of metal piercing skin was enough to paralyze her. She stood completely still, her mouth open, holding the knife with a death grip.
Blood twisted down the side of the blade. She dropped it. April’s body sagged, and she thumped to the floor.
Bethelyn staggered back. She retched. Before Ed could help, she fell into the wall, and vomited. Her stomach was so empty that nothing but sound left her mouth.
He wanted to put his hand on his shoulder, but his hand wavered. Contact, emotion, empathy…it was all too alien for him.
Gotta be there for her. He fought against his instincts. He put his hand on her shoulder, forcing himself to hold it in place like her shoulder was a hotplate, and the contact burned him.
She stared beyond him, at nothing, her mind retreating to a place so dark he couldn’t imagine it. Her expression found its way into his core, shaking him to the point his stomach lurched.
“Bethelyn...I…”
No. I don’t have the words. I’m empty.
Bethelyn walked to the wall, raised her fist and punched the plaster. She winced at the first contact, but she brought it back and punched it again. After another two strikes, she screamed out in pain. Her knuckles were red, and her skin was torn.
Did he have bandages? Antiseptic wash? What the hell should he do now? He didn’t know what to say or how to act. It was lost on him. He had failed to learn whatever instincts were supposed to help you deal with another human being in crisis. Bethelyn was about to break down, and all he was going to be able to do was to stand there.
Bethelyn rested one bloody hand in the other. “We need to go find Gordon,” she said, voice shaky. “He’s got the key to the shelter. More will have turned, and we need to be somewhere safe. We can find anyone else still living on the way.”
Really? She wants to make plans after what she’s just had to do?
Maybe this was the only way she could cope. The human mind was a miraculous thing, designed to keep people alive. Sometimes it shoved everything else to the back so people could focus on doing what it took to survive.
She’d break down at some point. He knew it’d come, but he would let her meet it in her own time. For now, the only way he could help Bethelyn was to indulge her urge to be practical.
“I was at Gordon’s ten minutes ago. He’s not going to be much help.”
“He’s one of them?”
“No. He wasn’t there.”
“We need to find
him.”
He focused on Bethelyn’s face, but she wore an indecipherable expression. April’s burned on the outskirts of his vision, drawing his gaze, begging him to turn his head. Don’t look at her body, he told himself.
He looked at her. A shiver ran through him. I shouldn’t have done that.
“Listen Bethelyn. Don’t you think we should…do something? Don’t you want to stay here a while? For her?”
Bethelyn’s stare threatened to tear through him. Tears strained at the corners of her eyes, but she held them back with a will most people would have found impossible. Her cheeks quivered, and blood ran from her busted knuckles.
