I grinned genuinely for what felt like the first time in years. I took the bar of soap proffered to me. It smelt of fake lime scent, and made me sneeze. Straight away she was looking out for her daughter again, so I headed in the direction I thought the toilets would be. As I walked I raised my arm and sniffed under my armpit. It smelt like a skunk had crawled in to my shirt and died. Festivals weren’t this bad. The toilets were marked clearly enough and by habit, I walked in to the men’s. I walked out straight away again as the iron smell of blood overpowered my lungs. Something, or someone, had died in here quite violently. Whilst the mess and been cleared, it was evident the room itself hadn’t been cleaned. I tapped timidly on the door of the ladies and opened it when I didn’t get a response. I looked in the mirror and was disgusted by what I saw.
Dirt and blood was caked in to my stubble. My eyes were sitting in hollow sockets – I looked like I’d been punched. My skin was sallow, and my shirt… I took it off and threw it in the bin. Then I thought better of it, and rolled it up to take back with me. It had infected blood on it. I should really burn it. I ran cold water in to the sink and started working a furious lather from the cheap bar. Shaving could wait. I wanted to smell human again. Not like a corpse.
The cold lashing of the water felt glorious against my tired face. It was more like walking out in to a sunny bracing Christmas morning, rather than a cold slap in the face. I wetted my hair and bent over, working that cleansing goodness in to every pore of my head. Nothing before had felt so good. Apart from sex. Nothing ever feels better than sex, and anyone that ever says otherwise has never had a good shag. I did this four times before I was happy that my head was clean. My shirt had been splattered with so much blood I decided six times was enough for my chest. I thought about cleaning the rest of me, but then thought better of it in the middle of the ladies toilet. I didn’t want to give any small children nightmares. I dried myself off, wetted one half of the towel, and finished my scrub-down in the privacy of a cubicle.
As I came out and headed for the door, another woman walked in. She had her head down and earphones in, and I clearly scared her back to Sunday as she jumped off the floor when she saw me, ripping the white buds from her ears.
“Whoa what the… oh yeah, the men’s is a no-go. Sorry, you scared me. You the new guy?”
“One of them. My name’s Warren.”
“Lana. Nice to have someone else here to defend the place.”
I cocked my head. “Austin said they didn’t have any women defending. Said they all had kids.”
“Well yeah,” she looked conspiratorially over her shoulder. “Austin’s a cock, if you ask me. He knows what I am and doesn’t like it. So he pretends I don’t exist. In turn, I daydream ways of throwing him to the teeth, when I’m not on watch that is.”
It took me a few seconds to register what she meant. Then my ambling brain took in the short hair, the eyebrow piercing, the way she was standing. She was holding her weight on one leg, her thumbs hooked through her belt. The stance was so masculine I wondered how I even had to work it out.
“We’ve already had our run in. You have my sympathy. He seems like someone who is getting used to having his own way here.”
“Isn’t he just. But we’re alive, and I suppose I’m grateful for that. Here, you got any smokes?”
“I don’t. You checked the machines? Don’t they put them in those for prizes?”
“I thought they only did that in the travelling fairs. Good idea. Thanks, man.”
She walked past me without another word, so I left and headed to look for Carla and Rick. Assuming they were together. I wasn’t sure if Carla would risk wandering around alone with men like Austin in charge, but she wasn’t exactly shy and retiring. I found the door and had to shield my eyes as bright sunlight assaulted my vision. The soothing movement of the waves immediately met my ears. This was followed by the harsh cries of seagulls. Perhaps less welcome. I squinted and tried to make out where people were. There was a circular white building up at the end of the pier. This must have been the nightclub that Doughy mentioned, though why anyone would want to get drunk and party on a pier was beyond me. There was a man sitting on a chair on top of it. Very Resident Evil. I wondered if he had a gun across his lap. And possibly a Stetson, along with some cans of beer at his feet.
As that was the business-end of the pier as it were, I headed that way. I turned to look back at the seafront. Not a lot seemed to have changed. Smoke tendrils reached in to the sky from various parts of the town. How much of it was setting on fire? When would things start shutting down?
I leant over a handrail to check out the lapping sea that was calming me so much. I immediately wished I hadn’t. The tide was low now, and below me dozens of undead wandered around aimlessly. It seemed like they could hear what was going on above them, but had no understanding of what to do about it. One turned its head to look up at me. One side of the face was exposed skull. The eye was gone. Skin flapped around loosely. Bile rose in my throat, and I retreated to the safety of the middle of the walkway. From that point on, I couldn’t resist looking down through the slats to see if I could spot them walking around under me. When the tide came in, would they just float away?
I bet the French would love a few of those washing up on the beach.
As I took in a deep lungful of air a different scent met my nostrils and my stomach growled to greet it. It was something bland. Nothing more than beans. But food was food, and it had been too long since my stomach was even vaguely full. I headed in the direction of this, and was surprised to see fishing rods poking over the end of the pier, lines taught and out in the deeper parts of the sea. Doughy lounged by one, resting his not inconsiderable weight against the railings. Rick stood with his hands tucked in to his back pockets, looking completely relaxed. There was another man with them, but I had no idea who it was. I was supremely glad that it wasn’t Gollum. They weren’t the ones with the food but Rick happened to look my way and as he’d noticed me, I could hardly ignore him. I waved at all three of them and Rick stood in the centre so I could address all three men.
“Morning, Rumplestiltshit. Managed to have a wash? Thank goodness for that, I was worrying you’d begin to rot or something.”
“Ha ha very funny. Thanks for the shelter, Austin. I needed that rest. Sorry, I don’t know your name?”
“It’s Pete. Oz has already told me about you.” I didn’t like the tone of that. How much had ‘Oz’ told him before Rick arrived?
“All I good I hope?” I tried weakly. “You’re up early Rick. Did you shit yourself?”
“Couldn’t stay awake with all your snoring. Had to find some food too. You need to eat?”
“Almost as much as I need to breathe. You managed to get something?”
“No. Oz was just explaining how they’re getting the food sorted here. Then he was going to take me up top. They’ve got some kind of broth going on up there, it’s got me dribbling like a dog I tell you.”
“Can we go get some now?”
“I can’t see why not boys. I’ll come with you. You okay with both the rods Pete?”
“As long as I don’t catch one of those dead fuckers I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Doughy chuckled and led the way to a set of stairs that apparently took us up to the club. I mouthed at Rick, mystified that he was using Doughy’s chummy shortened moniker. He shrugged and mouthed back ‘when in Rome’. He could take that approach if he wanted. I’m not sure I had that much effort in me. The metal stairs wound around the outside of the grim white building, and the door to an upstairs level was open. The smells were coming out of there, and I followed my nose gratefully.
It was dim inside. Worse than the dank amusements. There was a mahogany bar and a few skylights that were so covered in muck that most of the seagulls in Bennington had probably taken a shit on them. There were a few forlorn looking bottles still in the optics, and I’m guessing this was where Oz said I could get the whisky. I wanted water fi
rst, but I could imagine hitting that later on. Dust was swirling around in the vague light filtering in from the skylights, and positively whirling around in the light from the door. But in front of me was a gas camping stove and the smells coming from it made me forget everything else. There were a few people sitting cross-legged on the floor in little clusters. I saw Heather in one group, her daughter running around behind her. I took a small portion with thin grace, considering there was probably not a lot to go around quite a few of us.
Rick spotted Carla with one group, and we joined them. I winced as I crossed my legs down to the floor. Aches and pains from the exploits of yesterday were beginning to tell, and I had spotted far too many bruises for my liking during my wash. I was introduced to Andrew and Gaynor, a husband and wife from Bennington town centre. Anna had joined them, and apparently they knew each other. Thomas was nowhere to be seen, and I was too nervous to ask about him. As Rick sat down another face I recognised, Lana, came to join us. Heather spotted us too. She gave me a thumbs-up. Apparently I looked better.
Rick noticed and nudged me with a wink. “It’s not really the time for romance.”
“On the contrary,” Lana said. “I’ve never had more offers for sex. Apparently the apocalypse brought out the lesbian in everyone. Amazing what people want to do when they think the world is going to end.”
Carla choked on her soup. Rick smiled wanly. I couldn’t help but grin at her candour. It was true. A lot of the country were dead. Or should have been at least.
“What’s actually going on out there? I think we missed out on a lot of news overnight.”
“I’ve been catching up on that actually. It’s pretty fucked up to be honest, brother.”
“Even more than before?”
“Well, you know the nursery rhyme ‘London’s Burning’? London’s Burning 2: We’re All Doomed. There have been no new television reports out of London since last night, and they were all pretty grim to begin with. Social networks are starting to become a bit desperate. Still, you’ve got to love the fact that people are still updating their Facebook accounts.”
“What else have they got to do? It’s not as if people are going to work.”
“You’d be surprised. From what I’m being told, the first waves of infected were practically all drunken clubbers and night workers.”
I thought back to Old Ma Deathly. Had she just been in so very much the wrong place at the wrong time? Why else? It’s not as if she’d have been in a club.
I wondered what my social media accounts would hold. I wondered what Twitter was like. After the videos I had seen on YouTube yesterday, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to confront any of it.
“What’s Bennington like?”
“Well as it stands, I think we’ve picked the best place in the town. We got no help from police or anything.” Lana snapped. “Half my street was on fire before I came to town. I can’t get hold of any of my friends. Trains full of those things coming in. Offloading everyone. One. As if they are people any more. And why this town? Fucking train drivers got some sordid agenda going on. Nothing happens in this town.”
“Nothing is still happening here. It’s just there’s a lot less alive people doing it.”
We all chuckled a little at that dry sentiment. I’m guessing our theory was true. The towns had been ignored for the sake of the cities. And in the cities, the emergency services had probably all been consumed.
“How did you all make it here?”
“The majority of us, we were on the pier early. Some of us were in town because of the looting. We were panicking to get supplies. Some of us were looking for a way out, some transport. This just seemed like the right place to go, you know? It seemed safe. It’s not as if it’s a popular place at the best of times. We had to throw a few of them off the sides but that wasn’t exactly tough. When we had more than a few coming in, we closed the gates. When we thought they were a bit unstable, we chained them. We put people on watch. We just need guns.”
“Well we brought those.” Rick answered through a mouthful of broth.
“Hell I heard that! Pete was saying. Two shotguns. That’ll be a help close quarters.” Apparently Lana became livelier when firearms came in to conversation. “Shame we haven’t got any sniper guns like that have in Call of Duty. Or those SWAT guys in America. That’d be all we need to stay safe.”
“What about the noise?” Carla asked. “I thought everyone here was just keeping quiet. The lights out and all, there’s no need. We just sit tight and wait for help, right?”
“As if help is coming. Who’s running the show exactly? The government are doing news updates from whoever knows where. Have you even seen YouTube? No one can leave the country. No one else is allowed in. What do they actually expect us to do?”
“Nothing. They expect us all to be quiet and die, from the looks of things.”
“Well they’re not getting that from us.”
There were a couple of high-fives shared as this banter circled. I soaked it in as I devoured my soup. Someone handed me a cup full of water. I couldn’t help but down it. Right then, alongside the broth, it felt like Michelin-starred food alongside the world’s finest single malt. Everyone else looked just as pleased. Maybe we were all just happy to be alive.
Austin was walking around, acting like the Captain trying to motivate his troops. I noted he ignored us completely. Whether that was because of us or the company we kept, his general disdain for me, or perhaps a mix of the two, I don’t really know. At that point I couldn’t care less how much of an ass he wanted to be or what his prejudices were. I was too busy eating.
It almost felt normal. Then I phased back in and people were still talking about zombies. How depressing. People had moved on to survival stories. Carla was currently ploughing through mine. She was being pretty accurate so I left her to it. It didn’t look like anyone was getting seconds, so I didn’t ask. The broth hadn’t exactly been very filling, but I didn’t know how much there was to go around.
Pete came to join us. He sat down next to Andrew and seemed much more natural when chatting. He was a weathered man. Even his skin seemed windswept, fishing on the end of the pier being something he had obviously long enjoyed doing. I was curious to get some real information on what we had missed. I wanted to know about the swarm we had seen in the centre of town, and the surprising noise from the more mobile zombies we had encountered on the way here. Pete was the authority on this. Everyone else had skirted the goings-on in the town. He had been in the middle of it for a lot of the day. Apparently he had been mixing looting with vigilante zombie-culling. I’m not sure how anyone would go about that, and immediately decided to keep on his good side until I found out how much of his story was true. Apparently many people in the town had ignored the state warnings to stay indoors and avoid areas of social congregation. As expected, and as was happening all over the country, people were swarming to shops to steal whatever they could lay their paws on. Sadly enough, this still mainly included electronics stores. I bet they hadn’t planned ahead and got enough solar power to keep their HD televisions going when the power went out. There were also the standard protests, with people demanding answers on what was going on. If the idiots had read the news brief, they would have known well enough to have kept indoors. Apparently, zombies from the train station descended on the town like a plague of locust. They had collected enough victims along the way. And with everyone packed in so close, with the virility of the bites turning people so quickly or people succumbing to their ghastly wounds, it took less than an hour for the town centre to turn in to a no-go zone.
My next question was about the speeds. And the sounds. I didn’t know why some were slow and others were quick. I was downright petrified by the ones that screamed at us. Even now, I couldn’t hear any others, and hadn’t heard any others. Nothing had been mentioned about it on the news. Okay, I may have overlooked it as part of my research, but at that point I hadn’t even known some of them were audible. There we
re so many theories about that too but Pete returned the one that was most credible for me. If you got infected blood in to your system, but you weren’t fatally wounded, you were a quick one. So anyone bitten on the arm, the leg, just a small wound, would eventually succumb. Even a little bit of the infected blood would be enough to turn you. Slowly, but turn you. And then you’d be chasing down a three year old if it meant you’d get the sour iron taste of their flesh. They appeared to retain most basic motor skills they had from life. There was a complete lack of direction and an overwhelming desire to consume human flesh, but in general, they were rapid. They could run, they could jump. They could use their lungs. They could roar.
The slow ones? Easier to explain. In death the virus appeared to keep the brain working. Very basic motor functions, but nothing that would be needed for life. Rigor mortis apparently continued to set in, which is why absolutely all of them moved slowly. And the silence? Have you ever seen a dead body breathing? Sure they made the occasionally wheezing noise when air escaped the lungs through compression.
The movies were right in general terms. Lana was the talker here. I thought I’d done enough research. As the conversation ploughed on it was clear she seen every film and read practically every book the post-apocalyptic genre had to offer. You could disable or kill the quick ones the same way you could kill everyone else. But they would come back. And when they did, they’d still want your flesh. They wouldn’t be able to get it as quickly, but by every dire thing that walks this earth, they wouldn’t stop until they had it or they perished.
So the only guaranteed way to stop them all? Destroy the brain. Don’t risk a single shot; not that many in England would be able to actually take a shot with a gun. The reason I’d been so lucky so far was apparently because I was virtually disintegrating the brain with a hammer.
“And by the way Warren, using a hammer? That’s insane. I mean, I thought about a baseball bat. Not too close, but not really guaranteed to be effective, you know?” Lana was becoming animated again. Pete, after spending a goodly amount of time expounding his newly acquired knowledge on the active undead, seemed happy to give her the spotlight where melee combat was concerned. I was considered mildly psychotic for using the hammer, but apparently my 100% success rate meant that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. No one else appeared to be willing to try it. Rick volunteered that he used a hammer too, but as he hadn’t actually registered any kills with it he was laughed down. Carla grinned at him and punched him playfully. He even blushed. Pete was the next big winner. He used a spade. Both Lana and Andrew had used axes. Anna went quiet. Apparently Dan had done all the heavy work.
Great Bitten: Outbreak Page 13
