dEaDINBURGH: Origins (Din Eidyn Corpus Book 3)

by Wilson, Mark

  Some of them only began to worry when their broadband was cut off; some of them when their Sky TV disappeared. When the electricity went off and all electronic devices died, that’s when most people really started to get angry. When they couldn’t Google or Tweet or whatever the hell those idiots did. And then the smart ones got scared. Some managed to get over our fences and into the courtyard, seeking sanctuary. Some even managed it whist remaining unbitten.

  Leaving their once-comfortable homes and stepping into the real world instead of the virtual one, reality hit them hard. Food, heat, the hungry dead and survival became their primary concerns instead of clicking Like on some picture of a cancer-ridden baby or a kitten with a grumpy face, or perhaps completing their new shoot ’em-up. Some rose to the challenge. They fought and survived, for a while at least. Most learned the difference between a virtual Zombie and a real-life one pretty bloody quickly. I remember passing by one guy, a hipster-type, dressed in tight trousers, check shirt, oversized hat and large-framed spectacles, frantically holding his smart-phone into the air, trying to get a signal, as the dead devoured his legs. God only knows if he was calling for help or trying to update his Facebook status. Being eaten by Zoms. It’s different… LOL.

  Whatever he was doing, a few hours later he’d be dragging the upper body of his dead self around the old town looking for a meal. Eyes glazed, fixed on fresh meat, this would be his only social interaction for eternity.

  The Ringed were all over the social networks and news channels, at least until the communications were severed, but we had become so numb to shock, so arrogant.

  We were used to our illusions of control, sure of our place in the world and our right to those privileges we enjoyed but never appreciated. Most folk probably expected an announcement to be made on the news channels that it was all just some clever marketing stunt and barely looked up from their screens. Almost ubiquitously, the prevailing attitude was certainly one of Go back to your reality shows, PlayStations or TVs. Everything is fine. Then, all at once, it wasn’t confined to screens. It was in streets, in our homes, standing snarling at us in full, glorious high-def.

  Even then you could see the shock and puzzlement on people’s faces as they watched the dead begin to bring down their neighbours, their family – hell, even their pets. Eventually it hit. This is real. Run. Venturing out of the Kirk in those early days, searching for supplies, we saw this reaction may times.

  We fought hard to keep Canongate Kirk free of the infected. We thought that if only we could hold out for long enough then the government would get control and rescue us. Two days later they sealed the city with all its residents inside their hastily-erected fences and left us to it.

  The word Zombie was thrown around in those first few days, but no one could say it without smiling. Zombies were make-believe, something from the movies or TV. These creatures in our city were real. They brutally killed anyone they could reach. They ate people. We took to calling them The Ringed because of the characteristic rash.

  In the weeks and months that followed we kept hoping that the fences erected around the city were temporary. They’d built them so quickly, it must have taken all of the armed services. Only they could have done such an effective job so speedily. We told each other that they’d come back. That our families on the outside would demand they came in to clear the dead and rescue the uninfected. We clung onto a lot of fantasies in those days.

  As the time passed we became skilled foragers, leaving the safety of the Kirk at regular intervals and in teams in search of food and supplies. We lost a lot of people in those early days, when the dead still moved so quickly; when they were still so fresh, so predatory.

  After a year, our people had given up hope on ever communicating with the outside world again. Some thought that the plague must have spread to other cities despite the fences, and that perhaps the rest of the country, maybe the world, was in the same position as we were. Some preached that we’d faced God’s judgment for our consumerist ways, or that this was His judgement of the gays, or whatever twisted notion they subscribed to. You know the type better than most, Joseph.

  There was no shortage of doomsayers or bigots before the plague hit and the end of our city only strengthened those beliefs. Most of us suspected that we’d just been abandoned.

  Most were beginning to accept that life would be inside this city, in these conditions, for the foreseeable future. Many were discussing how the small patches of cultivated land inside the Kirk’s fences might be extended out to the rear of the grounds. Food was always an issue, but we managed. There was still plenty of long-life foods around, even after a year. Canned goods, dried food. We had it easy in a lot of ways.

  The wildlife that runs free in the city hadn’t had sufficient time to build their numbers to the level we’re used to today, Joseph. There were so many Ringed around also. The streets were always thick with very fast and very strong infected in those early years. We ventured out to forage in small groups only, using mostly stealth to navigate the back alleys and circumvent The Ringed. The little critters who did scamper the streets were hunted by them just as surely as humans were.

  Our fledgling community in the Kirk survived. Sometimes only just, while other times we thrived, at least physically. People who’d been strangers became a true team, in many ways a family. For many our seclusion in the Kirk was the first occasion where they’d had to rely on others for anything. Many in our little community really came into their own as the challenges of daily life forced them to learn skills and to discover new depths to their own resilience.

  We lost a lot of people. Each death was felt very deeply by us all, but tinged with guilt when the relief we felt to still survive pushed to the fore. People had a lot of adjustments to make – food, living conditions, sanity, the physical challenges of the new reality – but by far the most difficult adaptations people had to endure and survive were those altering their mental state.

  You haven’t crossed The Brotherhood’s fence-line yet, but you will. The survivors have formed many very different communities over the decades. Some are very small, just a house with maybe half a dozen folk. Some are huge, fencing in practically a town of people. Some are religious, many are farming communities. A handful of loners travel the city. Very few of the communities have forged any real links between them, despite thirty years of opportunity. Fences and barriers and isolation, Joseph, that’s what the survivors have resorted to in order to live in this city. Perhaps your generation will do better.

  All things considered we were doing okay. We had enough food, morale was low, but better than it had been, and the general acceptance that this was it for us was beginning to grow. My kids, Tricia and Marty, had proved to be very capable. My daughter was a computer engineer. That meant that she worked with machines and computers, built them as well. If I’m honest, Joseph, I didn’t really understand the world she so effortlessly navigated and manipulated, but I was so very proud of her.

  Marty was different. He wasn’t the academic type, he was more physical – like me I suppose – but he was also incredibly sharp. Despite being an absolute terror as a child, Marty was growing into a very capable young man. Although Tricia was two years older than he was, Marty was every inch as much her protector as she was his. They were very different from each other, but they were a unit. Inseparable.

  During that first year in the city, Marty and Tricia had developed into what everyone agreed was our finest foraging team. Together they cut through alleys, over roofs and through buildings, ferreting out unspoiled food and equipment stores. We’d lost many people as foraging was by far the most dangerous necessity in our existence. In truth, it had taken me a long time to let them venture outside at all. Once their instincts and growing skills to find supplies and avoid The Ringed became obvious, I found that the community’s needs outweighed my own selfish need to protect them.

  Each of us had a role, some value or service to contribute. We had people who had become fighters
– specialist silencers of The Ringed or killers of any living who attacked our home. This happened very few times but regularly over that first year. We had cooks, laundry people, childcare specialists, hunters and trappers. God, we did well.

  Our only real schism was caused by the little group led by Grayson. Obviously, that didn’t turn out so well in the long term, but at that time, the group within our larger community kept to themselves. There was little opportunity or will to convince more of our number to join, but resentment did eventually grow.

  Grayson and his people wanted to seek out their own area to colonise, somewhere that paid tribute to the Children of Elisha, as they called them now. Reluctantly, I agreed to a party of thirty able men and women escorting Grayson and a handful of his Brothers in his search. Keen to explore further into the city-centre, Marty and Tricia both volunteered for the squad.

  Isabelle had moved from open hostility to tolerating me by then, mostly because there was no alcohol. Granting permission to the kids to join Grayson’s party shifted Isabelle squarely back into the hostile state of a year earlier. “You and your fucking heroics. Those kids are trying to prove themselves to you.”

  They weren’t. They were just being who they were, doing what they felt they had to, contributing.

  The team accompanied Grayson in moving through the immediate Canongate area in search of a suitable building or area to fence off and colonise. They took three separate sorties, roaming further on each occasion. Grayson insisted that defence, supplies and sustainability had less importance than finding a location that would honour The Children. The fourth time the party left the Kirk was to be the final time. Not a single member of the party returned – not alive, at any rate.

  Almost a month later I found the remains of my children. Thanks to the stupidity of a group of students holed up in a nearby building, the Kirk became a painful, blood-spattered and eventually burned-out memory soon after.

  Chapter 8

  Jenny

  “Jock, I need your help with this. Please, just listen to me.”

  Jenny watched the big padre sitting with his elbows on his knees trying to care about what she was saying. He failed. Jock couldn’t focus on the words, couldn’t even sense the desperate tone. He appeared drunk, which he wasn’t. He was badly depressed. Simply, their once stoic and unshakable leader couldn’t care. He hadn’t eaten in a fortnight and had only reluctantly taken water every other day. His clothes and body stank worse than a Zom. A fourteen-day growth of hair on his face, dirt in his skin and pain in his heart was hobbling his effectiveness.

  Jenny felt brutal in her demanding that he put aside the loss of his children. That he find the courage to lead them again, at least for a while. What else could she do? Despite the skills the community had acquired this past year, Jock was the only one of them with any training… with combat and tactical experience. They needed him, and they needed him right fucking now.

  She stood over the broken Marine, her right eye twitching in anger. To the extent that any non-parent could, Jenny understood that Jock was in intense agony over the death of his children. The man had found their scattered and meagre remains – a mental image that would torture him until the grave, she was sure. Having said that, this day’s events were exceptional. The community that he’d established, that he’d led, was on the brink. They needed him so very badly.

  Jenny’s eyes moved over the broken man, assessing him and finding his weakness an insult to the people who depended on him. He’s just like him… Dad, she thought. All front, but ultimately weak.

  She swallowed the acidic contempt that grew for this man she’d admired since they met; for the man who had taught her to fight, to survive, to never be second. Jock had advised her to learn from everyone she met: no matter how unskilled they seemed, everyone had a useful skill to pass along. Without this man, she would have died on the first day of the outbreak. Without his example and seemingly unlimited capacity for improvement and immeasurable resourcefulness, Jenny would have lost hope, or melted into the background of their community, like Fiona had. Useless and dependent. Vulnerable. As Jenny glared down at the back of the marine’s head, she acknowledged with a fleeting trace of sadness that Jock’s usefulness was at an end.

  Turning on her heels sharply, Jenny left her one-time mentor to his self-pity and ascended the storeroom stairs. Her mind flipped through strategies and possible outcomes. All roads led to the horde of Ringed gathered outside on Canongate, steamrollering the fences and destroying their community.

  Jenny scanned the seventy or so faces remaining in their community, waiting for a spark of… something to deter her from her chosen tactic. Her mind racing, the sweat slick on her spine, Jenny glanced at the trembling oak doors and the fear, determination and panic forming on the faces of her community. They were frozen. These people. They didn’t or couldn’t acknowledge that the vibrating doors and dusty snarls of The Ringed meant that the perimeter was breached. The Kirk was finished. As she looked at each face, a switch clicked over in Jenny’s mind. Weakness. They’re all weak. Weakness means death.

  Jenny shoved a path through the people she’d begged Jock to lead moments before. Reaching Fiona, she grasped her sister’s wrist tightly, almost wrenching it free from its moorings as she yanked and dragged her sibling along the aisle of the Kirk. Reaching the rear doors, Jenny glanced back into the main hall one more time. A man had followed her – God, she couldn’t recall his name – and was already pulling the heavy fire door closed behind them.

  “Good luck,” she spat. Not a cell in her body felt a need to stay and defend against the onslaught. Practicality ruled her heart. The Kirk was finished.

  Inside, Padre Jock Stevenson gave a bitterly cynical thank you to a God he no longer believed in for the mercy of an imminent death.

  Chapter 9

  Tricia

  “Do you remember when I taught you to ride your bike?”

  Marty shrugged. “Course.”

  “See, when I said I was holding the back of the saddle? Well, na… it was all you.”

  Marty eyed his sister, genuinely aggrieved at the disclosure.

  “Ya fuckin cow. I thought you had me.”

  Tricia laughed, sending a hacking cough racking through her. When she’d recovered, she wiggled her eyebrows at him.

  “You did good, blondie,” she whispered. “Martin, do you remember the Christmas Dad was away?”

  He nodded, moving his eyes to the vibrating planks of wood nailed across the store window. “Aye. I do. You made that day for me, Trish.”

  Tricia nodded. “I know. Had to.”

  Pain flashed between their eyes as the unspoken history stabbed at their memories. Absent Dad. Drunk Mum. They’d had only each other. Dinner, gifts, a sneaky dip at the old man’s whiskey. They’d had a brilliant day in the end. Bloody Marty had taken the tenner she’d given him, spent one-seventy-nine on a selection box for her and kept the change. Tricia had bought him a DVD and couldn’t care less that he’d pocketed most of the agreed-upon amount.

  “We’re not going to make it back. You know that, right?” Marty asked, emphasising the word we.

  Tricia sat up from the makeshift bed of foam tubes they’d strung together. Just as they had as kids, they’d lain talking, planning and laughing for hours on their bed, despite the clawing from outside. Scanning the door, she noted that it was now moving a good inch in and out of its frame with the tireless battering it was receiving from The Ringed outside.

  Almost one month they’d been holed up in the little shop, a former Scottish clothing store up near Castlehill. The pink and white ‘Ness’ sign of the storefront had offered little hope that any useful resources were there to be found. But, as at least a thousand Ringed hunted them along The Royal Mile and Grayson and his Brothers had taken refuge in Mary King’s Close, closing the heavy doors and leaving the siblings to die on the cobbles, they’d had little option but to take shelter inside the tartan-filled store.

  Perhaps
they might have made an egress in the first week or so, before the number of Ringed increased to the thousands currently clambering, clawing and snarling at the shop door. Drawn by the clamour of their reanimated brothers, The Ringed had flocked relentlessly to the area, mindlessly following the last source of food sensed nearby. Those at the rear of the rabble simply followed their brethren.

  Tricia’s pneumonia had kept them rooted in place. Marty found crates of Pot Noodles in the shop’s storeroom and packs filled with litres of bottled water. God only knew why they were there, but the dried noodles and water kept them from starving and allowed Tricia to begin to recover from her infection.

  The door was going to give way, and soon. Neither of them doubted this. It was just a question of when. That their improvised reinforcements had held so long was a miracle. A flicker of hope remained in each of them that Grayson might send assistance, or perhaps their father might make a rescue. Neither eventuality was realistic: Jock would never make his way through the hordes along The Mile, not alive at any rate, and Grayson had his new home. He simply didn’t care that they were nearby. Perhaps if they became infected Grayson would tend to them as his dogma seemed to demand. The notion made the siblings laugh.

  There was a single chance for escape. The rear exit, a slim window at head height from the basement and free from the attention of the gathered horde of The Ringed at the front of the building, was too narrow for Marty. That they’d had this six weeks together to love each other, to discuss old times and simply say goodbye, was another miraculous gift.