by Gary Gibson
At first I heard only the sigh of the wind, and the rustle of branches. Then it came to me – a far-off yipping that aroused a primal fear in me. A pack of dogs.
‘We should turn back,’ said Alice. ‘We’ve still got miles to go, and we don’t know how many there might be.’
‘Let me think,’ I snapped. ‘We can’t turn back.’
‘For God’s sake, Jerry – the last thing we want to do is get attacked by wild animals just when we might have a chance of rescue. We need to turn back!’
I stared towards the nearest houses, still a good fifteen minutes away on foot, then back the way we had come. I knew from experience how dangerous even a moment’s hesitation could be, but a succession of days that were identical to each other had made me slow.
I pulled my shotgun from my shoulder and patted the pocket of my jacket where I always kept spare ammunition. ‘We’re not turning back,’ I said. ‘I’ve dealt with worse before. Now come on.’
One of the things I remember the most from those first months alone in the world is the sound of dogs crying out day and night. Most of them were still locked in their homes with their dead owners – unlucky for them, lucky for me. As for the rest, they wandered the streets in search of food and – once they ran out of corpses to feast on – prey.
I started to move again, ignoring the pain in my lungs and chest. I was close enough now to the houses of Wembury to see their empty windows and the cars scattered across the road. The church spire rose above the rooftops, like a beacon drawing me towards my cache of supplies.
I heard barking from somewhere behind me and knew the dogs were on my trail. I tightened my grip on the shotgun, despite the sudden dampness of my palms, and turned to see a heavyset canine that looked as if its mother had mated with a bear come barrelling towards me, low and squat with legs pumping furiously. Its jaws gaped wide, its eyes white around their edges. I came to a stop and had to fire twice before the dog finally tumbled to the ground and lay still.
I cracked the shotgun open and hurriedly fumbled two more cartridges into the barrel before snapping it shut again. There was no point in running any more; even if I tried, the rest of the pack would catch me long before I reached the nearest of the houses. The best I could do was take a stand and hope for the best.
My heart grew cold when the rest of the pack caught up with their fallen leader. There were half a dozen of them: big, mean-looking sons of bitches with murder in their eyes, flesh clinging to thin ribs. They surrounded me in a half-circle, snarling and growling.
I had, I realized, doomed myself. I had let myself panic, when under any other circumstances I would never have taken such drastic risks. I brought my shotgun to bear on the nearest of them, determined not to let them take me easily. At least Alice would have a chance to get away.
In the next moment, I heard the roar of an engine. I whirled around, thinking perhaps Alice had managed to run back to the house and get our truck. Instead, I saw an armoured van come crashing off the road leading into Wembury and onto the grass, before accelerating straight towards me. It braked to a hard stop and a figure leaned out of the passenger-side window, brandishing a rifle and shouting something at me. It sounded like, Get down.
I didn’t need any further encouragement. I dropped flat to the ground, shots echoing overhead, thunderous in the still winter air. The dog nearest me seemed to rear back on its hind legs as the back of its skull exploded. Three more of its compatriots rapidly followed, before those remaining took the hint and fled howling into the underbrush.
I lay there trembling in the dirt and snow, watching as the rear legs of the nearest dog twitched momentarily before becoming forever still. My rescuer jumped down from the van and I saw he was dressed in a hazmat suit with a visored hood. Behind the hood I saw the face of an Asian man, with a thick handlebar moustache.
‘Run, you furry bastards!’ the man yelled towards the trees, firing one more shot into the air by way of punctuation. His voice was muffled slightly by his hazmat suit.
I didn’t allow myself time to think. I pushed myself upright and sprinted past him and towards the road, catching sight of his startled expression as I fled. I heard shouted curses and another van door slamming open, followed by the sound of boots crunching on snow. I felt an awful terror at the thought that Red Harvest might get hold of Alice. I prayed she had done the sensible thing and made her own way into Wembury and found some place to hide.
Someone tackled me from behind just as I reached the road, slamming me face-first onto the ground. I tried to twist free, but there were two of them, and obviously in much better shape than I was. I couldn’t see their faces clearly because of their hazmat suits, although I caught sight of a severe crew cut as they hauled me upright before hustling me in the direction of the van. My rescuer, his expression more sombre now, pulled open the doors at the rear as we approached. I was then half-thrown, half-pushed inside and the doors were slammed shut.
The outside world was barely visible through thick steel mesh that covered every window. Another sheet of mesh separated me from the front cabin, which was wide enough to take three seats. I knew this because in the next moment three men climbed in the front. The engine thrummed into life a second later.
‘You comfortable back there, Jerry?’ one of them said over his shoulder. ‘You are aware we’re trying to save your worthless skin, right?’
My name. They knew my name. That clinched it. I no longer had any doubt they were Red Harvest; perhaps they had learned my identity from Nussbaum and Keene before I killed them. Perhaps, then, they had spent all the years since hunting me down so they could take their revenge.
I wasn’t ready to give up, not yet. I lay on my back and braced myself as best I could, despite the bumping, swaying motion of the van, and started to kick at the rear doors as hard as I could with both booted feet. The metal clanged hollowly as I battered at it with all my might.
The van lurched to a halt after half a minute. I kept kicking until the doors were suddenly yanked open.
I didn’t hesitate. I threw every ounce of strength and energy I had left into hurling myself straight at the figure standing silhouetted by the bright winter sun. He stumbled backwards as I roared my anger and terror and ran past him.
The cold winter air bit at my lungs. We were still in the outskirts of Wembury, having covered barely half a mile. There were houses on all sides of me – any number of places I could hide in. I dived into the gap between two buildings, and started to clamber over a rusted heap of a car that blocked the driveway just as something punched me in the shoulder.
Or at least that was what it felt like.
I whirled around to see who had come up behind me, but there was no one. I got up on the roof of the wrecked car, in preparation for dropping down on the other side, but before I could, my legs folded beneath me. A terrible fatigue swept through my muscles with such speed that I slid backwards off the car. I lay there on the weedy gravel, panting with fear and exhaustion as shadows crowded the edges of my vision. I listened to the voices come closer, wondering what they had shot me with.
I closed my eyes for just a moment, and that was all the shadows needed to reach out and swallow me entirely.
TWO
The next time I opened my eyes, it was to see faintly buzzing strip lighting directly overhead.
I jerked upright, to find myself in a hospital bed at one end of a boxlike room, its walls painted in that particular institutional shade of pink designed to soothe and calm the violent and insane. I saw a sink to my right, white cabinets on my left. There was a single window covered over by a heavy black blind that allowed no light through. There were no clocks, or anything that might tell me what time of day or night it might be.
Just beyond the foot of the bed stood a door with a broad window to one side, through which I could see another room of the same approximate dimensions as the one I occupied. It was empty, however, apart from a row of lockers.
I looked down and saw I was wearing disp
osable blue paper pyjamas that crinkled as I moved. I saw also that my right hand had been handcuffed to a metal rail running along one side of the bed. My left hand, at least, remained free. I yanked experimentally at the chain a couple of times, but it was soon clear that brute force was never going to set me free.
I stared through the pane of glass at the outer chamber. I wondered if I might be inside some kind of isolation unit. If they thought I might be carrying the EVE virus with which Red Harvest had wiped out the rest of humanity, that would make sense. They had shot me with a tranquillizer dart, I felt sure, then brought me to this place . . . wherever it might be.
I leaned over the side of the bed and saw a bedpan. The sight alone filled me with an overwhelming urge to urinate. Despite my shackles, I was at least able to get both feet on the ground and make use of the pan. Then I lay back, still groggy from the effects of the tranquillizer, and fell asleep until Alice came to me.
I came awake only slowly, from a dream in which I had been swimming through an ocean of oil, desperate to reach air. She gazed down at me in alarm, her face framed by the strip lights. She mouthed something at me, and when I tried to reply, no words would emerge, despite a powerful sense of overwhelming danger. She shook her head in frustration, then darted out of sight. I tried to sit up and see where she had gone, but there was no sign of her. I hoped she could get away, escape whatever place we had been brought to, and soon enough I slid once more into unconsciousness.
I found myself ravenous with hunger the next time I opened my eyes. I rattled at the chain in frustration, wondering if their intention was to starve me to death. But only a short while passed before the door in the outer room opened, allowing two men to enter.
One was slight and bespectacled and wore the white coat of a doctor, while the second was tall and muscular and wore a grey T-shirt and cargo trousers. He pushed a metal trolley. His crew cut made me think he might have been one of the three men who captured me. I watched with fascination as they each opened a locker in the other room, withdrawing white suits from within and pulling them on, finally completing the ensemble with visored hoods.
More hazmat suits, I realized. I had been right in thinking I was in some kind of isolation chamber. But if they had the antidote to the EVE virus, as I knew Red Harvest had, was it really necessary to take such extreme precautions?
Then, I remembered: the men who captured me had also worn hazmat suits. Perhaps they didn’t have the antidote after all.
They checked each other’s suits before opening the inner door. As it swung open, I felt a sudden breeze, indicating a difference in pressure between the outer and inner chambers, and further confirming my virus theory. I smelled coffee and baked bread and felt my hunger grow exponentially, as the larger of the two men lifted a plastic tray of food from his trolley before depositing it on top of the white cabinet.
‘Mr Beche,’ said the other man, smiling at me, ‘Jerry. How are you feeling?’
‘Like I’ve been hunted, kidnapped, drugged and chained,’ I answered. ‘Where am I, and who the fuck are you?’
‘We’ll get to that,’ he replied. ‘First of all, we want to make sure you’re well, and then we’ll talk.’
‘Or you can just tell me who you are, and where I am, right now,’ I insisted. ‘Otherwise, why the hell are you keeping me here?’
The little man’s shoulders rose and fell. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have the authority to tell you anything.’
‘Are you Red Harvest?’ I demanded, my heart hammering.
‘No.’ He brought both hands up in a gesture of placation. ‘Rest assured, we’re not.’
‘Then why the fuck am I chained to the fucking bed?’
The smaller man opened and closed his mouth, then looked to his larger companion, who placed the plastic tray on the trolley standing near my bed and pushed it closer. ‘You attacked some of our people when they brought you in,’ he said, his voice calm but certain, ‘despite them saving your life.’
‘Bullshit,’ I said, trembling with fear and anger. ‘You’re Red Harvest. Where is she?’ I demanded, my voice rising in pitch. ‘Where is Alice?’
‘Who?’ asked the smaller man, baffled.
‘Alice!’ I nearly screamed. ‘My wife, Alice Beche. I know you’ve got her here somewhere.’
‘Mr Beche—’
I lunged towards the trolley, grabbing hold of the plastic tray and flinging the food and coffee at them. The larger man ducked neatly to one side, and the tray went sailing past his head before clattering to the floor. ‘Where is she?’ I screamed. ‘In some other cell? Where?’
The two men exchanged a long glance with each other. The smaller one turned to me and opened his mouth to say something, but then I saw his companion shake his head, and he fell silent.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Mr Beche,’ said the larger man. ‘You need to eat. You’re malnourished as it is.’
‘Why?’ I bellowed. ‘So I can be good and healthy when you torture me again? Is that it?’
I kept screaming as they rapidly retreated back the way they had come without another word. When they were gone I curled up on the bed in terrible anguish, my face damp with tears as I screamed Alice’s name, hoping against hope that wherever they were keeping her, she could hear me. The smell of food while my stomach roiled with hunger was almost more than I could bear.
After enough hours had passed, I fell asleep once more, from exhaustion as much as fatigue. The next time I woke, I found another trolley beside me, laden with hot food. I gorged myself on it until I was nearly sick, then waited to see what happened next.
I learned to tell the time by the nature of my meals: first came thick porridge and coffee, then later scrambled eggs, and later still fish or chicken with salad – breakfast, lunch and dinner. The food was good, far from prison slop, and brought to me by a sallow-faced man of about middle age, based on what I could see behind his visor.
I didn’t react, shout or scream, throw the tray around or anything like that. I asked him to at least open the blind, but he wouldn’t do it. Why, I couldn’t guess. What harm could it do, to at least see the outside world?
My initial panic had subsided, replaced by desperate cunning. I knew my best chance to escape required me to cooperate, at least for the moment. I forced myself to watch passively as the man who brought me my food and changed my bedpan went through the rigmarole of changing into a hazmat suit before wheeling a trolley into the inner chamber, then repeating the whole process in reverse. The most he ever said was, Good morning, Mr Beche, or Good evening, Mr Beche, no matter what I said or asked.
By my estimation, three days passed like this before they sent the shrink in to talk to me.
On the morning of the fourth day, someone new arrived with my breakfast. He wore a dark suit that looked curiously old fashioned, with a narrow tie and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and a button-down white shirt; he didn’t bother with the hazmat suit. Neither did the burly individual accompanying him – the same man whom I’d attempted to decapitate by throwing a plastic tray at him. This time, when the inner chamber door opened, I detected no sigh of air indicating a pressure differential between the two chambers. My quarantine, then, was over.
He wheeled a trolley inside and wordlessly handed me my tray of porridge and coffee, a look of warning in his eyes. The other man entered carrying a plastic chair in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He placed the chair near the bottom of my bed before taking a seat and opening the briefcase on his lap.
‘Guess I’m safe to be around after all, huh?’ I asked.
‘There is no EVE virus any more, Mr Beche,’ he said. ‘We had to take precautions, of course, until we were absolutely sure. But there’s no trace of the virus in your bloodstream. In fact, all the evidence points to the EVE virus being extinct.’
‘But it was airborne . . .’
‘Not any more,’ the man explained. ‘Not even in a dormant form. We checked.’
I stared at him, t
hunderstruck, still far from sure whether he was lying to me or not. ‘Who are you, exactly?’
‘My name is Doctor Sykes,’ the man replied. ‘I can imagine how frustrating it must be for you, being kept in the dark like this. I know it doesn’t make any sense right now, but, rest assured, there are good reasons for it.’
‘There’s no good damn reason to keep me chained up like this.’
‘You’ve been violent,’ he said. ‘It’s for our protection.’
‘Why can’t I see out of the window?’
‘All in good time.’ He held up a card. ‘Now, tell me. What’s the first thing this makes you think of?’
I stared at the Rorschach card held in his hands and laughed out loud. ‘You absolutely have to be shitting me.’
‘Mr Beche, please. This won’t take long.’
‘I thought those things were a joke,’ I said. ‘What do you think I am, crazy?’
Sykes sighed, put the card down and picked up another. ‘Let’s try it again, Mr Beche. Let’s just concentrate on the task at hand.’
I glanced at the ink blotches. ‘Murdered corpse,’ I said, with confidence.
Sykes exchanged a look with the other man, who shrugged almost imperceptibly. Sykes lifted another card.
‘My parents fucking,’ I said immediately.
‘You’re not taking this seriously, Mr Beche.’ He held up another card.
‘My pet cat Mitzy after I cut out her entrails because they wouldn’t let me have any cake on my birthday,’ I snarled.
Sykes gave me a baleful look, then dropped the cards back in his briefcase with a sigh.
‘I don’t need a psychological test, dammit!’ I said. ‘We were alone for ten years. Ten years, thinking everyone else was dead. I had to go foraging through streets filled with corpses.’
‘You said “we”.’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Me and my wife, Alice. You’ve got her here somewhere, right?’
Sykes licked his lips and glanced at my chained wrist. ‘Mr Beche . . . you must know she died along with everyone else, from the EVE virus.’
