by Brady, Eoin
Rebecca shivered, her teeth chattering when she spoke. “We may leave the bikes behind. They’re not mine, I feel bad suggesting it, but yours is broken and if we cycle, we draw too much attention. It’s too cold to walk them and if we do run into somebody, we won’t be able to hide before they spot us. We might have to go through fields when the path takes us too close to the road.”
“This hugs the main road most of the way,” Fin said. “I don’t mind hiding the bikes, it’s the food I’m worried about. We won’t be able to take all of it with us.”
“It’s not important. We have the luxury of one worry at a time. Right now, it’s getting to safety.”
It was peaceful beneath the bridge. Ivy grew from gaps in the stonework and hung down like a curtain, shielding them from the long path ahead. A veil of rain fell on either side. Despite the mild comfort, if they were surprised here, the hills to the side of the path were far too steep and slippery to climb. There was no choice but to continue.
They lifted the bikes off the path and hid them behind bushes at the bottom of a disused field. It sickened Fin to leave so much food behind. Laden with a full shopping bag in each hand, they continued at a slower pace, stopping only to put the bags down for a brief reprieve.
“How long do you think before we get there?” Fin asked.
“Six hours, I reckon – by bike.”
“Knowing that is going to make it feel much longer.”
“Bet you’re not giving out about the hot water bottle now, are you?”
The heat slightly scalded his skin, but the warmth was welcome. “I’d have turned back by now without it.”
When cars approached on the adjacent road, they ducked out of sight. Their clothes were bright enough to stand out if they were caught moving in the open. Lying on the ground, he watched the car speed on the empty road.
“That idiot’s going to crash,” Rebecca said. “I can barely make those corners doing the speed limit.”
“How is this spreading so quickly?” Fin asked.
“Motorways, trains. Westport is the end of the rail line, another in Galway. Every large town and city is connected, like one big body. It doesn’t matter if the infection gets in through a cut on a finger, given enough time, it’ll spread through the whole system. The blacktop outside every house in the country will take you anywhere on the island within a few hours.”
Once the road was clear, they started walking again. Fin stopped to watch a small river, turbulent from the storm. The banks were overgrown, hidden by trees and bushes. Pathless places where people seldom tread, there was safety there. The river disappeared out of sight at the end of the field. Fin imagined sitting in a boat, letting the current take him; once he was around the corner he would be invisible to most. “What if we went by boat to the island?”
“Do you have one? Because I don’t.”
The latest car to pass announced itself a while before they saw it.
“They’ll wake half the countryside if they don’t lay off the horn,” Rebecca said.
As it came into view, Fin noticed that the windshield was smashed, a spiderweb of cracks spread from an indent over the passenger side. It veered dangerously across the road. A few moments later, it became clear why. Fin was about to stand up when people appeared, sprinting after the car. None of them were dressed for the weather. Rebecca pulled him down into a puddle. The only thing between them was a wire fence and a marshy field. The runners were breathless and weeping.
The group of people quieted and slowed after the car passed. Fin pulled his hood down, afraid that it deafened him to his surroundings. “We can’t go on,” he said. “What are they running from?”
Rebecca remained silent and watched. A light went on in a farmhouse across the road. A dog barked, causing the people on the street to wail and weep.
“What are they playing at?” Fin asked.
The front door opened and a white-haired woman in a night dress stood on the porch. Smoke was swept away as it poured out of the chimney pot. The group ran up her driveway. The woman stumbled and hurried back inside, slamming the door closed, leaving her dog outside. The labrador tried to chase the intruders away. It dodged out of reach of frenzied attempts to grab him. They were indifferent to the snarling and seemed not to feel its teeth when it bit them. One caught the dogs tail, keeping it still long enough for the others to fall on it. The pained yowls and loud whimpering did not last long.
Heat from the hot water bottle burned Fin’s stomach. He could barely lift his head high enough to turn it, but he did to look at Rebecca. He mouthed ‘We have to go back.’
She nodded vigorously. “Leave the bags.”
Without a second thought, he left the food in the gutter. They crawled across the path, sharp stones tearing at their jackets. Once they reached a tall hedge that hid them from the road, they rose into a crouch and ran. If we had the bikes we never would have seen them, they’d be behind us and who knows what in front. It felt like they were running from the mouth of a triggered trap.
Terror set the pace; it was not one Fin could keep for long, but they were too vulnerable on the path to stop. Fin slowed to catch his breath, the back of his throat raw from gasping.
“We can’t stop,” Rebecca punctuated each worth with a pant. “The road curves round, it crosses the bridge over our path. We’re too exposed here. If those –”
“What were they running from? They were crying – it wasn’t normal the way they were acting.”
“I don’t think they were running from anything.” Rebecca put her hands on her head, constantly checking the path behind them. “The car’s windshield was buckled, did you see that? Like a person rolled over the bonnet. I think the driver was fleeing from them. The speed they were going, I take that road to and from work every day and I dread the bends they’re coming into.”
“A bad joke in poor taste,” Fin said.
Rebecca latched on to that. It was the only reasonable excuse for those people to act in such a way. “Maybe, but they must have scared the life out of that woman and that driver could have killed one of them.” She seemed less sure of herself. “What do we do? We could leave the path and head further across the fields. Be slow going, but we could make it.”
The weather was worsening and the sight of those people acting so strangely unsettled him so much that he would not consider continuing. “We go back before it gets too busy. I don’t want to blindly wander through fields and hope we’re going in the right direction. We’ll have a look at maps online and choose a better route. We’ll leave again tonight.”
Rebecca nodded. “What about that woman back there? Should we help her?”
“Whatever they’re doing, I want no part of it. They’re just acting the maggot, trying to scare people. Sure what could we do anyway?”
“I suppose.”
They started off towards town. A stitch took root in Fin’s side, and the pain became more intense the longer they jogged. The periphery of his vision blurred. When he noticed Rebecca slowing down for him, the ensuing embarrassment spurred him on a little faster.
Light on the path ahead forced them to hide in the bones of a hawthorn bush. They sank in the marshy ditch, water rising above their ankles. Pressed tightly together, Fin realised he completely forgot to put on deodorant before leaving the apartment. The warm tang of sweat wafted up to his nostrils. He turned red, grateful for the low light hiding his blush. He felt stupid for worrying about it; for all he knew, the smell could be Rebecca.
“It’s not moving,” she whispered. “Maybe a Garda checkpoint?”
“We’ll be fine then, can tell them what we saw down the road.”
Cautiously, they came out of hiding, keeping to the side of the path where they could melt into the verge if need be. As they got closer to the bend, they heard an engine idling. Coming around the corner, they saw the car that had sped past those people: it had come off the road near the bridge and slid down the steep verge. The axle was cracked, jutting ou
t from beneath the car like a broken bone, digging into the soft earth. Oil glistened on the surface of the ditch water.
Rebecca instinctively started towards the crash, but Fin grabbed her arm. They stepped around it, trying to get a better view of those inside, through the fractured glass. A woman lay back awkwardly in the driver’s seat, her pale face covered with little cuts, spouting blood, her breathing laboured. There was no way of telling if she was infected or not.
Fin took his phone out and dialled the emergency services, while Rebecca tried to coax her back into consciousness.
“I’m not getting anything,” he took Rebecca’s phone and tried calling again. “Nothing, it’s not even ringing.”
“Fin, she’s alive. Hey, are you okay?”
The woman looked around her in a confused daze. When she saw them standing in front of her headlights, a look of absolute horror crossed her face. “Leave me alone!” The engine roared as she pushed the accelerator to the floor but the car chuckled and conked out.
Fin and Rebecca jumped to the side but the car did not move. In the brief silence that followed, Rebecca tried to calm her, but nothing she said reached her.
“Please just go away, leave me alone.” She turned the headlights off, leaving them night blind.
“Come on,” Fin said. “We’ll keep trying on the phone.”
When she stopped sounding the horn, they heard crying, but it did not come from inside the car. The world was silenced by the sound of weeping. Rebecca took his arm and ran, no longer worried about the noise they made. The horn blared, but only briefly. Fin wanted to look behind, he could sense something following them. Every nerve in his body was on end.
“We’ll try for the hotel,” he said.
“Most of the food is still in the car.”
“I’m sure your folks are okay,” Fin said because it was the thing to say. She nodded.
They walked on the muddy verge the closer they came to town, no longer speaking, for fear of making too much noise. They nearly made it to the end of the Greenway before they were attacked. If the man did not start crying, he would have had them. The weeping startled Rebecca into a run, Fin turned. He was in his late thirties, Fin would have guessed at a glance. There was little time for more than that before the man was on him.
The infection made him look worn out. Weeping was odd coming from a man his size. It sounded like he was in agony, but his face was blank and lacked any expression, like somebody sleeping with their eyes open. He came from the driveway of a house just off the path. His mouth held open by the dead weight of his slack jaw. Hands outstretched, he lurched forward. Fin reflexively fell backwards away from danger. He gained his feet, but was pulled back by the man yanking a strap on his pack. His other hand grabbed his jacket, but his fingers slipped off the slick, waterproof fabric. Fin wrestled to get the backpack off. The man bit into a strap; his front teeth were loose, one hung on by a nerve. The sight made Fin recoil, that injury should have had him howling in agony, but he did not seem to notice.
The man dropped the bag and threw himself on Fin, locking his arms around the back of his knees. They rolled into an overflowing ditch of swift, cold water. Fin kicked out and they came apart. The man lunged without a care for his own safety. He misjudged, the bottom of his jaw smacked against the gravel path, and his teeth snapped together with a sickening, porcelain clack. Fin put his foot and his full weight on the infected man’s chest, keeping him beneath the water. He sensed no fear or change in the man’s body. He did not struggle or writhe with more vigour than he had before being faced with drowning.
Fin held his head away from the blind reach of those hands. The palms were ruined, raw flesh torn so badly that he could see bone, fat and sinew beneath. Rebecca grabbed the arms. Together they struggled to hold him. Teeth clenched, spittle formed at the side of Fin’s mouth as he fought against every impulse, to let go, to let him breathe. I’m killing him. He saw it in Rebecca’s eyes. They were alone and on the verge of ending a life.
The noise of his thrashing was hidden by the rain. This man had made it through life, its hardships and pleasures, to this point. Family and friends would never know his last moments were spent choking on ditch water at the hands of two strangers. There might be concessions for some crimes during the current panic, but murder is murder.
They were united in their effort; they would kill a person before the day had started in earnest.
“How long does it take to drown?” Fin asked.
“Not this long. I don’t know.”
There was no reduction in the man’s efforts or movements. Below the surface, Fin could see the tendons in the man's neck straining to rise, to bite them. Their struggle churned the water in the ditch until the chomping mouth disappeared in silt. Rebecca kicked her boot down through the water, where his head should have been.
Fin felt it connect. “Watch out for his teeth.”
“Look at his hands, the nails are broken and his palms are destroyed. It’s like on the news, he’s infected.”
He knew time passed slower than normal in dangerous situations, but this was taking far too long. They had enough time to come to their senses. Rebecca called his name as loud as she dared. She still struggled with the man’s arms, the fingers clutched and clawed like eels around her jacketed arms. The ripples on the surface showed no sign of calming. He counted to ten. The moments between each count drew on. The man was not dying.
“We have to go,” Rebecca said. “We’re making too much noise.”
He nodded in agreement.
“On three, let go and run.”
As soon as she finished the countdown, Fin jumped onto the shore. Without his weight, the man floated to the surface. His mouth and nostrils were full of water. Rebecca pulled Fin along the path until he managed to keep pace. One foot after the other. Slowing enough to glance back, he saw arms scrambling at the edge of the path for purchase. Fin had no religion, but he prayed fervently for the locked doors and barred windows of the hotel. What he saw made no sense. He had never tried to drown somebody before, but it struck him as something that was hard to fail at so spectacularly. It must happen faster in movies, they have limited screen time.
They rounded the corner and were back on the quiet, lonesome lane that ended at the crossroad.
“Did he get you?” Rebecca asked.
Adrenaline coursing through his body, he doubted he would be able to tell. There was a dull pain in his wrist but that was from the fall. “I’m not stripping off to check here,” he said. “We’ll head back to mine. We don’t know that the hotel is clean and all our food’s in your car.”
The traffic lights still hummed, oblivious to the state of the world. Town was busier. looking through windows, Fin could see people sitting in front of television screens, waiting for good news. Drenched, muddy and running, they left a lot of scared locals in their wake.
He shook so badly that he could not get the key into the door of his apartment. It was impossible to tell the infected from the panicked. Most were heading towards the train station, even though public transport was cancelled. Are they walking to Dublin?
When the key finally entered the lock, he nearly broke it in his haste to be inside. He slammed the door behind them and locked it, letting out a wheezy, relieved laugh.
“Take your clothes off.” Rebecca gave him no time to relax. She was right, even if they were not infected, both of them had likely taken something from contact with that man. They quickly undressed to their underwear. Fin poured antibacterial, mint-scented soap into their cupped hands. He considered bleach for a moment and poured some of that on too. Rebecca showered first, not waiting for the stream to heat up before getting in. Stepping out from beneath the shower, she gasped and wiped water from her eyes. “I couldn’t hold my breath for as long as he did. Will you check my back for broken skin?” Steam rose from the shower, but she was shivering.
Fin scrutinised her pale, freckled shoulder. “Aside from a spot and a mole you sho
uld keep an eye on, you’re okay.” He was not sure if he saw tears in her eyes or if it was just water from the shower.
“Your turn.”
Fin hid himself behind a large bath towel. He sucked in his gut and stopped, struck by the stupidity of it.
“What are you smiling at?” Rebecca asked.
“I was worried about my stomach hanging out, while you’re checking me over in case of a lethal infection, when really I should be concerned about Solene walking in and catching us in the nip.” He had his back to her; she was silent for too long. “What?”
“Oh, Fin.”
7
Zombies?
Fin rubbed condensation off the mirror and stared at his back. A large purple welt stained his shoulder.
“Is the skin broken? I can’t see properly.”
Rebecca was apprehensive at first but stepped out of the shower and checked more thoroughly. Her touch caused him to wince. “I don’t think he scratched you.”
He held onto the edge of the sink for support. Relief made him lightheaded. Each breath caught in his throat. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry Fin, I got a fright. It must have happened when he knocked you to the ground. It’s just badly bruised.”
He stood beneath the shower and felt invisible hands melt from his skin. “We nearly killed a man.” He collapsed to his knees and vomited bile. He watched it disappear down the soap-stained drain while he caught his breath. “I don’t know what came over me. He just came out of nowhere and wouldn’t stop. He looked like he wasn’t even there, like he was on something and could have woken up later without even the memory of killing us.”
“There was nothing normal about that, he was rabid. Those people on the road… That woman in the car was speeding to get away from them, she was in shock.”
They locked themselves in the bedroom. The cats hid in the open wardrobe pawing at the sleeves of jumpers and trouser legs dancing on hangers as Fin rifled through Solene’s clothes. He laid out comfy sweatpants, a tee-shirt and a warm winter jumper on the bed for Rebecca.