Weep (Book 1): The Irish Epidemic

by Brady, Eoin

  “Well, you prick, remember me?” Fin said.

  Burke had already caught his breath. He scrutinised Fin and simply said, “No.”

  “What happened?” George asked.

  “Mutiny,” the captain said. “People got sick, too many for it to be a coincidence.”

  “This was a crime against humanity. Mutiny is too soft a term. They never even tried to make it look like an accident,” Burke said. He was exhausted.

  Despite his dislike for the man, Fin’s anger burned itself out in the face of the few people that the soldier did manage to save. He wondered if Burke kept scanning the shore to look for those he lost.

  “They poisoned the camp’s rations. Likely laced it with biological waste. Country’s full of infected meat,” Burke clenched his teeth.

  Fin went cold at the thought of somebody cutting up bodies and feeding it to a camp of survivors.

  “So many of them started turning. Then they blew the front gates wide open while we were dealing with the infected. They came pouring out of the hotel in the woods and overran us. Some bastard in a van, the thing was packed with explosives.”

  “Survivors made it to the hotel on the quay,” George said. “We can drop you off there. You could see about getting a helicopter to winch people out of the car park or from the roof. Get them to one of the ships off the coast.”

  The captain’s laugh was brief, the action causing her immense pain. “They’re not here for our protection.”

  The soldier that Fin assumed had been bitten in the lough was stoic and contemplative. His duffle bag covered his injured leg. Fin did not know what to do. How fast does it take to become infectious?

  “Are there any oxygen tanks in Westport House?” George asked.

  Reverend injected herself with something. The tension in her body subsided. The creases in her face ironed out a little, the cross-hatching at the corners of her eyes less pronounced. “No. We moved everything to the hotel.” She turned to Burke. “We’re far enough now. Get rid of it.”

  “Hold on.” Burke grimaced and took out a radio. “Michael, you set?”

  The radio chirped before a voice came back. “As good as I’ll ever be. All make it?”

  “All except Ronan,” Burke said.

  The sniper came to an upstairs window, leaned out and waved at them. “Give me five, then do it. Once you’ve your own seen to, will you check on my family?”

  “I’ll make it my mission,” Burke said.

  “Thank you.” The man stayed at the window for a while, watching the swan boats bob on the water.

  Nobody on the swans broke the five minutes’ silence. The soldiers frantically pedalled the boats until they were nearly out of sight of the manor. Burke took out a device from his front pocket. He held his radio to his face, wet his lips. “Cover your ears and get down low,” he said to the survivors. He pressed the radio receiver in and said, “Safe travels, brother.” Before his friend could respond, Burke pressed something on the device. A second passed before every window still intact in the building was shattered. Part of the back wall was blown out by a massive explosion. Shattering stone and warping metal. A shockwave rippled across the surface of the water. Fire engulfed the lower rooms, incinerating the infected still inside. Flames blossomed up caressing the barren stone. The fire caught and raged, driven on by man-made ordinance.

  Blocks of stone and debris rained down on the manicured garden and splashed in the lough. One brick struck a zombie in the gut, pinning it to the ground.

  “Why did you do that?” George yelled. “There could have been people still inside.”

  “There were,” Burke said. The light of the fire showed how gaunt he looked. “I could hear them all night. I couldn’t get to them.”

  “I didn’t hear a thing.” Another soldier took off her mask and marvelled at the blaze.

  Even from this distance Fin shied away from the heat.

  “It had to be done,” Reverend said. “Hopefully it’s enough. If not, then at least we’ve bought ourselves some time.”

  The comment was cryptic, but before Fin could ask after it, a soldier alone on the swan boat with most of the bags started retching. It went mostly unnoticed until he went into a fit of uncontrollable sneezing. The mask covered his mouth. He held his left arm close to his body. The last of the fireworks stopped.

  “Sweeney, please tell me you cut yourself on the window,” Burke said.

  Everyone pedalled away from the infected man.

  “Have you any messages you want me to pass on?” Burke readied his rifle.

  “Nah, I sent my emails a few days ago. This place is kind of nice.” He started crying.

  “Have you any prayers to say?” Burke’s voice was starting to crack.

  “What’s the point?”

  “Short and sweet, I like it.” Burke never got a chance to pull the trigger.

  The shot came from behind him and brought silence over the water. Reverend let her smoking pistol fall back into her lap. “Infected are not human. The longer it’s left untreated, the more chance it has of spreading.”

  Burke’s lips curled in a snarl. He fought against himself to lower his weapon and sat down hard. The soldier Fin knew to be bitten was breathing heavily and staring at him intensely. He shook his head so slowly that only Fin could see it.

  “Get us upwind of it,” Reverend said.

  Without the fireworks to draw them, the fire mesmerised the infected. They walked into the inferno. Fin watched in horror as those closest to the origin of the explosion burst into flames. Their clothes smoked and ignited first. Most dropped before they got inside the building. Express route to hell.

  George steered them towards his board. He took his radio out and tried to call Rebecca. “Are you okay?”

  Her response was quick. “I’m on the water. The place is crawling with weepers. I heard the gunfire and the explosion, did you kill them all?”

  George put down the receiver and laughed. An eerie sound to hear while steeped in despair.

  The mountain no longer seemed so bad to Fin, once you got over the smell, the cold and Malachy's madness. He wondered if he would take the three of them on as apprentice scavengers.

  After a few moments without a response, Rebecca's voice came back over the radio. “There’s something wrong with the hotel, it’s riddled with walking corpses.”

  The soldiers shared looks. Reverend went even paler.

  “How many people were in the hotel?” George asked the captain.

  “Every living soul that left these grounds went there,” she said. She was deathly weary. “Hundreds.” She shrugged and wrapped her jacket tighter around herself.

  “What’s the point?” Burke echoed the last words and sentiment of his friend.

  Fin felt his anxiety rising under the scrutiny of the infected on the shore. Their faces were caricatures of their former selves: exaggerated expressions, grotesque grimaces as their mouths hung wide open. He stopped trying to count them. He had not seen so many in one place since the news footage from Dublin and Galway.

  “Won’t the current take them down to the falls?” a teenager asked. “They’ll clog up our only escape.”

  “Don’t worry,” George said, but gave no reason for reassurance.

  There was nothing they could do but wait. Weepers, returning from the fireworks display, churned the lough water to froth in their haste to reach the roaring furnace. At least the dead don’t swim.

  “What are you after oxygen tanks for, anyway?” Burke asked.

  “I found a survivor with bad lungs, she’s run out of tanks,” George said.

  “Wouldn’t be a kindness. You’d only draw it out,” Reverend said with her eyes closed. Her voice sounded distant and dreamy.

  Burke was agitated. He looked to her, but she had lost interest in them. “There won’t be any more deliveries. No more tanks. She’s not a survivor. I’m sorry – for what it’s worth.”

  Now that the fireworks had cleared, they
heard cries for help coming from high in the trees around the lough. Suddenly, it felt like the tide was going to change too soon. They started paddling towards the closest caller, but there was nothing they could do. Fin finally noticed the cold as screams of the desperate and despairing haunted them. There was no plan; they just gave in to instinct and tried to help.

  36

  Safehouse

  They stayed on the lough long after the tide turned. Nobody wanted to abandon survivors that might still be trapped in the trees, too scared to call out. “We’ll be back!” Burke shouted. He wanted to stay behind, but the boats were crammed with those they had already rescued. “Avoid the hotel!” They stopped pedalling at every sound, fearing that calls for help might be drowned out by the noise of their wake.

  The few they had saved were exhausted from a frosty night spent clinging to branches. They barely had the strength to tread water long enough to be dragged into the swans. One person screamed for them to wait and not to leave without him. Despite their reassurances, he rushed his attempted escape. He screamed as he dropped from the canopy and ran towards the water. He screamed when the infected caught him. Burke erratically aimed at the shore, arching the rifle to try and find a shot. “Come on.” The man died, but Burke would not let them continue until he made a shot. In the end, he settled for methodically emptying a clip into the heads of undead. With shaking hands, he took a fresh one from his vest and reloaded. He lowered the rifle and sat down, trying to affect a look of disinterest.

  The river gurgled over the short falls. Fin, George and a few of the survivors lifted the boats through the shallows. River stones scraped against the slippery plastic bottoms. The children went ahead into deeper water, carrying the captain with them. The soldiers protected the rear.

  “I’m not going with you,” said the soldier that had been bitten by a submerged zombie. The roosts were still full of the cries of survivors.

  “You’re no good to them, Mark, we can’t give you a boat. You won’t get them out,” Burke said.

  “None of us are getting out of here.”

  Burke looked almost relieved that somebody was staying behind. He took a magazine from his belt and gave it to Mark, clapped his shoulder and followed the swans. Mark drew his knife, crouched low and entered the woods. Either the infected will finish him off, or he will turn slowly and join them.

  They tilted the swans, bowing their heads low to fit beneath the bridge. Bodies that washed down the stream choked the channel. They were no longer menacing, reclaiming their humanity in true death.

  Fin nearly jumped when George lay a hand on his shoulder. He did not say anything, but Fin was now conscious of how quick and loud his own breathing had become.

  The island from which Rebecca had set the fireworks off was crawling with weepers. The smell of gunpowder hung heavily in the air. Rebecca shone her torch to alert them of her position. She paddled out from the shelter of a river marker. She was shivering. Fin thought it was from the cold at first, but when she drew close, he saw her red eyes. “The hotel…”

  Most of the windows were broken. Fin looked away, but he could not hide from the melodious cry of hundreds of infected. The mudflats were filled with them, indifferent to the rising tide. How long will they reach for the light from the darkness before they rot away, like a primordial dread? Each day that passed, the numbers of unfeeling killers grew. There’s no reasoning or bargaining with them. They won’t bend against threat of harm. It was enough to turn his guts to water.

  “These boats will be swamped far from shore,” Burke said. “We need to find shelter for the night, somewhere safe.”

  “I know a place,” George said.

  The swans were cumbersome and without a keel they were unsteady. Most of the children were too cold and miserable to make much noise, but one child mustered up the enthusiasm to cry. She was slapped by another child. “We don’t cry, they do. Are you one of them?”

  Her eyes darted to the rifles and she shook her head vigorously.

  George stopped outside their safehouse, but Burke passed over it after a brief assessment. “It’s too close to town.”

  Despite George’s best efforts, the soldier would not be won over. The survivors deferred to his judgement. Beneath the roof tiles, rafters and insulation was their safehouse; two single beds, a futon and enough food to see three people through the worst of the outbreak. There is no seeing this through.

  “There’s a solid gate at the front,” George said. “Only a small road cutting off from the main one. If we could put a few cars together, we could block it up, we’d only have to worry about possible infected in the houses around here.”

  “No. Still too close to town. I want to get as far from the camp as we can with the light we have left.”

  “We have food there. Your mate looks like she’s dead already. Give us time to make a plan.”

  Burke looked as if he was about to snap, like he was being hunted by something other than the infected. “We need to find a boat and get as far away as possible. Something that can get us out to Clare Island. If you want to stay here, we’ll not keep you. This place will be overrun. Think about all the people in the hotel, once they turn, they can’t go through town because we’ve blocked the roads. The noise will have drawn all those in town that weren’t already inside the camp. There’s only one direction for them to go.” Burke started pedalling without another glance at the building. “If you think you can do better than us, piss off and try.”

  Fin kept glancing behind him, trying to catch the phantom that caused his hair to rise. “It feels like we’re being watched.”

  Burke shaded his eyes against the sun. “When an animal’s sick, it’ll find a quiet place to die. People aren’t much different. If they could, they went home. It was the last bit of comfort they could hope for. Most houses will have infected inside, too stupid to get out. We’ll not find anywhere safe to sleep tonight.”

  “There are survivors in some of those houses,” George said.

  “You think those aren’t just as dangerous? Remember, they still have their wits. As I said, we won’t find anywhere safe to sleep on the mainland.”

  “There’s a man on the mountain,” Fin said. “He lives in the church. He has plenty of supplies, mentioned he was looking for help.”

  “Mad Malachy?” Burke said with a grim grin. “You were up with him? Is it true what people say about his family?”

  “If it’s that they’re dead, then yes,” Fin said. “Maybe he needs to pretend that they’re alive, so that he gets through until he finds something worth living for.”

  Wind rocked the boats beyond the headland. Burke set the pace, while another soldier landed and scouted ahead. It was incredibly disheartening to watch him jog out of sight ahead of them.

  Reverend noticed the children watching the infected on the shore. “The trouble is in not knowing how much intelligence they retain. You look at their faces and you see people. There’s nothing supernatural. Inside those skulls is a defunct human brain. I haven’t gotten much sleep since this started, but when I do nod off, what haunts my dreams are intelligent infected.”

  “You must know what’s going on,” Rebecca said.

  Reverend did not look away from the children. She did not answer.

  When the scout returned to them, he directed the swans to a farmhouse further along the coast. They would have made better time walking, but nobody wanted to leave the relative safety of the swans. Light rainfall made the cold worse, but nobody mentioned it. Reverend was used as a control by which to gauge their own discomfort. No matter how horrible they felt, she was going through it too, with a gunshot wound.

  The crowd of infected that followed them were quickly left behind; they could not manage the cluttered waste ground, field hedges and boundary walls. They watched the farm for a long time before Burke gave his approval. It was getting too dark for them to look elsewhere. They brought the swans into a sheltered natural harbour. Fin jumped off the boat i
nto clear water. He dragged the boat closer to the black rocks to keep it from drifting. The children remained behind. This place was completely new to him. With George and Rebecca, they would have moved silently and trusted each other to watch out for the group. These were strangers.

  “Have we passed the house with the old woman in it?” he asked George when they had a bit of privacy.

  “No, she’s still on further.”

  “Why did you head out this far by yourself?” Rebecca asked.

  “Scouting for a better place. Your man was right, our place is too close to town.”

  “Maybe we can convince them to bring her with us to Clare Island,” Rebecca said.

  “We both know what their mercy is,” George said. “I don’t know that I’d put her through that. Yous have already been to the islands in the bay. Why should Clare be any different?”

  The sky was tinged a dark velveteen by the setting sun. Black clouds obscured the moon and stars. They promised a wet and miserable night for any caught outdoors. The place was too quiet. A sign of what the rest of the country would be like if Ireland did not get the help it so desperately needed. With soldiers watching the entrances, Fin shined the weak beam of his torch through a window. It glinted off the glass. Undead faces stared back at them.

  They were back on the boats as the last light left the world.

  “I’ve been along the coast, there are no boats just lying around,” George said. All of them were on edge. Burke kept pushing for them to keep moving. Everything was silhouette, all detail lost in the darkness. Their fear populated the fields with inquisitive infected.

  “We’ll have to search the grounds. In garages. Look for slipways. We’ll not find any in the dark, though,” Rebecca said. “We can go back to the house.”

  “We’re not turning back.” It seemed fear was Burke’s guiding drive now.

  “Rev needs a place to hold up,” Rebecca said. “At least for the night. We need a plan and we can’t come up with one out here. If you want to continue on, then away with you, but the rest of us are stopping at the next decent-looking house.” Rebecca paddled away from the group. Fin and George followed.