by Rick Wood
Every muscle that he hadn’t used ached. His arms that lifted him up, his waist that rotated, his shoulders, every flex was a barrage of pain.
He went to stand up again. Slipped.
He’d forgotten.
Just one leg now.
How could he forget?
Looking down, the vacant leg was blaringly obvious. That leg’s presence hadn’t meant anything to him before, but now its absence was unmistakably clear. He could feel nothing below his knee. A stump where his nerves ended. Complete emptiness. A hollow nothing.
Get a grip.
He couldn’t dwell on it. Not now. This was about survival. He could cry over spilt milk later.
Using the bed, he pulled himself upwards, used it for leverage and support, using the floor to push him up, and he steadied himself, unbalanced but upright, leaning against the bed.
He continued to use its support as he hopped toward the door.
He shifted his body weight from the bed to the wall. Steadying himself. Falling, then regaining stability.
He made his way to the door. With great difficulty, but he made it.
He opened it.
Corporal Krayton turned and looked Gus in the eyes. A boyish look, his eyebrows raised, like he was caught at a bad moment doing something naughty. Before Gus could understand why, it was spelled out for him.
One of the infected dove upon Krayton, took him to the ground and bit the bastard’s ear off. Before the next few infected were upon Krayton, displacing his limbs and insides, Gus had slammed the door shut.
He locked it from the inside. Put one hand against the wall as he pulled a chair closer, placing it against the door. Then doing the same with the bed. Balancing. Falling. Stumbling. But doing it. Pulling the bed closer, the chair, barricading himself in.
The cowardly way.
But what else could he do?
If he went outside that room, hopping against the hundreds storming down the corridor, he was dead. He was no use to anybody dead.
Then again, he was no use to anybody anyway.
He collapsed, falling down the wall, landing painfully on his arse; he’d been laid down for so long, it had been a while since he’d sat.
The door moved. Again. A few prods, shaking it.
Then it pounded. Bumped. Moved the bed across the room under the ferocity.
They could smell him.
And he had nowhere to go.
Chapter Fifteen
A dozen of the infected and their dislodged throats lay vacantly at Sadie’s feet.
Her fingers were blemished with blood. It stuck off her hand in splodges like dried glue. Her hair was drenched in it, her skin marked, her eyes boasting a demented focus on the door ahead. Her naked body was dressed in robes of violence, covered from head to toe in the masses she’d defeated.
She could smell him. Behind the door.
And someone else. There was someone with him.
She drummed her fingernails against the door. Allowed them to slow rat-a-tat a tuneless, ominous sequence of four solid marks.
The door was already open.
There stood a woman. She recognised the coat. It was what the doctors wore. The doctors who had prodded and probed her, stuck needles in her, held her down, ignored her screams. Everything she had experienced made her despise that coat.
“Are you…” the woman said. “Are you… her?”
Sadie twisted her head.
She wasn’t like other girls.
Other girls communicated. Thought in more than brief words and venomous actions. Acted without such a ruthless scorn.
“My name is Doctor Janine Stanton,” the woman said.
Sadie lifted her head, her greasy hair drooping over her lethal eyes. Between the threads of her thick locks, she saw him. Sitting. Alone.
Donny.
His hands restrained.
Fixed to the chair.
Like she had been.
Was that what this woman was doing to him?
Sadie’s finger nails dug into her palms.
“Listen,” the woman said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The woman lifted her hand out. Stroked the hair out of Sadie’s face. Revealing the wrathful emptiness that lurked behind her eyes.
Doctor Janine Stanton was doing this as a sign of affection.
Sadie didn’t understand that.
Every arm that had been reached out to her wearing that coat had been to hurt her. Humiliate her. Ignore her cries.
No more.
Sadie would have no more.
“Look, I know who–”
Janine interrupted herself with tormented screams.
Sadie’s canines went clean through the doctor’s arm.
Janine tried to tug her arm from Sadie’s teeth, tried to pull, but that only weakened the tendons of her arm that Sadie had lodged in her jaw. She’d latched on like a dog on a bone or a luscious slab of meat, wriggling her head, wondering why this arm didn’t break as easily as those others, the ones with the pale faces, but persevered anyway, kept biting, until she eventually tore her head backwards, taking part of the arm off with her.
But it wasn’t clean. Fractions of bone and muscle still clung to Janine’s elbow like stubborn pieces of spaghetti.
Before Janine could even acknowledge the agony, Sadie jumped, took her to the floor, bit into the throat, latched on, tore, ripped, tugged at her. Then her face. Then her throat again, on the other side. Again. Until the doctor didn’t move anymore. Until she was a helpless puddle of blood. Ripping, tearing, pulling away.
Crouched over the corpse, Sadie lifted her head with a sudden memory of urgency.
“Donny,” she grunted. One of the few words she could. “Donny. Friend.”
His head slowly rotated. His eyes were elsewhere. His face was nothing.
She bit and ripped off his restraints, then lifted her hand and beckoned him.
“Come.”
He stood robotically. Looked at her. Recognition not appearing on his face. Yet he was obedient. Like he was doing his duty.
Sadie couldn’t understand.
Why was he acting like this?
“Donny.”
Nothing.
“Friend,” she reminded him.
He took a few steps toward her.
“Where do we go?” he asked.
She motioned for him to follow.
The made their way toward the horde. Sadie readied herself to fight, to defend Donny, to keep himself.
But she needn’t.
The horde made no advances on Donny. In fact, they went nowhere near him. It was like they didn’t want to taste him. He was diseased. Or something else. They just parted at the sight of him.
Sadie didn’t care.
She had Gus’s scent, and she had Donny.
She was half way there.
Chapter Sixteen
The bed abrasively battered the door, beating against the bombardment of bodies bashing against it.
Gus’s strength wasn’t enough. He was one man. One one-legged man, who hadn’t even started to understand what that meant yet.
He crawled to the other side of the bed he’d barricaded against the door and he pushed against it, resisting as much as he could. But he had no leverage. Nothing for him to push against.
Snarls entered the room. The door ajar, multiple arms reaching in, scabby hands with missing fingers, ragged clothes hanging from bony bodies. One of them got their face in, their nose sniffing with eager delight. They could smell him. New flesh. Living flesh.
He wondered what he smelt like.
Then he cursed that such a thing may be his dying thought.
It must have been like a good steak was to him. Luring him in with its juices, its crisp coating, its luscious meat with the blood oozing out – and right then, Gus realised how hungry he was.
He ducked down behind the bed.
Like that was going to do anything.
Sure, the bed would hide him from a ma
ss of the undead. They could smell him down the corridor, but no, the bed, that’s what would do it.
He chuckled to himself.
Funny, really. For six months following his family’s death he was so keen to die. He’d almost done it. He’d had the pills in his mouth, ready to leave it all behind.
Then something changed it.
Someone.
Two someones, in fact.
He wondered if those two friends he’d somehow managed to attain were even still alive amid the chaos of the compound.
He closed his eyes. Pictured his wife’s face. Skin so soft. Eyes so pure. And his daughter. So keen. So eager to please him.
He didn’t believe in heaven. Nor did he believe in hell. So he didn’t realistically, in his heart, think he would ever be reunited with them. That he’d ever see them again.
But, just for a second, he allowed himself to believe. Thought about what he’d say to them. Thought about placing his lips on hers one more time.
He understood why people believed in the afterlife, it just seemed like bullshit to him. Think about all the stars in the sky, the vast planets out there, the amount of life forms that must exist. To believe that there is a specific place after death for humans is to believe that humans are far more significant than they are. In the grand scheme of things, people are just dust on the sleeve of a greater being. God, if he existed, didn’t intervene because people didn’t really matter. Because people were nothing. To the grander universes and solar systems out there, they were an ant. No, less. They were barely even a microbe.
Gus opened his eyes.
Something had changed.
He’d gotten lost in thought, readied himself for inevitability. Somehow, he’d failed to reason.
The bed wasn’t pushing against his back anymore. The growls were gone. He turned around, and the arms were gone too.
But something else was battering against the door. Trying to open it.
He instinctively moved out of the way, so that whatever it was could punch the door against the bed and enter. He was cautious, but this didn’t feel like one of the infected. It felt like…
“Oh, God.”
He couldn’t believe it.
It couldn’t be.
Standing in the open door, bodies on the floor behind her feet, a pile of infected left discarded and destroyed, she stood. Her feral face, her bare, wounded body, and her eyes – those eyes that said to so many that she was an animal, but to him, said that she was a scared girl. Those eyes that reminded him of his daughter. They looked back, wounded.
His instinct was that he’d let her down. Wherever she’d been, she’d been stripped, tortured, hurt. He’d been tied to a bed, big fucking deal – by the look of her, she’d been torn apart day after day.
He used the bed to bring himself to his foot. Balanced himself on it. Looked at her full of solemn despair.
She had been let down. She had. And he hadn’t even thought it. He hadn’t even…
Her grim frown curved upwards. A mischievous smile accompanied a glint in the eye. As Gus helplessly smiled, she ran into his chest and he enveloped her in his arms.
“Oh, Sadie,” he whimpered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
From the doorway, another familiar face.
“Donny!” Gus yelped. He lifted his arm out as an indication for Donny to come into the hug as well.
Donny didn’t move.
His face didn’t move.
Gus’s friend, so comical, so playful – and annoyingly so – stood there, with an expression Gus couldn’t even fathom. He didn’t even look like Donny; Gus had to look twice. The way he held himself, it was like he was void of feeling, void of recognition.
“Donny, what’s the matter?” Gus asked.
Donny didn’t change expression. His neutrality punched through the tension, alerting Gus.
What had they done to him?
“Hey, Donny, mate,” Gus said, being decisive. “Could you get some clothes off one of the bodies, yeah? Perhaps, one with no blood on it, if it’s possible. Something to cover Sadie up ’til we find something better.”
Donny’s eyes lingered on Gus for a moment then he turned, his body hunched without purpose, and he retreated back into the corridor.
Gus turned to Sadie.
“What’s up with him?”
Sadie looked perplexed.
Oh, yeah. She’s feral. Can’t understand me.
“Donny okay?” he tried. “Donny – he okay?”
Sadie shrugged.
Gus nodded. He wasn’t sure why, but he nodded.
“What did they do to you?” Gus asked, filled with compassion, his chest hurting at the thought of the pain she must have endured.
Sadie’s head dropped.
“Hey,” Gus said, lifting her chin up. “It’s okay. We’re all together now, we’ll be fine. Yeah?”
Donny returned and handed a bunch of clothes to Sadie as if he was handing her a bomb only she could dismantle. He kept his distance and backed away as soon as she’d taken them.
As she dressed, Gus kept his eyes on Donny, who stared absently at the wall.
Was Donny mad at him? Was it because Gus hadn’t done anything to save him? Or was it because they had messed him up that badly?
In which case, did they need to worry about what he was going to do? Was he going to act out, put them in danger somehow?
No. Gus knew Donny. Donny, whom he’d literally given a leg to save. Donny knew what Gus would do for him, what he had done for him. There was something else.
Gus was snapped out of his contemplation by Sadie, who was standing by the door, ready to go.
“Donny, help me walk,” Gus requested.
Donny looked at Gus, paused, then walked over and put an arm around his back. He even managed to do that in a cold manner, such a lack of caring or concern for the friend he was doing it to.
“What’s up with you, man?” Gus whispered to him as Donny helped him to the door.
“Nothing,” Donny blankly replied. “Nothing is wrong.”
“I don’t know, you seem pissed. I’m sorry I didn’t get to you to save you, if that’s what it is, I know they must have done some messed-up shit to you. They did it to me, and Sadie too, and–”
“Nothing is wrong. Let’s just get out of here.”
Gus nodded.
Fine. Maybe it would take time. Whatever had happened to them all, they were going to have to recover. First thing to do was get out, then they could deal with it.
“Okay, Sadie,” Gus said as Donny helped him into the corridor. “Do your thing.”
More infected emerged from the rooms opposite, the announcement of fresh blood approaching.
Sadie went to attack.
She didn’t need to.
They all stopped. Dormant. Unmoving. Just looked at them.
Or, rather, looked at Donny.
“What the fuck…” Gus muttered.
Chapter Seventeen
The compound disappeared into the distance behind them, obscured by the high trees of the forest.
“Man, that really was in the middle of nowhere,” Gus said, keeping his arm around Donny.
Sadie kept a few paces ahead, remaining cautious, keeping a lookout. Making sure there were no surprises.
But she needn’t have.
None of the infected had attacked them. None of them at all. They had stood aside and let them walk out.
Gus was appreciative, but also sceptical.
Why?
How?
And, you know – what the fuck?
Donny didn’t react.
He did as he should. Kept Gus steady. Kept his one leg moving. Helping him slowly meander away. Further away. Away from the compound. Away from what had been their home.
There was no home anymore.
Donny looked at Sadie. Far ahead. Running with a stutter. Moving with jolts that made him wary. She could do anything at any moment.
Gus next to him. Useless.
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Donny remembered Gus. Gus used to be so much more. Gus had been a soldier, or something. Someone who’d fought in wars.
What else was there to know about Gus really?
“Over there,” Gus said, pointing out a broken-down house, one that looked like it had been burnt-out long ago. “That can be our shelter tonight. It’s getting dark, we need to rest.”
Sadie rushed ahead to the house. Checked it out.
Donny helped Gus up the messy lawn. For a big, bulky guy, Gus felt weightless. Like hollow air. So when Donny helped Gus to a sitting position on the splintered floor of their night’s accommodation, it wasn’t much relief.
“I’ll take first watch,” Gus proposed. “Sadie, if you want to–”
“I don’t want to sleep,” Donny interrupted. “I’ll take watch.”
“Okay, if you wake us up in four hours, then–”
“No. I’ll watch all night. I’ve slept enough.”
An uncomfortable silence lingered. Donny could tell Gus was unsure.
“Are you positive, mate? I mean, you’ve been through a lot.”
“I’ll be awake anyway. I don’t want to sleep.”
“We’ve had a tough run, you need to rest, gather your energy–”
“I don’t need to gather any energy. I will be fine. Stop worrying.”
Gus glanced to Sadie, who’d already curled up in the corner.
“If you’re sure.”
“Yes. I’m sure. Go to sleep.”
Gus laid down. Slumped onto his back.
Donny stood at the window, looking out, into the dark settling upon the night. It was quiet. He could still feel Gus’s eyes on him. Still watching him. Figuring him out.
Donny couldn’t see the compound anymore.
It had disappeared.
They were on their own.
No.
He was on his own.
They were with him.
The Journal of Doctor Janine Stanton
Day 1
Transcript from webcam journal by Janine Stanton, first entry
I feel apprehensive. I guess that’s natural. This is big, right?
I don’t even know if I should be doing what I’m doing. But, let it be known in case this entry becomes public record, I am doing as requested by the prime minister, Eugene Squire. I am doing my duty.