Contamination

by Ryan Casey

  And she got why Eddie wanted to help this guy. She wasn’t an idiot. She’d seen what state the bloke was in. He looked worse for wear. At his wits’ end. In an absolute mess. She could still smell the vomit from the other side of this club hut.

  But there was just something about him that made her feel uneasy.

  She looked across the hut at him. There wasn’t much in here. No furniture. A kettle and a sink. A hoover left plugged in, right in the middle of the room. Outside the glass, tennis courts. Rackets left stranded. Matches left unfinished. Normal life put on hold—never to resume, not in any ordinary way, anyway.

  Bruce lay against the wall with his eyes closed. His hands were wrapped around his body. He hadn’t said much on his walk with her and Eddie. Something about losing his wife, then his daughter. Something about a medical centre. About how he should’ve been there for his daughter. How he could’ve helped her. Could’ve saved her.

  And it was sad. It was tragic. No doubting that.

  But there was still something about this guy she couldn’t put her finger on.

  Something she couldn’t trust.

  “I wish you looked at me the way you look at him.”

  Kelly turned. Saw Eddie lying with his head against the wall, not far from her. “You still awake?”

  “He’s not a bad guy,” Eddie said. “He’s been through some shit. He needed a hand. He needed to see someone cared. That goes a long way.”

  “I get that,” Kelly said. “I just wish you’d asked me first.”

  “So you could’ve said ‘no’ right away? Shot me down on the spot?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Exactly,” Eddie whispered, a little loudly for Kelly’s liking. “I get you’ve got your issues. I... I understand where they come from now. But you can’t keep on just pushing people away like this. Or you’re gonna live a pretty lonely life.”

  Kelly sighed. “This isn’t about pushing people away. It’s about being rational. We run into a stranger and your first instinct is to invite him along like you’re the fucking pied piper for people with issues?”

  “My instinct is to help someone when I see they’re on the verge of killing themselves,” Eddie snapped.

  His voice was loud. His whisper broken. His words ringing in Kelly’s ears.

  And they made her feel insensitive, no doubt about that. They made her feel like a mega-bitch.

  “I’m not saying don’t help people,” Kelly whispered, trying to return a sense of calm to the situation. “I just wish you’d asked for my opinion is all. I’ve... I’ve spent my whole life having my opinions belittled. I’ve spent my whole life believing what I have to say isn’t important. And I just have a bad feeling about this guy. That’s all it is. And usually, my instincts are pretty on point. You’ve got to give me that.”

  Eddie sighed. “Look. I’m sorry for railroading you or whatever. That’s not how it was meant to come across. I just saw this guy in need. I figured he needed a hand. I acted on emotion, or whatever.”

  “And I get why you did that. It’s just... what next?”

  Eddie frowned. “What next?”

  “Are we supposed to just take this guy back to my place? Because that’s another mouth to feed.”

  “Is that seriously what you’re worried about right now?”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said. “Yeah, it is. We’re struggling to feed ourselves as it is. The whole fucking reason I left my home was to try and find somewhere else. To find some supplies. Or whatever. One extra person isn’t going to fix that. It’s going to make it worse.”

  Eddie rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Your place doesn’t have to be permanent. It’s just a stopgap. Until we figure out what we do next. But the way I see it, an extra helping hand isn’t a bad thing. It could be a positive thing.”

  “And have you stopped to think what Noah and Jasmine might think?” Kelly asked.

  “What?”

  “You seem to have made your mind up that this bloke is coming along to my place, by the way. How about Noah? Jasmine? You reckon they’ll be on board with this grand plan of yours?”

  “Let’s just... take it a step at a time,” Eddie said. “Noah and Jasmine are the least of our concerns right now. Right now, sleep would be a really good idea. We wake up tomorrow. We figure out where we go from here. Together. Okay?”

  Kelly wanted to argue with Eddie. She wanted to tell him what a dick she thought he was being.

  But in the end, she just didn’t have the energy anymore.

  “Speak about it tomorrow,” she said.

  She closed her eyes and curled up against the wall and pictured she had someone beside her, someone holding her.

  “I get it,” Eddie said. “Maybe more than you realise. But this will work out. All of it will work out. But it won’t work out if we isolate ourselves. If we cut ourselves off.”

  She wanted to tell him he was wrong. She wanted to tell him she didn’t agree.

  But she just lay there. Eyes closed. For a while, at least.

  When she was sure Eddie was snoring away, she opened her eyes and looked right across the club hut at Bruce.

  She swore she saw him staring at her, eyes twinkling in the darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Noah and Jasmine.

  Bruce lay in the darkness and couldn’t stop thinking about those two names.

  Initially, he wasn’t sure he’d heard the girl, Kelly, right. He was imagining things. Hearing things when they weren’t there.

  But then she’d said their names again, and at that point, he was convinced.

  The stories. They added up.

  They were a group.

  Kelly and that idiot, Eddie.

  Noah and Jasmine.

  The people at the medical centre.

  The people who’d stormed in there, threatened his livelihood.

  Who’d cost his daughter her life.

  He wasn’t sure how to feel as he looked across this hut at the pair of them sleeping. On the one hand, he appreciated Eddie’s kindness. He seemed like a genuinely decent guy. An idiot, but a decent guy.

  But Kelly.

  He didn’t like her. She clearly didn’t like him, either. She wasn’t sure about him at all. He couldn’t blame her. Why would anyone be sure of anyone in this world anymore?

  She was a problem. But only because of his new agenda. His new plan.

  The only way things could possibly go at this stage.

  He’d thought about getting up in the night. Thought about sneaking away from these people. Going somewhere quiet, somewhere out of the way. Maybe killing himself. Maybe not. He wasn’t too sure yet. Depended on how he felt in the moment. Probably would someday. He didn’t know.

  But after hearing those two names, something shifted in Bruce’s mind.

  A new agenda.

  A new plan.

  He could use these two people.

  He could convince them he needed their help. Convince them he wasn’t a threat. That he was a friend.

  They could lead him right to Noah and Jasmine.

  And then he could get the revenge he craved, all along.

  He looked back over at the girl, Kelly.

  Swore he saw her looking right over at him, just for a moment, before closing her eyes.

  He kept on looking at her. Kept watching as she opened her eyes a few more times. Looked over at him. Checked to see if he was looking.

  And then he closed his eyes, and for the first time in this horror show of a week, he smiled.

  He was almost done.

  He was almost at peace.

  Chapter Forty

  It was only when Jasmine stepped out into the street that she started to feel desperately unwell.

  It hit her suddenly. First, a coldness to her hands. She remembered what Steve told her. Purple palms. The first sign of a carrier.

  She looked at her hands. They didn’t look particularly purple. They were always a little on the red side, but right now, they wer
e pale, if anything.

  But that splitting headache, totally out of nowhere.

  That taste of blood, right across her lips.

  And that strange feeling that came over her as she rushed out of the building and into the chaotic street of Longridge.

  She couldn’t describe the experience too well. But just for a moment, just for a glimmer of time, she felt like she didn’t have a head. Like where her head was supposed to be, there was only the world. Sights. Sounds. Smells. Tastes. Touch. All of them spiralling around in a destabilising dance.

  “Jas?”

  Jasmine looked around at Noah. Saw him standing by her side, knife in hand.

  “You okay?”

  She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to be open.

  But she was terrified.

  Terrified of being straight with him.

  Terrified of being honest.

  Because it was hard enough being honest with herself.

  It was hard enough accepting what might be reality right now.

  She was sick.

  She had the virus.

  And that meant she was going to lose him, and he was going to lose her, all over again.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Just... just what happened back there in the flat. Are you okay? Your arm, it looks...”

  “It’s fine,” Noah said, lifting his arm. Truth be told, it didn’t look terrible. A light gash, that’s all it was. But she had to use anything she could to turn the attention off herself; to divert the spotlight away from her. “Come on. We need to get away from here. But keep your head down. It looks a state.”

  Jasmine nodded. She looked around at Barney.

  He stared up at her with this look of sheer uncertainty on his face that made her feel sick.

  He growled at her. Just a little.

  Like he didn’t recognise her.

  Like he didn’t trust her.

  And that’s when she knew.

  That’s when it hit her.

  She looked up at Noah.

  He started walking up the street. Holding a hand out for Jasmine. A hand she didn’t take. A hand she couldn’t take for reasons he couldn’t possibly know.

  But he hadn’t heard Barney’s growls.

  He hadn’t clocked on to her own uncertainties.

  She followed him down this street. Every step she took was painful. Her head ached more and more. She tasted more blood. Every now and then, she felt something on her top lip. Convinced it was blood. Convinced she was showing symptoms.

  But when she reached for her face to wipe the blood away, she saw only clear fluid. Snot.

  “Shit,” Noah said.

  He froze so suddenly Jasmine almost bumped into him.

  She stopped in her tracks.

  It didn’t take her long to see what he saw.

  Up ahead, in the middle of the road, a man lay. A man Jasmine had seen some time yesterday. She might’ve sat around that fire with him. Eaten squirrel with him.

  There wasn’t much left of him anymore.

  A woman crouched over him, straddled him. She was totally naked. Covered in blood and flesh.

  She’d torn this bloke apart.

  Smashed his skull against the road so hard that it’d caved in.

  And now she crouched there. Crying. Begging.

  “Please, no. Please, please, no!”

  Noah staggered to the side of the road, just a little. Took cover beside a car. “Fuck,” he said. “That’s... that’s fucked up.”

  And all Jasmine could do was look on in horror.

  Because this could be her and Noah if she wasn’t honest with him.

  This could be her and Noah if she weren’t straight with him.

  She couldn’t do that to Noah. She couldn’t put him through that.

  And she couldn’t put herself through this, either.

  “We’re gonna have to be quick,” Noah said. “And we’re... we’re gonna have to be ready. If she comes running at us, we have to take her out. As awful as it is. We have to take her down. Jasmine?”

  Jasmine looked back around at Noah. “Yeah. Sorry. I just...”

  That’s when she heard it.

  The cry.

  “Come back here! Come back here!”

  Right behind them.

  Right over her shoulder.

  She looked around and saw three people staggering through the streets.

  Covered in blood.

  Looking right at them.

  Her heart raced. Shit. You’re cornered. You’re surrounded. And you’re sick as fuck.

  But then she felt Noah’s hand grab hers. Lightly.

  “We need to run,” he whispered, as calm as anything. “We need to get the hell off this street. Right this...”

  She didn’t need telling again.

  The trio behind her started racing towards her.

  And then the woman straddling the bloke in the street stood, started running, too.

  Noah stood up, and he ran.

  Yanking Jasmine along with him.

  She felt weak. Her legs were on fire. The soles of her feet felt like they were tearing away. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream.

  But she could only run along with Noah.

  Body getting hotter.

  A fire splitting through her system.

  Threatening to burn her to a crisp.

  “Come back here! Come back!”

  They raced down this street. Raced past smashed windows. The further they ran, as much as Jasmine felt in a haze, she saw clearly what’d happened here. The virus. Somehow, it’d hit hard in the night. And it had hit in its most brutal, psychotic form, too.

  The people here were either dead or crazy.

  She didn’t want her or Noah to join those statistics.

  She went to take a left onto a side street that would lead out of here when she saw four more people running towards them.

  She stopped. Noah stopped. Both of them stood there in the middle of the street. Surrounded. Trapped. No escape. No way out.

  “The manhole,” Noah said.

  “What?”

  Noah looked down at the street. A manhole cover, right beneath them.

  He crouched down. Started dragging it to one side. “Give me a hand with this.”

  “Noah, I—”

  “Jasmine, give me a hand with this. Right now.”

  Nausea crippled her.

  She wanted to vomit.

  She wanted to scream.

  But she crouched down and lifted that manhole cover with what little strength she had.

  Voices screaming at them.

  Footsteps racing towards them.

  Figures closing in.

  Barney barking. Growling.

  And not just at the approaching infected.

  At her, too.

  She looked up at that naked woman. Her wide blue eyes focused firmly on Jasmine. And for a split second, she thought about throwing herself to these people. About giving Noah and Barney a chance to get away. A chance to escape.

  And then the manhole cover slid away, and the smell of sewerage filled her lungs.

  “Now!” Noah shouted. “Down here. Now!”

  Jasmine looked down into the darkness. “Noah, I... there’s something—”

  “There’s no time, Jasmine. Get down there. I’ll shut the cover. Now!”

  She looked down into that darkness.

  Heart racing.

  Body shaking.

  So weak.

  So sick.

  She wanted to tell Noah how sorry she was.

  She wanted to tell him she couldn’t come with him. That she couldn’t do this.

  But then she felt her vision waning.

  That sense of her head disappearing, all over again.

  She looked back at that pile of bodies. The burned bodies. The charred bodies.

  And it might be her imagination, but she swore that pile of bodies had gone down, now.

  She thought about what Steve said.

/>   “Everyone thinks I’m crazy. But believe me. There’s more going on here than they tell us.”

  And then the last thing he’d said.

  “I was right, Jasmine. I was right… The bodies.”

  And before she could stop herself, before she could hold back, her vision faded, her head spun, and she went falling face first down into the darkness, while those screams and shouts got closer and...

  Chapter Forty-One

  When Eddie woke, he couldn’t see Bruce anywhere.

  He jolted up right away. Immediately checked the inside of this abandoned building for Kelly. Something alarmed him. Something about that lack of Bruce. As much as he wanted to trust him, as much as he was determined to help him, he just got a bad feeling about the fact he wasn’t in here from the off. A sense that maybe Kelly was right. Maybe he couldn’t be trusted.

  When he looked around, he saw Kelly right away, and his fears were momentarily allayed.

  “You okay?” Kelly asked, sitting up against the wall, frowning.

  “Bruce,” Eddie said. “Where is he?”

  Kelly shook her head. “He’s out there. But Eddie, you need to know something. Our knives. He’s—he’s taken them. He’s—”

  The door to the abandoned tennis club hut swung open, right on cue. Bruce walked in, holding a pair of squirrels. “How you two doing? Figured I’d sort breakfast.”

  Eddie frowned. The look on Bruce’s face. A different look to yesterday. Like a light had illuminated in his eyes. Like the sadness had gone. Faded away.

  But it all seemed too sudden.

  It all seemed too fast.

  He walked across the room, over towards Eddie and Kelly. “One’s a little meatier than the other, so you’ll have to fight over that one. We can get a fire going outside. Grab some breakfast. And then we can head off. Wherever we’re heading.”

  Eddie scratched his head. A momentary guilt sparked inside him. He looked at Kelly. He knew she wasn’t sure about Bruce coming along with them. And sure, as much as Eddie wanted to help the guy, he had his reservations after his conversation with Kelly, too. They barely had enough at her place to feed them, let alone another mouth.

  They had no choice but to see Kelly’s as just a temporary measure before heading back out to find somewhere new. Somewhere better.

  “About that,” Eddie said.