The Purple Haze

by Gary Richardson

  James felt defeated. The adrenaline was starting to fade, and his blood lust was quenched in the face of the impossible odds. He turned and ran into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. He sat on the floor, his back against the door. He heard the creatures shuffling onto the landing, and then he felt the jolts as they hit the door trying to get to him. He looked around for an exit but it was hopeless. The only way out was the window, and the street was filled with creatures. He had nowhere to run. He couldn't believe it had come to this. He didn't want to be pulled apart by the things at his door, but he no means of ending his life by his own hand any more. Whilst he pondered these thoughts, he heard a low sound, a small moan coming from within the room. He slowly stood up, no longer thinking about the threat at the door. He looked across the bed and watched in horror as the three reanimated corpses of his family, now hideous and covered in blisters and boils, began to slowly rise up from behind the bed. The sight froze his soul and destroyed whatever little fight he had left. The door buckled and he looked to see the top half break away, the creatures outside reaching in to get at him, but still being held back by the bottom half. He looked back at his family, coming towards him now, no longer the loving girls he had said goodbye to just two days previous. Tears formed in his eyes. His whole life crumbled beneath him, taking whatever will he had with it. He dropped to his knees and watched them come. Before they set upon him, he heard himself say aloud, “better you than them.”

  Chapter 11

  Dave had been still for about for an hour. His breathing was now slow and deep, and he slept as though he hadn't slept for a week. The group gathered around him and watched him. The most concerned of them all was Colin. When he joined the crew he found he had the most in common in Dave, and Dave was good to him, talking him through a lot of inner demons he carried around with him, and in doing so he helped him to overcome a lot of personal doubt and self-loathing. Dave was his best friend. Before the crisis in the bank, the group had talked about how it would be the last job and that they would all go their separate ways afterwards. Colin hated the thought of this, because he would right back in the position he was in before he joined Martin's crew, alone.

  These thoughts were far from his mind, however. He just sat watching Dave, not knowing when or if the slow rising and falling of his chest would stop. He wondered if he would ever wake up again. Mike stepped away from the others and approached Colin. “Colin?”

  Colin looked up at Mike. “Yeah?” he asked.

  “We need to have a look at him,” said Mike, “while he's unconscious we need to look under his clothes to see how far this thing has spread.”

  Colin nodded. The group all took a post. Colin held Dave in a sitting up position while Mike carefully unbuttoned the boiler suit. Once this was open he removed the white tee shirt underneath it. Colin set Dave down and then Martin and Yvonne lifted a leg each. Gaz had to remove the boiler suit. He reached for the waist band and paused. He looked up at Yvonne. “You sure you wouldn't rather do this?” he said, finding it difficult to hide a wry smirk.

  “Shut your mouth, Gaz,” said Martin angrily, “just get his pants off will you.”

  Gaz sighed then pulled the pants down and removed them. Yvonne and Martin carefully laid Dave's legs back down. The group all stood back and looked at Dave lying there. He hadn't made a sound or stirred in all the while that they were removing his outerwear. The boils radiated from the bite wound in his calf all the way up and down his leg. The boils closest to the bite itself had burst, and now looked a reddish brown in colour, and like an ulcer were still weeping tiny amounts of bloody puss. The boils that were now forming on his hip and waist were fresher looking. They were a mix of red and yellow colours under the skin, with a red ring outlining them. The group stared in silenced horror. It was Martin who broke the silence. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “What can we do?” said Gaz.

  “We don't have anything for him,” said Mike, “and if this continues to spread like this there is no way he will survive it. I'm amazed he has lasted this long.”

  “So what, then?” asked Gaz, “We put him out of his misery?”

  “Don't say it like that!” Colin said with a raised voice.

  “I'm serious, though, Colin,” Gaz replied. “Look mate, I know he was your best friend.”

  Martin cut him short. “He still is, Gaz. Don't write him off yet.”

  Gaz backtracked. “Yeah, I know. I know he IS your best mate, but you saw him there, shaking about like that. He's suffering, man. Imagine what this is going to be like for him when this reaches his chest. Or his face, even.”

  The group stood silent. Even though they didn't want to admit, the whole group agreed. They all thought of Gaz as a sarcastic ass at the best of times, but on this matter he was right on the mark. Dave was out cold. If they did it now, he would never know.

  “Jesus, Gaz,” said Martin. “Why did you say it like that?”

  “Because I'm right,” said Gaz.

  “I know you're right,” said Martin, “but who the hell's going to do it?”

  The group looked at each other. Nobody said a thing. The silence seemed to last an age. “I will,” said a voice. The group looked round to the person who had said it. “I'll do it,” said Colin, stepping forward.

  Martin looked at him, biting his lip to try and hide the fact he was about to well up. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” said Colin, “I'm sure.”

  The rest of the group took a step back. Colin stood at the side of Dave and looked down at him. He looked at peace, despite the boils all over his lower body. Colin gathered his thoughts. He focussed on the fact that Dave, despite being unconscious, was suffering greatly from his injuries. He took a deep breath and removed his pistol from his pocket. He looked at it intensely, although taking in every fine detail of it. He held it in his right hand and pulled back on the slide with his left. He let it go and it bolted forward with a metallic snap. He checked the safety and let the gun hang by his side. He looked at Dave and then looked up at the rest of the group. Martin was watching through watery eyes, Gaz was watching with a look on his face as though waiting to be punched, and Mike was holding Yvonne with her face in his chest. Her hands were covering her ears.

  Colin looked back down at Dave and, in his head, he said his goodbyes. He remembered the laughs they had together and tried to keep an image of Dave in his head as he wanted to remember him, the friend he needed in his life years before he met him. He took and a deep breath and held it. He raised his hand slowly, aiming the gun at Dave's head. A subconscious pull was working hard at retracting his hand, making the gun feel as though it weighed a hundred kilos or more. He fought with this feeling and his arm held firm. He breathed out and began slowly squeezing the trigger. He felt the spring slowly compress under the force of his finger, but was stopped suddenly in the middle of the process when he saw Dave move suddenly and open his eyes. He froze, aiming the gun right between Dave's eyes. Dave didn't seem to react at first, but as his focused, he saw that Colin was aiming a handgun at his face. He jolted upright and recoiled back, screaming out as he moved. Colin jumped in fright and fired a round off, the bullet harmlessly hitting the wall, the noise echoing around the room in a deafening boom. “What are you doing?” shouted Dave, sounding terrified.

  Colin couldn't speak. He just stood there and looked dumbfounded from face to face of the rest of the group. He didn't know what to say. How could he explain this? Luckily, he didn't have to. Martin stepped forward. “We thought you were dead,” he lied, “we just wanted to make sure you weren't going to get up again and start ripping us apart.” Although they had seen nothing to prove the possibility that Dave was slowly becoming one of the things outside, Martin wanted to protect Colin from any verbal onslaught that Dave might throw at him.

  Dave was still breathing rapidly. He looked down at his lack of attire. “Why the hell am I nearly naked?”

  “We were checking the marks on you,”
said Martin. “Why didn't you tell us about it?”

  Dave shook his head. “And have you all looking at me as a burden? I can cope myself.”

  “We are all in this together, Dave,” said Martin, “We need to know everything. If you are in pain, don't feel well, have boils all over you because some freak bit a chunk out of you, we need to know.”

  Dave didn't say anything. He looked down at the boils on his body and wondered how long it would take before his whole body was covered in them. “How do you feel, Dave?” asked Mike.

  Dave looked up at him. “Terrible. Sick. Dizzy. Hot.”

  Mike squatted next to him and put his hand on his forehead. He felt like a furnace. “It's the infection that's causing you to feel that way. We don't have anything to help it I'm afraid.”

  “Like I said, I'm coping,” said Dave.

  The group said nothing more. Nobody knew what else to say.

  “Can somebody give me my clothes back please?” said Dave eventually.

  As night fell, the survivors gathered in the main hall. Everyone was feeling low, but this feeling was only exacerbated by Dave's degrading condition. The group couldn't believe that one bite from the woman in the bank had reduced him to his current state, wrapped up in as much clothing as could be spared for him, lying down sweating and coughing. He was sleeping again, but nobody was going to try and kill him now. They couldn't do that to him even it was a form mercy. The sudden reactions from him when he saw Colin's gun barrel bearing down on him showed he still had some fight left. It was clear the infection would kill him, and that soon, the six of them would become five. They were finding it hard to cope with that only three days previous eight of them had escaped the bank.

  Martin sat against the wall, looking out at the others. Colin sat keeping a constant vigil over Dave, while Mike and Gaz sat talking quietly against the opposite wall. Martin managed to pull his mind away from his misery and realised that he was grateful to have Mike with him. He felt it strange given the fact that as far as careers go they were polar opposites, but Mike had been a huge help to them from the start of the ordeal. Even James, who was by far the most physically capable of the group, had been worn down by his emotions and it led to him taking his own path, but Mike had remained head strong and stuck with them throughout. Martin wondered if James was still alive, but he thought it pointless to ponder on it, it was clear they would never see him again since he had left his radio behind.

  Martin's attention shifted when Yvonne came and sat down next to him. He looked at her and gave a forced smile, which she returned although it looked just as faked. “How are you doing?” he asked her.

  “I'm okay, I suppose,” she said. “What about you?”

  Martin shrugged. “The same, I guess.”

  The two sat in silence a moment. “Do you think we have a chance out there?” Yvonne asked.

  Martin took a deep breath while he thought of how to answer the question. In truth, he had no idea. “Yeah, sure we do,” he said to her, wanting to keep her spirits up as much he could.

  Yvonne let slip a small chuckle. “Liar,” she said, smiling at him.

  Martin gave an inquisitive frown. “What makes you think I'm lying?”

  “You took too long to answer,” said Yvonne.

  “Well, do you think we have a chance?” Martin asked.

  “I think we can make it to the docks if we find a way of moving Dave, but in the long run,” Yvonne paused. She found it hard saying the next words. “We won't make it.”

  “Why do you say that?” Martin said, trying to force an optimistic tone in his voice.

  “Because we’ll never survive at sea,” she replied. “If we don't get capsized and drown, exposure will kill us.”

  “We can find an island somewhere,” Martin said, still trying his best to sound optimistic.

  “Find an island?” Yvonne said, sounding annoyed by the very suggestion of it. “We are in Britain. The whole place is an island and look what's happened to it. The only islands off the coast are either uninhabitable or will be too highly populated with those things.”

  Martin didn't answer. He knew she was right and her stubbornness wouldn't allow her to feel any hope no matter how he said things. “Look, let's change the subject,” he said.

  “What? You want to make small talk?” said Yvonne sarcastically.

  “Well, if I'm going to die at sea with you it might be a good idea to at least know something about you.”

  Yvonne paused a moment. “Well what do you want to know?”

  “Anything,” said Martin, “things about your parents, why you work in a bank, that sort of thing.”

  Yvonne looked at him and frowned. “You tell me about yours first.”

  “Well, there isn't much to tell,” said Martin. “They split up before I reached high school. My dad left and never really spoke to us again and my mum became a heroin addict. She died a couple of years later and I moved around a lot of foster homes.”

  “Is that why you do what you do?” Yvonne said.

  “No, I do what I did because I wasn't any good at anything else. Despite the little nothing jobs I'd had in warehouses, and shops, the thing I was best at was robbing stuff from those places. That all started from robbing a house when I was fifteen. It all took off from there really. The bank was supposed to be our last job.”

  “Bummer,” said Yvonne, “bad one to go out on.”

  Martin frowned at her again. “Did she just say bummer?” he thought to himself.

  Yvonne looked back him, this time frowning herself. “What?” she said.

  “You see? This is what I wanted, just talking and not worrying about what’s going on outside.” He looked around the room. Gaz and Mike were still talking and Colin was still sat staring at Dave. Martin turned back to Yvonne. “Anyway, it's your turn. Tell me about your parents.”

  Yvonne smiled slightly. “Well, my mum was a teacher at a local high school. She taught biology. My dad worked as a joiner owned his own company.”

  “Did they get on?” Martin asked.

  Yvonne paused, her eyes welling up slightly. “Yeah, they did. They were together nearly forty years and were still in love.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  Martin realised he’d landed on raw emotions. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Yvonne said, fighting to keep herself from crying. “It's just hard describing them in the past tense.”

  Martin looked at her and put his hand on hers. “They could be okay,” he said in a calming voice.

  Yvonne shook her head. “No, they won't be.” She paused to wipe away a tear. “Even if the fog didn't get them, those things will. They weren't violent people. I just hope that whatever end they met, they met it together”

  Across the room, Gaz and Mike were in conversation. They had been talking about their pasts too.

  “Right,” said Mike, “so you went through university, of which your parents paid for, and you ended up a thief?”

  “Yeah, why is that so hard to believe?” asked Gaz.

  “Well, because people don’t do that. How could you do that to your parents and waist all that money?”

  “It's not like I had a choice. When I graduated there were about three graduates going for each graduate job out there. I just didn't get lucky and gave up.”

  “So how do you go from that to this?” Mike said.

  “To make money, obviously,” said Gaz, sounding patronising. “I looked at the social status of graduates who didn't go into their chosen fields and saw that most of them end up in dead end jobs or couldn't get work because they are deemed as either 'too qualified' or ‘not experienced’. It's a hard life out there for them. They coast through university, pretending to be all into politics and complaining about money because they think it matters, but once they get into the real world the shock knocks all the wind out of them. I was lucky in the sense that my parents paid off my student loans for me, but I wasn't going to sit on my arse in an office making a pittance
.”

  Mike laughed quietly at him. “So you got into this line of 'work' to rebel against society?”

  “No, I just needed to make money. But then it became obvious I wasn't ever going to get this kind of money doing anything else.” Gaz paused and looked seriously at mike. “You know, Mike? If you weren't a pig, I'd probably be able to like you a lot more.”

  “I'm not a pig,” said Mike, “I work in a warehouse that supplies motor parts.”

  “So why volunteer as 'rent-a-cop' then?”

  “Because I wanted to be a police officer,” Mike replied, “but I couldn't get in due to funding cuts in the force.”

  “Oh my God,” said Gaz, “we're the same.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Neither of us could get the jobs we wanted,” said Gaz.

  Mike laughed slightly and nodded his head. “You know what, Gaz? You’re right.”

  “Of course I am,” Gaz said, and then he looked to see Martin and Yvonne walking over.

  “You two okay?” asked Martin.

  “Yeah,” said Mike, “we're fine.”

  “Good,” Martin said. “It's getting late, so I'm going to get some sleep.” He turned away and walked over to Colin. He crouched down next to him. “How's he holding up?” he said, looking at Dave.

  “I don't know,” said Colin, “he hasn't moved much. His breathing seems deep and he's sweating a lot.”

  “That's the fever,” Martin said. “Just keep an eye on him. Everyone will be going to sleep soon. Make sure you get some sleep too.”

  “Yeah, I will,” said Colin. Martin stood and walked away from him. Colin looked back at Dave and wished he could do something to help him. He kept staring at his chest to make sure he was still breathing. Even long after everyone else gone to sleep, he sat staring like this. It wasn't long before sunrise that tiredness finally got the better of him and he drifted into a deep sleep.