by T. A. Sorsby
With it dead I could finally breathe easy, and was suddenly hit by a wave of exhaustion. My knees weakened, and I turned their sudden jelly-like state into an excuse to pick my baseball bat up. I used it like a cane to get back on my feet.
‘Can we go inside?’ Morgan asked, tentatively leaning out of the rear window.
‘We’ve come this far.’ Neville nodded, looking back to his daughter.
He fished a keyring out of his jacket and looked for the right one while the rest of us stood scanning the surrounding gardens, growing more and more paranoid. That was a lot of dogs for one little estate. Someone was either a real animal lover, or infected dogs formed themselves into packs. No telling how many more could be out there in suburbia – or what happened to the cats.
And who heard of rabid animals sticking in packs? Maybe if this was the same infection; it’d have different effects on the brains and bodies of any creature it’d take hold in? The zombies from earlier –most we’d seen had been slow, ponderously limping towards us, but the last one we’d seen had come for us at a dead sprint. No pun intended.
Maybe that doesn’t sound weird to you, but realising there were potentially hundreds of surprises waiting for us was a little concerning to say the least. At least there were no zombies here. Either the dogs scared them away, or, as I found more likely, they were smart enough to go where the dead weren’t.
Neville opened the door a crack, setting both hands back on his gun before nudging it further with his foot. The door stopped about half way, coming up against the limp dog. He stepped around the door, gun flicking between the living room and the kitchen. Morgan was set to follow him in, but I put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Let him see.’ I muttered, so he couldn’t hear.
‘Clear.’ Neville announced a few seconds later.
I let her go in after him, and politely waited outside with Damian and Lucile.
‘What do ya’ll think?’ Lucile asked, concerned. ‘They okay?’
I dipped my head, and looked back towards the door. ‘There was blood all over the carpet, kitchen floor. Dog was covered in it too.’
Damian sniffed loudly, and turned to look around the cul-de-sac again.
‘How about you, man?’ I asked.
‘Longest time Lydia an I been without talking since our Ma died. But I be right.’ he nodded, not turning around, his voice a little deeper.
A gunshot rang out from inside, muffled by the walls. People started yelling, Morgan, her father, and someone else.
I was already through the door before I knew what I was doing, bat under my arm and revolver in hand, thumbing the hammer back. I followed Neville’s yelling upstairs, where he was pinned to the side of the wall beside the first door on the left. Light was shining into the dim corridor through a bullet-hole in the door.
‘Cease fire, cease fire!’ he shouted.
‘Who are you? Looters?’ a woman’s voice was yelling back, from inside the room. Holy shit, someone did survive.
‘It’s Neville, Morgan’s father!’ he shouted back, ‘I already said that!’
‘Who else? There’s more than one gun out there - I heard more than one gun!’
‘I’m a friend of Morgan’s too,’ I said, bringing the volume down, ‘my name’s Kelly.’
‘You’ve…you’ve got a funny voice for a girl, Kelly.’ The woman replied, uncertainly.
‘I work out.’ I shrugged, looking at Neville’s bemused expression and matching it.
I heard the woman in the room let out something halfway between a laugh and a cry. She was hurting. An uncomfortable half a minute passed before the woman in the room called out again, her voice strained, ‘Got not choice anyway…I need some help in here.’
Neville looked at me, hooking a thumb at himself and then the door. I shook my head, and tapped my own chest. I felt stupid for doing it, but I then patted myself on the back. I think he understood.
‘I’m coming in.’ I warned.
I entered the room while Neville waited outside, covering the door. It was the room of a teenage girl. The name ‘Rebecca’ was written on a license plate hanging off the door, a few feet above the bullet hole, several dints, and a set of peeling claw marks. Morgan was just coming up the stairs, Neville put a hand out to signal her to stop. She didn’t need to see what was inside, no matter how prepared I wanted her to be.
Becky, I assume, was laid out on her bed. The sheets were soaked through with blood, and her face was a deathly pale-brown, tan skin turning to grey. A set of human teeth marks showed red and raw on her neck.
A neat hole sat right in the middle of her forehead.
I dragged my eyes from that strangely demure little wound. Across from her was a living woman, tall, brunette, somewhere near thirty with pale brown skin, Rojas descent maybe, and if circumstances were different I’d say she was pretty.
She sat in a chair across from the door, turned away from a vanity table-come-desk. Her left hand held a tea-towel to her shoulder, while her right held a gun; firmly pointed at me.
*
Thirteen
She caught me looking at the gun, and rolled her eyes.
‘I haven’t asked you to drop yours, so don’t worry about mine, okay?’ she said slowly. I nodded. ‘I would appreciate it, if you could put it away though.’
I did as she asked, setting my bat down against the bed first, carefully putting my gun in my jacket pocket and slowly lowering my hands again.
She wore black trousers and a dirty vest-top that was stained with so many different things that I didn’t want to hazard a guess at them. A belt hung with different pouches and holsters was lying on the desk beside her...Along with a silver police shield.
‘Who’re you?’ I asked her.
‘Anita Mason.’ She replied, passing up the opportunity to drop rank and flicking the gun around the side of the bed, ‘Come give me a hand, Mr Kelly.’
I tried not to look at the body on the bed as I walked around it. I kept my eyes on Anita, bleeding quite badly down her right arm, but still managing to keep the gun pointed at me without so much as a waver.
‘Can I trust you?’ she asked.
‘Given how much you’re bleeding, I don’t think you have the luxury of choice.’ I said, kneeling down to examine her wounds.
‘You’re little Morgan’s babysitter, right? Answer the Godsdamn question.’ She demanded.
‘Yeah. You can trust me. Morgan’s here too.’ I promised, meeting her eyes for a long second. Bloody babysitter.
She sagged down in the chair a few inches, and I realised she wasn’t all that tall, just confident, commanding. That ran out when her pain threshold did.
‘Hurts like hell,’ she said through her teeth, ‘there’s a FAK in my tac-belt. First, I need you to find the antiseptic and spray it on my arm when I tell you to.’
‘Were you bitten?’ I asked, trying not to think about what it meant if she said yes.
‘By a dog, not an infected.’ She replied, ‘Don’t think you turn if you get bit by the dogs.’
‘What if you do?’ I asked.
‘You know when I said not to worry about my gun? I take that back.’ She added in a whisper, looking down at me. Her eyes were red from crying, but she was still keeping strong. I couldn’t not help her.
I searched through the pouches on her belt until I found it, a pull-out mini first aid kit.
‘If I turn out to be wrong, you can shoot me yourself, Kelly. Now, open that pack of bandages. You’re going to have to go under my armpit with them, the bite’s all around my right shoulder. Get the tape and the spray ready because this is going to bleed when I let go.’
I did as she asked, and used the little scissors to cut off a few strips of the medical tape, and hung them off the arm of the chair.
‘Just like wrapping solstice presents.’ she grimaced, ‘Hurry up, I’m dying here.’ She added, glancing to her sister, on the bed. She looked back down at her knees, her face grim.
I n
odded when I was set, and she removed the towel she’d been pressing against the bite, long soaked through with blood. Underneath, the dog had sunk its teeth into her shoulder pretty deep, and likely cut some important bit of plumbing that bled like crazy. I’m a delivery boy, not a doctor, but a couple of those punctures looked pretty serious.
She must have killed the dog or pried its teeth off, because the wound was neat, not like she’d ripped herself away from it. I tried to focus on what she said about wrapping solstice presents, rather than on the blood pumping freely out of the three or four biggest punctures.
I quickly sprayed the antiseptic over her shoulder, amid a wave of shivers and pained hisses. Then I stood so I could get around the back too, where she hadn’t been able to keep as much pressure on. Blood had stained the cushions of the chair beneath her back.
She was looking noticeably paler as I started wrapping her shoulder up in the bandages, working around her bra strap, but she didn’t cry out, just hissed through her gritted teeth. I taped the bandage in place across her back and the top of her arm, and took a step back to see if I’d left anything.
‘Congratulations,’ she said, leaning over to one side in the chair, her gun slipping from her hands, thumping softly on the carpet, ‘you probably just saved my life…’ she trailing off. I barely caught her before she hit the floor.
‘Somebody, I need help in here!’ I shouted towards the door.
I heard heavy footsteps bounding up the stairs, Damian clearing the side of the door a moment later, cricket bat in hand. He took one look at me holding the unconscious woman, and dropped it.
Damian was stronger, so he took her shoulders while I got her legs. We carefully moved her out of the bedroom, the room where her sister’s body lay, and negotiated her down the stairs without hitting her on anything.
Neville and Morgan were knelt on the lawn, hugging. I couldn’t see her face from here, but what with the Jamesons this morning and Becky now…she’d be worse than broken up, words wouldn’t do what she was feeling any justice.
I felt my ears ring again, and got another dose of blurred vision. Lucile pointed towards the end of the road, where more dogs were slipping out of an alleyway and sniffing the air. We got the wounded officer into the back seat, Lucile and Morgan climbing into the warehouse-sized boot and grabbing onto straps to give Anita and myself a little room.
Anita Mason, Rebecca Mason’s big-sister, woke as we mounted the pavement, turning to speed away from the cul-de-sac. The new dogs were haring right after us, their barks not carrying the same bite anymore, either because we were in the car, or we’d become desensitised to it.
Morgan hadn’t looked into Becky’s room, but Neville had told her that she was dead, that there was nothing they could do for her. Apparently the parents – Paul and Marianna – were dead in the kitchen. Which Morgan had seen. She didn’t say a word, all the way back to the flats. She just looked out of the rear window with this blank stare.
I wished we could have stayed behind to bury them, like we had the Jamesons. Leaving the three bodies there left a sour taste in my mouth, but if we fought the dogs we risked more injuries. Maybe more deaths.
Anita looked up at me, blinking her eyes open. Laid across the backseats, her head was in my lap.
‘Whe…’ she tried, her throat closing up on her.
‘You’re in Damian’s ride. We’re heading back to our safehouse.’ I told her, keeping my voice as soft as I could.
‘Wha…’ she tried again.
‘You held on until I’d finished patching you up, but then you passed out. You’re still bleeding, but the bandages haven’t soaked through yet. I think you might need a few stitches. Hopefully we have some in our own medical kit.’
She cleared her throat. ‘Do you always talk so much?’ she said weakly.
‘Only when I’m rescuing folk.’ I said seriously. ‘I picked your stuff up. Badge, gun, belt.’
‘Let her rest, Kelly.’ Lucile said from behind me, ‘She still might not pull through. And she still might be infected.’
‘An optimist huh?’ Anita smirked, creasing up lines of blood on the side of her face. She fell silent for the rest of the ride, and passed back into sleep, rather than unconsciousness. She must have been exhausted. I still kept a close eye on her, and had my gun out beside my leg, just in case.
Despite the safety of the upper floors, it wasn’t practical to carry her all the way back upstairs when we got home. Damian helped me again, carrying her through to Stan’s apartment and setting her on the sofa, where she muttered something about his interesting collage before drifting off again.
‘Neville,’ Lucile said, walking to Stan’s kitchen, ‘get me the medical kit and a cigarette lighter.’
‘You going to stitch her up?’ Damian asked.
‘No, I’m going to roll her a smoke.’ She sniped. ‘Of course I am. Don’t think any of ya’ll got the stones for it.’ She added, washing her hands in the sink. We still had hot water, but there was no telling how long the city’s pump stations would last before shutting down.
‘Kelly, I want you to hold her head, don’t need her thrashing around if she gets lucid again.’ Lucile continued, nudging a coffee table closer to the sofa with her knee. ‘And just in case she is infected, don’t let any of the blood get in your mouth or eyes.’
‘Why would I do that anyway?’ I asked, my hands already streaked with Anita’s drying blood. I’d tried not to touch anything on the way here, though I’d need to wipe my gun down at least.
Lucile used some kitchen scissors to snip away what was left of Anita’s vest…sleeve? Would you call that bit at the top a ‘sleeve’? Anyway, she cut that away while I slid her bra strap off her shoulder, out of the way. No sense in ruining it.
‘Perv.’ Lucile joked, pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves from Stan’s first aid kit, with the snap usually associated with airport security. I ignored her.
Neville and Morgan were nowhere to be seen while Lucile worked, peeling back the bandages I’d put in place and identifying the worst of the wounds, the ones that meant she’d be dead before they healed on their own.
She cleaned her hands off again with antiseptic wipes, and had us do the same too, but it was more of a formality, with my hands already caked. I should have washed up too.
Then she used a cigarette lighter from my jacket pocket – I don’t smoke, but Katy does – to sterilise the hooked needle. I tried not to look while she pulled it through Anita’s skin. Luckily, Anita was too far into sleep to do more than whimper. Lucile was right, I didn’t have the stones. Needles just went right through me… so to speak.
Anita was still out as the three of us re-bandaged her with the more complete equipment from Stan’s kit. We used soaking pads, gauze, and then put the bandages over them, taping them in place more thoroughly. I put pillows under her head and tried to make her as comfortable as I could.
‘So. What if she’s infected?’ Lucile asked, taking the first turn at the sink. She probably used more hand soap than water.
Maybe Lucile was an optimist after all. Warning us that Anita might be infected with the virus, then getting her hands dirty in an attempt to save her life? Not the actions of a worst-case-scenario thinker.
‘Then we deal with that when it happens.’ I replied.
‘I ain’t saying we kill her now,’ Lucile said defensively, ‘If I thought she was going to die I wouldn’t have wasted my time there, I’d have started on the elevator. I’m just thinking, you know, in case shit.’ She added in her drawl. I adjusted “optimist” to “realist”.
‘We seen about that when de time comes.’ Damian intoned, his voice deep with concern, ‘For now, we wait an see if she even pull through.’
‘I seen worse on site. Once saw a chainsaw belt snap clean off and into the side of a man’s neck. Of course, he actually got to see an emergency room. But I reckon she’ll be okay.’ Lucile tried for reassuring.
‘Where you learn to do that?’ Dami
an asked her.
‘My Nat-Service,’ she shrugged, ‘I had some trauma training before I went engineering. Got kicked out after a while. I’m so-so with the blood, but show me the soft and squishy bits and I’ll show you my lunch. Either of you two served yet? You handled that gun alright.’ She added, nodding towards me.
‘No, I was due to soon, before this.’ I waved a vague gesture.
‘That’s why you popped de question to your girl, right?’ Damian chuckled. ‘I not been yet either. Glad about it now. Gods know what de TA are having to deal with.’
We washed up and left Lucile in there to watch her. Neville and Morgan were sitting in the foyer. I caught the image of myself as a doctor, walking out of an important surgery and meeting the family. I shook my head and pinned it on the increasing deficit of sanity in my life.
Morgan was sat next to Neville, his arm around her shoulder, but neither of them were crying at the moment, but from their eyes, I could tell they had been. Now they were just sat there, staring quietly into space.
‘She’s alive.’ I said, ‘Lucile says she’ll probably make it, and she’s the closest thing we have to a doctor. She does good work.’
‘Maybe they’ll have a doctor at GCR,’ Neville suggested, ‘you said yourself, we should go there eventually. Why not now?’
‘I said that it wasn’t a priority…’ I corrected him, looking down at the carpet, ‘I guess it might be after all, if there’s a life on the line. What time is it?’
‘It’s passed five o’clock.’ Neville replied, checking his watch. ‘Sunset should be around six.’ He added, looking at the sky, already beginning to darken.
‘Shit.’ I muttered, sitting down next to Morgan. Damian was pacing the foyer behind us. ‘Alright. Alright, if Anita wakes up by half-past, I’m saying she’s fine, and I’m going for Katy…but if she doesn’t wake up…GCR.’
‘We have three cars,’ Neville reminded me, ‘mine, Damian’s, and I’m guessing that’s Lucile’s pickup outside.’
‘Hadn’t thought about that. Do we really want to split up?’ I asked, biting my lip.