by Luke Kondor
Ria and Byron’s dogs sat on their hinds, with Flynn, the larger of the huskies, taking a moment to lay down and catch some rest. Dylan ran circles around Colin’s legs, sniffing the air, jerking his head at any movement.
Colin felt a warmth steal over him as he observed the five dogs. It came to him then just how precious these dogs were. With seven dogs and a single bitch between them all, the output of new pups was hardly going to hit big numbers. Dylan was easily the youngest, the other dogs all flecked with ashes and greys. Colin wasn’t sure of their ages but saw the reality of the dire situation that Byron was dealing with.
If Whisper gets hurt or dies, then that’s it. Until they find another husky dog or something similar, there would be no more dogs. And what’s the likelihood of that? They can hardly ask Siri where to find the nearest puppy farm.
“Right, Bolton, listen up. We’re about a third of our way there. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t stop, but with you and Dylan both hardly in practice, I thought we’d pause and get ourselves together. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Colin replied, taking a few deep breaths. And it was true. His legs had ached a bit at the start, sure. But once he’d gotten going, his body seemed to warm.
“Now, I’ll be honest, we’re not expecting to find much today. It’s been months since we’ve seen any sign of scavvies, junkers, or the rot. But Henry’s keen to keep the patrols going as is. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
Ria gave Colin a knowing glance.
You never know, indeed.
The three of them walked their separate ways and wandered around the shed, welcoming the small break.
Colin looked out ahead where a thin trodden path led through a cluster of trees. Beyond that, he could see open fields fading onto the horizon. The perimeter of Hope was big, that was for sure. For the first time ever, he started to miss having such a small farm to patrol. With Hope being so wide and with all the potential areas for threats to develop, it made his old patrol feel like a kid’s charity run. A 50m egg and spoon race to the finish line, here, have a balloon.
Behind them, a dog barked. A single call which set Colin and Dylan running towards the sound. The brown leaves and broken sticks crunched beneath his shoes as he made his way to Ria and Byron who were standing at the base of a tree. Looking down at a small thicket of thorny leaves.
“Check this out,” Byron said, pulling Whisper and Flynn back as they strained on their leads.
Colin followed and saw the dark globule sitting atop one of the leaves. The weight of it bowing the leaf downwards.
“It’s blood,” Ria said. “Been here for a while at the least. Look at its colour.”
“Strange.”
“How many Hopefuls come this way?” Colin asked.
“They don’t,” Byron said. “Not even the trade routes run this way. The last people who came this way were me and Ria yesterday afternoon. It doesn’t seem human. Look.” He pointed to a small patch of light brown fur that had clumped and caught on one of the thorny leaves. “Keep moving; keep your eyes peeled.”
And on they went, in the same order as before. The dogs barely slowed at all after previous run and Dylan seemed to be even more lively. It was as if the first run was a simple warm up. Time for the main event, and it wasn’t long before an aching pain pricked at Colin’s lower back, wrenching it tighter and tighter as they ran. He tried to put it to the back of his mind and focus but it was difficult.
After twenty minutes or so they stopped and split up again. Byron watching Colin with a knowing look. The ache in Colin’s back dulled.
The trees were thinner here and Colin saw the green horizon of the distant hills. Every now and again he caught sight of a spire pricking the sky. Relics of a distant belief system, shattered by the events of the last decade. Well, unless you were to ask Henry or Veronica.
He walked onwards, watching nearby squirrels scurry up the trees, birds flying in large groups over the skies in beyond. His head buried in the clouds so high that he hardly noticed Dylan stop in his tracks, causing Colin to wobble as he nearly tripped over the dog’s body.
“What is it?”
Dylan’s tail was up like a bolt. The fur around his neck and back were on end. His head bobbing low. A hundred meters ahead was an odd rump of brown fur, peppered with pale spots. A heaving, breathing mass that grunted with alarm. They advanced slowly, the thought of calling the other two runners not even entering Colin’s mind.
As they got closer, Colin saw that the rump was actually the back end of a deer. A big one too. Its entire top end planted firmly into the ground as though he had chased a rabbit, dived headfirst into the hole and was stuck. Its back legs pulling against the ground, finding no purchase.
Dylan waited patiently for an order. No barking. No scuffling. Colin was amazed at how obedient this dog was. If he had been here with Wheat the whole area would be alive with the sounds of barking and grunting, playing with sticks, digging holes.
The thick earthy smell of blood floated towards them. Colin saw it then. The clumps of brown blood painting the deer’s neck, splattering its torso. Its back end occasionally shunted left and right as it fought to free itself from whatever was keeping it bound to the floor. Colin felt a flood of pity for the beast. How could something so majestic find itself in such an uncompromising position?
But then it shuddered. Unnaturally so.
A wave fluttered through its skin from nape to rump. Its legs kicked harder. The grunts louder now. The rear of the deer dancing faster and faster from side to side as it pulled on its head. There was a ripping sound.
Suddenly, Dylan let loose a strong, loud bark. It took Colin a second to understand what was happening as Dylan lowered his front and raised his haunches.
Dylan’s a rot-detector…
This is his job…
Colin pulled on the lead to draw Dylan back. A deep growl escaped his lips now, hair on end, ears pointing upwards.
Another bark, followed by a wet popping sound as the deer’s head was freed.
Colin felt the urge to speak, to say something to acknowledge what he was seeing. The head, which likely once had all the Disney charm of Bambi had an almost perfect split down the centre of its face as though some invisible force had cloven it with an axe. Beneath the flaps of flesh, the red skeletal snout lay clumsily open from which flaring tendrils of white strands sprouted outwards. Impressively intricate.
“Come on, Dylan,” Colin said finally, his words little more than a whisper. If they backed away now, the deer might ignore them. By the looks of things, the deer was far too preoccupied with its transformation to even have noticed the man and dog watching. Colin pulled on the harness and Dylan retreated.
He was about to turn and hunt for Ria and Byron, keen to let them know what he had seen when they emerged from the trees behind. Ria held a handgun pointed straight ahead of her. Byron’s eyes were wide. There was a clicking of metal and a fleeting moment in which Colin crossed the line of sight from the gun and panicked, wondering if maybe after everything Ria blamed him for the events at Ditton, for losing two of her men. Maybe this was some kind of dark revenge that she and Anton had been waiting for. Get Colin out of Hope and ‘make it look like an accident’.
But then Ria was at his side, training the gun on the rotting deer.
“Well ain’t she a pretty sight? Move it, Colin. Let’s go.”
The gun would do little to a rotter like this, so full, exploding with life, but Colin welcomed the added protection anyway. All of them now pulled on the dogs who were growling at the convulsing creature.
They managed to gain some distance and hide behind the cover of the trees before the rot fully took over and the deer was no more. It sniffed the air, arcing its head slowly back and forth as if searching for something. Maybe it was looking for them? To an animal, their scent might still be thick on the spot where Colin had been just moments before.
But it wasn’t an animal anymore, was it?
T
he rotten deer spotted something further away and into the fields beyond. Not with its host’s or the deer’s eyes, but with whatever built-in sensory organs the rotters had. The deer-rotter shifted suddenly, before stumbling away, disappearing into the overgrowth off the neighbouring field.
“Anybody else seeing the great beastie over there?” Byron said when they were certain that the rotter had gone.
Ria nodded.
“In the flesh. The rot.”
“In the flesh, for sure. I kinda hoped I’d not be seeing any of that hot mess ever again but…” For the first time since Colin had met Byron, he lost some of his calm facade.
Colin opened his mouth, but before he could say anything he saw Ria shaking her head sharply at him. Unfortunately, this was not missed by Byron.
“So, it’s like that is it?” His eyes suddenly widened. “I knew that there was more to the story at Ditton. Chicory, Lee and David got cut up by the scavvies, did they? What happened out there? Tell me the truth.”
Ria’s eyes dropped to the floor, brow furrowed, corners stung with tears.
“We can talk about all this when we’re back at Hope. Henry will want to hear about this, anyway. Now’s not the time for this sort of conversation.”
There was a screech from afar. The rotter calling in the wild.
“A quick sweep of the area and head back, yeah?”
Byron reluctantly nodded, eyes still intense on Ria.
The three and their dogs quickly scanned the surrounding area searching the trees from bottom to top for any sign of spore-clusters, or any other indications that there was more rot nearby. Soon satisfied that there was nothing else to find, they turned back, each silently agreeing that, though they hadn’t finished their full route, they were best to head back to the safety of Hope.
“Everyone has to know,” Colin said, Dylan already pulling on his harness. “Henry can’t be keeping those people locked out of this. He can only protect them so much. This is, what, a couple miles from Hope? We’re sitting ducks in there. The Hopefuls have to know what happened at Ditton. They have to know what we saw here.”
Byron nodded eagerly, yet Ria remained silent as if the very memories of Ditton were a trigger for her to shut down.
“We will consult with Henry and he’ll give us our best course of action. If there’s anyone that can lead us through this, it’s him,” Byron said.
As they lined up ready to jog in single file, Colin reached down and patted Dylan on the back. “Good boy,” he said, unaware that, at that moment, he thought that he was talking to Wheat.
~ 9 ~
“It’s getting closer, LeShard. These ain’t just leaves you can sweep under your porch, the rot was the catalyst for the collapse of the entire fucking country.”
Henry sat patiently at his desk, eyes flicking from Ria to Colin to Byron standing before him, then Anton who occupied a seat at the side of the large office room.
The three runners had dropped the dogs off at the kennels and made their way to the admin office in the town centre of Hope. After a quick bleaching at the gates, they’d shoved open the wooden door – with the large smiley face painted across it – to find Henry and Anton sat with equal looks of concern on their faces. They’d clearly been in the middle of some kind of debate and were roused from their thoughts as Colin stepped through the door, Byron and Ria in tow.
“No needs to shout,” Anton said, kneading his brow.
“We saw another,” Ria said, a flame of her old passion inside of her.
Byron stepped between them both and clapped his hands against the desk, leaning over Henry. “The rot is back? When the hell were you going to tell me, Henry? We’ve got men – good men—”
Ria coughed.
“—men and women out there patrolling the borders, thinking the most they’re going to see is a squirrel, or maybe a buck or wood pigeon, when you’ve all known what’s really out there? How long… I mean seriously, how did you think you’d be able to keep this a secret? Why would you even fucking want to?”
“Woah, woah. Let’s take a breaths. What happened outs there?”
Colin shifted his attention from Henry to Anton. Henry sat tight-lipped, studiously observing the group as their emotions ran riot.
“It’s outside the borders. We saw it with our own eyes. A deer, or at least what used to be a deer, infected with the rot, transforming, screeching, running off into the wild.”
“A deer? But that’s…”
Byron’s eyes blazed. “Don’t you dare say impossible, Dutchman. Don’t you even fucking dare. If it hadn’t been too preoccupied with its own pain, it might’ve caught us and none of us would be here to tell the tale.”
Anton cast his eyes to the floor, his face creasing as the news set in. “But we… You,” he said, looking up at Colin, “you torched them all… didn’t…” He stopped, remembering the small black rot spores he saw crawling away from the factory doors and into the undergrowth. Of course, the rot was out there and he could hardly ignore it now. Those little black concerns that had scurried away from sight and mind. Little doubts like undiagnosed cancers that Anton had simply pushed to the back of his mind for some future version of himself to deal with. Bad lucks, Dutchman, he thought. This is the version of you that has to fucking deal with it. Welcome to your future, fucks-face, the diagnosis is in and it’s terminal.
He turned to Henry for some support.
With simple grace, Henry stood up and laced his hands behind his back. “Yes, it seems the rot is back,” he said, as though he were simply reading from a shopping list. “Facts are facts. It’s what we do with them, moving forward, that really matters here.”
The four Hopefuls were silent, each one not really knowing that they needed Henry to say his piece. To make sense of it all for them and tell them what to do. “First things first, we keep this between ourselves—”
“—but—” Byron tried to interrupt.
“—the last thing we want to do is create a fear. That’s one disease I won’t let infect our sanctuary. Fear killed just as many as the rot did – fear of losing, lost, dying, and death. Makes people do bad things. You know how delicate life is behind these walls. People trust us, Byron. You know that. Right? Without the hard work that you, your team, and those dogs do, we would never feel safe at all. We need to keep this between ourselves, and the people manning our outposts. My apologies go to you for keeping you in the dark about the truth at Ditton, but you must understand, Hope is still a little chick, barely out of its shell. As difficult as it is, this little town of ours needs protecting and nurturing. A delicate touch. It doesn’t need worry, doesn’t need paranoia poisoning it until we truly know what we’re up against. I fear it wouldn’t survive. Do you understand?”
Byron nodded.
“Now, about this deer…”
Colin proceeded to tell Anton and Henry about the deer in the woods, less than five miles away from Hope. Henry nodded along, none of it seeming to shake him. Colin tried to explain the horror of the creature’s face, split in two as if the more grotesque his detail the quicker he’d get some kind of a reaction from the town leader.
“Curious. So it’s adapted? Able to take to animals. And the change was just the same as it is with humans?”
“Seems so.”
“Curious…” Henry said, losing himself in his thoughts.
The room was gravely silent as Henry processed this latest information. At one point, Colin caught a glance from Anton and saw a strange thing. The Dutchman’s eyes looked heavy, with red bags beneath as if he’d been crying and the tears had dried and left a stain. Anton turned away.
“I still think we should keep this between ourselves,” Henry said at last, raising a hand as Colin’s mouth opened in protest. “For now. Don’t get me wrong. This is something we should be monitoring. Anton can begin the bunker preparations for if the worst should happen.”
Anton raised his head in alarm. “But, Henry, what about our… other… problem?”
“Ah, of course.”
“Hold on,” Colin said. “What do you mean ‘bunker preparations’?”
Henry sat back down. “Well, Colin, didn’t you think we’d be prepared for any scenario here? As though we hadn’t learned from before?” A small smile played across his face. “We have a special little place a few metres below our feet just in case. Over the years we’ve been stocking it with all the necessities: food, medical supplies, beds and water. But that’s all between us, please. For now, our Hopefuls are happy. They’re… Hopeful.” A small chuckle, not returned by the others in the room. “For the first time since they lost their loved ones, lost their homes, their lives, they’re able to see a future. They’re able to come together and sing and dance and drink. I don’t want to ruin that for them just yet. I don’t think I could bear it.”
Colin, like Byron, nodded. The idea of not preparing people for the worst didn’t quite sit right with Colin. He felt the urge to grab a cone and use it to bellow to the people of Hope, “Rot’s back, grab a weapon people, and hole up in the private bunkers until it all blows over!” But there was something in Henry’s voice and demeanour which seemed to quell them all. A calm washing over what had moments ago been a Guy Fawkes-worthy explosion of panic.
London’s burning, dammit. Run!
Henry crossed over to the window and looked out at the lake, the lazy sun throwing stars across the water. His Hopefuls all within his watch. “Now, Anton. As for our other little problem, maybe these wonderful gents—” Ria rolled her eyes and went to cough again, “—and lady, might be able to help you.”
“What do you mean?” Colin said.
“When you all burst through the door like that, I was just discussing two points for concern with Anton. One is a small matter. Likely just a technical issue.”
How did Henry do that? How did he make them all feel guilty for approaching him with news of the rotten deer?
“What is it?” Byron said.
“It’s our lookout ons Picnic Hill. Probably nothings, but worth someone checkings out.” Anton muttered into the cup of his hand.