They Remain: A post-apocalyptic tale of survival (The Rot Book 2)

by Luke Kondor

  Susie caught him as his leg buckled. “Dad, take it easy.”

  “Let go of me,” Beckett roared in a flash of anger, ripping his arm out of Susie’s grasp. He wobbled a moment on his legs then concentrated on standing. “If we’re to have any chance of survival, I need to do this. I’m not going to have you dragging me around, putting yourself and the others at risk. That’s not what a leader does, and that’s not something that I’ll die doing.”

  “We have a motor,” Colin said in a flash of inspiration. “Maybe we can make our way back, bring the car around and collect you guys? The noise may pull the attention of the rotters – and any remaining scavvies who are stupid enough to still be nearby – but no rotter can outrun a car. Right?”

  “Where’s the car?” Susie asked.

  “It’s in a carpark. A multi-storeys one on the east side of town that we passed on the way in. Keaghan shoulds still be there. Byron might even have found his ways back there and be waiting for us.” Though the words came from his mouth, Anton did not look convinced.

  “Nonsense. I’m coming with you, and that’s that.” Beckett fixed them all with a determined grin, unable to hide the effort it took to stand on his face. Susie looked distraught at the idea, but it was clear that Beckett had made up his mind. It was to be one last charge through the town, hop in the car, and back to Hope.

  “So it’s agreed?” Anton said. “We go ands we go quietly; we go quickly. If you somehow survive this shit, Beckett, then maybe we can even get you a bottle of that moonshine you’re gagging for, eh?”

  *

  Though their progress was slow, they had made a fair distance without any sign of danger. Susie expertly led her way through the ruins of the town, taking lefts and rights without a second thought. It was night now but there was enough silver from the moon to light the streets with a soft glow. Along the way, she told Colin how she would often sneak away to explore the town and clear her head from the chaos of constantly being surrounded by other folks on the hill. She would sometimes come across treasures – food stock, bottled drink, and the like. Not a lot in the way of gold these days.

  The group passed over fences, through bushes, ducked behind cars. At one point they heard rotter activity to their right, so Susie and Colin snuck onto a pebble-dashed garage in the hopes of seeing into the distance. When they came back down, Colin re-clipped Dylan to his canicross harness, but they had nothing to report. The garages just weren’t high enough to scope too far.

  The entire journey, Beckett hobbled along, supported by Anton and Quinton (although Anton took the bulk of the weight). They had to give it to him, so far he hadn’t really slowed them down too much. He had struggled when it came to the fences, but with a little help from the others, he had made it over safely. That didn’t stop him from looking any worse for wear, however, and Colin found himself continually glancing back, checking that he was okay. Beckett’s breaths came in short bursts and occasionally he would stop to clutch at a pain in his stomach.

  “We need to take a five,” Anton called ahead, keeping his voice as low as possible whilst still making himself heard by the two up ahead. “He needs a breather.”

  Colin and Susie turned as Anton and Quinton placed Beckett down gently, letting him rest with his back against a low-rise wall out the front of a terraced house, complete with overgrown garden.

  “Five is all we have,” Colin said, aware of how out in the open they were.

  Susie pulled a canteen of water out of her bag and offered it to Beckett. The old man refused, taking a pathetic swipe at Susie, his head lowering to his chest as though he was falling asleep.

  Anton stood and took a place next to Colin. “I don’t thinks it’s good news. He’s getting worse, and I don’t know how much further he can go.”

  “Dad?”

  Beckett’s eyes suddenly widened as he bent forward and expelled a mouthful of vomit over himself. He coughed and gargled on residue left in his mouth. Susie rubbed his back, her eyes shimmering. For a second Colin thought he saw movement in the small puddle of sick.

  “It’s okay. We’re nearly there.”

  “We’re not, though. Are we?” Beckett managed, his voice faint and weak. “We’ve got a couple miles at least, and that’s not even counting if we have to run from rotters.” He leant his head back against the wall, a line of bile still hanging from the corner of his mouth. Skin sheet-white and eyes spiked with bloody lightning dashes. He looked at Susie. “You need to go without me. I tried. I’m finished. I’m done.”

  An involuntary spasm racked Beckett’s body. Susie was tight-lipped, clearly torn between the decision of leaving her father for dead, knowing that there was little she could do to help him besides dragging him through town herself, increasing the chances of getting them all killed, or going on ahead with her son and the Hopefuls.

  She leant towards him and took her father in her arms, squeezing tight. Colin and Anton watched as Quinton bent down and joined the embrace. It was a touching moment, something rarely witnessed in the new world. The love of family.

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, Grandpa.”

  And that’s when it happened. Between the tangle of bodies on the floor, Colin saw Beckett’s foot begin to spasm. Back and forth, back and forth. Susie and Quinton withdrew, taking a step backwards and watching in horror as the light from Beckett’s eyes faded, his mouth opened, and from the back of his throat came a thick white strand as the rot began to take hold.

  A moment later and Beckett leant forward, a second wave of vomit pouring from his mouth, followed by several clicks and a screech.

  “No? That can’t be?” Susie muttered, stumbling backwards as the rotter that was her father began to rise.

  Beckett’s bones clicked and cracked, the myelin strand now weaving its way in and out of its skin, joining others which crept from any orifice it could find. It staggered towards Susie, adapting to its frail human host, sniffing the air. It quivered on the spot as if it was suddenly cold. Susie let out a sob, a hand going to her mouth.

  Colin and Anton could do nothing but watch as the shell of Beckett lunged through the air, clearing the ground by several feet, and aimed for Susie. It was just a few inches away, the smell hitting her before the rotter. The awful stench of halitosis and decay. Susie opened her mouth to scream when—

  Susie was thrown sideways. She landed on the hard floor with a thump. The rotter screeched in protest behind her. She pushed the weight off the top of her, suddenly feeling her son’s body on hers.

  “Quinton?”

  But Quinton wasn’t listening. He was already rummaging through Susie’s bag, withdrawing one of her patented bleached arrows.

  “Quinn? No!”

  It was too late. Beckett screeched as Quinton punched the arrow into the side of his face, the bleach instantly doing its job. Melting flesh. Bubbling and charring the skin, forcing the rotter to writhe and kick and protest. The screeches were awful, forcing them all to clap hands to their ears. All they could do was watch until the rotter that had once been family fell to the floor and became still.

  They were only allowed a few moments to grieve before they heard the screeches of the others nearby — Beckett’s new family.

  ~ 21 ~

  They careened around the corner, a dozen or so rotters, with more spilling behind them. They took the corner at such a rapid pace that a few of them skidded to the floor. They clumsily brought themselves back to their feet, each chasing towards the source of where Beckett’s screeches had called just moments before.

  And there, leading the pack, was the shirtless wonder himself, Byron. The trail of the broken leash dragging behind him like his very own dog-tail. Glistening blood caking his torso, pouring from a wound in his neck. They could just make out the grooves of teeth like the bite-mark on a dark black apple. His right cheek had been ripped away, peeled back like onion skin, revealing his rot-infected cheek muscles spasming.

  Colin heard Anton gasp but they
had no time for words. Colin pulled him away and they broke into a run.

  Despite his instincts to storm ahead, Colin found himself pulling back against Dylan, still strapped to his harness. The dog was in panic overdrive, pulling the line so taught you could see the threads, yet they were already passing Susie and Quinton, and the last thing Colin wanted to do was leave anyone behind.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got any of those bottles hidden away still, kid?”

  “No,” Quinton called between breaths, his arms flailing as he ran. “They’re all gone…”

  “Bottles?” Susie shot a disapproving look.

  “Not now, Mum!”

  They rounded a corner, then another, Anton trailing the pack. The rotters were gaining, though they still had some distance to carry. Colin halted, jolting Dylan to a stop, waited for Anton to catch up, then grabbed his hand and dragged him along in Dylan’s wake.

  As they passed through a narrow alley they emerged into a clearing, finding the large fountain in the centre of the town square.

  “Not much farther, right?”

  Susie looked back to answer Colin and caught sight of the pack of rotters squeezing through the alley, their bodies converging into an unsightly mess of limbs, their movements slowed as they all chased for the same targets. Her eyes widened and she tripped.

  “Come on Susie,” Anton grimaced, pulling her to her feet.

  “Thanks.”

  Anton blushed.

  They halted for just a moment, gaining their bearings. There was thick smoke everywhere now. Up ahead, the Old Bell Inn still smouldered, the building half the size now, the flames low. Dylan barked and snapped at the air as tiny embers floated like fireflies. Quinton doubled over, struggling to breathe, the stitch needling his side. Anton was covered in soot and muck, eyes red with heavy bags. Susie idly dabbed at the warm trickle of blood as it poured down from the fresh wounds in her elbows and dripped from her fingers.

  Behind them Byron led the pack, his eyes concentrated, his mouth snapping. There came another screech from somewhere off to their right and Colin began to wonder just how many rotters they had awoken. Only a few hours ago he and Anton had been stood on top of a roof, looking over the tranquil destruction of the town. Now it had come alive like an ant’s nest reacting to a kettle of boiling water.

  “This way,” Susie said, patting Quinton on the back and setting off once again.

  *

  It wasn’t long after they left the fountain behind that Colin recognised the street they were on. Just a little further ahead and they would be free. He could see the spot where he and Anton had split from Keaghan and Byron, in a time that felt aeons ago now.

  “Move move move,” Colin commanded Dylan, finally allowing the dog to accelerate him forward. Maybe this final burst of energy would spread to the others, all panting away behind. The rotters now unrelenting as they shot from the side street.

  No wonder Byron couldn’t outlast them. These things are acting on mechanics alone. They’ll go until their legs snap.

  He leapt over the chassis of a ruined car, turned a corner and stopped. There, some way down the wide stretch of road was the entrance to the underground carpark.

  But that wasn’t the reason that he stopped. Susie, Quinton, and Anton all piled behind as they saw them too. A second pack of rotters, standing in the centre of the road.

  “What the hells do we do now?” Anton asked, knowing there was no good answer.

  The din of the chasing rotters attracted the attention of the second pack, who each turned to face the new arrivals on the street. Their mouths frothed excitedly, former humans with horrific deformations as the rot spores had woven through their bodies and taken over their very being. A former middle-aged woman emerged from the pack, stepping with jerked rooster-necked movements. The two on either side had once been scavvies, no doubt about it. They’d decorated their faces with so much ink there was little-to-no skin to see what was left of their dead humanity. Behind them was a woman with bloody streaks in her blonde hair. And leading the pack was a man with a growth on the side of his head that pulsed outwards like a tropical frog’s neck, fattening and shrinking rhythmically, the skin so opaque it looked ready to pop and spill forth black inky gore.

  They were trapped, and they only had a few seconds to decide what to do. Anton pulled out his gun and held it in front of him, moving his aim from rotter to rotter. Colin wondered whether he remembered that the chamber was empty, whether just holding the gun made him somehow feel safe, like he was doing something to protect them all. He pulled the trigger and the gun simply clicked.

  A rotter behind them screeched. Colin chanced a look and found that the pack behind had slowed to a near halt. Byron at the head of the arrow, abs decorated in blood. His attention flexing between his former Hopefuls and the second pack. The bullfrog rotter screeched back, thick dark foam flying from its mouth.

  “Are they… talking?” Susie asked.

  “I don’t know. But we need to do something. Now.”

  Just then an awful noise erupted all around. Quinton jumped and yelped, Colin and Anton looked wildly around for the source of the noise. A ripple of anguish swept through the two packs of rotters as light exploded from the mouth of the carpark. Thick beams of light shone ahead, casting the rotters in a golden glow. A moment later and the Ranger burst up the ramp, clearing the ground by several inches and mowing into the pack. The rooster-necker and the two scavvies were swallowed beneath the car which bumped and bounced over cracking bone. The pack led by Byron screeched in an angry frenzy, as the headlights turned and dazzled them all. A voice cried out of the open Ranger window, “Somebody order an Uber?”

  Quinton was the first to sprint ahead, throwing the door open and clambering inside. Whisper barked on the back seat, and Dylan returned the call, tugging Colin forward. In seconds they were all inside. Keaghan wound the window, stepped on the accelerator, and charged at the rotters blocking the way out of town. He had only a moment to acknowledge Byron as he rolled up the bonnet, smacked against the windscreen, then rolled off onto the floor.

  “Was that—?”

  “Not now. Just drive,” Susie said.

  Despite their situation, Keaghan smiled at Susie and Quinton in the rearview. “Welcome back Miss K. Good to see you again.”

  It was slow going forcing their way through the rotter pack. They clawed at the doors, jumped on the roof, and did everything in their power to slow the car. Keaghan kept the car in low gear, using all the power he could muster.

  The wheels screeched and spun on the tarmac as they made their way out the other side. The headlights illuminated streets and roads as Susie shouted directions at him. He grimaced, feeling the pain in his leg, but choosing to ignore it as he took a hard right and raced down an empty street. Pretty soon the only sign of the rotters was their cries that rang out deep into the night.

  *

  Byron, or the thing that operated him, continued on up the road and towards the fading sounds of the car’s engine. Glass splintered his body, but he carried on regardless, following the rotter’s prey as far as he could before all traces of them disappeared.

  He stood. He didn’t breathe or pant or try to catch his breath. The other rotters assembled next to him, congregating like a church procession on Sunday.

  They waited. Dark statues in the night. Rotters big and small, scavvie and Hill-folk. All manner of horror and gore. Rain started to fall, every rotter now reaching their arms to the sky, drinking in the moisture like roots of a flower.

  If you were to look at this congregation from afar you’d have figured they were people of God, worshipping the world around them. Silently praying. But if you were to come closer, you’d see their prayers weren’t so silent. Their mutterings under their breath were odd. Like each person held a locust-swarm in their innards.

  And, if you were to look even a little closer, and watch the rain on their skin, you’d find thousands of fibres, like tapeworms, reaching upwards,
puncturing holes, dancing, dancing, as they soaked in the water.

  This is a prayer, their communion.

  And now they listen. They wait. They pray.

  ~ 22 ~

  “Keaghan, pull over, I think we’re clear now.”

  Keaghan let another grunt escape his mouth as they dipped and dived over a pothole, the jagged movement sending a bolt of pain up his leg.

  Colin leant over from the passenger seat and took the wheel. For a moment it looked as though Keaghan was going to protest, his eyes still wide, chest rising and falling as the panic that had kicked into him after he heard the rotter screeches from down in the carpark still held him. They were all still in shock, really. Even Quinton hadn’t said a word as they raced from King’s Hill, the houses thinning into nothingness as the countryside took over. If anything, the journey out of King’s Hill was a hell of a lot tougher to ride than Anton’s erratic driving on the way in, but with the adrenaline surging through his body, Colin didn’t seem to care.

  Until now, at least.

  With a quick flick of his eyes at Colin, Keaghan depressed the accelerator and pulled the car over.

  Colin stepped out the moment they stopped, feeling the chill that the night breeze brought. He took deep lungfuls of it, relishing the taste, not realising until now how sore his throat had become from running through the cocktail of ash and smoke from the burning buildings. He placed his hands on his knees and began to laugh, his body shaking as the sound came out in machine-gun bursts. Anton opened his door, fell out onto the dusty floor and joined in, the two men howling against the silent countryside.

  “What the hell is so funny?” Susie said, slamming her door and coming around the car to join the two gents. “We almost all just lost our lives back there, and you think that’s somehow funny?” She looked for some kind of support from Quinton and Keaghan but found them both now silently chuckling into the collar of their clothes. Doing their best to hide their sniggers until they were all laughing, tears streaming down their faces.