by Jack Lewis
“Damien,” said Wes, in a softer voice.
Damien turned around. His face looked strained. His jaw was big and curved and the skin struggled to stretch around it. At some point his body had stopped growing but his chin and has just gone on and on.
“If the Capita’s men find you with that, and you tell them where you got it, I’ll make you watch your daughter beg for her insulin.”
Damien left, slamming the door behind him. Wes opened a drawer in his desk and took out a handheld mirror. He held it to his face, turning his head to catch view of his hair. After working his fingers through his quiff he put the mirror back in the drawer. He was at an age where he really should have been more secure, but he was living proof that we never really get over the things that haunt us in our teens. Everyone goes through life dragging a boulder behind their back, but instead of grinding away it becomes larger with each step.
He looked at Heather and smiled.
“If it isn’t Heather Castle. Inspiring those young minds, are you? Feeding them the Capita’s garbage? Got them stood on the desks chanting your name?”
“They’re ten years old.”
“And we don’t live in very inspiring times, do we? One thing I admire about you Heather is that you don’t bullshit. At least not to yourself. We live in grim fucking times, and you’re one of the few who admit it.”
“No point in pretending otherwise.”
He pointed at the chair opposite him. Heather stood up and joined him at the desk. Her chair was made of plywood and the cushion had worn away, making it dig into her back. Wes’s chair was leather and seemed to mold around his body. It was a Chesterfield that would have looked better suited in a gentleman’s lounge.
“You hate coming here, don’t you?” he said.
He was right, she hated it here. It wasn’t that she hated Wes; she didn’t condone what he did, but she knew that he was doing it to get by. She was no better. She fed lies to the Capita’s children every day, and she did it for her own benefit.
Still, as soon as their current crop was ready to harvest she and Kim could finish their Great Escape. They’d dry out as much food as they could to make it last longer and then they’d get as far away from the Capita as possible. There had to be places out there that were still untouched. Some kind of island off the mainland where the infection hadn’t reached.
“It’s not my favourite place,” she said.
“I can tell. You look like someone turning their head away as they clean up after their dog.”
“I don’t think that way.”
“Why are you slumming it today, anyway?”
She jerked her thumb toward the window. The sky was darkening under the anger of the storm, and she was worried that if she didn’t hurry up she might be too late. The soil would get waterlogged and the crops would be ruined, and it would be months before she could get things growing again. She didn’t think she could bear to stay for that long.
“I need something to cover my plants. Plastic or something. Tarpaulin. Whatever you’ve got.”
He scratched his chin. He gave a glance to a door behind him, and then frowned. Heather didn’t know what was behind the door, and she had never seen Wes go in there.
“I don’t have anything at the minute,” said Wes. “But I could tell my salvagers to keep an eye out for you.”
“I can’t hang around that long. The storm’s only going to get worse.”
“I’m sorry Heather, nothing I can do. I don’t know why you don’t move here? This place is going to be independent from the Capita someday. A safe zone they can’t get their fat hands on.”
“I can’t. I’ve got Kim to think about.”
“You’re a Capita shill.”
Not for much longer, she thought. She sat up straight and rested her arms on the desk. She could feel scratches on it from where someone had gouged a knife into the wood. It seemed as if all of Wes’s furniture except his Chesterfield had been salvaged from a school, and most of it had faded wood and fraying joints.
“Shill or not,” she said, “You know this place can’t last. One night they’ll bust down your door while you’re in your underpants.”
“We’re building somewhere safe, Heather.”
“You’re building it on a fault line. Sooner or later it’s going to break apart and suck you in.”
Wes laughed. It was a high pitched one, a squeaky hinge in need of oil.
“Listen. Go to Cresstone.”
“The village?”
He nodded. “A few miles east of here. There are a load of tarpaulin tents in the centre from a village fete back before things turned to shit. Don’t think the dead will mind if you dismantle a few of them.”
***
The rain was lashing down by the time she got to Cresstone. Her back and arms were soaked from where her waterproof coat had perished, and she felt a numbness settling over her cold body. She wished she was at home.
Before the outbreak Cresstone had been a dying village. A factory on the outskirts that produced sheet metal had gone bust, leaving half the population looking for a job and wondering how they were going to feed their families and pay their mortgages. That had set in motion the decay of a century old village, and years later, as Heather walked down streets that barely saw footfall from the living, it was dead.
It was funny how everyone thought about the infected as ‘the dead’. Changed as they were, a check of their pulse would show that they were still as much alive as Heather was. The only difference came with their desires. Maybe that was the reason. Take away the inhibitions that held back the evil in them, and people quickly stopped being human. They weren’t part of the living anymore.
Across from her, wandering into an alleyway between two houses, a couple of infected shambled side by side like lovers on a walk. Heather walked slower and paid attention to the sounds her steps made, though the torrential rain was more than enough to cover them. The sight of the infected raised her pulse but she no longer had the feeling of utter panic that they had once brought on her. She knew how to be quiet and how to sneak. The infected were slow and stupid, and they only became dangerous when you let them get too close.
She threaded her way through narrow streets and passed long-abandoned cars until she reached the centre of the village. In front of her was a paved area half the size of a football pitch. It was covered in tents, some still standing but most collapsed on the floor. She wondered how some of them had remained upright, but the supports looked solid and there was rarely weather bad enough to rock them. She looked up at the sky and caught a rain drop in her eye and felt the wind run icy fingers through her hair.
Stood in front of a tent, she rolled up the sleeves of her coat. The white canvas was draped on the ground like a ghost with its soul sucked out.
The whole thing was connected better than she expected, and whoever had put the tent together had tied impenetrable knots where the metal supports met the canvas. She got to her knees and began to unravel them, her face growing hot as knot after sodden knot fought against her.
She heard pattering sounds that marked something different from the rain, and a sudden chill tickled the hairs on her arms. From the way she felt her mind sprang to one conclusion. Infected.
She got to her feet, but she didn’t see any monsters coming for her. Instead, an Alsatian dog moved in her direction with wary steps, its ears raised and fur dripping wet. It stepped over a patch of muddy grass and onto the paving, staring at Heather with every step it took toward her. At first it seemed curious, but as it got nearer its real expression became clear. Its nose was wrinkled and its legs tensed as though it were ready to pounce. Its wild eyes made it seem more wolf than dog.
Heather took a step back, careful not to trip over the tent. The dog thrust a wary paw forward, and she could sense that its instinctive caution was evaporating. She hoped she was wrong about its intentions, but she didn’t want to test it. The worst thing to do would be to act scared. Any animal able to
survive years in the dead world knew that fear was a sign of easy prey, and Heather couldn’t afford to give it that impression.
“Piss off,” she said, testing her voice. In the dead village her words sounded alien even to her.
The dog craned its head to the side. It stepped forward again.
Heather backed away. She glanced down at the tarpaulin. She couldn’t leave without it, nor did she want to stay here.
“For god’s sake, what do you want?”
The dog stopped. For a second she felt relief, but then the animal opened its mouth and let out a deep bark. The noise was loud enough to cut through the sounds of rainfall and it boomed across the village centre, spreading through streets that rarely heard noises made by the living.
She looked around her, heart hammering. The dog let out three throaty barks. Heather crouched down to her knees, reached to her side and picked a stone up off the floor. With a firm grip and a tense arm she launched it at the dog, only just missing its head. The dog jerked back. Heather bent down and rummaged for another rock, but the dog turned and ran. Thank god for that, she thought.
Her relief lasted seconds. A figure moved at the edge of her vision. She turned and saw an infected walking in her direction. His arms were twigs, his skin grey and marked by craters. Rain-washed white hair clung to the side of his head, and he wore a denim jacket that was three decades out of fashion. His dead eyes stared directly at Heather.
Across the square another stepped toward her, her stomach so thin as to appear caved in, revealing a rack of bones that threatened to snap through the weak skin. Another crept from the side of a van. He wore a skin-tight leather coat and had oil-black hair that spilled across his shoulders. His fingers were curled as though in rigor-mortis, despite the fact he wasn’t dead yet.
More of them moved toward her from all directions. It was as if someone had made an infected version of a dog whistle and they were blowing on it from the shadows. She had an overwhelming urge to run. So much for staying calm.
She reached down to the tent, took hold of the tarpaulin and heaved it away from the metal support. Her arms began to ache and panic set over her. She saw more figures in the distance, drawn by the bark of a dog which had taken the sensible option and fled. She shook the tarpaulin and saw water bounce onto the floor, and with one more tug she pulled it free. She rolled it up, tucked it under her arm and moved away from the centre.
As she ran over the splashed pavements, more of the infected lurched out of side streets and alleyways. Their clothes were ripped and faded, and their hair was slick with rain. All of them turned when they saw her, and she saw desire light in their eyes as she passed.
As she ran by a house near the outskirts she looked up, and a wave of shock ran through her. In the bedroom window, just in view, was the head of a boy. He seemed to be peering through a gap in a pair of shabby curtains. At first she thought he might have been another infected, but he didn’t move when he saw her. Instead he just watched, and Heather saw that didn’t have the same darkness in his eyes as the infected.
A group of infected closed in behind her. Ahead of her was the way out of the village, and beyond it, sat underneath a grey sky, was the Dome. Somewhere in between was her house, where Kim waited.
What am I doing?
The words formed in her mind, but they left just as quickly as she ran toward the house. She stopped outside the front door, twisted the handle and walked in. The hallway was painted black and a cold draught blew through the house. Framed paintings lined the walls but it was too dark to make out what they were, and there was a damp smell which seemed to grow stronger by the second. The house was tidy, and in the darkness it looked as though the family had simply left and gone on holiday.
She walked up the stairs careful not to make her steps thud on the wood. Upstairs she turned right and came to a bedroom door. The boy must have been beyond it. She set the tarpaulin down on the landing and opened the door.
She found the boy in the corner of the room. There was a bed in the centre but he had taken the duvet off it and had cocooned himself so that only his head poked out. On the floor around him were discarded apple cores, the flesh turning brown. The boy’s eyes became saucers when he saw her, and he shrank back against the wall. He was a feral child, with his pale skin and hair flattened down on his scalp.
“It’s okay,” she said.
He moved his arms and the duvet fell away from him. She saw his clothes now. He wore a jumper that was made to fit an adult many times his size. The grey pattern was splattered with grime, and the sleeves that spilled over his hands looked chewed.
She realised that he wasn’t wearing his mask. Instead it was discarded on the floor next to him. It was standard issue the same as Heather’s, so he wasn’t a Capita student. The question was, where had he come from, and why was he alone?
She reached into her coat and took out her AVS. She pressed the power and let the device test the air. It blinked red in alarm.
“What the hell are you doing?” she said. “Get your mask on.”
He looked at his mask on the floor but didn’t move to put it on.
She held the sensor out to him. “You know what this means, don’t you? Red means virus. Put your mask on.”
The boy spoke. At first his voice came out croaky, as though he hadn’t used it in weeks.
“I don’t need it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m immune.”
She walked over and crouched in front of him. She reached out and put her hand on his knee. The boy jerked it back.
“Where are your parents?”
The boy looked at the window. Night had taken over the sky, and the storm still raged on. The infected seemed to have drifted by the house and were probably roaming the streets looking for Heather.
“Where are you from?” she said.
He grabbed the duvet with shaking hands and pulled it close to him.
“You need to come with me,” she said.
Her words met a wall of ice and falling to the ground and the boy seemed frozen in place like he was posing for a photograph. She felt pity for him, and wondered how he had come to be alone. She couldn’t leave him here. She reached put to grab his hand, but he jerked away.
“You can’t stay here,” she said, and grabbed for him again.
He lashed out with his fingers, and she felt her arm burn. She saw that it was covered in long red scratches. The boy moved further back into the corner, and his body shook in the manner of a dog ready to attack.
Something had damaged this boy. What had he seen that had made him this way? Where were his family? He was a DC. That much was obvious. She thought about Jenny being taken from her class. She thought about Kim at home. She couldn’t even imagine her daughter having to live like this. So much pity flooded her chest that it was hard to breathe.
Outside, the infected still lurched down the street. They didn’t seem to know she had come into the house, but there were enough of them now to be called a crowd. This was when they were at their most dangerous, and if she waited much longer there would be too many on the street for her to escape. The clouds in the sky still spat down a torrent, and she knew that her plants at home would be taking a hammering.
She took a few steps toward the boy, but he grew more panicked with every inch closer she got. She didn’t want to leave him, but nor could she stay. She had her own life to think about. A daughter who would be lost without her, a crop in their garden on which all their future hopes rested.
“Are you going to come with me or not?” she said. “This is the only time I’ll ask you.”
The boy paused, thought about it, and then shook his head from side to side.
She turned and walked out of the room, not giving the boy even a fleeting glance, because she knew if she looked at him then she would break down. She was giving up on him in the same way she’d given up on Jenny, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
“I’m sorr
y,” she said over her shoulder.
She stepped out of the room, out of the house, and into the cold.
4
Ed
He ran out of candles months ago and he hadn’t bothered to replace them. There was something comforting about the dark. It put a black sheet over the things he wanted to keep hidden but at the same time couldn’t bring himself hide away. It meant that he couldn’t see the smiling face of his father from a photograph on the mantelpiece as he held the trophy he’d won in the Golgoth fishing competition. It meant he couldn’t see the wool decoration his mother had knitted which declared that “a house is not a home without love.”