by Amy Cross
“Help,” a female voice whispers suddenly.
Stopping, I look around. Finally I see that one of the bodies is crawling slowly toward me through the mud.
“I can't do anything for you,” I reply, seeing that there are several bullet wounds in the woman's back and arms. “I'm sorry, I just can't.”
When she gets close, she rolls onto her back and reaches up toward me with a hand that's caked in mud and blood. I recognize her: she used to work with the people who gutted fish, and we exchanged a few words occasionally. She always seemed nice, and in a strange way she reminds me of my sister.
“Please...” she whispers. “It hurts...”
“There's nothing I can do for you,” I reply, trying to stay calm even though I'm angry at her for asking. “I don't have any medicine or -”
“Kill me,” she continues. “Please, just stop the pain.”
I shake my head.
“Please,” she sobs, “just do it fast.”
“I can't.”
“You have to. I've been here for hours now, all night... I'd do it for you...”
“I can't,” I tell her, “I'm sorry.” Turning, I hurry away, even though I can hear her desperately calling after me. I know I should go back and put her out of her misery, but after all the pain and horror I've seen over the past few days, I can't bring myself to just murder a girl in cold blood. I feel as if I'm still just clinging onto a few tattered shreds of my own humanity, and they'd be gone forever if I had to pick up a rock or a knife and kill that girl.
Stopping by the main tent, once I'm far enough away from the girl to no longer hear her voice, I take a moment to examine my injured shoulder again.
It's bad.
The creature bit into me hard last night, and the wound doesn't seem to be healing at all. If anything, it's getting worse, and I'm worried that the edges of torn flesh are starting to turn a brighter shade of red. I keep telling myself that it's nothing, that at worst it's just an infection that I can heal with some supplies from the truck, but at the same time I have this nagging fear in the back of my mind that it might be much more.
I keep thinking back to that Lydia woman, the first sick person I saw when this whole mess started, and the way she got ill and then died in the upstairs room of my parents' farm. I don't know exactly how she was infected in the first place, and I still don't fully understand how the sickness works, but there has to be at least a chance that the creature's bite has caused me to become another victim.
Stepping into the tent, I start looking around for anything that Melissa and I can use to make food. With my shoulder still hurting, I figure that my best bet is just to stick around for a few more days, help to get them settled and stocked with supplies, make sure they can find more food, and then get the hell away from them. I'm worried that the longer I stay, the bigger the chance that I might infect them. If there's only one more good thing that I can do in this world, then maybe it'll be ensuring that Melissa and her daughter have the best possible chance to live out their lives free from the threat of starvation.
Suddenly, as I turn to look at another bench in the tent, I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder and I stumble, dropping down to my knees and briefly crying out as the agony echoes and then fades.
“Please not now,” I whisper, taking a series of deep breaths as I try to stay calm. “Just give me a couple more days. Let me help them.”
I wait, but the pain seems to have passed and I quickly force myself back onto my feet. Finding little of use in the tent, I stumble back out and survey the desolate scene once again, trying to spot something useful amidst all the dead bodies.
And then, quite out of nowhere, I realize that I've been overlooking something huge.
***
By the time I reach the door to the bunker, I've been walking for a couple of hours and the back of my neck is badly sunburned. Finding the door unlocked, just the way we left it the other day, I pull it open and then limp inside, and as soon as I get through to the second room I open one of the other doors and make my way into the storeroom.
“Thank God,” I whisper finally, as I see shelf after shelf filled with canned goods and various bottles. Before I've even started looking through a few of them, I can tell that there's enough here to keep Melissa and Katie going for many months. Grabbing a couple of the cans, I take a look at the bare printed labels and see that they contain beans. Somehow, even something so simple feels -
Suddenly a heavy weight crunches against the back of my head, sending me stumbling forward and crashing into one of the shelves, which collapses and pitches me down to the floor. Dazed, I try to get up before I feel a boot being slammed into my neck with enough force to send me headfirst into the wall.
“Thought you'd steal, huh?” a familiar voice asks.
I turn to look at him, but before I get a chance he kicks me again, this time square in the mouth.
“Desperation really brings out the worst in people,” Leonard continues, reaching down and then hauling me up. He smiles at me for a moment, before slamming me into the wall and then reaching over to grab a gun from the counter. “Most people turn out to be thieves and liars in the end.”
Struggling to stand up, I finally see that he's aiming the gun straight at me.
“Are you the only one left?” he asks.
Trying to catch my breath, I realize that he has no idea about Melissa and Katie. If I'm smart, he'll stay ignorant, and I figure they're far enough away that they'll hopefully never run into him.
“I thought I was the only one,” I mutter, with a sharp pain in my chest, as if a few ribs are broken, “but that was before I saw your ugly face.”
“That's smart,” he continues. “Go ahead, insult the guy with the gun.”
“Why would I care?” I ask. “Do what you're gonna do.”
“Not putting up a fight?”
I shake my head.
“That's disappointing,” he continues. “What's wrong? Given up?”
“I'm tired,” I reply, and I mean it: right now, I can't imagine trying to fight back. I just want the pain and fear to end; so long as Melissa and Katie have a chance, that's all that matters.
“Well,” he mutters, “you're a hell of a disappointment, kid.”
I open my mouth to reply to him, but at the last moment I spot a face in the shadows, just beyond Leonard's shoulder. For a brief second I allow myself to think that someone is going to help me, but suddenly I realize that I recognize the face.
“Joe,” I whisper, as my brother smiles at me.
“Don't try that stunt, kid,” Leonard continues. “I know there's no-one else in here.”
“It's okay,” I continue, ignoring him and keeping my eyes on my brother. “I'm coming.”
Joe smiles, still mostly hidden in the shadows.
“I just...” I start to say, barely able to breathe. “I just... I need this asshole to pull the trigger.”
“Seriously?” Joe replies. “This is how you're gonna let it fucking end? Shot in the head by some total idiot?”
“I'm too tired.”
“Whatever,” Leonard says firmly. “How do you want to go? Bullet in the front of the head, or in the back? Either way, let's do it outside. I don't want to have to clean blood-stains off the walls in here.”
“You're gonna die,” Joe continues. “You know it. But don't let it be here, and don't let it be this fucking psychopath who sends you on your way.”
“Out,” Leonard continues. “Go on, out the door.”
I blink a couple of times, and Joe's face starts to become fuzzy, almost as if he's not really there. I try to focus again, but Leonard suddenly grabs me by the collar and shoves me through the door until I land hard on the floor of the next room.
“Get out!” he shouts. “I haven't got all day for this!”
Scrambling to my feet, I stumble to the main door and finally I emerge on the rocks. The sky above is clear and bright blue, and a faint breeze is blowing in from the lake. As Le
onard pushes me in the back to make me keep walking, I keep hearing Joe's voice in my head over and over again, and although I'm starting to feel dizzy, I'm less tired than before.
“Sorry about this,” Leonard continues, as I hear a click from the gun, “but I really don't like thieves. Goddamn savages -”
Ducking out of the way as he fires, I cry out in pain as I slam my body against him and knock him down to the ground. The gun spins out of his hand, but I ignore it as I pin him down with one hand and grab a nearby rock with the other.
“You want savages?” I shout. “Here!”
With that, I slam the rock against his face and immediately feel his cheekbone breaking. He lets out a cry, but I keep going: bringing the rock crashing down again and again, I'm filled with a kind of blind fury as I feel a burst of energy surging through my body, pushing me on to hit him over and over, determined to make sure that he's dead. Even when I know I've done enough, I keep going until several minutes have passed and I can feel the rock breaking through his skull and hitting his brain. All the time, I'm screaming at him, as if he's responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened on this planet.
I start crying.
Tears flow down my face.
And still I don't stop.
“That's enough,” Joe's voice whispers.
“No it's not,” I gasp. “It's never enough!”
“Yeah it is, mate,” he continues. “Just stop, okay?”
I raise the rock up high and look at it, feeling a surge of anger in my chest, before I bring it crashing down against Leonard's head one final time. Taking a series of deep breaths, I toss the rock to one side and stare at Leonard's head; for a moment, my vision is too blurry for me to make anything out, but finally I blink a few times and I see that I've completely destroyed his face, with the rock having shattered his skull and mashed his brain.
Disgusted, I pull away and scramble across the rocks, before picking up the gun in my trembling hands.
I turn and look back at Leonard's body, and finally I see just how much blood has been sprayed all over the rocks. When I look down, I see that there's also blood on my clothes.
“You did what you had to do,” Joe's voice says.
“I did what I have to do,” I whisper.
“And you know what you have to do next, don't you?”
I shake my head, still unable to stop looking at Leonard's body.
“Yeah,” Joe continues, “you do. You need to do the only fucking decent, honorable thing that's left to you.”
“What's that?” I ask.
“Well, your shoulder hurts, doesn't it?”
“Like hell.”
“And what have you got in that bunker?”
“Food,” I whisper. “Lots of food.”
“Then you can work the rest out for yourself, can't you?”
I pause for a moment, before finally realizing what he means.
“Oh,” he adds, “and one more thing. Stop talking to yourself and using my voice to rationalize things. It makes you seem like you're losing your fucking mind.”
“It helps,” I whisper. “It's the only way I can hold everything together.”
Slumping down onto the rocks, I lean back and stare up at the sky. I just want to sleep and never wake up, but at the same time I know deep down that I can't stop yet. Besides, Joe was right: I'm going to die, and soon, but I still have one decent and honorable thing to do before I'm out of here.
Elizabeth
“It's out of the question,” my father says as we sit alone at the dinner table in his quarters. “Long-distance communication with Mitchfield is only permitted when there's a pressing reason.”
“I just want to ask General Patterson a few things,” I reply, picking at my food as I try to find a way past my father's stubbornness. “All I need is a few minutes.”
“Even a few seconds would be enough for enemy forces to learn our position, and the position of Mitchfield too. It can't happen, Lizzie, I'm sorry.”
“Enemy forces?” I pause for a moment, trying to work out whether I heard him correctly. “What enemy forces?”
“Who knows?” he replies. “That's the point. What we have here in Boston is valuable, Lizzie, and there are undoubtedly people out there who'd like to take it from us. We have to face the very real possibility that we could be attacked at any moment, potentially by armed groups who've taken control of ex-military equipment.”
“Are there people out there like that?” I ask, genuinely shocked by the idea.
“There absolutely could be.”
“But you don't know for sure, do you?”
“That's not the point. The threat is possible, maybe even probable, and that's why we have to be careful. We make broadcasts occasionally, but only for emergencies.”
“Like trying to find me?”
“I pulled rank,” he continues. “I shouldn't have, but I did. Members of the council are permitted to do that from time to time.”
“It seems kind of unfair,” I point out.
“Right now, I don't give a damn,” he replies. “You're here, and that's what matters.” He pauses for a moment. “Lizzie, I know you might not understand our reasons for controlling the city in this way, but you're just going to have to trust me. We have a long-term plan, but it doesn't involve bringing in large numbers of outsiders. Instead, we're eventually going to encourage population growth from within the group that's already here.”
“Seriously?”
“It's the only viable solution.”
“You want to regrow the population of the entire country from eighty-one people?” I stare incredulously at him, barely able to believe what I'm hearing. “You couldn't drown a flea in that gene pool! It's insane!”
“From a scientific standpoint, it's completely viable,” he replies. “There are very few blood relations in the city, so that shouldn't be a problem, and as each successive generation arrives there'll be less and less of a problem. Besides, we're not trying to repopulate the entire country, we're just working with a city.”
“But what about when the barriers come down and people want to leave?”
“No-one's going to want to leave.”
“Sure they are,” I continue. “You can't expect every generation to just live and work completely within the walls of one city.”
He stares at me.
“You can't,” I tell him. “It's crazy!”
“It's safe,” he replies. “The members of the council have discussed this matter in depth, and we've run the numbers. It's a viable project and it respects the purity of the community we've established. One of the problems of the old world was over-population, Lizzie. We've seen the errors that were made, and now we've got a chance to create a much better, much more productively organized society. The savages at the gate -”
“What savages?” I ask, trying not to panic. “Dad, what are you talking about?”
“The people who try to break through,” he continues. “They're basically savages, but it's okay, they won't last forever. It's the people in this city who have a future.”
I stare at him, trying to wrap my head around everything he's saying. He sounds less like my father and more like some kind of cult member.
“I don't recognize you,” I say finally.
“I'm sorry?”
“I don't,” I continue, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. Setting my knife and fork down, I force myself to stay at the table. “You never used to talk like this.”
“Things have changed, Lizzie.”
“And you've changed with them.”
“We all have to adjust.”
“And become cold-hearted killers?”
He winces at those words. “Lizzie, you're being melodramatic.”
“What's next?” I ask. “Are you going to throw out everyone who isn't a blue-eyed blonde?”
“Now you're just being hysterical,” he continues. “This isn't eugenics, for God's sake, it's just a viable way to sustain our communi
ty in the face of everything that has happened. Please don't go throwing dumb insults around.” He pauses for a moment. “I'd hoped you were a little more mature.”
“I just feel as if you're trying to control everything,” I tell him.
“Over the past two months,” he replies, “we've seen exactly how the world functions when there's a free-for-all. I don't know what you've witnessed, but I've seen cold-blooded murder, I've seen men and women being subjected to the most vile assaults, I've seen people burned to death...” He pauses again, as if he's struggling to contain his anger. “What do you think would happen if we lowered the barriers and let all those people inside? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them out there. What if one of them is infected? That's all it would take, you know. Just one.”
I open my mouth to argue with him, but at the last moment the words seem to stick.
“Even if by some miracle they were all healthy,” he continues, “we couldn't support them. We don't have the food, the resources, the time... Some of them could contribute, sure, but some of them would just be a drain. I know things are improving here, Lizzie, but trust me, in some regards we're still absolutely on a knife-edge and it wouldn't take much to tip us back into a full-scale decline. Don't you think that what we have here is precious? That it should be protected?”
“But we could try to do something,” I tell him, even though I already know that I don't sound very persuasive. “I mean... Leaving them out there to starve...”
He sighs, but before he can say anything there's a crackle from his radio, and he grabs it from the table.
“Marter here,” he says, “what -”
“Sir,” a voice replies, sounding panicked, “we've got six intruders who've made it past the barrier on the western side. One of our men is down, and the intruders are currently believed to be making their way through alpha zone. It's the usual scattered raid, nothing too organized, but I thought you should know.”