The memory fades as the situation scratches back into my mind. Perhaps new snow has covered up our trail by now. Maybe, maybe not. But at any rate, we have got to go. I can’t risk it. The soldiers could be at the front door searching for immunes. The memory of the soldier saying that some of the immunes are so much more will not leave me. That thought is eating me up. More than what, more than just immune? Are we carriers? His voice echoes through me ‘they’re more than that, so much more’. It is like he is saying it now, whispering it into my ear. I hear him anew, and with this new hearing I seem to detect a hint of intrigue in his voice, and a hint of fear, a hint of wonder even. Why am I only hearing this now? Why didn’t I hear it then? What does it mean? Is that why they are so desperate to find us, not just because we are immune but because we might be more? God knows. All I know is that we absolutely have to leave as soon as we can. I sit up, rub my eyes and look around the room. It was obviously a couple’s bedroom. I glance at a painting on the wall. Art from the lost world.
“Izzy,” Olly says. “Why are you crying?”
I didn’t realise that I was. I touch my face. It feels wet. I wipe the tears away.
“I’m not crying baby, I just yawned, see.” I do an over exaggerated yawn. “Yeah.”
He laughs and copies me. We both yawn over and over.
“Do you want to see what’s hidden inside this house for breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
eight
A metallic crash booms somewhere outside. Both our heads whip towards the window. My stomach drops to the floor. I want to puke. The noise is faint but monstrous. Far away yet inside our heads.
“No, not yet,” I whisper as the haunting sound of metal grinding on metal eats into the house. “Not yet.” I shake my head
I stare at Olly. He stares back.
“We have to go.”
He nods and drops the toys he found on the floor. I grab my overladen rucksack and force it back over my sore shoulders. Olly puts his on too.
“Come on,” I say.
We rush towards the front door. I open it cautiously, cracking it an inch at a time. I listen. The sounds are somewhere in the distance. I peek out. I see no one. I sigh. My shoulders drop. They are not here yet. I step out and into the cold.
“Stop,” Olly cries.
“What is it?”
“The sad, it needs my help.”
“What?”
He runs back into the house and disappears into the front room.
“Olly,” I call, “what’re you doing? We can’t stay here. We have to go.”
“I know,” he calls back. “I’m coming.” His voice sounds strained.
“What’re you doing?”
I step back into the house and down the hallway. Olly emerges in front of me dragging a potted tree.
“It’s sad, we need to take him outside, he needs water.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Oh Olly, why didn’t you say so, of course we’ll take him outside.”
I grab the plant pot and carry it out into the front garden.
“It’ll be OK now,” I say. “Come on, we have to go. Which way? You choose, you’re better at choosing than me.”
Olly grins. Closes his eyes, turns on the spot slowly. I watch on, bemused. His eyes spring open. He points.
“That way,” he says.
Hand in hand we march onwards, threading through the city, passing burnt out buildings, smashed in shops, and bodies in the snow. I no longer care, we will venture anywhere as long as it is away from the soldiers and their trucks and their guns. We pass by the entrance to an underground station. For a moment I contemplate entering until I see the scenes of death within. I shudder and pick up the pace until we pass.
A metal crunching noise suddenly echoes throughout the street. We stop and stare at each other, ears pricked. Which direction has that come from? It screeches again. It’s behind us. We turn. The noise screams again. No, it’s coming from this way. There is another loud metallic noise. It seems to be coming at us from all directions at once.
“There has to be more than one group of them,” I say. “I don’t know what to do? What do you think?”
“I don’t know. Come on, this way. We’ll be OK,” he says.
He starts waking onwards, pulling me after him.
“I’m glad you’re so confident.”
There is a sudden loud explosion. The Earth shakes. The buildings rattle. We drop to the ground beside a car and cover our heads with our hands. We wait. There is another explosion, somewhere else. Gas is exploding along the line. It could get worse. I pull Olly close to me, I hug him tightly. Everything goes eerily quiet. I can almost hear the burning. I can almost feel the heat. We huddle together and wait and listen. Waiting and listening appears to be all we are doing at the moment. Waiting for the noises to tell us which way not to go in. Snow begins to fall. Slowly at first. Then I realise. It’s not snow. It’s ash. Grey snow. Grey world. Grey prospects. The old world is disintegrating. I want to cry. What are we doing? The world has died and still we live. I feel as if we are being tortured. I hug Olly tighter.
“Don’t worry Izzy,” he says, to comfort me. “Everything will be OK.”
“I know, baby,” I say.
“Come on,” he says, “we need to go, don’t we.”
We head onwards, strong together, strong hand in hand, putting one foot in front of the other and repeating the process. But to where? Where are we supposed to go? I have no idea where we are, let alone which way to go. We are supposed to be heading North. But I haven’t got a clue. I need something to help me, a map, a compass, anything. The sounds of the soldiers are suddenly all around.
“No,” I mutter, stopping.
Olly keeps tugging me onwards, “we mustn’t stop now Izzy,” he says.
I follow without hesitation, even though I’m not sure whether or not we are moving away from the soldiers or towards them. One minute they sound very, very close. The next they seem somewhere far in the distance. None of this deters my brother. He is without fear. We walk around corner after corner. Olly knows where he is going. Like he has some secret knowledge, like he was a taxi driver in a previous life. The ominous sounds of the soldiers grow close again. Then they fade away. They are far. Then silence. Our feet crunching down into the snow and ash, is all I am aware of. And the cold. The deep cold. It happens again. The pistons, the grinding. I’m absolutely sure they are around the next corner. The tomb-like city seems to be sucking in the sound of metal on metal and reverberating it back out in waves. The city is busy storing the sounds, for its memory. It seems to know it is confusing us. Confusing me. It seems to like it. Yet, there is hope. I am being shown the way. We crunch onwards. Olly stops abruptly. They are close, definitely this time. I put my finger to my lips. I think about disappearing into the nearest house. No. I can’t. There is something calling out to me, something from within telling me not to, telling me it would be even worse in there. I think about hiding inside one of the cars, but the bodies, even though they’re frozen, I can’t bear it. Olly wouldn’t be able to bear it. We crouch and listen. We tentatively step onwards.
What the Hell? We have found ourselves at the corner of a town square. Olly grins. Why? He really puzzles me. The soldiers are congregating here.
“Quick,” I whisper as I drag Olly away.
We dive behind a hedge at the front of a house on the road back from the square. I fall into the corner and sit on the snow. I sigh long and hard, why me? I pull Olly onto my lap. We hug.
“What are we going to do now then, ay?” I exhale.
“Just wait,” Olly says.
“Just wait,” I repeat, sighing.
I shake my head. I need to know what’s going on. I turn and swipe some of the leaves out of the way. From here I have a pretty good view down the road and into the square. The soldiers are entering and exiting the square from the road, way over the other side. This side is pretty much deserted. They swarm about as a collective, talki
ng to each other, carrying things, dragging things, signing at each other. They are building something up in the square… a huge pyramid of... of… Oh, shit. It can’t be. A paralyzing freeze travels along my veins. How could we have walked straight into the hornets’ nest? I slip back down into the corner slowly. My body feels hollow. This is the worst thing that could possibly have happened. I feel sick. I hold it down. We were supposed to be heading away from them. The exhaust breath of a truck travels into my ears. It is like a dragon. No. Not now. Oh God. I drop my face into my hands and shake my head.
“What’s wrong?” Olly says.
“I can’t do this.”
“What is it?” he asks. “Izzy, Izzy.”
He shakes my arm. I need to sort myself out. Stop being such a weakling. I bite my tongue. Man up for God’s sake, man the fuck up. I listen to the truck bombard its way into the square. It stops. I want to know. I have to know. I kneel back up and stare at the digger transferring the bodies from the trailer onto the pyramid. God, even though it’s freezing, I can smell the rot and decay from here. I am captivated and horrified.
Come on Izzy, I tell myself. Think of something. Think, God damn it. I scan the area. There are shops, restaurants, B&B’s, houses and cafes in the square. We have come here for a reason. Olly guided us here. I have to believe it. I stare at the buildings.
“What do all the big red kisses mean?” Olly says.
How did I not notice those before, “er… I don’t know?”
I stare at the crosses. I squint further into the distance, into the road beyond. The houses over there are all marked too. I glance around at the buildings on this side. No crosses. I sit back down in the corner.
“What is it?” Olly asks.
It suddenly hits me.
“You little genius,” I say and give him a big kiss. I kneel back up, “can you see all the houses with kisses have smashed in doors?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, um… I think that means all the houses have been raided.”
“What does raided mean?”
“Erm… it means that the soldiers have already been inside them and taken everything they want.”
“Raided, raided,” he repeats over and over.
“You like that word don’t you.”
“Yes… raided.”
“If these houses haven’t, we can’t say here,” I say thinking out loud.
“Uh-uh.” He shakes his head
“Maybe, then, just maybe,” I say, tapping my lip with my finger, “we could go and hide inside one of those buildings. They wouldn’t raid it twice now would they.”
“Yeah. Let’s go,” Olly says.
“I mean, why would they bother raiding a property twice? They wouldn’t, would they?”
“No. I want to go now, I’m tired.”
“Not yet, I need to think.”
Yeah, the closer we are to them, the less likely it is that they will find us. There is some logic in that. I know there is. Definitely. As the realisation flows through me, I feel as if I am being boosted. The darkness is fading. I want us to go for one of the houses in the square. We need to be able to see the soldiers. We need to be careful, though. We watch. We wait. We are silent. We are vigilant.
nine
“Ready,” I ask Olly as nightfall begins creeping over the city.
He nods, his eyes glinting. Courage fills me.
“Run, quietly,” I whisper. “Keep down though, OK?”
“OK.”
We rush across the road crunching into the snow, towards the entrance of a narrow footpath hiding between the buildings. A little piece of luck. We stop at the opening and peer down it. No one appears to be on the other side. I put my finger to my lips.
“Ssssh.”
We venture into the void, keeping in the shadows, brushing up against the wall, treading into the unbroken snow concealed within the threadlike path. The soldiers probably haven’t even noticed it yet. We tiptoe silently until we reach the end. There is a silver, leafless tree just in front of the path, on the edge of the square. It is obscuring their view. I sigh. I smile. I look up to the Heavens. We have cover. I stare beyond its trunk and at the soldiers. They are busy ushering another tractor into the square. It is hauling another trailer of bodies. We both stare for a moment, before we shudder in unison. The whole world seems to shudder with us, including the tree. Snow falls from its branches on to our heads. I brush it off and almost laugh out loud. I kneel down and kiss Olly on the cheek.
“It’s going to be OK, remember?” I tell him. “We can do this.”
He smiles widely and grips my hand. I hold my breath. I squeeze my eyes shut. I ball my free hand up into a fist. Go, go, go. Now or never. Now or never. Go. My eyes spring open. We creep out of the pathway and slide along the wall. My heart is racing, my skin is burning, I drag Olly with me. He is much braver than me. He was born ready for the adventure. I stare at the soldiers in the lingering light of the day, praying, hoping they don’t turn around from their gruesome task. Praying they do not see us. We slip inside the first building. It’s a coffee shop. The door has been smashed in, and is laying on the ground. We rush inside and duck down below the window ledge. We made it. Yay. I sigh long and hard. Then I giggle. Olly is grinning too. Everything is going to be OK, just like he told me, just like he knew. He really is so much more. But what would they know about it.
Now for the next step. Inside the shop, everything has been destroyed. The windows are smashed in, cutlery has been thrown all over the place, plates and cups are smashed up, broken into a thousand tiny pieces. Shit.
“Watch out for all broken stuff on the floor, we must be quiet,” I whisper. “If they hear us.” I look beyond him and out to the soldiers who are now busy lighting lanterns on sticks. “We’ve had it. OK?”
I hold my breath. Together we stand.
“Follow my footsteps,” I say.
“OK.”
We sneak into the shop, deeper and deeper, eyes scanning for a safe path through the minefield. I hold my breath and tiptoe silently. Olly follows my lead. Inch by inch we venture in until we pass the counter and reach the back. I drag Olly up the stairs and into the room at the front, the staff room. We sit silently at the table and catch our breath. I look around the room. There is a sink with a lino flooring area in front of it. The rest of the room is carpeted. In the still dimming light, I can’t quite tell what colour it is. Everything seems grey. In the wall, there are cupboards and wardrobes. The windows are intact, and one of the curtains has been pulled to the middle. The best of both worlds. I lean back into the chair, stretch my arms out and yawn. It could definitely be worse. In the last light of the day, I unroll the groundsheet in the corner beside the closed curtain and lay the sleeping bag on top of it. I find some coats and blankets in the wardrobe, which I layer on top.
I sit in front of the window and watch the soldiers while sipping from our last bottle of water. I am mesmerised by the soldiers. I watch on in morbid fascination as they pile more and more bodies up on top of each other in the centre of the square. Some of the soldiers are lighting more lanterns. Olly plants himself down on my knees. He wants to know what’s going on out there too. I can’t stop him from seeing. I can’t shut the curtain anyway, even if I wanted to. Besides, he’s only interested in the flames of the lanterns. He is staring at the beautiful oranges, yellows and reds bleeding into the night, and so am I, it is fascinating. I give him the bottle of water to finish.
The soldiers begin lighting fires in old oil barrels, they are dotted strategically around the square, creating paths. I realise they are rudimentary street lights. It actually looks quite peaceful, as if they are about to start singing songs around the campfire, ready to ask for a penny for the guy. Sweet lingering memories. That’s until I remember that the bonfire is a pile of corpses, the ultimate cremation. I bite my tongue and tear my eyes away from the scene. I glance down at Olly. He is peaceful. I stroke his head until he falls asleep on my lap, then I lay him
inside the sleeping bag.
How many more bodies can they pile up on top of each other? In the firelight I can just about make out the individual bloated and grey copses of what used to be mums, dads, teachers, doctors, security guards, shop assistants, office workers, waiters, financiers, solicitors, they are all equal now, I laugh despite myself, none are more equal than the other. And still they layer more bodies up on to their never-ending pyramid of death. It is climbing up and up, into the sky, a perverse stairway to heaven. Tractors shovel bodies from the trailers. The mechanical sound of the tractors bucket going down and hitting the trailer as it moves forward, slowly, screeching on the metal makes my teeth hurt. I shiver and block my ears. Soldiers are shovelling as many bodies as they can possibly get into the bucket. It screeches back. It lifts up in jerky movements. A leg has been seared off, it hangs by a thread, swinging to and fro as the bucket moves over towards the pile. I can hear the soldiers laughing. Then it falls on to the pavement. They laugh some more. My mouth hangs open. I can’t scream, I can’t look away. A soldier walks toward the leg, picks it up and chucks it onto the pile. What if that was someone I know? Knew? What if it was my Father? Would I run out there? Would I do anything at all? I am being haunted. The darkness is beginning to tighten around my neck once more. Will it ever let me go? I am forgetting myself. I am forgetting my life before the virus. I shouldn’t be watching this. I shouldn’t be here. This world was not meant for me. But here I am, and keep watching I do. I want to know what will happen next. I am hooked.
As I watch, I begin discerning the features of some of the many, many faces in the firelight. All of these anonymous faces bleeding out their last little bit of existence, lost into the eternal nothingness of their new reality. They are forever gone now, already forgotten. Who is left here to remember them? No one, no one at all. It’s like they never existed to begin with. No bloodline left to recall them. And somewhere, decaying alongside all the nameless dead, is my Mother and Father, my school friends, Olly’s friends, everyone I have ever known in the city is now dead and unceremoniously dumped here for end times. I begin to cry. The true scale of the horror is only just starting to assault me. I am being beaten. I have been so caught up in the death of my parents and my misery that I hadn’t spared much of a thought for anyone else, not really. I rub my face in my hands. All that life, so pointless, so fruitless. I cry silently, so as not to wake Olly. I do not want him to feel any of this negativity.
Tears of Blood Page 6