Flu

by Wayne Simmons

  George came running out of the living room, just as they reached the front door.

  "What the hell?!" the cop began.

  "He's leaving," Lark said, abruptly.

  "What do you mean?" George said, his eyes heavy and hair ruffled, as if he were still waking up.

  "He fucking tried -" Lark began, before checking himself. "Listen, he's not who he says he is He's a liar. He's lied to us all."

  "Wait," George said, putting his hand on the door to stop Lark from opening it. "What do you mean? What's going -"

  But Lark pulled the revolver from his jeans, pointing it confidently at George.

  "Move away from the door," he said, his voice shaking with anger. "Move away now, or I swear I will kill you "

  George moved away immediately, sensing Lark's anger. He was out of control. More unpredictable than ever.

  Lark opened the door, immediately catching sight of the faces of several of the dead.

  "P-please," Paddy said, blood seeping from his mouth and nose.

  "Shut up," Lark said, lifting him and throwing him out the door. He slammed the door behind him, watching through the glass as the panicked survivor picked himself, quickly, from the ground.

  "You better be able to explain yourself," George said, his voice almost shaking with shock at what he'd just witnessed.

  But both men turned to see Geri looking down the stairs, wrapped up tightly in a long dressing gown. She was shivering, as if having just got out of the shower.

  "He tried to attack me," she said, flatly. "If it wasn't for Lark-"

  George stared at her as if she had two heads. He looked at Lark whose own head was bowed, as if ashamed. As if the attack was a slight not only against the attacker, but him, too.

  Geri came down the stairs. She looked out the glass pane in the door. A cry erupted from outside. She continued to stare, unflinching. Lark moved his arm to gently lead her away from the view, but she remained where she was.

  "I want to see this," she said. "I need to see this."

  Lark handed George the revolver. The two men stood, quietly, respectfully, as Geri watched the dead tear her attacker apart.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "How many of them are there?"

  It was Geri asking the question. George was looking out the living room window, full riot gear donned and rifle by his side.

  "Six," he replied. "Fairly well spaced out." He turned to address the others, Geri and Lark in front of him, Norman eagerly standing by the front door. "Norman, you go first. Clear the way. You two follow only when it's safe to do so, when Norman has the back of the Land Rover open."

  Lark exhaled, heavily.

  "Deja-fucking-vu," he said to Geri, but she heartily ignored him.

  Norman was out the door in seconds, his heavy frame moving with surprising agility. He raised his rifle, taking out the first of the dead quickly and quietly, a flash of the muzzle being the only sign of his approach. He moved around the perimeter of the vehicle, taking others out with similar ease.

  George waited until he saw Norman open the back of the Land Rover, only then patting Lark and Geri on the back.

  "Go now," he whispered.

  As Lark ran, he noticed several of the dead crowding around a mangled corpse on the ground, feeding. He could make out the coat belonging to Paddy, but nothing else looked like him. In fact, nothing else gave away any clues that the carcass on the ground was human. It could have been any freshly-slain meat lying there.

  Lark tried to take his eyes away from the scene as he moved towards the vehicle. Geri didn't seem interested at all. She was limping a little, perhaps still recovering from her torn foot on the first day they had met. Lark turned to help her into the Land Rover as Norman kept them covered. George moved next, nodding to McFall as he left, the door to the house slamming, loudly and uncouthly.

  "Fucking tit couldn't just close the door," Lark mumbled under his breath, "Has to fucking bang it, let everyone and everything know we're here "

  But Geri said nothing. She was lost in a thousand- yard stare that seemed to speak buckets of what she had experienced the previous night. Lark didn't know what to say. He was good at using his fists, his feet, but not so good when it came to using his mouth.

  George moved towards the front of the Land Rover, clambering in without incident. Lark could hear him shutting the door, but could see only the back of his head from the rear of the vehicle. He was fairly familiar with the set up of these Land Rovers. Pretty much similar to the ones he'd got more than a few drunken trips to the slammer in, after one drunken brawl too many outside the pub. Halcyon days, he thought to himself.

  Soon, the Land Rover was kicking into action, moving fairly speedily onto the main Lisburn Road. They were heading towards the Ml motorway and the nearest available warehousing, just south of Belfast. The journey was fairly uneventful, Lark almost being lulled to sleep such was his level of exhaustion. He realised he hadn't really slept for the last few days. He had developed a kind of insomnia, it seemed. A tiredness that could never become sleep, always seeming to float around his mind, just beyond reach of sleep. Like something important that he had forgotten to do.

  Geri sat facing him, head in her hands. Her red locks fell through her fingers like spaghetti. She was beautiful, and he suddenly realised he was falling in love with her, despite her absolute and obvious hatred of him. Despite the ridiculousness of falling in love in a world like this. But that was always the way with Lark. He seemed to always go for the hard-to-get types, in the hard-to-reach places, at the wrong times. Which, for a no-mark like him, meant pretty much all of womankind. Or the sane ones, at the very least.

  Finally, they reached their destination. Being somewhat out of the way, they didn't expect much trouble. But George shouted into the back, advising them to stay put until he and Norman checked things out, first. A few minutes later, the back of the Land Rover opened, George standing with his riot gear intact and rifle by his side. He didn't seem too stressed, which was a good sign.

  "Warehouse is clear," he said. "Plus, it's completely untouched. Good call, Norman," he said, smiling and patting his colleague on the back.

  George took the lead, HK33 rifle ever at the ready, with Norman at the rear, as the survivors all moved towards the nearby warehouse. For Lark, someone who'd been on the streets since it all went down, moving from place to place, it was weird to see somewhere so untouched. In the city centre, pretty much every shop had been raided. Debris and waste littered the streets. Stalled cars sat jagged-edged along every road, some with infected bodies inside, resurrected but unable to climb out. But here, approaching the warehouse, it seemed to be literally spotless.

  It got Lark to thinking that the flu may not have spread everywhere. The people on the TV said it was airborne, and even Lark knew that was bad news. But who's to say it ever reached any other countries? With the UK and Ireland getting closed down pretty quickly, no one could be sure exactly what was happening anywhere else. Early signs suggested it hadn't moved through Europe, or across to the USA, but when the TV switched to Emergency Broadcast, and the phone lines failed, there really was no way of telling. Even the internet stopped working after a while, when the communications companies broke down. And that was definitely a bad sign.

  "Through that door," pointed George, rifle still at the ready. "That's where I saw most of the stuff we need."

  "How much is in there?" Geri asked.

  George smiled in reply. "A lot," he said.

  Lark opened the wooden door into the main warehouse building. His eyes lit up when he saw the full reality of what lay in store for them. A storeroom the size of a football pitch, stacked to the rafters with various colours of cardboard boxes, full of all types of things. This place must have supplied most of the major supermarkets; all the usual suspects, when it came to tinned foods and pretty much everything else, was present and accounted for.

  "What's that smell?" Geri asked, seemingly only slightly impressed.

&nbs
p; "Probably the dairy and meat locker," George said, pointing to a metal door in the corner of the store. "I'm guessing that's where the refrigerated and frozen goods were kept." A damp patch surrounded the metal door, suggesting the cooler had defrosted.

  "Okay," Norman said, from the back of the group. "Let's load up as much as we can."

  Geri found the task of helping out to be therapeutic, distracting her from the foul reality of what had happened to her earlier. She was determined not to let that experience beat her, overwhelm her. She was stronger than that, better than that. And there was no time for wallowing or reflecting on what it all meant. It was best to think that it simply meant nothing. And, for all intents and purposes it did mean nothing. He meant nothing. A stranger she never really knew, nor would know. Unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

  The priority, now, was to secure as many bottles of water and canned goods as possible. Of course, Geri couldn't help but pilfer a few things for herself, as well. 'Womanly essentials', as she referred to the items she shoved into her own shoulder bag, and that seemed to be enough to stop the gents from prying any further. Once done collecting her 'womanly essentials', Geri helped load up the less heavy boxes into the Land Rover. They say that many hands make light work, but Geri thought it had probably more to do with the limited space they had in the back of the Land Rover. It filled up pretty quickly.

  "Weren't we thinking of taking another van?" she said to George and the others, pausing to crack open a can of Coke which she'd liberated.

  Norman looked around, seeming to recall the plan but having since forgotten about it. His eye went to a nearby white van, parked by the corrugated door of a nearby smaller warehouse.

  "That one could do the trick," he said, pointing, then proceeding to move towards the vehicle.

  "Careful," warned George.

  "It'll be okay," shrugged Norman as he strolled over. "This place is deserted."

  As the others watched, nervously, the big man searched the vehicle for any signs of life. He reached for the handle of the van's door, looking surprised as he found it to be open. Geri started to get nervous, wishing she hadn't reminded them of the plan. Norman jumped up into the front cab of the van, poking his head in and having a good root about. He appeared, shrugging, hands in the air.

  "Nothing here," he shouted over. "I'll check the back and see how much stuff is loaded up."

  He proceeded around to the back of the vehicle, out of sight of the others. Lark, bored of watching, returned back to the task at hand, loading the last of the boxes that would fit into the Land Rover. Geri was about to follow suit when a sudden shout startled her.

  "What is it?" she said, turning to George.

  George didn't answer, instead dropping his box and running towards the van as fast as he could. Geri followed, Lark calling after her but remaining where he was. She reached the van just as Norman stumbled out of the back of it, holding his hand. It appeared to be wounded, bloodied. His teeth were clenched as he looked up at the two other survivors approaching.

  "You okay?" George asked him, drawing his own hand gun from its side holster.

  A dead man wearing company uniform emerged from the vehicle, stumbling towards Norman.

  "The bastard fucking bit me!" Norman spat, still holding his hand.

  George wasted no time at all, offloading two shots into the thing's head from his HK. It fell, nothing but a scarlet stump remaining where its head had been. The thing jittered on the ground pathetically, a hoarse rasp of gas escaping from its gore-stained corpse as it seemed to 'die' again. This time for good.

  "Let me see that," George said, walking towards his colleague to examine the wound. But Geri backed away. She knew whatever was going to come from the wound couldn't be good.

  She ran back towards Lark, still rooted to the same spot he had been in before.

  "What's going on?" he asked, innocently.

  "He was bitten," she said, "by one of those things."

  "Jesus," Lark said, rubbing the stubble on his head. "He's fucked."

  "Maybe we can quarantine him, see what -" Geri started.

  "You KNOW what will happen," Lark interrupted. "And with the other cop messing around with the wound, there's a good chance he'll go the same way as well."

  Geri looked at the other survivor, wondering if his very obvious discomfort with the cops was colouring his thinking on this whole thing. It was an easy way to wash his hands of them, be done with them once and for all. But he didn't seem to be taking pleasure in it. In fact, quite the opposite seemed true. It also didn't help that deep down she knew he was right in what he was saying.

  "What would you have done if I had started to show symptoms when you had me locked in the patio?" she said suddenly, not quite sure why she wanted to know. Maybe it was to try and put herself in the same position as the cops.

  Lark just looked at her. His face said it all.

  "Fuck," said Geri.

  "We have to leave," he said, quietly. "Now." He quickly closed the back of the Land Rover, moving around to the front. Geri climbed into the passenger seat. Lark looked like he was about to follow her, until he seemed to think of something else.

  "What's wrong?" Geri asked, impatiently.

  "They'll follow us. In the other van," he said.

  Geri looked out to the scene, noticing George and Norman still fussing over the wound. They didn't seem to know what they were planning.

  "Wait one second," Lark said, grabbing the other rifle from the Land Rover.

  "Wait! What are doing?" she shouted after him. For a moment, she thought he was going to shoot them. He walked halfway towards the van, rifle in his hands. He aimed, but instead of firing in the direction of the two men, he fired a volley of silenced shots at the van itself, taking out the front wheels and windscreen. She watched George and Norman jump at the noise of the breaking glass and blown out tyres.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" one of them shouted at Lark. In response, Lark aimed the rifle at them, both cops immediately hitting the ground. Lark fired, anyway, his bullets striking the corrugated fronted door of the smaller warehouse. He hurried back to the Land Rover, still watching the two cops, while gesturing to Geri to fire up the engines.

  Geri did as she was told, shuffling over to the driver's seat and turning the ignition.

  "Fuck, you could have killed them!" she said as Lark jumped into the passenger seat beside her.

  "Just go!" he said, throwing the rifle into the back, staring at the two cops.

  George was on his feet as Geri was kicking the Land Rover into reverse gear. She could see him through the windscreen, making out a baffled expression on his face, as if he couldn't believe what was happening. She hoped to God that he wouldn't look hurt or disappointed. She couldn't bear seeing that look draw across his face. Geri turned her head to reverse, and in doing so, betrayed George as brutally as was possible.

  "Shit!" she shouted, in frustration, banging a hand on the dashboard of the vehicle.

  "Go, go, go!" Lark was screaming in her ear.

  She turned the vehicle, quickly, changing gears with one hand, before pressing her foot hard against the accelerator. The Land Rover sped out of range, allowing Geri and Lark to look up, again.

  "I can't believe we just did that," she said, shaking her head.

  But Lark said nothing, his eyes glued to the wing mirror as they pulled further away.

  Geri stuck to the main roads as much as possible for the short journey back to Belfast centre. There were fewer of the dead there. For some reason, and she feared she knew just what that reason was, they were sticking to the more densely populated areas.

  Or the areas that used to be more densely populated.

  The walls along the road were almost uniformly covered in 'flu' posters. Advice of what to do in the event of contracting the virus. Phone numbers to call and emergency helplines. Pictures of beautiful young women wearing headsets and smiling, as if they would enjoy talking to you about you
r death plague. They were the early warning signs, of course. The huge, hastily painted slogan 'Stay away, diseased bastards' hammered out more recent thinking on the infected.

  Geri wondered just how many people were left now. She recalled Paddy's story of the rescue camps. How much of his story she could trust, she would never know. She remembered how some of her friends had tried to find out more about the camps, gathering at designated areas as prescribed by the Emergency Broadcast. But it all seemed just a little too wartime, for Geri. And she wasn't the countryside type, anyway. She was a city girl, born and bred.

  Just as well, really.

  Now, of course, the city seemed as still and barren as the countryside. Concrete jungles without any monkeys. Blocks of cement and red brick, poised against the skyline like dirty pieces of Lego. Belfast was the land of the dead, pockets of the fuckers constantly wandering the streets, as if having lost their keys. Stupid shadows of their former selves.

  Or so she thought.

  "Jesus," Lark said. "Check that out "

  Geri followed his gaze, slowing down a little to take in the scene. A pack of dead fucks were pacing, awkwardly, closing in on a single male. The poor bastard was hemmed in, and the dead seemed to be working together to keep him that way. They stumbled around, menacingly, like a gang of drunken sailors from some old movie. Their prey was panicking. Looking for a way past them, but they closed ranks wherever he found a spot, trapping him against a wall, closing in for the kill.

  It was the first time that Geri had seen them working together. They normally acted randomly, passionately and selfishly. Now, it seemed as if they were following some kind of pack mentality in order to trap this poor bastard, hem him in.

  "Keep driving," Lark said, glaring at her as she slowed the Land Rover. "There's nothing we can do for him. He's fucked."

  "We're all fucked," she whispered, pressing her foot against the accelerator and moving on before the scene reached its inevitable conclusion.

  A few short miles from the house, Geri looked at the fuel gauge.