The Undead_Day 22

by R. R. Haywood

  ‘Lani resisted,’ the boy says, the infection says. Not knowing what it means but knowing what it means while knowing everything while not understanding anything while trying to work in the boy’s brain while the boy still occupies his own mind, or parts thereof.

  ‘Lani resisted what?’ Cassie asks.

  The boy looks at Cassie. The infection looks at Cassie. The boy hasn’t a clue what the answer is. The infection does know but it doesn’t know. It can’t answer because the question is too complex and too layered with roots stretching out to all areas of life. Lani resisted what? What is what? What did Lani resist?

  ‘I’m hungry,’ the boy says. ‘I don’t know,’ the infection says.

  ‘What don’t you know?’ Cassie asks. ‘He’s doing it again,’ she says to Gregori with a look the infection knows is an expression of concern.

  ‘He is child, child say things.’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean,’ she says with another sigh. ‘Anyway, so Lani is dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ the boy says, the infection says.

  ‘Dead dead or coming back dead?’

  ‘Deaded,’ the boy says. ‘Her body has been destroyed beyond further use and can no longer sustain life. Lani has ceased to be a host,’ the infection says.

  ‘Right,’ Cassie says slowly, looking from the boy to Gregori.

  A shrug from Gregori. ‘Come, we go.’

  A shrug from Cassie. ‘Come, we go,’ she says with a wink to the boy.

  A shrug from the boy who smiles at the play on words. ‘Come, we go,’ he says, swinging on Cassie’s hand.

  The boy told them that Cookey doesn’t like clowns. He also told them about Paula and Roy and how they ran for miles when it was foggy. Cassie listened, at first feeling like an indulgent parent allowing her child to yack on about nonsense, but then she took notice and became invested when she clocked the continuity of the stories and the way the details were always correct. The names, the things they did. Howie and Dave. Dave is dangerous. Clarence is big. Lani was fast but she’s now dead. Marcy was a host but different but the same but not the same. Reginald was with Marcy but is now with Howie. Reginald was a host but is not a host but is a host.

  The boy drew more pictures in the hotel too, with the infection using the boy to understand, process and filter and know the things it knows. This is Howie. This is Dave. This is them. What is them? What is what? What is the infection?

  Take more hosts. That must be done. That is being done. But there is more. What more? Why is Howie killing it? What is it? A hint of size. A vastness. A thing of many. Many minds. A hive mind. Too many minds to control. What is control?

  One race.

  ‘Jesus,’ Cassie said, after taking a break from shooting guns to look at the pictures the boy drew, the pictures the infection drew. ‘You are a little savant,’ she said, kissing his head. The boy’s head. The words one race written on sheets above drawings of Howie and the people with him. ‘What’s one race?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘There is two but there must be one,’ the infection said.

  Cassie shook her head and blinked.

  ‘Can we do swimming later?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Say that again, about the being two but it should be one…’

  The boy stared at her. The infection stared at her. It knew the answer but it couldn’t verbalise a reply to come from the boy. ‘One race,’ it said instead.

  ‘One race, yay,’ Cassie said, frowning then shrugging then kissing him on the head again. ‘Drink your juice.’

  ‘Seriously, Gregory,’ Cassie says, following him in through the farmhouse door after waiting while he searched for a key, finding one under a rock.

  ‘Is Gregori,’ he says automatically, knowing she only calls him Gregory when she is being annoying.

  ‘Whatever. Listen, no don’t walk off…’

  ‘I check house.’

  ‘You saw what happened. We can’t just ignore it…they’ll follow him wherever he goes…’

  ‘You talk. Is too much. Yack yack…’

  ‘They don’t want to hurt him,’ she follows him from room to room, traipsing behind as Gregori checks every possible hiding place. ‘And you felt it…I know you did…you felt the way they feel about him. They love him…’

  ‘Is things. Is bad things. Not people. Boy need people…’

  ‘The people are bad! Not the things. Look what happened in that street we stayed in…they were bad. Murdering and raping…stealing, making people sleep outside and go hungry….and those men that pinned me down and tried to rape me and the men that came to the hotel…your own people, Gregori and what did they do? Stop walking off and bloody listen!’

  ‘I listen. You say this. You say too much. Boy will be child. Boy need peace and life. Not murder. Not rape. Not die…’

  ‘You’re contradicting yourself! You said murder and rape and death is bad but you said he needs people. People do that. The things don’t. They…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They want to protect him…we would be dead if they didn’t…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh my god you are so stubborn and pig-headed and and…’

  The boy listens, holding Cassie’s hand as they argue and glare and pout and scowl and frown at each other. ‘Need a wee wee, Casseee.’

  ‘What? Oh, right…the bathroom is in there…go on now. Hang on, Gregory we haven’t finished our…’

  ‘IS GREGORI!’

  ‘Don’t you shout at me…’

  The boy goes into the bathroom, looking up at the windowsill and round at the bath and the shower and the things inside. He lifts the toilet seat-cover then thinks to lift the seat but doesn’t bother and tugs his shorts down to start weeing into the bowl, aiming properly before looking around again while listening to Gregori and Cassie shouting loudly as the jet of urine starts hitting everywhere but the bowl. It doesn’t bother him that they shout. He feels loved. He feels very loved.

  ‘Where is boy?’

  ‘See! You don’t listen. If Daudi was here he’d know exactly where he was… oh stop that glaring, he’s only having a wee…’

  ‘NO WEE WEE ON SEAT.’

  ‘Ah shit, I forgot about that…Boy! Wee in the bowl.’

  ‘Okay, Casseeee,’ the boy shouts back, not bothering to aim for the bowl. Lani is dead. What does that mean? Why won’t Howie’s body take the infection. Is it an infection? What is it? It knows, in a way of knowing, where it came from, but it doesn’t know what that means. The infection also knows the secrets of the millions of hosts it controls, but it doesn’t know what they mean.

  Pi is an irrational number of which the decimal representation can never end and will never settle into a permanent repeating pattern and that in terms of numerical expressions it equals 3.14159265359. The infection knows that, but it has no context for the knowledge. No history. Nothing to compare it to.

  ‘Je suis ravi de vous rencontrer,’ the boy says in perfectly spoken French with a distinct Parisian accent. ‘Ah, thank you,’ he replies in German. ‘I am pleased to meet you too,’ he says in Italian. ‘Come, we go,’ he says in Albanian while looking down at the puddles of piss all over the floor and toilet seat. ‘Socrates corrupted the young. He is guilty because he was accused but surely the burden of proof lies on the prosecution and those casting the charge rather than the person accused…’ he reels it off in fluent Greek as he flushes the toilet before tugging his shorts up and running off to follow the voices, finding them in the kitchen having another stand-off.

  ‘Did you wash your hands?’ Cassie asks as he runs in.

  The boy stops to think, not remembering if he did or did not wash his hands. ‘No,’ the infection says, giving the answer.

  ‘Wash your hands,’ Cassie tells him, ‘and good boy for being honest…okay,’ she says, back to talking at Gregori. ‘I understand what you’re saying and yes, he needs to be safe…but what I’m saying is he is safer with them around him…’

  Gregori lifts the
boy to wash his hands at the sink while the infection reflects on the use of honesty and dishonesty in the context of social and interpersonal relationships. What would have happened if it said yes when asked if the boy washed his hands. That would be untrue so why say it? Something untrue is a lie. It is deceit. Is all lying bad? What is the purpose of lying? ‘I did a poo,’ the infection says, the boy says.

  ‘Good boy,’ Cassie says automatically. ‘Well, we’re here now but I’m not happy…seriously, Gregori…you and I will be sitting down later and coming up with a better plan than running about in the countryside…’

  The infection just lied. It said the boy did a poo but the boy did not do a poo, but the boy has, at least once in his life, done a poo which renders the statements as both true and false. False in the context of which it was intended, in trying to suggest that the boy did a poo just now, but true in the actuality of expressing a fact that the boy has indeed, previously, done a poo.

  ‘Can I do drawing?’ the boy asks, looking up at Gregori.

  ‘Yes,’ the man says deeply, staring down.

  The infection stares up then makes the boy look at Cassie. It has Cassie. It is within her but is dormant. It does not control her mind but rather only works to dump chemicals in response to base emotional reactions. Cassie loves the boy. Cassie will always protect the boy. The boy is small and weak. He is unable to do many things. Cassie can do many things. The infection does not know how it can be dormant with Cassie, nor does it know why it cannot go in Gregori. The infection determines that Gregori is the same as Howie and cannot be made into a host, but the infection also knows Gregori loves the boy and will, and has, done anything to protect the boy. ‘Gregoreee, do you put your penis in Cassee’s vagina?’

  An abrupt end to the argument. A shocked silence. ‘We no do this,’ Gregori says with just a hint of uncertainty.

  ‘Well…we almost did,’ Cassie says quietly with a growing smile and the boy watches them staring at each other.

  ‘Natural human reproduction occurs when a man and a woman engage in sexual intercourse during which the interactions between the male and the female results in the fertilisation of the woman’s ovum by the man’s sperm…’ the boy says, the infection says.

  Cassie pulls her head back, showing distaste as she looks from Gregori to the boy. ‘Ewww, bit gross…ruined the moment there.’

  ‘I not know what said,’ Gregori says, staring at the boy while kind of knowing what the boy said while choosing to pretend that he didn’t understand it.

  ‘And anyway, that makes my point because that is not a normal thing for a boy of his age to say…how old is he anyway?’ Cassie asks.

  ‘I not know.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Cassie asks the boy.

  ‘Come, we go,’ the boy says deeply.

  ‘We don’t even know how old he is…and we’re still calling him Boy…that’s bad. We’re awful parents, Gregori.’

  ‘We not this thing.’

  ‘Er, I think you’ll find we pretty much are now my love. Not biological no, but certainly I think we’d be defined as foster or even adoptive parents…anyway, stop changing the subject. We’re not staying here for long…’

  The day goes on. The boy interacting with the world around him as a child should, dancing with Cassie when she rigs up one of the music players she charged in the car. Singing happily while she hip bumps Gregori, trying to make him smile and lose his hard-faced manner while inside the boy’s mind he knows that Howie and all of those are running in the rain. A horse is there too. A man called Neal on the horse. Howie’s team are separated but some are going to the sports academy where the under 21 England hockey team are holding trials. It knows this because the infection has the minds of local workers and residents and the boy dances and eats and plays while the fights and battles go on.

  ‘Jimmy Carr shit on Howie’s chin…’

  ‘Don’t say shit,’ Cassie responds, clattering about with pots and pans in the kitchen at the gas-stove.

  The infection sends more resources, but they fight back. It knows some of the young men from Howie’s team are in the sports academy now, so it will attack them to divide Howie’s numbers and cut them down.

  It will attack and attack. More. Send more. Do more. It dumps chemicals into hosts. Pumping them wild and crazed but still it’s not enough and the boy grows still, his face hardening, his eyes growing cold and distant as the battle comes to a close and the one remaining host it has inside the lobby of the sports academy stands tall to stare at Howie and the dog stalking towards it.

  The boy can see them. The infection can see them. All of them. It is there but here. The boy is there but here and the reactions felt by the infection go into the boy. Organic and natural but twisted and wrong then Howie moves, and the host is gripped and held, staring into those awful dark eyes of the man.

  ‘He is coming,’ the infection tells Howie. The boy watches, listening, his body tensing. Cassie turns from the stove, having heard the words and startling on sight of the boy standing on the kitchen table with a face of pure anger.

  ‘Bring him,’ Howie snaps the words out, goading, provoking, powerful. Invoking a surge of rage within the boy.

  ‘One race,’ the host tells Howie, the boy tells the kitchen, growling the words out in a voice not his own as Gregori walks in to stop and watch, sharing a glance with Cassie.

  ‘MY RACE,’ Howie screams. ‘And we win this day…’ the infection feels the power as the host drops and the jaws of the dog clamp to rag and kill as the boy bursts into tears and flings himself into Cassie’s arms scooping him off the table.

  Half an hour later the boy eats his dinner, chatting happily and normally, all thought of Howie gone from his mind, but his mind filled with thoughts of Howie. Not his mind, the parts of his mind the infection has but the infection has all of his mind.

  Why is Howie killing it? What for? There can only be one race. It is logic. The infection is pure. It is not flawed as people are. They feel pain. The infection does not. They have diseases and broken cells within their bodies that allow things to hurt them. The infection does not. The infection is the body. It is the mind. It is every single cell. It is all those things. It cures. It heals. It prevents death and it takes what the body has and makes it better. The infection is the true state of being.

  ‘Time for bed little man,’ Cassie says hefting the boy up to carry up to the bathroom.

  The infection watches as Cassie prepares the boy for sleep. The infection does not need sleep in the way people do. Their bodies are wasteful. The infection fixes that. It is the true state of being. It takes less and makes more. It uses less and provides better.

  ‘Wow, you are sleepy aren’t you,’ Cassie says, watching the boy yawn as she lies him down in a soft bed. ‘Sweet dreams,’ she kisses his head and waits quietly at his side, stroking the boy’s face and cheeks as he drifts down to sleep while the infection inside seeks to learn to evolve to survive to achieve dominance.

  Cassie moves quietly back from the sleeping child, pausing at the door to smile at him sleeping. She goes into the bathroom, brushes her teeth and showers in cold water, washing her hair and lathering her body. Shaving her legs and armpits then drying off on a towel bought and stocked here by people she will never know. The day is late already. The boy stayed up longer than he should and outside the darkness is already coming down.

  In the kitchen, she fixes black tea at the stove. A towel wrapped around her body. Gregori at the table behind her stripping guns to clean. Silence between them, awkward and heavy but he steals glances at her legs and quickly looks away when she turns to carry the mugs over and sits down opposite him.

  ‘Tea,’ she says, nodding at his mug.

  He nods back, grunting a reply. ‘He sleep?’

  ‘Yep.’

  His deft movements become absorbing. The fluidity of him and the long years of doing these same tasks show with his sublime proficiency.

  ‘Can we talk?’ she final
ly asks, her tea now nearly all gone.

  He doesn’t reply but pauses to drink then carries on working, clunking and clicking the gun back together.

  ‘We’re going to wake up tomorrow and they’ll be near here…’ she cuts off when he blasts irritation from his nose and the clunks and clicks get louder. ‘They’ll run all night, Gregori…’ he slides the top back several times, listening to the action. ‘We cannot just keep ignoring it…’ he aims off, dry firing a few times before pushing the loaded magazine in, clunking and clicking then a thud as he finally puts the pistol down and lifts his mug, draining the tea. ‘What about tomorrow night? What about the night after that? Just keep moving house every day? It makes no difference…they know where he is…where are you going?’ she asks when he stands up.

  ‘Bed.’

  Another huff and she follows, mounting the stairs behind him. ‘Gregory…’ she whispers. He pauses on the top step, his hand gripping the bannister. No words or movement but his aura expresses displeasure. ‘We cannot just keep running…’

  A grunt and he moves into the bathroom but she slips through the door before he can close it, earning another glare that she ignores.

  ‘And anyway, what are we running from? It’s not like we need to fear anything…’ she whispers as he brushes his teeth at the sink. Watching him with her arms folded. ‘It’s like we’re scared of something and excuse me for being blunt, but you’re not scared of anything in this world, Gregory…’

  ‘Is Gregori,’ he growls, bending to spit before rinsing his mouth.

  ‘So why are we running? What from?’

  He pulls his top off, glowering while holding it out for her to take as his fingers grip the buttons of his jeans. ‘Leave,’ he grunts, nodding at the door. ‘I shower.’

  ‘I’m not leaving. We need to talk about this…’

  ‘I shower.’

  ‘Shower then,’ she retorts as he reaches out to grip her shoulders, physically turning her around. ‘Why won’t you discuss it?’

  ‘I discuss.’