The Rot (Post Apocalyptic Thriller)

by Paul Kane

  “I have no idea,” was the answer this woman gave me. “I just found you here… I’ve been gone nearly a day.” Her raven hair was in a bob, eyes so big and round they took up most of her face – overwhelming those other delicate features. She was dressed not that dissimilarly to the guards at the facility, a kind of tracksuit or jumpsuit, but with a jacket over the top. A strap ran over her left shoulder, down through the valley of her breasts, and round past her right hip – holding up some kind of messenger bag that was dangling down behind her. The whole outfit was topped off with a pair of leather boots that came to her knees and were covered in mud and slime.

  “Gone?” I asked, shaking my head. I wasn’t fazed by the fact she was talking to me, making sense. But I was looking for signs of the Rot on her face and hands, not that they were always evident there; could have been under her clothes for all I knew, right the way up her back. Could turn any second and just shoot me in the head. Even now, those parts of the brain that made her her might be getting eaten way.

  “Yes,” she said curtly, still training the bolt on me. “I needed some supplies.”

  I looked around, wondering if I’d been taken somewhere – but no, I was still in the chapel, still surrounded by the saints and the angels. “You… you live here?”

  She frowned at me as though that was on odd thing to ask, then she asked: “What kind of polymer is that?”

  “Come again?”

  “The webbing, your protective suit. Does it incorporate nanites?” Now she was frowning because she was studying the SKIN. She cocked her head and I waited for the change to come over her; for the woman to start screaming or laughing or… She just righted her head again, and said: “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I’m assuming it covers the whole of your body?”

  I just nodded. Didn’t know what else to do.

  “But it’s damaged, right?” She pointed to my thigh with the crossbow and I followed her gaze, the first time I’d thought about the injury since I woke up. Wasn’t hurting anymore at least, so there was that. The material from my sleeve I’d tied around it was still there, so I couldn’t see whether the SKIN was healed or not. I made to remove the bandage and the woman took a step closer, bringing the crossbow up to her shoulder – ensuring I knew she meant business.

  “I said easy,” she snapped.

  “I was just going to… Look, you were the one who asked.”

  She thought about this for a second and nodded. “Go on.”

  I unwrapped the dressing, pulling aside the torn edges of my jeans. The SKIN beneath it had indeed knitted itself back together again. The skin beneath that was on its way to doing the same, but would leave a nasty scar behind. “Fixed,” I said simply, as the woman seemed to respond better to the more direct approach.

  “What happened?” she said then.

  “What do you think? I got attacked,” I informed her. “Actually, I was trying to help this woman who I thought—”

  “Did you get infected?” That was rich, coming from someone who was standing there with no protection whatsoever. Who might be covered in Rot from the neck down for all I knew. But she was waiting for a reply, demanding it without even saying a word. She does that… Can say something to you without even having to open her mouth; could just be how she is or it might be how we’ve come to feel about each…

  Shit, jumping ahead again. Sorry.

  I was going to answer that I didn’t know, because I didn’t. I felt fine, but I’m sure most people do before that change comes on them. Just as this woman might turn at any moment, who was to say I wouldn’t instead? I was pretty sure the SKIN would have detected something by now, though – set off some sort of system-wide alert. Confident enough to shake my head in answer to her question, anyway. “What about you?”

  She just stared at me. “Does it look like I’m infected to you?”

  I shrugged.

  This isn’t painting a very good picture of her, I know, but I’m telling the story warts and all. We didn’t really know each other, were definitely suspicious of one another. And still, given all that, I felt an undeniable attraction.

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it,” I said. “I’ve seen people who looked okay, only for them to go nuts in seconds. The lady I was trying to save back there, she looked fine, but when I got to her…”

  The woman in front of me held up her hand. “Okay, okay. Point taken. But I haven’t got the disease, trust me. I’ve done tests and everything. I… well, I’m immune.”

  “Right.” I said it slowly, without a hint of trust – or sarcasm, though that’s what she heard in my voice.

  “You either believe me or you don’t.”

  “I’d believe it a whole lot more if I could see the rest of you.”

  She shook her head. “Not gonna happen.”

  I think I cracked a smile then and said something stupid like, “Can’t blame a guy for trying, though.” What a charmer, eh?

  But in spite of herself, she smiled back – the crossbow lowering a little. “Here, let me show you something,” she said, then saw me smile again. “Not that.”

  The woman motioned for me to get up, which was a lot harder than it sounded. I was still pretty wobbly, and needed to hang on to the altar to begin with. When I took my first few steps I felt like a toddler again, or doing my physio after the accident, my pinned leg still weak and healing. Just like I had on my way there, I stumbled, about to fall over – but then suddenly she was beside me, holding me upright, putting my arm around her shoulders. Carrying me.

  “De…Decided I’m not dangerous after all, then,” I said.

  “Jury’s still out,” she told me. “But in your condition I figure you’re not really up to pulling anything.”

  As she took me through to the back of the chapel, I looked about me again, looked up. “What?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you frightened of all this coming down on your head?”

  She gave a little laugh. “Not really.”

  “I’ve seen the Rot do it to bigger places. You must have seen it as well.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it: the Rot?”

  “How else would you describe it?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “Those people out there, the buildings and everything else… they’re not rotting in the conventional sense of the word.”

  “Okay.” Again, I said it slowly and with very little conviction.

  “Here,” she said as she opened the door and took me into a back room, which must have belonged to whatever vicar had tended to this parish; a private space, with books on shelves and a table in the middle of the room, with what looked weed killer sprayers stacked against the wall to our left, and against the right, a camp bed. On the table were a couple of microscopes like the ones I’d been using back at St August’s, one rigged up to a large battery on the floor. There were test-tubes as well in wooden holders, glass beakers with liquid in them. It looked like a massive version of a kid’s chemistry set. She flipped a switch on one of the microscopes, pointed to the lens.

  “I’ve seen all this before,” I told her.

  “Just look,” she prompted.

  So I did. There was a sample under there already, at quite a high magnification. “It’s stone,” she told me. “The same stone this place is made from.”

  The Rot was attacking it, just like I’d seen before. “I don’t see what…”

  “Keep watching,” she said and I did, as something was introduced to the sample – a yellowish fluid. Almost immediately, the Rot stopped; not only that, the parts of the sample that I’d seen being eaten away were beginning to be restored to their normal state.

  “What the…” I looked up and saw she was standing next to me, holding a pipette.

  “I treated the whole place with it, inside and out,” she informed me, smiling even more broadly and pointing to the spraying equipment – which I now noticed included what looked like a huge
industrial hypodermic needle made out of metal. “As best I could anyway. First thing I did when I had enough; I needed somewhere safe to continue my work.”

  “But what… I don’t understand.”

  Again, I’ll admit that a lot of what she said next went over my head. Head hurting time, actually; eyes glazing over. Something to do with developing the treatment from her blood, from the proteins? I do remember she said something along the lines of: “Same theory as introducing an antagonistic organism to reduce the ability of fungus to colonise wood in dry rot. Only effective if you catch it early enough, though. Works on stone and wood, obviously… Paper.” She waved her hand over the books. “Food.” Now she took out an apple from her bag – the freshest apple I’d ever seen in fact – and she bit into it with a crunch. “Tastes a bit weird, but better than what I was living off before… Then again, I don’t suppose you’ve had that problem, have you?” She touched my face and I flinched, not expecting it. “I’m sorry, it’s just I’ve never… Where did you get it?”

  “Long story,” was all I’d say at that time.

  “I assume it’s what’s been keeping you alive all these months, that tech?”

  “Not just the tech. I’ve kept myself alive,” I argued.

  “Of course… Well, the ‘Rot’ as you call it, that’s been doing the same for those people out there, keeping them alive. You ever see any of them eat?”

  “I…” Now I thought about it, I hadn’t. I guess I just assumed they ate rotting food, drank stale water – what harm could it do them, after all? But then I thought about Mum, about her refusal to eat – about how she’d even forgotten how to eat.

  “What do you mean, keeping them alive? They’re all dying.”

  “They’re changing,” she corrected me, as if to reinforce what she’d said earlier about the disease we were facing. “Just like the environment is, to accommodate all this. Look, when we die, we become little more than necrotic tissue – it’s true.” I’m paraphrasing here, so stick with me… “But those people out there are still very much alive. It’s all part and parcel of the same thing, everything’s balancing out and it’ll keep doing that until—”

  “It’s taken over,” I butted in. I was still thinking about it as the enemy, as an invading force. Wasn’t how she regarded it at all.

  “Fascinating really, when you think about it.”

  “It’s terrifying,” I said, correcting her this time, but she said nothing in return. “How do you know so much about it? Were you responsible for it or something?” And I imagined her then, sitting in some lab somewhere, a place like the facility – working on the Rot, maybe even as a weapon like Dennis had suggested.

  She laughed again. “I wish!” Then realised what she’d said and shook her head. “Let me rephrase that, I wish I was clever enough to come up with something like that. You’d have to be a genius.” From where I was standing, she didn’t seem too damned shabby in that department. A better mind than mine… “No, I’ve just had a long time to study it, that’s all. In fact that’s the only thing I’ve been doing all this time, apart from surviving, like yourself. Helped me to come up with my little cocktail, stop the spread of the disease in this place. And I bet you thought it was some kind of divine intervention protecting it, right?” She shook her head. I found out later that she had no interest in religion; was an atheist, in fact. Divine intervention hadn’t helped that priest back in the shopping centre, why should it have helped this place?

  I ignored that comment anyway. “So this is a disease then?”

  “Any disturbance of the function or structure of a body… or object, is a disease.” It was just a confirmation of what I’d thought myself, my amateur studies – which were like child’s play compared with what she’d been doing. I’d been the one with the kid’s chemistry set, if anything.

  “Any idea how it came about?”

  She shook her head again. “Not yet, but I’m working on that, too.”

  “So, what, you’re some kind of doctor, scientist…?”

  “Biochemist… at least that’s what one of my doctorates is in.”

  “One? Christ!” I said and she pulled a face, wagged her finger.

  “Remember where you are.” Then she laughed once more and I couldn’t help joining in a little. “Yeah, afraid so. I was one of those girls who was busy studying when the others were off chasing boys – probably boys like you.” I blushed at that, but couldn’t help thinking it was some kind of veiled insult about my wasted youth. “Hit uni early, promising career in the private sector, no husband, no kids or pets… yada, yada, yada… End of the world, I’m immune. Whaddya gonna do?”

  “But… but you’ve come up with the cure,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be the end.”

  Her face soured. “It’s still in its early stages, and although I’ve tested it on organic matter, I still haven’t tested it on human tissue. That’s my next step in these little clinical trials.”

  I nodded, then suddenly thought…

  “Look, we’ve been talking here and I don’t even know your name.”

  For a moment it looked like she wasn’t going to tell me, then she blurted out, “Kim… It’s Kim Bedford.”

  “Keller. Adam Keller.”

  We didn’t shake hands or anything quite as formal at that, because the trust still wasn’t there really, but Kim was interested enough to say next: “So, what’s your story?”

  I grinned. “Well, you know, it’s funny you should ask that…”

  Pause.

  Resume recording:

  I played her my journal – again, warts and all – so she’d get a pretty clear sense of who I was. Thought it would be better than just recounting everything again, editing selected bits. Thought it would make her trust me more… although she still sat with the crossbow within reach.

  Kim had me pause a few times, so she could make herself drinks; once a coffee, a couple of times tea – both with the special ingredient she’d shown me through the microscope. It has a kind of brackish flavour, that stuff, but you get used to it – like she said, it was better than doing without. I sometimes think it was more of a habit than anything else, a routine carried over from before the change – like she was sitting and listening to some sort of radio drama with a cuppa. Unfortunately, this drama had been all too real and Kim knew that – I hadn’t made any of this up and she could see I hadn’t. For one thing I had tears in my eyes at certain points.

  By the time it drew to a close, Kim did too.

  The crossbow forgotten about, she stood and walked over to me and gave me the biggest hug I’ve ever had from anyone in my life – including from Mum. And I hugged her back, the first proper human contact – if you could even call it that through the SKIN – I’d had in a long, long time. The first real human connection, as well, not just a one night stand like the one I’d been contemplating with that nurse so long ago back at the facility, but something that meant so much more. Two survivors, clinging to each other in a crazy topsy-turvy world.

  I wonder sometimes if it was that moment I fell in love with her, but no – it was definitely before. Feels sometimes like I’ve always loved Kim, which I know is the kind of soppy thing people say who’re in the middle of it. She might even tell you that it’s a disease too in its own way, because it alters the brain’s chemistry. If so, then I’m happy to have caught it.

  Kim told me a little about her life beyond the basics after she’d heard about mine. Mother and father had both died quite early on in her life, much earlier than mine and at the same time, in a car crash, leaving her to be brought up by her aunt. She’d won various scholarships, so money hadn’t really been a problem, but it had been a lonely existence for her even before all this had happened. In fact, it had taken her a few days to even notice what was happening in the sleepy village where she’d set up home not that far from here. They say that the cleverest people often feel the most isolated, and Kim was the living, breathing proof of that. I can’t ever say t
hat I’m on her level intellectually – I thought I was doing okay until I met her – but we do have a hell of a lot in common besides that. Taste in books, in films and music…

  But I’m getting off track again. What happened next? Well, once we’d both rested up and talked some more – talked for hours and hours and it still didn’t seem enough – I was drafted in to help with the next stage of the plan to rescue humanity and this planet.

  “We’re going to need a human test subject,” she informed me. “I’ve been putting it off for a while now, just because I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to manage it on my own.” She didn’t need to tell me how hard it was to try and capture one of the Rotten.

  But, unlike me, Kim had it all plotted out. Some of her happiest memories growing up were when she and her father used to go out fishing and hunting. “He was a real live off the land kind of bloke,” she told me, and when she spoke about him I could see the love in her eyes, how much she missed him still. “Most effective trap for our kind of prey, without causing too much injury, is a snare trap.” You’ve probably seen these yourself, where a noose is hidden on the floor. As soon as an animal steps on it and the trigger is released, they go flying into the air to hang there.

  We wouldn’t be using trees for our ‘engine’, though – instead Kim had already chosen a location to set the trap; had already treated the building, in fact. A small single-screen cinema she knew well, one of those places showing classics that she’d caught before the Rot had set in too badly.

  The hardest part would be getting close enough without drawing attention to set the trap, but then she’d done her homework in that department as well. Watching patterns of Rotten traffic; how many people were usually in one place at any given time, including inside the cinema. She’d worked out that first thing in the morning it was relatively quiet; probably because the cinema used to be closed at that time. Easy enough to head in, set up the trap, then retreat again.