by Jack Lewis
This was how I knew that Lou’s actions were right. Faizel was going to turn, there was no stopping that. The only thing wrong was the human brain’s inability to process violence, even if it was necessary to survive. I decided to take a chance. I turned to Lou, picked my words carefully.
“There’s a town. We’ve got walls, gates. There’s a couple of hundred of us, and it’s the safest place you can be these days.”
Lou shrugged her shoulders.
I picked up a corky ball, twisted it in my hands, found the ridges which told the bowler where to place his fingers.
“I want you to come back with us. It would be good for you. We could use someone like you.”
Lou crossed her arms, and the faint bulges of her biceps pressed against the fabric of her coat. Living in the Wilds had toned her physique to a level that, before the outbreak, people used spend days working in the gym to achieve. If only we’d known back then that running machines weren’t the secret to fitness; you just had to wait for the world to end. She put her hand up to her chin and shook her head.
“No thanks.”
I was going to try and persuade her, but the sound of an engine rumbled outside the pavilion. Lou and I exchanged glances. Had someone else driven into the field? Had someone been following us?
I dropped the ball, pushed the pavilion door open and stepped out onto the grass. Across the field, Alice and Ben trudged out of the bushes just in front of the river.
The headlights of our car illuminated the middle of the field. Dan sat in the driver’s seat. There was a lurch as he change gears, and then he reversed the vehicle.
There was no need to ask what he was doing because I knew that already. As he drove forward and left the field, spilling the car back onto the motorway, I knew that he had abandoned us.
19
The motorway seemed a lot more expansive when you walked rather than drove. Alice hung at the back, stopping every so often to rub her calves. Lou walked beside me and tapped her machete against her shoulder as if she were pounding out a marching beat for us. Ben was on my back, his arms around my neck and his legs around my waist. Alice needed a break, and the kid had been slowing us down.
My anger toward Dan burnt with every step I took, compounded by the weight of Ben on my back. For his sake I kept the mutter of expletives in my head, stopped them from being verbalised.
“So why were you heading toward Bury?” said Lou.
Ben’s legs slipped so I shifted my weight. “We guessed Whittaker was going either there or Manchester, and there was the chance that half a million infected were headed out of the city. Bury seemed like the safest option.”
She shook her head. “Whittaker isn’t one for safe options. For him, his work comes above everything.”
“What’s his line of work?”
“He was getting his Masters in Medical biology. He’d just failed his second year exams when the outbreak hit.”
My leg ached under the strain of Ben’s weight. I was going to have to put him down soon, but Alice didn’t look ready to deal with him. She’d looked depleted ever since seeing the stalker in the car park, and her fight with Lou.
“How do you know him, Lou?” I said.
“It’s a whole story, a load of shit that I don’t wanna talk about.”
We had covered most of the way to Manchester in the car, so the walk into the city only took a few hours. We weren’t heading into the centre, because anyone who went into the middle of the city didn’t return. Instead, Lou was taking us to a university research facility that was on the outskirts.
“It was Whittaker’s campus,” she said. “He basically slept in the lab in his second year. No idea how he failed his exams; he was obsessed with learning and knew more about the course than the professor.”
Smoke drifted off the horizon, thick grey plumes that rose into the air. I couldn’t make out what caused them but if there was a fire, that meant there were people around. Maybe it was Whittaker.
As we got closer we saw a car smashed against a lamp post, the bonnet engulfed in flames. I knew this car. I knew the man who stood on a wall across from it, with a dozen infected straining to get at him. The vein on my temple twitched. I wanted to walk away and leave Dan to deal with the infected himself.
Ben stretched his hand out and pointed. “Dan!” he said.
“We should just leave him,” said Alice. Her voice was strained.
Stay with your mother,” I said, and lowered Ben to the ground. Then I turned to Lou. “Are you up for this?”
Lou gripped her machete. “Is he worth it?”
“Nobody deserves to die like that.”
Dan saw us when we got closer to the car. At first he smiled when he thought that his rescue had arrived, but the expression was quickly replaced by fear as an infected pulled itself onto the wall. It straightened up and lurched toward him. Dan kicked his boot out, tried to connect with the infected’s leg but missed. The wind blew a plume of black smoke in his direction, and he covered his mouth and coughed.
A thick cloud of smoke drifted down my throat. It blew into my eyes and made them sting. Lou pulled her hood over her head.
Dan gave the infected another kick and this time he connected, twisting its knee with a crunch. The infected fell off the wall and into the crowd who waited below with their arms outstretched. Dan fell back, put his hands out and managed to stay on the wall.
I reached the back of the crowd. I lifted my knife and plunged it deep into the back of the head of the first infected. Lou swiped her machete at another, cut through its neck tendons and sent blood spraying out. The disturbance drew the attention of the crowd away from Dan, and the faces of the undead turned to look at us.
I took a step back, gave myself room to swing my knife. Lou grunted and buried her machete in the head of an old infected woman, carving her skull open and revealing the rotted brain that sat inside.
Dan jumped off the wall. He picked up a brick, cried out and then brought it down on an infected’s head. We kept our distance and let them come at us one at a time.
After stabbing my knife through the fifth infected’s skull my hands were covered in thick blood that seeped into my coat and made it smell like a butcher’s apron. Grey matter clung to the blade of my knife and sweat poured down my forehead.
When the last one dropped, I sank to the floor. Exhaustion rushed through my limbs, sweat poured from my forehead and into my eyes and compounded the stinging of the smoke.
Dan threw his brick to the floor, and leant against the wall. Lou wiped her machete on the jacket of a dead infected and then slid it back into her belt.
Alice joined us. “Go sit with Kyle,” she told Ben.
The boy ran over to me and sat down. I blinked, tried to smile, but my eyes stung and my head pounded. Alice walked up to Dan, her tiredness replaced by purposeful strides.
Dan looked up. “Alice, am I glad to-”
Alice cocked her arm and slammed it into Dan’s nose. His head lurched back, hit the brick wall behind him, and a mist of blood exploded from his face. He clutched his nose and groaned with pain.
Alice brought her arm back again.
“Alice, don’t,” I said, but my legs wouldn’t let me stand.
Lou stood and watched with her arms folded. Dried blood was crusted around her knuckles, and a smear of crimson was painted on her neck. The veins of her toned arms stuck out and sweat glazed over her skin.
Alice threw another punch, smashed Dan’s head back against the wall with a crack that made me wince. Dan fell to the floor. He covered his face with his arms.
I willed my legs to work, fought through exhaustion and got to my feet. My left leg throbbed so badly it was like the bullet scar had re-opened.
“That’s enough Alice,” I said.
Her face was red from the blood that pumped into it. Her features were twisted, almost bestial in her rage. She pointed at Dan. “You selfish fucking prick!”
I put my hand on her shoulder
and squeezed. “Come on,” I said. “Go to Ben.”
Dan straightened up. He pulled his hands away from his head. It looked like a red paintball had exploded in his face. He wiped away a clot of blood, spreading it on the back of his hand.
I expected him to apologise or to explain himself. I thought he would make up an excuse for taking the car. Instead, the corners of his lips curled into a smile, but his eyes looked wolf-like.
“You think you’re all so high and mighty,” he said, his voice strained. “Did you know what kind of man your husband was?”
Alice clenched her fists. “What does Torben have to do with this?”
The grin spread wider. His words became clearer. “Kyle killed him. Bet he hasn’t told you that yet.”
20
I led a fractured group to the university lab, trusting Lou’s directions to get us there. Alice walked at the back holding Ben’s hand. She didn’t talk to anybody, and instead focussed on putting one foot in front of the other. Dan walked with his head hung and a sorrowful look on his face. Maybe he felt guilty.
I had to decide what to do with him. He couldn’t just get away with it; he had taken the car and abandoned us in the Wilds. He could easily have been leaving us to die. I couldn’t condemn him to death, but I couldn’t welcome him back into the group either. For now, my mind was too fuzzy to make a decision.
I also needed to sort things out with Alice. She knew I’d killed her husband, Torben Tusk, and understandably, the news hadn’t sunk in well. Despite the fact she knew what kind of man he was, hearing he was dead had upset her. I just wished I had told her the truth earlier.
All of this would wait. We were so close to finding Whittaker and Justin that everything else– broken relationships, punishments, decisions – would have to wait until we got Justin back.
“It’s down here,” said Lou, and turned us away from the street.
The science lab looked like it had been built in the seventies. The grey stone walls were decades overdue a power wash. The face was covered in windows, some of which were single-glazed and others double, and all of them were covered in a web of dust. We stopped at the side door.
“You been here before?” I said.
Lou nodded. “I’d come and meet him after class sometimes.”
“Where is he likely to be?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Probably one of the practice labs on the first floor.”
The rusty hinges of the door screeched open. Inside the building our steps echoed from the stone floors and bounced off the walls. The air smelt like damp mixed with dust, a combination that added a thick layer of mucus to my nostrils. A staircase spiralled all the way up to the tenth floor, the steps worn by years of footfall from thousands of university students.
Lou held a hand out and stopped us. “This was his lab.”
The first door was labelled Biology Laboratory A1. We were so close to Justin now that I felt the valves of my heart slam open and shut as it pumped blood around my body. Whatever was about to happen, we weren’t leaving without him.
“You guys ready?” I said.
Dan blinked, Alice gave a grunt. Lou held her machete in her hand and nodded.
I pushed the door open. A sour waft of anti-septic solution wrinkled my nose. The science lab looked as up-to-date as the rest of the building; it should have been overhauled fifty years ago. The floor was covered in the shiny material usually found in hospitals. A wooden rack of shelves held various glass beakers on one side of the room, and on the other, a counter was pushed against the wall and a bank of microscopes was set up with transparent petri-dishes next to them.
Whittaker stood in front of a workbench at the far end of the room. Blood was smeared on the arms of his lab coat, making him look more like a butcher than a scientist. The back line of his hair was jagged from the poor haircut he had given himself. He was engrossed in something on the worktop in front of him.
A long shape was in front of him, but I couldn’t see what it was. The room was lit by a single light bulb that hung in the centre and emitted weak rays that were drowned in the shadows. How could he work like this?
“Whittaker,” I said.
His body jerked and he dropped something. He span round, and his eyes widened when he saw us. He gathered some control over his face, and he looked at each of us in turn as though he were evaluating us. When he looked at Lou, the wideness returned.
“What are you doing here?” he said. The tone of his voice was cold, but there was something about it I recognised.
“Told you I’d be back,” said Lou.
“Where have you been?”
His skin had the grey pallor of a man who survived on just minutes of sunlight each day. His lab coat spilled over his shoulders and arms and threatened to drown him. His fingers were thin and knobbly, the fingers of a puppeteer. Underneath his lab coat, he wore black jeans and a black t-shirt with “Black Sabbath” painted in red on the front.
I stepped forward. I felt the heat of anger burning in my chest at the thought of what this man had done. He’d taken Justin, which was bad enough, but I knew he hadn’t been the first. Who else had he kidnapped? What had he done with them? What had he done with Justin?
Whittaker blinked at my approach and shuffled back. I didn’t give him time to react. I strode forward until I was a foot away, swung my fist and connected with his cheek. He lurched back and fell into the worktop behind him. Then I saw what was on top of it.
It was Justin. His face was ice, his eyes were closed. Tubes were connected to his wrists and neck, feeding liquid into, or out of, his body. A monitor behind him showed a digital display of numbers, but I didn’t know what they meant. He didn’t move, and I couldn’t see him breathing.
Whittaker squirmed on the floor beside me. I grabbed the collar of his lab coat and threw him into the centre of the room. He stuck his hands out and stopped his fall.
I wrung my fists. Sweat poured down my forehead. I couldn’t tell if Justin was alive or dead, but something was wrong. What sick experiments had Whittaker been performing? My body tensed up, my muscles quivered.
“Is he dead?” I asked, the words burning my throat.
Whittaker put a hand next to him and used it to support his weight as he stood up.
“Stay on the floor,” I said.
Alice stirred behind me. She walked across the room to Justin’s body and picked up his arm. She pressed her thumb into his wrist and closed her eyes.
“There’s a pulse,” she said.
I felt a tiny spark of relief, but it quickly blew out. “What have you done to him?”
Whittaker crossed his hands in front of him. “Your friend is part of something great. He’s helping me find a cure.”
Bile rose in my throat. “Helping you? He doesn’t look like he’s doing much to help.”
Lou stood beside me. “Just what the fuck is going on here, Whit?” she said.
Whittaker ran his hand through his dark hair, sweeping back the greasy strands. “Didn’t think I’d see you again, Lou.”
Lou looked toward Justin on the work bench. Alice had her hand on his forehead now. Lou shook her head. “You’re crazier than I thought.”
From the back of the room, Dan spoke. “We’ve got the kid. Let’s take him and go.”
I shook my head. “We need to decide what to do with him.”
Whittaker tried to stand again, and the blood drained from his face.
“Sit down,” I said.
He lowered himself to the ground. His lip quivered and his voice was strained.
“This was never personal; I have nothing against you. I have to think above individuals and focus on the species.”
I spoke through gritted teeth. “And just what the hell does that mean?”
Whittaker put his hand in his pocket, closed his palm around something.
“Take your hand out of your pocket,” I said.
He pulled his hand out. “It means that if I’m going to find a
cure, people will have to die along the way.”
21
There was obviously some history between Whittaker and Lou, but you would never have thought it with the way she treated him; cold indifference, she hardly even acknowledged he was there.
“We need to decide what to do with him,” I said.
My thoughts were on Justin. We needed to get him out of here, and get back to Vasey. I didn’t even know if we could look for the wave anymore; I didn’t know if I had it in me to carry on after this.
Lou fingered the handle of her machete. “Kill him,” she said.