‘Mae?’ I finally managed to say, staring over at her. ‘Mae, what the hell happened?’
Several seconds passed before she finally showed some semblance of a response – slowly, ever so slowly, she began to turn her head to look over at me.
When she finally did turn completely, I didn’t find myself looking at Mae. This wasn’t her. This was some shelled out version of the person I had been speaking to the night before. Blood was splattered across her face, her lips and the patches of skin around them looking as if she dipped them in red paint. Her eyes were docile but glaring, lit up with a light blue tinge, the whites discoloured.
In that fashion, her eyes staring vacantly at my face as if she was trying to ascertain something but was taking her time with it, she remained for several long, drawn out moments. The barrel of the gun was still raised as we glared at each other, but Mae, or whoever or whatever this thing was, did nothing but stare at me.
I saw the change in her face – it began to twist and contort as she decided that she had finally made her analysis of me.
Suddenly she began to gnash her teeth animalistically, a growl of fury and anger and pure, pure malice escaping from her as she instantly broke into a run, sprinting across the room towards me in a matter of seconds.
I had to think faster than ever, much as I had done several days ago with Carl at the farm.
Should I kill her?
I couldn’t.
I grabbed the door handle and drew the door closed, slamming it shut just as I heard a pressing bang against it. Mae continued to snarl, and the slamming of fists and open palms continued against the wood as I backed away.
Even though it wasn’t locked, and there was nothing but a latch between her and me, a turn of the door handle, her brain couldn’t process the notion of opening it. Any inhibition or memory no longer existed behind her eyes – there was just me as a threat, as something to be attacked.
I stepped back through the hallway, wondering what my next course of action was going to be, when I heard it splinter.
The door. The wood was cracking. That was how hard she was hitting it. I didn’t think I could even manage that myself, no matter how angry I was, and here she was already coming through it.
I dashed quickly down the stairs, stumbling down them with the rifle still in my hands. I pushed awkwardly through the front door, shutting it behind me and tripping over onto the yard as I clambered on.
Turning to look up at the house, this nightmarish place that I had managed to escape from, I turned over onto my back and crab walked to the road, refusing to look away from the door as I crawled onto the tarmac of the road.
I struggled to my feet, breathing deeply, feeling the oddness of the quiet street. Nobody had a fucking clue what was going on inside my house, and as I took a second to regain my composure, I tried to process everything that I had just witnessed.
Morgan was dead, his mouth covered in blood. What happened? Had he been carrying something, some infection that had made it’s way to Mae and Larry?
No… I had been closer to him, and for a longer period of time, too. If they had been infected by something airborne, I would be have been infected too. I was fine…
Then, as my thoughts raced, it struck me. The biting that Morgan had mentioned…
And, in my scepticism, I had allowed him to stay.
Stood there in the street, I suddenly found myself in one of the most awkward situations I could remember in my life.
I was alone, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do.
Of course, I didn’t have any time to deliberate further on all of this. Right then, there was another horrendous banging noise, and in the window of the front door I could see the blurred, vague outline of Mae as she tried to force her way through the door. Unlike the wooden one upstairs, this was one she couldn’t get through. It was too solid, and it wasn’t going to happen. Did I have enough time to put a plan together?
No.
Mae’s form disappeared from the window, and seconds later it reappeared in the living room. With the first smash against the window with her fists, the glass shuddered. With the second, it cracked. In between it and the third, I took a step back on the tarmac and swung the gun around again my hand, holding the rifle in both hands, trying to keep them steady.
With the third, the glass smashed, and Mae began to force her way through.
There was no inhibition, no need for self-preservation or anything remotely human behind her eyes as she pushed through the glass. I watched with complete terror as her hands began to bleed with the cuts from the glass, slicing through her skin as she tried desperately to push through the small space she had created. The glass continued to crack around her as she pushed and pushed, until it finally it broke and she came stumbling through, falling onto the yard.
Whatever injuries she had sustained didn’t faze or halt her attempts to get to me in the slightest; she stood to her feet almost immediately, bounding towards me with as much hatred and fury as she had possessed upstairs.
‘Mae, stop… Fucking stop, I’m serious!’
I had said it with some vague notion of hope, that my words would bring some sense to her as she closed up the yards between us.
‘Don’t fucking do it, please…’
I was pleading more than anything. I had known her for years, and now she was rabid, infected with something hellish that I didn’t even have a name for.
‘DON’T!’
It happened faster than I could have ever anticipated. Shooting an outsider was something that I never hesitated in doing if they threatened any member of Bastion, but one of ours, somebody who I had been speaking to just hours ago the night before?
I squeezed the trigger.
I immediately felt the recoil of the rifle, the press against my shoulder as the bullet fired from the gun and slammed into Mae’s chest. The force sent her flailing backwards, and she landed hard on her back. The sound of her body cracking against the pavement jolted through me even harder than the gun had, and I could do nothing but watch as she laid there on the ground, still, staring vacantly up at the sky.
I thought that it was all over, that it would bring everybody running… But I was way off.
As my the rifle wobbled in my shaking hands, my eyes welling up with tears as the far-reaching implications of what had just happened began to set into my mind, the myriad of questions that I couldn’t even begin to decide on asking first swelling and shifting through my brain, I heard her.
It was a snapping sound, like a crick in the neck, only something much more unnatural. I looked back down at Mae – and saw that she was moving.
With the street still quiet apart from the chaotic interactions between us in this, the most outlandish of insane scenes I could never have imagined, she raised her head to look up at me. Her eyes were filled with that luminescent blueness, enlightened yet vacant, as she pushed herself up from the ground. Blood spilled through her clothes and over her torso, yet here she was, moving again with a fatal wound.
Somehow, someway, it hadn’t deterred her in the slightest.
She pushed herself up from the ground, snarling with rage, taking no time to bound towards me as I struggled for the gun.
Blood on the tarmac.
I raised it, pointing the barrel at her head, knowing that whatever I shouted at her would have zero effect – if this thing coming towards me still possessed any part of Mae’s mind, and something innate in me told me that it didn’t.
I might have whispered I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t remember. I pulled the trigger, the barrel point at her head.
It struck her in the centre of her forehead, a rigidity coursing through her as she seized movement completely. The force once again through her back as a wisp of blood blew out from the back of her skull, sending her falling to the ground.
I panted deeply, waiting, watching her as I tried to hold the gun steady in my hands.
All of the knowledge she had held in her mind that
helped us over the years, everything that made her up, that made her who she was, was gone in an instant. Somewhere in the shock of those following moments, though, I realised that it wasn’t the bullet that had done it.
It was the bite marks on her neck that I could now see in the morning light, the spread of the infection that Morgan had given her after he had died.
After he had come back.
There was no other explanation for any of this.
I was in charge of this place, and as I looked around the street for some sign of movement or assistance, I heard a door opening somewhere, a creaking sound. I would be damned if everybody in Bastion hadn’t been woken by the screaming and the gunshots - any lifeform took millions of years to evolve, but all of us had grown accustomed to recognising the sound of conflict.
The problem was, as I looked about the street to try and determine the source of the door opening, I had failed to register the sound of the gnashing of teeth and the crunching of glass behind me as Larry came struggling through the window, falling onto the yard in the same fashion that Mae had done just seconds ago.
I turned to see him bounding towards with only seconds to spare, and those seconds weren’t enough; I had no time to ready the rifle, to raise it, or to fire it. Larry – or the spectre of what used to be Larry, jumped at me with all the animosity of a rabid dog.
The gun went flying from my hands to the tarmac, out of reach, and I went falling backwards as he threw himself on me.
I landed hard on the ground. Some of the wind was knocked out of me, but it didn’t perturb Larry in the slightest. He clasped his hands around my throat, his paper-like skin stretching as he stretched his mouth open, snarling at me. I couldn’t believe the strength I was being confronted with, the anger and rage, that I was the only thing in his eyes that mattered. He wanted me dead more than anything.
For the briefest of moments, some element of calm washed over me as I came to terms with this horrendous but sure fate that was confronting me.
This is it. This is how I die.
That was the notion that crossed my mind while Sam sprinted over to me from the Kitchen just across the road. I had failed to hear him – in a parallel with Larry, he was the only thing that existed to me. Such is the nature of perception when your life is on the line.
While I failed to notice his approach, I didn’t fail to see his butcher’s cleaver come slashing down into Larry’s skull, his gnashing teeth just inches away from skin as it cut through his brain matter.
Before my eyes he went limp, his gaze docile and pointless. With Sam’s help, he pulling the body off and I pushing it away, we managed to shift him off of me.
I laid there, panting deeply, my brow drenched in sweat as I looked up at the cloudy sky.
I heard Sam mutter ‘fuck…’ right before he held his hand out and I took it, he pulling me to my feet.
‘What the fuck happened?’ He muttered, exasperated, almost unable to speak.
‘The man… That man we brought in last night, Morgan, he was infected with something. It’s like rabies… I think he bit Mae, and she didn’t realise what it was… Then she turned and bit Larry, and…’
‘A domino effect?’ Sam said, looking down at their bodies. Despite his enormous size and his image as one of the tough guys in town – alongside Marcus – his eyes began to well up with tears as he ran his hands through his hair. ‘I fucking talked to them just yesterday, Tommy… How the fuck does this happen?’
‘I don’t know…’
As we looked at the bloody mess before us, the bodies splayed out on the ground like some small, self-contained episode from a warzone, the sound of doors opening and shouts of confusion down the street began to emerge. People stepped out, all of those whom we had eaten dinner with two nights ago, who had been peaceful and happy to be together in unity, now looked horrified.
‘What happened?!’
‘Are we under attack?’
‘Nobody panic!’ I shouted about the street, as more and more began to flood onto the roads by the second. ‘It’s over… Please don’t worry. There’s been a terrible accident…’
The chattering and the murmuring… I couldn’t comprehend how quickly it had all gone downhill, how fast it had all gone to shit. We had lost two of the most beloved, integral members of our community, and when something like that happened it cast a sheen over the town that caused it to dwell in misery and terror for days, if not weeks.
On top of all of that I had more questions than answers to any of this. How had this happened? Where the fuck had this man come from?
Where the fuck did an infection like this come from in the first place? It was a far reach from an evolution of the virus, that was for damn sure.
In those few seconds, my mind tried to put together a plan of action by second nature. I wasn’t even thinking about doing it of my own free will – as the leader of the town it was my job to be coming up with these things without even having to think about it.
I had never known so much fear and terror to be swelling up inside of me as I looked around at the chaos and horror in the eyes of everybody as they approached the scene before us, clasping their hands over the mouths, their eyes wide, taking each other in their arms as they tried to support one another.
I had brought him in here, I had caused all of this… I hadn’t known it at the time, but it had been me… And right then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the sirens on the east lookout post began to blare.
We were a sea of heads, all turning to look in the direction of that noise, the air raid siren that we had taken from an old army outpost, years ago… In our time here I could count on two hands the number of times it had been set off, and half of those times had been by accident.
I ran.
Seconds later I was away from the crowd, sprinting through the streets towards the lookout post. The siren continued to sound, that horrible chorus of whirring notes that sent a chill of terror through me.
Death, attack, threat.
‘HEEELLP!’
It was Laz on the outpost – Sam’s assistant. He was looking frantically back and forth between the field, which was out of my sight from down here, and myself as I ran towards him.
The faces of those closest to me – Henrietta, Robbie, Hayley, Leah – flashed through my mind as I bounded up the ladder.
‘Sam, what is it?’
‘What the fuck are they, Tommy?!’
I ran to the edge of the platform, gripping the railing as I looked out over the field – and my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my threat.
There must have been fifty of them by my initial counting, although that was frantic and on the spot – for all I knew there could have been more. All I knew was that they were just like Mae and Larry, rabid and furious, snarling, ragged and bloody, particularly around their mouths. Men and women, intent on attacking us and the town that laid before them. They had no other purpose other than to get inside the walls and kill every one of us…
No. Infect every one of us.
They were coming straight for the walls, for the door, and they would be hear in thirty seconds.
‘Run.’
We both leapt down from the platform, sprinting through the streets, back towards the scene that I had come from just a minute ago. Leah stepped out of her front door just as we ran past.
‘Tommy, what is it?’
‘We need to get everybody out, now!’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it, Leah, we don’t have time for this!’
Her face fell as she saw the expression of fear and seriousness that was cast across my own, and she set off running with us for the crowd, who were still situated with terror and confusion, exactly where we had left them. More had joined, and by rights and my quick counting, it appeared that almost everybody was there.
‘Evacuate! West exit!’ I shouted. ‘THIS IS NOT A FUCKING JOKE!’
The screams and shouts were a given, but the
chaos that ensued was something that I couldn’t have possibly comprehended. We had gone over protocols a number of times, rehearsed situations in the event that we would need to rapidly evacuate Bastion, in case we came under attack. In reality, though, things played out in the most insane of circumstances.
Everybody ran in different directions. Those who lived together took off together – some followed protocol, some ran to their homes, some looked about and screamed with confusion.
Leah and I shouted it again, the words roaring over the crowd.
Save as many people as possible.
The problem was that the chaos had hit us too hard and too fast, and now bedlam had ensued.
‘We can’t direct everybody,’ Leah shouted at me, ‘we need to get out of here.’
I looked about hopelessly, watching as people panicked and split up, running off in a general easterly direction. Some still stood around, waiting for nothing in particular, when we all heard it.
The crashing sound against the wall which our attackers – the infected, whatever we should have called them – were heading towards was unmistakeable. I knew immediately what they were doing based on the behaviour of Mae and Larry, whose bodies were still lying in the damn street. They were throwing themselves against it, contorting themselves, trying to find a way in to our home.
With that crashing, snarling sound, echoing through the streets, ready to reach us at any second, it suddenly became real to everybody. The last hangers on ran, screaming, some crying as they took off.
‘Tommy!’
Hayley came running up to us – I wrapped my arms around her, never having been happier to see her in my life.
‘They’re coming,’ she panted, ‘they’re gonna be here any second.’
‘We need to get Robbie and your mom,’ Leah said.
I looked to the floor, searching for my gun, realising that I had left it there – but it was gone. Somebody had taken it.
‘This is a fucking nightmare,’ I said, running my hands through my hair.
Fall of Earth (Book 1): The Survivors of Bastion Page 9