It seemed pointless, of course, to have gone through all of these things. There wasn’t anything in the cupboards, although one thing did change my mind about the nature of our intruders, if I had any preconceived thoughts to begin with. The first-aid kit had been found from its cupboard in the kitchen, and the box was sat open on the table, the contents splayed out messily.
‘Somebody injured?’ Leah said. ‘Maybe Morgan came through here before he arrived at Bastion.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense though. How would they know it was here? And surely one of them would have stayed if they thought more would show up?’
‘Just like us, you mean?’
‘Hmm…’
I rifled through the box, my mind running over who our guest could have been. I suppose, with that one floor cleared, and considering that there was no second floor, it hadn’t crossed my mind that our guest might still have been in the house.
‘This place have a basement?’ Leah asked, looking over at me.
I looked over at her, feeling a chill run through me. From my expression she knew that that was a yes.
‘Where is it?’
We returned to the hallway as quietly as we could, stopping at the basement door just outside the kitchen. I took a deep breath, before Leah nodded at me and I turned the handle.
It was unlocked.
I looked over at her with both confusion and apprehension, and clasped the handle of the shovel tightly in my hand, opening the door.
A dim light came from the room below. From it’s almost supernatural flicker I could tell that it was from a candle, or several – I had spent far too many nights with them guiding my way for me to not be familiar with it.
We stopped, listening for something, anything.
‘Hello?’ I said, just loud enough for whoever – if there was anyone down there – to hear, and just quiet enough not to be intimidating.
Silence – then;
‘Who is that? Please don’t hurt us…’
I clenched the handle tighter at the sound of another voice, but after a few moments of quick thinking realised that it was a voice that sounded genuinely in danger, and one that belonged to somebody who wasn’t going to harm us.
‘We’re not going to hurt you, as long as we have an understanding… First tell me who you are.’
‘I… Tommy? Is that you?’
I glanced over at Leah in shock. Maybe racing down there was something that I shouldn’t have done just because somebody recognised my voice, but in the heat of the moment, with the possibility that somebody else might have survived, I hurried down the stairs.
The sight that greeted me was one besotted with both relief and tragedy.
Maria was knelt down by her brother Marcus in the light of several candles. She looked exhausted, her usually sweet and forgiving face completely stricken with helplessness. It was evident that she had been crying, and one glance at Marcus explained it. It was likely her that had cut open the bottom of the jeans on his left leg, as in the state he was in he would be unable to do it himself. He seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness, shaking on the ground as if he was freezing, although I had no doubt you would receive a burn if you were to touch his forehead – the sweat running off of him was ridiculous.
I didn’t have to ask about what was causing it – I could see the array of bite marks covering his left shin and calf muscle.
‘We managed to make it out,’ she said, retaining some strength in her voice as she looked down at her brother’s huge, mortally wounded body. ‘Marcus killed a few of them with his bare hands, ripped their heads clean off, but they got to him before we could get away.’
‘Have… Have you been bitten, Maria?’ I asked, my eyes darting between the two of them as Leah stood by my side.
‘No… Marcus kept me safe, but he couldn’t stop them from getting to him… What were those things, Tommy?’
I glared down at Marcus’s body. He was this huge guy when I had known him, the exact same guy Carl had been so afraid of when it came to talking to Maria – Carl who was now infected or dead on the street out of Bastion…
Now, though, Marcus looked a shade of the person I remembered from the day before. He had been huge and stocky, somebody who we used for the more difficult heavy-lifting jobs. Now he looked like somebody who couldn’t lift either one of their arms if you asked him too. It had levelled him completely in a matter of hours.
‘They, uhh… They’re infected with something,’ I said. ‘Something that turns them into these rabid monsters.’
‘Marcus is strong, though,’ she said wilfully. ‘He never gets ill. He can pull through from anything.’
‘I… I don’t know…’
‘We don’t know anything about this thing yet, Maria,’ Leah suddenly said. ‘For all we know some people might get infected and some might not. It’s just a matter of waiting.’
Maria smiled, her eyes still moist with tears before running her hands over her face and shaking her head.
‘What am I saying?’ She said. ‘Here I am worrying about Marcus and then there’s everything that happened back in town…’
‘Do you remember anything?’ I hurriedly asked. ‘We got out pretty early on… At least I think it was early… Do you remember seeing anything after Rudy detonated his bombs, or whatever that thing was…?’
‘We were there after it went off,’ she said. ‘I felt the ground shake, it was that powerful. We set off in a hurry, hiding behind the fences on each house and trying to get to the next one, one at a time. It was crazy. Jack Wilson from the house a few doors down, we could hear him screaming… Oh, God… And then-’
‘Do you remember seeing anybody else while you were getting out? My mom, maybe?’
Maria paused, thinking, relaying the towel on Marcus’s forehead and rubbing his arm in comfort.
‘No…’ She said, ‘no, I didn’t see Henrietta at all. We didn’t see many of ours, everybody was so spread out, they all ran in different directions. Some went to their houses, some ran in whatever direction. We saw five or six being attacked in the streets… I hate to say it, Tommy, but I think we’re the only one’s left.’
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything for me to say, anyway. Marcus convulsed and Maria returned to tending to him, and in the midst of that terrible scene I felt Leah’s hand rest on my shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, Tommy. I was hoping that more would have escaped.’
‘Yeah…’ I said, calming myself at the thought of this, this reality that I would have to accept at some point – but right then I was still in denial. Come on. Let’s go get Robbie and Hayley.’
Chapter Fourteen
Rest
I took lookout duty that night – I knew that I was going to cry, and I didn’t want any of them seeing me like that. Robbie, Hayley and Leah set up some beds in the living room just across the hall from the basement door, but I doubted that they would be sleeping in them. With Marcus downstairs, and Maria caring for them, they would likely spend their time dozing in and out of consciousness, succumbing to sleep while trying desperately to resist in case he died and came back. They would be safe – all three of them had spent nights awake, be it for lookout duty or just sleeplessness in this odd, dangerous world we occupied.
I had wandered around the outside of the house a few times, my father’s rifle in my hands, trying to keep my mind occupied by the prospect of some approaching, possible threat. He had left us just as one threat had threatened our existence, and now my mother had gone with him just as another had confronted us.
She had warned me that this was in the nature of our efforts, though; that the things we work hardest to build can be wiped away in an instant, that it’s much easier to destroy something than it is to create it. One takes seconds of recklessness and chaos, the other requires years and years of discipline and work, and only then does it possess some value to you that can be ripped away without warning.
What we had built, what
all of us had built, had been taken away from me and everybody who had assisted in the construction of Bastion.
What happened now might have been beyond me, but I had to figure something out. Marcus would likely die based on the knowledge I had of the virus, and he could come back. If he did, he would be damn near impossible to stop without a clean shot to the head, and that was presuming I had the opportunity. He had ripped the infected attackers apart, at least some of them, so attacking us in a frenzied state would be all too easy for him to achieve.
I sat atop the Ranger, now just an exhausted machine that wouldn’t take us anywhere because of the empty engine. If we were going anywhere from here it would be on foot. I looked about the land, surveying it in the evening light. The night was still, and it didn’t appear that anything was coming for us. I was operating under the assumption that the infected weren’t exactly the stealthiest of assailants, so if they came running we would know pretty quickly.
I laid back on the metal, setting the rifle down next to me and looking up at the stars as they came out in the upcoming dark. In the grand scale of things we were just another drop in the ocean of the universe, a tiny rock with self-contained problems that the universe didn’t give a fuck about. The notion of an apocalypse event is often seen as something that happens within our world or something that comes from outside. Either way, even if a virus had almost wiped out the planet’s population… And now another had struck us, too, it was still possible that meteor could strike us. Space didn’t care about our problems, although it would be a hell of a stroke of irony.
The smoke over Rudy’s house a few miles away had stopped more than an hour ago, and with it some tiny whisper of hope had disappeared. I don’t know why. Maybe I was associating it with the death of the virus, but I knew that wasn’t true. It was alive, and it’s servants would be hungry to pass it on.
This was something that I never did, and I really shouldn’t have done it, but I found myself beginning to fall asleep. I was the lookout, and it was a cardinal sin to sleep on the job – I had read in one of the history books I found a while back in a house that they would shoot trench soldiers in world war one if they fell asleep on night duty. Rightly so, too, but I was just so fucking tired…
I don’t know how long I had been out when I heard my name being shouted.
‘Tommy…!... It’s Marcus.’
I sat up hurriedly, snatching up my rifle and jumping down from the roof of the Ranger. I followed Hayley through the house and down into the candlelit basement, the most light that existed probably within 50 miles of us right now.
Maria was crying over Marcus’s body. He was laid there, motionless, his eyes closed. I could do nothing but stand there and let her mourn her brother’s death while we presided over just another tragic scene from the last 24 hours. I had experienced more death in that time than I would have cared to experience in a hundred lifetimes, and here was another.
It was something that I would never get used to.
Leah was comforting her, cradling her head on her shoulder, when Robbie came over to my side.
‘What do we do?’ He whispered. ‘We can’t just leave him like this. What if he comes back?’
‘How quickly is that gonna happen, though? If it happens at all?’
‘You really wanna take that risk? We’ve got two options here – we risk and he stays dead, or we still risk it and he comes back to life.’
‘Three. We put a bullet in his head.’
‘Exactly – and either way, he’s still dead. What does it matter if we cave his head in?’
‘Robbie, it’s been less than eight hours since all of this happened and you’re out for blood. Nobody in history has ever calmed down after having being told to calm down, but right now I’m telling you to calm down.’
‘Whatever. We need to resolve this, though. Now.’
‘I know.’
It took some time to figure out how to explain it all to Marie, but in the end she understood what had to be done. We stayed in the room with her while we discussed all of it and she managed to pull herself together, and in the end we finally came to the conclusion that we would have to do it.
We all said a few words, standing about Marcus’s covered body as we laid him to rest. Marie even brought in some flowers that she found growing in the gardens outside. It was a much better passing off than many of the people back at Bastion had likely had.
‘So… What do we do?’ Leah finally asked, after we had stood in silence for quite some time.
‘We’ll do it properly. We can use the rifle.’
‘You wanna use the bullets?’ Hayley asked. ‘I thought you said we only had a few.’
‘We do… But Marcus is worth more than any other… Method. Of course he is.’
Maria lowered her head, trying to keep the tears at bay, but it was a feat she couldn’t manage.
Then she said something that I never expected her to say.
‘I’ll do it.’
‘What?’
‘He’s my brother. We’ve been with each other since we were little. It’s only right that I do something like this. I know that he wouldn’t want me to… He’s always looked after me through everything… But I’m on my own now, and it’s for the best.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes. I need to do this.’
We all exchanged a glance, but in the end, if she wanted to, it was only fair. Her brother had just died, and we were willing to do anything to help her through it.
A few minutes later I had set the rifle up, loaded it with rounds, and showed her exactly what to do.
‘Squeeze the trigger, and make sure it doesn’t drag to the left. We can keep the sheet over him for the blood, so you don’t have to look.’
‘Okay…’ She said calmly, nodding and gulping. Her hands had been shaking before, but now they were steady as I passed the rifle over to her and she steadied it in her hands. ‘Tommy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you for keeping us safe over the years. You’ve looked after us for so long.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’d like to think somebody would do the same for me, I guess.’
‘Yeah…’ She smiled.
I stepped back, taking a deep breath as I watched her hold the gun in her hand. We were all stood there, all four of us, on the other side of the room. Lookout could wait a few minutes while we said goodbye to one of our own. We had lost so many earlier that day, maybe everyone, but these were different circumstances; they called for different rules.
Maria waited for a long time with the gun in her hands, looking down at Marcus’s body covered in the sheet. I don’t know how long we waited, but finally she raised it a little, pointed it down at the head, and pulled the trigger.
The blast rang through our ears, shaking all of us. There was no blood spatter, just a little smoke and the steady sight of the blood soaking in to the sheet. I looked over at Maria. She was holding it together, a lot calmer than I expected her to be.
We waited many moments longer until the ringing subsided a little, and Maria turned to look at me, a calm smile resting on her face.
‘Thank you for everything, Tommy.’
I had a chance to look her in the eyes one last time, to nod at her reassuringly before she brought the barrel of the gun up beneath her chin.
‘No, no, NO…!’
She closed her eyes before she pulled the trigger, the force of the blast hitting us like a wave as her blood spattered onto the ceiling above.
Part Three
Gone
Chapter Fifteen
On Foot
We buried them in the garden, side by side. We had enough water and food in the house to support us through the night, and for several more nights, so getting tired wasn’t a problem. It was more of the fact that we couldn’t really sleep after it happened.
We went about our motions without speaking, only communicating with nods and expressions, doing what was necessary – finding a s
hovel, digging, stopping for food. When we finally placed their bodies in the graves, we didn’t hesitate in beginning to move the soil back to where it had come from, until they were filled up, two burials, just another set of victims from the consequences that had beset us all.
Afterwards we strung together sticks and composed makeshift gravestones for them. It wasn’t much, but it told anyone who happened to be near here that somebody had lived, and somebody had died, and that they had been laid to rest properly, not left to rot in their homes like everybody else who had succumbed to the F1N3 virus so long ago.
Nobody said much. I didn’t have anything to say myself. We had all seen it happen right in front of us, this madness that had overwhelmed us in less than a day. That’s what my Dad used to say – it just takes one bad day for a person to be pushed over the edge. I suppose the day that Bastion fell was that day for Maria.
The sun was rising right around the time that we had laid the two of them to rest. We returned to the house without assigning somebody on lookout; it seemed that we had all grown apathetic about the situation for just a few hours as our minds tried to recover from everything that had happened. It didn’t work, though. The other three stayed in their beds, but I knew that they were simply staring at the ceiling above their heads. I wandered about the house aimlessly, feeling my stomach turn as I tried to get a grasp on it all.
I tried to determine our next move. If we returned to Bastion we might get a view on the reality of what was happening, but we risked our lives by going back there. Even getting within a hundred yards would tell us nothing about what was happening inside, and once we were inside the infected would set upon us like wild animals. There were only four of us and tens of them, potentially close to a hundred. There was no sense in it.
We could stay here, but what sort of life would that be? We could make do, but… I don’t know. I guess I just missed Bastion too much already, and everybody who lived there.
Then there was Ashby. The town where this had originated… Or at least where it had come from to get to us. A woman had come to them and infected everybody, but who was this person? Where had she come from? Another infected town? Was this thing spreading from town to town, community to settlement, with one person acting as the virus, welcomed into the fold and then taking out the entire community before moving to the next one?
The Survivors of Bastion (Fall of Earth Book 1) Page 12