Domain of the Dead

by Iain McKinnon

  “And you’ve been there ever since,” Idris chipped in. “That explains why there were so many W.D.’s in the area. You must have been pulling them in for miles.”

  “It wasn’t bad to start with. The fences were strong enough to keep ‘em out, so we just ignored them to start with, no point going out and getting them all agitated. When the world got quiet and they started to swarm, we decided to try and thin them out. More out of frustration than anything else. I mean we were doing something, taking some of it out on them. Occasionally in the dry weather we’d go up onto the roof and throw petrol bombs. You can vent a lot of anger doing that, but generally we tried not to leave the warehouse much cause of the smell an’ all.”

  “Those fuckers smell bad enough without barbequing ‘em,” Bates agreed.

  “Damn straight,” Nathan said. “But we had it pretty good for a while. Set up a rain butt to collect fresh water. We even had electricity.”

  Bates was genuinely interested, “Yeah? How? A generator?”

  “To start with, yeah, but when the fuel ran out we used solar power and then wind generators. What was that kids name?” Nathan gently elbowed Sarah.

  “Gabriel,” she replied, annoyed at Nathan for his lack of reverence towards a deceased companion.

  “Yeah, Gabe,” Nathan said, missing or ignoring Sarah’s implicit chastisement. “Smart kid. He wired up a whole bunch of those solar powered lawn lights to some car batteries. On a sunny day we could cook stuff up in the microwave.” He turned back to Sarah. “How old was he?”

  Sarah couldn’t remember and she felt hypocritical for her failing. A lot had happened since those early days; a lot of companions had died. How much had slipped from her memory? She shook her head slightly and guessed, “Twelve? Thirteen?”

  Nathan beamed, recalling some of the excitement he had felt at the boy’s achievements. “He set up solar heating. Well, he designed it. Ryan and Grandpa George did most of the work. Set it up on the roof, gave us hot showers and it took the chill out of the winter that first year.”

  “Cool,” Bates said, soaking in some of Nathan’s excitement.

  “He died.” Sarah’s harsh statement chilled the conversation. She was angry. She had survived when others hadn’t and she felt responsible for that, angry at herself for exposing her friends to the monsters outside the warehouse. But she was also angry at herself for what she had forgotten. Gabriel wasn’t with them long but he had deserved to be remembered. Now Sarah couldn’t even recall his last name. She had let that die.

  Bates gave a knowing frown. He asked, “Got bit?”

  “No.” Sarah’s face went blank as her memory retrieved the boy’s death. This she recalled in piercing detail; she hadn’t forgotten that. She remembered the blue tinge to his lips, the pallor of his skin, the hard rasping breaths that finally surrendered. Except for the lack of a fever, Gabriel’s death was almost identical to one of the infected.

  “Asthma attack,” Sarah said, recalling Gabriel’s futile puffs on his long exhausted inhaler.

  Nathan scowled his thin lips, sucking in stifling remorse. “His puffer ran out.”

  “Shit...” The shock made Bates’ jaw drop.

  “I remember finding a couple of unopened ones in a bathroom cabinet that winter when we went foraging,” Nathan said. “The apartment was just a five minute walk from the warehouse.” He shrugged. “No way we could have saved him, not with those things crowding round us like they were.”

  “Harsh, man,” was all Bates could muster.

  There was silence again in the cabin.

  Feeling uneasy with the quiet, Nathan decided to break it. “There must be all manner of shortages like medicines and fuel and stuff?”

  “We got plenty of gas,” Idris said, pointing up as if to connect the chopper’s rotors with his comment.

  Bates nodded. “Yeah, no fossil fuel crisis anymore.”

  “Why’s that?” Nathan asked.

  “Oil rigs were the first things the military moved to protect,” Bates answered. “W.D.’s ain’t no good at climbing and they proved just as hard for panicked civvies to crack. Kind of like castles, just pull up the drawbridge.” Bates smirked. “Well, ladders in this case.”

  Idris elaborated, “And those things are hell of a tricky to land a bird on unless you know what you’re doing.” He made a thumbing motion in Bates’ direction. “Just need a couple of grunts like him with a machine gun to discourage any unwanted company.”

  “I miss beef,” Angel said suddenly, breaking her silence from quietly enduring her pain.

  “Christ, when was the last time any of us had a steak?” Bates complained.

  “We had steak last Wednesday,” Idris said.

  “Proper red meat.” Bates lent forward and prodded Idris in the shoulder. “Tuna doesn’t count.”

  “Ah, what’s the difference?” Idris asked.

  “If you’d been raised in the south and fed proper food you’d know,” Bates said. “Everything your momma made for you came out of a can swimming in tomato sauce.”

  “Bates,” Angel interrupted, “Everyone eat out of cans now.”

  Laughter filled the cabin but the good cheer grated at Sarah. Her thoughts were still with Gabriel and Elspeth and George and all the others not able to share in the joke. She cocked her head around Jennifer, who was fast asleep.

  Nathan asked, “So what were you doing this morning anyway? I saw a cargo net. Were you looking for supplies?”

  “No, it wasn’t a supply run,” Bates said. “We get most of ours from Cape Verde.”

  Angel corrected him, “Was supply run of sorts.”

  Bates sniggered in agreement. “I suppose.”

  The blank looks of the awake survivors begged clarification.

  “We were specimen collecting. Every few months we get sent out to round up some W.D.’s.”

  “Why?” Sarah’s tone was almost shocked.

  “The scientists need them,” Bates said.

  “What for?”

  “Oh, number of reasons.” Bates scratched his head as he tried to retrieve all the uses the zombies were put to. “Well, they monitor how quickly they’re decomposing…”

  “They’re trying to work out how long before they crumble to dust,” Sarah guessed.

  “Yeah that’s right.”

  “How long then?”

  “How long what?” Bates stumbled before he married the train of thought. “Oh, I see. Um, I don’t know. Guess it must be a while, ‘cause if it were good news they’d tell us.”

  Sarah restated her original question: “So what else do they do with them?”

  “They experiment on them. Mainly trying to find out what will kill them.”

  “I can tell you that,” Nathan grunted. “Nothing except turning their brains to pulp.”

  “Do they know what caused it?” Sarah asked.

  Bates shrugged. “If they do they ain’t telling us. Some talk of viruses, but if you ask me they don’t know dick.”

  The chopper dipped down through a layer of feathery clouds, bringing into view a dreary pallet of green and blue.

  “There she is, folks,” Idris declared. “The Ishtar.”

  Beneath them in the roll of teal surf was a scruffy cargo vessel, her paint blistered and her seams tinged with rust. On her cargo deck was an empty square with the letter H in bold yellow paint. None of this caught the survivors’ attention as they craned for a better view from their approach. What mesmerised them were the people. On deck and in the bridge there could be seen a myriad of living human beings. None of the people were apparently interested in such a mundane thing as a helicopter.

  A smile broke out on Sarah’s face as the skids of the chopper touched down on the deck. For the first time in years she felt safe.

  * * *

  A whistle pierced the noise of the rotor blades winding down.

  A thick set marine shouted out, “Hey Bates, where’s the rest of the crew?!”

  “Still in country!
” Bates called back.

  At the side of the landing pad stood two marines. Unlike Bates, they wore green uniforms and soft peaked caps. Sarah didn’t know much about the military but the one who shouted had a couple of stripes and an anchor insignia patch on his arm.

  The lead marine bellowed, “Who the fuck are these civvies?!”

  “Survivors, French,” came Bates’ curt reply.

  “What, Cahz and Cannon are still on the mainland and you found room for some useless civvies?!” French blustered.

  “Was his idea, so don’t go blowing your shit, Lawrence,” Angel said.

  The second marine spoke up. “Looks like you got a promotion.”

  “No one’s got any promotion just as soon as this bird is refuelled. Idris is heading back for them,” Bates said, giving a reluctant Angel a hand getting out of the chopper.

  The door to the deck opened and through it came striding the executive officer. Like the rest of the ship’s crew, Commander Patterson wore a version of the soldier’s uniform excluding the armour and webbing, but unsurprisingly the garment was a navy blue. His blue peaked baseball style cap was clutched in his right hand to prevent the down draft of the dawdling rotor blades from blowing it away. The same wasn’t true of his thinning blond hair; the combover flapped in the wind like a tattered flag on a forgotten battlefield. The tints on his round gold-framed glasses had turned opaque in the strong afternoon light, obscuring his over magnified grey-blue eyes.

  “Private Bates! Private Chernov!” Patterson hollered as if he were chastising children.

  “Yes sir!” the pair barked back.

  “Captain wants debriefed immediately!” Patterson thumbed his free hand in the direction of the bridge.

  Bates was still helping Angel out of the chopper. Her injured arm had swollen up and a suffusion of purples and reds had spread out from her elbow.

  Bates shouldered Angel’s rifle. “Sure I’ll just stow—”

  “Just nothing, Bates,” Patterson scolded, maintaining his schoolmaster persona. “NOW!”

  “Yes, sir,” Bates sneered while giving Patterson a limp salute.

  As they passed him, Patterson stopped Angel. “What’s up with you soldier?”

  Angel, clutching her arm, looked down at her injury and then back up at the executive officer. “Women’s troubles, sir.”

  Without looking back she walked off.

  As quickly as the wind changed the position of his combover, Patterson’s demeanour also changed. As Sarah stepped out of the aircraft, he stretched out his hand to help her and her young ward onto the landing platform.

  “Ma’am, I am Commander Patterson,” he said, utterly unphased by the insubordination displayed by Bates and Angel. “And you are?”

  “I’m Sarah, this is Nathan.”

  “Hi,” Nathan said.

  Patterson knelt down to bring himself eye level with the third survivor. He pealed off his glasses and asked, “And who might you be, young lady?”

  Jennifer looked up at Sarah. It wasn’t a look for permission; Jennifer had grown up in a world devoid of stranger danger and parents fretting over child abduction. Jennifer was looking to Sarah for reassurance that it was worthwhile getting to know the man.

  Sarah’s smile was the security she needed.

  “Jennifer,” the girl said as she extended her hand.

  Patterson swapped his cap and his glasses into his left hand. He smiled and simultaneously shook her hand, saying, “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Jennifer.” He stood back up. “I had a niece about her age before...”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The people in Patterson’s world had seemed to become closer since the Rising. It wasn’t just the banding together for protection or the shared experience of survival. Everyone had been in the same situation. Everyone had lost people and it meant that everyone could connect empathically, instantly.

  He broke off from his train of thought and back to the task at hand. “If you and your party care to follow me, we’ll have our medical staff check you over.”

  “Thanks,” Sarah said, holding a hand out for Jennifer to follow.

  “I’m sorry, what do we call you?” Nathan asked.

  “Only the sailors and the soldiers need address me as Sir. You guys being civilians can call me whatever you feel appropriate.”

  Nathan didn’t look any the wiser.

  “Mr. Patterson would do fine,” he added.

  He looked at the three. They had the slender look of starvation on them. No curves, only points where the bones threatened to pierce their paper-thin skin. “Lets see about getting you people a hot meal. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like on the mainland.”

  * * *

  Sarah stopped at the bottom of the steps from the helipad and arched her back. The confined flight and the strains and contusions from their exodus had combined to numb her muscles. She stretched her neck up high and tried to drop her shoulders before walking away from the landing pad. The sun was bright and although the wind took the warmth out of the day she didn’t mind. The salt air brought with it a sense of cleansing. It was a pure unfetid smell. Occasionally there was the whiff of grease or gasoline, but it wasn’t the terrifying smell of a wildfire consuming and corrupting the air or the stench of rotting flesh. It was clean and uncontaminated. The view around her was less threatening, too. Nothing but open ocean. No derelict buildings with unknown dangers inside. No hoards of the undead hemming them in. Just the calm sea, a smattering of clouds and the odd seagull trailing the ship for scraps.

  The shadow of the bridge blocked out the sunlight on the last few paces into the ship. From the seemingly infinite space of the deck, Sarah found herself being funnelled into the comparatively cramped corridors that ran through the ship’s interior.

  The ship had looked small as the chopper came in to land, but now Sarah realised the Ishtar was a sizeable vessel. She stepped over the bottom lip of the hatch into the thin corridor. Steering from behind, Patterson called directions as they travelled deeper into the hull.

  Sarah felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of new faces. Seemingly unconcerned by the new people, they went about their duties. Occasionally one of the curious would strain their neck to watch the new arrivals as they squeezed through the narrow corridors.

  “How many people are there?” Sarah asked.

  “On the ship or in the world?” Patterson replied.

  Nathan’s voice was quick with excitement, “Both!”

  “On the ship there are thirty-two seamen, fifteen marines and soldiers and an assortment of others, making fifty in total,” Patterson informed them.

  “And the rest of the world?” Sarah asked.

  “About fifteen million,” Patterson answered. “Give or take.”

  “Only fifteen million?”

  “Lowest human population since before the last ice age, we’re told,” Patterson replied. “Kind of knocked the whole overpopulation fear on the head, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Fifteen million,” Sarah said, trying to get her head around the figures.

  Patterson waved his arm, instructing them which turning to take. “Experts say once the W.D. problem is solved we can repopulate the world in just a couple of hundred years and the eugenicists are saying we’ll be better for it.”

  “What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

  “Well, it’s the survival of the fittest, quite literally,” Patterson replied. “Since the Rising you don’t get any fat American tourists anymore.”

  Sarah smirked. “Darwinism in action.”

  “You have to be fit, smart and lucky these days. All the chaff has been weeded out. Or so the eugenics folks say.” Patterson smiled. “Personally I think it’s mostly down to luck.”

  “Seems like one hell of a big boat for just fifty people,” Nathan commented.

  “Ishtar used to be a cargo ship before it was requisitioned.” Patterson was more than happy to chat about his favourite subject. “Even then it only t
akes a crew of about twenty to get her to where she’s going. There was a lot of automation fitted back in the late eighties, early nineties. Before all that, a ship like this would have needed three times the crew.”

  “So what’s the cargo?” Nathan asked.

  Patterson let out a wistful sigh. “Oh, no cargo. Those days are long gone. Nothing but supplies in her holds now.” He gave a passing bulkhead a couple of slaps with his palm as if he were patting a faithful dog. “We don’t make port. A supply ship rendezvous with us each month and brings in fresh provisions. They give us cans of sweet corn and we give them hard copies of the research work.”

  Sarah started to tune out of Nathan and Patterson’s conversation. In the confined space of what was obviously a busy ship, the rich and sometimes pungent odours were a welcome pleasure. It took Sarah quite some time to work out why she was so transfixed. It wasn’t the presence of an odour she was enjoying, it was the absence of a particular one: The smell of putrefaction—which had been ever-present since the Rising began—had been whisked away by sea breezes. The smell was nonexistent here.

  Sarah realised the source of her delight had been the unlocking of her past, a time before all the hardship and loss.

  “I’m sure you’ll have a chance to speak to Doctor Robertson about the research conducted onboard.” Patterson raised his voice. “It’s just this door on the right.”

  Sarah was dragged back from her daydreaming. Next to her was a plain grey door with the word INFIRMARY stencilled at eye level.

  “Just inside there if you wouldn’t mind.” Patterson ushered the group into the room.