by Matt Drabble
He stuck to the coast path and worked his way, or so he hoped, towards the harbour. The storm had been a real bitch, but hopefully, there would be at least one boat still afloat that he could take to safety. The only real destination to head for now was anywhere off the island, leaving someone else sort the mess out.
The sun was starting to rise now as he walked and he feared what the dawning light might shine down upon. He had no idea if Caleb had been successful at the monastery, but he found that hard to believe. That monster, Torvan, seemed unstoppable so more fool the constable for trying.
He kept to the narrow path as he walked, mindful of not slipping over the cliff edge and wasting the life that he’d worked so hard to save.
The gulls were started to cry their morning song, and although the sun’s rays were dim, it was still a welcome warmth after the cold night before.
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and under the approaching day’s light tried to get his bearings.
Standing on the cliff edge and looking around at the greenery behind him and then out across the crystal blue waters, it was hard to come to terms with the horrors he’d witnessed here. Now the world seemed to be calm and serene, devoid of the death and horrors that the previous night had thrown up.
The gulls called and he tried to listen to them as the guilt voices called to him. Men and women were dead, and while he hadn’t killed anyone personally, he supposed that there was blood on his hands. He wondered if every time that he closed his eyes, he’d see their faces staring back at him. Would they come for him in his dreams every time he slept, with their fingers curled into talons, demanding vengeance for his cowardice?
He closed his eyes now and tried to drown out their voices, but they were insistent. He heard angry cries and bellows of rage; he heard them call him names and yell for his attention. He concentrated hard on silencing them but they wouldn’t stop. Caleb was screaming at him and he supposed that was only right; he had left the man to die, after all.
Caleb continued to scream his name until Cooper realised that the voice wasn’t in his head: it was over the cliff edge.
Carefully, he leaned forwards, questioning his sanity, until he saw the constable several feet down the cliff, clutching on desperately to the rock face.
“What are you, bloody deaf?” Caleb screamed up at him.
“Caleb?”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?”
“Are you real?” Cooper questioned.
“Are you serious?”
“How did you get down there?”
“HELP ME, YOU FREAKING MORON!”
“Oh..., okay. Uh..., I don’t have any rope.” Cooper shrugged, looking around helplessly.
“Take off your jacket and trousers, and knot them together. Knot them carefully, Cooper! Do you hear me?”
“Okay.”
Cooper did as he was asked, eager to make up for his past. Once he’d checked, double-checked and triple-checked the makeshift rope, he wrapped it several times around his wrist and lowered it carefully over the edge.
Caleb grabbed hold and tested his weight. “You hold that?” he yelled up.
“You’re good.”
Caleb started to climb, praying that the weakness in his hands from holding on so long wouldn’t be his downfall, literally.
Cooper held on firmly, determined to do one thing right. Slowly, Caleb inched his way up the cliff face until Cooper was able to grab his hand and pull him up over the edge.
“How long were you down there?” Cooper asked, gasping for air through the physical struggle. “And how did you get there?”
Caleb fixed him with a long hard stare, one that told Cooper he wasn’t forgiven.
“How did the..., you know..., at the monastery?” Cooper asked, while looking down at the ground, unable to meet Caleb’s gaze.
Caleb didn’t answer the question; he couldn’t bring himself to talk about what had happened, not with the man who’d fled the scene.
“Have you been back to town?” he asked instead.
“Not likely! Not with that maniac and his followers on the loose.”
“Torvan’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?” Cooper exclaimed, praying that it was true.
Caleb nodded over the cliff edge and Cooper risked a lean out to look. Somewhere down at the bottom of the drop, he thought he saw a dark shadow smashed on the rocks, just before a wave washed over and pulled whatever it was out to sea.
“So it’s over? It’s safe to go home?” Cooper demanded, feeling a lot more confident if the threat was truly gone.
“Did you see Quinn?” Caleb asked, again ignoring Cooper’s words.
“Quinn?”
“Yes, wasn’t she around here somewhere? Down the hill?”
“I came up that way. I didn’t see anyone.” Cooper shrugged in reply.
Caleb stared down the slope, the way that he’d made her run when he’d spotted Torvan coming for them.
“Maybe she made it back to town?” Cooper said, following the bigger man’s gaze.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Caleb replied as he heard the faint whisper of machinery from the closed mill rising up on a soft breath of wind.
----------
Caleb wasn’t the only one to hear the lumber mill crank into life. Doc Simmons’s office was far closer to the mill than it was to town, and when she too caught the sound rising up, it gave her pause.
Due to the noise and potential for pollution, the Clayton mill had been erected away from where the town had built up and developed. The only road into town passed by the mill, and as Simmons made her way towards the people she’d left behind, she found herself stopping by the outer fence.
The antidote seemed to have worked. She’d left a confused and frightened man back at her office locked inside a back room. The man had been disorientated but seemingly no longer violent; he just seemed exhausted and scared.
It hadn’t taken much persuasion to get him to agree to wait for her to return as she’d led him by the hand like a child and left him with water and a little food.
While the makeshift antidote appeared to be working, it was still imperative that she held onto the man for further study, but her town needed her now.
She was waiting by the fence outside the mill when Caleb and Cooper Fox suddenly appeared out of the woods, running towards her.
“Doc?”
“Caleb?”
“What are you doing here? Are you okay?” he asked with genuine concern.
“I’m fine... Well, not fine, but..., well… you know,” she answered with a tired shrug.
“What happened in town? What’s the...?” He wanted to ask about the body count but couldn’t bring himself to.
“I’m heading back there now,” she replied tiredly. “There’s a lot to tell you.”
“Tell me later, Doc. I’ve got to find Quinn.”
“You think she’s in there?” Simmons asked, jerking a thumb towards the mill.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “There was a guy, the big Niner. The monastery blew up somehow; it’s a long story,” he said when he saw her confused expression. “I’m guessing yours is too.”
“You could say that,” Simmons said, thinking about the town shelter and the madness she’d left behind, not to mention the man who’d tried to kill her and was now locked up in her back office.
“What’s he doing here?” she asked, nodding towards Cooper.
“Helping,” Caleb replied to her as they shared a weary smile.
“Look, I’ve got to get back to town, but to be honest, I need your help, Caleb. I know that you want to find Quinn, but there are more people in Clayton that need you right now.”
“Niners?”
“Look, it’s a long story but the basics are this: the thing that’s made everyone go crazy is..., well, it’s an infection of sorts, but I’ve got a working antidote, or at least I hope so,” she said, patting the bag slung over her shoulder.
“Infection?�
� Cooper asked suspiciously.
“I think both the Niners and the islanders are infected,” she replied thoughtfully. “Look, when I left the shelter, things were... Well, they were bad - violent. That’s why I need you, Caleb, please. I have to get back there.”
He turned away from the mill, knowing that his place was with his town. Besides, with Torvan now dead, what was the worst that could happen to Quinn on her own out here away from everyone else?
His internal question was answered when the air around them was suddenly split with a blood-curdling scream coming from inside the mill.
The three of them turned back to the mill and stared with white faces. The scream, while high-pitched, wasn’t immediately identifiable as a man’s or a woman’s, but someone was in trouble.
“Cooper, take the doc back to town and help her,” he ordered.
Cooper stared back at him with naked terror in his eyes.
“Doc, take Cooper back to town and look after him,” Caleb responded, momentarily forgetting the man he was dealing with.
“You’re not going in there!” Cooper exclaimed.
“Go!” Caleb replied simply.
“Here, take this,” Simmons said, handing him a syringe from her bag. “If someone’s infected, then this seems to work pretty fast, but I only had one test subject so I can’t guarantee it’ll work on everyone.”
Caleb took the syringe, slipped it into his pocket and started to climb over the fence.
“Good luck!” Simmons called after him.
“You too,” he replied as he dropped to the ground on the other side.
As he headed towards the mill entrance, he honestly didn’t know which one of them needed it more.
----------
Simmons and Cooper headed back into town, all the while keeping a close eye out for anything or anyone suspicious.
Simmons had no idea just who might be affected by now, Niner & Clayton resident alike.
“How do we know who’s who?” Cooper asked as if reading her mind.
“We don’t.” Simmons shrugged back. “But if someone’s trying to stab you in the face, I think we can make a safe assessment.”
“So where are we going then? I mean, shouldn’t we be trying to get away from town and over to the mainland for help?”
“A lot of innocent people that I care about are in Casey’s shelter right now. I figure that’s a good a place to start as any.”
Cooper followed behind dutifully if not somewhat dubiously. He wanted to do the right thing; he had just hoped that it would have been a little easier.
“So where did all this come from?” he asked as they crept along, watching the sides of the track.
“The infection?”
He nodded in reply.
“It could be naturally occurring. It could be in the water or an airborne pathogen; it could have been in the flora and fauna and worked its way up through the food chain until it reached us. Honestly, Cooper, I don’t know, but that’s a question for another day. Right now, we need to introduce this,” she said, patting her shoulder bag. “Before it’s too late.”
“How do you know any of this, Doc? I mean, no offence, but aren’t you a country MD? Isn’t the whole... science of this out of your league?”
Simmons favoured him with an honest glance and shrugged. “Hey, I’m just winging it here. I had a few gut hunches and ran with them. There’s been a lot of religious talk, what with the Niners and all; maybe there is a god after all.”
“If there was a god, then wouldn’t all of this shit not have happened in the first place?”
To that she had no real answer, only more questions.
“Look, one problem at a time,” she said as she picked up the pace again. “We get to the shelter and sort them out.”
“If anyone’s left,” Cooper added morosely.
Again, she had little to say.
They reached town without being attacked, and they both took that to be a good sign.
Simmons led the way to Casey’s Bar but headed around the outside of the building instead of the shelter below.
“Where are you going?” Cooper whispered, a little relieved.
“It’s too dangerous to go straight in there in case they’re all still..., you know,” she answered back as she circled the building.
Cooper followed on behind, tiptoeing across the ground, eager to remain undetected.
Simmons hunted around for a short while before she found what she was looking for.
There was a large metal tank that collected rainwater with pipe work that led downwards.
“What is that”? Cooper asked.
“Casey’s homemade sprinkler system for the shelter. I figure that we should empty most of my supply into the water and dose those inside.”
“Great idea,” Cooper enthused, eager for any plan that involved standing out of harm’s way.
“Only problem is someone has to pull the lever inside the shelter.”
“Bollocks,” he muttered, knowing that the plan had seemed too good to be true. “And by someone, I’m guessing you mean me?”
“Well you’re a damn sight younger than I am,” Simmons replied as she started to empty the syringes into the water supply. “If I remember rightly, there’s a lever just inside the door. You pull it and this lot empties into the shelter; hopefully, the antidote isn’t diluted too much.”
“Hopefully?”
“Well this may be science, but it isn’t an exact science.” She shrugged. “I guess you’re going to have to find a little faith. Ready?” she asked as she finished emptying the syringes.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not today, Cooper; I’m afraid that none of us do.”
----------
Caleb entered the lumber mill as stealthily as he could manage for a man as large as he was.
While part of him wanted to yell loudly for Quinn, there was a larger part of him that felt stealth was the way to go, especially as lately there seemed to be someone around every corner wanting to kill him.
The mill machinery was still operating and did a good job of covering his approach. The heavy metallic clanking echoed out, and while it hid him, he also knew that it might be hiding others in the building.
There was a grotesque stench in the air that worsened the further he pushed inside. It was a rotten smell and one that could only mean decaying death. The aroma served to push him on quicker.
He made his way through the factory floor but found no one. He kept moving forwards until finally he heard sounds of life.
There was what appeared to be a staff changing room up ahead and there were definitely noises coming from inside.
As he approached, he saw the flickering of candlelight under the door, which seemed odd considering that the generators were working well enough to operate the lights and machinery out here.
He reached out and pushed the door open gently, holding his nose as the smell coming from inside was almost unbearable.
As he pushed the door open, two wrestling figures suddenly burst through the door, sending Caleb flying backwards.
One was a man while the other was a blur of untamed movement. At first he thought that the man was being attacked by some kind of animal, given the dim lighting and feral noises coming from the smaller figure as it thrashed about wildly. But then he caught a clear glance as the two rolled into the light, and he recognised the second figure: it was Quinn.
All rational sense left his body when he spied his childhood friend fighting like a wildcat. He rushed forwards to help her, but as he drew close, he suddenly realised that she wasn’t the one in need of his help.
She was now perched atop the man under her. He was face down and she had a good chunk of his hair in both hands as she lifted his head before slamming it into the ground with a sickening crack.
Caleb rushed towards her, knowing that she was infected. The girl he’d known - and the woman he hoped to know - would never have acted this way.
He took the syringe from his pocket as he ran, praying that Doc Simmons knew what she was doing.
Quinn was too intent on causing damage to the man beneath her to notice Caleb’s charge, and he was able to reach her without being detected.
“Please,” he whispered as he grabbed her collar and plunged the needle into the centre of her back.
Quinn then noticed him as she felt the sharp sting but was helpless to react quickly enough as Caleb sank the plunger down.
He backed away as she started to thrash and buck, desperately trying to pull the syringe from her back but unable to reach it.
She lashed out violently and caught him squarely across the mouth, hard enough to draw blood. She was strong but she was feral. Whatever the infection had done to her, it had caused her to lose her coordination, and he avoided her wild swings as she lunged towards him.
Caleb couldn’t stand the noise now as she started to wail, her voice screaming in higher pitches of pain than seemed possible, but he stepped towards her all the same.
He was far taller and broader than her and he took her in his embrace, pulling her in close and squeezing her tightly. She kicked hard at his shins and a wayward knee caught him painfully in the groin, but he just pulled her in closer. He felt a stab of pain in his chest as she bit deeply, but his shirt absorbed the worst of her efforts and he only grasped her tighter.
He held her like that for what seemed like an age, her hands trapped by her sides and her face now buried against his chest.
At some point, she went limp against him and he loosened his grip, afraid that she was suffocating. He eased her away and looked down into eyes that were confused but no longer feral.
“You have to finish her,” a man’s voice gasped from the ground.
“Anderson?” Caleb exclaimed, looking down at the man’s bloody face as he tried to sit up.
“She’ll kill us both.”
“No, no she won’t. Not now,” Caleb said as he eased Quinn down and sat her gently on the floor.
“You’re crazy!” Anderson said as he crawled away. “I’m telling you, she’ll kill us both! She’s been infected like the others but worse.”
“No,” Caleb said, shaking his head firmly. “Doc Simmons came up with an antidote. She’ll be fine; she has to be.”