The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival

by Lewis, Jack

  The cabin was filled with rows of bunk beds that must have come straight from an army barracks. A narrow space separated them in the middle, and at the end of the cabin there was a doorway. The room beyond was dark, but Heather could make out a row of toilets side by side with nothing covering them. Next to some of the beds were wooden drawers, and the nearest one was open. She saw sheets of paper that looked like newspaper clippings, as well as some indeterminate beige blocks that could have been food of some kind.

  She grabbed a chair from under a desk at the side of the room. She dragged it to the door and wedged it under the handle just in time for an infected to try to push its way in. The door held firm under the rattling of the infected, but she knew it wouldn’t stay that way.

  Some of the people had slunk away into the dark shadows of the room in the manner of insects retreating from the light. A little girl stared at Heather from the top bunk. Her face was clean but her clothes were covered in dirt. Heather took a step forward. The old woman with the necklace looked at the gun in Heather’s hand and shrieked. It was the kind of noise she’d expect from a rat trapped in a corner.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She stepped forward, and the people scuttled back. There were less than twenty of them in the room, but over thirty bunk-beds. Heather put the gun in her pocket and held her hands in the air. She tried her best to seem non-threatening.

  “I’m looking for two children,” she said.

  She girl on the bed perked her head up. The woman with the necklace blinked and stuck a foot cautiously out of the shadows as though the light might burn her.

  “They’re not here,” she said, in a voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in days. “Guards took them a few hours ago.”

  Was she already too late? She looked at the skinny people and realised what they were. She stared carefully at their bodies and saw scratches on their arms and bites on their necks. One man, with a square jaw and rough beard, had teeth marks on his cheeks. They were all immune, she realised. They had been attacked by the infected and survived the coma, and the Capita had celebrated by bringing them here. It made her want to cry when she thought of Kim and Eric in this same room, scared and wondering what would happen to them, waiting for the soldiers to take them away.

  “Are they on the train?” said Heather.

  “That’s where they usually go,” said the woman.

  Her face was different, but her body reminded Heather of her grandmother. She had once been a healthy woman but after slipping on ice and shattering a hip she lost the confidence to leave her house.

  I’ll be happy when I can go out again, she used to say. Once I’m up to it.

  She and Heather both knew that day would never come. Her grandmother didn’t leave the house in the last eleven years of her life. Her body grew thinner under a lack of exercise and a diet of grilled fish and potatoes, but her left leg swelled with water retention. Through years without use it started to look like a hunk of beef.

  Heather felt tenderness for the woman in front of her. What was the point of it all? She had survived through the outbreak and found herself in this new world, and her reward for a life of hardship was being locked in a shed and left to waste away.

  “What do you mean, they?” said Heather.

  “The ones who go to the farm.”

  As soon as she said the word a shockwave ran through the room, and some of the immune moved farther back into the shadows until they were pressed against the wall. The girl on the top bunk lifted the bed cover and buried herself in it, leaving just enough of a gap for her head to poke out.

  Heather didn’t know what to say. She realised that these people wouldn’t care about her problems, or her children for that matter. God knew how long they had been here, wasting away, wondering when it would be their turn to board the train.

  “How the hell did they get a train working? And where do they keep it?”

  “Nobody knows,” answered a man.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and rolled paper between his fingers. It looked like a cigarette, but when she looked closer Heather realised it was newspaper filled with floor shavings.

  “Ignore him,” said the old lady. “It’s a steam powered train. Like they used to have.”

  “Can you take me to it?”

  “If you can get me out of here.”

  The door banged and rattled, and the chair holding it back shook under the force. Heather wondered how many of them were outside. She realised that the infected hadn’t approached the shed until now. She had led them here, and in doing so had put these people in danger. They might have been immune to the virus, but that didn’t mean the infected would ignore them.

  “I think I ruined our escape route,” said Heather.

  “Don’t worry. They usually drift away after a few minutes.”

  She realised that she was the only one who glanced toward the door every time it shook. The others seemed more wary of Heather than the monsters outside. What kind of a world was it where they had become more scared of people than the infected?

  “What’s your name?” said Heather.

  The old woman straightened the necklace on her neck. The blouse she wore was baggy around her waist. Maybe it had fit once, but now it was more like a tent.

  “Mary,” she said. “But it’s not the time for life stories, Heather. They might have buggered off for now, but the guards will be round to check in a few hours.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “The lad and the lass were going on about you. I’m no genius, but my brain’s not rattled yet. And I’m not as old as I look, so you can take the pity out of your eyes.”

  She looked at the door. The chair held it tight, but she knew that they couldn’t leave the cabin that way. Her pistol would afford some protection from the infected, but it wouldn’t help her swim through the tide. Eventually it would give out, and Heather would have nothing left.

  “You got a better way out of here?”

  Mary smiled. It was the kind of grin given to a child full of naïve questions.

  “Thought the door, of course.”

  Heather shook her head. “We won’t make it.”

  “Look at the chair. Is it moving now?”

  She was right. The chair was still, and the door no longer rattled. Perhaps, as Mary had said, the infected had gotten bored and drifted away. From her experience they were remarkable for their one-track minds and unwavering determination, and if they sensed a potential meal they could happily hammer at a door for days. Was it possible that over time, knowing they couldn’t get into the cabin, they had become conditioned to give up?

  She moved the chair way from the door. As she grabbed the door handle, she felt something tug on her back. She turned and saw the man who had been rolling a cigarette. He had the thin wrists of a skeleton covered in Clingfilm.

  “Take us with you.”

  Others rose from their beds and stepped out of the shadows. Their eyes were large, their expressions lost. It made Heather want to cry when she saw how much they resembled the infected. This was what it had come to. The Capita gave safety to some, but took the humanity away from others. She felt the fire of anger and ice of sadness in her chest at the same time, and it was overwhelming enough for her to want to sink to the floor.

  “Leave them, Heather,” said Mary.

  “What?”

  “You can’t save them all. Most of us already made our peace with what will come. Those who haven’t, well that’s tough shit.”

  She didn’t see her grandma anymore. The kind old lady was gone, replaced with a selfish woman letting her survival instincts guide her actions. She had misjudged her, and she realised that merely being old didn’t bestow a person with an inner sense of goodness. You didn’t suddenly become a saint because you were old enough to collect your pension. People of great ages were capable of the darkest things.

  “We can’t leave them here,” she said.

  She wav
ed her hand in the air and gestured for all of them to follow her. The girl on the top bunk threw back her covers, swung off the edge of the bed and dangled herself closer to the floor. She let go and dropped. Others moved from the other side of the room and joined Heather at the door.

  “Get ready,” said Heather. “When we leave, they’ll sense us. Just keep moving.”

  She felt a glow inside her. She was doing something, finally doing something. She imagined the faces of the Capita soldiers when they opened the cabin doors to find it empty, and she grinned. If she could lead the DC’s away and find Kim and Eric, she would finally have done something worthwhile.

  She turned and gave them all a smile that she hoped was reassuring.

  “This is it,” she said. “Watch your arses and don’t let the bastards bite you.”

  She moved the chair away from the door and started to turn the handle, when a hole exploded in cabin wall. She heard popping sounds, dozens in succession, and more holes dotted the plasterboard. The cigarette man clutched his neck and fell to the floor, blood spraying over his chest. The little girl scrambled underneath her bed. Another man cried out, and three people sprinted down the hallway and into the bathroom at the end.

  As more cracks rang out and the wall became a sieve, Heather opened the door a crack. A line of Capita soldiers stood at the edge of the complex, just past the gate, with their rifles raised. Two of them in the middle parted as someone walked by them, and Heather watched with wide eyes as Charles Bull walked into the compound.

  25

  Ed

  Pain flowed through him and blood gushed out as he pulled the spear from his calf. Behind them he could hear the shouts of The Savage and his men, and when he turned he saw that they moved forward in a uniform line, knives and axes raised in the air, like a hunting party trailing a hog. Ed tried to limp but his calf burned as though someone held a piece of hot coal against it. He sank to the floor, bit back on the urge to scream, and rolled up the leg of his trousers. There was a hole an inch wide where the top of the spear had punctured the skin, and the bottom of his calf was becoming covered by a film of blood.

  The stranger’s boat was fifty feet below them at the bottom of the cliff, and Ed knew that without it there was no way to leave the island. There was a pathway down to it where the cliff was less severe, but it was rocky and it sloped in many places. Gordon Rigby had once vetoed plans to install a handrail with the excuse that it would ruin the beauty of the island, but Ed would have gladly swapped aesthetics for a sturdy piece of metal. In its absence, there was no way he could make it down there.

  “Bloody Gordon Rigby,” he said.

  The Savage made a bellow so loud that not even the wind could drown it out. He reached behind him and pulled another spear from a holster on his back as though he were an archer drawing arrows from a quiver.

  “Ed…” said Bethelyn.

  He rubbed his calf and wiped away some of the blood. The wound was raw but the blood seemed to be thinning into a dribble. The stinging of pain didn’t follow suit, and if anything it felt like a blowtorch was breathing fire on his skin.

  “I know, I know,” he said in between gasps of pain.

  The pathway down to the ship wasn’t an option. As brave a face as he wanted to put on it, he wouldn’t be able to hobble down before the strangers caught up with them. They were going to be caught, and rather than whimpering about it, Ed wanted to stand up. It wasn’t fair that he should doom Bethelyn to the fate he was surely going to face.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “You think I’m leaving you?” said Bethelyn. “Don’t you remember my big speech at the town hall? If we split up, we die.”

  “And since then Gary and Judith aren’t doing too good, are they?”

  Bethelyn pout her hand out toward him. “Come on Ed. If you’re gonna give up, then I’ll join you. So you won’t just be screwing yourself if you’re a coward about this.”

  He felt a rush of heat in his face. Did she really just call him a coward after everything they had been through? He knew that nobody on Golgoth had faced the outbreak until now, but he’d handled it pretty well. Sure, the fact he was immune was pure luck. Everything that had happened since, and the fact they’d survived as long as they had, must have been at least partly down to him.

  Bethelyn moved her hand closer to him. Ed brushed it away, pressed his own hand on the ground and tried to push himself up. When his weight fell on his wounded calf, the fire burned in him again. He collapsed back down to the grass.

  “Okay you stubborn sod. You’re not a coward. But you’re not exactly an action man.”

  This time he let her help him to his feet. The strangers were skirting along the cliffs, creeping as though they thought they could sneak up on them. It didn’t make sense given that The Savage had already screamed his lungs out.

  His calf still throbbed, but once he was on his feet he found he could stay there, and he could even limp along. He still wasn’t sure-footed enough to brave the cliff pathway, but he could walk enough so that they could at least go somewhere.

  “We need to hide,” said Bethelyn. “Let’s go into the village.”

  “Back there again?”

  “I know this is probably the worst day of your life, having to spend time outside your bedroom and all, but if there’s another way then I’m missing it.”

  Ed had to agree. On the cliff edge, surrounded by patchy Golgoth grass that never grew more than a few centimetres before falling out like an alopecia stricken head of hair, they were asking to be caught.

  The strangers were a stone’s throw away now, slinking across the cliff with their fur coats flapping in the wind. They moved deliberately and aggressively, tigers hunting on the plain. Ed limped away from the edge with Bethelyn supporting him and tried his best not to act like the wounded antelope that the strangers had obviously mistaken him for.

  They reached the edge of the village. There was a cobblestone wall that didn’t support or join on to anything. On the edge of it was a post box which Ed had never seen emptied, even before the outbreak. He had the strange thought that he had never actually mailed a letter to anyone. Not even once in his entire life.

  Ahead of them was Ed’s house and Bethelyn’s cottage. Scattered around were a handful of other decades-old buildings that had once been people’s homes, but which were now empty and would stand for years to come as museums of what had once been. The main street, with its uneven cobbles and poking weeds which Gordon had battled endlessly, was never busy at the best of times. In such a small population it was rare to see anyone else lurking because they would usually be working during the day and at home by night. The residents of the island had always kept private lives, which was partly the reason why most of them had moved here. Now, for the first time, all the residents of Golgoth walked down the street together. Only, they were no longer people. They breathed, they saw, they heard and they walked, but any trace of their humanity was gone.

  The village was lost to them, and even if he could run at full sprint Ed wouldn’t have liked to dodge his way through the crowd of infected stumbling down the cobbles. They were trapped between monsters both sides. One crowd of them was slow and stupid, the other agile and cunning. It was a choice, then, of which way they were going to die. Maybe Ed hadn’t been a coward when he sat on the floor and thought about giving up. Maybe he was just a realist.

  “You in the mood to fight?” said Bethelyn.

  She rubbed her shoulder and grimaced, but she hid the expression within seconds of making it. It seemed to Ed that everyone made attempts to hide their pain, be it of the mind or of the flesh. Ed had hidden the emptiness he felt after dad and James had gone by cutting himself off from everyone else, and Bethelyn had disguised the pain of losing April by forcing herself into action. It was as though feeling something was a thing to be ashamed of. Pain and fear were the most basic emotions, yet everyone tried to pretend they were numb to them.

  He looked at the inf
ected and he saw the faces of people he once knew, though they didn’t seem real. Between their snarls and the gnashing of their teeth they looked as though they were made-up to feature in a horror movie, like the population of Golgoth had been cast as extras in a monster feature. He knew that Bethelyn would fight until her body gave out and he would do the same, though his damaged body would give sooner than hers. Between them they could probably take down five or six infected, leaving a good thirty more ready to bite feast on them.

  “We need to go back to the cliff,” he said.

  Bethelyn held her poker in her hand, her thumb wrapped around the handle.

  “Not your greatest idea,”