by Jack Lewis
Mel stopped walking. Her triceps twitched with the strain of Lou’s weight.
“Okay, Kyle. You’re gonna want to see this.”
The wider we went, the more the countryside came into a view. In front of us, nestled amongst the untamed grass and nettles, was the helicopter.
Cracks lined the cockpit window, though the glass must have been shatterproof because it had stayed in place. The helicopter leaned to its left so that one of its propellers was dug into the dirt. The tail was dented in places and bent out of shape, and the smaller propeller at the end was completely smashed.
The smoke we had seen came from a fire next to the helicopter. It looked like it had been started recently, though it was dying down. Someone had ripped out the chairs, upholstery and parachute from the helicopter and had set it alight.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones who came to find it,” said Mel.
A group of infected were surrounding the helicopter from all sides. There were ten of them, and they were almost all completely naked. They took blundering steps forward, breasts and penises swinging in the cold air. Some had scorched flesh as if something had burned them, and others had missing limbs and holes in their flesh.
“Scotland’s last nudist colony,” I said.
The infected were closing in a circle around the helicopter. There was something inside that they wanted. I didn’t know what it was, but after coming all this way, I wouldn’t let them have it. I lowered my end of Lou’s stretcher to the floor. She stirred, but didn’t walk from her sleep.
“What do you think?” I said. “Ten of them. That’s three each for me and Mel, two each for you guys.”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders.
“It’ll be fine if we’re careful.”
Dealing with the infected was routine now. In any ecosystem, the prey and the predators adjust to each other. Sixteen years ago the infected had been something new, a dangerous animal that we hadn’t seen before. We’d had a lot of time to adjust, and they had their limitations. Seeing them still gave me a chill, but that was just an instinctual response that I doubted would ever leave. I knew I could handle them.
“Mel and I will take the ones from six o’clock to twelve. You guys take the other four. Keep your distance until you’re ready to kill. Ben, I want you to stay here with Lou. Shout your lungs out if you see anything.”
We descended down the gentle slope. I felt a heaviness in my back muscles and my calves, but at the same time a light feeling fluttered through my stomach. Nerves, maybe, but not fear. Charlie’s face was set in a scowl. I knew that he didn’t like fighting the infected, but I was glad that I had made him practice back in camp.
When I was four feet away from the first infected, it turned around with a speed that I didn’t expect. It repulsed me. It had once been a man, judging from what swung between its legs, but it resembled nothing human now. Deep gouges covered its face as if someone had scratched its flesh with a knife, left it to heal and then scratched it again. Dead flesh didn’t heal, I knew, so this must have been done to him while he was alive. This infected was the only one who wore any clothing, with its upper body covered by a tight-looking denim jacket.
The infected cried out. Another creature to its left, a woman, turned around. One of her breasts was missing, and a wound ran across her from hip to hip, thick and deep like a dried up river cutting a channel across a desert.
“Keep it tight,” I told everyone.
One by one the infected turned to us, each of them alerted by the cries of the others. The creature in front of me stared into my eyes. Its irises were dark brown, with so little colour that they appeared to be black. I got the sense that this wasn’t just an absent stare. It felt like this infected was really seeing me, that it knew I was there and that I wasn’t just food.
The wind scoured my body, sneaking through every crevice in my clothes and smothering my skin.
“Kyle,” said Mel.
An infected to my right stumbled toward me. It was a short, middle-aged man, his scalp missing and his grey brain matter facing the elements. He reached out for me with fingernails an inch long and lined with dirt.
I stepped back. I gave the scratched infected another glance, and then focussed on the middle aged man. The infected screamed and groaned like a nest of undead birds. Some concentrated on me, hunger in their gaze, whilst others looked at Mel.
In the background behind me, Charlie held his carving knife in his hand and swung at the head of an infected. The blade dug into its scalp, but the blow wasn’t deep enough to damage its brain. The scientist strained to pull his blade free.
A woman lurched at Mel. Her hair ran to her waist, and flowed over the hem of a dirty skirt. It was tangled with mud and twigs, giving her the appearance of an undead forest witch. Her cry was high pitched and it seemed to crawl into my ears and worm its way into my brain. The shouts around us rose until they sang out like a chorus.
The middle-aged man groped for me again. I stepped out of reach, moved to the side and then stabbed the end of my knife into his exposed brain. He tumbled down to the dirt.
Charlie tried again with the infected near him, and this time he stabbed the metal through the monster’s brain. Instead of falling back onto the floor, the infected toppled forwards, and the scientist was too slow to move out of its way. He caught the full weight of the corpse and struggled with it. As he tried to push it away, a monster to his right moved toward him.
“Reggie,” I shouted, trying to get him to help Charlie.
Even in the midst of a fight I could see that Reggie didn’t look good. His eyes were vacant and it looked like he could hardly keep them open. His steps were unsure, his gait not much different from the infected whom he fought.
I was going to have to help Charlie. That meant leaving Mel with three infected to fight, but I was more confident of her prowess than I was of the two men across from us.
“You okay?” I said.
She nodded, and swung her cleaver at the head of the forest witch infected who strained for her.
Charlie pushed the infected to the floor. The one to his right, six foot tall and black, grabbed his shoulders. He cried out in pain under the infected’s grip.
I moved in his direction, but as soon as I took a step I felt pain in my scalp, and something yanked my head back. I tried to move my head away but the pain was searing as if my skull was on fire. I moved to the side and felt a clump of hair tear from my scalp.
The taller infected looked at me. It held a clump of my black hair in its fists. It reached for me with a speed I didn’t expect, and grabbed hold of my arm so tight that it was like it was trying to squeeze through my flesh.
“Help!” Charlie shouted.
The infected held my right arm, so I couldn’t do anything with my knife. It moved its head toward me in an absurd movement that looked like it was stretching for a kiss. I saw its teeth, yellow at the bases and stained brown in between, gums swollen and red raw. Its breath tweaked my gag reflex.
Charlie screamed behind me. His voice was desperate.
With my left hand I reached up and grabbed the infected’s skull. I held it in a grip so that my thumb was on one of its temples and my middle finger on the other, with my palm resting on its head. I squeezed tight and then pulled away. The infected’s scalp came off with surprising ease, the skin making a tearing sound as I ripped it away.
Charlie shrieked. Mel shouted something, but a thumping in my ears drowned it out.
I held the infected’s scalp in my hand. I bit back on the urge to be sick and threw the piece of skin and hair to the ground. The wind lapped around the infected’s exposed brain. It was slimy and full of gouges. I put my hand around it and squeezed, imagining that I was gripping a sponge. I closed my hand tighter around the brain tissue until finally I sensed a change. The creature in front of me went limp, its hand fell away from my arm, and it dropped to the floor.
I turned. Charlie fell to the floor, and an infected fell
on top of him. Reggie took a few paces toward the scientist and then stopped.
”What the hell are you doing?” I said.
Reggie looked at me, but his eyes were unfocused. He looked empty, a broken shell hobbling on two legs. As his friend grappled with an infected just feet away, Reggie’s eyes went completely blank and he fell to the floor.
I was too far away to get to Charlie in time. With his one arm he wrestled with the infected, but the creature’s desire and hunger and two good arms were winning out. My stomach churned as I watched what I knew would be the death of yet another friend.
Something exploded. It was a bang so loud that it made my ears ring. The infected above Charlie stopped fighting, went limp and then slumped to the floor.
A man emerged from inside the helicopter. He bent his head through the broken door and squeezed himself out onto the fields. When he straightened up, I saw that he wore a military uniform.
Chapter 20
He was shorter than most military men, and a whole lot rounder. Though his body seemed thick it was also bulky, and I sensed that he was sturdy enough that it would take more than a few punches to knock him down. His eyebrows were bushy, and his black hair was swept over his head where it fell into curls at the back. A carefully groomed moustache claimed territory on his top lip.
Despite the uniform, I couldn’t imagine him in the army. He looked like he’d fit in better behind the bar of a low-class whiskey joint. Gossiping with the regulars, twisting a glass and wash cloth in his hand and making the glass squeal as he wiped off lipstick stains. Knocking back a short when the feeling took him, then looking up at the clock and breathing out a sigh of whiskey-tainted breath.
He stopped for a few seconds and looked at me. To my left, Mel raised her cleaver one last time. An infected cried out, and there was a thud as it hit the ground. Then everything was silent.
The pilot turned the gun in his hands. He looked at the handle. Then he raised it and pointed it at my head.
I didn’t say anything. I just stared. I looked at his moustached face, at his skin wrinkled like a hide left out in the sun. His eyes were deep and dark.
Mel turned her head toward me, and then back at the pilot.
“The fight’s over. You can lower that.”
He blinked. His irises disappeared for a second, and then came back as dark as ever. He held the gun loosely, as though he didn’t want it but knew that he needed it at the same time. I saw his right eye squint through the sights. He seemed like a man getting ready to pull the trigger.
“Listen,” I said, holding my hand up. “We’re not here for trouble. We saw you fly over our camp, that’s all. Just curiosity.”
He coughed.
“Well now you’ve seen me. So fuck off.”
His voice was northern. It was gruff and brutal, the words taking on a thickness as they left his mouth. It was a voice as brash as the cold winter wind.
“Where are you from?” I said.
The smoke rose up behind him. It was starting to disperse now, and the plume was thinner and clearer. I wondered why he had started the fire in the first place. Was it to attract attention? Throwing his chair on the blaze meant that the helicopter was probably grounded.
“I’m not in the habit of telling strangers my business,” he said.
“So maybe you don’t tell us your business. Just clue us in a little.”
“I’ve gotta say,” said Mel. “I’m freaking out here. It’s been God knows how long since I saw a helicopter, and then you go flying overhead. Then we come and find you, and you look like you should be behind the counter in an antiques shop.”
The pilot seemed to think about it. The gun stayed firm in his hand, the barrel pointed at my forehead.
“What’s with the fire?” I said.
“I’m not in the habit of – “
“Yeah, we get it.”
It was a Mexican standoff, but instead of a dusty desert, it was the wet countryside of Scotland. Rather than having pistols pointed at each other, only one of us had a firearm, which left the rest of us at a disadvantage. We also had no idea what each of us wanted. Where had he come from? Why was he here?
I started to feel like none of this had been worth it. It had cost us a lot to get here, and there was nothing to show for it but a paranoid pilot who looked too stocky to even get in the cockpit.
“Kyle,” said Charlie, to my right.
Caught in the moment, I had forgotten about him. He crouched down on his knees next to Reggie, who was out cold. The bodies of the infected were slumped out on the grass around them. Charlie pressed his index and middle fingers against Reggie’s neck.
He turned and looked at me. His face was white.
“He’s dead,” he said.
The words stopped in the air, the breeze sweeping them up and carrying them away so that I wondered if I had even heard them.
“Say that again?” I said.
Mel started to walk across the field. The pilot pointed the gun at her.
“Steady, love,” he said.
Charlie pressed his fingers against Reggie’s neck again, and then shook his head.
“No pulse. He’s gone.” He put his hand to his forehead, covering his face for a few seconds.
“This can’t be right,” I said. “What the hell are you talking about? He didn’t get hurt in the fight. Look at him, there are no marks on his body. Try his pulse again.”
Charlie shook his head. “Kyle, he’s gone. I don’t know what - Well, I don’t know how this happened. One minute he was walking, next thing we know, he drops to the floor.”
I thought about Taylor and about finding the teenager’s body, his chest and stomach ripped apart. A few days later, I had evicted Kendal from camp. Now, later still, Reggie was dead. This was a whole family unit which had been torn to shreds in less than a fortnight. One of them was gone by my hands, but what about the other two? Who had killed Taylor? What the hell had happened to Reggie?
“You need to watch your pal,” said the pilot. “Make sure he doesn’t get back up.”
“He wasn’t bitten,” said Mel. She was edging closer to the pilot.
“No? So your mate just dropped dead? Well lucky him, I suppose. Not many of us get to die of natural causes these days.”
Mel took another step. She was feet away from him now. The pilot aimed his gun at Charlie and Reggie now.
“Make sure the bugger doesn’t get back up.”
Charlie looked incredulous. “You’re not listening to me. He wasn’t bitten, and he damn sure wasn’t infected.”
Mel edged closer. I willed the pilot not to look at her. I felt my pulse quicken.
The pilot instead moved his gaze to me.
“You. What’s your name?”
“Kyle.”
“Well, Kyle. I’m Al Redmayne. You seem as bull headed as me, and I don’t like that. But now that we know each other, are you going to listen to me?”
“Helps that you’re pointing a gun,” I said. “I’m not exactly going to ignore you.”
“An ears an ear, I don’t care what makes you use it. Take heed of this, though. If you’ve got any sense in you, you’ll put a knife through your friend’s brain.”
I sighed. “You’re the one who needs to use your ears. He wasn’t bitten. He was…”
Mel moved another step as I spoke, and this time she was close enough to lunge at the Al. As she reached for him the pilot saw the movement, and he span around to face her. Quicker than Mel could react, he swung the pistol and hit her on the face with it. It made a thumping sound as it smashed the bridge of her nose.
Al raised the gun. His face was calm, his breathing steady.
“Now listen to me, lass,” he started to say.
Charlie cried out. Still on the ground, he started to scamper backwards with one arm, but he lost balance for a second. He scrambled on the floor and then pushed himself up to his feet.
There was movement in front of him. Reggie’s hand flinched.
It twisted on the ground, his fingers stretching out and then curling in toward his palm. He jerked his arm and then twitched his feet. Slowly, he moved his head. He started to lift it to look at us, and when his eyes met mine, a shock ran through me.
Reggie’s gaze was cold and dead. The skin on his face still seemed soft and human, but the look behind his eyes was something else. It was wild and hungry. This was a stranger in Reggie’s body. He opened his mouth to talk, but the only sound that came out was an agonised cry. It was a wail so desperate that it sounded like it came from the deepest pit of his stomach.
Al turned. He lifted the pistol and looked down the sights. As his finger wrapped around the trigger, Charlie launched himself at Reggie and aimed his blade at his eyes. Reggie fell face first onto the grass. Charlie stood with his knife coated in blood, his chest rising and falling as he sucked in air.