by Haywood, RR
‘Dunno,’ I say, ‘Clarence and Blowers can speak to him tomorrow.’
‘Lilly needs good people here,’ Paula says firmly, ‘and unless he’s…well, unless he is…’
‘Unless he is what?’ Lilly asks.
‘Immune,’ Marcy says, ‘he wouldn’t last five minutes otherwise.’
‘Reggie,’ I get his attention from the book in his hands, ‘how can we tell if someone is immune?’
‘I am most flattered that you consider me able to answer every question you pose but short of having an infected host body bite him I do not know.’
‘Talking of which,’ Paula says, giving me a look.
I look at Lilly and take in the bruises on her face and again question how a fifteen year old girl can take such a beating and do what she’s done without any apparent side effects.
‘Lilly,’ I say. She frowns at the way Paula, Marcy and Clarence are looking at her and turns to face me.
‘You think I hold immunity?’ She asks with an intelligence that joins the dots far quicker than I would do.
‘You’re healing very fast for someone who took such a beating,’ I say.
‘Did Nick give it to me?’
‘I don’t think it works like that’ I say, ‘Reggie? I know what you just said but…’
‘I cannot say for certain,’ he says with a sigh, ‘but no, I do not think it works in that manner.’
‘Your hair,’ Marcy says with a kind smile, ‘your skin. You look so glowing and healthy.’
‘I have been outdoors for a few days,’ Lilly says.
‘Look at Charlie,’ Paula says, ‘someone with those injuries should not look like she does.’
‘Fit,’ Cookey says with a firm nod and a big grin.
‘Thank you,’ Charlie says, smiling at Cookey.
‘Do your injuries hurt?’ Roy asks, moving closer into the middle of the group as we stand in the dark outside the house on the shore opposite the fort.
‘A little,’ Lilly says.
‘May I?’ Roy asks, holding his hand out for her arm. She nods politely and holds it out as he gently touches the bruises and welts so clear on her skin. ‘Does that hurt?’
‘It’s tender,’ she says, watching his fingers gently push into a bruise.
‘You were kicked in the ribs and thighs?’ He asks.
‘I was.’
‘Several times I think they said,’ Roy says.
‘That is correct.’
‘No broken ribs?’
‘How would I know?’
‘A broken rib? You would know,’ Roy says confidently. ‘Do you wake up with energy?’
‘I have a lot to do.’
‘But you don’t feel as hungry or as thirsty as you used to do,’ he says.
‘I…I have not really noticed.’
‘May I ask you a question, Lilly?’ Charlie asks.
‘Of course.’
‘When you fought back, did you feel something inside? Like a rage?’
‘Well I was very angry yes but my brother was…’ she trails off with the memory of the event so clear on her face and just for a second I see a flash of darkness in her features. I close my eyes and make myself think of my sister. I make myself think of Lani and everyone we’ve lost. I summon faces and the essence of the infection and the darkness in me swims to the surface. I think of the battles we’ve fought and the never ending unceasing relentless hatred I have for the infection. Then I think of that girl screaming in the room Mummy…Daddy…make them stop. Rage inside that surges up with a searing pain that floods my mind. Meredith growls, pushing her nose into my open hand.
They are not here. Be calm.
‘Howie stop,’ Marcy says quickly.
Rage that pulses to send out a feeling that comes down on all of us. Jess whinnies in the garden of the house. Meredith’s voice joins her. A low whine, insistent and worried.
They are not here. There are no little ones. Be calm.
‘Howie, stop!’ Marcy grabs my hand.
I snap my eyes open to see Lilly glaring at her with a vein pushing out from her forehead and the cold blue eyes of a killer fixed and unblinking.
‘I felt that yesterday,’ she says in a voice bereft of emotion, ‘last night when it got dark…I felt it then. Pack. I felt the word pack.’
‘That’s enough,’ Marcy says, ‘Lilly, you’re one of us. Stop it now, Howie. Switch it off I can’t handle that girl in my head…’
It ain’t that easy to turn it off though. I’ve never brought it on coldly like that before but now it’s here I can’t get rid of it. I shake my head but the pressure builds and grows.
‘Howie, fucking stop it,’ Marcy flashes at me.
‘I fucking can’t,’ I growl back.
‘You stupid prick, why did you do that?’ She shouts at me.
‘Get fucked,’ I snap back.
‘Safe, Dave,’ Mo says, his own voice choking with unspent rage.
‘Fucking hell,’ Marcy seethes and steps away with her hands clasped to her head, ‘why did you do that?’
‘To see if Lilly was…’ I go to reply with a voice hoarse and tight.
‘Well it fucking worked,’ Marcy says over me, ‘switch it off for fuck’s sake.’
‘I just said I fucking can’t.’
‘Everyone inside,’ Paula snaps, her eyes furious. We all are. Everyone is. The hive mind of battle coming on strong. Energy courses our bodies, urging us to give battle but there ain’t nothing to fight. ‘You two take first watch,’ she adds waving an angry hand at me and Marcy.
‘Fine,’ Marcy snaps.
‘Good,’ I growl. We stare at each other. We glare full of baleful hate. Her nostrils flare. My head tilts back.
‘Marcy,’ Paula shouts from the door, ‘switch him off.’
‘You fucking idiot,’ Marcy whispers at me.
‘I will apologise when I am not so fucking angry but until then you can fuck off…’
‘I fucking hate you, Howie.’
‘I fucking detest you, Marcy.’
‘SWITCH HIM OFF FOR FUCK’S SAKE,’ Paula shouts from inside the house.
‘Fine,’ Marcy’s face twitches. I glare at her. She shakes her head at me. I squint my eyes at her with my arms and legs shaking from the unused adrenalin pumping through my body.
‘NOW MARCY,’ Paula bellows.
‘Fine,’ Marcy marches at me. I stand my ground. She stops inches away with hot air blasting from her nose.
‘You’re breathing on me,’ I whisper angrily.
‘I have to kiss you,’ Marcy says with absolute pure fury in her eyes.
‘Yeah? Gonna use pheromones again?’
‘Cunt.’
‘Bitch.’
‘IF YOU DON’T START I WILL COME OUT THERE AND DO IT MYSELF…’ Clarence’s angry voice booms.
Her lips slam into mine. Fury and rage ramming into me. I stand my ground taking the impact and push my lips into hers. A hand comes up to grab a handful of hair on the back of my head. I push harder. Not yielding. Not giving ground. She drives in. Our eyes open and glaring.
‘Kiss me back,’ she hisses.
‘You kiss me,’ I counter.
‘I am you twat.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes. Open your bloody mouth then.’
‘You open yours,’ I say, refusing to be controlled or manipulated.
‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ she says.
‘On three then,’ I growl.
‘Fine.’
‘One,’ I count.
‘Two,’ she pulses with rage that I can feel thrumming her body and never before have I hated someone so much.
We count the last second in our heads and the discipline of order kicks in. We both close our eyes. We both move in and we both open our mouth and that fury flows between us. From her to me and back to her. Round and round it goes as my hands reach up to cup her face and hers dig harder into the back of my head. The fury grows. We kiss harder. The pulsing rage scream
s to be used and like a switch it changes from something dark and nasty to something of light and beauty. I kiss her. She kisses me. I kiss her because I want to kiss her and now suddenly there is nothing else to do in the world other than kiss this woman.
She pushes into me. Her hands not digging now but pushing through my hair. My own hands feel the cheekbones under her skin and down to her slender neck and shoulders. We kiss and let that darkness slide away to be ready for another day. We let beauty and grace back inside and it spreads out like a gentle ripple on a lake. I can feel the others all settling too. I feel Lilly breathing slower. I feel Clarence’s fists unclenching. Blowers finally blinks. Jess stops snorting and tossing her head and Meredith’s hackles soften against her back.
I sink into Marcy. Marcy who holds my heart in her hands because nobody else could do this right now. There isn’t another person alive that could take that consuming rage and turn it away so deftly. It goes too. All of it. It goes and instead there is only her. Just Marcy. Only Marcy. Always Marcy.
When we separate we do so by increments of millimetres at a time. Almost as though the very act of parting is painful. Then we are just a man and a woman holding each other on a dark road outside a house where our friends are gathered.
‘Saxon?’ She breathes heavily.
‘Yeah go on then.’
Thirty Four
The rage subsides. A stupid thing to do. To invite the urge to fight and give battle and in the house they snarl and growl at each other until finally it ebbs away like a tide being pulled smoothly back from the shore.
But now it goes and in its place is a warm feeling of grace and beauty that spreads warm smiles from face to face and so organic and natural that none of them question it. These are strange days after all.
‘You okay?’ Paula asks, easing gratefully into bed.
‘Fine now, I can’t believe he just did that,’ Roy says, stretching his arm out for Paula to sink into his side.
‘I think he meant well.’
‘No, not that he did it but that he was able to do it…just switch it on like that.’
‘Mmmm, couldn’t bloody switch it off though could he.’
He kisses her forehead gently and pulls her in closer. ‘I think Marcy will calm him down.’
She mumbles affirmation then lifts her head to look at him, ‘did you see the doctors?’
‘I did.’
‘Everything okay?’
‘For now,’ he says, his tone dropping a notch.
‘For now?’ She asks.
He smiles sadly, ‘magical thinking. One of my fears is that if I believe I am okay then I will get sick…so I never really believe it even when they tell me. It’s like a…like a security blanket or a shield.’
‘Oh,’ she says mildly, ‘okay.’
‘Doesn’t put you off me?’
‘No, Roy,’ she says, leaning over his chest to kiss him gently, ‘nothing about you puts me off. I bet they stay up chatting for ages.’
‘Let them,’ Roy says as she rolls to get on top of him. He traces his fingertips down her back sending shivers through her body, ‘I think we might be up for a bit anyway.’
‘A bit of what?’ She asks with a quick grin.
‘God, you’re turning into Cookey.’
He reads. Water heated from a camping gas stove left in the kitchen and he sips peppermint tea and reads. Candles flicker around the worktop and he sits almost stock still. Only moving to turn the pages or lift the mug to take a sip. After a while he pauses, goes to his bag and takes a writing pad and pen. He flicks to a new page and goes back to the beginning but now with the pen adding notes as he starts again. He doesn’t hear the conversations outside in the garden or the low laughter but somehow, those background noises sooth his mind. The sounds of voices he has already become so used to hearing.
Guide us then. Tell us what we should be doing.
Easy words said but he reads anyway. He reads to learn and as he does so he sees Neal’s life scribbled down in the pages of a journal stained with coffee and blood. He reads because Howie asked him to. He reads because this is his role now and he reads because he refuses to be beaten intellectually by a virus. No Sir, he reads to compete because the challenge is set. His wits against the other player’s. The wheels are in motion. The game is underway. Yesterday was infancy. Today is childlike. What will tomorrow be?
Reginald has seen more horror and felt greater fear than he ever believed it was possible to know, but that pales to the sensation growing inside and as his understand forms so his blood turns to ice in his veins and that feeling of dread magnifies by the second.
They sit and talk as young people do. Blowers, Mo, Blinky, Cookey, Charlie, Nick and Lilly. They tell jokes and laugh and smoke cigarettes and drink hot drinks brewed on a camping gas stove. In the enclosed rear garden of a shore side house with a huge riot trained horse munching at the grass that hasn’t be cut for nineteen days and a dog that rests by the open back door.
They all need this time. Lilly more than anyone. She talks to Charlie about schooling, horses and everything young women talk about. She talks to the others about the fort, her brother and the funny things people say and do. They don’t mention the rage. They don’t talk of the importance of their roles in this brave new world. Instead they listen to Cookey’s jokes and watch Charlie bending double with tears streaming down her face.
The night draws on and as much as they have energy, so they also knew they will need to be awake and alert the next day and with a yawn and a stretch, Blowers stands and signals it’s time to call it a night.
Charlie hangs back to sort Jess out. Cookey waits with her. Blowers, Mo and Blinky head into the living room to kip down on bedding rolled out. Nick panics. Lilly doesn’t.
If you want time alone the first room upstairs on the left is yours. Paula whispered the words in her ear as she bent to kiss the girl goodnight.
Lilly takes his hand and leads him down the hallway. She feels the callouses on his palms and the hard ridges of his knuckles. Their rifles on their backs. Pistols on hips and his axe held in his free hand they mount the stairs. Nick’s mouth goes dry. His heart thunders. Lilly smiles to herself and opens the door to the first room on the left and spots the single flickering candle next to the bedding on the floor.
He flounders. His hands trembling as he props his axe and assault rifle against the wall. She senses his nerves and watches him with soft eyes. Marvelling at how someone who can do the things he can without fear or worry now shows abject concern at being alone with her. She goes to him. Her nerves held at bay and it’s her confidence that carries the moment and her hands that reach up to gently hold his face and pull him down to kiss her soft lips.
He goes with it. Sinking and breathing into the embrace as they stand in a room stripped of usable furniture. Not even curtains on the walls and the silvery moonlight fills the room to fight against the orange glow of the candle.
‘Lilly,’ he pulls back with fear in his voice, his soft brown eyes everything she remembers. His voice quavering with passion and worry. His honour so clear and his decency shining like a beacon in the darkness.
‘I’m not fifteen anymore,’ she whispers, knowing exactly what he is worried about. Lilly is intelligent. Her mind ten steps ahead of everyone else and any nerves she had at coming to a private room with Nick evaporated at seeing that nervous honesty within him. He blinks and smiles a confused grin with a cute frown that makes her chuckle.
‘When…I mean shit sorry…I er…’
‘Yesterday,’ she says, ‘I was sixteen yesterday.’
He nods slowly, his eyes searching hers. She takes his hands in hers and holds them tight.
‘Remember that day in the field?’ She asks.
He smiles softly, that wry twitch of his lips that caught her heart that day, ‘yeah, yeah I do.’
‘I wanted to.’
‘Fuck really? I mean…shit…’
‘It’s fine,’ she smiles, ‘yes,
yes I did.’
‘We don’t have to do anything now, Lilly,’ he says with a brutal yet fragile honesty.
She doesn’t reply because there are no words that could match the feeling inside and this image is the only she held in her head when she walked into the room with Zayden. Instead she kisses him. A girl and boy in a room in a house. Warriors. Killers. Hearts of lions that held the line but a boy and a girl nonetheless.
‘So, right…so by this time the ferry is on fire and Mr Howie is trying to save the coffee machine and we’re all ripping the piss out of Nick who is getting angry as anything…’
She laughs harder. The tears fall faster. Cookey telling her the story of crossing the Solent on a stolen ferry from the Isle of Wight.
Jess is sorted. Brushed, fed, watered and happy to potter about in the garden but still they remain. Leaning against the fence as Cookey gives her a greater pleasure than anything she has ever known.
He trails off. His eyes twinkling as he watches her wipe the tears from her eyes and groan from the pain in her stomach.
‘Cookey,’ she finally stands upright to look at him.
‘Michael Buble,’ he says and she’s off. Bent double from the random utterances that spill from his mouth.
‘What?’ She gasps, ‘what’s…I…Michael Buble?’
He shrugs, ‘dunno, so yeah anyway. Thanks for telling everyone you saw my willy today.’
‘You told everyone you saw my bottom.’
‘I love the way you say bottom.’
She snorts then brays and covers her mouth self-consciously before fighting like a demon to get her breathing under control. She stands up again and fixes him a look, ‘I’ll come to you Charlie…’
‘Oh piss off,’ he groans as she starts laughing at his reaction, ‘right well if we’re not sharing a house then I’m going to bed.’
‘I’d share a house with you,’ she says between snorts.
‘Yeah?’ Cookey asks, ‘have you seen my new sock dance?’
‘No!’ She sputters and turns away when he starts grooving on the spot with a perfectly serious face.
‘My new sock dance.’
‘Stop,’ she gasps.
‘Do the new sock dance with me, Charlie,’ he grabs her hands and starts swinging to get her going, ‘to the left and to the right…and er…to the left or something…’