by Jack Lewis
Heather went to test the door at the other side of the room, when she heard a thud behind her.
“Kim,” said Eric, and scampered across the room.
Kim had dropped to the floor, with her legs splayed underneath her. Sweat dripped across her forehead.
“Mum?” she choked out.
Eric laid his coat underneath Kim’s head. Kim leaned back and made a gasping sound that tore at Heather’s ears. It was a sound every mother feared. She wanted to do something, but she was stuck her to the ground in fear. Kim’s eyes rolled back until only the whites showed.
“Oh god. Just hold on, darling.”
Heather knew what this meant, because they were told about it on the news in the early days of the outbreak. She knew what to expect, but she didn’t know what to do. It didn’t matter what the white-teethed newscasters said; when someone fell into a virus coma, you expected them to wake as a monster.
She couldn’t waste time being upset. Minutes were precious in a crisis. If she wasted them on tears, she would be throwing away hope. She stood in front of the door where she had once hidden. She put her hand on the door handle.
What lay behind the door? A row of beds with people in them? Would they be dead this time? Maybe the cure didn’t work, and she’d open the door to find a room full of infected. Come on, Heather.
She gripped the door handle so hard the metal dug into her skin. With a hammering heart, she twisted the handle.
The door opened from the other side with such force Heather almost spilled over the doorframe. Wes was standing in front of her.
Instead of his usual suit and jogging bottoms, he wore stonewash jeans stained with dirt, and a t-shirt with more holes than fabric. His hair was combed onto his forehead and covered in grease.
Play his game. Be friendly to him, and he’ll help you.
“You must be Wes’s slobbier brother,” she said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.
“What’s the smoke out back?” asked Heather.
“The Capita have turned up the heat, so I turned it up more. Everything that could get me into shit is now a heap of ash.”
“There’s nothing here, Wes,” she said.
“Like I said. It’s all ash.”
Heather followed Wes into the main room. Wes stopped when he saw Kim on the floor in the middle of the floor. He put his hand to his forehead.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“What about your deal with the Capita?” said Heather. “You were testing a cure. I need to know about it.”
He shook his head. “A deal with the Capita is a flame flickering in front of a farting arse. You never know when the next gust is coming.”
“What about the cure?”
“There’s no cure, Heather.”
Acid rose in her stomach. “You told me about the trial.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The acid slid up her chest and into her throat. She felt like steam was rising off her.
“I saw them,” she said, every word coming from between gritted teeth. “The people. The beds.”
“You’re getting into things you know nothing about.”
She thought about what Charles had said about the cure. Eric could cure Kim, but Heather couldn’t sacrifice him. Her conscience shamed her. Kim was her flesh and blood, but the boy was nobody. She should have been able to do it.
Yet this nobody was sitting next to her daughter. He looked at her with concerned puppy eyes, dabbing sweat away from her forehead with the palm of his hand.
She was wrong to blame him. It was her own fault. She was the parent. She should have made sure Kim never took off her mask. She should have stitched it into her skin.
“Listen Heather, you need to go,” said Wes.
The heat inside her reached melting point. Here she was, more desperate than she’d ever been in her life, with a daughter on the verge of becoming a monster, and this pathetic trader wouldn’t tell her about the cure.
She’d make him tell her. She’d force him to. She’d beat the truth out of him.
She punched him in the stomach. God, that felt good. The trader bent over and coughed, flecks of his spit flying from his lips. He didn’t smell of aftershave today; he stunk of sweat.
After seconds of coughing he straightened up. Saliva dripped from his chin. “You stupid bitch. I wasn’t trialling a cure. Can’t you read between the lines?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Capita isn’t trying to find a cure. They already have one.” He pointed at Eric, who looked up in alarm. “I’m assuming that’s the mouth-breather Charles is looking for? There’s your cure. Do you know what the farms are?”
“I’m beginning to piece it together.”
Wes sneered. “They sure as hell aren’t farming potatoes. They farm people, Heather. The DC’s. The Capita collects them and feeds them up. They keep them alive, and they bleed them or cut away their flesh.”
Her stomach lurched. “This is too much.”
“The Capita didn’t pay me to find a cure. They pay me to house the infected and see if they turn. The ones who turn, I burn. The ones who don’t, I sell.”
She thought back to when she had hidden in the room. She remembered the figure stopping feet away from her and speaking to her. The person who asked, ‘where am I?’ had been infected, and they had woken up immune. Where were they now? Had Wes sold them to the Capita?
What about Kim? If a cure wasn’t an option, she could only wait. It would be a long, agonising one. What if Kim woke up and was immune? Would Wes’s try and sell her? She looked at the trader and tasted bile in her mouth.
She threw herself on him. Despite being lighter than him, she got him to the floor. She put her knees on his arms and pounded her fist into his face again and again. Anger burned through her as his nose squashed and his blood splattered on her face. All those people he’d sent to their deaths…rage filled her so completely she couldn’t breathe.
Arms dragged her back. When the fog of anger cleared, she realised Eric had pulled her away. Wes lay on the floor, his face a pulverised piece of meat.
The infected, the farms…it was all too sick. She didn’t care what happened to her anymore. She didn’t care if she spent the rest of her life in the Capita dungeons. She was going to do something. Once Kim was better – she will get through this – she was going to stop the Capita.
“I need to find the farm,” she said. “And the Resistance.”
The trader didn’t speak. Air left his nostril, mixed with blood, and formed a bubble. When it popped, she wanted to vomit. Had she knocked him out? No, his eyes were open.
She moved closer, but his raspy breaths sped up. He’s scared of me.
“The Resistance have someone on the inside,” said Wes, voice weak. “working for the Capita. Someone close enough to learn things.”
All she needed was a name, and she could make contact. She could learn about their fight and her part in it. There was nothing the Capita could do to her now. They might put her in a prison, but there was no dungeon where they could keep her mind.
“Who?” she said.
Wes didn’t answer.
“Damn it Wes, give me a name.”
His face was swollen. He looks pathetic. She almost apologized, but then she thought about the farms.
“A name,” she said. “That’s all I need.”
Wes’s lips trembled. His face took on a look of defeat. “I don’t know,” he said.
Chapter Sixteen
Ed
The wind whistled through the cavities of Ed’s house. He and Bethelyn were in his dad’s old bedroom, one of only a handful of times Ed had been in it since he’d died.
Bethelyn stared out of the window onto a darkness-covered Golgoth. Ed opened the drawer of his father’s bedside cabinet. He didn’t know what he was looking for; it was the first time he’d had the courage to open it. It only seemed right he looked thro
ugh Dad’s things to find a memento.
When he saw what was in the drawer, he laughed.
“What’s so funny?” said Bethelyn.
Ed pulled out two candles from the drawer.
Bethelyn shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s an inside joke. Never mind.”
“Guess we can have some light in here, at least.”
Ed shook his head. “We can’t light them. They might see.”
Bethelyn stared out of the window again. “Did you just sit in the dark eating cold food before you met me?” she said.
“You make it sound depressing.”
“I’m sure it’s heaps of fun.”
In the distance, toward the village centre near the town hall, gas lamps glowed orange. It was too dark to see the figures who carried the lamps, so they seemed like a parade of ghosts lighting their way across the village.
“Who do you think they are?” said Ed.
“Never seen them before in my life.”
“I knew I saw a ship out there,” he said.
Bethelyn’s voice was monotone. Every time she looked at him, her eyes stared straight through him. “Maybe we should go speak to them.”
“They aren’t friendly,” said Ed.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
He thought of the masked men. Their appearance on the island gave Ed and Bethelyn a chance to escape, but something told him they needed to avoid the strangers just as much as the infected. Seeing them confirmed one thing to him; their masks were a nod of approval toward his virus theory.
“Maybe the new guys brought the infection,” said Bethelyn.
Ed shook his head. “It was here before they got here. It was waiting in the air.”
“What?”
“The storm, Bethelyn. It didn’t just destroy your roof. The virus is airborne.”
Bethelyn would be able to see the harbour from where she was standing, with the raging sea beyond it. Ed’s dad used to bring him to the window when he was a kid. He would lift him up so he could stare out across the island.
This landscape was all Ed knew, and probably all he’d ever know. His father could name every constellation in the night sky, and he’d tried to teach them to Ed. He wished he’d listened.
“We need to get down there first light,” said Bethelyn.
“There?”
“The harbour. I can’t stay here another night. “
He got the sensation of being stared at by empty eyes. Strange, how a person could be present in the flesh but be somewhere else at the same time.
“We’ll find a way off,” he said. “I’ll try and remember how to sail.”
“Did you ever think about leaving when your brother died?” she said.
“Come on Bethelyn…”
“Just talk to me. I need the distraction.”
Distraction didn’t work. There was no avoiding something like this, and the fact Bethelyn could talk like that meant it hadn’t sunk in yet.
What could he say? Was he going to talk about himself? He’d kept the door locked so long he was scared how large the monster inside it had grown. He thought about what to say. It was stupid, but nerves buzzed in his stomach.
“People used to talk about what a hero James was after he died,” he said. The words came easier than he expected. “They thought it’d make me feel better or something. People think they know what’s best for you, like there’s a user manual for the mind and all it takes is the right combination of words. If my brother was such a hero, why did he kill himself?”
Bethelyn jerked back, almost hitting the window. “I didn’t know he – “
Ed nodded. “As good as. You know he was in the navy, right? He fell for some girl on the mainland. I never met her, but I know her name. It used to be a swear word for me. I used to say her name and fill with so much hate I’d feel like smashing everything in the fucking house.”
“Jesus Ed, you’re going red. Who was she?”
“He was stationed at a naval base on the east coast near Loxbrough and he used to head into the city on rec time. Think he met her in a pub. By the time he had to come home, he’d glued himself to her. I thought I was going to have a best friend again, but instead all I got was a guy who had something missing.”
Bethelyn hugged herself tighter, though it wasn’t cold in the room. “I remember him coming back,” she said.
“After the infection broke, he used to sit inches away from the TV and flick through the channels trying to get every scrap of news about the mainland. He was hoping for something good, but it got shitter and shitter. When the TV reception went south, he went completely crazy. He couldn’t cope.”
“Sorry, Ed.”
“A ship docked in the harbour to barter supplies, and James put on his old navy uniform and got on board. Didn’t matter he’d been discharged. I think in his loony mind he was going to smuggle himself to the mainland and go find her. A few weeks later, the ship washed up in pieces on the beach. No sign of James.”
He hung his head. It made him want to go hide somewhere. It felt like he was walking a tightrope where the slightest push would tip him over. He’d plummet into the mess of emotions he’d planned on hiding from forever.
If he said anything else, it would pour out of him. Need to keep it together.
“Ed.”
He walked to the doorway. Across the hall was Ed’s room, which he and James shared for more than a decade. If he wanted to, he could prise up the floorboards and find the time capsule they’d hidden. The whole house was a museum, with his memories staring at him like relics. They’d left him, one by one. Mum, Dad, James…
His eyes were wet now. A hand rested on his shoulder. This was the part where he’d shrug it off, but he let it stay this time. He let go of everything he’d been holding in.
Chapter Seventeen
Heather
Wes wiped blood from his nose and threw sneaky glances at Heather when he thought she wasn’t looking. She saw him out of the corner of her eye. He wants to kill me.
“What are you still doing here?” said Heather.
Wes held his hands out and inspected them. His skin was always so clean and soft, but dried blood covered his fingers today.
“I’ve only lived here two years, you know.”
“So?”
“You never met my wife.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
He licked his thumb and began rubbing the blood off his palm. “We got out of the city after it all started. We moved place to place for a year. Got to a point where I made too many mistakes. My wife and son paid for them, not me.
“This is the first place I’ve stayed in years, and I hate it. It stinks, and it’s dirty. But you know what, Heather? Now it comes to it, I don’t want to leave.”
He stood up, wincing in pain with each moment. As he hobbled across the room, guilt pricked her chest. She let the feeling dissolve. He deserved everything he got.
Wes walked to the wall opposite him and tapped on it until the sound became hollow. He pushed at the wall and part of it peeled away to reveal a cavity. Wes took out a photograph, and something else that he put in his pocket before she could see.
“You better think about what to do about her,” he said.
Wes was a practical man above everything else, and his instincts were right. Heather knew what she might have to do. She tried to recognise this without letting her real mind enter the conversation. If she pried open the door to her survival instincts but shut away everything else, she could get through this.
There was a smashed bottle next to her on the floor. She took off her jacket, picked up the bottle and wrapped the fabric around it to protect her hands.
Eric sat beside Kim, wiped the sweat away from the girl’s forehead and stared at her with unnatural attention. Despite everything, a rush of affection filled Heather’s chest.
“Get over here,” said Heather.
&n
bsp; Eric looked away.
“Get over here, Eric.”
It wasn’t Eric’s fault, but everything had collapsed when she met him. For so long she’d been frustrated at her own cowardice. DC’s went through hell. She wanted to help them, but she didn’t dare. Look what had happened when she found the courage.