Everything Dies [Season One]

by T. W. Malpass

  ‘Yeah. That falls into the “no shit” category.’ Salty groaned again, putting his head in his hands.

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ Ethan said. ‘They have some friends. We just heard them over the radio.’

  ‘They know about this place too?’

  ‘They must have communicated with their friends when they discovered it.’

  Salty didn’t need to hear any more. He started to get up. ‘We have to get set – put a gun on the gate.’

  Ethan placed his hand on his chest and eased him to the ground again. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have stood a chance of overpowering Salty, but he was more than a little woozy.

  ‘Outta my way, Twilight.’

  ‘You were just out cold. How far do you think you’ll get before you keel over? You need to stay put until you’ve recovered.’

  ‘Ha. And have you running the show?’

  ‘No, thank God. Vincent and Kristin are here, and Miller’s about somewhere, I guess. We lost Adam though. He was killed by one of the dead. Must have gotten in through the breach.’ The memory of what Ethan had been forced to do to stop the young man from coming back was still fresh.

  Salty turned slowly to see the Graham family huddled together, and Kristin dressing her husband’s wound. ‘You get bit?’

  ‘Shot,’ Vincent replied. ‘A lot happened while you were out.’

  ‘Evidently. Where did Miller go?’

  ‘To get cleaned up,’ Kristin said.

  ‘Shame about the boy. I liked him,’ Salty said.

  Ethan and Vincent thought about speaking up, but they both remained silent.

  ‘If no one has any objections, I say we dress these wounds and get over to the visitor centre,’ Kristin said. ‘Jake and Emily can get some proper rest there and I’m sure we’d all feel a lot safer being closer to the parking lot.

  ‘Who’s going to watch out for those assholes?’ Salty said.

  ‘On the radio they said they were a couple of hours away. We should post someone here to watch the monitors.’

  ‘I’ll come back once I’ve helped you get over there,’ Ethan said.

  After Kristin had secured the bandage around Vincent’s arm, she saw to Salty’s head injury, wrapping it with a dressing. She and Ethan helped the wounded men into the truck and told Emily to sit up front with them as they drove east to the much larger visitor centre facility.

  The automated doors slid open and the five survivors staggered through in a huddle, bloodied and bruised, into the foyer. The floors were polished and a large welcome sign hanging from the ceiling greeted them.

  To the left stood a C-shaped reception desk, a sizeable photographic image of a woodland stag mounted on the wall behind it. On the opposite side was a souvenir kiosk that had carousel stands full of hard-back books on wildlife and conservation, motif pens, small-scale models of the animals that existed in the preserve, T-shirts, caps, and twelve-inch prints taken at various periods of its history.

  Vincent noticed that the till register had been removed and wondered why any part of the kiosk was still remaining. ‘I thought you said Farrington closed this place to the public?’

  ‘He left everythin’ pretty much as it was. He used to invite his family and some kids from the charity he was patron for,’ Salty said.

  A little further ahead they came to a movie theatre, where once a film on the preserve’s history and development was screened. It now lay idle.

  Emily was drawn to the flashing digital panels from a section called the Discovery Station. She let go of her father’s leg and plodded over to it. The panels had been placed low to the ground, so you didn’t need to be tall to use them. Each one contained interactive information about a particular animal or type of vegetation, which you were able to toggle through using two push-buttons.

  There were also three microscopes fixed to separate desks, but she could only reach high enough to touch their bases.

  ‘What is it, honey?’ Vincent had noticed that she’d strayed and was now standing next to her again. ‘Woah, how cool is this? You could learn a whole lot looking through those. You could be the next park ranger in no time.’

  Emily didn’t smile. Much to his dismay, she just gave him a brief look and then turned back to the panels.

  Ethan approached one of the microscopes and peered through its lens. Beneath the slide was the delicate structure of an insect wing. The patterns created by the fusion and cross-connection of veins were both beautiful and oddly reassuring to him. It represented a snap-shot of the finer details of life, or at least the remnants of it.

  ‘Can I see it?’

  The sound of Emily’s weak voice caused him to remove his eye from the viewer. He glanced to Vincent for approval and the child’s father nodded.

  ‘OK, take a look.’ He grabbed her around her waist and lifted her up to it. ‘See it?’

  ‘Yeah. It looks complicated,’ Emily said.

  ‘That’s the way it supposed to look,’ Ethan said.

  They made it to the lounge area and collapsed into the leather sofas there. In the right corner, next to the staircase leading to the second floor, was a sophisticated-looking cocktail bar surrounded by mirrors and decorated with stainless steel and soft-wood furnishings.

  Kristin set down the first-aid kit and the medical case they had found in the military truck. She began to examine the centre-piece of the lounge: a tubular glass tank that reached all the way up to the next floor, its interior lit with blue neon, which illuminated the coral and seaweed inside. Bubbles rose to its surface.

  ‘Farrington had all the fish removed ‘cause he was against them being confined. He just kept the feature ‘cause he liked it.’ Salty eased back on the sofa to rest his bandaged head.

  ‘I can see why he would want to spend most of his time in here,’ Vincent said.

  Kristin ran her fingers down the glass of the aquarium. ‘And where is he now – this Farrington guy? Anyone know?’ She turned to face them. ‘I can see how taken you are with this place, but do I have to be the one to state the obvious?’

  ‘Kris.’

  ‘No, Vincent. We almost paid for having something that others want, and it’s not over yet.’

  ‘This time we’ll be ready for em’,’ Salty said.

  ‘Even if we are ready, there’ll be more. Do you really think a handful of us can defend something this size indefinitely?’

  ‘You wanna go back out there? Into that shit?’ Salty said.

  ‘As much as I don’t want to burst the bubble of our industrious leader, I’m inclined to agree with Kristin on this one,’ Ethan said. ‘I have a bad feeling about this place.’

  ‘No one asked you for your fuckin’ opinion,’ Salty said.

  ‘You said a bad word.’ Emily pointed an accusing finger at him.

  ‘It’s OK, sweetie. We’re just talking.’ Vincent stroked her hair and laid her back down on the sofa. ‘Close your eyes for a little while. I’m still here.’

  ‘Instead of arguing about this, we should be fixing that gaping wound in the fence,’ Vincent said.

  ‘How big’s this hole? Will the truck block it off?’ Salty said.

  ‘Sure. It’ll be big enough, but how do we get it past the trees?’ Vincent asked.

  ‘The perimeter around the facility is about twenty feet wide. All someone needs to do is come at it from the north side of the gate.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Kristin said.

  ‘No you won’t.’ Vincent tried to get up, but she pushed him down again.

  ‘You’ve lost too much blood already, and you need to rest. Besides, I’d feel better if you were with Emily right now,’ she said.

  ‘What about you, Twilight? Can you drive a stick or does your skill-set begin and end with gettin’ the heebie-jeebies?’ Salty said.

  ‘I’m not so good at driving stick. I’m used to automatics,’ Ethan said.

  Salty croaked out a laugh, but soon wished he hadn’t as his head throbbed under the strain. ‘
Jesus H. Christ.’

  ‘It’s fine. Ethan fought for us back there. He took a beating for it too. He should go back over to the Management Centre so he can watch the gates. I can handle myself behind the wheel. My dad was a long-haul driver. I grew up in them,’ Kristin said.

  Vincent stood and returned the Beretta to her. ‘Keep following the west fence into the nature trails and you’ll see it.’

  Ethan handed her his radio. ‘You better take this too. I won’t be far away if you get into trouble. I can keep an eye out for you on the monitors.’

  ‘You’re not going to get into trouble, are you?’ Vincent reached for her hips, barely making contact with the tips of his fingers.

  ‘I’ll be inside the cab and I have this.’ She brandished the gun. ‘See you soon. See you soon, Emily.’

  ‘Bye, Mommy,’ Emily said, her eyes half-closed.

  Kristin made her way towards the entrance. Her ankle had loosened and her limp was hardly noticeable.

  ‘I better go too. I’ll grab one of the spare radios when I get there. Keep you posted,’ Ethan said.

  Before he could leave, Vincent called him back. ‘Listen, I’m still trying to get my head around what happened out there, but what you did for my daughter, and what you had to do with Adam, I—’

  ‘I did the world a favour, as far as Adam’s concerned – even a world as fucked up as this doesn’t deserve someone like him.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I saw that kid – how he was. And I saw you. What I’m trying to say is I was wrong.’

  Ethan frowned and his eyes glazed over. ‘You were wrong about him, but you were right to be afraid of me.’

  Vincent didn’t respond. He had no clue what the young man meant by it. Instead, he watched him trudge across the polished floor with his hood up and his hands in his pockets.

  2

  Kristin froze in the dirt on her way to the truck. She saw a lone figure approaching from the southeast, next to the clinic. The person was striding in her direction with some purpose. She wanted to believe it was Raine coming from the shower blocks, but it couldn’t be: this person’s hair had been shaved right down to the scalp.

  The sky was turning a sickly colour as the day ebbed away, so it took her a few minutes before she could distinguish their facial features. Her cold flush subsided when she realised it was Raine after all, but she still couldn’t explain her appearance. Her lack of hair made her seem harsher – more unforgiving. Raine held the assault rifle tight to her shoulder, her body rigid.

  ‘What’s with the hair cut?’

  ‘Seemed appropriate,’ Raine said.

  ‘What you did in there—’

  ‘What?’ Raine squared up to her as she got close, inches from her face, cutting into her with her stone-cold stare. ‘You gonna tell me you understand what that was?’

  Kristin had to break eye contact, and she certainly didn’t have an answer to her question.

  ‘Nah, didn’t think so.’ Raine continued.

  ‘Raine, those men are coming. We have to—’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about them anymore,’ Raine said. She walked beyond the visitor centre and up towards the south fence.

  Kristin couldn’t afford to go after her. She climbed into the truck, cranked the stiff gears, and manoeuvred it in the direction of the main gate. She found that she was a little rusty with her driving, but she’d handled bigger rigs than this in the past. She thought about the times she’d sat up front with her father on his shorter trips. How she used to stick her head out of the open window on the highway to feel the wind blow through her hair. She tried to imagine how those familiar stretches of road would look now: silent, desolate – dead.

  3

  Salty grunted in his sleep and rolled onto his side, pushing his face into the sofa’s leather. He’d fought against his tiredness, but the blow to his head had weakened him and his body needed to recover.

  Now the talking had stopped, the first floor of the visitor centre began to feel eerie to Vincent. The only sound he could hear besides an occasional moan from Salty was the gentle bubble from the empty aquarium. He knelt by the sofa next to Emily, propping his injured arm against one of the cushions.

  His little girl lay with her eyes wide and alert, staring at the interwoven pattern of vines on the ceiling tiles. Vincent noticed her hair had started to become lank and greasy. Her bubblegum cheeks didn’t seem quite so full anymore either. A few flakes of dried blood still clung to the edge of her forehead. He didn’t want to brush them away, as it would draw attention to them and her ordeal. ‘Could you at least try to close your eyes for me?’ he whispered.

  Her stare remained fixed on the ceiling. ‘Every time I do, I see things. Things I don’t want to.’

  Vincent lowered his head, holding back a scream of frustration. ‘I know. It’s just that, sometimes, people see things and they can’t ever make them go away. Usually, it’s only a few unlucky ones that go through that, but things have changed. Now it happens to all of us.’

  ‘What do those people do about it? If they can’t ever make the pictures go away?’

  ‘They learn to live with them somehow. It’s hard, but they find a way.’

  ‘Because it’s better than not being around anymore?’

  ‘Yes, sweetie. That’s exactly right.’

  Emily swallowed hard and finally looked at him. ‘I think I’ll do the same.’

  Vincent shook as he fought back the tears and tried to get his words out without falling apart in front of her. ‘You want to be around at least as long as your daddy.’

  ‘Nah, that’s too old.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Emily let out the tiniest giggle. Then a smile lifted her cheeks. It was a moment he wanted to capture and seal in a bottle because he dared not dream of it happening again. The smile was interrupted by a long yawn that elongated her face and caused her nostrils to flare.

  ‘Come on now. Scooch down.’ Vincent eased her along the sofa cushions so her head was flat against them, covering her with the blanket he’d taken from the Management Centre.

  ‘Will I dream?’ she asked.

  ‘You might, but I’ll be right here waiting for you when you wake up.’

  Her eyes finally closed and Vincent felt safe to wipe the moisture from his cheeks.

  4

  Kristin rammed the truck into reverse and rolled back level with the west fence. She could see the main gate and the access road on the other side, curving right into the forest. It was empty, for now. Her gun and radio lay on the passenger seat of the cabin, just within reach. She shifted into first and drove on into the gap between the fence and the trees surrounding the nature trails.

  Through the spaces of the electrified cables, the stumbling dead were already beginning to swarm towards the facility. Their mannerisms – their flailing limbs and twitching heads seemed aimless, but their collective movement certainly wasn’t. They had all found their way to the same place, as if summoned by something silent and unknown. It was then that Kristin recalled what Sergeant Banks had told them the night they escaped from the FEMA camp. He said that the herds the soldiers had been tracking migrated to the nearest coastline.

  The charred debris and the twisted metal up ahead indicated she was close to the breach. She changed up again and eased the accelerator. Not only had the dead found their way through the forest, they were converging on the hole. Before she could reach it, one of the fragmented herd crossed the perimeter and stepped onto the scorched ground. At first, the creature had its back to the truck, but it turned in stages to reveal the melted features of a woman. Most of her hair had fallen out, leaving surface fuzz over her wrinkled scalp, like the skin of a giant insect. Her slack-jawed expression caused her to drool through her fractured rows of teeth.

  Kristin noticed that her right eyeball was missing from its weeping socket, and there was a red strip of material hanging beneath her armpit. As she faced the cabin, Kristin feathered the brake. A dirty, sh
rivelled mess sat inside the carrier fixed to the woman’s chest. Its small, diseased-ridden legs started to kick out and it turned its head towards the oncoming vehicle. The child could not have been any more than a few months old when it died. A sizeable section of its cheek was missing, and the flesh around the wound was stretched crudely. It wasn’t difficult for Kristin to piece together what must have happened.

  She reacted by moving the truck closer to the fence. Even though she quickly straightened up, the side mirror caught against one of the cables and was promptly taken out and bounced under the rear wheels. She abandoned the brake and accelerated again, pushing hard down.

  The truck was just about to hit her, and the mother looked like she was almost cradling her baby. Then she reached out into the glare of the headlights and roared. Her body hit the cabin’s windshield like a sack of bones in loose skin, leaving a circular patch of spoiled blood on the glass. What was left of the body got chewed up as the truck ran over it.

  Kristin felt a violent jolt as the front fender crashed into the jagged shards of metal sprouting from the damaged fence. Her seat belt snapped her back and prevented her from hitting her head on the dash. The vehicle juddered and stopped, Kristin’s foot forcing down the brake. Steam hissed out from the hood and in through the crack of the driver’s side window. She shook herself and leaned forward to check out the damage. Not only was the front of the truck impaled on one of the fence supports, she’d also overshot the breach, leaving a part of it clear.

  The dead were attracted by the noise and made their way towards it, more purposefully than before. At least twenty of them reached up to the cabin, groaning. Kristin snatched at the stick to slip it into neutral. She turned the key in the ignition, and it spluttered into life on the first attempt. When she tried to shift into reverse, the stick wouldn’t budge.

  The first creature to get to the passenger window tapped against the glass with the stump of its right arm. The flesh had been shredded up to half-way down its radius and ulna bones.