Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival

by Warren Fielding

  "From the spare rooms," he said, before I got the chance to ask him where they came from. I shuddered at the thought of sleeping in dead people’s duvets. It could have been worse though. We could be sleeping in the garden.

  "So what now?" I asked. I knew what I wanted to do. Start research again. We’d been in the dark for too many days, so for all I knew there were international aid stations waiting for survivors like us to arrive. I doubted it, but even if there had been Austin had been keeping us ignorant of the wider truth.

  Rick shrugged.

  I ignored his apathy. I was used to it. I crossed my legs up on the sofa and buried myself deeper into the duvets. They gave off a faint scent of cabbage and mothballs. It was a smell I expected of the elderly, and one I associated with the steady decay of old age. I was thinking about the hanging couple upstairs, and what these smells had meant to them, when something occurred to me.

  "What happened to that couple up there?" I asked.

  "What kind of question is that? They thought the world was going to end. They decided to top themselves, and they chucked themselves off the end of their bed. Job done. Well, mostly. We had to scoop up the rest of it."

  "That’s what I mean. Did we check for bites? That old woman didn’t look like any of those things had been at her. Did she just die and turn?"

  Rick screwed up his face, weighing up my words. "I doubt it. We’d know. The bloke hadn’t gone. Why would they just come back from the dead? That’s ridiculous."

  "Yeah, completely more unbelievable than a virus that’s making us all want to eat each other. Have you even fucking looked outside, Rick? Do you not remember what was happening when we were out there? Or are you living in some sociopathic world inside your head?"

  "Hey, calm the fuck down. I’m not the one who stabbed the woman in the head without checking how she got turned. You want to go out there and check her for bite marks, be my guest, I’m not fucking doing it."

  I bit my tongue. Rick wasn’t going to help me if I kept pissing him off, even if he was driving me insane. We needed a structured plan, and there wasn’t a lot we could do from this house. The power might still potentially be working, but we hadn’t found a computer and we didn’t have our phones any more to try and get on the Internet that way. I looked at the telly.

  "Think they’ll have some information on the news?"

  "Any more than the recycled stuff they had on the radio?"

  "Well let’s face it; we got our information from Austin second hand. We need to know what the government were actually saying. I can’t believe a single word that man said now, and I don’t know how you think you can either, Rick. Have you forgotten where he is yet?"

  "Still no, Warren, not that we actually know where he is and what he’s doing to my missus now."

  "Hey, she’s my sister don’t forget. We need a solution, not all this stupid bickering."

  "Then stop being a twat."

  "Let’s both stop being twats."

  I scrunched my hair, bunching my hands around my skull in frustration as I tried to restrain myself from smacking him in his smug face. The now familiar sensation of adrenalin thrilling through my body did nothing to temper my mood, but Rick recognised none of this. I looked around for anything small and electronic, just to see if it was showing a standby light, any indicator that the power was on without turning on a light and announcing our presence to the wider undead community. Finally, my eyes settled on a DVD player. It was caked in more dust than the rest of the front room and probably hadn’t been used for some time. But blessedly in the corner of the front bezel there was a small red power light. Standby, Warren, you may yet get your news.

  "The power’s on. Look at that button." I pointed at the DVD player. Rick followed my gesture and shrugged again. I began to think he was trying to goad me deliberately. I was used to him occasionally playing the tosser, but not to such an extravagant scale. "Let’s turn it on and see what’s broadcasting."

  "The noise will bring them to the house won’t it? And the light?"

  I mulled this over before responding. "We’ll shroud it in the duvets so the lights don’t show as much. We’ll turn the sound down and sit right next to the set. It’s not as if there’s a load of other noise going on to drown it out."

  "No, but on the other hand there’s not a lot of other noise, so what little noise we do produce will travel further than usual."

  "I think we should be okay with just one or two bars. It’s not exactly buzzing with populace around here. I’d rather take the small risk of attracting one or two of those things than not find anything out at all. If it’s the slow ones, we’ll just turn it all off. They’ll probably just get bored and wander off. Remember the ones underneath the pier? If they’d had any kind of attention span, we’d have probably been screwed."

  "I’m game if you’re game. It’s not as if we’ve got anything else to do. Or any better ideas."

  We both shuffled out of our duvets and across to the TV. It was one of the older style CRT units you find at public waste sites and at the end of derelict gardens. I followed its plug and saw it was turned off at source. I clicked this on and almost felt the hum of static as power flowed back through the aging device. We hung our duvets around and over the back of the telly, creating a makeshift tent. It was going to overheat under here, though that would simply be a welcome side effect. We looked at each other in a moment of nervous apprehension, then I pushed in the power button. We both held our breath as the screen flashed on, blinding us momentarily before the screen filled with static and our ears were overwhelmed with white noise. I clicked the buttons until the volume was at its lowest level. The nervous hope I had been building up deflated slightly at seeing a screen full of noise, but after clicking through a channel saw we were on number fifteen and not likely to pick anything up on a device of this age and a channel that high up the scale. I clicked down and finally reached Channel 5. In the initial stages of the outbreak, this had been the light entertainment channel, which had perhaps been a way of the other networks sticking their fingers up at the lesser channel. Now, instead of showing reruns of trashy Australian soaps, it was showing a simple service message, advising people to stay indoors and to report any infections to the local authorities via a specially commissioned helpline. Rick snorted at that. It had been impossible to get hold of the emergency services, and anyone left still manning those emergency phones were probably deranged. The government, or whoever had been pretending to be in charge, had sent the majority of the emergency services and the military into the cities to what would have been an almost certain death, or at least a close approximation thereof. I switched down to Channel 4. There was an identical message, with the added tagline that we should check the BBC for national announcements. I skipped ITV and flicked between BBC1 and BBC2. Both were showing the same scrolling message. We both sat in silence next to each other, legs crossed, absorbing the words as they cascaded down the screen, the bold white text on a red background jarring my eyes.

  The first full message was the basic advice I had seen on the BBC website when I had been researching the outbreak at Carla’s. There were advisory symptoms and warnings to stay indoors. There were warnings that the motorways and major routes had to be kept clear for the emergency services. There were the legal declarations about the state of national emergency. Then there was another more interesting announcement:

  "Where possible, military bases are assuming control of their local authorities. The government is delegating control through these regional bodies. Emergency broadcasts will be sent over the medium-wave band. Please use your local radio to tune into these broadcasts for advice on emergency rations of food, first aid, and for safe shelters which are being constructed with military authority."

  We allowed this to scroll past a few times before we decided we had understood its message. We were in the mid-south, and there were a few local military barracks that we could try to make it to. Rick didn’t wait very long to voice his doub
ts.

  "How do we know this message is still valid? If everyone has abandoned ship, then those places might already be overrun. Didn’t they send all the troops into the city? I’m not sure about this."

  "If the military are still involved, then they have a better chance than any of us of surviving this. At least they had all the guns. And besides, they’re transmitting if they’re available. So let’s get our hands on a radio and see what we can find out. Which one is the most likely? Aldershot’s the biggest barracks near here isn’t it?" I hoped I sounded knowledgeable. I’d covered some stories a few years before on regional bases, and I was grasping at some very vague straws.

  "I have no idea, Warren. But it makes sense to me that the biggest barracks would have the largest number of soldiers to respond to this. I’m not even sure there is much of a military left over to start establishing these shelters, or whatever they’re going to call them."

  "Well the message isn’t changing, and we haven’t got any better ideas."

  "Where are we going to find a radio? I doubt these folk ever got far beyond carrier pigeon."

  "Most cars have that local radio still, don’t they? We could kill two birds with one stone. Find a car that we can make some distance in. One of us can drive, the other can tune in. What do you reckon? Austin will be heading for a group; he’s not going to be flying around the country on his own, waiting for someone to shoot him out of the sky."

  Rick chewed this over for a few seconds. "You know what? That’s actually a half decent plan. Wish I could drink to it. I feel like this is the only secure set of walls we’re going to get for some time."

  I turned off the telly and dropped the duvet, leaving Rick cross-legged on the floor with the bedding sitting over him like a latter-day bogeyman, and stumbled off in the dark into the kitchen. I rifled through a couple of cupboards, probably making too much jangling with glasses and cups, until I engaged some common sense and looked on the top of the fridge; the universal storage location of alcohol everywhere. A bottle almost shone, highlighted in the non-light of the stars coming through the exposed and, thankfully, empty kitchen window. I snatched it and darted back into the front room, waving the anonymous bottle aloft in triumph, like the warriors of my cartoon-infested childhood, raising their swords to the sky.

  "Let’s fucking drink to it then!"

  Rick was rolling around on the floor in the duvet, evidently bored out of his wits. I chuckled. He looked like an overexcited puppy, and even more so when he heard that I had some booze. A head shot out from the duvet and I could see a vague outline of his face in the dark. He looked like a worm.

  "What is it? What you got?"

  "You know what? I don’t even know!" I yanked the top off the bottle. It was a cork, which was a promising sign; nothing good ever came from a bottle with a screw cap. I took a sniff and sneezed. "Fucking jackpot. Whisky!"

  Rick shot out of his blanket tunnel, pulling himself up my leg and snatching at the bottle in my hands. I let him take the first few slugs without any malice. I walked calmly to the back door and to the front, checking they were both locked. I was going to enjoy this. We were both going to enjoy this. Tomorrow, perhaps we weren’t going to enjoy so much. But now more than ever, I wanted to start living for today.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sunlight lanced my face and burned my cheek. I rolled over groaning, pulling my swollen and dry tongue off the roof of my parched mouth. I felt like a monkey had slapped me in the face and shat in my mouth overnight. I smacked my lips together and slapped at my cheeks to wake myself up. A pair of legs stepped over me, and I had a horrendous flashback of the bottom of the bottle of whisky before my stomach caught up with the plot and I started retching. I planked onto my elbows and heaved an overnight concoction of stale whisky and bile on to a dead couple’s carpet. I heard Rick chuckling from the kitchen and cursed him mentally as a wave of cramps made me heave again. Tinnitus rang in my ears despite the overburdened silence we had drank in last night, and a vision of Rick slunk into my brain, slumped cross-legged on the floor with an empty bottle of whisky in his lap and sobbing for the girlfriend he had lost and the world we no longer had. I hadn’t been able to respond in kind. I missed Carla, but I hadn’t drank enough to drive me to tears, nor to false brotherhood with someone whom I shared mutual derision. Tears wouldn’t help her. Neither would our hangovers, though there was nothing I could do about that immediately.

  I finished heaving, but still felt some remnants of liquid roiling around in my stomach. I decided to stick my fingers down my throat, not something I’d ever recommended in a previous life, and get rid of the rest of it. It was disgusting, and it felt like I was sliding my fingers through a putrescent meniscus and into an alien oesophagus, but it brought out the rest of the contents of my stomach in a couple of yellow strings. My chest hurt like hell, but it was worth it; I almost felt cleansed. Rick patted me on the back, even rubbing it half-heartedly. He evidently felt like we had bonded over the obscene amount of alcohol we had consumed neat last night. I was glad he had forgotten my systematic lack of response as he had sobbed into his whisky over losing Carla. I vaguely remember telling him that she wasn’t gone, that we’d find her and everything would be okay, or some similar placatory shit. I hadn’t been in the mood. I’d just wanted to get shitfaced and celebrate the last night of ignorant oblivion I’d have for what would probably be the rest of my life. It wasn’t meant to be a bonding session. I spat a yellow glob of saliva and bile onto the carpet and shoved myself to my knees. Rick offered me a hand and I took it anyway, despite my spiteful inner dialogue. I coughed and tasted my own breath. I made a face and Rick mirrored it.

  "Yeah you smell like shit, mate. They have mouthwash upstairs. Not like we’re going to get stopped for drunk driving, but I’m not sitting next to you in a car stinking like the bottom of a bar’s drip tray. Just saying."

  He shoved my shoulder in the direction of the bathroom and I lurched off, feeling not too unlike one of the undead. I caught a look of myself in a mirror. Apart from sallow skin thanks to dehydration, and mandatory bloodshot eyes, I didn’t look half as terrible as some of the things I’d been sticking my hammer in. I pulled down the skin under one eye, exposing the full eyeball. They did look pretty shit all the way round. But it would wear off. Upstairs, the mouthwash was some cheap own brand, but it could have been a hygienist appointment for all I cared and for how good it felt to rinse my mouth of a week of dead breath and cheap alcohol. I spat again, this time slightly more appropriately in the sink, and decided to take another swig and rinse for good measure. I was a little dizzy skipping back down the stairs, but I did feel ready to tackle the day. Without the nocturnal worry of the zombies seeing the television through the window, I turned on the old set and scrolled back through the channels again to see if there was any chance the emergency broadcasts had changed. Though I completely doubted it, I wanted to make sure we had our information right before we went off like Butch and Sundance in a random car into the murky, overcast, and overtly depressing metaphorical English sunset. We both stood there with our arms crossed, grimacing at the telly and trying not to make each other drunk with our breath. The information wasn’t any different, so we started rifling through the house and pooled stuff in the front room that we thought would be useful. We laid out two blankets on the floor. In one, we put some cooking equipment and food. In the other we put some towels and the clothes we were brave enough to take out of the house. In a moment of inspiration, I put in some soap, along with the rest of the medicine cabinet. We didn’t need heart pills, but I bet we could use them for bartering somewhere along the lines. It wasn’t as if our money would be worth anything anymore, at least for the foreseeable future.

  "Anything else in here we can use?"

  I looked down at the blankets. "Weapons. We need weapons. We could look at the neighbours too, see what they got?"

  "See what they got? Are you a gangster now?"

  I chuckled. "I’m sorry; the journ
alist accuracy must be slipping in the post-apocalyptic rioting. And actually thinking about it that may not be a good idea. I’m not sure that I want to really go around attracting the attention of any more of the undead than I really want to. We have plenty here, right?"

  Rick nodded. The couple here had stocked their cupboards well before they decided enough was enough. If the broadcasts were right, we wouldn’t be on the road for very long; there were enough military bases in the vicinity, including a couple of major ones. And if the reports were wrong… well there were enough of the undead around that we’d be able to find another house like this in a pinch if we wanted. There was no need to overload, no need to risk more than we had to in places we didn’t need to go. We both got that.

  "So, what now? We pick a car and find the nearest cliff?" I suggested, a chirpy edge to my voice that sounded wrong, considering our grim circumstances.

  "Ha ha, Warren. There’s enough empty houses. Have you seen any keys lying around? Car keys? There’s enough motors sat up in this road for one of us to boost."

  "Boost? Now which one of us sounds like a gangster? Do you actually know how to hotwire a car?"

  Rick looked seriously thoughtful for a moment before shaking his head. "We shouldn’t have to. This is a dead street. We should be able to pick up a car. So first things first. We didn’t want to break into any other houses, let’s look for the keys here."

  A short check of hanging hooks in the hallway, a small sideboard underneath said same hooks, and another hanging board in the kitchen, brought up a bunch of keys with a Vauxhall-branded key attached. Bingo. We were set.

  We tied up the two blankets with knots in the top, and like two over-sized vagrants, we pulled our loot to the front door, readying to leave. The key fob had central locking, and there was a very promising small car outside the house that was hopefully the vehicle we needed. I clicked the door, and saw the smallest reflection of indicator lights, confirming the doors had unlocked. We didn’t know how many infected might be around the streets, though based on the lack of population we’d encountered yesterday, I felt safe enough heading out to the car to open the boot. It was pristine; empty. Unlike Carla’s car, which had been full of shoes, anonymous bottles, and the accumulated detritus of the common commuter. I waved to Rick, who brought one of the blankets out. I overlapped him, bringing the other one in and shutting the door behind me. No point leaving it open for any infected to stumble in; if someone else needed to use this place for shelter in the future, then it would be safe. Slamming shut the boot louder than was necessary—if there were any infected in the area, they’d have heard it for sure—I plonked myself down in the passenger seat next to Rick, who was poised at the steering wheel.