Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival

by Warren Fielding

  There was a rustling of disquiet amongst the crowd. Almost all of us had blood on our hands to get this far. The specific use of the word 'murder' was a clear statement. Austin braced himself. There wasn't a pelting. Food was too precious for that. Gordon waited. There were no shouts. A very well behaved mob.

  "In this world it would be easy for us to say 'an eye for an eye' and sentence Austin to death. But I do not want us to become that kind of community. I am trying to build a peaceful haven for us all. We have all struggled to get here today. Meting out the death penalty in a world already full of death seems wrong."

  This time he did get shouting. He was confusing people. I could understand what he was trying to say. He didn't want to have the death of a living man on his conscience. It would make us no better than Austin himself. He waved people down. So did Rich. People reacted to Rich more.

  "Hear me out. Austin is a changed man. Carla has been living peacefully in our community, as has Austin. People can change. We have all made mistakes. We have all had struggles. Austin will have a chance to redeem himself. But he will also be punished. To be allowed a place in the community we all have to abide by the laws that made Great Britain the place it once was. We do not have a prison. We do not have the time, the capability, or the resources to maintain a prison. So here is our ruling.

  "If you break our laws, the punishment is to exist outside of our walls. The severity of your crime establishes the length of your exile. Austin's crime is murder. Multiple counts. He is hereby sentenced to live outside our walls for the period of one year. If after that time he is alive, he may return to us, bringing a suitable contribution to solicit re-entry to the community. Some may say this is a death sentence in itself. My answer to that is that people who break the law do not deserve the safety that the community walls will give them.

  "Carla is a lawyer. If any of you have skills in law making or law enforcement that you have not yet declared, please do so as soon as you can. We will draw up a full and official list. We will make this list available to you. You will be able to raise concerns. You will be able to comment. We do not want to rule you. This is a community, not an autocracy.

  "But hear this. Chaos will not be tolerated." He waved at Rich. "Take him to the car. Drop him at least twenty miles away from our walls. Blindfold him all the way. It might be easy enough for him to find the way back once he gets to a road, but we don't want to give him solutions on a platter."

  Austin crumpled. Rich heaved him forwards. The crowd parted obediently to let them through. There was no outcry. We knew what survival in the wild was like. No matter what Gordon said, Austin had just been sentenced to death. I wasn't even vaguely upset or disturbed by this. I looked sideways at Carla. She had a thin smile on her lips. I didn't think for one second she had been happy with his initial punishment, or with living in the same community as him.

  I waited. I wanted to speak to Gordon or to Travis. Carla stayed put too, and they approached us both.

  "Are you satisfied?"

  They asked me, not Carla. I assumed that was because I was the one who had brought the charges against Austin. I was satisfied. There was no way that gelatinous glob of mucus was going to survive outside the walls on his own for a full year. I nodded. They turned to Carla, implying the same question. She nodded stiffly. She would have said if she were upset. She wouldn't have waited for them to approach her.

  Perhaps I could put the pier behind me now. The people of the community were an interesting bunch. I had another full day of asking questions before I had to go out on my next run with the potentially cowardly Tom and the definitely unhinged Charles.

  * * *

  "You sure you're not going to be pissing people off, asking all these questions?" Rick sounded agitated already. Not a good sign, given the time of day.

  "Don't swear; there's kids around," I responded, placing a mocking hand over one of Isabelle’s ears.

  Rick rolled his eyes, trying to ignore Isabelle. The girl stuck to Carla or me like a limpet. Carla was her preference, but she was out on errands. She therefore clung to me as I sat at an expansive table in our house, shuffling around bits of paper. I'd told Travis what I wanted to do. He'd been keen. He could see it adding to his own biographical notes about our residents. Almost like therapy. Root out the rot before it could spread. He'd had almost the same idea as me. I didn't know if that made me feel relieved to be in company, or disturbed at who I kept my company with.

  "Don't swear. Kid's around," Isabelle spoke quietly, peering up from underneath large innocent brown eyes. She was starting to come out of her shell steadily. I thought she'd be a firecracker when she fully came around. Rick had reacted just as I'd expected him to. Negatively. He didn't want a child interfering with his new life. Rick changed quickly, I was coming to learn. His was the one story I had never really sat down to learn. His moods had changed like the wind since we first left Carla's house. I had put this down to the situation. To a certain extent, I probably still should. But we were safe now. The community was safe. So why did he still think he could act like an absolute dickhead?

  Carla had noticed. The two were becoming distant. I never heard them argue. Rick had seen what I could do with a hammer. I liked to think that he simply wouldn't dare. He had been intrigued at first by what I was doing with the interviews. Morbid curiosity overrode whatever contempt he held for me and he had sat in on a few. They weren't enough for him. I don't know if he expected some kind of live chat show, as if I had lie detectors and DNA kits hiding away to test the validity of what these people were telling me. For me, it was humbling before it was interesting. The people who came to see me so far had been volunteers, and they hadn't exactly held back on what they had decided to tell me.

  With the next visitor, I didn't want Rick around to hear us talk. I had been drawn to Karen. I wanted to spend some time alone with her. I wanted to hear her story at length. And I didn't want a third wheel weighing us down. Even little Isabelle. I knew Karen and Carla would be coming off some kind of duty around the same time. Carla could take the child. And hopefully take her distraction of a boyfriend away too.

  I felt an itching on my temple. That usually meant someone was staring at me. It was Rick. Rick was smirking. I was starting to hate him more day by day. I hadn't believed in cabin fever before. I had tolerated him at the pier. He had thrown himself then, though, at the leaders—at Austin and Andy and the others. He had discarded me like used tissue. He was in the process of doing the same here in the community. He wasn't even being subtle about it, which was fucking annoying considering everything we had been through together. And even worse, he was now going to drop Carla too. What had she done wrong? Or had there been something wrong there before, and it was a relationship that couldn't withstand the end of the world? Trauma didn't always serve to drive people closer together. Sometimes it cleaved ties in two.

  Other bodies came and went during my days. It was a big place, and hard to keep track of everyone, especially when there was not really any such thing as leisure time any more, not for those working inside the walls. Alistair was one of them. The quiet South African had rejected my request for a talk, for now, but had said he'd be willing to talk if other people spoke well of me in turn. I had already interviewed the two couples I had met on our first night here, Rachael and David, and Tracey and Rob. Their stories made for some interesting reading. Tracey and Rob had made it over two hundred miles in an attempt to save their son, before ending up running from a horde. They had tried to get into London. When most of the capital city had been trying to get out, they had tried to get in. I didn't know what love that strong felt like.

  They never found Dominic. But they still believed he was alive. They showed me a picture of him. He looked like a happy kid. Settled. Capable. I didn't wanted to kill their hopes with the stories of what I had already seen of London. I'm sure they'd already seen and heard enough. If they wanted to deal with their grief by believing their boy was still out there and not one o
f the undead, then that was their own choice. I knew what I believed.

  Karen's brief story piqued my interest. She seemed slyly meek. She didn't mention any of the men she had left with. I wanted to know how many of them had actually made it to the community alive. I wondered if any of them were on the clean-up duty with me. If they had literally fought their way out of Central London early on, they would be more than capable of taking my place on the runs. As two women walked through the door, I turned and stood, automatically responding to a subconscious desire to please at least one of them. Carla peeled away from Karen. The two women had been sharing something amusing. I would bet the majority of a limb that it had been an embarrassing childhood story about me. Karen smiled warmly at me. She seemed pleased to be here. It wasn't that I was simply hoping it to be the case, either. I offered her a seat. Rick looked like he was bedding down for the long haul, until Carla stooped over and whispered something in his ear, flicking her eyes briefly at me in the process. Rick openly scowled. Scraping his chair back from the table, he retreated. But instead of following Carla, who took Isabelle by the hand into the front room, he stomped out of the front door. What a fucking child.

  After everyone left, Karen and I sat together at the table.

  "So, where would you like me to begin?" she asked.

  I wasn't sure this time whether I was imagining her voice gaining a husky edge. I suppressed a smirk. So, people did at least sometimes think about sex during times of high crisis. The pre-apocalypse media seemed to have two opinions on it. Fuck like bunnies, or barren as the desert. I'd begun to think it was going to be more like the latter. It was certainly the first time it had registered in my apparently now sex-starved brain.

  "How about at the beginning. I already knew you were in London. Why did you go to work?"

  "I already said it was early. It was a high-pressure job. At least, that's the way I made it. I suppose I could have eased back, could have done less hours, lots of could-haves. That's not the way they want you to work in the city though, is it?"

  I shook my head, completely understanding her mindset. She looked young enough. Mid-twenties, perhaps early thirties. Young enough to still want to climb the ladder, and not quite old enough to be completely cynical about the proceedings. She fidgeted a little, trying to get comfortable before carrying on.

  "Anyway, like I mentioned there was a group of us. They liked to drain their staff. I don't think this had completely broken in the news when I first went into work, either. I honestly don't think I would have gone in, knowing how bad it all was."

  "Not if you're as early as you say. I saw one of the first ones. It must have been about four in the morning. Maybe earlier. And I didn't hang around, either. What time did you get out?"

  "It was nine a.m. I'm not sure whether they'd locked down the Tube or not by that time, but we'd seen enough videos on YouTube. Our boss hadn't made it in. I bet that bitch sure as fuck wasn't going to risk her own skin getting into the office. Barely turned up any given day anyway. Staying there would have been suicide. Shit, even going into work nearly was."

  She had started to shake. I put down my pen, which I had been absentmindedly twisting around, and rested my hand over hers, clasping her wrist lightly.

  "You don't have to do this, you know. Not if it makes you uncomfortable."

  That was a lie. I needed to hear this story. People respond better to the nice guy though. At least when they think they're not being interrogated. She shook her head. Kindness opens so many more doors than force.

  "No. I need to tell someone. And I want it to be you. I mean, I've heard a couple of people now say they spoke to you. They said you were honest, that you're compiling some information that might be used in the community. But it was all private; you wouldn't be telling anyone our stuff without letting us know. It's kind of like therapy, you see? You're just going to sit there and listen to me. And what's better, you've been through what I've been through. So you're not going to judge me.

  "I've been through therapy before, you know. It was different that time. Sure, someone had taken an oath and they were legally obliged to keep my secrets. But I could never believe that the person on the other side of the desk could actually understand what I had been through. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you have seen what I have seen. Sharing is understanding. And the more we understand, the stronger we will be."

  I was rendered speechless for a few seconds. She was good. Damned good. But she did mistake my silence as waiting for her to carry on. Get me, the patient listening type. Who'd have thought it?

  "So anyway, we decided to make a run for it. We couldn't get much together by the way of weapons in the office, but it's surprising what people can come up with when they improvise. We had a toolkit. Someone took a hammer from that. I've heard the hammer is your weapon of choice. Maybe there's a nickname in there for you somewhere?"

  "I'm not blonde," I responded dryly before smiling.

  "You haven't got enough facial hair either. You can work on both of those. Anyway, I keep distracting myself. No wonder you think I don't want to talk about this. So, we all had makeshift weapons and made a run for it. The streets were chaos. At first, we thought it was all infected people, like in that World Dead film, and that everyone was running around and, basically, that we were screwed. Then we saw it was all rioters. It was like 2010 on steroids. People were stealing anything they could get their hands on. Televisions. I mean, when it looks like the world is going to end, who the fuck steals a television?"

  "Idiots," I responded automatically.

  She didn't stop. "So we dodge in between all of these raging looters. Then, in between them all, we start to see them. The biters. They look so much more frightening in real life than they do on the screen. On the Facebook videos, it was easy. Like watching a clip from a horror film. I've seen them all. It wasn't so bad. But out there...you can't prepare yourself for that. Who could?" She shivered.

  I didn't move. I didn't want to interrupt her flow.

  "The first one I saw for real was a kid," she continued. "Millions of people in this world— even just in London—and the first one I see is a fucking child. It was messed up. She was stumbling around. She was one of the slow ones. You don't tend to stay alive for too long when your arm has been ripped out of its socket. It was hanging on by some muscle. Just dangling. Damaged. Useless. I think she died quickly though. You definitely don't survive for very long when half your throat has been torn out." Karen's eyes went distant, then her face went pale. She convulsed a little, and I thought she was going to vomit. Then her voice returned, quiet. She was back in London. A cold and lonely place at the best of times. "She had a night dress on. It was covered in blood. She was just stumbling around in the street. Barefoot. Alone. And that's how she's going to be. Forever."

  Her eyes came back into focus. She had moved. Her hands were gripping my thigh. Her fingers were white, and I realised that she was actually hurting me. We'd both been that absorbed with her words. She looked shocked, almost repulsed, and withdrew.

  "I...I'm sorry Warren. I don't think I can do this now. I thought I could, but..." Tears started to slide down her cheeks. I shook my head, hushing her to silence. I tried to sound reassuring. I tried to keep my disappointment hidden. I stood and moved to her, stooping to encircle her in what I hoped would be received as a hug of friendship. She wound her hand around my arm and squeezed. A whispered voice came out.

  "Thank you for understanding."

  The only thing that I understood so far was that some wounds took longer to heal than others. Some would never heal. The wounds of the undead would just decay and become worse. And if the world had become this macabre, why would my brain only allow me to weep in the dead of night, when I went to sleep and couldn't touch those thoughts and dreams of wounding fire.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I was in the rear of the car again. I couldn't keep my mind off Karen. I think she distracted me so much that I even managed to avoid nightmare
s last night. Alastair thanked me for keeping my cake-hole quiet for an entire night for once. I told him to fuck off. I think he likes me.

  I saw Karen on the way to the car. I don't know if she saw me. I hated to think that she was avoiding me. And that was irrational. We'd barely spoken. I didn't know her. I was just intrigued by her. I didn't like to let things like that go before I knew why. And I knew I interested her. She and Carla had spoken. Carla was definitely avoiding me, but my sister was much easier to metaphorically pin down. I would get her to set up another meeting between me and Karen. And I would say that this time we didn't have to talk about the undead.

  "Hey, you awake back there?"

  I yanked my consciousness back to the present. Charles was yelling at me, which was an unappealing way to start and spend my day. "What's up, chief?"

  "Don't chief me, jackass. You're meant to be keeping an eye out for the zombies. Stop fucking daydreaming."

  I grated at the use of the word. Like mentioning 'death', we seemed to be finding a euphemism for anything but what they blatantly were. Sprinters. Lemmings. Biters. Infected. We avoided it so much that when someone did finally use it, it sounded like a curse word.

  "I am looking," I lied.

  The scenery was monotonous. The small row of houses we had first visited had already been cleared out. We were moving on to the edge of the town now. We were breaking rules. We were back in a group of three again. Because of the potential populace, we were voting safety in numbers for the rest of the week. I had reacted to the phrase in surprise. I had asked which day of the week it was, because I had no idea. Charles had responded just as blankly. The basic turn of phrase was already becoming redundant. I had a machete as well as a crowbar this time. Tom actually had his gun out. We were expecting trouble. That excited me. The fact that it excited me, worried me.