“Yes, you said. Your friend, she does not speak?” I said to her.
“She is mute,” Susie said. I tried to walk away, but a question lingered on my mind from yesterday. After she told me of my father's demise, I completely shut down, I broke down.
“Tell me how he died again?” I asked her, looking away from her. I couldn't face anyone when I grew upset.
“He died saving your sisters, I told you,” Susie whimpered.
“Yes, yes, but, how? Please?” I asked to know.
“He was shot. And infected, both of them things together, it was too much, he passed. In Jess's arms,” she said.
“I never would have thought, Gareth, would do such a thing, if I were there I would have made him suffer,” I said in anger, recounting her story of how Gareth went crazy and killed both my father and hers.
“Why are you not with her, how were you separated?” I then asked.
“Jess, Jess took Lily, and left me,” Susie said. I held my forehead and pressed, unable to hide my emotion anymore, I felt faint.
“I’m so sorry Blake,” Jess’s best friend said. She held my hand and comforted me. I looked her in the eyes and then hugged her. She was nice, and she reminded me of home. As I finished hugging her, her eyes were drawn behind me, outside the tent, to a person standing outside. It was Maddison, she was holding a bloody bandage in her arms. She hesitated and then looked away, stumbling before trudging off. She probably thought me and Susie were together. I thought of chasing her and explaining to her that we were just friends, but I had more serious issues to contend with, like the fact my parents were dead and my sisters were alone out there somewhere. What if they were stuck, and in pain? What if they needed me…?
I collected my thoughts as I stood up, and thanked Susie for her support, wiping my tears from my face I searched the ragged camp for Jake. I found him at the watchtower, his radio silent.
“Jake, I need your help,” I said to him.
“What?” He asked me, putting his pencil down. He had been drawing a sketch of someone it seemed.
“Have you heard anything?” I asked him, pointing to the radio.
“Nothing, you know this,” he said, covering the paper next to the radio.
I walked close to the table and looked at his drawing.
“What is that?” I asked. It was a sketch of an older woman, and she seemed recognisable to me but I couldn't put my finger on it, quite literally as Jake snatched it away and hid it.
“It's my mom, I don't have a picture of her, a real picture,” Jake said looking at the wall. “They say that after ten years, you forget the features of the people who have died. After twenty years you forget even more, until one day they fade completely. I want to remember her,” he said. I turned and looked across the camp. It was high up in the watchtower, you could see the ruin for miles towards the city.
“Yesterday I found out the last of my parents was dead,” I told him.
“Who told you? Jess’s friend?” He said facing me.
“Yeah,” I answered. He took a deep pulsive breath.
“Then you know how it feels now, you know why James deserted.”
“Yeah, but I'm not James, I’m not going to desert,” I said. “There are other people out there, right?”
“Possibly, I don't know, there's got to be, we’re here,” Jake spoke frustratedly.
“Is there a way I could transmit a message on the radio?” I asked him.
“Sure, I can use the emergency channel,” he informed me.
“Brilliant,” I said. He fiddled around with his radio, then turned back to me.
“But Thomas will not like it. We have limited rations, to transmit openly will attract attention,” he reasoned.
“Exactly! We need to save more people,” I said, a smile branching out across my face.
“Saving? It'll be anarchy in the camp within days, the capacity of the camp is already overflowing,” Jake said.
“There is space.” I told him.
“No there isn't,” he replied.
“You know what you sound like right now? The lifeguards on the Titanic, saying the boats are full even though there's more space for people on board,” I said, with a serious face.
“The world is not a sinking ship, Blake,” my friend responded slowly.
“Your right, it's not, because it's already sunken,” I said to him. “Help me with this.”
He stared at me for a few seconds, then nodded and pressed some buttons on the radio. I looked to the distance, to the trees and the barren roads, to the city and the warehouses that were empty. I thought of what I was going to say to the world. Then I thought of what I would want to hear, if I was alone and scared.
“Your broadcasting,” Jake's voice called. Now was the moment to do something worthwhile, for the first time in my life. I sat down in his seat and picked up the speaker mic. Here goes…
“Time of message is 16th of October, sixteen days since the onset of the outbreak. My name is Private Blake Lively of the Mercian Regiment, I transmit this to those surviving out there, to any civilians taking refuge in the city, come to the Exhibition Centre, we are here, and we will beat this …”
The Night Before - Day 17 - Jess
I woke up screaming, for some reason I was scared. A nightmare I couldn't recall. But I was in the hotel room again. I’d another dream too, a dream that Peter came to me late at night, we ate popcorn and watched a movie together. We did other things too. It was only a dream, that's all… A weird one. I got up and left the room to go to the cafe at reception. When I arrived, everyone was up.
“You had a nice sleep after last night pet?” Betty asked me as she put down her coffee.
“Yeah,” I said, walking to the cafe and opening the vending machine for a can of cola. It was diet, because why not? She had asked me about last night, maybe it wasn't a dream, I panicked as Terrence gave me a look from near the reception. Maybe I was so drunk that I actually did all those things. I felt a banging headache.
I remembered drinking alcohol then in the lounge downstairs with Terrence, Betty, and Fay, the short blonde girl from the cafe. I remembered it all now. We had told each other our stories and Fay told me about her studies at uni, that she was an Irish girl studying abroad while working at the hotel. How the hell did I know that?
I remembered Peter. We had gone up together to the hotel room 121. But when I woke up I found no one but me in the bed, as the light shone through my windows to an empty hotel wardrobe. Good, I thought.
I wouldn't be so easy as to capitulate on the first night of knowing a man. There was another girl, one with black hair, she was called Jamie, but she had stayed away from me and gone up to bed early. There was another part of the dream, that I could not remember, a terrifying part. Maybe that's why I was screaming as I woke. I couldn't tell what was the dream and what was the night before.
I sat down and looked around myself. Outside, through the glass, there were dead people. Walking around like animated scarecrows, bits of bone protruding from their legs and elbows, their eyes purple, red, white and sunken.
“Morning,” said a voice from opposite me. I looked and found the girl, Fay.
“Hi,” I said gingerly, feeling the hangover in my head.
“I didn't drink as much as you,” she smiled and fiddled with her hands. “I'm not feeling it as much.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about, what did we do?” I asked.
She smiled. “Well, we got drunk. It's the end of the world,” she shrugged her shoulders with a mischievous grin. I felt uncomfortable speaking with her like this, as if we had known each other for years. I stood up to retreat to my hotel room.
“Don't go, I thought we were friends, I don't have many friends left,” she said, her smile disappearing into sadness.
“I don't know you,” I told her.
“That didn't stop you from having a good time with me last night,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“Ok, fin
e. What did we do last night?” I said sitting down, I was slightly curious.
“Well, I told you about myself,” she began.
“Right yeah, your name is Fay, you're studying here, you're from Ireland. If I couldn't tell from the accent,” I joked.
She laughed quietly.
“You told me about you. And your sister. Your family,” she finished.
I froze. “What did I tell you?” I then uttered with a quick draw of breath and a sharp glance up.
“Just that you missed her, and your father…” She grew quiet as my face fell down and looked away to the outside. She didn't say anything else, I imagined she was unsure of how to approach me.
“Yeah,” I delivered my response in a deadpan voice. My eyes began to well up with tears as I looked up and to the side, away to anywhere I could, looking for answers to questions I didn't even know.
“Peter saved me, he saved me and I trust him to save your sister,” she said as I gazed at her.
“I don't trust him,” I confided in her.
“You spent the night with him!” She whispered back in joy.
“I don't remember?” I then said, in a confused way. She saw the seriousness of the situation and withdrew her joyful demeanour, replacing it with a more pertinent, caring but fearful one.
“Jess!” Called his voice. It was Peter.
“Good to see you up. Do us a favour, can you give Ian his cup of coffee. He's on the roof with the radio, thinks he can get it working again, poor sod.”
“Why can't you do it?” I asked him.
“I need to check the armoury, run some errands, do some fiddling,” he answered with a confused, stern tone.
“We have an armoury? What's in it? Broomsticks and air fresheners?” I said in a sarcastic tone.
“No, guns,” he replied surprisingly.
“An army patrol came by a week ago, they abandoned a small outpost near here,” Fay said then.
“And they left their guns?” I said in shock.
Peter shook his head in an astonishing gesture. “They just left their guns!” He repeated my comment with a charming grin.
“Thanks darling,” he then said, giving me a friendly smile as he left. I didn't know what to think of the man. I found myself being attracted to him while at the same time despising him. I took the coffee Jamie had made. Why I had to deliver it was beyond me. I had never met this Ian bloke. Maybe he wanted me to get to know other people in the hotel. That's the only reason I could think other than him being lazy. I went up ten flights of stairs, finally arriving at the roof. There was a large antenna on the edge near the wall. From here I could see for miles and miles. I could see the city as well. It looked completely dead and bereft of life. There was a short stubby man with a green top on and white summer shorts sitting on a table working on some wires near a large generator.
“Ian?” I spoke, presuming this was him. The man turned around with his glasses on. He looked shocked to see me.
“Who are you?” He asked, but before I could answer, he answered his question for me.
“Oh, you're that girl Terrence stopped in the road!” He boomed. I placed his coffee and crumpets down beside him.
“You haven't spat in it have you?” He asked me, looking back to the wires and machinery and resuming whatever he was doing before I arrived. I smiled, wanting to laugh at his suggestion.
“Would you have liked me to? Is that what the others do to give it that special taste?” I said sarcastically as I neared the edge of the building. The feel of the wind blowing back my hair was amazing, it was as if I was standing behind the aeroplane below as their engines were turned on.
“Don’t tease me!” he laughed. “Careful by the edge, that's where my last assistant fell,” he joked sarcastically before continuing to work on his radio.
“Who the hell said I was your assistant?” I asked him with a smile.
“You're probably thinking the wind feels so good right now, you won't in about ten minutes, you'll start to get a headache. An hour and then you’ll throw up.”
“An even bigger headache than I already have?” I said to him.
“Oh yes,” he replied with a smirk. I crossed my arms and glanced at his equipment.
“Well, if you hate the wind then why are you out here?” I tried to pry him for information.
“I need this radio to work, we need to know what is happening out there, girl like you wouldn’t understand,” he said. I looked to the pale-yellow skies in the distance, mouth agape thinking of a comeback, but then the radio sizzled and static arose. A person was talking, it was a person!
“Oh my god, it’s a person. Why can't we hear them properly?” I asked him.
“It's a repeated message, repeating every hour since yesterday when it was first broadcast, someone out there has a large generator working, it's probably military,” he said
“A warning or something, if I can get this working then we can hear it, and maybe get our own message out.”
“That warning is almost a month late,” I said, remembering dad.
“Ha, yeah,” he laughed and turned his head to me. “You’ve got to wonder how the hell no one know anything about this virus before it spread.”
I didn’t reply, I just looked out to the horizon. He seemed to notice I was upset.
“You’ve lost somebody?” He stated.
I nodded and looked down.
“We all have,” he said solemnly. A few moments passed, and it felt like the most peaceful moments I’d had since dad died.
“So what's your theory, then?” I asked him.
“Aliens. Well, I mean alien bacteria. Think about it, it's like nothing we’ve seen before ever, perhaps the government even knew, they’re probably watching us right now, best way to invade, when they’re all dead from eating each other,” he theorised.
“Alright Agent Mulder,” I chuckled. “You know you're the first person I have maybe liked since being forcefully taken here,” I added.
“Nonsense!” He shouted while working on his radio. “Those people down there are way nicer than me.”
I comfortably smiled at his back. He was nice to be around, his vibes were good. I felt safe.
“Best be going,” I told him.
“Yeah, that's for the best,” he said, and I felt personally offended by it. “I’m probably boring you,” he added, calming me.
“No, you're not,” I said truthfully. “I’ll see you around.” He turned around and grinned, before continuing his work. I went in search of Peter. On the ground floor I found Terrence in the security room.
“Where's the armoury? I need to find Peter,” I said. He swivelled around his chair slowly and stood up out of it, his long brown hair falling down his shoulders, as the screens behind him flickered with static showing the hotel surrounded by the infected. He was an absolute machine, a tank if ever I’d seen one. He gave me a cold piercing stare and walked to within an inch of me. My eyes came to his abdomen, just below his chest that protruded with what I imagined was rock hard muscle. He then flicked his head to the corridor.
“Down the hall, second right,” he spoke, breathing on me with his rotten breath.
I collected my composure and left following his instructions. Inside the storage room I found Peter and the short bloke Mark.
“Welcome,” Peter said, sighing as he looked at his collection.
“We have a weapon for everyone, four rifles, one shotgun, and five handguns. That covers me, Terrence, Ian, Mark, Fay, Jamie, Betty, Christopher and you Jess.”
“Wonderful, I would like the shotgun,” I said to them.
“The shotguns mine,” said Mark. He was small and short and his arms were weak, he couldn't handle the recoil I thought. Then again, I wasn't the strongest either.
“Yeah, you can have the shotgun, we don't need it yet though,” Peter said to him. Mark made a little grunting sound before he left, it was kind of weird, but I passed it off as a mental illness of some sort.
; “You really don't remember anything from last night?” Peter asked me after a moment. I gave him a worried side eye, I was scared, what the hell had occurred last night, why did I drink so much?!
“Nothing happened anyway,” he said, feeling my silence. I was relieved, but my face stayed the same.
“What?” He asked me.
“I want to know about this group,” I said. “Why the hell did they jump you, who leads them? Where have they taken Lily?”
“Slow down!” He said, but I wasn't even talking fast. He was trying to control me. I have every right to ask these questions, questions he had not answered in the entire four days I have been here.
“I’m planning on doing something about that little group as soon as I’m ready. I have a guy, Romano, he’s been scouting out the place right now. We need to know what we’re up against or else if we go in blind, we’re as good as dead. I saw what they did to Darren, you didn't.”
“Yeah, because I was unconscious thanks to your stupid brother!” I said losing my rag at him.
“I get you lost a friend, but I lost my sister and I might lose her for good if we don't do something now. I’m losing patience here, every second that goes by she could be hurt or worse, she could be dead.”
I stepped back and regained my bearings, it wasn't like me to lose my shit this way.
“I want to get her back, now,” I broke down, but before I could elaborate, we both heard screaming. A subtle, muffled screaming. It was coming from outside the corridor, at the reception. The café must be attack! Peter's face twisted with concern. He grabbed a shotgun and a pistol, then handed them to me.
“Grab one of them!” He shouted, I could hear the fear in his words, the tremble in his voice.
“I don't know what to do!” I screamed.
“They're fully loaded, here,” he handed me the pistol and picked himself up a rifle. Kicking open the door we marched out into the corridor. Mark was running away from the screams towards us. Peter chucked him the rifle and we made it into the foyer. Christopher, the tall workman, was on the floor at the reception gnawing into Jamie's back, the shy girl with the birth marks. He had been bitten. She clawed on the floor to get away, screaming in pain, but he had pinned her legs to the ground with his body, immobilising her. He continued to delve into the flesh on her back making feral growls and groans, ripping her limb from limb.
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