by Alex Scarrow
‘Jing,’ replied Grace, ‘They will welcome you in . . . and I will return you.’
‘To be clear, this is not happening!’ snapped Rex. ‘I’m not prepared to use this man as a guinea pig.’
‘You have to trust me, Mr Williams.’
‘No. Absolutely not!’
‘I trusted you . . .’
‘What?’
‘I offered myself up. I came aboard the big ship and I announced myself. I could have been burned alive.’
Rex turned his eyes back to Lieutenant Choi. The Chinese man nodded, silently, confirming that he was ready to sacrifice himself.
‘You know, I could have passed your test. Then I could have infected the others, quietly.’
‘Why didn’t you? You had the perfect opportunity, more than a month out at sea and no way for anyone to escape? Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I want to talk. I want to show you.’
‘Show me what?’
‘What life can be.’
Freya –
What the hell happened to you and Grace in Southampton? One second we were all together, the next you and Grace were gone. I waited for you two outside the holding pen. I know you got out. You must have got out.
I miss you, Freya. God, I really miss you. I wish I’d said something the night before it happened. Remember? We were scooched up beneath the raincoat? Right then I was going to say I love you, but it didn’t seem like the right time. The others were still missing and, let’s face it, the pen stank of human crap. Not exactly romantic. There are better places to say something like that, I’m thinking? But, damn, I wish I had. It’s funny, we were holed up together for a year and a half in Norwich, then we were at Everett’s castle. All that time we could have, you know, got together. Why didn’t we?
Why didn’t I say something?
Say hi to Grace for me.
Leon
CHAPTER 22
‘Come on? What do you miss the most?’
Jake laughed. ‘You’re going to call me a totally shallow bastard . . . but I miss my personal grooming routine.’
‘What?’
‘No, seriously, mate.’ Jake peered through the binoculars again at the road beyond the ragged gap in the bridge. ‘I used to shower every morning. A long, hot one. Then shave my barnet to a number two. Then splash aftershave all over, and get into clean clothes.’ He lowered the binoculars and turned to Leon. ‘I hate waking every morning and smelling of tramp.’
Leon laughed. ‘You get used to it.’
‘Not me, bro. I hate it.’
He passed the binoculars over. ‘Your turn.’
The old man, Peter, was sitting outside the Portakabin, enjoying the fleeting rays of sunlight.
Leon changed places with Jake so that he was sitting beside the Portakabin’s scuffed window. Sentry duty down by the bridge was one of the regular jobs on the isle. The fishermen fished, the gardeners gardened, Jeffery Dunst, formally a marine engineer, kept the generator running with his small staff of helpers. Peter ran the ‘Home Guard’, which Jake and Leon had volunteered to join. They had this pair of binoculars, a walkie-talkie, a shotgun, a kettle and a box of coffee and UHT milk sachets.
‘What about you?’
Leon shrugged. ‘Where the hell do you start?’
He missed everything. The flicker of a TV set, the amber glow of street lights, the smell when you passed a coffee shop, the warmth of clothes fresh from a tumble dryer, the soft whirr of his laptop’s fan, the ping of a new post or text.
All of that vanished in a single week. Ever since then, pretty much, he’d been living the life of a scavenger. He recalled sitting down in that abandoned nuclear bunker with Grace and Mum and that guy, Mohammed. The pair of them had been arguing about Xbox vs PS4 zombie games. Mo was a PS4 guy, Leon Xbox. They had drifted on to that whole fantasy thing about wishing that a zombie apocalypse would actually happen, and how quickly their lives had become that stupid fantasy. How much they wanted boring normality to return.
‘I miss waking up safely. Knowing the only tough decision that’s going to happen this morning is which cereal to pour out.’
Jake chortled. ‘True that.’
‘Even with the safe places me and the girls stayed at, the castle, the Oasis . . . there was this constant feeling that it wasn’t going to last forever. It was one mistake away from collapsing.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Jake leaned back and planted a muddy boot on the corner of the old camping table. He crossed his legs and stretched. ‘It’s like . . . dude, we can scavenge cans of beans and dried pasta, but unless we start growing new stuff it’s gonna run out one day.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Leon raised the binoculars and swept the outskirts of the small town at the end of the road.
‘I sometimes think it’d be easier to just walk out there and say, ‘Come on, bitches, infect me!’
Leon turned in his seat. ‘Well, that’s bullshit!’
‘Really? What is this? Living?’ Jake snorted. ‘It’s a holding pattern is what it is. We’ll carry on like this until one day one of those little bastards gets over the gap and then it’s game over.’
‘Jake, we’re better off here than any other place I’ve stayed.’ He gestured out of the window. ‘This is pretty good. This is the first properly defensive place I’ve come across.’
‘Yeah. Maybe. But that makes it our entire world, then. A thin beach and an island a couple of kilometres across, filled with golden oldies. Great. No offence, Peter.’
The old man sitting outside the cabin grumbled something sleepily.
Jake lowered his voice. ‘You know this community will shrink quickly as they die off.’
‘For now, we’re safe. We’re alive. We’re getting fed. I’ll take that.’
‘That’s what I like about you, mate.’ Jake’s boots slid off the table as he leaned forward and punched Leon’s arm gently. ‘Always positive. OK, I’ll go with your fight-on-while-it’s-worthwhile approach,’ he added.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’m not going to end my days as a lonely bloody hermit sitting on this chunk of rock.’
‘What, you gonna go out in a blaze of glory at some point?’ It was meant to sound flippant.
‘You know what I’d like to do?’ said Jake. ‘I’d take a gun, go out there, over the bridge, and wait for the little shits to come for me.’ Jake shrugged. ‘Go down fighting.’
Leon peered back through the binoculars. There was no way he’d risk getting overrun by them. He still had nightmares. Ones where he saw Mum’s face poking through the broken mesh window, those things crawling through her hair, her eyes wide and rolling as she hissed, ‘They’re inside me.’
He quickly pushed the image back into the dark corner where it belonged.
‘In that case, you’d better make sure you keep the last bullet for yourself, Jake.’
‘Maybe it isn’t so bad?’
Leon felt his body go rigid. It took him a few moments to realize that it was anger. Rage. He felt an intense urge to lean over and punch Jake for saying something so bloody stupid. They were alive right now. Sitting here, with mugs of cooling coffee, talking crap, because they’d survived the outbreak and its aftermath.
Dumb shit like ‘I give up’ . . . or ‘Maybe it isn’t so bad’ is what losers say, MonkeyNuts. Put him straight, son.
‘I mean, I’ve seen it happen up close,’ continued Jake. ‘My big sis. I saw her die.’ He sighed. ‘You know what the last thing she said to me was?’
‘No. Jake, It’s not really—’
‘She said, “It’s OK, bro. I’m OK.”’
Tell him to shut up. Now.
‘I mean, I think she was trying to tell me she felt good, or something. So, you know, maybe it’s not so—’
‘For Christ’s sake, Jake! It’s death! The worst goddamn kind of death!’ he snapped. He hated the brittle tone in his voice.
‘Whoa, mate! Chill!’
He let a s
econd or two pass, let his voice settle. ‘I have plans to see my sister again and my . . . friend again. That’s my plan. That’s my goal.’
‘Your one true love, huh? What’s her name again?’
He knew Jake knew. Jake was just winding him up.
‘I know I’m gonna find them again. Things are going to get better here. Lawrence is a good and stable leader. We’ll get shit sorted. Maybe one day soon get a radio mast set up and reach out to the others.’ He turned to Jake. ‘I’ve got good reasons to live, to fight on.’
Jake shrugged. ‘You’re saying I haven’t?’
‘Well, if you’re talking about going down fighting . . . maybe not?’
Peter stomped into the cabin, bleary eyed from his snooze. ‘What’re you boys squabbling about in here?’
‘Nothing, Peter. Just talking, mate,’ said Jake, ‘just . . . shooting the breeze.’
Leon felt his sudden anger wheeze out of him like a punctured tyre. ‘Shit. Sorry, Jake, I just . . .’
‘Hey, don’t worry about it, mate. I was just arsing about.’
‘Well, you two young pillocks aren’t down here to arse about!’ grumbled Peter. ‘You!’ He pointed at Leon. ‘Get back to looking out there! And you . . . put the bloody kettle on!’
Leon nodded. He raised the binoculars back to his eyes and resumed scanning the world beyond the bridge.
As he panned, he saw something move. ‘Shit!’ He jerked the binoculars back until his view settled on what he’d spotted.
‘What is it?’ hissed Peter.
‘Scuttler . . .’ he replied under his breath. ‘I think I just saw a . . .’
He adjusted the focus and the patch of crumbling road he was staring at sharpened up. There it was.
Movement.
‘Small scuttlers,’ said Leon. ‘Really small.’
‘How many?’ asked Jake.
‘About . . . six . . . seven . . .’
‘Mind if I take a look?’ Peter shuffled forward and took the binoculars from him as Leon pointed out where they were. ‘About seven metres back from the end of the bridge.’
Leon watched him squinting into the eyepieces. ‘Is that what they normally do, Peter? Come up to the edge like that and sniff around?’
‘Bugger!’ He grunted, studying them silently a while longer before finally lowering the binoculars. ‘They’ve never come right up to the edge like that before.’
‘What?’
‘I think they’ve finally worked out we’re here!’
Leon took the binoculars back off him and peered into them once more. He adjusted the focus until he had the fidgeting of their movement in clear view again. He could see something like twenty or thirty of them now, all perched on the crumbling lip of the broken bridge, hair-thin antennae and legs flexing in the air like the whiskers of a rabbit.
CHAPTER 23
Rex Williams and the others watched through the observation window as Lieutenant Choi entered the room from the positive-air-pressure antechamber. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, looking at the window and the faces of a dozen observers, crowding the glass to look in.
It was too late for Lieutenant Choi to turn back now the inner door had opened. Too late for Rex to ask if he was sure about this. He’d now been exposed to the virus.
Lieutenant Choi sniffed the air. ‘There is a distinct smell of –’ his voice sounded tinny over the wall speaker – ‘soya, rice vinegar; rich, like tamari.’ He went carefully into the room, stepping on parts of the smooth tiled floor, avoiding the ones criss-crossed with veins and bacilli-like fingers of growth.
‘Hello, Jing.’ The girl’s voice sounded odd to Rex: thicker, with more layers to it, like the beginnings of a chorus. ‘It’s good to finally meet you in person.’
Rex had to admire the man’s calm demeanour. Choi dipped his head politely, formally, addressing his reply towards the glistening flesh on the small desk. ‘And it is a pleasure to meet you as well, Grace.’
‘I can see you’re concerned, Mr Williams,’ said Grace.
Rex glanced at the glistening pale object encased in a purse of deep red muscle tissue. It was nothing he could ever describe as an ‘eye’, but clearly it was the organ she was using to view events in the room and the observation room beyond the window.
‘I promise,’ continued Grace, ‘Jing will be unharmed . . . He’s my friend.’
‘We’re taking you at your word, Grace,’ replied Rex.
‘What do you need me to do now?’ asked Lieutenant Choi.
‘It’s best if you remove your shirt, Jing. There will be some blood.’
He did as she instructed, unbuttoning, then removing the crisp white top of his navy uniform. He folded it carefully and placed it on a clean part of the floor.
He was wearing a black vest beneath. ‘That’s enough. We just need to get to your arm and shoulder. Now lie down.’
He sat down, carefully examined the floor around him, then lay back.
‘Spread your arms out wide.’
He did so.
‘Jing, I’m going to reach out for you. There’s going to be a little sting as I enter, and that’s it. No more pain after that, I promise. You just relax, OK?’
‘Yes, Grace.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ hissed someone standing directly behind Rex. ‘Are we really letting this happen to the poor bastard?!’
‘Be quiet!’ snapped Rex. The observation room quietened down.
They watched Lieutenant Choi lying perfectly still, arms stretched out like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, his eyes closed, his chest gently falling and rising.
Jesus. Rex had to admire the man’s courage. To even enter the room.
Or perhaps he’s been brainwashed by her to ‘join’ him?
Rex was not prepared to think beyond this experiment. If Choi did return unharmed and could prove that he was uninfected, then . . . the same invitation awaited himself.
The containment room was still and quiet. Then finally the silence was broken by a wet ‘snapping’ sound. Rex saw something emerging from the largest and thickest pool of organic material on the floor. A dark, wrinkled membrane, like the desiccated skin on a sun-dried date had formed over the pool during the last few days. Now something small seemed to be poking around beneath it. A tiny rip in the membrane suddenly appeared and a bloody crablike creature emerged – freshly born.
Once again the silence in the observation room was broken by the exchange of hushed voices. ‘We saw those things in Calais and Southampton. Thousands of the bloody little—’
He raised his finger to shut them up.
The creature climbed out of the ripped membrane and began to take little uncertain steps across the white tiled floor towards Choi’s arm, dragging behind its abdomen what appeared to be a fine, sticky thread.
Is that some sort of umbilical cord?
The creature finally reached Choi’s left arm.
‘You’ll feel some tickling,’ said Grace. ‘That’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s a messenger, a scout making contact with you.’
The creature’s fine legs and antennae touched Choi’s arm and began gently caressing his skin.
‘What’s that thing doing?’ asked Rex.
‘Lieutenant Choi tells me They are better now at entering us,’ replied Captain Xien. ‘They are more familiar with our biology. So, the process can be less . . . destructive.’
The answer came with a trickle of bright red blood that rolled down across Choi’s pale forearm and dripped on to the floor. The creature shifted position, turning delicately around until its abdomen was poised above the breach in his skin, then it lowered itself down, pushing the small bulbous portion of its body through the cut and into his arm. It fidgeted for a few moments, seemingly trying to ‘back’ itself in, then stopped what it was doing, hesitated, and hopped off the arm, minus its abdomen and the umbilical thread. It was just like a bee leaving its sting behind. The creature scuttled away, its part of the process apparently completed.
Jing felt the sting. It was barely a scratch, and as Grace had promised there was no more pain. He was aware of the cold tiles beneath his bare shoulders, the glare of the strip light in the ceiling directly above him, leaching through his closed eyelids and staining his view with a warm amber glow. He watched flecks of micro-debris on the surface of his eyes slide gracefully to one side as they avoided direct inspection. He listened to his own breathing, in and out, regular and soothing, the soft fizz of the light above and the quiet hiss of the com speaker, broken every now and then by the rustling of movement, or a whispered exchange outside.
Gradually those sensations began to recede.
Time passed.
Time passed.
Time passed . . . and Jing found himself beginning to wonder if this was what death was like – the gradual descent of awareness, from the outside to the inside, to eventually nothing.
Jesus Christ, his whole arm’s gone!
Rex was mentally unprepared to deal with what he was seeing with his own eyes. The speed at which the liquefaction process worked was astounding. Within a minute of that small glistening crablike thing depositing its body into the incision, the skin around it had darkened to a threatening, angry purple. A minute or so more and the discoloration had extended to reach up to the man’s shoulder and down to his elbow. The discoloured skin was beginning to glisten wetly in places; sagging dimples were appearing where the tissue beneath the skin was decaying faster than on the surface.
Then came the first gentle ripping as gravity won the battle against surface tension. Like gravy skin parting at the spout of a gravy boat, his skin began to separate. Loops of the flesh around Lieutenant Choi’s arm began to break away and sag from his bones on to the floor.
Unharmed. She promised he’d be unharmed, he reassured himself. She’d explained, for their benefit, that Choi was going to be completely subsumed into the virus.
Then returned.
Unharmed.
A full demonstration that entering her world could be done non-destructively.