Dead Meat | Day 5

by Clausen, Nick

  A brief pause.

  “No,” Mom says. “He died in an accident.”

  “What accident?”

  “He had a nasty fall.”

  “That sounds strange,” the guy with the rifle—Silas—says.

  His brother grabs his arm, as though to tell him to shut up.

  “If you don’t believe me,” Mom says, “you can see for yourselves. He’s lying right there in front of you.”

  The men look down. They both lock eyes on something just outside of the screen. Jonas steps forward and kneels.

  “Holy shit, it really is him,” he says. “You … you shot Holger, dude.”

  “The hell I did!” Silas exclaims.

  “Then why does he have an open gunshot wound in the neck?”

  Silas goes to his brother and kneels down beside him. “That’s not from a gun, you half-wit. A knife did that. Someone stabbed him.”

  As though the same thought occurs to both of the brothers at once, they both get back up and look up.

  “She’s gone,” Jonas says.

  “Hey, lady!” Silas shouts. “Come back!”

  “She doesn’t want to talk anymore,” Jonas says.

  “The hell she doesn’t. But she killed Holger!”

  “I know, what are you going to do about it?” He turns towards the car. “Come on, man.”

  “Are we just leaving?” Silas exclaims, throwing out his arms. “That’s it? Some crazy bitch got here first and killed the poor prick, and we just leave?”

  “What else can we do? You see those bars on the windows? That place is probably impossible to break in to.”

  “Maybe not,” Silas says, lowering his voice as he steps closer to his brother. They begin talking together in voices too low for Dennis to hear.

  A knocking from behind him makes him jump and turn.

  “It’s me, Dennis!” Mom’s voice calls from the door. “Please open up.”

  Dennis rushes to let her in.

  She closes and locks the door behind them.

  “Mom, I think they’re planning to break in,” Dennis blurts out, pointing to the terminal. “I couldn’t hear them properly, they were talking too low, but—”

  “It’s okay, Dennis,” she tells him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “There’s no way they can get down here. Even if they break into the house, this place is still safe.”

  “Are you sure?” Dennis asks, wanting to believe Mom.

  “I’m sure. Holger designed it that way.”

  Dennis bites his lip. “I found out there’s audio too, Mom. On the surveillance system. I heard you talking with them.”

  Mom’s eyes grow a little wider, then she looks over at the terminal and goes to takes a closer look. Dennis follows her.

  “That’s clever,” Mom says. “He put up microphones, too.”

  “Look, they’re leaving,” Dennis says.

  The men are getting back into the truck and turning it around. They speed out of the driveway.

  “What did I tell you?” Mom says, smiling.

  “But what if they come back?”

  “There’s only one entrance, and the door is made of armored steel.”

  “But … but what if they bring like, a bomb or something, to like, blow it open?”

  “Even with a stick of dynamite, all they’d achieve is to collapse the tunnel.”

  “But what if—”

  “Enough, Dennis.”

  Mom’s tone of voice changes ever so slightly, and Dennis knows the conversation is over.

  “Go back to sleep, you need to rest. There’s still a couple of hours till sunup.”

  “What … what about you?” Dennis dares to ask. “Are you going to sleep, too?”

  “In a little while,” Mom says without looking at him and without explaining further.

  Dennis knows better than to ask anymore.

  He goes back inside the bunk room, turns down the lighting from the spots and crawls under the blanket. He stares at the wall, thinking that he probably won’t get back to sleep, despite how exhausted he is.

  Maybe that’s for the best, though; going back to sleep will likely mean going back to the nightmares which have plagued him constantly ever since what happened at Esther’s house.

  “That place is probably impossible to break in to.”

  “Maybe not.”

  The men’s voices replay in his head. The way they whispered to each other is still bothering him, and he’s afraid they’ll come back, despite what Mom said about Holger’s bunker being safe.

  “Maybe not,” Dennis whispers to himself, blinking and feeling sleepy after all, now that the adrenaline is leaving his blood. “Maybe it’s not safe here,” he mutters and yawns. “I sure hope they won’t come back …”

  Without knowing it, he drifts into sleep.

  THREE

  It’s only a twenty-minute trip, but today, those twenty minutes feels more like twenty hours.

  Her mother is there with her, sitting in the passenger seat. Normally, she would be chatting away while knitting. Today, the tiny, grey-haired woman just looks out the window, silent.

  The traffic is surprisingly sparse, at least on this side of the freeway; the other lane, the southbound one, is stuffed with cars going by.

  Where’re they headed? Josefine thinks to herself. Germany? Some place even farther?

  It won’t make a difference. This thing has already spread across borders, and it will keep doing so. Josefine knows that, and she suspects most of the people in the cars know it too. Despite the reassuring faces they keep showing on the news. Doctors, politicians, military personnel—all of them calm, assertive, promising everything is under control, assuring people it will be over soon, if everyone just stays calm and follows the instructions they keep pumping out every five minutes on the radio.

  Keep indoors.

  Stay away from other people.

  If you have any scratch or bite marks, report to the local hospital for isolation immediately.

  If things really are under control, she thinks, squeezing the wheel a little harder, then how come they let the infection reach a nursing home?

  Shouldn’t the old, the sick and the fragile be the ones best protected?

  There were rumors about several care facilities being overrun by the infection. She has even heard about a kindergarten being struck. The mere thought of young children dying from this awful thing is too much, and she has never been more thankful that she never had any kids of her own.

  In her younger years, she would still play with the thought now and then, but since she reached forty-five last winter, and she still hasn’t gotten married, she decided to put it to rest and focus on herself instead.

  There was also the hospital in Viborg being “shut down”—that was the official statement of what had happened, anyway, though the images she saw on Facebook suggested it had been more like a massacre. Infected people everywhere, soldiers trying to keep them inside the building, guns and helicopters, crashed cars and corpses littering the streets. It was like a scene right out of a disaster movie.

  Josefine had never imagined she would experience anything like this, not in her lifetime. Denmark had always been gracefully spared of any natural catastrophes, and the wars and conflicts they had been involved in had all taken place far away, in the Middle East or the Balkans. Even the Second World War and the great flu pandemic had only caused the country minor hardship compared to many others.

  Maybe that’s why this thing started here. You could say we had it coming. With so much shit in the world, it was bound to be our time to get sticky sooner or later.

  She becomes aware of how gloomy her thoughts are, and she makes an effort to turn her attitude around.

  She needs to stay positive. For herself, and for her mom. And for her dad, most of all.

  They are almost there.

  The longest ride of Josefine’s life is finally coming to an end. And what waits for her will probably be the toughest experience
of her life.

  She takes a deep breath as she turns into the parking lot in front of the red brick building. A white tent has been set up in front of the glass doors, and several medical vehicles are parked around the entrance. A person—Josefine can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman—is walking around in a hazmat suit.

  This will be the last time I see him.

  She has tried to prepare herself mentally for the past year, ever since he was admitted. People his age don’t live long with dementia that far advanced. And yet it was so hard—impossible, really—to imagine a reality without her daddy in it. He had been there all her life, after all, and Josefine had secretly hoped he would continue being there forever.

  Time to grow up, she tells herself as she parks the car. You’re a big girl now. He taught you to be brave, didn’t he? Well, this is your time to prove it.

  She turns the key and kills the engine.

  Silence falls over the car.

  Her mom is still staring out the window, even though the view is blocked by a hedge.

  “Well, we’re here,” Josefine says, forcing a smile. “You ready, Mom?”

  Her mother blinks, looks at her, the grey eyes are distant for a moment, daydreamy. Then she smiles coolly and nods. “I’m ready, hon. How about you?”

  “As ready as you can get, I guess.”

  As soon as they leave the car, they’re met by a short, stern-looking woman with her hair bundled up in a tight knot and the lower part of her face covered by a mask. She’s also wearing rubber gloves and carrying a tablet.

  “Who are you here to see?” she demands, without even greeting them.

  “Gert Johansen,” Josefine says. “We got a call that if we wanted to see him—”

  “You’re just in time,” the woman cuts her off, tapping the screen, then pointing towards the building. “They just told us they’ll be here in fifteen minutes, clearing the place out.”

  “Clearing the place out?” Josefine repeats. “What does that mean?”

  “You need to go around the back,” the woman says, gesturing in the direction, completely ignoring the question. “A man will instruct you on how to—”

  “Excuse me,” Josefine says. “What do you mean, the place will be cleared out?”

  The woman looks at her impatiently, like the question is too obvious to warrant an answer. “The authorities are closing the place down. That means they’ll come and collect the infected, and those still in the early stages will most likely be kept here in isolation until they reach the paralytic stage.”

  “What … what happens to them then?”

  The woman shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you. They don’t tell me more than I need to know.”

  “Do you at least know where they take them?”

  “You’ll have to ask them. I’m sorry, but I need to get going.” The woman turns around on her heel and marches back into the tent. Just before she disappears out of sight, she stops, turns and says: “Around the back. He’s waiting for you.”

  FOUR

  Mille feels the growing panic like a rat trapped inside her chest, thrashing and gnawing to get out.

  She’s trapped, too, and even though she has room to move around, she feels claustrophobic.

  She’s on a ferry. Out at sea. The ultimate trap. Nowhere to escape.

  Her mom is gripping her by the elbow and dragging her up the stairs of the ship, making her feel like a helpless little girl again.

  Torben is trudging along in front of them, wheezing from the exertion of climbing the steps, and behind them is a group of other passengers headed for their cabins. Mille notices the looks on their faces. They all have something in common, something just below the surface.

  Mille recognizes it; it’s fear. No one aboard this ferry is here because they’re going on vacation, that much is clear. They’re all refugees who foresaw what was to come and made an effort to get out of Dodge while they could.

  And now.

  Now they might all become some of the first ones to go.

  Because Torben is infected, and it’s probably a matter of minutes rather than hours before he’ll turn.

  The trip to Sweden will take at least three hours.

  That’s plenty of time for all hell to break loose.

  “Mom,” Mille tries again, not really expecting to be heard. “Mom, please listen to me!”

  Her mom yanks her arm harder as Torben makes a turn and leaves the stairway.

  “It’s here,” he breathes, wiping sweat from his upper lip with a purple tongue. “Deck 13. We need to find cabin B55.”

  “This is a terrible mistake,” Mille says, this time addressing Torben. “We need to warn people—we need to get you off the ferry!”

  “Nonsense,” Torben mutters, giving her but half a look. “I told you, I’ll be fine. We just need to find our cabin …” He looks around as he speaks, then, apparently spotting a sign, he heads off down the hallway.

  Mom pulls Mille along before she can come up with another objection. Mille looks out of the row of windows all facing the calm, black Kattegat Sea with the looming, dark blue sky above it.

  And somewhere beyond the horizon, still too far away to see, lies Sweden. Twice as many inhabitants as Denmark. Boarders to both Norway and Finland, and, a little farther east: Russia.

  The world’s largest country.

  The thought is almost enough for Mille’s knees to buckle as she’s dragged along by her mother.

  The situation is far, far graver than Mille thought at first. In Denmark, the infection could conceivably be contained, as the country is surrounded on three sides by ocean.

  If the infection reaches Sweden, however, there will be absolutely no chance of stopping it. It’ll have a free pass to spread across the globe.

  And right now, Mille is the only one aware of the risk.

  Torben turns another corner and points down a smaller hallway with a lot of doors on each side. “Found it! Down there!”

  “Great,” Mom sighs with relief. “Do you think they have something to clean your wound in the cabin?”

  “If not, we’ll have to send for something.”

  “Don’t you get it?” Mille shouts, suddenly filled with not just horror, but a raging fury. She tears herself loose from her mother’s grip and stares at Torben. “It’s too late! Disinfecting it won’t do anything! I’ve seen it happen! Once you’re bitten or scratched, there’s no way to—”

  Mom interrupts her with a stinging slap of her right palm.

  Mille blinks with shock and stares at her mother, who points a finger right between her eyes. “You shut up now! You hear me? I won’t hear another word out of you!”

  Mille just glares at her, feeling her cheek begin to swell and burn. She sees the muscles under her mother’s left eye tic and her lips tremble. She sees fear and wrath and regret all mixed together. And she finally sees her mother completely as she remembers her: a grown-up by body only, but a body navigated by someone endlessly fragile and weak, a constant victim of circumstances, blindly staggering through life, trying to avoid pain but encountering it again and again, forcing her to hide deeper inside herself, cowering behind the cheap makeup and the booze and the pretend strength of some asshole whom she calls her boyfriend.

  And within three seconds, something changes completely inside of Mille. It feels most of all like growing up in an instance. Her anxiety level plummets. The fearful thoughts dissipate, allowing her to see clearly. Resolve fills her as she breathes deeply.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry about everything. I truly am.”

  Mom’s expression softens at the words, and she begins to speak in a warmer tone: “Oh, honey, it’s okay. I just need you to stop—”

  “I’m sorry your life is such a mess. And that you’re constantly hurting yourself and people around you. I understand you don’t mean to. But I can’t be a part of it anymore.”

  Mille feels almost as surprised as her mother at the words coming out of her. She shakes her head gen
tly.

  “I’m going to go warn the crew now. They need to turn the ferry back. That’s the only right thing to do.”

  “No,” Mom says, obviously trying to regain some of the forcefulness she had just mustered but now lost completely. “No, you can’t do that …”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Torben cuts in, stepping in between Mille and her mother. “You come with us, and you’ll keep your mouth shut like your mother told you to.”

  He reaches out a fat hand to grab Mille, but she steps back briskly, easily getting out of Torben’s reach.

  He glares at her in surprise and anger. “You come here, girl …”

  “No,” Mille says, shaking her head once, then she turns her back on him and runs down the hallway.

  FIVE

  Seeing her father through the window is a lot easier than she feared. In fact, he looks surprisingly like himself. The thin, white hair combed back, the usual brown slippers on his feet. His head is turned away, and it looks like he’s sleeping.

  The only thing different about him is the bandages on his left elbow. That, and the straps around his wrists and ankles, tying him to the bed.

  “Oh, dear,” her mother whispers. “They’ve tied him down. Why did they tie him down like that?”

  “It’s a safety thing,” Josefine tells her. “So he doesn’t … hurt anyone else.”

  “Oh, dear,” her mother says again, shaking her head. “Can we at least go inside?”

  “I don’t think—”

  Before Josefine can stop her, she’s grabbed the handle to the terrace door and is trying to turn it. It’s locked.

  The sound makes her father turn his head and look straight at her. “Josie? That you?”

  “Yes, Dad,” she says, and she can’t help but smile. “It’s me. Mom’s here, too.”

  Her father squints his eyes and lifts his head slightly from the pillow. “Oh, hello, dear. Didn’t see you there.”

  “Hello, Per,” Josefine’s mother says, her voice already starting to shake. “How’re you holding up, love?”

  “Well, I’ve been better, to tell you the truth,” Josefine’s father says, breaking into a grin, then into a cough.