He heard rustling in one hedge and decided it was probably a rabbit.
The air smelled clean.
How was it he felt so confident in the dark now? he thought.
He picked up the pace again and started a slow jog. The road curved uphill to a crest that hosted another small industrial site. What looked to be a series of garages and storages units receded from the entrance off the road, and ended with a blanket of trees. He marked it.
A sign that read ‘Armed & Dangerous’ was attached to the gate of one house, a little further on. Through the gaps of the gate Nate could see the front of the house. The entrance was open. All the windows were intact. Sniffing, there was nothing unusual in the air. He marked it.
As the road began to descend again, the wind picked up. The road levelled off and straightened; other than one abandoned car, it was unobstructed. Maybe I should learn to drive, thought Nate, most of these roads are clear. When he reached the car he opened it and found a key in the ignition. He turned it, but it coughed once and went quiet. More death. He didn’t mark it.
When he reached the island that would normally take him to Worcester, he stopped. The smell of excrement again. It came from the body that was lying at three o’clock on the island’s dial. He walked over to it and kicked it – the official test of life now – and was satisfied of its death. He looked around. On the island itself was a back-pack, and tumbling out of it were Snickers bars.
A crowbar lay on the road between him and The Mitre Oak.
*****
Bent and buckled metal blocked Worcester Road, but from what? Nate wondered; a rampant horde of undead, or had we now segregated into pockets, Stourport its own district to be protected at all cost? Borders withdrawn from the size of countries to the pockets that lined them. From pockets to the thread that bound them. Each man for himself.
The weapon of choice? Knives, spanners and crowbars. If this was America, he’d probably be dead already with a bullet in his head; or worse, caught between killing and dying. He picked up the crowbar and checked the road-block for activity. Even if he had a gun, actually using it was a double-edged sword – ammunition would be hard to come by around here, and once gone, then what? Better to get the practice in with knives and blunt objects, and the fist. The other drawback? Announcing your location. Stealth tactics were more likely to keep you alive.
The road-block clear, he made his way towards The Mitre Oak, the opening and closing gambit of a neighbourhood pub-crawl. The front entrance had a little blood on its hands. The doors were reddened culprits and inside the doorway, a path of blood lead away from a pool on the floor as though drawn with giant fingertips. It lead towards the bar and under the lift-up counter-top. The copper-iron smell was sweetly pungent and yet, something beneath it – a body odour perhaps if that person had been running through a field of roses, if such a thing existed – wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
He listened to the silence until satisfied, then followed the trail. He lifted the bar on its hinges until it rested against the wall and rounded the corner, passing an open till full of copper coin, but devoid of notes – who wasted their time looting cash? In the dark-that-was-not-that-dark, a body in the foetal position was curled at the far end. Nate rested a hand on the hilt of a knife and walked forward.
His running shoes squelched mildly where the blood was thickest on the floor, leaving intricate zig-zag patterns where it was bare.
The girl – for it was a girl, he could see that now but had somehow sensed it before, even without the prior knowledge of the Snickers packets and the upturned back-pack – was breathing. The breaths were raspy and frequent, almost panting. Nate knelt down and touched her shoulder, ready to jump if a clamping jaw so much as jutted in his direction. He shook her gently, noticing a bite on her neck as he did so. It was bloodied, but the blood seemed dry or at least slightly congealed. Almost a scab, actually. Putting a hand to her forehead, it came away damp. The girl was shaking slightly.
“Fuck,” he said. He stood back up and leaned on the bar with his head in his hands. The bloodied “Thank you” with its trailing footprints came to mind; footprints that had only lead to her death anyway. The world was one big grave, one big cemetery; Night of the Living Dead for the masses.
Drinking was the great opiate of pain, right? He turned to the mirrored shelves behind him, the refrigerators beneath the counter, looking for alcohol – anything at this point will do, sorry, Mum – but there was nothing. Circles on the counter were ghostly reminders of what had once stood there, now gone to helping ease another’s pain, dull another’s existence.
He looked down to the girl at his feet, then sat next to her. She hadn’t turned yet, she was still real, still alive. The short rasps of breath continued and flicked tongues of condensing air from her slightly parted lips. Her hands were locked together beneath her chin. There was dried blood across the left side of her face, but the right side was almost spatter-free, and her cheek glowed at the cheekbone as though there was blood there anyway. Her nostrils flared occasionally.
Nate reached out and put his fingertips to her temple – she was hot, not cold and clammy as he had previously thought. The wet was sweat. Running the combs of his fingers through her hair, lifting it in a clump where it had matted, he revealed beads of sweat at her hairline.
Then she opened her eyes.
For the first second, all Nate noticed was how they seemed to glow, their luminescence all around the iris and within the pupil; and then that faded and all that remained was the brownness of her irises and the slight Asian intonation. They were locked on his, even in this light, and he was struck dumb. His knives were on his belt but the distance seemed vast – he would never get them in time. He couldn’t speak – irrationally he didn’t want to ‘spook’ the thing into action, even though he had locked eyes with it. He didn’t want to move to show that he was something that moved and could be eaten. Eaten – how did humans get back in the food chain?! His throat felt constricted by his floating heart and his whole body was still. And then her eyes widened and her pupils dilated and her brow crumpled from raised eyebrows, a notch in the centre of her furrow. And her breathing quickened more. And the mouth opened more to intake breath. She was breathing. And her body crumpled into itself as she tried to burrow back into the dark of the wall behind her. And she moaned, unintelligible and coarse, as though in fear. Underpinning her moans, now forming, was the word “No.”
Nate sucked on the air and expelled it, rapidly, until he felt like talking was a possibility. It almost choked out of him; “You’re alive. Hey, hey,” he moved his arm forward – it hadn’t swayed from its position over her head – to stroke her brow, but she suddenly smacked it away. “Hey, it’s alright, it’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you. I thought you were dead, or at least one of them,” he said, submissively raising his arms.
She coughed and her face contorted with pain and suddenly Nate understood that this was where he had been a few hours before, and recalled the splinters in his throat and the hole in his stomach that felt like a vacuum sucking him inside out. “Water,” he said, “you need water. Hold on.” As he stood up, she moaned in agony and became an even tighter ball of flesh.
Hold on – as if you’re going anywhere.
“I’ll find you something to drink.”
If anything lurked, it would surely have revealed itself by now. He plucked the torch from his back pocket and turned it on. Running around the counter-edge, he nearly slipped on the floor but managed to keep his balance. Kitchen. He saw a door marked ‘Staff Only’ and pushed his way through it; torchlight gleamed on the pristine surfaces – not so pristine in the dull light of day perhaps, covered in dust if nothing else – and pans that would never be simmered in again clung to the hooks on an island in the centre. Along the far edge the sinks beckoned with their pipe-filled promise of water – How’s our luck? – and Nate tried the tap. It exploded with a spurt, coughing both water and air. He grabbed one of the pans –
no time to look for anything else – and filled it with water. Maybe this place has its own water storage tank? No time to worry about that now. He returned to the girl, taking care with the pan, and found her much the same as he had left her.
“I have some water,” he said. “Can you sit up?” He put the torch on the polished wood-floor so it gave its light to them. Her dark hair was in fact black, and it straggled across her face as she raised herself, clutching her arms around her and shaking as though in remission from some drug too vital to go cold turkey. “Here,” he lifted the pan to her. “Sorry it’s nothing glamorous like a cup, it’s the first thing I saw. Besides, if I know how you’re feeling – and I think I do – you’ll need all this and more.”
She took the pan in both hands and brought it to her lips, gulping it down.
“I’ll go grab some more.” He returned to the kitchen and grabbed all the pans from the island, then searched the cupboards for cups or glasses. All the glasses are on the bar, of course. He began filling the pans before the water pressure could get a chance to drop – if that was an issue – lining them up along the counter. He took another pan out to the girl and retrieved the one that was now empty. He picked up a few glasses on the return trip too.
After every pan and the glasses were full, he plugged the industrial-sized sink and let it run until it was brimming.
“How are you feeling?” Nate asked her after he’d returned a second time.
“Hungry,” she rasped, “but better.”
“I have this,” he pulled out the bit of beef jerky he’d brought along and handed it over, “but it won’t be enough. Did you have much food in your bag?”
“Some, I think, but I don’t know where –”
“It’s on the island outside, I’ll go get it.”
“Okay.”
‘She’s alive,’ he repeated to himself, over and over as he re-entered the outside world. It was a little brighter, both the day and circumstance; “She’s fucking alive.”
I’m not the only one.
He marched quickly across the car park and tarmac, reaching the island and jumping up the shallow embankment. Picking up the bag, he collected the fallen remnants and stuffed them inside. Standing, he breathed deeply and turned towards an opaque horizon. The world seemed a little different now.
*****
Daylight was beginning to reign the skies once more, in one filled with the sombre grey clouds that once blanketed a country known for its drizzle and cold, and now merely shrouded it like fallout. Through the vast leaded windows of the turn-of-the-century mock-Tudor pub, the dawn invaded and lit the interior: leather-bound booths and chestnut tables with cushioned chairs dominated, all in various shades of red, with cream-coloured walls offset with local artists’ paintings and photographs in black-and-white from days of old; in grey the fairground with its wheel and helter-skeltor; faded with a white sky, the bridge before the reconstruction had widened the road and created only one path; a High Street with horses pulling carts. All this Nate had noted as they ate together in silence.
“So...” he said. “You’re not dead.”
Looking out onto the road-block and cold grey tarmac, Ruby replied “I’m not dead,” and washed a stale chocolate mini roll down with water. They were sat in a window-booth with a table and empty packets between them, each staring out at the gloom. The front entrance was dead-bolted shut, and the rear entrance was blocked by a stack of tables and chairs that someone had previously piled against it.
“I’m not dead, either,” said Nate, turning his head to face her. She didn’t return the look, just kept staring, but Nate could not turn away. The bite on her neck was pink and obviously fresh, but it wasn’t bleeding or spreading; there were no green, black or brown circles of rot rippling from the wound. It wasn’t his father’s bite mark which had infested surrounding tissue and corrupted the bloodstream, turning eyes red and his mind maniacal until no shouting and restraining could withhold his rage and he ceased to be human, then ceased to be alive at all as Nate was forced to stab it, over and over, its chest a pin-cushion – the difficulty of penetrating the ribs, the blade resorting to slipping sideways in his grasp so it could plunge into the softness between the bones, scraping in – the thing relentlessly reaching until one final stab above the ear finally claimed it.
Nate watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, then looked at his hands. Palpitations had threatened to rise a few times in the past couple of hours, recalling his dead mother and brother and how he had finished them off, himself, with his own hands and knife. He raised his eyes back to Ruby’s neck, her flushed cheeks and clear, gazing eyes. How dead were they? Recalling the fight with the monstrous entity, the aftermath and the morning; did he actually look at them at any point and notice how badly hurt they were?
“Did I kill my family?”
At this, Ruby turned, and watched as a film of tears coated Nate’s dark brown eyes, his brown cheeks flushed too, his chin threatening to wobble. “You didn’t kill your family.” Outside, a fox appeared from the undergrowth and sniffed the air, and Ruby turned to watch it. “You did whatever you had to. This world killed your family.”
“If I’m still alive, and you’re still alive,” he started, leaning forward on his elbows and staring at the table, “then how many people have been killed just because we thought they were going to turn?”
“Does it matter? Probably doing them a favour.” The fox hunched its body and made movements towards the dead body. Hungry, it started to tear clutches of meat from it. “Foxes now eat humans – that’s the world we live in now.”
“Of course it matters; my Mum, my Brother – they could still be alive right now if it wasn’t for me.”
“Look, you don’t know that. How many people have you seen survive a bite?”
“How many people have been given the chance?”
“I’ve only seen people turn. No-one ever said anything about giving people a chance. Once they were bit – that was it. No going back. No cure. Dead within hours and trying to kill you.” The fox strained its front legs against the body as it pulled, flesh in its teeth that stretched. “We’re in the food chain now, Nate. Guess it’s survival of the fittest, just like cavemen.”
“I didn’t give them chance.” Nate looked up, at Ruby, then out the window. Another fox had joined the first. It began to rain lightly.
“Truth is,” Ruby turned and reached out a hand to Nate, settling it on his arm, “we don’t know the rules anymore.”
Nate turned and met her eyes.
“It’s a new game with a new set of conditions and anything goes. Thanks again for saving me the other night – it was you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for saving me again today,” she said flatly. “Nice to see the world isn’t full of monsters yet.” There were no smiles in this exchange.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t sooner.” Ruby sat back and stared at the foxes again. Nate continued; “But I’m glad as hell you’re not dead. It’s only cause I was putting it off so much that I didn’t kill you when I thought you were gonna turn.”
“Thank you for that too, I guess.”
Nate took an empty glass and tipped it into a pan of water, filling it. Between sips, he said “I was bit too – I wasn’t too sure I had been properly bit or just stabbed or what, since I hadn’t died. I woke up, like you I think, hot, sweaty, sore throat, thirsty sure, but just extremely hungry, like nothing else I’d ever felt before. I came home after saving you and somehow, maybe it had spotted me leaving, something had gotten in and killed Mum and my brother, Ryan. I killed it, but not before it got me. I woke up in the morning, my throat was burning, but I drank and it felt better. I ate until I was full. I collapsed and slept again in my bed upstairs.”
“Sorry to hear that. You were saving me and you could’ve been saving them.” Her eyes turned vacant and she blinked absently.
Nate sighed, sank back into his seat and spun the glass around on the table.
Its scraping sound filled the void of silence, but he barely noticed, trying instead to remember if the locations of cuts, blood indicators and gouges on the bodies of his Mum and Brother, but also trying not to remember, not wanting to remember. He couldn’t anyway, not with certainty – there had been too much blood to contend with. Too much of that coppery aroma and the scent – yes, a sharp and potent whiff of faeces – and suddenly there was a clarity to which Nate could bring forth attached images; a snapshot of a face that looked serene despite there being a missing jugular; an open stomach cavity where guts were spilling out. There was something acidic underlying the perfume of corruption here, something bilious.
“Nate?”
They were dead. They were dead beyond retrieval – waking up or no waking up, there had been no way out for them.
“Nate?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hear me?”
“Sorry, no, I was…”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said with an expansion of the chest and a long release of breath. “I umm, yeah, it’s okay.” He smiled at her.
“Okay.”
“What did you say?”
“Just small talk stuff, you know, what’s your story, I guess.”
“Oh, nothing special. Was going to uni this year. Was gonna run for them – you know, track and field – and train to be a PE teacher. You?”
“I was in uni, up in Birmingham, doing law, third year. Everything happened so quickly, didn’t get chance to say goodbye to anyone. Dormitories were overrun. Student digs became empty as they all raced to return home. Mum managed to escape after my Dad died and make her way to me. We found a couple of bikes and were making our way down south. Last bit of news had been about protection camps being set up around London.”
The Risen (Book 1): The Risen, Part 1 Page 5