Last Days With the Dead (41 page)

‘Just a sea of bodies all the way down
,’ he whispered, turning from the stairs to meet her gaze, ‘they’re all dead, they’re all really dead.’

With hope blossoming in her chest, Liz turned and began to climb over the mound of corpses to get to the handrail.

‘Liz?’ Imran asked, watching the woman he loved frantically wade through the corpses to get to the edge of the platform.

Looking down at the dome spread out before her, Liz’s hand rose to her mouth as she choked back a sob of relief. For there, dotted along every path below her
, were motionless, lifeless, and more importantly, truly dead bodies. Slowly, she turned back to Imran, the heavy tears of joy already falling from her eyes.

‘Imran
,’ she whispered through her tears, all of the group suddenly looking expectantly at her, ‘it’s over, Imran, it’s finally over, they’re… they’re gone.’

EPILOGUE

SIX YEARS LATER

‘Charlie, take this to Steve and the others,’ said Alice, wiping her hands on her apron, as she handed her son a basket overflowing with chunks of bread and wedges of cheese, ‘but wait for Steve to stop the tractor, and don’t get too close, and don’t drop it!’

The young boy looked up at his mother through the deep brown eyes that mirrored his long lost father and smiled.

‘Yes, mum,’ he replied, taking the food before turning to clamber over the already ploughed section of the convent’s north field.

‘And come straig
ht back, they’re busy, they don’t need you pestering them,’ Alice called after the fleeing boy, who simply waved back at her.

As she watched the small boy, who had become her whole world, gleefully running towards Steve and the others in the field
, she thought back to the time she had almost lost him, and an involuntary shiver ran down her spine.

‘Someone walk over you
r grave?’ asked Liz, sitting next to her, watching Saleana trying to spoon feed her infant brother, Elijah, a cold mash of apples and pears.

‘What? Oh, sorry
,’ Alice replied, forcing a smile as she turned to the woman she loved as a sister, ‘just remembering, you know, just how close I came to losing him, that’s all.’

Liz leant
forward, helped her daughter wipe the excess fruit puree from Elijah’s happily grinning face, and nodded back at Alice.

When the group had left the tropical dome, with its pathways littered with the lifeless corpses of the Dead, they had stepped out into a world forever changed, or rather
, to a world suddenly changed back.

They had come across Grimes trying to support the bulk of his friend, Sinclair, the two of them hobbling along a
corpse-strewn road just beyond the Eden complex. Sinclair’s right calf had been savaged in an attack, and even as the cart pulled to a stop alongside them, he had fainted for a second time from blood loss. The group of survivors didn’t mind being squashed together in the cart, as they travelled along the twisting and overgrown country lanes back to Lanherne, they were simply happy to be alive, and to find the decaying remains of the Dead lying wherever they had fallen. With each corner Samson pulled the cart round, they expected to find the Dead wandering just as they had done for the last eight years, in search of warm bloody flesh to feast upon. But they didn’t, and with each turn, their spirits rose higher and higher, and more importantly, they even dared to hope. It was not until the high stonewalls of Lanherne finally came into view, and they still had not come across any of Dead that were anything more than piles of lifeless flesh clothed in tattered rags, that they truly allowed this hope to bloom.

‘It reached critical mass! It reached critical mass!’ Avery had cried over and over again, joyously waving his arms as he ran down the tree lined lane outside the convent toward the cart.

In a babble of scientific terms and overflowing with an almost tearful joy, the group had managed to glean from Avery that the new virus had mutated from Charlie to become airborne. It had reached such a density within the atmosphere that it actively began to attack the original virus hidden deep within the tissues of the Dead, effectively curing them and restoring this flesh back to its natural lifeless state. However, when he saw the bandaged leg of Sinclair, and Karen’s patched up ear, his smile faltered.

‘When were you bitten?’ he had asked, his face once more full of medical interest and concern as he checked Karen’s ear for infection.

‘Just before it all happened, but that was over two days ago now,’ she had replied, knowing if there was a chance she was going to turn, she would have done so by now.

‘It’s an unknown factor
, reintroducing the original virus into those already cured,’ he had said, carefully reapplying her bandage. ‘I assume whatever was going to happen, would have manifested itself by now, so I guess you’re both okay.’

‘Probably a genetic mutation,’ he had later explained when Grimes got round to telling him of the Dead girl he and Sinclair had seen with a bite mark on her arm
. ‘The fact that she only had signs of a bite, rather than that she died from physical trauma or blood loss, indicates she was unable to fight off the introduction of a new infection, but as Karen and Private Sinclair managed it, I’d say her particular mutation must’ve been quite rare.’

So the Dead had effectively been eradicated from their lives. No longer would the living live in fear of feeling the rancid touch of Dead hands upon their skin. The nightmare of the Death-walker plague was finally over
and they were free.

It was with this
newfound freedom that the survivors entered nearby towns, collecting treasures thought forever lost to them, petrol being one the most prized of their finds. With more than enough fuel for their meagre needs, those at Lanherne could finally run generators, to give them light and keep them warm in winter, as well as run the tractor that even now, Steve was using to plough the fields for planting.  

Liz looked out across the field where Steve had just pulled the tractor to a stop and jumped down to greet Charlie
, struggling with the large basket. Behind him, Gabe, Phil, Leon, Karen, Cam, and Penny, had been clearing the already toiled soil of stones and weeds by hand, and even from a distance, Liz could tell each and every one of them, though engrossed in their tedious but necessary work, welcomed the chance of a break. Tossing aside their sacks of collected weeds, they each mopped their brows or stretched their aching muscles, before slowly making their way over to Steve and the basket of food. Trailing behind Phil and the others, Liz watched as Gabe bent over conscientiously to pull one last unwanted item from the soil. Suddenly, he snapped back up, clutching his hand tightly to his chest and began to stamp furiously at something in the soil. Confused, Liz slowly stood, her hand rising to shield her eyes from the bright morning sun, as she watched as Gabe looked sheepishly about, before briskly walking away from the others, over to the side of the field.

‘Saleana
, take care of your brother for a moment,’ Liz said, slowly stepping away from the felled tree on which they were having their lunch, ‘Mum just needs to go talk to Gabe for a bit, okay?’

‘O
kay,’ replied Saleana, trying to get another spoonful of mashed fruit into her struggling brother’s mouth.

‘Liz?’ asked Alice, wondering why she was so desperate to speak with Gabe all of a sudden.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she replied, forcing a smile.

Something about what she had seen itched at the back of her mind
, and if the horrors she had endured in the past had taught her one thing, it was that if you had an itch, you scratched it.

‘Gabe?’ she calmly said a few minutes later, approaching the young man who had his back to her
. ‘Aren’t you hungry like the others, Gabe?’

Gabe slowly turned round, fear clearly dancing in his eyes.

‘Liz,’ he whispered, blood dripping through the fingers held tightly round the palm of his left hand, ‘it… it…’

‘Gabe?’ Liz asked, cautiously stepping forward to take his hand.

‘It must have been buried, Liz, the plough brought it to the surface,’ he continued, as if Liz hadn’t spoken.

Liz gently took his hand in hers and after a few moments
, he reluctantly relinquished his bloody hand to her inspection. As his fingers slipped away covered in blood, Liz gasped. There, across the fleshy mound at the base of his thumb, were the tell-tale crescent shapes of a human bite mark. Slowly, her eyes rose to meet his, the young man’s fear suddenly mirrored in her own.

‘Gabe
,’ she managed to whisper, her blood smeared fingers subconsciously drawing away from his hand, while shameless tears threatened to drop from his wide eyes.

‘What’s
, what’s going to happen?’ he said, his voice cracking with overwhelming fear.

Liz looked deep into his eyes, so full of fear and need for words of comfort and consolation. But as she opened her mouth to speak, she suddenly realised there was
nothing she could say.

The End

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Chet & Floyd vs. The Apocalypse

Chapter - 1

“Okay, Chet, who do we grab?”

“It’s not that easy Floyd. There is too much to think about.”

“Think fast. If we stay here too long we’ll be the food.”

Huddled in the corner of the water-sodden and decaying upstairs bedroom was a family, consisting of a man, a woman and a child. Even in their fear they did not hold each other with any fervent animal panic. Their postures showed defeat and patience in as they waited for their sentence to be carried out.

Their jury consisted of two men, tall and lithe. White skin peeked under layers of grime. The one named Chet had brown hair that was slicked down, probably by saliva, into a little boy’s part. He wore glasses that he constantly adjusted, as if they caused him discomfort. He was looking at the family with a frown that moved and twitched as his thoughts changed.

Floyd, though not over thirty, had the shockingly white hair of an old man. He was as much a statue as Chet was constant movement. He stared directly at the family without even as much as a blink.

“Do you even have any thoughts on this one yourself?” Chet asked Floyd. “You will have as much to blame in this decision as I do. You have to have an opinion.”

“I know that I’m starving, and I need to eat,” Floyd said. “I’m running out of morals on the whole thing. Just pick somebody. This was your idea.”

“And you’re just going to go along with it? I’m talking about eating people Floyd. This is not the usual way you choose between Chinese and Italian,” Chet said and laughed. “Don’t give me any trouble about the morality issue of it. I am starving as much as you, and you know I would never be inclined to do what we are about to do if I had any other choice.” Chet paused in his speech, waiting for Floyd to save his soul with a word. Floyd kicked a piece of debris into the corner where the family sat. They yelped.

“You don’t need me to aid in your conscience Chet,” Floyd said.

“Yes I do! Balm me Floydy baby.” Chet puckered his lips at Floyd. Floyd slapped him.

“Be serious.”

“I don’t think I can. How do I make the choice? Aren’t you going to help me?” Chet said. His twitches became more serious as his agitation grew.

“I’m going to slap you again if you start getting crazy on me,” Floyd said. “Get serious Chet.”

“I am serious.” Chet smiled wickedly and looked back at the family. “Although I think you are a bit of a bully for making me decide. You don’t really think about my feelings too much.”

“I’m just thinking about my stomach,” Floyd said.

“I don’t suppose you people could help me out with this?” Chet asked the family. His question was answered by the sound of water dripping off shredded wall-paper. “Funny. I would think you would have the most opinion on the matter. Let’s see…we could take the father. Couldn’t we Floyd?”

“We could take the father,” Floyd said.

“Then what will the family do about food? We will leave them with just the mother and the boy. I don’t want to sound sexist or anything Floyd,” Chet said. He looked at Floyd for reassurance. Floyd waved his hand as if to say that he wasn’t offended. “Men are just the more powerful sex, and this world is just not hospitable. It’s just not safe. We take the father, and we take safety.”

“We could take the boy,” Floyd said. The boy in the corner whimpered at the comment.

“You can’t take my son,” The woman said.

“It’s too late for you to have an opinion,” Chet said. “You had your chance to pipe up, and you all played dumb.  Now that I know you can hear me and respond to me, I can write you off as rude. My mother always said it’s polite to respond when someone speaks to you. You are rude, and I don’t care to converse with rude people.” Chet turned from the woman and spoke to Floyd. “We could take the boy, but he won’t provide much of a meal.”

“I may be able to turn the other cheek with your sexist comments Chet, but I don’t appreciate your ageist statements.” Floyd made a disapproving face.