The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (5 page)

At the
end of the classroom the door opened and a man stepped through it. He wore a
long mask with a beak that hung off the end, the kind plague doctors used to
wear in the Middle Ages. A long leather coat flowed around his bulky waist, and
the ends stretched past his knees. She knew the man, of course. He was Charles
Bull. It was the kind of name a person came to recognise if they lived within
the Capita’s borders. Heather felt cold.

“Hello
class,” he said.

Heather
squeezed her fingertips into her palm. It was an old trick she learned when
getting ready to teach her first class. It supposed to take away the nerves,
but usually it just left her with fingernail impressions on her skin.

“Mr.
Bull. How can we help you?”

“Sorry
to butt in, but I was wondering if I could have a word?” said Charles, looking
at the children.

“Sure,”
said Heather. Her heart started to hammer at her chest. She didn’t want to go
out of the classroom with Charles. Just being in the same room as him made her
feel guilty, that she’d done something to offend the Capita.

“Not
with you, Miss Castle.” He looked over at the corner of the room. “I need to
speak to Jenny Fairgrove.”

Heather
froze in her place.
He knows what she is, and he’s come for her. What do I
do?
  She forced herself to stay calm. Betraying any sort of emotion was the
wrong thing to do in front of Charles, and it wouldn’t do Jenny any favours.

“I’m
sorry, but we’re in the middle of a class. Can this wait?”

Charles
looked at the blackboard. 

“August
16
^th
. Is this a history lesson?”

Heather
nodded.

The
bounty hunter put his hand to his chin. He faced the class and span on his
heel. “I’ve got a good question for you, kids. When did the Capita come into
being?”

“We’ve
done this one,” said Heather.

“Then
let them answer.”

She
hoped they’d get it right. She didn’t need Charles reporting back to the Capita
about how ineffectual a teacher she was.

“Eight
hundred years ago,” said the little voices.

Heather
sighed with relief.

“No,”
said Charles, and shook his head. “Try seven years. That’s how long the Capita
has existed.”

Heather
squinted at the bounty hunter and wondered how he could get away with saying
things like that. If Heather had said it and one of the kids had told on her, Capita
soldiers would have smashed through her front door at night. The kids looked as
confused as she was from the way they stared at the bulky man with the pickaxe
on his back. Charles gave Heather a grin, as if to say
there you go. Now you
can deal with that one.

In a
second his face was business-like again. “Your lesson is of the utmost importance,
Miss Castle. But I have an important matter to discuss with Jenny and not even
the history of the Capita can delay it. Jenny, come with me please.”

Jenny’s
chair scraped on the floor as she swivelled away from her desk. She got to her
feet and looked up at Heather with pleading eyes. But what could she do? She
couldn’t physically restrain Charles, and if she said anything untoward, he
would pick up on it. She couldn’t risk anything happening to her. Not with Kim
at home.

“Does
Jenny have your leave?” said Charles. “I’d hate for her to get detention on my
account.”

Heather
didn’t speak. She felt that he was goading her.

“Miss
Castle?”

There
was a smile on Charles’s face, but his eyes were cold. She felt that he was
peeling her layers back and reading her innermost thoughts. He knew her secrets,
and he wanted to make her say it was okay for him to take Jenny. Somehow, he
knew how it would make her feel.

She
had to stop him, but where would that leave Kim? She couldn’t risk something
happening to her and having to leave her daughter alone. She couldn’t do
anything to put their Great Escape in danger.

“Yes,”
she choked out.

Charles
put his hand on Jenny’s shoulder and gently guided her out of the class room.
As the girl passed the last of the desks one of the boys, Henry, reached out
and grabbed her.

“You
can’t take her,” he said, in a voice so hysterical it even surprised Heather.

Charles
raised his hand and brought it down on Henry’s face. A slapping sound echoed
against the walls. The boy’s head jerked back, and in seconds his cheek began
to redden. Heather thought he was going to cry, but from his glazed eyes it
seemed he was too shocked for tears.

“Carry
on with your lesson Miss Castle,” said Charles. “History is my favourite. It’s
always good to know the mistakes of the past lest we repeat them again.”

With
that he left the room and slammed the door behind him. The class was silent and
the room was cold, and Heather was left stunned. She knew she should say
something to reassure the class, but she couldn’t.

“Excuse
me a second,” she said to them.

She
walked away from the blackboard, across the classroom and opened the door that
led into the stockroom. She walked into the small cubby-hole and shut the door
behind her. There were two shelves with various glass beakers, art supplies and
text books. On the top shelf was the doomed class biology project, where they’d
planted bean sprouts in soil and tried to cultivate them. The sprouts had died
in days.

The
four walls trapped her in a small space with nothing but her cowardice and her
anger. Why hadn’t she done anything? She had let him just take her away. What
if it had been Kim?

Her
shoulder muscles tightened into knots and a lump the size of a tennis ball grew
in her throat. She hated Charles and the Capita he served, and she hated
herself even more because she was too scared to do a damn thing about it.

I
let him take her.

Without
thinking she swung her arm out and pounded on the shelf. She kicked her legs,
threw punches, flung her arms around until she felt everything topple over and
crash onto the floor. She didn’t care about the mess or the noise, nor the fact
that the children outside could surely hear her. She just wanted to smash and
destroy until there was nothing left inside her.

When
the haze began to clear she ran her hand through her hair and smoothed it down.
She took a deep breath, opened the door and walked into the classroom. She
walked up to the blackboard, picked up a new piece of chalk and began writing.

“So
class,” she said, trying to still her shaking voice.

“Miss?”

“Let
me finish writing.”

“Miss,
there’s blood on your hand.”

She
looked at her hand and saw blood running from a cut on her knuckles, spreading
over the white chalk and falling in drips to the floor.

3

Heather

Jenny’s
pleading eyes followed Heather every step of the walk home. The rain fell in
torrents and splattered onto the pavement, flowed down the road and ran into
drains that hadn’t been tended to in years. The drops fell in hundreds of
thousands and hit Heather’s forehead so hard that they actually hurt. She wiped
her head and made her palm slick with moisture. At times like this maybe it
wouldn’t have been such a bad idea to have one of the full-face masks that the
children had to wear instead of her minimal eyes-and-nose-only model.

Unwanted
and unwelcome, Charles’s plague doctor mask thudded into her thoughts. The long,
extending beak, black and pointed at the tip. The straps that came off the side
and twisted snake-like around his neck. She knew that his choice of mask was a
deliberate attempt to make him seem scarier. The annoying thing was that it
worked. Whenever she thought of him she felt icy fingers tap up and down her
spine.

She
tried to push him out of her mind. She even tried to push Jenny away, because
if she thought about the look on the girl’s face as the bounty hunter led her
away, it would tear her apart.  She needed to be strong for Kim.
She
thought about home and the vegetables they had planted in their garden.
Hopefully with the current crop they’d finally have enough food to make the
journey away from the Capita and the shadow of the Dome.

As she
watched the water slosh over the roads and bubble up through flooded drains,
she was worried. If it carried on this way then the plants would get
waterlogged, and sometimes getting too much of something was worse than not
getting enough. Before the outbreak Heather had lived a pretty middling life. Mediocre
love life, a decent job. She usually felt well enough to get through the day
without a panic attack, but never had the highs of happiness or rock
bottom-lows of misery. Things had changed. The world was now one of extremes;
safety in the Capita, and death and starvation beyond it.

She
took a detour and arrived at the edge of an estate that had long ago fallen
into ruin. The streets were lined by terraced houses that had been built by the
council decades ago and then rented out to those who couldn’t afford the prices
of anything better. In the years leading up to the outbreak, when everyone
pretended things were still okay, the council had earmarked this estate for
demolition. They never got the chance, and now these poorly insulated,
unbearably grey houses had new occupants.

The Capita
knew about the trader estate. They were aware of the seedy business that took
place here, but they let it pass. The houses that weren’t used by black-market
traders were filled by those suffering illnesses that the Capita couldn’t
treat, or by people who lacked the skills to get a place in the Dome and the
safe zones around it. Walking through the dirty concrete streets of the estate
brought a sense of dread in Heather’s mind, but she didn’t have a choice. She
needed to pick up some tarpaulin to cover the plants or she’d lose the crop. A
trader named Wes usually had what she needed.

She
opened Wes’s door and walked up a flight of splintering timber steps. She entered
a room that had once been a master bedroom and which Wes had converted into his
office. There were chairs in the corner, a grandfather clock leaning against
one of the walls and a door on the furthest side of the room. The grandfather
clock never ticked and its pendulum never swung, so the antique block of wood
stood to attention as a silent guard.

Wes
sat behind a desk. His short hair was combed forward, and his fringe was stuck
up into a quiff that was a good two inches too high. He wore a shirt and tie,
with the knot so tight that it looked like his Adam’s apple was squirming for
breath. Heather knew that underneath the desk, where his clients couldn’t see,
Wes wore a pair of slack jogging pants.

In
front of Wes was a man with a less groomed appearance. His brown chequered
shirt was covered in stains, and his hair stuck out in tufts at the back as
though he had just gotten out of bed. He bent over the table as though a great
weight was on him. Heather couldn’t see his face, but she could tell the man
stared intently at the Wes.

The
trader put a glass bottle on the table and tapped the lid with his index
finger.

“Lantus
Levemir insulin, five hundred mil. Lasts up to 24 hours.”

The man’s
shoulders shook. “Thanks Wes. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“No, I
don’t. That’s what you’re going to show me.”

Wes
looked up at Heather in the doorway. He jerked his head to the side of the room
where the chairs were lined up against the wall. Heather walked over and took a
seat.

The
man stuck a hand in his pocket. He moved it over the table in front of Wes and
then opened it carefully. A circle of gold rested in his palm.

“This
is my wife’s.”

Wes
took the ring and held it up to his eye. He turned it in his fingers.

“I
didn’t know you were married.”

“You
never asked.”

He
dropped the ring on the table where it rolled a few inches toward the edge and
then clattered to a stop.

“I
don’t trinkets. What good are they? Show me what else you have.”

There
was silence as the man thought about it. He stared across the room and out of
the window to the rundown buildings and elephant grey concrete streets.

“I
don’t know.”

Wes
nodded at the man. “What’s that tucked in your belt?”

“My
Heckler?”

“That’s
right, the pistol. Used by the police, weren’t they? How did you get hold of
it?”

“My
brother was in the force.”

“He
doesn’t need it anymore?”

“He’s
dead.”

Wes
made a beckoning gesture toward the pistol.

“Well
that’s better. Hand it over.”

The
man shrank back in his seat. As a neutral observer, Heather thought it a little
harsh to take away the man’s protection, especially since he didn’t look to be a
Dome resident. He probably lived somewhere outside the Capita lands where the
infected roamed, and out there a piece of metal and a clip full of bullets were
the only thing that stopped the monsters chewing on your flesh. Wes’s manner
didn’t surprise her. So cold. He was a useful friend to have, but a dangerous
one.

“You
want the gun?” said the man.

“That’s
a lot of insulin.”

The
man’s voice became tense. “Damn, Wes. What do you expect me to do? I’m screwed
if I hand this over. You don’t know what it’s like to live out there. What am I
supposed to fight them with? A broom handle?”

Wes
pushed himself away from the desk and crossed his legs. He wore saggy grey
jogging bottoms.

“You’re
not a man with a wealth of choice. I guess it boils down to this. You either
watch your daughter slip into a diabetic coma and then curse the fall the of
the National Health System, or you hand over the gun, leave with the insulin
and find yourself a sharp stick.”

The
man reached to his belt and took out his gun. There was a moment where Heather
thought he might point the gun at Wes and make off with the insulin. Hell, it
was something she would have considered in his position. These days survival
was at a premium and you paid whatever price you could.

The
man slammed the gun down on the table. He stared at Wes as he scooped up the
bottle of insulin, never once breaking eye contact. The look in his eyes was so
cold it seemed to freeze the room. He stood up, turned and walked toward the
door.

“Damien,”
said Wes, in a softer voice.

Damien
turned around. His face looked strained. His jaw was big and curved and the
skin struggled to stretch around it. At some point his body had stopped growing
but his chin and has just gone on and on.

“If
the Capita’s men find you with that, and you tell them where you got it, I’ll
make you watch your daughter beg for her insulin.”

Damien
left, slamming the door behind him. Wes opened a drawer in his desk and took
out a handheld mirror. He held it to his face, turning his head to catch view
of his hair. After working his fingers through his quiff he put the mirror back
in the drawer. He was at an age where he really should have been more secure,
but he was living proof that we never really get over the things that haunt us
in our teens. Everyone goes through life dragging a boulder behind their back,
but instead of grinding away it becomes larger with each step.

He
looked at Heather and smiled.

“If it
isn’t Heather Castle. Inspiring those young minds, are you? Feeding them the Capita’s
garbage? Got them stood on the desks chanting your name?”

“They’re
ten years old.”

“And
we don’t live in very inspiring times, do we? One thing I admire about you Heather
is that you don’t bullshit. At least not to yourself. We live in grim fucking
times, and you’re one of the few who admit it.”

“No
point in pretending otherwise.”

He
pointed at the chair opposite him. Heather stood up and joined him at the desk.
Her chair was made of plywood and the cushion had worn away, making it dig into
her back. Wes’s chair was leather and seemed to mold around his body. It was a
Chesterfield that would have looked better suited in a gentleman’s lounge.

“You
hate coming here, don’t you?” he said.

He was
right, she hated it here. It wasn’t that she hated Wes; she didn’t condone what
he did, but she knew that he was doing it to get by. She was no better. She fed
lies to the Capita’s children every day, and she did it for her own benefit.

Still,
as soon as their current crop was ready to harvest she and Kim could finish
their Great Escape. They’d dry out as much food as they could to make it last
longer and then they’d get as far away from the Capita as possible. There had
to be places out there that were still untouched. Some kind of island off the
mainland where the infection hadn’t reached.

“It’s
not my favourite place,” she said.

“I can
tell. You look like someone turning their head away as they clean up after
their dog.”

“I
don’t think that way.”

“Why
are you slumming it today, anyway?”

She
jerked her thumb toward the window. The sky was darkening under the anger of
the storm, and she was worried that if she didn’t hurry up she might be too late.
The soil would get waterlogged and the crops would be ruined, and it would be
months before she could get things growing again. She didn’t think she could
bear to stay for that long.

“I
need something to cover my plants. Plastic or something. Tarpaulin. Whatever
you’ve got.”

He
scratched his chin. He gave a glance to a door behind him, and then frowned. Heather
didn’t know what was behind the door, and she had never seen Wes go in there.

“I
don’t have anything at the minute,” said Wes. “But I could tell my salvagers to
keep an eye out for you.”

“I
can’t hang around that long. The storm’s only going to get worse.”

“I’m
sorry Heather, nothing I can do. I don’t know why you don’t move here? This
place is going to be independent from the Capita someday. A safe zone they
can’t get their fat hands on.”

“I
can’t. I’ve got Kim to think about.”

“You’re
a Capita shill.”

Not
for much longer,
she
thought. She sat up straight and rested her arms on the desk. She could feel
scratches on it from where someone had gouged a knife into the wood. It seemed
as if all of Wes’s furniture except his Chesterfield had been salvaged from a
school, and most of it had faded wood and fraying joints.