The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (9 page)

“Give
me the knife.”

Ed
took a step toward April and raised his arm. He had to do it.

“She’s
my fucking girl,” said Bethelyn, desperation making her voice crack. She
grabbed hold of the knife handle and tugged it away from him.

Ed
looked sideways at her. “Maybe there’s a cure. We’re not infected, so there
might be a way to stop it.”

A
sound left April’s throat. It was something bestial that had no right escaping
the mouth of a little girl.

“Shut
up Ed,” said Bethelyn.

She
straightened up fully and held the knife at chest height. April let out another
growl and walked toward her mother. In another time, on another day, she might
have been going in for a hug. This time as the girl was inches away from her
mother, the older woman raised her knife and plunged it into her daughter’s
temple. There was a crunching sound, and a solitary dribble of red blood
twisted its way down the side of the knife. April’s body sagged, and she fell
to the floor like a discarded jacket.

Beth
stood over the body with her mouth open. She opened her fingers and let the knife
drop to the ground. She turned and looked at Ed, but her eyes stared beyond him
at the same time. It was a look that found its way into his core, shaking him
to the point that he felt his stomach lurch.

Bethelyn
walked up to the wall, raised her fist and pounded it against the plaster. She
winced at the first contact, yet she brought it back and punched it again.
After another two strikes she finally screamed out in pain, and Ed saw that her
knuckles were red and the skin was torn.

Did
he have bandages? Antiseptic wash? What the hell should he do now?
He didn’t know what
to say or how to act. It was lost on him. Ed had failed to learn whatever
instincts you were supposed to have to help you deal with another human being
in crisis. Bethelyn was about to break down and all he was going to be able to
do was to stand there awkwardly.

Bethelyn
rested one bloody hand limply in the other.

“We
need to go find Gordon,” she said, voice shaky. “He’s got the key to the
shelter. More will have turned, and we need to be somewhere safe. We can find
anyone else still living on the way.”

“I was
just there. At Gordon’s. Don’t think he’s going to be much help.”

“He’s
one of them?”

“He
wasn’t there.”

“Then
we need to find him.”

Ed
tried as hard as he could not to look at the body on the floor. Instead he
focused on Bethelyn’s face, but he couldn’t read an expression in it. Though he
didn’t move his head, April’s body burned on the outskirts of his vision all
the same, and eventually he had to give it a glance. He regretted it
immediately.

“Listen
Bethelyn. Don’t you think we should…do something? Don’t you want to stay here a
while? For her?”

Bethelyn
gave him a stare that threatened to tear through him. Tears strained at the
corners of her eyes but she held them back with a will that most would have
found impossible. Her cheeks quivered and blood ran from her busted knuckles.

“Ed,”
she said, eyes almost pleading. “Don’t say anything. Just fucking don’t.”

6

Heather

Sometimes
she felt something unsettling inside her, less a voice in her head than a
weight in her soul. It was a sheet stitched with anxiety, hopelessness,
pointlessness, and it could slip over her unannounced. It was nothing physical,
but it exhausted her all the same. Some days she woke up and within seconds she
wondered what the point was, why she’d even opened her eyes, how unsurmountable
everyday life seemed.

Once,
back when there were cars, she’d been driving along a country road on a dim
afternoon. The road was narrow and twisted without warning, so with a hurrying
heart and wide eyes she paid attention to the asphalt in front of her. A cat
jumped out from a bush. Heather stuck her foot on the brake and managed to
bring the car to a stop, but it was a while before her pulse followed.

The
cat stayed in the middle of the road, tail curled up, body tensed, and stared
at her. Heather pressed the horn but nothing would move it, and gradually she
came to realise that it wasn’t being wilful, it just couldn’t move. In the face
of two tons of metal it was paralysed, and even though the cat knew that
running was in its best interest, it was stuck.

“Mum?”

She
realised she was stood with the tarpaulin in her hands, and that she’d zoned
out halfway through laying it.

“We’ve
been doing this for hours. My arm’s going to drop off,” said her daughter.

It was
a line typical of the ten year old. They hadn’t been working for hours and her
arm was connected to her body the way it should be. She’d grown up for ten
years without her father and if Heather really thought about it, it was shortly
after he went that she could pinpoint the lying starting. Kim had a kind heart
and good nature, but she enjoyed creating a mythology around herself that grew
by the day. It was usually little things that did no harm; if the walk to
school was a mile, Kim would say it had taken three. One day it took on a more
destructive bent, as Heather had discovered during the break between classes.

Heather
was stood by the staff room window with a cup of tea warming the palm of her
hand. From here you could see for miles and it gave the rare view of something
outside the Capita, where in the distance a valley of mountains stretched out
into the sky. The door behind her opened. Heather turned and saw that it was Mr
Erlich, one of only three other teachers in the school. He happened to be Kim’s
teacher.

“Miss
Castle.”

“I
told you, you can call me Heather.”

“Heather,”
he said, the word sounding strange as though the familiarity was hard for the
serious older man. “Kim said something disturbing in front of the class today.”

Heather
felt her face screw up. “Go on, you better spill it.”

The
man stepped forward and put a hand on Heather’s shoulder. It was the first time
he’d ever stood within a foot of her, let alone touched her. The friendliness
was unnerving.

“What’s
going on, Clive?”

“I
just wanted to say I’m sorry. About your husband. I had no idea he used to…”

“Used
to what?”

The
man looked at the floor, and rubbed his hand across his forehead. When he
looked up it was red. “That he used to beat you.”

It was
complete bullshit, of course. Heather’s husband had never so much as spoken
harshly to her, let alone anything worse. Kim’s fantasy that she had seen her
father beat her mother had somehow spilled out of her mouth in the middle of class,
and for the next few weeks Heather had to explain to the staff and the children
that her daughter had remembered it wrong. When asked, Kim couldn’t tell her
why she said it, and her eyes looked on the verge of erupting in tears.

The
fact was that Kim was too young to even remember much of her father. Perhaps
that was the reason for the lies. She was filling the blanks in her memory with
things that seemed exciting to her.

“Jesus
mum, what’s wrong with you today?” said Kim.

Heather
shook her head and focused on the job at hand. There was a steady tapping as
the rain dripped onto the hood of her raincoat, and even more of it fell on the
outstretched tarpaulin and ran in channels off the slick surface. Below the
tarpaulin were the vegetables. She and Kim had already managed to dry out and
store some of their last crops, but this was bigger than the rest. This was the
one that would finally give them enough supplies to start the journey away and
leave the Capita behind for good.

It
seemed irresponsible, but she didn’t know exactly where they were going. She
knew there were two or three well-established settlements with populations
growing to the point that they might rival the Capita someday. Even better,
there were islands off the mainland where the infection wouldn’t reach, where
the sea that surrounded them was better protection than a hammer or a gun. Wes
also probably knew somewhere they could go. It was stepping slightly into the
border of crazy to leave without a destination in mind, but anything was better
than here. The Capita offered safety but its price was intrusion, fear, and
control.

Heather
knew the stories. Doors busted open in the middle of the night, people dragged
screaming into the middle of the road and executed. Curtains in the houses
around them twitching as sleepy neighbours watched. The Capita set the price of
its freedom, and failure to pay it meant punishment without mercy and without
humanity. As a teacher, Heather stood on a narrow ledge, where all it took was
a complaint or two from the kids and she could face questions herself. She
imagined Charles Bull pounding on her door in the middle of the night, his long
beak breaching the tread of her bedroom door.

“What’s
it like outside the Capita?” said Kim.

Heather
crouched to her knees and laid the corner of tarpaulin. She took her
screwdriver and gouged a small hole in it, and then the threaded a small stick
through and drove it into the soil.

“I
don’t know,” said Heather. “I’ve never been.” She’d travelled the mainland, of
course, but that was all pre-outbreak.

“Is it
full of infected?”

“It’s
going to be dangerous and we might die. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“And
you still want to leave?”

Kim
crossed her arms. “I’m not the same as the other kids mum, you don’t have to
lie to me.”

“I
know I don’t, but there things I don’t think you’re ready to know.”

“You
need me mum,” said Kim. “Once you had dad but he’s gone, and you have me to
support you now.”

Heather
grinned despite herself. “You’re a smart little jerk. Do me a favour and just
stay a kid a while, yeah?”

A
pounding sound came from across the house, and Heather realised it was the
front door. Straight away her chest tightened and the cogs of her mind span.
Visitors were rare these days, and friendly ones rarer. She picked up the
screwdriver and walked through the house and to the front door. She turned the
handle and opened it slowly, nearly losing her breath at the sight of the
monster in front of her.

“Doing
DIY, or are you going to stab me?”

Charles
Bull filled the doorframe, and with him were two soldiers in Capita uniforms.
One of them had a deep gouge across his face that ran in a channel from the
corner of his eye to the edge of his mask, and it resembled a red tear that had
streaked across his skin. He nodded at Heather and seemed human for a second,
but the expression was quickly replaced by the blank stare that the Capita
required of its guards.

Heather
invited the bounty hunter in. As he followed her into the house every room
suddenly seemed colder.  Through the change in his eyes Heather knew that
Charles was smiling at her, but it was like being smiled at by a shark. His
mouth was covered by the mask and his dead eyes were surrounded by black
leather.

“Mind
if I take a look outside?” said Charles.

If
you touch anything I’ll kill you,
thought Heather. Then,
who am I kidding?
I’m terrified of him.

Charles
walked through the living room and out into the garden, where he stood for a
second or two looking at the sky as a flock of geese flew overhead. Then he
turned his attention to the ground. He crouched down, took hold of one of the
sticks Heather had driven into the soil to hold the tarp, and pulled. He lifted
the tarpaulin to reveal a line of carrots with their heads poking out of the
soil. He took hold of one of them and pulled at it, but it took more effort
than he realised. With one heave he pulled an eight inch carrot out the earth,
spraying wet soil across the stone paving that lined the garden.

It was
akin to watching a stranger talk to your child on the bus. It was a feeling of
intrusion, of someone opening the drawer next to your bed and rummaging round.
This was their plan, their future, and Charles thought he could do whatever he
wanted with it. Heather crossed her arms and fought to bring her feelings under
control.

Charles
scraped the soil off the carrot. He took an AVS sensor from his coat pocket,
held it in the air, and waited for it to bleep green. He put a hand to his
mouth and unzipped part of his mask. Even at home Heather kept her mask on all
the time, because no matter what the AVS registered, there was always the
chance a gust of wind could blow infected air their way. Charles didn’t seem to
mind as he sucked in unfiltered air. He brought the carrot to his mouth and
took a bite, his lips moving as he chewed. A second later he pointed his head
toward the ground and spat chunks of pulped carrot onto the floor, and threw
the rest of it across the garden.

A fire
leapt through Heather, and it was only thoughts of Kim that kept her from
exploding. Just on wrong word, one stupid action, and Charles’s men would have
no trouble taking her away. Kim used lies to form a protective barrier around
her, but that wouldn’t do her much good if she was left alone.

“Better
in a stew,” said Charles. “Raw carrot is too bitter. Tastes too much of the
earth.”

The
solder with the scar on his face walked around the garden. Despite the
pantomime of Charles’s mask, the Capita soldier wore standard issue. It made
them seem more human, more “one of us”, but Heather knew that the Capita were
masters of propaganda who played with emotions like children play with toys.
Nothing about them or their soldiers was to be trusted.

“How
long did it take you to dig the trench?” said the soldier, hovering over the onions.

“A
year,” said Kim.

“A
couple of weeks,” corrected Heather.

“You’ve
done a sweet job,” said the soldier. “I’m Max, by the way.”

Across
his standard issue mask he’d drawn a giant grin which spread from side to side,
the mouth comically opened to reveal tonsils at the back. As he walked the
garden his stance was casual, a contrast to the other solider who stood on the
side-lines with his back so straight you could hang a coat on him.

Max
pinched some soil between his fingers and rubbed it until it fell to the
ground.

“You
should start composting,” he said. “It’ll enrich the soil.”

“How
do you know that?” said Heather.

The
grin on Max’s mask was fake, but his eyes showed that there was a real smile
behind it. He had an easy way to him that, if the Bull wasn’t here, could have
relaxed Heather. At the other side of the garden Kim stared at the bounty
hunter, unable to take her eyes off the mask that spread across his face as a
growth.

“My
mum used to grow marrows,” said the soldier. “She won best in show two years in
a row. Would have won the third if the judges weren’t in Barry Sander’s
pocket.”