The Grave: A Zombie Novel (26 page)

“Yo
u have a good memory, Kelly. Paraguay I think it was that I was supposed to be living in. I’ve never set foot in South America. They locked me up and threw away the key. I spent two and a half years in prison. No lawyer, no trial, no telephone calls, nothing; I don’t even know which prison I was in, but I doubt it was in America. They interrogated me now and again. I think that was something for them to do, rather than to get anything out of me. Agnew knew I had nothing to do with the Golden Gate.

“
Anyway, about four years ago, after a long stint in solitary without any hint of what was happening, they dragged me out of my cell and brought me here.”

“
Why would they do that? Why would President Agnew do that?” Kelly was astounded. She could tell from the faces of her friends that they were amazed too. Roach’s story was incredible, yet he was convincing and he seemed to be telling the truth. “The Grave is off limits, a protected island monitored by the UN and the US military. You’re telling me they dumped you here? Alone? What about the research base?”

Roach held up his hands in a defensive posture, his palms outspread. “I know, I know, it must seem unbelievable to you. But I have nothing to hide, no reason to lie to you
. If you don’t believe me, then you can be on your way and forget all about me. But if you want to live and get home, you’re going to need to listen to me.

“You see, I was brought here on a U
.S. military helicopter. There were five others with me then. We were all handcuffed and blindfolded so we had no idea where we were being taken. Once we found out of course...we were dropped on top of the US Embassy in the old capital of this island, about six miles south of here. I’ve seen them come and go on an almost daily basis since. They bring convicts, murderers, political dissidents – anyone they need to get rid of. There is no research base. There is no one looking for a cure for this thing, because there isn’t one. This is an island of death and a very handy one for those in power. They drop you off here and know you’re gone for good. Nobody can leave. You’re expected to die here. Nobody is going to come looking for you. Nobody is going to find your body washing up on the banks of the Hudson with a bullet in your head. No journalist is ever going to expose the truth, because anyone who comes here is on a one-way ticket.

“I managed to get out of the
embassy with one other person; Min Wang. She was innocent like me, but the Chinese needed her to disappear so she wound up on The Grave. Everyone else in our group was slaughtered within minutes of the soldiers leaving us. They just laughed and joked as if we were dogs. They shot Quentin because he was threatening to expose them. The others never made it out of the embassy. They fell to their deaths into the crowd of Deathless they had waiting for us. Izliev refused to go. I watched as the motherfucker Warwick pushed her over the edge. The Deathless were on top of her instantly. Min and I could only watch helplessly as they ripped her to pieces.

“So
Min and I ran. We managed to avoid the Deathless for a few days by hiding out in a nearby apartment block. We saw the chopper come and go, but knew there was no point in trying to get back with them. They would shoot us on sight. So we bunkered down and lived on scraps until we were forced to go out looking for water. It was a fluke really that we made it this far. We got lucky. All the Deathless were concentrated around the embassy so the highway from the city to here was deserted. We never saw another living soul. It wasn’t easy. I’ve had to put down several of those things. It never gets any easier.

“This mall became our home. We had plenty of food and water, apart from the summers when it can get dicey. But it tend
s to rain a lot in this country so I guess we got lucky there too. We were like brother and sister. We knew there was no way back to our old lives and we came to depend on each other. Min was such an intelligent woman. She opened my eyes to a lot of things, but as the days became weeks, she struggled to adapt. This place is really just another prison. She couldn’t face the prospect of living here forever, constantly on the lookout for the dead. I found a couple of guns in an SUV one day, but it wasn’t enough to reassure her.

“
In the end, she died of desperation. She refused to believe they wouldn’t rescue her if she signalled for help. She went down to the coast and I followed her. I tried to stop her. I protested all the way, but it was useless. She had made her mind up. We found a quiet cove and she took a small rowboat out. I refused to go. I couldn’t do it. She said that once she got home, she would send help for me. She got past the wire and the mines, but...they just shot her down. They tore the boat apart with her in it. I never saw her again. I was a coward. I should’ve done more to stop her.”

They
gave Roach time to compose himself. It had obviously been painful talking about it and he had broken down whilst talking about losing Min. Eventually, they questioned Roach further, probing him for answers and explanations. He was able to satisfy everything they threw at him. Finally, they began to realise he was telling the truth. Stunning though it was, it also explained why they had not seen or heard any sign of rescue. They were doomed to this island too.

“As for finding a cure, well that’s a crock of shit. There is no cure. There never was and never will be. There are no scientists
, not anymore. There were at first, but they were soon shut down. This place is a quick fix. Agnew can get together with his buddies, and anyone posing a problem is parachuted in here never to be seen of again. There’s no mess to clean up afterwards. Agnew just feeds the media a story about how so-and-so is safely locked away in prison or has disappeared as fugitives, never to be seen again, and no one asks any difficult questions. Very handy. Agnew has got a lot of explaining to do.

“
I must make sure this story gets out. What’s happening here is wrong. This place was supposed to be a final resting place for the poor souls who will never know true death. Instead, Agnew’s turned it into a bear-pit; a place to bury his problems where the living are fed to the dead.” Roach pulled the covers up to his neck, indicating he had said enough.

Will noticed Claire and Tricia
had fallen asleep whilst Mark and Kelly had slunk down beneath the covers, their eyes drooping. It had been a chilling story, one that would take them a while to fully process. Will needed to know one more thing before he could sleep and scurried out of bed over to Roach.

“Hey, Roach, just in case anything did get in here, do you have any weapons?
Anything at all?”

Roach bent down and lifted up a black jacket exposing two hand pistols. “Fully loaded,” he said, covering the guns back up.
“Just in case.”

Will nodded curtly and went back to his bed. He glanced over at Suzy who met his gaze.

“Good night,” she mouthed to him, drawing the covers up to her chin. She shut her eyes and attempted to sleep.

“Night,”
Will mouthed back. He lay down and looked at Suzy a while before closing his eyes. She looked so sweet and peaceful. If what Roach had said was all true, and Will certainly believed it to be, then it was going to be even harder getting off The Grave than they thought. He tried to sleep and ignore the burning questions in his mind. How would they get to the embassy, how would they convince the soldiers to take them home, and how could he protect everyone when he had failed to protect Wilfred, Rasmus and Tug? Will hadn’t forgotten than Josef was still out there, his body forever entombed in that cold house.

The night was
quiet, but they slept restlessly, turning constantly, waking at every slight sound and fearful they had been discovered. Like everyone in the store that night, Will slept badly, worried about what tomorrow would bring.

* * *

Just
after five the next morning, another quake shook the building. It caused a small jolt in the building and only Mark woke. He clung to his bed as the tremor passed and looked around. A little light came into the store from the open doorway to the mall and he could see everyone was asleep. Good for them, he thought, get it while you can. Mark had dreamt of Josef curled up in the cellar, the dead boy eating him. Sometimes he would replace Josef in his dreams and find the boy leering over him, ready to take a chunk out of his neck. He had been unable to stop the dreams coming, as if Josef was haunting him; reprimanding him for not helping.

Unable to sleep any
longer, Mark got up, pulled on his free new sneakers, and decided to head out into the mall so he could use the bathroom. The regular bathrooms had long stopped working, but Roach had showed them an outlet pipe he used. It was an old air-conditioning duct that had collapsed along with the south side of the mall. Handily for Roach, the top end was sticking out into the mall whilst the lower end deposited its contents somewhere deep within the building’s rubble.

On his way back to the
others, Mark peered into a bank. It had been designed as open-plan and he could see all the way to the back. The tills were open, the desks upturned and chairs askew. Thousands and thousands of dollars littered the floor. Banknotes of various colours gave the floor an expensive looking rainbow carpet and he picked a note up. It was a green twenty dollar bill and he thought about taking it. It was useless now, just a memento of the trip really, a reminder of what this place used to be, a reminder of how the world was before the Deathless. Then he remembered that anything could be infected and hastily cast it aside where it fluttered to the floor soundlessly. What if someone had been infected and handled that note? Could you get infected that way? Was it like a germ that spread from one thing to another until it passed onto you? He didn’t think so, but wiped his hands on his jeans nonetheless, and decided his photos were enough. He didn’t need anything else to remind him of this place.

Mark
casually sauntered back toward the furniture store. There was no real rush. They were safe and they had certainly needed the break. He looked up at the glass dome in the centre of the mall and noticed the rain had stopped. It actually might be a nice day; the sky was a light blue and the grey clouds of yesterday had gone. Yes, today was going to be a good day, he could tell. They had found help, shelter, food and water. New York all of a sudden didn’t seem so far away. If they got picked up tonight, he could be sending his editor some shots tomorrow. Mark smiled to himself; things were looking up.

He reached the store
and stopped in the doorway. He had heard a faint coughing and looked around to see who else was up. He saw Claire sat up in bed and he froze in horror. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled and he involuntarily shivered. Her duvet was covered in bright red blood and he watched her coughing again. She raised her hands to her mouth and blood flew through her fingers like water pouring through a sluice gate. Claire took in a lungful of air and spluttered again, showering her bed with more blood.

“Kelly, wake up! Wake up, it’s Claire!” She was the first person Mark thoug
ht to wake. Her bed was closest and she would know what to do. He had no real first aid knowledge, nor knew much about Claire’s history. For all he knew, she was glycaemic or allergic to certain medications. He admonished himself for not talking to her more. If he was going to report on this story, he should’ve spent more time talking with the others and a little less time behind the camera. He raced over as Kelly sat bolt upright, awoken by Mark’s shouting.

Kelly
looked at Claire and gasped in horror at the sight of the poor girl, so pale and white. “Claire, what…” As Claire’s body heaved and racked with her uncontrollable coughing, Kelly thought that it was all over for her; that Claire was going to cough up a lung or something. She rubbed Claire’s back and soothed her, telling her to calm down and that she would take care of her.

“I didn’t mean to,” Claire said
painfully. She clutched her heaving chest. “Back at the farmhouse on that first night? I didn’t even think about it. Oh God, why me? Before we went to bed, I had a drink of water from the bathroom tap. It was just habit. It tasted bad and I spat it out, but not before I’d swallowed a bit. Do you think it was polluted? Do you think…” Claire screwed up her face as pain wracked her body. She could not talk any more. Kelly kept rubbing her back, trying to calm Claire down.

By
now, everyone was awake and alert. They had heard the shouting and everyone rushed to Claire’s bedside. Even Roach had come over to investigate.

“Will, you don’t think
…” Suzy felt like her heart was going to burst through her chest. She couldn’t believe Claire was going to die, not like this. It couldn’t be real.

Will didn’t know what to do. He grabbed Suzy’s arm. “Suzy, what medicine did you give her last night?”

“Just a couple of paracetamol, nothing much. It can’t be that, can it?” Suzy felt dizzy. Claire looked awful. Her hair was a straggly mess that clung to her sweaty forehead. Her skin was pale and the amount of blood on the bedspread was unreal. Surely, there had to be another explanation. “She was feeling better...she only had a cold, right?” Suzy looked up to Will for reassurance, but found none.

Will
looked at Claire forlornly, feeling helpless. Claire was obviously in a lot of pain. He saw Claire brush her hands through her hair and a thick, matted clump of hair came away. Will watched on astonished as Suzy and everyone else just faded into the background.