3
Blood
We could all hear it now as we lay awake together, eyes wide... the slow footsteps on the stairs. How long had we been hearing it for now? There weren't many stairs, maybe twenty at most...
Marcus was the first to react, of course. He hungered for moments like this. He threw Cato aside and leapt out of the bed, running to the door and throwing it open. I followed as quickly as I could and was just in time to see Marcus, driven by rage, slamming into the dark shape at the top of the stairs. It fell backwards, releasing a high scream as it went, cast back into the depths, smashing into the banisters and letting out a final howl as it landed heavily at the bottom.
Marcus stood breathing heavily at the top of the stairs, trying to spot some details in the darkness below. I joined him, craning over his shoulder to look. Without thinking I had pulled the revolver out and was aiming it shakily ahead of me. I could just about make out the silhouette at the bottom, moving slowly, crawling in the small amount of moonlight that was shining in through the open front door...
Open front door?
The sounds from below were not what I had expected. There was no gnashing of teeth or desperate hands scratching but rather the sound of deep, laboured breathing interspersed with grunts of pain and disorientation. I slid the gun into the back of my trousers and went back to the bedroom to pick up the kerosene lamp. When it was lit, I slowly made my way down the stairs, watching the details emerge in the faint but welcome light.
The lamp illuminated a thick set, bulky woman. Her face was twisted with emotion, a mix of fear, disgust and anger. She was very much alive. There was a patch of blood in her tightly drawn black hair, spreading towards her right ear and forehead and dripping onto the floor where she lay, with her left ankle twisted badly to her side. Her eyes blinked in the light as she pushed herself away from me along the carpet with her arms. She looked to be in her mid forties, her face showing laughter lines and freckles over lips tightly drawn in determination. She was wearing thick rubber waders covered in mud, a weather beaten leather jacket zipped up tight over her torso and a thick set of fishing gloves. A small anchor was lying on the floor a few feet away, four wicked barbs on a foot long steel pole, just outside the open door that was swinging gently in the breeze. Just in time I realised she was making for it, so I quickly circumnavigated her to grab it. She lunged for my leg to try and stop me but she was still groggy and I was able to stumble aside, stooping to pick up the makeshift weapon. Outside I saw the rain had stopped, although the wind was still whistling around the dead harbour, bathed in pallid moonlight. The sound of the sea provided a strange and soothing backdrop to the potentially violent situation as I looked down at the woman, the cold metal anchor heavy in my hand. She closed her eyes in resignation.
“Well, go on then. I’m too tired anyway,” she said, her voice heavy with the weight of the condemned. I didn’t reply, feeling unsure how to begin this first human contact. I decided to close the door, as the breeze was chilling my bones. I placed the lamp on the side table along with the anchor, before rubbing my hands together, my mouth working silently as I tried to formulate my first words. In the silence, she opened her eyes again.
“I said do it. If you want to try and play with me before you end it I will fight you every bloody step of the way you maniac,” she said, spitting the last few words out as if they were poison.
“I won’t, I don’t... I...” I said, still lost for words. What did she think I would do? Why would she think that I’d hurt the first person I’d met for... ever? Well, perhaps it was understandable after what Marcus had done. I had to try to make amends somehow. A show of compassion, yes, that would help. I crouched down near to her ankle but she hastily backed away, pressing her back against the wall.
“What are you doing?” she asked angrily, as if enraged that I hadn’t killed her yet. This question was easier to answer and I finally found some words.
“Your ankle, it looks badly twisted. It might be broken, I can check...” I said, trying to keep my palms open to show I wasn’t a threat. Was that how it worked? It seemed right, so I did it, hands held out in a gesture of peace. She kicked at me with her right leg and fired a wad of spit at my outstretched palms.
“I know it’s twisted, I can feel it,” she said whilst trying to crawl further away, even though she had no more room for movement. She shook her head, muttering to herself. “Crazy, absolutely. Should have...”
I slowly approached as she watched me and gently lifted her foot, causing her to wince.
“I can’t check through these waders, I need you to... ah...” I said. She laughed mirthlessly.
“Of course. Is this really how you’re going to do this, shoving me down the stairs before trying to fix me?” she asked, arms held out in front of her to keep me at a distance. The blood was starting to drip down her forehead and over her eyes, causing her to blink repeatedly as she involuntarily tried to clear it.
“I didn’t push you, it was Marcus. He’s... aggressive. We thought you were him, the brigadier, I mean... Isaac. The man in the cellar. Well, not a man any more... but anyway, we thought you were him and that you were going to kill us. I’m sorry, I’m...” I sighed, sitting down in despair at how it was going. “Please forgive us.”
She didn’t answer for a while, pursing her mouth as she searched my features with her eyes.
“Well, Marcus has introduced himself in his own special way,” she said at last, her voice softening slightly, “who are you?”
“Me, I... don’t have a name.”
“Everyone has a name.”
“If I ever had one, I lost it a long time ago,” I replied. I glanced up to the top of the stairs. Marcus was still standing there, a black silhouette with pinpoint red eyes. His face bristled with spikes that moved in and out of his skin in time with his breathing.
“Really,” she said, tilting her head to look up the stairs, before looking back at me. “So you’re saying you can remember how to diagnose a sprained ankle but you can’t remember your name?”
“You can’t choose what you forget,” I said, starting to feel annoyed. I quickly quashed my irritation by breathing deeply and trying to control myself. This was going badly enough as it was without me getting short tempered with her.
“You’re probably right,” she said, “but I suppose I’ll have to choose to forget just being thrown down the stairs and let you have a look at my ankle.”
“We thought you were...”
“Yes, yes,” she said in clipped tones. “Lets just get this over with. I’m not going anywhere like this, and if one of those things comes knocking I’m as good as dead.”
She unzipped her jacket to reveal a thick woollen jumper, before pulling the wader straps off her shoulders.
“You’ll have to help me,” she said, bracing herself up on her arms. I tugged at the waders as gently as I could but there was still enough traction to make her yell in pain as her foot slipped out of the boot end. She grimaced as I pulled the waders off to reveal some worn jeans underneath. When her ankle was freed I motioned for her to lay back and gently lifted it, giving support to the foot and calf. She was also wearing a pair of trainers, as the waders were quite large and had probably not belonged to her originally, so she needed them to fill the boots out. I slipped the left one off before gently checking the joint. There was some swelling and heat but a quick check of all the likely bones didn’t show any breaks.
“Just a sprain, hopefully it won’t be too bad if we limit the damage. I’ll need to get something cold and strap it up,” I said, gently guiding the woman towards the stairs. I gently placed her foot on the second step to keep it elevated, and left her as I headed into the kitchen to try and find something to cool her injury. I had a quick look around the room just in case but couldn’t find anything suitable, as the freezer had long ago ran out of power and was just a rotting food depository. I hit on an idea and opened the door to the sodden garden, before selecting two pieces of rain soaked slate from an ornamental border. I brought them inside and headed back over to her, enjoying this strange new sense of purpose.
She hadn’t moved, still frowning at me. I realised then that I had left the anchor close to her and she could have reached it if she had been quick, although she had decided not to. Maybe she simply had not realised her opportunity but I decided to take it as a peace offering of sorts nonetheless. It was time to reciprocate, so I picked up the anchor, bent down and handed it to her carefully. I could hear Marcus growling from the top of the stairs with anger and distrust but I chose to ignore him. The woman looked at the weapon in her hands for a few moments before folding the anchor down and laying it on the ground. I smiled as I handed her the two pieces of slate. She didn’t smile back, instead accepting them with a simple nod.
“It’s the best we’ve got. Put them either side of your ankle and we’ll have to hope it stops the swelling getting worse for the moment. I’ll go and get something to strap the ankle up, so you might be able to walk on it if you’re lucky, and I’ll also see if I can find something to help with that cut above your eye,” I said, feeling a bit better about the situation now that I had a role to play in her recovery.
She watched me go upstairs, cradling her ankle with the slate. When I reached the top I had to stop momentarily as Marcus stood to block my way. The black hair had once again receded but his face still carried a dark expression. I thought better about asking him what the trouble was and motioned sheepishly that I wanted to get past. He eventually moved and I glanced backwards to see the woman still staring.
Mercifully, Cato and Perdita were still asleep on the bed. I mouthed a silent thank you; I had no wish to explain the situation to them at the moment. I found a spare sheet in the main bedroom dresser and tore it into strips. I was was about to head downstairs when it all happened in a few loud, earth shattering seconds... the loud crash of a door slamming into a wall as it was thrust open. Cato and Perdita’s eyes jerking open in alarm. A yell of desperation. A wave of terror gripping me.
I sprinted back to the landing in time to see the woman desperately trying to unfold the anchor and stand up at the same time as the large rotting shape of Isaac stumbled towards her, dripping with foetid mould and ichor. The electrical chord had snapped, just as I had dreamed, or maybe I had heard the snap and it had influenced my dream. Either way, the remaining stump of it hung down behind the matted silver hair that glistened on his rotting scalp. His footsteps were jerky and irregular. I could see his right foot bowing out at a sickening angle; he had obviously broken his leg when he had landed on the dark cellar floor. Maybe he had lain there for hours before my conversation with the woman had roused him...
In a panic, paralysed by fear, I looked towards Marcus. He grinned as wide as I had ever seen, bristles bursting from his skin in a small shower of blood, before launching himself down the staircase, taking the steps two at a time and throwing himself at Isaac just as the creature reached for the woman. The corpse of Isaac was well built but Marcus was fuelled by a demonic rage and he slammed the dead man’s body into the door, before clambering off and picking up the side table one handed as if it were no heavier than a cricket bat. He brought the awkward weapon down hard on the rising corpse’s head with a sickening hollow sound that made me wince. The impact broke the table’s leg off, even though Isaac was still moving.
“Let me,” said the woman, at last on her feet with the anchor’s blades extended. “Stand on his chest for me,” she said. I froze, wondering from my vantage point how Marcus would react to an order. To my amazement he capitulated, even with the black bristles of his fury covering his features. Maybe his desire for carnage was stronger than his desire for autonomy. He pushed the dead man’s chest down hard with his boot, as Isaac grappled ineffectually with Marcus’ leg, trying to grab it and pull it towards his ravenous mouth. This was the last time I would see Isaac’s still moving features but there was nothing left of the man who had cared so much for his granddaughter. The photographs I had scavenged were a more fitting legacy than this sack of maggots. When the woman brought the anchor down hard, puncturing the skull in a burst of liquefying flesh and bone, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.
We buried Isaac next to Jane just before sunrise. There was little dignity in the way I had dragged his body into the hastily dug hole – leaving a trail of gore from the house – but it was the best we could do. Nobody said a word as I threw the earth on top of his ravaged body, with Perdita and Cato standing stoically either side of the woman, whose head I had bandaged with ripped sheets. Even Marcus managed to find some solemnity in his soul and stayed silent. I planted two crosses constructed out of planks nailed together at the head of the mounds and as an afterthought I went and got the hammer again, nailing a particularly fine looking medal on Isaac’s cross before wiping the sweat from my brow as the sun finally crept through the clouds above us.
As I had been digging the hole, the woman’s tough shell had finally cracked, the relief after the violence acting as a strange aid to socialisation. She had introduced herself as Eliza. Her voice was generally calm and measured as she described a little about her past few weeks, though her account was understandably muddled. She had given up on trying to get more details about my own past and seemed content enough to do the majority of the talking, just for simply having someone to talk to. I was happy to listen, as it saved having to endure Cato’s endless disconsolate musings. Eliza told me a tale that somehow filled me with wonder despite it’s horror... it was a tale of rumours of sickness, moving on to reports of violence, culminating in a death of society amidst a desperate struggle to simply survive. No one had known exactly where or when the plague had started, yet it’s effects were deadly. She couldn’t be sure of the incubation period or how it was spread as there hadn’t been any teams of scientists, not here, just ordinary people trying to keep their families together. Some had called it witchcraft, others were sure it was a biological weapon. Whatever it was, it had worked fast.
She had been running her small camping equipment shop when the first refugees had started to flood into the harbour with disease already spreading among them. Boats had come and gone but there had always been more people waiting, screaming and bargaining as they had tried to get on board. There had been ugly scenes as some male boat owners had openly stated they would only allow women on board. The payment they had obviously been angling towards had made Eliza sick to her stomach, but from what she had seen some had been desperate enough to accept the bargain. No boat had left without at least someone capitulating, as the blind terror of mortality had gripped them.
Soon the deaths had begun and the boats had stopped coming. Maybe several people in the harbour had already had the symptoms and had tried to hide them, or maybe there had been simply one source of infection, there was no way of knowing.
Eliza had helped at first of course, giving out tents, food and blankets to those ill prepared for the journey ahead, refusing to believe the nonsensical stories until she had seen someone rise with her own eyes. When she did, it had been a teenage boy, barely old enough to shave. He had thrown out an arm from the sleeping bag where he had died in the night and grabbed his mother, dragging her close and ripping out her throat with his teeth before anyone could stop him. She had watched with tears stinging her eyes as the boy's father had been forced the kick the dead boy – who was wriggling like a caterpillar in his sleeping bag – over the side of the concrete harbour and into the dark waters below before cradling his wife in her last moments. It had been too much for Eliza. She had retreated to the shop, hiding behind the locked steel shutters and refusing to come out as the scenes of violence increased and the gradual cacophony of the dead had started to echo around the cliffs.
Eliza had watched as many more had been thrown into the sea by way of burial, before they had started to rise, lumbering out of the sea, crawling up the boat ramp. One of the more enterprising refugees had driven his van down the ramp to create a barrier with an old fence panel but it had only stopped the ones who had already died. Sickness had been everywhere, and there was nowhere to go as more and more people arrived.
Every death that devastated a family had gone hand in hand with brawls, as Eliza had heard fights breaking out nearly every hour. Maybe those with a stronger self preservation instinct had tried to rid themselves of the risk by dismembering or burning the bodies, which in turn had led to the family of the deceased, presumably driven mad with grief, defending the body so that they could at least give them some sort of last rites. When more and more had started to rise it had been too late for arguments. Soon the ranks of the walking corpses had swelled, as people had even dived into the sea in desperation, trying to swim somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was away from the dead. From the window where Eliza had stared out across the bay, she had been able to see most of the swimmers being pulled under by the huge number of underwater corpses, with whoever had escaped their clutches facing almost certain death in the cold waters beyond. It had been a horrifying spectacle but one that had morbidly held her attention long after she should have looked away.
It was not long before she had been the only living person left, with all of the other residents having presumably left on the boats or died. She had even heard the family next door screaming in fear as the horde had broken into their house. Eliza had crouched down behind the counter with her hands over her ears, cursing her own weakness and fear and sheer inability to do more.
When a corpse had managed to claw his way through her back garden hedgerow from next door she had been forced to act, for her own survival’s sake. She had tried to remain calm, opening the back door and brandishing a large kitchen knife, waiting for her moment. The corpse had turned towards her, hunger in its eyes, thick blood seeping from the gaping wound that used to be its jaw bone and dripping down a grubby floral dress. With a start Eliza had recognised what used to be Andrea Lomax, a pensioner from a few doors down. It had been hard to equate such a gory sight with the woman who had spoken with such passion about her gardening just a week ago. She had hoped that the dear lady had left on the first wave of boats, yet here she was, her pale skin turning to green, greying hair slick to her scalp, flabby arms reaching towards her. Eliza had tried to steel herself but as the corpse had come closer Eliza had started to shake with adrenalin, almost dropping the knife. Eventually she had aimed a wild slash at the thing's face but had only served to slice through some putrefying skin. The corpse had kept on coming. Eliza had needed to re-evaluate the situation again and quickly, running inside and grabbing the first useful thing she had been able to find, a folding kayak anchor she had used on various trips in her past. After she had unfolded it, she had paused under the weight of the enormity of what she needed to do, but not for long, eventually bracing herself and acting. As the corpse had shambled into her kitchen she had slammed one of the anchor’s spikes into its forehead and had watched in horrified fascination as all emotion had drained from its dead features. The body had slumped to the ground and Eliza had changed, gaining a new sense of purpose.
Over the following few days she had systematically rid the harbour of straggling corpses. Although many had already gone, maybe moving back inland, there had still been some left, dragging their feet across the concrete in the rain. She had always waited until they were separated before moving out quickly, kitted out in her waders and leather jacket in case of attack. Once they had been dispatched she had returned home, pulling the shop’s shutter down quickly to stop any that may have spotted her. When she had been sure the harbour was free of threat she had begun the grim task of clearing the bodies, dragging them over to the harbour edge and pushing them in, whilst also saying a few words for anyone she had recognised. When all the bodies had finally gone the rain had done its share of the work, mercifully washing the blood away. From then on Eliza had stayed inside, slowly going through her dwindling food supplies and trying not to think what the future held for a person alone in a world of the dead.
And then, a week later, she had heard the yelling.
“At first I thought you might be Isaac, but I had never even heard him raise his voice. And the arguments, both sides, they were just...manic. Violent too, from the sounds of it,” she said, limping back inside the house.
“Marcus,” I said, helping her into the study, where she sat down gratefully in the armchair. I pulled up a small stool to rest her leg on, adjusting the support bandages that I had finally managed to apply after all of the carnage in the hallway.
“Whoever it was, they were loud, angry... and I had to presume also dangerous. I suppose I was right,” she said ruefully rubbing her ankle. “Anyway, I watched you for a day as you went around the house, turning it upside down. I had no idea what you were looking for in the house of an old man...”
“We just wanted to know a little bit about him, before we could...” I started.
“You wanted to know, we just wanted to do the smart thing and finish the bastard off,” said Marcus, sitting nonchalantly on the windowsill and looking out across the sea. With the sun glinting on the crests of waves the little port looked almost peaceful, even though we now knew that under the waves the dead still walked, trudging through silt and stones for as long as their bodies held together. Maybe Marcus was trying to spot them, to find a new challenge to test his mettle against.
“Yes, I wanted to know more and I still say it was worth it,” I replied, opening a tin of beans and passing it to Eliza along with a fork washed in rainwater. Eliza frowned at me and glanced towards the window before digging the fork into the beans, eating slowly and quietly.
“Isaac was a polite man, as far as I could tell from the few times I saw him. He bought a pair or two of walking boots from me over the years. I asked him once who he went walking with, just some general shop banter, and he told me that he liked to go hiking with a few books in his rucksack as his only company. I don’t recall him mentioning his family, or the... girl... that girl he’s buried with now. He was clearly a very private man. What an unfair way to end a life. I suppose everyone who died... all of them... well, I don’t know whether to be glad I’m still alive or not.”
She continued to eat, staring down at the can as if trying to glean some answers from it. Although it seemed somewhat trivial after everything that had happened, I decided to ask her where we actually were, and where the harbour was situated. She gave me an answer but the name meant nothing to me. I had no frame of reference. The word drifted away like a piece of seaweed in my watery thoughts, never to be seen again.
As I watched her a question started to tickle the back of my mind but Cato was the one to raise it first, his voice drifting down from his perch on a pile of books.
“Why were you creeping into the house last night? Were you going to kill us?” His voice was thick with suspicion and I felt guilty by association for him asking the question, as Eliza had shared a lot with us since our first violent contact. She remained stony faced for a moment before finally replying.
“Maybe,” she finally said, still eating the beans as she watched me carefully. Marcus had turned back towards us from the window and I could tell from the way he was eyeing the food that he was becoming hungry too, so I opened another tin and passed it to him. He started to tip the contents into his gaping mouth, keeping an eye on the newcomer Eliza as he did it. When he had finished he passed the can back to me and folded his arms across his huge barrel-like chest. Eliza finished her own food and gently placed the tin on a side table. There was an icy tension in the room but Eliza soon started to speak again, to my relief.
“Well I must say that despite all your other problems, you do seem to know your first aid. My ankle definitely feels a lot better, I might even be able to walk on it,” she said. She still looked a bit ill at ease, sitting within our strange family unit. “I think,” she said after a few minutes, “I think you need to pick out a new name. It’ll certainly help me cope with this oddball situation a little better.”
“Who says we want you to stay in our situation?” said Marcus, his brow furrowing in disgust. “You just invited yourself in, ready to bludgeon us to death in our beds.”
“Only if it was necessary,” Eliza replied testily. “Thankfully it wasn’t in the end. I know you say you haven’t been here long but have you heard a word I’ve been saying? We might be the only people alive in this part of the world now. We didn’t meet in the best of circumstances and if you really want to be alone that’s fine, but for better or for worse and despite that horrendous attitude you sometimes display, I think it will be better for us in the long term if we stay together, at least for the time being. I know I was slowly going... crazy... by myself.”
I nodded; it definitely made sense. We had set out to find other people and in the grand scheme of things we could have found a lot worse. Eliza seemed honest, pragmatic and a survivor, definitely what I needed. I just hoped I had some skill or quality that she needed.
“All right, I’ll choose a name, if it’ll help,” I said, standing up. I walked over to a bookcase and ran my finger along the rows, trying to look for a name that would suit me. My eye was drawn to the faded flames on the spine of a battered paperback titled “Fahrenheit 451”. I flicked through the pages and found the name of the protagonist. It was as good a name as any.
“Guy, that’ll do,” I said, sitting back down. Marcus snorted and Cato started giggling but I ignored them. Eliza just shrugged, probably because there were more important things to think about in a situation like this than the suitability of someone's name. I looked over to Eliza and this time was able to ask a question before Cato was able to stick his oar in. “So you’d cleared the harbour... had you decided what you were going to do next? Were you just going to wait it out?”
She fidgeted in the seat, trying to get comfortable, although it was probably an emotional discomfort rather than a physical one, so eventually she levered herself gingerly to her feet and walked over to the window to look out over the harbour. Marcus fixed his eyes on her as she moved, baring his teeth like an animal.
“I didn’t have a plan, to be honest. After clearing the harbour I just drifted around my house aimlessly, eating a little, sleeping a little. When you showed up I wanted to talk to you, see what was going on, what the arguments were about... I never really knew but I think I’m more of a social creature than I thought. I mean, I haven’t got a husband, haven’t had a relationship for years but...” she said, sighing as she opened the window a little to let a fresh breeze into the room. Despite ridding ourselves of Isaac, there was still the lingering stench of his fall into decomposition. “I always had friends, a lot of friends. Some around here, some up in the town... I always saw at least one friend a day or at the very least spoke to them on the phone. I made sure of it, I suppose. I even chatted with the the people who were trying to escape the plague, as they waited for the boats. I’m sure I annoyed some of them but I always got a few good conversations. When you showed up, you became the only point of interest left. Maybe it would have been better if I’d approached openly in the day but after some of the things I’d heard I had no idea what was going on in here, I might have walked into a bloodbath. I just knew I couldn’t stay over there alone.”
It was a feeling I could well relate to, as no matter how much noise or banter the others were making, I still always felt isolated somehow.
“Well I’m happy, I mean, it’s good. We came to the mainland to find out what had happened and to try and meet someone new, so I’m glad you came over,” I replied. I smiled a little and for the first time Eliza fleetingly smiled back.
With Isaac finally dead and gone, there was nothing left for us in that house. We took what we thought would be useful and made our way over to Eliza’s shop, with Eliza managing to walk the whole distance without any help, the support bandages doing their job admirably. She unlocked the shutter and pulled it up slowly.
“It hardly makes any noise,” I remarked, thinking it would make a loud clattering as it rolled into its housing.
“I keep it well oiled,” she replied, “because the corpses seem to react to sound. I don’t want them surprising me before I’ve even had a chance to get outside.”
Inside the shop the displays were well ordered and clean, if sparse. There were a few empty shelves and it was clear that most of the stock had been given out over the last few weeks. There were still a few useful items though, and the three members of what passed for my family spread out to take in the details. Marcus started peering under a glass counter at an assortment of Swiss army knives, staring hungrily at the glinting blades. Perdita amused herself by gently turning a map spinner, before picking out a map at random and unfolding it like a concertina. Cato started tapping cylinders of butane, listening carefully to the difference in their tones.
“When you’ve finished,” said Eliza, lifting the door to the counter and heading into the back, “you can join me for some food, if you want. The beans were all right but I need something a bit more substantial.”
I followed, somewhat ashamed about the other’s odd behaviour. We went through into a hallway stacked on either side with half empty boxes of stock and turned back on ourselves, up a stairway and into her residence.
It was a modestly decorated flat, with bright colours on the walls and a huge array of furniture dotted around the place. It was quite cluttered, with no obvious order to anything. Maybe she knew where everything was so had no need to sort her items by category. Wherever I looked there were strange ornaments that seemed to almost be from another world: large eyed cats with odd paws seemingly waving in greeting, ceramic raccoons reclining on their haunches to reveal huge stomachs and testicles, charcoal blackened wooden masks showing extreme expressions... all of them were placed seemingly at random on any available surface, sometimes on top of piles of books. I stared in awe at the treasure trove, a testimony to the civilisations of a world that I had no knowledge of, and longed to know more about.
Eliza led me into the kitchen and lit a small portable camping range that she had set up on the counter, putting a pan of water on to boil. “No gas or electricity, not since last week,” she told me by way of an explanation. She searched through the cupboards and eventually pulled out a packet of dried tubes. “I adore pasta. I would eat it morning noon and night if I could,” she said, half to me and half to herself.
“Why can’t you?” I asked.
Eliza thought to herself for a moment. “I suppose I could... but then again, too much of a good thing....”
I sat down at the small wooden kitchen table and looked over at a cork notice board next to the window that overlooked the harbour. There were photographs pinned on top of photographs, a lifetime of memories all jostling for space. They were obviously from Eliza’s many trips around the world and showed her with a huge array of different friends in exotic locations. It made me wonder why she had chosen to settle here, at the back end of nowhere.
It felt good to be sitting at the table with nothing to do but wait. The water had started bubbling, Marcus and Cato and (I found myself a little ashamed to be relieved about this) Perdita were off amusing themselves and I was here, sitting in a kitchen waiting for a freshly cooked dinner, like an everyday person. Well, maybe not everyday in this new world....
It was simply the best meal I could remember bar none, even topping the fresh fish I used to eat on the island. Eliza covered the pasta with a simple sauce made from a tin of chopped tomato, some dried herbs and a little salt. I eagerly asked for seconds a few minutes after she had served me, something about the taste stirring a memory in me, too indistinct to grasp. I stopped eating for a moment and tried to bring it into focus, but it was gone. It was a regular and frustrating occurrence, spotting shapes of my past with no knowledge of what they represented. Eliza ate more slowly, savouring every bite. I suppose I should have done the same, as this food might one day be a thing of the past, yet I couldn’t help myself. Eliza suddenly sat up in her seat, struck by a thought.
“Wait here,” she said, as she got up and limped out of the room. She returned a couple of minutes later with a medical dictionary, before placing it open on the table and leafing through the contents. I glanced down at the pages.
“Don’t look,” she said, picking the book up and holding it against her chest. She peered downwards and looked back up at me, her eyes twinkling. “All right. What are the symptoms of heavy metal poisoning? Go.”
“Wait, what? Why are you...”
“Go!” she said insistently.
“Well, which heavy metal? They all present differently,” I said, knowing that they did but not knowing how I knew.
“Do they?” She glanced down at the book again, her mouth moving a bit as she read to herself. Eventually she looked up again. “We’ll start easy then. Lead.”
“Acute or chronic poisoning?”
“Oh for the love of... acute,” she said, exasperated.
I considered for a moment. The information was there, I knew this. It was an unfamiliar but welcome feeling.
“A metallic taste in the mouth, abdominal pain with vomiting, diarrhoea with a black stool, lethargy, weakness, cramps, it can make the patient present with abnormal LFTs or renal complications, if the patient is a child there may be encephalopathy with cerebral oedema...”
“I think that’ll do, take a breath,” she said, before leaning in a little. I could smell tomatoes on her breath, which was warm against my face. It was somehow a wonderful feeling, a microcosm of human contact. “What’s an LFT?”
“Liver function test,” I said, smiling at myself more than anything. “Keep going, this is good.”
“It is, isn’t it?” she said, flicking through the book some more. Eventually she found something obscure and narrowed her eyes. “Let’s do another one.”
She quizzed me on Dengue fever, common and uncommon blood disorders, auto-immune conditions, always picking something at random. I always had an answer. Eventually she put the book down, shaking her head with incredulity.
“For someone who knows nothing, your memory for medical facts seems to function perfectly well,” she said at last, as the afternoon started to draw on. I was lazily picking at pieces of the pasta. My stomach was long past full but I was simply enjoying the opportunity to indulge myself.
“It seems that way, which is extremely frustrating, maybe more so than if I had no knowledge whatsoever. I know a lot of different things but have no idea where I learned them from. I know how a society works but have no idea of my place in it. If I learned everything from a book, then I have no memory of reading it,” I said. Maybe it was time to discuss this with someone who knew a lot more about the world than I did; maybe she could give me some guidance towards the truth.
“The amount you know is more than simply studied knowledge. Your hands were too skilled with the bandages; that’s muscle memory. You’ve done it a thousand times, I’ll bet. You must have been a doctor of some sort. Maybe one day using one of your skills will help you recall when you learned it,” she said, wiping the plates clean with a little rainwater. Perhaps the tap water was safe – it was still running – but Eliza hadn’t wanted to risk it without knowing how the plague was spread.
“Perhaps... but nothing has helped so far. The closest I get is remembering a sound or a smell, or a taste. Even then it’s only the slightest hint, like a random frame thrown into a cinema reel,” I said. Cinema reel, another titbit of information bleeding into my mind...
“Perhaps one of the others could help?” she asked, her back to me as she wiped the surfaces clean with a cloth.
“I doubt it,” I said. “I’m generally the last thing on their mind. I’m just a means to an end, a helper, simply tolerated. I try to keep them on the straight and narrow and keep them out of trouble but it’s a thankless task. I don’t know why I put up with them,” I said, before sighing, the answer to my own question was staring me in the face. “Yes I do, I know why. It’s because they’re all I’ve got.”
“Where are they now?” she asked as she turned back towards me, her face serious.
“Downstairs,” I said slowly, a frown creasing my brow. “Why?”
“Well, I mean...” she said slowly, leaning back against the counter, “you’re a lot more tolerable when they’re not around.”
“Tolerable?”
“Perhaps tolerable wasn’t a good choice of words... but certainly, definitely you seem to get on with things better when you’re alone.”
“No, no, no,” I said, standing up. “I’d be dead without them. Even Cato, he saved me once on the island, working out the best way to get our shanty roof to stay on. We had so little rope but he pushed and nudged Marcus so that he put it just where it was needed, and it stayed put. All the time we were there, it stayed put.”
“I’m sure you could have done it yourself,” she started.
“Let’s leave this, shall we?” I said, as gently as I could muster within my rising anxiety. All three were now standing in the doorway, watching Eliza intently. Marcus cracked his knuckles. Cato’s mouth was drawn tight and flat. There was a faint smile playing at the corner of Perdita’s mouth. It was a strangely adult expression that seemed alien to her young features. At that moment I found her more unnerving than the other two.
“I didn’t want to cause offence, I’m sorry,” said Eliza, yet her eyes still searched my face for something. I had nothing to give her.
We spent the rest of the day batting small talk back and forth as I helped out with bracing the fences in the back garden against intrusion, cleaning the flat and making quick forays into the neighbouring houses to gather any usable food we could find, because while the houses seemed clear at the moment, they might not remain so. At Cato’s request, while we had the luxury of time (it was a good idea, even Eliza thought so) we got a couple of rucksacks ready with everything we would need if we had to leave in a hurry and placed them near the top of the stairs. I made sure that Isaac’s personal effects were secure in my rucksack, still intending to scrutinize them in more detail in the future.
We settled down to sleep when the sun was almost set, so as to conserve our dwindling light supplies. As I pulled the blanket over me on the sofa in her lounge – a simple white walled room, low roofed with beams criss-crossing it – I realised I wasn’t that sleepy. The days were definitely becoming shorter and it seemed to be turning colder lately... perhaps winter was finally on the horizon. I spotted a calendar on the wall, with crosses up to October 17th. Well, I finally knew the date. It cemented me a little more in the world. Had I endured a winter on the island? I didn’t think so, as I was sure the shack wouldn’t have survived it without some serious work. There was a television in the corner, a squat archaic model with a portable aerial and a single dial for tuning in the channels. I knew it wouldn’t work but still I slipped off the sofa and padded over to it, flicking the switch experimentally. It did nothing, of course, yet if I looked closely enough I could see my reflection and pretend it was a picture...
Marcus stood over me, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. His blonde hair looked a little more wild and unkempt than usual and his eyes bore a sort of rheumy manic energy, as if he had been awake for days and was desperately hanging on to the waking world.
“She doesn’t like us,” he said finally, grinding his teeth.
“Yes she does,” I lied, badly.
“Don’t care though, don’t need her to like us. Just need her to leave us alone,” he said. He sounded like a child and just like a child his mood could turn in a second. I needed to be careful. Behind him I could see Cato holding Perdita close as they huddled under a blanket on the floor.
“It’s better for us to be with her, she knows the mainland better than we do. You wanted to come here because you were bored, didn’t you? Well, hasn’t this been exciting?” I asked hopefully.
“She... wants... to... kill... us” he said, hissing each word as he came close to my face. There was no warmth in his breath. It smelt of damp earth after rain, and was as cold as the sea.
“Keep your voice down, of course she doesn’t,” I said. “You’re being more paranoid than Cato. With Eliza around, I don’t know... I feel like being alive has some sort of purpose. We never had a purpose, we just existed.”
“We have a purpose...” said Cato quietly, holding the map from Isaac’s house out to me with a trembling hand. I leant over and took it, before unfolding it onto the floor under all three pairs of watchful eyes.
There was now a rough cross drawn at a point on the coast line.
“That’s us,” said Cato, pointing a spindly finger. His long fingernail was filthy, the colour of rust.
“And that’s where Perdita says we need to go,” said Marcus, putting his own calloused finger on the map. His fingertip obscured the small cigarette burn towards the centre, surely a coincidence. I shook my head. This new-found sense of purpose within the group was bewildering.
“In the morning, all right? I’m too tired to discuss this right now,” I said, returning to the sofa and hastily pulling the blanket up around my shoulders, before turning my back on them.
“In the morning then, we’ll hold you to that,” said Marcus. I took one last glance towards him and saw his huge form by the window, staring intently out to sea.
I awoke sweating from a nightmare of black, brackish water and clawing hands to find Eliza standing over me, her face a mask of fear in the pale light of the torch she held. The room was otherwise almost pitch black.
“It’s still the night?” I asked, my words slurring a little through exhaustion. She firmly pressed a hand over my mouth and motioned with her eyes to the window. I slowly crawled off the sofa, fighting my body's aching muscles and managing to stay relatively quiet, before making my way over to see what she wanted me look at. As I got closer to the window Eliza pulled my arm and forced me to crouch, although I didn’t need much encouragement to hide as now I could hear them.
Deep and throaty, harsh and rasping, their moans echoed around the harbour. The dead were walking and we were surrounded.