5
Building
The lead shot slammed into a body to my left, barely missing me. My instinctive reaction to fall to the ground ended up saving me from the second shot, which came barely a second after the first, hitting the mud where I had been standing. I held my hands up in surrender whilst I tried to work out where the shot had come from. All of the windows on the ground floor were boarded up but I managed to spot one of the windows on the second floor which was slightly ajar, with a shotgun barrel weaving unsteadily as whoever held it tried to get a bead on me.
“Please, I’m alive!” I shouted, not knowing if whoever was doing the shooting even cared about that fact. They may know I wasn’t infected and think I was some sort of looter. Perhaps I was making it worse and should have played dead but I didn’t trust my acting skills. All it would have taken was another shot and my body would jerk with fear.
There was not another shot though, not yet. I tried not to think about what my palms were digging through as I dragged myself away from the window, keeping as low a profile as possible. Finally a voice rang out.
“Stop right there!”
I obeyed, freezing in place whilst slowly raising my hands again. I hoped that if they were talking they were less likely to shoot, although it could have just been a trick to make me easier to hit.
I saw the shotgun barrel disappear inside the window and a burgundy curtain pulled across to take it’s place. I waited for a few moments, wondering whether if I started running I could make it to the relative cover of the hedgerow. Just as I started to push myself out of the foul mud I heard the noise of a bolt being pulled back. My gaze was drawn to the front door, an antique affair made from sturdy oak and cast iron bands. It was covered in bloody hand prints and superficial damage but still looked able to stop an army. It was pulled inwards and a hoary man in his sixties emerged, stooping slightly and blinking in the light of the sunset as he held the shotgun in my general direction. His aim wasn’t helped by an obviously broken left arm that he was awkwardly balancing the barrel of the gun on. His hand looked bruised, the fingers swollen and pushed out straight. The pain was obvious in his eyes, which were watery and red rimmed. His hair was mostly white, flecked here and there with grey. It was getting a little long but was still styled with Brylcreem, carefully held in place in a style he must have used every day for many years. He was wearing a thick jumper patterned with green and white zigzags, tan corduroy trousers and heavy leather boots, and his cheeks were covered in stubble as white as a layer of snow. He stood watching me for a few moments as I slowly started to get to my feet, hands still held above me. My backpack had twisted a little and was pulling me off balance, and as I moved a hand down to try and adjust it he waved the gun at me as a warning.
“Keep those hands where I can see them, if you please.”
His voice was low, rough as gravel but strangely polite given the threatening situation. I did as he asked, my brow sweating as I tried to stay still despite my every instinct telling me to run.
“Now, I just want to go through what’s going to happen, so that we’re clear and there’s no surprises, understand?” he asked, taking a couple of steps towards me, closing the distance. I could see his nostrils working as the smell of the rotting bodies assaulted him.
“I wasn’t going to, I just...” I started to say before he cut me off.
“I don’t want to know. I’m sure before all this started you were a good person, had a family, or any other number of things that give merit to your life, but things have changed now and we’ve learned our lesson the hard way. Once their life is threatened, people are capable of acts they usually wouldn’t ever consider doing, which is how we find ourselves in this situation.”
“I wouldn’t do anything,” I said, leading the man to roll his eyes.
“Just, quiet. Be quiet. I want you to drop your bag, turn around and walk away. You’ll do it slowly and carefully. Move too fast and I'll shoot you. If you run, then I'll shoot you. Come towards this house, and I will shoot you.”
“I can’t leave,” I said quietly, looking involuntarily towards my ankle.
“Well I don’t think you’ll like it here soon. Those shots I fired will draw more of them to the house and they’ll find you a much easier target than us.”
“Who’s us?” I asked, strangely curious despite my predicament.
“That’s not important. I don’t want to know your name and I will not tell you ours. It makes this easier and that’s what we need right now. I think I’ve given you fair warning, now if you please, your rucksack. If you don’t hand it over then you’ll leave me no choice.”
My mind raced as I tried to think of a way out of this situation without losing all of my possessions, or at the very least the food, although maybe his need was greater than mine... after all, he had a broken arm, getting supplies would be very hard in such a condition...
“Your arm, how did you break it?” I asked as I slipped the rucksack off my shoulders and placed it carefully at my feet.
“That’s none of your concern I’m sure,” replied the man, seeming to wince as if I just reminded him about the pain that he had forgotten. “I dare say you can understand why I haven’t had the chance to get to a hospital.”
“If you leave it untreated then infection can set in, or if it’s a severe break the freely moving bone could catch an artery, or the marrow could release fat emboli,” I said, reeling off just a little of what I knew. The man’s face creased with a flicker of confusion as the conversation took an unexpected turn.
“Are you medical?” he asked, his voice softening. It was the power of pain, I thought. It tired your mind, body and soul until eventually you’d do anything just to be rid of it. His desperation was my chance, and for my own sake I had to take it.
“Yes, I’m a doctor. I can help you, it you’ll let me?”
The interior of the house showed the signs of a siege that must have gone on for weeks. All of the hallway table tops had been cleared of ornaments and held what few weapons were available – a shovel, a garden fork, a hand sickle and also a couple of boxes of shotgun shells, both open and worryingly low on contents. After the old man had locked the front door it was barricaded by means of a large dresser which obviously gave it enough backup to remain impregnable, so far.
The carpet was sodden with mud and water; obviously there had been some flooding in this area but the man had no way of clearing it or opening the house up to help it dry. There was a wide central staircase that went up to the floor above but the old man instead led me down a couple of stone steps through a doorway to the right and into a large dining and kitchen area. There were a few cupboards and shelves which seemed to be bare for the most part, while what little tinned food he had was stacked on a counter next to the sink, maybe a weeks worth. Pots and pans hung from racks across the cooking area and the thought crossed my mind that it would be quite a beautiful house to live in under different circumstances.
The room was lit by means of an empty strip left above the boards that covered the windows, too high for any of the corpses outside to see into but just wide enough to let in enough light to see by without the aid of candles, at least during the day. Thick curtains either side of the windows showed how they dealt with the night and having to use artificial lights without attracting attention.
My boots rang out on the stone floor of the kitchen as we walked over to a large dinner table set near a set of bookshelves opposite the cooking area. The old man sat down painfully on a polished wooden chair, laying his shotgun on the table and motioning for me to also pull up a seat.
“It was about a week and a half ago,” he said, his breath a pained staccato as he pulled off his jumper, trying his best not to move the arm but having to shift it a little in order to work it free of the sleeve. “I fell down the stairs, of all things. After all of this death and horror, a step broke me. Just that little one, there, down to the kitchen.”
Once I could see the arm fully it became clear where the issue was after only a few seconds of gently checking the bones. He had tried to splint the arm with a couple of wooden salad spoons but he hadn’t secured them well enough or in the correct position to be effective. I checked the blood flow to his fingertips. It seemed good, the colour coming back immediately after pressing, so he was only suffering some swelling after the break. I reached for a sheet lying on top of a pile of clothes in a basket nearby.
“May I? I’ll need some cloth strips.”
“Of course,” he said quietly. “After all, you’re helping us.”
Us, there it was again. There was someone else here. Was he hiding them? Or were they hiding from me? I tore a couple of strips off the sheet and looked around for something suitable, laying my eyes on a telephone directory sitting next to a phone on a small side table. I curled the directory around his arm and tied it off near the elbow and wrist with the strips, before using the rest of the sheet to make an elevated sling for the arm, pulling it up towards the other shoulder.
“The elevation should help with the swelling. It’ll heal in time but you need to stop using it for the time being. Here, I’ll adjust the splints and sling it up against your chest. You’re just aggravating the muscle damage,” I said as gently as I could. I wanted to stay on his good side, after all, he had let me in to his home. I also wasn’t confident I could get to his shotgun first if he decided I was a danger again. I needed to play it his way for the moment. The old man frowned, his rough voice raising as he seemed to vent a long held frustration.
“I can’t just stop using it, rest isn’t really an option now. I’ve got to try and get some food from somewhere and there’s always more of them, every day one or more of those things show up. I can’t stop for...” he ran out of steam and rested a shaking hand on the shotgun.
“Who else is here?” I asked again. His pain was the pain of helplessness in the face of insurmountable odds and somehow I could tell it wasn’t himself he was worried about.
“My wife, Dorothy. Arthur, I’m Arthur, sorry. I... I forget everything these days, even manners. I’ve let you into our home now, so lets put the way we met behind us, if we could.”
He raised his good hand and I shook it awkwardly.
“Not a problem,” I said, relishing this fresh human contact. This felt natural, easy, not like the stilted conversations laden with threat that passed between Marcus and me. “I’m just glad to be inside at night. Can’t your wife help a little to take the strain off your arm? Can she shoot?”
Arthur dipped his face to his chest for a second as if composing himself.
“She can’t even sit up in bed by herself now. It’s this fever. She’s running so hot and there’s no ice, nothing I can do,” his eyes fixed with mine, dark points of determination in his pale features. “Please, help her if you can. I’ll be so, eternally, yes eternally grateful. It’s why I let you in here, I don’t really care about my arm. I tried to help her but I’ve no training apart from a first aid course about twenty years ago. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll definitely see what I can do,” I said, standing up. “Where is she?”
Arthur got up as quickly as his infirm and damaged body could muster and led me back out into the hallway and up the stairs to the second floor. The dusty carpeted steps creaked under our weight, with the sound seeming harsh in such a quiet and still house. At the top we came into a what must be a vibrant and brightly coloured hallway under normal light but in the encroaching darkness it simply felt oppressive, it’s yellow wallpaper lending an unhealthy glow to everything, as if the house was jaundiced. The door at the end of the hallway was open, so I picked my way between the cabinets of ornaments and bookshelves that dotted the corridor and went into a room that was steeped in darkness.
All the curtains were drawn, with only a small amount of ambient light spreading out from underneath them. There was a large bed in the centre of the room, the covers drawn up tightly around the neck of an elderly woman whose grey hair was plastered to her forehead with perspiration. A compress lay discarded by her side. As I came closer I saw her breathing was shallow and I didn’t need to feel her head to sense the heat that her body was giving off.
“How long has the fever been this high?” I asked Arthur quietly. He had stayed by the door as if afraid to enter the room.
“Since the morning, thirteen or fourteen hours,” he replied, coughing politely as he started to walk towards her. “I wasn’t sure whether to keep her covered or not. She’s sweating, so has it broken?”
“Maybe. Dorothy?” I whispered to the woman. She was unresponsive, still breathing in short sharp gasps. Her skin was pale despite the heat. I tried tentatively pulling the covers back, folding them around her waist. She was wearing a floral nightdress soaked with sweat that clung to a body that seemed far too thin.
“She said she felt cold,” said Arthur. I managed a little smile to try and relax him.
“It’s common to feel that as the body’s temperature rises but I think her fever is running so high that we need to reduce her heat to stop the risk of, ah, further damage,” I finished gently. I didn’t want to say brain damage, there was no need to heap further details on the poor man. “Has she been eating?”
“A little soup is all she can manage but even then she usually can’t keep it down.”
“I see. Can you refresh this with the coldest water that you can manage?” I said, handing him the compress. “I also need some aspirin, if you have it. It may help reduce the fever. Do you have clean water?”
“The tap, we’ve... it’s all we’ve been using. It should be fine, shouldn’t it? From a reservoir?” His voice had been so confident before but when it came to his wife his fear made his voice tremulous.
“Maybe... but just in case get a bottle of water out of my rucksack. Oh, and...” I said, remembering finally what had led me to this house, “if you have any disinfectant, wipes or liquid, bandages, plasters... just, just bring me everything you have medicinal. We’ll see what we have to work with. Oh, and an unused wash cloth if you have one.”
Arthur nodded solemnly and hurried out of the room as fast as he could, tottering carefully down the creaking stairs to the floor below. It left me alone with Dorothy so I busied myself with trying to make a diagnosis.
I leaned close to her and spoke gently but firmly, trying to wake her in order to get some much needed information. “Dorothy, I need to talk to you.”
The woman stirred, starting to moan a little as she awoke. She was obviously in a lot of discomfort.
“I, don’t... cold, I’m cold,” she said so quietly that I had to strain to hear the words. Her voice had a fragility that only the very weak possessed.
“We need to bring your temperature down, just a little. I just need to know what other symptoms you have besides the fever, so we can get you up and about again,” I said, trying to sound positive and yet not overly flippant. She gradually turned her head to face me, her blue eyes fluttering quickly as she tried to focus on me. When they did she became visibly unnerved, trying to push herself away from me despite her weakened state.
“It’s all right, I’m a doctor,” I said, starting to fall into my role with surprising ease. She didn’t look any more relaxed though, glancing towards the door.
“Arthur,” she said quietly.
“He’s downstairs. He’ll be back presently,” I said, standing up and moving away from her to try and help her relax. I went to the nearest window to open it for some fresh air but I only had to open it a crack before the stench of rot outside the house started to permeate the room. I quickly shut it again, hearing Arthur making his way up the stairs. As he came in the room he saw me and nodded apologetically.
“I know, we need some fresh air in here but there’s none to be had. I wouldn’t want to risk letting that smell in here anyway, it might have caused Dorothy to feel this way,” he said, placing the various things he had found on a side table.
“It could certainly bring on some nausea, if nothing else,” I said, patting Arthur on the shoulder as I surveyed what he had brought me. “Even though dead bodies in themselves are in some ways less of a hygiene risk than those of us who are still alive, if they carried infection when they died then it could spread...”
I quickly remembered myself and looked towards Dorothy, who was still staring at me, pulling the blankets back around her neck as if to shield herself. “I’m sorry, that was unnecessary. Besides, there are many things that could cause your fever.”
She didn’t say anything, breathing deeply as a new wave of discomfort flooded her body. Arthur went to her side and held her hand, grasping it tightly as he kissed the sweat from her brow. She painfully raised her other hand to his face, whispering low but insistently. I only caught a few words of the conversation but it was obvious they were discussing me.
“... seems... knew how... my arm...”
“... others... could be... trust...”
“... hope...”
“I know I’m intruding,” I said, picking up the aspirin and twisting off the childproof cap, “but I really, truly only want to help.” I tapped the bottle against my palm, shaking out two pills which I handed to Arthur along with the bottle of water. He handed them to her one at a time and let her take tentative sips as she tried to swallow them.
“What now?” asked Arthur after Dorothy was finished. She had settled back with her eyes closed, her breathing a little less shallow than when she had been sleeping.
“I just need to ask Dorothy a few diagnostic questions,” I replied as I moved up next to them. I reeled off the classic symptoms of the common causes of fever, checking which applied to her and making a few mental notes to help my diagnosis. After a few minutes it became clear that she had already been suffering from several conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, which could cause fever by itself. She had been involved in a struggle with the walking dead as they had been surprised in their home after the initial outbreak, during which she had fallen heavily, which in turn had led to her becoming bed-ridden. Whether it had any bearing on her fever though was hard to tell. The light was fading fast so Arthur pulled the curtains closed again, whilst lighting a couple of candlesticks. The glow flickered across Dorothy's ghostly features as I stood up, rubbing my hands as I tried to piece it all together.
“I need to check a few more things, then we can see what we need to do next. I’ll just go and sterilise my hands, it’s been a while since they’ve been washed,” I said, as I picked up a bottle of disinfectant and a few other useful items. “Where can I clean up?”
Arthur pointed out into the corridor with his good hand. “Second on the left.”
I nodded, picked up one of the candlesticks and made my way to the bathroom.
It was a modest affair in white tile and blue paint. There was a toilet, a bath with a ruffled green shower curtain pulled across it and a basin with a mirror above it, probably concealing a medicine cabinet. I gently shut the door and set the candle down on a side table before my legs gave way and I slid down the door to rest on the ground. It wasn’t fatigue but some sort of strange moment of fearsome clarity. I was playing a dangerous game here and Dorothy’s life could be forfeit. Did I really know as much as it seemed I did? Had I been a doctor before? And if so, then what had happened to send me onto that island with no recollection of before except my disjointed knowledge?
There was a sense of movement on the floor by my hip and I jerked aside instinctively as a rumpled mess of folded paper was pushed slowly under the door. It was a little torn and there was some rain damage but as I tentatively picked it up I could see it was the map from Isaac's house. I unfolded it carefully, teasing the folds apart to reveal the same burn mark towards the middle of the map. There was also something new. It was now circled many times roughly in red crayon, although that was not the only mark. The coastline still had a large red X drawn on a small village but it was now joined to a rough trail that led over some elevation lines towards a large town, stopping short at a farm...
Someone was tracing the journey.
I slowly placed my hands on the floor and lowered my face to the level of the bottom of the door, to find one of Perdita's large grey eyes staring at me, glistening as if it were some colossal cloudy quartz, cold, wet and unblinking. As I watched, she slowly stood up and I heard her bare feet pad away down the corridor.
I sat up, carefully folding the map up as I tried to make sense of it all. Perdita had never shown any real sense of purpose besides simply being with us, shadowing our footsteps. What did this mark refer to that was so important to her? It was clear that without thinking I was heading towards it anyway, though did I really want to get there? Despite her small size, there was something... vast about her presence. No, it was more a potential for vastness, as if she were a blueprint for something so much more...
I shoved the map into my pocket hurriedly, feeling a strange chill running down my spine. My heart was thumping from adrenaline for some reason, as if I feared the child. Did I?
A twinge in my ankle as I stood up reminded me what I should focus on. I propped my foot up on the closed toilet seat and pulled my trousers up to survey the damage. The fingernails had ripped a couple of layers of skin off on the outside of the ankle but the injury that hurt the most was a deep piercing wound from the thumb nail. There was a small amount of swelling around the wounds, which could have been the beginnings of an infection but I had to hope I was being quick enough with my treatment to stop it.
I undid my belt and removed my trousers and socks, before washing my hands with the soap by the sink, ready to clean the wound. After running my ankle under the tap in the bath for five minutes I scrubbed it with the wash cloth, wincing at the raw pain, before finally applying the wipes and disinfectant. I pressed a sterile pad over the wounds and wound a bandage carefully around my ankle and under my foot, making sure it was secure. I hoped it would be enough.
There was a tentative knock at the door and I heard Arthur clearing his throat politely.
“Doctor, ah... doctor, is everything all right in there?”
“Yes, no problem,” I said, quickly pulling on my clothes. I ran my hands vigorously under the water again and applied some more disinfectant for good measure, before composing myself and opening to door to greet Arthur's mildly concerned face. I could see him glancing over my shoulder at the room to see if he could spot anything untoward, so I thought I'd offer him an explanation to put his mind at ease.
“It was my fingernails, they took a lot of cleaning. You have to be thorough.”
He nodded slowly, “Yes, of course. Silly me.”
“Arthur,” I said, gently pulling the man by his sleeve into the bathroom so Dorothy wouldn't hear, “I don't know how much I can do here. I need proper diagnostic equipment, I may need antibiotics, I may also need a stronger antipyretic if the aspirin doesn't do the trick in reducing her fever...”
I could see Arthur's face shifting as he tried to process what I was saying.
“She may die if we can't get her some better treatment,” I said, my voice as low as it could be whilst still being audible. Arthur started to lose his balance and I put a hand on his shoulder to help steady him.
“But it's dark now and there's nothing else nearby except town,” he said finally, his voice small and feeble.
“Yes, it'll have to be tomorrow, first thing. It may take a while even though it isn't far to the town but we'll get her there, don't you worry. I'll need you Arthur, I don't know my way around this part of the world,” I said, trying to keep my voice firm and matter of fact.
“Of course,” he muttered, coughing to clear his throat. “You can rely on me. I'll start packing, I suppose. I haven't left the house for years except for the shopping trips to town, we never... we didn't feel the need for a holiday. We loved it here, you know.” He looked at me, his eyes blinking in the candlelight.
I couldn't find any more words of comfort. We were having to go back out there, back into the rain and the flesh and the horror. I settled for a nod and together we started to pack for the onward journey. Outside, the first of the dead drawn by the gunshots began to moan. It would be a long night.
When we were finally done the darkness outside was absolute. The cloud cover was so thick that not even a star was visible and the moans of the dead echoed around the farm, punctuating our every movement with urgency.
“They won’t get in, will they?” I asked as we folded some blankets into one of the soft travel bags, which were the least cumbersome item of carriage they possessed. Arthur finished carefully laying the few cans they had left into another bag, working slowly with his one arm, before looking over to me and answering low and softly, the crackle and rumble of his voice reminding me of a gramophone.
“I shouldn’t think so. They haven’t since that first attack and I’ve shored up the door since then. Look, I don’t want to be rude after all you’ve done for us and want to do for us but please... let’s not speak unless absolutely necessary. Dorothy and I worked that out long ago. They eventually wander off, maybe drawn by the noise of the town. We can sometimes hear it through the walls of the house. Explosions, the wail of car alarms, all sorts. Whether it’s someone alive, or otherwise...” he shrugged his shoulders, a strange movement with one arm strapped up.
We finished packing in silence, after which Arthur showed me to a spare room on the second floor. My ankle pulsed painfully as I walked up the stairs but I tried not to show it in my stride, gritting my teeth behind my lips.
As I settled down under the covers on the old brass bedstead, the pain intensified, as if the compression of my foot by standing up had somehow alleviated it a little. My sleep was disjointed, hot and sweaty despite the chill that the old stone house carried. My dreams were of wheat fields, teeth and bones, flesh and blood.
Dawn arrived with cold fingers of light pushing their way into the room through a gap in the curtains, illuminating Marcus’ features, hard lines and sharp nose, stark eyes, firmly set jaw, with his hair lank and lifeless around his shoulders as if he had been standing in the rain for a day and a night. Though I had woken up to similar sights for as long as I could remember on the island, the sight of him still gave me a turn. I jerked awake, my heart pounding almost painfully in my chest. Marcus' eyes narrowed as he scrutinized his prey.
“Something the matter?” he asked. His voice sounded different, distant somehow, as if being heard from the lip of a well.
“I just didn’t expect to see you there,” I replied, pulling the bedclothes around my body against the chill. Marcus tilted his head to one side, studying me. His coat now seemed to be a strange patchwork affair made of brown, grimy leather and squares of black cloth, which was just as sodden as his hair. There was muddy water pooling around his heavy boots.
“You should know by now that we’ll always be here, looking out for you,” he said, casting his eyes around the room. A flash of movement to my right drew my attention and I spotted Cato sliding out from under the bed and skittering across to the door. He opened it carefully and scanned the hallway outside before closing it again as quietly as he could manage. The room I had been given for the night was at the far end of the corridor from Dorothy’s room, so there was little chance of her hearing us. I wondered therefore what he was looking for....
The shrivelled man shuffled over to the bed and bent close to my ear. “You need our help, you can’t carry on alone. Without us, you’ll suffer. Marcus can feel it...”
Marcus strode forward and pulled the blanket away from my legs, tearing at the bandage and revealing the wound on my ankle. I tried to kick him away but Cato pushed down on my thighs as Marcus went to work, squeezing the flesh of my ankle to such an extent that brackish blood started to seep out. I screamed and punched out at Cato, trying to dislodge him. Despite his thin form he was immensely strong, spidery fingers gripping me like a vice.
“That’s it, there... there we are,” said Marcus, grimacing as he dug his fingers into my flesh before slowly pulling out his prize and brandishing it aloft.
It was a piece of the corpse’s thumbnail.
“You would have lost your foot to infection, ‘Doctor’,” said Marcus, smiling proudly as he flicked the nail onto the bed covers, “or else would have become one of those sacks of maggots outside. We need you to be healthy.”
Cato released me, nodding in satisfaction as he wiped a hand across his forehead, pushing his straggly hair out of his eyes. I noticed that he looked just as dishevelled as Marcus, with his baggy shirt torn in places to reveal his skeletal form beneath. His eyes suddenly darted to the door as I heard the creak of the boards on the stairs.
Marcus snorted and threw my bedclothes back over my legs before pushing Cato to the floor, where the thin man scrambled back under the bed, his legs and arms pumping wildly. Marcus himself crouched down and powerfully pulled himself underneath just as the handle of the bedroom door turned and Arthur entered, shotgun weaving ahead of him, fear etched into his features. He scanned the room, swinging the gun’s barrel around as he spoke through quivering lips. “Is everything all right? I heard a scream...”
I pushed myself up to a sitting position, trying to look as nonchalant as the pain that coursed through my leg would allow.
“I’m sorry, it was... outside, I think the noise of the dead influenced my dreams. Do you ever get that, where the sound outside...”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” replied Arthur, lowering the gun and shuffling over to the window. He pulled the curtain back carefully, glancing downwards at the scene outside. “One or two, not bad for a morning. We should be able to get them put down before we move on.”
He cast a glance at me, before looking back out of the window.
“I have to try and think like that. Put them down, like sick animals. As if it’s a kindness.”
“It is a kindness,” I said, adjusting my leg a little. The pain was lessening slightly but I was eager to get to the bathroom and give the wound another wash. My hands felt sticky and I pulled one out of the covers to see why, before quickly shoving it back under. It was covered in blood, with clots caked under my fingernails.
“I know it is, it must be. I don’t want to come back, if... when, I should say... when I die. I just wished they looked less, well... less human.”
I nodded, watching as the man turned around and made his way back out of the room. He stopped at the doorway to Dorothy’s room and called back to me.
“Five minutes, then we’ll go.”
I waited for him to enter the room and close the door before quickly sliding myself out of bed and walking gingerly to the bathroom, wincing whenever my injured foot touched the floor. After going through the ritual of sterilisation again, I re-bandaged the wound, went back to the bedroom and folded up the bloody sheets. After looking around for somewhere suitable to place them, I slowly crouched down, looking under the bed. The two men were gone – as I always suspected they would be – but lying on her stomach, resplendent in her clean crisp blue dress, was Perdita. She was facing towards me, her features a blank mask of indifference, eyes blinking slowly. Her hands were spread out at her sides as she lay flat. They clenched and unclenched in a strange rhythmic motion. Suddenly I was struck by a strange impulse and I reached out and grabbed her wrist, turning the palm of her hand towards me.
Somehow I knew I would find it, and there it was... a bite mark, raw and fresh.
She pulled her arm away from me in a sudden motion and seemed to slide away without any movement on her part, as if she was stationary and the world was drifting away from her. She slipped out of the other side of the bed before standing up and hopping effortlessly up onto the mattress. When I raised my head to follow her, she was gone, with no sign of her or the others anywhere in the room. I hurriedly pushed the bundle of sheets under the bed and had every intention of going to check if Arthur was ready to leave, yet I found myself sitting down onto the bare mattress, staring at the floor.
I was missing so many things, points of reference, vital knowledge of exactly what was happening to me. The more I was starting to integrate myself into the world of newly met people – Eliza, Arthur, Dorothy – the more the other three didn’t seem to fit. Was I suffering some sort of sensory issues?
“I don’t need them, I don’t...” I said quietly as I rubbed my temples, in an attempt to give myself the support that they claimed to be giving me. Maybe if I showed I truly didn’t need them, they’d go. Then I could concentrate on helping others through these dead days, instead of just playing a cautious game of cat and mouse with their feelings. I looked around, expecting them to be there, watching me.
The room was empty, save for the shelves, books and ornaments of Arthur and Dorothy, my new family.
Arthur told me his car was a battered brown Morris Minor Traveller, with wood lined windows and worn out cloth seats. He told me he hadn’t driven it for a month or so even before the outbreak but it had always been reliable in the past and he was sure it would be up to the task we were to ask of it. The car was safely locked away in a garage thirty feet away from the farmhouse, with three or four of the dead occupying the ground between us. I asked about taking the tractor but Arthur told me the engine was damaged. He tried to insist that he accompany me but I managed to persuade him that we would be better served if he covered me with the shotgun from one of the windows above, though I had no desire to face the dead by myself. We needed to get the car to the door and help Dorothy in, which would take time. We also had to get rid of however many corpses were here already without drawing others, so it would be down to my hands to do the deed. To “put them down”, as Arthur said. That was all it was, I told myself - as I hefted up a sturdy spade that Arthur gave me – it was simply putting them out of their misery.
We decided to draw them away from the door by throwing a plate from the window towards the tractor, pulling them away from the garage to give me as much time as I could get to assess the situation and deal with them. My throw was strong but inaccurate, curling inwards and striking the far wall of the farmhouse where it shattered in a shower of shards and chips. We didn’t risk another throw in case I fell short and they turned towards us, which could lead to them spotting us and blocking my way out, which would have ended our escape attempt before it had even begun.
I quickly made my way down the stairs two at a time and pulled the dresser away from the door as quietly as I could manage, before tugging back the bolts and opening the door a crack. The reek of rotting flesh enveloped me, reminding me (as if I could ever forget) that this was the world now. Everything within the house was just a microcosm of the old ways trying to hold out.
The way was clear, so I gripped the spade as tightly as my bruised fingers would allow and made my way outside, pulling the door shut behind me. There had been more rain in the night and the ground was a swathe of thick, churned mud, slowing my steps but thankfully also those of the dead. I could see them twenty feet away still struggling and staggering towards the remains of the plate and I bravely, or foolishly, decided to strike.
The nearest corpse to me was a middle aged woman, wearing ragged jeans and a t-shirt that may have once been white but had long ago become brown and black from the blood that fell from her partly severed neck. The wound was wide and ragged, her throat obviously having been torn out with teeth. Her head was hanging at a ludicrous angle and I doubted she could have seen me even if she was looking directly at me, as she was having to stumble almost sideways to keep her eyes ahead. She was wearing Wellingtons, so I wondered as I got closer if she had been a neighbour or even a friend of Arthur’s, maybe a farm hand...
Put them down. I had to keep that in mind. I had learned that truth from the way I had dealt with Isaac, desperately trying to preserve his soul within his rotting flesh, attempting to find humanity where there was none. I couldn’t show any remorse, because that might slow me down and I might hesitate, which could only turn out badly. Speed was my advantage; I had to make full use of it.
I drew up behind her, as close as I dared to get and swung the shovel up and across my body, not hitting as squarely as I had wanted but still cutting deep into what remained of the corpse’s neck’s connective tissue. It’s body staggered and lost its footing but the thing’s eyes and mouth were still moving as it fell, gnashing slowly in the mud and slurry. Though it’s head was still connected by some skin there were no nerves left and the body had stilled. I left the head silently chewing the air, it’s white mucous lined eyes casting about helplessly as I went after the next one.
The others had heard the spade’s impact and were slowly turning to look, although the nearest one had been an old man and was now in the late stages of decomposition, so it was taking an age to turn, it’s putrefying muscles more liquid than fibre. It was wearing an old dressing gown with the remains of a nightshirt fusing through rot to it’s body underneath and I morbidly wondered if this man was getting more exercise now than when he had been alive. I waited until I was closer this time before swinging the spade, to try and get more purchase. The blade caught the corpse well, caving in the side of it’s head as the body dropped like a stone, sinking into the mud.
I was gaining confidence now and felt ready when I saw that the two remaining dead had seen me and were lumbering through the mire towards me. I wiped some gore from the spade’s blade on the dressing gown of the fallen corpse and readied the makeshift weapon. The nearest corpse was considerably faster than the other one, staggering hungrily towards me. It looked relatively fresh, a large, well built man who had obviously tried unsuccessfully to fight off the hordes with his bare hands, as they ended in ragged bone and gristle, with considerable damage up to his elbows. The shirt that had been covering his torso hung open to reveal yellowing pale skin above a distended belly no doubt filled with the gases of putrefaction. His head was shaved and his eyes still had some semblance of colour, dirty brown irises staring wide and unblinking. His moan was low and guttural, a rumbling call of hatred and hunger...
I froze suddenly, faced by this thing that seemed all too human. This would be different to the others, with their ludicrous gaits or withered frames. It would be like facing a man, with all the challenges that entailed. As he was almost upon me I managed to push myself to swing, however the action was wild and inaccurate. I was trying to slice upwards from my right hand side in order to knock the corpse’s head back and hopefully force it away, but instead the blade caught the ground and the unexpected impact pulled me off balance. My right boot slid across the mud as I fell backwards, the spade’s leverage against the ground twisting my wrist painfully. I managed to keep a hold of the spade’s handle as I fell, wildly thrusting it out as I collapsed into the slick mess that surrounded me. The corpse was strong but had no sense of self preservation and as it threw itself towards me it ended up ramming it’s chest onto the blade, spilling blood around the wound as it twisted and struggled to reach me. It’s arms were long despite the damage to its hands and the bloody spikes of bare bone were getting painfully close as the corpse pushed itself further and further onto the blade. The mud shifted and slipped under me, offering me no purchase as I kicked my boots, trying to force myself away. It’s mouth opened wide to reveal stained teeth that gnashed and crept ever closer to my face. I could just catch a glimpse of the other corpse limping closer to me on stiff dead legs.
A hand burst out of the mud nearby, clutching the air with powerful fingers. Another hand was pushed out of the mire and they turned to press down upon the earth, pulling a head and shoulders from the mud. The sludge dripped and fell from a face covered in thick black spines that weaved and swayed beneath matted straw coloured hair. Razor sharp teeth gleamed. Red eyes glowed and span like kaleidoscopes.
“No,” I managed to say through gritted teeth, as I continued to fight with the huge dead man. Some blood from the ragged remains of the corpse’s fingers dripped onto my chest and neck, the sharp bones mere inches away from piercing my skin. The fingers that still had tendons and muscle running from them up the arm waved sickeningly, like horrific spider legs. Marcus paused, licking the mud from his lips.
“Need some help?” His voice boomed with raw power, an untapped well that was there if I just unleashed it and let go of my doubt. I tried to push the corpse away but only managed to push it up a little before my arms started to give out and it fell back, ever closer to my face. Every time I tried to twist sideways it readjusted itself to move with me, the blade cutting a swathe in the flesh and bone of its chest. Marcus started to laugh, pulling himself further out of the mud, his arm stretched out...
I felt a sudden rush as the shot rang out, fired from above. It was slightly off centre and the majority of the blast shattered the corpse’s shoulder, causing it to fall sideways as the rest of the shot peppered the ground. I was just glad that it had missed me, as Arthur’s aim was always going to be unreliable when he was using the window ledge as his only support, guiding the shotgun and firing with the same hand. Marcus growled, sinking a little back into the wetness, although his face was still visible, dark hairs twisting, his eyes fixed on the dead that were still a threat.
I shook my head to clear the noise and scrambled to my feet, boots still slipping on the mud as I pulled the spade up, before swinging it back down with force. The blade slammed into the skull of the corpse, shattering the face and getting lodged in the bone. I placed a boot on the body’s neck and wrenched it free, glaring at Marcus meaningfully as I prepared myself for the last corpse. It was slow moving and short, with a dark messy wound where its left arm should have been. It was no match for me now that I was standing and I swung hard and true, catching the side of the corpse’s head with the flat of the blade and sending it crashing into the mire. A few more blows from the spade and the head was little more than pulp. I stood breathing heavily, gripping the handle so tightly that my knuckles turned white, sending pain up my arm from my bruised fingers. I looked towards Marcus but all that was left of him were small bubbles popping on the surface of the muddy water that only reflected my own rippling, shifting face.