Remains of the Dead (28 page)

Cahz looked back down at the fire and nodded gently.

“When Sam died everything collapsed for me,” Ryan said, looking at the baby as he opened the tin of milk. “I held her in my arms as she went. I felt the tension leave her body. I heard her last breath. I felt her hot blood on my fingers. I mean, like you, my friends and family died when all this shit kicked off, but that’s different. I know they must be dead but I wasn’t there with them. I mean, I know my dad is dead; I had to put him down, but I didn’t see him die. I just saw him as one of them. It’s a hard thing seeing someone you love die. I dealt with it by going on a bender. I drank every last drop of alcohol that was left in that warehouse. I didn’t want to think about it, to feel it. I saw you in that same place this afternoon.” Ryan flicked the moisture from his cheek. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m just glad you snapped out of it quicker than me.”

“Thanks,” Cahz said.

Ryan fed a spoonful to Rebecca and the two men sat quietly by the crackling fire. The wind and the rain outside drummed at the windows.

“You ever thought of doing it?” Ryan asked.

“Doing what?”

“What Cannon did.”

Cahz pursed his lips in thought. “No, not really.”

“I have,” Ryan said. “Nothing serious. It became kind of normal. There were a lot that first year. I remember I walked in on one. He had the noose and the chair all ready and I walked in as he was just climbing onto the chair. And do you know what I did?”

“No,” Cahz whispered.

“I apologized,” Ryan laughed. “I said sorry, looked at my shoes and walked out. Like I’d walked into the men’s room and saw him taking a dump. I said sorry and walked out, embarrassed that I’d disturbed him. How fucked up is that?”

“You didn’t try to stop him?”

Ryan shook his head. “Nope. I’ve seen so many, but never right in front of me. You know you’d wake up one morning to find someone’s taken an overdose, or break into someplace to find a body with a blood-splattered suicide note. It became normal.” Ryan waved the spoon towards the window. “You know, normal like not in the normal world normal but in the fucked-up world normal.” He laughed. “Did that make any fucking sense?”

“A little,” Cahz said.

“We had this one woman—Petra she called herself. I don’t think that was her real name, by the way. She went on and on about it. Talked all the time about how she was close to killing herself, but she never did. Then we had that first one. An older guy slit his wrists and… Elspeth cleaned that up like she did after Sam.” He shifted uneasily and placed a hand on his stomach as if he were suffering from indigestion. “Well, once he’d done it, that was the taboo broken. We had four that first summer.” Ryan shrugged. “I guess what I’m saying is, who can blame them.”

Cahz took a deep breath. “I used to wonder if you went anywhere when you died; Heaven and Hell Sunday school kind of thoughts. Then all this fucked up world—as you put it—happened, and it didn’t seem possible anymore.”

Ryan smiled at Cahz’s use of his description and gave a snort of understanding.

“It doesn’t seem that God is listening. Cannon killed himself and that’s supposed to be a sin, but he isn’t walking around out there.” Cahz sighed. “That mass suicide at Masada doesn’t seem as crazy now.”

“No,” Ryan said. “No, it doesn’t.”

The two men sat staring into the fire, trapped by their own thoughts.

Abruptly Cahz broke the silence. “Give it over here.”

“What?” Ryan replied, puzzled.

“The milk. You’re dribbling it. Pass it over here and I’ll feed Rebecca. It’ll give you a chance to get your wet clothes off.”

Cahz scooped up Rebecca from Ryan’s arms. Ryan handed over the open tin of milk and a spoon he’d liberated.

“Should we heat this up first?” Cahz asked, looking at the milk.

“I haven’t a clue,” Ryan admitted, struggling out of his wet shirt. He stopped, the shirtsleeves still covering his arms, his torso bare. “Elspeth did all that,” he said, looking into the fire of burning school books.

Cahz poured a spoonful for the child. “I don’t know about any of that shit about sterilizing bottles. It’s not going to harm her giving it to her cold?”

Ryan shrugged. “I guess not. She’s been taking it cold and she ate the cracker all right. We’d better get rescued soon, if only because we’re shit parents.”

At that he pulled off the wet shirt and hung it on the clothesline.

“You want a can of soup heated up?” Ryan asked as he peeled his jeans off.

“Sure,” Cahz said. “Pierce a couple of holes in the lid and stick it on the fire.”

A dribble of milk ran down Rebecca’s chin. Cahz gently wiped it away with a dish cloth.

“She seems to be taking this,” Cahz said, pouring another spoon.

“Good.” Ryan nodded. “So how do we signal this chopper?”

“Three possible answers to that,” Cahz explained. “I’ve got a radio. It’s only short range, but if the chopper passes close enough I should be able to raise them. If the radio doesn’t work, I’ve got a flare.”

“And the third option?”

Cahz smiled. “Star jumps.”

“We’ll want to put some clothes back on for that one, mate,” Ryan joked. “I wouldn’t land if there were two blokes in the nude waving their tackle at me!”

The two men laughed at the absurd image.

“God, I’m sore,” Ryan groaned as he shifted to a more comfortable position.

“Guess you didn’t get out much,” Cahz said.

“Only in winter, when the dumb fucks froze,” Ryan answered. “We’d forage maybe a few miles at most. Never got as far out as here.”

Cahz nodded.

“Ah, man, even my tits are sore,” Ryan said, rubbing his chest. “It’s wearing that rucksack with Rebecca. It’s been chaffing me nasty.” He stretched out his shoulders one after the other. “What’s the rest of the world like? I mean, away from all this?”

“Mostly like this,” Cahz said. “There are a few military bases that have survived infection. Mainly shitty little rocks like the Diego Garcia, the Aleutians—those sort of ass-of-nowhere places with an airstrip on it. There’s even a floating shanty town off Hawaii. The biggest infection-free zone is Antarctica. Got twenty thousand people living down there on the ice at McMurdo.”

“Is that it?” Ryan asked despondently.

“There’s a big plan to take back New Zealand. They’ve got a base on Stewart Island to support the Draw and Destroy campaign.”

Ryan extruded the wet socks from his feet. “New Zealand,” he whispered as he slung the soggy tubes out to dry.

“They fly in these huge concrete prefab defenses.” Cahz fed a spoonful to Rebecca like an aircraft. “They build a central compound and a segregated kill zone.”

“So they’re just sitting and sniping at them?”

“Oh no, the kill zone is all measured out. They sit in their compounds playing loud rock music and launching flares. When the kill zone is full, they napalm the lot.” Cahz nodded at the smoke coming off the fire. “That must really stink.”

“We used to burn them at the fence when they got too many,” Ryan said. “The stench would stick in the back of your sinuses for days.”

“But the whole point of these kill zones is they’ve been specially sized so they can count how many W.D.s are incinerated,” Cahz went on. “The concept is, if they can barbeque a million then they’ve got most of them.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Ryan said.

“They want to take the island with the infrastructure intact. The plan is to secure the South Island and start rebuilding our industrial capacity, but there’s no easy fix. The insertion teams who set up the compounds have a high mortality rate. You get sent to the South Island if you’ve pissed off someone high up. And anyway, those towns and cities have been rotting away just like this one. Don’t know exactly how much they’re planning on salvaging.”

“Still, there’s a future,” Ryan said, looking down at Rebecca.

Cahz smiled and nodded.

* * *

Ryan woke with a start. Cahz had knocked over his gun; the hard metal object landed clattering on the classroom floor.

“This is India Tango One, are you receiving me?”

Still naked, Cahz ran over to the classroom window. Ryan sprang to his feet, throwing off the blanket he’d found in the first aid room.

“The chopper?” he asked, his voice quick and excited.

“Come in, over,” Cahz called into the receiver.

He pulled the makeshift blackout curtain from the window and looked out. He turned the handle and pushed the window open ajar.

“I can’t see any navigation lights,” Cahz said, running back to his kit, “but it’s still raining out there.”

He undid one of the flaps on his body armour and pulled out a red flashlight-shaped object. With nary a stitch on, Cahz ran out of the classroom.

Ryan rushed up to the window. Outside, it was pitch black, the flickering light of the fire turning the window into a mirror.

With his ears cocked to the crack Cahz had opened, he listened as he stared back at his reflected face. The rain was drumming down outside and the moan of the dead wafted in the moist air.

With the crackle of the fire behind him, Ryan concentrated on the sounds outside.

And then, just like this morning, the sound of an engine drifted across the sky.

“Hell!” Ryan turned and ran to catch up with Cahz. He was out of the classroom when he remembered Rebecca asleep next to the fire. He paused for a moment debating whether or not he should wake her and take her with him or leave her there.

“I’ll be back in minute,” he assured the sleeping child.

With a quick about turn he was charging out of the school after Cahz. As he gingerly navigated past the broken glass at the door, Cahz launched the flare. The rocket streaked up into the black sky, a tail of flame trailing behind.

“Will it light in this rain?” Ryan called out above the noise of the moaning. He stood in the rain stark naked except for the first aid blanket tied round his neck like a cape. He craned his neck up, watching as the flare burst into a ball of brilliant orange light. The underside of the rain clouds turned orange from the brilliance of the glow. The fizzling signal wafted to and fro as it slowly parachuted down.

“They’ve got to see that, Cahz,” Ryan said, transfixed by the light.

“Back inside,” Cahz said softly.

Ryan was still watching the flare drift down. “What?”

“Get inside now!” Cahz grabbed Ryan’s arm and pulled.

“Why?” Ryan demanded, being pulled off balance. His gaze dropped and he saw why Cahz was so agitated.

The playground was illuminated in the shimmering orange glow. But beyond the playground, pressed up against the school fence, were hundreds of zombies. Every square inch had an undead face staring back at him.

The dozen or so zombies that had trailed them here had been reinforced by a legion of undead. But worse still, there were the handful of zombies trudging across the field towards the school.

“Oh fuck,” Ryan whispered and he turned and fled.

As he barreled back into the classroom Cahz slammed into him. The nude soldier had his gun in one hand his armoured vest in the other.

“They’re in the field!” Ryan’s voice exploded.

“I saw,” Cahz said. “Bring desks and chairs—anything you can. There must be a break in the fence.”

“Can’t we just barricade ourselves in here?”

“Hold this.” Cahz thrust his carbine at him. “Would love to,” he said as he squeezed into his body armour, “but we need space for the chopper to land.”

“Right,” Ryan said, looking around. “Where are you going?”

Cahz snatched the weapon back from Ryan and ran off down the corridor. “I’m going to stem the tide,” he called as he turned the corner.

Ryan called after him, “Dressed like that? You’ll catch your death—”

* * *

Ignoring the broken glass, Cahz ran out into the playground. The flare was still casting the peculiar daybreak glow over everything.

Looking around, the nearest zombie was a good ten metres away. The woman’s hair was matted and wild. The sequined vest top she wore was still clean enough to sparkle slightly under the light. The skin on her bare arms looked warmer, more alive under the artificial light, but the fingers missing from her outstretched hands and the gaping maw left Cahz in no doubt that she was walking dead.

He aimed and fired.

The dead partygoer was floored.

There were a dozen or so zombies in the playground now making a beeline for Cahz, but none were dangerously close.

There was the sound of breaking glass behind him. Cahz turned to see a desk half out the already shattered window and Ryan shoving at it from inside.

Cahz looked up. The shamooli flare was halfway down. It wouldn’t be long before it landed, and although it would continue to burn on the ground for a time, it wouldn’t throw out as much light.

With the carbine snug against his shoulder again, he marched off over the playing field to engage the shambling cadavers. Calmly and efficiently he walked up to within a few metres of the closest zombie and put a bullet between its eyes.

It was now that he wished Ryan had confronted him earlier. On the march over here, Cahz had succumbed to his anger and foolishly shot all the zombies he’d encountered. He knew he could have clubbed them when he’d come across them individually. Now he didn’t have the time to waste; he had to dispatch these cadavers as efficiently as possible before they had a chance to push through in force. He wished he’d conserved his ammunition.

Pressing in against the rusted fence, unperturbed by the rain, a thousand dead eyes watched the half-naked soldier executing their brethren. Already there were far too many to deal with. He had to find and plug that gap.

In the gloom and the rain Cahz couldn’t see the break in the fence, but the stream of zombies were all coming from one direction, leading him back to the source. From behind him the angle of the light flattened and his shadow stretched out over the tall grass.

“Fuck,” he cursed as the illumination from the flare dimmed.

Ahead of him, zombies were squeezing between a pair of broken slats in the fence. It wasn’t a large gap, just enough for the zombies to exploit.