The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (19 page)

Charles
greeted her with a nod.

“Have
you got an AVS?” said Heather.

“You’re
quite safe indoors.”

“Have
you got one?”

“In my
pocket.” He jerked his head to the side. “I’d get it, but I’m a little tied up.
You’re lucky; this is my last one.”

She
reached into the bounty hunter’s pocket and took out his AVS. It didn’t alarm
her to be so close to him now. As much as she feared him, there was something that
scared her even more. Something almost everyone was terrified of these days.
What
if the air was infected?

She
ran down the stairs. When she got into the living room the children turned to
look at her, but she had no words for them. Instead she walked outside. The
cool breeze flapped at her hair and sent a chill through her. She held the AVS
in the air.

Please
don’t be infected.

She
pressed the button and the green led blinked. The AVS opened and took in air.

Please
be clean. Please be clean. I’ll do anything. I’ll give myself up. I’ll let them
take me into the Capita dungeons. Just let her be safe and let the air be
clean.

The
AVS whirred and began to process the air. Time slowed, and it looked like even
the birds froze in the sky as the metal gadget in Heather’s hand processed her
chances of a happy future.
If the air’s infected, then so is she.

It
stopped whirring. Heather’s heart thumped against her chest. She put her hand
over it. She wanted to close her eyes, but she knew she couldn’t. It felt like
the ground was shaking underneath her, and she realised that her legs were shaking.

The
AVS lit up. Five red blinks.

She
fell backwards into the glass of the patio door, slamming against it so hard
that it wobbled. She slid to the floor and sat against it. She brought her head
forward and then smashed it back against the glass with a great thumping sound.
The patio doors opened and the children came into the garden.

“Oh
fuck,” said Heather.

Kim
sat next to her mother.

“I
just wanted to know what it was like,” she said.

“It’s
my fault,” said Eric.

For a
second she thought about leaving the boy in her house and fleeing with Kim. It
seemed like it would be fitting punishment for what he’d made her daughter do.
What was the point in helping people if it made a mess of your own life? It was
no coincidence that before the outbreak, people who donated all their money to
charities more often than not had lives more messed up than those they were
trying to help. It had been stupid of Heather to think she could make a
difference.

Minutes
later she found herself upstairs and in front of Charles again. His face was
free from emotion save the suggestion of a grin on his thin lips. She saw that
the skin around his mouth was chapped.

“Is
there a cure?” she said.

“You’re
wasting time,” said Charles. “You need to leave. My soldiers will look for me.”

“Stop
messing about. Has the Capita found a cure?”

Charles
rolled his eyes. He looked like he was in a meeting which he found boring,
rather than tied to a chair in front of a desperate woman.

“The Capita
has borders to guard, Heather. A land to run. People to serve. They don’t have
time for a cure.”

She
was close to slapping him again.

“Don’t
fuck around. Everyone knows the experiments they do. They must have something.”

The
bounty hunter looked her up and down, from her feet to her head. Once again she
felt like he was peeling away her layers of defence and staring into her
secrets and shameful emotions.

“You
look fine to me,” he said.

She
tasted salt, and she realised that a stray tear had escaped the corner of her
eye and trickled down her face and onto her lips.

“It’s
Kim, alright? She took off her mask and the air’s full of it.”

Charles
closed his eyes. There was a few seconds of silence, and when he opened them
again the grin was gone.

“There’s
a cure. It’s not palatable to most.”

“They found
something and they’re holding it back?”

“You
don’t understand, teacher. The people aren’t ready for it.”

She
moved closer to him until only a couple of feet separated them. She held the
knife in her right hand and pressed it against his cheek. With one slight
movement she could pierce his skin, and part of her knew it would feel great.

“Your
knife doesn’t scare me.”

She
knew the words were true. He may have looked more human without his mask, but
she knew there were some emotions that he just did not feel. She threw the
knife against the wall on the far side of the room and heard it clatter to the
floor.

“Fuck,”
she said.

Her
chest started to hurt and air felt harder to get. She stared into Charles’s
eyes and tried to see the human in him. She tried to do to him what he
routinely did to others; she tried to peel back his layers and see him from the
inside.

“Just
tell me,” she said. “Please. For my daughter.”

He shook
his head.

“It’s
not that simple.”

“Just
tell me.”

She
was aware of how strained her voiced was. It was undercut with emotion and it
made the sentence sound more like an agonised wail than a collection of words.
It must have surprised the bounty hunter too.

“It’s
human flesh,” he said.

Silence.
She couldn’t even feel the beating of her heart. She was numb.

“What?”

Charles
cleared his throat.

“Eating
the flesh or drinking the blood of one who is already immune. That’s the only
cure.”

“You
mean – “

He
nodded.

“The
mouth-breathers, Heather. Their flesh and blood.”

She
felt like her head was swelling with the information fed into it, but at the
same time nothing was being retained. She wanted to sink to the floor and close
her eyes, but it was only thoughts of Kim slipping into a coma that kept her
body from folding in on itself.

“I
don’t understand.”

“If
someone thinks they have been infected, they can eat the flesh of one who is
immune. The DC’s. Mouth-breathers. But they must do it before they enter the
virus coma.”

“But
some people come out of the coma and find out they’re immune anyway. So you
might…eat someone for nothing. I just don’t understand.”

“That’s
the price you pay if you want certainty,” said Charles.

She
thought about Eric. There was nobody in the world she would protect more than
her daughter, and she always told herself she would do anything for her. But
what about the boy? He was immune. In his body, somewhere in his flesh or his
blood, was the cure. Could she do what she needed to make sure she didn’t lose
Kim to the virus?

 I’m
not a monster. I can’t do it.

Charles
was wrong. There had to be another way. What about Wes? Didn’t he say he was
trialling a cure for the Capita? Surely it was worth a try. She didn’t know how
long it would be before Kim fell into a coma, but she knew she had to go. Heather
turned and went to leave the room, when Charles spoke.

“If
you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I need to leave.”

“You’re
not going anywhere,” said Heather.

“Oh, I
think I am.”

She
heard the scrape of a chair behind her, and she turned in time to see Charles
rise out of his chair. The ropes that tied his arms and legs flopped to the
floor.

She
looked at the ropes on the floor and wished she had listened more when her
father had tried to teach her about knots. She thought about her daughter
downstairs and wished that she’d been a better parent.

Charles
crossed the room, grabbed her shoulders in a firm grip and before she could
move he slammed her into the wall. Pain exploded in her back and she fell to
the floor.

“You
don’t understand what the Capita will do to you,” said Charles.

His
voice had become menacing again. It boomed throughout the room. His skin was
red now, flushed with anger so tremendous it seemed to shake the walls.

“You’ll
die in the dungeons,” he said. “Your death will take weeks. Your daughter won’t
be so lucky. She’ll wither away her last months on the farms. They’ll drain her
blood and cut the flesh from her body, but she’ll live. They’ll keep her alive
as long as her little body keeps giving. She’ll die so that the Capita infected
can live.”

Charles
reached to the floor and picked up his pickaxe, and it seemed as though he
found it as light as a twig. He lifted it in the air.

Eric
appeared in the doorway. Without a second for pause he launched himself at
Charles. Heather saw the glint of a screwdriver in his hand, and then she saw
it pierce a hole in the bounty hunter’s arm. There was a thud he as dropped his
pickaxe, and Heather thought the floor might collapse under the weight.

She
got to her feet. The knife was too far away, and her shoulder ached. She could
taste the metallic tint of blood in her mouth.

Eric
pulled way the screwdriver. He plunged it back into the bounty hunter’s arm
again and again, and blood spurted over the carpet and walls, making them look
like the victims of a paint fight. Eric brought the screwdriver back and went
to stab Charles again, when the bounty hunter threw a hand out and pushed him
away. The force of it was so strong that Eric staggered back and almost fell to
the floor.

Charles
picked up the axe with his good arm. There was a moment when Heather thought he
might start swinging wildly at them and turn the room into a bloodbath, but
instead he grabbed his mask and then stormed out of the room, went down the
stairs and out of the house.

16

Heather

When Heather
was growing up she felt like stupid things could protect her. Tapping five
times on her bedroom wall before getting in bed. Carrying the same coin in her
pocket every day. Blinking in even numbers, counting back from ten while brushing
each tooth in her mouth. Twisting a key in a lock back and forth, counting each
turn until the number felt right.

When
she was thirteen she saw it for what it was. She’d just finished football
practice. She waited on the curb of the street, despite the fact that the road
was clear, counting back from twenty before she could cross. When she hit zero
she stepped off the curb, and there was a squeal as the driver of the car that
had just turned the corner hit his brakes. He slowed as much as he could from
thirty miles an hour but he couldn’t avoid the girl who had stepped in front of
him. Heather spent the summer at home with her legs in plaster. Her football
skills waned, but so did her belief in an elusive thing like luck.

She
wished she could believe in such protections now. No matter how agonising it
was to know that you needed to leave a room yet couldn’t because you needed to
tap the wall sixty times, it was much scarier to have nothing. She was a woman
with two kids in her care. One, her most precious, might be sick, and the other
was being hunted by the Capita.
No,
she corrected herself,
we’re all
hunted now.

The
smell of food hung in the air as she crossed into the trader district. From a
house a few streets down she saw wispy smoke drift from a chimney. A few days
ago she had watched as a horse and cart carried Capita soldiers down this
street. She could only hope that there wasn’t a repeat today.

She
squeezed Kim’s hand and her daughter did the same. She gripped it again, and in
her head she had counted three.

“What
are you doing, mum?”

I’m
not going back there,
she thought
. Those things didn’t protect you.

Wes’s
house was ahead of them. On the front of the house was a sign that proclaimed
the house to be named “Brown Elm”, thought she knew the sign had not come with
the building. Instead it was an addition that played to Wes’s vanity. Whenever
she saw his house she always had the urge to turn back, but not today. There
was nothing that could keep her away today.

She
thought about the room with the beds. She remembered the dread that crept
across her chest as she heard bare feet pad across the floor and saw a black
mass move toward her. Wes said he was taking money to help the Capita with
their trials of a cure. She hoped that their new cure, whatever it was, worked
and didn’t involve ingesting flesh.

As she
got closer to Wes’s house the aroma of food was overpowered by the
nostril-tingling smell of fire. Black smoke rose above the roof, but she knew
his house wasn’t on fire. It seemed like it came from behind it.

“Will
I be infected, mum?” said Kim.

“I
don’t know,” she said.

She
glanced at her daughter’s face. It was only a brief look, because she didn’t
dare risk more. Kim’s skin looked tired. It looked as if the colour was
draining out of it. The skin around her eyes sagged so heavy it seemed like
something was pulling it down. She hadn’t seen her daughter like this since she
caught a bug and spent six days in bed with a bucket next to her. Kim had paced
the floors worrying that her daughter had somehow caught the infection, even
though she knew it was unlikely.

The
house had been emptied. Marks on the floorboards showed where Wes’s desk had
once rested. The book case was replaced by bare wall, and the chairs that was
lined the side of the room had vanished. Near the door were sprinklings of
smashed glass, as though Wes had left in a hurry, dropped something and not
bothered to clear it up. Heather went to test the door at the other side of the
room when she heard a thud behind her.

“Kim,”
said Eric, and scampered across the room.

Kim
had dropped to the floor with her legs splayed underneath her. Sweat dripped
across her forehead and her skin had lost any trace of colour.

“Mum?”
she choked out.

Eric
took off his coat, lifted Kim’s head and wedged it underneath. Kim leaned her
head back and made a gasping sound that tore at Heather’s ears. It was a sound
that every mother feared; it was hard wired into any parent to be scared of the
sounds your child made when they were in pain. It made her want to do
something, but at the same time it stuck her to the ground in fear. As Heather
looked on, Kim’s eyes rolled back until only the whites showed.

She
knew what this meant, of course, because they were told about it on the news
when the outbreak was young. Heather knew what to expect, but she didn’t know
what to do. It didn’t matter what the white-teethed, overly-positive
newscasters had said. When someone fell into a virus coma you expected them to
wake as a monster.

She
couldn’t waste time being upset. In a crisis the minutes were precious and if
she wasted them on tears, then she would be throwing away hope. She walked
across the room and stood in front of the door where she had once hidden. She
put her hand on the door handle.

What
was she going to find behind the door? A row of beds with people in them? Would
they be dead this time? Maybe the cure didn’t work and she’d open the door to
find a room full of infected.
Come on, Heather.

She
gripped the door handle so hard she felt the metal dig in to her skin. With a
beating heart she twisted, and as the handle turned the door was opened from
the other side with such force that Heather almost spilled over the doorframe.
Wes stood in front of her.

Instead
of his usual suit and jogging bottoms he wore stonewash jeans stained with dirt,
and a t-shirt with more holes than fabric. His hair was combed down to his
forehead and covered in grease. He looked like Wes’s slobbier brother.

“What
the hell are you doing here?” he said.

“What’s
the smoke out back?” asked Heather.

“The Capita
have turned up the heat, so I turned it up even more. Everything that could get
me into trouble is in a heap of ash in the yard. It hasn’t left me with a great
deal of stuff.”

“There’s
nothing here, Wes,” she said.

“Like
I said. It’s all ash.”

Wes
moved to get passed her. Heather stepped out of his way and then followed him
into the main room. Wes stopped when he saw Kim on the floor in the middle of
the floor. He put his hand to his forehead.

“Is
this what I think it is?”

“What
about your deal with the Capita?” said Heather. “You were testing a cure for
them. I need to know about it.”

He
walked closer to Kim until he was stood above her. He shook his head.

“A
deal with the Capita is a flame flickering in front of an arse that’s just
farted. And you never know when the next gust is coming.”

“What
about the cure?”

“There’s
no cure, Heather.”

She
felt acid rise from her stomach.

“You
told me about the trial.”

“I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The
acid started to burn. It slid up her chest and into her throat. She felt her
body heat up and her hands became tense. She felt like steam was rising off her.

“I saw
them,” she said, every word coming from between gritted teeth. “The people. The
beds.”

“You’re
getting into things you know nothing about.”

She
looked at her daughter on the floor. She thought about what Charles had said
about the cure. The boy could have cured her, but Heather couldn’t do it. The
fact she couldn’t bring herself to sacrifice a person who until a week ago had
been a stranger, shamed her. Kim was flesh and blood but the boy was nobody.

Yet
this nobody sat next to her daughter. He looked at her with concerned puppy
eyes, dabbing sweat away from her forehead with the palm of his hand. She was
wrong to blame him, she knew. It was her own fault, all of it. She was the
parent. She should have made sure Kim never took off her mask. She should have
had the thing stitched into her skin, if that’s what it took.

“Listen
Heather, you need to go,” said Wes.

She
felt the heat in her reaching a temperature so hot she was likely to melt
unless she released it. Here she was, more desperate than she’d ever been in
her life, with a daughter on the verge of becoming a monster, and this pathetic
trader wouldn’t tell her about the cure. Who did he think he was to play with
Kim’s life?

She
punched him in the stomach. It felt good as her fist sunk into the rolls of fat
on his belly, and it felt better when the trader bent over and coughed, flecks
of his spit flying from his lips and hitting the floor. She realised that he
didn’t smell of aftershave today; he smelled like sweat.

After
seconds of coughing he straightened up. There was saliva around his chin.

“You
stupid bitch. It wasn’t a cure that I was trialling. Can’t you read between the
lines? Don’t you know how the world works now?”

“What
do you mean?”

“The Capita
isn’t trying to find a cure. They already have one.” He pointed at Eric, who
looked up in alarm. “I’m assuming that’s the mouth-breather? There’s your cure.
Do you know what the farms are?”

“I’m
beginning to piece it together.”

Wes
sneered. “They sure as hell aren’t farming potatoes there. They farm people, Heather.
The DC’s. The Capita collects them and feeds them. They keep them alive and
then they bleed them or cut away their flesh.”

She
felt sick.

“This
is too much.”

Wes
seemed to be on a roll. It was like he’d held in his secrets for so long that
he couldn’t stop them from spilling out.

“The Capita
didn’t pay me to find a cure. They pay me to house the infected and see if they
turn. The ones who turn, I burn. The ones who don’t, I sell.”

She
thought back to when she had hidden in the room. She remembered the figure
stopping feet away from her and speaking to her. The person that asked ‘where
am I?’ had obviously been infected, and they had woken up immune. Where were
they now? Had Wes taken the Capita’s credits and sent them to the farms?

What
about Kim? Now that a cure wasn’t an option, the only thing she could do was
wait. It would be a long, agonising one. What if Kim woke up and was immune?
Would Wes’s conscience allow him to sell even Kim’s daughter? She looked at the
trader and tasted bile in her mouth.

She
threw herself on him. Despite being lighter than him, she was able to get him
to the floor. She put her knees on his arms and, satisfied that he couldn’t
move, made a fist and pounded it again and again into his face. Anger burnt
through her as she watched his nose squash and as she felt his thick blood
splatter back on her own face. She thought of all the people Wes has sent to
their slow deaths and she felt a rage fill her so completely that she could
hardly breathe.

She
felt arms drag her back, and when the fog of anger cleared she realised that
Eric had pulled her away. Wes lay on the floor and resembled a pulverised piece
of meat except for the rise and fall of his chest.

She
didn’t care what happened to her anymore. She didn’t care if she spent the rest
of her life in the Capita dungeons. She was going to do something. Once Kim was
better –
she will get through this –
she was going to stop the Capita.
She didn’t know how, but that was just a detail.