Unfed (12 page)

A definite noise. A half gurgle, some kind of yell? I lean farther and listen intently, but all I can hear is the noise of the rain and the rushing of water. Was that a voice?

“Are you there?” I take a step, unable to see what’s under the water, easing my foot forward in the sludge.

Nothing answers me this time. I try to remember the sound I thought was a yell. Could it have been him, hidden somewhere under there? Or in trouble?

“Hey!”

Smitty?
The voice behind me makes me twist round awkwardly, and my feet almost slip from under me. A hand catches me under the elbow.

“Gotcha!” Russ beams at me, blinking through the rain. “Sorry if I gave you a shock. I know you wanted us to stay in the car, but I thought you looked like you could do with some help.” He really is drenched. I should feel warm and fuzzy and grateful, but I’m too damn preoccupied with thoughts of Smitty. “See anything under there?”

“No. I thought I heard something, but …” I grit my teeth. “There’s some sort of ledge halfway up the wall. I think there’s a path underneath — I can reach up to the ledge and see what’s there.”

Russ looks, then shakes his head. “There’s nothing useful under there. We should go. This is too dangerous.”

“I’m checking it out anyway.”

“Bobby” — he shakes his head — “have you seen how deep the water is? You’ll kill yourself.” He holds my arm tightly.

“Back off!” I holler at him. He does just that, at least for a moment, shocked by my ferocity. But then he’s placed his hands on my rope.

“At least let me.” He looks at me intently. “I’m strong.”

“Yeah, I know it.” I pull it away from him. “Good for you, big guy.” I stumble and stomp through the rising water down to where I think the path begins, only too aware of how ridiculous I must look and how completely stupid I’m being. This is suicide. And I have to admit — as much as I hate to — that if I wasn’t pretty damn sure that Russ was behind me, I might have turned back by now.

I put a frozen, wet hand on the rough stone of the bridge and edge my way until I’m underneath it. The water threatens to overrun my waders, the current strong against my knees.

“Hello!” I call up to the ledge, over the noise of the water.

I squint and focus. I’m going to have to get closer. My hands feel numb like I’ve only just woken up. Pulling the rope along with me, I reach the bridge and edge one foot gingerly down, hugging the stone for support. The water squeezes cold around the waders, but my toe eventually finds solid ground — smooth, flat stone. I step down with the other foot, and I’m almost swept away, my fingers desperately clinging to the side of the bridge. I flatten myself against the crumbling stone. It feels welcome against my cheek. Suddenly there’s a tightening around my waist. With difficulty, I turn my head and look back, and there’s Russ, holding the slack.

“Go for it! I’ve got you!” he shouts against the roar.

I pull a face like I want to laugh.
As if it was that simple, sucker
. At least there’s someone to witness my demise.

Giving myself a lovely limestone facial as I turn my head back again, I edge carefully along the wall, trying to use the force of the current to keep me squashed against the sides. The bottom of the path is smooth, which has pros and cons. One slip and I’m under. The water pushes up against my thighs, under my stupid skirt, splashing up my backside. It doesn’t matter. It’s so cold I’m numb from the waist down.

I can reach the ledge now; it’s not far above me. My arms stretch up and the edge of the stone actually provides a good grip. One hand reaches and feels the surface of the ledge, looking for whatever might be hidden there. Then I inch farther along, and we go through the same process again. I get a rhythm going:

Grab, grab, step, feel.

Grab, grab, step, feel.

Slowly progressing along the path, looking for heaven knows what.
Couldn’t you have been a little more specific, Ma? Where under the bridge? What’s there?

For the first time it strikes me that she could have been warning me against something. I mean, all she actually wrote was “Underbridge.” She could have meant, “Stay away! Don’t go near! There’s danger ‘under bridge.’” My mind races. Isn’t there usually a troll under a bridge? You know, in nursery stories or whatever? And muggers on canal paths. I don’t think there’s ever anything good underneath a bridge. Maybe we should have avoided it. Too bloody late for that now.

Just as I’m savoring the thought, my hand strikes something.

I risk standing on tiptoes to reach, and my poor sore digits close around it. A padded strap. I pull. It’s heavyish, and caught on something. I give it a tug, and then another, with gusto.

The thing falls over, off the ledge, and almost over my head and into the fast-flowing river behind me. At the last minute I snatch it back, wrenching my shoulder and neck in the process — but that doesn’t matter, I save it, and quickly stick an arm through, reattaching myself to the wall like an clam, and preparing to edge back to (relatively) dry land.

“What is it?” Russ shouts down at me.

“Backpack.”

The disappointment is like bile in my mouth.
Backpack-not-Smitty
. After all of this, Mum had better have packed something damn useful.

“What’s inside?” he shouts again.

I raise my eyebrows and shoot him a look, the effect of which is no doubt totally lost in the gloom of the underbelly of the bridge. “Wanna give me a moment before I check?”

“Sorry.”

I can see him grinning at me in the light. He’s so head-messingly cheerful, it’s not normal. I wonder for a split second if he’s some kind of android. Or alien. Or maybe he’s an adult stuck in a teenager’s body. Nobody my age I know is that weirdly smiley.

“Want me to pull you?” he shouts.

“I’m good,” I reply quickly. It occurs to me I’m not overanxious to share the contents of this bag in public. Hadn’t thought that far ahead. It’s not like I want to linger in the icy river, but I need a few secs more to figure out how I’m going to get to look at this stuff on my own.

Then Russ drops his end of the rope and disappears.

“Great,” I mutter, groping along as fast as I can. I’m almost through the bridge and out when Russ comes into view again. But this time he’s not alone. A zom is holding him in a deadly hug.

“Russ!” I scream.

At first I think the zom is a kid, because there’s not much to it, but as Russ struggles to throw it off I realize that it’s a full-grown adult, but only half a zom. Torso, arms, head. Below the waist is missing, with a raggedy edge, little tatters of wet flesh hanging loosely down, shaking like decorations in the wind as Russ tries to free himself from it. Goodness knows how this one caught him, goodness knows how it moves, but it’s swollen and bloated and I’m guessing it has been splashing around in the water for a while.

Russ and his dance partner wrestle, and Russ wins. The Thing with No Legs splashes into the water beside me and bobs up like a cork. Quickly its arms rotate with a front crawl action the likes of which I’ve never seen before. It has strength and enthusiasm, and the cold doesn’t worry it. As it powers toward me, aided by the current, it opens its mouth and gives a gurgling bellow. It’s a man, with meaty shoulders and no hair and a face so swollen and so pale it’s almost violet, every little spidering purple vein showing the strain of effort. I’m struck with the certain knowledge that with this one I am hopelessly out of my league. I really wish I had saved my game before I took the decision to venture under this bridge. Because he’s spotted me, and at once Russ is forgotten; he’s homing in on his new target, and I know I am done for.

Unable to free a punching arm or a kicking foot, I scream. Vulnerable and stuck like a mouse on glued paper. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nothing to do but wait for him to land. It’s pathetic.

Russ sticks out a faraway arm, and with no other option, I jump for
it. I miss, of course, but as I splash into the water my hand grasps something — a trailing root? — sticking out of the bank, and I pull myself along it, the freezing water deafening me. No-Legs swooshes past, his big sausage fingers batting the water in a tantrum, as if he’s trying to pull himself after me. But it’s too late for him; as good a swimmer as he is, he’s no competition for the river. The current carries him off and he yells in protest, whirling round and looking back at me with sad and resentful eyes, because it’s not fair, and I would have made such a tasty meal.

As I dare to feel relief, my root gives way, and I’m underwater again, spinning, arms flailing, trying to touch the bottom or grab on to something, scared as much of being saved by No-Legs as of drowning. My knee scrapes something — I’ve lost a wader — and I find the bottom and push myself up to the surface.

I’m standing. I’m back on the path. But on the other side of the river.

The backpack is still on my shoulder. That’s OK, then; all I have to do is to not die of cold, climb to dry land, and the others will meet me on this side of the bridge.

The others? They’ve gone.

Russ is no longer standing beside the riverbank, and I can’t see the Jeep. Through the sound of the rain comes a sudden, shocking, juddering noise. A shadow moves over the sodden ground, and there’s a strange flattening of the flood water as if something is forcing it down from above.

A helicopter.

Slick black and hovering, like an evil beetle. It pauses for a second only, and then drops. It lands, and I nearly lose my balance as I’m battered by its downdraft.

Three men get out and run toward me at a crouch. Soldiers in black.

Shit! Shit!

They’ll see me any minute. I have to move, but I suddenly realize that I still have the rope around my middle, and that rope is still tied to the tree trunk on the other bank. With stiff little fingers, I try to ease the knot free, but the water has made it stick fast.

The first two soldiers have reached the riverbank. They’re looking for something — or someone.

Behind me the helicopter has stirred up the water, and I’m caught in a rolling wave. I smack into the river and sink, the shock of the cold flooding down my neck and over my face, my eardrums feeling like they’re going to burst with the sound and the pressure. The backpack weighs me down from behind, and I roll upside down, struggling, trying to swim, pulling myself toward where I think up is. My lungs are beginning to burn, and the huge urge to take a breath is becoming the only thing that I can think about. I fumble and fumble, but the knot isn’t easy. I kick out with my legs — more out of panic than anything — but as luck would have it, my feet find the bottom and I spring myself up to the surface, gasping and flailing and full of shock that I’m still alive.

Finally the knot gives, but all that exists is churning water — frantic, icy, fast water.

“You’re going to burn.”

He’s right, I am. I’m boiling hot. I twist my head sleepily, feeling the sand under my face, and try to look up at him. But he’s just out of sight. The sun hurts my eyes, and I blink
.

“So put some lotion on me.” It’s such an effort to speak. I think I hear a seagull screeching somewhere. I’m going to need a drink soon
.

“Bossy.” But in spite of his protests, I hear the bottle give a little squelching noise as he flips the lid. “Lying here is not going to help, you know,” Smitty says. “You might feel like you need a vacay, but you ain’t earned it yet, sweetcakes.”

“Yeah, yeah. Sunscreen me,” I mumble into the sand
.

“OK,” he says, sitting on the backs of my legs and placing his oily hands on my back. “But you’ve got promises to keep. And miles to go before you sleep. And miles to go before you sleep.”

“Shut up!” I laugh. “You don’t talk like that.”

He laughs, too, and rubs the cream on me. And as he does, my skin comes off. He keeps rubbing my back, and the muscle and fat and flesh and ligaments slough off, until there’s nothing left apart from shoulder blades and spine
.

“Now that” — he taps my backbone — “that is what we need to see.”

*  *  *

I wake, screaming with imagined agony. I’m so cold I feel burning hot, shaking, curled in a ball like a shrimp. My arms and legs shoot out along the ground to make sure I still have solid ground below me.

I have.

And it has stopped raining. After the deafening noise of the relentless downpour, the helicopter, and the amped-up roar of the river under the bridge, the relative quiet shocks me. And then there’s the sound I’m making myself, although at first I don’t realize it’s me. I’m shivering uncontrollably, literally making
va-va-va
noises through trembling lips. It’s almost funny. I pull at my jacket around my neck; I’m so screwed up with the frigid water that my brain can’t work out my temperature. Freezing — boiling — freezing.
Choose one and go with it!
But the fact that I’m still breathing and still in one piece fills me with a tremendous sense of invincibility, and I almost want to laugh out loud. If I had the strength and the breath to spare, I would.

I’ve lost one wader. And Alice’s dumb skirt. Incredibly, that seems to be the sum of my injuries. I look up and find I’m on a kind of grassy knoll in the river.

How long have I been out? At least I’m still alive; for all I know the others have been captured, or shot, or chomped.

Damn
… where did the helicopter go?

I rub my eyes and look around, my breathing slowly returning to almost normal.

Fog. Thick, white, choking fog. It feels clammy against my skin; I can almost taste it.

No motor blades whirring, no shouts or shots being fired. Just the white noise of the river, and the squelch as I tentatively get up, testing my limbs to see if they still work.

I weigh up my situation. As far as I can tell, I’m not stranded, as such — the water around my little island is just overflow from where the river has burst its banks. I can see maybe ten feet into my future, but no farther. Close by, there’s another grassy knoll, and on it, a hulk of brown, like a big balloon with four thin sticks pointing into the sky. It’s not until I spot the horns that I realize what it is. A fat, dead cow. Full of fermenting dead-cow gas and bursting at the seams.

“Hey, fella,” I shiver at it. “This water thing sucks, huh?”

But that’s all I can make out. I have no concept of where the road is, where the trees are, how far away I am from where I started. Lost, and colder than I thought possible. I wonder if I should take off my jacket and fleece. What does the guy on the survival show do? I’m pretty sure he strips naked. That’s all well and good if you’ve got a flint stuck in your shoe and a handy supply of flammable moss or whatever you’re supposed to use to start a fire with, but not so great if you’re marooned on a grassy knoll, and you’re me.

It’s only when I start to take my jacket off that I remember I have a backpack slung around my shoulder, and I almost whoop for joy. I pull at the drawstring with icy fingers.

The first thing I see makes me want to cry. Two tightly bunched balls of synthetic materials. I quickly unravel the first one, but I already know what it is. Waterproofs. My dad always used to keep a set or two in the car for any impromptu tramping through the countryside. That distinctive smell that takes me back to Dad, wet vacations, miserable walks, and stiff-upper-lipness. It makes me weep, but it’s not just sentimentality that’s providing the waterworks. For the first time I will finally have something to cover my backside. Some long waterproof pants and an anorak.

And I’m certain now — if there was ever any doubt remaining — that Mum left these things for me, and that she has a plan. The fact that I’m following her bread crumbs successfully makes me happier than I’m willing to admit out loud. And if she has a plan, then maybe this whole thing will end well. Or at least, it will end.

I dress quickly, and already I’m warmer. Great thing about waterproofs is that you always sweat like a bastard when you wear them, and for that I’m now grateful. I wring out my fleece and jacket as best as I can, then put them on over the waterproofs.

“God bless man-made fibers!” I slap my chest like a loon. “Oh lordy, I’m talking to myself now. Must have gone full-on feral.” I look around me. “Well, at least it’s better than having an imaginary friend. Dream Smitty is about all I can handle right now.”

A terrible moan erupts from the grassy knoll beside me. I twist round. No, make that a terrible
moo
. My bovine friend is struggling to get up.

“Holy cow,” I groan. But this cow is most unholy. And most Undead. Her face is barely there: a white skull clotted in places with clumps of bloodied flesh that used to be a nose, a mouth, cheeks. Browned teeth grind as she moos and leans toward me, the skin on her body stretched tight and transparent across her enormous, swollen belly, the visible organs twitching inside. She lurches forward, so bloated she can barely walk, and flops down into the water. But the eyes are on me, and Daisy wants blood. I put the backpack on again; further investigations will have to wait.

The fog swirls, and I take a step into the cold water with the foot that still has a wader on. The cow struggles to her feet again and moos her deafening moo, trying to propel herself toward me on her stick legs. But it’s hopeless; she’s so inflated that she can’t keep upright. She smacks
down into the water again, and as she does her huge belly splits and dead-cow stomach explodes into the dank air.

“Jesus!” The smell is beyond unbearable. I retch into my hands and stagger away through the water before the ooze can catch up with me.
Great
. We have zombie animals now, too. Did the zoms run out of humans and start chomping on the local wildlife?

Heaven only knows where the road is. Meantime, I need to get to someplace hidden. Someplace I can see the lie of the land and find my companions, or what’s left of them. The fog thins a little.

There’s a cowshed on a little hill up ahead. I limp toward it, slow and slipping with my unbalanced footwear. This will never do. I fling my remaining wader off into the wetness.

By the time I make it to the cowshed my socks are caked, gouging out chunks of sloppy earth as I power upward. But at least the effort warms me. And there’s something to do with moving, one slow step in front of the other, that makes the adrenaline kick in, that reminds me we escaped, and that in spite of zombies, snipers, and water, water, everywhere — I’m alive.

“Mmm, yummy.”

The cowshed stinks almost as bad as the Undead cow did. Actually, come to think of it, the whole of the countryside stinks. Must be dead things marinating in the wet: a funky, musty smell with the slightest hint of sickly sweet.

The shed is empty, except for a pile of hay or straw — I’ve never known the difference — and a substantial cow pie of dark green poo. I make the mistake of standing on it, thinking it’s hard, and the crust slides off, leaving a brighter, wet mess underneath. Dammit, it’s not like these socks were salvageable anyway. I carefully peel them off and throw them
in the corner, my feet fuchsia, raw, and exposed. But now that I’m in here, I kind of feel worse than I did before, because there’s a wall without a door, and at any moment there could be zombie flora or fauna sneaking up on me and hiding behind that wall. So I decide to climb up onto the roof. It’s simple enough; a horizontal beam provides a foothold, and I pull myself up onto the sloping, corrugated iron pretty easily. And I lie flat on it, making myself small against the outline of the shed so if anyone happens to glance my way, they won’t immediately spot me.

The fog is definitely on the wane, and there is a better view from up here, for sure. I can see back to where the river winds out of the woods, and I can see the extent of the tree cover, spreading back for acres upriver. And I think I can see the spot where the road emerges a few fields away. There’s no sign of any Jeep, though. I wonder if they made it.

“Maybe they did make it,”
Smitty murmurs in my ear.
“But maybe they kept driving away.”

“Wot, you my bad fairy now, Smitty?” I murmur back. He doesn’t reply. He’s selective like that.

The sun is blinking weakly through the heavy clouds, casting rays down onto the glittering, wet ground. This is weird of me, but it makes me smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen sun for what seems like a lifetime. Behind me, there are fields, and then the horizon drops away. We must be on a kind of plateau up here; either that or the world has melted away. I quite like that idea — walking to the end of the earth and then dropping off the edge. I could always stick out a hand when I pass Australia and catch myself on a gum tree. I’m sure things are a lot safer Down Under.

I lie on my back for a moment, feeling the uncomfortable corrugated lines straightening out the kinks in my spine. My hand is on the bag.

“Stop putting it off. Look in the bag, Roberta.”

All right, already.

Rolling over, I pull the bag toward me, open the top, and stick a hand in. There’s a plastic bag, and I extract it slowly. Granola bars. About a dozen; I can see them through the plastic. I break into the bag anyway and find water-purifying tablets, antiseptic cream, and a roll of bandage. I rip open one of the bars and cram it into my mouth; there are chocolate chips that explode their sugar over my taste buds, and gritty oat pieces that scratch my throat as I swallow. I’ve been all Nil by Mouth for weeks now. It’s quite something to be eating again, and my stomach roars hungrily for more. I eat another and stop there. Who knows how long these things are going to have to last me? Besides, there’s other stuff in this bag that needs my attention.

I delve farther into the backpack and find a water bottle, then something hard and heavy, wrapped several times in plastic and sealed with black tape. I place it on the roof with a
clunk
. I have a feeling this may be the main event. I run my hand around the backpack, and just as I think there’s nothing else, my fingers catch on the edge of something rigid and flat. I pull it out.

A postcard. With a lighthouse on it.

A tingle fizzes down my spine. Same lighthouse as in Martha’s office, I’m sure of it. I turn the postcard over. Yes, there at the bottom it says
ELVENMOUTH LIGHT
. There’s also a tiny scrawl:

Mum’s writing.

Seriously, Mother?
Couldn’t you have used the space to say something a bit more helpful? Like, starting with where the hell this lighthouse is,
perhaps? Is it where Smitty is, or where you are? Or should we beware the lighthouse? Or maybe it’s symbolic, another code to be worked out? And why the hell did Martha have the same damn picture?

I groan. I get that my mother is being über-careful and all, I truly do — I mean, if this backpack had fallen into the wrong hands, heaven only knows what could have happened. The enemy would have waterproofs! They’d have clean drinking water! And a charming picture of a lighthouse! It would have been game over, Mother.

I shove the postcard back into the pack.

Just the heavy, wrapped-up thing to investigate. And you know what? Part of me already knows what it is, and that’s why I’ve left it till last. Because if I’m right, I’ll have a big ol’ dilemma on my hands, the extent of which we haven’t seen the likes of before now.

I unwrap the thing very carefully, tearing off the tape piece by piece until just the plastic remains. Mum did a great job of making it watertight, and it’s as well she did, because the thing inside would probably not react wonderfully to being underwater.

As I reach inside the plastic to retrieve the thing that I’m going to wish was never there, I suddenly doubt myself. But as my fingers close around the smooth, cool object and I draw it out slowly, my very worst suspicions are confirmed.