The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) (15 page)

I sighed, reaching for my bedside drawer and some painkillers. There was a knock on my door and I called out for the person to enter. It was Adag; she came into the room and shut the door behind her.

“Is Paul OK?” I asked her, for I couldn’t think of any reason why Adag would come into my room.

“He’s sleeping,” she said and she pointed to the chair that was next to my desk, I nodded my head, and she sat down.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“OK,” I said uncertainly.

“I’ve spoken to Mitch,” Adag said, “He thinks I’m wrong, I need to know what you think.”

“About what?” I was puzzled.

“We’ve got no chance of surviving here,” she said bluntly “But once the electricity goes off and it will eventually, we will have no power to cook, we’ve got water, and a reasonable store of food, but without the power to cook it, it’s a moot point. Yes, we can make a fire, we have the bar-b-que area, but we will only be able to use that now, in the summer, what about the winter, and the food won’t last forever. Mitch says we can try and leave in the coach, but where can we go? For some reason the outbreak that has changed most people hasn’t come here, and by the look of it, it won’t come here for whatever that reason might be. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling, not that it counts for much, that I’m not. I don’t know why and I doubt if I will ever know why, but once we leave here there will be more Twice Dead than just Gregory and the poor man he bit, we could barely deal with Gregory, how the hell can we be expected to deal with more than one?”

Her words made me feel cold inside, but I understood what she was saying. She continued, “The soldiers here now will abandon us very soon…”

“You and Mitch can go with them,” I interrupted her to point out this fact.

“I’m not a brave person Lucia, I’m scared out of my mind, and part of me wants to go with them, but the very fact that their superiors are willing to let you and the other residents die makes me not want to be part of their new world, I’d rather live and die in this one, because at least it tried to make a difference, Mitch feels the same way, at least about staying here.”

I had never really had any feelings about Adag; she was the Assistant Manager of the home, good at her job, efficient, kind when she needed to be, stern at other times. She did not inspire love and devotion in the way that some of the Auxiliary helpers and PA’s had done for some of the residents, but she had done her job well and she was still doing her job even though she must have been sick with worry over her daughter Pia in London.

              “Why are you telling me this?” I asked her.

She took a deep breath, “You know we keep very strong medication on site, some of it intravenous, don’t you?”

I did, Paul took a lot of Morphine, some of it intravenous and for some of the more difficult residents there was medication to sedate them when necessary, kept locked away and only used by certain trained personnel in the home, like Adag.

“There could be a time,” she said slowly, “When we might have to use some of that medication.”

I went still.

“Mitch says I shouldn’t be thinking such things,” she continued when I said nothing in response to her words, “But I am a realist Lucia, what if something happens to Mitch, me, you, what will happen to the others then?”

“There’s Seb,” I heard myself say and Adag smiled.

“Out of that wheelchair he needs help, once he can’t charge his power chair, he will be as helpless as the others.”

I hadn’t thought about that: I had thought about a lot of things, but funnily enough not that. I wanted to tell her she was being stupid, melodramatic, that we were going to be OK, that the electricity might not go off for years, but I knew she was right. We’d struggle for a while, doing our best with what we had, if the Twice Dead didn’t make their way to the home we would be physically safe, but Adag was right, being physically safe simply wasn’t enough.

When the power went there would be no heat, in the summer, it would be OK, but like she said, not in winter. We had food, but even if we rationed it, it would not last forever. We could try and go into town like I had thought of, but once again, there was the problem of meeting up with the Twice Dead, we hadn’t been able to handle one much less more than one. We might stand a chance if Wolf and his people stayed, but that was never in the equation and I didn’t give it much mind.

“When the time comes,” Adag continued looking at me with her unwavering gaze, “I hope I can rely on your help?”

I sat on my bed, my palms pressed flat on the mattress. I pushed harder, wanting to feel the pressure to prove I was actually alive. For the moment I was. I wanted to say to her I didn’t understand what she wanted of me but I did understand, more than she would ever know.

Slowly I nodded my head to her request. Her shoulders sagged with relief and she gripped the arms of the chair she was sitting on, “Thank you.” she said.

“I’m not really keen on injections,” I said, “I’d rather drink something if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Adag said briskly, “They won’t feel anything, it will be like before, they will have a drink, go to sleep and then we can give them the injections so they won’t wake up, you and I can drink a concoction I will make up for us, we will just go to sleep, it won’t be painful, I promise you.”

“What about Mitch?”

“He said no, we’d manage, he wants us to hope, I want us to hope too, but without more than what we have now there is no hope, he won’t ever know, he will go to sleep like the others, like we will afterwards.”

“When?”

“When it gets too difficult,” she said and she stood up, “We’ll know, for the moment, well let’s live the best we all can.”

I nodded my head. She smiled at me, “Thank you for having the strength to do what is right,” she said.

What was right? What was right? What was wrong? I didn’t know. Philosophers down the ages didn’t know. What I did know what was we were no gung-ho survivalists like Wolf and his people, we were a group of disabled people in a home who had limited resources, no weapons, no allies and eventually at some point, no electricity to keep our home warm and everyone fed.

True we had found food in the wood, we could get fresh water from the stream, but Adag was right, it was still not enough.

Later that evening I went out into the darkness of the garden and sat outside the kitchen door on the bench. I wanted fresh air and the coolness of the night before I got ready for bed. I had a bottle of water in my hand in my hand and I sipped from it slowly.

              I had found what an eight-hour pack run was by listening to the other soldiers who had been lucky not to be on burial duty and end up having to partake in the punishment bought about by their companion. In full kit which included a fully loaded back pack they had to run and keep on running. If they felt they had to get up, if they didn’t get up, they were dragged along until they did get up.

              I saw them stagger back just after nine o clock as I was closing the windows in the lounge area, Captain Lacks-Renton had made sure they had paid their dues. They were all filthy, saturated in mud, weeds, dirt and by the smell, cow shit. They were also covered in bloody cuts, some quite deep because I heard Captain Lacks-Renton shout at them to go and see the medic.

The soldiers had stumbled toward the conference centre billet, still swearing but by the sound it, glad to be back at Thorncroft.

A couple of hours later I was outside, staring up at the moon, wondering about our chances of survival when I heard sobbing. Someone was crying. I stiffened, and then I heard retching and I instinctively got up, moving into the shadows on the other side of the kitchen door where the rubbing and recycling bins were kept. The sensor light went on as I passed it.

He was crumpled by one of the bins, his face swollen and blood was bubbling out of his nose. He was clad only in his green combat boxer shorts and a very torn vest. He had just been sick, and I saw bloody vomit near the wheels of the bin.

It was Private Salter. I moved backwards and the second sensor light came on. I sucked in my breath, the young soldier’s eyes met mine. His lips were torn and covered in clotted blood. He had a huge wound on his scalp and one eye was completely closed, the other was blood shot and weeping. He was shivering, clutching a wrist that was bigger than it should have been and he spat out a mouthful of vomit and blood.

The full pack-run hadn’t done that to him, he had been given one hell of a beating, probably after getting back from the run.

He didn’t expect me to help him, but I remembered the first sound I had heard before the retching. Sobbing. Pitiful sobbing.

I turned and ran to the garage, my brace clicking painfully against my protesting knee. Moments later Mitch was squatting down beside the soldier.

“Jesus Christ,” Mitch said and he gently touched Salter’s arm, “What the hell happened to you son?”

“Fell over,” the young soldier rasped, then he whimpered when Mitch touched his wrist.

“Must have been a hell of a fall,” the old soldier said grimly and he turned to me, “Go get his Colonel, Lucy, I’ll get him inside.”

I quickly headed in the direction of the conference centre as this was where I Wolf had gone to. The building was lit up and I saw shadows of people moving across the pulled down blinds.

When I entered the large room, the smell hit me. Cigarette smoke, coffee, sweat, and testosterone, and that was just from the female soldiers. I heard laughter and voices as I pushed open the door but that ended as soon as the soldiers saw me.

The conference room had been turned into a kind of communal living area, all the strip lighting was on and the room was brightly lit. The huge table was covered in army gear from rifles to combat jackets. Some of the soldiers were sitting on chairs cleaning their boots, a couple were at the table drinking coffee and one female soldier, a dark haired woman was sharpening a bowie knife on some sort of flat piece of metal. It didn’t look like army issue.

“What the fuck does she want?” the voice came from the right of me.

Now I had a choice right at that moment, I could either be intimidated by the hostile people in the room, or I could say what I thought and to hell with the consequences.

I made my mind up quickly, “She would like all of you all to get the fuck out of her life but tragically for her that won’t happen for another three weeks.”

There was a snort of laughter from the female soldier sharpening her knife, “That told you Maddox,” she said.

“Screw you Tiffany,” the soldier called Maddox said and the woman laughed again.

“In your dreams,” she said, “In your dreams!”

“I need to speak to your Colonel,” I directed my words to the female soldier, and I added a polite, “Please,” she stood up and went through a door at the back of the room.

It was going to be an uncomfortable time for me waiting for the Colonel, the hostility in the room was like thick icing on a cake. Just then Corporal Peters, the soldier who I had gauged had a sense of humour clattered into the conference room, followed by two other men, they had obviously been on patrol.

Our eyes met and he said, “What are you doing here?” he wasn’t being rude so I wasn’t rude back.

“I need to speak to your Colonel,” I said to him.

“Yes Miss Lal?” the Colonel’s voice startled me. It also made all the soldiers jump up, standing to attention. The officer came out of the door that the soldier called Tiffany had gone through, she was behind him.

“Your Private Salter,” I said, “He’s been hurt.”

I watched the faces of the soldiers directly in front of me and behind the Colonel. Most didn’t react, but I saw eyes flick between some of them.

“What do you mean?” Wolf said.

“Someone kicked the crap out of him,” I said, and then I added for clarification “And no, it wasn’t any of us cripples and retards.”

“Get Barnes,” Wolf ordered the soldier I now knew as Maddox. She turned to go back through door she had just come out of, “Where is he?”

“Mitch has taken him into the home,” I replied, “He has a nasty head injury.”

Lieutenant Barnes appeared a moment later, carrying a large canvas bag which I guessed was full of medical supplies. Both he and the Colonel swiftly left the building and I started to follow them but not before I caught the eye of Private Duke. He and the other soldiers had relaxed when Wolf had left and he had sat back down at the table, reaching for a mug of coffee. I saw his hands then, they were bloody and bruised. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it because the room had all the Pack Run soldiers in it, and they were all bruised and battered but Duke hadn’t been on that run. He hadn’t been on grave digging duty and therefore had not been part of the group that had paid for Salter’s stupidity.

Duke saw me looking at his hands, and I wasn’t fast enough to hide the fact I had guessed he was the one who had beaten up Salter.

“Can’t you afford a punching bag?” I said to the soldier. I wasn’t Private Salter’s best friend, in fact I wanted to kick him in the balls for two reasons, but this was five steps too far, even for me at my angriest.

“Fuck!” the soldier called Maddox had been one of the pack-run men, it was obvious that everyone in the room was aware of what had happened to the young soldier after the run.