The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) (21 page)

              I saw her push her tongue around her mouth. Slowly she nodded her head. She stood up and looked down on me, “I think I might have underestimated you,” she said taking me by surprise.

              “That’s what most people do with us disabled folk,” I quipped.

“Big mistake I think,” she said and then she walked away, rigid, tall and a soldier doing her duty, which included making, Corporal Peters keep his pants up. Jasmine was going to hate me if she found out I had dobbed her in, but right now, in this world that was upside down and arse about tit, there was no time for brief romantic liaisons that could lead to complications in nine months’ time.

S
tevie wheeled me over to Phoenix’s room as my request. Phoenix hid his computer under the bedcovers as Stevie pushed me to the side of his bed. When Stevie had gone he bought it back out.

              “What do you want?” he said in usual blunt way.

              “Can you access everything on this COBRA site?”

              “Yes,” he said in a matter of fact voice, “They locked me out on my other computer, but I created a mirror.”

              “Mirror?”

Phoenix stared at the screen in front of him, “Everything they do mirrors back onto my computer, they don’t know I am still watching them, I can even go on the web and do searches,” he wasn’t boasting just giving the facts.

              “Good,” I said, I leaned over and peered at the screen, there were grids, and all sorts of things going on that I had no understanding of, but I didn’t care. Phoenix understood it and that was all that mattered, “Can you find out where all the other contagion survivors have been located in the UK?”

              I watched his fingers fly over the keys. Five minutes later, he had pulled up a list.

              “So far,” he said, “In Dorset, in Sussex, in the Isle of Wight, Scotland, in Ireland.”

              “Can you at correlate where the survivors were found in relation to any fields of wild garlic and heavy woodland and if there are any Twice Dead in the locality and if they are how far are they from those particular areas?”

              Phoenix didn’t question what I was asking him. Seconds later a map appeared on the screen, his fingers danced over the keys and red dots appeared on the map, spread thinly all over the UK.

              He then moved the cursor to a box in the far corner of the computer and began to type what looked like me to be just numbers, symbols and letters.

              “I’m creating a formula,” he said as typed, “I won’t be long.” He wasn’t. Ten minutes later, he showed me what he found.

              I had been right. Every single survivor had been found in areas that were heavily wooded and had vast swathes of wild garlic growing in certain areas and there were no Twice Dead within ten miles of those areas.

              Why hadn’t the clever scientists safe underground made the connection we had made? I forced myself to think logically. It was obvious the people at COBRA were collecting data in the same way Phoenix was only they weren’t looking at it the way we were.

              “The movement of the Twice Dead,” I asked Phoenix, “Are they being tracked by the Drones?”

              “Yes,” Phoenix confirmed what I had suspected all along, “They are heading for cities, they are cannibals too, they eat each other, and some of them sleep.”

              “Sleep?” I said in surprise. Now that was news to me.

              “Yes,” Phoenix said tapping at the keys on his computer, “They move during the day, then when it gets dark, they drop to the ground, but not all of them, some remain awake, but they don’t move, they just stand where they are.”

              My brain took in this new information and processed it.

              “Sentinels,” I said suddenly.

              “Sentinels?” it was Phoenix’s turn to echo me.

              I nodded my head, “I don’t think the Twice Dead are your bog standard Zombies, eat brains and go looking for more brains, they’re clever, they seem to have an aversion to wild garlic or something in heavily wooded areas, and know how to avoid it, they aren’t interested in the countryside either by the look of it, they have left small villages and towns and seem to be going toward the cites, why?”

              Phoenix shrugged his shoulders; he had no more idea than I did and had no interest in the movement of the Twice Dead unless they were heading in our direction. I though was troubled by what Phoenix had shown me. Moving out of Thorncroft would be our downfall, as long as there was wild garlic in the ground in vast swathes then we had a modicum of protection, but what in the Wild garlic were the Twice Dead averse to?

              What we needed right now was a scientist, or someone who understood herbs and wild vegetation.

              I thanked Phoenix for his help, he nodded and went back to monitoring COBRA, we had our Sentinel I realised, one who was able to keep us abreast of the very people who did not value us as fellow human beings.

              “Fuck you Epsilon Command whatever and wherever you are,” I thought savagely, “Fuck you and yours!”

Whatever Captain Lacks-Renton said to Corporal Peters was extremely effective, or so we thought it was. Jasmine was in tears the next day. Absolutely devastated in fact and I felt a surge of guilt as she sobbed her heart out in her room and refused to speak to anyone to tell them what the matter was.

              She’ll get over it I thought, and please God she’s not bloody pregnant. I said nothing to Adag or Mitch and it appeared Captain Lacks-Renton had refrained from telling Wolf anything, but Corporal Peters was not in the home very much from then on, being on foot patrol most days around the ground and if he saw me, his face went stony and he headed in the opposite direction.

              He obviously knew who had dobbed in. Not my problem though, I had to think of Jasmine’s welfare whether she liked it or not.

              Jasmine became very quiet, her ‘getting over her knickers off” fun’ as I called it didn’t happen as quickly as I had anticipated. It appeared that her time with the young soldier had affected her on a deeper level. I found this perplexing, as most of the residents in the home were forever changing boyfriends and girlfriends, everyone body was always going out with somebody. It was very important for a lot of them to be seen to be in a relationship.

One good thing did come out of Corporal Peters being exiled to duty outside of the home, Jasmine went looking to Eden for comfort and the two girls were back together again and for a little while, things took on a sense of normalcy.

              The first week went by in the home. We foraged for as much food as we could and the well was bought back into action with the help of Wolf’s men. We still had electricity, but how long that was going to last was anyone’s guess.

I saw Private Salter again on the eighth day of the quarantine. He was now well enough to return to the conference room billet. His face was still battered but he was stitched up and on his feet.

              His uniform had been cleaned, and he was with Lieutenant Barnes who had given him the all clear to return to his comrades.

              Lieutenant Barnes nodded at me as he left the building, telling Salter to stay where he was as the Colonel was coming over from the billet and wanted to speak to him in the office. Salter stood where he was, awkwardly, I was sitting at the dining table with a cup of tea and my sketch book. He caught sight of me and I looked at him directly. He bit his lower lip and averted his eyes.

              “How’s your head doing?” I said to him. I had a feeling of deja vu, I had said the same thing not so long ago to Eden. These two so needed to compare notes. His hand instinctively went to his scalp which had been shaved and stapled. Nine staples, caked with bits of blood and scabby flesh but healing well. The swelling in his left eye was almost gone but his lips were peeling and raw looking. One of his arms was in a sling, he had a fractured wrist and it would take a bit of time to heal but other than that he was OK.

              I had been mulling over what had happened to the young soldier since it happened. I didn’t particularly like Salter but my moral compass, which for the moment was still intact was outraged by what Duke had done and subsequently got away with.

              “It’s OK,” Salter mumbled.

I reached for my tea and I looked out of the window as I spoke, “Tell your Private Duke if he touches you again, I will tell the Colonel who beat the shit out of you.”

I heard Salter suck in his breath, “How do you know…” Salter stuttered as I took a sip of my tea.

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” I said curtly, “Just tell him.”

“Why?” I understood Salter’s question. He had been disrespectful about Gregory, called us “fucking retards, so why should I offer him any sort of help?

“Because, unlike you Private Salter,” I said turning to look at him, “I treat people how I want to be treated, you obviously don’t but I will not lower myself to your level, yes, I wanted to rip your head off and shit down your neck for what you said, both times, but that isn’t my job and it isn’t Duke’s either,” I took another mouthful of tea and reached for my pencil to start drawing.

“Why do you live here?” Salter asked me, his words were hesitant and he physically braced himself for me to tell him to mind his own business.

“I have disability and this is home for people with disabilities,” I said and he blinked. He hadn’t expected me to answer him.

“But-but you’re not…” his words fell away as he saw the expression on my face, but then he added, “I don’t...don’t understand…” his bewilderment was genuine, he looked so confused.

“I take it you don’t know a lot of people like me?” I said.

He shook his head, “No, not like…” he hesitated, trying to find words that didn’t offend.

“What about war veterans?” I asked him, “Ones who were disabled by war, surely you have seen them?”

“Yeah…but…they’re dif…” he began but I interrupted him.

“No, they are not, a disability is a disability, whether it is physical, learning or anything else, we are all in the same box, just different compartments,”

He was an intelligent young man, with a rather big gap in that intelligence.

Before he could ask me another question the door clattered open and Stevie stomped in.

“Hi Lucy!” he said upon seeing me at the table. His face was flushed red and glistening with sweat from exercising. I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

“Go and have a shower Stevie,” I said to him, “You pong.”

He laughed and then he saw Private Salter, he smiled, and then he shocked me because he said, “Hullo Kai.”

“Oh hi, Stevie,” Private Salter said. I looked at the young soldier who averted his eyes from mine very quickly.

“Want to play checkers again?” Stevie gave the young soldier a cheery smile.

“I can’t at the moment,” Salter said, he fidgeted, determined not to look at me if he could help it, “I have to speak to the Colonel.”

“OK,” Stevie said, and he turned to me and smiled proudly, “I taught Kai how to play checkers.”

“Really?” I said and I kept my gaze on the visibly squirming soldier, “When did you do that?”

“When I helped him with his food when he was sick,” Stevie said and then he looked anxious, “It was ok to help him, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied, “It was, who asked you to help him?”

“No one,” Stevie said cheerfully, “I saw him trying to eat his soup when he was in bed, but he couldn’t, he knocked the bowl on the floor, I cleaned it up, then got more for him, I had to help him eat it, he kept dropping his spoon.”

Private Salter was now staring at the floor, “My left arm had a drip in it,” the young soldier mumbled.

“Stevie has Downs Syndrome,” I said, “Did you know that?”

“He told me,” Private Salter said and he glanced at Stevie.

“He also has a learning disability, but that doesn’t stop him from being intelligent.”

“Yeah,” Private Salter said and with great reluctance he looked at me. I smiled at him and his mouth dropped open.

Stevie reached out and longingly touched Private Salter’s combat Jacket, “I want to be a soldier,” he said to me.

My heart lurched. Jack had wanted to be a soldier.

“You just like my jacket,” Private Salter said and Stevie grinned at him.

“Yeah,” he nodded his head in agreement and then he laughed.

“What’s wrong with Cassidy?” Private Salter asked me suddenly. His question took me a bit by surprise but I told him, watching his face, “I’ve not heard of that before,” he confessed.

“Eden has something called Kabuki Syndrome,” I said, “It’s quite rare.”

“Seb hurt his back in a car,” Stevie piped up.

“Phoenix and Paul have Asperger’s,” I said, “But they are both extremely clever but not in the way most people are.”

“Jasmine is just thick,” Stevie said and he laughed when he saw my expression, “I’m only joking Lucy, she’s only a bit thick.”

I snorted back a laugh, though I should have told him off. Private Salter put a hand over his mouth and nose and tried to pretend to sneeze.

At that moment Wolf came out of the office. Private Salter immediately snapped to attention, Wolf glanced at me and then at Stevie before turning his unfriendly eyes onto the young soldier, “I hope you are not causing any problems Private Salter?”