The Survivors of Bastion (Fall of Earth Book 1) (14 page)

              ‘They, uhh… They’re infected with something,’ I said. ‘Something that turns them into these rabid monsters.’

              ‘Marcus is strong, though,’ she said wilfully. ‘He never gets ill. He can pull through from anything.’

              ‘I… I don’t know…’

              ‘We don’t know anything about this thing yet, Maria,’ Leah suddenly said. ‘For all we know some people might get infected and some might not. It’s just a matter of waiting.’

              Maria smiled, her eyes still moist with tears before running her hands over her face and shaking her head.

              ‘What am I saying?’ She said. ‘Here I am worrying about Marcus and then there’s everything that happened back in town…’

              ‘Do you remember anything?’ I hurriedly asked. ‘We got out pretty early on… At least I think it was early… Do you remember seeing anything after Rudy detonated his bombs, or whatever that thing was…?’

              ‘We were there after it went off,’ she said. ‘I felt the ground shake, it was that powerful. We set off in a hurry, hiding behind the fences on each house and trying to get to the next one, one at a time. It was crazy. Jack Wilson from the house a few doors down, we could hear him screaming… Oh, God… And then-’

              ‘Do you remember seeing anybody else while you were getting out? My mom, maybe?’

              Maria paused, thinking, relaying the towel on Marcus’s forehead and rubbing his arm in comfort.

              ‘No…’ She said, ‘no, I didn’t see Henrietta at all. We didn’t see many of ours, everybody was so spread out, they all ran in different directions. Some went to their houses, some ran in whatever direction. We saw five or six being attacked in the streets… I hate to say it, Tommy, but I think we’re the only one’s left.’

              I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything for me to say, anyway. Marcus convulsed and Maria returned to tending to him, and in the midst of that terrible scene I felt Leah’s hand rest on my shoulder.

              ‘I’m sorry, Tommy. I was hoping that more would have escaped.’

              ‘Yeah…’ I said, calming myself at the thought of this, this reality that I would have to accept at some point – but right then I was still in denial. Come on. Let’s go get Robbie and Hayley.’

Chapter Fourteen

Rest

I took lookout duty that night – I knew that I was going to cry, and I didn’t want any of them seeing me like that. Robbie, Hayley and Leah set up some beds in the living room just across the hall from the basement door, but I doubted that they would be sleeping in them. With Marcus downstairs, and Maria caring for them, they would likely spend their time dozing in and out of consciousness, succumbing to sleep while trying desperately to resist in case he died and came back. They would be safe – all three of them had spent nights awake, be it for lookout duty or just sleeplessness in this odd, dangerous world we occupied.

              I had wandered around the outside of the house a few times, my father’s rifle in my hands, trying to keep my mind occupied by the prospect of some approaching, possible threat. He had left us just as one threat had threatened our existence, and now my mother had gone with him just as another had confronted us.

              She had warned me that this was in the nature of our efforts, though; that the things we work hardest to build can be wiped away in an instant, that it’s much easier to destroy something than it is to create it. One takes seconds of recklessness and chaos, the other requires years and years of discipline and work, and only then does it possess some value to you that can be ripped away without warning.

              What we had built, what all of us had built, had been taken away from me and everybody who had assisted in the construction of Bastion.

              What happened now might have been beyond me, but I had to figure something out. Marcus would likely die based on the knowledge I had of the virus, and he could come back. If he did, he would be damn near impossible to stop without a clean shot to the head, and that was presuming I had the opportunity. He had ripped the infected attackers apart, at least some of them, so attacking us in a frenzied state would be all too easy for him to achieve.

              I sat atop the Ranger, now just an exhausted machine that wouldn’t take us anywhere because of the empty engine. If we were going anywhere from here it would be on foot. I looked about the land, surveying it in the evening light. The night was still, and it didn’t appear that anything was coming for us. I was operating under the assumption that the infected weren’t exactly the stealthiest of assailants, so if they came running we would know pretty quickly.

              I laid back on the metal, setting the rifle down next to me and looking up at the stars as they came out in the upcoming dark. In the grand scale of things we were just another drop in the ocean of the universe, a tiny rock with self-contained problems that the universe didn’t give a fuck about. The notion of an apocalypse event is often seen as something that happens within our world or something that comes from outside. Either way, even if a virus had almost wiped out the planet’s population… And now another had struck us, too, it was still possible that meteor could strike us. Space didn’t care about our problems, although it would be a hell of a stroke of irony.

              The smoke over Rudy’s house a few miles away had stopped more than an hour ago, and with it some tiny whisper of hope had disappeared. I don’t know why. Maybe I was associating it with the death of the virus, but I knew that wasn’t true. It was alive, and it’s servants would be hungry to pass it on.

              This was something that I never did, and I really shouldn’t have done it, but I found myself beginning to fall asleep. I was the lookout, and it was a cardinal sin to sleep on the job – I had read in one of the history books I found a while back in a house that they would shoot trench soldiers in world war one if they fell asleep on night duty. Rightly so, too, but I was just so fucking tired…

              I don’t know how long I had been out when I heard my name being shouted.

              ‘Tommy…!... It’s Marcus.’

              I sat up hurriedly, snatching up my rifle and jumping down from the roof of the Ranger. I followed Hayley through the house and down into the candlelit basement, the most light that existed probably within 50 miles of us right now.

              Maria was crying over Marcus’s body. He was laid there, motionless, his eyes closed. I could do nothing but stand there and let her mourn her brother’s death while we presided over just another tragic scene from the last 24 hours. I had experienced more death in that time than I would have cared to experience in a hundred lifetimes, and here was another.

              It was something that I would never get used to.

              Leah was comforting her, cradling her head on her shoulder, when Robbie came over to my side.

              ‘What do we do?’ He whispered. ‘We can’t just leave him like this. What if he comes back?’

              ‘How quickly is that gonna happen, though? If it happens at all?’

              ‘You really wanna take that risk? We’ve got two options here – we risk and he stays dead, or we still risk it and he comes back to life.’

              ‘Three. We put a bullet in his head.’

              ‘Exactly – and either way, he’s still dead. What does it matter if we cave his head in?’

              ‘Robbie, it’s been less than eight hours since all of this happened and you’re out for blood. Nobody in history has ever calmed down after having being told to calm down, but right now I’m telling you to calm down.’

              ‘Whatever. We need to resolve this, though. Now.’

              ‘I know.’

              It took some time to figure out how to explain it all to Marie, but in the end she understood what had to be done. We stayed in the room with her while we discussed all of it and she managed to pull herself together, and in the end we finally came to the conclusion that we would have to do it.

              We all said a few words, standing about Marcus’s covered body as we laid him to rest. Marie even brought in some flowers that she found growing in the gardens outside. It was a much better passing off than many of the people back at Bastion had likely had.

              ‘So… What do we do?’ Leah finally asked, after we had stood in silence for quite some time.

              ‘We’ll do it properly. We can use the rifle.’

              ‘You wanna use the bullets?’ Hayley asked. ‘I thought you said we only had a few.’

              ‘We do… But Marcus is worth more than any other… Method. Of course he is.’

              Maria lowered her head, trying to keep the tears at bay, but it was a feat she couldn’t manage.

              Then she said something that I never expected her to say.

              ‘I’ll do it.’

              ‘What?’

              ‘He’s my brother. We’ve been with each other since we were little. It’s only right that I do something like this. I know that he wouldn’t want me to… He’s always looked after me through everything… But I’m on my own now, and it’s for the best.’

              ‘You sure?’

              ‘Yes. I need to do this.’

              We all exchanged a glance, but in the end, if she wanted to, it was only fair. Her brother had just died, and we were willing to do anything to help her through it.

              A few minutes later I had set the rifle up, loaded it with rounds, and showed her exactly what to do.

              ‘Squeeze the trigger, and make sure it doesn’t drag to the left. We can keep the sheet over him for the blood, so you don’t have to look.’

              ‘Okay…’ She said calmly, nodding and gulping. Her hands had been shaking before, but now they were steady as I passed the rifle over to her and she steadied it in her hands. ‘Tommy?’

              ‘Yeah?’

              ‘Thank you for keeping us safe over the years. You’ve looked after us for so long.’

              ‘Don’t worry about it. I’d like to think somebody would do the same for me, I guess.’

              ‘Yeah…’ She smiled.

              I stepped back, taking a deep breath as I watched her hold the gun in her hand. We were all stood there, all four of us, on the other side of the room. Lookout could wait a few minutes while we said goodbye to one of our own. We had lost so many earlier that day, maybe everyone, but these were different circumstances; they called for different rules.

              Maria waited for a long time with the gun in her hands, looking down at Marcus’s body covered in the sheet. I don’t know how long we waited, but finally she raised it a little, pointed it down at the head, and pulled the trigger.

              The blast rang through our ears, shaking all of us. There was no blood spatter, just a little smoke and the steady sight of the blood soaking in to the sheet. I looked over at Maria. She was holding it together, a lot calmer than I expected her to be.

              We waited many moments longer until the ringing subsided a little, and Maria turned to look at me, a calm smile resting on her face.

              ‘Thank you for everything, Tommy.’

              I had a chance to look her in the eyes one last time, to nod at her reassuringly before she brought the barrel of the gun up beneath her chin.

              ‘
No, no, NO…!
’

              She closed her eyes before she pulled the trigger, the force of the blast hitting us like a wave as her blood spattered onto the ceiling above.

Part Three

Gone

Chapter Fifteen

On Foot

We buried them in the garden, side by side. We had enough water and food in the house to support us through the night, and for several more nights, so getting tired wasn’t a problem. It was more of the fact that we couldn’t really sleep after it happened.

              We went about our motions without speaking, only communicating with nods and expressions, doing what was necessary – finding a shovel, digging, stopping for food. When we finally placed their bodies in the graves, we didn’t hesitate in beginning to move the soil back to where it had come from, until they were filled up, two burials, just another set of victims from the consequences that had beset us all.

              Afterwards we strung together sticks and composed makeshift gravestones for them. It wasn’t much, but it told anyone who happened to be near here that somebody had lived, and somebody had died, and that they had been laid to rest properly, not left to rot in their homes like everybody else who had succumbed to the F1N3 virus so long ago.

              Nobody said much. I didn’t have anything to say myself. We had all seen it happen right in front of us, this madness that had overwhelmed us in less than a day. That’s what my Dad used to say – it just takes one bad day for a person to be pushed over the edge. I suppose the day that Bastion fell was that day for Maria.

              The sun was rising right around the time that we had laid the two of them to rest. We returned to the house without assigning somebody on lookout; it seemed that we had all grown apathetic about the situation for just a few hours as our minds tried to recover from everything that had happened. It didn’t work, though. The other three stayed in their beds, but I knew that they were simply staring at the ceiling above their heads. I wandered about the house aimlessly, feeling my stomach turn as I tried to get a grasp on it all.

              I tried to determine our next move. If we returned to Bastion we might get a view on the reality of what was happening, but we risked our lives by going back there. Even getting within a hundred yards would tell us nothing about what was happening inside, and once we were inside the infected would set upon us like wild animals. There were only four of us and tens of them, potentially close to a hundred. There was no sense in it.

              We could stay here, but what sort of life would that be? We could make do, but… I don’t know. I guess I just missed Bastion too much already, and everybody who lived there.

              Then there was Ashby. The town where this had originated… Or at least where it had come from to get to us. A woman had come to them and infected everybody, but who was this person? Where had she come from? Another infected town? Was this thing spreading from town to town, community to settlement, with one person acting as the virus, welcomed into the fold and then taking out the entire community before moving to the next one?

              I needed answers, and there was no way we could head back to bastion at that moment in time.

              After hours and hours of interrupted, mostly failed attempts at sleep, we gathered in the kitchen a little before midday.

              ‘I want to go to Ashby.’

              ‘Are you insane?’ Hayley asked. ‘That’s where this thing started.’

              ‘I know that, but there are so many questions that we haven’t had answers to yet. If this thing started there then we might get some insight as to who it was who infected them, and where this thing came from. Look, we might never see Bastion again, but if we find out how things went down at Ashby then it might help us take Bastion back.’

              ‘What are you planning on finding there?’ Robbie asked.

              ‘I don’t know… A clue… Something? I mean, for all we know the place could be fine. We don’t know for sure that it’s them who overran us at Bastion. If they’re still alive we could make a deal with them to take back the town. They could help us.’

              Silence, then-

              ‘But what if it
was
them who attacked us?’ Leah said.

              ‘Then… It’s them, and we take whatever we can. If the place isn’t too much of a mess we could make it our new home. Keep looking for survivors.’

              ‘Survivors?’ Robbie asked. ‘Don’t you hear yourself?’

              ‘Look, I know I usually seem as if I’ve got a plan, and that everything’s going to fall into place, but right now I don’t. I’m just making this thing up as I go along. We can stay here and struggle on, and live with just the four of us, or we can try and solve this situation and take back our town. Maybe you’re right. Maybe they’re all gone, every single one of them from Bastion is gone, and it’s just us. But I’m not going to sit around and speculate on the matter. I’d rather… I’d rather be dead than know that we can still save them. Anything’s possible. They could be hiding for all we know, in the basements or something.

              ‘I’m sick of debating on this. I’m going anyway. You can come with me, or you can stay here. It’s your call. I’m not asking you to choose either.’

              Leah, Robbie and Hayley all looked between each other. We sat in silence for so long that I assumed they were going to say no. I had made the offer though – it was still in their right to decide against it.

              ‘You’ve led us this far,’ Leah said, ‘I think you’ve done a pretty good job of it.’

              ‘Really think I’m gonna say no?’ Hayley asked.

              I looked over at my brother as he folded his arms and looked me in the eye.

              ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but only because the thought of living with you in this damn house for the rest of my life without Bastion outside the front door sounds hellish.’

***

We packed up supplies and the weapons we had in our possession. It was a three mile walk to Ashby through the countryside, a route that would take us away from where the main access road was, past a dried up water drainage system and a long-abandoned and overgrown sewage containment facility. The Ranger was completely out of gas, so going on foot was really the only option that we had in this entire situation.

              We stopped off one last time at the gravesides of Maria and Marcus before heading off. I still couldn’t get over how quickly they had returned to our lives, just to disappear once again. Three days ago in the field on our way to the farm, Carl had asked casually asked me what I thought of Maria, and he had gone right ahead and shook hands with Marcus and made conversation with her.

              Now the brother and sister were dead, and Carl was either a smear on the road of Bastion or one of the infected, a shelled out version of who he used to be.

              We set off around 1pm by my best guess, heading through the fields mostly in silence. Some awful conflicted part of me felt like I was purposefully walking slower, like I knew that something terrible awaited us, like I was trying my best to put off whatever we would find. It was inevitable, though. I knew that we had to get there, as sure as I knew anything – we were getting closer and closer, step by step.

              So we stopped.

              ‘Let’s take a break for a five minutes, guys. This is as good a place as any.’

              Nobody suggested that we carry on – I think, deep down, that they all felt the same.

              I headed down to the river, another one of the things that had benefitted since the fall of Earth. With the absence of use that the sewage plant experienced, it was now running with clear water. Nature continued to take over from the humans.

              I stood by the stream, watching the steady trickle run by me over and in between rocks. It was perhaps only a foot deep and a few yards wide, surrounded on a descent by trees and bushes. It was truly secluded, save for the walk back up the ascent to the path that we had been taking.

              After a minute or so of nothing but the sound of the water and the birds in the trees, I heard footsteps approaching behind me.

              ‘How are you, Tommy?’

              I turned to see Hayley heading towards me, her arms crossed in front of her. I had never seen her look so tired.

              ‘I’m all right. As all right as I can be.’

              ‘Me too… I can’t fucking believe this.’

              ‘What?’

              ‘All of this, Bastion, the zombies, everybody just gone…’

              ‘Wait, wait… What? What did you just say?’

              ‘What, zombies?’

              ‘Yeah.’

              ‘What about it?’

              Hayley looked me up and down, biting the inside of her lip before settling into a static glare at my face.

              ‘Do you remember the other day when we were at the lookout point, talking about those old movies? It was around the same time you were acting like a complete asshole.’

              ‘I remember. Get to the point.’

              ‘We watched one once about those people who go get attacked by people, except… They’re not people. They’re all slow and crazy.’

              ‘Yeah, I remember it,’ I said. ‘This is nothing like that, though.’

              ‘How is it not like that?’

              ‘Because they were slow and groaning. These things are like… Animals. They’re infected with something. I don’t know what. It burns them out until they’re dead and then they kick back up, running like crazy, trying to…’

              ‘To bite everyone?’

              I looked over at Hayley, suddenly seeing the logic in what she was saying but adamantly denying it still in my mind.

              ‘It’s like that, I will admit. This is different, though. This isn’t a movie. They’re fast. Like a predator… It’s like they’re designed to kill, to spread the infection. How does something like that even start? Where does it start? A biological weapon? Who the fuck would bother with that in this day and age, or even have access to the knowledge and resources to make something like that possible?’

              ‘I don’t know, Tommy. Maybe we’ll find the answers at Bastion. Maybe… Maybe the entire world is infected and we were the last one’s.’

              ‘What… Why would you think that?’

              ‘Well, you said it yourself. We don’t have the knowledge. We know about Ashby, and that there are a few settlements further out, but that’s all we know. If it had happened, how would you find out? We really could be the last ones alive.’

              I stood there in silence, deliberating on everything that she had said. No matter how much that that was another thing I wanted to deny, I couldn’t help but realise that she was right. There was no other way for me to tell, even if I was the leader… Or acted like I was. All I cared about was keeping my people safe, and I had fucked that up completely.

              What did that make me?

              ‘Maybe we should just go back…’ Hayley continued, ‘find a remote farmhouse, take as many supplies as we can and live our days out in the middle of nowhere. Leah and Robbie would want the same, I’m sure.’

              ‘They’d find us eventually. Maybe not soon, but one day one of those things would find us. What would happen then? I don’t know much about any of this, but I know that if I can get Bastion back, and if anybody else survived it, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure we get as much as we can back.’

              She looked over at me for a long time, gazing into my eyes. How I had ever put off my feelings for Hayley for so long was beyond me...

              I wrapped my arms around her, feeling the warmth of her returned embrace as she buried her face in my neck. She raised her lips kissing me once before pressing her forehead against mine.

              ‘Just promise me that you’ll stay alive,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to lose you too.’

              ‘You won’t. We can get through this.’

              ‘Are you two quite done down there?’

              I heard Robbie’s voice – we both looked back up the ascent and he was stood there with Leah, both with folded arms and faux-judgemental expressions.

              ‘Now I understand why we stopped,’ Leah said, shaking her head. ‘When you two lovebirds are done can we get a move on? We’re losing daylight.’

***

We continued on through the fields until the path veered off to the road and we had to pass by a long hedgerow to the left, finally reaching a fence. We were right on the outskirts of the town, perhaps a quarter of a mile from the walls of the Ashby community walls.

              We jumped over the small fence, pushing our way through shrubbery and landing in the overgrown grounds of the first of several manor houses that we would be confronted with – these were the kind of old places that existed on the outskirts of every rural town. They used to be owned by the old, rich families, where wealth was passed down between landowners across generations.

              Now they belonged to nobody, and the money they held in the bank was paper with pictures on it, as far as anybody in this world was concerned.