The Survivors of Bastion (Fall of Earth Book 1) (7 page)

Part Two

Savages

Chapter Eight

Treehouse

Every day was a fresh slate. I tried not to hold too much over my head and blame myself for these things, but when I saw the shovel and the gun as I awoke, these being the first things I saw, I couldn’t help but think back to the previous night.

              In the early morning light I returned the shovel to the shed and the gun to the lockbox, before checking my schedule and seeing that I was due to be harvesting wheat with none other than Hayley, and a few others, that morning.

              In the old world Mary had been an accountant – she had entered early retirement just a few years before the outbreak, and when it happened we had eventually run into her. My family had known her for years, and as she had gotten into her 60s her manual labour skills had started to fade.

              What hadn’t faded, though, was her organisational skills – she could numbers and information about like nothing I had ever seen. If I was in charge of the place as a figurehead or a general leader, she was unquestionably in charge of the technicalities. She ran everything from information on food supplies, to storage and resources, to designating work and making sure that everybody’s contribution to Bastion was fair.

              Just because I was the leader didn’t mean that I didn’t have to put in the hard work too – and that was what I liked about Mary. She didn’t let anybody slide when it came to contributing properly.

              I changed into my work clothes and grabbed my gloves, making my way through the streets while chomping away at some raw carrots and bread in the early light – breakfast of champions, I guess. I picked up the tools I needed from the supply shed by the field, greeting one of the citizens I didn’t know on an informal basis – Casey, I think – who had just taken up guard duty on the lookout post by the door. With that, I headed out into the field.

              We had no machines, only our hands and the tools that we held, and to say it was a big-ass field was an understatement, particularly when it came to farming it. Over the next few minutes the four others who I was working with, including Hayley, trickled into the field, and we all got to work.

              She took up the section by my side, but only after I asked her to – considering how much of an idiot I had been the day prior it was a wonder that she even wanted to speak to me like a normal person.

              ‘Have a good night, did you?’ She asked.

              ‘I… What?’ I said suddenly, glaring over at her.

              ‘Lookout duty. Nice of you to take over from your brother’s shift even if you acted like a bit of a douchebag.’

              ‘Oh… Right, yeah. Yeah, it was fine,’ I said hurriedly. I had assumed she knew something about me sneaking out, but apparently I had managed to get away with it.

              ‘Look,’ she started, ‘I’m sorry if I made you feel awkward. I just think you’re pretty hot.’

              ‘I thought you’d left the thought of us behind it.’

              ‘What can I say? I had a change of heart.’

              ‘It’s mutual,’ I laughed.

              ‘I just see no reason why we should have to stumble around the obvious in a world where we might get killed every other day. What’s wrong with just having a little fun?’

              ‘Wait, wait,’ I said, ‘Killed every other day? What do you mean by that?’

              ‘Well, it’s like you were saying yesterday, when people from hundreds of years ago just used to get on with it because they had a short life expectancy. What about the most basic things for us? What if one of us got struck down with appendicitis or something sudden like that? Don’t you think you should enjoy each day as it comes?’

              ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘it’s just… Every other finer detail when it comes to stuff like this. I mean, it hasn’t happened yet, but what if somebody in Bastion became pregnant? We have no way of keeping them safe like they did back before the outbreak. I know it’s an ugly truth, but it’s one everybody has to face.’

              ‘I’m not getting into a discussion with you about sex,’ Hayley laughed. ‘Speaking of which… You wanna hear a joke?’

              This was really the way that we made it through hard days of labour and work – a wretched sense of humour. Regardless of who was out in the field working, no matter how reserved they might have had a reputation to have been, the laughter was always uproarious. The jokes and stories were disgusting, dirty, and above all, utterly hilarious.

              In no time we had made our way along the lengths of the field, our work done for the day, with still plenty of time on the clock before whatever needed completing next. During our shift, Hayley and I had gotten onto the topic of the treehouse, and by the time I had finished checking everything over, everybody else was headed back to town.

              Apart from Hayley, that was. I couldn’t see her anywhere.

              I looked about myself, searching the field for her fruitlessly before hearing a strong whistle behind me. I looked over my shoulder into the trees, and without any mistake could see her standing amongst the surrounding forest.

              She nodded her head to the side, gesturing towards the deeper parts of the forest, and it took me some miniscule fraction of a second to know what secret she was referring to.

              The treehouse.

              Giving one last look over the field, and shaking my head with a smile, I set off towards the forest.

              I had been there the night before in much different circumstances, but now the light flickered in between the branches and the leaves of the trees above, and up ahead I heard Hayley’s footsteps as she pandered off between the trees.

              ‘You gonna join me or what?’ Her whispering shout emanated from somewhere untraceable, and I started onwards until I finally reached that tree, hidden amongst the others.

              It was perfect, to be honest. The trunk was enormous, and surrounded on most sides by others that not only hid it but supported it. Grafted and bolted deeply into the bark were a series of steps that acted as a makeshift ladder, allowing anybody to climb up.

              They stretched up at least ten yards, before finally topping off on a huge slab of wood and metal that acted as the base of the house. We hadn’t been stuck for resources – with an entire world at our fingertips we had as much wood and steel as we wanted, and oh, how we had exploited it. The place even had water filtering to protect it from rain, as well as insulation and various other systems. I had no doubt that it would be just as we had left it those few years ago.

              Was she already up there?

              ‘Hayley? Hayley, are you there?’

              I waited, but there was no sound in response.

              ‘Fine…’ I said, testing the stability of the first few steps with my hands before readying myself, and finally setting off.

              With every new step I brought myself further away from the ground – at any second I anticipated that I would go tumbling to the ground, break something and spend a long few weeks enjoying painful rehabilitation.

              That never happened, of course. I finally found myself at the top of the tree, clambering up onto the stable platform at the top of tree and wiping myself down before looking about myself.

              It was just as I had remembered it. Everything had kept pretty well considering the fluctuating weather that confronted us year on year – the roof, the windows, the shelter of it all. There was only one outlier from the things that were usually up there, of course, this being Hayley, as she leant over in the corner of the huge room, prying open the lockbox in the corner.

              She tipped the lid open, reaching into it and removing the various blankets and rugs and pillows that were crammed inside, before throwing them down upon the floor.

              ‘You remember these?’ She said, laying them out. ‘Could never figure out a way to get a couch up here so we just sat in these like a giant beanbag…’

              ‘I remember,’ I laughed.

              Somewhere in the middle of all of this, as we talked and laughed and reminisced, we turned to each other and found our lips just a little way from each other, and somewhere in all of that we found ourselves in a kiss that had been waiting to happen for probably a year.

              We ran our hands over each other in the quiet solitude of the forest, far and above the worries and reality of the world below, lost in each other.

Chapter Nine

We Have a Visitor

The laughter had carried on afterwards, and once we had exhausted ourselves we had both fallen asleep up there in the solitude of our make-believe home.

              Well, that’s partly a lie – I wasn’t sure whether Hayley had fallen asleep, but I certainly had done.

              When I awoke it was midday. There wasn’t even a rustling in the trees, only the twittering of the birds in the branches, singing away. For some time I remained there, looking about the wooden interior of the treehouse. I had this idea that I could stay up here forever, that my days would be endless and that I could live here in the peace of it all.

              I looked over to my side and saw that Hayley was nowhere to be found. Through the gap in the wood ahead I could see that she wasn’t stood outside either. There were no sounds other than the birds.

              Looking closer at the pillow she had been using, I saw a torn piece of paper had been placed upon it. I took it up and read.

Gone back to town – covering lookout duty for Carl.  Come see me at my house tonight if you want.

Topped off with a kiss and a smiley face, I couldn’t help but smile myself.

              She had always been eccentric, always full of life… Those were the things that I loved most about her.

              I got dressed and finally made my way back down the ladder. At the time I wasn’t really paying attention to many of the things going on around me. I was worrying more about my appearance, whether my hair was ruffled, things like that. Of course I was just being paranoid – that was the way we all usually looked by default. Cosmetics wasn’t exactly a priority above eating, drinking and staying alive.

              I’m talking about all of these things – around this time I came slamming to the ground, landing on my feet heavily. I looked down at the base of the tree, retrieving the bag of tools that I had set down there from the field and slinging them over my shoulder, latching the knife belt around my waist and checking that the blade was still safe. All of these things didn’t matter at all considering what was about to happen, but then that’s often the way things tend to go – the things that have the most effect on us often have a tendency of creeping up on us out of nowhere.

              The night before I had heard that cracking sound in the forest – something being ground down underfoot, something deliberate. So when I heard another cracking somewhere in the undergrowth, coming from the deeper part of the forest, I turned to look without hesitation. I didn’t expect to see anything, just like every other time I heard a sound, but it didn’t hurt to look either. One in maybe a thousand times it would be something important.

              This was one of those times.

              ‘Can… Can you help me… Please…?’

              I was turning away as I heard the words, but when they met my ears and the gravitas of those sounds struck me I spun on my heel, moving faster than I ever have in my life.

              The man, this visitor, stood about ten yards away from me, having appeared through the trees. I had already checked the latch on the holster for the knife, but right then I fumbled for it, pulling it open and swinging it out before me by the handle, the steel glinting in the light before me.

              ‘Don’t move – don’t fucking move!’ I shouted over at him, my mind casting back to the day before when I had shot the intruder at the farm.

              I took in the sight before me. This man looked to be the epitome of weakness – he was supporting himself by leaning up against one of the trees. His face was pale, washed out, and his hair was drenched with sweat. His clothes were dirty and torn in places, hanging off him as if they were too big for him. He looked to be in his early thirties, but at that point it was anything but a guess based on the adrenaline coursing through me.

              ‘
Please…
’ He muttered breathlessly, ‘I… I don’t know what happened. Everybody, they just… They’re coming for me… Please… Please help me…’

              I was a second away from shouting something else – who are you, where did you come from, what do you want, all of the above – but I never got the opportunity. Without another moment’s warning, the man’s eyes rolled back, his legs gave, and he crumpled into a heap on the ground. He was out cold.

There were times when my responsibility as the leader of Bastion meant that I wilfully keep things from the citizens in order to not worry them unnecessarily. On the other hand, there were times when things happened under such circumstances that, firstly, they had a right to know about what was happening because it involved everybody and, secondly, because even if they weren’t told about it there was no way to keep it a secret.

              This time, though, I had no intention of keeping it a secret anyway – it involved everybody.

‘Leah, I need you…!’

              ‘What the fuck is going on? Tommy?... Tommy!’

              ‘Get a stretcher from Mae’s.’

              ‘What are we doing?’

              ‘Just do what I fucking say!’

              Leah gave me a sceptical, worried look, as if she thought I might have finally gone insane, before running off through the streets.

              I turned to the citizen on guard duty, remembering that Hayley was on a different post.

              ‘Keep your eyes on the field. If you see
anything
that isn’t part of Bastion, you sound the alarm. Signal to the others and make sure they know.’

              We had a system for indicating between the four lookout posts at each corner of Bastion in the event that anything of some magnitude happened – the signal was given, and I could only presume that it had reached every post.

              Leah finally returned with the stretcher under her arm. We took it in our hands and set off through the doorway, pacing quickly through the field towards the trees.

              ‘Tommy, what’s happening…? Is somebody hurt?’

              ‘There’s somebody in the forest. He came walking right up to me…’

              ‘Who?’

              ‘I don’t know… I’ve never seen him before.’

              ‘Shit…’

              We made our way through the trees, further into the forest, until we finally reached the spot. I no longer cared about the location of the treehouse being revealed – all I could think about was the man.

              He was exactly as I had left him.

              ‘Holy fuck…’ Leah exclaimed.

              ‘I know.’

              ‘What happened to him?’

              ‘I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to pose a threat to anyone in this condition. If he tries anything don’t hesitate to cut his throat.’

              ‘You got it.’

              We approached him slowly, placing the stretcher down beside his body before rolling him onto it. He was almost completely limp.

              ‘You sure he isn’t dead, Tommy?’

              I checked his pulse, feeling the odd warmth of his clammy skin.

              ‘His heart’s racing… Christ…’

              ‘A fever? You don’t think that he’s… That he’s got it, do you?’

              A hundred questions raced through my mind, but the one thing I remained sure of was that he didn’t have the virus. There was no way he could have survived this long – just over fifteen years, now – without contracting it.

              ‘No. Let’s just get him back to town.’

              We managed the weight between us, trotting back through the field – by the time we were halfway across I could already see people appearing in the doorway, some standing around it, some outside.

              Around forty yards from it, Robbie came running out towards me.

              ‘Tommy! What is it?’

              ‘We found him in the forest…’ I grunted, trying to catch my breath as we hurried along. ‘He’s not in a great state.’

              ‘Let’s get him to Mae’s.’

              ‘Yep.’

              We reached the door and pushed inside as Robbie led the way. Despite the fact that he was my younger brother, I still reckoned that in a fair fight with nothing but fists, he could probably take me.

              Despite the fact that we were a community that remained strong together, the mounting number of people who were making their way towards us from town was growing and growing.

              Fortunately I had Robbie.

              ‘Nobody panic!’ He shouted, leading the way and making sure nobody came to close, ‘We found him in the forest, and he’s injured. We’re going to get him straight to Mae’s house. Please, give him some room, people.’

              Everybody obliged us, making some way for us to get towards Mae’s house, but the chatter and between everybody was in abundance.

              ‘Everybody just calm down,’ I shouted, just as Leah, Robbie and I reached Mae’s house. ‘We’re gonna get him inside and everything’s gonna be fine.’

              ‘Who is he?’ A voice shouted.

              ‘I don’t know, but he isn’t a threat to us. I’ll be right back, everyone.’

              At that moment the door to Mae’s house came swinging open, and she emerged in the doorway looking agitated to say the least.

              ‘What the hell is all this?’

              ‘Mae, we need you.’

              ‘Oh, good
God…
Right, get him inside…’

***

As far as religion goes, it isn’t really my responsibility to talk about such things, if it’s anybody’s at all. I’d prefer not to go into it…
But
, if there is a God, then Mae was a godsend. A sassy, overtly honest godsend, but still a godsend.

              ‘The fuck did you find this fella?’

              ‘In the forest. He just came stumbling at me, mumbled some nonsense and collapsed-’

              ‘You two, out!’

              ‘Us?’ Leah and Robbie said in unison.

              ‘Yes.’

              They both took off, Robbie winking at me and I returning it as they exited and the door shut behind them.

              Mae’s surgery, if it could have been called that, was where the kitchen of the house would have been years ago. The centre island had been turned into a table big enough to place a body – or patient – upon, and then some. Right then that was where our visitor was placed, still unconscious.

              ‘Now that they’re gone, anything else I should know about this guy?’

              ‘Nope. I’ve told you everything. All I know is he looks like shit.’

              ‘You’re not wrong there. Give me a hand cutting off that jacket of his and we’ll shed some light on the situation.’

              A few moments later I was pulling the overshirt taut while Mae ran the scissors through the material, cutting it open over both of his arms. The first was nothing but dirty, but the second was-

              ‘What’s he done to himself?’ Mae asked, echoing my thoughts.

              His arm was wrapped up in several pieces of towel and what looked to be ripped up t-shirts.

              ‘Has he cut himself?’ She continued.

              ‘Think we should take a look at it?’

              ‘No time like the present, m’boy.’

              We both pulled on a plastic gloves from a box that she kept on the counter, along with the myriad of other pieces of equipment she had in her stores. While I made sure they were secure on both hands I couldn’t help but hear the sounds of the chattering and murmuring of everybody outside.

              ‘Okay,’ Mae said, ‘let’s take a look…’

              I held his arm in place while Mae unwrapped the pieces of cloth bit by bit. Finally the last piece of soaked cloth fell away, and we saw what we were dealing with.

              ‘Oh, holy mother of God…’ Mae exclaimed, stepping back and inhaling deeply.

              ‘What the
fuck…
’ I couldn’t help but mutter.

              I won’t go into exceptional detail about the sight that rested before me, but it was evident what we were looking at. The man’s forearm was dotted with incisions, overlapping in various points, with dots of blood seeping from several of the holes. For a second it hadn’t occurred to me, but then I realised what they had been caused by.

              The man had been bitten.

              ‘You ever seen anything like this?’ I finally asked Mae, after several long, drawn moments of silence.

              ‘No, young man. No, I haven’t. It’s like somebody’s tried to eat him, or something….’