Doomware (13 page)

But that had been another life and another country.

* * *

He walked for miles, taking a random, zigzagging path through the maze of streets. The route he’d carefully plotted out beforehand went completely out of the window, but he was unconcerned about the chances of getting lost – he could always check the map, though looking at it while walking was impossible. Here and there he saw zombies huddled in doorways or staring out blankly from windows and park shelters. If they saw him and made a move in his direction they were stopped by the wall of rain; all except one lanky bastard with a damaged leg who tailed him for a while, limping through the rain, before vanishing.

The ferocity of the storm gradually reduced as it passed overhead; he could detect it diminishing to the east, gifting him with a feeling like the relief a subsiding migraine left in its wake. Even so, the relentless rain kept trickling into his eyes and driving him to distraction. On he walked until his mind and his legs, each in their own ways, were equally as numb. He didn’t know how far he’d travelled, but each mile had felt like five.

Eventually he had to admit defeat. There was no sign of the boy, who was undoubtedly – sensibly – staying indoors. He’d tried; there was nothing more he could do. Besides, if he carried on like this he’d probably get pneumonia and then where would both of them be? There’d be the next time, and the time after that. He wouldn’t give up. It had become his mission in life, as vital to him as foraging for food and sleeping at night.

He stopped under a shop awning and studied the map. Napier Road. He traced the quickest route back to the flat with a finger. It would take quite a while to get there, but at least he’d have the knowledge that every step he took was bringing him closer to home.

He’d travelled a few blocks when he rounded a corner and stopped abruptly.

On the pavement up ahead, walking towards him, was a diminutive figure clad in a shiny blue parka.

The boy looked to be sauntering along so casually that at first David couldn’t believe it, thinking it must surely be a mirage conjured up by his storm-battered senses. As if to add to this impression, the iridescent blue of the boy’s parka stood out against the dull grey of the city in a manner which was as eye-catching and unreal as the crimson of the little girl’s coat in
Schindler’s List
. Then the boy lifted his head. Almost without pause, much quicker than the last time they’d met, he turned and ran.

David was flying along the pavement before he knew it, his attention riveted to the back of the boy’s coat, as oblivious now to the wind in his ears and the rain in his eyes as he was to the rolling pin bumping painfully against his ribs. Up ahead, less than 30 yards away, the boy turned right at a junction and disappeared from view. David was reminded horribly of the time he’d lost him at the Lighthouse. He tore around the corner and his heart sank through the soles of his aching feet. The street was empty. Not again.
Please!
Not again. But no! There were no side streets for as far the eye could see, and the boy couldn’t have run the entire distance in so short a space of time. There had to be another way. Hurrying forward, he found it: a narrow alleyway between a pub and a house. The alley led to wider one running along the back of the street. Here was the familiar sight of rows of doors leading to cramped backyards, but no boy. Jesus Christ! The task he’d set himself was difficult enough without having a quarry whose first reaction was to run at the sight of him, and who was seemingly capable of vanishing into thin air.

But then the boy emerged from one of the doors. He’d obviously been trying to hide there, and had changed his mind; either that or he’d tried gaining entry to the house and had failed. The boy took one frantic look at him and started running again. Eyes wide as they locked onto the back of his scurrying target once more, David sprinted hard, his feet slapping, echoing, on the cracked concrete beneath them. He could tell at once that he was gaining rapidly. So too could the boy, who glanced over his shoulder and nearly tripped and fell he was so startled by the proximity of his pursuer. The boy was outmatched; his legs simply weren’t long enough to equal David’s stride. To him, the feeble glow at the end of the alley must have felt the same way the lambent sanctuary of a church had felt to a medieval lawbreaker.

David was only a couple of yards away from him when they reached it. The boy scrambled for the first thing offering any protection, which happened to be a huge articulated lorry resting, as many vehicles were, in an odd position, one side of it flush with the wall of a large warehouse. He scuttled, insect-like, under the lorry’s silver-coloured trailer and disappeared. David stopped, hands on hips, and stood for a while, catching his breath. Then he got down on all fours and peered under the lorry. The boy had retreated as far as he could, wedging himself between the wall and one of the lorry’s tyres. He could see his eyes flashing in the dark – they were brimming with tears and abject terror. The boy had the look, though not entirely the aspect, of a cornered animal.

“It’s okay … it’s okay,” David said, wanting his voice to sound soft and unthreatening, but underuse making it come out gravelly and harsh; besides which, he quickly realised, he had to speak at a certain level to be heard over the rain drumming on the trailer’s roof. “I’m not going to hurt you – I swear. Just relax. Okay?”

He took a good look around the rainy streets before slowly creeping under the lorry on his belly. The boy, knowing he was trapped, made no effort to move, but started crying loudly and piteously at this.

“It’s okay, just relax. I promise I am not going to hurt you,” David said, enunciating clearly to emphasise the point.

The boy’s crying continued unabated and David wondered briefly if he understood English. He crawled closer, his overworked eyes straining to adjust to the shadows. The boy was just a dark silhouette, his face nothing more than a glinting pair of eyes, the light-diffusing hood of the parka encircling it like the haze of a halo. He was pressed against a tyre that was bigger than he was.

As David moved to within touching distance, the boy started screaming, a desperate, bordering on hysterical, caterwauling that tore at David’s heart. Slowly, holding his breath, he stretched out a hand towards the boy. The pitch of the boy’s screams went up another octave out of sheer terror as the hand touched his back. Through the boy’s clothing and ribcage he could feel precisely what he’d been hoping for: a heartbeat, strong and irrefutable, the pulsatile signature of life, pounding away at a desperate rate.

David snatched his hand away and backed off.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. “I just had to make sure.”

He quickly withdrew from the shadows into the daylight again. Although hating himself for scaring the boy even more, inside he was silently rejoicing. The boy was alive. Alive! He would have danced a jig had he not suspected such a thing likely to send the boy into convulsions of terror.

Instead, he took a few paces away from the lorry and sat down, cross-legged. From this location, hunched forward, he could clearly see the boy’s silhouette. He smiled at him – a broad, forced smile he could only hope didn’t come across as maniacal.

“I’m gonna wait here till you come out,” he said, before pushing two empty palms in the boy’s direction in the universal gesture of peace. “You can see I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m unarmed. I’m a friend. If I wanted to hurt you I could’ve done it by now, couldn’t I?”
 

The boy had stopped screaming by this time and was sniffling softly to himself as he watched, his twinkling eyes taking everything in.

David waited, unbothered by the rain’s tapping on his hat and its drumming on the trailer. In fact, they almost formed a kind of music, melodic and soothing, which verged on being ecstatically enjoyable. Of course, the only thing making it so was the fact he’d found the boy; the feeling of unqualified accomplishment it had given him had brightened his mood beyond measure.

Thunder rolled, mournful and glowering, its formidableness diminished only by its increasing remoteness, like the footsteps of a departing giant.

He smiled at the boy again. “Storm’s lifting,” he said cheerfully. “I think it might stop raining in a minute … We ought to get indoors, don’t you think? I could take you to my place … fix us something to eat. You hungry?”
 

The boy didn’t answer, but his sniffling faded away to almost nothing. Only then did David realise how hungry he was – ravenous in fact. He’d only eaten a paltry breakfast, and that had been hours ago.

The minutes ticked by.

Presently, there was a rustle of movement under the lorry and David had to move closer to see what it was, squinting into the shadows. The boy had slumped forwards and was lying flat on the ground, his body curled around the tyre and his head pointing in David’s direction.

Quickly and quietly, David crawled under the trailer. The boy didn’t stir. He grabbed the top of his hood and gave it a gentle tug. Still the boy didn’t stir. The task requiring only a fraction of his strength, he pulled on the hood and towed the boy all the way out into the daylight, the parka scraping noisily as it slid across the stony ground.

The boy’s eyes were closed, and for a terrible moment he thought he was dead. Oh Christ, I’ve frightened him to death! He gingerly pressed a hand to the boy’s chest and breathed a sigh of relief. The miraculous heart was still beating away, settled into a much more sedate rhythm now. The boy was just unconscious. The stress of the chase, the great surge and recession of adrenaline, had obviously proved too much for the kid’s system.

“Poor little fella,” David said under his breath.

He folded the boy’s limp form into his arms and got to his feet, surprised and appalled by how light he was. He set off for home. He had to get back to the flat as soon as possible – and before it stopped raining. He walked purposefully and steadily, the boy seeming to grow heavier and heavier in his arms. At intervals he rested him on a wall or a car bonnet, giving his arms a chance to regain their strength.

As he walked, he tried not to think about the prospect of being attacked when they were so vulnerable, but it was impossible. What would he do if two or more of them attacked at the same time? He would fight. He would fight with everything he had. Some force outside of himself – or so it seemed – dictated to him that he must protect the boy. No matter what. Mercifully, the rain kept coming; gradually slackening off, but continuous.

But even with the magnanimity of the weather, the walk home felt like the longest walk of his life.

* * *

David was exhausted by the time he closed and locked the flat door, but he knew it would be a long time before he could rest. There was too much to do. Thankfully, the boy’s presence energised him.

He hurried into the kitchen, past the boy who was lying unconscious on the living room sofa, his parka still on and the hood still up. The cat was sniffing tentatively around this newcomer with the curiosity characteristic of all felines.

In the kitchen David pondered over what to make to eat. What did kids like? He plumped for hamburger and chips followed by apple tart and custard. Not the healthiest of options, but he had no doubt the principal need the kid had was to be fattened up. He snacked while he cooked; this meal was just for the boy.

When he next checked on him, the boy was sitting up. He’d obviously just woken: he looked sleepy and confused and the cat was treading an arc around him, still sizing him up. When he saw David fear returned to his eyes, but it was muted and less feral, a distant relative of the unbridled terror he’d seen in the shadows under the lorry.

“Hi there, little man,” David said friendlily. “Little man” had been his grandfather’s pet name for him.
 

The boy didn’t respond; he just sat there staring, his small hands clutching the sofa as if it were a fairground ride.

“My name’s David. What’s yours?”

This time the boy gave a little, almost imperceptible, shake of his head. The silence was almost palpable.

“Don’t feel like talking?”

Again came the vague shake of the boy’s head.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to,” David said brightly, shaking off the awkward moment. “We can talk whenever you’re ready, okay? Wanna take your coat off? It must be soaking.”
 

The boy seemed to vacillate for a moment before apparently coming to a compromise: haltingly, he took his hood down.

“I’m making you something to eat,” David said, raising his voice as he disappeared into the kitchen. “It’s almost ready. I hope you like hamburger.”

When he returned with the piping hot meal and placed it on the dining table, the boy stared at it with his huge, bright-blue eyes. His gaze travelled from the dining table to David, and back to the dining table again, traces of both hopefulness and uncertainty in his expression. He looked for all world as if he believed the meal would be snatched away if he dared make a move towards it.

“It’s okay,” David reassured him. “Eat up.”

The boy got up from the sofa and waddled over to the table on stiff legs. He started by nibbling the food cautiously, as if he expected it to taste foul, but in no time he was wolfing it down. He drank a whole glass of orange squash, which David refilled immediately. While the boy ate, he watched him, feeling so unaccountably pleased with himself that he couldn’t keep a foolish half-smile from playing on his lips.

As he finished the meal the boy let out a huge belch, at which he looked somewhat sheepish. David chuckled at the indiscretion and retreated to the kitchen with the empty plate. There was a definite flicker of incredulous excitement in the boy’s eyes when dessert was brought out. He soon wolfed that down too, paying no attention to David, who hovered over him like a mother hen. He thought it likely the kid hadn’t eaten such a meal since the virus had struck more than six months ago.

After he’d finished eating David ran a bath and the boy was ushered through to the bathroom without protest. He seemed only too happy to comply with David’s wishes, going along with the fortuitous flow of events.