Doomware (14 page)

The boy’s clothes obviously hadn’t been washed in a long while, and they smelt accordingly. David helped him undress, and when he stripped off the last layer of clothing he had to stop himself from gasping at the boy’s emaciated state. His fatless skin was pulled taut over his prominent shoulder blades and rows of ribs, below which protruded a bloated little stomach, a classic sign of malnutrition.

Around his neck he wore a gold and silver ring on a gold belcher chain. David went to touch the ring, but the boy clutched at it defensively.

“It’s all right,” David said. “I’m not gonna take it from you. Come on, in you get.” As he helped him climb into the bath, he noted that the boy’s hairless body, which was as filthy as the clothes he’d been wearing, barely smelt of anything.

The boy didn’t seem to enjoy the water at all. He sat there passively, shivering a little and staring into space, as he let David wash him.

He’d thought the boy pale before, but now he could see there was a delicate olive tone to his complexion. His hair, once months’ worth of dirt had been washed out of it, fell in natural curls about his face and was of a golden blond shade which darkened markedly towards the roots.

The mask of dirt and grime sloughing away like an old skin allowed him to see the boy properly for the first time. He really was one of the cutest kids David had ever clapped eyes on – maybe even the cutest. There was an angelic quality about him, something that spoke profoundly of the untainted perfection of youth, and a fragile, radiant kind of beauty, all of which served to strength David’s resolve to act as his protector. The boy was like a rare and precious item of treasure he’d found, something worthy of adoration and round-the-clock protection.

Even so, he wasn’t quite seeing the boy’s true nature. The look of his eyes was unnatural and worrisome. They were lifeless, dark and glazed-over, as if they weren’t focusing properly. It was a look he’d seen before somewhere. A moment passed before he realised that he’d seen it in the mirror, staring back at him from his own reflection. It was the infamous thousand-yard stare, as seen on the faces of soldiers and medics and the survivors of apocalypses.

There was no doubt it: the boy was severely traumatised. How could he not be? It gave him a sick feeling to wonder what he’d witnessed, let alone what he might have been through. Were there paedophiliac zombies out there? He supposed there were. They took to murder and rape and cannibalism; why not that too?

“Feel like talking yet?” David asked him gently.

The boy didn’t answer.

Dully, he wondered if he could talk. Had the unspeakable terror of a world torn apart by violence and death rendered him speechless? He couldn’t help thinking that it would be just his luck to have found a fellow survivor – and a fellow acybernetic to boot – who was a mute. But, then again, he’d screamed loudly enough, so there didn’t seem to be anything wrong physically.

While he was cleaning him he took the chance to examine the ring, which dangled on its chain almost down to the boy’s belly button. It was most unusual. The gold band had a groove all the way around it, and inset into this was another ring – silver in appearance but probably white gold or platinum in material – that rotated around it. This outer, silver-coloured ring was dotted with odd-looking inscriptions.

“That’s a nice piece of jewellery you’ve got there,” said David offhandedly.

When he was satisfied the boy was clean, he lifted him out of the tub and dried him with a warm white towel that succeeded in covering him from head to toe. At this point he started to fret. He had no clothes for the kid. Everything he’d been wearing could go in the washer-dryer at once, but there was no change of clothes. No pyjamas, no underwear, not even a T-shirt that would fit. He was dismayed by how unprepared he was. He’d had ages to think about stuff like this – at least, it felt like ages – and it had never occurred it him. Had he deliberately blocked it from his mind because he’d thought the accumulation of children’s clothes and books and whatnot tantamount to tempting fate? Had he actually believed, deep down, that the boy would never be staying here?

He made do with a dressing gown that was years old and had shrunk in the wash, and a pair of socks which were likewise. He tutted at their woefully ill-fitting nature, vexed with himself. At least the boy isn’t complaining, he thought.

By this time it was getting dark outside, and he asked the boy if he wanted to sleep. This time the boy gave a clearly perceptible nod.

When David saw that the bed in the spare room was bare it was all he could do to refrain from crying out loud in anger. Had he prepared nothing? He couldn’t let the boy sleep in a bed without bedclothes.

The boy waited patiently, doe-eyed and yawning, while the bed was made, before clambering in without needing to be told. He closed his eyes and was still.

As in his own room, David left a night light on, and watched the boy for a while from the doorway. He seemed to have fallen asleep straight away; his breathing was in the deep, slow cadence of slumber and his eyeballs, even from a distance, were visible as they moved slightly behind his eyelids. The poor kid was as exhausted as he was.

Many times during that first night David got up from his bed and tiptoed to the boy’s door to peer in, just to make sure he was really there. Each time, as he returned to his room, he wondered if this was the way a parent felt about their newborn child. Or had felt, back when there had been newborns to watch over and worry about.

The following morning David rose early and was momentarily panicked to find the boy’s bed empty. He found him sitting on the living room sofa stroking the cat, whose rapturous purring announced that it was thoroughly enjoying the attention.
 

Before David could say anything, the boy said, “What’s his name?”

David was so taken aback to hear the boy’s voice he could only blurt out, “I’m sorry?”

The boy gesticulated in the cat’s direction.

“Oh!” David said. “He doesn’t have a name. He’s just ‘the cat’. You can give him a name if you want.”

“Is he a boy?”

“Oh yes. Most ginger cats are boys. They’re called tomcats. What would you like to call him?”

“Um…” the boy said, evidently thinking hard. Then he said brightly, “Tom?”

David laughed, finding this so endearing he could have hugged the kid. “It doesn’t have to be Tom,” he said. “That’s just what male cats are called.”

A look of embarrassment crossed the boy’s face; he thought he was being laughed at, and David hastened to correct the misunderstanding. “But it can be Tom if you want it to be – it’s a good name. It’s entirely up to you.”

The boy thought for a moment. “I like Tom.”

“Tom it is then,” David said as he took a seat on the sofa next to the boy. “And what’s your name, little man?”

“Shawn. Shawn Shilts.”

David held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Shawn Shawn Shilts.”

The boy giggled and shook the large hand awkwardly. It was the first time David had seen the kid smile. If he’d been beautiful before, while sullen, he was captivating now. The phrase “a sight for sore eyes” didn’t begin to cover it.

“I’m sorry I scared you yesterday … and the time before that,” David said.
 

“It’s okay,” replied the boy. “I thought you were one of them.”

“I gathered that.”

“Why is everyone… bad?”

“Well,” David said, taking a deep, stalling breath – how to explain such a thing to a kid? “the computers in their heads got sick, and everyone either died or went crazy. But people like you and me are okay ‘cause we don’t have computers inside us to get sick.”

David felt it was an inadequate – not to mention inaccurate – explanation, but he got the distinct impression that the boy already knew well enough what had happened, and just wanted to hear it from an adult’s mouth. He sat there staring, nodding a little as he absent-mindedly fondled the ring around his neck.

David pointed at it. “That’s an unusual ring. Who gave it to you?”

The same embarrassed look darkened the boy’s features again and he said uneasily, “Er, nobody. It was my dad’s … I took it.”

Much to his chagrin, David realised the idiocy of his own question. Of course nobody had given him the ring. Of course he’d taken it. Taken it from his father’s cold, dead hand – a stolen souvenir of the life he’d left behind.

There was a tense silence, during which David could only nod stupidly, lost for what to say.

“You don’t think he would’ve minded, do you?” Shawn asked suddenly.

David was quick to latch onto this. “Oh no, not at all. I’m sure he would’ve wanted you to have it.”

The boy nodded, looking eager to be convinced. “It’s too big for me though.”

“Well, one day it won’t be. When you’re all grown-up it’ll fit just fine.”

“Yeah.”

David changed the subject. “You hungry? What would you like for breakfast?”

“You’ve got a morpher?” the boy asked hopefully.

“No, but there’s plenty of stuff I can rustle up: cereal, porridge, something cooked. What takes your fancy?”

The boy hesitated, looking as if he was worried about giving the wrong answer. “I’m not sure,” he said at length.

“Want me to surprise you?” David offered.

The boy nodded and smiled, and the smile made David feel happier than he had done in ages.

* * *

For breakfast he made his version of a full English: hash browns, sausages, bacon, tinned tomatoes and toast. The boy’s eyes were like saucers when he saw such a feast. He downed it all in no time – except the tomatoes, which he politely turned his nose up at. The boy had no real concept of cooking food rather than morphing it out of Bloxes, and David explained it to him while they ate. The boy asked question after question and listened, rapt, as if being treated to a discourse on the workings of magic.

After breakfast, David dressed him in the clothes – now clean – he’d been wearing the day before. Then he sat him on the sofa and fixed him with a look that said “this is important”.

“Shawn,” David started, choosing his words, “since everyone got sick, have you met anyone else like us? Anyone who wasn’t sick?”

Shawn shook his head.

“You’ve been on your own all this time?”

A nod.

This threw up so many questions in David’s head they all seemed to clamour for precedence. Now he knew for sure that the boy had spent the past six, almost seven, months alone, no doubt reeling from the shock of his family’s abandonment of him, eking out a pitiful existence whenever the rain offered its scant protection from the world’s newfound insanity. How on earth had he survived? This had to be one incredible kid.

“You’re too young to be on your own,” David said. “In the normal world, let alone this one. Would you like to come and live here with me?”

The boy thought for a moment before saying, “That room I slept in last night: can it be my room?”

“Yes.”

“Can I bring my stuff here?”

“Sure you can. Were you at your parents’ house?”

“No, somewhere else. I’ll show you.”

“Okay.”

There was a pause. David sensed there was something else the boy wanted to ask about, but was holding back, so he raised his eyebrows in an unspoken invitation.

“Can Tom be
my
cat?” the boy enquired nervously.

“Course he can,” David said, still getting reacquainted with the feeling of the alien thing on his face called a smile.

And that was that. There was no further discussion about it for no further discussion was needed.

* * *

David took the gun down from the top of his wardrobe, where he’d ensconced it last night, and slipped it into his pocket. He’d have to find a better hiding place for it, but was having trouble thinking of one. Guns were irresistible playthings to young boys, so he needed somewhere that would be completely inaccessible to Shawn.

He stopped to look from the window. It was a dull autumnal day, with no sign of the previous day’s storm save for a few windblown tree branches. On the corner of Ruckholt Road and York Road a couple of zombies were brawling with each other. Both were adult males of roughly the same height and size, and such contests usually ended in stalemate; as, indeed, this one did. Before long they were skulking off in opposite directions.

When he stepped into the hall the boy was standing in the living room doorway. He took in David’s outdoor attire and said, “Where are you going?”

“I have to get some things: clothes for you mainly,” David said as he stretched a woolly hat onto his head.

“Can I come?”

“There’s no need. You stay here in the warm.”

“But I want to come.”

David shook his head. “I’ll only be gone an hour – if that.”

“I could take you to my place. We could collect my stuff.”

“Yes, we’ll do that, but not today. It’s too far when it’s not raining.”

“But I can take you there,” the boy said, and David could tell he was becoming agitated. His face was turning red and there was a flicker of something indefinable in his eyes.

“You don’t even know the way from here.”

“Yes I do,” the boy shot back. “I worked it out from the window.”

“We’re not going there today.”

“Can I come with you anyway?”

“I said no, Shawn. Besides, who’d keep Tom company?”

“I don’t care about Tom!” the boy shouted. Then he burst into tears.

David knelt in front of the boy, until he was looking up into his face, and put his hands on his narrow hips. He hadn’t expected this. He’d assumed the boy would be only too happy to stay inside, well away from the horrors of the streets.

“Hey, hey!” he said consolingly. “What’s all this about? What’s wrong?”

Shawn rubbed at the hot tears flowing from his eyes with clenched fists. Through sobs and sniffs, he eventually stammered out, “W-what if you d-don’t come back?”

So that was it: a desire not to be abandoned again disguised as a temper tantrum.

“Of course I’ll be back,” David said gently.

“B-but wh-what if you d-d-don’t?”