Charlie walked over to us. “If this
is concussion, then I’m a stalker’s uncle.” He lifted Reggie’s hand. “Look.”
Two little dots were on Reggie’s
hand. The skin around them was swallow and red, as though it was filling with
blood and ready to burst. The bites were an oval shape.
“It was back in the sewer,” I said.
“I heard him cry out when a rat bit him.”
“I’d love to give you good news, but
this looks like he’s got rat bite fever,” said Charlie.
“Is that actually a thing?” said Mel.
Charlie lifted Reggie’s hand higher.
“Look at him.”
“So what do we do?” I said. “Wait.
Let me have a guess. We get him antibiotics.”
Charlie gave a grim nod.
I stood up and kicked the muddy grass
in front of me.
“Well that’s great. Because we know
how plentiful they are, don’t we?”
We had rat bites and broken legs. Our
rucksacks were almost empty, and our moods were darkening faster than the late
afternoon sky. I looked at Lou on her stretcher and Reggie with the sweat
pooling on his face, and I knew that we only had one choice.
“We’re gonna have to head back,” I
said.
We were all silent. Mel knelt beside
Lou and zipped her coat up to her chin. Charlie held the back of his palm to
Reggie’s forehead.
“Fire,” said Ben.
I turned around.
Ben pointed over to the east.
“Something’s on fire.”
Sure enough, the plumes drifting in
the sky were the fumes from a fire. It was the same patch that I had dismissed
as a cloud, but there was no doubt about it now. The hulking rock shielded the
source of the smoke from my view, but I knew there weren’t many things that it
could be. The towns were far behind us and Scotland wasn’t known as a country
of spontaneous wildfires.
Charlie stood up.
“What do you think it is?”
“It’s the helicopter,” I said.
Chapter
19
Sometimes things became more
noticeable in their absence. Gone were the days where smoke pumped out from the
brick chimneys of warehouses and factories. Cars exhausts were rusting away,
having fallen out of use in the years since car keys turned in ignitions. Not
even cigarettes or vapour pens sent their white plumes into the air. The only
smoke a person was likely to see these days was from the campfire of a fellow
traveller, and in that way, smoke acted as a warning. It was a sign that a
stranger was in the area and that a change in route was needed.
The smoke we saw from behind the rock
wasn’t from a camp fire. It was grey and thick. It twisted up into a waiting
sky and then spread wide across it, making it look like a wispy forest floating
amongst the clouds.
We took a wide path so that we could
get a clearer view of what was behind the rock without getting any closer than
we needed. Mel helped me with Lou’s stretcher, walking in front of me with one
end of the wooden plank in her grip. Reggie moved at a stumbling pace, his skin
grey and wet with sweat. Charlie held Ben’s hand and led the boy along.
Mel stopped walking. Her triceps
twitched with the strain of Lou’s weight.
“Okay, Kyle. You’re gonna want to see
this.”
The wider we went, the more the countryside
came into a view. In front of us, nestled amongst the untamed grass and
nettles, was the helicopter.
Cracks lined the cockpit window,
though the glass must have been shatterproof because it had stayed in place.
The helicopter leaned to its left so that one of its propellers was dug into
the dirt. The tail was dented in places and bent out of shape, and the smaller
propeller at the end was completely smashed.
The smoke we had seen came from a
fire next to the helicopter. It looked like it had been started recently,
though it was dying down. Someone had ripped out the chairs, upholstery and
parachute from the helicopter and had set it alight.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones
who came to find it,” said Mel.
A group of infected were surrounding
the helicopter from all sides. There were ten of them, and they were almost all
completely naked. They took blundering steps forward, breasts and penises
swinging in the cold air. Some had scorched flesh as if something had burned
them, and others had missing limbs and holes in their flesh.
“Scotland’s last nudist colony,” I
said.
The infected were closing in a circle
around the helicopter. There was something inside that they wanted. I didn’t
know what it was, but after coming all this way, I wouldn’t let them have it. I
lowered my end of Lou’s stretcher to the floor. She stirred, but didn’t walk
from her sleep.
“What do you think?” I said. “Ten of
them. That’s three each for me and Mel, two each for you guys.”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders.
“It’ll be fine if we’re careful.”
Dealing with the infected was routine
now. In any ecosystem, the prey and the predators adjust to each other. Sixteen
years ago the infected had been something new, a dangerous animal that we
hadn’t seen before. We’d had a lot of time to adjust, and they had their
limitations. Seeing them still gave me a chill, but that was just an
instinctual response that I doubted would ever leave. I knew I could handle
them.
“Mel and I will take the ones from
six o’clock to twelve. You guys take the other four. Keep your distance until
you’re ready to kill. Ben, I want you to stay here with Lou. Shout your lungs
out if you see anything.”
We descended down the gentle slope. I
felt a heaviness in my back muscles and my calves, but at the same time a light
feeling fluttered through my stomach. Nerves, maybe, but not fear. Charlie’s
face was set in a scowl. I knew that he didn’t like fighting the infected, but
I was glad that I had made him practice back in camp.
When I was four feet away from the
first infected, it turned around with a speed that I didn’t expect. It repulsed
me. It had once been a man, judging from what swung between its legs, but it
resembled nothing human now. Deep gouges covered its face as if someone had
scratched its flesh with a knife, left it to heal and then scratched it again.
Dead flesh didn’t heal, I knew, so this must have been done to him while he was
alive. This infected was the only one who wore any clothing, with its upper body
covered by a tight-looking denim jacket.
The infected cried out. Another
creature to its left, a woman, turned around. One of her breasts was missing,
and a wound ran across her from hip to hip, thick and deep like a dried up
river cutting a channel across a desert.
“Keep it tight,” I told everyone.
One by one the infected turned to us,
each of them alerted by the cries of the others. The creature in front of me
stared into my eyes. Its irises were dark brown, with so little colour that
they appeared to be black. I got the sense that this wasn’t just an absent
stare. It felt like this infected was really seeing me, that it knew I was
there and that I wasn’t just food.
The wind scoured my body, sneaking
through every crevice in my clothes and smothering my skin.
“Kyle,” said Mel.
An infected to my right stumbled
toward me. It was a short, middle-aged man, his scalp missing and his grey
brain matter facing the elements. He reached out for me with fingernails an
inch long and lined with dirt.
I stepped back. I gave the scratched
infected another glance, and then focussed on the middle aged man. The infected
screamed and groaned like a nest of undead birds. Some concentrated on me,
hunger in their gaze, whilst others looked at Mel.
In the background behind me, Charlie
held his carving knife in his hand and swung at the head of an infected. The
blade dug into its scalp, but the blow wasn’t deep enough to damage its brain.
The scientist strained to pull his blade free.
A woman lurched at Mel. Her hair ran
to her waist, and flowed over the hem of a dirty skirt. It was tangled with mud
and twigs, giving her the appearance of an undead forest witch. Her cry was
high pitched and it seemed to crawl into my ears and worm its way into my
brain. The shouts around us rose until they sang out like a chorus.
The middle-aged man groped for me
again. I stepped out of reach, moved to the side and then stabbed the end of my
knife into his exposed brain. He tumbled down to the dirt.
Charlie tried again with the infected
near him, and this time he stabbed the metal through the monster’s brain.
Instead of falling back onto the floor, the infected toppled forwards, and the
scientist was too slow to move out of its way. He caught the full weight of the
corpse and struggled with it. As he tried to push it away, a monster to his
right moved toward him.
“Reggie,” I shouted, trying to get
him to help Charlie.
Even in the midst of a fight I could
see that Reggie didn’t look good. His eyes were vacant and it looked like he
could hardly keep them open. His steps were unsure, his gait not much different
from the infected whom he fought.
I was going to have to help Charlie.
That meant leaving Mel with three infected to fight, but I was more confident
of her prowess than I was of the two men across from us.
“You okay?” I said.
She nodded, and swung her cleaver at
the head of the forest witch infected who strained for her.
Charlie pushed the infected to the
floor. The one to his right, six foot tall and black, grabbed his shoulders. He
cried out in pain under the infected’s grip.
I moved in his direction, but as soon
as I took a step I felt pain in my scalp, and something yanked my head back. I
tried to move my head away but the pain was searing as if my skull was on fire.
I moved to the side and felt a clump of hair tear from my scalp.
The taller infected looked at me. It
held a clump of my black hair in its fists. It reached for me with a speed I
didn’t expect, and grabbed hold of my arm so tight that it was like it was trying
to squeeze through my flesh.
“Help!” Charlie shouted.
The infected held my right arm, so I
couldn’t do anything with my knife. It moved its head toward me in an absurd
movement that looked like it was stretching for a kiss. I saw its teeth, yellow
at the bases and stained brown in between, gums swollen and red raw. Its breath
tweaked my gag reflex.
Charlie screamed behind me. His voice
was desperate.
With my left hand I reached up and
grabbed the infected’s skull. I held it in a grip so that my thumb was on one
of its temples and my middle finger on the other, with my palm resting on its
head. I squeezed tight and then pulled away. The infected’s scalp came off with
surprising ease, the skin making a tearing sound as I ripped it away.
Charlie shrieked. Mel shouted
something, but a thumping in my ears drowned it out.
I held the infected’s scalp in my
hand. I bit back on the urge to be sick and threw the piece of skin and hair to
the ground. The wind lapped around the infected’s exposed brain. It was slimy
and full of gouges. I put my hand around it and squeezed, imagining that I was
gripping a sponge. I closed my hand tighter around the brain tissue until
finally I sensed a change. The creature in front of me went limp, its hand fell
away from my arm, and it dropped to the floor.
I turned. Charlie fell to the floor,
and an infected fell on top of him. Reggie took a few paces toward the
scientist and then stopped.
”What the hell are you doing?” I
said.
Reggie looked at me, but his eyes
were unfocused. He looked empty, a broken shell hobbling on two legs. As his
friend grappled with an infected just feet away, Reggie’s eyes went completely
blank and he fell to the floor.
I was too far away to get to Charlie
in time. With his one arm he wrestled with the infected, but the creature’s
desire and hunger and two good arms were winning out. My stomach churned as I
watched what I knew would be the death of yet another friend.
Something exploded. It was a bang so
loud that it made my ears ring. The infected above Charlie stopped fighting,
went limp and then slumped to the floor.
A man emerged from inside the
helicopter. He bent his head through the broken door and squeezed himself out
onto the fields. When he straightened up, I saw that he wore a military
uniform.
Chapter
20
He was shorter than most military
men, and a whole lot rounder. Though his body seemed thick it was also bulky,
and I sensed that he was sturdy enough that it would take more than a few
punches to knock him down. His eyebrows were bushy, and his black hair was
swept over his head where it fell into curls at the back. A carefully groomed
moustache claimed territory on his top lip.
Despite the uniform, I couldn’t
imagine him in the army. He looked like he’d fit in better behind the bar of a
low-class whiskey joint. Gossiping with the regulars, twisting a glass and wash
cloth in his hand and making the glass squeal as he wiped off lipstick stains.
Knocking back a short when the feeling took him, then looking up at the clock
and breathing out a sigh of whiskey-tainted breath.
He stopped for a few seconds and looked
at me. To my left, Mel raised her cleaver one last time. An infected cried out,
and there was a thud as it hit the ground. Then everything was silent.
The pilot turned the gun in his
hands. He looked at the handle. Then he raised it and pointed it at my head.
I didn’t say anything. I just stared.
I looked at his moustached face, at his skin wrinkled like a hide left out in
the sun. His eyes were deep and dark.
Mel turned her head toward me, and
then back at the pilot.
“The fight’s over. You can lower
that.”