He blinked. His irises disappeared
for a second, and then came back as dark as ever. He held the gun loosely, as
though he didn’t want it but knew that he needed it at the same time. I saw his
right eye squint through the sights. He seemed like a man getting ready to pull
the trigger.
“Listen,” I said, holding my hand up.
“We’re not here for trouble. We saw you fly over our camp, that’s all. Just
curiosity.”
He coughed.
“Well now you’ve seen me. So fuck
off.”
His voice was northern. It was gruff
and brutal, the words taking on a thickness as they left his mouth. It was a
voice as brash as the cold winter wind.
“Where are you from?” I said.
The smoke rose up behind him. It was
starting to disperse now, and the plume was thinner and clearer. I wondered why
he had started the fire in the first place. Was it to attract attention?
Throwing his chair on the blaze meant that the helicopter was probably grounded.
“I’m not in the habit of telling
strangers my business,” he said.
“So maybe you don’t tell us your
business. Just clue us in a little.”
“I’ve gotta say,” said Mel. “I’m
freaking out here. It’s been God knows how long since I saw a helicopter, and
then you go flying overhead. Then we come and find you, and you look like you
should be behind the counter in an antiques shop.”
The pilot seemed to think about it.
The gun stayed firm in his hand, the barrel pointed at my forehead.
“What’s with the fire?” I said.
“I’m not in the habit of – “
“Yeah, we get it.”
It was a Mexican standoff, but
instead of a dusty desert, it was the wet countryside of Scotland. Rather than
having pistols pointed at each other, only one of us had a firearm, which left
the rest of us at a disadvantage. We also had no idea what each of us wanted.
Where had he come from? Why was he here?
I started to feel like none of this
had been worth it. It had cost us a lot to get here, and there was nothing to
show for it but a paranoid pilot who looked too stocky to even get in the
cockpit.
“Kyle,” said Charlie, to my right.
Caught in the moment, I had forgotten
about him. He crouched down on his knees next to Reggie, who was out cold. The
bodies of the infected were slumped out on the grass around them. Charlie
pressed his index and middle fingers against Reggie’s neck.
He turned and looked at me. His face
was white.
“He’s dead,” he said.
The words stopped in the air, the
breeze sweeping them up and carrying them away so that I wondered if I had even
heard them.
“Say that again?” I said.
Mel started to walk across the field.
The pilot pointed the gun at her.
“Steady, love,” he said.
Charlie pressed his fingers against
Reggie’s neck again, and then shook his head.
“No pulse. He’s gone.” He put his
hand to his forehead, covering his face for a few seconds.
“This can’t be right,” I said. “What
the hell are you talking about? He didn’t get hurt in the fight. Look at him,
there are no marks on his body. Try his pulse again.”
Charlie shook his head. “Kyle, he’s
gone. I don’t know what - Well, I don’t know how this happened. One minute he
was walking, next thing we know, he drops to the floor.”
I thought about Taylor and about
finding the teenager’s body, his chest and stomach ripped apart. A few days
later, I had evicted Kendal from camp. Now, later still, Reggie was dead. This
was a whole family unit which had been torn to shreds in less than a fortnight.
One of them was gone by my hands, but what about the other two? Who had killed
Taylor? What the hell had happened to Reggie?
“You need to watch your pal,” said
the pilot. “Make sure he doesn’t get back up.”
“He wasn’t bitten,” said Mel. She was
edging closer to the pilot.
“No? So your mate just dropped dead?
Well lucky him, I suppose. Not many of us get to die of natural causes these
days.”
Mel took another step. She was feet
away from him now. The pilot aimed his gun at Charlie and Reggie now.
“Make sure the bugger doesn’t get
back up.”
Charlie looked incredulous. “You’re
not listening to me. He wasn’t bitten, and he damn sure wasn’t infected.”
Mel edged closer. I willed the pilot
not to look at her. I felt my pulse quicken.
The pilot instead moved his gaze to
me.
“You. What’s your name?”
“Kyle.”
“Well, Kyle. I’m Al Redmayne. You
seem as bull headed as me, and I don’t like that. But now that we know each other,
are you going to listen to me?”
“Helps that you’re pointing a gun,” I
said. “I’m not exactly going to ignore you.”
“An ears an ear, I don’t care what
makes you use it. Take heed of this, though. If you’ve got any sense in you,
you’ll put a knife through your friend’s brain.”
I sighed. “You’re the one who needs
to use your ears. He wasn’t bitten. He was…”
Mel moved another step as I spoke,
and this time she was close enough to lunge at the Al. As she reached for him
the pilot saw the movement, and he span around to face her. Quicker than Mel
could react, he swung the pistol and hit her on the face with it. It made a
thumping sound as it smashed the bridge of her nose.
Al raised the gun. His face was calm,
his breathing steady.
“Now listen to me, lass,” he started
to say.
Charlie cried out. Still on the
ground, he started to scamper backwards with one arm, but he lost balance for a
second. He scrambled on the floor and then pushed himself up to his feet.
There was movement in front of him.
Reggie’s hand flinched. It twisted on the ground, his fingers stretching out
and then curling in toward his palm. He jerked his arm and then twitched his
feet. Slowly, he moved his head. He started to lift it to look at us, and when
his eyes met mine, a shock ran through me.
Reggie’s gaze was cold and dead. The
skin on his face still seemed soft and human, but the look behind his eyes was
something else. It was wild and hungry. This was a stranger in Reggie’s body.
He opened his mouth to talk, but the only sound that came out was an agonised
cry. It was a wail so desperate that it sounded like it came from the deepest
pit of his stomach.
Al turned. He lifted the pistol and
looked down the sights. As his finger wrapped around the trigger, Charlie
launched himself at Reggie and aimed his blade at his eyes. Reggie fell face
first onto the grass. Charlie stood with his knife coated in blood, his chest
rising and falling as he sucked in air.
***
“Right now, we’ve all got things spot
on,” said Al.
He walked among the infected,
kneeling beside each one and turning them over to look at them. He stopped by
the one with scratches all over its face. It was the only one which wore
anything, but even this infected was naked from the waist down. He put his hand
in its jacket and pulled out a wallet.
“How do you figure?” I said.
Al opened the wallet. He pulled out a
bank note, looked it for a second and then let it go. The Queen’s head printed
on the side stared at me before it was carried away by the wind. He flicked
through the wallet and found a valet ticket, which he screwed up. He unclasped
a button and pulled out a photograph the size of a stamp. He studied it for a
few seconds and then put it in his pocket.
“Well,” he said, as he pulled the
coat off the infected. “You don’t trust me, I don’t trust you. Means neither of
us is gonna make a move that doesn’t serve our own interests.”
“Which are?” said Mel.
“Which are my business,” said Al.
I looked behind me, to the top of the
gentle hill. Ben and Lou waited on the crest of it. I waved up at them. Ben
waved back, but Lou didn’t stir.
“Let’s just leave it,” I said. “This
guy’s a dick.”
Mel had her hands on her hips. “Are
you serious, Kyle? We come all this way and then just leave because he’s an
arsehole? I want answers. I want to know what the hell he’s doing here.”
Al ignored her. He slung his new
denim jacket over his shoulder and walked over to the helicopter.
I wanted to know what was happening
as much as Mel, but I sensed that Al wasn’t a man accustomed to giving answers.
I knew that it wouldn’t do any good to try and persuade him.
Mel wouldn’t give up.
“Come on. What’s with the big
silence? We come all this way and you’ve got nothing to say to us?”
“I don’t give a shit how far you’ve
come. Your miles are your business, not mine.”
“You owe us an explanation.”
He shook his head. “I owe you nowt. I
don’t know you, I don’t trust you, and I sure as hell don’t have anything to
say to you.”
“Supposing I make you talk?” said
Mel.
Al grinned. “Supposing you try.”
“Leave it,” I sighed. “He’s right.
Trust works two ways, and I don’t have any in this guy. Let’s go.”
I turned my back on Al and started to
walk away toward the hill. I counted each step in my head, but I only made it
to ten before I heard his gruff voice call out.
“You made the right choice, Carl,” he
said.
“Kyle.”
“Whichever one it is.”
He tried to tuck his gun into his
belt, but the leather was so tight around his waist that he couldn’t. He held
it in his right hand, but put his left up in the air.
“Come on now. Come sit down a second.
You’ve got to be careful, round here. In the untamed parts. You never know
who’s looking for trouble and who’s bringing it.”
Chapter
21
“The way it seems to me,” said Al,
“You were gonna leave. Means you weren’t interested in taking what I had,
though many in your position would try.”
Al had walked around the side of the
helicopter, where a thin line of smoke drifted. He poked the ashen edges of the
fire with his boots. I stood a few feet back.
“I didn’t know you even had anything
worth taking.”
“Oh I don’t. I’m poorer that a
beggar’s arsehole. Doesn’t stop people from trying, though.”
Mel rubbed her nose. It didn’t seem
broken, but it had already started to swell.
“You’re an arsehole, alright. Think you
can do that again, do you? Put the pistol down and fight me properly.”
“You lunged at me, love. I know I’m a
handsome bastard but you could have waited.”
I gave Mel a look. I didn’t want to
provoke Al yet.
Charlie knocked on the helicopter
with his knuckles. The metal rang.
“Doesn’t seem like you’re poor to
me.”
“The sparrow isn’t mine,” said Al.
“Sparrow?”
“It’s what I call the helicopter.”
We stood around the smouldering wreck
at the side of the helicopter. The black seat had melted around the edges and
some of the leather had dripped away like wax. The bulk of it hadn’t caught
fire completely.
“It’s time you were straight with
us,” I said.
Al rubbed his hands around his mouth,
the bristles of his moustache moving under his fingers.
“How many of you are there?” he said.
I didn’t know how much I should tell
him. I had learned to be wary of strangers, but it seemed clear that Al had
gotten the same lesson. We needed to find out what he was doing here, and he
wouldn’t give any information away without getting some from us in return. I
reasoned that if he meant us harm, he could have shot one of us already.
“Just what you see here. We’re a
small group,” said Mel, answering him before I got a chance.
Al studied her for a second. I got
the impression that he saw beneath the surface, that his wise eyes saw the
truths we tried to hide away.
“Come on, love,” he said.
“Do you see anyone else?” said Mel.
“And don’t call me love.”
Al held up his hand. “Sorry. But if
you’ll beg my pardon, that’s bullshit.”
“Think what you want.”
“If that’s the way it’s going to be,”
said Al.
He turned his back on us and walked
to the window of the helicopter. He rummaged around inside, before pulling a
bright orange rucksack through the opening. He hefted it onto his shoulder, and
then stopped. He looked at us all for a few seconds, dark eyes focussing on
mine, and then he started to walk away.
I looked at Mel and Charlie. Charlie
shrugged his shoulders. Every few seconds, he would dart his gaze to Reggie’s
body on the ground.
“I don’t trust him,” said Mel.
Al was walking across the grass now.
His heavy boots trampled the blades underneath him.
“Hang on,” I said.
He carried on walking.
“Al.”
He stopped and turned around.
“Feeling chattier?”
“Just come back here.”
There was a chill in the air. The
faint tinge of burning and smoke infused the air around us. I pinched the arm
of my jacket and sniffed it. I smelled like a fire. It took me back to bonfire
nights with my dad; a twisted Guy Fawkes doll melting in the flames, and
fireworks screeching into the sky. I had always hated my dad dragging us out on
those nights, but I would have given the world to go back in time.
Al walked back toward us. His bag
made a heavy thump as he dropped it on the ground.
“Time we spoke honestly,” he said.
“Now trust me on my word. I don’t mean you any harm. But I can’t say the same
about you lot.”
“You’re the one with the gun.”
Al nodded.
“And I don’t mind telling you that
I’ve only got one bullet left. Enough to drop one of you. Probably the big guy
here,” he said, nodding at me. “I say big, but you’re more lanky than anything.
But the rest of you will still be standing. Seems to me that I’m the one
placing all the trust here.”
“Look around you,” said Charlie. He
jerked his shoulder to show Al his stump. “I’m not exactly in prime condition.
And Lou over there won’t be putting up much of a fight. We’re not a threat to
you.”
I sighed. Weariness made my bones
heavy. It was like the journey of the last week was hitting me in full force
all at once.
“We’ve got a camp. South of here, not
too far away. There’s about fifty of us.”
“Any guns?” said Al.
“This is Britain. We don’t have Uzis
lying around.”
“Maybe so. But we’re in the
highlands. There are poachers, farmers. People who like the feeling of a
shotgun hanging over their arm.”
“We already told you we’re not going
to hurt you,” said Mel.
Al watched us. Again I got the
feeling that he saw much more than we intentionally gave away. His wrinkled
face stood out under the dim light. The gouges that time had carved in his face
made him seem as craggy as the hills and rocks around us.
“The situation’s this,” he said. “We
dropped into London a fortnight back.”
“Who’s we?” I said.
“Sounds a little silly, when you look
at how things have turned to shit. But you’d probably know us as the
government.”
It was a word I hadn’t heard in a
long time. It brought back images of politicians in suits, of debates and
referendums, of lies and propaganda. At the same time, it had associations of
civilisation, of the world as it had been before the cataclysm.
The first few years of the outbreak,
I had always wondered where the government were. I was so angry at them that I
could spit. Why weren’t they doing anything? Why had they just left us to waste
away? After a while, I gave up on the idea of seeing them.
“Say that again,” I said.
Al bent down and adjusted the lace on
his right boot. Straightening up, he looked at me.
“We’ve been coming back every few
years. Don’t know what we expect to find, because nothing changes. We find
survivors every so often and take them back to the island, but there’s no
helping some people. Did you ever see on the news, those stories about kids
found in the wild? Abandoned when they were babes and then raised by wolves or
wild dogs? People are like that, we find. Anyone who’s survived this long has
had to go a little wild. Some of them can’t adjust when we take them back.”
“Hold on a second,” said Charlie. He
tucked his hand in his jacket pocket. “What island?”
Al reached into his rucksack. He
rummaged around and then pulled out a compass. He studied it for a few seconds,
sighed, and then threw it on the ground.
“Bloody thing’s busted.”
He looked up at the sky, and then
turned to his right. He pointed.
“Over that direction,” he said. “Know
what we call that?”
I followed his finger, but I saw
nothing but more of the bleak landscape that seemed to fill every inch of the
highlands. Rocks forged millions of years ago and then carved away by the
passage of time.
“I’m not the best at geography,” I
said.
Al grinned.
“We call that south east.”
I shook my head.
“Very funny.”
“If you follow that direction,”
continued Al, “you’ll hit the coast. Go far enough across the sea, and you’ll
come to an island called Gann. Used to be a small fishing village. Now it’s
something else. You won’t find people catching cod out there, anymore. Well you
will find that actually, because that’s what we eat, but it isn’t just a
fishing village anymore.”
“Get to the point,” said Mel.
“That little island in the sea is
where the government lives now,” said Al in a patronising voice, as though he
was talking to a child.
For a few seconds nobody said
anything. The only sound was the wind which blew through the open windows of
the helicopter and rattled something inside. Charlie stared south east, his gaze
focused on the horizon as if he could see through the hills that blocked our
view.
“Come on now,” said Al. “Don’t tell
me you never wondered where everyone went.”
I hadn’t been south since the world
ended. It had occurred to me that if by some chance anything was left of the
leadership of the country, they would be down there. I also thought they would
be hunkered in a bunker, shutting themselves away from the apocalypse with
steel doors and tons of rock. They would be either oblivious to the screams of
the survivors above, or just plugging their ears to ignore the noise.
In my time in the wilds I had met a
few people who were going south. It always seemed like a stupid plan to me. The
capital was in the south. It was the most populated city in the country, and
that meant more decayed foot soldiers for the army of the undead. Cities meant
death. Everywhere meant death, really, but going to a city was like walking
into your own grave.
Al picked up his rucksack and slipped
the strap across his shoulders. He adjusted the weight on his back, bending his
knees under the strain.
“I better go,” he said.
“Go where?”
He spread his arms out wide.
“Where else? I can’t stay in the arse
end of nowhere, no matter how beautiful the view and how delightful the
company. I’ve got to get to the other side of the country.”
“Why don’t you fly?” said Ben.
I didn’t even know that the boy had
left Lou’s side. I looked behind us and saw that she was on her own, on the
stretcher, at the top of the hill. I felt guilty that we had just left her
there.
“Mind checking on her?” I said to
Mel.
She nodded. She gave Al a wary
glance, and then walked away.
Al kneeled down so that he was at the
same height as Ben.
“The sparrow’s wings are broken, so
I’m going to have to walk,” he said. “And I better get a move on.”
“What’s the rush?” said Charlie.
“Our ship is only docked for a few
weeks. If I’m not back to meet them, they’ll just leave. And then I’ll be
spending the next few years on the mainland.”
“That’s a hell of a journey,” said
Charlie. “London is miles away.”
“And I’ve got sore feet,” said Al.
“But I’ll have to make do. Now, are you coming, or what?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I told you. We pick up survivors.
The ones who haven’t gone savage, at any rate. There’s room on the ship for a
few more scruffy looking people.”