I closed over the hatch, grabbed a couple of towels and mopped up as much of Danny’s blood as I could, lobbing them into the pool of Simon’s blood as I prepared to leave. I made sure the rug covered the edges of the cellar entrance perfectly. If I was lucky, the next people in here would not find the way down. If I was unlucky, then I was just trying to save my brother. And there was nothing wrong with that.
* * *
Now, I peeled the rug back and lifted the hatch as much as I needed to reach down and pop on the overhead lighting. It seemed to burn into my retinas after so long in the dark. I squinted and closed the hatch over a little, giving my eyes a chance to re-adjust. Once the bright spots in my vision began to fade, I opened it up again, this time just enough to look down and pick out my brother’s form.
Danny had not broken free of his bonds. He was still tied to the strut of the shelving unit but was clearly no longer unconscious. The heels of his boots had left black streaks along the floor as he had tried to push himself up, and his head, still in the backward motorbike helmet, jerked back and forth like a chicken waiting for its feed.
I crept down the stairs, closing the trapdoor gently with as little noise as possible. It was only when I was in the confined area that I became aware of the continual ‘mmmm’ coming from beneath the helmet, from Danny. I approached him slowly and reached over the back of his head, lifting the visor and then using the space it left to get a tight grip on the helmet. I whipped it off over his head as quickly as possible, tearing small clumps of his hair out at the same time. I pulled so hard that I lost my balance, falling backwards and away from Danny, the dust from the floor coating my black trousers. I rolled myself over and we sat facing each other.
The sudden brightness had silenced him and he tucked his chin in close to his chest, his eyelids partially closed as if the light was stabbing into the grey mess that had once been his eyes. His skin was already pale like the others I had seen, tight across his cheekbones and around his jaw. Then, he saw me properly and all his fear of the illumination dissipated and he stared straight at me, body rigid, teeth bared by his grotesquely peeled back lips, occasionally snapping but making that evil, terrifying noise over and over and over.
‘MMMMMMMMMMMM.’
Maybe being around the military and listening to the formal news reports on the BBC had gotten to me; my brother was infected, but there was no way that my brother was a zombie. For the second time, I smashed a motorcycle helmet into his face, and for the second time, I was not sure if I had killed him or knocked him out. But even then, from his limp jaw, the occasional distant noise would escape. I quickly pulled the helmet back into position over his head. I did not want to see Danny this way. This was not going to be easy but at least it meant that, now, I could bring my brother home safely.
I snatched one of the scissors from the shelf above Danny and snipped away all of the ties that held him in place. His upper body slumped forward to the floor. His wrists and ankles remained bound. The wound that had once been his little finger was a red, gory mess. It was no longer bleeding, but since he had regained whatever form of consciousness that this was, he had been rubbing his hands on the floor behind him, trying to get some purchase, leaving a gloopy smear of flesh and blood on the floor.
I was in no rush so I made sure the extra ties I put in place around his knees and elbows were as tight as could be. By the time I was ready to lift him back up the stairs, I knew there was no way that he could escape, and that I, in turn, was safe. Hooking my arms under his, I was able to work my way backwards up the stairs. I used the top of my head to lift the hatch as I stood up straight, and it fell over with a muffled bang as I finally got him to the top.
Luckily, it had overbalanced onto the rug, which had bunched up on the other side of the hole from which we emerged, so the sound it made was relatively muted. Now, I moved quickly, pulling Danny over as close to the front door as possible and dumping him down on the floor. I made one final trip into the cellar to hide the remains of the cut-up ties right under the bottom shelves, and used a clean towel to rub up the blood that Danny’s injury had left behind. I stashed the towel with the ties, mounted the stairs and turned the light off. I closed the trap door and once again replaced the rug.
Crouching, I advanced to the window on my far left. I raised my head just enough to see the back of the Range Rover. I pulled the key fob from my pocket and clicked it to unlock the doors, making the indicators blink once. It must have been quiet out there because I could hear the clunk of the lock opening even in the shop. I quickly ran to every window, checking for any passersby or any people in the windows of the houses that overlooked my position. Nothing. It was time.
I returned to the first window and slipped my thumb to the button at the very bottom of the fob, pressed, and held it. The boot of the Range Rover opened. That was my cue to move quickly. I crossed to Danny and, using my right arm, pulled him to his feet, realising for the first time just how light he felt. I got him balanced between my arm and my right hip, my hand gripping the leather of his jacket as tightly as I could. With my left hand I opened the shop door, let it swing inwards and then bundled Danny towards the boot of my vehicle.
From a distance, even with the helmet, it would have looked like I was man-handling a drunk, and as long as it seemed like we had just come around the corner as opposed to having exited the hairdressers’, maybe this would work. I half carried, half dragged his upright body as quickly as I could to the back of the Range Rover, basically throwing him inside.
I closed the boot with as much grace as possible, locked the car again and walked back past the shop door, casually reaching in and pulling it towards me as I went. It made a dull but resonant noise of metal on metal as the mechanisms slotted into place. I walked back to the Range Rover, unlocked it and got in, hoping that no one had seen me, and hoping that my brother would not get free.
I unravelled the rope and considered where it should be looped up over the rafters. I had to be sure I was positioning him in the right place. I didn’t want him too close to the door, although I didn’t want him too far out of sight of the open door, either; I needed to know straight away before I even stepped inside the shed if he had gotten himself loose at all. I couldn’t position him too close to the side panel, because if he started to kick out, not only could he damage the wood but he might also draw attention to himself. That would not be good.
The rafters overlapped in several places, and one junction, just off to the left of the centre of the shed, seemed to present the best option. I threaded the rope over the top, tied it off a couple of times, took the longest end over again, knotted and repeated once more. The two ends of rope left hanging were about one metre long and I swung on them, making sure both the rope and the wood were strong enough. They were. That was good enough for me. It was time to bring Danny down.
I had too many keys in my trouser pocket, so I diverted into the kitchen and left the house keys and Simon’s shop keys on the table. The car keys and the padlock keys remained with me. I had not been sure how I was going to secure the shed door and had searched around the garage over the last couple of days of the Williams’ stay; I had only found one small and rusted hasp and just enough screws to hold it in place. It had not taken long to screw it into position and one of our bike padlocks would do for the time being until I was able to get two far more substantial security devices.
I pressed the button that opened the boot and leant over my brother to see if he had come round yet. His body was still limp, the helmet still on his head, and it was easy to drag him out and down the path. The padlock lay on the floor just outside of the shed and was opened, ready to be snipped into place. I gently lay Danny on the grass next to it and pulled the shed open, wedged it wide with my left foot and with no ceremony at all, virtually bounced Danny inside. I let the door swing shut and stepped fully in after him. And then I realised that I possibly had not thought this through enough. How was I meant to hold him up and tie his hands at the same time? Some engineer I would have turned out to be.
He still made no sound and had not made any voluntary movements, so I lifted him to his feet with my left arm under his left armpit. I raised the arm up and stretched across his chest with my right hand and wrapped one of the loose strands of rope around his wrist, pushing the sleeve of his leather jacket up his forearm as I did so. Holding on to the rope tightly with my right hand, I slid my left hand up to his arm and grabbed hold of the jacket, stepping back slightly and letting Danny’s weight slip off me.
He stayed upright, and I had just enough hold on him to stop him from sliding to the floor again. I worked quickly, feeling gravity turn against me, but within a couple of minutes, he was tightly tied to the rafter.
I had chosen his left hand intentionally. The thought of touching where the girl had bitten him repulsed me. It was from that point where the infection had spread, had taken over his whole body.
Maybe the infection was
still
spreading? And what if it was emanating from that very source?
I undid his leather jacket and tried to take it off him, but only got it halfway down his right arm before realising I would never get it off his bound left wrist. To rectify my mistake, I exited the shed and ran up towards the house to fetch the heavy duty scissors from the cutlery drawer. I stopped halfway.
Damn
.
I had to get into the right habits from the off, and one of those would be to always keep the shed locked. It may only be for a few seconds, but it was not a risk I was prepared to take, full stop. I jogged back, put the padlock in place and this time walked up to the house. When I approached the back door, the security light blinked on. It did not have time to switch itself off before I was back out again, scissors in hand. I unlocked the shed and stepped back inside.
Danny was no longer hanging there by his left arm. He must have started to regain his senses and now his feet held him up. Not all his senses had returned, however, as he was still blinded by the motorcycle helmet, and I was glad of that when his right arm started trying to grab the air around him, restricted by still being half stuck in the sleeve of the jacket. I was able to pivot away from it but realised I would need to get more rope.
What if he managed to free himself before then?
I caught sight of the exposed flesh of his upper right arm, just below his shoulder. I looked at the place where his little finger should be, the rest of the digits still wiggling slowly next to the bloody stump. I looked at the small axe, the hatchet, and I knew what I had to do. I picked it up and stepped to Danny’s left so I was stood safely behind him. I lined up my swing in the narrow space between his body and the wooden panel and then I sunk the head of the weapon into his arm, just where the bottom of the deltoid shoulder muscle met his bicep.
The flesh and muscle tore open, and a little black blood seeped out. There had been a splintering sound of bone breaking on contact and I now had to work the axe up and down to free it from the arm. I could see my own reflection in the motorcycle helmet and I scared myself. If Danny felt any pain, he did not show it; the only time he showed any awareness of what I was doing was when he turned his head towards the wound, as if he felt nothing more than some minor irritation, like an insect had landed on him. I swung once more, this time almost going all the way through.
Three more swipes at it, and my brother’s right arm fell to the floor, leaving a messy stump that continued to probe the air, searching for food. I kicked the arm into the far corner and stumbled outside, bile spilling from the sides of my closed mouth as I tried to hold it in.
I had disfigured my brother. Was there anything worse I could do to him?
I gave myself a moment, breathing deep and trying to stop my shuddering. Eventually I stepped back inside, my legs shaking, my chest crushing my lungs so tight that breathing hurt. I cut the leather jacket off his arm with the scissors, then removed it from him completely so that he was left hanging in his boots, leather trousers and a filthy white t-shirt. The gore had soaked up from his right shoulder along the material.
He occasionally tugged on the rope that held him but made little effort to really pull himself free. His feet hardly moved and just shuffled an inch or so forward and back when he lost his balance. I stood behind him, gripped the sides of the helmet with both hands and gently eased it off his head. Either I had gotten used to the noise being muffled by the helmet, or he had not been making it while his face was covered, but the sudden, ‘MMMM,’ sound made me drop the helmet.
That made up my mind for me. When I wasn’t down here with him, talking to him, feeding him, the helmet would stay on. Leaving it where it lay for now, I stepped around to the front of my brother. His face was almost the same colour grey as his eyes. His hair seemed to be falling out and his lips were pulled back, revealing his striking white teeth. His gums were bleeding and his tongue licked and flicked around inside his mouth, relishing the taste. I guessed they all did that, sucking their teeth clean as they sought every morsel of food possible.
His eyes picked up my movement, as if he had initially been looking through a haze, and he sniffed quickly, foxlike, before launching himself at me, face first. I was well out of his reach, thank God, because the power with which his jaws smashed together caused one of his teeth to chip, the white enamel skating across the shed floor.
He started making the growling noise again. His jaw continued to work itself up and down, extending out towards me with every bite. I knew that I had to do something to minimise the risk to myself. I was all too aware that Danny would need feeding, but there was no way in the world that I could manage it if every time I brought him fresh meat he was more interested in chewing on me instead. No, I had to make this as practical for me as possible.