Remains of the Dead (27 page)

Cahz snapped the carbine up to the firing position.

“Don’t walk away from me!”

He had the back of Ryan’s head framed in the sight.

Ryan stopped but didn’t turn around.

“Stop and about face!” Cahz barked. “That’s an order!”

“I’m not one of your soldiers,” Ryan said calmly. “I’m not under your command, Cahz.”

He turned around. His eyes widened as he saw the weapon trained on him.

Slowly he raised his hands to show his surrender.

“What are you going to do, Cahz?” Ryan said softly. “You’re all nice and democratic all morning; now you’re going to shoot a civilian with a baby? For what?” Ryan cocked his head slightly. “For what?”

Cahz’s teeth were clenched together, his muscles rigid with strain. The muzzle of the weapon was trembling as he barely kept his anger in check.

“You know what?” Ryan shook his head gently as he spoke. “Why don’t you just pull the trigger? Waste me like I’m one of those things and then do my daughter.” Ryan paused, staring down Cahz. “You’d be doing me a favour. I don’t have the luxury of topping myself like Cannon did. I have to look after her.” Slowly he brought his hands down from the surrender position and unzipped the rucksack.

He unveiled the crying child.

“I can’t give up on her, on Sam, or Elspeth. I have to keep going, not for myself, but for her.”

Ryan lifted the girl out and cradled her in his arms. The child was flushed bright red, screaming at the discomfort of the cold and the hunger.

Cahz looked down at his carbine. The black metal frame had fat drops of rain bouncing off its body. The same cold raindrops sprayed Cahz’s face, soaking his skin before dribbling off like the miniature river coming down the alley.

“When you decided to stay behind, is this where you thought you’d be?” Ryan asked. Droplets of water dripped from his chin as he spoke.

Cahz felt the pounding of his heart and the rush of breath. The bad taste still coated his mouth. He brought up some phlegm and spat it on the wet ground. The spit was instantly swept away by the fast current of the runoff.

He took a deep breath and lowered the weapon.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” he asked, his voice flat, his eyes still on the barrel of his weapon.

“We’ll work it out, man,” Ryan said. “We’ll work it out.” He lowered his daughter back into the shelter of the papoose and pointed off up the path. “I think there’s a school this way; fences and a big flat playing field.”

Cahz took a snort of breath in through his nose and followed where Ryan was gesturing.

“Sounds like the best plan,” he said, his chest still heaving.

* * *

The dark rain clouds eradicated the last light of day and a hazy gloom reduced visibility still further.

Ryan’s thoroughly soaked jeans clung to his legs, chafing him with every step.

“How far have we got to go?” Cahz asked.

The pair were walking side by side. Cahz’s desire to distance himself had softened.

“Huh? Is that you whining?” Ryan laughed.

“No. I want to know if we’ll make it before it goes dark,” Cahz said.

“It’s just down this road,” Ryan answered.

“You said that ten minutes ago.”

“I know, I know,” Ryan said defensively. “Look, I don’t know this area that well. I only ever drove down here back in the day. It’s much further when you’re walking.” He scratched his chin. “Well, it’s not any further, it’s just taken longer than I expected. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do. Me and Cannon walked over a hundred miles to get to safety when the whole thing kicked off,” Cahz said. “Some days you’d walk for hours, then you’d look at the map and you couldn’t see any progress.”

“You and Cannon been friends since the kick-off?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, basically,” Cahz said. “A handful of us regulars managed to get out of Nelson.”

“Nelson?”

“Yeah, a pissant little town. Nothing there, but we’d been sent to set up checkpoints to test for infected. They were quarantining whole parts of the country, trying to stop the spread at that point. Well, the shit hit the fan, like it did everywhere. When we lost contact, our captain took the decision that we should bug out and head for a naval base on the coast. We took a royal fucking getting out of there and on the way out we acquired a bit of a following.”

“Pus bags?” Ryan asked.

Cahz sniggered. “Yeah, those as well, but I’m talking about civvies. Refugees spotted the uniforms and demanded we protect them. So the six of us that were left ended up escorting fifty-odd refugees all the way to the coast.”

“Was Cannon in your squad?”

Cahz looked across at Ryan. After a moment he faced forward again and said, “Cannon was one of the civvies. He’d been out of uniform a few years by then, but he still had the skills. We’d have lost a lot more people if Cannon hadn’t been with us. After that we kind of stuck together. It’s good to have a man like Cannon you can trust…”

Cahz physically stopped.

“What is it?” Ryan looked around nervously.

“I thought I could rely on him. I thought I knew him.” Cahz was breathing heavily. “I never thought he’d…”

Ryan waited for him to restart his sentence.

“Look, Ryan, there’s something I need to tell you,” Cahz said, his voice flat and serious.

“Yeah?”

Cahz spat a bitter mouthful of phlegm onto the ground. “I think I’ve been infected.”

“What?” Ryan was stunned. “When—I mean how?”

“Back in the plaza this morning,” Cahz said.

Ryan looked at either side of Cahz’s face. “Where? How?”

“Shot a W.D. point-blank and got a mouthful of junk,” Cahz admitted.

Ryan screwed up his face at the thought. “But surely you’d have…” He paused. “I mean…”

“I know most people succumb in a few hours, but then most people get bit or scratched. I ingested it. I’ve been feeling steadily worse all day.”

“But that’s the loss of blood from the dog bite.” Ryan looked down at the blooded bandage on Cahz’s arm.

“It’s more than that. I’m sure of it.”

“I’ve never known anyone who’s swallowed that stuff.” Ryan looked at the bloody arm and back up at Cahz. “I don’t even know if you can get it by eating it?”

“I don’t know either. I know you get it if it gets in your blood.”

“Surely you’ve have died by now and come back?” Ryan perked up. “It can’t have gotten into your blood or you’d be one of them by now.”

Cahz shook his head. “Ryan, I know what you’re trying to do. There’s no point—”

“Say it’s just the dog bite, right,” Ryan said eagerly. “It was a mangy thing and you’ve lost a lot of blood. It makes more sense it was the dog bite. All you have to do is hang in there. We’ll get picked up and you’ll get your rabies shots and everything’s okay.”

“What if it’s not?”

“Then…” Ryan thought for a second. “Then I’ll do what you did to Elspeth.”

Cahz gave a silent nod.

“School’s just down here,” Ryan said, changing the subject.

“Thank fuck. I’m soaked.” Cahz looked up at the black sky. “It will be good to get under shelter and dry out.”

They rounded a corner to see a squat-looking old brick school. Its tall, flat iron fencing skirting the main road marked the end of its large grass covered playing fields.

“Looks perfect,” Cahz said as he quickened his pace to the gates.

“Why the fuck are schools surrounded by this stuff? We never had this shit when I was a kid,” Ryan said, shaking a rusted post. “It’s like Guantanamo Bay.”

“It’s to keep the pedos out,” Cahz said as he stepped onto a litterbin and scrambled over.

Ryan sniggered.

From the other side of the fence Cahz stretched his hands up. “Pass Rebecca over first,” he said.

Ryan unfastened the makeshift papoose and handed the child over.

A familiar moan drifted across the derelict street.

Standing on top of the refuse bin Ryan turned round and looked back the way they’d come. Even through the grainy cloak of darkness he could make out shadows moving. He stood there like a sentry on his elevated lookout. As he squinted his eyes against the rain-veiled gloom, the shadows grew closer. The fleeting glimpses started to coalesce and out of the rain lumbered the silhouette of a zombie, the dark figure ambling past the wrecked cars and drawing closer. Emerging from the downpour a second wretched creature shuffled resolutely towards him, then a third and a fourth. More and more until a dozen shambling cadavers appeared.

“Jesus Christ, Cahz. Look at them.”

Not even the torrential rain could mask the cries now. Cahz looked through the railings to the platoon of drenched corpses shuffling their way towards them.

“Quickly, Ryan,” Cahz said.

“Yeah.”

He passed the strained plastic bag full of cans over to Cahz. Ryan grabbed the railing and vaulted over the top.

“Get inside and out of sight,” Cahz said. “If we stay out here we’re just going to rile them up.”

Ryan and Cahz ran through the weeds and long grass to the school’s entrance. Though the large glass fronted door all they could see was the pitch darkness of the hallway inside.

“Locked,” Cahz said, rattling the door handle.

“Try another door?” Ryan looked left and right trying to spot a second way in.

“Fuck that.”

With both hands Cahz swung his carbine round and battered the glass with its butt. The safety glass crunched with the impact but didn’t break.

“To hell with this,” he said as he swung the weapon into firing position and opened up on the pane.

Rebecca started bawling at the shock from the gunshot.

“Cahz!” Ryan protested as he tried to shield the child’s ears.

“Come on,” Cahz said, stepping over the broken glass.

Carefully treading through the doorway, Ryan followed close behind.

“You got that torch?” Cahz asked, his weapon pointing at the gloomy corridor ahead.

“Somewhere… Ah! Here.”

He hooked the handles of the plastic bag over his wrist and with the whir of the dynamo the dim yellow light started to dispel the insidious darkness.

Before them was a short corridor that led to a set of double doors.

With his carbine hard against his shoulder Cahz, cautiously moved forward.

“Follow my aim,” he whispered to Ryan.

The inadequate wind-up torch cast a pulsating glow of dirty yellow light over the desolate school. Impeded by the awkward position of the improvised papoose and the bag of cans dangling from his arm, the light dimmed and grew with Ryan’s ungainly cranking. With clumsy jerks Ryan frantically tried to illuminate Cahz’s sweeps.

It was a conflicting situation, the two men moving stealthily and with purpose while all the time the child strapped to Ryan’s chest wailed.

They reached the end of the corridor past the small reception area and restrooms unmolested.

Cahz stretched out with his left hand and opened the swing doors, his weapon still trained. The door swung to with a loud creak. He stepped through, using his foot as a doorstop for Ryan.

The light died as Ryan negotiated the door. When the puny light came back on, the corridor was just as empty.

“What now?” Ryan whispered.

“We check…” Cahz stopped whispering and spoke at a normal volume. “We check the classrooms. And there’s no point whispering with Rebecca crying.”

“It’s not her fault, man. She’s only a little baby. Every time you fire off with that thing you scare the shit out of her.” Ryan sniffed the air. “Literally.”

“I’m sorry I upset her, but I’m not going to fuck around. I know this can’t be any fun for her.”

“At least give me a warning in future,” Ryan said in a conciliatory tone. “I could cover her ears or something.”

“Let’s just find a room we can get comfortable in,” Cahz said. “And I’ll give you a hand changing her.”

“What if there’s pus bags in here?”

“If there were I’m sure they’d have come to greet us, or at the very least started whooping for joy. Now let’s get dried off as best we can and see about signaling the chopper.”

“Found these in the canteen,” Ryan announced as he came into the classroom. He tossed a bundle of dishtowels in Cahz’s direction.

Cahz was already naked, sitting on the only adult-sized chair in the room, warming his hands by the fire.

“Thanks,” he said, catching the cloths.

“Ingenious,” Ryan said nodding at the makeshift clothesline.

Cahz had knotted together a line of skipping ropes and was drying his fatigues over the fire.

“Adapt, improvise and overcome,” Cahz quoted as he rubbed his wet hair with the small towel. “They’re going to stink of smoke, but no one ever died of a smell.”

Ryan pulled up a miniature plastic chair and sat down on it. His knees were up by his chin as he squirmed, trying to get comfortable.

“This is no good,” he said, admitting defeat and sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“Did you take a look outside?”

“Yeah, but it was too dark to see anything,” Ryan said. “I could hear them moaning and rattling the fence, but there can’t be more than a handful of them.”

“What’s that?” Cahz asked, looking at the tin in Ryan’s hand.

“Canned milk,” Ryan said. He pierced the lid with the tin opener. “I thought Rebecca might like it since we’ve run out of crackers.”

“How you going to feed it to her?”

“Spoon it in, I guess,” Ryan said, brandishing the utensil. “Got one from the kitchen.”

“Listen, Ryan…” Cahz stopped rubbing his hair. “About earlier...” He looked down into the fire and summoned up the courage to speak. “I’m sorry.” He looked into Ryan’s eyes. “I’m sorry for the shit I pulled on you. I was out of order.”

“You lose anyone close before Cannon?” Ryan asked.

“Sure. Friends, family, girlfriend.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, I mean up close. I mean right in front of you?”

Cahz folded the wet dishcloth and put it to one side. “I’ve seen countless people get devoured or put down—”

“That’s not where I was heading. Have you seen anyone you cared for die in front of your own eyes?”