The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) (28 page)

              I noticed early on that Cassidy and Stevie were often doing weight lifting near were the soldiers sat, talked and smoked when they were off duty. Moreover, Eden liked to sit at one of the outside tables with her adult colouring book and pencils.

              An idea formed slowly in my mind, aided and abetted by Phoenix’s conspiracy theories which he had many of, but these theories were based on the information he had at hand, his analytical mind and ability to think in a totally linear fashion.

Phoenix had state that it would be totally illogical for Epsilon Command not to include people in the ranks that spied for them, who knew the true reality of the situation.

I had at first scoffed at this theory, but when I mulled over it in bed that night I realised it had considerable merit. From what Phoenix said, most military units who had been training and had survived the contagion were international specialist units with specialist skills.

Wolf’s people were ground combat ready soldiers, every soldier from Grunt to Officer had a specific skill, like Nat who was the Company’s medic, but was also a qualified Doctor, trained in battle trauma and wounds.

Even young Salter had a specialist skill, he was apparently their digital ace, his degree had been funded by the army he told me when he came into the kitchen for coffee the day after we had returned from town. He had no family, other than an Aunt and Uncle who he presumed were now Twice Dead and the only way he could afford to go to college at 18 was by getting a full scholarship and the army offered him just that. Payback was a bitch though, ten years in the army.

In order to defeat your enemy, you had to know what they were doing and though we could access COBRA, it wasn’t enough. We needed more information.

I immediately excluded Jasmine from my idea because she had been physically involved with one of the soldiers, also she couldn't keep a secret even if you taped her mouth shut. So whilst she was with Adag helping in the kitchen I took Stevie and Cassidy aside and told them that I had a very important job for them to do, not only important, but it was a secret too.

              Cassidy’s eyes went big and they both listened intently.

              “When you are exercising outside,” I said, “I want you to listen to what the soldiers are saying, even if you don’t understand what they are saying, try to remember, all that you can, but don’t let them know you are listening to them.”

              “OK,” Cassidy said. He liked to do things for me. I gave him half of the bar of the army ration chocolate leftover from the picnic. He was delighted and happily sat down to eat it.

              “Thank you Lucy,” he said through a mouthful of chocolate.

              Stevie was quiet for a moment as he mulled over what I had requested of him and then he said, “Why?”

              “Cass,” I said, “Could you please get me a glass of water? I need to take my tablets.”

              Cassidy got up and ambled off to the kitchen still munching on his chocolate. I contemplated lying to Stevie, but made the decision once again not to lie,” You remember what happened to Gregory? How he was made bad?”

              Stevie nodded his head, “Well,” I said, “What made him bad was done by very bad people far away from here, and some of them might be here.”

              “The soldiers?” Stevie asked.

              “Some of them perhaps, I don’t know, but we need to know, it’s a lot to ask you to do, listen to what people are saying and perhaps not understanding all of it, but I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t very important.”

              Stevie looked at me quizzically, taking in what I said and then slowly he nodded his head, “OK.”

              Cassidy came back with my water and I thanked him. I then went and found Eden. She was watching a re-run of EastEnders and lamenting that she was missing the new episodes. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the only EastEnders actors she would ever get to see from now on would be of the Twice Dead variety, unless they were among the chosen elite, somehow I really doubted that.

              I asked her to come to my room for a chat. She looked surprised, then worried, but I said softly to her, “I need your help.”

              She was stunned by my words, then excited. She stood up and we made our way to my room. I sat on my bed; she sat on the chair by my desk. I had purposely taken two cans of Coca-Cola from the staff fridge and I handed her one and opened mine.

              Delighted she opened hers and took a deep drink of the cold black fizzy liquid. I am not really a cola fan, but I know that Eden loves it.

              “Your room is really nice,” Eden said and I saw her looking at my pink bedding, the books on my shelves and a collage of my many sketches, done over the years, reflecting I realised, as I looked at them, my life, from hospitals, to care homes, to foster family, back to hospitals.

              “Thanks,” I said and I put my cola on my bedside table,” Eden, do you know the names of all the soldiers that are here?”

              She blushed and I smiled. I thought as much. Eden liked to know things. She had a way of ingratiating herself with people, all people, the soldiers I had noticed, even the ones who had made comments about Stevie and Cassidy, had not said a bad word against her, there were a few lewd comments about Jasmine, but mostly the girls were more accepted by the soldiers.

True Eden had been in the doghouse over the stealing, but her tearful apologies had been accepted by everyone and now that she and I had an amicable relationship, everything in the home, on the surface, was fine.

              I would never be as fond of her as I was of Cassidy and Stevie, but my instincts told me she would be a far more valuable information gatherer than either Stevie and Cassidy though I suspected they would hear bits and bobs of value.

              “Remember I told you that you were smart?” I said to her and she nodded her head.

              “Well I really meant it.”

              She looked stunned then she beamed at me and I added, “I’d like you to listen to what the soldiers talk about, when you are near them, don’t let them know you are listening to them, just listen, and if you hear words like Epsilon Command, contagion, pathogen, can you tell me which of the soldiers said it?”             

              She rolled the words on her tongue, I repeated them for her, and she concentrated hard, wanting to please me. I felt a surge of guilt. I was using her, but I needed to use her and if it protected her and the others then it was all right. Moreover, I didn’t dislike her anymore. She was smart, and Mitch was right, she hadn’t had it easy.

              “Alright,” she said. She sipped her coke, “What do the words mean?”

              I decided that I didn’t want to lie to her either, but I didn’t want to scare her either so I replied, “Well Epsilon Command is a place far away from here, I want to know if it is a good place or a bad place, if it’s a bad place I’d like to know, because it’s always good to keep away from bad things, don’t you agree?”

              Asking her, her opinion, made Eden swell up with pride, “Yes,” she said nodding her head eagerly.

              I then explained to her in simple words what contagion and pathogen meant. I tried not to make it too scary. Pathogen became a nasty bug that medicine could hopefully cure and contagion meant that some people got the bug and needed help. Not entirely accurate, but she accepted my explanation.

              “Don’t tell anyone what you are doing,” I said, “Not even Jasmine.”

              Eden’s eyes widened and I added, “I really like Jasmine, but you know she can’t keep secrets very well, I mean she told Mark what he was getting for his birthday present from his parents!” I made a face as I spoke.

              Eden giggled and I laughed with her. We both knew that Jasmine was simply not good at keeping secrets, but Eden was, and that made her invaluable. In the time of the Apocalypse the rise of the disabled was just beginning. This was our time. Our day of days were at hand. This was the new beginning of a world in which we made all the rules. And broke them.

The Colonel was as good as his word. The next day he sent two trucks with army personnel in them to collect what they could from the shops in the High Street and also to the supermarket not far from town. Mitch went along, driving the Home’s coach and Percy and Gabe accompanied him, their dogs in the happy care of Stevie and Cassidy.

              Paul had taken on a new lease of life since our game of chess, he began to eat more, not just drink the high protein milk that Adag forced on him; oh, he wasn’t cured, he was still dying, but for now, he had a purpose and it made him strong.

              Phoenix had pretty much been forgotten by the soldiers, as he never put in an appearance outside of his room, this was fine by me. He was our eyes and ears with regard to COBRA. We still had internet access, for how long we didn’t know, but Phoenix, however told me not to worry about that, he was piggy backing off COBRA’s own internet via a piece of software he had invented. Even if our internet was shut off, as long as there was some kind of electricity, he could still get onto the web.

              The march of the Twice Dead at first was slow, but relentless, Phoenix showed me real time Drone Footage. They were converging on the big cities, a heaving mass of walking corpses, but corpses who weren’t all they seemed.

We found we could identify the Sentinels as we now called them. They walked slightly apart from the mass, how they had taken on this status, we had not yet worked out, but they were, we all agreed leaders of this dreadful walking Twice Dead contagion. It was Seb who pointed out that the Sentinels chose who was to be cannibalized.

              There were no spoken words, but all of us in the Home, other than Percy and Gabe knew Adapted Makaton, and Seb noticed that each Sentinel would slightly move their hand at an angle and small clusters of Twice Dead would turn on a particular person in that group to rip apart.

              We went over this gruesome footage as Phoenix recorded it and we started to notice other small things. Those who were cannibalised were usually the very old, or the very young. We had talked about the Twice Dead who had been sick, dying, elderly or disabled before the pathogen was released, and worked out that whatever the Pathogen was, it reanimated them in the same way.

              And it was these Twice Dead who were the food of choice for the other Twice Dead, but I suspected they preferred their food with a pulse.

              “It’s selective feeding,” Mitch had said recently then he said under his breath, but ensuring he wasn’t looking at me at the time, “And they still leave behind dentures and slippers.”

              I pretended not to hear his last comment, but my lips twitched as I had stared at the footage, “They aren’t as mindless as they appear,” I commented and refrained from adding, “And they aren’t toothless either.”

              With Mitch in town, Seb was working yet again on Lewis in the garage. Eden and Jasmine were outside getting the sun, whilst playing Connect 4 on the bench they were sitting on.

              Cassidy and Stevie had the dogs to look after, Adag was making lunch and after speaking to Phoenix and Paul, I put on my jacket and took a walk.

              Most of the soldiers were on foot patrol in the grounds, Captain Lacks-Renton was drilling four soldiers near to the woods and I had no idea where Wolf was. I had a longing to be away from everyone, even if it was for just for a while. I moved slowly to where the water well was and then slowly up the foot worn path to the summerhouse.

              There was a couple of chairs outside of it and I sat down on one of them and surveyed the land before me, the glimpse of the Home between the swaying trees, the low sound of water rumbling beneath the earth.

              If I closed my eyes, I could pretend just for a moment that the world was the same, not a brilliant place at the best of times, but a place where everyone’s life was the same as it was before.

              Where Seb had rows with the system about his ‘internment’, and Stevie got to see his mum and Dad, even if his sister was ashamed of him, for Paul to be with his family before he died, for Eden to know her parents did love her even if they did neglect her at times, for Phoenix to be able to perhaps eat with the residents once a week however difficult it was for him, for Mitch to harang management for a new coach for the Home, and Adag to see her daughter at least once a month and finally for Cassidy to be valued for what he was capable of, not judged by his meltdowns and constant hunger.

              And what about me? To be able to sit here, outside the summerhouse, with a sketch book in hand and the sun behind me with my earphones in my ears as I listened to my favourite music.

              Ordinary lives, ordinary things, but all those things were gone, wiped out and replaced with something else that didn’t include us, or anyone who wasn’t chosen to live. Anger burned inside of me. Who gave anyone the right to choose who lived and died? As terrible as the contagion was, part of me had a secret feeling of satisfaction. Those who sought our destruction just might possibly have included themselves into the mix.

              My thoughts were eventually interrupted by my name being shouted. I sat where I was, not wanting to leave the solitude of the summerhouse. Eventually though someone came looking for me. Duke. Great. Couldn’t someone else have been sent? Like Satan? Or a horde of Twice Dead?