Burden of Survival Page 7

“The pleasure he finds with you,” Becky said. “Is nothing compared to that thrill he’ll get from killing; I imagine the zombies worked for a while but even they’re becoming uninteresting.”

  Despite myself I was starting to listen to her. She was making some kind of sense and he had been distracted lately, I’d seen that.

  “What will you do if he kills someone?” the sudden question took me by surprise and I blinked rapidly as I sought an answer.

  “He won’t,” I said but even I could hear how weak that sounded.

  “Imagine if he does,” she pressed. “What if someone said something to him at the wrong time and he lost control? The council would either have him executed or force him to leave. What would you do?”

  “I don’t know,” I finally admitted. It was a question I’d asked myself more than once since he’d made the promise. In the early days the answer was easy, I’d leave him to his fate. Now though, with what had grown between us I couldn’t say whether I’d be able to.

  “It would destroy you,” Becky said. “You’re a good person. The things you’ve done for the community here, the people you’ve saved and given hope to… it’s astounding and not something I expected to find.”

  “You want to save everyone,” she pressed. “I can see that but he doesn’t. You are polar opposites and why that works for you I don’t know, it’s none of my business. I can see though that it won’t keep working. Something will give and it will destroy you both.”

  “Your solution is to go with you no doubt,” I said with a sneer.

  “Of course it is! I’m not claiming it will be a long term solution but for now, giving him a challenge and an enemy to face. Giving him the ability to do that thing he’s craving… well, it gives you a chance at least.”

  A sudden burst of laughter escaped me and I hated how bitter it sounded. The way she’d gone about it was wrong but her words did make sense. I knew that I could really dislike her for that.

  “I never expected to fall in love with him,” I said.

  She came back to settle onto the roof beside me, not so close as to be intrusive but close enough to be there if I needed her.

  “What about him?”

  “It’s complicated and if pressed I don’t think he’d be able to even recognise it but I think… yeah, I think he loves me.”

  “In the course of my research I met a few people like him,” she said. “Each and every one of them cared only for one person. Themselves.”

  She put her arm around my shoulder in a comforting gesture that I was about to shrug off when she spoke again.

  “I don’t see that in him,” she said. “It’s fairly plain to see that he does care about you. Why else would he suffer being trapped in this cage when he clearly recognises it is a cage?”

  “You think?”

  “My friend downstairs, Harry. He’s similar to your pet killer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Harry was in the army for a number of years. He enjoyed it so much because early on he found he liked killing people.”

  I looked at her in surprise and she smiled back at me.

  “He’s not quite the same as your pet,” she said. “He enjoys the killing but he has a need for orders. He wouldn’t go off and starting slicing people up on a night, no, he likes to be told who to kill.”

  “So he obeys you?”

  “Oh no,” Becky said with a guffaw of laughter. “We are helping each other at the moment. We both want to get to the naval forces that landed in Scotland and he knows as well as I do that we can’t do that alone.”

  “So back to this,” I said with a sigh. “You want me to leave my people here and come with you so that Ryan will too.”

  “Don’t forget Cass and her brother,” she said with a wide smile. “He is likely as immune as she and the baby probably is too. The three of them and my brothers’ research may actually be enough to find a cure for this disease that ravages the world.”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered though deep down, I think I actually knew what I’d have to do.

  “Take some time and talk to your pet,” she said. “We’re leaving at the end of the week and I want you to come with us. If you don’t, then we’ll still go. Of course we’ll likely die and the world will remain the same.”

  “No pressure there then,” bitch.

  Becky grinned and positively bounced to her feet. She’d made her point and made it well, she knew she had me as much as she probably knew I really disliked her right then. It didn’t seem to faze her though.

  “I wonder if I could find a plane,” she mused as she gazed out over the lake. “It would certainly make life easier.”

  “You crashed your last plane,” I pointed out with maybe a little more malice than needed.

  “Oh pish,” she said as she waved her hand. “Details darling, just details.”

  “No promises,” I said with a sigh as I pushed myself to my feet. Time to re-join the rest of the community. “I’ll talk to him… what’s that?”

  Across the water a dark shape was moving slowly with the current almost invisible in the last of the days light. I let out a gasp as I realised what it was and ran to raise the alarm as the zombie filled raft made its slow way toward us.

  Chapter 11

  Ryan

  I picked up one of the bones and held it in my hand, turning it this way and that as I studied it in the little light that filtered through the new leaves covering the tree branches.

  All across the bone was a distinctive pattern. Small puncture marks, gouges and double arch punctures on the edge of the bone. It was the pattern one would expect to see on bone that had been chewed upon.

  “Someone had a feast,” I said.

  The others were staring around the clearing and the scattered bones with looks that ranged from disgust to fear. It was an almost visceral reaction in them at the sight of so many human bones.

  “Who did this?” Gregg demanded.

  “No idea,” I said, though I had my suspicions. “The bones look fairly weathered so I guess this isn’t too recent.”

  “How long?” Pat asked.

  “A month, maybe two. Likely in the worst part of winter.”

  “These all belonged to people,” Gabby said quietly as she stepped out into the clearing. She placed her feet carefully so as not to disturb the bones as much as possible. As she walked, she’d pause occasionally to peer down at something or other before moving on.

  “You think the living did this or the undead?” Pat asked in his usual quiet voice.

  “No idea,” Gabby said at the same time as I spoke.

  “The zombies.”

  “What makes you say that?” the vet asked.

  I shrugged as I gestured at the enclosed clearing.

  “It seems fairly clear. If the living did this, why would they do it here, in the middle of the woods? The undead would just eat wherever they found the prey.”

  “Zombies don’t eat people though,” Gregg said. “Sure, they might take a few chunks but when you die they stop.”

  “No,” Pat said. I looked at him and found him staring off into space, eyes closed as he worked on recalling a memory. “When we first found the apartment building at the ferry port.”

  “What about it?” Gregg asked. His own face was screwed up in thought.

  “We opened it up and found blood and bits of bone all across the floor,” Pat said and I nodded as I remembered that day. “Some zombies had been trapped in there and at the time it looked like one of them had eaten all of the others.”

  “I don’t know mate, that was a long time ago,” Gregg said. “Maybe you’re not remembering it right.”

  “No, he’s right,” I said.

  “Okay so some zombies eat people,” Gabby said. “Not pleasant but not especially relevant.”

  “Unless these weren’t people,” I said quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

&nb
sp; “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just thinking out loud. Let’s keep going, it’ll be dark soon.”

  The vet looked at me strangely for a moment before nodding and taking the lead. The others I noticed with some real amusement, walked around the clearing rather than through it.

  I let the bone I held drop to the ground and wiped my hands against my jeans. I suspected that perhaps a group of the undead had found themselves in that clearing during the worst of the snow and when it cleared, only one walked out.

  That would tie in with what I had already been considering and it would explain quite a few things. I’d wondered why some of those undead that seemed, less corpse like than the others. Were able to repair some damage and maintain their bodies when the others were slowly rotting.

  To do that would require energy and that needed to come from somewhere. In the living we’d eat, sleep and slowly the body regains lost energy and heals. For the undead, they didn’t have that option. The one’s I’d been cutting open had shown me that their bodies no longer worked like the living did.

  If they could gain some energy from actually cannibalizing the living or other undead… well, that would explain a great deal. Why they could heal to some extent, why they retained agility and some animal cunning.

  For the first time in weeks I felt a growing excitement. I wanted to get back to the house and unlock the cellar to find out if I’d been right. That would be the clear proof I’d need to show that some of the zombies at least were changing, becoming challenging.

  I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I didn’t realise I was lagging behind the group and I chastised myself. To be distracted out in the open was beyond foolish. I hastened to catch up with the others.

  Night had well and truly fallen by the time we found a house where we could spend the night. It was situated in the woods and a long broken trail led towards the road. It was likely far enough away from that road though that we wouldn’t be bothered.

  Two stories high with ivy climbing the grey stone walls and a door hanging open with suspicious stains spattering the stained wood. It was pretty much what you’d expect to find in a cheesy horror film and I couldn’t help but hope there’d be something inside that needed killing.

  We moved through the house with practised ease to clear it. Pat and Gregg went straight up the stairway that stood opposite the front door while Jenny followed me through the ground floor. It took all of five minutes to realise the house was empty of everything but mold and memories.

  Pat shook his head as he descended the stairs and called Gabby in. I left him to organise some way of blocking the front door as I rooted through the kitchen cupboards. The few supplies we’d brought with us all fitted into the one rucksack that Pat carried and contained more water than food.

  The cupboards bounty was poor and I guessed someone had found the house already. I did find a pack of rice that had been abandoned and a few soft biscuits that crumbled as soon as I touched them.

  “Anything?” Pat asked as he set down the rucksack on the counter beside me.

  “Rice if you want it,” I said as I proffered the packet to him.

  “Great,” he said with a sigh. He wasn’t a tall man but he was perhaps overly muscled and had a great appetite. Since I’d first met him, much of the thin layer of fat he’d had was gone. Our limited diet over the winter had left little excess weight on any of our people.

  “Front doors blocked,” Gregg said. “Any others need blocking?”

  “Back one’s locked,” I said and he nodded as he sauntered over. He eyed the meagre offerings Pat had pulled from the rucksack and his sigh echoed his friend’s earlier one. “Bugger all to eat as usual then.”

  “Afraid so mate,” Pat said.

  “We really need to get more food, or take less people in.”

  “Don’t let Gabby hear you say that,” Pat said. “She’s as eager as the rest of the council to invite everyone to the island.”

  “Where is she anyway?” I asked.

  “Living room with Jen,” Gregg said. “They found a fireplace and want to get a fire going.”

  “As long as they keep it low, should be fine. Anything upstairs we could use?”

  “Nah, just the usual stuff. All the bedding and clothes are damp and musty.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  I left the two friends to argue over what they would cook for the shared meal and wandered through the house. I had no real desire to go look for anything but it gave me an excuse to get away from the others for a while.

  Jenny was marginally less irritating than the others but that was due to her ability to stay silent and not try to ‘chat’ with me. The others, well I liked them. They were my friends as strange as that sounded even to me, but I had a strong need to be alone most of the time.

  Quite simply, I wasn’t a social animal. I’d never needed friends or family and had always been perfectly content on my own. During the apocalypse even I would admit that I’d need some friends to help stay alive but I’d not realised how much work that would be.

  Lily wanted me to be more engaged with other people. I had the notion that she thought that if I spent more time with people, I’d grow to like them and not want to kill them. In actuality the opposite was true. For the vast majority of people I met, the more time I spent with them the more I wanted to end their lives.

  I sank down against the wall in what had been a dining room and let the darkness swallow me. The glow from the living room didn’t illuminate the corner where I sat and I could enjoy the peace and quiet while imagining I was alone.

  Perhaps it was time to leave, time to move on and take some time alone. I didn’t think Lily would leave her friends or the community she was building though.

  The thought hit me a moment later. Even when I was imagining going off alone, I expected she would be with me. I marvelled at how entwined with my life she’d become. The idea of going off truly alone and leaving her behind was troubling.

  I rested my head back against the wall and listened to the sounds as they drifted in from the living room. Pat and Gregg had joined the others and were chatting quietly. Even Pat who spoke so little he appeared mute, could be heard.

  It pained her that I couldn’t join in with the rest of them. I know it did and I’d tried, though often failed. It just wasn’t in me to care about the inane things they seemed to constantly talk about. Again and again, over and over, the same subjects.

  What did you do before this happened? What do you miss most? What do you want to happen next? Do you miss your family? Did you see this film or that TV program? It was all so dull.

  None of them seemed to grasp that the world they knew had ended. It was over, finished with. They should forget about what the world was once like and adapt to the new. Reminiscing about the past was pointless and wasteful of your energies.

  “You there mate?” Gregg said softly. I turned away from him and hoped he’d leave me be.

  When I didn’t speak he slowly walked into the room, peering into the shadowed corners. His face was hidden but I heard his exhalation of breath as he noticed me. He crossed the room to join me, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Fine,” I said. Go away.

  “Nah, it’s not is it?” he said. “Talk to me if you need to.”

  I gripped the handle of my knife in its sheath on my belt, my fingers ached with the force of my grip. The sudden urge to draw it and slice it across his throat was almost overwhelming and I silently waged a war within myself.

  “Just need some time alone,” I said. Go, go, go away!

  Images flashed through my mind, the very first kill I had, the second and the last. More clouded into my mind, the deserters, Sarge, Rachel, Eric. On and on, image after image as every part of my being seemed to demand another life to add to those already taken.

  “I’m here for you mate,” Gregg said. “You know that
right? We all are.”

  I clenched my hand into a fist, fingernails pressed into my palm. A distraction, a way of keeping myself from drawing my knife and taking the life of my friend. I ached to kill someone, anyone. My body trembled with the need and I turned my face from him.

  He pushed himself to his feet and patted me gently on the shoulder, just the once, he knew I hated being touched. It was too much for me, as he rose my hand closed round the hilt of my knife, blood from where my fingernails had broken through the skin of my hand staining it crimson.

  The urge to rise and strike, to sink my knife into his back, his neck or through his heart surged through me. I needed to do it, I wanted to do it. Then she was there, invading my mind and bringing order to the chaos. Lily, as I’d last seen her. Lily with the look of sorrow she’d wear when she heard what I’d done to my friend. Lily turning away from me.

  I let go of my knife as Gregg walked away, back into the flickering light and cheer of the living room, leaving me alone in the darkness to contemplate what I had almost done.

  Chapter 12

  Lily

  No one had noticed. I jumped the last few feet ignoring the rungs on the ladder and dashed down the hallway towards the stairs. No one had seen it coming.

  “Get everyone inside,” I yelled as I ran down the stairs taking them two at a time.

  The people who heard looked at me in surprise for just a moment before leaping into action. They knew by now that when someone shouted, you got ready for an attack.

  I pulled the claw headed hammer from my belt as I reached the doors. I could see people still milling around outside, several keeping the bonfire under control. I called out once again and more faces turned my way.

  “What’s going on?” Cass called as she entered the main room of the roundhouse.

  “Another raft,” I yelled back before stepping through the doorway.

  “Get some weapons,” I yelled to the nearest people as they ran back to the house.

  I made a run for the bonfire, the men and women there were still armed from earlier. They were also closest to where the raft bearing the undead would hit the island. I waved my hammer at them as I ran and saw faces turn to me with looks of alarm.