CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

 

RICK STARED AT the gun.

It was beautiful, a marvel of engineering. The barrel was sleek and glossy, the handle a perfect fit in his hand. The trigger felt like a promise of salvation beneath the calloused skin of his finger.

He could barely believe how quickly everything had come apart; the sheer speed at which the world had unravelled like a ball of string toyed with by a giant cat. Rick had never put much stock in God or the Devil, in angels or demons, but current events were causing him to re-evaluate his entire belief system. If the dead could walk, if society could break apart so easily, then what did that say about the delicate balance of the universe?

Tears poured down his face. He had stopped sobbing, but the pain remained, a physical ache clenched deep inside him. His chest was tight, his arms and legs were growing numb, and there was a hollow inside his body where his heart had been torn out by invisible claws.

“Sally,” he muttered, realising that even her name was dead. “Don’t leave me.”

Then, amazingly – like the greatest miracle on this wide, green earth – her head stirred in his lap. Holding his breath, he glanced down at the back of her head. The skull was cracked; sticky brain matter hung out in bloated grey clumps. He’d failed to notice before that one of her ears had been torn off – the left one. He wondered where it was, and had to resist the urge to go looking for it.

Sally’s head moved, twitching to the side. Her hands clutched at his thighs, the fingers gripping and releasing the legs of his trousers. Her movements were slow, mechanical. She was like a ruined machine powering up from a major breakdown.

“Sally?”

She twisted her head so that her ruined face was pointing into the room, facing away from him. There was blood in his crotch; his trousers were wet with it. But he didn’t care. All that mattered was that Sally was coming back to him, reaching out across a black void to return to his side.

“Oh, baby. I need you.”

An awful wet rasping sound began in her throat, like a loud death rattle. He heard blood bubbling at her lips. Carefully, he reached down and began to turn her head towards him; slowly, and with great care he handled her damaged cranium. The flensed cheeks and torn forehead were horrific to see, especially now that her eyes were open. One eyelid was missing; the other hung loose, dangling across the eye like a broken fleshy blind over a tiny window.

“Oh, Sally. Oh, God. Poor, poor baby. Rick’ll make it better. I’ll protect you this time, and make sure nobody ever hurts you again.”

Her mouth ratcheted open, the movement shockingly fast. Blood caught in thin red strings between her jaws. The sound she made was like a yawn, but deeper, more resonant. It was ironic, he thought, because she was in fact coming round from the longest, deepest sleep of all. Her right eye quivered in its socket, the pupil so pale that it was almost white. There was a ragged hole in her skinned cheek and her teeth showed through the moist red tatters.

Rick took her into his arms, wrapping her up in his love.

Sally’s head craned round on her neck, moving slightly swifter yet still lacking co-ordination. Her teeth snapped on empty air near his throat. Rick pulled away, pressing his hands into the mush of her face, pushing her teeth back whilst keeping her cold body close.

“No, baby. Don’t do that.” He felt something snap inside his head; just a fine white pain, like a needle sliding into a gum or a particularly deep paper cut. Lightning flared momentarily behind his eyes. When it cleared he felt changed, altered; the world seemed different, filled with fresh promise.

He held Sally’s head away from his throat, watching her teeth continue to clamp down on nothing. She was trying to chew. Her movements were spastic, out of whack. He remembered Hutch, half his head blown away on the concrete staircase, and when he came back from the dead it was as if he’d suffered brain damage. Glancing at Sally’s shattered skull, at the grey slugs hanging out of the red-rimmed rents, he realised that she had not returned whole. Pieces of her had been left behind, huge chunks of her consciousness. She was like a child, a damaged and hungry child, and he would have to care for her.

A noise not unlike wordless singing came from her mouth: a fractured tune, the song of the damned.

Rick closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. If he thought too hard about any of this, it would drive him insane. Or perhaps he had already lost his mind, back in the Dead Rooms. Maybe he was still there, lying on the floor with his blood draining out, and these were his final thoughts before death – a weird phantasmagoria of love and loss and longing...

Easing Sally’s head onto a cushion, he got up from the sofa. He took the gun and placed it back in its holster, knowing that he no longer required its bleak promise. He’d turned his back on the offer of smoke and darkness.

Sally squirmed on the cushions, unable to stand. She had forgotten even the most basic elements of locomotion. This was good, it would make her easier to control. He could handle her, exercising authority over even her most fundamental functions. He watched her for a short while, wondering if she might fall onto the floor and hurt herself. Then he remembered that she was dead, and the dead can no longer be hurt. Pain was for the living, but even they must put such physical discomfort behind them in this weird new world, this hideous reversed Eden.

There was a new world order forming, and only the strong would survive.

Rick went to the window and looked out at the sky. The promise of dawn hovered at the edge of the horizon, a long, thin band of light shimmering like a mirage in the distance. There was still a long way until daylight, but it was making its presence known. He wished that time would freeze and nothing would ever change again. It was all too much, he needed time and space to sort things through, to get it all straight in his head.

He sat down at the dining table and pressed the power button on Sally’s laptop. The screen hovered in darkness, and then reluctantly stuttered into operational mode. Rick connected to the Internet. It took a long time for the connection to be established, and when the window finally opened up a gateway to cyberspace, the graphics had broken up into a clumsy pixellated mess.

Rick attempted to access a few websites: BBC, CNN, Sky News. None of them had been updated for some time. The headlines still comprised of reports of civil unrest, terrorist attacks, rapes and murders and looting in all the major cities of the world. By now things would have moved on. The survivors of the initial outbreaks would be trying to form groups, arming themselves, searching for food and water. Whole streets would be occupied by a civilian militia, areas shut down by gangs. The police would be helpless. There was too much to cope with and their limited resources would be stretched beyond their capabilities. The combined threat of walking corpses and roaming mobs would be too much for the authorities to deal with all at once.

Maybe this uncontrollable free-for-all could work in his favour. If the security forces were busy fighting, then he could move freely. He had his police warrant card, his weapons and riot gear. He even had a sturdy vehicle with which he could tackle potential barriers.

Things were never as hopeless as they seemed. It was a lesson he’d learned in army training and had served him well in all other areas of his life. There is always another plan, an alternative option. Never give up, never surrender. Keep going, keep fighting. Don’t stop moving unless you are backed into a corner, and even then make sure you come out shooting.

Sally had slipped half off the sofa. Her arms were trapped beneath her body and her legs were kicking wildly, drumming on the floor. Rick crossed the room and lifted her back onto the cushions, placing her gently across the sofa. She seemed to calm down when he was nearby, but he was unsure if that was simply because she saw him as meat or if there remained a vestige of affection in her vandalised brain.

He’d always been a bit of a romantic but sentiment was something he could ill afford. He decided that Sally was merely responding to the proximity of his flesh rather than demonstrating any tenderness of the heart. The promise of food settled her down, made her rest easy.

He left her there and went through the cupboards, the shelves, the fridge. There were steaks in the freezer and he took them to the sink and ran the hot tap, trying to defrost the meat.

Sally groaned, whined, made other less recognisable sounds.

Rick hammered the frozen steaks on the draining board; he punched them against the walls. The meat began to soften, but only slightly. He carried it over to Sally and sat her up against some cushions, which he laid over the arm of the sofa.

Her mouth opened, the jaw shifting sideways in blind chewing motions. She made nasal grunts, throaty belches, and strange drawn-out wheezing gasps. Rick pressed one of the steaks against her tattered lips. It was bloody, the meat growing softer in his hands. Sally bit down, tried to chew. Her teeth went right through the partially frozen meat, slicing into it with a power and strength that disturbed him. He remembered Babyface and the dead man who’d sheared off the rookie’s boot end. Despite their apparent weaknesses, it seemed that these dead cannibals possessed an amazing strength in their jaws, as if all their remaining energy was focused there.

Keeping his fingers away from her mouth, Rick awkwardly pushed the food between her lips. Suddenly, as if realising the meat was no good, Sally began to gag. She regurgitated the still-frozen flesh; shredded strips dropped from her mouth and stuck to her clothes.

“Eat it, Sally. Come on. Eat it up.”

She spat out the meat, turning her head to one side. His fingers brushed against her wounds, and he drew his hand away, dropping the rest of the steak onto the floor. Apparently it was no substitute for warm flesh.

He returned to the kitchen and opened a drawer beneath the sink. Dragging things out and scattering them across the floor, he found the first aid box Sally always kept well stocked in case of emergencies. He opened the plastic box and took out all the bandages he could find, and then returned to his dead wife. She sat on sofa and swayed like a drunkard, her neck barely supporting the weight of her head. Her fingers flexed in her lap and her muscles were out of control, tensing and relaxing as if an electrical charge was being passed through her body.

Ensuring that he kept away from her slow-snapping jaws, Rick stuffed wads of cotton wool into Sally’s mouth. He packed it tight, forcing her teeth apart and ramming it down her throat. When he was done, she was unable to close her mouth properly over that densely packed throat.

Then he began to wrap the bandages around her bloodied head. He smothered the damage, swaddling her head like that of an Egyptian mummy, ensuring that the bandages covered every inch of exposed, wounded flesh. The first layer absorbed the congealing blood quickly, red stains blooming and spreading and coming together to turn the wrappings into a patchy crimson mask.

Rick applied another layer, continuing to cover her head until the blood stopped appearing on the fresh white dressings. By the time he’d used up all the bandages, the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Sally’s features were concealed; her head was a smooth white oval.

He returned to the kitchen and found some tea towels, which he tore into strips. These he wrapped tightly around her hands, giving the illusion that she might be a burns victim. It also served to protect him from her nails, which were long and sharp and could easily rend his skin if she became too excited.

He would need to procure more bandages, but that was something he could control, a normal problem well within his capabilities to solve. He wished for more banal tasks, rather than the outlandish chore of hiding his wife’s condition from prying eyes.

This might just work, he thought. If I’m careful. If I keep a cool head and stay away from trouble.

Sally was now at rest. Her padded hands rested in her lap and her large white head nodded, as if she had a tune running through her mind. If indeed there was enough of a mind for a tune to pass through. Rick doubted there was; the truth of it was that she was an animal now, a simple thing of hunger and blind instinct. Yet still, despite all this, he loved her. He had always loved her; and he would continue to love her until his own life was over, and possibly even beyond.

Rick sat next to his dead wife, one arm hanging loosely around her shoulders. He stared at the side of her head, at the bandages wound tightly around her skull. There was a perverse beauty to this; she possessed a strange and almost erotic allure. His hand moved across the rough material of the dressings, his fingers tracing the smooth hollows of her eyes, the gentle outlines of her nose and lips. She did not breathe – she was dead, so why should she require oxygen? The chill of her skin made the bandages cold to the touch.

Rick leaned in and softly kissed her cheek. It felt odd, like a kind of blasphemy, but it also felt right. Love, he thought, illuminated even the darkest corners, picking out small pieces of hope amid the most devastating forms of destruction. If love did not exactly conquer all, then it was at least a damn good weapon to have on your side in the ongoing battle for survival.