The Undead Day Nineteen (37 page)

Twenty Eight

‘It’s done?’

‘It is.’

‘We heard the shooting but we haven’t had any injured brought in.’

She pauses, her unblinking blue eyes locked on his with an intensity that makes him look down at the ground. ‘There are no injured. Just dead.’

‘Fuck,’ Anne recoils at the savage simplicity of the words spoken by the young woman with a pistol on her belt and an assault rifle gripped in her hands.

‘Maddox?’ Lilly asks, choosing to move the conversation on to the reason she came into the hospital.

‘He hasn’t come round,’ Andrew replies quietly.

‘Is there something you can do?’ Lilly asks looking to Anne then back to Andrew who shrugs but with an air of someone who has an idea but is reluctant to impart it. ‘He needs to come round,’ Lilly adds, her voice as cold as her eyes.

‘Can we wait until tomorrow?’ Anne asks.

‘No,’ Lilly says now knowing they have an idea to do something, ‘it has to be tonight.’

‘Why tonight?’ Andrew asks, looking up and wishing he hadn’t because she doesn’t blink or flinch or look away politely but stares through him to a point a hundred miles beyond his eyes.

‘Maddox needs to wake up,’ she says, once again choosing to reply how she sees fit and in so doing she holds the power in the room. Not because of the weapons she holds but because of the energy she projects that speaks of things done that can never be undone.

‘Okay,’ Anne breathes the word out feeling the importance of the moment, ‘there is something but it’s not without risk.’

‘A great deal of risk,’ Andrew adds bitterly.

‘How long?’ Lilly asks so coldly it makes both of them start.

‘An hour or two,’ Anne says.

Lilly starts towards the door, ‘I will come back in one hour.’

‘Lilly,’ Anne calls after her, rushing to the door as the young woman stops in the corridor to face back, ‘it’s done…you did it. Why the rush? Get some sleep…everyone needs to sleep…’

‘Later,’ Lilly replies, ‘there’s still work to do. I’ll be back in one hour.  

Lenski watches them work. They move fast but she can tell they’re worried. An IV stand is brought in with a bag of saline solution hanging from the bracket. Andrew fixes the cannula into the crook of Maddox’s right arm and checks the tube running to the bag of solution. Anne brings in the oxygen bottle and fits the mask to Maddox’s face. Three orange capped syringes lie on a sheet of white gauze, carried in and made ready by Andrew.

‘What you do?’ Lenski asks, catching the fear they project.

Anne looks up at her as she adjusts the mask and reaches over to turn the flow on the bottle, ‘starting oxygen, Andrew.’

‘Okay,’ Andrew says and picks the first syringe up. He takes the cap off and pushes the needle into the ingoing valve on the drip, ‘Thiamine going in now.’

‘What you do?’ Lenski asks again, edging protectively closer.

‘It’s called dont,’ Anne says quietly.

‘Don’t?’

‘Dont…D O N T. Also known as the coma cocktail. It’s been used for years to bring patients out of a coma state.’

‘I not hear of this,’ Lensky says, frowning with suspicion.

‘Controversial,’ Andrew mutters, ‘very controversial…and we’re bending the rules even more.’

‘Desperate times and all that,’ Anne replies.

‘It is dangerous?’ Lenski asks.

‘Dangerous?’ Andrew says, thinking for a second, ‘yes it’s very bloody dangerous…I mean the drugs themselves aren’t dangerous but the body retains a coma state for a reason. Bringing someone out of it using hard medication is always dangerous. We don’t know if Maddox has a brain injury or something else. We don’t know his medical history or if he’ll react to the drugs…and if he does then we don’t have the capacity or facility to deal with it,’ he stops and sighs as he turns the valve to start the drip feed into Maddox’s body. ‘Dextrose, Oxygen, Naloxone and Thiamine. DONT. We’ve increased each dose and we’ll shorten the time it’s meant to be given over. He’ll either wake up or he won’t.’

‘This thing, it kill him?’

The doctors share a glance, neither of them are confident to answer. A few minutes passes and the Dextrose goes in next. It should be a 50% solution of 100ml given over thirty minutes but it seems every second counts tonight so the dose is increased. Same with the Thiamine. Same with the flow of Oxygen and the same with the final IV feed of Naloxone. Adrenalin is given too. Not for the effect it has in the movies but to raise Maddox’s blood pressure, stimulate his heart and aid his breathing. Drugs given and each one will have a side effect, the worst of which could be death.

‘Desperate times,’ Andrew mutters to himself. Never before has he done the things he has done on this night. Setting bones without anaesthetic. Gauging flesh open to pluck shrapnel and bullets out. Stitching skin together without wearing gloves. Anything that was sterilised was soon made dirty and the risk of infection is great. Everyone treated will have to take either penicillin or anti-biotics. It wasn’t medicine. It was butchery.

‘What now?’ Lenski asks, her eyes fixed on the unconscious form of Maddox.

Anne checks her watch and slumps to lean against the wall, ‘now? Now we wait.’

One hour after she walked out, Lilly returns to walk through the hospital with the pistol on her belt and the assault rifle held in her hands. ‘Has it worked?’ She asks the two doctors sitting in the back office sipping from mugs of strong coffee.

‘He started coming round a few minutes ago,’ Andrew says.

‘He’s groggy but alive,’ Anne adds, holding her mug with both hands while avoiding looking at Lilly.

‘Shouldn’t you be with him?’

‘Lenski is with him,’ Andrew replies.

Lilly moves away to walk down the darkened corridor to the small room lit only by a single hissing gas lamp. Lenski looks up, her eyes staring without expression.

‘He’s awake?’

‘Just,’ Lenski says, her voice muted and low but her eyes take in the heavily armed girl who now looks so different. Older. Aged. Matured and her eyes are icy cold.

‘Take the mask off him,’ Lilly says, seeing Maddox blinking heavily as he stares up at her.

‘He need the oxygen…’

Maddox’s hand lifts to push the mask up over his forehead. His eyes bloodshot but clear with focus.

‘Can you hear me?’ Lilly asks, her voice flat and monotone.

‘Yes,’ Maddox whispers, his own voice rough and low.

‘Your crews are nearly all dead. I killed them. Do you understand?’

His eyes widen. His heart hammering harder as her words strike home. The pistol on her belt. The rifle in her hands and only now does he take in the change and the way she holds herself.

She can feel Lenski’s eyes boring into her and the tension in the room that ramps in that split second. She can feel the fear rippling through Maddox and she sees herself through their eyes.

‘A few remain. The younger ones. The rest are dead,’ she stops to force her tone to become softer from seeing the pain on Maddox’s face. ‘They refused food to every person other than
your
crews. They made them stay outside in the rain…they made me crawl on my knees like a dog and every bruise you see on my face was made by them and they made my brother stay hungry outside in the rain while they beat people and laughed and ate food inside…’ She stops again to swallow the rage that still seethes inside. ‘I told the doctors to bring you round because we need to have this conversation now. Our agreement still stands. The three of us will run the fort but there will be changes. If you oppose this then say now and I will take the people that want to leave and we will go but know this,’ she steps closer to glare down and whisper, ‘if a single hair on my brothers head is hurt from any form of desire for revenge then every person in this fort knows to tell Howie you caused that harm and if I don’t kill you then he will. Do you understand?’

Maddox stares, his eyes wide and unblinking but a single tear tracks from the corner to roll fat down his cheek to leave a wet trail that glistens in the orange light, ‘they’re dead?’ His voice a ghost of a whisper, weak and faint with emotion from the memories of the children he watched grow on the estate. The drugs are heavy in his head. His mind fuggy and slow but the feeling of his heart fracturing into a thousand pieces is real.

Lilly nods. She can feel his pain and see the hurt flood his eyes and less than one day ago she would have consoled or found words of comfort but now there is no comfort to be given. There is only the brutal vicious seedy reality of this day and it needs to be finished to be buried.

He sinks lower onto the mattress, his hands lifting to cover his eyes as Lenski looks away with her own face as set and as hard as ever.

‘Maddox,’ Lilly says dangerously quietly.

‘They did that?’ He asks, his voice choking with emotion, ‘Sierra yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘She didn’t listen to Lenski…’

‘No.’

‘Fuck,’ Maddox bites the sob down, ‘all of them? How many? Who?’

‘Sierra, Skyla, Zayden, Liam….’ She reels the names she knows off, seeing that each one pierces his heart that little bit further, ‘more,’ she adds simply, ‘I didn’t know their names.’

The sad reality is that despite the anguish gripping his insides, he can see it happening. He can see the collective lack of responsibility from minds too used to taking what they want without any fear of the consequences. He can see Sierra’s temper exploding from the grief at seeing Darius killed. He can see the little bitch Skyla getting drunk on power and the others reverting to what they always were; wild and feral with no concept of longevity. He was going to change them. He was going to show them how to live differently but more than that, he can see the cruelty of them. It hurts, it hurts more than anything but with testament to a mind that still functions despite the drugs he knows there is also acceptance of what is fact.

Lilly watches him closely. Seeing the pain but seeing the understanding too. His failure but that he tried. His anger at not being there to stop it but his acceptance that it’s done and there’s no going back.

‘Some are alive,’ she says, finally finding the words to soften the blow. ‘Those that were injured when the armoury blew up and some more who were asleep when I…when I took the fort back…’

Maddox returns and the man locks the emotion inside to look up at her, ‘I understand.’

The magnitude of the moment holds them still with eyes locked, ‘my brother?’

‘Don’t offend me. I am not that man.’

‘And me?’

‘I am not that man either.’

‘Then we have an agreement?’

‘We do.’

Quick words fired back and forth. Lenski watches, alert to every nuance of tone and inflection.

‘I am sorry,’ Lilly says and finally dips her head to break the eye contact and show remorse.

‘Me too,’ he turns away and blinks slowly and heavily as the effects of the drugs sweep over him.

‘I will leave you to rest,’ she turns away but stops in the doorway, ‘one more thing, Mr Howie is welcome back here anytime he chooses and for any length of time he chooses.’

‘The hole? Is it fixed?’ He asks without looking up.

‘Not yet. I’ll get to it. Rest. The fort is safe.’

‘Lenski, go with her. Help her…’

‘I stay with you.’

‘Go with her…’

‘I not go. I stay…’

He fights the tears back, holding it all inside with every ounce of strength his weakened body can muster. She sees it and rises without a word to rush after Lilly and as the door closes softly so he releases and weeps alone in a room bathed orange by a single hissing lamp.

Twenty Nine

Day Eighteen

She wakes with her eyes blinking open to see the new day is here. A grey sky full of low clouds that pour water with relentless driving rain. She doesn’t move but stares through the broken inner wall to the broken outer wall. Soft snores and low murmurs fill the room and every inch of floor space is covered by blankets, coats and clothes on which sleep the children and some of the adults.

There was no choice but to sleep in the old armoury. The hole needed guarding and the people needed somewhere undercover and so necessity overcame choice. Once their bellies were filled with whatever food they could grab from the stores and any scrap of material found was used to dry bodies they trampled in to fall down and sleep. The smell didn’t bother them. Only that it was out of the rain and with so many bodies sharing space it soon heated up to dry even the most soaked of clothes.

Lilly slept with her right hand holding the rifle with the barrel pointing towards the hole. Her left hand resting on Billy. Pea, Sam, Milly and Joan completed the line. The children prone, the adults sitting upright with backs to the walls. They all slept. There was no designated watch on. The fort is too big, too open plan and everyone was too exhausted to organise anything. So they took their chances and drifted into fitful sleep to get through the hours of darkness.

It’s soothing though, the sound of the rain. The pitter patter of a billion tiny droplets of water striking the flat surface of the sea and the varying drumming noises as the rain falls on the flat surfaces outside. She shifts, her bladder full and sending signals to her brain that translates them into a feeling of being uncomfortable. She doesn’t move but waits. Listening and staring into nothing.

She thought it would be different and she would wake up consumed with guilt at killing so many people and so brutally too. She thought she would spend the quiet hours weeping or seeing the faces of those she shot and executed. Instead she feels resolved to see it through. She started a chain of events and she was wrong if she thought it would be finished when the last one was killed. It wasn’t and it isn’t now. It’s still raining. The bodies are still out there. There are children and adults here that need shelter, clothing and bedding. The hole needs fixing. The police offices need cleaning to remove the bodies left to dry and congeal. What food do they have left? Is it enough? What about being armed? She can fire a weapon and so can Joan. Pea and Sam are both armed but they only learnt just enough to point and shoot. Lenski can probably handle a gun and Maddox definitely can but he’s in no state to do anything

A chain of events. Solve one problem and get a dozen more. Do enough to give people food and shelter but they look to you for their ongoing safety and comfort. It never ends and nor
will
it ever end.

So no. There isn’t time for guilt or grieving but just to get on with the job at hand and do the right thing for the right reasons.

She eases herself up from the wall, taking care not to wake Billy but then remembering a nuclear bomb going off wouldn’t wake Billy when he was asleep.

‘Wha…what’s…’ Pea comes awake too quickly, her eyes wide and full of fear.

‘I’m just going for a wee,’ Lilly whispers.

‘Okay,’ Pea says, still staring with that shocked look especially reserved for those who go from deep sleep to wide awake in a split second, ‘you okay? What’s…I mean…want me to come?’

‘It’s fine,’ Lilly says, ‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Just piss outside,’ Sam mumbles sleepily.

A lady does not piss outside. A lady does what it takes to preserve her dignity and acts with grace at all times. She steps out, checks the view and walks up a few metres to unzip her jeans and squats to relieve the fullness of her bladder while the rain once more soaks her hair and clothes.

That today is her Sixteenth birthday only mildly registers. In her previous life there would have been a party, cake, music, dancing and laughing. She would have been given presents that marked the start of the transition from child to adult. In this new life she pisses on the ground with her bare arse poking out behind her as she tries to avoid getting wee on her shoes while holding an assault rifle out in front that acts as a counter weight so she doesn’t fall over. Thank God she didn’t need a poo. That would be an undignified start to the morning. There isn’t even a bush to poo in. Just open ground. Come to think of it, where will the people go to have a poo? Do they dig holes? Isn’t that what soldiers do? But then there are a lot of people here and those holes will soon add up.

Hmmm, she looks over the fort to where the toilet block and visitor centre used to be. Now a flat expanse of concrete that hints at the foundations underneath. There were toilets in that section which must mean there are sewer pipes. It wouldn’t be that hard to fashion something over the holes. Like the old fashioned bench seats with a hole in them so they can poo down into the sewer pipes. What about flushing it away? Buckets of water will do that. Actually, sea water would do the job. They could just fetch it in from outside or maybe stretch one of the hosepipes over. That still leaves the issue of privacy. Nobody wants to be seen having a poo and reading the back of a can of air freshener. They will have to make wooden partition stalls or something.

She looks round noticing how well the fort is coping with the deluge of rain coming down. Never in her fifteen, no sixteen years has she seen rain like this. A relentless unceasing down pouring of water from clouds hanging so low it’s almost as though she could reach up and touch them.

She finally stands and sighs the contended sigh of someone who has just had the best wee ever. She could go back into the dry and wait for the others to wake up but the dawn is here now and there’s work to do.

What first? The bodies on the beach need taking away but that will need people and the boats to be in use. The debris in the middle section between the two walls also needs taking away but again that needs people and the boats. There is a job that needs doing. The police offices need cleaning. It’ll be gruesome and disgusting but it’s her mess so she better get on with it.

She heads down alongside the wall expecting to see the area where Liam and his crew were killed but the bodies are gone and the ground is washed clean by the rain that now shows no sign of the blood that was spilt here. Someone must have dragged them down the front or shoved them somewhere else. That’s a good sign. It means someone is taking responsibility for their own environment.

A noise ahead. The sound of a voice but not talking. More like humming. Tuneless yet melodic. She slows down to listen and from instinct her right hand drops to the trigger guard on the rifle. The sound is coming from the police offices but only death should be in that room. She threw grenades in there that blew the bodies apart then executed anyone left alive. Who would be in there humming?

At the door she looks at the wheelbarrow propped against the wall then peers through, blinks and steps in with her mouth dropping open.

‘Morning, Miss.’

He stops and leans on the mop held between his gnarled hands as the smell of pine disinfectant wafts pleasantly into her nose. The walls gleam. Everything has been freshly scrubbed. The bodies gone and the pool of blood and bits of gore all washed away. He stretches his back and nods to the table pushed against the wall and the pan of water coming to the boil on top of the camping gas burner, ‘water’s ready.’

She looks round again. The tables and chairs damaged in the blast have been taken out, and everything else has been stacked at one end making the rooms look much larger.

‘You did this?’ She asks, hardly believing the sight her eyes are taking in.

‘I said’s yesterday I did. The dead don’t bother me none, Miss. You wants to make an old man a cup of tea then while I finishes this last bit?’

‘Tea,’ she says, still in shock.

‘That’s right, Miss.’

‘I’ll make the tea…have…I say, I mean…’ She stops and stares as he goes back to swishing the mop head over the floor, ‘have you been here all night?’

‘I reckon I has,’ the old man replies, ‘you don’t’s sleep so well at my age…and I figured to myself that you’d be needing somewhere to work from this morning so Alf I said to myself, we’ll go on and get them rooms all cleared away.’

‘Alf?’

‘Yes, Miss. Alf.’

‘I’m Lilly.’

He smiles up at her, ‘I knows your name, Miss. I thinks everyone here knows your name.’

Too many things run through her head at one time and she holds still, processing and trying to clear the temporary cognitive traffic jam in her mind. ‘Tea,’ she says, ‘I shall make the tea.’

‘Ah that’ll be lovely, Miss. I put’s the deceased down on the beach out the front. We’ll be wanting to get them buried or disposed at sea afore to long, the living don’t like to see the dead you see. It worries ‘em it does.’

‘The wheelbarrow,’ Lilly says as the traffic jam starts to unclog.

‘That’s right. Found it in one of the rooms I did. My back ain’t got the strength it used to have so I used that barrow to get the deceased all down yonder.’

She stands in front of the gas burner and looks across to see freshly cleaned mugs laid out face down with a box of tea bags, a bag of sugar, a jar of instant coffee and teaspoons all gleaming on the side.

‘I took them from the food stores. They had some condiments and such like in here but it weren’t fit for human consumption it weren’t so I cleaned it out. I didn’t know if there was a chitty to sign ‘em out on…couldn’t see one anyways.’

‘It’s fine,’ Lilly says and makes tea. A simplistic act of putting tea bags in mugs then pouring hot water in before dunking and swishing the bags about with a teaspoon. She’s making tea in clean rooms that smell of pine disinfectant. ‘Do you take sugar?’ She asks politely.

‘One please.

‘Strong or…’

‘As it comes. I drinks anything.’

‘Would you like milk? There’s none here but I could…’

‘Black be fine with me. There, I reckon that’ll just about do it.’ He stands back to inspect his work, ‘good enough for you is it?’

‘My word yes, yes it’s…I don’t know what to say.’

He carries the mop and bucket to the door then walks slowly over to take the mug held out to him, ‘ah, nice cup of tea,’ he says with what appears to be genuine contentment, ‘can’t beat a nice cup of tea.’

‘Thank you,’ Lilly says with genuine feeling, ‘I was coming down to do this…I mean, it was my mess and…’

‘Ah,’ he says as if that answers everything then sips his tea.

‘Holy fuck,’ Sam walks in with Pea behind her. Both of them staring round in wonder at the sight of Lilly and Alf sipping hot tea in a room that should be covered in bodies and blood.

‘Mornin,’ Alf nods, ‘good timin’, water just boiled.’

‘Boiled,’ Pea says, her jaw slack.

‘Fuck,’ Sam says again.

‘Tea?’ Lilly asks.

‘Tea,’ Pea says.

‘Fuck,’ Sam says again.

‘Alf has kindly cleaned the rooms,’ Lilly says, turning back to get two more mugs ready, ‘tea or coffee?’

‘Coffee,’ they both reply at the same time.

‘Someone say coffee?’ Joan strides in looking remarkably awake for a seventy year old woman who slept leaning against a concrete wall. She takes in the room with the eyes of someone who has seen many things and nods approvingly. ‘Morning, Alf. Good job.’

‘Mornin’, Joan.’

‘Smells nice in here,’ Joan says, taking a big sniff, ‘bodies?’

‘Out the front.’

‘Mess was it?’ Joan asks, her voice brisk and clipped as she strides to the pan of water and assumes the command of making drinks.

‘None worse than I see before,’ Alf replies.

‘Alf, you give Sam a hand to get a table and chairs out,’ Joan says, ‘Lilly, you move up a bit my dear so I can make these drinks. Where’s the milk? Sam, the rifle has a sling for a reason. Put it on your back not on the floor. Pea, you run down and get the milk portions from the store room. We’ll have a civilised coffee before we start on this morning’s agenda.’

Two simple acts and suddenly the bleakness of the immediate future is pushed away. An old man cleaning a room and an old woman brisk and forthright in manner. A table is pulled out and chairs to go with it. Milk portions are fetched and within a few minutes they sit down in a room filled with scents of pine and freshly made coffee.

‘Now,’ Joan says, lowering her mug from the first and very much appreciated sip of coffee, ‘what are we to do?’ She looks round at Lilly, Pea and Sam, ‘ladies?’

Pea and Sam share a glance as all three look to Lilly, ‘Lilly?’ Pea asks.

This was meant to be Lenski and Maddox with Lilly but neither of them are here and things need to be done. They all look tired. They all feel tired and Lilly bears the marks of the beatings she took yesterday but there is a fork in the road ahead and she looks to each path, wondering which to take.

‘We started this revolt,’ Joan says when no one else says anything, ‘or rather, Lilly did with exceptional execution I might add. To you, Lilly,’ Joan says lifting her coffee mug in salute.

‘Lilly,’ Pea says lifting her mug.