The ham felt slimy and tasteless as I forced myself to chew on it. You’ll change your minds soon enough. When he starts screaming. I put my fork down and pushed my plate away. The silence was claustrophobic and the wet sounds of people methodically eating were making me feel nauseous.
“You all right?” George was a few seats away, his fork paused on its journey to his mouth.
“Just not very hungry. I’ve never been a salad man.”
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes probing mine. “You know something we don’t?”
“Nothing that’s going to make a difference, George, let’s just put it like that.”
He continued to look at me before sighing heavily and putting his forkful of ham down untouched. “You know, salad’s never really done it for me much, either. I think I’ll sit this out till dinner.” Pushing away from the table he stood up, leaving his plate where it was and walked slowly outside, filling his pipe as he did so.
Rebecca’s brow furrowed and when I caught her eye, she signed slowly, He okay? I shrugged at her, not needing to put my pidgin ham-fisted efforts into practice to reply. I think my face was probably speaking pretty clearly for me. Were any of us okay? Sure as hell not Dave, and if we were honest, then all we were
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doing was sitting around and waiting for the screaming to start.
Not wanting any company, I gave George a head start before I stepped out into the temporarily dry air and lit up a cigarette. I had a funny feeling that if anything was likely to kill me early, it wasn’t going to be fucking fags.
The howling started at four-thirty, making me drop my book and leap up from my bed as the sound filled the air. It was loud and full of pain, but it wasn’t Dave, it was Chester. What the fuck was making the dog howl like that? My heart thumping, I raced out of the dorm without putting my shoes on and ran towards where I thought the noise was coming from. Had a widow got into the compound somehow? Had it bitten Chester? What the hell was making him howl like that, what the hell was it?
As I ran through the overhanging branches of the trees, I saw him sitting in the clearing by the comms hut, his head thrown back letting out the heart-wrenching sound. John was coming equally fast from the direction of the canteen, and over in the distance even Nigel and Mike were jogging over from their new home in the other hut. The teenager reached him first, a few feet ahead of me.
“What is it? What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t know. What the fuck is it, boy?” Between us we searched his fur for any sign of injury as the others gathered in a crowd.
“Has something hurt Chester? Is he okay?” Jane was almost crying herself as she fell to her knees on the grass, hugging the dog’s neck and making our examination more difficult.
I stood up, perplexed. “No, I don’t think so, honey.
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He doesn’t seem to be hurt. You found anything, John?”
“No. Nothing.” He stroked the dog’s head, and the howl lessened into a pitiful mewl. “There, there, boy. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“Something freaked him, though.” What could it have been?
“Did you ever see that film, The Thing? The one with Kurt Russell?” I stared at Nigel, waiting for him to make whatever shit point he was heading towards, and when it came, he didn’t disappoint.
“Well, maybe the widows are going to start erupting from him now. Maybe that’s what’s pissing him off.” He laughed slightly at his own poor attempt at humour, and if Whitehead hadn’t turned up I think I’d have stopped stroking the trembling animal and beaten the life out of the pompous shit, no matter who tried to stop me. Sometimes I dream of that day and wish I had. I really do. As it was, I didn’t and Whitehead stumbled over to us, his eyes wide.
“You’d better come.” He swallowed hard, the action almost comical, one arm waving absently behind him. “You’d better come and see…in the infirmary. …” He turned on his heel and started back the way he came, pulling on George’s sleeve, dragging him back with him. The rest of us trotted after him, apart from Jane and John, still soothing the anxious dog. It seemed that Chester had no desire to follow Chris Whitehead, and I wondered if whatever had disturbed the doctor was what had set the dog off. The infirmary. Dave. What the hell had happened to him now?
As I tumbled through the doorway, a pace or two behind George, my feet seized up, my legs incapable of
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taking me further forward until my brain could translate what my eyes were seeing into some kind of rational meaning. I stood swaying and staring, mouth open. I won’t let it kill you. Wasn’t that what she’d said? Just let us get on with it, all right?
I fought the urge to gag, and my leaden legs finally found the strength to step forward and come alongside George. I could feel his body shaking next to mine, his breath coming quickly. “Oh, no. Oh, Lord no.”
Dave lay on the infirmary bed, his arm hanging down the side, his eyes shut. Beside him was a packet of sleeping pills and an empty glass. On the table was an empty bottle of wine that Katie must have snuck out of the canteen, and two plates with the remnants of smoked salmon and what looked like fine pate and toast on them. The condemned man’s last supper. The tips of his fingers were blue where the blood was settling, and a small amount of dry puke had crusted at the edges of his mouth as if something inside him had desperately tried to get the sleeping pills out.
My gaze moved round to the tableaux at the other end of the room, pulse quickening, not wanting to accept what I saw there. Not ready to accept it.
Why she hadn’t taken the sleeping pills as well, I don’t know. Maybe she thought they wouldn’t work on her. Maybe she wanted a fail-safe, no shit method. Whatever the reason, she’d done what she’d set out to do. Her small lifeless body hung from the makeshift noose tied round the metal curtain pole, the stool kicked away, sideways on the ground. Thankfully, her head was lolling forwards. I wasn’t sure I could take the sight of her bulging eyes and thick tongue, her elfin beauty destroyed by strangulation. There wouldn’t have been enough weight to break her neck, and a
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thick sob squeezed out of me with the unwanted image of her kicking and struggling as she slowly lost her breath.
It took a moment before I realised she’d pinned a note to her jumper, and I shuffled forward, needing to read it. It said one word. One word was all that was needed.
FAT.
Oh Jesus.
Whitehead was stammering behind me. “She must have planned it…she must have…they must have talked about it this morning!”
Staring at her, my heart aching, I wondered if she’d held Dave’s hand and soothed his brow as he drifted away. I wondered if they’d talked and laughed over their last meal, reliving precious memories. I almost felt a pang of jealousy at that shared experience. Why hadn’t she talked to me? Why hadn’t she told me?
Needing to know, I reached forward and lifted her jumper, wanting to see her skin beneath. My breath stopped in my throat. FAT. One word that said so much. She was still slim, not big like Chloe got, but beneath that smooth surface, unnatural lumps and bumps protruded like bags of loose fat under her skin. Oh Jesus, Katie. I was barely aware I was crying, the tears blurring my vision and burning my eyes, and George pulled me back, slowly taking my shoulders.
“She must have been so scared, George. She must have been so scared.”
“Yes, son. She must have. Now let’s get her down from there, shall we?”
My brain thudded painfully, a headache raging into life. This had happened much more quickly than it did with Chloe. Only a few days ago, Katie had been
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strolling around in vest tops. There was no way she could have been hiding any of those unnatural excesses of flesh from us, so how could it have happened so fast? How could it have done this to her so quickly? And why didn’t she say something? I remembered the way the widows hadn’t attacked her in the pub. Could they sense the change in her even then? Christ, I hated them, and I hated the scientist who had allowed them to happen.
“Come on, Matt. You’ve got to be stronger than this.”
George squeezed my shoulder, and the surprise of his touch made me slam my gaping mouth closed, biting down hard on my tongue, bursting the flesh and filling my mouth with the sickly taste of blood. Pain gripped me and as I cursed the shock of the scene around me lost its grip slightly, the added brightness created by my hot mind dimming slightly back to normal light.
Without speaking I wrapped my arms round her still-warm body, trying not to feel the too-familiar lumps beneath her clothes, as George reset the chair and untied her, letting her slump over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Her slight frame seemed too heavy and my arms shook as I slid her onto the narrow examining table in the far corner. Vessels burst, sending rays of red toward her pupils; her too-wide eyes stared at me from above the thick purple lips that I could remember kissing not so many weeks before, when they were slim, pink and hot with human desire.
It was Katie, but not Katie; a distorted interpretation of what she had once been, and staring at her and then at Dave behind me, tears rolled down my face and I couldn’t stop my sobbing, their faces blurring
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with those locked in my head forever that I would never see again. Too many to mourn, even Chloe just one of thousands or millions, a tiny speck in this tragedy.
“Holy fucking shit.” Nigel must have followed us inside and through my tears I turned to see him standing in the doorway, hands on his hips, taking it all in. “Holy fucking shit.” His eyes rested on Katie, and I saw a flare of victory in them. “I knew it. I fucking knew it. She had one of those things growing inside her, didn’t she?” He stared at me, and then George. “I told you we shouldn’t trust those women, but oh no, you wouldn’t have any of it. Well, now look.” He pointed at Katie as if what he was saying would shed new light on the situation, as if she were going to sit up and agree with him and his pompous prick attitude. “And there’s two more back there.” His voice was rising with angry indignation. “What are we going to do about them?”
My shoulders slumped. I didn’t have the energy to shout back, or to even get mad. Phelps would never see things the way we did, the way any decent person would. Shouting would only serve to make him more fucking self-righteous. I let out a long sigh and almost laughed.
“She killed herself, Nigel.”
“So?” His ever-sweaty brow furrowed, not seeing how the method of her death could have any bearing on what he had to say.
“Yes, she had a widow growing inside her. Do you think she wanted that? Do you think she did it on purpose? She killed herself, for fuck’s sake. And she did it for us as well as for herself. She wanted to kill the widow, and to do that she had to kill herself, and you
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want to talk about trust?” My voice was tired, low and even and maybe that gave it more power, because when I met Nigel’s eyes there was real hate trembling in them. His mouth worked to get the words out.
“We might not be so lucky with the other two. They’ll turn next, I fucking promise you.”
Where did he get so much loathing from? After all that had happened in the world around us, surely those of us that had survived should learn to trust and respect each other. His negativity drained the remains of my energy.
“Nigel, Jane is a little girl who has been through enough already, and now we’ve got to go and tell her that her big sister is dead, and all you can think about is the vague possibility that she might turn into one of these things one day. You’re a father. Surely you feel more than all this suspicion and hate. What if it was your little girl?” I stared at him. And what the hell happened to her, anyway? What if it was Emma that had made it and I was suggesting that she had no hope? How would you feel then?”
His jaw gritted for a moment and I got the feeling that he was fighting the urge to strangle the life out of me with his bare hands, and I couldn’t understand why. He stood like that, frozen, his fingers twitching, for a full ten seconds letting out a long sigh, and leaning against the wall behind him, shutting his eyes. I could almost see the shudder of emotion rippling through his middle-aged body.
“You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m sorry.” He covered his face, rubbing at his eyes. “I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. It’s just all too much to bear.”
Now it was my turn to be lost for words. I hadn’t
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actually thought what I’d said would have any effect on Nigel at all, but it seemed that my quiet tirade had hit home.
His shoulders shook slightly, almost as if he were crying, but his hands were shielding most of his face and I couldn’t see for sure.
“I think that’s what the problem is. I think when I look at Jane and Katie, I think of my poor Emma and I can’t handle it.” He looked up, eyes slightly damp. “I’m sorry, Matt. I really am. That girl killed herself to protect us all and that must have been a terrible decision to make. I can see that now.”
He was still wearing a suit shirt, and sweat stains stretched in huge crescents from his armpits, darkening the blue. The sight of it turned my stomach, and I wondered how much he meant what he was saying. It was a bit of a turnaround for him, but then I doubted I would ever really understand this man. I knew that I would never really like him, and I wondered if that was making me suspicious of his change of heart. The thought made me feel guilty.
“Don’t worry about it, mate.” My words sounded hollow even to me. “This shit affects us all differently.”
He shook his head vehemently. “No. No, it doesn’t. It shouldn’t.” I didn’t know how to deal with this new contrite Nigel and just stared at him as his words blubbered out. “I’ve got to change the way I look at things. I’ve got to give that little girl some support. As if she were my Emma.” With that real tears oozed over the rims of his eyes and he cried openly.
For a second, I thought about going and putting an arm around him, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.