Infection Z 3 (3 page)

“
N
o
. You aren’t taking our boy away from us. You—you aren’t taking our boy away from us.”

Hayden leaned against the door to Matt and Karen’s room. It was a small, six by six-metre space in the confines of one of the abandoned Riversford hangars that the group had occupied. There were three sleeping bags laid out on the floor. Hayden felt a great sadness when he saw the bump in the little blue sleeping bag. Karen crouched beside it, cuddled up to it, throaty cries creeping out of her throat. She stroked her hands against the sleeping bag, stroked from head to toe and back again.

Blood seeped through the blue cover.

Matt stood in Hayden’s way. He glared at him with bloodshot red eyes. Hayden could smell the sweat coming from his body. The sweat that always came with shock. “Please. Just—just leave us in peace with our son. Leave us in peace.”

Hayden felt his insides turn. “I … I want that but—”

“Then you’ll walk away right now and leave us to mourn. You’ve lost people too. You … you have no idea how we feel right now, but you’ve lost people too. So you know what—what we have to do.”

Hayden felt deep sympathy for Matt and Karen. Sure, Tim could be a bit of a handful, but weren’t all kids a bit of a handful from time to time?

The way he’d dropped dead. “Just fell,” as Amy put it. One second, alive, the next, bleeding out of his orifices on the ground.

Hayden thought too about Sarah. About her fears of this being some kind of virus. “We can’t be sure your son’s body is … is safe.”

Matt squared up to Hayden. “I told you to—”

“Did Tim ever have any … any funny turns? Seizures, things like that?”

Matt ground his teeth together. His cheeks flushed, and it looked for a moment as if he was going to lash out at Hayden just like Hayden had lashed out at him earlier.

“No,” he said. He wiped the sweat from the side of his head. “I … No. He was healthy. Good at … at PE.” He chuckled. “Little champion at the egg and spoon race. My little champion.”

His voice faltered at those final words, and once again the guilt welled up inside Hayden.

“I’m sorry,” Hayden said. “I … Really. I’m so sorry this happened.”

“We’ll get who did this to you,” Karen mumbled, stroking her son’s body and sniffing back her tears. “We’ll get who did this to you.”

It was at that moment that Hayden’s understanding and perspective shifted. Karen’s words—we’ll get who did this to you. She was suggesting murder. Foul play. “Karen, I don’t think anyone murdered—”

“What the fuck do you know?” Karen spat. She looked up at Hayden with dagger-like eyes. It was the most honest look Hayden thought he’d seen from Karen since meeting her.

“I … I’m just saying. I think it’s more likely we’re dealing with—”

“Are you a doctor? Are you a medical professional? Are—are you in any way qualified to tell me what’s—what’s right and wrong for my son? For my little boy?”

“Karen,” Matt cut in.

“No,” Karen shouted. She stood up and walked towards Hayden. “I won’t have this. I won’t have this.” She smacked a hand hard against Hayden’s chest. “People thinking they can tell me how to raise my son, how to look after my son. People … people still telling me what to do even when he’s gone.”

She lashed out and hit harder and then, exhausted, she fell crying into her husband’s arms.

Matt gave Hayden a look that told him everything he needed to hear—it was time to leave.

“I just want my boy back,” Karen sobbed. “I … I just want my little boy back.”

Hayden wanted to tell Karen that he understood loss, that he’d lost so much in his life that he could relate. But a part of him was numb to loss. A part of him was desensitised. Since Clarice died in front of him, he hadn’t cried about her. He hadn’t mourned, not in the traditional ways. He’d banished the memories from his mind. And they came crawling back to him in the confines of sleep when he couldn’t run away, but in reality he just kept his eyes shut to the truth and powered on with life.

He couldn’t allow himself to grieve. He couldn’t allow himself to
feel
. He’d felt way too much in his life, and it had caught up with him one time too many.

He turned away from Matt and Karen’s room and left them to grieve. He’d give them time. One more night with their son, and then they’d have to clear their heads and step forward with the only logical thing: burial. It wasn’t a nice thought. It was a damned horrid thought. But they had a chance to bury their son. Not a lot of people had a chance to say a proper goodbye to their loved ones in this world. That was something.

Hayden pushed open the rusty metal door that led out into the Riversford grounds. He zipped up his thick winter coat as the cold of night surrounded him. His breath frosted from his mouth as he walked across the concrete, past the spot where they’d found Tim’s body, and towards the wall. Sarah was up there on watch. He had to go up there, reassure her everything was going to be okay. She’d been pretty shaken up by Tim’s death. All of them had.

He climbed the ladder up the side of the CityFast hangar and reached the roof. He liked coming up here at night. Night watch was his favourite because it gave him a legitimate reason to avoid sleep.

He walked across the stones laid on the roof and towards Sarah, who sat at the edge of the building with her eye to the rifle scope.

“Hey,” Hayden said.

Sarah jumped, lowered the weapon and swung to look at him. “Damn. You love giving me a fright, don’t you?”

Hayden perched down beside her and she looked through her scope again. “Figured you could use some company.”

“I’m not sure what I need right now,” Sarah said. Her voice still had that distant shakiness to it like it had down in the yard when they’d found Tim’s body. “This. Everything. It’s all just so …”

“Shitty?” Hayden said.

“Shitty,” Sarah said. She lowered the scope and together with Hayden, stared out at the fields and the trees beyond.

“I just keep thinking of Tim and wondering how this world can be so damned cruel,” she said.

Hayden took the gun from her and put his eye to the scope. “If you’re only just realising that, then poor you.”

He looked out beyond the wall. Saw the empty streets, the still, abandoned houses, the vacant fields, the vast forest.

“You seem so … so calm. About everything. Hayden, you haven’t once spoken to me about what happened to Clarice.”

The words made Hayden’s grip on the gun tighten. He felt his cheeks heating up, his mouth drying. “There’s nothing to say. She’s … she’s dead. She died and she’s gone. Nothing more to be done.”

“But it’s okay to talk, sometimes,” Sarah said. “It’s better to talk sometimes. I know how close she was to you. And I can’t imagine how much it must tear you up inside.”

No, you can’t imagine, Hayden thought. You can’t imagine and nobody can imagine. Not even I can imagine because if I imagine I see evil; evil that I can never unsee. “I’m okay,” he said, forcing the words through his tight lips. “I’ll …”

And then he saw the movement in the fields.

Saw the woman sprinting in the direction of Riversford.

Cream dress. Dark hair. Fear on her face.

“What’s up?” Sarah asked.

“There’s—there’s a woman out there.”

Hayden kept on staring at the woman. A part of him thought she looked so ragged and pale that she had to be a zombie. But no—she was muttering something.
Shouting
something, even. Words that were becoming clearer. Words that made sense.

“Help me!” she screamed. “Let me in! Help me! Please!”

Hayden was about to lower the gun when he saw the movement behind her.

The crowd of zombies closing in, one by one …

“
N
o
. No chance. It’s too risky.”

Sarah shook her head. Hayden could see from the way the colour was returning to her face in the glow of the moonlight that she wasn’t happy with him. “She’s out there on her own. She needs help. What are we supposed to do? Just leave her out there to die?”

Hayden looked back through the rifle scope over the wall at the scene Sarah was referring to. The woman in the white dress running for her life, shouting for help. And behind her, getting closer and closer, a crowd of a dozen zombies.

“We can take a few of them out,” Hayden said. “Snipe a few zombies from here and give her a chance. But she isn’t coming inside. Not with … with what happened. To Tim.”

“Is that the real reason you’re not letting her inside? Or is the real reason just that you’re too damned afraid to let
anyone
inside anymore?”

Hayden tightened his grip on the rifle, eased his aim and pointed at the zombies behind the woman. He fired a shot, sent it slicing right through the zombie’s shoulder but not quite hitting the neck. “This isn’t about—”

“Get real, Hayden. You’ve not been the same since Clarice died, and it’s about time you started facing up to it. Remember the man who went back into the CityFast HQ ten days ago? The man who went back and saved the people who we’re living with right now? The people we’re looking after?”

Hayden fired another bullet in the direction of the zombies. He heard footsteps as someone clambered up the ladder, probably Gary. “I let them down. I let … I let Matt and Karen down.”

“And you’re about to let somebody else down if you don’t come to your frigging senses and let that woman in. At least give her a chance, Hayden. Let’s—let’s monitor her, at least. But don’t leave her out there to die. Don’t make that call. I … I won’t let you make that call.”

Hayden glanced away from his scope and met Sarah’s eyes. He saw that look. That look of disdain, but also a look of fear. A look that told Hayden she didn’t trust him, couldn’t predict what he was going to do, anymore. And in a way, it echoed Hayden’s own thoughts. He wasn’t sure if he could trust himself. He wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to trust anyone or anything ever again.

“The hell’s goin’ on down there?” Gary asked. He walked over to the edge of the hangar and joined Sarah and Hayden in looking over the wall.

“There’s a woman out there,” Sarah said.

“A … A live one?”

“Not for long if Hayden has his way.”

Hayden looked back through the scope. The woman was just metres away from the wall now. They could—
could
—go down there and throw the rope ladder over for her. But it was a risk. There was a chance of the visible zombies being a smaller splinter group of a larger herd, the like of which Hayden hadn’t seen since that fateful night ten days ago. And the group couldn’t suffer another upheaval. Not so hot on the heels of Tim’s death.

The thought hit him in its rawest form: Tim is dead. Gone. Finished.

“So what do we do?” Gary asked. “Out there ’n help her or—”

“It’s too risky. It’s too risky.”

“Of course it’s too frigging risky,” Sarah said, frustration bubbling through her voice. “Everything’s frigging risky these days. But we have to take risks. You’ve seen that yourself. We take risks or we die. That’s all life is now. One risk after another.”

Hayden fired at another of the zombies. The bullet fizzed past it, missed it completely. The zombies were gaining ground on the woman, who was right up to the wall now, scratching at the stones and shouting out.

“Screw this,” Gary said. “I ain’t leavin’ her out there to squeal.”

“Amen to that,” Sarah said, heading for the ladder.

“How does she know?”

Gary clambered down the ladder first, Sarah following shortly behind. The sound of the woman’s screams echoed through the night.

“Know what?” Sarah asked.

Hayden looked back through his scope at the oncoming zombies. He got one in his sights, tickled the trigger, but this time he didn’t fire. “How does she know there’s someone here to help her?”

Sarah didn’t respond.

She was already down the ladder, running towards the gates.

Hayden watched Gary and Sarah appear to his lower right. All the while, the zombies edged closer. He saw Sarah and Gary climb up the debris that Tim had climbed, scamper up to the top of it like rats in a scrapyard, and then when they reached the top they lowered the rope ladder and shouted out for the woman to grab on.

Hayden fired at the nearest zombie.

And then at the one behind.

And the one behind that.

But every time he fired, he felt something welling deep within. Like he was making an error of judgement. Like they were all opening themselves up to a new set of horrors.

Paranoia? Probably.

But paranoia had served him well so far.

He watched Gary and Sarah fish the rope ladder further down towards the woman. Saw the sides of it strain under her weight as she clutched onto the bottom of it, invisible to Hayden but there for the mind’s eye to see. He watched Gary and Sarah hold on even tighter as the woman ascended, as the remaining zombies got closer, closer …

He pointed at the zombies and he pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

No explosion from the end of the gun.

Nothing.

Fuck.

He lowered the gun. Went to reload, but it was jammed. He looked through the scope. Looked over at the ladder. The zombies would be on her if he didn’t kill them fast. They’d be …

He saw the woman climbing up onto the wall, her arms over Sarah and Gary’s shoulders.

Hayden felt a simultaneous hit of relief and disappointment. And that reactionary sense of disappointment absolutely terrified him.

He lowered the gun completely and headed down the ladder to the yard. He had to meet this woman. Make sure she wasn’t going to cause trouble. Make sure she could be trusted.

If anyone could be trusted.

He saw her sitting on the concrete, tears rolling down her cheeks, lit up by the dim glow of Gary’s torchlight.

Hayden walked slowly towards her. Sarah and Gary were still, in a daze, like they’d received some bad news.

And Hayden understood the bad news the moment the woman pulled back the bandage on her left forearm, revealing a gaping bite wound.

His stomach sank. And rose.

And terrified him.

He walked up to her. She was bitten. No arguing. No denying. What had to be done, had to be done.

“She was bit,” Gary said, shaking his head. But he didn’t look disappointed. He looked amazed.

“We need to talk about—”

“She was bit over a week ago,” Sarah said.

Hayden narrowed his eyes. “That’s not possible. She … she can’t …”

“I was bitten ten days ago,” the woman said, looking right up at Hayden. “And I’m … I’m still here.”

And then she passed out and hit the concrete.