Authors: Matthew Johnson
“They’re there,” I said, trying to keep my voice too low for Sophie to hear. “Maybe a lot of them.”
As we neared the gate I fought the urge to run: I could hear the end-stagers in the woods around us, feel their eyes on us as we passed through the narrow space. The fence around the Ranger compound was solid steel, with razor wire along the top to keep end-stagers from climbing over it. The open gate, just wide enough for a train to pass through, let us see glimpses of the other side but concealed much more. I slowed my pace as we reached the gate, letting my finger curl around the trigger of my rifle.
Sophie reached the gate and broke into a trot as she passed through, moving out of view. I caught up with her just as she ran into a man in dark clothes who had been moving in front of the gate on the other side. For a moment I thought he might be a Ranger, until I saw his white hair: he turned towards me and opened his mouth to reveal two rows of teeth, like a shark’s, perfectly white and gleaming.
I raised the barrel of my rifle, getting ready to shoot and run—the sound of the shot would surely bring all the other end-stagers from the woods—but before I could fire Sophie reached into the pocket of her windbreaker, pulled out the biscuit she had saved from that morning and held it out to the man.
For a moment he just looked at her, his double teeth grinning obscenely; then he took the biscuit and began to chew it carefully, barely able to get it in his mouth. I stood there, watching as he chewed contentedly on the biscuit, and I saw that he was wearing dentures over his own teeth, which were sliding in and out of his mouth each time he moved his jaw.
After a few moments Peggy tugged on my sleeve and led me away.The cabin was about fifty yards off the tracks, the firewatch tower a short distance beyond that: once we had passed the chewing end-stager we broke into a run, crossing the distance between the tracks and the cabin as quickly as we could.
The outside of the cabin was not much different than it had been before it had been repurposed—there was not much you could do to make a wall of stacked logs more defensible—but the windows and doors had been replaced with shatterproof Plexiglas and steel, the wood shingle roof long gone in favour of aluminium. I used my momentum to launch myself up onto the cement platform that stood before the door, the only reminder of the screened porch that had once covered the whole front of the building. Peggy hesitated as she neared it and stumbled; Sophie slowed to help her, the two of them awkwardly levering themselves up onto the platform with their hands.
“Stay close,” I said. “We’re just going to find the radio and get out.”
“Don’t you know where it is?” Sophie asked.
“I’ve never been inside,” I said. I took a step back, raised my rifle and waved Peggy forward. “Push it open, then step away.”
“What if it’s locked?” Peggy said.
“Then we knock very politely and ask the Rangers to let us in,” I said, glancing back at the gate.
Sophie grabbed my arm as her grandmother stepped past us, putting a hand on the door handle and turning it tentatively. Peggy leaned into the heavy door, pushing it with her shoulder, and as she did I moved my sights off her and onto the opening doorway. Once she had it fully open I stepped in and then waved the others in after me. When they were both inside Peggy released the door and it swung back, slamming shut with a heavy thud that made me wince.
The door led into a small foyer that opened into a larger room to the left. I stepped into the room and swung my rifle at the other three corners. Fading light from the window showed a brown leather couch, much-patched with silver duct tape, facing a fireplace on the far wall that held some smouldering logs: in front of it was a wagon wheel coffee table, its glass top lying in shards on the floor all around, and an eyeless moose head hung on the wall above.
Peggy held her hand to her mouth. “That smell. . . .” she said.
“They’ve been here,” I said. An open doorway in the wall to our right led to a hallway, but it was too dark within to see anything. “Let’s hope they ran out of toys to play with.”
We crossed the room, stepping carefully to avoid the shards of glass, until we stood at the doorway. I took my flashlight from my jacket pocket and handed it to Sophie. “Stay right in front of me,” I said quietly.
“I should go first,” Peggy said.
I shook my head. “You’re too tall. I need to be able to shoot over her.”
She opened her mouth, shut it and nodded. Sophie and I counted a silent one, two, three together and then stepped into the doorway, swinging the flashlight and rifle together to the left and then the right. There was a door, half-open, almost directly across from us, and another to the left of it; beyond that the left-hand hallway opened into a room that looked like it spanned the breadth of the cabin. To the right I could see three doors, all on the facing wall, before the corridor faded into darkness.
Peggy pressed against the back of my jacket, trying to squeeze into the doorway with us. “Which way?” she asked.
I nodded at the door across the hall and Sophie and I moved forward together. The wooden door swung inward as she kicked it: the room lit up as she pointed the flashlight inside, with mirror, tile and porcelain bouncing the light back at us.
“Let’s try to the left,” I said. “It’s not as far from the front door in that direction—maybe we’ll get lucky.”
The smell we had noticed earlier grew stronger as we opened the next door on the left. It was a smell I had known before I ever came here: every home I ever worked in had it, no matter how hard it had been scrubbed.
The flashlight’s beam picked up a carpet, dresser, and two single beds, on each of which lay an unmoving body. I started to cover Sophie’s eyes with my hand, but the smell had already reached her: she spat up water and half-digested berries, and dropped the flashlight onto the floor. It rolled into the room, and Sophie reached down to pick it up; as her hand closed on it something seized her and pulled her forward. I took a step, trying to get a bead on the end-stager who had grabbed her, but Peggy rushed past me, knocking me to my knees. In the dim light I saw her grabbing Sophie’s other arm, pulling hard, and I heard Sophie scream.
I didn’t bother to stand but instead rose to one knee and tried to sight the end-stager. All I could see, though, was Peggy: she had knocked Sophie aside and leapt onto the one who had grabbed her, clawing at him with a savagery that was, I was sure, entirely foreign to her nature.
“Grandma?” Sophie asked.
Peggy turned back to us: her face was chalk-white, her eyes wild. I kept my rifle where it was, watching her carefully.
“Sophie, go,” I said. “The way we were going.”
Peggy looked from me to Sophie and then back again. She opened her mouth but remained silent, a perplexed look on her face. She took a step toward Sophie and my finger curled inward, touching the cold metal of the trigger.
“No,” Sophie said. “Don’t . . .”
Peggy froze. I rose to my feet, keeping her in my sights. “We have to go now,” I said. I backed up towards the door, putting myself between Sophie and Peggy. Sophie reached from behind me and grabbed my arm, pulling it down until the .30-06 was pointed at the floor.
I took a step back out into the hall, still watching Peggy, and glanced to my left. Two end-stagers had emerged from the large room at the end of the corridor. One was a bald male in faded blue pajamas, his bare feet trailing blood; the other was a female dressed in just a dirty, pilly grey bra who had a halo of frizzy grey hair and little round bumps all over her body, like someone had slipped a sheet of bubble wrap under her skin.
“Go.”
Sophie looked at her grandmother for a moment before heading down the long corridor, the flashlight’s beam jumping around the walls as she ran. I took a step backwards, trying to keep both Peggy and the two end-stagers within my arc of fire, then turned and ran after her. I could hear the male and female pick up their pace behind me and swore under my breath, cursing myself for triggering their instincts by running.
Sophie looked back at me, slowing her pace to let me catch up. We were already past the doorway to the room we had come in, so we ran until we could see the end of the hallway. There was a door on the left, just before the furthest wall; beyond it the hallway turned left, with a hint of light visible at its end. The exposed logs on our right showed that we were following the outer wall, and ahead of us we could see light coming through a transom over a wooden door. When we got closer, though, we saw that the door handle had been removed and nails driven through the door into the frame.
I took my jackknife from my pocket and tried to work the blade into the empty socket where the handle had been, thinking that if I could get the latch free I might be able to force the door open.
“Can you use your gun?” Sophie asked.
I took a step back and raised my rifle, aiming at where the handle had been. “I don’t know,” I said.
“No, the other end—bang it on the hinges.”
I nodded, then handed her my knife. “You keep working on the handle.” I slid open the bolt and let the cartridge fall to the ground, then turned the rifle around and slammed the butt into the upper hinge. I could see the screws pulling out of the frame, but just barely.
Sophie was kneeling in front of the door handle, trying to disengage the latch with the knife. She glanced behind us, saw the two end-stagers rounding the corner, and screamed.
“Just keep trying,” I said. “We can get out of this—”
When I moved to hit the hinges again, though, something was pulling the other way: I turned to see the bubble-wrap woman’s hands on the barrel. My finger went to the trigger, but by the time it had gotten there I remembered I had taken out the cartridge.
The bubble-wrap woman had both hands on the barrel now and was trying to pull the rifle away from me. The bald man crouched down, trying to creep past the woman and me to get at Sophie, who screamed again.
Suddenly the bald man’s head flew forward, slamming into the door. I glanced away from the woman to see Peggy stumbling back from where she had collided with him. The bubble-wrap woman looked at her, too, and that gave me enough of a chance to pull the barrel out of her grasp; I swung the stock forward and it hit her head with a crunch, knocking her back into the wall. Sophie was curled up into a ball, covering her face with her hands, but the bald man had forgotten about her and was struggling with Peggy, scratching her face with long, dirty fingernails.
I turned back to the hinge and hit it again, saw the ends of the screws come loose from the doorframe. “The doorknob,” I said to Sophie.
She moved her hands from her face, then froze as she saw her grandmother struggling with the bald man.
“Sophie, the doorknob,” I said again. “If you can get that I think I can open it.”
She nodded and turned back to the door, sticking the point of the knife between the door and the frame. A few moments later the whole door moved slightly within the frame and I lowered the rifle, took a half-step back and slammed my shoulder into the door. The top half of the door pulled free of the nails holding it to the frame and with another slam the whole door came loose and fell onto the ground.
I stepped outside but Sophie didn’t follow. “Come on,” I said, but she was frozen. Peggy was still wrestling with the bald man, his teeth sunk into her shoulder as she punched him in the stomach. I took the box of cartridges from my pocket, loaded one into the rifle and drew a bead on the man’s bald head. “Don’t look, Sophie,” I said, then pulled the trigger. The shot drove the man into Peggy, knocking them both over.
“Come on.” I grabbed Sophie’s wrist and pulled her after me. “There should be another radio up in the firewatch tower.”
“No,” Sophie said. “My grandma’s hurt.’
“Oh, honey,” I said. “She’s not your grandma anymore.”
Sophie said nothing as she moved to pull the dead end-stager off her grandmother. Peggy was in bad shape, but still moving; there were cuts and bruises all over her face, and bright red blood was oozing out of the toothmarks on her shoulder. I fumbled with another cartridge, loaded it into the chamber.
“Is she going to die?” Sophie asked.
I raised my rifle and tried to sight Peggy, who was rising stiffly to her feet. “Come on, Sophie,” I said. “Get away from her. We have to go.”
Sophie turned back to look at me, frowning deeply. “Is she going to die?”
“Yes,” I said. “Not right away, but yes, she probably is. Bite wounds are bad—they get infected, and the blood she’s lost is going to make it worse.”
“Tell me what to do. To help her.”
I took a step forward, nudging Sophie aside with the rifle barrel. Peggy looked up at me, silent, her face unreadable. “There’s nothing you can do to help her. Your grandma is gone.”
“No, she isn’t,” Sophie said. She turned to Peggy and looked her in the eyes. “You’re sick, I know that. But you aren’t going to hurt me, and I’m going to help you.”
Peggy’s ragged breathing slowed as Sophie held her, becoming more regular. After what felt like a long time I took a breath, looked right and left, and then dropped my rifle. I unshouldered my pack, took out some steri-wipes, two syringes of my moxifloxacin/clindamycin bite mix and one of morphine. “Give me her arm,” I said.
Sophie took Peggy’s right hand in hers and straightened her arm. I found a good vein, wiped it clean and tapped the three syringes, one after the other. “That should help with infection,” I said. “Do you want to do the bandages?”
Sophie’s mouth quirked up into a tiny smile, and she nodded. “How do I do it?’ she asked.
I handed her a steri-wipe, tore open a pack of chitosan sponges and handed it to her. “Clean your hands first, then press these into each of the wounds.” I held my breath as she touched the first sponge to Peggy’s bite marks. “Careful, it might hurt her,” I said.
Peggy flinched as Sophie applied the sponges, but did not move. “Now what?” Sophie asked.
“Here,” I said, passing her the bandage. “Wrap this around the wounds five or six times, nice and tight.”
When she was done she looked back at me. “Is that it?”