The Survivors of Bastion (Fall of Earth Book 1) (15 page)

              ‘Think we set up shop in the wrong place,’ Robbie said, looking up at the enormous manor house. ‘Why didn’t we move here when we set up Bastion?’

              ‘Having so many people living together in one house doesn’t exactly work,’ I said. ‘Plus we’d be too close to Ashby, anyway. I know we like to think of them as our allies but they’re more like acquaintances. There’s never been a whole lot of trust…’

              ‘World like this?’ Leah said. ‘There can’t be. No police to tell you not to pillage and overrun the next community along.’

              If the first virus that killed most of humanity had never broken out it was the kind of place I would probably have dreamt about at this age, being able to afford it.

              Now I had no interest in it at all.

              We carried on to the next garden, making our way over the fence and into the next garden. There were a few like that, manor houses with dilapidated fronts and shattered windows, the wilds having grown all about them.

              Finally we reached the open stretch of grass where the river continued to run alongside it. Maybe 300 yards ahead I could see the walls. They had gone for the same system that we had – cars positioned on top of each other like a row in a junkyard, covered in sheet metal that blocked a view from either side. They had a considerably higher number of lookout posts than us down to the sheer fact that they had more people occupying the community.

              The problem then, though, was that I couldn’t see a single person occupying any of the posts.

              ‘I don’t see anybody,’ Hayley said.

              ‘Me neither,’ I said, pulling out the rifle and removing the scope.

              ‘What are you doing?’ Robbie asked.

              ‘Getting a closer look. I’m not leaving the scope in the rifle. If any of them are up there watching us and we just can’t see them, me pointing the barrel of a gun in their direction isn’t going to do us any favours. I haven’t come this far just to get shot over something like that.’

              I raised the scope and cast my view over the line of the wall, seeking out any sign of movement.

              ‘There’s nobody there…’

              ‘I don’t like this,’ Leah said. ‘What if it’s an ambush or something?’

              ‘Then it’s the most elaborate ambush in history,’ Hayley said. ‘I say we just head in. Keep our hands raised and everything else, and hope for the best.’

              ‘Or we sneak to a vantage point for a better look,’ Robbie said.

              ‘We?’ Hayley asked.

              ‘No, not we,’ I said, ‘I’ll go.’

              ‘No,’ Robbie place his hand on my shoulder, stopping me. ‘I’ll go.’

              ‘Absolutely not,’ I said.

              ‘Why?’

              ‘Because you’re my little brother, and I promised mom a long time ago that I’d always try to keep you safe.’

              Robbie smiled at me, shaking his head and looking down at his feet before looking back up at me in the eyes.

              ‘Look,’ he started, ‘you’re my brother, and I love you, but you can’t be the guy who always takes the dangerous jobs all the time. I know you’re just trying to look after me, after all of us, but you’ve got to let me do something once in a while for myself. I’ll be careful, I promise.’

              It was just another moment of conflict, a moment where I had to reason with my habits in order to get past the reality of the situation, a reality that I had to confront and live with.

              ‘Okay… All right,’ I managed, nodding and restraining myself from tying him to a tree or something just to keep him from going anywhere. ‘If anything happens to you, though, I swear to God I’ll lock you in the basement for the rest of your life.’

              ‘What basement? The one back home?’

              ‘I’ll find a new basement and put you in it… Go on, get out of here.’

              I handed the scope to him and he glanced between us all. Then, without saying another word, and just like the teenager he still was, set off running towards the opposite treeline before jumping over the fence.

              We took a more covered spot behind a section of trees close to the river. All three of us kept our eyes on the gardens that led into town, watching Robbie make his way through them before he dashed out of our line of sight.

              From then on there was nothing but the sound of the river again, and we strained our eyes desperately searching for him to come back into sight.

              ‘Where is he?’ I said frantically, feeling the pangs of panic run through me. I expected to hear a gunshot at any moment, but there was nothing.

              ‘I don’t see him,’ Hayley muttered, looking about. ‘No, wait… There he is…’

              I followed the direction in which she was pointing, finally seeing him steadying his footing on the branch of a tree on the opposite side of the road by the stretch of grass. He spent some time getting steady before finally raising the scope and looking through it. I couldn’t see his reaction or anything that hinted at what laid beyond the walls, but after nothing more than a few seconds of observance he made his way down from the tree and jumped over the nearby fence sprinting down the stretch of grass towards us.

              ‘What the fuck is he doing?’ I muttered, ‘They’re gonna see him…!’

              The three of us set off from behind the treeline, sprinting towards Robbie as he ran towards us.

              ‘We need to get inside…’ Robbie shouted, turning and setting off back towards the walls of Ashby.

              ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted. ‘What did you see?’

              ‘You need to see this for yourself…’

              All I could do was follow him, all three of us running after him until we finally reached the wall. My heart was racing, and not because of the running – a part of me knew for sure what would await us, but Robbie was right. I had to see this.

              There was no door on this side of the wall, so we had to climb up over the carcasses of the cars that composed it. It didn’t take long, making our way up over the metal exterior and the many footholds and gaps available. We pulled ourselves up to the top, standing atop the rusted rooftops of the old, wrecked cars and looking out over Ashby.

Chapter Sixteen

Last Man Standing

It wasn’t Ashby, though. It was what was left of it.

              Perhaps ten or eleven bodies littered the streets, splayed out on the concrete and tarmac like pieces of trash, cast aside. Some resided facing away from us or down against the ground, while others were face up or on their side, their eyes wide and dead. All were spattered with blood and ripped clothes.

              I couldn’t account for the number of ways in which they had been killed. Some were ripped apart, others laid next to enormous pools of dried blood on the roads, horrendous wounds on their heads – the few that had been lucky enough to be put out of their misery in one way or another, those who would not have to succumb to the perils of the infection.

              Before it had happened they had operated a similar system to us, utilising the detached houses for individual homes that everybody could use. Now, though, almost every one of these houses possessed smashed windows and open doors, the general signs of mess and disorder as the place lay quiet. That deathly silence that cast itself over Ashby, a place that was once vibrant and teeming with human life in the face of the apocalypse, sent a wave of terror washing over me that I hadn’t felt since we had gone running from Bastion, since I had left my people and my mother behind.

              Maybe we would have all muttered expletives at the sight of what lay before us – I’d like to tell you that we did, because I think it might have helped our perception of the whole thing. None of us said a word, though. The death of the town spoke for itself.

                            We remained in silence for some time before I heard a long exhalation from Hayley, and she spoke.

              ‘Let’s head inside.’

              It was a dangerous prospect, probably the most life-threatening one that we had considered since having left Bastion. We had talked about going inside and investigating beforehand, but now that we were here…

              ‘Yeah…’ I said, keeping myself together. ‘Let’s go. I’ll take front with the rifle. Keep your eyes open and stay away from the bodies. Any one of them so much as flinches, cave their skull in.’

              We climbed down the other side of the wall, I looking over my shoulder at every opportunity. Stopping off at the ground, my feet coming to rest in this unfamiliar ground, I raised the rifle and kept it there in front of me. Everybody else kept their eyes open.

              All four of us had gone nights without sleep before – it was just another thing in this world that we had to get used to because of the sheer number of things out to kill us.

              Right then I had little doubt that they were all as wide awake as I was.

              The sun had been rising on Ashby for two days now, presuming the infected had come to us based on the timelines in my head. After two days in the sun the flies had come out, and the things had begun to rot.

              ‘That’s fucking awful,’ Leah muttered. ‘I can’t believe this…’

              I don’t think any of us could have believed the reality of it, but here it was, right in front of us.

              In the midst of it all I had a flashback to the aftermath we had confronted when we had left the basement all those years ago, when we had stayed down there for a week before coming outside to see the new version of the world that awaited us. Henrietta had tried to keep us away from it, from seeing the chaos in the streets and the aftermath of the infection.

              I thought back to her, to what had happened to her. Not even Marcus and Maria had her throughout the attack.

              I returned my mind to the situation at hand, shaking my head and looking out ahead of me, searching for any sign of movement. I looked over every body that lay in our path – all had horrendous wounds to the head and neck, and many had very visible bite marks scattered about over their skin.

              I had no doubt that those whose bite marks we couldn’t see would possess them somewhere on their body.

              We made it to a clear patch of the road, stopping off outside of one of the abandoned houses.

              ‘This is insane,’ Robbie muttered, ‘I can’t fucking believe this…’

              ‘I think we’ve got our answer as to who it was that attacked us,’ Hayley said.

              ‘I just don’t know where we go from here…’ Leah said. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’

              ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I mean, I didn’t expect to show up here and find a piece of paper with ‘clue’ written on it. This person, this woman that Morgan spoke about… She was here. They brought her in, just like we brought him in. The only difference is we know where he came from. We’ve got no idea where she came from to get here.’

              ‘I just wish it really was as simple as finding a piece of paper with ‘clue’ written on it. Either way we still can’t get Bastion back.’

              ‘I’ll do whatever it takes,’ I said, ‘and I know the rest of you will, too.’

              ‘Oh, shit-’

              I spun my head, glancing over at Leah as she glared across the street at the opposite house from where we stood.

              I couldn’t react fast enough to the sight of the hooded figure in the doorway. My hands seemed to act of their own volition as I raised the rifle, pointing the barrel at the doorway.

              ‘Don’t fucking move,’ I shouted, my heart racing, ready to fire if I saw even the glimmer of a weapon. I expected a fight, either for them to start firing or for the hood to fall and for them to come running at us with a bloody face, gnashing teeth and wild eyes.

              Turns out it was neither.

              The figure took off, running back through the open doorway of the house, leaving us in an odd state of quiet. Nothing demanded that we run after the person, so we stayed put.

              ‘I don’t think this is an ambush,’ I said. ‘If it was they wouldn’t be clamouring about in a town filled with dead bodies.’

              ‘Who do you think that was, then?’ Robbie asked.

              I lowered the rifle, looking over at him by my side.

              ‘Last man standing.’

              We set off towards the house, Hayley keeping a lookout at the back as we made our way into the house. Things might have seemed normal were it not for the fact that everything had been thrown to the ground or overturned. I thought back to Mae and Larry’s house as we stopped in the dark, small entrance hall.

              ‘If you’re in here,’ I shouted, ‘and if you can hear us, I want you to know that we mean you no harm. We’re from Bastion. I’m giving you the chance to come out in the next ten seconds, and we can have a friendly chat. That’s all. Like I said, we don’t want to hurt you. We’re ready when you are.’

              Leah looked at me like I was insane, but I nodded at her to let her know I had it under control. I signalled back out and we left the hallway, stepping out into the sunlight, out onto the road.

              We all kept our eyes on the house, and in the sunlight I caught the flicker of the blinds on the upper floor in my line of sight. The moment I made eye contact with the hooded figure the blinds closed again. They were watching us for sure.

              But who were they?

              We waited, seeing no further movement before us. Then-

              ‘All right… All right, I’m coming out. Please don’t shoot me.’

              The voice came from through the open door. We all waited cautiously as we heard the footsteps coming down the stairs. I intended to keep my word, but as I knew that our guest was slowly approaching us I had to resist raising the rifle, keeping myself desperately in check as I fought to remain on the defensive rather than the offensive.

              Finally the figure emerged in the doorway, still hooded in the cloak that they had been wearing. They walked out into the sunlight, seemingly apprehensively.

              ‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘How are you still here?’

              ‘I didn’t have anywhere else to go,’ a man’s voice said, and with that he removed the hood. I found myself looking at a dark haired man in his mid-30s, with tired eyes and a furrowed brow. ‘I’m… I’m James.’

              ‘Okay… James…?’ I said sceptically, feeling the air of weariness that the stances of my friends gave off. ‘Who are you? And what happened here?’

              ‘I lived here… This was my home, before… Before…’

              ‘You know who we are, don’t you?’ I said, looking him in the eye. ‘You know what Bastion is?’

              ‘Yes. You’re the community in the next town, aren’t you? Helena speaks about you…
Spoke
about you a lot. She liked you. Said she admired you and how we got along with you.’

              ‘Spoke?’ I said. ‘So she’s dead?’

              ‘They all are… I’m the only one left.’

              ‘Are you serious?’

              ‘Why would I joke about such a thing?’

              ‘I… Yeah, of course… I’m sorry.’

              He was an odd man. He didn’t speak with an accent, or with any vernacular habits – he spoke the language exactly as it was supposed to be spoken, as if he was reeling off his responses from a massive back catalogue that he had rehearsed, like a robot.

              ‘You all look very tired. Would you like to come inside? I have plenty of food and water.’

              I looked about at my three companions. All of them silently agreed – I could tell by the expression on their faces that they needed to rest, and so did I.

              ‘All right,’ I said, nodding at him reassuringly. ‘One wrong move and I take your head off, though. Deal?’

              ‘No wrong moves,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

***

I didn’t know what to think of James, or Ashby. I wasn’t intimidated, that was for sure – even if the air of death hung over the place infallibly.

              Despite the overturned objects we had seen from the hallway, the place seemed in at a halfway point of repair. Things had been tidied and rearranged upon closer inspection, and as we sat in the dining room of James’s house, I keeping a relaxed but cautious hold on the rifle as he returned from the kitchen with a tray of water and baked bread, I tried to put the questions in my mind into some coherent order.

              We all took up some food as James sat at the other end of the table quietly, the vague echo of a smile on his face.

              ‘What happened to you happened to us,’ I said, finishing up my cup of water. ‘That is what happened to you, isn’t it? The infected?’

              He seemed stunted by the question, not exactly to my surprise. Everybody stopped eating, even if they were halfway through a bite of bread, and watched James from across the table. He remained quiet for a long time, as if deliberating on his words, before finally speaking.

              ‘There was only one to begin with. She came from the south. Arrived at our gates one night in a completely hysterical state. Couldn’t speak, couldn’t communicate. Terrible, terrible fever, and her arms were riddled with these bite marks. I tried to say that that was what they were, but nobody would listen to me. They just assumed they were thorns. She managed to tell us that her name was Sarah before she collapsed.’

              ‘What happened after that?’

              Our medical people looked after her at the hospital…’

              ‘The hospital?’

              ‘It’s what we call the house we use for treating anyone who’s sick. Helena did that with everything. She said everything should have a name and a place just like it did in the old world, that this town was our world now…’

              Leah shot me a glance, the kind that silently commented on the oddity of the statement, but I shook my head and returned to James.

              ‘What happened when you took her back to the hospital?’

              ‘She died that night. Many of us stayed awake, because we couldn’t sleep knowing that we had somebody new within the walls. We always like to introduce new members and bring them in to our way of life, but when she died… Well, it cast something of a shadow over us, one that made the night even darker.

              ‘Helena had a policy of burying people as soon as they passed, to pass them back to the Earth from which they came. We all headed out to the site where we bury those amongst us that fall. She was on a stretcher, wrapped up in a sheet, but from the front there were suddenly murmurs and screams. She had begun to move inside of her sheet. Those around her hurried as quickly as they could to get her out of the sheet – we thought that she was suffocating, that we had made a mistake about her death, but when the sheet was unfolded…’

              ‘She had turned,’ Hayley interrupted, gazing over at him.

              ‘I suppose you could say that,’ James continued. ‘I don’t quite know what it was that she turned into, but she began to bite everybody that she could. Her eyes were blue and this terrible snarl came from her, like the growl of a wild animal. She must have bitten six or seven of our people before one of the guards shot her. The bullet hit her in the chest but she just kept moving, so they shot her in the head and she went down for good.