The Unblemished (30 page)

It was the start of a long night. A night of a dozen hospitals. The
doctors, the surgeons, the cleaners and receptionists were all gone or
all dead. It became attritional. She would not be beaten by what was
obvious. She would not return to Tina's flat, to her daughter, without
her knight in shining armour. Nor would she accept that she was
reluctant to return to the responsibility she bore, that she was looking
for an end to her life tonight. No, that wasn't it. No.

She travelled on foot and by the end of it, as the weak sun turned
the roofs liquid white, she found herself close to collapse. She was in
the car park of the Chelsea and Westminster hospital on the Fulham
Road, with no knowledge of how she had arrived. She had seen so
much depravity that it had her questioning her motives. If this was
normality, then what was she doing? Accept it and assimilate. Death
was on the cards anyway; it just meant that living this way would
bring it along a bit quicker. She was about to head back to the city
centre when she decided to have one last look around. It would be
just her luck to throw in the towel now while a convention of the best
lump surgeons in the world were having tea and biscuits inside.

More of the same. It was wallpaper. It was background. She
looked through the sprays of red and the jagged ends of bone. She
had learned early on not to hurry along the corridors lest she slip in
some slick of serous fluid or another. As with all the other hospitals,
she found more people the deeper she proceeded. Some were dead.
Some of them were doctors, the knowledge she craved trapped for
ever inside their cold heads. There were further signs that the devastation
had occurred recently. And there were fresh atrocities. She
stumbled upon a ward of twelve lifeless in-patients that had been
feasted on while they drowsed, splayed ribs in their opened chests like
some unspeakable attempt at culinary presentation. Each had been
stabbed violently in the arms and legs first, the blood that had flowed
from the lesions showing that the victims were alive at that time,
before any fatal wound was inflicted. These poor people had been
attacked in their beds by things that wanted them to suffer in extreme
agony before they were killed. Who would do that? Why would they
do that?

A shadow moved. 'It's because their hearts will taste sweeter.'
Sarah screamed.

'Violent death,' he said, tipping his head in the direction of the
corpses. 'The liver releases a great whack of sugar to help the fight for
life. The liver doesn't know it's inside a sick body lying in a hospital
bed pissing through a catheter. It's thinking fight or flight. It's
thinking, "I don't want to die, here ... have some jungle juice and
let's get the fuck away". But if the victim dies quickly, the sugar stays
inside the stopped heart. Bingo. Supper time.'

'Are you a doctor?'

'No.'

'Then stay away from me.'

'You won't live.'

'I think I'll have at least a say in the matter,' she said. 'Just fuck
off. I'm doing fine. I've got a knife.'

'I'll get you a fork and you can eat yourself before any of the
nutjobs in here do it for you. I can help. Really, I can.'

Sarah maintained the distance between them as the shadow moved
deeper into the room. She could hear the rasp of its breathing. He was
not in good shape. 'You don't sound in a fit enough state to help
yourself, never mind anybody else.'

'Appearances can be deceiving,' he said.

'Tell me about it. You might have a belly full of these poor
bastards for all I know.'

'I've resisted that,' he said, forcefully. She believed him. She couldn't
understand why, having not even seen his face so far, but she believed
him nonetheless. 'I am like them, but I'm not like them. I helped them.
Unwittingly, unwillingly. Occasionally it felt as though I was on their
side. But I'm not. I know I'm not.'

'What's your name?'

'Bo. Bo Mulvey.'

'Why are you here?'

He moved towards her and again she stepped back. Footsteps
outside the ward. Hard and fast. Many.

'I'm here because I did a silly thing,' he said. He showed her his heavily
bandaged hand. The dressing was streaked with oil and blood and grime.
But then so was the rest of him. His hair was lank, greasy. His skin was
grey and tired, loose on his obvious bones, and painfully thin. Sarah
thought that if she touched him, her finger might poke through. 'I've been
searching the city for painkillers. The heavy-duty stuff. But there's not a
lot of it left.'

'You did that to yourself?'

He nodded. 'I did it to stop myself ... turning. I'm not sure it's
worked.' He turned his head away from her. The footsteps were
joined by hollers and whoops, the sound of bottles smashing and,
shockingly, the sound of gunfire.

'I'm leaving,' he said. 'You can come with me if you want to. But
make up your mind quick. I don't want to die here.'

'I can't leave. I'm trying to find a doctor.'

He laughed.

'Fuck you,' she spat, and jabbed the knife in his direction.

'Okay,' he said. 'Good luck.'

He moved past her and she smelled how ripe he was, how death
was trying to bring him down if only it could get a grip on him.
Without thinking she reached out a hand and grabbed his jacket. She
said, 'Help me.'

'We have to leave,' he said. 'Now.'

'Help me find someone. A paramedic. A surgeon. A fucking ambulance
driver. Do that and I'll put the knife away. I'll trust you.'

'What makes you think I need your trust?'

'You're crying,' she said.

He raised his hands and batted at his cheeks, shocked by the tears.

'You fighting against this. It's a lonely job, yes? I'm right?'

Bo couldn't speak. He wanted to run. He wanted to get outside
and keep running until his lungs combusted. But the gutsy blonde
with the knife and the attitude had rattled him. And he liked it. It
gave him the nudge he needed, the hand on the back of the head
forcing him to look in a direction he had been ignoring for too long.
She seemed to understand him, without him needing to open his
mouth. He had missed that in a person. There was a way out of this
that did not involve the extreme measures he was drifting towards.

'There are no doctors,' he said. 'They were targeted. When you're
trying to wipe out a race, you don't want anybody around who's
useful at patching people up again.' He took a risk and grabbed her
elbow, steered her into the corridor away from the approaching
rabble. She allowed him to lead her, folding the knife into her pocket.

'I think I realised that hours ago,' she said.

'Then why are you here?'

'My daughter needs help. What do I do? Give up? You don't have
kids, do you?'

'No.'

'Well, take it from me. You don't give up. Hospitals were the only
place I could go.'

Bo made a noise that might have been laughter or bafflement but
came out like a cough from a sick man. 'This isn't a hospital any
more,' he said. 'This is a fast-food restaurant.'

'I have to try.'

'If there's anybody here who can help you, they're dead.
Understand that. We need to get moving.'

She pulled clear of him. 'Let's get one thing clear, bucko,' she said.
'I don't take orders.'

'You do now,' he hissed, clamping his good hand over her mouth
and pulling her through a set of swing doors into the stairwell. A
doctor was sprawled over the edge of the upper landing. Her head had
been chiselled open for the goodies inside. It was a neat operation; the
body's white coat was spotless, the brain scooped out with minimum
fuss, like a scrupulous breakfaster at a lightly boiled egg.

Bo frowned hard at Sarah when she began trying to bite his
fingers. He put a foot to the door to prevent it closing completely, and
through the half-inch gap that remained she watched as a jumble of
shadow moved stealthily into view. She slackened against him as the
shadows resolved themselves into three figures. Their heads were
shaved, dyed red.

'What?' she mouthed against his skin.

He pulled her back. The door closed, but not before they noticed
the lead figure halt and swing his head their way, his mouth dropping
open like a badly packed tool bag.

'Who was that?' she whispered as Bo led her down the stone steps,
her voice breathy as if they had just seen a cinema legend nonchalantly
strolling along.

'Someone I wish I didn't know,' he said. 'Someone you certainly don't
want to know. Someone who wants me dead, and I'm not sure why. He's
going to have to get in a queue for that before long.'

'Did he see us?'

'I doubt it. He had his mouth open, though. He might have heard
us. He might have smelled us.'

He paused at the landing and listened. Nothing.

'I think we might be all right. Come on.'

'Where are we going?'

'Basement. We can get out at one of the refuse collection points.'

'But that's where they congregate. I saw them. It looks to me as if
they're after easy food.'

'Everywhere is easy food now,' he said. 'We don't have any good
options available to us. Some of those things, they're clever, adaptable,
mean enough to get their meat wherever they want it. They'll bring it
down in the street if they can. Others are weaker and stupid. They'll
grub about in bins. They're like us. That's the problem, really.'

'Who are they?

'We can talk about that later.'

To the left, at the foot of the steps was a large locked door with a
glass window. Through it Bo could see banks of switches and fuse
boxes. To the right, the corridor led to a locked partition accessible
by key card. The red light in the security housing glared at them. They
stood looking at it for so long that Sarah believed it must change
colour because of their interest in it.

'Wait here,' Bo said at last.

He was not gone for long but Sarah didn't like the feeling his
absence inspired. Before meeting him she had been alone. Now he
was gone, she felt lonely. It bothered her that she should feel so
different in such a short time. It was needling that she should be so
fickle, when she had never dreamed she was that way inclined. Nick
had helped, but his help was of the puppy-dog variety, there was
always the feeling that he was waiting for his reward. This guy was
driven, and that made her feel safer.

He returned with a big smile – which helped the parlous state of
his face, but not much – and a key card.

'Where did you find that?' Sarah asked.

'On the doctor with the open mind,' he said, and swiped the plastic
across the housing. Even after the light had turned green and a soft,
pneumatic
thunk
heralded the release of the door, Sarah was convinced
the red light was still showing, it burned in her memory so brightly, no
longer a no entry indication but now more of a warning. They passed
through the pharmacy, Bo smashing cabinets and stuffing his pockets
with drugs – 'There's got to be something here that can do me right,
no?' – and on through another linking corridor to the mortuary.

'Great,' Sarah said.

Bo indicated to her to be quiet and used the card again on this
second security mechanism. The door released itself. Refrigerated air
flowed past him and tightened her arms. They moved through an
admission and removal area into body reception. Beyond were
stacked the storage fridges. Everything was covered in red handprints.

'Oh my God,' Sarah said, when she saw the bodies.

'It's okay, they're dead.'

Sarah tugged at his leather jacket. 'I'm sold on what you said
about getting moving,' she said. 'Let's go.'

But Bo was moving deeper into the room. His boots sloshed
through shit and chemicals; the drainage gullies were blocked with
body parts, hanks of hair, torn clothing. A woman was lying across a
laminar flow table, her lower half gone, a grey spaghetti remaining.
There was a partially sucked Polo mint in her gaping mouth. Three
more bodies were drunkenly slouched against the wall, the eyes that
remained in their faces opaque with death, or shock.

'What are we doing here?' Sarah asked. 'You looking for a date?'

'Weapons,' Bo said. 'Knives. I don't know. Drills? Meathooks?'

'Okay,' Sarah said, happy for a task. She started on the drawers
and immediately found a cleaver. 'Some butcher's shop this is.'

'Bag it,' Bo said. He put a cartilage knife and a couple of bone
rongeurs and Austin chisels in his pocket along with a packet of
circle-curved suture needles. 'Bag it and take whatever else you can
lay your hands on.'

They'd done a circuit of the mortuary and were heading for the
door when the first heavy blow rang along the corridor.

'Fuck,' said Bo.

'This was a trap,' Sarah said. 'You tricked me.' She checked behind
her but there was no exit. The windows were either as small as letterboxes
or secured by bolted steel bars. Another blow. The sound
of glass cracking, of metal gritting, squealing as it was wrenched
free.

Bo craned his neck. 'There's a dozen of them. Maybe more. They
haven't necessarily seen us.'

'Fucking great,' Sarah said. She felt close to tears. She felt hungry.
'I haven't necessarily shat my pants, but all these things ... they're
on the cards, aren't they?'

'We hide,' Bo said.

'What? Where?'

'The refrigerators.'

'They'll find us.'

'If they're looking for us.'

'What else would they be doing?'

'Same as they're all doing,' he said, bustling her towards the rear
of the mortuary where nine great vacuum-locked doors stood.
'Looking for food, scraps, whatever they can get.'

One of the bodies on the floor rolled over, spitting crimson sputum
from his grey-blue lips. Bo tipped him back over on to his chest and
jumped down hard on the nape of his neck. Sarah turned away when
she saw his intent, but could not block out the deep, dense sound of
bones crunching.