Flu Read online

  The house had been a great base for Lark and him for some weeks, now. Just how many weeks, he couldn't be sure. He'd found it pretty early on, pretty soon after meeting Lark for the first time. Was it three weeks ago? Four weeks ago? Hell, who was counting anymore, anyway? He wondered how long it would be safe to stay at the house. The longer they stayed, the more the dead seemed to multiply in number. He was worried that they would eventually sniff them out, and once that happened, he was sure it was game over.

  But that wasn't his only concern. He had others, all scrambling for airtime in the WORRY section of his brain. First of all, there was the flu. Why he hadn't caught it, he couldn't be sure. Deep down, he knew it probably wasn't anything to do with his obsession with the balaclava, but he still wasn't prepared to take it off.

  Every little helps, he said to himself, rhyming off the old supermarket slogan. But he could never be sure he was immune - people were catching it every day (if there even were many people left) and he knew he could just as easily be next.

  And then there was the whole problem with supplies. Yesterday's run had, obviously, been very unsuccessful. What with the whole mess with the girl, he'd ended up leaving all the stuff he'd got in the boot of the car. And it was becoming so heavily populated with dead out there that he couldn't imagine it being safe enough to retrieve it any time soon. They had some stuff left from the last run, but only enough to see them through another couple of days. And who was to know how many more of those things would be walking past the window tomorrow, or the day after.

  He thought back to his life before all of this had happened. He had been a taxi driver, and a damn good one. He worked long and hard and made good money. None of it mattered now, of course. His money was useless. The change in his pocket no better than the stones on the ground. His bank accounts no longer existed. Once mere numbers on a screen, his whole life savings had disappeared overnight - pretty much snuffed out at the flick of a switch. Twenty thousand odd quid blown like a faulty light bulb.

  McFall considered, for a moment, what it was that made him rich now. He was healthy - that much was true. The flu hadn't touched him. Of course, he was never a man who took ill very much - there just wasn't time to be ill. Or maybe it was something to do with all the people he was coming into contact with. Hundreds of people sitting in his car every week. People from all walks of life, some coughing and wheezing and sniffing with colds and flus and God-knows-what. The school runs he did, the hospital runs - all of them without even as much as a sniffle from his seat. His body had most likely built up a resistance to all of the ills of Belfast, maybe even including this most recent flu outbreak.

  But he wasn't taking any chances.

  Still keeping an eye on the street outside, he removed his balaclava. He felt in his pocket for the small bottle of herbal remedy he carried with him. His wife had turned him onto this stuff when she'd heard he was going to be working as a taxi driver. She had said it would help keep the cold and flu away. It tasted like acid, but he mixed a few drops with his orange juice every morning and drank it down. He unscrewed the bottle, removing the small dropper. He squeezed out three small drops over the mouth and nose of his balaclava. It was a soothing, minty smell that came from the bottle, so he guessed one ingredient had to be mint. He didn't know what else it was made from His wife had become increasingly bored with life, reading all kinds of nonsense in books and magazines. God knows what she had put in it! McFall screwed the dropper back into the bottle, sliding it into his pocket again. He slipped the rather pungent balaclava back over his face.

  A noise outside startled him. Ducking to the side wall, he peeked, gingerly, through the curtains of the bedroom. Down below, he saw a couple of men struggling with the door of the car he had parked by the house. The one the girl had clung onto, earlier in the day, with groceries in its boot. One of the men held a small handgun and was aiming it, nervously, at a pack of dead that were moving, slowly, towards them from further down the street. McFall moved to change his view, still taking care to duck behind the curtains. From the other end of the street, he could see the couple of meandering dead he'd spotted earlier. They were wandering back towards the commotion, as if worried they might miss out on something really wonderful. It looked like the two men were hemmed in.

  McFall watched as the two men continued to force the door of the car, eventually giving up. As the dead drew closer, both men jumped onto the car's roof. The man with the gun fired at some of them. His aim was poor, however, several shots flying wide of the incoming targets. Then he struck lucky, McFall noticing how one shot connected with the chest of a dead woman. She hit the ground almost immediately. To the surprise of both men, as well as McFall, though, she wasted little time before climbing back onto her feet.

  Before long, the dead had surrounded the car and were grasping at the legs of the two men. They kicked and lunged out in panic. The one with the gun fired a couple more random shots, to little effect. Those who were shot looked stunned for a while, before moving back in for the kill.

  One of the men was compromised, falling flat on the car roof as the dead managed to grasp hold of his leg. As McFall watched on, the poor bastard was dragged into the pack and onto the road. All the surrounding dead immediately closed in on him, hungrily, leaving the other man firing his gun and screaming the name of his friend - both in vain. Finally, as a last ditch attempt, he jumped off the roof of the car, grabbing his friend's arms and trying to rescue him from the closing quarters, but they grabbed him too, dragging both men to the ground and surrounding them like a pack of hyenas around prey.

  But there was something new happening, here. Something McFall hadn't noticed before. Something that almost made him gag with disgust, despite the minty fresh feel of balaclava on his face. Sure, he'd known the dead to be aggressive. He'd even known them to tear at people with their hardened, rigor mortis fingers, or snap at them, like wild dogs, like feral beasts using every part of themselves to fell their prey.

  But this was new. This was terrifying.

  "Jesus " McFall whispered to himself, unable to take his eyes from the gruesome scene. "They're fucking eating them "

  Chapter Five

  Karen sat the pot of tea down on the coaster beside the milk and sugar. She set one empty cup where Pat was sitting, also laid out on a coaster, then another for herself. She then poured Pat a cup of tea. Only then did she sit down beside him at the table.

  "It's the head," Pat said, staring into space. "You have to shoot them in the head."

  "Uh-huh." She said, smiling. "Would you like a biscuit?" He looked up, as if to peruse the biscuits. Karen immediately jumped up, scrambling to throw some onto a plate for him to inspect. "Chocolate or Jammie Dodgers?" she said, setting the plate on yet another coaster at the table.

  "Any plain digestives?" he asked, frowning at the choice on the table, "I'm watching my cholesterol, you see."

  "No, but I could-"

  "I wonder why it didn't fall when I hit its heart," he said, forgetting all about the biscuits. "I mean pretty much everything dies when you take out the heart what's driving the thing if it isn't the heart?"

  "Well, I -"

  "And another thing; have you noticed that they don't breathe?"

  "Well, maybe -"

  "Sure they spit and choke and cough blood up, and stuff, but they don't seem to breathe. Maybe all the other stuff is just habit. Which is understandable, of course," he continued, "What with them being dead and all "

  Karen didn't respond, instead standing up from the table and reaching for the tissue in her pocket with shaking hands. She brought it to her face, choking back some tears.

  Pat looked up at her, pulling his chair back when he noticed she was crying.

  "Hey, I'm sorry. I -" he cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. Pat wasn't the kind of man who felt comfortable around tears or emotion, in general.

  "It's okay, she said," Karen dabbed the corners of her eyes before flashing a very false smile at Pat. "It's
just all this can be so -"

  "Yeah, I know," said Pat. He wandered over to the large window, looking out into the night. Karen had lit some candles around the flat. It was pretty much the only light to be seen for miles, save for the cloud-clothed moon. The lights had gone out in Belfast, thought Pat, and it unnerved him more tonight than any other night.

  He couldn't see any of them, now. If he were to listen really carefully, he might have heard the snorting and coughing of the ones trapped in the flats below. But they were relatively safe up here, and that kind of comforted him. Even if just a little.

  He turned to look at the dainty girl at the table, sipping her tea politely. This world wasn't for her. She wouldn't survive it, unless she changed, adapted. He knew he would need to teach her a few new tricks in order to keep her safe.

  Pat walked over to the small stash of weapons in the case he had recovered from earlier in the day. He retrieved a Heckler and Koch UPS handgun from the case, sizing it up.

  "Tomorrow I'm going to teach you how to shoot" he said, looking at Karen, brandishing the handgun, "With this."

  Pat rose early, waking pretty much as the sun poked its head through the cheap, thinly woven curtains of his bedroom. Of course, it wasn't his bedroom, per se. Truth be told, neither he nor Karen knew to whom their chosen flat had belonged prior to the flu. It was just empty and relatively safe. And that was enough to make it somewhere they could call home.

  He rubbed his deeply set, tired eyes, sighed and pulled his stiff body out of bed. The years hadn't been kind to his bones, and he was certainly feeling the effects of the previous day's journeying up and down the block's staircase.

  Pat opened the wardrobe, retrieving a dressing gown and towel. He moved out of his room, through to the bathroom, lifting a small bottle of still mineral water from the (ever-decreasing) stash in the hallway as he went. In the bathroom, he filled the small sink with the bottled water, then proceeded to wash his upper body as best he could. He emptied the sink before refilling it again, in order to brush his teeth. He opened the cabinet to retrieve some baby wipes, using them to clean his lower body. Finally, he took a piss, completing his morning hygiene routine for another day.

  Coming out of the bathroom, he met Karen in the hallway. Her athletic body was also wrapped in a dressing gown, revealing all of her shapely curves. Pat felt embarrassed, all of a sudden.

  "Morning " he mumbled, dipping his head as he passed her.

  "Morning," she replied, sprightly as usual, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

  "Please," he answered, looking back at her, briefly. He watched her disappear into the kitchen area. As he retreated back into his room, he heard the clinking of cups and cutlery as Karen got their tea and breakfast on the boil.

  From somewhere below, he heard the dead. They were also stirring, it seemed, although he doubted that they ever slept. Their low moans and constant, growling coughs harmonised with the whistling sound of Karen's boiling kettle from the kitchen.

  Pat opened the curtains of his bedroom, looking out. There were definitely a lot more of them today. They crowded the entire greenery and car park immediately surrounding the block of flats. Their number spread out, fairly densely, as far as he could see from the bedroom window. It was going to make it almost impossible to move about without considerable danger. And that was bad news for two reasons.

  First of all, there were provisions. What they had wouldn't last forever - and he wasn't just thinking about mineral water. Their tea-bags, biscuits, cereal and tinned goods were going to run out as well, and sooner rather than later. He reckoned they had about a week's worth left, but that was about the height of it.

  Then, he thought about their plans for the morning. He had told Karen only last night how he intended to show her how to use the gun, but it would be both foolish and reckless for them to even consider opening the door on the ground floor of the flat when there were so many of the dead around.

  He sat down on the bed, thinking things through the way men like him - pragmatic men - often did.

  "Breakfast's ready," he heard Karen call, from the kitchen.

  "Coming now," he replied, still going over everything in his head.

  Karen stood, awkwardly, holding the Heckler and Koch handgun as if it were a hot coal.

  They were in the 8th-floor corridor of the block of flats, just two flights down from their chosen home. At the far end from where they stood, a hastily sketched human- shaped target was taped to the wall. A few torches, taped to the walls of each of the corridors they ventured into, provided enough light.

  "Is this the way that you point it?" Karen asked Pat, a strained look breaking across her face. Her forehead wrinkled, and her lips pursed in a way that made her look even cuter and more innocent than Pat had ever seen her look before. Even with a 9mm in her hands.

  Pat gently corrected her pose, bringing one hand up to support the other as she aimed the gun towards the target.

  "It's whatever is most comfortable for you," he said.

  "Do I pull the trigger now?"

  "Gently squeeze the trigger," he said. "Don't pull it too quickly."

  Pat watched as she grimaced, closing both eyes before squeezing the trigger. Her hand shook, more with anticipation, as a round fired, noisily, from the gun. She immediately opened her eyes, staring at the target some metres away, excitedly.

  "Did I hit it?" she asked.

  Pat reached one hand across the barrel of her gun, lowering the weapon to point at the ground, snapping the lever onto 'safety' before he walked towards the target. He searched the white paper for any sign of a direct hit, finding a blackened chip out of the concrete wall above the target, instead.

  "You were a wee bit high," he called back to her, smiling encouragingly. "Not bad!" he added, and he was genuinely impressed. They hadn't been at it for long, but it seemed she had a steady enough aim. He would just have to teach her not to be so frightened of the gun, to relax with it, and then she would be-

  (a killer? Like you, Pat?)

  He put the dark thoughts to the back of his mind. They were bubbling up again. Threatening to take over, to overcome him. Recently, before everything had kicked off, he had gone to see his doctor, just to get some tablets to help him sleep. Of course, the doctor - some young upstart fresh out of Nursery School - had only agreed to give him the tablets if he saw some counsellor. Pat had agreed reluctantly, at first, but soon found his bi-weekly trips to the clinic to be something of a God-send. Pat wasn't stupid enough to talk directly about the things he had done, or the things which were done to him, referring more to 'things he had seen', but he had always considered himself good at reading other people, and he was pretty sure that the middle-aged Englishman with the white hair and horn-rimmed glasses knew exactly where he was coming from. It made a difference to be able to talk about these things, get them off his chest. To talk about death. To understand death and his part in it. To mourn the dead, both the dead he had known and loved, as well as those who had been known and loved by others, but not him But now now he was suddenly surrounded by death. He was knee-deep in it. He was even teaching this innocent, young girl how to deal it out, and it was starting to eat away at him.

  He looked at her as he walked back up the corridor. She was disappointed she hadn't hit the target. Her gun hand hung limply by her side as if ashamed of itself - ashamed for not being able to meet the target, of not being able to make a kill. Pat wondered if he was doing the right thing in changing her into something she would never have been, otherwise. A dark part of him even considered whether death, itself - her death - would be better than her dealing with death. Or dealing out death. But he knew, deep down, that he had to give her at least a chance to protect herself, a chance to prolong her life in a world where the dead were now the majority.

  But there was another reason, of course. A reason much more personal to him. Karen was a rarity in every sense of the word. She had become precious to Pat, like she was his own child, and he had to protect w
hat was precious to him.

  This was something he had learned the hard way.

  At precisely the same time, two days later, Pat and Karen were standing outside the door of one of the fifty- six apartments in the block. They had cleared the two floors above them, already, pillaging each of the empty flats to fill their wheeled suitcase several times over. Pat's back was broken, dragging the case downstairs, each time, to their flat on the 10th floor, but the prize was worth it. They had managed to restock their own cupboards with enough tinned goods and bottled drinks to keep them going for at least a month. They had avoided the quarantined flats, of course, the blood- clogged sniffles vivid enough to discourage them from compromising the welded sheets of metal across their doors, and they hadn't met any nasty surprises along the way.

  Yet.

  "Okay, this is the last one for today," Pat said. "My back's killing me."

  Karen stepped up to the doorway, her handgun at the ready.

  Pat sighed, reaching across the barrel to lower the safety lever.

  "Sorry," she whispered.

  "It's okay," he said, smiling weakly.

  Pat readied his own 9mm before bending forward, quietly, to open the front door to flat 52. It wasn't locked, and that worried Pat. They'd had to break open every other flat, save this one. It certainly wasn't a good sign to find a door unsecured.

  Pat reckoned that most of the block's tenants had shot through well before the worst had hit Belfast, leaving most of their belongings locked up tight in their flats. He had heard reports of rescue camps, during the height of the outbreak. Well after even the TV had stopped broadcasting anything besides the 'Emergency Broadcast Signal' that had become all too familiar. Of course, rumours were circulating that the 'rescue' camps were only slightly better than 'concentration' camps. He'd even met some survivors, along the way, who had broken free of the camps amidst reports of government- sponsored culling. That wouldn't surprise a man like Pat Flynn, when it came to the British government. In fact, it fitted in perfectly well with his political leanings, as well as his personal experience