The Risen Page 12

  “Do you know Worcester?” asked Ruby.

  “Well enough.”

  “Will we cross the bridge today?”

  “We should do. We should be able to cross and begin to make our way out the other side. Probably end the night on the outskirts. After that, I have no idea.”

  “Sounds good to me. I always wanted to go travelling; I just never thought it would be England.”

  “Or Wales, or Scotland,” added Nate.

  “Indeed.”

  “I guess you’re taking your gap year, Miss…?” he looked over at her and laughed.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t even know your last name. Shame on me.”

  “Ditto,” she joined in. “We’re such slags. It’s Reid by the way.”

  “Were your parents Marvel fans by any chance, Miss… Ruby Reid?”

  “No, not that I know, Nate?”

  “Westwood.”

  “Pfft.”

  “I could’ve told you anything. You’d never have known.”

  “True,” said Ruby. She hitched up her shoulder strap. “But let’s not do that. We can make shit up for other people, but let’s at least have one thing that means anything. Deal?”

  “Never in question,” said Nate, squeezing her to his waist.

  “Onwards,” she said.

  Strange, thought Nate, that he should find intimacy, here and now, despite the population cull. “When you find someone nice, treat her right,” his father had said. “There’s only so many gooduns,” he continued, giving his mother a squeeze.

  *****

  North of Worcester city centre, a wasteland of half-finished houses and piles of unused bricks dotted the brown, tilled earth. Nature had not yet reasserted itself where bulldozers had bullied and JCBs had excavated and loaded the earth; here and there vast puddles of mud hosted the remaining and wandering wildlife that sipped from their shores, or washed wings, beaks or snouts. The odd domestic cat or dog utilised the protection of standing walls and occasional ceilings to keep warm at night, or day, when it wasn’t out foraging. Nate and Ruby walked by a large billboard exclaiming ‘New Homes: For Rent or Sale’ adorned with the white-toothed smile of a man in a sharply pressed business suit. “Too little too late,” said Ruby. Nate knew she was making some kind of political allusion, but he left it alone – it wasn’t of interest any more, if it ever had been. Let the halls of Westminster decay and rot while Big Ben continued to chime every hour over the desolate ruined city, for all he cared. In fact, “Big Ben will still be going, right?” he asked.

  “Unless anything happened to it. I guess you can always know the time if you’re stuck in London,” said Ruby, adding, “Creepy, if you think about it.”

  Upon entering the town, the road was suddenly lined with semi-detached houses, and to go from fields to the suburbs, although it was natural enough and they had done it all their lives, such was the greenbelts so well defined in Britain, was an odd experience, as though suddenly oppressive, even though the houses were mostly only two storeys. A half-attempt at a road-block had been started, stretching from one neighbour’s wall to the opposite, but they didn’t meet in the middle. Perhaps it had been smashed through, though it would have needed a bus or a lorry to do so, and none were in sight. Shrubs and hedges were overgrowing in some front gardens, but only that – they hadn’t yet overgrown; their owners could come home from an extended holiday at any moment and do a quick fix, and voila! Sorted.

  This was worse than Stourport, thought Nate. It was more obvious that shit had gone wrong there. Here, besides the road-block attempt, it was just as though everyone was inside, their cars on their driveways. There was hardly even a boarded-up window. “It all looks too normal,” he commented.

  “I don’t like it,” added Ruby. “How far to the bridge?”

  “Could be an hour’s walk, maybe longer. Wanna rest?”

  “No, I just wanna get over it.”

  “That could take a while. Getting over... this.”

  “Don’t be a dumbass.”

  They followed the main road as it lead nearer to the centre, and the closer they got, they almost breathed sighs of relief as signs of destruction began to appear; the smashed shop-front windows of a Spar, blood-smears on surfaces protected from the rain – the pools on the ground long-since washed into the gutters; scavenged cars with doors hanging over, boots and spare tires exposed to the elements; and all around a growing fog, thick, of sweetly sour, bile-inducing scents that caused Ruby to pull her sleeve down and hold it over her nose. “Not a bad idea,” Nate remarked.

  They closed the gap between themselves, rubbing shoulders, while the The Smell encroached upon them. With each step they felt as though they were wading deeper and deeper into a thick mulch, though there was no actual change in the air; the day remained as blue and clear as ever, though cold. Lowering her hand, Ruby took a deep breath and said “It’s not so bad when you get used to it. I mean, it’s bad, but I can handle it.”

  “Either these houses are full of the dead, or we’re heading towards them.” Nate stared at the blank and broken windows; at the car dealership with a broken fence where car thieves had looted the keys to brand new Audis and wheeled away over the ramparts. A solitary crow sat on the bar of a streetlamp, watching and waiting. “I used to try to avoid this smell at all costs... or try to.”

  To their left, they passed an old theatre-cum-coffee shop, that even without the end-of-the-world had long been in need of a paint-job. Green moss and damp trailed down from leaking gutters. The sight of the theatre made Ruby think of Shakespeare, and then more; “We keep thinking of the things we’ve lost. But think of everything there has ever been; Chaucer, Plato, Socrates, Religions, the Greeks, Romans, Vikings, fuck – all that history – just to stop.”

  “Maybe this is how the dinosaurs went. Maybe we’ll be fossilised and excavated in a million years by an evolved dog.”

  At an intersection, dead traffic lights asserted the start of mayhem as the fog grew thicker; each could see the walls of poured concrete further down the road – the distance somehow shortened by focusing their eyes – though the details were sketchy. They passed through the traffic lights and Nate placed a hand on the hilt of a knife, causing Ruby to follow course. “I’m guessing it’s this way,” she said.

  “Yeah, we basically stay on this road. There’s probably side-roads but this is the most direct I think.” He looked right towards the entrance to Gheluvelt Park and saw the climbing frame and swings of a children’s park, and beyond, grassy fields that stretched to a tree-line with – and he counted – four ambling bodies. “You see those?”

  Ruby looked. “Yeah, but they aren’t attacking each other.”

  “Maybe they’re not hungry.”

  “Let’s not try them.”

  Nate armed himself with two knifes. “Let’s be ready, and let’s walk quickly.” They picked up their pace and headed for the tall concrete walls that marked the beginnings of the shopping centre of the town, where houses gave way to shop-fronts and multi-storey car parks.

  Armed now too, Ruby faced slightly left, while Nate faced slightly right. At the concrete walls, an iron railing fence separated two tall pillars – obviously a checkpoint and some kind of guard-tower (a tall wooden structure stood just the other side). If smells were sights, they would have been blinded by a shroud so thick they could taste it as they breathed.

  Leaning against the iron railing, its cold surface barely registering in the tight grip of their hands, they stared down the long, straight road. Four- and five-storey Georgian and Victorian buildings, mostly converted into shops selling antiques, pastries, bread and milk, alcohol – all the usual things the workers of a busy city centre would need – stood like the sides of a coffin or mausoleum, the lid open to the sky. The ground was a carpet of flesh and bones; thirty – or even twenty – feet away, it became almost impossible to distinguish body from body, body part from body part. Death’s great road roller had been this way
and slain everything in its path; yet there were shimmers of movement, hands that answered class-questions and arms that swam against a tide of innards as coils of intestines held them back. Faces without jaws; half-faces, eyeless faces, skinless faces; faces a mother would no longer be able to recognise, jagged or sharp were the protruding cheekbones and half-hanging bridges of noses. The mass was whole. It was squirming with life – the longer they looked, the sicker they felt. And yet it was impossible not to stare in awe; this beach of flesh that represented the humanity of now; nurses and doctors, labourers and homeless, the aged and the young; all just threads in this tapestry.

  A hand grabbed at Ruby’s ankle and caused her to yelp. She stood on it and they both took a step back from the rail as tired, slug-like arms bled through them, reaching for anything but clasping nothing – the hands contracted every now and then. In the mosaic of bodies nearest the railings there were examples of faces, melted as they looked, like acid rain had poured into them – fibrous tendons held some jaws together, and some eye sockets retained an eyeball, while elsewhere they hung or were otherwise lost in the jumble.

  Hopping over them like Death’s entourage, pecking and perhaps checking for life-signs, carrion crows and rooks and ravens –black-robed avian priests – filled their bellies with a mixture of human flesh, maggots and blue-bottle flies. Even in the freezing winter the beneficiaries of death thrived.

  Nate and Ruby swallowed and swallowed until their mouths were dry and sore; each gulp trying to discharge this acidic taste that invaded through their nostrils, and while they each had full control of their gag-reflex, it took every neuron of brain power to keep their stomachs at bay.

  It was Ruby who first turned away, grabbing Nate’s arm and pulling him back with her as she hurried back the way they had come. He let himself be dragged, his eyes open, staring at the mass of flesh as the bumps and fissures of the road passed beneath his feet.

  She led them both to a bridal shop on the corner of the intersection and around to an alley at the side, putting the barrier out of sight. There, they slumped in a heap against the wall of the shop and took long, deep breaths. Like smoke in a fire-filled room, the stench was thick up high, and somehow thinner down low. They each grabbed a bottle of water and sipped at it, testing its coolness within their throats, testing their incumbent stomachs.

  After a while, Nate registered the quiet tears that were running down Ruby’s cheeks and held her close.

  They sat and rested for another half-an-hour, until the sun was beginning its downward spiral, or the Earth was spinning Britain into another darkness, finishing their water in silence. Then Nate rose and said “Come on,” offering his hand to Ruby, who accepted. Together, they left the shelter of the alleyway and crossed the road towards the park, Nate leading the way.

  In the park, they went immediately to the verge of old oak and chestnut trees. The thick brown trunks were barren of growth, but it was the best they had on offer, and a backdrop of tall hedgerows helped disguise them. The grass was thinner here, and mud squelched around their boots as they continued forward, all eyes on the wandering bodies. It was inevitable that they would be spotted – the park was far too compact for any other outcome, and when indeed they were, the spotter screeched and charged at them. Distant ones turned their heads and screeched too, and before they knew it, there were six of the risen monstrosities bearing down on them.

  They dropped their bags and stood, each hand armed. The first of the things screamed coarsely from a thick, bulging neck; the closer it got, the more Nate and Ruby noticed its foreboding shoulders, packed with muscle as though a quarterback wearing shoulder pads. Its nose was flat or gone. It leapt forward onto all fours and then used its powerful front arms to launch itself at them – Nate the nearest target – and its force knocked him to the ground. It hissed like a savage dog in his face, despite the two knives in its chest. Blood foamed at its mouth. Keeping it at arms’ length, Nate roll-kicked it back over him, and it landed with a skid against the trunk of an oak. Ruby, poised, thrust a reverse-gripped knife into its brain until she felt the pointed end strike the tree. She pulled it out and turned as the second of them leaped at them, this time knocking her to the ground. It swung a long, thickly muscled arm at her, and long black claws ripped at her jumper but went no deeper. Back on his feet, Nate jumped onto its back and was immediately shrugged off as though he was no heavier than a fly pestering someone’s face. On the ground, he kicked out at its knee joint – from behind – and caused it to momentarily lose balance. While it was on one knee, Nate doubled up and gave it a pair of new ears and it fell immediately to the ground. And then he was face first in the mud with another one on top of him, its teeth chewing at his neck – Nate could smell rot on its breath, could feel a tongue lapping at his seeping blood – until it was a dead weight on him. Ruby kicked it off him and shouted “Get up!” just as three more came charging towards them, their fingers spread, claws slicing the air.

  “Get ready to duck if they jump!” shouted Nate, standing up and wiping mud from his eyes.

  The first did jump, and Ruby dropped to the ground so that it flew straight over her, landing in the mud and sliding out of control towards Nate. It was dispatched with comparative ease. Nate pulled the solid table leg from the back of his pack and waited by Ruby’s side for the next pair, who lunged simultaneously. The head of one exploded with the impact of the table leg, while Ruby countered the other until she could bring her knife round and plunge it into its eye.

  Breathless, they scanned the edges of the field for signs of further madness, but saw only a few birds returning to bare branches. Hot air billowed from their panting throats.

  “Fuuuuck you,” screamed Ruby, aiming her insult at the nearest of them, kicking it in the midriff.

  “What the hell?” asked Nate, hands on knees. “Talk about fucking mutants; hard to believe these were once human.”

  “Well they’re dead now, sure as shit! Can you believe that shit?”

  “We kicked the shit out of them,” laughed Nate, rising and slowing his panting. He barely even felt the open wound on his neck.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Yeah, guess we’ll need to get some more practice.”

  “I’m sure the chances will come,” said Ruby, grabbing a bottle. She tipped a little water onto Nate’s neck and dabbed it with the hem of her sleeve. “Don’t look too bad.”

  “You need a new jumper.”

  “Bastard thing nearly ripped me in half,” she sighed. “Seriously, what was that? Not them: us.”

  “I don’t know. Ever since...” he looked into her eyes. “What’s happening to us?”

  She wrapped her arms around him and said “I’m scared, Nate,” letting the tears come again, quiet and slow.

  “We just need to get somewhere safe, away from all this madness.” Grabbing her head and looking into her eyes, he kissed her. “Whatever it is, good or bad, we’re together.”

  She nodded, regaining her composure. “Okay, since you lead us down this path, I hope it was for a reason.”

  “It goes to the river’s edge; we just gotta follow it to the bridge.”

  “Okay then.” They picked up their bags and continued on. Nate looked back at the piled bodies, shaking his head. The blood on his hands – he rubbed them together – it wouldn’t come off.

  They joined up with a path that meandered down towards the river, crossing through once-manicured flower beds now wild. As the river came into view, a fallen motorcycle slept at the end of a sharply cutting skidmark, its rider’s bootprints leading towards them. It looked like John’s bike, to them, but it was difficult to be certain. Nate popped open the rear compartment and bottled beer rolled out. “Guess that solves that question,” he said. “You want?”

  “Nah,” replied Ruby.

  The path joined the riverside path and turned left, for now dead-straight and cutting through old chestnut trees that were twisted magnificently into a kaleidoscope of shapes;
they walked on a geometry of shadows that were dense, despite the lack of leaves. There were bodies here and there, face-up, face-down – either way anonymous – clothes and then flesh torn from them. It was easy to imagine that many may have rather jumped to the relative safety of the surging river, than endure the agony of being ripped limb from limb. Ruby looked at the deep brown currents of the river as it flowed south – the air here was ‘fresher’ she thought, cleaner – and imagined the river’s estuary gushing forth a torrent of dead bodies into the Celtic Sea.

  “The racecourse is coming up on the left,” said Nate. “This way’s a bit of a walk, but yeah, there’s no alternative unless we cross that… road-block.”

  “That’s fine.”

  With the river to their right and the racecourse – and then the riverside homes - on their left, they made their way towards the bridge. They never left the oppressive fog entirely; it hovered ominously every time they took a deep breath, and it was always on their left, thick and green in their mind. They could see the embankment and the road on the other side of the river – there were bodies for sure, but not in such numbers they sensed.

  They stepped over some of the dead and into a road that lead the rest of the way to the bridge. An American-style diner had burned down to their left – “It was shit, anyway,” said Nate – and further up that way, they could see what were perhaps the tasselled ends of the carpet of bodies, not to mention the large red-bricked façade of the Police Station, its smashed windows decorated with the thick, black eyelashes of a fire.

  Here, cars and vans were everywhere – it had been one of the busiest roads in the city in an already over-crowded city – and they made a maze of the road. Dodging between them, Nate and Ruby would stumble upon flailing and starving bodies which they sometimes kicked, sometimes stabbed in the head. The road moaned quietly, waves of groans ululating in ripples as they rounded car after car. It snaked downwards and beneath the railway bridge, and then ascended again as it raised up to cross the river.