Dead Meat | Day 6, page 5
part #6 of Dead Meat Series
And why had Silas wanted to teach him how to shoot in the first place? Because he wanted to use him as a bodyguard? Not likely. He did it, Dennis felt sure, just as much to help Dennis.
“Grow a pair and do it soon,” Silas had told him. “Just friendly advice.”
Dennis hardly ever got any advice from anybody, mostly just looks of disgust or mean comments which he had learned a long time ago to ignore. Dennis had no friends, and that was okay.
But for a moment yesterday, he had felt like Silas was his friend. No, more than that. He had felt like he was his big brother. Someone besides Mom who would look after him if it became necessary.
Maybe Dennis is reading too much into it, but that was how it felt. And as Dennis is standing there, feeling an ounce of unlikely gratitude towards the guy who held them hostage, the truck with Silas and Jonas in it suddenly turns sharply to the side, crashes into the ditch and goes flying into the air, completing three or four somersaults before finally coming to rest several yards from the road.
Dennis gasps.
He stares at the car, which has landed upside-down. It’s too far away for him to see any details, but it doesn’t look good.
The other car, the one with Sussi and the father, stops, backs up and stops again. A person—must be Sussi—comes out and runs to the crashed car.
Dennis turns away from the window and runs downstairs.
“Mom! Mom!” he shouts, running to the kitchen, but Mom isn’t there.
“What is it?” Her voice comes from the living room.
Dennis runs back in there and sees her sitting on the couch, her hands resting on her knees, almost like she’s about to begin one of her prayers.
“The car!” he croaks. “Silas and Jonas … they … they crashed, Mom!”
Mom just looks at him, no discernable surprise on her face. “Oh.”
“Just up the road,” Dennis goes on, pointing. “Not even, like, two miles from here.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Mom says, her voice cool as ever. “They should be more careful.”
“But … shouldn’t we … help them? Maybe they’re hurt!”
Mom’s eyes grow narrow. “Why on earth would you help them?”
“Well, because … I don’t know … maybe they’re hurt!” he repeats, as he can’t find any other good reason.
“They were bad people, Dennis,” she tells him, shaking her head. “Whatever happens to them, they deserve it.”
“But, Mom—”
“And even if we wanted to help them, we couldn’t leave this house; it’s too dangerous.”
“But—”
“No more ‘buts,’ Dennis.” Her tone is final, her eyes digging into his. “They’re gone now. It’s over.”
Dennis can only blink for several seconds. His heart is pounding away. He senses something Mom isn’t telling him, something he should be able to figure out.
But failing to do so, he just keeps standing there, blinking.
“Go and get some rest, Dennis,” Mom tells him, her voice very soft now. “We both need it.”
Dennis hesitates for a moment. He wants to ask something, but is unsure what. So, finally, he turns and walks back over to the stairs. Just before he goes upstairs, though, he glances back at Mom. She’s sitting in the exact same way, her eyes closed now, her lips moving soundlessly.
And then he sees it.
The doll.
It’s lying on the couch next to Mom.
Its head is turned all the way around.
ELEVEN
Dan is resting his head against his father, feeling the warmth coming off his body.
He knows it’s the fever.
It’s all still unreal.
He gets it—intellectually at least.
His father is infected.
His father will be gone in a few minutes.
Gone forever.
Dead.
Irrevocably.
It’s fairly simple, really. As simple as anything. You’re either there or you’re not. It shouldn’t be hard to understand.
And yet it hasn’t dawned on Dan. He hasn’t understood any of it.
A part of him still hasn’t caught up with the fact that Mom is gone. Or Jennie, even though he watched her die.
Emotionally, they still feel alive to him. They’re still very much present in his memory. He can see their faces clearly, hear their voices. How can they no longer be in the world when they’re so vividly there right inside his mind?
Apparently, that part of him is a very slow learner. It’ll likely take years before it really catches on. Maybe it never will. Maybe that part of him will keep thinking that Mom and Jennie are alive somewhere.
And now, to make everything all the more unreal, his father will be going away too. In a short time, he’ll only exist within Dan’s memories too.
What kind of world does this to anybody? What kind of awful crimes has Dan committed against anybody to make fate feel like he deserves this?
And what about Mom and Jennie? What did they do to deserve to die? What could possibly be the reason for the world to decide they no longer belonged here? How could it discard them so easily?
None of it is real.
None of it makes sense.
None of it is fair.
He feels his father move slightly.
“Dan? You awake?”
No, Dan thinks.
“Yes,” Dan says.
“It’s time. I can feel it.”
No, Dan thinks.
“All right,” Dan says.
“You ready to say goodbye?”
Never, Dan thinks.
“I guess so,” Dan says.
Dad pulls him in tighter, placing both arms around him, hugging him like he hasn’t done since Dan was very little.
And Dan takes it in like a little kid who has had a fall and needs to be comforted. He squeezes Dad, breathes in the smell of him, feels the realness of him.
“I love you, Dan.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
The hug seems to go on forever, and in a way it does. In a way, time doesn’t exist in that hug.
And yet it ends.
After a long, long time, Dad slips out of Dan’s arms, leaving them to slump down into Dan’s own lap, and Dan doesn’t move them, can’t move them. He can’t open his eyes either. He hears William’s voice, and Josefine’s, both speaking softly to Dad.
“Come on, now.”
“Here, take my hand.”
Then there’s only the sound of the helicopter, and Dan lets that sound fill up everything, floats away into it, and somewhere nearby and very, very far away, a door opens and then closes again a moment later, and then there’s nothing.
Nothing at all.
TWELVE
Iver must have been sleeping, because he’s suddenly jerked awake as the lifeboat comes to a sudden halt. The soothing sound of the waves caressing the outside of the hull is for a moment drowned out by a harsh scraping of sand.
“Damnit,” Chris growls from the front end of the boat, where he’s operating the controls. “I told you to give me a heads-up before we got too close to the shore!”
Charlotte is standing at the other end of the boat atop the three-step ladder which allows her to look out the rear window. “It’s not exactly easy to see how deep the water is,” she bites back at him. “Besides, nothing happened.”
Iver feels his buttocks ache from sleeping sitting upright. The toddler is resting on his lap, wrapped in a blanket, his thumb securely lodged between his lips.
“We could have easily capsized,” Chris grumbles and gets up.
“But we didn’t, did we? Let’s get out of here.” She looks to Iver. “Good, you’re up. Bring the kid.”
“Where … where are we?” Iver says, straightening his back. “Frederikshavn?”
“Frederikshavn?” Charlotte shows her teeth in a sneer. “Are you crazy? Why would we go back there? That place is overrun by now.”
“Okay, well, where are we then?” It’s not until now that Iver notices the sunlight streaming in from the window above. “Wait, is it morning?”
“That’s what you call it when the sun rises, yeah,” Chris says and opens the door, letting in more of the light.
“How long did we sail for?” Iver asks, getting to his feet, careful to place the toddler against his chest.
“Almost seven hours,” Charlotte tells him with a grin. “Welcome to Anholt.”
“Anholt?” Iver has heard the name before—it’s a small Danish island—but he couldn’t place it on a map. “Where’s that?”
“Well, where are islands normally located?” Chris asks, right before he jumps out of the boat, audibly landing in water.
Charlotte flashes her phone in front of his face for a second. On the screen is a map of the Kattegat, the sea between Denmark and Sweden. Right in the middle is a red arrow pointing to a tiny dot.
“We couldn’t go to Denmark, and we couldn’t go to Sweden, either,” she says, putting her phone away with a shrug. “We were headed for Sweden at first, actually, but then we heard over the radio that the infection had reach them, too, so we changed course.”
“Okay, but … why Anholt?”
She shrugs again. “Seemed like the obvious choice, really. Little over a hundred residents. Twenty-five miles of water all around. We can ride out the shitstorm here.”
“But … but what about … I mean, our families? My mom is in Oslo, I can’t just stay out here until—”
“Look, you’re welcome to take the boat and go wherever you please!” Charlotte says, throwing out her arms. “Just expect to meet dead people trying to eat you, because they’re all over the place! Denmark, Sweden, Germany … they’ll be in Norway by this afternoon, I promise you that. If you want to survive, I strongly recommend you come with us.”
She leaves the boat before Iver has time to reply. The toddler moves in his arms, and Iver looks down to see him yawning.
“You waking up?”
The boy looks up at him, blinking sleepily. To Iver’s surprise, he doesn’t start crying right away. Instead, he smiles tentatively at him.
Before they went to sleep, Iver and the boy shared a pack of crackers and a bottle of water. There are still crumbs at the side of the boy’s mouth, and Iver brushes them away before he steps out of the boat.
The sunlight is blinding, shining down from the vast blue sky overhead. It’s probably only nine o’clock, yet the air is already warm.
Iver squints and looks around. The boat has landed on a beach very close to the sand. A few miles down the coastline, he can make out a lighthouse, and in the other direction there seems to be a harbor in the distance.
Chris has already made his way onto the beach, carrying a big bag over his shoulder. He’s holding a lit cigarette between his lips.
Charlotte is standing in the water, bending over to wash her face.
Iver steps down the ladder and into the water, immediately soaking through his shoes and socks. It’s lukewarm, so he doesn’t mind. He carries the boy to land. As they pass by Charlotte, she remarks: “We decided not to land at the harbor.”
“Why not?”
“We didn’t want to risk the people living here deciding they didn’t want any newcomers.”
“Why wouldn’t they want that?”
Chris takes a deep drag, then answers: “They might have already taken precautions to defend the island. That’s what I’d be doing if I lived out here and the world was turning to shit all around me.”
To Iver, that sounds like something soldiers in an American movie would do, not regular old Danish people living on a peaceful island. But he doesn’t say anything.
The toddler begins whimpering.
“What’s up with him?” Charlotte asks.
“I think he might be hungry,” Iver says.
“Here, I brought some food,” she says, reaching into her bag and pulling out a packet of beef jerky.
Iver looks at it. “Uhm, thanks, but … I’m not sure he can eat that.”
“Why not?”
“He hasn’t got too many teeth.”
“Oh. How about a banana, then?”
“I’ll give it a try. Thanks, Charlotte.”
Iver takes the banana and begins peeling it. As soon as the toddler sees it, he reaches for it and takes a big bite.
“Huh,” Iver says and can’t help but smile as the toddler wolfs down another bite, hardly wasting any time chewing. “Guess bananas are a hit with toddlers.”
THIRTEEN
They’ve only walked inland for twenty minutes when Iver sees the blue coastline in the horizon, past the green meadow.
“Wait, is that …?” He stops and looks back towards the beach. Between the dunes he can also see water. “Is that the other side of the island?”
“It is,” Charlotte nods, passing him.
“But you can literally see from coast to coast,” Iver says, pointing.
“Of course you can,” Chris says, glancing back. “I told you, it’s a very small island. Only a couple of miles wide.”
“Huh,” Iver says, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The day is already getting hotter. The toddler is resting against his chest, wrapped in Iver’s shirt, which he has turned into a makeshift carrier. The little guy has been quiet until now, looking out over the landscape.
Iver’s back is beginning to ache, and he hopes they won’t have to walk much longer. Neither Charlotte nor Chris have said anything about where they’re going, and Iver is weary of asking, as everything he says is met with a snarky remark.
So, he just keeps on walking.
As they pass the next one of the small hills covering the open fields, a gravel road appears in front of them. A few hundred yards up road is a house. A small car is parked in front of it.
“Looks like they’re home,” Charlotte says, taking a swig out of her water bottle. “Do we go talk to them?”
“We have no choice,” Chris says, patting his backpack. “We need to make friends with the locals, or we’ll run out of food by tomorrow.”
Plus, we have a baby to look after, and we can’t do that on our own, Iver thinks to himself. Both Charlotte and Chris have obviously written the toddler off as Iver’s responsibility. Which is fine with him—he wouldn’t trust the little guy to either of them anyway.
They walk onto the road and begin heading for the house. Farther down the road Iver can see more houses, and it looks like they turn into a village.
A rumble of an engine comes from behind, and Iver turns to see a few cars coming. “Look out,” he tells Chris and Charlotte—unnecessarily so, as they have also heard the cars. They step to the side of the road.
The cars pass them by, slowing down only enough for the people inside to glare at them with no attempt of hiding their interest. Iver sees an old guy, two old women, a younger man with a beard, two little boys and a teenage girl. It looks almost like a big family road trip.
“Well, now the locals know we’re here,” Chris says as the dust settles and they walk on. “I bet you they could tell right away we were outsiders.”
“They didn’t look very welcoming,” Charlotte remarks. “And they didn’t stop and ask if they could help us, either. You think they already know about what’s going on?”
“About the ferry?” Chris shrugs. “Maybe. But they definitely know what’s going on in mainland Denmark. And they probably figured out it’s only a matter of time before outsiders will try to come here for refuge.”
The toddler starts moving against Iver’s chest, whimpering.
“You thirsty?” he asks, offering him a sip of his bottle. But the toddler turns his head away. “No, you’re probably hungry. Sorry, but I’ve got no more bananas.”
He walks on as the toddler keeps whimpering, catching up with Charlotte and Chris as they reach the house.
Just as they step into the driveway, the front door opens, and an old guy—around Iver’s grandpa’s age—comes out. He’s holding a shotgun.
“Whaddya want?” he asks, not raising the weapon, but squinting at them suspiciously. “Why are you here?”
“We’re survivors of a shipwreck,” Chris says, holding up his arms. “We only want help and—”
“What shipwreck?” the guy says, his eyes growing even smaller. “We didn’t hear of any shipwreck. You were on the ferry, weren’t you? And I bet you’re all infected too!”
“No,” Charlotte says, stepping forward. “Please, sir, we’re not infected. We have a baby with us, and he really needs—”
“I don’t care about your baby!” the guy snarls, raising the shotgun, causing Charlotte to stop dead in her tracks. “Get the hell away from my house! And get off my island!”
A car comes rolling up and stops right beside them. The window rolls down and an old lady pops her head out. “What in God’s name is going on here?”
For a moment, Iver is sure the woman is about to yell at them too. But she looks at the old guy scornfully.
“Why are you pointing that thing at these kids, Fred?”
“They’re carrying that nasty disease!” the old guy cries out. “They’ve come here to take over my house! It’s just like they said at the meeting they would!”
“That’s not what they said at all! Were you even listening?”
The old guy bares his teeth—or what’s left of them—in an angry snarl. “Don’t you get smart with me, Agnete! I know what these punks are after! They’re nothing but trouble, and they’re not welcome on my island!”
“It’s not your island, Fred,” the woman says, and then she looks at Iver. “Oh, goodness! You have a baby.”
Iver nods. “I think he’s hungry. I tried giving him something to eat, but—”
“You get the hell off my property!” the old guy bellows, stabbing at them with the shotgun like a prodding rod used on cattle. “I’m not telling you one more time!”
They move out of the driveway and closer to the woman’s car. She uses her hand to shield her eyes as she looks at them one at a time. “Where are you from? The ferry?”
“No, we—” Chris begins.
