Among the Living, page 22
“We’re here to—” Dean said, voice raised against the RIB’s outboard and the roar of the ocean, but he did not finish his sentence.
The woman’s left eye burst with an audible pop!, fat whiteheads rose across her left cheek and the side of her neck, and she opened her mouth and vomited a stew of blood and something chunky and slick, a thick mess that did not belong inside any body. Her head jerked up and down three times, left side slamming against the RIB’s deck, and then Dean heard more crunching bones even above the motor.
“Dean, don’t let her—”
Dean held the shotgun in both hands and fired at the woman’s torso. She slammed back across the deck, squealing through the blood still pouring from her mouth and nose, and her head cracked open above her right ear and across to her eye socket. Brains, clear fluid and blood flowed out, and Dean shot her again, this time in the face.
Her head came apart.
Dean held his breath.
A sickly mess spread across the bottom of the boat.
The RIB slewed as the starboard cell started to fold and deflate where the shotgun had blasted through the woman and into the canvas.
Bethan grasped his arm and shoved him at the ladder. Dean grabbed on with his spare hand and climbed, reached up quickly and climbed some more, and when he looked back down, he saw Bethan holding on with both hands, her feet trailing in the sea and dragging her at an angle along the ship’s side. If he reached for her, he’d fall, so he climbed again and gave her room to haul herself up, hand over hand, rung by rung.
As he made the gap in the railing he glanced along the deck in both directions, saw no one, and swung himself up. Reaching down with one hand, he grasped Bethan beneath the arm and helped her up onto deck. Panting, she shook him off and pulled the small pistol from her pocket.
The RIB had fallen behind, drifting in a wide curve away from the Kelland and slowing, falling to the mercy of the sea. The woman’s body slid back and forth across the wet deck, now awash with the bloody mess of her insides. The starboard side of the boat was shrivelled, and soon a wave washed over and swamped the vessel. A few minutes, maybe less, and it would sink.
“You okay?” Bethan asked.
“No. I just shot someone.”
“She was dead anyway. Which way?”
“Which way to where?”
“The hold.” Bethan was calm, wide-eyed, alert, and Dean only wanted to sit against the bulkhead and think on what he had done.
The gun jumping in my hand, the thud against my hip, the hole in her jacket, the red, the red.
“Did you feel like this?” he asked.
“Really? Come on, Dean. We’ve got to move and make it worthwhile.”
“What if some of that stuff from her—?”
“We won’t know until we do! And right now I still want to stop them. You?”
“Yeah, stop them.”
“Then we’re good. For now. The hold. Come on.”
Dean took the lead and started along the deck, crouched low, trying to recall the best way through the ship to the hold. Each time he blinked he saw that woman, already sporing and dying, blasted by the shotgun he still held in his hands.
“Dean, we have to assume they’re all infected,” Bethan whispered as she followed behind.
“We can’t just think that!”
“You saw her. We must.”
“I’m not going to blast anyone I see just in case!”
She grabbed his shoulder, hard, and leaned in close. “You know what’s at stake here, Dean. You know what happens if we fuck up. Imagine these people landing on the mainland. Baffin Island first, then Canada. Each one infects twenty, or a hundred, and then five thousand, and then—”
“Okay!” He nodded. Yeah, he knew. “Okay.” The responsibility bore him down. Its weight landed in the gun in his hands.
* * *
Wren sat in the Kelland’s well-appointed lounge enjoying a decent bottle of red, thinking of what had been and what was yet to come, and he raised a silent toast to a job well done. The others were gone, and he guessed that deep down a part of him was pretty sad about that. But he was a changed man now, and old associations no longer meant so much. They were in the past.
It was new connections that mattered.
The dozen townsfolk from Joyce Sound sat around him. He’d known none of them less than a day before, but now that they had met their risen ancestors, he was closer to every one of them than he’d ever been with anyone in his life. He might not know all their names, but they were brothers and sisters. No, closer than siblings. They were like other parts of him. Their joint futures were assured, and so tied into each other that they might as well be one single organism. Like a network of fungi spread beneath a vast forest, their lives touched and interconnected and would never be prised apart, no matter the distance between them.
Him over there, his left leg hurts where he pulled it climbing onto the Kelland. He doesn’t like the taste of fish, and his friends take the piss out of him about that, because he lives on an island in a community that fish for a living. He plays guitar but his wife doesn’t like the sound, so she bought him expensive headphones so he can practise. She’d dead now. She’s one of those we left behind on the shore. But her memory is part of us all.
Wren sipped his wine. The man rubbed his left leg.
And there, that woman sitting close to me, her hobby is wood carving, and she’s made furniture for many friends in Joyce Sound. She lost her thumb and the tops of three fingers in a lathe, and she’s known as Stumpy. She doesn’t mind that. She drinks Japanese single malt and her favourite writer is Stephen King.
He knew what they were thinking, and they all knew his thoughts.
And it’s all for the very best, he mused. That was the Wren part of him, still carrying all his memories and character quirks, yet with whole new vistas opened up to view. Coming to Hawkshead Island had been an exercise in profiteering. Leaving this place, he was going to change the world. Spread the love. Open some eyes.
He could not think of a better return for his investment of time, effort, and life.
Wren, the old Wren, knew very well what had happened. His mind remained, but expanded. There was no trace of doubt and no regret, and he only wished the others remained to share this very particular joy with him, especially Emma. They’d experienced some interesting times together, but nothing like this. He felt sad that she hadn’t survived to live these great moments with him.
He also mourned those others who had not made it as far as the Kelland. The tall ones, the forefathers. A shimmy of fear went through him when he thought of them, because they were like nothing he’d ever known before, and what he knew of them now…
That hardly sat well, even in his altered mind.
They should not be, he thought, and that idea butted against everything else that he now was. It was uncomfortable, and he tried to shut it out, but it remained deeper down, hovering close to where other parts of him—the Wren from before; old thoughts, discarded values—lay mostly dead and buried. Mostly.
At least they remained back on the island, probably dead by now. One had been killed by the old man who’d come with Dean’s friend. The others had probably fallen and faded as well. They’d been old and feeble, animated by their purpose yet unable to defy the influences that time had wrought over their strange bodies.
Sometimes, when he blinked, Wren caught a glimpse of their deep and dark history, and then his mind would fold and close him out, because it was unknowable to the likes of him. All he knew was they had remained dormant for so long, waiting for their purpose to be fulfilled. And now it was.
Fulfilled in me, Wren thought. In all of us. He looked around the lounge, and when he caught someone else’s eye—rarely, because the others were deep in their own thoughts, looking at their feet or the carpet but seeing something far more distant in their futures—they swapped a brief acknowledgement of shared wisdom and mutual destiny.
“Fulfilled in me,” he muttered, and his words drew no attention. If any of the other silent passengers heard, they’d know what he meant, because he was thinking and speaking for them all.
Wren stood and stretched, finished the wine. He went to the counter and made a mug of coffee, and as he was looking for cream—weird, he’d always taken it black before—he felt a shudder of pain, a warm discomfort in his stomach, and he tasted salt water.
Or blood.
He held the cup halfway to his lips.
Everyone else in the lounge gasped or stood up and grew more alert.
“One of us spored, then died,” he said. “Something’s wrong on the ship.”
“But what?” the wood-carving woman said. “No one else is on board.”
“No one that we know about,” Wren said. “Spread out, check the ship. I think I know who it might be.”
EIGHTEEN
Bethan followed Dean along the deck and through a doorway, pistol held down by her side. She rested a hand on his shoulder so that he knew she was following, gaining comfort from the touch. They were taking things moment by moment, edging towards an ending she really didn’t want to consider.
They headed along a short gangway with three closed doors on either side, then through a wider vestibule. Dean paused there, glancing both ways along a hallway running perpendicular to the one they’d come along, then crossed and ducked down a spiral staircase.
At the bottom he paused again, and Bethan raised an eyebrow. He nodded at an open doorway leading into another gangway, and they started for it.
A shadow shimmered on the wall and a man’s shape filled the doorway.
Bethan stepped to Dean’s right and brought up her gun.
“Oh thank God!” the man said, raising his hands. “Wait, wait, oh thank God, you’re here to stop them? You’ve going to stop the ship?”
“Who are you?” Dean asked.
“My name’s Pilip. We have to be quiet! Some of them are… different. Where’s Frank? Are you the ones he went to find? What happened to him, we have to be quiet and hide, I know where we can—”
“Shut up!” Bethan said. She took a step closer, gun aimed at Pilip’s face. She watched for any change, any twitch. He was talking too fast, throwing too much information their way, not giving her enough time to think.
I should just shoot him and be safe, she thought.
“Where are the others?” Dean asked. “The townsfolk, and Wren, the big guy I came in with?”
“I haven’t seen them,” Pilip said, “come on, this way, there’s a spiral staircase that leads down to—”
“How do you know?” Bethan said. “Haven’t you been hiding?”
“Well yes, down the staircase. There’s a room down there.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Behind you!” Pilip said, and even as she turned around Bethan cursed herself, her reaction, her naïveté. She went down to her knees and twisted back towards Pilip, hearing the first creaking of strained bone as she did so.
Still standing, Dean kicked out and sent Pilip staggering back, tripping over a door sill and onto his back. His head struck the deck, raised, then struck down again, hard enough to crack bone.
Bethan grabbed Dean and pulled him after her.
Dean resisted, aiming the shotgun down at the contorting man.
“No,” she said into his ear. “A gunshot will bring them all and—”
From the distance they heard doors slamming open.
“Hold,” she said. “Now. Once inside we have to hold them off.”
“This way.” Dean dashed along the gangway and took a left, and she followed him down a twisting staircase into the bowels of the ship.
There were sounds all around now—hurried footsteps, doors closing or banging open—and she feared they’d be bottled in, trapped, and then a couple of people would spore and that would be it.
She would keep two bullets back for them both.
If she only had one left, it would be for Dean.
A man appeared along the gangway, bumping into the wall and pausing when he saw them.
“Hey!” he said, “thank God you’re here, we’ve got to—”
Dean’s blast took him in the throat, knocking him back against the door jamb, blood spattering around him. He slid down, eyes rolling in his head. Then he started to bleed out through the ears.
“Come on!” Dean shouted, voice deep and wretched. He grabbed her arm and they went through another door, which he closed and locked behind them. “The hold’s through there.” He pointed through a narrow doorway. “Down the stairs, double doors. I think you can lock them from the inside.”
“But you’re coming with me?”
“I’m going for the radio. I have to warn someone about all of this, anyone. We can’t put all our eggs in one basket, Bethan.”
“We have to stay together!”
“And… and… die together?” He was shaking, sweating, and his eyes quivered. He turned this way and that as if to find something to focus on. Wiped his hand across his brow. Frowning.
Bethan took a step back from Dean and aimed her gun at his face.
“Hey, I’m me… I’m…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just…” He took in a deep breath. No twitching head, no eyes flushing with blood. But still, she kept her gun on him.
“Dean!”
“I just shot two people, Bethan,” he said, and she knew his voice, heard the inherent decency there that he’d always carried.
“You saved them. And us.”
“Yeah, but I’m not like you, I’m not…”
“A killer?”
Dean sighed. “I’m me.”
“How can I be sure of that?”
“Because I know for sure you’d shoot me if you thought I was one of them, and I’m still not sporing.”
Bethan tensed forward, pursing her lips, looking for any change, any twitch, a darkening of his eyes. Yes, I would, she thought, but it would be to save you as well as me.
“Go,” he said, and instead of flinching back he came closer, drew her in with his free hand and hugged her tight.
Bethan let him, and it felt good, better than good. It felt right.
“What’s the explosives chest like?”
“Yellow, plastic. Might be locked.”
Bethan pulled back and held up her pistol.
“I’ll be back,” Dean said. He turned, dashed to a narrow doorway, and disappeared through it.
Bethan waited for a second, listening to Dean’s footsteps as he hurried up a staircase, then she turned and headed where he’d said. Narrow doorway, two flights of stairs down, then through double doors into the hold. It was smaller than she’d imagined, with a set of closed folding hatches forming the ceiling and large doors at the bow end through which the Stallion must have passed. There were a few pieces of random equipment scattered about, and some storage chests around the edges.
She closed the door first, throwing a thin bolt that would not keep out anyone for long. There was no saying how many other infected townsfolk were on the ship, but she had to assume that she and Dean were running out of time. Their clock had been ticking from the moment she and her friends had arrived at that cave mouth to see Dean, Emma and Wren wasting time as they debated what to do about Lanna.
She found a yellow plastic chest in one corner. The lid was locked, but the padlock was small, and she used the pistol to prise it off with a brief, loud snapping of plastic. She flipped the lid open against the bulkhead. Inside were several sealed packs. She ripped them open. She’d seen Goyo prepping explosives before, but never on this scale, and some of the equipment was unfamiliar. But she recognised explosives, a box of blasting caps, and a control unit, and she’d figure it out.
Bethan went to work. She had no real idea how much would be necessary to achieve what she wanted, so she included it all. Packed in three places against the port bulkhead of the hold, along the line where the floor joined the curve of the hull, she hoped a blast here would open the walls and the hull, taking down the ship. She hoped, but didn’t know. She was feeling her way through this moment by moment.
As she attached blasting caps and wound blocks of explosives together with a roll of black sticking tape she’d found in the chest, she thought about Dean, and how he’d said he wasn’t like her. That hurt, because the Bethan he still saw when he looked at her was not the real Bethan anymore.
Am I really still a killer?
Doing what she was doing right then suggested that, yes, she was still ready to kill for a cause. While Dean sought out the radio to attempt a more peaceful resolution, she was preparing to blow them all sky-high.
“Fuck it.” She shook her head and carried on with her work. The ship rocked gently, buffers softening much of the movement from the violent Arctic Ocean, and cracks and rattles resounded around the hull. She thought of Alile and Goyo, dead back on that island. Her friends for so long, their loss still felt surreal and dreamlike, the impact yet to land. And poor Frank, brave even at the end in the face of people he knew and loved turning on him.
He’d known the dangers they lived with. The Long-Gone and their terrifying history might have been campfire tales in his mind, but deeper down she thought he’d really believed them. He’d certainly faced up to current events without too much doubt. It was almost as if he’d always been waiting for this to happen, and in that way he reminded her of Goyo.
She didn’t hear the door open. Didn’t sense the man entering the room. The first she knew of his presence was when she heard a deep sigh, then a loud violent retching, and the splattering of bloody vomit striking the deck.
Bethan span around and raised her gun, dropping a blasting cap and stepping away from the pack of explosives she’d been working on.
“Stay still!” she shouted, but she could already see that the man had no intention of doing what she said. She doubted he could even hear her. He was short and thin, skin leathered by a lifetime on the harsh landscape of Hawkshead Island, and his eyes were rolled back in his head, blood leaking from their corners and flowing from his left ear. He let out a curious sound from his throat—ack, ack, ack—and she wondered if he was fighting it, and what he was trying to say.
