Edge of Chaos Page 10

  Heather’s patience was a fraying thread, and she had to leave the trader’s house before it snapped. She reached the door and was about to turn the handle, when Wes’s chair scraped on the floor. He stood from behind the desk, showing once again his marathon-running businessman ensemble.

  The trader grinned like a hunter who had snared a rabbit. “You know,” he said, “The Bull was asking about a DC boy, and you showed up here today trying to bleed me for information on the Resistance.”

  Heather went to protest, but Wes held his hand in the air. “Oh, come off it, Heather. I knew what you were doing. Nobody wheedles anything out of me. You need the Resistance, and I have the contacts. But guess what? The information just became a lot more valuable.”

  “What do you want?”

  “If you want to get the boy to safety, I want all the food you’ve been growing. Every bit of it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Ed

  Being in the town hall meant you were either getting married or attending a town meeting. In his years on the island, Ed managed to avoid both. He had a girlfriend a while back, but she left Golgoth when her dad got a job on the mainland. Ed wrote to her once or twice, but her silence made him stop halfway through his third letter.

  Once, the building represented everything that terrified him in life. Housed within its stone walls were the things adults had to deal with; lifelong unions with another person and the emotional ties that went with it.

  It was a place you went when you grew up, and there was a time when Ed didn’t think that would have to happen to him. He was happy for Dad to cook his meals with the food James worked to buy. Neither of them questioned Ed or pushed him out, and he thought he could get through his entire life without taking care of himself. It made him sick to think how he used to be.

  The town hall didn’t represent terror today. It represented a light that could cut through the fog of the last twenty-four hours.

  “Let’s get some guns,” he said.

  “Hearing that,” said Gary.

  The four of them constantly scanned the area around them. Aside from isolated houses and crumbling walls, there were few places to hide in Golgoth. It meant they should be able to see any infected coming their way, but it also worried him. Where were they all? Had some of them not woken from their comas yet? Were they on the floors of their houses waiting to turn?

  Bethelyn set their pace from the front. She looked like she had purpose, but her expression was vacant, like the darkened windows of an abandoned house.

  Gary and Judith followed. Gary was older than Ed, and their social circles rarely collided. He remembered Gary calling on him one night after everyone on the island heard what happened to James’s ship.

  He turned up at the door with the faint smell of beer on his breath. He folded his arms, and he couldn’t look Ed in the eye. He had a shaved head and thin body, and he wore a belt with a metal buckle in the centre heavy enough to pull his trousers down. There was something fidgety about him, like a dozen itches formed on his skin at once and he wasn’t sure whether to scratch them or not.

  “Heard about James,” he said.

  Ed didn’t say anything. He’d heard the start of enough of these speeches to know his input wasn’t required. People needed to tell you how sorry they were because it was an energy building inside them, a breath they’d held too long, and they had to let it out so they could feel better about themselves.

  “Just wanted you to know there’s a beer waiting for you at my house. If you ever need someone to talk to. Almost lost my cousin this year, so I know what you’re going through. Kinda.”

  Gary had put weight on his bones, so the outbreak must have agreed with him. It was a tough feat to accomplish, given the food situation on the island. He walked behind Ed with his head shifting from side to side, and his hands dug deep in his pockets. Same old Gary.

  “Ed,” he said.

  They stopped. There was no movement around them, and the wind had died.

  “Yeah?”

  “I need to check on my cousin.”

  Ed had bought into Bethelyn’s idea, and he wanted to get into the town hall cellar and see what they’d prepared. He had the vague idea of staying there for a while in relative safety, but a bigger part of him wanted to get off the island. They didn’t have time for detours.

  “You’ve not been to see him yet?” said Ed.

  Gary scratched his ear, then his cheek. The slightest contact of his fingers on his skin left red prints.

  “I didn’t dare. I heard screaming and I shut my door. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I only came out because I saw you guys.”

  Ed knew how he felt. Just an hour earlier he’d found Bethelyn and her daughter in comas in his bedroom, and he couldn’t bring himself to check on them. Gary wasn’t a coward; he reacted the same way as any sane human. People thought being brave was great, but being scared was as good a survival mechanism.

  He knew about Gary’s cousin, of course. About the cancer and the treatments and how his battle to survive it tore his family apart. He had no doubt that Gary had been in the same position as Ed. He’d probably sat on his sofa with a well-wisher across from him and prayed they’d get the hell out of his house and leave him alone.

  “Sure. We can go check,” he said.

  Judith coughed into her hand and spoke. “I think we should get to the hall first. Set up a base.”

  She looked around her. The area was deserted, but tension hung in the air. It was like being in Pompeii hours before the eruption.

  “I can’t leave him,” said Gary.

  “You’ve left him once already, what’s the difference?” said Judith.

  Judith Plum was a name well-known on the island. In a population as small as theirs it was hard for people not to know who you were, but even on the island she’d gained celebrity.

  It was Judith who had argued for imposing an entry ban shortly after the outbreak. It was Judith who proposed rationing, and it was Judith who said families who didn’t grow crops should get a smaller share of food. She’d been outspoken for decades, but her opinions used to be limited to who should be on the council committee. Now, her ideas stretched to how they should shape their survival.

  She had a sharp tongue and a loud voice, and in Ed’s experience the people who shouted loudest won. If you could look someone in the eye and drown out their words with your own, it didn’t matter if you were right or wrong.

  Gary drew his coat closer to him. “I need to check on him. For Christ sake, Julie, what if it was your family?”

  “We’ve all got families, Gary.”

  Bethelyn threw her arms out in desperation. From the way she clenched the poker in her hand, Ed worried she might lash out with it. She seemed like an elastic band being prised apart inch by inch, until the rubber perished and it snapped.

  “This is how people die,” she said. “They split up for some stupid reason, and think that somehow they’ll wind up alive and together again. If you go and look for your cousin, who’s probably already dead, you’re done. I’ll make sure I put this poker in your skull when you come after me, and I’ll stab you again for your sheer stupidity. We stick together.”

  They’d all seen on the news how dangerous the infected were, and Ed had witnessed it first-hand today. Within an hour of waking up he’d seen a woman kill her husband, and a mother kill her child. Bethelyn was right.

  “We’ll get set up in the hall first,” he said. “Make somewhere safe. Then we’ll check for survivors. Your cousin will be the first.”

  Gary started to protest, but he looked around and said nothing. He could have gone on his own, of course. Nobody could stop him. The way he fell in line told Ed how scared he was.

  Two people shambled up the gentle slope at the bottom of the street. He hoped they might be alive, but the way they lurched along themselves meant they weren’t.

  “How many of us are on the island?” he said.

  “Forty men and wom
en by last count,” said Bethelyn.

  “It’s more than that,” said Judith.

  Bethelyn fixed her a look. Without words, she told the woman to shut up.

  Judith wasn’t fazed. “I’m telling you it’s more like sixty.”

  “We did a census. I know damn well there are forty.”

  Judith gave a mocking smile. “Oh, look at you. Miss I’m-on-the-council. Whatever. It doesn’t make you special, you know.”

  “You were on the council, weren’t you?” said Bethelyn. “Until they kicked you off for being a mouthy bitch.”

  Their raised voices made Ed tense. He always ran from conflict when he saw it coming. When James and dad used to argue about him joining the navy, which got especially bad when they’d had a drink, Ed used to go upstairs, go into his room and blast music in protest.

  “Do you guys not realise what’s happening?” he said. “There’s a chance we’ll die. This isn’t the newscasts, you know. You can’t turn off the TV and see it disappear. We’re in trouble, and we need to stop behaving like little bitches if we’re gonna get out of it.”

  Judith raised a finger in the air and opened her mouth, but Ed cut her off.

  “Shut up.”

  He was sick of it. All those years of arguments in his house and he’d never said a word. He was done with it.

  He turned to Bethelyn. "So, there are forty adults. How about children?”

  “Twelve.”

  “There are four of us. We’ve killed three infected. There are two at the bottom of the street. So, where the hell are the others?”

  He had included April in the number of infected. What an idiot. He’d reeled it off like she was a statistic, and the coldness of it made him want to scream at himself. He wanted to dig a hole and bury himself in the soil.

  He was about to apologise to Bethelyn, when he remembered the slap. She’ll grieve in her own time, he reminded himself. Could anyone in the world have told you how to grieve when James went?

  “Maybe they’re all in their houses,” said Gary.

  The infected were stupid, so they didn’t have the brain power to figure out how to open doors. That meant some of them, at least, couldn’t get to them. The problem would come if they tried to break through their doors. Most houses on Golgoth were decades old. He doubted the ancient wood would survive under stress.

  “Let’s hope they stay that way. Come on, let’s get the guns. That’s the first step. I don’t want to think too far beyond that.”

  At the town hall, they found that nature blocked their way. An elm tree had blown down in the storm, and the thick trunk covered the entrance doors.

  “What now?” said Gary. “We’re fucked!”

  “Don’t lose your head,” said Ed.

  Bethelyn pointed at a row of windows on the first floor. There was a ledge outside it, and the gutter that ran along it was full of leaves. “We need to climb and break in,” she said.

  The two infected had become four. He recognised their faces now, but he didn’t want to say their names. The infection had turned their skin grey and given them faraway stares lacking any trace of life.

  Ed climbed the drainpipe first. He’d been a good climber since he and James used to make a sport of scurrying up the wall of their house and sitting on the roof. James sometimes stole a couple of beers from dad’s never-ending supply and they’d drink them and watch the sea.

  Judith insisted she went next, and her climb was more laboured than Ed’s. In the time it took her to reach the ledge, the infected had gotten closer until they were only fifty feet away.

  Ed put his hand out and hauled her next to him. As soon as she sat on the ledge, she pulled her hand away and rubbed it on her coat as if it was dirty.

  “You go next,” said Gary, and nodded at Bethelyn.

  He was trying to be brave, and he probably regretted it as soon as he said the words. Bethelyn didn’t move. Instead she stared at the hill behind them as the infected walked on.

  “Bethelyn,” said Ed.

  The emptiness of her eyes sent a shudder through him. He’d seen that look before, but it was back in school. It was the expression he’d seen in a history book when they learnt about the first of the old wars. He remembered a grainy photograph where a soldier lay in a trench with a stare as empty as the muddy hole around him.

  “Hurry, for God’s sake,” said Judith, with more irritation in her voice than panic.

  Bethelyn climbed the drainpipe and joined them at the ledge, leaving Gary alone on the ground. The infected were ten feet away now. The closer they got, the hungrier they looked.

  Gary held the pipe and lifted his feet. As he climbed the infected got closer, and their groans sounded loud. It reminded Ed of the wail of the wind, but it was worse because it came out of mouths that were once human.

  When Gary was halfway up the pipe, the infected closed the gap until they were standing underneath him. They stretched their arms toward him and cried out. The desperate look on their faces and the hunger in their voices stirred pity inside Ed. This time yesterday they were all human. How did this happen?

  Gary lifted a leg and tried to hook it on a gap in the wall, but his foot slipped. While the infected reached out for him, Gary started to lose his grip on the pipe. His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth. Instead of words, he only screamed. Ed grabbed his hand. His arms strained as he tried to haul him onto the roof.

  It was hopeless. He couldn’t hold him.

  The infected opened their mouths like lions expecting meat, and Ed’s muscles burned. Can’t hold on. I’m gonna drop him.

  Cold sweat wetted his forehead, and he grunted as he put in one last effort. Judith took Gary’s other hand and helped pull him up. Together they got him onto the ledge.

  Gary lay on his back and panted. The groans of the infected drifted up to them. Ed sank back against a wall. His muscles ached. He’d never been a strong man and he’d never wished for a better body, but it shocked him that his own weakness had nearly killed someone.

  “Thanks,” said Gary, his voice wobbling.

  The windows were less than an inch thick. Bethelyn smashed them with her boot. It was a small drop to the floor, and none of them struggled getting down. The town hall was dark, and their footsteps echoed as they walked through corridors that had seen happier times.

  They went quietly, trying not to disturb the silence. Judith broke it. “I’m still trying to get my head round this. How did the infection get here?”

  “Someone must have got bitten,” said Gary.

  Bethelyn motioned for them all to stop outside a wooden door with frosted glass. Bethelyn pressed her ear against it. She listened for movement for a few seconds, but she seemed satisfied when none came. They walked down a chalky-smelling hallway.

  “For someone to get bitten,” said Judith, not bothering to limit the volume of her voice, “Someone had to be infected in the first place. And there’s been nothing here for years, so it doesn’t add up.”

  “Maybe there’s another way of getting infected,” said Ed.

  Golgoth was cut-off at the best of times, but things faded fast when the outbreak hit. It didn’t take a long time for Golgoth to be adrift from all lines of communication. Added to that the fact the government rarely told all they knew in the newscasts, and it wouldn’t have surprised Ed to learn there was another way of getting infected.

  “It’s the storm,” said Bethelyn. “Something about the storm.”

  Bethelyn led them through hallways, down a stairway, and into the depths of the building. They didn’t hear any movement, nor did they come across anyone else, living or dead. The cellar door was in front of them.

  “I hated coming down here,” she said. “But man, am I glad we stocked it.”

  Ed couldn’t help but agree. He’d seen enough films to know that when disaster happened, it caught people with their trousers down. The Golgoth council had the foresight to plan for infection on the island, and their actions gave Ed, Judith, Gary an
d Bethelyn a chance. It was a small chance, so frail the lightest of touches could break it, but it was a chance.

  “Let’s stock up and find the others.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we fight our way off Golgoth,” said Ed. “An island of infected isn’t so big a number when you have guns.”

  Bethelyn pushed open the cellar door. As soon as it swung open, a rock sank in his stomach. He stopped, unable to speak, unable to do anything but stare at the sight in front of him.

  The cellar was full of provisions and guns, as Bethelyn promised. Only now, they were sitting under five feet of rain water.