u/28_M_L

Prologue

Light glittered through a dense canopy of leaves split neatly in two by a road, one lane each way with turnoffs on each side, leading into their village.

A man walked backward down the road with both hands raised, his head cast down. At his feet was a white line - where the line made a sharp turn to his right, he began shuffling sideways; a few meters either way from the white line were lashed-together wooden poles, each X connected by another wooden pole. The top ends of each pole were cut down to sharp stakes and painted white.

A few of those stakes, closer to the entrance to this maze, were covered in flakes of brown, dried blood.

From a hunting stand two older men watched the stranger shuffling. So far he had done what the hand-painted instructions left outside had said - make no sound, raise your hands above your head, and walk with your back facing us until we tell you to. Follow the white line.

Still, one of the men trained an old hunting rifle on the stranger. All of the crazies that had found their community up til now either drowned themselves or threw themselves on the spike barriers they had spent backbreaking hours putting together; that didn’t mean that someone who could read and follow directions wouldn’t suddenly start vomiting blood, screaming their lungs out and clawing at your face.

The other watched through a pair of old binoculars, first at the man, then further up the road.

“That’s Joanna’s van,” he said with a start.

“Keep it down,” the rifleman hissed. Then he realized what his companion had said, taking his site off the stranger for a few seconds. “Who?”

“Joanna, my niece. Grand niece. She’s an on-call plumber, that’s her van - she’s coming down the road, just passed the… 250 meter marker.”

The rifleman peered through his scope. There was a van coming, that was sure, but he couldn’t see who was driving it.

“Are you sure?”

The van wasn’t slowing down.

“Yes.”

“Whatever she’s doing, she’s got to be leading them here.

“Then we’ll hold them off,” he said. “I’m opening the gate for her.”

“No…” it was useless, he was already climbing, half falling down the extension ladder that led to their makeshift lookout tower.

The rifleman looked down his scope, found he didn’t need to anymore - the van barely slowed down to careen through the spike maze, bewildering the stranger long enough that he stood between two X’s of spikes and goggled at the van, then hastily caught himself, put his hands back up and faced away from the tower again.

Shouting from below and eventually the sounds of scraping and heaving as the gate, and various things piled against the gate, began to be moved out of the way for the incoming van.

The rifleman peered back and saw that, despite the warnings about quiet, the noise had attracted the attention of people near the barricade.

The van’s engine roared as it made the final rush to the gate, its brakes slamming as a final heavy tire that was part of the barricade was rolled out of the way.

Armed people - and an old man armed only with binoculars - approached the van. The old man tapped on the driver’s side window.

“Joanna?” he called.

The woman inside seemed to jump out of her seat when she heard her name. The driver’s side door opened and she fell out of the vehicle sobbing.

“Joanna!”

“Get back, is she–”

“No, she’s my niece!”

“Turn her over.”

“Jo, dear, please–”

The woman started sobbing between deep breaths and rolled herself over.

“No blood,” someone called out, and a ripple of relaxation went through the small crowd.

“Joanna, it’s me.”

“Uncle… Gary?” she said.

“Yes, you made it,” he replied.

“Did you - “ he began. “Are any of… them… following you?”

Sunlight shining on her face seemed to drive happiness into the big woman.

“No, we lost them,” she said. “They tried chasing us, but we got in the van and… I drove until I couldn’t see them in the rearview anymore, then made it here.”

“Thank God,” her uncle said. Then he picked up on something she had said.

“We?”

“Dicky and I.”

“Ah yes, your husband, right. I remember the wedding, what, twelve years ago?”

She did not answer.

”Where is he?”

“In the back. We had to climb through the backdoors to get to the front, I think he hit his head.”

Someone walked around the back.

“There’s blood on the back. Fresh blood.”

“They almost got us.”

Joanna and Gary kept up their chatter as the back door was opened.

“Out like a light,” Norton, one of the two men who opened the doors said, looking at the man. He was as big as his wife; no wonder he bashed his head on the way in.

“Mister?” they asked. Nothing.

“I know some first aid,” Roberts, the other man said, climbing into the van.

He pressed two fingers against Dicky’s neck.

“Strong pulse.”

Dicky moved a little bit at that.

“Sighted!” a voice cried out; the rifleman in the tower.

“Two-fifty meters! A dozen or more!”

Motion outside the van meant people were rushing back to close the gate and pile material against it.

Roberts continued checking the passed-out Dicky, testing reflex, then absently pulled back an eyelid.

“Norton!”

“What?”

“His eyes!” Roberts shouted, scrambling back, slamming himself against the inside of the van.

“What about them?”

The van rocked a bit as Dicky began coming to in jerking, thrashing motions.

“No, no, no!” Roberts said.

The inhuman sound of someone emptying their stomach contents came from the van; when Norton turned to look back, Dicky was already lurching toward him, eyes red-rimmed and red-shot, fresh blood covering his mouth and front.

“Dicky?” Joanna called.

Roberts fell out of the back of the van, thrashed, then fixed on Joanna, pulling himself along the ground with his hands and pushing the ground behind him like a swimmer on dry land.

“No!” Gary shouted, swinging a booted foot as hard as he could, connecting it to the side of Roberts’ head.

Then Gary hauled his foot back; despite years of playing football, when the moment came he toe-kicked and broke his own foot.

Dicky rushed around the side of the van, shoving Gary out of the way and falling on his wife.

The infection was loose in their refuge.

Just like everywhere else on the island of Britain windows were broken, doors were smashed in, and neighbor attacked neighbor in a senseless rage that spared no one.

28 Months Later

Private Scott Braxton, US Army, looked through the rifle scope, in disbelief at what he was seeing.

They had been wandering for months through the English countryside, and wondering how, after all this time, they were still coming across infected. Dozens of scenes of dehydrated, emaciated, infected bodies, dying of thirst, hunger, or exposure since their infection were memories he sometimes tried to suppress, but still, they kept finding living infected, not just ones from the resettlement failure in London.

He looked at Andy Smith, made a cupping motion with a hand and lifted it to his mouth. Andy nodded. This is what Andy wanted Scott to see - a congregation of infected had found a clean pool of water and were drinking from it.

The thought made his guts churn and burn, as though through sheer will his stomach acid could fight off the rage virus. It also made him feel like he’d be shitting brown liquid for the next few days.

Andy placed his pointer finger on one side of his neck, drew it to the other side, then motioned with a spread-out hand toward the infected below.

Scott nodded.

Destroying infected was his priority; if any infected were adapting to survive, maybe even consciously organizing, that had to somehow become even more priority.

They slowly eeled backward, careful not to make any sound, until they could safely walk. It was a mile or so until the tree they holed up in; or more accurately, holed up on.

Only once they were safely in the canopy of the tree did either of them speak, and the three other survivors that rounded out their group joined them.

“It’s true,” Scott began. “They’re drinking water. Not just from rain - from a pond.”

Long habit kept everyone from making any noises at that news, but they all showed shock on their faces.

“How did you find them?” Scott asked.

“I saw one when I was on watch this morning. Just came twitching by, easy as you please, like he was popping down to the shops for a crisp and ciggies. Once Dag was awake and spelled me I followed - I didn’t want the trail to get fouled, and didn’t want to wake you up yet.

“It was easy to catch up, the way they shamble, and kept above him when I got in sight” - Scott nodded approvingly at that - “it was the sound of the waterfall, I think, that attracted them, you know the way it sometimes sounds when everyone’s talking? That’s when I saw them, from the same perch I took you too, and none saw me. You saw it too - they lay in the water and let it into their mouths, or scoop it up, and tell me if it looked like some were bathing in it?”

“It did,” Scott said. “Not all, just some of the ones that weren’t as bad off. The ones that didn’t look as dirty as the others. Do we have a map - can you point out which stream you think it is?”

Among the tourist maps, surveys, and Scott’s US Army issue they seemed to find it.

“We need to mark everything downstream of it as unsafe.”

Heads nodded all around.

“And we need to kill them all.”

*****

Dag, Andy, and Miriam scrambled up tree trunks, climbing spikes biting into bark and reaching for hastily cut handholds until they could secure ropes through their climbing harnesses and give themselves added height. Once in place they reached for their longbows, ancient weapons made by themselves, based on scant memories, museum pieces, loot and guesswork.

Now they had to wait.

Scott - no one called him Private Braxton anymore - had insisted on what he called conditioning the area, a Yank term he no doubt learned back in America when they were first training him to fight Al-Qaeda.

Reflecting on that made Dag curious; he was connected to the same tree as Andy, and close enough to whisper conversation.

“An, d’you know why Scott’s here? And not in Afghanistan?” Dag asked, his accent shortening some letters and vowels in the Irish way, lengthening others in the English way.

Andy thought for a moment.

“He was in university, I think, back during 9/11, joined up in patriotic fervor the way the Americans do.”

“Yeh but, here and not, well, there? Afghanistan?”

“Ah, right. His da was from around here - literally this countryside of England - and he’d spent some time here as a kid.”

“I thought he was from California.”

“That he was. Ma was in recording in Los Angeles. Maybe ask him about it some time?”

“I couldn’t, I don’t know him like you.”

“Well… that may be,” Andy said. Few people wanted to talk about life before the infection, even interesting strangers from faraway lands.

Who might never see them again, thought Dag. Scratch that, will never see them again.

He pushed the thought out of his mind but the fact still remained. He’d never see Dublin again - if Dublin still stood.

Lights and people and… crowds…

With a shake of his head Dag forced his mind away from it again.

Bang!

A gunshot sounded, distant enough that it wasn’t earsplitting for them, but close enough to hear.

“Yeah, you! I’ll get you next, motherfucker!”

Bang!

That was Scott, setting his part of the plan in motion - get the infected at the watering hole riled up.

“You like that? Huh, what about you?”

Bang!

One more, Dag thought.

“Ha - try to climb it, come on! Three points of contact at a time, boys and girls!”

Scott, Dag knew, was standing in the place they had overlooked the infected.

Bang!

That was Angela’s signal; she let herself down the rope, fast, then waved two smoldering branches in the air until fire caught them well and good as she ran, carefully picking where her each step landed, toward the watering hole that the infected were congregated at.

“Hallooooo! Here! Me! I am the goddess Athena, and I have come to bring you fire!” she shouted, throwing the flaming branch in her right hand.

If her shouting hadn’t gotten their attention, the burning branch would - Dag couldn’t see it, but she was supposed to throw it as close to the middle of the throng of infected as she could, and then -

“Here they come!”, she shouted

- run as fast as she could, waving the remaining branch, leading them away from Scott.

Dag, Andy, and Miriam drew their longbows, knocked with clothyard arrow shafts, to their ears.

The infected chased Angela over the rise that led down to their watering hole and directly over the rows and tangles of hardwood thorns and metal spikes they had laid down before their one and only path to and from it.

They may not feel pain but no one can run with finger-length piercing wounds in their feet.

Without needing an order the suspended archers loosed their arrows into the writhing mass of infected bodies. The first couple that managed to crawl close enough to threaten Angela got burned by the branch she still held, then she took up the sharpened shovel she had left handily nearby and stabbed at whatever she felt like.

Scott reappeared just as the archers joined Angela with their own weapons for finishing the job - arrows were too valuable to risk on this and Scott jealously guarded his dwindling supply of bullets, and he had a bayonet attachment he used at times like this.

“Well done,” he said, after the sound of rage gurgles finally abated. “That’s… twenty-five, just like we counted before. I think we should watch the area from trees nearby for a while, until we know that no other infected are coming this way to… drink.”

The others nodded. There was none of the yes-sir, do-what-I-say US Army nonsense in Braxton anymore.

“Where they lay?” Andy asked.

“Yes. Do you have it?”

“I’ll get it,” Andy replied. It was the makeshift napalm that Scott had showed them how to make out of petrol, laundry detergent, and cut-up tires; they used it to dispose of infected bodies.

Dag spotted movement toward the edge of the pile, unlimbered his bow from around his back and knocked an arrow, and walked over carefully to investigate.

“Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you come have a look at this?”

Scott came up with his rifle ready, bayonet attachment freshly clean from a quick wipe-down, and Scott flipped the now-dirty piece of cloth onto the pile of bodies.

A tiny figure moved.

Tiny.

Dag didn’t know anything about babies, but this couldn’t be more than a year old.

He heard Scott clear his throat.

“Someone would have had to… carry it…”

Neither of them could tear their eyes away.

“What do we do?” Dag asked.

“Go, um,” in that moment, Scott actually looked and sounded to be his age, about 24 if Dag remembered correctly, for the first time he’d ever seen. Everyone else was older than him, but Scott brought them together, Scott had the training and experience, Scott had the classroom and real-world education…

For everything except this.

“We can’t leave a reservoir of infection anywhere on this island,” Scott said as though reciting something from memory.

The tiny body moved, barely crawling, crawling away from them.

“Go help them with the bodies and the… it. I’ll handle this.”

Scott reappeared a few minutes later, wiping his bayonet with a rag then flipping the rag onto the pile.

Andy gave Dag a questioning look; Dag shook his head. Miriam and Angela both caught the gesture and stayed silent.

They all watched as Scott struck one of their few precious all-weather matches and lit a piece of dry wood with it, then went around the pile touching the flame to where they had doused their homemade napalm, finally flinging the small burning stick into the center.

Something about the lighting had a sense of reverence to it, as though Scott was submitting a sacrifice to the flames, or apologizing to people they had failed.

They didn’t speak for the rest of that night.

*****

I'll be posting part two next week.

Sorry for the formatting, I wrote this in Google docs and none of the original formatting is carrying over.