Dying to Live (18 page)

“What is that?” Xin asked distractedly.

“Our relationship?” Pete wondered, his brow creased with confusion as he searched her face.

“No. What is that?” Xin said, pointing off down the track. There was a big white van parked in the middle of the road.

“Oh... Isn’t that the van that Bao and Frank came here in?” Pete wondered once he noticed the looming vehicle.

“What is it doing out here?” Xin thought out loud. “I can’t even ask Bao or Harry because Fiona still has the walky-talky.”

The minute they were close enough to see bodies, Xin and Pete knew it wasn’t going to be good news. The closer they got, the clearer the scene became and Xin began to howl and cry.

Bao was laid on the floor in the biggest pool of blood Xin could ever imagine seeing, and the top of his head was missing and empty. The last time she had spoken to him she had been angry, now she felt bitterly ashamed of herself. There was a corpse on the ground at the other side of the van and a dog that looked like Kenco lay dead nearby. There was somebody sat behind the wheel of the van but they had their head down. Evidently they were alive, as two walkers were scratching frantically at the window.

When Pete pulled the car over, Xin couldn’t bring herself to get out with him. The Police car stopped beside theirs and despite his ankle, Frank was already climbing out. Lucy turned off the engine and sat staring out of the windscreen at the scene before her. Zack and Fiona got out last and were woefully unprepared for what awaited them.

“Kenco?” Fiona said puzzled. “It can’t be?” She started forwards to investigate further, whilst her husband made his way over to the monsters clawing at the van.

“Oh God! Dr Yuan,” Frank gasped, stumbling closer to the body. When the full scene unravelled before him, shock set in; his eyes popped open, his jaw dropped and his hand reached up to his head in disbelief.

Xin chanced another look out of the windscreen through tearful eyes, seeing Bao like that made her open the car door in a rush and throw up a torrent of hot bile beside the car.

Zack put the muzzle of his handgun to the male zombie’s head and pulled the trigger. When the body dropped, Zack got a clear view of the female zombie that had been stood beside it. She turned and snapped at him.

“LANIE!” He yelped, as his monstrous daughter lurched towards him. He caught her arms just in time and held her in place. “No... No! Not my girl!”

“It can’t be! You’re wrong!” Fiona countered when she heard his exclamation. She staggered away from Kenco to see for herself. “Nooo!” She howled.

“Oh my...” Pete was baffled. He couldn’t work out what might have happened whilst they were gone, but he knew that neither parent would shoot their own daughter. It didn’t seem like the right time for him to step in and do it himself. “Zack, Fiona... Get her in the back of the van.” This in turn drew their attention to the van, and puffy eyed girl behind the wheel.

“Joanne!” Fiona sobbed, noticing her other daughter. “Are you hurt?”

Zack led his monstrous daughter away from the van’s door. She was still snapping at him as he cried. When he had dragged her to the back of the van, his wife could get their other daughter out of the cab. Fiona threw the door open and hurled herself at Joanne.

“Honey, are you okay? What happened?” She wept into the girl’s hair. Joanne clutched at her but remained silent, staring red eyed at her sister.

Pete walked up to Zack, who was now struggling to restrain Lanie as the instinct to comfort his family kicked in.

“She’s one of them now. We can’t help her,” he said, placing a hand on the fathers shoulder.

“But this was all about a cure!” Zack said desperately.

Pete gave him a sad look. “I’m so sorry, Zack. You know that we can’t offer guarantees. We don’t know if it can be cured and even if it is possible it will be a long, long time before we are ready for that,” He explained patiently. Pete struggled to keep his personal feelings about the likelihood of curing any of these things out of the discussion. “Where would we keep her long term? We wouldn’t be safe, the rest of your family would be at risk.”

“There must be something...” Zack said hopelessly.

Pete sighed and pulled at his hair. “I can’t make you any promises, Zack. Xin is the only doctor here now, so you really need to talk to her about it. We can’t ask her just yet, but we don’t need to do this right now. Put Lanie in the back of the van, we’ll drive her back with us and leave her in there until we decide what to do.”

“Thank you,” Zack said, grateful just for a tiny scrap of hope. While his wife comforted Joanne, who was still not speaking, Pete assisted Zack in bundling the savage girl into the van.

“If it comes to shooting her, I’ll do it myself, you know,” Zack told Pete. “If anyone’s going to do it, I want to know that I did it with love for my daughter rather than someone else who did it with hatred for a monster.”

“And that’s fair enough,” Pete told him, as they shut the vans back doors before Lanie could attempt to amble her way back out. “You take your wife and Joanne back in the car with Xin. I’ll drive Lanie back and then your family don’t have to...”

“Hear her as one of them... God, I can’t believe this,” Zack finished, tears prickling in his eyes. “Thank you,” He said again, offering Pete his hand.

“Don’t mention it. Let’s just get everyone back to the cabin,” He replied, grasping Zack’s hand and looking worriedly back at Xin. Pete wanted to ask Zack to check she was alright, but how could he ask anything of a man who had already lost his father, and now his daughter and even his dog?

Zack managed to lead Joanne and his wife over to the car that Xin was still sat in. Thankfully she was no longer being sick. He saw his wife and daughter into the back seat and got into the driver’s seat beside Xin.

“Pete’s going to drive the van back,” he explained shakily. He continued talking in the hope that he could distract himself, for even just a moment, from the horror of reality. “We’ll be back in no time, but I know he’d want me to make sure you’re okay. I know it’s a dumb question, and I’m barely okay myself, but...” He began to cry and didn’t finish his sentence.

Xin didn’t say anything either, she just stared at her friend’s motionless body.

Pete was the first to get moving. He got the van turned around and made his way off down the track. Frank and Lucy were next in the squad car, Lucy in the driver’s seat still looking shell shocked. Zack didn’t force their car to follow straight away. His wife and daughter sobbed together in the back. Xin leaned her head on the glass, looking out of her window and crying silently, and Zack had to take five minutes to himself before he could put the car into drive. Eventually he wiped his eyes and resigned himself to the fact that he couldn’t sit there all day. The car purred into life and, lost in their own thoughts, the journey passed in a daze that none of them could remember afterwards.

13.

‘I suppose it’s my turn now. I’m Sam, and what a shitty part of the story I have to tell. I’m not a big talker and this was the worst day of my life, so I’m going to keep it short if you don’t mind. I guess I should pick up with the moment when we heard the engines and realised the others were back.’

Sam scooped Evan up from the rug he was playing on when they heard the vehicles outside. He took Shania’s hand and followed Harry out of the cabin. When they got outside, the white van was the first to pull up beside them. Pete jumped out just as the police car rumbled up beside it.

“Take the kids back inside,” Pete urged Sam, as Lucy and Frank exited their vehicle with serious looks on their faces.

“What’s happened? Where are the others?” Sam questioned. There were two loud bangs from the back of the van. “What’s that--”

“Take the kids inside!” Pete shouted. It was out of character for him to shout. He wasn’t angry, but he needed Sam to listen. He strongly believed that those kids had already seen enough, and would see plenty more. This didn’t have to be something that they witnessed. They didn’t need to hear what was coming.

“This involves my family! I want to know where they are!” Sam argued.

“Here, I’ll take them,” Harry said, holding his arms out to take the small, bewildered looking boy. Sam frowned and reluctantly surrendered the child over to him.

“Go on, Shania. Go with Harry,” He told the little girl.

“Sammy, what’s happening?” She asked, her brown eyes wide and worried.

“It’s okay, darling. Everything’s okay. We’ll be in soon,” Sam crouched and reassured her. She nodded at him and reached out to cuddle him. Sam pulled her to him and kissed her head. “Go on now.”

The door had only just shut behind them when the last car pulled up. Xin got out first, unable to bare the atmosphere in the car any longer. She was still crying and rushed over to Pete. When she reached him, she broke down and he wrapped his arms around her. Her sobs were quieter with her face buried in Pete’s shoulder.

“What-- Wait, where’s Kenco? And where’s that other guy?” Sam questioned. He couldn’t see into the last car well enough to tell that Lanie wasn’t in it. “Are they in the back of the van?” Confusion puckered his face.

Xin pulled away from Pete. “That other guy?” She asked angrily. “He has a name, you know!”

“Hey, go easy on the kid,” Pete soothed her with his hands on her shoulders.

Before anyone else could speak, Fiona leapt from the car. She was yelling.

“NO!... You cannot be serious, Zack!” She slammed the door before he could respond and fled towards the RV.

“Mom, don’t go in there!” Sam said, rushing to stand between her and the door. At that, everyone looked puzzled. “Jo!” He called, relief spreading over his features as she got out of the car too. “Thank God you’re--” She began to cry and his face fell. “Where’s Kenco?... Oh my God, where’s Lanie? Will someone tell me what happened?” he began to shout.

Nobody spoke, but his mother looked up at him and shook her head. Her face said it all. Joanne dropped to her knees in the dirt and put her face in her hands. Zack finally got out of the car and walked around it to pull his daughter back up.

“Don’t touch her!” Fiona said angrily, crossing the dry earth to pull their daughter from his grasp.

“Fi, come on, please,” Zack pleaded, his voice breaking.

“You’re a monster,” she said, kneeling beside Jo without even looking at him.

“What does she mean, dad?” Sam asked, stunned. He hadn’t even begun to process what was happening.

“Your mom’s just angry.” Zack hung his head.

“Angry!” Fiona said, jumping to her feet. She spun around to address Sam. “You’re sister is bundled in the back of that van” She pointed at it to reinforce her speech. “And your father thinks that we can just keep her there until someone figures out a cure. No daughter of mine is going to walk this earth as one of them! Who knows if she can ever be cured? And in the mean time she will get worse and worse, and she’ll try to kill us all. She’ll want to feed on her own flesh and blood!”

The others looked on as the family aired their grief. It was difficult to watch and they wanted to be able to help, but this had to be left to the family themselves.

“Mom!” Sam said, horrified. Tears stung his eyes. “You want to kill Lanie?”

“That isn’t Lanie anymore! That isn’t my daughter or your sister! I want her to be able to rest! I want mercy for her!” Fiona choked out in a tearful rage.

“And I want her back,” Zack breathed, tears still slipping over his cheeks.

Sam looked over at Xin. “You’re a doctor.”

Xin looked bewildered, her own loss still etched onto her face. “Yes... But--”

“You can fix her. You know how to make the cure. You have everything that you need, that’s what you said.” Sam’s face was earnest and desperate. “Please, you can help her.”

“But it’s...” She looked at Frank, then Lucy, then Pete. “I don’t know...”

“That’s what the whole damn thing was about, isn’t it? Getting the stupid computer so you could look at those files and make the cure!” Sam glared. “Lanie wouldn’t have even been up there if mom and dad hadn’t gone with you! They could have been here when Gran killed herself!” With that he ran out of steam and began to cry.

“What?” Zack asked, his head jerking up. “Mom? Where is she?”

Sam didn’t speak, he just pointed over at the RV. With that Zack half strode and half jogged over to the RV and disappeared inside it. A few moments later a fresh howl tore through the air.

Joanne couldn’t bear to stay outside and listen to them talk about death any longer.

“Evan?” She asked. Her voice was thick as she finally looked up. Her eyes were red and swollen but she pushed herself to her feet. “Where is he?”

“He’s inside with Harry,” Pete told her. Joanne wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. After composing herself, she trudged over to the shack and headed inside to find the boy she had promised to care for in her sister’s final moments.

Zack staggered back off of the RV, holding the door frame to steady himself. “She’s really gone,” he said.

“Zack, Fiona, Sam, I’m sorry for your loss,” Frank began bravely. “We all had an instant liking for your family and I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now. We do have a difficult situation here, though.” He was trying very hard to be tactful, a skill that was not natural to him. “It’s getting late now and we’ll support whatever you want to do, but we need to figure out what we’re going to do with Lanie and how to dispose of Annette’s body.”

“Frank means that we will be more than willing to help you bury her, if that is what you want,” Lucy rushed to smooth out the last part of what he had said.

“And whatever you decide regarding Lanie, we will support, so long as everyone is safe,” Pete added.

Zack looked at Fiona, it was a long time before she finally raised her head to meet his eyes.

“Zack, our daughter shouldn’t have to suffer as one of those things. She wouldn’t want to be a danger to us and quite frankly, I’d rather she was just dead than brought back and never the same,” Fiona reasoned.

Zack looked at the others. “Please, Xin. Be honest. What are the chances that we can make her right again?”

Pete was still stood behind Xin, he took her hand and squeezed it. She took strength from the gesture.

“When we were driving earlier I was contemplating why the... dead, seem to be deteriorating. It seems likely to me that they are decaying like any other dead body. If that is the case, then if there is any kind of a cure for this it will only work if they are given it soon after infection, before the body is too badly affected by death. But I don’t know. I think that even if I’m wrong and they aren’t decaying, the chances of her being normal afterwards are slim. She would have survived death and who knows what that would make her.”

“But what if we wanted to try it anyway? How long would it take to make the cure?” He asked. Ploughing on optimistically, even though he already knew the answer and didn’t want to hear it.

“Months, at least,” she told him simply.

“We have to help Lanie find peace,” Fiona insisted. The sun was beginning to set and the sky seemed to have an orange tinge to it when Zack turned his face up to look at it. He silently begged for an answer. Moments passed and nothing came, nobody spoke and he would have to decide. He sighed.

“Think of Evan,” Fiona urged him. “That’s his mother for Christ sake, do you want to explain to him why she’s different?”

“I said it would be me that did it if it came to that,” Zack succumbed, looking at Pete. Pete nodded his acknowledgement.

“No, dad!” Sam had been watching in horror. “It’s still Lanie, Please!”

“Fiona, I don’t want you or Sam here when it happens. Don’t argue,” He said before she could, “If we do it, we do it my way. You go inside with Sam and sit with Joanne and the kids. You focus on them. These people have said they will help, we will bury her and my mother when it’s done,” Zack said firmly. “We’ll go back and get Kenco and Dr Yuan too.”

Fiona knew better than to argue with Zack when his mind was made up. So instead she walked over to Sam, placed her arm around his shoulders and guided him, still protesting weakly through his sobs, to join Joanne and the children.

Zack held it together until they had gone and then began to cry again. Lucy’s jaw set, her lip trembling slightly as she tried to hold in her own tears. She watched the man who was about to have to kill his own dead daughter and wandered slowly over to him. She placed a hand on his arm.

“Are you sure you can do this?” She asked him.

He blinked down at her. “I have to, don’t I?”

“Well...” She said, hoping he would understand the implication.

“No. I’m not letting anyone else do it,” he sighed. “Let me get my gun.” Zack’s head was spinning, the gravity of killing his daughter settled upon his shoulders. It didn’t feel like a weight upon him as things so often are described. He thought that it felt more like a noose around his neck that would constrict on him as soon as he followed through with his intentions. He retrieved the shotgun from the car where he had left it and headed back to the group.

“We’re going to have to open the doors and let her out. We may need the van again and seeing as we aren’t fully sure of how the infection spreads, it’s not wise to contaminate it,” Xin said with an apologetic look. She couldn’t help the bluntness of her statement; she was tired and grieving herself.

“I think you should go inside too, girls. Take Frank in and check on his ankle,” Pete said hesitantly. “Xin, you’re tired and upset. Frank, you’re ankle is in no fit state for you to insist on staying and helping, and Lucy, the others need you. There are kids in there and everyone is going to need to look after each other. You could send Harry out to help us, though.”

“I’m fine, I can help,” Frank protested.

“No, you can’t,” Lucy said sternly. “You need to rest and put ice on your leg.”

“She’s right,” Pete said, in a tone that made it clear that this word was final.

Xin was not going to argue with what he had said. Frank was secretly hiding a lot of pain and his ankle felt at least twice its usual size inside his boot. Lucy didn’t want to watch more bloodshed and was happy to take charge in caring for the others that needed it. So, the three followed in the steps of Fiona and Sam. Lucy assisted Frank into the quiet and mournful atmosphere of the cabin while Xin held the door. She looked back at Pete.

“Bao...” Her throat clicked dryly. “Please just... handle him with dignity?”

“Of course,” Pete nodded gravely.

As Pete had requested, Lucy sent Harry out to join them. When the door swung open and he stepped out, still in his uniform, he was carrying two shovels that Lucy had probably retrieved from the small stock of maintenance supplies out back.

“You don’t mind helping I trust?” Pete asked him.

“Not at all,” Harry told him, as he rested the shovels in the RV’s doorway. “Zack, I’m really sorry buddy.” he said turning to face him.

“Thanks. I guess I know how you felt now, huh?” He said, with a humourless grunt of laughter.

“Don’t say that. This is different,” Harry said.

“Let’s just get it done,” Zack said grimly. He adjusted his grip on the gun and led the way to the back of the van.

“Me and Harry will open a door each and then step back so you can wait until she’s out, and... Well. Just try and make it quick. Don’t think too much about it otherwise you might never do it, and don’t give her the chance to attack,” Pete told him gently.

Harry and Pete exchanged a nod and positioned themselves.

“Ready?” Harry asked.

“As I’ll ever be, I guess,” Zack said and drew his gun up.

“Okay then,” Harry said and turned to Pete. “Now.”

On his command, the two men swung open the back of the van. The sun was now low in the sky and cast shadows inside. They couldn’t see her, they would only hear her quiet grunt of surprise as the light filtered in. Harry and Pete backed away, eager to be safe from the gunshot and the girl who was now bumping her way to the open doors. When she got to the opening and saw Zack waiting a few paces away, Lanie snarled. She didn’t acknowledge the drop from the van to the ground, and instead attempted to pounce at her father. She hit the ground like a bag of stones and groaned. Lanie lifted her head and focused again on her father. This motivated her to try and regain her feet. After a few trips and stumbles she got herself upright and seemed to smile with satisfaction. Zack took a few steps backwards and whimpered a little, the gun shaking in his hands.