Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (2 page)

“Bullet.”

Garfield raised an eyebrow.  “Somebody shot
you?” 

Guns were outlawed in the United Kingdom and now that
the world had ended they were even harder to come by.  Garfield had not
seen a firearm since the Army’s initial failed response to the infection. 
Their automatic rifles and machines guns had quickly run dry and the brief
appearance of firearms had ended.  Bullets did very little to stop the
dead when you don’t know to go for the head.  It was a lesson most of the
world had learned too late.

Bullets can still put a nice dent in a living man,
though.

The injured man moved a feeble hand to his t-shirt and
pulled it up over his thin stomach.  Sure enough, there was a perfectly
round hole where something – quite possibly a bullet – had entered
his torso at the side.  It was hard to say for sure if the man had been
shot, but at the very least it was clear that he had not been bitten. 

He may as well have been, though.

“There are no doctors,” Garfield said.  “Probably
best that I put you out of your misery.”

“N-no.  I can make it.”

“I don’t think you can.”

The injured man waved a hand.  “I’ve been badly
injured before.  I can make it.  I just…I just need some help.”

Garfield let out a long breath.  The best thing
to do was to end the man’s suffering right here.  A dying man was nothing
but a burden – to himself and anybody who tried to help him.

“Please…”

Garfield pulled his axe free of the pallet’s plastic
lashings and lifted it onto his shoulder.  The man looked up at him
pleadingly, but his eyes were rheumy and weak.  Death was closing in on
him fast. 
Best to just end it now.

Garfield made a decision.  He turned and walked
away, exiting the container and re-grouping with the foragers outside.

“What did you find?” Kirk asked him.

“Couple pallets of toilet paper.  Would make good
kindling for our fires, as well as having more obvious uses.  It’s a
luxury, but it’s all we have.  Get it out and load it up on the sledges.”

Kirk nodded.  The toilet paper was better than
nothing.  They all enjoyed returning back to camp to the cheers and
back-pats that accompanied a full sled, and hated the sullen faces that greeted
them whenever they came back empty handed.  The toilet paper would
probably suffice in lieu of anything else.

“Was there a dead man inside?” Kirk asked.  “The
shuffling?”

Garfield cleared his throat.  “Oh…yeah, there’s
an injured man inside.  If he’s still alive by the time we leave then I
guess we should take him with us.”

“Was he bitten?”

Garfield shook his head.  “No, but he may as well
have been.  The poor sod’s been shot.  Slim hope he’ll even make it
back to the pier with us.”

Kirk seemed surprised.  “But…who has guns? 
Do you think there’s another group out here someplace?”

“I don’t know,” said Garfield, “but I would much
rather avoid them if there is.  They have guns and we don’t.”

G
arfield and the others had been gone
ages.  Poppy knew they’d be okay – they went out all the time
– but she could never help but worry.  For the last hour she’d been
sitting, shivering on the rooftop of the
Sea Grill
restaurant with her cardigan
wrapped around her shoulders, anxiously watching the horizon for Garfield’s
return.  During that time, she had absentmindedly tied her white-blonde
hair into two long plaits. 
I wonder if Garfield will like them. 

The Great Southern Pier was all there was for
miles.  The seaside village that surrounded it was just a few
bed-and-breakfast hotels and places to eat, with the odd pub interspersed
–
boozers
her daddy used to call them.  Poppy had never been
inside a pub, but she knew it was a place that only adults were allowed
in.  Now nobody went in the pubs; they were all empty. 

The pier was the biggest in England after having been
rebuilt following a big fire – at least that’s what Garfield had told
her.  He said the pier had only just opened when people got sick. 
That’s why everything was so new and unused.  There was even an oven in
the
Sea Grill
restaurant that was still wrapped in plastic and had never
been plugged in. 
What a waste of money.

The people who’d built the pier had planned on
bringing lots of visitors and making the village so rich that it would grow
into a town and have more shops and nice houses.  None of that ever
happened, though, and now the great big pier looked silly next to the tiny
village. 
And all of the people live
here
instead of in the
houses.

Behind Poppy, the rest of the camp went about their
usual business.  The pier had lots of shops and restaurants on it and a
big building shaped like a tent at the far end.  The tent was full of
games and rides that no longer worked because there was no electricity.
 It made Poppy sad whenever she looked at them. 
They would have
been so much fun.

Everybody was safe at the pier because it sat on big
metal stilts above the sand and could only be accessed from a big long deck
barred at one end by a fat metal gate.  Sometimes dead people would come
up to the gate and try to get inside, but it never worked.  The gate was
too big and strong.  The dead people would eventually go away if everybody
on the pier kept quiet enough.  And if they didn’t go away, Garfield would
go out and hit them.  That always made her sad; to see the dead people
hit.  They looked so lonely at the gate, like all they wanted in the world
was to be inside with the living people. 
But if we let them in they’ll
try and hurt us.

At least there were no zombies around at the
moment.  When Garfield and the others left yesterday, all the dead people
in the village had followed after them until they’d disappeared into the
distance, at the point where the main road took them out of sight.  Poppy
had a feeling that Garfield probably hit the dead people when they were away
from the village.  He always tried to avoid hurting them near the pier
– he said their smelly bodies would make people sick.  One time at
the pier, Poppy had gotten a
poorly
throat and it was
terrible.  She’d wanted so much to be better, but the pain and aching went
on forever.  There was no more medicine like her mummy used to give her to
make the hurt go away quicker. 
Lots of things are gone.  I miss
my bed with the pink pony sheets and my fluffy dressing gown.  I miss my
parents, too.

Poppy’s mummy was gone now and so was her daddy.
 The only person she had to look after her was Garfield – and he was
never there.  No sooner would he return to the pier then he was off
again.  She understood why he had to go.  He would always say to her,
“I never chose this,” but she would still miss him when he was gone. 
Sometimes when he returned, he would bring food, or toys, or comic books for
her.  That almost made it worth not having him around, but not
really.  She liked having him near, even if he was grumpy all the
time. 
Grumpy Garfield I call him, but really I think he’s brave.

Poppy shuffled around 180-degrees until she was facing
away from the village and towards the sea beyond the pier.  Some of the
group sat at the edges of the deck, holding fishing rods out over the
railings.  There was a fishing tackle shop on the pier and almost every
person in the group had a rod or two.  Poppy liked some of the fish they
caught, but there were so many different kinds that she never knew what she
would get one day to the next.  Sometimes they caught big fat fish with
white meat that tasted good, but other times they would catch thin, ugly fish
with red meat that tasted yucky.  Her favourite food back home –
back when she had a mummy and daddy – had been macaroni and cheese, with
a glass of fizzy apple juice.  She hadn’t tasted cheese in such a long
time and all she ever drank was water.  It made her sad to think about.

So she thought of something else.

She thought about getting older and becoming an
adult.  She could go foraging with Garfield and Kirk then (although she
didn’t really like Kirk.  He was always making fun of her).  She
wasn’t allowed to leave the pier because she was still just a kid, but from up
on the rooftops of the various buildings she could see for miles around. 
She could see the hills and the roads, and an old railway that cut through them
both.  There was a whole world out there waiting to be explored –
one she could barely even remember.  She just wished she’d taken the time
to appreciate the things she used to have, because now they were all gone
forever. 

She used to moan and complain about having to get up
for school, but now she would give anything to be surrounded by other children
her own age.  She would love to sit and listen to old Mr Stead prattle on
about the Ancient Romans and how they changed the world with their roads and
sewers.  There was so much she could have learned back then, but now her
entire world was on this pier at the edge of the sea. 
I hate it.

Being stuck in one place made her feel panicky, like
she couldn’t breathe.  One day, when she was older, she would leave the
pier and find all of the things she’d forgotten.  She’d learn about all
the things the world used to care about.  Then, one day, she would teach
it to kids the same way Mr Stead had once taught it to her. 
I’m going
to teach them about how the Romans built the aqueducts and had lots of baths.

“You up on that roof again, lass?  You’re going
to break your bleedin’ neck one o’ these days,
huh
.”

Poppy looked down to see Alistair standing on the deck
below.  He had his hands on his hips and his fat belly was hanging over
his belt the way it always did.  Everyone else in the group was skinny,
except for Alistair.

“What do you want?” Poppy asked him.

“What do I want?  Nothing, lass, but it’s about
time you started helping out around here instead of farting around on the
rooftops all the time,
huh
.”

“I’m just a kid.”

“No such thing anymore.  You’re either useful or
you’re not.  No mummy and daddies to look after kiddies these days. 
You have to be useful, whether you’re nine years old or ninety.”

Poppy rolled her eyes.  She’d never liked
Alistair, not since she’d first met him.  He was always nagging at
her.  “Garfield says I’m just a kid and I shouldn’t grow up too
soon.  I asked to go foraging with him, but he said no.”

Alistair sniffed a wad of snot back through his
nose.  His dirty brown hair fluttered in the breeze.  “He should’ve
let you go with him, if you ask me.  Better than having
you
hanging
around doing nothing like a chimp with a hairdryer,
huh
. 
The time for child’s play died along with everything else.  You need to
start making yourself useful.”

“I
will
…” said Poppy.

Alistair grinned and nodded.

“When Garfield tells me to.”

Alistair pointed his chubby finger up at her. 
“Now you look here, Poppy.  Garfield
ain’t
here,
and when he ain’t here you do as you’re told by your elders.  I was at
this pier long before Garfield, so don’t you believe I take orders from
him.  You need to start pulling your weight, girl, or else you’ll be
gone.  Got no time for freeloaders.”

“
You
can talk!  If it wasn’t for all the
food that Garfield brings back, you wouldn’t be able to stay so fat.”

Alistair went bright red.  “You just wait until
you come down from there.  You’ll have my hand across the back of your
legs.”

“Touch me and Garfield will beat you up.”

Alistair snorted.  “We’ll see about that, young
lady.”

“Yes, we will,” said Poppy with a sudden grin on her
face.  There was movement on the horizon at last.  “Because he’s on
his way back right now.” 
At last.

In the distance, Garfield and the foragers were coming
down the main road.  They dragged their wooden sleds behind them, carrying
the things they’d found.  Any luck and they would have some food.
 Even better and they might have found some books or toys.

Give me something to do around here, please!

As Poppy squinted into the distance, she noticed
something unexpected.  One of the forager’s sleds held no food or toys at
all; it carried a man.  Somebody was injured.

Oh no.  I hope we can help them.  I hate it
when people die.
 
Who is it?

Poppy glanced down at the pier, to tell Alistair what
she could see, but the fat man had already gone, so she hung down from the edge
of the roof and dropped down to the wooden deck below.  Her ankles stung
as she hit the ground, but the pain soon left once she started running. 
She headed for the gate, wanting to be the first to greet Garfield when he
returned.

But when she got there, she heard rattling and
moaning.  There were dead men at their door.

A
nna heard the moans followed by the
rattling of the pier’s main gate.  It was not unusual to find dead men on
the pier’s walkway, but it was something that always needed dealing with. 
If enough of the dead gathered together then they might manage to bring the
gate down beneath their sheer weight.  Anna had seen what the collective
strength of the dead could do several times over the last year. 
They’re
like a force of nature when they group together.

Anna was tucked up in her sleeping bag, re-reading a
paperback, when she saw members of the pier race by the window of the gift shop
in which she lived.  It wasn’t a reason for great concern, but she put on
her jacket and followed after them, wanting to see what the fuss was.  She
joined up with them at the gate where a dead man and woman were thudding
against the iron bars.  A light rain had begun falling and a wind whistled
in from the sea.  Seagulls circled in the air, as they always did around
the dead.

“Why aren’t we staying out the way?”  Anna
frowned.  When dead people arrived at the gate, the common thing to do was
to lay low and wait for them to lope away.  More often than not, they did
so within the hour.

“We can’t afford to leave them at the gate,” Alistair
informed her.  “The foragers are coming in.  We have to clear the
way.”

Anna studied the two zombies on the other side of the
wrought iron bars and felt confused.  The female was little more than a
skeleton, with a waistline she probably would have killed for in life. 
Hell,
I would kill for it. 
Her entire stomach had rotted away and the
crusted remains of her lungs had fused to her spine.  The man beside the
dead woman was a boxer, still wearing his ring shorts and gloves.  Once
upon a time it may have been comical to see the sportsman in full gear, but the
people at the pier were all used to the oddities of the dead and long past
paying any notice.  Previously the gate had been host to a dead policeman,
several old-aged-pensioners, a Chinese chef in full kitchen whites, and once
they even had a ghoulish clown trying to get in at them.  There was no
humour to be found in the dead.  The boxer was just another corpse with a
story untold.

“There’s only two of them,” said Anna, bemused. 
“Garfield can handle two zombies easily enough.”

“He has somebody injured with him,” Alistair said.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I saw him,” said little Poppy who was
standing in the gap between the
Sea Grill
restaurant and the pier’s
block of toilets.  She looked lost in her oversized cardigan.

Anna took the child to one side.  “Was it
Garfield who was hurt?”

Poppy shook her head.  Two long blonde plaits
swung back and forth behind her and Anna suddenly resented her own lank brown
locks.  “No, it was somebody else,” said the girl.  “I couldn’t see
who.”

Did they find a survivor out there, or did one of the
foragers get hurt?

“Okay,” Anna said.  “Let’s do this quickly and by
the book.”  Everyone got to work quickly, all of them knowing the drill
after having performed it so many times before.  It was just another daily
chore – no different than ironing used to be, or washing the car. 
Alistair went up to the gate, donning a thick pair of neoprene fishing
gloves.  He worked the key in the padlock and began to loosen the chain
that bound the gate’s half-sections together.  The two dead people snapped
and grabbed at his hands, but Alistair was quick enough and calm enough to
avoid them.

Anna picked up a large sledgehammer, which the group
always kept propped up beside the gate, and hefted it over her shoulder. 
Fellow campmates, old man Bob and Jimmy, took up two great fishing nets and
fanned them open.  Jimmy used to be a forager, but twisted his knee by jumping
down from the second level of a supermarket to escape a group of zombies. 
Now he had to remain at camp, but always sought to make himself useful. 
Old man Bob was…old.  Chris and Samantha were also present, but stood back
so that they would not get in the other men’s way.

Alistair yanked the chain and opened the gate wide.

The dead people stumbled down the deck, arms
outstretched and decaying jaws snapping.  Bob and Jimmy threw the nets
down over their heads, trapping them in place as they fought clumsily to free
themselves.  Anna brought the sledgehammer down on the boxer’s skull
first, caving in his head like an overripe melon.  Some juices exploded
from the skull, but it was mostly just dry, flaky flesh, long ago rotten, that
remained.

The boxer fell to the floor and stopped moving. 
Anna raised the sledgehammer once again, and this time brought it down on the
dead woman’s head.  Her skull split open the same way the boxer’s
had.  Now both of them lay on the deck benignly, their threat extinguished,
their skulls obliterated.  Anna looked down at the boxer and sighed. 
Out for the count.

Without comment, Chris and Samantha grabbed the two
dead bodies and dragged them down the pier towards the strip of walled pavement
that separated the beach from the road.  There they left the bodies in a
pile, ready to be taken away by Garfield’s next foraging party. 
Before
the sun turns them into viral breeding grounds,
Anna thought with a
grimace.

Chris went and stood by the gate, ready to close it
once everyone was inside.  The shy man was wearing his favourite red
wellies.  They made him stand out like a children’s entertainer, which was
a stark contrast to his personality.  Anna wondered if the wellies meant
something to the man, but she never asked.  Samantha stood beside him, the
only survivor at the pier that still had the fashion sense to wear a skirt and
heels on occasion.  Thankfully, today she was wearing black jeans and
Ugg
boots.  She still wore enough jewellery and
bracelets to weigh-down a horse, though.  Despite her love of nice things,
the twenty-year old was headstrong and brave and reminded Anna a lot of
herself. 
She just gets on with it.

Two hundred yards distant, Garfield and the foragers
were getting nearer.  They dragged their sleds behind them and managed a
brief wave as they saw the gates of the pier laying open to greet them. 
Anna put the sledgehammer back down against the wall of the toilet block and
was just in time to catch Poppy by the arm as the girl made to run off. 
“Where do you think you’re going, princess?”

Poppy skidded on her heels and moped at Anna.  “I
want to go see Garfield.  He’s only down the road.”

“So it will only take him a few minutes to get here,
won’t it?  You can wait like everybody else
.
”

Poppy huffed.  “You have to let me out sometime. 
I’m not a prisoner.”

Anna smiled.  “No, you’re not.  But you’re
alive, and you have this place to thank for it.  You shouldn’t be in such
a hurry to leave.”

 Poppy sulked.   Anna ignored her.
 The girl liked to act hard-done by.  That was how she managed to
wind Garfield around her little finger all the time. 
I’m not such a
pushover, though.

“The zombies are all gone,” Poppy argued.  “These
two were the first we’ve seen in ages.  They’ve all gone off someplace to
die.”

If only that were true,
thought
Anna.  “They’re still everywhere, Poppy.  The only reason we’re safe
here is because it’s far away from anywhere else.  If you go running
around out there you’ll attract attention, and it could land us all in a lot of
trouble.  You need to grow a little more before you earn the
responsibility to leave the pier.”

Poppy folded her arms in a grump, but she knew better
than to argue.  The girl stood silently while they waited for Garfield to
return. 
All she needs is some consistency.  A few rules never hurt
a child.

The foragers rounded a burnt-out Mini Cooper sitting
in the middle of the road just beyond the pier, and then started up the decked
walkway.  Three other foragers accompanied Garfield, but that concerned
Anna – because he’d left with four.

“Where’s Marty?” she asked Garfield as he came up the
walkway with Kirk, Lemon, and Squirrel.

Garfield’s expression was grim – but then it
most often was.  He avoided making eye contact with Anna, which was a bad
sign.  “Marty got bit.”

No more explanation was needed.  Everyone knew
that if you got bitten on
a forage
, you didn’t come
back.  Knowing Garfield, they probably buried poor Marty where he fell and
moved on without a word.  It was just the way of things – nobody’s
fault.

Poppy broke free of Anna’s grasp and rushed down the
deck to meet Garfield halfway down the walkway.  Anna sighed.  The
girl had defied her, but only by a little. 
Probably okay to let it go.

“I was worried about you,” Poppy gushed, wrapping her
arms tightly around Garfield’s waist.

“You’re always worried about me, Popcorn.  But
don’t I always come back?”

“You do.”

“Who’s he?”  Anna pointed to the stranger on the
sledge.  The man had copper-coloured hair just like Garfield’s, and was
soaked in blood.  The other sleds were loaded with what looked like toilet
paper. 
They’ll be no shortage of something to wipe our arses with, but
food would have been better.

Garfield glanced down at the injured man and then
shrugged his shoulders.  “Found the guy close to death in a
container.  Don’t hold much hope of him making it through the next couple
hours, to be honest.  Poor sod was shot.”

Anna folded her arms.  “Shot?”  There were
very few guns about, which made anybody who had them inordinately dangerous.

“I was hoping you’d have a go at fixing him up,
Anna.  You’d have a better chance than anyone else.”

Anna kept her arms folded tight.  “I was a vet,
not a doctor.”

“Still makes you the best hope this guy’s got.”

Whether she liked it or not, it was true.  She
sighed.  “Bring him into the diner.”

The pier’s American-style diner was one of the largest
spaces and was used as a communal area, as well as the place where they stored
all the rainwater they collected and supplies that the foragers found. 
Rene was in charge of allocation, and right now Anna needed boiled water. 
Stat!

When Rene saw the injured man, his eyes went wide and
he quickly came over to help.  The man did not speak, but his body
language made it clear he was ready for immediate orders.  Anna nodded at
him and smiled.  Rene had been her trusted friend since the beginning and
the only person she could rely on. 

“Rene, I need boiled water and the sharpest knife you
can find.  I also need a latex glove filled with one part salt and five
parts water – and bring me all the hand sanitizer from the kitchen. 
Anna knew they had all of those things, because she’d gathered them
herself.  The things she lacked, however, included proper surgical
equipment, painkillers, and medicine of any kind (she had once tried to grow
penicillin from some stale bread, but it was long gone now).  There were
no hospitals in the area and those further afield were hot zones of
infection.  The dead were everywhere inside hospitals and getting medicine
would cost more lives than it saved.  She and Rene had once entered a
local Doctor’s clinic, hoping to find bandages and antibiotics.  What they
found was a waiting room full of dead people.  That was the last time they
ever searched for medicine.

Garfield carried the injured man over to one of the
diner’s large square tables and dumped him down on it.  Anna took her
jacket off and told him to leave, along with anybody else not named
‘Rene’. 
The less people crowding me the better
.
 
Poppy would probably pop a blood vessel, anyway, if Garfield didn’t go and
catch up with her right this instant. 
Glad I don’t have the
responsibility of looking after that girl.  She’s a handful at the best of
times.

Anna went and got her kit bag from underneath the
cashier desk.  It contained a needle and thread (actually a reel of 6lb
thin-diameter fishing line), as well as some glue and bandages.  So far
the kitbag had been needed only for scrapes and bruises, but it had been
prepared in case of something worse.  Most serious injuries were from being
bitten, and there was no point wasting time or supplies on someone with a bite.

But this man was shot. 

By whom?

Since being carried along the pier and into the diner,
the injured man had stirred only slightly.  He mostly just moaned and
muttered with his eyes closed.  Whether from the fever of infection or the
delirium of blood loss was unclear. 
Probably both.

Anna handed a long sewing needle to Rene and told him
to boil it in the saltwater he had on the go.  There was no gas or
electricity anymore, but the diner had a small stockpile of disposable
lighters, cooking oils, and petrol that the group used exclusively for starting
fires and cooking.  Anna knew that she could also use some of those
chemicals to disinfect the injured man’s wounds, but they were all very
caustic.  She had better methods.

Anna pulled out some sharpened scissors from her kit
bag and cut away a strip from the patient’s t-shirt.  Blood was
everywhere, mostly crusted and caked.  That was a bad sign; it suggested
the man had been bleeding out for some time. 
He may have already lost
too much.