The Undead Day Nineteen (2 page)

‘She’s fine,’ Lilly blurts, ‘Honestly, she’s completely safe.’

‘Her name is Meredith and she hates CATS,’ Milly informs everyone with an arm looped over Meredith’s head squashing her ears flat. The dog is enormous, dwarfing the tiny girl clinging to her and her soft brown eyes flick over the faces of the children almost as though checking each one of them. So many of them too. Boys rescued from the house that Billy was rescued from. Others brought along by survivors threading their way to the fort. Orphaned, destitute, terrified and now once again being rushed from another point of danger.

‘Billy, I have to go and help the others,’ Lilly says lowering her brother down close to Meredith and Milly, ‘Stay here with Milly.’

‘Come with you,’ Billy clamps on harder, refusing to be torn away from his big sister again.

‘I have to help the others,’ Lilly says softly, ‘Look, Meredith is here, give her a big cuddle.’

‘You can cuddle Meredith if you want to,’ Milly says in such a gentle tone it brings tears forming to the back of Lilly’s eyes, ‘She likes cuddles but she doesn’t like cats. We went to the zoo. Do you like the zoo?’

‘Billy, I’ll be back soon. I promise,’ Lilly says gently prising his arms from her neck and half turning him so those arms can wrap around Meredith instead. He takes the invite and sinks into the deep hair of the dog that shows no reaction to the two children now clinging to her, other than the two eyes that stay fixed to the top of the vehicle ramp and her ears now pricked back up alert and ready. Meredith lowers her backside, planting herself between the top of the ramp and the children behind her. Nothing passes. Nothing gets through without being seen and checked. A tendril of understanding sweeps through Lilly. The dog is staying. The dog will protect. At any other time Lilly wouldn’t even notice that sensation but these are different times and there isn’t time to question it, just an instinct.

‘How many adults have we got up here?’ Lilly stands up sweeping her eyes over the taller adults and counting as she goes. ‘Who knows first aid? Medical training? I need two of you…’

‘I did first aid at work,’ a young woman stands up from the middle section of the children.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Amy.’

‘Amy, who else?’ Lilly asks, looking round, ‘The hospital is full of injured children…’

‘Yeah I can come,’ another woman says reluctantly when no one else volunteers, ‘I did my certificate a few months ago.’

‘Thank you,’ Lilly says genuinely, ‘Please come with me. Billy, I’ll come back as soon as I can,’ she bends to kiss him on the forehead with another quick hug before rushing off with the two woman following behind. ‘Forgive me but I don’t know your name,’ she says to the second woman.

‘Hannah,’ the woman says politely with a tight grimace, ‘How bad is it?’

‘Bad,’ Lilly says dipping her eyes for a second, ‘they don’t have time to remove the bodies and do triage on the children…’

‘Bodies?’ Amy asks, cutting in with an audible swallow.

‘Some grenades exploded in one of the rooms…’ Lilly explains, selecting her words carefully, ‘the debris caused multiple injuries and several fatalities. Stay to the edge,’ Lilly speeds up to get past fires still burning. On the far side she sees Howie and the others wrenching water pipes from the walls to fight the flames and more figures beating at the tents to get them away from the walls. She leads them through the mess and the heat that wafts over their faces with a stench of chemicals and thick smoke that stings their eyes. Hands over mouths and staying low they get quickly to the door and through into the complex of rooms full of screaming, writhing children holding broken limbs, shattered ribs and clinging to mates that lie silent and unconscious.

In the blink of an eye Lilly can see all order has been lost as the doctors rush from patient to patient while glancing constantly to the rest of the wailing children. Heathcliff sways on the spot from the pain in his nose and the sheer pressure of the situation. Lisa scowls, suffering her own pain and a thrumming headache that refuses to ease off despite the pills she’s swallowed.

‘Lilly!’ Anne shouts clapping eyes on the three women.

‘What first?’ Lilly asks seeing Amy and Hannah stare round at the confusion within the main room.

‘Fucking bodies,’ Lisa shouts, ‘Get them moved, we’re tripping over them.’

‘I need dressings,’ Andrew twists round with fresh blood spattered over his face.

‘Hannah,’ Lilly says turning to the woman on her left, ‘Go into the back rooms, find bandages and bring them to stack on the main table. Amy, they need the deceased moved…can you do it?’

‘I er…’

‘Just bloody get them shifted,’ Lisa screams with such fury it sends a fresh spurt of blood pumping from her nose.

Amy nods, swallows and seems to square her shoulders with an attempt at firming her resolve and into the mess she heads. Moving to the bodies pushed from the beds onto the floors as the doctors rush to give aid and treat the next patient. She grabs the wrists of a young girl, no more than nine years old and starts dragging her down the central aisle past the injured kids to dump the corpse outside. A sound of retching and she comes back in wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘Where does it hurt?’ Lilly heads to the first in the line waiting to be seen.

‘Arm,’ the boy says through gritted teeth.

‘Do you feel sick?’

‘No, jus’ fuckin’ hurts, you get me?’

‘I do,’ Lilly says softly, ‘just stay still and we’ll help you when we can, okay?’

The boy nods with rapid breaths blasting through his nose. Lilly looks down the line seeing the ones that are moaning and gripping limbs, looking past the screaming ones, looking beyond the ones swearing and crying. She heads to the first silent child. An Asian boy with thick dark hair and the first signs of a wispy beard showing on his chin. Fingers to the neck. Fingers to his wrist. She opens his eyes trying to see if his pupils dilate from the light.

‘I think this one is deceased,’ she calls out.

‘FUCK IT,’ Lisa roars spraying more blood from her nose, ‘WE CANNOT WORK LIKE THIS.’

‘Get a grip,’ Anne hisses, ‘Lisa…LISA.’

‘This is insane,’ Lisa mutters stepping back from the bed holding the patient she was treating.

‘Lisa,’ Anne calls out in a softer tone, ‘Triage with Lilly…we’ll do these. Lisa…LISA!’

‘What?’

‘Do triage with Lilly, we’ll do the patients…’

‘Triage?’ Lisa asks confused as her mind starts closing down.

‘I need your help,’ Lilly rushes to the doctors side, grabbing a soft dressing from the table she places it in the doctors hand and gently pushes the same hand up to stem the blood dripping from her nose. ‘Help me…I think that boy is dead.’

Lisa nods and allows herself to be pulled gently down to the Asian lad while holding the gauze to her face.

A simple task now. Check for life. She can do that. She checks the heart first, using her stethoscope. She feels for a pulse in the neck and wrists. She opens the eyes and shines a light.

‘Deceased,’ she says flatly.

‘Amy, this young man needs to be removed,’ Lilly says holding Lisa’s wrist to move her down the line to the next silent child, ‘Check this one.’

Lia nods again. Stethoscope. Neck. Wrist. Eyes. Light. ‘Dead.’

‘Amy, this one too. Hannah, can you help Amy please…we’ve got more bodies than I realised.’

‘Dead,’ Lisa says at the next one and reels back on her heels shaking her head at the shock of it all

‘Dead.’

‘Dead.’

‘Dead.’

The bodies mount up. The corpses carried or dragged down the room to be piled outside to smoulder and singe near the flames and heat.

‘Dead….NO,’ Lisa freezes with her eyes wide, ‘Alive…she’s alive…ANNE.’

‘Coming.’

‘Lilly, move over,’ Lisa switches back to her skills and training to gently lay the girl out as she first runs her fingers up the spine checking for back injury. ‘Okay, lift her up…easy now…’

‘Over here,’ Andrew calls out while heaving a boy from a bed to a chair, ‘you’ll be fine, just sit still,’ he says as the boy screams at the pain in his broken leg being jarred from the motion.

Broken arms. Broken legs. Crushed skulls. Bones fractured and dented. Crush injuries. Burns and scalds. Teeth knocked out and gunshot wounds from rounds sent flying as they detonated from the armoury. As the bodies are removed so Lilly, Hannah and Amy set to applying pressure on wounds and holding children steady as the doctors reset broken bones or dig into flesh to remove the bullets and fragments. Blood sprays out. Vomit is brought up. They mop and clean. Spraying anti-bacterial spray on the floor and wiping down the beds and tables as best they can. Gloves should be changed between each patient but such is the pace that gloves are only changed as they remember to do so.

Heathcliff sways constantly, his legs seemingly weak but he pushes on, using his years of knowledge and expertise in orthopaedics. Stitches are given. Wounds cleaned and those not at risk of instant death are sent away. Antibiotics, Penicillin and pain-relief are given out like smarties with Lilly, Hannah and Amy becoming dispensing chemists.

‘Take these.’

‘Drink this.’

‘Go outside, up the ramp and wait with the other children.’

In the chaos order is clawed back. Painfully slowly and at times they lose more than they save with crush injuries left longer than the prescribed time and deadly toxins flooding the young bodies. CPR done time and again, chest compressions and one of the girls pumping the balloon on the mouth mask in a vain effort to get the heart working again. Death is called more times than life is saved and those young are dragged and carried to be stacked to smoulder and singe near the flames and heat.

Three

Slowly. Gradually. With sweat pouring down faces and minds frantically learning as they go so the odd one or two sent to traipse up the vehicle ramp become a trickle to limp along and up past Meredith lying down with a young boy and girl curled round each other sound asleep at her side. The women with the children on the top of the wall receive the once armed kids with warm smiles and soft words. Bringing them back into the world of maternal instinct as the adults fight fires below and bellow with deep voices that have broken from the maturity given them by the years they have lived.

‘…go outside, up the ramp and…’

‘Yeah I got it, I heard you before,’ a boy says trying to smile at Lilly but showing a grimace of pain instead.

‘The painkillers only take a few minutes to kick in,’ Lilly smiles and touches his thin shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ he nods and stands up, ‘Thanks,’ he says almost surly but too hurt, too tired and too confused to sound anything other than near on helpless.

Lilly stands up stretching her back and turning slowly to see Amy rubbing her eyes and Hannah sagging against a wall. The three look at each other with eyes that have now seen all there is to see of the human body.

Lilly checks the floor. No more corpses to be moved. The worst of the blood and gore has already been sluiced and washed away. A quietness starts to settle, from sedatives given as freely as pain relief from doctors who know that a sleeping body repairs faster than one awake and crying. Heathcliff slumps in a chair looking deathly pale. Anne tends to a young girl, smiling with eyes full of care and a gentle hand that strokes the skin of the child as she falls slowly to sleep. Lisa works like a robot, rubbing salve into the burns of a woman given morphine to numb the incredible agony of her scalp nearly melted away. Murmurs sound out. Bodies twitch and jerk. Bodies that lie in beds, on tables and on the floor. Those at too much risk to be sent out and held back in whatever space they can find to monitor.

‘Coffee,’ Anne says quietly, easing back from the now sleeping girl, ‘I need coffee…’

‘We need blood,’ Heathcliff grumbles from the chair, ‘…we need radiography and nurses trained in trauma…we need beds more beds…yes,’ his voice trails off with a long exhalation of air, ‘We need many things.’

‘But we can start with coffee,’ Anne says staring over at the older doctor, ‘Lisa, get some rest. One of the girls can do that. Lisa?’

‘Huh?’

‘Go rest,’ Anne says wincing at the amount of salve applied to the burn and realising Lisa had once again switched off to work on auto-pilot.

‘I’m fine,’ Lisa says, irritated at being disturbed.

‘You need to rest.’

‘I need you to stop telling me what to do.’

‘Lisa,’ Andrew says sharply, ‘Enough, take five.’

‘But…’

‘Just bloody rest,’ Heathcliff booms then grunts from the pain radiating through his nose into the back of his skull, ‘And someone get me some blasted codeine.’

‘You need anti-inflams,’ Andrew says glancing over at him.

‘Can’t. Guts got acid,’ Heathcliff says darkly, placing a hand over his stomach.

‘Jesus, Cliff,’ Andrew says rolling his eyes with a heavy sigh, ‘You’re a doctor from the bloody dark ages. The back room is packed full of Omeprazole.’

‘My grandfather used to take that,’ Amy says, recognising the word.

‘I think half the population were on them,’ Andrew says.

‘That and anti-depressants,’ Anne mutters.

‘I was on anti-depressants,’ Hannah says then shrugs when the doctors look over at her.

‘Which ones?’ Anne asks.

‘Sertraline.’

‘We’ve got loads if you need some,’ Anne offers.

Heathcliff snorts with disdain, ‘Anti-depressants during the apocalypse? That’ll help.’

‘I’m fine,’ Hannah says recoiling as she takes the senior doctors words as a slight against her, ‘But thank you.’

‘Oh don’t you worry,’ Heathcliff continues, staring into the far distance, ‘Let us know if you feel down or anxious. We’ve got pills for everything. Just don’t get injured…or burnt…or break a bone…What happened out there anyway?’

‘Lani blew the old armoury out,’ Anne says before Lilly can reply.

Heathcliff snorts again with his favoured response to hearing anything he doesn’t like, ‘She turned then.’

‘I don’t know,’ Anne says looking at Lilly, ‘Lilly? Did you see?’

Lilly thinks before answering knowing full well that Anne was right there tending to Maddox as Lani heard the radio message and started the descent into madness. She looks at the doctor trying to fathom the reason for the evasiveness but Anne focuses on rolling the dressing in her hands and doesn’t look up. ‘I’m not sure what happened,’ Lilly says, making out like she’s thinking about it, ‘Lani just snapped…but I went over in the boats to bring the others back.’

‘Snapped or turned?’ Andrew asks.

‘Did you see her eyes?’ Heathcliff cuts in.

‘It was dark.’

‘Lani was screaming at the kids,’ Hannah says taking a step closer into the conversation, ‘We all heard it…she was hitting them with her gun then she shot Darius and Jagger…like just shot them for no reason.’

‘Is that true?’ Andrew asks, looking at Lilly.

Lilly pauses, knowing she has to tread carefully, ‘Lani did that yes. Like I said, she sort of snapped…but then I know from talking to Nick what they’ve all been through together…’

‘But she was murdering innocent people, is that right?’ Andrew asks and Lilly feels the pressure of the room weighing down as every pair of eyes focus on her, waiting for her measured and calm reply. Even Lisa stops and stares over with a baleful expression, almost as though she wants to hear Lani turned.

Again Lilly chooses her words and makes sure to look at Andrew then round at the others as she replies, ‘I think we need to be careful about the terminology we use. Saying Lani murdered innocent people is factually incorrect and, I would respectfully suggest it is also inflammatory. I wasn’t there at that point, I was bringing Howie back in the boats but if Lani shot people then those people had been armed just minutes before and had been holding her team captive.’

‘How old are you?’ Heathcliff asks, recoiling slightly.

‘Fifteen,’ Lilly says, adding some confidence to her voice. ‘I do not know if Lani succumbed to the infection or if she simply snapped from the pressure of everything they have done.’

She stops speaking and holds her head high while feeling awful for lying. Lilly hates lying. One lie leads to two and on it goes with a web of deceit that threatens to catch you out at any second. Lani
did
turn. That was fact. Lilly saw the way Howie stalked at her with the dog at his side. She watched, hardly daring to breathe or make a noise for fear of sparking something as Howie walked seemingly without fear towards someone he loved who was now infected and holding a rifle aimed at him. She felt it too. The energy pouring from the man. Something primeval that was both dark and light.
I see you.
She knew Howie said that to the infection and not to Lani.
I see you too.
The infection, the disease, the thing inside of Lani said that. It wasn’t Lani speaking. Or was it?

‘It’s hardly relevant,’ Anne says with an air of resignation, ‘I think perhaps we were trying to focus on something we know nothing about instead of…’

‘Instead of what?’ Lisa asks.

‘Instead of doing what we were brought here to do,’ Anne says.

‘I thought we were brought here to help them understand the virus,’ Lisa says with an edge to her already bitter voice and a glance at Andrew and Heathcliff.

‘We’re doctors,’ Anne says, addressing the other three, ‘Not scientists. Not virologists. Not haematologists. Medical doctors. We should stick to what we know. Bloody hell, Lisa. We injected blood from one patient into another! An old man lying on a patch of ground with a gun pointing at his head. Where’s the science in that? We knew nothing of either patient’s history or medical background…’

‘Research has to start somewhere,’ Heathcliff says defensively.

‘No,’ Anne says, shaking her head and folding her arms in an effort to telegraph her firm belief, ‘Besides…’

‘The old man survived didn’t he?’ Lisa says.

‘He did,’ Anne concedes, ‘So on that basis we can simply take blood from Lani, Howie and the others that show immunity and inject it into anyone that feels sick or poorly. Is that right? We’ve got a hospital full of seriously injured people,’ she says sweeping her arm round the cramped room, ‘why don’t we start now? Go on. Someone go and ask Howie to come and bleed all over our patients.’

‘Anne,’ Andrew says with a sigh and a tired hand rubbing his tired face.

‘No, Andrew. That is exactly what we did with Lani and that old man and on the basis, as Lisa put it, that he survived, then surely we have irrefutable scientific fact that everyone here will miraculously heal.’

‘We’re not saying that,’ Andrew says tightly.

‘No? What about this woman with third degree burns to her scalp? Surely we can try her can’t we? Lilly, go find a gun to point at her head while we drip blood down her throat.’

‘Anne…’ Andrew’s voice rises as the point she is making strikes home.

‘Ah I know,’ Anne says with malicious delight, ‘Lisa, you’ve got a broken nose and no doubt a thumping headache and probably some concussion going on…’

‘Stop,’ Lisa says quietly.

‘Put yourself as the next test subject in our scientific study. See if it takes the pain away or makes your nose get better.’

‘Anne, stop it. Please just…’

‘Why not, Lisa? You were more than happy to sacrifice the life of an old man. You’re injured now. Or we can use Heathcliff. How about it Doctor Stone?’ Anne says, staring hard at Heathcliff.

‘Good God, Anne! Let it rest. We’re all tired and this is not the time…’ Andrew cuts in.

‘Then look at yourselves,’ Anne says firmly, ‘Look at what you did. You took a young woman and tazered her when she wasn’t willing to do as you wanted. The fact that she was electrocuted may have been the action that made her bloody snap! Have you thought about that? The shock and disorientation of being forcibly separated from her group? That she was isolated. Sick. Alone. Shocked? Have you any of you considered for one second that by playing God you caused this?’

Lilly watches the other three go to reply but something in the words spoken by Anne and the firm tone of the doctor make them stop. One by one they absorb the implication and the defiance starts to slip. A night of hell, of watching children die one after the other and dumping their small bodies on the floor to be dragged away and just the suggestion that they played a part in what made that happen is enough to sap the already dwindling energy from all of them.

Anne sees it too but there is no gloating from the sudden victory of the argument. She doesn’t look smug or satisfied but as tired and exhausted as everyone else. Silence descends. An uneasy reflection on the actions they have taken. Lilly can see how it happened too. Hospitals have protocols. Everything has protocols with fail safes built into processes so that if one person makes a poor decision others will stop and rectify it. Everyone is accountable for their actions, or rather they were accountable. Now there are no processes. No fail safes. Three medical doctors decided to do something, so they did. They believed they were right and sought justification from each other. The fact that one of them did not agree did not stop them. They did it anyway.

Maddox chose a course of action but there was nobody to oppose him either or tell him he was doing the wrong thing. Or did he do the wrong thing? Lani did turn. Does that mean Maddox was right? If Lani had stayed in the hospital would any of this happened?

Easing away from the doctors, Lilly folds her arms and walks slowly down the main aisle to the door with too many strands of thought whirling round her head with each one of them screaming to be taken as the most important.

That’s not our way.
Nick’s words float through the confusing fug.
We have to do the right thing.
Maddox
thought
he was doing the right thing but Howie would have
done
the right thing. Paula, Clarence and the others would soon tell him if they thought he was wrong. That’s it. That’s why they work so well, because of the collective experience and Howie’s respect for that experience and knowledge coupled with an ability to make sound decisions under pressure. Find Howie. He can’t leave. He has to stay and get this place safe.

As the decision is made so she steps through the door into the world shifting from night to day and a sky already lifting with the first rays of the sun highlighting the mess inside the fort. The ground runs sodden and filthy with blackened water. The fires now extinguished but with wet heat hanging in the still air. She looks over to the old armoury and the gaping hole in the wall. Even from here she can see through to the sea on the other side.

She looks round, sweeping her eyes along the perimeter to the new armoury, searching for Clarence’s bulk to use as an identifying marker for where the group are. She’s tired. Her eyes sting so she closes them for a few seconds and tries again. The first thing she sees are the bodies dragged from the hospital stacked on the ground. People walking slowly along the edges of the ruined mess of burnt tents in the middle. Her eyes scan each person, each group, each section and the first seed of worry starts to sow. She can’t see Clarence. No Paula and Roy. She can’t see the lads or Nick anywhere. No Howie and Dave.