Iain McKinnon - Remains of the Dead

Ali looked across at the dilapidated office block, its sandstone walls grimy with soot and moss and all the other discolouring that five years of the apocalypse and a lack of maintenance had accumulated. The maintenance crews, the cleaners, the office workers and a hundred other careers had all amalgamated into one profession: denizen of hell. Most of the undead that had congregated wore the same uniform now: tattered brown rags, pale blue skin and a gormless open maw.

Here and there Ali could still pick out the odd noticeable individual. A soldier in a bio-chemical suit with his gas mask torn off, a hiker with his backpack still secured by its shoulder straps his thick jacket with white puffs of stuffing poking out from the rips, and Ray-

Ali shook his weary head and let out a lonely sigh.

Among the zombies gawping up at him was Ray. There were raw chunks of flesh gouged from his body where the zombies had ravished him. His familiar glasses were missing and his face was caked in his own dried blood, but it was unmistakably Ray. Ali’s friend these last four years was now reduced to a mindless corpse.

Even with a hundred hungry ghouls feasting on his bones he had revived before the ravenous mouths had time to consume him. And no matter how fresh the kill, once they had reanimated no zombie would eat them.

“I am truly sorry, my friend,” Ali said.

He closed his eyes.

Chamber

“What the fuck happened here?” Cahz said, stepping over a dead body. Once through the broken gap in the makeshift defences, he had been confronted by an extraordinary scene. It looked like the stairwells had been barricaded and sealed off. The office furniture piled up to block the entrances and the space created by their absence resembled a campsite. There were tents, camp beds and piles of provisions all laid out in an orderly pattern. The only thing that wasn’t orderly were the blood splatters, bullet holes and dead bodies.

“Defence in depth,” Cannon said absently, looking at the make do redoubt.

“What are the tents for?” Elspeth said absently.

“Privacy I guess,” Ryan offered.

“The Whisky Deltas break in?” Cahz asked, looking round the breached stronghold.

“Nope, not a single W.D. in here.” Cannon nudged a corpse with his foot. “These poor bastards have rotted to mush. The roaches and flies have seen to them.”

“W.D.?” Ryan asked.

Cannon answered without acknowledging Ryan, “Walking Dead.”

Cahz continued to prowl round the site, occasionally pulling open the flaps on tents with the muzzle of his rifle. He prodded at a flap of leathery skin on a cadaver’s skeletal rib.

“That’s an exit wound,” he observed, looking at the shattered bone. “This guy died from a shot to the chest. What the hell happened here?”

“When we found this place,” Ryan looked across at Elspeth, “What, four years ago?” Elspeth shrugged. “Well, the corpses were in better condition. You could see some had their throats cut, others shot.” Ryan gestured to a stack of crates. “There was food and water and guns and ammo and everything you’d need to hold up for months. Ray called it Masada.”

“Masada?” Cannon asked.

Cahz stepped back to the group. “First Jewish uprising against the Romans in something like fifty A.D.”

“Ray reckoned the same thing happened here,” Ryan added.

“Do one of you want to fill me in? I ain’t that clued up with Jewish history,” Cannon grumbled.

“There was a Roman siege at a place called Masada. The Romans built a massive ramp to breach the defences. It took months to build but when they finally got over the wall everyone was dead. Even though they had plenty of supplies, rather than being captured and crucified or sold into slavery they decided to commit mass suicide.”

Cannon kicked a corpse with a gunshot wound to the head. “Yeah, well, nobody shoots themselves in the cheek to blow their brains out.”

“At Masada they drew lots,” Cahz said. “Each man would kill his family and then they in turn would kill each other until only one man remained. Then he would be the only one who had to commit suicide.”

“So you’re saying the same thing happened here?” Cannon asked. “It was Jonestown massacre all over?”

“That’s how Ray and Sarah saw it,” Ryan answered. “Surrounded with no way out, they committed mass suicide.”

“It’s a bit unlikely, isn’t it?” Cannon wonder aloud. “Could it not just as easily been looters?”

Ryan shook his head and pointed at the crates. “There were still a ton of supplies when we found the place. Kept us fed for a month. No way looters would have broken in, killed a group of heavily armed people, and then left without ransacking the place.”

“They all drank the Kool-Aid,” Cannon said reluctantly. “Still it’s a bit sick.”

“Technically it was Flav-R-Aid,” Ryan mumbled.

“Hell, Cannon, we’ve seen a dozen things just this fucked up over the years,” Cahz pointed out.

Cannon chewed his lip. “Suppose.”

“Well, let’s make this place secure,” Cahz said. “We need to be sure we can get to the roof and check it’s suitable to land a chopper. Ryan, you know this place better than us.”

Ryan nodded his agreement.

“You and Cannon check that out. Go scout things out up there. I’m going to start making an inventory of what we can use in here.”

“No point,” Ryan said. “We gutted the place of anything useful.”

“I want to know that for sure. You guys might have missed something. Now get a move on.”

Cannon gave a nod and turned for the stairs.

“Cannon,” Cahz said. Cannon stopped and whipped round. “Go up one staircase and down the other. Don’t go onto the other floors, but keep your ears open for other residents. We’ll sweep the place clear only if we need to.”

“Got it boss.” Cannon made a salute and jogged away.

Ryan hesitated. He looked at Elspeth and the child she cradled.

His daughter was still whining, her cheeks flushed, the scratch down her face puffy and prominent. Elspeth looked cold and grey. Her skin had a waxy sheen to it and her eyes looked sunken. Ryan had seen that pallor so many times before. The condemned look of the infected.

“You comin’?” Cannon called back.

Elspeth was Samantha’s mother and they shared the same hair and the same eyes. And now Elspeth shared the same haunted expression Ryan had seen on Sam when she’d realised she was going to die.

“Yeah, sure,” Ryan said softly and turned to follow.

Cahz slung his carbine behind him and marched up to the crates.

The various wooden and plastic boxes weren’t as ordered as he’d first thought. Cahz guessed that at one time they had been neatly stacked, but that Ryan and his friends had seen no need to tidy up after their foraging.

He squatted down on his haunches and gave a huff before opening the first one.

Inside was an array of bandages and other basic first aid.

“Here,” Cahz said, offering a Mepore dressing.

“Oh, what’s the point?” Elspeth sighed.

Cahz nodded and tossed the dressing back.

“It doesn’t hurt now anyway,” Elspeth said.

“Gone numb, huh?” Cahz didn’t look back to make eye contact. Instead he opened the next box.

“After all this time…” Elspeth sucked in a sharp breath. “I mean… Well, I don’t know what I mean. We’d survived all of this, Samantha and me.” She looked down at the sleeping child in her arms. “It was a shock when she died. I thought I could console myself with my granddaughter. There was always a reminder of Samantha. But she reminds me too much sometimes. It’s all so unfair. I mean, who dies in childbirth these days…” Elspeth paused for a moment. “I mean, no one should die in childbirth in this day and age, what with the medicines and machines and doctors. If we’d have had them Samantha wouldn’t have died. She’d be here to look after her baby girl just like I looked after her.” Elspeth looked up, her eyes wet with welling tears. “That’s how things are supposed to be. Not this nightmare.” She took in a deep breath that transformed into a sob. She started crying.