Iain McKinnon - Remains of the Dead

CRISIS!The headline cried in thick bold letters.

Ali smiled as he read the half truths and fantasies that were passed off as news. Even as the world had collapsed the media was turning a buck. He remembered the trouble the copywriters had had keeping up the panic. Every day dozens of broadsheets and tabloids had to think up a new and more frightening headline to trump the last. After THE DEAD WALK!there was very little impact any others could make. And for once the scaremongering of the media was deficient.

Ali opened up the paper to see a picture of the Eiffel tower listing and broken, smoke billowing from the Parisian skyline. The unenlightening article was entitled ‘Paris falls’. The one telling line wasn’t in the piece, it was under the picture. In small letters it read ‘Representation’.

Ali smiled again, looking at the mocked-up photograph.

“Why’s the Eiffel tower bent?” he asked the newspaper as if he expected it to answer. “What are the dead doing gnawing at the steel girders?”

Ali laughed at this notion. He gnashed his teeth at the newspaper and laughed. He laughed at the world that had to re-enact scenes from war of the worlds to enthral ignorant readers.

Ali laughed until he became aware of how lonely a sound it made echoing off the bare magnolia walls.

Stock

Cahz looked down at the city from his vantage point. It was a different sight to the one he had experienced flying over at daybreak. The height of the chopper was comparable to the elevation of the office block he now stood on, but it was very different. Maybe it was the changing light-the pinks and golds giving way to broad daylight? Maybe it was the fact Cahz knew he was stranded.

Cannon interrupted his commander’s thoughts. “So, boss, what do you think?”

Cahz slowly circled round the flat roof. “I’m no expert, but it sure looks big enough.”

“Good. So, what now?”

“What now, indeed,” Cahz replied, looking at the bristling mast of satellite dishes and aerials. “We’ll need to fell these antenna.”

“Blow it with one of Bates’ claymores?”

Cahz stepped over to the steel structure and tried to rattle the solid struts. He rubbed his chin. “Hmmm… I don’t think the claymore will have enough power to take it down. There was some D.I.Y. store stuff in one of the crates. If we can find a torch, or even just a saw in there, we’ll be fine.”

“If not?” Cannon asked.

“Adapt, improvise, and overcome,” Cahz replied.

Cannon gave a snigger.

“It might not be enough though,” Cahz said, looking down at the canyon between the office block and the next. Half a dozen storeys below, the streets were packed with the undead.

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know anything about wind shear and that sort of stuff,” Cahz admitted and he spat over the edge of the office block. The white spit tumbled down the gap between the two buildings for a moment before being whipped violently to one side by a gust of wind.

There was still a bitter taste on his lips like he’d spent all morning licking envelopes. He scraped his tongue against his teeth, trying to abrade the taste away. The frothy white spit was caught by the wind and dashed against a window long before it hit its intended targets on the street.

Up here their moans were softened somewhat by the wind. However, the stench wasn’t tempered by the breeze. The wind direction had changed from their dawn insertion and was now blowing out to sea. With it came the reek of the rotting dead mixed with the tang of smoke.

Cahz looked out onto the horizon. Just beyond the ragged skyline and the random pillars of smoke was the ocean. Out on that ocean was their base ship, a refuge in the middle of nowhere. Safety.

“Wish I’d paid more attention sitting up front all these missions.”

“Wind shear?” Cannon parroted. “It doesn’t feel that windy to me.”

“Not to me either. Just some LZ’s I thought looked fine, Idris would veto ‘cause of wind shear or cross winds or something like that. I didn’t pay any attention. I don’t know how to fly, so I didn’t bother to ask.” Cahz gave Cannon a friendly tap on the shoulder. “Still, buddy, it looks good to me and at the worst I’m sure we could get winched out one at a time.” He cocked a finger at the communications tower. “I’m sure we’ll be sound just as long as we get rid of that thing.” He took a few steps away from the edge of the roof and looked out over the city. “We can hold out here until the pickup. We’ve got water and some food. The entrances are secure. We just need to sit tight and wait.”

“Makes me wish I’d brought some cards with me,” Cannon said. He burbled up some phlegm and shot it out at the throng below just as if he were ridding himself of a cherry pip. Turning back from watching the spit’s descent Cannon caught Cahz’s eye. He said, “We do have one problem, boss.”

Cahz turned back from his companion and looked towards the service entrance that led back into the building. “Yeah, I know. Elspeth.”

“She’s gonna turn.”

“I know.”

“You know what needs done,” Cannon said, his voice betraying none of the emotion behind the issue.

Cahz only nodded. It was normally Cannon who was the quiet one, but Cahz sensed he wouldn’t leave the question.

“Lieutenant?” Cannon pushed.

Cahz knew Cannon was nervous. The big man was almost always in control always, confident his sheer strength could get him through. But Cahz knew the man was uneasy the minute he stopped referring to him as boss.

“I know, buddy. I know,” Cahz said. “I’m not going to ask you to do it.”

“It’s not that,” Cannon replied. “I’ll do her if you ask me. But when?”

“She wants to wait until she’s gone. I can respect that, but you’re right, there are issues with that. Do we lock her in a room? Set watch over her?” He turned to look his friend in the eye. “Do we cable-tie her to a radiator? There’s no good way to do this.”

“There never is,” Cannon said. “But it needs done.”

Cahz could see Cannon was waiting for an answer, a nice clean plan of events. All he could tell him was, “I don’t know, buddy. I guess we talk to her and Ryan.” He slapped Cannon on the shoulder again. “We’ll work it out.”

Cannon stood stoic and unmoving. Cahz sensed that the friendly pat wasn’t the conclusion to the matter he’d wanted.

In the deep pause that followed, Cahz couldn’t even see Cannon breathe.

“What is it?”

“The child?” Cannon said.

Cahz’s shoulders slumped as he thought of the angelic looking child. The soft pink skin framed by the grubby swaddling and the infected welt running the length of the left-hand side of her face. He let his hand slip from his friend’s shoulder.

“I’ll do them both,” Cahz said, looking down at his carbine. As he gazed at the slick black metal he couldn’t help but see the faces of the people he’d killed. Since the Exodus from the mainland, he hadn’t needed to administer the coup de grace. It had been years since he’d last been called upon to administer a mercy killing or watch over a friend to prevent their return. But all that time didn’t diminish the clarity-the look in their faces as he pulled the trigger. He’d forgotten the names of many of those he’d dispatched, but never the faces. Some of them cried. Some wore false smiles to try to help make it easier. And the ones who he’d guarded until their resurrection, in a way they were the easiest. He wasn’t shooting a human being. With their pallid skin, gaping maws and their vacant eyes, Cahz was destroying a monster, not the person they had once been.