Iain McKinnon - Remains of the Dead

“Come on,” Cahz said, stepping over the broken glass.

Carefully treading through the doorway, Ryan followed close behind.

“You got that torch?” Cahz asked, his weapon pointing at the gloomy corridor ahead.

“Somewhere… Ah! Here.”

He hooked the handles of the plastic bag over his wrist and with the whir of the dynamo the dim yellow light started to dispel the insidious darkness.

Before them was a short corridor that led to a set of double doors.

With his carbine hard against his shoulder Cahz, cautiously moved forward.

“Follow my aim,” he whispered to Ryan.

The inadequate wind-up torch cast a pulsating glow of dirty yellow light over the desolate school. Impeded by the awkward position of the improvised papoose and the bag of cans dangling from his arm, the light dimmed and grew with Ryan’s ungainly cranking. With clumsy jerks Ryan frantically tried to illuminate Cahz’s sweeps.

It was a conflicting situation, the two men moving stealthily and with purpose while all the time the child strapped to Ryan’s chest wailed.

They reached the end of the corridor past the small reception area and restrooms unmolested.

Cahz stretched out with his left hand and opened the swing doors, his weapon still trained. The door swung to with a loud creak. He stepped through, using his foot as a doorstop for Ryan.

The light died as Ryan negotiated the door. When the puny light came back on, the corridor was just as empty.

“What now?” Ryan whispered.

“We check…” Cahz stopped whispering and spoke at a normal volume. “We check the classrooms. And there’s no point whispering with Rebecca crying.”

“It’s not her fault, man. She’s only a little baby. Every time you fire off with that thing you scare the shit out of her.” Ryan sniffed the air. “Literally.”

“I’m sorry I upset her, but I’m not going to fuck around. I know this can’t be any fun for her.”

“At least give me a warning in future,” Ryan said in a conciliatory tone. “I could cover her ears or something.”

“Let’s just find a room we can get comfortable in,” Cahz said. “And I’ll give you a hand changing her.”

“What if there’s pus bags in here?”

“If there were I’m sure they’d have come to greet us, or at the very least started whooping for joy. Now let’s get dried off as best we can and see about signaling the chopper.”

Safety

“Found these in the canteen,” Ryan announced as he came into the classroom. He tossed a bundle of dishtowels in Cahz’s direction.

Cahz was already naked, sitting on the only adult-sized chair in the room, warming his hands by the fire.

“Thanks,” he said, catching the cloths.

“Ingenious,” Ryan said nodding at the makeshift clothesline.

Cahz had knotted together a line of skipping ropes and was drying his fatigues over the fire.

“Adapt, improvise and overcome,” Cahz quoted as he rubbed his wet hair with the small towel. “They’re going to stink of smoke, but no one ever died of a smell.”

Ryan pulled up a miniature plastic chair and sat down on it. His knees were up by his chin as he squirmed, trying to get comfortable.

“This is no good,” he said, admitting defeat and sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“Did you take a look outside?”

“Yeah, but it was too dark to see anything,” Ryan said. “I could hear them moaning and rattling the fence, but there can’t be more than a handful of them.”

“What’s that?” Cahz asked, looking at the tin in Ryan’s hand.

“Canned milk,” Ryan said. He pierced the lid with the tin opener. “I thought Rebecca might like it since we’ve run out of crackers.”

“How you going to feed it to her?”

“Spoon it in, I guess,” Ryan said, brandishing the utensil. “Got one from the kitchen.”

“Listen, Ryan…” Cahz stopped rubbing his hair. “About earlier…” He looked down into the fire and summoned up the courage to speak. “I’m sorry.” He looked into Ryan’s eyes. “I’m sorry for the shit I pulled on you. I was out of order.”

“You lose anyone close before Cannon?” Ryan asked.

“Sure. Friends, family, girlfriend.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, I mean up close. I mean right in front of you?”

Cahz folded the wet dishcloth and put it to one side. “I’ve seen countless people get devoured or put down-”

“That’s not where I was heading. Have you seen anyone you cared for die in front of your own eyes?”

Cahz looked back down at the fire and nodded gently.

“When Sam died everything collapsed for me,” Ryan said, looking at the baby as he opened the tin of milk. “I held her in my arms as she went. I felt the tension leave her body. I heard her last breath. I felt her hot blood on my fingers. I mean, like you, my friends and family died when all this shit kicked off, but that’s different. I know they must be dead but I wasn’t there with them. I mean, I know my dad is dead; I had to put him down, but I didn’t see him die. I just saw him as one of them. It’s a hard thing seeing someone you love die. I dealt with it by going on a bender. I drank every last drop of alcohol that was left in that warehouse. I didn’t want to think about it, to feel it. I saw you in that same place this afternoon.” Ryan flicked the moisture from his cheek. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m just glad you snapped out of it quicker than me.”

“Thanks,” Cahz said.

Ryan fed a spoonful to Rebecca and the two men sat quietly by the crackling fire. The wind and the rain outside drummed at the windows.

“You ever thought of doing it?” Ryan asked.

“Doing what?”

“What Cannon did.”

Cahz pursed his lips in thought. “No, not really.”

“I have,” Ryan said. “Nothing serious. It became kind of normal. There were a lot that first year. I remember I walked in on one. He had the noose and the chair all ready and I walked in as he was just climbing onto the chair. And do you know what I did?”

“No,” Cahz whispered.

“I apologized,” Ryan laughed. “I said sorry, looked at my shoes and walked out. Like I’d walked into the men’s room and saw him taking a dump. I said sorry and walked out, embarrassed that I’d disturbed him. How fucked up is that?”

“You didn’t try to stop him?”

Ryan shook his head. “Nope. I’ve seen so many, but never right in front of me. You know you’d wake up one morning to find someone’s taken an overdose, or break into someplace to find a body with a blood-splattered suicide note. It became normal.” Ryan waved the spoon towards the window. “You know, normal like not in the normal world normal but in the fucked-up world normal.” He laughed. “Did that make any fucking sense?”

“A little,” Cahz said.

“We had this one woman-Petra she called herself. I don’t think that was her real name, by the way. She went on and on about it. Talked all the time about how she was close to killing herself, but she never did. Then we had that first one. An older guy slit his wrists and… Elspeth cleaned that up like she did after Sam.” He shifted uneasily and placed a hand on his stomach as if he were suffering from indigestion. “Well, once he’d done it, that was the taboo broken. We had four that first summer.” Ryan shrugged. “I guess what I’m saying is, who can blame them.”

Cahz took a deep breath. “I used to wonder if you went anywhere when you died; Heaven and Hell Sunday school kind of thoughts. Then all this fucked up world-as you put it-happened, and it didn’t seem possible anymore.”

Ryan smiled at Cahz’s use of his description and gave a snort of understanding.