Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead Read online

  I'm not sure how long I waited there, my eyes adjusting to the relative darkness of the rows of pharmaceuticals at the back of the shop, though it must have been at least an hour before I finally heard the door stop rattling and the corpse's moan diminish into silence. I tentatively cast a glance towards the front and saw the corpse had returned to its previous lazy struggle to free itself. I also spotted one or two new corpses staggering outside, obviously drawn to the noise the other corpse had been making. It would be tougher to leave than to enter, that was for sure, though I didn’t have to worry about that yet. I took the opportunity to grab a handful of packets of sugary cough drops from the counter, along with four or five of the lollipops the tall man had requested, feeling disgusted as I followed his instructions. I then moved behind the partition wall to the main storage area, keeping low and not standing up until I was obscured from the shop front.

  I almost yelled out as I tripped over the pair of black leather shoes, tumbling onto the floor and desperately scrabbling at the sports bag. I managed to pull the crowbar free and turned to be faced by the sight of a pair of legs, all that remained of presumably one of the pharmacists. The legs ended in a bloody mess of spine, ribs and rotting organs, though I could barely smell them due to the stench that was covering my clothes. I was relieved that I wasn’t being drawn into another fight but as I looked around I could see that this was going to be a hard task anyway. I could barely see a thing in the room, as the partition wall was a double edged sword, keeping me hidden from whatever senses the corpses were using but blocking out the light from the front windows to such an extent that all the stock was anonymous unless I held it directly in front of me. As I was casting my eyes around for a solution I saw a slim line of light on the floor towards the back of the room. As I moved towards it I saw that it was a fire door, connected up to a keypad and alarm system, the display of which was blank from lack of power. It would do as an escape route but I couldn’t risk using it now in case there was a battery back up. If I set an alarm off, my time within the pharmacy would be drastically reduced. There was nothing for it, I would have to go shelf by shelf, item by item, at least until I worked out the filing system.

  “What the hell are you doing now?” I heard Marcus ask. I glanced over my shoulder towards the fire exit but it was so dark I could only see his eyes, like burning embers in the shadows.

  “Leave me alone, this is none of your business,” I said, sliding along the floor as I checked one of the bottom shelves. I found a few syringes and pulled the bag into position, pulling my arm across and sweeping them all into it. They could be invaluable. I also found a few bottles of medicinal alcohol, although I only took one as I had no wish to fill the bag solely with the tall man's requests.

  “Everything you do is my business, everything,” said Marcus, taking a couple of heavy steps towards me. The floor seemed to shake but I tried not to let him see any change in my mood due to his show of power. “You’re half a man without me. Less than that. You’re a melancholic, narcissistic worm. You would be dead without me.”

  “That’s not true...” I started to say but Marcus bent down quickly next to me, his words sharp and hot in my ear, spitting his consonants so fast that my skull ached.

  “It bloody well is and you know it, sunshine. You've got a piss poor survival instinct without me helping you. I got you here, safe and sound. Now you’re throwing your life away for some old dear who’s going to be dead by Christmas anyway.” Somehow I could smell blood on his breath, even over the rotting body. What had he been eating this time?

  “Stop pretending you’re helping me. I know you released the dead in the harbour...” I said quietly, trying to move away from him surreptitiously. He stood up, almost brushing the ceiling as he drew himself up to his full height. The coat of skin he now wore was dripping blood into a pool around his boots, spreading over the floor in a red pool.

  “I did at that, I did. But my hand was forced,” he said quietly, his voice suddenly all too human and vulnerable.

  “You said ‘we’re ready’,” I said, remembering the shop shutters and Marcus' quiet, disturbing words.

  “We were ready. I’d known it was coming even if you hadn’t. So had Cato, it was why he suggested packing those rucksacks. We wanted to keep you safe, always, but when I’m told to do something it has to get done. There was no other option.”

  “Who...”

  There was no need to ask the question. I knew, of course, who it had to have been who had commanded and was probably still commanding him. I pulled the map from my pocket and saw Marcus’ eyes widen as he spotted it, the red tint in his pupils fading quickly as his skin blanched. He took a couple of steps backwards, breathing heavily.

  “She said you were getting comfortable. She said you were going to stay, or worse, get back on a boat and leave. That was why she wanted Eliza out of the way. That was why she threw her hands over your mouth...” he spoke low and fast, his eyes moving quickly around the room as if expecting the walls to cave in on him.

  “But she’s never spoken,” I replied, as I started scanning another box, which this time turned out to be useless hay fever tablets. I had to move quickly and try to concentrate on my job despite his presence. I could sense the tension winding up in the room, ready to unravel at any moment.

  “Not to you, no, not yet, but she will. She has plans. Cato and I can’t keep you safe forever. We’ve tried for so long but... she forced me to push you towards the mainland. I ride a tide of blood, fear and terror tethered to my chariot, driving me onwards, and yet it means nothing to her. She got her little hand, grabbed my beating heart, twisted... her fingers are so bloody sharp... the darkness inside is limitless...”

  He was babbling. I was about to confront him further when I spotted a locked cupboard laid into the wall. I knew what it would contain: the most restricted pharmaceuticals, exactly what I needed. I held my breath and moved my hands over the rotting remains of the pharmacist on the floor, finding the tell-tale bulge of a key in one of the sticky pockets. When I had extracted it, I was able to unlock the cupboard, revealing row upon row of controlled substances including several small bottles of the greenish, sickly sweet methadone. I threw a couple into the bag in disgust. What was I going to be party to? My stomach continued to turn but I had to be strong, I had a duty to Arthur and Dorothy.

  I was up to the middle shelves, when suddenly I found something I was after for myself, something actually necessary. There were a few penicillin derivatives of varying strength, so I threw them all in the bag, at least knowing that I could deal with any normal infection that might rear its head. All I needed was a good antipyretic but as I started to pick out the sound of shoes on the tiles in the shop – delicate, careful footsteps – I knew my time was up. Marcus took a few steps backwards, placing his hand onto the handle of the fire door. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows at the back of the stock area but I somehow knew it was wearing an expression of sorrow. I started to grab anything, pulling one or two boxes of each item into the bag, desperately hoping that when I had a chance to look in the bag I would find something I could use. I could hear Marcus’ breath, rasping and rough as if he was in great pain, as if even standing up was a chore. The footsteps... stopped.

  “Run,” he said quietly, as he pushed the bar down. The alarm started immediately, a high pitched wailing that was almost deafening. Despite the sound, I could still hear the answering calls and moans of the dead from the front of the shop. I risked a glance around the wall and saw three corpses lumbering into the pharmacy, their arms grasping and their heads casting about wildly. I looked back and saw that Marcus had gone, his bloody boot prints leading out of the doorway. I went to zip up the bag when a couple of bottles on the top shelf caught my eye, now illuminated by weak daylight flooding in through the open fire door. I looked closer at the label and saw it was quinine. Even though it was primarily used to cure malaria, I knew that it also reduced fever and vitally, it could be injected. I took bot
h bottles before zipping up the bag and slinging the strap over my shoulder, grabbing the crowbar as I ducked out of the back of the shop.

  Despite the overcast sky I still had to blink a couple of times to adjust my eyes to the light outside after the darkness of the pharmacy. The fire door led out onto a delivery road, one car’s width wide between high windowless brick walls still slick from the earlier rainfall. To my right I saw the road was crowded with corpses, still twenty five metres away but closing quickly, their arms reaching towards me. Whether they knew I was there or were simply reacting to the still blaring noise of the alarm I couldn't say, but I didn’t wait to find out. I turned and ran to the left, following the delivery road around to a corner to where it crossed another small back road behind the shops, the right branch leading out into what looked like a supermarket car park, with the left heading back to the high street. I stopped momentarily, almost slipping on some cardboard that had been scattered across the road but managing to keep my feet. I looked back at the crowd of the dead – most of which had stopped at the pharmacy, one or two scrambling and tumbling inside the fire door – and spotted three of them that had somehow noticed me lumbering in my direction. In some ways the way they moved was strangely childlike, singular of purpose with all other feelings or notions of self preservation overridden by pure desire.

  What was the intelligence level of the dead? Was it comparable to a two year old? A one year old? Was there any memory of their life ‘before’ in those liquefying thoughts, or were they simply being driven by the most primal section of the mind, the reptilian brain, closest to the brain stem? The fact that the dead, no matter their other shortcomings, could still balance showed that this section of the brain was at least partly functional.

  From out of nowhere I suddenly recalled the memory of an old diagram I had seen of the mind relating to thoughts, inspiration, cowardice... a strange way to separate the brain's sections but understandable. I had to wonder morbidly if the part of the brain still active in the dead had any capacity for emotion or pain. With no way to express it, there was no way to know, unless their moaning was not out of desire but anguish. I didn’t want to imagine the pain of actually feeling your muscles slowly break down over the course of months.

  I looked towards the high street. It seemed relatively clear, so I crept towards the intersection and peered both ways. I had come out between a flower shop and a card shop, both of which were relatively intact compared to the other shops on the street, obviously due to the lack of practical uses in their contents. That was all life was now, practicalities. What truly separated us from the dead was our minds, even though the only thing we could use it for now was to help us simply survive.

  I spotted Arthur's car a few metres away, a corpse still squirming under it, despite most of its torso having been crushed, leaving a wide gory trail behind the vehicle from point of initial impact. As I looked around I could see very little activity nearby. Down the street I could see thirty or forty corpses heaving and staggering outside the pharmacy, struggling to get into the building that was already full of the dead, as if they were attending an album signing. The dead had the ultimate mob mentality.

  I decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I moved closer to the car and tried not to think about the grisly mechanics of what I had to do. I thrust the crowbar's straight end down hard, the metal hitting the stone after passing through flesh and smashing the ribs of the corpse under the car. Its head snapped bloody teeth at me, one of its eyes hanging loosely on its ocular nerve whilst the other was a mass of jelly from the impact. I pulled and tugged, dragging the remains of its shattered body into the road and freeing the wheels. The car started to roll a little so I darted around to the drivers seat and opened the door, throwing the bag onto the passenger seat as it moved forwards, gathering momentum. I was about to turn the key in the ignition when I thought better of it, instead simply letting the car gather speed by itself as I gently pumped to brakes to keep it under control. I brought it to a stop just before the police station, pulling on the handbrake and collecting the key, before slipping out of the door in a crouch and pulling the bag with me. I slipped around to the back of the car, still keeping low as I unlocked the boot, pulling the right hand side door open and dragging my rucksack out. I reached for the side pocket and pulled out the small fold out knife that Marcus had given me at Eliza's. As I slipped it into my trouser pocket I smiled with grim satisfaction. Finally it had a use. I now had something up my sleeve, something to give me an unexpected edge at a vital moment.

  I locked the doors of the car before heading to the police station. A couple of the fresher corpses spotted me and broke away from the crowd at the pharmacy but I was close enough to my destination so that I could run around the side of the station and into the alleyway unmolested, before beating out a desperate knocking on the fire door.

  After a few excruciating seconds the bearded man opened the door, grabbing my jumper and pulling me inside. As I staggered forwards under the weight of the sports bag the tall man grabbed my arm and wrenched the crowbar from my grasp, before kicking my leg sharply in the side of the knee. The bearded man sniffed his fingers before hurriedly wiping his hand on his trousers.

  “What the fuck are you covered in?” he said, disgusted.

  “A disguise,” I said, disentangling myself from the sports bag and pulling myself painfully to my feet. “Now, please, I need to see Dorothy.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” said the tall man, grabbing one of my arms and pressing the tip of the kitchen knife between my ribs. I winced as I felt the blade break the skin but I tried not to give the man the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt me. “You’re coming with me first. Move, that way.”

  He pushed me forwards and I moved as carefully as I could, trying to stop the blade from cutting me further. The bearded man fell into step behind us, after recovering his crowbar from the tall man. They led me down the opposite branch of the corridor, away from the cells, until we came out behind the counter of the reception, which was covered in assorted improvised weaponry and many more candles. In fact, there were so many candles dotted around on benches and surfaces that the heat was almost unbearable. Around the corner to the left of the counter was a small corridor which led past the front entrance – the door that we had first entered the police station through – which was now barricaded with a table and several chairs. The corridor then turned back to the rear of the station, presumably reaching the cells from the other side. To the right there was the waiting area for the reception that had been turned into a huge “bed”, strewn with various cushions, blankets, and sheets. Even though most of the bedclothes looked relatively new, they were not free of the blood stains that seemed to be everywhere in this horrific building. My stomach felt heavy as I thought of what had happened here in the past and what was going to happen with my help, but if I didn’t administer the methadone then there would be two deaths on my hands, not Marcus’. I had no wish to emulate him.

  The tall man pushed me forwards, releasing me from his grip and rolling his neck, causing a sickening cracking sound as he flexed.

  “Get the junk ready, get a dose for her. Fuck it, two doses, she’s built like a house. Don’t make her OD though. You know what you’re doing, doctor,” he said, his voice thick with seedy lust. From the way he was looking at me, I could almost believe that I would be next...

  I did know what I was doing. I knew all too well. I slung the bag off my shoulder and placed it on the ground, before opening it and rummaging through the contents for a bottle of methadone. They would have to force it down their poor victim's throat but I had no doubt that they would have no problem with that. I tried to busy myself with the task at hand, checking the potency, working out the dosage based on a guessed weight. I had to keep this unemotional, a task that must be completed to save Dorothy. Heaven only knew whether she would want to be saved at such a cost though, to be brought back into this world where the living preyed on the living wh
ilst the dead waited for their chance. At least the dead had solidarity, a kind of brotherhood. We had fallen upon each other as soon as the shackles of law had been cast off.

  “Jason, go get her. Grab Freddy, you might need a bit of muscle to get her out of that cell.”

  The names were laughable, as a memory somehow dredged itself up from the depths. They were famous, weren't they? Characters in horror, here emulated by men, people, real people who thought that such acts were permissible as long as there was no one to see or stand over them. In their youth they must have dreamed of this, the freedom to act as they chose, to revel in rape and bloodshed. These were the best that the human race could offer, these were our Noahs in the flood of the undead. I couldn't help myself, retching and vomiting once again a stream of black bile onto a bed sheet, all that I had left in my system spat out as a curse on these foul demons.

  The tall man kicked me hard, slamming me into a bench as he waved the knife over me.

  “That's my bed, you stinking fuck!” he yelled as he kicked me again, this time in the leg. I felt the metal handle of my knife dig into my hip bone but possessing it gave me no comfort. How had it come to this?

  Shadows shifted beyond the candlelight as a man I hadn't seen before – presumably “Freddy”, no more than a teenager with a mop of dirty brown hair and a ragged t-shirt – staggered into the room, nervously pulling the arm of...