The Dead Boy (3 page)

            Everyone
had to answer to someone.

            'Sir,
are you seeing this?' said O'Dell.

           
'Is
this live?'

            'Yes,
Sir. The feed streaming now is current. Approximately sixty minutes since
introduction, primary effects in two confirmed subjects. Secondary effects of
airborne dispersal, I suspect, very shortly.'

           
'Culpability?'

            'Response
time from emergency services went as expected. Perimeter established with no
contrary indications of post-event breach. Traffic diversions are all smooth.
Primary area testing is still underway, and secondary area dampening is going
ahead right now - they're good teams, Sir. It will be a full sweep before
midnight. Zero residual effects, test parameters successfully limited to
primary area of effect, and media in play as we speak. Clean and smart and all
tidied away. Sir.'

            Silence,
then, from the other end of the line. O'Dell held his impatience in check,
along with his natural tendency to yell at slow people and shoot outright
idiots. The camera in his fist did not sway from the scene. Nothing wrong with
his right hand at all.

            'Sir?'
he asked, finally, his hatred of waiting beating his studied calm.

           
'The
effects in initial studies were variable, yes?'

            'Yes,
Sir.'

           
'I
was given to understand that post-mortem animation was extremely rare. I have
the statistics. I have your reports. Right here, in fact. 'An effect which
presents in less than 1% of viable candidates.' Does this sound familiar?'

            'Sir,
yes it does.'

           
'And
yet there are, in this first field trial, two confirmed incidents?'

            O'Dell
didn't assume for a second, ever, that he was the man's only source of
information.

            'Temporary.
Two minutes for the first and below one minute for the second. Considerably
shorter than our longest surviving subjects.'

           
'And
in this report, you stated, 'Secondary effects are more common by far. Within a
sample of one hundred subjects we can confidently expect seventy to exhibit
greater or lesser degrees of confusion, anger, and volatility.' Is that also
accurate, do you recollect?'

            'Sir.'

           
'Then
where in the fuck is my weapon?'

            O'Dell
lowered his head for a moment and stared at the ground. Not chagrined, but full
of rage.

           
Bite
it down
, he told himself.
Bide.

            'Yes,
Sir. I remember my words. If I may?'

           
'Please
do.'

            'The
dispersal method necessitated by an early public trial is imperfect.
Atmospheric saturation works well, but efficacy can only be adversely affected.
Perfection was never the intention, Sir. Not at this time. It's a test run and
the compound itself is still in developmental stages.'

            This
last he added carefully, though he felt like a parent explaining a simple
concept to a slow child.

            The
first shouts of real fear from the gaggle of men and women by the supermarket
doors began. O'Dell checked the screen to ensure he captured everything. He never
allowed avoidable mistakes in others and applied the same criteria to his own
actions.

           
'Ah,'
said the man at the end of the line.

            'Indeed.
As you can see, even vastly diluted, it remains more effective than any other
current chemical agent. Sir.'

           
So,
fuck you,
thought O'Dell, but he did not voice that thought, either.

            The
incident reached a natural conclusion in slightly under ten minutes. Only one
man remained, exhibiting extreme confusion. O'Dell watched the man walk from
the scene to the car park, where he sat on the bonnet of a Hyundai attempting
to clean the blood from his hands with his tongue.

           
'I've
seen enough. O'Dell?'

            'Agreed,
Sir. I think the footage, coupled with autopsy reports and data from any
survivors of initial exposure should more than suffice at this stage.'

           
'Then
get clean and clear. Good work.'

            O'Dell
closed down the phone and walked away. He left the bloodied man to his
endeavours. The fire teams would clear the scene soon, and those from outside
this tight circle of effect were already being loaded onto buses nearby.

            All
tidied away.

            He
drove away and took country lanes. He passed an army road block with no
questions asked, then turned south.

           
'Good
work,'
he said over and over as he drove, with his teeth bared and bright
in the dashboard lights, and his black eyes burning.

*

Ben
North's first thought, coming around from the blow to his head, was that his
back was broken. He could barely breath, and when he did the pain in his ribs -
on the right side, at the back - was excruciating.

            Blood
ran along his scalp, tickling and wet.

           
Maybe
brain damage,
he thought, but in an idle way, addled by his injuries. The
thought passed by without even a hint of panic.

            He
shifted a little, trying to feel the edge of his pain, and found it. Still
short of breath, his scream gurgled in his throat, dragging bile up. The edge
he found was something deep inside his lower leg. The smallest movement stabbed
at every nerve ending in his leg, and more besides, up his back and through his
guts, even.

            Frightened
tears welled in his eyes.

            Then,
after laying still and too scared to move again, he realised that his back
couldn't be broken.

           
I
can move. It's going to hurt...but I can.

            He
remembered, hazily, that he was a policeman. Policemen had radios. Gingerly, he
checked his body for a radio, but found nothing.

            Somewhere
above him, torn loose, the radio lay by a dead paramedic.

            North
didn't remember the paramedic right then, and he couldn't see far enough to
recognised the crumpled shape of Damien Cobb.

           
Nothing
for it.

            North
jammed his teeth together, stood and took some weight on his legs. Something
popped low down in his left shin. It carried right on popping - all the way
through the muscle and skin at the side of his calf.

            This
time, he had enough breath for a real scream. 

            When
he could think again, he wondered if he hadn't passed out for a while. This
time around he remembered more. The paramedic he'd tried to save. The traffic
accident just above him, and the explosion, and the awful heat.

            The
fire burned, still.

            Ben
thought he'd known fear, facing down drug addicts and tattooed lunatics with
mean dogs. He didn't know...he hadn't known. Never could he have imagined just
how
deep
fear could be. He felt it in his stomach, and then in his
bladder.

           
If
I pissed myself, would it smell like fear?

            People
were dead or dying up there in the flames, and he was too afraid to even shout
out for help. Right then, he hated himself worse than ever.

            If
he could make it from the dark in the trees even as far as the reach of the
supermarket lights in the distance, then someone would find him. At least then
he could just get away. A hospital. Pension. Disability.

            If
he was lucky, he'd have a limp for the rest of his life.

            Something
else blew, up on the motorway, and Ben's bladder finally gave in.

            Maybe
his father had been right. The elder Mr. North always said Ben had a streak of
yellow in him.

*

The
clicking sound was the dead woman trying to settle her false teeth back in her
mouth. Francis felt like laughing, for the same reason people sometimes laugh
at funerals. Some weird response to shock, she guessed.

           
I
can just walk the fuck away. This circus now officially sucks.

            But
the old woman latched onto her arm and pulled Francis close enough to clamp her
false teeth on Francis' sleeve.

            For
a moment, Francis' confusion ruled, and she couldn't understand that the old,
dead woman was actually attempting to
bite
her.

            It
didn't last long. Francis hit the woman with an open-handed slap and bounced
back on her heels - away. The only direction she was worried about right then was
away
. The woman dropped and kind of slid out, arms and legs losing
weight and strength and animation, so she looked just about as dead as any
corpse Francis had ever seen.

            'You
okay?' a man beside her asked. She swore, startled, before her heartbeat
settled back. The man who spoke had a weak, half-arsed ginger-looking beard.

           
Am
I?
she wondered.
Am I OK?

            Maybe
this is what nutters feel like all the time.

            'She's
dead.' She tried to find the words to explain further, but she couldn't.

            The
guy took Francis' arm and helped steady her.

            'Some
weird night,' he said, letting go of her arm.

            She
nodded, looked back at the man and saw he was pulling his belt free of his
trousers, and that what she took for a weak beard wasn't. A thin sheen of blood
covered the man's lower cheeks. He scratched compulsively with the nails on one
hand even while he undid his trousers with the other hand. He seemed entirely
unaware he did either thing.

            'Never
taken a shit on a pensioner before. You?'

            She
stumbled, walking backward.

            A
kid of six or seven years kicked an adult in the shins. Probably the child's
mother. The woman completely ignored the child and stared at the receipt for
her shopping. She seemed to be absorbed in muttering the numbers on the print
out.

            'What
in fuck's name?'

            The
man squatted down. 'What?' he said, like he was just buying a coffee or smoking
a cigarette.

            Some
people, like her, were horrified. The man with the bloody cheeks desperately
strained as he hovered above the dead old woman.

           
Everyone's
nuts.

            The
old woman's dentures were still stuck in her sleeve.

            Someone
screamed, and it wasn't her. Francis still walked backward. She couldn't risk
looking away. A few people tried to help others who didn't look like they could
be helped. A woman with one of those burlap looking shopping bags threw herself
face first into a thick metal pole, bounced back with a mashed nose and split
lips, then tried again. Whatever she was attempting to do to her face obviously
wasn't successful.

           
Run
.

            Francis
Drew Sutton was a long way from perfect, but she'd never been stupid.

            Other
people, sane people, like her, decided on the same course of action when half a
woman appeared at the entrance. She wasn't alive, like the old lady, Francis
realised. A security guard from the store was pushing the broken thing toward
the entrance. The remains left a slug-trail of blood and viscera in her wake. The
security guard made train noises as he pushed.

            'Choo-choo,'
he was saying. Didn't matter at all to Francis. By then, she had a good head of
steam going herself, headed wherever everyone else wasn't.

            Twenty
yards free of the insanity she still clearly heard someone say, 'Mind, you're
on my foot.'

            Francis
felt that laugh bubbling up again. She bit down on it.

            She
dismissed the idea of getting away in her car because she could see the
motorway was jammed. She thought about her husband, maybe calling him, and
dismissed that, too.

            Ahead,
though, there were plenty of blue lights. Where there were blue lights, there
would be police, and order, and sanity.

            She
ran at an angle toward the embankment, aiming to skirt the fires. The
embankment led up to the road, but to get clear of the heat of the fire, and to
the safety of those blue lights, she had to get through a narrow strip of
trees. Saplings mostly, but some of the larger branches on the mature trees -
poplars, she thought - snatched at her clothing and whipped at her face or caught
her hair.