Road to London: City of the Dead

X
July 11th

Latiwa was slapped awake harshly. On an impulse brought upon by dreams of blood and horror she thrashed out wildly while keeping her eyes sealed shut. A pair of hands grabbed her forearms and suppressed them. She squealed and kicked out with her legs like a child in mid-tantrum. Israel hushed her, taking the kicks as if he couldn’t feel them. Latiwa opened her eyes. Upon seeing her boyfriend’s stubbly face, the cruel hands clutching her became a safe haven. Warm affection trickled off of them and onto her skin.

She tried to smile but could not, denied so by a trauma she couldn’t bring herself to remember. It was then that she looked down at herself and realised that what she had previously mistaken for affection was in fact thick, blackish blood. She screamed as she watched it drip off of Israel’s face and chest and onto her clothes.

Though she felt her lungs bellowing she couldn’t even here her own voice she was so afraid. But she could. Confused she stopped and listened to the room. It was alive with screams. Not hers but others’. So loud that it was impossible to hear anything else.

She looked around from her seat on the floor. Everything in every direction was tainted with gore. There were bundles of people huddled on the ground, clothes stained red. Others were writhing and contorting while groping at deep cuts or severed limbs that pumped blood incessantly and agonisingly. The stretched faces of the wounded and those who were trying to help them displayed a panic that Latiwa had never seen before on a human being. Only on the half dead rabbits she had caught in traps back in Nigeria, the seconds before she ended their lives.

“You have to get up!” said Israel. There was no room for argument. Israel hoisted Lat off the ground by her arm and slung her across his shoulder. He effortlessly carried her through the room with her dazed head lolling over his back. Staring down at the floor as they traversed the wreckage, it looked from here like Israel was leaving a trail of morbid destruction in his wake. But Lat knew that even though Israel was a psychopath there was no way he’d ever be capable of enacting the atrocities that she was seeing right now.

Without meaning to, Latiwa vomited her boyfriend’s back. It was thick and yellowish and mixed despicably with the other bodily fluids that already stained the ground. Israel didn’t even flinch but Lat still apologised between heaves and tried feebly to brush the worst of it off of his favourite leather jacket. The sick was accompanied by a throbbing headache and
Latiwa realised she must have hit her head on something hard after fainting. A minor concussion would explain the wooziness she was feeling and the pain as well.

After passing most of the several hundred students in the hall Israel stopped. Latiwa wondered what destination it was that they had reached but was answered swiftly when Israel called out Conrad’s name and slapped the seated boy repeatedly on the shoulder, just as he had done to her earlier. After failing to yield the desired results Israel curled his hand to a fist and changed his tone with a suddenness that made Lat jump.

“Oi! I can tolerate this shit from the girls, but not from you mate! Get up and stop acting like such a fucking axe wound!” Possibly revitalized or possibly just confused by this insult, Conrad slowly got to his feet. Latiwa, who was still upside down at this point, could only see his shoes. They were pointed away from her and Israel so it was obvious that Conrad wasn’t ready to look him in the eye.
“What do I do?” the voice was broken and frail, all strength replaced by a cutting and humbling fear.
“Don’t you dare ask me that!” Israel roared back. “Why the fuck would I know what to do!? You’re the boss, the man with the plan. It’s your job mate, I know it’s the last thing you need to hear right now but you gotta start telling people what to do or we’re all gonna go nuts. Soon.”

“But I can’t!” Conrad’s voice had regained volume but was still absent conviction. “I just... can’t, there’s too much blood.” With this closing statement his speech became a sob. A whining that can only come paired with true feelings of despair and helplessness. As soon as he heard this noise Israel punched him square between the shoulder blades. Conrad stumbled slightly but made no reaction and stayed facing away.

“No chance mate. You can’t afford to pussy out now. I’m gonna keep hitting you until you do something because to be frank mate, it’s the only thing I can do right now.” Nothing. Israel sighed and took another swing, not overly hard but enough to make Conrad lose his footing slightly. The movement of the action made Latiwa swing violently for a moment, not easing her nausea in the slightest.

On the third punch however Conrad reeled around and squared up to Israel. Latiwa couldn’t see but she imagined that he was red in the face and that there was anger burning in his eyes. “What the Heck are you doing you asshole!?” Even from seeing only his Converse trainers and his slim fit Henley jeans it was clear to Lat that he was shaking with emotion, be it rage or sadness she was unsure.
“Getting you psyched!” from the lift in Israel’s voice Lat could hear that he was pleased with himself. “You’ve got a shit load of work to do mate!”

*****

It had taken Conrad as little as forty-five minutes to collect himself and with Israel’s help restore some kind of order to the seven hundred people in the hall. Latiwa had figured out how to stand on her own two feet and was now helping to carry the wounded (some of whom were so bad that there screams had to be stifled with gags) to the West side of the hall. A head count revealed that thirty-two people had been injured so badly that they couldn’t or shouldn’t move by themselves. This was less than had seemed from the carnage earlier but was still a serious problem.

The first thing Conrad had done was shout down the entire building until those who were capable of remaining silent were so. Next, imitating the teachers who had done exactly the same thing since the day he had first arrived at the school, he ordered everyone to gather into their years groups and sit arranged in front of the main stage. Once this had been done with mechanical efficiency Conrad gathered every year eleven to the front of the hall, leaving everyone else seated in anticipation.

Over the following minutes jobs had been distributed and the hall erupted into action. Everyone who had previously been a year eleven prefect was assigned a year group they would be responsible for because the younger students were familiar with them and therefore would be more likely to co-operate. For now everyone else was either told to shift corpses or move the wounded.

The bodies of the dead students had been moved out of the hall along with those of the staff. At the moment they were simply laid out a few metres outside of the hall but they weren’t there for long. When the hurt were attended to by Svet and several of the other older students, the bodies were carried by two man teams to the Pit. The Pit was a twenty-by-twenty metre hole in the ground, located in one of the fields that the school had owned for centuries. It had been used for the last five years to dump all of the school’s food waste and organic matter as part of the local council’s ‘Sustainable Living’ programme. When a pit was filled, which usually took between four and seven years, it was covered with grass and a new Pit would be dug. Whenever anyone from this part of Cornwall was in need of organic compost they would take a spade to a Pit from around thirty years ago free of charge.

No one ever really went near the Pit otherwise because the smell was damn atrocious. On unfortunate days the wind would carry the stench right up to the school site and make everyone’s lives an absolute misery for a few hours until they got used to it. The Pit was the ideal choice to move the bodies to because it was well out of the way of the morally crushed students and the smell would never be noticed.
While she had been recuperating on the floor against a wall Lat had heard Conrad mercilessly put down a motion to have the heads of the staff and dead students (in fact anyone who had been bitten at all) smashed open and their bodies burned. He agreed with

James, giving in to ridiculous Hollywood inspired superstition could only be a fatal mistake.
It was about a twenty minute walk normally from the hall to the Pit so a round journey while carrying a human cadaver between two people would probably take well over an hour. Many of the people Conrad had dispatched on this duty were people he really needed around before he could make any big decisions so for now he was sitting tight and helping Svet out the best he could with those in need of medical attention. Lat was amused to see that he had brought the box of codeine and diazepam that he had confiscated from Israel out of hiding. By now several of the worst off were dead and dying and Svet was becoming ever more agitated as people continued to bleed out. Latiwa noticed that most of the screaming had stopped as the sources gradually lost consciousness.

It was because of this relative quiet that Latiwa and almost everyone else in the hall heard the commotion outside. It was getting louder and suddenly a dozen boys burst into the hall and hastily strode over to Conrad who was making a dog’s dinner of stitching up a tiny girl’s bloodied calf. Looking up from his handiwork, he asked them what was going on. Lat hobbled over to get in on the excitement and instantly regretted her decision as soon as she heard the words: “It’s alive,”

She was relieved to see Israel, James and Nathan come into the room, sleeves stained red. “Guys, what the fuck happened? I just heard something that better not be true!?”
“It’s true,” answered Nathan quietly.
“Chris Balham and Andrew Chou were carrying Miss Avery the maths teacher to the Pit when she just started goin’ mental.” Israel sounded enthusiastic but there was a clear and present fear in his voice just below the surface. “Her guts ‘nd shit were hanging out as well it was proper nasty!”
“What did they do?” Lat asked frantically, not wanting to have another of those things within a mile of her right now. The nausea was creeping back to her with tendrils of apprehension.
“Nothing, we were about to smash it’s skull open when Chou convinced us to tie it up and bring it back here and ask Prefect what to do.”
“What!? Are you a moron?” Lat was livid, “didn’t you see what those things did like an hour ago!?”
“Latiwa calm down,” James cut in smoothly, “It’s seriously not in any state to cause much trouble.”

Not ready to resign just yet, Latiwa tried to find Conrad in order to plead her case with him. She was surprised to see him already leaving the hall with Chou and a couple of others in tow. She followed them outside to the blood splattered courtyard. The Dead was twisting around on the floor in obvious agony. Israel had been telling the truth, it was using both of its hands to hold its intestines in its stomach but not with absolute success. Conrad was standing over it, Wayne’s bat tight in his hand.

Latiwa watched him stand there for a long time. She desperately hoped that he would end it right there and then. But he didn’t. He was pitying it. She could see why, though its features were stretched into a face that she doubted anyone alive could make, this person was all too clearly human. She had seen Miss Avery most days around school with a cup of piping tea in one hand and some shoddy canvass painting in the other.

“What are you going to do?” Lat wheeled around to see Svetlana standing right beside her. She had been so transfixed by the Dead woman that she hadn’t even heard the slight Russian girl creep up on her.
“I believe the question,” began Conrad, “is what are you going to do?”
“What?”
“You told me there was nothing we could do...”
“Conrad what the hell are you on about!?”
“Right at the beginning. I watched you cut up Sarah. You checked her vitals then you cut open her head and I watched. You told me you were sure they were dead and there was nothing we could do!”
“They were dead!” Svet screamed back, furious, “That tumour in her head was as big as a fucking golfball!”
“Then how the heck did she wake up!? And why in God’s name did Nathan have to cut her darn chest open! Eh?”
“You’re calling me a liar!?
“Well you must be because she does not look Dead to me!”
“Otebis'! You think I would lie about something like that you stupid Yankee suka!”
“No I think you were wrong! Now calm the heck down and stop callin’ me words I don’t even understand!” The two simmered for a few moments and were soon back to their normal selves. Lat had no idea how he did it back Conrad has a serious gift for getting heated situations under control. “Svet, how are the wounded doing?”
“okay I guess, most of the ones who are going to die are dead already.” Upon hearing this blunt statement Conrad looked at the floor and cursed under his breath.

“Is there anyone you can leave in charge down here for a couple hours?”
“Yeah I guess, Katrina was doing pretty well and I showed her how to cope with most of the things we’re dealing with in there. All she’d need to do is give out some codeine and stitch some cuts.” This was surprising for Lat, Conrad and probably everyone else present. Katrina was renowned for being a complete airhead and hearing that she’d found something challenging that she actually had some proficiency in was welcome news.
“Okay then, go tell Kat to get some people together to cover for you. Nathan, Chou, the three of us are gonna take Miss... this thing over to Science three. Svet join us when you’re ready.”
There were some nods of understanding from those concerned.

“Everyone else. We know the people down in Carmyu were in the same state as these folks this morning. If anything similar’s happened down there as did up here then we can’t afford to take no chances. Get everyone in that hall into groups of three or more, then tell em’ all to find weapons, fast. Israel I want everyone back in that hall in under two hours understood?” Israel gave a thumbs up to show he was listening and that he was exited there might be opportunity for some more head splitting.
“Okay then, I’m frickin’ serious. Two hours.”