The Dead

Liam sat staring at the great solid lump that was the back of his father’s head. It was so familiar from countless drives. The pale bristles of his short haircut, the big crease in the skin that ran all the way across his scalp, the red rash where his collar rubbed against his wide neck. Greg always complained that most shirts didn’t fit round his neck. The collars were always too tight.

The hours Liam had spent in the back of the car studying this great fleshy boulder. He took after his dad. He had the biggest head in his class. When he’d had his glasses fitted the optician had been amazed. She said she’d have to give Liam adult frames.

He had a sudden flashback to a memory of when he’d been much smaller. Sitting in the car – not the new Jeep, the old one, the Shogun – and there being two heads in the front.

Mum and Dad.

It must have been a really long time ago.

Mum was gone now, back up to Coventry. She’d moved in with the man from the phone company. Daryl.

Liam visited her three times a year, once on her birthday, once at Christmas and for two weeks in May when Dad went fishing with his mates.

It suited all of them. Mum had never much enjoyed being a mum, and Dad was more fun. He did cool things with Liam. They went to the football, they went fishing, they watched DVDs together – old war films, mostly. They were Dad’s favourites: The Dam Busters, The Great Escape, The Longest Day, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Battle of Britain.

They walked Charlie on Hampstead Heath. Charlie was a boxer. They’d left him with Uncle Ray when they’d set off down to Kent all those weeks ago. They weren’t allowed to take Charlie on to the farms.

Liam wondered if he was all right. Maybe Uncle Ray was like Dad. Maybe he wouldn’t get sick. He hoped Charlie was all right. He loved him.

He loved his dad as well, even though he sometimes scared Liam. Dad could get really angry and when he was ‘in one of his rages’ as he called it, Liam had to try to keep out of his way. He was worst when he was driving. He would swear at other drivers and say the most horrible things. Once Liam had been with Dad when he’d got into a fight with another driver.

Dad had had a laugh about it afterwards but Liam had been really shaken up by it. He hated fighting himself, and spent a lot of time at school trying to keep out of the way of bullies. He never told Dad if he was bullied, because he knew Dad would only make it worse. Go round to the bully’s house and start a fight or something.

Liam watched as Greg coughed and ran a hand through his hair. A fine spray rose up as he did so, like a mist. Liam thought at first it was water, and then he realized it was a spray of Dad’s hair, like when you go to the barber’s and they leave all those sort of powdery itchy bits down the back of your neck and in your hair.

There was a bald patch where Greg had rubbed. And right in the middle of the patch was a spot. A single whitehead, glistening and fat with pus.

Liam held his breath.

He didn’t want to look, but he had no choice, the spot drew his eyes like a target. And Greg kept scratching at it, scratching and scratching, rubbing off more hair and making the skin around the spot red raw.

Greg coughed again, like he had something caught in his throat. He reached for his plastic water bottle and drank half of it in one long swallow. Dad’s party trick was to down a pint of beer in one go. He’d tried teaching Liam how to do it with a glass of water, but it always ended the same way, with Liam choking and Dad laughing.

‘You’re no son of mine!’ he joked.

You only had to look at pictures of Greg as a boy to know that wasn’t true, however. The two of them were identical. He supposed he’d be just like Greg when he grew up – strong and tough and not afraid of anything or anyone.

That would be nice.

He looked forward to getting home. It had been awful on the farm. With everyone dying and all that.

And then there was poor Little Paul, the farmer’s youngest son. Liam had made friends with him.

He shivered at the memory. He couldn’t help it.

Little Paul had got hysterical when his dad and all his older brothers had got sick and Greg had had to shoot them. Little Paul had been like a crazy person. Screaming, shouting, crying. And then he’d gone very quiet. Wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t talk. Stared at the wall.

Liam remembered how Greg had taken Little Paul out to the barn one night, and when he came back into the house his hands were all wet. He’d washed them.

Little Paul never came back.

Greg coughed, a long fit of it, and spat into a paper coffee cup.

When he rubbed his head again he exposed another bald patch.

There were three more spots on it, nestling in the crease of skin.

Liam felt a coldness creeping up his legs, as if his heart was sucking all the blood back into itself like a sponge. His vision was turning black and white, like an old film.

‘Dad …’ he said, just before he passed out.

25

‘He’s all right, he’s all right, give him air. He’s just fainted. Give him air. Liam … Liam … wake up, son.’

Liam felt a damp hand slapping his face. His eyes fluttered open. What was he doing lying on the floor? Dad’s big face looming over him. Boys and girls crowding round him.

‘You fainted, son, is all. Nothing worse than that. You feeling all right? Get him some water, one of you, come on!’

‘I’m fine, Dad. I’m fine.’

‘What set you off? What happened?’

Liam couldn’t say anything. He looked up at his dad like he was an alien. Someone already dead.

The spots.

The cough.

He couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say ‘You’re getting sick, Dad.’ Couldn’t say anything. Because saying it would make it real. And the reality of it was too terrifying to think about. If he didn’t say anything, maybe it wouldn’t happen.

Dad’s face was covered with a thin film of sweat and the whites of his eyes looked yellowish.

It had started like this on the farm. First Big Paul and his wife, and then the older boys.

It could be something else, though, couldn’t it? Couldn’t it? Maybe Dad just had a cold.

That was it. Just a cold.

Liam smiled at his dad who smiled back. Greg coughed and sniffed and wiped his nose. Liam saw a thin smear of blood along his finger. Had anyone else seen it?

Please, no. Not Dad.

‘Let’s get you up from there, son.’

Greg pulled Liam up off the floor, dusted him down and took him to the front where he sat him in the driver’s seat and stood looking out through the rain-spattered windscreen.

‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ said Liam, feeling like he’d let his dad down and shown weakness in front of the other kids. ‘I didn’t mean to. You’ve had to stop the bus and everything. I’m really sorry.’

‘We needed to stop anyway, soldier,’ said Greg. ‘It’s getting late and it’s getting dark. I wanted to try and push on over the river and get back to Islington tonight, but it ain’t go

‘Can’t we get home, Dad? If we go slowly?’

‘It’s too dangerous. Don’t want to hit nothing and damage the coach. It’s our lifeline. No, we’ll kip down here and hope the rain clears by the morning.’ He pressed his face against the glass of the windscreen. ‘Don’t seem to be no one else about.’

‘No, Dad,’ Liam pleaded, ‘not another night on the bus. We’re so close. If you go carefully …’

Greg sighed. ‘I said, Liam, it’s too dangerous. Look at it out there – it’s coming down like stair rods. Plus I’ve got a banging headache. It’s been a very stressful day.’