The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) by Suchitra Chatterjee Page B

don’t remember getting over to the bleeding soldier, but I did, crawling on my belly across the floor, dragging off my cardigan and stuffing it into his neck and holding it down, hard.
    Our eyes met. He was trying to keep calm, he clamped one of his hands over mine and with the other one, he shoved a revolver into my palm, his eyes were looking over my shoulder and instinct told me what he was seeing…oh Jesus…
                  Everything I have to say was happening in slow motion. I had never believed that happened in real life. I thought it was a movie thing, but I can tell you everything at that moment was moving at a snail’s pace at least that is how I perceived it.
    Two years on I can still visualise what happened next. Gregory lurching toward us, arms outstretched, teeth bared over the remains of his lips, his body pumped full of holes leaking black goo down his once pristine white shirt.
                  Wolf was sent flying by a blow to the chest from one of Gregory’s swinging arms, he smacked into the concrete wall behind him and he was momentarily winded. Captain Lacks-Renton was desperately trying to reload her gun from where she was crouched near the office door.
    Have you ever gone underwater and listened to how far away everything sounds above you? Well that was how it felt for me right at that very moment.
                  My hand rose upwards as if it was on an automatic switch. I felt the weight of the handle as I aimed for the face of a man I had had once bantered with, whose neck wound I had recently bathed, whose life had been since my arrival at the home, intertwined with mine.
                  “I’m so sorry Gregory,” I whispered. The gun I was holding was a military issued Glock 17. Jack, a foster brother, loved anything military. At just 12 he had been a virtual encyclopedia on wheels about all things military. He liked nothing more than to tell me all he knew about guns.
    I would listen to him, go on and on about the different types of guns that were available to various armies across the world and how they should be held, how to aim them and how to shoot.
    Jack wanted to be a soldier, he told me, but we both knew that was never going to happen, like me he was disabled, in a wheelchair, but he loved to read, to learn, to desire, for that was all he could do, dream and desire.
                  Not every disabled person is the sum of their disability; they can be more than that. Moreover, it was only now in the midst of a carnage I was beginning to realise this despite living the life of a disabled person for so long.
    The tip of my forefinger pulled on the trigger. I instantly felt the recoil rush up my arm, but somehow I managed to keep my aim in one direction. I followed my line of sight instinctively, and the bullets that whistled out of the barrel finally blew what was left of Gregory’s head completely off his shoulders.
    The force of the bullets pushed him away from us. Flesh, muscle and brains showered the room and he staggered, swinging from side to side like a wounded beast, his head was gone but there was noise coming from his body, like a hissing sound, as if someone was swiftly deflating a pumped up piece of rubber and as the last bit of air escaped the once gentle giant fell down onto his knees with a thud.
                  Just like that. He fell to his knees, no head on his shoulders, just a bony stump where his neck was, there was no blood, only black streaks of gunge and there he knelt, still as an obscene stone monument placed on a plinth in Trafalgar Square.
                  I stared at him, my eyes were watering as my arm dropped and the empty magazine fell from the handle onto the ground. My other hand was still pressing down on the neck of the wounded soldier, still alive, but badly hurt.
                  Captain Lacks-Renton was back on her feet, heading in my direction, shoving