The Dying & The Dead 2 (13 page)

The Savage looked at her.

“No idea. We never heard from them. I
set off to Golgoth after that.”

“Who’s ‘
we
,’ anyway? You never
told us where you’re from. Do you have a home? A family?”

The Savage’s eyes looked sad for a
second, but the expression left him. He shook his head. “You saw the last of
them on Golgoth. My men. We had a place where we settled for a while.”

“What happened to it?”

“Same thing that happens to
everything else on the Mainland. The Capita.”

When Ed joined them, his skin
tingled. He couldn’t help looking behind him, and he half expected the infected
to have gotten back to its feet, spurred on by the smell of flesh. The scratch
across his arm stung. He knew he was immune so he wouldn’t become one of them,
but that knowledge didn’t help with the pain.

“What the hell happened to you?” said
Bethelyn.

Ed looked at his coat and saw that
blood was smeared on it. He took a breath. He didn’t want to seem scared,
because he knew what The Savage would do with that kind of reaction.

Back when he was a kid, his mum was
forever telling him off for coming home with clothes covered in mud. Once, he’d
had to hide a new pair of jeans at the back of the airing cupboard because he’d
accidentally burned a hole in them with a cigarette. He wondered what mum would
say if she saw him now, with his coat splattered red like a butcher’s apron.

The Savage walked on ahead.

“This way,” he said, and waved his
hand.

They followed him for five minutes
across the forest. Ed darted his gaze left to right, expecting infected to
crawl from the undergrowth or pounce from behind a tree. In front of them, The
Savage stopped walking.

“Shit,” he said. He kicked at the
ground. “I hate this bloody place.”

When Ed caught up, he saw what had
angered him.

The forest in front of them was an
impenetrable wall of thick bushes. They were so thorny that it looked like
daggers were growing amongst the leaves. Just off the centre, the ground
changed into a rough rock path. The problem was that the path was completely
blocked off by a tangle of wood and rock.

“Someone doesn’t want us to come this
way,” said Bethelyn.

She was right. The blockage in the
pathway clearly wasn’t something that had come about naturally. It seemed like
the logs and the stones had been jammed in there by something that didn’t want
the path to be used.

“I don’t really need to ask,” Said
Ed. “but I will anyway. This path was the shortcut, right?”

The Savage grunted. As he paced from
left to right in front of the pathway, Ed saw that his eyes were squinting in
anger.

“So what now?” said Bethelyn.

The Savage stopped. He swung his leg
and kicked a rock in front of him, but the blockade didn’t budge. He kicked it
again, and this time gave a cry of pain and then hopped away.

“Which way do we go?” asked Ed.

The Savage straightened up. His
forehead creased into wrinkles.

“Only one bloody way we can go,” he
said. “Through the middle of Loch-Deep. Right through Ripeech’s living room.”

As Ed heard the name again, a shiver
ran through him. He wished there was another way to go but looking around them,
he knew that the forest wouldn’t give them the easy way out.

They heard a scream from somewhere in
the distance. This was too loud and too pain-filled to be an animal. He thought
it could have been another deer, but the scream came again, and Ed knew it was
something worse. Far away in the forest, a man cried out in agony.

Chapter
Thirteen

Eric

The guards were predictable, to a
point. Eric knew that as soon as darkness filled the sky and the immune were
escorted back to their cabins, the guards’ minds would turn away from
discipline and focus only on drinks and cards and sleep. At the back of his
cabin, Eric had found that part of the wall was loose as if someone had cut it
away. Perhaps before him, some other enterprising DC had thoughts like him;
that he didn’t want to be cooped at up at night, listening to the crying of the
men and women as their scared minds resisted the exhaustion of their bodies.

Eric slipped out of his cabin and
stepped into the night-time breeze. Worries about Kim hung over him like a
cloud, and as he crossed camp, all he could picture was the pale-faced girl
clutching her stomach.

He looked ahead of him. The row of DC
cabins were cloaked in black. Beyond them, at the edge of camp where the guards
and other camp employees slept, lights glimmered in the windows. There was a
cabin on the east side next to one of the fences. Eric honed in on it.

Right now, he knew, Goral and Allie
were sat in the cabin. Allie was enjoying the meal that he had won in the race,
and at this very moment he was probably stuffing his face with a pie or something
equally delicious.

He crept across camp. When the oval
light of the watchtower swept by him, Eric sunk to the ground and stayed still.
In his head, he pretended it was like a wasp. Eric used to be scared of wasps,
and whenever one came near him he’d flinch and prepare for the inevitable
sting. Mum had taught him that if you just stayed still, the insect would get
bored and leave you alone.

It was in that way he managed to
cross camp and get to Goral’s cabin. It was made of the same material as the
ones that housed the DCs, but a light shone dimly in the window. On the front
door, watching over anyone who walked by, was the head of a hog, severed at the
neck and fastened to the wood by nails.

He knew he couldn’t go through the
front door, and he couldn’t risk trying to pry open a window. Instead, he
walked around the back of the cabin. There was a crawlspace underneath it. It
was only a foot and a half wide, but Eric was able to squirm underneath as long
as he didn’t mind having his nose pressed against the ground. After wriggling
his way through, he found a hatch. He strained to open it, careful not to make
a sound, and in a few seconds he climbed up into Goral’s cabin.

He found himself in the bedroom.
There was a smell of incense in the air, and he heard faint whispers come from
next door. Next to the bed there was a framed picture with a young boy and girl
with their arms around a tall man.

He opened the door. Beyond it was the
living room. Goral and Allie sat at a large wooden table with their backs to
him. The table was made from dark plywood, and a gold trim decorated the sides.
The DCs’ cabins seemed like they would blow down in a breeze, but the Capita
had opened their wallets for Goral, it seemed.

The surface of the table was covered
by plates of food. Eric’s mouth watered as he saw sugared strawberries, pies
with triangle pieces cut out, and steam rising from a bowl of stew. This was
all stuff that Kim could eat.

Goral scraped his chair back, and the
sound sent a jitter through Eric’s spine. Ducking low, he stuck to the wall and
crossed the room until he came to a small space that had been cut into it for
storage. Above him, long trench coats hung from hooks. He ducked into the
crevice and slowly wormed his way behind the coats, so that he could still see
out but wasn’t in danger of getting caught.

Goral’s wiry body looked as thin as
the frame of the chair. A robe hung from his shoulders and trailed down to his
ankles, making him look like he was wearing a gown. He reached in front of him,
pinched a strawberry between his fingers and popped it in his mouth.

“You don’t have a sweet tooth, do you,
boy?” he said.

“I like the pie,” said Allie.

While the old man looked thin against
his wooden chair, Allie seemed engulfed by it. His feet dangled a foot above
the floor, and he had to strain to reach the plates in front of him. His
fingertips were covered in pie and gravy.

At the side of the room there was a
bookcase, but only one shelf was dedicated to novels and the rest were given to
a manner of strange objects. There was a bleached skull with curved horns that
almost scratched the wood above it. One shelf was full of papers that had been
rolled up, and they looked so old that they might crumble at the slightest
touch. Below was a pot with two thin sticks hanging from it, and smoke drifted
from the ends and filled the room with the smell of spices.

Though a fire burned inside a stone
hearth, something about the room felt cold. The spice incense mixed with the
aromas of the food and became so rich that Eric’s stomach stiffened. The trench
coats hanging from the hooks in front of him were made of leather, and he had
to look away as he breathed so as not to take in the sweaty smell.

Goral pulled the stew dish close to
him. Rather than pour some into a bowl, he dipped his spoon into the pot and
ate from it. Some of the brown liquid stuck in his grey whiskers. He dipped the
spoon again, and offered it to Allie.

The boy looked at it and paused. Then
he shook his head.

“Just the pie for you, is it?” said
Goral. Eric imagined that the incense came from the same place as his accent.

“Grandma used to make beef pie. She
usually went to the butcher’s, but sometimes she killed one of the cows in the
field.”

“And I bet they made quite a noise
when she did that,” said Goral.

Allie nodded. The frame of his chair
loomed over him.

“I think that’s enough food for now,”
said Goral, and pushed the stew dish away.

Eric realised that the old man wasn’t
wearing his mask. Come to think of it, had he ever seen Goral wearing one? In a
camp full of the mask-less immune, you got used to seeing people’s faces. It
was only the guards and Scarsgill who kept themselves covered.

Eric looked across the table. He saw
the stew and the bread and the fruit, and he imagined Kim’s face as he took it
back to her. Helping her was worth the risk of being caught, and it was only
the idea of her being able to eat something that stopped him from shaking.

“What’s your surname, Allie?” said
Goral.

“Gill.”

“Interesting. Very interesting. Do
you know where that is from?”

“My mum.”

Goral laughed. It was a strange
sound, almost squeaking.

“No, boy. Family names all have a
meaning. Someone named ‘Johnson’ used to be the son of John. Someone called
Tailor had an ancestor who mended clothes. Where do you suppose Gill came
from?”

Allie looked around him. The flames
of the fire danced in the shadows and looked like they were playing across his
face. He looked at the pie.

Goral reached forward and put a bony
finger on Allie’s cheek. He gently turned the boy to look at him.

“My name is Goral Vitch. Can you try
and guess what Vitch means?”

Allie shook his head. Eric’s ankles
hurt, so he carefully lowered himself to the ground. The leather coats swung a
little, and he put his hand out to stop them. Goral looked in his direction,
and Eric froze. The old man turned his attention back to Allie.

“Back in my village, there was a man
named Haren Vitchinich. Haren was a greedy man, and he liked to have feasts
like ours all the time. But we’re only having it as a treat. We’re not greedy
are we, Allie Gill?”

Allie shook his head.

“Haren asked the people in the
village to pay taxes on everything they grew in the fields. Sometimes this
meant that families would go a little bit hungry, but Haren didn’t mind that.
One day he found out that a farmer had been hiding some of his food so that he
didn’t have to give as much to Haren. So do you know what he did?”

“Put him in a camp?” asked Allie.

Goral gave a soft smile.

“No, Allie. Haren took the man, and
wife, and his two little boys, and he put them on a bonfire and set fire to
them in front of the village. People started getting scared. Some people,
terrified that Haren would suspect them of hiding food, would tell him that
they had seen others doing it.”

“The other townsfolk didn’t like
these people. They were too scared to say it to their faces, because they knew
Haren would get mad. But behind their backs, they would call these tell-tales
‘the Vitches’.”

Goral leaned back in his chair. His
robe brushed against the floor. He looked at Allie, and the smile left his
face.

“So, Allie. Do you understand where Vitch
comes from now?”

Allie looked at the food in front of
him. Eric could tell that he had lost his appetite. Eric’s only grew stronger,
though. He could almost taste the beef pie.

“What’s the matter?” said Goral. “You
seem shy.”

Allie squirmed. “I’m full now,
Goral.”

“Mr Vitch.”

“I’m full, Mr Vitch. Can I go back to
my cabin?”

Goral nodded. “Certainly. I just have
one last thing for you. A present for winning the competition.”

Goral pushed his chair back. The
effort seemed to strain him, and Eric wondered how old he actually was.
Sometimes a smile would play on his face and he looked no older than sixty, but
at other times, the way he moved seemed old beyond age. Maybe they had to pry
him out of a coffin each day.

The old man got up and walked across
the room and into his bedroom. He sniffed at the doorway for a second, and then
walked in and closed the door behind him.

I hope I closed the hatch,
thought Eric.

Allie leaned forward. He strained to
reach a grape on a plate in front of him, and he put his weight on the silver plate
and sent it spinning off the table and crashing to the floor. The metal made a
clanging sound that filled the cabin, and Allie looked around with wide eyes.

Eric looked at the grapes on the
floor. His stomach tightened so much that it hurt. If it was this bad for him,
then he couldn’t even imagine how Kim must be feeling. At least he could eat
the stuff they put in front of him. One morning in the canteen, Allie had told
Kim to ask the guards to give her something else. When Eric heard that, he
almost laughed at how naïve he was.

He knew that this was his chance.
There was a table full of food across the room, and nobody but Allie there to
see him take it. The question was, could he trust Allie not to say anything?

Allie leaned off his seat and dropped
onto the floor. He walked over to the bookcase and traced his fingers along the
spines. Even feet away Eric could see that the books were old, and the titles
on the spines were written in a language he didn’t understand. Allie picked up
a book. The cover showed a full moon, with pale hands pushing through the mud
beneath it and trying to reach up to it.

It was now or never. Eric could just
walk over, take as much food as he could carry, and then get back to the cubbyhole.
After that, and it was just a matter of waiting for Allie to leave and for
Goral to go to sleep so that he could go back to Kim.

Come on,
he thought.
Do it for her.

His heart thumped. He wanted to move,
but something held him back. He knew that being caught here meant death. Or
worse, even. Perhaps in Camp Dam Marsh, death was an escape. Then again, maybe
Goral would just smile at him, give him a wink and tell him to leave. Perhaps
he’d look the other way. He certainly didn’t seem to fill the room with cold,
like Scarsgill had on the train.