dEaDINBURGH (9 page)

“Aaaaargh!”

Bracha was suddenly screaming as an arrow tore through his right hand with such force that it threw him backwards, off Stephanie.

Never missing a step of her run, Alys flew at Bracha. She brought the Sai in her right hand down hard on his left wrist, breaking the radius and ulna instantly on impact. He shook off the pain instantly, impossibly, and began to rise to his feet, but she was already bringing her other Sai around in a backhand strike to the upper right arm. She heard the humerus break and brought her forehead crashing down on his nose. Alys would like to have spent a few more minutes breaking more of the monster’s bones, but Steph needed her and Bracha was on his knees, arms useless.

As she threw him a final hate-filled glare, she became aware of the arrow in his right hand, just as another disturbed the air millimetres from her ear and tore across his right eye, leaving a mush of jelly and white gristle where his eye used to be.

Bracha climbed to his feet with the strength of insane rage and ran off down the street.

Turning to Steph, she kneeled and pulled her cousin close, not bothering to turn to look at the owner of the strong hand now placed on her shoulder.

“Let me see to her eye, Alys.” His voice was much deeper than she remembered but it
felt
the same.

Suddenly exhausted, she sat on the road and watched him carefully and methodically clean Steph’s wound, remove the useless eye and gently bandage the empty socket. His hood was raised; she hadn’t seen his face yet.

When he’d finished, he inspected the girl for a moment, brushed her hair over her ear with his finger and turned to Alys, lowering his hood as he did so.

“Hello Alys.”

He smiled at her.

Chapter 9

Joey

Alys punched him in the chest, knocking him onto his backside.

“Hey.” Joey picked himself up and grinned at her. “Not much of a thank you.”

“Don’t leave it so late next time,” Alys scolded him, trying to conceal a smile. Trying and failing.

Just then, the girl with Alys who’d been injured began stirring and crying for her.

“Shh. I’m here, Steph,” Alys told the girl, stooping to scoop her head up and cradle the kid.

”There’s something wrong with my eye,” Stephanie said. “I can’t see. It hurts.”

A fresh torrent of tears streamed from her one good eye.

Alys held her until the crying subsided.

 
“It’s okay now, Steph. The man has gone and he won’t be back in a hurry. Thanks to him.” She gave a sharp nod in Joey’s direction, noticing her cousin perk up at the sight of Joey’s face.

Stepping forward, Joey offered the kid a hand, which she took, and he hoisted her up onto her feet. Alys stood alongside the younger girl, one arm around her little waist.

“This is Joey. He’s my friend.”

Stephanie raised her eyebrows as she looked at him, a puzzled expression on her face.

 
“You don’t have any friends. Alys.” Despite the tears, she laughed at her own joke.

Alys smiled, and said simply, “Yes I do.”

“We should get going, Alys. Bracha will be back,” Joey said.

She raised an eyebrow doubtfully.

“After what we did to him? No way we’ll see him again anytime soon.”

“Yeah. I’d have said the same thing a week ago.”

Joey spent the next few minutes explaining what had happened with Bracha a few days earlier: about Jock and about the satchel and its contents. Alys had surprised him by giving him an awkward hug, instead of punching him like she usually did. She’d looked genuinely shocked and saddened to hear that Bracha had killed Jock.

Within half an hour the three of them had collected their things, made a brief and successful scavenge of the Eye Pavilion building for sterile eye-patches and antibiotics for Steph and began the walk back towards The Gardens, Joey explaining how he’d tracked Bracha to St Thomas Aquin’s.

“I considered stopping into The Gardens, well the fence-line at least, and warning your mother but my temper got the better of me and I went straight after him.”

Alys smiled at the notion of him turning up at the gates of The Gardens alone. “Probably it’s for the best that you followed Bracha, don’t you think?” she said, glancing at Stephanie.

She turned her attention back to Joey. “Have you read any of Jock’s journal yet?” she asked

He reddened a little and shook his head, subconsciously shifting his hand to Jock’s satchel which was across his shoulder and resting on his hip. “No. I was a little preoccupied.”

He should’ve just told her that he couldn’t, but he knew that Alys could read and didn’t want her view of him to be diminished.

Alys nodded. “What do you think that flash-thing is?”

Joey shrugged. “Dunno. Jock said I needed a computer to use it. Said it was my mum’s. I figured that I’d just hang onto it and hope that I came across someone who has the means to use it while I’m travelling.”

Joey suddenly came to a dead stop as he realised where he was. Standing at the junction of George IV Bridge and High Street, he touched a hand softly to the fence that formed the boundary of The Brotherhood’s territory. It was the first time he’d been in the area since the night he’d scaled the fences with Jock and left The Brotherhood behind. These people had once been the only family he’d known and, regardless of their motivations, had given him a moral compass (of sorts), food and a safe home for fifteen years. A wave of shame passed over him as he realised that he hadn’t thought once about his former home or the people he’d grown up with.

After a few minutes silence, Alys placed a hand on his shoulder.

“We should go. It’s getting dark.”

Joey still preferred the dark, or at least his eyes did, a throwback to his time in the underground crypts. Always, his most peaceful moments would come when he was in the absence of light. The darkness was a warm blanket around him and held no terrors. Recent experience had taught him that the monsters that walked in the daylight were to be feared more than imagined ones in the night.

As she made to scale the fence, Joey held her back. “I know a better way, easier.” He nodded at Steph, who’d been walking silently beside them the whole way, holding onto Joey’s hand.

Leading the girls through the ruins of the Bank of Scotland building, the three emerged on Lawnmarket and made their way quickly to the gates that separated The Gardens from The Royal Mile. Joey had pulled his hood up as they’d exited the bank, fearful that one of The Brotherhood would be on the surface. He couldn’t know how they’d react to his presence, but suspected that the underground cult had changed little in their philosophy, outlook or daily routine in the years he’d been travelling the north with Jock.

Picking the gate’s lock effortlessly, Joey slid through and then held back a little so that Alys could take the lead.

“Wise man,” she said.

“Yeah. I figured that your face would be more welcome than mine.”

Alys glanced at her cousin’s bandaged face.

“Don’t bet on it,” she muttered, cutting a glance sideways at her cousin, before leading the three of them down the Playfair Steps towards her home.

Joey watched her go and smiled, despite the circumstances. It was good to see her. She looked good,
Hell, she looked great,
and really, who else did he have?

Interlude

Fraser Donnelly

“Jesus.”

The man had been sitting at his post watching security footage from the dead city of Edinburgh for close to twelve hours. The pay was lousy, so were the hours, but he liked the solitude of his work. Being paid to monitor the CCTV network of the quarantined city was hardly demanding. More often than not he’d bring a bottle of vodka along on the night shifts and find entertainment in the lives of the abandoned.

His neck ached; it always did. His lanky frame wasn’t built to lounge around in a chair for twelve hours a day, luxurious leather, orthopaedic or not. Leaning to the left and then to the right, a series of loud pops and cracks preceded a long groan of relief from him.

Standing, he pushed his hands behind him to his lower back and puffed his chest out as he pushed, feeling the muscles lose their tension as he watched the teenagers and the young girl make their way down the stairs towards Princes Street Gardens.

The boss would want to know about this. Pulling his seat towards him, he spoke into his Comm.

“Fraser Donnelly.”

As he waited to be connected, he considered that although the extra money the Executive had been paying him these last few years for keeping a camera on this teenaged boy, Joseph, had been very handy, having to converse with Mr Donnelly, even by Comm, was never a pleasant experience. Still, the boy had crossed several zones since the old man’s death, and Mr Donnelly paid him to relay this sort of information. Squeezing his butt cheeks he forced a loud fart out to relax, amusing himself with the notion that Mr D might be able to smell it through the Comm. He doubted that the man’s facial expression would change in response, at any rate.

The face, neck and shoulders of Fraser Donnelly flickered into existence, forming a fully 3D holographic image on his desk top. Dressed in an expensive suit, appearance as groomed as always, Donnelly looked coldly in his direction. He never looked angry or even annoyed exactly but his disapproval was a laser beam.

“What is it, Paterson?”

Aware that he’d been sitting staring slack-jawed for a few seconds, Paterson reported the day’s events to his superior.

“Let me know if he leaves The Gardens. Other than that, don’t contact me again.”

Donnelly signed off abruptly.

Paterson relaxed into his seat and allowed a lazy and loud expulsion of gas to leave his backside, in retort. Reaching for the pack of Pringles to his right, he emptied a few into his open mouth.

“Once you pop you can’t stop, Mr D,” he laughed at his own fart joke.

Padre Jock’s Journal

In the early days of the outbreak, people were so isolated, too isolated, or perhaps too innocent to realise that what was happening was the new reality for them. What they had, what remained in the city, this was it from now on. Twenty-somethings sat on their PS4s, thumbing away their worries or aggression on
Call of Duty
or
GTA
, comfortable in the knowledge that the screams and death they heard outside their barricaded doors were nothing to worry about, nothing that could affect them, and that the police or army, government or whoever would sort it out. Some of them only began to worry when their broadband was cut off; some of them when their Sky TV disappeared. When the electricity went off and all electronic devices died, that’s when most people really started to get angry. When they couldn’t Google or Tweet or whatever the hell those idiots did. And then the smart ones got scared.

Leaving their once-comfortable homes and stepping into the real world instead of the virtual one, reality hit them hard. Food, heat, the hungry dead and survival became their primary concerns instead of clicking
Like
on some picture of a cancer-ridden baby or a kitten with a grumpy face, or perhaps completing their new shoot’emup. Some rose to the challenge. They fought and survived, for a while at least. Most learned the difference between a virtual Zombie and a real-life one pretty bloody quickly. I remember passing by one guy, a hipster-type, dressed in tight trousers, check shirt, oversized hat and large-framed spectacles, frantically holding his smart-phone into the air, trying to get a signal as the dead devoured his legs. God only knows if he was calling for help or trying to update his Facebook status.
Being eaten by Zoms. It’s different… LOL…

Whatever he was doing, a few hours later he’d be dragging the upper body of his dead self around the old town looking for a meal; eyes glazed, fixed on fresh meat, his only social interaction for eternity.