The Dying & The Dead 2 (27 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

Ed

Its voice sounded like a lullaby sung
in the raspy tones of a forty-a-day smoker. There was something dark about it,
but with the sense that there was something human there, no matter how deeply it
was buried. It was at once both familiar and odd, a sound that scratched at the
inside of Ed’s head and dug deep into his subconscious.

“I could lead them away, if I chose,”
it said.

Ed had to look around him to see if
the others had heard it too. Part of him worried that he was just imagining it.
At the same time, he wished that was the case, because whatever was outside
went beyond the monstrosity of the infected. This was a being that should never
have been created. No matter how Ripeech had started out, what he had become
was an abomination best scrubbed out of existence.

They had pushed what furniture that
was in the room up against the four windows so that two were covered by arm
chairs, one by a full-height antique mirror, and the other by a chest of
drawers. It didn’t completely block the outside from view, and Ed saw the
infected as they scratched on the window frames and tried to pull themselves
over the ledge. The only mercy was that the windows were high enough to make it
difficult. It still didn’t seem it would be long before they got in.

Polyester meditation mats were
scattered on the floor around them. Spent incense sticks littered table tops,
and in the corners of the room speakers were fastened to the wall. Ed could
almost hear the calming music they probably played during relaxation sessions.

“Where is it?” said Bethelyn.

She walked over to a window and
looked beyond the mirror propped up against it. She jerked back, and shuddered.

“Don’t look at me,”
said the voice.

Its voice scratched its way into Ed’s
ears, eating away at every good thought he ever had and turning them sour.
Suddenly, he lost all hope. He knew they wouldn’t leave here alive, and that
he’d never find James. He imagined Ripeech crawling up next to him and
whispering into his ear, like it had with Cillian in his hut.

When Cillian had told them about it,
the idea made Ed’s skin crawl so much that he wanted to shed it like a snake.
Despite the darkest images his imagination could conjure, nothing prepared him
for hearing the noise first-hand. It was the cold voice of something that was
once human, but had deformed so much that every shred of humanity had leaked
away into the darkness.

With the infected grouping around the
windows, there was only one way out of the room, and that was the way they came
in. Ed considered it for a second, but when he heard the screeching of infected
echo through the corridor, he knew that way out was lost to them too. Not only
were they surrounded on both sides, but the creatures were in the building as
well.

Bethelyn stood opposite the window
covered by the mirror. Ed knew why she had chosen that particular window,
because he felt it too. Wherever Ripeech stood, he somehow sensed its presence.
He felt his gaze being drawn by it.

“What do you want?” said Bethelyn.

“Don’t talk to it,” said The Savage.

He took hold of a small coffee table
and turned it over. He wedged his boot against the bottom of one of the legs and
wrenched it away until it snapped. The splinters cracked as he pulled it free.
He took out his pocketknife and started shaving the end of the leg into a
spike.

Bethelyn edged closer to the window.

“Do you want something from us?”

The gurgling clamour of the infected
surrounded them, the din sneaking in through every gap in the window frames. Ed
had closed the doors at the end of the room and slid a table leg through the
door handles, but if the monsters wanted to get in, they eventually would.

The moans ceased for a second, as if
in deference to something higher on the bestial scale.

“
I want the man,”
said the
voice.

Ed’s shoulders shivered. He tried to
see through the gap where the mirror didn’t cover the frame, but all he caught
was the bobbing head of an infected as it sniffed the opening. Ripeech was
there, somewhere, staying out of view.

“Why me?” said Ed.

“
You’re not a man.”

“Charming,” said Ed, though the
sensation of fear running through him didn’t match his forced jovial tone.

The Savage scraped a long wedge of
wood away from the table leg and let it drop onto the floor. The carpet was
littered with curled oak shavings, and the table leg was starting to look
sharp.

“He means me,” he said.

“
Yes,”
gurgled the voice.
“The
infected one. I want him.”

“I already had a wife,” said The Savage.
“And she was a damn sight prettier than you.”

“What do you want from him?” said
Bethelyn.

“To make him like me.”

“And what are you?”

“
I have seen him. I have seen the
weak one giving him blood. He can learn to become like me. I can teach him.”

The Savage gripped his sharpened
table leg. “I won’t be your boyfriend,” he said. “Find someone else.”

The Savage took hold of a wooden
chair and dragged it to the centre of the room. He climbed onto it and reached
up toward the ceiling, where one of the plastic covers looked loose.

Ed walked over to one of the windows.
They had blocked this one with a felt-lined armchair, but it wasn’t big enough
to block the view completely. He pressed his head close to it and looked
outside.

Peering out, he caught a glimpse of
the monster. He regretted it immediately. Ripeech stood next to a tree. He was
on all fours, but it was clear that he was no animal. His body was bloated, and
rags hung off his torso. His nails were long and yellow, and they curved at the
ends. His face was marked by craters, and it looked disfigured, like a piece of
wood infected with woodworm and decayed by rot.

Despite everything he had seen over
the last two weeks, he couldn’t believe that something like this existed. It
was as though part of Ripeech was still human, but the other half was tainted
by infection. He didn’t carry himself like the other infected, but nor did he
act as a man would. He seemed like a confused creature, unsure of what he
really was.

The Savage lifted the ceiling pane
above him. He strained on his tiptoes to get a look at the space above, and
then lowered himself back down onto his heels. He huffed.

“Nothing up there but cobwebs. Only
an inch or two of space at most.”

An infected stuck its arm through the
window nearest Bethelyn and scrabbled to get hold of the frame. She kicked its hand,
snapping it at the wrist until it hung limply over the edge. The bone pierced
its skin, and blood dripped onto the floor.

It was no good, Ed realised. They
were surrounded at each exit, and it was clear they wouldn’t be able to fight
their way out. He couldn’t even believe he was contemplating it, but he
wondered what would happen if they gave The Savage to Ripeech. What would the
creature do to him? And would it be true to its word and call away the
infected?

He knew he couldn’t do that. The
Savage was a loathsome man, but Ed needed him to find James. The Mainland was a
humongous place, and without The Savage there to guide them, Ed would never
find his brother amidst the ruined towns and desolate villages.

There was a choice to make either
way. They could try and fight their way out, and more than likely all three of
them would die. Or he could give up The Savage, and weigh his conscience down
with the idea that he had condemned him to a worse fate than the infected could
ever bring.

He realised that this was the world
they lived in now. Maybe there was beauty out there somewhere, but it was
buried in a grave of blood and violence, of infected and rot. The old Ed would
have backed away from this. He would have filed the decision in his drawer and
left it in darkness until the choice was taken from him, and he’d hide from the
consequences of his inaction.

He was strong enough to live in this
world. He realised that now. If Bethelyn could make it through the death of her
daughter, and The Savage could lose his wife and live with infection, then Ed
could learn to adapt.

The infected clamoured to get in. Outside
some of the windows, the row of creatures was three bodies wide. They gurgled
and hissed, tormented by their hunger but held back by the grip that Ripeech
somehow had on them.

Ed walked over to one of the windows
and started to drag away the chair.

“What the hell are you doing, Ed?”
said The Savage.

It was one of the first times he’d
used his name without a hint of sarcasm behind it. No more Wetgills, no more
mockery. The Savage’s soul was corrupted by darkness, but it was one Ed would
share too, he knew. There was no way to survive on the Mainland without taking
some of the taint upon you.

He pulled the chair away. There were
three infected at the window. Ed stared into their soulless eyes, and he
ignored their hungry grunts. He took hold of the window frame and prepared to
climb out.

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

Eric

When he woke the next morning, Eric
saw that Martin Wrench’s bunk was empty. Cold mornings and vacant beds weren’t
unusual in Camp Dam Marsh, but he knew what it meant. Guards had probably taken
him away in the night, putting a hand over his mouth to avoid alerting the
other DCs. Eric had learned to accept things like that and ignore them, because
getting upset over each disappearance would weigh him down. Martin’s absence
was different. He couldn’t ignore this one.

He got out of bed and walked over to
Kim. The cabin floor was so cold that it stung his bare feet. The smell of
cooking drifted through the window, carried across camp by a chilly wind. Food
was the last thing he wanted.

He shook Kim awake. She rubbed her
eyes, making the skin around them red.

“Martin’s bed is empty,” said Eric.

“Maybe he’s in the yard.”

“The guards aren’t even up yet, Kim.
They don’t take us out for another hour at least. Something’s going on.”

Kim sat up. She glanced across the
cabin and saw Martin’s bunk. His covers were dishevelled, as if he had been
dragged from them.

“What happened?” she said.

Eric sighed.

“I can’t believe it. Today of all
days. We need him.”

“We can’t think about that now.”

Eric’s heart skipped every other
beat. He tried to keep his mind focussed, but it wandered out of the cabin and
across camp. He imagined the fences with the infected patrolling in-between,
and the kennels where hungry dogs sat tense in their cells. Today was a day
where he needed certainty. He needed the guards to keep their schedule and for
everything in Camp to go the way it usually did.

“Say it to me,” he said.

“What?”

“The plan. Tell it to me again.”

Kim looked around her, as if one of
the other DCs was listening to them.

“Eric…”

He cut her off. “I need you to go
over the plan, step by step.”

It seemed as if their plan was built
on a foundation of wet tissue paper, and any second it was going to fall apart
into a mushy mess. There were so many things that depended on chance, and the
idea of it going wrong made him short of breath.

“Okay,” said Kim. “First we rile up
the dogs. Get them so excited that the guards in the yard are distracted.”

“And where are you when this
happens?”

“I’ll go and get Marta.”

“Good. She told me she wouldn’t drive
the train, but when she sees you, she might change her mind. She’s a kind lady,
but I think she’s scared. Seeing how bad you look might be enough to change her
mind.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said.

“Come on. You know I don’t mean it
like that. But you don’t look good. So you go to Marta’s cabin. And then what?”

“We need someone to sneak across camp
to the canteen and start a fire.”

Eric sat on Kim’s bed. When the hard
mattress took his weight, tiredness washed over him.

“Yeah. And that was Martin’s job.”

“Can we ask someone else?”

Eric looked around him. The other DCs
snored into their pillows. The guards made some of them work harder than others,
and these inmates needed their rest. Tiredness wasn’t the only reason they
didn’t stir. For most people in camp, sleep was the only escape they got.

He’d thought about involving others.
He’d even gone as far as talking to some of them about the idea of escape, but
saying it in a way that could never get him into trouble if they told the
guards. Some seemed interested, but he saw the fear behind their eyes, and he
had learned that being scared made you do stupid things. In the end, he knew he
couldn’t bring anyone else into the plan.

“No,” he said. “I don’t trust anyone
else.”

“We’ll just have to figure something
out.”

He shook his head. “Okay, tell me
what happens next.”

“That’s down to you, isn’t it? You
said you’d do something about the guards near the train.”

“Yeah, I will. And then we get as
many people to the train as we can before the guards realise, and Marta can
drive us away.”

“This all seems…”

“Like it’s not going to work?”
answered Eric.

Kim looked down at her chest. Her
collar bones stuck out against her shirt. If her mum saw her like this, she’d
cry. Eric wondered if she blamed him for everything that had happened. If
Heather had never taken him in, then the Capita wouldn’t have come looking, and
she and Kim would be safe.

This is why it was so important to
escape. He needed to get Kim back to her mum. Somewhere out there, too, he just
knew that his own mum and sister were still alive. He couldn’t explain how, but
he just knew it. He imagined that if they’d died already, he would feel
something. A darkness weighing him down.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s run through
it again.”

Kim glared at him.

“I’m not a baby, Eric. I’m older than
you. And I’m not weak. Sure, the food makes me sick, but I don’t need you to
hold my hand all the time.”

Eric bristled at her tone.

“Okay. Give me my rations back if
you’re so tough.”

Kim sighed. “I only let you look
after me because it seemed like you needed it. Same as I did with mum. She
thought she was keeping me safe, but I know how to take care of myself. I’m not
weak.”

Anyone who could survive in Camp Dam
Marsh had strength in them. You spent your day working under the cruel eyes of
the guards, and at night you laid in darkness, listening to the barking of dogs
and moaning of the infected. It was hard enough to survive as it was, let alone
with a stomach condition. He realised that he’d been treating her like a baby.

“I know. I know you’re not weak. I’m
sorry.”

Kim sat up further. She pulled her
cover over her chest. Whether it was to block the chill or to hide the way her
bones protruded against her skin, Eric didn’t know.

“You need to admit that you’re the
one who’s scared,” she said. “Not me. You’re terrified of being caught and what
will happen to us if we are. But you need to realise that what they do when
they catch us isn’t going to be worse than if we stay.”

He didn’t know what to say. She was
right; that was the truth. He was a scared little boy, and he just knew deep
down that the plan was going to fail and the guards would do things to them,
and it would all be his fault. What else could he do, though? Just give up like
the rest of them?

“Mum and me were going to escape, you
know,” said Kim.

Eric nodded. “She told me about your
plan.”

“We were going to leave the Capita
and the Dome and find somewhere safe. And it’s still going to happen. But first
we need to get out of here, and I don’t mean you getting me out. I mean both of
us escaping
together
.”

“Okay.”

“So you’ll stop treating me like a
baby?”

“Yeah.”

Kim got out of bed. She stretched her
arms behind her head and yawned. Suddenly, she seemed taller than Eric
remembered. It was as if she’d grown a few inches overnight, and she actually
looked older than him for once.

Eric stood up.

“I’ve been saving my food for the
escape. Let’s see how much we’ve got.”

The cabin door burst open. Eric
turned round to see two guards marching across the floor. Martin Wrench trailed
behind them, looking at the ground and then the walls; in any direction but
Eric’s. At first he thought that the guards were just bringing Martin back, but
when he looked at the harsh expressions on their faces, he knew that this was
something else.

“Which one was it?” one of the guards
asked Martin.

Martin raised his arm. He gulped, and
then pointed at Eric. One guard nodded at the other.

“Take him to Scarsgill,” he said.

Eric didn’t even have time to move
before the guard gripped him by the shoulders and dragged him toward the door.
He flailed in the guard’s grasp, but when strong fingers dug into his
shoulders, he knew that it was useless.

Martin looked at one of the men.

“Can I go home tonight?” he said,
eyes wide. “Like you promised?”

Eric knew what had happened. He
realised that he had trusted in the wrong person, and in doing so he had ruined
any chance of escape. As the guard dragged him out of the cabin he looked up
and met Kim’s stare. Although he didn’t say it, he hoped that she understood
that the look in his eyes meant that he was sorry.

~

The walls were so spotless that it was
as if the grime of Camp Dam Marsh couldn’t touch them. The air smelled like the
stuff that Mum had once cleaned Dale’s house with. Such a sterile room couldn’t
have been more different to the stains and filth of the DCs cabins. It almost
seemed wrong that a room should be so clean, and it made him feel cold.

The guards had dragged him across
camp, past the kennels and into Scarsgill’s lab. They took him into the room
with walls so white that the light bounced off them. One of the guards pushed
him down onto a big chair and held him, while the other tied ropes around his
feet and wrists.

He strained against the ropes, but all
he got was scratched skin. The chair was so big that even stretched out, his
feet didn’t touch the end. The guard pumped something with his foot and the
chair rose up off the ground. He walked to the back and pulled a lever, and the
chair dipped behind him and forced Eric to put his head back. The only thing he
could see now was the tiled ceiling, which was nowhere near as shiny as the
walls.

He knew that he had ruined
everything. The escape was supposed to happen today, and Eric had made a
mistake that seemed so obvious now. He was so desperate to escape from the camp
that he’d trusted in the wrong person. If it were up to Kim, she wouldn’t have
made a mistake like that. He wondered why she ever listened to him. After all,
what good had he done?

He tried to calm himself. He thought
of Mum’s advice. There wasn’t a wasp or a search light in the room, but maybe
if he was calm and stayed still, something would come to him. He took in his
surroundings.

Aside from walls so white that they
glowed, there was little else in the room. To his right there was a metal stand
with a plastic tray on top of it. The plastic was covered by green cloth, and
things were placed on it in a line. He saw a scalpel, scissors and a saw with
edges that looked like teeth.

The ropes burned his skin as he
squirmed. He remembered to calm down.
Pretend there’s a wasp.
If only
mum was here now. Or even Luna. He remembered how much she used to annoy him.
Always wanting attention, forever tugging on his hand and asking him to play,
when all he wanted was to read the books that Mum had given him. He’d give
anything to see her annoying face.

The door opened and Dr. Scarsgill entered
the room. Eric expected guards to follow, but instead the doctor shut the door
behind him. His boots tapped against the porcelain floor as he walked over to
Eric.