The Dying & The Dead 2 (29 page)

Some scoffed, some ignored him,
others asked questions, but all of them were scared. Eric saw some of them
flinch every time the word ‘escape’ was mentioned. He might as well have been
one of the guards waving a baton in their eyes for the way they blinked.

A handful of people agreed to go with
them. Eric made them stand by the door. He was amazed that the adults listened
to him and Kim, and that they were content to let a couple of kids take charge.

“Take them to the train,” he told
Kim.

She nodded and then started to lead
the DCs out of the canteen. Eric watched how she walked, back straight and
shoulders high despite the pain in her stomach, and he was proud of her.  The
DCs walked across the yard. Some took a few steps and then stopped. They looked
around them as if they expected this to be a test set up by one of the guards
to see who ran.

“I’ll meet you there,” Eric told Kim.
“I need to go and find our driver.”

As he went in the opposite direction
toward Marta’s cabin, a rifle shot cracked through the air. Eric flinched, but
the bullet didn’t come anywhere near him. He looked up and saw that the rest of
the DCs were okay, too. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a guard at a
watchtower with his rifle propped up on the barricade. He must have missed his
shot, and Eric looked around for cover to protect himself from the next one.

He heard a moaning sound. To the
right of him, the group of infected banged against the gate on the camp fence.
Normally they liked to walk from one side to the other, groaning to themselves
and dragging their feet along the gravel. This was different. They had crowded in
one section.

The fence gate opened. The infected
let out a cry, and they started to walk into camp. Eric’s breaths came sharp
and fast, and he realised that he had his hands curled up into tight fists,
with his nails digging into his skin.

The gate lock was on the floor next
to the fence, with a dent in the metal from where the guard’s bullet had struck
it. Eric guessed that the guard in the watchtower wasn’t as bad a shot as he
thought; he just had a different target. That didn’t explain why he’d want to
set the infected loose.

On the east side of camp the guards
worked together to subdue the dogs. The DCs walked toward the guards’ quarters,
beyond which was the train. Across from them, the infected made their way
across camp. It must have been part of the guards’ plans that if the DCs ever
got loose, the infected would be let out to stop them escaping.

One of the DCs, a man in his fifties
who Eric had once seen take bread from a child in the canteen, saw the
infected. He shouted something, but they weren’t words. It was just a noise, as
though his brain was scrambled by the panic of seeing the infected. Somehow,
though, the rest of the DCs understood him. A woman saw the monsters and she
screamed. A little boy put his hands to his ears to blot out the high-pitched
cry.

Instead of following Kim to the
train, the DCs started to panic. Some bolted off in different directions,
trying to get as far away from the infected as possible. A teenage boy and a
young girl ran toward the guards. A dog latched itself on the boy’s ankle and
brought him screaming to the ground. The girl stopped in front of a guard and
got to her knees. The guard, in a fit of adrenaline, swung his baton at her.
Blood spat from the girl’s mouth, and she hit the floor, eyes closed.

Other DCs sprinted toward their
cabins, hoping that if they got in and shut the door then the guards would
forgive them. Only a handful still followed Kim. With the infected dragging their
bloated feet across the yard, the DCs running in every direction they could,
and the guards fighting with the dogs, Eric knew things were chaotic enough for
him to take advantage.

He raced across the yard. He rounded
the corner of one cabin, and then kept running, aiming for where Marta Vitch’s
lived. He stopped when he heard a familiar voice scream his name.

Martin Wrench stood a few metres to
his right. His skin looked grey like rain had washed the colour off it. His mouth
was wide open as though he was screaming, but the volume had been muted. He
backed away from something. Eric saw a dog making its way toward him, cunning
behind its eyes, teeth showing out of black gums. Martin edged away, scared to
make a movement in case it spurred the dog into quicker action. He cast a look
at Eric. His expression was pleading, his eyes wide and begging Eric to help.

Eric thought about saving him. He
almost reached into his pocket to grab some more food pellets, but he stopped.
At first it was like something else was controlling him and preventing him from
helping Martin. That was when he realised that it was all him; he just didn’t
want to help the boy.

If it had been up to Martin, Kim and
Eric would be dead by now. Martin had told the guards about their plan, just so
that he could save himself. He hadn’t given a thought as to what would happen
to Eric or Kim, so why should he care now?

“Eric. Please.”

He felt the dry pellets in his hand.
All it would take was one throw, but he couldn’t. His cheeks burned with anger.
He thought of Goral and Scarsgill, and what they would do to Kim. Martin needed
to learn that actions had consequences. At least if you did something and there
was a consequence, you understood why it had happened. But what had Eric done
to deserve this? He was born with a gene that made him immune to the virus, and
that meant a life where the Capita pursued him across the Mainland and tore his
family apart. How was that fair? What lesson was Eric supposed to learn, except
don’t be born the way you are?

He felt the anger wrap around him,
closing his pores so that not a trace of empathy could leak out. He looked at
Martin Wrench and saw someone who had been happy to trade his and Kim’s life
for his own. In Martin’s judgement, he was worth more than them.

Eric pulled his hand out of his
pocket. He turned away from Martin and walked toward Marta’s cabin. He heard
the dog growl behind him, and then Martin Wrench screamed. It was a high-pitched
squeal, and the sound of it turned Eric’s stomach to mush.

At Marta’s cabin, he stopped. He
turned and saw Martin thrashing on the floor, with the dog chewing on his neck.
Fifty metres beyond that, he saw Kim. She had stopped, and she seemed to be
staring across the yard. Eric wondered if she had seen everything. Maybe she had
watched him leave the boy to die. He wondered what she’d think of it, and
whether she’d understand.

He walked up the steps to Marta’s
cabin door. He already felt the adrenaline seep out of him and start to make
him feel tired, but he knew they still had a long way to go. He opened Marta’s
door and stepped inside.

Her cabin had been torn apart. A pan
was on the kitchen floor and nettle tea had spilled all over the porcelain. Her
chair was tipped on its side, and someone had shoved her bookcase onto the
ground.

In the kitchen area, on the corner of
the wooden work surface, there was a splotch of blood. This wasn’t just a
spring clean, he knew. Marta hadn’t suddenly decided to remodel her cabin.
Someone had been in here, and there had been a struggle.

Chapter Thirty-One

Heather

Charles stood at the window of the
theatre and stared out on to the streets of Mordeline. He hadn’t moved in five
minutes, and it was starting to get awkward. All Heather could hear was the gurgling
of the infected outside, and she expected the doors to open at any minute and
for them to stream in, dragging their feet over the red carpeted floors.

They were in the theatre café. Across
from her, glasses collected dust on the bar. Behind the bar was a full
complement of liquor bottles boasting whiskeys and gins from around the world,
and above them was a cocktail menu. Part of her wanted to go to one of the
bottles, put her mouth around it and then drink the vintage bourbons until she
started to feel numb.

She realised that she hadn’t had a
drink in years. The last time was at the beginning of the outbreak. Back then
she and Kim had joined with another group of survivors and they’d taken refuge
in an old shoe warehouse. There were rows of shelves that were filled with
black footwear. The smell of leather was so overpowering that it clung to her
clothes, and she felt like she could taste it when she opened her mouth to
speak. Kim was terrified in those days. Heather couldn’t even go to the toilet
without her daughter tugging on her sleeve.

One night, a man called Baldwin came
back from a scavenging run. Baldwin was an ex-paramedic who strangely had a
distaste for sick people, and he always wore a hat. It didn’t matter what kind;
bowler, flat cap, baseball cap. Heather suspected that it was to cover up a
bald patch that he wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge.

When he came back from the run he had
blood down one of his sleeves, and his knuckles were bruised. He greeted the
rest of the group and gave them a big smile. He reached into his bag and pulled
out two large whiskey bottles. The brown liquid swished as he held them in the
air like a hunter returning with a prize kill.

That night they had obliterated their
senses on the sour spirit. Heather remembered waking in the early hours to a
banging sound. She saw the empty bottles smashed on the warehouse floor, and
the rest of the survivors dozed just feet away. She heard the banging again. At
first she thought it might have been the pounding of her temples, but she
realised that it was coming from the doors. Before she could react, the doors
opened and infected stumbled into the warehouse. In a drunken haze, one of the
group must have left the door ajar.

In a mad panic, Heather woke Kim and
grabbed some of their things. She tried to wake the other survivors. Baldwin
stirred from sleep, eyes bloodshot from the drink, and shoved her so hard she
fell to the floor. As the infected’s footsteps echoed across the warehouse and
their hungry cries bounced off the walls, Heather grabbed Kim’s hand and they
left. The other survivors had been too drunk to even wake from their sleep.

That was the last time she touched
alcohol. She realised that in this new world, you didn’t get a break. You had
to be on your guard all the time, because death stood in every shadow, and it
poked its head around each corner and waited for you to stumble.

She wondered how Kim was. She hoped
that she was okay. Her daughter had become a lot stronger since their time in
the warehouse, because Heather had forced her to. Sometimes she had been too
harsh, but that was just the way things had to be.

Charles turned away from the window
and looked at her with bloodshot eyes. She knew that he hadn’t been drinking,
so there had to be a reason. She couldn’t say for certain, but she was pretty
sure that as he had stared out of the window, his shoulders had shook.

“He was a foal when I got him,” said
Charles, slowly turning away from the window. “Not much bigger than those
Shetland ponies that you used to see. Found him in a field behind a farmhouse.
His ribs were sticking out like a carved chicken. Got a saddle for him, and it
was big enough for me to ride with Lilly sat in front of me. That was back when
she could walk. You remember that, darling?”

“I remember being able to walk, Dad,
yes.”

The infected banged on the windows
outside. Heather saw a man with his head pressed against the glass. He had his
two front teeth missing, and half his face had been chewed away.

“We better go,” she said.

Charles ignored her.

“He didn’t take kindly to us riding
on him at first, and he was so weak we had to stop every few miles and let him
rest. After a while I just gave up. Started feeding him apples and mushrooms
that we found, and I waited until he’d put on a bit of muscle. After that he
could carry us for hours. We’ve been through a lot, Ken and me.”

The banging grew louder. Heather
looked around her. A projector screen was fastened to one of the walls. There
were leaflets scattered on the floor. One showed a man dressed in a distasteful
witch doctor costume. ‘
Papa Landers Spooky Circus,’
it read. ‘
Scary
family fun.’
There was a door at the back of the bar with a fire exit sign
above it.

She felt sick. She didn’t know if it
was from lack of food, or just because she was so worried about Kim that she
might vomit.

“So where do we go from here?” she
said.

Charles didn’t answer.

“I hate to say it, but I preferred
the old you,” she said.

The cries of the infected outside
became deafening. They couldn’t leave by the front exit, she knew. She wanted
to get out of Mordeline, but the Capita soldiers would be waiting for them even
if they made it past the infected.  Charles leaned against the wall, eyes far
away and mind focussed on memories from years ago. It came from nowhere, but
suddenly she felt warmth for him. It was the kind of warmth that made her nauseous,
like stepping into a car on a hot summer day.

She knew it was wrong to feel
anything but loathing for him. Then again, he was still a person. He might have
done horrible things, but buried inside him was someone like her; a parent who
just wanted to survive and protect their child.

She needed to say something.
Suddenly, it felt like she was the strong one. She remembered how her husband
had always called her weak, and she knew that it wasn’t the case. He was dead
now, yet here she was, still breathing. She would do anything to get to Kim.
Charles had been right all along. The world was a dark place, and Heather was
going to have to embrace the darkness if she wanted to survive in it.

She had to get through to Charles
somehow and get him to collect himself. She walked over to him.

“Remember what you told me before,”
she said. “’
You have to do anything to survive.’
That’s what you said.
Look around you, Charles. You can hear them banging on the windows. This is one
of those times. We need to survive.”

“Dad and his stupid horse,” said Lilly.

Without saying anything, Charles
moved away from the wall. He walked over to the door of the theatre and grabbed
the handle. Before Heather could even speak, Charles opened the door and
stepped back.

“Ken might be dead, but they’re not
having his body,” he said.

The first infected stumbled into the
bar. It snapped its head around, glancing at Charles and then Heather and then
Lilly, as if it didn’t know who to choose for a meal.

“Have you lost your mind?” said
Heather.

She backed away from the door. She
walked over to the bar, took a bottle of whiskey and emptied it onto the floor.
She smashed the end of the bottle and held it in her hand, sharp end facing
out.

Charles picked up Lilly and slung her
over his shoulder as if she was weightless. More infected streamed into the
bar. One let out a wheezing groan, and then tripped over a bar stool and fell
face-first onto the floor. An infected lady walked behind him. She wore a long
black cocktail dress, as if she was attending Mordeline theatre to see the
premier of a new play.

“This way,” said Charles.

He walked past Heather to the end of
the bar. He looked like he was going toward the fire exit, but then he went
beyond it and stopped in front of a life size Papa Landers cut-out that was
propped against the wall. He adjusted Lilly’s weight over his shoulder, then
took hold of the cut-out and shoved it away. There was a steel door behind it.

More infected filed in. It was as if
an usher had stepped onto the streets and announced that the play was about to
start. Heather expected some of them to stumble in with tickets in their hands
and go to the bar for a drink. Instead, they wandered through the room, gazes
fixed on Heather, Charles and Lilly. None looked like they were here for
entertainment; there was only one desire in their rotten brains.

Charles opened the door. Beyond it
was a narrow passageway, but it was too dark to make out anything else inside.
He stepped into the darkness, Lilly slung over his shoulder.

An infected was close enough to make
a grab for Heather. She stepped to the side and then plunged the broken bottle
into its skull. Some of the glass snapped off, and Heather drove the weapon
deeper into its head until the infected went limp.

She followed Charles and Lilly into
the darkness. It was a passageway with stone walls that seemed to emanate cold.
Their footsteps made little echoes on the floor. It was a part of the theatre,
though nobody had made any attempt to decorate it, and Heather couldn’t imagine
where it would lead or what its purpose was.

“I helped fill Mordeline with
infected,” said Charles as they walked. The creatures groaned behind them. “You
can’t get to Dam Marsh without passing through here, so we decided to make the
place as nasty as possible.”

“You certainly did that,” said
Heather.

She heard infected enter the tunnel
behind them. All of her senses had been muted in the darkness, and she couldn’t
tell how far away the creatures were. She felt like at any second one of them
might try and grab her.

Charles stopped. The tunnel ended
abruptly, and there was a stone wall in front of them, with nowhere else to
turn. Rasping moans stalked them through the passageway. She thought that
Charles had led her into a trap. He’d gone back on his word and betrayed her
again, and he was going to let her die. But that didn’t make sense. If that was
the case, why would he bring his daughter here?

Charles set Lilly on the floor and
kneeled down. The footsteps of the infected sounded closer now, and Heather
could tell that dozens of them had made their way into the passage.

She heard the scraping of metal.
Charles grunted as he pulled something up from in front of him, and there was a
clanging sound. He sat back and wheezed. Heather stepped forward. Despite how
dark the tunnel was, she saw something even darker on the floor. It was an oval
hole in the ground.

“Hope you don’t mind tight spaces,”
said Charles.

“Where does it lead?” asked Heather.

The infected snarled behind them, and
their footsteps sounded only metres away.

Charles put Lilly on his shoulders.

“Hold tight,” he told her. He lowered
himself down into the darkness. He stopped, and then looked up at Heather.

“I hope you’re ready. Dam Marsh isn’t
far away.”