The Dying & The Dead 2 (32 page)

The guards’ guns rattled and smoke
left their barrels in wisps. Eric sprinted forward. He didn’t care if one of
the bullets hit him. His only concern was Kim, who was struggling under the
weight of the dead man slumped on top of her. She pushed against his chest until
her face went red, but she couldn’t move him. A bullet bored into the man’s leg
and jolted his whole body as if he was having a spasm. Eric grabbed his arm and
dragged him away. Bullets dug into the ground around his feet.

“Get on the carriage,” he told Kim.

The sound of the train engine turned
from a rumble into a roar. The whistle sounded, louder even than the gunfire of
the guards and moans of the infected. The wheels slowly started to turn, the
pistons moving from left to right at a speed that almost seemed slow motion.
Eric helped Kim over to the carriage, opened the door and pushed her up the
steps.

Bullets sunk into the metal of the
carriage. One was so close to Eric’s head that he felt a rush of wind on his
ear, and the bang as it hit the steel made his eardrum pop.

The train started to edge its way
along the tracks. As the gunfire peppered the ground around him, Eric heaved
himself up onto the vehicle. He shut the door behind him.

The carriage was filled with scared-looking
DCs. They seemed even weaker than they had been the last time they had been on
a train. The guards of Camp Dam Marsh had worked some of them until they were near
death. Despite their physical exhaustion, there was something in their eyes
that had been missing on the first train ride. Eric knew that some of them had
hope.

~

He didn’t even know how much time had
gone by. The sky had darkened into complete darkness, and then later, the sun
had risen. It gave a weak light now, and was hidden behind a cloud as though it
was shy.

The rumble of the train’s wheels on
the track threatened to lull him into sleep. Some of the DCs around him were
already dozing, their bodies drained of energy from the escape. Three men
walked through the carriage and pried the boards off all the windows, throwing
each sheet of wood onto the floor triumphantly. The light wasn’t strong, but it
was enough for them to see the scenery as it went by.

Eric found Kim at the back of the
carriage. He walked over and settled down on the floor next to her.

“I can’t believe we did it,” he said.

He put his arm around her. She
shrugged him off and inched away. She stared at him and there was a look in her
eyes that he couldn’t place. It was one he had never seen on her face before.

“I saw you,” she said, her words
drawn out.

“What?”

“I saw what happened to Martin
Wrench. I watched you leave him to the dogs.”

Her voice was cold, as if she was
talking to a stranger. He knew that he should have helped Martin. The boy was
immune, just like him, and he’d only betrayed them to the guards because he was
scared for his own life. That still didn’t make it okay. Some of the Capita
guards at Dam Marsh were just the same; they worked for the Capita because it
was the only way to survive. Was Martin any better than them?

Eric was going to respond to Kim when
he heard a screeching sound so loud that he thought his ears were going to pop
again. It was the sound of metal scraping across more metal and giving a
piercing whine.

The carriage shook. It jerked
violently, and the screech drew out for what seemed like hours. Before he even
knew what happened, the carriage tipped over.

It seemed to happen in slow motion.
The carriage went onto its side and started to slide. One of the men who was prying
a board from the window fell back and banged his head on the floor. The screech
filled Eric’s head until he couldn’t think of anything else. The jolt threw him
off the floor and sent him crashing against what used to be the roof.

He smashed his head against it. He
felt a sickening feeling in his stomach, and his head throbbed. The train
seemed to be sliding on its side along the tracks. He didn’t know what had
happened, but all he could hear were the screams of the DCs around him.

The train stopped suddenly, and he
was thrown across the carriage again, smashing his head on the corner of a
window. His vision faded to black.

~

He woke with the dim recollection
that something had happened. Metal screeching so loud that it was almost as if
it was screaming at him. Kids thrown across the carriage like dolls. He felt
the back of his head and ran his fingers over a lump sticking out from his
skull.

He walked across the carriage. The
windows were at his feet now, and the carriage door was at the end but it was
pointed up. He didn’t know exactly what had happened, but he knew they’d been
derailed and the train had tipped on its side.

He climbed outside to find Kim and
the other DCs sat on the ground. Looking around him, he had no idea where they
were. They were far away from camp; that much was obvious. To their left was a
forest, though it was too dark to see beyond the first line of trees.

The three train carriages had been
tipped completely on their sides, and the last one had uncoupled. The front of
the train had dislodged from the tracks completely, though it was still
upright. In front of it, the track was broken. It looked as if someone had
dislodged part of it.

It was time to think about things. He
didn’t know where they were, and he didn’t know where they were going. Kim
wasn’t speaking to him, and his head throbbed from where he had hit it on the
side of the carriage.

Despite that, something felt good. He
felt as if he’d done something right. The forest to their left looked dark and
miserable, yet anything was better than Dam Marsh. There were no guards around
them, and he knew that he could walk where he liked without the threat of a
baton on the head. Best of all, there was no Scarsgill. Kim was safe.

Except that Goral was with them. Invisible
vines squeezed his chest and made breathing difficult. He was glad that Marta
had decided to help them, but why the hell had she brought her brother? What
had happened to her, and why was Goral tied up?

He took a deep breath. The trees were
far away, but he could smell the pine and the earth. He knew that just like the
train that had derailed, he wasn’t destined to run along the same track for the
rest of his life. His immunity might have meant that the Capital would always
hunt him, but it didn’t mean that he had to let them. He was going to find his
family, and they’d find Kim’s mum, too.

Someone shouted from the front of the
train. Eric ran over. He opened the door and climbed three rungs of the ladder.
He had just enough time to glimpse Marta in the driver’s seat. She wasn’t
breathing, but he knew straight away that wasn’t anything to do with the
derailing. Marta’s throat had been cut open.

Suddenly, Goral Vitch’s wiry body
filled the doorframe. Eric stepped back, missed a rung of the ladder and fell
onto the ground. The impact winded him.

Goral held a knife in his hands.
Blood coated the silver, spreading from the tip all the way to the handle, and
then coated his right hand. He grinned at Eric, and then started to walk down
the ladder.

With his stomach winded and his legs refusing
to move, Eric could only watch as Goral walked toward him. He heard screams of
pain around him from the DCs who had been injured when the train derailed. Wind
whispered through the trees in the forest, and the smell of the pine was gone.

He looked into Goral’s face and saw a
look of such evil that he felt tainted by it. He remembered Allie on the table,
and the old man’s twisted features as he walked around him, naked, and chanted.

Eric’s breaths came fast. He willed
his legs to work, but they wouldn’t.

Then he saw three figures emerge from
the forest. It seemed like two men and a woman. He didn’t have time to see any
more before Goral was creeping toward him, clutching a knife in his hand.

Chapter
Thirty-Four

Heather

It seemed like they’d been walking
for hours, but time was lost in the darkness and all Heather could measure it
by was the aching in her calves and the soaking of her feet in the dank waters.
She couldn’t even imagine how tired Charles must have been, having to walk with
Lilly over his shoulders.

Eventually they found a metal doorway
in the sewer wall. Charles opened it and stepped inside. He walked to the far
end as if he knew the layout and set Lilly down on a scratched wooden table.
After a few minutes of messing around with something, he struck a match, and
then the room was illuminated by the glow of a lamp.

One wall of the room was filled with
machinery and a computer terminal, though it had been so long out of use that
dust had gathered over the metal. On the other side of the room were two green
lockers. Charles opened one of them. It was filled with dried food and bottles
of water.

“This used to be where they’d control
the flow of water,” said Charles. “When we designed Mordeline, we turned little
stops like this into places for provisions.”

He passed Heather a plastic bag full
of something that looked like crackers. She held one in her hands. It didn’t
look appetising, but her stomach ached with hunger.

“Go ahead,” said Charles. “They’re
dried. They’ll last forever.”

She put one in her mouth and crunched
it. It was so dry that it seemed to suck all the moisture from her gums.

“What happens when we get to camp?”
she said.

“You find your daughter. I’ll find
someone else.”

“Who?”

“A man who can help Lilly. Someone I
knew long ago. Back before I got this gut,” he said, and patted his stomach.

She put another cracker in her mouth
and chewed.

“Won’t there be guards?”

“Plenty, and infected around the
perimeter too. Dam Marsh is a lovely place. But don’t worry, I can get us in.”

Lilly sat on the floor. She hadn’t
said much during their journey, and Heather had become accustomed to thinking
she was just luggage, as though Charles had slung a sack over his back rather
than his daughter. Maybe she was used to being carried around like that.

“And then what?” asked Heather.

“Then?”

“What will you do?”

Charles leaned against one of the
lockers. The metal creaked as it took his weight.

“Word won’t have reached camp yet that
I’m no longer in the employ of the Capita. I’ll use my position to get your
kids out, get some flesh for Lilly, and then we’re done.”

It sounded too easy to be true. She
still couldn’t help but think that Charles had something else planned.

“Just like that? We all say our goodbyes
and walk away?”

“I didn’t think we’d be getting married
and starting a family. Want me to bake you a goodbye cake?”

“How do I know you won’t turn me in like
you did last time?” said Heather.

“Trust is just about the only resource
you have left, Heather, because you’re not getting into Dam Marsh without me.
This isn’t some holiday camp that a couple of kids could break out of.”

Lilly stirred.

“You shouldn’t trust him,” said Lilly.

Charles glared at his daughter.

“Don’t start,” he said.

Lilly looked at Heather. She had a
piercing gaze for such a young girl, made all the more striking by the wound
where her nose used to be. She had inherited a lot of things from her father,
and his cold expression was one of them.

“He’s my dad,” she said. “But even I
know you can’t trust him,”

Heather sighed.

“Like your father said. I don’t have
much else going for me than trust.”

~

Time became the dripping of the pipes in
the sewer, the swish of the water that reached up to her ankles. With each hour
came new pain, but Heather pushed it to the back of her brain because she had
her goal fixed firmly in mind. Whenever an ache crept up her thigh, whenever a
cold drip fell on her neck and made her shudder, she pictured Kim. She did it
so much that she could almost smell her, and the image was so strong that she
wanted to cry.

She knew now why it would have been
impossible to walk through Mordeline alone. The sewers had stretched for miles,
and according to Charles, every foot of land above them was crammed with the
infected. Heather knew how to handle them well enough to kill the odd one, but
if she’d gone through Mordeline alone she wouldn’t have made it through.

Finally the sewer came to a stop. The
lamp light had long since been extinguished, but pale streams of light from the
end of the tunnel offered some illumination and cast glows over a ladder
fastened against the wall.

Charles stopped walking. Water sloshed
around them. Somewhere in the darkness behind them, a rat squeaked.

“This is it,” he said. “Up this ladder
and out of the manhole is Camp Dam Marsh.”

Heather could hardly hold herself back. Being
so close to finding Kim filled her with energy, and she wanted to scramble up
the rungs.

“You have to follow my lead,” said
Charles. “It’s the only way you’ll get in.”

“Like I did last time?” said Heather.

She thought back to the Capita guards,
and the way Charles had given her up. Later, the look of terror on one of the
guard’s face as Heather tore out his throat. The feeling of nausea welling up
inside her when she tasted his blood. She’d get Charles back for that. Tucked
away somewhere in her mind was the idea of revenge, but she knew that now
wasn’t the time.

“This is different,” said Charles. “You
need to follow exactly what I say when we’re up there.”

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t trick you,”
said Lilly.

“Do what I say and you’ll get your
daughter back,” said Charles. “Are you ready?”

Heather took a deep breath. She was
ready. The desire to have Kim in her arms was stronger than anything she’d ever
felt before in her life.

Charles climbed the ladder. At the top,
he heaved the manhole cover aside and climbed out. Heather put her hand to her
eyes to block out the daylight. After spending so long in the darkness of the
tunnels, the sun was too much for her.

As she climbed the ladder, she felt her
heart rate spike. She was so full of nerves that she could hardly grip the
rungs, and she nearly slipped more than once.
Be careful,
she told
herself.
It won’t do any good if you break your leg.
Finally she reached
the top. She pulled herself out of the darkness and into the glow of the sun.

Dam Marsh wasn’t what she expected. She
thought there would be rows of perfectly maintained fences, guards walking with
guns and keeping watch over DCs who were so accustomed to their orders that
they hardly looked up from the ground. She imagined an overwhelming silence
that was only ever broken by the shrill bark of a Capita soldier. A place where
order ruled and hope died, but everything was perfectly kept.

Instead, she saw a gravel yard marked by
carnage. There was a fence in front of the camp but part of it had collapsed.
Cabins lined one section, but most of the land was taken up by loose stone.

She almost gasped as she looked on. Men
and women in Capita uniforms held batons in their hands and swung them at
anything that moved. At first she thought they were killing the DCs, but then
she realised that they were fighting the infected. On the east side of the camp
a small shed had caught fire, and black smoke billowed into the sky and filled
the yard with the smell of burning leather. The camp was filled with a chorus
of dog barks, screams of pain and the moaning of the infected.

The DCs were easy to spot. Instead of
Capita uniforms, they all wore beige trousers and shirts that were made out of
a material so thin that it might as well have been paper. Their faces were
hollowed, their limbs bony. The DCs were the ones who didn’t engage in fights
with the infected, but instead ran to whatever cover they could find.

She saw two children waiting under a
cabin in the crawlspace, arms wrapped around each other as if it was the only
thing that stopped them being scared. For a second she thought they were Eric
and Kim, but then the excitement in her mind faded, and she realised she didn’t
know those children.

Charles set Lilly on the ground. He
stood and silently watched the scene around him.

“What’s happening?” Heather asked.

The bounty hunter didn’t turn to look at
her. Instead, he spoke to Lilly.

“Stay here,” he told her.

“Where are you going?” asked Heather.

“I need to do something. Lilly, stay
here and you’ll be okay.”

With that, he marched toward the fence
and slipped through the gap. Heather called out to him, but he wouldn’t turn
around. She decided that it didn’t matter. There was only one thing to do now;
she had to find Eric and Kim. Before going, she kneeled beside Lilly.

“Will you be okay?” she asked.

The girl nodded.

“I’m used to him leaving me.”

When Heather entered the camp, the smell
of smoke was everywhere. She felt it cling to her clothes and twist into her
hair. Someone to her right screamed, and she saw a woman on the floor, legs
twitching as two infected clawed at her stomach.

She hadn’t expected Camp Dam Marsh to be
a holiday resort, but she knew things had gone wrong somewhere. Gunfire
crackled somewhere beyond camp. A little boy sprinted across the yard, but his
footsteps weren’t quicker than the dog bounding behind him. He ran to a cabin
door. The dog followed, black eyes fixed forward.

Heather started to run toward him. As
the boy got to the cabin door he turned the handle, but nothing happened. He
wiggled it again and again as if he expected it to do something. He turned
around. The dog reached the bottom steps now. It leaned onto its hind legs and
growled. The boy flinched at the noise.

She picked up a rock from the floor. She
threw it at the dog, only missing its head by inches. The animal turned and
looked at her. Heather breathed in. She pushed her fears to the back of her
mind and ran at the animal, bellowing as loud as she could. When she was feet
away, the dog decided better of the fight and ran away.

“Thank you,” said the boy.

He wore a beige uniform that was
tissue-thin and looked like it was days overdue a wash. His head had been
shaved recently, and his scalp was dotted with little red marks that looked
like bites. She wondered if the same thing had happened to Eric, too.

“I’m looking for two children,” she
said. “A girl called Kim. She’s a couple of years older than you.”

The boy stared at her with eyes that
looked like they were being pried open. It was as if he couldn’t comprehend the
question.

“Have you seen a boy called Eric?” she
asked.

“Eric?”

Heather’s heart picked up. She wanted to
step forward and shake the boy until the answers fell out, but she could see
how scared he was.

“Yes, a boy called Eric. He’s around
your height, but he’s thin. He’s very quiet.”