The Dying & The Dead 2 (33 page)

The boy nodded. He pointed behind
Heather.

“That’s his cabin over there.”

Heather ran over, but Eric and Kim
weren’t in that cabin or in any of the others either. She searched through them
frantically, finding some doors open, but unlocking others with a sharp kick.
After searching the last one her legs ached and she felt out of breath. She sat
down on the steps. Somewhere beyond her, a man screamed, and the cries of the
infected droned like backing vocals.

She didn’t understand it. All the cabins
were empty save for a few people hidden under beds, but they had been struck
dumb by fear. She didn’t understand why the camp was in chaos, and why there
were infected and dogs fighting the guards and killing the DCs.

A dark thought rose out of the blackest
corner of her mind, stood up in the mist and walked to centre stage until she
couldn’t think of anything else. Looking around her, she knew there was a
possibility that Eric and Kim were dead. She couldn’t let herself imagine that.
If she did, she would break down.

She heard a scream. A boy and a girl sat
in the middle of the yard, and four infected walked toward them from their left
and right sides. She didn’t recognise the boy, but she could only see the back
of the girl’s head. She had hair just like Kim, and though she seemed smaller
than her daughter, maybe that was because she was on the floor.

It was as if electricity jolted through
her. She got to her feet. She ran down the steps so quickly that she missed the
bottom one and stumbled to the floor. Her ankle twisted, and pain shot up from
her foot and into her calf. Pushing down on the floor, she forced herself back
to her feet. Each step sent a ripple of pain through her ankle, but she willed
herself to hobble along.

The infected walked closer to the kids.
The children didn’t move, as if they were paralysed by fear and their bodies
were engaged in neither a flight nor fight response, but instead had simply
accepted that this was the end.

With the pain in her ankle she barely
moved quicker that the infected. She called out to the children, but they
didn’t hear her.

The creatures moaned. It was a sound
full of longing, a hunger deeper than anything Heather had ever felt. She could
smell them now; the aroma of sweat gone stale, of skin that hadn’t been washed
in years. Their faces were marked by craters, and scabs grew around the edges.
One of them had bumps on his forehead that looked as if flies had laid eggs in
his skin.

She reached the children just before the
first infected. She gripped the girl’s shoulders and turned her around. The
girl had a cut stretching from the corner of her eye and going down her face
until it reached her jaw bone. Blood seeped at the edges, and her right palm was
smeared crimson with the blood she had already wiped away. It wasn’t Kim.

The infected with the fly eggs on its
forehead reached them. It tried to grab Heather, but she pushed it away,
wincing as she put weight on her ankle.

“Run to the cabins,” she told the
children.

The girl stood up. The boy didn’t move,
as if he was trapped in a bubble of fear and couldn’t hear what she had said.

The infected started to get up off the
floor, and the others were only feet away. She didn’t have time to wait for the
boy to hear her. She slapped him on the face. The boy spun around, and Heather
saw an imprint of her palm on his skin, white at first, but then turning red as
the blood crept back to his cheeks.

“Get to the cabin. Keep her safe,” she
told him, pointing at the girl.

The boy nodded, and they ran away.
Heather was left with the infected. The pain in her ankle was the kind that hit
her in the stomach and made her nauseous. The fly egg infected grabbed for her
again. Luckily he didn’t weigh much, and Heather was able to shove him away
again.

She felt arms on her shoulders. One of
the infected grabbed her. It opened its mouth wide and showed yellow teeth and
swollen tonsils.

A knife carved through its head. At
first the blade hit its skull and was lodged in the bone. Charles Bull held it.
He put his hand on the infected’s shoulder and wedged the knife free. He lifted
it again, and this time he was able to crack through the skull.

The other infected tumbled toward her.
Charles pushed her out of the way. He put his leg behind the infected and
pushed it to the ground, and when it was on the floor he lifted his right leg
and drove the full force of his boot onto the infected’s head, repeating the
action until bones cracked and blood leaked onto the stone. When the final two
creatures turned in Charles’s direction, it took less than five seconds before
they lay motionless on the ground.

There was another man stood with Charles.
He was tall with a hooked nose, and he wore a plastic raincoat that was covered
in stains. He had a sneering quality to his face, and skin so grey it looked
like it would be cold to the touch. His face was marked with bruises that
looked fresh, and blood was crusted around his nostrils. He had a mark on his
neck as if something had been stabbed into his skin.

Charles held his knife by his side. His
chest heaved as he took deep breaths.

“I was able to persuade Dr. Scarsgill to
join us.”

“Who’s he?” asked Heather.

“The respected doctor who runs Camp Dam
Marsh.”

If he ran the camp, then there was a
good chance he would know what had happened, and he might know who Kim and Eric
were and where they had gone. Heather knew that her daughter was clever, and
she believed that she and Eric would be hiding somewhere in camp until the
trouble stopped.

“Your name is Scarsgill?” Heather asked.

The doctor nodded.

“I’m looking for my children,
Scarsgill,” Heather said. “A girl called Kim and a boy called Eric. I know
there must be lots of children here but-”

Scarsgill looked at her strangely. “Did you
say Kim?”

“She’s my daughter.”

He looked up at the sky for a few
seconds, as if he was having a silent conversation with something sat above
them. When he looked back at Heather, he crossed his arms.

“Your daughter is gone,” he said.

She felt her chest constricting. It was
all she could do not to grab the man by the neck.

“Gone where?”

He shook his head.

“The boy is taking her somewhere. She’s
more important than you realise. Your daughter could be the answer to
everything, Heather. What are you going to do if you find her?”

“Keep her safe, obviously.”

“The world has better things in store
for her than that. I’ve spoken to the boy.”

“Eric.”

“Yes. He knows what Kim could mean to us
all. And he knows where to take her. It won’t do any good for you to find
them,” said Scarsgill.

She looked at Charles. The bounty hunter
shrugged, and then cast his gaze across the yard to where Lilly sat. She was
far enough away to be unaffected by the trouble.

Heather didn’t have the patience to even
listen to Scarsgill. She didn’t care what he meant about Kim being important,
she just needed to find her.

If Scarsgill wasn’t going to talk, then
she needed to make him. She remembered what Charles had told her; that she
needed to take on some of the darkness of the world. She’d already done that
when she tore a guard’s throat out. It seemed like sometimes, the only way to
get what you wanted in the world was to do something that blackened your soul.

She took the knife from Charles’s hand.
Scarsgill saw it and blinked in surprise. Heather jerked it forward and stabbed
him in the arm.

He cried out. His face scrunched up in
pain, and blood welled up onto the sleeve of his coat and ran down the plastic.

“Where are they?” said Heather, words
spitting through gritted teeth.

She twisted the knife. Scarsgill
screamed. She felt the blade cut into the gristle of his arm, and the sensation
made her want to vomit. She breathed through her nose.

“Tell me where they are.”

Scarsgill’s face was a mask of pain. The
blood drained from his cheeks until he looked chalk white, and the fingers on
his wounded arm twitched.

“The train,” he said.

She held the knife in his arm.

“Where’s the train?”

With his free hand, Scarsgill pointed
across the yard. Heather saw a dog kennel with all the cells empty, and then a
red brick building.

“I don’t see a train,” she said.

Scarsgill grunted. “It left already,” he
said. “Your children are gone.”

Chapter
Thirty-Five

Baz

He tried to wriggle his hands, but he
could only manage an inch of movement before ropes tightened against his
wrists. It was the same for his feet too, and he felt the nylon scratch his
ankles as he moved them. When his vision cleared, he didn’t see the cobbled
streets or sloping roofs of Kiele. Instead he looked out onto a wasteland
stained with blood from the bodies that had been dragged across it, and the air
smelled of sweat and urine. The knots of the ropes fastened him to a wooden
pole that was dug into the dirt.

A faint breeze swept through the air,
and voices spoke dimly in the background. He couldn’t have been far out of
Kiele, he knew, though he couldn’t turn his neck to confirm it. To his right
there was a decapitated head at the top of another pole, staring out into the
wasteland as though it was on watch. He could see the underside of its neck and
how the spike was driven through the gristle and up into its chin.

Kiele must have been behind him, then.
Where were Rushden and Max? Baz had taken a risk freeing them from the cells,
and this was the thanks he got. He started to wonder if it had been the right
thing to do. Letting them go was an act of treason toward the Capita. If Hanks
found out he did it, he wouldn’t waste more than a second thinking about how to
punish him.

He squirmed against the ropes, but they
were too thick and bristly, and they’d been wrapped around him and the wood so
many times that there was no way he could break them.

He heard the clip-clop of hooves and
marching of feet behind him. He wondered what Rushden and Max were going to do
to him. Maybe their plan was to torture him for secrets. The thing was, they’d
caught a bigger prize than they could ever have imagined. He knew more than any
normal Runt. If they made him feel enough pain, he could tell them secrets
about the Capita that would fuel the fire in the Resistance’s belly for years
to come.

When the horse rounded him, Baz saw that
Hanks was riding it. He’d taken a cut across the face in battle. His sickle
hung from his side, and the curve of the blade was smeared with blood.

“See you’re awake,” said Hanks. “How’s
that head of yours?”

Baz had the urge to rub his forehead but
knew the ropes would hold firm.

“Can you cut me loose?” he said.
“Bastards must have knocked me out.”

Hanks nodded at one of his officers.

“Go ahead,” he said.

As the officer approached with a knife,
Hanks spoke. He lifted his hand in the air.

“Hold up. Actually, let’s not free you
yet. Let’s talk about why we found you passed out in the police station, with
two empty cells next to you and the keys in your hand.”

Rushden and Max hadn’t been the ones who
tied him up. They must have fled after being let loose, and one of the Capita
Runts had found him. He must have been tied up here on Hanks’ orders. He
remembered all the stories he’d heard about Hanks. Deserters getting shot in
the ankles, men having their eyes scooped out. The ropes seemed a lot tighter,
and they burned his skin even more as he squirmed.

“Where are they?” said Hanks.

“Who?”

“You might be dumb, Baz, but surely
you’re not
this
stupid. You’re not in a position to pretend you are,
either. Tell me where they are.”

He’d always felt like he walked a lonely
line in the Capita. In council meetings, even when he wore the mask and
costume, he never quite felt like he was Tammuz. He never fit in. He worked hard
to hide his northern accent as if uttering the rough syllables was shameful,
and his upbringing meant he couldn’t make the right decisions. Marduk and Nabu
spoke with English so perfectly accented that the Queen would have given them a
knighthood. Sometimes, though, Nabu slipped up and Baz heard some of the
Gloucestershire creep into his tone.

He’d never really believed the Capita’s
ideology. He’d gone along with it because principles were luxuries since the
outbreak. You either stayed in the Dome and chose to embrace the Capita ideals,
or you walked into the darkness of the wasteland and wondered what would get
you first; hunger, thirst, or the infected.

Since the battle in Kiele, he realised
the true cost of his decisions. It wasn’t just about survival anymore. If he
ever got back to the Dome, he knew he couldn’t just put his mask back on and
walk into the Grand Hall. He’d seen the knife wounds and heard the cries of
pain, and he knew what the decisions made in the Hall really meant.

He looked at Hanks. His saw his thick
shoulders, muscles tensed as he held the reins of his horse. The wrestling
action figure in his shirt pocket, the chewed head just peeking out. It felt
like Hanks was peeling his skin away with his gaze alone.

Men like this couldn’t win, he decided.
People like Charles Bull and Marduk couldn’t be allowed to prosper just because
they were prepared to do things that others weren’t. Max and Rushden might have
betrayed him the second they had the chance, but Baz believed their cause was
worthier than any of the Capita’s lies.

“I’m trying to remember where they are,
but my memory is fuzzy,” he said.

Hanks scowled.

“Go and bring it,” he said to an
officer.

The officer walked away. Baz couldn’t
turn his head enough to see where he was going, but a few minutes later he was
back. This time, as he approached, there were two sets of footsteps. The boom
of the officer’s boots was easy to recognise. The other steps were slow and
dragging, like shoes scraping across stone.

The officer walked into view. He held
ropes tight in his hand, and on the end of them was an infected. Spit flew out
of its mouth as it snarled. Its skin had the pink softness of someone who was
human not too long ago, though his neck had a scratch so deep that Baz winced
to look at it.

The infected wore a Capita uniform. It
was obviously one of the Runts, since the uniform was torn and dirty. Hanks was
trying to scare him. Maybe the lieutenant had forgotten, but Baz was there when
the other infected were defanged. He knew the old man’s ploys, and knew that
this infected wouldn’t have any teeth.

“Tell us where they are and why you let
them out,” said Hanks.

When Baz didn’t say anything, Hanks
ordered the men around him to move back. He turned his horse around and trotted
ten feet away. The officer holding the infected jerked his head back as it
lashed out at him. He grabbed his knife and in one swipe cut the ropes that
held it.

Suddenly free, the infected moved its
head from side to side, groaning as it decided who to attack. Another officer
stepped up behind it and gave it a shove.

The infected locked its gaze on Baz.
Desire lit in its eyes, and it opened its mouth and cried out. Baz saw teeth
slick with spit, yellowing where they met gums.

The ropes felt even more constricting.
He squirmed and struggled but they wouldn’t budge, and he felt the coarse
material rubbed the skin off his wrists. The infected took lurching steps
toward him, and he knew it would take less than a minute for it to reach him.

He knew Hanks wanted answers. The
problem was that Baz didn’t have them. And even if he possessed them and wanted
to talk, Hanks would kill him as soon as the last word left his mouth.  On the
other side, the Resistance men didn’t trust him either, and they’d gladly left
him to face the consequences of letting them go.

This was the end, he realised. As the
infected stumbled close enough that Baz could hear the clack of its teeth, he
knew he was out of allies.

He hoped that he’d done one good thing.
That freeing the Resistance fighters would lead to something that brought karma
on the people of the wasteland and hurt the Capita. If he knew that, he could
face dying.

As the infected reached out for him, an
arrow plunged through its head, tearing through the weak skin at its temple and
travelling to the centre of its brain. The creature fell to the floor at his
feet.

He looked to his left to see Rushden
stood with a bow tensed in his arms. Behind him was Max, and with them were
some of the men and women from Kiele. Stood with the crowd and trying to blend
in was Ronnie Alderson. He’d ripped the Capita emblem from the sleeve of his
shirt.

Hanks rounded his horse. He slipped the
sickle from his side and wiped the blood on the leather saddle. He rubbed the head
of the action figure in his pocket, and then turned to his men.

“No prisoners this time. I want every
pulse stopped. I want the ground covered red. I want to see their blood on your
hands and knives.”

He slapped the side of his horse and
charged toward the Kiele fighters. Seeing their leader in action, the Capita
officers and Runts soon followed. Some were still fuelled by adrenaline from
the battle the day before, but others gave a reluctant charge, running at a
slow pace like a child in a PE class who’d rather be at home.

The people of Kiele were ready this
time. Wise to Hanks and his tricks, they made sure to look around and check
that no infected had been let loose. As the Capita commander pounded toward
them on his stallion, Rushden slid another arrow onto his bow. Max tapped a
knife against his palm, and the other men and women of Kiele held whatever they
could find that was sharp enough to pierce flesh or blunt enough to crack
bones.

The ends of Capita blades tore through
the skin of Kiele men and women. Hammers cracked down on skulls, and men
screamed as knives were pushed deep into their chests. The wasteland was filled
with cries of pain and bellows of anger. Baz could only watch as he saw creased
foreheads gather sweat, and blood shot eyes open wide as blades sunk into
flesh. When a man clutched his throat to stem the spurt of blood from a slash
on his skin, the noise was like the patter of a waterfall.

He heard someone moan, but it didn’t
come from anyone in the battle. He looked down, and saw the infected at his
feet was straightening up. It put its hands on the floor and pushed it up. The
arrow still stood out of its temple as though it was wearing a novelty hat. The
arrowhead must not have gone far enough into its brain.

Cold panic covered him. He struggled
against the ropes and winced at the burning of his already raw skin. He could
move against them all day and never get free.

He bent his thumb in toward his palm. He
pulled his hand against the ropes, and inch by inch he felt it get free. As he
slid through the rope, he felt pressure on his hands. Pain racked through him.
He realised that his thumb was being dislocated, but he bit through the agony
and strained to get his hand free.

The infected stood up. It fixed its gaze
firmly on Baz. Just as it lurched at him, Baz felt his hand fall out of the
ropes. He ducked down and let the infected collide with the wooden pole.

Rushden appeared behind the infected. He
grabbed it and turned it around, and held a small knife in his hand, prepared
to complete the job he’d left half–finished with his bow.

As Rushden went to stab it, Hanks
galloped by on his horse. He swung his sickle at him, but the ginger man moved
his head back, and the blade sliced the top of his earlobe. He put his hand to
the side of his head and blood covered his fingers.

More people streamed out from the gates
of Kiele. All the surviving townsfolk rushed at the Capita soldiers with
hammers and pikes and shovels, and Baz watched as they attacked the soldiers.
Capita uniforms were stained red as blades punctured them, and he heard the
screams of Runts as they fell to the floor.

His left hand was free. Despite the pain
from his dislocated thumb, he sucked it up and worked on the rope on his right
arm until he felt it loosen, and then he slipped his hand free. He fell forward
onto the floor. Pain stung through him as his left hand touched the ground.

The screams of the Capita soldiers
started to die down. One by one Hanks’s men fell, until soon the leader sat
alone on his horse, with angry Kiele fighters around him and all his unit lying
dead on the wasteland.