The Dying & The Dead 2 (35 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Baz

“Everyone grab a shovel,” said Max.
“Dig until your arms hurt.”

They’d separated the Capita soldiers’
corpses into one pile and the remaining unburned Kiele townsfolk into another.
Their bodies lay on the ground like discarded dolls, and as the sun rose up it
cast pastel light over the stabs and slashes in their skin. It lit the crimson
stains in their clothes and illuminated their faces, showing what their
expressions had been when they met their deaths. Some had wide eyes and open
mouths, while others had faces so scrunched up in pain it looked like their
bones had collapsed.

After a few hours of sleep they had
all met up outside the town gates, where the wasteland grass was stained red
and the carrion swooped and dived and tried to pick at the skin of the dead.

Rushden turned to Max. “Wasn’t anyone
on guard last night?”

Rushden’s hand was bandaged up,
though blood leaked through the cloth. Baz felt exhaustion in every cell of his
body, and it was like he was only being held up by strings being pulled from
somewhere in the sky. Rushden showed no signs of tiredness.

“We’ve just lost half our people,”
said Max. “Not just our fighters, Rushden, but half our population. And the
other half is ready to crack.”

A raven fluttered next to the body of
a Capita soldier. Rushden picked up a stone and threw it. He missed by three
feet, but the bird got the message and flapped its black wings and took off
into the sky.

“By all rights,” said Rushden, “we
should just burn them. I can still smell their bonfire in the air. Even after
the fight, they could have showed a shred of decency.”

“That’s the Capita for you,” said
Max.

They walked onto the wasteland and
past the heads on the stakes. The air was crisp enough that it could snap, and
the caws of birds came from their left and right. They walked over to the pile
of Capita bodies. They were laid side by side like dominoes. Baz looked at
their faces. He saw cold skin and standard-issue masks. Some had stab wounds
and scratches on their bodies. He didn’t recognise most of the Runts, but as he
went from face to face, he stopped at one of them. He recognised Lerner, his
skin freezing despite the sun’s weak rise in the sky.

The other Kiele men soon joined them.
After so much fighting their shoulders should have been slumped and their faces
should have looked drained, but they put on a front. They wouldn’t let
themselves feel the aftereffects of battle until it had really finished. The
end wasn’t when the blades stopped swinging and the knives were dropped. The
other part of battle, the worse one, came afterwards. It was when the victor
had to cope with the effects of the violence; when they had to dig graves in
the wasteland and deal with the dead. It was grabbing a corpse under the
armpits and dragging it across the grass, hearing a crunching sound as you
pulled it over to the burial pit.

As Kiele men dragged the last two
Capita corpses over to the wasteland grave, Rushden stopped them.

“Save one,” he said.

He looked at Baz.

“Come here, soldier.”

He almost forgot he was still wearing
his Capita uniform. He had never gotten used to the feel of it; the prickliness
around his neck, the way it hung loose around his arms but tight on his legs.
It had never felt right.

Rushden looked at Max. “Hand me your
knife,” he said.

Max pulled his blade from his belt
and gave it to Rushden. The ginger-haired man fixed Baz with a look full of disgust,
as though when he looked into his eyes he saw the Dome and the Five and Ishkur,
and all the terrible things they had done in the Mainland.

He walked toward him, eyes burning
holes into his face as though they were magnifying glasses focussing rays of
hate. Baz wished they hadn’t taken his weapon away from him.

Rushden stopped in front of him. Baz
waited for his arm to raise and the blow to come. He clenched his fists at his
side.

“Take it,” said Rushden.

He stretched his hand out, knife hilt
resting on his palm. Dirt lined the creases of his skin.

Baz held the blade. The handle was
warm, and the sheen of the metal had faded long ago. It felt heavier than the
standard-issue Capita weapons, even though it was smaller.

Rushden pointed at the head of one of
the Capita corpses.

“See that?” he said.

“I had noticed, yeah,” said Baz.

Rushden turned and pointed at a stake
dug into the ground near the town walls. Where the other stakes wore severed
heads on their spikes, this one was empty.

“I think you know what I’m asking you
to do.”

Baz looked at the dead Runt. The skin
on his neck looked cold, the colour of it almost blue in the morning chill. It
looked like it would be tough to cut through it. Even then, there was the
vertebrae and larynx. All his life he’d never really thought about the particulars
of cutting a man’s head off. He supposed it wasn’t something most people had to
consider, really. Now that he did, he felt his stomach turn.

The Kiele men watched him. His Capita
uniform became constricting now, as if the fabrics were tightening around him.
He became all too aware of how it marked him as different. Expectant eyes
stared at the blade in his hand, and some darted their gazes at the other dead
Runt.

There was no choice. If he didn’t do
this, they’d kill him. He walked over to the body. He looked into the dead
man’s face. He had nostrils that seemed too wide for his nose, and there was a
mole on the side of his face, just below his well-groomed sideburns. His skin
made him look like he had been hanging in a butcher’s refrigeration room for
hours, and Baz wondered if this meant there wouldn’t be much blood.

Rushden and Max watched him. As he
started to unbutton the Runt’s shirt collar, he heard them talk.

“You know what you’re going to have
to do,” said Max.

Rushden clutched his bite wound.

“No chance.”

“You’ve been bitten. You know what
happens after that.”

“I don’t care. I’m not becoming like
them, Max, bite or no bite. If it means I have to die, then so be it. Besides,
you never know. I might wake up from the coma. I might be immune.”

“The chances of that are one in a
hundred.”

“Thousands, probably. I’d rather take
those odds than become like them.”

Baz unbuttoned the Runt’s shirt and
spread it wide so that his neck was fully exposed. He held his blade in his
right hand. The handle had felt warm when Max first passed it to him, but Baz’s
cold hands had cooled it down. He poked the blade against the Runt’s skin.
Despite the snappy chill in the air, it was still soft. He stopped.

He couldn’t do it. He’d never been a
fighter. Even in the early days before the Dome, he’d only ever killed infected
when he really had to. He didn’t like the sound skin made when it teared, and
that noise was the same whether someone was alive, dead, or infected. Skin was
still skin, and it wasn’t meant to be ripped apart.

Some of the men moved around him. He
saw weapons held in firm grips, eyes locked on him, waiting for him to do
something. Most of them probably wanted him to make a run for it. They would
have loved to hunt down the Capita soldier and kill him. Once more, the uniform
felt tight around his body. He felt like if he didn’t take it off soon, it
would just melt into his skin like Ishkur’s mask.

He looked at the Runt. He took a
breath and held it in. This is what it would take, he realised. If he wanted to
leave the Capita, this was what he would have to do. He’d have to cut the head
off a Capita soldier.

Pressing the blade against the man’s
skin, he closed his eyes. He jerked his arm forward. The knife slipped in
easily at first, then met resistance deeper into the man’s neck. There was a
snapping sound as he cut through the vertebrae. He felt the blade meeting bone,
and the smell of blood crept into his nostrils and sneaked down his throat.

As he felt the blade tear through
bone and skin, he felt his uniform start to loosen. He opened his eyes and saw
Max and Rushden watching him. He cut through the last part of skin until
finally, the Capita soldier’s head was separated from his body.

Although nobody said anything, Baz
saw appreciation in their eyes. There was a sense of something changing around
him, like his life was a book and someone had turned the page, and the rest of
the paper was blank. For too long he’d served an empire that he didn’t love nor
even agree with. He looked at the walls of Kiele, at the houses and shop roofs
poking over the stone, and he saw something that he could be a part of.

Hanks would make it back to the Dome,
of course. He’d tell the Five what had happened, and they would retaliate in
the most violent fashion. Ishkur would have replaced him already, he knew.
Someone else would wear the Tammuz mask from now on. The knowledge made his
clothes feel even looser, like he was breathing for the first time.

He looked up at Max and Rushden.

“I know a way we can get to them,” he
said. “I can lead you to the Five.”

A cloud hid the sun away and made the
air seem grey. The smell of blood and death hung in the air, and he felt his
stomach cramp from lack of food. It didn’t matter.

For the first time, he had the sense
that he was free. No more Capita, no more Tammuz. And now that he felt this
way, he wanted to make sure the rest of Mainland could someday, too.

Chapter
Thirty-Eight

Ed

An infected reached toward him
through the window frame, but Ed kicked it away, splitting its tooth under his
boot heel. He lowered himself back into the room. He knew what he needed to do,
but he couldn’t be stupid about it.

The Savage stood with his sharpened
chair leg in his hand, beating it against his palm. A wood shaving split from
the end and fell to the floor. Bethelyn walked over to a wall. The infected
pounded against the window frame across from her, and Ed saw an infected man
with a ponytail gnaw on the wood. Bethelyn stared at one of the drawings nailed
on the wall. There was an oval shape roughly imitating a face, but there were
crosses where the eyes should have been.

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

Ed ignored the cries of the infected
behind him.

“Pass me the map.”

The Savage pulled Cillian’s crumpled
map from his pocket and gave it to him. He unravelled it and saw the
illustration of Loch-Deep, complete with markings for where the hunter had seen
Ripeech, as well as the symbols showing where he had placed his traps. He
studied it for a few minutes before he found where they were. A few seconds
later, he saw what he had been looking for.

“We have to go. Savage, I need you to
go to the window opposite and make some noise. Draw the infected over there,
and then we’ll leave by the window.”

The Savage nodded. He walked over to
the window frame and started banging on it. A few infected left the other
windows, but some stayed, their stares fixed on Ed and Bethelyn.

“Come on you disease-riddled gas
bags,” hollered The Savage. “Fresh meat over here. Come get your gums on this.”

More infected moved around the
building and over to the window covered by the antique mirror. With the window
frame nearest him almost clear, Ed climbed out. Bethelyn followed, yelling in
pain as a splinter stuck in her leg. Finally The Savage joined them.

Without the walls of the mediation
room warding it away, the wind whipped at them. Ed felt a chill sneak through
his sleeves and spread across his skin. He heard the infected on the other side
of the building.

He tried to get his bearings. He
pictured the map, and tried to work out which side of the building they were
on. As he fixed their direction in his mind, he heard groaning coming from the
right of him.

A different group of infected
approached, their heavy feet snapping on twigs and stumbling over vines, cries
sneaking out of their chewed lips. There was a little girl wearing a poncho.
She had a large tear across her chest, and Ed saw a bite mark stretching across
her skin. The other infected towered over her.

“Keep them away from me,” said Ed.
“Make sure they stay busy.”

The Savage tested the weight of the
table leg in his palm.

“Where are you going?”

“Just keep them around here. I’ll be
back soon.”

He felt his trouser pocket and
touched the outline of the penknife resting against his leg. He gave it a tap.
He didn’t know if he’d done it for luck, or just to reassure himself that it
was there.

Beyond them were pine trees, though
the branches had shed their needles. A pathway twisted through them, and the
gravel showed through the patches that the needles didn’t cover. From looking
at the map, Ed knew where the path led.

He moved toward it. He knew he had to
go quickly. He didn’t want to leave The Savage and Bethelyn alone with the
infected, but he also knew that if he didn’t act now, his resolve was going to
spill out of him and he wouldn’t dare go.

The infected closed in on The Savage
and Bethelyn. Ed glanced back and saw The Savage stab his chair leg into the
skull of the little girl. A man reached for Bethelyn, but she pushed him onto the
floor. Bethelyn stood over his head. She stomped down on his skull again and
again, letting his bones crack beneath the soles of her boots. Blood and brain
splattered onto the muddy ground. Her face turned red, and she gnashed her
teeth as she made a mess of the creature at her feet. She wore a smile on her
face despite the violence of the act, as though destroying its skull had helped
her work through some of her anger.

The pine needles scrunched under Ed’s
feet, and wind snaked through the bare-limbed trees and made a hollow whistle.
The further he went the darker the path seemed to get, until he felt it close
all around him. The breeze sucked the noise out of the air until he couldn’t
even hear The Savage and Bethelyn behind him. He looked back and realised that
he had walked so far out that he was alone. Shadows surrounded him, and he
wondered if eyes stared at him through the darkness.

He couldn’t turn back. As much as he
wanted to, he knew that he had to do this. Finally the path wound through a
break in the trees. Beyond them, where the gravel stopped, Ed saw the entrance
of a cave. A sign post outside it read ‘
Gaspar’s Ruins.’

Ed had seen it on the map.
It
was listed with a symbol above it, and when he looked up the symbol on the map
legend it said that it was part of the retreat. He wondered what it was used
for. Perhaps for some people the mediation centre, with its incense and mats,
wasn’t quite peaceful enough and they sought solitude inside the rocky hollow.

He stood at the mouth of the cave.
Somehow, back in the meditation room, he’d sensed Ripeech sloping away. When
The Savage had refused its offer the creature had left, and Ed knew it would be
here. Cillian’s markings showed that he had spotted Ripeech in this area a
number of times, and a dark cave seemed perfect for it.

He looked into the darkness in front
of him and though he couldn’t see anything, he sensed something was inside. A
creature waiting in a cave so silent that its own heartbeat echoed off the
stone.

He touched the penknife again. His
heart was pounding, and for a second the darkness ahead of him looked deep
enough to drown him. Taking a breath, he walked inside and felt the gloom fall
over him like a drape.

Inside the cave, everything was
still. The gloom was so thick that his eyes couldn’t puncture even an inch of
it. Something dripped in an unseen corner pattered onto the floor. He walked a
little further in. He’d only gone a few metres, but the cave exit already felt
so far behind him that he’d never find it again.

Something waited in the dimness. A
creature that brooded in silence, observing him with eyes that had long-since
adjusted to the all-encompassing black. His hairs curled up on his arms, and a
tremor of anxiety went through him as though his body was urging him to leave.

“I know you’re here,” he said.

His voice sounded alien as it bounced
back at him from the stone walls. The water pattered, and a faint breeze
chilled him. He put his hand in his pocket and grabbed the penknife. Silently
as he could, he pushed the lever up, and the blade poked through.

He tried to ignore the fear building
in him. He fought the urge to flee, and tried to forget the noise of his own
croaky breaths and the pounding of his pulse in his ears. It was in here, he
knew. Watching him. Sharing the shadows with him, breathing in the nothingness
that only a pure darkness can give.

He tuned everything else out. He
remembered the books his dad used to read after Mum died. As much as he’d
scoffed at them, he’d read one once. He’d done it so that he could refute
everything that his dad believed was good about them, and didn’t find it at all
ironic that he read a book about inner peace so that he could win an argument. He
knew what mindfulness was, but he’d never really believed it could work. Inner
peace seemed like a phantom feeling, like the itch he’d heard amputees got on
limbs they had long-since lost.

Clearing his mind of The Savage and
Bethelyn, of the infected and their groans, he began to recognise something.

It was shape. He couldn’t see it, but
he could feel it in his mind. It moved along the walls to his right. He felt it
walk behind him, metres away, and the hairs on his back stood up. The shape crossed
over to his left, staying in the shadows and stalking him as silently as a tiger
playing with prey.

He stayed completely still. As he
felt the creature move closer to him on his left, he spun around and stuck the
penknife into the darkness, thrusting his arm forward until he felt it puncture
something solid.

Ripeech screeched. Its cries were so
high-pitched that Ed thought his eardrums would burst. The cave was enclosed
enough that the noise couldn’t escape into the sky and instead hit the walls
and came back at him again and again, a squealing assault on his ears.

He pulled his knife out, and then
thrust it back into the darkness. He kept stabbing, unable to stop himself like
his arm was a wind-up toy on a loop. The blade punctured Ripeech’s skin over
and over. Ed couldn’t see which part of the creature he had pierced, but as the
monster cried out he knew he had to carry on.

Then there was silence. The dripping
sound returned. He realised that he was panting, and he fought to keep his
breath under control.

Something smashed into his face. He
felt his bones pop, and his eyes watered with the pain. He tried not to cry out
but as it hit him again in the stomach, he felt the wind suck out of him and he
couldn’t help groaning.

It cracked the back of his skull this
time. He fell to his knees, and the penknife slipped from his grasp. He
scrambled in the darkness but could only feel the cold stone floor against his
fingertips. The creature stalked around him.

He tried to clear his mind. His
broken nose sent pain screaming through his head, and he gasped for air. He
felt Ripeech close in behind him. He rolled over to his side just as he felt it
pounce.

A dim circle of light marked the
daylight outside the cave. He got up. His stomach cramped and he felt blood
trickle out of his nose and over his lips until he could taste it on his
tongue.

He fixed the exit in sight and ran
toward It. Ripeech chased him, this time not caring to hide the sound of his
hands and feet on the floor. Just as it caught up to him, Ed reached the mouth
of the cave. He ran out and felt the pale daylight stream over him.

The pine trees were ahead. Beyond
them and along the hidden gravel path was the communal mediation room. He
couldn’t take that direction yet, as much as he would have given anything to
see The Savage and Bethelyn.

He remembered the map. He recalled
the forest lines and the Ripeech sightings, and he fixed the trap markings in
his mind. As Ripeech reached the cave exit behind him, Ed took a right. He
ignored the cries of his lungs as they called for air and he trampled through
the forest, cracking twigs beneath his panicked footsteps.

He saw it ahead of him. A large oak
tree, the biggest in the forest. He remembered the map and knew that this must
have been the place Cillian had marked.

Ripeech almost caught up. Ed sensed
the creature slowing down, and hoped that his penknife had done more damage
than he realised. Despite that, the monster was still faster than him.  As Ed
reached the oak tree, Ripeech’s feet bounded just inches behind. He looked
intently at the ground in front of him. Finally, he saw what Cillian had
marked.

Nestled on the forest floor, inches
away from where the tree roots submerged from the earth, he saw the glint of a
bear trap. The steel was covered by mud and leaves, inconspicuous enough that
only an alert mind could see it. Ed ran right for it, jumping over it at the
last second.

He heard a scream of pain behind him.
He knew that Ripeech had stopped chasing, but he didn’t turn around straight
away. It was as though his body wouldn’t let him, or that something pushed him
on and forced him not to stop.

Swallowing a glob of blood from his
nose, he slowly spun around. Ripeech flailed on the ground, both arms stuck the
mouth of the trap. Nothing could have prepared Ed for seeing the creature
properly.