The Dying & The Dead 2 (4 page)

“I get that,” said Ed. “But it can’t all
be bad. There must be places that are safe. There must be areas where things
are still good and…I don’t know…beautiful.”

There was a silence for a few seconds.
Kindling crackled on the fire, and Ed stuck his fingers toward it. Suddenly, The
Savage started laughing.

“Beautiful?  You naïve sod. You’ll be
dead by the end of the week.”

“Tide’s coming in,” said Bethelyn.
“Better go.”

~

As the sun started to rise they followed
the railed path behind the beach. It led a trail through the hill until the
sand started to give way to mud and grass. Small foliage was dotted around
them, and waist-high shrubs blew in the breeze. All of the leaves on the trees
were dead and had fallen to the ground.

None of them knew where to go. The ship
had sunk not far off the Mainland coast, though which bit of the coast was a
question they couldn’t answer. Ed felt as if he was fighting a constant battle
to keep his eyelids open, but walking warded away the cold, and there was no
sense staying near the beach. Looking out at the sea one last time, Ed saw no
sign of the boat. The sea had swallowed it whole. Right now the old timber
vessel was lining the ocean floor where it would rest for the next few hundred
years.

“How long before you need to, you know,
do it?” said Bethelyn.

Ed and Bethelyn walked close to each
other, but The Savage liked to keep a distance. Even though he was stuck with
them, he didn’t want to be near the pair.
The feeling’s more than mutual,
thought Ed.

The Savage stopped. A grass plain spread
out for half a mile in front of them, and beyond that was the start of a
woodland area where the trees reached fifteen feet tall. The contrast between
beach and forest was a strange one. It didn’t seem like they should be so close
together. Then again, Ed had never left Golgoth. He’d spent all his life on an
island of forty people, and it was clear that his world experience hadn’t even
approached the surface, let alone scratched it.

The Savage, on the other hand, walked
with the air of a man who always knew where he was. Nothing seemed to bother
him, because in the back of his mind he always had a fix for it. When the ship
was sinking, there was a trace of panic in his voice, but it vanished almost
immediately.

“What’s that?” said The Savage, turning to
Bethelyn.

“I was just thinking. When are you going
to need…your cure?”

“We’re going to be spending a lot of
time together unfortunately, Bethelyn. No point being coy about it. The words
won’t bite you. You want to know when I’ll need blood or flesh.”

“If that’s what you need, yeah.”

“By my count, I’m due some soon.”

“And what happens if you don’t get it?”
said Ed.

The Savage stopped walking.

“I’ll start to turn. I’ll fall into a
coma, and when I wake I’ll want nothing more than some tasty flesh between my
teeth.”

“So it’s flesh on the menu either way,
then? You either turn into an infected and want to eat us, or you stay human
and still want to eat us.” said Ed.

“That’s the short of it. At least by
having it now, I get to stay as me. I get to keep my thoughts and my brain, and
I don’t become a mindless sack of crap.”

They started across the plain. The grass
was sagging and brown, and it looked so dead that it might just grind into dust
beneath their feet. From somewhere, a bird gave a piercing cry. It sounded like
it had come from the woods.

There were no woods on Golgoth. Ed’s dad
had wanted to take the family on a ferry across the Mainland and stay in a log
cabin at Yellow-Stone Forest, but by that point mum was so ill that she
couldn’t stomach the rocking of a boat. Though they never made it on that
holiday, Ed used have dreams about it as if it had actually happened. It was
stupid, but he counted those dreams as some of his best memories.

“Have you ever thought about just ending
it?” said Ed. “We saw you on the island. You kill people to get what you need.
Are all those lives really worth yours?”

“In my eyes, they are.”

Bethelyn shivered. Her hair was still
wet, but her clothes were starting to dry in the rising morning sun. She looked
at The Savage as she spoke.

“What have you ever done to justify
extending your life at someone else’s expense? I mean, what good have you
actually done with the extra time you’ve been given? Sorry, I shouldn’t have
said ‘
given’
, because nobody handed it over freely to you. Let me
rephrase: So, what have you done with the extra time that you’ve
taken
?”

“The only person I need to justify
things to is myself,” said The Savage. “And I find myself pretty agreeable.”

Ed wondered what he would do if he was
in The Savage’s position. He liked to think that if somehow he got infected,
he’d just end it. When he watched the newscasts about the outbreak and heard
about the mass suicides, he thought those people had the right idea. If he knew
he was going to turn into one of the monsters, he would just take a walk off
the Golgoth cliffs.

That was impossible now. Ed was immune,
so nothing the infected could do would turn him. They could still kill him, of
course, and it would be a pretty horrible death. He’d never join their ranks.

He looked around him. Everything was
different on the Mainland. Not in drastic ways, but in the small details that
he never thought of. He’d never seen trees so close to a beach. He’d never
trampled over grass so brown and fragile that it was like tissue paper. He
refused to believe what The Savage said. Sure, the infection had changed
things, but there had to be something good left in the world. It couldn’t be
all that bad. Maybe once he’d found James, he could see some of it.

 He glanced ahead of him, and something
caught his eye.

“What’s that?” said Ed.

In front of them, on the ground,
something glinted in the sun. They walked across the dead grass until they
reached it. When Ed saw what it was, he recoiled.

“Jesus,” said Bethelyn.

The Savage kneeled down on the floor. He
reached down and picked up a severed arm. The hand was curled inwards toward
the palm, and the arm had been cut just below the elbow. The wound was jagged,
as if it had been ripped off. The glinting object was a chrome watch. It was
still strapped to the wrist, though the owner would have no need for it
anymore. A chill crept through Ed. He felt eyes watching him, but looking
around, he saw nothing.

The Savage unclasped the watch from the
wrist. He turned it over in his hand and looked at something on the back. He
traced his finger over it.

“What does it say?” asked Ed.

“
To my wonderful husband. Love, KC
,”
read The Savage.

He stood up. He paced around them and
stared intently at the floor as if something had gotten his attention.

“Footprints,” he said. “People were
here. A few of them, from the looks of it. It seems like they were all in this
spot, and then all the footprints lead off in different directions, as if they
all ran away. There was something else here, too.”

“What?” said Ed. He looked around him
again, but nothing moved in the grass, and the woods seemed empty.

The Savage bent down and picked up a few
flattened blades of grass.

“There are some pretty weird footprints.
This place is beginning to make my bum itch. I have an idea where we are, and
it’s not good.”

“And where’s that?” said Bethelyn.

The Savage gave them a grave look. His
eyes were free from traces of his usual mockery.

“Loch-Deep” he answered.

Ed walked over to The Savage. Sure
enough, he saw the footprints that seemed to go in different directions. There
was another set; bigger than the rest, and misshapen. They couldn’t have been
made by human feet, but he didn’t know of any animal whose paws could make a
shape like that.

“You say Lock-Deep like it should mean
something to us,” he said.

“Of course. I sometimes forget you’re a
Wetgill.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“What’s Loch-Deep?” said Bethelyn.

The Savage took a deep breath. “The only
place on the whole damn Mainland where I wouldn’t want to be.”

Ed and Bethelyn exchanged glances. He
saw something in Bethelyn’s stare. It was the same look she’d given him on
Golgoth, back when they first saw the infected. He didn’t know her too well,
but he had already realised that she was a woman who didn’t scare easily. Yet
something about this place obviously made her uncomfortable.

He felt like it was his job to try and
reassure her. After losing April there had been nothing Ed could say to her.
What could you really do with something like that? He couldn’t exactly tell her
that worse things could happen, because that wouldn’t be true. For Bethelyn,
the absolute worst, most soul-crushing thing had already come to pass. He
couldn’t let her dwell on things. After seeing her in the sea, floating limply
as the salt water lapped over her face, he was worried about her. She’d given
up, and he couldn’t let that happen.

He walked over to the severed arm. He
kicked it with his foot.

“Anyone got the time?” he said.

Jokes weren’t usually his thing, but he
hoped to raise a smile to put her at ease. Instead, Bethelyn shook her head and
looked away. He expected The Savage at least to laugh. All he got was a stern
look.

“There are some things you don’t joke
about,” he said.

Ed couldn’t believe that The Savage, a
man who he had seen hunt down and butcher an innocent person, had just given
him a reprimand. When he looked at The Savage he couldn’t see his nose or mouth
through his mask, but he could tell from his eyes that the man was spooked.
Seeing that look on someone who hadn’t seemed scared of anything made Ed wish
they were back on Golgoth.

“If we’re in Loch-Deep,” said The
Savage, “that might be the last joke you ever make.”

Chapter
Four

Heather

Outskirts
of Kiele

It was a motorway once. Like everything
else made by the hands of men, nature had reclaimed it once the outbreak reset
priorities. It wasn’t important to keep the roads tarmacked anymore, because
there were few cars left to travel on them. Even if someone did have highway
maintenance on their minds, the Capita were the only ones with any kind of
resources. Their thoughts were fixed on collecting the immune and expanding
their territory.

They’d followed the motorway for a day,
walking through the wild grass and weeds. Every so often they could see where
the grey concrete resisted the spread of nature. They’d come across a few cars
with leaves covering the bonnets and vines twisting over the framework. There
was a camper van with the windows smashed and cupboards ransacked, and on the
back was a sticker that read ‘
The closer you drive, the slower I go.’

“We should have followed the train
tracks,” said Heather.

Charles Bull answered gruffly. “The
train’s miles away. Follow the tracks all you want, you won’t catch it unless
you’ve got an engine up your skirt.”

“I’m not wearing a skirt.”

“It’s a figure of speech, Heather.”

They shared few words as they travelled.
Heather had no desire to speak to Charles, and she couldn’t help the feeling of
hate that burned inside her when she looked at him. The bounty hunter had
separated her from her daughter, Kim, who was on a train with Eric headed deep
into the arse of the Mainland. Heather had to force herself not to think about
it. She was going to find Kim, but if she dwelled on it then she would break
down.

Charles held his horse by the reins and
walked beside it on foot. Every so often he’d lead it around an obstruction in
the road, talking softly to the mare. “
Come on, Ken. That’s it. This way.”
Heather
thought that at any moment the man and horse would gaze into each other’s eyes
and declare their undying love.

Max rode in front on a black stallion,
never stopping to look behind him at Heather and Charles. For him, the only way
was forward. He needed to get back home to Kiele. After spending years
undercover as a member of the Capita guards, he was counting every step until
they reached town.

He had told Heather to ride Charles’s
horse. “
Take his horse and let the old bastard walk,”
he said. She
climbed on top of Ken and jerked the reins, but the animal refused to budge for
anyone but Charles. They let the bounty hunter guide his horse along with them,
but Max refused to allow him to ride it.

As a bitter afternoon wind lapped over
them, they passed an old service station. A ten foot high sign advertised
petrol at decent prices. Across the forecourt there was a shop, and a banner
was spread across the window offering hot sausage rolls and coffee. Heather had
stopped here once. It was years ago, back when it still offered drinks and
pastries, and people still had cars that they needed to refuel.

She and her husband had been on a road
trip back then, and Heather was desperate for the toilet. She normally wouldn’t
have gone in a place like this to relieve herself, but Kim was inside her and
pressing on her bladder. The urge was more than she could control.

She went inside the grubby toilet and
made her husband wait outside the door. After a few minutes passed, she heard
him tap on the wood. He spoke to her in the irritated tone that she had grown
to hate.

“Can’t you do a simple thing like
take a piss?” he said.

Feeling under pressure, she strained and
strained but nothing would come. It was as if being in such a crappy toilet had
shut off the urge to go. Her husband banged on the door and told her to hurry
up and that there were people waiting. Panic built up inside her. She didn’t
want him to get cross again. He was a nightmare once the anger took him.

That was a long time ago, and the person
Heather was back then was nothing but a memory. This very morning, Heather had
squatted behind a bush and relieved herself while Max and Charles stood only
ten feet away. She measured progress these days by how freely she could empty
her bladder.

Max stopped his horse.

“What are you looking at?” said Max.
“You know this place?”

Heather shook her head. “It’s all new to
me,” she said. The past was better left where nobody could see it. She wasn’t
that person anymore.

Max climbed down off his horse. He glanced
her way, and she saw the wide smile that he’d painted on the front of his mask.
The expression didn’t match his eyes. He was always so serious, turning every
conversation around to what they needed to do and where they needed to be.
Charles would sometimes try to goad him, but the Resistance fighter didn’t humour
him.

Max bent down to the floor. He took hold
of a bunch of daisies which sprouted from the ground, and he carefully pulled
them away.

“You shouldn’t have,” said Charles.

“They’re for my daughter,” said Max. He
nodded at Heather. “You should have kept trying with the horse. We could have
broken him.”

Charles patted his horse on the head.
“Ken won’t break for anyone. He’s a stubborn old git. That’s why we get on so
well.”

“I don’t mind walking,” said Heather.

She meant it too. Back before the
outbreak, Heather loved nothing more than a hike across green pastures. The
smell of the grass, the blowing of the breeze. The feeling that when you were
in nature, everything was right with the world.

Things couldn’t have been more
different. Nature was reclaiming the things that man had built, but it wasn’t
using green grass or bright flowers to do it. Instead it was vines twisting
over metal, weeds straining and spreading across the streets. It seemed like
something was seeping across Heather’s mind, too. A network of roots that fed
anxiety into her brain. She couldn’t stop thinking about Kim and Eric.
Where
were they? Where was the train taking them?

She knew what the Capita did. When she
was a teacher, she had seen Charles Bull take a girl from her class. Jenny had
been immune, and somehow the Capita found out. When the bounty hunter led her
away Heather knew she should have done something, but the truth was that she
was scared. Now Jenny was gone, and it was more than likely that her daughter
and Eric had been taken to the same place.

“I don’t like the idea of you walking
when there’s a perfectly good horse there,” said Max. “I don’t care if it’s
stubborn. You deal with it the same way you deal with stubborn people. You
grind them down.”

“Like I said, I don’t mind it.”

Charles tugged on Ken’s reins and pulled
him away from the weeds he was chewing. “It’s not the miles that are the
problem anyway,” he said. “It’s the things that follow you when you walk them.”

“Like what?” said Heather.

“You’re looking for Kim, yes? Help me
help you. I need to get to my daughter, too.”

She had heard that Charles had a
daughter, but somehow she never believed it. He was such an uncaring man; an
emotional void where anything happy was sucked in and the joy was stripped away.
She couldn’t imagine him taking care of someone else.

“You’re bullshitting,” said Max.

“Hand me my things and I’ll prove it,”
said Charles.

“I’ve spent enough time with you to know
not to believe the garbage that comes out of your mouth. Heather, when we get
to Kiele I’ll get you a horse. One that actually walks. And then you can go
find Kim and Eric.”

Charles’s mouth was hidden behind his
mask. It was a standard issue, this time. He used to wear a mask that smothered
his face. It was made of leather and had a long beak producing from his nose,
making him look like a plague doctor from the fourteenth century. Max had taken
it off him and put it with the rest of Charles’s things in his saddlebag.
“I
can’t look at him wearing it
,” he had told Heather.

Despite not being able to see his mouth,
Heather knew from the shape of his eyes that Charles was smiling.

“You don’t trust me?” he said. “Rich
words coming from a man who spent three years pretending to be someone else. Where
were your family while you lived in the Dome, Max? What were they doing while
you were playing soldier and drinking and whoring?”

Max gave him a stern look. He snapped
his saddle bag shut.

“I never went whoring.”

The mischief grew behind Charles’s eyes.

“And what about all the Darwin’s
Children you helped me round up? What of the things they do to them in the
Capita’s dungeons? You knew what we did, and you helped me put them there.”

“It was for a bigger cause. I don’t have
any regrets.”

“What’s your daughter’s name?” asked
Heather.

“Lilly,” said Charles.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t asking
you.”

Max unzipped his coat. The midday sun
had broken through the clouds and cast pale yellow over the ground. A crow flew
down and perched on the petrol sign across from them. It gave a croaky squawk.

“Kiela,” Max said.

“Interesting name,” said Charles.

“We named her after Kiele. It seemed
right.”

“And what about your wife?” said
Heather.

“Lauren.”

“She doesn’t mind you being away for
three years?”

“She understands. I guess. We needed
someone who could live in the Capita and pretend to support them, and I used to
be an actor. Back before the outbreak, that is. Before you ask, no, you
probably never saw me in anything. But yeah, I don’t have much of a
relationship with her or Kiela. Some causes mean you’ve gotta forgo stuff like
that.”

Heather felt a flinch of anger. Her
daughter was miles away in the Capita’s hands, and Heather would have cut off
her own legs to get her back. She knew that no matter what happened, she
wouldn’t stop trying to find Kim until her own body broke down. She couldn’t
believe that this man would voluntarily leave his daughter for so long. It
seemed wasteful; frittering away the most important bond you could ever have
just to play spy.

“You’re cold,” she said.

Max sighed and closed his eyes, as if it
was an argument he’d had many times before. The smile on his mask achieved the
reverse of its intended effect. Now it just looked sad.

“It’s the opposite, really,” he said.
“I’m not cold. I’m warmer than anyone else. I’m not content to look after my
own and say a big ‘screw you’ to the rest. I want to make things better for
everyone, and I’ve sacrificed a hell of a lot to do that. Whereas you, you’re
only interested in yourself, and Kim.”

“And Eric,” said Heather.

“Point is, you look after yourself. I do
what
I
do for everyone on the Mainland. Listen, Heather. You need to
toughen up. You need to take on some of the dark. There are things we have to
do that might not taste right, but you swallow them down anyway. If that’s what
it takes to get rid of the Capita, then that’s what you have to do.”

Heather found herself shaking her head,
as if the action would expel Max’s words. Having a cause didn’t just excuse everything
you did to achieve it. There was a lot of darkness in the world, and Heather
wouldn’t thicken it by pouring in some of her own. She was going to get Kim
back, she was certain of that much. She wouldn’t lose herself in the process.