‘I’m not leaving. Not without Ethan,’ Foster said.
‘Foster, take a good look up there. Walking into that in the hope we’d find him before they found us would be suicide,’ Raine said.
‘So you’re just going to abandon him to these animals? I expected this from O.B., but not from you.’
‘I never said we were going to abandon him, but we have to find another way,’ Raine said.
‘They’re not going to kill him. You know he’s too precious to Edwards,’ O.B. said.
‘No they won’t. They’ll just turn him into a monster instead,’ Foster replied. ‘You better be on your way, then. At least I can slow them up for you.’
She stood up from the barn and started towards the smoke.
O.B. immediately tried to stop her. She struggled in his grasp.
‘Get off me,’ she shouted, dragging her nails down his face.
The shock of her attack allowed her to wriggle free and run clear of him into the bleached fog.
O.B. recovered quickly and was about to follow, but Raine pulled him back.
‘Let her go,’ she said.
‘No, I—’
‘Let her go and keep your head.’
Raine’s glare brought him back to his senses, and he stopped fighting her.
‘You good?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, I’m good,’ O.B. said.
‘We’ll find a way to get her back too. They won’t hurt her, not if they want Ethan to do their dirty work for them.’
‘Are you two comin’?’ Kaos asked, still huddled against the side of the barn.
Before they headed back, Raine and O.B. saw the faint outlines of two figures in the mist. It was obvious it wasn’t their friends, as they could see the cloaks the disciples were wearing.
Raine pulled O.B. away and ran to Kaos.
‘Someone’s coming,’ she said. ‘Behind the barn.’
Kaos followed, and they moved behind the building to hide.
Raine stopped in her tracks when she almost bumped into Samuel. He was carrying an empty bucket. Blood trickled down from a gash on the side of his head, a dazed expression on his face.
The other two froze behind her on encountering the boy, aware the disciples were closing in on their position.
‘Samuel, you’re hurt,’ Raine whispered, cautiously reaching out her hand to him. ‘Come with us. We can get you out of this place, somewhere you’ll be safe. There’s nothing for you here, Samuel, only pain.’
Her fingers were close to him, almost touching his chest.
Before she could make contact, he spun around and tried to make a run for it shouting ‘I’ve found them. They’re here. They’re—’
Raine pounced on him from behind and slammed her hand over his mouth and nose to muffle his yelling.
Fortunately for them, a grenade had exploded just as he’d started to call for help so the two disciples close by weren’t alerted.
Instead they ran faster towards the barn to take cover.
The three escapees pressed themselves against the back of the barn, listening to the disciples search the interior.
Raine could feel the boy squirming like a fish in a net on top of her, and the vibration from his mouth as he desperately tried to project his voice warmed her hand. The more he struggled, the tighter she held him, ready to release him if the disciples detected them so she could fight.
O.B. reached across to Kaos and silently took the pistol from his hand, indicating with just a look that he was far more capable with the weapon than the boy appeared to be.
Foster put her hand to her mouth to cough, choking on the fumes from the depleting smoke. Every follower she came into contact with was too frightened to even notice her. She’d hoped she could follow them in order to find the church, but they were just as disorientated as she was.
Gunfire erupted close by, and she stooped to cover her ears. As she glanced down, she noticed a disciple lying on the ground. He was curled up in a ball, his face caked in blood. It looked like he had taken the brunt of a grenade blast.
Realising he was maybe dead, certainly unconscious, Foster felt confident enough to climb over his body to collect the automatic weapon he’d dropped.
She had little idea how to use it, but if she encountered any hostile resistance, she would pull the trigger and hope for the best.
She took a few more strides until the cross on the black tower at the front of the church revealed itself beyond the gloom. If Edwards had Ethan, he would have taken him there.
She knew she would have to kill to get to him, and she was prepared to do just that.
Her determination was short-lived. Someone grabbed her from behind, and she felt the cold edge of a blade placed against her throat.
‘Drop that or I’ll open you up,’ the man said.
The voice belonged to Crane.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you where you want to go.’
The two disciples exited the barn and stood outside the door.
‘Should we search the perimeter for them?’ one asked.
‘Let’s head back and tell Crane. He’ll know what to do,’ the other replied.
The escapees listened to the men’s footsteps get farther away as they headed back to the chaos at the main section of the camp.
‘This is our last chance,’ Kaos said. ‘We have to make a run for it now.’ He didn’t wait for a discussion, just ran from behind the barn with his head low over to the west fence where he’d snuck inside.
O.B. nudged Raine and ran after him.
Raine felt the extra weight on her, realising Samuel had gone limp in her arms. She removed her hand from his mouth and laid him down on the grass. His eyes were closed, and his body was still.
Shaking, she turned her hands so her palms were facing her and stared at them.
Another volley of gunfire snapped her out of her thoughts, and she got up and sprinted in the direction of the fence.
Kaos and O.B. were waiting for her just beyond the hole that had been made in the wire meshing.
Once she was through to the outside, Kaos held his radio up to his mouth and called his friends.
‘I got them out. Fall back and meet at the rendezvous point.’
Raine took one last look at the camp. The smoke had almost cleared, and aside from the odd sporadic gunshot, the onslaught was over.
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she spied Edwards emerging from the smog before she scurried off into the woods.
Crane made his way back onto the battlefield, aware his leader hadn’t returned to the church as he’d expected. He grabbed hold of every dazed disciple he could find, demanding to know if they had seen Edwards.
None of them were sure, just happy to have survived the ambush.
It wasn’t long before Crane caught sight of him. Edwards staggered around, almost falling over a female follower who had been trampled by the stampede.
A robed figure ambled to meet him from the other direction. As the figure got closer, Edwards recognised him as David, one of his most trusted disciples. To his dismay, David was no longer himself.
Blood stained the man’s chest from a gunshot wound, possibly caught in a crossfire. The infection that had coursed through his veins, tempered by the Lazarus Serum, had resurrected him in death.
Disheartened by this macabre discovery, Edwards halted his march. Of course, the creature wouldn’t harm him. Although it couldn’t recognise him as its leader anymore, it sensed his familiarity in brain chemistry and walked right by him, in hunger for much fresher meat.
Crane understood the danger it would pose to the other followers wandering in the field, injured and disorientated.
He acted decisively, approaching his reanimated brother at speed and sinking his knife deep into its eye socket.
Crane rushed to his master’s side and snatched at his arm.
‘Father, why aren’t you inside, takin
g shelter?’
‘Did you secure The Shepherd?’ Edwards responded.
‘He’s locked in the vestry. I also recaptured the woman,’ Crane said.
‘Which one?’
‘The scientist.’
‘Good. That’s the one he cares about the most.’
Crane and Edwards made their way down to the barns and, as expected, found the makeshift prison cell had been sprung.
‘Shall I arrange for a search party to track the others?’ Crane asked.
‘No. We have what we need,’ Edwards said, a calm now present in his voice again. ‘They will be judged soon enough.’
As they strayed beyond the barn, some of the other disciples located them and rushed to their side.
Crane was the first to see Samuel’s body lying in the grass where Raine had left him and went to check his body.
Edwards watched as Crane placed his ear to the boy’s chest and pressed his fingers into the side of his neck to check for a pulse.
‘He’s not dead, but he’s clinging to life by a thread,’ Crane said.
‘A thread is all we need for him to be useful,’ Edwards said. ‘Where is David?’
‘He’s no more, Father. I ended his life—his second life. He would have attacked your followers if I hadn’t.’
‘Bring his body here,’ Edwards said.
‘Father?’ Crane said.
‘His body, Crane. Right now,’ Edwards urged.
Crane indicated to the disciples who were now behind them by pointing to where he had put David’s reanimated body to rest.
The men hurried and dragged David’s corpse by its arms to their leader as he knelt over Samuel.
Edwards took it upon himself to haul the body even closer and extended its arm so it was above Samuel’s head. He then looked to Crane’s dagger at his side and held out his hand to ask for it.
Still uneasy about the situation, Crane did as he requested and passed the weapon to him.
Edwards instantly slashed David’s wrist and allowed the dark syrupy blood to splatter onto Samuel’s face and into his slightly open mouth.
The still warm liquid seemed to partially stir the boy from his terminal stupor. His tongue flickered to lick some of the blood from his lips.
‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood,’ Edwards said with a sickening smile.
Episode Eight
Lich King
1
Kaos led the two liberated prisoners through the woods at pace. Every so often, he would dodge around a tree and strip a piece of red industrial tape from its trunk.
It was obvious to O.B. and Raine that it had been used to mark the way back to the rendezvous point and the kid was now covering their tracks so they couldn’t be followed.
As soon as he spied the standing rock formation shrouded by trees and moss up ahead, he quickened his steps even more, trying to get someone on his walkie again.
‘OK, I’ve got them to the meeting spot. Where are you guys?’ he asked.
Nothing came back aside from the hiss of static.
Raine surveyed the area, looking for signs of movement.
‘You said you’d been sent by a friend. What did you mean by that?’ she asked.
O.B. gazed up to the top of the rock formation and saw a familiar face looking down at them.
Anna’s nose twitched and her eyes widened, recognising the interlopers. Her single excited yelp was only matched by the vigorous sway of her tail.
Her bark alerted Raine to her presence, and as their eyes were on her, Salty appeared by her side.
A smile started to form on his lips but faded when he realised there were people missing.
‘Just the two of you?’ he asked.
‘Ethan and Foster are still at the camp,’ Raine said.
‘Jason?’
Raine glanced to her boots, and O.B. took it upon himself to answer.
‘They killed him.’
‘What happened to Crawford?’ Raine asked.
‘They killed her too, back at the compound during the attack.’
‘You know it’s Edwards, right?’
‘Yep, and I know why. I doubt he’s gonna send people after you ’cause he still has Twilight, but we’re gonna hide up here until we’re sure we ain’t being followed,’ Salty said.
‘Followed where?’ O.B. asked.
‘Someplace safe,’ Salty said. ‘Wait there. I’ll come down to you and show you the path up here. It’s pretty tricky.’
A blanket of darkness descended over the rocks where they were hiding out.
Because they didn’t want to run the risk of any potential search party spotting them, they didn’t light a fire or use torches. It was hard to see much of anything.
Even so, Salty told Anna to stay where she lay and carefully made his way down the gravelled pathway that led to the base of the formation, using his sense of touch to help him navigate safely.
Halfway down he came across O.B., hunched over in silence, festering away from the others.
‘You should get some sleep. We’ll be movin’ on soon,’ Salty said.
‘I can’t sleep,’ O.B. said. He reached up to brush a fly from his face and felt the crusty line Foster had scratched into his skin.
‘What is it you feel like doin’ right now, kid? Planning on goin’ back there? Even if they weren’t ready for a second attack, we don’t have enough grenades or ammunition left.’
‘This is all because of me.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘Jason, Crawford—they both died because I was too preoccupied with some pointless vendetta. When I was holding that gun on Ethan, I wanted to pull the trigger, and I would have,’ O.B. said.
‘They’d been watchin’ us for days, just waitin’ for the right moment. If it wasn’t then, they would have chosen a different time when we were distracted. Tensions were fraying with all of us. There was a lot to deal with. It wasn’t only you who was breakin’ back there,’ Salty said.
‘But I snapped first. I put us all in danger.’
Salty moved farther down and managed to find a small ledge in order to sit opposite him.
‘When I was about your age, I lived in Louisiana for a time—Cajun country. There was this old fella, had a house across the street from ours. Nice guy, used to brew his own beer and hand it out for free to some of the locals. Nobody in the neighbourhood knew it at the time, but the doctors had diagnosed him with early onset dementia. This guy had already had a battle with cancer, and I guess he just didn’t have any fight left in him.
‘A couple of folks complained about a strange smell comin’ from the back of his house, like a cookout gone bad. No one had seen old Burt for days. When someone eventually decided to investigate, they found him sittin’ in his recliner in the garden. He’d hooked himself up to some contraption that he’d connected to the mains. He was a retired electrical engineer, so he knew what he was doin’. Fried himself to a crisp.’
O.B. lifted his head from between his knees and looked at the blurred shape of Salty’s face in the darkness, wondering what the hell he was talking about.
‘Pinned to his chest was a suicide note that said “DON’T TOUCH. STILL LIVE”. You can imagine how quick that sort of thing got around in a small town.’
‘Is there some kind of point to this awful story, Jake?’
‘The point is, even in his darkest moment, when the world had taken one of many giant shits on him, his last thought before he checked out was about the safety of the person who might find his body.
‘You were in a rut, and you were able to pull yourself out by thinkin’ about your friends. You didn’t kill anyone. That fuckin’ maniac back there is to blame. You’re a good kid, Oswald. You just lost your way for a while like we all do.
‘Your old sidekick probably did some shit in her time that would make your toes curl, but she sure as hell paid her dues when she saved you. So can you.’
Salty’s insightful words cut to the core of him, and O.B. put his head in his hands and wept.
‘God, I still miss her, Jake. Even now, I miss her,’ he sobbed.
‘I’ll tell you one thing I don’t miss—the smell of her goddamn feet. I’m surprised the dead didn’t fall right back down again when she whipped those crusty socks off,’ Salty said.
O.B.’s laughter forced its way through his grief as he desperately tried to wipe the tears and snot away with his sleeve.
‘Get yourself together and come join us up top when you’re ready,’ Salty said. He patted the young man on his shoulder and dragged himself to his feet.
‘OK, sure,’ O.B. replied.
Anna raised her head to greet Salty as he made his way back to the summit of the rock.
Kaos still kept watch over the woodland, Teddy lay motionless under a blanket, and Raine sat away from the others, staring at her hands in the dark, considering the terrible things they had done.
Salty sensed the same cloud of oppression hanging over her as he’d seen with O.B. moments earlier. He knew hers was much worse, burned deeper into her heart through years of tormented dreams.
‘We’re gonna make a move in an hour or so,’ he said. ‘Not keen on leavin’ our ride unattended for any longer than we need to.’
‘If they were gonna follow us, we would have seen some sign of them by now,’ Raine said. ‘How is he?’
‘Beatin’ himself up good about the whole thing with Twilight back at the compound.’
‘Maybe it would have been better if he’d pulled the trigger. We’d all be dead now, but at least Edwards wouldn’t get to wield his weapon of God. He’s planning to use Ethan to gather a huge herd to destroy his enemies, wipe them out.’
‘Which enemies?’ Salty asked, moving closer to her so he could lower his voice.
‘Some community he feels threatened by. Mustn’t be far from here. He mentioned someone named Gideon,’ Raine said.
A twinge of unease hit Salty’s stomach.
‘Then we need to haul ass as soon as possible. That community is exactly where we’re headin’,’ he said.
Everything Dies | Season 3 Page 22