He sighed, “It just feels wrong”
“OK then, let’s put it to a majority vote” Bella grimaced, turning to look at the others, “Do we take time out to bury this poor bastard or just get back to safety? I vote safety”
“Well, I think he deserves a burial” Dog shrugged.
“What about you Frankie?” Bella turned to the young man in the back and he laughed nervously.
“Freddy…er…I’m happy to help bury him but if I was given the choice…honestly…I’d go safety”
Bella nodded, “Alice?”
She winced, “I agree with Dog”
“OK” Bella smiled then turned her face to look at the woman beside Freddy, What about y…”
“Dump him” Bethany shrugged before Bella had even finished asking the question, her head shaking, “It seems like a weird question right…he is dead…he isn’t coming back and he isn’t getting any deader…just throw him out!”
“Bethany?” Freddy sounded shocked, “Really?”
“We aren’t just dumping anyone out!” Dog was suddenly angry, wincing as he turned to glare at the woman and then with a curse, he opened the door beside him and climbed out into the rain.
Throwing a grim look back at the black-haired woman, Alice fought the urge to swear at her as she got a raised eyebrow in response, and then she turned as the door slid open beside her to reveal a grim-faced Dog. Without a word, he reached in, hands grasping to the overalls of the dead man as he slid the corpse towards him, and wincing, Alice stepped out of the way, watching as Dog scooped the unfortunate man up in his arms and then turned to step off the road onto the moorland. Stepping to the edge of the open back door, Alice watched as Dog knelt, carefully laying the body down as if it were a sleeping baby, then turned her head to watch as Bella moved around the front of the van to stand beside him, a hand gently resting on his shoulder, the fingers squeezing gently and Alice smiled.
The pair were growing closer, that much was obvious, and she was pleased for them both. She had realised early on in her acquaintance with them that there was something magical happening between them, although she wasn’t sure if they had even realised it themselves yet.
As she stood studying them, Dog began to speak, his words lost to the heavy rain and she saw him raise a hand as if crossing himself, that strange but comforting relationship that she had with her faith resurfacing in a rush and without giving it conscious thought, she too began to say a prayer, then turned as she heard movement behind her., grunting in surprise as she found the black-haired woman standing there studying her.
“What are you do…?” she gasped as without warning the woman shoved her backwards, and her view shifted, the interior of the van being replaced by the grey sky as she fell to her back on the roadside, the soft peat beneath her and the full backpack that she still wore stopping her from hurting herself. Blinking against the rain that was falling upon her face, she stared up, watching in confusion as the black-haired woman rushed forwards and slammed the side door shut, the voice of Freddy loud as he shouted at his friend, “Bethany, no…what are you doing!”
“Bitch!” the roar of Bella sounded loud over the rain, and struggling to her feet, helped by a rising Dog, Alice stumbled forwards to draw level with the cab of the van, staring in shock through the window as Bethany scrambled over the back of the seats and slid behind the steering wheel, quickly leaning out to lock both of the doors.
Cursing, her features twisted in a rage, Bella moved to stand in front of the van, a fist banging down on the bonnet, “You fucking bitch!”
Behind the wheel, a triumphant smile upon her features, Bethany raised her middle finger, reached down and then cursed in disbelief, the smile slipping from her features, her eyes wide.
“Looking for these?” Bella dragged the keys out of a pocket of her jeans, her features a mash of anger, “Get out of the fucking van, now!”
For a moment, the teacher sat behind the wheel, eyes locked with those of the former soldier, and then she gave a smile, and bent once more, a hand rising with a shotgun in it, only for Bella to laugh bitterly, “Both empty bitch…and I’ve got the shells…now get out of the fucking van”
“Screw you!” the reply came, the voice barely audible over the sound of the rain as the three of them stood beneath it, surrounding the cab.
Alice winced as the rear door suddenly slid wide open, the figure of Freddy stepping back to allow them entry and grimacing, Alice surged inside, leaning forward over the seats to open Dog’s door, a grunt of pain escaping her as Bethany struck her in the side with the empty shotgun.
The door suddenly flew open and as Alice leaned back, the furious figure of Bella surged into the cab, her features twisted into a mask of hatred.
“I give up!” Bethany raised her hands dropping the shotgun, “I surrend…”
Her words were cut off as Bella hammered a fist into her unprotected features, throwing her back so hard that the window behind shattered as her head struck it, the lips of the teacher moving soundlessly in a plea but the former soldier was already striking her again, once, twice, three times, before suddenly Dog was there, dragging her back, “For fuck sake Bella, you’re killing her!”
As the pair slid from the cab, the teacher tried to sit up, a hand fumbling with the lock on her door as she opened it, and then she fell heavily outside onto the rain soaked road, moaning in agony.
“Bethany!” Freddy took a step forwards but Alice turned, her head shaking as she met his gaze.
“Dude, for your own good stay there!”
He nodded, hands raising before him and sat down upon the floor of the van, eyes closing his shoulders beginning to shake as he began to sob.
Shaking her head, Alice scrambled back out of the van as Dog and Bella walked around the cab, one hand clasping to her side where the woman had struck her with the gun as she followed them to stand staring down at the woman on the ground.
“What are we going to do with her?” Alice asked, her question drawing the attention of Bethany as she glanced up at the trio that stood about her in the rain, her eyes already bruised and swollen, her nose bent at an angle, both her lips split and bleeding profusely, running down to the road.
“Pleathe don’t kill me” her shoulders shook as she sobbed, her voice scratched and pained.
“Leave her” Bella shrugged, her voice cold.
“What?” Dog was incredulous, eyes wide as he met her gaze, “We can’t just leave her here!”
“Why?” Bella asked, raising an eyebrow, “She has tried to leave us behind twice now…fuck her!”
“Alice!” Dog turned to look at the embalmer, his eyes beseeching, “Tell Bella we can’t leave her!”
For a moment, she stared back at Dog in silence, feeling the need to back him up but then she shook her head as she suddenly recalled the two men from back at the hospital, Nick and Peter,
God that seemed to long ago now.
“Sorry Dog” she shrugged, her smile sad, “Some people deserve to be left behind”
He shook his head at her words, taking several steps away from the pair of them as he turned to stare out across the rainy moorland, a hand rising to scratch at his dreadlocked hair, then he turned and moved back to them, stepping behind Bethany as he held their gaze, “Fine, I’ll make sure she can’t hurt anyone
“Dog!” Bella shook her head, exchanging a glance with Alice, the pair of them watching as he withdrew the handcuffs that he had previously used upon the ghoul in the barn, and secured the hands of the female teacher behind her back.
Grimacing, he took a step back, shrugging, “I am sorry, I know what she tried to do but we can’t leave her…if we leave her then I stay too”
“For fuck sake” Bella grimaced, “Dog, you can’t!”
He shrugged, smiling sadly, “Don’t make me”
“I’m not joking” the former soldier grimaced.
“Neither am I” Dog stated, matching her anger with sad calm, “All I ask is that we take h
er back to the farm, give her a day or two to heal, then we drive her somewhere and leave her…but not here…not out in the open in this weather!”
Bella grimaced, “How about I deal with her”
“Deal with her?” Dog grimaced, eyes narrowing.
She shrugged, “Alice, get a shotgun from the cab”
“What?” the embalmer blinked, head shaking.
“You don’t mean that” Dog shook his head as he held her gaze, “You aren’t a murderer”
“And you aren’t a priest anymore” she snapped angrily, her head shaking, “You cant save everybody no matter how hard you try!”
Alice felt her stomach knot as she saw the sudden pain register in Dog’s eyes, her heart sinking as he gave a heavy sigh and turned to stare out across the moorland once more. Then with a sigh which seemed to shake his entire body, he turned back and bent, wincing as he helped Bethany to her feet, “I’ll be sitting in the back with her”
Without another word he turned to walk around the front of the van, assisting the still sobbing woman and wincing, Alice met the gaze of Bella, seeing instantly that the woman was hurting as much as she had just hurt Dog with her words.
For a moment, the pair of them stood in the heavy rain in silence and then Bella sighed and turned to meet her gaze, forcing a sad smile, “It looks like you are up front with me, right?”
Alice nodded, sighing, “Can we go home now”
The bitter chuckle from Bella was raw and filled with pain, “Home? Where the fuck is that?”
Chapter Forty Five
“Thank you” the barely audible voice of the young man name Freddy dragged the attention of Victor as he sat on the floor in the back of the van, his back to the tool rack, and lifting his head he met the others gaze and then looked away.
He knew instinctively, even without looking that the young man had winced at his apparent ignorance and was now sat quietly in dread, worrying what the angry looking man with the beard and the dreadlocks was going to do next.
Yet wasn’t that the image that he had nurtured; a man that it was best to leave to himself, a grumpy and irritable loner to be widely avoided.
In the wake of his family’s deaths in the fire and his eventual release from hospital, Victor had felt his place in the priesthood to be a mockery of how someone in his position should be.
Whereas he had once put the members that made up his congregation first, putting their needs and desires above that of both himself and his family, he now saw sin at almost every turn; adultery, theft, addiction and lies, and the fact that his family had been taken from him while these had been left alive, had felt like a slap in the face from a God that he had dedicated his life to.
So, he had quit the priesthood ignoring the pleas of those higher in the church, resisting the urge to react with anger and violence when he had been told perhaps God was merely testing him.
For nearly two years he had lived on the streets of London, and had been lost both mentally and physically, his broad frame having become near skeletal, his mental health at an all-time low, and then salvation had found him in the guise of an accident. He had been struck by a speeding car one night, two years to the day after his family’s deaths, and had been left to die in the wet road.
A passer-by had seen him, and called for the emergency services and he had been taken to the nearest hospital where, as chance would have it, the new hospital padre was a former friend of his from the priesthood who had recognised him.
Over the course of the next year, Victor had moved in with his former friend, growing strong physically with a regime of exercise and a good diet, and mentally strong with the aid of therapy and his prescribed pills, yet he had kept his full beard and dreadlocks from his time on the street, enjoying the wide berth that strangers gave him.
Just as he was using it to his advantage now.
In the front of the van, Alice and Bella began to talk, their voice’s a low buzz against the heavy thrum of the rain upon the van in which they were travelling, and Victor leaned his head back against the tool rack and studied the silver-haired woman that was sitting behind the wheel.
“You can’t save everybody no matter how hard you try!” that was what she had said to him outside the van as they and Alice had stood in the rain around the bleeding and sobbing figure of the female teacher, her words cutting him deeply.
She was right, he knew that, just as he knew that was part of the reason that her words had hurt him so much. Yet it was the second part of that reason which had left him feeling so out of sorts.
He liked her.
He liked that she seemed to like him.
Yet for the first time since he had begun to admit that there was something about the former soldier that he was attracted to, there was no guilt, no mental images of his deceased wife.
Just hurt that Bella had been so angry with him.
Sighing heavily, he closed his eyes for a moment, giving himself over to the shake and rattle of the van as they drove through the moorland, then he opened them to study the woman that he had saved from Bella’s fury as she lay on the floor in front of Freddy, her head resting upon his lap.
Wincing, he let his gaze drift over her bruised and bloodied features, letting out a shaky breath as he saw just how badly Bella had beaten the black-haired woman, and with just four punches.
Yet he knew that Bella had been justified in her anger, after all, the female teacher had tried to abandon them back in the village, even leaving her friend Freddy behind, then gone on to assault Alice twice before she had been finally stopped.
Turning his gaze away from her, he let it settle upon the brown-haired woman that was sat in the passenger seat of the van’s cab, studying her for a moment as she laughed grimly at something that Bella had just said, a smile creasing his face.
She was a good person, his favourite, after Bella of course, of this random bunch that he had found himself a part of, and he was glad that she had survived her night out on the wet moorland.
It would be good to have her back with them at the farmhouse though the loss of Geri, the Scots woman, was going to cast a cloud over them.
Another person lost.
He sighed, head shaking as he considered that Marcus had also been lost, chastising himself for not having given the young man much thought since Alice had relayed what had happened.
He had assumed that anyone who was going to change would have done so on that first day when everyone else had changed but with the delayed change from Marcus that was clearly incorrect. Yet why? What was different?
Grimacing as he considered how Marcus and Moonshine had seemed fine one moment and then changed into ghouls, Victor considered the farmhouse and the people they had left there.
Were any of those liable to become ghouls?
Was Bella? Was Alice? Was he?
Feeling sick with dread as he suddenly pictured young Eric and Emily back at the farmhouse, he sat up straighter, his stomach knotting with dread as he pictured returning to the farm and finding that the youngsters had been violently killed by ghouls, surprising himself with how protective he felt about the brother and sister.
“Hey what’s that?” the concerned voice of Alice made him glance up, “I thought I saw something”
“Where?” Bella grimaced, slowing the van and then stopping it, and clasping a hand to his side, Victor rose to his feet and moved to stand behind Alice’s seat. Bella turned her head as he stood there and smiled awkwardly as he met her gaze, and he sighed, throwing her a weary smile, his pulse quickening as she gave a sudden blush.
“There!” the startled voice of Alice had them both snapping their attention forwards, Victor’s grey eyes narrowing in curiosity as he stared through the windscreen down the long open road ahead, his brow furrowing as he spotted something moving amid the heavy rain and the drifting mist.
“Ghouls” Bella grimaced, a finger rising to point ahead of her, a hand pointing down beside Alice’s feet, “Pass me the shotguns, let’s
load them”
As the young woman handed her the first of the weapon’s, Bella pushed two shells into the breech, Victor cursed, his eyes widening as the figure surged out from the mist, its body clad in a black and white tracksuit, its black features streaked with sweat and rain, “Holy fuck”
“Brandon?” the voice of Alice was thick with shock, and without even hesitating she opened her door and rushed out into the heavy rain.
“For fuck sake, Alice, be careful” Belle grimaced, throwing her own door open as she turned to pass Victor the loaded shotgun, “This is yours”
Nodding in thanks, he slid open the side door of the van and stepped down to the road, turning to throw Freddy a grim glance, clasping the shotgun with one hand as he pointed at the barely conscious figure of Bethany, “Watch her!”
Without waiting for an answer, he began to stride forwards through the rain to where Alice now crouched beside the familiar figure of Brandon as the young man knelt in the rain, his chest heaving with the exertion of running, his features locked into a mask of utter terror.
Grimacing, he stopped short of the young man, not wanting to unsettle him anymore than he was, noting that Bella had done the same thing.
Letting out a shaky breath, Victor turned to meet her gaze, his stomach knotting as she saw the fear in her eyes, her voice thick with barely controlled emotion as she spoke, “Brandon, why aren’t you at the farmhouse”
The young man sobbed at her words, his head shaking and beside him, Alice placed a hand upon his shoulder, and another beneath his chin, tilting his face up to hers as she nodded, “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head, his eyes wide, and she nodded back at him, “That’s good…can you tell me where Lauren is…your nurse…is she hurt?”
He sobbed, head shaking, “She lied to me”
Frowning, Victor turned to meet the gaze of Bella again, then took a step closer, “Ask him about the farm…is everyone OK, are the kids OK?”
“Did you hear that?” Alice asked the young man, her tone soft, soothing, “Is everyone OK? Why are you out here on your own?”
Ghoul: The Beginning Page 27