by Kolin Wood
He knew what was about to happen and didn't want to watch, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from the scene. Tidus said some words in a language that he didn’t understand and struggled to raise the rock up over his head.
The woman appeared calm. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing deeply and slowly. Tidus continued to chant above her. John could see his arms shaking with the strain of the rock.
The woman opened her eyes and this time when she looked up, they found his own. Her expression changed. Her eyebrows raised and her mouth opened in shock. John stared at her and saw tears brim then fall sideways across her face.
Her face.
There was something about the woman’s face that unnerved him. It was like her face was the missing piece of a puzzle that his permanently muddled brain could not fit together. He knew her, recognised her even, but the recollections were faded and blurred, like seeing somebody you knew at a distance, through a pane of rain-splattered and dirty glass.
And then it struck him: the face belonged to the woman from his dreams.
John’s breath caught in his chest.
The shape moved as a blue blur from the corner of his vision. It charged in a line along the wall and smashed headlong into the side of Tidus, who still had the large rock raised up high above his head. John tore his eyes from the woman’s just in time to see a flash of red hair before it became lost and tangled in the flowing black robes of the tall man.
Becca.
With a look of complete shock on his face, Tidus stumbled sideways and then fell from sight, narrowly avoiding being brained by the rock as it crashed to the floor behind him.
The other men, equally as shocked to see their leader fall down as John had been, slackened their hold on the woman, who spied her chance. She scrambled to her feet and launched herself backward, taking both of them with her.
Now, John could see nobody. Shouting and the sounds of fighting ensued. Becca yelled and the yell turned into a scream.
Incensed beyond the limits of his own understanding, John gritted his teeth and yanked hard on his right hand. The rough nail held only momentarily and then ripped through the soft skin. Blood hit the board below in a dense splatter. He looked at the hand, saw the dark red wound like an eye crying blood in the centre, and tried to clench his fist. It only managed to close half way. With a roar, he turned to look at the left one. And this time, with his right arm able to move underneath his body for leverage, he pulled upwards, tearing it away from the board with all of his might.
The pain was terrible, hot and searing, and for a split second, John worried that he might pass out. Blood rushed his head and pounded in his ears. But as the moment faded, he turned, his naked knees pulling splinters from the rough board.
On the floor to his right, the woman that watched him in his dreams was rolling away from the thrashing body of one of the men, bloody holes where his eyes should have been. He saw her tumble and roll over the top of a gun lying discarded on the floor. She pulled herself upright and reached for it just as the second of the two men launched himself at her. The boom slammed around the room and John flinched as the shot caught the man in mid-air, kicking his body violently upward in a puff of blood. The woman slid to the side, narrowly avoiding being landed on by the now-limp corpse, which hit the hard floor with a sickening thud and lay still.
Another yell from Becca sent John tumbling from the table. His legs ran thick with pins and needles as blood forced its way back down through his body, but he ignored the feeling, half running, half falling in the direction that he had seen Tidus go down.
His shin caught the edge of the bloody pile of blocks, and he thrust his bloodied hands out in front of him, where they crashed into the wall in a flash of burning pain. He could see them now, a twisting pile of black robes in the corner. The shape writhed on the floor, like a demon hidden in shadow.
At his feet lay the broken rock and, with his hands on fire, John bent down to pick it up. He tried to close his fingers and electric jolts of pain shot up his arms. His grip was tenuous at best, but he lifted and the rock remained in place. Pulling it into his body to gain the adhesive power of his forearms, John walked with heavy steps over to where Tidus and Becca were still fighting.
“Becca!” he shouted, his voice broken, hoarse, and full of rage.
Her face appeared to him then. Her ruddy complexion had changed to a deep red and her green eyes stared up at him, wide open in terror. Her hands were up, grasping under her chin, pulling desperately on the black arm hooking her neck in a deathly grip. On the floor next to her, John noticed a large, dirty knife, the blade wet with blood.
Tidus, whose own features were red and twisted with exertion, continued to squeeze, strangling the life out of the girl, pulling on his arm with his free hand to ensure maximum pressure.
Incensed, John stepped forward. No longer able to feel them, his hands were now simply molten lumps of hot lead attached to the stumps of his arms. His mind thumped with rage.
Tidus looked up, saw John holding the rock, and in that instant, the exertion fell from his face. He smiled.
John threw the rock down with all of the might that he could muster. The sound was like fruit hitting a hard floor. The sharp, broken edge of the block caught Tidus in the middle of his face, pushing his nose into his skull and snapping his jaw in two. The rock hovered in its soft base for a second and then toppled away, revealing a mushy indent of blood, teeth, and bone. The two dark eyes stared upward, still twinkling, their trajectory now slightly off and inverted, due to the misshapen state of the skull.
From somewhere below the horrific sight, there came a gasping sound. Becca untwisted herself from the tangle of arms and sat forward, sucking in air, her hands rubbing at her neck.
Pulling his eyes away from the bloody pulped head at his feet, John stumbled forward and laid a frozen hand on the frizzy red mess of her hair.
She looked up at him, and her face lit up as she took him in.
“John.”
But her mouth did not move.
John turned and saw the woman with the gun stood a few feet away. She was staring at him. She cried freely and had her hands up over her head, holding her hair back from her face.
“Is that really you?”
Chapter 31
Her legs quaked so hard that it blurred her vision. She put her arms up, ignoring the pain that she felt over most of her body and scooped the mess of hair from her face so that she could see him properly.
So that she could see the boy.
It felt as though she was on a merry-go-round and, at any moment, would lose her balance and be flung off. The ache in her chest gnawed intensely, like teeth chewing on her insides.
“John? Is that really you?”
Her own voice sounded alien and detached.
The boy simply stood there, his hands gushing blood, his thin, naked body covered with bruises and dirt. Clear blue eyes brimmed with tears. His head sat tilted to one side and he wore an expression of tired shock on his face.
At his feet, the girl, Becca, coughed and spat as she stood slowly and turned to face him. She reached up, tenderly running a hand down the shaven side of his head then his face, over the birthmark. She turned to look at Juliana and offered a small smile.
“John,” she said, “This is Juliana. She saved us.”
Still the boy continued to stare.
Juliana managed a single, hazardous step forward. Then another, until she was standing next to the table that John had been nailed to only moments before.
It can’t possibly be so.
She wouldn’t allow herself to be sucked in.
Who was this boy; this impostor who stood before her now and who bore the same face as her dead husband?
“Juliana? Are you… okay?” Becca asked.
But Juliana couldn’t answer. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the boy. But he wasn’t a boy, was he? No, not anymore; he was a young man, a handsome, tall, young man. John had been six
when she had left him there, crying in that cupboard. That would make him about… sixteen now? The rough wood of the board offered up splinters to her fingertips as she gripped down hard.
“John?”
She barely recognised the sound of her own voice in her ears.
Becca looked between the two, confused and set a hand on his shoulder.
“John?” she said.
“Mum?”
The word hit Juliana in the chest like a bullet. At that moment, time itself seemed to slow down and speed up all at once. The world spun and her eyes became so misted that she could no longer see. She tried to speak, but the cyclone in her mind had wind-blasted any thoughts from her head. Her entire neck ached. Desperately, she tried to breathe, but her constricted throat would not open enough to allow her to.
Her legs gave way from underneath her. She struck out with hands that didn’t feel her own, barely catching herself before she fully collapsed to the ground.
Becca rushed forward. An arm encircled her waist and Juliana was pulled upright again, but this time, anything resembling energy had gone.
Juliana blinked her eyes, part of her mind still unbelieving. She expected to wake up any minute, to find herself lying in her own piss in a dark prison cell, with one of the evil little fuckers waiting to come in and have some fun with her.
As her vision cleared, she saw that the boy was now standing right in front of her.
John was crying freely. His mouth held a down-turned grimace. His shoulders popped up and down like the fast setting on a battery operated toy.
“Mum?”
And this time it was the voice of her little boy.
Juliana opened her mouth and sucked in a shuddering breath. She lifted her arms up and threw them around his neck, half grabbing-half falling onto him.
John.
Her son.
Her John.
***
By the time they had finished crying, both of them were sitting on the floor, partly covered by the table. Becca sat close by, her legs crossed, playing with a thread that had come loose on the hem of her fraying shirt. Juliana stroked her hand down John’s face and turned to the girl, calling her over to them. Becca stood slowly and walked over, and Juliana could see that she had been crying.
“Bec,” John said, his voice still quivering. “This is my mum.”
Becca sat down and Juliana put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. The girl had saved them both.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, and Juliana laughed and burst into tears again.
“And you, Becca,” she replied and set her forehead against the girl’s own. “Thank you.” The last words were barely more than a whisper as their eyes connected.
Becca nodded.
“Well,” John said, wiping his nose on the back of his naked forearm. “My hands are killing me. Shall we get out of this dungeon?”
At the triteness of his words, Becca laughed.
Juliana looked down at her son’s hands and frowned; he would need medical attention, and soon. He was right: it was time to move.
“Right,” she said, wiping the last remaining tears from her face with the sleeve of her jacket. “Let’s see what we can gather and get the hell out of here.” She made to stand, but it felt like every single muscle and joint in her body had, at that moment, declared strike on her. “Becca, can you cut me up some material, please? We need to wrap up John’s hands to stop him from losing any more blood. Wrap them tight.”
Becca stood next to her and nodded.
“John, if your clothes are still intact, use them; if not, you are gonna have to see what you can scavenge from these dead fucks. Becca will help you.”
“They’re over there,” John said, pointing to a corner over the far side of the room. “Should be fine.”
“Good. I’m gonna see what weapons we have.”
Slowly, Juliana began to move. Even though her body ached all over, inside, her core felt strong. So strong that, for the first time since the culling began, she no longer feared the world outside. Her boy had survived, and she would too, no matter what it took.
From the table, she retrieved the knife. It was a simple kitchen knife, but somebody had ground it to an edge that was sharp enough to be able to shave hair from a head. Her rifle lay discarded on the floor; Juliana picked it up, popped the breech, and cleared the spent shells, reloading with two more from the pocket of her jacket. The misfire from the second barrel of the shotgun had nearly cost them their lives. She could only guess that the trigger mechanism had freed itself when she had dropped it right before she had been bundled to the floor. And she could only pray to god that it wouldn’t happen again. Finally, she checked the dead bodies of the men but came up empty-handed.
On the other side of the room, John had pulled on his trousers and shirt, and Becca was finishing wrapping his hands. Juliana walked over and crouched down beside them.
“Think you can hold onto this?” she asked, holding out the kitchen knife, handle first, in her son’s direction.
With a look that held an edge of sarcasm, John simply raised his hands. Swathes of black material now encased them like boxing gloves. A large knot on the back of each secured the fabrics in place. Juliana noticed that the blood had stopped dripping from his fingers though. She nodded, slipping the knife into the pocket of her jacket instead.
Becca had picked up the hunting knife. She set it down on the table as she leaned in to tie the laces on John’s shoes.
“There’s more bad news,” Juliana said, flatly. “Our demented preacher here has somehow unleashed a whole world of shit on this city. I saw hundreds of these crazy bastards come bounding like rabid dogs from this building earlier on today. Christ knows what’s waiting for us out there now.”
Becca turned to face her, eyes glassy. “We’ve seen them before.” Her voice was low and despondent. “The crazies attacked a farm that we were staying at; killed everybody.”
Juliana raised her eyebrows. “Crazies?”
“Yeah,” Becca continued. “It’s something to do with the rats. My brother read about it. It’s caused by them eating the sick people, the ones that became infected. A bug or something, he said. People eat the rats, they get sick. Then, when people eat the sick… it gets in their brains. Turns ‘em crazy.” As she spoke, she made a twirling motion with her fingers by her temple.
Juliana’s thoughts whirred.
Rats. Infection.
She cast her mind back to the New Capital, to the river of shit that ran like a moat around the place, and the rats, in the thousands, sweeping in from the banks to attack and eat the General alive…
Could rats really be the cause? And if so, where does that leave the Capital?
“The crazies only move at night, well, dusk and dawn too, I suppose,” she added. “They hate the bright sunlight. Something to do with their eyes. Guess that don’t help us none.”
Juliana considered what she was being told. The whole story sounded far-fetched, but it was more of a hypothesis than she could muster up herself. Right now, it would still be dark outside—early morning at best. If the girl was right, it would place them smack bang in the middle of feeding time.
“We had a gun and a bow,” Becca said, as if reading her mind, “when we came in. They gotta be somewhere nearby. They took them away when they captured us.”
“Well, I suggest we go find them,” Juliana replied. “I have a feeling that we are going to need all of the help we can get out there.”
John, who’d remained quiet up until that point, looked up from his hands, his face drawn. “Why don’t we just leave?” he said. “We could get out of the city right now. I know a place… It’s safe and…”
“I can’t,” Juliana cut in.
John sat back, a hurt look on his face.
Juliana swallowed. Her mind screamed in protest.
What are you saying? He might not even be alive!
But she couldn’t do it, even though every bone in he
r body wanted to clasp her boy in her arms and run… Just get as far away as possible… There was no way that she could leave Tanner out there, injured and alone. Not after everything.
When Juliana spoke again, she focused this time on Becca, confident that the girl would understand. “I have a friend in the square. He’s fighting them all alone, and needs my help.” She glanced back over to John, who looked away. “And we have supplies, loads of them, enough for all of us for weeks.”
Juliana stood, resolutely. “You two need to get out of the city. Find somewhere safe to hole up and wait for me.”
A look flashed between Becca and John. John’s brow creased.
After a few moments of staring, Becca shook her head. “No way. We are not splitting up, not again. We’re stronger if we stick together.” She stood up next to Juliana. “Besides, we don’t know that it’s any better out there. Right, John?”
John opened his mouth to protest, his eyes wide. Finally, he closed it again and dropped his head in a faint nod.
Juliana felt a rush of relief, and she smiled at each of them in turn. “Okay. Okay then.” She looked around the room. “Then we’d best get moving. It’s a fair way back to the…”
The metallic clattering sound of a bowl being kicked over cut her off mid-sentence. In unison, all three of them turned toward the door.
“What was tha—?” John started, but Juliana raised her hand to hush him. Anger flushed red in his cheeks.
The quiet now pressed in on them as they stood as still as possible and strained to hear.
“Might be the rats,” Becca whispered, her face suddenly white.
Juliana glanced at her, confused by the reaction.
The sound came again, followed this time by a low, scraping noise.
“Oh god.”
Convinced that somebody was coming, Juliana crossed the room. The single candle fluttered as she neared it, and she extinguished it with a hiss. The darkness that fell was immediate and complete. Sure, it would hinder their transition back to the exit, but it would also make it harder for anybody out there to zone in on their position.