Hell On Earth Box Set | Books 1-6

by Wright, Iain Rob

  Carol was shaking her head and looking like she might start sobbing. “Nathan, please just calm down.”

  Nathan kicked a chair. Then he fled, racing out of the hall and into the night.

  Jackie stood up and sighed. “I’ll go after him.”

  “Be careful,” said Kamiyo. “Nathan is…” He shrugged. “Well, I guess he’s just a kid. Don’t push him too hard.”

  “I won’t,” said Jackie, leaving the room.

  Kamiyo put his hands on his hips and looked at Philip who had continued standing there during Nathan’s tirade. He seemed perplexed by what he had seen, and Kamiyo had to nod to the man to regain his attention. “So… we’ll leave at first light?”

  Philip nodded. “Or sooner.”

  34

  HANNAH

  It had been twenty-minutes since Kamiyo announced he intended to leave in the morning. Hannah needed to get some air after hearing it. She felt guilty. If she hadn’t made such a shambles of getting supplies, Kamiyo wouldn’t need to risk leaving the forest. The doctor had plenty of survival experience, but she still felt like it was her responsibility to go out. It had been taken away from her because she’d got wounded—because she failed. Some nights, she heard dogs barking in the forest as if to mock her. Was it the same ones that attacked her?

  Tonight, she didn’t hear dogs barking. She heard a gunshot. Others heard it too because they came spilling out of the castle. Ted shuffled through the crowd until he was right next to Hannah. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Was that a gunshot?”

  “I don’t know.” Although she did know. She knew what a gunshot sounded like. “It came from down by the lake.

  Ted turned a circle, craning his neck to see through the crowd. “Where’s Jackie?”

  “I haven’t seen her since she left to find Nathan.”

  Ted panicked, and he suddenly seemed much older and frail. “Damn it. I have to find her, Hannah.”

  Hannah grabbed his meaty wrist and squeezed it. “We’ll both go.”

  They started towards the sally port, Hannah hobbling on her bad ankle and trying to keep up. Others followed too, in a loose tangle. Everyone was worried, but also solidified in their intent. Whatever was happening, they would face it together.

  “Maybe it was a flair or a firework.” Hannah looked up at the sky, hoping to see such a thing. “Maybe there are survivors out there somewhere signalling for help.”

  Ted didn’t reply. He marched through the sally port like a man possessed, and when he started down the hill, she worried several times that he might stumble. She worried about doing the same herself. Her ankle nagged at her.

  They soon reached the bottom of the hill, but nothing except silence and shadow met them. A glimmer of movement came from the lake, but all else was lifeless. There had been no more gunshots since the first.

  Hannah realised they had acted poorly as a group. At least a dozen of them had clambered down the hill to investigate, but there was no reason for them to all be out in the open like this. The only saving grace was that everyone had armed themselves, some with bows, several with spears.

  The cabin was no longer lit with candles by night as Kamiyo’s infirmary was empty. The building stood empty and unlit. Kamiyo walked with them and seemed deeply concerned like he might know something no one else did. Hannah would have stopped to ask him about it if she wasn’t so concerned with Ted.

  The man was several paces ahead now, and without his hammer. If an attack came from the forest, he would be defenceless. It made little sense, but she felt protective over him more than anyone else in the camp. They’d arrived here together, shoved together by circumstance. It felt like they were supposed to have each other’s backs.

  A single shape shifted in the shadows ahead, and Ted picked up speed, moving even farther ahead of the group. Hannah gritted her teeth to endure the pain in her ankle and hurried after him. “Ted, slow down. Stay with the group.”

  Ted stopped short and froze stiff. Hannah quickly closed twelve-feet and reached his side. The shadowy shape turned out to be Nathan, standing alone in the darkness. He held something in his arms. Hannah’s rifle.

  “Where did you find that?” she demanded, marching to retrieve it, but Ted threw out an arm and stopped her. She skidded to a halt, just in time to avoid tripping over a mound at her feet. At first, she couldn’t tell what it was, but then she realised.

  It was Jackie. Blood covered her chest, silvery in the moonlight.

  Ted remained frozen stiff, but he managed to move his mouth enough to speak. “Nathan? What did you do?”

  Nathan pointed the rifle at the ground and was emotionless as he spoke. “It was an accident. I was going to run away, but I found the gun at the edge of the forest. It was just lying there. I was going to bring it back and—”

  “You’re lying!” Ted snarled, a fury coming over him all of a sudden like a match being lit.

  “I’m not!” A flash of defiance lit Nathan’s face. “I swear, I was bringing the gun back and Jackie just… she startled me. I don’t know why she was out here.”

  “She came to make sure you were okay!” Ted shocked them all by leaping forwards and punching the child in the face. It was a brutal blow, and it knocked Nathan to the ground. Kamiyo and two older teenagers hurried to grab Ted and hold him back.

  Nathan rolled on the ground, clutching his bleeding nose and sobbing. He wasn’t so defiant anymore.

  Hannah ran and retrieved her rifle and immediately pointed it at the injured child. Her actions horrified her—Nathan was just a child—but in the edge of her vision, Jackie’s blood-covered body urged her to move her finger over the trigger.

  No one spoke in Nathan’s defence. Ted broke free and loomed over the child, looking ready to pummell him into a wet patch. Were they all really about to do this? Was this what they had become?

  Jackie is dead.

  Hannah put a hand on Ted’s shoulder. If he killed Nathan, she feared what it might do to him. “I’ll do it, Ted. Let me.”

  Ted looked at her, unbridled fury ready to unleash in cannon-fire. But he didn’t unleash it. Instead of beating Nathan to death, he shook his head and sighed. “I promised Jackie I would protect these children. Which includes this piece of shit. Get him up.”

  Hannah shook with a mixture of pain and relief as she pulled the lad to his feet instead of pulling her trigger. The emotion of the scene was too much, and she felt ready to double-over and spew her guts. She could fight monsters all day long, but she’d been about to shoot a kid. She had really been prepared to do it.

  Nathan didn’t struggle, but Dr Kamiyo came over to help Hannah keep him restrained just in case he tried anything. They used her nylon belt to bind the boy’s wrists behind his back, and then they shoved him down onto his knees. A pair of teenagers stood close by, holding spears. Nathan sobbed.

  Kamiyo moved Hannah aside and pointed to her rifle. “As a doctor, I hate to say such things, but I think you would have been doing the boy a kindness. I don’t think this was an accident.”

  Hannah sighed. “I don’t either. You don’t accidentally discharge a combat rifle like this. It’s not an antique pistol. You need to get a firm hold to make it bark.”

  Still in a whisper, Kamiyo went on. “I’ve had concerns about Nathan for a while. I’m not sure if his dissociation issues were caused by the trauma of the last few months, or if he’s always been this way, but he’s been sending up several warning flags—fascination with death and killing, playing with animal carcasses, lack of empathy. It’s all very theoretical, and I’m no psychiatrist—”

  “What are you saying?” Hannah asked.

  Dr Kamiyo folded his arms and looked over at Nathan. “I’m just saying I don’t think this was an accident, and there aren’t facilities anymore to care for someone like Nathan. I still plan on heading out tomorrow, but I’d feel better knowing someone is keeping a close eye on him.”

  “You think he might try to hurt someone else?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t know, but he worries me enough to say it’s a more than plausible risk.”

  Hannah nodded, and when she glanced at Nathan, she saw the same things Kamiyo did. Nathan was disturbed. “I won’t let him out of my sight,” she said. “You get what we need, come back, and then we can decide what to do with Nathan.”

  “I think we might already know,” he pointed to her rifle again. “Don’t hesitate if he tries to hurt anyone else, okay? When I get back, I will try to help him, but in the meantime just do what you need to do to keep everyone safe.”

  Hannah agreed, then turned to check on Ted who was kneeling beside Jackie. He didn’t touch her, as though he dared not to. Instead, he peered down at her with his hands on his knees. Tears stained both his hairy cheeks, and she realised that the man was different now to how he’d been in the rest of the time she’d known him. He had shown compassion to Nathan instead of fury, and now he was showing grief. Whatever emotional barriers Ted had been holding onto were gone. That meant he was in pain.

  Hannah knelt beside him, saddened by the sight of Jackie’s expressionless face, and by the broken expression of her friend.

  Jackie’s hair was all bunched at the back of her head, and it made it look like she was lying on a dark pillow.

  Everyone was silent, and the only thing Hannah could hear was Ted’s gentle breathing. “Are you okay, Ted?”

  “Jackie taught me something today about not giving up on people. All the people who cared about us, all the people who are gone… they still matter. What we do still matters. Jackie is dead, but I’m not sure I know what that means anymore.”

  Hannah placed a hand on his back and rubbed. For once, he didn’t flinch at the contact. “I know you two were close,” she said. “I’m sorry. She was a good chick.”

  “We weren’t close,” said Ted, “but we might have been one day. What the hell happened here, Hannah?”

  “I wish I knew, pet. This is partly my fault. Nathan used my rifle. I searched for it, but I assumed it was gone. Didn’t see much use in worrying about it. If I’d known…”

  Ted reached out and squeezed her knee. “None of this fucked up world is our fault, Hannah. The only ones responsible are the demons that came through those gates to kill us all. I don’t know how long we can keep surviving, but I will kill every last demon I see until the day of my death.”

  “And I’ll be right at your side, Ted. I promise.”

  Ted looked at her and smiled. “I’m glad I met you, Hannah.”

  Hannah wiped the tears on his cheeks and smiled back at him. “I’m glad too.”

  35

  TED

  At sunrise, Ted was already down at the cabin to check on Nathan. For the time being, the group decided to keep the boy imprisoned in the cabin’s First Aid room away from the camp. It was a small space with no windows, but there was a bed. Ted had fashioned a thick wooden crossbar across the door, held in place by a pair of steel brackets scavenged from the workshop. It wasn’t an inescapable cell, but if Nathan managed to get out, he wouldn’t be able to enter the castle without being seen, anyway. The worst that could happen was that the kid could flee into the forest never to be seen again. That wouldn’t be the worst thing. It would beat having to execute Nathan somewhere down the line.

  Every second spent with Nathan put the thought more in Ted’s head. The remorseless monster had killed Jackie, a woman devoted to the welfare of others—including Nathan himself. If she hadn’t cared enough about Nathan to go after him, she’d still be alive. Her empathy had been the death of her.

  Ted opened the First Aid room and found Nathan sitting on the bed. He couldn’t look at the boy, so he left some dried pasta and a cup of water on the nearby table and went to exit again.

  “It was an accident,” Nathan protested. He did the same thing each morning.

  Ted stopped in the doorway but didn’t face the boy. “I’m not sure I believe that.”

  “Then why didn’t you let Hannah shoot me?”

  “Because Jackie cared about you, lad. Killing you isn’t what she would have wanted.”

  “I liked her,” said Nathan, which angered Ted enough to turn around finally, but when he saw Nathan’s teary eyes, he refrained from further action. “I liked her,” he said again. “I wish she were still here.”

  “But she’s not. You shot her dead, Nathan.”

  “Kill me.”

  Ted frowned. “What?”

  “Kill me, please. I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t want to keep being me. You should have killed me, so do it now.”

  “I won’t kill you, Nathan.” Not yet.

  Nathan stood from the bed. “Then I’ll hurt someone else. First chance I get, I’ll kill someone. Just like I killed Jackie.”

  Ted felt his hands ball into fists. He bit his lip and forced his rage back down into his guts. “If you don’t like who you are, Nathan, then be somebody else. Keep your mouth shut and stay put until we decide what to do with you. Maybe you’ll get your wish.”

  Ted stormed out of the room and barred it from the other side, ignoring the sound of Nathan’s fists beating against the wood. Was the kid truly suicidal, or just murderous and insane? He decided it wasn’t something he had an answer to right that minute, so he went back up the hill to the castle.

  Dr Kamiyo was preparing to leave this morning.

  Ted found Kamiyo, like Hannah days earlier, standing at the portcullis. Philip and Aymun stood with him, and all three men had large camping rucksacks on their back. Philip carried a spear while Kamiyo had an old iron poker taken from one of the castle’s hearths. Aymun was unarmed.

  Frank was there too, shaking hands with the men and wishing them well. Hannah and Steve were in the winch room overhead, waiting to raise the gate. Both shouted ‘good luck.’ As usual, the children and teenagers huddled in their respective cliques. Milly stood alone as she so often did. Ted went up to her, and when she saw him she smiled.

  “Is Nathan okay?” she asked.

  Ted nodded. “Yes, are you?” She nodded but didn’t look like she was okay. She looked sad in the way only a young child could. Ted patted her head.

  “You’re upset about Jackie?”

  Milly nodded silently.

  Ted knelt down, putting a hand on her shoulder. “She’s not really gone, you know? There’s a place we all go when we die. A better place. She’s up there watching us right now. Whenever you miss Jackie, just look up at the sky and smile. She’ll smile right back at you.”

  “She’s in Heaven?” Milly said the word tentatively, like she thought she might get told off for speaking the words. “Heaven isn’t real.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Reece.”

  Ted laughed. “Well, that’s funny because Reece is in Heaven too. You see, no one knew for sure back before the monsters came, but now we do. The monsters came from a bad place, but there’s a good place we all go that is safe and peaceful. Jackie and Reece, and everyone else, are there.”

  “Then I want to go there too.”

  “You will one day, Milly, but not until you’re old and grey. I know it’s scary here, but you can’t go to the good place until it’s your time. Until then, you have to be brave and strong so that those already in the good place can be proud of you. Okay?”

  Milly nodded.

  Ted straightened up and left her. He felt a little fraudulent speaking to a child about Heaven, but he believed his own logic. If demons came from Hell, then there had to be a Heaven. There just had to be.

  Either that or there’s just one Hell after another.

  There were some things Ted wanted for the camp, and he wanted to go tell Kamiyo before he left. Nothing exotic, just things like sealant, hinges, and other small items that would come in handy. None of it was vital, but he gave Kamiyo a list anyway.

  Kamiyo took it with a smile. “I’ll get whatever I can find.”

  “Where are you planning to go?” Ted asked.

  “We’ll follow
the main roads until we find a supermarket. If it has a pharmacy, we can get food and medicine in one place. You going to be okay here in the meantime?” Kamiyo looked at Ted with concern. It seemed like everyone was worried how he would react after Jackie’s death. They kept waiting for him to explode.

  Ted shrugged. “I have Steven and Hannah to help hold down the fort. Carol and Frank are looking after the kids. We’ll be fine. Before we know it, the teenagers will be running things without us.”

  “Ha, yeah, I think you’re right. Let’s hope they don’t put us out to pasture.”

  “Good luck out there, Doc. And be careful.” Ted side-eyed Aymun and Philip. He had obvious reasons for not trusting Aymun, but he also worried about Philip too. The grieving father was emotional and angry, and he made no secret of his hatred for Kamiyo. “There’s more than demons that can hurt you.”

  Kamiyo gave a subtle enough nod to let Ted know he understood. “You’re right, I know, but I still have to believe the best in people. We’ll be back, safe and sound, I promise.”

  “Then bring back some whiskey, and we’ll have a drink.” They shook hands, and the portcullis rose. There was a good chance no one would see Philip, Aymun, or Kamiyo again.

  36

  DR KAMIYO

  Kamiyo and his companions had walked for an hour through the forest and anticipated another thirty minutes more until they found its end. It made Kamiyo wonder how people used to put up with the walk to the activity centre back in the days when few people enjoyed walking farther than the end of their driveway. He supposed he had answered his own question, though, and that the people who would visit an outdoor activity centre were the people who would enjoy the ninety-minute walk to get there. Kamiyo looked forward to the days when people would have the luxury of being lazy again because laziness went hand-in-hand with safety.