As they walked through the vast space, Vicky watched Flynn’s reaction. Used to the kitchen shipping container, his jaw fell loose when he looked around. Several chefs prepared food over in one corner, busily chopping and cooking, the smell of boiling vegetables prominent as the pots and pans belched steam into the air.
While Flynn watched the kitchen, the snap of a chef’s knife against a chopping board echoed in the large open area. Vicky’s gaze wandered to the medic bay. To look at the single bed and small set of drawers on wheels next to it gripped her stomach with nauseating dread. The woeful provisions meant they had no resources to help anyone with anything major. The bed also had the yellow stains of washed-out blood on it. How many people had bled to death because they couldn’t perform a simple operation here?
At the other end of the kitchen, they entered the corridor that led to Vicky’s room. It might have looked similar to the corridor with Flynn’s cell on it, but it felt warmer somehow. Most of the rooms had been made into bedrooms for the residents, which gave it a more homely feel. The same smell of bleach hung in the air, but Vicky had a lot more tolerance for it than Flynn. Maybe she’d been conditioned, but it smelled clean, and clean saved lives—probably many more than the damn medic bay ever could.
After Vicky had entered her room, she had to step back outside to double-check the number on the door. Seventy-two. It was her room, but it looked different from when she’d last been in it. It had two beds shoved into the tight space instead of one. Her bed remained like she’d left it, but the new bed had a pile of clean clothes on it.
After Flynn followed her in, Vicky walked over to the pile of clothes and found a note. Flynn stepped close to her and Vicky caught a whiff of him. She tried not to react to the boy’s tang as she read the letter aloud.
“Welcome to Home, Flynn. You’re here as our guest, so please make yourself comfortable and relax. We want to make sure you have every opportunity to get your strength up while you recover from your journey. We have some clean clothes for you and a towel so you can go and take a shower. We normally only let people shower once a week, on Sunday, but sometimes we allow special privileges in cases like yours. Get washed up and we’re sure you’ll feel a whole lot better. Anyway, please rest and let us know if we can help you at all.”
Once Vicky had finished reading the letter, she lifted the pile of clean clothes. Tracksuit bottoms, a T-shirt, sweatshirt, underwear and socks had been piled up neatly for him. Every item of clothing had the same grey colour. Vicky wore something similar, as did many people in the community. It seemed that those in positions of power dressed slightly smarter with trousers and shirts, but for most people in Home, they wore the grey tracksuit as their uniform.
After she’d passed Flynn the soft pile of clothes, Vicky said, “Want me to show you to the shower block?”
Flynn nodded.
***
“Don’t worry, they’ll get bored soon,” Vicky said as she leaned close to Flynn while they walked. About fifty people had gathered in the canteen for lunch, and all of them stared over at Flynn like they had done with Vicky when she’d first arrived.
Vicky watched Flynn’s wide eyes dart around the room, clearly self-conscious because of the attention and seemingly afraid to look back at anyone.
On their way to a table, Vicky stopped dead while Flynn continued on. The attention shifted from Flynn to her and her voice echoed in the large canteen. “Come on, guys, give him a break. He’s been here two minutes and you’re all staring at him. You’ll get a chance to meet him, but just let him settle in first, yeah?”
Although a berating, those in the canteen took it well and almost every face turned away from the pair. Vicky walked over to the table in the corner Flynn had chosen to sit down at. “You wait here, and I’ll get you some food.”
Vicky returned with two steaming bowls of stew. They smelled like overcooked vegetables. For all the chefs there were in Home, none of them seemed able to make anything other than bland sustenance. Although, Vicky would take bland sustenance over no sustenance any day.
The polished tabletop put up little resistance when Vicky slid Flynn’s spoon to him, and she flinched in anticipation of the loud noise it would make when it hit the floor. But Flynn caught it before it fell and dipped it into his stew. The boy—obviously still in shock—moved like a machine with a haunted stare in his glazed eyes.
After she’d spooned in a bland mouthful of the watery slop, Vicky said, “We’re safe here, you know?”
Flynn stared at her.
“The diseased can’t get us.”
As Flynn looked at the canteen with a slow turn of his head, he said, “The diseased can’t, but they can.”
And he had a point. At least they could predict what the diseased would do: run and try to kill you. But over a hundred people—all with their own agenda and their own insecurities—could do countless things. To live in such close proximity with strangers required a level of trust that Flynn and Vicky barely had with one another, let alone people they didn’t know.
As if stepping forward from the place he’d retreated into within his mind, Flynn stared at Vicky with accusation. “And what about when you get bored?”
“Huh?”
“Like at the containers. You got bored of us and wanted to move on.”
“I got bored of the life, Flynn; that’s a very different thing.”
“Different how?”
“I didn’t want to be the spare part anymore. I’d been a clinger on to your family for a decade and I couldn’t continue to do it. It got depressing knowing I would never meet anyone new. Besides, I told you when I wanted to move on; I didn’t just leave you in the lurch.”
A shrug of his shoulders and Flynn spooned another mouthful of stew in. As he looked around the vast canteen—the monitors on the wall showing nothing happening outside—he sighed. “I still think you’ll find a reason to move on. I don’t think you like responsibility.”
The words stung because of the truth within them. Vicky had been distant at the containers. The supply runs were her thing and she could do them easily, but when it came to connecting with other people, she struggled, preferring to retreat to her container rather than open her heart to a fulfilling relationship like a normal human being.
When she looked up at Flynn, she met his dark glare for a second before she looked back down at the white Formica table. “You’re right, I did struggle. All I can promise you is that I’ll try harder here. Maybe my need to move on from the containers was down to my desire to open up. I finally want to meet new people.”
“Or a new person? Is this all because you want to fuck someone?”
Heat flushed Vicky’s cheeks. “It’s a bit more complex than that, Flynn.” It felt strange to talk to him about these things. As hard as she tried not to see him in that way, whenever she looked at the young man, she still saw the little boy sat in the back of the police car as they raced away from his school ten years ago. “Well …” But before she could finish, Vicky caught sight of Hugh, Jessica, and another man. All three of them wore the khaki uniform of those in positions of authority.
With a grin almost as wide as his face and teeth as white as the walls of the canteen, Hugh strode over to them. “So, how are the newest residents settling in?”
In light of her conversation with Flynn, Vicky’s face flushed hot again and her heart fluttered. After a dry gulp, she nodded. “Fine.”
Both Vicky and Hugh watched Flynn for a response. When he finally looked up, he nodded and spoke a monotone syllable. “Fine.”
Vicky looked over at Jessica by the entranceway to one of the corridors. Hugh laughed. “She’s not that bad, you know.”
“Huh?”
“Your face when you look at Jessica. I know she can be a bit cold—”
Vicky tried to relax her unconscious scowl. “A bit?”
“Okay, so she’s our resident ice queen, but she means well. She always wants to do the right thing, even if she doe
sn’t always manage it. Besides, when you get to know her, she really shows you her big heart. Her exterior coldness is a defence mechanism. Trust me, you’ll become friends with time.”
Her ponytail pulled back so tight it looked like it could scalp her, Jessica kept her eyes fixed on one place as if to look over the heads of everyone in the canteen. Her mouth remained pulled tight in a bitter grimace. A sentry looking for trouble, she’d end it in a heartbeat. Zero tolerance. Zero compassion.
In contrast, the man next to her had dark skin and a warm set to his features. “And who’s that?”
“That’s Serj,” Hugh said. “A lovely guy, he and Jessica have been an item for years now.”
Serj stood with his eyes aglow, and although he didn’t smile, his face beamed radiance as if he drank in every moment of his life and loved it. Vicky instantly liked him. Although he looked deceptively young, Vicky would have put him at around the same age as Jessica. They both looked to be in their mid-thirties.
When Flynn spoke, his words shot out of him and Vicky jumped. “What was the alarm sound?”
The question caught Hugh off guard and he stepped back a pace. “I told Vicky; it was a test. We need to make sure they work every once in a while. Let’s hope we never have to evacuate, but it doesn’t do us any harm to prepare, does it?”
Although Hugh had returned Flynn’s question with one of his own, Flynn only responded with a cold and narrowed glare.
“Anyway,” Hugh said and hooked a thumb over his shoulder, “I need to be off now.”
Before either Vicky or Flynn could speak again, Hugh spun around and weaved through the tables in the canteen on his way back to Serj and Jessica.
Once he’d gotten out of earshot, Flynn shook his head. “I don’t trust him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s hiding something.”
If Vicky could have argued the point, she would have, but he did seem to be hiding something from them. “Maybe he has a good reason to.”
There seemed to be little conviction in Flynn’s voice when he said, “Maybe.”
Chapter Three
Having spent several hours in the canteen, many of them in silence as Vicky and Flynn watched the monitors and the other people around them, the pair returned to their sleeping quarters.
The corridor had the usual stink of bleach that caused Vicky to involuntarily ruffle her nose against its probing reach. “I didn’t get it at first,” Vicky said.
With his feet dragging as he walked, Flynn looked up at Vicky but didn’t respond.
“The monitors in the canteen,” she continued. “I thought they desensitised the children of the community to the diseased outside.”
Although Flynn still said nothing, he watched Vicky.
“But now I get it. I mean, in a world with no windows, those monitors provide some kind of connection with life. The bulbs in this place may be UV, but if nothing else, we need to see the outside world, right? We need to at least have an understanding of the sun in the sky, even if we don’t feel the warmth of it on our skin. I mean, what do we have without that?”
A few seconds passed as Flynn watched Vicky and he looked like he would respond. Instead, he shrugged and stared ahead again as they drew close to their room.
***
Vicky stopped before she opened the door. “Are you sure you’re okay sleeping in with me? I can ask them to give you your own room if you like?”
A frown darkened Flynn’s face and he spoke in a gruff voice. “Do you want me to sleep on my own?”
Still clearly damaged from everything that had happened over the past week or two, Vicky reached across and touched Flynn’s wiry forearm. “I don’t mind what you do, honey. I like having you in with me, so stay as long as you like. I just want to make sure you feel comfortable.”
With his attention dropped to the floor, Flynn said, “I’ll stay for a while. If that’s okay?”
“Of course.”
When Vicky pushed the door open, it crashed into one of the beds in the room. A small room, it now had two cot beds in it like the ones used by the army or in impromptu hospitals. They had white bedding and silver metal frames. They creaked at any slight movement. Since they’d been out of the room, a clean tracksuit had been left on each bed.
Flynn walked over and lifted his tracksuit up. “I’ve only just put on fresh clothes. Surely this is a mistake.”
A smile lifted Vicky’s face as she shook her head. “It’s no mistake. Every day you leave your old clothes on the floor and someone comes around and picks them up. At the end of each day, you come back to your room to find a fresh set waiting for you, grundies and all.”
A red hue spread across Flynn’s face at the mention of underwear, so Vicky spared him the details about the uncomfortable bras. Not that she should complain; she’d often found it difficult to get a well-fitted bra on an entire high street in the past. The fact that Home had something that came close to fitting her had been a miracle.
The space between the beds showed a strip of blue linoleum floor. Too narrow for the pair to pass one another in the tight passage, they’d be lying so close they’d be able to reach across the gap.
White walls and a white ceiling, lit up by the naked bulb, finished off the plain room.
When Vicky sat down on her bed, the springs groaned as they sagged beneath her weight. She rocked from side to side and the entire bed moved with her, the joints creaking with every shift. “Okay, so these aren’t the best beds in the world, but they sure beat sleeping on the cold floors of those fucking containers.” For some reason, the swear word struck Vicky more than it had done in the past. Her swearing aloud started off as something to get under Larissa’s skin, but now they’d joined a community, she had the judgement of close to one hundred other people around her. “I won’t miss the airport, will you?”
A shake of his head and Flynn sat down on his creaky bed.
Both beds had a floor space at the foot of them. At about a metre square, they gave some room for Vicky and Flynn to place their personal belongings—if they ever gathered any personal belongings, that was. Maybe when the need for them arose, they could put shelves up.
After Vicky had slipped beneath the covers, she stripped down to her knickers, bra, and vest and tossed the rest of the clothes onto the floor space at the end of the bed.
Once Flynn had settled into bed, Vicky, who had the light switch close to her head, reached up and turned the light out. With the door to the room closed, the place fell into almost complete darkness. Just a sliver of light peeked beneath the door from the hallway.
***
As they lay in the dark, Vicky’s mind raced, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Flynn would need the rest. From what he’d been through and his time in the cell, he’d ended up looking like the walking dead, and it wouldn’t be fair to drag him into a conversation when he should be sleeping.
“Are you asleep?” Flynn said.
Relieved at the break in silence, Vicky said, “No.”
“I wonder what the alarm was for?”
“So do I. I really want to trust Hugh and I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough what it was about. There’s probably nothing to it.”
A non-committal grunt and Flynn said, “I hope you’re right. I struggle to trust anyone who smiles that much.”
“He comes from a different place than us; he’s been safe for years. He has more of a reason to be happy than we do.”
“I still don’t like it.”
Neither did Vicky, but Flynn had a lot to deal with already, so she kept it to herself.
The spareness of the room took Flynn’s clearing of his throat and amplified it. “I used the spear, you know.”
“To get out of the hole?” Vicky asked.
The silence seemed to last an age before Flynn finally said, “Yeah. I had it with me as the tunnel collapsed and I managed to hold onto it with one hand. I couldn’t breathe at first and couldn’t open my eyes for the damp earth, but I
gritted my teeth and wiggled the pole until the smallest amount of daylight came in from above me. I wiggled it some more and it brought in some fresh air with it. I was already knackered by that point.”
The guilt of leaving him stabbed pain through Vicky’s chest. If Rhys and Larissa could speak to her now, they’d no doubt be furious at how she’d abandoned their son—and rightly so.
“I waited until I got my strength back and I wiggled the pole some more. Slowly but surely, the hole above me grew. I mean, maybe it was a blessing that it took me a while to get out. It gave the diseased enough time to get bored of waiting for me and to fuck off. So when I finally crawled out of the ground, exhausted and covered in dirt, I didn’t have to face a whole herd of the bastards.”
“I’m so sorry I left you, Flynn.”
Another loaded pause seemed to suck all of the air from the room. “It’s okay. If you’d have known I was still alive, you would have waited for me. What else could you do but assume I’d died?”
Vicky let him continue.
“I picked up the trail quite easily after that. I mean, the signs are pretty clear, right?”
Vicky laughed. “Right.”
“I panicked when I came to the stream.”
A sharp gasp and Vicky clapped her hand to her mouth. “Shit, I hadn’t even thought about that. How did you cross it?”
“I made a raft. I found a couple of plastic barrels caught in the reeds and fished them out. I used the weeds to bind them to some wood and it took my weight. I managed to push out across the stream just as a herd of the diseased appeared. I got lucky there; if they’d arrived any earlier, I would have either drowned trying to swim across or been bitten.”
Despite the fact that Flynn lay next to her now, washed, cleaned, and fed, the pain of the loss of him remained with Vicky and her eyes itched with tears. A sniff did little to clear her running nose.
“Are you okay, Vicky?”
The Alpha Plague 5: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 2