As Vicky spooned another mouthful of the plain wheat cereal into her mouth, she screwed her face up at the stale flavour of the powdered milk. Maybe the people in Home had acquired the taste for it, but for Vicky, her stomach responded to every swallow with the beginning of a heave. More watery than before from what must have been a thinning of their supplies, she munched the cereal without enthusiasm and sighed.
“What’s up?” Flynn said.
A cow chewing the cud, Vicky shrugged. “I’d kill for sausages and hash browns right about now. Even the cheap shit they used to serve in the crappy motorway hotels.”
A smile lit up Flynn’s face and his eyes sparkled. “Me too.”
But Vicky didn’t smile in return. Dressed in the khaki uniform of the Home guards, she looked around the room at the people gathered there. What would they think had they seen the way Jessica dealt with the infected woman? It took for Vicky to witness it to realise that tough decisions needed to be made by those in power. Maybe she’d been naive to think it would be any other way.
For the second time in as many minutes, Flynn said, “What’s up?”
Of everyone in the place, she wanted to protect Flynn the most. As he adjusted to a life in Home, he didn’t need to know all of its dark secrets. “Nothing, why?”
“You seem distant. Like you have something on your mind.”
It almost ached to smile, but Vicky forced one anyway.
Flynn pulled back at what must have been a ghastly sight. He frowned at her. “You can tell me, you know.”
Maybe she could. After all, she’d shut him out for long enough, so maybe she should treat him like the adult he was and confide in him. If Rhys were there at that moment, she would have shared her worries with him. A nod and Vicky drew her breath to reply, but before she could say anything, Hugh appeared at their table and sat down beside Flynn.
Hugh looked pissed. Vicky’s turn to say, “Are you okay?”
Although Hugh gave her a sharp nod, he scanned the large canteen area as if paranoid about listening ears, but no one seemed interested in them. The collective sound of chatter swirled in the ceiling space above them. A room full of people without a care in the world because of Hugh and his team.
“Come on, Hugh, I can tell something’s up.” When she looked at Flynn, he raised his eyebrows at her as if to highlight the fact that he’d just been asking her the same thing. Vicky ignored him and turned to Hugh again. “What’s going on?”
As Hugh released a heavy sigh, he dragged his hand over the top of his head, pulling his hair from his eyes. “You know what we spoke about with the gym time?”
Vicky nodded.
“Well, I want to address that now. I need to tell the people here that we need more from them.”
With his hand still on the top of his head, Hugh continued to scan the room with his dark eyes.
Another mouthful of the watery and sweet cereal and Vicky looked at Flynn. “Many of the people here don’t pull their weight. We think they should exercise more so they’ll feel confident to go outside when we need it. Although, we don’t want to reveal that part of the plan to them yet. Phase one is to get them fit. After that, we can hopefully start taking the fight to the diseased.”
When Hugh stood up, his chair screeched out behind him. So consumed with their own conversations, very few people seemed to notice his actions.
Vicky hadn’t seen the red plastic whistle on a string around his neck until Hugh lifted it to his mouth and wrapped his lips around it. In anticipation of the shrill sound, Vicky winced. A second later, a prolonged and sharp peep called through the vast open room and cannoned around in the ceiling space above.
The way every face snapped to attention and stared at Hugh took Vicky back through the countless times a horde of diseased had noticed her. The hive mind focused on the leader of Home and silence swept through the room like a strong gust.
Now that he had their attention, Hugh stood up on his chair. “It seems like most of you are here, which is good. For the people who aren’t, I want you to relay my message to them.”
Each face stared at Hugh as they let him speak.
“Home is a hard place to run and we’re lucky that we now have a new person to help with that.” A slight pause and Hugh looked down at Vicky. “But it’s not enough. We’ve existed for the longest time, but we need to grow as a community into something much better than what we currently are.”
For a few seconds, Hugh didn’t speak and simply took in all the faces that stared at him. “Phase one is to make sure everyone’s fit. Unless you have a legitimate health condition, we expect you to log ten hours’ gym time per week. I’m not saying you all need to be super athletes, but we can all get fitter. Become the fittest person you can be and I’ll be happy. We’re going to place someone on the door of the gym and they’ll stamp you in and out to log the times you’ve spent exercising. I’ll be checking the cards every week.”
A Middle Eastern-looking man got to his feet and called across the vast space, “And what if we don’t do it?”
Hugh massaged his temples and drew a deep breath. Vicky could see that for the longest time, he’d let his frustrations with the people of Home bubble beneath the surface. Because he hadn’t addressed it, he now seemed to struggle with holding his rage back.
Vicky stood up and felt the attention of the room shift to her. It threw her off momentarily, heat smothered her, and she pulled at her collar as if it would help her breathe more easily. “We all have to do things we don’t like. I had to go outside and fight the diseased because none of you lot would. After ten years of doing that, do you think I really want to do it some more?”
Silence.
“Well, I don’t. But I do it because we all need to be accountable. We need to help Home survive. What will you lot do if the few of us who go outside get killed? Who will have the courage to run this place then? We can all get fitter, stronger, and more adept at coping with life as it currently is. The diseased aren’t going anywhere, so we need to learn to continue to survive with them still around.”
Some of the crowd nodded at Vicky.
After Vicky sat down, Hugh winked at her before he turned to the room again. “To be a part of any society, you have to contribute. Home has been a free ride for too long and that needs to change. If you don’t want to take part, just say.” Although he’d addressed the room until that point, he focused on the Middle Eastern man when he said, “We can open the front door for anyone.”
Enough people gasped at Hugh’s threat for it to cut through the large space, and Hugh scanned the place for a few more seconds before he nodded to himself and sat down again.
For the next few minutes, Hugh said nothing. At any one time, it seemed like about a third of the room watched him as if he would offer an alternative to them getting off their lazy arses.
When the stares finally died down, Hugh looked at Flynn. “I have a job for you, mate.”
Pride straightened Flynn’s back and he smiled at Hugh.
“I want you to monitor the comings and goings at the gym. I want you to stamp people in and out. We have an abundance of notebooks, so we’ll use them for everyone, and we have a stamp that bites a hole in the paper.”
“Why me? Why can’t someone else do it?”
“Because you’ve not been here long and you seem like a stand-up guy. You’re much less likely to be coerced into stamping people’s books who don’t exercise. Although, when we explain that phase two is going outside of Home, maybe that’ll be enough motivation for them to do it anyway.”
Flynn glared at Vicky. Maybe he knew she wouldn’t let him go out and fight, or maybe he simply guessed as much. Either way, he clearly blamed her for his new role in Home.
Hugh stood up again and patted Flynn on the back. “You’re a good lad, Flynn. I’ve set up a pile of books and a stamp outside the gym already. Once you’ve finished your breakfast, if you could go over there and get prepared for the first people, that would be gre
at.” Hugh turned his attention on Vicky. “Come on, we need to go.”
Several quick spoonfuls filled Vicky’s mouth with the flat taste of watery milk and wheat biscuits. She got to her feet in the glare of Flynn’s rage, winced at him, and mouthed the word sorry before she followed Hugh out of the canteen.
In truth, she didn’t feel very sorry. Flynn would be safe in Home and he’d be doing something useful, so Hugh would be likely to keep him there. Even now, after she’d seen him fight as well as his father had, Vicky couldn’t let Flynn outside of Home. She loved him too much to let him die.
Chapter Seventeen
The two corridors that ran between the canteen and the kitchen area seemed virtually identical. Each one had doors along either side with a small room behind them. Both sides were used purely for accommodation. Most of the doors—all of them painted white and with the same plain silver door handles on—remained closed. The only ones that still hung open were the ones currently unoccupied. The smell of bleach hung heavy in the air. Vicky could get used to most smells, but for some reason, the reek of bleach never felt any less abusive to her senses.
“We could find a separate room for Flynn now, if you like.”
As Vicky kept stride with Hugh, she tried to see the subtext in his statement. If he had one, he’d hidden it well. He walked with his eyes focused on where they headed and with his chin raised. With everything that had happened in her life up until this point, Vicky didn’t feel ready to trust him yet. Brendan had convinced her to lower her guard and she’d paid dearly for that—the entire bloody country had paid dearly for that … maybe more if it had reached those beyond the waters surrounding the UK.
“I’m not sure he’s ready for that,” Vicky said.
“Not sure if he’s ready, or not sure if you’re ready?”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not. He lost his parents just a few short weeks ago. He’ll need some more time to adjust to things, and I’ll be there for him for as long as it takes.” She steered the conversation away from talk of Flynn’s accommodation. “Thanks for giving him the gym job, by the way.”
“Huh?”
“Look, you and I both know the boy can fight better than most of the people in this place, but if he works in the gym, it means he has much less time to get outside of Home and put himself in danger. You giving him that job has ensured his safety.”
A click of his fingers and Hugh smiled. “That wasn’t my intention, but that makes sense now. I did wonder why he looked so pissed off. I like that kid; he’s got spirit.”
“That he has.” With her steps falling into line with Hugh’s, Vicky smiled. “That he has.”
***
As one, Vicky and Hugh stepped out into the huge kitchen area. The stainless steel workspace for the chefs would have looked large in most places, but in the corner of the cavernous room it seemed tiny. The medic bay—a small bed and very few supplies—looked as neglected as it always did. “Do you even use that bed anymore?”
Hugh said nothing for a few seconds as he stared at the rickety bed in the corner as if he’d seen too many people die on it already. He then shook his head. “No. It had more use back in the day when we had some medical supplies. Now people are better off in their room than lying out here in the open.”
“Then why don’t you get rid of it?”
“Quite a statement, wouldn’t you say? Get rid of the medic bay and we publicly admit what we privately know; if you get injured, you’re fucked.”
Before Vicky could reply, Jessica emerged from the corridor that ran parallel with the one Vicky and Hugh had walked down. She had a pole slung over her shoulder and a collection of dead animals hung from it.
They arrived at the kitchen area at the same time, the smell of boiled vegetables in the air, but Hugh and Vicky stood back as Jessica laid the large stick down on the side with a heaving sigh. “Three rabbits, two foxes, seven squirrels, and a cat.”
The chef—a fat and sweaty woman with angry red skin and heavy bags beneath her eyes—nodded at Jessica. “Thank you. We can put all of these to good use.”
After she’d received the chef’s approval, Jessica turned to Vicky and Hugh. “Everything okay?”
Hugh shrugged. “Okay. I told the people today that I expected them to exercise more.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure it went down too well, but they took it at least. Phase one is under way.”
A knowing nod and Jessica turned to Vicky. “How are you?”
For some reason, the attention from the once hostile woman warmed Vicky and she felt herself grow inside by a few inches. “I’m fine, thank you. Are you okay? And Serj?”
Jessica’s already friendly demeanour opened up into a broad smile. “We’re both great, thank you. Serj’s ankle aches a little now, but he should be back to full action very soon.”
Vicky returned a smile before Jessica spun on her heel and walked away. As Vicky watched her back, a sway to her hips, her trousers a tight fit around her toned butt, and her blonde hair scraped back in the perfect ponytail, she saw beauty where she had once seen coldness. The woman stood as a vision of power and radiance. No wonder Vicky had found her so intimidating at the beginning.
“Can we get some food for our two newest arrivals, please, Fran?”
The large chef nodded at Hugh and plated up two bowls of stew. She then placed them both on one tray and slid it toward him.
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
The slightest hint of a smile lifted the sides of Fran’s mouth. And why wouldn’t it? Vicky even found herself charmed by Hugh’s charisma. It helped that he stood as tall and strong as he did. A winning smile and always prepared to dish out a compliment, he could probably have the pick of any woman in the place.
Vicky followed Hugh out of the kitchen area and nodded at Fran as she passed her. The smile fell from Fran’s face as if the scaffolding holding it up had collapsed.
As they neared the next corridor, similar in layout to the one that separated the kitchen and canteen, Vicky said, “So Jessica does all of the hunting for Home?”
“Yep. She’s the best we’ve got.”
As much as Vicky didn’t want to appear egotistical about hunting, and even though she wanted to feel comfortable with Jessica’s clear strength and beauty, she said it anyway. “I’m good at hunting. You should let me try.”
Hugh didn’t reply.
***
The corridor with the gym on it and the cells with their two newest citizens looked different from the other corridor because many of the rooms existed without doors. Storage areas, empty spaces, and the gym … none of them needed to be closed off.
With their close proximity to the two men in their cells, Vicky moved nearer to Hugh and spoke so hopefully only he would hear it. “Will you keep the newest arrivals in their cells for longer than two days?”
Dropping his pace, Hugh shrugged. “Dunno. I’m a little worried about how they were with Jessica. I won’t let them out if I think they’re a danger to anyone here.”
“I agree. I think you have to be careful with those two.”
The two newest guests might not have had windows in their cell doors, but, unlike Flynn’s cell, they did have small holes in the bottom for Hugh to slip their food through. When they got to the first one, Hugh crouched down, opened the hatch with a loud snap, and pushed the bowl of stew in. “Get it while it’s hot.”
They had the next man locked up a few doors down. Enough of a distance separated the two so they couldn’t talk to one another should they want to. Hugh repeated the process as he slid the second bowl of stew through the gap.
Once he’d snapped the second hatch shut, Hugh placed the empty tray on the floor outside the cell. “Remind me to take the tray back later. I think we should go and check in the gym. I want to see—”
Before he could finish his sentence, raised voices ran up the corridor from the farm at the end of it. Without another word, Hugh took off toward t
he noise at a sprint and Vicky followed closely behind.
The hammer of their feet rattled through the hard confined space as Vicky and Hugh ran down it. The shouts at the far end continued; it was a clear conflict between two men.
When Hugh got to the end, he slid the door aside and ran into the humid and earthy room. Piotr stood by the door and watched the two men square off against one another. Some of the larger people in Home worked in the farm because it was the most physically demanding job. As Vicky looked at the two men in dirty grey tracksuits, she gasped at their size.
“Have you seen it?” the more irate of the two men said. Slightly smaller than the other man, his dark brown skin glistened with sweat in the humid room.
The other man sighed. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“We need to tell them; it’s the only thing we can do.”
The more defensive of the two men turned to Piotr at that point and raised his eyebrows. Piotr shrugged.
“I said,” the first man snarled, “we need to tell people. They have a right to know.”
In a flash, Hugh darted forward, and before the angry man could look up, he drove a right cross into his chin. The dark-skinned man’s eyes rolled back in his head and his legs folded beneath him. He hit the wet soil with a thud.
The man he’d been arguing with stared down at his fallen opponent and shook his head. When he looked at Hugh, he said, “I didn’t know what to do with him.”
Hugh’s reply snapped back at him like a cracking whip. “Try what I just did. We can’t have hysteria in this place. Now take him to one of the holding cells.” Hugh turned to look at the large Russian. “Piotr, can you please help him?”
The Alpha Plague 5: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 8