As much as I wanted to order Samuel to take his cultists and crush them entirely, I knew that it would be a huge mistake. Before we could take them on, we would need a plan in place and the infrastructure set up to allow our people to step in and protect those communities.
Which brought me right back around to the need for transport and supply routes as well as a trained security force that was dedicated to protecting the survivors in a way that Samuel’s death cult never truly could.
Of course, none of it would matter if the parasite in Liverpool wasn’t dealt with because all the signs pointed to it growing fast. After its many appendages had delved beneath the sea, it had found a food source that it could use to increase its mass exponentially.
Charlie had reported just that morning that it had crossed the River Mersey and spread across Birkenhead towards the coast that was opposite to us. If it continued as it was, before the end of the year it would dip into the waters where the River Dee spilt into the ocean and it would only be days then before its crimson tentacles were climbing the beaches just a short distance from where I was standing.
All in all, it was a growing problem that would leave me with little choice but to abandon everything we had been building in Mostyn before we fled back to the Isle of Mann. That was something I was not willing to do because if we did, I would never be able to persuade anyone to leave again and that would doom the rest of the survivors on mainland Britain to death beneath the creeping spread of the parasite.
I leaned forward, forehead pressing against the cold glass and hot drink cooling in my hand as I wished for something, anything, to appear that would give us a chance of surviving. That would allow my children to grow up without fear of raiders, the undead or parasites.
But that wouldn’t happen. There was no divine intervention, no bolt of lightning cast from the heavens to strike down the parasites. No, there was just us poor humans and we were the last hope of our entire species continuing.
I only wished that it didn’t all rest on my shoulders, that there would be someone else who would have to make the decisions, even just for a little while. The fate of humanity would depend on the choices I made, and I honestly wasn’t sure if I was strong enough.
The laughter of my son had me turning my head to look over at where he sat before the fire. Angelina had stopped sulking and was playing with him, holding the small carved elephant in one hand and making it ‘walk’ across the rug to where the carved lion sat.
Perhaps, I thought, there was some hope after all. She was playing and smiling at her twin’s laughter as she played. For a moment, I could imagine her growing to an adult without the issues her father had dealt with.
Then she raised the elephant high and brought it crashing down on the carved lion, laughter finally coming from her as she imagined it trampling the lion into the rug. I shook my head as I realised that there was little chance of her escaping his dark urges.
“How do I help her?” I whispered, knowing that even if he were still alive, he would have no answer to give. “How do I save her from herself?”
I didn’t know and that scared me for the future I could see for her was one absent of love and filled with loneliness.
It was enough to make me weep.
Chapter 13
The glass door shattered and I stumbled through into the shop beyond, a grunt of pain escaping my clenched teeth as I rebounded from the wall to the counter where I stopped myself by grabbing hold of the dust-coated wood.
“Help him!” Gregg snapped and hands grabbed at me, but I shook them off.
I pushed away from the counter and crossed to the nearest chair, dropping onto it and resting my head back as sweat streamed down my face, mixing with the blood there.
“Look in the back.”
Emma didn’t need telling twice as she grabbed Two’s arm and pulled her along. Abigail went with them, shaking her head and muttering all the while. Three and Five stood watch by the door, only occasionally throwing concerned looks my way.
“Hold still!” he snapped as he grabbed my head, tilting it so that he could see in the dim light of the tattoo parlour. “Doesn’t look deep.”
“Head wounds always bleed a lot, it’ll be fine.”
“It was bloody stupid!” he snapped back. “I keep telling you…”
I stopped listening and jerked away from his hands. Emma came back with her arms full of supplies, Two walking beside her.
“You were right,” Abigail admitted, albeit a little unwillingly as she tilted the bottle she held towards the light. “There’s bandages, gauze, antiseptic and rubbing alcohol.”
“Makes sense. Most people would just hit the pharmacies first. Not many would care enough to loot a tattoo shop.”
“Well it means I can patch you up,” Abigail said. “Not that I should.”
I could hear the anger in her voice, and I had to admit it was more than a little justified. For the past five days, I had been leading my Furies against the patrols of the raiders. We killed those we couldn’t capture, which they had soon learnt was the better option.
My rage knew no bounds and the torments I had been inflicting on those we captured was too much for the others. Apparently, it had upset the leader of those raiders enough that they had called in as many of their people as they could get.
The number of raiders in the crumbling city had grown exponentially and each night could be heard the raised cries of those on their island base as the people there were presented with the new day’s horrors.
It had, apparently, galvanised them to action and I had led my merry band into a trap that had very nearly cost me an ear from the sword of some bearded raider, and we had barely escaped with our lives.
With more people, I would have been able to stay and fight, but there were too few of us against too many of them. I could admit that, as much as it irked me to do so.
“You finally ready to pack it in?”
I scowled up at Abigail as she poured the antiseptic over the wound on my head and then shifted my glare to Gregg.
“Why would I be?”
“We just got our asses kicked!”
“No one died.”
“Barely!”
He was right, I knew that of course, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that out loud. My anger burned bright within me, a fiery inferno of rage that seemed to be all that was keeping me going. I had lost every that had made me close to being human and all that remained was the killer.
It wasn’t enough to sustain me, I knew that. My anger would burn out but for the moment, the raiders were a convenient target for that rage. I would kill them all because there was nothing else that I could do and if I stopped, even for a moment, I would remember what I had lost, and despair would take me.
I had been content before I met her. Not happy, never happy, but I had kept myself busy and when I killed, light pierced the darkness of my being and gave me something close to real pleasure. Then I had met her.
She had reached into that darkness and pulled forth the man that had been hidden there, shrouded by the death and violence that filled my life. She had shown me what it was like to live as a man, and not just a killer, and I had lost that.
Five years trapped beneath the ground, with Lily thinking me dead. My children would not know me, and her memories would have faded as she found a way to move on with her life. She would be happy and the only pleasure I could find was in knowing that she would remain so as long as I was gone.
I couldn’t take that from her. I couldn’t upend her new life and shatter that happiness with my presence.
Nor could I bear to see the happiness she had found in the arms of another, though I pushed that thought back down into the darkness before I could think too long about it.
“We stay.”
A wordless cry of frustration escaped him as he stormed away from me, out past the women watching the door and into the humid day. He would get over it, I was sure of that.
Maybe.
A curt nod of thanks for Abigail as she finished dressing my wound and a wince at the immediate burst of pain that accompanied the movement. While it was not a terrible wound, it would still need time to heal.
“What is your command?”
Emma saluted, her fist against her breast as she spoke, and I held back my sigh. She couldn’t seem to help but fall back into the habits she had learnt while under Samuel’s care. If I weren’t so short of people, I might have killed her for it.
The other women looked at me, trying to hide their weariness as they waited for my command. I sneered at their soiled clothing bearing the stains of battle and their defeated postures. If they were better, I might have another order to give.
“Head back to the safe house.”
“All of us?”
“Yes.”
“What of you?”
“Just go.”
Emma didn’t ask again, just saluted once more with fist against breast before gathering up the others and heading for the door. They could have their rest but before I could do the same, I had to give vent to my anger some more.
Raised voices from outside drew my attention and I crossed to the door to see Gregg arguing with Abigail. He gestured wildly and she looked ready to stomp her feet, lips pursed, and brow furrowed as she argued back.
Finally, he seemed to win the argument as she shot a glare my way before turning and heading away with the other women. Gregg remained behind, turning expectantly towards me.
“Where to?” he asked, as I approached him.
“You should head back to the safe house.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
I lifted my shoulders in a half-shrug. It wasn’t any of my concern if he wanted to follow me around and, even if he wasn’t talking to like he used to, I did enjoy his company. Of course, he might not like what I had planned.
“So, where to?”
“South.”
He didn’t ask where to the south, just nodded and set off after me as I began walking. My head ached and I had to squint against the weak afternoon light as I glanced up at the sky. The days were long during the summer months and I had plenty of time, though the heavy, black, clouds suggested there would be more rain on the way.
We travelled in silence, along the tree-lined streets that filled the sky with their branches and the ground with their leaves and seeds, there to rot and decay much as the city around them did itself. Birds flitted from branch to branch, while rats scurried along the walls as they searched for food.
With the undead in the city slowly dying, the rat population had grown to unthinkable numbers as they feasted on the remains. It was they that were the cause of the piles of bones that littered the ground, picked clean of flesh by a tide of hungry rodents.
As that food source had run out, their numbers had dropped to a populace that could survive by scavenging on whatever they could find in the city. Still, even with far fewer than I imagined there had been at their height, there were far too many.
Foul things.
The houses we passed were empty, many with their doors open and locks shattered, their windows open to the elements with their glass in pieces on the ground. Those survivors who had made the city their home seemed to have cleared out every house in the city.
“You ready to talk?”
I glanced back at my friend, brow furrowing as I was brought back to the present. His ravaged face was set, his lone eye staring into mine as he awaited my response.
“What is there to talk about?”
A heavy sigh escaped his lips and I carefully kept back my smirk. There was no need for me to needle him as I was but I couldn’t seem to help myself. He seemed to know what I was doing and didn’t react, but rather ignored it.
“About why you don’t want to go back to the island,” he said. “About why you are determined to kill yourself here.”
“I have no intention of killing myself.”
I held up one hand as we neared the end of the street. Dropping low, I moved past the overgrown hedgerow and peered around the corner into the next street. When assured it was clear, I waved him on.
“You’re angry, I get that, but we could do more to help people by going to the island and coming back with an army of your cultists.”
“Not my cultists, not anymore.”
“Aye, and I know that must annoy you too.”
In truth, it didn’t. I had been growing bored with my minions well before I headed to London. They had been useful at one point, and amusing later, but eventually, it had just become tiresome. Their constant need for my attention had begun to grate.
“Doesn’t annoy me at all.”
A chuckle escaped him, and I glanced back, cocking one brow in query.
“No,” he agreed. “It probably doesn’t annoy you. Why would it, just one more responsibility you no longer have to worry about.”
“What do you mean?”
More low laughter and I stopped, turning to look at him. A drop of water hit my cheek as the rain began to fall in earnest and I waited, there beside a rusting, brown leaf-covered, car. Gregg pursed his lips as he considered, seemingly choosing his words before he gave his head a shake, muttering words too low for me to hear.
“Say what you mean,” I repeated.
“You don’t fool me, mate.” Another shake of his head as he seemed to struggle with something, finally his gaze snapped to mine, and I caught sight of something like real anger in his face. “I know you struggle with this sort of stuff, but you can’t just ignore it!”
Ignore what?
“I get it, I’m scared too! We have no idea how things might have changed while we’ve been gone.”
He thought I was scared? That confused me for why should I be scared of anything back on the island?
“At least for me it’s just worrying about whether Cass and my niece are okay, or how they’ve been getting on while I was gone. Has she found someone to love her? I don’t know.” He shrugged and looked away, not meeting my gaze. “For you, it’s worse, I know that. But you don’t have to be scared.”
Scared of what?
“I don’t understand.”
The words were like that of a child, I knew that. But they were no less true for that. How could I understand when the things that had always come so easily to others were alien to me. The way people reacted, the emotions they felt. All utterly unrecognisable by me.
“No, I know you don’t, mate.” His shoulders slumped as he scratched at the ragged and patchy beard that covered his jaw. “She loved you, yeah? Even now, do you really think she wouldn’t be glad to see you?”
“Lily?”
Why did just speaking her name cause a shift of something inside of me, almost a physical pain?
“Yeah, Lily. Whatever new life she has made, she will still be happy to know you survived. Your children will want to know you.”
I doubted that as they had been so small when I left. They would not remember me and nor should they. I was a ghost to them, the memory of a man their mother had once loved.
“No.” Why was my jaw clenched so tight I felt my teeth might shatter? “I have nothing to go back for. They have new lives, and they deserve to live them with happiness.”
“You think they won’t be happy to see you?”
How could they be? My hands clenched into fists as I fought back the urge to lash out, to smash something, to kill someone.
“Yesterday, I tied a woman to a lamp-post. I piled old and dry wood around her feet, and I set it alight.” The darkness roiled inside of me, anger burning in its centre as I recalled that scene. “Her companions were forced to watch her burn as I heated a knife blade in that fire. The last thing they saw before that knife plunged into their eyes, was her agonising death.”
He licked his lips and looked away, a tremble running through him. He had not been there to see that, but he had heard her cries. He had seen the blind men that I left screaming out their pain, be
gging for help, and he not been able to look me in the eye.
“Samuel considered her to be the embodiment of life,” I said, not understanding why I avoided saying her name. “Because she is far better than I could ever be. Our children carry her kindness, her intelligence, her empathy and compassion. They would look at me with the same disgust I see in your face.”
I turned away, that need to strike out coming perilously to the surface and I kept my hands held rigid by my side.
“She made you better, mate. I’ve seen what you are becoming without her and if this is what you were like before you met her, I could never have been your friend.” His hand pressed against my shoulder and I closed my eyes as I clenched my jaw. “If you go back to the island, you can be that man again.”
It was my turn to laugh then as I jerked away from his hand. His face showed his surprise as I shook my head, stepping back away from him.
“I corrupt everything I touch. I am a plague on this land and everywhere I go, I bring death to those around me. I won’t destroy the innocence of my children with my darkness.”
“You’re a fool!”
“I’m a realist!” I snarled. “I know what I am.”
“No, you’re a coward!”
“What?”
“Oh, you’re fine when it comes to fighting, to killing. Real brave then aren’t you!” His laughter was cutting, and my heartbeat pulsed my ears as I glared at him. “But when it comes to being there, to being the man and not the killer… no, you’re a coward.”
He turned his head and spat, cutting the air before him with his hand as he waved me away.
“The thing you fear most is your responsibility! You built a cult of death around you and then ran from them when they became something more than you had expected. They needed guidance to stop them from becoming something terrible and you left them! What happened then, huh?”
Sebastian Cho, the man who had taken my family and imprisoned them. He had been a scourge to the island, and a threat that still remained at large.
“Then there’s Lily and your children.”
“Don’t…”
Killing The Dead | Book 22 | Fury Page 9