Melancholy: Book Two of The Cure (Omnibus Edition)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  I catch a glimpse of something a few feet away. It is the female Fury, the one who spoke to me. She’s just standing there, watching as the creatures attack me. Another Fury moves between us, and by the time I kill it and look up again, the woman is gone.

  The guards are still firing into us and they’re dropping bodies one after the other, and I’m taking down as many with my guns, but I’m about to run out of bullets and there’s not enough time to change the magazine.

  So this is it. Honestly, it’s not how I thought I’d die. But I guess it’s as good a way as any. Better, maybe – I never thought I’d die fighting.

  That’s when a Fury gets past my guns and reaches for me.

  Suddenly a knife slashes its throat and Luke bursts to my side with a wild grin.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says, and I remember the first time we said these words to each other, in Anthony Harwood’s office last year.

  “You’re right on time,” I tell him.

  Luke wields a long knife, and as we lunge forward he uses the blade to cut a path through the monsters. His right hand is useless, the cast hanging half on, half off. But even with only one hand he’s too fast for them to stand a chance, even so many of them; he slices through throats and thighs and guts, stabs eyes and skulls, dropping one after another and allowing us to move toward the nearest building.

  “Any reason you reckon they’re all in love with you?” he asks.

  So I wasn’t imagining it – they’re attacking me more than anyone else. “I have pure flesh, apparently.”

  “I wouldn’t call it pure.” Then, “We’re nearly at the tunnel, girl. Keep it up a bit longer.”

  “Did you see Pace and Will?”

  “Nope. But hopefully everyone was on their way to the tunnel. Did you see Quinn? My knife has his name on it.”

  I’m about to tell him when instead a Fury grabs my shoulder and wrenches me backwards. I trip against it but manage to twist and stab it in the neck.

  We fight our way to the tunnel, shouting to be let through the trap door. Below ground it’s cool and much quieter, but now the sounds that find me are those of people crying and moaning in pain.

  Claire and Tobias lunge to Luke gratefully. I run through the crowd, searching for faces.

  But the three I’m looking for are not here.

  I whirl back to Luke, and he sees my expression. “No.”

  “They’re my family,” I say, holding his eyes. “Them and you.”

  An agonizing second passes between us, and then he nods. We race back to the steps, grabbing more weapons and magazines from people as we pass, then plunge up into the night.

  The Furies swarm, their shrieks almost as lacerating as their nails and teeth. Our guns get one hell of a workout as we sprint through the chaos to my house.

  They’re not here – the place has been smashed open and emptied. “Where the fuck are they?”

  “And why wouldn’t they have gone to the tunnel with the rest?” Luke asks as he shoots a rushing Fury in the forehead and slams the door shut on the rest.

  “Infirmary?” I suggest. But then I see it. My cello. I run over to lift it up, but it’s damn heavy.

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  I ignore Luke, grabbing a sheet and twisting it into a sash.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Luke snaps. “You’d die for a goddamn instrument, Josi? I’ll build you another one!”

  “It’s coming,” I tell him simply. He built it, but he still doesn’t get it.

  Luke groans in disbelief, then comes over and snatches it out of my hands. “Strap it to my back. And for the record this is incredibly dumb.”

  I’m about to argue but we don’t have time and Luke is a hell of a lot stronger than me, so I strap the cello to his back. “Extra protection,” I offer. And then we charge outside.

  Three Furies emerge from the shadows to the side and collide with me before I spot them. We go down in a tangle of limbs and I fire into any flesh I can find. Teeth bite through the fleshy part of my arm and I give a short yelp of pain before Luke gets them off me and hauls me to my feet.

  We make it to the infirmary to find about a dozen Furies all trying to get inside. Some have smashed windows and are trying to climb in, but I see one of the creatures blown away from the building, shot in the face. Which means there’s someone inside.

  Hacking our way through the Furies at the door, Luke roars that it’s us. The door unlocks and swings open, and I give a sob of relief to see Will. His eyes are wide as he ushers us in and we slam the door shut against the rush of monsters.

  “Thank god you’re here,” he says, “It’s really really bad.”

  A scream slices through the air, a woman’s scream. My insides go cold. We race around the corner into the main room to find Eric rushing around to each of the windows and shooting anything he can. And Pace, lying on one of the beds, wailing as though she’s being eaten alive. Or in labor.

  “Oh my god!” I exclaim.

  Pace sees me and moans. “It’s too early!”

  Luke and Will rush to help guard the windows as I race to Pace’s side. “Okay. Okay okay okay. Are you sure this is definitely happening?”

  “Yes!” she shrieks.

  “Holy shit. Okay.”

  “Stop saying okay!”

  I take a deep breath and concentrate. “I need to look.”

  She moans again. Her cheeks are red and she looks like she’s in deep distress. “Whatever, just do it!”

  I unbutton her pants and pull them off, then her underpants.

  “There’s too many windows!” Luke shouts. “We should get her to the Den – we can barricade it better.”

  “We’re not taking her away from the only medical equipment in this whole place,” I respond. “So keep guarding those windows.”

  I’ve got no idea what a dilated vagina looks like, but there’s no baby actually coming out yet.

  “It’s too early,” she says again, sitting up on her elbows, apparently in between contractions.

  “It’s not too early. Twenty-eight weeks is fine, Pace.” I think that may only be true when there’s modern medicine and facilities, but I’m definitely not telling her that.

  Luke arrives at my side. “I’m not shitting you. We’re running out of ammo, and then we won’t be able to guard the windows. We have to move her.”

  “Don’t look at my vagina!” Pace shouts at him.

  Luke’s eyes jerk away. “Sorry! Bit hard not to.”

  I start giggling and have to get a hold of myself. “Oh god.”

  “And why do you have a cello on your back?” she asks him furiously.

  “God only knows, Pace. Josi, what do we need to take?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Towels,” he says, racing to grab some. “Water. Morphine?”

  “No! Morphine could kill the baby.”

  Pace moans. “Don’t kill the baby.”

  “We’re not going to,” I assure her. I help Luke grab whatever we can, including a few surgical bits and pieces, then we get her gurney to the door.

  “You’re going to wheel me, half naked, to the other side of a zombie-infested compound?”

  “Yes,” we say together.

  Pace groans and covers her face with her hands.

  “Boys!” Luke calls. Eric and Will abandon their posts and run to flank the gurney.

  We unlock the door and explode out into the night, firing wildly and pushing that bed for all we’re worth. A contraction hits and Pace screams and we run and shoot and try to shield her and it’s all a brutal blur of go go go!

  *

  Luke

  We get to the Den, but I don’t know how. Literally. I’m losing chunks of time.

  Last thing I remember is pushing out of the infirmary, I blinked and suddenly we’re inside the Den, boarding up the doors. And I’m doing this as though in my momentary blackouts I’m still fully active and cognitive. Which is really, really weird.

>   Hold it together. Just hold it together for this one night, don’t let Josi see you wig out, and get these people out safely.

  But even with no windows, even unable to see it, I can feel the moon. Tugging persistently away at me. It’s a sweet, sinister, seductive thing. It’s an uncurling of something deep within.

  Pace shrieks again, breaking through it all.

  And as I turn to see them, the four of them, I make a decision with the moon and the beast and the violence within. Not tonight.

  I run to help my family.

  *

  Josephine

  The doors are all barricaded. There are no windows. No Furies are getting in here. So now all we have to deal with is this baby.

  Will is holding Pace’s hand and coaxing her to do that Lamaze breathing thing, which I don’t think is helping, but at least it’s focusing her rage on him and not me. Eric keeps running around to get more stuff from the kitchens, including strange items of food that Pace does not want to ingest right now, while Luke and I try to work out what’s going on with the baby.

  I feel her stomach, trying to trace the position. “I’m pretty sure it’s head first,” I mutter. There’s a whole lot of stuff that can go wrong if the baby’s turned the wrong way, I know that much.

  “Feel how dilated she is,” Luke tells me. “I can’t see and I don’t think she wants my hand going up there.”

  “I do not!” Pace snarls.

  As gently as I can I press my fingers inside her, then pull them back out to show Luke the width.

  “That’s like three and a half inches!” he exclaims, and I see a look of terror cross his face. “It’s totally coming!”

  Pace gives this low moan that sounds sort of like a cow, making us all jump in fright, and I see her really start to push.

  “Good girl,” I tell her, ducking back down to see. I am, in a word, appalled. Because this kid is tearing out of her. The head pushes through and it looks like it’s the size of a fucking basketball. “Keep going!” I yell. “I can see it!”

  “Push, push, push!” the boys are chanting as if they’re at a sports match.

  Pace is moaning and screaming and I’m taking hold of the baby’s shoulders and helping them to slide out. The tiny person slips the rest of the way free and into my hands, with a lot of blood and mucus and I don’t feel the miracle yet because this little boy is not crying or breathing. I try to clean his nose and mouth with my fingers but they’re too covered in fluid to help.

  “Dual?” Pace is crying out, over and over, wanting to know what the hell is going on, but I don’t have time to respond – I duck my mouth to his tiny mouth and I suck all the gunk from his face, and the minute it’s clear he takes one mighty breath and lets out a resounding wail.

  The boys let rip one hell of a cheer, and I sag, almost falling in my relief. But he’s still in my arms, and he opens his eyes and stops crying, and I’m in absolute awe as he looks up at me, my whole soul reaching right into the sky for the sheer, perfect joy of it.

  Eric grabs the scissors from the tray we brought and cuts the umbilical cord, and I can see that he’s crying as he does so, and I’m crying as I carry the little fella to his mother, and I think everyone is crying as together we watch her hold him and kiss him.

  I lean against Luke, and he says, “I’d kiss you right now, but you still have all that gross goop on your mouth.” And then we are all laughing and it’s perfect, even though there are a bunch of cannibals trying to eat us.

  *

  After I’ve used the towels to clean Pace (and my mouth) a bit, we swaddle the baby and tie him in a makeshift sling against Pace’s chest. She can’t stop staring at him, utterly in love.

  “Okay,” Luke says, bringing us all back down to Earth. The four of us step away from Pace and her son to speak privately. “A way out.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I sigh. “I’m braindead.”

  “Oil. Matches. Let’s light these suckers up,” Luke answers his own question. He and I run to the kitchens and gather supplies.

  “Pace is amazing,” he comments, impressed, as we tear through the pantry.

  “Pace is a superhero,” I agree.

  “You were pretty damn great too.”

  I check to make sure we’re alone and then mutter, “I sure as hell don’t want to have a baby anymore. Yeesh.”

  He laughs.

  After dousing a bunch of knotted up tea-towels in cooking oil, we distribute them among the group, along with matches and lighters.

  “I need pants,” Pace points out. “I’m not streaking naked down into the tunnel where everyone is waiting.”

  The mental image causes us all to giggle. I think we are hysterical with adrenalin and nervous energy. Eric takes one for the team, removing his pants for Pace to put on. At least he’s wearing boxers.

  “Here, Dad,” Pace says to him, handing him the baby.

  He blinks, looking startled.

  Pace meets his eyes and nods. We watch Eric’s face crease; he is deeply moved as he reaches reverently for the baby.

  Luke hauls the cello onto his back again, with a glare at me.

  When Pace has put the pants on, with a wadded-up towel for a nappy underneath, the baby is returned to her sling and we all move to the door closest to the tunnel.

  “We throw these as we need them and force a path through to the tunnel,” Luke instructs. “We don’t stop no matter what.”

  “Even if one of us goes down,” I agree. “Except for Pace, obviously.”

  We’re about to break out when – “Wait!” Will shouts. “What’s his name?”

  We all turn to look at him, our little miracle. Pace gazes into her son’s eyes, then smiles and says, “Duh.”

  And so together we light the doused rags, fling the doors open and send fire straight into the midst of the Furies.

  Chapter 32

  September 17th, 2066

  Luke

  It’s dark as hell down here. There’s a substantial group of us traipsing through the tunnel, but when you take into account how many people lived in The Inferno, it becomes apparent that at least two-thirds of us died at the hands of the Furies.

  I move past the survivors in silence, not wanting them to notice me. Past Eric and Will, Pace and baby Hal. What I have to do now needs to happen as invisibly as possible. I feel hungry; it’s a disturbing notion, and reminds me all too clearly of the monsters we fled.

  I am looking for a man. A man who was once a child who ran from the city, seeking death and solitude but finding instead a life he would not turn out to be worthy of.

  Four innocent people, I remind myself. Four people who trusted him, obeyed him, worked tirelessly for him. He was meant to protect them, not slaughter them. I wanted none of this – I wanted power for him. I wanted peace. But he let himself be twisted by the ugliest of things: greed. And so.

  No pity dwells in my heart, no hesitation.

  But as I creep through the tunnel I realize he is not here. And I realize, too, how much I wanted to be the one to kill him. Which frightens me more than anything.

  The blood moon still shines, down through the night sky and the dusty earth, down through the rock and steel of this tunnel, right down into my dark heart.

  *

  Josephine

  When Luke joins me at the back of the group I take his unbroken hand and we walk through the tunnel with the rest of our kind, the uncured souls who now have nowhere to go except back underneath the city that would see us destroyed. We have no home, except these tunnels. The Underworld indeed.

  But this is what happens when you try to break our spirits: you leave room for only the strongest and the most ruthless to survive. You create an army sad enough to mourn what it’s lost and furious enough to destroy those who steal from it. You create a real resistance.

  There’s a lot of despair in this world, a lot of anger, a lot of sadness. Raven let those things burn her to a husk. But all the threads that keep us tied here to our bodie
s, to our souls and to this big empty, broken planet – they all start and end in the same place. With hope.

  Here in the west they know a lot about hope. They know how to ration it. How to squeeze and wring it dry. They know when to let it go; they know when it ends.

  But here’s a secret I know: it never ends. Not if you don’t let it.

  I remove a vial from my pocket, one that is filled with a drug that could take away my sadness. But happiness like this wouldn’t feel as sweet without sadness. I have believed this always; I simply let grief confuse me. So I smash the vial under my foot and keep walking.

  I’m coming for you, Shadow.

  A sound whispers through the dark, and I falter. Turning to face the endless black hole behind me, I peer into it, skin prickling. I don’t know how I know, but I know. They got through the barricade. The Furies are in the tunnel with us.

  “Run!” I scream.

  And we run.

  Also by Charlotte McConaghy

  Fury: Book One of The Cure

  About Charlotte McConaghy

  Charlotte has been writing from a young age, and has written several novels in both the science-fiction and fantasy genres, published internationally by Random House and Pan Macmillan. These include Fury, Book One of The Cure series and Avery, Book One of The Chronicles of Kaya.

  She studied a Masters of Screenwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and is the author of the Australian Writer’s Guild award-winning screenplay Fury – adapted from her novel of the same name. She now lives in London, writing novels and working on both film and television projects, as well as the upcoming graphic novel Skin.

  First published by Momentum in 2015

  This edition published in 2015 by Momentum

  Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Charlotte McConaghy 2015