by Wood, Rick
She looked back at the opening. Still so close. She’d barely made any progress.
Turning back around threw her off balance again and she fell to her knees.
She wanted to scream out. Shout for Boy. Shout for frustration. But what if they heard her?
You never know what’s nearby.
She pulled herself back up again. She had to keep going, surging onwards, fighting the fatigue, fighting the headache, punching it away, punching it out, telling it no, it will not take her, it will not, it will not…
Her mind left. She absently strode onwards, as if led by her weight, like she was constantly falling forward but never hitting the floor.
When she reached the end of the field, she had nothing left.
But she had to find something.
She crawled. Unable to stand anymore, she crawled, using her arms where her legs were failing her.
“Boy!” she gently shouted. She was close enough now, he’d hear her.
No response. Maybe he was still covering his ears. Maybe he was still reciting the poem. Maybe that’s why he didn’t hear her.
Or maybe he was dead.
The thought sped her up. Against the desperate weariness, she dragged her drowsy body to the log where she’d left him.
She hoisted the log upwards, and looked down at–
Nothing.
There was nothing there.
Nothing but the indent of where an eleven-year-old boy had previously been laying.
Chapter Eighteen
“I saw her stumbling across the wasteland,” Lucy declared, rushing through the woods with the eagerness only a child’s legs could provide. For a seven-year-old, she was spritely – but for all she had in terms of energy and enthusiasm, she severely lacked in intelligence.
“Where?” asked Troy, striding behind her, his large paces keeping up with her many little ones. His long hair waved behind him in the breeze, his broad shoulders effortlessly carrying his strong body forward.
“Here!” Lucy said, pointing ahead.
Sure enough, there she was. Laid over a log, her eyes closed.
“Is she breathing?” Troy asked.
Lucy moved her face as close as she possibly could to the girl’s without touching it.
“Hello!” she shouted. “Are you breathing?”
“Shut up,” Troy commanded. “Don’t shout, you don’t know what you’ll attract.”
He looked behind him and scanned the surroundings.
“We seem to be safe for now,” he decided, then knelt beside the girl.
She was black, but not. Maybe mixed race. Black, curly hair. Small. Petite. Maybe a teenager, late teens, still a child. Old enough to bear a baby, at least.
She was laid strangely, however. Draped over the log as if she’d fallen on it and ended up unconscious. Or died – she didn’t particularly look full of life.
He lifted her hair to scan her neck, then her top to scan her body. No bites. A few scratches, a few scars, maybe a few wounds, but nothing that showed evidence of an attack. And if she was dead, she was very fresh.
He turned her over so she was facing upward and put his hand over her chest. Sure enough, her heart was beating, although softly. Her belly rose and sank, but at sparse intervals. She was struggling to stay alive, for whatever reason.
“Go back,” Troy told Lucy. “Tell the bearers to prepare her a room. A nice one, with a bed and duvet and all that.”
“Okay!”
“Oh, and Lucy.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t make any fucking noise.”
“Okay!”
She turned and ran, sprinting through the fields, jumping over logs, ducking under branches. Troy huffed. She had good coordination, but her thick mind was inscrutable. He imagined, if the world was still as it once was, she wouldn’t have survived the kind of high-end education he’d had.
Still, she wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. They had a new purpose now.
Troy grabbed the girl’s chin and shook it, seeing if she’d come to. A small huff pushed warm breath against his arm, but her eyes remained closed.
She looked developed enough. She had breasts. Small ones, yes, but she was a small girl. She could definitely be one of them. Without a doubt, she could help them with their mission.
“Oi,” Troy said, seeing if he could provoke her.
Nothing.
He shook her body harder.
“Oi!”
She didn’t wake.
He brought his hand back and slapped her hard across the face.
Her eyes briefly opened and focussed on him. Green. Piercing. Beautiful.
She was perfect.
“Wha…” she mumbled, then fell back under.
Without any wounds, it was likely that she was just tired. Maybe she’d been in a chase and narrowly escaped, or had been hiding and the stress had gotten to her.
Either way, she was easily recoupable.
He hoisted her over his shoulder into a fireman’s lift. He carried her without a grunt or stutter through the forest, combing the blockages out the way. It was five miles back to home, but he did it by nightfall.
He approached a building that used to be a church, and the guardsman opened the door for him without hesitation. Troy nodded at him in appreciation and carried the girl through.
Everyone looked amazed.
All the people sleeping or sitting or reading at the pews turned their heads, marvelling at his find.
A woman.
A girl-woman.
Young, but old enough.
She was perfect.
“Did Lucy find you?” Troy barked at a man standing outside a far door.
“Yes, right up the stairs,” the man told Troy.
Troy carried the girl up a set of stone, spiralling steps and into a bedroom, where a bed had been made for her. The fresh smell of the sheets, the soft glow of the lamp, the springs of the mattress – it was something they all craved, but only the bearers received.
That was the honour for being a bearer.
For now, she was their guest.
He lay her down and let her sleep. He told Lucy to keep watch and let him know the minute the girl woke up.
THEN
Chapter Nineteen
Cia did not let go of her dad’s hand. She ran behind him, clutching, grasping onto him. She knew it was silly, but as long as her hand was in his hand she knew she would be safe. Nothing could harm her because her dad was there, and he would take care of her no matter what.
No matter what.
“Come on,” he urged her, moving faster, and her tiny legs rattled forward as quickly as they could.
They were among a crowd of people, bustling through the city streets. Some were in the midst of looting shops that had been deserted hours ago. She knew what they were doing was wrong, but it didn’t really matter – it wasn’t like the shop owners were going to be back for their stuff anytime soon. All around her, houses were emptying, people were running, and she couldn’t move a few steps without being barged into by someone too tall and too ignorant to notice her. People were throwing things out of their window to people below, mostly bags, probably full of supplies, giving them what they needed for their journey.
But their journey to where?
At least Cia and her dad had an idea where they were going. There was a target in mind, even though it was top secret, and she was not to tell anyone about it, not even her friends from school, not even her best friend, not even her boyfriend.
Where were these people going exactly?
Cia tried to listen, tried to distinguish words amidst the mass of panicked ramblings that came at her in wave after wave.
“…our holiday home…”
“…your sister in the countryside…”
“…he owns a farmhouse…”
People seemed to be wanting to leave the cities, to head for the country. Why? How would they be safer there?
The countryside is a
large, open area. At least in the city there’d be lots of buildings and lots of places to hide.
When Cia got in trouble at school a few weeks ago for stealing Bradley’s pencil, she said that she didn’t do it at first. That’s when she learnt about denial. Mrs Longley explained that denial is something you’re in when you refuse to face the truth. When you refuse to admit what you actually know.
And that’s where all these people were.
In denial.
“This way,” Cia’s dad said, directing her down an alleyway.
They came to an abrupt stop. Cia didn’t understand why, until she saw it.
At the far side of the alleyway. Something was there. Something big. The building beside it was missing a big chunk of bricks. It had four legs and red stuff around its jaw like someone had knocked a paint pot over it by accident. Then she realised it wasn’t paint, because there was a person in its mouth, their legs dangling out of its jaw, floppy, like a rag doll, or like the unused thread that wouldn’t fit in the friendship bracelet she’d made for Dad because she’d bought too much.
“Don’t mo–”
Too late. Cia screamed. She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t ever seen anything like it. Not the creature, nor the bloody corpse betwixt its teeth.
He wasted no time. He pulled her out of the alleyway and ran back into the crowd. It was callous, maybe, but it was mostly instinctive – put as many other people between him, her, and it; give the monster more people to go through before they reached him and Cia.
He barged through more and more people and they were all too tall for Cia to see, so even though she looked behind her, she couldn’t see it – but she heard it. Screams, just like hers. Ringing around the crowd.
Something flew over her, like an arm, or something like that, she couldn’t tell, and honestly, she didn’t want to know.
The crowd started pushing against her. Everyone was running now, and it was squashing her, and she couldn’t stand it because she couldn’t breathe.
“Dad!” she shouted.
He looked down at her and saw that she couldn’t keep up with the mass of people trying to flee, so he picked her up, put her on his shoulders, and ran, and that’s when she turned, and that’s when she saw it.
So many of them. It just charged through so many of them. Took them all down, scraping its large, curved teeth through them as it went, with so much blood, spraying everywhere, so many body parts, limbs, just flying, and it was awful, just terrible, just awful.
She looked forward and covered her eyes. She didn’t want to see it, she couldn’t see it, she felt sick, like she was going to be sick, but she couldn’t because then it would go on her dad, so she swallowed it and tried to think of nice thoughts.
Thought of her mum.
Her paintings.
Her art.
Her poem.
Cia would never get to see say any of the memories stored in the attic in their old house. Somehow, Cia knew they’d never be able to go back there.
She tried something else.
Her and Dad. Safe. In a cabin, on holiday, log fire, after doing a hike, she loved hikes, especially with Dad, loved them, so much fun, they sang songs had snacks held hands and – and – and –
She couldn’t think.
The screaming was too much.
Her dad ran up to a car. He went to open the door, but this large, tattooed man came to his side, pushing him, and said, “Don’t you even fucking thing about it!”
Cia thought the man was very rude, but when she saw his children in the back of the car, she understood it. He was just trying to protect his kids. Just like her dad.
He tried another car, but so did the rest of the mob. People were diving on it, smashing the window, dragging the family out from in the car. She was sure she saw someone with a blade.
A large screech came closer, followed by another one.
Everyone ducked.
A bird, no, a dinosaur; no it couldn’t be a dinosaur, some kind of monster, something – larger than a car – no, larger than three – came swooping down.
Everyone ducked.
It just sailed over them, but she watched as, behind her, the flying thing took a person in its mouth and two in its feet and flew away. It dropped one, and then dropped a piece of the next, but the last one never came back.
“Dad, where are we going?”
“It’s a long way away, darling, but we’ll get there,” he reassured her. “We’ll get there.”
NOW
Chapter Twenty
The sunlight rose before Cia did. Her mind didn’t make sense of anything, at first; it formed words in droves, but those words had no coherent sentences to form.
Eventually, her vision returned and a room came into focus. Walls made of large stones, a gap in the wall filled with stained glass to make a window. A patter of bare feet echoed around the chamber, and she sat up in bed.
Bed.
She was in a bed.
She looked down. A duvet snuggled over her, a big pillow beneath her head, a mattress she could bounce off of and hit the roof.
Was this real?
“Get Troy, she’s awake!” came a child’s voice from outside the slightly open door. A young girl ran in and went scuttling up to Cia’s bedside.
“Hi, I’m Lucy, what’s your name?” the girl blurted out, shouting it at her like someone had pulled a string on her back and she was reciting her stock recorded phrase.
“What?” Cia asked, groggy, rubbing her face.
“I said, hi, I’m Lucy, what’s your name?”
Cia looked up and down this girl called Lucy. She was stood very upright, a strange smile, and an eagerness that didn’t fit with Cia’s tired state.
“My – my name is Cia,” she answered.
“Hi, Cia!”
A large, burly man strode in, his face cemented in seriousness. He was big – not in terms of tall or fat, but in terms of muscles. In fact, he was huge. His arms were easily the width of her head, and his clothes didn’t leave much of his torso to the imagination.
She quickly thought of something. Her friendship bracelet. Her sore hand swiped to her wrist and felt for it.
It was still there.
“Her name is Cia,” Lucy declared.
“Hello, Cia,” Troy’s strong, deep voice boomed, his serious face set in stone. “Lucy, why don’t you go run a bath.”
“Okay!” she said, and skipped out the door.
“Strange kid,” Cia said.
“Yes,” Troy concurred, but without the element of humour Cia was hoping for. He made his way to Cia’s side. “How are you?”
“Confused. Where am I?”
“You are in The Church of the Bearers.”
“The what?”
“We found you in the woods. You were passed out over a log. You’ve been out for nearly two days, but I hope you are well-rested now.”
“I am. Thanks, I guess. For finding me.”
“You’re welcome.”
She tried to remember what had happened. Where she’d been. The log. Draped over it.
The log where Boy had been.
Where he wasn’t.
With an abrupt inhalation of air, she sat up straighter.
Boy.
She looked down and saw that she was dressed in silk pyjamas. What the hell was this place?
“Where are my clothes?” she hastily demanded. “I need to go.”
“Go?”
“Yes, I’ve lost my – my friend. Brother. Kid. Whatever he is, I’ve lost him, and he needs to – I need to – I don’t where he is. I have to look.”
“Please, relax.” Troy placed a grand hand on her shoulder.
“You don’t understand. He’s only eleven, he’s autistic, he can’t cope with this world, he’d die without me.”
“How long has he been missing?”
“I don’t know. Days. Four, five maybe.”
“Then he is probably dead.”
That was n
ot what she wanted to hear.
She stood, wobbling on unused legs, and charged for the door.
“And how do you plan to find him?” Troy asked.
She paused. “I don’t know. Just go out there and look, I guess.”
“Why don’t you let me help? We have a bath ready for you, we have food, water. You look malnourished. Why don’t you let us give you the energy, and I will send men out to look for him?”
“You’d do that?”
“Yes.” Lucy reappeared at the doorway. “Go with Lucy now, and I will instruct a group of men to search for him.”
“He – I told him to wait at the log. Where you found me. That would be a good starting point.”
“Then that is where we will start.”
He smiled at her. His first one. It reassured her somehow, calmed her, told her that it would be okay for her to regather herself before she left. After all, his men were likely to be a lot stronger and far more trained than she, and it made sense for them to search.
And she needed to be at her best to look for him.
“I’m leaving before the day is through,” Cia said, still not wanting to completely relinquish control.
Troy said nothing.
“Your bath is ready, Cia,” said Lucy. With an uneasy glance back at Troy, she led her away.
Troy spoke quietly to a guardsman standing outside the room.
“Do not let her leave,” Troy instructed.
The guardsman nodded and followed her.
Chapter Twenty-One
A tub of hot water. Such a simple thing, yet it made a world of difference to her state of mind. Cia’s thoughts still remained on Boy, and she would not let herself forget her task for a moment – but, in the reassurance that there were better people out there looking for him, she allowed herself to enjoy the bath.
Once Cia had finished, Lucy gave her a soft, woolly dressing gown that caressed her skin with softness, and even smelled clean. Lucy led her to a bedroom a few doors down and offered her the choice from a selection of clothes.
Cia couldn’t help but notice that, wherever she went, there was always a guardsman nearby, or a beefy bloke with a grim expression.