by Wilson, Mark
The boss would want to know about this. Pulling his seat towards him, he spoke into his Comm.
“Fraser Donnelly.”
As he waited to be connected, he considered that although the extra money the Executive had been paying him these last few years for keeping a camera on this teenaged boy, Joseph, had been very handy, having to converse with Mr Donnelly, even by Comm, was never a pleasant experience. Still, the boy had crossed several zones since the old man’s death, and Mr Donnelly paid him to relay this sort of information. Squeezing his butt cheeks he forced a loud fart out to relax, amusing himself with the notion that Mr D might be able to smell it through the Comm. He doubted that the man’s facial expression would change in response, at any rate.
The face, neck and shoulders of Fraser Donnelly flickered into existence, forming a fully 3D holographic image on his desk top. Dressed in an expensive suit, appearance as groomed as always, Donnelly looked coldly in his direction. He never looked angry or even annoyed exactly but his disapproval was a laser beam.
“What is it, Paterson?”
Aware that he’d been sitting staring slack-jawed for a few seconds, Paterson reported the day’s events to his superior.
“Let me know if he leaves The Gardens. Other than that, don’t contact me again.”
Donnelly signed off abruptly.
Paterson relaxed into his seat and allowed a lazy and loud expulsion of gas to leave his backside, in retort. Reaching for the pack of Pringles to his right, he emptied a few into his open mouth.
“Once you pop you can’t stop, Mr D,” he laughed at his own fart joke.
Padre Jock’s Journal
In the early days of the outbreak, people were so isolated, too isolated, or perhaps too innocent to realise that what was happening was the new reality for them. What they had, what remained in the city, this was it from now on. Twenty-somethings sat on their PS4s, thumbing away their worries or aggression on Call of Duty or GTA, comfortable in the knowledge that the screams and death they heard outside their barricaded doors were nothing to worry about, nothing that could affect them, and that the police or army, government or whoever would sort it out. Some of them only began to worry when their broadband was cut off; some of them when their Sky TV disappeared. When the electricity went off and all electronic devices died, that’s when most people really started to get angry. When they couldn’t Google or Tweet or whatever the hell those idiots did. And then the smart ones got scared.
Leaving their once-comfortable homes and stepping into the real world instead of the virtual one, reality hit them hard. Food, heat, the hungry dead and survival became their primary concerns instead of clicking Like on some picture of a cancer-ridden baby or a kitten with a grumpy face, or perhaps completing their new shoot’emup. Some rose to the challenge. They fought and survived, for a while at least. Most learned the difference between a virtual Zombie and a real-life one pretty bloody quickly. I remember passing by one guy, a hipster-type, dressed in tight trousers, check shirt, oversized hat and large-framed spectacles, frantically holding his smart-phone into the air, trying to get a signal as the dead devoured his legs. God only knows if he was calling for help or trying to update his Facebook status. Being eaten by Zoms. It’s different… LOL…
Whatever he was doing, a few hours later he’d be dragging the upper body of his dead self around the old town looking for a meal; eyes glazed, fixed on fresh meat, his only social interaction for eternity.
Chapter 10
Alys
As Alys led Joey and her cousin along past the Scottish National Gallery, she kicked at a few discarded plastic burger containers that still blew up and down the terrace, left over from the German Christmas market that’d been visiting when the city had been hit by the plague. For someone who was generally of a stable, calm disposition, the last twelve hours had propelled her on an unexpected and uncharacteristic emotional rollercoaster. Bracha, Steph’s injury, her rescue at Joey’s hands, the boy with the bow suddenly coming back into her life, and now having to face her mother and her aunt with Steph injured, and him with her asking for shelter – the day had brought anger, annoyance, shame, fear, elation and then more fear. In the few short beats of the day, she’d been through a greater range of emotions than in the last eighteen years.
Glancing across at Joey, she watched as he supported her cousin on his back, chatting away to her about the people he’d met in the suburbs, making her laugh. How that was possible in the circumstances Alys couldn’t fathom; she wouldn’t have had the capacity. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to try, but there Steph was, missing eye and all, laughing like she was on a day-trip to the beach. She wasn’t sure that she liked it; how easy it was for him to be liked, to be free. Free with his emotions, and literally free, so very free in the world.
Steph’s balance had presented as a problem the instant they’d begun their descent down the long and steep Playfair Stairs. Joey had picked the kid up on his back, calling it a piggy-back ride. Alys hadn’t heard the expression before and saw little to do with pigs in the manoeuvre, but was again ambivalent in her reaction to Joey’s solution. It was practical and Joey was impressive in his strength. He’d carried her the length of the stairs and was still wandering along with her on his back, not a care in the world, no sign of tiring, either of her or physically. She liked that. She’d always liked his strength and his character.
The ease with which the boy with the bow and her cousin had formed such a naturally comfortable relationship confused her. She’d always found it difficult, even with Steph, to display affection, to be physical with people unless she was fighting them. Joey and Steph played, walked hand in hand and just liked each other, she supposed, so easily. She sort of hated them both for their weakness.
The two sides of Joey had her angry at him, disgusted with and by him in truth, but engrossed in his movement, skill and capacity for survival in equal measures. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how this boy had survived so long beyond the inner fences.
As the thought crossed her mind, Joey, with lightning speed, dropped Steph gently to the ground, drew his bow, loaded an arrow and dropped to his right knee, aiming directly at her.
As she took a ready stance and began to draw her Sai, he let the arrow go before she even cleared leather with the Sai.
Alys heard a thunk behind her and rolled reflexively and tightly to her right, coming up on the balls of her feet, knees bent, facing the direction in which Joey had shot the arrow.
A Ringed, pretty fresh from the looks of it, was lying on its back with one of Joey’s arrows sticking out of its forehead. Four more of the creatures were steps behind where it had stood. As Alys twisted the position of her feet, shifting her weight, and prepared to attack she heard four more thwip sounds followed by the same thunk she’d heard moments before. All four Ringed were silenced.
Joey walked past her, trying not to smirk, and began pulling his arrows from the downed creatures’ skulls with a slurping noise coming with each removal.
In her state of over-alertness, she’d been totally oblivious to signs of the approaching creatures. It was so unlike her. Joey, whilst seeming relaxed, had been truly, totally alert.
“Smart-ass,” Alys growled.
“You should trust me,” Joey said, referring to her assumption that he’d been aiming at her.
“I don’t even know you,” she said, flatly.
“Yes you do, Alys,” he replied giving her an almost one-fingered, almost rude gesture.
Despite herself, Alys laughed in response to his jabbing his middle half-finger at her.
“You should’ve gotten over that by now,” she said, nodding at his part-finger. “I thought I was helping.”
Steph rolled her eye at them.
Joey jabbed his half-finger at her again.
“Just trust me from now on.”
She felt the smile leave her face; it felt so unnatural there and her facial muscles seemed to sigh as they returned her poke
r face to position. The laughter disappeared, carried off on the cold, cutting Edinburgh wind that constantly whistled along Princes Street.
“I will, Joey. I promise.” She meant it completely.
Watching him pick Steph up again, Alys took the lead once more, taking them to the entrance to The Gardens. She felt Joey exhale loudly as they entered.
“It’ll be okay,” she told him, punching him sharply on the shoulder.
As he followed her through, Alys saw five women waiting for them just inside the entrance.
“It’s me, Alys. Go and get my mother and my aunt. Steph’s been hurt.”
Some women Alys hadn’t seen stepped out from the shadows. It was her mother, flanked by two of her guards. She hardly ever had her protectors with her. It wasn’t a positive sign.
“Jade, Megan – take Stephanie to the medical tent and one of you go and get my sister,” she barked at two of the group of women Alys had seen initially.
Jennifer stood staring at Alys, unmoving, unreadable. Finally Alys broke and took a step to her side. Using an open gesture, she indicated Joey with her hand.
“Mum, this is Joey, my… friend.”
Joey took a step forward and then a ball-bearing to the forehead, delivered from the catapult of one of her mother’s guards. Watching him crash to the grass, face first, she screamed at her mother.
“No! He’s with me. He saved Steph… and probably me as well.” She said the last part with shame in her voice, but she’d take the shame of being rescued by a male, if it meant keeping Joey safe.
Jennifer looked down at her daughter, crouching protectively over the boy with the bow. She was completely without emotion.
“No males. Ever,” she said softly and left them on the ground together.
Chapter 11
Joey
Alys’ mother threw a flurry of sharp punches, alternating between head and gut, gut and chest. Blocking each of them, he used her slight forward momentum against her, rolling her punch, extending the reach of it further than she’d intended. It caused her front foot to slide forward an inch, bringing her in to elbow strike range. It was a good move, she’d taught it to him, and she grunted her approval as she slid the foot forward as he’d predicted, but continued further than he had expected to sweep him off his feet and onto his rear-end with a crash as he lunged to make the elbow connect.
“Up, Boy.” She’d already assumed her ready stance.
Joey gave her a lop-sided grin, mostly to annoy her.
“Nice move, Mrs Shep….” He almost saw the kick that connected with his chest that time. There was no doubt about it, he was getting faster. The training, her training, was paying off. He really had to stop antagonising her by referring to her as Mrs though.
“Up… Boy,” she said once again.
She’d never once called him by his name in the three months he’d been allowed to stay in The Gardens. She spat out the word Boy like an insult. It was an insult in this place.
Rising to his full height, which was still a few inches short of Jennifer’s, he gave her the smile again. To hell with it, he thought.
“Ready, Mrs Shephard.” This time he managed to block and deflect twelve of her blows before he was knocked on his ass once again. He could swear that Jennifer broke a smile that time.
“We’re done today, Boy. Go back to your quarters.” She swished around and took off towards another training session with one of the younger children. Good luck to them, he thought.
“Thank you,” he called after her. Normally she ignored his ritual thank you at the end of their sessions. This time, she paused, turned slightly and gave him the sharpest of nods before resuming her walk.
High praise indeed.
Joey plonked himself onto the frost-covered grass, sitting with his wrists resting on bent knees, and scanned The Gardens as his breath fogged the evening air. The greenhouses on the flat sections were busy with girls collecting tomatoes, peppers and other produce. He could see women working metal in the smith’s tent, prepping meals in the kitchen tent, doing drills in the training rings and scribbling away in the school enclosure. The few boys who lived there – seven of them, each younger than he and sons of women who’d been pregnant or new mothers when the men left – were dragging hand-ploughs through a large section of field. None of them had spoken to him. They’d leave if he approached them. When he’d arrived, Joey had expected the boys to be pleased to see another male, but if anything they seemed frightened of him in a way that not even the youngest of the girls were. They simply went about their duties and acted as though he didn’t exist.
Everyone in The Gardens had a role, a place in the structure. Everyone was important and equal; more or less. The women of The Gardens were a truly self-sufficient society, dependant on no one and nothing but their own hard work.
Joey climbed the slope up to the fence-line that divided The Gardens from Princes Street and scanned the long, once-busy centre of the city. Jock had described to him the city before the plague hit many times using words like ‘beautiful’, ‘striking’ and ‘cosmopolitan’. When asked about the people, he’d often used the phrase, “streets full of busy fools.” The streets were still full, but instead of teeming with workers, residents, tourists and shoppers rushing around, they were filled with an endless myriad of walking corpses in various states of decomposition.
It was a quiet evening, relatively speaking. The ever-present groan that vibrated dryly with the bottomless hunger that these creatures suffered, was a little more muted today. None of them bothered to take a swipe at him through the fence as he walked the perimeter, checking the fence’s integrity. Those who noticed him at all merely followed him along with their dusty, frost-covered eyes as he moved. It wasn’t apathy; they always got a little slower in the cold weather. As he made his way along the fence shaking rails, pulling on posts, Joey reflected on his time in The Gardens.
After Jennifer’s initial refusal to allow him entry – not when he was conscious at any rate – Alys had been able to convince her mother to grant him access because of his help in treating and saving Stephanie. They’d had to agree that they would not spend any of their time together and that Joey must participate in their way of life fully. He’d spoken to Alys only a handful of times since, the pair of them sneaking out into the surrounding streets to swap stories and share survival skills. Whilst Joey had the advantage in survival strategies due to his years in the north, Alys was by far the superior combatant. In the short spells they’d spent together they’d made good use of every moment, each absorbing knowledge and skills from the other.
He thought that she was currently out of The Gardens on a supply run in Stockbridge. Combat training, farming and security now filled his days. In addition to this, Alys had sold her mother on the benefits of having access to Joey’s intel on the world outside The Gardens and the immediate area that the Rangers patrolled inside the inner fence.
Jennifer had sat with him for hours at a time, fascinated at what had happened to and was happening in areas of the city she’d known as a child or in the days before The Gardens was founded. Forefront in her questions was security. She wanted to know as much as he would relay about the people beyond The Garden’s inner fence. That was easy; most of them, whilst damaged, were good people, trying to survive another day. There were exceptions, of course, the most notable being Bracha.
Jennifer had found it hard to believe that he and Jock hadn’t had any prior encounters with the man. His actions in tracking them and killing Jock seemed entirely too motivated by personal reasons. Joey had just about convinced her that he was merely another wandering madman, albeit a hugely dangerous one.
Whenever they’d spoken about Bracha, an odd look had crossed her face. She’d asked many questions about the way he fought, how he’d conducted himself. The language he used. Jennifer never really explained what she had on her mind where Bracha was concerned, but had told Joey that from his descriptions she could tell that Bracha had been a soldi
er. “I was married to a soldier.” It had slipped out in conversation but she’d noticed Joey’s eyes light up at the prospect of information on Alys’ father and immediately shut down, resuming questioning him on the city.
Jennifer didn’t seem worried about Bracha turning up at the gates to The Gardens. And he had to admit, why should she be? No one person, no matter how clever, skilled or deranged, was a serious threat to the women of The Gardens. As for his assertion that a cure existed in the Royal Infirmary grounds, Jennifer treated the notion with the same ridicule that Jock had. Joey omitted Jock’s warning of Somna and The Exalted. He didn’t doubt Jock’s account for a second, but how did you sell that tale to a stranger?
Joey, of course, had shown her the flash drive that Jock had kept for him. She’d described to him exactly what it did and explained that, without a working computer, there was simply no way to determine what its contents were. As she’d handed it back, an uncharacteristic softness entered her features and tone, clearly sensing how disappointed he was in his inability to access the link to his mother.
“I’m sure you’ll see what’s on it one day, Boy.” Her face hardened again as she handed him the device. “On your travels.”
It had been a clear and none too subtle hint that it was time for him to move on. He couldn’t help but agree. Having roamed the city for three years, he’d enjoyed his time in The Gardens, had picked up and passed on many useful skills and rested well. It was, however, time to go.
After completing his duties and chores under the ever-watchful eye of Jennifer’s people, he slipped into the small tent they’d allowed him to claim during his stay. Only once in the three months he’d been here had he left the tent between lights-out and sun-up. As he’d become predictable, the night-time guards had been removed weeks before. Tonight would be the second time.