by Wilson, Mark
On the day he’d left, Steph had refused to speak to him and stood alone in the training field practicing combat drills and sequences as he left by the north gate.
Alys, on the other hand, was coming with him, or rather, he was going with her. She was still adamant that Bracha would be going to the Royal Infirmary in search of the cure. And she was still convinced that they had to stop him. She dangled the chance to repay Bracha for Jock’s murder in front of Joey. He had to admit, Jock’s death was still a raw scab inside him, and if he allowed himself, the urge to kill Bracha could consume him.
Jock had taught him better than that. He’d taught him to survive. Bracha would get his, sooner or later. Men and women like him always did. It didn’t matter whether or not Joey was there to see it. Still, if the opportunity arose, he wouldn’t waste it either.
Alys was due to return from her current Ranger tour a few days after he’d departed. The plan was that Joey would use seven days before meeting Alys on North Bridge to gather any supplies, clothing and tools they might need from the outdoor stores along Rose Street. Taking an indirect route along Clerk Street, they’d leave the inner-fenced area and then loop around Craigmillar to the hospital grounds. Their journey, of only four miles, should take around ten hours, what with the debris, cars and any Ringed they’d have to deal with or avoid along the way. Once they left the relative security of the inner fences, the Ringed population would likely be much, much denser as most of the land they would be travelling through was once residential.
They’d scheduled two days for the trip, to give them the opportunity to explore the area a little, and packed accordingly. Slow, steady progress was their intention. Stealth was more important than speed.
Most of the mountaineering shops had been emptied over the thirty years or so since the plague hit, but people had taken mostly the larger items – sleeping bags and such like. The smaller equipment, certain types of clothing and camping gear still lay in some of the stockrooms.
Whilst Joey scavenged for supplies, Alys would be speaking to her mother about her intention to leave the safety of the inner fence, travel south and look for the cure. As angry as Jennifer would certainly be, she respected her daughter’s abilities and her judgement. Alys would be here, sooner or later.
An hour later, Alys appeared, dressed for the weather and carrying an empty rucksack and a sour expression on her face.
“Your mum a pain in the ass?” he asked.
Dropping to one knee, she began stuffing the supplies that Joey had left in a neat pile for her into her rucksack.
“Let’s not talk about it, okay?” she said without looking up.
“How’s Stephanie?” Joey asked.
“She’s… determined.”
Joey jerked his chin up in a how’d you mean gesture.
Alys stuffed the last of her things into the rucksack and sat on top of it to look up at Joey.
“She’s still training really hard, working on compensating for the eye. She’s taken up archery.”
Joey’s eyebrows popped up, partly in surprise and partly in delight.
“Made her own takedown recurve bow,” Alys continued. “Did you teach her that?”
“No. Not how to make the bow, or how to shoot one. She watched me make a bow though, and spent hours watching me shoot.”
“Crush.”
Joey blushed, more out of annoyance than embarrassment.
“It’s not a crush, Alys. She just needs something safe to focus on.”
Alys looked unconvinced.
“She any good?” Joey asked.
“She’s very good.”
Joey nodded. Steph had, knowingly or not, chosen the one weapon that her missing eye would actually give her an advantage with.
“So. We ready then?”
“Yeah.” Alys nodded over to the line of cars running the length of the Bridges and onto Nicholson Street. “Over the roofs?”
Joey grinned. “You up for it?”
“Yep.”
“Let’s go then.” Joey tightened his rucksack, laces and checked that his weapons were secure. The ritual was a comfort to him. He heard Jock’s voice in his head reminding him of the precaution each time
With a small hop, he placed one foot onto the bumper, then the trunk, then the roof of a rusted Honda Cr-V. Running along, slowly at first to gauge the grip of his all-weather hiking boots on the icy car, he found the rusted car body underneath the layer of snow and ice gave more than enough traction. He increased his pace, leaping from roof to bonnet to trunk to roof, throwing in the odd spin or whirl when the space allowed. Running along the line of rotting shells of cars was by far the easiest and fastest route along the rubble, debris and vehicle-strewn streets.
After clearing his tenth vehicle, Joey spun around on the roof of a Mini Copper to check on Alys’ progress. She was only two cars behind. Since the herd of Ringed at the bus in Canonmills, Alys had found a new appreciation for Joey’s method of moving through the city. “It’s so fluid, so fast,” she’d told him. Alys had asked him to show her the basics the very next day.
Like everything else Alys Shephard had put her mind to, she punished herself practicing the routines and manoeuvres associated with Parkour that Joey taught to her. Fortunately she had three things in her favour which allowed her to progress quickly. Firstly, she had been practicing gymnastics and unarmed combat for most of her life. The necessary strength, flexibility and basic balance were already at her disposal. Secondly, she was highly motivated. She hated being less able than anyone at anything. Finally, she was a total natural. She was beautiful and flowing in her movement across, over and through the city’s surfaces and objects.
Nodding at her, she gave him a signal to carry on. Joey smiled to himself, happy to share his world as they flowed along the cold metal. After an hour or so, they reached the corner of the inner fence where Clerk Street met Hope Park Terrace. They found a gap that someone else had made in the chicken wire fence and re-tied with copper wire, presumably after passing through.
“Bracha?” Alys asked, pointing at the scar on the fence.
“Could be anyone, Alys.”
Alys sniffed at him in reply, pushing her way past him to untangle the wire, reopening the hole.
“Ready?” she asked, nodding over at the group of the dead who were congregated in front of a Sainsbury’s store. Some of the creatures had turned towards them in response to the rattling of the fence.
“Let’s do it,” Joey said, stepping through after Alys.
Taking a sharp right, they took a pre-planned detour they’d discussed when planning the trip. The Hospital for Sick Children was barely half a mile from their position, and whilst in the heart of a packed residential area, student residences mostly, both agreed that it would be a good place to scavenge some supplies. Neither expected it to take them quite as long as it did to reach their destination.
Almost every step of their path to the children’s hospital brought another Ringed to them. Walking corpses in a myriad of varying states of decomposition barred their path in staggered waves, making them fight for every forward advance. Joey stood back and loosed arrow after arrow into the heads of the freshest-looking corpses as Alys whirled around, a flurry of Sai strikes, fists, feet, elbows and knees, dealing with the slowest ones sequentially. She was quite something to watch.
Clean, fast strikes, clinically delivered with no fuss, no energy wasted, no quarter needed. She scythed her way through the dead, stepping from one to the next as they fell behind her. It looked like a choreographed dance from Joey’s viewpoint, making the violence she engaged in strangely beautiful and totally terrifying. For every one of The Ringed that Joey’s arrows found, she silenced three. It was a devastating display of her abilities and one that showed Joey how easy she’d taken it on him in their sparring sessions. The disclosure of how much she’d been holding back for him startled Joey.
They fought and silenced former people of all description. Doctors, soldiers, st
udents and children. An awful lot of children and teenagers. They sent them all to a peaceful existence, one in which they were no longer driven to wander the bitter streets of Scotland’s former capital for eternity trying to sate a bottomless hunger. That’s what they told themselves, anyway. They had to believe that the people they silenced were at last truly dead or the actions that they took would be meaningless. Closure for poor wandering souls trapped in rotting corpses was all they had to offer and all they had to cling to. Even though they called them The Ringed and occasionally Zoms, neither of them ever forgot that they used to be people. In his mind, Joey still clung to the phrase The Children of Elisha, but in his deeds he did not.
Slowly but steadily, they made their way along Sciennes Road through a tide of the dead to the gates of the hospital. Both were glad of the hours they’d spent conditioning their bodies for sustained combat, but the training they’d endured couldn’t compare in intensity to the real-life gauntlet they’d run. Both were exhausted when they reached their destination. Both hid their exhaustion from the other.
“Some fun, eh?” Joey asked, retrieving an arrow from the eye socket of a Zom dressed in a tattered, weather-beaten nurse’s uniform.
Alys slipped her Sai into the sheaths on her thighs. Ignoring his question, she nodded in the direction of the hospital’s gates.
The stone pillars and walls of the gates still stood but the metal of the gates had either been torn down or had rotted. To close the gaps where the gates once stood, someone had parked four large food trucks across the entrance and packed sandbags around the space between ground and truck. It wouldn’t hold against the living, who could just move some sandbags and slip under, but it’d keep the dead from entering the hospital grounds just fine. Joey suspected that whoever was holed up inside the hospital probably didn’t have many visitors with a pulse. The horde of Zoms they’d dealt with to get there would deter most travellers.
No heroics. The phrase struck him suddenly. Jock would have been pretty angry at what he’d just done to get to a hospital that had probably been looted decades before.
“I’ll go first,” he told Alys. She always resented it when he took point, but swallowed her reflexive need to lead, simply because he had the long range weapon. Pushing a few sandbags aside, they both slipped through the gap. Joey was in a ready position in a second once they reached the inner line, scanning around for signs of people, dead or alive, whilst Alys replaced the sandbags behind them.
“Clear,” he called.
Alys drew her Sai. Moving into point, she led him up the stairs and through the broken glass entrance. The sound of groaning faded behind them.
Chapter 14
Alys
Once inside, Alys shifted her Sai so that the handles rested firmly in her palms and her index fingers lay along the hilts. She wanted the extra reach as the corridors ahead had several twists and turns. Pausing to read the faded lettering on a map of the hospital, she opted to take a left turn towards the main building when a flicker of movement caught her eye on the right. Pointing her right Sai in the direction, she indicated to Joey to go slowly and quietly.
Hugging the corridor’s walls, they moved along, slipping silently along the dark corridor, Joey with blades in hand and bow tucked away, watching their rear. They were wary but not particularly afraid. The Ringed didn’t do stealth; their groans were involuntary and the smell of decay that emanated from them warned of their presence more often than not.
Alys stopped suddenly as a shadow slid across the gap at the bottom of the double doors she’d been moving towards. The shadow moved quickly, smoothly and with purpose. That meant a living person. Joey was facing the other direction so she lashed out a quick, gentle kick to his heel to signal that he should stop. She peered through the darkness at the gap under the door. Silently swapping positions she gestured to Joey that he should look through the gap. His night vision was far better than her own.
“There are two people there; small, fast,” he whispered to her.
She tugged on his sleeve and made a circular motion with her index finger, indicating that they should swap positions once more. When back in point, Alys slid silently up to the door and held up three fingers to Joey behind her, slowly retracting them one at a time in a countdown.
They crashed through the double doors, weapons raised. Two children, no older than ten, dropped a pile of plates they’d been carrying, screamed and ran. The smashing of the plates echoed along the corridor long after their screams disappeared into the ward up ahead.
“Your face did that,” Joey said.
“That scowl of yours would scare the dead.”
Alys threw a few colourful phrases his way and hid a smile.
“Let’s go say hello,” she said, following the kids along the corridor.
Taking an L-shaped corridor along to Ward One, they walked deliberately and slowly, weapons sheathed but accessible.
“Hello there,” Alys called along the corridor. “We’re sorry for scaring you. We won’t hurt you.”
They heard shuffling from deep at the rear of the ward.
“We just want to talk to you, maybe have a look for some medicines in the hospital and then we’ll leave. Is that okay?” Alys said gently.
“Let’s just go.” Joey tugged at her shoulder.
Shrugging him off, she told him, “No, Joey, they’re just kids. They might need our help.”
She saw his eyelids flicker and knew what he was thinking. She cut him off before he could say it.
“No heroics, I know. But if not us, then who? Who’ll help them?”
She could see the surprise cross his face, just for a second, before he hid it. Why were they all so surprised when she showed that she cared? Her mother was the same, but Jennifer’s expression was always more one of disdain. Did they think she was made for violence and nothing else?
“They might not need any help, Alys. They seemed fine.”
She turned away from him. “We’re going to make sure, okay.” It wasn’t a question.
Alys moved through the doorway onto the ward, ready to call again, when a young and shaky voice called out.
“What age are you?”
“We’re both eighteen,” Alys answered instantly.
Whispering came from behind some curtains at the rear.
“You’re adults,” a different voice said, an older one, a girl.
Alys smiled at Joey who had a what the hell look on his face.
“Yes we are. Almost, but not quite, I suppose,” she said with a hint of humour.
“Are you hungry?” called the second voice.
“I’m starving,” shouted Joey. “I could eat a scabby dog.”
Alys punched him in the arm, the usual spot.
“You’ll scare them.”
“You eat dogs?” a third voice asked, an even younger one this time.
Alys glared at Joey to keep his mouth shut.
“Why? Have you got one for me? Is it a Jack Russell? I love a nice barbecued terrier, so I do.”
The youngest kid cried, “Nooooo. Don’t eat ma dug,” and appeared from behind the curtain, looking crushed.
Fifteen older children stepped out, laughing at Joey’s remark.
The oldest-looking one, maybe sixteen or so, bent down to bring herself face to face with a three-year-old who was clutching a stuffed dog to her chest.
“He was only joking, Natalie. He won’t eat Dougal.”
Turning to Alys, she held her hand out. “I’m Irene” she said with a sad smile. “Sorry, but we’re a little wary of adults around here… Since they all tried to eat us.”
The group of kids all snapped their attention towards Alys, looking like they half expected her to suddenly decide that she did fancy biting one of them after all.
“You think that all of the adults became...”
“Biters,” Irene interrupted. “All of them. They got them out, the kids who were here in the beginning, on bite-night. At least that’s what we we
re taught.”
“Only kids allowed,” little Natalie piped up.
Alys smiled at the little girl with the stuffed dog and back to Irene again. They thought that the plague only affected adults.
Alys felt Joey’s surprise and resented him for it as she knelt down in front of the timid three-year-old, took one of her hands and kissed the back of it.
“See? I’m nice and warm and I’m only nearly an adult. You’re safe with me, sweetheart. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.”
Little Natalie insisted on taking Alys for a tour around the section of the hospital that the kids inhabited. So she wandered off with her and a group of the younger kids, leaving Joey with the teenagers.
She was surprised to discover that the little group of children, thirty in total, actually had a pretty decent standard of living. The hospital still had running water and even had a functioning hot water system, heated by solar panels on the roof. The water was recycled rainwater and wasn’t likely to run dry any time soon. Perhaps most surprising was that the kids – they called themselves The Sick Kids – had access to limited electricity which they used mainly for special treats, like watching old discs they called DVDs on little televisions built into the ward walls.
Alys had never seen a television before, and despite Joey’s best attempts at an explanation, she was no more enlightened. Of course his explanation was second-hand from Jock. Joey had never seen a live screen before either. Neither of them had ever had any access to electricity.
The kids explained to her that the television never received a signal and neither did any radios they had. The only contact they had with the outside world was when the older kids went on supply runs. Generally they stayed within a small radius, but had been forced to venture further recently, leading to a horde of Zombies following them back home a week or two ago. Alys explained that the horde outside wouldn’t be a problem in future and suggested some new ways that they could use to sneak around for supplies more discreetly.