by Wilson, Mark
Bracha’s eyes lit up, the embers of hope.
Through gritted teeth and clenched jaw he rasped, “Alish.”
“Make it look good,” James said, a half of a second before Bracha knocked him to the grass with a front kick that was more vicious than required.
As Jimmy Kelly watched Bracha limp into the woods, his brain treated him to a wee slideshow of images from his life as he blacked out. Random moments flickered and changed.
The Gardens. Breaking the soil there, growing corn, oats, peas. Himself and Cammy living a life there, a good life. A happy life.
Married life.
Images of their expulsion from The Gardens flew past in a flurry of madness and violence and irreparable deeds.
Images of Bracha, when he was still a good man. A prince among men. Literally.
He watched a scene of himself joining Bracha amongst The Exalted when every shred of decency in him screamed that it was wrong. Lying, always lying, walking the knife’s edge with Somna. Keeping him away from the city with lies, lies, lies.
Cammy’s death flashed past, the promise he made to him as he watched his friend turn from a good man into just another empty shell shambling through the city.
“Alys.”
The name escaped James’ lips as he passed over into unconsciousness. And then a final little reminder, his promise to keep.
Never let the madness in the south come to The Gardens, to Alys. Keep her safe.
He’d said the words and he’d meant them with all of his soul. He’d never let The Exalted know of the city communities. He’d do anything to keep them away, even become one of them. He’d inked his single raven under his eye for Cameron Shephard.
A single black tear to remind him why he was what he was and where he was. To protect Cameron Shephard’s daughter.
Epilogue 2
Fraser Donnelly
Fraser sat by his intercom, absent-mindedly clearing the drives and all traces of his activities on the systems and replacing them with signs of an audit having been performed during his time in the control room. His heart raced with the adrenaline that had been consistently flooding his system over and over since the previous night’s discovery of Joey and Alys’ presence at the hospital compound. It had been an excruciating experience but, he had to admit, an incredibly exhilarating one.
Joey’s voice suddenly broke through, snapping his attention back to the little speaker.
“Does it work on the fresh ones?” Joey’s voice had become a little less aggressive. The boy was still pissed at him, but was obviously beginning to consider his plan.
He made a gesture and the link to Joey and Alys crackled back into life.
No,” he said, reluctantly. “The tissue still alive in them is fresh enough that their senses are much more acute, the eyesight in particular. You’ll have to move slowly and hope that the fresher ones have mostly left the area.”
It was pathetic advice, but it was all he had to offer. If he were a religious man he might say a prayer but he’d abandoned the right to that particular privilege decades before.
“They’re usually the first to realise that a food source is gone and wander off to look elsewhere.”
“Don’t you have cameras there?” Alys asked.
The accusation in her tone stung him. It had been a last resort to show them the footage being streamed from the abandoned city that they called home. Fraser had no idea what the fallout might be, particularly once they began discussing, on camera, the revelation that they were the subjects of history’s cruellest reality programme. Its cruellest and its most successful, by a huge margin. dEaDINBURGH had been a hit for decades. A global hit.
“We do, but I can’t access them at the moment. The same people who would have detected you at the hospital had you been there when the power activated would notice me tapping the feed from here.”
“So you’re in as much danger as we are, are you, Fraser?” Joey’s voice mocked him over the miles and the reality that lay between them.
“No, I’m not,” Fraser said. “But I’ve done all that I can. If I’m to help you again, I can’t be found by The Corporation at this time. Now, go. Time’s running out for me now.”
Fraser listened to them open the trap-door above and then silence. It was time to get out of here, go downstairs and act the efficient boss. Toss around a few admonishments about their systems, and a few compliments too. All that would be left then was to get to his office and check on Joey and Alys.
dEaDINBURGH had been looping highlights footage in the time the show had been off-air. Now the standard twenty-four-hour coverage was back in place. He’d have little trouble discovering their fate.
He stood and pulled on his suit jacket. Smoothing the lapels down, Fraser adjusted the cuffs, sitting them at the appropriate length, peeking out from underneath his sleeves.
As he prepared to leave, hoping that the teenagers’ presence had gone unnoticed by the infected, a voice crackled through the intercom.
It was Joey.
“Thanks… I suppose.”
A wave of sadness, guilt, anger and grief passed through every cell in the organism named Fraser Donnelly, almost bringing him to his knees.
Composing himself he coughed the lump from his throat, flipped the light switch and replied to no one.
“You’re welcome… son.”
End of Book One
Also by Mark Wilson:
Bobby’s Boy
Naebody’s Hero (YA)
Head Boy
Paddy’s Daddy
Dedication
For Michelle Wilson
Writing this book I drew on a lot of influences, but none more so than that of all the strong women in my life, past and present.
Rena Wilson, Natalie Wilson, Michelle Wilson, Cara Wilson.
All a small part of Alys Shephard and a huge part of my heart.
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” – William Shakespeare.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the following people for their support in writing this novel:
Thanks to my regular test-readers Derek Graham, Gayle Karabelen. Derek suggested linking the plague to the Ring of Roses rhyme. Thanks for that, dude. Gayle always agrees to read for me without hesitation.
Very Special thanks to Jayne Doherty for her continued support of my writing career. Always ready to help, your support is much appreciated and never taken for granted. Jayne is ever-reliable and always ready to give an honest opinion. Thank you so much.
Special thanks also to fellow writers Keith Nixon and Ryan Bracha. Both have been a tremendous support and source of inspiration and always make themselves available for advice or to just talk nonsense about whatever. Reading their books pushes me to be a better writer. Thanks also to Bracha for letting me have his name.
Thanks also to Paul McGuigan of PMCG Photography for lending me his talents shooting key locations from the book around Edinburgh on a very dreech afternoon.
A huge thank you, as always to my wife Natalie Wilson for unwavering encouragement and support. Twenty years with me isn’t an easy task.
Author’s Note
When I set out to write this book, I’d sat at my desk with the intention of continuing with another novel that I was ten thousand words into. An image of a steaming hot baby, born fresh onto the cobbles of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, surrounded by the clutching hands of the dead, shot through my mind and I started writing about him instead. Sometimes it’s a worry, the shit that goes through my brain, often these random thoughts are dead-ends; but in this case, a novel emerged. A novel that I had amazing fun writing and ,finally, one that my kids might be able to read whilst still young. Of all my people, I reckoned that my baby sister would like this book the most. So I wrote it for her.
This book was inspired by the fine works of Jonathan Maberry, Robert Kirkland and George A Romero.
Thank you for reading my book.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
First Kindle Edition, 2014
Text Copyright©2014 Mark Wilson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express permission of Mark Wilson and Paddy’s Daddy Publishing
Published by Paddy’s Daddy Publishing.
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Cover design by Mark Wilson
Cover image by Paul McGuigan Photography