by Jack Jewis
She reached down and stroked Ken’s side.
“How come he’s letting me ride him?”
“Because I’m letting you. Now shut up and hold on.”
As the horse gathered speed, Heather knew she was going to have to grip hold of Charles’s waist so that she didn’t fall off. The idea of touching him sickened her. After everything he had done, this was the last situation she thought she’d find herself in. She’d rather have knocked him off the horse than sit on it with him, but she knew that Ken wouldn’t budge without Charles.
“You won’t catch anything,” said the bounty hunter. “Grab on.”
She heard shouting behind them. She turned her head. Beyond them, standing near the heads and the spikes, were some of the men and women from Kiele.
Charles lifted the reins and whipped them, and Ken moved from a trot into a gallop. Heather started to lose her balance, so she reached forward and grabbed Charles’s waist. She hated the feel of his leather coat on her palms, but it was better than falling off.
“It’s been a while since a woman held me like that,” said Charles.
~
They travelled north for a few hours until Charles brought Ken to a halt. Heather’s back ached from bumps as Ken took them over the plains, and her palms were sweaty from holding Charles’s leather coat.
“It is safe to stop?” she said.
“I haven’t seen any sign of them for miles.”
The townsfolk from Kiele had pursued them for a while, but only a couple were on horseback, and their animals were no match for Ken. Their travel situation wasn’t ideal, but no matter how exhausted she was, she could have carried on. Every step north took them away from Kiele, and in some way, it meant she was getting closer to Kim.
Charles took his bag down from Ken and reached into it. He pulled out a white roll of bandages and wrapped them around his hands. He walked forward a few feet and stared at the plains that stretched out beyond them.
“My palms get blisters on long rides,” he said. “You’d think I would be used to it by now, but I have skin like a baby.”
“I need water,” said Heather.
“Check the saddlebag.”
Heather walked over to Ken. When she reached him she stroked his side and felt how coarse his fur was. She opened Charles’s saddlebag and reached for the water, but her hands closed on something thin with sharp edges. She pulled it out and saw that it was a photograph.
It was taken in a bedroom with a bare wooden floor and no furniture save a single-sized bed. A woman was in it with a duvet drawn up to her chin. Her face was completely red, and beads of sweat dripped from her forehead. Next to her was a younger Charles Bull. He still had the overall bulk of his body, but the years were peeled back from his face. He held a baby in his arms and tucked her close to his chest.
From the lack of furniture in the room, and the state of Charles’s clothes, Heather guessed that the photo was taken after the outbreak. If that was the case, how had they gotten it developed? One of those self-printing cameras, she thought. A bigger question, though, was the lack of masks. Neither Charles nor his wife wore one.
The photo was snatched from her hands, and she looked up at Charles’s glaring face.
“I told you to get some water, not go rooting through my stuff.”
“It was an accident,” said Heather.
“We better go.”
Before she got back onto Ken, Heather reached to the ground and picked up a hefty-looking rock and concealed it in her pocket.
She didn’t know where they were going, but for now it was enough that the horse put one hoof in front of the other and carried them away. Soon enough she was going to have to decide which direction to take.
She knew that if she followed the train tracks, then eventually she would end up at Camp Dam Marsh. If Charles was to be believed, there was an area she would have to pass through that was infested with infected. The bounty hunter said it was too dangerous to even try it alone. The best choice, then, was to accept his help, but it still didn’t feel right.
She saw movement ahead of them. Two men rode horses across a bridge which curved over a small river. At the end of the bridge, one of them let his horse walk to the bank and dip its head in the water to drink. A few seconds later he gave it a kick in its side, and the animal backed away.
Looking closer, Heather saw that the men wore Capita uniforms. Something inside her groaned. She tugged on Charles’s coat.
“I’ve seen them,” he said, without turning around.
The sky above them was overcast, and drops of rain fell and made rivulets down Ken’s leather saddle. Heather reached to her pocket and felt for the rock she had picked up. The edges were rough, and she knew it was heavy enough to hurt someone.
The Capita soldiers guided their horses up a small slope and turned in their direction.
“Skirt around them,” said Heather. “They might not have seen us.”
“The Capita might employ stupid men, but not blind ones,” said Charles.
She watched one of the soldiers raise the reins of his horse in the air and then whip them down, spurring the animal into a gallop. The one behind him followed. As they got closer, Heather found herself gripping the rock in her pocket and feeling parts of it flake off against her fingers.
Charles turned his head.
“Follow my lead.”
“And what’s that going to be?”
“Follow it and you’ll see.”
The two soldiers reached them. The one in front brought his horse to a stop. The animal wheezed, and then lowered its head. It sniffed at a patch of weeds which poked up through the rocky floor.
The soldier kept one hand close to the side of his horse. Heather saw a sword hanging off it, fastened tight into a leather holder but with the clasp left undone for easy access. For him to have a sword, he must have been a high-ranking officer. His hair was short at the sides but long on top, and swept back into a quiff. Something about the way he held himself shouted out self-confidence.
The soldier behind him leaned forward on his horse and propped his arm against its head. On his lapel, he’d sewn a badge with a peace logo on it.
The officer spoke to them.
“The Bull,” he said, nodding at Charles. “Word is you haven’t been to the Dome in a while. We didn’t know whether to send out a search party, or to go to Darwin’s Bar and actually throw a party.”
Charles nodded. “Any news in the old onion?”
“We’re planning a raid on Kiele,” said the soldier at the back. “The Five gave the order two days ago. All the criminals and dissidents are getting measured for their uniforms.”
The one in front turned. He raised his finger and pointed at him.
“I’ve told you, Greene. You don’t say a bloody word until I tell you to.”
Heather thought of Kiele. If the Capita were planning a raid on the town, then Max and his daughter were in trouble. She wasn’t happy with the way Max had treated her, but she wouldn’t wish the Capita’s anger on anyone.
The officer spoke.
“Where’s your pickaxe?” he said.
Charles reached to his back and comically patted his coat. He turned around, feigning a look of surprise.
“I thought I felt lighter,” he said. “Where did I put that thing? Pickaxes are so easily misplaced.”
“They say you carry it everywhere.”
Charles pointed his thumb back at Heather.
“Lost it catching this one. Escorting her back to the Dome now, actually.”
“What’s her crime?”
“Hiding DCs.”
The officer spat on the floor. He fixed Heather with a look of disgust.
“We can take her if you like,” he said. “We’ve scouted out as much as we were asked to, and I could do with going back and getting one of Oscar’s disgusting beers. I’ll hogtie her and put her on the back of my horse.”
“Maybe,” said Charles. “I don’t normally
like to hand over a catch. And this one’s got a bit of a bite to her. You’d be better staying well clear.”
Heather saw what Charles was doing. The officers knew him as a bounty hunter, so it would hardly seem natural if he was seen travelling with some random woman. Much more fitting was the lie that he had caught her as one of his bounties and was taking her back to the Dome.
“Well?” said the officer. “Our scouting trip is finished, anyway. We can take her back to the Dome and you can do whatever it is you need to do.”
Charles put his finger to his chin and pretended to think about it. The soldier at the back adjusted the badge on his pocket. The stitching was frayed. The officer pulled on his horse’s reins and made it trot back a step.
“Okay,” said Charles. “That would be great.”
Heather jerked back in shock. What the hell was Charles playing at? She wanted to ask him what he was doing, when he suddenly shoved her off the horse. Heather fell to the ground, slamming her head back against the stones.
“I’m off to see my daughter,” said Charles. “Keep an eye on this one. She’s tricky.”
“Don’t worry about us,” said the officer.
Heather pushed a hand on the floor and sat up. Pain throbbed in the back of her head, but she shoved it away so that she could stare at Charles with the fire of hate burning in her eyes. She gripped the rock in her pocket and wondered who to use it on.
“This is why I’ll always come up smelling of roses,” said Charles, looking down on her. “I’m willing to do anything. And this is why you’re sitting on the floor with a sore arse. Enjoy your trip to the Dome.”
He gave the Capita soldiers a nod and then whipped Ken’s reins. The animal started into a gallop and carried the bounty hunter away.
Chapter Twelve
Ed
“Something’s watching us,” said Bethelyn.
A rock carving was spread across the ground ahead of them, seeming to emerge from the mud. It was a stone likeness of a woman in a relaxing pose, though time had chipped away at it and left parts of her missing. She stared at them with one eye open, the other shut tight. Grass had grown along her back and covered it. How long would it be before nature reclaimed the carving completely and buried it in a carpet of vines and wild grass? Ed wondered who had poured hours into shaping the stone just to leave it abandoned for the birds and the rats.
“Feel my arms,” said Bethelyn. “My hairs are standing up.”
Daylight peeked through the breaks in the trees and seemed to fall to the ground like rain. The deer was long behind them now, its head caved in by The Savage, though Ed thought he could still hear it cry.
“It’s a trick of the mind,” he said. “Nothing’s watching us. It’s a primeval instinct programmed into us. New places mean danger, and I guess our ancestors spent a lot of time in the forest looking over their shoulders.”
“No,” answered Bethelyn. “There’s something about this place. It feels rotten. It’s like I’m back in the school gym changing room with Mr. Thompson standing in the background. Like I’m being watched.”
“I’ll keep my eyes to myself now then,” said The Savage.
He still walked in front of them, though he didn’t so much bound ahead, as creep. Something about the deer in the trap had filled him with caution, and Ed sensed that even The Savage felt wary about Loch-Deep.
The Savage stopped and rested against a tree.
“There’s an easy way through,” he said. “I studied maps back when I was planning the expedition.”
“What’s so special about this place?” said Bethelyn.
“Like I said, some people think this is ground zero for the outbreak.”
“And what about you?”
The Savage looked up. A thin sliver of light cut across his mask.
“I don’t know about ground zero. But there’s something else here. There’s a reason not a single expedition here ever made it back.”
Ed bent down and touched his calves. The muscles were tight. Back on Golgoth, you could finish a lap of the island in just under an hour. On the Mainland, things were different. Even this forest seemed endless. Part of it snagged his curiosity, but when he looked at the trees and listened to the snapping of twigs, he felt like zipping up his coat to ward away a creeping chill.
“If it’s so dangerous,” said Ed, “and there’s something here, why do people keep coming?”
The Savage kicked at a stick in front of him. He cast his gaze over to the carving, where the moss crawled over the squinting lady.
“Some people got the idea that if we could find out why all this happened, then we could make a cure. Sounds like the best idea since my drama group cast me as the lead in Macbeth, but it would have been nice if even one person had made it back. I’ve thought for a while that there was something dark in Loch-Deep. It can’t just be the infected here.”
He looked around him. Sure that nothing was watching them, he continued.
“We sent a few guys here a while ago. These lads were mean. I’m talking about the kind of guys who make killing infected a sport. They chew metal and shit steel. Not a single one came back. There’s something here, Wetgills. And it’s a damn sight uglier than the infected.”
Ed’s back was cold. He suddenly had the urge to hold something sturdy and sharp. With nothing like that available, he took a few steps forward and picked up the fallen limb of a tree. He gripped it in his hands and wondered if it could crack through the skull of infected. A few seconds later, answering the question in his own head, he threw it back on the ground.
“I’m not in the wood for fetch,” said The Savage.
Bethelyn huffed.
“Why do you have to be so cryptic again? Whatever this thing is, just tell us. I don’t really give a shit what’s out there. Whether we make it out of Loch-Deep or not, I couldn’t care less.”
The Savage shrugged.
“It’s a character flaw, I guess. I have an air for the dramatic.”
“So…” said Bethelyn.
The Savage sprang away from the tree. He lifted his leg and bent it back at the knee, then stretched his thigh muscles.
“There’s a creature here,” he began.
Bethelyn shook her head. “Oh, come off it.”
“After everything you’ve seen, you really have room for doubt? We live in a world where people fall into comas and turn into blood-thirsty monsters. If I tell you there’s a unicorn flying around shitting rainbows, you better at least give it a bit of thought.”
He paced again, shaking his head.
“I know Golgoth is inbred, but I would have thought your mind had expanded a little over the last couple of days.”
“I’m not from Golgoth,” said Bethelyn. “I was born on the Mainland. I’ve never been down here though. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is. Are we in the south?”
The Savage nodded. “As south as you can get without falling off the edge.”
“Tell us about the creature,” said Ed.
“Well,” said The Savage. “It might not have a birth certificate, but it’s got a name. Don’t know where it got it, or how.”
“Which is?”
“Ripeech,” said The Savage.
The wind picked up and swirled around them in a howl. Ed pulled his coat closer to him. He looked at the woman on the ground again. Her stony body was half-covered by the forest. He wondered how many other things were buried in the dirt, and whether there was also a hole freshly dug somewhere for the three of them.
He’d spent most of his adult life as a skeptic. He could date the closing of his mind to the night he found his dad eating a mince pie in his room, dispelling the myth of Santa Claus in a blink. After that, Ed was a serious kid who turned into a stern teenager. He remembered overhearing his mum and dad talking about him once.
“He’s going to be a tax inspector,” said his dad.
Mum leaned back in her chair and laughed.
“He’s just a thinker, that�
��s all. You should be glad he doesn’t believe in ghosts and stuff.”
Years later, when scenes of the outbreak flashed on his television screen, he hadn’t believed it. He’d heard of a radio producer once who had made a play about an alien invasion. When he broadcasted it, he fooled a nation into thinking that monsters from Mars were coming to invade. Maybe the newsreels of men chasing women down the street and tearing chunks from them was the same. Perhaps it was all a big put-on, he’d thought back then.