The Dying & The Dead 2

by Jack Jewis

  Later, when televisions stopped signalling and the Mainland stopped answering Golgoth’s transmissions, Ed knew it was all real. His mind was starting to open, and he knew that anything was possible now. So when he heard of a creature called Ripeech who stalked Loch-Deep, he knew that he had to at least entertain the possibility. To ignore it would leave him vulnerable.

  “That’s why we’re taking the shortcut,” said The Savage. “It’s going to miss out the area that they say is ground zero, which is a shame. For a while, I saw my face on a plaque, with fancy writing underneath it reading ‘Here lies The Savage. The man who found the cure.’ But going this way means we can miss the heart of Loch-Deep and take the scenic route instead. We’ll skirt around the edge and avoid going anywhere near Ripeech.”

  “How do you know so much if you’ve never been here?” said Bethelyn.

  The Savage rolled his eyes. “Did you get hit on the head? I planned a few expeditions. I was going to come on the last one, but I couldn’t.”

  “Too scared?” said Ed.

  “Actually, an infected got into town and took a liking to me. I was too busy fighting infection to come on a forest trek.”

  They walked past the stone carving. Up close, Ed saw centipedes scurry across it and then crawl into the moss. He kneeled down so that he looked directly into the woman’s open eye. Someone had painted the iris a deep black, and it gave the impression that she was looking right through him.

  Ed went to stand, when the moss coat of the statue wriggled. He leaned away from it, thinking that a mouse or rat had taken refuge and was annoyed with the disturbance.

  “Wetgills?” said a voice across the forest.

  Ed turned his head and saw that The Savage and Bethelyn had walked ahead of him. He looked back at the statue, when a hand shot out of the overgrowth and reached for him.

  He fell back onto the ground. The grass on the statue started to shake. Ed got to his feet. Something thrashed under the moss. Ed backed away slowly as a figure emerged from underneath.

  It was a man. His clothes were covered in mud, and bits of moss were stuck in his hair. His face was scratched, and part of his sleeve had been torn away to show a wound. From the inflamed skin, Ed knew that the cut wasn’t fresh, and he could see the gouges of tooth marks on the skin.

  The man opened his mouth and shrieked. He launched at Ed, falling face first off the carving and onto the forest floor. Ed looked around him for a weapon. As the infected man straightened himself up off the floor, Ed wished that he hadn’t thrown away the stick.

  He looked to his right. The Savage and Bethelyn were further away now. He knew that he couldn’t just catch up to them; the infected would follow them relentlessly unless he did something about it.

  It cried out again and took shaky steps toward him, arms outstretched. It seemed like a lifetime ago since Ed had last seen an infected, back on Golgoth. He tried to take steady breaths to calm himself, but as his heart pumped, his lungs demanded more air.

  He darted a look to the others. He saw their shapes dimly through the darkness of the forest, too far away to help.

  The infected walked closer. Ed saw a gold cross hung around its neck, which shook as it took steps toward him.

  He didn’t want to be scared. This was going to be his life now, he knew. The infected were everywhere on the Mainland, and Ed didn’t want to have to look over his shoulder every time he took a step.

  Without thinking, he launched at the infected. He grabbed it by the neck and with all the force he could summon, he pushed it back toward the carving on the ground. The infected scrabbled in his grasp and Ed felt hot pain as it scratched its fingernails across his arm.

  The pain nearly threatened to make him lose his grip. Ignoring the stinging, he tensed his arm and then pushed the infected’s head sharply against the stone. The infected wheezed, but Ed dashed its head against the statue until he it stopped struggling.

  He let the infected fall to the ground. He watched it for a few seconds, and when he was certain it wouldn’t move, he bent over and panted. When he looked up, the open eye of the carving stared at him as blood dribbled over her iris.

  When he caught up to The Savage and Bethelyn, they were stopped.

  “What happened to the last expedition?” Bethelyn said to him.

  The Savage looked at her.

  “No idea. We never heard from them. I set off to Golgoth after that.”

  “Who’s ‘we,’ anyway? You never told us where you’re from. Do you have a home? A family?”

  The Savage’s eyes looked sad for a second, but the expression left him. He shook his head. “You saw the last of them on Golgoth. My men. We had a place where we settled for a while.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Same thing that happens to everything else on the Mainland. The Capita.”

  When Ed joined them, his skin tingled. He couldn’t help looking behind him, and he half expected the infected to have gotten back to its feet, spurred on by the smell of flesh. The scratch across his arm stung. He knew he was immune so he wouldn’t become one of them, but that knowledge didn’t help with the pain.

  “What the hell happened to you?” said Bethelyn.

  Ed looked at his coat and saw that blood was smeared on it. He took a breath. He didn’t want to seem scared, because he knew what The Savage would do with that kind of reaction.

  Back when he was a kid, his mum was forever telling him off for coming home with clothes covered in mud. Once, he’d had to hide a new pair of jeans at the back of the airing cupboard because he’d accidentally burned a hole in them with a cigarette. He wondered what mum would say if she saw him now, with his coat splattered red like a butcher’s apron.

  The Savage walked on ahead.

  “This way,” he said, and waved his hand.

  They followed him for five minutes across the forest. Ed darted his gaze left to right, expecting infected to crawl from the undergrowth or pounce from behind a tree. In front of them, The Savage stopped walking.

  “Shit,” he said. He kicked at the ground. “I hate this bloody place.”

  When Ed caught up, he saw what had angered him.

  The forest in front of them was an impenetrable wall of thick bushes. They were so thorny that it looked like daggers were growing amongst the leaves. Just off the centre, the ground changed into a rough rock path. The problem was that the path was completely blocked off by a tangle of wood and rock.

  “Someone doesn’t want us to come this way,” said Bethelyn.

  She was right. The blockage in the pathway clearly wasn’t something that had come about naturally. It seemed like the logs and the stones had been jammed in there by something that didn’t want the path to be used.

  “I don’t really need to ask,” Said Ed. “but I will anyway. This path was the shortcut, right?”

  The Savage grunted. As he paced from left to right in front of the pathway, Ed saw that his eyes were squinting in anger.

  “So what now?” said Bethelyn.

  The Savage stopped. He swung his leg and kicked a rock in front of him, but the blockade didn’t budge. He kicked it again, and this time gave a cry of pain and then hopped away.

  “Which way do we go?” asked Ed.

  The Savage straightened up. His forehead creased into wrinkles.

  “Only one bloody way we can go,” he said. “Through the middle of Loch-Deep. Right through Ripeech’s living room.”

  As Ed heard the name again, a shiver ran through him. He wished there was another way to go but looking around them, he knew that the forest wouldn’t give them the easy way out.

  They heard a scream from somewhere in the distance. This was too loud and too pain-filled to be an animal. He thought it could have been another deer, but the scream came again, and Ed knew it was something worse. Far away in the forest, a man cried out in agony.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Eric

  The guards were predictable, to a point. Eric knew that a
s soon as darkness filled the sky and the immune were escorted back to their cabins, the guards’ minds would turn away from discipline and focus only on drinks and cards and sleep. At the back of his cabin, Eric had found that part of the wall was loose as if someone had cut it away. Perhaps before him, some other enterprising DC had thoughts like him; that he didn’t want to be cooped at up at night, listening to the crying of the men and women as their scared minds resisted the exhaustion of their bodies.

  Eric slipped out of his cabin and stepped into the night-time breeze. Worries about Kim hung over him like a cloud, and as he crossed camp, all he could picture was the pale-faced girl clutching her stomach.

  He looked ahead of him. The row of DC cabins were cloaked in black. Beyond them, at the edge of camp where the guards and other camp employees slept, lights glimmered in the windows. There was a cabin on the east side next to one of the fences. Eric honed in on it.

  Right now, he knew, Goral and Allie were sat in the cabin. Allie was enjoying the meal that he had won in the race, and at this very moment he was probably stuffing his face with a pie or something equally delicious.

  He crept across camp. When the oval light of the watchtower swept by him, Eric sunk to the ground and stayed still. In his head, he pretended it was like a wasp. Eric used to be scared of wasps, and whenever one came near him he’d flinch and prepare for the inevitable sting. Mum had taught him that if you just stayed still, the insect would get bored and leave you alone.

  It was in that way he managed to cross camp and get to Goral’s cabin. It was made of the same material as the ones that housed the DCs, but a light shone dimly in the window. On the front door, watching over anyone who walked by, was the head of a hog, severed at the neck and fastened to the wood by nails.

  He knew he couldn’t go through the front door, and he couldn’t risk trying to pry open a window. Instead, he walked around the back of the cabin. There was a crawlspace underneath it. It was only a foot and a half wide, but Eric was able to squirm underneath as long as he didn’t mind having his nose pressed against the ground. After wriggling his way through, he found a hatch. He strained to open it, careful not to make a sound, and in a few seconds he climbed up into Goral’s cabin.

  He found himself in the bedroom. There was a smell of incense in the air, and he heard faint whispers come from next door. Next to the bed there was a framed picture with a young boy and girl with their arms around a tall man.

  He opened the door. Beyond it was the living room. Goral and Allie sat at a large wooden table with their backs to him. The table was made from dark plywood, and a gold trim decorated the sides. The DCs’ cabins seemed like they would blow down in a breeze, but the Capita had opened their wallets for Goral, it seemed.

  The surface of the table was covered by plates of food. Eric’s mouth watered as he saw sugared strawberries, pies with triangle pieces cut out, and steam rising from a bowl of stew. This was all stuff that Kim could eat.

  Goral scraped his chair back, and the sound sent a jitter through Eric’s spine. Ducking low, he stuck to the wall and crossed the room until he came to a small space that had been cut into it for storage. Above him, long trench coats hung from hooks. He ducked into the crevice and slowly wormed his way behind the coats, so that he could still see out but wasn’t in danger of getting caught.

  Goral’s wiry body looked as thin as the frame of the chair. A robe hung from his shoulders and trailed down to his ankles, making him look like he was wearing a gown. He reached in front of him, pinched a strawberry between his fingers and popped it in his mouth.

  “You don’t have a sweet tooth, do you, boy?” he said.

  “I like the pie,” said Allie.

  While the old man looked thin against his wooden chair, Allie seemed engulfed by it. His feet dangled a foot above the floor, and he had to strain to reach the plates in front of him. His fingertips were covered in pie and gravy.

  At the side of the room there was a bookcase, but only one shelf was dedicated to novels and the rest were given to a manner of strange objects. There was a bleached skull with curved horns that almost scratched the wood above it. One shelf was full of papers that had been rolled up, and they looked so old that they might crumble at the slightest touch. Below was a pot with two thin sticks hanging from it, and smoke drifted from the ends and filled the room with the smell of spices.

  Though a fire burned inside a stone hearth, something about the room felt cold. The spice incense mixed with the aromas of the food and became so rich that Eric’s stomach stiffened. The trench coats hanging from the hooks in front of him were made of leather, and he had to look away as he breathed so as not to take in the sweaty smell.

  Goral pulled the stew dish close to him. Rather than pour some into a bowl, he dipped his spoon into the pot and ate from it. Some of the brown liquid stuck in his grey whiskers. He dipped the spoon again, and offered it to Allie.

  The boy looked at it and paused. Then he shook his head.

  “Just the pie for you, is it?” said Goral. Eric imagined that the incense came from the same place as his accent.

  “Grandma used to make beef pie. She usually went to the butcher’s, but sometimes she killed one of the cows in the field.”

  “And I bet they made quite a noise when she did that,” said Goral.

  Allie nodded. The frame of his chair loomed over him.

  “I think that’s enough food for now,” said Goral, and pushed the stew dish away.

  Eric realised that the old man wasn’t wearing his mask. Come to think of it, had he ever seen Goral wearing one? In a camp full of the mask-less immune, you got used to seeing people’s faces. It was only the guards and Scarsgill who kept themselves covered.

  Eric looked across the table. He saw the stew and the bread and the fruit, and he imagined Kim’s face as he took it back to her. Helping her was worth the risk of being caught, and it was only the idea of her being able to eat something that stopped him from shaking.

  “What’s your surname, Allie?” said Goral.

  “Gill.”

  “Interesting. Very interesting. Do you know where that is from?”

  “My mum.”

  Goral laughed. It was a strange sound, almost squeaking.

  “No, boy. Family names all have a meaning. Someone named ‘Johnson’ used to be the son of John. Someone called Tailor had an ancestor who mended clothes. Where do you suppose Gill came from?”

  Allie looked around him. The flames of the fire danced in the shadows and looked like they were playing across his face. He looked at the pie.

  Goral reached forward and put a bony finger on Allie’s cheek. He gently turned the boy to look at him.

  “My name is Goral Vitch. Can you try and guess what Vitch means?”

  Allie shook his head. Eric’s ankles hurt, so he carefully lowered himself to the ground. The leather coats swung a little, and he put his hand out to stop them. Goral looked in his direction, and Eric froze. The old man turned his attention back to Allie.

  “Back in my village, there was a man named Haren Vitchinich. Haren was a greedy man, and he liked to have feasts like ours all the time. But we’re only having it as a treat. We’re not greedy are we, Allie Gill?”

  Allie shook his head.

  “Haren asked the people in the village to pay taxes on everything they grew in the fields. Sometimes this meant that families would go a little bit hungry, but Haren didn’t mind that. One day he found out that a farmer had been hiding some of his food so that he didn’t have to give as much to Haren. So do you know what he did?”

  “Put him in a camp?” asked Allie.

  Goral gave a soft smile.

  “No, Allie. Haren took the man, and wife, and his two little boys, and he put them on a bonfire and set fire to them in front of the village. People started getting scared. Some people, terrified that Haren would suspect them of hiding food, would tell him that they had seen others doing it.”

  “The other townsfolk didn’t
like these people. They were too scared to say it to their faces, because they knew Haren would get mad. But behind their backs, they would call these tell-tales ‘the Vitches’.”

  Goral leaned back in his chair. His robe brushed against the floor. He looked at Allie, and the smile left his face.

  “So, Allie. Do you understand where Vitch comes from now?”

  Allie looked at the food in front of him. Eric could tell that he had lost his appetite. Eric’s only grew stronger, though. He could almost taste the beef pie.

  “What’s the matter?” said Goral. “You seem shy.”

  Allie squirmed. “I’m full now, Goral.”

  “Mr Vitch.”