by Jack Jewis
She moved her head forward and sunk her teeth into his neck. Grandpa screamed. It was such a high pitched cry that Heather was taken aback. She pulled away from him and spat blood out onto the floor.
Hearing the cry, Stone Face ran over to them. Heather panted. Blood dripped down her chin, and the air smelled like burned hair from the fire. A dim thought flashed through her brain; would his blood infect her? There was no point wondering about it right now. It had gotten her close enough to both soldiers that she could do something, and that was all that mattered.
“You crazy bitch,” said Stone Face.
His gaze darted between Grandpa and Heather, as if he was unsure whether to tend to his friend or deal with the woman in front of him. She knew she must have seemed animal-like to him now. The truth was, that’s how she felt. Adrenaline rushed through her, and she pushed back all the doubts and disgust and focused on one thing. Kim.
Grandpa gurgled. He lifted a hand to his throat and tried to stem the blood, but it just gushed over his fingers, down his neck and onto his chest. Stone Face kneeled beside his friend, eyes wide in alarm.
Heather got to her feet. Her hands were still bound, but she was able to swing her leg at Stone Face’s head, and there was a crack as her boot met his skull. She was pleased to find out that his body was made of flesh and not rock, and Stone Face fell to the ground. Heather walked over to him and kneeled down, pressing her knees onto his arms.
“Where does Charles Bull live?” she said.
Stone Face shook his head.
Heather reached down. Between her bound hands, she grabbed his penis through his clothes and squeezed. His eyes bulged, but he didn’t cry out. She could tell by the way his veins throbbed in his temple that he was in pain.
“Tell me where the bounty hunter lives.”
She knew she had to get to Charles. If he was the only one who could get her through Mordeline and into Camp Dam Marsh, then she would make him do it. She couldn’t trust him, but maybe she could control him. She just had to catch him unaware.
The soldier stared at her with his eyes wide and lips shut. The flames of the bonfire illuminated the blood on Heather’s hands. Finally, Stone Face spoke.
“Think a woman like you could make me say a damn word?” he said. His words were tough, but his voice was strained. “I spent a week in the Dome dungeons having guys meaner than you do much worse. I won’t tell you a bloody thing.”
She reached across to Grandpa. He still gurgled, but the fight in him was gone, and his hands rested on his chest. She smothered her bound hands in the blood from his neck, and then turned to face the other soldier. She held her hands above him.
“Your friend was infected, wasn’t he?” she said.
Stone Face didn’t speak.
“And he was taking stuff for it to stop him turning,” she continued.
Her breath caught in her chest. She watched the blood trickle down her finger and form a drop on her fingernail. She held it above the soldier’s mouth. He saw the droplet of claret, and suddenly he understood. He thrashed underneath her, but Heather pressed her whole weight into her knees and held him back. It was times like this that she was glad she’d put on weight over the years.
The drop grew larger, and she moved her hands away and let it fall onto the mud.
“The next drop goes in your mouth,” she said. “And then I’ll break your legs and leave you to turn.”
The words sounded foreign, as if it wasn’t her saying them. For a second, she thought she might have been possessed by Charles Bull. It was the sort of thing she’d say, and the kind of thing he would take pleasure in doing.
Stone Face cracked and he blurted out the direction to Charles’s house. It wasn’t too far away, and Heather knew that she could make it before dawn. Stone Face raised his head, but Heather threw her own head forward and connected with his. The blow stunned him again.
She got to her feet. She walked over to Grandpa and, leaning over, took a knife from the inside of his coat. She bit it between her teeth and frantically cut at the bonds on her wrists, glancing every other second at the soldier next to her.
With her hands free, she walked over to the horses. One of them took a few steps back, but the ropes tied to a stake in the ground stopped it from fleeing. She cast a look behind her. Stone Face stirred on the ground.
She thought she might have to kill him. If she didn’t, he could follow her. Even worse, he could go back to the Dome and then come back for her with a whole unit of Capita soldiers. Then she looked at Grandpa. He was still now, and the blood dribbled from his torn-open neck. Heather could still taste it in her mouth. She wondered if it would infect her, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She had only one drive, and she would listen to it. She didn’t care if she died, as long as she found Kim and made sure she was safe.
She got on the horse. She left Stone Face on the ground, his eyes glazed over as if he didn’t believe what had happened to him. She gave the horse a kick. A few seconds later she was already riding across the wasteland, leaving the bonfire and the dead soldier behind her.
When she thought she was far enough away, she slowed the horse to stop and climbed off it. Her belly felt like it was wrapping up into a knot. She bent over and emptied its contents onto the ground, feeling the stomach acid burn her throat. When she was done, she climbed back onto the saddle. The bonfire still crackled in the distance, but Heather didn't turn her head to look at it as she led the horse into a trot.
Chapter Eighteen
Ed
Just a few hundred yards out of the woods, they found a badger caught in a steel trap. The metal had chewed through the calf of one of its legs, and as they approached it, the animal stared at them pathetically. The Savage, as if this was now his job, ended its misery with a rock to the skull.
A few yards later, they found a dead deer. Later still, another one. This animal had been cut open at the belly, and something had torn out its entrails and spread them in a line across the ground. Ed looked around him. He expected someone to be watching them but he saw no eyes in the bushes and no heads peering at them from the trees.
The plain in front of them was covered by yellow grass and formed a gentle slope. The deer’s entrails had stained the grass, though from how it dried, Ed knew it had been placed there a few hours ago at least. The Savage walked ahead of them.
“We’re really going in that direction?” said Bethelyn.
“Scared of a little blood?” asked The Savage.
Bethelyn shook her head. “I was a nurse. I’ve seen worse than this, trust me.”
“Think of it like that old story. You know, about the kids who follow the breadcrumbs in the forest.”
“Don’t they end up at a witch’s house?” said Ed.
The Savage scratched his head. “Details,” he said, and waved his hand.
As they followed the sinewy trail, it gradually began to wind up. It made sense, Ed guessed. Deer could only have so much intestine in their bodies. That wasn’t the end of it, though. A few steps later they saw a heart nestled in the grass. Beyond that, was a kidney.
The Savage bent down toward the organ. He took his knife out of his pocket.
“If you need any more blood from me,” said Ed, “you better not poke that thing with your knife.”
The Savage put his knife away and picked a twig up from the ground. He turned the kidney on its side. Ed and Bethelyn watched as he stared at it intently. Ed couldn’t help the shudder run through him. He still felt eyes gazing at the back of his head.
“It’s a kidney,” said Bethelyn. “A deer kidney. What else do you need to see?”
The Savage held his hand in the air. Ed wondered what The Savage had found. He could feel the anticipation in the air. After a few seconds, The Savage stood up.
“So?” said Ed. “What is it?”
The Savage shrugged his shoulders.
“Did you really think I could just sniff at the ground and work out what’s going on?”
Bethelyn sighed. “Idiot.”
They followed the trail of organs and blood along the path until they came to a wooden shed. It had a low sloping roof, and the walls looked flimsy enough that it would only take a shove to send the house crashing down. It seemed like the kind of place that was left out in the wilderness for the use of any passing hikers or hunters.
The Savage turned the door handle and pushed the door open. He stepped back as if waiting for something, but when nothing came out from the cabin, he stepped in. Ed and Bethelyn followed. Before stepping over the doorframe, Ed looked at the plains behind him. His hairs stood on end as he stared at the animal carcasses that littered the grass.
Inside there was a metal camp bed. Paper had been nailed to the walls, and someone had drawn on them. There were twenty sheets in total, and all of them were portraits of the same man. As Ed scanned across all of the drawings, he realised that the artwork degraded in each one. The first started as a realistic-looking self-portrait of a man with a curled moustache and long hair that he had tied into a bun. By portrait twenty, the image was just a roughly-drawn circle with pencil scratches all over it. Where the eyes and mouth should have been, were crosses that had been etched so hard into the paper that it had teared.
Bethelyn wandered over to a table in the corner.
“Check this out,” she said.
She held a book up in the air.
“It’s a diary.” She leafed through the pages, stopping around halfway through.
“What does it say?” asked Ed.
“It doesn’t look like it was finished.”
“Read some to us,” said The Savage. “I love story time.”
Bethelyn lifted the diary closer to her face and started to read.
“Day 28. There’s no cure that I can see. My body is getting sick and it’s starting to weigh on my mind. I think with meditation, by keeping mindful and controlling my thoughts, I can stop the virus as it attacks my brain cells. I can meditate through the change. I’ve already tried it. It helps, but I don’t know if my body will follow suit. I worry that my mind will stay human, but my skin will change.”
Ed heard something gurgle from outside the cabin. He walked over to the window and when he looked out of it, his legs became unsteady.
A procession of infected stared at him from outside. Their mouths opened and closed as they moaned, and they jostled each other to move closer to the window frame. When they saw Ed they became agitated, and their fingers made screeching sounds as they clawed the glass.
“The door,” said Bethelyn.
She pointed at the cabin door, where two infected stumbled over the frame.
“You know what they say about being born in a barn?” said The Savage. “You ever think to close the door?”
The infected walked towards them. One was a man with a thick gut, and his hairy legs stuck out from shorts that were two sizes too small. The other, a woman, had long brown hair that was matted with blood, and a hair clip clung to a strand of her locks.
Ed looked around for a weapon. He walked across the cabin to a kitchen area and opened a drawer. Knives, forks and spoons glinted at him, but none looked sharp enough to stab through a skull.
The infected gave a rasping groan. The woman lurched toward The Savage, screaming at him as he backed away from her. She caught hold of his hand but he shrugged her off and then pushed her against the wall. Her arms became entangled in the curtain, and as she strained to get away, the fabric tore from the curtain rail.
Ed turned around. He opened a cupboard door and found a rolling pin. He picked it up and batted it against his palms. In place of something better, it would have to do.
The woman’s head was covered by the curtain, but she still managed to take lurching steps toward The Savage. Across the room, Bethelyn kept hold of the window as if she expected the infected outside to learn how to open it. They pounded at the glass with clenched fists, but the window held firm.
Ed strode across the room. The infected man spun around. It snapped his teeth at him, and then grabbed for his chest. Ed raised the rolling pin and brought it down on the infected’s skull.
“Bake your cake in your own time,” said The Savage, pushing the woman away from him.
“There was nothing else I could use,” said Ed.
“Then jam it in her skull.”
The infected pounded on the window. The glass shook. Bethelyn stepped away, and after a few more bangs, it shattered. Ed had just enough time to look up and see an infected climbing through the opening, scraping the skin on the back of its neck on the broken glass.
The Savage gripped hold of the curtain and pulled it away from the woman. He held her hair in a tight grip. She tried to snap her teeth at him, but he tensed his arms and kept her face away from his. He dragged her across the room to the kitchen, lined her head up with the kitchen counter and then brought her down on it face first. There was a crack as her nose exploded, and The Savage brought her head down again and again until she stopped moving.
The man reached for Ed again. Ed whacked him across the face with the rolling pin, but the infected didn’t even feel the blow.
Two infected had crawled through the window now. Their wails bounced against the walls of the cabin. With one of the infected in front of him, Ed cast a glance at the door. The frame was empty. Luckily, the other infected hadn’t figured out that a door was easier to use than a window.
The infected man snarled. When he opened his mouth, Ed jammed the rolling pin inside until it reached the end of its throat. The infected gagged, and Ed pushed him away. He ran across the room and took hold of Bethelyn.
“This way,” he said, and aimed for the door.
They ran out of the cabin, leaving the rasping of the infected behind them. After five minutes Ed’s lungs hurt, and he bent over to catch his breath. He felt adrenaline pumping through his blood stream. His fingers trembled, so he clenched them into a fist.
“Where the hell did they come from?” said Bethelyn.
The Savage looked back at the cabin.
“Funny that they should show up the minute we go in the cabin. Felt like they’d been led there.”
“What the hell was with that place? The drawings and the diary. Who lived there?”
As they spoke between panting breaths, a scream rose in the air and seemed to cover the entire plain. Ed looked up and couldn’t see anything, but the noise spread out across them again. It was a cry so full of pain that his blood cooled in his veins.
Chapter Nineteen
Tammuz (Baz)
The air seemed different when they left the Capita borders. It was heavier somehow, harder to breathe as if his lungs weren’t used to it. He’d been away from the border before, but that was a long time ago. He’d just left home to start a degree in astrophysics at a Mainland university, and his only worry was having enough money for all the beers he was going to drink in fresher’s week. Since the outbreak, though, he hadn’t strayed far from the Dome.
His shoulders ached under the pack on his back. He’d never been a particularly strong man. Even years later, he still felt the shame of a school gym session where the other boys had laughed at him when he couldn't do a single push-up.
The rest of the soldiers walked ahead of him. The officers were at the front on horseback, and leading them was Lieutenant Hanks. Baz was at the back with the other Runts, eyeing the officers on their horses and feeling jealous of their pain-free feet.
Hanks cut an imposing figure on top of his horse. He rode with his back straight and his gaze never leaving the wasteland in front of him. He was a career soldier with a reputation for ruthlessness. Rumour had it that Hanks shot any would-be deserters in the ankles and let the wasteland take care of them. He was well known as a commander who treated the Runts the same way he would the dirt on his boots.
Despite that, he was a Capita legend. He had grey whiskers that poked out of the side of his mask. Some said he was pushing on sixty years old, yet h
e had the strapping body of a man half his age. With more Capita war campaigns than any other soldier, he was as sure a bet as any to lead an invasion.
“Heard they once locked him in a room with twenty infected and left him for an hour,” said a Runt next to him. “When they opened the door the floor was covered in brain chunks and Hanks was sat there grinning.”
Baz had heard the story. They said that after that, Hanks had snapped. That was when he started leaving deserters to die and punishing his own men by having them beaten. He was a demanding man to have as a unit leader, and if the Runts were given a choice, most would have chosen any man other than him.
The irony was that Baz, or Tammuz as he was called when he made the decision, had handpicked Hanks. He needed Kiele to fall, and he knew that Hanks was the man to shove it. He never imagined that he would end up being a Runt in his army.