by Jack Jewis
He passed Heather a plastic bag full of something that looked like crackers. She held one in her hands. It didn’t look appetising, but her stomach ached with hunger.
“Go ahead,” said Charles. “They’re dried. They’ll last forever.”
She put one in her mouth and crunched it. It was so dry that it seemed to suck all the moisture from her gums.
“What happens when we get to camp?” she said.
“You find your daughter. I’ll find someone else.”
“Who?”
“A man who can help Lilly. Someone I knew long ago. Back before I got this gut,” he said, and patted his stomach.
She put another cracker in her mouth and chewed.
“Won’t there be guards?”
“Plenty, and infected around the perimeter too. Dam Marsh is a lovely place. But don’t worry, I can get us in.”
Lilly sat on the floor. She hadn’t said much during their journey, and Heather had become accustomed to thinking she was just luggage, as though Charles had slung a sack over his back rather than his daughter. Maybe she was used to being carried around like that.
“And then what?” asked Heather.
“Then?”
“What will you do?”
Charles leaned against one of the lockers. The metal creaked as it took his weight.
“Word won’t have reached camp yet that I’m no longer in the employ of the Capita. I’ll use my position to get your kids out, get some flesh for Lilly, and then we’re done.”
It sounded too easy to be true. She still couldn’t help but think that Charles had something else planned.
“Just like that? We all say our goodbyes and walk away?”
“I didn’t think we’d be getting married and starting a family. Want me to bake you a goodbye cake?”
“How do I know you won’t turn me in like you did last time?” said Heather.
“Trust is just about the only resource you have left, Heather, because you’re not getting into Dam Marsh without me. This isn’t some holiday camp that a couple of kids could break out of.”
Lilly stirred.
“You shouldn’t trust him,” said Lilly.
Charles glared at his daughter.
“Don’t start,” he said.
Lilly looked at Heather. She had a piercing gaze for such a young girl, made all the more striking by the wound where her nose used to be. She had inherited a lot of things from her father, and his cold expression was one of them.
“He’s my dad,” she said. “But even I know you can’t trust him,”
Heather sighed.
“Like your father said. I don’t have much else going for me than trust.”
~
Time became the dripping of the pipes in the sewer, the swish of the water that reached up to her ankles. With each hour came new pain, but Heather pushed it to the back of her brain because she had her goal fixed firmly in mind. Whenever an ache crept up her thigh, whenever a cold drip fell on her neck and made her shudder, she pictured Kim. She did it so much that she could almost smell her, and the image was so strong that she wanted to cry.
She knew now why it would have been impossible to walk through Mordeline alone. The sewers had stretched for miles, and according to Charles, every foot of land above them was crammed with the infected. Heather knew how to handle them well enough to kill the odd one, but if she’d gone through Mordeline alone she wouldn’t have made it through.
Finally the sewer came to a stop. The lamp light had long since been extinguished, but pale streams of light from the end of the tunnel offered some illumination and cast glows over a ladder fastened against the wall.
Charles stopped walking. Water sloshed around them. Somewhere in the darkness behind them, a rat squeaked.
“This is it,” he said. “Up this ladder and out of the manhole is Camp Dam Marsh.”
Heather could hardly hold herself back. Being so close to finding Kim filled her with energy, and she wanted to scramble up the rungs.
“You have to follow my lead,” said Charles. “It’s the only way you’ll get in.”
“Like I did last time?” said Heather.
She thought back to the Capita guards, and the way Charles had given her up. Later, the look of terror on one of the guard’s face as Heather tore out his throat. The feeling of nausea welling up inside her when she tasted his blood. She’d get Charles back for that. Tucked away somewhere in her mind was the idea of revenge, but she knew that now wasn’t the time.
“This is different,” said Charles. “You need to follow exactly what I say when we’re up there.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t trick you,” said Lilly.
“Do what I say and you’ll get your daughter back,” said Charles. “Are you ready?”
Heather took a deep breath. She was ready. The desire to have Kim in her arms was stronger than anything she’d ever felt before in her life.
Charles climbed the ladder. At the top, he heaved the manhole cover aside and climbed out. Heather put her hand to her eyes to block out the daylight. After spending so long in the darkness of the tunnels, the sun was too much for her.
As she climbed the ladder, she felt her heart rate spike. She was so full of nerves that she could hardly grip the rungs, and she nearly slipped more than once. Be careful, she told herself. It won’t do any good if you break your leg. Finally she reached the top. She pulled herself out of the darkness and into the glow of the sun.
Dam Marsh wasn’t what she expected. She thought there would be rows of perfectly maintained fences, guards walking with guns and keeping watch over DCs who were so accustomed to their orders that they hardly looked up from the ground. She imagined an overwhelming silence that was only ever broken by the shrill bark of a Capita soldier. A place where order ruled and hope died, but everything was perfectly kept.
Instead, she saw a gravel yard marked by carnage. There was a fence in front of the camp but part of it had collapsed. Cabins lined one section, but most of the land was taken up by loose stone.
She almost gasped as she looked on. Men and women in Capita uniforms held batons in their hands and swung them at anything that moved. At first she thought they were killing the DCs, but then she realised that they were fighting the infected. On the east side of the camp a small shed had caught fire, and black smoke billowed into the sky and filled the yard with the smell of burning leather. The camp was filled with a chorus of dog barks, screams of pain and the moaning of the infected.
The DCs were easy to spot. Instead of Capita uniforms, they all wore beige trousers and shirts that were made out of a material so thin that it might as well have been paper. Their faces were hollowed, their limbs bony. The DCs were the ones who didn’t engage in fights with the infected, but instead ran to whatever cover they could find.
She saw two children waiting under a cabin in the crawlspace, arms wrapped around each other as if it was the only thing that stopped them being scared. For a second she thought they were Eric and Kim, but then the excitement in her mind faded, and she realised she didn’t know those children.
Charles set Lilly on the ground. He stood and silently watched the scene around him.
“What’s happening?” Heather asked.
The bounty hunter didn’t turn to look at her. Instead, he spoke to Lilly.
“Stay here,” he told her.
“Where are you going?” asked Heather.
“I need to do something. Lilly, stay here and you’ll be okay.”
With that, he marched toward the fence and slipped through the gap. Heather called out to him, but he wouldn’t turn around. She decided that it didn’t matter. There was only one thing to do now; she had to find Eric and Kim. Before going, she kneeled beside Lilly.
“Will you be okay?” she asked.
The girl nodded.
“I’m used to him leaving me.”
When Heather entered the camp, the smell of smoke was everywhere. She felt it cling to her clothes
and twist into her hair. Someone to her right screamed, and she saw a woman on the floor, legs twitching as two infected clawed at her stomach.
She hadn’t expected Camp Dam Marsh to be a holiday resort, but she knew things had gone wrong somewhere. Gunfire crackled somewhere beyond camp. A little boy sprinted across the yard, but his footsteps weren’t quicker than the dog bounding behind him. He ran to a cabin door. The dog followed, black eyes fixed forward.
Heather started to run toward him. As the boy got to the cabin door he turned the handle, but nothing happened. He wiggled it again and again as if he expected it to do something. He turned around. The dog reached the bottom steps now. It leaned onto its hind legs and growled. The boy flinched at the noise.
She picked up a rock from the floor. She threw it at the dog, only missing its head by inches. The animal turned and looked at her. Heather breathed in. She pushed her fears to the back of her mind and ran at the animal, bellowing as loud as she could. When she was feet away, the dog decided better of the fight and ran away.
“Thank you,” said the boy.
He wore a beige uniform that was tissue-thin and looked like it was days overdue a wash. His head had been shaved recently, and his scalp was dotted with little red marks that looked like bites. She wondered if the same thing had happened to Eric, too.
“I’m looking for two children,” she said. “A girl called Kim. She’s a couple of years older than you.”
The boy stared at her with eyes that looked like they were being pried open. It was as if he couldn’t comprehend the question.
“Have you seen a boy called Eric?” she asked.
“Eric?”
Heather’s heart picked up. She wanted to step forward and shake the boy until the answers fell out, but she could see how scared he was.
“Yes, a boy called Eric. He’s around your height, but he’s thin. He’s very quiet.”
The boy nodded. He pointed behind Heather.
“That’s his cabin over there.”
Heather ran over, but Eric and Kim weren’t in that cabin or in any of the others either. She searched through them frantically, finding some doors open, but unlocking others with a sharp kick. After searching the last one her legs ached and she felt out of breath. She sat down on the steps. Somewhere beyond her, a man screamed, and the cries of the infected droned like backing vocals.
She didn’t understand it. All the cabins were empty save for a few people hidden under beds, but they had been struck dumb by fear. She didn’t understand why the camp was in chaos, and why there were infected and dogs fighting the guards and killing the DCs.
A dark thought rose out of the blackest corner of her mind, stood up in the mist and walked to centre stage until she couldn’t think of anything else. Looking around her, she knew there was a possibility that Eric and Kim were dead. She couldn’t let herself imagine that. If she did, she would break down.
She heard a scream. A boy and a girl sat in the middle of the yard, and four infected walked toward them from their left and right sides. She didn’t recognise the boy, but she could only see the back of the girl’s head. She had hair just like Kim, and though she seemed smaller than her daughter, maybe that was because she was on the floor.
It was as if electricity jolted through her. She got to her feet. She ran down the steps so quickly that she missed the bottom one and stumbled to the floor. Her ankle twisted, and pain shot up from her foot and into her calf. Pushing down on the floor, she forced herself back to her feet. Each step sent a ripple of pain through her ankle, but she willed herself to hobble along.
The infected walked closer to the kids. The children didn’t move, as if they were paralysed by fear and their bodies were engaged in neither a flight nor fight response, but instead had simply accepted that this was the end.
With the pain in her ankle she barely moved quicker that the infected. She called out to the children, but they didn’t hear her.
The creatures moaned. It was a sound full of longing, a hunger deeper than anything Heather had ever felt. She could smell them now; the aroma of sweat gone stale, of skin that hadn’t been washed in years. Their faces were marked by craters, and scabs grew around the edges. One of them had bumps on his forehead that looked as if flies had laid eggs in his skin.
She reached the children just before the first infected. She gripped the girl’s shoulders and turned her around. The girl had a cut stretching from the corner of her eye and going down her face until it reached her jaw bone. Blood seeped at the edges, and her right palm was smeared crimson with the blood she had already wiped away. It wasn’t Kim.
The infected with the fly eggs on its forehead reached them. It tried to grab Heather, but she pushed it away, wincing as she put weight on her ankle.
“Run to the cabins,” she told the children.
The girl stood up. The boy didn’t move, as if he was trapped in a bubble of fear and couldn’t hear what she had said.
The infected started to get up off the floor, and the others were only feet away. She didn’t have time to wait for the boy to hear her. She slapped him on the face. The boy spun around, and Heather saw an imprint of her palm on his skin, white at first, but then turning red as the blood crept back to his cheeks.
“Get to the cabin. Keep her safe,” she told him, pointing at the girl.
The boy nodded, and they ran away. Heather was left with the infected. The pain in her ankle was the kind that hit her in the stomach and made her nauseous. The fly egg infected grabbed for her again. Luckily he didn’t weigh much, and Heather was able to shove him away again.
She felt arms on her shoulders. One of the infected grabbed her. It opened its mouth wide and showed yellow teeth and swollen tonsils.
A knife carved through its head. At first the blade hit its skull and was lodged in the bone. Charles Bull held it. He put his hand on the infected’s shoulder and wedged the knife free. He lifted it again, and this time he was able to crack through the skull.
The other infected tumbled toward her. Charles pushed her out of the way. He put his leg behind the infected and pushed it to the ground, and when it was on the floor he lifted his right leg and drove the full force of his boot onto the infected’s head, repeating the action until bones cracked and blood leaked onto the stone. When the final two creatures turned in Charles’s direction, it took less than five seconds before they lay motionless on the ground.
There was another man stood with Charles. He was tall with a hooked nose, and he wore a plastic raincoat that was covered in stains. He had a sneering quality to his face, and skin so grey it looked like it would be cold to the touch. His face was marked with bruises that looked fresh, and blood was crusted around his nostrils. He had a mark on his neck as if something had been stabbed into his skin.
Charles held his knife by his side. His chest heaved as he took deep breaths.
“I was able to persuade Dr. Scarsgill to join us.”
“Who’s he?” asked Heather.
“The respected doctor who runs Camp Dam Marsh.”
If he ran the camp, then there was a good chance he would know what had happened, and he might know who Kim and Eric were and where they had gone. Heather knew that her daughter was clever, and she believed that she and Eric would be hiding somewhere in camp until the trouble stopped.
“Your name is Scarsgill?” Heather asked.
The doctor nodded.
“I’m looking for my children, Scarsgill,” Heather said. “A girl called Kim and a boy called Eric. I know there must be lots of children here but-”
Scarsgill looked at her strangely. “Did you say Kim?”
“She’s my daughter.”
He looked up at the sky for a few seconds, as if he was having a silent conversation with something sat above them. When he looked back at Heather, he crossed his arms.
“Your daughter is gone,” he said.
She felt her chest constricting. It was all she could do not to grab the man by the neck.
He shook his head.
“The boy is taking her somewhere. She’s more important than you realise. Your daughter could be the answer to everything, Heather. What are you going to do if you find her?”
“Keep her safe, obviously.”
“The world has better things in store for her than that. I’ve spoken to the boy.”
“Eric.”
“Yes. He knows what Kim could mean to us all. And he knows where to take her. It won’t do any good for you to find them,” said Scarsgill.