by Jack Lewis
“The way they’re doing it is wrong. I don’t know how Max stands for it,” she said.
“Don’t you understand?” said Charles. “Your friend is as much a part of it as this delightful Rushden fella. Morality doesn’t exist. You can’t dig in the ground and pull up a fresh bulb of ethics. It’s something a clever man with horn-rimmed glasses made up so that he could impress his other academic pals. The world doesn’t give a shit how shiny your code of conduct is.”
“That’s not true. Morality evolved through time. We learned it so that we could all live together without killing each other.”
“And look how that turned out. One little virus floating in the breeze, and soon morality is a memory and all people can think about is tearing each other apart. If you want to get your daughter back, you’ll have to change, Heather. The Capita aren’t just going to hand her to you. You need to take them by the balls and then squeeze them until they pop.”
“I’d rip my own face off for that girl, but I’m not becoming like you.”
Charles settled down on his bed. Heather heard it groan under his weight. “I’m not so bad. I have the same motivations as you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Lilly. My daughter.”
Heather heard footsteps from beyond the room, but nobody walked in.
“You’ve got a daughter, but you still didn’t give a shit about taking mine away? What did you think about when you handed Kim and Eric over to the Capita? Did any emotions enter that thick head of yours when the train took them to God-knows-where?”
“They’re going to Camp Dam Marsh.”
“Answer the question,” said Heather.
“Feelings don’t put food in my belly. Emotions are a pretty shitty currency. Everyone has them, but nobody can spend them.”
The door at the end of the room opened. A man stepped out. He had shaggy hair and squinting eyes, as if his forehead was pressing down on them and forcing them to close. In one hand he held a metal wrench, and in the other he gripped a ring of keys. He walked past the ‘Think 18’ poster and gave it a tap.
“Hello again,” he told the girl on the poster.
Heather heard Charles get to his feet. She walked over to the bars in her own cell and gripped them. The man looked at her, and then struck the metal with his wrench. The clang threatened to reignite the headache in Heather’s temples. He turned, walked over to Charles’s cell and stood in front of it.
“Don’t get excited, big man,” he told Charles. “It’s not feeding time.” He held up his wrench. “I’m going to unlock your cell now. You might have noticed I have a big bloody wrench, and it would hurt quite a bit if I needed to whack you across the skull with it. So be a nice boy and follow me.”
“Where are you taking him?” said Heather.
“You’ll know the answer to that when you hear him screaming,” said the man. He looked at Charles. “You might be big, but Rushden will still break you.”
Part of her took satisfaction in the fact that Charles would soon be in the room beyond them, strapped to a chair while Rushden stuck things down his fingernails. The place inside her where pity was stored was empty, used up while brooding about her daughter. If it wasn’t for the knowledge that she would be next, she could have smiled.
The man unlocked Charles’s cell. He opened the metal door and then stood back, twisting the wrench in his hand. He seemed on edge, as if he expected the bounty hunter to leap at him.
Charles stepped out of the cell. Heather had never seen him looking so compliant.
“Which way is the gents’?” he said.
The guard shook his head. “There’s a toilet in your cell.”
“There is,” answered Charles. “But it’s broken.”
Before the guard could react, Charles reached to his left and swung the metal lid from his cell toilet at the guard. There was a cracking sound as it connected with his right cheek, and the man fell back against the wall. Charles stepped forward out of his cell. He lifted his arms in the air and had a stretch. Then he kicked the guard in the face with his boot, smashing the man’s nose and sending a spray of blood onto the floor.
Charles reached down and took the keys from the guard’s hands. As he straightened up, the guard moved. With blood pouring from his nose, he summoned the last of his energy and caught the bounty hunter unaware with a punch.
The keys spilled from Charles’s hand and landed next to Heather’s cell. She strained through the bars to reach them, ignoring the pain as the metal dug into her shoulder.
Charles recovered from the punch. He gripped the guard by the throat and lifted him to his feet. He hit him in the stomach, and the guard bent over, wheezing. Charles turned him around to face the wall. He gripped the back of his head and then slammed his nose into the brickwork again and again until he went limp. Blood covered the face of the girl in the ‘Think 18’ poster.
With shaking hands, Heather unlocked her cell. She stepped out and picked up the guard’s wrench. There were shouts from outside the room, and footsteps moved toward them.
Charles picked up the guard and carried him into his cell. While Charles placed the guard on the bed, Heather walked to his cell door and slammed it shut. She put the key in the lock and turned it.
Charles spun around. He launched at the bars like a tiger, straining at her through the gaps. Heather stepped back to avoid his grip. He pounded against the metal.
“Let me out,” he said. His face was a snarl.
“Why the hell would I do that?” said Heather.
She turned to walk away.
“For your daughter,” said Charles. “I can take you to her. I know where she is.”
“So do I. Camp Dam Marsh. I’ll follow the train tracks.”
Charles smiled. “A great plan. And when you follow them and have to pass through Mordeline, what then?”
“Where the hell is Mordeline?”
The sounds of boots running across the floor came from outside the room.
“A place you have to pass through to get to the camp. The Capita filled it to the gills with infected to keep people away from Dam Marsh. Walk through it yourself. It’ll be ten minutes before you’re on the floor screaming while the infected dig through your insides to find your liver. But I know a way through. If you want to see your daughter, you better put that key in the lock, turn it, and let Charles breathe a little air.”
The last thing she wanted to do was free a man like him. It was like taking a cobra out of a tank and putting it next to your bare feet. What choice did she really have, though? She couldn’t trust Charles about this Mordeline place, but if she chose to ignore him and then found out it was true, what then?
The footsteps outside the room grew louder.
Heather sighed. She gripped the keys and moved toward Charles’s cell.
“There’s a good girl,” he said.
Chapter Seven
Ed
He wasn’t a thief, and that’s why he felt guilty for taking it. Ed put his hand into his pocket and touched the metal links of the watch. When The Savage had thrown the piece of jewellery back on the floor, Ed picked it up. He read the inscription on the back. To my wonderful husband, love KC. He felt bad for the joke he had made earlier, despite the good intentions behind it, and he owed the previous owner some respect.
Twisting the watch in fingers, he ran his thumb over the words on the back and felt the grooves they made in the metal. It didn’t seem right that something like this should be left on the ground. Once, probably before the outbreak, someone had put thought into having this done. They’d taken their feelings and had them gouged into the steel. Ed would keep it because KC and her wonderful husband deserved to be remembered.
The Savage walked in front of them. He never moved in a straight line, always darting from side to side. He bent to the ground to inspect anything he thought was suspicious, and at other times he put his hand to his head and stared into the distance. He was like a puppy that had caught
onto a scent but became distracted as soon as he got a whiff of something else.
Ed made sure to stay close to Bethelyn. The further into Loch-Deep he got, the more he felt like he needed someone near him. Twigs stuck out from spindly limbs on the trees. Every so often they’d come across paths dug into the dirt, but they all ended abruptly as if they had been made to trick someone into following them. He walked close to Bethelyn’s shoulder.
If anyone had asked he would have said he was doing it for her, to make sure she was okay. Now that they had entered the forest and the trees had closed around them, Ed had the overwhelming sensation that something wasn’t right.
Small lines of light beamed down through the tops of the trees, but it wasn’t enough to rid the woodlands of a sense of darkness. What little light did illuminate the forest seemed like it was running through a filter, and it made the air look like it was tinted pale green. Vines and ivy twisted along the floor and hooked over their feet. All around them twigs cracked and the ground crunched as small animals scurried away. He smelled the musky scent of the mud and the aroma of sodden pine.
The Savage stopped walking. Ahead of them, someone had carved a face into the trunk of a pine tree. It was the face of a man, but his features were exaggerated. His lips had swelled up until they almost covered his chin, and there was a sad look in his eyes. He seemed to look out onto the forest, as though it was his job to watch over it and he did it with a sense of misery.
Across from it, a sign post stuck out from the dirt. The Savage walked closer. He started to sweep at the ground around the sign, kicking the mud and twigs to one side.
“What’s that?” said Ed.
“A path.”
Hidden under the spread of the forest was a stone pathway, but it had been buried through years without use. Ed looked at the sign. The metal had started to rust, and crusty white bird droppings stained the front. On the sign, there was a symbol. A large red triangle, with another small blue triangle within it. Below it were the letters ‘LD.’
“Well folks,” said The Savage, “we’re definitely in Loch-Deep.”
“And what does that mean?” said Bethelyn.
“It means you better match my pace. You and Wetgills. Stop slowing me down.”
“You’re the one who stopped,” said Ed.
They carried on through the forest. From the outside, where they had found the severed arm, the woodland hadn’t looked so large. Once they were inside it seemed to spread out into impossible proportions, and Ed wondered if they’d ever get out of there. It was like a maze that grew and twisted around them, as if some mad creator watched from above and shaped it as they walked through. There was nothing like this back on Golgoth, and he was once again left feeling that he knew nothing of the world.
The Savage had seen more of the Mainland than Ed ever could have hoped to. He’d experienced it both pre and post outbreak. Where Ed had gotten his image of the Mainland from television and the occasional newspaper, The Savage had a life here. He’d seen everything fall.
“What’s your name?” he asked The Savage.
“The Savage.”
Bethelyn sighed. “Your mum and dad must have had fun with the birth certificate,” she said.
“Ok, fine. Call me Sav.”
A string of ivy hooked around Ed’s boot and almost tripped him. He pulled his foot back and then stepped over it. A bird screeched somewhere deeper in the forest.
“That’s not your real name,” said Ed.
The Savage stopped. He turned to face them, and there was a look on his face that was different from the usual mockery and insults. For the first time, he looked mad. He lowered his tone.
“You don’t get to know my real name. Got that? Ask again and I’ll leave you here to die.”
“I bet it’s Malcolm or something like that,” said Bethelyn.
The Savage gave her a stern glare. “You’ve perked up, then. How’s your daughter?”
The words dropped on them like a sheet of cold. Ed saw Bethelyn’s hands tighten up into fists, and he sensed a tension in her that was seconds away from snapping. He put his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off, and took a step to the side.
“Let’s cool off a little,” said Ed.
“Then don’t ask my name.”
Bethelyn took a deep breath. Her face was starting to turn red. “You think it’s the same? Asking your fucking name, and talking about my dead daughter?”
Something cried out deep in the forest. It was a strange sound, and Ed knew immediately that it wasn’t a bird screeching. He listened and then heard it again. It was a drawn-out whine; a pathetic cry that was racked with pain. The noise drifted toward them through the trees, honing in on their location and creeping into their ears.
The Savage set off toward it. Ed and Bethelyn tried to keep up, but he was able to move quicker than both of them. It seemed that Ed and Bethelyn’s feet were constantly snagging on the vines that ran along the ground, whereas The Savage knew when to lift his feet to avoid a string of ivy, even without looking.
When they caught up to him, The Savage was stood over the body of a deer. Its leg had gotten stuck in a hole in the floor and snapped in the middle. Ed bent down. Someone had sharpened some sticks and dug them down into the mud, pointy ends facing up.
The deer whined at them. Its mouth was smeared with blood, and when it smacked its lips together Ed saw a glimmer of claret-stained teeth. He looked at its leg again and realised that it had been trying to chew itself free. The animal looked at them with wild eyes. It cried out, and Ed thought that it sounded as if it were pleading.
The Savage started to sing.
"We're caught in a trap,
I can't walk out,
Because I love you too much, baby"
“So my joke about the watch was too much,” said Ed. “But it’s okay to sing about this?”
“A deer getting stuck in the floor and a man getting his arm cut off are two different things.”
His stomach churned. He wanted to look away, but he knew that even if he did, he still couldn’t ignore the deer’s whines of pain. He could sprint halfway across the forest, and the horrible noise would just follow him.
The Savage bent down. He picked up a rock from the forest floor and held it in his hands. He ran his thumb over a groove, and lifted the rock up and down to see how heavy it was. Without warning he brought it crashing down on the deer’s head, snuffing the life from its eyes in one blow. He threw the rock onto the floor and wiped his hands on his coat.
“Okay,” said Ed. “That’s it. What aren’t you telling us about this place?”
“Promise you won’t be your usual scared self?” said The Savage.
“When have you ever seen me scared?”
“There was a point on Golgoth when my guys were chasing you and I thought you were going to shit yourself.”
Bethelyn walked over to the deer. She crouched beside it. She reached out to touch it, but stopped herself. She hung down toward the ground.
Ed looked around him. He looked closer at the trees and saw that the bark looked like it was crumbling away. Dead leaves were scattered on the forest floor, and all of the foliage was a decaying brown colour rather than green. It seemed as if the forest was eating itself, and if they stayed much longer, it would turn its attention to them.
“There are secrets here,” said The Savage. “That’s what a guy back home told me.” He looked at Ed and held his hand in the air. “Don’t bother asking where home is, Wetgills. I’m not in the mood. I don’t like story time, but I’ll tell you this one if you promise to shut up.”
“Fine,” said Ed.
“A couple of weeks before I set off to Golgoth, they were planning an expedition here. I was against it, for the record, although in the interest of full disclosure-”
“Yeah, because that’s really your forte,” said Bethelyn.
“In the interest of full disclosure, I planned a few trips to Loch-Deep in the past. That was year
s ago, before we found out that the people who came here never went home. Never visited here myself, though.”
Ed couldn’t take his eyes off the deer. Even though it was dead, its black eyes stared out with fear. He wanted to walk over to it and close its eyelids, but at the same time he wanted to be rid of the image altogether. He looked at The Savage instead.
“What’s the significance, then? Why do people come here?”
The Savage stared at him. “Spend time on the Mainland and travel around a little, and you’ll hear all sorts of rumours. My town was no different. They think this place is ground zero. The chicken that came before the egg. They say the outbreak began here.”