Many people nodded, but they still didn’t speak.
Although he’d asked the group, Serj’s eyes settled on Vicky. She nodded too. “Let’s do this.”
The lock clicked as Serj undid it with his key. He then pulled the two large bolts at the top and bottom of the door free. The rub of metal over metal ended in a crack as each one came loose.
Vicky watched through the window to see the diseased respond to the sounds. As stupid as they were, they clearly knew they should pay attention to what was about to step outside.
Anxiety sent butterflies through Vicky’s stomach as she continued to watch them. About thirty in total, their rage boiled just beneath the surface, sending them swaying, twitching, and lashing out at thin air. A well-organised fighting unit would take them down without a problem. Sadly, the people of Home weren’t a well-organised fighting unit. And they still had the people smashing up the solar panels to contend with.
After a nod at Vicky, Serj yanked the door wide. The sound of the enraged diseased rushed into the place. The noise rode the back of their rotten stench and Vicky saw several of the people from Home step back a pace as if shoved by the wave of funk. None of them were as used to the smell as the four guards were.
Vicky elbowed past the couple of people in front of her and led the attack.
The crossbow remained clipped to Vicky’s back. There seemed little point in using it at that moment because the reload time would be too long. Instead, she swung her bat at the first creature to rush her. A wet crack as it connected with the diseased’s weak jaw and the thing fell to the ground. It disappeared beneath the stampede as its brethren surged forward.
Some of the other people from Home grunted as they too swung for the diseased. The sound mixed with the screams of the monsters receiving the blows.
As much as Vicky wanted to check on the other guards—Flynn especially—the diseased came at them too quickly for her to focus on anything else.
Swing after swing and the monsters fell away from Vicky, some of them screaming as they went down, while others fell without a sound, clearly knocked out from the blow. The soundless remained down while the noisier ones rolled around as if fighting to get back up again.
Sweat ran into Vicky’s eyes, the warmth of the June day still in the air despite the fading sun. The stench of the diseased around her seemed worse for the summer heat, but Vicky gulped against her desire to heave and pushed on.
“Someone make sure they’re dead,” Vicky called out, the vibration of another blow running up her baseball bat into her shoulders. “Clean up behind us. Stab the fuckers in the head. We don’t want to get caught out here.”
Whether someone heard her or not, she couldn’t tell, but she hoped they did.
A moment’s respite and Vicky looked back over her shoulder to see the people of Home were winning. Maybe they did have it in them. The sight sent a surge of adrenaline through her and she found the impetus to carry on.
Ten, twelve, fifteen … each blow scored a direct hit, and, with Vicky’s expertise, she silenced more than she didn’t. An ache gripped her jaw from clenching it tightly, but she kept going. Blow after blow after blow.
A glance to her right and Vicky expected to see Serj or Piotr or Flynn leading the attack with her. Instead, she saw Sally—the meek and mild woman that Hugh had wanted to evict for being useless. She looked to be possessed. Wild eyes and a fierce scowl, she matched Vicky strike for strike. Together they tore a hole into the diseased’s ranks.
When Sally looked across, Vicky nodded at her and she nodded back, her face covered in the blood of the fallen.
The crowd of diseased bodies thinned from the onslaught, many of them lying in the long grass and not getting back up again. Soon they’d have to face the people from Moira’s community—if they were still there. Vicky called out, “We’re doing this. Keep it up, guys.”
A cry sounded out to Vicky’s right and she looked across through the mess of bodies. She saw a gang of people she presumed to have been the ones attacking the solar panels. They’d grabbed Stuart and two others and had them outnumbered at least three to one.
“Fuck it,” Vicky said and turned to Sally. She then saw Serj, Flynn, and Piotr had appeared next to her. “Keep fighting,” she called to all of them. “I’ll be back in a second.”
Flynn stared at Vicky, the blood of the diseased dripping from his sweating face, and he looked like he wanted to say something. But she spoke before he could. “Stay there! I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
A shake of his head and Flynn continued to fight. He clearly didn’t want to stay there, but he listened to her nonetheless.
Vicky fought against her exhaustion as she shimmied and weaved through the throng of fighting bodies after Stuart and the other two. They wouldn’t get taken. Not on her watch.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Once Vicky got free from the fighting, she had a clearer sight of the people who’d dragged Stuart and the other two away. About ten in total—less than she’d seen smashing up the solar panels—they had a head start on her, and by the time she reached the bottom of the hill with Home’s front door in it, they were disappearing over the top of it.
Vicky was sweating from her fight with the diseased and now the chase. Her strength threatened to abandon her as she began the short but steep incline. She clenched her jaw and pushed on. At any moment her legs could stop working, but until then she’d give everything she had.
Darkness spread through the sky as night clenched its grip on the world, but when Vicky saw Stuart and the other two completely disappear over the brow of the hill, she found a burst of speed. She couldn’t lose sight of them.
Vicky panted when she reached the top and looked over the field of solar panels—all the blacker for the darkening sky. Stuart and the others had vanished. Before she could catch her breath, the thick ropes of a heavy net crashed into her. They wrapped a tight embrace around her and she fell to the ground, rolling down the much smaller hill on the other side. A fly in a web, she came to rest at the bottom, completely entrapped in the cargo netting.
Only now did she see Stuart and the other two. They were gripped tightly by their captors. About twenty more guards stood with them and they all stared at Vicky on the ground.
It had been hard for Vicky to see at first, but now she’d gotten closer, she looked at what were two boys from Home. Both of them stood frozen, their eyes wide as they remained board stiff.
Stuart, on the other hand, twisted and turned as if he could get free from his captors.
When a woman no more than about five feet tall raised a bloody machete to Stuart’s face, the fight left him and he fell limp. She held the tip of the large blade close to his right eyeball and snarled at him.
Stuart looked at Vicky and said, “I’m so sorry.”
The more Vicky moved, the tighter she found herself trapped within the twisted net. She shook her head at him. “Don’t be. There’s nothing you can do to help.”
Before Stuart could say anything else, one of the men from Moira’s community linked both of his hands together and drove them into his stomach.
With a loud oomph, Stuart bent over double and he fell to the ground in a heap.
Although he looked like he wanted to speak as he stared at Vicky through wide and watering eyes, he had to fight too hard for breath to get his words out. He looked like a fish as he lay there gasping.
Suddenly, Vicky’s feet lifted a few inches from the ground and the rush of the long grass whooshed over the ropes as someone dragged her away through the solar panels. She looked at Stuart while the gap between them increased. He stared back and said nothing.
Until that moment, Vicky had shut it out, but as she got taken farther away from her community, the screams and shouts of the battle in front of Home came to her.
When Vicky had got about twenty metres away, Stuart seemed to finally find enough oxygen to call after her. “I’ll come for you, Vicky. I’ll save you, tr—oomph.” He must have taken ano
ther blow.
The gesture seemed like a sweet one, but the guy didn’t have a clue. Now that Vicky had escaped from Moira’s community once, she’d punish her so quickly she wouldn’t be able to do it again. Hell, she wouldn’t be able to do anything again. She’d be in that pit the second they dragged her into the courtyard.
“You won’t get away with this, you know,” Vicky called to the figures who dragged her away. With so much netting around her, she couldn’t make out any more than their silhouettes. “My friends will come for me and burn your community to the ground. You’ll pay for this.”
The people stopped dragging Vicky, and one of them snarled, “Shut up, you cunt.”
Vicky saw the foot a second before it sent a white flash through her vision. The copper taste of her blood flooded her mouth and her world turned dark.
Chapter Forty-Nine
When Vicky came to, her headache sat in her eyeballs and drove pain through them as if they were glass about to shatter. Unable to see much because of her heavy squint, she lay on cold concrete and smelled the heady reek of piss and shit. The fear-laden silence told her exactly where they’d taken her—not that she had to be a genius to work it out.
Vicky groaned and rolled over. Free of the netting at least, her face throbbed from having been kicked and the swelling added extra weight to her mouth and cheeks. She could still taste blood.
Despite the very clear reek of the place and the sound of movement around her, Vicky saw nothing. Repeated blinks went some way to clearing her vision. They must have kicked her straight in the eyes.
“And she’s finally awake!”
A look in the direction of the sound and Vicky sneered. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see, she knew that voice all too well.
The raking rasp of her tone was like fingernails down a chalkboard. “Moan all you like, love. It won’t do you much good. We’ve even told your community we have no interest in a war with them now. We have what we want. Bygones and all that.”
Vicky’s vision finally cleared. Still dark from the night sky above, she looked around at the same small cell she’d been trapped in before. A few metres square, it had a frigid concrete ground and chain-link fence walls.
Nausea flipped through Vicky’s guts when she sat upright and her head spun. When she opened and closed her jaw, electric pain streaked through it. Whoever kicked her had put their full force into it.
Vicky looked at Moira. Scraggly black hair, sagging skin, a hooked nose. A broomstick and a black cat would have topped off the image.
The prisoners remained in the larger cage next to Vicky. All of them sat together as if seeking warmth from one another, and all of them looked prisoner-of-war thin. After a quick scan of them, Vicky’s heart racing because she couldn’t see him, she finally laid eyes on Aaron. He stared back at her from the large orbs in his withdrawn face. Dark rings hung beneath his eyes. His skin pulled so tightly across his skull it formed a paper-thin layer over the bone.
“Although,” Moira said, pulling Vicky’s attention back to her, “I still quite like the look of your place. Home? Is that what you call it?”
“You think we hadn’t worked that out?”
“Oh?”
“If you didn’t want it, you would have done the one thing that would have flushed us out instantly.”
“Destroy the solar panels?” Moira said and, before Vicky could answer, added, “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?”
“It doesn’t take a genius.”
“Well, you’re right. Smashing those things would have been like sending smoke into a bees’ nest. We’d have flushed you out in minutes.”
“But then you wouldn’t be able to use them for yourself.”
A crooked smile spread across Moira’s face. “And you know the best part?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“They genuinely believe we won’t attack them now.”
Before Vicky could respond, Moira said, “I know what you’re thinking.”
“You do?”
“That we’ll still attack Home, and that the people of Home will be ready for us. But I think we’ve already proven we’re smarter than you are.”
Vicky forgot her pains momentarily and ground her jaw. She winced at the sting of it and the pound of her headache ran harder through her vision. “What’s with the bullshit monologue, Moira? What are you? A fucking James Bond villain? Or do you just like the sound of your own voice?”
The reaction seemed to please Moira more than anything Vicky had said so far and she let out a titter of a laugh. “Surely you need to allow me my moment? We’ve meticulously planned this, and the best part is revealing it to you. It’s like thinking really hard about a Christmas present, buying it during the summer months, and giving it to the one you love on Christmas Day, when you’ve managed to keep the secret the entire time. Imagine what Flynn’s face would be like had you done that.”
Vicky didn’t respond, her heart quickening at the mention of his name. It didn’t belong in her mouth.
“We made you think we’d attack earlier. When you and your Indian friend were outside, a few of my people made sure you heard them talking about when we would do it.”
A flashback to the moment when she and Serj had overheard the people from Moira’s community made Vicky’s stomach sink. She looked across at the prisoners next to her in the cage. How long would it be for her to look like that? For her to be so broken she existed as no more than a skeleton in a cell. Apathetic through exhaustion.
Glee lit up Moira’s face when Vicky looked back at her again. It seemed hard to take anything the woman said at face value, but if the people from her complex hadn’t known of Vicky and Serj’s presence the other day, then Moira still wouldn’t know of it now.
“You still don’t believe me, eh?” Moira said. “We made sure you saw and heard us that night. We pretended we knew nothing about you being there. We wanted to force your hand. To expose you.”
When Vicky scowled, it sent pain through her face, but she didn’t say anything.
While she paced up and down outside Vicky’s cell, Moira spread her arms wide in a theatrical display. “Then we let the diseased out of the pen. Nice idea, by the way; we should have thought of that one. Shame you held back though, eh? That could have worked really well if you’d had the balls to strike early.
“So even if your little gang do think they can outsmart us and get you back, I can assure you now, Victoria, they don’t stand a fucking chance.”
Although her legs shook from still feeling woozy, Vicky got to her feet and walked toward Moira. With clenched fists and a clenched jaw, she leaned against the cold chain-link fence and glared at the woman. A time would come when she could set her fury loose on her. When it did, she wouldn’t hold back. She’d unload both barrels on the bitch.
After she’d tilted her head to the side and smiled wider than before, Moira said, “You want to say something to me, little one?”
Another look over at Aaron, and she saw the rage in his eyes too. Although, unlike Vicky, he directed his rage at her, not Moira. It robbed her of her fire and she sighed as she dropped her head and looked at the ground. She’d let a lot of people down. In fact, she’d let down everyone who currently trusted her in this life. Maybe she’d come to the end. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. At least Flynn had Piotr to look after him now.
Chapter Fifty
God knew how long Vicky dozed for; it couldn’t have been very long. When she came to—not through any choice of her own, rather because of the rattling attack of Moira dragging something metal along the chain-link fence of her cell—the sky above still looked as dark as it had when she’d passed out. Nighttime for sure, but fuck knew what time of night.
The same twisted smile dominated Moira’s haggard face. In one hand she had a metal baton—which she’d used to rattle the cage—and with her other hand, she pointed a finger at Vicky. On the end of her outstretched finger hung a key attach
ed to a shoelace.
Vicky grabbed at her neck to find her key had gone. Of course it fucking had. They’d probably taken it before they’d locked her up.
“So—” Moira giggled, the shrill staccato of it sounding like someone on the precipice of madness “—not only does your group think they’re safe from an attack from us, but we also have a way in whenever we choose to take it.”
The community wouldn’t lower their guard that easily. Hopefully Serj had already replaced the locks. It must have got back to him that she’d been taken. Stuart would have told him. Vicky’s heart kicked hard. Stuart probably hadn’t survived. Although maybe they’d released him and the boys as a gesture of peace. They had Vicky; they didn’t need anyone else. She couldn’t think about it. The fact that she hadn’t returned would be enough for Serj to change the locks. They only took longer with Meisha because they knew exactly where she and the key were.
Another bash against the cage, her baton exploding in a wash of sound that ran all around Vicky, and Moira said, “Anyway, I’m getting bored of this nonsense. You’ve served your purpose now, sweetheart, and I’m getting fed up of looking at your pathetic face. The longer I keep you around, the greater risk there is of you escaping again. It’s happened once; trust me when I say it won’t happen again.”
One of Moira’s guards walked to the padlock on Vicky’s cell door, lifted the lock up, and slipped the key in.
Before he could walk to her, Vicky got to her feet, her hips and knees sore from lying on the hard and cold concrete.
A raised eyebrow and Moira watched Vicky stand still. “Not going to fight?”
“What’s the point?” Vicky said as she stared at the vicious woman. “Will it achieve anything?”
“It may get you tied up.” Moira raised her eyebrows again. “If that’s your thing?”
The two women stared at one another for what felt like the longest time before Moira shrugged. “Fine. It’s not like you’ll survive anyway.”
The Alpha Plague 6: A Fast-Paced Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 16