The Alpha Plague (Book 7)

by Michael Robertson

  Chapter Twelve

  The vents in the hallway let the sound of night down into Home’s corridors but did little to illuminate the empty walkway. Bugs and birds called down to Flynn as he walked with a lit candle from his room. He cupped his hand in front of it to prevent it from blowing out.

  As he made his way down the corridor, Flynn rolled his shoulders to adjust the pack on his back. Yet to be filled, it still didn’t fit as comfortably as he’d like. The straps had snapped so many times he had at least three knots tied into each one. Each knot found a different point around his shoulders and back to press into.

  A metre or two around Flynn lit up from the candle’s flickering flame. Beyond that, everywhere fell into darkness. It sounded clear, but for all he knew, someone could be watching him at that moment. They could see the large knife attached to his hip. Maybe understand the intention of his late night wanderings.

  Although very few people walked the corridors at night, so he couldn’t worry about it. But what if someone saw the light through the bottom of their door? A community full of people had to have a few insomniacs. Fuck it, he couldn’t think about it.

  When Flynn arrived at the room, he stopped and stared at the door. His heart sped up, pounding so hard he could almost hear it. Quicker breaths than before, his throat dried. Once he stepped into the room, there would be no going back.

  A deep breath and Flynn pulled his long knife from his belt. He then unhooked the few lengths of rope that hung down from his backpack, rolled his shoulders one last time, and opened Brian’s door as quietly as he could.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The fat fucker snored as he lay in his bed, oblivious to Flynn standing over him.

  For a few seconds, Flynn simply stood there and watched the prick breathe. He could force the tip of his knife hard into Brian’s eyeball and end everything there and then. He’d done it a thousand times with the diseased. Although, if he did that, he’d take away all the fun.

  Instead, Flynn put his candle down on the side and properly took in the man’s room. The paint fell from the walls like it did everywhere else, but most of the walls were covered by bookshelves. The bed lay in the middle, and a huge chair had been placed in each of the two corners farthest away from the door. They looked like thrones. Especially as they were a luxury very few others in the community had.

  A shake of his head and Flynn got to work. As gently as he could, he unwound one of the lengths of rope and lay it over Brian’s barrel chest. He dropped the rope down the other side of the man, hunched down and fished it back under the bed.

  Once Flynn had looped the rope around the bed and had it ready to tie, he repeated the process with another rope across Brian’s middle. One would tie the top of his arms down and the other one the bottom. If he could disable his reach, he could overpower him.

  When he had both ropes ready to pull tight, Flynn sat down on the floor next to the fat and bearded man, drew a deep breath, and pulled hard on the one running across his chest, pressing his feet against the bed frame to give him more tug.

  It pinned Brian to the bed and woke him with a heavy gasp as it crushed the air from his lungs.

  Although Brian’s eyes flashed open, he didn’t have time to react before Flynn tied a quick knot in the rope and tugged the next one to pin the bottom of his arms to the bed.

  Awake enough to realise what had been done to him, Brian looked at Flynn. “You little fucker—”

  He stopped short and his eyes spread wide when Flynn stood up and waved his knife at him.

  “W-what are you going to do?”

  Flynn said nothing. Instead, he used a third length of rope to tie Brian’s legs to the bed. A glance at Brian and he could see the man looked like he wanted to fight, but another wave of his eight-inch knife quickly encouraged him to let go of his rage.

  For the next two minutes or so, Flynn let the silence hang and paced up and down in Brian’s room. He listened to the fat fuck breathe on the edge of a panic attack before he finally spoke. “So Serj told me what actually happened to Vicky. He said it wasn’t fair for me to think she’d walked out when she’d been forced out.”

  Red-faced and breathing heavily, Brian spat as he spoke. “She couldn’t stay here.”

  “That makes sense,” Flynn said and let the silence hang again as he leaned over Brian and rested the sharp tip of his blade against the man’s sweating cheek. “I can see how she had to leave.”

  “We had to give her the same treatment everybody else had when they were evicted. We couldn’t risk her coming back.”

  “And there it is,” Flynn said as he stood up straight again. “You killed her, Brian. I mean, you had to, right? And that’s how you justify it to yourself. How you manage to sleep at night.” He turned the knife so the flickering light bounced off its polished blade, and said, “Once you’ve had a fallout with someone, once you’ve gone past the point of no return, you have to follow through and kill them. There’s no way back from that, eh?”

  “She set the plague loose, Flynn. Besides, I wasn’t the only one. Sharon and Dan wanted it too.”

  “Don’t you worry about Sharon and Dan anymore.”

  “You’ve been to them already?”

  “Two for the price of one, you fat fuck. Of course I went there first.”

  A single tear ran down Brian’s red face and he shook his head. “Please, Flynn, please don’t hurt me.”

  “Crocodile tears don’t sit well with me, you know? You fucked her over, Brian, and you have to pay for that. That’s how it works, isn’t it?” Flynn rested the tip of his blade on Brian’s cheek again, this time a little closer to his wide eye. “An eye for an eye and all that, right?”

  “But—”

  Flynn silenced the fat man with a raised hand. He then rubbed his temples as if fending off a headache. “Your voice grates, Brian.”

  “But—”

  “SHUT UP!”

  Brian flinched away from Flynn’s rage.

  After a quick scan of his room, Flynn saw Brian’s socks on the floor and he picked one of them up in a pinch. “My god, man, what the fuck’s wrong with you? These socks are fucking disgusting!”

  When Brian opened his mouth to respond, Flynn cut him off. “You don’t need to answer that. I’m simply telling you you’re disgusting. Worse than an animal. Worse than a diseased. And you know how easily I dispatched them, don’t you?”

  A look at the bookshelves and Flynn said, “A man is not great because of the books he owns. I wouldn’t mind betting you’ve not read any of these.”

  Before Brian could say anything else, Flynn stuffed the sock in his fat mouth, jamming it in so hard the man heaved from either the taste of his own filth or from the fabric of the sock pressing against his gag reflex.

  Another piece of rope, shorter than the others, and Flynn wrapped it around Brian’s face, tying it so tight it cut into his fat jowls. “Your head’s like a fucking pork joint. You disgust me.”

  Flynn spoke more to the knife than he did Brian at that moment, staring at the blade, mesmerised by the way the light danced along it. “Since before even Vicky left, I’ve dreamt of this moment. My chance to skin you. I’ve had practice with the wild animals we’ve caught, but I think it might be a bit messy still. I’m certainly no expert.” A look at Brian and he grinned. “Hopefully it’ll fucking hurt.”

  Although Brian screamed and writhed, the sock muffled most of his words. However, every time the fat fuck shifted on the bed, its metal frame groaned in protest.

  Flynn looked down at the bed for a second before he said, “I’d shut up if I were you, fat man. Think of it like the fair. Scream if you want to go faster. That’s what they used to say at the fair, right? I was six the last time I went, so I can’t remember.”

  Brian watched Flynn through a confused frown and didn’t answer.

  “You’re right.” Flynn laughed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Scream if you want more pain. How does that sound? It’s not quite right
, is it?”

  Tears ran freely from the fat fuck’s eyes and he trembled where he lay. Flynn clicked his fingers and laughed. “I’ve got it!” He pressed the tip of the knife into Brian’s gut and said, “Scream if you want to go deeper. How’s that?”

  It looked like Brian had left the room; his disgusting body remained, but his eyes were glazed as if he’d retreated to a safer place.

  “Serj said something else to me before he died, you know?”

  Again, nothing from Brian.

  “He told me anger’s like a hot coal. And I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought long and hard. I think he’s right; anger is like a hot coal. Throw it at someone and you get burned, right?”

  Brian nodded furiously.

  “But!” Flynn said and wagged his right index finger at Brian. “It’s also a fuel. Coal, I mean. It fuels a lot of things. Like the desire to stick a fat fuck with a knife. With just one coal and a lot of patience, you can set fire to the world.”

  Flynn stuck the first centimetre of his blade into the top of Brian’s right thigh. He watched the man shake his head and turn even redder. He watched his fat jaw bite down on his filthy sock. He watched him cry like a small child and he laughed harder than he’d laughed in years. A slow twist of the blade and he said, “That’s it, Brian, scream if you want to go deeper.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Flynn hunched down in the darkness of Home’s barn, his hands shaking with his urgency. He needed to get the pack loaded up and get the fuck out of there before anyone found out what he’d done. Unless he got unlucky, he should be good ’til morning, but by then he needed to be as far away from Home as possible.

  Because he had to remain hidden, Flynn worked without light, pulling peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes from their piles and stuffing them into his bag. In the short walk from Home to the barn, he’d seen the moon hung as no more than a fingernail in the sky. Sure it gave him the shadows to hide in, but it did little to help him see, even with the barn’s door left wide open.

  When he’d filled his backpack with as much as he could reasonably carry, Flynn shouldered his bag, picked his crossbow up, got to his feet, and left the barn.

  Jackson and Ollie had pulled night duty on the gates that evening. As Flynn walked up to them, his heart beat out of control and his legs shook. They could ask to check his bag. Someone might find out what he’d done.

  “Everything okay?” Jackson called out as he looked down on Flynn, a hand on his baseball bat.

  “Yep,” Flynn replied, the bag on his back seeming to treble in weight with the stolen goods. “I’m going out to do some night hunting. ’Bout time we had some meat in this place.”

  “Amen to that,” Ollie said and he waved Flynn through. “Good luck, brother.”

  Even as he walked through the open gates, Flynn expected someone to call him back. But they didn’t. How far would he get from the place before they realised what he’d done?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Flynn walked into the night, checking behind him every few metres. Far enough away that the boys on the gates wouldn’t be able to see his paranoia, he could check back frequently to get a heads-up on a pursuing pack should they decide to give chase.

  The heavy backpack pulled on Flynn as he walked, dragging the hard knots into his shoulders and sending a tingling sensation down both arms.

  It hurt to hold his crossbow out in front of him, but with fuck-all vision ahead, he had to be ready for anything. When he’d lived with the diseased for so much of his life, he refused to trust things would be okay.

  Flynn kept up a quick pace, sweat lifting on his brow and itching beneath his clothes. He forced a rhythm to his breaths to maintain the march and did his best to see through the dark and long grass.

  By the time Home had been reduced to no more than a large silhouette on the horizon, Flynn released some of the tension in his body, but he still kept up his pace. He might lose sight of Home shortly, but he still needed to put as much distance between him and it as he possibly could. He’d never go back to that place again. Never.

  ***

  The swoosh of the grass surrounded Flynn as he continued to plough through it. Hours had passed and he’d still not adjusted to the dark night. The human eye could only do so much.

  Flynn looked around, for what good it did. The diseased didn’t exist anymore, but it didn’t matter how many times he told himself that. He only knew he hadn’t seen any diseased in several years. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t see any again. Anyway, they had nomads and rats now. Although the rats kept to the town, so they’d be easy to avoid. Just the nomads, then. And maybe the diseased.

  The hoot of an owl called out, and when Flynn turned in the direction of the sound, something moved through the undergrowth behind him. A fox or a badger? Maybe a diseased? No, it had to be an animal.

  How had the boys on the gate believed he’d be going out to do some nocturnal hunting? Unless he had night-vision goggles on, he wouldn’t be hunting shit. Any nocturnal creatures would be up and out of his way long before he even knew they were there.

  Regardless of the ridiculously low odds, it was another reason for Flynn to keep his crossbow raised. He might get a chance to pinpoint a sound and take a lucky shot in the dark.

  The ground grew more uneven as Flynn pushed on, the undulations beneath him twisting and turning his feet when he walked over them. He’d been nuts to leave at night. One hard twist and he could break his ankle. And what would he do then? A shake of his head and he pushed on. It didn’t bear thinking about. Although, whether it bore thinking about or not, the thought of nomads chowing down on him like the diseased would have ran through his mind anyway.

  A twig snapped behind Flynn and he spun around, his crossbow raised. The weak moonlight shone over the landscape and picked out a deer’s silhouette for him.

  Flynn’s heart beat double time to look at the large creature. Far too much meat for one, but better to have too much than not enough. He’d do his best to make sure none of it went to waste.

  The stock of the crossbow fitted neatly into Flynn’s shoulder, so he rested it there and continued to take slow and deliberate steps forward. One eye closed, he looked down the barrel of his bow at his target.

  Already pushing his luck, just ten metres separated Flynn and the creature before he stopped. He pulled in a deep breath and held it, his pulse booming through his skull. A gentle squeeze on the trigger and he bit on his bottom lip as he counted down in his head.

  Three.

  Two.

  On one he let the bolt loose, the weapon kicking against his shoulder as the shot exploded away from him.

  The bolt sank into the creature’s body with a solid thud!

  But the deer didn’t move. It just stood there, motionless, like it had been the entire time. A tree would have flinched harder from being shot.

  Just before Flynn could step any closer, what little he could see turned to darkness as a sack covered his head.

  “Motherfuckers!” Flynn shouted before an explosion of white light hit his temple. The blow turned his legs weak and he fell to the ground.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Every time Flynn blinked, tendrils of pain ran from his eyeballs deep into his brain. A rock of nausea in his stomach and still dizzy from the blow he’d taken to the face, he sat up slowly. Very fucking slowly.

  The dark room remained dark, showing it to be the reality of the place rather than a dimmed view through his foggy mind. Flaming torches ran down either wall. About a quarter of the size of the canteen in Home, the space looked like an underground cave. A dungeon.

  The hard stone floor and walls were damp as if they sweated in the muggy heat of the place. It stank of dirt and body odour. Hard to tell exactly how many people he shared the space with. He could see ten at least, probably a few more.

  “What the fuck?!” one of the people called out.

  Although Flynn couldn’t see well, he saw enough to make out the tall and stocky s
ilhouette of a man as he stood up and hunched over another, skinnier man. “I said what the fuck?”

  The skinny man on the ground didn’t reply. Instead, he scrabbled backwards away from his aggressor, his frantic movements scraping through the place as everyone else watched on in silence.

  “You’d best fucking answer me. What were you doing getting so close to me? What were you trying to achieve?”

  The man on the ground shook his head and his voice came out as a high-pitched whine. “Nothing, I wasn’t trying to do anything.”

  “Why were you getting close to me, then?” The deep boom of the aggressive man’s voice shook through the place.

  “I was just trying to see out of the cage. I’m number fifteen. It won’t be long now.”

  “You won’t even make it to then, you fuck.” The fat man spat at the one on the ground. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I don’t believe your bullshit. You wanted to take me out before it starts, didn’t you? You see me as a threat.”

  “No, it’s not that, honestly.”

  “So you don’t think I’m a threat?”

  The man on the ground didn’t reply. Probably for the best.

  Movement by the cage door and Flynn saw several guards line up to watch events unfold. They looked like they could burst in at any moment and split the men up.

  “I can’t have anyone fucking with me. Especially not now, before we even get out there.”

  “I promise, I wasn’t planning anything.” By now, the cowering man had made it close to one wall and pushed himself up against it. The two women who’d been waiting there moved away and found somewhere else to sit.

  Surely the guards had to come in at some point and put a stop to it.

  Flynn flinched to watch the aggressive man kick the one on the ground. The deep slap of foot against flesh snapped through the place and the cowering man curled into a ball.