Ed smirked, and his heart began to race. A vague plan had formed in his head that was just crazy enough that it might work. It required delicate timing. It wouldn’t help the man in the storage closet, and Ed felt a surge of guilt that he dismissed angrily. There was no way to help the man if he couldn't even help himself.
He led the group following him to the kitchen door at the rear of the house and shuffled inside, keeping his eyes painfully wide, searching for any sign of movement.
Rough hands grabbed his shoulders and span him around.
“So where is he?” Rhys growled, and followed Ed’s hand as he pointed at the cupboard door in the narrow hallway. Rhys and the two other men with him shuffled past Ed, and pulled the cupboard door open, glaring accusingly at Ed.
“Behind the toolbox, under the blanket,” Ed said, taking a slow step backwards.
Rhys leaned into the cupboard.
Ed took another step, easing away from the men in his mother’s house.
He felt a bony finger prodding his back.
“Stay still,” the old woman hissed.
“Got him, Ma! He’s here alright. Here, give me a hand…”
Rhys passed the toolbox to the man next to him.
Now or never. She’s just an old woman.
As the three men in the hallway began to grunt with the effort of hauling the big man out of the cupboard, Ed finally persuaded his limbs to follow orders. Spinning around, he shoulder charged Annie Holloway to the ground and bolted through the door and into the garden.
Once he was outside, he put his head down and ran as he had never run before.
*
“Shit,” Rhys cried as he leapt back out of the cupboard, slamming his head painfully into the low doorway. He emerged just as his mother pulled herself unsteadily back to her feet. Her face looked like a gathering storm.
Rhys froze.
“Shall I go after him?”
Annie squinted through the windows and saw Ed disappearing into the distance.
“The idiot’s running straight back toward the hotel,” she snapped. “He’s not important. Bring him.”
She pointed her crooked finger at the inert shape the other two men were pulling from the cupboard.
*
Ed ran until his lungs felt like they were tearing themselves apart. He glanced back several times as he ran, and saw they weren’t following. He hadn’t expected them to. Whatever they wanted the man they called Voorhees for, it was obviously far more important to them than Ed. Given the choice, they had stayed with their primary target.
It was only stage one of Ed's grand escape plan. Stage two bordered on stupidity, but Ed didn’t believe he would last long running around in the open. So far he hadn’t seen any of the Infected zombies, but he didn’t expect his luck to hold.
For a few seconds he put his hands on his knees and sucked in deep breaths. The oxygen burned in his chest, but there was no time to waste.
He made his way straight back to the hotel, slowing only when he saw the dark building looming ahead of him. Trotting along, Ed scanned the windows for movement.
He saw plenty.
How many of these bastards are there?
Ed gave the hotel a wide berth, skirting down toward the water’s edge, and felt his nerves blaze when he saw the boat bobbing next to the narrow jetty.
It was going to work.
Ed quickened his pace, and let out a strangled yelp when he felt a strong hand clutch his collar and bring him to an abrupt halt. He crashed to the ground.
“Who the hell are you?”
Ed turned to stare at the bald man looming above him. The man was slight, with a face filled more with concern and curiosity than the sort of vindictive aggression he had observed in the group he had escaped from at Orchard Grove. Before Ed even knew what he was doing, he twisted away from the man’s grasp and rose to his feet, picking up a small rock and smashing it into the bald man’s temple. The man stared at him for a moment, stupefied, as though he hadn’t even registered the impact, so Ed hit him again, harder, and the bald man hit the ground like a felled tree.
Ed didn’t wait to see the bald man fall. Wondering in horror if he had just killed somebody, Ed focused on the jetty and the boat, and he dropped the rock and ran.
26
Michael counted nearly forty windows that faced the sea, and each and every one now glowed softly with the light of the candles he had told everyone to place in the rooms beyond.
Most of the twenty-three people left in the castle seemed relieved to have something to actually do, and Michael cursed himself for not realising sooner that leaving the people to dwell on the horrors of the recent past would do them no good. He had, he supposed, been too wrapped up in his own morbid introspection.
He wondered if maybe it was overkill, lighting up every room like that, but figured it was better to bank on a show of strength than to worry about whether whoever was out there watching the castle would call his bluff.
Every single one of the rooms contained a candle. Not one contained a person. To Michael it felt a little like going all in with a pair of threes in a high-stakes game of poker.
As the candles were lit by those for whom stairs were not an insurmountable obstacle, Michael busied himself with building three large fires in the courtyard, creating a glow which scorched the deepening night above the castle. From a distance, bathed in the glow of the flames, he thought the castle must have looked as though it was full of people. A closer inspection would reveal the ruse immediately, but Michael told himself that if he saw a force of people arriving by sea, he would gladly expend a few of his precious rifle rounds to dissuade them from coming any closer.
If all went to plan, it wouldn’t come to that.
When the place was as ready as they could make it, all twenty-three inhabitants of Caernarfon Castle gathered in the courtyard under the stars, with nothing left to do but wait. Clammy tension descended on the group, and for a long time no one spoke, straining their ears to catch a hint of an engine approaching in the distance.
After many uneventful minutes nervous smiles broke out, and even Michael began to wonder if they had been worrying about nothing.
Eventually Michael asked Claire to gather what food she could find, and he set about cooking their last few battered cans of beans over the fires.
Whatever happens, he thought, at least we won’t have empty stomachs.
One way or another, he knew, it would be their last supper. The beans represented the last of the food he had been trying to ration out; the final part of Darren’s supply.
He ate with Linda and Claire, and for a fleeting moment allowed himself to forget the horrors that crawled around the town outside and around his memories inside. They were like a small family camping out under the stars.
Linda had stood beside him, offering much-needed moral support, as he informed the others that the castle might be in danger, and at no point had she even hinted that she might divulge the things he had told her. He felt as though he could trust Linda, and the notion was jarring and odd, until he realised that he hadn’t felt like he could trust anybody in a long time; not since long before Project Wildfire reduced the world to savage barbarity.
They ate the beans and talked and laughed, and Michael listened happily as Linda told him stories of her time as a school teacher, mundane little anecdotes that reminded him how normal the world had once been.
Sometimes when she talked of the children she had taught and their exploits, he saw a hint of sadness in Linda's eyes, and wanted very much to return the hug she had given him, and to let her know that everything would be okay, whether he believed it himself or not.
“Maybe they’re not coming today,” Linda said finally.
Michael shrugged.
“Maybe they’re not coming at all.”
Linda looked at him hopefully, and Michael shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But John was right about one thing: this castle is an
open invitation to anybody left out there. I travelled all the way up the coast, and didn’t see a single place that looked as safe as this. If there are people out there, they’ll come eventually. It’s up to us to be prepared for the ones that don’t come to talk.”
Linda nodded morosely.
“Maybe you’ve just been unlucky,” she said. “You’ve run into bad people, but there must be good people left out there. People who just want to survive.”
“I’m sure there are,” Michael replied. “But it seems like it takes a certain sort of person to do more than survive. The ones who manage to organise themselves somehow…well, I’d guess they are the ruthless type.”
“Like you?”
Linda smiled, and Michael realised that her words were no more than light teasing.
The noise of the outboard engine halted Michael’s response before he could form it, cutting through the night like a laser and neatly severing the tentative relaxed atmosphere that had slowly blossomed during the strange picnic under the stars.
He stared at Claire, and at Linda, and saw their eyes widen. They heard it too.
“Up to the battlements,” Michael cried, lifting his voice just enough so that they could all hear. He knew the noise might draw the Infected from Caernarfon, but for now, crazily, the eyeless horrors felt like a secondary threat.
Better the devil you know, he thought.
“Be as visible as possible,” Michael said. “Let them know you’re here.”
There was movement everywhere as the campfires were abandoned, and all the people in the castle bolted for the steep steps that led to the battlements. Michael wheeled his chair to the foot of the steps and dragged himself from it, slinging his rifle over his back and lifting himself up each step on his backside one at a time until his triceps burned.
He reached the top of the steps as the whine of the engine reached its apex, and Linda helped him haul himself up to sit on the wall so he could see.
The sea looked dark and empty.
Just one boat, Michael thought. A decoy? Was John wrong?
He scanned the black water, trying in vain to locate the source of the noise. It sounded close, but the combination of the dark skies and the low mist that hung over the water made it impossible to spot.
For a brief moment he fantasised that there were many boats out there without engines, rowing toward him, silent and all but invisible, as if a horde of Viking warriors approached. He strained his ears, trying to catch anything that sounded like oars splashing in water, but beyond the whine of the single engine and the rolling roar of the waves, he heard nothing.
All along the battlements the people of the castle stood like watchful guardians, some holding flaming torches, others lifting pieces of wood that Michael hoped would look like weapons from a distance.
The engine drew closer.
Closer.
He slung the rifle from his shoulder and aimed it into the darkness, ready to fire a warning shot that would be the last card he had to play, and went rigid with shock when he heard the distant explosion behind him, rolling across the land like thunder.
The noise of the engine began to recede, but Michael had already turned his attention inland, to a distant plume of fire that rose up into the night.
He felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Linda looking at him, wide-eyed and quizzical.
“That’ll be John,” Michael said with an elated grin. “That guy loves blowing things up.”
He pointed at the wall opposite the one on which they all currently stood.
“Go see,” he said, “but stay quiet.”
Michael watched as they all filtered along the wall to the other side. He couldn’t hear the noise of the engine anymore, and began - finally - to believe they might make it.
When he saw Linda raise her arms aloft in silent victory and turn towards him beaming a huge smile, he didn’t need to see Caernarfon himself to know. The plan had worked.
The Infected were leaving.
27
Ed had no idea how to control a boat. Getting the engine started was fine: he’d seen how that worked plenty of times on television. Just a case of pulling on the cord that fired the engine. The boat emitted a throaty roar and lurched away from the small jetty and Ed took a moment to give thanks that the boat had fuel in it, and to suffer through a pulse of cold dread at what might have happened to him if the tank was empty. Already he heard people emerging from the hotel behind him, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before they found the man that Ed had either killed or knocked unconscious.
Even as it was, he cast furtive glances back at the shore for a good thirty seconds, half expecting to see the old woman appear with an assault rifle or a bazooka, and only when he was far out of range of all but the most unlikely of weapons did he turn his thoughts to actually steering the boat.
His first mistake was as obvious as it was foolish: he pulled the tiller to the left expecting that the boat would follow suit, and nearly threw himself overboard when the boat turned right instead.
Oh, right, he thought to himself feebly. Inverted controls. Like a flight simulator.
Once he had mastered left and right, Ed turned his thoughts to navigating the waves that reared up in front of him, but nothing he tried helped him avoid ploughing straight into them and blinding himself at regular intervals with spray. It felt like there was someone out front launching buckets of water at his face.
After a minute or two of attempting to adjust, Ed decided to just go with it and stopped flinching aside when the water hit him, figuring that seeing enough to nullify the possibility of running into rocks was far more important that getting soaked by the freezing waters of the Menai Strait.
He hadn’t left the jetty with thoughts of anything beyond getting away from the crazy freakshow that was unfolding on Anglesey, and when he saw lights in the distance on the opposite shore he felt like crying with relief. From the look of it, the power cut only extended as far as Anglesey. Maybe the insanity and violence did too, though Ed could think of no reason why the mainland authorities hadn’t stepped in to put a halt to the bloodshed.
Fighting against the powerful waves, he aimed the boat toward the lights.
The Menai Strait was only a little more than a half-mile wide, and it didn’t take long to cross, even in an old tub with an engine that chugged and coughed like an asthmatic. He had only been on the water for five minutes when he saw that what he had assumed were the lights of Caernarfon were in fact just the lights of the castle.
He frowned into the darkness.
The castle was a tourist destination; no one actually lived there. The place being lit up at night seemed…odd. The lights that burned in every window unsettled Ed, and he searched around the castle for evidence of life in the town itself, but all he saw was darkness.
He steered the boat to the right, moving parallel to Caernarfon rather than straight at it, and after checking the water in front of him was clear of obstacles, he focused his attention on the castle.
Are there people up there?
It looked to Ed like a line of people manned the battlements, almost like they were reconstructing some ancient siege.
Are they holding weapons?
Ed’s hand began to tremble on the tiller. He couldn’t be sure whether that was due to the cold or fear, but if he had to put money on it, he would have picked the latter.
He squinted in frustration, desperately trying to make a lie of the truth his eyes imparted to him. When he was a few hundred feet out, he saw them clearly enough: something like thirty people lined the battlements, some holding flaming torches, others holding what looked like clubs.
What the fuck?
Before he could even begin to come up with theories about the strange people in the castle, the sound of an enormous explosion reached him, and his mouth dropped open. In the distance beyond Caernarfon, a huge plume of fire billowed up into the sky, like a small nuclear device had been detonated.
Ed was no be
liever in signs from God, but he was a firm believer in staying the fuck away from trouble. He steered the boat away from the castle, and headed down the coast as fast as the whining engine and the stubborn ocean would allow.
He didn’t make it far - a mile or two maybe, Ed had no idea, no frame of reference when it came to navigating the sea - before the engine chugged and spluttered and died.
Oh shit.
Again and again he tried to rev the engine into life and was met with obstinate choking and empty rattling.
No fuel.
Ed stared at the outboard motor in seething frustration. He was so focused on it that he didn’t even see the sails as the yacht moved silently alongside him.
“Engine trouble?”
The voice in the darkness nearly made Ed leap into the sea in fright. When he turned he saw a man leaning over the side of a much larger boat than his. As the vessel neared, the man leapt down onto Ed’s stranded boat and grinned.
“Reckon you might need a ride, mate. Dangerous out here, you know. Sockets can swim, after all.”
*
A sea of sightless corpses charged at him, shearing his flesh with their teeth, and he screamed and screamed as they tore away his body, praying that he would die, but the torment was eternal. When he shut his eyes to block out the image, another replaced it: a blood-soaked rat, crawling along inside his intestines, chewing its way toward his heart. In the darkness he writhed and twisted, trying to turn away from the horrors that loomed all around him, and found that there was no escape. The terror wasn’t something he could outrun: it followed relentlessly; attached itself to him like a diseased shadow.
He wanted to scream, but found that when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. Just a whispered sigh that echoed, and sounded like a distant voice sneering at him. A familiar voice somehow, yet one that he could not place.
He awoke abruptly from half-remembered dreams of movement, like someone had dragged him in his sleep.
Trauma (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 5) Page 16