by Lewis, Jack
“I think you owe it to the DC’s after what I saw in your room.”
“I’m not a monster, Heather.”
“Maybe not, but you’re feeding the monsters.”
An infected made a rasping sound as it turned the corner in front of them. A metal bracelet cut into the skin on its neck, and a loose chain link flapped with each jerk of its head. It saw Heather and her group and stretched out for them.
The barking of a pack of dogs came from nearby. A Capita solder shouted but Heather couldn’t tell what he said. Here, with the estate as small as it was, it wouldn’t be long until they were found either by the nose of a hound or eyes of a soldier. In the background of it all, as sure a thing as the wind in the air, the groans of the now-loose infected drifted.
“Check your masks,” said Heather. “And your skin. Have any of you got cuts?”
“Nope,” said Eric.
Kim wheezed out an answer. “No”.
Wes shook his head. His injuries were to his nose, but his nostrils were covered by the pollution mask strapped to his face.
The infected stepped a foot closer to Heather. She grabbed it by the shoulder, surprised by how much its bones stuck out. It turned its head to bite her but Heather’s hand was too quick and she managed to lodge her broken bottle in its brain. She let the infected fall to the floor.
“Here,” she heard someone shout.
The barks grew louder and more frenzied as if the pack of dogs spoke to each other as they hunted across the estate. The feeling of having pursuers was enough to wish she’d never risked herself in helping Eric. Without him, her life would have been untroubled.
But was that really true? She thought back to class, to seeing Jenny escorted from her classroom and the way it made her feel. She couldn’t have lived without doing something, so perhaps it was wrong to blame the boy. It was a thought she kept turning in her head, never sure which side of it she stood on. Even she was growing sick of it.
More yapping focussed her attention about what she needed to do. She lay the infected out on the pavement, arms and legs spread-eagled. She felt as though she was arranging a dummy in a shop window.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Wes.
She twisted the bottle in her hand to see how sharp the glass was. The infected’s skin was weak from illness, so she had no doubt it would tear under the slightest of cuts. She unbuttoned the ragged shirt sleeve on its right arm and rolled it up to the elbow. Holding her breath, she stabbed the glass into the infected’s flesh and dragged it down. With her eyes closed it felt no different to cutting through a chicken breast, and she found that was more adapt a butcher than she thought.
When she was finished it didn’t resemble an arm anymore. The skin was peeled away to reveal the gory insides, and blood dribbled over the edges and stained concrete paving that had spent decades as the same shade of grey.
“Rub this on yourselves,” said Heather.
“Have you lost your mind?” said Wes.
More barking. More groaning. The shouts of the soldiers. Heather looked around her but saw nothing.
“It’s for the dogs,” she said.
They could hide from the eyes of the soldiers and they could dodge the blundering infected, but the nose of a dog was hard to trick. The only way to evade it was to disguise their smell. By painting themselves with infected blood they would be able to drown their human stink enough to let the Capita’s dogs pass by.
Wes looked around him. His cheeks were blotched. There was something nearby that he seemed to be searching for, but Heather saw nothing. He had the same look on his face as her pupils usually got just before they did something wrong. Wes might have been a grown man, but it seemed like the human range of expression made everyone less unique than they thought.
“Looking for something?” said Heather.
He rubbed his neck.
“I just…no.”
“If you want to get out of here you better follow my lead.”
Eric, with the bravery only a child could have, had already coated his neck and arms in blood. He looked like a butcher’s apprentice who had lost a battle with a steak. Heather scooped a palm full of blood and swabbed it across her daughter’s forehead, around her face – careful not to get any in her eyes – and followed the curve of her jaw and down her neck. Soon her face was a dull red, with tiny red lumps in places like the pulp from a glass of orange juice.
Kim wrinkled her nose. She coughed, and then the parts of her face which weren’t covered in blood turned whiter than snow. She leant forward and retched. Heather rubbed her back with one hand, and with the other gave herself a bloody makeover.
The yap of the dog’s voices placed them only seconds away now. Heather picked up Kim and supported her off the pavement and next to a house, where a wood fence shielded them from view. Eric followed, letting his hand slide along the fence as he walked and leaving a trail of blood on the wood. Wes came last. His chin was red and his cheeks had some blood on them, though nowhere near enough to disguise the smell. With his sad face and half-done paint job, he was the circus clown who couldn’t commit wholeheartedly to his disguise.
There was the patter of small feet on the road as the dogs walked by. Heather strained her ears so as to hear everything, and she fancied she could even hear the sniff of their noses as they tested the scent in the air. Her heart rattled in her chest and she found herself gripping Kim’s arm. She knew it took only one curious hound to wander their way and the whole pack would find them. From there it would be seconds until the Capita soldiers had them under arrest.
She held her breath as the dogs filed by them. Kim stood so close to her that there was barely a centimetre between them. A tension filed Heather’s hands but she couldn’t grip Kim tighter because she didn’t want to risk her daughter making a sound. Had the dogs gone passed yet? What was taking them so long?
Eric glanced at her and slowly started to turn around. Heather wanted to tell him to be still, but she daren’t risk movement. Now, facing the fence, Eric peered through a tiny hole in the panel. Heather’s pulse fired at the rate of a machine gun. Seconds later, hours in Heather’s head, Eric lifted his thumb in the air. With the dogs gone she let the air out of her chest, and she relaxed her fingers away from Kim’s shoulder.
She wanted to starting moving but a natural caution held her in place as sure as a hand on her chest. Although the barking of the dogs seemed to be drifting away she could still hear the whisper of the infected’s groans as they walked nearby.
“So Sarge told me he wanted me to apply for a posting in the Dome. Then when I give him the paperwork, only an hour later, he tells me it’s too late and that I should have applied days ago.”
“What a prick.”
“Yeah.”
The voices of the Capita soldiers were matched only by the sound of their boots as they marched by the fence. They walked side by side, one of them holding a rolled-up chain in his right hand and swinging his arm with each step.
“Just keep quiet and we’ve got a clear pass,” whispered Heather.
Wes moved away from the fence. Heather was going to tell him to be still when she caught a look on his face. His eyes were pleading, sorrowful. The eyes of a man who was apologising before he’d actually done anything wrong. He stepped away from the fence and held his arms out.
“Hey,” he said. “They’re here. I found them.”
The Capita soldiers turned and walked back toward them. Heather felt herself sink. She pulled Kim close toward her. There was an alleyway in front of her, but she knew that running wouldn’t do her any good now.
Wes looked at her once again, and Heather realised that she’d misread his look just a second earlier. It could have been many things, but it wasn’t sorrowful. He stared deep into Heather’s eyes as the Capita soldiers ran up to him, halting when they saw the family hiding behind the fence.
“I’m just doing what it takes to live,” he said, and then pointed his gun at Heather.
21
Heather
The warmth in Charles’s voice didn’t match the coldness of his eyes. When the Capita soldiers had tied ropes around her arms and had done the same to Eric and Kim, she knew that it wouldn’t be long until the bounty hunter showed up. The sound of horse hooves clip-clopped from down the street, and soon enough a horse and cart turned the corner and then rolled to a stop in front of them. A Capita solider prodded the handle of his butcher knife into Heather’s back and made her walk toward it.
She watched Wes struggle as she walked up the ramp and onto the cart. Two stern-eyed Capita soldiers ordered him to stretch out his arms, but the trader threw his shoulders to shrug them off. His groomed eyebrows arched as though he didn’t believe the ropes they held out were meant for him.
“I’m the one who found them,” he said. “It was all part of the plan. Ask Charles. He knows. I sell to you guys. I’m one of you.”
By the time Charles arrived, the soldiers had tied up Wes’s hands. He wore a black eye to match the busted nose Heather had given him. The near-winter sky held frost in it, but Heather couldn’t feel the cold. Instead she felt exhausted as her mind raced through all the possible outcomes that lay ahead. None were good. She tried to turn away from them, but that was the problem with the things in your head; they wouldn’t let you hide. What would happen to Kim and Eric when they were taken to the Capita? Would their paths lead them to different fates?
When Charles arrived, Heather finally felt the touch of the frost. The bounty hunter made his horse trot up next to the cart. He pulled at the reigns and the animal halted. The animal seemed comfortable with Charles’s bulk, though the bounty hunter’s shoulders sagged an inch.
“Good lad, Ken,” he said, and ran a hand down the horse’s black hair.
Charles’s long black coat covered his body and hid the wounds that Eric had inflicted on him. Heather guessed that under his costume he wore bandages around the places that the screwdriver had punctured. Despite his injuries and the weight that his shoulders seemed to carry, he still seemed strong. She wondered if this was even the same man who, not much earlier, had fled from her house with blood pouring from him.
Years ago, Heather had been a big fan of wrestling. Her father was surprised that the seven year old girl liked to watch men throwing each other around a ring, but he went with it. On Sunday mornings they’d get up before the rest of the family and watch recordings on TV. There was one wrestler called Carlisle who wore a mask that covered his face, and he spoke in a voice so deep it seemed to shake the canvas. He fought so many bouts and stayed in the scene for so long that people began to question whether it was even the same man behind the mask. He didn’t age like everyone else, and he seemed immune to the physical toll years of wrestling would have on most men. Rumours spread that there had been two Carlisle’s; a newer, younger man replacing the original when his body fell apart. Then the conspiracy theorists, claiming to have studied years of tapes, said there had actually been four body switches. The original Carlisle, they said, had a scar on his thigh that he covered with makeup which was sometimes washed away mid-fight by sweat. In later years, the scar was gone. This was proof enough for them that they were being lied to. Many men had worn the mask, but none had taken it off.
“You got a lot of fight in you,” said Charles.
She looked at the oval shapes in his eye sockets but she couldn’t read anything in them. He didn’t look angry, but she had come to know that Charles’s anger boiled below the surface, and it only spewed out when he let it.
“It bodes well for your daughter,” he said, “If she’s anything like her mother. They like tough bodies at the farm. We get more meat before they break.”
Now that their search had ended, the Capita soldiers rounded up their infected and linked their chains to the bracelets around their necks. She wondered why the soldiers were never bitten by them. Were they just experienced handlers, or was it possible to train the infected?
The same couldn’t be said about the dogs. One soldier bent at the knee and grabbed the collar of a Rottweiler-Husky half breed. The dog stepped back and curled its top lip to show yellow teeth. The soldier’s forehead screwed up. His right hand twitched toward a hand axe which hung off his belt.
“Heel, Silas,” he said, his voice so deep and low that it was almost a growl.
The dog’s hind legs bent as if getting ready to spring, and man and beast stared at each other. Finally the dog’s ears relaxed, its lips uncurled and it trotted over to the man.
“Every bloody time,” said the soldier, and pulled the dog toward him for an affectionate hug.
Wes leaned forward in his seat on the cart to see what was going on, but the soldier in front of him pushed him back. Heather wished the soldier would hit him. She’d beaten him up pretty bad herself, but he deserved worse. She could only see the back of the soldier in front of Wes, and she wondered what kind of man he was. Some of them loved to use the power they had over others, and it was that sort of man who would hit Wes. She hoped this soldier enjoyed his authority enough to abuse it.
“Armstrong,” said Charles.
The soldier turned round. Heather saw the scar that ran across his cheek like a vein, and she recognised Max Armstrong. He had been in her house twice. On one visit he had complimented her crops and given her advice, and on the second he had uprooted them from the ground and taken them away. Despite that, his lingering stare from soft eyes made him seem different from the other soldiers.
“Sir?” said Max. The way he emphasised the word made it seem sarcastic.
Charles pointed. “Take Miss Castle and the trader to the Dome.”
Wes wriggled forward again. “Why me?”
Charles leaned into the seat of his horse. He stroked the side of the animal’s head as he spoke.
“How many people do you plan to double cross, trader? As many as you can get away with, I’ll bet. You made your bed, so you can die in it.”
He looked at the soldiers who stood at the foot of the cart. One of them turned away under Charles’s gaze. It reassured Heather that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to look at the bounty hunter. Even his own men were scared of him.
“Take the boy and the girl and put them on the other cart. They’re going to the compound for processing. The train leaves in two days and I want them on it.”
Did he say train? Once or twice in the last few years Heather had heard rumours that high ranking Capita officers made use of carefully-maintained cars, but she never imagined they could have an operational train. Things like that seemed like relics of a time long-gone, of days where people were safe.
Charles tugged on the reigns of his horse. The animal took a few steps back, snorted and then stopped. The bounty hunter pointed at Kim.
“Stand up,” he said.
Heather wanted to do something. She looked down at her arms and saw the redness of her skin where the rope scratched against it. Max Armstrong was in front of her and there were two Capita soldiers at the bottom of the cart. Across the estate other soldiers gathered their infected to re-chain them, and a few dog handlers clipped leads to the necks of the Capita’s canines. There was nothing that Heather could do. Even if she grabbed Kim and started running, they would get ten metres before a set of teeth clamped on their calves or the fingers of an infected pulled them back.
She felt like shrinking back in her seat and dissolving into it. It would be better that way. After all, what good was she to anyone? After Kim’s father went – she refused to even think the bastard’s name –she had assumed the role of protector. She’d tried to get her daughter far away from the Capita, but she’d failed. Now she was going to be taken further into the maze than she’d ever been, and she couldn’t imagine what waited in the middle.
“Give your daughter a hug,” said Charles. “It’ll be the last one that you’ll get.”
“I’m not letting you take her.”
He pulled back on the reigns. Ken, th
e horse, wheezed.
“Look around you,” said Charles. “Do you think you have much of a say?”
“I won’t let you, you bastard.”
“I’m not too bothered about the insults to be honest Heather, but the harder you make this for me, the more your child will suffer. Now give your daughter a hug.”
She looked around her again as if the passing of a couple of minutes would magically alter the scene. Nothing had changed; Capita soldiers walked with idle strolls and their dogs pulled at leather leads. There was nothing she could do. The worst thing would be to give Charles a reason to kill her.
“Go on. I won’t wait much longer,” said Charles.
Heather stood up and opened her arms. Kim, eyes tearing up and legs shaking, walked into her embrace. Heather pulled her daughter’s head close to her chest, closed her eyes and squeezed. All the water in her body was fighting to spill out of her eyes, and she felt Kim tremble against her. Eric stood up, walked across the cart and threw his arms around Kim. It amazed Heather how natural it felt for him to join them.