The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival

by Lewis, Jack

  Heather looked at the family tied to the stakes. She felt sorry for the man with his body full of needle holes and the woman who had lost an arm, but she couldn’t keep her stare away from the child who was being drained of blood. Was this the fate that waited Eric and Kim? Where was the train taking them? It hurt to think about, but she had to wonder if they were being taken somewhere worse.

  She straightened up. Despite the burning in her stomach, she couldn’t stop. The soldiers would be her soon, and she wouldn’t let herself be caught in a place like this, and she wouldn’t consign Kim and Eric to this kind of hell. She felt a hatred for the Capita scorch every inch of her skin.

  “Let’s keep moving,” she said.

  As they threaded through a narrow walkway between the cages, the darkness became thicker until the daylight struggled to find its way through. Heather, Mary and two other DC’s walked carefully, always staying an arm’s length away from the cages. The sounds reminded her of a walk through a zoo with the bestial cries and screams that scarcely seemed they could have left the mouth of something human. She heard a whimpering sound and tried to look at the floor. When it grew louder she looked to her right and saw a woman flopping around on the floor with her arms and legs gone.

  She decided she wouldn’t look at the ground as she walked. It made her want to empty her stomach, but she couldn’t ignore what was happening. Someone had to witness the horror of it all. To turn her head would have been wrong. She was too late to save them, but she wouldn’t pretend they didn’t exist.

  Across the warehouse behind them, the doors opened and boots stomped on the stone floor. A soldier shouted orders and then the boots began to disperse.

  “Did you know about all of this?” said Heather.

  Mary walked with her hands at her side, her stare never leaving a narrow space directly in front of her.

  “I was never brought here. Thought I would be plenty of times, but they never picked me. Or I got good at not being picked. But I heard the stories. Some say they’re trying to find a cure. Not me.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think they’re trying to do something even more terrible.”

  The infected started to groan in their cages as though something was stirring them up. The pounding of the boots sounded louder. Heather had to remind herself to push on, that to stop now meant getting caught. Then a voice boomed above everything else.

  “I know you’re here, Heather,” said the voice.

  She knew its owner all too well. She knew it belonged to a man who would never stop hunting her. A man who cared about nothing except his precious Capita. He probably didn’t have a family or anyone to love. The thing he valued most in the world was causing pain to others.

  “You have a choice,” shouted Charles. “Stop running and I’ll let you and your daughter go. All I need is the boy anyway. But I need to speak to you, Heather. I can get you in the Dome. You’ll never have to worry about anything again. But you must stop.”

  She didn’t believe him, of course. If she stopped, she would end up on the other side of a cage with tubes sticking out of her and cauterised stumps where her arms used to be. She wouldn’t allow that. And she wasn’t going to let him scare her anymore.

  “I know what you want,” she said. “You think I’ll just give up?”

  “I won’t argue with you. Especially not by shouting across a warehouse. Come where I can see you. For the mighty to live, a few have to die.”

  “I’ve made my choice, Charles. Fuck you.”

  “I hope it works out for you,” he said.

  He spoke again, this time not across the warehouse but to the men close to him.

  “Kill them all.”

  She heard their boots bolt down the narrow pathway between cages, and she could tell by the acoustics that they were catching up to her. She turned her head and saw Mary lagging behind. One of the DC’s from the cabin kept pace with Heather, but the other was gone. To her right and left were more cages, and infected stuck their arms through the bars and reached out toward her.

  She grabbed the latch of one other cages and pulled it open. When the door swung wide the infected walked toward it and out onto the corridor. Heather grabbed Mary and made her walk faster.

  “If I’m going to do this I can’t have you trailing behind,” she said.

  She went from cage to cage and opened them all to release the infected, creating a wall of the monsters behind her. The only cages she didn’t open were the ones housing DC’s. She wanted to let them out, but most of them didn’t even look as if they could even walk. To open their cage doors would be to invite the infected in to feed on them. Her heart began to tear in two as she left them locked away, but she couldn’t stop.

  Behind her, at the beginning of the walkway, she saw Charles heading toward her. Infected drifted toward him and his men, but he swiped them away with the swing of his pickaxe. With every arc of his arm the axe smashed against the skulls of nearby infected and sent them crashing to the floor. Blood, teeth and bone sprayed out, but Charles walked through relentlessly, eyes fixed on Heather, the beak of his mask poking through the darkness. One of his own men, a soldier with a gun aimed at an infected walking toward him, stepped into Charles’s way. The bounty hunter swung his axe and broke the man’s skull, and then stepped over his body.

  Heather’s heart began to pound. Her legs turned to jelly, and it wouldn’t be long until she just collapsed to the floor in a flood of panic. She forced herself to keep moving. She and Mary cleared the last of the cages and finally reached the end of the warehouse, where another set of double doors waited.

  These weren’t bolted, and it was easier to heave them open. As daylight streamed in from outside, she stopped across the threshold and lost her breath. Outside the warehouse, sitting in the daylight, was the train. In front of it, a welcome party with bared teeth and angry faces, were a dozen infected.

  Heather’s eyes snapped between the train and the infected, and her brain flitted from fighting the monsters to running for the train. It was a three-carriage steam locomotive. It was green, and ‘The Valiant’ was painted in silver along one carriage. Years ago, armies of trainspotters would probably have killed to get a sight of it as it made leisure trips over the train line with steam chuffing from its exhaust. Now it sat idle with DC’s on board, ready to leave for whatever hell the Capita decided to take them to.

  As the infected walked toward her she snapped out of her thoughts. She knew she couldn’t kill them all, but she wouldn’t let them stop her reaching the train. It felt like Kim and Eric were so close now.

  An infected lurched at her. She side stepped and pushed it away. Another span in her direction but she swung the butt of her gun and cracked its skull. She weaved her way through them, acting on instinct to get out of the reach of the ones who grabbed for her. Behind her, Mary screamed.

  Heather stopped just long enough to see two infected pull the old woman to the ground and begin tearing at her with their teeth. For a second she thought she should help her, but as the monsters gorged on the flesh of the woman’s neck, Heather knew she was already lost.

  Suddenly she felt a burning pain in her shoulder. An infected had taken hold of her and sunk its teeth into her shoulder blades. Heather grabbed it by the hair and ripped it away, shoving it so hard that it fell to the floor. Blinded by pain but knowing how close Kim and Eric were, she abandoned her instincts and just ploughed through the crowd of infected until finally she cleared them.

  As she walked up to the train she looked at the small windows on the sides of the carriages. The faces of panic-stricken DC’s stared back at her. Some banged on the glass and opened their mouths to shout, but Heather couldn't hear what they said. She ran along the train and looked into each window, searching for two faces. As she reached the last carriage she had given up. Kim and Eric were on there somewhere, but she couldn’t see them, and she didn’t have the luxury of time to climb aboard and inspect each carriage.

&nb
sp; Her shoulder felt wet, and when she turned her head she saw that blood oozed out of the bite-marks in her skin. Her body felt cold and she was surprised she could even stand up. She looked up again at the windows of the last carriage, and adrenaline exploded in her so fast that thoughts of falling to the floor disappeared.

  In the second to last window, Kim stared at her. When she saw her mother, her eyes went wide and she began to beat on the glass. Heather ran along the carriage and to the stairs. She took hold of the rail and lifted her foot onto the first stair, when something grabbed her and yanked her back with such force that she ended up on her back on the ground. She looked up and expected an infected to be stood over her, but instead it was the plague doctor mask of Charles Bull.

  “The mice always run,” he said. “But I always catch them.”

  He lifted his pickaxe in the air, and for a second it seemed to blot out the sun and leave Heather lying in darkness. It reached the highest point of its arc and hung there like a rollercoaster teetering over the edge of a drop. All Heather could think was how she’d failed. Her daughter stared at her from the window of a train that was taking her to hell, and the pickaxe about to hit Heather meant that she was nothing she could do about it. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the misery that she was doomed to die with.

  The sound of galloping came from close by. The pickaxe above Heather lowered, but not toward her. Instead Charles brought it down to his side and turned to see the source of the noise.

  Heather scrambled to her elbows and then propped herself to her feet. Her shoulder was soaked in blood now and she felt woozy. She looked beyond Charles and saw a horse riding toward them. On top of it, with a painted grin spread across his mask, was Max Armstrong.

  Max didn’t slow when he approached Charles. Instead he swung something at the bounty hunter’s face, connecting with the side of his mask and knocking the bulky man off balance. Max rode his horse around Heather in a circle and then headed back toward Charles in the manner of a jouster making his second turn.

  As Max and his horse approached, Charles stepped out of reach and then swung his pickaxe into the side of the horse, puncturing its flesh. The horse whinnied, faltered and then collapsed to the floor. Max managed to leap off without becoming trapped under the animal. He ran over to Heather and stood in front of her.

  “Where’s the gun?” he said.

  “I always knew you were Resistance,” said Charles, and walked toward them.

  “The gun,” said Max, and held out his hand.

  Charles took another step.

  “I never got rid of you though. You know why?”

  “Because you’re lying?” said Max.

  Charles laughed.

  “A liar is one thing I’m not. The truth is, having a mole wasn’t so bad. As long as I kept you fed, you’d dig the tunnels that I needed you to. Your little movement can’t do anything to stop the Capita. And you spreading the word about our plans can only help us. You know why?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Charles was close enough now to raise his pickaxe in the air with the intention of breaking Max in two. He lifted it high above him.

  “Because the more people know about us,” he said, “the more they fear us.”

  Heather stood up. She lifted the Heckler and aimed it at Charles.

  “They don’t fear you. They pity you,” she said.

  She pulled the trigger and expected it to blow Charles’s head off. Instead, she heard a click. She pulled the trigger again. Click. Panic rippled through her. Max grabbed the gun from her, released the clip and threw it to the floor.

  “Fuck,” he said. “Empty.”

  A rumbling sound sent a tremor through the ground. For a second, Heather thought that there was an earthquake and that she was stood on the fault line. There was a screeching noise, and a cloud of steam drifted from the train next to her. The rumbling grew and Heather realised that the train warming up and preparing to leave.

  This was her last chance. She had to do something, anything. She would take the blow of Charles’s pickaxe if it meant that Max would stop the bounty hunter. She would do anything just as long as the train didn’t leave.

  As she stepped toward Charles, Max got there first. Something silver flashed in his hand and in one swift movement he stabbed it into Charles’s chest. Heather saw that it was a knife, and Max had pierced Charles’s ribcage with it. Max went to pull it out when Charles grabbed his hand and held the knife in place. With his other hand, he grabbed Max by the throat and began to squeeze his neck. His gloved fingers closed around the Resistance man’s throat and made him gasp for air.

  Heather looked at Max, and then at the train. The wheels of the train were beginning to turn, and the steam was drifting from the top in plumes. It wouldn’t be long until it left. Across from her, Max’s face turned red. There was nobody to help him except for Heather, and if he died the Resistance suffered a mortal blow. He had sacrificed himself and left his family for the greater good, and if he died now, it would have been for nothing.

  Heather thought back to his words on the cart when they were in the wilderness.

  ”The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” he said.

  Heather started to run toward the train. How right you were, she thought. She reached the stairs of the last carriage and climbed onto them just as the train began to move. Somewhere inside were Kim and Eric. She had to get to them.

  As the train began to crawl along its tracks she tried to ignore Max and Charles behind her for fear that guilt would make her turn back. Instead she put a hand on the door handle and pulled it open.

  A man in a Capita uniform stared back at her from the inside of the carriage. His eyes registered a glimmer of surprise, and then in one swift motion he pushed her off the train and onto the ground. She hit the floor and felt pain burst in her back. Ignoring it, she straightened up in time to see the train pick enough speed that it was impossible for her to catch it. As she watched it move away and into the distance, carrying her daughter to a Capita hell, she wanted a hole to open in the ground and devour her.

  She turned around. Behind her, Max had somehow gotten out of Charles’s grip and was now stood over him, with the bounty hunter on his back on the ground. The blood poured from her shoulder and down her arm, and her body trembled all over. She felt a second away from passing out.

  She turned again and watched the train fade away, white stream chugging toward the sky. She didn’t know where the train was going or where its tracks went, and she felt like screaming as it moved toward the horizon.

  This wasn’t going to be the end. She would find Kim again, even if it meant following the train tracks for thousands of miles across infected-filled wastelands. And then, with Kim and Eric safe, she would walk back again. She would return to the Dome and face the Capita. They didn’t inspire fear in her anymore, only hate, and now she wasn’t scared to do something about it.

  27

  Ed

  A final leap

  Ed was so stunned that he didn’t even get up off the ground. He looked at The Savage’s face and waited for him to laugh or smile. Someone was having a joke, and Ed was the victim. There was no way this man could have known James, was there?

  He looked up at the sky. It was darkening, and soon blackness would cover the island again. He didn’t want to spend another night on Golgoth. He wanted to leave it, but not just because of the infected. He wanted to get away from the house which was nothing but a shrine to memories he’d never forget, to people he’d never get back. He wanted to get away from the island where he’d wasted years of his life hiding from emotional pain that he should have faced long ago.

  Joke or not, The Savage’s words wouldn’t affect him. Ed realised now that James was gone and was never coming back. But the fact that he’d lost his brother didn’t mean he should give up on everyone else.

  Bethelyn stood a few feet away from The Savage and stared at him warily. She didn’t seem to know wh
ether to help Ed or to keep guard against the stranger. Behind them, toward the village, the rest of The Savage’s group fought the oncoming infected. It was a battle of eight against nearly sixty, but the strangers seemed strong and experienced warriors by the way they swung their weapons, and it looked as though the numbers would even up soon enough.

  Even from across the plain Ed heard the grunts as they carved through the flesh of the infected. He heard the bodies of the Golgoth residents hit the floor after being sliced open. Then he heard a scream, one that wasn’t from the effort of swinging a weapon but from something else. A man, wearing a fur coat that had a grey streak down the middle, had failed to see Golgoth’s infected postman as he crept up behind him. Before he could even react, the infected had dragged him to the floor and torn open his neck in the same way he used to tear open the envelopes he couldn’t be bothered delivering.