Vicky jumped down to the floor and swerved around several chairs before she sprang back up onto another table. Just a few metres separated her and the crazy woman, who yelled again and lunged at the young girl, knife first. The girl’s scream joined that of the woman’s.
Just before the woman made contact, Vicky leaped at her, rugby tackled her around the waist, and knocked the woman from the table down onto the hard floor. Vicky landed on top of her, driving the air from the crazy woman’s body with a deep omph.
Vicky sat on the woman’s chest with her knees on the woman’s biceps. The crazed eyes of the lunatic showed a lack of humanity Vicky had only previously associated with the diseased. Lost in the confusion of her own mind, this woman clearly didn’t register any human rationality. Something had broken inside of her.
The woman twisted and writhed beneath Vicky’s weight, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t throw Vicky from her. After a short while, exhaustion took over and the woman lost some of her fight.
Vicky then felt a hand squeeze her shoulder. When she looked behind her, she saw Jessica flanked by Hugh and Serj. “You can leave her to us now, Vicky. Thank you.”
Hugh and Serj moved to either side of the woman and grabbed an arm each. Vicky climbed off her and stared at the dishevelled mess as they dragged her to her feet. Something had permanently switched off inside of the woman, and it didn’t look like it would come back any time soon.
The people in the canteen gathered around. All of them stared at the guards as if waiting for them to act. The tension in the air seemed to turn into something else, closer to anticipation than fear. Before Vicky could think on it any further, Hugh leaned close to her and said, “I promised you I’d show you what the alarm was for. Now’s the time to find out.”
A twinge twisted Vicky’s heart as she watched the three guards lead the woman away. She nearly didn’t follow the crowd out of the canteen, but she had to know what the alarm meant. As she took up the tail of the pack, she went by Flynn to bring him with her. Nausea churned through her stomach when she said to him, “We’re about to find out what the alarm was for.”
Flynn’s eyes shifted from side to side as they studied Vicky’s, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he followed her and the rest of the pack from the canteen. They headed for the corridors that led to the front door of Home.
Chapter 6
Vicky and Flynn followed the rush of people toward the small foyer at the front of Home. Many—if not all—of Home’s residents made the hasty pilgrimage, forcing Vicky and Flynn to the back of the crowd.
When they got to one of the sets of stairs that led from the canteen up into the foyer, the crowd bottlenecked and they couldn’t get through. Instead, Vicky turned to look at Flynn.
A deep frown stared back at her. “Seems like a lot of fuss for a batty old woman.”
Even this far back, the crush of bodies pushed against Vicky. Claustrophobia pulled her chest tight. Whenever she moved, she touched another person, and the collective funk of bodies that only washed once a week turned the air thick with the muddy reek of dirt. “It sure does,” she said in response to Flynn. “But you want to know what’s going on as much as I do, right?”
Despite their distance from the foyer, the people around Vicky and Flynn craned their necks and pushed and shoved to get an inch or two farther up the stairs. Whatever they were looking for, it seemed impossible to see it from where they stood.
When Vicky heard her name, she froze. It ran down the crowd, passed like a baton from one pair of lips to another.
“Vicky.”
“Vicky.”
“Vicky.”
As it journeyed through different voices and accents, it caught up with Vicky and shot straight past her. She’d not met many people yet, so they wouldn’t know her. Vicky called after the name as it ran down the crowd and into the canteen. “I’m here.”
As one, the crowd of people stopped and silence descended. For a second, everyone waited. A call then came out from those up in the foyer. “Bring her up.”
Although she received many resentful looks, the crowd parted for Vicky, who reached out and grabbed Flynn’s hand before she shoved her way up the stairs.
With the bodies packed as tightly as they were, she had to squeeze through the crush. She gripped Flynn’s hand hard to make sure they didn’t get separated.
At the top of the stairs, the crowd parted more willingly, and Vicky saw Hugh for the first time since he’d dragged the woman away. He still had a hold of the woman, but seemed to be waiting for Vicky before he made his next move.
Another couple of paces and Vicky found herself at the front of the crowd with Flynn. They stood next to Hugh and had a great view out of one of the large windows next to the door.
With a grim frown, Hugh dipped a gentle nod at Vicky that gripped her bowels in an anxious pinch. With so many onlookers, Vicky didn’t speak. Instead, she watched Jessica walk up to the large steel door and grab the bolt at the top. She turned to Hugh and Serj, her brows raised questioningly as if double-checking what they wanted her to do. Both Hugh and Serj encouraged her with a stoic nod, and Jessica closed her eyes as if in prayer.
The anticipation in the small room hung so thick Vicky’s stomach turned backflips and her heart crashed against her ribcage.
When Jessica opened her eyes, they’d glazed with tears, but she accepted her role in it all by returning a nod to Hugh and Serj. A deep breath and she pulled the top bolt free with a loud crack!
The sound of the lock took off over the heads of the dead-silent people in the entranceway, raced down the stairs, and got swallowed by the vast amphitheatre of the canteen below.
When Jessica leaned down for the second bolt at the bottom of the door, a few people in the audience gasped. The sharp hiss of it hit Vicky at the base of her neck and she flinched. Before she could look around to find the source of the sound, the large hinges on the huge steel door creaked as Jessica pulled it open.
The woman who’d lost the plot had been silent, almost sedate in comparison to her anxious state of only minutes earlier. It seemed like Hugh holding her tightly filled her with some kind of calm. But as she watched the large steel door open in front of her, her insanity returned. At first, she shook her head. A few seconds later, her entire body. A few more seconds, and she thrashed and writhed as if she could get free from the men’s strong grip.
As she twisted and squirmed, she screamed, “Please don’t. Please, let me be.”
Although Vicky watched the woman, she found herself looking more at Hugh for his reaction. A look passed between him and Serj; then, as one, they stepped forward with the loud woman so they stood just outside of the open doorway.
It almost needed a countdown before they shoved her out, but the men saved the woman that indignity. Instead, they continued to look at one another before Hugh nodded again.
They forced the woman forward with a hard shove and she stumbled out of Home. After a few wobbly steps, she tripped and landed flat on her face.
Both Hugh and Serj withdrew back into the foyer.
Vicky watched on, her throat dry as the door to the complex remained open.
It seemed that Jessica had frozen in place while she watched the woman splayed out on the ground. The woman made no effort to get back in. Instead, she got to her knees, remained hunched over, and sobbed.
When Jessica still didn’t move, Hugh shoved her aside and slammed the door shut. Two loud cracks echoed as he slid the bolts back into place.
Despite the press of bodies, silence consumed the entranceway. A few people shifted to peer out the windows at the woman.
Hugh, Jessica, and Serj all moved over to a window. Hugh moved to the one next to Flynn and Vicky; Jessica and Serj moved over to the other side. Everyone who had a view of her watched the woman outside.
After what seemed to be about a minute or two of sobbing, the broken woman shakily got to her feet. With her hair sticking out at all different angles, she walke
d through the long grass away from Home. She moved as a drunkard would after leaving the pub, so intoxicated she didn’t know which direction to walk in.
She walked with an awkward gait as she looked from left to right, clearly in search of the diseased.
When Vicky felt Flynn press into her side, she put her arm around him.
“What’s going to happen to her?” Flynn said.
“Maybe she’ll get away.”
When Hugh looked down at the pair, a sad regret twisted his features, and fear gripped Vicky’s heart.
A huge red button sat above the door. Vicky hadn’t noticed it before, but it seemed so obvious now as Hugh reached up to it. Before he hit it, he spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “May your journey be as painless as possible.”
A murmur of “Amen” came from the crowd surrounding them.
When Hugh hit the large button, the wet throb of the alarm called out. The same sound they’d heard before, it rang loud in the foyer, but it seemed louder outside.
At the noise, the woman stopped, almost like she’d given up at that point.
Before Vicky could say anything to Hugh, Flynn gasped next to her. Five diseased—all moving with their clumsy sprint—rounded the corner and came straight for the woman.
Before Vicky had time to even catch her breath, they’d crashed into the woman and knocked her to the ground.
For a moment, Vicky couldn’t see the woman for the bodies that dived on top of her, their faces leaning down and coming back up a second later covered in blood.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the diseased pulled back from the woman and left her twitching and bloody form lying on the ground.
Vicky looked from the fallen woman to Hugh and saw the grim set of his face. Horror had turned Vicky’s entire being slack at what she’d witnessed. Not so with Hugh. He didn’t seem to derive any pleasure from it, but he did condone what had just happened. Hell, he’d instigated it.
Before Vicky could say anything, a young boy in the gathered crowd said, “Oh no.”
It started as the woman’s arm snapping away from her fallen form. It kicked away from her body as if a jolt of electricity snapped through her. Then the other arm twitched. Seconds later the woman’s legs shook, spasming and twisting as she went through the bizarre animation process that turned a normal human into a diseased.
The woman then jumped to her feet. As if driven by the memory of what had happened to her, she sprinted back toward Home. In spite of the thick glass and steel door, Vicky heard her harpy scream. With her mouth stretched wide, her eyes bleeding, and fury driving her on, she ran straight for the window in front of Vicky.
The woman collided with the transparent barrier with a huge boom that drove Vicky—and several of the crowd around her—back. Vicky then watched as the woman pressed her face into the glass. The woman’s bloody lips pulled as she dragged a red line down the other side of the clear pane. The chink of her teeth tapped against the transparent barrier, almost as if she thought she could bite through to them.
After a few minutes of watching the woman, Vicky turned around to see most of the people that had gathered around her had gone. They’d seen the woman’s death; they seemed satisfied in some bizarre way. Maybe they’d seen the horror show so frequently, they didn’t need to watch any more.
When she shared another look with Hugh, Vicky shook her head at him, genuinely at a loss for words.
Hugh then left and followed the rest of the people, leaving just Flynn and Vicky remaining in the entranceway.
In the near silence, punctuated only by the woman’s growls and hisses on the other side of the glass, Flynn said, “What kind of place is this?”
Strung out with anxiety, Vicky shook her head. “I’m not sure, mate. But I don’t fucking like it.”
Chapter 7
The next morning, Vicky walked down the bleach-infused corridor toward the gym. She carried her clean clothes under her arm to change into after she’d worked out.
The boom of someone’s feet accompanied the whine of a treadmill spinning close to maximum speed. It could have been anyone in there, but more than likely it would be Hugh. He seemed more obsessed than most with working out.
A stale funk of sweat hung in the air of the gym like it always did, and whether it came directly from Hugh or not, Vicky couldn’t help but attribute it to him.
After Vicky had stepped onto the spare treadmill, she dropped her clean clothes on the floor and set the machine to a fast walk at number seven.
Before long, she’d picked up to eleven, like Hugh next to her. The pair hadn’t yet said a word to one another, and although Vicky felt Hugh look across at her from time to time, she continued to stare straight ahead.
The quote—one that she’d read the last time she’d visited the gym—stared back at her. Black on the yellowing walls, she finally spoke as she read it aloud, “I think I like what I am becoming.”
The thud of her feet played in time with Hugh’s, and he didn’t reply.
Vicky slowed back down to seven and looked across at the man, red-faced and covered in sweat. “Do you? A murderer. A savage!”
A large red button sat in the centre of the running machine’s console as an emergency stop. Hugh slapped his palm against it with a loud thwack. The machine slowed to a halt and he turned to face Vicky, panting as he looked across at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Flynn and I spoke last night. Now we’ve seen what you do to people here, we’re thinking of leaving. I said to Flynn I’d come and talk to you, just to give you a chance to explain your murdering ways before we make our final decision.”
As Hugh fought for breath, he shook his head at Vicky. “You’ve got it all sussed out, eh? What would you do with someone in that state?”
“I’d lock them up until they got better.”
“And what if they didn’t get better? Or worse, what if we thought they’d gotten better and we let them back into the community, only to find they hadn’t improved?”
A glaze covered Hugh’s eyes as if he’d retreated into his memories. “Ten years, Vicky,” he said. “We’ve been here for ten years. We’ve had people lose the plot in that time and we’ve tried different ways of doing things. But you know what? None of the other ways have worked. And you know what else? People die when we try to look after someone who’s lost it. The thing that sends them insane is being in here. Locking them up in a cell isn’t going to make them feel any better. I’d rather be”—he used air quotes—“a ‘murderer’ than put the lives of innocent people at risk. We have children in this place.”
Vicky opened her mouth to speak, and Hugh cut her off. “It’s sad, don’t get me wrong, and Joanne didn’t choose to lose her mind, but we’re a community, and we have to do what’s best for the community. As the leader, I have to make the tough decisions.”
“But is the alarm necessary? It seems like a frivolity designed to make a sport of murder.”
“Do you know what happens to people when you kick them out of a community?”
A slap against the red button on her treadmill and Vicky walked to a stop. “They get infected by the diseased?” she offered.
“Not always.”
“Then what?”
“They get resentful,” Hugh said.
“And rightly so. You’ve kicked them out when they needed help.”
“Help that we can’t give them. And when someone’s resentful, they seek retribution. Several years ago, a man we kicked out hid until we came out of the complex. He took out three of us before we could get him. The alarm makes sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Hugh picked up a white towel and dabbed at his face and neck with it. “What you saw yesterday is a part of who we are. Sure, it’s an ugly part, but it’s still who we are. We will never risk the community for the sake of one person.”
“So if I lost it, or if Flynn lost it, or Jessica or Serj …”
“We’d kick you out in a heartbeat,” Hugh
said. “It would be with a heavy heart, but nobody—not even me—is bigger than this community. If you can’t accept that, then maybe you should leave.”
Before Vicky could reply, Hugh stepped off his treadmill and left the room.
Chapter 8
Dressed in a fresh tracksuit, Vicky sat down opposite Flynn in the canteen. The vast space did little for communal spirit. With room to spare, everyone clustered in their own little huddles. Flynn had followed suit by choosing a table in one corner away from everyone else.
The broths they ate most days made the room smell of steamed cabbage. It took Vicky back to her school days of carrots and peas overcooked to the point where they’d had all the colour boiled out of them. But the broths prepared in the kitchen always filled a hole and at least had some flavour.
With a steaming spoon raised to her lips and the meaty smell of the soup lifting into her nostrils, Vicky blew on it. She looked up to find Flynn’s eyes on her.
Before she had a chance to take a mouthful, he said, “Well? What happened when you went to see Hugh?”
A sip of the rich broth and Vicky shrugged. “I expected him to be more defensive and ashamed of his actions.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Not really, no. He said that after running this place for a decade, when someone got to the state of that woman yesterday, the only option they had was to throw them out.” Vicky relayed the rest of the conversation to Flynn, especially the part about why they used the alarm.
The twist of youthful indignation slowly melted from Flynn’s face as he seemed to see some logic in Hugh’s defence of their actions. The certainty left his voice. “It all seems a bit messed up to me.”
Another sip of her broth and Vicky nodded. “Of course, but what part of our world isn’t?”
As Flynn pushed his empty bowl away from him, he looked at all of the people in the canteen. Maybe fifty people there, at least half were children. “So if it was one of these kids, the same would happen to them?”
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