Edge of Chaos

by Jack Lewis

  As as the boy went to pass the mask to her, the infected woman lunged. In his panic he opened his hand, and Heather watched as her mask hit the water and sank beneath it.

  “Shit!” said the boy.

  Her chest burned, and her lungs screamed for her to breathe. She unhooked the boy’s mask from his face. For him it was just for show, a symbol so he could pretend he was like everyone else. She slipped it around her face.

  “Let’s go,” she said, panting. “Don’t let them touch you.”

  At home, Kim boiled water and filled the bath with it. It took ten buckets of water to fill the bathtub, and they could only spare enough for one of them. Heather pushed the boy into the bathroom. So much for my soak.

  “Take as long as you need,” she said, and shut the door behind him.

  She went into the bedroom, stripped out of her clothes and put on dry clothes. Kim came in and sat on the bed.

  “What are we going to do with him?” she said.

  Kim hadn’t said a word when Heather had arrived home with a mask-less boy drenched in flood water. Without needing to be asked, she boiled water to fill the bathtub. Her daughter was more resourceful than she gave her credit for.

  “He’s not our responsibility, said Heather. “I’ve done my bit, and bad things will happen if they ever find him here.”

  “I know what the Capita do, Mum. I’m not a kid.”

  “You are a kid, and no, you don’t know.”

  Kim looked her in the eyes. “If they find you hiding a DC they take you outside, pull off your mask and make you breathe. Then they make your family watch you turn.”

  Heather rubbed her forehead. Her skin felt cold but clammy at the same time. Hope I’m not getting something. She’d made sure not to breathe the infected air with her mask off, but that didn’t stop her getting an infection from the water.

  “Where the hell did you learn this?”

  “If you don’t turn…if you’re immune...it’s worse,” Kim carried on.

  The boy emerged in the doorway behind Kim. His hair was drenched, and he had wrapped a towel around his waist. His ribs stuck out against his skin, stirring pity inside her.

  “They take us to the farms,” he said. “They make us grow and they feed us to anyone who gets infected.”

  A shudder ran through Heather. She’d heard of the farms. She’d heard whispers of the rich Capita citizens feeding the flesh of the immune to the recently-infected, hoping to cure them. She never believed it until now, but the boy had no reason to lie.

  “What’s your name?” she said to him.

  He looked at his feet. “Eric,” he said. “Eric Heaton.”

  “You’re going to stay with us for a little while, Eric. If you want to.”

  Chapter Nine

  Heather

  The smell of coffee was a testament to the Wes’s fortune, because it meant he could waste water on luxury. Not that water was hard to get; the world was still made of two thirds of the stuff. Untapped fresh sources were miles away from settlements, and danger lurked the further away from settlements you went. To most people, the idea of a hot coffee in the morning was the hangover of a happier time.

  Wes’s hair was better groomed than ever, with each strand tamed into place. His face had a roundness that was becoming desirable these days. A full face and heavy figure meant you had plenty of food, and you could take care of yourself and any potential partner.

  Heather stretched her arms across the desk and folded her hands, noting the thinness of her own wrists. She and Kim cut back on food because they were trying to store away as much as possible, but two days ago she’d added another hungry mouth to their household.

  The boy was ravenous, eating whatever was in front of him in seconds and asking for more. He never wore the spare mask she’d given him, despite Heather explaining that Capita men could spot check the house whenever they wanted. He was trouble.

  “Do you hear news from outside the Capita?” she said.

  The trader held his hands in front of his face and inspected his nails, all filed to a uniform length. “From time to time. Not much changes. People get by, people die. Towns pop up, and the Capita shuts them down. Or the infected overrun them.”

  The last thing Heather wanted to do was to sit at Wes’s desk and prise information from him. Who else could she go to? Wes met with all kinds of people, and his communication webs stretched miles outside of the Capita lands. He’d know where the Resistance lived. She had to get the information without him realising why she needed it.

  “Do you hear from anyone else?” she said.

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wes’s gave a shifting glance to the door behind him. He always did this. He’d turn his head so the door was in the corner of his vision, then he’d look back at whoever was sitting across from him. Nobody knew what lay behind it.

  “We’ve known each other long enough, Heather. You know enough about me to get me thrown in a Capita cell. Just spit it out.”

  She was tired. It was all she could do to get out of bed in the morning, and her duvet grew heavier each day. Sometime soon it was going to get so bad it would trap her in her bed and refuse to let her go. Her head was fogged. She had so many lies in there, that maintaining them was like spinning a hundred plates. Lies she told Kim, lies she told herself. Lies she told her students.

  “Supposing I needed to get in touch with the Resistance?” she said.

  “Supposing I asked why?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you.”

  The trader sucked in his cheeks, and his cheekbones stuck out. Wes must have been handsome, once, but his vanity didn’t appeal to her. A thought hit her.

  “Why don’t you wear a mask?” she said.

  “The air’s clear,” he said.

  “It can change in minutes.”

  “Not here.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table and then, as if realising he could destroy his nails, stopped. “I can put you in touch with them. I’m assuming that’s what you want? But nothing comes for free.”

  She didn’t like the sound of this. “Go on.”

  He looked her up and down, and she felt under-dressed. “It’s a price I know you can afford.”

  “What do you want?” she said.

  He smiled at her, and it felt like she was being smiled at by a hyena. “I want a share of the food you’re growing.”

  “How much?”

  “Half.”

  “That’s not a share. That’s robbery.”

  She pushed her chair back and almost stood up from the table, but the idea of helping Eric kept her there. She thought about the food in her garden and shook her head.

  “Give me half and I’ll arrange a meeting with the Resistance,” said Wes.

  If she gave him half their food, it would set them back months. Hell, there was every chance that by the time she got home, Eric would have eaten half of it on his own. He ate like he was trying to fill a hole that grew deeper with every mouthful.

  Before meeting her, he hadn’t eaten properly in weeks. He’d been alone with nothing but the groans of the infected to hear. If anyone but Heather found him, he’d have been sitting on the back of a Capita cart by now. She didn’t want to think about it. She’d heard about the screams that came from the Capita dungeons.

  Sounds of shouting came from outside the trader’s house, but Heather couldn’t tell what was being said.

  “I’m not going to barter with you, Heather.”

  “It’s stuffy in here,” she said.

  “So open a window.”

  She opened one. The clip-clop of horse shoes pounding on tarmac came from outside. Two horses pulled a cart through one of the streets, and five Capita soldiers were sitting on the back of it.

  This would have been enough to agitate her, but she spotted a lone horse trotting at the back. A man with a plague doctor mask sat on top of it.

  She felt like she’d been dunked into a bathtub of
ice water. Charles Bull. She couldn’t let the bounty hunter find her here. The trader town was a black-market hive that the Capita tolerated with a blind eye, but if Charles saw her here, it would look too suspicious.

  The cart stopped and the soldiers jumped off. One of them patted the horses. The rest separated, approached different doors, and knocked on them. Charles heaved his leg over the side of his horse and lowered himself to the ground. He turned his head from side to side as if stretching his neck, and he headed toward the trader’s house. His pickaxe swung from his back with every step. Heather bit her lip.

  There were three loud thuds on the door. More ice was dumped into Heather’s freezing bath. Wes opened his drawer, found his mirror, and adjusted his hair. Heather looked for a different exit but found none. I can’t let him find me here.

  “I can’t stay here, Wes.”

  The trader put down his mirror. “Just act natural.”

  “You don’t get it. He can’t find me here.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The man knocking on your door. It’s Charles Bull.”

  “A man with a heart blacker than ash,” said Wes.

  Heather fixed her stare on the door behind Wes, the one she had never seen him open.

  Wes turned his head. “Don’t go in there.”

  She tried the door handle and to her surprise, it opened. She’d assumed it was locked. The room was longer than Wes’s main trading room. There was a set of double windows at the end of it, but the daylight was shut out by blinds. A lightbulb hung from a chord from the ceiling and emitted a sickly yellow light. Wes must have a generator.

  Four beds were in the room, two on each side, with I.V. drips standing by each one. People lay sleeping in three of the beds.

  “What the hell is this?” she said.

  She felt Wes standing behind her. It was the first time she'd seen him walk from behind his desk for ages, and sure enough, he wore his jogging bottoms, making him look like a business man who couldn’t decide between going to the office or going for a run.

  Charles pounded on the door again.

  “Who are they?” said Heather, looking at the bodies in the beds.

  “If you insist on hiding, then shut up and go in.”

  He reached across the wall next to the door and flipped the light switch off, and he swung the door shut. As he twisted the key in the lock, she wished she’d found another way out. The darkness stayed thick while her eyes adjusted to it, but she knew the beds and the sleeping people were there with her. Something about it sent a tremor through her. She wished she’d taken her chances and jumped out of the window.

  Outside the room, the door opened, and there were thuds on the wooden floorboards as the bounty hunter crossed them. Muffled voices reached her. Charles spoke first.

  “Has anyone come to you, Wes?”

  The trader’s answer came in a higher pitch than normal. “Just the usual undesirables,” he said.

  A chair scraped across the floor. “Christ. Is this what you call furniture?” said Charles. “Get up, I want your seat.”

  There were footsteps and a thud as Charles sank into the trader’s chair.

  “Have you heard any rumours of a DC boy?”

  “Nothing, Charles. Why?”

  “There’s one on the run, that’s all. I only mention it in passing. You know why I’m here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There was silence. A few seconds later, Charles broke it. “Are they ready yet?”

  “Are what... Oh. No, not yet.”

  Resentment grew inside her every time Wes spoke. The way he acted with Charles, the way his voice changed. It was pathetic, but was she any better? For all the battles she fought against the Capita in her head, she wilted when she was faced with a man like Charles Bull. She said what he wanted to hear, no matter how much the words stung her throat.

  “How long until they’re ready?” said Charles.

  “A day or so I reckon. Then we’ll know.”

  Heather shifted her body closer to the gap between the door and the wall to try and hear their voices clearer, careful not to make a sound. She shifted her left foot and moved her body across.

  Charles spoke softly. “Where are the…things, anyway?”

  The trader’s voice was quieter this time. “Just through there.”

  “Maybe I should take a look.”

  He wants to come in here. Did she have the strength to push on the door and stop Charles from coming in? Maybe if he thought the door was broken, he would give up and go home. What a stupid idea. Maybe your head’s broken.

  Wes spoke louder. “Maybe you should get a warrant.”

  “I’m not a policeman, Wes. I don’t have policies or procedures. If I wanted to take everything you own, I would.”

  Heather held her breath as if it would stop Charles from wanting to come into the room. The consequences of being caught flashed by, starting with her arrest and ending in a cell in the Capita’s dungeons. Worse, she pictured Kim waiting at home and wondering where Heather was.

  Something moved in the room. Her eyes adjusted enough that she saw basic outlines, but she couldn’t peel back the darkness to see details.

  Bedsprings groaned as weight moved over them. Bare feet slapped on the floor. Uneven footsteps thudded. A couple at first, then more. A black mass moved toward her in the darkness.

  What the hell?

  She shrank back against the door, bit her lip and peered into the black as the figure stepped toward her. She felt across the door until she found the handle. She didn’t want to use it, but she needed to know it was there.

  The figure got closer, and Heather’s hand twitched on the door handle. The black shape stopped ten feet away from her. In the darkness she couldn’t see a face, but she knew it stared at her. Her skin crawled with hundreds of invisible bugs. A voice cracked through the darkness.

  “Where am I?” said a voice.

  She couldn’t take it anymore. The darkness was becoming heavy enough to crush her, and she the gaze of the person in front of her was as sure as a physical touch. She was throwing herself into danger, but a shudder of fear made staying in the room impossible. She opened the door.

  The light of the trader’s room was like a warm bath on tired skin. Her breath caught in her throat. The long beak and hideous leather of the bounty hunter’s mask was gone. Instead, there was only Wes, sitting for the first time on the other side of his desk. Seeing Heather, he got up and locked the door.

  “What the hell is in there?” said Heather, fighting to control her breathing.

  Wes sat in his desk chair. He seemed smaller than before. “Take a seat,” he said.

  “I’ve spent enough time at your desk. I’m freaking out. Tell me what the hell’s happening.”

  He put his hands across the table. “I’m earning credits from the Capita,” he said.

  “By doing what?”

  “It’s a good thing, really. You’ll understand.”

  She wanted to smack the devious look from his face, but she reined it in. “Explain.”

  “They’re trialling a cure. I agreed to keep the guinea pigs hidden, and the Capita helps me out.”

  Heather paced over to the window. Charles and the Capita soldiers galloped away on their horses. A few people gathered in the streets to watch them go, and at least one man had blood pouring from his forehead.

  She turned back to face Wes. “You didn’t do a good job hiding them,” she said. “Considering you didn’t lock the door.”

  “We both know enough about each other to know when to keep quiet.”

  “All the bullshit you talk about. The town you’re building, one free from the Capita. And all this time you’re sucking them off. What do they say about your black-market stuff?”

  A smile spread on Wes’s lips. “Every ruling body needs their dirty secrets. They need someone they can turn to for the things they don’t want others to see. They don’t know I funnel money into the Resistanc
e.”

  “How?”

  “I have a guy on the inside. He works for the Capita, but he’s part of the good fight.”

  “Who is he?”

  Wes shook his head. “Come on. I can’t tell you that.”

  “I’m out of here.”