Edge of Chaos

by Jack Lewis

  She ran across the courtyard to the porta cabin in the middle. She tried the door, but it held. “Damn it.”

  She pointed the pistol at the lock. It didn’t matter about the noise now.

  The bang rang in her ears, and her shoulder ached at the jolt. There was a hole where the lock had been, and the smell of spent fireworks hung in the air.

  Twenty thin figures filled the cabin. Some slid off beds and got to their feet, trembling in agitation. Heather squeezed the handle of her pistol. How many bullets did she have?

  Wait…they’re not infected.

  “Err…hi,” she said.

  Military-style bunkbeds lined the walls. Most of the windows were boarded, but someone had drawn on one, depicting a crayon scene of sloping hills with a golden sun beaming down. There was a darkened doorway at the end of the cabin, with rows of toilets sitting side by side, uncovered.

  She grabbed a chair from under a desk at the side of the room. She dragged it to the door and wedged it under the handle in time to stop an infected man push his way in. The door held firm under the rattling of the infected, but it wouldn’t stay that way.

  Some of the people slunk into the shadows of the room. A girl Kim’s age stared at Heather from the top bunk. Her face was clean, but dirt covered her clothes.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” said Heather.

  The people scuttled back. Heather put the gun in her pocket and tried to seem non-threatening. “I’m looking for two children,” she said.

  She girl on the bed perked her head up. An old woman wearing a necklace that dangled to her breasts stuck a foot cautiously out of the shadows.

  “They’re not here,” she said, in a cracked voice. “Guards took them away a few hours ago.” She cleared her throat, hacked up, and spat.

  Heather knew who these people were now. She stared at their bodies, at the scars on their arms and necks. One man, with a square jaw and rough beard, bore teeth marks on his cheeks. They’re all immune. Immunity should have been celebrated, but instead it led to this.

  Tears brimmed on her eyes. She pictured Kim and Eric in this same room, clinging to each other, waiting for the soldiers to take them away.

  Get a grip. Think of Kim and Eric.

  “Are they on the train?” said Heather.

  “That’s where they usually go,” said the woman.

  “What do you mean, they?” said Heather.

  “The ones who go to the farm.”

  A shockwave ran through the room, and some of the immune moved farther back into the shadows. The girl on the top bunk buried herself in her bed cover, leaving enough of a gap for her head to poke out.

  “How the hell did they get a train working? And where do they keep it?”

  “Nobody knows,” answered a man. He sat on the edge of the bed and rolled paper between his fingers. It looked like a cigarette, but she realised it was newspaper filled with floor shavings.

  “Ignore him,” said the old lady. “It’s a steam-powered train.”

  “Can you take me to it?”

  “If you can get me out of here.”

  The door banged, and the chair holding it shook under the force. How many of them were outside? The infected hadn’t approached the shed until now. She had led them here. These people might have been immune, but the infected wouldn’t ignore them.

  “I think I ruined our escape route,” said Heather.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll quit after a few minutes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The old woman straightened the necklace on her neck. Her blouse was baggy around her waist. It might have fit once, but it was more of a tent now.

  “Mary,” she said. “But it’s not the time for life stories, Heather. They might have buggered off for now, but the guards will be round to check in a few hours.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “The lad and the lass were talking about you. I’m not as old as I look, so you can take the pity out of your eyes.”

  “You got a better way out of here?” said Heather.

  “Through the door, of course.”

  Heather shook her head. “We won’t make it.”

  “Look at the chair. Is it moving now?”

  She was right; the door no longer rattled. She dragged it away from the door. As she grabbed the door handle, someone tugged on her back. It was the man who had been rolling a cigarette.

  “Take us with you.”

  Others rose from their beds. Their dark eyes and vacant faces made them resemble the infected.

  “Yeah, help us!” said another.

  “Leave them here, Heather,” said Mary. “You can’t save them all. Most of us already made our peace with what will come. Those who haven’t…tough shit.”

  “We can’t leave them here,” she said. “Everyone, this way.”

  She waved her hand in the air and gestured for all of them to follow her. The girl on the top bunk threw back her covers, swung off the edge of the bed and dangled herself closer to the floor.

  “Get ready,” said Heather. “When we leave, they’ll sense us. Keep moving.”

  She was finally doing something. She imagined the faces of the Capita soldiers when they opened the cabin doors to find it empty, and she grinned.

  She gave them all a smile she hoped was reassuring. “This is it,” she said. “Watch your arses and don’t let the bastards bite you.”

  A hole exploded in cabin wall. Popping sounds thudded against the plaster, dozens in succession, and holes dotted the plasterboard. Light shone into the cabin in thin rays.

  “Nigel!” shouted a woman.

  The cigarette man clutched his neck and fell to the floor, blood spraying over his chest. The little girl scrambled underneath her bed. A man screamed, while three others sprinted into the bathroom at the end of the cabin.

  More cracks rang out, and the wall became a sieve. Heather opened the door slightly.

  “Capita soldiers,” she said. “Lots of them, with rifles. Oh….shit.”

  “Heather?” said Mary.

  Heather couldn’t answer. Beyond the cabin, near the fences, two soldiers parted as Charles Bull entered the compound.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ed

  “Don’t pull it out,” he said, fighting to keep the groan from his voice.

  “It’s sticking out of you, Ed. You can’t run.”

  “Snap it off. If you pull it out, it’ll bleed.”

  “I was a nurse. I think I can handle it.”

  Bethelyn took off her jacket and tore off a sleeve. “This’ll hurt,” she said.

  Blood gushed out as she pulled the spear from his calf. His head swam in pain so strong he couldn’t think. He held back a grunt. Don’t scream. Be a man.

  The shouts of The Savage and his men boomed behind them. They marched in a line with their knives and axes raised in the air, like a hunting party trailing a hog.

  “Can you stand?”

  Ed tried to limp, but his calf burned as though someone held a piece of hot coal against it. He sank to the floor, bit back on the urge to scream, and rolled up the leg of his trousers. A film of blood covered his calf.

  He needed to distract himself. He looked at the cliff. The stranger’s boat floated in the sea at the bottom. The pathway down was rocky, and it sloped without warning.

  “Think you can handle the walk?” said Bethelyn.

  The Savage bellowed so loud not even the wind could drown it out. He pulled another spear from a pouch on his back, like an archer drawing arrows from a quiver.

  “Ed…” said Bethelyn.

  He rubbed his calf and wiped away the blood. The blood thinned into a dribble, but the pain was a blowtorch breathing fire on his skin.

  “I know, I know,” he said, between gasps of pain. “We need to move.”

  The pathway to the ship wasn’t an option. As brave a face as he wanted to put on it, he couldn’t hobble down before the strangers caught them. Rather than whimpering a
bout it, Ed wanted to do something. It wasn’t fair to doom Bethelyn to the same fate.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “You think I’m leaving you?” said Bethelyn. “Don’t you remember my big speech at the town hall? If we split up, we die.”

  “And Gary and Judith aren’t doing too good, are they?”

  Bethelyn put her hand out toward him. “Come on Ed. If you’re gonna give up, I’ll join you. So, you won’t just be screwing yourself if you’re a coward about this.”

  Heat rushed into his face. “A coward? After everything we’ve done?”

  Bethelyn moved her hand closer to him. Ed brushed it away and tried to stand. When his weight fell on his wounded calf, the fire burned in him again. He collapsed onto the grass.

  “Okay, you stubborn sod. You’re not a coward. But you’re not an action man.”

  He let her help him to his feet. Meanwhile, the strangers skirted along the cliffs, creeping up on them.

  His calf still throbbed, but he limped along. He wasn’t sure-footed enough to brave the cliff pathway, but he could walk enough so they could at least go somewhere.

  “We need to hide,” said Bethelyn. “Let’s go into the village.”

  “Back there again?”

  “I know this is the worst day of your life, having to spend time outside your bedroom and all, but if there’s another way, I’m missing it.”

  She was right. The patchy grass didn’t have any hiding places. “We’re asking to be caught if we stay. Wherever we’re going, we better move.”

  The strangers were a stone’s throw away now, slinking across the cliff with their fur coats flapping in the wind. They moved aggressively, like tigers hunting on the plain.

  “I’m okay. Let’s move,” he said, gritting his teeth.

  They reached the edge of the village. Ed’s house and Bethelyn’s cottage lay ahead. Scattered around were a handful of other decades-old buildings that had once been people’s homes, but would stand for years as museums of what had once been.

  Infected marched from the bottom of the street. A herd of them packed together, hissing and spitting and bumping into each other.

  “Guess that way’s a no-go,” said Ed.

  Even if he could run at full sprint, he couldn’t dodge his way through them. Monsters trapped them on both sides. The infected were slow and stupid, the strangers agile and cunning.

  “You in the mood to fight?” said Bethelyn.

  She rubbed her shoulder and grimaced, but she hid the expression within seconds of making it.

  He looked at the infected, at the faces of people he once knew. Between their snarls and the gnashing of their teeth, they seemed like extras in a horror movie.

  “We need to go back to the cliff,” he said.

  Bethelyn held her poker in her hand, her thumb wrapped around the handle. “Not your greatest idea,”

  “We don’t have many to choose from. What else can we do?”

  Her forehead creased. “Not give up, perhaps?” she said.

  He limped over to the wall, glad of something to rest against. The infected gained ground, but every cell in his body screamed for rest.

  “We might be able to reason with the strangers,” said Ed, nodding in the direction of the strangers. “but we can’t talk with the dead.”

  The infected closed in on them, an army regiment with dead eyes and a never-ending hunger. Behind them, the strangers trampled along the grass.

  Bethelyn nodded. “There doesn’t seem to be anything else left to do, does there?”

  Bethelyn wrapped his arm around her shoulder. The movement made him feel helpless, but he had to accept her support.

  They headed toward the cliffs. The strangers marched from the other direction, so they became two armies meeting in the middle of a battle field.

  Ed looked at the sky. For the last one he might ever see, it was clearer than it had any right to be. He wished for a time when Golgoth was still untouched, but that he had lived differently. Instead of becoming a hermit, he should have opened his doors. He still believed people could come and go without warning, but if you never let them in, there was never a chance they would stay.

  He had to say something. “Bethelyn? I wanted to thank you.”

  “There’s nothing to thank me for.”

  “You didn’t have to try and help me.”

  “I always thought about it, Ed. When your brother went, I was going to knock on your door. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner.”

  A narrow section of the plain separated them from the strangers. The cliff edge lay behind them, and from this angle it looked like one push would topple them into the sea.

  He was close enough to see their faces. Some had beards that grew over their cheeks. A couple of the men had shaved, and the red slashes on their cheeks made it clear they’d used their knife blades. Their eyes shone with youth, but wrinkles crisscrossed their skin.

  How did their eyes look so youthful? Maybe it was the way they lived now. Away from the trappings of office jobs and factory work, they found a purer way of life. It was tougher, but it made them feel more alive.

  The women’s faces fared better than the men’s. Though smaller in frame, they were no less imposing. A woman with thick eyebrows and hair curling across her face carried an axe that Ed wouldn’t even have been able to lift.

  Did they wear their furs for warmth, or to seem scarier? Maybe it was all costume. They were normal people once. The outbreak had changed them into survivors, but what were they before? Teachers? Bus drivers? Salesmen?

  The Savage pointed at Ed and Bethelyn. “For Kiele!” he shouted.

  “For Kiele!” answered his group.

  The strangers held their weapons in the air and ran at him.

  This was it now. Nothing to do but meet their end. He was glad he had someone to face it with. As if thinking the same thing, Bethelyn tightened her grip around his shoulder.

  He closed his eyes. He grew numb as he watched the approaching hoard. This is it.

  The strangers ran across the plain, but they didn’t attack Ed or Bethelyn. Instead, they ran beyond Ed and toward the village.

  Bethelyn spun around to watch them. “The hell?”

  The infected walked from the outskirts of the village. They had collected now, all the adults and children of Golgoth in a herd.

  The Savage stopped five feet in front of Ed and Bethelyn. Behind them, the strangers battled the infected, but the sounds of the fight muted as they travelled over the plains.

  The Savage’s silky, charcoal hair would have been the envy of most women. A mask covered his nose and mouth, with an open metal zipper on the mouthpiece. His fur coat was patchy in places, and the hairs had clumped together. His coat was torn at the edges where the lining spread across his thighs. His pockets bulged, but Ed couldn’t see what was in them.

  The Savage lifted his spear above his head, pointing the tip at Ed. “Well met,” he said.

  Cold sweat trickled from Ed’s forehead and into his eyes. He braced for the blow. The Savage drove the top of the spear into the ground.

  “Nowhere to run,” said The Savage. “And that’s good, because I’m knackered.”

  “What do you want with us?” asked Bethelyn.

  “It’s not what I want with you, it’s what I’ll get for you. Do you know what you’re worth? What people will pay for your immune flesh? On the mainland, you’d buy me a room full of boys and enough beer to drown a whale.”

  “You’re sick,” said Bethelyn.

  The Savage shook his head from side to side dramatically as if trying to shake fleas from his scalp. “No, no, no, no. I was sick once, not anymore. I’ve never felt more alive.”

  Bethelyn gave Ed a sideways look. “Seems we’re out of options.”

  He looked over to the cliff. He couldn’t see the immediate drop from here, but beyond it was the grey sea where the tide rushed into a frenzy. If they were going to escape over the sea, they had to do it soon. />
  “All except one,” said Ed.

  “Hope you’re a strong swimmer,” said Bethelyn.

  The Savage laughed. “Suppose you don’t die of hypothermia and you manage to reach the dump across the channel. You have no idea what’s happening there. You might find me distasteful, but some people make me look a saint. Do you know of the Capita?”