It was deliberate. To startle her in her burrow would be a mistake. He wanted her to know who approached. He knelt at the sheltered opening. He could sense the tension. He could hear her quickened breath. The terror that emanated from the dark little hole was a physical thing, a bubble of panic that surrounded her.
Light reflected in tired eyes that blinked from the shadows. Euan gave a nod before he rested his back against the log. It took time to find the perfect position. The ground was wet and icy. He placed his rifle prudently at his side. The stock was to the mulched earth, the barrel tilted towards a darkening sky.
Desperation was a keen motivator. Trapped as she was, she would use whatever small arsenal within her abilities to protect herself. Going in after her was unwise, and he was hungry to show her that life under his care didn’t have to end on a meat hook, that he could provide the safety she craved.
‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ Euan murmured, as his throat grew thick. ‘It was barbaric.’
His words were inadequate, meaningless. No language had the vocabulary to articulate the sadness that Euan held in his heart, the outrage he tempered, or the hollow sense of loss for a benevolent society eviscerated by a plague.
It came as no surprise when silence was his reply.
He continued regardless. ‘We haven’t formally been introduced. I’m Euan McKay.’
There was a distinct rustle. Euan focused on the sky as she started to dig, her escape eminent. The first of many glittering pinpricks of light began to enlighten the deepening navy. Altruism was extinct. Compassion and decency were subsumed by terror and anarchy. A brief surge of realisation had him fully comprehend the poignancy of the moment, his ass in the dirt as lives that mattered were torn apart by the rising tide of dystopia.
He felt as small as he was. Simply one man against an unfathomable opponent. His focus shifted to where the trees thinned and the grass lengthened. Amongst the shadows he saw the telltale smudge of blond against a dark backdrop.
He wondered in that moment if what he’d seen today had been the catalyst that had altered Smith’s course, tilted the axis of his consciousness to the point that he could no longer hang onto the flawed mechanics of a destructive society. A culture that had taken naive boy and forced him to become an honourable man.
Or simply human.
He voice was hoarse when he spoke. ‘I’m going to protect you. Both of you from the people that did this.’
Her silence was overwhelming. The violence suffered here was insurmountable and her reserve solidified his dedication to a cause that would witness more bloodshed. His fury festered. It consumed him, burrowed deep inside his soul to force his hand.
Euan knew what needed to be done. And who needed to see it to fruition.
He may be one man, but so was his adversary. Mickey-O needed to die, and it would be his hand that would grip the blade.
He wondered if Mickey-O harboured rage as bright as that which burned in his chest. He hoped he did. It was a significant motivation to kill.
‘After I know you’re safe, I’m going to find the bastards that did this, and I’m going to rid the earth of them, and any who ally themselves with their cause.’ It was an oath, a pledge. A deliverance of truth and justice that he would see to completion, despite the sacrifices made to do so.
Namely, two beautiful souls who hid in a bunker.
A bunker he thought of home.
But they would have no home if the men that could cause this level of destruction continued to breathe.
The scratching and rummaging had ended. Euan was tired, a weariness that was more than just the fatigue of the body. His chest was tight. He longed to remove his clothing despite the cold, loosen the protective outer layer and expose his skin to the air.
Night was gathering, the darkness deepened. A part of him knew he had to return to Nick and Kira. Another, more violent part, wanted him to see this through to its violent end.
These violent delights have violent ends.
The Shakespearean quote was another example of the poignancy of the moment, of the monumental change in his trajectory. It was apt. The last time he’d quoted Shakespeare, he thought he was being led to his death.
But in this instance, he would be the one at the head of the charge.
He’d lost sight of Smith in growing gloom.
‘He needs you,’ the reality of his words caused more pain. ‘He won’t survive without you. You’re his beacon, don’t take your light from him.’
An early mist was amassing with the night-time chill. It rolled through the pine, the naked oak, the distant ramshackle buildings of death that could still be discerned through the trees. She still did not reply.
‘This place isn’t safe,’ he told her.
Finally, a raspy voice broke the silence. ‘Nowhere is safe.’
Euan took a long time to answer. His thoughts were a mire of twisted emotions and trajectories. All included his body and his strength at the epicentre.
His words, when they came, echoed a thousand hopes for love, for safety from this anarchy, for a future.
‘I am safe,’ he told her.
He meant it.
Chapter 11
Euan had not kept his promise. He was not going to return in one piece.
He was going to come back shattered and broken. A tarnished shell that was riddled with cracks and fissures.
He would arrive with a goal to shed further blood. To purge the world of monsters and mayhem. To take fate into his big hands and alter the course of the human race by eradicating the presence of one single man.
It was an objective he would complete alone, likely causing his own death to see it done. But to give Nick and Kira a chance at life beyond this horror story, he’d do it gladly.
Smith now rested close to his side. The boy’s breath slow and even. He was awake, but he was calm. In the quiet of a hushed, frozen woodland, where even the nocturnal animals kept close to their warm lairs, it was simple thing to communicate his thoughts.
‘You’ll take me to Nirvana, show me what needs to be done to finish this.’
Smith’s reply was slow to come. ‘No.’
Euan held no remorse in his reply. ‘It’s the cost of her safety.’
Smith shivered. Euan stretched out his arm and waited for the boy to accept his demands and the warmth of his embrace. He pulled his jacket open where a skeletal body might fit into the expansive nook created to do nothing but offer shelter.
There was a moment of hesitation, a silent war that waged inside the exhausted, spent and famished mind. Heartbeats thrummed in a chest before slowly, carefully, humbly, that desperate body partook in the warmth and safety Euan provided.
The woman’s den would keep the chill from hounding her. Yet most of Euan’s body concealed the entrance, to further shield her from the mist, the rolling chill, the elements that would otherwise have infiltrated that nest with icy fingers. It was an effortless benefit Euan’s bulk provided. Smith buried deeper into the heat Euan’s body generated. He was thankful for a moment he could provide true respite before the dawn crested and the horrors of this world had to be confronted.
Bodies needed to buried. Obligatory prayers to apathetic gods were required to be whispered.
Rendered slashes in souls would be mended with thread made with nothing but closure and compassion.
Then a long trudge home.
Home …
Euan dismissed the thought. Until the world was rid of Mickey-O, Euan would have no home.
Smith’s gasps evened and lengthened. His rigid body turned soft. Exhaustion finally won against a will almost as tenacious as Nick’s. Smith slipped into sleep, and Euan pulled him tighter against his body.
The dawn would see his plans come to fruition.
But it would see the end of his family. The loss of two hearts more dear to him than the blood that ran through his veins, than the light that touched the earth, then the thought of a life beyond this destructive existence
.
What was left in his chest began to wither and die.
***
As dawn crested over a misty horizon, they buried the bodies.
The earth was frozen and unyielding, and conscious of time and discovery, they were forced to cover the shallow graves with the scattered debris of the surrounding buildings in the hope it kept the wild dogs from digging up the corpses.
There were no tears. No words of comfort or parting wishes for languishing souls.
The woman had returned to her mute state after her few words and Euan hadn’t pressed her. But it was obvious in every movement she made to prepare the bodies for their final resting place that the men now buried in the dirt meant something to her. Something vital and deep.
Something now irrevocably broken.
Once their macabre task was complete, they readied themselves for the journey. The woman was clothed and boots were laced on her feet from the supplies they’d brought with them. Finally, three figures dressed in dark fatigues left a place riddled with malevolence and death.
They moved with care though the grass and sparse scattering of trees. They kept the highway to their right. Despite frequent breaks, both the woman and Smith’s physical states had them easily tire. Euan had forced them both to eat all the remaining rations. As the bunker was close, it was important to keep their energy level high to maintain momentum. By that afternoon, they would enter the forest that surrounded the bunker, and soon Euan would be able to take a breath of untainted air.
Euan patently waited for the woman to scramble over a jumble of boulder stones. Smith at her side, his grimy palm outstretched to assist her in her task.
The air that surrounded them shifted. A whiff of danger, of menace and peril travelled with the light breeze. Euan paused and scanned the surrounding terrain. They were hidden in the overgrown scrub that lined the highway. An abundance of persistent and overpowering force—nature in all its untainted beauty.
He squinted into the sun and breathed in. The unwelcome sense of unease fuelled his weariness.
‘Smith,’ he hissed and held out his hand in unsubstantiated warning to halt.
The young man paused and focused his way.
Their gazes locked, held. Smith parted his lips to answer, as icy eyes widened in alarm.
In the moment it took for Euan to decipher the expression, Smith moved. In a single, great stride, he launched his body towards him. Euan had no time to react, he simply prepared himself for the full impact of Smith’s trajectory to collide with his own.
Euan hit the ground hard. Branches and rocks slammed into shoulderblades and ribs. He was momentarily winded, even as Smith rolled over him and stood.
On two feet, facing an attacker twice his weight, he took the knife that had been intended for Euan’s throat into the muscle at his shoulder.
Smith’s grunt of pain was consumed by the dense thicket around them. As he fell to his knees, blood bloomed from the knife embedded in his flesh. His hands flew unerringly to the Sig at his belt. He pulled the weapon free, aimed, and with faultless accuracy, he squeezed the trigger point blank into the attacker’s face.
The gunshot resounded like a clap of thunder. It pulsated through the landscape to herald human activity to any who should hear it.
A pile of bloody rags, minus the back of skull, fell to the leaf-littered ground. Just as another attacker emerged through the trees.
Euan’s instincts kicked in. His innate reflexes created a honed, hyper-alert machine. He became an instrument of death, unconcerned with the repercussions of further blood staining his hands.
He dodged a second knife slash from a man who looked more like a starving bear than anything human. His body was covered in filthy, ragged clothes, his hair long and matted, and his beard patchy.
Euan had no time or space to aim a rifle, so he pulled the bowie knife from his belt with a flick of his wrist. The full power of his large body was behind him when he thrust the blade forward and embedded the steel into the sternum of his assailant. Blood spurted from the wound to cover his hands. A gurgling cry resounded through the trees.
The stench of unwashed decay was overwhelming, but so was their ferocity. These animalistic men were tenacious, even in the face of death. Euan squared his stance when the man who still had Euan’s knife protruding from his chest rushed towards him. A battle cry bellowed from his cracked lips, the rot in his molars evident.
Euan roared back. He leaned into the howl with every emotion that he harboured. The man stumbled at the thunderous call, but continued to charge. Once in range, Euan raised his fist and smashed it into the open maw of the man. The crunch of bone shattered under his knuckles. There was a bubbling howl of pain, followed by an angry slurred curse before his foe finally collapsed to his knees. Euan kicked out. His heavy boot landed squarely in the man’s face. It felled him in one final, obliterating blow.
Euan’s eyes swirled, his body followed his gaze as he searched his surroundings for further onslaught. To his left he found Smith. He grappled with a third man, a knife brandished between them. The blade was stained crimson with Smith’s own blood. The woman was beating at the man’s back with tiny fists in an effort to aid in his take-down.
Euan took the few precious seconds to bend and retrieve his knife from the body of his vanquished. In a single jerk, its warm weight was a comfort in his sweat-slicked hand.
In his struggle, Smith had taken a slash to the face. His bearded cheek dripped red. But he was still fighting with the strength of a man unwounded. A man who knew that if he paused for even a moment, he was dead.
Euan grabbed the hair of their enemy and pulled him bodily off Smith. His knife found purchase easily into the belly. He wrenched the blade upwards, and slid it through the unprotected flesh like butter.
The dying man’s gurgled laughter was frightening. His malnourished and skeletal body vibrated with the hysterics. The aggressive teeth of terror bit ferociously into Euan’s bones, and held.
Smith took the knife from the ground where the man had dropped and, without hesitation, stabbed it unerringly into the man’s eye socket.
Smith fell to his ass in the in the leaf litter. He was covered in gore, blood poured from a wound on his face and saturated the dark clothing at his shoulder. He clutched the sodden fabric at his shoulder, his face contorted as he bit back the grunts of agony.
The woman was at his side in an instant. She ignored the death that surrounded them as she tugged at Smith’s clothes to get to the wound beneath.
Euan fell to his knees in front of the young man in the blood-soaked earth. ‘Smith, look at me.’
Smith’s eyes were wild when he finally focused. ‘Fucking hell …’ he wheezed. ‘I thought, I thought they were going to get you.’
Euan firmed his jaw against the onslaught of banked emotion that emanated from the icy depths. ‘Let us look at that wound, yeah?’
Smith didn’t move. He simply huffed through the pain. Euan shifted quickly and helped pull the parka back from Smith’s shoulder until white skin met his eyes.
But it wasn’t just skin that he saw.
Scars … Fuck him, so many scars.
‘Smith?’ His voice quaked with shock.
‘It wasn’t Mickey-O,’ was all Smith could utter.
‘Christ,’ Euan swore in reply.
Smith swallowed, his emotion clearly visible in the tortured lines in his face. His muscles were strung tight, his lips were bloodied and twisted. Smith couldn’t run. His exhaustion, pain and blood loss would slow them down. That gunshot would announce their location for any close enough to hear it.
Euan made a snap decision. He threw Smith over his shoulder and shifted him until he hung comfortably. He stood. Smith grunted.
He turned to a dirty face and held out his hand. ‘I need your name, baby.’
Whisky-gold eyes studied the pale palm that was marred with black mud, facing upwards towards a clear blue sky. Finally, a dirty hand reached and out clasped his, as
two tears streaked down two hollowed cheeks. ‘Lily,’ she croaked.
Then they ran.
Chapter 12
Kira consumed her breakfast with deliberately small mouthfuls. The noise of her knife and fork as they clinked against the ceramic plate was grating. A reflection of the rigidity in the room.
She painstakingly avoided catching his gaze. Nick narrowed his eyes as his girl took an extraordinarily long time to chew her last mouthful. He spoke into the increasing tension. ‘Are you going to forgive me yet?’
Kira kept her focus on the placement of the omelette on her fork. Her posture was impeccable. ‘I haven’t decided.’
A slow grin split across Nick’s face. ‘Really?’
She sniffed haughtily and she replied, ‘Really.’
Nike sucked his teeth in an attempt to keep his humour concealed. ‘But you’ll still eat the breakfast I made you?’
She chewed, swallowed. ‘I don’t waste food.’
Fuck him, she was so pretty when she was pissed. ‘Your frugality is impressive.’
Cool blue eyes sliced his way. Her lips pursed, and a tiny furrow appeared between two blonde brows. Nick struggled to contain his chuckle.
‘Big words for such a pretty boy,’ she said, as she attempted to hide the glint of humour in her eyes.
‘You think I’m pretty?’
‘I think it’s lucky you’re pretty,’ she counted.
‘Otherwise?’
‘Otherwise I wouldn’t feel bad about bruising those lovely cheekbones.’
Nick couldn’t help it. Her proud reserve, even as she wore clothes that were disintegrating. The arrogant tilt to her chin despite her hair swirling around her shoulders in a battered mess. Her glorious little toes that curled into the carpet in an adorably youthful act.
It all gave her away.
Reservation was for pre-plague. Nick tipped his head back and whooped with laughter.
She was so fucking perfect.
He focused back on her just as her stormy eyes began to calm. Her sharp features softened and her tight lips reluctantly tipped up in a rueful smile.
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