by Rick Wood
Of course, the deadliest predator was one she wouldn’t hear coming.
But that was okay.
There was no way Dalton could find them.
Why would he think to look in a flat block?
No. She was safe.
She had to be.
As was Boy. Precious Boy, asleep beneath her arm. He was in such a deep rest, yet, she knew if she so much as took her arm away he would wake up.
She let her body sink into the bed, falling further into it, until she was engulfed by its pleasant warmth.
At some point she fell asleep, completely unaware of the threat that was approaching the building.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Their tracks weren’t tough to follow.
They had been sloppy. It was practically like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Boy’s big feet and Cia’s tiny feet had left a long line of footprints in the mud, guiding him seamlessly in their direction.
Dalton couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough not to search out their hiding place. That he’d naively kept following in same the direction, just aimlessly shooting in the hope of tagging one of them.
He’d been reckless. Foolish.
And whilst he swore it wouldn’t happen again, he could feel his mind throbbing, could see his vision constantly refocusing, and he wondered whether he was thinking clearly.
It was dark but he wasn’t tired. It didn’t deter him. With the trees hanging over him, he was disguised. He could barely see in front of himself, but he didn’t need to. His torch showed him the prints in the mud, the remnants of her running.
She’d been running from a lot of things, he figured.
The truth.
Her comeuppance.
The lies.
She deserves to suffer.
Whatever he could do to her would barely match what she’d done to him.
Not just him.
To a lot of people.
Her father. His friends.
Every single damn person in that damn bunker had died because of her. Yes, some managed to make it out, but how long would they have survived? How long would an inept politician who’d spent their entire lives being protected last in the real world?
Screeches sung above him.
Growls shook some faraway world.
Fuck them.
Let them eat me.
With way he was feeling, and with the rage that pumped through his body, he was ready to take on anyone, and anything.
Which was foolish, again. Reckless.
He wasn’t invincible.
The trees grew sparser. The bushes began to thin. The sound of wind through leaves and branches lessened.
He was coming to the end of the woods.
This worried him. He didn’t want to leave the protection of the trees. He hadn’t expected Cia to, and he was going to have to think soundly and clearly about this.
He followed the footsteps further, until the trees ended, and a clearing revealed itself.
Beyond this clearing was a town. Abandoned, looted, broken down. Houses covered in moss, cracks in the ground, blood stained on the inside of shop windows.
The tracks ended as the mud ended.
He had nowhere else to follow them.
He wanted to punch out. Kick something. Shoot something.
But he reminded himself once more that he was not to be reckless.
Cia had lived long enough to show that she wasn’t an idiot.
Violent. Sadistic. A liar.
But no idiot.
Just as his anger came to fruition, his annoyance at losing the tracks – he saw something.
High up in a flat block just across the street.
It was faint, but definite. A small light most likely lit by a single candle. A soft, barely noticeable amber glow against a curtain.
A growl shook the ground and he backed away from the street, reversed back into the clearing, into the darkness and shelter of the trees.
A Thoral came thudding past.
It wasn’t safe yet.
But he knew there was a light. He was sure of it.
It had to be them. It had to be.
He was going to have to run.
He wouldn’t see Masketes coming from the clouds, or Thorals from the darkness down the street, or Wasters bursting around a corner.
This truly was as pitch-black and pitch-black could get.
He checked his ammunition. Full.
He checked his knife. Tucked neatly in his belt.
He peered up at the window. Stared at it, as if willing something to happen, willing Cia to reveal herself, to peer out at the world below and show him that she wasn’t as nimble and adept as he gave her credit for. That she wasn’t smart, but just a sick, twisted little bitch.
He couldn’t wait.
Couldn’t wait to grab Boy’s throat.
To tear him apart as that twisted little bitch watched.
He couldn’t wait.
All he had to do was follow that candle.
THEN
Chapter Forty
Dalton found himself unknowingly staring at Brooklyn as he scoffed down his dinner.
This guy was his best friend, no doubt about that. He would do anything for him.
In fact, he had done anything for him – including taking a good beating from their sergeant and being locked in segregation for weeks because of it.
This guy was always on his side.
So why was Dalton beginning to grow scared of him?
What was it about him that was unnerving him so much?
His behaviour, it just…seemed to be becoming more and more erratic. Impulsively and needlessly hostile.
That kid…
Brooklyn was a bully. The child was probably terrified after losing his family in a world not made for solitary youngsters – and Brooklyn had taken advantage of that.
“What?” Brooklyn grunted, a mouthful of beans dribbling down his chin.
Dalton realised he’d been staring for a while.
“Nothing,” Dalton said, looking down and returning to his own selection of fried items. He absently prodded at a piece of bacon, pulling at the fat.
“Nah, what is it?” Brooklyn insisted. “You were staring at me for ages. I know I’m pretty, but I ain’t that pretty.”
“I don’t know. I was just…thinking. Forgotten what it was I was thinking about now.”
Dalton could feel Brooklyn’s stare now on him, lingering, shovelling a mouthful of bacon and sausage into his gob.
“It’s the kid, ain’t it?” Brooklyn asked.
Dalton sighed. He didn’t want to get into this. Brooklyn wasn’t the easiest person to engage with when it came to his views on other people and the world they now lived in.
“Come on,” Brooklyn persisted. “Spit it out. You got beef, share that beef.”
“It was just–” He stopped himself. He really didn’t want to do this. “That kid, man. He was so young.”
“Weren’t that young.”
“Couldn’t have been older than ten.”
“At ten years old I was beating my step-dad with his own belt for beating on my mother. Ten ain’t that young.”
This was exactly what he expected. Stubbornness confronting him like a tank speeding head-on.
“Forget it,” Dalton said.
“Nah, come on. I want to know what made me such an arsehole with this kid.”
Dalton placed his cutlery down. Turned fully to Brooklyn. If Brooklyn was as good a mate as Dalton thought, then Brooklyn would be willing to listen to him.
“What if that kid had family?” Dalton said.
“Okay,” Brooklyn said, still shovelling his food down. “What if he did?”
“Wouldn’t it be good of us to help him get back to that family? You know, instead of teasing him while he’s scared.”
“I didn’t realise we were such a bunch of do-gooders.”
“You don’t have to be a do-gooder to do the right thing.”
Brooklyn put his cutlery down too. Took a long, drawn-out gulp of beer. His face twisted like it did when he was readying himself for another one of ‘Brooklyn’s life lessons for the insane.’
“What does that even mean?” he asked.
“What does what mean?” Dalton retorted.
“The right thing. What is ‘the right thing’?”
“The right thing is helping others, is taking care of a vulnerable child, is–”
“Nah, see, you’re coming up with what the right thing was once. You know, once upon a time where we still lived in a society that went beyond an underground bunker. You’re talking about the morals of a world that no longer exists.”
“You don’t need society around to know that it’s wrong to be nasty to a poor child.”
“That’s a point of view. Like right or wrong, which is also a point of view. And is the point of view of people still in the hangover of a world destroyed.”
He swigged down another few large gulps of beer.
“Brooklyn–”
“No, Dalton, you listen to me. I love you, man, you are my brother – but you keep your beliefs to yourself, and I’ll keep mine to me.”
Brooklyn took his knife and fork in his fists and resumed diving into his sausage, shovelling it into his mouth with the juices squeezing out of his lips.
“Let me just ask you one more thing,” Dalton said. “What about his family?”
“Don’t give a fuck about his family.”
“Imagine they showed up. They didn’t like how you treated their kid. They wanted to do something about it. What then?”
“What d’you mean, what then?”
“I mean, say they really didn’t like it. Say they threatened your life. What would you do?”
Brooklyn shrugged.
“Kill ’em.”
He finished the last of his bacon and threw his cutlery onto his plate with a loud clatter.
“You would kill them?”
“I would kill anyone who threatened my life. Or yours.”
“Come on, you wouldn’t–”
“Listen to me, Dalton,” he said, jabbing his fat finger across the table, ignoring the faces that were beginning to turn toward him. “It’s the world we live in now. No one’s stopping them trying to kill me, same as no one’s stopping me trying to kill them.”
“You really feel like that?”
“If there’s one thing I can teach you about this new haven we find ourselves in, Dalton, it is this – if someone hurts you, kill them.”
Dalton stared back at Brooklyn, not sure what to say.
“Kill them, and kill them dead, Dalton. If they don’t deserve their life. Snatch it away from them. You got to be willing to kill to survive in this world. Kill, or you’ll never make it.”
Brooklyn stood, picking up his tray and walking away.
Dalton watched him go.
He didn’t feel like eating the rest of his meal.
Brooklyn’s words kept repeating around his mind.
You got to be willing to kill to survive in this world.
Was that really true?
Brooklyn seemed to believe it.
Kill, he had said.
Kill, or you’ll never make it.
NOW
Chapter Forty-One
Dalton had been trained by the army. Therefore, he was confident that he knew all he needed to know.
He was a soldier.
He was an expert in stealth and combat. He could craft a masterpiece of death. He was the Leonardo da Vinci of war.
But, as magnificent a painter as Leonardo da Vinci was – if you were to feed his mind nothing but anger and wrath, then all his paintings would become a chaotic mess.
And Dalton’s crafted masterpiece was soon becoming just that – a chaotic mess.
His hellish fever fed off his lust for vengeance and impaired those abilities he had spent so long honing.
Even his footsteps were loud. His body barging into the doorway as he entered the sixth floor, his gun clattering in an echo around the corridor as he collapsed to his knees.
He wiped his sweaty brow.
Pushed himself up with wobbling muscles.
He’d forgotten which window they were at. He’d counted, but the information had since faded.
But he didn’t need to remember.
He saw a faint amber glow seeping from beneath the crack of a door a mere few yards away.
He knocked into the wall, drunk without alcohol, ecstatic without ecstasy – and reminded himself of the need for stealth.
He turned the handle.
Locked.
No matter.
He put his gun over his back and withdrew his knife, squeezing it into the lock, and jimmying it until it opened.
The door slowly and silently swung open, displaying a room lit by a single candle.
An empty room.
Dalton rubbed his eyes. Willed his vision to focus.
As silently as he could step, and as catastrophically clumsy as he couldn’t fight, he edged into the room.
He stood. Still. Listening. Sensing.
From a nearby door came a soft snore.
He’d recognise that snore anywhere. He’d had to sleep beside that snore for months. Sometimes it kept him awake, and sometimes he was so tired he could drown it out.
Boy’s snore had never bothered him before.
Now it incensed him.
He edged toward the door, knocking his knee into the sofa and cursing the instant pain of a stricken knee cap.
Slowly, he rotated the handle and pushed the door ajar, revealing a darkened room with a bed in the far corner. A duvet – the luxury of the few – wrapped around a sleeping body, that same snore still humming away.
He couldn’t wait to end that sound.
And this was it. What he wanted. To end Boy’s life as a way of destroying Cia’s. The beginning of his vengeance – it was still not enough compared to what she had taken from him; but it was a start. One life lost to begin to make up for the thousands she took.
He kept his knife out, edging, softly placing his feet to avoid the moan of the floorboards.
He walked into the end of the bed and tripped, falling to his knees, and hastily looked up to see if he’d awoken the beast.
Nothing.
As unaware of the world in his sleep as he was when he was awake.
He stood over him.
A lump entirely concealed by the duvet.
The heavy snores of the innocent.
Innocent.
Dalton decided he shouldn’t think such a word.
No one who had survived could be innocent. No one could have survived this long without committing horrific acts.
He retracted his knife.
Threw it downwards, into the side, relishing the swift sound of its slice, feeling the soft squidge into the flesh.
He pulled his knife out and swung it downwards again, prompting a yelp.
That must have woken him.
The damned snoring had ended.
He stabbed again.
And again.
And again.
Then, seeing the body turn over, making out the shape of Boy beneath the covers, he could see where the throat was.
He plunged the knife downwards, sticking it in and holding it there, watching the duvet dampen, thicken with blood, growing in a pool across the cheap material.
There was a scream.
And Dalton took his knife out, watching the soaking blood grow at a far higher rate.
Chapter Forty-Two
Cia’s eyes opened with an urgency she was too sleepy to comprehend.
It took a few seconds to grow alert and realise what had awoken her.
Was that a scream?
As if answering her thought, it came again – though this scream sounded concealed. A deep, guttural scream, full of gargles.
Cia checked for Boy next her.
There he was, beneath her arm, eyes shut.
She shook him.
He didn’t wake.
She shook him harder, and eventually his eyes opened.
“Boy,” she whispered, “don’t make a sound.”
A commotion came from the adjoining room.
“We need to go,” she told him.
“But I’m sleepy…” he objected.
“I know, but it’s not safe, there’s someone in the other room.”
“No, I want to sleep!”
A clatter. A smash.
There was something there.
How long until it found them?
“Boy, get up,” she said, and pushed until he fell out of bed.
He went to moan and object, but Cia didn’t give him the chance – she stood, putting a finger on his lips and listening intently, straining to hear what was happening through the random sounds.
“Get your bag,” she demanded, finding hers on the floor and pulling it over her shoulders.
Boy delayed, as if deciding whether to be cooperative or angry – so she didn’t give him a choice. She grabbed his bag and shoved it over his shoulders.
She took his hand and opened the door, peering out.
The commotion was happening in the bedroom next to hers – the bedroom between them and the door.
The door was open.
Cia paused, considering their options.
They could run and hope that whatever it was didn’t give chase.
They could creep and hope not to be noticed.
They could wait and see what it was, see whether they could fight.
“Daddy?” came a quiet voice emerging from the bedroom to the other side of theirs.
Cathryn walked out, rubbing her eyes, inquisitive, meandering toward her father’s bedroom.
“Cathryn!” Cia said in a shouted whisper. “Cathryn, stop!”
Cathryn looked at Cia, as if deciding whether to stop, whether to trust her. She frowned, scowling at this new stranger, and decided she needed her father’s protection.
She ran to her father’s room.
“No, Cathryn, no!” Cia urged.
Cathryn ignored her, entering the doorway to the room with all the vile sounds.