The stairs at the end looked familiar. When Vicky reached them, she bounded to the top in three long strides and came out in the first room she’d come to when they let her into Home. A large steel door with a window on either side, Vicky pressed her face against the cold glass and stared out.
Although her quick breaths steamed up her view of the outside world, she saw the boy approach. He’d gotten to within twenty metres of the complex. Vicky reached up and grabbed the large bolt at the top of the door. She slid it across with a loud crack and did the same for the bottom one.
Hugh had shouted something, but she hadn’t heard it. By the time he’d reached the door, she’d already burst free of the complex and sprinted out across the long grass.
Vicky waved her hands above her head as she ran. “Flynn! Flynn!”
The bedraggled boy looked at her; his shoulders slumped, his clothes filthy, a broken spear in his hand. The slightest twitch of a smile lifted on his face as Vicky continued to sprint toward him.
When she reached him, she fought for breath and pulled on his arm. Mud clung to the boy from head to toe, clearly from where he’d been buried. Tears burned Vicky’s eyes as she stared at him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I left you. I thought you’d died.” When she hugged him, it filled her senses with the reek of damp earth. “I’m so sorry.”
The scream of the diseased cut through their reunion, and when Vicky looked up, she saw several of the horrible fuckers come around the bend and head toward them. A tug on Flynn’s arm and she led him back toward Home.
Hugh stopped in his tracks when he saw them run back, turned around, and led the retreat to the complex.
A few seconds after Hugh ran through the door, Vicky dragged Flynn in with her.
Hugh locked them in, the diseased getting closer with every second.
After he’d secured the first bolt, a loud bang exploded through the small foyer and the bottom half of the door came away from its frame for a second. With his weight against the steel barrier, Hugh slid the other bolt home. The next bang had little impact on the secured door.
Vicky breathed a relieved sigh and looked at Flynn again. Tears turned her world blurry, but she tried to look at the boy anyway. Her words croaked when she said, “You’re okay! You’re okay!”
Despite her poor vision, she saw the smile on Flynn’s face. “Of course I’m okay. I’m not the kid you think I am.”
Vicky smiled through her tears and hugged Flynn again. Now she’d gotten herself clean, she suddenly realised just how bad Flynn smelled. A mixture of mud and ground-in dirt, he stank like an old bog. Vicky pulled away and laughed. “You need a bath.”
When he laughed too, Vicky balked at the alien sound. It had been a long time since she’d heard him happy like that. She cried harder than before and then took the boy’s hands in hers. As she drank in the sight she thought she’d lost forever, she said, “We made it, mate.”
When they pressed their foreheads against one another’s, Vicky watched Flynn’s tears fall to the ground. He drew a deep and stuttered breath and said, “We made it.”
Ends.
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Michael Robertson has been a writer for many years and has had poetry and short stories published, most notably with HarperCollins. He first discovered his desire to write as a skinny weed-smoking seventeen-year-old badman who thought he could spit bars over drum and bass. Fortunately, that venture never left his best mate’s bedroom and only a few people had to endure his musical embarrassment. He hasn’t so much as looked at a microphone since. What the experience taught him was that he liked to write. So that’s what he did.
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