After a moment of him examining my face, he commands, “Wait, keep the girl. She’s fiery, I like that. Lock her down in the boiler room until she’s prepared to be nice.”
Someone grabs my arm and tries to pull me away from Alex and my father.
“You bastard!” I shout before spitting at him.
Alex tries to get up and manages to barge one of the men out of his way, but another blocks him. My father is also fighting against his captors, but is met with a boot to the face.
“Wait,” a voice calls through the crowd. People start to move as someone makes their way to the front.
It’s a man in his mid-to-late thirties, dark hair, and a face that looks vaguely familiar. His arms are covered in tattoos, his T-shirt and combat trousers are dirty, but the knives strapped across him from his left shoulder to his right hip are spotlessly clean.
Leo beams when he sees him and pulls him into a hug with a back slap. “Sammy, my man. Back from your raid so soon?”
The man shifts slightly, his face unreadable. “Yeah man, found what we needed.”
Leo jerks a thumb at my father and Alex, that smug look still plastered on his face. “We’re just taking out the trash.”
Sammy sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Leo, you can’t.”
Leo huffs in response, he clearly doesn’t like to be told what he can or can’t do. He pats Sammy on the back again, it’s a show of dominance between these two men.
“Awh, man, not this again. If we don’t have rules, there is no order. No peace.”
Sammy looks across at us, his face dark. “Leo, that’s my brother…”
“That’s your Alex?” Leo’s expression turns to one of interest. “The Alex who can break into anything, anywhere?”
Sammy glances away as if he’s shared some top secret titbit. “Yeah.”
Laughing, Leo slaps his thigh. “Well shit, we may just have use for him.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alex
Sammy leads Hazeldine, Mia, Donovan, and I into a large tent I assume is his. I say that because there’s a bed in one corner, a sofa made of pallets, and cushions and a makeshift dresser, and on top of it, there’s a picture of my mother, and beside it, her gold bangle. She was wearing it when she turned, I wonder for a moment how he got it but then I decide I don’t want to know.
There is a reason I never mentioned my brother to Mia, a reason I left London alone. See, Sammy wasn’t a good person, he would drag everyone down around him. He was with a street gang, it had some stupid name I can’t even remember now, but my mum was sick with worry about him. When he got hooked on heroin, my mother threw him out of the house, she just couldn’t take it any longer. She’d drawn her line in the sand, and he crossed it repeatedly; it broke her heart, but she hoped it would be enough to give him the wake-up call he needed. Looking at him now, he’s gained some weight, which is unusual considering the circumstances, and he looked good. Clean. I guess Mum was right.
“Alex...it’s been a while.” He pulls me into a hug, and while I want to be angry with him, I can’t. My brother survived the apocalypse. My family wasn’t all gone.
“How did you get here, Sam?”
“The SSS. Mum always said they’d be the death of me,” he gives a hollow laugh, “But in the end, they saved me.”
SSS—the South Side Syndicate, I remember now. A gang notorious in London for bank robberies, drug dealing, arms trafficking, and any other crime you could think of. My mother had wept when she’d read a newspaper article about the nine people injured in a shootout between the SSS and a rival gang. As a nurse, she mourned the waste of life, but she also knew what trouble that kind of life would bring Sammy.
“They had weapons, hideouts, and man power.” He shrugs casually, as if the thought of a gang offering refuge in an apocalypse was normal. I wonder just what he did for them, how much his freedom cost.
“So, is Leo SSS?” Donovan asks as he takes a seat on the pallet sofa, long legs stretching out in front of him. He was probably just as exhausted as I was, but he never let on. Showing weakness in a place like this only guaranteed danger.
“Used to be, now we go by Wharf Rats.”
“Catchy,” Mia chips in, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
Sammy narrows his eyes. “It’s what those military bastards called us, and it just kind of stuck.”
“So, the army was here?” I say slowly, trying to gauge the situation.
He shrugs again. “Yeah, they were. But they aren’t now.”
Mia’s standing now with her arms crossed, annoyance on her face. “What happened?”
Sammy laughs, and it sends chills down my spine. This man was my brother. I mean, he looked like my brother, sounded like my brother, but something was off. He was almost the man I remembered but not quite. He pours himself a shot of vodka from a bottle he’s pulled out from under the bed.
Downing it, he turns to us, suddenly serious, and says, “Trust me man, you don’t want to know. Leo has this huge thing about authority figures, and he shows no mercy.”
“What does he want with me?” I tilt my head, wondering exactly what my brother had said about me.
Sammy scratches the back of his head. That was his nervous tick. He coughs, clearing his throat. “He wants your skillset…”
I used to steal cars, sometimes I would assist in the SSS robberies—I’ve cracked a safe or two in my time. That was the kind of influence Sammy had and why I created distance between us. I could see the path I was heading down, I saw the sharp downhill slope approaching, and I wanted to do anything I could to stop it. I got out.
“For what, Sammy? Stop dicking around,” I say sharply. I’m getting fed up of my brother dragging out the shitty news. I refused to be a puppet, dragged along by the strings.
“There’s a vault in an MI5 building across town. Leo wants in.”
I can feel my eyes practically pop out of my head. “I’m sorry. What?”
“He’s got big plans.”
I take a moment and let it all sink in. “He wants me to break into the Secret Service building and rob them?”
Sammy grins. “It isn’t robbery brother, and it’s deserted. We cleared it weeks ago.”
He sounds almost proud of himself. What has he gotten himself into?
Mia scoffs at Sammy. “MI5 is intelligence, what could you want from them?”
Sammy sits on the edge of the bed, a strange excited gleam in his eyes. “There is a weapons cache. He knows someone who used to work for the government before the outbreak. He wants that, but also, there may be some information…”
The way his leg starts jittering tells me there’s more to this, he looks like an addict chasing a high. “Sammy, you better spill.”
Sammy swipes a thumb across his bottom lip. “Nuclear weapons. He wants info on WMDs.” He declares as if Leo was just out shopping for the latest pair of Nikes.
Mia sits slowly, shock and horror clear on her face. “You trust a nut like Leo with weapons of mass destruction? Who the fuck does he think he is?”
I have to say I agree. Leo was unhinged. He was running some sort of dictatorship built upon fear, punishment, and control. Brute force and guns kept him on that stupid throne of his. This would be like handing him the golden goose.
Sammy points at her, his face twisted. “Listen bitch, he’s kept us all alive. We owe him our fucking lives.”
“We don’t owe him ours, and Alex isn’t going to do this,” Mia says.
Sammy laughs again. And again, there’s something in my mind screaming at me that this isn’t the same person I grew up with. “You don’t know shit about what Alex will or won’t do. Trust me, Leo can be very persuasive.”
I grab Mia’s hand and pull her to her feet and go to leave. “She’s right, Sam. I won’t do this. I won’t hand what’s left of humanity to this madman on a plate.”
“I wouldn’t go out there if I was you,” Sammy warns, there’s a touch of malice to his voice.
“Why?” Donovan asks as he lifts the tent flap.
He sniggers and drinks another shot. “Because you’ll see just how much Leo hates the military.”
Mia’s eyes meet mine, and I know this isn’t going to be good.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Mia
I know the second that slimeball Sammy says that I won’t want to look, I’ll have to. I know what I’ll see, I can feel it in the pit on my stomach. We were allowed to leave Leo’s tent. My father was not. I’m not an idiot, but nothing could have prepared me for this. As we get nearer to Leo’s tent, I can hear a crowd cheering, and I want to be sick. Something is very wrong. When the crowd parts, and I see it, I fall to my knees.
Outside Leo’s tent, my father and his soldiers have been chained to giant masts. Their hands are secured about their heads and there is so much blood. Cuts and bruises cover their bodies. And the blood...the blood just keeps coming. I can’t even tell where from. People in the crowds are throwing rocks, spitting, and even going up and hurting them with their fists, and in one case, a pocket knife.
I see Leo parading around with a shit-eating grin on his face, and I want to kill him. The rage I feel as my eyes rest on my father's broken, battered body is beyond anything I have ever felt. Any anger at his part in this disaster evaporates at the cost he is paying.
“Alex!” Leo calls when he spots us. “Are you going to give me what I want?”
Alex threads his hand through mine and gently squeezes, he’s letting me know that he’s going to give in. He’s going to help them. He moves to step forward, but I refuse to let him, keeping tight hold of his hand. If we give Leo what he wants, there will be nothing left to save. There will be no vaccine for the destruction he threatens to wreak. When we started this mission, we agreed that we would do anything, give anything to fix this mess. My heart hurts. It feels like it’s shattering inside my chest, but my wants and needs are not greater than the rest of the country. I cannot let this lunatic with an armchair throne and a stash of guns rule over everything.
Alex stands firm next to me, Donovan on my other side, and in that moment, we have a silent agreement. We will not bend for this fucker. We won’t help him in his quest for domination. He can suck my non-existent dick.
Leo’s mouth stretches into an even bigger grin, his filthy teeth on show, and I’m trembling now, I’m so mad. Without warning, he jumps forward and thrusts a hunting knife into my father’s stomach and drags it across. I run, without thinking, I run, and I throw myself at him. Leo steps back, laughing hysterically as I try to stop the bleeding, as I push my father’s intestines back inside his body. I know it’s no use, I never finished my biology classes, but I don’t need specialist knowledge to know it’s a fruitless endeavour.
Donovan and Alex appear seconds later, and they try to help, but there’s just warm blood everywhere. It’s slick and sticky as it fills the air with a metallic tang.
My father groans, and I worry that I’ve pushed too hard, and then I realise what a stupid thought that is. He is covered in wounds, his insides are trying to become his outsides, he probably doesn’t even feel my fingers inside his gut.
“Mi Amour,” he mumbles, blood sputtering from his mouth.
I can’t stop the tears that are flowing down my cheeks. In the films, you always know they’re going to die when there is blood dripping from their lips. I’m not ready to face that yet.
“I am so sorry I did this. So…sorry…I…love…you. It was…for you…thought it…the right thing…sorry.” He gasps, dropping words as he struggles to suck in air to breathe.
“Shhh, don’t talk. You need to save your energy,” I say as if I know what I’m talking about. I don’t.
“Vaccine…save them…forgive…them…” He coughs and more blood comes up. How does he even have any more left to spit up?
Donovan is holding his stomach, so I wrap my arms around him and place my head on his shoulder, like I used to do when I was a child and I was sad. “I love you. I love you. I love you,” I whisper, over and over again as his breaths get shorter and his eyes begin to close. “I forgive you,” I say gently in his ear as I kiss his cheek.
“Love…you…Mia…”
He stills, and I don’t need to look to know he’s gone. My father is dead. My only living family is gone.
I’m going to kill Leo.
Maybe not today.
Maybe not tomorrow.
But I will get that psycho. Right after I finish saving these people.
Alex holds me even though I’m covered in blood. I know that we need to come up with a plan before Leo kills more of them and us, but I can’t think straight.
“Lock them inside the boiler room!” Leo commands, and large hands grab us roughly and drag us away inside the water station.
As we move, I see the young mother from earlier, her eyes lock with mine and the pity in her eyes breaks me. A lone tear, fat and heavy rolls down my cheek before falling onto my clothes. I swear to myself that I would grieve later, but for now, no more tears would fall. I needed to do something.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Alex
Mia has stopped crying, and I don’t know whether to be proud or terrified of how she’s handling the situation. What we just witnessed was brutal. Horrific. Leo has promised that more soldiers will die, one for each day we refuse to help. How many lives can I have on my conscious? How much blood?
We’re locked in a boiler room, inside the water station. We need a way out, to find the vaccine and get it in the goddam water before anyone else is killed. But I haven’t got a clue how to do that. Sammy is no help. He knew what we would find, and he never tried to stop it. That monster wasn’t my brother, he was a shell. A selfish beast wearing my brother’s face.
The three of us sit in silence, leaning against the wall, watching the door.
Finally, Donovan speaks, “The water pump we need is literally down the corridor. They’ve put us virtually in touching distance.”
He, like me, can’t believe their arrogance or Leo’s smug assertions that we weren’t a threat. We needed the vaccine and nothing was going to stop us. Not Leo. Not a locked door.
“How many do you think there are guarding us?” I say, keeping my voice low.
“I don’t know,” Mia replies. “But this thing can’t stay tucked in my trousers forever.”
Donovan and I turn our heads to look at her, and she slowly lifts the fabric to reveal the vaccine canister she was still carrying. The skin that’s in contact with the canister has begun to blister and looks raw.
“Fuck, Mia. What’s happening to your leg?” Donovan hisses as he tries to get a closer look.
She winces as she pulls the material back down. “It’s normal. The vaccine is in concentrated form, if it’s inside the canisters for more than forty-eight hours, it begins to get a little warm.”
Donovan makes a soft snorting noise. “A little warm?”
“How long have you known that? Did you know it when your father gave it to you?”
She looks away, guilty and heartbroken all at once. “Yes, I knew. He explained it to me back at Litchfield. I knew the risks. It was already hot when he gave it to me.”
I just nod. She knew that if anything went wrong, if we were delayed or had to hideout somewhere and wait for a threat to pass, she would be at risk of burning her skin. I hate that she took that chance, that she was the one carrying our future strapped to her skin to hide it. But Hazeldine also realised that Mia was the safest option. I would die for her, Donovan would never leave her behind, and Hazeldine…well, he gave everything for her. If anyone was going to make it out alive, it was going to be Mia.
The sound of the door being unlocked makes us jump a little and shuffle back to our spots against the wall. A woman with a plate of stale bread and a bottle of water enters and places them down in front of us.
Without looking up at us, she whispers “Do you have the vaccine?”
None of us say
anything as she pours the water into three small cups she’s pulled out of her bag. Two of Leo’s goons follow her in and watch her as she provides us with some sustenance. They begin chatting between themselves, clearly not viewing us or her as a threat.
Softly, so not to draw attention, she asks, “Does it work?”
Mia crawls forward and takes a cup from her, murmuring, “Yes.”
The woman nods. She produces a can of spaghetti hoops and a tin opener and opens them, ready for us to share. As she reaches forward, she exposes the skin on her arms, and I can see she is bruised. She places the tin opener on the floor while she pours the spaghetti into a bowl. She was like Mary Poppins with the bloody bag of hers, but I wasn’t complaining, I was just grateful we were being fed.
“They have sent my son on a raid. He’s eight.” Her voice catches in her throat, and Mia places hand on the woman’s arm.
Children are small and quick. Zombies have a slightly harder time catching those who are quick on their feet just because their coordination and speed isn’t always the best, depending upon the rate of decay. When Basecamp had suggested we take Dai’s small daughter with us so she could get into hard to reach places, I thought he was going to have an aneurism at the idea. It was dismissed without another word, but this place obviously didn’t have the same qualms about using kids.
We eat quickly, and the woman collects the cups and bowls back in, but not before I notice Donovan sliding the can opener under his foot. The woman doesn’t seem to notice as she packs her bag back up.
As she zips it shut, I think I hear her say, “Be ready.”
I frown, not sure if I heard her correctly or if she’d even spoken at all, but something in the way Mia looks at her tells me something is brewing.
The woman leaves, the door slamming shut behind her, and we hear the key in lock. We were like sardines trapped inside a tin can with no way out. I tilt my head back and sigh, thinking on the odd interaction we just had.
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