by Mason Sabre
Finn was standing with James, his nose working the air. Diana paused a second to watch him. He wasn’t a barker, hell he didn’t make a fuss but from the looks of him, there was no one around.
“That’ll have to do for now,” James said. “I just need some water.”
James lay on the sofa, eyes half closed. He’d taken the paracetamol. Finn lay on the floor next to him, his back pressed to the base of the sofa. Diana kept herself in a chair. She wasn’t even going to sit on a stranger’s bed.
“I think I might look around the town. See if there is anyone around. Maybe there is a town meeting and they’re all at it or something.” She didn’t believe that, and if James was feeling fit, he’d not believe that idea either. Something was wrong. Whatever it was, she could feel it, pressing against her with niggling intent.
“I don’t want you wandering around alone,” James said, trying to force himself awake. She hated how he did that. He needed to get better. Not worry.
“I’ll be okay. I’ll take your bow. Finn is here.” She hated leaving him alone, but she knew she’d not settle if she didn’t check everywhere out first. If the place was empty, like she expected, that was fine, but she wanted to know for sure, not just have her gut tell her.
It was dusk when she went outside. James had fallen asleep, and she covered him with a blanket she found. His fever was down. At least the paracetamol had worked. She’d be back before he awoke. He’d not even know she was gone.
If this was a trap, and it had crossed her mind it was perhaps something the money hunters had set up to trap stray Others looking for shelter, she would kick herself.
Swallowing the thought, though, she pushed herself to walk and check. The houses at the start were shops, just the same as the others. One of them was a produce shop, and they had fruit more than veggies. Thick red strawberries. She picked a handful and ate them as she went.
“Well, I’ll be,” she said. She’d found a pharmacy equipped with medications galore. “Oh, jackpot.” Her heart soared at the sight of it and even more so when, like everything else, the place was empty. Most of the medicines were divided into little plastic zip-lock bags and put into trays on the shelf. Some names, she did not understand what they were or what they were used for, but there was something with the name of cillin at the end. Antibiotics had that, didn’t they? Amoxicillin, penicillin … it would do. There were five tablets in the little bag. Five wasn’t a course, but it was a start.
After she left the pharmacy, instead of going back to James, because he’d be asleep, she went deeper into the town. The houses were so neat and looked after. It was a proper township. She could imagine it bursting with life, people milling around. Humans didn’t afford Others to have something like this. Not just given to them. And if they knew … well, chances were, it would be knocked down.
There was a huge barn at the end of the street Diana found herself on. One door was open and so she took it on herself to see what was in there. Desks. Rows and rows of desks, enough to school thirty children. There were books open on the table and at the front was an old chalkboard with writing on it. The sight of normalcy brought a smile to her lips. It was nice … nice that somewhere had got itself this functional. Not like theirs, falling down and everyone dying. God, she still had the scent of Max’s burning flesh in her nose like a nasal stain she couldn’t get rid of.
Except as she walked, the smell got stronger and with it, so did the twinge in her gut that something wasn’t right.
“Oh, God.” As she got around the barn, she paused. She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no, no, no … please, no.”
Bodies. So many bodies, piled high, piled together. Men, women, children, it didn’t matter. She could see them all. She couldn’t unsee them. Couldn’t unsmell the scent of their flesh burning … burnt. They were half charred. Someone had lit the fire, but it had gone out. All were dead. A little boy’s leg stuck out at one side. Beside that was the head of a woman, then another boy, two girls. Diana’s stomach recoiled, and she had to step back. Tears stung her eyes, blurred her vision.
Something hard pressed into Diana’s back and she jumped.
“Do not move,” said a man, and she raised her hands.
“I-I …” she choked on her words, choked on what she had seen. Tears ran down her face. “Please …”
“Turn around.”
She did.
“Who are you?” It wasn’t a man in front of her, this was a boy. He was perhaps nineteen at most. Young, gangly, his face thin, the slight stubble on his chin not quite coarse.
“Diana. My name is D-Diana. I … me. My husband.”
“How do I know you’re not one of them?”
“Who?”
He nodded to the wall and there was a logo painted there. “The True Order.”
“Humans?” Diana asked.
He shook his head. “Others.”
“I … I d-don’t know who they are. Why would Others do this?”
“Have you been in a box? The Forgotten?”
“I know who they are.”
The Forgotten … the group run by the Prisoner, but this, The … what did he call them? The True Order? She’d never heard of them.
“You’re in the middle of a war, and you don’t know all the sides?”
“The war between the Forgotten and the Humans?”
“And The True Order. It is their way, or …” He nodded at the pile.
“My husband is sick,” she said. “We were travelling …” she was about to say to the Forgotten, but then what if this boy was part of The True Order he spoke of? What if this was a trick too?
“You were going to the Prisoner?”
She didn’t want to say yes, she didn’t want to say no. If there was a war, there was no way to know whose side he was on. He was alive, his town was dead … “Just travelling. I was looking for some medicine for my husband. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” She glanced at the pile. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She dared to take a step away from him. She wasn’t asking his permission. Show him confidence. That was what James said. Always show the enemy confidence, and they’re less likely to kill. She didn’t show so much, though, as she turned her back on the boy. No. She got around the corner and when he was out of sight, she ran.
Chapter 8
When Diana got back into the house—the shop, breathless, shocked, everything going around in her head, she pulled the key off its hanger and locked the door behind her. Then she stepped back and clutched it to her chest, staring at the door, like those who had done that to the town would somehow follow her and kill both her and James. Then they’d end up in that burning heap like everyone else.
“Calm …”
The True Order. It was too grotesque to even fathom. How did a bunch of Others gather around and then kill their own? Why? Why? It made little sense.
She blew out a breath and pushed her thoughts into some kind of calm she could find. It was so hard to do, though. Her mind wanted to jump and scream and fall into the natural fight-or-flight mode and get her and James out of there.
Everyone was dead, though. Didn’t that make her and James safer in the house. God, she was like them? Putting herself before the townspeople who lay dead in a pile, and here she was, stealing their homes, their things.
Putting her hands to her face, she let her fingertips massage her temples. Not that she had a headache, but there was a pressure building up.
James was still fast asleep on the sofa. He had his arm hanging down by the side of him, his hand resting on Finn. He was too long for the sofa itself, and so he had one leg hanging over the arm. She touched his hand, his face, just something to ground her back into normality and not the horror scene she had just witnessed.
His temperature was still down. At least the pills had worked on that. He didn’t have the antibiotics yet, she remembered. They were still in her pocket.
It’s safer here. She had to keep telling herself that like a mantra. S
he was wide awake and wired, with all the thoughts spinning in her head. The sweepers would be out now. It was dark, and the curfew was up. Not that there was a specific time, but once the street lights had turned themselves on, that was it, fair game for all who would make money off someone caught out after time.
She sat on the bed. No one was coming back for it. She leant against the wall, legs hanging down the side, feet bouncing off the edge as she tapped them to a silent tune. It kept her moving, kept her going and didn’t mean she sat there and wallowed in her thoughts. Without realising it, she fell asleep.
She woke with a start and her hand slammed down onto the crossbow she had settled beside her on the bed. Her heart thundered. Finn had his head up, his ear cocked, listening too. He was beyond that age where he would bark at his own shadow, now he had sort of learnt the same way they had, not every sound was the door or someone to woof at. Diana narrowed her eyes as she watched Finn. He was looking at the door.
Another knock. Quiet, but loud enough. Her heart leapt into her throat and her stomach jolted. James didn’t stir. She wasn’t so sure he’d moved.
“James?” she whispered. “James … someone is at the door.” Not that she expected him to get up and answer it. No. She already had herself slipping off the bed, the crossbow loaded and ready to fire.
“The door?” he moved to get up. His eyes still half closed.
Diana put her hand on his shoulder. “Stay there.”
James tried to get up, and if he hadn’t been sick, Diana was sure he’d have been wide awake and leaping off that sofa to bust her out of the way and tell her she was not, under any circumstances, answering that door. But when he tried to sit, his body swayed, and he had to grab the arm.
“Stay,” she ordered again.
With the crossbow tucked against her side, Diana snuck into the front room—the shop part of the house. It was dark outside still, and from where she was, she could see the street had a couple of lights on. There were big curtains in the shop window, and she cursed herself for not having closed them, but then again, if she’d thought about it, she might have left them open to show the house was empty.
She kept herself low as she snuck along the wall of the room, like a rat scurrying in the dark to get to where it needed.
She made it all the way to the window and peeked out at the edge. There was the boy, the one from the back of the town. He nodded at her, looking in the window for her, and her stomach settled.
“How did you know where I was?” she asked, when she opened the front door. She leant out to look around and to make sure there wasn’t anyone hiding. She couldn’t feel them. Didn’t feel the ill will coming off him, but she kept the bow in her hand, ready to fire it if needed. She hoped she wouldn’t.
“Wolf,” he said, and then he sniffed to demonstrate. His eyes flashed with the blue wolves had.
She nodded. Made sense. Wolves could scent. Shifters were like walking talking lie detectors. They could smell fear, lies, and malice a mile away. One man who’d lived in Newport had said all emotions had a scent, it was just learning to detect which was which.
He stepped uneasily onto the first step, bit on his lip. “You’re going to the Prisoner, aren’t you?”
“Why?”
“Take me with you,” he said. “There’s nothing here for me now. It isn’t safe to travel alone, and I can’t drive. I could run, I guess, but then if I tried that, the sweepers could pick me up.” He lowered his voice, threw a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the barn. “My sister is in that pile.”
“I’m sorry.”
He was still looking back, his eyes a little glazed, lost in the memories perhaps, or the horror. Diana couldn’t even imagine it, the horror.
“They shot everyone first. No one suffered that way. I suppose you’d call that a blessing.” He ran his hand through his hair, as if to brush away his thoughts, but then would anything brush this away? Not even time, she imagined. “We talked about going to the Prisoner, me and Jenny, my sister. We … we were gonna do it, you know? Then The True Order came … I heard the Prisoner takes people in and the Humans don’t know where he is, or if they do, they can’t get to him. He took down the Norton place, so he’s got to be something big, right? To take down that shit? I heard he did it by himself too.”
“You never thought of joining The True Order?” Diana had lowered her crossbow, enough, but not so much. Her finger stayed on the trigger.
“They’re no better than the Humans. They want power and control. They think the Prisoner just wants it for himself, but he doesn’t. Not what I heard anyway. I heard he’s strong too. There are three sides in this fight. I know which one I want to be on.”
Diana gripped the edge of the door and stared at the young man in front of her. If he was part of The True Order and playing her, then he was a damn fine actor, but her senses told her he wasn’t. Her heart felt like it could touch his and feel the loss and pain residing in there. “My husband is sick,” she said. “We stopped here to maybe get him some medical attention, but …” she shrugged. “Then everyone was gone. I found antibiotics.”
“He’s in there?”
Diana paused.
As if sensing her distrust, the boy added, “The True Order will be back in the morning. When the sun comes up. They’ll come in, clear everything out and take over the place or burn it. I think they’ll take it over. I’ve lived here my entire life. It’s a good place, a nice place. Be out of here before they come, or you don’t stand a chance. If I can’t tag along, that’s fine. I need to know so I can get out of here and not wait.”
“Do you have any weapons on you?”
He shrugged, “Just this.” He showed her a gun. “I’m a shifter. I have my own weapons.”
After giving him a once over, she stepped back and nodded for him to come in. Diana wasn’t used to being like this with people. Not that she let anyone in her life, James dealt with this stuff. Strangers, people they weren’t sure about.
“My name is Diana.”
“Sam,” he said.
“Sam.”
As soon as Sam stepped into the building, Finn came bounding out of the backroom. He leapt at Sam, tail wagging, body bending in a way that made Diana think he would snap himself in two in a moment.
“Finn …”
“It’s okay. He can sense I’m wolf.” He bent to the dog’s level and ruffled his ears.
“I’ve never seen him so lively.”
“Funny things with other animals. They either snarl and snap and run from us, or they go crazy like this. I guess … Finn, is happy to be part of a pack.”
James was at the doorway of the backroom. “This is my husband. James, this is Sam.”
James held his hand out, and Sam went to take it, but he paused, gazed on James’ face. Yeah. Diana knew what he’d seen. The thick dark veins under his skin.
“Everyone in town is dead,” Diana said, before Sam could ask.
“True Order?”
Diana was shocked. “You’ve heard of them?”
“Yeah. I heard of ‘em. Led by some idiot from the South I believe. Thinks Others will be punished for rising against God’s natural order.” James lifted his eyes to Sam. “The idiot got people to back him then?”
“A whole load. It was like a swarm. They rounded everyone up. Bang, bang, bang … all gone.”
“You’re alive.” The statement had an implied question, and sure, Sam wasn’t stupid. He got what James was asking him.
“There’s a crawl space in the basement of where I live. Me and my sister, we shared the basement place. Just had to help hunting, you know. Jenny was up top, and I was in the crawl space just … doing stuff.” He lowered his voice. “Guy stuff.” His face flushed, and he avoided eye contact. Diana didn’t push. James nodded. “I heard shots. Well they were bangs and shouts, and then someone yelling over one of those megaphone things.” A long pause. “Jenny was already dead, so I kinda hid. Coward, I know.”
“They’d have killed you too,” James said. “From what I heard of ‘em, they sweep in.”
“Yep. Ask what side you’re on, and fire if it’s the wrong answer.”
“Sam says we need to leave soon because they’ll be back to empty the place.” She glanced to Sam. “Maybe we could gather supplies, fill our car?”
“Yeah, we could. There are some tradables around here. Town was good with making things.” He focused on Diana. “Can I come with you then? To the Prisoner?”
It was James who answered. He wobbled a little, nodded. “Sure, you can. Always handy to have a wolf at our backs.”
Chapter 9
Ignoring the bleating guilt emanating from her gut, Diana pulled the pillowcases from the closet upstairs and handed a pile to Sam. What had the world come to … what had she become, going into people’s houses—dead people—murdered for their beliefs, and taking their things?
“They’re not going to need them anymore,” James had said. And although the words were harsh, and she wanted to gasp and tell him how could he, she knew he was right. With the way the world was going, at least in Exile, it was fast becoming dog eat dog, and things would only get worse.
“Non-perishables, flour, sugar, medicines. Anything you can find that may come in useful,” she said to Sam.
“Anything tradable too. There’s a whole witch’s stash in a few of these houses. I bet the Prisoner will have at least one witch with him.”
Yes. Diana didn’t doubt that, and they could take all the medicines they wanted, but witches … they could cure and make lotions and potions that would aid anything. “If you find seeds, take those too.”
Sam nodded. Seeds would be like gold now. They'd packed their own from their house. It was fine carrying a bag of potatoes, but that was cumbersome, and once it was gone, it was gone. Carry a satchel of seeds and grow potato after potato.
Diana made the first stop at the bakery. She didn’t take all the bread. It was perishable, but enough for the trip for them to eat. Trade what would last, eat what wouldn’t. That was the idea. She made a bag of stuff for her, Sam, James and Finn to eat … everything else she left. Only gathering ingredients that would make bread and goods like that.
