Hell On Earth Box Set | Books 1-6
Page 104
So, he had erected a rope swing from karabiners and climbing rope. The kids were ecstatic. It might not be a PlayStation, but it was the first time they’d had fun since monsters had eaten their world. Watching the children now, smiling and giggling, made Jackie’s absence all the more painful. She would’ve been overjoyed.
Ted needed to go check on things down at the cabin. He did so every morning, to check Nathan was still locked up, and to see if Steven needed help collecting whatever fish had made it into the traps. There were wooden snares too, but they were yet to catch any rabbits. Ted would have to find a way to improve them.
He took his hammer and passed through the sally port, starting down the hill in a diagonal line to keep from tumbling headfirst. Steven remained at the castle, but he knew the man would come down in the next hour. Until then, Ted would have peace and quiet, both things he still very much appreciated. Knowing the kids were happy was enough to lift his mood, even without watching the joy firsthand.
At the bottom of the slope, he started towards the cabin. This morning was the coldest in a while, and dew hung from the tips of the overgrown grass. The wooden planking over the cabin’s exterior was damp, as though the building had been sweating.
He continued walking beyond the cabin to a nearby clearing. All the graves there had markers, but the most recent marker had been put there by Ted. It was a sturdy cross made from the thick limbs of an oak tree. A strong, no-fuss marker for a strong, no-fuss woman. He hoped Jackie was some place safe. Some place she would be happy.
“I let Nathan live,” he said, as if not murdering a child would somehow impress her. “But I still don’t know what to make of him. I wish you could tell me whether he shot you on purpose. Everyone is certain he did. Think I am too. The kid is weird.” He blew air out of his cheeks and looked up at the grey sky. “I have to believe it was an accident. If Nathan is a killer… I suppose it would make me question a lot of things. Things that would make me wonder if things would be better if mankind just finished. You would probably argue with me about that.” He ran a hand over the loose dirt and imagined her body down there. “I hope you found your George up there, Jackie. Tell him I say hello.”
After his one-sided conversation ended, Ted got up and headed back to the cabin, planning to go check on Nathan. He hadn’t expected to see Vamps standing there.
Ted raised his hammer.
“Chill!” Vamps put his hands out. “It’s me, not… the bad guy.”
Ted started up the steps. “You’re going down, fucker. Eric was a good bloke, and you gutted him.”
Vamps didn’t move. “The attack will come tonight while you’re sleeping. They’ll come right to your front gate and smash their way through any way they can.”
Ted stopped in his tracks, only making it up the first step. “What? How do you know that?”
“Because the Red Lord knows, innit? He can sense all the other demons nearby. He knows there’s a large group getting closer. They will wait until the middle of the night and then come at you while you’re in your beds. It’s gunna be bad, yo.”
Ted took another two steps up, close enough now to take a swing at Eric’s killer. “Like I’m going to trust any word that comes out of your mouth. You’re just another monster.”
“No, man, I ain’t. I get these brief sessions where The Red Lord goes away. I don’t know why. But I came to warn you all. Get ready because tonight is the night. They’re coming.”
Ted ran scenarios through his mind, trying to pre-empt any angle the Red Lord might be working here. Warning Ted to be on his guard didn’t seem like something that could hurt him though. Maybe this really was just Vamps trying to do them a favour. The young man had worked amongst them for weeks without causing harm, and as a human he had skin in the game by default. Did he truly have periods of time where he was himself? What happened to the Red Lord then?
Ted decided he couldn’t be sure, which meant it wouldn’t be acceptable to kill this man who might be innocent. “Okay, I’ll have everyone be ready.”
Vamps nodded but didn’t seem done. “Ted, can I ask you to do me a favour?”
“Now you’re pushing it. What do you want?”
“For you to take me out.”
Ted didn’t understand immediately. “You… want me to kill you?” He looked at the hammer in his hands, wondering if he could do it. He was pretty sure he could. “Are you playing games?”
“No, man. My fight is over. I’ve done my bit, and now I’m a danger to everyone trying to do theirs. The Red Lord will be back soon, and he won’t stop until he wipes every last one of us off the face of the earth. Kill me, and he’ll have to find another ride, innit? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Ted took the last two steps, squeezing the hammer’s handle. He lifted it over his head but stopped halfway. He let the hammer drop with a deflated sigh.
“Maybe there’s no United Kingdom left, but before it fell, we were a nation that didn’t execute its enemies. A tradition, I think, that should be retained. I won’t kill you, Vamps, but I will take you prisoner. It will be up to the group to decide what to do with you. You killed their friend, and they deserve the right to judge you. If the Red Lord comes back, he’ll be our prisoner too. Maybe we’ll find a way to get him talking.”
Vamps shook his head. “You’ll regret it, man. Just kill me. Please!”
“I don’t know you, Vamps, but I ain’t gunna kill you. Maybe if the Red Lord pisses me off enough, then I’ll change my mind, but right now I don’t have it in me to kill you. Not if you’re telling me you’re not the one who killed Eric. No more death.”
“But—”
“And if what you said is correct, we don’t have time to stand around arguing about it. If you want us to keep the Red Lord from hurting anyone, let us keep you prisoner at the castle. It has plenty of space in the dungeon, and you’ll have company.”
Vamps frowned. “What do you mean?”
Ted motioned for Vamps to follow and marched into the cabin. He yanked open the door to the First Aid room and found Nathan sitting sullenly on the bed. The boy showed no emotion as he looked up at Ted, but he tilted his head curiously. “Hey.”
“Come on,” said Ted. “You’re being moved to a different cell.”
Nathan stood up. “Why?”
“Because tonight, this place is going to be swarming with demons. And I don’t want you to die.”
Ted took his two prisoners up the hill and into the castle. Then he shared the news that an attack was on its way. This time, nobody in the camp panicked. They were tired of waiting for a fight to come. It was time to get it over with.
39
DR KAMIYO
Through some bizarre twist of irony, Kamiyo’s captors placed him and the others in the supermarket’s pharmacy. It resembled a cell, but with a counter on one side instead of a wall. Someone always sat on a chair out front watching them.
“They have enough medicine here to keep us healthy for a year or more,” said Kamiyo. “Not as many antibiotics as I’d like, but plenty of everything else. We need to make a deal with these people.”
Philip pulled a face. “I don’t think we have a strong bargaining position right now. And you say there’s enough medicine here to keep our camp healthy for a year, but that would be at the expense of this group not having it for themselves. They would have to be mad to give it up. You can tell they know its value because of how organised everything is.”
“I do not know what we have that they do not,” said Aymun. “These people are afraid, and fear makes people clutch tight to what they have.”
“So what would you do, Aymun?” Kamiyo had got to know the man a little over the last couple of days. At first, he was stunned to learn the man had once been part of an Islamic militant group, but then even more flabbergasted when he heard about the man’s more recent exploits in Hell. He was a strange man, but always calm and never quick to anger. Kamiyo had started to enjoy the man’s presence.
Philip huffed. “They’re not going to just give us what we want.”
Kamiyo didn’t know what would happen, but he wished things would move along. All this waiting was driving him insane. He studied the shelves inside the pharmacy, noting how the boxes had been shuffled into matching groups. The people here were fastidious, working, rationing, exercising. They were no different to the people at the castle in many ways—and equally suspicious of newcomers.
Kamiyo was tired of always being a newcomer.
He moved away from the spot he’d been using to sleep. His captors hadn’t provided blankets, so he had been using bundles of sealed bandages as a pillow and his coat for warmth. The only time he’d been out from behind the counter in the last two days was whenever he needed to go to the toilet. He was dutifully escorted and led immediately back. The only decent part of his imprisonment was the food. The stale biscuits they had given him with some boiled spaghetti had been sublime.
As always, there was a guard on the other side of the counter when Kamiyo approached. “Hey, I want to speak with Pritchard.” Pritchard was the leader of this group, the bald thug who had assaulted Kamiyo and taken him prisoner. The man who carried around a toy gun painted black.
“Pritchard’s a busy man,” said the guard—an elderly gentleman, rendered weak by an apparent lifetime of smoking and drinking. Kamiyo knew he could overpower the sickly man, but the chances of getting out of the supermarket were slim. There were too many people—too many locked doors.
“I know he’s busy, but so are we. We came from a camp just as large as this one. Let’s work together. We can trade, protect each other.”
The old man sighed, like he didn’t have much of an opinion on the matter either way. “Pritchard will come see you when he’s ready.”
“That’s not good enough! Our people are expecting us back. You’ve kept us here two days already.”
“Tough luck. Pritchard’s the gaffer, and he’s otherwise occupied at the moment.”
Kamiyo frowned. “What do you mean?”
“His old lady is about to drop a kiddie. She’s not doing so well, and he needs to be with her. That’s why he hasn’t got round to dealing with you.”
Philip rushed to the counter beside Kamiyo. “Chris is a maternity doctor! Dr Kamiyo, tell him.”
The old man studied Kamiyo as though he were dressed like a clown at a business conference. “Uh-huh! You don’t say.”
“I am a doctor,” stated Kamiyo. “I was a registrar at Manchester Hospital Maternity Ward. Let me help.”
The old man huffed. “Women used to have babies just fine without doctors. We have a nurse in our group, and it’s nurses what deliver sprogs, anyway.”
Kamiyo nodded. “Yes, provided nothing goes wrong. You said it’s not going well. The baby could be breech, entangled in the umbilical cord, or a hundred other things. You really want to take the risk that all will go smoothly while you have a trained doctor at your disposal?”
The old man swatted his hand at Kamiyo and groaned. “Fine. Fine. I’ll go tell Pritchard you want to help. I’m sick of guarding you three, anyway.”
The old man tottered off, leaving Kamiyo, Aymun, and Philip unattended. They looked at one another, all thinking the same thing: should we run?
While they were considering it, time ran out. Pritchard appeared, sweaty and breathless. Blood specked his unbuttoned white shirt. “Oliver told me you’re a birth doctor, is that true? Is it true?”
Kamiyo nodded. “I was a doctor at a maternity ward. Is your wife okay?”
“She’s not my wife, but…” He wiped sweat from his brow and began again. “Things aren’t right.”
“Take me to her right now.”
Pritchard didn’t even think about it. He nodded to the counter, encouraging Kamiyo to vault it. Once Kamiyo was on the other side, he waited to see if Philip and Aymun were allowed to follow. Pritchard didn’t seem to object, so the other two men vaulted the counter as well.
Pritchard led them all through a staff-only door that led into a corridor. The small administration area that followed had several offices and a large staff room. It was from inside the staffroom that Kamiyo heard moaning.
The pregnant woman he’d spotted two days ago was lying on a sofa with her legs raised on the armrest. She was clearly in labour, but something wasn’t right. Despite her moaning, she wasn’t in enough pain. In fact, she appeared dozy.
“She’s been like this for hours,” said a young blonde lady in the room. “I don’t know what to do. Shouldn’t she be pushing by now?”
“Are you the nurse?” Kamiyo asked.
She nodded.
“What kind of nurse?”
“A general nurse. I worked at a GP’s surgery. I’m Becky.”
Kamiyo nodded. “Okay, Becky. I’m Dr Kamiyo. I need you to tell me everything. Have her waters broken?”
The girl nodded. Her wide eyes made her young age apparent. She’d probably been a nurse for all of two years. She clearly had no experience with delivery. “Yes,” she said. “That’s when we knew the baby was coming. We boiled water, got blankets, and gave her pain medicine.”
Kamiyo nodded. With that information, he moved over to the labouring woman and examined her. He felt her tummy, and became relatively sure the baby was alive and not in distress. It was when he examined the woman’s arms that he found his first clue as to what was wrong with her. “What are these patches on her arms?”
The nurse stuttered, so Pritchard spoke over her. “They’re pain killers. The patches are slow-release, which we thought would be best.”
“Why did you give her any pain relief at all?”
Pritchard looked confused. “Well, I thought—”
Kamiyo focused on the nurse. “What painkiller did you use?”
She turned toward the corner of the room. “Oh, I have the box over here somewhere. It’s, um, bro… buppa…”
“Buprenorphine?” Kamiyo surmised.
Becky picked up a cardboard box and studied it. “Yes! That’s the one.”
Kamiyo shook his head. “You’ve given her morphine. A patch on both arms. She’s in labour.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t want it to hurt,” said Pritchard. “If she was to scream too loud, the demons might hear. The last attack almost finished us and—”
“She needs to push!” Kamiyo yelled at the man, who was a shadow of the combative brute that had put Kamiyo’s lights out days earlier. “You’ve drugged her up to the eyeballs with morphine, and now she can barely stay awake. We need to rouse her and get her body working again.”
Pritchard nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m so… Look, just tell me what I need to do.”
Kamiyo ignored the man, and instead looked to Philip, standing by the door. “Philip, go back to the pharmacy. I need Misoprostol. I know they have it because I’ve seen it. It will help move things along.” He reached down and pulled the patches off the labouring woman’s arms. “Maybe look for some caffeine pills too. We need to get her heart rate up.”
Philip raced off, colliding with Pritchard and knocking him aside. Becky stood in the middle of the room, fidgeting with her watch. Aymun patted her arm. “Easy child. This is not your fault.”
Kamiyo took Pritchard to one side and made certain things clear to him. “There’s a good chance both this woman and her child will die—not because of anything I am about to do, but because of the things you have already done. For future reference, when delivering a baby, less is more. Don’t administer drugs you know nothing about just for the sake of it. Leave nature to take its course.”
Pritchard had tears in his eyes. “Please, just help her.”
“I wil
l. Tell me her name.”
“H-Holly. We’ve been together six years. We spent the last three trying to get pregnant, and when we finally do, the fucking world ends.”
Kamiyo squeezed the man’s shoulder. “These are less than ideal conditions. Let’s try to salvage this situation, okay?”
Pritchard nodded, which prompted Kamiyo to get to work. He told Holly what he was doing as he examined her, but she was too out of it to respond. Her cervix was loose and dilated, but the surrounding muscles were lax. The baby was ready to come, but her body wasn’t pushing. The morphine was stronger than her hormones.
He felt for the baby’s head and found it. “Baby is in a good position, Holly. You’ve transitioned, and we’re ready to get this little bundle out into the world. If you can hear me, I need you to push—almost like you’re trying to do a poo, okay?”
Kamiyo still had his hands inside the woman, and he felt a slight flexing around his fingers. If it was Holly responding and trying to push, they might have a chance of pulling this off.
Philip came back with a shopping basket full of drugs. Kamiyo picked out the Misoprostol and weighed up whether to use it. “I think we’re passed the point where this will help us. Did you find the caffeine pills?”
Philip nodded.
Truthfully, Kamiyo didn’t know what he was doing. Labour complications were generally all mapped out, with protocols to follow for each occurrence and a team of staff ready to assist. A morphine overdose, however, was something he’d never encountered. He’d never seen an epidural over-administered even once. Holly was slipping towards a coma at worst, and an inappropriate high at best. The damage was done, and he couldn’t reverse it. He could only halt its progression.
He looked for his nurse. “Becky, mix up the caffeine pills with water and try to get Holly to drink as much of it as you can. It’s probably pointless, but if we give her even a slight boost, it might give us what we need to deliver this baby. We’ve just got to hope that Holly is still with us.”