Before Vicky could respond to him, Jessica gasped on the floor and the three of them jumped back.
“Quick,” Vicky shouted. “We need to get her to the medic bay now. Help me.”
Vicky dropped down into a crouch next to Jessica and stroked her hair away from her face as she stared into the woman’s glazed glare. “It’s okay, honey, just relax and we’ll get you to the medic bay.”
Very little recognition ran through Jessica’s distant eyes, but she nodded like she understood. With blood everywhere, Vicky scanned the woman for the location of her wound. The most blood seemed to come from her middle, but Vicky couldn’t be sure where exactly. When she slipped her hands beneath Jessica’s body, one along her lower back and one just beneath her bum, she called up to the other two, “Hugh, Flynn, one of you get the legs, and one of you get the head and shoulders.
With the other two in place, Vicky nodded at them. “Okay, on three. One, two, three …”
They all lifted Jessica from the ground, and blood dripped from her like water from a full sponge.
Both Hugh and Flynn stared at the mess that rained down onto the floor.
“Right,” Vicky said. “We need to get to the medic bay now.”
At the front, holding Jessica’s head, Flynn led the way out into the corridor.
***
After they’d placed Jessica on the medic bay’s bed, Vicky opened and closed each one of the drawers in the small unit beside it. Once she’d finished, she turned on Hugh and threw her arms up in the air. “Not even bandages? Seriously?”
A shrug and Hugh looked at Jessica, worry creasing his brow.
Although Jessica breathed, her respiration came in shallow waves that diminished by the second.
“You two,” Vicky said to Flynn and Hugh. “Take your tops off. We’ll use clothes as bandages.” She then ripped Jessica’s shirt open to reveal her flat stomach. A quick count and she saw at least seven deep red stab wounds. Each one belched thick blood like tar coming from a bog. The metallic stink of it mixed with what smelled like human waste.
When Flynn held his grey tracksuit top in Vicky’s direction, Vicky took it, looked back down at Jessica, and physically sagged. She watched Jessica’s head loll to the side, and her breathing dropped to the faintest whisper. “Who am I kidding? There’s no way she’s surviving this.”
Jessica then opened her eyes, stared at Hugh, and mouthed soundless words at him. Her mouth worked frantically and she shook her head, but the effort of communicating seemed to take it out of her and she fell back down against the bed a second later.
Despite the thick blood that coated her hands, Vicky ran two fingers along Jessica’s neck and felt the last kick of her pulse. Jessica released a final breath and fell limp. Vicky dragged a white sheet over the woman. Within seconds, the fabric had turned red with her blood.
Grief locked in Vicky’s throat as she stared at yet another dead friend. One of many to pass, Vicky’s sadness added to the swollen lump in her oesophagus that had existed since everything went to shit in this world. The burden of yet another death.
When Vicky turned around, she saw a crowd had gathered in the kitchen and they all watched on. Although they stood still, statuesque in their observation of the dead Jessica, Vicky caught movement behind them.
“Coming through,” a male voice called. “Please let me through. Guard coming through.”
Before she saw him, Vicky’s heart sank. A second later, Serj broke the line of the crowd and locked eyes with Vicky. Tears burned Vicky’s eyes as she watched the realisation sink through Serj’s features. When he looked back up at her, she bit onto her quivering bottom lip and shook her head.
“No,” he said and stepped forward. “Please, no, not Jess. Jess?”
Vicky pulled a stuttered breath in and tried to speak to Serj, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t let her. Instead, she stood aside as the man strode over, a slight hobble still in his walk.
When he pulled the white sheet back, he stared down at Jessica’s corpse for what felt like the longest time before he released a roar of a wail. The loud and broken cry sounded like he’d had his soul torn from him.
With tears streaming down his face, he screamed, “No! No! No!”
As the one who knew him best, Hugh should have stepped forward to offer the man comfort, but he didn’t. Instead, Flynn walked over to Serj and put an arm around his shoulders. In moments like that, words had no place. The sixteen-year-old boy got that and didn’t even try. The sight of Flynn comforting Serj set Vicky off worse than before and her grief cascaded from her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
They stood over Jessica’s dead body and Vicky watched Serj’s face turn red as he shook his head. “She shouldn’t have let those mongrel fucks out of their cells. I knew this would fucking happen.”
Before Serj could walk away, Hugh grabbed his arm and the two men glared at one another. For the briefest moment, Vicky readied herself to step between them, but the aggression died down when Hugh spoke in a soft tone. “Let Vicky and me go to see them. We have to remember that we’re part of a community, and we can’t assume people are guilty until we’ve put them through a trial.”
The distressed Hugh of moments earlier had suddenly vanished, and Vicky couldn’t help but notice how his grief had all but left him.
“Are you fucking serious?” Serj said.
Hugh looked at the crowd of at least fifty people gathered in the large room.
It seemed to prompt Serj to do the same. He sighed before he lowered his head and spoke to the floor. “Okay.”
“Now,” Hugh said. “Why don’t you and Flynn go to look for evidence in the room where she was killed? That is, if you want to get involved in this investigation? Otherwise you can leave it to us.”
When Serj lifted his head again, he fixed a stare on Hugh and fire burned in his eyes. “Of course I want to get involved.”
Although Vicky remained on edge as she watched the two men, Hugh thankfully didn’t respond to the confrontation.
With Jessica’s blood continuing to soak through the white sheet, Vicky stepped away from Hugh and Serj, grabbed another sheet from the side, and covered her over with a second layer. Bad enough that they had a dead body in Home, they hardly needed the sight of all that blood too.
Fortunately the bed had wheels, so Hugh grabbed it to take her away.
Just as he went to push it off, Serj blocked his path. “Where are you taking her?”
“I need to lock her in one of the spare rooms. We can’t leave a dead body lying around.”
Despite grinding his jaw as he stared at him, Serj didn’t argue with Hugh. After a few seconds, he stepped aside to let him through.
The men seemed to be getting nowhere fast, and their animosity toward one another spoke of a conflict Vicky knew nothing about. It made sense for Serj to be upset, but why did he blame Hugh? Maybe he had the same gut feeling as Vicky. But her instinct made no sense. Why would Hugh kill Jessica? The grief of the situation had to be messing with her head.
“Flynn will show you were it is,” Vicky said, Jessica’s blood pulling the skin on her hands taut as it dried.
With the sensitivity of a man rather than a boy of sixteen, Flynn gently tugged on Serj’s arm. “Come on, let’s start the investigation so we make sure we find the people responsible for this.”
After they’d walked off, Vicky spoke in a whisper so only Hugh could hear her. “Do you think the two prisoners did it?”
Hugh raised his eyebrows while he pushed the bed. He then whispered, “What do you think?”
A rhetorical question, Vicky looked over at the crowd of people. It seemed obvious who had killed Jessica, but maybe a little too obvious. Whatever they concluded from their investigation, they owed it to the community to conduct one. The people of Home had to see that punishment only came after rational enquiry, not before.
The wheels on the bed squeaked as Hugh pushed it across the vast open space of the kitchen. Al
l of the onlookers had gathered by the corridor farthest away from them, so Hugh headed for the one closest. The less the community saw of the dead body, the better.
Maybe Vicky had imagined it, or maybe the shock of what had happened caused the sensation, but as she walked behind Jessica, the smell of blood hung so rich in the air, she was sure she could taste it on the back of her throat like it were her own.
Chapter Thirty-Five
After they’d found an empty room and locked Jessica’s body in it, Vicky and Hugh headed for the rooms of their two main suspects for Jessica’s murder. They walked in silence for a few minutes before Vicky broke the tension. “What was that about with you and Serj?”
Hugh looked across. “Huh?”
“There seemed to be a lot of beef between you two.”
A shrug of his shoulders and Hugh kept his quick pace, his boots clicking on the hard floor as they marched down the corridor. “I think Jessica used to like me, and Serj finds that hard to deal with. I suppose in the old world, you just moved away from the people that made you feel inferior. Now you have to live and work with them.”
The arrogance threw Vicky off, but when she looked at the tall and toned man next to her, she could see how he’d make other men feel inferior. Were Serj the kind of person Hugh had just described him to be, then the beef between them made sense. But Serj didn’t seem to be that kind of person.
Inside Home, Hugh never seem fazed. So when they got to the door of one of the men and he drew a deep breath that seemed designed to calm his nerves, Vicky’s heart fluttered. What would be waiting for them on the other side of the two doors?
Vicky moved down to the room next door so they could take a man each. As one, her and Hugh knocked, the sound carrying in the sleepy corridor. Despite the crowd in the canteen, a lot of the residents would still be dozing.
It took a few seconds, and just as Hugh lifted his hand to knock again, the door in front of him opened. A couple of seconds later and Vicky’s door opened too.
The shorter of the two men appeared in front of Vicky. A lumberjack of a man, he stood bleary-eyed and scratched his head. “What’s going on?”
With the press of a machete slipped into the back of her belt, Vicky stared at the man. Hugh held one similar, which he also concealed behind him. They’d agreed they’d only show them if they had to. It seemed better that they didn’t start out by waving huge blades at them. “Can you please step out of your room?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want to have to ask you again,” Vicky said.
The man—dressed in just his boxer shorts—stepped out into the corridor. The tall, blond man in front of Hugh did the same.
The room on the opposite side of the corridor could be locked like so many in Home. After he’d kicked it open, Hugh said, “You need to get in there, please.”
The taller man frowned. “You want to lock us up again? No fucking way!”
When Hugh pulled his machete free, the man raised his hands in defence and walked into the room. His short mate followed him in at the sight of Vicky’s blade.
As Hugh locked the door on them, one of the two called from the other side, “What have we done? Why are you locking us up again?”
But Hugh ignored them. Instead, he pointed at the room he intended to enter and said, “I’ll search this room; you search the other one, yeah?”
Not sure what to look for, Vicky nodded anyway. “Okay.”
Although similar to the room Vicky shared with Flynn, the room of the shorter man seemed dirtier in just one night than hers and Flynn’s had been in several. Clothes had been thrown on the floor and it stank of stale farts. Standing as far away from the duvet as possible, Vicky leaned across and grabbed it in a pinch. The smell seemed worse for disturbing the man’s bed, and Vicky tensed in anticipation of the noxious reek she was about to release. She counted silently down from three and snapped the duvet away. Fortunately, the smell didn’t get any worse.
Before she could search anywhere else, Hugh’s cry stopped her dead. “Come here, Vick.”
He’d never called her that before. It shouldn’t have bothered Vicky, but something about the sharp truncation of her name grated. A shake of her head and she went next door to find Hugh, a grim set on his features as he held up both a bloody kitchen knife and a silver chain.
“This is Jessica’s necklace. And I found this knife. I suppose the good thing about living in a closed community is that it makes it hard to hide shit like this.”
It seemed short-sighted of the blond man to have the knife and chain in his room. Surely if he’d done it, he would have found somewhere better to hide the evidence.
Hugh had brought a clear plastic ziplock bag with him, which he slipped the two items into before he walked over to the locked room on the opposite side of the corridor. “Right, I want you to come out one at a time. I don’t care who comes first, work it out between yourselves. We both have machetes and aren’t afraid to use them.”
Vicky heard shuffling on the other side of the door. Hopefully it signalled the two men deciding who would go first and nothing else.
With her machete in her hand, a white-knuckled grip on the wooden handle as if it would stop the shake than ran through her, Vicky watched the door. Her throat felt dry.
Just before Hugh unlocked the room, he passed a bag of white cable ties to Vicky. She pulled one out and waited.
The click of the freeing lock ran both ways along the corridor, and Vicky’s furious heart lifted into her throat. If the blond man had killed Jessica, he might not come out easily. He had nothing to lose now.
After Hugh had opened the door, the blond man stepped out, his eyes as bloodshot as always, his hair a bird’s nest of chaos. He didn’t look like someone who had just been rumbled.
The other man remained in the room, allowing Hugh the time to close the door and lock it again. He then pointed at a wall for the tall man to walk over to and took a cable tie from Vicky. As Hugh bound the man’s hands, he pressed against the man’s back and said, “I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You will be tried in our court.” He then held the clear bag up in front of the man’s face. “Although I don’t think a trial will do you much good. Why didn’t you try to get rid of the weapon you stabbed her with?”
The blond man raised his voice. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’ve never seen that knife before.”
Before he could say anything else, Hugh shoved him hard into the wall he had him pressed against. The blond man connected nose first, a wet crack resulting from the impact. When he pulled away, a line of blood ran from his nose, over his lips, and dripped off his chin.
“Save your bullshit for when you’re on trial.” As if to show the man he had no power, Hugh tugged his wrists back so they lifted away from his body. The man leaned forward and drew a sharp breath across clenched teeth. In no position to retaliate, he stared at the floor and said nothing.
After they’d got the second man out of the locked room and Hugh had bound his wrists with the makeshift cuffs, they led them back to the prison rooms they’d stayed in when they first arrived at Home.
Some of the crowd who’d gathered in the kitchen remained there. All of them watched Vicky and Hugh lead the two men through.
As if taking his chance to appeal to as many people as possible, the shorter of the two men said, “Look, I don’t know what he did or didn’t do. I can’t say because I was in a different room. But if he did do anything, it had nothing whatsoever to do with me.”
A hurt look pulled on the blond man’s features when he stared at his friend. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I’m not saying you did. I’m saying that I had nothing to do with whatever’s happened and that I haven’t been with you.”
“Whatever,” Hugh said. “You two come as a pair. You’ll both be tried for Jessica’s murder.”
The shorter of the two men said, “But—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Hugh said. “Save it for
your trial, yeah? The community will decide whether you’re guilty or not.” A glance at the gathered crowd and Hugh said, “And you’re not making yourself look very good in front of them at the moment.”
As much as Vicky wanted to stick up for the two scruffy men, she couldn’t. They seemed innocent, but how could she level a charge against Hugh when she had nothing to back it up with. Before she challenged the man, she had to have sufficient evidence to make her case watertight. After all, she was about to go up against the leader of this community.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Vicky fought for breath as she climbed the steep hill with Hugh beside her. She didn’t know where she was, and Hugh didn’t seem in the mood to tell her where they were headed. Other than ‘hunting’, he hadn’t given her any more information. “And you think Serj will be okay with those men locked up so close to him?” Vicky had to shout to be heard over the wind.
“I’ve taken Flynn off his duty at the gym and asked him to watch their cells while we’re out.”
Vicky stopped. “You’ve done what?”
Unlike Vicky, Hugh continued to march up the overgrown and uneven hill. “The boy can look after a few cells, Vicky. Besides, all he needs to do is make sure Serj doesn’t get to them.”
After a jog to catch up, her new crossbow heavy on her back, Vicky said, “Yeah, he sure can, but I figured you might have consulted with me beforehand.”
“What are you? His fucking mother or something?”
“How many times do I need to be reminded I’m not his mother? Were this world not the fuck up it’s become, then I would be his legal guardian, and I would be entitled to make decisions on his behalf.”
Completely disregarding Vicky’s comments, Hugh continued to climb the seemingly never-ending hill with his long strides. “Besides, Flynn seems to understand Serj better than almost anyone I’ve met … apart from Jessica, of course. I think if anyone can talk him down, it’ll be Flynn.”
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