She wasn’t wrong, to be fair.
“I mean, how many of them could there be here in… where are we?”
“Ellesmere.”
“Yeah, Ellesmere. How many?”
“No more than a dozen.”
“They’re watching all the roads and if we kill them, we won’t have to skulk through the fields like we did three days ago! Crawling through mud and stagnant rainwater! I’d rather not do that again.”
Again, she had a point. I wasn’t sure how much I could risk it though. I’d not found any signs of Gregg or my Furies, and I had to assume they were well past Shrewsbury by now. Which meant they would be waiting in Wrexham.
I knew my friend well enough to know that if he had survived the wound that I had given him, he would insist on waiting. It would allow him time to heal and he wouldn’t give up on me, not that easily anyway.
Travelling by road would make the journey faster since while I was sure he would wait, it wouldn’t be forever.
“Plus,” Eight said, smile widening. “You can leave another present for them.”
Sold!
“Fine, but hang back and let me do most of the fighting.”
“Whatever you say.”
There was a lake on the eastern edge of the town and if they had any sense that is where they would make their camp, close to the water they could use for drinking. Well, after it was filtered and boiled anyway.
Most of their people would be stationed on the roads to the south and we had already passed them so the northernmost road would be lightly guarded. The patrol that we had evaded earlier moved between all of the roads out of town, looking for signs of my presence.
“Okay, follow me.”
Ellesmere wasn’t a large place so it didn’t take us long to pass through the centre and head up the northern road that led out of town. As expected, the raiders had two men waiting beside a packing plant on the very edge of town.
From their position, they could let their horses graze while keeping an eye out for anyone heading north across the open fields to either side of the road, as well as watching for people who might be trying to leave along that same road.
Since the patrol was headed back towards the lake they likely wouldn’t be back until towards dark. Which meant we would have a fair few hours head start after I had killed the two raiders.
Of course, the difficulty would lie in getting to them before they noticed my approach. As I crouched behind a low wall and watched them, I became more and more convinced that they were the veterans rather than the colonists.
They didn’t lounge or busy themselves with other tasks. No, they focused on the road and they made a point of periodically taking a walk north or south to see around the nearby buildings. They were alert and very much a problem.
I couldn’t sneak up on them. There was far too much open space around their position that they would see me coming from any direction. There was one way, of course, and I glanced at the two women as I considered it.
“What?” Eight asked, looking more than a little concerned. That look only deepened as I smiled at her.
“They need distracting.”
“So, what do you want…oh.”
She swallowed hard and then licked her lips as she squinted over at the two men in the distance. She understood what the risk would be and her hand dropped to the knife tucked into the wide leather belt she had found at one of the homes we scavenged through.
“It needs to be done,” I said, not unkindly. “We’re seeing more of them every day and we can’t evade them all for long.”
“Okay.” She licked her lips once more. “But just me, yeah?”
“Whatever you say.” I gauged the distance and made a quick calculation. “Give me five minutes.”
“How will I know it’s been five minutes?” She held up her hands revealing her bare wrists. “No watch.”
“I don’t know, count to a thousand then.” I paused. “Slowly.”
As she nodded I set off away from the women. Whatever happened to them, it was their choice to put themselves at risk and I knew that I wasn’t breaking my promise to Lily even if they did die. Which was entirely possible.
I jogged on over to the packing plant and leapt, grabbing the top of the chain-link fence and pulling myself up and over. I landed on the cracked tarmac and set off running once more. Pallets were stacked high behind the building and several large trucks had been backed up to the loading bays.
For a moment I contemplated passing through the building but discarded that ideas it would take far too long to navigate my way through the large building. Instead, I continued on and turned right when I reached the northernmost end.
As I approached the large car park where the raiders waited, I slowed my pace, moving as quietly as I could. I stopped at the edge of the building and peered around, sweat beading on my skin as I breathed deeply.
Too long with limited food, my stamina was declining far faster than I had hoped and I had to conserve my energy as best I could.
The raiders were alert and watching the road so it didn’t take them long to notice the approach of Eight. She sauntered up as though she hadn’t seen the two men and I grinned as she opened her coat, revealing an overlarge shirt that had been tied up at the bottom to reveal the pale skin of her midriff.
It was too enticing a sight for the raiders as they stepped out into the road which is when I made my move. They were so intent on her approach, that I was upon them in an instant. The closest died in silence, my axe buried in his skull, while the other stood stock still as my knife pressed against the back of his neck.
“Don’t move.”
My voice, cold as ice, revealed the man to be gone and the killer all that was present. I ached to drive that knife into the back of his skull. It took every ounce of will not to do so as my rage burned inside of me.
Eight, wide-eyed, hurried over and in the distance, Seven rose from behind the wall and set off running to join us. I reached down to grip the sword on the raiders belt and pulled it free as he carefully lifted his arms.
“You the one we’re after?”
“I would assume so.”
He grunted then and his weight shifted from one leg to another, a minor movement but noticeable as close to him as I was.
“You gonna do me like you done the others?”
Up close, he stank worse than I did. Old sweat and piss that told me I really didn’t want to face him and find out what his breath smelt like. I pushed the knife a little deeper into his flesh, blood welling up where I pierced the skin, and he gave a soft grunt of pain.
“Kneel down.”
He did as I instructed, and I made sure to keep the blade pressed against his skin all the time.
“There’s no need, you know? I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“You have no information I need.”
“Then why you doing this?”
“Because I can.”
With my free hand, I waved Eight forward and her mouth hung open as she realised what I wanted. Her hand trembled as she lifted her knife and took a step towards the kneeling raider.
“H-he isn’t…”
“Isn’t what?”
“I don’t recognise him,” she said. “He isn’t one of the ones who…”
She trailed off, licking dry lips as she looked away, swallowing past the lump of fear in her throat and I gave her an evil grin.
“That doesn’t matter if he raped you. I’m sure he’s raped plenty of others.”
“I haven’t!” he cried. “I swear on my mothers grave. I never did no-“
Blood splashed over Seven’s hand as her knife slammed into the side of the raider’s skull. Her eyes were empty of anything resembling emotion as she yanked it back out, allowing the dead man to collapse to the ground.
“Alright then,” I said, sheathing my knife and recovering my axe. “I think we’ll just take their eyes this time. No time for fancy things.”
“What about
their horses?” Eight asked, voice high-pitched as her eyes flicked towards the silent Seven.
“I don’t have any real desire to kill them but if you want to, I don’t care enough to stop you.”
“No!” She shook her head. “I’d never hurt a… It doesn’t matter. I mean, why don’t we take them. Will be faster.”
“Sure, until you fall off and break your leg. I’ve no idea how to even mount a horse let alone ride one without killing myself.”
“Okay, but I do.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I went riding all the time before… before all this.”
I looked up at her fingers still gripping the eye I was about to pry loose from the dead man’s head and then I gave a long, hard, look at the two horses that had been tied up on a grass verge not so far away.
If it meant we reached Wrexham quicker than we would by walking, I was all for the idea. It was just the falling off and potentially breaking a bone that gave me pause. Still, if she could actually ride then it was worth the risk.
“Okay then. Get them ready.”
Chapter 24
Oswestry had been a pleasant market town back before the fall. Some twenty thousand or so people had made their home there, on the border with England. Farms surrounded the town itself and there was an iron age hill fort on the northern edge of town.
Cricket fields and running tracks, a football stadium and a thriving industrial section coupled with a railway line that cut through the centre of the town bringing tourists in the summer, had created a pleasant and prosperous town. It was the sort of place that I could have once imagined bringing up my own family.
Once.
Since the fall of the world, Oswestry, like every other man-made place in the world, had started to fall apart. A slow crumbling of the civilisation that had once considered itself to be the top of any food chain.
Roofs that sagged or had missing tiles and shattered windows, sat empty and cold with rusting cars covered in years of dirt and leaf fall. Birds had made nests in eaves and trees, in hedges and empty chimney stacks.
Rats scurried from place to place, intent on finding their next meal while the occasional cat would appear, before vanishing as if it had never been there. Nature had reclaimed the town, much as it had the world, all except for one small part.
On the southern edge of town, surrounded by farmland and nestled up against the road was a small estate. Fences had been raised and fields ploughed over. Chicken coops had been built in several of the gardens and the homes were well-tended, the steps swept and the gardens neat.
Bodies lay amongst the bushes and flower beds, faces contorted into visions of agony as limbs had been hacked off to be cooked on the fires that had been built nearby. Their blood spraying over the ground as they were tormented and abused as though nothing more than a pre-dinner entertainment.
I had to push down the urge to vomit, to spew what little I had eaten that day across Charlie’s desk, as I watched through the drone’s camera as Samuel’s people picked through the shattered remnants of the small community.
Cass reached over and gripped my hand tightly, her mouth showing a little green at the corners as she fought back her own nausea. Any doubts that I may have had about wiping out the Silures had vanished the moment the drone began transmitting.
Men, women… children. Even a pair of dogs that had been torn apart to the point where I couldn’t tell their breed. It was sickening brutality and beyond anything I was prepared to ignore. My finger stabbed down on the keyboard and my headset came to life.
“My Lady?”
“Where are they, Michael?”
“The ashes are still warm, and I would suspect they are not so very far ahead of us.”
“Then catch them and kill them. Every last one of them. Do you understand me?”
“As you command, My Lady.”
Samuel had split his cultists into five groups of twenty and sent them out to search for the raiders. Once we had their location and determined whether they were actually headed towards Mostyn, they would reconvene and hit the raiders from all sides.
The young man who led those in the town of Oswestry was clearly visible on the screen as the only one of the group without a hood. Like the others, he wore entirely black clothing with the white armband and black half of the yin-yang symbol on it.
His group, all armed with knives, sprang to action at his shouted command and we watched as they left the devastated community behind without so much as a glance. They had my beloved’s dismissal of the bodies of the fallen. He’d never understood why people cared about what happened to the bodies of their loved ones.
“I’ll let Samuel know,” Charlie said, tapping on her keys. “If these nutters are only a short distance ahead then he can start moving people towards them.”
“Good idea,” I said, nodding approval. “Once we get-“
Charlie stopped typing to look at me as my eyes widened and my heart seemed to stop. She followed my gaze to the screen.
“Fuck.”
They came out of the houses further up the road, voices screaming obscenities as they raised their spears. Their clothing was ragged and worn, covered in the blood and viscera of the entrails that wrapped their torsos.
Human heads hung at their belts, teeth removed as the eyes moved, searching for prey they could never catch even should they see it. Glyphs had been carved into the raider’s cheeks and foreheads, spirals and whorls, scarred tissue raised so all who saw them would know them for what they were.
Ahead of them, like dogs let off-leash, were the Reapers. Five of them, bent backed and elongated bodies with skin gone grey. Their overlong fingers were blackened and sharp at the end, resembling claws more than anything else, while a crown of bone surrounded their skulls and forearms, like armour and weapon both.
They leapt at the cultists, clawed hands tearing through clothing before teeth found flesh. The cultists, veterans of the war against the undead, were quick to respond. Their blades flashed, and black blood filled the air.
A Reaper went down, three cultists following the training of my beloved, as they ended its unnatural life, only to die in turn on the spears of the Silure as they joined the battle.
Outnumbered, it was a short and brutal fight that could have only ended one way. A tear ran down my cheek as those raiders crowed over their victory, before bringing out the knives and cutting into the flesh of the dead.
“Shut it off,” I snapped to Charlie, as an arm was torn from a torso and waved around like some sick trophy. “Now!”
“We need to see where they go,” she said, voice trembling with the horror of what we had witnessed. “I’ll fly it up high so we can’t see the details.”
My head bobbed once, the urge to be sick almost more than I could bear as I swallowed back the saliva that was filling my mouth, precursor, to the vomit that was about to be unleashed.
“Here.” Cass lifted a wastepaper basket and I waved it away.
“I’ll be fine.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think any of us will be. Not after that… that… savagery!”
How far those people had fallen, becoming like beasts, as they killed anyone they encountered. No, I realised, not like beasts, for animals would not do such evil. No, they were monsters and like all monsters, they needed to be hunted down so that the innocent need not fear them.
“Call Samuel,” I instructed tersely. “Inform him of what happened and let him know which way they go. I want him to have everyone ready for them. Get a rough estimate of numbers too.”
“Yes, Boss.” She hesitated and then added, “I was told there was a community in Wrexham too.”
“You’ve not mentioned them before?”
“Because it’s not definite,” she said, a little defensively. “A couple of people had mentioned a large walled compound with people in. Seems like they’re a bit standoffish and don’t like outsiders.”
“Won’t they need allies to protect them fro
m the raiders? That’s right on the edge of Rider territory.”
“This is the thing. Way I hear it, they built a big ass wall around themselves and there’s only one way in, which is along some train tracks. They’ve been attacked but no one made it to the gate. They just stood on top of their walls and threw shit down at the attackers until they were all dead.”
I considered that for a moment. While I respected their right to privacy, I also felt it was important that we tell them about the Silures. There were a lot of psychotic raiders headed their way and it could be useful to reach out to the community to warn them.
“Let Samuel know.”
“Sure thing, Boss-Lady.”
“What are you going to do?” Cass asked, as I pulled my hand from hers. I’d not even felt the grip of her hand though my own was red from her tight hold.
“I need to see, Isaac. We need to make sure we’re prepared. That can’t happen here.”
“We could evacuate.” She sniffed noisily and wiped at her own eyes with the back of her hand. “There’s a ship in ready for the lumber. We can get some people away from here at least.”
That made sense. The more people we could save, the better it would be. But, at the same time, if I sent people back to the island, I was telling everyone there that we couldn’t keep them safe, that the mainland wasn’t safe.
No one would ever return and any chance of rebuilding something remotely close to a civilised world would be doomed to failure. We could not live on the island, hidden away from the world and the people who needed our help.
“We can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry, but everyone stays.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t like it, I could tell that much from the set of her jaw and the flush on her cheeks, but she wouldn’t argue. Not about this. No, she knew that I wouldn’t make such a decision lightly and she would back me, though when we were somewhere private she would let me know her thoughts, I had no doubt.
“The children?”
Ouch! That shot hit home and I winced, as her lips twitched. There was no malice in her, but she knew where to hit me so that I would make sure my course was the right one.
Killing The Dead | Book 22 | Fury Page 15
