by David Tyne
I would never have given the O-Saints a second thought, if we hadn't come across one of their dead bodies. Now that the questions were being asked, I found myself compelled to avoid the answers.
"Guys,” I breathed a sigh. “I don't like this either, but the worst is honestly behind us. The O-Saints, Burkley... There's nothing that they can do now, except hide from those monsters like the rest of us. I say we let them disappear, and focus on the real enemy."
Although that's what I said, I was still unnerved about being anywhere near the elusive kingpin that was Burkley. For all of our sakes, I hoped that he was as dead as the lonely O-Saint we’d just coldly stepped over.
----
On the other side of the bridge, it felt surreal to be walking through the streets of a major city once again — even a barren one, completely devoid of Lost as well as wildlife. Beth peered down each junction, curiously scanning for any signs of movement.
"It's just like Mister Ian used to say... They've stopped coming out during the day again!"
I wondered whether this phenomenon was related to the population density of the area; the hordes seemed to leave for rural areas during the day, possibly returning for the night. Sadly, there was no way to test that theory without seeking them out by ourselves. In all truth, I was just glad to be anywhere that they weren't.
Harry mashed his hands together, ready to dish out some tasks. "Okay, we should split into teams — one to look for a way to read those coordinates, another to find food and stuff like that, and maybe one to stay here in case there's an emergency."
Beth's hand shot up, as though she was volunteering for a school trip. "Ooh! Daniel! I choose Daniel!"
Serah was already by my side, so the three of us formed a line and the first team was formed. "We'll go looking for food, I guess?" I quizzed blankly, not paying much attention.
To no one's surprise, Harry and Millie grouped up and went in search of any maps that could show them how to reach the Telos branch. Tomás, Jamie and Señora Alegría were left to wander our designated street; they would keep watching both sides from the middle, providing a safe point for us both to reach in case either team ran into any danger.
Feeling lazy in our search, the two girls and I broke the window of the first supermarket we came across. I kind of expected it to be already looted, but much to my own surprise, the shelves were still full of life — give or take some mouldy bread or layers of dust.
The entire shop was darker than night, with the surrounding high-rise buildings blocking any sunlight that managed to pierce through the overhead sky. I raised my arm and smacked it down on one of the dim counters. The sound reverberated throughout the entire complex, and we waited patiently.
One Mississippi… Two Mississippi… Three Missi— Nothing?
"No Lost in here, either. That’s weird,” Serah’s voice shivered. “Beth, remember and stay where we can see you."
The blonde girl nodded, and grabbed a basket as she skipped down the aisles, clearly gunning for the sweet-tooth section. It was probably a mistake to bring Beth shopping for survival supplies, but I was still too weak to impose her with any kind of rations.
After slinging some old bottles of water into the trolley we'd commandeered, I doubled over when Serah almost broke our wheels with every alcoholic beverage left in the shop. Whiskey, vodka, beer, the most expensive wines... Even something called absinthe, which I'd only heard horror stories about from the six-o’clock news.
"Wha— I thought you didn't drink?!" I stated accusingly. She let out a nervous giggle, nodding her glasses upright.
"Yep. Honestly, I've never had a drink in my life... With everything that’s been going on though, I’m thinking maybe we should throw a party soon?"
The suggestion only sparked more questions in my mind. "R-Really? You, partying? What's brought all of this on?"
Serah turned slightly towards Beth, who was struggling to lift her already-full basket of bonbons and fizzy drinks. "We might never get another chance to do something crazy like that, you know? Beth told me that you guys used to do lots of fun stuff every night, and how it's boring now that you've... stopped."
Her pause allowed me to reflect on this. I guess I hadn't made enough time for Beth, or anyone lately. Any fun we might’ve had would only create extra noise, which would’ve probably gotten us killed. I think Serah knew this, but she wasn't done trying to convince me.
"I didn't care for the party at the Aquarium, even when I try to forget how that ended. But with friends— Um, I hope that's not embarrassing to say. What I mean is, before we rush ahead and confront Telos..." She fixed her glasses, and let a smile shine through. "...I think we all need to live a little. Just in case."
I hadn't even fully decided whether I wanted to head for the Telos branch, after we finished helping Tomás. Yet there Serah was, already planning it out as though it was the last chapter of her life.
The part that scared me the most, was that I wasn't nearly as terrified as I should have been. From moment to moment, I couldn’t register whether I actually wanted to go through with this. Forgetting all of the reasons why I shouldn't, the reasons that I should were far too prominent to ignore.
As we skated around the supermarket for some more stock, we gave up on the lanes of expired fruits and moved onto the long shelf-life ones.
Serah had already brought up the night at the Aquarium, and I had to wonder whether she was thinking about our near-kiss as much as I was. Swallowing my pride, I decided to give it a shot.
"Hey, umm... Do you remember, what you said to me? That night, on the dance floor. You told me that you were—"
Serah glanced away for a second, not allowing me to see her face as though that would dismiss the affair entirely. "...Sorry, Daniel. I heard what’s been going on." She slowly turned, at least having the decency to look me in the eye.
"I was awake."
I wondered what she meant by this, until it hit me right in the gut. Serah wasn’t actually sleeping, that night in the truck. When I was talking to Millie, about our messy feelings for each other, she overheard everything.
My starved stomach let out a pained whimper as the nerves sank in. Luckily she didn't notice, but still continued to extinguish any hope of us getting together.
"...I don't know what it is between you two — or even us — but it's not a big deal, okay? You're a good friend, and I'd hate to lose you." With that, she sped off to make Beth put back some of the candy that kept spilling out of her sugary basket.
It took us nearly half an hour to get all of the shopping done. We silently approached the register with our trolley creaking under its own weight: stacked full of water, fruit juices, canned food, instant noodles and even some nutritional supplements.
I bagged most of the items as Serah helped Beth with her overwhelming amount of junk food. I tried not to think too hard about life in the ‘friendzone’, instead focusing on the task at hand.
My feet carried me into the nearby pharmacy section, searching for anything else that we could foreseeably need. An angry buzzing of flies drew my attention towards one of the shelving units, telling me that something was either rotten or dead.
Walking around the stand, my eyes drifted downwards to recognise a large hiker's bag, just sitting on the floor. Ignoring the curious nature of the giant rucksack, I realised how useful it would be to carry our own ungodly amount of loot.
Only after I'd taken several steps towards the bag, did I realise it was attached to a person. I froze, eyes scanning for any sign of movement — thankfully, there was none. Only a small amount of blood trickled from the side of the corpse's head, indicating that it had already turned Lost and was killed.
An abrupt cry to the left almost toppled me over, shooting an alarmed glare at the deafening sound. Serah and Beth rushed over to my side, thinking that I was the cause of it.
"Keep it down! We don't want to attract any... attention..." Serah quickly realised that I wasn’t the one making such noise
s, looking horrified once she’d located the source.
I slowly side-stepped around the object, hoping that there was nothing inside. Of course there was, though. The gurgling sounds made Beth clasp both hands over her mouth.
"Wait... Is that…?"
I didn't answer, instead trying to block the little girl’s view. Nothing could curb Beth’s curiosity, however. Soon she worked her way past me, approaching the stroller with visible excitement.
"Mister Daniel, look! We've found a baby... Aww, he’s so cute!!"
The baby boy strapped into the blue pram was anything but cute. Those hauntingly-cold grey eyes stared right into my very flesh; the aberrant cooing noises signified something much more macabre than a child’s hunger.
25 | Set Them Free
I couldn’t move. For several tense minutes, we just stared in mourning until Beth tried to lift the feral infant from the stroller. "N-Nooo! Don't touch it!!" I swatted her hand away a little too harshly, which she almost mistook for a personal attack.
"Why... Why not? We can take care of him! He's lost his mummy and daddy as well, right?"
I clawed at my forehead, palms sweating as I tried to figure out how to tell Beth about the true nature of the situation. Serah, who appeared rather distraught by the dead child, wasn't in the mood for tiptoeing around the obvious.
"It can't come with us, Beth. It's infected."
The little girl reeled slightly at the revelation, but seemed more concerned about the words Serah used. "He's not an 'it', Miss... If he's Lost, then I know what we should do."
Beth sauntered over to the cash register, and I had no idea where she was going until she lifted my discarded metal poker. Her eyes studied it carefully with a look of anxiety, then a strange comfort washed over her face.
"We need to set him free."
If I thought I was being rude before, it was now apparent to Beth how much I disagreed with her thought process. A rage surged that I didn't even know I had in me, violently exploding as I smacked the weapon out of her hand, letting it clatter to the darkened floor.
"The fuck is your problem?! We're not killing a damn baby!!" I bawled at her. Beth's eyes only screamed back in confusion, having never been scolded by anyone in the past few weeks.
"Mister Daniel…? You told me that we set the Lost free, by killing them! That they’re happier in heaven, back together with their mummies and daddies! That’s what you told me, right?!"
I ran my hands through my hair in a state of panic; the obvious lie I'd told Beth finally catching up to me. There was nothing else for it, except to tell her the truth. If she wasn't strong enough to hear how messed up the world was by now, then she would never survive one day alone.
"I... I only told you that, because of Ian. I wanted you to believe there was a higher purpose, a reason why he killed your mum. That's not the case, though..."
I circled the undead baby, inciting his hungry snarls as I passed. Part of its left arm had been bitten into, concealed under layers of bandages and red cloth. Someone had tried to stop the bleeding, probably one of the parents.
"We kill the Lost only when we have to, that’s all. They will always try to attack us, no matter what. You can't reason with them, you can't stop them — and if you believe that there's anything left inside that empty shell, a soul or whatever, then you're showing weakness."
I didn't want to frighten the poor girl, but I also didn't want her putting herself in unnecessary danger to 'set free' a restrained Lost. This mistake could never happen again.
Serah took over the speech, giving me a chance to cool down. "...Daniel's right, Beth. You need to realise that the Lost don't retain anything from their lives. Once they're infected, they become killing machines. It's not pretty, but I think you're old enough to understand that if anyone tries to hurt you, it's only natural to defend yourself... even if it means hurting them back."
The little girl seemed to already know all of this, dropping the poker to the ground. Nodding in a controlled manner, she kicked the weapon towards Serah.
"...Do it, then."
I found myself in the middle of an intense stare-off between the two women. The med student tried to play it off, shaking her head with a constrained laugh. “I don’t need to, it’s perfectly safe in here."
“Doesn’t matter. If that baby is just a 'killing machine', you won't have any problem switching it off. Right, Miss?"
The eight-year-old was trying to keep a serious face, but I could tell from the way her mouth kept twitching that she was one moment away from falling into a hysterical fit. Someone her age shouldn’t even speak of such morbid things.
"Beth, what’s gotten into you?!" I hissed, interrupted by the sound of the metal scraping along the floor. Serah picked up the weapon, staring bitterly into its tip.
"No, Daniel. She's absolutely right." She approached the grey infant, who growled back up at her with a face far too grim for someone so little to wear.
“Serah?”
"That thing is not alive. If I can't distance myself from some monster with the appearance of a child, then there's no way I can go on living every day like... this. I'm not going to be all talk, not anymore. It's... It's not even alive..."
That was what she said, but the tears were already streaming down her cheeks. I turned to face the wall, moving Beth with me as Serah’s shadow raised the metal poker. The sounds that ensued were too ghastly to even describe.
When it was all said and done, Serah collapsed onto her knees as the reality of what had just transpired forced her to gag in disgust. She threw up all over the supermarket floor, then resorted to smacking herself raw across the face.
She couldn't stop shaking, despite my attempts to rationalise what she did. Her horrific wailing reduced Beth to apologetic tears, and mine followed shortly after.
----
The three of us marched out of the supermarket with a certain briskness, almost shattering the insane amount of bottles stuffed into my new hiker's backpack. The weight was crushing my spine, but thankfully Tomás and Jamie weren't too far off, giving me time to take it off and rest my shoulders.
"There they are! What took ya so long?" Jamie yelled over, waving our approach. He glanced hesitantly at Serah's pale face, waiting for her fake smile to filter through.
"Oh, nothing. We've got a surprise planned for you guys, though!"
Jamie playfully pestered Serah to find out what she was hiding, which I had to assume was the party she wanted to throw. In any case, we could certainly do with a proper night off. Just the seven of us.
Serah was in pretty rough shape, and while I sympathised with her motives for going through with it, I wouldn't expect her to have a good night's sleep for a while. She didn't look like she wanted to talk to anyone, so I pushed the whole incident to the back of my mind and focused on the distant couple steadily approaching us.
Millie and Harry waved at us from the other end of the street, giving a thumbs up to signify that they'd located the coordinates. Several cheers spread throughout our group, letting me know that it was already too late to dissuade anyone from playing right into Telos' hands.
The company we were looking for had no qualms or moral boundaries about human experimentation. Not the kind of people that I wanted Beth and Jamie to be hanging around.
As they both strutted closer, Tomás formed finger-binoculars with his hands to observe them more accurately. Upon inspection, he reported with a grin that Harry's neck looked a little raw, and Millie's hair was all tousled and roughed up. She had also forgotten to button herself up properly, which according to the musician, was 'conclusive evidence'.
He wolf-whistled them as they finally joined us, and Harry shot our new companion a deathly stare infused with cocky embarrassment. "Oi, enough of that already... Now, what’s the dirt on this 'Belle' we’re supposed to rescue?"
Listening to the mission details, I chewed bitterly on a fistful of the strawberry laces I'd swiped from Beth's supermarket haul. It was a stra
nge adjustment, being around the mismatched couple and acting like everything was normal.
The location where Tomás had previously been held by Belle's captors was only three blocks away from the street we were currently occupying. He led us through the concrete maze, which opened up towards a disused factory of sorts on the seafront.
The soil was mixed in with gravel and sand, a brown wasteland with the urban area being left behind us. It gave the impression of walking from a major metropolis to a desolate one in a matter of seconds.
The only sign of active life was a couple of crass spray-paint tags along the entrance, telling survivors to keep out. "Do you think they'll recognise you?" I asked Tomás. He shook his head, unsure.
"...I don't expect you guys to come with me. This'll probably end badly — but it's the only way. If someone in there knows where Belle is, then I just gotta make them talk. One way or another."
I put my hand on his shoulder, alleviating the burden riding on him. "...I told you before. You don't have to do this alone."
Turning my head back to the rest of the group, they were all looking worse for wear, except for Jamie. He seemed to realise what I was going to say, and his face dropped as well.
"...Sorry, guys,” I lifted my shoulders with a shrug. “If what Tomás said is true, then this place is way too dangerous for all of us to go in at once. Keep an eye on the outside, okay? If you hear any trouble, find a safe spot until everything blows over."
Harry protested about us going alone, requesting that he come as well ‘for muscle’. After convincing him that the others needed him for protection, we said our goodbyes and then it was just the musician and myself... alone.
He pressed his hand to the door, revealing a shady staircase that led down into the Earth’s crust. Perhaps even further to hell, judging from the masculine screams and distant yells.
Noticing his obvious hesitation, I decided to ask one final question before descending. "...These guys, you’re sure that they know who took Belle?"
