by Wilson, Mark
“That wasn’t very welcoming, young lady,” he said, polite as ever, but allowing a little menace to creep into his tone.
“That’s because you’re not welcome here, Mr Bracha.”
Smiling pleasantly at her, he interrupted.
“Oh, just Bracha, my dear. And, really, there’s no need to be so rude. I’m just passing through. No harm intended.”
Alys rested her right hand gently on the handle of the Sai on her right thigh. Indicating the direction he’d pointed with a jut of her chin, she replied, “Pass through then.” Her mother’s words coming from her mouth. This man, the way he dressed, moved and spoke, screamed out to her instincts that he was everything her mother had warned her men became in this city.
Abruptly he sat cross-legged on the road surface, resting his elbows on his knees. “Perhaps we could share a meal? I’ve been travelling for a few days without rest and I’m quite exhausted.”
He examined Alys for a few moments, assessing her body, her face.
“No? Perhaps some information then? I’m thinking of introducing myself to a little community of women, along at Princes Street Gardens over there. Perhaps you know them?”
Alys clutched the handle of her Sai but did not unsheathe it.
“Ah, you do know them.” Bracha beamed at her. “A whole community of women; fighters from what I’ve heard. I think that’s worth a visit, don’t you, Alys?”
Alys lifted her head slightly, assessing her options. He had no visible weapons, just the ridiculous-looking metal pole with the fat end he’d been swinging, but the lightness of his step and the flexibility he’d displayed in the smoothness of his movement and in sitting down all told her that he was a dangerous fighter. This was a man who knew how to use his tall, if slight, frame.
“You wouldn’t be made very welcome there, Bracha.”
Standing as quickly as he’d sat earlier, he spread his palms out to either side of his body.
“Oh, I’m simply wonderful with people. I make new friends wherever I go. Look how famously we’re getting along, Alys.”
He was trying to provoke her into doing something. She swallowed her anger and spoke in the same calm, flat tone she’d used throughout.
“Pass through.”
Dropping all pretence at friendliness and levity, Bracha lowered his chin. Staring up at Alys, he took a few steps towards her, hands still spread, and smiled horribly.
“Or what?”
Alys gave him a humourless smile of her own.
“Or you don’t get to pass through,” she said softly
Bracha cocked his head to the side again, giving a sad looking expression, before speaking.
“Here’s how I see this playing out,” he began.
A fraction of a second later, Alys’ Sai no longer sat resting on her right thigh but had instead travelled the short distance between her and Bracha and struck him dead centre in the forehead, knocking him clean out.
“Creep,” she said to his blank face as she retrieved her Sai.
Darting inside, she pulled her rucksack on and helped her cousin into hers. Grabbing Steph by the left wrist, she yanked the girl towards the rear exit that led into the car park.
“I can’t believe you did that, Alys. Why did you hit that poor man; you’re worse than Aunt Jen.”
Steph had pulled her arm free from Alys’ grip and was glaring up at her elder cousin with contempt.
“He was only being friendly.”
“We don’t have time for this. Hurry up.” Alys whirled around and headed for the exit. She’d taken three steps when she suddenly registered the sound of her cousin’s footsteps running in the other direction.
“You idiot!” she yelled after Steph.
Racing after her younger cousin, Alys shouted for her to come back but the girl was tearing her way towards the front doors of the former school. Alys desperately yelled again for her to come back and then watched horrified as Bracha calmly stepped through the doors and slipped his arms around Steph, who had run directly into his embrace like he was some kindly uncle.
Alys skidded to a halt and drew her weapons, dropping her rucksack as she moved.
“Mr Bracha, I’m so glad that you’re all right,” Steph beamed.
Bracha held her out at arm’s length.
“Thank you, my sweet girl.”
At that, he spun her around. Clutching the girl to himself, her back to his chest, he looped one arm over her shoulder. With the other hand he produced a stiletto dagger and pressed it to her right lower eyelid.
Steph looked in panic at her older cousin, realisation finally showing in her eyes.
“It’ll be okay, Steph.” Alys spoke to reassure the girl out of reflex. She needed to make sure that Steph didn’t do anything stupid. That she followed Bracha’s instructions.
“Your cousin is correct,” Bracha soothed. “I won’t do anything to hurt you. If you do what you’re told.” Bracha glared at Alys from behind Steph.
Dragging the girl along he backed himself out into the street, positioning his back to the sun so that the light made Alys squint to see him.
Silhouetted against the light at his back, he dropped all pretence.
“As I was saying earlier, Alys, here’s how I see this playing out. Assuming you’re willing to listen this time?” Bracha edged the point of his blade a half centimetre deeper into Steph’s eyelid.
Alys re-sheathed her Sai and adopted a submissive open-palmed gesture, mimicking, mocking the one he’d offered her earlier.
“Okay. How old are you, Alys?” he asked.
The question took her aback.
“Eighteen,” she replied, looking puzzled.
Bracha laughed loudly.
“Bloody eighteen-year-olds.” He shook his head. “Then of course you were born here, Alys. You have no clue what the world was like before… this.” He nodded his head to indicate the streets around them. “It was a horrible place, Alys, too many rules. Don’t do this, don’t say that. People got so uptight at the smallest little differences.”
Alys wanted to yell or launch herself at him, but she had no choice but to stand and listen.
“Most people rushed around full of their own self-importance. They thought that they were invincible; that money, or an education, or status made them untouchable, infallible. Do you know what most people did when the plague came, when the dead rose, Alys?”
She shook her head.
“They tasted delicious. That’s what they did. People like me; we were the ones who did what it took to survive. We adapted. We thrived in this world.”
He laughed at his own insights.
“I’m willing to gamble that you know someone like me. Someone single-minded. Someone in charge. Someone who does what it takes to keep your community safe, to survive.”
Alys felt her cheek twitch as his words hit home, closer than he might have suspected.
“Yes. You wouldn’t be here otherwise, with your lovely Sai and your impressive skills.”
“What do you want?” she asked.
“That depends.” He paused for a second, clearly calculating or perhaps deciding something. “Have you heard that there’s a cure?”
Alys narrowed her eyes, trying to work out if he was asking because he knew of one or thought that she did. She decided that, with Bracha’s talent, honesty was best.
“No.”
“Well I have” he beamed. “I learned that it’s out at the Old Royal Infirmary. I learned this from a very reliable source.”
Alys shrugged. “So? Go get it.”
“Ah, that’s where you come in. There are certain people in the south, beyond the inner fence-line, that I’m none too keen to see and who feel the same way about me. I need a little help. A half dozen or so of your fine fighting females would be just the right number. People who can do what needs done. That’s what I need, survivors.”
Alys shook her head. “They’d never help you.”
“I think they will, you see,
when I turn up at their gates with this one’s head and you, broken and crying.”
Alys controlled the urge to launch herself at him.
“They’ll just kill you.” She spat out the words.
“Hmm. Maybe you’re right. Perhaps it would be better if I just held onto young Stephanie here as a hostage, whilst you lead me to The Gardens.”
“Not going to happen,” she told him, watching the tears boil from her cousin’s eyes.
“You’re not leaving me much choice here, Alys.”
With a small flick of his wrist, he put the blade into Stephanie’s right eye and flicked, causing it to pull free of the socket and dangle onto her right cheek.
Stephanie crumpled to the tarmac, taking Bracha with her.
Landing on his knees, Bracha propped up the unconscious girl, arm still curled around her. He moved his dagger to the other eye.
Alys had covered half the ground between them in the few seconds that had passed, but came to a full halt as she saw Bracha move towards her cousin’s remaining eye.
“She’s not going to die, Alys, but I’ll take her other eye if you don’t start being a little more pleasant.”
Alys glared at the ridiculously lethal man.
“Okay, I’ll take you there.”
“How perfectly wonderful, Alys.”
He smiled up at her from the road. “This one will just slow us down though.”
Alys screamed as Bracha changed his grip on his dagger and plunged it at her cousin’s chest. There wasn’t enough time to reach him before the blade stabbed into her. Alys ran at him anyway. Drawing her Sai she tore along the road, watching his hand plunge towards the girl’s heart in slow motion, knowing that she’d never make it.
“Aaaaargh!”
Bracha was suddenly screaming as an arrow tore through his right hand with such force that it threw him backwards, off Stephanie.
Never missing a step of her run, Alys flew at Bracha. She brought the Sai in her right hand down hard on his left wrist, breaking the radius and ulna instantly on impact. He shook off the pain instantly, impossibly, and began to rise to his feet, but she was already bringing her other Sai around in a backhand strike to the upper right arm. She heard the humerus break and brought her forehead crashing down on his nose. Alys would like to have spent a few more minutes breaking more of the monster’s bones, but Steph needed her and Bracha was on his knees, arms useless.
As she threw him a final hate-filled glare, she became aware of the arrow in his right hand, just as another disturbed the air millimetres from her ear and tore across his right eye, leaving a mush of jelly and white gristle where his eye used to be.
Bracha climbed to his feet with the strength of insane rage and ran off down the street.
Turning to Steph, she kneeled and pulled her cousin close, not bothering to turn to look at the owner of the strong hand now placed on her shoulder.
“Let me see to her eye, Alys.” His voice was much deeper than she remembered but it felt the same.
Suddenly exhausted, she sat on the road and watched him carefully and methodically clean Steph’s wound, remove the useless eye and gently bandage the empty socket. His hood was raised; she hadn’t seen his face yet.
When he’d finished, he inspected the girl for a moment, brushed her hair over her ear with his finger and turned to Alys, lowering his hood as he did so.
“Hello Alys.”
He smiled at her.
Chapter 9
Joey
Alys punched him in the chest, knocking him onto his backside.
“Hey.” Joey picked himself up and grinned at her. “Not much of a thank you.”
“Don’t leave it so late next time,” Alys scolded him, trying to conceal a smile. Trying and failing.
Just then, the girl with Alys who’d been injured began stirring and crying for her.
“Shh. I’m here, Steph,” Alys told the girl, stooping to scoop her head up and cradle the kid.
”There’s something wrong with my eye,” Stephanie said. “I can’t see. It hurts.”
A fresh torrent of tears streamed from her one good eye.
Alys held her until the crying subsided.
“It’s okay now, Steph. The man has gone and he won’t be back in a hurry. Thanks to him.” She gave a sharp nod in Joey’s direction, noticing her cousin perk up at the sight of Joey’s face.
Stepping forward, Joey offered the kid a hand, which she took, and he hoisted her up onto her feet. Alys stood alongside the younger girl, one arm around her little waist.
“This is Joey. He’s my friend.”
Stephanie raised her eyebrows as she looked at him, a puzzled expression on her face.
“You don’t have any friends. Alys.” Despite the tears, she laughed at her own joke.
Alys smiled, and said simply, “Yes I do.”
“We should get going, Alys. Bracha will be back,” Joey said.
She raised an eyebrow doubtfully.
“After what we did to him? No way we’ll see him again anytime soon.”
“Yeah. I’d have said the same thing a week ago.”
Joey spent the next few minutes explaining what had happened with Bracha a few days earlier: about Jock and about the satchel and its contents. Alys had surprised him by giving him an awkward hug, instead of punching him like she usually did. She’d looked genuinely shocked and saddened to hear that Bracha had killed Jock.
Within half an hour the three of them had collected their things, made a brief and successful scavenge of the Eye Pavilion building for sterile eye-patches and antibiotics for Steph and began the walk back towards The Gardens, Joey explaining how he’d tracked Bracha to St Thomas Aquin’s.
“I considered stopping into The Gardens, well the fence-line at least, and warning your mother but my temper got the better of me and I went straight after him.”
Alys smiled at the notion of him turning up at the gates of The Gardens alone. “Probably it’s for the best that you followed Bracha, don’t you think?” she said, glancing at Stephanie.
She turned her attention back to Joey. “Have you read any of Jock’s journal yet?” she asked
He reddened a little and shook his head, subconsciously shifting his hand to Jock’s satchel which was across his shoulder and resting on his hip. “No. I was a little preoccupied.”
He should’ve just told her that he couldn’t, but he knew that Alys could read and didn’t want her view of him to be diminished.
Alys nodded. “What do you think that flash-thing is?”
Joey shrugged. “Dunno. Jock said I needed a computer to use it. Said it was my mum’s. I figured that I’d just hang onto it and hope that I came across someone who has the means to use it while I’m travelling.”
Joey suddenly came to a dead stop as he realised where he was. Standing at the junction of George IV Bridge and High Street, he touched a hand softly to the fence that formed the boundary of The Brotherhood’s territory. It was the first time he’d been in the area since the night he’d scaled the fences with Jock and left The Brotherhood behind. These people had once been the only family he’d known and, regardless of their motivations, had given him a moral compass (of sorts), food and a safe home for fifteen years. A wave of shame passed over him as he realised that he hadn’t thought once about his former home or the people he’d grown up with.
After a few minutes silence, Alys placed a hand on his shoulder.
“We should go. It’s getting dark.”
Joey still preferred the dark, or at least his eyes did, a throwback to his time in the underground crypts. Always, his most peaceful moments would come when he was in the absence of light. The darkness was a warm blanket around him and held no terrors. Recent experience had taught him that the monsters that walked in the daylight were to be feared more than imagined ones in the night.
As she made to scale the fence, Joey held her back. “I know a better way, easier.” He nodded at Steph, who’d been walking silently bes
ide them the whole way, holding onto Joey’s hand.
Leading the girls through the ruins of the Bank of Scotland building, the three emerged on Lawnmarket and made their way quickly to the gates that separated The Gardens from The Royal Mile. Joey had pulled his hood up as they’d exited the bank, fearful that one of The Brotherhood would be on the surface. He couldn’t know how they’d react to his presence, but suspected that the underground cult had changed little in their philosophy, outlook or daily routine in the years he’d been travelling the north with Jock.
Picking the gate’s lock effortlessly, Joey slid through and then held back a little so that Alys could take the lead.
“Wise man,” she said.
“Yeah. I figured that your face would be more welcome than mine.”
Alys glanced at her cousin’s bandaged face.
“Don’t bet on it,” she muttered, cutting a glance sideways at her cousin, before leading the three of them down the Playfair Steps towards her home.
Joey watched her go and smiled, despite the circumstances. It was good to see her. She looked good, Hell, she looked great, and really, who else did he have?
Interlude
Fraser Donnelly
“Jesus.”
The man had been sitting at his post watching security footage from the dead city of Edinburgh for close to twelve hours. The pay was lousy, so were the hours, but he liked the solitude of his work. Being paid to monitor the CCTV network of the quarantined city was hardly demanding. More often than not he’d bring a bottle of vodka along on the night shifts and find entertainment in the lives of the abandoned.
His neck ached; it always did. His lanky frame wasn’t built to lounge around in a chair for twelve hours a day, luxurious leather, orthopaedic or not. Leaning to the left and then to the right, a series of loud pops and cracks preceded a long groan of relief from him.
Standing, he pushed his hands behind him to his lower back and puffed his chest out as he pushed, feeling the muscles lose their tension as he watched the teenagers and the young girl make their way down the stairs towards Princes Street Gardens.
