dEaDINBURGH

by Wilson, Mark

  “Judge later. You have twenty seconds before this is over for you. I’ll ask you one question. Do you want to live?”

  He nodded at the open hatch.

  Alys pulled at Joey, who came along willingly now. As the hatch closed over their heads, Alys put all of her malice and hatred into a hard stare aimed at the man.

  “One day, we’ll find you.”

  The panel slid over as every instrument and panel sprang to life and the live feeds flickered back to life.

  “I know.” Fraser’s holo-image muttered before flickering off.

  Interlude

  Fraser Donnelly

  As the light for the holo-cam blinked off, Fraser sank back into his over-sized chair and let out a long sigh of relief. The instant the kids had closed the hatch behind them, the compound’s electricity and security sprang back into life. Too close.

  Swinging his seat a little to the lift, he watched Bracha make his way towards the tunnel he’d dug under the fence the night before. Bracha slipped under the gap the very instant that security had come back on line.

  Somna and his men had followed him along the fence-line towards the gap and had closed in on him as he rose to his feet on the other side of the fence. Only ten yards stood between Somna’s right-hand man, James Kelly, and Bracha. The rest of The Exalted were a hundred metres away. It appeared that Somna would finally have his ex-lieutenant back. Fraser cocked an eyebrow and smiled bitterly as he saw Bracha’s probable fate in his mind’s eye.

  Flicking the image away Fraser watched the seconds tick past on the desk clock, timing the teens’ journey along the tunnel towards the exit into the woods. After three minutes had passed, he activated the intercom to the tunnel’s system.

  “Alys? Joseph? Have you made it to the hatch yet?”

  Fraser chewed at the inside of his cheek as he waited for a reply, worrying that they’d turned back, which was unlikely as the alarms would have gone off by now. Equally as worrying was the notion that they may have exited the tunnel already. Despite them having fought through a seemingly insurmountable number of Zombies at the same part of the woods the previous evening, the dead’s numbers had tripled in the area since they’d last been there, drawn by the chance of a meal and the noise. Without him to guide them Alys and Joseph had zero chance of surviving in the woods, despite their extraordinary skills.

  He tried again.

  “Alys? Joseph?”

  A voice cut sharply over his, crackling through the speaker.

  “Can you stop calling me that? Call me Joey.” He was trying to contain his anger, but it was a heat through the intercom.

  “Okay, Joey.” Realising that he hadn’t given them a good reason to trust what he was about to tell them to do, he gave them the only thing he had to offer. His name.

  “I’m Fraser.”

  “What do you want from us, Fraser?” Alys put a good dose of spite into his name as she pronounced it.

  Fraser cleared his throat before speaking, burying the emotions swirling in him.

  “I want you to survive.” It was the simplest truth.

  “For your viewers?” Joey asked scornfully.

  Fraser lifted his chin, cricking his neck to the left to release some of the tension there.

  “No, Joey. Not for them.”

  Their voices vanished for a few moments. Long enough to make Fraser believe that they’d left the safety of the tunnel. His finger hovered in mid-air, desperate to activate communication once more. His mind told it, give them time.

  Finally the silence broke.

  “Tell us what we need to know… then leave us alone.” It was Alys.

  Chapter 27

  Joey

  In the blackness of the tunnel, Joey finally felt in control again. He could concentrate fully and begin to try to absorb the revelations they’d been given. Now isn’t the time. Joey snapped himself back to the moment, deciding that he could deal with the horror of their situation and his rising anger another time.

  He held Alys’ hand in the darkness to reassure her that he could see and to make himself feel less alone. Whilst the absence of light underground made him feel safe it also reminded him of how isolated he’d been in his former life. Or thought he’d been.

  Joey listened as the man who called himself Fraser continued to give instructions through the little speaker bolted onto the tunnel wall.

  “There are several hundred of the infected just through that hatch.”

  Joey glanced up to the top of a concrete staircase at the metal trapdoor, wondering if Fraser was stupid or just ignorant, that he thought he needed to tell Alys and himself that outside was teeming with the dead. Their groans, as familiar to them as their own voices, drifted down to the tunnel. Joey had never heard so many in one place and gritted his teeth in response.

  He’s brought us here to die.

  Fraser continued.

  “If you step outside you’ll die.”

  He was beginning to irritate Joey.

  “You expect us to sit here, then... Fraser?”

  Joey waited a moment. The man on the other end of the conversation was clearly taking a minute to compose himself.

  Because he was lying?

  “No.” For the first time, Fraser sounded unsure of himself. Strangely it made Joey trust him a fraction more than before.

  “I want you to step outside and simply walk through them.”

  Both Alys and he laughed loudly at the same time.

  “C’mon, Joey. Let’s get back up to the hospital corridors.”

  “No!” Fraser blurted. Both teens halted in response to his cry. It was the most genuine-sounding word he’d spoken yet. “I promise that they’ll kill you if you go that way.”

  Joey pushed at his intercom button.

  “And The Ringed will do what? Throw us a party?”

  “No, Joey. They’ll ignore you completely. If you do what I tell you to.”

  He couldn’t make out the expression on Alys’ face in the darkness, but expected that she wore the same mocking expression he did.

  He pushed the intercom again.

  “Oh, why didn’t you say? Okey dokey. We’ll just pop up there now, will we?”

  Fraser didn’t miss a beat, his voice as steady, as calm as ever.

  “You’ve seen them do it before, is it really so hard to believe me?”

  A series of mental images flashed through Joey’s mind. He thought about the oldest Zoms found on The Royal Mile. Those Zoms never attacked The Brothers, no matter how close they were. They simply fed on whatever The Brotherhood offered and wandered away when they were finished. Father Grayson taught them that it was because The Brothers were God’s shepherds. He asserted the dead knew that The Brothers were holy, that they existed to attend them.

  Jock had told him many times of how often he’d cleared fresher Zoms from the fences of The Brotherhood at Grayson’s command. Why was he worried about some Zoms and not others if The Brotherhood were God’s shepherds?

  “Go on,” Joey said flatly.

  Fraser’s voice crackled through the darkness.

  “I’m counting on you having some Carrionite in that bag of yours, Joey.”

  He’d been about to ask how Fraser knew about The Brotherhood’s sacred powder, and then he remembered. You watched it, you watched us, on TV… for entertainment. Every private moment.

  A surge of hatred coursed through him. He swallowed it back, giving a one word answer.

  “Yes.”

  Joey hated that this man knew details of his life, maybe every detail. He felt violated. That Fraser knew he had Carrionite in his bag infuriated him. Joey hadn’t even shared that knowledge with Alys. He didn’t really know why he’d kept the Carrionite, other than as a reminder of his former home. He’d never taken Communion, never inhaled the powder or experienced its effects. The uninitiated Brothers were anointed with a simple cross marked in Carrionite on the forehead.

  Joey couldn’t hide his anger this time and growled i
nto the intercom.

  “Does that make you happy? Does it entertain you that you know these things, Fraser?”

  “No it doesn’t, but it does mean that you’ll survive today.”

  Joey stabbed at the button with his index finger again.

  “If you’re trying to help, get on with it.”

  A beat of silence filled the tunnel before Fraser spoke again.

  “Wet your faces, necks and the back of your hands. Do the same on any other exposed part of your body. We don’t understand quite how the mechanism works, but the dead use a combination of sight, sound and smell to target… prey.”

  Fraser coughed before continuing.

  “Their sense of smell is a mystery. The delicate membranes and sensory neurones are gone, but somehow their intellect, what remains of it, can still receive and process information from these senses. The sense of smell is actually quite developed...”

  “Get on with it,” Joey interrupted.

  “Sorry. Okay, once you’ve wet those areas scatter as much Carrionite as you can over the wet areas and rub it in, forming a paste.”

  The teens had already wet themselves using puddles of stagnant water from the tunnel floor. Joey raked around in his satchel as Alys waited, eventually pulling out a grapefruit-sized leather pouch, tied at the top with a leather string.

  Opening the pouch he told Alys, “Don’t breathe any of this stuff in, or you’ll lose a day.”

  He could feel her confusion, but pulled her close and began spreading it onto the wet areas of her skin until a fine coat formed over her.

  The film of Carrionite that covered her reminded Joey of a time he’d contracted chicken pox and Father Grayson had bathed him in oats from The Gardens. A fine crust had formed on his skin then, and reduced the need to claw at the open sores that the virus had brought.

  When he’d finished Alys repeated the process with him.

  “What the hell is this stuff, Joey?”

  He promised to tell her later.

  “We’re done,” Alys informed the man through the intercom.

  He sighed in relief.

  “The ingredients in the Carrionite powder are formed from parts of the dead themselves. As well as the sensory effect it has on The Brotherhood during Communion, it also has a very powerful effect on the senses of the dead. Simply walk through them. The Carrionite will tell their senses that you’re one of them.”

  “That’s how The Brotherhood can walk amongst them? Worship them as they do?” Joey asked. He avoided saying we when referring to The Brotherhood.

  “Yes,” Fraser replied. “But you have to move slowly. Remember that they have other senses also. If you move with too much purpose or at a greater speed than they do, they’ll notice you.”

  Alys brought herself close to him.

  “Do you think this will work?”

  Joey shook his head, forgetting for a moment that despite their closeness, she couldn’t see him.

  “It might. The Brotherhood were never attacked by the dead within their fences.”

  Joey jabbed at the intercom again.

  “Does it work on the fresh ones?” Jock’s tales of clearing the newly-dead from The Brotherhood’s borders nagged at him.

  “No,” Fraser admitted. “The tissue still alive in them is fresh enough that their senses are much more acute. The eyesight in particular. You’ll have to move slowly and hope that the fresher ones have mostly left the area. They’re usually the first to realise that a food source is gone and wander off to look elsewhere.”

  “Don’t you have cameras there?” Alys asked, her tone acid.

  “We do, but I can’t access them at the moment. The same people who would have detected you at the hospital had you been there when the power activated would notice me tapping the feed from here.”

  “So you’re in as much danger as we are, are you, Fraser?” Joey’s voice was filled with sarcasm.

  “No, I’m not,” Fraser said. “But I’ve done all that I can. If I’m to help you again, I can’t be found by The Corporation at this time. Now, go. Time’s running out for me too.”

  Alys climbed the first few stairs and lifted the trapdoor an inch, wincing as a flood of morning light shone through the gap. Joey saw that she had her Sai drawn. Before following along behind her, Joey pressed the intercom one last time.

  “Thanks… I suppose.”

  He turned, drew his blades and emerged from the trapdoor side by side with Alys Shephard.

  Standing in a small gap in an ocean of the dead, Joey peered through scrunched up eyes, confirming that Alys was there beside him. The weak winter sun was low in the sky and burned into his retina like a supernova. He cupped his hands over his eyes and gradually opened them, allowing small amounts of light, slowly increasing, into his eyes.

  When they were fully open and the pain in his eyes had dulled, he scanned around. Alys was still beside him. Sai drawn but hanging low at her sides, she stood looking out over the hundreds of decomposed faces gathered around them. Former doctors, paramedics, and dozens of other types moved like a wave around them but not one of those faces turned towards the pair.

  No eyes darted to their faces, no hands clawed at them, no teeth closed on their flesh or snapped at them from afar.

  Joey felt invisible. Feeling his confidence grow, he stifled a laugh of joy before it escaped and took several steps out into the undead sea. He didn’t try to resist but moved with the motion of the dead around them and gestured for Alys, whose eyes were wide with joy, to join him.

  Allowing the movement of the dead to carry them along like a current towards the field where few roamed, Joey relaxed and surrendered to the rhythm. He felt peaceful. The surrender was exactly what he needed. In a mass of bodies, in various states of decomposition and with putrid smells all around, he felt truly alive for the first time since Jock had died. The anger that had been growing inside him since Jock had been killed had threatened to become a furnace of rage when he’d discovered the truth about their city. This moment, the passiveness of it, dampened that anger to an ember.

  Something hard snagged and pulled at the leg of his trousers as he was carried along. Reaching down he found one of his arrows protruding from the head of a Zom. He yanked it out and began scoping around for others. The path the dead took towards the open field where they scattered carried him within reach of thirty of his arrows by the time he’d reached it.

  Feeling a disappointment he hadn’t expected upon disengaging from the tangle of creatures, he took Alys’ hand and pulled her close. To hell with it.

  He pulled her firmly towards him, and held her tight, celebrating their survival. Joey expected a punch in return, but it was worth it.

  She dropped her Sai and clenched his face between her hands, locking him in a very brief kiss.

  “You bloody stink like a Zom,” she laughed quietly and gave him the punch he’d been expecting. In all honesty, he’d have been disappointed not to have been hit by her. It was what she did.

  Alys noticed something over his shoulder.

  “There are a few fresh ones up over there.”

  She pointed them out.

  “Let’s go around,” she suggested.

  “Go where?” Joey asked. The weight of everything they’d been through and had discovered settling heavily upon him.

  Alys shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Home.”

  Joey stood still, feeling the chill of the morning wind on his skin as Alys gathered her weapons and her belongings.

  Home.

  Joey didn’t really have a home anymore. The Royal Mile had been a prison, a lie. His time with Jock had been liberating and brought with it a parent at last, but had been far too brief.

  The boy from The Brotherhood was long gone and Jock’s apprentice had grown up. Where did this Joey belong? Who was he now? Someone whom eager viewers watched struggle to survive for their amusement? Maybe they really cared about him in their way.

/>   How many others in Edinburgh were suffering for entertainment for the masses?

  He pushed the thought of the cameras and a world outside of the quarantined city away. It was too big. The thought of the outside world and the callousness of the people there was too horrific a truth. Later, he told himself. Deal with it later.

  Finally he decided that, whoever he was or whoever he was becoming, he was certain of two things about this young man who stood in a field, carried there by the dead.

  He would forever cherish the memory of his foster-father, Jock, and use the skills he’d taught him, and he was blessed to have Alys Shephard for his best friend.

  Throwing his rucksack over his shoulder, Joseph MacLeod followed his only friend through the long, crisply-frosted grass… Home.

  Epilogue 1

  James Kelly

  Bracha emerged from under the fence-line, snaking quickly through the pit he’d dug under it to gain entry the day before. James strolled towards him, unhurried and came to a stop a few feet away from the spot where Bracha had already risen to his feet.

  James wasted a second he couldn’t afford with a quick appraisal of Bracha’s condition. The teenagers had clearly done a job on him. Moving his eyes over the broken-looking man, James caught a broken nose and jaw, two badly damaged hands hanging useless and, from the ragged way he breathed, they’d done a number on his ribcage as well. A lopsided grin spread. He wasted another second with a glib comment.

  “Kids, eh?”

  Unsurprisingly, Bracha didn’t laugh. He just stood there, body a ruin, eyes darting between checking over James’ shoulder and glaring at his former friend.

  James sighed and nodded over his shoulder.

  “They’re right behind me. Tell me the girl’s name and I’ll give you a head start. For old times’ sake.”

  James had no intention of letting Somna get his hands on Bracha. Too many secrets would be learned. He wished he had it in him just to kill the beast who wore his best friend’s face.