by Luke Kondor
“Don’t let it touch your skin,” Quinton called, reunited at his mother’s side.
“I won’t,” Keaghan smiled, holding the torch as if it were one giant match.
Before long the night sky had been broken by the firelight. The dark patchwork of stars was lost to a hazy hue of orange, yellow, and pink. The heat was intense, and the bodies crackled as they melted into ash. There were no screams from the rotters. Not so much as a single click. Yet, they were alive as they burned. You could see it in their faces and the way their tendrils swayed like living things tended to do.
When it came to the hiver (… The Scarred Henry…) Colin dragged the bloating body away from the cabins to a clear space on the floor. A moment later his torch made contact with the hiver's skin and the flames took to it as if it were always meant to burn.
Colin stood beside Joanna and held her in his arms. Sunny stood in front of them both, eyes no longer glowing. Colin and Joanna hadn’t told anyone of Sunny’s actions. The stillness of the rotters was nothing to them but an evening miracle.
Some asked questions. Of course they did. Some had theories, too. Everything from the power of Christ to some special type of tree pollen in Hope’s woods. Someone even said that it was Henry. He’d morphed with Benjamin and put a stop to it.
“Howzzat?” the critic’s moaned.
“Henry-baby had a strong mind,” Iggy had replied. “The man was something truly special.”
When the conversation came to Colin and Joanna, they would simply shrug and look bewildered. It was a secret to be held between them both, and the little pale kid with the emerald eyes.
The bug in the machine.
The virus.
The trojan horse.
Sunny.
*
A short distance away, up a three-mile black-route trek into the hills, the doors of a small outpost opened, and a dark-skinned woman emerged.
She rubbed her wrists, feeling where the bonds had cut into her skin. She felt her mouth, soothing the irritation where the duct tape had kept her silenced. The two dogs barked and jumped around, licking at Ria’s exposed skin. The scavvies had done a number on her, that was for sure. Kept her bound and tied while they had run off to join the fray in the town centre. Kept her in the company of two dead men who had been hung out to dry until the shed smelled of nothing more than death and pork. More than a couple of times that night, Ria had vomited in her mouth and swallowed it back down. Unable to spit past the thick tape that locked her lips.
But that was all over now. One of the scavvies had been stupid enough to leave a blade on the floor. Once Ria was certain that they were not coming back, she had toppled herself over, and shimmied to the blade, rubbing the bonds that bound her wrists against the cold steel. More than once the blade bit her flesh until she was free and threw away the bloody rope. Her muscles ached. Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry. She needed air. She needed to free the dogs, get moving, and get back to Hope to warn them all – if they didn’t already know. The wind had carried some strange cries not too long ago, and that frightened Ria.
She used the doorframe to lift herself to her feet. Already she could feel the dogs tugging against her hips, eager to get away from the cabin of death and back to their warm home in Byron’s kennels. Oh, how happy she’d be to see his face again. The one who would never judge her weakness from drink, and who had given her a second purpose after the shit had hit the fan in Ditton.
But as she looked ahead, she saw something strange. A golden glow that poured out of the darkness between the trees in the distance. A dome of light that flickered and burned. Was this what the night-time torches looked like from a distance? When the Hopefuls were sat inside eating and drinking, was this the beacon that had brought the Millers to the town? They looked bigger somehow and there were more of them.
Something in Ria’s heart told her that it wasn’t. That something extraordinary had taken place tonight. She braced herself against the chill breeze, looked down at her eager dogs, and began running towards the burning fires of Hope.
~ 37 ~
It took a couple of days for the Hopefuls to clear up the mess from the night of the attacks. Bodies were moved, fallen Hopefuls were given a proper burial, and piles of ashes were scattered to the wind.
At Henry LeShard’s funeral, every single Hopeful attended. A crowd joined in sombre solidarity as Veronica sobbed into a tissue, wailing loudly and shaking her fist at the sky. Anton officiated the ceremony, looking incredibly uncomfortable. Susie stood at his side – where she spent the majority of the days since the attack and linked her arm in his.
Colin watched the ceremony from afar with Sunny and Joanna, leaning against the thick bough of a tree. None of the three of them had really known much more of Henry other than his position as leader of Hope and found it difficult to immerse themselves in the grieving with the rest of the town. When Anton finished his words, and Henry’s charred remains were committed to the soil (with the Scarred Man… Benjamin at his side), Colin disappeared before anyone could see them.
Days passed. Wounds healed. Life went on.
On the two week anniversary of the attack, the Hopefuls gathered at dinner and put the idea of a new leader to a community vote. There wasn’t a person who could deny that the town felt empty without someone to man the helm and steer the ship, someone to protect them from a world in which the rot had returned with a vengeance. A world where now it seemed the rot had shifted and adapted. There were still, what people had commonly called the ‘runners’, but what was this new breed of rot that hid inside people’s systems and laid dormant until such a time as it deemed ready to make itself known? Colin had seen three examples of it already. First in King’s Hill, bursting forth from the flesh of an old man named Beckett Kendall. Second from the Miller boy who he had tied and bound with the lead of a dog at the kennel (and who had since been burned after they found him frozen, mid-run, down towards the red bridge). And third, the poor unfortunate soul who had become something of an icon over the years in Hope. Benjamin Rydell – the Scarred Man.
‘Undetectables,’ Keaghan had suggested one night as the Hill-folk sat in the quiet of the admin cabin with Colin, Anton, Joanna, and Sunny.
Colin nodded. It seemed to fit.
There was little in the way of competition for the title of ‘Leader of Hope’. Anton was nominated without hesitation, as was Veronica. Chef offered himself for the position but was quickly rejected, with someone asking instead for Susie K. She shook her head and tried to shrink into the crowd.
Anton held her hand. “You’d make a great leader. You’ve already got the experience. I don’t.”
“No, it should be you,” Susie said, to a crowd nodding in agreement. “If anybody embodies what Hope is supposed to be, to grow and live and love and… get their fucking fingers dirty, it’s you, Dutchman.”
Anton looked at the expectant faces and their beaming smiles. Even Veronica clapped enthusiastically, a tear rolling down her cheek. Unaware in that moment that there were three Hopefuls absent from the votes, and would surely skip dinner that night too.
*
Colin approached Joanna’s cabin. His beard returning and his hair now past his ears. He looked up to see that there stood a creature with brown/black fur and piercing blue eyes that sniffed at the ground, tail wagging frantically in the air.
Colin caught up and ran his hand over its wet nose, over its head and down to the bandage fixed to the top of its leg, near to the point where its ass ended and the tail began. The dog whined as it buried its nose into Colin’s side.
“Veronica did a good job, eh, boy?” he said as he dropped to his knees and placed his hands on its shoulders, bringing them up to its ears which he tickled with his thumbs and index fingers.
The dog seemed so much more secure now compared to how frail he’d been when Colin found him out in the woods, hidden away in the hollowed-out arch of a giant oak tree.
It had taken Colin three days of walkin
g around the woods of Hope before he heard the faint whimpering on the wind and followed it to find his companion. The dog had barely moved as Colin pulled him out from the foliage. He didn’t cry or bark or do much of anything as he carried him back to Hope, whispering “please don’t die” over and over like he was trying to invoke some sort of pagan healing spell. “Your mother’s waiting for you,” he repeated, hoping that by somehow talking about Whisper (who they’d found alive and well in one of the Millers’ Transit vans) would keep Dylan breathing just that little bit longer.
And maybe that worked.
Because here he was. Eyes bright as ever. Tail wagging.
A second later and Dylan clamped his mouth around Colin’s hand. The same one he’d bitten on that first interaction. But this time he wasn’t piercing skin. He was barely applying any pressure at all. A playful glint appeared in his eyes.
“Hey!” Colin shouted and Dylan quickly let go of his hand and dropped his shoulders, ready to pounce and play with his master. “No time for play, bud. Come on.”
Dylan licked Colin’s hand and ran for the cabin door, his paws scratching against the wood. By the time Colin was on the doorstep, Joanna had opened the door and was standing there. There was no smile on her face, just a fixed, determined expression as she looked over Colin’s shoulder and up and down the empty street.
“Come inside. They’ll be back soon. If you have something to ask him, I suggest you do it now.”
“Where is he?”
“Inside. Sat on the sofa with a comic book. He knows what you’re here for.”
“He’s talking again?”
“In spurts. Some days he’s just like a regular kid. Others… well… you know.”
Colin found Sunny sat cross-legged in the living room, a brightly coloured comic book on his lap. The boy’s eyes widened when he saw Dylan who leapt up and licked his face. Sunny laughed and closed his eyes against the onslaught of saliva as Colin watched, amazed that, in that moment, Sunny almost seemed like a normal kid.
Joanna followed close behind Colin. “Sunny? Colin’s here to ask you a few questions, remember? He’s not going to hurt you. He’s not here to be horrible like the men from before,” Joanna ignored Colin’s look, “he just needs to see. He just needs to know the truth.”
Dylan calmed by Sunny’s feet and lay with his head rested on his knee. Outside all was dark, the inside of the cabin illuminated by a great many candles. Colin almost felt that he was about to initiate a seance.
He took a seat next to Sunny and looked into his deep green eyes. The eyes that Colin believed he saw glowing on that night of death. The eyes that glowed with an unknown power and brought the rotters to a standstill. Eyes that seemed to know a great deal more than the boy could ever describe. Even looking at them now, the irises seemed to shift and move, as though Colin was looking into a green weather cloud from a bird’s eye view.
What the hell was this kid?
A steady breath. Sunny watched Colin curiously. “Sunny… is my family alive?” It was a long shot, and Colin knew that, but he had to ask. “Fletcher… Rachel… can you see them?”
Sunny blinked and cocked his head to the side. The eyes continued to morph and whirl, yet he sat silent.
Joanna moved and sat on the back of the sofa. “Sándor, it’s really important that you answer Colin’s questions, please. He only needs help with this one thing.”
Silence.
Colin bowed his head, hiding the tears that collected in the corner of his eyes. “This was a stupid idea. I’m sorry, Joanna. I can’t be around the kid anymore and not know. He knows something, I’m sure of it. But until he can open up and let me—”
Sunny grabbed Colin’s hand and placed it on his forehead, then grabbed Joanna’s and did the same.
A second later and his eyes spilled with the green glow as his mouth opened wide. Sunny looked at the ceiling as words and voices flooded into Colin and Joanna’s minds.
Abandoned and broken buildings that stretched high into the sky appeared around them. Lampposts and traffic lights that leant dangerously close to the ground. A large glass structure on the right, the windows hollow with jagged edges. Every one of them broken.
And Colin was running. Or rather, he noticed as he looked down and saw the scrawny legs pumping back and forth, the body of the person through whose eyes he was seeing was running.
The breaths were shallow, and there were footsteps behind.
“Come back here, scum,” the dark female voice growled. Colin tried to turn but couldn’t afford to lose any speed. He looked ahead and saw the familiar steps that he had passed down on so many occasions over the years. The passageway down into London’s Kings Cross Station.
“Come on, Fletch.” The voice sent goosebumps down Colin’s (or, rather, the boy’s) spine. “This way.”
There she is. Rachel…
Rachel was already at the bottom of the stairs, hair matted in thick lumps, dirt on her face, and a line of scarring over her left eye. She looked thin. Wiry. Almost feral. She watched with unblinking eyes as Colin sprinted towards her in Fletcher’s body, the haughty cackling of the woman behind as the footsteps grew closer.
“Mum!”
But Rachel didn’t look panicked. She looked.. controlled. Calm. As Colin bounded down the steps two at a time, he noticed that she held a thin wire in both hands, its end taught against something he couldn’t quite see.
He reached the bottom of the steps, briefly catching his reflection in an old unused tv screen, and saw Fletcher standing there. Taller and ganglier than he would have imagined he’d be at age eleven. But the same blond hair, the same blue eyes that Colin remembered so well.
The woman’s footsteps were loud on the frozen escalator stairs. She slowed at the top, taking her time as her feet clapped on each porcelain step.
“Given up, have we? Where’s the honour of the chase?” the woman cackled. Her face was demented, twisted with scars. One eye sat lower on her face, and chunks of her hair were missing. She held up a small knife with a jagged edge and waved it around. “Oh, I’m going to have so much fun here… I can’t remember the last time I ate meat…”
Rachel and Fletcher bolted down the final set of stairs into the dark of the King’s Cross boarding platform. Rachel’s hands pulled Fletcher to the side and into a nook hidden into the wall.
The woman’s steps were loud and manic, only a few seconds behind them.
“Awuh… hiding are we, now? Don’t worry… I’ll find you… and I’ll slice open that lovely little belly of your boy’s. I’ll start by eating his intestines. For some reason, I’ve developed a right taste for— yerlk!”
The woman didn’t get to finish her sentence. As she stepped close enough to the edge of the platform, Rachel suddenly burst forth and shoved the woman over the edge where she landed on the tracks below. Well, not quite.
“Mind the gap,” Rachel said dryly as she climbed down.
Colin watched it all as if in slow motion through Fletcher’s eyes. He stepped forward and peered over the edge, already aware of what he would see. The hundred or so knives poking up and out through the wooden boards. The woman’s final chittering movements as the blood drained from her system. A gargling sound where a serrated blade had opened her throat.
Colin couldn’t believe what he was seeing, finding it near impossible to believe that his wife could be capable of such a murder. But there she was, acting as if it was business as usual. She emptied the woman’s pockets and turned down the dark tunnels. Colin followed closely behind, occasionally turning to see Fletcher in dim reflections until they were so deep in the dark that he was surprised they could both navigate it.
Colin tried to call after Rachel, but Fletcher’s mouth did not move. Though there was something… definitely something…
Don’t worry, Dad. We’ll wait for you.
And then it turned off. In a flash of green, the power zapped and Colin felt the firm leather of the cabin’s sofa against his but
tocks.
For a second he sat there, staring into Sunny’s eyes. Until he remembered where he was, and looked at Joanna. She looked at Colin, dazed and confused.
Sunny opened his comic book and began to read.
Joanna placed a hand on Colin’s shoulder. “Colin…?”
But Colin was lost for words. It was true, then? Rachel and Fletcher were alive, running, fighting, surviving somewhere in London. Finding a way to adapt down in the tunnels of the underground…
Colin stood and placed his hands on his head. He looked over at Joanna, the woman that he had begun to feel could be a fresh start. A chance to forget the past and move forward. His insides hurt as his mind racked with the knowledge that Sunny had bestowed.
Colin closed his eyes tight. When he opened them Joanna was stood in front, wrapping her arms around him.
“Joanna… I… I need to…”
Joanna placed a finger on his lips, her eyes shimmering. “I know… I know…”
And in the candle-lit cabin of Hope, while Anton and the Hopefuls grew merry and celebrated a brand new chapter of their town, while Ria fed and watered her troop of dogs in the kennels, the decision was made without words.
Colin was going to London.
END
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