by Jack Lewis
“I’ll come for you,” Heather whispered, and she meant every word more than she’d ever meant anything in her life.
She looked away from the children in time to see Charles give a nod. Before she could interpret its meaning, Heather felt the crash of something blunt on the back of her head. Her legs turned to water and before she could open her lips to shout, her whole world was plunged into darkness.
22
Heather
The wheel of the cart struggled over a stone, and the jolt brought Heather back from the dark. As the light strained into her eyes she felt a throbbing pain in her temple and wondered if this was real or just another layer to the dream she’d been having. In it she was in the school swimming baths like in the old days. Her legs were so useless they might as well have been made of plastic, and a fin glided through the water in graceful zigzags. As the shape got nearer and she could see its mass underneath the water, and she realised it wasn’t a fin poking out of the water. It was the long black beak of a mask, and in front of her, emerging in a spray of water, was Charles Bull.
“Let me off this fucking thing.”
There was more than an undercurrent of fear to the trader’s voice; it was so high pitched it sounded like the words wobbled out of his mouth. His wrists were scratched raw from his attempts to get out of the ropes, but the knots had held. Whoever tied them had paid more attention to their teacher than Heather had to her father.
She lifted her arms to her face. With bound hands she brushed her hair away from her forehead. The strands stuck to her skin in clumps, glued by the sweat that covered her.
“Where are you taking me?” she said.
“The Dome,” said a soldier to her right.
At the end of the cart one solider sat with reigns in his hand and his back hunched. He concentrated on the space in front of him as though he might have to take a sharp turn, but they were in the wilderness now. The trader district was so far away that she couldn’t even see it as a blip on the landscape, and nothing lay ahead of them save a horizon with fearful promises.
They were in the wilderness that Heather knew was part of Capita territory. Once it had been a government protected nature reserve, and Heather had taken a school trip here once. The teacher had given them all a sheet with pictures of birds, and each bird was worth a certain amount of points. There were some on there that she’d never seen before in her life and which looked too exotic to exist in a place as bleak as this. At the end of one of the happiest days she could remember, Heather had the second highest point tally after seeing dozens of colourful birds. Now, on the cart, she looked around her and she saw nothing except knee-high yellow grass that blew idly in the wind.
The cart followed a rough stone path that someone had cut into the ground. The width was uneven and more often than not shrunk so small that it became a line. The cart driver leaned forward in his seat and held the reigns tight in his hand. The soldier next to him leaned towards him and spoke.
“Better stop,” he said.
She recognised the voice, and when the soldier turned to look at her she saw that it was Max. Heather moved her head from side to side as if expecting Charles Bull to come riding by on his horse, but when the cart stopped, there was nothing but silence. It seemed that Charles had trusted Max to deal with Heather and Wes, but what did that mean for the kids? When she thought about them being with Charles, she felt like she was hanging onto a ledge hundreds of feet in the air with fingers too weak to hold.
The road forked ahead of them and the stone pathway split into opposite directions. Heather had no clue where either of them led. It made her think about how stupid their plan had been, really. Even if she and Kim managed to get enough supplies together to leave the Capita lands, where would they go?
Knowing the area wasn’t a problem. There was a city twenty six miles away that was once the mecca of a rock and roll movement, and five miles east was an industrial town that kick-started the turn of the century steam era. Getting around wasn’t the issue and even if it was, there were plenty of maps sitting on the shelves of abandoned shops. The problem was that things had changed. She didn’t know what creatures lived in the old rock-and roll-city or how many infected walked the streets of the steam town. The maps still looked the same but the places had changed.
The soldier on the end of the cart stood up.
“Why’ve we stopped?” he said.
Max stepped across from the driver seat and into the cart. His mask was dusty, but Heather could still see the smiley face that he’d drawn on it. He walked past Heather and Wes and stood in front of the other soldier. Without a word, Max pulled a knife from his belt and stabbed the soldier in the throat. The man put a hand to his neck, but his legs collapsed under him. He hit the floor on his back and gurgled. Max kicked him off the cart.
He bent down toward Heather and motioned for her to hold up her hands. With two cuts he sliced away the rope that tied her, and then worked on the rope around her ankles. Heather watched as he did the same for Wes.
As soon as his ropes fell away, Wes dived over the side of the cart. He hit the ground with his knees but immediately straightened up. He tried to run away but could only manage a limp, and he couldn’t even clear twenty metres before Max had leapt over the side of the cart, caught up to him and punched him so hard in the back of the head that he fell over. Max grabbed Wes’s ankles and dragged him back across the grass.
The driver stood up and turned around now, holding the reigns in one hand as if dropping them would send the horses bolting for their freedom. When he saw the Capita soldier on the ground with blood gushing from his throat, he stepped back so suddenly he almost tripped over his seat.
“Goddamn it,” he said, voice weary as if this happened every day.
He snapped his head to the left and saw Max approaching the cart with the unconscious trader. The driver let the reigns go, reached into his pocket and pulled a clay hammer. He was about to step off the cart toward Max when Heather reached out, grabbed his leg and pulled on it, sending the man face first to the floor. Reacting quicker than his rival, Max stabbed the driver in the back of his neck.
He picked up Wes and pushed him up onto the side of the cart. Heather grabbed Wes’s collar and helped get him aboard. Max grabbed the railing, put his foot on a wheel and swung himself up onto the vehicle. He sat down, ran his hand over his face to wipe away the sweat and then let his breath catch up with him.
Heather didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what had happened, and in this situation it seemed there was little input she could give. She waited as Max brought himself under control. She saw that his right hand was in a tight fist and that he tapped his foot nervously on the floor of the cart.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He closed his eyes for a second. Opening them, he spoke. “Give me a minute.”
Though his face was young, a crease ran across his forehead as if it was a worry that wouldn’t leave. With his otherwise smooth skin and his hair that was thick at the front but thinning slightly at the back, he seemed like one of those chameleon guys who could pass for any age they liked. With a suit and briefcase he could be forty, and with ripped jeans and trainers he could easily become an early-thirties guy clinging onto his late twenties.
Finally he straightened up in his seat. He put the knife back in his belt and rested a boot on Wes’s back.
“You’ve heard of the Resistance?” he said.
Heather nodded. Speech still wouldn’t come.
“Then you will understand what I just did.”
The words left his mouth casually like a man telling the time. After listening to Charles talk, Heather was glad of someone who didn’t speak in riddles. She had so many questions for him, but when she went to speak, he put a hand out.
“Probably best you let me tell this,” he said. “I’ve been living a lie so long it’ll be good to say something true for once. Oh boy. Here it comes, then.”
He ran his ha
nd across his forehead. “I’m from Kiele, in the south. Came to the Capita three years ago and joined the force. Rose through the ranks and tried to find out what their big plan was.”
Heather’s brain unfogged. She had so many things to ask, but they wriggled around her head like worms and she couldn’t say anything until they settled down. It was probably better to just let him talk.
“Big plan?”
“The Capita are working on something. We could smell it miles away, even in Kiele, but we couldn’t get close enough to learn the details. We used to have a guy inside the army, but one day he was found swinging from the beams by his bootlaces with silver coins shoved down his throat.”
“Why silver?” said Heather.
“That guy in the old stories. You know, the Betrayer. They were letting everyone know that he had crossed the Capita. Somehow they must have found out he was one of us.”
Heather knew too well that the Capita’s resources of information were endless, and their drive for power was second only to their need to destroy the corruption within. The Capita wanted pure, unchallenged control, and the punishments for those who disturbed the balance were beyond cruel.
“I don’t know why anyone would risk it,” she said. “Living in the barracks, knowing you could be found out any minute. Doesn’t seem worth it.”
He gave a slight smile. “You sound like my wife.”
“She must be a sensible woman.”
He shook his head. “It’s been three years since I left. Wish I would have listened to her. She was expecting when I left you know. She told me it was going be a girl. There’s no way she could have known, but that’s Olivia for you. She always has these weird feelings about stuff.”
Wes stirred on the ground. His eyelids flickered, and he let out a sound that was muffled by the wooden floor against his mask. Max pressed his boot into his back. Heather worried that her complete lack of sympathy for the trader meant that her heart had hardened, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
“So, what now?” said Heather.
“It’s been three long fucking years but I know what it is now.”
“Sorry?”
“Their plan.”
“Is it the farms?”
Max stood up. His knife swung from his belt as he paced around the cart. Wes rolled to his side and got up off the floor. His noise was swollen and there was a purple bulge under his eyes, but otherwise his face was pale. Max stood on the end of the cart and looked into the landscape beyond.
“The farms are only cogs in it,” he said. “It’s something much bigger. You won’t even believe me Heather. You won’t believe how bad it is, and even if you did, you wouldn’t understand.”
“You could try me.”
“We need to get back to Kiele. We need to tell them what the Capita is planning.”
“But my daughter,” she said.
“If we don’t go now, Heather, it’s gonna be too late.”
“I can’t leave her.”
“You have to try.”
Heather got to her feet. She felt her cheeks burning up.
“Try and leave my daughter? Have you lost your fucking mind? There was a time when I really needed to meet you, Max. Not you, but the Resistance. But now I just need Kim.”
Max looked at her with an ashen face. Right now he looked closer to being in his fifties. Time was sandpaper that had ground him down. Maybe not his smooth skin, but internally it had worn him away.
“Things run deeper than you and the children. I know it sounds cold to say it, but sometimes the right thing to do is the coldest.”
In that second she wanted to push him off the cart.
“You can’t just leave them,” she said. “What about this train or whatever the hell it is?”
Max crossed her arms. He fixed a firm expression on his face. Behind him was the grassy wilderness of the mainland, a vast stretch of endless nothing. Somewhere beyond it was the Dome, and somewhere else were the Capita’s farms.
“I can’t, Heather,” said Max. “It’s just me. No-one else knows. If I don’t make it back to the others, we’re fucked. Think about how many DC’s will die.”
“I’m more worried about Kim.”
“Your daughter’s life isn’t worth hundreds of others. I’m sorry.”
There was finality to his words that Heather had heard before, but not since she was fourteen. Back then the words had come from her father as he carried her cat, Ham, to the back of their car. He was taking Ham on a one-way trip to the vets, and Heather had begged him to reconsider.
He’s too old, Heather. Too old and sick.
Please dad, I’ll take care of him.
Only one way to take care of him now.
She saw the same stubbiness in Max that she’d seen in her father years ago. She knew already that he was the sort of man who, once he’d took his first step forward, didn’t stop until the journey was over. This left her adrift from any options. Charles had taken Kim and Eric to the farm, and Heather didn’t know where it was. Even if she did, she would have to travel there alone through the wastelands. If the wastelands didn’t claim her life, the guards on the farm surely would. Even then, having overcome every obstacle she could think of, there was every chance that she would get there too late. Charles had spoken of putting the children on a train. When it was leaving and where it was going was just another mystery.
Max must have sensed the problems turning in her mind.
“Do you understand how impossible this is?” he said.
“I don’t care.”
“The farm is the Capita’s plan for the future. They don’t leave that to chance. They’ll blow your head apart while you’re still a speck in a soldier’s scope.”
“That won’t stop me.”
He rubbed his forehead in frustration, and for a second his line of worry became two. She understood now how he could look so old. His double life must have taken a toll. Heather knew too well the weight of living a lie, but this man had led two of them. The first was the one he told the Capita soldiers he lived with. The other, the most important, was the one he told himself.
“You’ll die, Heather.”
“Then you better choose whether to help me or to let it happen.”
She realised what it meant to fight for something. It wasn’t standing in front of the classroom and thinking thoughts against the Capita. It wasn’t with fake promises to help that stayed broken. It wasn’t even taking in a DC boy and hiding from the Bull. Sometimes, to fight, you had to give something of yourself up. That’s what she admired about Max, but she loathed it at the same time. She was angry on behalf of his family back in Kiele, the wife who hadn’t seen her husband for three years and the little girl Max had never held.
Heather was ready to fight. She wouldn’t let them take Kim and Eric though. She had to get them back, and after that she could start her battle against the Capita. She would die one day. That was the only certainty she had. If she could go having done something for once, it might be worth it.
Max rubbed the bridge of his nose and hung his head in thought. When he lifted it again, Heather knew he had decided to help her.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s your choice. This means more than just your story, you know? More than mine even. We’re playing with the collective future of a generation and the stakes aren’t ours to bet with.”
She didn’t expect this. Somehow she thought she had talked him round, but his stubbornness ran deep in him like tree roots burying into mud. Max looked at the trader.
“What about you?”
Wes was so washed-out he looked like a sixty year old version of himself.
“Get me the hell out of there,” he said.
Max reached over the side of the cart to the driver’s seat. One of the horses lifted a leg and stomped it on the ground, while the other stared into the distance. When Max turned around he held a heckler pistol.
“Follow the path back to the fork. Take the second route. Whe
n you get to an elm tree with an X carved into the trunk, get off the path and walk in the long grass. Hit the floor anytime something moves.”
The forked road lay behind them. The second path twisted away and ran in a curve. A half mile away it seemed to thicken, and then shortly after that it disappeared into the horizon. On both sides of it chest-high grass danced solemnly in the breeze.
“The kids won’t be on the farm yet. They’ll be in the sorting pen. When you hear the groans, you’ll know you’re close.”
