The Outcast's Journey

by Rebecca Fernfield

  THE OUTCAST’S JOURNEY

  A World Torn Down Series Book 3

  Rebecca Fernfield

  THE OUTCAST’S JOURNEY

  A WORLD TORN DOWN SERIES

  BOOK 3

  By

  Rebecca Fernfield

  Ebook first published in 2017 by REDBEGGA LIMITED

  Copyright REDBEGGA LIMITED

  The moral right of Rebecca Fernfield to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.rebeccafernfieldauthor.com

  rebecca@rebeccafernfieldauthor.com

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  Created with Vellum

  To Safi, Evie, Harrison, Mia and Jacob. For our future.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Author Notes

  Also by Rebecca Fernfield

  Chapter 1

  Four months after breakout – Scanlon Rd, Warehouse 2

  Late winter

  Finn looks out from behind the thick trunk of the great oak, fingers digging hard into the resistant bark, sharp against the soft tips. Her heart beats hard with fear. Across the empty field of untrod snow, a boy lays sprawled, a dark angel against the white. She stares hard at his still body, silent though her mind screams at him. Get up Kyle! Get up! He rolls to the side and the bark cuts sharp. Come on! Run! He pushes up, unsteady, one leg trailing, unbending. She can’t leave him. Palm flat, her hand scrapes against the trunk as she scans the dark hedges that line the field beyond. Where are they? She takes another step out from the safety of the tree, back into the light, then re-treads her deep footprints back towards Kyle, hers, the only movement. Perhaps they did outrun them?

  A balding head appears from the corner of the warehouse, eyes coal-black against the flushed face from this distance. She almost didn’t recognise the red-headed man striding out from behind Murray’s henchman, only the scraping of red hair gave him away. He’s gotten skinny these last months. Old and skinny. He can’t catch her but the rifle in his hands—if it’s loaded!

  She stands stock-still not daring to move, yearning to reach out across the expanse of white and grab Kyle to safety. Murray lifts the rifle’s sights to his eyes, a winter-wrapped henchman at his side.

  “Kyle!” she screams. “Get down.”

  Kyle lurches as Murray’s shoulder jerks and the blast from the rifle ricochets between the vast steel walls of the warehouses.

  “Kyle!”

  She watches as he drops, red seeping into the virgin snow. She can’t leave him and pulls back behind the tree, digging her fingers into its bark. Hidden from view, she stares out across the snow to Murray. He’s still there, staring out into the trees, searching for her. Don’t move, Kyle! Let him think you’re dead. Her eyes shift to the boy, a bloodied angel sprawled in the snow. Don’t be dead. Don’t! She waits as Murray stands, rifle trained on the trees, staring through its sights, until he tires then turns and disappears back into the warehouse. Damn Saskia and Murray! Why did they think they could control everything around here? She waits for five more minutes, counting the seconds to sixty before starting again and pulling back a finger to keep count. Fifty-eight. Murray hasn’t returned. Fifty-nine. The henchman has gone too. Sixty! She runs across the snow, re-treading her steps and slides to her knees next to Kyle’s prone body. She stares at him, deathly pale, his lashes dark against the white of skin and snow. “Kyle!” she whispers, her gloved hand gentle on his thick coat. He makes no response. A voice sounds from between the warehouses. She slides down low, her body next to his. If they look out across the snow, they’ll see one dark patch, think it’s just him—she hopes. The voice fades and she reaches for Kyle again. His breath seeps white from his nose, billowing in the cold air. He’s alive at least. Kneeling up, she pulls at his jacket. A bloody patch of melting snow pools next to his thigh. She sighs, hopeful that the bullet only grazed him. “Kyle,” she says pushing him again.

  He groans.

  “Shh!”

  “My leg! He got my leg!”

  “Shh! Listen,” she whispers as she checks back to the warehouse, “we’ve got to get to the trees. He’s gone. He thinks he killed you, otherwise he’d still be here taking another shot.”

  “I can’t move!”

  “You’ll have to.”

  “I think my ankle’s broken. Before he shot me, I fell and crippled over on it.”

  “Probably just twisted,” Finn says in return, firm in her need to get him to safety. “I’ll drag you,” she says standing up and stepping to his head. She bends down and grabs the shoulders of his thick jacket and pulls.

  He groans in pain. She ignores it.

  “Jeez! You’re heavy,” she grunts as she pulls.

  “Sorry,” he replies as his body begins to move through the snow.

  “It’s OK. The snow is helping,” she says as she digs her heels in and pulls again. “Your coat’s like a sled. We just need some dogs to pull it.”

  “Hah!” he says through gritted teeth. “That’s not even funny!” He groans with pain as Finn pulls again.

  “Sorry!” she says. “I’m trying to keep it smooth.”

  A loud bang echoes in the stillness. Finn stops and they both look towards the warehouse then to the trees. They’re so close she could touch the leaves of the oak if she stretched. She lays down next to Kyle and waits, expecting Murray to sidle from between the huge steel-topped concrete walls and point his rifle at them again. The space remains still.

  “Let’s keep going,” Kyle urges. “We’re nearly there.”

  She crouches next to him, slow in her movements, then bends and grasps his shoulders and pulls him the final feet until they’re beneath the tree’s canopy. She stops to catch her breath then pulls again until they’re hidden behind the oak’s thick trunk.

  “Let me look,” she says gently as Kyle leans up against the tree. The bright light of the winter’s day shines down through the bare branches as she takes off her gloves and unzips his long coat. She sees it as she pulls the coat away from his legs: a rip in the cloth of his jeans, soaked dark with blood. She pulls at the ragged hole with her finger and peer
s inside. Seeing nothing, she tears at the fabric.

  “Hey!” Kyle reprimands. “These are my best jeans.”

  “They’ve got holes in anyhow. Another one won’t hurt! Now sit still and let me look.”

  She rips the fabric until the wound is clear. At the edge of his thigh towards his hip the flesh is torn, the blood already clotting thick about it.

  “I think it’s just a flesh wound,” she says as she stares down into the torn fabric.

  “Good!” he says with relief. “Have you finished looking at my kegs now?”

  She laughs, buoyed by the strength of his spirit.

  “Take more than a bullet to put me out of action,” he says though he doesn’t move and his breath comes hard.

  Finn notices again the paleness of his gaunt face; he’s gotten thin since the summer. She squats next to him and leans back against the tree, her own heart hammering hard in her chest, her too-large jeans gaping at the back and letting in the cold air. She unzips her jacket and tucks the layers of t-shirts back into the band of her jeans, then zips the jacket up and pulls on her gloves.

  “You dropped your hat,” she says looking down at Kyle’s dark hair, grown from the crop of summer to a tousled mop that brushes his shoulders.

  “I’ve got more at home,” he replies wincing as he shifts to stand.

  “Here,” Finn says as she stands to help then crouches in front of him. “Put your arm over my shoulder.”

  “Aagh!” he seethes through gritted teeth.

  “Are you going to make it?”

  “I’m not dead yet.”

  “No, I meant back home. Do you think you can make it back home?”

  “I’ll have to. What choice do I have?”

  “None,” she agrees as she looks through the trees. “No one else here to help us.”

  “Only Lina.”

  “Yes, only Lina,” Finn agrees. “She’ll know what to do about your leg.”

  Chapter 2

  Deacon watches from behind the thick trunk of the tree as the girl stands, the boy’s arm across her shoulder. He’s watched them for the past ten minutes, resisted the urge to run to her when she lurched out to the boy as the thug from the warehouse had raised his gun. She has guts, that’s for sure. A trail of blood follows them through the snow. If the thugs wanted to follow them, then they’d have no trouble figuring out which way they went. The boy’s progress is slow as he presses against the girl, but eventually they disappear through the trees. When he’s sure they’re out of hearing, Deacon steps down from the tree and stands next to their footprints. The blood seems to have stopped just ahead, so the boy can’t have been badly injured, though how he does later will depend on what they know about keeping injuries clean. He snaps a young branch from the tree at his side and ruffles the snow where their feet have trodden. It’s not perfect but it obscures their path out of here at least. He follows the trail for another hundred feet covering the tracks as best he can, then looks to the sky. It is opaque and, from the deadness of the air, full of snow. As he reaches the edge of the trees where the trail steps out onto the path, large snowflakes begin to fall. It won’t take long for the new snowfall to cover their tracks.

  Deacon pulls at the straps of the large rucksack on his back. Its weight is reassuring—a good day’s trapping and Kit would be eating well tonight. He catches sight of the injured couple as they turn the corner into another street and crosses the road and makes a start on his own journey back home.

  “Deacon!” a voice shouts from behind.

  “Kit!” he says turning. “I thought you’d be back home by now?”

  “Did you hear that gunshot?” Kit asks as they get to the other side of the road and step up onto the bank.

  “I did,” he returns. “Saw the shooter too.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  “Yeah. It was that red-headed bloke. The one from the supermarket. Seems they’ve taken over the warehouse now.”

  “The warehouse!” Kit says dismayed. “How’re we going to get stuff from there now?”

  “Not sure, but that bloke’s gotten really skinny since I last saw him. I’m guessing they’re running out of food.”

  “Uhuh. They don’t hunt. They’re gonna run out of food.”

  “We’ve got the advantage that way. We don’t need what they’ve got in that warehouse. It’s full of booze mostly and boxes of useless crap.”

  “Sure, but there is some food in there too. Tins of meat and vegetables. You said we’d go back for it.”

  “And we will, but Kit, they’re armed now. They’ve got rifles, not just the crossbows.”

  “Hmm … Sure, it’ll be more dangerous, but if we watch them we can figure out their schedule—see if there’s a time they’re not watching the place?”

  Deacon doesn’t respond and they walk on in silence as fat snowflakes fall and begin to settle. By the time they reach the small wooden hide their backs, hoods and sleeves are laid with a thick covering of snow. A canopy of tarpaulin covers an area outside the hide where saplings and young trees have been cleared and a metal bin, its rim blackened with heat, sits at its edge.

  “Fill her up,” Deacon motions to the bin as he shrugs the rucksack off his shoulders.

  “Sure,” Kit replies as he grabs a cloth and pulls off the lid of the brazier. He reaches down to a pile of logs, neatly sawn and stacked next to the hide, hidden beneath a grubby sheet of plastic and drops some into the mouth of the metal bin. Smoke twirls up and ashes burst from the top in a flurry as the logs drop into the heat. Kit grabs a long stick, blackened and tapered at the end and pokes about. “She’s still going,” he says as he peers down to watch his handiwork then replaces the lid. Smoke twirls out of the metal lid’s chimney. “She’ll soon be going again. Wish we could have one inside,” he says looking back to the hide.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. We could if we find an old cast-iron stove. We just need to make sure the smoke goes out through the roof.”

  “Where are we gonna get one of them?”

  “In the town. One of the houses could have one,” Deacon continues as he unzips the rucksack and opens the bag.

  “What’d you get?” Kit asks as he pulls off his own bag and slumps it next to Deacon’s. “Bet not as much as me.”

  “Hah! I got more than you yesterday.”

  “That was just luck!” Kit goads.

  “Pah!” Deacon returns with mock disgust. “Luck! You wish!” The lines about his eyes crinkle as he delves into his sack to pull out today’s haul. Sharp, dead claws scratch at his skin. He ignores the sting and grips his hand around the feet then pulls at the rabbit. Its body stretches thin, its soft underbelly creamy against the brown of its fur.

  Kit nods in appreciation. “Good size.”

  “You?” Deacon asks as he lays the rabbit on the blue plastic top of the camping table.

  Kit reaches into his sack and pulls out a rabbit slightly smaller than Deacons.

  “Hah!” Deacon says in triumph as the boy holds up the rabbit for inspection.

  Kit doesn’t smile, simply lays the rabbit next to Deacon’s then reaches back into his bag. Deacon’s smile fades as he recognises the triumph in Kit’s eyes as he holds up a pair of squirrels.

  “I win!” he says laughing.

  “You do today, son,” he nods with a chuckle. “You do, today.” He rubs at his beard and checks over the catch. “We’ll eat well tonight. Get ‘em skinned, I’ll sort out the pelts,” he says with satisfaction. The rabbit fur would be a welcome addition to their growing collection—another skin to add to their bed covers. “I’m famished,” he finishes as he turns to walk up the hide’s ramp.

  “Those people,” Kit says as Deacon reaches for the handle. “I’ve seen them before.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Yes. They live above a shop. They’ve got food too.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, it got me thinking. Perhaps we could trade in some of our fresh meat for some of what they’ve g
ot.”

  “If they’ve got anything.”

  “Yeah, sure, but if they have … they may be more … approachable than that lot at the supermarket.”

  “True,” Deacon says as he thinks back to the young woman pulling the boy across the snow.

  “And, I kinda …” Kit stalls.

  “Yeah?”

  “I guess … I think they’re about my age and … and I’d kinda like to meet them.”

  “Oh,” Deacon says, dread dropping like a stone in his belly. “Then perhaps we can introduce ourselves,” he says without enthusiasm and pushes the door open and steps into the dark of the hide.

  Chapter 3

  Danesgate

  Dan shivers, pulls his coat about him then reaches for the door’s handle. It doesn’t budge. Try the side door—they’re often the ones that are open. He feels like a thief stealing into strangers’ houses in the middle of the day but he has to find some food. His belly growls as he steps along the concrete path at the side of the house and reaches a dirt-stained hand out to the door handle. Snow falls thick from the sky settling on his shoulders and the tip of his knitted hat. She shivers again and the ache in his muscles burns. He sneezes, not bothering to cover the spray then pushes down at the handle. It moves in his hand and the latch clicks. The door swings open straight into the kitchen and to a man, his back to him, sat at the table. Dan freezes in horror and steps back pulling the door to. The man doesn’t move and Dan peers through the gap, holding the door ajar.