“Hello,” he says, his voice tentative. The man remains silent. Dan inches the door open again and steps into the kitchen, steeling himself against the horror that he knows is to come if he looks any closer at the upright body. Standing behind the man he checks at the hands poking out from the shirt sleeves. They have the typical green hue and black tips of the plague. He’s dead at least. No harm to him, but it doesn’t stop the hairs on Dan’s neck bristling, nor that awful sensation of his flesh creeping. He takes a shallow breath and moves away from the body to the other side of the kitchen. He has to find something to eat, creepy body in the kitchen or not.
Opening the cupboard, he bends down. The shelves are stacked with plates and bowls. He looks up to the wall cupboards and pulls the door open. Packets of dehydrated sauce mix are stacked neatly to one side, on the other are jars of herbs. He pulls out the folded shopping bag from his coat pocket and shakes it open, picks out the packets and drops them in the bag. Dry or not they were food, whatever they tasted like. The time for being picky about what he ate was long gone. If Cassie served him up a plate full of worms he would smile and thank her and be truly grateful. Cassie! His heart aches and the familiar pain gripes at his belly. If he could just go back to that hotel and face them all, apologise and tell them he’d do anything – everything - he could to make things right, he would, but he’d lost them all. Lost Cassie. He’d regretted leaving them as soon as he reached the town’s boundary, but by the time he’d returned to the hotel they’d gone and he had no idea where they were.
He opens another cupboard and smiles. At the back, already rusting from the damp and cold, sit four cylindrical, and a stack of flat oblong, tins. He grabs the cylindrical ones first: two tins of baked beans, one of ravioli and another of chopped tomatoes. The flat tins are sardines in tomato sauce. He drops each into his bag then opens another cupboard and reaches for the boxes of cereals. The cardboard feels damp to his touch and the card soft as he pulls them off the shelf, but he opens the bag and drops them in then turns to leave.
Without thinking he stares straight at the corpse sitting at the table, quickly screws up his eyes and groans inwardly. Another horror to haunt his dreams! Turning his head to the wall he walks past the man, staring at the film of wet that clings to the paint then slams the door behind him. His chest tightens as something thuds from inside the room and he imagines the man slumping forward head first onto the table. No need to watch horror films anymore—it was all here—for real. He takes a deep breath from the frozen air and runs down the driveway to the snowy path and begins his long walk ‘home’.
Along the street, cars sit like huge marshmallows and the road disappears into the distance and over the hill. Tramping forward the cold bites at his toes; a pain that sinks into the bones. He clenches his hand tight around the handle of the bag. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll come back here for more supplies. As he reaches the top of the hill he stops and stares at the ground. Barely covered footprints sit deep in the snow, and next to them, sometimes stepping across them, are the marks of dogs’ paws. Checking up and down the empty street all is still, but he pulls his collar closer to his neck and walks with a quick step. It’s another ten minutes’ walk back home.
A dog barks and then a scream pierces the air.
As the scream echoes in the snow-laden stillness he stops, locating the direction of the noise. It comes from ahead, over the brow of this hill. The scream comes again and he picks up his step to a run, clutching the bag of precious food to his chest. As he stamps to the top of the hill a woman stands in the dip, a pushchair in her grip and pulled to her side. A large, woolly-looking dog, its hackles raised, its front lowered, stands growling at her, teeth bared.
“Hey!” Dan snarls, his voice rough and threatening. The dog turns its head to look, decides to ignore him, and turns its attention back to the woman. Her long white-blonde hair straggles over her thick coat, red woollen hat pulled low over her eyes. Cassie! The dog moves forward and she screams again.
“Get away from her,” Dan shouts, his heart pumping hard, hammering in his chest. Cassie’s here? The dog snaps at her. Without thought Dan picks up speed and begins to run. His foot slips in the snow and he slides down the path, the ice a treacherous film after yesterday’s thaw and the hard freeze in the night. He clutches the bag and shifts his weight to keep his balance as he stumbles closer to the dog.
The dog turns to snap at him, its fur matted about its collar. Another designer dog gone bad—labradoodle by the look of it. He snarls at the dog, keeping its gaze, hoping it will back down. It snarls back and Dan stares in horror as it takes another step closer to the pushchair. The woman screams again.
Reaching into his bag, Dan pulls out a tin of tomatoes and lobs them at the dog, wrenching the muscles in his back. He grunts with the force. The dog cringes but the tin misses and hurtles more than ten feet beyond, landing with a thud and clipping the branches of a hawthorn. Snow sprinkles onto the tin. He reaches again, this time pulling out a tin of custard, he looks at the label for a second, sighs then lobs it again at the dog. This time it hits its mark, striking the dog hard on its side. It yelps, but doesn’t move. Turning to Dan the dog bares its teeth and snarls.
“Snarl at me, would you?” he shouts, then growls at the hound as he reaches for another tin, a primal urge to destroy the dog beginning to surge. A tin of meatballs in tomato sauce launches through the air. The dog yelps as it crashes onto its nose. “Raargh!” Dan roars, taking the opportunity to impose his dominance and runs at the dog. It yelps again and turns, tail between its legs, disappearing through the scrub of hawthorn and back to the gardens of the empty village.
“Cassie!” he says turning to the blonde. Stepping forward his hand trembles as he reaches for her.
She looks up to him, her face flushed, tears making tracks through the dirt on her cheeks. Green eyes, bright as the leaves of summer, look out from a pale, delicate face, sprinkled with freckles, the blonde hair a long and thick cream scarf wound tight around her shoulders.
“Oh,” he says, dropping his hand. “I … I thought you were my Cassie.”
She drops her head and turns from him, grasping at the pushchair.
“Your baby? Is it alright?” he asks with a frown, looking down into the pushchair, as she turns. Of all the ungrateful- He stops. The top of a child’s head is propped against the back of the stroller. It looks too big to be pushed about, not that he really knew about kids and babies, but he remembers Cassie’s sister’s kids on the one time they’d visited - the only time they’d visited - her mother’s home. This one looked too tall, sure it was slight, but- “When did he pass,” Dan asks as he stares down at the child. The woman doesn’t respond. He steps forward, an inexplicable need to comfort her overwhelming him. Stepping next to her he looks down at the boy in the pushchair. Even covered in the blanket and wrapped in the coat, the child looks unnaturally thin. He squats down. Perhaps he’s wrong. Perhaps the boy is alive. He looks asleep after all, despite the deathly pallor. Dan’s breath billows white in the cold. The child is still, its lashes dark against sunken cheeks, and remains—breathless. He stands and gently puts his arm across the woman’s shoulder. She lays her head against him and a sob breaks from her chest.
Chapter 4
Three Peaks Farm, Northumberland
Cassie turns to Becca in the kitchen, the warmth of the woman’s smile matches that of the room, and accepts the hot soup she has ladled into a mug. Turning again to the hob of the cast-iron stove, she stirs the bubbling broth.
“Rick ‘n’ Justin’ll be glad of this when they get back in.”
“They will, Becca,” Cassie returns as she sits down at the table with the children. “Good?” she asks Harry as he spoons in another mouthful of broth then scrapes at the side of the mug with his spoon.
“Uhuh!” he nods.
Cassie lifts the mug to her mouth and sighs as she notices her nails. The acrylic tips have finally come loose and disappeared along with their strength.
Left beneath are her natural nails, short, uneven and ugly with their last chippings of colour towards the cuticle. She sighs then smiles as she remembers how she’d dug them deep into Ray’s neck and Saskia’s scalp. They’d come in handy—that was for sure.
The soup, tastes peppery and rich, a mixture of winter vegetables and venison, as good as any she’d had at the Michelin starred restaurants she’d been to with Dan—better because she’d helped grow the vegetables and been with Rick when he’d caught the deer. Her heart sinks at Dan’s memory and as she takes another sip of the warm soup, she looks out through the window and over the vast expanse of white, remembering their last dinner together, before everything went tits up. It was a gala dinner - a charity ball - she’d had a little too much champagne whilst dressing and had tripped on the carpet in their glittering living room sending champagne from across the pale carpet. Dan had given her a withering look, asked her if she was pissed, then made a stinging comment about her mother. She’d drunk nearly pint of water to flush out the alcohol before they left. Come to think of it, that was another time she’d caught Kayla Van der Mer with her hand on Dan’s arse.
“Cassie! Are you listening?” Celie’s voice breaks into her thoughts, dragging her from the creamy white of the penthouse in her memory, her eyes away from the brightness outside, and back to the warmth of the kitchen.
“Sorry, hun! I was away with the fairies. What did you say?”
“I was just saying, just asking if-”
“We want to go out in the snow—to play.”
Cassie’s chest tightens a little and she looks to Becca with a worried frown.
“Becca? What do you think?”
“Well … if you promise not to go far-”
“We won’t—we promise,” Harry says, scraping his chair back from the table.
“No! Listen. Stay in the yard. You’re not to go to the back fields or the forest.”
“Aw!”
“I know, Harry,” she says looking at the boy’s downturned mouth, “but you’ve got to stay where we can see you.”
“But-”
“Doesn’t he, Becca?”
“Yes, Cassie, he does.”
“Well, so does Celie,” he says turning to the girl as she grabs her coat from the hook on the back door.
“I will, Harry!” she says petulant at his insistence. She brightens as she pulls up the zipper of her coat and flicks the long braids of yellow hair out of her collar. “C’mon. Let’s build a snowman!”
“Sounds like a plan!” Cassie adds, smiling down at Harry as she pulls up his zipper. “Make sure to put your wellies on,” she calls to them as they search near the door among the pile of shoes and boots.
Minutes of scuffling, huffing and ‘please, Cassie’, ‘do my laces, Becca’ and ‘I can’t do up my coat’ pass and then the door closes behind them and quiet returns to the kitchen. Becca sits down at the table, her own mug of soup finally ready. “Quite the whirlwind aren’t they,” she says smiling as she lifts the mug to her lips.
“Yes, they are,” Cassie returns, her voice low, as she stares out of the window again. She can’t see the children so walks across to the sink and looks out into the yard.
“Sit down, lovie. Them bains’ll be fine. No harm’ll come to them.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well, after the rollicking we gave that crew, I don’t think they’ll be back again anytime soon,” she replies. Her voice soothes Cassie, but her belly gnaws as she watches Harry dip his hand to the snow and look across at Celie, her back turned to him.
“I wish I had your confidence,” Cassie says turning, just as Harry lobs his snowball. Celie squeals in surprise and Cassie turns back to the window.
“It’s a worry, I admit, but Justin tracked them and he’s sure they left town, plus we’ve got Rick and Zak to protect us. They won’t let those thugs bother us again.”
“I don’t understand how they found us. I mean, out here, we’re so secluded.”
“Perhaps too secluded! We’ll be snowed in before long if this weather carries on.”
“Good!”
“Good? No, Cassie, we’re not completely self-sufficient—not yet.”
“But we put down lots of vegetables, and the meat’s curing. We did all that canning too.”
“Yes, lovie, but there’s more of us here now than me and Justin banked on. We need to get into the town to see what we can pick up, otherwise … well, we won’t make it through winter.”
Cassie’s stomach gnaws and the guilt of burden chips at her.
“It must’ve been someone from the town,” she says deflecting her thoughts. “That’s what Rick thinks anyway.”
“I know. I was talking to him about it this morning. He could be right. Makes sense. If they’re banding together down there and know what we’ve got up here …”
“Yes, and if they’re desperate then perhaps they’ll be coming back.”
“Won’t no one be going anywhere,” she returns looking out through the window, “not if this keeps up.”
Cassie looks to the children again, their shoulders already smattered white, and watches the wide flakes thickening the snow on the window’s sill.
Chapter 5
The crash of metal, hollow and reverberating, startles Deacon as he pulls the door closed and steps back down into the snow. He looks out across the street, checking left then right over the tops of the snow-laden privet hedges and parked cars, squinting against the dazzle of reflected snow that blankets the empty roads, and each wall, shrub, roof and path. The only indents are the ridged imprints of their boots and the triple toes of the birds.
“Sounded like they’re at the warehouse again,” Kit says as Deacon joins him on the path.
“Yeah,” he replies.
“Where’re we gonna check next? This is the third street we’ve looked in and none of them have one.”
“Problem is, most everybody had electric fires, or gas, or blocked up the old fireplaces and had radiators.”
“What’re we gonna do then, Deacon? The hide is freezing, there was frost on my covers this morning when I woke up.”
“I know son, it got me too.”
“What about the centre of town? Back home that’s where the older houses were and in winter there’d be smoke coming from the chimneys. Perhaps they’d have log burners?”
“Stupid!”
“What?”
“Why didn’t I think about it before. Jules—one of the things she loved best was sitting at our local pub in the autumn. It was an old coaching inn and still had its real fireplace.”
“So?”
“So, we should check out the pubs around the town’s centre. They often have a log burner to tempt in the punters.”
“Let’s go then!” Kit replies, slapping his gloved hands together. “If I stand still any longer my toes are going to drop off!”
“Hah!” Deacon laughs looking at the reddened cheeks of the boy, the pain in his own feet sharp. “Mine too.” He steps onto the path and tramps through the snow with renewed vigour.
Leaving the suburbs of the town behind they walk towards the town centre. Evidence of human activity is missing, and the snow lays virgin along the paths. As they reach a small corner shop, it’s plate glass windows obscured with vinyl stickers featuring doughnuts, steaming coffee, eggs and loaves of bread, Kit sighs and Deacon gives a wry chuckle as the boy looks at the images with longing. As they approach, dents in the snow become apparent and Deacon reaches for Kit’s arm and holds him to stop.
“Someone’s been here,” he says looking down at the trail of obscured prints. They lead to the corner of the building then disappear down the side.
“It’s where those kids live.”
“Oh.”
“What’s that?” Kit asks peering down to inspect a red spot on the right side of the tracks.
“I think it’s blood,” Deacon says with a frown. “Let’s see where they go.”
Confide
nt that the blood will be the boy’s, he follows the trail. It disappears at a gate set into the brick wall that extends to the road at the back of the property. “Whoever it belongs to went in there,” he says looking up at the windows at the top of the building. The curtains are pulled back and a vase with a display of red-berried holly stands in the middle. Freshly cut unless it's fake. He scans the window to the right. The curve of a metal tap sits at its centre; a kitchen. “There’s the flat you mentioned—above the corner shop,” he says still peering at the windows. Movement to the right catches his eye and he watches as an arm extends to pull open the door of a wall-mounted cupboard, reaches in, pulls out a cylinder, then closes the door and walks deeper into the room, out of sight. The girl from the warehouse!
“There’s definitely someone living up there,” he says turning to Kit, “and I think it is those kids from the warehouse.”
“Shall we go see?”
“Go see?”
“Yes, shall we go see them?”
“What? Just knock on the door and say, ‘Hi, fancy a coffee?’”
“Hah! Coffee would be amazing,” Kit returns with a laugh.
“Come to think of it, she did get what looked like a coffee jar out of the cupboard.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
Deacon chuckles. “Coffee would be good, Kit-”
“Sure beats your nettle … ditchwater!”
He cuffs the boy at the back of the head and laughs. “Seriously though, we can’t just go and knock on their back door.”
“Why not?”
“They’re living above a shop. They’ll think we’re out to get their supplies.”
“Same as the gang at the warehouse?”
“Yeah.”
“What then?”
“We need something to barter with—or a peace offering. Something we have that they want.”
“Fresh meat?” Kit asks hopeful.
“Exactly. If the boy’s hurt, they’ll be thankful of some freshly roasted meat.”
The Outcast's Journey Page 2
