The ferals immediately frenzied in an uproar.
“The bitch is gonna bring a heap of shit down onto us,” Officer Hutcheons said, a hand on her hip, the other rubbing her forehead.
“You just let her take your gun!” Kurt erupted, unsure whether to follow or stay in the relative safety under the jetty like some kind of fabled troll. “You just let her have it? What kind of officer are you?”
“One that’s going to save your life, son. So mind your tone.”
“We’ve got nothing to defend ourselves!”
Officer Hutcheons untucked the side of her shirt, revealing a small pouch with a secondary gun. “Eight years on the force, you think I’d just let someone leave me without a way to protect myself?”
“We need to go after her.”
“Son, if you go up there, you’re dead. Come with me, or don’t. I’m going to find a way out of here.”
The officer turned and walked further into the shadows. Kurt looked longingly above, straining his ears to try and distinguish his travelling companions amongst the rabble. But it was impossible. On top of the cries of the ferals, the screams and shouts of fighting survivors, and intermittent gunshots, there was no way on Earth that he was going to be able to hear them.
He wandered slowly in the direction the officer had gone and nearly jumped when he walked into her. She was waiting for him, knowing that he’d follow.
“C’mon, son. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m not your son.”
Shrug.
Sabrina led Kurt from one side of the jetty’s underbelly to the other. They clung to the shadows like rats, stopping now and then when a body would fall so hard above them that it sounded like the wood was going to break. More of the sticky residue dripped upon them. Now and then Kurt could see the animated action of a feral dining on its prey in strobe light flashes between the gaps and soon took to staring at his own toes instead.
On the other side, Officer Hutcheons stopped and searched along the coast. She clapped the boy’s shoulder eagerly when she saw a small white speck rocking with the tide in the distance.
“Your eyes are probably better than mine. Is that what I think it is?”
Kurt shaded his eye, his mouth dropping open at the sight of the little wooden rowboat tethered to a small post. The distance couldn’t have been more than five hundred metres. “A boat? But isn’t that…?”
Yep. Someone else was already running towards it.
“Quick!” Sabrina shouted, setting a pace for Kurt to follow.
Kurt took one last look above, hoping against hope, that maybe the others were nearby. Maybe they’d somehow find a way to break free from the throng and run to some kind of safety. Officer Hutcheons ran ahead, doing her best to close the gap between herself and the stranger in the distance. The only threat to her escape plan.
Kurt lowered his head, was about to start running when two bodies hurled themselves off the jetty and landed on their bellies on the sand.
Kurt grinned from ear to ear, his heart leaping at the impossibility of what he was seeing.
Steve grunted, spat out a mouthful of sand. Karen appeared to shudder and weep beside him. Where James was, he didn’t know. They appeared not to have noticed Kurt, who began running towards them. But before he could reach either of them, Steven looked up, dragged Karen to her feet and began running towards the boat.
Kurt tried to call out but was surprised to find there was little breath left in his lungs. It all felt too much, and he began to grow light-headed, the edges of his vision beginning to blacken. Out of nowhere, thoughts of the ink-world came.
Not now, not now, not now, he screamed in his head.
But it didn’t come. Kurt began to make good speed, taking deep breaths as his feet sunk into the sand. He almost began to smile until he heard more people thump off the jetty. More competition for the race, perhaps? Maybe some fighters up top had seen the steady stream of people now racing towards the boat and had taken the initiative to follow?
Kurt chanced a look behind and saw the form of three ferals picking themselves up off the sand.
Shit.
*
“Hey!” Sabrina shouted. “I am an officer of the law. I order you to stop.”
The command had the opposite effect. Instead of waiting patiently like the good boy he should’ve been, the man hurried with the ropes and began pushing the boat into the water. A second later and he hopped aboard, scrambled for the oars, his eyes wide as he spotted the approaching crew behind the officer.
Sabrina followed his eyes down the shore, expecting to see only the boy a short distance behind. Instead, she saw a man and woman far ahead of the boy, who, if her eyes weren’t mistaking her, was currently in the throes of trying to outrun a trio of ferals.
Run, son. You’ve got this.
The boat man doubled his pace and gave his full attention to his getaway vehicle. Sabrina couldn’t believe how selfish this guy was, now escaping into the dark, rippling water, leaving a group of survivors to battle it out on the beach. He had made a choice. He was sticking to it.
Without really thinking, she let the anger boil inside her, feeling like a kettle about to squeal. In her mind, the boy’s panicked eyes enlarged like two moons, and she reached for the gun tucked into her belt. She narrowed her eyes. The boat man looked at her, seemed to snigger. She heard words that weren’t the man’s in her head, ‘If you’re going to point a gun at me, at least have the fucking balls to use it.’
A moment of silence passed.
“I’m sorry,” Sabrina muttered, squeezing the trigger.
The boat man managed to open his mouth in horror before the force of the shot propelled him backwards and over the side of the boat into the water.
Sabrina took a deep breath, collected herself, then sprinted into the shallows. The water was up to her chest before she could hook an arm around the boat and climb in. She looked to the shore and saw the ferals gaining on the boy, the other two practically already in the water, heading straight for the boat.
“Wait up!” the man called. “Please!”
Sabrina waited. Not for the man, or the woman that she now recognised as the bitch that had stolen her gun and abandoned the kid, but for the boy who fast looked like he was beginning to run out of steam.
“Come on!” she shouted.
The boy stumbled but managed to keep going. The feral behind growled as if in mock laughter and reared, ready to jump.
The man turned, saw the boy. “Kurt! C’mon, you can do it!”
Sabrina steadied her breathing, knowing how unlikely she was to hit a moving target from this distance, aimed, and fired two shots.
Pop!
Pop!
The first bullet exploded into the dirt behind the feral. The second ripped a hole in the feral’s hip, throwing it off course. She fired another three bullets, but none hit their target.
The man with the greying hair was swimming now, splashing his way to the boat. He looked ridiculous, with the woman running alongside him, the water far too shallow for the man’s breaststroke to offer any real benefit. She clambered in, rocking the boat uncertainly on the water. A moment later and the man had jumped in too. They shivered and turned as one, cheering Kurt on.
Sabrina took a seat and began to row away from the shore. Kurt’s eyes nearly popped out, his huffs so loud they could hear them as he entered the water.
“What are you doing?” the woman cried. “We can’t leave him behind!”
“Trust me.”
“He’s not going to make it. Look!”
“Ma’am. Trust. Me.”
Sabrina narrowed her eyes, c’mon… c’mon… you’ve got this. The man and woman tried to fight with her for the oars, but she knew that she had to at least make it difficult for the ferals. Could they swim? She had no clue. But physics dictated that the water resistance would at least slow them down to…
To what?
“Duck!” The words exploded out of Sabri
na as though she were a balloon and they were the needle’s prick.
“What the—” the woman said before she was dragged to the floor by the man. The boat rocked wildly.
“Duck!”
Luckily Kurt was much sharper than the woman. At the moment that Sabrina shouted, her eyes met Kurt’s. Terrified. Red from saltwater. The boy threw himself into the shallow water as Sabrina Hutcheons squeezed the trigger and fired the last four bullets straight into the ferals’ heads in rapid succession.
Pop pop.
…
Pop.
…
Pop.
The noise was deafening. The man clapped his hands to his ears and moaned. The woman joined. Sabrina bared teeth until the ferals fell. Her gun arm dropped. Her shoulders drooped. She sighed loudly and sat down, watching Kurt resurface, look behind, then propel himself away from the corpses of the ferals. Their dark bodies floating like buoys in the water.
Onboard the boat, the boy was immediately embraced by the woman. “Thank God, oh thank God!”
“Why thank a man that creates monsters?” Sabrina mumbled as she began to row. She looked back at the dark outline of the jetty where more ferals were peeling off to chase the noise. At least that’s something for those still fighting… A small distraction from it all. There were car headlights shining here and there, brighter now under the wash of pinks and blacks in the sky. The sounds of the struggle still raged. Sabrina thought of those still scrapping, fighting for their life with a strength and light that would be extinguished by the morning when the monsters would overpower them all and win.
The single figure of a feral stood on the edge of the jetty, watching them with keen curiosity as they disappeared over the waves.
Kurt shuddered as a breeze caught his damp clothes. He looked up and suddenly looked confused. “Where’s James?” The boy wriggled free from the woman and looked at them each in turn. The greying man with deep frown lines looked up at Kurt and shook his head, the action saying more than a thousand words could, even to Sabrina who had no idea who this James person could be.
20
“Oh, that’s nasty.”
It had been a feral, until very recently. The creature’s arms and legs stuck out at odd angles beneath the wardrobe, decorated in a clumsily outlined palette of its own blood. Underneath the weight of the wardrobe, they could hear a low grumbling that reminded Lucas of the time he had stuck his ear to the train tracks to see if you really could hear them coming from miles off. Occasionally the feral’s finger twitched.
“How do you think it got in?”
Lucas shrugged. “You got me. As far as I know, this place has been locked up tight for months. Shouldn’t have been anyone inside at all, let alone this poor bastard.” He lowered the vase that he had picked up from the landing and placed it gently on the bed. “Here. Give me a hand.”
They lifted the wardrobe together, revealing the pulped mess of the body on the floor. Its eyes still squirmed around in its sockets, and Lucas could tell that, even though none of its body parts were functioning correctly, it had every intention of finding a way to reach its prey. ‘If it takes a thousand years, I will taste Dixon blood!’ Lucas imagined the thing shouting, its neck straining, highlighting its own network of dark veins that somehow made Lucas feel incredibly queasy.
“Recognise him?” Maddie asked, looking uncertainly at the feral, then Lucas. As they kneeled beside it, her top floated open just enough for Lucas to get a glimpse at her cleavage line.
“Him? How can you tell? It looks like a bowl of porridge with eyes.”
“A woman knows these things.”
“You sound just like Ani.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He supposed it could’ve been a ‘he’. The thing wore a striped polo shirt with dark jeans. Medium length hair splayed beneath its head. Only issue was, Lucas mused, in a world where political correctness has gone mad, was he allowed to assume?
He leaned forward, patted the feral’s body. Maddie recoiled in disgust. “What’re you doing?”
Lucas dipped his hand into a pocket and drew out a wallet. He was surprised to find that the leather felt cold to the touch. The feral growled indignantly, not at all happy at the search. Its teeth gently clapped together as it gurgled, the sounds becoming weaker. “Thanks, Harvey,” Lucas said, holding up a driver’s licence. “Age: 17. Ohio State. Ooo! An organ donor.”
“I don’t think that’s likely to be an option now, do you?” Maddie said, unable to hide the note of disgust in her voice.
Lucas rifled through the wallet, trying to glean details of what this guy was doing in his house. It had been locked. He was sure of it. He remembered triple-checking the lock before he left, anticipating that a trip of his duration might bring about a few nosy teens, maybe an eager criminal looking for a quick steal, or even just a curious bystander wondering why the house looked abandoned. A biological conservation centre in the middle of a line of neatly-kept, terraced houses. Had he missed a sign of a breakin? He suddenly thought how stupid he was to not search the house properly before heading to his basement lab. That’s how people turn into chow, Lucas. Jesus, get your head in the game.
Lucas peeled apart the compartments. There were a couple dollars and some change, a few bank cards, a picture of a pretty little thing with braces, and little else. Maybe some dust bunnies that had gathered over the time the wallet spent in this kid’s pockets. Lucas wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he expected to find something. Anything that might have been a clue. He considered that perhaps he was becoming paranoid. But then, hadn’t he just escaped the site of a terrorist attack, triggered by a former colleague of his?
“Poor kid couldn’t even afford a bus ride to the hospital.”
“What do we do with him?” Maddie asked, taking a step back and sitting on the edge of the bed. Lucas raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “We can’t leave him like this.”
“He’s hardly in pain.”
“Still…” Maddie looked around uncertainly. She handed Lucas the gun. “It’s the humane thing to do.”
They made their way downstairs shortly after. The gunshot still rang in their ears. Though they had tried to be careful, covering the feral with the duvet in a futile attempt to stop the blood splattering any further than it already had, Lucas could still see the small blobs of pink that projected across the room and stuck for a few moments to the wallpaper, the ceiling, the windows, before moving at a glacial pace towards the floor. Maddie had closed her eyes. Lucas directed her out.
They sat in the living room for a few moments, neither speaking. Lucas stood up and walked around the house, inspecting every potential entrance that could’ve allowed the boy passage. It didn’t take him long to find it. Upon entering the kitchen he heard the crunch of glass underfoot and thanked his unconscious for not taking his shoes off when he came home. The back door was split into two frames of glass. The top half was frosted, with decorative roses etched inside. The bottom half had become a jagged cat flap for a small tiger. There were smears of red where the feral boy had crawled along the floor in some sort of desperate flight for safety from the outside world. Lucas kneeled and saw the thick collection of brambles and greenery that the boy had had to work his way through to find the inside of the house.
Boy’s got spunk. Gotta give him some credit for braving that and getting cosy in the bedroom. Who could blame him?
Lucas turned his attention to the kitchen cupboards, grabbed a glass, filled it with water from the tap, and headed back to where Maddie sat in the living room. “Here. Drink.”
“Thanks.”
Outside the sun shone lazily. It was lower in the sky now, low enough to cut against the top of the roof across the road and shine smooth rays through the patterned cotton blinds. There was a far-off sound of a car speeding at well above the speed limit nearby, louder at first, then quickly shrinking as it sped on by. Lucas imagined the people inside the car. A desperate father f
leeing to the other side of the country, terrified as his wife begins to turn in the passenger seat, dark veins throbbing from her neck, eyes growing blank and vacant. In the back perhaps a small baby, unaware of what life should be, soon learning what torture meant as mummy bites daddy’s neck and daddy veers off the side of the road. There’s laughter. Demonic pitch. A man in the spare seat, smouldering, his skin cracking. The ditch is deep, the car folds like a pressed can of coke and—
“Lucas?”
Maddie studied Lucas, her drink now nearly gone. “Hmm?”
“Do you really think Fred could’ve sold us out? Do you really think he’s a part of this? I keep milling it around in my head and… I don’t think he ever would. But then, why would he have reached out to you in this dream, and not me?”
“We don’t even know that he did. For all I know, I was imagining it all.”
“But you still found the bomb, didn’t you, Luke? Let’s not pretend here. This shit is real. Those things are real. I’ve just seen one on the floor, turned into jam and still going on as though it had woken from a nap. And if Fred has had something to do with this, what does that say about me? That I can’t keep track of my own husband enough to make sure that he’s not selling his friends short and auctioning off a revolutionary formula for commercial gain? I just… I couldn’t live with myself if that turned out to be true.”
Lucas scooched closer to Maddie. “It doesn’t say anything about you at all. It doesn’t even say anything about Fred. Let’s just stick with what we know so far. No making assumptions. That’s not going to help anyone.” He stood up, took a quick look outside. “It’s still early enough to hit the road and make some good distance. C’mon. Let’s get moving. I’m sure Sammi will be more than happy to see us.”
Maddie rolled her eyes.
“Alright, maybe not Sammi. Anita sure as hell will.”
But the minute Maddie stood, her legs shook and her knee buckled. Lucas grabbed her before she fell, lowered her to the chair and studied her shaking hands. Maddie placed a hand over her forehead and let out a pathetic giggle.
Lazarus: Enter the Deadspace Page 12
