Cars lined the street they ran down. Houses on either side. Grass pushed up through the road. The wind tore down it and howled through every building. But Vicky heard no sound from the mob behind. Maybe they just wanted the pair out. If they kept the pace, they’d be out of the large town in five to ten minutes and on their way.
At the end of the street, they could have gone one of two ways. Right seemed like it would lead them away from the town and toward Home.
Without breaking stride, Vicky led the way out of the road, turned right, and stopped instantly. A second later, Flynn skidded to a halt behind her.
A line of people blocked the road. A scraggly bunch, dressed in rags and filthy from what looked like years’ of accumulated dirt, they fixed on Vicky and Flynn with their dark stares. When Vicky looked over her shoulder, she nearly lost the strength in her legs. The crowd from behind had appeared. They moved without urgency because they must have known what lay in wait for the pair up ahead. They’d guided Vicky and Flynn into it.
As the pair stood frozen, Vicky locked eyes on the man at the front of the mob. Sure, the crowd looked wild, but they had nothing on him.
Tall, six feet and two inches at least, the man at the front looked like he weighed less than Flynn. Dressed in trousers, a waistcoat, and nothing else, the man didn’t even have shoes on. So gaunt, his skin looked vacuum packed to his skull, the man’s eyes nestled in two dark pits on his face. In contrast to the shadow that surrounded them, his piercing blue irises focused on Vicky with laser-like precision. As he lifted his hand to point at the pair, his cracked lips pulled back to reveal his clenched teeth. When he hissed, those around him jumped to life. Their roar damn near deafened Vicky and sent her heart into overdrive. When she looked at Flynn, his face pale and eyes wider than ever, she said, “Run!”
Chapter 29
It felt like being chased by thunder when the crowd behind them sparked into a roaring stampede. The sheer force of their charge robbed some of Vicky’s strength and she had to fight her inclination to fall to the ground and curl up into a ball. But she kept on, for Flynn’s sake if nothing else.
When she looked across at Flynn, his mouth wide as he fought to breathe, his movement clumsy from exhaustion, she forced her words out. “We can do this. We’re going to get out of here. I promise.”
Although he shot her a look, he didn’t reply.
They rounded a bend and managed to put the crowd out of sight. Even though they couldn’t evade the intimidating sound, if they kept this pace, maybe they’d outrun them.
A mangle of about fifteen rusting cars blocked the street to their left, so Vicky led them right instead. Every step felt like it could be the last as her strength ebbed away. The diseased scared her for sure, but she’d gotten well used to them. Having not seen other people for a decade or so, how the fuck should she react? They couldn’t stand and fight, but it wouldn’t be as easy to outsmart them. They had just one choice; run faster than the people behind them. But as the sound of the crowd drew closer, even that plan seemed flawed.
A glance in the direction of the lowering sun and Vicky could see the way out of the town. Maybe they simply wanted them gone. If they got out, hopefully, that would be enough—hopefully.
Every time Vicky and Flynn came to a junction, either a large sinkhole in the road or a blockage of cars gave them only one choice.
Vicky’s rucksack continued to slap against her back, the bruising, a hot swollen mess between her shoulder blades. Her hips hurt worse than before, and her lungs felt ready to burst. But she pushed on.
The next bend saw the street narrow down. Too late to do anything but run into it, Vicky could see they were being funnelled into something. The path had been far too contrived for it to be anything but a trap.
“I don’t like this,” Flynn called out. He lagged a few metres behind her.
“Me either, buddy, but the only option we have is to run.”
Cars, piles of rubble, and lumps of wood and furniture all narrowed the road down as they sprinted up it. The tighter space funnelled the sound of the crowd behind them too, almost as if it concentrated the boom of unintelligible malicious intent.
It got so narrow toward the end of the road, Vicky and Flynn could only just barely run side by side. They’d managed to stay ahead of the mob, but Vicky couldn’t ignore the dread that sank deep in her gut. They’d been fucked. Whatever would come next, they’d been well and truly screwed.
At that moment, Vicky lost her feet and flipped upside down. With Flynn by her side, she flew upwards, dragged by a tight rope around her ankles.
As she stared up at her feet, a deep pain in her neck, and with Flynn beside her, Vicky fought for breath and yelled, “Fuck!”
About two metres from the ground, the pair swung in the breeze. The ropes around their ankles creaked under the strain of their weight. The traps stank of rot and shit. Not the first things to be caught in them, maybe they were the first things in a long time that weren’t infected. And who could blame these people? Maybe they had the entire city set up to trap and execute the diseased. Maybe they’d take it easy on Vicky and Flynn when they realised they hadn’t been bitten.
As the crowd caught up with them and gathered around the bottom of the trap, Vicky looked down at the fixed scowls and trembled. Maybe not.
After a few minutes, the tall man in the leather waistcoat caught up with the pack and stared up at Vicky and Flynn. When he made eye contact with Vicky, he glared straight into her. It snapped a chill through her frame.
The man bared his teeth again and pointed up. He hissed, loud and prolonged, and all of those surrounding him joined in. The crowd had started at about fifteen strong, but it had near doubled as those at the back caught up.
The man continued to stare up at Vicky and Flynn, but he pointed at a woman with an axe. The axe wielder nodded and swung it at the rope attached to a pulley that had been drilled into a nearby wall.
Vicky’s stomach rushed into her feet, and Flynn yipped as they hurtled toward the ground. The hard contact drove the wind from Vicky’s body and a nauseating crack seemed to realign her entire skeleton.
Flynn vocalised Vicky’s pain as he rolled around on the ground and moaned.
Before Vicky had time to catch her breath, the mob wrapped a net around her and Flynn and moved off, dragging the pair behind them. The netting rushed over the hard and broken ground with a whoosh.
Flynn squirmed until he’d pulled himself up next to Vicky. “I’m scared.”
What could she say to that? Vicky hugged him close to her and looked up. Behind them, staring down with what looked like simmering rage, the tall and gaunt man fixed on the pair.
“I’m scared, too, mate,” Vicky whispered as she held Flynn close. “I’m scared, too.”
Chapter 30
Vicky didn’t want to be in the shopping mall, but the smoother floor came as a welcome relief to the cracked concrete they’d been dragged over for the past twenty minutes or so.
The tall and gaunt man continued to walk behind them. So withdrawn, his face looked like a bird’s skull, he no longer looked down at them. Instead, he stared directly ahead and marched. A sergeant major in the power he exuded, the rest of his gang responded to his silent authority, often looking back at him as if to make sure they’d read his mood right. The man clearly put everyone on edge.
When they got to a shop, the rush of the lifting shutters at the front called out through the abandoned mall. Three men dragged Vicky and Flynn into the middle of the space, pulled the nets off them, took their rucksacks and weapons, and left them in the shop.
The shutter rattled as they dragged it to the floor with a loud crash!
The floor may have been hard and cold, but at least Vicky could stretch out. She pushed her fingers and toes in as far opposing directions as she could manage. Nowhere near banishing all her aches and pains, she found some relief in the gesture and got to her feet.
When Flynn got up beside her, Vicky looked
around the dark space. The light came from the main area of the shopping mall, which lit up the front of the shop, but cast the back in dark shadow. When Vicky heard the whimper of someone in the darkness, her heart raced, and she pulled Flynn behind her.
The first fear that they shared the space with a diseased vanished almost instantly. The diseased didn’t snivel and cry when they saw a human; they roared with all they had and came forward like a steam train.
The guards had taken most things from Vicky, but they’d failed to find her flint. When she stepped closer into the shadows, she pulled the item from her pocket, checked to see that no one outside paid her much interest, and sparked it.
The magnesium flash lit up the man in the corner. He had a long beard and scraggly hair. He looked like he’d been there a long time as he huddled with his knees pulled into his chest, shook his head, and cried.
Vicky sparked the flint again and got a glimpse of his bloodshot eyes. Confused and distressed, the man seemed lost as he glared up at her. The flash had shown Vicky that the rest of the shop sat empty.
As she walked closer to the man at the back, the smell of piss ran up her nostrils, and she twisted her face against its ammonia reek. “Excuse me, are you okay?” Not that she cared; she had her own shit to deal with. What she should have said is, “will you harm us?” but that wouldn’t go down well.
The man made more noise as he whimpered and cried.
Before Vicky could say anything, he spoke. “Take me. They take me. Burn. Feed. Hungry. Dry. Cold. Take me. Can’t. Just can’t.” When he let out a shrill scream, Vicky’s heart damn near exploded, and she jumped backwards, clattering into Flynn behind her.
The closer she’d gotten to the man, the more distressed he’d seemed, so Vicky took Flynn’s hand and led him back toward the shutters that faced out into the mall.
The guard on the shutter didn’t seem like the rest of them. A woman in her forties, she had long blonde hair that looked like it had been cleaned recently. She had kind features.
The shutter bowed outwards at the pressure Vicky put on it, and it felt cold against her face when she leaned toward the woman. “Excuse me,” she said, “can you please tell me what’s going on here?”
Although the woman didn’t reply, Vicky saw her flinch.
Before Vicky could ask anything else, the scream of a diseased ripped through the mall, followed by the crash as it hit the shutter of the shop opposite her. The monster fell backwards from where it collided with the shutter before it jumped to its feet again and pressed its face against the bars.
Flynn pressed into Vicky’s side, and she felt him shiver next to her.
“What the fuck?” Vicky said to the woman. “Why are you keeping diseased here?”
The woman still didn’t reply, but she looked like she wanted to.
“Okay,” Vicky said, “I’m obviously asking the wrong questions. Let me try again. Do you know anything about Home?”
The woman looked over this time.
“Come on, please tell me. Flynn and I plan to go there, and we want to know if it’s a trap or not.” Not that she needed to concern herself with another trap. They needed to get out of their current one first.
Although she looked ahead as if to ignore the pair, the woman spoke from the side of her mouth. “We’ve seen the signposts for Home.”
“It’s well signposted, is it?” Flynn asked.
“Sure, once you get out of the city.”
Flynn tried to speak again, but Vicky put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. They didn’t need the woman clamming up from too many questions. “And why aren’t you there? What’s wrong with them?”
When the woman turned to look at Vicky, sadness glistened in her eyes.
With the gap too small for her head, Vicky stretched her hand through the cold metal bars instead and touched the woman’s forearm. “Come on, love, you can tell us. Please?”
Darkness swept across the woman’s features, and she screwed her face up when she said, “Let’s just say they have different tastes than us, shall we?”
“What does that mean?”
But Vicky had lost her at that point. The woman clearly had no interest in continuing the conversation, and she pulled her arm away from Vicky.
“Come on, Flynn,” Vicky said as she led the boy away from the shutter and retreated into the shadows in the corner opposite the whimpering man.
It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but eventually the tall and gaunt man arrived at the front of the shop. Without a word, he flicked his head at one of the guards he’d brought with him, who opened the shutters. The loud metal barrier clattered on its runners as the man lifted it all the way open and stepped inside.
With a torch as big as his face, the guard lit the place up and temporarily blinded Vicky. She flinched away from the strong beam, and before she’d regained her sight, the man had grabbed Flynn.
“Vicky,” he cried as he shook and twisted. “Vicky, help me, please.”
As Vicky made to stand up, the tall and gaunt man said the first word she’d heard him speak. It came out as a deep boom like a cannon had been fired in the enclosed space. “NO!”
The guard instantly let go of Flynn, and Vicky couldn’t blame him. She’d never seen anyone with the authority of this man. When he spoke—which clearly didn’t happen very often—people listened.
The tall man then pointed at the whimpering mess in the corner.
The guard walked over to the other man and grabbed his foot. When he yanked it backwards, the man in the corner fell and whacked his head against the hard floor with a loud and hollow tonk.
Although the man twisted and turned, screamed and wailed, the guard continued to drag him away. In such a state Vicky couldn’t make out a single word he said, she watched the distressed man leave their lives.
The second he’d crossed the shop’s threshold, the woman guard pulled the shutters down and bolted them to the floor again.
Vicky got to her feet and pulled Flynn in close to her. He shook and cried in her arms. She hugged him tight as she watched the man and his gang drag the distressed prisoner off.
Once they’d moved far enough away from the shop, Vicky walked back toward the front near the shutters and looked out. She had a clear view of the centrepiece of the shopping centre. It looked like it had been a water feature of some sort in the past—maybe a fountain or something—but now it had been made into a fire pit.
As they got the distressed man closer, he kicked and screamed and fought against his captors. The closer they got to the fire pit, the more vehement his protest.
Once at the pit, several other gang members appeared and held the man upright and still. One of the gang grabbed his hair and pulled back so he faced the ceiling.
The tall and gaunt man marched up to him, a long curved blade in his hand. He looked at the distressed man before he leaned in close and sniffed him.
The back of Vicky’s knees turned weak.
The tall and gaunt man then brought his knife up to their prisoner’s throat. The prisoner screamed louder than before, and it set off the diseased person in the shop opposite them.
Before Vicky could grab Flynn and cover his eyes, the tall and gaunt man had ripped the blade across his prisoner’s throat.
Blood shot forward from the prisoner, and the tall and gaunt man leaned into the flow with his mouth open wide. When he pulled away, blood coated his face and chest. He smiled a skeletal grin and pointed at the fire pit.
The process seemed to last an age, but they finally had the dead prisoner tied to a spit above the fire. More wood had been dragged onto the blaze and the flames rose up. When the fire caught his blood-soaked skin, the dead man sizzled.
The acrid reek of charred pork reached Vicky, and she heaved. A glance at Flynn, and she saw the twisted distaste on his features.
They hadn’t said anything to one another for the entire time. Flynn finally turned to Vicky, a warble in his voice. “We need to ge
t the fuck out of here. Now!”
Chapter 31
The shadows at the back of their prison called to Vicky. If she withdrew into them, she wouldn’t be able to see the cooking man. Maybe if she stepped those few metres farther back, she also wouldn’t have to endure the charred reek of his skin. But she remained by the shutter, not to watch the vile ritual out in the mall, but rather to watch the woman who stood on guard by their shop. A grimace of discomfort had sat on her face with every painful second of the murder and bizarre spit roast. As much as she tried to act the part, this woman didn’t belong here.
Vicky moved closer to the woman and spoke so only she would hear. “You’re not into this are you?”
As the woman stared straight ahead, a twitch ran through her stony expression.
Vicky spoke in a soft voice. “It’s okay, I know you’re not like them. I can see you have some humanity left.”
Still no reply, but Vicky saw a tear run down the woman’s face.
“What are you doing here?”
After a deep breath, the woman continued to stare ahead and spoke quietly. “I came here because I needed to survive and they offered shelter.”
“That makes sense.”
“They eat the diseased,” the woman said.
The comment ran ice through Vicky, and she lost her words for a moment. After a deep breath, she finally said, “What?”
“I know,” the woman replied, “fucked up, right?”
When Vicky looked at Flynn, she saw the shock on his face, but he didn’t speak. “How have you avoided getting infected?”
“They boil the meat for so long it seems to kill the virus. As gross as it is, it works. I’m prepared to eat it to survive. They’re not human anymore.”
Vicky nodded but didn’t respond as the bitter taste of bile lifted up into her throat. Just the thought of it … she’d rather die than eat diseased human meat.
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