Stupid? She’d written Flynn off before he’d been killed. She’d already done something stupid; now she needed to make amends.
After a couple of days’ rest and some food, she moved more easily than she had in years. The aches and pains that characterised every movement had gone. She could run forever if she needed to. Strong again, she pushed on as she passed people’s private living quarters on either side of the long hall.
The stairs at the end looked familiar. When Vicky reached them, she bounded to the top in three long strides and came out in the first room she’d come to when they let her into Home. A large steel door with a window on either side, Vicky pressed her face against the cold glass and stared out.
Although her quick breaths steamed up her view of the outside world, she saw the boy approach. He’d gotten to within twenty metres of the complex. Vicky reached up and grabbed the large bolt at the top of the door. She slid it across with a loud crack and did the same for the bottom one.
Hugh had shouted something, but she hadn’t heard it. By the time he’d reached the door, she’d already burst free of the complex and sprinted out across the long grass.
Vicky waved her hands above her head as she ran. “Flynn! Flynn!”
The bedraggled boy looked at her; his shoulders slumped, his clothes filthy, a broken spear in his hand. The slightest twitch of a smile lifted on his face as Vicky continued to sprint toward him.
When she reached him, she fought for breath and pulled on his arm. Mud clung to the boy from head to toe, clearly from where he’d been buried. Tears burned Vicky’s eyes as she stared at him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I left you. I thought you’d died.” When she hugged him, it filled her senses with the reek of damp earth. “I’m so sorry.”
The scream of the diseased cut through their reunion, and when Vicky looked up, she saw several of the horrible fuckers come around the bend and head toward them. A tug on Flynn’s arm and she led him back toward Home.
Hugh stopped in his tracks when he saw them run back, turned around, and led the retreat to the complex.
A few seconds after Hugh ran through the door, Vicky dragged Flynn in with her.
Hugh locked them in, the diseased getting closer with every second.
After he’d secured the first bolt, a loud bang exploded through the small foyer and the bottom half of the door came away from its frame for a second. With his weight against the steel barrier, Hugh slid the other bolt home. The next bang had little impact on the secured door.
Vicky breathed a relieved sigh and looked at Flynn again. Tears turned her world blurry, but she tried to look at the boy anyway. Her words croaked when she said, “You’re okay! You’re okay!”
Despite her poor vision, she saw the smile on Flynn’s face. “Of course I’m okay. I’m not the kid you think I am.”
Vicky smiled through her tears and hugged Flynn again. Now she’d gotten herself clean, she suddenly realised just how bad Flynn smelled. A mixture of mud and ground-in dirt, he stank like an old bog. Vicky pulled away and laughed. “You need a bath.”
When he laughed too, Vicky balked at the alien sound. It had been a long time since she’d heard him happy like that. She cried harder than before and then took the boy’s hands in hers. As she drank in the sight she thought she’d lost forever, she said, “We made it, mate.”
When they pressed their foreheads against one another’s, Vicky watched Flynn’s tears fall to the ground. He drew a deep and stuttered breath and said, “We made it.”
Ends.
Support the Author
Dear reader, as an independent author I don’t have the resources of a huge publisher. If you like my work and would like to see more from me in the future, there are two things you can do to help: leaving a review, and a word-of-mouth referral.
Releasing a book takes many hours and hundreds of dollars. I love to write, and would love to continue to do so. All I ask is that you leave an Amazon review. It shows other readers that you’ve enjoyed the book and will encourage them to give it a try too. The review can be just one sentence, or as long as you like. Click this link to go straight to the book page on Amazon.
The Alpha Plague - Book 5
Email: [email protected]
Edited by:
Terri King - http://terri-king.wix.com/editing
And
Pauline Nolet - http://www.paulinenolet.com
Cover Design by Christian Bentulan
The Alpha Plague 5
Michael Robertson
© 2015 Michael Robertson
The Alpha Plague 5 is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely 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 electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
No matter how Vicky shifted on the hard blue floor, she couldn’t get comfortable. She’d even stood up and paced up and down outside Flynn’s cell, but nothing helped.
It hadn’t been the first time she’d done it, but Vicky looked at all of the other rooms that lined the corridor with Flynn’s cell on it. Many of them had locked doors; a few holding cells had vertical bars that ran across a small square hole resembling a window. They’d put Flynn in the cell without one—Hugh had said they didn’t have a clean cell with a window in it. Vicky peered into the darkness of each of the ones with the barred holes, and although her heart raced to stare into the shadows in case anything jumped up, they not only all seemed empty, but they all seemed clean too.
A deep breath and Vicky inhaled the reek of bleach in the corridor. Home stank of the stuff and rightly so, but maybe this was a little bit excessive. Maybe—as a clean freak—Hugh had been bothered by the fact that the cells hadn’t been bleached yet. Maybe that would be enough for him to force Flynn into a room where Vicky couldn’t see him. Or maybe Hugh had another agenda.
When Vicky and Rhys had gone out scavenging in Biggin Hill, some days they only found cleaning products. There hadn’t been much need for cleanliness at the shipping containers, but in a place like Home, a virus could tear through it like wildfire. So many bodies in an enclosed space seemed like a breeding ground for an epidemic. The reek of cleanliness might have been borderline offensive, but better to be safe. Something about Hugh just didn’t sit right though; there seemed to be an overly strong element of control in his need to keep everything spick and span.
Vicky stood up and shook the inaction from her body as she wiggled her legs. She then knocked on the white wooden door of Flynn’s cell and called, “Flynn?”
The muffled reply of the boy came back at her. “Yep.”
“Does it smell of bleach in your cell?”
“Huh?”
Maybe he hadn’t heard her properly through the door. Maybe he had and thought he hadn’t. Vicky repeated herself anyway. “Does it smell of bleach in your cell?”
A few more seconds of silence passed where Vicky pushed on the back of her kidneys and shoved her pelvis forward. It did little to ease the aching stagnation in her body. “Flynn?”
The boy had obviously chosen to ignore her question, because now she’d asked it again, his reply came back at her like the crack of a whip. “Why are you asking me about bleach?”
“It’s just, I want to work out if it’s clean—”
“Look, Vicky, I’m okay in this cell. I’m not going anywhere, so why don’t you go and get some rest and come back in a day and a half when the quarantine period is up?”
“I left you once, Flynn, I won’t do it again.” Curren
tly unable to see the boy’s face, Vicky saw the memory of his dirty hand as the earth consumed him in the tunnel. How the fuck had he gotten out of there? Had Jessica and Hugh not taken Flynn away so swiftly when he arrived at Home, then she would have asked him. It didn’t seem right to ask him now from the other side of a locked door.
Vicky continued to talk to Flynn. The poor kid must have been going out of his mind in the cell on his own. “Although I lived with your family, I kept myself very separate—a different shipping container, a lot of time alone … At those crucial points when you probably needed someone to talk to, I wasn’t there, emotionally at least. I saw all of this when I thought I’d lost you, and I want to make up for that. I want to be more connected to you and other people. Because of that, I’m not going anywhere. They seem like good people here at Home, but I don’t want to leave your side, Flynn.”
When Flynn didn’t reply, Vicky sighed and sat back down on the hard and cold floor. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Maybe he’d decided the conversation would be too much effort and had chosen to reject it.
The click of boot heels snapped through the long corridor, and when Vicky looked around to see her approaching, both her heart and body sank.
The woman had a cushion in her hands as she strode toward Vicky with purpose.
When she got close—her features pulled back by her extreme blonde ponytail—Jessica handed the cushion to Vicky and revealed the tray of food she had in her other hand. “Here, you didn’t look comfortable last time I saw you.”
“I’m not,” Vicky said as she looked down at the cream and pink pillow. “I’d be much more comfortable if you let him out and we both went to a room with a bed in it.”
When Jessica glanced at Vicky, Vicky glared back. The two women held each other’s stares before Jessica tilted her head to one side. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Well, let me in with him, then. If one of us turns, then at least we’re both contained.”
A tight smile that looked to be dragged back with her ponytail and Jessica shook her head. “Can’t do that either.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
Because Flynn hadn’t been put in a room with a cell door, not only did it lack a barred window, but it also lacked a hatch to slide food through. With her eyes fixed on Vicky as if she would try to fight her way into the room, Jessica placed Flynn’s tray of food on the floor, pulled a large ring of keys from her pocket, and unlocked Flynn’s door with a loud and resounding thunk!
After she’d shoved his tray through with her toe, she closed the cell door again and locked it. All the while, she focused on Vicky.
The women stared at one another for a few more seconds before Jessica walked back the way she’d come from.
Once the click of Jessica’s boots had vanished, Vicky leaned close to Flynn’s door. “Hang on in there, mate.”
Flynn didn’t reply.
It felt like days, but it could have only been four to five hours at the most by the time Hugh strode down the corridor toward Vicky. Having reluctantly accepted Jessica’s gift of a cushion, Vicky’s bottom appreciated the rest, if nothing else.
Like Jessica before him, Hugh carried a tray of food. The way he held onto either side of the tray highlighted his broad shoulders and prominent pecs. The boy’s second meal now, Flynn had at least four or five more to go before they let him out.
Although less hostile than Jessica had been, Hugh watched Vicky all the same as he placed Flynn’s tray of food on the floor and fished the keys from his pocket. As Jessica had done before him, he slid the tray of food in and locked the door again.
“That floor won’t get any more comfortable, you know,” he said to Vicky.
Vicky shuffled as if suddenly more uncomfortable because of Hugh’s words. “There’s a simple way to get me off this floor.”
The smile told Vicky that Hugh wished he could do more. “Jessica’s already told you the answer to that.”
“Oh, has she now? Jessica been running back to you and relaying all of our conversations, has she?”
When Hugh crouched down, his combat trousers pulled tight, highlighting the man’s power in his muscly legs. Clearly someone who exercised a lot, Hugh had the glow of a person in good physical health. He reached out and put a hand on her outstretched shin. “Look, Vicky, I understand you’re frustrated, but we can’t break the rules for you.”
“But Flynn’s only a kid.”
“I’m not a kid, I’m sixteen,” Flynn called through the locked door.
A tilt of his head toward Flynn’s cell and Hugh smiled. “See, he’s okay.”
With her jaw in a tight clench, Vicky stared at Hugh and said nothing in response to his optimism.
As she watched Hugh walk away from them down the corridor, Vicky leaned close to Flynn’s door. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you a kid.”
Again, Flynn didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry, okay? I worry about you. A lot.”
Flynn didn’t reply to Vicky’s comment; instead, he asked, “What are the plans for when I get out of here?”
“We’re both going to rest and get our strength up. God knows we need it.”
“And then?”
“And then, I dunno, we’ll do our bit, I suppose. We’re part of a community, so we’ll need to pull our weight.”
The silence of the corridor surrounded Vicky again as she pulled away from Flynn’s door and leaned against the cold, hard white wall again.
The wet pulse of the alarm sent Vicky’s heart rate off the charts as she snapped awake. The bright glare from the strip lighting in the ceiling made it impossible to tell whether it was night or day.
The alarm continued to send a jagged sting into her eardrums as she blinked against the lights and found her bearings. A sharp pain speared the base of her neck from where she’d slept awkwardly.
It took Flynn banging on the other side of his cell door before Vicky heard him over the alarm. With her face pressed against the white wood, a slight sting on her cheek from the cold touch of it, she called through to him, “Are you okay?”
“Yep, what’s that noise?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you go and check it out?”
“Because I don’t want to leave your side.”
“I ain’t going anywhere. What if it’s a fire?”
The rubber sole sound of running shoes hit the hard floor and grabbed Vicky’s attention. The noise came from the back of the complex. A second later, a man appeared at a flat out sprint and didn’t even look at Vicky as he flew past her.
With her hands cupped around her mouth, Vicky called up the hallway after him, “Excuse me. What’s that noise? Is there a problem?”
By the time she’d finished her questions, the man had vanished from sight.
The alarm continued to echo through the large complex. The loudness of it made her dizzy, so Vicky rested back against Flynn’s door and called through to him again. “I think—” The alarm stopped and Vicky’s loud voice echoed in the quiet corridor. She lowered the volume. “I think we’re okay, mate. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I can’t.”
“And you don’t want to check?”
“Remember I told you about the place I used to work in?”
“The Alpha Tower?” Flynn said.
“Yep. All of the white corridors and locked rooms here kind of remind me of that place—even that alarm sounds like theirs did. That’s one of the most evil places I’ve ever been in, and while I don’t think Home is anything like the Alpha Tower, I can’t leave you here on your own. I’ll wait until you come out, so please stop telling me to go away.”
Muffled, like all of his other words, Flynn simply said, “Okay.”
No more alarms sounded and Vicky had tried to find comfort again on the solid floor. The thud of boots dragged her attention up the corridor and she saw Hugh walking toward her.
It had been a good eight or nine hours since she’d seen him last. “What was that noise a few hours ago?”
With a bat of his hand, Hugh scoffed and said, “Just an alarm. Nothing to worry about.”
“This ain’t the kind of world you do fire drills in. I can’t see all of the people in Home lining up outside as they take a register. Also, I saw a man tear down this corridor like his life depended on it.”
A twinkle lit up Hugh’s eyes and a hint of a smile lifted the edges of his mouth. “Flynn should do another twelve hours in this cell, but we’ve decided to let him out early. We’ve never had anyone take longer than thirty-six hours to turn, so we assume he’s okay. It’s really important that you don’t tell anyone we broke the rules for you, all right?”
Vicky nodded, but she didn’t miss that he’d changed the subject.
“It could cause chaos if anyone found out.”
Pins and needles ran a debilitating buzz down the back of Vicky’s right leg when she got to her feet. She let her left leg hold her weight and watched as Hugh unlock Flynn’s cell. It opened with a loud crack.
After he’d opened the door, Vicky shoved him aside, rushed in, and hugged the slim Flynn. The journey from their containers to Home had taken it out of both of them, and Flynn’s usually robust frame felt lightweight in comparison. The boy also stank. Not even allowed a shower, he’d washed with a bucket and water in his cell but nothing else. Not that Vicky cared; she kept a tight hold on him and inhaled his sweaty funk for a few more seconds before she finally pulled away, a grip on the top of each of his arms. “We made it, Flynn. We made it.”
Bags sat beneath the boy’s sunken eyes. So deep in their sockets, it gave him a hollow stare. He looked to have aged in the time since Vicky had left him buried alive. The traces of the boy he used to be had all but vanished.
The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 66
