Were the canteen not the first place she had to enter to get to her room, then Vicky would have taken another way round and avoided the crowd completely. If the place didn’t have so many people in it, then maybe she would have walked through there in just her underwear. Currently, she could do neither, so she kept her bloody clothes on and she continued to help Jessica lead Serj down the stairs.
Although Hugh, Piotr, and Flynn slowed down for the wounded member of their party, they still entered the canteen moments before Vicky, Jessica, and Serj. The roar of what sounded like the entire community nearly knocked Vicky backwards when she followed them in a second later, and she looked at the open joy focused on her.
A couple of young teenagers rushed over with a chair and gave it to Serj, who nodded his thanks and winced as he sat down on it.
Unable to hear much over the celebration, Vicky accepted a hand wash from two older women. The women said nothing as they cleaned her, and once they’d finished, they passed her two biscuits and a bottle of water, dipped nods at her, and backed away.
The wash of noise in the high-ceilinged canteen spun Vicky out and made her dizzy. It took for Hugh, who chewed on one of the biscuits given to him by the community, to stand on his chair and cut the air with a chop of his hand. The crowd responded and the sound died down.
As Vicky watched the leader of the community stand tall and strong on the chair—his thick arms folded across his chest, enhancing his already large upper body—she bit into one of the biscuits given to her. The sweet and crumbly texture made her salivate, and, unable to control her impulse, she put the entire thing in her mouth.
Once the crowd’s chatter had completely died down, Hugh let the silence hang for a few seconds, a half smile raising one side of his mouth before he finally shouted, “We did it!”
As he thrust his arms in the air—a grin as wide as his handsome face beaming—the crowd went crazy again.
What felt like a minute or two later, the noise died down in anticipation of Hugh’s speech.
“So, in case anyone hasn’t met them yet, I’d like to introduce you all to Home’s newest residents.”
Vicky’s stomach did a backflip when Hugh turned to her and Flynn, and Piotr’s gentle hand urged her forward. Although reluctant, Vicky stepped toward their leader on his chair, Flynn by her side.
Before she got to the man, she chewed on her second biscuit, and it turned into a paste in her dry mouth. A couple of panicked gulps and it felt like the food could stick in her throat. She didn’t need to be choking in front of the entire place. A sip of water helped, but it still hurt to swallow the lump. Another sip and Vicky cleared her throat of the bulk of it before she arrived next to Hugh, sweat raised beneath her collar from the panic. A chair appeared on either side of Hugh from some of the children in Home, and Vicky and Flynn stepped up onto them next to their leader.
Despite her urge to punch him for dragging her up there, Vicky smiled at Hugh and then checked Flynn. The boy seemed to be loving the attention, a chance to be a hero in a world where he’d been constantly disempowered. To see his joy made it slightly easier for Vicky to stand up next to him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I’d like to introduce Flynn and Vicky to you.”
The crowd erupted once more and the high ceiling filled with the collective swirl of celebration.
Hugh cut them off with another chop of his hand, and a slight sneer lifted his lip. Accusation rode his words. “These are people we need to keep in Home. They’re prepared to fight for us. There will be times when we need it again. Please consider it next time because we may not be so lucky to return if so few of us are prepared to go out.”
Silence fell on the place and tension gripped Hugh’s frame. He looked ready to say more, so Vicky reached across and squeezed his thick arm. A heavy sigh and he dipped his head as if to reset his thoughts before he looked back up again. “But let’s not dwell on that. I think you’ll all agree that Vicky and Flynn are amazing.”
The crowd—less enthusiastic for being reprimanded—still made encouraging noises.
“And why wouldn’t you? You saw everything on the monitors, right? You saw the hero that this woman is when she put her own life on the line to make sure Jessica could get Serj to safety.”
The crowd stirred more than before.
“Well, I saw this in Vicky before we went out, and I’ve already asked her to be my deputy. Jessica has expressed an interest to work more closely with Serj, so I need someone to help me with the day-to-day running of this place. I need a woman like Vicky by my side.”
Although Vicky felt Hugh look at her, she kept her attention on the floor and waited for more.
“So I’m going to ask her again.”
Vicky looked up at the excited Hugh.
“Vicky,” he said, “will you be my deputy and help me run Home?”
How could she trust Hugh after he’d left Serj behind? But then she looked up, and not only did she see hope on the faces of the citizens of Home—from the small children to the adults older than her—but she also saw respect. Besides, she’d been pretty certain she’d do it before she’d gone out to fight with Hugh and the others. A glance at Flynn, and the boy smiled and nodded at her. They’d found a place they could settle down in, even if Hugh did need a few lessons in courage.
A heavy sigh and Vicky looked up at the crowd again before she finally said, “Yeah, okay.”
The sound damn near knocked Vicky off the seat she stood on. After she’d raised an appreciative wave at the residents of Home, she stepped down as they continued to cheer.
Before Vicky could catch her breath, Jessica came over, wrapped her in a tight hug and whispered in her ear, “I’m so pleased you said that. Welcome to Home. You’re a hero.”
Chapter 12
Dressed in the khaki shirt and trousers of a guard, Vicky followed Hugh along the corridor to the final large room in Home. She’d never ventured this far down the complex before and only knew it to be the farm because Hugh had told her so.
The closer they got to the end of the corridor, the thicker the air became with humidity; it reeked of hot damp soil. Vicky looked at the large door that shut the farm off from the rest of the complex. It seemed solid in both its construction and fit and clearly did a good job of containing the reek of the place.
When they reached the door, Hugh stopped and turned to look at Vicky. “I wanted to show you everywhere now that you’re my deputy. We normally keep the farm separate from everyone. A rationed community doesn’t need access to the place where all the food is made. And even if they could resist the chance to steal some food, the extra-strong UV bulbs would have the people flocking here. Did you wonder why Piotr was the most tanned Russian you’d ever seen?”
As Vicky thought back to her first impression of Piotr, she laughed. He did have a surprisingly dark tan; it was like bored-housewife dark.
Hugh grabbed one side of the door with both hands. On runners, it slid across as Hugh dragged it with a grunt and revealed the third and final large room in Home.
Vicky’s jaw dropped as she stepped forward. Similar in size to the vast canteen and kitchen area, the farm had the same high ceiling. Except, unlike the other spaces, every inch of the floor had been covered in damp earth. Now they’d stepped into the room, the heady reek of moist mud made the air harder to breathe.
Vicky’s eyes widened as she took the room in; were the space outside, the size of it would have justified using machinery to work the land. But if they used anything like that inside, the exhaust fumes would make the air unbreathable.
Although one large carpet of wet earth, the ground had been separated into sections. Each had a crop of one sort or another growing in it, creating a patchwork effect. They even had a square of earth that looked like it had been left fallow.
Hugh leaned close to Vicky and said, “You can close your mouth now.”
“This is amazing,” Vicky said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my
life.” Huge banks of lights hung from the ceiling. When Vicky looked up, she felt the UV rays sink into her skin.
“You can probably see why we need three hundred and twenty-seven solar panels now.”
Vicky’s mouth remained open and she nodded.
The large Piotr walked over to Hugh and Vicky. Dressed in just wellies and shorts, his semi-nakedness showed the body of someone used to hard graft. Heat smothered Vicky’s face and she didn’t know where to look.
A smile showed Vicky that he hadn’t missed her reaction. Piotr then said in his thick Russian accent, “Welcome to my farm.”
A glance across the room and Vicky saw a barn in one corner. “Is that where you keep the food?”
“Yes,” Piotr said, “although, not so much food these past two years. Not a good harvest.”
Worry lines painted deep grooves on Piotr’s face as he stared down at Vicky, and when Vicky looked at Hugh, she saw the same taut anxiety gripped his features. Before she could push it any further, Hugh patted her back. “Right, there’s more I need to show you. Thank you, Piotr.”
“Welcome,” the big man replied.
As Vicky followed Hugh back through the sliding door, she heard Piotr call out across the vast room to the seven or so workers busy in the fields. “Come on, you lazy sobaki. Work! Your life and your comrades lives depend on it.” Although a booming call, the carpet of soil dampened his words.
Before Vicky could hear anymore of the chatter, Hugh slid the door back across and slammed it shut.
Silence separated the pair as they walked up the next corridor. The smell of damp earth had been replaced with the familiar tang of bleach. Vicky finally said, “Piotr seemed worried about the harvest.”
Hugh kept his eyes ahead as he spoke. “Yeah, he likes to be overly cautious. In reality, we’ve been doing fine.”
Hugh already seemed less worried than he had in the farm, but it could have been a front. He seemed keen to avoid the subject, so Vicky moved on and said, “So what did you do before this? You must have been, what, late twenties when everything went to shit.”
Before Hugh could reply, Vicky said, “Let me guess.”
With his back straight and his gaze still fixed ahead of them, Hugh marched down the corridor. It seemed so obvious now that Vicky thought about it. “You were military, right?”
A wry smile spread across Hugh’s face. “I’m guessing at the age you must have been, you were on your way to being a sergeant or were already there?”
“I hadn’t quite got there,” Hugh said. “I didn’t want the responsibility too early in my career. I just wanted to focus on being a grunt, you know?”
“So what did you do? Did you go on any tours?”
“A few. My main role was door-kicking in Mogadishu.”
Too embarrassed to ask what he meant by that, Vicky nodded. “I knew it.” Because she didn’t know what else to say, she added, “You have military written all over you.”
The comment seemed to inflate the man. If he didn’t have military written all over him before then, he certainly did now as he marched into the kitchen area.
After they’d crossed the kitchen and walked up the next corridor, they arrived at a locked room and Hugh pulled out a ring of keys. He looked both up and down the deserted corridor before he undid the lock with a snap and pulled the door wide.
A bank of monitors faced them, and Vicky gasped to see each one switched on, the collective glow of them lighting up the room.
After she’d followed Hugh in, he locked the door behind them.
“If you think about it hard enough, you can work out this room exists,” Hugh said. “With the monitors in the canteen, it has to, right? In spite of that, I don’t broadcast the fact. If everyone knew I had almost complete surveillance of the entire surrounding area, they’d never leave me alone.”
“Almost complete surveillance?” Vicky asked.
“Yeah.” Hugh walked over to a monitor that looked out over the field of solar panels. “We can’t see all the way back here. If someone came at the solar panels from the far end, they could crawl beneath them and get all the way to our front door without detection.”
“And there’s no way to change that?”
“Not without losing a significant view somewhere else.”
“You don’t worry about someone sneaking up on you?”
“We invite people here, Vicky. The diseased are our only worry, and they don’t creep anywhere. We’ll see them, so it’s not much of an issue.”
As Hugh spoke, Vicky looked at all of the monitors and the view they afforded her. “You’ve got some proper escapism here, Hugh. If I were you, I’d spend a lot of time watching the outside world.”
Hugh laughed. “I do.”
Both of them watched the monitors as if searching for the diseased outside. “I’m still pissed that so few people came out with us to fight,” Hugh said. “We protect them, feed them, hell, we even do their fucking washing, but when we need them to fight, none of them seem interested. I’m trying to build an army here, and we have a group of lazy good-for-nothings. If even just ten percent of the community had come with us, that battle against the diseased would have been much easier.”
A shrug of her shoulders and Vicky looked across to see the tension in Hugh’s face. “I suppose some people aren’t meant to fight. You should go a bit easier on them. Even the brave ones can lose courage on the battlefield.”
The dig went straight over Hugh’s head, his anger at the community seeming to dull his awareness. “But they’re meant to eat, sleep, and wash here?”
“Look, I’m not saying it’s right, but there has to be a more productive way to deal with it than getting aggressive.”
A heavy sigh sank Hugh’s entire frame and he looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry. I just get so frustrated. I feel like most of the people here are parasites. I have to deal with the day-to-day stresses of running this place, and they eat all our food and bring their petty little complaints to me when someone takes two fucking pieces of bread rather than one. It’s like looking after children sometimes.”
Although deadly serious, Vicky couldn’t help but smile at Hugh and his rant. “So how about we try to do something to motivate them to contribute more?”
“Like what?”
“I dunno, enforced PT?”
“PT?”
“Physical training. Shouldn’t you know that from your time in the army?”
“So how do we force them to work out?” Hugh said, ignoring Vicky’s question.
Vicky paused for a moment and looked at the man. Had he been in the army? When she saw him awaiting a response, she said, “We make them all use the gym. We station someone on the door to verify they’ve been there. They have to get a certain amount of hours signed off every week. At least if we get them fit, they may feel more willing to go out and fight.”
With his bottom lip in a pinch, Hugh nodded. “I see. That makes a lot of sense.”
“We could get them all fit and then start forcing them outside every day on little chores. Even just twenty minutes at a time to get them used to the outside world. I’m guessing it would help you if other people stamped down the grass near the solar panels?”
Hugh smiled. “I knew asking for your help in running this place was a good idea. It seems so obvious now you say it, but I’d gotten so lost in my frustrations that I couldn’t see a logical solution anymore.”
All of the right words came from Hugh’s mouth, but something in his dark eyes didn’t connect with what he said. Before Vicky could challenge him, she saw movement on one of the monitors. “Look, three diseased.”
The pair stared at the three figures. Something seemed different about them. None of them had the stooped gait of the diseased. Vicky drew a sharp breath. “I don’t think they’ve been bitten.”
The screens seemed large enough for it to be clear, but Hugh leaned closer anyway as he studied the three forms on the monitor. “Shit the bed,” he said. “
I think you’re right.”
Chapter 13
Vicky watched the people on the monitor with her mouth open wide. They stumbled a little, but they definitely didn’t move like the diseased. She’d seen enough of the fuckers over the years to recognise the difference between human exhaustion and the infected.
Hugh broke the silence when he tugged on Vicky’s arm and said, “Come on, we need to go and help them.”
After they’d locked the monitor room behind them, they took off in the direction of the canteen. Hugh ran ahead and Vicky followed.
The sound of their heavy footfalls echoed in the tight corridor. As Hugh passed one of the closed doors, he banged on it, his hard whack booming through the tight space. “We need you, Jessica. New people have arrived.”
Just before they entered the canteen, Vicky glanced behind to see Jessica burst from her room at a sprint. In her right hand she had a long and rusty machete.
The collective chatter in the canteen silenced the second they entered it, and everyone turned their way.
As if on cue, the people outside of Home came up on the monitors mounted on the far wall. It saved any need for explanation.
By the time they’d crossed the canteen and gotten close to the stairs that led up to the entranceway, Hugh had pointed at a young girl. Maybe slightly older than ten, she looked at him when he said, “You, come with us. We need someone on the door.”
After they’d left the canteen, the people came to life again. Their excited chatter chased Vicky, Hugh, and Jessica up into Home’s foyer.
A mixture of the run and the nervous anticipation of what lay ahead added rocket fuel to Vicky’s pulse. When she stopped, every kick of her heart damn near rocked her where she stood. With her mouth spread wide, she tried to pull deep breaths into her body.
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