“Moira reckons we can thin their numbers. At least, that’s what she says to us. I think it’s just a creative way for her to torture people.”
Vicky chewed on the inside of her mouth and looked out into the darkness for Flynn. “How many guards are there here?”
“I reckon about fifty.”
“Fifty?”
“Yep. At least.”
Before Vicky could reply, she caught movement in the shadows outside of the complex. “Thanks for the information. I’m going to do everything I can to escape from here. If I get out, I promise I’ll come back for you, okay?”
The man fixed Vicky with a hard stare before he nodded and shuffled away from her.
Back in the middle of her cell, Vicky drew a deep breath and watched the space she’d seen movement in. When she squinted, she saw Flynn’s form hunched down next to a bush right by the front gate. He held onto a rock so large he had to use both hands to lift it. When he saw that Vicky had seen him, he nodded at her and she nodded back.
Flynn then stood up and moved toward the gate, the rock above his head ready to smash into the lock.
A deep breath to still her frantic heart and Vicky readied herself to run.
Chapter 46
The loud crash as Flynn brought the rock down on the padlock no doubt sent an alarm call to the guards, wherever they were.
Seconds later, the same bell Vicky had heard when they’d brought the food out rang through the place, frantic in its jangling rattle and backed up by a man screaming at the top of his voice. Vicky bounced on her toes, desperate to get free from her cage.
As Flynn shoved the front gate wide, Vicky listened to the sound of the guards gathering in the complex behind her.
Doors opened and slammed shut, and as Vicky watched Flynn run at her cage, she listened to the guard’s heavy footfalls from where a considerable amount of them had clearly mobilised and headed their way.
In the moment it took Flynn to cross the forecourt, Vicky turned to the man from the farm and pushed her hands together as if to pray for his forgiveness. “I’ll come back for you, I promise.” He stared back at her, his face lank with shock.
Flynn got to Vicky’s cell door and brought the rock down with another loud crash that shook the entire cell. He then cast the rock aside and ripped the door open for her.
The guards still hadn’t appeared, but as Vicky ran from the cell out into the courtyard, she heard them call to one another.
Without looking back, she followed Flynn through the open front gate.
The desire to help the other prisoners dragged on her escape like she had a heavy tyre strapped to her, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to live.
As she ran near to the manhole covers, the thought of the young girl in the dark hole beneath her sent sharp shards of grief through her chest, but she kept going.
Once she’d run through the gates of the complex, Vicky followed Flynn up the hill away from the place. The uneven and overgrown climb sucked the life from her legs, but adrenaline ran through her like rocket fuel and Vicky pushed on with everything she had, her lungs ready to burst, her head spinning, her mouth open wide to pull in the air that her blocked and swollen nose couldn’t.
Chapter 47
No matter how wide Vicky stretched her mouth open, when she inhaled, she couldn’t drag enough air into her tight lungs to satisfy her. Every step up the hill had drained her energy, and when she reached the top, she stopped. With her hands behind her head to open her chest up, she stood in the full force of the wind, gasped, and looked down at the community.
Unable to speak from her lack of breath, Vicky watched the activity below. It looked like the guards and Moira had appeared, but from her current position—and in the dark—she couldn’t be sure … until she saw how the woman walked. Prowling like a dominant lion, Moira didn’t have her white fur coat on, but Vicky recognised her from the way she stalked the courtyard and stopped outside Vicky’s empty cell. A second later she moved over to the larger cell with all the prisoners in it. Vicky’s heart beat harder than ever as she watched.
“Where’s she gone?” the deranged woman yelled, her shrill call an unhinged and broken cry that shot out into the night. “Where’s she gone?”
The other prisoners recoiled from her wrath and they all gathered into one corner of the cell. “They’re not telling her,” Vicky said between breaths. “I thought someone would rat me out.”
Flynn said nothing as he watched events unfold below.
“Did you see what she did to that girl?” Vicky asked him.
“The one they put in the hole?”
A shiver snapped through Vicky. “To think of the poor cow down there as we speak, surrounded by the rotting heads of the diseased in what sounded like a tiny dark space.”
“You!” Moira called out and pointed into the cage of prisoners.
A man withdrew from her accusatory finger and his fellow prisoners stepped away from him. Three guards armed with bats and long blades entered the cage. Two of them grabbed an arm of the man each while the third pointed a machete at him.
The man shook and twisted as if to writhe free of the guards’ grasp. But he clearly didn’t have the strength for an escape. Broken by fear and weaponless, he fell limp and let the guards lead him from the cell.
Once they’d left the cage, the guards shoved him forward and he fell to his knees in the courtyard. Moira walked toward him with a long, curved blade in her hand. She pressed it to the man’s neck, and still the man said nothing.
“Do you think he doesn’t know where you’ve gone?” Flynn said.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s ready to go himself. Maybe he’d rather die than give Moira what she wants. Withholding information is the only power they have over her now.”
Without even questioning the man, Moira ripped her blade across his throat. Frozen with shock, the only sound Vicky heard came when his limp body hit the cold concrete.
Despite the distance between them and the dark, Vicky saw blood drip from Moira’s blade as she pointed it at the next prisoner. Before the guards could go to the woman singled out by the vicious community leader, Vicky put her fingers into her mouth and whistled so hard it rang through the night.
As one, Moira and the guards turned to look up at her.
Again, despite the distance and the dark, Vicky felt Moira’s glare bore into her and she stared back. When one of the guards stepped forward as if to run up the hill, Moira held a restraining arm across his chest and shook her head. They wouldn’t catch Vicky and she knew it.
For at least two minutes, Vicky and Moira stared at one another before the vicious older woman pointed at the gate. Two guards ran over and locked it with a fresh padlock. Moira then walked back toward the buildings behind the cages. The woman seemed to know when she’d been beaten, but anxiety turned over in Vicky’s gut as she watched her walk away. They’d not seen the last of each other. Not by a long shot.
Chapter 48
With their backs to Moira’s community, Vicky and Flynn walked toward Home. It might have been dark and they might have had to remain vigilant for the diseased, but Vicky allowed herself a deep breath of freedom. The fresh air cleared out the lingering memory of the smell of human excrement, and she lifted her chest, empowered by her release.
“So how did you know where I was?” Vicky asked.
“When you left with Hugh, I followed you,” Flynn replied. “I persuaded the kid on the door to keep quiet about letting me out. I told him to lock the door behind me and not to worry about me getting back in. After what you’d said about Hugh, I was worried something like this would happen.”
“And Hugh didn’t see you leave?”
“No. I had to let them take you into that community while I waited for Hugh to go back to Home though. Sorry.”
Although Vicky continued to walk, she pulled Flynn close to her with a one-armed hug. “Don’t be sorry. You came and got me. Thank you. Thank you so much.�
�
When Flynn looked up at her, a deep frown creased his brow.
“What’s up?” Vicky asked.
“Your eyes. I’ve never seen you with black eyes before. I dunno, it hurts to see you like this.”
“You’re a kind young man, Flynn. Thank you.”
They arrived at the end of the solar panel field. Vicky and Flynn crouched down in the long grass. As always, the wind ran over the environment, unimpeded because of the lack of tall buildings in the area and not many trees.
“And you think Hugh told you the truth about this way into Home?” Flynn said.
Three hundred and twenty-seven solar panels sat spread out before them. “They stretch back so far, it would make sense that these ones at the end are out of the reach of the cameras. So yeah, I do think he told me the truth.”
A shrug and Flynn focused on the shiny black panels in front of them. “Only one way to find out, I suppose.”
As Flynn moved forward at a crouch, Vicky nearly dragged him back. She had an instinct to go first like she always had, but she checked herself. Flynn had proven more than capable outside Home. She had to let him grow up. Fighting her maternal instinct, Vicky held back as Flynn crawled beneath the panel closest to them.
The grass around the solar panels had been stamped down, but the grass beneath them had been left to grow free. The long green blades stretched from the ground and pushed up beneath the bottom of the panels.
Vicky had her eyes closed for half of their journey as the grass brushed against her face. Every once in a while, one of the blades would threaten to cut her when she felt the sharp edge of it against her skin.
The panels had been placed so close together, Vicky and Flynn only exposed themselves for a second as they darted from the safety of one panel to the cover of the next. If they hadn’t been spotted entering the field, it would take a keen eye to see them as they made their way through it.
Moving at a crouch set fire to the muscles in Vicky’s tired legs, and she grimaced with every step, but she pushed on and kept moving forward on the tail of the younger and fitter Flynn.
By the time they’d reached the end of the solar panel field closest to Home, Vicky’s body screamed in agony and sweat stung her eyes from where it ran into them.
The camera that overlooked their approach sat on a pole close to the last panel. A quick glance up and Vicky saw it pointed out over the field. No way would it see them in their current position.
This time, Vicky took the lead as she slipped from beneath the final panel into the space behind the camera on the tall pole. Directly above the door to home, they stood in the middle of a ring of cameras, all of the glass eyes pointing outwards.
With Flynn by her side, Vicky walked to the edge of the small hill that the front door of Home nestled in. She peered down at it. Sooner or later Hugh would come out of that door. And when he did, they’d be ready for him.
Chapter 49
The sun warmed Vicky’s face as she and Flynn sat on the grass bank above the front door to Home and waited. Tiredness stung her eyes from where she’d stayed awake all night, and her body ached, but she had to be ready for him. Hugh would leave Home at some point. He left most days, if for no other reason than to check the solar panels.
When the snap of the bolts on Home’s front door issued their loud report, Vicky and Flynn looked at one another and shifted as close to the edge as they could without falling down.
“You don’t have to do this,” a small voice called out. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”
A woman that Vicky recognised from the community appeared beneath them, her hands bound together with cable ties.
“Actually,” Hugh said, “I do. You do nothing for this community other than drag it down. We can’t carry freeloaders like you anymore. I said you should go to the gym at least, but you couldn’t even get your fat arse down there, could you?”
“I have bad knees.”
“Tell that to the diseased, they may give you a head start.”
The woman cried harder than before and walked back toward Home as if trying to force her way past him, but Hugh pushed her out again.
When she fought against him, Hugh’s face twisted into a mask of hate and he grabbed a hold of her throat. With clenched teeth, he squeezed and forced the woman back out again.
Without a second thought, Vicky jumped down so she landed between Hugh and his way back in. Shock spread his features wide, and before he could react, Vicky had punched him three times in the centre of his face.
Hugh reeled, but he didn’t have time to recover before Flynn jumped down and punched him too. Both of them rained a flurry of blows into the man until he fell. While he lay on the ground, Vicky kicked him so many times it hurt her foot.
It took Flynn pulling her back for Vicky to realise she’d knocked Hugh out cold. Out of breath and with sweat running down her face, Vicky looked at the woman with the cable-tied hands. A mix of fear and relief twisted through the woman’s features in equal measure, and she said, “Thank you.” Although it sounded more like a question than an expression of her gratitude. Should she be thanking this crazy woman and boy?
“Hugh kicked me out because I found out he’d murdered Jessica,” Vicky explained. “Were it not for Flynn following me, I wouldn’t have ever made it back.” A glance at Flynn and Vicky saw his flushed cheeks before she turned back to the woman. “Flynn and I haven’t been here long, so we’re going to need your help to convince the community that Hugh’s bad for them. Food’s running low, which is why he’s kicking people out. The people need to know about the food situation and what he did to Jessica. If they know, then at least we can do something about it as a group.”
The woman had watched Vicky with her mouth agape.
When Vicky finished, she asked the woman, “Are you ready to help us?”
After a gulp, the woman nodded and the three of them re-entered Home, dragging the unconscious Hugh with them.
Chapter 50
After she’d slipped the second lock on the front door into place, Vicky turned around and jumped to see Serj standing at the top of the stairs that led down into the canteen. They’d been clear only a second earlier. With a raised eyebrow, he looked from Vicky to the unconscious Hugh to Flynn and back to Vicky. “Uh … what the fuck?” He ignored the woman they had with them.
Flynn had the good sense to step forward. Closer to Serj than Vicky, it would sound better coming from him. “Among other things,” he said, “Hugh was having sex with Jessica.”
The words seemed to drag the air from Serj’s body and he leaned forward a little, his mouth agape.
“I’m sorry to tell you this way, Serj, but we need you to trust us and not Hugh. He’s a rat. Help us lock him up and we’ll prove it to you.”
Clearly still reeling from the bombshell he’d just had dropped on him, Serj stared at Flynn, a glaze of tears spreading across his eyes. After several gulps, he nodded. “If I’m honest, I knew something was up.” Vicky watched the man break in front of her. He shook his head and slumped as if defeated. “I suppose I didn’t want to admit it. What else could I do? Leave her? Leave Home?” Serj looked down at the unconscious Hugh through narrowed eyes. “So we need to lock him up?”
Vicky and Flynn nodded in unison.
“And then what?”
Vicky stepped forward this time. “Then we put him on trial. The community need to see what he’s done.”
The woman who Hugh had tried to evict—Sally—stepped aside and handed Serj the unconscious man’s right arm. He grabbed it, stared down at the knocked-out Hugh and then nodded at the canteen. “People will ask questions when they see him like this,” Serj said. “There’s no way we can drag him through this place unnoticed.”
“Tell them to come to the canteen in one hour and we’ll explain everything,” Vicky said.
After another pause, Serj looked back at Vicky. “I’m trusting you here. Don’t let me down.”
In the hour bet
ween locking Hugh up and starting the case against him, Vicky had gathered all of the evidence she could find. Hugh had clearly been too confident in his leadership role at Home. Someone with a little more paranoia might have hidden a few things, but Hugh had made Vicky’s job incredibly easy.
Vicky now stood in the canteen in front of everyone in Home like she had a few days previously. Every face in the cabbage-scented room seemed to focus on Vicky, the collective attention burning her like the sun. But Vicky said nothing as she waited and gulped an arid mouthful of hot air.
A few seconds later, Serj and Flynn led Hugh into the room, his hands cable tied behind his back.
Although he’d been silent as he walked in, when Hugh looked at the people of Home, he twisted and writhed against his restraint. “This is ridiculous. Let me the fuck go. Who do you think you are?”
But no one answered. Instead, Flynn and Serj led Hugh to the same seats at the front that they’d put the convicted men in a few days prior.
To spend some of the anxious energy that ran through her, Vicky paced up and down. The second Hugh’s bottom hit the seat they’d reserved for him, she started, her words coming out fast, fuelled by the adrenaline of her nerves.
“You’re standing trial for the murder of Jessica and many others.”
The crowd gasped and Hugh shouted over the top of them, “What?”
“We believe you to be a danger to Home, and we plan on letting the people here decide whether we should kick you out or not.”
Although Hugh shook his head, he didn’t reply. Instead, he stared hate at Vicky.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Vicky said as she addressed the crowd of people. A slight shake took control of her voice and her lungs tightened as if shrinking. She cleared her throat and continued. “I put to you that Hugh is a danger to this community. Not only is he a danger, but he’s a murderer, a cheat, and a liar.”
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