Before the rest of the guards could follow her up, Vicky raised a palm at them and shouted, “Stop!” Although she’d aimed it at all of them, she meant it for Flynn. He didn’t need to see this.
The guards did as she instructed.
Turning back to face Moira’s community, Vicky’s head spun. “W-wait there. Just wait there,” she called to the others.
Although Vicky had mobilised quickly, she clearly hadn’t done it quickly enough. Why hadn’t she headed straight out? In the time it had taken her to get to the weapons room and cross the small distance between the two communities, this had happened.
A look at the three forms—the backdrop of Moira’s brutal complex behind them—and Vicky cried uncontrollably. All three of them had been crucified.
“How could they do this to kids?” Piotr said.
When Vicky looked to either side, she saw all of the guards had made their way up, even Flynn. Sadness, rage, and guilt swirled within her and formed a tight ball in her guts. She directed it all at Flynn. “I told you to stop. What are you doing? Why don’t you ever listen to me?”
“I’m not the only one who didn’t listen to you.” Flynn looked at Piotr, but the large Russian didn’t get involved. He clearly knew when to shut the fuck up.
“I’m getting fed up with it, Flynn. You chuck your weight around all the time and forget you’re only sixteen. Why do you continue to disregard everything I say to you?”
The sides of Flynn’s jaw widened and eased from where he clamped and then relaxed it, but he didn’t respond. And maybe he’d been right to hold it in. They didn’t need a row at that moment.
“Look,” Scoop said as she walked toward one of the corpses. He appeared to be the eldest of the three. Vicky didn’t know his name.
He had some kind of letter attached to him, nailed through his chest bone with a rusty six-inch nail. At first, Vicky had only glanced at the bodies, but now she looked again, she saw their hands and feet dripping fresh blood from where they’d been recently nailed up. She saw each child had had their eyes gouged out. Streaks of red ran down their faces as if to recreate the diseased look. Huge crude holes had also been dug into their chests, and their hearts had been removed.
Before Vicky could ask Scoop what the letter said, her head spiralled out of control, her stomach bucked, and a hot rush of thick and acidic vomit exploded from her.
Chapter 18
Vicky wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve and spat the bilious taste of vomit away from her. A line of stringy bile caught on her bottom lip and dribbled down her chin. She wiped for a second time and spat again, her stomach still churning at the sight in front of her.
The wind on the hill picked up and tousled the children’s hair, animating the now permanently inanimate. It also tossed the letter nailed into the kid’s chest, forcing Scoop to grab it in a pinch as she read it aloud. “This is what happens when you break free. We never had any beef with the people of Home, but she’s mugged us off by breaking out. Now we’re coming for all of you.”
All of the guards looked at Vicky.
It took for Serj to speak up to break the silence. “It’s okay; no one blames you. I know I would have busted out given half the chance and I’m sure everyone here would have too.”
All of the guards nodded.
Serj pointed down the hill, his hair covering his eyes from where the wind caught it. “That community has been allowed to exist for far too long. We need to put a stop to it. All you’ve done is force our hand.”
Vicky swallowed and nodded several times before she found her voice. Even Serj—their leader in name only—looked at her for their next move. “We need to pull those kids down,” she said, her voice echoing in her mind as the ramifications of her actions glared at her from six bloody eye sockets. She winced to stare back at them. “As grim as they look, Sharon and Dan need their bodies back to bury them.”
The crucifixes both came down and came apart easily. The guards—under Vicky’s instruction—laid the three upright bars in a row and then tied the smaller horizontal bars across them. It looked like the start of a raft. They had enough twine from taking them apart to make it work.
The three kids lay with the contours of the stretcher like thinly sliced bacon on a griddle pan. Far from level because of the crossbars, their malleable little bodies showed just how lifeless they were. It would be a while yet before rigor mortis kicked in.
None of the guards spoke as they carried the kids back. Other than the sound of the wind and the crunch of their feet through the long grass, they walked in silence. Vicky continued to stare straight ahead as she and Serj led the way at the front of the stretcher. She scanned their surroundings for signs of the diseased and Moira’s army.
Scoop, Piotr, and Flynn walked behind Vicky and she heard at least two of them crying. She didn’t look back to find out who. A hard lump like broken glass had balled in her own throat. She’d only just managed to stop crying; if she looked at them, it would set her off again.
After they’d passed through the solar panel field, they descended the small slope towards Home’s entrance.
“So …” Serj said, “shall we show them the note?”
Vicky shrugged when the others looked at her. “Show them. They deserve to see it.”
Chapter 19
“So this is all her fault?” Dan said, the letter shaking in his hand as he glared at Vicky. “They killed our children to get back at her?”
What did Vicky expect? The note said why they’d done it. Ultimately, their children had died because of her. Had she not escaped, then Moira’s community wouldn’t have sought retribution. At least, that was what the letter said.
Instead of replying, Vicky looked down at the dead children on the ground in the flat grass. They’d done their best to trample it before they removed the bodies from the stretcher. She looked at the dark red holes where their eyes should have been. She looked at the cavities in their small chests. A rock of a lump rose up in her throat, but she gulped it back down. What right did she have to grieve?
Vicky drew a deep breath and looked at the gathered crowd outside of Home. Her stomach turned over and her heart fluttered to be the focus of so much rage. Would she become a pariah in the community? A Jonah that needed to be thrown overboard? At least thirty adults and as many children, they all stared at her. Given half a chance, many of them looked like they’d end her where she stood. Then she saw Stuart. The man offered her a tight-lipped smile. At least she had one person on her side.
Serj stepped towards Dan, the long grass up past his knees. “Now that’s unfair,” he said. “What would you have done in Vicky’s situation? Would you have stayed in the community and accepted death when you had a chance to get away?”
The tension in Dan’s jaw made it look like he could bite through steel. He didn’t reply to Serj; instead he addressed Vicky again. “If it saved the life of my children, then yes.”
Scoop—who comforted a distraught Meisha—let go of her daughter and moved forward. “Look, Dan, I know you’re hurt. Of course you’re hurt—”
“Let me ask you something, Scoop,” Dan said, the wind blowing his loose-fitting shirt.
Scoop froze and looked at him.
“How would you feel if that—” he pointed down at the brutalised corpses of his three children “—if that was Meisha? What would you do if you saw her like that?” The June sunshine made his tear-sodden cheeks glisten.
As much as Scoop looked like she wanted to reply, she didn’t. Instead, she shivered and moved close to Meisha again.
Sharon stood over her children’s bodies the entire time. She clamped her hands to the bottom half of her face. While shaking her head, she rocked on the spot and muttered something to herself that Vicky couldn’t understand. She then kneeled down, tore a strip from her jumper, and wiped at the eyes of her youngest. The blood had already dried against his cheeks, so she licked the makeshift cloth—zero regard for the red stain already on it—and
went again at cleaning him up. No doubt she’d do the same for the other two.
The silence seemed to last an age before Dan threw his arms up in the air and addressed Scoop again. “So you have nothing to say? I know you’d be exactly the same as I am now, yet you expect us to accept it?”
“I’m not saying accept it,” Scoop said, “but I would have done what Vicky did were I in her situation. How could she possibly think her escaping would mean Moira’s community would do this to your children? In what world does that logic make sense?”
For the first time since coming out of Home and seeing her children, a flash of clarity ran across Sharon’s otherwise washed-out features. She looked up from the ground, her long blonde hair dancing in the breeze as she spoke with an unnaturally calm tone. “All I know is we’ve lived in Home for close to a decade now, and we’ve never had a run-in with this community before.” She levelled a stare at Vicky that cut to her core. “Now she comes here, and we’re in a war. How many more children will die? Why don’t we just give her up and be done with it?”
Piotr spoke this time. “You think that will work? You think they’ll let this go now?”
But Sharon had gone again. The glaze had returned to her eyes and she shook her head at her mutilated children as an indecipherable stream of garbled nonsense issued from her mouth.
A rip opened into a chasm inside Vicky as she watched the broken mother. Although not a parent, she’d cared for a little one. She knew what it meant to fear for their safety. No one should outlive their child; it went against the natural order of things.
Movement flashed through Vicky’s peripheral vision. When she spun to face it, she saw Dan had been knocked to the ground and Flynn sat on top of him. A large chunk of brick lay a few feet away from them.
Flynn raised his fist and gritted his teeth as he glared down at the man. But before he could swing for him, Vicky darted forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t.” She tugged on Flynn’s arm and encouraged him to his feet.
Although Flynn came with her, Vicky had to pull hard to move him. Still breathing heavily, Flynn twisted away from her and continued to lean over Dan, both of his fists clenched and his face red. “Have you seen the community they had Vicky trapped in?”
Tears ran freely down Dan’s cheeks and sobs bucked through him as he lay in the long grass. He shook his head.
“I have. They torture people down there. They feed them scraps of vegetable peelings and offcuts of rancid meat mixed with used sanitary towels.”
Dan’s eyes widened as he looked at Flynn.
“They have two pits down there. Did you know that?”
A shake of his head—his lips buckling out of shape—and Dan still didn’t speak.
“Well, they do. One of them is a dark manhole they put people in and slide a cover over the top of. The other one is a pit filled with diseased. Of course Vicky escaped from that; anyone would in her situation. Your anger needs to be at Moira and her community, not at Vicky for doing what anyone else would have done.” Flynn pointed at the brick on the ground. “You try a trick like that again and I’ll cut your throat, you got me?”
If Dan took in what Flynn had just said to him, it didn’t show. Instead, he remained on his back and brought his hands up to cover his face. He sobbed as he lay there, his quiet cries turning into full-blown screams.
“Come on,” Vicky said as she tugged on Flynn’s arm again.
Dan screamed louder, his broken wail calling across the open meadow.
Some of the adults in the community stayed with Sharon and Dan, but the guards walked away—the guards and Meisha. Vicky reached across and touched Flynn’s back. “Thank you.”
“I did it for the sake of the community,” he said as he scowled at her. “We can’t have infighting.”
Although his words had been clearly designed to hurt her, Vicky couldn’t rise above it. Each syllable cut to her core. Of all the people in the world, Flynn had the most direct link to her heart. She remained wide open in his presence, and he could hurt her any time he chose to.
When Vicky looked up, she found Piotr staring at her. The large man winced—like she needed his fucking sympathy. “This can’t go unpunished,” he said in his thick Russian accent. “We need to retaliate.”
“We do,” Vicky agreed, “but not immediately. We go down there tonight and they’ll be ready for us. We need to give it a few days to wait for them to lower their guard.”
Nods passed around the guards as they walked through Home’s large entryway, their footsteps echoing in the empty foyer. Moira’s community would fall and Vicky would make sure her knife ended the vicious bitch.
Chapter 20
The moon hung as a silver fingernail in the starry sky, providing very little light and giving Vicky the perfect opportunity to hide in the darkness. Although the lack of light gave with one hand, it took away with the other. It made it much harder to navigate the uneven and tufty ground.
As Vicky walked alongside the prison in the dark, she scanned the emaciated occupants. What if she’d persuaded Aaron to trust her and he’d been thrown into the pit? What if Moira had taken some of the other prisoners too?
When Vicky saw Aaron, she let her relief out with a heavy breath. She moved close to the fence and the rich smell of dirt and shit.
Many of the prisoners looked up at Vicky’s approach and saw her before Aaron did. They shuffled to meet her as she dropped her heavy bag and unzipped it. She tried her hardest to stifle her reaction to the stench as she handed out the refilled bottles of water. Home had many assets; among its best were the water filtration system and its solar power. Not many people had those luxuries in the world now.
Aaron regarded Vicky with sunken green eyes as he took a bottle of water from her. “It’s been one day already. You said you’d be rescuing us within two. You coming for us tomorrow?”
Vicky looked at Aaron, his gaunt face twisted with the sneer of a skeptic. “Um …” she said.
A roll of his eyes and Aaron sighed. A lot of the others sagged around him too.
“There’s been a hiccup.”
“Oh, well, that’s okay, then.” An already sunken face, Aaron’s features dropped farther. “I mean, it’s not like our lives are on the line or anything, is it?”
The memory of the three kids flashed through Vicky’s mind and she flinched at the mental image. It suddenly became harder to keep her thoughts straight. “I know that, Aaron. It’s been a hard day.”
“You’re coming to me for therapy now?” Aaron grabbed the chain-link between them and sent a rattle along the fence when he shook it. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have slightly more pressing issues to deal with. You’ll have to find someone else to listen to your bullshit. Why don’t you just tell us the truth?”
The others closed in like the diseased. They looked ravenous for her flesh. “Which is?” Vicky asked.
“You’re not coming to rescue us.”
“But we are.”
The lethargy left Aaron as he surged forwards, his face crashing into the fence. “When?” he barked.
“Shh!” Vicky looked towards the section with the guards in it. “Keep it down; otherwise the answer will be never.”
Although Aaron opened his mouth to reply, Vicky cut him off, “Moira killed three of the children from the community today.”
When Aaron looked like he’d say something else, Vicky added, “She gouged their eyes and hearts out. She nailed each of them to a cross.”
Aaron’s face dropped at the same time a gust of wind rushed through the pen. It forced the reek of rotting food and human waste at Vicky and she couldn’t help screwing her nose up.
The anger left Aaron and he spoke in a soft voice. “Which three?”
“Do you know Sharon and Dan?”
“Blythe?”
Vicky looked behind her. Probably just paranoid, but it sounded like movement in the darkness. As she stared into the inky blanket of shadow, her mouth dried. She co
uldn’t see a thing. While holding her breath, she reached down for the knife on her hip and listened for sounds of movement. Nothing. She turned back to Aaron. “Yeah, Sharon and Dan Blythe.”
“All three of their kids?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
“They left a note saying they did it because I broke out. A lot of people in Home are pissed off with me.”
“Fuck!” Aaron said again. “But what did they expect you to do? Stay here?”
“They’re hurt. Their children are dead and the murderer attributed their death to me. I can’t blame them for being pissed off.”
A shake of his head and Aaron looked down at the ground.
“So I will get you out.” Vicky looked at all of the faces on the other side of the chain-link. “I’ll get all of you out, but this has knocked us back by a few days.”
The other prisoners passed the empty water bottles back to Vicky and she put them into her bag one at a time. As she focused on loading up her pack, she said, “Your lives are important to me. I have sleepless nights thinking about you all in here. I see what you’re going through, but I can’t break you out on my own.”
“We’re three people down since you came here last,” Aaron said. “Three people who’d managed to get three heads every single time they went out. This time each of them came back with two and Moira dropped them straight in the pit. No strikes, just straight in the pit.”
“I promise I’ll come for you soon,” Vicky said.
As the last of the group slid his bottle through to Vicky, she and Aaron stared at one another. “I hope you do,” he said. “I really hope you do.”
Guilt had turned into a parasite inside Vicky. It gnawed at her, taking bigger bites with every step she took away from Aaron and the other prisoners. The previously warm summer night took on a bitter twist and Vicky shivered as she drew close to the guards’ side of the complex.
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