Vicky stood back and looked at the space on the wall where the spare key had been, while Serj addressed Scoop. “But how long do we give it?” He stood in front of the door to Home, a new lock in his grip. “That key could fall into the wrong hands.”
“Longer than a day.” Scoop shook her head, the whites of her eyes wide in her dark face. “Jesus, Serj, you need to give Meisha longer than that.”
Just the three of them there, Vicky didn’t know where she stood on the argument. After all, Meisha could be dead; or worse, she could be in a cage in Moira’s community. And what then? Wait until Scoop could accept that possibility, and hope Moira didn’t raid them with her newly acquired key in the meantime? But then again if they didn’t give her a chance to return, then they would be cutting the next generation loose. And if they did that, what the hell were they fighting for?
Vicky looked out of the large window to the left of the huge front door and watched the long grass. The sun shone brightly, making her eyes itch. At least she had good weather today. It would have been worse for Meisha to go out amongst the diseased in the rain. A heavy downpour always made it harder to hear the fuckers approaching.
A deep sigh and Serj walked close to Scoop. Holding both of her hands with his, he spoke in a soft voice. “I get where you’re coming from, and were I in your situation, I wouldn’t ever want to change the locks, but think of the worst …”
Looking back at Serj through a glazed stare, her attention shifting from one of his eyes to the other, Scoop said, “I’m drowning in thoughts of the worst. Whenever I let my guard down, thoughts of the worst overwhelm me.”
Vicky stepped closer to Scoop and put a gentle hand against her slim lower back. “We have to protect everyone else’s kids too, Scoop. If the spare key’s fallen into the wrong hands …”
Scoop’s shoulders slumped and she dropped her head as she stared down at the blue linoleum floor. “Can we just give her a little longer? She left a note saying she was going out to find supplies. If she’s gone to the local town, she shouldn’t be back yet anyway. Surely we need to give her enough time to do that?”
The appeal melted Vicky’s heart. To see a fellow guard and friend in such distress … Were it Flynn, she’d demand they never change the locks. “Maybe we should give her a bit more time,” she said to Serj.
Piotr and Flynn had gone to the farm to check on supplies, so the decision had to be made between Vicky and Serj.
Serj drew a deep breath before he finally shrugged and turned to Scoop. “If you remain by the door and wait for her, you can keep an eye out for anything untoward. That way, we can wait a little longer.”
After she’d nodded at him, Scoop said, “Thank you.” She looked at Vicky and repeated, “Thank you.”
Chapter 24
“I’ll be glad when we don’t have to do this anymore,” Serj called after Vicky as he ran behind her toward the small but thick wooded area between them and the pen.
Vicky didn’t reply. Instead, she focused on the trees up ahead, the grass whipping at her as she sprinted through it. Whenever they led a pack this way, the woods meant the difference between life and death. If they kept their wits, they could get through the space and open up enough of a lead for the final stretch.
The diseased screamed as they chased the pair. A wall of sound, it challenged Vicky’s resolve and a buckle snapped through her stride.
When Vicky entered the woods, it muted their cries. For a second, the sound of her own heavy steps and ragged breaths rang out louder than the mob on their tail.
Vicky heard Serj enter the woods behind her. Despite his fitness, whenever he ran he breathed like an asthmatic in the middle of an attack.
The sound of the diseased entered a few seconds later and their collective roar seemed to shake the trees. Vicky and Serj had picked up more of a crowd than ever before. Fuck knew how many, but when Vicky glanced back, they stretched the width of the woods.
Vicky did her best to push her panic down and searched for her route out of there. It didn’t matter how many chased them, her objective remained the same—get the fuck out of the woods well before they did.
A heavy pulse and tightening lungs dragged on Vicky’s progress. She pulled greedily at the pine-scented air and continued to focus in front of her, twisting and turning her way through the tightly packed space. She kept tabs on Serj by listening to his panting breaths. Apart from that, they were on their own until they got to the ropes.
When Vicky burst from the woods, the sun burned her eyes. The same happened every time and she squinted while running blind. Every footstep rolled when it landed on the uneven ground. One wrong step and she could break her ankle. If she did, she’d expect Serj to leave her behind—she wouldn’t stop for him.
The few seconds of blindness seemed to last an age before Vicky’s sight returned. She was now no more than fifty metres from the two ropes hanging from the tree. One for her, one for Serj.
The grass whipped at Vicky’s thighs again.
When Vicky got close to the ropes, she leapt and reached out. Driven by her momentum, she grabbed the rope and swung forward over the pen of diseased. She shimmied up it while it moved.
The rope next to her swung when Serj landed on it, but Vicky didn’t look across. Not yet.
Once at the top, Vicky turned to face the approaching pack. It didn’t matter how many times she saw the tidal wave of insanity, whenever a horde of the fuckers chased her, cold fear wrapped her in a constrictor’s grip.
Vicky’s knuckles ached from how tightly she held the rope. She watched Serj climb for a second before looking at the lead diseased at the head of the pack.
The packs always had a leader, sometimes two, and that leader would always be the most adept. It ran the fastest and looked the strongest. Vicky always feared it and figured if any of them would get to her, the fucker in the lead would.
A few seconds later the alpha jumped at Vicky’s rope. Not quite zero co-ordination, but not far off, the brute flailed in her general direction, hit the knot at the bottom with its face, and fell down the steep slope.
The knock from the diseased set Vicky’s rope swinging again and she watched the others make even more pitiful attempts at reaching her as they fell, one by one, down the short and sharp hill leading to the holding area below.
Although she still fought for breath, Vicky found her words when she turned to Serj. “I’ve had enough of this now. This has to be the last time. We need to take these fuckers to Moira.”
The diseased had all fallen into the trap now, yet Serj still looked down at them as if they could rise up and attack him from their current position. Without taking his eyes off them, he reached up and pulled the rope attached to the first gate. It swung shut with a loud crash.
Vicky tugged the other rope so the new arrivals could mingle with the rest of the horrible fuckers. As she looked at them, she continued to breathe heavily and said again, “This is the last fucking time.”
Chapter 25
After Serj had lured the diseased down to the opposite side of the pen, Vicky slid down the hill and closed the inside gate behind them. She backed off, closed the outer gate, and scrambled back up the small hill. Even with the open space and strong winds between her and the pack, their rancid stench still smothered her.
Vicky lay down on her belly and hid in the long grass so she could watch them. They had well over two hundred diseased now. Surely it had to be enough to take down Moira’s community.
Serj looked over at Vicky before he pulled away from the mob. Each of them moved to the rhythm of their own torment as they watched him disappear. Some swayed from side to side, some slashed at the air as if locked in a battle with a figment of their own imaginations—if they even had imaginations anymore. Some of them bit around them as a dog would when trying to catch a fly. Despite their seeming individuality, something locked them together. They seemed to have a hive mind. It drove them and could call them all to the same cause. It could be used to get them to Moira�
�s community.
“So how are we going to do this?” Serj said and Vicky jumped as he slid down next to her.
“How did I not hear you?”
Serj shrugged. “I waited.”
“Huh?” Vicky said.
“I waited down there for you to come to me.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Fifteen minutes at least.” Serj watched the diseased too. “There’s something hypnotic about them, isn’t there?”
“And stupid,” Vicky said. “They’ve watched the space you disappeared into for the entire time. You’d think one of them would have turned around by now.” As if on cue, a small diseased no bigger than a six-year-old wandered through the pack. “It’s never easy to see children like that, is it?”
“Poor kid,” Serj said. “She looks like she’s looking for her mum. Even though it’s been over ten years, I still can’t believe the curse that’s been put on this world.”
Fire burned beneath Vicky’s cheeks. If they knew she’d helped release it, she’d be out of Home within seconds. Another thing the community could hate her for—and rightly so this time.
Vicky pushed the thought of Brendan to the back of her mind. The memory of the school bus in Summit City took its place. The sight of the diseased kid must have stirred it up. She thought of the splash when the glass smashed against the ground as the bus fell. The children’s screams flying from the toppled vehicle. The blood.
“We need to get them to Moira’s community while keeping them as far from Home as possible,” Vicky said, trying to forget her memories. “You’ve seen how we can lead them off a ledge. We need to do that at the top of the hill and let them fall into the complex at the bottom. If this lot crash against the chain-link fence, hopefully it’ll collapse.”
“Hopefully?”
Vicky turned to look at the man. “You want guarantees from me?”
A flicker of something flashed across Serj’s mahogany gaze, but he didn’t say it. Maybe he did want guarantees but realised the absurdity of it. “When shall we do it, then?”
“I worry about Moira’s prisoners. The sooner we get them out, the better.” Two diseased scuffled for a second in front of them. They seemed unable to contain their fury, but the fight quickly died down after several slaps and a lot of growling. They both seemed to realise the futility of taking from one another what had already been taken. “I promised them we’d get them out two days ago.”
“Huh?”
“Oh fuck.”
“What do you mean you ‘promised them’.”
“Uh … I …”
“Just tell me, Vicky.”
A heavy sigh and Vicky kept her attention on the diseased. “After we fitted the new locks, I went to Moira’s community in the night.” She winced. “Twice.” Before Serj could speak, she added, “I wanted to make sure the prisoners were okay and to see how many guards we’re up against.”
“And?”
“I haven’t been able to work that out yet. Because it was night, I assume most of them were sleeping. But if the dorms are anything to go by, then I’d say there’s a lot of them there.”
Serj scratched his head and frowned at her. “Why did you go on your own?”
“Because you need to look after Home.”
“I’m not the only guard.”
“No, but Scoop has a little girl she needs to protect and Flynn is so pissed off with me at the moment he’s a fucking liability.”
A look out at the horizon and Serj chewed the inside of his mouth as he seemed to consider her words.
“You remember the people we saw in town. The family,” Vicky said.
“The army surplus guys?”
“Yep. Moira has them.”
At first Serj’s eyes widened. Then his head dropped and his shoulders sagged. “Damn.”
“I know, right? She has them in a cage with a man that seems to have nothing to do with them. She’s waiting until they get hungry enough to eat one another.”
“What?”
“She wants them to turn on one another for food. There’s a tense stand-off between them. At least, there was; that might have changed now.” More and more of the diseased turned away from where Serj had disappeared and wandered aimlessly.
“We need to get them out,” Serj said.
“Exactly. How about we attack in two days’ time? I know I told the people at Home five, but if they don’t have to fight, then we’ll save lives, right? Hopefully we can get it all sorted before they even have to think about it. Also, the longer we wait, the more likely it is the prisoners will be gone when we get there.”
A deep sigh and Serj continued to watch the diseased in the pen.
Before he could reply, Vicky gasped and her stomach flipped. “Oh my god.” She pointed down at the pack.
Only aware of him in her peripheral vision, Vicky noticed Serj turn to look where she indicated. “Oh fuck,” he said. “It’s …”
“Meisha,” Vicky finished for him.
The sound of the wind filled the silence between them before Serj said, “How the fuck are we going to tell Scoop?”
Chapter 26
When they reached Home’s entrance, Vicky pulled her key out and cast a glance around her one last time. The area seemed clear, the grass moving as she would expect it to in the wind. She focused on the keyhole and unlocked the door.
The second Vicky stepped inside, she found Scoop waiting in the foyer. Heavy bags sat beneath her bloodshot eyes.
“Have you seen Meisha?” she said.
Vicky shook her head. “No. Sorry.” She and Serj looked at one another as he followed her into the foyer.
They’d discussed it on the way back and decided it would serve no purpose to tell Scoop about Meisha. The girl had gone, driven away by the disease. Sure, Scoop would need closure, and she could have that after they’d set the diseased loose on Moira’s community. It had taken them months to fill the pen, if Scoop knew about Meisha now, she’d want to get her back and bury her. Who wouldn’t, right? But that couldn’t happen. To try to get Meisha from the pen could jeopardise everything. Meisha couldn’t be saved, but Home still could.
The look in Scoop’s eyes took on a sound in Vicky’s mind. To watch her fellow guard—her irises shifting from side to side—made her think of a great structure cracking as it fell. A tower as tall as Pisa giving way at the bottom, creaking and groaning until the entire thing came crashing down.
Although Vicky reached out to hold Scoop’s hands, Scoop either didn’t notice or didn’t care because she completely disregarded the gesture. Maybe she sensed the betrayal.
Silence in the foyer save for the click of the lock as Serj closed the door. Vicky watched Scoop’s eyes glaze as if she’d retreated into her own mind. Scoop then turned around and walked away down the stairs, clearly in shock as she moved on autopilot.
A look across at Serj as she drew a deep breath and Vicky exhaled hard, her cheeks puffing out with the action. They’d done it for the right reasons. The uninfected needed to be the priority, regardless of how hard she’d just found it to lie to her friend.
Chapter 27
The half-moon hung in the near cloudless sky. Brighter than the last time Vicky had visited, it ran white highlights along the wire of the chain-link fence. It showed the prisoners beyond, their eyes sunk so deep in their gaunt faces they appeared to have no eyes at all.
The moonlight made it easier for Vicky to navigate the rough ground but still gave her enough shadow to hide in. Although, she took no comfort from it and her stomach clamped tight with anxiety. Regardless of the cloaking darkness, it would only take a torch to reveal her in plain sight. But she had to keep going. They were finally going to move on Moira’s community and the prisoners needed to know.
Aaron looked like shit. Worse than before. His skin clung to his face as thin as a layer of film. To look at him reminded Vicky of the Gothic paintings she’d seen of skulls on writing desks. The source of light always came fro
m a melting candle off to one side and cast appropriately eerie shadows. Fuck knew which museum she’d seen them in; the Tate, the National Gallery … a lot of years had passed since then and it hardly mattered now anyway.
Exhaustion clearly gripped Aaron, who slowly turned his head to Vicky when she stepped forward. Before he spoke, he heaved a weary sigh, the inhale lifting his entire body. “How long?”
“Two days.” Vicky dumped her heavy bag and went through the routine of passing water and food to Aaron first and then the other prisoners.
“Two days! What the fuck, Vicky? You said that three days ago!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, that’s okay then.” Laboured breaths ran through him as he lay against the fence and stared at her through listless eyes.
“I can see how it looks, but we have problems to deal with at Home.” Vicky gave some carrots to the people who lined up for them and already took some of the empty water bottles back.
“One of the guards’ kids has gone missing. It’s causing a lot of disruption. I promise I’ll be back in two days. I won’t let anything stand in the way of it.” Vicky checked behind her for the diseased and touched the knife at the back of her trousers. Up until now she’d worn the blade on her hip and taken it off inside Home. But with the amount of animosity around her at the moment, she’d decided to conceal the weapon on her at all times.
“For what good your promise is!” Aaron said. “Two more people went in the pit today, you know?”
Vicky didn’t reply.
“And they brought back three heads from the hunt! Moira’s punishing people for fun now. I’ve managed to meet the quota for heads every day, which apparently means fuck all. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up for.” Several hungry gulps of air and he added, “I’ll be in the pit soon.”
“Just be prepared, okay? Be ready to bust out. We have enough diseased penned up to tear through this place. It’ll be your best chance to run. Just before it happens, I’ll bring some hammers down. When there’s chaos outside, you’ll be able to smash up the concrete ground and lift the fence up.”
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