“Why don’t you bring us the hammers now?”
“Because Moira will find them. It’ll ruin your chances of escape and our chance to surprise her.”
Before either of them could say anything else, Moira’s shriek cut through the night. At first Vicky thought it came from a diseased and spun around, drawing her knife. What she’d give for her crossbow right now. She’d left it behind because she needed to carry supplies on her back. Not ideal, but she probably wouldn’t hit much in the dark anyway.
Then it came again. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
After sharing a look with Aaron, Vicky threw frantic gestures at the people in the cage—hurry the fuck up with the water bottles and pass them back. A shake took a hold of her in her haste to pack her bag, the empty bottles crunching as she threw them in. Fortunately Moira seemed too occupied at that moment to notice anything else.
The zip on Vicky’s bag creaked through the night air and she turned to Aaron again. “Hang on in there. I promise I’ll get you free.” She then darted into what shadow she could use and moved alongside the prison until she came to the guards’ section of Moira’s complex.
Like the last time she’d visited the community, the door to the guards’ communal area hung wide open. Firelight rippled across the forecourt. It lit up the cage, twisting and bending the shadows on the bars as if manipulating the metal itself.
Vicky found a bush on an elevated mound. It gave her both something to hide behind and a view into the forecourt beyond.
The mum of the family shouted at the man in the cage. “I said stop looking at my girls. I don’t know what you want from them, but it won’t happen.”
Moira stood close to the bars, her eyes wild in her craggy face, her crazy black hair bouncing as she hopped on the spot.
No more than a defensive ball, the man recoiled in the cage from the mother’s wrath. He raised his shaking hands above his head and looked at the ground in total subservience. “Please, I don’t plan on doing anything. I don’t mean you any harm. Please.”
“He’s lying, Simon,” the mum said to the man in the cage with her, and she pointed down at the cowering wreck again. “I can see it in his face.”
If anyone had insanity in their face at that moment, it didn’t come from the older man. Moira maybe, the mum for sure, and even Simon seemed to be catching the crazy bug, his wide eyes bulging in his gaunt face.
Simon moved next to his wife and grew more animated, the situation clearly pumping him up. “Are you calling my wife a liar?”
Vicky jumped to see the mum of the family dart forward and drive a hard kick into the man’s face. It connected with a loud clop before the dad piled in after her. They went to work on the older man, a flurry of punches and kicks moving in the dancing light.
When the dad raised his fist, Vicky noticed the glisten of blood on it. His or the man’s, she couldn’t tell, but only one side fought the battle. While being attacked, the older man curled up and covered his face.
Spittle flew from the mother’s mouth when she leaned over him, her teeth bared. “You won’t win this. This is the fucking end for you.”
Until that point, Vicky had focused on the mum and dad. Although when she looked at the two girls behind them, her heart sank. They hadn’t been taken over with the rage infecting their parents. Instead, they stood at the back of the cage—seemingly pressing themselves as hard against the bars as they could—and they hugged one another. Both of them cried freely.
But Vicky didn’t watch them for long.
When the mum dropped to her knees next to the man, Vicky shuddered to see her wild face. The firelight glistened on her teeth when she opened her mouth wide and dived in on the cowering man’s neck.
The man screamed, Moira cackled, the guards cheered, the girls cried, the dad continued to beat the shit out of the man, and the mum pulled away, blood dribbling down her chin and neck as she chewed on the liberated piece of flesh that had been a part of the man only moments before.
Knots clamped Vicky’s guts tight and a nauseating fire burned in her belly. Whatever else she did in this life, she would take Moira down.
Chapter 28
Maybe it would have been a good time for Vicky to leave. The guards and Moira all watched the barbaric attack in the cage and it gave her the perfect opportunity to move from shadow to shadow until she got out of there. But she didn’t. Instead, she stayed and watched events unfold in front of her, her stomach tense and her jaw slack.
The mum’s eyes rolled as if she were about to vomit, yet she continued to chew the man’s flesh. When she gulped it down, Vicky’s stomach flipped.
The mum looked at the others, a goatee of blood dribbling from her chin.
Even Moira’s laugh died down at that point. “You fucking sicko,” she said.
Some form of realisation sank through the mum’s features and her mouth fell half open. Only moments earlier she’d been lost in the frenzy of the kill, but in the face of Moira’s berating, she seemed to be coming back.
“How the fuck do you do that to another human being?” Moira said.
Despite being over twenty metres away and seeing everything in the poor light of the fire, Vicky noticed the shake running through the mum.
The mum looked from the dead man down to her blood-covered hands and then up to her family. Even her husband backed away from her, her daughters still pushing against the bars as if their applied pressure would get them out of there.
The frantic cycle repeated several times before the mum focused on Moira. “What have I done?”
The accusation of a few seconds ago left Moira’s frame and she spoke with a soft voice. “You’ve just killed a man, dear. And you’ve eaten some of him.” Her tone stiffened and she shouted, “Isn’t that fucking obvious?”
As the mum shook her head and rocked back and forth, Moira’s cackling laugh returned and rang out into the night. The shrill punch of glee startled a rabbit next to Vicky, which exploded to life and ran away from the bush. By the time it had vanished from sight, Vicky had only just drawn her knife. Were that a diseased, it would be eating her face off by now.
Moira continued to goad the mum. “You’ve just bitten into him like he’s a cooked ham.” She used her long and bony index finger on her right hand to jab at her temple as she laughed louder. “You’re fucking mental.”
When the mum looked at her partner and her girls, she shook more violently. As if a hypothermic seizure came over her, she jittered uncontrollably, the man’s blood still running from her face.
Not that her clear distress stopped Moira. “I can’t believe you thought you had to eat him. What the fuck’s wrong with you? I was planning on letting you out today too.”
The brief moment of lucidity seemed to pass for the mum, who repeatedly shook her head as she walked in small circles inside the cage. She spread the fingers on both of her hands out and stretched them back as if locked in a spasm. She clapped her palms together, seemingly trying to avoid the fingers connecting with one another.
The girls remained at the back of the cage and clung together as if they could keep each other afloat in the choppy sea of insanity. They stared at their mother, or what used to be their mother.
Moira sneered as she looked at the family and shook her head. She then turned to her guards. “Get them out.”
After one guard opened the cage, four of them moved in and grabbed a family member each. The family came without resistance, all of them looking down at the recently dead man as they passed him.
Chapter 29
More guards joined the ones who’d dragged the family out until there were thirteen in total surrounding them. They followed Moira around the side of the complex where the prisoners were. Vicky moved over with them, staying in the shadows to remain hidden.
“No,” the dad said, his call running out into the night. “Don’t lock us up again.”
Vicky hadn’t noticed the dad’s bare feet until one of the guards stamped on them and he scream
ed. Another guard punched him on the chin, rocking him to the point where the one leading him had to hold him up.
A quick check over both shoulders and Vicky couldn’t see any diseased. They might be there, but if they hadn’t been attracted to the sound, then maybe she’d be okay.
The dad had asked Moira not to lock him up again. Vicky had no doubt the crazy bitch would oblige him.
When Moira walked toward the two manhole covers, Vicky dropped her head and sighed.
At the cover over the pit of diseased, Moira stopped to look up at one of her guards. She then pointed down at it.
“No,” Vicky whispered. “Don’t do it.”
Backflips turned through Vicky’s stomach as she watched on and listened to the scratch of the metal manhole cover against the concrete surrounding it. When she looked at the cage of prisoners, she saw Aaron watching her. Maybe he couldn’t see her. Maybe he just guessed she was still there. Either way, she stepped back a few paces into a darker spot.
Something close to hope burned in Vicky’s chest as she watched Moira and her guards. Maybe the hideous matriarch just wanted to taunt the family. Hopefully, she’d change her mind and throw them in with the other prisoners.
The sharp tear of gaffer tape echoed in the open space as one of the guards pulled off a long strip and wrapped it around the mouth of the youngest of the two girls. He then used more to pin her arms to her body. When the guard had finished, the silver tape sheathed and gagged the girl. It left her standing pencil straight.
An evil grin lit the guard’s face as he pulled out another length of tape no more than about twenty centimetres long. He bit it free and pressed it over the girl’s nose. He laughed as he pinched it and the girl’s eyes spread wide from where she clearly couldn’t breathe.
The girl’s cheeks puffed out in panic and she shook her head. She tried to say something, but it came out as no more than a muffle. Her pale skin turned red. Tears ran down her cheeks.
The dad broke free and ran for his daughter. Before he could get to her, another guard drove the end of a baseball bat into his stomach. It forced a loud oof from the dad, who folded to his knees on the ground.
Most of it didn’t seem to register with the mum, who stared into space and looked catatonic while the eldest of the two girls cried and stared at the ground.
Suddenly, as if their situation had only just dawned on her, the mum broke out into hysterical screams. The guard who’d just dropped the dad let his bat fall and drove a hard cross into the mum’s chin, but she remained on her feet.
When the mum drew a breath as if to scream again, the guard raised a fist at her and grimaced.
The mum stopped.
A slightly smaller guard than the one who’d attacked the mum lifted the youngest girl and waddled over to the open manhole with her as if she were no more than a fence post. With little ceremony, he held her over the wide hole and dropped her.
Vicky heard nothing of the girl’s passing other than the scream below from the frenzied diseased. Like Meisha, Jack, Lola, and Alvin, she wouldn’t see the future of this fucked-up world.
The dad looked like he tried to call out again, but he fought to breathe from the bat’s winding and didn’t seem to have it in him. So when he jumped to his feet, it startled Vicky. Two steps towards Moira and another guard clotheslined him.
The dad hit the ground flat on his back and the guard who’d taken him down leaned over him and punched him square in the face. The dad fell limp.
No need for gaffer tape, they dropped the dad in next.
Both the older daughter and the mum shook and cried. At least they’d learned to keep their mouths shut, for what good it would do them.
For the next few minutes, Vicky tasted the bile of indigestion as she watched the guards wrap the mum and daughter in gaffer tape like they’d done to the youngest girl.
They carried them to the manhole and dropped them in one after the other. They might have twisted and writhed against their captor’s grip on the way over, but it didn’t matter; they stood no chance of escaping.
After just a few seconds, the sound of the diseased’s frenzy vanished and gave way to the wet ripping sounds of tearing flesh.
A click of fingers from Moira and one of the guards—a short and slim woman with the body of a young boy—slid the manhole cover back across. It muffled the sound of the feasting diseased, which made it easier for Vicky to hear the vicious woman address her guards. “I’ve had enough of this bullshit. We need to get ready to go to war with Home. I want that place for my own.”
A cold chill seeped through Vicky’s veins and the desire to run back to Home coiled within her, but she had to wait. Any movement and they’d see her now they had nothing else to focus on.
Vicky remained crouched in the bushes—her bent legs cramped from her awkward position—and she watched the guards slowly move away from the scene. They took their time as they headed back to the other side of the complex.
One final glance at Aaron and the gaunt man raised his eyebrows. Vicky stared back for what felt like the longest time before she dipped a nod. They’d get them out of there whether he believed it or not.
Chapter 30
Slightly out of it from another active night and the memory of the family at Moira’s community, Vicky raised her hand, rocked on her feet as if her legs could give way at any moment, and stared at the group through slightly out of focus eyes. She hadn’t slept well for days and every sluggish movement felt just at the edge of her co-ordination.
Even Flynn raised his hand. In what seemed to be a constant mission to challenge Vicky, even he could see the logic in what they proposed. Fed up with being the villain, Vicky relaxed as she watched Serj finally be a leader.
The five guards stood in the bleached stink of Home’s foyer. Four of them had their hands in the air. Scoop didn’t. When she’d seen the hands go up, she did what she’d done since Tuesday morning when Meisha vanished; she looked out of one of the large windows of Home and stared at the tall and swaying grass as if her daughter would emerge from it. But the diseased didn’t heal and she wouldn’t be getting out of the pen until someone let her out.
To Vicky and Serj, Meisha had to be treated as a number. They couldn’t jeopardise their plan of setting the pack on Moira’s community. They had to make this decision with their heads. The war with Moira had to end before anyone else died, and they had to strike before Moira hit them. Because Vicky had woken up to this meeting, she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Serj about what she’d seen the night before and tell him they needed to release the diseased now.
The guards lowered their hands and Serj walked across to Scoop. The only sound in the space came from the gentle pad of his feet over the blue linoleum floor. He placed a hand on Scoop’s shoulder and looked into her eyes. “I’m so sorry, but it’s four to one. It’s been a couple of days now. Meisha should be back.”
Scoop’s breakfast—fresh made bread and a vegetable broth—sat on the floor by her feet, picked at but largely untouched. Vicky had instructed the kids in the community to bring Scoop regular meals, which they’d done since Tuesday morning. Not that getting a meal to her friend three times a day covered up the toxic guilt eating away at her. One sentence, ‘Your daughter is five hundred metres away and she’s one of them’, would end her search, but they couldn’t tell her that.
Scoop opened her mouth to reply, but Serj cut her off, his tone sharp. “What would you do in our situation?”
Vicky recognised the guilt in Serj’s defensive response, but when she looked at Flynn, Piotr, and Scoop, she saw the slightly shocked expressions in reaction to his outburst. A usually calm man, it certainly seemed out of character.
After Scoop closed her mouth, her dark eyes welling up, Vicky walked over and hugged her tightly. She opened her heart as much as she could and breathed through her mouth because of the woman’s smell. It reminded her of a dirty dog, but who could tell her to shower with things as they were?
For
the entire time Vicky hugged her, Scoop locked up tight and stared out of the large window into the long and grassy field, rigid as she stood pole straight.
When Vicky pulled away, the woman she called a friend stared at her like she wanted to set fire to the world with her in it. Like she knew something was amiss.
The June sun shone through the huge window and heated the foyer. Sweat lifted beneath Vicky’s clothes, so she stepped back a pace.
Tension wound the air tight before Serj said, “We’ll give her one more day and then we’re changing the locks, okay?”
Not gratitude, but a slight weakening of her jaw and Scoop nodded at the other four guards, sat down on the floor again, and turned to look out of the window.
A few minutes passed where none of the guards spoke as they all watched Scoop on the floor. The chatter from the canteen came up the stairs and filled the space.
If only the rest of the guards would just fuck off, Vicky could talk to Serj about what Moira had said. They needed to act before the crazy bitch could attack them. They also needed to step up the security in Home; they couldn’t have Moira catching them unawares.
Vicky eventually cleared her throat, the sound of it echoing in the hard space. “Guys, we need to get people in the monitor room so we can watch Home’s perimeter during the day. It’ll be useless at night because we won’t see anything.”
Not that Vicky had said it directly, but Scoop looked over at her, her face streaked with tears. “I ain’t moving from this spot. I need to be next to this door when my little girl returns. You know what? Change the locks if you need to; I ain’t moving until she comes back anyway.”
“Flynn, you need to do the first shift,” Vicky said because she had no reply for Scoop. They’d get her in the monitor room when they needed to. After all, it gave her a better view of the outside than just looking through the window.
The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 94
