Flynn turned toward Vicky, instantly on the aggressive as he screwed his face up. “What the fuck?”
Despite the rise in her heart rate, Vicky forced calm through her words. “What’s with the attitude?”
“What do you think? You’re always trying to lock me up in places. Or chain me to a desk outside the gym. Anything as long as I can’t get hurt. Fucking hell, Vicky, you won’t even let me fight the diseased if you can avoid it. What the fuck was that about at the funeral? You put your own life in danger to stop me having to fight a diseased. You’ve seen me kill them plenty of times already.”
A look at Serj and Vicky returned her focus to Flynn. She couldn’t deny he had a point, but she’d take his wrath over his death all day long. “We’re going to take turns, Flynn.”
Flynn continued to glare at Vicky, his boyish face locked tight.
In her peripheral vision, Vicky felt Piotr watching her, but she didn’t look over. Instead, she drew a deep and steadying breath and said, “I’ll draw up a rota. You first, and then we’ll break the day up into two-hour shifts so it doesn’t get too boring.”
Flynn still glared at her.
Sure, Flynn had a point, Vicky did want to protect him, but at that moment, she thought more about Moira. They needed the earliest possible warning of her impending attack. But to tell Flynn that would be to admit what she’d been doing in the evenings. If the others knew, they’d also know they needed to set the diseased free. They wouldn’t let just Vicky and Serj do it. Scoop would see Meisha, and Flynn would be out there with hundreds of diseased. Although the boy could handle himself, Scoop couldn’t see Meisha. It would fuck everything up.
Piotr put an arm around Flynn. “Come on, mate, we all need to put a shift in.”
After he’d looked at Piotr, Flynn scowled at Vicky again. “Someone best come and get me in two hours.” Without another word, he spun around and walked off down the stairs into the canteen in the direction of the monitor room.
Vicky sighed as she watched him go. At least after they attacked Moira’s community, she wouldn’t have to lie to them anymore. She’d be stepping down from her role too. Let someone else make decisions for the good of the group. She didn’t need the burden of it.
Chapter 31
A few minutes had passed since Flynn left the foyer for the monitor room. Piotr, Scoop, Vicky, and Serj stood in the near silence and stared out of the windows to the meadow beyond. The sounds from the canteen continued to come up at them, but other than that, Vicky heard nothing. It seemed like they all remained beside Scoop to support her as she waited for Meisha, for whatever good that would do. In truth, Vicky waited because she needed Serj on his own. She needed to tell him about her visit to Moira’s community the previous night.
“I’m going to get some breakfast,” Serj finally said. “Can I get you anything, Scoop?”
None of the others spoke as they waited for Scoop to reply. When she didn’t, Serj said, “I’ll catch up with you guys later, then.”
To watch him walk away made Vicky want to call after the man—but the others, or Piotr at least—would want to know what she had to say. A couple of seconds after Serj had left, she turned to the tall Russian. “I’ll see you later, yeah?” she said, and before he could reply, she’d already run off after Serj.
Vicky caught up with Serj at the bottom of the stairs and walked next to him. Many of Home’s residents seemed to be in the canteen, having breakfast. She spoke from the side of her mouth so they wouldn’t hear. “I need to talk to you.”
Before Serj could reply, Sharon and Dan Blythe stepped in front of the pair. They both looked like shit as they glared at Vicky through drawn and exhausted faces. It wouldn’t be long before she found one of them in her room with a knife in their hand.
A look from the bereaved parents and back to Serj again and Vicky shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch you later.”
As Vicky walked away, her mind ran in circles. They needed to act soon. They needed to set the diseased loose on Moira’s community before it was too late. They needed to make sure no one found out about Meisha.
Chapter 32
Vicky opened her eyes, her head thick from sleep. A second later, clarity rushed through her mind with a kick of adrenaline and she sat bolt upright. After weeks of insomnia, why had she fallen asleep today? “Fuck!”
When Vicky stood up on her weak legs, she wobbled and had to rest against the cold wall of her bedroom. At least it only had one bed in it now. The dexterity required to go from asleep to shuffling along between the two beds a second later would have been too much for her. A glance down and she saw her shoes remained on her feet.
By the time Vicky had stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind her, she moved more easily. After a few paces, she picked up her speed and walked with a fast march towards the canteen. Because very few watches worked, the screens in the canteen were now the only place she could get an accurate reading of the time. It could be the middle of the day, it could be evening already; because there were no windows in Home, she needed to see the monitors to know.
As much as she wanted to sprint to the canteen, Vicky didn’t need to attract unwanted attention. Instead, she kept at a fast walk. Her footsteps echoed in the enclosed space of the corridor as she strode down it.
When Vicky entered the large communal area at the end, she looked at the monitors on the wall. An exasperated sigh and she muttered, “Fuck,” again. The sky had turned dark blue, the thick grass almost black because of the encroaching darkness. The clock on the screen showed a digital reading of the time: 8:31p.m.
The canteen sat relatively empty. Dinner had finished. A scan around the place and Vicky couldn’t see Serj anywhere. Although she did see Flynn at a table by himself. When he looked up, she pulled a tight-lipped smile at him and went over.
As she got close, Flynn glared at her from behind a dark scowl. No time for drama, she cut to the chase. “Have you seen Serj?”
“He’s in the monitor room. I thought you’d know that with it being your idea and all.”
Vicky ignored the crack in his tone and looked back at the screens on the wall as if her attention would somehow make time move slower.
“And you’ll be pleased to hear he’s changed the locks,” Flynn added. “So you’ve got your way with that too.”
“But you voted for that as …” Vicky stopped herself. She didn’t have time for this. “You know what? Never mind. I moved you out of my room so you could grow.”
Flynn laughed.
“What?” Vicky said.
“You say that, but you stop me growing every chance you get. If it came from a nurturing and motherly place, maybe it would be easier to take. But it doesn’t. You either totally blank me or you disempower me in front of everyone by stopping me fighting the diseased. You want me to be a guard, but you won’t let me guard. You’re a fucking control freak.”
As much as Vicky wanted to argue back, she didn’t. He had a point and she didn’t have time. It seemed like every glance at the screens showed a rapidly darkening world outside. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I’m trying to do the best by you and I’m clearly getting it wrong. I’ve had a lot on my plate lately and I’m not being very level-headed about things at the moment.”
“We’re supposed to help each other as guards,” Flynn said.
Vicky didn’t respond and looked back at the monitors: 8:32.
“So let us help you,” Flynn continued. “You’ve been acting strange. I know you’re probably doing something for the greater good of the community, but you’re pushing everyone away while you’re doing it. I think I understand you, but a lot of the people here don’t. To them, you’re just a heartless bitch that can make the tough decisions without any apparent remorse. I love you, Vicky, but you need to let me in some more.”
The words caught Vicky off guard and she momentarily froze. Tears itched her eyeballs, but she blinked them away. How did a teenage boy have a b
etter grasp on life than her? For the past decade or so she’d been so focused on making sure shit got done, she’d failed to do anything about the relationships in her life. It had been easy for her to take people for granted when circumstances had forced them together. She never had to admit to caring. Another several blinks and she said, “I will talk to you.”
Accusation sat on Flynn’s chiseled face and his tone had an aggressive spike to it. “Go on, then.”
Another glance at the monitor on the wall: 8:33. “But I can’t now. I’m sorry.”
By the time Flynn tutted at her, Vicky had already spun on her heel and headed in the direction of Serj and the monitor room.
Chapter 33
It took no more than a couple of minutes to get to the monitor room, but it already felt like too long. Vicky slammed the handle on the door down and entered without knocking. The second she walked in, Serj spun around in his chair and looked up at her, shock in his wide eyes at the sudden intrusion.
“Vicky?”
“We’ve got to get out now.”
Confusion crushed Serj’s heavy features. “What are you talking about?”
Vicky looked at the ever-darkening images on the monitors, her chest tightening with panic. “Moira’s going to attack us.”
“When?”
“Soon. I went there last night.”
“Again?”
“I watched her kill the family dressed in camouflage. The mum lost the plot, kicked the shit out of the guy in the cage with them, and then ate a chunk from his neck.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know, right? She’d gone off the edge by that point. Properly fucking lost it. Anyway, after that, Moira called her crazy and dropped the entire family in the pit with the diseased in it.”
“And what’s this got to do with her attacking us?”
The monitors and large computers raised the temperature of the room. Sweat lifted on Vicky’s brow from her rush over there, which she wiped away with the back of her sleeve. “After she’d dropped the family in, she said they need to attack us soon. That she’s going to take Home for her own.” A tightness ran through Vicky’s chest. So stressed she felt her panic spilling over.
“So why are you only telling me this now?”
“I fell asleep.”
“You what?”
“Look, don’t judge me. I haven’t slept for days. It was the only time I haven’t wanted to fall asleep and I sparked the second I lay down. I couldn’t help it.”
“Shit!”
“Right? We need to set the diseased loose on them.”
A look at the monitors and Serj turned back to Vicky. “But it’s getting late and I have another fifteen minutes in here.”
“Yeah, but no one’s taking over after you because it’s too dark to see anything, so what does it matter if we leave a little early? No one will know.” Before Serj could respond, Vicky said, “Look, I know it’s getting rapidly darker outside, but we have to try. The longer we leave this, the more likely Moira is to attack us.”
“Why don’t we just tell the others?”
Vicky put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side at him.
“Meisha,” Serj said. “Fuck.”
“Exactly.” Vicky shook her head. “If Scoop sees her daughter and the others find out we’ve been hiding this from her … They weren’t happy about the pen in the first place, this will only prove how bad an idea it was. We need to go out, plan the route to Moira’s community, and lead the diseased over there before dark.”
Another look at the monitors, but Serj didn’t respond until he said, “How will we get past Scoop on the door?”
“She has to use the toilet once in a while.”
“Right,” Serj said. “Let’s go, then.”
Chapter 34
The canteen didn’t have many people left in it. Some of the adults remained up playing bridge and other card games, but all the children had left, and most importantly, Vicky couldn’t see Piotr or Flynn.
Every second in the place took a second of daylight away from them, and they’d been sat there waiting for the past twenty minutes already.
“What if she’s only just been to the toilet?” Serj asked as he frowned at the screens: 9:12 p.m.
Vicky scratched her head and checked the contents of her bag. She’d stopped at the weapons room and put three hammers in there for the prisoners. Small enough to get through the gaps in the fence, and hopefully they’d break up the concrete for them. “Hopefully she hasn’t, but if we have to wait too long, then I suppose we don’t go out tonight. All we can do is wait and see if Scoop moves. We can’t force it.”
Vicky looked at the short stairs leading to Home’s foyer and she saw Scoop emerge as if on cue. The woman looked delirious as she walked, so exhausted from very little sleep she didn’t even notice Vicky and Serj watching her.
Once she’d left the canteen in the direction of the toilets, Vicky looked at Serj and nodded. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be. Oh, wait,” he said, pulled a key on a shoelace from his pocket and held it out to her. “This is for the new lock. Just in case only one of us makes it back.”
Although Vicky took it, she shook her head. “Don’t be soft. Come on, let’s go.”
They both got to their feet and headed for Home’s entrance.
Chapter 35
Vicky walked quickly alongside the pen, with Serj next to her, their backs to the river as they headed in the direction of Moira’s community. The jog over there and now their fast march made her sweat. The hammers in her backpack sometimes shifted to awkward angles and jabbed into her spine. Despite it getting darker, the heat of summer remained in the air.
They walked along the side of the pen farthest from Home. Vicky had never been on this side before. The grass came up to just below her breasts and dragged on her progress. Not great considering the rapidly dwindling light, but they needed to tread the route they’d lead the diseased on before they tried to run it with over two hundred of the fuckers on their backs.
The groans and moans followed them as they walked, the rotten stench snaking up Vicky’s nostrils. Whenever she glanced across, she saw Meisha. Even a cursory look into the pack and the girl’s tormented face stared back at her. One of the most well-balanced teenagers she’d ever met, Meisha had had her shit together. Scoop had been a good mother and loved her dearly. Meisha had worn it well.
It made it harder for Vicky to see the diseased as monsters when familiarity stared back at her. Innocence and purity ravaged by the hideous plague she’d helped loose on the world.
Not only did she look at the girl—her dark skin turning blacker from where she’d already started to rot—but she looked at the fat dude next to her. A lumberjack shirt and beard, he looked to be in his mid-forties. Probably a dad before all this happened. Someone who loved his family, his beer, and his day of sports on television on a Sunday. Just an average Joe. Another person unfairly turned because Vicky had helped set the virus free.
An old woman stood next to the man. She looked to be at least seventy years old. If anything, the disease seemed to have injected a new lease of life into her. She might have had the rambling and twitchy gait of the inflicted, but the way she bobbed and weaved as if trying to dance her way free of the disease spoke of someone decades younger than her. “Hardly a fucking cure for arthritis though, is it?”
“Huh?” Serj said as he looked across.
Vicky shook her head. “Nothing.” Before Serj could say anything else, she picked the pace up a little. If they ran now, they’d have no running left when they needed it most, so she kept at a fast walk. “So if we lead them around this way when we let them out, it’ll keep them as far away from Home as possible.”
“Makes sense,” Serj replied, looking around at their overgrown surroundings. “I just hope we don’t have to run too fast. I’m still not confident we can get this done before dark.”
“It’ll be fine,” Vicky said and
sped up some more. “They’ll be slowed down by the grass as much as we’ll be.”
Worry lines creased Serj’s face. “But can they see in the dark better than us?”
“Have you seen their eyes?”
Serj didn’t respond and rightly so because Vicky didn’t have a clue if they could see in the dark or not. They should be tripping over their own feet, but they weren’t.
In all the time they’d contained the diseased, the thick fences had held. Because of that, Vicky didn’t think about the creatures as much as she maybe should have. When she looked at them all reaching out to her, she shook her head. Never good to get complacent around the fuckers. She looked across again. They snarled and hissed, biting the air and moaning as if it caused them physical pain to be restrained.
The tree with the ropes hanging down from it marked the edge of the pen. As they passed it, Vicky looked out over the dark sky and sighed. “I hope we never have to lure any more of them here again. I’ll be glad when we finally put our plan into action.”
Serj nodded. “Me too.”
Vicky led Serj to the top of the hill looking down on Moira’s community and inhaled a lungful of the fresh night. The light had got to the point where it became almost tangible. The dark blue fuzz of those moments between day and night had thickened the air around them.
They’d come to a different point on the hill than usual, one further from Home. “We should be able to lead them off this bit.”
The wind picked up, and when Vicky looked at Serj, she saw him pull his hair from his brow and hold it there as he nodded in response to her. His eyes were narrowed to slits, probably from a combination of both the sharp wind and the lack of light.
The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 95
