A lot of pale faces and sombre nods responded to Vicky’s address. Hardly inspiring, but the facts were far from inspiring. They had a war to fight and it would be on their doorstep before they knew it.
Exhausted from the day and night, Vicky watched the slow shuffle of people as they left the room to go back to their sleeping quarters.
Dan, Sharon, and Brian remained where they were. When Vicky walked past them, Sharon said, “This is all your fault.”
Before Vicky could think, she’d jumped on top of Sharon and pinned her to the ground by her throat. She watched the woman’s mouth flap and her face turn red. She squeezed harder as she clenched her jaw. Although she felt what she assumed to be Dan and Brian pulling at her, Vicky didn’t let go. “You think this is easy for me?” she said as she dribbled on the woman through her gritted teeth. “You think I like seeing people die? You think I like taking responsibility for useless fucks like you?”
But Sharon couldn’t reply. Instead, she turned redder and the veins on her temples bulged.
It took for two large arms to wrap around Vicky and yank to get her off Sharon.
The two women stared at one another while Piotr kept a hold of Vicky.
Sharon stroked her neck where she’d been choked and her eyes streamed with tears. Although Vicky expected her to say something, she simply shook her head, spun on her heel, and walked away.
Chapter 57
Piotr only relaxed his constrictor grip on Vicky after Sharon, Dan, and Brian had left the canteen. Not that she would have followed them, but Piotr had a duty to keep the peace in Home. Besides, she’d done some pretty flighty things in the past few weeks, so maybe he’d made a good judgment call.
After the large Russian and Serj had also left the canteen, Vicky looked at Flynn. Only two of them in the room now, she said, “Shouldn’t you be getting some rest?” She glanced at the monitors, which only showed how dark it was outside.
The acoustics in the large room sounded very different now all the people had left it, and Flynn’s voice echoed when he said, “You should have taken me with you when you went to save Stuart and the other two.”
Despite watching him grow up and change, Vicky still hadn’t got used to Flynn’s manly voice. “You were fighting the diseased, Flynn. I couldn’t take you away from that.”
“But it was so clearly a trap. I could have helped you. You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t, was I?”
“But you could have been. You’re so fucking selfish, Vicky. You need to think about people other than yourself.”
“I do,” Vicky said. “That’s why I won’t take you with me.”
“You need to stop protecting me. I’m not a child.”
How many times would she have to argue with him about the same fucking thing? Maybe she just needed to be a lot more direct. “You’re sixteen, Flynn, not thirty-five. You wouldn’t even be old enough to drink in the old world. Or buy e-cigarettes. Stop being such a self-righteous little brat and appreciate what we’re doing for you to keep you safe in this fucked-up world.”
Flynn pursed his lips and Vicky watched his nostrils flare as she listened to his heavy breaths.
Before he could say anything, Vicky said, “Besides, you say you can look after yourself, but you twisted your ankle and needed help the last time we were out.”
“Not the last time.”
“Before that you made a noise that revealed us to the diseased. That was what brought the crowd of them down on Home in the first place.”
“The crowd that you and Serj collected, you mean?”
Vicky glared at him.
“This world wouldn’t be fucked up were it not for you. You walk around as if you’re the boss, but the virus never would have left the Alpha Tower if you hadn’t helped the terrorists. How do you think everyone else would feel to know this mess is all your fault? You only have to look after me because you created this!”
Vicky balled her fists as she stared at the boy. He had no idea what she’d been through. Like she didn’t blame herself for everything that happened with Brendan, Oscar, or whatever the fuck his real name was.
Instead of attacking Flynn, Vicky turned her back on him and headed for the exit of the canteen. When she saw Piotr standing there, a confused frown on his broad face as he looked straight at her, she froze.
They stared at one another and it seemed to last an age before Piotr shook his head at Vicky and walked away.
Vicky’s shoulders slumped with a deep sigh and she muttered, “Fuck it.”
Chapter 58
Vicky walked toward the canteen the next morning, numb with exhaustion. How could anyone expect her to lead the war against Moira? The only time she’d had to stay awake over the past few weeks, she’d slept like a baby, and now she couldn’t buy a good night’s sleep.
Dread sat in Vicky’s stomach as a dead weight. The anticipation of war tore at her guts, but to know Piotr had heard Flynn’s accusations the previous night turned the thumbscrews on her anxiety. As much as she’d wanted to pretend to herself he hadn’t heard it, he had. Of course he fucking had.
And what if he’d told someone already? The disgust she’d seen on his face showed exactly what he thought of Vicky, but would he keep it to himself? What if he told the wrong person? Most of the residents hated her, or at least feared her; it wouldn’t do well for them to know she’d been responsible for forcing them all underground in the first place. Their loved ones had died because of her.
First to arrive in the canteen, Vicky saw the daylight from the windows in the foyer spill down the stairs. The smell of boiled cabbage hit her as it always did. When she looked at the monitors, her stomach flipped and she stopped dead.
The view outside showed a risen sun over the meadow in front of Home. It also showed something else. At the very edge of where Vicky could see stood a line of people. Men, women, and even teenagers. Each of them appeared to have a weapon of some sort. Bats, bars, chains, a few swords. They all faced Home, waiting patiently.
Maybe they’d been there all night. Maybe they’d only just arrived. Either way, they’d come for war, and Home needed to rise to the challenge.
Vicky spun around and returned to the corridor she’d just walked down. The corridor where she’d had to execute the diseased family just days ago. She yelled so loudly it burned her throat. “Get up now! They’re here! Moira’s community are here!”
The empty corridor amplified Vicky’s voice. No one appeared, so she shouted again. “Hurry the fuck up! Moira’s community are outside!”
When someone poked their head from a bedroom door, Vicky yelled, “Wake everyone up, now!”
A woman in her forties, she frowned at Vicky as if trying to decipher her words.
Although Vicky slowed her speech, she didn’t lower the volume, a tickle in her throat from where she needed to cough. “Moira and her community are here. We need to mobilise right now.”
The woman looked like she had more questions, but Vicky didn’t give her the chance to ask them. Instead, she darted across the canteen to the corridor running parallel to the one she’d been in.
By the time Vicky got there, some of the people had already got up. Heavy breaths from the short run, she looked at the three or four faces and didn’t know the name of a single one. Maybe they would have liked her more had she shown even a passing interest in them, but it was too late now. “We need to get ready,” she called. “We’re going to war!”
The spears the group had been making stood in a large bin in one corner of the canteen. Vicky jogged over to it and dragged it close to the stairs leading up to the front door of Home. The heavy barrel screeched along the hard linoleum floor.
At the sight of the first people emerging from the corridors, Vicky yelled, “Come on, get your weapons and get in the foyer. We need to face this.”
Clearly still tired from being woke up, the first few people stumbled toward Vicky, but they watched the monitors as they moved along
. A couple of them shook their heads at what they saw. All of them visibly woke up.
Vicky bounced on the balls of her feet. They weren’t moving quick enough. If she had to, she’d go down there and drag the fuckers into the foyer. “We don’t have time for this bullshit. They’ll be on us before we know it if we don’t do something now.” With her pulse so frantic it felt as if her heart would burst, she said, “Hurry the fuck up!”
A young lad, who looked to be about eighteen at the most, continued to watch the screen as he said, “Can’t we wait for the diseased to get them?”
“Have you seen how many of them are out there? They’ll take down even the biggest herd of the fuckers and then they’ll descend on this place. We need to meet them out in the middle of the field where we can fight them.”
Another look at the monitors again and Vicky saw an old oil barrel with flames stretching from it. “What if they set fire to this place with us in it? We’re sitting ducks in here.”
The boy seemed far from keen, but from the stoicism on his face, Vicky saw he clearly understood where she came from. Pulled back shoulders and a raised chin, the boy walked over to her, his pale skin turning paler with every second.
Vicky offered him a spear and he took it before he walked up the stairs into the foyer. She patted his shoulder on his way past. “Good work. Now wait there until we’re all ready to go. We can win this. We can outfight them.” Even as she said the words, her resolve faltered. Hopefully, if Moira’s lot were as useless as the people of Home, they might stand a chance.
Tight-lipped and a clenched jaw, the boy nodded as he continued up. How many of them would have to die today?
Chapter 59
Not one for head counts, Vicky scanned the foyer and gauged most of Home to be there now. Even if some had stayed behind, they had to get out into the meadow before Moira’s lot came for them. Stuart had given the rest of the spears out while Vicky went to the armoury and picked up a crossbow and baseball bat. Those who had taken weapons out to fight the diseased the previous day still had them. For those who didn’t, the spears would have to do.
As she shuffled through the press of bodies in the foyer, Vicky ruffled her nose in response to the acrid reek of sick. Nerves had clearly got to some. By the smell of things, nerves had clearly got to quite a few of them. But they’d made it up there and they remained there. When it came to the battle, they’d forget their nausea and defend their lives. Besides, better to get it out now.
At the front of the foyer—the two large windows and door between her and the people from Moira’s community—Vicky walked up and down in front of the crowd. Serj stood on one side of her, Piotr and Flynn on the other. Maybe she imagined it, but when she looked at Piotr, she met his dark stare in response. It wouldn’t serve any purpose to think about it now.
“This is it,” Vicky said to the group. “We win this war and we get peace. We wait in here and they’ll flush us out like rats. We need to take the fight to them. Are you ready?”
Silence.
After a deep breath to settle her roiling stomach, Vicky shouted so loud it burned her throat. “I said are you ready for this?”
Flynn, Serj, Sally, and Stuart all shouted, “Yeah!” Their combined voices had quite an effect in the cramped space and the almost still group of people moved and shifted. Piotr continued to glare at Vicky.
As she pumped her fist in the air, Vicky called again, “Are you ready for this?”
“Yeah!” A few more people joined in.
Piotr didn’t. Brian, Sharon, and Dan didn’t.
They didn’t matter right now. “Are you ready for this?”
“Yeah!”
“Are you ready for this?”
“YEAH!”
Vicky walked up to Brian and leaned in his face as she screamed so loudly her head spun, “ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?”
“YEAH!” the group called, but Brian still didn’t respond, his lips pursed, his jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed.
Fuck Brian. Vicky cracked the two bolts on the front door free and pulled it wide. The fresh morning breeze rushed into the place, blowing away the stench of sick. The long grass swayed in front of them. It moved more than the line of people waiting to fight them.
After she’d stared at the people on the other side of the meadow, adrenaline searing through her, Vicky drew a deep breath that lifted her chest and called out at them, “Let’s fucking have them, then!”
The people behind her screamed and yelled as Vicky led the charge.
Chapter 60
Adrenaline forced Vicky’s tiredness from her as she released a battle cry. Her community behind her matched it with equal ferocity.
Although when Moira’s army answered with their own call, Vicky nearly ground to a halt. The wall of sound damn near blew her hair back. But if she stopped at that moment, how could she expect the people behind her to keep going? They were committed now, and as their leader, she needed to fucking lead.
The long grass pulled against Vicky’s progress. Not that she could give it any more than a passing thought, her attention returning to the army in front of her.
It had been dark and Vicky had been on the receiving end of a beating when she’d been in Moira’s community the couple of times she’d been captured by them. So other than Moira, she didn’t recognise any of the wild faces now rushing at them. Men, women, and teenagers, not a single one looked familiar.
Regardless of who they used to be, they all came at Vicky and the community of Home with just one intent. If they were to survive this, Home needed to match that intent.
Vicky roared again, freed her crossbow from her back and raised it as she ran. The stamp of feet shook the ground around her.
The bow kicked when Vicky set the first bolt free and she watched it sink into the face of a boy no more than about fourteen. It took the scream from him before he could loose it and he fell backwards into the long grass.
Another bolt loaded and ready to go, Vicky set it loose again. The whoosh of it rushed through the air and landed in the chest of a man with a thump as if it had just sunk into a tree. Over six feet tall, the man went down hard, tripping a couple of the people around him. The stampede from their own side ran over all three of them.
One final bolt and one final casualty. Another man, he went down like the other two had. Vicky didn’t have time to load a fourth bolt. Instead, she threw the crossbow at the woman in front of her and followed it up with a swing of her bat.
The bat connected on the top of the woman’s head with a deep tonk and the woman’s legs folded beneath her. Dead or just unconscious, as long as the woman had fallen, Vicky didn’t care.
A man filled the space the woman had occupied and Vicky swung for him. She landed another blow and dropped another person.
Aware of the fighting around her, Vicky kept her attention on the people in front. To think about everyone on the battlefield would spin her out. She could only focus on those she had to fight.
A hard contact crashed into Vicky’s left shoulder and she stumbled sideways. She clattered into a woman from Home, who raised her spear, her eyes wide and her nostrils flared. The mask of fury quickly cleared, pushed aside by comprehension as the woman clearly realised who Vicky was. She turned her spear on the man in front of her from Moira’s community and drove it—with two hands—into his chest.
Whatever hit Vicky’s left arm had turned it dead. Being right-handed gave her the dexterity to jab her bat into the face of the person in front of her. A slight girl no older than about sixteen, she took the end of the baseball bat to her nose with a wet crunch and fell backwards.
Vicky’s heart ached along with her exhausted and beaten body to see the girl go down. So few humans left on the planet and they could only manage to fight one another.
Until that moment, Vicky hadn’t noticed Brian, Dan, and Sharon fighting on the left of her. They stabbed and kicked, blood coating the shafts of their spears and spraying their clothes. The metallic reek of it
mixed with the sweaty, shitty stench of battle.
When Vicky looked back in front, three of Moira’s guards homed in on her. Maybe Moira had earmarked her as a target before they started. No, Moira had definitely earmarked her as a target. The three large men looked to be carrying out orders as they closed in. Two of them had machetes while the third had a bent crowbar.
Vicky’s already ragged heart leapt higher in her throat as if trying to escape her body. No matter how she tried to drag breaths into her lungs, she couldn’t get the oxygen she needed. A look at Brian and the others and they all looked back at Vicky first and then the men closing in on her. As one, the three of them turned away.
“What the fuck?” Vicky yelled, but she didn’t have time to protest any further because the three men had slowed down and formed a semicircle around her.
Shallow of breath and with a dry throat, Vicky stepped back a pace. A fox cornered by wolves, she looked from one of the men to the other, each one of them ravenous with intent. They were here to destroy her. The people who could have helped her had just turned their backs.
A quick glance to her right and Vicky saw the woman with the spear next to her locked in a battle with a teenage boy. The boy had a sword, the sunlight glinting off the blade as he lunged forward with it. The woman next to her bent over double—her mouth stretched wide—and she folded into the long grass.
When Vicky looked back at the men closing in on her, she shook beyond her control. She looked left at Brian, Dan, and Sharon again and saw they’d moved farther away from her than before.
Vicky refocused on the men. If she had to go down, she needed to take at least one of them with her. After tightening her grip on her bat, she shook her head to herself and stepped forward to her death.
Chapter 61
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