by Jack Lewis
“An epileptic fit,” said Charles, with amusement in his voice. “What to do, what to do? If my knowledge is right, you need to check she hasn’t swallowed her tongue. To do that you’d need to take off her mask, but the girl doesn’t seem to be in the state of mind to hold her breath. Oh my.”
Since they came to live with him, Luna had only had one fit. She used to have them all the time, Stephanie told him, but she hoped she was growing out of them. That didn’t help now. Why now, of all times?
It was obvious what would happen next. They’d take Luna away, and the Capita would expect her to fall into a coma. They’d wait and see if she became infected. Only, that wouldn’t happen. They would find out about her immunity, and everyone knew what happened to immunes. Dale couldn’t let her be taken to the Capita on her own.
“We’re immune,” he said. “Me and Luna. Kids inherit it off their parents, and she got it from me. My lad didn’t get it.”
Charles moved forward and stood alongside Dale. He put a heavy arm across his shoulders and waved a finger in the air. “But it’s not always from parents, is it Dale? There’s another way one can become immune.”
“What?”
“I digress. I don’t believe your story. This is a classic case of a man trying to be a martyr. It’s scary, trying to be a martyr. Do you know what happens in the Capita, Dale? Is your mind conjuring dark images? Dungeons, torture, experiments? I think you’re stupid, but you’re brave.”
He looked at Stephanie. “Take off your mask, darling.”
Stephanie backed away from the bounty hunter. Charles grabbed her throat, wrapping his gloved hand around her neck and stopping the flow of air.
Dale’s chest burst with electricity, and a hot load of adrenaline spilled into his veins. He couldn’t watch Charles’s hand close around Stephanie's throat. The sight of it set a flare inside him. He rushed at the bounty hunter.
Charles swung his free fist at Dale’s nose. Dale fell to the floor and a fuzzy pain spread through his face. If the pain in his cheeks weren’t enough, a feeling of shame spread through him. He couldn’t protect his family. The Capita wanted them, and Dale couldn’t protect them.
Charles pulled Stephanie’s mask away from her face. Stephanie’s skin was chalk, her confidence trundling away as the reality of the situation pulled into the station. Her once-red lips turned the dull colour of an arctic explorer emerging from a blizzard.
“This man isn’t the children’s father, is he?” said Charles.
Stephanie didn’t speak. Charles wrapped his gloved hand tighter around her neck with the easy grip of a farmer wringing the neck of a chicken. He moved his arm and slowly lifted Stephanie off the ground with an impossible show of strength. She spluttered. She swung her feet in the air as though trapped in a noose.
“Do you want your children to see their mother murdered in front of them?”
Stephanie shook her head.
“Tell me; is he the children’s father?”
“No,” she choked out.
The bounty hunter relaxed his grip and let Stephanie touch the ground. He wiped his hand on his coat, and Stephanie’s spit left a streak on the leather. “Sorry about that. But needs must.”
He waved his gloved hand in the air. Something moved way across the field, and a few minutes later a horse and cart galloped to meet them. A driver steered the horses using black reins, and on the back were four soldiers clad in Capita uniforms. Three of them wore the blank stares of disciplined soldiers, but one stared at the terrified family with curiosity.
The fog cleared from Dale’s vision. He put a hand on the ground and pushed himself to his feet. The wind lapped around him, but it did nothing to cool his anger-flushed cheeks. How had everything changed so quickly?
Charles turned to his men. “Take the woman and the children to the farms.”
“What about the man?”
“Take his mask off. Let him smell the air one last time and kill him.”
Dale couldn’t let them be taken. Not now they were a family, not when he finally believed Stephanie felt the same about him. For years after the outbreak he searched for a meaning to survival, and now he’d found it. He couldn’t let Charles take it from him.
He threw himself at the soldier nearest to him and punched the underside of his jaw. He grabbed the machete from the soldier.
Another soldier, the curious one, ran at him. Dale swung his weapon and the metal scratched across the soldier’s cheek, tearing his skin open. Blood bubbled through the cut, and the man put his hand to his face and cried out.
A different soldier pointed across the meadow. “Sir, the boy!”
Taking advantage of the commotion, Eric ran across the field as fast as he could. As he sped out of sight, his mask slipped from his face. He picked it up from the ground, before giving one last look back at his family.
Dale wanted to shout at him to run, and to be safe. Before he could open his mouth, something blunt smashed on the back of his head. His eyes rolled in their sockets, and the meadow faded into darkness. He struggled against the black and tried to fight for his consciousness, but it slipped from his grip.
“What do we do about the boy?” a soldier asked.
Charles answered. “Let him go. We’ll find him; we always do.”
Chapter One
Ed Furness
Golgoth Island, 2 miles away from the mainland
Ed watched the waves as they crashed into the cliff. Back and forth they came, grinding against the chalk and carrying pieces of it away with them. He’d wasted every damn second of his life. If he stepped off the cliff, what would be left?
Someday the waves would grind Golgoth Island away without a trace, and they’d never find anything of Ed in the debris. He hadn’t accomplished anything. His family were gone. He spoke to nobody, did nothing of any importance. If a complete history of the world was written, his life would barely get a sentence.
A twenty-foot wave crashed against the cliffs, the frothy tip straining to reach him. He tasted salt in the air, and rain pattered onto his forehead and ran down his face. They’d all have to leave Golgoth one day and go to the mainland. It wasn’t the erosion, because that would take decades to claim the island. The problem was their crops were failing. Medicine was scare, and they couldn’t just order a delivery. Golgoth’s safety lay in its remoteness, but in the end its isolation would damn it.
A grey cloud spread across the sky. Below the cliffs, another wave smashed into the stone. Ed remembered the newscasts, back when his TV worked. The pictures of the infected; eyes grey, dead flesh hanging from their arms, their mouths opening to scream or to bite. The infected were like to the tide; no sooner did one wave leave, then another replaced it. They went on relentless, devouring everything in their path.
Sometimes he thought about taking a step forward off the edge, but not right now. He’d do it when the tide went. If he did it while the tide was strong, there was a chance he’d die by drowning. He preferred the idea of his head hitting the ground. Instant oblivion seemed much nicer than slow agony, as salt water poured into his throat and into his lungs.
How did James feel when he drowned? Did his life flash in front of him? As he spluttered on the sea water, did he scream for their long-dead mother? Maybe he cried out for their father.
Nobody knew if James was dead, of course. Not officially. His boat hit a storm too big for the vessel to break through, and none of the crew ever came ashore. No sane person could look at the freezing sea, imagine the group of men sinking beneath it, and hope fate had taken pity on them. Ed never saw the body, but he’d let himself grieve because that was the only way he could cope. Everyone talked about hope like it was shining light anyone could follow, but sometimes light led you into dark tunnels.
I wish I knew. His brother hadn’t been dead as long as his dad, but he was already fading into the memory void where faces became impossible to recall.
“Gonna be a mean one,” said a voice.
It was the woman who lived in the house closest to his. What was her name again? Damn it, she told you this. Better guess.
“Hi Elizabeth.”
“Close. It’s Bethelyn. But don’t worry, we’ve only lived next to each other for eight years.”
He sighed. He was being rude, but he couldn’t help it. What was wrong with him? “Sorry, Bethelyn.”
“Don’t worry, I get it. It’s been tough for you.”
As the wind shrieked in his ear and rain ran into his coat and down his back, it struck him that Bethelyn’s voice was the warmest thing for miles. It made him want to get away from her. To go home and lock his door.
Bethelyn joined him at the cliff side. He expected the height of the drop to make her shaky, but she didn’t look.
“A scientist did a study on Golgoth,” she said, tucking her hands into her pockets. “The sea claims a foot of the island a year. Imagine that. This place will be gone soon enough.”
The wind wailed louder than before, and the rain fell heavier. Gloomy was too soft a word to describe the island at night time, and he couldn’t help but think it contributed to his own disposition. That’s what I am; a miserable arsehole. Knowing something about yourself didn’t mean you could do anything about it.
“Do you think anyone will be around to see it when it goes?” said Bethelyn.
“Maybe. Not sure if they’d be the lucky ones or not.”
She scrunched her nose up as a rain drop hit her. “You’re a barrel of laughs,” she said.
“Sorry Bethelyn. I came here to be alone.”
“Alone from who? You live by yourself.”
“This place feels more alone than others.”
She nodded. “I know. Listen, Ed, I was wondering; the storm’s gonna hit us head on. There are a few slates loose on my roof, and I don’t want rain to piss all over my living room.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I wouldn’t normally ask, but I need the help. C’mon…there’s a hot meal in it for you.”
Bethelyn’s living room radiated cosiness, the kind where you’d curl on the sofa with a book on a stormy night. On a table in the centre of the room, a dozen tiny candles cast an orange glow over the walls. A fire hissed and chewed through logs. Everything was in its place but out of it at the same time; an orchestrated chaos. On a bookshelf by the windowsill some books were standing, with others on their sides. Despite their haphazard arrangement, they were grouped together by the colour of their spines.
A girl lay across from him on a couch. She ignored Ed, instead moving her head as she scanned the pages of a book. Ed caught sight of the cover; a giant rat with blood-stained fangs. The books so carefully messed up on the case were all horror novels. The girl looked too young for that kind of reading. When she noticed Ed staring at her, she put the book next to her and sat up, tucking her legs against her chest.
“That was dad’s chair you know,” she said.
“Sorry, should I move?”
“No, it’s okay.”
The door opened and Bethelyn stepped in from the darkness of the hallway. She carried a tray with a bowl in the centre. Plumes of steam circled from it.
“Thanks for the roof,” she said, and sniffed as steam hit her nose. “Glad to have a neighbour like you.”
Ed shuddered. Who knew fixing roof slates would be such a cold, water-drenched job? He’d nearly slipped off twice. The slates were slippery with the rain clattering onto them, but not many were dislodged. His shirt sagged with water when he’d finished.
He looked at the living room. The walls were cream and bore the signs of filled-in holes. A step ladder rested against a wall, and a toolbox was under the table. Bethelyn wasn’t as helpless as she made out.
“You could have fixed the roof yourself, couldn’t you?” he said.
Bethelyn bent to put the tray down. She stumbled a few centimetres from the table, and the tray almost tipped. She caught it at the last second.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You could have gone up there yourself and fixed the slates. I see what’s going on here. You wanted to give me something to do.”
“Nope.”
“Come on, Bethelyn.”
She took a deep breath and let it out with a huff. “Fine. ‘Course I could have got up there, it’s not difficult. And I wouldn’t have taken so long pissing around as you did, either. I was worried about you. I know we haven’t spoken much, but times like these you need to look out for your neighbours. When was your last hot meal? Weeks? You’ve barely left the house since your brother went.”
“You know a lot about me.”
“It’s called being neighbourly.”
Ed looked at the girl who was sitting on the couch, watching them. Freckles dotted her face, and her smile made her seem on the verge of mischief. “What’s your name?”
She smiled. “April,” she said.
“Like the month?”
“No, like the animal,” the girl said, rolling her eyes.
“She’s a cheeky one,” said Ed.
Bethelyn pushed the wooden table toward Ed. The closer it got the stronger the smell of the stew became. His stomach ached for it. Lately, he’d been eating raw carrots and leeks from the patch at the back of his house. He wasn’t much of a gardener; that was dad’s thing. Ed developed green fingers out of necessity, because he didn’t want to starve.
“Don’t change the subject,” Bethelyn said, straining as she pushed the table toward him.
Ed dipped his spoon into the bowl. Carrots, cauliflower, onions and mushrooms swam in the yellow-brown liquid. Bethelyn’s gardens must have been flourishing. Maybe she knew something the rest of the village didn’t. He was about to drink when he noticed April staring at him.
“Help you?” he said.
“She’s curious,” said Bethelyn. “She’s always asking about you.”
“What are you reading?” said Ed.
Bethelyn stepped around the table and sat next to her daughter. “Changing the subject again,” she said.
April tucked her legs closer to her chest. Sitting next to her mother, she looked a miniature version of her. Both had hair so curly it seemed unkempt, but something told Ed it was a look they carefully cultivated. April’s eyes were a darker shade than her mother’s.
“How come you’re always on your own?” said April.
Ed put the spoon into the bowl. He waited for Bethelyn to say something to her daughter, but she didn’t. Bethelyn should have told her daughter the question was too cutting to ask a stranger.
“Don’t you get lonely?” asked April.
I’ve had enough of this. He got to his feet. The rain hammered on the window and tried to get in. A hurricane swirled outside, ready to sweep away all the people and houses of Golgoth. If the sea didn’t claim them, the weather would. He’d never seen it this bad before.
“You got any tape?” he said.
Bethelyn smiled. “Do you need to wrap me a present?”
“I mean masking tape. Duct tape.”
She pulled her toolbox from under the table. Metal screwdrivers and wrenches clanged as she rummaged through them, and black oil stained her fingers. Finally, she grabbed a half-used roll of tape. She tossed it over to Ed.
“What do you need it for?”
He stared into the darkness outside the window. A hundred feet away lay the cliff edge, with the tide rushing below it. The night sky was a tarmac swamp, and the wind whined as though it was in pain. He stretched the roll of tape across the window vertically and then horizontally, dividing the larger glass into smaller sections.
“This’ll stop it smashing into pieces,” he said.
“Think it’ll be that bad?”
“Rat Lair 2 starts off with a storm,” April informed them.
Bethelyn turned to her daughter. “I don’t know why I let you read that stuff.”
Gunshots of rain sprayed the window so hard the frame wobbled.
“It�
��s going to be the worst storm we’ve ever seen,” said Ed.
“And to think I moved here for the weather”.
“We haven’t had anything more than a gust of wind for years,” said Ed. “We’re due a big one. I better go do the same for my windows.”
He walked into the hallway, leaving the glow of the candles behind him. For a glimmer of a second, he regretted leaving the warmth. He grabbed his coat from the stand.
