“What’s wrong with Thor?” Tully asked disingenuously.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with it? It’s short, isn’t it?” Jeff jumped to Tully’s defense. The others appeared to agree with Jeff as they set up an infernal din, chanting the name and beating out the rhythm with their feet and rifle butts.
“I think that settles it.” Tully beamed at Ace, who turned away. “That just leaves my rank, doesn’t it? How about if we put it to a vote?”
“A wha’?”
Judging from Jeff’s question, democracy did not figure among the customs of the Flay Tribe. Ace hesitated, listening to the enthusiastic yelling of the rest of the Tribe as they chanted Tully’s new name. He scowled when the title general was tossed in the air and picked up and repeated here and there, and his fists clenched in anger. Ace might not have had much time for democracy, but he could count. He came to a decision, and his thin lips twisted into the rictus of a smile as he slapped Tully on the back.
“Welcome to Flay, Warlord Thor. Let’s hope you live up to your name.”
“I intend to, boss.”
“And as Warlord, your job is to get a plan of campaign drawn up right away. And I want a defense plan, in case any of the bleeders are already on their way to do a bit of trespassing.”
“Aye, Sir!” Tully saluted, a broad grin of triumph spread across his face. “Now, I’d just like to clear up a few points with Jim if you can spare him for a few minutes. And if Matt could sort out the little question of the ammo we spoke about earlier?”
Ace nodded curtly, his jaw working as he controlled his fury. “I’ll see you back at the canteen. I want this campaign plan setting out in detail, in words of one syllable or less. The material you’re working with is just one small step above the potato on the evolutionary scale, remember. And when you’ve settled the easy part,” Ace smirked, “I suggest you work out what you’re going to do about the Big Boss when he turns up.”
“This Light-Bringer fella and his hordes of darkness and all that? That’s just stuff for the kiddies and the potato brains back there, isn’t it?” Tully raised his eyebrows and looked first at Jim, then Matt and Jeff. They turned their heads, unwilling to look him in the eye. “Isn’t it, lads?” Tully began to feel the cold prickle of fear creeping up the inside of his gut. “You wouldn’t be holding out on me now, would you? C’mon, Jim. Matt, be a mate and tell me what’s going on.”
Ace slapped Tully on the shoulder and winked at Jim.
“You wanted the job, arsehole. Fill him in a bit, you two. And wipe that self-satisfied expression off Snow White here’s fuckin’ face!”
Tully stared after Ace’s retreating back, too uneasy to feel the usual contempt and intense dislike. He turned back to the group that had become his personal bodyguard.
“Well? Let’s get on with it then. Whatever I missed while I was in that bloody wormhole, I want to know about. Table, Matt, and a few chairs perhaps?”
The group settled down, heads together like a bunch of conspirators.
Tully crossed his arms and leaned forward across the table. “First of all, can we reel back to that Saturday five years or so ago, when all this started?”
* * * *
An hour later, as they walked back to Warlord Thor’s quarters in Lady Day’s fine lingerie boutique, Tully mulled over what he had been told about the Abomination that he and Carla had missed by the skin of their teeth. His head was stuffed with apocalyptic images of buildings sliding into bottomless chasms, firestorms and gas explosions, but he still had only a vague idea about where all the tribes had come from. And the way Jim and Matt had wriggled out of answering his questions about the shadowy character they called the Burnt Man had left a nasty, queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The others mulled over the prophecy and the prospect of a successful raid on the other tribes. None of them paid much attention to the metal blind they had left closed and that was now half open. They did notice on the threshold, though, the small pool of blood with three severed fingers swimming in it and that the fine lingerie boutique was empty. Carla had gone.
Chapter Fourteen
A few hours earlier
One of them pulled down the metal blind after him. Carla didn’t see which one—she had her back turned. As their footsteps faded down the walkway, she slumped to the floor and put her head in her hands, trying desperately not to cry—not now, not here—despite the weariness and the dead feeling inside. She needed a plan and soon, before the lack of vitamins made her sick, before the lack of food of any kind sapped her energy. And most of all, before the fear of what was going to happen to all the women sooner or later clouded her judgment and turned to panic.
Getting out was the easy part. There were too few men to patrol the whole area. It was only a matter of time before the guards would be occupied tormenting something or playing soldiers with one of the other tribes, and they would be able to just slip away. Not that the women were particularly closely guarded. Where would they run? That was the real problem. Where in the hellish mess outside would they go? Carla blew her nose loudly and blinked the nascent tears out of her eyes. She put her hands over her eyes. The darkness was comforting.
She tried to visualize the things she missed—sunshine on moving water, her favorite chair in the corner by her bedroom window, Tattoo stretching on the balcony, walking through the pines with Nonno Dario and Fermo the dog, Tully laughing at one of his dad’s terrible jokes. They were all there still, in her head, only the colors were difficult to recreate.
She sorted their things with determination. She was leaving, moving on, because there was nothing to go back to, and she shuddered to imagine what the future held for the Flay tribe. Carla was determined to find that part of the Earth that was habitable, even during the Ice Age. Even if it meant going alone. Even if it meant leaving Tully behind.
Carla had thought she knew Tully inside out—more than that, that there was a bond between them that nothing could break. But here, in this awful place, when she needed him most, she felt him slipping away from her, and the feeling filled her with a sense of confused loss. He had changed. She no longer felt she could predict what he would say, how he would react. The Tully she knew was part of the past, in the pictures she kept in her head.
Trying to think of nothing at all, she packed her own rucksack with half of what was left of the food they’d brought from the apartment, all her clothing and a selection of the weapons out of Dog Skin’s cloak. There were also a few things she’d picked up in the kitchen—a can opener, cutlery, a pair of scissors and a ball of string. And a water bottle.
Water was a rarity, just rainwater caught in all the plastic buckets, bathtubs, tarpaulins and dustbins the supermarket had contained. They covered the flat roof of the car park and only the two duty guards had access to it. Rain fell rarely, but when it did, it fell in torrents. The containers had to be covered immediately to keep out the ash and volcanic debris that began to fall again sporadically once the rainstorm was over. Ace had ordered that water was to be rationed to a liter and a half a day, per person. If you wanted to wash, it came out of your drinking ration. Even cave people, Carla told herself, were able to wash when they wanted. She wasn’t sure that they ever did want to, but she was pretty certain that Neanderthals didn’t have little fascist creep dictators stopping them.
Fuming against Ace and his inertia when it came to doing anything constructive—like trying to find another water source, or mending anything that was broken—Carla buckled her bag and straightened up. A skittering in the walkway outside made her stiffen. There was a sound like sniffing, the pattering of clawed feet back and forth on the tiles, then silence. Whatever it was had stopped just the other side of the metal blind.
Carla reached for a hefty meat cleaver from the pile of knives on the floor and began to creep the ten paces or so to the blind. The key was in the lock, if she could just get to it. She stretched out her hand to the key as the skittering started again, turned to a frantic scr
abbling—then the blind moved.
Carla snatched back her hand as eight scaly, clawed fingers slid beneath the blind and began to heave. She hesitated to do what her instinct was shouting at her to do. A foot appeared, about the size of her own, but covered in gray scales and sparse, dirty hair. The fingers flexed and opened to get a better grip. Carla hesitated no longer. Barely able to believe what she was doing, she swung the meat cleaver with all her strength.
A shrill scream rang out as the blade sank into the floor tile, slicing away several fingers and a part of the foot. Dark blood spurted and formed a viscous pool around the twitching digits. Throwing the cleaver aside, Carla stepped back, trembling, as clawed feet scuffled off into the echoing emptiness of the mall. She hugged herself to stop the trembling and strained her ears, listening for the sounds of a vengeful beast, but the beating of her heart was all she heard.
She reached for the blind to force it down and lock it, to lock herself in against the creatures that roamed the abandoned places of the mall, but changed her mind. She couldn’t face the silence and the stillness, the creeping bloodstain and not knowing how long she would have to wait alone.
Nor did she want to meet a grinning Tully arm in arm with his new mates, chatting about animals they were going to eviscerate or women they were going to have. She pushed her rucksack into a corner. She didn’t feel up to escaping for the moment. Bobbing underneath the blind, she gave a quick glance up and down the walkway and set off at a jog, back to the kitchen, the other women and company.
With a shudder, she noticed that whatever it was that had tried to get into the boutique had also made off in the direction of the kitchens. Spots of blood and larger smears from the mutilated foot left a trail that zigzagged along the dirty fake marble of the walkway. Carla moved as quietly as she was able, straining to pick up any sound from the intruder, whether it was man, beast or mutant. It could be hiding anywhere, just lying in wait.
She tried to peer ahead into the gloom, but in the feeble light, she didn’t see the place where the blood stains ended abruptly until she was almost upon it. She stopped in her tracks, heart pounding. On one side, the walkway was scattered with the burst out plate glass of a shop front, on the other side were the broken safety rail and the drop down to the wreckage of the ground floor.
A slight break in the oppressive silence caught Carla’s attention, the scratching of claws on a hard surface. Instinctively she leaped back and raised her eyes to the gaping hole in the walkway above her head. A steel girder hung loose where some explosive charge had ripped a part of the structure away, and perched on the girder was a creature the size of Jeff, covered in lank hair.
The humanoid face was long and narrow, the forehead running flat to the back of the head and forward to a jutting nose and upper lip that curled back to reveal jagged, broken teeth. Small, deep-set eyes glittered with malice, and elongated ears twisted to capture sounds coming from all directions. A scaly tail hung as a counter balance, and two clawed paws clutched the girder. The creature held the wounded hand protectively against its chest, while the mutilated foot dangled, useless, and dripping blood.
Carla drew in her breath sharply and backed up slowly while the thing in the roof snarled at her and swiped with its injured paw. Struggling to keep its balance, the beast thrashed its tail then curled it back around the girder. Carla whispered Calabrian prayers to herself, afraid to either approach the thing or turn her back on it. She cast about vainly in search of a long weapon that would keep it at bay, but could see nothing, the scattered debris was too large, too twisted or simply out of reach.
The thing crouched lower on its haunches, swaying slightly as if preparing to spring. Carla swallowed a cry and reached for the knife in her right boot. She stood brandishing the knife in a trembling hand. Footsteps! Her heart lurched. Footsteps behind her were accelerating from a walk to a run. She daren’t take her eyes off the thing on the girder to look over her shoulder, but heard the running feet skid to a standstill among the heap of broken glass.
Something whistled past her ear and the rat-like creature gave a piercing, almost human scream and swayed dangerously. Blood dripped to the floor, faster when a large piece of glass detached itself from the gash it had made in the creature’s shoulder and dropped to the floor. The thing screamed again and clutched its shoulder. Completely losing its balance, it crashed to the ground.
A figure leaped from behind Carla, snatched the knife from her trembling hand and plunged it into the creature’s neck. Blood spurted from the wound and the thing began to twitch spasmodically. Carla watched aghast, her gaze held by the disturbingly human eyes, unable to turn her head until the body was still. Kat stood panting beside her.
* * * *
Flo glared as Carla and Kat burst breathlessly into the cafeteria kitchen. “At last! Where was the little skiver hiding?” she asked Kat.
“Level one, west side. Hiding from rat man!”
“Dead?”
“Is now.”
“Rat men’s bad news,” Flo mused. “The whole west side’ll need scouring to find the nest. A nice little job for the young heroes tomorrow. Perhaps they’ll use Jeff as bait.” She sniggered as the color drained from Kat’s face. “The others are clearing out the pizza place,” she rattled out, her habitual stony-faced expression returning abruptly. “Max and Seb found a way into the back storeroom. You should be there helping.”
Kat nudged Carla and led her outside.
“Kat?” Carla asked. “What’s a rat man?”
Kat frowned. “Nobody’s sure. The Holy Man says they’re men who rejected the tribe and are slowly turning into rats.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Kat gave one of her eloquent shrugs. “Could just as easily be rats slowly turning into men.”
Carla shuddered. “That’s a revolting idea.”
“Rats are survivors. We’re finished.”
Chapter Fifteen
The pizza restaurant had stood on its own site with its own car park. One of the rival gangs had used it as headquarters during the fighting, and rocket fire had pummeled it out of recognition. A couple of sentries watched out for drax and other marauders, while the girls worked in a chain to clear a way through to the basement, where they hoped to find a food store. A flock of black birds hopped from one heap of rubble to the next, watching, shuffling closer. When the guards judged the birds were close enough, they chucked pieces of rubble at them.
Carla took up her place in the line next to Kat, with the other girls, slinging the debris aside to build yet another rubbish heap. The cold was biting, and Carla was frozen, even with her sheepskin jacket. Thick, leaden clouds bowled along in the violent wind, creating a mournful gloom and spitting flakes of gray ice and gray rock. Carla peered up at the sky.
“Does the sun ever come out?” she asked. “Is there really blue sky behind that stuff?”
Kat shrugged. “Not blue, not anymore. But it gets lighter sometimes. The sun’s still there, just…obscured.”
Carla stared. The tone of Kat’s voice was different—firmer, almost conversational. Kat smiled, and her face was transformed. The perpetual frown had disappeared and her eyes had lost their usual dullness.
“It’s better being outside,” she said, as if in explanation. “Even if it is bloody cold.”
“And it’s bloody here,” Carla added. Kat’s usually absent expression focused and she handed her another lump of concrete. Carla dumped it.
“It’s nice to have somebody to talk to who isn’t completely resigned to…this.”
“Tell me about it,” Carla asked, eager for explanations. “Tell me about what happened.”
Kat caught her breath and let it out in a whistle. She looked at Carla and opened her mouth as if to speak. Instead she dropped her gaze and shook her head.
“Too much,” she whispered. “Too much.”
They worked in silence. Carla fell into the desultory rhythm of the other girls, ignoring the exhortations of
the two sentries to put their bloody backs into it. The pile of rubble looked like a mountain, the lowering sky looked ready to open in a deluge of freezing rain. She swore. Then swore again and again, sometimes in Italian, sometimes in French, sometimes in English. The swearing turned into a litany like the responses in a Latin Mass. She caught Kat glancing at her through hanging locks of damp hair, the faintest glimmer of interest in her eyes.
“Well, what do you want me to do? Recite bits of Wordsworth?” Carla was almost shouting.
“What’s Wordsworth?”
“Baudelaire then. Verlaine, Rimbaud. You know, poetry.”
Kat gave her a strange look then said quietly, “I remember Verlaine.”
“So, you do remember some things?”
Kat nodded. “Too many.”
Carla bit her lip. Her anger and irritation flared and died. Memories of her parents, then Tattoo, flashed behind her eyes, and she blinked to keep them from brimming over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir it all up again. You’re right. Maybe it’s best not to talk about it, try to forget.”
Suddenly Kat pulled herself upright out of her usual slouch. She tugged her hair out of her eyes and shot Carla a piercing look. “No,” her voice was emphatic. “The past is all we have. If we forget, we die, and the last five years of hell will have been for nothing.”
“Tell me then,” Carla pleaded gently, “when you’re ready.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Kat nodded.
A low rumbling made Carla look up at the sky. Dirty yellow clouds bowled past in the icy wind, but the sound did not come from above. Vibrations rose up through the soles of her feet along with a wave of panic, bringing with it her last memories of the world. She felt again the awful sensation as the ground slipped and slid beneath her feet, of the earth opening up, and tumbling into darkness. Dropping the broken floor tile, she grabbed her jacket tightly and cast about, looking for the source of the noise.
Abomination (The Pathfinders Book 1) Page 9
