The silence lasted for a few seconds before Spike broke it. “William.”
Although he stared at the underside of the metal sheet, he heard the sound of movement beside him and felt Matilda look his way.
“When I went to see Bleach, his family called him Dave.”
“I still can’t get over that. I never had him pinned for a Dave.”
“I think I’ve outgrown Spike. Spike is a name for someone destined to be a protector. The name of a naive kid who’s willing to believe the propaganda and bullshit vomited from the mouths of men in power. They keep us like livestock, living in pens while we’re sold a dream that few of us achieve. They maintain compliance by reminding us to be scared of the outside world. All the while, they live like kings. Protectors, politicians, and us. I would have never wanted it to be this way, and would do anything to reverse what’s happened to Artan, but I’m glad to be rid of that cursed city. Will you call me William now, please?”
“Okay.”
It clearly felt like a bigger deal to William than it did to Matilda. And why should she care? He’d only lost a name. She’d lost a brother.
The sound of thunder interrupted William’s thoughts. He looked up at the underside of the metal sheet as he released a long sigh. “Dammit. Not again.”
“What?” Matilda’s voice lifted a little. If she’d had the space, she would have probably sat up. “What is it?”
“Keep your voice down. We don’t want—” The sound ran over the metal sheet above them again, and William said, “Too late. I knew we should have gone deeper into the city.”
“You saw how dark it was last night. We pushed our luck just getting here.”
“You’re right. It’s just, the last time this happened, the diseased above me didn’t move, and it took three protectors to take down the horde who’d gathered with the thing.”
“Spike?”
William gasped but said nothing. When he looked at Matilda, she appeared equally as paralysed by the voice above. They hadn’t even made it to the next morning without being caught.
“Spike, it’s Hugh. I’m on my own.”
The way he spoke suggested William had a choice whether he revealed himself or not. The truth of it became apparent when Hugh slid the metal sheet away, daylight flooding into the dark pit.
His eyes on fire—blinded by the glare—William covered his face as he waited for his vision to return.
“I heard your voices,” Hugh said. “What are you doing in there?”
Still blind, William sat up and heard Matilda do the same beside him. “Trying to stay alive.”
“Well, it worked.”
When William felt a strong grip wrap around his hand, he let Hugh pull him to his feet, standing on shaky legs as he continued searching for his bearings.
After a few seconds, William’s sight returned. Matilda stood beside him, Hugh in front. “What are you doing here?”
Hugh shrugged. “I got out of the hole.”
“They let you out?”
“No. I escaped. Max was down there.”
“In the hole?”
“Moving diseased into it. He can walk among them now he’s been bitten.”
William’s jaw fell loose.
Hugh had a stick in his right hand, which he held up. “He gave me a rope and this. I ditched the rope, but I figured I might need this.”
As she retied her hair in a topknot, the hummingbird clip catching the morning light, Matilda said, “So why come out here?”
“I overheard a kid in the middle of the night say you forced him to let you out.”
Both William and Matilda waited for more.
“Artan’s alive!”
Too slow to catch her, William darted in Matilda’s direction and clasped air as she slumped to the ground.
Her legs twisted beneath her, she looked up at Hugh. “What do you mean, he’s alive?”
“Max spoke to him yesterday, in the justice department’s building. Max and the lady no one could understand who came in while we were on national service are both immune to the disease. They’re being kept in cells near the labs so they can run tests on them. They had to transfer them to the justice department’s cells while they made some renovations to where they were being held. Max was in a cell next to Artan.”
Tears shone in Matilda’s eyes. “He’s alive?”
“He’s alive.”
“Spik—uh, William, we have to go back.”
Before William could answer, the shrill call of several diseased exploded from the city. The patter of clumsy steps followed. A second later, three creatures burst from the ruins. Blood-red eyes. Stretched maws. Flailing limbs.
By the time William had drawn his sword and Matilda had sprung to her feet, Hugh had cracked the skulls of two and used his blunt-ended stick as a spear, driving it through the eye socket of the third.
All three diseased down, Matilda said, “Wow. What have you done with the old Hugh?”
The look on his best friend’s face turned William’s blood cold. Hugh’s tone was as stony as his expression. “He’s dead.”
Before either William or Matilda could speak, Hugh’s attention had fallen on one of the three diseased. He walked over to it and bent down. It had a backpack strapped to it, which Hugh opened. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper. William and Matilda walked over and peered over Hugh’s shoulder while he unfolded it.
“A map,” William said. Highly detailed, it showed a long patch of land that pinched about two-thirds of the way up. In the northern part of it, it had what looked to be the ruined city, and then beyond it, a red line encircling what William could only assume was—
“Edin,” Matilda said. “Do you think they were looking for Edin?”
“And what are all these other places?” Hugh said as he ran his finger over what looked like the locations of other communities.
As William stared at it, the realisation forced the air from his lungs. “We’re not alone.”
Hugh studied the map for a little longer, his thick finger running over the bottom third. “What do you think’s here?”
What looked to be the depiction of a wall separated the bottom third from the rest of the map. Unlike the detail in the top two-thirds, beneath the wall was blank. William shook his head. “Whoever drew this map clearly didn’t know.”
The pause only lasted a few seconds, Matilda reaching across and touching William’s arm. When he looked at her, her eyebrows pinched in the middle. “We have to go back to Edin.”
What could he say? No? It didn’t matter what they’d just found, they couldn’t leave Artan.
“When we’ve freed Artan from his cell,” Matilda said, “we’ll leave for good. I promise.”
“Let’s not think too far ahead, yeah?” William said. “One step at a time; let’s get Artan free first.” As much as he tried to remain upbeat, a damp weight sank through him. If they went back to Edin, they had no chance of getting out again.
After she’d hugged him, Matilda then ran to Hugh and hugged him too. “Thank you for risking your life for us.”
Hugh shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
William almost smiled. Regardless of what the boy had just said, the old Hugh remained somewhere in that broken form. With time, he’d return. As Matilda and Hugh walked back in the direction of Edin, William looked at the ruined city. When he’d been a cadet on national service, it represented the freedom of being a protector. When he’d approached it with Matilda, it represented the freedom of a new life. Now, as he turned his back on it, ready to face whatever punishment would come from the powers that be in Edin, it represented a closed door, a path trodden by a different William in a different life.
Chapter 45
On their walk back into Edin—the morning gathering momentum, the fresh spring sun on their backs—William, Matilda, and Hugh hadn’t said much. They’d dealt with several diseased on their journey home and remained on high alert for more, but it seemed like the day and the disea
sed were yet to fully awaken.
To walk through the gap where the new gates were due to be fitted, the gates themselves leaning against the wall on either side, tugged on William’s momentum. What would it mean to give themselves over to the men in power? Then he looked at his love and got a lift from the hope in her eyes. He’d die for her. Nothing had gone to plan yet, and at least they still had a chance for something more when they freed Artan. Hope, no matter how small, had to be better than none.
William turned to Hugh. He’d lost too much already. “How are you holding up?”
The twist to Hugh’s face suggested he might eject the same defensive response William had grown so accustomed to. Stop probing my mind or talking’s for pussies, but instead, he sighed, dropped his head, and shrugged. “One step at a time, eh?”
A dejected response, but progress nonetheless, William moved closer to him and pulled him in for a one-armed hug. “One step at a time.”
From the way the others stopped the second William did, they’d seen it too. About one hundred feet away from the gates, William kept his attention ahead. “Hugh, what did you say happened to the girl on the gate?”
“I sent her to talk to Sarge. I figured it would give me enough time to get away before they returned to lock the place up again.”
“You figured wrong,” Matilda said.
Only a small gap, but a gap nonetheless, one of the gates hung slightly open.
Before any of them could speak again, the gate shifted a little. Maybe disturbed by a breeze. Who was William kidding? It would have taken more than a breeze to move them.
A chill hit the top of William’s head as if freezing water had been slowly poured over his crown. As he watched everything unfold, it ran down the sides of his face, locked a tight grip around his throat, and then dragged its fingers down his spine.
First, a pallid hand with long fingernails reached around the gate. A second later, a diseased stepped through the gap. Lank, greasy black hair, it appeared lost in its own world, grunting and snuffling as it emerged from the national service area. Clumsy with its movements, it rocked with a slight sway as if simply standing upright presented a challenge. Then it looked up. Red eyes fixed on them. Crimson streaks from where it had cried blood. Its brow furrowed. Its mouth spread wide. It then released a prolonged, rattling hiss.
End of book three.
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The Alpha Plague - Chapter One
This is the first chapter of my novel, The Alpha Plague.
Alice pressed her fork down on her steak. The soft meat leaked a pool of blood that spread over her white plate. It soaked into the potatoes and broccoli.
A slow heave lifted in her throat, and she gulped several times to combat the excess saliva that gushed into her mouth. She could almost taste the metallic tang of blood. “How was the–” another heave rose up and she cleared it with a cough that echoed through the sparse room. She tried again. “How was the lab today, John?”
A thick frown furrowed John’s brow. This was his usual response to most questions. Everything was an irritation. Such banal conversations couldn’t hold a flame to his vast intellect. He ejected the word as if giving a reply was below him. “Stressful.”
The rejection sent a sharp stab through Alice’s stomach. It didn’t matter how many times he knocked her down, she got back up and continued to look for his approval. Fire spread beneath her cheeks and she chewed on her bottom lip.
John flashed a grin of wonky teeth. It took all of Alice’s strength not to flinch at the ghastly sight. “I must say though, it’s been made a little easier by Wilfred having to make me this meal.”
A deep breath filled Alice’s sinuses with the smell of disinfectant; the smell she associated with John. Decades immersed in the study of bacteria and disease had driven his level of cleanliness to the point where it bordered on obsessive-compulsive. A frown darkened her view of the room. “What did you say the bet was?”
“I didn’t.”
Alice looked into his sharp blue eyes and waited for him to say more.
He didn’t.
A look first at the man, dressed in his white lab coat, she then looked around at his white, minimalist penthouse apartment. Everything had a place, and everything was necessary. Beakers and test tubes littered the sides like ornaments. She hadn’t ever seen a photograph on display, despite this being his personal space… no room for sentimentality here.
Alice squirmed in her seat as the silence swelled.
John watched her.
No matter how long she’d known the man for, John always made her itch in her own skin. As if pressured to break the overwhelming void between them, she said, “So, what was the bet about?”
“An experiment. I predicted the correct result.”
A machine would have been better company. Alice frowned at him again and sighed.
“Oh, do pull yourself together, woman,” John said. “You’ve got to learn to stop being so bloody sensitive.”
Despite his obnoxious behaviour, the man did have redeeming qualities. When he worked, his creativity and passion flowed from him. Science drove him like a heartbeat, but Alice couldn’t excuse him time and again. She couldn’t ignore every time he’d humiliated her during a lecture; every time he’d not let her finish her point; every time he’d selected her to clean the lab at the end of the day while he let his other students leave. “How about you learn to stop being so bloody insensitive?”
A flick of his bony hand at her and he said, “This is what I mean. It’s these emotional fluctuations that take away your ability to be objective. That’s why men make better scientists.”
“And terrible companions.”
He lowered his head and peered over his glasses at her. “We can leave our baggage at the door,” he continued.
For the second time, her face smouldered. “You left your baggage in the delivery ward, John. Maybe your sociopathic detachment serves you well in the world of science, but it doesn’t equip you to deal with the real world. Without science, you’d be stranded.” Her vision blurred. Great! Tears again. They only strengthened the man’s argument.
John sighed and shook his head.
A glance down at her dinner, and Alice prodded the soft steak. Maybe a scalpel would be more appropriate than the wooden-handled knife in her hand. In the bright glare of John’s scrutiny, Alice cut into the steak and lifted a piece to her mouth.
The soft meat sat like jelly on her tongue. Unable to chew it, she took a deep gulp and tried to swallow. The piece of steak stuck in her throat like it was barbed. Her heart raced as a metallic rush of juices slithered down her oesophagus and clogged her throat.
John watched on, his expression unchanged. The cold detachment of a scientist rather than the compassion of a human being stared through his beady eyes.
Alice’s pulse boomed inside her skull. She held her neck and wheezed, “Help me.
”
He didn’t. He believed in natural selection. Sink or swim. How many cavemen had choked on their dinner? The ones who had been saved only weakened the gene pool. Weakness should never be rewarded.
After several heavy gulps, Alice swallowed the meat, leaned on the table, and gasped. Adrenaline surged through her. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand to stop her mascara from running and looked up to see John watching her with his usual blank expression. A barrage of abuse rose and died on her tongue; there was no point.
Alice retuned her focus to her dinner and flinched every time her cutlery hit the porcelain plate. The sharp chinks bounced around the quiet room. After she’d cut everything up, she stared at her food. A tightness remained in her throat from when she’d choked; another sip of warm red wine did little to ease her trepidation.
When she looked back up, John still watched her.
She cleared her throat. “So, when will you tell me about your work, John?”
His dinner remained untouched; his scrawny frame and pallid skin served as a visual representation of his poor diet. Thirty years her senior at sixty-three, he looked fifty years older. He consulted his wristwatch as if their meal had a deadline and sighed. “I can’t. You know that.”
While she watched him, she speared some potato and put it in her mouth, chewed, and took another sip of wine. The fluffy vegetable disintegrated and slid down her throat when she swallowed. Eating under John’s cold scrutiny seemed to increase the possibility that she’d choke again. Maybe he was right; maybe her tension was all in the mind.
She ate a piece of purple sprouting broccoli. The bland vegetable had taken on the rich tang of blood from the steak.
Despite the slow heave that turned through her stomach again, Alice focused hard on mastication. When the food had no taste left, she swallowed the weak mush.
Retribution - Book three of Beyond These Walls: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Page 18
