Fury Rising (6 page)

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But such things were fool’s hope. Daniel knew better. Even with Aries and her unusual gift, there was no second chance. All he could do was fight to keep control of his own brain. And stay away from those he loved. That was the only cure.

“He will come back,” the kid insisted. There was a finality to his voice, like he’d spent the past few months forcing himself to believe it. Daniel knew there was nothing he could say that would change the kids mind.

“Fair enough.”

“I’m Jordan, by the way.” The kid held out his hand to shake. Daniel didn’t accept the offer. No point in letting Jordan think they were going to become best friends. Daniel worked alone.

“Daniel.”

They watched as the ferals slowly made their way down the block. Jordan chatted non-stop, pointing out a few in the group, giving some details about where they’d hooked up. The girl with the pink hair joined up in Hope. The three guys in matching work shirts came in around Prince George. Jordan had trouble there. He’d been spotted and chased into the woods. He’d spent a few days having to travel through the bush, living off of a few strips of beef jerky and a bottle of water. But he’d caught up with the group. They moved slowly and predictably. All Jordan had to do was follow the road and search for signs of destruction.

“They’ve killed everyone they’ve come across,” Jordan said. “But not my brother. He got into a car accident a few years ago and got pins put in his knee. He doesn’t run as fast. Lags behind the group a lot. The others don’t seem to care. I guess. They hardly notice anything. Watch.”

Jordan brought up his rifle and took aim. A single feral had broken away from the group, stopping to take a pee on the hedges across the street.

“Wait!”

Jordan pulled the trigger and the gun gave a quiet pop. A silencer. The feral dropped, pitched forward into the bushes. Jordan was right. The other ferals didn’t even notice or look back.

“You could have warned me,” Daniel said.

“Come on, give me more credit than that,” Jordan said. “I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid.” He brought the gun up and showed Daniel the silver bit at the barrel. “Like it? I made it myself. Not hard when you know how. Best not to draw attention, don’t you think?”

“You’re one hell of a shot.”

“Thanks. Got my Daddy’s eye. He could bag a deer from a hundred feet.” Jordan paused, cocking his head to the side again. “Holy crap. Bagger. Bag a deer. I get it. That totally makes sense.”

As the last of the remaining feral Baggers turned the corner and disappeared, the street once again grew quiet. It was only then that Daniel could hear his heart beating heavily in his chest. He turned back to Jordan who propped his rifle against a patio table and bent down to tie his shoelace.

“How many of them are there? Have you tried counting?”

“I dunno. Three fifty. Four hundred?”

“Jesus.”

Four hundred feral Baggers and they were moving steadily towards Vancouver.

“We’ve got to go,” Daniel said.

Jordan looked up from his shoes. “Go? Why? If they’re heading to the mall, they’ll be there for a while. Maybe even a day or two. That’s what they normally do. They spent a week at the mall in one of the other places. Kamloops. Weird name for a city. Couldn’t forget that if I tried. But they will stay there until they’re done. If there’s food, they’re gonna have a party.”

“They’re heading for Vancouver,” Daniel said. “There are a lot of innocent people there. Some of them are trapped. They’ll be sitting ducks. They deserve a heads up.”

Aries. She was in West Vancouver. She’d be safe if she stayed there. Daniel knew better. Aries wasn’t the type to sit still. Once she found out downtown was under attack, she’d try to help. There were too many humans trapped at the Plaza of Nations. People of worth: doctors, electricians, engineers—people the Baggers considered valuable in their new world order. And of course Mason was there. Aries would never abandon him.

Of all the possible outcomes that had gone through Daniel’s mind the past few months, he’d never thought something like this would happen. It never dawned on him that they might have to take on something far more deadly than an average Bagger. But ferals were a thousand times worse.

So if Jordan was right, and the ferals were going to camp out at the mall, that would give them extra time to prepare. 

First things first. Daniel had to get Mason. They may have their differences, but Daniel liked the guy. Mason had been there for him when Daniel needed him and he wasn’t going to let that stubborn idiot die before returning the favor. And Mason was a good fighter. Damn good when it came to killing Baggers.

“Come on,” Daniel said. “We’ve got a prison break to plan.”

Aries

              “We’ve got a problem.”

Of course they did. Aries sighed. She’d been awake for less than five minutes and Joy had already tracked her down. At least she’d had the decency to wait until Aries finished in the bathroom stall, coming into the community washroom just as Aries cleaned her hands in the basin by the sink. The other morning, a young couple had crawled into her tent to try and discuss some ridiculous issue they thought was important enough to wake her at five am for. 

She looked into the mirror, slightly surprised to see her face staring back at her. Although she’d been through so much in the past nine months, Aries really hadn’t changed. Okay, her hair was longer and desperately in need of a good washing, but her face remained the same. But inside, Aries felt more and more like an old woman instead of a seventeen-year-old girl.

They’d all aged that way.

Joy crossed the room in a few strides. She was pregnant and although she wore an oversized plaid shirt, Aries knew the bump was growing. Thankfully there was still three more months to go. Hopefully by then they might have a doctor on their side, or at least someone willing to help with the delivery.  Larissa, their former nursing student, could only do so much. Aside from raiding the UBC bookstore for medical textbooks, she had zero experience. The only thing they’d been able to do so far was to load Joy up on prenatal vitamins and hope for the best.

“What’s wrong?” Aries splashed some water on her face, trying to erase the last signs of sleep. If only she could have one night where she had more than four hours. She’d gotten so used to being exhausted that she barely even noticed it anymore. And when she did, she swallowed more coffee and ignored it.

Her bed. Fluffy pillows and a comfortable duvet. What she wouldn’t give for a single day in which she could sneak off into one of those West Vancouver mansions and curl up in one of those massive king sized beds with a good book. A hot bubble bath afterwards, followed by wrapping herself in a fluffy blanket while eating popcorn on the couch.

She dreamed about it every day. Escape. Push aside all those duties and responsibilities and just run away. She could do it too. It’s not like anyone would physically stop her. She could say she was going on a small supply run or going to gather some vegetables from one of the many gardens the group kept. Sneaking away was her specialty. Aries was a bit of an expert when she wanted to be. She’d done it all those times before when she used to visit with Daniel. No one had been the wiser; expect Mason, only because he actually paid attention. Now that he was gone, there was no one who might notice. All she had to do was slip outside the park grounds and never look back.

But she wouldn’t. No matter how much she wanted, Aries would never do such a thing. Daydreaming about it, well, that would have to be enough.

“Eve’s dead.”

“What? How?”

Tears exploded into Joy’s eyes. She must have been holding back. “Pills. She snuck into the medicine locker last night and took a bottle of aspirin. She swallowed the entire thing.”

Aries pulled Joy into her arms and hugged her hard. Eve had been with them since the beginning. They’d run into Eve and her brother Nathan right after the earthquakes destroyed Vancouver. Together they’d survived countless Bagger attacks. But Nathan died at Christmas, killed in front of Aries. She still blamed herself. Her own stubborn fault. If she hadn’t been so stupid, they never would have gone into that house. And Nathan would still be alive.

Eve hadn’t taken the death well. Although normally quiet, she’d withdrawn even further, refusing to talk to anyone unless they pushed. She’d done her work, never complained when Aries gave her things to do, but at the end of the day, she’d retreated to her tent, not bothering to join the others. Just the other day Aries had thought she should talk to Eve and make sure everything was okay. But she’d been so busy with Michael and Clementine, she’d forgotten all about it. Now it was too late. She’d screwed up again.

“Who knows?”

“Larissa. She’s waiting at the tent. Jack and I thought we should come see you first. He’s outside.”

Aries turned and pushed through the heavy wooden doors. Outside, a blast of bright sunlight hit her face. Spring had hit hard and they’d had very little rain. After a long winter, it was a nice change, especially now that they’d moved their base into the woods. Okay, not quite the woods, but a provincial park in the middle of West Vancouver. It had been a good decision. The group had grown over the past few months, from just a few survivors to several dozen. There simply wasn’t a place big enough for them anymore. It had been Michael’s idea to take it outside. To form a community where everyone worked together. They’d originally thought about Stanley Park in the downtown core, but everyone agreed it was too close to where the Baggers settled. They wanted to be far enough away to go undetected, but close enough to keep an eye on their enemies. And regardless of how much Aries wanted to get away from Vancouver and head north, she’d never leave Mason or Daniel behind.

Lighthouse Park was a good choice. It was right on the ocean, which meant they could escape into the boats if need be. The area was heavily forested, giving them enough cover to live in the open, and it left them plenty of hiding spots to keep guard. Because it was walking distance to many of the West Vancouver mansions, they were able to plant vegetables in the local yards and retrieve them without difficulty.

Living in a tent was hard, but compared to everything else they’d been through, Aries wasn’t complaining.

Outside, Jack waited, leaning against the wall. He had his head tilted upwards, squinting at the bright morning sun.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” he said somberly.

              Several months ago Jack had been injured during a Bagger attack. He’d been blinded and spent the past months lying in bed with horrible migraines. But a few weeks ago, his vision started to come back in one eye. He still couldn’t see properly and the headaches hadn’t gone away, but none of that mattered.

              Jack had his vision again.

              “What’s it like?” Aries asked him in the beginning.

              “Like I have a blindfold over one eye,” he said. “And there’s all these white stripes, as if I’m trying to look through a skinny fence.”

              It had been something to celebrate. One of the rare times Aries could actually remember being in a sincerely good mood. Joy was beside herself, more determined than ever to watch Jack like a hawk. She wanted to make sure he’d be there to see the birth of the child growing in her belly.

              Looking at Jack now, she wanted to throw her arms around him again, and giggle like a happy schoolgirl. But his new eyesight wasn’t something to keep celebrating, not when Eve was dead. They’d have to remove the body and bury her. She deserved that.

              “So…um…where is she?”

              Aries realized she didn’t even know where Eve kept her tent. How was that even possible? She should know. Now that she thought about it, when was the last time she talked to Eve? She couldn’t remember. But she’d been so busy lately, working hard with Michael and Clementine. She’d been up late last night, going over final plans with them. They’d left last night with Raj, leaving Aries behind, worried about the million or so things that could go wrong.

              She’d been busy trying to keep everyone alive. And because of this, Eve slipped through the cracks. Aries should have known.

              “This isn’t your fault,” Jack said, reading her mind. He’d always been like that, able to know exactly what she was thinking. Jack hadn’t left her side since the night they met up at the school auditorium. He’d been invaluable to her, helping her with the tough decisions.

              “She’s been depressed for a long time,” Joy said. “We’ve all known about it. If anything, we’re all to blame.”

              “No,” Jack said.

              “She lost her brother.”

              “I lost three brothers,” Jack said. “And you had a bigger family than me. We’ve all lost people. Every single one of us.”

              “But Nathan was a survivor,” Joy said, rubbing her stomach absently. “The earthquakes. The Baggers. We went through it all together. It’s different.”

              “No,” Jack said. “Death is death.”

              They stood silently in the morning sun. An older woman came up the steps, nodding at them before disappearing into the bathroom. Someone walked past carrying a large jug of water. The camp was starting to wake up.

              “Come on,” Jack said. “I’ll take you there.”

The walked down the path leading towards the ocean. There were less tents out this way, most of the group had set up their homes in a circle closer to the washrooms. Even with the security, people still felt safer in numbers.

They passed the Lighthouse Keeper’s house, a large two-story building that served as a hospital. Larissa spent most of her days there, helping anyone who showed up on the front porch. They’d been lucky so far; the majority of illnesses were simple things like colds or scrapes. Someone broke an arm last week climbing on the rocks. A few days ago, three people ended up with food poisoning after eating some bad cheese found in an abandoned house.

Larissa managed to patch up everyone who showed up at her door. They’d raided the hospital shortly after they first settled and brought back as many bandages, medicine and syringes they could carry. Larissa had locked up everything in a back room, keeping the key with her at all times. She kept detailed notes of the items that went through her hands. She knew who came to her for which ailments and could recite everything back to Aries at a moments notice.