The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (22 page)

She
wanted to starting moving but a natural caution held her in place as sure as a
hand on her chest. Although the barking of the dogs seemed to be drifting away
she could still hear the whisper of the infected’s groans as they walked
nearby.

“So
Sarge told me he wanted me to apply for a posting in the Dome. Then when I give
him the paperwork, only an hour later, he tells me it’s too late and that I
should have applied days ago.”

“What
a prick.”

“Yeah.”

The
voices of the Capita soldiers were matched only by the sound of their boots as
they marched by the fence. They walked side by side, one of them holding a
rolled-up chain in his right hand and swinging his arm with each step.

“Just
keep quiet and we’ve got a clear pass,” whispered Heather.

Wes
moved away from the fence. Heather was going to tell him to be still when she
caught a look on his face. His eyes were pleading, sorrowful. The eyes of a man
who was apologising before he’d actually done anything wrong. He stepped away
from the fence and held his arms out.

“Hey,”
he said. “They’re here. I found them.”

The Capita
soldiers turned and walked back toward them. Heather felt herself sink. She
pulled Kim close toward her. There was an alleyway in front of her, but she
knew that running wouldn’t do her any good now.

Wes
looked at her once again, and Heather realised that she’d misread his look just
a second earlier. It could have been many things, but it wasn’t sorrowful. He
stared deep into Heather’s eyes as the Capita soldiers ran up to him, halting
when they saw the family hiding behind the fence.

“I’m
just doing what it takes to live,” he said, and then pointed his gun at Heather.

21

Heather

The
warmth in Charles’s voice didn’t match the coldness of his eyes. When the Capita
soldiers had tied ropes around her arms and had done the same to Eric and Kim,
she knew that it wouldn’t be long until the bounty hunter showed up. The sound
of horse hooves clip-clopped from down the street, and soon enough a horse and
cart turned the corner and then rolled to a stop in front of them. A Capita
solider prodded the handle of his butcher knife into Heather’s back and made
her walk toward it.

She
watched Wes struggle as she walked up the ramp and onto the cart. Two stern-eyed
Capita soldiers ordered him to stretch out his arms, but the trader threw his
shoulders to shrug them off. His groomed eyebrows arched as though he didn’t
believe the ropes they held out were meant for him.

“I’m
the one who found them,” he said. “It was all part of the plan. Ask Charles. He
knows. I sell to you guys. I’m one of you.”

By the
time Charles arrived, the soldiers had tied up Wes’s hands. He wore a black eye
to match the busted nose Heather had given him. The near-winter sky held frost
in it, but Heather couldn’t feel the cold. Instead she felt exhausted as her
mind raced through all the possible outcomes that lay ahead. None were good.
She tried to turn away from them, but that was the problem with the things in
your head; they wouldn’t let you hide. What would happen to Kim and Eric when
they were taken to the Capita? Would their paths lead them to different fates?

When
Charles arrived, Heather finally felt the touch of the frost. The bounty hunter
made his horse trot up next to the cart. He pulled at the reigns and the animal
halted. The animal seemed comfortable with Charles’s bulk, though the bounty
hunter’s shoulders sagged an inch.

“Good
lad, Ken,” he said, and ran a hand down the horse’s black hair.

Charles’s
long black coat covered his body and hid the wounds that Eric had inflicted on
him. Heather guessed that under his costume he wore bandages around the places
that the screwdriver had punctured. Despite his injuries and the weight that
his shoulders seemed to carry, he still seemed strong. She wondered if this was
even the same man who, not much earlier, had fled from her house with blood
pouring from him.

Years
ago, Heather had been a big fan of wrestling. Her father was surprised that the
seven year old girl liked to watch men throwing each other around a ring, but
he went with it. On Sunday mornings they’d get up before the rest of the family
and watch recordings on TV. There was one wrestler called Carlisle who wore a
mask that covered his face, and he spoke in a voice so deep it seemed to shake
the canvas. He fought so many bouts and stayed in the scene for so long that
people began to question whether it was even the same man behind the mask. He
didn’t age like everyone else, and he seemed immune to the physical toll years
of wrestling would have on most men. Rumours spread that there had been two
Carlisle’s; a newer, younger man replacing the original when his body fell
apart. Then the conspiracy theorists, claiming to have studied years of tapes,
said there had actually been four body switches. The original Carlisle, they
said, had a scar on his thigh that he covered with makeup which was sometimes
washed away mid-fight by sweat. In later years, the scar was gone. This was
proof enough for them that they were being lied to. Many men had worn the mask,
but none had taken it off.

“You
got a lot of fight in you,” said Charles.

She
looked at the oval shapes in his eye sockets but she couldn’t read anything in
them. He didn’t look angry, but she had come to know that Charles’s anger
boiled below the surface, and it only spewed out when he let it.

“It
bodes well for your daughter,” he said, “If she’s anything like her mother.
They like tough bodies at the farm. We get more meat before they break.”

Now
that their search had ended, the Capita soldiers rounded up their infected and
linked their chains to the bracelets around their necks. She wondered why the
soldiers were never bitten by them. Were they just experienced handlers, or was
it possible to train the infected?

The
same couldn’t be said about the dogs. One soldier bent at the knee and grabbed
the collar of a Rottweiler-Husky half breed. The dog stepped back and curled
its top lip to show yellow teeth. The soldier’s forehead screwed up. His right
hand twitched toward a hand axe which hung off his belt.

“Heel,
Silas,” he said, his voice so deep and low that it was almost a growl.

The
dog’s hind legs bent as if getting ready to spring, and man and beast stared at
each other. Finally the dog’s ears relaxed, its lips uncurled and it trotted
over to the man.

“Every
bloody time,” said the soldier, and pulled the dog toward him for an
affectionate hug.

Wes
leaned forward in his seat on the cart to see what was going on, but the
soldier in front of him pushed him back. Heather wished the soldier would hit
him. She’d beaten him up pretty bad herself, but he deserved worse. She could
only see the back of the soldier in front of Wes, and she wondered what kind of
man he was. Some of them loved to use the power they had over others, and it
was that sort of man who would hit Wes. She hoped this soldier enjoyed his
authority enough to abuse it.

“Armstrong,”
said Charles.

The
soldier turned round. Heather saw the scar that ran across his cheek like a
vein, and she recognised Max Armstrong. He had been in her house twice. On one
visit he had complimented her crops and given her advice, and on the second he
had uprooted them from the ground and taken them away. Despite that, his
lingering stare from soft eyes made him seem different from the other soldiers.

“Sir?”
said Max. The way he emphasised the word made it seem sarcastic.

Charles
pointed. “Take Miss Castle and the trader to the Dome.”

Wes
wriggled forward again. “Why me?”

Charles
leaned into the seat of his horse. He stroked the side of the animal’s head as
he spoke.

“How
many people do you plan to double cross, trader? As many as you can get away
with, I’ll bet. You made your bed, so you can die in it.”

He
looked at the soldiers who stood at the foot of the cart. One of them turned
away under Charles’s gaze. It reassured Heather that she wasn’t the only one
who didn’t want to look at the bounty hunter. Even his own men were scared of
him.

“Take
the boy and the girl and put them on the other cart. They’re going to the
compound for processing. The train leaves in two days and I want them on it.”

Did
he say train?
Once or twice in the last few years Heather had heard rumours that high ranking
Capita officers made use of carefully-maintained cars, but she never imagined
they could have an operational train. Things like that seemed like relics of a
time long-gone, of days where people were safe.

Charles
tugged on the reigns of his horse. The animal took a few steps back, snorted
and then stopped. The bounty hunter pointed at Kim.

“Stand
up,” he said.

Heather
wanted to do something. She looked down at her arms and saw the redness of her
skin where the rope scratched against it. Max Armstrong was in front of her and
there were two Capita soldiers at the bottom of the cart. Across the estate
other soldiers gathered their infected to re-chain them, and a few dog handlers
clipped leads to the necks of the Capita’s canines. There was nothing that Heather
could do. Even if she grabbed Kim and started running, they would get ten
metres before a set of teeth clamped on their calves or the fingers of an
infected pulled them back.

She
felt like shrinking back in her seat and dissolving into it. It would be better
that way. After all, what good was she to anyone? After Kim’s father went – she
refused to even think the bastard’s name –she had assumed the role of
protector. She’d tried to get her daughter far away from the Capita, but she’d
failed. Now she was going to be taken further into the maze than she’d ever
been, and she couldn’t imagine what waited in the middle.

“Give
your daughter a hug,” said Charles. “It’ll be the last one that you’ll get.”

“I’m
not letting you take her.”

He
pulled back on the reigns. Ken, the horse, wheezed.

“Look
around you,” said Charles. “Do you think you have much of a say?”

“I
won’t let you, you bastard.”

“I’m
not too bothered about the insults to be honest Heather, but the harder you
make this for me, the more your child will suffer. Now give your daughter a
hug.”

She
looked around her again as if the passing of a couple of minutes would magically
alter the scene. Nothing had changed; Capita soldiers walked with idle strolls
and their dogs pulled at leather leads. There was nothing she could do. The
worst thing would be to give Charles a reason to kill her.

“Go
on. I won’t wait much longer,” said Charles.

Heather
stood up and opened her arms. Kim, eyes tearing up and legs shaking, walked
into her embrace. Heather pulled her daughter’s head close to her chest, closed
her eyes and squeezed. All the water in her body was fighting to spill out of
her eyes, and she felt Kim tremble against her.  Eric stood up, walked across
the cart and threw his arms around Kim. It amazed Heather how natural it felt
for him to join them.

“I’ll
come for you,” Heather whispered, and she meant every word more than she’d ever
meant anything in her life.

She
looked away from the children in time to see Charles give a nod. Before she
could interpret its meaning, Heather felt the crash of something blunt on the
back of her head. Her legs turned to water and before she could open her lips
to shout, her whole world was plunged into darkness.

22

Heather

The
wheel of the cart struggled over a stone, and the jolt brought Heather back
from the dark. As the light strained into her eyes she felt a throbbing pain in
her temple and wondered if this was real or just another layer to the dream
she’d been having. In it she was in the school swimming baths like in the old
days. Her legs were so useless they might as well have been made of plastic,
and a fin glided through the water in graceful zigzags. As the shape got nearer
and she could see its mass underneath the water, and she realised it wasn’t a
fin poking out of the water. It was the long black beak of a mask, and in front
of her, emerging in a spray of water, was Charles Bull.

“Let
me off this fucking thing.”

There
was more than an undercurrent of fear to the trader’s voice; it was so high
pitched it sounded like the words wobbled out of his mouth. His wrists were scratched
raw from his attempts to get out of the ropes, but the knots had held. Whoever
tied them had paid more attention to their teacher than Heather had to her
father.

She
lifted her arms to her face. With bound hands she brushed her hair away from
her forehead. The strands stuck to her skin in clumps, glued by the sweat that
covered her.

“Where
are you taking me?” she said.

“The
Dome,” said a soldier to her right.

At the
end of the cart one solider sat with reigns in his hand and his back hunched.
He concentrated on the space in front of him as though he might have to take a
sharp turn, but they were in the wilderness now. The trader district was so far
away that she couldn’t even see it as a blip on the landscape, and nothing lay
ahead of them save a horizon with fearful promises.

They
were in the wilderness that Heather knew was part of Capita territory. Once it
had been a government protected nature reserve, and Heather had taken a school
trip here once. The teacher had given them all a sheet with pictures of birds,
and each bird was worth a certain amount of points. There were some on there
that she’d never seen before in her life and which looked too exotic to exist
in a place as bleak as this. At the end of one of the happiest days she could
remember, Heather had the second highest point tally after seeing dozens of
colourful birds. Now, on the cart, she looked around her and she saw nothing
except knee-high yellow grass that blew idly in the wind.

The
cart followed a rough stone path that someone had cut into the ground. The
width was uneven and more often than not shrunk so small that it became a line.
The cart driver leaned forward in his seat and held the reigns tight in his
hand. The soldier next to him leaned towards him and spoke.

“Better
stop,” he said.

She
recognised the voice, and when the soldier turned to look at her she saw that
it was Max. Heather moved her head from side to side as if expecting Charles
Bull to come riding by on his horse, but when the cart stopped, there was
nothing but silence. It seemed that Charles had trusted Max to deal with Heather
and Wes, but what did that mean for the kids? When she thought about them being
with Charles, she felt like she was hanging onto a ledge hundreds of feet in
the air with fingers too weak to hold.

The
road forked ahead of them and the stone pathway split into opposite directions.
Heather had no clue where either of them led. It made her think about how
stupid their plan had been, really. Even if she and Kim managed to get enough
supplies together to leave the Capita lands, where would they go?

Knowing
the area wasn’t a problem. There was a city twenty six miles away that was once
the mecca of a rock and roll movement, and five miles east was an industrial
town that kick-started the turn of the century steam era. Getting around wasn’t
the issue and even if it was, there were plenty of maps sitting on the shelves
of abandoned shops. The problem was that things had changed. She didn’t know
what creatures lived in the old rock-and roll-city or how many infected walked
the streets of the steam town. The maps still looked the same but the places
had changed.

The
soldier on the end of the cart stood up.

“Why’ve
we stopped?” he said.

Max
stepped across from the driver seat and into the cart. His mask was dusty, but Heather
could still see the smiley face that he’d drawn on it. He walked past Heather
and Wes and stood in front of the other soldier. Without a word, Max pulled a
knife from his belt and stabbed the soldier in the throat. The man put a hand
to his neck, but his legs collapsed under him. He hit the floor on his back and
gurgled. Max kicked him off the cart.

He
bent down toward Heather and motioned for her to hold up her hands. With two
cuts he sliced away the rope that tied her, and then worked on the rope around
her ankles. Heather watched as he did the same for Wes.

As
soon as his ropes fell away, Wes dived over the side of the cart. He hit the
ground with his knees but immediately straightened up. He tried to run away but
could only manage a limp, and he couldn’t even clear twenty metres before Max
had leapt over the side of the cart, caught up to him and punched him so hard
in the back of the head that he fell over. Max grabbed Wes’s ankles and dragged
him back across the grass.

The
driver stood up and turned around now, holding the reigns in one hand as if
dropping them would send the horses bolting for their freedom. When he saw the Capita
soldier on the ground with blood gushing from his throat, he stepped back so
suddenly he almost tripped over his seat.

“Goddamn
it,” he said, voice weary as if this happened every day.

He
snapped his head to the left and saw Max approaching the cart with the
unconscious trader. The driver let the reigns go, reached into his pocket and
pulled a clay hammer. He was about to step off the cart toward Max when Heather
reached out, grabbed his leg and pulled on it, sending the man face first to
the floor. Reacting quicker than his rival, Max stabbed the driver in the back
of his neck.

He
picked up Wes and pushed him up onto the side of the cart. Heather grabbed
Wes’s collar and helped get him aboard. Max grabbed the railing, put his foot
on a wheel and swung himself up onto the vehicle. He sat down, ran his hand
over his face to wipe away the sweat and then let his breath catch up with him.

Heather
didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what had happened, and in this
situation it seemed there was little input she could give. She waited as Max
brought himself under control. She saw that his right hand was in a tight fist
and that he tapped his foot nervously on the floor of the cart.

“I
don’t understand,” she said.

He
closed his eyes for a second. Opening them, he spoke. “Give me a minute.”

Though
his face was young, a crease ran across his forehead as if it was a worry that
wouldn’t leave. With his otherwise smooth skin and his hair that was thick at
the front but thinning slightly at the back, he seemed like one of those
chameleon guys who could pass for any age they liked. With a suit and briefcase
he could be forty, and with ripped jeans and trainers he could easily become an
early-thirties guy clinging onto his late twenties.

Finally
he straightened up in his seat. He put the knife back in his belt and rested a
boot on Wes’s back.

“You’ve
heard of the Resistance?” he said.

Heather
nodded. Speech still wouldn’t come.

“Then
you will understand what I just did.”

The
words left his mouth casually like a man telling the time. After listening to
Charles talk, Heather was glad of someone who didn’t speak in riddles. She had
so many questions for him, but when she went to speak, he put a hand out.

“Probably
best you let me tell this,” he said. “I’ve been living a lie so long it’ll be
good to say something true for once. Oh boy. Here it comes, then.”

He ran
his hand across his forehead. “I’m from Kiele, in the south. Came to the Capita
three years ago and joined the force.  Rose through the ranks and tried to find
out what their big plan was.”

Heather’s
brain unfogged. She had so many things to ask, but they wriggled around her
head like worms and she couldn’t say anything until they settled down. It was
probably better to just let him talk.

“Big
plan?”

“The Capita
are working on something. We could smell it miles away, even in Kiele, but we
couldn’t get close enough to learn the details. We used to have a guy inside
the army, but one day he was found swinging from the beams by his bootlaces
with silver coins shoved down his throat.”

“Why
silver?” said Heather.

“That
guy in the old stories. You know, the Betrayer. They were letting everyone know
that he had crossed the Capita. Somehow they must have found out he was one of
us.”

Heather
knew too well that the Capita’s resources of information were endless, and
their drive for power was second only to their need to destroy the corruption
within. The Capita wanted pure, unchallenged control, and the punishments for
those who disturbed the balance were beyond cruel.

“I
don’t know why anyone would risk it,” she said. “Living in the barracks, knowing
you could be found out any minute. Doesn’t seem worth it.”

He
gave a slight smile. “You sound like my wife.”

“She
must be a sensible woman.”

He
shook his head. “It’s been three years since I left. Wish I would have listened
to her. She was expecting when I left you know. She told me it was going be a
girl. There’s no way she could have known, but that’s Olivia for you. She
always has these weird feelings about stuff.”

Wes
stirred on the ground. His eyelids flickered, and he let out a sound that was
muffled by the wooden floor against his mask. Max pressed his boot into his
back. Heather worried that her complete lack of sympathy for the trader meant
that her heart had hardened, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

“So,
what now?” said Heather.

“It’s
been three long fucking years but I know what it is now.”

“Sorry?”

“Their
plan.”

“Is it
the farms?”

Max
stood up. His knife swung from his belt as he paced around the cart. Wes rolled
to his side and got up off the floor. His noise was swollen and there was a
purple bulge under his eyes, but otherwise his face was pale. Max stood on the
end of the cart and looked into the landscape beyond.

“The
farms are only cogs in it,” he said. “It’s something much bigger. You won’t
even believe me Heather. You won’t believe how bad it is, and even if you did,
you wouldn’t understand.”

“You
could try me.”

“We
need to get back to Kiele. We need to tell them what the Capita is planning.”

“But
my daughter,” she said.

“If we
don’t go now, Heather, it’s gonna be too late.”

“I
can’t leave her.”

“You
have to try.”

Heather
got to her feet. She felt her cheeks burning up.

“Try
and leave my daughter? Have you lost your fucking mind? There was a time when I
really needed to meet you, Max. Not you, but the Resistance. But now I just
need Kim.”

Max
looked at her with an ashen face. Right now he looked closer to being in his
fifties. Time was sandpaper that had ground him down. Maybe not his smooth
skin, but internally it had worn him away.

“Things
run deeper than you and the children. I know it sounds cold to say it, but
sometimes the right thing to do is the coldest.”