The Dying & The Dead 1: Post Apocalyptic Survival (27 page)

An
infected lurched at her. She side stepped and pushed it away. Another span in
her direction but she swung the butt of her gun and cracked its skull. She
weaved her way through them, acting on instinct to get out of the reach of the
ones who grabbed for her. Behind her, Mary screamed.

Heather
stopped just long enough to see two infected pull the old woman to the ground
and begin tearing at her with their teeth. For a second she thought she should
help her, but as the monsters gorged on the flesh of the woman’s neck, Heather
knew she was already lost.

Suddenly
she felt a burning pain in her shoulder. An infected had taken hold of her and
sunk its teeth into her shoulder blades. Heather grabbed it by the hair and
ripped it away, shoving it so hard that it fell to the floor. Blinded by pain
but knowing how close Kim and Eric were, she abandoned her instincts and just
ploughed through the crowd of infected until finally she cleared them.

As she
walked up to the train she looked at the small windows on the sides of the
carriages. The faces of panic-stricken DC’s stared back at her. Some banged on
the glass and opened their mouths to shout, but Heather couldn't hear what they
said. She ran along the train and looked into each window, searching for two
faces. As she reached the last carriage she had given up. Kim and Eric were on
there somewhere, but she couldn’t see them, and she didn’t have the luxury of
time to climb aboard and inspect each carriage.

Her
shoulder felt wet, and when she turned her head she saw that blood oozed out of
the bite-marks in her skin. Her body felt cold and she was surprised she could
even stand up. She looked up again at the windows of the last carriage, and
adrenaline exploded in her so fast that thoughts of falling to the floor
disappeared.

In the
second to last window, Kim stared at her. When she saw her mother, her eyes
went wide and she began to beat on the glass. Heather ran along the carriage
and to the stairs. She took hold of the rail and lifted her foot onto the first
stair, when something grabbed her and yanked her back with such force that she
ended up on her back on the ground. She looked up and expected an infected to
be stood over her, but instead it was the plague doctor mask of Charles Bull.

“The
mice always run,” he said. “But I always catch them.”

He
lifted his pickaxe in the air, and for a second it seemed to blot out the sun
and leave Heather lying in darkness. It reached the highest point of its arc
and hung there like a rollercoaster teetering over the edge of a drop.  All Heather
could think was how she’d failed. Her daughter stared at her from the window of
a train that was taking her to hell, and the pickaxe about to hit Heather meant
that she was nothing she could do about it. She closed her eyes and surrendered
to the misery that she was doomed to die with.

The
sound of galloping came from close by. The pickaxe above Heather lowered, but
not toward her. Instead Charles brought it down to his side and turned to see
the source of the noise.

Heather
scrambled to her elbows and then propped herself to her feet. Her shoulder was
soaked in blood now and she felt woozy. She looked beyond Charles and saw a
horse riding toward them. On top of it, with a painted grin spread across his
mask, was Max Armstrong.

Max
didn’t slow when he approached Charles. Instead he swung something at the
bounty hunter’s face, connecting with the side of his mask and knocking the
bulky man off balance. Max rode his horse around Heather in a circle and then
headed back toward Charles in the manner of a jouster making his second turn.

As Max
and his horse approached, Charles stepped out of reach and then swung his
pickaxe into the side of the horse, puncturing its flesh. The horse whinnied,
faltered and then collapsed to the floor. Max managed to leap off without
becoming trapped under the animal. He ran over to Heather and stood in front of
her.

“Where’s
the gun?” he said.

“I
always knew you were Resistance,” said Charles, and walked toward them.

“The
gun,” said Max, and held out his hand.

Charles
took another step.

“I
never got rid of you though. You know why?”

“Because
you’re lying?” said Max.

Charles
laughed.

“A
liar is one thing I’m not. The truth is, having a mole wasn’t so bad. As long
as I kept you fed, you’d dig the tunnels that I needed you to. Your little
movement can’t do anything to stop the Capita. And you spreading the word about
our plans can only help us. You know why?”

“I’m
all ears.”

Charles
was close enough now to raise his pickaxe in the air with the intention of
breaking Max in two. He lifted it high above him.

“Because
the more people know about us,” he said, “the more they fear us.”

Heather
stood up. She lifted the Heckler and aimed it at Charles.

“They
don’t fear you. They pity you,” she said.

She
pulled the trigger and expected it to blow Charles’s head off. Instead, she
heard a click. She pulled the trigger again. Click. Panic rippled through her.
Max grabbed the gun from her, released the clip and threw it to the floor.

“Fuck,”
he said. “Empty.”

A
rumbling sound sent a tremor through the ground. For a second, Heather thought
that there was an earthquake and that she was stood on the fault line. There
was a screeching noise, and a cloud of steam drifted from the train next to
her. The rumbling grew and Heather realised that the train warming up and
preparing to leave.

This
was her last chance. She had to do something, anything. She would take the blow
of Charles’s pickaxe if it meant that Max would stop the bounty hunter. She
would do anything just as long as the train didn’t leave.

As she
stepped toward Charles, Max got there first. Something silver flashed in his
hand and in one swift movement he stabbed it into Charles’s chest. Heather saw
that it was a knife, and Max had pierced Charles’s ribcage with it. Max went to
pull it out when Charles grabbed his hand and held the knife in place. With his
other hand, he grabbed Max by the throat and began to squeeze his neck. His
gloved fingers closed around the Resistance man’s throat and made him gasp for
air.

Heather
looked at Max, and then at the train. The wheels of the train were beginning to
turn, and the steam was drifting from the top in plumes. It wouldn’t be long
until it left. Across from her, Max’s face turned red. There was nobody to help
him except for Heather, and if he died the Resistance suffered a mortal blow.
He had sacrificed himself and left his family for the greater good, and if he
died now, it would have been for nothing.

Heather
thought back to his words on the cart when they were in the wilderness.

”The
needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” he said.

Heather
started to run toward the train.
How right you were,
she thought. She
reached the stairs of the last carriage and climbed onto them just as the train
began to move. Somewhere inside were Kim and Eric. She had to get to them.

As the
train began to crawl along its tracks she tried to ignore Max and Charles
behind her for fear that guilt would make her turn back. Instead she put a hand
on the door handle and pulled it open.

A man
in a Capita uniform stared back at her from the inside of the carriage. His
eyes registered a glimmer of surprise, and then in one swift motion he pushed
her off the train and onto the ground. She hit the floor and felt pain burst in
her back. Ignoring it, she straightened up in time to see the train pick enough
speed that it was impossible for her to catch it. As she watched it move away
and into the distance, carrying her daughter to a Capita hell, she wanted a
hole to open in the ground and devour her.

She
turned around. Behind her, Max had somehow gotten out of Charles’s grip and was
now stood over him, with the bounty hunter on his back on the ground. The blood
poured from her shoulder and down her arm, and her body trembled all over. She
felt a second away from passing out.

She
turned again and watched the train fade away, white stream chugging toward the
sky. She didn’t know where the train was going or where its tracks went, and
she felt like screaming as it moved toward the horizon.

This
wasn’t going to be the end. She would find Kim again, even if it meant
following the train tracks for thousands of miles across infected-filled
wastelands. And then, with Kim and Eric safe, she would walk back again. She
would return to the Dome and face the Capita. They didn’t inspire fear in her
anymore, only hate, and now she wasn’t scared to do something about it.

27

Ed

A final leap

Ed was
so stunned that he didn’t even get up off the ground. He looked at The Savage’s
face and waited for him to laugh or smile. Someone was having a joke, and Ed
was the victim. There was no way this man could have known James, was there?

He
looked up at the sky. It was darkening, and soon blackness would cover the
island again. He didn’t want to spend another night on Golgoth. He wanted to
leave it, but not just because of the infected. He wanted to get away from the
house which was nothing but a shrine to memories he’d never forget, to people
he’d never get back. He wanted to get away from the island where he’d wasted
years of his life hiding from emotional pain that he should have faced long
ago.

Joke
or not, The Savage’s words wouldn’t affect him. Ed realised now that James was
gone and was never coming back. But the fact that he’d lost his brother didn’t
mean he should give up on everyone else.

Bethelyn
stood a few feet away from The Savage and stared at him warily. She didn’t seem
to know whether to help Ed or to keep guard against the stranger. Behind them,
toward the village, the rest of The Savage’s group fought the oncoming
infected. It was a battle of eight against nearly sixty, but the strangers
seemed strong and experienced warriors by the way they swung their weapons, and
it looked as though the numbers would even up soon enough.

Even
from across the plain Ed heard the grunts as they carved through the flesh of
the infected. He heard the bodies of the Golgoth residents hit the floor after
being sliced open. Then he heard a scream, one that wasn’t from the effort of
swinging a weapon but from something else. A man, wearing a fur coat that had a
grey streak down the middle, had failed to see Golgoth’s infected postman as he
crept up behind him. Before he could even react, the infected had dragged him
to the floor and torn open his neck in the same way he used to tear open the
envelopes he couldn’t be bothered delivering.

The
Savage leant on his spear. He didn’t seem perturbed by the scream, and he still
stared at Ed’s face with more interest than Ed had ever been shown. It seemed
as if he were a tourist looking at him through an inch of glass.

“From
the look on your face,” said The Savage, “I’m guessing you know James? I’ve got
a good mind for faces and I’ve seen a version of yours before.”

Ed
wanted the sick joke to end, but he wasn’t in a position to make demands.

“What
do you want?” he said.

“You’re
Ed Furness, aren’t you?” said The Savage.

Questions
flooded Ed’s head but there were so many that he couldn’t choose a single one,
and instead it felt as though his mind had been filled by a thick sludge. He
tried to form words but couldn’t coax them out. Bethelyn seemed similarly
confused from the way her forehead scrunched up.

“You’re
wondering how I know that, aren’t you?”

There
was another scream across the plain, this one so full of pain that it made Ed
shudder. A woman was on the floor with six infected knelt beside her. Some
chewed on her arms and legs and others ripped open her stomach with greedy
hands.

Ed
still couldn’t form words. He knew that The Savage was playing some kind of
trick, but at the same time he began to wonder where it was headed. Finally it
was Bethelyn who spoke for him.

“The
question did occur,” she said.

The
Savage picked up his spear and put it back into the quiver behind his back.

“Well,”
he said, “It’s simple. I know who you are, because I know your brother.”

Ed felt
cold. He’d never met anyone who knew his brother before, save for the other
residents of the island. James’s time on the mainland had always been a mystery
to him because his brother had rarely spoken about it except to tell Ed how
much he missed his girl. He was going to ask The Savage where they had met,
when a different question struck him.

“Wait,”
he said, and sat up. “You said ‘know’, not ‘knew’. What the hell is going on?”

Bethelyn’s
eyes widened.

“No
fucking way.”

The
Savage folded his arms.

“He
said he had a little brother, but didn’t mention this place. James isn’t one
for words,” he said.

Ed
shook his head. He wasn’t going to be taken in by this.

“You’re
lying.”

“James
Furness,” said The Savage, “Six foot tall. Sandy hair. Likes to pretend he’s
the strong, silent type. That sound like him?”

Ed
opened his mouth wide but no sound came out. It was as though his brain had hit
a glitch and refused to work. Part of him was trying to cling on to The Savage’s
words for the hope they offered, but another part wanted to run and hide. Was
James alive? How was that even possible? They’d all seen the parts of the ship
that had washed up on shore, and that was proof enough that he was gone.

But
they’d never seen a body.

He was
going to try and speak when shouting came from across the plain. He looked
across and saw that The Savage’s men had fallen in number until only three of
them remained to fight the infected. It turned out that they hadn’t been as
good warriors as Ed had first thought. Almost everything about The Savage and
his men seemed to be an act.

The
three survivors left the battle and started running back across the plain
toward Ed, Bethelyn and their leader. Some infected gorged on the fallen
fighters, but the others, nearly thirty in number, walked across the plain and
toward the group.

Ed got
to his feet. Behind him were the cliffs of Golgoth, and beyond the chalky slope
was a sea that stretched out toward the mainland. Was James out there
somewhere? Had he found his way to the mainland and started a life there? And
if that was the case, why the hell hadn’t he tried to come back for Ed?

“Your
men,” said Bethelyn, and pointed.

One of
the survivors had fallen onto the grass. The other two, rather than help him
up, had carried on running, and the fallen fighter was pounced on by three
infected who probably couldn’t believe their luck.

“Selfish
bastards,” said The Savage.

The
Savage, without even looking back to the survivors who ran toward him, walked
over to the cliffs. He stood on the edge, barely a foot away from the drop, and
stared out to the sea. Then he turned around to Ed.

“Do
you trust me?” he said.

“Not a
fucking inch,” said Ed.

“My
ship is forty feet below. If we hit the water without getting knocked out, we
can make it.”

There was
only two ways this could go. They either tried to fight thirty infected in a
hopeless battle, or they followed The Savage, braved the sea, and then trusted
him not to double cross them. Ed looked at the houses of Golgoth one last time.
The place was lost to him now, and he had no reason to stay. Away from the
island, though, was the mainland. Suddenly, Ed wanted to get there more than
anything.

Ed was
going to reply to The Savage, but before he could say a word the man closed his
eyes and leapt off the cliff. Bethelyn ran over to the edge and watched. Ed was
too slow to see him fall, but he heard the splash as he hit the water, and the
slapping sound was enough to make him wince.

He
joined Bethelyn at the cliff edge. He grabbed her hand and held it tight. The
infected poured toward them, and for a second he wondered if they would be
stupid and desperate enough to follow them into the sea.

“It
doesn’t look like we have any other choice,” he said.

Bethelyn
looked at him. Her eyes were wet.

“Do
you trust me?” said Ed.

She
nodded her head.

For
the first time in years, he trusted himself too. He saw light at the end of the
maze and it was so bright that it hurt his eyes. James was out there somewhere.
Ed was suspicious of The Savage, but something inside told him that the
stranger’s words were true.

He’d
thought about leaping off the cliffs lots of times, but it was always with the idea
of bringing about an end to things. Now it was different. His leap off the edge
would mark his beginning.

He
gripped Bethelyn’s hand tighter.

“Ready?”
he said.

“Yeah.”

Ed
counted to three in his head and took a running start. The pair of them leapt
off the cliffs of Golgoth and fell toward the raging sea. He closed his eyes
mid-flight and felt the wind rush over his face, and finally he felt alive.