The Dying & The Dead 2 (11 page)

Chapter
Eleven

Heather

She wanted to look back and make sure
that nobody was following them, but she didn’t. She knew that if she turned
around, all she’d see would be the heads impaled on the stakes. They must have
been effective in keeping strangers away from Kiele, but she wondered how the
residents could look at them every day. Even worse was the question that needed
to be asked;
which unlucky people had donated their heads for public
display?

Charles tugged on Ken’s reins. The
horse carried them across the dirt, responding to the tugs by picking up his
speed. The bounty hunter leaned forward, the beak of his plague mask bobbing up
and down as the horse ran.

“Did you really need to stop to get
that thing?” she asked him.

“I thought you might have got sick of
looking at my ugly mug,” he said. “Besides, I don’t feel right without it.”

Charles’s mask used to give her
nightmares. She’d dream about waking up in her bedroom and looking over to her
door to see the bounty hunter standing in the darkness. The long leather nose
of his mask poked over the doorframe. She saw his eyes watching her beneath the
mask, gazing at her as she shook herself from sleep. His leather coat brushed
against the walls as he walked toward her and then towered over the end of her
bed.

Once they had gotten out of the cell,
leaving Kiele had been simple. They took a route through a few side streets and
kept their heads low until they reached the gates. By that point, Max and
Rushden must have realised that they were missing. It seemed almost everyone in
town had run to the old police station. Rather than guarding the gate to stop
them leaving, they had left it unmanned.

She reached down and stroked Ken’s
side.

“How come he’s letting me ride him?”

“Because I’m letting you. Now shut up
and hold on.”

As the horse gathered speed, Heather
knew she was going to have to grip hold of Charles’s waist so that she didn’t
fall off. The idea of touching him sickened her. After everything he had done,
this was the last situation she thought she’d find herself in. She’d rather
have knocked him off the horse than sit on it with him, but she knew that Ken
wouldn’t budge without Charles.

“You won’t catch anything,” said the
bounty hunter. “Grab on.”

She heard shouting behind them. She
turned her head. Beyond them, standing near the heads and the spikes, were some
of the men and women from Kiele.

Charles lifted the reins and whipped
them, and Ken moved from a trot into a gallop. Heather started to lose her balance,
so she reached forward and grabbed Charles’s waist. She hated the feel of his
leather coat on her palms, but it was better than falling off.

“It’s been a while since a woman held
me like that,” said Charles.

~

They travelled north for a few hours
until Charles brought Ken to a halt. Heather’s back ached from bumps as Ken
took them over the plains, and her palms were sweaty from holding Charles’s
leather coat.

“It is safe to stop?” she said.

“I haven’t seen any sign of them for
miles.”

The townsfolk from Kiele had pursued
them for a while, but only a couple were on horseback, and their animals were
no match for Ken. Their travel situation wasn’t ideal, but no matter how
exhausted she was, she could have carried on. Every step north took them away
from Kiele, and in some way, it meant she was getting closer to Kim.

Charles took his bag down from Ken
and reached into it. He pulled out a white roll of bandages and wrapped them
around his hands. He walked forward a few feet and stared at the plains that
stretched out beyond them.

“My palms get blisters on long
rides,” he said. “You’d think I would be used to it by now, but I have skin
like a baby.”

“I need water,” said Heather.

“Check the saddlebag.”

Heather walked over to Ken. When she
reached him she stroked his side and felt how coarse his fur was. She opened
Charles’s saddlebag and reached for the water, but her hands closed on
something thin with sharp edges. She pulled it out and saw that it was a
photograph.

It was taken in a bedroom with a bare
wooden floor and no furniture save a single-sized bed. A woman was in it with a
duvet drawn up to her chin. Her face was completely red, and beads of sweat dripped
from her forehead. Next to her was a younger Charles Bull. He still had the
overall bulk of his body, but the years were peeled back from his face. He held
a baby in his arms and tucked her close to his chest.

From the lack of furniture in the
room, and the state of Charles’s clothes, Heather guessed that the photo was
taken after the outbreak. If that was the case, how had they gotten it
developed? One of those self-printing cameras, she thought. A bigger question,
though, was the lack of masks. Neither Charles nor his wife wore one.

The photo was snatched from her hands,
and she looked up at Charles’s glaring face.

“I told you to get some water, not go
rooting through my stuff.”

“It was an accident,” said Heather.

“We better go.”

Before she got back onto Ken, Heather
reached to the ground and picked up a hefty-looking rock and concealed it in
her pocket.

She didn’t know where they were
going, but for now it was enough that the horse put one hoof in front of the
other and carried them away. Soon enough she was going to have to decide which
direction to take.

She knew that if she followed the
train tracks, then eventually she would end up at Camp Dam Marsh. If Charles
was to be believed, there was an area she would have to pass through that was
infested with infected. The bounty hunter said it was too dangerous to even try
it alone. The best choice, then, was to accept his help, but it still didn’t
feel right.

She saw movement ahead of them. Two
men rode horses across a bridge which curved over a small river. At the end of
the bridge, one of them let his horse walk to the bank and dip its head in the
water to drink. A few seconds later he gave it a kick in its side, and the
animal backed away.

Looking closer, Heather saw that the
men wore Capita uniforms. Something inside her groaned. She tugged on Charles’s
coat.

“I’ve seen them,” he said, without
turning around.

The sky above them was overcast, and
drops of rain fell and made rivulets down Ken’s leather saddle. Heather reached
to her pocket and felt for the rock she had picked up. The edges were rough,
and she knew it was heavy enough to hurt someone.

The Capita soldiers guided their
horses up a small slope and turned in their direction.

“Skirt around them,” said Heather.
“They might not have seen us.”

“The Capita might employ stupid men,
but not blind ones,” said Charles.

She watched one of the soldiers raise
the reins of his horse in the air and then whip them down, spurring the animal
into a gallop. The one behind him followed. As they got closer, Heather found
herself gripping the rock in her pocket and feeling parts of it flake off
against her fingers.

Charles turned his head.

“Follow my lead.”

“And what’s that going to be?”

“Follow it and you’ll see.”

The two soldiers reached them. The
one in front brought his horse to a stop. The animal wheezed, and then lowered
its head. It sniffed at a patch of weeds which poked up through the rocky
floor.

The soldier kept one hand close to
the side of his horse. Heather saw a sword hanging off it, fastened tight into
a leather holder but with the clasp left undone for easy access. For him to
have a sword, he must have been a high-ranking officer. His hair was short at
the sides but long on top, and swept back into a quiff. Something about the way
he held himself shouted out self-confidence.

The soldier behind him leaned forward
on his horse and propped his arm against its head. On his lapel, he’d sewn a
badge with a peace logo on it.

The officer spoke to them.

“The Bull,” he said, nodding at
Charles. “Word is you haven’t been to the Dome in a while. We didn’t know whether
to send out a search party, or to go to Darwin’s Bar and actually throw a
party.”

Charles nodded. “Any news in the old
onion?”

“We’re planning a raid on Kiele,”
said the soldier at the back. “The Five gave the order two days ago. All the
criminals and dissidents are getting measured for their uniforms.”

The one in front turned. He raised
his finger and pointed at him.

“I’ve told you, Greene. You don’t say
a bloody word until I tell you to.”

Heather thought of Kiele. If the
Capita were planning a raid on the town, then Max and his daughter were in
trouble. She wasn’t happy with the way Max had treated her, but she wouldn’t
wish the Capita’s anger on anyone.

The officer spoke.

“Where’s your pickaxe?” he said.

Charles reached to his back and
comically patted his coat. He turned around, feigning a look of surprise.

“I thought I felt lighter,” he said.
“Where did I put that thing? Pickaxes are so easily misplaced.”

“They say you carry it everywhere.”

Charles pointed his thumb back at
Heather.

“Lost it catching this one. Escorting
her back to the Dome now, actually.”

“What’s her crime?”

“Hiding DCs.”

The officer spat on the floor. He
fixed Heather with a look of disgust.

“We can take her if you like,” he
said. “We’ve scouted out as much as we were asked to, and I could do with going
back and getting one of Oscar’s disgusting beers. I’ll hogtie her and put her
on the back of my horse.”

“Maybe,” said Charles. “I don’t
normally like to hand over a catch. And this one’s got a bit of a bite to her.
You’d be better staying well clear.”

Heather saw what Charles was doing.
The officers knew him as a bounty hunter, so it would hardly seem natural if he
was seen travelling with some random woman. Much more fitting was the lie that
he had caught her as one of his bounties and was taking her back to the Dome.

“Well?” said the officer. “Our
scouting trip is finished, anyway. We can take her back to the Dome and you can
do whatever it is you need to do.”

Charles put his finger to his chin
and pretended to think about it. The soldier at the back adjusted the badge on
his pocket. The stitching was frayed. The officer pulled on his horse’s reins
and made it trot back a step.

“Okay,” said Charles. “That would be
great.”

Heather jerked back in shock. What the
hell was Charles playing at? She wanted to ask him what he was doing, when he
suddenly shoved her off the horse. Heather fell to the ground, slamming her
head back against the stones.

“I’m off to see my daughter,” said
Charles. “Keep an eye on this one. She’s tricky.”

“Don’t worry about us,” said the
officer.

Heather pushed a hand on the floor
and sat up. Pain throbbed in the back of her head, but she shoved it away so
that she could stare at Charles with the fire of hate burning in her eyes. She
gripped the rock in her pocket and wondered who to use it on.