The Dying & The Dead 2 (21 page)

He held his arm out for the canteen
again. Ed placed it in his hands. Cillian shook the metal container and found
that it was empty. He let it drop to the floor, and then winced.

“Then what?” said Ed.

“It didn’t attack. Just craned its
neck to one side, like it was interested in me or something. It got to its
knees and crawled up next to me, and it lifted its head to mine and whispered
to me.”

The Savage nearly fell over in shock.

“It
spoke
to you?”

Cillian nodded. Ed didn’t think his
face could have gotten any paler, but now there wasn’t a trace of colour left
in his skin.

“He spoke to me, but the words didn’t
make any sense. And that’s not all. His face…”

He spluttered, and blood spat out
from his lips and onto this chin.

“He’s got the face of a man,” he
continued. “It must have lain next to me for an hour. I didn’t dare move. I was
so scared I wanted to piss myself, but I didn’t in case it got mad. And then it
looked at me, and suddenly it turned. It got a mean look on its face. It
started making these horrible wailing sounds, like it was in pain or something.
It snarled at me, and then it pounced on my chest and did this.”

“And then what?” said The Savage.

Cillian looked on the point of
passing out. His wound looked so raw that even Ed felt it sting. The Savage
tugged on his sleeve.

“Then what, Cillian? Where did it
go?”

“Come on,” said Ed. “Leave him be.”

The Savage rounded on him. “What the
hell are you talking about, Ed? Look what it did to him. It’ll be us next, and
you want me to leave it be?”

Cillian blinked. He stretched out and
pointed to a green rucksack at the side of the hut. Ed picked it up and handed
it to him.

“No, you look inside,” said Cillian.
“I can’t sit up.”

Ed rummaged opened the rucksack. It
was completely empty except for a scrap of paper. He took it out and unfolded
it. It was a map with lots of different symbols drawn on it.

“What do you want us to do, Cillian?”
said Bethelyn.

He coughed. It sounded like he was
choking, but then he spoke.

“There’s nothing you can do.”

He clenched his teeth together as
pain ripped through him. The stench came back, but this time Ed breathed
through it. Cillian’s nose must have become numb to the smell, but surely even
he knew there was no way he was leaving the hut. Someone had to do the right
thing.

“There
is
something we can do,”
said Ed.

Cillian stared deep into his eyes and
Ed knew that he understood. Ed could hardly believe that he had suggested it.
It showed how much he’d changed. He’d been sheltered in Golgoth while the
outbreak ripped through the Mainland, and he’d never had to make tough
decisions. He couldn’t run from them now, though. He was going to have to make
some difficult calls and do unpleasant things, and this was one of them.

“Are you crazy?” said The Savage. “We
haven’t seen anyone for days. That thing is out there watching us, and this guy
has actually been up close with it.”

Ed looked deep into Cillian’s eyes.

“Do you want me to do this?” he asked.

Cillian nodded. He spat blood out of
his mouth, and the dribbles landed on his chest. He closed his eyes and
clenched his fists as his body racked with pain.

“Just do one thing,” he said. “If you
see Rex, tell him I nearly did it.”

“Nearly did what?” said The Savage.

“I nearly caught the bastard.”

“Nearly caught it? What the hell are
you saying? Look at yo-“

Ed held his hand up. “Give it a
rest.”

Was he going to do this? Had he really
come this far? Deep down he knew he was doing the right thing. It would have
been wrong of them to keep this man in agony. He couldn’t help but think about
James, and what his opinion would be. His brother was a romantic above all
else, and he had a deep sense of empathy. What would he say if he saw Ed now?

Ed took off his coat. He wrapped it
into a bundle and held it in his hands. Bethelyn sat next to him, silent. The
Savage got up and huffed, and then left the hut.

“Bye, Cillian,” said Ed.

He put the bundle over Cillian’s face
and pressed down with all his weight. After a few seconds, Cillian struggled.
His survival instincts kicked in and seemed to override the pain, and he
thrashed as Ed smothered the life out of him. He gripped Ed’s arms and tried to
pull him away. Ed kept up the pressure until Cillian’s arms fell limp.

Ed sat back and caught his breath. He
stood up and walked out of the hut. The evening air was stuffy, but he was cold
inside. His stomach felt as if it had turned to water. There was a hand on his
shoulder, and when he turned, he saw Bethelyn.

“You did a good thing,” she said.

The Savage was sat on the ground with
Cillian’s map in front of him. He looked up at the two of them, and for the
first time in hours, his eyes looked alive.

“You need to see this,” he said.

Chapter
Twenty-Two

Ed

They spread the map in front of them.
Rain pattered down through the bare branches of the tree above, and damp spots
blotched the paper. It looked like an ordinance survey map of the area, except
that Cillian had marked certain spots in black pen. Crosses meant traps, and
he’d drawn an ‘R’ wherever he had spotted Ripeech.

“Give us some cover, Ed,” said The
Savage, as rain fell on them.

Ed held his coat in his hands. It was
covered in blood from the attack on Golgoth, and mud from travelling through Loch-Deep.
Since using it to put an end to Cillian’s suffering, he hadn’t been able to
bring himself to wear it.

He reached up to a branch of the tree
and spread the coat across it to form a crude roof. It was hardly snug, but it
stopped the map getting wet.

“Is it useful?” said Bethelyn. She
pulled her hood over her hair. It had started to frizz as it got wet. When it
was covered, all Ed could see was her pointy nose.

The Savage put his hand down on a
corner of the map to stop the breeze taking it.

“You can see from the number of ‘R’s
in this area,” he said, and pointed to the map, “that Ripeech likes to stalk
one place. Seems he’s not a fan of change.”

“So we can avoid it, right?” said Ed.

The Savage shook his head.
“Unfortunately, Wetgills, that’s exactly where we need to go. Straight through
Ripeech’s hunting ground.”

Bethelyn kneeled on the floor. The
mud spread a damp patch on her knees.

“What about the crosses? Those are
Cillian’s traps, so they should help us.”

“Depends what he used,” said Ed.

The Savage studied the map. “I’m no
hunter, but he must have used bear traps, like he said, and…other stuff like
that.”

“Are you sure you’re not a hunter?”
said Ed sarcastically.

The Savage looked at the map. “We
have to tread carefully.”

Bethelyn looked around her. She
shivered.

“It’s getting closer. Or he’s getting
closer. I can feel it. The air seems different here. It stinks, for one. Like
when Argyle started dumping waste from the butcher’s shop in a field on
Golgoth. Remember that, Ed?”

He remembered it too well. The island
had stunk of rotting meat for days, and nobody knew where it was coming from.
At first, an old man named Gordon Rigby had blamed Ed and his brother James. ‘
This
is just the sort of stunt they'd pull for a laugh
,’ he said.  Then one
night, Constable Leland had seen Argyle dumping cow offcuts near Farmer Jones’s
carrot field. Neither Ed nor James ever got an apology.

“Ripeech doesn’t keep a clean house,”
said The Savage. “How many of his presents have we found just this morning?
That’s why it stinks so much around here.”

It was hard to walk even twenty feet through
Loch-Deep without coming across the half-eaten carcass of a rabbit or deer.
There was no doubt now that they were all Ripeech’s doing. Ed wondered why he
killed the animals, took a few bites, and then just left them to die. It was as
if he toyed with them, or grew bored after killing them.

He thought about what Cillian said.
How Ripeech had crawled into his hut and laid next to him, whispering to him in
a language that was decidedly un-animal like.
What the hell was this thing?

The Savage rolled up the map. He got
to his feet, and then stretched his legs.

“Nothing for it,” he said. “No
detours, no shortcuts. No family-friendly footpaths. We need to walk through
Ripeech’s den.”

~

They came to a part of the plains
where the pine trees grouped together. A stone path wound through, and there
were several log cabins all close to each other. There were little metal lights
fixed at the sides of the path. Once they would have provided welcome
illumination in the shadow-filled trail, but it was a while since they'd worked.
Now the fixtures had become home to the spiders that spun webs across the
glass.

At the far end, there was a building
the size of a warehouse. A white banner hung from the side of it, though one of
the nails had come loose and the fabric flapped against the brickwork. The
banner read ‘Welcome to Loch-Deep Meditation Retreat. Find Your Inner Calm.’

Ed heard a shrill hissing sound
carried by the wind. He looked around and saw that some infected were emerging
from behind the cabins and trees, and slowly making their way to them.

Their skin was grey and marked with
bites and blood. Some wore flannel shirts stained claret, while others were
naked. One of them wore nothing but a pair of gym shorts, and he stumbled
forward, dragging his leg behind him. His lower leg was broken, and a jagged
bone stuck out from his shin.

Ed felt a weight pressing on his
chest. Since the encounter with the infected at the cabin, he carried a thick
log with him. It wasn’t sharp enough to pierce a skull, but he preferred the
idea of it to just using his fists.

“See them?” he said.

“Yeah,” answered The Savage in a
clipped voice.

The infected approached them from all
sides. The closest was twenty metres away. It stopped as it approached. It
craned its head to the side at an angle, and it snarled. As it got closer, Ed
gripped the log in his hands. When it was less than ten feet away, he saw that
the infected was wearing a necklace with a peace logo fastened to it.

The Savage stepped forward. He held
his penknife in his hand and pushed the lever to show the blade.

“Here, boy,” he said.

As the infected strained for him, The
Savage gripped it by the head, lined up his knife and plunged the bladed
through its temple. He released his hold and let it fall to the ground.

The groaning grew around them until
it drowned out the noise of the wind. Ed gazed from one side to the other. His
skin tingled as the infected came at them from all angles. The stench of rot
hung heavy in the air.

As the infected attacked them, The
Savage dispatched them with his pen knife. Ed swung his log at anything that
approached. He hit one of them so hard that it fell to the floor, and Ed raised
his boot over its head. He looked down at it, but something held him back. He
couldn’t bring himself to squash its skull.

“Jesus Christ, Ed,” said Bethelyn. An
infected strained for her. She ducked under its reach, and ran over to Ed. She
raised her foot and brought it down on the infected on the ground. He heard a
crack as its skull caved in under the weight of her boot.

The Savage grunted. One infected
swiped at him, while the other approached him from behind, lips curled up to
show yellow canine teeth. Ed reached him in time to push the infected away. He
hooked his foot behind it and shoved it to the ground. This time he took a deep
breath and brought his foot down, and he felt bones crunch underneath his boot.
His stomach rolled.

The Savage swung his penknife around
and stabbed through the brain of the infected woman in front of him. She gave a
pitiful cry and sank down on the mud.

Bethelyn screamed. Ed turned just in
time to see an infected man wearing a striped shirt sink its teeth into her shoulder,
just above the collarbone. Ed ran over and pulled it back by the hair. Bethelyn
shouted in pain. Ed raised his log, but Bethelyn put her hand out and caught
his.

“He’s mine,” she said.

She took hold of the infected’s hair
and pulled it down to the ground. Before it could get up, she brought down her
boot and squashed its head into the floor. The infected went limp, but Bethelyn
brought her foot down again and again, panting each time her boot crushed bone.
Her face grew red, and blood and skull fragments soiled the ground.

Ed walked over and put his hand on
her uninjured shoulder. She shrugged him off and then looked at him, face
twisted in rage. It was as if something had awakened in her; energy that had
been missing since they had left Golgoth.

The Savage stood over the body of an
infected. He gave it a nudge with his foot to see if it was going to move.
Satisfied, he turned to Ed and Bethelyn. When he saw her wound, he almost
winced.

“That looks nasty,” he said.

Bethelyn’s chest shook with each
breath. She put her hand to her shoulder and touched it. She winced. Her
fingertips were stained red.

“Don’t worry,” said The Savage. “You
can’t get infected.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t catch
something. I need antibiotics. I was bitten back on Golgoth, too. It’s a wonder
I haven’t caught anything yet.”

A roar broke through the air. It was
so loud that it seemed to shake the branches of the trees. A sheet of cold
settled over Ed. A few seconds of silence passed, and then they heard it again.
It was so loud that it could have come from just beyond them.

“That’s our cue to leave,” said The
Savage.

“We’re going nowhere until we get
something for her shoulder.”

The Savage looked around him as if he
expected something to leap out from behind a tree.

“I told you,” he said. “You two are
immune. That means their bites won’t affect you.”

Ed pointed at one of the infected on
the floor. Bethelyn’s footwork had pulverised it so much that the ground was covered
by brain tissue and jagged pieces of skull.

“Have you seen their mouths? Who
knows what kind of bacteria their mouths are crawling with? They aren’t exactly
examples of oral health.”

Bethelyn’s face drained of colour.
She touched her wound again and grimaced.

“I watched a documentary once on Komodo
dragons. Their mouths are so loaded with bacteria that one bite kills you. I
need to get something for this.”

The Savage paced in front of them.
“Didn’t you just hear that?” he said. “I’m not sitting around and waiting for
Ripeech to come and whisper his sweet nothings. Bite or not, we’re going.”

“You selfish bastard,” said Ed.
“After everything we’ve done for you.”

“Everything you’ve done for me? Ha.”

Ed’s cheeks started to burn. “Giving
my blood isn’t enough for you?”

Irritation showed in the creases of The
Savage’s face. “Let me tell you something -”

Ed interrupted him. He realised that
his hands were clenched into fists.

“No. Let me tell
you
something. You helped us get away from Golgoth, but let’s not forget what you
did there. Think that playing nice for a while makes it okay? You’re a monster.
The sooner we leave this place, the better. When we get out of Loch-Deep, we’re
done. I’m going to find James and then for all I care, you can die in a ditch.”

The Savage walked up to him and prodded
his chest. Ed had to stop himself from reacting, but the rage strained to get
free.

“Let me tell you something about
James,” The Savage spat. “You’re going to be disappointed when you finally meet
this big brother of yours. If you think I’m bad, wait until you find out what
precious James has done. You’re going to wish you never found him.”

“Don’t talk about my brother like
that.”

The Savage prodded him again. Ed’s
face felt on fire.

“Your brother is scum,” he said. “But
don’t worry. You’ll find out.”

He dimly heard Bethelyn say his name,
but the anger rose up and he felt his temples pound. His breaths came slow, and
he gritted his teeth. Before he could even stop himself, he swung a punch at The
Savage.