The Dying & The Dead 2 (31 page)

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Fuck off.”

“Do you want to get out of here?”

“I’ll get out. Don’t you worry about
that.”

Baz sighed.

“Just tell me your name.”

“Max.”

“And the other guy?”

“Mary fucking Poppins,” said Ginger
Hair. He shook the bars again.

“Not a good answer,” said Baz.

“I couldn’t care less.”

“I’m going to let you out, Mary
Poppins,” said Baz. “But you need to be quiet. There’s a guy on watch outside,
but he won’t be much trouble. It’ll be tougher getting out of Kiele, but I
figure if we can put enough miles behind us, we’ll get to the Dome ahead of
them.”

Max stood back in surprise.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m going to get you out
of here and to the Dome where you can actually do something.”

“And what do you want out of this?”

Baz thought about explaining, but
time wasn’t his friend.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

He unlocked the cells. Max walked out
slowly, never taking his eyes off Baz. The other man refused to back away from
the bars.

“Just settle down, Rushden,” said
Max.

Baz looked at Max.

“Are you going to control your
friend?”

“Friend isn’t the right word for him.”

“I’m not messing about here. We don’t
have long. Are you going to keep him under control?”

Max nodded.

“Okay,” said Baz, putting the key in
the next cell lock. “I know how this all looks. How you must be feeling. Ignore
the Capita uniform for a second, yeah? There’s something we can do.”

He meant it, too. The plan was vague,
but it was there, a glimmer of light in what had become a tunnel of darkness.
As Tammuz he’d lost himself in a maze, but he finally saw a way out. If they
could just get back to the Dome, he could get the Resistance men into the Grand
Hall. He didn’t know what they’d do from there, but somehow it seemed right.
The Five had to be stopped.

The lock clicked as he turned the
key. He pulled back the cell door and then stepped back warily, never moving
his gaze away from Rushden. The ginger-haired man looked like he could rugby
tackle a bear, and Baz knew that he couldn’t turn his back on him.

“What’s your angle in this?” said
Rushden, eyeing Baz’s Capita uniform. “What game are you playing?”

“It’s no game.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I just want to put things right,”
said Baz.

Something cracked down on the back of
his head. Dark spots filled his vision, and before he could even put out a
hand, he fell against the floor. His thoughts swam through his mind in a
torrent, and he heard a ringing in his ears. He looked up to see the two men
above him, dim figures in a scene that was fading around him.

“Wrong answer,” he heard Max say.

Chapter
Thirty-Three

Eric

There was so much noise around him
that he couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts were drowned out by the barking of
dogs as they circled the guards, the sound getting more desperate as their
excitement grew. Guards around him yelled, and Eric heard the surprise in their
voices, as if they couldn’t believe the DCs would have the audacity to try to
escape. Infected gurgled as they looked at the people around them, spoiled for
choice in a yard full of Capita guards and the immune.

As Eric made his way through the yard
to the train, he saw a guard on the floor. His baton was six feet out of reach,
and two dogs advanced on him. Their heads were low, and throaty growls warned
that they were not playing. At some point the dogs would have been trained to
obey anyone wearing a Capita uniform, but amidst the chaos the animals were
attacking anyone.

Kim and the others had gone ahead of
Eric for the train. With Marta missing, there was nobody who could drive it,
but he didn’t have the time to look for her. The guards were fighting a battle
on three fronts now, using their knives and batons against the dogs, the immune,
and the infected. Soon enough they would reclaim control of the camp, and he
didn’t want to be here when they did.

The dogs advanced on the guard. The
man looked up at Eric pleadingly, as if in that second he was asking for
forgiveness for everything he had done. Eric stopped. It came from nowhere, but
he felt a pity for this man that he hadn’t even felt for Martin Wrench. He had
to bury the feeling and remember who the man worked for, and how many DCs had died
in camp. He deserved nothing.

As the dogs took more steps forward,
noses sniffing the ground and teeth showing with each growl, he heard the crack
of a rifle. One of the dogs collapsed to the floor with blood streaming from a
wound in its head. The other animal jerked back and looked around. Another
crack, and this one fell to the floor with a hole in its back. It whimpered,
and then a second bullet put it out of its misery.

The men in the watchtowers were
burning through the camp’s supply of ammunition as they shot bullets from up
high. Every few seconds there was a bang or a crack, and another dog or
infected would drop. One guard was caught by friendly fire, and he dropped his
baton as a bullet drilled into his bicep.

It reminded Eric of when Dale had
brought home some fireworks that he’d found in a nearby town. That night he’d set
them off, and they watched red sparkles fizz in the air and then pop. Luna
complained that the noise hurt her ears. Mum called Dale a romantic idiot and
said they could have one last firework and then it was time to stop.

It was different today; instead of
blue crackles and yellow streams of light, the sky was getting heavy with
darkness as the afternoon faded, and the only illumination were the dim stars
that Eric knew were millions of light years away and were probably already dead.

He reached the gates that led to the
lab, and beyond it, the train. The nearer he got the more his heart thumped,
and he couldn’t believe that he was so close to escaping. He stopped when he heard
a man shout out nearby.

It was a DC man with two children beside
him, each one holding one of his hands. The man had thick eyebrows blacker than
oil, and a beard that reached all around his face and covered his neck. Eric
recognised the children, but he’d never spoken to them. He knew that the boy
was forever trying to get people to play chase with him, but the adults were
too busy and the children were too weak.

A guard approached them. His face and
neck were a sickly white. He looked like a man he, Mum and Luna met on the road
once. The man asked Mum if she ‘
had anything on her’
and offered all his
food and clothes. Mum said ‘
Like what?’
and the man pointed to his nose
and sniffed. Eric remembered thinking how ill he looked.

A Capita guard walked toward the man
and the children. He held a long knife that was unlike anything the guards
usually carried. The handle was green and there were spaces gouged into it for
his fingers, and the blade was jagged and blunt. There was a strange look in
his eyes, as though he was hungry for something. Eric knew how well the guards
ate, so he couldn’t have needed food.

“You’re not getting anywhere near them,”
said the man.

The guard laughed. He held his knife
up, as if to remind them that he had it.

Eric watched as an infected walked up
behind the guard. He wondered if he should say something, but he decided not
to. He waited just long enough to see the infected grab the guard by the
shoulders, and then he turned his back on him.

He was about to run when the lab door
opened twenty feet in front of him. A man stepped out. As soon as he moved out
of the dark doorway, Eric saw that it was Dr. Scarsgill. His face was drained
of colour, and a lump stuck out on his forehand from where he had hit the floor
after Eric injected him.

Scarsgill walked out onto the yard.
He saw Eric and he stopped and stared at him. He couldn’t stand straight,
swaying as though the breeze was blowing him.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,
Eric,” he said.

“I’m not letting you touch my
sister.”

“This isn’t for fun. I know some of
the sick bastards here and what they do. I don’t really have a choice in the
matter; the Capita sends who it sends. But you and your sister are worth more
to me than that. You could mean so much to the whole of the Mainland. Come with
me, Eric. Bring your sister and let me help everyone.”

Eric shook his head. He knew he
couldn’t trust Scarsgill, same as he couldn’t trust the other adults. Even
Marta had let him down. He knew that she’d never actually agreed to help, but
going missing at the exact time he needed her felt like a betrayal.

Scarsgill walked toward him. Eric
looked to his right. The infected was gone now, having finished with the guard
and decided to chase the DC man and the two children. Eric walked over to the
guard and picked up his knife. He expected the man to open his eyes and then
give a groan, filled with hunger only the infection could give.

There was a rumbling noise. He looked
around him, but couldn’t see anything making it. Then a whistle cut through the
air and covered the entire camp. It came from the train. Eric saw that beyond
the lab, steam drifted from the top of the vehicle.

Someone had started the train. They’d
worked out how to switch on the engine, and they were going to leave him
behind.

He patted his pocket and heard it
rattle. He had the keys with him, so how had they done it? Unless Goral’s keys
weren’t for the train.

“I need to go now,” he told the
doctor.

For a few seconds they just stared at
each other. Scarsgill was weak, and even though the knife in Eric’s hands felt too
heavy for him to use properly, Eric knew he had the advantage. He didn’t know
what the doctor was going to do. Was he that desperate to capture Eric that he
was willing to die?

Moans came from behind him. The
infected walked across camp, having killed every guard and DC that they could
reach. The rest of the DCs were on the train, Eric knew, but he wondered how
many had made it.

He looked at the doctor. He didn’t
want to, but he knew he was going to have to kill him. He gripped the knife in
his hand and prepared to charge.

Scarsgill held up his hands. He had
the sagging shoulders of a man with no fight left in him.

“Just promise me one thing,” he said.

Adrenaline drenched Eric’s veins. He heard
the infected trailing their feet across the gravel behind him. In front, reams
of smoke curled into the air. Eric ran his free hand through his hair and felt
sweat coat his palm.

The doctor sighed. “If you make it
far enough across the Mainland, go and see my colleague. I mean it, Eric, the
cure is in your blood. You and your sister.”

“She’s not my real sister, you know.”

Scarsgill didn’t say anything for a
minute, as if he was processing the information.

“Then the girl is more important than
you can imagine. Go and see my colleague. He lives in a town called Kiele. His
name is Dr. Rushden.”

Scarsgill turned and walked away. He
went into his lab and shut the door behind him. Eric couldn’t believe it had
been that easy. Perhaps the doctor was telling the truth, and that all he was
interested in was helping the people of the Mainland. Whatever the reason for
leaving him alone was, he would think about it later.

When Eric finally got to the train he
found Kim stood outside it. Smoke chuffed up into the sky and hung above them
like a cloud, and the roar of the engine was so loud that it was hard to talk.
The train was three carriages long and there was a section at the front for the
driver. Something had once been painted on the sides of it, but the Capita had
chipped it away to show the bare metal.

Eric was about to say something, when
Kim stepped forward and hugged him. When they parted, Eric felt warm inside.
Then he heard the rasping of the infected coming from camp, and he became aware
of the hour glass over his head and the sand draining away.

“Who started the train?”

“Go see for yourself,” said Kim.

He walked to the front and opened the
driver’s door. He climbed the steps and was about to step in. Marta Vitch was
sat in the driver’s seat. She had blood all over her chin and cheeks, and there
was a bulge the size of an apple above her nose. When she saw him, she nodded.

Across from her, tied to a chair in
the corner, was Goral Vitch. The old man sat calmly, as if he was ready for a
pleasant afternoon trip. Despite knowing the ropes had bound Goral to the
chair, Eric felt ice run through him.

“There will be time for stories later,”
said Marta. “You need to get into one of the carriages and calm everyone down.
We will go as soon as the engine is ready.”

He climbed outside. The sky had
darkened so that it looked like a vat of oil. Kim stood outside one of the
carriages with a throng of DCs around her. He could see that they were firing
questions quicker than she could answer, and some of the adults towered over
her.

“
Where are we going? Do you even
know?”

“What will we eat?”

“Who’s the old woman driving the
train?”

Eric felt mad. Even after everything
that he and Kim had done, they didn’t get any thanks. Instead the adults leaned
over Kim and shouted at her. As soon as they had gotten far enough away on the
train, he was done, he decided. He and Kim would just leave the rest of them and
go somewhere quiet and safe. Eventually, he’d find Mum and Luna, and then
they’d search for Heather.

A man stood over Kim and pointed his
finger at her. He was about to ask a question when a bullet ripped through his
head. Blood splashed all over Kim’s face and covered her skin in crimson dots.
The man slumped onto her and knocked her to the ground.

Seconds later the air was filled with
the cracking of gunfire. A unit of guards stood near the lab. They lined up in
file and held automatic rifles at chest height, resting the butt against their
bodies and aiming down the sights.

This was the final plan, Eric
realised. The last contingency that the Capita had for Camp Dam Marsh. Even
though the infected crept through the yard toward them, the guards only cared about
the DCs. They obviously had orders that if the camp fell, then they had to kill
as many as possible.

The men and women outside the
carriage started to scream as bullets ripped through their clothes and into
their flesh. Eric watched as they fell, most not even putting their arms out to
stop their faces hitting the floor. Some went limp so suddenly it was as if an
off switch had been flipped.