The Dying & The Dead 2 (34 page)

Max ran over to them. His mask was
smeared with blood, covering the smile he’d painted on it. He held a long knife
in his hand, and for a few seconds he stood and panted. He looked at Hanks, and
then at Rushden.

“Make sure you take him alive,” he said,
nodding at the lieutenant.

Rushden turned to Hanks. He cocked an
arrow on his bow and aimed at the horse. As he was about to let it loose, the
infected leaned in to him and bit down on his hand. Rushden screamed and let
the bow fall to the floor. Baz heard a crunch as the infected chewed through
his finger bones.

Max grabbed the infected and pulled it
away from Rushden. Hanks took advantage of the confusion. He tugged sharply on
his horse’s reins, turned and then gave it a kick. The horse galloped away.
Before Rushden or Max could do anything, the lieutenant was galloping away from
Kiele.

Baz loosened the ropes around his feet.
They had been tied so tight that the circulation had been cut off, and his feet
felt numb when he tried to walk on them. He stumbled forward, putting his hands
out in front of him, and felt pain tear through him as his thumb touched the
ground.

The grass of the wasteland was discoloured
with the blood of the Capita soldiers and the Kiele townsfolk. Rushden held his
hand out in front of him, mangled and covered crimson.

Lieutenant Hanks became a spot in the
distance. With all the Capita soldiers dead and their commander gone, Baz was
alone with the Resistance fighters.

While he attended to his friend, Max had
forgotten about the infected. The monster lurched toward him, reaching out with
long fingernails and scrabbling to grab hold of his clothes. Baz pushed it so
hard that it fell to the floor. The blood rushed back to his feet, but the
sensation wasn’t quite there yet. He raised his boot up and brought it down to
the infected’s head, repeating it until the infected stopped moving. He didn’t
feel the impact as his boot crunched its skull, but he saw its brains leak out
onto the grass and knew that it was dead.

Chapter
Thirty-Six

Heather

She could never have imagined the
smell of battle; so full of sweat and blood, heavy with the sense that lives
had been lost. The wailing of the men and women around her was so desperate
that it sounded worse than the hungry moans of the infected. The ground was
littered with guards clutching open wounds and dogs lying motionless on the
gravel; infected with skulls split open and brain matter spilling through the
cracks in the bones.

It was a strain to even lift her
head. Her stomach was heavy, and she felt that if she opened her mouth, the
contents would just spill out onto the stones. She just wanted to close her
eyes.

The parts of the yard that weren’t
taken up by dead guards or a limp infected, were covered in loose gravel. There
was a white running track painted around the outside. The cabins were to her
left. The cheap wooden buildings reminded her of holidays with her parents. Her
dad worked the production line at a car manufacturing factory and her mum had
given up a glittering clothes shop career to look after Heather and her
brother, so rather than boarding a plane bound somewhere hot, her childhood
holidays took place in boggy fields, inside cabins barely big enough to sleep
them all.

Despite how much she’d hated them at
the time, she would have given anything to be there. Even stronger was the
feeling that she’d like to take Kim and Eric someday. She bet she could even
take them to the same resort she used to go to. It was called Loch-Deep. It was
a meditation retreat, but the owners would rent cabins to families to make
enough money to maintain it. The only condition was that the parents promised
to keep their kids under control and not ruin the inner calm of those who were
there to relax.

She still remembered the owner. His
name was Ryan Peat. A moustache covered his top lip, and his hair was scrunched
back into a bun on the top of his head. He always talked about peace and
mindfulness, though sometimes he scared Heather. He wore a dark expression, as
though the calmness of his face was a mask for something else.

She didn’t know where her daughter
and Eric were. Some DCs were in the yard. She saw a group cowering near a
cabin, while others lay dead on the stone. It was clear though that not all of
them were here. Some must have gotten away somehow, and if Scarsgill was right,
then Kim and Eric were on the train.

It made her chest hurt when she
thought that she’d travelled so far and had only just missed them. It was
better than the alternative, though. At least if they’d gotten away on the
train, it meant they hadn’t suffered the same fate as the rest of the people in
the yard.

As much as her body cried out for
rest, she wouldn’t get it yet. She was going to find Kim. Even if it meant
following the train tracks for mile after mile, she’d find her daughter.

She still couldn’t reconcile the idea
in her head that Charles Bull was a man with feelings and emotions, but she was
grateful to him for one thing. She realised now that he was right in everything
he said. With the world the way it was now, people who forgot their morals were
generally the ones who survived. Those who tried to keep a clear conscience
ended up like Heather.

She stood up. The train tracks
started beyond the camp. It was going to be a long journey, and she’d need a
horse and provisions. She guessed she might find food and water in one of the
red brick buildings.

Charles broke away from a
conversation with Dr. Scarsgill.

“Going somewhere?” he said.

“I’m going to find the train.”

“Good luck. Time to activate the jet
pack under that skirt of yours.”

“You’ve used that one before,” said
Heather. “It wasn’t funny last time, and I’m still not wearing a skirt.”

“Charles,” said Scarsgill.

He pointed over to the camp gates. A
company of Capita soldiers rode toward Dam Marsh on horseback. All of them had
swords hanging from sheaths on the sides of their horses. In the middle of
them, a man rode a mount that was bigger than the rest. Its saddle was painted
gold, and the reins shimmered under the sun. The rider wore a mask that didn’t
just cover his mouth and nose, but stretched over all of his face It was
painted brown, and it looked as if wrinkles had been cut into the plastic. The
cheeks were coloured red, and there was a sneering quality to its expression.

The rest of the Capita soldiers
bunched around him, seemingly so that nobody could attack from the back or
sides. The man held the reins of his horse high up in the air, curling his
fingers lightly around the leather like a rich lady holding a tea cup. She had
never seen the man before, but she guessed he was someone important.

“Marduk,” said Charles.

She’d heard the name. Everyone who
lived near the Dome knew the names of the Five. Ishkur, Nabu, Marduk, Sin and
Tammuz. Ishkur was the ruler of them, but the other four were powerful enough.

Lilly was sat beyond camp, mere
metres away from the procession of Capita horses. Charles walked over to the
body of a camp guard and pried a baton out of his hands. The end of it was
smeared with blood.

“I’ve never seen any of the Five
leave the Grand Hall,” he said. “For Marduk to be here, this must be important.
I don’t think he’d make the journey to see my delicate features.”

“They’re here for me,” said
Scarsgill. He had his hands in front of his waist, and he wrung them in
agitation. “Someone must have told them about the girl.”

“What do we do?” asked Heather.

“I can’t let Marduk take me,” said
Scarsgill. “I need to finish what I started. Your daughter is the key to
everything, Heather.” He nodded at an infected on the floor near them. “It will
be the end of them. With her, we can put a stop to the infection.”

“You’re not touching my girl. I’m leaving,”
said Heather.

Charles sighed.

“You’ll never catch the train.”

“I don’t care. I’m not staying here.”

As Marduk and his Capita escort
approached, Scarsgill paced the floor. He wrung his hands so much that the skin
had started to chafe.

“Take me with you,” he said.

“No way.”

“I know where your daughter is
headed. I told the boy where to go.”

“And where’s that?”

“To see one of my old colleagues.
Someone who can help.” There was a tremor in the doctor’s voice, and he
couldn’t help glancing at the Capita soldiers as they drew closer.

“Get hold of yourself,” said Charles.
“Who is this colleague of yours, and where is he?”

Scarsgill stopped pacing.

“His name is Rushden. He lives in
Kiele. Or he used to, anyway. I haven’t seen him in years.”

Heather couldn’t believe what she was
hearing. They’d escaped the pursuit of Capita soldiers and travelled through
the Mordeline, only to find that her daughter was gone. They walked into a war zone,
somehow survived the fighting, and then Scarsgill had hit them with this; her
daughter was headed to a town that she had not long since left.

Marduk pointed across the yard at
them. He lifted his head, and Heather felt his mask sneer at her. The Capita
guards spread out on their horses, some going left and others right until they
surrounded Heather, Charles and Scarsgill in a circle.

She looked at the train tracks beyond
camp. Kim was out there, somewhere. It made her chest ache to know that she’d
come so close to finding her, but there was some relief in knowing she was
alive.

The hooves of Marduk’s horse clomped
toward them, crushing the gravel beneath its muscled legs. Marduk drew the
horse to a halt. The animal stomped down on a stone and kicked dusty mist into
the air.

Charles looked at her.

“Lilly’s over there,” he said. “I
need to get to her.”

Heather nodded.

“And Kim’s out there, too.”

He gave her a look, and for the first
time since she had met the man, she felt an affinity with him. They shared a
mutual ground, but Charles stood in the shadow and she in the light, and she
couldn’t help feeling that he was dragging her into the darkness. She knew that
if she was ever going to find her daughter, she would have to embrace it.

Marduk said something, but she didn’t
listen. She stared into the bounty hunter’s eyes and for the first time, she
saw that he was worried.

“Marduk’s going to want to kill me,”
he said. “And if that happens, you’ll never find your daughter. So what I need
you to do is-”

“Follow your lead?” asked Heather.

Charles nodded.

This time, she knew that she would.
The old Heather would have been scared. She would have suspected lies and
betrayal. The new version didn’t care, because this one knew exactly what she
needed to do to get her daughter back.

She ignored Marduk’s shadowy figure
in front of her and turned her head and stared at the train tracks. They could
spread across the Mainland for miles, for all she cared, because there was only
one burning desire in her mind. To get away from the camp and follow them.

This isn’t the end
, she vowed.

Camp Dam Marsh had been the final
destination for so many. The yard was littered with bodies, some who had been
brought here as prisoners, and others who came to work, scared that if they
refused the Capita would banish them from its safe zones. It had been the end
for so many people, but for Heather, it was the beginning.