The Dying & The Dead 2 (7 page)

She had no desire to speak to the bounty
hunter, but she needed something to take her mind off the screams that replayed
in her head on a loop. They had stopped now, maybe because Wes had passed out
during torture, but Heather was left with the ghost of his cries.

“The way they’re doing it is wrong. I
don’t know how Max stands for it,” she said.

“Don’t you understand?” said Charles.
“Your friend is as much a part of it as this delightful Rushden fella. Morality
doesn’t exist. You can’t dig in the ground and pull up a fresh bulb of ethics.
It’s something a clever man with horn-rimmed glasses made up so that he could
impress his other academic pals. The world doesn’t give a shit how shiny your
code of conduct is.”

“That’s not true. Morality evolved
through time. We learned it so that we could all live together without killing
each other.”

“And look how that turned out. One
little virus floating in the breeze, and soon morality is a memory and all
people can think about is tearing each other apart. If you want to get your
daughter back, you’ll have to change, Heather. The Capita aren’t just going to
hand her to you. You need to take them by the balls and then squeeze them until
they pop.”

“I’d rip my own face off for that girl,
but I’m not becoming like you.”

Charles settled down on his bed. Heather
heard it groan under his weight. “I’m not so bad. I have the same motivations
as you.”

“And what’s that?”

“Lilly. My daughter.”

Heather heard footsteps from beyond the
room, but nobody walked in.

“You’ve got a daughter, but you still
didn’t give a shit about taking mine away? What did you think about when you
handed Kim and Eric over to the Capita? Did any emotions enter that thick head
of yours when the train took them to God-knows-where?”

“They’re going to Camp Dam Marsh.”

“Answer the question,” said Heather.

“Feelings don’t put food in my belly.
Emotions are a pretty shitty currency. Everyone has them, but nobody can spend
them.”

The door at the end of the room opened.
A man stepped out. He had shaggy hair and squinting eyes, as if his forehead
was pressing down on them and forcing them to close. In one hand he held a
metal wrench, and in the other he gripped a ring of keys. He walked past the ‘
Think
18’
poster and gave it a tap.

“Hello again,” he told the girl on the
poster.

Heather heard Charles get to his feet.
She walked over to the bars in her own cell and gripped them. The man looked at
her, and then struck the metal with his wrench. The clang threatened to
reignite the headache in Heather’s temples. He turned, walked over to Charles’s
cell and stood in front of it.

“Don’t get excited, big man,” he told
Charles. “It’s not feeding time.” He held up his wrench. “I’m going to unlock
your cell now. You might have noticed I have a big bloody wrench, and it would
hurt quite a bit if I needed to whack you across the skull with it. So be a
nice boy and follow me.”

“Where are you taking him?” said
Heather.

“You’ll know the answer to that when you
hear him screaming,” said the man. He looked at Charles. “You might be big, but
Rushden will still break you.”

Part of her took satisfaction in the
fact that Charles would soon be in the room beyond them, strapped to a chair
while Rushden stuck things down his fingernails. The place inside her where pity
was stored was empty, used up while brooding about her daughter. If it wasn’t
for the knowledge that she would be next, she could have smiled.

The man unlocked Charles’s cell. He
opened the metal door and then stood back, twisting the wrench in his hand. He
seemed on edge, as if he expected the bounty hunter to leap at him.

Charles stepped out of the cell. Heather
had never seen him looking so compliant.

“Which way is the gents’?” he said.

The guard shook his head. “There’s a
toilet in your cell.”

“There is,” answered Charles. “But it’s
broken.”

Before the guard could react, Charles
reached to his left and swung the metal lid from his cell toilet at the guard.
There was a cracking sound as it connected with his right cheek, and the man
fell back against the wall. Charles stepped forward out of his cell. He lifted
his arms in the air and had a stretch. Then he kicked the guard in the face
with his boot, smashing the man’s nose and sending a spray of blood onto the
floor.

Charles reached down and took the keys
from the guard’s hands. As he straightened up, the guard moved. With blood
pouring from his nose, he summoned the last of his energy and caught the bounty
hunter unaware with a punch.

The keys spilled from Charles’s hand and
landed next to Heather’s cell. She strained through the bars to reach them,
ignoring the pain as the metal dug into her shoulder.

Charles recovered from the punch. He
gripped the guard by the throat and lifted him to his feet. He hit him in the
stomach, and the guard bent over, wheezing. Charles turned him around to face
the wall. He gripped the back of his head and then slammed his nose into the
brickwork again and again until he went limp. Blood covered the face of the
girl in the ‘
Think 18’
poster.

With shaking hands, Heather unlocked her
cell. She stepped out and picked up the guard’s wrench.  There were shouts from
outside the room, and footsteps moved toward them.

Charles picked up the guard and carried
him into his cell. While Charles placed the guard on the bed, Heather walked to
his cell door and slammed it shut. She put the key in the lock and turned it.

Charles spun around. He launched at the
bars like a tiger, straining at her through the gaps. Heather stepped back to
avoid his grip. He pounded against the metal.

“Let me out,” he said. His face was a
snarl.

“Why the hell would I do that?” said Heather.

She turned to walk away.

“For your daughter,” said Charles. “I
can take you to her. I know where she is.”

“So do I. Camp Dam Marsh. I’ll follow
the train tracks.”

Charles smiled. “A great plan. And when
you follow them and have to pass through Mordeline, what then?”

“Where the hell is Mordeline?”

The sounds of boots running across the
floor came from outside the room.

“A place you have to pass through to get
to the camp. The Capita filled it to the gills with infected to keep people
away from Dam Marsh. Walk through it yourself. It’ll be ten minutes before
you’re on the floor screaming while the infected dig through your insides to
find your liver. But I know a way through. If you want to see your daughter,
you better put that key in the lock, turn it, and let Charles breathe a little
air.”

The last thing she wanted to do was free
a man like him. It was like taking a cobra out of a tank and putting it next to
your bare feet. What choice did she really have, though? She couldn’t trust
Charles about this Mordeline place, but if she chose to ignore him and then
found out it was true, what then?

The footsteps outside the room grew
louder.

Heather sighed. She gripped the keys and
moved toward Charles’s cell.

“There’s a good girl,” he said.

Chapter
Seven

Ed

He wasn’t a thief, and that’s why he
felt guilty for taking it. Ed put his hand into his pocket and touched the
metal links of the watch. When The Savage had thrown the piece of jewellery back
on the floor, Ed picked it up. He read the inscription on the back.
To my
wonderful husband, love KC
. He felt bad for the joke he had made earlier,
despite the good intentions behind it, and he owed the previous owner some
respect.

Twisting the watch in fingers, he ran
his thumb over the words on the back and felt the grooves they made in the
metal. It didn’t seem right that something like this should be left on the
ground. Once, probably before the outbreak, someone had put thought into having
this done. They’d taken their feelings and had them gouged into the steel. Ed
would keep it because KC and her wonderful husband deserved to be remembered.

The Savage walked in front of them.
He never moved in a straight line, always darting from side to side. He bent to
the ground to inspect anything he thought was suspicious, and at other times he
put his hand to his head and stared into the distance. He was like a puppy that
had caught onto a scent but became distracted as soon as he got a whiff of
something else.

Ed made sure to stay close to
Bethelyn. The further into Loch-Deep he got, the more he felt like he needed
someone near him. Twigs stuck out from spindly limbs on the trees. Every so
often they’d come across paths dug into the dirt, but they all ended abruptly
as if they had been made to trick someone into following them. He walked close
to Bethelyn’s shoulder.

If anyone had asked he would have
said he was doing it for her, to make sure she was okay. Now that they had
entered the forest and the trees had closed around them, Ed had the
overwhelming sensation that something wasn’t right.

Small lines of light beamed down
through the tops of the trees, but it wasn’t enough to rid the woodlands of a
sense of darkness. What little light did illuminate the forest seemed like it
was running through a filter, and it made the air look like it was tinted pale
green. Vines and ivy twisted along the floor and hooked over their feet. All
around them twigs cracked and the ground crunched as small animals scurried
away. He smelled the musky scent of the mud and the aroma of sodden pine.

The Savage stopped walking. Ahead of
them, someone had carved a face into the trunk of a pine tree. It was the face
of a man, but his features were exaggerated. His lips had swelled up until they
almost covered his chin, and there was a sad look in his eyes. He seemed to
look out onto the forest, as though it was his job to watch over it and he did
it with a sense of misery.

Across from it, a sign post stuck out
from the dirt. The Savage walked closer. He started to sweep at the ground
around the sign, kicking the mud and twigs to one side.

“What’s that?” said Ed.

“A path.”

Hidden under the spread of the forest
was a stone pathway, but it had been buried through years without use. Ed looked
at the sign. The metal had started to rust, and crusty white bird droppings
stained the front. On the sign, there was a symbol. A large red triangle, with
another small blue triangle within it. Below it were the letters ‘LD.’

“Well folks,” said The Savage, “we’re
definitely in Loch-Deep.”

“And what does that mean?” said
Bethelyn.

“It means you better match my pace.
You and Wetgills. Stop slowing me down.”

“You’re the one who stopped,” said
Ed.

They carried on through the forest.
From the outside, where they had found the severed arm, the woodland hadn’t
looked so large. Once they were inside it seemed to spread out into impossible
proportions, and Ed wondered if they’d ever get out of there. It was like a
maze that grew and twisted around them, as if some mad creator watched from
above and shaped it as they walked through. There was nothing like this back on
Golgoth, and he was once again left feeling that he knew nothing of the world.

The Savage had seen more of the
Mainland than Ed ever could have hoped to. He’d experienced it both pre and
post outbreak. Where Ed had gotten his image of the Mainland from television
and the occasional newspaper, The Savage had a life here. He’d seen everything
fall.

“What’s your name?” he asked The
Savage.

“The Savage.”

Bethelyn sighed. “Your mum and dad
must have had fun with the birth certificate,” she said.

“Ok, fine. Call me Sav.”

A string of ivy hooked around Ed’s
boot and almost tripped him. He pulled his foot back and then stepped over it.
A bird screeched somewhere deeper in the forest.

“That’s not your real name,” said Ed.

The Savage stopped. He turned to face
them, and there was a look on his face that was different from the usual
mockery and insults. For the first time, he looked mad. He lowered his tone.

“You don’t get to know my real name.
Got that? Ask again and I’ll leave you here to die.”

“I bet it’s Malcolm or something like
that,” said Bethelyn.

The Savage gave her a stern glare.
“You’ve perked up, then. How’s your daughter?”

The words dropped on them like a
sheet of cold. Ed saw Bethelyn’s hands tighten up into fists, and he sensed a
tension in her that was seconds away from snapping. He put his hand on her
shoulder. She shrugged him off, and took a step to the side.

“Let’s cool off a little,” said Ed.

“Then don’t ask my name.”

Bethelyn took a deep breath. Her face
was starting to turn red. “You think it’s the same? Asking your fucking name,
and talking about my dead daughter?”

Something cried out deep in the
forest. It was a strange sound, and Ed knew immediately that it wasn’t a bird
screeching. He listened and then heard it again. It was a drawn-out whine; a
pathetic cry that was racked with pain. The noise drifted toward them through
the trees, honing in on their location and creeping into their ears.

The Savage set off toward it. Ed and
Bethelyn tried to keep up, but he was able to move quicker than both of them.
It seemed that Ed and Bethelyn’s feet were constantly snagging on the vines
that ran along the ground, whereas The Savage knew when to lift his feet to
avoid a string of ivy, even without looking.

When they caught up to him, The
Savage was stood over the body of a deer. Its leg had gotten stuck in a hole in
the floor and snapped in the middle. Ed bent down. Someone had sharpened some
sticks and dug them down into the mud, pointy ends facing up.  

The deer whined at them. Its mouth
was smeared with blood, and when it smacked its lips together Ed saw a glimmer
of claret-stained teeth. He looked at its leg again and realised that it had
been trying to chew itself free. The animal looked at them with wild eyes. It cried
out, and Ed thought that it sounded as if it were pleading.

The Savage started to sing.

"We're caught in a trap,

I can't walk out,

Because I love you too much,
baby"

“So my joke about the watch was too
much,” said Ed. “But it’s okay to sing about this?”

“A deer getting stuck in the floor
and a man getting his arm cut off are two different things.”

His stomach churned. He wanted to
look away, but he knew that even if he did, he still couldn’t ignore the deer’s
whines of pain. He could sprint halfway across the forest, and the horrible
noise would just follow him.

The Savage bent down. He picked up a
rock from the forest floor and held it in his hands. He ran his thumb over a
groove, and lifted the rock up and down to see how heavy it was. Without warning
he brought it crashing down on the deer’s head, snuffing the life from its eyes
in one blow. He threw the rock onto the floor and wiped his hands on his coat.

“Okay,” said Ed. “That’s it. What
aren’t you telling us about this place?”

“Promise you won’t be your usual
scared self?” said The Savage.

“When have you ever seen me scared?”

“There was a point on Golgoth when my
guys were chasing you and I thought you were going to shit yourself.”

Bethelyn walked over to the deer. She
crouched beside it. She reached out to touch it, but stopped herself. She hung down
toward the ground.

Ed looked around him. He looked
closer at the trees and saw that the bark looked like it was crumbling away.
Dead leaves were scattered on the forest floor, and all of the foliage was a
decaying brown colour rather than green. It seemed as if the forest was eating
itself, and if they stayed much longer, it would turn its attention to them.

“There are secrets here,” said The
Savage. “That’s what a guy back home told me.” He looked at Ed and held his
hand in the air. “Don’t bother asking where home is, Wetgills. I’m not in the
mood. I don’t like story time, but I’ll tell you this one if you promise to
shut up.”

“Fine,” said Ed.

“A couple of weeks before I set off
to Golgoth, they were planning an expedition here. I was against it, for the
record, although in the interest of full disclosure-”

“Yeah, because that’s really your
forte,” said Bethelyn.

“In the interest of full disclosure,
I planned a few trips to Loch-Deep in the past. That was years ago, before we
found out that the people who came here never went home. Never visited here
myself, though.”

Ed couldn’t take his eyes off the
deer. Even though it was dead, its black eyes stared out with fear. He wanted
to walk over to it and close its eyelids, but at the same time he wanted to be rid
of the image altogether. He looked at The Savage instead.

“What’s the significance, then? Why
do people come here?”

The Savage stared at him. “Spend time
on the Mainland and travel around a little, and you’ll hear all sorts of
rumours. My town was no different. They think this place is ground zero. The
chicken that came before the egg. They say the outbreak began here.”

“And?”

“And if you know where something
begins, you can sometimes figure out where it ends.”

A thought pressed on Ed like a finger
prodding a bladder. There was something wrong with this place, and it wasn’t
just because the outbreak may have started here. He couldn’t help the feeling
that somewhere in the woodland, something peered at him through the darkness.

“Bethelyn,” he said.

She turned around, but didn’t say
anything.

“Can I talk to you for a sec? In
private?” he said.

Bethelyn shook her head.

“There’s no point hiding things, Ed.
With everything that’s happened, I don’t think we’ve got anything worth keeping
secret. If you’ve got something to say, then say it in front of him.”

Ed left out a huff of air. “Fine. I
don’t think we can trust him. All this talk about the outbreak starting here
and him knowing where we are. I think he’s full of crap.”

Bethelyn shrugged her shoulders. “I
don’t care either way. He might be lying to us. Maybe he’s picturing us turning
on a spit and licking his lips. I don’t care. But I do know one thing; if we
try and make it through here without him, we’ll die.”

“Your girlfriend is right, Edward,”
said The Savage.  “The only way you make it through Loch-Deep alive is with me.
The only way you find your brother is with me. I’m taking on a risk myself by
staying with a couple of turkeys like you.”