Authors: Mark Wilson
She dropped her Sai and clenched his face between her hands, locking him in a very brief kiss.
“You bloody stink like a Zom,” she laughed quietly and gave him the punch he’d been expecting. In all honesty, he’d have been disappointed not to have been hit by her. It was what she did.
Alys noticed something over his shoulder.
“There are a few fresh ones up over there.”
She pointed them out.
“Let’s go around,” she suggested.
“Go where?” Joey asked. The weight of everything they’d been through and had discovered settling heavily upon him.
Alys shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Home.”
Joey stood still, feeling the chill of the morning wind on his skin as Alys gathered her weapons and her belongings.
Home.
Joey didn’t really have a home anymore. The Royal Mile had been a prison, a lie. His time with Jock had been liberating and brought with it a parent at last, but had been far too brief.
The boy from The Brotherhood was long gone and Jock’s apprentice had grown up. Where did this Joey belong? Who was he now? Someone whom eager viewers watched struggle to survive for their amusement? Maybe they really cared about him in their way.
How many others in Edinburgh were suffering for entertainment for the masses?
He pushed the thought of the cameras and a world outside of the quarantined city away. It was too big. The thought of the outside world and the callousness of the people there was too horrific a truth.
Later
, he told himself.
Deal with it later.
Finally he decided that, whoever he was or whoever he was becoming, he was certain of two things about this young man who stood in a field, carried there by the dead.
He would forever cherish the memory of his foster-father, Jock, and use the skills he’d taught him, and he was blessed to have Alys Shephard for his best friend.
Throwing his rucksack over his shoulder, Joseph MacLeod followed his only friend through the long, crisply-frosted grass… Home.
Epilogue 1
James Kelly
Bracha emerged from under the fence-line, snaking quickly through the pit he’d dug under it to gain entry the day before. James strolled towards him, unhurried and came to a stop a few feet away from the spot where Bracha had already risen to his feet.
James wasted a second he couldn’t afford with a quick appraisal of Bracha’s condition. The teenagers had clearly done a job on him. Moving his eyes over the broken-looking man, James caught a broken nose and jaw, two badly damaged hands hanging useless and, from the ragged way he breathed, they’d done a number on his ribcage as well. A lopsided grin spread. He wasted another second with a glib comment.
“Kids, eh?”
Unsurprisingly, Bracha didn’t laugh. He just stood there, body a ruin, eyes darting between checking over James’ shoulder and glaring at his former friend.
James sighed and nodded over his shoulder.
“They’re right behind me. Tell me the girl’s name and I’ll give you a head start. For old times’ sake.”
James had no intention of letting Somna get his hands on Bracha. Too many secrets would be learned. He wished he had it in him just to kill the beast who wore his best friend’s face.
Bracha’s eyes lit up, the embers of hope.
Through gritted teeth and clenched jaw he rasped, “Alish.”
“Make it look good,” James said, a half of a second before Bracha knocked him to the grass with a front kick that was more vicious than required.
As Jimmy Kelly watched Bracha limp into the woods, his brain treated him to a wee slideshow of images from his life as he blacked out. Random moments flickered and changed.
The Gardens. Breaking the soil there, growing corn, oats, peas. Himself and Cammy living a life there, a good life. A happy life.
Married life.
Images of their expulsion from The Gardens flew past in a flurry of madness and violence and irreparable deeds.
Images of Bracha, when he was still a good man. A prince among men. Literally.
He watched a scene of himself joining Bracha amongst The Exalted when every shred of decency in him screamed that it was wrong. Lying, always lying, walking the knife’s edge with Somna. Keeping him away from the city with lies, lies, lies.
Cammy’s death flashed past, the promise he made to him as he watched his friend turn from a good man into just another empty shell shambling through the city.
“Alys.”
The name escaped James’ lips as he passed over into unconsciousness. And then a final little reminder, his promise to keep.
Never let the madness in the south come to The Gardens, to Alys. Keep her safe
.
He’d said the words and he’d meant them with all of his soul. He’d never let The Exalted know of the city communities. He’d do anything to keep them away, even become one of them. He’d inked his single raven under his eye for Cameron Shephard.
A single black tear to remind him why he was what he was and where he was.
To protect Cameron Shephard’s daughter.
Epilogue 2
Fraser Donnelly
Fraser sat by his intercom, absent-mindedly clearing the drives and all traces of his activities on the systems and replacing them with signs of an audit having been performed during his time in the control room. His heart raced with the adrenaline that had been consistently flooding his system over and over since the previous night’s discovery of Joey and Alys’ presence at the hospital compound. It had been an excruciating experience but, he had to admit, an incredibly exhilarating one.
Joey’s voice suddenly broke through, snapping his attention back to the little speaker.
“Does it work on the fresh ones?” Joey’s voice had become a little less aggressive. The boy was still pissed at him, but was obviously beginning to consider his plan.
He made a gesture and the link to Joey and Alys crackled back into life.
No,” he said, reluctantly. “The tissue still alive in them is fresh enough that their senses are much more acute, the eyesight in particular. You’ll have to move slowly and hope that the fresher ones have mostly left the area.”
It was pathetic advice, but it was all he had to offer. If he were a religious man he might say a prayer but he’d abandoned the right to that particular privilege decades before.
“They’re usually the first to realise that a food source is gone and wander off to look elsewhere.”
“Don’t you have cameras there?” Alys asked.
The accusation in her tone stung him. It had been a last resort to show them the footage being streamed from the abandoned city that they called home. Fraser had no idea what the fallout might be, particularly once they began discussing, on camera, the revelation that they were the subjects of history’s cruellest
reality
programme. Its cruellest and its most successful, by a huge margin. dEaDINBURGH had been a hit for decades. A global hit.
“We do, but I can’t access them at the moment. The same people who would have detected you at the hospital had you been there when the power activated would notice me tapping the feed from here.”
“So you’re in as much danger as we are, are you, Fraser?” Joey’s voice mocked him over the miles and the reality that lay between them.
“No, I’m not,” Fraser said. “But I’ve done all that I can. If I’m to help you again, I can’t be found by The Corporation at this time. Now, go. Time’s running out for me now.”
Fraser listened to them open the trap-door above and then silence. It was time to get out of here, go downstairs and act the efficient boss. Toss around a few admonishments about their systems, and a few compliments too. All that would be left then was to get to his office and check on Joey and Alys.
dEaDINBURGH had been looping highlights footage in the time the show had been off-air. Now the standard twenty-four-hour coverage was back in place. He’d have little trouble discovering their fate.
He stood and pulled on his suit jacket. Smoothing the lapels down, Fraser adjusted the cuffs, sitting them at the appropriate length, peeking out from underneath his sleeves.
As he prepared to leave, hoping that the teenagers’ presence had gone unnoticed by the infected, a voice crackled through the intercom.
It was Joey.
“Thanks… I suppose.”
A wave of sadness, guilt, anger and grief passed through every cell in the organism named Fraser Donnelly, almost bringing him to his knees.
Composing himself he coughed the lump from his throat, flipped the light switch and replied to no one.
“You’re welcome… son.”
End of Book One
Also by Mark Wilson:
For Michelle Wilson
Writing this book I drew on a lot of influences, but none more so than that of all the strong women in my life, past and present.
Rena Wilson, Natalie Wilson, Michelle Wilson, Cara Wilson.
All a small part of Alys Shephard and a huge part of my heart.
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” – William Shakespeare.