Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (16 page)

Look at them. So free, so at peace with who and what they are, together.

The recent changes in her perspective catalysed by her daughter’s effortless defeat of her aside, no matter what change lay ahead in the days and months and years to come, Jennifer knew that she would never feel as free, as part of this dead city, as they did. She probably never had, not even when the city was the world’s capital of culture and life.

Jennifer watched them move together, the perfect team. Able, strong, and trusting each other completely. Was romance part of their partnership? Jennifer didn’t know, didn’t care. It wouldn’t change what they had together, not like it had between her and Cameron. She and her husband had never really been compatible, just
useful
to each other... for a while.

Alys and Joey, they were perfect peers, true equals in every aspect, in a manner that few people from the old world were capable of.
 
She envied them their gifts and burst with pride at how hard they’d both worked to earn those skills and abilities that made them so suited to each other. So very gifted.

Realising that her companions had come to a stop up ahead, Jennifer jogged lightly along the moss-covered path to meet them. In front of them stood a line of sandbags and food trucks, just as Alys had described to her. The startling difference was that not a single Ringed roamed or shambled where Joe and Alys had fought through an army of the creatures mere months before. It seemed that the collapse of the Forth Road Bridge had been a blessing, at least for the people south of Newhaven who survived the Ringed passing.

Joey spotted something glinting in the morning sun and took off at a clip to investigate.

“What’s on your mind, Alys?” her mother asked

Alys made a little movement with her mouth that was a shadow of a shoulder shrug.

“Just, y’know.” She nodded at the stone façade of the hospital building. “Just hoping we can get these kids to listen to us. We don’t have much time left.”

“Well, that’s the reason I came along. Show them an old fogey who doesn’t want to eat them.”

Alys laughed. It felt good to Jennifer to make her daughter laugh after so many years of pushing the kid so hard.

Joey skipped back waving three arrows left behind from their previous trip.

“Can never have too many of these beauts,” he said, slipping them into his quiver.

Alys in point, they slipped under a food truck and through a gap in the sandbags, into the half-closed door of the main entrance. Jennifer caught a look exchanged between Joey and Alys.

“What’s up?”

Alys pointed at the dust and glass behind the door. Two sets of footprints led to the door.

“Those are ours. No-one has left here, not by this route anyway, since we were last here.”

“It’s only been a few months. Perhaps they simply stocked up for winter?” Jennifer suggested.

Alys pursed her lips. Turning, she slipped deeper into the corridors.

As they reached the dog-leg in the corridor, Alys called out softly.

“Irene? Kids? It’s Alys and Joey… We just came to check on you guys.”

Nothing. Slipping on through the hanging plastic that separated Ward One from the main corridor, Jennifer saw her daughter visibly sag as she took in the room.

All of the sleeping bags, toys, clothes and possessions that had lain strewn around the ward by The Sick Kids were gone or covered in a layer of dust. From the condition of the room, the musky air, the dust-covered beds, nobody had set foot in here in weeks, maybe months.

“What did you do, Irene?” Alys said, her voice a cracked whisper.

“Come on, let’s check the rest of the building,” Jennifer said.

This time, Joey took point, bow raised to cover their advance along the long corridors and up the steep staircases. As they approached the top floor, a warm light emanated from the set of double-doors leading to PJ’s Loft.

The sounds of children singing began to reach their ears.

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday, dear Irene,

Happy birthday to you.

Joey looked over his shoulder and grinned at them both, stepping back to allow Alys to take the lead once more. Jennifer noted that her daughter hadn’t drawn her Sai and slid a small blade into her own palm, just in case. Shoving the doors open a crack, Alys poked her head through the door, relaxed and walked through to enter the room.

It hadn’t changed since they’d last stood here trying to convince Irene that people didn’t become infected simply by reaching adulthood. There were some beds and bunks in the room that had been absent previously. It looked like The Sick Kids used the room to see out the winter months.

Wary of scaring them, Jennifer watched through the part-open doorway. A seven–year-old, whose name Alys couldn’t remember, was the first to notice Joey and Alys. In less than a second the singing stopped and the room went quiet.

“It’s the boy who wanted to eat ma dug!” The voice was loud and made everyone jump and then laugh loudly at little Natalie’s outburst. Jennifer smiled to herself in the corridor, unaware of the history of the dog-eating remark.

Surely Joseph hadn’t eaten the girl’s pet?

A girl stepped forward. It was Jayne, a fifteen-year-old with a calm demeanour. Alys seemed to recognise her and stepped towards her, palms up, arms open in a gesture meant to invite calm.

“It’s so good to see you both,” the girl said, rushing into Alys’s open arms. Alys, looking a little stunned, returned the girl’s embrace.

“It’s good to see you too, Jayne.”

Forty or so children of various ages gathered around a puzzled-looking Alys and Joey, offering high-fives, hugs and pecks on the cheeks. Joey was enjoying himself and was picking up the littler ones, swooping them through the air, making aeroplane noises, one after the other.

Someone just out of Jennifer’s line of sight moved and the atmosphere in the room shifted so dramatically that Jennifer almost burst through the door in response to the shift. Tightening her hand around her little blade, Jennifer restrained herself, trusting that her daughter would handle it.

An older girl moved into the centre of the room. The younger children gathered around her, bringing her by her hand towards Alys.

“Irene,” Alys said. To Jennifer her daughter sounded nervous but was hiding it well. “You’re still here. And you’re eighteen today?”

The girl answered in a placid voice, one used to speaking to children.

“Yes... and no,” she said. “The little ones convinced me to…” she searched for the correct term, “to try an experiment. I actually turned eighteen one month ago today. I agreed to be isolated in an autoclave room for two months. We filled it with enough supplies to see me through and the little ones locked me in behind doors of solid steel and complex locks. They were told that when I turned, they were to leave me there. To never open the doors.”

She gestured at Jayne.

“She would inherit my duties and my responsibility for the little ones.”

Jayne stepped up beside Irene.

“What changed your mind?” Alys asked, joy audible in her voice.

Irene cocked her head. “You did, Alys. Sally and twenty or so of the other kids believed you. Every word. When it came time for me to leave The Sick Kids, they begged me to stay. They railed and raged at me and they threatened to lock me up until after my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t believe a word you said.”

She cut a look at Joey.

“Either of you, but… it felt like the right thing to do, for them. Even if all that happened was that they ended up with a monster locked in their autoclave, at least they’d know.” Irene paused, flushed with embarrassment.

Sally spoke up.

“Only she didn’t turn. Not on the day she turned eighteen and not for the month that followed. We convinced her to come out this morning and threw her a belated birthday party. It’s the first eighteenth party we’ve held here.”

Irene slipped an arm around the younger girl’s shoulders.

“I’ve insisted that they watch me closely. I’ll be sleeping in a locked room, separate from everyone else from now on. I’ve an itch in the back of my mind that insists that this is all wrong, that I’m letting my own need to stay here with them cloud my better judgement.”

Jennifer stepped into the room and made a beeline for Irene.

“You’ve done the right thing, Irene.”

Irene gasped and recoiled. All of the children did.

In her mid-fifties, Jennifer was by far the oldest person these kids had ever seen. That she talked to them, moved with purpose and didn’t try to kill them, left them stunned.

Reaching out to Irene, she took the kid’s hand and pressed it to her own face.

Irene’s eyes widened.

“You’re warm,” she blurted. “And soft.”

“Yes. I’m fifty-six years old, and I assure you, I have never eaten a single child in all my long years. No matter how much they annoyed me.” She jutted a nod at Alys and Joey.

Some of the kids laughed. Others of the kids joined Irene in touching Jennifer’s face. They felt her hair, commenting on the silver strands. They poked fingers into the hard muscles of her back and legs, built from decades of farming and fighting. Having never or rarely ventured outside the building, their own bodies were so soft in comparison. Fingers traced the lines at the edges of her mouth and eyes. One kid pinched at her skin and then his own and watched with fascination at the difference in elasticity. Natalie hooked her index fingers and thumbs under Jennifer’s lips, peeling them back to examine the teeth.

“Good choppers,” she said, all business.
 

Jennifer, shut off from affection and casual physical contact for years, bore their curious touches until she felt a dam break inside as the touches and prods became less of something to be endured and more the most delightful surrender to the innocence of these children’s curiosity and wonder. She hugged each of them warmly for as long as they wished: every single child in the room received their first embrace from a grown woman. When she was done, Jennifer stood tall to address them.

“I’d never do anything to hurt any of you.
 
You will never have any reason to fear me or the people in my community. You beautiful children can be the future of a new community we’re building. A safe community of adults and children and teenagers. One comprised of healers and farmers and warriors and artists, and a hundred other types. We can build a miniature city, right here in the centre of this dead one. We can make it and ourselves whatever we wish it and us to be. We can reclaim lives that are full and free from fear and endless killing. It won’t be easy and it will not be perfect. We have a war ahead of us to ensure its founding, but we will fight that war for you and all the others who are already there, safe in the Castle walls. We’ll never let you feel afraid of your world ever again. Will you come with us?”

They slept there with the children that night, leaving with the cold, low, glorious morning sun floating up behind them as they headed west and then north to their new home.

Chapter 17

Professor Angus Ramsay

The smell reached him before the coffee did, causing him to look up from his Holo-Screen. Events in dEaDINBURGH were astonishing at present. In the south, Somna was gathering his army of psychotics. In the city-centre, many of the previously separate communities – each so different in their credos and the manner in which they survived in the dead city – were now safe inside the walls of Edinburgh Castle. Joey was about to return to see his former Brothers. Bracha lurked…

Ramsay couldn’t recall the atmosphere inside the city, or what could be transmitted at any rate, ever having been so charged.

Smiling at the pretty barista as she handed him his coffee, Angus stared out of the shop’s window and daydreamed of how the coming events might unfold. Mr Donnelly would introduce the new strain he’d worked so hard on sometime in the next few months. Heaven only knew what that would do to the ratings. The Ringed would certainly increase in number. The shorter incubation time would be a major obstacle for the survivors, and the slower decomposition rate in the infected would ensure that The Ringed would remain physically stronger, more agile and faster for longer.

It was an exciting project to be involved in.

Draining the last of his coffee, his third since arriving in the city, Ramsay glanced at the little clock in the corner of his Holo-Screen. He’d landed a couple of hours previously at a private gate at Schiphol before catching a train into Amsterdam Centraal. He’d been waiting in the little café on Nieuwebrugsteeg ever since.

As he sat considering ordering another coffee, the comm-device Mr Donnelly had issued him began to buzz on the table. Ramsay clicked the privacy setting and held the device to his ear, in the manner of an old-fashioned mobile phone.

“Hello, gaffer. What’s the plan?”

A few seconds of silence.

“Thank you for your assistance, Professor. That will be all.”

For several seconds a gentle puff of gas came through a custom-designed vent at the base of the phone. It slipped into the mouth and nasal passages of Professor Ramsay and into his lungs where it diffused from his alveoli into the tiny blood-vessels surrounding them. Carried along by the push of his heart, the aerosol Beta-Strain of
Yersinia edinburgis
made its journey to his brain and tissues.

Recognising the scent of buffer gas, Ramsay threw the comm-device across the café. Mind racing, he mentally flipped through a list of plausible reasons why Donnelly should wish to expose him to some aerosol-carried agent.

The process didn’t take long. Ramsay’s heart sank as he accepted his new role: Patient Zero in a new outbreak of a pathogen he himself had designed.

Ramsay’s eyes were drawn to the people around him. Staring out through the window into the narrow streets, teeming with people going about their lives. Working, running, shopping. Children, men, women.

Ramsay shoved away his own terror and began rushing around the café, cajoling its occupants out the door.

“Out, move. Everyone, out of here… NOW!”

Ramsay moved from person to person, screaming, pulling at arms, shoving at backs. Some argued, some left, looking anxiously back at the nutter trying to save their lives. One man punched Angus in the face and stood stunned as the scientist picked himself up and inspected his attacker’s hand for cuts.

“You’re fine. Please go.” He handed the man all the money in his wallet and watched him leave, shaking his head as he went.

The barista looked frightened. He spoke softly to her.

“I’m so sorry, miss. Something really bad is happening and I need you to leave.”

Her eyes widened.

“Is it a bomb? Is it terrorists? Are you a policeman?”

“Something like that. Please, go now. I’m going to lock the doors. If you can, move people away from the front of the café and the street outside. Call the police.”

Angus moved to the doors, closing them behind her as she left. The girl, a brunette with large brown eyes, turned to look back at him as he bolted the doors top and bottom. She mouthed a thank you and left.

Returning to his seat, Angus retrieved his personal Holo-Tablet. Selecting his home contact, he waited as the call connected.

A five-inch Holo-Image of his wife flickered into existence.

“Hi, love. How’s your trip?” she asked.

Angus blinked a long, slow blink and coughed a few times, budging the lump in his throat enough to sound halfway to normal.

“I’m good, Jess. Look, I have to… be somewhere, but I wanted you to know that I miss you and that I love you. Very much.”

Jess scanned his face for a moment.

“I love you too, Angus. What…”

Angus flicked the device off and checked the time once more before making his way to the other side of the counter. Calmly, he made a coffee, lit a cigarette and waited to die.

Twenty minutes later a team of police officers crashed through the doors, concerned that the aggressive, snarling man who’d trapped himself inside the Funny People coffee shop might hurt himself or cause even more damage to the premises.

Within the hour, Seb Gallant’s team had begun the quarantine process.