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

Chapter 1

Joey

Joey pulled the straps of his rucksack tighter, making his shoulders ache with the force. He hardly noticed. In his right hand he twirled a small rubbery object along his fingers as one might have done with a coin in times past. He walked and twirled and thought of his mother.

Dying, Jock had clung to the fraying fibres of life long enough to give him the flash drive he now fidgeted with and to relay the awful truth of the mother who died to save him as a new-born.

“Her name was Michelle. Michelle MacLeod. She wasn’t from here, Joseph.”
Jock’s last words replayed through his head as his gut heaved.
“The way she was dressed, the way she spoke, it was all wrong… Someone put her in here. From outside.”

Joey felt the full impact of Jock’s words at that moment in a way he never had before. Jock had died telling him of Michelle MacLeod, but instinctively Joey had compartmentalised the anger, the horror that his mother had been free, living outside the rotted city.

He’d focused all of the hurt and rage which had washed over him in the wake of Jock’s death and his mentor’s revelations of Michelle’s appearance. Both barrels of that loss had blasted him in the heart and threatened to cripple him emotionally; threatened to rob him of his reason. He’d taken the strength of anger, of revenge, and made finding and killing Bracha the centre of his world for long enough to survive the storm of grief.

Now that he’d learned first-hand how cruel the people outside the fences were it brought a new and all-consuming surge of anger and sense of betrayal to him. He was trembling.

Joey leaned over and vomited into the moss-filled gutter. Glancing up, he noticed Alys still ahead, facing the other direction, running along. Wiping roughly at his mouth with the back of his sleeve, Joey walked onwards.

 
 
The haar was closing in. Hanging low it crept far into the city-centre that evening. Joey had never considered whether the haar was a weather quirk unique to Edinburgh or if it swirled through and filled other cities. Why would he? The outside world was an abstract concept… until now.

Now, he couldn’t stop thinking about the outside world and the monsters who lived there. The more he thought about the larger world, the angrier he became. The world outside had shifted cataclysmically from being inconsequential, an unnoticed constant, to being the only thing allowed space in his thoughts. He was filling up with hatred and he didn’t know how to stop himself being consumed by it.

 
He watched the cold mist whirl above and along the streets of South Bridge as he trudged with heavy step and dark thoughts along after Alys. She was spinning and twirling along the roofs and bonnets of a continuous line of rusted cars along the main thoroughfare of the wide street. Normally he’d have somersaulted and twisted his way along the cars with his best friend, but not today.

Upon leaving the open meadow in Liberton, having swum a sea of the dead thanks to Fraser’s advice, they thought about how this man from the outside had communicated with them and saved their lives by imparting the knowledge that the Carrionite Joey carried from his time with The Brotherhood would render them both undetectable to The Ringed. The friends had spent the day stealthily travelling back towards the city. Keen to avoid Somna’s Exalted tribe, and any other prying eyes, they’d wound their way through Drum Wood, backtracking several times to lay false trails in the frost and earth, thus concealing their true route. The journey had taken hours longer than it should have, but the lost time was a price worth paying for safety.

As they’d travelled, the elation that Joey had felt on escaping the hospital and surviving the tide of The Ringed had faded quickly. As the full impact of Fraser’s revelations hit him, his mind had begun to race with fear, anger and hate for the miserable bastards outside the city’s fences who so casually and ruthlessly used the decaying world inside Edinburgh’s fences as a source of entertainment.

He found himself examining every surface, each tree and dead lamppost, anywhere for signs of cameras or other devices. That people watched him at any and every given moment was threatening to immobilise him. Fearing he may vomit once again, Joey rested his behind on the bench-bar of a former bus stop.

He took a deep breath and let it loose in a long sigh, intended to banish the dark thoughts from him and clear the turbulence inside. He performed the ritual ten more times but felt no ebbing of the torrent of raw hate coursing through him. His heart began racing. He became aware that the world was swirling in an axis out of synch with the one he’d been attuned to for almost twenty years. He’d swear on his life that this was true.

A moment or two later, he opened his eyes to find Alys standing over him, one hand on his right cheek.

“Did you fall, Joey?” Unsure if she should be concerned or not, she looked like she wanted to smile. The notion that Joey, the free-runner, would slip and fall obviously tickled her.

Sweat beaded on his forehead and chilled his spine underneath the layers he wore to guard against the Edinburgh winter.

“No. I didn’t fall,” he said, rising to his feet. He felt the earth tilt again. Alys reached for his arm to steady him. He pushed her hand angrily away. “I’m fine, Alys.”

Focusing on a broken padlock on the heavy, faded-red doors, Joey blinked several times, forcing his vision to clear and the ground to stay under him. Alys’s jaw bunched and clenched in annoyance but she stayed quiet whilst he composed himself. Joey was exhausted. Physically he was fine, despite all the falling around. Mentally, he was drained. He was replaying in his mind’s eye the footage Fraser had shown them. Every frame, crisp and clear. Each shot a bullet to his resilience. Each horrible discovery a blow, destroying his world. His head swam again.

“Let’s camp here for the night. We can go to The Gardens tomorrow morning.”

He looked around at Alys. She clearly wanted to push on, but shrugged.

“Aye. Ok.”

After forcing the sturdy doors they did a sweep of the store and found only a single inhabitant. One of The Ringed who’d been silenced with a screwdriver to the temple. From the decomposition, he’d been long dead, or undead. Hardly any tissue remained, except for the head which had a long beard still in place and some long, curled hair at its crown.

 
Alys pulled a faded photo from behind the shop counter and handed it to Joey before resuming her sweep of the shop. Joey looked closely at the faces in the photograph to distract himself from another acidic ball of bile that was threatening to explode from his gullet. Three people stood, two men and a woman, arms around each other, grinning broadly into the camera. They were young and happy. They looked like nice kids. Working in a comic shop, selling stories of heroes and villains.

One of the men was thin with black curly hair and a long beard that didn’t hide his youthful face and the warm humour in his tired-looking eyes. The girl also looked kind. Covered in tattoos, she was full-figured, beautiful and funny and very much in charge. She was in Joey’s mind, at any rate. The other man had short hair and was clean-shaven. He held two fingers above the girl’s head to represent ears and pulled a silly face. The three looked entirely carefree. The image brought the faintest tug of a smile to the corner of Joey’s mouth which vanished with a glance at the bearded Ringed slumped in the corner.

Noticing a picture beneath the creature’s leg he tugged at it.

As he pulled, a thick magazine in a plastic bag came free from under the rotted leg bone. Joey looked at the pictures on its cover. Colour and black and white, the images were of people in unfamiliar clothes holding guns and other weapons. A kid wore a funny-looking hat and a gun belt. One woman held a Japanese sword. Faces of The Ringed were printed there also.

Joey screwed his eyes closed tight, holding back the acid once more. After a second, he pulled the magazine from its protective covering and flipped through its pages.

People, in America, fighting The Ringed. He shook his head as though this movement would aid his comprehension of the story in his hands.
Is this a newspaper?
Jock had told him about these.
Is this an artist telling of the early days of the plague? Has it spread to other parts of the world?

Puzzled, Joey mouthed the unfamiliar words as he slowly read through the story whilst Alys secured the perimeter. A man in a hospital. Waking to a world of the dead. A search for his family. The Ringed. Georgia, USA.

Joey flipped back to the cover to read the title:
The Walking Dead TPB, Volume 1.

Thumbing forward another few pages, he noted the date and the disclaimer. One word and a number screamed out to him:
FICTION … 2009.

Joey threw the book at the wall and screamed.

“More entertainment!”

Alys came running.

“What the hell, Joe?” She held her hands out at her sides, palms up.

He pointed at the graphic novel which lay face-down on a pile of decomposed paper and wood.

“That.”

Joey watched as Alys flipped through the book.

“This was written before Outbreak Day, Joey. It’s just a story.”

Dropping his head and his eyes down to hide his emotions, Joey said quietly, “I know. That’s all we are to them.”

He felt Alys come close and braced himself for her customary punch to the arm. Instead she brought her lips close to his ear and breathed into it.

“Not now. Let’s talk later… Quietly.

She took a half-step back. Her thumb, shielded by her body, jabbed at the wall behind her. A very small camera, dusty and cracked, was perched in the corner. Neither trusted or even liked Fraser, but his words and actions had made it plain that they’d be in danger if it became known that they’d discovered that the outside world watched. Neither of them had any idea if the camera still functioned but they’d agreed on the journey not to discuss events at the hospital until they could be sure they wouldn’t be observed or listened to.

Joey sighed. Turning away he busied himself with helping Alys secure the room. Working in silence, Alys barricaded the door to the basement, to save them having to search downstairs. Joey mechanically went through his routine of setting the wires and bells that would waken them should anyone, living or dead, stumble upon their camp. He could feel Alys watching him work and ignored her. She wanted to talk later, undercover in whispers. He didn’t.

Retrieving from his bag a couple of apples they’d found in the woodland he threw one to Alys and sat on his sleeping bag to eat the other. After a few moments, Alys joined him. Sitting with crossed legs she crunched into her apple and appraised her best friend.

“Want to talk?” she asked between bites.

“No,” Joey replied without looking up at her.

Alys spent a few more minutes crunching her apple to the core and staring at the top of his head as he ate.

“Yeah, well I do,” she said finally, tossing her apple core into a dusty corner filled with mostly decomposed toy containers.

Joey looked into her eyes. His anger had begun to burn away and be replaced by grief. She could see the fragility of his mental state in his eyes. He allowed her to. She was his best friend and he needed to lean on her, absorb her strength, regardless of what he told himself.

Shaking his head, he made a gesture around the room.

“Undercover.” He mouthed the words, a tear breaking loose from its duct as his lips moved.

Slipping under two sleeping bags, they hid themselves in a cocoon of nylon, warmth and grief. Hands cupped around ears and whispers, they sobbed and spoke and consoled and railed. They decided why and how to continue existing here in this place the outside world called
dEaDINBURGH
.