I had to do something for him. I couldn’t let them quarantine him
because that would make him worse. I couldn’t let them treat him like he was a
lab animal to study, a threat that needed to be learned from. Putting him in
quarantine wasn’t far away from treating him like the stalker that lay dead on
the trolley. Maybe Charlie wanted to have Justin’s cadaver on the trolley
instead. Maybe he wanted to cut through his skin and study his insides.
I knew what I could do. My brain cried out at the thought of it, and
tried to gather back the words and lock them away before they left my mouth. I
didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice.
“Tell you what,” I said.
Charlie waited for me to speak.
I leant on the counter. “Leave the kid out of quarantine, and I’ll take
care of your stalker problem.”
Melissa smiled at me. Justin looked up and flashed a look that said
‘what the hell are you doing?’ Charlie put his fingers to his chin and his eyes
glazed in thought. Strips of grey hair ran though his eyebrows and made him
seem much older than he was, but his smooth skin showed his true age. Either
that or he had a killer skincare routine.
“I think Victoria will agree to that that. In fact, I know I can persuade
her to accept. Leave that to me.”
Melissa smiled. “So he can leave now?”
Charlie nodded. “For now. But for god’s sake, try and stay away from
people. There are some idiots in Bleakholt who won’t give Justin the benefit of
the doubt.”
He pushed the trolley away and walked across the kitchen until he stood
in front of me. At least three inches separated our heights, and I could see
the strands of grey woven into his brown hair. On his right ear there were tiny
pin pricks where the skin had been pierced and then healed. I wondered when
Charlie had gotten his ears pierced. I imagined him being a punk as a teenager,
acting out against authority before decided to settle down and become a
scientist. Or maybe he had been carried away in the man-piercing craze of the
eighties and hit the town dressed like Adam Ant.
“Where the stalkers are concerned, I can’t give you much to go on. But
there is one thing,” he said.
“Go on.”
Charlie crossed his arms. “Stalker sightings have calmed since the
campers came.”
“The people Victoria is pissed about?”
Charlie nodded. “They’re an aggressive lot, and their leader is the
worst of them.”
I didn’t want to ask the question, but I had to know the truth. I had
my suspicions over who these campers were.
“Is the leader an old guy, a little flabby? Long hair but bald on top?”
“That’s the one.”
Anger flooded my chest. There was no doubt about it now. The people who
had left Vasey with Moe, the ones who had abandoned everyone else, were camped
outside of Bleakholt. Moe was with them, and now I had to go and talk to them.
My right arm felt heavy, as though it was drawn toward the knife on my
belt. I had to go and talk to them about the stalkers and find out what they
knew. I needed to do it for Justin’s sake. The question was whether I could
talk to them without killing Moe.
12
I found
Alice on the west side of town working the fence with a group of guys. Four of
them stood at the fence where fibres of the chain link had twisted away to
create a gap. It was barely big enough for a fox to fit through. Two of the men
pushed against it and held it steady, and the others worked with pliers to
straighten it out. Alice stood back and talked to Ewan Judah. I wondered why
she was spending time with the man who Victoria had told me had a jealous eye
on her power.
“Chain link
doesn’t make sense,” said Alice.
Ewan screwed
up his face. “You’ve been here ten minutes and you already know better.”
“I think a
concrete wall would be much safer. More stable.”
“We don’t
have the time.”
Alice
laughed. “You’ve got nothing but time. It’s not like we have anything else to
do around here.”
One of the
men turned around. “She could have a point boss. We wouldn’t have to spend time
doing this every day if we had a wall,” he said, and strained against the
fence.
“Fuck” said
one of the other men, and dropped his pliers. A trickle of blood dripped from
where a loose link had punctured a hole in finger.
Ewan huffed.
“Shut up,” he said to the man. He turned to Alice. “You don’t tell us what to
do. You’re a newbie. You’re nothing but a body to do the hard work; the hard work
that I order you to do.”
I took a
step forward. “Morning,” I said.
Ewan turned
to look at me. “Your boyfriend’s here,” he said to Alice.
“Got a sec?”
I said.
Alice and I
walked away from the men. We crossed the street and sat on a bench thirty metres
away. The wood was cold, as though the plummeting temperatures had frozen it
into a block of ice. Even three layers and a heavy jacket weren’t enough to
keep away the sting. I’d lived in the North of England most of my life and I
was used to the climate that prompted the saying ‘It’s grim up North’. Scotland
was something else entirely. It felt like the cold was digging into my bones.
“What’s up
Kyle?”
“It’s been a
while,” I said.
Sweat dotted
Alice’s forehead despite the cold air. She looked like she’d dropped a few
pounds, though her frame seemed as strong as ever. We’d only been here a week,
but I’d barely seen her in that time. When she wasn’t working, she was with
Ben. I couldn’t blame her though. Losing yourself in work was the surest way to
forget the grim reality of the world these days.
“Ah well,
you know. I’ve been busy. If I wasn’t here, these idiots would let the fence
fall into ruin.”
“Ewan seems
like a delightful fella.”
“He’s a
dick.”
I flicked my
collar up and shielded my chin from the cold. A day earlier I had groomed my
beard with a pair of kitchen scissors and now I looked halfway presentable.
What I gained in appearance, I lost in insulation. I felt bare.
“I suppose
you know the Vasey people are here?” I said.
Alice held
her hand in front of her, inspected the blisters crested on her palms.
“How do you
feel about that?”
I thought
about what to say. If I told her how I really felt, it might scare her. The
force of anger in my chest made it feel like I had an angry dragon in me. I
thought about holding it back but if there was anyone I could be honest with,
it was Alice.
“I want to
kill Moe,” I said.
There was
silence except for a gust of wind that that rushed past us. It groaned against
the fence and made it wobble. To our left there was a children’s playground,
but it had been a while since the rusted swings and dirty slide had seen any
children on them. Not even children had time to play anymore.
“I can
understand that, Kyle. But it wouldn’t do any good. There’s way too many of
them. If you ever touched Moe, you’d have the rest of the Vasey crew chasing
you with pitchforks. Best thing is to stay away.”
“I wish I
could do that.”
Alice turned
to me. The dark rings around her eyes made it look like she hadn’t slept in a
week. “What do you mean?”
“I know how
much you want to stay here,” I said. “You want somewhere safe for Ben.”
Alice
nodded.
I took a
deep breath. “Victoria is letting us stay. But I have to help deal with their
stalker problem.”
“What
problem?”
“There’s a
nest of them, somewhere. They’ve been picking people off every night.”
“I wouldn’t
know where to start with that,” said Alice.
A rush of
wind kicked at the fence across from us. The fence jarred as though a tank had
hit it. One of the men stepped back, his face red.
“I said hold
the fucking thing!” he shouted.
“I need to
get back,” said Alice.
“I need your
help,” I said. “Apparently the stalker deaths calmed down since the Vasey
people got here. Moe must have found a way to deal with them, and I need to
find out what that is. If I do, Victoria’s gonna let us stay here. Only thing
is, I can’t go and talk to them alone. If I’m left on my own with him, I know
what I’ll do. And we can’t afford that. I need you there Alice.”
Alice looked
at the ground for a few seconds. Her skin was full and pink, and it was free of
the wrinkles that most people her age sported. Whatever burdens Alice carried,
she carried them well. She was a contrast to Victoria, whose wrinkles made her
look like a leather purse. Alice looked toward the fence. The men stepped away
from the area they had been holding.
“I’m sorry
Kyle, I can’t. They need me here. You’ve seen how stupid they are. The fence
will fall apart if I leave it to Ewan. And he’d love to tell people I was
slacking off.”
I sighed.
That was the answer I’d been dreading. “I know. I tried finding Lou, but she’s
a ghost.”
“Saw her
yesterday,” said Alice. “She was arguing with the guy we saw in Victoria’s
office, the one with the scarred face.”
“Billy?”
“Yeah. Then I
saw her in the street and she blanked me.”
I didn’t
know what was going on with Lou. She knew Billy from before, that much was
obvious. She was keeping something from me, but I had to remind myself that I
had only met the woman a few weeks ago. I had no right to demand to know the
secrets of her past. I would just have to wait for her to tell me. Until then,
though, I didn’t know how much I could trust her.
Pinpricks of
freezing wind punctured through the insulation of my coat. I stamped my feet on
the ground to get my blood flowing.
“Thanks
anyway,” I said.
I walked
away, toward the exit of the settlement.
“Kyle?”
Alice called after me.
I turned,
waited for her to say something.
“Don’t do
anything to fuck this up for us,” she said.
There was no
way around it. I was going to have to go and see Moe alone. If I didn’t, there
was no way Victoria would let us stay. That meant we would all have to head
into the Wilds again, leave the safety of Bleakholt and face the same old
dangers. Starvation, cold, the infected, stalkers. I couldn’t put Alice and Ben
through it. I couldn’t ask Justin and Melissa to leave with me.
The problem
was that I couldn’t trust myself around Moe. I always thought of myself as a
logical guy. I was calm and not prone to emotions. But Moe had done something
unforgivable, and even thinking of him sent a shot of hot anger through my
veins. I was worried something would take over my brain if I saw him. Make me
do something to him that would make me feel good, but would screw things up for
everyone.
As I got
nearer to the exit, boots trampled on the ground behind me.
“Going
somewhere?” said a gruff voice.
Billy
stepped in beside me, his muscled frame covered by a thick wool coat. A leather
belt covered his waist, thick enough that a weight lifter could use it as a
girdle. A butcher’s mallet hung off it.
“Going to
see the campers,” I said.
“I’m coming
with you,” said Billy.
I wanted to
ask why. I wanted to refuse him, but I just didn’t have it in me. The truth was
I needed someone there to hold me back. I didn’t matter that I didn’t trust
Billy. He was tough enough to stop me if the rage took over.
***
The Vasey
campsite was a scattering of battered tents. People huddled together around
fires that flickered against the wind. Cold was etched into their faces, and
their cheek bones stuck out. Life outside the fence was completely different
from the safety of Bleakholt. The people looked a thousand calories short of
what an average person needed to live. It reminded me of paintings I’d seen in
a museum of the Irish potato famine. Desperation was written into their skin
and the scars of hunger twisted their faces.
“Jesus,”
said Billy. “Never actually been out here. Didn’t know things were this bad.”
“Don’t get
your violin out just yet,” I said.
“What do you
mean?”
“Doesn’t
matter.”
I found it
hard to be sympathetic. Moe was their ringleader, but every person here was
complicit in the abandonment of the Vasey settlement. They all shared blame in
what happened; the people they had left behind in Vasey had been slaughtered by
stalkers.
I stamped
away the tiny flicker of empathy that rose in my chest when I looked at their
malnourished faces. I imagined a hard shell covering me, deflecting anything
that might stir feelings of sympathy.
A man looked
up as we approached. Recognition lit his face when he saw me. He opened his
mouth to speak, but the words didn’t come.
Yeah
, I thought,
you know
who I am. You know what you did.
“Where’s
Moe?” I said, keeping my voice cold as stone.
He pointed
to a bank of trees a hundred feet away. It was the beginnings of a small wood.
The branches of the trees were bare and the stick-thin limbs creaked against
the wind. Despite the lack of foliage the woods were still dark, as though a
shadow hung over them. I couldn’t see Moe, but he must have been there
somewhere.
Instead of
walking through the camp we skirted around the outside. Some of the campers
would want to speak to me and maybe even apologise, but I didn’t want to hear
it. Billy couldn’t help but stare as we walked through, and his expression dropped
from tough stoicism to an etching of concern.
“Victoria
never told us that it was this bad,” he said.
“Don’t get
soft,” I said. “They deserve it.”
He screwed
his face up, made the pock-marks on his skin more pronounced, tiny craters that
dug into his cheek. “Are you for real?”
“Just trust
me.”
“You’re a
cold son of a bitch,” he said.
“They know
what they did.”
“And what
was that?”
“I don’t
want to talk about it right now,” I said.
Billy looked
at the ground. “We’ve all done things we regret,” he said, some of the
harshness gone from his voice. “Do you think people deserve a second chance?.”
I didn’t
answer him. I wanted to ask him about Lou, find out how he knew her and what
the hell was going on. I knew he wouldn’t tell me, and I couldn’t afford to
have an argument with him. Right now, so close to the Vasey camp, he was the
only ally I had.
The wind
screamed at the edge of the woods as the bare-limbed trees sucked it in and
shrieked it back out. The muddy floor was toughened by frost, and our boots
crunched as we walked along it. The further in we got, the more I wanted to
turn back. The atmosphere of the woods made me want to zip my coat up to my
chin and cover my face, as if there was something I shouldn’t see. The trees
stretched back much further than I had first thought, and the whole woodland
area must have covered at least a quarter of a mile.
“Jesus, look
at that,” said Billy.
He pointed
at a tree. I followed his outstretched finger, and then stopped walking. My
legs felt heavy and my chest hurt as though the cold was a vice squeezing
against it. I looked at the tree and felt a tremor of revulsion.
Ropes were
tied around the trunk. Blood was splattered around the bark as though someone
had exploded against it. Just below the ropes, stuck in the bark, was a
fingernail with blood on the end, like someone had clawed desperately at the
tree. I realised that the ropes were positioned at roughly chest height.
Someone had been tied to the tree and torn apart.
Billy’s face
was white. Despite his tough appearance, the draining of his face told me that
he wasn’t as hardened to the horrors of the Wilds as I was. But even I felt
sick. What had happened?
“Who the
fuck are these people?” said Billy.
I didn’t
occur to me that the Vasey crew had done this. I didn’t know what had gone on,
but I never thought them capable of this, whatever it was.