Blood Memory: The Complete Season One (Books 1-5) (15 page)

Mary froze. “How? When?”

“This morning on the beach,” Jordan said with a glance in Jessie’s direction.

“So she was knocked free?” Mary said. “We might have been able to save her, Stan.”

Stan hugged her.

“They were with her on Haven when she died,” Anne said. “She’d got stuck under a wall unit and they couldn’t get her free.”

“I’m sorry,”
Jordan said.

“We’re here now. We have to be thankful for that.”

Mary nodded and wiped away a tear. “You’re right. You’re right. I just can’t stop thinking about her.”

There was dead silence
as they reflected on their collective memories of that darling sweet girl.

“Can I help you, Mary?” An
ne asked, breaking the silence.

“Yes, dear. You can…”

Jordan joined Stan, who had moved to one of the tables piled high with brochures. “What’re you reading there, Stan?”

“Just about an old church. Did you know Saint Nicholas’
s is the largest parish church in England? And it’s right here in the city.” He pointed at it out the window. “It’s nearly a thousand years old.”

The s
oft moonlight tinted the church with an unearthly quality, like it was in a dream. Its flint walls were craggy and half-cloaked in shadow. A great cube belfry perched atop the short tower like a top hat with four spires jutting out from each corner. It sat crouched, as if hiding behind the low expanse of buildings before it.

Stan read from a brochure. “The belfry was built for the sun to rise and cast a long winding shadow, sweeping the city beneath it in a wide arc.”

Jordan smiled. “You can take the teacher out of history, but not the history out of the teacher, huh?”

Stan shrugged. “The future is in the past. What was will be again.”

“Good Jesus,” Jordan said, moving to another table. “What is that?”

“Oh, that,” Stan said with a grin. “That there’s what they call a machete.”

“Where in God’s name did you find it?” It was over a foot long and light as a feather to lift.

“In the lost and found box.”

“In Great Yarmouth?” Jordan shook his head. “You never can tell about a place, can you?”

“Who would be forgetful enough to misplace it? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Fortunately, the kind of person who
did
misplace it.”

Jessie, tears streaming down her face, ran to Mary with her chopping board.

“Jessie, don’t cry, love,” Mary said.

“I’m not. It’s these onions. They’re really strong!”

They all laughed.

Mary put the chopped onions into the pot. “Everybody get a bowl. I think we’re pretty much done.”

They picked up lumps of bread – most of it hard as rock – and dipped it in the soup. It softened as it soaked.

“I’d forgotten what eating something
other than fish was like,” Stan said. “This is lovely, Mare.”

“You’re not eating, Mary?” Jordan asked.

“I ate earlier,” she said, not meeting his eyes. Stan suddenly became interested in blowing his food down to the temperature of an ice cube.

“You look tired. You should sleep.”

“I’m not tired compared to some of us,” Mary said, gesturing to Jessie, who had her spoon halfway to her mouth, head nodding.

“Are you sure?”

“You know me, tough as old boots.” Mary moved to Jessie. “Jess. Wake up. Time for bed, love.” She half-led, half-carried Jessie to a cot they had set up in the corner. The moment Jessie’s head touched the pillow she started snoring.

“Poor tyke,” Stan said. “It’s been a tough day for her.”

“It’s been a tough day for us all,” Mary said. “So, what are we going to do tomorrow?”

“We’ll wait three days,” Jordan said. “That’s the rule.”

“But what if Joel doesn’t show up by then?”

“We went over this when we made the
shipwreck protocol. We stay until the sun rises on the third morning following the shipwreck.”

“That was then,” Stan said. “This is now.”

“We all agreed.”

“We could wait a little longer, Jordan,” Stan said. “A few extra days won’t hurt.”

“If we stay an extra day we might decide to stay an extra week, or month. When does it end?”

“You’re being over dramatic,” Mary said. “An extra day won’t hurt.”

“Jordan’s right,” Anne said. “The longer we stay here, the more time it gives for the Lurchers to find us.”

“But Anne… It’s Joel.”

“I know.” This wasn’t easy for Anne to say. “But Joel knows he has to get here by sunrise. He understands that. And if he were here he would say the same thing.”

Mary gave a look to Stan as if to say,
I can’t believe we’re doing this
. “Okay,” she said. “If that’s the group’s decision.”

S
ilence followed, save for the scraping of spoons on bowl bottoms.

“
In three days what are our plans then?” Stan asked.

“I don’t know,” Jordan said. “Does everyone agree the sea is still the safest place to be?”

Stan scratched his chin. “Unless we can get on a submarine or into space, where else is there?” He grimaced. “I’m sick of fish already.”

“Aren’t we all?” Anne said.

Everyone’s bowl was empty, and they all looked a whole lot more tired.

“You all go to sleep,” Jordan said. “I’ll take first watch.”

Stan and Mary
snored from their bed made of stacked cushions and threadbare blankets. They lay in the furthest corner from the door, their heads directly below the windows. The heat from their bodies steamed up the glass. Jordan sat whittling at the door. Anne approached him.

“You’re not tired?”
Jordan asked.

“Exhausted. But you need stitching back
together

“I’ll be okay.”

“Your shirt’s covered in blood.”

“Promise you won’t take offence? I’
ve seen your handiwork before.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Do you remember that time Joel managed to land himself with his own fishing hook?”

“My first patient.
”

“Even Frankenstein would have shuddered at those stitches
.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“It was!”

“Fine, let it get infected. But don’t come to me when you need an amputation.”

Jordan let out a sigh. “Where do you want me?”

“Where you are is fine.” Anne took up a threaded needle. “Where do you hurt?”

Jordan pulled up his sleeve to reveal a gash on his forearm. Anne cleaned it and began to sew.

“Jessie doesn’t have a scratch on her,” she said. “Can you believe that? The worst storm in years, and she doesn’t have so much as a
graze

“Lucky Jess. Ouch!”

“Don’t be such a baby.”

There was a pause.
Anne’s arm brushed against Jordan’s, and he could feel the heat off her body.

“How did you get away?” Anne asked. “The last I saw you, you were sucked out to sea.”

“I don’t know. I found a fragment of the hull and climbed onto it. I must have blacked out because when I woke up I was on the beach. How did you all get out?”

“Me and Jessie got sucked into the storm like you. We floated there for a while, clinging to each other. We tried to find the mainland, but couldn’t see it anywhere. Suddenly there was this explosion of water and the life raft came up. Mary and Stan came up with it. We all climbed aboard
. Mary and Stan were really upset about Stacey. They wanted to swim down into Haven to rescue her. After they calmed down we all fell asleep. When we woke up we were on the beach. It was dark. We weren’t sure how long we’d been on the life raft and weren’t sure if we missed everybody already.”

“
I know that feeling.”

Anne bit the thread off with her teeth and tied a knot. She took Jordan’s arm, extended it and then bent it at the elbow. “How does it
feel?”

“Great.” Jordan admired her handiwork. “Since when did you get so good?”

Anne nodded to the sleeping shadows. “You can thank the guinea pigs. Do you hurt anywhere else?”

“My back. There’s a slight twinge.
”

Anne helped him take his shirt off. She inhaled through her teeth. There was a long diagonal cut across his back. “Looks painful.”

“Only when I breathe.”

Silence as Anne sewed.

In a small voice Anne said, “I wanted to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“For holding me at the end.”

Jordan turned enough to see Anne’s face. “
Thank you, but you were the one holding me.”

Anne smiled. Her lips grazed his back as she bit the thread clean and tied a knot.

“Don’t give up hope on Joel yet,” Jordan said, slipping his shirt back on. “I wasn’t back till a few hours ago. If Joel’s still alive, he’ll be here.”

Jordan huddled up in a blanket in the corner, pressed up against the door. His head felt heavy and nodded with the threat of sleep. He opened his eyes, shook his head and maneuvered himself into a less comfortable position. He couldn’t allow himself to fall asleep, no matter how tired he was. His eyelids drooped and his head nodded toward the floor again.

Then he heard a noise.

Jordan blinked awake but didn’t move. He listened, but hearing no more so
unds, began to drift off again.

He heard the noise again, louder this time. A creaking sound. Jordan yawned and stretched. He put his eye to the keyhole. The corridor was empty.
He heard another noise, like something being dragged.

The blanket fell from his shoulders. He pivoted himself in front of the door to get the best view possible. The dragging became louder. He felt certain it would appear from around the corner any moment. He waited with bated breath. Jordan licked his dry lips. For a long time there was nothing, the silence most terrifying of all.
The creak of a floorboard. A low throaty rumble. The blood drained from Jordan’s face as the figure emerged from around the corner. It held its right arm at the elbow, left leg trailing behind.

Jordan looked back at the sleeping figures and prepared to
wake them, but doubt stayed his tongue. Maybe the figure wasn’t heading for them, but would head into another room altogether. If he shouted, he might as well ring the dinner bell. He put his eye back to the keyhole.

The figured limped into moonlight flooding through a hole
in the wall, and for an instant, Jordan caught sight of the man’s face. His expression was gripped with a fierce determination, or perhaps fear. Maybe both. It was not the expression of a Lurcher, but a man.

Joel
’s injuries looked too fresh to have been caused twenty hours ago at sea. With him bleeding like that, he was lucky not to have attracted the attention of every Lurcher within a half-mile radius.

Jordan reached for the doorknob.

That’s when he heard the scariest sound yet. A low groan. And it hadn’t issued from Joel.

Joel cast a look over his shoulder. He stumbled faster down the corridor
, toward Jordan and the others. Behind him another figure appeared.

The hairs on the back of Jordan’s neck stood on end.
Jordan, never taking his eye from the keyhole, reached for the machete propped against the doorframe. There was only one Lurcher. Jordan was confident he could take it.

Joel kept
coming. There were more groans.

More Lurchers joined the first. They ambled after Joel in their own limping fashion
, no two the same. Thoughts of fighting evaporated as the corridor grew thick with their rotting corpses.

But Joel kept coming.

He reached for the doorknob. Jordan did nothing to stop him, nor aid him. He felt powerless.

The doorknob began to turn, but it never made a full revolution,
never cracking open. Joel looked at the door with a desperate expression – a man at sanctuary’s door, but unable to cross the threshold. Joel took his hand off the doorknob and instead opened another door. The Lurchers followed Joel into the room with their ubiquitous chorus of low groans.

Stan made a small sound in his sleep,
and then quietened back down.

It was silent.

The groans had stopped.

There were
grunts of pain amidst the crunching of bones and the snapping of ligaments and cords, the hard crunch of gristle.

S
ometime later, after the Lurchers had had their fill, the groans came once again. They emerged from the room and wondered aimlessly down the corridors. One came close to the door, but was distracted by a noise one of the other Lurchers made and followed it.