Blood Memory: The Complete Season One (Books 1-5) (42 page)

“
But they didn’t get you?”

“
They did, but they didn’t bite us.”

Kevin shook his head, then looked at Stan, who said,
“It’s true.”

Kevin paled.
“Why wouldn’t they bite you?”

“
They held us and waited for another Lurcher to come. Except he wasn’t like the other Lurchers. He was smart. The compound soldiers called him Queenie – because he’s like the queen of the Lurchers, a kind of hive mind, I guess. He grunted and they all listened. He came to me, cut open my arm with his nail,” Jordan showed him the cut that had healed, “and drank some of my blood. He… tasted it. He seemed to like it. He screeched something and the other Lurchers holding me took me away. I don’t know where they were taking me – I never got there. Apparently Queenie tried Anne’s blood but didn’t like it. There’s something about my blood he likes. We don’t know what. We managed to escape, not to our boat like we’d planned but further inland. Queenie has been chasing us ever since.”

“
Chasing…” Kevin couldn’t believe it.

“
They even set a trap for us. It almost worked. One of our number – Selena – was killed.”

Kevin paled with each word. He ran a hand through his thin
ning hair. “That is worrying.”

“What are you going to do?”

Kevin blew air out through his mouth. “Stay here, I guess. Beth’s happy here. I can’t force her to go somewhere she won’t be happy. Besides, she’s allergic to fish.”

Beth handed them a packed lunch for their journey ahead. They made their goodbyes.

“
Good luck out there,” Kevin said.

They crossed the field, waved once more to their hosts, and found the gap in the hedge Kevin had told them about. It led onto yet another field.

A south westerly wind blew cold, hard and strong from behind. It felt good when it dried the sweat on their backs. The land ran downhill making their travelling even easier. They crossed a country road that bisected their walking path. Jordan checked both directions out of habit and walked across it. He stopped in the middle and looked up and down the road that appeared and disappeared over undulating hills into the distance. The heat haze wobbled above it. The world was so quiet. They crossed the road and came to a worn dirt-track.

The grass and flowers had been pressed back as if someone had been through recently. There was a farmhouse up ahead with adjoining barn. Together the buildings made an ‘L’ shape, and sheltered between them were trees with branches bowed heavy with ripe fruit. Jordan reached up, plucked an apple and tossed it to Anne.

“Here, catch,” he said.

Jordan plucked another apple and bit into it. The juice ran down his chin.

SNAP.

Jordan spun round to identify the cause of the sharp metallic clack, akin to a large mousetrap going off.

Stan fell to his knees at Jessie’s feet, clawing at something attached to her foot. Jessie’s eyes were clenched shut with pain.

Most bizarre of all was Anne – frozen, the apple on the ground, a queer look on her face, looking at something behind Jordan. But before he could turn, something cold and hard pressed against his head. He recognised the thick cir
cular tubes as that of a double-barrelled shotgun.

“You gonna pay for that?”

The voice was hard and deep, with an obvious broad Norfolk twang. Jordan couldn’t turn his head far enough to get a good look at him. He held his hands up in surrender.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Jordan said.

The man chuckled. “Then you’d best not have stolen me apples then had you?”

“You’re right. We’re sorry. We thought there was no one else here. All the farms in the area have been empty.”

The man cocked his head to one side. “Which direction did you come from?” ‘From’ was pronounced ‘frahm’.

Jordan nodded west.

“You come by old Tilly’s place?” the man asked.

“I don’t know who Tilly is.”

“Old farmhouse building with a red roof and white walls. ‘Bout a mile in the direction you came from.”

“Yes. We passed it.”

“And?”

“Empty.”

“Nobody?” The man’s voice seemed hollow now, and cracked with emotion.

Jordan began to turn.

The man pushed the gun harder into Jordan’s skull. “Did I tell you to turn round? You do, and it’ll be the last thing you do do.” There was a pause, and then, unexpectedly, the farmer cackled. “Do do,” he said. “Doo doo.” The shotgun barrel relaxed on Jordan’s head.

Jordan turn
ed. The man was the quintessential farmer: thick of chest and short of leg. Everything he wore was earthy in colour – from his dusty brown flat-cap, to his soiled green wellington boots, muddy to the shin. He had to be in his fifties, but his body was hard and lean, used to labour. He lowered the gun, pointing it at the ground, and wiped the tears of laugher from his eyes. He extended a hard-skinned hand.

Jordan
nodded to his hands still up in the air. “Can I put them down?”

“
Unless you’ve got something else for me to shake. And between us, I don’t think we’re that well acquainted yet.”

Jordan shook the farmer
’s hand.

“The name’s Frank,” the farmer said.

“I’m Jordan. This is Anne, Stan and Jessie.”

Upon seeing Anne and Jessie, Frank tapped his cap
with his fingertips. He rested the gun in the crook of one arm. “You’ll never get it free that way,” Frank said to Stan, who continued to pull at the thing attached to Jessie’s leg. Frank put the gun down and knelt beside Jessie’s trapped foot. “Stop struggling. It’ll only get tighter the more you struggle.”

“How do we get it off?” Stan said.

Frank took a knife out from his pocket and slipped it between the trap’s jagged teeth and pried them open. Jessie pulled her leg free. Frank set the trap up once again, its jaws wide open like a Venus flytrap. He took Jessie’s foot in his hand and lifted up the hem of her torn trousers. A thin sliver of blood ran down Jessie’s leg.

“It’s just a nick,” Frank said. “She’ll live. You’re lucky. It could have taken your foot off.”

Jessie just stared, not even looking at him.

“
Is she all right?”

“
She’s fine,” Anne said.

Together Frank and Anne
helped Jess up.

“Just what were you doing, wandering through here?” the farmer asked.

“We’re heading for the coast,” Jordan said. “We’ve got a boat waiting.”

“I meant through here.” He tapped the ground. “Didn’t you see the signs?”

“What signs?”

Then Jordan noticed something odd about the land. There
were hundreds of tiny mounds dotted about the place – just like the one that Jessie had stepped on.

Stan whistled. “It’s a wonder we didn’t all get snared.”

“I suppose I ought to invite you in,” Frank said. “I’ve got a first aid kit inside.” Without waiting to see if they would follow, he trudged toward his house.

Ivy crawled up the white painted walls, stretching almost to the roof, where a converted attic skylight looked out on the English countryside in all directions. The front door was like one of those you might find at a horse stable. The bottom was closed, the top hooked back wide open. Birds hopped across the tile roof, watching those below. Frank led them inside.

Monitors and blinking lights greeted them the moment they stepped inside. The equipment hummed. Wire bundles ran the length of the ceiling beams. Jordan turned to find the others wore matching expressions of incredulity.

“Tea okay?” Frank asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Jordan said.

Frank sat the gun down, letting it lean against the polished mahogany dresser. He shrugged off his green duffle coat, hung it on a carved stand, and headed into the kitchen. The kitchen was far less ostentatious; plain wood panel cupboards and chipped sideboards. Frank flicked on the kettle. He bent down and took out a first aid box from the cupboard under the sink.

“Come here then,” Frank said to Jessie.

“I can do that,” Anne said, a slight abrasiveness in her manner.

Frank shrugged. “As you please.”

As Anne washed and dressed Jessie’s wound, Frank took five clean mugs out of a cupboard and set them on the table.

“We’ll have to share teabags, I’m afraid,” he said, putting a bag in alternate cups. “I’m running a little low. So, how is the world these days?”

“Pretty much the same,” Jordan said.

“Lurchers still trying to bite your faces off?”

The kettle rumbled, almost boiled. Jordan peered at the kettle. Just as
he opened his mouth, Stan said, “You’ve got power?”

Frank smiled, as if he’d been waiting for them to notice. “I’ve got a back-up generator out back. Powers most of this stuff. The hot water’s a bit patchy, but-”

“Hot water?” Anne said, pinning the bandages tight to Jessie’s calf.

“Sure. You can help yourself to a shower, if you like.”

Anne turned to Jess. “How would you like a nice hot shower, Jess?”

Jessie’s mouth twitched and she squeaked with excitement. Anne took her by the hand. “Come on then.”

“The best shower is upstairs. Towels are in the cupboard.”

As Jessie and Anne disappeared up the stairs, Frank reached into a drawer and came out with a packet of sweets. “Sweet?” he asked.
“Good thing about sweets: they keep damn near forever.” He tucked them in his pocket.

Armed with their cups of weak tea, Frank led them up the staircase. Two threadbare sofas and a worn armchair took up the space. Taking up one corner of the room was a bank of security monitors looking in and outward of the farm in just about every conceivable direction.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Frank said.

Jordan nodded, not wanting to disagree. “Why have you got cameras in the rooms upstairs? If there were Lurchers that close, you’d already know.”

Frank shrugged. “I’m a cautious man. Count yourself lucky you came from the west. If you had come from the north or east, you would have arrived in meaty chunks.”

“Why’s that?”

Frank gestured to a monitor. The image was a little grainy, but peering close, Jordan could make out small goose bump-like mounds of earth.

“Mines,” Frank said, chest swelling with pride. “Hundreds of ‘em. A Lurcher couldn’t get within five hundred yards of this place without setting one off. But the traps – they are the best. With the lightest touch they go off, and the Lurcher’s mine. I leave them there. They call out, you see. They attract others who get trapped like the first.”

“What happens if there are too many for the traps?”

“That’s never happened.”

A pause as they sipped their tea.

“Where does this lead?” Jordan asked, gesturing to a door built into the wall. The door was clearly a recent addition – it still hadn’t been painted yet.

“To the barn.”

“Do you mind if I open it?”

“Go ahead.”

Jordan opened it, and was immediately assaulted by light farmyard smells. A giant square of light with his silhouette inside stretched across the floor, and barely grazed the barn doors opposite.

“To keep
an eye on bovine,” Frank said.

“There aren’t any.”

“Right now they’re in a field grazing.”

“
They’re safe out there? Lurchers will attack anything with a pulse.”

“
The cows have their own defences, don’t you worry about that.”

Jordan nodded
and sipped his tea. It felt good to be civilised again. “Do you mind if I use the toilet?”

“Down the hall, on the left.”

“It’s indoors? Sorry. I’ve spent so long crapping outside it’s hard to remember what it’s like to do it inside.”

After relieving himself, Jordan re-entered the corridor leading back to the computer console room.

“Jordan.” Anne stepped from a darkened room. Her hair was still dry and she hadn’t taken her dirty clothes off yet. Her eyes darted up and down the corridor. “I don’t think we should stay here.”

“Why? What’s wrong? I thought you were taking a shower with Jess?”

“She’s in the room. She’s fine. I wanted to get you alone. We’re not safe here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you see the way he looked at Jessie outside? When he looked at her earlier, there was something… I don’t know… wrong. In his eyes. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Frank? He was probably surprised at seeing someone so young. Children are rare these days.”

“Yeah…” Anne said, sounding unconvinced.