dEaDINBURGH (17 page)

 
Joey whispered an apology to her and passed out, falling onto the grass at her feet with the rest of the dead.

Chapter 20

Alys

Harder. Push harder. Again, again. Move faster, be better, be stronger.
Alys’ mind mocked and encouraged her in equal measure, and in Jennifer’s voice. Always the voice of her mother. It had become second nature, that voice driving her, empowering her. This is what she’d spent thousands of hours training for. This.

The years of torturing her muscles, taking the hits, falling, rising, again, again, again.
This was so worth it.

She’d never felt so free, so alive. She’d never felt such purpose.

 
This. This is what she was made for.

With a scream of rage and joy she leapt at the next one, taking its head clean off with a single slash. Volleying the dried head, she marvelled at how light it felt as it struck her foot and bulleted off, straight into the face of an oncoming fresh Zom who staggered back. She felt like laughing. Instead she shoved her Sai through the temple of the next one, and the next, and began to clear herself some room to move. A few more inches, maybe a foot around her. Just a little bit more space free, unoccupied by the next Zom. Then she could really get going.

Chapter 21

Joey

Joey regained consciousness, becoming slowly aware that he still lay on the grass beneath her.
She hadn’t left him
.

Whirling, jabbing her Sai, leaping and kicking, she was a lethal whirlwind of blows and strikes and death. Inches from his prone body she did what had to be done. That’s what she always did. He rolled over from his back onto his side, curled his body inward and ripped off his right boot. One glance at the red stain blossoming out across the fabric of his sock from the big toe of his foot told him that it was all over. The nail had been bitten through. He watched the blood spread, detachedly noting to himself how like a poppy it looked with his toe at the centre of the blood flower.

Why is she still here?

Glancing across at his left hand, he noticed that an injury he’d taken there was bleeding freely also.

Trying to stand, he braced himself with the palm of his right hand pressed into the mud and blood, but found that his legs weren’t listening and crumpled back to the ground. He tried twice more to stand before she kneed him in the shoulder, knocking him back to a curled position. She’d fought harder still and made a three-second gap in the fight to turn her attention to him. Three seconds was three times as many as she’d need, but that’s how she was. Well prepared. He’d taught her that. They’d taught each other so much in the too-little time they’d spent together.

 
Instead of the terror he’d expected, a peaceful acceptance slid over him. He didn’t raise his hands to protect himself and he didn’t close his eyes. Placing one foot either side of him in a strike position, she raised her third Sai, the deadliest, swirled it around in her palm to a stabbing position and threw herself at him. As she struck he did close his eyes. Not for himself, not to welcome the black darkness he still missed from Mary King’s Close, but for
her
. She shouldn’t have to look in his eyes as she killed him. Silenced him.

Thank you, Alys,
Joey’s voice whispered inside his head. Outside, Joseph MacLeod was still.

 
“Aaaaaaargh.”

Joey’s upper body curled up, launching him onto his feet in response to the pain in his right foot. Alys was already back into her stride, whirling, showering her personal space with a hundred different killing blows, defending him as well as herself. Joey shook his confusion off and returned to the fight, ignoring the pain in his foot and his former toe, which Alys had severed and a Zom dressed as a fire-fighter had just made a quick meal of.

Reinvigorated, inspired by her bravery, by the risk she’d taken to try to save him from the infection spreading, he steeled himself and fought harder than he’d ever done before. Together they pushed back the dead, stabbing and thrusting and bleeding from a million scratches, cuts and tears from rancid fingernails and calloused hands. They cleared a space and the dead began to thin out.

“Up there, Joey.”

He turned, following Alys’ Sai tip to a broad oak tree twenty feet to Alys’ left.

“Think you can get up there?” She elbowed one of The Ringed in the forehead with the blade of her Sai along her forearm as she spoke.

A huge grin broke out on Joey’s face as Alys began to count down.

“Three, two, one.”

On one, Joey spun around in front of Alys and began sprinting at the tree. Shouldering six Zoms aside, one at a time, he reached the trunk at full speed, ran several steps vertically up the trunk and grabbed out for the lowest hanging branch that would hold him. Scooping his legs up after his hands, he landed smoothly astride the branch. Joey rose to his feet instantly and began scrambling further up the tree, coming to his knees in a ready position at a wide meeting place of two large branches.

He had fifty arrows at hand and didn’t waste a single shot as he cleared a path for Alys out from the epicentre of the herd she still fought.

As Alys took her cue and took off at a sprint towards the Royal Infirmary, dispatching a few more Ringed as she ran, Joey fired his remaining arrows into some Zoms that shambled after her. He had no idea where he might find replacements for the arrows he’d spent, or if he might have the opportunity to recover the fifty that protruded from so many Zom heads in these woods, but they’d survive. That was all that mattered. Descending the tree, he ran after Alys, a little clumsily, due to the lack of a big toe on his right foot.

He caught up to Alys as they broke through some tangled greenery at the end of the cycle path and out onto the grounds to the infirmary. Joey flashed her a smile.

“That’s a finger
and
a toe you owe me,” he said, jabbing the stump of his middle finger at her in a rude gesture that had become their own private joke.

“Stop feeding them to Zoms, then,” she replied, face breaking into a smile of her own.

She punched him in the usual spot and then shocked him for the second time that day by wrapping her arms around him. She pulled him close in an embrace he hadn’t a hope of escaping, if he’d even wanted to. They held each other for a few long moments, each just happy to still have the other. Joey could have stayed there forever.

“What’s that?” Alys suddenly broke off and moved nearer to the hospital grounds.

Having had his back to the hospital, Joey followed after her, noticing something shining in the distance.

“Is that…. a light?” Alys stammered.

“An electric light?”

Joey shrugged. He’d never seen one before. Neither had she, so how could they be sure?

Peering deeper into the darkness, he spotted something and took Alys by the hand, guiding her a few feet on towards the building shapes in the distance. Reaching out with his hand, the one that held hers, they made contact together with a very large, very tall, and very strong steel fence which sealed the hospital grounds.

After their encounter with the massive herd of The Ringed, which had so clearly originated from the hospital, they’d expected the grounds around it to be overrun also. It seemed that someone had cleared the hospital compound and secured it with a very impressive perimeter fence. It was far taller and stronger than any that surrounded their own communities and more closely resembled the outer fence-line around the city. The one that prevented the survivors from leaving. That meant safety from the pursuing herd.

“We need to get in here,” Joey said.

After searching around for less than ten minutes, they found a hole, dug under the fence from their side, leading into the compound.

A darkness spread over Joey’s face.

“He’s already here,” he said softly.

“It might be someone else?” Alys offered.

Joey bent down and ran his hands along the trench and under the fence-line. Pulling at something, he lifted a scrap of chequered material from golfer’s trousers for Alys to see.

“It’s him. Let’s go.”

Being smaller than Bracha, neither had any difficulty slipping under the fence-line.

“What’s the plan?” Alys asked.

Joey shrugged.

“Hole-up ‘til morning?”

“You give us the advantage at night.” Alys gestured towards his eyes and then flicked his right ear. “Bat-boy.”

Despite the tension, they both laughed.

“Okay. But something’s not right. There’s a weird sound here I haven’t heard before. You hear it?”

Alys cocked her head.

 
“A kind of humming?”

“Yeah, but it’s not an animal. I don’t know what it is. Let’s find that, and then see about our favourite golfer. That okay?”

Alys agreed and fell in behind him, signalling that he should lead the way. Pressing against buildings and using greenery as cover, they slowly followed the sound from one end of the compound to the other. As they moved, Joey scanned around constantly. Their path was taking them closer to the light they’d seen earlier.

“Weird,” Alys whispered.

Joey jerked his chin upwards in a questioning gesture.

“There are no Zoms at all inside their fences.”

Joey realised that she was right. He was so accustomed to the presence of The Ringed that once he registered that he couldn’t see or hear one anywhere around, he felt instantly uncomfortable. It didn’t feel right, this silence outside.

Silence in Mary King’s Close he was familiar with, but outside? The soundtrack was all wrong without the shuffle-groan of the dead.

Alys reached out, taking his hand and squeezing it to reassure him that it felt odd to her also.

“Let’s go.” He moved off, a little more alert than before. “We’re close,” he whispered to her. “I can feel the vibrations from it.”

“Me too.”

Joey and Alys slipped around the edge of the Chancellor’s Building and stopped dead as they spotted the source of the strange sound they’d followed.

Both recognised it instantly from pictures they’d seen as kids. It was a relic from the past. It should be silent and rusted and still. But there it was; a huge, fully-functional generator, chugging away, pouring out electricity, sending the energy along so many cables leading to the main hospital wing in which a row of six electric lights shone bright as suns through fully intact glass windows.

Interlude

Fraser Donnelly

Pressing his thumb to the keypad on the door to his apartment, Fraser held his anger in check as the scanner slid over his fingerprint and chirped cheerfully for him to enter. He threw his coat onto the floor as he stepped inside, slamming the door loudly behind him. Leaning his back against the inside of his apartment door, he let loose a stream of very colourful expletives and some very impractical suggestions for what his superiors could do to themselves.

He felt better for getting it out of his system, here in the privacy of his apartment. In the boardroom, of course, he’d been supremely calm and confident.
Yes, sir… Have you considered that, sir… Here’s my plan, sir.
He silently thanked… whoever that they’d eventually sanctioned his idea.

Ignoring the growl from his stomach, he strode towards the drinks dispenser by the refrigerator.

“Glenmorangie. No ice,” he barked at the automation.

Seconds later he’d downed the golden liquid and ordered another, whilst enjoying the pleasant burn from the last. By the time he’d had his third, a double this time, Fraser already felt mellower and much more confident that events would play out the way he wished them to.

Laughing as loudly as he’d sworn minutes before, he clicked the fingers of his right hand, mentally snapping his attention back. Taking a seat at his computer array, he pressed his back deep into the luxurious leather, appreciating the quality.

The Brits knew how to do a big comfortable, leather chair. Bull’s leather, that’s the key. Bull’s, not cow’s. The Brits, they knew that cow’s leather was covered in bloody stretch marks.

Fraser made a gesture and a holo-screen popped up in front of him. He hadn’t spoken to that moron Paterson for a few hours. He couldn’t stand the man, but he was surprisingly discreet and kept Fraser appraised of events in the quarantined city when he couldn’t reach a holo-screen of his own. The last word he’d had on the pair of teens was that they were camped on a cycle path en route to the Royal Infirmary. It was a problem and one that he’d had to move swiftly to deal with.

Issuing orders for the teams at the Infirmary to clear out and that all duties be suspended, Fraser was currently juggling one too many balls for his liking. The official reason he’d given his superiors and the team on-site was that fences had been damaged by the infected and several of the creatures were roaming the hospital grounds. Several of the senior employees had complained that they’d be leaving assignments, important projects behind, some of which couldn’t be recovered. Some worried about equipment.

All of the cameras placed by The Corporation throughout the plague-ridden city to monitor the survivors fed into the Royal Infirmary and were then bounced out via satellite to the outside world; to Corporation Headquarters. The outpost had been run on a skeleton crew for years. Discretion was the key. For that discretion and for the risk they took in entering the quarantined zone, the men and women who manned the Infirmary station were paid handsomely. Fraser Donnelly reminded them who they worked for and how fortunate they were to be paid such a lucrative salary. He also enquired as to whether they’d be happy to be devoured by the infected. They left without further complaint.

It was another necessary lie with Joseph MacLeod and his friend making their way towards the hospital, and one that had been difficult to sell to his superiors. Difficult, but not impossible. The Corporation had a blanket policy: no resident of Edinburgh could be permitted to discover the outpost on the hospital grounds or its purpose. Anyone who had stumbled into the grounds in the past had been permanently taken care of. When his superiors had discovered that the teens were headed towards the outpost, the order to eliminate was given immediately. Thanks to Paterson’s vigil, Donnelly had gotten word of their path slightly ahead of them and had had time to prepare.

Donnelly had asked that the teens be allowed to enter the grounds, but only after the staff had been evacuated, suggesting that they’d find an empty compound with no trace of the cure they sought. After that, they’d simply go home. It was the humane way to deal with the situation and an opportunity to have the kids spread word that the area was dead. The compound would have to be closed temporarily and the infected cleared out anyway. They might as well allow the teens the time to explore, conclude that there was no cure and that the compound was as abandoned as the rest of their city.

 
It had been a close vote, but the board trusted his judgement. Fraser had worked for thirty years to become CEO and had proven his worth and commitment many times over. Now all he had to do was ensure that those kids didn’t discover anything they shouldn’t and cleared the hell out by morning.

Swiping again at the air, the holo-screen changed at his command to an image from earlier in the day. Fraser watched Joseph and the girl fight their way through an impossible number of infected. He was mesmerised by them both. Neither would leave the other, neither would fall. It was an incredible sight to behold. Eventually, they made their way under the fence to the hospital and had stumbled across an office block, fully-lit, and the generator chugging away.

“Goddammit!” Fraser threw his empty tumbler across the room.

He glanced at his wristwatch, formerly his father’s. Coverage was normally twenty-four hours, but with the evacuation of the outpost and the loss of power to the site, the feed had been terminated for a twelve-hour period. Only the private feed to the individual board members’ computers remained active. Generally he was likely to be the only one watching at this late hour. He said a silent prayer that this would hold true, but there was nothing he could do. Either someone else on the board was watching or they weren’t, it was out of his control.

 
What bloody fool left that one, single generator whirring away, and all those bloody lights on?

It didn’t matter. The teens had seen the generator and the lights. His only option was to get them out of the compound somehow, destroy any footage and hope that no one else was watching a private feed before the main generators kicked back into life in the morning.

Returning his eyes to the holo-screen, he made a very slow clockwise motion with his index finger and watched in fast-forward as the pair walked around the generator for some moments and then locked themselves into a supply shed for the night.

Fraser pulled the finger sharply back, pausing the image on the screen. He examined the boy’s face. He was a handsome kid, determined beyond reason and so very… so very… Fraser reclined back into his chair, pushed the thought from his mind and drank a large mouthful from his new glass as he took in the familiar face which was now filling his holo-screen.

Noticing something, a shadow perhaps at the bottom of the paused screen, he rotated his finger clockwise again, slowly moving frame by frame until a man came into focus. Sitting with his back pressed up against the shed door, smiling, listening to every word from inside, Bracha sat, stroking his golf club.

Fraser left his bull’s leather chair whirling and tore out of his apartment, headed for the corporation’s headquarters at 30 St Mary Axe, The Gherkin, London.