dEaDINBURGH (4 page)

“Step into the light.”

She saw his head cock to the side, as if he’d been amused at her order, but he followed the instruction by leaving the shade of the buildings and stepping into the moonlight.

Dressed in leather boots, gloves, black denims and a leather duster coat,
not a cloak
, the figure also wore the long-beaked mask of a plague doctor. Alys recognised it from books she’d read in her childhood. The sight of it threatened to chill her muscles, to seize them up, but she pushed away the instinctive fear that the ancient image had brought and stepped closer to him. Joey followed her lead.

Closing the distance between them, she noted that he wore two long blades, one sheathed at each hip. The way he moved, like flowing silk, told her how dangerous he was. She heard Joey draw further on the bow. He was readying a shot, probably figuring that the man had gotten close enough. The creaking string caused the masked man to halt and spread his arms, palms open in a submissive gesture.

“Mask off. Now,” Alys barked at him.

Joey pulled the last ounce of tension into his bow. Alys took a ready stance, both Sai raised. The masked man performed a strangely old-fashioned little bow to show that he would comply. The gesture did nothing to make either teenager relax.

Reaching up, he grabbed the long, hooked nose with one hand and unbuckled a leather strap behind his head.

“A little jumpy tonight, Joseph?” Padre Jock asked in wry amusement.

“You know this guy? Why didn’t you say?” Alys was instantly suspicious of both males.
Had she wandered into a trap?
She rotated her hips and adjusted her feet slightly, almost imperceptibly but enough to enable her to defend an attack from either male. Her mother’s voice mocked her.

Joey had seen or felt the subtle changes in her posture and lowered his bow, placing it on the ground in response.

“I do know him, sort of, but I’ve never seen him dressed like that.”

“Aye,” Jock interrupted. “Sorry about that.”

Alys eyed them both. She felt at war with herself. Everything her mother and community had taught her told her not to trust anyone, especially not men, and most especially not men from The Brotherhood. Her mother had also taught her to listen to her instincts, to trust her inner voice and it told her to relax: to trust the boy with the bow and the green eyes. To trust Joey.

Keeping her Sai in her hands –
there was trust and there was stupidity
– Alys lowered her arms and stood in a more relaxed manner.

“What’s the story with you guys then?”

Jock smiled warmly at her, causing Joey to throw him a puzzled expression.

“Just looking out for the lad. He’s kind of burned his bridges back there.” Jock jabbed a thumb over his shoulder indicating the entrance to Mary King’s Close.

Joey smiled his agreement before asking, “What’s happening down there? Did they send you to bring me back?”

Jock laughed outright at the question.

“Not exactly, son. I’ve no intention of taking you back there.”

Alys watched the exchange.

“What makes you think I’ll allow you to
take
me anywhere?” Joey asked, clearly irked at Jock’s attempts to take charge of him. “What happened back there? Why haven’t they come after me?” Joey had raised his bow once more, taking aim at Jock’s chest.

Alys backed him up. It felt like the thing to do, even though her common sense told her to leave them to it.

Jock surprised them both by sitting on the cobbles, cross-legged. “I had a little chat with them, son.”

“I’m not your bloody son!” Joey was starting to get angry at the old man’s amusement. Alys didn’t blame him; she thought the old guy was irritating too, but also kinda cool.

“You’ve never spoken to me, cared about me or even looked at me without scowling before today. Why the hell would I trust you? I’ll ask one more time, Jock.”

Joey took careful aim and put maximum tension into the bow.

“Tell me what happened back there.”

He’s gonna kill this old guy,
Alys thought.

Jock stood again, placed his weapons on the cobbles and walked slowly towards Joey.

“I… persuaded them to let you go; to come with me, out there.” Jock nodded to his left, towards the fence-line that marked the limits of The Brotherhood’s territory. Alys watched Joey’s eyes narrow in mistrust and confusion.

“I also reminded them who brought you to Mary King’s Close in the first place.”

Joey lowered his bow and shook his head. The tears had begun to track their way down his face.

“I reminded them who had fetched you from a pool of blood five yards from where your mother was being devoured by those
things
that they choose to worship. I reminded them that it was me who kept the most dangerous of the Children of Elisha from their gates in return for your safe shelter.”

“Why now? You let me live there all this time, why now?” Joey had fallen to his knees and was looking up at the padre, eyes streaming with tears now.

Alys watched what look like shame pass across Jock’s face.

“Because they had women amongst them, back then. Mothers. All I was then was a killer. A Zombie-hunter. I couldn’t be a father. I couldn’t have a baby to care for, I didn’t know how.”

“Coward,” Joey screamed out at the old man, rushing towards him to strike his face. Jock caught him easily by the wrists and brought his face close to his.

Alys was stunned into inaction and stood passively beside them watching it all unfold.
What could she do or say, anyway?

“I
was
a coward to leave you there for so long, in the arms of mad men,” Jock told him gently. “That’s why I stayed and watched over you. I hoped that you’d be smart enough, be brave enough, braver than me, to break their brainwashing. They were keeping you safe and fed; that is what was important. I waited for when you would want to be free. For the time when you could leave the fences and not just become food for The Ringed. I watched them try to break your spirit, to make you believe with your whole heart that their way was the right way, but you kept a part of yourself free from their influence. The free-running through the streets up on the surface, the visits to the Esplanade; you were becoming independent in thought and deed.”

Joey was crying freely now in Jock’s arms, both men on their knees. Alys looked away, but felt her eyes drawn back to them crouched together on the black, wet cobbles of the Royal Mile.

“I wanted to give up once, I got tired of fighting,” Joey whispered through his tears. “And then my birthday came and my bow with it. That was you?”

Jock gave a curt nod.

“I’ve been so proud watching you master that weapon. I’ve no right to be, but I am. You’re going to need it where we’re going, son. If you’ll come?”

Joey stood to look over the fence-line into the unknown part of the city. The Royal Mile and the underground town of The Brotherhood had been his entire world for fifteen years. Alys doubted that he could leave, that he’d even want to. She was desperate to leave her community’s fenced-in Garden, but only when the time was right. This boy had guts and some skill but he was nowhere near the fighter that she was and she wasn’t ready for that side of the fence yet, which meant that he certainly wasn’t. If she could have asked him to come with her, she would have.

Suddenly Joey turned back to face Jock.

“My mother, who was she?”

Jock shook his head.

“I don’t know, son. Here, come with me.”

Alys followed along behind them as the padre led Joey along towards Mary King’s Close. She busied herself scanning the side buildings for any more surprises. It had shocked her how… fresh The Ringed who’d attacked her and Joey had been. They still had muscle and were fairly co-ordinated in their movements. They also had speed and that meant that they’d only crossed over a few months before. That was very unusual this far into the city-centre. Most of the dead found within the boundaries of their communities had been
made
in those first few days, as Mary King’s Close had been the epicentre of the outbreak.

As they reached Mary King’s Close, Alys noted that the heavy doors leading down to the crypts were closed tightly, probably locked. Jock had been correct in his assertion that The Brotherhood didn’t care about pursuing Joey. Jock came to a stop at the arches of the City Chambers. Entering the first archway, Jock stared at the cobbles and spoke softly, pulling Joey close to him as he spoke.

“This is where I found her, where I found you. She was in the last stages of labour and unable to mute the screams that brought you out onto these cobbled roads. The dead were many in those days and livelier than the ones we see so often now. Her screams, which should have signalled a new life for both of you, merely drew them to end hers. Perhaps they smelled the blood; there was enough of it. I was up there,” Jock pointed up at the battlements above the archway. “I’d just returned from a hunt. The Brotherhood paid me in those days, with food and shelter. I was charged by the founding Brothers with secretly dispatching the liveliest of the Children of Elisha. It went against the dogma but the founders knew that they wouldn’t be left alone by the most active dead, the freshest ones. Their
methods
didn’t work on the fresh ones.”

Jock squeezed Joey’s shoulder, a gesture of reassurance and a question:
should I go on?

Joey merely stared at the spot on the cobbles that Padre Jock had indicated.

Jock chose to continue.

“By the time I’d dropped down, she’d bitten through the cord that attached you to her and had hidden you in that doorway over there.” Jock pointed into the darkness. “She ran from you. Blood left behind her like a trail of gruesome breadcrumbs for the dead who pursued. She led them from you. It was the bravest act I’ve ever witnessed, Joseph.”

Joey cried freely again, absorbing the words. This time Alys did look away and gave him his dignity.

“There were an army of them, forming a wall between her and me, but she saw me and pointed to the doorway as her last conscious act. I found you there, Joseph, fresh from the womb, still steaming, covered in your mother’s blood, lying in a puddle of it with a reflection of the moon beside you. You were silent. I couldn’t believe how silent you were. As I picked you up, I noticed some of the Brothers standing in High Street. They’d stood passively and watched the whole event. They would’ve let their precious Children eat you both. I threatened them, made them bring me to Father Grayson and made my deal with them to care for you. It was the best that I could do, son.”

Alys had heard enough. Departing, she sent a silent prayer to Joey.
Go with Jock. Don’t ever come back.
And then she went home, content for the first time in years that it was where she belonged. For now.

Padre Jock’s Journal

In the first few hours of the outbreak people just assumed that the stories of monsters emerging, rabid from the depths of Mary King’s Close, couldn’t be real. Most of us thought that a trusted face would appear on the news telling us that it was all an elaborate hoax. That someone like Dynamo, the magician, had pulled a
War of The Worlds
type of event. Obviously we were wrong.

 
The Ringed were all over the social networks and news channels, but we had become so numb to shock, so arrogant, we didn’t really consider that any real harm would come to us. We were used to our illusions of control, sure of our place in the world and our right to those privileges we enjoyed but never appreciated. Most of us expected an announcement to be made on the news channels that it was all just some clever marketing stunt and barely looked up from our screens. Almost ubiquitously, the prevailing attitude was one of “Go back to your reality shows, PlayStations or TVs. Everything’s fine.” Then all at once, it wasn’t confined to our screens. It was in our streets, in our homes, standing snarling at us in full glorious high-def.

Even then you could see the shock and puzzlement on people’s faces as they watched the dead begin to bring down their neighbours, their family
–
hell, even their pets. Eventually it hit.
This is real. Run.

I was thirty years old when the plague hit Edinburgh and had been a minister in the Royal Marines since I was sixteen. Padre Jock Stevenson. I’d spent the last three years based in Scotland and had come to Edinburgh for a weekend visit. Some timing, eh? I’d been up on the Royal Mile, doing all the tourist crap, taking tours, sightseeing, so I was at the epicentre of the outbreak. Twenty-four hours in, they cut the power, everything disappeared, the internet, television, cell phones radios; all gone. Everything electrical, dead. God knows what they were thinking.

On day two I was barricaded inside St Giles Cathedral along with around a hundred other survivors. We fought hard to keep the cathedral free of the infected. We thought that if only we could hold out for long enough then the government would get control and rescue us. Four days later they sealed the city with all its residents inside their hastily-erected fences and left us to it.

Initially we kept hoping that the fences were temporary. They’d built them so quickly, it must have taken all of the armed services. Only they could have done such an effective job so speedily. We told each other that they’d come back. That our families on the outside would demand they came in to clear the dead and rescue the uninfected. We clung onto a lot of fantasies in those days.

As the weeks passed we became skilled foragers, leaving the safety of the cathedral at regular intervals and in teams, in search of food and supplies. We lost a lot of people in those early days, when the dead still moved so quickly; when they were still so fresh, so predatory.

After a year had passed, people had given up hope on ever communicating with the outside world again. Some thought that the plague must have escaped, despite the fences, and the rest of the country, maybe the world, was in the same position as we were. Some preached that we’d faced God’s judgment for our consumerist ways, or His judgement of the gays, or whatever twisted notion they subscribed to. There was no shortage of doomsayers or bigots before the plague hit and the end of our city only strengthened those beliefs. Most of us suspected that we’d just been abandoned.

Whatever they believed, people did what people always do: they fought. They chose sides and they built more fences to found and segregate communities. I roamed around for a few years, always making my way back to the city-centre for long spells. At times I took payment from The Brotherhood for keeping their community free of all but the most decayed dead. Eventually I stopped travelling around and stayed permanently in the city-centre for fifteen years, watching over you, Joseph.

I met a lot of people. I killed a lot of people and ex-people to keep my little corner of the world safe. I existed instead of living, until the screams of a woman delivering her baby into this hell brought me running.