Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (11 page)

Alys broke her silence.

“Mum. What happened?”

Jennifer sat upright once again and resumed her account.

“You were probably three or four years old. Aunt Fiona was pregnant with Steph. James didn’t know. Nobody did except Fiona and I. She was only around five weeks gone and wasn’t entirely sure that she hadn’t just skipped a period. We had no way of knowing for sure until she was a little further along. James was a good man; he’d have made a good father.

“Anyway, we’d been in The Gardens for eleven years by then. This was our world now. After more than twenty years of quarantine, we knew we would never leave and had built our own mini town. Our rules, our control, forgotten by the outside world.”

Joey and Alys shared a quick glance, noticed by Jennifer.

“Your dad and I had been arguing ferociously for probably six months or so over how to deal with a series of assaults and rapes which had been ongoing in The Gardens. We had guards then, a mix of different types of people. We increased their number and began night-shift patrols of The Gardens, trying to reassure people that they could still feel safe; that the community leaders would end the growing practice of sexual assault.

 
“Most of these guards were determined to end the growing danger, but some turned a blind-eye. A few, it emerged, participated.

“Cameron felt that these sort of attacks were a consequence of a medium-large group of people living in fenced-in quarters.
‘This kind of thing used to go on when armies were on manoeuvres,’
he’d told me.
‘Sometimes, when people, when men, are in pressured, isolated conditions, an outlet is needed.’

“I couldn’t believe what he’d said, and convinced myself that he understood the battlefront mentality better than I did. That he was explaining something badly. That he wasn’t condoning rape as a stress-relief for scared men. He at least agreed that any men assaulting other people should be punished.

“He and I were arguing one night when some guards crashed into the tent. Three female guards were pulling a semi-conscious, half-dressed, badly-beaten man, dangling by the crooks of his arms, his feet dragging through the mud. The women dumped him unceremoniously onto the ground.

“‘Another rapist,’ the smaller of the two guards spat out.

“I watched as Cameron lifted the man and sat him back against a wooden trunk. I watched as the anger rose on your father’s face. Eyes blazing, he stood and began roaring at the guards.
 
‘Who left this man in this condition? This is unacceptable. Where’s the girl?’

“I watched quietly, passively, as he interrogated the guards. As he had the victim dragged to the tent and interrogated her also and then warned her to dress in heavier clothing and travel with escorts in future. The man was told that he could no longer work with the other crop-handlers. He would instead be given perimeter guard duty for a year as punishment.

“As Cameron spoke, I felt cold purpose wash over me. I planned and assessed and finally cast away the last scrap of respect I’d held so dear for your father. I decided what was best for this community.

“It was best that the people could live free from the worry of sexual violence. It was best that the women were left in peace to control their own destiny. If the men couldn’t control their primal urges to humiliate and subvert the women, it was best that the men were gone.

 
“There was resistance, and some men died. There was a fight but it didn’t last long. There was pleading, but they might as well have been begging Castle Rock up there to listen to them. We were organised, we were calculated and we were motivated. By the time the sun rose the next morning, it was done. All the men were driven out. The good, the bad – we didn’t care. We wanted the violence and the threat of persecution to end and truly believed that all men must leave.

“We were in control. We were safe.

“I never saw Cameron or James again.”

Silence filled the room and began to pollute the air with a heavy fog of awkward honesty and emotions.
 
Joey caught Alys’s eye and jutted a nod over to Jennifer who was still crouched, staring at the floor.

In relaying her story, she’d broken walls in her heart and mind and looked broken herself in the rubble of the lingering emotions.

Joey gave a firmer nod to Alys who gave him a sharp look but rose to her feet anyway.

Standing over her mother, Alys clenched and unclenched her fits several times, causing the bones in her fingers to crack and pop. After a moment’s indecision and a quick glance up at Joey to shoot him a final spikey accusation, Alys knelt in front of her mother.

Enfolding her in her arms, Alys sighed with relief as she felt her mother’s strong arms slip around her back and her face snuggle into her breast.

“Mum, I’m so proud of you. You built this place for us and kept us safe.”

Deep sobs came from Jennifer, her face buried in the folds of her daughter’s sweater.

Alys moved a hand to her mother’s shoulders and gently pushed her back. Holding her at arm’s length, she told her, “But it’s time for change.”

Jennifer, face streaked with dirty tears, simply nodded.

Standing together, still interlocked by arms around waist and shoulder, the Shephard women looked at Joey MacLeod.

“You better stay quiet about this, boy.” Jennifer pointed a finger at her tear-streaked face. A thin smile threatened in her moist eyes.

Joey smiled broadly at her. Standing, he approached, arms wide.

“Och, all right. But give me a wee cuddle, then.”

Alys laughed and threw a hard punch at him, aimed at the usual spot.

“Don’t push your luck, Joe,” she said before wiping her mother’s face clean with her own sleeve.

Joey rubbed at his arm and enjoyed the familiar throb of friendship.

Chapter 11

Alys

Alys had laid it all out for her mother and Joey: the UKBC, James’s intel and his plans to defect, Somna’s plans to eradicate the city-centre communities and her own plans for preparing the same communities for dealing with the coming of The Exalted. What it added to was this: gather the communities here, in The Gardens. Give them sanctuary. Protect them and hold off Somna’s tribe for as long as possible. Maybe, just maybe, they could hold out against them long enough to make the price of victory for Somna too high.

Jennifer absorbed all of her daughter’s words without a single interruption. Alys watched her nod her approval from time to time and wince at other parts, particularly where Uncle James’s role featured. Joey sat forward on his bench, elbows resting, hands clasped in front of him, listening, captivated.

Jennifer stood and paced the room, rubbing at her throat.

“Your plan is not without merits, Alys. It’s probably our only real option, but it will come with a heavy cost for everyone involved, both in lives spent and communities lost. We can certainly send our Rangers out to convince as many communities as we can to leave their homes and join us here. Many will not. Most fear leaving the relative security of their zones.”

Jennifer paused, giving Alys and Joey time to add a remark. As they both stayed silent, she continued.

“We can accommodate and feed people in the numbers you’re talking about, but this place will be changed forever if we do. Once we take these people in, we’re responsible for them.

“When The Exalted make their way here, there’s much we can do to fortify the area. We can line the approaches with fighters. We can set a variety of traps and deterrents, but a motivated army of that size? Well… The Gardens wasn’t made to defend against hordes of humans.

“Humans can climb and run and jump. Humans can use tools and battering rams. Humans can strategize. Humans can use the strength of insanity and of belief to fuel and condone terrible violence. Humans will break our perimeters and burn and rape this place of all its resources. Everyone here will die. Somna will spend every life he has, throwing his believers at us until we are eradicated.”

Alys rose to her feet and placed a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. She worked her mouth a few times, but no arguments came. After gaping a few more moments she said quietly, “We have to try. All of those people will die and no-one will help them. They won’t even know The Exalted are coming.”

Jennifer nodded.

“We’ll do what we can, Alys. I promise.”

Joey hadn’t uttered a word and had begun rooting around in his rucksack which lay at his feet. Finding the items he’d been searching for, he smiled up at the grim-looking Shephards.

“We’ll do better than that.”

Opening his hands, Joey showed them three simple objects that brought only more questions.

Alys lifted the items from her friend’s hands. Turning over the orange flash-drive she looked at him, scrutinising his smile.

“You’ve accessed this?”

He beamed at her and nodded. His eyes filled a little but he swiped the growing moisture away and motioned to the map Alys held.

“I’ll tell you all about it later. Open that map up.”

Jennifer helped spread the large map across the rug, filling the centre of the tent. It was a simple street-map, available for a few pounds in any filling station before the city fell. Most Rangers carried them whilst out in the city.

Smoothing the map out, Alys noticed that it had been altered over the years with a variety of bright, fluorescent marker lines, loops, circles and keys, denoting routes, journeys, people and settlements that Joey and Jock had visited on their travels alone and together. She smiled as she noted the various communities’ borders that had been marked out.

The Brotherhood

The Gardens

The Sick Kids

Panda-Nutter

Suzy Wheels

Scarecrow Tony’s

Jester’s

Tricia Ferguson’s Allotment

Green Zone

The Beach

Drum Wood

The Exalted

The Canongate Kirk

The Haymarket Zom-Hunters

Fountainbridge Sanctuary

The list continued.

As Alys and her mother scanned the various zones and communities, their eyes brightened.

“Joey,” Alys said. “This will make finding people so much simpler. I can add at least thirty more zones and settlements that I know of and I’m sure the other Rangers will have places to add.”

“Aye. And I’ll give the Rangers some information and advice on how to approach the individuals or zones that I’m familiar with. Hopefully, if we can dispatch them in waves over the next few months, we can get everyone who is willing gathered, before spring.”

He gave her a nod, indicating the final object in her right hand. In her excitement at the information overload the map had brought, she’d completely forgotten about it. Opening her hand, she examined a small leather pouch, tied at the top with twine. The dark brown pouch looked familiar.

 
It greatly resembled the pouch Joey had kept the Carrionite in but was larger and felt as though it contained a bunch of smallish heavy objects instead of the powder that had saved their lives in the south.

She turned the pouch over a few times, scanning it from various angles. Her eyes raised as she remembered the last time she’d seen it.

A wide-eyed smile at Joey.

“You took this from underneath a cobble in the wall, beside the Castle entrance. It was the night you left The Brotherhood with Jock.”

Joey raised his eyebrows and nodded calmly.

“Saw that, did you?”

She laughed. “Yeah, right before I cut your finger off.”

Joey gave her his customary rude gesture with half of a middle finger.

“Open it,” he said, nodding at the pouch again.

The dusty leather pouch seemed to sigh and sag as Alys untied the twine from around its neck. Falling open, it exposed a peculiar-looking set of keys. Five of them.

Three looked polished, modern. The other two were much larger and appeared to be ancient, like something from the book on medieval times she’d read as a child.

Alys and her mother both looked up to Joey, questioningly. He pointed to the flash drive.

“That and the place my mother left instructions for me to access will give us the information we need to know exactly where Somna and his tribe are. It’ll also help me get the bastard who placed my mother in here.”

Joey took a moment to compose himself before pointing at the keys.

“Those, quite literally, are the keys to the Castle. We won’t be using The Gardens as our new home for all these people, Mrs Shephard. Or as our defensive retreat.” Joey jabbed a finger at the map indicating the communities they’d been poring over. “We have a much more secure place to take them.”

Alys was stunned. Joey had received something from his mother? He had the keys to Edinburgh Castle? How was that possible?

 
Turning to her mother, she found the same bewildered expression on Jennifer’s face as well as a trace of a bitter smile.

“That Castle is impenetrable, boy. There’s a portcullis that twenty men couldn’t budge and the main gates are heavy oak corrugated with iron. Plenty have tried over the years, but have failed to make a dent in it. Those who did try made enough noise to bring hundreds of The Ringed running for a free meal.
 
The place is sealed. One way in, one way out, and no-one can open the defensive doors and gates.”

Joey jutted his chin at the keys.

“We can,” he said, shrugging.

“We can?” Alys asked.

Joey’s smile disappeared. “Yes. We most certainly can.”

Jennifer clapped her hands together loudly and laughed the dustiest, most disused laugh Alys had ever heard. An alien sound coming from her stoic mother, it made Alys’s tears burst and her heart swell.

Both women thanked Joey in their usual manner. His shoulders hurt for a whole day.