The dead room, p.18
The Dead Room, page 18
part #1 of The Dead Room Series
“A spot of shooting, then?” Wallace said and Cate’s fingers burned.
She nodded.
“Are you any good?” Wallace asked.
“I don’t know. Not much experience, really.”
Cate studied her nails, each one dirty and broken, and wished she didn’t feel like a petulant teenager whenever she was around Wallace.
“You don’t like being told what to do, do you?” Wallace said. A hot flush of anger boiled in Cate’s stomach and chest.
“What did you want me to do? Stay up on the roof when I see who they’re sending towards us or come down and warn people? What would have happened if the sick had got any closer to us? Do you want the Manc in here?” Wallace was trying to speak; Cate wouldn’t let her. Without warning, tears exploded from her eyes. “Children, Wallace. They were just children. They were. . .” Words left her. All she had was a terrible burning deep in the centre of her chest and the images of the bullets striking the dying children.
Wallace embraced her, thick arms encasing Cate’s thin body. She wept against Wallace’s warm neck. The echoes of the gunshots sang in her head. She saw them all falling again and again, holes in their chests and faces, coughs of blood following them down to the ground.
Coughing, Cate wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Why the hell were they coming towards us? Why not just drop down dead when they were set free? I saw them. Most of them could barely stand up so what the hell kept them coming?”
The hot anger vanished. Deep freeze took its place and she knew it was all over her face.
“What is it?” Wallace said, pulling away to study her face.
“Nothing.” Cate moved along the bench.
“Don’t lie to me, Cate. What is it?”
The scream from the lift shaft was bouncing off her ears, hitting the wall and racing back to her.
The thing she’d seen out on Thorpe Road.
The risen bodies in the morgue.
They were all around her, all back to stay with her.
No, you don’t. Leave me alone.
“What kept those kids coming?” she said. The older woman stared at her. “They could have tried to run when those people let them out of the vans. They didn’t have to come towards us. What kept them coming?”
“I. . .” Wallace licked her lips and said nothing else. Cate spoke and her voice was somebody else’s.
“They were dying anyway. Someone made them come. Someone who made them more frightened of not coming to us than they were of dying.”
“I’m more interested in where they came from. And how the hell Skinny and his friends found them.”
Cate kept her reply locked away. She knew the answer. It was obvious. She’d seen the light in the window those few days ago, she’d walked away from the building and she’d heard the plan spoken out on the street with Steve by her side. And now all those children were dead.
“Cate? Something to tell me?”
“No.”
Wallace licked her upper lip and stood. “Cate.” She licked her lip again and Cate understood the action didn’t come from nerves. This was all about a calm preparation. “I need to ask you something. A favour. Sort of.”
“What is it?”
She knew, though. The only surprise was that it had taken Wallace this long to bring it up, and the only comfort was knowing this moment had been coming since she’d first entered the hospital.
Wallace licked her lip again and kept her eyes on Cate’s. “I won’t tell you to leave, but I will ask you to think about doing so.”
Wallace rose and walked away, heading back along the corridor, leaving Cate to stare after her and tremble.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
N icola bent double, gun and knife held close to her knees as she panted, inhaled and spat. Her body was a ball of burning pain and exhaustion, and the thought of crawling into the long grass beside the pathway kept prodding at her.
She spat again and stood upright. The woman was a few steps away, eyeing her and the gun.
“Helen,” the woman said.
Inwardly, Nicola groaned. The last thing she wanted to know was the woman’s name. Acting as if the woman hadn’t spoken, she peered over the grass to the carriageway. No sign of the men or a car. The body and all the blood had to be a mile behind by now. Far enough for them to stop and catch a breath. Not far away enough to keep the men from giving chase on foot. At least there was no way of getting a car over the muddy grass to this road.
“We’re all right. We made it,” the woman said.
“Listen. You have to get away from me. I’m not safe,” Nicola replied and walked as fast as she could. No thought of which way she was going. No thought of a plan. Only the need to move.
“Wait.” The woman jogged after her and Nicola whirled around, bringing her gun up.
The woman backed away, hands up, cringing.
“Shit.” Nicola lowered it. “Look. I don’t mean anything. I just. . .I just want to go on alone, all right? It’s better for both of us if I do. Trust me.”
The woman’s mouth opened, closed and opened again. “I’ll come with you just for tonight,” she said. “We can split up in the morning.”
She shook and Nicola had no idea if that was due to the cold or fear or reaction.
What might have been a car engine roared in the distance. Nicola ducked. The woman did the same.
You can’t leave her here, Scott told her.
Like she’d left the other women in the woods.
“Just for tonight,” Nicola said.
“Yes,” the woman said and Nicola wondered if she would be able to hear such meekness again without screaming.
“Come on, then.”
They followed the path at not quite a jog. Beyond the grass, the road was as empty as it’d been for weeks.
“Helen,” the woman said, panting.
“Yeah. You said.”
“What’s your name?”
“Be quiet.”
Nicola crouched and pulled her notes and map from her back pockets.
“Do you know where we are?” she said without looking from her papers.
“Near Mansfield, I think. I heard the men mention it the day before yesterday.”
“Mansfield?” Nicola ran a fingertip over her map. If she had it right, the road they’d run from was the A617. “Shit,” she whispered.
“What is it?”
Nicola traced the lines of the roads, willing them to be wrong. They weren’t.
“Nothing. Come on.”
They jogged in silence for several minutes. The grass beside them rose and fell in small peaks and dips before shrinking in size. The road twisted; they passed a few abandoned cars and fallen tree branches. As they reached a flat pavement, Helen staggered to a stop. She held her side, gasping.
“Can’t run. Sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
Struggling to keep calm, Nicola crossed to the pavement and took deep breaths.
“What’s wrong with the map?” Helen said.
“Nothing’s wrong with it. I’m just not where I want to be.”
“Where’s that?”
Nicola closed her mouth, then opened it again. What harm was there in telling the woman? She’d leave her as soon as she could. No need for another death to haunt her journey north.
“The M1.”
Helen frowned. “Why?”
“I’m going north.”
Helen gazed behind them to the quiet road, then checked ahead. “How far is it?”
“Further than I’d like. Let’s go.”
They moved at a fast walk, the cold rolling in off the fields and the constant breeze drying the sweat all over Nicola’s body. She caught a whiff of herself and grimaced. Her body and clothes stunk of sweat, blood and fear. She wanted to tear her coat off and run and run. Attempting to distract herself, she took a few breaths. At once, she smelled something other than her body.
Nicola stopped, held the hand with the knife up to her mouth and tried to cover her face. The blade, inches from her lips, made her flinch. Too easy to think about the hands which had held the knife before her.
“Here,” she said and jabbed the knife towards Helen.
Helen took the knife and wrapped her fingers around the handle.
“Thanks.”
Nicola nodded. Helen took a rag from her jeans pocket and pressed it over her mouth and nose.
“You’d think all the bodies would be frozen, wouldn’t you?” she said.
Nicola breathed against her skin for another moment, then lowered. “We need to keep going. Find a house or building. Somewhere warm.”
She dropped her gaze as she spoke and desperately wished for the woman, for Helen, to not notice it.
You lying bitch.
She knew lying would keep the woman safe and she still hated having to do so. Walking with someone, having someone physically close. . .God.
They walked on into the lengthening shadows. Minutes passed and Nicola waited. She knew it was coming. Helen’s question was a breathing thing between them.
“So, what happened to you?” Helen said and Nicola almost smiled.
“The usual. Probably the same as happened to you.”
“Your husband killed in a riot, was he?”
Nicola pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. He’s. . .Christ.” She shook and hunched her shoulders in an effort to keep warm. “He’s in a place called Cheadle Hulme with our daughter. Near Manchester. They were up there when it happened. The first bomb. Visiting his brother and our sister-in-law. A weekend away. They were going to come back the next day but when they stopped all the trains and people started getting ill, he—” She broke off. Letting it all out was oddly pleasant, like scratching a healed scar.
“Right,” Helen said. “Sorry.”
“Sorry about your husband,” Nicola said.
“Thanks. At least it was quick for him. He didn’t have to see all this.” Helen wiped at one eye. “Only ten days ago which just feels mad. We were in Nottingham, trapped in the city. There weren’t many people left, but those who were left, they had guns. They had cars. They were just treating the city like a playground, you know what I mean?”
Nicola nodded.
“We were trying to get out of the city. Me, Dave, a couple of others. Turned out some of the army were left. Maybe they got stuck there when all the others ran. Anyway, they were in a supermarket, using it as a base. There wasn’t much left there. Even I could see that. But the others, the people with the guns, they wanted to get in. Dave. He got shot. Right in front of me as we ran the other way. He got shot as we ran the other way.” Helen coughed hard, wiped at her eyes and shook. “The others I was with, they dragged me away. We made it to the road and ran. Two days later, they got us. The men. In the woods.”
Nicola waited. They walked. Shadows drew in closer.
“There were six of them. They already had three women. I think they wanted as many as they could. Two of them came out of the woods when we were on the road. They shot the men and the older woman I was with. They took me.”
“I’m sorry,” Nicola said. It seemed to be the only thing to say.
“Thanks. And thanks for killing that one. Gary.”
“I got another one in the trees. Stabbed him.”
“Good.”
Nicola shook again and found herself wishing she felt guilt or horror or anything at murdering the two men. The most she could manage was a weak sense of relief and a deep tiredness. There was no happiness at what she’d done, but then nor was there any regret. The men had needed to die for her to live. And they needed to die for what they’d done. Simple. Brutal. True.
She twitched at the memory of shoving the knife into the man, at the kick of the gun exploding, at the flying blood. She’d liked it and there was no getting away from that. Just like there was no getting away from the blood on her skin and in her hair.
Helen was talking again. Her husband. The Manc. Words after words after words. Nicola nodded, not hearing it. Instead, she saw.
All the roads led from the town, all the roads slipped away from Cheadle Hulme out to the green and the rivers, out to the quiet places where people knew their neighbours, where they talked and drank together.
Nicola saw the roads taking her out of Cheadle Hulme, taking her to the narrow lanes and hedges lining those lanes. Scott’s father lived out there; he lived with his dog and his little house; he had his local pub and he had his chair at the bar, that one at the end. He sat there with the dog at his feet and he drank from his glass and he talked to his friends who’d be there with him in the rain or in the sun. He knew the little pub as well as he knew his own house and she knew it through his eyes. She knew the lines at the side of his mouth when he smiled at Julia. She knew the weight of his big arms when he hugged her and she listened to the rasp of his beard on her cheek as he kissed her.
All of it there in the little pub and the narrow lanes and the green and the rivers. All of it in the roads leading away from Cheadle Hulme and the rotten stink of a city of bodies all frozen in the December wind.
Chapter Forty
“U p on the roof,” Cate said not quite under her breath.
Steve zipped his coat up to the neck and hugged himself. “Are you going to start singing?”
Cate shook her head, wishing she could give him the laugh he wanted. Forcing a smile let alone a laugh was out of the question. Nothing had been funny in days or weeks or God knows how long.
Steve shifted closer to the air conditioning unit they were sitting beside and scanned the ground with his binoculars.
“About fifty by my count,” he said.
“Are we going to burn them?”
“Yeah. No choice.”
Cate sighed, the breath full of tears. “Tonight? After dark?”
Steve said nothing. He was still looking through the binoculars and now faced towards the curve of Thorpe Road that led into Dalry’s suburbs.
“Vans. Four of them.”
Cate lifted her own binoculars and studied the roads. The vans drove into view. Four of them as Steve had said. Each one was spattered with mud as if they’d been driven across fields or along country lanes. At least two were missing their windscreens. The one coming up at the rear appeared to be driven by someone who didn’t know what they were doing; the van careered from one lane to the other and repeatedly came within inches of crashing into another van.
They disappeared out of shot. The rumble of their engines burned in the air. Cate shifted her position so she had a better view of the road. Steve joined her. The heaviness of his arm wrapped in a thick coat was comforting but she made no move to slide closer to him.
“What are those bastards doing now?” Steve murmured.
“More of the sick?” Cate said.
“They can’t. I mean. . .” Steve sucked his teeth. “How the hell are they finding these people? Everyone’s dead. And how the hell are they getting them to come at us? Why don’t they just lie down and die?”
“Same thing I asked Wallace before. . .”
He lowered his binoculars for a few seconds to study her. She’d pulled hers from her face a fraction and made sure she met his eye. “Before she sent us up here. I asked her what made those kids keep coming even when we shot them.”
“What did she say?”
Before she asked me to leave. Before that, Steve.
“She didn’t.”
Steve brought his binoculars back to his eyes and swore. Cate refocused on the road and immediately understood.
The vans were gone. No sight or sound of them at all.
“Where’d they go?” Steve pointed to Thorpe Road. “This is the only way along here.”
“Maybe they took another turning.”
“Maybe.”
Cate spied movement at a front door. Steve named the figure as she focused on them.
“Hello, Skinny. How are you today, you bastard?”
Skinny crossed a garden, heading to the road and looking no more dangerous than any guy taking a walk. He stopped in the centre of the road, faced towards the hospital and stood, eyes shielded, as if was staring back at them.
“Fuck you,” Steve murmured.
“Who is he? Who are any of them?”
“Just people. They want to get in here and they want us out. They can piss off and die.”
Skinny carried on appearing to appraise them. His steady gaze infuriated and chilled her in equal measure. How great it would be to stand and shove her fingers up at him. Show him she wasn’t scared.
A big lie. Several hundred feet away and up from the figure facing her, she was scared shitless.
Skinny glanced at a nearby house as if someone had called his name. He gestured to someone out of Cate’s shot; a moment later, the man in his familiar black coat walked from a rear garden and joined Skinny. Both men stood side by side, facing the hospital.
“Cheeky fuckers,” Steve whispered.
“They can’t see us, can they?”
“No chance. They’re just pissing about.”
Cate kept her mouth shut. If the two men were simply attempting to frighten anyone who might be facing them, their timing was a huge coincidence. Standing there now suggested they knew someone was looking their way.
“Maybe they know we watch from up here. Maybe they’ve got binoculars, as well,” she said.
“Maybe,” Steve replied.
She lowered her binoculars as he did the same. Grinning, Steve jabbed his middle finger into the air. His grin faded as two men abruptly walked to a house and vanished.
“Arseholes,” Steve said and a lot of the humour had left his voice.
Behind them, a hollow clang rang out as the door swung open and bounced off metal railings. At the steps leading down to the top floor, Damien waved and jogged to them.
“Steve.” He shouted it as he ran. “You best get down here.”
“What is it?” Steve stood and extended an absent hand to Cate. Not caring how it looked, she took it and rose.
“The bodies down there.” Damien took a breath, held it and let it go in a puff. The air had turned his nose and cheeks bright red. “Me and Joey. We were at the windows, checking them out. You know. How many and that. One of them. It’s got something stuck to it.”
