Before he could do anything else, I
stepped forward and threw my full weight into a punch. My fist connected with
his right cheek, and the strength knocked his head back into the wall. His eyes
glazed over once again and he slid down to the floor.
***
We propped him up on a wooden chair
that we found in the kitchen. Mel was at his side with the blade of her cleaver
resting in her hand. She studied the teenager with a grimace on her face. It
was strange to think that she was a similar age to him; over the last year, Mel
had grown a hell of a lot older.
“I’m going to go look upstairs,” she
said.
I shook my head. “Remember what I
said about splitting up?”
“This isn’t a horror film, Kyle. I
know it might seem like it sometimes, but unfortunately for us this is real
life.”
“Yeah. That’s what makes it worse.”
Mel walked across the room. The
teenager turned his head and his gaze followed her every step. When she stopped
in the doorway, she tapped her cleaver against her palm.
“I’ll be careful, honestly” she said,
and left the room.
The stranger turned his gaze toward
me. His cheek was swollen red from my punch.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
He was no more than a boy; sparse
sprouts on his chin from a puberty not long gone. His arms and legs were
sprightly, having no muscle mass but no fat either. Back in Larkton we had seen
him sprint down the street, so I knew that he was fast. His body shape wasn’t
exactly strange given his sparse diet and regular exercise.
There was an animal cunning in his
eyes, a glimmer in his gaze that held experience long beyond his age. If the
world hadn’t changed all those years ago, this boy would have just been at
college with his friends. Instead, he had managed to survive alone in the
Wilds. I knew what that took, and I knew that some of the things you learned,
and some of the things you had to do, aged you beyond the normal run of time.
“If you kill me,” he said, “Salt me.
Don’t let me go to waste.”
Reggie perched on the end of the
couch. He couldn’t take his eyes off the boy, and he gripped his hammer in his
hand and twisted the handle in his palm. The teenager seemed oblivious to
Reggie’s stare.
“Is there anyone else here?” I said.
He shook his head.
“I’m not a fan of surprises,” I said.
“So if you’ve got any, you better tell me. Are there any other survivors here?”
The teenager shook his head from side
to side in exaggerated slow movements.
“Noooooooooo,” he said, drawing the
word out so that it sounded like a whale song.
I showed him my knife.
“Are you sure?”
“That won’t be sharp enough to
butcher me. There’s a whetstone out back, go and freshen up the blade.”
“Just answer the question.”
He shook his head, quicker this time.
“I told you. No survivors here.”
He was twenty-odd years younger than
me and half my weight, but something about him chilled me. He was part of a
generation of people born in this new world; boys and girls who had to grow up
fast. I got the sense that he was capable of anything.
“Reggie, stand in the doorway and
keep listening for Mel.”
I turned to face the teenager.
“What’s your name?”
“They never named me.”
“Who are they?”
“My group. We never called each other
by names. You don’t personalise something that’s about to die, it gets too
hard.”
Reggie gave me a funny look and then
shook his head.
“Call me Rhadamanthus,” said the
teenager.
Reggie let out a sigh.
“What kind of name is that?”
“It means judge of the dead. He was
an Egyptian god.”
“I’m not calling you that,” I said.
“Fine. Call me Shawn. I always liked
that name.”
“What are you doing by yourself,
Shawn?”
“Isn’t that how we all end up,
eventually?”
It struck me how much his voice
didn’t match his face. His skin was pale and soft, and it bore the aftermath of
an acne flare up. His voice was rich and thick, and the words and their
meanings carried more maturity than I expected. It was like talking to an old
man in a teenager’s body.
Floorboards creaked above us, and
then a door opened. I glanced over at Reggie.
“It’s Mel,” he said.
“You better go up there with her.”
“What about him?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“What about me?” said Shawn.
He leaned forward in his seat. He
wore black jeans, black boots and a black hooded sweater. There was a dried
stain on the cuff of his right arm, and he had tucked the bottoms of his jeans
into his socks.
“What about you?”
“You’ll need to decide what to do
with me.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that
he could have been talking about the best way to cook a potato. He was right,
though. We would have to decide what to do with him. Deep down I knew there was
something dangerous about him, and I wouldn’t feel right letting him go. On the
other hand, there was no way that I wanted him with us.
The floorboards whined. Reggie poked
his head out of the doorframe. He ducked back in a few seconds later and stared
at Shawn again. It was a deep stare, as though the boy fascinated him.
“I was just lonely, you know,” said
Shawn. He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “Just lonely. There
are worse people than me around.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“You’ll find out. Sooner rather than
later, probably. But hey, what do I know? Not much except what I’ve seen.”
“Such as?”
“Guys racing around on quad bikes and
hunting people down. Other things, too. You learn to keep your eyes open when
you’re on your own.”
Reggie rubbed his hand over his face.
“I’ve had enough of this. Kyle, let’s
ditch him, search the rest of the house and then get out of here. He’s a sick
little bastard.”
“Sick?” said Shawn.
I nodded over to the table.
“The arms and the legs,” I said. The
words felt strange to say. “Explain yourself.”
Shawn put his hand to his chin and
sat, deep in thought. The air held a tension, a wire stretched out and ready to
snap. I realised that I was gripping my knife so tight that my knuckles had
turned chalky. Shawn seemed relaxed. He leaned his arms behind his head and
supported his neck.
“Like I said. I’m not the worst thing
out there. You’ve got more to worry about than me. You and your little camp.”
I snapped my head toward him. His
eyes were slits, and a flicker of a grin played on the corner of his lips. How
did he know about camp? I took a step closer. I was going to have to shake the
truth out of him.
There were four sharp thuds upstairs,
and then a loud banging as if a door had been flung open.
“Kyle,” shouted Mel. “Kyle!”
Reggie looked out of the doorway.
“What’s up?”
“Tell Kyle to get the hell up here.”
There was an edge of panic to her
voice that cut through the tension of the room.
“You okay with him?” I said to
Reggie.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look so good.”
“Good enough to keep this little bastard
under control.”
I left the room and ran upstairs. Mel
met me at the top and pointed at a doorway across the hall. The door was a
brown mahogany with flowers carved into it. It seemed out of place in the
cottage, as though it belonged in a much bigger and more expensive house.
“Got your knife?” she said.
I held it up. Mel lifted her cleaver.
“Just be careful, Kyle.”
“What’s in there?”
“You’ll see. Just stay away from the
walls.”
A chill covered the skin on my back.
I walked through the doorway, running the fingers of my right hand along the
carved wooden trim. I clutched my blade in my left hand and tried to stay calm
despite the anxiety leaking into my veins. I could feel Mel following just a
step behind me.
“Watch out to your left,” she said.
It was an arresting sight. A blood
stain covered the wooden floorboards. The walls had been stripped bare, and red
handprints of different sizes decorated the plaster. Some of them were big
enough to be a man’s hand prints, and others were from children. On one wall,
written in messy red writing, were the words ‘Help me’.
Stainless steel rings were fastened
in place along the walls. Lines of metal chain were looped through the rings,
and on the end of the chains were some infected. When they saw me they lurched
in my direction, and the chain jangled as it was fed through the hoops. The
infected were silent. Even as they tried to reach for me they made no sound,
and I realised that their necks were torn open and their vocal chords had been
ripped out. The chain around their waists allowed them movement in the room,
but the line was just short enough that they couldn’t reach me.
The biggest shock was in the centre
of the room. Sat on a woodmen stool, with mute infected surrounding him, was a
boy. He stared down at the ground. Blood matted his hair, and I saw that the
palm of his right hand was covered red. To his right, on one of the walls, was
a hand print the size of a boy’s that looked fresher than the rest.
“Ben?” I said.
The boy lifted his head. His face has
dirty and his hair was stuck to his face by a mixture of sweat and blood. There
were rings around his eyes, but there was no doubt it was Ben. I felt relief
rush through me and flood my chest.
The infected strained. Their line of
chain screeched through the stainless steel rings and then it ran out of length
and jerked them back. They opened their mouths to scream, but despite their
efforts nothing but silence came out. I walked into the centre of the room
toward Ben, and when I reached him, he stood up. I put my arm around him and
hugged him.
“Are you okay?” I said.
Ben held up his hand. A deep gouge
ran across his right palm, and dark lines of blood had dried around it.
“Did he hurt you?”
“He made me put my hand on the wall.
There was another boy here too, but Shawn took him away.”
I felt the heat of anger start to
rise. I thought about the salted limbs in the living room downstairs. Shawn was
killing people and eating them, that much was obvious. If we hadn’t noticed him
prowling near us earlier, then we would never have followed him and found his
nightmare house. He would have killed Ben.