“Stop right there!”
The voice echoing down the alleyway.
So close to the bottom of it now. So close to the turn.
She went to turn as more of those darts whizzed past her when she froze.
There wasn’t a turn at the bottom of the alleyway.
It was a dead end.
She stopped. Froze entirely.
Turned around and saw the guards running down there towards her.
The guy at the front, the one he’d been speaking to. Rifle raised now. Smile on his unmasked face.
“Seriously, kiddo,” he said, lifting his rifle higher. “You should’ve just come with us when you had the chance.”
And then he pulled the trigger.
Chapter Thirty
Noah pointed the knife at the woman’s back and stood right behind her.
“Walk,” he said.
She stood there. Eyes wide. Blood all over her. Clearly still reeling from the incident with the infected. Noah’s display of his abilities. Of what he was capable.
Tapping into it again, in a way he never thought he’d manage again, especially not with how tired he was feeling, how exhausted he was feeling.
“Go on,” he said. “I won’t ask you again. Walk.”
The woman puffed out her lips. “And where the hell you think you’re gonna take me, huh? Might as well just kill me. Get it done with.”
“Trust me,” Noah said. “The thought has crossed my mind.”
“What’re you keeping me around for anyway? You coulda just left me. Let me get torn apart back there. But no. You just had to show off your powers, didn’t you? Neat little trick you got there. Added a fair bitta value on your head, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, well, whoever the hell this ‘Renault’ dude is, we aren’t gonna be meeting him. You’re coming with me.”
“Where to, huh? Some nice place you’ve got lined up? Some sanctuary you’ve been lied to about? ’Cause they’re all lies, buddy. They’re all lies. And the sooner you can accept that, the sooner you can get your head around that, the better. There ain’t no hope out here in No Man’s Land. It’s everyone for themselves. The good places, they all fell, a helluva long time ago. There ain’t no goodness out here anymore. There’s only chaos. And you’d better jump the hell on board, mister. Especially with skills like that. They’re gonna get you a long way out here.”
Noah tutted. “Shut up, seriously.”
Truth be told, he didn’t really know what his plan was. Well. He had a vague plan. A plan to travel to the Morecambe safe haven he’d been told about. A plan to run into Iqrah, Kirsty, Bruno there.
He thought about Bruno, and his stomach turned. Wounded. Whining.
He hoped he was okay. He hoped he didn’t run into him on the road. Last thing he needed right now was to find his dog dead, somehow only a couple of weeks after the last one died, Barney.
Shit. That felt like forever ago. A lot had happened in a hell of a short period of time.
He only had one place in mind. One place in sight.
Morecambe.
Iqrah.
Bruno.
Kirsty.
And that’s what he had to focus on. Cross whatever bridge he came to when he got to it.
“Where you from anyway?” the woman asked.
“What?”
“You don’t seem like you’ve been living out here awful long,” she said. “You seem like you’re from somewhere... nicer than out here. Cleaner than out here.”
“Where I’m from doesn’t really matter. How about you anyway?”
“Huh?”
“You’re so eager to ask shit about me. I don’t even know your name.”
The woman looked back at Noah then smiled a toothless grin. She looked caught in two minds about opening up to him. He expected her to double down. To keep that air of mystery about her.
Then she did something he didn’t expect: “Name’s Shel. You want my life story? Yeah, I’ll give it to ya. Worked in security before all this shit. Lost everything I loved on day one. Girlfriend. Dog. The whole lot, bam.
“Spent the first few years just drifting from place to place, really. Never really settled. Didn’t wanna attach. Didn’t wanna make any bonds. Suicidal half the time. But hey. The second wave came along and wiped all folks out, and those times were kind of bliss. Finally had my own headspace in all that damned confusion. Well, until the virus rose again, and factions rose, and the Society came along. Since then, guess I just became even more of a drifter. Started working for some unsavoury folk. Know it won’t last forever... but hey. We gotta do what we gotta do, huh?”
Noah tasted a bitterness to his mouth. He wasn’t sure he liked hearing Shel’s story. Because it humanised her. It turned her into something else. A person. A person with their own issues. Their own traumas.
It conflicted him.
“I know you’ll judge me,” Shel said. “People always goddamned do. And I deserve it, I guess. But I ain’t in this world to make friends, my buddy. And neither are you. I can see it in your eyes. So it’s about time you got real and faced up to shit right this second. What do you want with me? Why are you keeping me alive?”
Noah looked into Shel’s eyes, and he found himself at a crossroads. On the one hand, he didn’t want to reach out to her. Didn’t want to connect with her. Because she’d have traded him for supplies and sold him into slavery in a heartbeat, and she probably still would.
But at the same time... he heard her.
He wasn’t in this world to make friends either.
But she was a human with her own goals and her own life.
So why couldn’t he look past that and help her?
“I’m going somewhere like I told you,” he said. “My friend. A girl. Iqrah. She’s like me. Wanted by the Society. Somehow, when we’re together... we’re even more powerful. They think together we can create some kind of cure. Some kind of future. But they’ll harm Iqrah to get to that point. And I can’t accept that. I’d
