Pushing through the pain, I struggled up from the floor with Thompson gripping my arm.
“Well, if she won’t come voluntarily...” Toni said, and I watched through the crack of my eyelids as she nodded to Doctor Lytham.
Doctor Lytham smiled, raising a brow. “This is it, Antonia. This is the culmination of all our work.”
Without pause, Toni nodded to the two other soldiers. They shouldered their rifles before heading to the door where Toni had entered, whilst she stepped across the room to the first bay and pulled the curtains wide.
The three pale children lay under thin sheets. They were bound to the beds and weren’t moving. If they were breathing then it was shallow at best. Each of them looked nothing like they had when we last saw them; Ellie so old. Tish so young, so small in the bed. Memories surged of Jack, old before his time, and the moment I met Shadow, waking to find him licking my face and the two children were just there.
I tried to push away thoughts of how I’d almost shot Ellie when we’d first met.
Beside them were monitors. For a fleeting moment I questioned why I couldn’t see their heart traces, panicking they much be dead, but then I saw the cables and tubes wrapped in bundles hanging down. A thin metal IV stand stood at each of their sides and a bag of clear liquid hung upside down with a tube flowing to each of children’s arms, giving me the first sign they weren’t dead.
Toni strode to Ellie, pulling back the cover to grab at her wrist. Cassie’s sister didn’t react when Toni held her arm high, not even when she let it fall back to the bed. Toni reached to a cardboard box by the side and unfolded a square of absorbent pad before placing it under Ellie’s forearm.
I turned to movement from where the soldiers had left and I saw the dark back of a soldier with his outstretched hand hidden from view. My mind raced over what he could hold out in front, but the question soon dropped at the terrible stench I hadn’t smelt since we’d left the mainland.
86
JESSICA
With a stilted pace, the soldier stepped sideways into the room with a catchpole, like those used to control feral dogs, held out in both his hands. The noose gripped tight around the neck of a girl, but with her face dark and bruised, her skin slack with decay; it had been a long while since anyone could call her human.
Pulling through the doorway, her mouth snapped closed and open as it stared, locking its gaze to the soldier. I half expected it to grapple with the pole, until I saw the straight jacket with the semi-circle of dried blood at the front, binding its arms at its sides.
A second noose dug into its neck and I followed the second pole heading through the door, gripped by the other soldier gritting his teeth as they held the tension between them to guide its travel into the room.
The soldier walking backwards chanced a glance to his side and the bed where Ellie lay unconscious.
“No,” Logan and Alex called out.
This was it. This was the moment; I couldn’t let this go on any longer.
“Stop,” Logan shouted.
Thompson swung his rifle down on Logan’s back again and he went quiet before collapsing to the floor. With Alex’s furious shouts echoing across the room, I stared at Toni, whose gaze fixed on the teenager between the soldiers. The hunger rose as I watched, holding my breath.
With her head tilted slightly up, Toni looked on, squinting with interest at what was about to happen. I looked to Doctor Lytham to see her wearing the same detached intrigue and the energy surged from inside me.
Holding my breath, I tensed against the bounds and the room grew silent. Out of the corner of my vision, Logan rose to all fours and looked my way as if he knew what I’d planned all along.
This was it; this was the moment. I felt so alive. So full of energy, the power coursing through my veins as I fixed on the flesh at Doctor Lytham’s neck and I pulled my muscles tight, straining with everything I had.
But it wasn’t enough.
87
LOGAN
I watched her effort fade, leaving her panting with the leather holding her tight. Toni turned, catching my eye as she followed my look to Jess where she lingered for a moment. When Jess puffed out a second breath, tears flowed down her face and I knew it was all over. The last hope lost.
Turning back to Ellie, I could barely watch as the soldiers guided the dead creature to the bed. Bile rose and I gritting my teeth.
“No,” Alex screamed, but her cry cut off with the thump of something heavy.
Rising to my feet and finding enough energy, I twisted around, holding my breath for the pain. I surged up and took Thompson by surprise as I caught his eye with my balled fist. He barely moved, instead raising the rifle, teeth bared and glaring back, but he didn’t pull the trigger.
We’d lost and clutching my pounding fist, I closed my eyes, opening them again when I felt another presence in the room. Cassie stood at the doorway behind Alex with her arms held out to the bed, her mouth hanging wide but silent as she looked towards Ellie.
Renewed with rage, I brought my arm back and punched out towards Thompson, but the rifle butt swept across my face, sending me spiralling to the floor, my vision blackening as I slumped to the side of a metal cabinet.
“Stay the fuck down,” he shouted, sending spit my way.
As my view cleared, I looked up to see Thompson turning his rifle away and looking back across to where Cassie
