Lex Talionis Read online

  “Would you stop it? I swear, if you fuss over me one more time, I’m gonna punch you in the face.”

  “I’m only trying to be considerate.”

  “You’re mothering me, and it’s nauseating.”

  She walks on ahead, frustrated by his behavior, which she knows is nothing more than a weak attempt to forge closeness between them. Or, more precisely, to fake closeness for Luka’s benefit—to ward him off.

  More annoying still, from this point onward, time seems to drag. Another hour passes, and they keep trudging down the main road, leaving one set of ruins behind, only to come upon another within a mile or two. Something’s different about this set, though. The ivy hasn’t taken so much of a hold, and the roofing appears to have undergone some minor repairs, keeping the interiors mostly dry.

  Curious, Silver slows her pace. A collapsed overpass provides access to the ruins, which lie to the left of the main road, and veering closer, she notices a trail of something sticky and moist smeared across the untended tarmac.

  The suspicious trail, red and goopy, begins to the right of the main road, snakes across it, then continues up onto the ramp-like remains of the overpass. Dropping to one knee, Silver presses her middle and index fingers into a glob of it, testing it for smell and texture, confirming that her instincts are correct.

  It’s blood.

  It’s fresh blood.

  For the first time since landing in this country, she feels it necessary to draw her gun. Knowing that Alex and Luka are only a few paces behind her, she follows the goop up onto the ramp and down the other side, soon emerging onto a tree-filled street.

  A flowerbed at the entrance to the town has been recently weeded, and a signpost declaring the name of the place—Godley—has been kept clean, but amended: the ‘y’ crossed out and replaced with two other letters.

  Godless.

  “Silver!” Alex calls to her from the top of the ramp, Luka by his side. “Come back here!”

  Mostly for the pleasure of infuriating him, she ignores him. Returning her attention to the blood trail, she keeps her gun drawn and turns left onto the ‘High Street’, steadily following the curve of the deserted roadway until she rounds a corner and discovers the source of all the mess.

  A corpse.

  Its legs are cut and scraped from being dragged along the ground, and its reddy-brown hair is matted with coagulating blood.

  It’s another deer.

  Confused, Silver looks around for any signs of life. Residential buildings line the street on either side. Portions of exterior walls have been rebuilt, though the handiwork doesn’t look professional. Some effort has been made to replace rotting doors with newly constructed ones, and the windows are all intact.

  Giving one quick shoulder check to make sure that Alex and Luka have her guarded from the rear, Silver lowers her gun and steps up to the dead deer. Blood is oozing from several places: its mouth, a through and through wound in its neck, and a gash from its chest to its stomach. It appears as though someone was about to gut the animal, but was interrupted.

  Gun in one hand, she crouches and presses her other hand against the creature’s chest, finding it still warm. More interestingly, she spots a set of bloody shoeprints leading away from the corpse to a door in one of the buildings. Looking up, she hears a latch click into place.

  One more glance at Alex confirms that he heard it, too. Not only that, but he’s spotted something in a second storey window, and he directs her eyeline there with a sharp nod of his head. Pressed up against the glass, a small child in a handmade summer dress is staring down at them, her expression solemn. A second later, an adult appears behind the child’s shoulder, also staring.

  It’s not long before Silver, Alex and Luka start to feel hundreds of eyes burning into them from all angles. Silver looks from one window to another, and another, finding faces in every single one. She spins around, flitting her eyes left and right, counting dozens of men, women and children—at least three generations of people.

  “What the … ?”

  She doesn’t get to finish the question.

  “It’s your uniforms,” a gravelly male voice explains. “The emblems frighten them.”

  Her gun aimed and ready, Silver pivots to face the voice: a young man in his early twenties. He limps out from a side street and plops down onto the curb, tugging off one of his well-worn boots to inspect the sole. In doing so, he releases the stench of a foot that’s been confined to a boot for far too long without adequate air circulation.

  He’s dirty and emaciated, his clothes raggedy and torn. Wearing a pair of brown trousers with suspenders, a white button-up shirt with puffy sleeves, and a tattered pinstripe waistcoat, he looks like a throwback from an era Silver feels sure she’s read about in history books. It brings to mind a time when women wore corsets and men pranced around in top hats and puff ties.

  Calm and unflinching, he acknowledges that three guns are aimed at his head, but shows no fear. This is obviously not the first time he’s encountered firearms, nor had them pointed in his direction, so their show of muscle has little noticeable impact.

  Judging him to be non-threatening—albeit strange—Silver drops her aim. “These aren’t the emblems of your country.” She picks at the Omega symbol on her shirt. “You can’t possibly know what they stand for.”

  His interest piqued by her accent, he regards her through narrowed eyes. “It don’t matter. You’ve got army boots, you’re wearing the color of law enforcement, and you’re carrying weapons—that tells these people all they need to know about you.”

  “And what’s that?”

  The young man pulls a sliver of metal out of the heel of his boot and flings it away. “You’re trouble.”

  “We’re not trying to be.” Silver holsters her gun, well aware that both Alex and Luka still have theirs trained on him. “We’re looking for a place to stay, that’s all.”

  “Well, you won’t find it here.” He slips his boot back on and starts lacing it. “Pecsaetans keep to themselves. No outsiders.” He peers up at her again. “Especially not ones what speak with a foreign tongue.”

  “Pecsaetans?” Silver quirks an eyebrow.

  The young man frowns at her, baffled by the need for clarification. “Peak District folk. The border’s not far from here. Do you not know where you are, love?”

  “Not a fucking clue.” Silver sighs.

  “Where you headed?” He stands up, testing out his boot by tentatively bearing weight on it.

  “West.”

  “Really?” His brow wrinkles with faint disbelief. “To Manchester?”

  Silver shrugs. “If you say so.”

  She sees a brief flicker of hatred in the man’s eyes, then his mood takes a sudden nosedive, his hands tensed into fists, his voice deep and stern.

  “When you get there,” he snarls, “tell Slade he’s a lousy little muck snipe who deserves to hang for what he’s done. Then, flick him a vee and tell him his mate, Trevor, is a crap shot.”

  He spits a ball of chunky yellow phlegm onto the ground, inadvertently drowning a tiny black ant, then walks away, limping slightly less than before.

  “Hey!” Silver calls after him. “Where are you going?”

  “Away from here.” He doesn’t look back. “Out of Mercia.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time Silver, Alex and Luka reach the Manchester city border, after a grueling two-and-a-half-hour hike through the crumbling remains of Greater Manchester, Silver is hot and irritable.

  The sun is at its peak in the sky, and there’s not a cloud in sight. Waves of heat shimmer above the baking tarmac, and there’s no respite from the ball of fire’s relentless glare. Worse still, they drained the last of their water twenty minutes ago.

  Desperate for shade, Silver leads the pack toward some shelter beneath a ring road that cuts over the main thoroughfare they’ve been traveling on thus far. A large, handmade banner hangs off the side of this overpass, declaring the area b
eyond it to be Manchester City, and large piles of trash have been thrown over the edge, resulting in a veritable dumping ground.

  Over many years, all sorts of junk has been tossed here: old couches, television sets, tables, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, dishwashers—a whole array of household appliances—armchairs, old carpet, bookshelves, and even vehicle shells. The stacks are piled so high they’ve formed a wall of rubbish on either side of the road below, reaching from the ground up to the side of the overpass.

  One rolled up rug lies half unraveled where it landed after tumbling down the embankment of junk, and the limbs of a naked woman are protruding from it. Judging by the level of decomposition, she’s been there at least a week.

  Her skin is in a state of green putrefaction, oozing, and ready to slip off the bone. Her fingers are black, bones exposed at the tips. Purge fluid has soaked through the rug, completely saturating it, and flies are buzzing everywhere around her. Light smears of liquefied organ juice are slathered over nearby objects, trailed there by a family of rats that come and go from her as they please.

  The air reeks. Silver knows enough about the smell of death to guess that there’s probably a good many more corpses here, all entombed within the garbage. Sadly, that doesn’t shock her. Nor does it dissuade her from breaching the city’s boundary by stepping into the narrow walkway between the two looming towers of debris.

  What does stop her is a fierce growl.

  Chained to a pillar beneath the overpass is a large dog, baring its teeth and snarling. Silver’s never seen a real dog before, only a taxidermied specimen kept in the biology classroom of her junior school. Still, she knows this particular dog is a poor example of its species. It’s emaciated, all of its ribs showing. Patches of scabby, broken skin along its back and head are evidence of mange, and the chain around his neck is so tight it’s cutting into the poor creature’s meat.

  “Do you want to do it? Or shall I?” Alex asks, coming up beside her. “One of us should.”

  “We could draw straws,” Luka offers, appearing at her other shoulder.

  “No, I’ve got it.” Silver brings a hand to her gun, preparing to shoot the sad looking dog for its own sake. “You can take the next mercy killing.”

  She means well, but, unfortunately, she never gets to draw her weapon. Behind them, there’s a snap and a click: the loading mechanism of a double barrel shotgun.

  “Hands on your nobs,” a male voice grunts at them. “All of you.”

  Alex and Luka share a glance, wondering if they misheard. Silver, on the other hand, having different anatomy, is quick to grasp that ‘nob’ very likely has a different meaning in this context—but she refuses to play along.

  “I don’t have one,” she says, turning around slowly. “Would you like me to put my hands on theirs instead?” She points at her counterparts. “I know they’d be up for it.”

  The man facing her is short and skinny, and looks slightly nervous. His eyes dart between all three of them, the barrel of his gun wavering, swaying in whichever direction his eyes are looking. When he sniffs twice and rubs the end of his nose with his sleeve cuff, Silver clues in to the reason why he might be so twitchy: he tweaking.

  “Don’t be a smart arse.” He sniffs again, pointing the shotgun in Silver’s general direction. “Hands on your head. Now.”

  Smirking, Silver weaves her fingers together behind her head. “I guess a welcome basket was too much to ask for.”

  Alex and Luka follow suit, silently hoping that the skinny man doesn’t sneeze while he’s got his finger on the trigger.

  Sniffing once more for good measure, the man grabs the waistband of his saggy army combat pants—which are several sizes too big—and hikes them higher up on his hips. His dark green, wife beater t-shirt is full of holes, and as he scratches at his chest, one of his nipples pokes through.

  “Huck!” he shouts. “Huck, get out here!”

  While he waits for whoever or whatever ‘Huck’ is, he runs a hand through his balding ginger hair. It’s damp with sweat and clinging to his scalp. Overall, he doesn’t look healthy. His face is unshaven, but the hair is growing in patchy and uneven. One of his eyebrows is missing, and he has a large dent on his forehead.

  “Huck!” he yells one more time, sounding slightly agitated.

  “Whatchu carping about?” A gruff, stocky man emerges from a shoddily erected wooden hut beside an overpass support pillar, buckling up his belt. “I’m trying to do my business.”

  Whatever ‘business’ that is, Silver doesn’t want to know. The man, Huck, is a truly repulsive looking beast. He’s heavyset, hairy and bearded, and he smells like rotten cheese. His cotton pinstripe trousers are covered with stains, the riveted suspender buttons rusted and on the verge of coming adrift. The sleeves of his white dress shirt are rolled up to the elbows, revealing forearms that are covered in crude tattoos, and the front of it is spotted with dribbled beer. His waistcoat is undone, probably because it’s too tight to wrap around his belly, and his lopsided bowler hat is frayed at the edges.

  When he looks up and spots the new arrivals, his eyes glue to Silver and his mood changes. “Lookie, lookie here.” He adjusts his belt and steps closer. “Strangers in queer rags.”

  Silver refrains from mocking him, even though it doesn’t seem at all right that the man wearing a bowler hat should be judging them for dressing oddly.

  The stench worsens the nearer he gets, and she tries not to breathe through her nose for fear of throwing up, but she dare not look away, lest that should be taken as a sign of weakness or submission.

  She stands firm while he circles them, and doesn’t flinch when he circles her twice, taking a particular interest in her chest. On the third rotation around her, he jabs at the Omega emblem on her shirt, inches above her breast.

  “This don’t mean nothing to me.”

  “There’s no reason why it should,” she replies, feeling Alex and Luka edge nearer, flanking her on either side, uncomfortable with Huck’s proximity.

  “What shall we do with ‘em?” The skinny fellow twitches, almost dropping the shotgun.

  Huck roams his eyes over Silver again, appearing almost saddened by the answer he’s about to give. “If there wasn’t such a rumpus in my bowels right now, I could make use of you.”

  Ugh. Silver feels vomit rise to the back of her throat.

  Huck turns away from her and gives the skinny man the all clear. “Kill them.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Silver says boldly, holding her nerve and making eye contact with Huck, who appears to be the more dominant of the two. “You might not live to regret it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He flicks his tongue over his lower lip, sauntering back over to her. “Why’s that? You think I should take you back to my ken so that me and my boys can dab it up with you first?”

  Dab it up? Silver interprets the unfamiliar phrase, using contextual clues for guidance. First of all, he’s staring at her tits again. Secondly, he’s developed a slight bulge in the crotch of his trousers. Ergo, he means to fuck her.

  She scowls at him. “Do you really think either of the men standing beside me would let you get your grubby little hands within groping distance of me? This one”—she indicates Alex—“has been known to lose his shit over a simple glance in my direction. And the blonde one”—she indicates Luka—“would jump at the chance to show off his masculinity in front of me.” She stares Huck down. “So I’d tread very carefully if I were you. You don’t want to make my men angry.”

  Huck scratches at his beard, dislodging a small beetle from it. He keeps eyeballing her, mistakenly thinking he can get her to break the deadlock first.

  She doesn’t budge.

  Perturbed by her unblinking, steely eyes, he retreats slightly. “Whatchu lot doing in Manchester anyway? You’re not Mercian.”

  Mercian? Someone from Mercia, Silver guesses, though she has no idea what in the world that could be.

  She answers with the first thing that lea
ps into her head. “We’re here to see Slade.”

  That throws Huck for six, and he retreats to confer with his jittery, shotgun-wielding friend. They talk in hushed tones, stealing sideways glances at the trio every few seconds.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Alex leans toward Silver, keeping his eyes fixed on the two grotty men.

  “I have no idea, but it’s a lot better than what you were doing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dick all.”

  “I was letting the situation play out.” Alex pouts disapprovingly.

  “You were being a pussy.”

  “I was being cautious,” he corrects her. “Anyway, the last person who came into contact with this Slade guy didn’t fare too well. Bear that in mind.”

  “What would you rather do? Kill these two twerps, then keep wandering aimlessly about, avoiding more junkies with shotguns? I’m trying to resolve this non-violently.”

  “Shut your yaps!” Huck bellows at them. “Me and Rex will take you to Slade.”

  They’re probably only doing it to curry favor with whoever or whatever Slade is, but Silver doesn’t care. The thought of hitching a ride on the back of their vehicle instead of taking another step on her sore, aching feet is desperately appealing. Even when they’re disarmed, bundled into the back of a filthy pickup truck, handcuffed to the guardrails, and forced to sit upon a pile of dead animals, she’s still elated to take the load off.

  Alex is decidedly less comfortable with the whole arrangement, and the concern shows itself on his face. His brow is puckered, eyes darting left and right, gathering as much information about their new environment as possible.

  Silver nudges his leg with her foot. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” he growls. “We just allowed ourselves to be detained by a couple of weirdos who could turn out to be serial killers for all we know.”

  Still not overly apprehensive, feeling safe in the knowledge that she has her hunting knife tucked into her boot, and that Luka has an ankle holster their captors didn’t think to check for, Silver laughs contemptuously at Alex’s suggestion that they could be in any real danger.