The Dying & The Dead 2 Read Online Free Page A

them were too scared to talk, Eric certainly wouldn’t be.
     
    “Where are we going?” he said.
     
    The man tilted his head. Eric felt like
a worm wriggling under the gaze of a hawk.
     
    “You’re going to Camp Dam Marsh,” said
the man.
     
    One of the guards shifted on his feet.
     
    “Do you think we should be telling them
that, Dr. Scarsgill?”
     
    “What?” said Scarsgill. “Would you lie
to them as well as kidnap them? Let the poor people know where they’re going,
at least.”
     
    He turned his attention to the DCs in
the carriage.
     
    “We’ll be there soon. When the train
stops, I suggest you wait. I don’t condone violence, but nor can I control it.
And trust me; a baton to the head soon puts thoughts of unrest to bed. Until we
stop, conserve your energy.”
     
    He turned to leave. Without thinking,
Eric stood up. As he approached Scarsgill, one of the guards stepped forward.
Eric grabbed Scarsgill’s plastic coat and pulled him back. The doctor stopped
and turned. When he looked at Eric he didn’t show annoyance, and he didn’t
speak. Instead a silence hung between them, broken only by a wheezing coughing
fit of a woman at the back of the train.
     
    “Are my mum and my sister in camp?” he
asked.
     
    Scarsgill smiled.
     
    “And who are they?”
     
    “My mum’s tall. She’s got curly hair. My
sister’s called Luna. She looks like me, she’s my twin.”
     
    “So you’re looking for a woman with curly
hair and a little girl? That doesn’t give me a great deal to go on. Are they
immune, like you?”
     
    “My sister is. My mum, I don’t know.”
     
    “If they are, they’ll be in Dam Marsh. I
hope you find them.”
     
    Scarsgill left the room, and with it
went the cold. Eric wandered back over to Kim and Allie.
     
    “That was stupid,” said Kim.
     
    “I know.”
     
    “What’s Dam Marsh?”
     
    “I don’t know. And I don’t think I want
to. But if my mum and Luna are there, we’ll find them.”
     
    “And what about my mum?”
     
    “We’ll find her too, sometime.”
     
    Allie moved his head away from Kim’s
shoulder. He had a dent in his chin, maybe from an old accident, and there was
a red blotchy birthmark on his neck.
     
    “And what about my grandma?” he said.
“She’s alone now. Her hip locks when it gets cold, and she’ll need me to let
the chickens out of the hutch.”
     
    Before Eric or Kim could answer, a
screeching sound rose around them. It was so loud that Eric’s ears hurt.
Gradually the train slowed, until finally it stopped. With the rumble of the
train gone, Eric could hear his own pulse as it beat in his ears.
     
    “Okay,” said one of the guards. “It’s time
to go.”
     
    When the door opened and the breeze
floated in, Eric leaned his head into it. He felt it chill his skin, but it
didn’t do anything to calm his heart rate. He got to his feet and stuck his
hand out for Kim. When she gripped him, he noticed how sweaty her palms were.
Allie stayed on the carriage floor, looking at them. Eric outstretched his other
hand and pulled the boy up.
     
    They left the train in single file. When
he got down onto the platform, Eric couldn’t see anything through the steam of
the train as it hung around them. It dispersed into the air, and slowly things
started to clear. For the first time, he saw Camp Dam Marsh. As Eric, Kim and
Allie stared at it, they held hands.
     
    The camp was a few acres long. It was
surrounded by two fifteen foot-high chain fences, in between which crowds of
infected shambled back and forth. Seeing them made Eric flinch, and he felt Kim
grip him tighter. There were two brickwork chimneys which reached high into the
sky, and black smoke drifted out from the ends of them. Beyond the fences were
rows of flimsy-looking wooden cabins with overgrown grass around them. The
majority of the camp was taken up by a yard filled with loose stones. Men and
women walked across it, some pushing wheelbarrows full of rocks,