Blood Memory: The Complete Season One (Books 1-5) (37 page)

Stan picked up a large jagged stone from the floor and clutched it in both hands. He crept up to the door.

The door bent inward, then pulled back. The bracing length of wood toppled over.

Stan raised the rock high up above his head. His skinny arms shook with the effort. After ten seconds Stan’s arms screamed in pain.

The figures outside push
ed on the door. It swung open.

The figures came in.

Stan brought the rock down.

“Jesus
Christ!” Stan said. His aim was off by four inches. The rock smacked the floor.

Stan grabbed Jordan’s arm as if he half-expected his fingers to pass through it.

“I thought you were… I thought…” Tears sprung into his eyes. Stan embraced Jordan and Anne, hugging them close.

Jordan and Anne changed out of their wet clothes. Jordan put on a bright Christmas jumper, while Anne wore a T-shirt with ‘Skater Dudette’ written on it.

A small pan, now empty, sat beside used paper plates
. A single small candle that cast a meagre light flickered and almost blew into submission. The barn, though draughty and dark, felt cosy with the rain tapping on the roof.

Stan leaned back on his bed of hay.
“Sorry to mention the white elephant in the room, but how in God’s name did you manage to get out of there alive?”

Jordan and Anne shared a look – a brief flicker of the eyes. “Nothing much to it really,” Jordan said. “I tried to move the
car seat but it wouldn’t give. The Lurchers came and attacked and somehow managed to knock Anne free. They came in at us on all sides. We thought it was the end.” He rubbed the black bags beneath his eyes. “And it would have been if they hadn’t shown up.”

“If who hadn’t shown up?”

“Queenie and the others.”

Stan frowned. “Wait. You mean they saved you?”

Jordan nodded. “The Lurchers attacking us were pulled up, out of the car. They dangled, their feet kicking. There were loud screams and crunches and splatters of blood, and then they were tossed aside. The Lurchers kept at us, of course. They didn’t understand what was going on – neither did we, really.

“In the confusion, Anne and I escaped. We stopped at the edge of the woods and looked back. There were two distinct gangs of Lurchers. The first was the one that attacked us in the car. The other
– Queenie’s group – was fighting the first gang. A tall figure turned and looked at us and smiled. It was definitely Queenie.”

Anne gave Jordan a curious look, but it was gone in an instant.

“We came out of the woods and followed your footprints, and that’s how we came to end up here, with our heads nearly bashed in by you.”

“Well,” Stan said, “about time we had some luck for a change, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say it was luck. If Queenie could have grabbed us, he would have. But they were too busy with the other Lurchers.”

“Do you think they’re still after us?”

“Yes.”

“What do they want with us?”

“I don’t know,” Jordan said. “But if we can get to our boat soon we’ll never need to find out.”

The old barn creaked. Stan shot up into a sitting position, clutching a length of wood in one hand, looked around, saw nothing was amiss, then went back to sleep.

Anne listened intently to the night, relaxed as the wailing
wind of nature continued its monotonous drone. Jessie grumbled quietly in her sleep, but didn’t wake. Anne gently laid Jessie’s head down, having been brushing her hair.

Anne got up and crept around the puddles and unpacked belongings. She joined Jordan at the barn door, where he sat with his whittling block in hand. He had carved out the front
and back legs, mane, jaw line, and was now working on the tail. It was a horse and shaping up well.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

Anne shook her head. She watched him whittle for a moment. She opened her mouth to speak.

“You’re wondering why I didn’t tell them,” Jordan said.

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“It would only worry them.”

“They should know.”

Jordan looked over at the sleeping figures. Stan snuffled in his sleep. “We don’t even really know what happened.”

“You don’t honestly believe that?” Anne said, studying his expression closely. “If you don’t believe it spoke, it won’t worry Stan or Jess. We can tell them.”

Jordan shook his head. “No.”

Anne watched his expression. “We both heard it, Jordan.”

“I heard a grunt. Babies make sounds we think are words all the time. They’re just babble.”

“It wasn’t babble.” Anne paused. “He said your name, Jordan.”

Jordan’s hand slipped and he cut his thumb. “Shit.”

“Are you all right?”

He sucked on the cut. “It’s not deep. It’s fine.”

“I’ll get some bandages,” Anne said, standing up.

“I said it’s fine.”
Jordan’s tone was thick and confrontational.

“It’ll get infected.”

“No it won’t.”

“Just let me clean it.” She brought back a small bottle
and started cleaning the cut. He was right – it wasn’t deep.

A moment of silence passed between them.

“I’m sorry,” Jordan said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s fine.” She concentrated on what she was doing.

“It wasn’t clear – what he said. It could have been anything.”

“It was clear, Jordan. Queenie spoke to you.”

Jordan shivered.

“He said-”

“Don’t repeat it.”

“He said, ‘Jordy. Don’t go’.”

“No. It was just a grunt-”

“What did he mean by that, Jordan?”

Jordan looked at the floor. “He couldn’t have said that. I hadn’t heard it till I dreamed it the other day.”

“So you
did
hear what he said.”

Jordan shifted on the u
pturned bucket he sat on.

“But you did know about it. Don’t you see? This proves your dream isn’t a dream at all. It is a memory.”

“How do you figure that?”

“There’s no way Queenie could know about your dreams-”

“But he could know about my memories?”

“Maybe there’s something in your blood, some way he can see your memories, read them, transfer them somehow.”

Jordan made a face. “Like vampires?”

“Remember when Lurchers seemed ridiculous before all this happened? They might have some abilities we don’t know about.” She wrapped the bandage tight over the fleshy part of
his thumb. “I’m not sure about all this blood reading stuff, but somehow they followed us. It took no small amount of intelligence to do something like that. They set a trap and rescued us. We think we’re going to be safe on the sea, but maybe the sea’s time has come. It’s about to become as unsafe as the land.”

The air was clean and fresh the way it was the day after heavy rain. The muddy fields had been moulded and shaped into dirty dunes, thin rivulets winding their way downhill, forming long scars. Thin bird claw prints skittered down the hillside, barely denting the surface, and round cylindrical holes punctured half an inch deep were interspersed every two steps with airy wisps that could only have been a fox’s tail. Their human prints had been washed away.

“Do you know,” Stan said
as he held up a branch and removed the shoots with confident strokes of his knife, “Mare and I used to have an old barn? We converted it into a nice little holiday home. People came from all over the country to stay there. Some really interesting folks, too. Last night was the first time I ever stayed in a proper one, though.” Stan jabbed the walking stick into the earth, pressing his weight onto it. He had an expectant look in his eye. “Well, aren’t you going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?”
Jordan said. He tightened the straps of his backpack. Anne was helping Jessie put on her own backpack across the way.

“What Mary said to me the day she died. I expected you
to ask me last night.”

Jordan shrugged. “I figure you’ll tell me when you’re ready to tell me.”

Stan smiled. “Thank you.”

They turned away from the barn and toward the vast empty fields that rolled out before them. Narrow dirt trails from decades of use wound through the bumps and mounds and hills like the blood vessels in a giant
’s eye. Norfolk land was largely flat land, and there was little that impeded the sharp wind that whipped across the open expanse, blowing their clothes tight against their bodies.

“Well done for
taking care of Jess, by the way,” Jordan said.

“Thanks
,” Stan said. “But I’m bloody glad you’re back. An old fart and a girl who doesn’t know who she is don’t exactly make the best survival team.” He looked at Jordan. “Why do they want us so badly do you think?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there aren’t many people left.”

“So they chase everyone they find? Doesn’t sound right to me. Surely the number of survivors hasn’t got so low that they would be happy to cover twenty miles on foot? If they have, we’re in bigger trouble than we thought. If you ask me, I’d say they’re looking for something.”

“You think?”

“Only stands to reason, doesn’t it? Why else would they go to so much trouble?”

“Makes sense.”

“They’ll never stop, will they? Not till they get what they came for? If we can figure out what it is they want, we might be able to give it to them and they’ll leave us alone.”

Jordan nodded
. He looked distracted. “You might be right.”

As the sun progressed across the sky local
bitterns and Cetti’s warblers
fluttered around them without a care in the world. Wild hares stood up on their paws, watched the party pass, and then bent back down to continue munching. A fence ran across their path and into the distance. There were special ledges built for ramblers to climb over it. Jordan hopped over, and then helped Jessie.

Every couple of hours Jordan led them up a rise to peer around at their location.
The land met the sky on every side and turned to white oblivion where it met the horizon.

They didn
’t stop to eat, electing instead to eat on the move. By mid-afternoon they came to a wide fast-flowing river that undulated with current, the wind brushing it and giving it wrinkles. Jordan scaled a hillock, put his hands over his eyes and peered around at their surroundings. He came back down the hill.

“
The river bends up ahead,” he said. “We need to follow it this way and cross over at some point.”

The hard-packed dry earth turned a darker shade of brown and clung to the soles of their shoes. The river widened to twice its normal size and gave onto thick marshland. Pockets of mud sucked at their boots. They walked around the marsh, taking them half a mile out of their way up a slight incline. They looked out over the area around them.

It was dark with marshland. Cranes stepped easily over the puddles, heads dipping into them at regular intervals. The larger pools shimmered with sunlight. The dry earth beyond it was a light brown spotted with green. It would take them hours to cross the marshland, if they didn’t get stuck in the attempt.

“
Let’s keep going,” Anne said. “I don’t much fancy crossing that.”

O
n the other side of the marsh, the water filtered through the land, coalesced and reformed itself into a trickle that then became a river once more.

The sun was at its zenith when they came to a stop at a flint bridge that
brooked the river.

“
Let’s take a five minute break,” Jordan said.

Stan took a seat on a tree stump, groaning and complaining about the pain in his legs. A small clump of trees sat hunched to the right. Anne unshouldered her backpack and helped Jessie off with hers.

Jordan stood at the foot of the bridge looking across it. His shoulders slumped. “We have to turn back,” he said.

“
What was that?” Stan said. He’d taken his boots off and was massaging his feet.

“
I said we have to turn back.”

Stan sat up and looked at Jordan.
“Why?”

“
Come take a look.”

Stan and Anne stepped up beside Jordan. The bridge on either side reached out about four feet, and then abruptly ended in a series of jagged flint rocks that had been scorched black. The gap between them was a good forty feet.

Stan bent down and touched the scorched stones with his fingers. “Judging by the rocks it looks like some kind of fire or explosion might have done it.”

“
How are we going to cross it?” Anne said.