Dead Flesh (24 page)

“What?” I asked
him.

“What d’ya
see?”

“A
tree,
” I sighed.

“Not just any
old
tree
,” Sam stressed, pointing skyward
while keeping his eyes fixed on me.

I looked up and
could see that Sam was pointing at our bridge to freedom.

“You’re
amazing,” I whispered. The branches of the chestnut tree were
spread out like a giant web. One of the branches reached out
further than the others and had worked its way over the top of the
wall. Seeing this, I looked back at Sam and smiled.

“I discovered
it a few weeks ago,” he explained. “But I’ve never had the guts to
go over the wall.”

“Why not?” I
asked him.

“I’ve been too
scared,” he said sheepishly.

“So what’s
changed?”

“You’re with
me,” he smiled. Without saying another word, Sam turned and began
climbing. I watched Sam shin his way up the trunk of the tree, then
like a monkey, he took hold of the nearest branch and swung himself
up. I glanced back at the school to make sure that we weren’t being
watched. Through the shrubs and trees, I could just make out the
search towers and the black outline of the school turrets that
corkscrewed up into the morning winter sky.

“Are you coming
or what?” Sam said from above.

Looking up, I
could see him inching his way across the branch that draped over
the top of the wall like a broken arm. I ran to the foot of the
tree and began to climb. Hoisting my way up into the branches, I
made my way towards my friend. By the time I’d reached the branch,
Sam was crouched on top of the wall. Clenching my teeth, I placed
one hand in front of the other and crawled across the branch.

Flying would have been so much easier
, I secretly
thought.

Halfway across,
the branch began to sway, then creak. I stopped and gripped the
branch until my knuckles were gleaming white through my skin.

“What you
waiting for?” Sam hissed, balancing on top of the wall.

I looked down,
and the ground seemed miles away. “The branch is gonna break!” I
said through gritted teeth.

“If you stopped
swinging on the thing like some demented monkey, then you might get
across without it snapping. Now quit messing about and get over
here!” Sam moaned.

Closing my
eyes, I crawled the last few feet, using my hands to feel my way
across the branch. Then, just as I reached the end of it, Sam leapt
into the field on the other side of the wall. I peered over the
edge and could see him waving up at me, a huge grin nearly cutting
the lower half of his face in two.

“C’mon! Jump,
Kayla!” Sam said.

Shutting my
eyes, I threw myself from the branch. I hit the ground and rolled
onto my back. Air belched from my lungs and up my throat. Sam stood
above me, his hand outstretched.

“C’mon, this
way!” Sam said, pulling me to my feet. Then, holding hands, we
charged across the field and headed towards a large wooded area in
the distance.

Kayla

We raced across
the field, tiny white plumes of breath escaping from Sam’s mouth
and floating like tiny clouds up in to the cold sky. As we neared
the woods, Sam let go of my hand and disappeared amongst the
trees.

I left the
field and darted after him. The woods were dark, and slanted shafts
of grey light cut through the branches overhead and formed patterns
on the leaf-covered ground. The woods were quiet and the trees
stood close together, twisted and moss-covered. The only sound was
the branches creaking above and the odd flutter of wings, as birds
swooped between the trees. There was an oppressive atmosphere
inside the woods and I began to feel claustrophobic. I looked
between the trees for Sam, and called out.

“Sam? Sam?
Where are you?”

Silence.

I went further
into the woods, the sound of twigs breaking beneath my shoes.

“Sam, are you
there?”

Silence.

What was he playing at?
I wondered.

“Sam, if this
is your idea of a -”

But before I’d
had a chance to finish, something had clattered into me from
behind, knocking me from my feet and sending me sprawling onto the
ground.

“Gotchya!” Sam
grinned, standing over me.

I rolled over
and looked up at him.

Laughing, Sam
said, “You’ve got that look on your face again!”

“What look?” I
groaned, brushing damp leaves and fern needles from my blazer.

“Like you’re
gonna shit in your pants!” Sam laughed.

“You dickhead,”
I moaned, getting to my feet.

Holding his
sides, Sam continued to laugh, tears welling in his eyes as he
watched me pluck twigs and leaves from my hair.

“Ha-Ha, how
very amusing!” I said. “I nearly wet myself, thanks to you!”

“Don’t…please…stop…please…” Sam said through his tears.

I glared at him
and said, “Freaking jerk.”

“Oh c’mon,
Kayla, I was just trying to have some fun with you,” he said. “We
could both do with having some laughs.”

Then, seeing
the funny side of what had happened, I began to laugh too. It felt
good to be laughing again. We stood spraying laughter into the
quietness of the woods – sounding like a couple of honking donkeys.
But it wasn’t just the laughter that felt so good – it was being
out of Ravenwood. It felt fantastic.

It was freedom!

Giggling like a
couple of little kids, Sam led me deeper into the woods. The
further we went, the darker it grew, as if the light filtering
through the branches was being turned down with a dimmer switch.
And although it was January, the air inside the wood felt warm and
clammy. Sam loosened his tie and opened his shirt at the
throat.

“How come you
know these woods?” I asked him.

“I grew up in
this area. I used to come down to the woods with my mate, John. We
made a camp in some bushes over there somewhere,” Sam said,
pointing in the direction of a thick shrubby area that sat on the
bank of a bubbling stream.

“Who is John?”
I asked.

“You mean, who
was
John.”

“What’s that
s’posed to mean?”

“I knew John
all my life. When the wolves came to Wood Hill and we became
prisoners at Ravenwood, it didn’t seem so bad because I had John
with me. We used to share a room. He was my best mate. But he got
chosen for matching within a few weeks, and I’ve not seen him
since,” Sam said.

“Where do you
think he is now?”

“Dunno,” Sam
shrugged. “He went into that old chapel and that was it. I’ve heard
that you never know if you’re going to the chapel to be matched or
released.”

“But if you
were going to be released, why go to the chapel?” I asked him.

“Either way,
McCain throws a party in there,” Sam explained. “The party is meant
to celebrate your freedom or your matching.”

“It sounds a
bit sick to me,” I said. “How can anyone celebrate being matched
with a werewolf – Skin-walker?”

“I don’t think
it’s the humans that are celebrating - it’s the wolves,” he said.
“After all, they’ve got a lot to celebrate. They’ve just got
themselves a human skin to walk around in.”

We walked in
silence, ducking low-hanging branches and climbing over fallen tree
trunks. Sam wiped his face with the back of his hand, his damp
black hair sticking to his forehead in dark lines. I felt as if
there was something on the tip of his tongue but he just couldn’t
bring himself to say it. Glancing at Sam, I said, “What are you
thinking?”

Sam looked over
his shoulder as if someone might be listening. Then, in a voice
just above a whisper, he said, “We don’t have to stay at Ravenwood,
we could run away. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

To hear this
upset me, because if I was in his position, I would’ve wanted to
run away, too. But I wasn’t in the same situation as him. I
wouldn’t be around for any matching ceremony. I would be gone as
soon as we had the evidence against McCain. I would be leaving Sam
behind. It hurt me to say what I said next, I felt like I was
cheating him in some way, and I hated myself for it.

“Sam, I
understand what you’re saying, but you need to get those crazy
thoughts out of your head.”

“How come?” Sam
asked, looking confused. “I thought you would feel the same. I
thought we could escape together.”

“Okay, so we
escape, but where we gonna go? We can’t go back to friends and
family because that’s the first place the wolves would come
looking. We’ve got no money. We’d probably last for a couple of
days until the wolves caught up with us. Then what? They’d bring us
straight back here!” I said.

“But we could
tell the police what it’s like here, all the weird things that go
on,” Sam insisted, and I could tell that Sam was desperate for me
to go along with his plan – but it wasn’t my plan.

“Do you really
think they’d believe us?” I asked him.

“It’s worth a…”
Sam started.

“Sam, it’s not
gonna be forever. And who knows, we might not even get chosen for
matching,” I tried to convince him.

Looking at me,
Sam said, “Ravenwood might not be forever, Kayla, but having your
soul taken over by a wolf will be.” Then, as if knowing that he
wasn’t going to change my mind, he said, “I’ll show you the camp
where me and John used to hang out as kids. It would be nice to see
it again.”

Hating myself
for convincing Sam to stay at Ravenwood, whereas I knew I wouldn’t
be, I watched him stride towards the bushes by the stream. At
first, neither of us noticed the swarm of flies that hovered around
the entrance to Sam’s camp. Crouching on all fours, Sam crawled in
amongst the branches and leaves and I followed. This isn’t what I’d
had planned. By now I had hoped to have hidden the camera for
Isidor and be back at Ravenwood before McCain noticed that I had
vanished. But I felt like I had to see where Sam and his friend,
John had hung out. It seemed important to him and it was the least
that I could do.

We worked our
way amongst the barbs and nettles until we came out into a small
clearing. Almost at once, I was struck by a putrid smell. Covering
his nose with his hand, Sam gagged at the stench. It smelt of
rotten meat that had been left out too long in the sun. I looked at
Sam, who had shoved his fist into his mouth, as if fighting the
urge to puke. Even in the shadowy light of the bush, I could see
that Sam’s face had drained to the colour of soap. His eyes were
bulging in their sockets as he looked at something ahead in the
clearing.

I followed his
gaze and looked at whatever it was which stank so much. Lying on
its side in the middle of the camp was a dead body.

Kiera

My iPod didn’t
leave my hand all day. I paced up and down, waiting for Kayla to
get in contact with me as to the location of the camera. She had
done well to find it, but I wanted her out of that school as soon
as possible. I hadn’t been happy about her going in there in the
first place. As soon as I knew what was on the camera, she was
coming out.

From what
little Kayla had managed to relay to us, the school sounded weird,
to say the least. What were these “Greys” that Kayla had mentioned?
Were they the wolves, waiting to be matched, or something more
sinister? But what could be more sinister than that? And why did
they hide their faces? But it was McCain; the more I heard about
the guy, the more I sensed that Kayla and the other kids at the
school were in danger. Why terrorise the kids with cattle prods, or
sizzle-sticks,
as Kayla had called them?
That was no way of keeping control. It was cruel and barbaric.

As I paced
through the kitchen and the living room, Potter sat quietly in a
chair by the fire and smoked. Once he had finished one, he threw
the end into the fire and lit another. He had told me once that the
craving for nicotine masked his cravings for blood. I could
understand that in some small way, as my own cravings for the red
stuff where always there. Taking blood from Potter helped but I
knew that wasn’t the answer. Even if I resorted to drinking Lot 13,
there was only so much of that left at the manor, and it would soon
run out as Isidor and Kayla were drinking it every day. I’d rather
them have it than me. I didn’t want them resorting to drinking
blood – not ever.

“Are you okay?”
I asked Potter as he flicked his cigarette ash into the fire.

“I’m sick and
tired of all this hanging around,” he said. “We should be doing
something.”

“Like what?” I
asked him, kneeling by his chair and stroking his forearm.

“I dunno,” he
sighed. “But anything has got to be better than sitting around here
waiting for something to happen. You know me, Kiera, I’m not happy
just sitting around, I need to be in the thick of it.”

“As soon as we
see what’s on that camera, we’ll be in a better place to...” I
started.

“And what if
there isn’t anything on that camera?” he asked, looking at me. “We
know that arsehole McCain killed that woman, so why are we just
sitting here?”

“Things are
different now,” I said. “We’re not part of this world; we can’t
just go storming about the place like we did before. We’ve got to
take a back seat and wait. We can’t afford to bring attention to
ourselves.”

“So why were we
brought back then?” he asked me.

“I don’t know
that,” I told him. “But McCain, Elizabeth, and her missing sister
have something to do with the reason why we were.”

“What makes you
so sure?” Potter asked, sitting forward in his seat.

“Because I’m
being punished,” I told him.