Chapter 83: 83 They (Do Not) Live, Part Five

Through the window Jin saw Mac struggling through the dangerous crowd, with a taller woman clinging to her arm. They spoke about something Jin couldn't hear through the glass. Mac was an idiot for even being out there.

Jin wanted to open the window in Josephine's room but it was sealed shut, probably by paint. He could break it open but that would leave Josephine exposed to the outside elements at night, and he wasn't that much of a jerk. He sighed and reconciled himself to heading outside.

Through the window Mac and the woman started to struggle against each other. Mac pushed the woman away, straight into the path of one of the machine men and its cruel tendrils. Accident or...? Jin shook his head and ran down the hall, shoved open the door again, and ran outside to reach them. Whether mean or just stupid, even Mac didn't deserve to be left out there to have who knows what happen to her.

He dodged one monstrous form and then another. Mac was frozen in place watching her companion bleed and blend with the machine skewering her through the middle. Jin used Angharad's big, heavy stick to beat them both to the ground, focusing his efforts on the joints of the more fully mechanised creature, then grabbed Mac by the arm and pulled her away. He didn't care if she was keeping up or if he moved too fast for her. He'd drag her if he had to.

When he reached the bottom floor of the dorm building again he threw her past the threshold.

"Thank you for..."

He threw the stick in after her.

"Close the door properly and go upstairs with everyone else," he said. "Try not to get anyone else killed."

He still had his gun, holstered by his side. He turned to face the mechanical crowd and see what he could do with it.

*

Yong Jie rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. His mother continued to smoke by the bed.

"Shouldn't you be out there with all the death?" he asked, acknowledging her for the first time in months.

"Your friend Gael is dying right now. Shouldn't you be?" she said, pitiless as ever.

"I know that," he said. "Answer my question."

She didn't answer for minutes. He waited her out. He wasn't going anywhere that night.

"Someone needs to protect you," she said, finally.

He found it a thoroughly insufficient answer. "I can protect myself. You taught me how to shoot. I haven't forgotten how."

"You could shoot when you had a left hand," she said.

He pushed himself upright with his right. "I can learn to use my right. You've never been maternal before. Why start now?"

She stood up, turned away from him, and began to fiddle with the handgun she'd left on the table. "Don't tell me what to do. If I want to risk death to protect you, then I will."

"You'd make me watch another parent die?"

"Die after me and live a long life hating me," she said. She turned back to him, her left hand holding the handgun and her right still holding her cigarette. "That's all I want."

*

Angharad couldn't stand the sound of it, of the thing that was already using Gael's body pushing at its chains. She stood, already breathing heavily, and walked her way down the hallway. She felt like she was pushing through a fog.

Would his chains hold?

Angharad walked along the hallway, checking that the doors were closed.

She heard a screech of metal from somewhere behind her and the sound of something crashing. She walked faster, just to be safe.

"One of them is in here," she yelled out, as loud as she could. "Check your doors."

She walked past the room the doctor was sharing with Yong Jie and she could hear the sound of something heavy scraping across the floor. That door wobbled as something slammed into it from inside. At least she knew they were safe even if she was locked out of looking in to be sure.

She breathed faster, walked faster. She realised she'd left the thing Freya had given her in Gael's hospital room.

Tabitha stood in a hallway, eyes wide and blinking slowly, hair a mess. She turned to look when Angharad reached the nexus at the other end of the hallway, and her arms crossed around her body, but she didn't move.

"You have to hide," Angharad said. Her voice was rougher than she'd realised.

Tabitha only shivered. Angharad stalked forward until she could see the tears on Tabitha's face, the mess of her lip gloss, the drool at the side of her mouth that Tabitha usually knew to wipe away before anyone could see.

The door from Darren's room opened and Willow stepped out, nodded once at Angharad, then grabbed Tabitha by the arm and pulled her inside. She looked so strong it was almost like she'd thrown Tabitha's body before she'd closed the door. As Angharad walked past their room and heard the sounds of something being moved around, she didn't know why she was surprised. Maybe Willow's muteness had more to do with the scar on her neck than her hearing – it wasn't like Angharad had ever asked.

She heard the sound of something slamming. Had it broken open the door?

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Angharad started to walk up the stairs to the first level above ground like the first victim in a horror movie, then realised her foolishness and stopped still. She stood there in the dark of the stairwell, shaking with every breath, for much too long. Where could she go? It wasn't safe outside. Going up would only mean it could throw her off the roof if it liked. There was nowhere to go.

She walked back down the stairs and was suddenly sure she could hear a loud, dragging step in the halls. She started to jog, away from the direction of the noise, but it never seemed to quiet down.

She couldn't see anything behind her. Was it in front of her? She turned the corner without looking and smacked straight into something body shaped and screeched. Everything was a blur as she hit the wall, helpless against the strength of whoever was holding her. It took the longest second she'd ever experienced to catch her breath. The body against her was warm, not too tall.

Could Gael still be warm?

She looked up and nearly collapsed in relief. It was Josephine's warm clothing that she sunk her fingers into.

"I came to find you," Josephine said. "Jin told me not to come but he couldn't stop me."

"I'm so happy you came for me. I'm so... We have to run."

The heavy footsteps were louder again, faster.

Josephine nodded and Angharad swallowed at the intensity of her gaze. She placed her hand in Josephine's and they ran, trying to find a room that was quite right. There needed to be something heavy inside that Josephine could move so they could bar the door, but they couldn't take too much time about it. The thing in the hallways behind them sped up its heavy steps.

One room after another was not quite right. Even the closet Angharad had been locked in once started to look acceptable in comparison, but even that, she knew, wasn't enough.

"The doctor's room," Angharad said. "She's with her son. No one will be in there."

"Something already tore off that door," Josephine said.

"Any room will do. Just bar the door with our bodies if we have to. I just can't look back and see what it's doing to his body."

They slammed into the nearest free room and closed the door behind them. Angharad collapsed to the floor and leaned her head against the heavy wood. Josephine quickly followed.

Angharad couldn't help leaning into her warmth. Josephine's faded grey hoodie was like a heavy blanket, and Josephine wrapped her up as Angharad started to shiver. Already it was streaked red where Angharad had put her hands on the pale fabric in the hall.

"I'm getting blood all over you," Angharad said, her voice a loud, panicked whisper.

"I don't care," Josephine said.

"I do. I care. It's not good, Josephine. I shouldn't be touching you at all." Only a concerted effort and the knowledge of the monster outside wearing Gael's skin stopped her from dissolving into tears.

Josephine put her warm hand to Angharad's face, so she couldn't help but looking up into those warm brown eyes with their reassuring downward tilt. "Get all the blood on me you want. Whatever it does to us, if it's with you, it's okay."

And then they were kissing, hard and a little bit desperate, and Angharad wasn't sure which one of them was to blame.

Josephine pulled back with her mouth, but her hand was still hot on Angharad's face.

Outside something slammed into the walls. Angharad heard gunshots from somewhere, but couldn't tell how close. She heard indescribable thumping noises, but she didn't know what they meant.

"I didn't mean to do that," Josephine whispered.

Angharad closed her eyes and breathed. Maybe she could breathe quietly enough not to draw attention to herself.

She didn't know how long she sat there before the hallway became large with sounds she couldn't interpret. Strange smacking noises and metallic screeches, a drumming and thudding, a sound vaguely reminiscent of someone playing the triangle in school band. There was a brief moment of relative quiet and then a dragging noise.

And then the sound of regular footsteps, steadily closer.

That was it, the moment she knew that if the monster had come to her door it was too late to resist.

Instead she heard Ibrahim's voice through the door, soft and polite. "I've taken care of things. It should be alright to come out now."

Angharad opened her eyes. Josephine looked unsure.

"Is it out there?" Angharad asked. "Do I have to see it?"

"I moved his body. You won't have to see what happened to him," Ibrahim said.

Angharad pushed Josephine back and stood up, her movements slow and careful. When she opened the door Ibrahim was coloured all over like a Jackson Pollock, his lovely white cotton shirt splatted with black and dark red, but his smile was kind and soft.

He reached out one bloody hand, and she reached out with a bloody hand of her own and let him guide her out of the room.

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