#skoobs

— part of an ongoing Skoobs story.

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[i] [ii] iii.

If Katya was honest with herself – and she usually tried not to be – she was jealous, maybe, about how swift Lucas had been to toss away his own safety – to toss away all of their safety – and haul that kid inside the gates, of how every sinew and fibre of his had been set into shivering action until the kid was safe. She wanted to excuse it all because of what had happened to Lucas back at the beginning, and because this kid today was probably about the age of that other one, but she knew that none of that mattered.

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— part of an ongoing Skoobs story.

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[i] ii.

Lucas swallowed once, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny neck. He looked at her for a second, and his eyes were wild and desperate. Then he pushed past, squeezing to get through the doorway without touching her. She followed him, running, and forced a laugh out between her teeth.

“You’re that keen to watch the show?” she called, but he didn’t turn around and he didn’t stop until they were outside, barrelling through the crowd of boys surging towards the gates, all of them yelling and whooping.

Lucas skidded to a halt in the dust of the yard, just a body’s length away from the enclosure fence.

Katya squinted against the sunlight. “Not here yet, then,” she said.

“Not yet.” Lucas’s voice was hoarse.

The two of them were an odd circle of quiet in the rabble around them, both of them standing and staring as the tiny dot pitched towards them from the edge of the woods. The horde fanned out untidily behind the kid like a dirty, bustling cloud. They were shamblers, sure, but the kid was young by the looks of things, short-legged and wearing out.

Lucas’s eyes were narrowed, his hands pressed flat against the sides of his jeans, held so still that there was an unstable tension in every joint and muscle. Katya knew what he was looking for, and why, but still she said the words, hating herself even as they came out of her mouth.

“What a runt. That one’s definitely not gonna make it.”

“He’s fast,” Lucas whipped out, not tearing his gaze away even to fix her with one of his looks. His whole face was still, so still that Katya poked him in the ribs.

“Breathe!” she hissed.

He took a breath, a slow, tremulous one. Then: “Open the gate,” he said.

She laughed, the stupid grating laugh she knew he didn’t like. “Don’t be dumb.”

“Open the damn gate.” The distracted, blinding nervousness was gone and his voice was low and cold and even.

Well, two can play at that. Katya moved to place herself in front of him, between him and the fence, between him and his view of the kid weaving towards them across the abandoned fields.

“No,” she said, and before he could even open his mouth to argue, she rushed on. “I’m not taking any chances for some random kid. He can climb it, just like everyone else.”

“He’s flagging,” Lucas said, shifting so that he could look past her.

There was something to his tone that chilled Katya but she pushed the feeling away. “I don’t care,” she said. “They get in here if they’re survivors. He can come in – if he makes it over.”

She wondered if he was going to fight her for it, if he’d shove her to the side and wrestle away the boys who were guarding the fence. But that wasn’t his style, and she knew that, really. Already he’d resumed his intent staring, hardly blinking. It was as though he’d forgotten he even asked.

When the kid was maybe a hundred or a hundred and twenty yards away, he started waving vigorously, and his voice – high-pitched and urgent – broke in amongst the shrieks and the chants.

“Help!” he screamed. “Open the gates! HELP!” The kid’s face, red and sweat-streaked, looked as angry as it was terrified.

Katya had to admit, he had some guts at least. She stepped closer to the fence, pressing her face to the criss-crossed wire. “Can’t!” she yelled back, “they’ll come in after you!”

“What?!” the kid called back.

“You gotta climb!” she shouted.

He was mere feet away now, and the boys surged towards the wire in a brawling mass, laughing and shouting when the kid hit the fence with a thud. A bunch of them had brought out their weapons of choice, mostly metal pipes and bats. Joey even had a hammer in his hand. And now they were baying for the kill – a zom, the kid, it didn’t really matter. None of them were picky, and action was action.

But not for Lucas. The boys had rushed around him, leaving him behind and he stood a little apart from them, still watching. It was as though, by his silence, by his stillness, he was willing the kid to make it over the fence.

But the kid was tiring, anyone could see that, and Katya knew better than most how hard it is to cling to the narrow wire of cyclone fencing with your hands while scrabbling to find purchase with your feet – and then to haul yourself higher while every muscle in your torso is screaming out in pain. Her own stomach clenched in surprising, momentary sympathy for the kid.

Abruptly, as if by some invisible signal, the boys hushed, the clamour dropping to a low murmur. As one, their faces were turned to the kid on the fence, the kid who was now at seven feet above the ground, now eight. His fingers, like grubby little white talons, were knotted into the wire above his head, and he twisted his leg to pull his foot loose from the hold he had found. The soft rubber sole of his running shoe, though, had squashed itself into the too-small gap of the fencing wire, and his foot caught there, stuck. He shook his leg again, but when it at last came loose, he was unready for it. His feet flailed a little in the air, and then the weight of his own body wrenched him down. His fingers were yanked loose and he fell to the ground, still kicking.

The horde was just six feet away, and their moaning built to a roar as they saw their quarry crumpled on the ground before them. The slavering howls were all the impetus the kid needed and he flung himself at the fence again, scrambling fast to gain some height.

Somehow, he got above them – got to nine feet, then ten – before they collided with the fence. The force of so many undead coming up against the wire shook the whole structure, and the kid yelped, clinging even harder.

Some of the zombies were attempting to climb the fence, too, hooking what was left of their fingers through the wire, or reaching upward with outstretched arms. Katya looked from the zoms to the kid, curled in on himself like a frightened squirrel. She could see the whiteness of his face under all the dirt, the tear-tracks carved cleanly through the grime.

“Get higher!” one of the boys shouted. “Just a few more feet!” Some of the stupider ones rushed forward and began rapping at the zom knuckles with their weapons, screeching when bits of fingers hit the dust in front of them. For every zom that pulled away, though, another came crushing in and now the kid seemed frozen in place.

Katya narrowed her gaze, holding a hand up against the sun-glare. The kid’s eyes were wide open and the pupils dilated. Now – now he decides to go into shock?

For a moment there was nothing but the relentless tremor of the wire, the triumphant war cries of the dancing boys all around, and that one tiny kid clinging at the near-top of the fence – on the wrong side.

Then Lucas shouldered past Katya, pushing the boys out of his way, and threw himself at the fence, his hands clutching right where the zom hands were clutching, his feet floundering for hold against the wire. In just a few seconds, he hauled himself even with the kid, and they faced each other through the gaps. But Lucas’s feet hung far lower than the kid’s, and the zoms began to climb over one another to reach him. The fence swayed in towards them against the surge of all that weight – “Dead weight,” Katya wanted to call, laughing like she doesn’t care, but only screams came out, screamed words that sounded like: “Get down!”

A zom had its hand through the wire – a fine, delicate hand that might once have played the violin – and the elegant, rotting fingers wrapped around Lucas’s ankle. Faces mashed up against the wire, teeth snapping and eyes rolling. The boys were silent again, all of them holding their breath like one bedraggled, dusty organism. Lucas grunted, kicked his foot free, and scrambled higher until he was at the top of the fence where the barbed wire spiralled in untidy coils. He leaned over the top, regardless of the barbs, and stretched his right hand down to the kid.

The kid just stared.

“Take it!” Katya shouted. “Take his hand!”

Slowly – as if the fence was solid and still, as if there weren’t two dozen starving undead clamouring for food just inches below them – the kid uncurled one hand and reached up towards Lucas – slowly, slowly, slowly. And then Lucas had the kid’s hand in his own big, bony one and the boys were cheering. Lucas began to haul the kid up and over; Katya could see the strain in his shoulders and the taut sinews of his arms. She saw, too, as the barbed wire dug in and tore a line in the soft muscle under Lucas’s arm. A wrenching groan came from his throat, and in one almighty move he yanked the boy over the top. There was a strange, idle second where they hung there like two weightless birds at the top of the fence, then the momentum pulled them both down and they fell twelve feet to the ground.

Lucas landed first, a sprawled tangle of long limbs, and the kid landed on top of him, both of them the centre of a choking cloud of dirt-dust. The relief bubbled up out of Katya so quickly it could only find expression in laughter, and she pushed through the crowing, cheering boys to reach his side. She was laughing too much, hysterically, and she knew it, but the short, sharp sounds kept coming as the kid rolled over and then dusted himself off. She waited to mock Lucas, to punch him in the shoulder and then berate him for his stupidity, but he was still lying there on the ground, his eyes twisted shut and his chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. The kid was staring down at him now, too, wide-eyed and blinking. And there was blood on Lucas’s jeans, lots of it, right below his left knee.

Katya was down on her knees next to him, punching him in the shoulder – but not mocking – grabbing for his hand and squeezing it.

“Get up,” she said, harsh and urgent.

His eyes fluttered open, and his mouth opened and closed, a rasping wheeze coming from his throat.

“Get up,” she said again.

He pushed himself up on his elbow, still not speaking. His movements were jerky, unsure.

“Get up!” Katya said for the third time. “What’s wrong with you?!” Then, remembering – but how could she have forgotten? – she saw again the pant leg, drenched in red, and suddenly she was screaming at him, shaking his arm with every word.

“Are you cut?” she yelled. “Scratched? Bitten?”

He shook his head and tried to shrug away her fierce grip.

“Then what’s the matter?” she said, feeling a buzzing in her ears.

His hand groped at his chest.

“Winded,” he gasped. “Can’t. Breathe.”

She ran round behind him and hauled him to a standing position with her hands under his armpits. He tottered there and she circled back around him again, dropping to her knees and pulling at the leg of his pants.

“There’s blood,” she said, and the shiver in her voice surprised her. At least she wasn’t screaming now.

“Not mine,” he said, finally finding his voice.

“There’s a lot of it,” she said, and the tone of it went up like a whimper, like a stupid, crying little kid.

He crouched next to her, looking her in the face, and even though his fingers were splayed flat on the dirt around him, holding him stable, it was his face again, his normal unhandsome face, in control of the air that was now moving evenly in and out his lungs.

“It’s – not – mine,” he said, steady and clear so she could get it. “Must be from the zoms.”

“Three cheers for old Lucas, hey?” Joey shouted. The others answered with wild, jubilant cries, and their presence came crashing in on Katya once more. She had forgotten them and now she stood, feeling foolish and naked and raw before them all.

“You’re an idiot,” she snarled, looking straight at Lucas. “You put us all in danger with your little stunt. You could’ve killed yourself and the stupid kid.”

Lucas looked at her for a second and then just shook his head. The moment of his surety and purposefulness had passed, and now he withdrew back into himself, solid and quiet and far away. Katya cursed inwardly.

“I’m not a stupid kid,” came a small voice, into the silence that fell. It was a defiant voice, with a little catch at the end. They turned to look at him, and Katya’s eyes flickered over his bare, skinny legs, his t-shirt with its abundant holes, and the dirty grey of his socks. “I’m Tick.” He stuck out his right hand. “Thanks for pulling me in,” he said solemnly.

“No problem, Tick,” Lucas said, taking the kid’s hand in his own. “Nice to meet you. Now let’s go get you cleaned up.”

The beginnings of my Skoobs story. These kids...!

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Katya swung around the doorjamb and looked into the room. “Ugh!” she choked. “Smells like unwashed boys in here.”

Lucas was hunched over the little crate he called his desk, fiddling with the dials on whatever it was he kept messing about with in here. He was folded in on himself, his lanky legs curled around the stool he sat on, his shoulders rounded forward as he leaned in, biting his lip in concentration. His stupid headphones were jammed down over his head, and he didn’t even look up when Katya spoke.

“Oh well then,” Katya said loudly. “Might as well go and fry up all this bacon for myself. And eat it by myself. And not give anyone any of it.”

Even with the inducement of mythical bacon, Lucas still didn’t look away from his work, and Katya hung there in the doorway, watching him. Always cooler watching people when they don’t know you’re there.