Chapter Eighteen.

“My problem?” she repeated.

“Yeah, you’ve literally been off with me since you transferred to our Division. Since Mark’s death. I know you liked him, but don’t take it out on me!”

“I’ll tell you why, you stupid twat. Because I know,” she spat.

“Know? What do you know?” Henry said.

“I know that you killed your brother, and I don’t trust or like you one bit.”

Henry felt the wind knocked out of him. He felt himself transcend out of his body, like he was looking at himself. Shit. How did she know?

***

The night of Mark’s death.

Zoe was showing Callum the sights and the sounds of the Town Centre at this ungodly hour. He was new, and he was good looking, so she didn’t mind one bit. He was tall and lean in an athletic way and he had blonde moppy hair with short sides. She lucked out with him, all the other girls in the division were a bit envious, even though they weren’t even available.

“What do you like the most about doing this?” he had asked her as they walked past the bus station just on the outskirts of the shopping. They’d already done a loop of the middle of the town where the main shopping drag was and were now heading out near the rougher residential areas towards the railway station.

Zoe laughed as she considered her answer. “I can’t bring myself to say. It’s so cliché,” she said.

“Oh, ok. Lemme guess. ‘You like knowing that you’ve done your bit to help the community?’”

“Yeah, it feels me with such warmth,” she said before laughing. “C’mon, what about you then? What did you say you wanted to join for?”

“Pretty much the same,” Callum said simply. “At least, that’s what I said I was looking forward to the most about joining up...”

It was Zoe’s time to guess. “But… you really just want to get out there and fight the vampuras?”

“Hell yeah I do!” he cheered.

The radios on their belts crackled. “Mark and Henry from Pin Corner here to assist.” Zoe instantly recognised Mark’s voice, although she wasn’t sure if she’d know what Henry sounded like on the radio. She got her phone out and started typing a message.

“Thanks lads,” came a voice back. “There’s plenty of us out tonight so welcome to the party. Be on the lookout for a manky looking greyhound dog too.”

“Oof, you’ve still not found it? It’s a good job we’re here then,” Mark teased back.

Zoe finished typing her message and pressed send. GOOD TO HEAR YOU’RE IN THE AREA. HOPEFULLY BUMP INTO YOU TONIGHT.

“You smiled when his voice came over the radio,” Callum said. “Which one of them do you fancy again?”

“I don’t fancy either of them, so mind your beeswax,” she said stuffing her phone back into her jeans pocket. “Come on, there’s a spot I like to check for vampuras. You can learn from my wisdom.”

***

An hour had gone by and Zoe’s hopes of giving Callum a decent Vampura shake down at her usual spot had been a bust. They were walking through some residential terraced streets behind the railway station when the radio burst alive again.

“The vampura grey hound has been spotted going into the old library. Mark and I are going to follow it in.”

“All received,” came back a reply.

“Shit, they’ve found it!” Zoe exclaimed.

“The elusive grey hound!”

“You think you can keep up with me?” Zoe asked Callum.

He looked back at her and swept his fringe to the right. “Can you keep up with me? I was in the cross country team at school. One of the best.”

They started to run and Zoe was secretly impressed that she was keeping up with him. Or… he was going easy on her. She was full of bravado earlier and had no idea he was actually as athletic as he looked. They carried over the bridge with the railway lines underneath. There were a few streets of rough looking houses and takeaway shops they had to pass to get into town.

“C’mon, we’re nearly there!” she puffed.

“What do you want me to do when we get there?” Callum asked, sounding not that very out of breath. Typical.

“We might… be first there, so just stay outside for when… when back up comes…” she explained as she controlled her breathing. “I’ll go in first… It’s big and it’ll be dark in there… I don’t want to lose you.”

“Ok, no problem!” he agreed.

They arrived outside the library moments later, and Zoe took note of Mark and Henry’s discarded bikes just by a bench.

“See if you can get those boards down. I’m going to check down here.” Zoe ran off down the side of the library and sure enough found a missing board revealing a window in. She was quite small for her age, which made her underestimated by a lot of people, but she was nimble and agile and through that window with extreme ease.

She took a deep exhale, just to normalise her breathing and walked out into the main lobby of the library. Her instincts told her to go up the stairs, so she listened to them and went up.

At the top of the stairs, she listened and heard a creaking of a door shut to her right. They had to be down there so she scurried softly on tip toes towards it. If they had found it, she didn’t want to barge in and surprise everyone. That could put them all in danger.

She pushed the door to the DVD, CD and VHS section of the library and crept round. She could see Mark ahead of her approaching slowly between two shelving racks.

There was some growling, from the dog, and one of the boys screamed. Mark jumped out of his skin and before she could do anything to help, she heard Henry yell, “Oh fuck, no! Bite Mark!”

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She watched as Mark was grabbed by the chest and thrown in front of his brother Henry. The dog jumped and Mark was shoved at it.

“Arghhh!” Mark screamed, throwing his arms up, but it was too late. The dog landed on Mark, sending him falling back into Henry who also fell back. The dog growled, gnashed and snapped at Mark who thrashed and screamed. “H! H! Help me!”

Henry, completely frozen by fear of the dog and what he had just done, didn’t react in time. The vamped grey hound bit at Mark’s cheek, before biting his neck, just at the exposed flesh at the front of his neck corset. Mark gargled a yell and tried with what little strength he had left to try and push the dog off him.

Mark’s arms flopped to the ground. He’d stopped moving. The dog manically and hungrily continued to nibble and tear at the wounds he’d created.

Henry snapped out of his daze and lunged at the dog, staking it into the side of its chest while it was occupied with Mark’s corpse. Out of breath and suffering with shock, Henry fell back onto his bum against one of the shelves. It was silent save for his heavy breaths and the echoes of his brother’s desperate screams and shouts.

Zoe was horrified. She scuttled back out towards the door, tripping on some loose broken shelving on her way to the door. She cursed to herself and ducked in a dark corner.

“H-h-hello?” she could hear him stammer. Zoe held her breath and didn’t say anything. What had she just seen? What the actual fuck just happened?! She screamed in her head.

After a few seconds of silenece, she could hear Henry start to cry. “Oh Marky,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. The reality of the situation and what she had just seen had swept over her and her own tears started to form in her eyes.

The doors to the section of the library burst open and Zoe watched as Gillo and Brandy ran through, probably hearing the crying.

“Oh my God, what’s happened?” Gillo called out.

“It’s my brother. I couldn’t save him!” She heard Henry cry.

Zoe couldn’t believe what was happening, what she was hearing and seeing, but she knew she had to leave. She quickly snuck out of into the hallway and tried to catch her breath again. Only this time, it wasn’t from exercise. It was from the shock of having seen her friend mauled by a vampura dog. Could she have done anything to help? Would her appearance only have caught everyone off guard?

She was stood just outside of the doors wiping her tears when they opened suddenly. She spun round, which fortunately made it look like she had just arrived.

With some strength she didn’t know she had, she locked eyes with Henry as he looked up to see why him and Gillo had stopped walking.

“I wouldn’t go in there Zoe,” Gillo said softly.

“Are you sure Mark’s dead?” she asked, trying to be strong and fighting back more tears. Why did I ask that? she instantly realised the moment the words had left her lips.

“I’m just taking Henry downstairs,” Gillo said, side stepping the question, but his answer saying it all.

He didn’t notice.

They walked off leaving her where she stood, ultimately deciding whether she went any further to see him or not. For herself.

Well, she saw him die, saw the moment. And didn’t stop the moment.

She didn’t want to see his body.

The lasting consequence of the devastation that she watched play out.

Fuck. How could this have happened?

***

“I… I didn’t kill him. He died.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Zoe near-shouted. For some reason, she didn’t want to cause a scene.

“It was an accident. I just panicked. I didn’t mean for him to die like that. To die at all.” Henry was almost pleading, begging that she believed him. It was the truth. He was wiping the tears that were flooding down his face, trying to maintain eye contact, to convince her with his eyes that he was telling the truth and desperately doing so.

He wasn’t sure it was working. She was crying as well and her eyes were filled with anger. He grabbed her by the elbow to lead her round the side of the building, away from preying eyes. “Get the fuck off me! Don’t touch me!” But she went with him.

“Sorrysorrysorry! Look I’m sorry! Please… I beg you, I’m telling the truth. I swear on Mark’s grave. I didn’t mean to.”

“But you did. And you’ve not said anything to anyone. You’ve been lying to everyone,” she hissed.

Henry straightened up, and almost came to his senses a bit. “Hang on! So have you! You’re telling me you knew, but you’ve not said anything. Have you?”

“No, but I can. I will,” she threatened. She looked like she would too.

“But why? Why would you now, if you haven’t already? What do you want? I’ll do anything. No one can know.”

“Know what?” David asked from behind them.

Henry spun round, almost falling over. The urge to throw up returning. “Err, no one can know that today really affected me.” He shot a look to Zoe who didn’t say anything. Henry wiped his tears, but it was also really obvious that Zoe had been crying too. “We just got talking about the funeral and then Mark, and Zoe was close to Mark.”

“Gee H, you don’t need to hide your sadness. It’s ok, you know?” He went in to hug his friend and Henry just stood there, too drained to reciprocate. David let go and went over to Zoe, who did a better job of returning the hug, but she still didn’t say anything. “Come on, it’s time to go now. Are you two going to be ok to kick some ass?”

Henry looked hopefully at Zoe. Begging with his eyes that she would just go along with it a bit longer, until after tonight was out of the way.

“Zoe? Shall we go and kick some ass?” David asked again, wanting a hoo-rah level of response to hype themselves up.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I’m ready to kick some ass.” David looked pleased by her answer and ran off back round the front of the pavilion. She glared at Henry and struck him with her shoulder as she walked past.

And Henry knew that it was his ass she was no doubt wanting to kick.