Page 26 of All Your Days (Mayhem Manuscripts Season One: 1nf3ction #4)

“Food won’t be long. We’ll just eat and go.

” Jacob mumbles, no doubt regretting putting his gun away with the others when we locked away the trade wagon.

Guns aren’t allowed in the pub anyway, but knives are.

Most everyone has at least one strapped to their hips.

It’s meant to keep us safe if we’re attacked by a zombified.

But the person who flips would also have a knife.

If they have enough sanity left in their brains to think, you’re just up against an enraged zombie with a knife.

Not a great position to be in.

Rather like me, right now, without a wall behind my back. There wasn’t any other table free when we arrived and now it would be too obvious to move to one of the ones that’ve suddenly become clear.

Despite Jacob’s promise that food won’t take long, it takes longer than it does for the Blue Creek crew to notice us. It’s not me who gets their attention. It’s Malcolm, Ryan, and Cale that do us in.

“Hey! You three! I remember you!” One of the men crows, stumbling heavily in our direction.

In a hemp shirt, fringed goat skin vest and goat skin pants, he must be hot as shit, even if the pants are cut off just above the knee.

His nose is pierced, I can’t help but notice.

Right through the middle and fitted with a thick silver ring, and there’s even three piercings in each eyebrow.

Most of the Blue Creek crew are dressed similarly in goatskin but the drunk stumbling towards us definitely has the most piercings; the others seem to have kept to one or two.

Malcolm and Cale’s hissed curses would be funny in pretty much any other situation, but now it just means we have the Blue Creek crew coming to join us.

“Yeah! They’re the fellas from the tables!” Another slurs—I swear they are still drunk from last night. If they stopped drinking at all, it must’ve been around breakfast. “Wanna ‘nother game?”

We’re surrounded on all sides. This close, I notice that there are actually a couple of women in their crew, their hair cut in the same jagged styles as the men.

“Nah, mate. Just grabbing some grub, then we’re outta here. Gotta get back.” Ryan leans back on his chair, tipping it on its rear legs. He gives the nearest one, the one that suggested the game, a friendly smile.

Me? I’m panicking. Hard. My stomach knots have tied themselves in knots. Fucking hell, I want nothing more than to inch closer to Jacob. That’s not possible, though. Well, I don’t think it is, so I keep my arse planted where it is.

“That’s right!” Another guy with unnecessary buckles attached randomly to his vest, gasps in mockery. “You lot are from that Facility place, right?” He digs the woman next to him hard in the ribs and jabs a hand at Jacob. “Shoulda known. You fellas are always right up yaselves, youse are.”

The woman snickers, even though nothing even close to funny was said, and nods, eyeing up Jacob like a juicy hunk of meat. And now I want to get closer to him for entirely different reasons.

Today is giving me a headache.

The heavily pierced one makes his way around behind me, snatching up a chair from another table. He spins it so he’s straddling the back of the seat, planting himself so close that one of his knees wedges itself between Lou and me.

Hovering over my shoulder, his breath smells like something crawled in his mouth and died last night. If I had to guess, I’d say the thing that died was his dignity.

“Hey! Hey!” He whispers, distracting me from the icy standoff between Jacob and Buckles, and the other guards and Lou making wary conversation with the people crashing our table. “Hey!”

Piercings keeps going, even though I’m ignoring him. Not taking the hint, he grabs my shoulder, giving me a little shake. I was already nervous as hell, but the unexpected touch has me jumping out of my skin, and the Blue Creek crew laugh mockingly at my sketchiness.

“Hey! Can you not hear or sumfin?”

Jacob’s hand moves slyly to his knife, but Buckles notices, casually mirroring the movement. Well, fuck.

I turn to face Piercings. The move, at least, gives me a cover for shimmying closer to Jacob. Mostly for my comfort, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was for Jacob’s, too.

“Hello.” I deadpan, trying to keep my nose from wrinkling at the man’s acidic stink.

“I’m Coby.” He grins at me, flashing surprisingly white teeth. Well, yellow, but still more teeth-coloured than others. And he has most of them.

My smile is a straight line on my face, but he remains completely unbothered that I haven't given him my name. The seconds tick by and I can hear the tense conversation going on behind me.

One of the Blue Creek crew is asking if we really perform breeding experiments on our residents, while another jokes that he’d be up for some breeding experiments. Only the Blue Creekers laugh at the exchange. The rest of us are stony silent.

How is Coby the best option here? My headache pounds harder the longer he stares up at me.

“Uh, hello.” God, he grins harder at my hello. Maybe he’s not right in the head? I mean, that’s a pretty safe bet, but still.

“You got pretty eyes.”

Every few months we have practice drills to ensure our safety systems still work for us underground in the main building.

A horrible siren blasts through The Facility.

It’s different from the fire siren. This one is designed to drive you out the building as soon as possible.

It throbs in your eardrums and rattles your spine, tickling your tailbone, telling you to run.

That siren is currently blasting through my body. But unlike at home, I can’t just run to safety.

“Thanks.”

Again, I give nothing, and again, Coby doesn’t care. I let my hand drop, the one closest to Jacob, and thankfully, he does the same, awkwardly wrapping his pointer finger around my middle one.

“Pretty lips, too.” Coby mumbles dreamily. He half leans, half falls forward, nearly tipping himself right over. He corrects himself just in time, but I’ve jumped away anyway, pretty much shoving myself into Jacob’s lap.

When Coby rights himself, he only ends up closer. I take too long to stop looking at him and he mistakes my horrified fear for interest.

“You like my piercings? I got more.” He bounces his eyebrows and chews on his lip.

I think it’s meant to be attractive, but it’s just disgusting.

I can feel my heart racing, my breath getting harder and harder to catch.

Coby lifts his shirt enough to show me his ribs and pierced nipples.

His belly buttons pierced, too, top and bottom with thick bars shoved through them.

The shirt drops and, stupidly, I still don’t look away from the horror show. Neither does Jacob nor Lou. Coby seems to appreciate he has a wider audience.

“I got more. Look.” Then he stands, unfastening his pants.

Holy… He’s gonna…

“NO!” Jacob bellows, ripping me back off my chair. My feet stumble as I’m shoved behind his back.

“No!” He says again to the confused Coby whose dick is half out of his pants. “Put that shit away. No one wants to see that.”

Personally, I think Jacob’s stance is perfectly reasonable—who the fuck gets their dick out in the middle of a pub? But Blue Creek—specifically Buckles—was already looking for a fight, and apparently we’re it.

“What’s your fuckin’ problem? Think you’re too good for our Coby here?” Buckles asks, standing up unnecessarily aggressively, sending his chair flying.

Fucking hell, now we’re all standing and too many damn people have their hands on their knives.

From my vantage point behind Jacob, I can see the panic in the rest of the pub. Some people are clearing out, not willing to get into shit in the middle of the day. Behind the bar, the man and the woman seem to be scrambling—to do what, I don’t know.

The table of armymen haven’t moved yet, but they seem to be keenly watching, and waiting, to see what happens next.

“Just not fuckin’ interested.” Jacob levels back, his hand on my arm squeezing tightly.

“Yeah nah, fuck that. You Facility fucks always think youse’re so fuckin’ special.

” Buckles spits—actually spits , disgusting—on a roll with the tirade he’s just chomping at the bit to unleash.

“Too fuckin’ good for Merline’s. Too fuckin’ good for the rest of us out here, tryin’ta make a livin’.

Always lookin’ down ya noses at us real folk out here in the world.

Just ‘cuz we don’t live in your science freakshow.

They do experiments on you, too? Maybe they be tryin’ to knock that one there up like a woman.

He pretty ‘nuff to be one. Maybe youse just don’t got what it takes? Maybe he needs a real man.”

Ooooooh fuck. Panic has spots circling my vision. I can’t fucking breathe. Jacob’s hand feels like it’s going to snap my arm, but I don’t care, it feels real. Safe. He won’t let me go.

“Now, fellas, we’re just tryin’ to have our midd—” Lou is using the same calm and reasonable voice he uses on the camels when they’re being finicky.

Unfortunately, Buckles is more of an animal than Sheba and Adeeko.

“Shut the fuck up, old man.” Buckles barks at Lou. There is the harsh sound of chairs being shoved and I squeeze my eyes tight, fumbling at my waist for my knife—not that I’ll be any use with it.

“Right, that’s enough.” Over my panting breaths I hear a new voice. Cracking one eye I see the armymen have come to intervene. I’m not the only one panicking. The man and woman behind the bar are quickly bundling up what looks like packages of food.

“They insulted our Coby, here. I was just askin’ for an apology.” Buckles seethes at the armymen.

“That’s fucking bullshit and you know it, Kane. Now get out his face.” The armyman doesn’t seem at all scared of Buckles, well, Kane. Good for him. This is why I could never be an armyman.

“Why should I?”

Jacob backs me up as Kane decides his fight is now with the Union.

“Because otherwise, I’ll lock you shits up in the tanks and Mister Lewis will use your hides for a new sofa for missin’ your next shifts.”

“What the fuck do you care?” Buckles is trying to act tough still, but it seems like Mister Lewis is a big threat against Blue Creek. The man must be the devil’s brother.

“Because The Facility is Union business. Union doesn’t fuck with Blue Creek business, so long as Blue Creek doesn’t fuck with Union business.

So you lot are going to sit down and shut the fuck up.

They are going to leave and eat their food on the road.

” There is a pause from the armyman that holds until one of us, I think it’s Ryan, makes an agreeable sound.

“And you fuckers are all going to hang around until tomorrow. And I swear to the Union and God, if you fuckers interrupt my peace one more time this break, I will gut you myself and make my own damn couch. You understand?”

We don’t get to hear whether or not the Blue Creek crew agree to the armyman’s conditions; we’re hustled out of there quick-smart by the man and woman from the bar.

They press our bags of food into our hands and almost shove us from the door.

Jacob nearly drags me back to the hotel, and we’re out of the outpost so fast I can barely keep up, my head too rattled from our run in with Blue Creek.

I don’t think I take my first full breath until we reach the first bore, and the fork in the road.