dEaDINBURGH: Origins (Din Eidyn Corpus Book 3) by Mark Wilson Read Free Book Online

arm movements as she cut her way through The Brotherhood’s fences, praying aloud that her son would be as strong as he’d looked in the laser scan. Strong enough to survive the world she now inhabited.
     
    Having spent the best part of five months alone in stagnant air of The Hub, Michelle took deep breaths, gulping in the cold winter Edinburgh air as she slipped through the slice in the fence she’d just reopened. She breathed deeply, partly to enjoy the clean air but mostly to prepare for the next contraction she could already feel coming from somewhere distant inside her.
    The Brotherhood was her one realistic hope of delivering her baby in safety. An isolated group of men and women, the cult worshipped the dead whom they called The Children of Elisha. They tended to the dead, even fed them, offering up their own blood in stone troughs along the length of The Royal Mile.
    Most of the time, they stayed in their underground home in Mary King’s Close. Having chosen the source of the plague as their new home, The Brotherhood enjoyed the safety of the closed, dark chambers, only rarely coming to the surface to tend to the dead. They survived primarily because of the food they received in tribute from The Gardens, an agricultural community founded in the former Princes Street Gardens in the city below. Nobody at the UKBC was quite clear as to why the residents of The Gardens had taken this duty to care for The Brotherhood, but they did so with minimal to no contact between the two communities. Fresh supplies were left at regular intervals by a gate that separated the communities. One of the younger members of The Brotherhood would retrieve it and take the food below, but only after the farmers of The Gardens returned to their home. No ‘thank you’ was exchanged or required.
    Michelle had watched the two communities with interest whilst on the outside of the city. Since she’d come to dEaDINBURGH, she’d observed them more closely from The Hub’s monitors. Until a few weeks ago, she’d planned to journey to The Gardens for Joseph’s birth. However, recent events in the farming community, a schism between the men and the women, looked to be about to cause a major incident and so she had shifted her plans.
    With this in mind, she’d decided that the crypts of The Brotherhood would be a safer option for her and her child to see out at least the foreseeable future. She could always return to The Hub once the baby had arrived safely. In truth she’d have rather stayed in The Hub but had grown terrified of the delivery of her child the closer the inevitable date had come.   With the relative safety of Mary King’s Close, their pacifist outlook and the presence of more than one former-midwife, Michelle felt that the short walk to their community was worth the risk. Before departing, she’d taken one last measure and recorded a message for her unborn son using one of The Hub’scomputers. Just in case.
     
    There were so few of The Ringed in the city-centre, particularly within and without The Brotherhood’s fences, and most of them were long-term infected, meaning that their bodies were decayed and weak having rotted for so long. Any livelier Ringed were usually taken care of by the legendary Zom-hunter, Padre Jock. Whilst Jock had been gone on an extended trip to the south of the city this past month, there had been a slightly higher presence of The Ringed, but the timing of Michelle’s visit was out of her hands. Her son was in a hurry to meet her.
     
    Turning back to the breach she’d made in the fence, Michelle retrieved a length of   smooth wire she’d brought from The Hub and began winding, pleating and pulling the opening in the fence closed once again. Working down the length of the gap, she pulled the two sides of the gash tightly together and tied the wire tightly at the bottom.
    A scuffing sound behind her made her start, her next contraction folding her in two as she turned to see a handful of The