“One of the technicians,” Darren said, pushing his thick glasses further up his nose with one finger. “He went in to feed her and she attacked him.”
“Did the guards not stop it?”
“There weren’t any, ma’am,” the professor said apologetically. “At Doctor Cassidy’s insistence.”
“She’s harmless,” Vanessa said. “Despite the… issues, she has, she was still herself.”
“Clearly not,” I said and turned to Samuel. “Mobilise as many of your people as you can. She’s across the river and into the town. We need to find her and retrieve her.”
“As you command.”
“Samuel.” He stopped as he was turning away to look back at me. “I want her alive if at all possible.”
His expression didn’t change but he nodded and made a sharp gesture. Two of my guards broke off and followed him back out of the building as I looked back at the two incredibly intelligent, yet stupid, people.
“What happened to the technician?”
They exchanged looks once more and I set my jaw, teeth grinding together as what little patience I had began to fade.
Vanessa spoke first, taking a step back towards the cell that had held Briony and waving towards it.
“In there.”
I took a step forward and stopped as a low growl rose from Jinx beside me. I glanced down at her. She was staring at the cell with ears pricked and teeth bared. Likely had been doing that since we’d arrived but had only made a noise as I had moved closer.
With one hand, I reached down and patted her gently. Two of the bodyguards seeing her reaction moved up ahead of me. I followed them, one hand pressed against my stomach and more than willing to let them take point.
As they looked into the cell, they raised their knives, a gasp escaping one of them. I hurried forward before they could do anything and looked in the cell myself.
A figure knelt on the hard concrete floor. Blood stained the blue fatigues he wore and his head was bowed, fingers pressed against the cold concrete. There was blood there too and the finger ends were split and torn, blood leaking from them where they had been scraping against the concrete.
He looked up at my approach, eyes round and dark, filled with a pain and fear that I couldn’t possibly understand. Black lines ran across his skin and I realised they were his veins, showing against the too pale flesh. They radiated out from the ragged wound in his neck.
His mouth opened and a slow, high pitched wail escaped from him. He looked like one of the undead and yet there was intelligence in his eyes. An understanding of what was happening to him.
As the sound ended, his gaze met mine and he spoke, the words filled with pain and horror.
“Kkkkiiiiiilllll meeeeeeeeeee!”
Chapter 11
My blade sank into the skull of the zombie and I raised one booted foot to kick it away as I pulled back my knife. I did a quick check of the street and grunted, as the rest of the small group of zombies were slaughtered by my minions.
All in all, the trip had been a little disappointing. The town should have held anything between seven and eight thousand people before the fall. I’d gone in expecting to find a similar number of zombies and so far, we’d found a great deal less than expected.
I cleaned my blade and rounded up my minions with a wave. They set off after me as I turned into the next street, determined to find a group large enough to lead out of the town to where the meatgrinders were set up.
The drone footage had shown streets full of the undead. It was more than a little disturbing to find so few then. A suspicion had begun to grow within me and I was pretty sure things were going to get unpleasant.
Not that it would stop me.
We ignored the houses other than to make sure that we wouldn’t have a handful tumble out of a doorway after we had gone past. Street by street, we moved through the northern part of the town. My black-clad minions following me, knives bloodied from the few zombies we had met.
Unlike many of the other towns we had visited, those on the island had not had the mass exodus that they had. Their cars were parked neatly in driveways and on the roads. They had no need of them to escape as there was nowhere to go.
As we approached the streets nearest the coast, we found more signs of the chaotic flight. Abandoned belongings, bags and clothes, muddied and wet from being out in the open weather for over a year.
Some people, it seemed, had tried to flee. Headed towards the docks and hoping for a place on a boat. Most of them hadn’t made it judging by the bones that littered the ground.
A lot of those people had died and not had the chance to rise again as a ravenous horde of zombies had devoured them, leaving little but tattered bones.
The various fists of minions that I had sent out to the outlying streets all converged on the main road that led through the centre of the town. None of them had found more than a handful of zombies and it was with some frustration that I led them towards the bridge that spanned the Sulby River.
I paused at the northern end of the bridge. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were walking into a trap. I had the radio if I needed it, and could call for reinforcements but the whole point of going into the town was to draw the zombies out and not have a pitched battle in the streets.
“My Lord Death,” a minion said with quiet reverence.
I glanced across at him and he raised one arm to point at the sky. I looked up to see a drone hovering high above us, high enough that the sound of its rotors turning was lost, carried away by the breeze.
The admiral, then, knew what we did and perhaps more. I raised the radio and pressed the button on the side before I spoke.
“Any sign of the zombies?”
I knew there was protocol and various phrases you had to use, but I had little real interest in bothering. They could get the gist of what I meant without me adding ‘over’ at the end of each sentence.
“They’re massing south of you, dude.”
“Can you be a little clearer, Charlie?”
“Yeah, follow the road across the river and you’ll see a fuck-ton of them all spread out waiting for you.”
It had to be a Reaper. That would be the only reason for them to fall back before us. There were only forty people in my group. Hardly a threat to the thousands of undead that must have been in the town.
“Better have the admiral send his people in then. There’s no way we could fight them all ourselves.”
“Already on their way. Got some new orders for you, dude.”
I raised an eyebrow at that even though she couldn’t see. “Orders?”
“A request,” Admiral Stuart said smoothly as he took over the radio from Charlie.
“What request, then?”
He could call it whatever he wanted, but if he tried to order me around he would soon learn that I wasn’t part of his command structure.
“I need you to wait. We’re moving the battle lines to you. There’s only two bridges across the river and where you are, it’s wide enough to have three of your… devices, side by side.”
He wasn’t wrong. The road that crossed the bridge was wide enough for two lanes of cars and pedestrians at either side. Line up three of the grinders and then take one over to the next bridge and the only way any zombies would get across would be to go straight through them.
“Once in place, You’ll need to bring them to us.”
Now that was the sticking point. Several thousand zombies versus a handful of my minions. Even with a Reaper controlling them, they would rush towards us as soon as they saw us. The problem was getting close enough for them to see without us being trapped.
We couldn’t just make noise or commotion, though sounds attracted them. No, we would need them to get our scent and come chasing after us. Depending upon where they were, that left us with the unenviable task of walking into a maze of streets and potentially, having them close in around us.
“Fine. Bring your people.”
I thumbed off the radio before he could reply and settled down to wait, staring all the while across the river, towards the horde of zombies that I couldn’t see but were undoubtedly watching us.
The trucks arrived first. Each of them carrying one of the containers. Behind them came the mobile crane and then the rank and file troops of the CDF. I waited impatiently for them to unload the container and put them in place across the end of the bridge.
My worker minion, the former engineer, moved around them like a mother hen with her chicks, as she supervised the fitting of the motors and hooked them up to the small, fuel run power generators.
Once they were in place, she and her assistants moved around each of them, drilling into the ground and then inserting steel rods to anchor them in place. A smart idea as the zombies would put a lot of pressure against them.
We had no way of lining the side of the bridge, so there would be no let up in the number of zombies that would be passing across it. They would all be trying to move through the grinders at the same time and I was reasonably sure that would clog them up pretty quickly.
But, it was just a test run so I expected things would not work as well as I hoped. At least when they failed there would be a small army of men and women lined up ready to kill any zombies that made it through.
I checked my weapons once more, taking a moment to pull out a sharpening stone for my knives as I watched them set up. One thing they had clearly not considered, was how I would be getting back across the bridge.
Clearly, they expected us to go through the containers. There was a four-foot gap beneath those rolling, grinding teeth. We could drop down and crawl beneath them, while the zombies wouldn’t consider doing that.
They had been left like that so some lucky souls could reach under and shovel the ground up zombies out of the way to make room for more. Not a fun job by any means, but likely one that would be required.
I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about the crawling through the meat grinder. My paranoia, while much reduced over the past few months, was still there. I had no intention of putting myself in a position where I would be at risk like that.
So, I’d need to come up with something else.
“Sir.”
I looked over at the CDF soldier that stood nervously a short distance away. His eyes darted this way and that as he looked everywhere but at me. Not the kind of behaviour that decreased my paranoia in any way.
“What?”
“We are prepared.”
Many of the CDF soldiers were moving into place in side streets while some lined the wall beside the river bank, crouching low to remain hidden for as long as possible. Both sides, it seemed, were preparing to ambush the other and in between were my minions and me.
It was going to be fun.
“Well then, let’s get started.”
I didn’t wait to hear the reply, but rose to my feet, my minions rising with me. I jogged across to where the containers stood and leapt, grabbing the top of the nearest and pulling myself up. I grinned at the confused expression of a nearby soldier. I had no need for him to understand, but going over the meatgrinders was safer than going through.
My minions copied me, climbing up and running over the top of the container before dropping down to the bridge. I paused just long enough for the majority of them to be down and then set off, jogging easily across the bridge.
Just a year before, I would have been out of breath from a short run. Months of running and training with my minions had given me a considerable boost to my stamina. Which was a useful thing to have in the zombie apocalypse.
Immediately across the bridge, the road split. I ignored the road that led off to the south-east and kept on straight south. Anything that came up the other road would be seen immediately by the troops massed on the other side of the river.
A drone flew overhead and I flicked on the radio. If they had any warnings, it was better that I hear them before I became caught.
There was a large bakery to my right as I jogged, followed by a supermarket. On my left, a bistro and a car park. There was no movement around any of the building and the car park had just a few cars sitting rusting.
The road turned to the left and I slowed to a stop at the junction I found myself faced with. It split in three directions and in the distance, down towards the south, were the first of the zombies. They massed in the road, jostling and moaning, though the sound was lost on the wind.
It was a simplistic setup. I was, no doubt, supposed to rush straight to the south and then more of the undead would come up the roads to either side and block us in, trapping us between two groups.
Reapers were smart, yes, almost as smart as they had been when alive. But, they weren’t tacticians. Not really. They could create rudimentary traps, but they still relied on numbers more than anything else.
I could already see a couple of holes that someone could wriggle through. Especially if they weren’t too concerned with losing a few of their number if required.
With a savage grin, I pulled free my blades and set off jogging once more, to the south.
Chapter 12
“What the hell is wrong with him?” I demanded, staring with horror at the man kneeling on the floor of the cell.
“It’s the vaccine,” Vanessa said, a little defensively. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and studiously avoiding looking at Darren. “The effect it had on her, was transmitted in her bite.”
In a few all too short hours, the town would begin to awaken. The streets would begin to fill with people moving towards the supply centres to collect their daily rations and one of two things would happen.
Either someone would find Briony and panic would spread outwards, or she would find people and feed. Once she did, once she began turning others, we could have an outbreak as serious as any we had way back at the beginning.
“How long?” I asked and received a look of confusion in return. “How bloody long until they turn? How long until they start to feel the urge to feed?”
“With Briony, she tried to hold back. It was a struggle for her as her intellect fought against the primal urge to feed that was mixed with an almost insatiable hunger.”
“So how long?”
“She lasted eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds.”
Good, God!
The man, if that was even what he was any longer, had begun to shake, his entire body trembling as though vibrating. He’d lowered his head, staring at the floor as something went on inside of him, the changes happening fast.
“What do we need to know,” I said, voice quiet and yet insistent.
“I don’t…”
She cut off as I whirled to face her, anger in my eyes.
“What are we going to be facing? Can she control herself or will she keep killing? Will she create an army of fucking zombies and lead them like a Reaper?”
“N-no,” Vanessa stammered. “I mean, she is still Briony. When she has fed, she will regain some control.”
Small mercies, I thought. The damage she could do to us if she harboured ill will was something I couldn’t bear thinking about.
Zombies, even the Ferals and Reapers, would attack and feed, leaving the bodies alone once they started to turn. Unless they were really hungry. At their most basic, though, they were just a series of urges. Feed and reproduce. The most basic ones there were.
Someone who retained their intelligence after becoming a zombie could be truly terrifying. People were manipulative, conniving, bastards at the best of times. With no morals and the power to convert people into their very own army…well, they’d be unstoppable.
Vanessa’s vaccine may well be the ultimate weapon. If the wrong person got hold of it, became like Briony, it could spell the end of humanity. The Reapers would look like children beside such a monster.
A shiver ran through me at the thought, as though I had just caught a glimpse of the future. Whatever else happened, I was damned sure I wasn’t going to let that become rea
lity.
“Kill him,” I said to my bodyguards. “End his suffering.”
“What!” Vanessa took a step towards the cell, and towards me. Stopping only when one of the acolytes moved towards her. “You can’t! We might be able to help him.”
“Can you?” I asked with a sorrowful look towards the crouching man. “Can you cure that?”
“No.” It was Darren who spoke. “We cannot cure that any more than we can remove the infection from each of us. That is why we need a vaccine, to stop the change happening.”
He paused and tilted his head towards the cell.
“Once the change has begun, it cannot be stopped.”
I gave a sharp nod and looked towards the acolytes beside the cell door. Without hesitation, they pulled it open and stepped inside.
The infected man leapt at the closest of them, arms rising and falling as they beat at the acolytes head, teeth tearing at the cloth hood he wore. For the first time, I realised that was likely one of the reasons Ryan had them wear the bloody things. An extra layer of protection.
It certainly saved the acolyte, for the infected man couldn’t seem to bite through it before the second acolyte came up beside him and sank a knife into his skull. He dropped without a sound and lay still on the floor as the second acolyte checked the first for bites.
Satisfied that there was no damage done, he helped the other to his feet and they came back out of the cell.
“Thank you.”
Neither of them responded to my words but they needed to be said anyway. I turned back to Vanessa.
“I won’t rescind the order to bring her back alive if possible, but once she is back, there will be no more chances.”
“Thank you.”
She pressed her lips firmly together and then left without another word. I had no doubt there would be complaints aplenty before the day was done, but I didn’t care. I had a town full of people and an infected woman running loose.
“I want a report on that damned vaccine as soon as possible.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Darren said a little nervously. “If I might add…”
“What?”
Killing The Dead (Book 16): Infected Page 7