HIVE

by Taylor, Dan

  Chapter 22

  It was around this time that a silver Ford pickup truck pulled out of a lane which ran from the wood into a town in panic. Inside the pickup truck Able was leant back as far as the passenger seat would go to avoid being seen. He caught swift glances through the window see what was going on. The town was lively. People were outside their homes packing their cars and leaving. Army soldiers patrolled the streets, their weapons drawn. People had no time to talk to one another. It was like something from a disaster movie, as if the town knew the local volcano was going to erupt at any second. Lydia was fumbling with her phone.

  “Now I have to get to the flat for my stuff, listen to this.” She turned touched a button on her phone and a live stream of national news was being played. On the screen, a man in an overcoat with thick glasses and an even thicker brown moustache held a microphone and said, "We are located outside the quarantine zone on the outskirts of Bayhollow. The Brain-Dead Maness disease has spread within this rural town. Nobody is allowed into the quarantine zone except for soldiers who are equipped with stab proof clothing and are armed in case of rioting and to maintain order. The town is being evacuated and so far about half have left the quarantine zone and are undergoing strict medical examinations before being moved to local hotels until they can, if ever, return to their homes."

  "And why would this report mean you need to go to the flat and not get the heck out of here?" Asked Abel realising he had slipped into calling it 'the flat' instead of 'your flat' like when they were dating.

  "I need to go to 'my' flat to for my laptop. I don't even have a pad and pen in this car and can't exactly take detailed notes on my phone. Plus, we need a disguise for you. The Army is looking for you after all." A cheeky smile spread across Lydia’s face.

  Abel had to unhappily concede. He had heard the news report and knew his only hope out of here was to get out of police uniform and try to look like a different person. He ran his fingers through his golden hair which was no longer in a neat parting but sticking up at the back and wavy at the front. Dishevelled from running and sweat.

  "That' going to have to go," Lydia stated bluntly.

  "No Lydia, I love my hair and it's taken ages to grow it this long." Abel protested.

  Lydia was staring at Abel’s hair which made him uncomfortable. "Well unfortunately the Army will be looking for a neat Goldilocks like yourself. That beautiful mane is your most recognisable feature."

  Once again Abel had to unhappily concede.

  It took thirty minutes to reach the flat. Traffic was at times at a standstill with the town’s desperate evacuation. Outside Lydia's home an Army soldier was pacing up and down. He was fumbling a piece of paper in his hands.

  "Wait here," Lydia told Abel as she parallel parked into the on-street parking opposite her flat.

  Lydia lived on a third-floor apartment ten minutes’ walk from the centre of town. Her street was a cul-de-sac of newly built yellow brick flats connected in a terrace. The terraces were joined in fours and separated by narrow alleyways which gave the street a beetle shape aerial view. Lydia left the car and walked up to her flats entrance. Abel saw the soldier approach her and they spoke for twenty or thirty seconds. From inside the car Abel could not hear the conversation which was driving him crazy in anticipation. The soldier repeatedly pointed at the piece of paper to Lydia who in response shook her head repeatedly. She then left and went inside the building. It looked like the soldier wanted to follow inside but Lydia slammed the door closed before he got a look in.

  Abel ducked out of view before the soldier turned around. Panic stricken, he felt a bead of cold sweat run down the back of his neck and under his white shirt. His phone vibrated loudly next to him. It was Lydia. Hurriedly he answered.

  "The soldier knows something is up and is most likely going to check out my truck. I'm getting in my flat now. I left the truck unlocked. Quietly and quickly open the passenger door and lay on the pavement."

  Without answering Able slowly clicked open his door. He opened it just wide enough to slither through the opening and carefully shut the door. He lay on the pavement as instructed and waited.

  Lydia by now has made it into her messy flat and was now at the window watching Abel and the soldier.

  "What's going on?" whispered Abel.

  "Shhh! He'll hear you," hissed Lydia, "When I say so crawl behind the bins to your right."

  Able looked to his right and spotted two wheelie bin overflowing with refuse. Lydia gave the command and Able scrambled on his belly across and behind the bins. The moment he was behind the soldier turned around the back of the truck and continued to circle the vehicle stopping once to look underneath it. When he was satisfied, he turned around and marched back towards Lydia's apartment building.

  "Now's your chance Able, run to the Alley on the left while his back is turned."

  Abel turned and started towards an alley when Lydia screeched in his ear, “Not that left Abel, my left, stage left!”. With that command Abel spun and ran trying as hard as he could to step lightly until he was in the correct alleyway. He briefly fumed to himself, how was he supposed to know what Lydia’s left was? He was now only one apartment complex away. The alley was narrow. It was about three and a half feet wide and had six-foot wooden fence panels either side. He ran down the Alley until he was sure he would be out of sight from the soldier.

  "I’m down the Alley," Abel whispered down the phone.

  "I know, I saw you running. Did the soldier see you? I can't see him when he is this close to the building."

  "I don' think so." Abel replied.

  "OK good. Now all you have to do is hop the fences until you reach my place and I can let you in the back."

  Able was physically fit but he was tired. He scrambled ungraciously over the first fence trying to be as quiet as possible. Once over he looked around briefly to see if any residents were watching him in their garden. Once he was satisfied, he was on his own he climbed over the second fence and into a familiar looking three-foot wide alley way.

  "One fence to go," he huffed down the phone, half to Lydia and half to himself. Having gotten the hang of scrambling over fences he decided this one would be a doddle and launched himself over the fence and into a rose bush. Before he could stop himself, he gave out a cry of pain. He had torn his trousers and scratched his leg on several thorns. It was nothing serious but did come as a surprise.

  Lydia was at the outside fire escape and scrambling down quickly. She was sure the soldier would have heard Abel's cry and knew she had to get to him before the soldier could. Abel had picked out the last thorn in his leg when he heard a banging on the ground floor window. He looked up to see a man in a dressing gown knocking rhythmically at the patio doors. He had the same crazed look as the man at the hotel and was banging was increasingly ferocious. Lydia was now on the first floor of the fire escape and was shaking the fire escape ladder desperate to get it to drop onto the floor. It was stiff from not being used and being exposed the British weather. She kicked the ladder and it slipped down an inch. Abel not wanting to wait for the dressing gown man to work out how to use a door scrambled under the fire escape and tried to jump to reach the ladder. No luck. He searched the garden for something he could stand on. Lydia meanwhile was kicking the ladder. each time she did this it would drop an inch. Abel tipped out a terracotta flower pot and placed it under the fire escape. He stood on the end and jumped up and grabbed hold of a metal rung. Using all his upper body strength he pulled himself up a few more rungs. There was a crash below him as the man in the dressing gown flew out the patio door. He severed his stomach on a large piece of glass doing so. Swiftly, as if he couldn’t feel he had seriously injured himself, the dressing gown man was on his feet and under the ladder, blood pouring down his front. He jumped at Abel's dangling legs. A piece of his intestines slipped out the gap in his stomach as he did so. Lydia grabbed Abel by the arm and helped to drag him up. Each time the dressing gown man jumped for Abel a little more
intestine slipped out until it was tangled up among his feet like a skipping rope. There was shouting from the alley way which distracted the dressing gown man. Lydia and Abel ran up the fire escape, through the top floor window and into the apartment. They hung around the window to watch as the soldier kicked down the fence and shot the dressing gown man in the head with his pistol. They listened to the soldier call on his walkie-talkie to let his comrades know what had happened. He was given some orders and then walked off back to guard the building.

  Both Abel and Lydia were in shock and stared at each other for a while not knowing what to say, until Lydia grabbed a pair of scissors.

  She smiled menacingly, "Right Barbie. Let's get rid of that hair!"

  Chapter 23

  By the time klutz stumbled into Bayhollow, half the town had been evacuated and the rest were either desperately trying to leave or had become a cannibal like himself. It was strange for Klutz to think of himself as a cannibal. He had always thought of himself as a good person. At school he would stand up for kids who were bullied even if it meant himself getting beat up or ridiculed. Only yesterday he had given half his supermarket sandwich to a homeless man. Good people did not eat other people, so he decided he cannot be good. Klutz knew the only thing he could do was to change his plan of visiting the hospital and instead turn himself in at the local police station. The police had treated him badly as of recent but he had put this down to the stress of a strange and extraordinary situation.

  Whilst walking slowly to the police station he saw many strange sights. A man he did not recognise tried to run him over but only clipped him with his wing mirror. The force spun him full circle and he continued on his way unable to feel any pain. Later on, he saw a middle-aged Chinese woman he recognised. In his pre-cannibal days, she could always be found speed walking backwards through the park wearing a pink tracksuit on and headphones in. He had always wanted to stop her and ask why she walked backwards everywhere, he assumed it was some fitness routine. Now true to form she was speed walking backwards, this time with a panic stricken look on her face. She managed to walk a full hundred meters before being dragged onto the concrete by a group of four and eaten alive. She didn't really stand a chance walking backwards and having to look over her shoulder all the time. Further on his walk he felt he force of a rock hit him in his shoulder. He looked up to see two teenagers in baggy trousers and hoodies. One held a golf club and the other a cricket bat. The one with the cricket bat turned to the other and asked why on the earth he threw the rock and let him know that now they had the monster’s attention. They then both turned and ran around a street corner.

  Klutz had been called a lot of things in his life. Clumsy, dopey, cloth ears but never 'Monster'. This was the first thing since being attacked by Mr Smith that had hurt Klutz all day. If his greying tear ducts could have produced a tear they would have. Instead Klutz put a brave face on and continue his trudge to the police station. Maybe he was a monster, although he did not feel like one. He felt as if he didn't want to eat people but at the campsite in the woods, he could not help himself. It made more sense to him that he was sick and had some sort of mental illness triggered by a nervous breakdown. He had to deal with lots of strange and stressful incidents at the hotel and maybe being attacked by My Smith and bitten was the straw that broke the camel back and made him snap. It is a strange thing to wonder about your sanity. ‘If you think you are crazy does that make it so? Surely the people who are truly crazy are the ones who think they are sane and everyone else is crazy.’ Klutz rationalised internal.

  Klutz pondered this and many other things until he had reached the police station. It was a tall, square and grey pebble dashed building. There was a small car park out the front with two police cars. The building looked eerily quiet. He slowly pushed himself through the front door. There was nobody at the reception area so he took a seat and waited. It wasn't too long before another person walked into the station. It was a slim blonde woman in her thirties. Like Klutz she had blood stains around her mouth and neck. She looked at Klutz intently for a few seconds as if deciding what to do. If it wasn't for the greying skin and blood she might have passed as pretty. She wore a pair of pink genie trousers and a white tank top. The whiteness of her top highlighted the redness down her face. Her eyes softened and she plunked herself down next to Klutz who leaned slightly away at this strange development. The woman swung her head around in one quick motion. Klutz seeing her in the corner of his eye swung his head around in a similar fashion to face her.

  "Urggggh," she grunted at him.

  Klutz stared at her for a few seconds before grunting in reply. What did this woman want? Could she not speak like him? She did stumble in and she had clearly been eating people. He grunted again this time managing to change the pitch of his voice. It must have looked like two cavemen grunting at each other.

  While this primitive conversation was going on PC Angela Crow was locking down the station. She was the only police officer from Bayhollow who had not been sent to the Royal Duchess Hotel and after the town meeting she realised she may be the only police officer left. Officially, the reason she was ordered to stay at the station was because they needed someone to 'hold down the fort', unofficially it was because she was five foot, weighed six and half stone, was a woman and hadn't arrested anyone for six years. After regulations on who could become a police officer was relaxed some years ago, Angela signed up to be a cop. She had worked in many jobs, mainly behind a desk, but had never had a career. She had craved a more excitement and the gritty, action packed lifestyle of a police officer in a small suburban town in the middle of nowhere was perfect. She passed all her exams with flying colours and was in uniform in less than four months. Her very first job on the beat was a noise complaint from a neighbour. Angela had turned up to find a young woman on her knees, wailing and cradling a dead infant in her arms. In later interviews, she had found out that the woman had left the toddler in a large paddling pool in an inflatable ring whilst she went off to make dinner. When the woman had returned, she discovered the inflatable ring had capsized and drowned the infant. Angela had decided that was enough excitement and the last time she went on the beat. For the past six years she had sat behind the reception. Still an important role but one less traumatic. She took fingerprints and DNA samples and this was enough to satisfy her. She got all the good stories from the other officers and she rarely had to leave the safety of her desk.

  After the town meeting, she had realised she would have to make sure the police station was locked and secure before evacuating. Now she was the last police officer in Bayhollow, it was her duty to make sure everyone was safe. In times like these looting could happen and an empty police station was a great target. Full of weapons, police equipment and evidence. She had just finished securing the offices, the cells (which were empty), the evidence room and the fire exits. Now she just needed to leave the front of the building and lock up reception. She looked at her watch. Locking up took longer than planned. She really did have to get a move on if she didn't want to be the last person in Bayhollow. Being trapped with feral humans whose only concern is killing and eating other humans sounded like more excitement than she wanted. She unlocked and swung open the door leading to the reception. Klutz and the woman in pink were sat in the waiting area. Both snapped their necks suddenly towards her and she could see they were covered in blood. The smell of death wafted from the pair and repulsed her enough to make Angela gag.

  Klutz shot up out of his seat and tripped over his legs in his trademark clumsy fashion. He fell inches from Angela with one arm outstretched towards her. He was snarling and wet blood dribbled from his mouth and onto the green carpet floor. The woman stood up more slowly, keeping eye contact with Angela the whole time. The woman shrieked and scuttled towards her quick as a spider. Angela in response turned and ran. She was small but quick and had the reactions to outpace the pair on her tail. Frantically Angela tried the office door forgetting she had locked them. Realis
ing her mistake and knowing soon they would be on her she ran down the corridor towards the holding cells taking her keys out as she ran. She fumbled for the correct key on her chain but quickly unlocked the holding cell block. She ran behind the door and tried to close it but something was blocking her way. The door was made of a heavy steel and had always been a challenge for her to close. Looking down she spotted an arm poking out from about a third of the way up the door. Knowing she would not be able to close the door with this obstacle stuck in the way she let go and jumped into the first open cell and slammed the door shut. The doors were old school and locked once closed. The infected duo would not be able to open the door as she had the keys and they hardly looked able to operate the power tools needed to break the door down. Unfortunately, there was no keyhole her side so she could not use her keys to get out. Angela turned and looked through the bars on the window towards the car park. Like so many criminals she had processed, she was trapped in a cell. It dawned on her how silly her actions had been. There was no way for her to get to the evacuation checkpoint and out of Bayhollow. In her despair, she sat down on the concrete floor and cried.

  Chapter 24

  Dr Leitner and Jason were travelling in the back of a Humvee towards Bayhollow. The car was painted black with a dark grey honeycomb pattern sprawling over all the body panels. This wasn't the British Army escorting the pair but the private security firm HIVE which the PM had given all sorts of contracts to. It was true that Ken Lockhart had huge numbers of share in this company, however they were, as he put it, what the Swiss Guard are to the Pope. They provided a security service to top officials in order to not waste precious Army resources.