“What did you tell Jeff?”
“That I needed to see you – he’s not stupid, Ollie.”
He smiled.
They went to the bed and lay down.
Roxie ran her hands down his body as their clothed legs intertwined in knots of love. They kissed each other, softly at first – then more rushed, frenzied. Ollie put his hands to her body, and felt her breasts through her clothes; she groaned slightly.
She stopped his hands, and pulled her top and bra free.
She snuggled back into him, and kissed him some more. He pulled away, and gently nuzzled at the side of her neck, kissing and teasing, before going to her breasts. He felt her hands at the waistband of his jeans, tugging the belt open and lowering the zip. She slipped them down his legs to his knees, and he did the rest using his feet. Ollie then helped Roxie out of her trousers.
This feels wrong, Roxie thought, but she needed him, wanted him. She felt that their love had been parted somewhat over the past few days; that whatever was happening to the world was crushing everything. Normal life would never be the same again. And, although they told each other every day that they loved one another, they were only words. She wanted to feel it. Much like she knew Ollie needed to feel it. Death scared Ollie, she knew that. Because death was the only thing that was ever going to keep them apart, forever. And that scared the hell out of him. Eternal loneliness shared only with darkness.
She turned onto her side and felt Ollie enter her. She pressed her back to his chest, and let him thrust back and forth without moving her own body or hips. He put his arms around her body, pressing her closer to him. His hand went back to her breasts, and he began massaging them again – teasing the nipples.
He pulled out of her, and Roxie rolled onto her back. Ollie got on top, and thrust into her again, slowly pumping in and out as they looked each other in the eyes, and kissed.
“I love you,” Ollie said.
“I love you, too,” Roxie said.
His climax was hard, and he had to bury his face into Roxie’s neck area to stop himself from shouting out. Roxie muffled her face with the blanket. They both lay there, burnt out, Ollie holding her tight.
“Ollie?”
“Yes, beaut?”
“Do you think we will ever have children of our own?”
He faced her.
“I’d like to think so,” he said.
“Would you give up the road, start up a family with me?”
“Of course I would, beaut, in a heartbeat.”
She smiled. “You’re a good man, Ollie.”
“That’s a laugh,” he said. “What about the things I have done? The people I have hurt for the gang?”
“You haven’t been that man for years, Ollie. Not since I have been with you.”
He shook his head, “Maybe you’re right.” He sighed. “I know I don’t want that life ever again. I want to live normal, like. You know what I mean?”
“Of course I do.”
“When we get out of this bloody mess, maybe we can start a family?” he said.
“I’d like that, Ollie,” she said, kissing him.
“And Amy. We will have to take care of her now.”
“Yes, I’d like that too,” Roxie said.
He gave her kiss before getting up and putting his clothes on.
“Best we go back downstairs, beaut,” he said.
She didn’t answer, just smiled and nodded before dressing. For the first time since the outbreak started, she felt things were going to be fine, that they were all going to pull through this mess as long as they had each other.
Ollie walked out the door, and was struck across the back of the head by a sharp blow.
*
Ollie was dreaming; dreaming of drowning. In the dream he was a young boy of about ten, and he was out in the middle of a lake. He’d swum out there to meet his friend who was no longer there. He’d been fooled. And now he was alone and scared. The wood that encircled the lake was dense. Empty. Only blackness looked out at him as he struggled to try and keep afloat; the sun began to set as he flayed his arms in the icy water. He tried calling for someone, anyone, to come and help him. But nobody came or called back.
Then he was under the water, engulfed by the chilly liquid which stabbed at his body. It felt like there were a million icicles trying to penetrate his flesh. His feet become entangled in reeds and seaweed, and nothing could be seen above but darkness. His lungs were almost at bursting point. Water started to find its way into Ollie’s mouth…
He woke up screaming, his lungs aching. He could still feel the cold water running down his face, finding its way into his mouth. Then he realised he was awake, and that the water on his face was real. So was the gun pointing at him, with a grinning Dylan behind it.
“Good morning, shithead. I hope you’re ready to meet your maker,” Dylan said, throwing the empty cup to one side.
Chapter 9
Panic seized Ollie as he went for Dylan, but he couldn’t move. He looked down and discovered he was chained to one of the chairs from out the back. He thrashed in the seat, but it was no use. The chain was padlocked behind his back.
“Ha-ha! That’s it tough guy, keep it up,” Dylan said. “You won’t be going anywhere, butty.”
“Urggghh,” Ollie grunted, and looked up at the man: he had a sort of clean-cut image that had been spoilt by a few days of growth on his chin – a killer with a smile. His teeth were perfect; his hair neat and almost girlish, but greasy. He didn’t cut much of a threatening pose, even standing over Ollie, despite his stocky build.
Dylan clipped Ollie over the head with the Browning pistol in an attempt to calm him down.
“Keep still or I’ll blow your fucking brains out,” Dylan said, forcing the muzzle of the gun into Ollie’s forehead; digging the cold steel into Ollie’s skin as hard as he could, hoping it was hurting.
“Not so tough now, are you, action man? Maybe I should stuff the barrel of this gun up your arse and pull the trigger?” He let out a silent cracking laugh.
Ollie started to rage in his seat again; the veins in his arms protruded as he flexed and strained against the steel. He sweated profuse in his attempt to be free, then relaxed, exhausted. All the time Dylan laughed as he watched the man writhe.
“You fucking cunt!” Ollie shouted.
“Ha-ha! This is fun. Let’s see how you react to this.” He stepped aside to reveal Roxie and Amy. They, too, were bound to chairs – backs to one another – with rope. Amy was crying. Roxie appeared to be out cold. Ollie completely lost it.
“Let me out of this fucking chair, you bastard!” he yelled. The plastic chair Ollie was tied to creaked under his lunatic movements. “I get out of this seat, boy, and you’re a dead man.”
“Tough words coming from a man who’s chained up with a gun on him. You really ain’t scared to die, are you? Quite the hero.”
Dylan smacked Ollie across the face, this time with the gun, causing a tooth to surf out of Ollie’s mouth on strings of bloody saliva. Ollie’s head rolled on its plinth, and his eyes flickered as he fought to stay conscious. Where the hell were Jeff and Maria while this was going on?
Then a harsh hand slapped Ollie around the chops, almost bringing his focus back. Then another slap, a third, fourth, fifth. He shook his head, and the hand was gone.
“Don’t you fucking faint on me, boy,” Dylan said. “I want you awake for the main event.” He smiled down at Ollie, and turned away from him. Ollie saw that Dylan had one of the machine-guns shouldered, and Ollie’s knife sheathed at the hip. Dylan holstered the Browning behind his back and picked up the other SA80. Its bayonet was sticky with dried blood. Jeff’s gun.
“Not a bad old machine-gun, if you ask me,” Dylan said. “Not quite sure what our boys have been complaining about out in Afghanistan.” He drew the cocking mechanism back, and let it go. The loud snick-snack noise brought Roxie around. Amy continued to weep silently.
“It’ll be okay,” Ollie sa
id to the young girl.
Dylan scoffed, “Huh, they all say that.”
“Urrghhh,” Roxie mumbled. “W…w…w…” She trailed off, and her head dropped back down, her chin touching her chest.
Ollie looked about him, and saw Jeff and Maria lying on the floor – untied. Jeff had blood spilling from his forehead, and Maria wasn’t moving. Dead? No, she couldn’t be. Then he saw the pipe Dylan had been cuffed to; it had been pulled from the wall. As he looked at Maria again, Ollie saw her stomach moving. Thank God for…The butt of the SA80 was planted into Ollie’s gut. He gagged for air as he listened to Dylan laugh.
Ollie’s scalp burned. He yelled out as his head was pulled back. His neck clicked as he stared up at Dylan.
“Don’t you fucking pass out on me,” Dylan said, and spat on Ollie’s face. “This is what you get for killing another man’s brother.”
“Leave him alone, you bloody freak,” Amy cried out. “He ain’t done anything to you.”
Dylan let Ollie’s hair go, and walked over to Amy. He bent down in front of the child, so that he was eye level, and grabbed her by the cheeks as hard as he could, causing the young girl to scream out.
“Not done anything, you say? He killed my brother, you little bitch.” He let her face go, roughly, and stood up straight. He picked up the machine-gun and pointed it at her face. She screamed and screamed. Tears rolled down her face, and Dylan grinned.
“Shut up. Stop that fucking noise,” he told her.
Amy wriggled in her seat, but she couldn’t move. Then she realised the bayonet of the gun moving closer to her. She whimpered and sat back as far as she could in her chair.
“Ever wondered what a popped eyeball would look like, bitch? Or the pain of feeling cold steel slide its way into the mushy texture of your eye? Hmm?” He stopped the tip of the blade just shy of Amy’s left eyeball, teased her with gentle thrusts.
“Get away from her. She’s just a child, mun,” Ollie managed. “Come back over here and pick on me some more.”
“I do love your appetite for pain, Ollie, boy.” He put the machine-gun down, and drew the knife at his hip. Standing in front of Ollie, he jabbed the knife’s point underneath Ollie’s chin, digging it in softly. Blood formed and a thin stream seeped down the knife’s edge, and pattered onto the floor.
Ollie scrunched his face up tight, and absorbed the pain. He felt like the knife was going to punch through his throat. Then it was gone, and gliding across his chest in zigzag movements, cutting shallow lines. Searing heat scolded his whole body, and he whimpered in the grip of it. A fierce left hook came from nowhere, and threw his head to one side. Blood pumped out of his sagging mouth. He spat another tooth free.
“Is that all you got?” he said, and laughed. “Your child-touching brother was tougher—” A second punch, followed by a third stopped Ollie chatting.
“Don’t you fucking talk about him,” Dylan screamed. “Don’t you fucking dare, you motherfucker!”
“Ha-ha. You’re fucking pathetic,” Ollie said.
“Shh, Ollie, you’re making him worse,” Amy said.
Dylan turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Another word out of you, bitch, and I’ll come over there and slice your tongue out.”
He turned back to Ollie, and ran his fingers across the glaring slit on the big man’s chest. Ollie pulled his lips back and shouted through his clenched teeth. “Aarrgggh.” He opened his eyes to see Dylan lick the blood from his fingers.
“Delicious, mun.”
“You sick fuck,” Ollie said.
“Ha-ha! Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“And I’m guessing it was you who killed Amy’s parents?”
“Hmm, right again.”
“You—”
“Now, now. If you keep behaving like that, you won’t get to hear what I did to them,” he said, and smiled
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway.”
He punched Ollie in the guts. “Shut up.”
Ollie coughed out blood, and wheezed for air.
Dylan looked over at Roxie; she was still out. So were Jeff and Maria.
“See, the thing is: me and my brother escaped from an army research facility not far from here. The place is isolated in a field on the border of Twsc.”
As he spoke he circled Ollie with the knife, all the time keeping his eye on Amy and Roxie, and occasionally checking the two on the floor.
“Me and my brother, Eddie, were sent there from Broadmoor prison. We were lifers, you see, not much chance of getting out. And we were not the only ones, oh no, they had scores of us, all lifers, from different prisons across the fucking U.K.”
Ollie felt for where the chains were clasped behind him, and found a rusted lock which held the chains together. He twisted the padlock, which did nothing, but he kept doing it. Bits of corroded steel filings came off in his attempts, and snowed onto the floor. Ollie continued to work away at it as he listened to Dylan speak.
“They were running some kind of fancy experiment there, injecting us with different kinds of shitty fluids, like. And as I said, me and Eddie got free. I think we managed to infect the whole town by bathing in the lake, the one the town gets their water supply from.”
Dylan circled Ollie once more, heading over to the main window of the cottage. He peeked out. It was daylight. He could see none of them outside. They had gone. Or maybe there just weren’t any left in the area.
“I mean, we had to wash when we escaped. We crawled through the sewage system to get out of the place, and Eddie cut himself in the process. His blood must have got into the water. Fuck that’s funny. Ah well, bollocks to it.”
“So if you are pumped full of some military experiment shit,” Ollie said, “why aren’t you sick?”
“Good question and one I can’t answer. Me and Eddie seemed immune to any kind of reaction,” he smiled. “I think Jeff and you might have done a bloody good job last night, boy. Mowed them all down. Great. It will make my escape with Jeff much easier.” Ollie looked at him intently. “What? What you looking at me like that for? You didn’t think I was going to take you all with me, did you? Especially you Ollie? You have a debt owing to me.”
Dylan walked over to Ollie; his footfalls reverberated through the walls of the cottage.
“The thing is Ollie, you killed my brother, and the penalty for that is death. But not before I finish telling you my story.”
“Go to fucking hell, pig,” Ollie said, and tried to head-butt Dylan’s face, which was almost close enough. Dylan stepped back, and holstered the knife.
“Fuck me you’re one tough nut to crack,” Dylan said, and laid into Ollie’s stomach with more punches, combining lefts with rights, leaving Ollie breathless.
“As I was saying. Me and Eddie were transported from Broadmoor prison to this research facility, see. Yeah, they had the finest collection of nut jobs going. All locked up in one lab.”
“Is this how this thing all started? This outbreak or whatever the hell it is?” He could see Amy looking over at Dylan too. She had stopped crying.
“If you close your mouth for a minute, I’ll get around to telling you. Now keep it closed or I’ll nail it shut.
“From what I could make out, they were looking for some kind of new weapon to use on enemy troops. They never told us, of course; I just managed to get hold of snippets here and there. Fuck, whatever they were pumping into us made some of the cons go fucking nuts. Again, I didn’t see much, just caught wind of stuff.”
Dylan walked back to the window, and looked out again. The sun was so bright in the sky; it was drenching the ground in gold. It was one of the nicest days he had seen since the epidemic. Dylan went to talk again, but something very odd caught his eye. There was someone standing under one of the trees by the wood. Just standing there, facing the cottage.
Strange. Can’t be one of them. It’s daylight. Dylan walked over to the door, opened it, climbed into the truck’s cab, and out the other side. The perso
n by the tree had gone. What the fuck, he thought. Where in the hell did they go to? He didn’t fancy going over there to take a look, and instead went back inside the cottage where it was safe.
All the time he was outside Ollie worked at the lock behind his back. He’d heard the thing groan a few times, but it had not yet yielded to his pressure. He’d also tried to reassure Amy whilst Dylan had been out of the room. Ollie had wanted to shout to Jeff and Maria, to try and get them to come around. But Ollie had not wanted to get Dylan riled again.
“Strange,” Dylan said, with a confused look on his face.
Ollie held his breath, thinking Dylan had caught him trying to pry the lock free.
“I think one of them just stood out there in the fucking sun. I know it was under a tree, which would’ve shaded it a bit, but it’s just too bright out there for them. What the hell is going on?”
Ollie was going to tell him about the things getting smarter over the past couple of days. That maybe they were starting to think again. That they could work together in packs, and were even able to communicate with each other. Maybe not through direct speech, but by grunts or growls. But they couldn’t prove it. Besides, Ollie thought, let Dylan work it out for himself. He smiled.
“What the fuck you finding so funny? Huh?” Dylan marched over to Ollie and punched him on the nose. The bones crunched under the solid blow, and sent Ollie’s head flying back. “You ain’t smiling now, are you?”
Ollie picked his head up, his nose a bloody, streaming mass, and looked Dylan in the eyes. “I am going to kill you. Just like I did Eddie.”
Dylan went to lay more blows into Ollie, but Roxie started moving. He looked over at her, she was coming round – “It’s time,” Dylan said.
“Kill me, will you, boy?” Dylan went over to Roxie, and yanked her head back by her long hair. She screamed as torrid pain tore through her scalp. Ollie roared and bucked.
“Stop it you bastard, you’re fucking hurting her.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet, boyo.”
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