by Rick Wood
He ransacked a few cupboards and a few drawers, pulling out wads of paper and shovelling them in. He came to a glass cabinet above a set of drawers containing beakers.
He wanted to know what was in them; but then again, he didn’t.
Should he take them with him?
Would it be a risk?
Could they be hazardous?
“How much longer?” Gus asked.
“Not long. A minute.”
He several, wrapped them in a few pieces of paper, and placed them in his bag.
“Desert,” said Gus, alert to something he’d seen. She put her rucksack on her back and followed him into the corridor.
Whizzo heard a few grunts and a few slices and, a few moments later, they returned, their blades slightly bloody.
“We need to go,” Gus said, blankly.
Sadie walked up to Whizzo, showing him her bag, like a child seeking reassurance from their teacher.
“Great,” Whizzo said, not really sure what he was supposed to say. But it seemed to satisfy her.
He put his bag on and she copied him.
“Okay,” Whizzo said to Gus.
Gus paused, something on a desk catching his attention. He walked over to it.
It was a framed photo.
“What?” Whizzo asked.
Gus turned the photo toward Whizzo. It was a woman, with a child sat playing on the floor beside her. The woman was smiling.
“Think this was her?” Gus mused. “Think this was Doctor Janine Stanton?”
Whizzo shrugged.
“Could have been.”
Gus nodded. For some reason he opened the frame, took the photo, and wedged it into his back pocket.
“Let’s get out of here,” he decided.
Chapter Eight
Gus wasn’t entirely sure why he picked up the photograph. Maybe he wanted to know something more about this woman. Maybe it was part of the research. Or, maybe it was just morbid curiosity.
Either way, he could think about it later.
They kept low, Gus leading again, guiding them through the corridors, passing the bodies of the infected they had recently disposed of, heads open and faces unmoved.
Then they reached a corner of the corridor. Gus took a peek around it and halted, raising a hand to the others.
Shit.
How the hell had this happened?
They’d passed this corner to get here, and there had just been a few infected lurking that they had dispatched. Now the corridor was full. Groans filled the narrow walls, wandering bodies clattered into one another, and the smell of death hanging on the warm air suffocated them.
Every now and then, one of them sniffed.
And another one, and another one.
That’s how…
They must have smelt them. With months of the potent odour of decay, the introduction of four fresh bodies must have stuck out.
“What is it?” Desert asked.
“Come look,” he told her.
She crept to his side and peered around the corner, quickly withdrawing once she’d seen them.
“Where did they come from?” she said.
Gus huffed.
“No idea.”
He turned back to the other two.
Could Sadie take them down?
He struggled to see how many there were, but there were a lot. So many that they couldn’t move without barging into others. So many he couldn’t see the other side of the corridor. So many that there was no way of knowing.
“Could we take them?” Desert suggested.
Gus really didn’t want to dismiss another of her ideas, knowing how much she seemed to dislike him at the moment, but there was no way they could take on that many in this enclosed space and make it out alive.
“I don’t think we can,” Gus responded.
“What then?” Desert said petulantly. “This is the way out.”
“There must be another way out.”
“Where? This building could easily be half a mile long.”
“Look at them, Desert. You know how fast they are, how strong they are – what do you want us to do?”
“Sadie could–”
“Sadie doesn’t have enough space to…”
Gus stopped. Hesitated. Now wasn’t the time.
“We go back on ourselves then,” Desert said, resolved.
Gus was relieved that the argument wasn’t going any further. Now they could just focus solely on getting out.
Gus turned to Whizzo and Sadie.
“We go the other way,” he told them.
They turned and began to step as lightly as they could, so the sounds of their feet on the floor were barely taps.
Gus could still hear the infected groaning and growling, their jaws still snapping, their shuffles uncoordinated and senseless.
Gus put his finger over his mouth to signal to Sadie to be quiet, then pointed over her shoulder. She nodded, turned, and led the line.
Gus took his gun from his belt, ready; just in case.
Though he wouldn’t need it.
They were nearly far enough away that they couldn’t be heard.
At least, that’s what Gus thought, just as Whizzo knocked into the door to Janine Stanton’s office that he’d left ajar, forcing it to thwack against the wall and reverberate numerous times around the corridor.
Chapter Nine
Whizzo wondered if he’d ever get used to the concept of running from zombies. Yes, they were the infected, and zombie was a term put on them by humans – but the situation was just as absurd as it was in trashy horror films and comics that he used to read.
One thing that he could definitely never get used to, however – despite it being a common occurrence – was him being at fault for them having to run from zombies.
For all he knew, his own stupidity had just cost them all their lives.
He ran as fast as he could, but still ended up at the rear of the group. Desert hung back, constantly urging him to hurry up, but he was hurrying as fast as he could. He was heaving and panting and limping and pushing and doing all he could to not give up and just let them all eat him.
He could feel their breath on the back of his neck.
He could feel the reach of their hands.
The only thing that was preventing them from getting him was their speed – sounds peculiar, but the corridor had many twists and turns, and the infected were running with such acceleration and ferocity that at every turn they skidded into one another.
At the head of the group, Gus drew his gun and aimed it at a far window.
Gus had been very strict in his insistence that they not use their guns – they would attract more infected.
Whizzo supposed that instruction was useless now.
Gus shot out the glass and dove through it.
Sadie followed.
“Come on!” Desert urged.
“I’m fine, you go,” Whizzo asserted, despite being terrified and not fine and fully sure that he was going to be eaten.
Desert leapt out of the window and reached her hand in for Whizzo.
But Whizzo was Whizzo, and just as he approached the window he stumbled over his own feet and collapsed on the floor.
“No!” Desert shouted, but Whizzo barely heard it above the moans.
He turned and looked at the approaching infected.
Barging against the wall, against each other, in sheer desperation, hungry for him.
He pushed himself up and went to hurl himself out of the window, but it was too late – one of them had a hold of his foot.
“Get down!” screamed Gus.
Whizzo ducked beneath the window and looked up at the face of the nearest infected. It leapt at him with its yellow, gangrenous teeth dripping drool over its prey.
A gunshot overtook the sound of the infected and that zombie fell to the ground.
A stream of bullets continued, and the infected closest to him fell, and the infected behind them stumbled over the bodi
es.
This didn’t deter them as, even though they were stranded on the floor, they still reached and clutched at Whizzo’s leg.
“Desert!” he heard Gus shout. “Come on!”
Even more bullets came flying through the window.
It was a smart move, Whizzo decided. Even though there were so many of them, they were all in a confined space, condensed together, and a constant stream of bullets at head height would stop more of them than if they were in open ground.
It was a smart idea.
A smart idea Whizzo would never have thought of.
He watched the infected as they locked eyes with him, reached out, then collapsed. One-by-one they fell, flailing arms and desperate lunges.
They were so strong, so quick – but Gus was Gus, and he knew how to fight.
Whizzo had never been in a fight in his life that he hadn’t run from.
He had enough of looking at them. The constant gun sounds were making his brain feel like it was throbbing against his skull, and the sight of them going from dead to deader was becoming all the more disgusting and disturbing by the second.
He bowed his head.
Buried it in his arms and between his knees.
He wouldn’t be able to see if one of them made it to him.
Then again, what if he could see? What then?
There was no running. No fighting.
Just being useless, as always…
He sighed.
His forehead pulsated, sore under the strain of his incoming migraine.
What if one of them got to him?
What if he was about to die?
What if he wasn’t around to help the resistance fight the infected and fight Eugene Squire?
No one would ever notice…
If his contribution wasn’t there, no one would contemplate his input.
What even was his contribution?
He made more gadgets than he could keep track of, and tinkered with technology to little avail – just because he was so keen for a purpose.
But, truth was, they were having to rescue him.
Again.
The bullets ceased
He opened his eyes.
A pile of corpses sat atop one another in front of him like a wall of death.
“Come on!” he heard Desert’s voice urge him.
He stood, peering over the window. There they were, guns slightly lowered, awaiting him.
He went to climb out.
But something stopped him. He was over the window pane, and something had his arm.
He looked back.
One of the infected, squished beneath a mass of bodies, had a hold of his hand.
“Come on!”
He thought that was Desert’s voice. He couldn’t be sure.
He just knew, there and then, that it was over.
The infected grabbed onto his little finger, clamping down with its teeth.
Someone pulled him, trying to grab him away from the infected, but its jaw was fixed and it was not moving.
“Move!” came Gus’s gruff voice.
Gus appeared beside Whizzo, wielding a knife.
Before Whizzo had any idea what was happening, Gus had swung the knife downwards and sliced through Whizzo’s little finger.
The last thing Whizzo saw before he passed out was the infected munching and swallowing that precious little muscle.
Chapter Ten
All the scientists at the compound knew the sound of Eugene Squire’s heavy breathing. It hung over their shoulder as he nosed at their work, loud and stinking of fish.
As head scientist, Doctor Charles Moore knew this sound better than anyone else. He’d had to be the one communicating with Eugene on behalf of his team for the past few weeks, and it was already a job he greatly disliked. He wondered how Doctor Janine Stanton had managed to do it for so long.
And that was the thought that kept him going – Janine Stanton.
He did not want to end up sharing her fate.
They all clung onto the idea of someday seeing their families again, though none of them knew if their loved ones were even still alive. They had never left the facility, and they were never permitted to leave the new compound either.
None of them knew what they were really creating.
But Charles did.
Oh, boy, Charles did.
He’d seen them. Below. Training. Readying themselves.
He’d rather run from the compound and face all of the infected than face a few of those monsters.
“A word,” Eugene hissed over his shoulder.
Charles looked back at his colleagues, noticing a few hesitant glances. He gave a faint nod as he was led out of the laboratory and into the corridor.
“I’m getting impatient,” Eugene announced, his voice as smug and posh as a smug, posh voice could sound.
He was a puny man who walked around with an upper-class arrogance. Charles could take him, his colleagues could take him – hell, even the rats that scuttled past their feet could take him.
But none of them dared.
It would be so easy. Just throw him to the infected. Stick a needle in his neck. Break a beaker and slit his throat with broken glass.
But the authority this little man with his disjointed walk had was ridiculous.
Take General Boris Hayes away, take his army away, and he’d be nothing… I’d have him then…
“But – but you have your army,” Charles said. “I’ve seen them below. They are – they are strong. They will fight for you.”
“They will, they will,” Eugene confirmed, placing a hand on Charles’s shoulder with what Eugene probably intended to be a firm grip. “But I want more, Charles. I want more.”
“We – we’re working as best as we can.”
Eugene laughed. A patronising chuckle that would be too patronising for even the most petulant of children.
“No,” Eugene decided. “You’re not.”
Eugene leant in further.
“The army is beautiful, you are right there,” he said, his voice low. “I love them. I love them to bits, as if they were my own. I can’t wait to see them fight, to see them kill and maim and–” He gripped Charles’s shoulder tighter. “Eat and feed. But I want more.”
“More?” Charles echoed.
“They will fight and they will win. But I don’t want to have to wait for the carnage to be over, I want it to be instant.”
“I – I don’t understand…”
“Of course you don’t.”
Eugene smiled a fake smile, a sinister smile, a smile with hostility and sadism behind it.
“I want them better.”
“Better?”
Eugene nodded. “Better.”
“I – we – we are trying.”
Eugene shook his head.
“I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.”
“We are.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. My army, they – they need to feed. Don’t they? After all, we all feed.”
“Y – yes.”
“What do they feed on?”
“…Us.”
Eugene nodded.
“That, my friend,” Eugene said, pronouncing every syllable, “is why you need to increase your efforts. Or you will find your team of scientists depleting in quantity quite rapidly.”
“Please, we are–”
Eugene pulled a zippit sign across his lips.
“Less talky, more doey.”
Charles nodded.
What he’d give.
Just an uppercut, a smack in that smug face, a headbutt on that incredulous set of nostrils.
“I want them faster. I want them bigger. I want them better.”
Charles nodded.
“Go. Now.”
Charles backed away, back into the laboratory.
The rest of the scientists didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.
Charles’s increased work rate told them everything they needed to know a
bout how the conversation had gone.
BEFORE
Chapter Eleven
His wife. His childhood sweetheart. The woman he had loved since he was sixteen.
Clambering toward him. Demonic eyes, snapping jaw, her joints twisting in the wrong directions.
He slid his knife into the base of his wife’s skull.
His daughter. Probably killed by her mother. Legless, dragging herself toward him.
He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
But he had to.
He knew he had to.
Hell, even this horrid creature masquerading as his daughter knew it – but that didn’t make it any easier.
He crouched beside her.
Don’t do this.
He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
Don’t do this.
He looked into her eyes, those empty, angry eyes, the blood-shot cuticles that glared at him with such vacancy he could barely take it.
Don’t. Do. This.
He did it.
He drove his knife into the back of her skull.
And he looked at the damage he’d done. The mess he’d made.
Why hadn’t he arrived in time?
Not that he knew when in time would have been.
They could have been like this for hours.
He’d rushed back from town, ignoring the casualties, weaving his motorbike in and out of those oncoming… things…
But he realised now what he’d known before he had even arrived.
It was too late.
It would forever be too late.
And though he was still alive, a piece of him had been bitten off and left with them.
A racket announced itself downstairs. The door barging open, swaying wrathfully against its hinges.
The snarls.
The stink.
The chaos.
He’d been around enough dead bodies to know the smell – he knew it all too well. But those bodies that smelt so bad had never stood up and attacked him.
He heard them. At the bottom steps. Bashing each other out of the way. Knocking into one another to get to Gus first.
He remained at the top of the stairs, his family a bloody mess, inside out, scattered around his knees.
He had to move. If he wanted to live, he had to move.