Twenty-Five Percent (Book 3): Vengeance

by Nerys Wheatley

  Pinned beneath the man’s bulbous body, Alex struggled to free his arms as more eaters closed in. Another sound came from the front of the hotel, a sound that made him pause and then struggle even harder. A helicopter engine.

  The rest of the eaters were uncomfortably close. Alex managed to pull his left hand out and pushed frantically against the body on top of him.

  The beam of a torch swept over the crowd. A shot rang out. The eater closest to him fell.

  With difficulty, he freed his right arm and shoved the body aside as more bullets ripped into the horde. More than half of them were down now, the rest moving away from him. The gunfire stopped. There was a flurry of activity by the far corner of the building as the rest of the eaters fell one by one.

  Finally, a lone figure was left standing. It disappeared back around the building for half a minute or so during which time Alex sat up and took stock of all the new pain in the various parts of his body. When the figure returned it walked towards him, the beam of a torch lighting its way until it reached him and put one hand on its hip.

  Alex squinted up. “Boot?”

  Micah kept the torch focused on the ground between them. “Gone. You okay?”

  Alex hauled himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his arm and, well, everywhere else. “More or less.”

  “Feel up to a tirade about how stupid coming here by yourself was and that you’ve ruined what chance we had of stopping Boot before he got to Sarcester and you could have got yourself killed?”

  “Not really.” Boot was gone and Alex had failed. Again.

  “Good, because at this time of night when I’ve had to wake up just to rescue you from somewhere you shouldn’t have been in the first place, I’m not in the mood to shout. So we’ll just imagine I’ve made my point in a forceful yet succinct manner and you are suitably chastised and apologetic. Just to warn you though, Dent- probably is in the mood to shout.”

  Micah turned away and headed back around the corner. After finding his pistol lying in the grass a few feet away, Alex trudged after him.

  In the car park in front of the hotel, Dent and three of the soldiers were clustered around the APV. Ridgewell and Rick were further away, slowly sweeping torches back and forth over the ground where the helicopters had been parked.

  As soon as Dent saw Alex, she strode over to him.

  “What the hell was that?” she yelled.

  Alex walked past her. “Don’t. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Not in the mood? You seemed to be in the mood to go off on your own on some half-arsed mission and destroy any chance we had. Now, thanks to you, we can’t track Boot and he can just do whatever he wants and we won’t have a clue.”

  Alex stopped and faced her. “What do you mean, you can’t track Boot?”

  “You coming here must have tipped him off to the trackers. They didn’t move when he left. They’re still here somewhere.”

  Alex looked back at Ridgewell and Rick still searching the ground then closed his eyes, letting out a long breath.

  “You may have just signed your friends’ death warrants.”

  Alex knew she was right, and it made him angry. “I took a calculated risk and it almost paid off,” he shouted. “I had him.”

  “You lost him.”

  Alex turned away, fuming. He’d had Boot. He’d had his hands on him. If he’d been seconds quicker...

  “Alex...” Micah began.

  “What?” he yelled.

  Micah raised his eyebrows. Alex huffed out a breath and looked away.

  “Your hands,” Micah said.

  Alex looked down at his hands. For the first time, he noticed the blood from a myriad of cuts from the window glass he’d landed in when he jumped from Boot’s room. One particularly large gash had sliced open his palm and was still oozing. His t-shirt and jeans were streaked red.

  “I almost had him,” Alex said quietly. “I had my hand around his neck. If I’d just squeezed...”

  He trailed off, staring at the blood without seeing it. Why hadn’t he killed Boot as soon as he had the chance?

  “Come on,” Micah said, “there’ll be a first aid kit inside.”

  “Found them,” Ridgewell called.

  9

  At dawn they headed back to the bridge.

  With having to divert off the main road several times to avoid hordes, it took them three hours. Alex was glad of the time alone inside his helmet. The last thing his sullen mood wanted was any kind of social interaction.

  As he and Micah drove side by side with the APV and Lamborghini following, the events in Boot’s hotel room played themselves over and over in his head. He’d had his hand on his throat. One quick squeeze and it would have all been over, just a bit more pressure and Boot’s neck would have snapped.

  Alex went through it for what felt like the thousandth time, examining every moment of the memory. Did he hesitate to take a life, even Boot’s? What if the opportunity arose again? Would the same thing happen? Could he really not kill the man who had destroyed so many lives? Who had taken Hannah’s life?

  Despite all the eaters whose lives he’d ended, Alex had never thought of himself as a killer. Now he needed to become one. It wasn’t enough to be physically strong, he needed to be mentally tough too. He couldn’t afford to fail again.

  They found an abandoned house close to the bridge, moved in, and set up patrols along the length of road between there and Bury St Edmunds. Early the following day, Collins and Dent radioed that they’d spotted the helicopters gathering a horde. It was already tens of thousands strong, and growing. Boot was marching them along the A14. Unlike Alex, Micah and the others, he didn’t have to circle around the eaters loitering on the road; he simply added them to his own.

  There was a small possibility that Boot would take another route, but it was unlikely. His eaters would have to cross the river to reach Sarcester and the bridge was the quickest way to do that. Boot wouldn’t know it had been damaged until he got there, and then it would be too late.

  So Dent and Collins returned to the house and for the next twenty-four hours they cleaned weapons, refuelled at a nearby petrol station, planned their strategy, and waited for the horde to arrive.

  The destroyed bridge was their first and best defence. Boot’s horde would never reach the city if their plan worked.

  And Alex was going to do anything it took to make sure it did.

  . . .

  Listening to the approaching horde was a slightly surreal experience. Thousands of pairs of feet shuffling on asphalt. It was a sound not dissimilar to rushing water, the kind of thing that came on CDs with rainforests on the covers. Relax to the soothing sound of eaters.

  There were no moans. Lately Alex had noticed that the eaters were confining their moaning to when they were either gathered into a group for some swaying and bonding time, or chasing down some poor unfortunate prey. Somehow he preferred it when they were simply moaning all the time. It made them easier to hear coming. The change in behaviour also gave the impression that they might be doing, or not doing, things intentionally.

  The last thing they needed was for eaters to start thinking.

  As the sound of the helicopters overrode the moving eaters, Alex and Micah moved back under the roof of the petrol station forecourt where their bikes were hidden. The radio attached to Micah’s belt crackled.

  “Micah?” It was Ridgewell.

  Micah unclipped the radio. “’Sup?”

  “You in position?”

  “Ready and waiting. What can you see?”

  “The front of the horde is about half a mile from you. One of Boot’s choppers is hanging back with it and the other is almost to you. You should see it any second. Looks like it’s scouting ahead, so they’re going to realise the bridge is out pretty soon. We can’t see the third at all. It doesn’t look like they’ve spotted any of us.”

  “Alright, we’ll head out as soon as the chopper heads back from the bridge, try to get the horde coming
after us before they get a chance to use their pheromones. Can you keep them distracted?”

  “No problem. Good luck.”

  Micah smiled. “When you’re as good as us, you don’t need luck.”

  Ridgewell laughed. “You two seem to run on luck.”

  “Nah, we just give that impression,” Alex said. “In reality we always have everything meticulously planned.”

  Micah erupted into quiet laughter.

  “Yeah, right,” Ridgewell said. “We’ll see you on the other side.”

  “Use the Force, Ridge,” Alex said, doing his best Alec Guinness impersonation.

  Ridgewell’s laughter was the last thing they heard before the radio shut off. The deep rumbling buzz of a helicopter took its place.

  “Here it comes,” Micah said.

  A tree crested hill rose half a mile along the road. At a bend in the road and with a good view in both directions, it was where the soldiers and their APV were hidden. Alex followed Micah’s gaze to see one of Boot’s black helicopters appear over the rise, oblivious to those hidden there, and fly towards them. They watched it pass overhead and continue on towards the bridge, following the line of the road.

  Alex looked back along the road. “And here they come.”

  The first few eaters appeared at the corner. Within seconds the horde spanned the entire road on both sides of the central reservation, a surging mass of eaters so big Alex’s brain had trouble processing what his eyes were seeing. Minutes passed as the huge crowd approached and still the back end of the horde hadn’t come into view.

  “There’s so many,” Micah said after a while, sounding as stunned as Alex felt. “How on earth can we fight that?”

  Alex couldn’t begin to guess how many there were, but there was no doubt Sarcester would be overrun. If they couldn’t stop them here, no-one would stand a chance.

  “Why so many?” Micah said. “He doesn’t need nearly this amount of eaters to come after us. Half, a quarter of that number would have been more than enough.”

  “Two birds, one stone,” Alex said absently, his mind on the task ahead and how they were going to make this work. “He’s probably using it as a chance to put his pheromones through their paces. If he’s going to sell the virus, he needs to know the whole thing will work. I imagine the kind of people who would buy it wouldn’t be too forgiving if it was faulty.”

  “We have to stop him,” Micah said. “No-one should be able to do this.”

  A second helicopter was hovering above the crowd and Alex couldn’t help wondering where the third was. The sound of the first returning drew his attention.

  “They must have seen the bridge,” he said, watching it fly back towards the horde.

  “Then that’s our cue,” Micah replied, pulling on his helmet and climbing onto his bike. “Let’s get this over with before I piss myself.”

  They waited for the helicopter to pass them, and when it was almost back to the horde they rode out from the cover of the petrol station.

  The eaters leading the crowd were now no more than a hundred yards away. Alex and Micah pulled onto the road and stopped, shouting to get their attention. Not that they needed to. The familiar moaning began almost immediately. Those in the horde that could, broke into a lurching jog. Those that couldn’t followed as fast as they were able. But it didn’t matter that they weren’t all moving at the same speed; the general consensus among the eaters was that the two men were food and that was good enough.

  As Alex and Micah pulled off, both helicopters apparently realised what was happening and started towards them. Seconds later, gunfire blasted through the sound of eater moans. Alex glanced back to see both helicopters peel away under a barrage from the APV’s fifty calibre gun, leaving Alex and Micah to continue leading the eaters towards the bridge.

  One helicopter headed in the direction of the trees where the APV was hidden, but swerved away when it came under fire. They seemed reluctant to risk damage, so far from home and in the middle of probably the biggest eater horde ever to exist. Alex guessed Boot was less concerned about endangering the lives of his subordinates than they themselves were.

  Alex’s nose started to itch despite the anti-histamines he’d taken earlier. They were using the fake pheromones. But with the eaters already fixated on him and Micah, it wasn’t working, which was what they were counting on.

  It took them ten minutes to lead the horde almost to where the road broke away from the land and began its climb onto the arc of the bridge. Ten minutes of being trailed by tens of thousands of ravenous eaters, not to mention the threat of the well armed helicopters ever present. It wasn’t the most relaxing ten minutes Alex had ever spent. By the time they reached the unsurfaced farm track they were heading for, his nervous tension was through the roof.

  It was the last place they could get off the road with their bikes before being trapped on the damaged bridge. Trees at the entrance to the track and a slight bend in the main road hid them from the pursuing horde as they turned off onto the compacted dirt surface.

  Once through the small wooded area, the track climbed a low hill on the edge of an arable field overlooking the river. Alex and Micah stopped to look back at the road over the tops of the trees. As they’d hoped, the horde was continuing to follow the main road. From their vantage point, Alex could just see the bombed out gap in the span of the bridge. He couldn’t see the group of people on the far side waiting to coax the eaters over the edge, but he knew they were there.

  “Are they slowing down?” Micah said, frowning.

  Alex moved his eyes back to the horde. As he watched, those in the lead, the runners, slowed to a walk and then stopped. The next wave bunched up behind them. Bit by bit, the entire huge horde came to a halt. There was some aimless shuffling and moaning, but none of the eaters were moving up the bridge.

  “It’s not working,” Alex said. “We have to do something.”

  “Like what?”

  Before Alex could answer, one of the helicopters swooped in from wherever they’d been hiding, crossing the back end of the horde. A door opened and one of the guns they used to launch the fake pheromone cartridges extended from inside. Alex heard shots from the APV and the chopper flew away again, but the damage had been done. Without any people to lure them forward, the horde began to turn and shuffle back the way they’d come.

  “No,” Alex said under his breath. “This has to work.”

  Flipping his visor down, he started his bike.

  “What are you doing?” Micah said, alarmed.

  “I’m going to get them onto that bridge. You go to the boat. I’ll meet you there.”

  Micah leaned across and grasped his arm. “But what are you going to do?”

  “I have a plan. I’m going to get them to follow me again.” He shook Micah’s hand off and waved his arm at him in a ‘go away’ gesture. “Just go. I’ll be fine.”

  “No, wait, Alex...”

  He didn’t wait to hear what Micah was going to say. Making a u-turn on the dirt track, Alex sped back the way they’d come, hoping Micah didn’t follow him.

  Back at the road, the horde had already gone a hundred yards and was moving away from him. Alex stopped, jumped off his bike and ran towards the eaters, yelling. Most of them ignored him, but a few, those rebels who didn’t blindly follow the smell, stopped walking and turned to look at him. He waved his arms, shouting louder. Around fifty eaters started towards him.

  “That’s right!” he yelled. “Come on, you know you want me!”

  The eaters picked up their pace, their moans becoming more enthused. They were downwind of him so he couldn’t smell the exact moment they started to exude their own natural food alert pheromones, but he could see it. Beginning with those nearest and travelling away from him in a ripple through the horde, every eater stopped and turned around.

  Alex waved some more. It was all the encouragement they needed.

  The entire horde surged forward, running, jogging and shuffling in his
direction. From somewhere to his left, one of the helicopters flew towards him. Alex took a moment to very deliberately flip it off in such a way that they would clearly see, then he turned and ran.

  He swung the rifle from his back as he sprinted for his bike. Halfway there he turned and fired at the approaching chopper. His aim wasn’t perfect, but this close it didn’t really matter. His bullets strafed the nose. At the same time, gunfire erupted from where his military buddies were hiding. The helicopter veered away without firing a shot.

  “Cowards!” he screamed, just for the fun of it.

  Then he turned and resumed his dash for the bike because the fastest eaters were so close he could almost feel their rancid breath on his face. Adrenaline flooding his veins, he almost laughed. The danger was exhilarating.

  Reaching the bike, he leaped on and waited for the horde to catch up before driving off.

  After the run and being chased by the helicopter, the stop and start journey onto the bridge, each time waiting for the horde to catch up before moving on again, felt anticlimactic.

  As he passed entrance to the dirt track he saw Micah sitting on his bike some way along in the shadow of the trees. Alex saw him shake his head before he turned and drove away. Alex ignored a twinge of fear. This was the only way to get the eaters onto the bridge, so this was what he had to do.

  It didn’t take long to reach the start of the bridge, where the road left the ground and began to ascend to the top of the high arc. The last place where Alex could change his mind and get off the road. Purposely keeping his eyes straight ahead, he carried on, leading the untiring eaters towards where the military had bombed the bridge in a futile attempt to stop the Sarcester horde’s progress.

  Despite what he’d told Micah, Alex didn’t have a plan. He had no idea what he was going to do once he reached the end of this side of the ruined bridge. All he knew was that he had to stop the horde getting to his home, and to do that he needed to lead the eaters off the bridge, whatever it took.