In The End Box Set | Books 1-3

by Stevens, GJ

  My breath stopped as anger balled in my stomach. I let my foot rest on the chair before stepping down, not listening to her call my name as I ran from the room.

  Whilst I gripped the front bedroom frame, I shouted at the three to come, spit flying from my mouth as I screamed to urge them on, saying the words I didn’t want the kid to hear only when they wouldn’t budge.

  “Run, or you'll die.”

  The kid was the first, pulling from Mary’s arms and followed my pointed finger in Toni’s direction as I stooped, smiling encouragement as he ran past.

  “Your choice,” I shouted, stepping back.

  Peering to the stairs, I saw they’d risen three quarters of the distance. I tried to hold back my shock at their quickened pace.

  Giving one last look back into the bedroom and raising my eyes, without voice I pleaded for the couple to wake from their trance.

  Neither did, their staring expressions fixed toward the ground. I ran the few paces back to the bedroom and found Toni helping the kid onto the chair. She held his hand as he eagerly climbed to the chest of drawers.

  “Wait,” I said, and grabbed the kid under the arms, glaring at Toni, but not saying the words I was desperate to voice. Flinching around, my heart rate spiked, dropping only when I found Mary rushing through the doorway.

  “You first,” I said to her, ignoring Toni’s protests as I held the kid back. “And we’ll lower Andy down the roof to you.”

  Toni quietened.

  Mary was easy to get on to the roof and made no complaints as we helped her up. She gave no protest as we lowered Andy down once she stopped slipping along the tiles.

  “You now,” Toni said, her head twisting back and forth to the entrance. She disappeared one last time to the corridor as I waited standing on the chair. She came back a little out of breath, slamming the door of the bedroom and leaning against it with her back. “They’re almost at the top. Hurry.”

  I paused, hovering my foot over the chest of drawers.

  “What about the husband?” I said, but Toni could only shrug. “What’s he doing?”

  She urged me on, gesturing the gun out of the window.

  I stepped down to the carpet, lowering myself to the floor and watched as she slid her back across the door to block my path.

  “We’ve got to get him,” I said, stepping to her side. She slid to follow my course and block the handle as she mirrored my sideways move. “He’s in shock. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. We’ve got to give him one last try,” I said again, with wide eyes and stepping closer.

  Toni took a step forward and put her face right up to mine, her sweet breath washing over me.

  “He doesn’t want to come. He’s given up,” she said with a shallow shrug. “He’ll get us all killed.”

  I could hear the moans and irregular footsteps growing louder in the hallway.

  “You don’t know,” I said, my senses overwhelmed at our closeness. I could feel energy sparking across my nerves, blood jetting through my veins.

  Toni flinched with a gurgle vibrating outward from my stomach as she pulled in a sharp breath.

  “It’s too late now,” she said, shaking her head towards the window. “Too late. Go, please.”

  I could hear a mix of anger and desperation rising in her voice. I drew a deep breath and, about to turn, I flinched as something heavy smacked against the door.

  Deflated, I turned away, raising my foot, leaving Toni to lean against the door with white knuckles around the handle as she fought against its movement.

  I stopped my climb when his strained call came from the other side.

  “Help me. Please, help me. Open the door.”

  48

  My features dropped as I heard the words, as did the strength from my legs as I tried to raise up to the chest of drawers. Turning towards Toni, I knew she’d be shaking her head, but didn’t expect to see the gun pointing square in my direction.

  Energised with the surprise, I spoke, the words weak, barely heard over the elongated sound of his voice begging from the other side of the door.

  “Why would you?” I said, my eyes squinting, watching a single tear run down each of her cheeks.

  “I have to keep you safe,” she said, repointing her aim at my chest. Her look followed as I climbed down. My legs shook as the gun traced.

  “You won’t do it,” I said. “We have to save him for goodness’ sake.” I turned, following the slope of the roof, watching Mary looking up expectant at the window with Andy smiling wide in her arms. “His wife is just there,” I said, taking a step towards the door. “We have to try.”

  I raised my hand toward the gun, but before I could reach, she turned, huffing out a great breath. Taking large steps, she pulled the door open, ignoring the relief of the husband, his eyes wide as he saw us.

  Without looking back to the hands scraping on the top step, I watched the elation in his smile vanish as his eyes caught on the gun raised at his head. He’d shown the most emotion I’d seen since we’d met. I ushered him in with a frantic wave of my hand.

  The bang came after the bullet exploded out of the back of his skull.

  My ears numbed and I fell to my knees, the world enveloped in cotton wool. My senses dulled.

  Toni’s words, her shouted commands, her tug at my shoulders only half felt as she said she’d seen a bite mark on his arm.

  My senses snapped into focus with a sudden slap of pain at my face and saw her open palm complete the arc.

  She’d done it. I’d been right all along. I knew a year ago this is how it would turn out if I didn’t break the cycle.

  I stood, shaking off her grip and climbed the chair up to the top of the chest of drawers. Dropping myself down to my butt, I pushed myself through the window to slide down the roof, past Mary and Andy waiting on the edge.

  Falling to the grass, I bent my knees, but cared little for what would happen if I crumpled to a heap.

  Slowly rising to my feet, I scarcely noticed as I helped Andy, holding him for a moment before letting him down to Mary as she stood. I followed her gaze as she looked up, trying to see past Toni emerging through the window.

  I didn’t wait. Didn’t linger; just called out to Mary to find somewhere safe to hold up. In the fading light all I wanted to do was get the van and drive away as fast as I could.

  Still barefoot, I walked along the grass to the end of the garden, climbing the fence at the back, all the while trying to let the low hum of moans, the sting of the stench and the occasional scream dissipate into the distance.

  A new sound cut through the air after a few minutes of trudging through the field. It came from the village.

  I didn’t look up to see the helicopter for fear of finding Toni following. I hoped she’d taken another path. At the same time some part of me hoped she chased.

  The noise of the rotors grew too strong and I glanced to my right, watching as the green helicopter hovered over the centre of the village. A figure in a flight suit leant out of the open side door; even though they were quite some way off, I thought I could see, or sense, the horror in their expression.

  The helicopter flew away after a moment, moving high along the road with caution and the figure still at the door.

  I couldn’t imagine the crazed conversation as they tried to explain over the radio what they were seeing. Still, I walked on at a pace, covering a quarter of the distance to encircle the village. When I came to the road bisecting the settlement, I stood at the roadside, leaning against the brick of the last house.

  Pausing, I couldn’t help turning back the way I’d travelled and with surprise I saw Toni hadn’t been following. She hadn’t appeared as I lingered on, and staring out as far as I could to where I had come, I swallowed down a rising guilt that I hadn’t pulled Mary and the child along with me.

  Still she didn’t appear as I waited; as I tried to reconcile why she’d pulled the trigger. The husband had made his mind up. He’d chosen life. He’d chosen to join
us in our escape.

  Despite her actions, when she hadn’t appeared I felt so exposed.

  Taking a deep breath, I told myself nothing had changed. I told myself I needed to get to the van. Toni would be there waiting impatiently for me with a scalding look, drawing the anger from where I kept it hidden. When we met again I would find out her reason. I would get the missing information only she knew; the real reason she killed that man.

  I’d seen no bite mark.

  Peering around the wall, I saw the thinning crowd of dead soldiers, each still turning right into the cul-de-sac, following their dead colleagues to torment any residents still alive.

  There were only a few by the time I walked toward the white of the van. I could just about make it out around the twist of the road on the other side of the village by the church. Toni was probably already there, ready to grab me when I arrived and tear off a strip for going it alone, or shower me with an apology.

  She wouldn’t be the only one raising her voice. I would make it clear things had gone too far.

  I meandered, hugging the buildings to avoid putting my bare feet on the gravelled edges of the road. Using the line of detached houses for cover, I stopped each moment at the sight or fear of a soldier’s glance with the lolling roll of their heads. I ducked into doorways. After checking the coast was clear, I stepped back into the road.

  Passing in front of a dark house, I didn’t see the door hanging open before it was too late; before a pale hand shot from the darkness, yanking my arm to drag me, my feet smacking against the concrete step to envelope me in the shadows.

  49

  He was alive, his hands warm to touch. I tried to let my breath catch, tried to push away the musty tang of dust in the air. I tried to let my chest relax as I sat on the floor, staying where I’d landed on the carpet in the stranger's hallway.

  “I saved you,” the man’s voice said in a thick, west country accent, his body just a wide shadow at the door.

  “Thank you,” I said, my breath yet to slow. “I’m okay, but thank you.”

  “There’s too many of them,” he said, still staring through the open door, his head darting left and right. Abruptly he turned, stepping back into the hallway.

  The room was too dark to see very much, the carpet a shade of grey. Dark, damp stains clung to the walls. The thick air only helped my conclusion. To my left stood an open door, another to the right at the base of the rising stairs.

  “Thank you again,” I said. “But I’ve got to go. I have a friend out there. She’ll want to make sure I’m okay.”

  He paused and I watched his head twist, but the light was too dim to catch more than a pudgy outline of features as they lingered in my direction. He turned around in the doorway, took another look left and right, pausing in each direction before he let the door close at his back. The silhouette of his hands turned and pulled the key from the lock.

  “I’ve really got to go,” I said, my heart rate still not falling. My heels stung as I pulled myself up.

  “Wait for help here,” he said in a breathy, asthmatic voice, offering out a hand while he pushed the key into his pocket with the other.

  “I insist, but thank you,” I said, already at my feet without his help whilst trying my best to keep my voice even.

  A shadow passed on the other side of the front door’s three thin windows, and then another. I thought about screaming, but I could have read this all wrong. My first fears could just be a hang up.

  I felt annoyance creeping in.

  “Look, I'm thankful for your help, but I have to insist you open the door so I can re-join my friend.”

  “Insist all you want, you’re not going anywhere.”

  Bile rose in my stomach, but I held back from my gut reaction to scream and call for someone to come to my rescue. This guy just needed to be told to stop being such a prick. What could he do anyway, the size of him? He looked like if I said boo he’d have a heart attack and fall to the floor clutching his chest.

  “I’m going. Now get out of my fucking way, you big fat creep,” I said, taking a step forward. “I will scream this place down and you’ll be surrounded by those things.”

  Despite the darkness, with my first foot forward I saw the concern on his features and the bunching in his cheeks as his hand pulled something from behind him before pushing it out towards me.

  He mumbled under his breath with all but an aura of light around his wide frame blocking the doorway. His face lit from below. His chins hung heavy from his shadowed features as the crackling blue light of electricity arced between the two prongs of the Taser in his hand.

  I turned and ran to the back of the house. Racing through the hallway, I knocked a thin, tall telephone stand to the floor, the bells pinging as the Bakelite hit the carpet.

  In the kitchen I had my hand on the back door and pushed down the handle whilst pulling as hard as I could.

  It was locked. Of course it was.

  I picked up a bowl filled with rotting fruit from the kitchen counter, raised it above my head with both hands, but felt his grip against my wrists and his pull backward as my legs buckled from under me.

  Screaming, the air went from my lungs before I could get any volume, each of my muscles contracting and relaxing at the same time as the electricity took over my body. All I could do was listen to the concern in his voice.

  “It’s for your own good.”

  50

  My vision blurred. Sounds rolled into one. His stench felt thick in my face, his breath heaving as he carried me over his shoulder in slow, painful steps, each one higher than the last.

  I kept silent, not able to talk, not able to think what would come when we reached the top. Tears boiled over as he laid me down in a dark room. The musk of months-old bed clothes surrounded me.

  I tried to fight as he grabbed at my hands, but when his face lit up with an arc of electricity, I let him take them and seal the Velcro around my wrists, clipping the cuffs to straps either side. My instinct told me to kick out, but the memory of the spasm won and I let myself go.

  I shuffled up the bed, resting my head on a pillow to get a better look. I tried to bring my hands together, but when I could almost touch my fingers, the straps stopped my progress. A lamp clicked on to my side, its long arm tilting with a hand wrapped around its shaft. The light fell to my body, turning me away from the brightness and he disappeared into the dark.

  I heard his weight rest in an armchair, the leather creaking under his mass. A huff of air came from his chest as it pushed out the effort, leaving just the rattle of his lungs with each laboured breath.

  I looked to the window to see the daylight had almost gone, what remained of the light doing nothing to help me see the room.

  “Just wait it out here,” he said.

  “I’m sorry but you’ve got the wrong idea.”

  “What wrong idea?” The words came out questioning and breathless.

  “I just need to go. I need to meet up with my friend.”

  “You’re safe here. I’m sorry I had to use the stinger. It’s for your own good. You don’t know what they are.”

  “I do. I do. I really do. Please just let me out,” I said, my voice rising as I pleaded.

  “Please keep quiet or I’m going to have to cover your mouth.”

  I held back the words and slowed my breath as he spoke again.

  “You don’t want to attract those things. Trust me on that.”

  I waited with nothing else I could do, the grate of his breath somehow reassuring me that he was still sitting there and not coming closer. He wasn’t the worst thing I’d had to deal with this day and I knew with certainty I would deal with worse before all this was over. I told myself again and again this was just another story to tell. The underbelly of rural England. Of humanity.

  With a great bubbling surge of noise from my belly, his breath paused, the silence disconcerting, leaving me with a rising pain.

  I thought of Toni out in the darkness alone
. She was safe. She had the gun, but her worry would be uncontrollable. By now she’d be at the van for sure. She’d be searching and I listened out for the distant call of my name.

  The void had grown in my stomach, a cloud descending into my head. I remembered the first time I’d had this feeling; the first time I’d experienced the alien depth of want in my belly.

  Anger surged as I pulled at the bounds around my wrists.

  “Is this the only way you can get girls?” I blurted out, regretting the words as I heard a deep breath and the complaint from the chair, air hoofing from his lungs, the floorboards creaking with each movement.

  I looked into the darkness, following as the noise travelled around the room, but the bedside light was too bright to make out any shapes in the shadows.

  “You’ve got the wrong idea,” he said, and I flinched at the words coming somewhere to my right, the view masked by the bright light.

  I screamed with all the effort I could muster, but all I got was his breath running harder as the noise tailed off.

  “Please don’t,” he pleaded as the floorboards creaked to the sound of a tape being ripped from the roll.

  I kept still, knowing I would need my energy soon to stop myself destroying this man and diving too deep into what I could feel coming.

  With surprise, his hands didn’t appear in the light, but as I heard the floorboards creak again I couldn’t hold back my voice.

  “No,” I said. “Please, no. Untie me. Let me go,” I added as I tried to listen for a reaction, whilst knowing he was staring back at me from the other side of the light. All I could hear was the slow breath.

  His wheeze had gone, his breath so shallow.

  His odour was changing and with every breath I could taste the richness of his sweetening meats.

  A sheen of sweat glistened on my body, despite the cold, each of his breaths sending a fresh wave of sensation through me and it felt as if saliva poured into my mouth.

  His podgy face peered in from behind the light with wide eyes and confusion staring back.