by Rob Lopez
Jennifer turned her tortured face to him. “He’s in pain, Breht. His soul is crying. I can feel it.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“You wounded him.”
Jennifer began to sob and Breht grabbed her as she started to collapse. “Filipova. Take her inside and see what you can do for her.”
Filipova nodded. “I’ve started the treatment for the others. I’ll monitor them all.”
“And the rest of you,” he added. “Get inside now. We’re not going anywhere – not while there’s people to look after. It’s safer here than outside for now.”
As everyone dispersed, Cobb turned to Breht. “How can you say it’s safe here? People are dying. The plague is right here with us.”
“People don’t want to go. You can see that in their faces.”
“They were waiting for your cue! If you’d have been more persuasive, they’d have followed you.”
“I can’t persuade them of something I’m not convinced about myself.”
“Why not? Fake it, for Christ’s sake. That’s what leadership’s all about.”
Wearily, Breht began ascending the steps. “That’s not what it’s about at all.”
“Breht, mate. You’ve got to listen. If we stay here, what are we going to do about Zak? Who do you think his next target is going to be? It’ll be you! And after that, who knows?”
“You’re blowing things out of proportion, Cobb. Leave Zak to me. I’ll talk with him.”
Cobb grabbed his arm. “That’s not a good idea, Breht. He’s got a hold over you and you know it.”
Breht halted. “I’m not stupid, mate.”
“He’ll lie to you and you’ll believe him. You’re the kind of person who would, because you’re too honest.”
“So you’re saying I’m a sucker?”
Cobb was visibly agitated. “I’m just worried, that’s all.”
“Well don’t be. Give Zak his stuff back and tell him I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
“Is that wise?”
“It’s a token of trust. He’ll understand.”
*
But Breht wondered whether he truly would. How far gone was Zak, and would it be possible to rehabilitate him? Breht looked at the revolver and dismissed the idea of taking it. He never wanted to touch it again. Wishing he’d never seen it, he considered giving it back to Cobb.
No, whatever the outcome, he simply needed to talk to Zak. Afterwards, he would consider what needed to be done.
Leaving the tower, he walked across the outer bailey, head down against the rain. He passed Kimberley’s shallow grave, ruminating on the madness of that event. It was hard to believe it was only this morning. The dark clouds were bringing darkness early, but it felt like the longest day of his life.
Climbing the steps to Zak’s quarters, he paused to practise his opening words, then entered.
Zak wasn’t there. On the floor, however, was a pool of blood.
Dumbfounded, Breht looked down, seeing the smeared trail that he’d inadvertently walked through. The blood trail led out of the room and up the spiral staircase. Breht ran up and found Zak crawling upwards.
“Zak!”
Breht turned him over, saw the sword wound in Zak’s chest. Clamping his hand over it, he said, “What happened?”
“Cobb,” uttered Zak, coughing up blood.
Breht’s head spun. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s been playing us,” said Zak. “He told me it was you who killed Nobby.”
Zak’s blood pumped out between Breht’s fingers. “Why...” he began. But suddenly he knew why, and he realised he’d been a fool.
You’ve been blind.
“Hang in there, mate. I’ll sort you out.”
Zak was under no such illusion, however. With every tortured breath, blood flowed over his lips. “Go,” he said.
“I’m not leaving you like this. Just hold still.”
With a mighty effort, Zak gripped Breht’s face in his bloody hands. “You were everything to me,” he coughed. “You always will be.”
“It’s not over,” cried Breht. Removing his jacket, he pressed it into the wound.
Zak sagged back, and Breht felt his heart stop beating. Frantically he pushed down on his chest, trying to restart it. He put his lips to Zak’s and breathed his life into him. But Zak was unresponsive.
Breht tasted Zak’s blood and hung his head, still struggling to comprehend how it had come to this. Screams filled his head, and he felt like he was in the lowest circle of hell.
But the screams were coming from outside.
Snapping from his stupor, Breht descended the stairs. Zombies streamed through the inner bailey, trampling Kimberley’s grave. The castle gate was open, and more were pushing their way in.
How the hell did they get the gate open?
Cobb.
Breht drew his sword and launched into them, chopping at necks, kicking at the undead as they tried to surround him. He needed to get the gate shut, but there were too many and he was forced to retreat. Runners were streaking across the compound, assaulting people as they came out of the towers. Children were screaming and running in all directions, and Breht saw the toddler scampering after them, trying to keep up. Wielding his sword like a madman, Breht tried to get through to him, but he was cut off by the horde. Thinking he could take a detour, Breht ran up the steps to the battlements and raced along the walkway.
A few survivors with shields tried to hold back the horde at the entrance to the inner bailey. Zombies piled onto the bodies they had caught, tearing at the living flesh like wolves. Zombies were entering the chapel tower, and Breht witnessed Filipova running out of the tower’s upper doorway and along the battlement walkway. She was on the other side of the castle from him, however, and he could do nothing as a runner, chasing her, dragged her down. She tried to fight it off, but the zombie gripped her tight, chewing up her legs. Dragging herself to the edge of the walkway, she caught sight of Breht, and gave him one last look. Then she threw herself over the edge, taking the zombie with her, and crashed down through the wooden roof of the cook house, where she lay motionless, the zombie still feeding.
Breht raced to his quarters, looking to get the damned revolver. If he could get down into the inner bailey, he might be able to help the rearguard action and give people a chance to escape.
Entering the tower, he leaped down the stairs and froze when he reached his room.
Cobb was there, wearing Zak’s sword and holding the revolver. He pointed it at Breht’s chest. “Looking for this?” he said casually.
“You bastard,” said Breht, out of breath. “What have you done?”
“Bringing forward the inevitable end. You didn’t think they were going to survive, did you?”
“It was you who shot Nobby.”
“Yeah. He was useful for a while. If you’d listened to me today, his death would have been worth something.”
“I can’t believe you’d do this.”
“That’s because you’re not very smart.” Cobb squeezed the trigger, the gun flashed and Breht felt the hammer blow to his chest. He sank to his knees. Cobb squeezed the trigger again, but the gun was empty. Disgusted, he tossed it to one side.
“If you hadn’t been so stupid,” he said, “you’d have come with me. There’s a castle in my home town, you know? Not as big as this one, but still promising. We could have gone there. Zak had a good idea about these things being a natural defence. It was a pity about the rest. Still, I don’t think you need to worry about anything anymore, do you? Just remember me while you’re dying, and what might have been.”
Cobb left, and Breht dropped to the floor. The screams and shouts outside had subsided, and Breht heard a moan echo up the stairwell. If he didn’t move now, the undead would tear him to shreds. Fighting through the pain, he dragged himself to the latrine chute. It was wide, the stones weathered by the years. Squeezing his shoulders in, he reached out and pulled himself through. The
next moment he was falling through the air, swimming in the rain drops, the river mud coming up to meet him.
38
Breht stared down the barrel of the rifle that Cobb pointed at him. Behind the former corporal loomed the ivy covered tower, with its arched, thick glass windows, and sandstone steps leading up to its locked wooden door. It wasn’t a military structure – more an observatory than anything – a quaint Victorian folly crafted by some romantic architect with a Gothic bent. A monument to humanity’s nostalgic view of history, in a town where history was now being scratched in blood by the undead.
“We meet again,” said Cobb, aiming his weapon with blood covered hands.
“Seems that way,” replied Breht.
Cobb sat on the cobbles, one leg stretched out. The leg was in bad shape, with chunks of flesh ripped out of it, blood dripping.
Cobb was calm. “I had a feeling you were coming after me. Just a few months ago, actually. Didn’t make sense at the time, but I can see now I was right. Just goes to show, you should always trust your instincts.” Cobb grimaced for a second. “I should have finished you off properly.”
“If you weren’t such an arrogant prick, maybe you would have.”
Cobb squeezed the trigger. There was a clack as the firing pin slammed forward onto an empty chamber.
“I knew I was out of ammo,” said Cobb with a sly grin. “I just wanted to see the look on your face.” He threw down his weapon.
Breht remained deadpan. “I’ve got some questions for you.”
“Bit late to be starting an investigation, isn’t it?”
“For you? Maybe. But I’ve got plenty of time.”
“Forget it. You’re not going to get anything out of me. You wasted your time coming here.”
Breht sheathed his sword and took out the revolver. “That depends. I can offer you a way out.” Extracting the bullet from his pocket, he loaded it into the revolver and clicked the cylinder round until the loaded chamber was in position. He pulled the hammer back so it was ready to fire.
Cobb licked his dry lips. Sweat trickled from his brow, and he grimaced again. He was in more pain than he was letting on.
“I’m giving you a choice,” said Breht. “In return, I want you to tell me why you did what you did.”
Cobb cocked his head. “You still haven’t worked it out after all this time?”
“Worked some of it out, but I’m still curious.”
“I doubt you’ll ever understand. It’s not in your nature.”
“Try me.”
“You’ve always had it easy, Breht. Everybody liked you. People looked up to you as a natural leader, even when you didn’t want to be. You couldn’t help being popular, and yet you still thought you were hard done by. You were pathetic.”
“And that made you jealous?”
Cobb laughed. “I said you wouldn’t understand. Why would I be jealous of someone who was too dumb to see what they had?” Cobb snorted. “You were a gift.”
“An opportunity, then.”
“You were so gullible. It wasn’t hard to place doubts in your head, because you were already halfway there, feeling sorry for yourself. Everybody trusted you more than me, so why not use the best tool I had?”
“To achieve what?”
“Whatever I wanted. Your job. Zak’s job. Anything.”
“Because you were ambitious, and I wasn’t.”
“Exactly.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe these jobs weren’t worth having? That they weren’t really jobs at all – just accidental placements with the added burden of responsibility?”
There was a glint in Cobb’s eye. “Have you ever felt that joyous kick inside when you kill someone? Not a zombie, but a real living person?”
Breht stared at him for a while. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. You probably never felt the ecstasy of winning, either. Just that feeling when you’ve beaten the odds, and everyone else too. This is why my answers won’t mean anything to you. You’re a sheep, Breht. Contentedly chewing grass with all the other fucking grazers, occasionally lifting your butt to be tupped by the ram. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. Justifying myself to you is like describing colour to a blind man. Just a sodding waste of time. Shoot me now and get it over with.”
Breht knew Cobb was right. He’d never be able to truly get inside the man’s mind, and if he did, the psychological damage would haunt him. Even damage him. He’d already caught a hint of the cold logic that had killed Martin and the others, just so that Cobb could get to this place. This empty, useless place.
Yet he’d also seen the other side of Cobb – the chummy, conversational Cobb. Surely an act, but not a complete one. And Cobb had saved his life on at least one occasion. There was more to the man than plain ruthlessness.
Breht weighed the revolver in his hand. “What was Nobby’s part in all this?”
Cobb slumped down with exasperated impatience. “Give it a rest, Breht, and pull the trigger now, for Christ’s sake. You’re boring me.”
“Be patient, because it’s not me who’s going to be pulling this trigger. It’s you.”
That piqued Cobb’s interest. “Say again?”
Breht squatted down. “I’m going to give this revolver to you, because I think it’s yours by right. Call it fate, if you like. You’re the one who took it off the colonel. Maybe the last bullet was for you.” Breht had a thought then that totally altered his view of Cobb. “That colonel was the first person you’d ever seen die, wasn’t it?”
A trace of annoyance flashed across Cobb’s face, breaking the mask. “What’s your point, Breht?”
And Breht saw the image for the first time – of a cocky, ambitious but green Cobb, never having deployed to a combat zone in his life, seeing the dead colonel, maybe even having heard the shot, and being fascinated by his first taste of death. So fascinated that he took the warm revolver from the colonel’s hand.
“No point. Just a deal. You give me my answers, and I’ll give you your gun back, and let you make that final choice. Either a straight death, or a lingering undeath. It’s the best I can do for you, and you only have to answer a couple more questions.”
Cobb’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You being honest?”
Breht looked straight back at him. “You know I am. So tell me, what was Nobby’s part in all this?”
A sly smile returned to Cobb’s face. “The same as you. He played the part of fool.”
“You studied him.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t hard. He had a thin skin. For all that bravado he was easily provoked. Getting him to attack you was a piece of cake. That triggered Zak’s maternal instincts, by the way – after that he wanted to protect you, though he had a strange way of showing it. And getting Nobby to turn against Zak wasn’t so hard either.”
“You killed Kimberley.”
Cobb gave a nonchalant shrug. “A hand over her face while she was asleep. Put her out of her misery. She was going to die anyway.”
Breht made the link. “She was the first person you ever killed, wasn’t she? An easy target to test whether you could do it. To get that kick inside again after you watched the colonel die.”
Cobb flashed annoyance once more. The gate rattled as the undead pushed against it, and Breht thought it was only a matter of time before they accidentally flicked up the latch. Then the gate would open and they would flood in. Overhead, crows circled, waiting for their feast.
“You enjoyed that taste,” continued Breht, “and you shot Nobby because you knew I’d suspect Zak. Knew, in fact, that you needed something big to break the bond between us. It was you who planted seeds of doubt in both his head and mine.”
Cobb gave him a look of contempt. “I didn’t need to add much. You were both as paranoid as each other.”
“And Filipova?”
“The same. She wasn’t as smart as she thought she was.”
“You killed everybody in that castle.”
; “They were dead anyway. I just speeded it up. Wasn’t worth my time spending another minute there.”
Breht looked at Cobb’s wound. “You weren’t that smart yourself, risking everything to get here. A little boy running back to his hometown. I imagine you played in this castle when you were a kid, pretending to be a knight. No, wait, that’d be too lowly a station for your kind of roleplay. Nothing less than a king would be good enough. But now it’s in ruins, and yet you still fought your way to this tower, instead of getting away. How smart was that? If you’d resisted your obsession, you could have gone somewhere else and I would never have found you.”
Cobb pulled his shoulder round and revealed the gaping wound behind. “I got bit in the town. I knew I didn’t have much time. And you’re right, I did play here as a kid. I thought that if I was going to go, I’d do it here. One last victory before it ended.”
And that was that. Breht had waited a year for this moment. He’d pictured it, yearned for it, suffered for it. If he’d hoped for his own victory, however, he was disappointed. In the end it had all been a game – right from when Cobb had been born, in fact, and Breht didn’t feel particularly moved. Cobb was right. It had all been a big sodding waste of time. He was here, it was over, and he didn’t feel a goddamn thing.
“Okay,” said Breht with a sigh. “The tower’s yours. Congratulations. You beat the odds. Here’s your reward.”
Breht tossed him the revolver and stood up.
Cobb caught the gun, and looked at it thoughtfully. “You know,” he said, “you’re too nice. Maybe that’s why people like you. I heard your last words to Nobby, by the way. He hated your guts, and you had every reason to hate him back, but you still didn’t want him to suffer.”
“Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Cobb smiled to himself. “For once, I agree with you.” He aimed the gun at Breht’s head. “In this case, it’s a third chance. I’m not going to make the mistake of hitting your chest this time.”
Breht narrowed his eyes. “After everything, is that what you really want? You’re going to turn into one of them, and all you care about is the satisfaction of seeing me dead?”