The flatbed fared no better. In attempting to avoid the collision the driver only succeeded in hitting stationary cars parked at the side of the road. That impact overturned it as well.
The cab turned onto its side, the bed slewing behind, and slid forward. Shattering the display window of a furniture store, it finally stopped, mammoth front wheel lazily spinning above a dining table. The table dressed now with shards of glass, chunks of felt-covered proscenium and splintered wood.
The truck windscreen was crazed but somehow still intact. After a few moments, there was movement in the cab. A booted foot burst through the glass as at least one of the occupants prepared to battle for their life out on the street.
<><><>
The Impreza lay on its crumpled roof, four wheels exposed to the sky and rolling softly to permanent stillness.
Like a dog dying slowly in its sleep.
There was no movement within that vehicle.
Chapter 5.
New Starters and Leaving Parties.
Ranj hadn’t slept, not properly, not real sleep, just fitful dozing. It had been difficult enough sleeping anyway, but the events of the night before rendered sleep an unlikely fantasy. A nice thought that wasn’t going to happen. There were too many things to think about. The killing of the old woman, Attis being injured, the fear of their fragile safety being fractured if the creatures outside broke in.
When the morning light grew past a suggestion, he gave up the ghost on sleep and got up. Exhausted, more exhausted than he could ever recall. He felt as if he were being worn down, his substance being slowly eroded day by day, each night of poor rest chipping bits of him away, making his edges more ragged.
The night before, he’d eventually dozed as the activity outside had lessened. There were creatures still out there, but without further provocation or any obvious target, their interest in the office seemed to flux and wane. Ranj had a feeling that they somehow knew there was prey nearby but couldn’t pin it down clearly. If they did, they’d pursue it relentlessly.
The day spooled out around him, a ball of string pulled by some mysterious weight, unravelling into a dimly remembered, unknowably vast space. His watch told him it was Friday but that was the only touchstone he had. The names of the days had ceased to hold any meaning. It could have been any day. Ranj had never taken tranquilizers but if they’d have been available at that point, he’d have gobbled them down like the last sweets on earth. He meandered between the foyer and the sixth floor, his nerves taut and fraying, alert for trouble. Expecting it, anticipating it like the downtrodden anticipate the sting of the lash.
Several discussions with the girls found the three of them in agreement and produced little in the way of a concrete plan. They had to leave but couldn’t decide where to go.
They didn’t trust Sault but didn’t know what to do about it.
They suspected that the nurse, Attis, was infected but shied away from doing anything other than agreeing to keep him isolated on the ground floor under observation.
That, the issue of Attis, troubled Ranj more than he could explain to them. In a short time, he’d got to know the guy and liked him, valued him as a person. The nurse was stronger and braver than he was and despite that, probably because of it, the man now lay injured and listless. There was a lesson there, Ranj knew that much, even though he might have difficulty accepting it. And however instinctive and instant his respect for the man, Ranj now approached Attis with caution in his step and a chunk of killing steel in his hand.
Sault said little and his apparent withdrawal unnerved Ranj further still.
Philip Sault reminded Ranj of a family guard dog they’d had when he was a kid. That dog had once scared off a burglar who was attempting to break in through one of those old style louvre windows. In the dark hours of the night, the entire household had been woken by furious barking and had come down to see the burglar running away, one of the glass louvres missing, later to be discovered outside in a flower bed by the window. The dog was frothing at the mouth, jumping and frenzied, desperate to get at the intruder.
That dog, Ranj was ashamed that he couldn’t even remember its name, Tiger maybe, was fearsome and had proved its worth.
But it radiated a danger that you could almost taste. It wasn’t malicious. Quite the opposite. It seemed to function without emotion, to be capable of unleashing a violence that was cold and efficient and merciless.
Action untempered by feeling.
A short time after the attempted burglary, the dog had disappeared. His parents passed it off with some vague half explanation but they needn’t have worried about consoling him. Ranj felt nothing but relief. Being around that dog had scared him more than he had ever been able to articulate. Scared him more than the concept of burglars in many ways.
Sault conjured the same mix of emotions. Uncomfortable admiration ...and fear. The man’s swift capability had saved them, but Ranj suspected that the guy would despatch any of them with the same clinical dispassion.
As the day wore on, they had several desultory conversations about Attis. It was clear that they needed to take precautions and in the end, locking him on a different floor seemed the least objectionable option.
Ranj volunteered to do it.
He helped Attis up to the first floor, having to half carry him up the stairs. When they got up there, he didn’t have the heart to lock the wounded man in an office, instead settling him on a sofa dragged near to the stair doors.
Attis had said little, mumbling in his own language, weak and fevered looking. Ranj thought he detected a dull gratitude in the man’s sunken eyes and that discomfited him as much as everything else did. In the circumstances, he felt obliged to help, wanted to at least offer some compassion, but the two of them being alone in that incongruously deserted space only made Ranj more aware of how vulnerable he was.
Attis looked sick to him, sicker than he should be, even allowing for the nasty injuries he’d sustained.
“How are you feeling?” Ranj asked him.
“Not so good. The damage is done. It is on the inside now, I can feel it”
His voice was hoarse and low. The tone flat and resigned, infinitely saddened.
Ranj didn’t have an adequate reply. He proffered a bottle of water and Attis shook his head and looked away, speaking again without looking back at Ranj.
“I miss my home. This ...it would have been better ...I should be in my own land for ...this. Not here.”
When Attis did look back, there was the glimmer of tears in his eyes.
“I don’t want to become one of those ...animals.”
Ranj had no adequate reply to that either. He merely told the Attis that he’d come back at regular intervals to check on him and made his way back to the reception area on the ground floor.
Locking the first floor behind him.
He sat alone in the foyer, watching the occasional blurred flicker of movement as creatures ghosted past the glass, his improvised pipe bender weapon at his side.
He was there when he heard the sound of engines, and then the discordant booms and grating screech of collision. Followed by Adalia’s voice shouting from the radio on his belt.
<><><>
To his astonishment, Julian Holloway remained conscious throughout the crash. Disorientated and stunned by all means, but conscious.
So disorientated that he wondered where he was for a few seconds, and so stunned that he barely noticed the painful thump as he undid his seatbelt and landed awkwardly on the roof of the upturned car.
Dust from the airbag clogged in his nostrils and clung to the inside of his mouth. He began to spit and cough but strangled it as he became aware of things moving in the street beyond the cracked windscreen. He dimly heard the tinkle of glass behind them, back up the street. Perhaps something to do with the truck they’d hit. Or that had hit them if you wanted to argue the point. That noise or something up there seemed to galvanise the things in the street, drawing them, hyenas to a prospe
ctive kill.
Julian could smell petrol. He twisted his head, pain flaring in his neck and shooting into his back and hips. Saw petrol dripping on the backseat, a small rainbow pool seeping into old leather. Bare feet, taloned and terrifying, flashed past the windows of the upturned car and he had to stifle the scream building in his dusty throat.
He held him himself stock-still and registered dripping of another kind, the blood oozing from Carlton Pearcey’s scalp.
For one horrible moment, Julian thought Carlton might be dead. A few dreadful heartbeats when his mind when blank and he considered just giving up, just curling into a ball, closing his eyes and shutting it all out.
And then the man moaned, his eyelids flickered.
“Carlton, are you okay?” Julian whispered.
Gently gripped the man’s shoulder. He was answered by another groan but Carlton opened his eyes.
“Head hurts, think it’s okay ...but my leg feels crunked as well. I can move it but it hurts like a bastard. Probably a good sign if I can move it. Get me out of this fucking harness before I pass out again.”
As Julian helped him unbuckle the belt and right himself, they heard screams from behind them and then the hollow boom of gunfire. Two shots separated by a five second gap. More screams and the crash of breaking glass.
“Shot gun I think,” Pearcey muttered.
“Carlton, can you move? We’ve got to go now, while whatever’s happening back up the road is occupying them,” Julian breathed, sweat dripping from his forehead in the heat of car.
He indicated the area around them.
“It’s as clear as it’s ever going to be. Once that’s finished back there, we’ll be sitting ducks. They’ll eventually spot us, however quietly we sit here. We can get out on your side and stick to the side of the buildings. Find somewhere to hide. Or another car or ...something.”
Pearcey grimaced as he shifted position.
“Yeah. Okay, yeah. You’re right. Good call.”
Pearcey took a deep breath and wiped away blood that was threatening to run into his eye. He looked at Julian and nodded once before turning and crawling through the broken passenger window. Shoving his bag ahead of him, Julian followed, wincing at the wire of pain in his neck and the fragments of glass that bit into knees.
Pearcey struggled to his feet and immediately fell as his left leg gave way. Julian stumbled after him and, grabbing his arm, shuffled them both up six wide steps that led to the frontage of an office building, a raised inset terrace with railings, that fronted the entrance and part of the ground floor of the building.
Pearcey stumbled again and as Julian staggered with him, from the corner of his eye, he saw the creature rushing at them.
What used to be a man, hairless and deformed, dressed in the remnants of jeans and tee shirt. Stained and filthy, hanging on the thing’s body like fading memory.
Dropping Pearcey and positioning himself between the onrushing creature and his fallen comrade, Julian swung the bag containing his laptop as the thing reached the top step and launched itself. The bag connected edge first with the creature’s jaw and Julian heard the crunch of impact.
Felt the crunch.
The thing was sent sprawling along the terrace on which they now stood.
Before Julian had time to gather himself, another creature, naked and bestial, skittered up the steps and threw itself at him. There was no chance to swing the bag again. In desperation he managed to wedge it between himself and the creature. Felt the computer inside shudder as the thing’s mouth snapped and bit at the obstruction.
The force of the attack sent Julian reeling. He was unable to prevent the scream of pain and surprise as he crashed to his back, head and spine jarring against polished stone.
The thing on top of him, claws scrabbling at his arms, teeth biting at the bag as Julian fought to block and parry jaws that would rip him to pieces.
All he could do, no other options, no other weapons. Just a matter of time before he tired or luck deserted him. That thing wouldn’t tire, it wouldn’t stop and it didn’t need luck. Because it was an animal with one instinctive purpose, a killing machine rendered in mutated flesh and bone.
Pearcey on his hands and knees, blood dripping like a melting mask down his face. Then lunging at them, knife miraculously in his hands, a deranged rugby forward making for a murderous try. Burying the blade in the back of the thing’s neck, pulling it free in thick spray of dark fluid, and rolling away, gasping with exertion.
Julian shoved the still shuddering beast off him in time to see the first attacker crawling toward Pearcey, damaged but relentless, jaws bared to expose massive drool slimed teeth. Grasping Pearcey’s boots and pulling itself up to him, propelled by insatiable hunger.
Pearcey reared to meet it, the knife in both hands, and stabbed the blade into the gaping maw before it had time to plunge at him.
Hilt deep, grating against those savage teeth.
Held it there as the thing thrashed and hissed before hefting the beast aside and pulling the knife free in the process.
They lay on their sides in the shade of the terrace, facing each other, unlikely companions shipwrecked by circumstance and glad to be alive. Hauled themselves up on abraded elbows to rest against the cool glass at their backs and survey the sun and shadow speckled street.
“Oh fuck.”
Pearcey said it with a weary smile in his voice.
He slowly pushed himself upright on his good leg, roughly grabbing Julian’s shoulder and helping him up as well.
“Oh ...wow.” Julian whispered the words. He stared at the street in horrified awe.
Whatever diversion had attracted those things had stopped. No more screams, no further gun shots. It had ceased to be the main attraction. The street before them was filling with mutated humanity.
Julian was too tired, too dazed. He could have been in tip-top condition, it wouldn’t have mattered. There were simply too many.
He nearly laughed at himself.
One or two would have been too many.
At his side, Pearcey was out on his feet. The man could barely walk. Julian didn’t know how badly injured he was but not being able to stand unaided wasn’t a god sign. No, that didn’t bode well, not being able to reliably stay on two feet was going to be a definite drawback in the next few moments.
Julian felt the fear begin to numb him. He could try hitting them with his laptop again, but he had a feeling that it was trick that had a limited effectiveness, and he’d probably used it all up. As he stared at the gathering storm of claws and teeth in front of him, Pearcey grasped his wrist and put the knife in his hand, wrapping Julian’s knuckles around the blood slick handle and squeezing. The weapon felt simultaneously alien and oddly reassuring.
Pearcey dipped into his jacket and pulled out the gun.
“No point being quiet now. Go for their heads if you can.”
Pearcey’s eyes didn’t leave the street but his hand went around Julian’s shoulders as he inched them towards the building doors.
They were trapped, boxed in. Julian could feel countless inhuman eyes tracking their pointless movement.
“We’ll try the doors. Break the windows if that’s a no-go. Go down fighting either way Jules. No surrender, no quarter. Back to back if we need to do it.”
They didn’t reach the doors.
A creature appeared like dark magic over the railing. Without thought, Julian leapt forward and drove the knife through its temple and would have toppled with his own momentum if Pearcey hadn’t caught him and somehow steadied them both.
The next two materialised to their right, again sliding over the railing. Pearcey clumsily twisted in their direction and attempted to steady the gun.
Neither of them heard the door behind them unlatch and open. But they saw the patchily bearded Asian man emerge and begin wielding the weird, taped metal weapon.
He despatched the first creature that scrambled the steps with a swing that crushed it’s skull
in a spray of thick blood. Unintentionally, the swing of the weapon brushed Julian’s left elbow and numbed it.
The second creature on the steps was caught by the return swing. The bearded man adjusted his weight and brought the weapon back and up, catching the thing underneath the chin, lifting it off its feet, neck broken and jaw ruined.
He turned to Julian, spittle flecked lips and crazed eyes, and threw him inside the building. Turned back and jabbed the metal club into the striated midrift of another beast, throwing it back onto the crowded steps. Clearing a momentary space.
Pearcey fired three times.
A fourth.
And was pulled inside the building, carelessly thrown onto carpeted floor as the Asian man slammed and locked the door.
<><><>
The windows wouldn’t hold.
That was Carlton Pearcey’s first thought and it was entirely correct.
The thudding impacts on the door didn’t overly concern him. Small surface area and reinforced glass should be able to take some punishment. The windows were too big. They’d fail, given enough pressure, or a concentrated pressure in a weak spot. And the force was ramping towards critical even in the few seconds that he’d been inside.
The Asian guy was a piece of work. Not trained, just a natural. Pearcey liked that in someone. A natural aptitude. As a general trait it was a positive, and subjectively, he’d be inclined to like anyone who saved his life. It was all good when both boxes got ticked.
The place smelled of death. A variety of odours permeated the air, all of them bad. Spilled blood, rank meat, fear sweat. And something more. The smell of strange corruption. Pearcey felt a visceral dislike of the building despite being grateful to be inside it. Mind you, the death hammering at the windows didn’t exactly make him feel all at home and relaxed.
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