His head wound was an irritant. His leg an unknown. He hoped the latter was compression damage that would work itself out. He didn’t think there were too many doctors available, so hope was his best bet at that stage.
And he knew he’d reached the stage of hopeful gambles and trusting to luck.
Julian was used up, wasted and empty on the floor a few feet away. He’d stepped up without hesitation, saved Pearcey’s life and shown that he was more capable than he himself understood.
Julian was alright. Yeah, he was too clever for his own good. Yeah, he thought too much. Yeah, he reeked of cag-handed fuck up. But he was alright. More than that. He was one of the good guys. As far as Pearcey was concerned, Jules was part of the family now.
So was the stocky little fuck with the medieval plumber’s mace who’d come dashing out to help them, wading into the fray with a bravery that was more than impressive in the circumstances.
The light from the windows was only visible through the upper portion of the glass. Below that, there was a moiling opaqueness that scratched and shifted as the mass of creatures grew, fighting for access to the quarry. Fighting for first bite of the kill.
As Pearcey struggled upright and shepherded Julian down the corridor towards their saviour and four other figures, the glass shattered and collapsed.
Hissing and thrashing, hell bubbled into the building.
Shouting and screaming from the small group of people behind him.
Incredible, so much noise from so few people. But they moved decisively despite their panicked racket, whisking Julian out of danger, pulling him into the stairwell. Tugging Pearcey himself backwards, even as he fired into the boiling claw filled corridor.
Then he was falling through the doorway, the door pushed shut on his boot, pain flaring in his injured leg. That leg ruthlessly kicked clear by one of his rescuers and the door locked.
Pearcey lay prone, staring up at a horde of monstrous creatures that clambered at the closed doors, scratching and biting at the wood and glass. Even now, pressing on it so that the frame creaked and groaned with the ominous premonition of failure.
<><><>
Ranj staggered back, breathless and terrified. The creatures slammed into the doors with a force that was awesome. If Sault hadn’t kicked the black man’s foot clear, those things would be amongst them, slashing and biting. Even now with the doors locked, he wondered how long they’d hold. The wood was already protesting under the pressure.
And they wouldn’t have made it that far without the black guy buying them a few precious seconds. When the windows shattered, those creatures had swarmed into the office, like giant insects, clambering over each other, literally throwing themselves into the building, hissing with savagery and hunger.
The group of survivors had fallen back to the stairway doors but it had been close. The black guy had limped after them and killed enough of the things to delay their surge just about long enough to lock the doors.
Ranj’s ear were ringing from the shots. The man had been unerring with the gun. Calmly firing four times without missing a beat, each shot exploding the head of one of those things. Ranj had virtually snatched him out of the corridor before Sault slammed the doors.
The decision to go and help him and the other guy hadn’t been planned or thought out in any way, but Ranj didn’t regret it. He’d heard the crash, then seen their car, and when he saw the two of them crawl out, he’d already knew he would try to get them inside. Adalia’s voice on the radio, urging him to help them had only spurred him on. True, their refuge was compromised. That had been inevitable. In his heart, he’d known it was merely a matter of time before those things picked up on them.
“We have to go, get out,” Caroline’s voice, cutting through the noise, echoing his thoughts.
“Grab what you can from upstairs and get down to the basement. We’re going. Now.”
“Where? Where are we going?” Adalia, scared, confused.
“I don’t know. We’ll work something out.” Caroline said.
The doors rattled and Ranj noticed the top hinge of the left-hand door shift.
The doors were going to fail, they’d break through. Just a matter of time. It was all down to when and not if, Ranj thought distractedly.
“There may not be time,” the black guy said as he heaved himself to his feet and grabbed the stair rail for support.
“Not unless there’re other routes you can lock down. Those doors aren’t going to hold for long.”
As if to lend weight to his laboured words, the glass viewing pane in one of the doors exploded inwards and a taloned hand snaked through and grabbed Adalia’s hair.
Yanking her backwards as it tried to force its head through the gap, yammering and hissing.
Adalia screamed as her feet slid from under her and she was pulled to the door.
Ranj watched helpless as the newcomer brought his gun up and steadied himself against the rail. Before the man could act, Caroline moved between the wavering barrel of the pistol and the slavering creature. Reversing the crow bar so her hand gripped the wicked split claw at its end, she rammed pointed steel into the face of the thing.
Shrieked even louder than Adalia’s screaming as she drove the metal into the creatures eye.
Lumpy maroon fluid splashing out around the edges of the weapon as it punched through eye and bone and into brain. Raining down on Adalia like unholy benediction as she continued to scream and scream.
The girl wrenched herself free and crawled away to the edge of the stairs, hanks of her hair left clutched between the beast’s murderously misshapen fingers. Fingers that spasmed and clenched even as it died.
Caroline pulled the bar free and collapsed back on the stairs as they all watched, horrified and momentarily immobilised. The dead creature was torn aside by those behind and another took its place. Trying to force through the gap, heedless of the razor shards of glass that stubbornly remained in the frame, not caring that the gap was inadequate.
The creature would somehow squeeze through, despite the physical impossibility of it, compress and alter itself, slither and rip itself into their midst. Ranj believed that, believed it irrespective of any logic. That thing, or one of the countless others, would get through that gap. One way or another, they would get through. Bones would collapse and reform, or wood would simply splinter and break, but they’d get through.
And then the thought became redundant as the weak hinge at the top of the door pinged and the wood moved alarmingly free of the frame.
“Go! Go!” Caroline shouted, her voice roaring and ragged.
Ranj stood as they moved past him, down the stairs.
“I have to get Attis,” he said as Caroline put her hand on his shoulder to push him ahead of her.
They all stopped
Philip Sault looked about to speak but reigned it back and waited.
Caroline’s face contorted as she struggled to reply. Ranj saved her the trouble.
“I’ll get him and meet you in the basement.”
He hefted the pipe benders and looked at Adalia, every bone in his body urging him to flee with them, away from that hellish doorway. He didn’t want to even go past it, past the flailing mutated arm that whipped and clawed at the air, below the drooling, tooth filled head wedged into that thin creaking opening.
But he couldn’t leave Attis. Same as he couldn’t have ignored the two survivors outside. Never mind how that decision had ended up, he couldn’t do it.
Sault could. And that was answer enough wasn’t it. Sault would walk away without a second glance and sleep well on the back of it. He didn’t like Sault and he didn’t want to be like that.
Caroline looked at him and he could see a lengthy conversation in her face. A conversation where she’d outgun him with long words, and where he’d match her with conviction and belief. A whole evening’s worth of debate, persuasive argument and counter argument that would amicably end up nowhere. Perhaps a splash or two of brandy and a thick
head in the morning. A conversation that they wouldn’t have. Not now, another time maybe.
She simply nodded and turned away.
Adalia, staring at him, beautiful even drenched in filth. Gosh, she really was something. Even the cool guys might have been a little intimidated, let alone the losers like him.
She disappeared from sight as Caroline grabbed her arm and pulled her downwards. She hadn’t said anything. She’d looked lost. Without hope.
He stood panting with fear and adrenaline sapped tiredness. Listened as one of the new guys starting describing where they could go. Not the big guy with the gun. The other one.
A plan. A safe place.
He turned away and edged warily past the mass of creatures that were pressing ever harder against the doorway.
He could do this. Get Attis and then get out with the others. Get somewhere safe. It might be risky but he could do it. Get somewhere safe. If he got his arse in gear ...and had some luck.
<><><>
As he unlocked the first floor entrance, he heard the rifle crack sound of the door below breaking under the pressure exerted by sheer weight of numbers. Numbers fuelled by voracious hunger.
The radio slipped from his pocket, clattered to the floor and bounced over the edge of the stairs. Following it, looking down the stairwell, he saw the first of those monstrous things scampering up the stairs. And behind that first two or three, a seething tidal wave of them. Frothing with claws and teeth.
He had time to mutter a few choice swear words under his breath before turning to meet the thing that used to be Attis as it burst through the door he’d opened.
Ranjit Basuta, decent and capable, with intentions as good as any to be found, would never reach the basement.
Chapter 6.
Leaving Never Easy.
Caroline was standing at the basement door when she heard the creatures break in above her. She slammed the door shut as the first of them hurtled around the bend in the stairs. Heard the things thud against the door, heard the snarling of inhuman sound and the rasping of claws against the wood. Backing away, heard the concussive beating on the door.
Tears in her eyes, she turned and hurried to the Range Rover. The others stood around it.
Adalia came to her, anxiously keying the walkie talkie and getting no response.
She hugged Adalia.
God that was good, someone hugging her. She turned her head aside and breathed over Adalia’s shoulder. Caroline had a feeling that her breath smelled bad, if nothing else, it must be soured by sorrow.
Ranj. She wanted Ranj to be here.
She looked at the others and the need to explain evaporated. They were all aware of the pounding, the noise from the door.
Those things were in the stairwell. Even if Ranj had made it to the first floor, he had no way down to the basement. He might be able to keep the creatures out for a while but there was no way out for him. Or any way that they could rescue him.
Caroline breathed deeply, holding back the tears. She was so tired and so lost.
She stepped back from Adalia, put an arm round the girl’s shoulders. Held her close, wanting to thank her and protect her at the same time
Addressed them all as she leaned on Adalia.
“We have to go. There are too many, the stairs are full. We can drive out through the shutter there. The power’s out, but the shutter can be raised manually. Someone will need to crank that handle to open it.”
She indicated the control at the side of the metal grill.
The area outside was blessedly clear of creatures. They were focused on the front of the building. That wouldn’t last. More and more of them would mass, a tornado that would fuel itself and envelop the building before it moved on, consuming everything in its path.
The precariousness of their situation was apparent to all of them. Once they opened the shutter, they would be instantly vulnerable, their chance to escape a scant few seconds, a window of opportunity that was narrowing as they stood there.
If they didn’t go soon, they wouldn’t go at all.
Adalia didn’t wait for any further discussion, she ran to grill and began to open the shutter. Julian and Sault went to the gate and hefted it upwards as soon as they could wedge their fingers under the bottom of it. Pearcey limped to the front of the vehicle and positioned himself to cover the exit. He was exhausted, the vehicle was all that kept him upright. The gun at his side, all that he had left if they faced further attack. The grill inched upwards as the door into the basement began to creak and groan.
Even as they jumped and hauled themselves into the four by four, creatures had materialised, either overspill from out front or attracted by the noise of the gate.
Caroline occupied the driver’s seat. Never mind the pain in her foot, it was her vehicle. Earned with the currency of hard experience, awful and mundane. As she left her workplace for the final time, she had to drive through the massing creatures to escape.
Flying bodies, ugly thuds and the crunch of warped bone beneath the wheels.
Horrible sounds and sensations to which the occupants of the car were already becoming desensitised. A few days ago, hitting something living would have been a shocking incident, now the horror of the things they were hitting outweighed the action itself.
Julian directed Caroline north, towards the Black Hills institute.
She needed little direction for the general location, she knew the area. A mere twenty miles if that. A short drive on any normal day, even allowing for traffic. Caroline navigated around the city centre, choosing roads she calculated might be empty of threat. Apart from the first few minutes, when they had to thread their way through a residential district that neighboured the business centre, it was a good choice. Roads that were Sunday quiet, lined with commercial and industrial premises, empty except for the occasional running figure glimpsed in their wake from the rearview mirror. One or two of those figures might have been people.
People like them. Unchanged. Desperate and fighting to survive.
Running out for help.
Caroline wasn’t sure but she thought they might well have been. The fact that she didn’t stop, didn’t even consider it, made her feel bad in a way that she had to push down. Shove down and shove again against any resistance. Because if she gave in to it, she might very well be killing more than just herself now. She might be killing them all.
They made introductions but other than that spoke little. Newly acquainted knots of people thrown in with fresh strangers. Battered and in varying degrees of shock.
They eventually came to a roundabout on the outskirts of the city and Caroline took the A34 north. Thinking only about driving. Blanking out everything except the road and keeping them moving. Blanking out the smell of sweat and fear that filled the car, blanking out the guilt that was piling up like storm clouds on a bleary horizon.
Speeding, feet stabbing the pedals at the merest hint of open space, slowing just enough to dodge stalled cars or possible obstructions, ignoring the twinges of pain from her foot.
And making decent time, despite the encroaching gloom and the consensus that turning on headlights would be a mistake.
Making decent time until they arrived at a snarled intersection. Cars and vans abandoned every which way. A messy sprawl of metal.
Messy, but not impassable.
She negotiated a route through it. Painfully slow going, a speed that left them all feeling exposed and open to attack. Nudging dead cars aside, scraping metal, bulling her way forward, their way forward, as the others muttered advice. Caroline kept remarkably quiet, biting back retorts that trembled on her dry lips like prayers for deliverance from responsibility.
Take the fucking wheel then if you think you can do better.
Finally breaking free of the jam, they rolled onto a raised section of the road. An aging effort at a flyover that was made grandiose by geography and offered a panoramic view of the straight road ahead.
She began to accelerate and
then abruptly eased. They slowed and halted just beyond the brow of the rise. Then sat and considered that expansive view. Any conversation or comment stopped along with their progress.
As the road continued down, in the distance it entered what had been a densely residential district, lined by houses that spread out on either side of it. A patchwork quilt of grey and red brick interlaced with lush green smears, set against a backdrop dramatised by dark columns of smoke.
Down there, as the road entered that sprawl of housing, there’d been a multiple collision, a pile up that blocked the way. Seven, no, eight, vehicles.
It looked recent. A big delivery van and an assortment of cars. Perhaps another group of survivors, on the move, seeking safety in another place. Who knew, who would ever know?
Creatures swarmed around the crazy juxtaposition of junked metal. And beyond that, there were too many of them to count. A good old writhing load of them, oh, just lots and lots. Certainly hundreds and maybe thousands. A scurrying erratic mass of things that displayed a human shape and moved in an insectile feeding fury.
Busy, busy, busy. Busy doing whatever these things did, but Caroline was pretty sure that finding food was near the top of the list.
Near the top? Scratch that, her experience so far suggested that it was their sole purpose, their sole reason for being.
Killing machines. Animals.
There was no way that she was driving into that. She might just as well ask one of her new companions to throw her out on the tarmac. Ask one of them to beat her to death with one of the sharp or heavy weapons. The instruments that were strewn around the inside of the Range Rover like candy wrappers on a family outing.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said the big guy sitting on her left. Carlton Pearcey. He’d said his name through pain-gritted teeth when they introduced themselves. He looked about ready to drop but still radiated a capability that scared her slightly.
Julian, the pale thin guy. He seemed to defer to Pearcey even though the bigger man could barely stand up.
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