by Alex Kings
The second van came into view. It was a normal van, this one, but still heavily armoured with salvaged metal and bulletproof vests. It drove at them without slowing down.
Jess aimed for its tyres and opened fire. A moment later Mike, standing beside her, did the same. Someone hit true; one of the tyres burst, and the van rattled back and forth, rubber slapping against the ground.
But it didn't stop.
Another sound: That familiar elephant-run. The giant demon was back! It appeared at the hole a few moments before the van did. At the van drove past, the giant demon opened its ribcage-mouth. The van tried to pull away, but it was too late, and there wasn't enough room to manoeuvre. A pair of tentacles extended, heading forwards, and wrapped around the front of the van. They pulled, and the van went spinning.
As the back of the van came into view, Jess saw the rear doors were open a few inches and guessed that's where the van's occupants were planning to shoot from as they passed. Now they wouldn't get a chance – the van, after doing just over half a circle, crashed into the wall a dozen or so metres away from her and Mike. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him with her towards the crashed van.
One of its doors creaked open. The attackers inside had variously been knocked out, fallen, lost their weapons. Only two out of ten or so in the back still had their weapons, but they weren't raised. Seeing Jess and Mike aiming at them, they didn't try to do anything.
“Drop them!” ordered Jess.
A second later, Mike's gun rang out. The occupants of the van fell back, covered with holes.
She turned to him. “Why the fuck …?”
“No time for prisoners,” he grunted, heading towards the front of the van. He jammed the muzzle of his gun under the armour covering the van's cab, and fired again. Then he wrenched open the door and looked inside. “Clear.”
Jess stared at the inside of the van, covered with bodies and stinking of blood. She turned away, disgusted. No time … no time to worry about that now. She looked around. The demon had vanished from the hole. What about the final truck?
Mike was over by the corner again, peering out and firing. The commander was still taking cover on the far side.
“Stop shooting!” he shouted to his side. A few more guns continued to fire, including Mike. The commander repeated the order, and the guns fell silent. He spoke briefly into his walkie-talkie
“You've lost your backup!” he shouted to the attackers from the remaining truck. “You're the only ones left. We're coming in behind you, and we've got more backup coming. Put your weapons down or die!”
Silence. The seconds dragged out.
A voice came back from the road where the truck was parked: “We surrender.”
“Put your weapons down and come forward one at a time. This way.”
After a few seconds the first of the attackers came forward. He was roughly pulled aside and made to stand against a wall with weapons trained on him. The commander sent a couple of people to the storerooms to get handcuffs and rope.
While this was ongoing, a group of people came jogging down by the wall, the way the first van had come. They were led by the commander of the first group. And – Richard.
Where was Mason? Wasn't she supposed to be leading that group?
Eventually all the attackers came out, one by one. Six pairs of handcuffs – all Paradise had – were brought back, along with some lengths of nylon rope. The prisoners were various cuffed or tied, their weapons retrieved, their van and truck investigated. The truck was still in working order; the van wasn't, and Jess heard muttering from the people investigating the bodies inside. Jess made a note to tell Mason what Mike had done – as soon as she arrived.
Elsewhere, Richard and the two commanders discussed what to do with the prisoners. There wasn't enough space in the cells for all of them. Some of the storerooms were still empty – perhaps that would serve? It was important, all agreed, to keep to prisoners in separate group, to minimise the risks of a breakout. Eventually it was settled that six would go in the cells, two to a room, and the others would be split up between two storerooms. Perhaps in time they would be traded back to Foxglove.
Jess had just moved on from listening to that conversation when there came a shout: “Zombies!”
Immediately everyone's attention turned to the hole in the wall. Yes – there were zombies. Loping creatures with oversized shoulders and arms made of oily red flesh and tipped with foot-long, razor-sharp claws. Their heads hung back, motionless, unseeing. Instead, their shoulders and misshapen chests were spotted with inky black eyes. They came en masse.
But on they were facing a good chunk of the compound's population – well over a hundred people – all armed. Jess aimed at the nearest and, guessing its shoulder was the weak point, filled it with bullets.
Everyone else did the same.
The first line of zombies went down. The second crawled of their bodies – and went down too. Then Jess ran out of bullets. She fumbled to reload.
Other people were doing the same. By the time Jess was ready to fire again, she saw the the next wave of zombies had reached the hole in the wall. She fired again.
The hole proved to be a chokepoint. It was only wide enough for five or six zombies at once, and they were just about able to keep them at bay. After three or four attempts, the bodies began to block the hole – the zombies had to climb, which made them easier to pick off as they reached the top.
Eventually, just as the supply of bullets began to dwindle, the onslaught stopped.
Silence. Just the stink of mutated flesh, and the billowing smoke from the gun muzzles.
“That's gotta be half our whole fucking supply of bullets gone,” muttered Mike. He glared at the prisoners.
“Right,” shouted one of the commanders. “We're going to patch this wall now! You lot –” He gestured at a group including Jess. “Get the bodies out the way. You lot, get the sandbags sheet metal ready. If you need to brace it, use the van.”
Jess went with her group and started pushing zombies bodies back. This was it, she realised. Demon flesh. What she'd been trying to get before the attack. And there was no way to take any of it without everyone noticing.
Except –
“It'd be quicker to pull these ones inside,” she pointed out. It was true: The remains of the zombies outside the wall formed a drift three feet hight. To get the rest of the bodies blocking the hole out there meant picking them up and throwing them. To take them inside just meant dragging them in a few metres. “We can incinerate them later,” she said.
The rest of the team agreed to this, and started pulling the remaining bodies inside. They laid them out by the corner of the wall and then moved out the way to the group tasked with reconstructing the wall could get on with it.
At last things began to wind down. Jess heard the other hole was being patched. People took stock of the dead, carried the wounded to the infirmary, came back.
Someone came carrying an upturned box and offered it to Richard to stand on. One of the commanders shouted for silence from all those assembled, and gestured to Richard.
“One more piece of news for those of you have haven't heard,” said Richard. “Mayor Mason was injured in the battle. Not fatally, but she is in the infirmary unconscious at the moment. In the meantime, that leaves us without leadership. As far as defence matters go, I'd like to suggest we defer to Commanders Johnson and McAlister here.” He gestured at the two commanders. “For everything else, I think it would be best of we go forward with the plan she laid out for us. The admin team will handle all minor matters”
A voice came up from the crowd: “We need to strike back!” It was Andrew Dale.
Mike spoke too, “Let's go and get 'em!”
There was a chorus of agreement.
Richard considered this for a moment. “I don't disagree,” he said.
Jess's ears perked up at that. Richard agreeing with Dale? She wasn't expecting that.
“But we also need to ha
ve our own house in order first,” said Richard. He eyed Dale levelly. “You're always talking about discipline. If we're doing thing that way, we're not going for an immediate counterattack. We need to fix things up. We need to wait for our trade vans to return. If nothing else, we need to save the power scuffle for later.”
Dale seemed mollified: “So long as you're not just going to forget about this.”
“I won't,” said Richard. He looked around the crowd. “That's all.” He stepped down.
Jess moved through the crowd. She needed to talk to him about the demon venom. Except, as she got closer, she saw he was already talking to Andrew Dale. They didn't seem to be arguing. She pulled up short a couple of metres away.
“Just come by tomorrow morning,” said Richard. “We'll sort something out.”
They separated. Jess moved away for a moment so it wouldn't look like she'd overheard. Surely it was nothing, she thought. Now, after a fight, with Mason out of the way, wad the perfect time for Dal to try and organise a coup – so maybe it was necessary to get along with him, at least for a little while.
She approached again and greeted him.
“Hi, Jess,” Richard said with a smile that said he was glad to see her but still troubled by the fight. “Anything you need?”
“Yeah, uh,” Jess began. “The zombies we brought inside.”
“Ah,” said Richard. “Of course. They're going to be incinerated tomorrow.” He glanced around. “But I think you might be able to get into storage tonight. Just let me get all this sorted, and I'll give you a way.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks. I'll see you later, then.”
Richard moved on to to arrange something else.
Maybe he was okay, then. Jess thought, again, about how things would go. She could bring the flesh to Dr Patel to experiment on. But … she couldn't expect that to happen right now, could she? So many people injured. She couldn't put her quixotic little to quest to save the world above their welfare, could she? They needed to be sorted first.
She put her left hand round her right wrist, where the new holes lay. But she didn't have long to wait.
Heading away from the crowd, she sighed. The injured. Among them, Mayor Mason. She made up her mind to go and visit her, to see how the situation was. Mason wasn't part of the conspiracy. Jess had kept her illness from her – but she'd kept things from everybody. She was still a decent person – a mile better than Dale or any of his cronies. And if Mason was going to die, Jess wanted to see her first.
Chapter 17
It wasn't until several hours later, in the late afternoon, that Jess got a free moment to visit Patel and Mason. In response to the attack, shifts had been hastily moved around. People had been taken off their normal duties to repair the walls, to work in the triage facilities, to watch the prisoners. She had to join the admin team to work out how to organise it all.
Then, after that, she had to run around the compound helping take account of everything that was damaged, how much was lost – and, bizarrely, take stock of bullets, weapons, armour, and attack gear.. In this last task, she thought she detected the hand of Andrew Dale, preparing for a possible attack on Foxglove.
Throughout all of this she felt the occasional scratching or motion beneath her clothes, while the presence I her head shifted or wriggled to remind her it was still there. She found she kept on tugging her right sleeve down to make sure no-one would see the holes on her wrist.
In the end, everything was done, she had half an hour's break. She met up Luke, then headed down to see Patel and Mason.
Three yellow tents had been sent up by the infirmary, and around these floated a number of nurses – a few of whom had been nurses before the Fall, and many others who had learned how to treat simple wounds since.
Jess already knew from her work how lightly they'd give off – eight dead, and another twenty three injured. But being among them was something else. The smell from the tents – of blood, of antiseptic, of shit. The occasional moans. Someone screamed briefly as they were approaching, but was cut off later.
Everyone in Paradise Compound had seen their share of suffering and death, of course, but this was different – all this was because of other people, not demons.
Jess reached out and took Luke's hand. It took a moment for him to respond. There was still, she felt, this barrier between them. Well – why wouldn't there be? After everything he'd done for her, she realised, she'd still run about behind his back and pushed him into her own plans for saving the world.
They ran into Patel coming out of the infirmary. She was holding a syringe of something, wearing rubber gloves slicked with blood. When she saw them, she gave them a brief nod. “I'll be with you in a moment,” she said, before going into one of the tents.
Jess and Luke waited.
“Did you see what happened to Mayor Mason?” Jess tried.
“No,” said Luke. “We had to split up in the battle. And, well, everything was a great mess. I only heard about it when then van was coming down your way.”
There was some soft murmurings from the tent beside them, and after a moment Patel came out, with neither syringe nor gloves.
“Could we see they mayor?” said Jess.
Patel nodded. “Just briefly. This way.” She led them into the main infirmary building, and from there into the chamber where Jess had recovered after her operation. This time the room held three beds, all full. All three patients were unconscious.
“VIP lounge,” murmured Patel. Everyone else have to make do with cushions on the floor.”
Mason was on the closest bed. She lay on her back, breathing shallowly, one side of her forehead swollen and bruised in livid colours.
“She was hit by the van,” explained Patel. “Concussion. We have no idea how long it will last. But if she's not awake in the next week …” She let the sentence hang.
She still might make a miraculous recovery, of course. But this wasn't a world where one came to expect miracles.
Jess felt vaguely guilty about the tents they'd passed, about all the others who's been hurt in the defence of the compound who hadn't been important enough to visit. “What about the rest?” she asked.
“We've lost another four since the end of the battle. It's probable we'll lose more, and I suspect there'll need to be some amputations if necrosis sets it.” Patel look away and fell silent for a moment. “You should know, though, we'd be doing a lot worse without the medicines you two brought back.”
“Okay,” said Jess. The knowledge didn't make her feel any better. “Thanks.” She looked back at Mason on the table, lying there, looking peaceful even through her injuries. “I guess we should get out of your way,” she said.
She checked infirmary's clock before she left. Another ten minutes before the next shift began.
They left the infirmary and headed back to Jess's room where they could get some privacy.
“How are you feeling?” Luke asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“I don't know,” said Jess. She really didn't. Everything over the past few days had overflowed her capacity for feeling. Suddenly, without knowing why. She hugged him. “I'm glad you're still here. And … there's stuff I need to tell you”
“Like what?”
“First …” First, the easy stuff, she thought. She brought up her right arm and pulled back the sleeve so her could see how far the holes had spread. “It's like that all over. I have … less than a week, I think, before people start to notice. Maybe two or three weeks before it spreads all over.”
“Shit,” said Luke. “We need to get you out of here. The next van to goat's Head. We –”
“If they accept our offer,” said Jess. She sighed.
“If they do, I guess we'll have to get on the van somehow.”
“There's a second thing.”
“What?”
“There's stuff I haven't been telling. Remember the egg we found back in the hospital? I brought it back with us. I know what it does now. It
allows me to communicate with demons.
Luke stared at her. “I told you we couldn't bring it back.”
“I know. And I did it anyway. It's done.” She bit her lip. “I used it to bring the giant demon to the battle. At least, I think I did.”
“You did what? Okay, let's just assume you're right and you did manage to summon a demon. Why the hell would you do that? Especially when you knew Foxglove was going to break holes in the wall. What if the demons you summoned all rushed through the holes and killed us all? Or what if that giant demon broke through the wall by itself? It was easily big enough.”