by Paul Kane
But she wasn’t alone. More suddenly appeared out of nowhere, walking towards the cordon. Still quite far away, but they’d be here in no time if they carried on coming at that pace. Even more joined them, asleep but moving towards the makeshift barrier.
Towards them.
Would the decision have to be made after all, to stop these civilians if they wouldn’t stay back? Wouldn’t stay where they were supposed to be? Something would definitely have to be done, and soon if they were to be stopped.
Radford gritted his teeth and put down the binoculars. He wasn’t like those pen-pushers, wouldn’t ask someone else to do what he refused to. “Soldier, hand me your rifle, would you?”
The man gaped at his superior.
“Your rifle,” the major repeated. “Today, preferably.”
The man handed over his Barrett M82 and the major rested the end of it on the rim of the watchtower, hunching over to look through the telescopic sights. He could see more details of the Sleepers now, because they were getting closer all the time. Could see the group was made up not only of women, but men and children as well. There were all age ranges by the looks of things, from what he could see through the wispy membrane they sported. They just kept on coming, nearer and nearer. It wouldn’t be long now, if the virus was indeed airborne, and they’d be in range to pass it on just by breathing.
Letting out a breath himself, Radford shouted down: “Please stop. You are in a quarantined area and will not be allowed to proceed.” The Sleepers kept on coming. “If you do not halt, we will be forced to open fire.” He said “we”, but he was the one holding the rifle. When the men down on the ground saw what he was doing, they’d follow his lead too. The Sleepers were all unarmed; it would be a bloodbath.
“Please,” begged the major, unable to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Please, just stop.”
The people continued to place one foot in front of the other.
Radford aimed at the ground in front of the first person he’d seen walk over that hill, the woman. He fired off a shot, sending the dirt there flying into the air. “That was your last warning!” he barked. Please don’t do this. He wasn’t sure whether he was talking to them, or the voice in his head telling him he had to. How many more would end up like them if he didn’t? Everyone at base camp for starters, then the next town or city. It would spread like wildfire and with no word from Strauss on how to defeat it, what chance would the human race have?
He had no choice.
Major Radford swallowed dryly, pressed his eye up against the sights harder – the head of the woman in the crosshairs – and began to pull on the trigger again.
The woman paused. It was as if she sensed she was milliseconds away from death, that Radford’s finger only had to twitch once and half her head would have been blown away. The other Sleepers stopped short as well, forming a line that continued past the spotlight, yet parallel to the cordon. Radford wondered if it continued right around it, whether there was a string of these people facing the barrier that ringed the entire area. It would be the first thing he’d check when he got down from this blasted tower. For now, he let out another breath, took his finger off the trigger completely and eased his head back from the sights.
That was a close one. Too close.
“What are they doing?” asked the soldier, staring out at the inhabitants of Middletown. “They’re just standing there.”
It beat walking into the line of fire, but Radford could see what he meant. It was quite disturbing. It looked like they were waiting for something. A signal, maybe? God alone knew.
One thing was for certain, Radford decided as he made to climb back down from his perch, he was going to see the general.
And he would knock anyone’s teeth down their throat if they tried to stop him this time.
Ten
Lesley Timms couldn’t believe the events of the past hour.
He couldn’t believe the events since the bus really, but what had happened after the storage place – that was complete fucking insanity. That Strauss guy was supposed to be the one with all the brains, wasn’t he? Posh education and all that, while the rest of them had to rough it in ordinary schools. And they didn’t come any rougher than Gegley Comp, Timms’ old stomping ground. You learned how to stick up for yourself there or had your head woven into the carpet. All those fucking colleges and universities obviously didn’t teach you any common sense, though, did they? Not as far as he could see – because Strauss had almost got them killed several times since those freaks out there started coming back to life.
Not back to life. They weren’t dead; the Doc had been at great pains to emphasise that when Timms wouldn’t go near them. Wouldn’t help carry that boy on board (and just look how that had turned out for everyone!). Oh, who the fuck cared? They might as well be dead. They were like zombies anyway.
In any event, Strauss had almost got them killed – was more than likely responsible for most of the men back there being slaughtered; definitely McBride back on the bus – and they were all still letting him call the shots. Timms was the only voice of reason, it seemed, in an otherwise mental world. Same as always. But nobody ever listened.
First Strauss fucking brought the freaks to the place where they were holed up, quite nicely thank you very much, at least for the time being. It certainly hadn’t been overrun until the egghead came round. Then, after they’d somehow managed to get away from that shitstorm, he’d started banging on about how he knew what they had to do, knew the direction they should be taking. “I know the streets, I know where I’m going because I’ve gone this way before,” he told them. When pressed further, all he’d said was: “In my dream.”
Either he’d been nutty as a fruitcake to begin with, or that bang on the head had done more damage than any of them realised.
To her credit, the bint who was with him – quite tasty she was, Timms thought, but she had too much of a mouth on her – argued the toss, tried to get him to turn around. But he wouldn’t have it, and when he walked off, the rest of them had to fucking follow, didn’t they? Timms had half a mind to just go it alone; wouldn’t be the first time. And he was blowed if he was going to start taking orders from the Yanks: that tosser who’d taken all his money and his sergeant; he didn’t know Coleman that well, but he was probably the fucking same. But there was safety in numbers, he supposed, and it sure as fuck beat wandering about this spook town in the dark on his own.
So Timms had reluctantly followed Strauss, along with the rest of them. Then the wanker had gone and got them lost. Said he knew where he was going, then didn’t have a fucking clue. What was all that about? His dream had ended before he’d got to where he should be going, he’d said.
“Let’s just get out of here, Andy,” his assistant had pleaded with him. She was still carrying that bag of fucking samples around with her. Why? It was obvious they should just let these morons rot here; they were never going to be cured. “We’ll be running out of air soon. If we don’t set off now we might not make it.”
Didn’t bother Timms – he had his gasmask, even if it was slightly cracked from the explosion. He was fine. They could both just pass out from asphyxiation as far as he was concerned.
But the egghead wasn’t playing ball. So what had he done? Only gone and snatched Timms’ tranq gun. Timms had almost battered him; soldiering instincts, see? You don’t go for another man’s weapon, even if it was fucking useless against the freaks.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Timms had asked him.
“I’ve got to go back under,” Strauss had explained. If you could call it a fucking explanation.
“Don’t do it, Andy. You’ll be out for hours,” his assistant warned him. “Not to mention the risk of infection!”
He just shook his head, then shot himself in the leg with a dart. At that close range, it went in so hard it puckered the plastic up around it, plugging the tiny hole. The silly cow screamed then, as the tranq took effect and Strauss dr
opped to the ground.
“Well I’m not fucking carrying him, I know that,” Timms had grumbled. Then, when Strauss’ assistant carried on wailing, he’d added: “Put a sock in it, we’re better off if we just leave him here. He’s probably fucking got this shit anyway now.”
“We’re not doing that, soldier,” the Yank sergeant had told him. “He’s important to the mission.”
“What fucking mission? Take a look around you, it’s all gone tits up.”
“What an asshole,” said Jackson.
Timms had been ready to make something of it right there and then, even if it meant taking on all three Yanks, but something bizarre had happened. Even more bizarre than everything up to that point. Even stranger than people who were supposed to be out of it, struck down by a virus that just sent you to sleep, getting up and attacking you, shrugging off bullets and fire like it was nothing.
Yes, even madder than that. Timms had watched, open-mouthed, as Strauss himself had got up. To begin with, he’d thought the Doc must have the disease. It was exactly how the freaks had acted, asleep one minute, up and walking about – and kicking the shit out of you – the next. But he wasn’t covered in that same crap the others were.
No, this was different. His eyes were open for another thing. He was asleep, had to be with all that inside him; those tranqs were high dosage, they’d explained it all to them before the off. Yet he wasn’t, not really.
“Andy?” his assistant had said, rising as well. “Andy… Andrew? Can you hear me?” He hadn’t even twitched.
“What’s going on?” the sergeant had asked.
And that’s when he’d begun to move forwards, nodding to himself. Just walking, like he was answering some kind of call. Could see something they couldn’t.
“I… I think he’s sleepwalking,” the woman had said.
“What? That’s impossible.”
“After everything we’ve seen today, you’re going to tell me that’s impossible.” She pointed, and it was true. The only possible explanation, Timms guessed.
“What do we do?” asked Coleman, and his mate Jackson shrugged.
The sergeant was the one who’d said it, and Timms knew it was coming even before the words escaped his lips. “We do what we’ve been doing so far. Follow him. Like I said, he’s important to the mission.” He looked in Timms’ direction when he said that, daring him to say something else.
Timms bit his tongue, even though following a sleepwalking nutjob was the craziest suggestion he’d ever heard. Even though it would probably mean they all bought it, finally, well and truly. That cow of an assistant was already following him – had a thing for Strauss if you asked Timms. It was clouding her judgement, causing her to make decisions that they’d all regret later. Even as Timms trailed after them, he was regretting it.
But he’d gone along with all this, following the egghead like he was the Pied Piper, and they were the rats. Yeah, fucking lab rats in an experiment, doomed to go round and round this bloody maze until they were either set upon again, or just collapsed. Timms himself was knackered – he’d been up at the crack of dawn this morning, pulling guard duty, and wouldn’t have volunteered for this if it hadn’t been for losing all his fucking dosh during his break. He gave a big yawn, as Strauss took them up one street and down another. They passed more than a few Sleepers on the way, keeping their guns trained on them as they walked by, but none of them got up. Obviously didn’t view them as a threat at the moment. Timms could hardly blame them.
Just when it seemed like they were never going to get to wherever it was they were going, they suddenly arrived, rounding a corner and coming face-to-face with the building they were heading for. In retrospect, they should have all guessed, and now it seemed so obvious. Ahead of them lay Middletown’s Central Hospital, ambulances abandoned outside, Sleepers littering the road leading up to it, past the ambulance bay. This must have been where everything began, where the initial cases were taken. If any clues were to be found it would be here. But, once again, it was left to Timms to be the voice of sanity.
“There’ll be fucking truck-loads of them there,” he blurted out, trying to pull back Coleman and Jackson. Never mind about Central Hospital, it’d be bloody Sleeper central. It didn’t seem to worry them, although had he spotted a slight hesitation in Jackson’s walk? He couldn’t stand the man, but maybe if he could get the two grunts onside they could talk Baker around? Or persuade him in another, less civilised way? The egghead was going to get them killed, after all.
“There’ll also be oxygen for those,” Jackson said, nodding at the medicos in the Hazmat gear. As if Timms gave a fuck about that. He began to say something else, but they blindly followed their leader, who was in turn following Strauss’ assistant, who was following her idol. Timms got the impression she would have followed him into an erupting volcano, if it would keep him safe. Didn’t mean they all had to go with her.
Yet again, though, he went – had no real option. But he kept his rifle trained on the sleeping figures, steeling himself for an attack at any moment. “This is fucking barking mad,” he said. Nobody seemed interested in what he had to say. They’d be singing a different tune when he was proved right, though, wouldn’t they? But in order for that to happen, he’d have to be in great danger as well. Timms tried to stop thinking about it.
He was right about the amount of Sleepers here, however. As they entered and made their way through the hospital, he could see where the original victims had been separated, cut off in row upon row of beds. Each one was surrounded by plastic to try and isolate the cases.
It hadn’t worked.
“I’m telling you, we should get out of here,” he warned them all again, spinning when he thought he heard a noise behind. “If they get up and–”
Sergeant Baker rounded on him. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, tonight,” he said. “Strauss is our key to doing that. He’s the only one who can fix this, stop it from spreading further. Maybe even get these people back to normal again.”
“He’s as much a fucking zombie as they are,” snapped Timms. “Look at him!”
But even Timms had to admit Strauss was walking with a purpose, marching on even as they went down corridor after corridor. Head down, he blundered along, only stopping when he reached his destination: up several flights of stairs in this maze-like facility (Strauss had ignored the lift completely). It looked to be on a private ward, away from the chaos that had occurred when the outbreak struck. Strauss led them along the corridor, not looking left and right as someone might if they were searching for something, just ploughing on with the same certainty he appeared to have had since he set off on his trek.
Then he paused outside one room.
“Andy?” his assistant had asked, about to reach out and touch his arm. But his own hand shot out, causing her to jump.
He opened the door and walked inside. The others followed, still cautious – aware that there were dozens of Sleepers on this floor alone – but wanting to see what had brought him here.
Timms’ eyebrows had shot up when he looked inside. There, on the bed, hooked up to drips and monitors, was a girl… a woman. She was asleep, just like the other people they’d come across, but there was something different about her. She didn’t have that shite oozing from her body for one thing, there wasn’t a wispy cotton-wool mask over her face. It was exposed to the air, and very pretty – if a little thin – her long, golden locks splayed over the pillow like a fan. One monitor showed her heartbeat was steady, but slow. She was in a coma too, but somehow Timms knew she’d been asleep before all this happened. Maybe that’s why she was different, perhaps if you were asleep already when the virus hit you, you stayed asleep but you were okay?
Who knew? Who cared? All Timms knew was that Strauss walked up to the woman’s bed and took her left hand, which was resting on top of the covers. Did he spot a grimace then from the assistant, the shock on her face turning to annoyance? Who the fuck was this?
&n
bsp; His question was answered not by Strauss, but by Baker, who was looking at the woman’s charts. “Says here her name is Suzanne Parris,” he read aloud, then flipped a few more pages.
Timms observed Strauss squeezing her hand tighter, then turning to the rest of the group. How could he be doing that when he himself was still asleep? It was fucking creepy enough that he’d been able to walk with all that shit pumped into him.
“She was the first,” Strauss said suddenly, and his voice made them all start. He seemed to be in a place between waking and asleep, like he was seeing them, but not really. Seeing both places at once perhaps? The man smiled, which sent chills through Timms’ body. “And she’s going to help us cure all these people.”
Timms snorted, had trouble believing it, just as he’d had trouble believing all the events since the bus. But there was a part of him that couldn’t help wondering if maybe Strauss was right. That he’d led them to their one and only chance to sort this out.
That he’d led them to their one and only chance of survival.
Eleven
Strauss had worked feverishly since they’d found Suzanne.
She’d been there, exactly where she said she’d be, waiting for him. Waiting for Andrew to do something about all this, and he wasn’t about to let her down. He had absolutely no idea how he’d been able to do some of the things he’d done since he’d tranquilised himself. By rights, he shouldn’t even be up and about. But not only had he brought his people here – correction, Suzanne had brought him (he’d have been lost without her), become clearer the closer they drew to the hospital, coming into sharper focus like a chart at the opticians when they try the right lens – but he’d been able to talk, communicate. Been able to work, and work hard, taking samples of her blood and get them analysed, comparing them to the previous ones they’d taken now by using the hospital’s equipment.
Suzanne was holding the Sleepers at bay, he understood that. She could do this here, because they were closer to her. I can calm their dreams, she’d told Andrew. But you have to work fast. I don’t know how much longer I can hold them off for. Strauss had got the soldiers to clear out the Sleepers, at least on this level, just in case. Jackson and co. had dragged them all into a room that could be locked, then barricaded the entrance and exit, to give Strauss time to “do his thing” as Baker called it. Then they’d blown out the lift by sending a grenade down in the car, leaving one emergency exit, at the other end of the main corridor that could only be opened from their side.