The man stepped forward out of the trees and into the sunlight. He didn’t move like a zombie. He was alive. I could make out his combat jacket and trousers. Was he the driver of the truck? Maybe he had staggered off to the trees after the crash. He might have suffered a concussion.
He began walking then picked up the pace and ran through the grass towards us. His arms and legs pumped in strong quick motions as he moved faster, seemingly fixed on us.
“Run!” Jax said, turning on her heels and sprinting for the village.
In a blind panic, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my temples, I chased after her.
Behind me, I could hear the swish, swish, swish of the grass as the soldier ran through it to reach us. Then I heard his boots on the road, the soles pounding the tarmac relentlessly as he pursued us.
I wasn’t going to make it to the beach. Jax might have a chance; she ran with strong fluid strides and her petite frame flew along the street. But I wouldn’t reach the Zodiac before the soldier caught me.
Jax suddenly veered left, leapt a picket fence and veered between two houses. I followed, almost snagging my jeans and falling when I jumped the fence. I got a quick glimpse of the soldier behind me. He was fifty feet away, still moving like an Olympic sprinter. I fled down the side of the house around to the back door.
It was open. Jax had smashed the lock and was in the kitchen trying to drag a big wooden table over to block the door. I ran inside, closed the door, and helped her bring the table over. We got it behind the door and both of us dropped to the floor so we couldn’t be seen through the kitchen window.
The soldier’s boots pounded around the house and into the back yard, slowed, then stopped. Jax and I looked at each other. I saw my own fear reflected in her eyes. I dared not move a muscle in case the soldier in the yard would hear and come crashing through the door.
He was no ordinary man. I had no idea what he was but I knew he was not normal. I closed my eyes and tried to recall the glimpse I had of his face when I had stumbled on the fence. There had been something wrong with his skin, something strange about his eyes.
But he was not a zombie; zombies did not move like that. The virus controlled the host’s basic motor functions and the result was a slow shamble. The soldier outside had covered a quarter of a mile in less than two minutes.
I couldn’t hear any more sounds from the back yard. Was he out there listening for us? Waiting for us to make a move?
If I wasn’t breathing so hard from the run, I would have held my breath. The only sound in the kitchen was the low hum of the refrigerator.
We sat there for what seemed like five minutes before Jax whispered, “I think he’s gone.”
I nodded. We slowly got to our knees and peered out of the window. The back yard was empty. The overgrown grass had been stamped down in places but the soldier was gone. There was nothing out there but a child’s pink swing set. I wondered if the child who owned it would ever use it again.
twenty
We explored the house quickly and made sure it was safe. It looked like a typical family had lived here once. The family photos showed a couple in their thirties and a bright eyed blonde girl of eight or nine.
The upstairs consisted of a simply-furnished double bedroom, the little girl’s bedroom decorated in pink, and a spare room that was being used to store cardboard boxes full of books and DVDs. The bathroom was tidy and decorated in sea blue with plastic fish and crabs on the window sill.
Downstairs we found a utility room and a cozy living room.
A typical family house.
I wondered where they were now.
We found food in the kitchen cupboards and filled the backpacks with cans and jars. We wouldn’t be going hungry for a while.
As long as we could get this stuff back to the Lucky Escape.
We left the food-stuffed backpacks in the kitchen, went into the living room and sat on the sofa after shrugging off our backpacks full of medical supplies. The curtains in here were closed and I left them that way. If the soldier was out there roaming the street, there was no point risking him seeing us through the window.
“What the hell was he?” Jax asked. “He wasn’t an ordinary soldier. There was something about him…something strange.”
“I got a glimpse of him,” I replied. “His skin and his eyes were weird. I don’t know exactly what it was, I only got a quick look.”
“You mean he’s turned?”
I shrugged. “He can’t have. We know how the zombies move and it isn’t anything like that. It was like being chased by Usain Bolt.”
“You think he’s still out there?” she asked, looking at the curtains.
I nodded. “Somewhere.”
“He must have been the driver of the truck.”
I dug into my backpack and found the notebook. “If he is, he’s probably Sergeant Wilder. This is his notebook.” I laid it on the glass coffee table and opened it.
Flicking through the pages, we discovered that Wilder had been tasked with transporting the vaccine from a nearby army base to the medics who were vaccinating soldiers at the outlying military outposts. Reading the list of places he logged in the book, we learned that the army had men stationed at every major port, harbour and marina.
He hadn’t worked alone. Wilder was part of a team called Alpha 3 Victor. Along with Wilder, the other team members were Corporal Francis and Lance Corporal Jones.
Judging by the dates entered in the notebook, the vaccination program had been in operation for just over two weeks.
The final entry was dated two days ago and Wilder had written a simple note in the margin. “Cpl Francis was bitten four days ago. He has not turned but keeps saying he wants to be left alone. Tries to wander off at every opportunity. He doesn’t look well but at least he hasn’t become one of the nasties.”
There was nothing else in the book that could help us piece together why the truck was lying in a field and one of the team had chased us into the village. Where were the other two members? There were no bodies in the truck so either all three men survived the crash or they weren’t all in the vehicle when it went off the road.
I closed the notebook. “How are we going to get back to the beach with him still out there?”
Jax thought a moment then said, “Let’s take a look out of the upstairs windows. We might be able to come up with a plan if we know exactly where he is.”
We went upstairs. The double room and the spare room looked out over the street. We tried the double room first, parting the curtains and looking down onto the street.
He was there, pacing up and down along the row of houses like a tiger ready to pounce.
“Look at his face,” Jax whispered.
It was difficult to see his features clearly at this angle but I could see the veins in his neck and face were abnormally dark blue. His skin did not have the blue mottled colour of the zombies, which made the veins stand out even more in contrast. The backs of his hands were the same, dark blue veins spreading like an inked spider web from his wrist to his fingers. His eyes were the same yellow as the eyes of the other zombies.
He didn’t move like an undead zombie being controlled by the virus. He moved like a living man and that made him all the more dangerous. We knew how fast he could run. There was no way we could get to the beach, untie the Zodiac, and be on the water before he caught us.
“What are we going to do?” I asked Jax.
“I have an idea,” she said, leaving the room and going into the pink-wallpapered girl’s room. The window looked out over the back yards of the houses. Jax pressed her face against the glass and looked in the direction of the beach. “We’ll have to go the back way,” she said.
I looked out at the row of yards. Each small patch of grass was separated from the next by a waist-high wooden picket fence. I remembered how I had stumbled on the front yard fence. This time I would be weighed down with a backpack full of heavy cans. It didn’t seem like a good plan to me.<
br />
“I don’t think I’ll make it,” I said.
“We’re not going to run. We’re going to sneak down to the beach.”
The thought of going outside while the soldier was out there sent a chill down my spine. “Can’t we just wait awhile? He might go away.”
She looked at me with sympathy in her eyes. Sympathy seemed to be the default emotion I brought out in girls. “I’m scared too, Alex, but we have to get back to the boat.”
“I just don’t think I’m going to make it if I have to outrun him with a backpack full of food weighing me down.”
She didn’t say what we were probably both thinking—that a backpack of food wasn’t going to make the slightest difference. I would be too slow to escape this hybrid soldier zombie even if I had on a pair of Nikes and running gear and no backpack at all. I just wasn’t built for this shit. The neglect my body had suffered from so many years of sitting on my ass while playing video games and eating crap wasn’t just going to go away overnight.
The reason didn’t really matter. All that mattered now was that if I went out there, I would probably get killed. Or bitten. Or eaten. Or whatever that hybrid intended to do to his victims. Either way, I wasn’t happy about leaving the house while he was out there on the street.
“You go,” I said to Jax. “I don’t think there’s any point in me even trying.”
“I’m not going to leave you here,” she said.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I turned my head away when I felt hot tears in my eyes and wiped them away with the back of my hand.
“How about we get something to eat while we’re making our plans?” Jax asked.
I nodded and we went downstairs to the kitchen where we found burgers in the freezer. We got a pan of water boiling on the stove top and added rice to it while the burgers cooked in the oven. I got one of the cans of baked beans we couldn’t fit into our backpacks and poured the contents into a saucepan.
The smell of cooking burgers made my mouth water. They sizzled and spat in the oven and I could hardly wait to get them out and start eating.
While I took charge of the rice, beans and burgers, Jax explored the house more closely than our initial inspection.
“What are you looking for?” I asked as she rummaged through the cupboard beneath the sink.
“A gun would be nice.”
“Good luck finding one of those.”
She continued searching, pulling out cleaning cloths, bottles of bleach, and a plunger.
“You going to plunge him to death?” I asked.
She smiled and said sarcastically, “Very funny.”
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything that kills hybrid soldier zombies,” I said.
“You think that’s what he is?” she asked, getting to her feet and leaning against the wall by the stove. “A hybrid?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. All I know is he looks like he has the virus but unlike the other zombies, he’s still alive. The virus is controlling him and using him to spread itself to other humans but it hasn’t killed him. Probably because he was vaccinated before he got bitten.”
She frowned. “Was he bitten, though? I can’t see a wound on him.”
She was right about that. Most of the zombies had very obvious wounds where they had been bitten when they were alive. Blood-stains on their clothing told the story of how they had ended up as part of the undead horde. But the soldier seemed to be bite-free. So how had he contracted the virus?
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Without taking a closer look, we probably won’t ever know. And I’m not volunteering to go out there and inspect him for wounds.”
She nodded and left the kitchen to see what she could find in other parts of the house. I heard her open the door beneath the stairs and start a search in the storage area there.
Twenty minutes later, the food was ready. I found plates and put them on the counter before filling them with rice, beans and burgers. Jax appeared at the doorway. “Smells good.”
“Yeah. We can’t eat it at the table since the table is blocking the back door so I suggest the coffee table in the living room.”
“Sounds good.”
We took our food into the living room and sat on the floor at opposite ends of the low table while we ate. The food brought my taste buds alive and I savoured every fork full.
“You find anything?” I asked Jax between mouthfuls.
“Not much. A pair of old binoculars, a hockey stick, tennis rackets, and some fishing equipment under the stairs. Some kid’s toys. Nothing else that could even be remotely useful.”
The mention of fishing equipment reminded me of the days on The Big Easy fishing with Lucy. Those days seemed so long ago now and I was almost sure I would never see Lucy or The Big Easy again. Getting a message to her on Survivor Radio seemed like an impossible task. We couldn’t even get out of this house, never mind travel to the radio station and take control of the airwaves.
“The fishing stuff will be useful,” I said. “We should take that with us.”
She nodded. I knew what she was thinking: Take it with us how exactly? You’re too unfit to leave the house.
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. I wondered how Jax had been affected by the apocalypse, how many loved ones she was missing. It seemed to me that Jax, Tanya, and Sam might have given themselves this mission to take over Survivor Radio to distract them from the reality of the situation. They must have family unaccounted for, people they loved who could be alive, dead, or somewhere in between. Yet all three of them seemed to be full of bravado and a tough inner strength.
Maybe they were just tougher than me. They were the type of people who were into extreme sports and martial arts. Competitors. Survivors. These were mentally and physically equipped to survive a zombie apocalypse.
A sudden idea hit me.
“You ever play tennis?” I asked Jax.
She nodded. “I used to when I was younger.”
“Were you any good?”
“Yeah, not bad. Why?”
I ran the plan through my mind again. It could work.
I said, “I think I know how we can get out of here.”
twenty-one
I stood in the double bedroom with the binoculars pressed against my face. I wanted to get a better look at the hybrid soldier. He had stopped prowling around and now he stood as still as a statue in the middle of the street. When he came into focus, I saw the bite on his neck. He had been bitten by a zombie after all but the wound was slight. Most people were almost torn apart by the zombies that killed them and the resulting wounds were deep and bloody.
The soldier had a simple set of bloody marks on his neck shaped like a set of teeth. I wondered how he had been turned. According to the notebook, Corporal Francis had been bitten already but Wilder’s note said Francis did not turn. He just wanted to be left alone and tried to wander off. Maybe Wilder and Jones were taking Francis back to base and Francis did finally turn and attacked them. The truck went off the road and Francis bit the other members of the team. But if that was the case, where were they? Why hadn’t all three members of Alpha 3 Victor been in the field near the truck?
I lowered the binoculars and went to find Jax. She was in the little girl’s pink bedroom, sitting on the bed and staring out of the window at the gathering gloom of the approaching evening. She had a faraway look in her eyes and again I wondered who she had lost in this apocalypse, who she was missing.
“Hey,” she said when she saw me.
I told her about the bite on the soldier’s neck then added, “So he was bitten but the vaccine kept him alive, turning him into a hybrid. He’s infected with the virus but it hasn’t killed and reanimated him. Also, I think it takes them longer to turn when they’ve been vaccinated. It sounds like it took Corporal Francis four days. I think he bit Wilder and Jones, causing the crash.”
She caught on to what I was thinking. “The last note in the book was written two days ago. So
you think that’s Francis out there on the street and Wilder and Jones are still turning somewhere?”
I nodded. “Probably somewhere in that field. Or in those trees where Francis was standing.”
She thought for a moment then said, “This is bad, Alex.”
“Yeah, all the soldiers are being vaccinated. How many of those soldiers will get bitten by zombies? How many have already been bitten since they were injected with the vaccine?”
“There’s going to be thousands of zombie hybrids just like Francis,” she said. “The shambling dead ones are bad enough but now we’re going to have to deal with runners as well.”
“The virus will spread, a lot faster,” I said.
She nodded then said, “Let’s get out of here.”
We went downstairs to the kitchen. On the table we had placed the tennis racket from under the stairs and four tennis balls. I had no idea if this was going to work but it was our best chance to get back to the Zodiac. Evening was already falling. Tanya and Sam probably thought we were dead. I just hoped they hadn’t sailed away and left us in this godforsaken village.
I helped Jax put on her backpack and she helped me do the same. We would have to carry the second backpacks we each had and we were prepared to dump those if we had to. We were hoping we wouldn’t have to.
Carefully, we lifted the dining table and moved it away from the back door. Jax took the tennis racket and balls out into the back yard while I went into the living room and parted the curtains just enough to see the soldier.
He stood watching the street. Did he even remember what he was looking for anymore or was he waiting for any stimulus to spark him into action?
I turned to see Jax in the back yard holding a tennis ball in one hand, the racket in the other. She tossed the ball up with a graceful movement then brought the racket up swiftly. The ball went sailing over the roof of the house.
I turned back to the hybrid soldier. He was as still as he had been a few seconds ago. Then I saw the vibrant green tennis ball land in the yard of a house across the road and bounce against the living room window with a bang.
Undead Rain (Book 2): Storm Page 9