Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours

by John F. Leonard

  When he was younger.

  When time and life didn’t seem so precious. Back then, being big and good with a gun and able to break stuff was a heady mix.

  Intoxicating.

  An infatuation.

  It lasted a fair while and then began to diminish.

  Like old photographs, some things fade.

  In seconds, they were accelerating wildly. Devouring the short span of the bridge like the short dash it should have been.

  It was straightforward.

  He slewed the Jag left and right as he dodged stalled vehicles. No problem, driving at speed through obstacles.

  And then slammed the superb brakes. Tested their quality and was impressed.

  There was a motorcycle.

  Lying across the road and preventing any further progress. No driving over it, not if he wanted to go much further after that.

  What looked like a body lay close to it.

  Pearcey rested his hands on the steering wheel and let out a breath. Wanted to scream with frustration.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing, was ever fucking simple.

  “I’m gonna have to drag that out of the way.”

  He looked at Gallagher but he didn’t need to explain. The mechanics were obvious to someone like Sonny.

  “It’ll be easier with two.”

  Gallagher didn’t elaborate, just stroked the door release and got out.

  Pearcey followed and then overtook him.

  Arrived at the fallen motorbike first.

  It lay on its side like some downed beast.

  Pearcey was distracted.

  The smell of the river.

  It was like dirt and freedom and fear all mixed together.

  It had never hit him this strongly before. Maybe it was the lack of noise and traffic. Maybe because he rarely stood on the bridge. Just travelled it. Admired it from inside whatever he was driving.

  The body was a man.

  His leg still trapped beneath the weight of the bike. A butterfly pinning from a nightmare collection.

  Presumably, he’d been riding the motorcycle.

  Blood pooled about him. Thick and glistening in the dying light.

  Maroon coloured tracks led in several directions. The pattern petered out like an irregular wheel.

  Irregular spokes from a dead centre.

  “Oh Jesus, Mary Mother of God.”

  Gallagher wasn’t considering the evidence of activity.

  He was just looking at what was left of the man.

  The pinned leg was the most whole part of him. Even that was incomplete. Large chunks were missing.

  The rest of his body was ...mauled. That was the word that popped into Pearcey’s mind. But it wasn’t quite right.

  The rider had been ripped apart and partially consumed.

  Eaten.

  Through his clothes.

  Eaten through his clothes.

  What remained of them were shredded and blended with his flesh. Soaked with his blood. A mixed material collage from the hand of a gruesome artist.

  Bone was visible in many places.

  One entire arm was missing.

  The chest and abdomen were empty. Gaping, torn cavities. Gnawed bone, glistening, stained red.

  He’d been wearing a full visor helmet.

  It was shattered, the helmet, broken open like some hideous black egg. Covered with red and grey lumpy smears.

  Gallagher muttered and turned away. Placed his hands on his knees and threw up weakly on to the road.

  Breathing heavily again, like he’d been for a run rather than simply getting out of the car.

  He wiped a hand roughly across his mouth and turned back to Pearcey.

  “Sorry. Sorry.”

  Shook his head and turned back to the body in disbelief and disgust.

  “Fuck this, let’s just get it out of the way. I’ll take the handle bars. You grab whatever you can and we’ll drag it clear.”

  Pearcey nodded and moved to take hold of the rear of the bike.

  Neither of them mentioned the man and Pearcey had a feeling that neither of them were going to move him. He didn’t know for definite about Sonny, but he’d drive over the corpse rather than touch those remains.

  Pearcey had been in war zones, seen mutilations at first hand.

  A long time ago now, but those type of memories had a habit of lingering. He doubted that they ever left you. They just receded, poorly hidden behind a gauzy curtain of time and conscious avoidance.

  And this was different anyway. Not something he’d encountered. It was more akin to what he imagined an animal attack to be like.

  And by the looks of the tracks, more than one animal.

  He thought about the creatures they’d just encountered outside the CIMC bunker.

  Those things could do this.

  Those things that, not so long ago, had been human beings.

  Mother, fathers, daughters and sons.

  The City Flu bug was difficult to accept.

  Millions of people being infected and slipping into coma. Everyone that he’d met who was immune was struggling to one degree or another.

  Struggling to come to terms with what was happening.

  The new developments put it all on another level.

  An unimaginably horrible new level.

  The fact that the fallen had undergone some sort of staggering mutation.

  The fact that they were waking. Changed and terrible.

  Savage and awesome.

  Those facts were messing with his head.

  Pearcey was accustomed to adjusting to circumstance.

  He’d been in the army and had moved into security. His life was one long story of dealing with the unexpected.

  Expect the unexpected was a sensible credo in his line of work.

  The unexpected made a certain sense.

  Up to a point. Once that point was exceeded, the rules dropped away, the sense disappeared.

  Then it was a different game.

  Then it became craziness.

  <><><>

  He heard a soft scraping sound before they’d even gotten a proper hold on the machine.

  His eyes moved up and his body straightened.

  The bike instantly forgotten.

  The knife and gun were in his hands without conscious thought.

  To his right.

  The noise was to his right.

  It was dragging itself from behind a van that had been abandoned, the vehicle slanted at the Thames and left there.

  Aimed at the water like a threat or a promise.

  The creature’s legs were broken.

  Destroyed, barely attached from below the mid-thigh area. Despite that, it was still moving, digging clawed hands into the tarmac and pulling the rest of itself along.

  That was the scraping sound. The claws and drag.

  Pearcey was fascinated and appalled.

  Hairless head that was dominated by a huge jaw and massive jagged teeth. Chittering and snapping in their direction, as if it could already taste them, feel their heat in its mouth.

  It was hissing.

  As it grew closer, he could hear that more clearly.

  A hissing and mewling that spoke of hurt and hunger and frustration. A horrible noise. Somehow alien and yet completely comprehensible.

  He began to get it.

  Began to build a scenario in his head.

  Began to see what might have happened here.

  Motorbike Man had been zipping across the bridge, getting to wherever he was going. Getting there fast because these days it didn’t pay to hang around and admire the view.

  He’d come across one or more of them.

  Encountered a single one or a group of the creatures. Those ripping, half-human things that moved like hunger personified.

  Either had no choice or simply decided to drive through.

  Bust them apart and be on his desperate way.

  But he’d got it wrong.

  Misjudged somethi
ng. Taken a fall and in turn been fallen upon by them. This slithering monstrosity was a casualty of the collision. Left to fend for itself. Horribly damaged yet still terribly dangerous.

  <><><>

  Smoke in the sky.

  The coppery smell of blood on the road at his feet.

  The dirty smell of the water in the river below him.

  The inexorable approach of this outrage.

  Radiating a hunger that was even greater than the damage it had sustained.

  He felt strangely removed from himself. As if the world had receded and left him in a time out of time.

  Pearcey raised the handgun and squeezed the trigger before he could think anymore. Watched as its head exploded in a spray of fragments and thick fluid.

  Mutated body jerking and spasming.

  Felt an enormous sense of relief as its death throes slowed to twitches.

  It was short lived.

  That relief.

  <><><>

  As he looked away from the dead thing, he saw movement at the end of the bridge. Figures appearing and disappearing as they darted between stalled vehicles.

  More of them. More creatures like the one he’d just killed.

  Gallagher saw them as well. He bent back to the task at hand, their most immediate problem, and grabbed the motorbike.

  Began to drag it off to the side.

  Pearcey went to help and Gallagher waved him away.

  “Start the car Carlton.”

  A gasped instruction as he wrestled the machine.

  “And you might want to think twice about shooting. You’re drawing a fucking crowd.”

  Pearcey slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Waited anxiously, scanning the bridge, until Gallagher jumped in beside him.

  They were very close now, running in a weird predatory lope. Six or seven of them. Dressed in an assortment of rags.

  Some naked.

  Abstract human shapes that moved in an inhuman way. Emaciated and corded with animal strength.

  Pearcey’s foot paused on the accelerator.

  “Are you sure Sonny? You still want to do this. It’s not too late. We can abort it, go back to the shelter. Re-evaluate things.”

  Sonny Gallagher shook his head.

  “I have to get Annie. The clock’s ticking. I can’t leave her out here in ...this.”

  He indicated the monsters that were nearly upon them.

  “You can go back, but I can’t.”

  Pearcey nodded and the car surged forward into the unknown.

  The sun a little lower in the sky.

  Chapter 7

  Progress

  He swerved into the street. Used everything the Jaguar had to offer and pushed it that little bit further.

  Hoped that the road was open.

  Please God, no monsters, no obstructions. A clear run for just a few minutes. Let me get closer to the objective before you throw anything else in the way. Just a little break from the crap.

  The mission had become a dangerous wound.

  Bleeding and all too likely to kill him. A trial of resilience and ingenuity, something he needed to endure and overcome.

  Survive and then recover from.

  Carlton Pearcey was tiring.

  <><><>

  As they’d come off the bridge, it had been reasonably free of creatures. To begin with at least.

  The creatures were there of course.

  The mutated people, the monsters.

  They saw several of them, but always far enough away that Pearcey was able to blow past before they could approach within attacking distance.

  As they entered more residential areas, it all changed.

  The roads became increasingly full of activity.

  None of it was good activity.

  At intervals, the streets seemed to swarm with them. Snapping predatory things that reacted to noise as if it signalled the proximity of prey.

  Food.

  Pearcey detected a pattern to their reaction.

  First, a stillness.

  Poised.

  Motionless, but alert.

  It was evident from their peculiarly angled stance.

  An almost feline position.

  Reminded Pearcey of the way a cat gets when it spies something it wants to catch. To run down, paw and play with.

  Until it tires of the game and bites.

  Those once human creatures stood, jaws gaping, alien eyes scanning for the source of the sound. If they locked on to the car, identified the movement, they invariably began pursuit.

  At times, Pearcey had no choice but to crash into them. Smash through one or more of them.

  The car was already dented and scratched.

  Smeared with their thick blood. A lumpy maroon liquid.

  Those instances terrified him.

  The times when he had to crash through them left his heart rate soaring and his armpits dripping with sweat. He could feel it under his shirt, running down the sides of his body.

  They scared him more than he let on to Gallagher.

  Pearcey let little show on the surface.

  It wasn’t his way.

  He’d never been inclined to displays of emotion, and his early life had hardened the characteristic. Engrained it so deeply into him that it moved beyond any conscious thought or decision. Carlton Pearcey was essentially honest by nature, but wearing his heart on his sleeve was another matter entirely.

  At one point, one of those monstrous skeletal things caught under the Jaguar, threatened to halt them. Or worse still, cause them to crash.

  The collisions horrified him. In that type of vehicle, despite its high-end spec, it would be all too easy to come to grief.

  When he judged the density too great, he had to backtrack.

  It became a dismal cat and mouse dance of evasion. They were constantly moving, but actual progress towards the objective was laughable. A painfully small distance covered.

  In reality, there was nothing laughable about any of it. Pearcey fancied that he could see the shadows lengthening.

  Hear the tick of each second as the clock relentlessly counted down to night.

  The thought of darkness out there left a slick sheen on his skin.

  <><><>

  He didn’t see the name of the street. He thought they were in Lambeth.

  Wasn’t sure because he’d become disorientated by the nightmare run of the last few minutes. The continual switching back and forth.

  He drove London a lot, it was a daily part of his life, but he generally followed proscribed courses.

  Familiar routes.

  He knew short cuts, but he was off the beaten path now.

  As he entered it, the street with no name, it was blissfully empty. Empty of prowling monsters. Empty of immediate threat.

  He accelerated. Felt the engine purr.

  It was rundown.

  A street that didn’t have much to do with the new shiny London. There wasn’t a great deal of gleaming steel and contemporary glass.

  A mixture of three and four story buildings that seemed to crowd out the darkening sky.

  Casting shadows and mystery like aspersion.

  At street level, shops lined both sides of the road.

  Some obviously derelict and abandoned.

  Some still going concerns, albeit grim and somehow despondent. The entire length of it brooded a sense of desperation.

  Dirty brick and fading frontages.

  Pearcey didn’t care about urban degeneration and decay. It wasn’t heaving with monsters. That was all that mattered.

  “Thank fuck for small mercies.”

  Murmured under his breath.

  That empty bit of road, it was like a drink of cold water on a hot day. It wouldn’t last, not if their progress so far was any kind of guide.

  “Carlton, pull over, I need the toilet.”

  Pearcey heard Gallagher speak and, for a moment, grappled with the words. It didn’t really compute.

  His stoli
d, no nonsense engineer, the man he’d chosen as a partner, wanted him to stop in order to go to the lavatory?

  Pearcey shot a glance at his companion.

  “Are you pulling my leg? Tie a fucking knot in it Sonny. Wait til we get to your place. You’ve got a fucking toilet there surely.”

  Later, he’d wonder if the distraction might have made a difference. Possibly slowed his reactions, blurred his thinking enough to be partly responsible. It was nonsense of course.

  Sometimes things simply happen.

  It’s useless to ponder it.

  <><><>

  Gallagher was opening his mouth to reply when the world went crazy.

  It was like an explosion.

  Shock and impact.

  The thing hit the ridiculously long bonnet of the Jaguar and bounced up. Smashed against the edge of the windscreen and roof.

  Disappeared.

  A detonation that crushed metal and splattered fluid like spilled paint. Squirted it across the glass in ropey strings.

  Obscured Pearcey’s view.

  Not that it mattered.

  The steering wheel left his control and the car veered left, weighed down and wild. His foot hit the brake.

  An instinct for self-preservation.

  He registered Gallagher being hurled forward.

  No seat belt.

  Gallagher’s head thumped the glass but Pearcey had no time to think about it. The car was slip-sliding away. Like the man said, the closer you get, the more the crap seems to conspire against you.

  The car shuddered as it hit something else.

  Something fixed and unyielding.

  Airbags inflating.

  The aroma of chemical burning.

  Powder in the air.

  Chaos and confusion. He’d slowed sufficiently for the crash not to be calamitous, but it still jarred him in his seat.

  Gallagher was thrown against him.

  Blood spotting the beautiful leather.

  A random moment. That was all it ever took. Unpredictable was everywhere and he ought to be used to the fact, but it still crept up on you. However prepared you thought you were.

  Pearcey cursed the world and cursed himself.

  Cursed the smell of oil and electricity.

  He tried restart and got nothing. It was dead, the car had become an expensive piece of sculpture.

  He roughly threw Gallagher out of his way, into the passenger side.

  The man groaned and held his head.