by Perrin Briar
Jessie couldn’t help but notice the Lurcher attack was orchestrated, the way they divided themselves up into small groups to attack, and did not feed or savour their victims after they were infected to reduce significant injury to new recruits, and each time a Lurcher group came across a problem, and then developed a solution, another Lurcher group immediately dealt with the same problem with the same solution when it arose. It was like they were all connected, a single fighting unit with a single mind.
Jessie had seen Lurchers acting similarly before. She cast her eyes over them, trying to identify what those at Burgh Castle described as an ‘overlord’. But there were too many moving limbs and flapping appendages. Then she thought about where it might be, should it be the most intelligent being in the whole city. It would be in the safest place. She turned to look at the giant ship run aground. It would be on the deck. That’s where she would camp. The Lurchers were spreading out in concentric circles from the ship, forming an offensive front as well as an effective defence for the overlord. And who would head into the ship knowing that was where the evil had begun in the first place?
If only she had her rifle, and one clean shot…
But she couldn’t hope to take out the overlord on her own. She would need help. Freeing Jordan and Anne became more important than ever. She turned to the king’s mansion and followed the panicked crowd toward it.
26.
The Moon Door was six inches thick with a series of steel rods as wide as a man’s wrist. The gaoler grunted as he forced a large wheel around, spinning it three times. The steel rods drew back.
Jordan and Anne stepped outside onto the street, breathing the air only free men could savour. They looked back to find Sam still at the door. He looked at them with wide fearful eyes, taking in the world like it was an alien landscape. The open space and infinite sky must have seemed daunting to someone who hadn’t stepped outside in almost a year.
Anne’s expression softened. She wrapped her arm around Sam’s shoulders.
“We’ll take this one step at a time,” she said.
Sam’s leg shook as he stepped forward, hesitating before placing his foot on the tarmac. The world didn’t explode. His body relaxed.
“See?” Anne said. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
Someone shouted something in Arabic that made Sam leap a foot in the air. A hundred locals, with wide sunken eyes, turned to look at the trio. Some pointed at the open Moon Door and ran toward it. The gaoler’s eyebrows rose in alarm on his broad forehead. He began to close the door, but it was heavy and slow.
The townspeople got to the door, blocking it with their bodies. The gaoler kicked at the squashed limbs, beating them back, but the locals were too many, pressing their combined weight against the door. The gaoler’s feet slid back on the thick carpet. He lost his grip, and the door slammed into the opposite wall. The gaoler tripped on the corner of a rug. The locals rushed inside, crushing the gaoler underfoot.
“What the hell’s going on?” Anne said. “Are they revolting?”
A long stream of people ran at the open doorway, squeezing into the mansion.
Jordan stepped in front of a woman in her twenties.
“Excuse me,” he said. “What’s going on here?”
The young woman shook her head, her eyes big and wide, mumbling something under her breath, none of it intelligible. She let herself get carried away.
“All this time we were trying to get out,” Anne said, “while these people were trying to get in!”
She approached a middle-aged man with a friendly countenance.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Can you tell me…?”
The creases in the man’s forehead were deep and fraught with concern.
“The dead!” the man said in his native English. “The dead have set sail! We’re doomed! They’ve claimed the oceans for themselves! The seas are doomed!”
“What are you talking about?” Jordan said.
The sailor stopped and turned, eyes unblinking. He was looking directly at Jordan, who got the feeling the man wasn’t really looking at him at all.
“The dead!” he said. “They’re at sea! And they’re here!”
He whimpered, turned, and melted into the crowd.
“We need to get out of here,” Anne said.
“They’re running from the dock,” Jordan said. “I’m not sure it’s wise to run toward what everyone else is running away from.”
“-ordan!” a voice shouted. “Jordan! Anne!”
“Did you hear that?” Anne said.
Jordan was already scanning the faces of the people in the crowd. They were all painted with the same pained expression.
“I can’t see her,” Anne said.
“-nne!” the voice shouted. “-ver here!”
“It’s Jessie,” Anne said. “I can hear Jessie!”
Anne pushed her way through the rushing crowd and leapt up onto a park bench. Just down the street she saw a familiar figure standing on another bench, waving her arms, a big beaming grin on her face.
“Jessie!” Anne said.
Her heart swelled. She had never been so happy to see anyone in her life. Jessie was glowing, beautiful. She had tears in her eyes, matching the ones in Anne’s.
“Stay there!” Anne shouted. “We’ll come to you!”
Anne hopped down from the bench and led Jordan and Sam against the flood of people. It never seemed to end. She met a large man with a beard, almost twice her size. She squared her shoulders and ploughed into him. He rocked back, knocked aside by this small lady. He glared at her, but she took no notice and kept going. Jessie couldn’t wait and ran half the distance. They met in the middle, surrounded by hundreds of frightened strangers.
Jessie wrapped her arms around Jordan and Anne, burying her face into them. They all had so much to say, so much relief and gratitude, but nothing came out. They just hugged one another. People bustled past them, cajoling them side to side.
Jessie noticed a figure watching them.
“Who’s this?” she said.
“This is Sam,” Anne said. “He’s going to stay with us for a while.”
Jessie offered her hand. Sam shook it.
“Nice to meet you,” Jessie said.
“And I you,” Sam said with a broad smile, clearly taken with her already.
“What’s going on here?” Jordan said to Jessie. “Why are all these people running away?”
“There’s a huge ship!” Jessie said. “It pulled right into the docks, destroying everything in its path, and then Lurchers started spilling from its hulls!”
“What about Hope Tomorrow?” Anne said. “Did you see her get destroyed?”
“No,” Jessie said. “But I can’t believe anything could have survived the impact. It destroyed everything.”
They were all silent a moment, paying respect to the ship that had brought them this far in their journey.
“We have to find a way to get out of here,” Jordan said.
“How?” Jessie said. “The docks are infested with Lurchers.”
Jordan caught movement out the corner of his eye. Amongst the thronging mass of bodies heading up the hill were three orange uniforms. They were standing still, at odds with the river of people weaving around them. They appeared to be assisting a child and his father who had been knocked down by the crushing crowd, but their eyes flicked up at regular intervals in Jordan’s direction.
“It gets worse,” Jordan said. “We’ve got a tail.”
“Where?” Anne said.
“Don’t look,” Jordan said. “They’re behind us.”
“Why would they be following us?” Jessie said.
“They think we have the key to the food vaults, or know where it is,” Jordan said.
Jessie’s eyes narrowed.
“Ori,” she said. “He has it, doesn’t he?”
“Do you know where he is?” Jordan said.
“He was on Hope Tomorrow,” Jessie said. “With the h
uge ship coming he’ll be at the bottom of the dock, along with the key.”
“So much for helping the king,” Jordan said. “Come on.”
27.
They pushed through the flow of humanity. The people were afraid and fearful, but moved in a calm and orderly manner, no doubt thanks to the guards lined up at regular intervals along either side of the street.
The number of townspeople petered out. They were replaced by hundreds of uniformed guards. They were all busy. Some hurled furniture down from the first, second and third floor windows of the buildings on either side of the street. Others sorted amongst the debris, picking up the largest pieces and piling them up into a wall about the height of a grown man.
A woman in black cried before a guard with plumes of white on his shoulders, marking him as a man of superior rank. He stood bolt upright, hands clasped behind his back, looking at the woman with the air of someone self-assured by the fact he was just following orders. The woman’s emotional pleas, whatever they were about, were falling on deaf ears. The guard waved his hand, and the woman was dragged away.
Jordan approached him.
“Excuse me,” Jordan said. “We need to get through to the dock.”
“No one gets through this way,” the captain said. “There’s a horde of the undead coming toward us. You’ll be dead before you get to the end of the street.”
A long line of guards stood along the barricade. Each man carried either a gun or ammunition. The guns were varied in shape and size – a German pistol here, a modern rifle there. The guards with the guns fell to their knees like an eighteenth century infantry unit and fired at the approaching Lurchers. A few went down, most only rocking back on their feet before finding their balance and leaning forward again.
The barricade shook with jarring thuds as the Lurchers beat on it with their fists. At places where the barricade was taller, the guards placed their guns through small holes, resting them on chair legs and the top of vanity cases. Every bullet struck a Lurcher, piercing the reeking dead flesh of the great unwashed. Not every bullet was a killing shot, so only a few fell. The guards aimed again and fired.
The captain peered through a gap in the barricade at the approaching undead.
“Through the heads, you fools!” he said. “Their heads!”
The next volley was more successful, and tore through the first row of aggressors. Heads imploded, their bodies collapsing like puppets with their strings cut. A thick red mist doused the road. A Lurcher screamed, a deep guttural ugly thing that belonged more in the belly of a dying beast than a blonde teenager. Her head snapped back as another bullet took her in the forehead. She crumpled to the ground, but her spot immediately taken by another.
“Your men aren’t going to hold!” Jordan said to the captain. “Pull your men back!”
“The king’s men never surrender!” the captain said.
“It’s not surrendering if you get to fight another day!” Jordan said.
But the captain didn’t listen. His attention was taken with something happening farther down the line. The men jolted forward, smacking into the barricade. Then they fell back, staring up at the wall like the devil himself had appeared on the other side.
“Get up!” the captain said. “Fight to protect your king!”
“He… He grabbed my rifle and pulled it from my hands, sir!” the guard said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the captain said, pulling the guard to his feet.
Another guard slammed into the barricade and lost his grip on his rifle. A skeletal hand snatched it and pulled it through to the other side. The same happened to a third guard, but he refused to let go of his weapon. His arm was dragged through the barricade. He braced his feet on an antique chair and piano stool and pulled at his arm. He screamed, and then fell back. He clutched his hand to his chest, writhing on the ground.
“Let me see it,” the captain said to the man.
The guard hesitated, and then extended his hand. It was red with blood, a large chunk missing from the fleshy part.
“Get to the infirmary,” the captain said.
Jordan expected the captain to draw the sword at his waist, scream something honourable in an ancient language, and decapitate the man. Instead, the captain let the guard go. Didn’t he understand what he was facing?
“Let’s go,” Jordan said. “We’ll have to find another way through. They can’t have blocked all the streets.”
His eyes flicked up at the three orange uniforms behind them, at the moment picking up items of broken furniture. A woman with a son grabbed for the guards. Her son had blood seeping from a cut above his ear. Jordan headed down a quiet narrow road, glancing back at the guards. The lead guard and Jordan’s eyes met. The guard shoved the woman aside.
Jordan took them down the road, and then quickly changed to a third, and a fourth, finally leading them into one of the buildings. The inhabitants nailed boards to their windows with sheets of wood and broken furniture. Jordan ran up the stairs until they got to the roof.
They were all tired, exhausted from the activities of the past day, their movements lethargic and slow. They collapsed on the roof, lying still and breathing in heavy gasps. Jordan crept over to the wall and peered over the side.
The guards peered one way and then another. The leader pointed to each of the other guards and sent them in a different direction.
Jordan slid down the wall and caught his breath.
“We need to get going,” he said. “They’ll be back soon and will start searching for us.”
“I’m not sure they will,” Jessie said. “They’ve got a bigger problem than us now.”
“There is no bigger problem than us right now,” Jordan said. “They think we have the key, or know of its whereabouts. The key unlocks the food vaults. Without it the people here will starve. Whether they live past today is inconsequential compared to that.”
“How are we going to get past the Lurchers if even the guards are struggling to do it?” Anne said.
“We don’t have to fight them,” Jordan said. “Only get past them.”
“How?” Anne said. “The only way to the docks is through the streets. And even if we did get past them, there’s no guarantee there are any boats in one piece.”
“What other choice do we have?” Jordan said. “The sea’s the only way off this island. But we’ll never reach the docks this way. We need to come from another direction.”
“I might know a way,” Sam said.
They all turned to look at him. He could barely stand, his tall frame supported by withered muscles. His cheek bones strained against aged coarse skin. But there was a playful glint in his eye, and a shy smile on his lips.
28.
“The night before the Incident hit us I went to a party,” Sam said. “We’d managed to smuggle in some alcohol and I might have overdone it a little. I woke up with a hangover, feeling bad. I was going to skip my morning lecture on Middle Eastern history when I remembered we were going to study the Barbar Temple. I’d been looking forward to that lecture all term, so I dragged myself out of bed and got ready.
“I crossed the ferry to the university, sleeping the whole way. The university, despite its name, is actually based on the Port Fouad island. It was lucky for me I did go. The outbreak hit us that morning. No one knows how it got to us, but I remember seeing a yellow-orange glow out of my classroom window. It was beautiful. I thought it was the sun setting. Then I realised it was ten in the morning. The whole of Port Said was on fire. It lasted all that day and well into the night.”
Sam checked the others were paying due attention. They were.
“But there was another reason it was lucky I turned up at the lecture that day,” he said. “Archaeologists had recently discovered the Barber Temple showed evidence of underground tunnels. What their purpose was no one could quite explain, but our lecturer suggested the most likely reason; the very same reason for the recent groundworks taking place beneath our feet in Egypt.
For transit.
“The government had decided to build three new underground tunnels that would link the rest of Egypt with the Suez Canal. Two for cars, one for trains. For many years Egypt had a thirteen percent unemployment rate and it was hoped that with improved infrastructure and transportation networks career opportunities might increase.”
“More underground tunnels?” Jordan said. “I’m surprised this island hasn’t sunk. It’s got more holes than Swiss cheese.”
“I’m sorry?” Sam said with a frown.
“Ignore him,” Anne said. “It’s rubbish English humour.”
Sam nodded, but his frown remained, puzzling over the joke.
“From what I remember,” he said, “there is an opening over here.”
Sam led them to the east of the city, almost on the coast, to a series of white squat houses with red tiled rooves. They looked like they belonged in Eastern Europe, not North Africa. Behind them was a long flat concrete block like a white chequered square belonging to a giant chest board. On top of it was a cigar-shaped hatch. Sam crossed to it and spun the wheel three times. Air hissed out the sides as the pressure inside was released.
“It hasn’t been opened in a while,” Sam said. “People were worried about the undead getting in through these underground roads, so the king ordered it to be shut permanently.”
“How do you know all this?” Anne said.
“Sometimes I heard the guards talking while they took my blood,” Sam said.
He placed his ear over the opening and listened.
“Sounds fine,” he said.
Jessie peered down through the hole with an unconvinced expression.
“Are you sure about this?” she said.
“Oh yes,” Sam said. “Quite certain.”
“Did you say, ‘quite’?” Jessie said. She turned to Jordan and Anne. “Did he say ‘quite’?”
“That’s what I heard,” Jordan said.