It’s not fair; his mind screamed as his bladder emptied from fear.
There was so much he wanted to do and achieve during his life. Find his soul mate. Fall in love. Create a life. Grow old while watching his grandchildren play. He was too young to die, to have his body left among the twisted naked creatures, to rot, to be forgotten, and be picked at by scavenging birds.
His mind did not flash thousands of past images in slow motion, as you hear some people state, when they have a near-death experience. His mind shot forward calculating all the things he would miss.
However, the logical side of his brain screamed back, who are you to survive, when all around you lay dead or dying. You’re no-one special. You have no more right to live than all those who have already been changed by the spores and who have turned into animalistic hunters. You’re nobody – an orphan with no family or friends. You have no special gift that the world needs to save humanity. You’re a loner, who locked himself away in a small flat, closing the world outside. The world doesn’t need you – no-one does.
I do want to live; he screamed back.
Noah’s eyes were still closed tight. He could see images of Red – her smile, the way she flicked her hair back, her graceful movements. He was shocked when he realized that the grandchildren he visualized had flaming red hair. He had never believed in love at first sight, but he had only known her for about three hours, and already he was dreaming about a future with her in it.
I should never have left her. Now I will never see her again.
All these thoughts took mere seconds.
The rain hammered against his cold, naked body. He could feel the mud beneath his numb toes. The wind against his goosebumps skin.
Nothing happened. No bullet slammed into his head or chest.
Noah opened his eyes and saw the female soldier firing repeatedly in his direction.
Surely, she cannot be that bad a shot. Maybe the mask is affecting her aiming.
Then realization dawned – as he felt the air of the passing bullets on his bare skin, and creatures toppled all around – she was protecting him.
Noah scrambled forward, jumping over a twisted, deformed body, and dodging another as it slapped the earth facedown.
“Down by the wall,” the female screamed as she concentrated on the charging mass, peppering them with bullets. Her hand slammed into the side of the SA80 rifle; the magazine fell away. In a swift, reflex move, she grabbed another from a pocket on her thigh and forced it in place. She pulled back on a lever, hit a section on the top, and continued firing.
Noah ducked down below her line of sight and scampered along on hands and feet to the short wall; he forced his wet, naked body up against the freezing cold concrete surface.
Gunfire echoed around him.
Noah could hear another woman screaming, “Come on Jimmy, breathe, damn you!”
As Noah turned back towards the park, he realized just how many creatures were heading towards the pond – it was no longer just a handful, there were hundreds.
38
Red, Betty, and Lennie
Newton Abbot
In an Old Peoples Flat
12:23 PM GMT
Betty headed into the flat over the sticky carpet and then onto floorboards, where Red’s arm lay protruding from the bedroom’s doorway. Betty scanned the room for danger. There was blood and guts everywhere, up the walls, and over the remains of the furniture. Part of the ceiling collapsed due to the blast, and the large double glazed window was blown out.
Betty slowly lowered herself down on arthritic knees. Her hand went to a vein on Red’s neck. She still had a heartbeat.
Red lay on her back, covered in blood and gore. Her hair was matted, and her clothes ripped and torn. However, she had no visible cuts or protruding bones from the exploding bodies. Her mask was still on, even though it had a fracture in the faceplate.
Black spores danced around what was left of the ceiling as they were pulled up to the next floor and out the smashed window by the strong wind.
“Lennie!” Betty called, sounding all muffled due to her top being pulled up over her mouth and nose.
Lennie slowly lumbered in while rubbing his back below the backpack, where he had been tossed backwards onto it.
“Pick her up Lennie,” Betty said. Betty stood back to give her grandson room to move.
“Put her in the bath.”
The small flat’s bathroom was cluttered with lots of pink frilly things. Pink mats upon the floor, with a pink cover over the toilet seat, and a pink shower curtain and toilet roll holder and towels. It strained the eyes. It seemed too ordinary after what had happened in the other room.
“Lay her down softy, there’s a good boy.”
Lennie slowly lowered Red into the bathtub. Before he left, Betty wiped the blood off his sleeves and hands the best she could.
“Take off your overall and toss it down by the toilet,” she said.
Lennie slowly removed the backpack and took off the sodden grey overall. He then moved into the small flat’s hallway in jeans and jumper. He then rummaged through his backpack, removed his spare overall, and pulled it on. He liked wearing overalls; it made him feel like a real worker, like Bob the Builder.
Betty then went and wedged shut the front door, and pulled what was left of the bedroom door shut also. She closed the curtains in the front room, even though the window was smashed; it still stopped anything from looking in.
“You sit on the floor there, Lennie, and look after Charlie.”
Lennie slowly lowered himself down, blocking the front door from opening, with Charlie snuggled under his arm.
Betty found some black bin bags in the kitchen then returned to the bathroom and shut the door behind her. The water still worked, as she turned the shower on and started to wash the blood and spores off Red’s body, clothing and out of her long red hair.
Red did not respond to the sensation of the warm water washing over her.
The bathtub filled with murky water, swirling around Red’s body and down the plughole, as Betty cleaned off the mess. She removed the tatty shirt and trousers with a pair of scissors from the medicine cabinet, leaving Red in her skimpy underwear. She cleaned off the blue trainers as best she could. She removed the filtration mask and cleaned it off only after she bagged up all the tatty clothes in a black bin bag. The bathroom seemed safe; the spores in the bedroom had drifted upstairs through the collapsed ceiling and out the smashed window.
The bathroom did not have a window, but it did have a powerful fan in the ceiling, sucking everything up and away. The fan vibrated and was a little noisy, but she had no choice; the light would not work without the fan kicking in as well.
Betty then wiped the bow and arrows clean that lay close to Red’s body when she found her. The golf club she had been holding in her hand was twisted by the blast, and the head had snapped off. She rested it next to the bow and arrows; it would still come in handy as a weapon.
Betty looked into the medicine cabinet’s mirror. Her dandelion hair swirled around her head. The goggles made her eyes seem huge and bug-like. She pulled them down around her neck. She gave a long sigh. She could hear Lennie playing with the dog. The dog’s nails tapped on the floor as it rushed about.
I’m eighty-six, and I’m stood in a stranger’s pink bathroom, surrounded by naked zombie type thingies, which either try to eat you or explode over you, and I’m washing blood and gore off a young woman’s unconscious body that I only met this morning. And just think I could be stuck in the old people’s home, crammed in a smelly rocking chair watching bloody Murder She Wrote reruns. All the while, the dimwitted care workers – who are telling me what to do when they are young enough to be my great grandchildren – meander around giggling at their phones like schoolchildren about something or other that’s been posted on Facebook.
Betty ran a wrinkled hand through her white hair. She winked at herself in the mirror and smiled.
This beats crappy d
aytime TV any day of the week.
She then went to search for some new clothes for Red.
The bedroom was a right off, and even if there were clothes in there; they would be shredded by the exploding bodies and drenched in blood.
Betty asked Lennie to shift over so she could go down the hallway to check out some other flats. She did not like the idea of wandering from flat to flat, but she could not leave Red in just her underwear.
When she opened the door, she noticed Red’s backpack in the middle of the entranceway.
Huh, what are the chances of that? Betty thought to herself. She picked the bag up and returned inside.
The only clothes were a pair of jeans and two tee shirts and underwear, but it was clean. It also had a photo of Red and another female, who looked like Red but a few years younger, with an older man and woman stood between them. The woman looked like Red’s mother. It was hard to tell if the man was related because his face was obliterated by being rubbed over with a black pen until the photo disintegrated.
Strange, Betty thought. She tucked the photo back in the bottom of the bag.
Betty then went through Lennie’s bag and found a dark-blue jumper with a rainbow across the front that dwarfed Red, but would keep her warm.
With Lennie’s help, after drying Red and dressing her, she moved her to the front room, laying her on the long couch that still had its protective plastic wrapping over it. After shaking one of the blankets that rested over her shoulders, she laid it over Red’s motionless body.
Betty noticed the lump on Red’s head when she washed her hair. She perched on the couch next to Red and held her small pale hand.
“Come on dear, time to wake up now,” she muttered. She began to rub Red’s hand. It was so cold.
The strong wind made the curtains flutter. Betty got up and pulled them tight, while wedging the heavy china angels on the windowsill into the corners to stop the curtains from flapping around.
They didn’t help much; she thought as she looked at the statues of the angels. Where’s our God’s now? One china angel held a sword as if ready to defend the weak.
Betty was raised a strict Catholic. She was marched to church every Sunday in her best, regardless of weather or illness. However, unlike the other old people at Mount Pleasants Old Peoples Home, who seemed to grow more religious as their years mounted up and the time to finally find out got closer, Betty grew further away from believing there was a supreme being. In her opinion, there was just too much suffering and hatred in the world.
Marquis De Sade made her mind up when she read one of his books. He wrote, I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God, or it was beyond His power to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak.
Betty agreed wholeheartedly with his statement, and it forever changed her view about God.
When the outbreak had first started, the TV channels and radio airwaves was full of preachers, priests, and evangelists screaming their beliefs, stating God had judged humanity due to his sins, his violence, his ignorance, his unrepentant ways.
On the second week, as the pandemic spread, and the infected jumped from millions to billions; people started to gather at the high places. Fires sprang up on the peaks around the world, with people screaming in every tongue. They made sacrifices to the Gods, of every type of animal, including human, trying to appease their anger. However, no Gods answered. There was no divine light – no celestial cure. The crowds thinned, and eventually dispersed under the knowledge that they were completely on their own.
The sound of Lennie playing with Charlie in the hallway, as the small dog scurried around, brought Betty back to the present.
Abruptly, the little dog froze while sniffing the air. It moved over to the door, and continued sniffing along the gap at the bottom.
A rubbing sound echoed around the small flat, as something scraped up against the other side of the door.
Charlie started growling, and the fur on his neck stood on end.
39
Doctor Lazaro, Noah, and the Squad
Newton Abbot
Courtney Park
12:26 PM GMT
“Doc, how’s he doing?” Echo shouted over her shoulder, as she continued to pump bullets into the charging mass of naked creatures while quickly swiping water off her gasmasks faceplate.
“He’s breathing, but only just,” Melanie responded, while placing Jimmy in the recovery position. Her body ached and shook from the cold water.
Jimmy coughed up the water from his lungs, and now lay upon his side, unconscious. His mask flew off in the crash. She could not find it in the murky, churned-up water.
Melanie might be cold and aching, but the freezing water succeeded in waking her up. It was just the kick she needed to shake off the last effects from the drugs the nurse had pumped into her, and apart from a banging headache, she felt almost normal.
“Behind you Bull,” the Captain shouted.
Bull spun around, while firing round after round. A naked middle-aged man plunged into the pond behind them, after tipping over the green railing that ran along one side. He floated to the surface with a blossoming red halo around his head.
“There’s just too many of them,” Bull screamed back, as the torrential rain poured down his faceplate.
The ammo container that was on the roof along with them bobbed up and down on the choppy ponds surface.
Coco stood braced against the truck’s door. There was no point checking on Franco and Trev, because the low-lying branches had punched through the windscreen and then through them.
So far, the creatures had ignored him, and were charging towards the gunfire.
Coco checked the truck’s cab. He could not see his machinegun; all he could see was splintered branches, ruined flesh, and lots of blood and pulp. He only had a Browning’s pistol on him. He unclipped the handgun and held it in his cold grip. The rain pinged off the truck’s metal surface. He was soaked to the skin.
He saw the naked male running and screaming towards the others. It was a neat trick, making the creatures think he was one of them. Pity it would not work for everyone.
Coco could see the Captain and Bull to one side, with Echo and Doc to the other, with Jimmy lying between them. However, he could not see Spice or Rogers.
Coco jumped down onto the wet grass, and ducked behind the overturned lorry. He needed to reach the others; he stood a better chance if they all remained together.
At least, the rain is working in our favour; he thought. The downpour will stop the spores from floating around.
Just then, a female child of about eleven changed direction and ran straight at him. The rain washed away the blood and dirt; she looked almost normal.
Coco raised his gun.
This is someone’s daughter. Someone raised her, loved her, and taught her right from wrong. Now she’s a delivery device for a fucking plant!
Coco watched as the thin naked child jumped the curb, racing across the slippery grass with guttural screams emanating from her wide throat. Her eyes were twice the size they should be, with veins holding her fractured skull together. Her throat was bloated and red, with a large deformed circular mouth with ruptured teeth protruding in all directions. Her features were pure animalistic; no human emotions remained – just hunger.
Coco pulled the trigger. The bullet went through her open mouth, exploding out the back of her head. She thudded to the grass, slid along, and hit a tree root. She lay unmoving, bleeding out.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
“Doc, get that ammo container open, we need more bullets,” the Captain shouted.
“On it,” Melanie screamed back. She felt like she should be doing more.
I could be holding a gun at least. I have never fired one before, but how hard can it be – point and shoot. I’ve watched someone do it a thousand times in the movies. Hell
, people are doing it right in front of me.
She waded through the freezing water. The rain was hard, splashing up into the faceplate. It was difficult to believe she was in a chest high pond about the size of a tennis court; it felt like she was in the ocean.
Melanie reached the bobbing container and started to drag it to the side. She tripped on something, possibly pondweeds. Her head went under for a second. It also felt like something large brushed up against her leg.
How big are the fish in this pond?
Gunfire echoed around her, distorted from the water in her ears. She managed to reach the wall. She could not lift the container out by herself; it was just too heavy, so she wedged it against the wall with her body and fumbled with the metal catches. She managed to swing the lid open after the second attempt. It was full of ammo magazines. It also had a few weapons held against the inside of the lid by webbing.
Echo stood up, while still firing, and jumped over Jimmy’s body, and walked along the wall to Melanie.
“Those,” Echo pointed, before returning her finger to the trigger.
Melanie pulled five magazines from the container and started filling Echo’s wide pockets.
Echo slapped her gun; the empty magazine fell over the side of the wall, clattering onto the concrete path.
“Another,” Echo screamed, without taking her eyes off the approaching mass.
Melanie smacked a full mag into her hand.
Within seconds, Echo was firing again.
“Get the same type over to the Captain and Bull,” Echo shouted over the sound of the rain, wind, and screaming creatures as she made her way back to Jimmy’s side.
Melanie gripped the container and then waded through the water over to the other two. Once again, something large brushed against her leg. She glanced down just in time to see a golden-red, scaled back. She felt relieved; she half expected a creature to leap from the water.
“Here!” Melanie screamed while stacking magazines next to the Captain and Bull.
The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10] Page 13