‘Yes, Dave,’ the student says and the two stop running to bring rifles to aim and wait for the last of the team to go by before firing into the massed ranks coming after them. Strafing shots into legs to down the bodies at the front to make the ones behind trip and fall to buy vital seconds. Their rifles expended quickly so they sling and draw pistols to fire smaller rounds into the attackers.
‘On,’ Dave says, his voice as flat as ever. A gap bought and paid for. A gap to work and make bigger as Dave runs up behind the others. ‘YOU WILL RUN…’ he roars to keep them going, making them speed up and grow that gap he and Mo just created.
Howie at the front leading them on. Veering left into a junction. More infected pouring into them from the sides. A running fight with fists and headbutts. A running fight, frantic and crazed.
A set of big wooden doors hanging open in a warehouse to the right. Howie aims for it, hoping to find a pinch-point to form a firing line and they go through fighting and snarling and battering at each other into the gloomy but dry inside of a vast storeroom filled with pallets stacked high with boxes standing like columns. Jess now running free within their group. Meredith streaking between them all, taking one down here then another down there. Danny glimpses behind, crying out on seeing Kieron and his mum then crying out louder on seeing his younger stepbrother and sister. Everyone the same. Snatching glimpses of relatives and friends that robs the pure spite-filled aggression needed to fight back.
A dirty thing to do. A foul trick to play and in the north the boy is lifted from the Range Rover outside their bumfucknowhere isolated little country house. Running over to Gregori opening the front door who lowers to take the child on his back as they go back to the car to ferry their new goods inside. ‘And Paula’s granddaddy is there Nick’s cousin and Cookey’s mummy and Danny’s mummy and Danny’s stepbrother and…’ the boy yacks on, words and names spewing from his mouth that Gregori doesn’t really listen to while Cassie chuckles and carries things inside.
The warehouse is big. A county delivery hub and it takes minutes for them to cross the vast space. The silence shattered by the shouts and cries of the living and the howls and screeches of the infected who pour through those double doors to chase and kill.
Through another set of doors. Across a yard. Clarence battering down another big wooden door and through another building. On they go. Unable to turn and fire without risk of shooting each other or of being flanked. The shock of seeing their families in their minds. The reality of it now hitting home.
Reginald gasps for air. Running in his new suit with his cane still gripped in his hand. A woman running in at him with a vicious snarl. ‘Jennifer!’ Reginald blurts, bringing his cane up as though it will protect him. Maddox batters her down, feeling Reginald falter to look back at the woman he played chess with on Thursdays. Then Maddox takes his turn to show horror on seeing faces he knows in the horde. Old customers he sold drugs to, someone he served a prison sentence with. Mo’s probation officer. People they knew. People they liked and people they hated. Disconcerting and brutal.
More yards, more service roads in a maze of industrial buildings on a vast plot of land. Left and rights taken but still the infected come. It has the upper hand now. It has that seed of fear planted and will end them here.
Howie spots it first. A cluster of dead bodies outside a set of double wooden doors, one half of which hangs open. ‘THERE!’ he aims for that door, knowing they can’t keep running, knowing they have to find a spot to fight from. The bodies outside the doors look shot down. Bullet holes in chests and heads blown out. Not that he pauses to examine them but runs past, wrenching the door open and screaming for them to get through. Dozens of infected and his team all going in together with Jess running free and panicked without Charlie on her back to guide and settle her natural fears.
Howie grips the heavy door, straining to pull it closed as the horde charge across the road at them. ‘CLARENCE!’ Clarence rushing to his side while the others fight. Shouts and screams. Dirty close quarters scrapping. Clarence yanks Howie back, flinging him into the fray to get space to grab the door and heave it shut and get a heavy wooden locking bar in place the second before the horde impact from the outside, thudding hard and making the doors flex and groan inwards.
Clarence staggers back, turning to see the brutal melee going on. Mo and Marcy back to back, both with knives out. Paula straddling over a woman, stabbing down into her chest with another slamming into her side that Clarence grips and breaks and uses to batter more away. Charlie and Tappy rolling across the ground trying to fight several at the same time. Knives stabbing and slicing. Cookey and Nick diving in. Blowers laying waste to anything coming near him and Danny stabbing into the stomach of a man while screaming wildly. Roy and Maddox fighting side by side with Reginald behind them and the doors creak and that locking bar groans.
‘BACK…’ Howie runs in, grabbing bodies to stab and fling aside. ‘INTO THE BACK…’
They stagger on, desperate to be away from the doors, to buy a second to think and form a defence while running and fighting across a pitted ground streaked with oil. Tappy goes down. Charlie grabs her arm, wrenching her up in. Cookey there pushing them on. Everyone slipping and tripping. Everyone bruised and hurt, gasping for air. Another set of doors at the back standing open. Wide and high. They go through and down a wide corridor to a sturdier set of doors fitted with metal strips riveted in place. The windows here barred with solid metal cages.
‘In there,’ Howie gasps, hearing the bang of the main doors behind him and the sound of glass smashing as they start coming in through windows in the huge building.
In through the doors to a dark, gloomy room. The last infected running with them cut down and killed. Howie, Clarence and Tappy grabbing the doors to push them closed. Big bolts shot home and big locks secured. A metal locking bar pushed in place as the wooden outer doors to the street give with a splintering cry of wood tearing. A howl coming towards them. The sound of hundreds of feet running over concrete then the door is hit but it holds fast. The solid metal strips absorbing the blow and only then do they drop to gasp for air, falling to knees and leaning against walls. Jess still skittering, Meredith panting but seconds bought to think. Vital seconds to think.
Twenty One
A big room with high solid walls. A slide back metal door on one side giving access to the outside world. A huge table in the middle with chairs all around it and a single grimy, opaque skylight in the ceiling above giving the only source of weak light as everyone apart from Dave, Mo, Jess and Meredith gasp and recover. Hearts racing. Flashes flushed and sweating. Hair and clothes soaked from the rain.
A bang to the internal door. Then another as the infected batter themselves against it. Footsteps running above them. The sound of feet over the roof and more voices screeching all around then the sound of thuds as the infected drop to bang on the metal slide back door.
‘Fuck me,’ Howie gasps. ‘Everyone okay?’
‘Not really,’ Paula says. ‘Dave killed my granddad…’
‘My mum’s out there…’ Danny says. ‘My brother and sister…’
‘I saw my cousin,’ Nick says.
‘My aunt,’ Charlie adds.
‘Marcy, you okay?’ Howie asks.
‘I’m blowing out my arse,’ she admits, slumped against a wall. ‘I think…I think I preferred Reggie boring them to death…’
‘Did you…’ Howie falters, realising what he was about to ask.
She shakes her head, ‘I’m not from here…you already killed all of my family…either that or I did…’
‘Jesus,’ Maddox mutters.
‘Is what it is,’ Marcy says grimly.
‘I saw your probation officer, Mo,’ Maddox says.
‘Yeah he’s a cunt,’ Mo says, remarkably calm with a level of fitness now nearing that of Dave. ‘Saw your aunt, Mads…’
‘I killed my family the first night,’ Tappy gasps. ‘But there’s more…out there…cousins a
nd…’
‘Danny?’ A female voice outside the doors and Danny’s head snaps up, his eyes growing wide. ‘Danny?’
‘Mum?’ Danny says, his voice breaking.
‘Danny?’
‘Fuck no,’ Howie groans, closing his eyes.
‘Mum…’
‘Fuck me, what a thing to do,’ Howie says, shaking his head as he looks to the door. ‘WHAT A THING TO FUCKING DO…’
‘Danny? Help me…’
‘Mum,’ Danny bleats, tears flowing down his cheeks. Cookey wiping his eyes from seeing his own mum in the street.
Pain in their bodies. Bites, scratches, bumps, bangs and bruises all over them. Knees and hands cut from falling over. Blood smeared over faces and arms. Clothing torn and cheeks marked with tears and the energy they built up during a day of days now dark and low.
‘Come here,’ Paula pulls Danny in, smothering his head with her arms to try and block the sounds.
‘Charlotte?’ another voice from outside, broken and hoarse but the words clear. ‘Charlotte?’
‘Oh Jesus,’ Charlie mumbles, closing her eyes.
‘Who is it?’ Cookey asks.
‘Aunt,’ she whispers.
‘Help me, Danny…’
‘Charlotte?’
‘Mohammed?’ a male voice, deep and rich.
‘You’s get fucked bro, I don’t even know you,’ Mo shouts.
‘Who is that?’ Maddox asks.
‘I dunno, my fam is huge, you get me…’
‘Danny?’ the female voice keeps going. The others calling the names of Charlotte, Mohammed then more. Paula’s name added. Natasha. Most of the voices unrecognisable but the effect is clear. The psychological impact worsening by the second.
Howie looks around, trying to see in the gloom while hearing more footsteps going over the roof and more thuds as they land outside the sliding door. More bangs and thumps and he knows enough of his enemy to know that for every minute they stay here the infection will draw more hosts and they’ve only got the weapons they carry. Then he spots a tiny glimmer of light higher up the wall. A blacked out window covered with bars. A pipe running next to it. ‘Mo, can you get up there and look out…’
‘Up where?’ Mo asks, peering into the gloom.
‘Window, up there…see it.’
‘Yeah…’
‘Yes not yeah,’ Dave says.
‘Yes, Mr Howie…’ Mo moves off, gripping the pipe to test it will hold before starting to rise hand over feet with Clarence moving underneath, ready to catch him while the thuds and bangs come and the incessant voices outside call names that drive into minds. ‘Got it,’ Mo calls down, reaching to grip the bars then pulling himself over. ‘S’filthy up here innit…windows painted…I can’t scrape it off, want me to bust it?’
‘Yes mate,’ Howie says.
A crack. Glass tinkling down. A pause while he looks out. ‘Ah shit, yeah that ain’t so good, boss,’ Mo says, his voice dropping a few notches. ‘S’kids innit.’
‘What is?’ Clarence asks.
‘Kids, outside that sliding door…’
‘Children?’ Clarence asks.
‘Yeah…I mean yes.’
‘How…’ Clarence clears his throat, the tension rising even more. ‘How many, Mo?’
‘S’loads…hundred maybe…more coming through…’
‘Shit,’ Clarence whispers, squeezing his eyes closed while rubbing the back of his neck. ‘I can’t…boss…I can’t…not kids…’
‘I know mate,’ Howie whispers, his chest still heaving. Two ways out. Either through the people they know or through kids. He locks eyes with Reginald, both of them knowing they’ve misjudged the situation entirely and underestimated their opponent and the levels it will go to because there are no levels, there is nothing it will not do to win.
‘You’re not even joking,’ Paula says bitterly, holding Danny close. Tears streaming from her eyes as she flicks her eyes to the door on hearing her name called.
‘Okay,’ Howie says, nodding grimly in the dark. ‘Blowers…you see anyone you know out there?’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’m up for it,’ he says, his voice hard as he pushes off the wall and starts rolling his shoulders.
‘Me, Blowers and Dave…we’ll go out with Meredith,’ Howie says. ‘Rest of you stay put…’
‘Mohammed will deploy with us,’ Dave says.
‘Mo?’ a voice outside the door. Young and female that makes Maddox grimace. ‘Mo?’
‘That’s Jagger’s sister,’ Maddox says as Mo closes his eyes, still holding the bars at the window high up the wall. ‘She was put in care a few months ago…wasn’t on the estate when…’
‘Mo?’
‘Mohammed will not deploy,’ Dave says, his voice as flat as ever.
‘I’s good, Dave,’ Mo whispers, willing the coldness to come now, to be what Dave is but when he opens his eyes he looks out through the break in the glass to a yard full of children and more dropping from the walls to land crouched and ready. Heads high and their faces full of the evil within. Macabre and sinister. He swallows, blinking the tears away.
‘I can fight,’ Roy says, pushing to his feet as Howie and Blowers look at him. ‘I never had friends,’ he admits with raw honesty. ‘And I haven’t seen my family in years…’ he trails off, nodding slowly. ‘Feel a bit light-headed though…might be something serious so we should get on with it…’
A noise above them. Different to the feet running over the flat roof. A crunching sound, distinct and loud. Howie looks up, squinting to see in the gloom. A skylight painted black like the window Mo broke and in that second, he wonders who would paint a skylight black. Another crunch. Something breaking and tearing then the room fills with sudden light as the skylight is ripped away and an infected woman leans into view, staring down. ‘Howie,’ she says.
‘Oh fuck,’ Howie mumbles, drawing his pistol. ‘Hey, Claire, how’s it going?’ he fires at his sister’s best friend from school, the bullet entering her forehead framed neatly in the square of light. The back of her skull blowing out and she flies out of sight, hitting more infected gathered ready to drop and bounces back to fall through the skylight, plummeting through the air towards the big table underneath and the contents stacked high, and in that split-second it all makes sense.
The strong doors. The barred windows. The bodies outside the doors that stupidly tried to get to their product and shot each other as the world fell. The big table and the chairs round it so the slave workers could reach the huge mound of Cocaine to pack into dealer sized baggies ready to be distributed. The huge mound of Cocaine that was grown in Columbia and shipped by a cartel in hidden in containers to hit UK shores to be brought here to be made ready. Millions of pounds of it right here on this table. More than Maddox and Mo have ever seen in one place and Claire, the now dead former best-friend of Sarah, plummets through the air towards it. A big girl, heavy boned and curvy. A dead weight dropping with momentum gained and she hits hard with a dull thump the only sound made but the sight is something to see.
An explosion of pure white powder blown up and out into the air. Loads of it. Tons of it. The entire space above the table seemingly filled with a cloud of particles going up and out like a mushroom cloud detonation and as one, they all look up in stunned disbelief. Fifteen people, a dog and a horse all staring at the same thing but what goes up must come down, and it does come down. Clouds of Cocaine falling to coat faces, settling in hair and on shoulders, covering them all in fine white powder. Jess and Meredith coated in seconds. Everyone still breathing hard from the exertion of the run and the fight. Everyone sucking Cocaine in through their mouths and noses. Mo covered entirely as he blinks and shakes his head causing more to fall on Clarence standing below that does the same as everyone else and just stares at the sight for it surely is a thing to see.
‘I feel strange, Mr Howie…’ every head snaps over to Dave standing perfectly still coated from head to toe in white powder and the small man li
fts a hand to stare at the powder for a second then ever so gently brings his hand to his mouth and licks a tiny patch. His face as devoid as ever but then he frowns and lowers his hand. ‘My mouth is numb, Mr Howie…’
Pupils dilate. Hearts increase in beats per minute. Senses come alive. Brains thrumming. Danny and Paula popping up to their feet. Tappy springing up. Charlie’s eyebrows lifting.
‘I feel strange, Mr Howie,’ Dave says again, his speech faster. ‘I feel strange…do you feel strange? I feel strange. Do you feel strange, Paula? I FEEL STRANGE. LIKE…LIKE…’ Dave pauses, looking casually to the left as another infected drops through the skylight to land crouched on the table. ‘LIKE I WANT TO KILL THAT MAN RIGHT NOW MR HOWIE CAN I KILL THAT MAN RIGHT NOW MR HOWIE I WANT TO DO THAT RIGHT NOW…’
‘YOU SHOULD,’ Howie says.
‘SHOULD,’ Clarence says.
‘SOUNDS GREAT,’ Marcy says.
‘GOSH,’ Reginald shouts. ‘I THINK WE’VE ALL TAKEN COCAINE. INDEED. COCAINE.’
‘IT’S COCAINE,’ Maddox shouts.
‘I THINK IT IS,’ Reginal shouts as another infected drops to land crouched on the table, sending more white powder into the air.
‘THERE ARE TWO NOW MR HOWIE,’ Dave shouts. ‘TWO. RIGHT THERE MR HOWIE. I CAN SEE THEM. THREE NOW MR HOWIE. I WANT TO KILL THEM…WITH A KNIFE…WITH THIS KNIFE…I LOVE THIS KNIFE MR HOWIE…’
‘OKAY,’ Paula shouts, bouncing on the spot. ‘OKAY…WHO WANTS TO DO WHAT? WE SHOULD ORGANISE…’
‘SHOULD,’ Clarence shouts.
‘I REALLY DO THINK IT IS COCAINE,’ Reginald shouts.
‘IS,’ Maddox shouts. ‘COCAINE.’
‘I THINK SO,’ Reginald shouts.
‘FOUR MR HOWIE. I CAN SEE THEM. I LOVE MY KNIFE. MY KNIFE IS CALLED BLINKY…’
‘GOOD NAME,’ Howie shouts.
‘GREAT NAME,’ Paula shouts.
‘BEST NAME EVER,’ Cookey shouts.
‘THIS ONE,’ Dave shouts, holding his knife out for everyone to see. ‘FIVE NOW MR HOWIE. ME AND BLINKY WILL GO AND KILL THEM…’
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