John knew it in his bones, knew it from every minute he had spent in the company of Fred Sullivan. The man was ruthless; cold as the edge of space. And suddenly John knew something else, too: Sullivan would have a backup plan. The old bastard was razor sharp. He was a billionaire precisely because he hedged his bets. Which meant that somewhere out there, across the ocean, there was a country that Sullivan had left untouched. Somewhere...isolated. A place to retreat to if everything went wrong, and there was no way back. John had a feeling he knew where that would be, but the knowledge was useless. Just getting there seemed insurmountable. He dismissed the train of thought, filing it away in his mind for consideration later.
"Fine," Rachel said, dragging his attention back to the present. "But that changes nothing about this. We can't run from the castle without any food, John. With no supplies. It's not like we can just pick up what we need from the supermarket after we set off."
She's right.
John nodded.
"Let's do this quick," John replied.
"Say's the man stood chatting on the beach," Shirley growled. "Are we moving or what?"
John nodded.
"We're moving," he said grimly.
"Good," Shirley said. "Which way?"
John glanced around the beach. When he had described the narrow strip of rocks and sand to Emma, after the girl at the castle finally opened up a little, she had told him she knew the place. Sometimes, she said, she'd skip school with her friends and end up out there. The statement had stuck in John’s mind like a thorn; the sudden revelation that she was so young. A schoolgirl one minute, a survivor the next.
All the way out there? John had said in mild disbelief. Hell of a trek just to skip a few lessons. She had shrugged, as if it was nothing.
When everybody nearby knows your parents, word would get back home quicker than I did, she had explained. John understood: if you wanted to play truant in a town as small as Caernarfon, you had to go far enough away that no one would see you.
There was, Emma had said, a small village to the north of the beach. About halfway to Caernarfon.
If Emma had been right about the village, John knew making a big enough bang to draw the Infected wouldn't be a problem. If she was right, he could make a bang so loud it would shake the walls of the castle itself.
That wasn't the problem. The roughly three-mile hike to get there was.
Find the road and follow it north, Emma had told him. You can't miss it.
She made it sound simple.
As John climbed the hill that led away from the beach and thought about what travelling three miles in the open actually meant, he cursed himself for his complacency. Somehow, back at the castle, it had been easy to forget just what being outside was really like. Three miles felt like three hundred. He shuddered when he thought about the way they had spoken back at the beach, barely bothering to keep their voices down at all. The place looked deserted and they had let their guard down.
But three miles was a long way to travel and hope they wouldn’t run into the Infected at all.
Too far.
He knew it as soon as they had left the beach. As soon as he saw the Infected shambling around in the strange, circular way he had come to think of as their default mode. Only two, and they didn't seem aware of the presence of humans nearby. The conversation they had must have been drowned out by the noise of the ocean. Somehow, John's luck seemed to be holding.
He made a mental note not to stand around casually discussing anything.
He held up a clenched fist, and dropped into a crouch. He had spent time at the castle teaching everyone a few basic gesture commands, mindful of just how important such skills might prove for the future of humanity. John had hoped to make the three-mile journey north to the village Emma had mentioned in absolute silence. It looked like that hope was going to be dashed immediately.
He drew Rachel in close, whispering in her ear like a lover.
"Two Infected," he said. "I need two knives. And I need all four of you to stay right here."
He checked to see Rachel had heard him and understood, and held out his hands while she passed him her own knife and gestured to Ray to hand over his. When John took the weapons, he saw Rachel leaning in close to Ray, passing John's message along. The group froze.
Turning away from them, John prowled toward the two Infected in the distance like a panther, moving every muscle in agonizing slow motion, dividing his focus between the creatures and his next footstep, painfully aware that breaking a twig or kicking a stone would almost certainly take the next minutes in a vastly different direction.
John thought he could handle two, even if they rushed him, but they tended to shriek, and that would bring more. Maybe lots more, depending on whether the countryside was as sparsely populated as it looked. If it came to running, the boat was anchored many yards from the beach, making any chance they had of a quick retreat slim at best.
He imagined another round of swimming with the Infected chasing. They had all survived that once, but John didn’t want to push his luck too far, worried that sooner or later it would inevitably push back.
Got to get this right.
The Infected were around fifty feet away, and it felt like it took John forever to close the distance, edging toward them inch by inch. Forty feet.
Thirty.
John's heart hammered.
At around twenty five feet, one of the Infected whipped its head in his direction, pausing its endless, circular shuffle, and John froze, holding his breath until his lungs felt ready to burst.
Still too far.
Finally the creature seemed to decide that whatever it had heard did not constitute prey, and resumed its aimless wandering.
John crept forward.
Twenty feet.
Close enough.
His left arm was nowhere near as accurate as his right, so John knew he'd be unable to take them simultaneously. The first shot was all-important. He had to take the closest creature down; had to ensure it made no noise while he aimed at the second.
Whipping his arm forward from his hip, as though throwing a frisbee, John let the first knife fly, and felt relief wash through him as he saw it land exactly as he had intended, burying itself to the hilt in the throat of the nearest of the two Infected. The creature let out a soft gurgling sound, but the second knife was already arcing through the air, cutting deep into a windpipe of its own. Both of the creatures fell almost simultaneously.
When their bodies impacted on the ground with a soft thump, John remained stock-still, his senses hyper-alert, waiting for some sign that other creatures nearby had heard the noise.
Nothing.
After a minute, he allowed himself to breathe easier.
Only for a second, though, because even as he gestured to the others to follow him, John heard a sound in the distance. A sound that made his blood run cold.
Humming.
A herd.
Fuck.
Every one of John's instincts shrieked at him to run, and warning fires erupted in his nerves. It felt like his very cells quivered in response to the rumbling hum. He ignored the impulse to flee with an effort, forcing himself to stand still. He raised a warning fist to stop the others running, and listened intently.
The herd wasn't close. Not right on top of them, at least. Most likely a mile or two away. Proximity wasn't as much of an issue as direction. The bellowing wind, and the answering sigh of the ocean rendered the noise muddy and difficult to pinpoint. After a moment he shut his eyes. Looking at Rachel's wide, terrified eyes and Ray’s gritted teeth was a different sort of noise, and he needed to tune it out.
He frowned.
Seconds later he opened his eyes and let the noise of the group’s terror back in. It looked to have gotten louder. He wasn't entirely sure, from the expression on Rachel's face, that she wasn't considering slapping him.
Probably would have, if it wasn’t almost certain to draw the Infected here, he thought.
<
br /> "Okay," he breathed. "We're okay. They're south, a couple of miles away I think. Heading north, coming this way."
Rachel looked horrified.
"How is that okay?" she hissed in disbelief.
"Because we're heading north too," John replied with a grimace.
"Are you crazy?"
"North, Rachel," John whispered. "They're going north. Caernarfon is north. The castle won't withstand another herd. We have to stop them."
Rachel stared at him, open-mouthed, and he saw her eyes flicker with understanding as the weight of his words settled on her.
"Move fast, but don't run. Watch your step. Light feet. Eyes open. Quiet." John delivered the words as he might to a platoon preparing for a mission. His tone left no room for doubt or debate. There was no time.
Thank God Michael isn't with us.
John blinked the thought away, and set off at a light jog, weaving and crouching to retrieve the knives from the throats of the dead Infected as he passed. He didn't look back. He had, he supposed, taken away any choice they had by simply going, but it didn't matter. Any seconds he spent talking it over reduced the distance between themselves and the herd, and increased the chances that they would all die. Or worse.
The terrain was tough. Lots of rocks in the soil, dense shrubbery, trees. Running would have been all but impossible even if silence wasn't John’s primary concern. Several times he was forced to clamber on all-fours across twisted roots, but he kept moving, making sure the coast remained to his left. It was just as he began to think the journey would become impossible that he burst from the trees into open space, and onto the road.
When he felt tarmac under his feet, John paused, and held up a fist, halting the group once more.
He scanned both directions for any sign of Infected, but the mist and shadows gave up nothing. He could still hear the humming, though. He couldn't be sure, but he thought it sounded a little fainter. It made sense. The Infected weren't charging toward them. There was no need to panic, and flee blindly. They just had to keep moving.
He waved at the others and set off again, keeping firmly to the middle of the road, scurrying along on his toes; whispering along the tarmac. Rachel, Shirley, Ray and Glyn followed, hustling along single file, like a train transporting terror through the misty afternoon. John still held both knives. He ran with them raised.
Ready.
17
The end of the world had barely registered as a blip on Ed Cartwright's radar. His mother had always said - in a tone that increased in exasperation when it dawned on her that her twenty-four year old son might never leave home - that Ed would probably sleep through an earthquake. She hadn't been far wrong.
Ed had spent the last night of human civilization in much the same way as he had spent every other leading up to it: delivering virtual headshots on his favourite online shooter. The hours drifted past on a haze of marijuana smoke and were only really notable for an outburst of uncontrolled rage when an eight-year-old from Iowa spent ten minutes team-killing Ed and screeching laughter and insults across the chat channel. Finally, after a mostly successful night of gaming, Ed crawled into his unmade bed at around 5am, collapsing into a deep, druggy sleep.
The canisters that changed everything fell as dawn’s light broke faintly across the horizon. The world began to end around six. Ed slept on.
Ed was used to waking up in an empty house. He lived alone with his mother, whose job in nursing meant she often had to work through the nights. Most days Ed woke up between two and three in the afternoon, but on the day that everything changed, his eyes flared open at around midday. He stared at the alarm clock - which was, in truth, just a clock; the alarm function hadn't been used in years - in bleary surprise as the digits swam into focus and informed him of his unusually early start.
His head was thick and foggy, and his throat felt like someone had taken an industrial sander to it, so Ed groaned his way out of bed, threw on a stained dressing gown and staggered downstairs to the fridge like it was an oasis in a hundred miles of parched desert.
As usual, his stomach complained that his habit of stuffing three or four chocolate bars down his throat right before falling asleep was bad form, and as usual he ignored it, and twisted the cap off a half-empty bottle of cola, grimacing in pleasure as the cold liquid fizzed over his fuzzy teeth and throat and delivered a sugar hit that hauled him toward full consciousness.
He belched and made for the living room, and his first joint of the day. His mother hated the fact that Ed smoked so heavily, and nagged him constantly about giving up. The weed was, she said, the reason he couldn't get a job. It was ruining his chance at a decent life. Ed nodded politely and agreed, but of course he didn’t want a job: he just wanted weed and late night porn and the latest iteration of Call of Duty.
He had the same argument with his mother about marijuana almost every day, and in the end she barred him from smoking in the living room, threatening that if he turned her house into 'a drug den' she would be forced to kick him out. Ed doubted she was serious, but all it took was not smoking downstairs to defuse the debate, so he paid the price. Better not to rock the boat when he could just go smoke in his room or in the garden instead.
Unless she was out shopping, or at work. If that was the case Ed stretched out on the couch and blew lazy smoke rings, watching the sunlight that filtered through the window as it caught them and made them otherworldly.
He slumped onto the couch and belched again, painful and acidic, as he flicked on the television. Static.
Ed frowned and surfed through the channels. They had approximately nine hundred - the majority of which tried to sell miraculous household cleaning items to the viewer or encouraged them to gamble away their money on rigged games of chance. Nine hundred channels should have yielded something, but static blared on every one.
Ed sighed. They'd had problems with the satellite dish before, and it usually took a couple of days to fix. Frustrating, but in no way as earth-shatteringly important as a loss of internet.
He flicked the TV off and slipped his tobacco and a small bag of weed from the pocket of his dressing gown, rolling a fat, untidy joint. The TV wasn't necessary. It was a crisp, clear morning. A joint in the garden always made him feel a little virtuous. Getting some of that fresh air his mother always raved about. It was practically healthy.
When he was done, he slipped out the kitchen door into the back garden and lit up, inhaling deeply.
The house was a part of a small community nestling out of sight in a sparse forest far away from Newborough, the nearest town. The collection of houses was nowhere near large enough to count as a town in its own right, nor even a village, really. It was no more than an exclusive enclave that allowed those with enough money to buy the huge properties to avoid the riff-raff and live out a quiet life close to the sea and an expansive golf course. It went by the name Orchard Grove, which Ed thought was nice and poetic, but pretty misleading given that the 'orchard' in question was made up entirely of Ash trees.
Only nineteen other houses were dotted around Orchard Grove, each dripping wealth and sitting in acres of unused gardens. Ed’s mother would never have been able to afford the house, but her ex-husband could, and the judge presiding over the divorce took an instant dislike to Ed’s father. The house, the judge said, was the least the man owed her.
Nobody ever complained about Ed’s pungent smoke: none of the neighbouring houses was close enough to be bothered by the smell, and he figured most were probably busy with more expensive drugs of their own, high on the narcotic rush of accumulated wealth; on their new Porsche Cayenne or their next trip to a distant exotic beach.
Orchard Grove was always quiet - in fact the whole of Anglesey could have been fairly described as soporific - but as Ed exhaled a cloud of smoke that drifted up into the cloudy sky, he felt oddly unnerved at just how quiet it seemed. Although the collection of houses was hidden from the road that led to Newborough by a smattering of trees, it wasn’t so
far removed that the sound of traffic couldn’t be heard. The road wasn't exactly busy, but it led right across the north of Wales and into England, meaning there was generally some traffic at least. And there were the usual noises from the neighbours as well: lawnmowers and barking dogs and the sound of young children having fun; the suburban symphony was always playing in the background.
He inhaled again.
Nothing seemed to break the quiet of the early afternoon. Even the birds didn’t seem to be singing.
Exhale.
Ed had issues with paranoia, of course. For a dedicated marijuana smoker it went with the territory. Sometimes the drug made him happy and dopey. On rare occasions it made him dissolve into hysterical giggles and blissful euphoria. But the more he smoked, the more it simply made him feel numb and slow, and his mind became a fertile breeding ground for paranoid fantasy.
Inhale.
No sound.
Exhale.
Something was nagging at Ed’s gut. Something that ran deeper than the indigestion that went hand-in-hand with late night attacks of the munchies.
Inhale.
Frowning, he retrieved his mobile phone from the pocket of his dressing gown, staring at the screen as it lit up cheerfully. No signal.
Exhale.
Inhale.
He tried to connect to the internet, and found that both the wi-fi and the 3g service seemed to be out of order. The unsettling dance in his nerves increased in tempo.
Exhale.
The paranoia had its claws deep in his mind; the insistent feeling that somehow he had slept through something important. He took a step back toward the house, dimly wondering if the radio in the kitchen would work - and come to think of it, when had he last needed to use the radio for anything?
Inhale. He flicked the half-smoked joint away, suddenly strangely conscious of the smell that had never bothered anyone before; feeling oddly concerned that it might draw attention to him.
It was as he turned that he saw it. A splash of colour through the gap between the wall of the house and the fence that ran alongside it. A splash of something red. Something that didn’t belong.
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