Mr Wallace’s house was one of the latter: a huge, domineering mock-Georgian mansion that boasted a front porch held aloft on four huge and unnecessary stone pillars. It looked more like a scaled-down museum than a home to a family of four.
Ed slipped under the ostentatious porch, grateful for the cover the pillars provided, and paused a moment to search the gardens for any sign that death was streaking toward him in the dark. His luck seemed to be holding. He cautiously tried to twist the door handle and found it locked.
Ed concentrated on the set of keys he had fished from the dead man’s pocket. Thankfully it was a small bunch: one of the keys was very obviously made for a vehicle, and Ed carefully separated that one, making sure he didn’t accidentally press the button that would activate the central locking of Wallace’s car with a loud beep.
Three other keys. Most likely front door, back door and garage. All looked virtually identical.
Turning his back on the world to try each key in the lock felt like painting a neon target on his back, but it had to be done. He tried the first of the keys in the door, and it slid part-way into the lock with a faint snick before he met resistance. Not that one.
He shot a sweat-drenched glance over his shoulder. Still no sign of the creatures.
The second key slid into the lock smoothly, and Ed twisted it. The door unlocked with a clunk that made his heart race, and he grasped the handle and looked over his shoulder again. Still nothing.
Ed pushed the door open, and cried out in horror when he saw the eyeless child that had been trapped in the house streaking toward him down the expansive staircase, snarling.
Ed scrambled backwards blindly, slamming the door shut just as the child reached the other side with a solid crunch. The noise reverberated around the quiet street like gunshots, and Ed had time to hear his heart beat once before the sound of footsteps erupted around Orchard Grove. They were coming for him in the darkness.
Which direction?
Ed turned left and right in terror, whimpering, unable to discern the direction of the danger. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere.
It probably is.
He saw the first of them, a fat old woman rocketing toward him like a sprinter; a wobbling mass of flesh and blood and teeth, and Ed took off in the opposite direction.
Straight toward another.
He veered away from the grasping fingers, missing them by inches, trying and failing to stop himself from shrieking in terror, certain that at any moment one of the creatures would leap from the shadows and claw him to the ground, and it would all be over.
The figure came out of nowhere. It was huge, heavily muscled, charging toward him, unleashing a hoarse bellow. Ed didn’t know whether to feel terror or relief. The stranger had eyes, at least. He also had a large piece of two-by-four, and he was winding up to swing it at Ed’s face. Horrified, Ed ducked low, and heard the whistling wind as the wood arced through the air just above him; heard the wet crunch as the wood connected with bone a fraction of a second later.
Were they that close behind me?
Ed’s mind felt like it was breaking apart.
The huge man grabbed hold of Ed’s t-shirt and dragged Ed behind him.
He’s helping me, Ed thought numbly as the big man focused on swinging the wood at the incoming creatures, winding up like a baseball pro to dispatch home run after home run. Ed watched open-mouthed as his saviour killed six of his former neighbours, savagely crushing their skulls, leaving a trail of twitching corpses on the ground.
When it was done, the man stood for a few moments, his weapon readied, until it became apparent that no more of the Infected were coming toward them.
“How-” Ed began to say, but his voice caught in his throat when he got a good look at the man that had saved him. The guy was big, but every inch of his body appeared to be covered in wounds and livid bruises. Some of the lacerations looked old, healing and scabbing. Others leaked, and Ed caught the scent of them on the breeze; a sickly sort of sweetness that he knew meant infection.
Ed's mind stumbled when he saw that somebody had carved a smiley face deep into the man's bare chest.
The big man staggered a little. He looked like he had been at war.
Maybe he has, Ed thought abruptly, maybe while you were hiding and crying this guy has spent weeks fighting for his life.
The big man staggered again. It looked like hitting those gruesome home runs had used up his last drop of energy.
Ed opened his mouth to take a second attempt at the question that was trying to take shape in his mind, and closed it again when his saviour's eyes rolled up in their sockets and the big man collapsed.
Ed stared at the prone body for a moment, wondering whether it would spring up like one of the creatures, trying to kill him, or whether the man might just die there on the tarmac. He did neither.
Ed knelt next to the man and gave him a gentle shake. The man’s eyes rolled around for a moment, unfocused.
“They’re after me,” the man slurred, before once again lapsing into unconsciousness.
The man’s words drilled down into Ed’s nerves, and made them rattle uncomfortably. Whoever was after the guy, it presumably wasn’t the horrifying eyeless zombies. He apparently had no problem dealing with them.
Someone else was out there. Ed glanced around the empty street nervously, half-expecting to see someone rushing toward him. There was nothing.
He shook the unconscious man again, but it was like prodding a sack of potatoes.
He's out cold, Ed. He needs your help.
Ed eyed the man's heavy, inert body, and stared back toward his mother's house. The place had run out of canned food, but there was plenty of medication there. The house was three hundred yards away, and the unconscious guy looked like he weighed a ton.
That's just great.
19
The village Emma had described took John by surprise. Not just because it appeared out of nowhere as he rounded a blind corner, but because it was bigger than he had anticipated. He had come to expect that when a Welsh person labelled something a 'village' what they actually meant was 'a few houses'. This was different, though. It even had a small high street. Once it had probably had a population of several hundred. Most of whom, John suspected, had ended up dead on the riverbed next to Caernarfon Castle.
Darkness was falling, and John slowed up abruptly, furtively searching the gloomy houses and gardens for the Infected. It all looked quiet. He could no longer hear the humming, but dismissed the notion that the Infected would have turned inland. Just too convenient. They were still coming, he knew it deep in his writhing gut. He'd be able to hear them in a few minutes.
"We don't have much time," he hissed. "The petrol station."
He jabbed a finger down the main street. About halfway down it stood a small, four-pump fuelling station.
"Look for any vehicle that looks solid. Look for keys. We’ll have to get out of here fast. Move."
John took off down the street, keeping a wary eye on the windows and doorways as he passed them. If they stumbled across Infected now, he thought, the game would be up. Any more than a couple would be too many to handle, and reinforcements would be arriving at any minute.
John found their escape route right next to the petrol station.
In a side street next to the fuel pumps he saw a small schoolbus. A twelve-seater that had probably delivered all the village's children to the school in Caernarfon, back when education hadn’t revolved entirely around surviving by learning to kill.
For a moment John wondered whether Linda had taught the kids who travelled in the vehicle. He dismissed the unhelpful thought immediately, and focused on the bus.
The vehicle looked undamaged, discarded in the middle of the street at an incongruously jaunty angle. A long smear of blood ran from the door at the front, down the entire length of the bus. John's mind wanted to conjure up images of the horror that had almost certainly befallen the passengers, and he told it in
no uncertain terms to shut up.
John approached the bus at a canter, slipping inside and sighing in relief when he saw the keys dangling from the ignition. He dearly wanted to test the engine, and ensure they weren't all about to die because of a flat battery, but he didn't dare risk the noise. Against his better judgment, he was going to have to roll the dice. He grimaced.
"In the bus," he whispered, and waited until the others had filed silently into the vehicle before speaking again.
"Rachel," he said finally, "I want this bus ready to move, okay? The minute you see my signal, get that engine running and go. Don't stop for anything."
Rachel nodded firmly.
"What's the signal?"
"Fire," John said through gritted teeth. In the distance, he heard the approaching hum of the Infected. Time was slipping away far too quickly.
He leapt from the bus, pausing outside.
"This isn't just about drawing them away from Caernarfon. We have to cut this herd down as much as possible, and that means waiting until the last minute. Everyone stays quiet until the signal. No matter what."
He turned away, jogging lightly around the front of the bus and onto the petrol station's small forecourt. There were a couple of cars near the pumps, abandoned much like the bus. John checked quickly to make sure neither vehicle held any unpleasant surprises for him, and turned to the pumps, lifting the nozzle from its cradle on the nearest of them. He figured it wouldn't take much: a quick spray of petrol around the forecourt, and as long as he left the nozzle resting on the ground the fire would do the rest.
He squeezed the pump's trigger, and heard a dull click and...nothing.
For a moment John stared at the nozzle, dimly wondering how the petrol station could possibly have run out of fuel. He squeezed the trigger again, and again got a click by way of response. No fuel.
Oh shit, John thought as realisation dawned on him. The pumps needed electricity to haul the fuel up from the underground tanks, and electricity had gone the way of the dinosaurs.
He dropped the nozzle to the ground, and began to frantically search the petrol station, hoping desperately to find a container of fuel that he could use to soak the pumps.
Nothing.
The humming was closer now, shaking the air. It sounded like the Infected were right on top of the village. Leaning out onto the street, John peered down the road, but couldn't see any movement. Not that it mattered: the blind corner in the road might spit an army of the Infected up at any moment without warning.
Think.
The answer arrived slowly, sinking into his consciousness, and then he was running, pulling out a knife and slicing through the rubber hose that provided a jet-wash facility for the cars that carried the dirt of the coastal road with them. He cut a length of the hose that measured about three feet, and sprinted back to the first of the two abandoned cars.
Locked.
Who locks an abandoned car?
John felt like screaming, and the urge only increased when he caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. The blind corner had become a terrible pun: Infected filled the width of it, marching straight at him.
As John's heart began to pound out a dreadful rhythm, he scurried to the second car, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door popped open easily. For a frantic moment he scrabbled under the driver's seat, searching for the lever that would release the fuel cap and came up empty. For a horrifying second he thought the car might be one of the older models that needed a key to get at the petrol tank, but then his fingers found the lever and he clenched and pulled.
The fuel cap opened with a soft pop.
He slipped the hose into the fuel tank even as the first of the Infected appeared in his line of sight. Panic swelled in his mind, and he fought hard against the instinct to run for safety.
There is no safety now. Not even the castle. If this herd gets through, everyone dies.
John sucked at the end of the makeshift hose, gagging on the foul taste of the air in the petrol tank. For several long seconds nothing happened, and John's mind sagged under the notion that the car had no fuel whatsoever.
That's why it's at a petrol station, you fool.
The petrol surged into his mouth without warning, and it was all he could do to suppress the urge to cough. He badly wanted to spit the fuel out, but even that minimum of noise concerned him, so he let it leak slowly from his lips. Placing the hose on the ground so the fuel pouring from it would remain silent, John stood.
And saw Infected everywhere.
20
Shit.
John had planned to get back onto the bus before the Infected appeared, but he saw immediately that the creatures would block his route to door on the other side of the vehicle.
Wincing and cursing inwardly, he sprinted for the bus, landing on his toes, praying the noise he was making would go unnoticed; knowing beyond doubt that his prayers would go unanswered and that only speed would save him.
A ripple of awareness passed through the first cluster of Infected visibly, beginning with the one leading them. Noise was no longer an issue: John sprinted.
With a final burst of energy, John threw himself at the side of the bus, scaling it and landing on the roof in a single smooth motion. He flattened himself to the surface of the roof, gritting his teeth as the herd began to swarm around the vehicle, searching for the source of the noise.
He dearly wished he was inside the bus, as much to keep the four people hiding inside calm as to get away from the creatures that pooled around it.
If any of the four people separated from him by a thin sheet of metal so much as whimpered, the Infected would tear the bus apart, and then blood would flow like the fuel spreading slowly across the petrol station’s small forecourt. There would be no getting lucky this time.
John held his breath while the bus rocked underneath him as the Infected began to stumble into it, and forced himself to wait.
*
Inside the bus, Rachel had watched John scurrying around the petrol station in a rising state of confusion. Only when she finally saw him appear with the hose and drain the fuel tank of one of the parked cars did she understand that John's plan was to blow the place up while they were sitting right outside it.
No wonder he wanted me ready to drive, she thought. The crazy bastard.
It was little wonder, either, Rachel realised abruptly, that John hadn't filled any of them in on exactly what he planned to do. It was the same stunt he had pulled on Michael back in Aberystwyth, when he turned a tower block into a gigantic bomb while they all hid inside it. She had understood John’s actions then, knowing full well that Michael would have disagreed, and that John's plan had been the only way.
Maybe he was right this time as well, Rachel thought, but that didn't make being left out of the loop any less irritating to her. She wondered briefly if John's modus operandi had always been to leap headlong at danger without any planning, and to do it alone. He had done just that back at the retail park. She couldn't decide whether the man was insane or lucky.
When she saw John stand, and fuel pooling around his feet, the look on his face drove all thoughts from her mind beyond one, a single dreadful question that filled her mind.
What's he looking at?
She knew the answer even before she followed his gaze. Before she saw the Infected rounding the corner and appearing on the street in front of her.
She clenched the wheel so tightly that her knuckles ached.
Stay quiet.
From the corner of her eye, Rachel saw John scurrying toward the bus, and felt the vehicle rock slightly as he leapt onto the roof.
He is crazy.
Moments later, the bus rocked again, and to Rachel's left, an eyeless face thumped into the window, leaving a streak of gore and gristle behind on the glass as it turned and shuffled around the back of the bus. It was followed by another. And then another. All of a sudden, the windows were full of the Infected, a shambling, dark stain of the
m that blocked out the light and made Rachel's throat constrict, until it felt as though they were pressing on her neck, cutting off her air supply.
Beads of sweat broke out across her forehead, and the seconds became hours, and with each one that passed, Rachel wondered which of the people in the van would be the first to make a noise and unleash hell upon them all.
Come on, John. What are you waiting for?
*
On the roof of the bus, John remained prone as the Infected swarmed around and underneath him, searching for the source of the soft footsteps they had heard. He heard a strange hissing noise that took him a moment to decipher.
The noise of dozens of nostrils. Sniffing.
John's blood froze in his veins. Hadn't Michael said something about one of them trying to locate him by scent?
John had wanted to delay setting the petrol station alight until the creatures surrounded it, giving him a chance of killing as many as possible, but when he heard them sniffing, and realised they were beginning to focus on the bus and would soon be looking for a way in - or up - he knew the time for waiting was over. He wanted to kill them all, but he had no interest in doing so by way of suicide.
Holding his breath, he eased himself up from the flat roof, and focused on the ground beyond the Infected, carefully avoiding staring at the animated insanity their faces had become. Fuel had stopped seeping from the car - didn't have much left in the tank after all - but there was enough: it had spread across the ground around two of the pumps, and the pumping nozzle he had left on the floor rested in a puddle that would do most of the work. The fumes in the pump would have to do the rest.
John slipped the lighter from his pocket. It was the same scratched Zippo he had acquired a thousand lifetimes ago, from a pilot he'd liked at first glance, and had later been forced to kill by jamming a flare gun into the man's open mouth and pulling the trigger. Staring at Ash's burnished gold lighter, John remembered thinking, what felt like an eternity before, that the man's usefulness had ultimately boiled down to him possessing the lighter; no more, no less. He smiled sadly. There was every chance the same could be said of John himself.
Trauma (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 5) Page 12