by Adam Millard
'They could have gone any-fucking-where!' he snarled, pacing up and down through the snow. He couldn't take his eyes off the mangled Jeep lying at the bottom of the embankment. Even that was already half-covered with snow, making it look as if it was emerging from the drift, not sinking into it.
'They had to go that way,' Moon said, pointing east down the road. 'If they'd have doubled back we would have seen them; and it would be pointless when they were only a few miles from Sa...Sand...' He struggled with the sign at the edge of the road, not because it was snow-covered, but because he'd never been one for reading. It wasn't because he was dumb – not in the conventional sense, anyway – but because he had been brought up to believe that reading didn't get you anywhere, that sticking your head in a book all day long made you gay – or something along those lines.
He wished he'd paid no attention now, though, because he felt like a complete idiot, standing there, mumbling to himself like fucking Rain Man.
'Sandown,' Randall said, stepping right up next to the sign.
Moon felt relief at the perfectly-timed intervention, but he also wanted to scream out at the top of his voice, I'm not a fucking retard! I'm not fucking stupid!
'Then we go to Sandown,' Victor said, almost biting his cigar in two. 'Some fuck's gotta pay for this, and those sonsofbitches shouldn't have ever tried to disappear into the fucking night the way they did.'
David Moon, still trying to put the letters together on the impossible sign, said, 'So we gonna make 'em pay for fucking with us?' It was a question, but of the rhetorical variety. Victor knew it, so didn't even honour it with a response.
'Let's go,' the captain said. It was starting to get dark; it was that strange, murky part of the day when you suddenly find yourself depressed for no apparent reason, though maybe that was just Victor...
'I just need to take a piss,' Randall said. He moved around the side of the helicopter and lowered himself just out of sight down the embankment.
'Well, hurry the fuck up,' Victor said. 'You leave your dick out for too long in this weather and before you know it its turned black and dropped right off.'
Moon chuckled; Kyle didn't.
'What's the matter with you, you miserable bastard?' Moon said to the pilot. 'This is all gonna work out okay for you. It's your fucked-up friends who're gonna suffer. Just be grateful you didn't go with them.'
That was a good point. He hadn't known anything about the attempted desertion. He and Shane had been out scavenging together on many occasions; Shane had never let slip about any sort of road-trip.
Would Kyle have gone if he had mentioned it? Possibly. Though that would have also made him a target, and right now the only thing standing between the good-guys and the bad-guys was him.
Not that he had put up much of a fight so far. Practically sucked their dicks for 'em so far. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth, though not as bitter as the actual act would have.
Suddenly, there was a scream, a blood-curdling screech from down the embankment. Moon pulled his rifle to his chest and stared towards Victor.
Randall? It had to be.
'Go take a look,' Victor said. 'If there's anything down there, don't give it a fucking chance.'
Moon was a big guy; the biggest in the camp, although a few of the men came close. Size, in that moment, mattered not one iota. He was terrified. The scream came again, and this time it sounded closer.
Victor Lord was already loading himself in through the side door of the helicopter. If cowardice needed a persona, then Victor Lord was it.
As the scream cut off, perhaps through force, Moon reached the edge of the road and stared down into the snow. Something had happened – the blood was enough proof of that – but Moon couldn't see where Randall had disappeared to.
'He's gone,' Moon cried back to the chopper. He turned and called out to his colleague, hoping for a reply, or something...
'You,' Victor said, pointing a .45 towards Kyle “Flyboy” Poulson. 'We're leaving.'
Kyle felt something right then, and it had nothing to do with fear, nothing to do with the gun pointing at his face. He was about to do something that might kill him, but was that any worse than not doing anything?
'Fly your own fucking chopper,' Kyle snapped. Even as the words passed his lips his brain was still trying to figure out if it was such a great idea. When the captain's face creased up and his mouth dropped open, Kyle had a pretty good idea of what was to follow.
'You get in this fucking thing, right now,' Victor said, the shock of the pilot's defiance still fresh on his face. 'I will not hesitate. I will shoot you.'
Kyle was about to voice, in no uncertain terms, where the captain's pistol would fit quite snugly, when he was knocked to the ground by something heavy, something solid.
At first he thought it was a horse; there were definitely legs, and Kyle was pretty certain he had felt the warm breath of something hit the back of his neck just before he was toppled. As he landed in the snow, and got his ass kicked by hooves for a few seconds, he realised that it wasn't a horse.
It was a deer.
He could see its head, now, and the bloodied antlers sitting on top of it.
He could also see the head dangling from its mouth – a wide-eyed, wide-mouthed soldier who had decided to go for a piss at the wrong time...
He heard Victor cry out, though it sounded foreign to Kyle as his ears were all of a sudden packed with freezing snow. He took one more kick – this time to the side of the head – and that was all he could remember.
That, and the sound of a shot being fired.
As he slipped into unconsciousness, he tried to remember whether he had ever read anything about deer turning vicious.
Bambi would have been a completely different story if the titular character developed a taste for human-flesh.
*
Many of the survivors were huddled together in the darkness. A few of them – mainly the women – were sobbing quietly to themselves or trying to comfort their children. There was a man at the front of the room trying to calm everybody down; Josef Abelowicz, though small, had a voice that could travel, the kind of voice that could blow out windows, if he wasn't careful.
'Ladies, everybody, please calm down. Everything's going to be just fine. Somebody here will be able to fix the lights.'
Though it wasn't just the lights, was it? The heating was also down. The temperature was already dropping, despite all the hot-air being generated by panic and despair.
Maggie Cox lit a cigarette and moved up next to Josef. In any other time and place they would have made a decent couple – the kind that you would gladly have over for Thanksgiving dinner – but right now that was not part of their agenda. Being widowed did not make you a target for every single wrinkle-factory over 65, something that Maggie was pleased about.
'Does anybody know anything about engines?' Maggie shrieked, blue smoke trailing from her nose as if her soul was trying to escape. When nobody spoke, she added, 'Anybody know anything about fixing shit in general?'
'Those gennies down there are not flat-pack furniture from IKEA,' a voice said from the back of the room. Maggie found the speaker and was unsurprised to discover Freddie Dewson standing there with his arms folded; the complete know-it-all, the kind of man that would profess to be able to do something, then run home and read all about it on Wikipedia.
'I'm aware of that,' Maggie said, trying not to get into an argument with him. 'But since we don't have any official generator repairmen amongst us, we gotta take what we can.'
'I don't mind taking a look,' Freddie said. He pulled a torch out of nowhere – his ass, Maggie thought – and switched it on. 'But I ain't promising nothing to y'all.'
Maggie didn't think he would be able to fix them; she saw him for what he was: Jack of all trades, master of none. Still, he was the only one offering to take a look, so it made sense to humour him.
'We would really appreciate that, Freddie,' she said. A few others ummed and
ahhed their approval, and Freddie Dewson's expression altered. He was the new hero, the one who could make everybody happy again, or something along those lines.
'I'll be back in a few minutes,' he said, snapping the torch around the room, highlighting individual faces as if he was trying to catch them in the middle of something unfortunate. 'If I can't fix them, then we better start getting more blankets from somewhere. It's gonna be getting a helluva lot colder from here-on-in.'
There were no other blankets; the soldiers had already checked the building. Pretty much anything that could provide warmth was in the main hall. Nobody said anything to Freddie, though. He was their saviour.
As he slipped out of the door, led by a trail of torchlight, Maggie turned to Susie Bloom and patted her gently on the arm.
'We did the right thing,' she said. 'If we'd mentioned it, they'd have been up there untying him right now.'
Susie nodded. It still didn't feel right. 'I know,' she said, straining her eyes in the darkness so that she could make out the rough shape of the old woman. 'What we need to figure out is what to do when Victor gets back, 'cos he sure ain't gonna be in the mood to forgive and forget, and it was obviously him that wanted you out of the way. He's not going to let this go.'
Maggie shrugged, her silhouette-shoulders just visible. 'Fuck him and the horse he rode in on,' she spat, barely a whisper. 'He's not going to kill me in front of all these people. The best thing I can do is stay close.'
'Safety in numbers?' Susie said.
'Exactly.'
It was the best they could do.
*
No way, uh-huh, not this guy. There was no way he was going to sit there like a fucking plum-pudding. When Victor got back to find that he had failed, heads would roll, and one of them would be his own. It wasn't an option.
His face ached so badly; it felt as if it was on fire, which was ironic considering the object that had caused such intolerable pain.
If he could just get free, somehow slip his arms out of the ropes keeping him fixed to the chair, then he knew all would be well.
He knew something that they didn't. Something that would make them wish they hadn't even dared to fuck with him.
As he hunched over, the agony tore through his face, relentless. He winced, spat blood, and then rocked back, hoping that it would be enough to topple the chair and give him a better chance of escape.
It didn't. He rocked, but only back to where he had originated. It was going to take everything he had, which wasn't much.
In the dark he heard a voice, muttering to itself? Torchlight momentarily hovered on the wall opposite, but then it was gone. Whoever it had been had decided that there was no need to head on up the stairs. His brain panicked, and for a split-second he thought he might cry out for help. As the opportunity passed, he realised how bad that would have been.
He'd tried to kill the old bag, Maggie. She would have returned to camp shouting her mouth off, maybe embellishing the truth a little here and there, as was her wont. He was hardly going to be treated with respect, not now. Lynching, now that would have probably been more like it.
He waited for the mystery-roamer to go away before giving it everything he had. This time, he managed to free a foot; the binds around his ankles had been a lot less secure than intended, and they slipped over his feet and fell to the ground.
Ha, you fucking assholes. It's coming, and you have no idea...
He whipped one of his newly-freed legs up and placed it against the wall. There was a hollow thunk! He wondered whether pushing against the wall would indeed force the chair back, or if his foot would simply crash through the wafer-thin plaster.
That would be perfect, he thought. Sat there with a foot stuck in the wall. Victor would be pleased.
Luckily, it went the way he had envisioned. The chair creaked beneath him, and then he was falling, hoping that his head didn't hit the floor too hard or knock him unconscious again. He grunted as he made contact; his one arm snapped, the restraints at his wrists were considerably better tied than the ones at his feet had been. He didn't cry out, though. That would have been stupid. If it was broken, it was broken, but at least it was loose now, and in a few minutes he would be out of there, free to go about his business.
Free to unleash hell on the old bitch and her friends.
The taste of iron in his mouth as he licked his lips made him ask the question: Was it so bad being one of them?
The answer would come in time.
TWENTY-ONE
Shane didn't know whether it was colder inside the school than it had been outside, but it was close. Frozen-mist clouded in front of their faces as they breathed, so much so that visibility was severely reduced.
'I hate to say it,' Marla said, though Shane doubted she really did, 'but I think we were better off sleeping in the Snatch.' It was a ridiculous notion, but looking around Sandown Elementary – The Best Start They Could Wish For – none of the others argued.
'Got to be somewhere in here where the windows haven't been put through,' Terry said, pushing up through the group with his shotgun ready. 'This is why I don't mix well with children.'
Shane smiled. 'Nothing to do with the fact that you're a career criminal.'
'Was, Shane, was a career criminal, and I'll have you know that up until I got slammed up I always thought there was still time for me to have kids.'
'Good job you didn't,' Marla said. The truth, though hurtful, was always available from Marla.
As they reached the end of a corridor – there were eerie paintings hanging on the wall, or sellotaped lopsided, which only added to the macabre feel – there was a door which read, MRS BEETHAM. The top half of the door was frosted, but in the darkness that meant nothing. There could have been a horde of the little fuckers just waiting for them on the other side; they wouldn't know until it was too late.
'Watch out for Mrs Beetham when we get in there,' Terry said. 'I doubt whether she's going to be in the mood for visitors.'
Shane pushed the door-handle down and gently pushed the door open.
The room was empty, which came as more than a relief. It wasn't quite dark outside, which allowed the gloomy light of the remaining day in through the windows on the far wall.
Shane led them slowly through the rows of desks. Chairs lay scattered and broken on the floor; the blackboard at the front of the room was covered with bloodied handprints.
'Doesn't bode well,' Marla said. 'Those poor kids.'
Shane was immediately plagued with visions of Megan, sweet little Megan. Would she have been at school when the outbreak occurred? Was there a classroom forty miles away in the same shit state as this one?
'No sign of the teacher,' Terry said, making the sign of the cross. 'Don't know whether that's a good thing, or not.'
Jared was across the room reading something that adorned the wall; a poem, maybe, by one of the unfortunate children, one of the missing, or maybe the one that Marla had stamped on so hard that her foot had disappeared into its face.
Without thinking – the poem seemed to have mesmerised him, relieved him of his senses – he yanked open the door in front of him. It led to a store-cupboard, the kind that contains the chalks, paints, blank textbook.
Only this one had something extra.
This one contained death.
'Jared!' Marla screamed, but it was too late. She could only watch as he disappeared beneath infected children. Limbs flailed, black goo flew through the air, and Jared howled as teeth sunk into his neck, shoulder, legs.
Shane whirled on the spot – he had still been thinking of Megan when the attack happened, which was partially the reason why Jared was now beneath a sea of bloodstained uniforms. There was no way he would have allowed Jared anywhere near the shut cupboard had he been focused. His reverie had sentenced a man to death, and he knew it.
The creatures didn't seem to realise that there were others in the room. They had what they wanted, and it was more than they had expected.
How long had they been in the storeroom? How long had they been waiting?
As Shane tossed one of the miniature wooden desks aside, he noticed the completely consumed cadaver lying on the floor of the store-cupboard.
Mrs Beetham.
She had been stripped, as if she were nothing more than a bargain-bucket. Bones and tattered dress were all that remained.
Terry unleashed with the Remington, tearing the head clean off the first creature. It fell to the side, revealing Jared's partially chewed face. Holy shit, was his eye out? It was, it was dangling from the socket, dancing around on top of a flap of loose skin.
The remaining two lurkers paid no heed to the shot fired, nor the headless creature that had been feasting with them. They buried their own heads deeper into Jared, chewing through him, trying to reach the prize that lay within.
Shane rushed forward and with one kick managed to take the little girl lurker out of the equation. She squealed – dinnertime over – as Shane fired two rounds into her face. As she fell back, he saw Megan again. Though this creature was the farthest thing from his daughter, and its eyes – black, cold, dead – snapped him out of his misery.
Marla screamed. 'Holy shit! Shane, watch out!'
The second creature, who was fatter than any child Shane had ever seen before in his life, turned its attention to Shane's ankle. As it moved, supernaturally fast, Shane dragged his foot out of the way and fired once into the top of Billy Bunter's head. There was an audible squelch as the bullet travelled through hair, skull, brain, jaw and out into the ground.
It fell off, thumping the bloodsoaked carpet like a sack of potatoes.
Marla was still screeching. Shane wondered whether she even knew she was. Probably not.
Terry was loading the shotgun, maniacally, but there was nothing left for him to shoot at, at least for now.
Shane dragged Fatboy off of Jared and instantly wished he hadn't bothered. Their friend was hollow; everything from the neck down missing or lying next to him in a steaming pile. Shane wanted to scream so hard, but something caught in his throat. He soon realised it was vomit as he rushed across the room and upchucked until his stomach was raw.