by Ian Woodhead
Miles had stayed by her side for the entire three weeks, reassuring her and repeating to Helena that a cure was just around the corner. Every day for that first week, Miles wanted to kill himself as his wife, sweated, wept and pissed out her bodily fluids and just like the dutiful husband, he cleaned her up.
It was halfway through the third week that he took the difficult decision that he had to leave her. Helena’s body had begun to dry out and now looked more like a sun baked dead frog than a human being. He had been foraging for food in one of the many abandoned houses near to the park where they lived when the idea of going rose to the surface of his mind. He had now gotten used to the fact that his wife was as good as dead, Hell, she hadn’t moved for three days, she hadn’t eaten in a week.
The posters had helped sway his decision. He’d been seeing them all over town, stuck in windows, nailed to trees. They all carried the same warning; ‘All hoarders will be shot’.
At first, he thought they meant food but it was the infected they meant. After three weeks, an infected body was completely devoid of all moisture, they were basically just bags of compressed spore dust and at the slightest vibration, the bodies would explode, releasing all this contaminated material into the atmosphere.
His wife was close to that stage, if the authorities found out that he hadn’t had her destroyed… He had run home to grab a bag of clothes and food.
The last thing he did before leaving was to sneak upstairs, he just wanted to see her one last time. As Miles opened the door, the wind caught the open window and slammed it shut. His wife literally detonated, Miles screamed then burst out of the room coughing and choking before vomiting up his last meal over the hallway carpet.
The mask was still irritating him but he felt that he could live with it. He knew why, it was obvious that walking around this strange city in dense fog while clad in this decades old diving suit was enough to knacker a healthy man, never mind a slob like Miles. The closest he had ever got to exercise was climbing the stairs to bed every night.
He’d done more working out these past few weeks than he’d done in his entire life. Miles got off the huge red brick building he’d been leaning against and took a few more steps forward, trying to get his bearings and hoping that he wasn’t lost. Edgar was a local; he claimed that he could walk around the centre with his eyes closed and still know where he was. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that ability.
The spore clouds around him were thickening up.
“Edgar, are you there, man?”
Oh, this was just great, it looked like there really was something wrong with these headsets after all, the led set into the side of the helmet flashed red then green.
“Hello?”
Miles felt fingers of unease creeping up his spine, this spore stuff really was getting thicker and thicker, this was his first mission out and the other Wombles had all told him tales of unearthly creatures moving about in the dense fog accompanied by loud rumbling noises. He thought they were just stupid stories designed to shit up the new recruits, now he wasn’t so sure.
“Edgar, come on man, this isn’t funny.”
The unease was now turning to panic.
His headset crackled and buzzed and somewhere beneath all that static, he thought he heard his partner swearing. Miles reached over his shoulder and un-holstered the weapon that the Institute had issued him with. He had never fired a gun in his life but holding the ancient shotgun in his gloved hands gave him the required incentive to move. Miles inched forward, still within eyesight of the wall, weaving the gun from side to side.
“Bugger this,” he muttered.
Miles placed the shotgun between his knees and wrestled the helmet off his head. He’d already breathed in the remains of his wife so he doubted that a little more could do any harm. Once his eyes were free of the scratched plastic visor, he found that it wasn’t as bad as he thought. His visibility had almost tripled; he could even make out the blurred outlines of the Victorian buildings around him.
“Edgar, where the hell are you?”
He saw something move to the left of him, Miles picked up the shotgun and hurried over, as he got closer, his companion came into view; both his hands were gripping the back of a bench. Something was clamped over his right foot.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell is that?”
Miles raised the shotgun, it looked like a squashed cat covered in bright yellow fur, his friend’s foot was stuck down its impossibly wide mouth. The thing looked like it should be dead and Miles was going to ensure that it would be. He stepped back as a few black, segmented tentacles reached out from under the creature’s body and wormed their way towards him.
He failed to spot Edgar’s panic-stricken face behind his visor; he was too busy looking for the safety catch.
“Hang on, Edgar, I’ll get you free.”
Miles caught the sound of screaming echoing through his own helmet before his partner’s gloved hand pushed him violently to one side. The shotgun slipped from through his hands and landed on the creature. It let out an ear-piercing scream and let go of the foot, it slid out from under the gun and pulled its body across the pedestrian zone before slipping down an open drain.
Edgar pulled off his own helmet. “Jesus man, I thought you said you saw an expert on guns. Have you never heard of a spread pattern?”
Oh hell, he was right. If he’d pulled that trigger, it would have vaporised Edgar’s foot as well as the cat thing.
“Sorry, man,” he said, “I didn’t think.”
Edgar nodded, “it’s okay, I didn’t think either. I mean I have two feet, why didn’t I just stamp on the furry little fucker?”
“Nobody told me that those things were slithering around the bloody streets.” Muttered Miles.
He helped Edgar sit down on the bench.
“I don’t believe it,” gasped his friend, “Of all the things to get me, I never thought that it would be an infected rat.”
Miles looked at him gobsmacked, “You mean you knew about them?”
Edgar nodded, “We’ve seen them about but they’ve never been hostile, they usually scarper before you got within a few yards of them.”
“And that was a rat? Oh Jesus, it looked like its mum had been raped by a fucking octopus.”
Edgar stared at him, “Wait on, you really don’t know about them do you? I thought you said that you’d volunteered.”
Miles was unsure what he meant by that, perhaps the shock had begun to take effect, that leg did look pretty mangled.
“You need to calm down Edgar, look we’ll take you back to the Institute; they’ll patch you up in no time. I’m sure your leg isn’t as bad as it looks.”
Edgar shook his head, tears were pouring down his cheeks, “I can’t go back now, those bastards will just gun me down.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s another infection in town, good buddy, you thought that everyone over forty was bad enough? Oh Jesus, that was just the start of it.”
“I don’t believe it,” he whispered. “I mean, we’d have heard about it.”
Edgar laughed. “Oh hell, how naïve are you, man? We’ve over four hundred folk crammed like sardines in the Institute. What do you think would happen if word got out that there’s hundreds of fucking monsters, large and small roaming about outside?”
Miles’s shell-shocked brain struggled to adjust to the ramifications. “So the committee knew about this, does that include Amber?”
Edgar shook his head, “You’re sweet on her ain’t you. I doubt they’ll have told her just yet, she’s just their pretty public face.”
He grabbed his shoulders and pulled him close, “I’ve been infected Miles, you’ve got to put an end to me.”
“I can’t do that!” he remembered his wife using the very same words; he turned away and shut his eyes, feeling his own tears running down his face. “There has to be another solution.”
“There isn’t. Do you think I want to die
? In a few hours time, I’ll change into a monster too. You have to do it for your own sake.”
Chapter Four
Jackson flicked the safety off his assault rifle and made sure that the weasel-faced technician saw him do it. The weapon’s magazine was empty, at the order of Major Tyler, but the cowering man in front of him wasn’t to know that.
“Okay Mr. Claiborne,” said Tyler, “let’s try again shall we?”
Jesus, the man had those patronising tones down to a fine art; Jackson almost admired the toffee-nosed cunt.
“Why did you allow our specimen to escape? You see, I recall you telling me back in London that ‘thorough and steady’ were your middle names. Were you by any chance trying to pull the wool over my eyes?”
“I didn’t allow it to escape, it wasn’t me, Major.”
Tyler sighed, “Maybe not, but I placed it under your care, it doesn’t matter about the details, you’re still liable. Okay, Sergeant Jackson, put a single round through his kneecap please.”
The man squealed like a terrified piglet when Jackson raised his rifle.
“Could I not just cut his balls off? It’ll save on ammunition.” He leaned towards the man, “Then I could stuff them into your mouth and watch you choke, if you don’t bleed to death first. Would you like that?”
He thought that was a good piece of improvisation there but judging from the scowl on the toffee-nosed dickhead’s face, Jackson was the only one who agreed. Well he didn’t care less what Tyler thought, he wasn’t going to be around for much longer anyway, Jackson would make sure of that, nobody showed him up in front of his men.
“No Jackson, a bullet will do nicely I think.”
The technician squealed again and Jackson watched with disgust as a wet patch appeared on the technician’s crotch and slowly spread down to his thighs.
“I mean I thought it was still dormant, they aren’t supposed to become active until at least twenty four hours after infection.”
Tyler shook his head and tutted, “Don’t you take me for a fool, Mr. Claiborne; you told me yourself that it only took them a couple of hours to change.”
Jackson tuned the idiots out and went back to plotting his revenge. That Tyler had been pissing him off ever since he’d been assigned to Jackson’s unit, it was as if he had something to prove, Jackson figured that Tyler expected to get his own unit. It must have come as a bit of a fucking shock to find he was playing second fiddle to the Colonel.
If the toffee-nosed twat thought he could take his frustrations out on Jackson, then he had another thing coming. Jackson held grudges and acted upon them, as that bastard would soon find out.
He should have allowed Jackson to pistol whip that mouthy bitch, it’s what birds like her needed, they got a whiff of command and strutted about like cockerels on heat. He smiled to himself when he found out he’d been randomly selected to be shacked up with her, random my arse. Tyler had fixed it; he must have, considering that he somehow had magically ended up with that delectable piece of blonde skirt with the big tits.
It could have been worse; she wasn’t that much of a dog, just a gobshite know better. Jackson would soon fuck that attitude out of her. Even so, it still riled him that Tyler thought he had the right to pick and choose, it was another bad mark that Jackson intended to rectify.
“Well it looks as though the damage has been neutralised, but it was only due to the quick actions from my well trained men.”
Oh God, listen to him, he made it sound as though Tyler had personally nursed them up from raw recruits. What a fucking arrogant tosser. He silently sighed. Jackson was bored out of his bloody mind, he wanted to be out there and hunting the diseased fuckers down just like his squad had been doing back in London. Holding the hands of a bunch of wet-nosed brain boxes wasn’t a job for a grizzled soldier.
“Well just you be thankful that I’m in a good mood today, even so I’m putting you and your team on half rations for the rest of this week. Just you make sure that your specimen doesn’t get out again. Now get out of my sight.”
The technician hobbled down the corridor as Tyler turned to watch the man go, Jackson though just how easy it would be to take him out right now. He could thrust his knife up into his heart and the man wouldn’t know what hit him.
“Is containment in place Sergeant Jackson?” Tyler asked, without turning around.
“Of course it is.” He replied. Jackson was a little pissed that he’d dare to question his efficiency.
“The first team of ten have already been taken out. My men shot five of them.”
“Did the others escape?” he asked, turning to face him.
“The gunshots attracted a swarm of Grade Twos.”
Tyler closed his eyes and rocked on his heels. “I see.”
The Type Two creatures were the infected remnants of the country’s pet cats and dogs as well as a smattering of foxes, rats and the occasional badger. The secondary infection had changed them beyond all recognition, the nightmarish constructs belonged in a horror movie, the things even gave Jackson the shivers.
He’d once watched a small collection of the little bastards strip a panicking crowd of people to bones in less than a minute. Major Tyler had lost his young wife and child to a pair of Grade Twos a few weeks ago, just before he joined the unit. Jackson wasn’t supposed to know that.
“The swarm shredded the remaining five; they even got the two that had tried to make a run for it.”
“Is there anything else?” Tyler looked as if he was about to collapse.
Jackson should have gone through in detail just how the things ripped the men to bits, it was a shame there hadn’t been a woman in the team.
“Yes, three of the team that my men had shot got up and followed the Type Twos when they left the area.”
“Are you sure they were dead?”
“Of course I’m sure Major, their heads were almost vaporised, those men were definitely dead.”
“Well that’s a new one. I suppose I’d better inform the good Colonel of this new development. So how many of their personnel are still unaccounted for?”
“The second team, there were just two of them. They are due to report back in about ten minutes. My men are already in position”
Tyler nodded, “Is everything else completed?”
“Yes, all communication has been severed, our prizes are safely stored away and the remainder are in the process of being neutralised.”
“Good job, as per usual Jackson. Your attention to detail is remarkable.”
Was that supposed to be a compliment? It was a bit too fucking late for him to start kissing Jackson’s arse, the bastard had already mucked his copybook, it was way too late to try and make amends.
Tyler turned around and walked towards the lift. “I don’t trust those technicians.”
That was probably the only opinion he shared with Jackson; as far as he was concerned they were closer to the animals they experimented on then proper humans.
“If I had my way, Jackson I’d have them all neutralised. Considering that it was probably some scientist who caused all this to happen in the first place.”
Major Tyler sighed as he reached the lift doors. “Personally, I think they are all pissing in the wind. The species is fucked, out only hope is to start again.”
He pressed the call button.
“It’s something I’m looking forward to,” said Jackson.
The door opened and he ushered the Sergeant inside.
“I’m glad you’ve reminded me, there is something I wanted to discuss with you. Your reputation concerning your treatment of the opposite sex is well known, Sergeant Jackson, so consider this to be your only warning. You will treat your new partner with the tenderness and respect she deserves; otherwise I’ll make sure that you regret the day that I walked into your life.”
Jackson kept his face straight while the lift doors closed, trying to keep his raging temper in check. Oh that was the last straw. That bastard was going to meet hi
s maker very soon.
Chapter Five
Amber threw herself back on the bare mattress and thrust her bruised knuckles up into her armpit. After fifteen minutes of constant door battering, she reached the conclusion that nobody was coming to help her. She’d continued to bang upon that door even when all the others had given up. She couldn’t understand where all the other people were, the soldiers couldn’t have locked all them up as well.
Her logical and analytical mind went on vacation when that soldier marched her through the deserted corridors and thrust her into this room and bolted the door on the outside.
The pale blue metal door became that Jackson bastard. She punched and screamed and Amber remembered head butting it on one occasion. She planned to repeat the same actions on that ugly man with the piercing blue eyes and the stupid moustache when he eventually showed up.
She sat up and inspected her hand then gazed over at the undamaged door and sighed heavily. “Well then, you big bag of overwrought emotions, you’ve had your turn.”
Amber got to her feet and looked around her new prison, “I think it’s time to let the old logic back inside my head.”
As logic had calmly informed her; if those soldiers did appear and she was still in here, then that would be it, the next thing she’d see would be the evil face of Jackson pointing to a map of Scotland before pointing to his crotch. Amber shuddered.
“Oh hell, talk about a fate worse than death.”
Her eyes darted from wall to wall, there were no windows, no air vents, no nothing, those unwanted emotions threatened to make an uninvited comeback as she came to the conclusion that poor Amber was going nowhere.