The first man appeared, the younger one. Jack fired. The man dropped to the ground, but not shot. His eyes, wide open in surprise. Maybe it was the first time he’d been fired at.
The two men stared at each other; Jack on his back, the other on his stomach, facing down the rise, his head lifted. The soldier eyes glanced to the right, where his gun was, on the ground.
Something in Jack’s mind told him to wait, that it wasn’t right to shoot. But he did. He fired.
The young man’s face exploded in a blur of red and white and black. What was the black, what the fuck was the black in people’s heads?
Another figure pulled to a stop at the top of the rise. Chris. He saw his soldier, head all exploded, and panic took over his face.
Jack fired again. No hesitation. Not anymore.
Just a click, this time. No bang.
Jack looked at the gun. He fired again, but another click.
Chris’ face turned from panic to glee. Joy, for a second, like a baby laughing at a rattle, just for a second, then darkness poured over his features like a tide.
“You fuck. Not so fucking clever now are you?” Chris raised his gun, shouldered it and aimed.
Jack closed his eyes. He waited for the shot, his mind empty. No thoughts of anything.
Nothing happened. Jack opened his eye slowly. Chris, the gun still raised.
“I’m a professional, not like these fuckers. You see, I got you now, Jack. Yeah, I fuckin know you. The Major will want to talk to you. I’ll get to kill you, but not until the Major has finished with you. Stand up. Leave the gun on the ground.”
Jack eased himself up, dropping the gun. He stood, still and stupid, with his hands in the air.
Chris shook his head. “Stupid bastard. Ok, turn around, walk that way, we’re going to see the Major.”
“What about the man on the tree?”
Chris shook his head. “Don’t need him now. You can tell us all we need to know about Allen.”
“I don’t know anything about Allen.”
Chris sneered. “Whatever numbnuts. Just get walking. I’m sick of this fucking wood.”
Jack walked. Ahead of him was the thick foliage that his daughter had stepped into just a few minutes ago. How far away was she? They must have heard the gunfire.
He pushed through the bushes, the overhanging branches. He could hear Chris behind him, his gun pointing right at this head, no doubt. He had to draw him in.
Ahead, a sound. Like an animal.
He stopped walking.
“Keep moving ball bag,” said Chris.
The sound again. It wasn’t an animal, it was a moan.
“You hear that?” said Jack, stopping.
“I don’t hear nothing but you getting a fucking bullet in the back of your head if you don’t shut the fuck up and keep moving.”
Jack walked again, slowly. He scanned ahead in the darkness of the thick green leaves, like small scarves in an infinite cloakroom. He pushed the branches to his side, letting them spring back behind him, hopefully hitting Chris.
Another moan. And clicks. Jack was walking towards a zombie, somewhere up ahead, hidden, waiting. He focused on the sound, disallowing everything else to register, except the moans, the clicks. Chris said something, but Jack didn’t hear, he didn’t pay attention. There was more than one. More than two. Many, like a terrible chorus.
His legs tried to stop walking, his heart sped up, and the sweating began. He could do this, he had to do this. There were no more bad choices to make; it was simple, making decisions, just do the thing that felt right, even if it terrified, even if it meant death. He had spent too long trying to avoid death; embracing it may be the key to living.
“I said stop!” shouted Chris.
Jack stopped. He turned to face Chris. The din of moaning was unmistakable now. The clicks like a cloud of locusts, the trampling of the bushes as if a herd of elephants was approaching.
“They’re coming, Chris. More than you or me can handle.”
“Shut up,” said Chris. He shook his head. “Shut up, just fucking shut up will you. You’re always going on!”
Jack realized Chris wasn’t talking to him. Chris was shaking his head, his face contorted in inner turmoil.
“We have to go back, Chris,” said Jack.
“I have to get him back Nan, you don't know what he’s like, if I don’t get him back, the Major will go crazy.”
The noise was too much. The zeds would be on them in seconds.
Chris raised his gun. Jack, even beyond the current circumstances, was surprised to see Chris was crying. “I’m sorry, but she’s right. I’ve fucked up again. Always fuckin up.”
As with everything that matters, it happened in seconds.
Chris’ swollen eyes, the tears looking as out of place on his cheek as they would on a snake’s. The gun pointing at Jack, the tightening of his finger on the trigger. Funny how those details were clear and obvious. It would fire in less than a second. Did Jack have time to move?
He didn’t have to. Chris’ eyes opened wide, now looking behind Jack. A sound in the back of Jack’s mind, movement, right behind him. Something grabbed him around the throat, pushed him.
Then, a noise like the thunder of all the storms in the world, and the lighting of a million power stations. Jack’s gun spewed, its muzzle emblazoned with furious fire.
But Jack was heading away from it, towards the ground, the weight of a body on his back. It would be soon, he thought, soon to feel the tearing of his flesh, the snapping of his tendons, his life squirting out of his neck in ten foot high ribbons of thick red.
He landed on the ground.
Words.
Not moans, but words. “Roll, roll!” The body on his back was pulling him, beseeching him to move. So he rolled, his mind empty in the chaos, ready for any instruction, yearning for direction.
He kept on rolling. Gunfire and the tumultuous sound of a hundred lost souls moaning. Branches stabbed into his skin. Dirt clogged his ears and mouth.
“Get up,” said the voice. It was Grace.
He scrambled to his feet. Grace was beside him. “This way,” she said pulling him back the way they had come, back towards the clearing.
“Annie,” shouted Jack.
Two small hands clasped around his legs. No time for hello. Jack scooped her up and onto his back. “Hold on,” he said.
They ran through the undergrowth, back towards the man tied on the tree.
The gunfire stopped. It was replaced with a blood-curdling cry that reached high into the forest.
Shadows flicked in and out of the trees. Bodies, various stages of decomposition crept and stumbled and stomped in the gloom. Their faces, when Jack saw them, were fixated in his direction.
“How many?” he said.
“Enough that we need to hurry.”
They reached the clearing. The beaten man, his brown skin ripped and running with red rivulets of blood, raised his head as they approached.
Grace pulled her knife out of her belt and hacked at the ropes. The man fell free, into Jack’s arms.
“Come on, can you walk?”
There was no response.
A sound like a falling tree. To Jack’s right, the edge of the clearing erupted in a zombie explosion as a mass of bodies burst from the vegetation.
“We need to go!”
The man saw the dead approaching, and a small light seemed to ignite in his eyes. “Lean on you,” he whispered.
“Lean on Grace,” he said, mindful that he couldn’t support both the man and his daughter.
Grace took the man’s arm.
“Ok, let’s go,” she said.
Jack took one last look at the writhing herd of dead, only ten yards away. He turned and started to jog gently, Grace beside him, with the man just keeping up. They were going slow, but faster than the herd. They would lose them if they could keep going.
Always keep going.
Chapter 23
Grace�
�s wooden hut was already starting to feel like home. Jack eased off his boots and sat on his sleeping bag. He wanted a cup of tea, but first, he wanted to rest. The day so far had been hard, stressful. It had taken a lot out of him. For someone who was used to running away, standing and fighting were hard.
He lay down. Annie was sleeping on her bag. He wondered how all of this was affecting her young mind and brain. What sort of woman would she grow into? He hoped something like Grace, as he turned his head to see her leaning over Abdul, the man they had rescued from Chris and his soldiers.
Grace wasn’t tired, there was no system shock apparent in her as she went about cleaning up Abdul’s wounds. He let out small moans every now and again; Jack guessing the disinfectant was stinging pretty bad.
Grace looked up at Jack, half smiled, then continued.
“How is he?” said Jack quietly.
“Ok, I think. In and out of consciousness. He keeps talking about the sergeant.”
“Delirious?”
“I don’t know.”
Stoic. That was the word that best described Grace. She showed no emotion, most of the time. She got about doing what needed to be done to survive. Was that really what he wanted for Annie? Jack mused the alternative for a moment; someone scared, apt to run, to hide, to never face the very real demons that roamed the earth, and the equally real demons that lurked in the depth of her mind. Yes, coldness and control were better than the wildness of emotion and death.
“You ok?” said Jack to Grace.
She looked up, a slight look of surprise on her face. “Yes, I think so. Why?”
“You’ve been quiet. Even for you. Ever since you looked at the laptop.”
She closed her eyes. She sighed. She put down the cloth that she had been wiping Abdul’s wounds with.
“The Facility where I used to work…” She paused. The moment dragged into a minute. An uncomfortable and preemptive silence. Thankfully, she continued. “We made things, that we shouldn’t have made. Things that weren’t allowed by numerous international conventions and by any right-thinking person’s moral compass.” She looked at Jack, waiting for a reaction.
He shrugged. “That was then.”
“So, I was involved in viruses. The study and manufacture of.”
“You going to tell me that you made the zombie virus?”
“No,” said Grace. “But I think I worked with people who did. People close to me who I trusted.”
Jack’s question had been facetious, he hadn’t expected Grace’s answer. He sat up on the bed. “What?”
“I found emails and documents in a hidden portion of my Professor’s laptop. He was killed the day of the outbreak, by a government spook, the guy who looked over our facility and made sure we did what we were supposed to be doing. I guess he thought he was going to escape. Probably to some hidden base under a mountain somewhere.”
“Did he?”
“No. I shot him.”
Grace was no longer looking at Jack but at the floor. But not even at the floor, through it, maybe all the way down to her facility.
She continued. “The docs revealed joint research, between our lab and many across the States and Europe. A virus that mutated, a simple cold virus that was meant to continually dodge our immune system, confound it into submission.”
“You worked on this one?”
“No, not me. My professor did. It was meant to be a slow burner. You would infect a target nation or terrorist organization, and it would spread, kill a few thousand people or more, then knock itself out, die.”
“Sounds sophisticated.”
“It would be, except it didn’t work. It kept mutating. Getting better at dodging the immune system, until it managed to take over the immune system, and most other systems. Like a virus AI, it became smarter than its creators and greater than had ever been anticipated.”
The cabin was tranquil now. No world outside, just this room and Grace’s voice telling the most terrible tale ever told. Jack glanced at Annie, she was still asleep.
“So why didn’t they destroy it?” said Jack.
“They thought they could use it, that if they showed it to the East - China, Russia, terrorist factions - that it would stop everyone in their tracks. That everyone would be too terrified, and world wars would cease.”
“The government thought that?”
“No,” Grace smirked. “My professor, the scientists. Usual high minded dreaming.”
Jack realized his heart was beating fast. “How did it get out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there a cure?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can it be stopped?”
“I don’t know.”
There was anger in Jack. Directed at Grace. It wasn’t rational, he knew; but there she was, a direct connection to the people who had destroyed the world. His world. He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed, breathing deeply, letting his anger spread through him, let it work its dark magic. But not let it win. Not let it take him over. He had allowed his emotions to rule him for too long.
The sound of water trickled in from the other room as Grace continued to clean Abdul’s wounds.
Allen heard them long before he saw them. Uneven cracking in the darkness, the rustling of bushes, the quiet whispers that carried in the still air, letting Allen know it was people of the live variety who were approaching.
Crowe entered the camp. He had four people with him: two men in their thirties, one who looked to be somewhere in his sixties, and a woman; only in her twenties but with steely eyes that Allen didn’t think would look out of place on the face a three-tour hardened veteran.
“Hey,” said Crowe, turning and motioning for the rest to sit around the burnt out campfire. “Everyone, sit down and keep your voices down. We have trip wires and other security measures in place, but you never know.”
The people sat on logs, Allen realizing they were all staring at him.
“This is Allen,” said Crowe.
It was the woman who spoke first. “I’m Harriet. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She started to cry.
Allen had never been good talking to women in any context outside of commanding them as part of his troupe. A crying woman was a particular challenge for him. He glanced at Crowe, who just shrugged, a wry smile on his face. He quickly scanned the other men in the new group, no answers there.
Harriet leaped forward, “I’m sorry,” she said, as she hugged Allen. “You have no idea… For so long I’ve been looking for you.”
“For me?” said Allen. Should he put his arms around her? Should he leave them as they were, hanging beside him? He struck a halfway house and rested them on her back, gently. Nothing like the bear hug she was inflicting on him.
“Yes. I don’t know what to… I… It’s,” she smiled, laughed through her sobs. She was crying for joy; that was a good thing, guessed Allen. But why him? What had he done?
“Come on, Harriet,” said Crowe. “Give him the news.”
Harriet pulled herself away from Crowe and holding his shoulders looked into his eyes with her own gleaming eyes. “I’ve been with Adam, since the beginning.”
“It’s you,” said Allen, his heart rushing with a foreign feeling. Warmth, joy. And love for this stranger, who wasn’t a stranger, for they both shared a love for Adam. “Crowe told me that he had been all over the country, looking for me, that he had been with a woman and a man. It’s you, you’ve been keeping my son safe.”
Harriet shook her head. “No, he’s been keeping me safe. If it wasn’t for him… I would have given up a long time ago, and… He knows you’re out here. He knows you’re alive.”
“Where is he?” said Allen, looking around the group, Eyes didn’t meet him, or if they did, they quickly looked down, embarrassed, maybe. It was only Harriet who continued to hold his gaze.
“We were being held by Dalby, but we escaped over the fence last night.”
“The firefight, we watched it from he
re,” said Allen.
“Yes,” said Harriet, “and Adam was with us. But he got lost. We had to go on without him.” She spoke efficiently and with purpose. He imagined how hard it must be to give him this news, that they had left his boy behind. Like a soldier giving a sit-rep, she gave him the facts.
“You did everything you could to get him out?” he said
“Yes,” said Harriet.
“Why couldn’t you go back for him?”
“Fire was too heavy. The last one over the fence, Andy,” she motioned to one of them sitting next to her, “didn’t see any… didn’t see him. I trust him. He’ll be safe, somewhere. I’m sure of it.”
Allen nodded. He believed her. He trusted her. She loved Adam, he could see that. “It must’ve been hard to leave him behind.”
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.
And then, the strangest thing. Allen reached forward as if it was a natural act, and he hugged Harriet. He didn’t feel awkward now, he didn’t feel like a lumbering old fool, he felt right. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll go get him.”
Abdul’s head hurt. His chest hurt. His legs hurt. His arms, his stomach, his back. Everything hurt. His flesh stung with deep wounds, his deep muscles cried in pain every time he moved. His head throbbed, like one of the trains he used to work on was busy thumping its way around his brain.
He was alive though. He had always told his children that they should focus on the positive. Focus on what’s in front of you and what you have. Never focus on what you don’t have. Advice he found hard to follow since the Fall, since his family had gone (had he finally accepted that?). And today, with every part of his body aching and yearning for quick merciless release, even harder.
So he was alive. Funny, it had always been the people in the apocalypse who had almost ended it for him. And then it was also people that had saved him. The apocalypse, the great cleanser; once the shackles of civility and civilization had been removed, this was what you got. The best and the worst. It killed your heart stone cold dead, and then in the next instant, the kindness from strangers would warm it right back up again. Ready for another freeze. It was exhausting.
The Fall Series (Book 3): The Fence Walker Page 33