The supermarket was silent as they waited. Mack’s men were not hasty or impatient. No help would arrive to help Parker, no reinforcements or nearby units. There was no reason for Mack not to take his time. He was no doubt out there, right now, planning his next move.
Parker held his breath and listened harder. What was the holdup, though? Taking your time was one thing, but the longer Mack took, the longer it gave his enemy to prepare. He should have been attacking by now.
“Hey,” Cross hissed from over by the bakery. “D’you hear that?”
Parker did hear it. A far away humming, getting louder. A mechanical sound. Almost like a…
Parker hit the floor and shouted, “Get down!” The explosion rocked the store at its very foundations, and glass, debris, and bloody chunks from the piled-up corpses from the front of the store filled the air and landed with the pattering sound of hailstorms and rain.
“What the fuck!” shouted Cross.
“They rigged a goddamn car with explosives; rammed it into the barricades outside.”
“Explosives? Where the hell did they get ordinance from?”
“Who knows,” said Parker. “It’s there for the taking for anyone who knows where to look. It doesn’t matter. Just get ready to return fire.”
Mack’s men started firing their weapons before Parker even managed to spot one of them. The glass of the deli counter splinted but did not break – otherwise a bullet or two may have found its way into Parker’s chest. He clambered across to the side of the counter and blind-fired into the supermarket, hoping to buy his own men the briefest chance to set themselves against their attackers.
Parker heard someone cry out at the front of the store and he couldn’t tell if it was from a bullet or if they had trodden on one of Dennis’s hidden nails. Dust filled the air and obscured vision beyond a few feet. Parker fired into the mist.
More rounds hit the deli counter and Parker ducked down. He turned to his right to tell Cross to coordinate fire with him, to pin down the enemy.
But Cross was dead.
Cross sported a bullet wound in his forehead the size of a penny while the back of his head had exploded in a wound the size of a tennis ball.
Parker shook his head and cursed. “That motherfucking sniper.”
Parker turned to his right and crawled beside the deli counter. Bullets seemed to hit all around him. Ahead of him, Anderson and Schumacher returned fire as best they could, keeping their heads down and hoping for the best. Beyond them, Dennis fired nails from his power tool wildly into the air, sending shards of iron death in a dozen directions.
There was a brief cessation in the firing and Parker knew that Mack’s men were reloading. He shot up over the deli counter and screamed at his own men to, “Fire!” He took careful aim down his sights and scanned the area as time seemed to stand still. At the front of the store, the dust was clearing and Parker made out the briefest flash of green material. He squeezed the trigger and flinched as he heard his bullet hit soft flesh beneath the camouflaged uniform of his target. The man hit the ground screaming, landing on the cardboard-covered nails. His screams got louder.
“Man down,” one of Mack’s men cried out, and Parker smiled as another body hit the ground in the aisles, slipping on the bleach and detergent and then taking a bullet from Anderson while he helplessly tried to keep his balance.
“Shit! Cooper’s down!”
Parker’s men seemed to be getting the upper hand, but that all depended on how many men Mack had with him. Parker’s rifle ran dry and he crouched down to reload. He pulled a magazine from a pouch on his belt but frowned when he felt it was light. He’d forgotten that his current magazine was all he had left.
“Damn it.” Staying low, he sprinted towards the barricade that protected Anderson and the others. They wouldn’t have any spare ammo to give him, but he could act as a spotter for them and try to pick their targets.
As Parker neared the others, something struck the floor in front of him and rolled across the floor. His eyes went wide as he recognised what it was. “Get down!” he screamed. “Grenade!”
Parker skidded to the floor and began clambering backwards on his hands and rump. Anderson looked down at the grenade at her feet and froze. Just when Parker was sure he was about to watch her get blown limb from limb, her body lurched forward, with such force that she tumbled and skidded a clear ten feet across the floor towards Parker.
Parker shook his head in disbelief as Dennis threw aside his nail gun and leapt on top of the grenade. A muffled explosion erupted from beneath him and blood splatter hit the floor all around him. He was dead before even a full second passed.
Schumacher came running up and looked down at the mess. “Shit! I guess he wasn’t willing to stand around and watch another woman die.”
“We’ll mourn him later,” said Parker. “I promised we’d take out every last one of Mack’s men and I intend on keeping my word.”
Anderson fired off another couple rounds and then they all huddled down. “What’s the plan?” she asked Parker.
“We need to fall back to the warehouse. There’s only one entrance to focus on. We don’t have the ammunition for anything else.”
As one, they moved behind the deli counter and shuffled towards the warehouse entrance. Parker ushered everyone in before him and then slid in behind them. They immediately made for the nearest stack of pallets and aimed their rifles at the doors, except for Parker who was out of ammo.
“You fire on the first fucker that comes through that door,” Parker ordered.
“You can count on it,” said Anderson.
Sure enough, the first guy to come through the warehouse doors caught a fatal bullet to the chest. His body hit the floor already dead, and several more men spilled into the area spread out. Parker pulled out the chef’s knife Anderson had given him earlier and threw it with all his strength at the doorway. It struck a man in the face and caused a bad gash, but that was it. “Knew that shit wouldn’t work!”
Anderson and Schumacher kept firing their rifles, but never managed to land anther round successfully as the enemy took cover. Then the grim click of their rifles going empty caused them both to take cover themselves. All three of them were now out of ammo.
Through the doorway of the warehouse came Mack, red bandana soaked with sweat and covered in rubble dust. He had a military shotgun around his neck but was letting it hang loose with the muzzle pointed at the floor. He began to laugh.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are. If you had any more bullets you’d be firing ‘em, so give up the ghost, my friends. We tried to take this place politely, but I’m afraid it has had to come to this.”
“Who do you think you are?” Parker shouted out from behind a stack of Blu-Ray players. “You signed an oath to protect this country, not rape and pillage it.”
Mack laughed. “Rape and Pillage. I like that. Like Vikings, yeah?”
“Like depraved animals, more like,” said Anderson.
“Ooh, a lady with a smart mouth. Looks like it’s our lucky day, boys.”
“Not gonna happen,” said Parker.
“Beg to differ.” Mack fired his shotgun and took out a chunk of the DVD players. Parker flinched and kept low. He made eye-contact with both Anderson and Schumacher. Both of them looked back with fear, but also defiance.
“Look,” said Mack. “Just get the hell out of here. We’re not interested in you. We just want the food here. It’s ours. You can go.”
“Yeah, right,” said Parker. “Is that the deal you made with all of the dead men and women at the front of this store?”
“They were just civvies, I have no respect for them. The world belongs to the strong now. I have respect for a serviceman such as yourself. You can go. You’re man, too. Just not the woman you got with you.”
Schumacher leapt from behind a stack of pallets and came at Mack from the side. While they had all been talking, he had managed to flank the man and was now lunging for him wit
h a knife.
Mack spun around, the lowered shotgun too long and cumbersome to bring up in time to deflect the blow. Schumacher swung out with his blade.
The sound of gunfire in the cramped confines of the warehouse was deafening. Parker peeked around the corner in horror as Schumacher flew back against a stack of cardboard boxes and immediately started bleeding from what was left of his face. Beside him stood one of Mack’s men, a smoking sidearm pistol in his hand.
“Who the hell are you guys with?” asked Parker, trying to stall for time. “All your weapons: shotguns, grenades?”
Mack laughed again. “Let’s just say we were based out of Hereford when the shit hit the fan. We forgot to bring our beige berets with us.”
Parker’s eyes went wide and so did Anderson’s. They were fucked. There were two of them facing off against a squad of SAS. The SAS were notoriously so tough that even if Parker had a fresh mag of ammo and emptied every round into Mack, the guy would probably just shake it off and keep coming. There was no way to win this.
Anderson spoke up. “If I come with you,” she said. “Will you let my sergeant go? He’s a good man and has helped a lot of people. If you let him leave I will come with you…willingly.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” said Parker in disbelief. “No way are you going with that psycho.”
“It’s the only way either of us will get through this alive. Besides, I’m already dead anyway.”
Before Parker had chance to ask her what she meant, Mack answered the proposal. “You have my word. I’m not in the business of killing those who don’t stand in my way. As long as they let me take what I want. And having a woman come willingly sounds like an interesting novelty. You have a deal. Come with us and your noble sergeant can go.”
Parker was looking at Anderson and shaking his head. She looked right back at him with fear in her eyes, but it seemed to be fading, becoming something else; consternation. “Just let me say goodbye,” she said. “Two minutes.”
Mack huffed. “Fine.”
Behind the stack of Blu-Ray players, Anderson moved up close to Parker. “Don’t worry about me,” she said.
“Are you crazy?” he said.
She pulled up one of her shirt sleeves to her elbow. “No, I’m not crazy. I’m sick. And I ain’t getting better.”
Anderson’s arm was covered in a swath of pus-filled blisters. In the worst places they had come away to show weeping, raw flesh. She had it. She had The Peeling.
Parker felt sick, but managed to keep his voice low. “What the fuck? You have it! But there’s been no new cases in weeks. The disease is supposed to be gone.”
Anderson shrugged. “Guess it hasn’t finished with us yet. It started yesterday evening. The rate it’s spreading I don’t even have a week left.”
Parker’s mouth dropped open. “I…I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Those fuckers out there don’t know I’m ill, so they’ll take me as a fucking piece of meat and let you go.”
“I still can’t leave you,” said Parker. “I can’t leave you to live even one day with those monsters.”
“You won’t have to. As long as you do one last thing for me.” She whispered into Parker’s ear and he nodded. Then he smiled. It was a good plan.
“Okay,” shouted Anderson. “I’m coming out, but Parker is going out the back and round the access road. You let him go peacefully and I’ll be the best fuck you ever had. You try to chase him down and I’ll struggle and bite until not one of you has a dick left. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Mack impatiently. “Let’s get it over with.”
Anderson stepped out into the warehouse while Parker hurried for the back door. It felt wrong leaving her, against everything he stood for, but he had something he needed to do. As he fled the building, the sounds of Mack and his men tormenting Anderson turned his stomach. At least she wouldn’t be suffering for long.
The fresh air of outside hit Parker like a slap in the cheeks. He hadn’t realised how stifling the rotting atmosphere of the supermarket had been. He was glad to be out of there. What had at first seemed like a haven had instead turned out to be another sanctuary of nightmares.
He passed by the gate and soon realised that it was still padlocked. He looked around and quickly spotted a row of wheeled recycling bins. Parker grabbed the nearest one and yanked it with him towards the gate. Once it was in position, he hoisted himself up on top and managed to claw himself over the chain link, ignoring the pain of flesh grating from his palms.
Once his boots were back down on the tarmac, he sprinted across the car park, heading in front of the supermarket. The flaming remains of an old Volvo saloon stood in a blackened mess against the barricade trucks and Parker couldn’t help but marvel at the amount of explosives Mack must have possessed. He kept on running, cutting between abandoned cars and trolleys, heading for where he and his men – all dead now – had left the Warrior. When bedding down on the night previous, they had covered the tank with a green canvas tarp. Luckily, Mack and his men had not noticed it up on the bank between the trees. As much as Parker had hated being tied to the rolling coffin the last several weeks, it now looked and felt like home. He was glad to return to it – he just felt great sorrow that he was returning alone.
Parker pulled back the tarp and leapt up onto the Warrior’s flanks. He examined the vehicle’s twin rocket launchers at its rear and was glad to see that they were all still primed and loaded: eight high-explosive rocket-propelled grenades.
Parker opened up the command hatch and slid himself down into the cockpit. He switched on the console and breathed a sigh of relief that the tank’s battery was as healthy as when they had left it. The targeting readout flashed up and showed him a black and white picture of the trees in front of him. After tapping in a few commands, the display switched to display something else: the supermarket.
The large, square building in black and white seemed sinister, more like a prison or asylum. He would be glad to bring it to its knees. Parker tapped in the relevant commands, targeted the twin grenade launchers on the back of the building, where the warehouse was located, and then sent the orders.
With a fizz not unlike the sound of champagne being uncorked, eight rockets hurtled high into the air. Parker could not see them from within the cockpit, but he knew that they would be about to reach the apex of their climb, before tilting in mid-air and falling back down to earth; their unmoving target was a certainty.
Parker watched on the screen as the supermarket bloomed white in a violently shifting cloud. A split-second later, the tank shook and his ear drums popped as the air pressure became charged. With a grim smile, not of happiness but perhaps of satisfaction, Parker climbed out onto the roof of the tank and surveyed the chaos of the rubble that had once been a supermarket. The hollow building, lacking in central support had crumpled like a stack of cards, so flat that no one inside could possibly have lived. The area was decimated and all that now lived was a smattering of fires. Anderson was dead; so were Cross, Schumacher, Carp, and Dennis. But so were Mack and all of his men.
Parker didn’t know if the sacrifice of his good men was enough to make the death of Mack’s evil men worth it. He hoped it was. One thing was for sure, the nightmares of this world were not yet over. Anderson had proved that The Peeling was not yet finished, and, as Parker looked up at the dawn sky and saw unnatural lights filling it by the thousands, he started to understand that the disease that had destroyed the world was not the end of things to come, but just the beginning of something worse.
The lights in the sky were getting bigger.
THE PEELING: BOOK 4
PATIENT ZERO
The spacious minibus cut through the English countryside like a scalpel through flesh. From within its air-conditioned cocoon, it would be easy to forget the sweltering sun that beat down its summer rays. The tinted windows made the world outside seem dark.
Dr Gregory Penn watched the farms, fields and forests roll by and wond
ered how long it had been since he last saw a building. Being so far away from London gave him an unsettled feeling that he did not like. It was like he was somehow leaving civilisation behind.
I’m fleeing. Escaping my life so that I might find another.
But it was a choice he had made. Greg had finally sold out to the big money offer and was working for the Government. No more helping sick people in hospitals, no more saving lives; now he would spend his days researching whatever his new bosses told him to – whether it was a weapon of mass destruction or an anti-wrinkle cream.
The black-suited driver of the mini-bus turned down a wooded lane and reduced their speed. The vehicle began to bounce on its axels as the road became uneven and rocky.
“Are we nearly there?” Greg asked. The long drive was giving him too much time to think. He was getting anxious, doubting his decision.
Am I really cut out for this? Chief Virologist at the age of thirty-eight?
Well, I’m not cut out for anything else. Was never any good at being a friend, a husband…
“We will be there in less than ten minutes, sir,” replied the driver.
Greg sighed. It was a relief to be close after so many hours of driving. With all of the back roads they’d taken, he wasn’t even sure which part of the country he was in anymore. They could even have passed north into Scotland for all he knew. They’d certainly be driving long enough since Lewisham.
Up ahead, the minibus encountered a chain link fence. The driver slipped a mobile phone from his pocket and made a call. A few seconds later, a section of the fence slid aside on rails and the minibus passed through.
The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling Page 64