The Alpha Plague (Book 1)

by Michael Robertson

Although Rhys followed the same path Vicky had originally taken, to continue along that line of trajectory would have landed him smack bang in the middle of the herd. His plan had more smarts than that.

  The vinegary stink of rot hit Rhys sooner than he’d expected. In just a few hours, the diseased smelled like their flesh had curdled. At this rate, they’d be nothing but piles of sludge in a few days. Whatever happened to them over time, Rhys wouldn’t be there to find out—no fucking way; he, Vicky, and Flynn would be long gone.

  With about twenty metres between Rhys and the stragglers at the back of the pack, Rhys changed his course and headed for a small building.

  One of seven small huts was positioned off to the side. They’d all gone into lockdown like the other buildings in Summit City, but when they didn’t have armour around them, they served a variety of food to the Summit City workers. Now they served as a way for Rhys to hide from the diseased crowd.

  A dull ache gripped Rhys’ lower back as he tried to run at a crouch. He stopped when he got to the first hut. Each hut stood about three metres tall; he didn’t need to run like that. Crouched or not, the diseased couldn’t see him. With two hands on the base of his back, he leaned backwards and thrust his pelvis out as he released a muted groan.

  After his slight pause, Rhys moved along to the next hut on tiptoes. As he ran, he listened to the collective moans and roars on the other side of the small buildings. If he couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see him. Although… if he couldn’t see them, he also couldn’t see an attack. There could be a welcoming party past hut number seven and he’d know fuck all about it.

  A sharp ache ran through his feet and he fell from his tiptoed run, but he carried on.

  Suddenly, Rhys heard something else and stopped. Muffled and distant, he heard it nonetheless—a small voice whimpered and cried. A stream of sweat ran down the sides of Rhys’ face as he searched around for the source of the sound.

  When he leaned against the steel panel of the closest food hut, he instantly withdrew from the hot metal shutters. It must have been scorching inside… Inside! The thick steel made it almost impossible to hear the person, but the voice came from inside the hut. Rhys moved his face so close, he felt the heat that radiated from the brushed metal.

  “Help me, please. Help me.”

  He couldn’t do anything. The thick reinforced steel barely let sound through, so any effort Rhys made to help the woman inside would be utterly ineffective. Even if he could help her, the noise he’d have to make would bring the diseased over in droves.

  A woman trapped as she cried for help twisted a pang of grief through Rhys’ chest, but he couldn’t help her. Vicky remained the number one priority at that moment. Get Vicky, get Flynn, and then get as far away as possible—nothing else mattered. Rhys stepped away a couple of paces and frowned at the steel pod. A lump rose in his throat. Poor woman. When he looked up at the sun, he squinted and shook his head. She’d probably die in there like a dog left in a hot car.

  Three heavy clunks and then a whirring sound took Rhys’ attention away from the food pod. He looked across to see the drawbridge as it slowly lifted. Fear gripped him; no going back now. A look at the two half-built towers flooded him with self-doubt. Rhys took a deep breath and whispered to himself, “One thing at a time.” It did little to calm his furious pulse.

  ***

  It took a few minutes for the bridge to lift. Without a friendly cop on the other side, it had become impassable. Whether Rhys had made the correct choice to go back for Vicky didn’t matter anymore. It now remained his only choice.

  The noise of the bridge had pulled some of the diseased back over. They shambled, rather than ran, toward it; curiosity drove them rather than hunger. They seemed to understand the disturbance wouldn’t provide them with something to hunt. It must be an olfactory thing; the drawbridge, although no doubt had a metallic quality to it, didn’t reek of human blood.

  The crowd that headed to the bridge consisted of maybe fifteen diseased at most. The ones that banged against the florist’s steel shutter continued to hammer away; they undoubtedly still believed they could get into the shop.

  Once Rhys arrived at the end of the line of food pods, he peered at the tall, unfinished buildings that were much closer now. He saw straight through them because neither of them had doors or windows fitted yet. They’d best be as barren inside. In fact, his entire plan relied on it.

  The heat of the day and Rhys’ anxiety had turned his mouth dry. He took a deep breath and counted down from three before he poked his head around to look at the diseased.

  The second he did, his heart jolted and rattled his nerves.

  He was being watched.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  If he waved at her, it would attract their attention. Instead, Rhys held eye contact with Vicky, and with a very slow gesture, pointed at the tall buildings just across the way.

  For a few seconds, she looked at the half-built towers. When she looked back, she nodded at Rhys, gave him the thumbs up, and disappeared from the roof of the florist’s.

  The sound of the diseased as they crashed against the steel grew louder. Something had evidently wound them up.

  From where Rhys stood, nothing had changed with the shop. Maybe the diseased farther back had redoubled their efforts to get forward, but even that didn’t explain the extra noise.

  Unless… “Vicky,” Rhys whispered. When he strained his ears, he heard it. Some of the bangs came from the other side of the shutter. It pulled the diseased in, and their collective intention bore down harder on the steel barrier that stood between them and Vicky. However, regardless of how hard they pushed, the barrier held.

  When their moans and cries grew louder still, Rhys muttered to himself, “Good girl, Vicky.” His opportunity had arrived.

  A slight reluctance gripped Rhys’ muscles, and it nearly held him back. Then he shook his head. Not now. Not when Vicky needed him. Rhys took a final breath and sprinted out into the open space.

  Once he was out of cover, he glanced across at the rowdy mob. If one of them saw him now… well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  Yet, not a single creature turned to look at him; Vicky had them well and truly occupied.

  ***

  Rhys darted into the unfinished building and pressed his back against an inside wall. Surrounded by bare concrete, it threw back an echo of not only his footsteps, but also his hard breaths.

  The place had a long way to go before completion. Most of the large rooms were yet to have their dividing walls erected. Dust from the construction tickled Rhys’ nose, but he managed to hold onto his sneeze.

  In an attempt to cool himself down, Rhys pulled his shirt away from his stomach and billowed it like a fan. Although the cheap nylon didn’t cater to this kind of heat nor this kind of exercise, he could hardly go skins—not a great way to impress Vicky. A beautiful and fit young woman nearly ten years his junior could hardly be attracted to Rhys, a slightly portly thirty-something bloke whose best physical attributes were his calf muscles because they kept his odd-shaped body stable.

  The bare concrete stairs ran a spiral all the way to the top of the building. It made Rhys dizzy to look up the centre of them.

  More dust ran up Rhys’ nose, and his eyes watered. A sneeze stirred in his nostrils, but with a hard rub of his face and a sharp sniff, it passed. He didn’t need to attract those things too early. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to outrun them up what must have been at least twenty flights of stairs.

  A final deep breath, and he began his climb.

  ***

  Tools lay strewn about the floor, dropped where workers left them. This place had been abandoned in a hurry. When the explosion sounded out and the shutters went up, if they had any sense, the builders would have gotten off the island in a flash. He hoped they’d made it, but it was doubtful. It would only be a matter of time before Rhys figured he’d see a diseased in a high-visibility vest. Good job they left the tools behind; th
ey hardly needed to be armed as well.

  ***

  By the time he’d made it up five flights of stairs, Rhys’ lungs had tightened to the point where he couldn’t carry on. Sweat stung his eyes as he stopped to rest, and the dusty environment made his throat dry.

  Rhys pulled the photo of Flynn from his top pocket. The photographer had asked his boy to lean forwards on the table in front of him—a very adult pose for a little boy. The slightest smile tickled Rhys’ lips and he kissed it. “Not long now, mate. Daddy’s coming.”

  With that, he carried on.

  ***

  By floor ten, Rhys paused again. Although he remained on his feet, he hunched over, placed his hands just above his knees, and fought for breath. While he stared at the floor, he watched his sweat land on the dusty ground and form dark little circles.

  The need to sneeze returned, the fine dust in the air impossible to avoid. It danced in a nearby beam of light and made his eyes itch.

  When a loud shriek flew into the building, Rhys stood up straight and peered down the centre of the stairs. Nothing had entered yet; he had to keep on going.

  Rhys moved off again. Every step set a fire beneath his kneecaps. If they came in now, he couldn’t outrun them to the top.

  As he climbed, Rhys heard another shriek and looked down through the stairs again. Time seemed to stop at that moment. Shame it hadn’t stopped a few seconds before—or, more precisely, he hadn’t stopped. If he had, he would have had a second to catch his breath. If he’d have stopped, he would have realised that, although unmistakably close outside, nothing was on his trail. If he’d have stopped, he would have seen the tray of paints before he stepped on them.

  Half of the paint tray hung over the edge of one of the steps as if put there as a trap. When Rhys’ foot made the slightest contact with it, it nudged it off the edge. Dread sank through Rhys as the tray, and six large paint cans, fell to the ground.

  They tumbled in silence and the entire world seemed to hold its breath with Rhys.

  The first can connected with a stair with a loud crash.

  Rhys’ entire being tensed up to the point where he felt brittle. The next five cans shattered him as they hit the floor, almost as one. A deep boom shot up the stairwell. A large cloud of dust kicked up from the point of impact

  And then silence…

  Unable to still his heavy heartbeat, Rhys held his breath and listened.

  Nothing.

  Nothing inside, but nothing outside either; no bang of fists against the steel shutter at the front of the florist, no moans from the mindless mass, no shuffle of tired feet. In a world were chaos reigned, everything had turned deathly still.

  Then he saw it: one diseased man. At a guess, Rhys would have put the guy in his forties. For a moment, he looked at the paints on the floor as if they would provide answers for him. Then he looked up and his bloody eyes stared straight at Rhys.

  “Fuck it.”

  When he drew a deep breath, Rhys took off, his legs on fire from the effort.

  The primitive and frenzied call of the diseased chased up the building after him.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Every part of Rhys’ body ached as he pushed on. If what he’d heard about a wall was true, he’d fucking hit it. Although, a wall sounded surmountable... he’d hit six-foot thick steel. He gritted his teeth and kept going. Wall or not, he had hundreds of fucking diseased on his tail. Two options sat before him: run or die.

  The thunder of footsteps pounded against the stairs behind Rhys. It turned from a military march, into a drumroll, into a continuous vibration that ran through the core of the building. It seemed like the entire place could collapse beneath their collective weight, especially as the tower could be structurally unsound in its incomplete state. Rhys shook his head to himself; it didn’t help to think like that, he had to push on.

  When Rhys looked down at the line of diseased that had entered the building, his stomach lurched. What little strength he had left in his legs nearly abandoned him. Packed so tightly together, they became a single unending entity with one thing on its mind—him.

  Rhys looked up again. To look behind served no purpose; the rumble of the stampede told him everything he needed to know—keep fucking running.

  Two more flights of stairs until the roof. Like the car park, he had to get to the gap and jump. If he could get up there, he could make the jump. If he’d done it once…

  When he rounded the next bend, Rhys saw the access to the roof and nearly puked. It had a fucking door on it. Of all the places in the building to have fitted a door!

  Without breaking stride, Rhys crashed into it as he snapped the handle down. The impact stung and the door didn’t budge.

  Exhaustion, fear, and grief combined as he released a throat-splitting scream. “Arghhhhhhhh!”

  If the door didn’t open, the only way to avoid the inevitable would be to take the plunge down the gap in the middle of the stairs. The way of the paint cans had to be better than what these creatures would do to him.

  With just two flights of stairs between him and the leaders of the pack, Rhys’ breath grew shallow and pains tore through his chest.

  The diseased showed no signs of fatigue.

  For a moment, Rhys froze, transfixed as he watched the casualties of the crowded ascent. With no railings to stop them, the diseased that weren’t firmly on the stairs fell down the gap in the middle. Their fellow monsters watched them, and some even reached out as if to catch them, but none of them stopped in their push to get to Rhys.

  The collection of broken bodies at the bottom of the stairs increased by the second; maybe Rhys should jump… at least a soft landing waited for him. He turned back to look at the door. There had to be a way through.

  A small cupboard sat just next to the locked door. It reminded Rhys of the kind of place used to keep the janitor’s equipment, but it didn’t have a door—of course it didn’t; there was only one door in this building. A bag of tools lay on the floor in the corner of the cupboard. There had to be something he could use in there.

  The thick bag made a whoosh and kicked up a cloud of dust as Rhys dragged it toward him. When he unzipped it, he gasped. A sledgehammer lay on top of all the other tools like it had been left there for him.

  Rhys jumped to his feet and swung it at the centre of the door with a yell. The heavy head sank into the wood, but the door didn’t give. Hardly a surprise—he’d just hit the centre of the fucking door.

  Locked in a battle with his shaky limbs, Rhys yanked the handle up and down to wriggle the hammer free.

  One final tug and it came loose. It hung from his grip as Rhys turned and looked behind him—bleeding eyes fixed on him as they rounded the final bend in the staircase.

  A surge of adrenaline rushed through him and he swung at the door again. He smashed the handle off and the door flew wide to the groan of splintering wood.

  Before he made a run for it, Rhys turned to the pack. A tidal wave of disease and hate rushed up at him. He wound the hammer back and swung it with all his strength.

  The head of the hammer connected under the chin of the lead infected like an uppercut. The force lifted it clean off its feet and sent it back into the pack. More spilled over and fell down the stairwell, and their bodies bounced off the jagged concrete steps. Each impact seemed to break them a little more until the damaged forms hit the ground like sacks of grain.

  Before Rhys ran, the creatures did something that made him pause.

  The pack of diseased had gathered around the one Rhys had just attacked. They held their dead friend tight and stared at Rhys. As one, they snarled and bit at the air. They hadn’t paused because they were scared about what he could do to them; they’d paused because they were angry. He’d hurt one of their own.

  Rhys’ skin crawled as he yelled and threw the hammer at the mob. They screamed louder than before, cast their recently killed member aside, and gave chase again.

  With no more than a few metres
lead on the pack, Rhys ran. He gritted his teeth and his heart boomed.

  The hot sun beamed down as he sprinted across the roof. The ragged breaths of the diseased in the lead got so close they damn near tickled the back of his neck. He could taste their stale aroma.

  When he got to the edge of the roof, doubt grabbed him in a strangle hold, but he pushed through it and jumped anyway.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Rhys stumbled but didn’t fall when he landed on the other side. He stopped and turned around to see the lead diseased continue to run straight off the edge of the building. It didn’t even try to jump.

  A few seconds later, Rhys heard a faint thump as it hit the ground below. Another one, despite some last-minute attempts to slow down, didn’t manage it in time either and followed the first over the edge. The rest stopped then snarled and hissed while they focused on Rhys.

  The hot sun beat down on Rhys as he caught his breath. He watched the diseased across the metre and a half of empty space that separated the two buildings. Most of them could jump it if they put their minds to it. But therein lay the problem; they didn’t have minds, at least not ones that could perform any kind of function other than run and attack.

  Rhys hawked up a ball of phlegm. It tasted stale in his dry mouth. He stepped close to the edge and spat across at them. It missed, but despite their obvious lack of mental function, it did something to incite them further. After he’d shown them the back of his middle finger, Rhys said, “Fuck you,” and left the roof.

  The second building had no door to block access to the roof. Once Rhys entered it, the dust clogged his sinuses and he sneezed. When he looked down the spiral concrete staircase, his stomach lurched and his head spun. Without any railings to hold onto, the prospect of a quick descent daunted him much more than the effort of running up them had.