Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1)

by Wheatley, Nerys

  As they left the flat, Micah took one last look around as if he would never see the place again. A backpack was slung over his shoulder. It was likely he’d be away for at least two days so he’d packed what he thought he’d need. The last thing he did was remove the photo of his family from its frame and slide it into a pocket.

  They hadn’t discussed it, but Alex knew they were both thinking the same thing; how would this all end? Would it all end?

  A few eaters were milling around some way away when they left the building, but they were able to slip out without being seen. They headed in the direction of East Town. The plan was to spend the night at Alex’s flat as it was closer to the location Bates had given them, then head out for the probably non-existent secret laboratory the next morning.

  East Town was less than a mile from Micah’s flat, a brief, not unpleasant stroll when hiding from eaters wasn’t an issue.

  While the area could never be called picturesque, it wasn’t usually in such bad shape. Abandoned cars were scattered along the roads, as seemed to be the case in most places now. It was as if the whole city had decided to move out, and failed.

  They passed a row of local shops. The windows were smashed on every one, even the florist. A bakery looked like it had caught fire at some point. The Co-op had been completely gutted. A few eaters wandered among the aisles as if searching for the last loaf of bread before heavy snow was forecast. Remembering Cutter’s mounds of supplies, Alex wondered if he should be concerned about food running out. How much food was there in the city at any one time? With no supplies coming in, were they going to start starving? And where were the authorities in this crisis? Had they really been abandoned?

  A scream shattered his thoughts. He looked around.

  “That sounded like a child,” Micah said.

  “Could you tell where...”

  Another scream interrupted him. This time it was obvious it came from somewhere ahead. Both of them took off at a run.

  Rounding a corner at speed, Alex collided with an eater directly in his path. He tumbled to the pavement, the blood soaked man landing on top of him and forcing the air from his lungs. He frantically struggled to free his arms pinned against his chest beneath it as its gaping mouth descended towards him. Abruptly it slumped, face hitting the ground beside his head. Micah withdrew his skull-spiker from the back of its head and Alex rolled the body off with a grunt.

  “No time for fraternising,” Micah said, offering his hand and pulling Alex up.

  A crowd of eaters was gathered a short way along the road and a handful turned towards them. As they began to lumber in their direction, Alex glimpsed a car through the space they briefly left before it closed up with more eaters.

  There were people inside.

  Alex dropped his bag, Micah doing the same beside him.

  “That’s a lot of eaters,” Micah said.

  More turned to look at them.

  Alex removed his pistol from its holster. “I don’t want to use the ammo or attract any more, but I don’t think we have a choice.”

  The first eater was only a few feet away and Micah stepped forward, ducking under its clumsy grab to drive the skull-spiker into its temple before stepping back and pulling out his gun.

  “Thin the crowd, then mop up with the spikers?” he said.

  Alex nodded and took aim.

  As soon as they began firing, the eaters around the car switched their attention from the trapped people to Alex and Micah. Alex tried to relax, taking his time with each shot, not wanting to waste a single bullet or accidentally hit the people they were trying to rescue. Even so, head shots were difficult at the best of times and having to stand his ground against a significant horde of eaters was not the best of times. Without Micah beside him, taking out the ones he missed, Alex wasn’t at all sure he would have been able to do it.

  Slowly, the mob was reduced to a more manageable number. Alex could see the car more clearly now. The front of the vehicle was crumpled where it had hit another, empty car in the middle of the road. Inside he could see a man and woman with three young children, huddled together, terrified.

  “Alex, look out!”

  He whirled around at Micah’s yell to see an eater directly behind him, its approach masked by the sound of their gunfire. He ducked out of its way and sent a punch hard into its ribs, feeling them crack under the impact. The eater staggered away from him and he leapt after it, bringing his spiker up before it could regain its balance and plunging it into the side of its head. It fell to the concrete, unmoving.

  Behind him, glass shattered. Someone screamed.

  Alex turned back to see Micah wading into the remaining eaters around the car, his movements almost a blur as he used both of the skull-spikers he carried to put down several in quick succession.

  One of the back windows was gone and an eater was reaching into the car towards the woman where she was trying to shield two of the crying children. It grasped hold of her hair and she screamed. The man grabbed its arm from his position in the driver’s seat and tried to push it away. The eater leaned in, reaching its mouth towards his hand.

  Alex ran forward and grabbed the back of its shirt, pulling with all his strength. Its teeth ate air as he hauled it from the car and threw it to the ground, puncturing the dead centre of its forehead before it could recover.

  He looked around for any more eaters, but Micah was taking down the final one a few feet away. More were approaching some way along the street, however, attracted by the gunfire.

  Alex bent to look into the car window. The glass of the windscreen was shattered and looked like it was about to collapse inwards. The rear window had a large crack across it.

  The family inside stared at him in terror.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said as calmly as he could. “You need to get out.”

  The man let go of his wife, two sons and one daughter and lowered the passenger side window. “Is it safe?” he said, his voice trembling.

  “No, but if you come with us, we’ll get you somewhere safe. But we need to go. Now.”

  He glanced at the closest of the new eaters a hundred feet away.

  The man whispered something to his wife and she nodded. The two doors facing Alex were opened and the man and woman, along with a boy of maybe eight, a girl of around five, and a slightly younger boy, all climbed out, looking around them fearfully.

  Micah, who had gone to check a couple of the nearby side roads, returned to the car. “That way’s clear,” he said, pointing to a narrow alleyway across the road from them.

  The man jogged around to the boot and tugged it open.

  “Are you one of the bad people?”

  Alex looked down at the little boy peering up at him, his eyes wide with fear and face streaked with tears as he clung to his mother’s hand. He couldn’t have been more than four.

  Alex crouched down to look him in the eye. “No,” he said, smiling. “I was sick once, which is why my eyes look like this. But I got better.”

  The boy nodded, accepting his words at face value in a way that most adults didn’t. “I hurt my finger last week,” he said, holding one of his tiny hands up to display a faint white line on his middle finger.

  “I bet you were very brave,” Alex said.

  “I hardly cried at all,” he said, smiling.

  Alex kept smiling despite the knot in his chest. If they’d left five minutes later, or been held up somehow, they wouldn’t have been here in time.

  The man had taken a couple of suitcases from the boot and brought them to where Micah was handing Alex’s bag to him. Alex glanced at the eaters as he straightened. They were getting closer. He moved to block the children’s view.

  “If we have to run, leave those,” Alex said to the father, indicating the suitcases.

  He nodded. “Thank you, for saving us.”

  “We need to go,” Micah said, watching the eaters getting closer.

  The man and woman each took a suitcase and
picked up one of the younger children. Alex knew they should just leave the luggage, but the suitcases probably contained things of sentimental value and he didn’t want to get into an argument about it on the street. If it got bad, they’d talk about it then. Or scream about it. Whatever.

  They escaped into the alley, Alex in the lead and Micah bringing up the rear. It was only thirty feet or so to the next street and they managed to exit the other end before the eaters on their trail reached the entrance. Alex hoped they wouldn’t follow if they couldn’t see them.

  The street they found themselves in was largely residential, with 1950s semis on one side and some newer town houses on the other, probably built just before East Town became a designated Survivor residential zone and the house prices in the immediate surrounding areas took a nosedive.

  Three eaters wandering along the centre of the street spotted them as soon as they emerged from the alley. Alex motioned for the others to stay back, put down his bag and strode towards them, removing the skull-spiker from his pocket and flicking out the blade as he went. He hoped the children’s parents had the sense to shield their eyes from what he was about to do.

  The first two eaters reached him together. Alex planted a hard kick into the chest of one, sending it stumbling backwards, then scooted to the side of the other as it reached for him. He stabbed the knife into the side of its head and it fell as he turned back to the first eater. It had regained its balance and was lunging for him again. On his other side, a huge man with at least four inches on Alex and a gut clad in a blood-drenched t-shirt that sagged over its jeans reached for him. Alex ran forwards, twisting away from them, and they collided, for a few moments looking like they were caught in a macabre embrace.

  He darted forward again, plunging the spiker into the big man’s temple then, as it fell, into the ear of the final eater.

  Breathing heavily, his heart pumping, he stepped back and looked around, checking for any more. It was beginning to bother him how proficient he was becoming at killing eaters. He’d despatched more in the last two days than in his entire seven year career in the police force. Even though they had all been trying to kill him, it was still weighing on him.

  Seeing no other immediate danger, he cleaned off his knife on the jacket of one of the dead eaters and returned to Micah and the family. Thankfully, the two smaller children were being held tight by their parents, their faces turned from the carnage, but the older boy was watching Alex with wide eyes. He flashed the kid what he hoped was a reassuring smile. The boy just stared back.

  Micah handed his bag back to him and, without a word, they started off again.

  After five minutes of moving quickly through the streets, Alex could tell the woman was struggling to carry both a suitcase and a four year old child.

  “I can take him for you,” he whispered to her as they pressed themselves against the side of a building, waiting for a group of eaters to pass by.

  She looked uncertain at first, but then nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to slow us down.”

  She whispered in the child’s ear then passed him to Alex. He was heavier than he looked and Alex was amazed she’d lasted so long. Adrenalin was no doubt affecting all of them.

  The little boy clamped onto him with all four limbs, his face pinched in fear like the rest of them. Alex smiled. “My name’s Alex. What’s yours?”

  “Aaron,” the boy said, the R coming out with a hint of W.

  “Well, Aaron, you just hold onto me and we’ll be there soon. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll keep you safe. You’re being very brave.”

  Aaron nodded and tightened his grip around Alex’s neck, burying his face in his shoulder.

  His mother smiled as she watched them. “I’m Jane,” she said, “and this is my husband Roy, and Luke,” she touched the head of the older boy, “and Miriam.” The little girl looked up briefly from her father’s chest at the sound of her name then pressed her face into his jacket again.

  “I’m Micah,” Micah said, glancing back at them from his place at the edge of the building and smiling. “And we are clear to go.”

  After another five minutes of running and hiding, they reached the outer edge of East Town.

  Any doubt they may have had was dispelled by a big metal sign set into the pavement that read, “Welcome to East Town” in big, green letters dulled from the repeated removal of obscene graffiti.

  A smile spread over Alex’s face. It was good to be home.

  18

  The area was deserted.

  As they walked along the street, Alex saw no sign of any eaters, live or dead. Glancing back behind them, he thought he saw movement. He stopped and stared down the road, straining to see what had caught his attention. When nothing presented itself, he frowned and took a few steps back the way they’d come. He was sure he’d seen something, or someone.

  Footsteps approached behind him.

  “What?” Micah said, coming to stand beside him and following his line of sight.

  “I thought I saw something.”

  “Eaters?”

  “I don’t know. Just something moving.”

  “Well if it was eaters, they wouldn’t be hiding,” Micah said. “Maybe it was just someone in their front garden.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, continuing to stare along the road for a few more seconds before mentally shrugging and turning away to catch up with the others.

  Turning left at a t-junction onto Market Street, they came to a halt. A double line of cars spanned the road from the buildings on one side to the buildings on the other. Parked bumper to bumper, each was separated by barely an inch.

  “Hmm,” Micah said, coming to stand beside him.

  Alex could see the building where he lived further up the street. They were going to have to climb over.

  “Mac!”

  Alex looked round to see one of his neighbours emerge from a doorway just beyond the cars. Pete lived in the same building as Alex, a floor above him. He didn’t particularly like being called Mac, but Pete was a good person and he seemed to like it, so Alex never said anything.

  He was smiling as he trotted towards the little group. “I am so glad to see you alive. We thought we’d lost you.”

  Alex smiled back. “I got a bit held up. These guys need a safe place to stay for a while...”

  “Yes, yes, come on through,” Pete said with a little bounce. Pete lived his life in a semi-permanent state of mild excitement.

  Alex frowned and looked at the cars. “Um...”

  “This way,” Pete said, beckoning for them to follow as he walked along the line of cars and stopped towards the centre of the street.

  The group paralleled him until they came across a one foot gap between two of the cars. Turning sideways, Alex edged his way through, then along another small gap between the two rows of cars for around ten feet back in the direction they’d come, then through a final gap to join Pete on the other side. The others followed him.

  “The eaters can’t get through it,” Pete said. “Although we’ve hardly had any come here. We don’t smell right.”

  Alex nodded. Of course the eaters would be attracted to the large concentrations of uninfected people in the rest of the city rather than to East Town where, as far as they were concerned, there were just more eaters.

  Aaron had dared to lift his face from Alex’s shoulder and was now staring at Pete.

  “Were you sick too?” he said.

  Pete looked at Alex, eyebrows raised.

  “Your eyes,” Alex said.

  “I was,” Pete said with a smile, “but that was a long time ago and I’m all better now.”

  Aaron nodded and turned his attention to the rest of the street.

  “Just go on,” Pete said, waving a hand. “I’m on guard duty so I have to hang here.” For the first time, Alex noticed a kitchen knife tucked into Pete’s belt.

  “Okay. Thanks, Pete.”

  Pete smiled as they filed past him
, suddenly frowning when he saw Micah. “Hey, aren’t you...”

  “It’s alright,” Alex said. “Long story.”

  Pete nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on Micah.

  As they walked along the street, various people came and went from buildings around them. Some waved at Alex, others stopped to welcome him back. A couple who had fought the mob invasion what seemed like a lifetime ago stared at Micah, but didn’t say anything. Alex noticed that Micah was looking uncomfortable, nervous even, as they walked, but as Micah had taken him into Survivor-haters central, Alex didn’t feel the need to sympathise.

  “Alex!”

  He turned at the sound of laughter to see Janie striding towards them with a big smile on her face.

  “What happened to you?” she said.

  He grinned. “Stuff happened. No big deal.”

  Aaron had twisted right around in Alex’s arms to stare at Janie. He gave her a shy smile.

  “And who is this?” she said, smiling back at the little boy.

  “This is Aaron,” Alex said.

  “I’m brave,” Aaron said.

  Janie laughed. “I bet you are. Have you been looking after my friend Alex?”

  Aaron nodded enthusiastically, grinning, and Alex marvelled at his ability to forget the terror of what he’d been through less than half an hour before.

  “Janie,” Alex said, “Roy, Jane, Luke, Miriam and Aaron need a place to stay until things get better.”

  She nodded. “Of course. We have a few guests here.” She turned and yelled, “Jerry!”

  “Yo!” Jerry waved from across the street and jogged over to them. “Hey, Alex. Good to have you back.”

  “These people need a place to stay,” Janie said.

  Jerry grinned. “No problem at all. I’ll take them to Jeremy’s.”

  When Alex tried to hand Aaron back to Jane, he clung to him, screwing his face up.

  “I wanna stay with Alex,” he whined.

  “Aaron,” Jane said, gently unravelling his arms from Alex’s neck, “Alex has to go and help other boys and girls.”