“Where is that spineless shit?” She growled.
Chris just grinned and said “To which spineless shit are you referring ma’am?”
I near pissed my self laughing at that.
She stomped into the lift, right up to Chris which made me want to laugh even more, because she was barely level with his chest.
“Tom.” She said staring up at Chris.
I thought I better say something before it got ugly “Look Rosa, the last time we saw him he was in the dining room and that was last night.”
Spinning to look at me I could see a red mark on her jaw, no doubt from where Amy had cracked her one.
“He didn’t come to my room last night.” She said.
“Er…aren’t you two sharing a room.” I asked.
“That is none of your business.” She spat out.
Holding my hands up I said “Hey, whatever is going on between you two has nothing to do with me.”
Shit wrong thing to say. Her eyes narrowed and she slapped me fully across the face before saying “I bet it has. I bet you’ve been giving him ideas. I bet you have been saying he is better off without me. Well he’s not. He’s weak, spineless and not very bright. He would have been nothing without me and my father.”
I glared at her and she shrank back against the side of the lift “Look you self-centred piece of shit. I have killed for less than what you’ve just done. I said we haven’t seen your boyfriend and if you ever try anything like that again, I’ll make sure you’re put outside with only the clothes on your back.” I said growling.
The doors opened and I pushed past her with Chris following close behind me. I was so pissed off. Entering the dining room I saw David and Amy eating breakfast and drinking coffee. I walked over and grabbed a mug filled it with bitter black coffee and sat down. Amy was the first to notice the red hand print on my face and asked how I had got it. Chris related the story and I just sat, holding my coffee and trying to keep myself calm. Amy shot to her feet and was about to go find Rosa and make it round two with extra time.
“Amy sit down please.” I asked her.
“But Marc that bitch deserves a good kicking.” Amy said still standing.
“She might but I have a feeling she is going to be very lonely, very soon. So please sit down.” I said.
Amy lowered herself into the chair she had nearly knocked over when she stood up.
David looked at me and said “What do you mean by that?”
I shrugged my shoulders and said “Well Tom didn’t go back to their room last night. Doesn’t take much to put two and two together.”
“I saw him going into one of the barrack rooms last night when we all went to bed.” David said.
Well that solved the riddle of where he had disappeared to. I doubt that Rosa even knew that the third floor had bunk rooms on it. For all knew she spent most of her time sitting in her room moaning how no one listened to her. Standing I stretched my legs and headed for the door.
“Where you off to?” David asked.
Stopping I turned round “Going to sort out my ammo and a few other bits and pieces in the armoury. Why? Did you fancy joining me for a little outing today?” I asked smiling.
Laughing Chris stood up and said “I thought you were going to tell Rosa where Tom was.”
“Don’t be fucking daft. We’ve got more important stuff to do today.” I said leaving the dining room and heading for the armoury.
Chris, David and Amy ran to catch up. We stood waiting for the lift and headed to the second floor. Chris opened the door and we walked inside and started to sort out mags and tactical vests. Chris disappeared into the shelving and returned carrying two plastic carry cases. Opening them we found radios with throat mikes. I’d never used them in the Army but Chris and Amy had, so they gave David and me a quick run down on how they worked. It wasn’t long before we had most of our webbing and tactical vests loaded up. Grabbing two flash bangs and two grenades I stuffed them into two pouches on my webbing.
Chris looked over and asked “What the fuck do you need them for?”
Smiling I answered “Well the grenades worked out pretty well in Thirsk. I thought I’d bring them and a couple of flash bangs as well.”
Chris and I also grabbed a 9mm Sig each and Amy took a Browning Hi-Power pistol. David waved off the idea of a pistol and said he would be fine with the rifle but did take extra ammo and mags in a small tactical backpack.
Heading outside we passed the communication room and I stuck my head in and asked if Jake had managed to get a better radio signal. He just said that he was still working on it and that he would hopefully have an answer by the time we returned.
Heading up in the lift I was nervous about what we might find in Thorne. I had never been in a fighting situation with Amy or David. I suppose my biggest worry would be David and how he would react to shooting at the infected. After all they used to be humans not very long ago. Amy on the other hand was a totally different kettle of fish. She might be TA but we didn’t know if she had been in any kind of battle. Yeah, she might be good on the range but being in a fight was a whole different ball game.
The doors opened and we stepped out into the entrance hall for the bunker. Chris opened the hatch to lead us outside. No sooner had he opened the door when an infected lurched through. There was a loud bang that rung everyone’s ears and the infected fell to the floor leaking green and grey from it’s ruined head. Turning round we saw David with his rifle up and pointing at the open hatch. Well that surprised the shit out of me.
Whispering to myself I said “Well that proved one of my worries unfounded.”
“What was that Marc?” Amy said standing beside me.
“Oh! I was just worried how David might react when he had to kill his first infected.” I said.
“Bloody well if you ask me.” Chris said clapping a large hand on his friend’s shoulder.
David just looked at the dead thing hanging half in and half out of the hatch and said “It was like Chris said the other day. If you don’t think about it then it makes the whole thing easier.”
I stepped over the corpse and grabbed its feet before dragging it outside and dumping it in the grass beside the bunker entrance. Standing up I breathed in the crisp morning air and looked around. In the distance were grey clouds that threatened rain, but at the moment it was pretty clear. I headed for the A.P.C with David and Amy following me. Chris was pulling the hatch to the bunker closed. Climbing inside we all got settled and being the gentleman I am, I let Amy sit in the passenger seat whilst David and I sat on the benches in the rear. The rumble of the engine vibrated through the floor and there was the small jerk as it pulled away from the bunker and down the gravel track. Turning on to the road I could felt the change of the road surface.
Chapter Nineteen
The road to Thorne was strewn with more cars than any of the roads we had been on so far judging by the way Chris was throwing the A.P.C about. Standing, I pulled myself toward front and stuck my head between the seats. Looking at the road through the windscreen I could see why Chris was doing an impression of a dodgem car driver. Cars were lying all over the road and occasionally in the field beside them. The few that I could see as we passed them had tell-tale bloody hand prints and green slime on them in different places. Most had the blood and green slime inside of them but quite a few had them on the bonnets and outsides of the car. That meant a couple of things. The infection had spread very quickly, but because of the blood and slime on the outside, it was fairly certain that the infected were wandering the countryside looking for food and were no longer staying inside villages, towns and cities. They were wandering and that told me why we had our infected friend outside the hatch this morning. I jerked out of my thoughts when Chris hit the back of a red Nissan Juke and pushed it into the ditch next to the road.
“How much further?” I asked.
Looking up at me Amy said “According to the map it’s about fifteen more miles.”
Map? What fucking map? Looking down I saw she had a map folded on her lap. She bloody thinks of everything this lass.
“We’re coming in from the north east so it might be an idea to stop just outside and go in on foot.” She said pointing to the map.
Looking down I caught sight of her cleavage. Now that stunned me for a while.
“So what do you think?” Amy said.
Because I was too busy looking, I just said “I think they’re great.”
“What?” Chris said.
“Err… sorry was thinking of something else. It sounds like a good idea, pretty much what we did at Thirsk.” I said recovering.
I went to go back and sit down, but as I turned I was certain a small smile played over Amy’s lips. Sitting down I shook my head and thought about the near fuck up I just had. David sat across from me looking at the rifle between his legs.
“Penny for your thoughts mate?” I shouted over to him.
Looking up he said “To be honest, I’m thinking about that infected I killed back at the bunker.”
I felt sorry for him because it had been his first time taking on an infected face to face.
“Look you did well back there. Let’s put it this way, you managed to get your rifle up and fired quicker than any of the rest of us. But I guess that is not what you are upset about though? Everyone one of us have had to do things out of the norm to keep ourselves, families and friends safe since the infected turned up. The thing you also need to remember is that the infected are no longer what we class as human. I suppose if we take your son’s title for them we should class them as zombies. Yes, they once had feelings and dreams like the rest of us, but that all changed when the infection took them. Now we are just a food source for them and we have to defend ourselves as such.” I said.
His shoulders slumped down and he said “The thing that has me upset the most is the fact that he, the infected that is, looked so human. Back when everything was normal I could never understand why man killed man. But back there in the entrance all I could think of was what would happen if it had gotten downstairs into the bunker to my wife and kids. That thought had barely registered in my head when my hands acted on their own and I fired.”
“I knew a friend once that said when things like this morning happen then a portion of our brain takes over and reacts. He said it has the ability to just jump ahead thought wise and react accordingly. I suppose it’s like the brain can see ahead and the body reacts to that. What you need to think on is this. Without you doing what you did this morning Chris may have been infected or worse dead.” I said.
Chris shouted from the front “That mate, is a debt that can never be repaid.”
David smiled and said “I know I had to do it and will have to do it again but I don’t think I will ever get over doing it.”
“David no one ever gets over killing and the ones that do are usually fucking nuts. Take me for example.” I said laughing.
Again Chris shouted back “I can vouch for that.”
“You can get fucked.” I said laughing.
David smiled and looked down again at the rifle in between his legs, I hoped that what we had talked about helped. The last thing we needed today was for him to suddenly lose it in the middle of an infected village. We all sat in silence for the rest of the trip to Thorne. It took another hour to reach the outskirts of the village and Chris pulled up into a layby. Climbing through the top hatch with the binoculars, I looked into the streets that could see. There were the usual scatterings of infected moving up and down streets, in and out of houses with open doors. Climbing back down, we gathered in the back of the A.P.C.
“I could only see a few infected moving around in there, but considering that this village is bigger than Thirsk it makes sense there are more of them in there somewhere.” I said.
Amy sat forward and laid the map on the floor of the A.P.C.
Pointing to the north west of the village she said “Ok, we are here. Chris where did you think the shops we need are?”
Chris looked at the map for a while before pointing to a few streets just out from the centre saying “The last time came through was a while ago, but from what I can remember it they were around here.”
It was about nine or ten streets inside the boundary of the village itself. If we headed straight down the road we were on we would have to navigate several turns before getting near to the shopping area.
Pointing to the map I said “What if we leave the A.P.C here and head over the fields and come at the village from the west. We would cut down on the number of streets we have to go through and we would have a quicker way out if we needed it.”
“How are we going to get the supplies out?” David asked.
“The way I see it is there are plenty of vehicles lying around. What about seeing if there is anything close to the shops? Preferable a four-by-four, that way we can load it up and bring the gear over the fields to the A.P.C.” Chris said.
“Sounds like a plan.” I said.
Climbing outside we all stretched our legs and checked out gear. We all verified the radios were working and that David and I remembered how to work them. Climbing over the fence and heading across the fields, weighted down with webbing and tactical vests was not easy. Amy was watching our six with Chris scouting ahead, whilst David and I tried not to fall over in the muddy fields. Taking our time we came around the outside of the village. When we were just west of it we stopped to discuss the next part.
“We split into two teams. Then if one goes down the other can either carry on or head back to the A.P.C and then back to the bunker.” I said.
They all nodded.
“Next thing is we enter at different streets. That way we don’t bring the infected down on all of us if we need to fight our way out. Chris, you and David are team one and Amy and I are team two. I’m keeping the names simple because Chris has a habit of getting confused easily.” I said smiling.
Chris looked over and stuck his middle finger up.
Continuing on I said “We keep radio checks to every hour and if either team can’t report in for any reason we pull out back to the A.P.C. Right let’s do a final check and get started.”
After ten minutes we split up and headed for different ways.
Chapter Twenty
Amy took point and I followed behind her with about eight feet between us. I thought that if anything happened then that would be enough space. We approached a small garden with no fence and headed between the buildings. Stopping just short of the front, Amy crouched down and slowing looked round the edge. We moved out into the street and crouched down behind a van. Watching the pavement behind us we saw a small group of eight infected lurch out of a large building and move off down the street. This was getting quite nerve wracking for me. Amy tapped me on the shoulder and pointed further down the street. Following her I crossed over because it had better cover. Working our way down the street was slow going but we managed to find an alleyway that headed further into the village. Heading down the alley we stopped suddenly when a bin toppled over. Crouching as far into a doorway as we could, we heard the usual moan of the infected, followed by the barking of a dog. I risked looking up toward where the barking was coming from. I saw a large white German Shepherd barking at two infected as they were trying to grab it. The dog kept dancing back away from them and down the alleyway toward us. If it continued toward us the infected would see us. Amy leaned out and took aim at the Shepherd with her rifle. Slowly I pushed the rifle down and pointed at the two infected.
Leaning out I pointed my rifle at the first infected. Amy shook her head and took aim at the other one. I fired my shot down the alley and hit the infected just above its right eye. Green mist exploded out the rear of its head and it collapsed in front of its friend which suddenly toppled over as Amy’s shot hit it fully the face. The dog turned and looked towards us before running down the alley away from us and out of sight.
Standing I whispered “Ungrateful shit.”
Amy just shook her head and said “What did you expect?”
I just shrugged and we headed off toward where the dog had disappeared. Amy took point again. I had to admit she was one spooky woman. We stopped short of the road and looked out in both directions. This time we would have to head off down a mud track along the back of some houses. The problem with this was that the houses backed on to a small open grass area. From where we were I could see a few bobbing heads out on that grass area.
We crossed the road and hid behind some bushes as we watched the infected move from one side to the other then back again; like some demented game of ping pong. Keeping the fences of the gardens to our backs we edged along the path. Every time we saw an infected stop we would stop. This was not going to be an easy way out if we had to come back this way. We had made it roughly two thirds of the way along the fence when Amy just stopped and looked back the way we had come. Turning round I couldn’t believe my eyes. The German Shepherd was creeping along behind us in the tall grass up against the fences. How the hell had Amy seen it? I was looking straight at it and could hardly see it. I just waved her on and we made it to the end of the path. It opened on to a large car park that still had a few cars parked on it. I couldn’t see any infected in between any of the cars so we slowly threaded our way through them. Looking over my shoulder I saw the dog stood at the edge of the car park with its tail between its legs.
Did it know something we didn’t about this car park? Suddenly there was a scream and I spun to see Amy falling down. Now I could see why the dog was so scared of coming into the car park. A infected was under one of the cars and had grabbed Amy’s ankle as she walked past causing her to fall. I quickly stood on its neck and placed my rifle to the back of its head. Pulling the trigger the MP5 coughed and I felt the rifle thud back into my hands. The round split its skull like it was a melon. Pulling Amy up by her hands she fell forward and I caught her. I could actually feel her shaking when she hit my chest. I heard a low woof and looked down to see that our shadow had appeared in between two cars just behind us.
The Bunker (The Infected Series Book 2) Page 10