Amazing, he thought, how quickly the human mind can adapt to deal with trauma, and render the horrific mundane. Then he caught sight of Jason's haunted expression, as Rachel led him forward by the hand. Not for everybody, he thought sadly.
The big man moved like a shadow, trailing Rachel, and his passing seemed hardly to disturb even the air around him. He needed help soon, Michael thought, and wondered if there was anyone left out there for whom mental instability would be deemed anything other than a frivolous irrelevance.
He shook the thought away, quickly, for it reminded him of his father, and told himself that things couldn't possibly be as bad as his worst fears tried to persuade him they were.
Rachel studied Michael slyly as they walked. He didn't talk, but the silence was not awkward: she welcomed it in fact, for it gave her time to gather her reeling senses. The policeman moved a little gingerly, and she puzzled over this for a while until she saw him clutching at his side when he thought she wasn't looking.
He's injured, she thought, and once the realisation took root, she noticed the limp he was trying to suppress, and the swollen jaw that looked as if it had connected with the wrong end of a cricket bat. Michael was trying to protect her, Rachel realised, trying to give her something that would make her feel safe, some semblance of authority, and she appreciated the gesture.
He was a good looking man, and she was amazed to find, somewhere deep within herself, faint sparks of attraction for him.
The thought shamed her, and she turned her attention to Jason, who needed her to remain focused and unselfish right now. She buried the thought of Michael deep down.
When they reached the car, a cheerful red Renault Clio that seemed oddly out of place amongst the horror in the town, Michael produced a single key from a breast pocket, and unlocked it.
The car beeped loudly, indicator lights flashing twice as the central locking acknowledged the wake-up call. The sound, unnervingly loud in the quiet night, made Rachel jump, and both she and Michael tensed, sweeping their eyes around the street.
The windows remained as dark as the others that they had passed en route. If there were any living souls left in the houses of St. Davids, they were staying out of sight. Rachel didn't blame them.
They eased Jason's massive frame into the rear seat. Rachel moved her seat as far forward as it would go to give him some leg room, but he still looked awkward, like a man trying on clothes five sizes too small. It would have to do.
She slipped into the passenger seat next to Michael, and they both shut their doors softly.
"How far is it?" Rachel asked once they were inside.
"Not far," Michael replied. "A few miles. On the coastal road, near Ralf's café."
Rachel noticed the tone of his voice drop as he said the words.
"It's out in the woods though, and I'm not certain I'll be able to find it again."
Michael turned and looked into Rachel's eyes. She felt a fluttering in her stomach despite herself, and told it to be quiet.
"It's not too late for you to go back. I can drive you. This guy I'm looking for, he's...well, I think he's dangerous. Unstable. He sure gave me that impression anyway."
Michael rubbed his swollen jaw absent-mindedly.
"Dangerous and unstable, huh," Rachel muttered, and she cast her eyes back on the bloodsoaked road they had just walked and forced a sardonic grin.
Michael nodded.
"Understood," he said, and turned the ignition over. The car started with a soft purr, and Michael set off, moving slowly and keeping tense eyes on the arc of light thrown out by the headlamps, heading back to where it had all begun, several hours and hundreds of lives earlier.
*
The emptiness of the road was spooking Michael. He had told himself that the streets of St. Davids were empty because there was nothing left in them to kill, but he had expected to encounter more of the Infected out here in the country, stumbling around the woods; directionless.
So far, though: nothing.
He felt his emotions beginning to spiral again, felt the lid that he had kept so firmly in place for years working its way loose. He knew from experience that he had to occupy his mind, had to suppress it, before the darkness took over.
He coughed.
"So, uh, you live in London?"
Rachel looked at him, surprised.
"Your mother," he said by way of explanation. "She never failed to mention her little girl conquering the capital, hanging out with the bigwigs."
Rachel snorted.
"It wasn't quite like that. I thought it would be, but it was more like making coffees and trying to make sure that it was only the boss' eyes that got near my arse."
She flushed.
"I am...I was, coming home to live. Just for a while, until I worked out what to do next."
The words made a heavy silence fall in the car again. They were both, Rachel realised suddenly, wondering if there would be a 'next' and just what form it might take.
"Jason came back to visit. My father's birthday, tomorrow. He's...gone now."
Michael glanced to his left. Tears were running down Rachel's cheek unnoticed, her eyes, strong and clear, focused only on the winding road ahead.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For you both."
Rachel nodded curtly.
Michael studied the rear view mirror. Jason was staring blankly at the back of Rachel's seat.
"I'm glad he didn't get to see this," Rachel said. "He wouldn't have understood."
"Is your mother-"
"Dead," Rachel said, her tone informing Michael in no uncertain terms that the subject was closed.
"And you? Do you have a family here?"
Michael shook his head.
"Wife and daughter in Aberystwyth. They left a couple of years back. I think they are..."
Michael trailed off. He was looking in the rear view mirror again. Behind Jason's head, out there in the darkness, something about the road behind them looked...off. He frowned.
What is that?
He checked the road ahead – all clear – and slowed a little, raising his foot a fraction from the accelerator. The road behind them looked blurry and indistinct, like a painting in which the colours were running, slowly seeping down the canvas.
He squinted, trying to make it out, and then he noticed the same blurring creeping up the windows from the rear, as though trying to overtake the car.
Instinctively, he tapped quickly on the brake pedal for a split second, and illuminated the road behind them in the red glow of the brake lights.
His mouth dropped.
Dozens of them, bathed in crimson as though they had burst straight from hell itself, loping in the tiny hatchback's wake like dogs. A swarming, heaving mass of shadows that blotted out the road, making the trees that lined it seem alive.
Infected.
Michael gasped and stamped on the accelerator wildly, all thoughts of proceeding with caution abandoned. As his gaze swung back to the road ahead, Rachel screamed in the passenger seat, her hands held out ahead of her face protectively.
Heading straight for them, an oblivious participant in a deadly game of chicken, was Derek Graham, the town butcher, drenched in blood, the lights of the car disappearing into his vacant, glistening eye-sockets. His mouth was split by a wide, hungry grin, displaying a set of blood-red teeth.
Michael tried to spin the wheel, but too late. The butcher ran straight into the radiator grille as if it were nothing more threatening than a garden sprinkler, and disappeared in a cloud of blood that filled the windscreen.
The car lurched as it bumped wildly over the body, and the wheel slipped from Michael's grasp. The world seemed to hold its breath for a fleeting second as the car flipped, and Michael had time to see the tarmac rushing toward the driver side window before everything became twisting, shrieking metal, and darkness.
*
Rat-a-tat-a-tat
Rat-a-tat-a-tat
Michael groaned, struggling to break h
imself free of oblivion, swimming against the insistent current that pulled him down inexorably.
Someone was at the door. Why wasn't Elise answering the damn door?
Rat-a-tat-a-tat
He struggled to open his eyes. They seemed glued together somehow, as if the lids had fused together. My God, how much did I have to drink?
Rat-a-tat-a-tat
Finally, his left eye opened, his vision swimming alarmingly, lurching, as though he were lying on a storm-tossed boat, not in his own bed.
And it was dark! Still pitch black. Who on earth was hammering on their door at this hour?
Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a
"Elise?" He tried to slur, but the words came out as a thick, gloopy moan.
And then a face was above him, a woman's face. Not Elise. The woman leaned close, shouting. Words he couldn't make out.
The darkness crept up and curled itself around him, pulling him back down into the depths, submerging him.
11
"He's waking up! I think he's waking up! Michael, can you hear me?"
A woman's voice. Elise? No, Elise was gone.
"Take it easy, Michael. Slowly, okay? You're safe."
Safe from what? His head was a deep, unending abyss of pain. Opening his eyes, he was sure, would only make it worse.
Had he been in an accident? Why hadn't they treated his pain?
He was lying on his back, his head resting on a cool pillow. Something else rose to the top of his list of priorities, something more urgent than the pain. Water. His throat felt like a sun-baked desert.
"Water," he tried to say, but the word emerged as a dusty croak.
The woman seemed to understand, for a moment later he felt a soft hand slide carefully under the back of his head, inclining it ever so slightly.
Something touched his cracked lips and then the water cascaded down his throat, ice-cold; the most delicious thing he had ever tasted.
At last he opened an eye, just a crack. Bright light flooded his brain, slowly resolving into the face of a young woman, her face hovering a few inches over his. She was young, dark-haired, her grey eyes heavy with concern. She looked familiar.
Michael struggled to find his memories, felt them out there somewhere, hiding beneath layers of pain.
A name surfaced. Rachel.
The memories came back then, like a jolt of electricity. St. Davids. Death and chaos. The car flipping, the road rushing up to meet him.
"Rachel," he wheezed.
A smile of pure relief broke out across Rachel's face.
"You remember," she said.
Michael tried to nod, but the effort made him see stars.
"Where are we?"
"We're safe, Michael. The man in the woods, the one you were looking for, he saved us. They can't get to us here. You need to rest, okay? Just focus on getting better."
Michael let his eyes close again, the pain and all-encompassing weariness inviting him back into the darkness.
The man in the woods had saved them. Michael thought the words sounded familiar, but fog had descended on his mind, obscuring everything.
As he drifted away into unconsciousness once more, his final thought was a question: why did the mention of the man in the woods, the one who had apparently saved them, awaken such worry deep inside him?
Darkness.
*
Rachel felt tears sting her eyes. She barely knew the man that lay bandaged and broken on the narrow bed in front of her, but the powerful rush of emotion she felt on seeing him break out of the comatose condition he had been in for days told her just how much she had riding on him. The realisation made her feel scared and isolated.
She had known there was something wrong with the man who had saved them almost immediately, had seen the look of disdain cross his face when she had insisted, after the last of the infected horrors had been mown down by the man's machine gun, that they must carry Michael's inert body with them through the woods. It was an oddly childish look; the pout of a teenager who'd been instructed to do something he felt was pointless.
Rachel had hunted through the wreckage of the car, and got lucky: there had been some camping equipment in the boot, and she was able to turn a groundsheet into a makeshift stretcher. The man with the gun had begrudgingly helped her extricate Michael from the wreckage and onto the stretcher, before lifting him roughly.
Rachel grimaced. If Michael had any spinal injuries, hauling him through the woods in this manner were certain to exacerbate them, but she didn't see any alternative. Jason's strength would have helped in the task, but Jason, having rolled out of the wrecked car with no more than cuts and bruises, was lost, staring dumbly at the broken bodies of the people the man had gunned down.
The man with the gun had a place. Deep in the woods. A place they would be safe. It was as he had said these words to her, as something in his eyes sparkled unnervingly when he said the word safe that Rachel felt concern growing inside her that the new world might hold more dangers than roaming packs of the Infected.
The 'place' he had described, at which they had arrived after a gruesome trip through a forest riddled with bodies, turned out to be even more bizarre, and troubling. A ramshackle outhouse, built to encase a hatch in the floor that opened when the man punched a code into a discreetly-placed keypad. A ladder leading down, into a world of concrete and fluorescent lights glinting off metal.
They had heaved the unconscious Michael down with a great deal of trouble, twisting his body awkwardly in the narrow space. Every time Rachel, clutching onto the sheet that they had wrapped him in, felt a bump against the walls of the shaft, she gritted her teeth. Once Michael was down, laid on the floor below, Rachel resurfaced to persuade Jason, who stood above staring at nothing in particular, to navigate the ladder. She had seen the man with the gun sneak a few glances at her brother. He had looked intrigued at first, and then, as Rachel had gently coaxed Jason to follow them through the woods she had seen something else. An odd look of satisfaction that unnerved her for reasons she couldn't quite identify.
Once they were all inside the strange bunker, sealed in by the closing of the hatch, Rachel took off her coat and bundled it under Michael's head. The man's face: a patchwork of scratches old and new, was deathly pale. She leaned in close, her ear hovering inches above his mouth. His breathing seemed steady, if shallow.
When she rose to her feet, she found the man with the gun standing in front of her, hand outstretched, face cracked in a grin.
“Victor,” he said pleasantly.
Rachel took the hand and shook it. It felt cold and limp in hers.
“I'm Rachel. That's my brother Jason. This is Michael.”
She motioned to the man laid on the floor. Victor nodded, looking slightly disinterested.
“Thank you for helping us. I don't know what we would have done-”
“Think nothing of it.”
Victor waved a dismissive hand.
“We need to stick together don't we? Those of us that haven't become...them.”
Rachel nodded.
“What were you doing out there in the woods?”
“Clearing my land,” Victor said with a sniff. “They had been converging on this place for a couple of hours. No real threat to getting in here of course – we're perfectly safe down here,” he looked earnestly into Rachel's eyes, “but the thought of them milling around so close was making me...uncomfortable. I saw a group of them break away and head for the road. Heard your car, I suppose.”
Rachel nodded again.
“Is there somewhere we can put Michael? A bed? Do you have any medical supplies here?”
“Of course.”
Victor seemed offended by the question.
“There is a bed, on the lower level. We'll take him there, and then I can give you the grand tour.”
Victor beamed, but the smile never reached his eyes. Rachel felt her skin crawl looking into those two vacant pools. Internal alarms began to sound, and she resolved to get away
from this man and his strange underground prison at the first opportunity.
*
Once Michael was safely stowed on a narrow bed in what looked like a large storage closet, and Victor reassured her that his pulse was strong and steady, Rachel allowed herself to focus more on her surroundings. They stood in what Victor claimed was the lowest level of his underground fortress: two large rectangular concrete rooms that had an industrial feel, like a storage shed.
The impression was reinforced by shelves lining the walls, packed floor to ceiling with food and supplies.
“Enough to sustain a single person thirty months without resupply,” Victor said, noting her stare. “Not exactly Cordon Bleu, but everything the human body needs to survive for an extended period.”
Rachel scanned the shelves: powdered milk in enormous sacks, vast quantites of rice, hundreds of cans of fruit and vegetables. Her eyes fell on the rectangular space in the centre of the larger of the two rooms. In it sat a battered armchair alongside a low concrete construction covered with a sheet of plywood. Her brow furrowed.
“The crowning glory,” Victor said smugly. “Under that sheet is a seven hundred foot well shaft drilled down to an aquifer.”
Rachel glanced at him, confused.
“An endless supply of fresh water.” Victor's face broke into another unsettling grin.
“Ah,” Rachel said, and noticed his expression darken from the corner of her eye. Something about the way he was describing his hideout made her think of a young child proudly showing a chaotic drawing to its parents.
She noticed, on the far wall, partially obscured behind a stack of cardboard boxes, a wall safe. Noticed too that Victor did not mention it.
Victor pointed to the narrow concrete steps that led to the floor above.
“Shall we?”
Rachel glanced at Jason. The big man was standing just inside the larger of the two rooms on the basement level, lost in his thoughts, eyes clouded. Gently, she grasped his hand and led him to the battered armchair, easing him into it. He sat wordlessly, his massive bulk filling the chair, his eyes coming to rest on the well in front of him.
Panic Page 16