by Dave Jeffery
“Let’s get out of here,” Shipman said pulling away from Honeyman and reaching for the ladder.
Shipman looked back at the devastation behind them. “It’s going to take a miracle to get the kid out of this,’ he said. “If he’s still alive.”
“I’m still confident, Major,” Honeyman said.
“You’re right to be confident, soldier,” Shipman nodded earnestly. “It’s that kind of thinking that will get the job done.”
“Of course, Sir,” Honeyman said.
But the marine was confident because he had the advantage of insider knowledge. One of the perks of being on the payroll. He knew that getting the kid didn’t need a miracle at all.
All it needed was Phoenix Industries.
***
Amir abandoned his post as soon as he’d re-established contact with O’Connell. Clarke had checked out the schematics, guiding him through the downstairs corridors towards a fire escape located on the east side if the NICDD building. After edging through scattered office equipment and the occasional piece of human debris, he located the fire door and kicked it open with several blows.
No, things probably hadn’t gone the way his parent’s would have wanted but Amir was going to put things right once all this was done; he was going to make amends.
As he stepped through the door and out into the compound, a hand grabbed him from the shadows and Amir found himself screaming instinctively for his parents.
***
On the roof of Hilton Towers reality and fantasy were becoming pretty indistinguishable for Thom Everett. He fought his way to his knees shortly before he was aware that he no longer had the roof space to himself.
Thom thought that he could count eight zombies in total, though it was all pretty immaterial in the grand scheme, wasn't it? One would’ve been enough to stretch anyone’s sense of sanity.
They saw him at the same time, and for each shuffling step The Risen made, Thom scuttled backwards on his knees. Their moaning was as relentless as their desire to get to him and his heart pummeled his chest reminding him of his vulnerability - his frailty in this war of life and everlasting un-death.
His back suddenly hit something solid. A wall, a skylight, a piece of apparatus vital for the upkeep of opulence; it didn’t really matter, it was an obstacle blocking his retreat. His stomach sank and part of him accepted what was inevitable, and an even deeper part, a part that was tired of the running and the crawling and the unrelenting fear wanted it to happen.
The Risen were devoid of such ambiguity. They crossed the ground separating their group from the beaten teenager with sluggish ease; falling to their hands and knees as they closed the space down to a few metres, forgetting that they were men and women who had once possessed lives, now crawling like ferocious feral animals stalking their helpless prey.
“Please,” Thom begged as the first, fetid hand caressed his ankle. “Please, leave me alone.”
And to his total, utter disbelief the zombies did just that.
***
In his government procured office, Colonel Carpenter was sitting gazing down at the order on his desk. In truth he wasn’t at all surprised that such a decision had been made, but given that he’d not heard from Alpha Team since their request for the schematics to the sewer system, options were limited.
The military used terms like “neutralizing” the threat; but the reality was the wholesale destruction of a city under siege. As he considered the implications of this, Carpenter’s commandeered telephone on his commandeered desk buzzed in its cradle.
“Carpenter,” he said firmly into the hand set.
“Harte here, Sir.”
“You have him?” Carpenter asked the returning marine.
“I do, Sir, though he took some persuading.” Harte’s response was stiff yet Carpenter noted some hesitancy. Carpenter wasn’t about to dig too deeply on how much persuasion the representative of Phoenix Industries needed to accompany a marine to a field HQ in the middle of a crisis zone. These were desperate times, after all.
“Bring him to my office,” Carpenter ordered.
“Yes, Sir, Colonel,” Harte replied and signed off.
Carpenter wondered if their reluctant ally could add any more to Shipman’s brief, though some new information had certainly come to light. Information raising more questions than yielding answers. Yet Carpenter would take it to the eleventh hour to avoid a strike on the city. But if that time passed, he would do his duty to protect his country and he would do it without question.
A knock on his door caused him to look up.
“Enter,” he said.
The door swung inwards, Harte standing to one side to allow a bedraggled looking man of around five foot five to scuttle into the office. He wore a pair of frameless glasses and his mop of brown hair was in need of a comb; highlighting the haste in which he was dragged from his home.
“This is most irregular,” the man said as he approached the desk. “I wish to make a complaint.”
“Complaint?” Carpenter echoed calmly.
“Yes,” the man said, his voice trembling with rage and fear. “Of police brutality.”
“We’re not the police,” Carpenter said waving for the irate man to sit down.
“Well, whoever you are I want to report this Neanderthal for assaulting a civilian.”
“My Sergeant,” Carpenter corrected him, “was acting under my orders. So I guess you’d better report me to the commanding officer.” He looked about the room in comic fashion. “Oops, I guess that’s me too!”
“This is a disgrace!” the man exploded. “What gives you the right to -?”
“Sit down on the chair,” Carpenter barked. “Or I shall have my Sergeant make you.”
Like a sulking child the man threw himself down upon the chair and crossed his arms tight across his chest.
Harte stepped up to the Colonel and handed him a slim folder. Carpenter opened the file and laid out the contents in from of him.
“You are Professor Garry Daniels, are you not?” Carpenter said after glancing down at the file.
“You know I am,” Daniels said churlishly. “Please dispense with this charade. It insults my intelligence.”
“Professor Garry Daniels of Phoenix Industries?” Carpenter continued regardless.
“And what of it?” Daniels snapped.
“The first man that Sir Alan Coe called after being interrogated by MI6 this evening. Why was that, I wonder?”
“We’re good friends,” Daniels replied with a smirk. “He wanted to tell me how disrespectfully he had been treated.”
“More poignant to inform his lawyer of such injustice, I would have thought?” Carpenter surmised.
“Maybe that was his next call,” Daniels sniped.
“No,” Carpenter said after scanning the file again. “No more calls after the call to you. Appears as though he may have been placated by what you may have told him.”
“That is complete supposition,” the Professor scoffed. “How can you possibly deduce that from a phone call?”
“You’re a man of science, Professor,” Carpenter smiled making Daniels shuffle uncomfortably in his seat. “Let me give you some empirical evidence.”
The Colonel pulled out a small, slim device and placed it next to the colligate file. He pushed a button and Daniels visibly deflated, his shoulders sagging, his protestations shrivelling to nothing as two voices engaged in a brief, yet damning, conversation.
“Daniels?” a voice said from the recorder. It was Sir Alan recorded earlier that evening shortly after his interrogation by Shipman’s superiors.
“Yes, Sir Alan, it’s me.” Daniels confirming and damning himself with six words in the ether. “This is unexpected, is everything alright?”
“Not now. And no more names on this line,” Sir Alan hissed. It was a bad line, not helped by the interference of the MI6 listening device. “I’ve been grilled like a kipper here, and I’ve had to give them something plausible. Where
are we up to?”
“Phase two is now in operation, Sir,” Daniels could be heard saying.
“What of our Necromancer?”
“Alive and well and waiting for retrieval,” Daniels’ reply was infused with pride.
“Then authorize it. Contact our man and tell him that we are to recover the Necromancer alive. Is that understood?”
“Alive, yes Sir, understood. Our retrieval squad is waiting for scramble. Our sleeper will make that happen as soon as he is in possession of the Necromancer.”
“Estimated pick up time from calling in?” Sir Alan asked.
“Thirty minutes, Sir. No time at all.”
“Good. Good. I’m off the radar now,” Sir Alan said. “Keep in touch via sms, got that?”
“I got that,” Daniels confirmed.
The device on Carpenter’s desk clicked and went dead; the silence from the past bleeding into the present.
“You have anything to say, Professor?” Carpenter asked bluntly.
At first Daniels remained silent, his lips blanched with anger and shame. Then the mood swept past him, and he adopted an affronted air.
“I cannot believe that you people would have the audacity to bug Sir Alan’s telephone conversations,” he said pretending to be surprised. It was bad acting at best.
“Who or what is meant by the term “Necromancer”, Professor?” Carpenter said ignoring the feigned protestations.
“Sir Alan will have you drummed out of the army for such impertinence! Don’t you understand how powerful he is? He has the PM’s ear, no less!” Daniels snapped as he leaned his shoulders forward to stand up.
“Sit back in the chair Professor or I will have you nailed to it!” Carpenter said his voice level and precise and so very serious.
Daniels flopped back in the seat, once more dragging his arms to his chest.
“I ask again: who or what is meant by the term “Necromancer”?”
“I do not have the authority to discuss such matters with you, Colonel,” Daniels replied coolly. It was a pat answer; robotic - rehearsed and regurgitated a thousand times over.
Carpenter looked at Daniels for a moment then nodded.
“Very well,” the Colonel said. “Harte?”
The big marine stepped smartly forward. “Yes, sir?”
“I am going to ask Professor Daniels a series of questions,” Carpenter said smoothly. “If he fails to answer any of them to nothing less than my complete satisfaction, I want you to shoot him in the head with your side arm. Am I clear?”
“Yes Sir,” Harte said as he un-holstered his pistol and cocked it.
“Are you insane?” Daniels said but the arrogance had been cleaved from his voice leaving it a small and brittle thing.
“Quite possibly, Professor. Protecting one’s country can put pressure on a man,” Carpenter said; his face an impassive mask. “But from this point on I will be asking the questions. And I would strongly advise that you answer them.”
***
16
Halfway into Shipman’s ascent, the rungs, brackets and the wall to which they were all attached disappeared, giving way to a misshapen trench with a summit fifty metres overhead. The channel kept company with huge chunks of concrete and several writhing zombies, their bodies crushed by slabs of debris; yet their yearning to be free, their need to feed driving them on despite their hopeless and inevitable sense of immobility.
Without his biochem mask Shipman could smell the heady mix of sweet putrid reek of decaying flesh and the bitter tang of acrid smoke on the air. He suspected that since he hadn’t yet succumbed to convulsions then the affects of Whittington’s Lazarus Initiative has dissipated; a small mercy in this place of corruption.
“The target zone should be north east,” Honeyman said crawling out of the hole in the ground. “I make that few hundred metres over the crest of the trench.”
“Then let’s get up there and report in,” Shipman said, his hand instinctively reaching for his mic. It was corrugated by the impact of his fall, but the fine clicking in his ear told him the apparatus was still functioning.
“Yes Sir!” Honeyman acknowledged.
Shipman scrambled up the side of the pit, one hand grabbing hold of chunks of rock or cement or concrete the other clutching his SA80, training its muzzle on the rapidly approaching summit.
Behind, Honeyman kept watch on his enemies; both the living and the undead. It would’ve been so easy to have left the Major to his fate in the tunnel cave in, but the cold truth was that Honeyman needed him, or rather his firepower, to get hold of the kid. It would have to be a last resort to take out the Major before he’d achieved retrieval. But no matter how he looked at it, Honeyman knew that with every step they made it nearer to Thom Everett, Shipman’s usefulness to the mission was slowly waning.
Soon he would shoot his commanding officer of five years in the back of the head. It would be an uncomfortable thing to do, but it would be made a little easier by comforting thoughts of the substantial payday that lay around the corner.
A gunshot brought Honeyman back into focus. Shipman had taken down a female zombie who had clambered over the summit and was scrambling towards them. Her head erupted in a crimson plume; driving her body flat against the inclined wall of the trench, where it slithered for a few feet on the unsettled earth.
Honeyman brought up his gun as two more zombies peered over the crest. He put a bullet through the eye of one and shattered the others jaw with a second round.
“Let’s get up there,” Shipman yelled, crouched and moving with determination. Honeyman followed and their progress was only hampered by the occasional zombie, who they dispatched with clinical efficiency.
Once out of the trough Shipman scanned the scene about them. The buildings were now skeletal, their brickwork blackened and broken; exposing girders and RSJ’s and the window frames warped and vacant.
And rising from this architectural carnage was Hilton Towers, tall and resplendent, yet still carrying the injuries of battle. Even from his position a hundred metres below Shipman noted that the top of the building bore a deep, dark gouge, a scar from the explosion at Whittington’s penthouse and from this smoke drifted, obscuring swathes of recently liberated stars.
“Honeyman,” Shipman said. “Cover me whilst I establish contact with COM.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Shipman moved several paces away from his cover man before speaking into his mic.
“Alpha team to COM Actual. Come in, Colonel. Over.”
The response was not so much fast as instant.
“COM Actual to Alpha Team,” Carpenter’s voice sounded loud and urgent. “Major, use secured line, over.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Shipman replied switching channels. “Shipman here, Colonel; you have news?”
“Plenty,” Carpenter said. “And it’s not good.”
***
“Take it easy, Amir,” O’Connell said firmly. “It’s just us.”
“May the Lord save me from myself!” Amir said clutching his heart through his fatigues. “I thought you were those things.”
“Some thanks that is,” Clarke snorted. “I thought we were a little less gross.”
“Some of us are,” Suzie sniped.
“How did we do?” Amir asked O’Connell.
“We delivered,” O’Connell said grimly. “But it came at cost.”
Amir suddenly realised that one of their number was missing. “Kunaka?”
O’Connell shook his head.
“May the lord keep him,” Amir whispered bowing his head.
“We can mourn later,” O’Connell said resolutely. “We’ve done the job. Now we have to get out of here.”
“Plenty of motors,” Clarke observed after a cursory glance about the car park.
“The roads are cluttered with shit and zombies. We may not get far,” Amir cautioned.
“There’s little alternative,” Suzie said. “We have to hot wire one of these vehicles and get gon
e.”
“We need a weapons check,” O’Connell suggested just as the group of zombies from the first floor spilled out through the fire door onto the metal platform.
Clarke lifted his SA80 and splattered their bodies with high explosive bullets.
“I can confirm that mine still works,” he grinned.
“Child,” Suzie said under her breath.
“Let’s get a vehicle,” O'Connell said.
The car park was splashed with the sodium glow from high intensity floods highlighting fifteen or so vehicles. Clarke made his way over to a blue Subaru Impreza WRX.
“Oh, let’s have this,” he said, almost skipping towards it. “Turbo charged 16 valve 265 break horsepower. Come to me baby!”
“Forget it, Clarkey,” O’Connell said. “It’s got an immobilizer. So unless you want to hop back inside and ask our undead buddies who’d like to give up their keys, I’d suggest that.”
Clarke followed O’Connell’s outstretched finger and moaned in disgust.
“A transit van?” he said, his face wrinkling at the abhorrence of such a suggestion. “Give me few minutes and I’m sure I could find a feckin’ moped I looked hard enough.”
“The van can be hotwired and it only has three windows,” O’Connell said. “Now get moving.”
The group trudged over to the transit and Suzie shot out the lock on the driver’s side. After clambering inside she opened the passenger door and finally the double doors at the back of the vehicle.
Amir and Clarke climbed in the back both having to navigate through a pile of electronic equipment loaded in the storage bay. Once deep inside, the two men began to create some space by throwing the contents out onto the tarmac. Once they were satisfied that they’d enough room, the doors were slammed closed with a good, solid thump.
Up front, O’Connell snapped open the steering column and removed the ignition barrel. Having sparked and twisted the two wires together, the engine fired and now lay idling.
He reversed the van out of its slot, parked between a mini Cooper and a beaten up Vauxhall Vectra, and drove to the gates some forty metres away.