Death Plague [Four Zombie Novels]

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Death Plague [Four Zombie Novels] Page 46

by Ian Woodhead

I was acting more human now than I did before the outbreak.

  The greys in front of me still defied explanation, and right now all I wanted was to lie down, preferably with the knowledge that my sister was safe. That wasn’t going to happen, though, at least not yet; there was no chance of me stepping back onto that dead ground. I took a deep breath and forced my shame back before turning around.

  A new landscape now awaited me. This one was just as formidable as the one I left behind. Even though I had known what to expect, I still could have kicked myself for now realising just how much greenery there would be here. I wrote down the one place where Danielle and I definitely knew in Blakely. The Centenary Square was an open paved area in front of the town’s civic centre. We used to visit every year when they held the annual German market. Thing is, seeing my hometown almost untouched by the vegetation affected my perception of what Blakely would be like.

  I ran the tip of my fingers along the nearest block of green. Picking away at some of the rich green moss, I found a crumbling concrete wall. “This is a mistake,” I muttered. Nature truly had run amok here; it felt as though the plants had made up for not being able to establish a presence in my town. From where I stood, even I doubted that I’d be able to get to the square.

  Eleven years without human interference had made this place unrecognizable. I hurried along the moss-covered wall, taking care not to catch my feet on the dozens of thick shoots that had pushed up between the paving, dislodging the stone. The road to my side was just as impassable thanks to a solid bank of bramble that filled the space. This was my only way into town. I considered staying where I was and wait for her to find me, but I tossed that idea in the bin. What if she approached the town from another direction?

  “Why did you have to leave there?” I whispered, hating the sound of my voice. I sounded like the whining teenager I never was. God, I couldn’t believe how afraid I felt. I stopped dead, held my breath, and strained my hearing, knowing that at least some part of my new senses were still operating. I wasn’t alone in here, of that much I was certain, and I hadn’t been alone ever since I entered the perimeter of this overgrown area.

  Somebody was watching me. I jerked my head back and looked up into the thick branches. A human face glared back down at me. He was about my age, completely naked, with a thin muscular frame. The man growled before he ran across a thick overhanging branch and dived into the adjacent tree. Before I even had time to take a breath, my observer had already made his way into a hole in the building and disappeared into the darkness.

  Judging from the noise blasting from his exit, the new arrival had comrades, and by the sound of the raised voices, far more than I was able to handle. Then again, considering my weakness, I wouldn’t have even been confident about tackling the one man.

  I stepped back and pressed my body against the wall, gaping in astonishment as over a dozen humans emerged, each one blinking in the bright sunlight. I saw the one who’d initially spotted me, right at the back, I also noticed that he was now armed with a weapon. He carried a thick wooden club—a broken armchair leg—complete with thick nails driven into the end.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I shouted. “I’m only passing through.”

  Two men scrambled down, jumping onto the floor a few feet from when I stood. I couldn’t believe the size of the man at the front. The others were all the same built. In this new world, where there was hardly enough food to go around, most humans were all on the thin side, except for this one. I was big, but this guy looked like he could eat two of me.

  The man grinned and calmly approached, a rough grin painted across his pockmarked face. “Well, this is most surprising.” He turned around. “We will be eating tonight,” he yelled.” The man turned back. “Isn’t this a turn up for the books! I never believed that I’d bump into another hunter.” It wasn’t until I felt his mind trying to penetrate mine that I finally understood. I had met my first true hunter, I also realised that this bastard really was going to eat me. I saw the naked lust in his large black eyes.

  He growled deep in his throat before lunging. His hands caught my wrists, and he pulled me towards him before thrusting my body back and swinging me into the side of the tree. I slammed into the bark, my senses reeling.

  “He’s a hunter,” yelled the man. Go back to the hall and wait for me.”

  Through my pain-blurred vision, I saw him licking his lips.

  “I’m going to take my time with you,” he purred. “Christmas has come early for me.”

  “Wait,” I cried. “How can you eat me? I am like you. We’re the same.” I struggled in his grip. “Come on, you know our meat is poison to each other.”

  The man laughed. He released one of the wrists, fastened his hard fingers under my chin, and pulled me forward. “Where did you hear that shite? No, don’t bother replying, I’ve just found it.”

  The bastard was inside my mind; I recoiled as his stinking probes teased open every locked door to get at my most secret thoughts. What made the situation worse was this fucker had been inside me before I even crossed the barrier. I mentally shuddered, feeling his cold claws peel my memories back, layer by layer, I heard his dark chuckle echoing inside my head; he knew full well that I could stop him.

  “Please,” I begged.

  The hunter pushed his face hard against mine. “You dare to beg? Just what kind of a hunter are you? Colin, you sad little worm, your education is sadly lacking in the affairs of your own kind. Now, if you had stumbled into my kingdom a few days ago, I might have taken you under my wing and ‘educated’ you.” The hunter took his probes out of me and threw me to the floor. “Alas, providence showed me that it’s not just you whose knowledge of our world is full of gaps.”

  The hunter clicked his fingers. He lifted his leg and pushed his boot hard against the side of my neck, and I could only watch in horror as his human accomplices jumped out of the tree and descended upon my immobile body. The bastards trussed me up with thick cord and wire, yet even this act gave me some respite. It meant that this other hunter wasn’t going to consume me immediately, and it gave me a little time to work out how to get away.

  He spun around, laughing. “Get away? You’re going nowhere, little worm.”

  “Why are we even bothering, Alan?”

  I looked towards the direction of the outspoken human. He’d finished wrapping thick rope around my ankles and was getting back onto his feet. He too looked my age, but unlike the other humans, his skin wasn’t taught over his bones. This joker had access to food. The man pushed his fingers through his long dirty blond hair and took a deep breath. From how the others had ceased their business and were gazing up at him, I guessed that this one must be the spokesman for the other humans.

  “I mean no disrespect, but we need to eat as well.” The man couched and ran his fingers along the inside of my thigh. “Why do we have to use this fucker as bait?”

  The hunter stared at the others, one by one. I saw the movement, but didn’t take much notice, my mind was still whirling over the human’s outrageous suggestion. This bastard was actually wanting to eat me! Depression soon silenced my fury. Why should I even be surprised by this turn of events? Fuck, I’ve been a sheep in wolf’s clothing ever since last year. I was weak, and I deserved to die.

  “Can you see what I have to put up with now?”

  His tone of voice made my blood boil, pushing away just a sliver of my own self-pity. Okay, so I was going to die here, that much I’d already realised, and I hadn’t come to terms with the prospect, but then again, who did? Even in this world where life and death was more closely linked that any one pre-event could have anticipated, it was still a terrifying ordeal, even for me.

  The last thing I needed before meeting my maker was for this fucking jumped up alpha male talking to me exactly like my sister used to address me when I was a kid. Back when mum had ordered her to look after her annoying ten year old brother when all she wanted to do was to fuck about in the mall with her ma
tes.

  ‘Can you see what I have to put up with now?’ Danielle’s favourite saying back then. Had this bastard purposely stolen that from me, just one more taunt before he had me killed?

  Surprisingly, it appeared that his words were just a coincidence. Although the hunter appeared to be giving his second in command a bit of a dress down, complete with the use of a withering look that would have put my sister’s looks to shame, inside, this fucking psycho was absolutely furious.

  He had extreme difficulty in controlling his temper, and I discovered that the mental transfer ceased to be a one-way affair. My own mental probe hitchhiked on his

  This was one hunter that had had some raging anger issues back when he was a lowly human. I saw a glimpse of a young man aged sixteen smashing up his mum’s best plate collection because she had the nerve to tell his dad that she’d caught him smoking weed. I blinked, realising that I was actually in the hunter’s mind. The mental transfer had ceased to being a one-way affair. My own measly mental probe had found a way to worm inside. It was a short-lived victory, as the huge man standing beside my tied up body knew almost immediately. He took his raging glare off the human and winked at me.

  “I never expected that from you, Colin. It looks like you have more spunk than I gave you credit for,” he sighed. “Yeah, I know you have questions, sure you do. I can imagine that returning home and seeing the state of it could well be most unsettling.”

  The bastard was inside my head again, reading me like a book. I wanted to weep when he peeled away my private unanswered questions to find the image of Danielle.

  “Oh lord! You sure are one dark horse.” You’ve made this hunter very happy; it’s been such a long time since I’ve explored the delights of a female, and one so pretty as well. She’ll keep me going for a long time.”

  “If you touch her,” I growled.

  “And you’re going to do what? Colin, you’re going to be dead in a minute.” He gave me one more smile. “Still, you do have questions, and you are kin—of a sort.” The hunter thrust his arms into the air. “Nobody can accuse me of being generous. You want to know what happened here? For giving me your sister, it’s the least I can do.”

  An almost unperceivable shudder caressed my bones. I jerked my head away from the lustful eyes of the human and saw that the hunter had what looked like a sly smile plastered over his face. “You felt that?” he tilted his head to the side. “You really are more sensitive than I thought.” The hunter sighed deeply. “It’s such a shame, but my clan needs to survive, my friend. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  I cried out when the ground under my body fell away, leaving me hanging in midair. Gravity embraced me, and my cry turned to screams as I plummeted towards a green carpet of foliage. I turned and twisted in the air, sucking in the oxygen, trying to calm myself, knowing that this was just an illusion. It turned out that my will to survive was far greater in the metaphysical realm. I would have laughed at the absurdity of the concept if I wasn’t about to have a multitude of thorns shred my body.

  The world tiled, and the green and blue swapped places, leaving me in the position of not falling. My feet anchored down onto a solid brown surface, and when the shakes and fuzziness left me, my senses rejoined me. Dead leaves covered the area, suggesting that I was in woodland, and as I scanned the horizon, gazing at the thin branches holding up their load of rich leaves, I suppressed the urge to break into smile. I knew when I was now. I hadn’t moved a bloody inch, the only difference was that there was no boundary, the green continued on and on.

  Fragments of the all too familiar human built structures peaked through the vegetation, giving me an insight as too how my old town must have looked before whatever it was had happened. I probably would have walked straight past where I used to live. I shook my head in confusion; there was nothing here that told me what had happened or when it had taken place. Still, I wasn’t going to allow impatience distract me, considering all that awaited me back in the real world was certain death.

  I made my way over the edge of a familiar looking building, the pieces falling into place once I placed the palm of my hand against the moss-coated wall. This was where the human’s had emerged from. I looked up and saw the hole in the wall, as well as a knotted rope partially hidden behind dangling ivy.

  It took me moments to climb up and clamber through, finding myself on a metal platform made from the sides of a transit van. The view from here took my breath away. I could see for miles. It also shocked me to discover that I wasn’t alone. The hunter and the other humans were all there, sitting on the edge, with their legs dangling over the side. None of them turned when I gasped.

  He’d pushed me into a past event, a dominant memory residing inside the hunter’s mind. I hoped to God that the psycho wasn’t here with me, meaning the one standing beside my tied up body, not the one directly in front of me.

  I guessed that he’d brought me to this time and location to show the reason for the incredible change to the area; at least, that’s what I’d hoped. So did he really feel some kind of bond to what I was? More importantly, could what I was about to witness help me out of this dire situation and to find some way to warn Danielle? It filled me with utter dread to think that he was about to go after my sister.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?

  The words startled me. I spun around and saw the thick-set human take his gaze away from the greenery before us and look questionably at the other hunter.

  “Do you want a closer look?” snarled the hunter, grabbing the human’s neck and pushing him forward. “There, perhaps you can see clearly now?”

  The human swung like a pendulum, wriggling and quietly sobbing. His submissive behaviour was light years from how I saw him react when they held me down.

  “I’m sorry, please don’t drop me. My eyes aren’t as good as yours.”

  I stepped forward, ignoring the commotion in front of me; it was like watching an old TV show, and you didn’t know what was about to happen, but it didn’t matter because all the principal characters would be in the show next week. The human’s eyes might not be as good as the other hunter, but mine certainly were. I squinted and used my hand to shield the sun and stared in the direction that the other hunter was pointing.

  About four miles from here I saw a tiny circle of grey almost hidden amongst all the shades of greens. Even as I stared, the patch of grey grew. This must be the start of whatever was happening. It told me nothing, though. My eyes weren’t that keen, even I couldn’t see in detail what it was.

  “Well, this is a turn up for the books,” murmured the hunter. He’d placed the now shaking human back on the edge of the platform and was currently examining the phenomena through a pair of binoculars. I ventured closer, vaguely wandering what would have happened if the hunter had dropped the human.

  The hunter then twisted his head completely around. His jaw opened and continued to drop, the flesh stretching like warm bubble gum. I jumped back and…

  … I was moving, leaves and branched crashed into my face. I tried to look down and found I couldn’t move my head. I couldn’t move anything. Daylight burst through the green and I found myself stopping. I wasn’t alone. The thick-set human stopped beside me and looked directly at me before dropping his gaze to the floor.

  “I’m sorry for my outburst,” said the human. I meant no disrespect, it’s just—”

  “It’s just that you’re a big fucking coward who thinks that I’m going to throw you at our new arrival?”

  You have got to be kidding me. I was inside the hunter now. What the hell was this shit?

  “Stop pissing your pants, it was a joke.”

  The hunter turned back towards the light, giving me my first look at what was happening. I saw no green or grey, only red, purple, and lot’s a black. I stood at the scene of what looked like an aeroplane had jettisoned a hundred rotting bodies from a distance of ten thousand feet. Lumps of wet flesh littered the ground and swam in foul stinking b
lack fluid. It took a moment for my mind to process the devastation. I was looking at what used to be a horde of perhaps thirty zombies. It had initially looked like more because every one of them was in four or more parts.

  “Was it our guest?”

  My head moved up and down. “Of course it was, stupid. Unless you think one of the town’s surviving humans magically found a fucking combine harvester.” He bent down and dragged his finger through the stinking slime. “Best not to linger. At least we know where he is going to return.”

  The hunter looked down at the humans. I had never seen so many in one place in all the years that we had been travelling. They were all tooled up, most carrying shotguns, while a couple of others carried hunting rifles.

  “You know the score. Take this fucker down. The one who brings back his head earns a place at my side.” Having said his piece, the hunter turned around and strolled back through the dense foliage.

  I wanted to cry when I opened my eyes and found myself staring up at the sky. I was back in my own body, the one that I’d somehow managed to allow to be tied up by a bunch of snivelling humans. The feeling of wanting to weep stopped when I saw that thickset human’s eyes were roving up and down my body. I felt like a lump of meat hanging from a butcher’s shop window. How fucking embarrassing; the tables had turned and I hated it. I looked past the human and attempted to get my fury under control. “So, all this was done by some kind of animal?”

  “You’re incredibly calm for someone who’s about to get torn to pieces. You saw what it did to the shambling dead, Colin. Does it not make you afraid that you’re about to meet the same fate?”

  I laughed at him. “Buddy, I get it, I really do.” I looked around at what was left of his human crew. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened. “You’re trying to make amends, aren’t you? So, I’m your bait. That’s cool. I understand why you think that’ll work. Thing is, I’m not the problem.” I looked up at the thickset human. “He’s your problem, buddy.

  The human’s face changed to a colour of bright red. “Shut your fucking pie-hole!”

 

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