The Alpha Plague (Book 4)

by Michael Robertson

  Although Flynn cooked when they were back at the containers, he rarely started the fires, but he knew what to do. He leaned down and blew gently. The spark glowed bright. He drew a breath and blew again. This time, the spark glowed even brighter.

  As she watched the boy, careful as he nurtured the fire, Vicky placed a gentle hand on his back. She didn’t have any words of wisdom for him. How could she comfort him about the loss of both of his parents? But she could encourage him. “That’s it, Flynn. Keep blowing.”

  As Flynn coaxed the fire to life, Vicky stood up and stretched some of the aches from her back and knees. She pushed her pelvis forward as a line of pops ran up her spine, and breathed in the woody smell of the fire.

  Smoke curled up from the ground, and each of Flynn’s blows made the grass glow brighter. A look around showed it seemed to be clear, and although inside a barn, Vicky could never be sure. Even though the place offered some protection, it restricted Vicky’s view of anything that may want to attack them. But then again, who wanted to sleep out in the open? Especially as the cold evening set in. They had to rely on faith to keep them safe for that night. No matter how hard Vicky tried, she couldn’t minimise all of the risks in life.

  After she’d picked the rabbit up from the floor, Vicky watched the first flames catch on the fire and Flynn move back from it. When he stood up, he smiled at her.

  The smile fell when Vicky handed him the rabbit. Another kitchen duty that had never been given to him, Flynn said, “You want me to skin it?”

  “You need to be able to do everything now, Flynn.”

  She could have been pushing him too hard. Maybe he didn’t need to do everything right now, but he needed something to keep him busy. An inactive body could lead to an overactive mind. When they arrived at Home he could fall apart, but not now. Unless Home turned out to be something completely different to what it promised—not that they had any other options beyond that anyway.

  Flynn held the limp rabbit and stared at it.

  “Tear the skin by its knees and push the knees through,” Vicky said.

  The same face he’d pulled when he broke the rabbit’s neck twisted his features.

  “Come on, Flynn, you need to be able to do this.”

  His hand shook again as he dug his fingers into one of the rabbit’s knees. With a clenched jaw, he pulled a tear in the rabbit’s skin. He then bent the creature’s leg and pushed its knee through. Although he may not have been comfortable doing it, he had seen it done a thousand times before and it showed.

  Once he’d slipped both of the knees out, Flynn tore the skin so it detached from the feet. He wrapped a tight grip around the animal’s ankles and pulled the skin down.

  Vicky watched Flynn’s horrified expression and shook her head at him. “Come on, Flynn, it’s only a rabbit. Man the fuck up, yeah?”

  Flynn didn’t reply as he continued to pull the skin off.

  With half of the skin removed, Flynn paused to look up at Vicky. His eyes glistened from his clear distress.

  “You’ve lived a sheltered life, boy.”

  Flynn didn’t reply.

  ***

  Although she’d eaten a lot of rabbit over the past decade, Vicky’s mouth watered as she chewed on the gamey meat. Each gulp sated the hollowness in her stomach. Since they’d taken the rabbit off the spit, the pair hadn’t spoken to one another. When Vicky looked up at Flynn, she waited for him to look back and smiled. “I’m glad you finally managed to skin the rabbit. I thought I’d starve to death watching you earlier.”

  “Fuck you!” Flynn said.

  The outburst forced Vicky to pull her head back. “I beg your pardon?”

  Flynn’s mouth buckled and he started to cry. “I said, fuck you! Fuck you and what you’re saying to me. I’ve lost my mum and dad, the last thing I need is you giving me a bollocking too. I’m trying my hardest, Vicky; you need to go easier on me.”

  It tore at Vicky’s heart to see him that way, but she said it anyway. “Actually, me being harsh is exactly what you need. I understand that you’re hurting; I’m hurting too, but we need to survive.” Vicky’s eyes itched with the burn of tears. “We can’t afford to grieve right now. I’m sorry, Flynn, I truly am, but we need to keep going. We need to find somewhere safe before we deal with anything else. To find somewhere safe, we need to survive. And if you can’t skin a fucking rabbit—”

  Flynn, red-faced and with a fierce scowl, drew a deep breath as if to launch into a tirade. But before he could speak, the sound of clumsy footsteps approached the barn’s entrance.

  As one, Vicky and Flynn turned to see three diseased burst through the barn’s door. All three of them—twisted with the virus—fixed on the pair with their dark stares.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A wet slap pulled Vicky’s attention away from the diseased for the briefest second. Flynn’s part-eaten bit of rabbit lay on the dusty floor next to the fire, and he stood, slack-jawed, as he stared at the monsters in the doorway.

  A quick scan of the barn and Vicky spotted the mezzanine hayloft. Instead of a rickety old ladder, a set of stairs led up to the next level. The higher ground would give them some advantage. “Go up there,” Vicky said to Flynn. She then saw the skylight in the ceiling. “Get out on the roof.”

  The boy didn’t need to be told twice. With his bag still on his back, he took off and sprinted toward the staircase that would take him away from the diseased, if only temporarily.

  But Vicky didn’t follow him.

  Although the smallest of the barns, it could still easily hold two football fields. In the centre of it with the stairs at her back, Vicky stood between the diseased and Flynn.

  Flynn’s movement seemed to spark the three diseased to life, and they rushed forward as one.

  The snap of Vicky’s baton called out in the barn, and she dropped into her usual defensive crouch as she waited for them. Not that she planned on dying that day, but if she could give Flynn the best chance, she would. Whatever happened, he would survive. She owed that to his parents.

  Vicky glanced behind and saw Flynn had reached the stairs. His footsteps echoed a rapid beat in the cavernous space as he made his way up. When Vicky spun back toward the door, she did it just in time to bring her baton around on the diseased at the front of the three. It sent the creature sprawling, and she jumped aside to avoid the other two.

  The one she’d knocked down twisted and writhed as it dealt with the heavy blow to its head as Vicky readied herself for its mates.

  Clumsy in their movement, they both pulled up and turned around to face her. They screamed louder than they had before. Their rage echoed through the barn, and they sprinted back toward Vicky.

  Although she had her baton raised ready to fight, Vicky caught sight of the others at the barn’s door. More than three this time, they’d obviously heard the call. With a dry throat and sweating palms, Vicky waited until the last moment before she darted out of the way of the two diseased for a second time.

  Although Vicky moved like a matador, her luck wouldn’t last. When a stream of diseased funnelled into the warehouse, she left the other two behind, jumped over the one that remained on the floor, and made a bee-line for the stairs Flynn had run up.

  As she fought for breath, she looked up to see Flynn at the top. Clearly concerned for her wellbeing, he’d stopped and looked down at her.

  “Run,” Vicky cried. “Get that window smashed.”

  With the onset of evening, the window glowed a deep red from the low sun. Much later in the day, and they wouldn’t have been able to see anything in the barn.

  When she reached the stairs, Vicky ran up them two at a time. About twice the height of a normal flight of stairs in a house, she pushed on up, her thighs on fire, her bag heavy on her back.

  Once at the top on the mezzanine, she looked down at the diseased on their tail. The new batch of them streamed into the warehouse in a seemingly never-ending line. With every new body that entered the building, thei
r collective scream grew louder. The chaos made Vicky’s head spin, and she had to rest against the wall for stability.

  When the first of the diseased hit the bottom of the stairs, Vicky took off after Flynn.

  At no more than a metre wide, the walkway that led around the side of the barn had no railing for safety. Too many of the diseased on it at one time would be sure to see some of them fall over the side to the hard ground below.

  As she ran along the walkway, Vicky saw Flynn reach the window in the roof at the other end.

  The sound of the diseased may have chased her, but Vicky kept her focus on Flynn as he grabbed his baseball bat with both hands and forced the end of it into the glass window.

  The pane broke with a crash and Flynn jumped back as it rained glass down on him.

  When he looked to Vicky, she made a shooing motion with her hand. “Get out on the roof, now!”

  A look behind showed Vicky the diseased had reached the mezzanine level. The ones in the front raced after her along the walkway. When she glanced at Flynn again, she saw his foot disappear as he climbed out of the window. It best fucking work, because if it didn’t, she had no more ideas.

  The walkway shook beneath Vicky’s feet from the stampede of the diseased. It trembled like it would fall to the ground. Hopefully, it would hold for as long as she needed it.

  Just metres from the window, Vicky kept her attention in front of her. To look behind would slow her down and she couldn’t afford to slow down. With her limbs working like pistons, she listened as the occasional scream and thud signalled yet another diseased had fallen from the walkway.

  The end of Flynn’s baseball bat suddenly poked in through the window from outside. “What the fuck?” Vicky called. Then she got it. The boy ran the end of his bat around the inside of the window frame to remove the shards of glass that he’d no doubt contended with. An urgent escape could lead to a shredded Vicky, and that wouldn’t help anyone.

  Just as Vicky got to the window, Flynn pulled his bat away and she jumped out onto the sloped, corrugated roof.

  Made from thin metal, but not so thin that it wouldn’t hold them, the roof ran away from the window in both directions. Vicky clambered up toward the apex.

  A second later, the first of the diseased jumped out after her. Steep in its gradient, the roof seemed too steep for the first uncoordinated fuck bag. After two steps, it slipped and rolled down the side.

  As she fought to get her breath back, Vicky watched the flailing body gather momentum before it reached the end of the roof and disappeared. Its scream ended with a thud against the concrete ground below.

  ***

  Cold from where the sun had set, the sky dark around them, Vicky shifted on the roof’s apex to try to find some comfort. She’d tried straddling it for a time, but it made her hips ache. Whichever way she positioned herself, it didn’t help; the roof hadn’t been designed to be sat on. When she stood up and looked over the edge, her head spun. She rode it out for a few seconds as she watched the diseased continue to rush into the barn.

  A hundred or so fell from the roof and did everything they could to get back in to try again. Some survived the fall. Others didn’t—or at least, it broke them to a point where they couldn’t attempt another run.

  It would have been comical had it not dragged on for so fucking long.

  With the sting of fatigue in her eyes, Vicky blinked against her heavy eyelids and watched a diseased she’d seen at least three other times. It crawled through the window; its body a mangled mess of fractures and breaks. It looked up at her and Flynn, screamed, reached out, and slipped again as it tumbled off the roof.

  “Surely we won’t see that one again,” Flynn said.

  “I thought that last time,” Vicky replied.

  Of the scores that tried, several of the diseased had made it a little way up the roof toward the pair. They’d received a baton to the face for their troubles and soon followed the others down and off the side.

  “Keep an eye out,” Vicky said as she lay back against the roof and pushed her hips to the sky to try to relieve the pains in her body. As she rocked back and fourth, she looked out over the dark countryside. With the only light coming from the moon, Vicky sighed. “I hope Home’s what it says it is.”

  “Me too,” Flynn said. “I can’t handle living a life on the run like this.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Shame we’ve got to leave really, isn’t it?” Vicky said as she stared out over the fields, the breeze tossing her hair.

  When Vicky felt Flynn turn to her, she faced him. Bleary-eyed from a night without sleep, he blinked repeatedly but said nothing.

  Vicky looked back out over the countryside and large town below them. “Well, it is. Look at this view. When you take a moment to see what’s happened to this part of the world in the past decade, it reminds you how powerful nature is …”

  “… and just how beautiful,” Flynn finished for her.

  A patchwork of fields—all with overgrown bushes and long grass—swayed in the early morning breeze. Roads were tinted green from where nature had reclaimed them. Before long, they wouldn’t even be roads anymore. When Vicky looked at the large town in front of them again, anxiety tightened in her stomach. The most sensible option would be to go straight through the middle. They’d get through so much quicker. The least amount of time they spent out in the open, the better. They needed to get to Home. That’s what she’d told Flynn, and it made sense, but regardless of the logic, the tense rock in her stomach balled tighter and lurched at the sight of the sheer volume of abandoned buildings. It gave the diseased a lot of places to hide.

  When Vicky looked down at the ground, she saw just a few diseased below still flailing among the mass of limp bodies. The lemming conveyor belt that had climbed out of the window and plummeted to their death had finally stopped a few hours ago, but the pair had to wait until now to move. With morning lighting up the world, they could finally see the damage below and formulate an escape plan.

  Although a couple of diseased squirmed on the ground, they didn’t look like they could walk. The fall must have shattered their legs or spines in some way. As they dragged themselves around, Vicky nudged Flynn. “You’ve got some stones for your catapult, right?”

  The boy said nothing, so when Vicky turned to look at him, she saw he’d turned pale as he bit down on his bottom lip. “I didn’t think,” he said.

  “You need to start thinking, Flynn. Why the fuck would you walk around with a catapult and no stones?”

  The boy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Vicky, I just didn’t think.”

  “Not an excuse.”

  Silence hung between them until Vicky pulled some smooth stones from her pocket and handed them to him. Whenever she saw a stone that would work well in the catapult, she’d pick it up, so she always had a supply. “Here, take these. Now it’s time for target practice. I can see two diseased down there; I want you to take them out with a headshot each.”

  After Flynn had shifted down the roof to get closer to the edge, he took one of the smooth stones and loaded up the catapult.

  “You’re pulling the elastic at an angle,” Vicky said. “You need to be straighter.”

  Although aware of the harshness of her tone, she didn’t care. This boy may need to survive on his own at some point. He needed to learn, and he needed to do it fast.

  Flynn tried to straighten the elastic, but it looked no better. The kid would struggle to hit the barn next to them if he held the catapult like that. But Vicky said nothing as she watched him pull the stone back a little more, and then let fly with a thwip. The stone kicked up dust about five metres away from one of the diseased’s head, and Vicky sighed.

  He tried again with another stone and missed the second one by a similar distance.

  After she’d tutted at him, Vicky leaned forward, took the catapult from him, and loaded it with a stone she had in her supply.

  “Look,” she said as she closed one eye
and pulled the elastic back. “You need to make sure you pull it back straight, so when you let it go, the stone flies true.”

  The elastic made a thwack noise as she loosed the stone and she hit one of the diseased directly in the temple. She reloaded the catapult and passed it back to Flynn.

  With a deep frown of concentration, Flynn tried to copy Vicky. He missed again.

  Vicky took the catapult back from him. “That was better.” Another shot, and she hit the second diseased before she handed the catapult back to Flynn.

  ***

  The morning dew that coated the barn’s metal roof made it more hazardous to slide down than it had been to climb. While remaining on her bottom, Vicky shifted down a foot at a time, the dew soaking through her trousers and knickers. It may not have been comfortable to be so damp, but the wet fabric gave her more grip as she shimmied down the roof.

  When they got to the broken window, Vicky turned to Flynn. “I’ll go in first, and you follow behind. We don’t know how many of the fuckers are left. I’m hoping that if there are any they won't move much, and we can easily beat them. You need to be ready to follow me in and fight, okay?”

  Flynn nodded, but it gave Vicky zero confidence. Maybe he simply didn’t have a fighting instinct in him, but she had to give him the chance to prove he could do it.

  Vicky slipped through the window and landed on the walkway with a thud. The shock of the landing snapped through her tired body. A few groans came from within the dark barn. With her baton raised, she waited, poised and ready to go. But nothing came at her.

  A second later, Flynn dropped down next to her. He landed louder than she had and with far less grace. With her heart in her throat, Vicky waited for her pulse to settle before leading him across the walkway.

  As they moved through the dark space, Vicky’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. The walkway seemed free of the diseased, but some lay down below from where they’d clearly fallen. As broken as the ones outside, they lay on the floor, no more active than large slugs. They posed no threat, so Vicky wouldn’t waste the energy killing them.