The boat they’d used to get across the river remained tethered on the other side. Not that anyone would want to use it to get back into Summit City, but they should have capsized the thing so no one could even entertain the idea.
Another look down at the water and Rhys stopped dead. His breath left him in an involuntary gasp.
The sun may have been lower in the sky than before, but it still provided enough light for Rhys to see through the shallow water. A mixture of colours sat just beneath the surface. About ten metres in, the technicolour swathe vanished. Maybe the water got too deep to see any more than that. Maybe the diseased recognised when they’d been beaten and gave up in their attempt to catch the boat.
The colours were tinted through a rose lens of diluted blood, although the tint wasn’t dark enough to hide what Rhys saw. A dry gulp did nothing to relieve his throat as he looked at the hundreds of diseased, all drowned as they lay beneath the surface.
None of them moved but their stillness didn’t fool Rhys. They could come alive at any moment, desperate to pull on any kicking legs, and chow down. Vicky had said they drowned in water, but Rhys wouldn’t be the one to test if they were dead or not.
Their earlier escape replayed in his mind. He saw the diseased as they fell to his baseball bat and sank beneath the water’s surface. He saw their bloody maws spread wide as they thrashed, kicked, and writhed in panic. Yet, even as they drowned, they still bit at the air between them. Not even their impending end could temper their desire to get at Vicky and him. A cold chill snapped through him when he saw their bloody eyes in his mind.
A shake of his head and Rhys moved away from the right side of the bridge and crossed over to the left.
As he walked, he screwed his nose up when the fetid reek of death ran up it. A look down at his feet and he saw the sludgy, bloody secretion left behind by the diseased who’d been barricaded by the police. They may be long gone, but their stench hung heavy in the air. A small amount of bile lifted into Rhys’ throat. He swallowed, but it did nothing to relieve the sharp acidic burn.
When a strong breeze blew across his face, it banished the smell momentarily. Before long, it returned with force, its vinegary kick so aggressive, he flinched.
Once on the left side of the bridge, Rhys looked down. Boats lined the shoreline all the way along; mostly rowboats, but a few speedboats and other smaller vessels bobbed in the water. If only they’d picked that side to escape from earlier… He shook his head to himself. All that struggle for nothing.
At the end of the bridge, closer to the half-built towers, the food pods waited; the trapped woman must still be inside one of them. Another check to the open space beyond the pods. The vast area was easily as big as six football fields and littered with the evidence of carnage, but still no sight of the diseased—long may it stay that way. Rhys looked at the food pods again. Like before, they seemed like the best place to hide.
Rhys scooted over to one of the pods, pressed his back into the sun-heated shutters that encased it, and dropped down into a crouch.
For the first time since he’d stepped onto the bridge, he looked back across the river. From his current position, he couldn’t see his boy but he saw Vicky. He gave her a thumbs up, which she returned.
A loud thunk snapped through the near silence. Seconds later, the heavy groan of the bridge’s motor yawned to life. Rhys watched as the bridge split in two. Both sides rose and pulled away from one another in a lethargic stretch.
The higher the bridge lifted, the harder Rhys’ heart thudded. He’d made his choice; hopefully, he’d made the right one.
A diseased scream filled the air. It ran goose bumps up Rhys’ arms and down the back of his neck. The sound of the bridge had clearly drawn them out, but when he looked around, he saw nothing… nothing yet, at least.
Having initially chosen the closest pod to hide by, Rhys moved down a couple more. If the diseased descended upon the bridge—which is exactly what they should do if they could be judged by their previous behaviour—then he needed to be farther away. He stopped in front of the one he’d hidden by earlier, the one with the woman inside.
The slight coolness of late afternoon may have lowered the temperature by a degree or two, but when he pressed his face against the steel shutter to listen out for the woman within the pod, the hot metal stung his ear. He heard nothing. Damn! Maybe she’d killed herself.
When another diseased scream called out, louder and closer than the one before, Rhys pulled his face away and drew a sharp intake of breath. He watched the bridge rise and waited for them to appear as his pulse ratcheted up a notch.
A deep breath in through his nose and a slow release through his mouth, and Rhys focused on trying to calm down. He repeated the process, his eyes wide as he looked out for the first signs of trouble.
Rhys moved across the front of the pod and slid down the side farthest away from the bridge. He had to assume they’d all head straight for the noise. If they did, he’d just made himself much harder to see. If they didn’t… well, he couldn’t plan for that.
A loud bang on the other side of the shutter caused Rhys’ heart to jump and it damn near lodged in his throat. Fuck! The woman inside obviously hadn’t offed herself. Earlier that day, her cries had been lost to the noise of the diseased. In the relative quiet, she sounded much louder than before. If she gave the game away…
Another loud bang and Rhys pushed his face into one of the small gaps between the metal shutters. The hot steel stung each cheek as he hissed, “Shut up.”
When he pulled back, a wide and feral eyeball appeared at the gap. The shadows hid the rest of the person behind it and made the lone organ look like something from a horror film. The woman’s voice came out in a wavered whimper. “Help me, please.”
“Shut up and I might,” Rhys said.
“But you’ll leave me like you did last time.”
Rhys lost his words. She recognised him?
“Help!”
“Shut up,” Rhys said through gritted teeth. “I’ll get you out of there, but you need to listen to me.”
The woman in the booth sighed but didn’t reply.
The steel shutters surrounded the food pods in their entirety. Unlike the shops in the city, they didn’t have card readers on the outside. “I’m going to The Alpha Tower to release the shutters. The entire city’s locked down in exactly the same way as this pod is. There are thousands of people trapped at the moment. I have to activate the central control to free everyone.”
“Why’s everything locked down?” the woman asked.
“There’s a disease ravaging the city.”
“What the fuck?”
“It’s like a zombie virus.”
“Zombies?”
“I know,” Rhys said. “It sounds far-fetched, right? I wouldn’t believe it either. Some kind of virus has broken out and has infected hundreds of people in Summit City. In effect, it’s turned them into zombies; except not the slow, shuffling types. These fuckers move like steam trains and they want nothing more than to sink their teeth square into your face.”
The woman didn’t reply—Rhys wouldn’t have in her situation either. His most likely response would have been ‘get ta fuck’. Not that he had any Scottish in him; he just liked to use the phrase.
“The shutters are a defence against them,” he explained. “The people who designed this city had quarantining in mind. Looks like we’re the lucky ones to be here when the need arose.”
Another diseased scream—even closer—and Rhys lowered his tone. “Anyway, what I need to do is get to The Alpha Tower, deactivate the city defence system so all the shutters lift up, and then everyone can escape. It may not have felt like it over these past few hours, but you’re in a great position. The only way to survive is to get out of this city, and fast. There are boats down on the river in front of you. If you get in one of them, you’ll be able to get to the other side and be free. The diseased can’t swim.”
The wide eye
continued to stare at him.
“Look, you may think I’m nuts, but all I’m going to say is get out of here the second you can. If you hang around too long, you’re fucked. Also, bear in mind that most people will be infected. If you’re unsure, take out whoever’s running at you. You can kill them if you lead them to water and go across; they’ll drown trying to follow you. Another way is to deliver a serious brain trauma—body shots won’t cut it.”
Yet another scream and Rhys lowered his voice more, “Look, I’ve got to go.” When he heard the woman inhale as if to speak, he cut her off. “If you keep quiet, I can get away from here. I’m your only hope. Please, trust me; I’ll do everything in my power to get the shutters lifted. If you shout your mouth off now, we’re both fucked.” He looked at Flynn’s Superman watch. “In five hours’ time the entire city will be incinerated. I need every spare minute to help free as many of you as possible.”
The eye widened more and then moved up and down in a nod.
Rhys pulled away from her and walked around the pod. It took him even farther away from the bridge and closer to the open space between him and the sky-scraping hell on the other side.
When he looked across at where he had to run to, he finally saw the chaos as it spilled out of the city. Each alleyway vomited lines of diseased. They flooded out at a sprint and lit up the air with shrill cries.
The pod threw a deep shadow, which he stayed hidden in as the diseased headed for the drawbridge. They ran with their stumbling gait, faster than most humans, but uncoordinated as fuck. They always seemed on the very limit of their balance.
At some point, the flow of diseased would stop. It had to. Then he’d make his move.
When he saw the man, Rhys’ breath caught in his throat. The guy obviously wasn’t infected; he stood in the doorway of one of the tower blocks, clutching some kind of weapon, an axe maybe. With it raised and ready to use, he had his back pressed into a wall as the stream of diseased rushed past. They ran towards the noise of the drawbridge with a single-minded focus; the sound seemed to provide a loud enough distraction to allow the man to remain hidden. Lucky for him that Rhys had chosen to re-enter the city at that point. If one of those bastards saw him, insanity would rain down on the poor guy.
With his attention divided between the man in the doorway and the stream of clumsy diseased headed for the bridge, Rhys relaxed slightly. The diseased didn’t notice the man and the man kept himself safe and out of the way. At least he seemed to know how to remain hidden.
After a few minutes, the sound of the drawbridge died down and the diseased stragglers stumbled across the open space towards it. A scan of the opposite side, and Rhys saw what appeared to be the last few as they ran up the alleyway closest to the man. If only Rhys could tell the man opposite that he just had a few more diseased to hide away from.
The man then moved.
“Stay there,” Rhys muttered. If the guy had a little more patience, he’d be fine. With the urge to shout across the open space balled in his throat, Rhys grimaced and watched on.
The three diseased rushed up the alleyway next to the man as the man continued to emerge from his hiding place.
The very second the man stepped out, the diseased appeared next to him. Both the man and the three diseased halted in their tracks and stared at one another.
When the lead diseased screamed, time stopped for Rhys. The other two joined the chorus. If they made much more noise, it would attract the horde by the bridge. If the horde joined the fight, Rhys had no chance of getting into the city.
The man’s stupidity had suddenly become his problem.
Chapter 1
Rhys looked at the man with the three diseased around him and then to the raised drawbridge. It may not have lifted fully, but it had lifted enough to create an effective barrier against the diseased. As one, they stood before the rising roadway and screamed and roared. Some punched it as if their fury had to be released. With no way to get across the river to Flynn and Vicky, but occupied by their pointless quest anyway, the mindless mob were in the perfect place to give Rhys an opportunity to slip into the city.
First, however, he had to cross the open space to get there… and do something to help the man.
The distance Rhys had to travel may have been over two hundred metres, but it didn’t prevent him from seeing the man’s size. Both broad and tall, he looked as well built to survive as anyone and had a good few inches on even the tallest of the three diseased. However, his size meant jack shit if the others at the bridge saw him. The Hulk would have a hard time against that crowd.
The walkie-talkie shook in Rhys’ trembling hand when he pulled it from his pocket. Two large dials sat prominently on its front, one for the channels and one for the volume. A check across the river and he saw Vicky in the control booth, the London skyline prominent behind her. He switched the walkie-talkie on and pressed the button on the side. “Vicky, it’s Rhys; if you can hear me, give me a thumbs up.”
Rhys could only see Vicky as a silhouette through the booth’s cloudy glass windows, so he couldn’t tell if she’d heard him or not. A few seconds later, she stuck her arm out of the side and gave him a thumbs up.
“Good,” Rhys said. “Don’t say anything; otherwise, your voice will lead them straight to me. I have a problem. Some idiot was hiding in the entranceway to one of the buildings and is now fighting three diseased. If the others see what’s going on, they’ll lynch him and I won’t stand a chance of getting into the city. I need you to distract them while I go and help him out.”
Rhys watched the booth and nothing happened. Of course nothing happened; he’d hardly given her a plan of action, just a big fucking problem.
Then she stepped out of the booth and walked off. Because of the raised drawbridge, she disappeared from sight almost immediately. As Rhys stood there, he chewed on his bottom lip. Adrenaline pulsed through his veins and he shook worse than before.
A loud continuous beep then sounded out on the other side of the river. The diseased close to the raised bridge lifted their heads like a pack of dogs in response to a whistle. Rhys couldn’t help but smile at Vicky’s ingenuity. “Good girl.”
The frenzy that had gripped the group only moments before ratcheted up. The diseased hurled themselves at the raised asphalt, and the roars turned to bellows. The screams rang so shrill they hit a pitch that sounded like it could break glass. Bloody maws snapped and they pushed one another aside to launch themselves at the bridge as if repeated attempts would make the immoveable barrier yield.
Rhys jumped when he looked down to see the eyeball in the booth. It still watched him through the gap in the shutters. He leaned close, careful to keep his face from the hot steel this time, and whispered, “Look, I’m sorry I told you to shut up. I understand you’re scared in there. I would be too, but don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to get to The Alpha Tower and get these damn shutters up. Just be ready for it when it happens, okay?”
A quiet voice answered, “Okay.”
“What’s your name, love?”
“Adele.”
“Okay, Adele, I promise I’ll do everything to make sure the shutters are raised. When they are, get across the river. Don’t hang about, okay?”
“Okay.”
After a deep breath, Rhys watched as the man defended himself against the three diseased. He checked his watch to see he had less than five hours already. A sharp nod at the woman in the booth and he said, “Okay.”
Chapter 2
Rhys’ legs burned as much as before, if not more. Each time one of his feet hit the ground, he stumbled. Without a proper rest since everything kicked off, his body felt like it could give up on him at any moment.
As he ran—the walkie-talkie in one trouser pocket, the lump of wood in the other—he listened to the prolonged car horn; much longer and she’d kill the battery. A glance at the drawbridge and he saw the creatures as furious as ever, their full attention still directed at the immove
able barrier that kept them contained. As long as they stayed there, he could help the man with the axe fight off the diseased.
Rhys looked left at the two incomplete towers and the florist’s. The flower shop door remained open, the vibrancy of the stock dulled by huge swathes of red. The memory of when he found the dead woman ran a shock through his heart. Thank god none of that blood had belonged to Vicky. If only he had her by his side now.
Now that he’d gotten closer, Rhys guessed the man was at least six feet and four inches. Broad shouldered and with thick arms, he stood in front of Building Thirteen and fended the diseased off with the handle of his axe. Like a piston, he punched sharp jabs at the creatures, driving back the closest one each time with a heavy blow.
The same pattern repeated after each hit; the monsters stumbled back, shook their heads as if to discard their dizziness, and approached the guy again with renewed vigour. The man showed no signs of fatigue, either. He looked like he could go all day if he needed to. His weapon remained his biggest handicap; if he buried the axe blade into the skull of one of the monsters, he’d be left vulnerable to an attack from the other two.
Rhys panted as he ran, lifted his baseball bat in a double-handed grip, and wound back.
When he got closer, he swung for the nearest of the three diseased. They didn’t see him coming. The bat cracked the thing’s skull and its legs buckled instantly. The creature hit the tiled floor so hard it shook the ground beneath Rhys’ feet. It fell lifeless and blood drooled from its wide mouth.
Rhys fought for breath, turned to the other two, and stopped dead.
The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 19