As Brendan moved off, the diseased continued their pursuit of him. Injured and covered in blood, the creatures slipped from the car like slugs and hit the hard road with wet slaps. Brendan paused to watch them.
Handicapped by the damage he’d dealt to them, each one glistened with blood and reached out to the big man. A gust of wind sent their reek up the hill and an involuntary spasm of revulsion twisted through Vicky’s face.
Long bony fingers stretched Brendan’s way and they snapped their jaws and snarled. However, with such poor mobility after their fight in the car they had nothing else to attack him with.
Vicky felt Flynn move into her side and the little boy shook violently. Once Brendan had killed the diseased, she’d move on. For some reason his intense fascination with the things kept her in place. Maybe he had no plans to kill the monsters. After all, he wanted the virus to spread.
When Brendan turned away from the diseased, ice gripped Vicky as his cold stare locked onto hers. He was going to leave them alive, she could see it in his eyes. “Come on, Flynn,” she said as she jumped to her feet.
“But what about the Nazi zombies?”
Vicky didn’t reply. Instead, she watched Brendan as he walked around to the driver’s side of the police car and peered through the window.
The key still dug into her thigh, a sharp reminder that unless he hot-wired the car he had no transport.
Brendan looked up at her and his dark eyebrows dipped in a hard frown.
Dizzy from her frantic pulse and frozen to the spot, Vicky pulled Flynn against her and watched the big man. They couldn’t outrun him, not with Flynn to take care of. Better to watch Brendan’s next move than to try to outpace him. Then she saw it.
Every time he tried to stand on his right leg, he limped. Even the slightest pressure seemed to cause him discomfort. He looked like he could fall over at any moment.
Without a car, the guy had no chance of catching them. Not that she should underestimate Brendan. Even with his injury, she’d just witnessed him handicap three diseased inside a cramped car.
“Come on, Flynn,” Vicky said as she tugged on the boy’s shoulder. She continued to watch the lunatic man down by the car. “Let’s get out of here.”
The rage in Brendan’s stare cut straight to her core. His hair darkened with blood and the red streaks of it ran down his face. She shouldn’t underestimate him at all.
Chapter 23
After a couple of seconds, Rhys heard the clumsy slap of feet against concrete. The heavy thuds, much heavier than the dog’s had been, but moving at a slower pace, came their way. “They’re close,” he said. “And it sounds like there’s more than one of them.”
With both stool legs raised, Larissa widened her stance.
Rhys did the same as he heard to the phlegmy rattle of wet lungs.
Rhys drew deep breaths in a useless attempt to calm his nerves. A flutter of anxiety ran through his entire body and his heavy arms reminded him just how little rest he’d had that day.
The uncoordinated stumble drew closer, but no matter how many times Rhys blinked, he couldn’t see any farther ahead.
The rotten smell hit before Rhys saw them. He twisted his face but remained focused in front. It sounded like only a couple of diseased, but he couldn’t be sure.
In a flash, a wide mouth, bleeding eyes, and a vicious scream burst from the darkness. With only a second to react, Rhys drove one of the stool legs into its eye. The pole passed straight through its head and popped out of the other side with a small explosion of brain matter and skull.
When Rhys moved aside, the thing continued past him for a few steps before it fell. The pole that still protruded from its face caught on the ground, snapped its head down toward its chest, and flipped the creature over the top of it.
As he watched the diseased slam down hard on the concrete, another scream called out ahead of them.
Two more diseased appeared. Incensed, they flailed in his direction and Rhys had to jump aside again to avoid what seemed like an inevitable collision.
Both diseased ran past him, stopped, turned, and looked back at him.
With Larissa closer to them, Rhys readied his pole to help her out. But they ignored her and came straight at him again. Both of them, as one, seemed intent on ending him where he stood.
Rhys looked from one of his attackers to the other, but before he had to decide which one to fight, Larissa appeared from the side and drove one of her poles through the temple of the one closest to her.
With his focus fully on the other, Rhys speared it like he had the last one and watched it fall.
Rocked by heavy breaths, Rhys looked at the downed diseased. Sprawled out on the ground, all three of them lay dead. A glance at Larissa and he forced a laugh out. “Fuck. Thank you.”
Larissa dipped a nod. “You’re welcome. Why did they go for you and not me?”
“I’m guessing it’s the same reason they went for a diseased baby when I threw one.”
“You threw a baby?”
“It’s a long story, but basically these creatures feel empathy for one another. I just killed one of their own. I think they wanted to end me before they focused on you.”
“So they have empathy for one another, and they know how to hunt and survive?”
Numb from the day, Rhys’ vision blurred as he looked down at the things. “It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?” He nodded into the darkness in front of them. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here. We only have about half an hour to get to Biggin Hill.”
With the smell of the diseased still up his nose, Rhys sniffed to try to clear it. The tang of burned plastic found a way in. A quick glance to either side and Rhys returned his attention to the darkness in front. Maybe they’d just been lucky so far, but it seemed like the woods were too dark even for the diseased. They didn’t need them coming out of there too.
“So what does it mean?” Larissa asked.
“Huh?”
“If the diseased can hunt and have empathy for one another, surely that suggests they could form some kind of community?”
“Well, they hunt in packs already, but I doubt they’ll start building houses and shit. I can’t see their town meetings being that fun.” Rhys laughed. Larissa didn’t.
“They seem to have a pack mentality,” Rhys continued, “but I don’t know if they’re any more cognitive than, I dunno, a herd of cows or something.”
Rhys watched Larissa scratch her face as she frowned into the darkness. She then ran a hand through her short black hair. “I hope they don’t evolve.”
Rhys shook his head. “I don’t even want to think about that.”
Larissa didn’t reply.
Only a few sounds made it through the near silence around them: the scrapes of their feet over the concrete road surface, the occasional cough from Larissa, a barking dog, and behind them …
“I think they’ll outlive us, you know,” Larissa said. “I think they’ll have the run of this world and there’s fuck all we can do about it.”
“With how quickly the disease spreads,” Rhys said, “you may just be right. Maybe Homo sapiens will become nothing but a memory as a new superhuman takes over. The ultimate killing machine, maybe they will outlive us … although, there has to be some chinless wonder somewhere with their pudgy finger on the big red button.”
“Big red button?”
“Nuclear war. With the way we’ve worked as a species, we’ll make sure we destroy the planet rather than move on quietly. We don’t have it in us to accept a world that isn’t being destroyed by humans.”
“That’s bleak.”
“Yeah, but look at what we’ve just released into the world. We’re a parasite on this earth and the planet would be better without us.”
In the silence that followed, Rhys tuned into the background noise of their pursuers. With every minute that passed, they grew louder. Another glance at Flynn’s Superman watch and he sped up a little. “We’ve gotta pic
k up the pace, ’Rissa. We only have about twenty minutes to get to Biggin Hill … and we need to make sure we outrun those fuckers behind,” he said. “They catch up with us and we’re fucked.”
Chapter 24
About three hours ago
“Where are we going?” Flynn asked.
After she’d glanced behind to the brow of the hill, Vicky pulled on Flynn’s small hand and said, “Away from here.”
The boy moved along with her, but his clear reluctance dragged him back a little.
Vicky looked behind again before she returned her focus to the boy. “Just remember Call of Duty: Zombies, okay?”
A confused frown crushed his small face and Flynn looked behind too.
“I can’t believe they’re still making them,” Vicky said to try and jolly him along. “I used to play those games when I was a kid.” As hard as she tried, she struggled to keep the panic from her voice, and from the way Flynn looked at her, she could see that he felt it too.
Breathless from keeping up with Vicky’s pace, Flynn nodded. “They’re on number forty-two now.”
Brendan still hadn’t appeared over the brow of the hill. “The only difference between the game and what’s happening now,” Vicky said, “is that we don’t have guns, so we have to run instead of fight.”
“Okay.” Flynn looked behind again and picked up his pace.
“We need to pretend the man that tried to get into the car is a zombie. He moves like them, all slow and shuffling.”
Although Flynn replied, Vicky didn’t hear him because she saw Brendan at that moment. The pain of the grief she’d not yet been allowed to feel ripped through her as if her insides had been torn. She stared at his chiselled face and dark hair, darker than usual from being soaked in blood. Streaks of it ran down his pale features and dripped off his strong jaw line. He glared at her through wild and wide eyes. The ice blue of his irises used to comfort her; now they sent a chill to her core as she felt the cold focus of a psychopath.
When she looked down at Flynn next to her, she saw him look back at their pursuer.
The grimace on Brendan’s face spoke of his pain. “As long as we can keep moving,” Vicky said loud enough for Brendan to hear, “the stupid zombie won’t be able to catch us.”
The grimace of pain turned to one of rage and fierce determination as Brendan limped after them. But as Vicky locked eyes with him, they both knew the truth of it. This once perfect physical specimen of a man had nothing left to give; a six year old and a woman had him beat.
A check of her watch and Vicky looked across at the city on their left. In fifteen minutes it would be aflame with Rhys and Larissa still inside.
Like something from a ridiculous comedy film, Vicky, handicapped by Flynn’s small legs, moved as quickly as she could, and Brendan hobbled after them. They’d tried a short sprint, but Flynn gassed out and needed to rest. It made them slower than before.
The pavement along the side of the road went uphill and turned into a footbridge that gave pedestrians a way to cross the busy and wide highway should they need it. Not that it served any purpose at this time of night. The road, free of homes and shops, stood abandoned outside of rush hour.
With their elevated view, Vicky could see Summit City more clearly. Five minutes until the place went up in flames. She pulled the police car’s walkie-talkie from her pocket and continued to tug Flynn along behind her. The second she turned it on, Rhys’ voice crackled through the small speaker. “Hello.”
Vicky panted when she said, “Rhys, it’s me. I’ve fucked up big time, but you can trust me. Please believe me when I say that.” Panic stole her breath more than the physical exercise so she stopped to recover. Flynn looked glad for the rest too as the boy hunched over and caught his breath.
“Where’s Flynn?” Rhys said.
“With me. He’s okay.” Vicky watched Brendan step onto the footbridge about one hundred metres behind them. The incline slowed him down.
“Where are you?”
“I had to move.”
“Where are you?”
Brendan shouted up at Vicky, “Come here, you bitch.”
Flynn’s tiny hand squeezed Vicky’s and he said, “I’m scared. Where are we going? I want my mum and dad.”
“Vicky,” Rhys said. “Where are you? What’s happening?”
Adrenaline and exhaustion combined to shake Vicky’s hand so badly she dropped the walkie-talkie. Before she could grab it, the thing bounced across the walkway and fell down to the road below. It hit the hard ground with a sharp crack and pieces of plastic exploded away from it. After she’d looked back at Brendan, Vicky’s heart sank. She saw Flynn look down at it. “We’ve got to leave it, buddy. If we stop to get it then the Call of Duty zombie will catch us. Besides, there ain’t no fixing it.”
After he’d looked down at it again, Flynn looked up at Vicky.
“If I put you on my shoulders, can you hold on?”
Flynn nodded. “Clive used to do that with me all the time.”
“Okay.” Vicky lifted the boy up and over her head. A heavy pressure on the back of her neck, she looked behind at Brendan again before she moved off over to the other side of the road at a jog.
It wouldn’t do any good to tell him not to look. As a boy of this new world, he had to desensitise quick. Before Flynn could say anything, Vicky squeezed his shins. “Bad people did this to the police.”
The scene seemed unchanged from when she’d been there with Rhys on their way to rescue Flynn. A burned out car and executed police officers. Nothing but corpses and carnage.
The dampness of urine soaked the back of Vicky’s neck and ran down through her shoulder blades. It made her entire back tense and she shuddered. The urge to throw the boy to the ground coursed through her, but she resisted. Then she saw it and her attention left her piss-soaked shirt.
A heave lifted up inside of her when she looked at the police officer. The woman lay on the ground much like the others who’d been executed, but this woman had something different about her. A red soupy mess sat where her stomach should have been. It glistened in the fading light and Vicky saw teeth marks in her flesh where she’d had chunks taken from her. But she had a bullet wound in her forehead like the others, so whatever had done this had done it after the woman had died. It had feasted on her.
Sweat stood out on Vicky’s brow and her stomach turned again. “Keep looking straight ahead,” she called up to Flynn and felt him snap his view straight. “I need you as a lookout up there, soldier, you got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Maybe he didn’t need to desensitise right at that moment.
They passed another couple of police officers who hadn’t been eaten. To bend down ran deep pains through Vicky’s already tired legs, but she did it anyway and retrieved a baton from each one’s belt. Only about six inches long, most people wouldn’t recognise them for what they were. She snapped the first one away from her and the telescopic pole popped out to over a foot in length. She lifted it up to Flynn and said, “Here, take this, you may need to use it. I know they’re only batons, but the zombies will still fall if we whack them with them, especially the big one on our tail.”
After Flynn had taken it, she snapped one open for herself.
Just before they moved off again, a loud whoosh sounded out that turned their surroundings from night to day as Summit City lit up like the sun. A ball of heat swelled outwards and blew Vicky’s hair back. “Good job your mum and dad got out, eh?”
Flynn didn’t reply.
For a second or two Vicky watched the tall flames claw at the huge towers. She then moved off again. With Brendan on their tail, they had to keep going.
About half an hour had passed and they hadn’t seen Brendan for at least twenty minutes. They’d finally arrived at the town she drove past with Rhys when they’d gone to rescue Flynn. The first house, still about fifty metres away, had a white garage door with blood sprayed up it. When she’d seen it previously with Rhy
s, the dark stain told them the virus had gotten out and gotten ahead of them. Vicky stared at it and silence hung in the air like low-lying fog.
Vicky lifted Flynn from her shoulders and rolled them to relieve the deep aches she’d gained from carrying the boy. She hunched down to be at his eye level. “You need to walk now, mate. I don’t know if any of the diseased are still here or not, but I need to be ready to fight. Besides, I can’t carry you anymore. Keep your eyes peeled, solider, and if you see anything, let me know immediately, yeah?”
Flynn blinked several times before he nodded at Vicky. “Okay.”
The pair set off again and passed a sign that read ‘Welcome to Springfield’.
Just after they’d crossed into the town, the sound of clumsy footsteps pattered against the ground and Vicky’s senses all snapped to high alert. She didn’t say a word as she pulled Flynn behind her and raised her baton ready for the onslaught. To see Flynn do the same stabbed into her heart. No six-year-old should have to fight for his life.
Two diseased appeared seconds later. The one at the front far outpaced the one behind. Both yelled and screamed and both wore the same masks of ultimate aggression. The one at the front was clumsy but fast. The one behind hobbled as if it carried an injury.
“Stay behind me,” Vicky said as she watched their attackers approach.
A deep breath and she met the first diseased with a full swing to the face. The weighty baton caught the monster in the cheek and Vicky felt the end of her weapon sink into it with a textured crunch. The monster’s head snapped to the side, blood sprayed away from its mouth, and it fell to the ground. Vicky glanced at the second diseased to see about ten metres separated them. It gave her time to swing for the head of the one she’d already knocked down. She felt its skull give in to her heavy blow.
When she stood up, the second monster had caught up to her. It reached out and she had to dodge out of its way.
The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 45