Without another word, the group set off in the direction of the airport.
They may not have been able to see them, but the sound of the diseased served as a constant reminder that they hadn’t shaken them. Vicky kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see their clumsy forms amongst the trees. Maybe no more than a coincidence, but the pack on their tail seemed to be just that; on their tail. Maybe they’d seen or even smelled them. Or maybe it was just bad luck that they’d chosen the same path.
They’d started out at a fast walk, but the four of them gradually picked their pace up until they moved at a jog. Rhys had thrown Flynn over his shoulder and carried him like a fireman would.
Vicky’s exhausted muscles hurt and she had to dig deep to keep her limbs working, but she pushed on anyway and kept up with the others. No doubt they felt much like she did. Their pained grimaces certainly suggested they did.
When they reached the edge of the woodland and with the airport in sight, Vicky looked at the group. The strained relationship between Rhys and Larissa had obviously been healed. An apocalypse seemed like a great way to gain some perspective.
Before she spoke, she listened to the call of the diseased. The murmur of suffering and discontent rode on the breeze. The smell of burned rubber joined the sounds as the car park behind them continued to glow in the night. The diseased sounded far enough away. “I think if we’re going to go for it, it needs to be now,” Vicky said.
Each person in the group nodded.
“The terminal for the private jets is on the other side of the airport. We’ll need to be quick because we’ll be out in open space when we leave the cover of the trees.”
Again, the other three nodded their agreement with Vicky.
After a deep breath, Vicky counted them down. “Okay, three, two, one …” She sprinted from the cover of the woods and heard the footsteps as the others followed her.
But the second they stepped out into the open, a diseased scream called through the night.
When Vicky looked over her shoulder, she saw them. A crowd bigger than any she’d seen before descended on them. They filled the road and the burning cars behind showed her more of them than she wanted the see. The glazed look in their wide eyes spoke of their desire to get at the four.
They had no chance of outrunning the creatures to the airport terminal. They needed a change of plan.
About twenty metal shipping containers lay dotted about in the car park of one of the empty units. Despite the poor light, Vicky saw the ladder propped up against the side of one.
She headed for it. In their current predicament they needed higher ground above all else.
Vicky arrived at the container first and her lungs burned as she climbed the ladder with wobbly legs.
Before she’d gotten to the top Larissa had arrived and followed her up.
Rhys brought up the rear and put Flynn on the ladder first. Vicky watched him bounce on the spot as his boy climbed. The diseased bore down on him.
Rhys jumped on the ladder a second later. As he made his way up, Vicky saw the diseased moments before it grabbed his ankle.
Rhys kicked the thing in the face and knocked it backwards. When it fell on its arse Rhys quickened his climb.
By the time Rhys had reached the top, the thing had gotten back to its feet. Before it could do anything else, Vicky, clumsy with the adrenaline that ran through her blood, lifted the ladder. She nearly fell when the lead diseased grabbed the bottom rung and tugged her down, but Larissa pulled Vicky back to keep her from dropping into the diseased below.
Gritting her teeth, Vicky yanked the ladder hard and managed to rip it from the monster’s grip.
After they’d pulled the ladder up onto the container with them, both Larissa and Rhys went to their boy again and Vicky watched the mob below.
The crowd seemed to double with each passing minute, and before long it felt like they wouldn’t be able to see anything but the horrible fuckers.
Rhys eventually walked over to Vicky and stood next to her as he looked out over the crowd. He didn’t speak for a few seconds, and then he finally said, “Thank you for bringing my boy back to me.”
Vicky shrugged while she chewed the inside of her mouth.
After a weary sigh, Rhys nodded out at the gathering horde. “The bastards may not be able to climb, but how the fuck will we get out of this?”
Vicky gave him the only response she had. After a deep inhale where the reek of rotten death damn near choked her, she shrugged and said, “Fucked if I know.”
Ends.
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The Alpha Plague - Book 4
Email: [email protected]
Edited by:
Terri King - http://terri-king.wix.com/editing
And
Pauline Nolet - http://www.paulinenolet.com
Cover Design by Christian Bentulan
The Alpha Plague 4
Michael Robertson
© 2016 Michael Robertson
The Alpha Plague 4 is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
Exhaustion seemed to treble the weight of Vicky’s body as she stood on top of the shipping container, swaying while she looked down on the mob below.
With every passing minute, the crowd doubled. Before long, they wouldn’t be able to see anything but the horrible fuckers. In every direction, it’d be miles and miles of diseased humans. At that moment, the darkness of night hid the worst of it. A shudder snapped through Vicky; God knows what it would look like in the morning.
Rhys walked over to Vicky and stood next to her. He said nothing as he stared out across the heads of the diseased. The monsters groaned and moaned below them. Their stench hung in the air so thick, Vicky could taste it as a stale tang on the back of her tongue.
After a deep sigh, Rhys reached across and placed a hand on Vicky’s back.
She tensed at his touch. A lot had changed since she’d seen him last, and any contact felt wrong.
“Thank you for bringing my boy back to me.”
Vicky shrugged and continued to stare down as she chewed the inside of her cheek. Black eyes stared up at her. Jaws snapped. Blood dribbled off chins.
Rhys then nodded out at the gathering horde. “The bastards may not be able to climb, but how the fuck will we get out of this?”
After a deep inhale, where the reek of rotten death damn near choked her, Vicky shrugged and gave Rhys the only answer she had. “Fucked if I know.”
“So what are we going to do?” Larissa asked, her voice shrill, her tight face focused on Rhys as if he could produce some magic answer. Vicky ground her jaw as she watched the woman. It must have been the fifteenth time she’d asked that question in the past few hours. Larissa had apparently spent too much of her life as a princess. She’d
be a fucking liability in this new world if she didn’t start coming up with answers rather than questions.
Rhys didn’t reply to her.
In the several hours that had passed since they’d climbed onto the shipping container, Vicky had stood up and sat down at least a dozen times. Each time, the other three looked at her as if she would provide them with an answer. Each time, she ignored their hopeful stares.
Rather than inspiration driving her actions, she rode the fumes of boredom. The hard container ached to sit on for too long, and if she remained stationary for the entire time, she’d go out of her fucking mind. At her lowest points, the sounds of the diseased grew so loud they damn near deafened her. If she didn’t stand up, she’d get dragged down with them.
The start of a new day stretched into the still dark sky, turning the blackness above them ever so slightly grey. Hopefully daylight would bring a solution to their predicament.
As she stood on the container, Vicky rocked from side to side to ease the ache in her hips and stared at the horizon. Thank God for the warmer evenings. A biting winter chill through the night on top of everything else would have encouraged Vicky to launch herself into the crowd below. Hell, she’d already considered it a few times that evening—either that or throw Larissa over.
A glance at the other three, and Vicky and Larissa locked stares with one another. Not quite hostile, but Larissa could fuck off for all Vicky cared. From the slight narrowing of her eyes when she looked at Vicky, it seemed that Larissa felt the same way. Vicky glared long enough for it to be awkward before she turned away from the woman to look out over the vast swathe of diseased below.
The day grew lighter with each passing minute. The gradual illumination flooded Vicky with dread as it showed the crowd to be larger than she could have imagined. They’d amassed a rockstar-level following.
After she scoffed and shook her head, she looked down at the others. “This must have been how U2 felt when they filled a stadium. Not that their fans wanted to eat them like ours do.” Vicky played air guitar to the crowd and snorted an ironic laugh.
The others remained silent. They clearly didn’t see the humour in it. Vicky sighed and listened to the sound of perpetual suffering that rolled through the early morning exactly like it had rolled through the night. Each time the volume spiked with a shout or scream, Vicky jumped. No matter how often she heard it, she’d never get used to the sound of the monsters. The call of hatred and hunger ran ice through Vicky’s veins. The fuckers below wouldn’t stop until they’d taken them down.
“So what are we going to do?” Larissa said again, directing the question at Rhys.
After a shrug of his shoulders, Rhys opened his mouth, but Vicky cut him short. Still on her feet, she clenched her fists as she loomed over the woman. “All you’ve done is ask Rhys what are we going to do. Instead of asking the same question like a broken record, why don’t you take some responsibility for coming up with some fucking answers?”
Larissa clapped her hands to the side of Flynn’s head to cover his ears. “There’s a little boy here. Can you please keep your language down?”
“Are you fucking serious?” Vicky pointed out at the thousands of diseased below them. “He’s seen people eaten alive in the past day, do you seriously think a swear word is going to damage him? Jesus, Larissa, get a fucking grip. Instead of bitching and moaning, come up with a suggestion. Try to help the group rather than hinder it. This ain’t a free ride anymore, princess, you need to pull your fucking weight.”
With narrowed eyes that sent crow’s feet to her temples, Larissa screwed her mouth up. “When you say ‘the group’, you mean my family, right?”
Heat flushed Vicky’s cheeks. She kept her fists clenched and shook as she looked at Larissa. A glance at Rhys and it seemed obvious that he wouldn’t get involved. Despite several deep breaths, Vicky’s fury wound tighter with every passing second, and she spoke through clenched teeth. “Your family, which I’ve saved on two occasions. I stopped Rhys getting bitten and I brought your son back to you. Now don’t get me wrong, the last thing I want to do is spend time with you, but in case you haven’t noticed, we have a stadium full of diseased that all want to get at us, and my main concern is dealing with that. Believe me, I’ll be gone the second I can get out of here, but that ain’t an option at the moment. So how about we start thinking of solutions to our problems, yeah?”
Although Larissa opened her mouth to respond, Vicky looked away from her. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, so tight it stung the back of her head. To look at the bitch for much longer would lead to violence, and Flynn didn’t need to see Vicky kick his mum in the teeth.
Vicky looked around and, with the onset of the greying morning light, saw something on top of one of the other containers. Without a word, she lifted the aluminium extension ladders they’d dragged up with them the previous night. She laid them across the gap that separated them from the other container.
The ladders clanged as she adjusted them, and it agitated the diseased more than before. They surged forward and kicked up a smell of rot. The sound of rolling thunder called out as hundreds of fists beat against the container, and the vibrations shook through Vicky’s feet.
The containers had been laid out haphazardly, which left gaps between each one. Maybe Vicky could jump across, but there seemed little point when they had the ladders.
Exhausted from the day’s insanity, Vicky’s arms shook as she thrust them out to the side to get some balance.
The diseased roared louder the second Vicky stepped onto the ladder.
Vicky looked over her shoulder to see three exhausted faces watching her.
A deep breath and she turned back toward the other container. Her legs trembled with her first step, and she shook her head as if to fight the urge to look down. Pretty fucking hard when you have a collection of infected fuckers all reaching up and screaming their rage at you. Dark and glistening eyes bled as they focused on her. Snapping jaws. Cuts and gashes on faces and limbs. So many open wounds and bleeding orifices it scrambled Vicky’s brain.
With the smell of rot came the distinct copper taste of blood. Vicky spat, but it did little to remove the metallic funk that lay against her tongue.
The ladder bowed slightly with Vicky’s next step, and her legs shook worse than before. Without the diseased, she would have run across it with no problem. But the pit below her shook her resolve and spread doubt through her mind like a toxic mist.
A deep breath and Vicky lifted her head. She may have been unable to block out the smell and the sound, but she didn’t have to look at them as well.
The ladder creaked with another step forward. Shiny still, it looked in great condition. The ladder would hold—of course it fucking would.
Vicky pushed on and took the final three steps before she jumped off the other side and landed on the top of the container with a hollow thud. When she looked back at the others, she half smiled. None of them returned her gesture.
After she’d walked to the middle of the container, she stared down at the rusty tools that lay there; a pickaxe and sledgehammer. Vicky scanned around them. How the hell did they get up there? Then she saw the dents in the top of the container next to the tools. It looked like someone had tried to bust into one of the containers at some point. They must have abandoned the job before they got anywhere with it. Vicky lifted tools and waved them at the three on the other side. None of them seemed to get it.
When Vicky crossed back over the gap between the two containers, she moved with more confidence than the first time. The ladders would hold. Her steps called down to the creatures below and stirred up their fury again. Not that it mattered; they’d have even more noise to agitate them soon.
Back on the other side, Vicky held the tools up.
“What are they doing up here?” Rhys asked.
As she looked at the rusty tools, Vicky shrugged. “It looked like someone had used them to try to break into the container over there.”
Three pairs of vacant eyes stared at her, so Vicky said, “I don’t know about you three, but I can’t stay up here all fucking day.”
Although Larissa winced at yet another swear word, she kept it to herself this time, so Vicky continued. “If we can bust through into one of these containers, at least we can hide away for a time.” A stamp of her foot made a hollow boom. “Maybe the floor will be flat inside this thing. At least, if we can get a bit more comfort, maybe we can rest up better and come up with a plan.”
“Hardly an answer though, is it?” Larissa said.
With her stare locked on the half-naked woman, Vicky drew a deep breath. When she exhaled, her cheeks puffed out. “And you have a better idea, do you?”
When Larissa opened her mouth to reply, Vicky dropped the pickaxe. The loud bang drowned out the woman’s retort and stirred up the diseased below. When Larissa tried for a second time, Vicky yelled and drove the sledgehammer against the top of the container. After the first savage swing, she stared straight at Larissa. She suddenly looked less interested in an argument. Vicky then lifted the sledgehammer above her head again and brought it crashing down once more. The loud boom rang out like a gong in the still morning air.
Covered in sweat from her last assault on the container, Vicky took the sledgehammer from the panting Rhys, filled her tight lungs with the rotting stench that surrounded them, and hit the same spot they’d both attacked for what felt like the thousandth time. The loud gong sounded again and a violent vibration ran up the handle, stimulating the aches in her tired shoulders.
The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 50