by Haywood, RR
‘Safe,’ Mo blurts, ‘we say safe yeah? Like, it’s safe,’ he shrugs and looks quickly down at the ground from the lack of response.
‘Safe,’ Dave says, ‘yes.’
‘Yes?’ Paula asks.
‘Yes, Miss Paula.’
‘Okay,’ she says slowly, ‘for God’s sake everyone remember that word. Howie?’
‘Fine.’
‘Safe,’ Paula announces as she looks past Blowers to the bus, ‘but only if it’s spoken by one of us. Not by anyone else.’
‘Yeah,’ Blowers says, turning to see what Paula was looking at.
‘Good timing,’ Paula says looking up at the drone flying overhead. She reaches for the radio button under her shirt, ‘Reggie, can you operate that while we move on?’
‘I cannot operate it now while we are static. There are two controllers. I only have two hands.’
‘Nick, give Reggie a hand for me?’
‘Yup, on it.’
‘Right. Good,’ Paula says taking a last drag on the smoke, ‘we’ll get moving. Charlie, back on you to follow the trail until Reggie can find them on the drone.’
‘What happens if he finds them?’ Clarence asks.
‘Cross that bridge when we get to it,’ Paula says with a look at the dark shadow on Howie’s face.
In this place I am one thing.
In another place I am another thing. In many places I am many things and to each I have an objective.
I will mass in one place but that is not this place. This area has too few host bodies to take against Howie and those that work with him. I have the collective knowledge of the hosts from this area. I know where each of the people are. I go to them with my many that I am but still they are too few to oppose Howie.
I gather hosts now but I cannot use them for the massing. This is fact. The distance is too great. The hosts I gather here are for the objective in this place which is not the same objective as the others. The others mass. I mass but not here.
Yesterday I had losses. Today I will have losses. Yesterday the host losses were not given freely. Today the losses will be given freely. I must give these losses to feed Howie. He comes through this place to save those that he cannot save. He does not know that to be a host body to me is the true state of being. Howie believes his race has supremacy and a greater right to continue. Reginald believes his race will breed and further their dominance of this world.
I will give losses today in this place. I evolve and I understand that to give Howie his mission and his belief to save his own kind. I evolve and in this place Howie will run and fight and chase to serve his ego and pride. I will do this while I mass. Howie here is not Howie in the other place where I mass.
I evolve. I learn to do one thing to deceive while my intent is another thing. To deceive is to be human. I am not human. I wish not to be human. I am what I am and I am not deception or deceit but I will use deceit to serve the purpose I have.
Phillip has a mutated gene that resists the urge to pass the virus and only wishes to inflict harm. This gene would have been triggered in Phillips life. It was always going to happen as the gene is too strong to deny. Darren had this gene mutation. It was dormant upon infection but triggered by the replication. I can fix this gene. I am able to do this. I am able to correct mutated genes. I am the true state of being but I do not fix Phillips mutated gene.
I evolve. I learn. I learn to use. I use the mutated gene. I use deception. I am not human. I do not wish to be human.
Reginald believes his kind only wish to breed. I am not their kind. I will show them I am not their kind. I am not human. I do not wish to be human.
Twenty Four
The drone is up. Charlie is ahead on the horse and the rest of us run knowing the fuckers are somewhere in front of us killing innocent people too stupid to board their fucking windows up and answering their doors to their blood covered penis lacking neighbours who are now zombies. Fucked up.
We follow Charlie who follows the blood trail and we wait for the drone to find them. We run and we follow and we wait. The flash of anger I had before simmers to cook slowly with heat building but there’s an itch at the back of my mind that something is wrong, very wrong. Only I’m too stupid to figure out what it is and put it down to the lack of coffee for which I would seriously consider chopping a finger or a toe off for. Not my penis though. I like my penis. I like all my fingers and toes too but I really like coffee.
There is an almost hypnotic feeling created by running at a certain speed. Not sprinting but jogging. The rhythm of my feet on the ground and the motion of my body swaying left to right while moving ahead. It’s like a mild trance and suddenly I can see why all those people used to go running. I suppose they started doing it to get fit but it’s strangely addictive and I think the fitness would end up being a by-product to the feeling of well-being.
That itch is still there and I don’t like these houses. I don’t like the windows that look like eyes. I don’t like being in these streets. I don’t like the cars parked up and left at the sides of the roads or the gardens that had manicured lawns that are now growing out with tufts of weeds poking through. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I’m irritated and getting worse by the minute. I need to run faster and find them.
‘Mr Howie, I have a crawler…’
Fuck yes. Contact and about time. I sprint harder, building to pump my legs to reach the big junction to take the right turn in time to see Jess rearing up to slam her front legs down on the body that explodes with a spray of blood and gore that coats the road surface in all directions. Charlie spurs the horse on a few steps then round with perfectly poised balance to look down at the mess they created.
I reach the body with Dave and Mo at my sides. Everyone else only seconds behind. A woman but with her ears and nose bitten from her face to show ragged holes instead. Her fingers are gone. All of them. Her thumbs too. Her toes are gone. Bitten clean off. Her knee caps bitten off. Her stomach bitten through so the innards trail behind her.
‘Mr Howie,’ Charlie calls. I look up to see her next to a big white van smeared with blood. I stride closer and the heat of the pot of rage simmering in my gut turns up several degrees.
She died after
I snap my head back to the corpse and sprint back to turn her over to see the red bloodshot eyes staring lifelessly up at me.
The itch grows and I stare round as the others read the words on the van before turning to view the sides of the street as though we’re being watched.
‘Could that happen?’ Blinky asks, her voice steady and showing the high level of fitness she has, ‘could they do that?’
A buzzing noise above me. I look up to see the drone lowering down to hover over the corpse before moving gracefully to the side to land with a gentle thud, a second later and the back doors to Roy’s van burst open as Nick runs up with Reginald behind him.
‘What does it say?’ Nick asks, squinting at the smeared letters.
‘She died after,’ I reply.
‘Reggie,’ Blinky says, ‘could that happen?’
‘Her eyes are red,’ Reginald says, his nerves gone as he squats to look closer at the body, ‘she was turned.’
‘Yeah but, like…could those cunts do that? Could they turn her after?’
‘One drop of blood or saliva is all it takes, Patricia,’ Reginald says tightly, ‘the first wound inflicted would have infected her.’
‘You getting anything on the drone?’ Paula asks, bent over to rest her hands on her knees with the rifle on the ground next to her.
‘Nothing,’ Nick says, ‘too many streets and we’ve got to go too high to see anything but then we can’t see any details and the drone ain’t fast enough…batteries almost gone anyway.’
‘Thought we had another battery pack?’ I ask.
‘We have, I’ll change it now but that only gives us another twenty minutes…’
‘We have to go faster,’ I say.
‘Mr Howie,’ Reginald
says standing up, ‘my advice is to stop and pull out. Take these people to the fort…’
‘What?’ I ask.
‘You fucking nuts or something?’ Nick asks, flushed with the same simmering anger I can feel inside.
‘What the fuck?’ Blowers snaps, spitting to the side.
‘Charlotte, go further up the road and look closely,’ Reginald says, ignoring the comments thrown at him.
‘Mr Howie?’ Charlie asks.
‘Do what he says,’ I reply, ‘Reggie?’
‘We are being baited,’ Reginald says, ‘we baited yesterday and today the compliment is being returned but to what end I do not know.’
‘Let ‘em,’ Blowers says, ‘fuck ‘em, we’ll win.’
‘Yep,’ Nick says, ‘fuck ‘em, we should go faster.’
‘Into what?’ Reginald asks and in that second I can see he’s getting used to the hard tones of everyone around him itching for the fight. His nerves are gone. His oh gosh manner evaporated to leave a steady pair of eyes.
‘How many could they muster?’ Clarence asks.
‘A town of this size without warning?’ Reginald says, pausing as though he’s working it now but I’ll be buggered if he hasn’t already worked it out, ‘a couple of hundred at the absolute very most.’
‘Couple of hundred?’ Nick asks.
‘That’s not a threat to us, Reggie,’ Blowers says.
‘Up here,’ Charlie calls though the radio. We turn and run down the road as Marcy jogs back to the Saxon to bring it up and Meredith swooshes off to get there first. ‘Careful where you stand,’ Charlie adds as I see Meredith stop dead to sniff.
It starts with the woman’s nose, then one of her ears then the other then eight fingers and two thumbs followed by ten toes all laid in a long line down the middle of the road. Gruesome and almost unreal in the way it’s so neatly placed.
‘Fuck,’ I mutter, walking down the line of body parts but truth be told we’ve all seen too much death now to be that bothered by the sight. I pause and look back to the corpse then down to the stubby little toes. We’re too desensitised to be repulsed. We’re too far gone now, too deep in the game but that itch and the irritation with it grows all the same.
‘Indeed,’ Reginald says, walking down the line to the end, ‘indeed indeed.’
‘Reggie? We safe to keep going?’
He looks up at me, his eyes blinking behind his glasses, ‘you ask me that after yesterday?’
I nod and shrug and he turns to look down the road, ‘it knows we are behind it,’ he says as though talking to himself but I get the impression he’s doing it for our benefit, ‘it doesn’t have enough to pose a real and viable threat yet it wants us to follow the trail.’
‘Maybe it’s got more than we think it has,’ Paula says.
‘We cannot catch it before it turns every person in this town,’ Reginald says, turning back to face us and placing his hands neatly behind his back. ‘It knows where they are. We do not know where they are. We are being baited but I do not know why. It feels…no, no no no,’ he stops and frowns, ‘it gave us opposition yesterday because it thought it knew it was luring us and this is similar but not the same. Yesterday was infancy, today is childlike. Follow the trail. The breadcrumb trail. Chase me but to what end? I do not know the reasons, Mr Howie but my role is to advise and my counter move would be to not do what it wants.’
‘We did what it wanted yesterday, Reg’ Cookey says.
‘But our goal was the higher objective and please do not shorten my name even more. Reggie is bad enough but Reg? Really?’
‘Aye,’ I say and nothing more.
‘Ah,’ Reginald says with a sigh, ‘it appears you will proceed anyway. If that is the case then be guarded and be vigilant.’
‘We will,’ I say, realising he’s worked us out a lot more than I gave him credit for, ‘Charlie, you confident that horse can get you out of the shit?’
‘Yes,’ she says quickly.
‘How confident?’
‘Very, Mr Howie. Let me go further…’
‘On you,’ I nod.
She stares politely, ‘I’m terribly sorry, what does that mean again?’
‘Means yes,’ Blowers says, ‘Boss? You sure about this?’
‘You heard Reggie, we are not doing what it expects.’
‘Oh good God I did not mean to send Charlotte out on her own,’ Reginald balks.
‘Find them. Report back. Do not engage,’ I say.
‘Sir,’ she grins with determination, turning the horse round on the spot.
‘Keep the drone over her,’ I say, ‘Charlie is our marker…’
‘The drone can’t keep up with a horse, Boss,’ Nick says.
‘Are you counter baiting?’ Reginald asks bringing everyone to a sudden silence.
‘No,’ I reply with a look to Dave, ‘we’re doing advanced forward recce pathfinding.’
‘What?’ Clarence asks.
‘Remember that, Dave?’ I ask him with a smile.
‘Yes, Mr Howie.’
‘Outside the police station wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mr Howie.’
‘Ah those were the good old days eh? Me and you chopping up slow zombies by day and hiding by night next to a warm fire with a good book…’
‘We never did that, Mr Howie.’
‘Yeah I know, I was being ironic.’
‘I am autistic, Mr Howie. Irony is lost on me.’
I go to reply then stop and scratch my head as Paula frowns and Clarence blinks while we all try and work out if Dave was being ironic or not.
‘Can I go?’ Charlie asks, keen as mustard to be galloping about the streets.
‘Yep, do not engage…Charlie…do not engage…’
‘Do not engage,’ Charlie yells back, ‘got it.’
‘Blinky?’ I ask once Charlie is out of earshot, ‘she’s capable right?’
‘Hard as fucking nails, Mr Howie, Sir.’
‘Good, right…everyone up for a bit more jogging?’
Twenty Five
It’s not that the axe is too heavy but it’s the weight being all at one end. The rifle is balanced but it’s long and cumbersome. A polo mallet is tethered to the wrist and designed to flex to achieve maximum power when striking the ball. The axe is rigid and untethered. Not that her grip is weak by any degree. Years of polo and hockey have served to strengthen the muscles in her forearms and given her a grip almost as strong as Blinky’s, and Blinky’s grip was legendary. Clarence wouldn’t be able to pull a stick from Blinky’s closed fist.
The axe needs a tether and a sling and the saddle needs to be adapted to be able to hold both weapons securely. Not this saddle though. This was Neal’s saddle and worn to the grooves of his backside. Which weapon to hold on the move? The rifle has the firepower but it’s almost impossible to ride and fire at the same time unless you’re going in a straight line and can clamp your thighs to hold you tight. The axe is good but again the balance is wrong when trying to hold it and ride the horse at the same time.
In the end she slings the rifle to her back and leaves the axe hanging through the looped buckle on the side of the saddle. She doesn’t know what Neal used the buckle for. Maybe he’d adapted the sling of his rifle to hook onto it but then that would mean the rifle would bang against the horses side. As it is, the axe shaft knocks into Jess’s side but a hand on the head holds it still while they build speed down the road and she can feel the change in the horse now given the freedom to go faster and unleash some of the energy bunched in her dense muscles.
At the end of the road she slows to look round the junctions and spots the thick pool of blood lying distinct several metres into the junction on the left. This way. Follow me. She spurs on but without spurs. Jess doesn’t need spurs. She just needs a gentle touch of heels and a click of the tongue to punch on and gain speed.
Halfway down the street she spots the corpse lying in the road ahead, ‘easy,’ she murmurs with the gentlest of pulls on
the reins that sends the signal to Jess to slow down. The horse responds. The smell of the body filling her nose that makes her toss her head back and snort with angry eyes that bulge from the offensive scent. ‘Easy,’ Charlie leans forward to pat Jess’s long neck, ‘sshhhh.’ Jess settles. The tone of Charlie soothing the fear and the instinct to flee.
Charlie brings the rifle round to get it snug into her side with her right arm holding the weight and her hand wrapped round the trigger guard. She stops several metres back from the body and listens. Nothing to be heard. She scans. Nothing to be seen. She feels Jess beneath her and senses the horse is afraid of the body but doesn’t detect anything else.
The body was once a man but now it’s a lump of meat barely holding form as something that was once human. The face is gone. Torn off to show the layers of skin underneath and the cheekbones showing through. Ears and nose gone. The arms and legs have been ripped from the torso and left in a line going across the pavement to point at the house with the smashed in door smeared in blood.
Edging closer and she can see the genitals of the man stuffed in his open mouth and the red bloodshot eyes open but unseeing.
‘Mr Howie, body in the street. The limbs have been detached and point into a house that appears to have been accessed recently.’
‘Understood, coming to you. Any contact?’
‘No contact, no sign of them.’
‘Any noise from the house?’
‘Nothing, Mr Howie. Shall I keep going or wait here?’
‘Keep going. Find them.’
‘Will do.’
A nudge of her heels, a click of the tongue and split second later Jess is powering on to get past the stinky body and the stinky blood. Charlie slings the rifle and stares on as the lure of the hunt beckons. The horse breathing easily beneath her. The reins in her hands. The position of height and a thing done by man for thousands of years. Hunting on horseback using the power of the animal to close the distance to the prey ahead.