The other thing that had made the most difference: the Rat Race was dead. It was dead for all of us, pretty much literally. I hadn’t thought about my bank account. I hadn’t thought about my job. I hadn’t thought about things that I wanted to buy for my flat that I didn’t need, and things I needed to buy for my flat that I couldn’t afford. I hadn’t worried about going in to an office that was depressing to please people that I didn’t like. The only thing I had liked about my job was the job itself; I was a good journalist. I enjoyed the front line. The rest of it? The environment? It all sucked balls. But now, I was revelling in this new life. Andy’s look of fear, I had decided it was one of respect. I was someone that was getting things done and making the hard decisions that no one else wanted to do. My career was virtually built on pissing people off; it wasn’t a problem for me to grind my heel in to get where I wanted or needed. Not everyone had that ruthless streak; some people probably had too much than was safe. Not that I considered myself perfect. But left to their own devices, Rick and Andy would have brought that druggie back to the pier. Not everyone needed to be kept alive.
I phased back in to the conversation. It hadn’t moved on very far. No one seemed to want anything to move very far in this place.
The consensus was that we’d all go on the run tomorrow at dusk. This appeared to be the favoured time for us to go out in to the town and attempt to kill ourselves. We had told no one about the druggie and no one had asked any questions. Carla had quietly taken away my blood-stained shirt and it had come back to me damp but reasonably clean. I hadn’t looked at it again. I wasn’t keen on putting on a potentially infected shirt, no matter what she told me she had cleaned it with. As Austin reeled off our precise itinerary along with the agreed scavenge list, my mind wandered off again. I found the man nauseatingly boring. I enjoyed a brief fantasy of holding him by his ankles over the pier at a freakishly-odd high tide. The floating zombies were like bobbing piranha, taking a nip here and a nip there, stripping off long painful strips of tender flesh and eventually peeling him down to his bone and marrow. It was a shame that only Britain’s Strongest Men had the upper tensile strength for that kind of feat. Next to him Gollum was huddled over. His shoulders kept jiggling up and down as if he were giggling. I expected him to start hissing at any second. Most of the women appeared to avoid the both of them. I couldn’t say I blamed them, and attributed most of the change in attitude to Carla’s standing in the mother hendom. When he looked at me his personal cloud of glee appeared to evaporate. He stood up straight and tried to catch Austin’s attention. He was shaken off, but I was aware then that I’d been staring. I arranged my face in to something less murderous and tried to pay attention. It was hard though, knowing the swarm was outside and my immediate fate was being decided by an overweight pervert who most likely wanted me dead.
Carla was sitting next to me and squeezed my leg. I looked at her and she gave me an affectionate smile. She had seen the looks I’d been throwing all afternoon, and I’d regaled her on more than one occasion on what I thought of our new bedfellows whenever we got a quiet chance. Not that there was much room for private and personal space around here. My mind snapped around when Austin mentioned my name.
“… and as Warren appears to be the reconnaissance expert around here, I’m going to ask him to just go through is plans with you all.”
“My plans?”
Carla pushed at my back and expectant eyes swivelled around to me. I took to my feet reluctantly and stood next to Austin, who sneered in unbridled delight at my discomfort. I’d find some way to thank him in kind later and chose to stand deliberately in front of Gollum, who squealed in protest. Austin pushed him to one side and he scuttled off to sit on his own in the corner – no mean feat in such a crowded room. “Right yes, my plans. Well Austin’s already described the shopping list at length. If I add much more to that we’ll all slip in to comas.” There were a few titters around the room and I saw Austin shift uncomfortably out of the corner of my eye. Point one, you fat fuck. “Suffice to say we’re going to go hard and quick. I’m experienced at that. All my exes said so.” More laughter. Keep them happy, keep them engaged. “Trust me I want to stay alive as much as everyone else in this room so we won’t be taking any risks. We’re going to hit each shop in order to bring us around in a loop and back with a clear run to the pier. I’m going to set up some decoys for if the swarm moves in, and we expect to be back at dawn. It’s going to be a scary night for us, but when you all wake up in the morning it’ll hopefully be to something more adventurous than stew.”
There was a ripple of applause and I sketched Austin a mock bow. “Is that it? Is that your grand plan?”
I shrugged. “What more needs to be said? It’s hard enough going out there as it is, without regaling our friends and loved ones with the gory details. And it’s not easy to talk about. We all know what it’s like to face them right?” Everyone nodded their agreement and I went in for the kill. “I mean apart from you, Oz. We weren’t all lucky enough to avoid confrontations with the infected.”
“I’ve seen – I did – I’ve done plenty, you arrogant shit.”
“Hey I didn’t say anything but you were lucky. My choice? I’d rather not have had to put my hammer through skulls to stay alive. You win some you lose some pal.”
We were nose to nose to each other now. The room had dropped to tense silence. Austin heaved in indignation, his disgusting breath flooding my senses.
“Good luck. You’ll need it.”
I smiled in return. “Brush your teeth you fucking tramp. I don’t want to die of over-exposure before I get out of the gate.”
Austin pulled back to take a shot at me and I stuck my chin out at him. “Go on. Take a hit. Put your extensive weight behind it because it’s the only chance you’ll ever get.”
Of all people, Gollum broke in between us. Pete and Matt joined shortly after, pushing Austin away rather than holding me back. He spat at me. “I’ll get you, you hear? You keep embarrassing me and I’m going to make you pay, Warren.”
“You embarrass yourself Austin, I don’t have to do anything. Now think about where we are and what you’re doing, and keep your voice down before we have a swarm at the gate.”
He shrugged off Matt and Pete’s hands and pointed at me. “This isn’t over.”
“Yes. It is.”
I walked out, resisting every temptation to slam the door behind me and ignoring the excited wash of whispers. I clicked the door closed, hoping the deliberate act would stop someone following me, at least for a short time. I looked out over the beach and for a heart-rending moment I thought the swarm had moved on. I couldn’t see them at all. Then I heard an unnatural movement below and I stepped down slowly from the club room and on to the slats of the decking. I got on my hands and knees and peered through the gaps in the aging wood. They were splashing around in the shallow water directly beneath us. I saw one scalped head, the brain already exposed. There were too many for me to pick out enough detail. What was worrying though was the congestion of movement around the wrought iron rudders that held the pier upright. If the mass moved in precisely the wrong way, the entire thing could come crashing down in to the shallow sea bed and the hungry jaws below. It was a perfect time for us to make the run again. But we had to keep quiet. It would be even better to keep everyone else elevated and away from making too much noise on the head of the pier.
I headed quietly back up the stairs. I walked in to Gollum as he headed out – to follow me no doubt. I pressed a finger to my own lips and pushed him back inside, keeping his eyes on mine so he could hopefully see how serious I was being. I pulled the door to behind me and waved my arms indicating I wanted everyone to circle again.
“What’s wrong hero? Come to make some apologies?”
“The swarm is beneath us.”
Worried chatter broke out and I let it run its brief course instead of trying to shout over people. They eventually looked back to me as the man with the answe
rs. “Something’s got their attention again. I don’t know if they’re moving to the other side of the pier but right now they are all underneath us and out on the head of the pier. If we move out there in a big group right now, we’ll risk being seen.
I think we should make the run now. Guys, what do you think? We can head out the front without any worry of being seen.”
“That’s a bit hasty Warren, it’s not like we’ve had that much time to rest.”
“We can’t miss an opportunity like this. What if alarms start going off in town and we end up with them right in our path again? We go tonight.”
“And what do we all do in the meantime? Sit in here like jessies waiting for you to come back?”
“No. There’s no need for that. But I recommend keeping as many people as possible indoors. And if you have to walk on the deck do it without shoes. Get everyone back to the arcade in pairs or small groups – bring little attention, get little back.
In the meantime – chaps, shoes off. We’re going to the arcade to get our kit.”
+++
Chapter Ten
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” – Mahatma Ghandi
“You know, I almost preferred the idea of doing this when it was getting dark.”
“Why’s that Matt?”
“Then you don’t have to look them in the face. I mean, look at them all.”
He pointed back down the pier to the swarm still milling around in the steadily deepening water. I had been told enough times that the current there wasn’t strong enough to move them if they wanted to stay put. That seemed freaky. I kept wishing they’d do us a favour and get washed out.
“I wish they’d make some noise ya know? It’s just eerie seeing them swaying around like that with the tide. All the movies I’ve seen, I’d expect to hear the zombies over the noise of the shoreline.”
“You don’t.” Rick replied bluntly. Matt asked why and I knew Rick was thinking back to the monster that took out Dan on our way here. “It’s nothing like the movies. I thought we would have all figured that out by now. No one’s coming to save us. And we’ve got no superheroes. No easy way to fight this.”
“Jesus great motivational speech. Anything else I need to know before we head out to our deaths?”
I smiled blandly at both of them. “You won’t come back as one of them on my watch I promise you that much. Now both of you stop being miserable fucks. It’s going to be a long enough night without you two turning the daylight hours in to a downer too.”
I opened my empty bag and looked at my lonely trusted hammer. I felt like naming it. It had worked for Tom Hanks. Kind of. But there again naming a hammer came with certain responsibilities. I’d need to grow long blond hair and have biceps. I flexed my arm absentmindedly. That wasn’t going to happen any time soon. I unzipped all the pockets and fumbled around to make sure I wasn’t bringing along any extra unneeded weight. In one I felt a crumple of paper and pulled it out. It was a £20. I smiled to myself. In days gone by, that would have been a discovery worthy of announcing, possibly followed by immediate expenditure at a nearby bar. Now? It was a worthless purple sheet of loo roll. My mind fluttered briefly to international markets and the panic the world in general was probably embroiled in figuring out what to do without pound sterling. Then I realised that in the here and now, I didn’t really need to care.
We were sat in a line outside the front of the arcade now. All we were waiting for was Gollum, although both Rick and Carla told me I had to call him Jez for the duration of the hunt. It didn’t matter that I thought the spindly little man was out to kill me, nor that they both agreed he was parked so far up Austin’s backside that it would be difficult for him to identify daylight. Rick had already picked up a knife to go alongside his hammer and he told me it was stowed in his bag. I had told him to make sure he didn’t stab himself with it. When he asked if I’d wanted another weapon, I’d said I was fine with the hammer. It’d be a sorry day in hell if that runt managed to overpower me. Stab me in the back maybe, but he had to get out of my line of sight first and I planned on keeping that little freak on a tight leash.
When he finally appeared, Austin literally had his hand wrapped around Gollum’s neck. He pushed him forward and feeling at least briefly sorry for him, I stood forward and grabbed him to stop him from falling face first in to the decking. He looked at me gratefully, then almost sorrowfully, before standing up and feeling at his neck. There were red finger-marks already beginning to show, and there was blood where one of his piercings used to be. My loathing for Austin somehow managed to crank up a notch.
“You got your list?”
“We have. You sure you don’t want us to take Lana or Carla so you can keep one of us on guard?”
Austin hawked and spat a disgusting amount of phlegm to the floor. My stomach turned. “I think we’ll be just fine here. That dyke thinks she’s a man anyway. You’re not as important here as you think you are. Now, I know you don’t think much of my good friend Jeremy and I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual. If he doesn’t come back alive and unhurt, there will be great trouble for you my friend.”
I looked at Gollum and back to Austin, and simply laughed. He thought he had me stuck because he would effectively be holding my sister to ransom whilst I put my neck on the line, along with her boyfriend, to get more supplies for the pier. I had more than a few bad feelings about this run, but we could hardly go on strike. Austin would have us in a corner then – we’d be the bad guys, refusing to do these things for the good of everyone on the pier. I warrant he was waiting for one good excuse to just throw me over the side.
“Is that it? Any other inspirational last words you want to add? Any more direct death threats? No? Then let’s go.”
I pushed at Doughy’s chest as I walked past. The others followed me silently. My mind was spinning as I tried to think at what Austin might have planned, but right now there were more immediate issues – like not dying in town. I had to get back as scheduled. I didn’t trust what Austin might do otherwise.
We slid out the gate and across the empty road as we had done before. This time the alleyway was simply dim, so we grouped there and huddled together in a circle. I asked Matt and Jez to go back over the plan, each one in turn. They were the only two that I hadn’t seen in action. Whilst I thought Jez would be handy in combat in a wiry chaotic way, I was still pretty certain that when it came to the crunch, Matt would be cowering in the corner. Jez repeated the plan back with ease. Matt stuttered, but when he saw we weren’t talking over him or forcing the information out, he calmed down a little. I asked to see the weapons they had all picked again. Andy proudly waved his axe at me and Rick his hammer. He obviously elected to keep the knowledge of the knife to himself. I produced my own hammer and Jez flashed a mean-looking rusty carving knife in our faces. We all shied back a little and told him to put it away before he cut someone. Matt looked a little embarrassed and I was expecting him to bring out a stick before he presented us with a ridiculously long Philips screwdriver and a hand axe. Andy whistled appreciatively. “You know how to swing that boy?”
“Only in my garden. But if it comes to it… rather us than them hey?”
I nodded. “Definitely. Right, it’s too light for us to go sprinting up and down the high street so let’s lend a little caution to this. Jez, go scout up ahead. You’re the smallest so you’re the least likely to be seen. We just need four or five minutes of nil activity – noise and movement. If you get that then we get the all clear to move forward. Matt, can you do the same and cover our rear? Don’t be a hero – if you see anything coming, fall back to us so we can make decisions. Questions?”
The two newcomers didn’t object and headed to either end of the alley.
“Smoothly done, sir. So what’s the real plan?”
I moved closer to Andy and Rick. “The plan is the plan. If we can, I want us all to survive this. I don’t like Jez but he’s another pair of eyes on guard w
e otherwise wouldn’t have. I just want you to keep a close eye on him for me. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, and I don’t trust him.”
“Really? I couldn’t tell.”
“Sarcasm still doesn’t suit you Rick. I’m being serious. I think he’s planning something and I really like being alive. And you Rick need to get your wits about you. Have you not seen the way Austin keeps looking at Carla?”
“You think Carla hasn’t seen the way Austin keeps looking at her? You think she’s walking around that pier without something she can castrate him with at a swipe?”
“Are you ever going to wear the trousers in that relationship?”
“Nope. And I like it that way. Although I have to admit all this hunter-gathering is making me feel all manly.”
“Well don’t start beating your chest yet Tarzan we need to go back with the stuff everyone’s waiting for. And like I said, I’d like to do so in one piece. You got my back?”
“If you’ve got ours. If Jez sticks you then I’m pretty sure he’ll have orders to stick Rick. And he must know that I’m not exactly sympathetic with him. So I’ll have to go too. How does Jez explain that away? And how does Matt figure in to all of this?”
I hadn’t considered Matt beyond him being our silent bystander. I clicked at the roof of my mouth as I contemplated this. “You think he’s with Austin?”
“You think he’s been loud enough for us to make an opinion of him either way?”
“Nope.”
“Then that’s enough for me to not trust him. The man seems like a wet fish. Can you see a wet fish surviving this long enough to get to the pier?”
“Nope.”
“Then we need to watch him too.”
Great Bitten: Outbreak Page 17