I had misjudged Jez. I had been blind-sided by Andy, and Matt had gone completely unnoticed. And Oz? He was getting away with everything. He was getting away with my sister, and he was leaving us all to die.
I checked Rick. He was still mumbling to himself, not able to get up. The injuries were really beginning to take their toll on him. There was no way I could completely hide him from the undead that had already spied us from the gate, but I could pull him out of harm’s way. I grabbed the back of his trousers and heaved, grunting as I literally yanked his ass across the decking. I left him by an outbuilding as the screams of the undead joined the furious screams of anger and panic coming from the other end of the pier.
“You okay? You going to be okay?”
“Weapon?”
I looked around. “I… I haven’t got a weapon for you, Rick.” I looked back at the gate. It was holding fast, but more hungry hands had joined those already waiting. The gates started rocking back and forth. They were solid in the pier and I just had to pray they would last long enough for us to get in to the next helicopter. “Look, it will be fine okay. They’re not going to get past that gate. But just in case they do, just get on your feet okay? Get closed in so they can’t see you. The cashier booth in the arcade should be fine. I’ll come looking for you. You got it?”
“I got it. Go find Carla for me.”
“Yeah it’s the only husband duty I’ll be doing for you. This isn’t Norfolk.”
Rick coughed, trying to laugh. “Go Warren. There’s no time.”
I ran through the arcade, looking to see if there was anyone left inside. Oz must have corralled them all at the top of the pier for lift-off. I more felt than heard as the helicopter moved overhead. I swore to myself and hoped that Oz had elected to run in the second lift, if it were coming. Beyond all hope though, I didn’t think he’d wait longer than a single extra second to get his overweight carcass off this cursed length of glorified decking. I stumbled, falling in to a coin-pusher and cursing as it jarred my hip. I felt like fate’s wrecking ball.
I was right. When I got outside I couldn’t see anything hovering over the end of the pier. I looked out left and thought I could make out another flying dot on the horizon, but couldn’t be certain. That wasn’t my immediate concern. The screams were my immediate concern. The crying. I rounded the corner of the nightclub at a hobbling run and around me was nothing but chaos. The wood, once grey-green and worn with the wear of years and the never-ending erosion of saltwater was now slippery and slick with angry red blood. It was quite literally everywhere and I found myself carefully placing my feet to stop myself from slipping over. There was no sign to where it came from. I had my suspicions though, and there was only one place the screaming could be coming from. A shattering of glass told me to head up in to the old club. I skidded that way. Grasping on to the handrail for support I felt along the surface – it was slick and my hand came away bloody. I tried to run up but my legs didn’t want to listen to my brain, which wasn’t exactly working at full capacity. I was panicking and I knew it, and I also knew that every time I had panicked so far I had made mistakes. And I was chalking up far too many mistakes than was reasonable, even with every admissible circumstance we had at stake.
My worst fears were met at the top of the stairs. The door was being hammered, hard, and an axe rested across the handle to stop anyone from getting out. The glass had already been broken through as whoever was trapped inside tried to make their way out. A hand shot out, scrambling around looking for the handle. A shard of glass already stuck out the top of the forearm and the screaming never let out. I only thought for a brief second before grabbing at the axe to free the door. The hammering pushed the axe handle as I closed my good hand around it, trapping my fingers. I swore again, unsure if there were any limbs left that weren’t in pain.
“Leave the door! Leave the fucking door! I’ll get you out!”
I kicked the axe, not trusting my arms any more. It took three full boots before it dislodged and fell to the side with a heavy clatter. The door flew open immediately and Lana landed in my open arms. She was followed by Pete, who slammed the door closed.
“Put it back! Put it… argh fuck!”
The door was slammed open as bodies threw themselves against it. Their weight was too much and Pete was thrown back. Trapped between the door and the railing, half his body was left prone as a little body shot out and dug teeth in to his leg. Lana rolled out of my grip, struggling hard to get away. She lost her footing and fell backwards down the stairs, her arms flailing in shock. I couldn’t bring myself to watch her fall. I looked back at Pete and tried to pull him. It was Heather’s child biting in to him and the press of bodies behind told me just what had happened to the rest of the people on the pier. They weren’t all dead, but they were all bleeding. The child was pulled away by an adult biter, all focus and intent on the morsel directly in front of them. Pete howled in agony as teeth tore in to his side. There was no rending of organs, no visceral splatter of blood. But the noise he made drove through my eardrums and left an imprint on my brain I will never be able to shake off. He battered at the zombie, weakening arms coming down on a head determined not to let go of its grip. Behind, others, living people, tried to pull them back in. One of them caught my eyes. It was Anna.
“Save them. Save yourself.”
She reached forward and grabbed the zombie by the hair. As the face was yanked back I saw that it was Heather. Anna pulled hard. First time, she pulled away with a fist full of hair and skin. Second time, the biter was pulled away. I saw chunks of red flesh still between chewing jaws. Then Heather disappeared and without another word, Anna yanked the door closed.
Pete was panting heavily. I clumsily fumbled for the axe and slid it back in to place to hold the door. It slammed once. I thought I could see the back of Anna’s head, but had to step away. There was nothing I could do for the people left in that room. I pulled Pete away and held him up as we both limped down the stairs. The last sound ringing in my ears was laughing, and there was only one candidate for the source. At the bottom of the steps Lana was still. I felt for a pulse but felt nothing but a pale clamour against her skin. Blood bloomed up from underneath her and I swivelled, forgetting about Pete who collapsed to the decking without my support.
“What happened here?”
I knelt by his head. He looked up at me, grinning. “Oz happened. You were right not to trust him. He took them. Then he left the rest of us to die.”
“Took who?”
“The ones he wanted. The ones he wanted to… he took them. The younger ones. He told us, after they all headed to the helicopter. Then he turned on us all. He was always going to turn on us all.”
“But the blood, everything down here. There was a shot too. What happened?”
“It was a massacre.”
My head reeled. How? He’d obviously locked all the others together and somehow infection had got in to the group, but he’d also managed to isolate a cluster of women to take north to the sanctuary he’d been talking about on the radio. Was my sister part of his payment for entry?
“Stay with me Pete come on, I need you. I need help, I can’t do this on my own.”
“Yes you can. You got here on your own. You were the only one that saw through Oz.”
“Not soon enough. I haven’t saved anyone. I’m only alive because of other people.”
“That’s how the heroes always start out. Now let me up. I can’t hang around here to bite you. There’s no one else left alive. One of the children… the woman you brought with you? Her little one. He was infected. Oz brought him in and he just set it all off. Once everyone was locked in together it was just a matter of time before we all died.
Now let me up. Come on we haven’t got all day.”
I helped push the older man to his feet. He staggered around, frowning tears of frustration at the blood and decay around him. He spared me a pitying smile. “I think I’ve got the better end of the bargain.”
/>
“How so?”
“Because I’m not going to have to face life in this hell. I don’t envy your future, Warren.”
We both turned as we heard the tell-tale sound of rotors. The dot I had seen was another helicopter and it was heading for the pier. But this time there was something wrong. There was smoke billowing out of it and its course was clearly not going to leave it hovering above us for our rescue. It was going to make a direct impact. At the foot of the stairwell Lana moaned and I could see here try to push herself to her feet, but I couldn’t tell then whether she was rising as one of the infected, or whether she had somehow survived her ordeal in the club and her subsequent fall.
I didn’t have time to wonder anything else; the copter collided in the middle of the pier before we had time to react. My ears were filled with a high-pitched screech that blocked out the rest of the world, and I felt a rushing of air. I briefly remember hitting water before the world again went gratefully black.
Chapter Thirteen
“And in real life endings aren’t always neat, whether they’re happy endings, or whether they’re sad endings.” – Stephen King
My body was being pulled. No, dragged. Dragged was a far better definition. All of my limbs felt like cotton wool that had been lightly scorched and blanched in freezing cold water. My ears were still ringing fiercely. As I started coming to, I realised both of my arms were out and being pulled, and wondered dully if a couple of the undead were pulling me out of the water to get to more of my body. I wondered where the heat of what should have been a massive explosion had gone, and where the dead were that should have been absolutely caroused by such a massive blaze. I opened my mouth to ask these questions, or at least cry inadequately for help, but took in a mouthful of water. The salt was revolting against my abandoned taste buds and my throat constricted in a choke. I started to cough convulsively and my arms were suddenly dropped. I plunged completely in to the water, taking down a complete lungful of the rancid water. There were some muffled words and I realised that my legs were already on the bottom of the sea, my hands clenching on to soft fronds of seaweed. I knelt, my head coming out of the water and my ears popping. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision of the stinging salt. I had to rub them twice as I saw Rick and Lana in front of me.
“I’m dead, right?”
“Nearly. We’re all nearly dead. But right now we’re the three luckiest fuckers in the country and we need to move quickly. Are you okay to walk?”
I tried my legs. I stood, shakily, but managed to hold myself firm. I nodded at them both.
“Good. We’re heading for some shelter. We haven’t got long.”
“Long before what?”
“Before the zombies realise there are three snacks running away from the crash very very quickly. We were all thrown away from the wreckage, and the wreckage is what got the most attention. You and Lana both drifted in closer to shore with the tide. She was dragging you in when I found you both.
“So I’ve got even more people to thank for being alive? Great. I’m not going to have enough time to pay you back you know.”
“Surviving is going to be plenty payback. We just need to get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Where we were going to go in the first place. The Downs.”
“And from there?”
“He’s taken Carla, Warren. Where the fuck do you think we’re going?”
I turned and looked back at the decimated structure that had so briefly been our bastion of safety. It was all burning, and the blaze and wreckage was the only thing now keeping us alive. The end of the pier had collapsed and chunks of building lay embedded in the shallow sea. Steam drifted upwards as hot wood was extinguished in the salty water. I hoped everyone that had been left inside had been granted either a quick end or a final rest. It was a miracle that even one of us had managed to get off the pier alive, let alone three of us. I thought back to the screams that had permeated to the other end of the pier from within the enclosed walls.
“Lana? What happened up there?”
“Not now Warren. I’ll tell you when we’re safe. If I can.”
I let her misery lie. If Oz had put children to death in there and she had managed to survive unscathed then I wasn’t going to push her any harder than she had already suffered that day. The sun was still sitting in the sky but it was fat and low, dipping towards the horizon. We didn’t have long to make shelter and I asked where we were going to head first.
“Like Carla said, the hills are only a couple of miles from the town. You can see them quite easily when you get past all the larger buildings. There’s fields slightly further out so we should have a free walk all the way up. We’re heading that way, and we’ll get there before dark if we don’t come across any issues.”
“And if we do come across… issues?”
“Do you have any weapons on you?”
“No.”
“Then I suppose we’re fucked. Soldier on, you’re meant to be the double-hard Londoner. We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.”
We waded through the shallow water of the beach, using its natural sound of the sea lapping against the shoreline to disguise our own movements for as long as we could. I moved mutely behind the other two, my mind cold and shrouded, reliant on their knowing where we were going and that we would indeed be safe by nightfall.
+++
“Under any other circumstance, this would be beautiful.”
We sat in a line, tired and hot but safe and sitting at the top of a hill that I had been told repeatedly was called Cissbury Ring. It was grassy and the barrows reminded me of gigantic burial mounds. They gave me the creeps.
“It’s still beautiful.” I said. And it was. There were now less pools of light to disrupt the darkness, and there was very little I could see tarnishing the landscape. There were no headlights of cars going past and no noise from aircraft. There was peace across all I could survey, although we all knew the country was anything but. I could easily stop there at rest. With a full vantage over the rest of the countryside we could see walkers from a mile off before they got to us, and could prepare a defence appropriate to the threat. There were even plenty of place to run and hide if a horde came for us; we’d have more than enough time to run like hell in the other direction. But more importantly, there was no reason for a horde to come this way. We were in the middle of nowhere. As long as we were careful, we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves. There would be no reason for jumpers or lemmings to come anywhere near us. We’d be able to pick off the occasional biter and weather the storm until the government took control – although that was unlikely – or until they all died off and we could retake control naturally.
There was one major flaw in the plan though; Carla wasn’t here. And I desperately wanted to murder Austin with my bare hands with her watching on. In fact, I wanted her to be kicking him in the bollocks repeatedly whilst I did it. Rick hadn’t mentioned her at all in our soundless trudge up to our hillside vantage point, but he must have been torn up inside. If I felt some sense of rage then he should have been absolutely frothing. We’d managed to stop off at a high street pharmacy and picked up some meagre rations to tend to our wounds. We were all suffering from fatigue and dehydration more than anything else, and we had taken as much water as we could carry. I had almost been sick with the amount I had drank. The one limping undead we had come across in the shop hadn’t been much of a threat, and we had let the child live. I was exhausted with killing. The others evidently felt the same.
The streets had again been quiet. I had felt eyes on me, as if pitying people were peeking out at us from behind their curtains. They were probably wondering why there were poor sods wandering the streets in the middle of an apocalypse; like you used to watch the telly and wonder why people would be out shopping during a tornado or a hurricane. You realise, when you’re the one out there, that many of those people were probably caught there by accident more than choi
ce, and it was mainly luck rather than skill that ensured your safety in these situations. But we had seen no other people, and no other signs of life. We had seen lots of bodies; bodies that would thankfully never move again, but the bodies of the dead nevertheless. It seemed that most of the carnage in the centre had created the walking dead and as they had moved out in search of prey, people caught out in the open were devoured to such an extent that they would never rise again.
I wasn’t sure which I preferred.
Great Bitten: Outbreak Page 21