“What?” one of the white clad scientists replied.
“Behind you,” the soldier told him.
The scientist spun around nervously to see the two men walking towards him and dropped a glass sample jar in panic.
“Get back,” said the muffled voice of one of the men in the black combats.
“I just want to show you...,” Chuck began to say, continuing to walk forwards.
“Stay back or I will use lethal force,” the soldier said even more sternly, levelling his weapon at the black man.
Muz, Amy and Tom watched fearfully from the truck.
“Just listen to me,” Chuck demanded, matching the man’s vocal aggression but now standing still.
“Shit,” the soldier said then, on noticing the deformities of the zombie at the big man’s side.
He pointed his rifle at Sam’s head then and looked through the sights, as did the other soldiers. Sam cowered in response.
“No! Don’t shoot. He’s important,” Chuck shouted, stepping in front of the zombie who dropped to his knees. “My name is Colour sergeant Chi…”
There was a sudden loud crack, as one of the soldiers opened fire. The high velocity round struck Chuck square in the face and the back of his head exploded in a shower of blood. He remained standing, as pieces of brain tissue and fragments of skull rained down onto the road and Sam. Then he fell forward, slamming limp, face first into the road.
“No!” Tom yelled and jumped out the rear of the Jankel.
Digby broke free of Amy’s grip and leapt out the open rear doors in close second to the Polish man. Not comprehending that it was already too late, the dog raced fearlessly to Chuck’s assistance. He had come to regard the big black man as one of his pack now and was ready to defend him to the death.
“No!” Amy screamed, falling out of the back of the truck after her furry friend.
“We’re good,” one of the scientists in white shouted with a thumbs-up at the soldiers.
All but ignoring the onrushing survivors, a soldier looked up and gave the winch men a hand gesture. Their lifelines snapped taught and all nine of the men were yanked into the air by whirring motors that spooled the ropes. As they were drawn rapidly upwards, the helicopter pilot didn’t wait for them to be back on board before banking towards the western cordon line.
One of the soldiers pointed his rifle down at the ground directly at Digby and fired off a couple of rounds. With him swinging wildly in the air though, the bullets struck the tarmac well wide of their target. The dog jumped furiously, barking and baring his teeth.
Tom Lunged forward to where Chuck lay in a rapidly spreading pool of thick blood that was pumping from his gaping cranial cavity. Pulling the handgun from where it was tucked into the dead man’s beltline, he aimed it up at the dangling men and fired repeatedly. After four shots, the weapon’s slide remained locked back in the rear position, showing it to be empty.
More by luck than good aim, two of the soldiers suspended beneath the banking helicopter hung limp now. The other men in black opened fire, but Tom was already diving for cover behind the engine block of the Range Rover.
“Dla mnie zona i syn,” he shouted furiously, curled up behind the car, a tear spilling down one cheek.
Dizzy with adrenaline and fear, Amy caught up to Digby, as the dog continued to chase along the road after the helicopter. Thankfully, the hip dysplasia that was common in the two breeds he had been bred from severely limited his top speed. The woman grabbed him in a wrestling hold around his waist and dragged him to the ground, as he continued to bark ferociously at the dangling soldiers now high above.
Bullets continued to rain down all around, pinging off walls and shattering car windows. Amy then felt herself knocked backwards with such force that she thought she had been hit by an invisible heavyweight boxer.
Instinctively covering the pain in her shoulder with her opposite hand, she felt the area was sticky and wet. Lifting the hand to her eyes, she saw it was drenched with blood. As shock clouded her mind, it took her more than ten shaky breaths to realise that she had been shot. She slumped back against the road, lying flat and staring up at the sky.
She saw the helicopter disappear over the roofs, leaving nothing in her vision but blue sky and grey clouds. It was beautifully serine, she thought happily.
Spoiling the view, the heads of Muz, Tom and Sam appeared around her. The two of them that were able to do so were shouting at her, demanding her attention, but she wasn’t interested in anything they had to say. She just wanted to be left to look up at the clouds.
“We must stop bleeding,” Tom said urgently.
“Get her in the truck first,” Muz told him, already beginning to lift the limp woman in his arms. “We need to get back to the flat. It’s the only safe place.”
Amy smiled and reached up to caress the police officer’s face.
Chapter 16
Colonel Grieves
Having once more abandoned the virtually ruined Jankel on the grass by the doors, the few remaining survivors hurried back into the block. They no longer had any kind of plan. They just knew that they had to get off the streets, away from the zombies, away from that blob and up above the impending chemical attack.
Laboriously making their way up through the stairwell, Tom and Sam dragged the unconscious – possibly dead – Raj between them, while Muz carried Amy in his arms. The weight of the little but chubby woman was preying heavily on his legs and lungs, but she was in no fit state to walk. She was barely even conscious, moaning deliriously in pain with her head lolling against his chest. Digby walked at the police officer’s side, looking anxiously up at the woman and whining under his breath.
The paramedic only had a blood soaked bra to cover her breasts. While Muz had struggled with the truck to get them back to the tower, Tom and Sam had torn off the woman’s Jumper and T-shirt to reveal her bullet wound. Finding a padded bandage in the Jankel’s first aid box, they had done their best to dress the wound and stem the copious flow of blood.
The rifle round had struck the woman in the shoulder. Although it had cut through the top of her pectoral and latissimus muscles, it appeared to have passed clean through without splitting bone or rupturing an artery. So long as the bleeding didn’t start up again, she should be okay.
Above the panting and grunting of their own exertions, the men heard a sound from above. It was the noise of scrabbling claws on concrete and a rasping snarl, amplified by the bare walls. As one, they stopped on the stairs and strained to listen beyond Amy’s moaning and Digby’s whining.
They heard the eerie snarl again.
“Brilliant,” Muz sighed in utter exasperation. Did the shit never end?
“Sounds like animal,” Tom stated the obvious.
“Yeah. It’s probably following our scent up to the top floor. You lot wait here and look after Amy and Raj. I’ll go check it out,” Muz told the others, depositing the heavy woman on the cold floor in a bend between two flights.
“I come with you,” Tom offered.
“No,” Muz told him. “No. Stay here with these lot and keep a hold of the dog. I don’t want him biting anything and getting infected. Amy would kill us all if anything happened to him. Whatever is up there has got to be far more dead than alive now. I’ll be fine.”
He headed off up the stairs alone, cricket bat in hand. He couldn’t get the image of Chuck’s head exploding out of his mind. It was yet another horrifying memory that would torture his dreams. Despite the man’s obesity, out of all of them, Muz would have thought that if anyone were to survive this, it would have been him. He’d possessed a grim determination and practical military knowledge and skills, he had been strong and had seemed to find killing easy, both physically and mentally.
Three floors up from where he had left the others, Muz’s thoughts were still absorbed by the big man’s bloody death when he rounded the next corner. Before he realised it, he was face to face with half a fox that, halfway up the flight in fro
nt of him, was above him. The animal, though missing its pelvis and hind limbs, launched itself at him. The shrill scream it made was ear splitting, like that of a young girl in a state of pure terror.
Three floors below, the others heard that awful cry, followed by the frenzied sounds of snarling and shouting. Then it went silent.
“That not sound good,” Tom said to Sam.
The mute shook his head in agreement.
Digby began to whine even more loudly. He licked his jowls and pulled against the collar Tom was holding him by. Though they continued to listen, there were no further sounds from above.
Eventually, Muz’s head reappeared round the corner of the top of the stairs ahead of them and he waved his blood drenched bat.
“It’s clear,” he said, looking thoroughly worn out, a sheen of sweat glistening on his brow. “It was just half a fox. I’m surprised it managed to get so far up here with only two front legs.”
Though he tried to sound nonchalant, it was clear to the other men that the fight with the animal had drained him of what little drive he had managed to keep in reserve. He looked as though he were teetering on the edge of completing giving up.
The copper trod heavily back down to them and tried to gather the limp Amy back into his arms. He simply no longer had the energy though.
“Stand back,” Tom told him. “I carry. You help Sam.”
Muz nodded gratefully and instead passed his head under one of Raj’s arms. Thankfully, in stark contrast to Muz, Sam seemed to be growing stronger and more filled with vitality by the hour. The recovering zombie shouldered the majority of Raj’s weight and Muz was grateful for it.
They continued to head upwards, each step a challenge. Passing the remains of what had been the fox, Muz averted his eyes. The copper had beaten it almost to a pulp. The animal looked like road kill that had been hit by several cars, a mess of blood and fur that was barely recognisable as the animal it had once been. Muz had clearly carried on beating it long after it had ceased to pose a threat, Tom saw.
The Pole caught Sam’s eyes, as he too saw what Muz had done. Nothing was said however. If mutilating the fox had helped the copper to exorcise his bitter anger, then it was all to the good.
At long last, they reached the thirteenth floor and entered their dingy flat. Muz locked the cage behind them and in the living room, they deposited Amy and Raj side by side on the sofa. Muz, his face a deathly drained white, ignoring everyone, slumped into an armchair and sat staring at the blank face of the shattered TV screen.
Sam brought Amy a cup of cold water and urged her to sip at it, while Tom checked that her dressings were working to stop the bleeding. At first, the woman was groggy and reluctant to drink, but the deformed mute was insistent, and after about ten minutes, she had finished the entire glass. With fresh fluids in her, Amy picked up noticeably, becoming more lucid. She sat herself upright and checked the bandage herself, peering underneath at her wound.
“We do good?” Tom asked her.
“Not bad,” she whispered with a weak smile at Tom and Sam. “I’ll live.”
She reached down and rubbed Digby’s head, as he stared up at her from his position by her feet. His tail patted the carpet softly in response.
Though Tom tried to tell her to sit back and relax, Amy then set about tending to Raj. She tried to disregard his terrible confession. He had put his life on the line, on what couldn’t have been more than a hunch, to save them all. Whether or not that was down to pure guilt, it counted for a lot in Amy’s books.
After approximately fifteen minutes of her sitting, doting over him, holding a cold damp cloth against his hot forehead, Raj finally jolted back to life, his eyes wide as he gasped for breath.
“Get him some water,” Amy said.
Tom went to the kitchen and returned with a fresh glass, handing it to the doctor.
“What in God’s name did you do to that thing?” Muz asked from over in his armchair, as he watched the inhuman drink.
“I… I’m not sure,” Raj said, heavily fatigued. “But I don’t want to have to do it again anytime soon.”
“You must have had some idea what you were doing,” Amy stated, rinsing her cloth in a bowl of water, before wringing it out and reapplying it to Raj’s forehead.
“Well, I theorised that the amoeboid masses weren’t digesting their prey,” Raj told her, shuffling himself up against the backrest of the sofa. “Rather, they were absorbing them via cellular de-formatting. I guessed that, as the cells of my body had already been subjected to this process, I should in essence be immune to its attack and my own newly evolved cellular abilities might even be able to mount a counter attack, if you will.”
The men regarded him with thoroughly perplexed expressions. Amy, though she frowned, nodded in rudimentary understanding.
“You guessed?” she said. “That was very brave.”
“Man have big balls,” Tom agreed.
Feeling restless, Muz stepped out onto the balcony. Sensing the man’s clear unease, Amy struggled painfully to her feet. She first went to the bedroom to dig out a clean jumper, and then went out after him. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they leant against the rail in silence until Amy felt the need to try to snap Muz out of whatever it was that was eating his mind.
“It’s going to be okay,” she told him softly. The words sounded hollow to her ears. “We’ve got enough food to last us weeks, a month maybe, if we stretch it out. From now on, we don’t leave the block at all. Digby will just have to learn to do his business in one of the other flats.”
Muz shot her a powerful stare, his weary eyes brimming with pain, hate, sorrow, and fear. Without saying a word in reply, he went back inside, headed straight for the bathroom and locked himself in.
He stared at the reflection of his dirty weathered face in the mirror for some time. Then, lifting up his T-shirt between the bottom of his stab vest and his kit belt, he examined the bite wound to his side. It wasn’t deep and had already stopped bleeding, but he knew what it meant. He leant forward and banged his head against the glass as loudly as he dared, without the others in the adjacent room hearing the noise.
He’d allowed himself to become complacent. After fighting off countless animated corpses without a single one of them so much as managing to scratch him, he’d become cocky, blasé. That fucking fox had managed a lucky strike and had caught him in the abdomen where his vest wasn’t quite long enough to protect, before he had crushed its skull.
He could think only one thought; he had to get home to his family, or find them wherever they were now. He had to live, for the sake of his wife, their daughter and their unborn child. He could not quit.
Sucking in a deep lungful of air, he turned and opened the door, to find Raj standing just on the other side.
“What?” Muz asked. He didn’t like the knowing look the man was giving him.
Raj walked into the bathroom with Muz and closed the door behind him.
“Let me see,” he said without preamble.
“See what?”
“Please, Constable Dogan, let’s not play games,” Raj told Muz, leaving no room for argument. “After all that has happened, I know a dead man when I see one.”
From the moment he had come round on the sofa, the doctor with his inhuman intellect had seen the mortal fear in the police officer’s eyes.
Muz lifted up his T-shirt and Raj stooped to examine the wound. He then took one of the copper’s hands in his own and pressed his fingertips, while listening to the beating of the man’s heart.
“How long do I have?” Muz asked meekly.
Raj looked him square in the eyes. He was already beginning to exhibit signs of amoeboid reprogramming in his extremities. His skin was pallid, his heart rate slowing, and capillary refill was poor. There was little Raj could do for him now.
“The rate of assimilation varies, depending on a number of factors,” the doctor told him solemnly. “If you have a strong healthy immune system, it may delay the proce
ss slightly. Your metabolic rate is probably the main issue though, the slower the better in this instance. Being a man in your forties who appears to have lived a fairly sedentary lifestyle should actually go in your favour.”
Raj then bent and picked up a cardboard box from the floor and placed it on the toilet lid. The box contained numerous packets of tablets that had been collected from the other flats in the block. Raj rummaged through the contents and selected a box. Removing one of the blister trays, he popped out several of the tablets and handed them to Muz.
“Antibiotics,” he said, continuing to examine more packets. “Swallow.”
“Will they stop me from getting infected?” Muz asked desperately.
“You’re already infected,” Raj told him flatly. “The pills should retard the spread of the foreign cells to some degree though, and at least buy you a little time.”
“But I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
Having finished with the box, Raj then rifled through the cabinet above the sink and retrieved a small white box containing more pills.
“What are those?” Muz asked, gulping repeatedly, as he tried to force the tiny tablets down his dry throat.
“Sleeping pills,” Raj told him. “Take four for now. They will also help fight the assimilation process.”
“I can’t afford to sleep right now,” Muz told him.
“The main thing is that you try to remain calm and keep your heart rate as low as possible.”
Muz shot the inhuman doctor a hard look. How was it possible for him to stay calm, knowing what he faced?
“An increased heart rate will only push the cellular reformatting through your system faster,” Raj continued to warn him.
Muz downed the sleeping pills.
“Please don’t say anything to the others,” he implored the man. “Not just yet.”
“If that is what you want,” Raj replied, his strange eyes adopting something akin to compassion. “And rest assured, when the change takes full effect, I’ll end your suffering. I’ll make it quick and painless. You won’t even see it coming.”
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 45