Tom was being quiet too. I think we were both intimidated by Charles. That was a situation I was happy to remain in. Charles had manoeuvred himself into a position of authority for some reason, and he was mental enough to keep it. Tom wouldn't be the man to wrest the lead from him. I couldn't be arsed.
"How's the nosing going, reporter boy?"
Charles threw the question at me without looking around. There wasn't any traffic, but animals were becoming bold now that the roads were abandoned. There was always a chance too that the infected might stray into the road. It didn't matter what car you were in. Hitting another human being, even one in a state of decay, would cause vehicle damage.
"It's going good. Getting some juicy shit. You should hear what half the women say."
"You're not getting anything horny from them. Not the people you've been talking to. You want to talk to the interesting women, you need to come over to my side of the community. They've put you in with all the posh ones. Teachers. Lawyers. Journalists. You think office folks are the only ones that survived this thing?
"You haven't seen anything until you've seen a construction team fight their way out with forklift trucks and power tools. That shit was messy."
"Did you see that?"
"See it? I was part of it, boy. I think you need to make me your next interview if you're after gore and gossip. My escape was a straight up horror story. If you're after something gritty and romantic, that make women blubber shit, then keep doing what you're doing. If you actually want to hear something interesting, then you come and find me."
That apparently signalled the end of our conversation. I pictured it. A group of men in safety gear wielding their expansive array of domestic weaponry to escape the zombie hordes. I don't think the infected would have stood a blind chance. Charles didn't appear particularly ashamed about this. So why in general was he cagey about his past? I was the first person, as far as I knew, that he'd even vaguely opened up to. Tom was included by rote by the fact that he was in the car, but I didn't expect him to act on anything he heard and I was sure that Charles thought the same too.
In silence the rest of the way, we pulled up to another anonymous street in another anonymous suburb. This one had seen some more action. We were perhaps twenty miles outside of the centre of London at this point. The infected would have got this far quite early, depending on how many of them escaped the centre. There were some shops on the small high street, further up the road. The area smelt of smoke and decay. One of the cars nearest to us was burnt out. There was garbled paint over the walls of the first house we pulled up to. Its windows had been bricked. Its neighbour's too. They had evidently embraced the rioting spirit here.
"Well blow me; looks like we've got somewhere interesting. Tom, you stay by the cars and cover us into the houses. I reckon Warren and me can clear one on our own. They're not big places."
I saw the back of Tom's head nod and we all got out of the car. The posh lad looked a bit pale. Everyone else looked a bit on edge, too. There was an odd atmosphere here. As if we'd come across either a mob of survivors, or a horde of the undead. I didn't know which one was preferable. Charles told the groups we'd have Tom covering us in. No one looked convinced, least of all Tom himself.
I wasn't surprised to see the insides of our house torn apart. Everything useful had already been either looted or destroyed. It seemed like simple blind luck that the houses hadn't been set on fire. Maybe they would come back to do that later. A full town on fire would be a dangerous and beautiful thing. As services started to degrade and stop, I had no doubt it would also become a thing of reality.
Everyone checked in. We cleared out eight houses to the top of the street and a t-junction that would lead us deeper into the locale. There was barely anything of use to us. There were no survivors. There were no infected bodies, either. This was an unsettling situation and no one was sure how to approach it. Charles took point, as we all hoped and expected. Staying on foot, in case the cars drew attention, he handed us all A to Z maps of the local area. He told us the page we should find the local streets on. We were going to walk around and scope the place out. No bloodshed. No more houses, beyond the ones we had already checked. We were simply going to 'case the joint' as it were.
"Wouldn't we be safer in the cars? What if someone shoots at us?" Ben asked.
"Yeah, or if we get rushed? What then?" Connor joined in with the nagging.
Charles rubbed his face with his hands, looking tired and frustrated, and perhaps also worried. "I understand, but we can't risk wasting fuel. There's a separate team to us doing siphoning, and there isn't a lot on offer. We don't know how long this is going to last. We need to keep things under control."
"We can't control anything if we're dead. Look. Just take one car, yeah? One car full of people. The rest of us will stay here. That's got to cover more space, with more eyes, than groups of us just wandering around waiting to be picked off? I don't mind saying that this place gives me the creeps. I think if we just walk around here then we're asking for trouble," Connor said.
Charles looked like he was inclined to agree. Connor's idea wasn't a bad one. I knew though that I didn't want to be one of the ones in the car.
"Okay so we go in one car. The biggest. But no one tells Travis we were wasting fuel, okay? Otherwise, it's my ass, and I won't let the buck stop there. Connor, Ben, Toby, you all come with me. You too, Tom, in case we need the gun. The rest of you stay here. If trouble comes, you know the rules. Get back to the community.
"If you're being followed, I don't care how much fuel you waste. I don't care if you run out of it in the middle of nowhere and have to hike home. Do not lead anyone aggressive back to our home. That's a whole new shitstorm we're not ready for yet."
We all muttered our understanding, and we separated. As the black VW Touran trundled around the corner and out of sight, my nerves turned into nausea. It didn't matter what way you looked at it. This was not going to end well.
* * *
It was whilst I was musing about how long the nicotine addicts would be able to keep up their addictions, that we heard the explosion. We couldn't feel it. It wasn't that big. The muted thud and roar though were unmistakable. We looked around at each other, faces all etched with concern.
"What do you think it was?"
"Do we check it out?"
"What if Charles is in trouble?"
"What if it's our lot causing the trouble?"
The chatter of questions bombarded me. The latter two were both possibilities if Charles' anecdotes earlier were even vaguely true. With the quiet of the streets, it was hard for us to tell how far away it had come from. We weren't even certain of the direction. We just had a vague idea, and the place was a nest of little streets and cul de sacs. That wasn't my main concern though.
"It's going to bring the infected," I said.
That brought the blabbering to a stop. No one else had considered what the noise, the heat, maybe the smoke, might do to attract the attention of the infected. And fast infected were often followed by the slow ones, sheep following their shepherd. I was torn between going to Charles' aid and running before the infected found us first. I was completely sure that, if Charles and the rest of our guys had been the cause of the explosion then we would have already heard from them. That meant they were in trouble.
"Get in the cars. We'll try to find them, then we'll get out of here," I decided.
My instructions weren't met with objection. Therefore by unspoken agreement, I climbed into the driver's seat of the lead car. How did I keep putting myself in these positions? I turned the ignition and fumbled around for the gear stick. Fucking automatics, I thought as I pushed the car into drive. I hated these things. I pulled away slowly, not wanting to seem incompetent at driving. It had been too long. I turned left to follow where Charles' car had turned. If any of us had been worried at first about where to look, it hadn't really been necessary. A plume of black smoke was starting to billow out into the sky a
nd the road. I could see bodies stumbling around. I drove forward cautiously until I could see well enough to recognise the stumbling form of Ben. He was bending over another body in the road. I pulled to a stop, and looked over at Jake, Tyler and Harry.
"You ready? Got weapons?"
They showed me they were. We all dashed out. I was expecting Ben to be one of the infected. I had assumed from my distance that we would find him feeding on someone else's prone corpse. That wasn't the case. As we ran up, he registered us for the first time. Eyes that were still very much human locked with mine. He was, however, stooped over the charred corpse of Connor.
"What the fuck happened?" I asked.
"That fucking idiot, Tom. He was meant to be watching from a distance. We smelt gas in a house. He came in. We were jumped by an infected. Fill in the fucking blanks."
I looked at what had presumably been the house they were investigating. There wasn't much of it left. It was a charred and fiery ruin. I pulled Ben up and away from Connor's body. It was lying unnaturally. This was the way he had probably landed. Given the distance from the house, he had probably been thrown from an upstairs room. There were cuts amongst the burns. I couldn't tell if there were any bites. I didn't know if they had been attacked. But I wasn't taking any chances. I didn't want to be nearby if Connor reanimated.
Ben stumbled along with me. He was mumbling incoherently. I had to assume he was going into shock. I almost threw him into the waiting hands of Jake and turned back to the house. There couldn't be any more survivors. How long could I look for people before we would have the undead at our feet? Why had they gone into the house in the first place? Charles had said they were just going to be scoping out the area.
I heard a shattering from across the street. I wheeled around to see an arm flailing out through broken glass. The erratic movements were shredding the skin of the arm. The infected inside that house would likely lose the limb before they managed to escape that particular tomb. Just how dead was this area?
There was disorganised chaos behind me as I headed across to the house. I hadn't forgotten Charles' code. I wasn't going to bring back anyone who was potentially dangerous or infected. I wanted to try to understand what had happened. Ben's injuries weren't known. If he didn't survive, we'd have no idea why they had entered that house. More survivors meant more clues.
The house was a ruin. Debris was scattered everywhere. This was the kind of accident you'd usually see on the front page of every tabloid the next day. 'Upper Class Muppet Triggers House Gas Explosion.' I could smell burning. I didn't know if there were fires starting elsewhere. I was surrounded by smouldering rubble. A charred dining table. The melted remains of a fridge. Tattered clothes. No bodies on the ground. I headed towards the back. Something staggered towards me through a haze of smoke. The figure wasn't walking normally, but I had to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone walking away from an explosion that had ripped out the side of a building. I waited until it came closer and when it did, I realised it was Charles. That only left Toby and Tom unaccounted for. If Tom had pulled the trigger, then I was willing to guess he was in more parts than I was willing to collect for evidence.
Charles' staggering from side to side came to a stop when he fell over a wall. The man had no sense of balance, or direction. I hesitated before moving closer to him. I still didn't know if he was an infected, of any variety. He could just be disorientated, but his behaviour was a lot closer to that of the infected. I leant down and scrambled my hand around the floor, trying not to take my eyes off Charles whilst I felt for something that I could use to get his attention. If he was human, he'd probably not react. If he was infected...well then that was something else entirely that I'd have to deal with. In my left hand, my fingers clenched tighter around my machete. In my right, my hands closed around something warm, round and pliable. I grimaced slightly. I risked a brief glance down. I saw that I was clutching a doll's head. One side had melted with the heat, and the hair had been scorched away. How...genre appropriate. I took what I hoped passed for aim, and threw the head overarm at the struggling figure of Charles. He was acting like a tortoise on its back. The doll hit him on his belly. He stopped thrashing around and I held my breath.
"Well don't just stand there, you gimp, help me up!"
I shuffled over. The dead, the infected, they don't talk. Charles looked in bad shape, but he was alive. I helped him to his feet, and we staggered back to the main group. I helped him onto the bonnet of the car.
"Have you seen Toby and Tom?" I asked.
Charles doubled over and started coughing, great big wracking heaves of his chest that were painful to listen to. Someone started to gingerly pat him on the back, hesitantly, like they were stroking the scales on a snake.
"I haven't got a clue where they are. Tom...the silly shit. We all got thrown out by that blast."
"Why were you in the house in the first place?" I asked.
"Because I ordered them to."
That was a door slammed in my face. No one else seemed to either notice or be bothered by the fact that Charles had gone off-piste with his own plan. Charles bent to coughing once more, and at one point I thought he was going to bring up a lung. Eventually he rose again, eyes streaming and voice hoarse.
"Where are Ben and Connor?" I continued my barrage despite Charles’ attempt to shut down.
"Connor is dead. Ben isn't much better."
"Is he in the car?" I asked, making sure we at least had our injured with us.
I nodded at Charles. He rose to his feet, unsteady, but better than he had been in the wreckage of the building. "Come on then, let's get the fuck out of here before the dead fuckers come calling."
"But what about Toby?"
"What are the rules? No risks. Come on. Let's go."
Everyone else filed mutely into the cars. Beyond them, at the end of the street, I could see some figures shambling steadily towards us. We were out of time.
There was more to this than Charles was letting on—much more. Now was not the time to question him. Maybe I would go over his head and speak to Travis or Gordon directly. Charles had seemed like a loose cannon on our first outing together, and now he had cost the lives of three of our own. If we were lucky, that would be the end of today's losses.
As I got in the car and looked at the slumped figure of Ben in the backseat, I changed my outlook. Today had not been a good day.
* * *
"Because he's a fucking lunatic, that's why!" I said.
We were standing in the garage Travis used to book people in. I was symbolically close to the exit of the community, but right then, I didn’t care.
Gordon wasn't impressed. Arms crossed, a deep frown lining his forehead, he had been dismissive of each and every one of my concerns. He didn't care that Charles had temper swings to match Dr Jekyll. He didn't care that Charles was amending the rules he had set to suit himself as he went along. He didn't give one flying fuck that Connor was dead, that Tom and Toby were missing, and that Ben had died before we made it back to the community. They had been annoying, sure. Tom had been a bit weird. I didn't even know Toby that well. But we were limited now. Both in manpower and resources, we had to cherish and make good use of every little thing that we had left. That Charles, with Gordon's support, would be so dismissive of a human life was disconcerting to say the least. I thought that I had finally found a place with a stable hierarchy and a good sense of human values. After just a week, I was already having to question that assumption.
Gordon's face was going redder to match my own rising ire. We were alone. That had been a mistake. I had aired my concerns to Carla. She had agreed with my raising this with Gordon. I didn't have anyone else from the recon team though to back my concerns. The only other man that had seen Charles flip was Tom. Now Tom was missing. Would anyone else have the balls to come and say anything about him? I doubted it. The more I thought on it, the more I worried for my own personal safety. Then I thought about Rich. Charles answered to Rich be
fore he came to Gordon with his concerns. Rich seemed like a nicer guy than Gordon—more level-headed. I would take my issues to Rich and see what he had to say about them.
"You have taken a personal dislike to someone in the community. That is not of my concern. I'm more worried about the fact you've decided to come straight to me with unsubstantiated personal rants. Don't you think you should have asked Charles about your concerns first? He is your direct superior." Gordon sounded like he was trying to dismiss me. I wouldn’t let him.
'Superior'? I felt like spitting the word back in his face. Charles was not my superior, not in any way, shape, or form. But he was evidently in Gordon's back pocket, if not halfway up his arse. Even if I did take my concerns to Rich, would he even be able to do anything about it? Not about Charles specifically, maybe, but he might be able to take me off the recon routine. I hadn't even checked on how long Charles would be out of action. I doubted it would be for very long. Carla was out information gathering for me on that score. I had agreed to meet Karen later in the afternoon, too.
There were lots of questions being asked about the last run. Despite what we had all encountered, no one was immune to death. We didn't expect to lose so many of our own so soon. Especially in what appeared to be a needless accident. I suspected Karen had more questions for me this time, than I did for her. I didn't mind. My reputation for questions was spreading. I now had people approaching me, wanting to tell me their stories. It was strange, being a man in demand again. This time without an insane boss breathing down my neck, and not so many of the undead at our doors.
Travis still approved of my activities. I suspected Gordon might have a thing or two to say about that after our confrontation. Had I unwittingly thrown myself under the noses of the leadership? Even worse, was I on the tracks, with one of them driving the train? Travis might posture like a man in charge, but Gordon was the one pulling the strings, and if he thought Charles' psychoses were excusable then the two had a relationship I hadn't yet been able to figure out.
Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival Page 13