"You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? I’m not sure what Rich thinks about it, but if we’re being honest here, I don’t think just dying is enough for you. I’m quite tempted to take off your balls and make you eat them, but you’d bleed out a bit too quickly. You might even pass out, and I don’t want you to miss any of the fun. I’m also giving serious thought to waking Tom up and letting him loose on you. He’s got a pretty good reason. Then, I think of my sister. And Isabelle. And Lana. And everyone else you’re responsible for killing, whether the blood is under your fingernails or on your conscience. And I really want you to suffer."
"Does that make you any better than me?"
"Probably not. Would I feel bad about it? No. The country is almost destroyed and people like you are still hammering in the nails. We’re better off without shitstains like you make the place smell worse."
"What are we going to do with him, Warren?"
I thought about it for a few seconds. "Put the gag back on him. The car still works doesn’t it?"
"Can’t see why it wouldn’t."
"I’m going for a drive," I said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The fuel gauge was plentiful for me to do what I needed. We’d have to hijack a car back into the community, so I didn’t worry about keeping this one clean or safe; it was marked. We wouldn’t be allowed back in this. Might as well get a bit more use out of it.
The rear suspension of the car bounced as Austin shifted himself around in the boot. He wasn’t going to escape. He was still belted up. Watching Rich at work was mesmerising. He could have single-handedly got Austin into the car. I pitched in a hand, if only to look like I could help. I didn’t care where I was headed. I just needed to get over ten miles away from the house. My headlights cut through the darkness, bolstering the erratic light from the moon. I flicked through the radio to be greeted with static. I tried the CD changer, and nearly swerved the car off the road as I was greeted with metallic pop tones. It was awful; some nineties boy band that had dressed in bad clothes and had terrible haircuts; it was, however, the first time I’d heard music since Mr Classical on the run to Worthing Pier. I grinned like a fool and tapped at the steering wheel to the predictable beat. Small things made the biggest differences in days like these.
I pulled the car over in a layby. I was near a motorway, judging by the road signs, and quite close to enough residential areas that I shouldn’t have to wait long for what I wanted. I opened the boot and, struggling against his weak kicks and rolling body, hauled Austin out of the confined space. With his legs hanging over the edge, I hauled the rest of him out and let him fall to the tarmac. He grunted, but he didn’t fight. He couldn’t have escaped if he’d tried. I got back in the car and turned it around so I had him in my headlights, about six car lengths in front of me. He looked up, and I think he expected me to mow him down. The thought had crossed my mind, but even a couple of broken bones and a long bleed-out wouldn’t be enough suffering.
I leaned on the horn. It tore through the still night. Austin shrank down at the belting shriek. My ears started to ring. I leaned up, and looked in my mirrors and all around. My heart rate was increasing. My fingers were tingling with anticipation and excitement. I secretly hoped it wasn’t because of what I was going to see happen to Austin, but I knew deep down that I had gone calmly and knowingly through this process because I was going to enjoy seeing him get his final and deserved punishment. I left it a minute, according to the digital clock on the car, which was also reliably informing me that it was two in the morning. It didn’t feel like it. I pushed the heel of my palm onto the steering wheel again and let the horn howl through the night again, a banshee against the backdrop of the dead UK.
Austin started flopping away now, trying first on his knees, and then trying to roll, to get off the road and to safety. He was still trussed up tight and he had too much bulk to make a good fight of it. I inched the car forward, keeping him in my sights. On the edge of the tinnitus overwhelming my ears, I heard a new noise. It wasn’t Austin. I was imaging that man’s sobbing renewed, but it was something else entirely. It was a roar. The trap had sprung. My eyes darted feverishly between my wing mirrors and my rearview. The lights ahead of me made the visibility behind me almost nonexistent. My right foot twitched over the accelerator. I had to be ready to gun it straight away—especially if they decided my car was a better meal before they saw the man on the road in front of me.
I realised I had started panting without being aware of it. I tried to calm my breathing, taking in a long lungful through my nose and letting it out through my mouth.
Movement to the right of the road caught my eye. An undead broke cover and headed for Austin. He saw it coming. I couldn’t hear any yells from here; the undead was louder, and my ears were still damaged from the horn. I was glad I couldn’t hear it. It made it seem less real; less palpable. Like watching a horror film in mute, without the sinister imposing music and the laments of the dying lead, the scene lost some of its gruesome quality.
The sprinter rugby-dived onto Austin’s prone body. It started tearing at clothes, and ripped two of the belts clear. Now I could hear Austin yell. It was a mindless stream of terror and profanities, and he was turning the volume continuously up. This human noise seemed to be the last catalyst needed to bring the rest of the infected running. Five more followed. Three, from the direction the first had come. A fifth sprinted past the car, ignoring me and heading straight for its friends already chowing down. I couldn’t identify ages or genders. I didn’t want to. I craned my neck slightly, trying to see if Austin was still putting up a fight. I couldn’t hear him shouting any more. I heard a ripping noise and a sucking pop, and saw a forearm lifted above the crowd. Red dew misted in the headlights. If there was anything left of him after this, he wouldn’t be much of a danger to humanity.
I was so mesmerised that I stopped looking in my mirrors. An infected slammed into my window so hard I almost jumped into the passenger seat. Spider cracks spread across the glass and my legs went hot around the same time the tang of urine hit me. Hands slapped against the side of the car. I imagined the infected pulling itself up against the door to try to force itself through the window again. A bloodied forehead came into view. I planted myself in the seat and found my marbles. I pushed off the handbrake and hit the accelerator. In my panic, I forgot how to drive. The car juddered forward a foot or so and stalled. I swore, twisting the key in the ignition as the zombie started pulling itself up the car again. On its feet this time, a naked torso swung into view. It had a crescent of bites from the side of the bellybutton out to the flanks. They had barely punctured the skin. Assuming there were no other injuries to this man, these light bites were all it had taken to turn him into one of the infected.
Flashbacks of the blood spatter from my hammer attack on Alan, the encounter with the infected closed in the clubhouse on the pier, and the ill-fated explosion that closed those events hurled through my brain. It could have been so easy, at any of those points, to have ingested infected blood, been lightly scratched or bitten—and yet here I was. Every single one of the faster infected had survived their encounters with the undead to end up succumbing to the virus anyway.
It would have been sweet justice to see Lana tearing through the forest to feast on Austin’s lower intestines, however fate, karma or whatever hadn’t seen fit to play that cameo out for me.
Pulling myself together, I backed the car away. I was meek at first. I didn’t want to get the car jammed on infected body parts. Some of the zombies looked up from their now unidentifiable carcass as I drove past, but my shiny hunk of metal wasn’t interesting or weak enough for them to tear themselves away from guaranteed nourishment.
Clear of the riot, and slow infected shambling in quite late to the party, I pushed the accelerator and got out of there. It was two thirty in the morning now. Time flies when you’re having fun.
* * *
I expected Rich to be waiting for me. I was instead met w
ith Tom as I headed upstairs to find a bed for the night. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. He jumped nervously as I came into his room, even though I had hoped he knew I was friendly. I whispered to him in the time-honoured way of talking in the middle of the night when you’re trying to keep the volume down. We basically hissed at each other.
"I was beginning to think I’d never get to sleep in a bed again." Tom’s voice was wistful.
He shifted in place and winced. The welts I’d seen lashed across his back looked excruciating. These were only a handful of the wounds I’d actually managed to lay me eyes on. I felt uncomfortable looking at him in pain, and my palms started to itch. "Can I get you anything?" I asked feebly, and regretted it the moment the words left my lips.
"You’ve done enough already, Warren. And I meant that. I’m not joking. I must have seen a bit stuck up when we first met. I’ve been put in my place. Repeatedly."
"What they did to you should never have happened."
"Truthfully, I wish I’d died in that explosion. It was horrible. I thought you were all dead. How many?"
"Ben and Connor. We’ve not seen Toby since, either."
"I think he survived, you know. I remember seeing him stagger away. I wonder if they were after both of us, instead of just me. If I can get my hands on Charles, I’ll tear him a new one. And I mean that literally."
"I can’t say I blame you." I sat next to him on the edge of the bed, placing my hands in my lap to stop myself from fidgeting. "I’m sorry. We’ve already dealt with Austin."
Tom grunted. "I hope he suffered."
"I considered castrating him," I answered bluntly. "In the end I went with feeding him to the undead."
Tom considered this. "Did he get a chance to fight back?"
"I threw him out of a car, pretty much hog-tied. Slammed at the horn and waited for them to come and get dinner. When I left there was almost nothing left of him."
"That works for me. What do we do now?"
"We need to get back to the community. You need proper rest and medical care. The bigger picture though? People need to know about this place. They need to know what Gordon is like, and what their leaders have decided they can do with the citizens. It gets worse too. There are bigger communities in the country, and they have military support. They’ve been hiding it all from us."
Tom grunted again. I wondered if it was painful for him to talk. His ponytail was gone. His hair was shorn. Had they tried to scalp him, or were they just into degrading him?
"So we have a plan. It might not be a great plan, but it’s a plan. We, that is me and Rich, we’ve been exiled. We were set up. We know that much. No one inside the community knows the truth, though I’ve got friends that will want to know why I’m gone."
"Did anyone notice I was gone?"
"We noticed. We went back to look for you. We thought you were dead."
Tom nodded his understanding. "More than I expected. Didn’t think anyone would miss the posh twat with the shotgun."
"Any healthy and sane person that’s lived to this point is going to be missed. Austin? No one’s going to mourn his loss. Not even those that claimed to call him a friend."
"Are you going to kill Gordon too? And Charles? Travis?"
"I thought you wanted to deal with Charles?"
"I’m not sure that I’d have the strength, personally. More wishful thinking."
"Then I’d be happy to carry out your innermost desires. As for Gordon and Travis? I’m not sure that it’s up to me. Personally, I’d just like to let people know the truth and have the whole community decide. They should be exiled as a minimum. We shouldn’t stoop to their level though. No torture. No murder.
"Anyway, enough talk. Shouldn’t you be resting?"
"I tried. I’m not used to getting much sleep these days. I thought I’d be able to sleep forever, especially when Rich put me in here. Turns out my body gives up after a couple of hours. I’ll be fine. I’ve got some water and I’ve got a duvet. That’s more than I’ve had for I don’t know how long. I’ll put my head on a pillow and close my eyes, and I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you for caring, Warren. I honestly thought I was going to die in that room."
"I’m not the only one to thank. And I’m glad we found you alive. I wish we’d come sooner."
"It could have been worse. You could have come later."
* * *
I woke as the smoky fingers of dawn began to wind their way around the room. I winced as I lifted myself off the chair. I hadn’t wanted to dislodge anyone and found myself curled up with a blanket. After getting used to the cot in the community I thought it would have been uncomfortable, but it had been massively more comfortable than sleeping in a car with the chance of infected slathering at the windows.
Isabelle was still curled up asleep. She had done well, to keep unconscious through all the goings-on last night. I wiped sleep from my eyes and stumbled out of the living room and into the kitchen. I felt normal for a brief second, until I looked out the kitchen window and saw the dead world out in the fog. Even at this time in the morning I was used to life. A postman, a milkman, a jogger, a dog walker. Anything. The sound of planes. The hum of distant traffic. The background noises that were the soundtrack to everyday life. All I needed was a slow infected to stumble past the window, half a face bitten off, a towel draped around its shoulders, and toilet roll half hanging from its arse where it was caught on the toilet. Not even the local wildlife could muster some life out there for me.
Feet moved on the floor upstairs. I didn’t have my bearings and I wasn’t sure which room it was. It could have been either Tom or Rich. Tom was a confessed insomniac and Rich had never slept heavily in his post as security.
I found a bottle of orangeade. There was no fizz as I unscrewed the cap, but I poured myself a full glass and enjoyed the different taste nevertheless. I didn’t take my eyes away from my window vantage point until I knew everyone was up and moving around. Both men had come downstairs, and I could hear Isabelle rabbiting away to them, almost back to her old self. Eventually, Tom came into check on me. He limped across the lino-covered floor and I felt myself wince in continued sympathy.
"Should you be up?" I asked.
He shrugged. "What else am I going to do? What are you looking for?"
"We’ve been watching the house for a few days now. Every morning a car has come from the community. We’ve seen Gordon. I’m keeping an eye out for it. They’re used to seeing Austin. We need to be ready to say hello, with guns."
"I wouldn’t like to be the one knocking on the door. Come in and sit down for a bit though. You’ve been out here for ages. Before you ask, I’ll watch the window."
"Aren’t you sick of standing up?"
"I kind of got used to it, you know? Go on. Bugger off."
That was our morning. Small talk and awkward moments.
After Tom found some iodine, he went upstairs to wash down some of his more tender wounds. We heard him cry out once or twice, not enough to scare Isabelle. I decided then, that Tom had stones of granite. After he was finished, he swapped with Rich for awhile and watched the window.
I found myself biting my nails more than once. As a habit I hate, I was disgusted each time I had to stop myself from doing it. When I heard Rich call out from the kitchen that a car was pulling up, my guts hit the floor and I sprang from my seat.
It was time.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"There’s just one here. It’s Rick," Tom said.
"Rick? I… I can’t do this." I shook my head and paced from one side of the room to the other. I was angry at Rick and had been for weeks, when I thought on it—since the start of the outbreak. Could I hurt him though? Especially if it was true that he didn’t actually know what was going on in here? Was ignorance excusable?
A knock at the door. All eyes turned to it. Isabelle was hiding behind the sofa and poked her head around. I waved her back down. I didn’t want her to witness violence, if it came to that.
/> The first knock had been timid. We didn’t answer quickly enough, and this time it was harder, more urgent. Rick’s high-pitched voice followed.
"Come on, Oz, hurry up. There’s slow ones out here and I don’t want to be lunch!"
He sounded pathetic. I steeled myself. He was asking Austin for help, despite what we had gone through at the pier. Ignorant or not, the line of his loyalty was now a chasm in the road. I marched to the door and yanked it open. Rick’s hand was raised to knock again, his hand clenched in a fist. If he’d had his wits about him, he could have turned that straight into an attack. As it was, he was a tired wreck. As he leaned forward slightly with the motion of his knock and the recognition registered on his face, his jaw went slack. I grabbed his loose shirt and yanked him past me into the hallway. I turned, kicking the door closed behind me. The satisfying slam shook the wall; I could feel the thud in the air.
Rick yelped. He staggered to his feet, moving to run away through the house. The imposing figure of Rich stood in his way, arms crossed and eyes fierce. Rick turned back to me.
"You’re… you’re both meant to be dead. Gordon said…"
"Gordon’s been saying lots of things. What did he have to say to you to get you so on his side? Or is this a special duty for his favourite pets?"
"Duty? I have… I don’t know what you mean?"
"Guarding a rundown house during the day? Odd noises coming from inside? Didn’t occur to you to ask any questions?"
"Yeah, 'cause asking questions is something Gordon reacts well to, isn’t it?"
"Gordon didn’t give a shit that I was asking questions about people’s lives. He was worried about what he was hiding."
"Come on then, Mr Sensation. What’s the revelation? Now what are you blowing out of proportion and spoiling for everyone?"
I put my hand up instinctively and Rich grunted. I’d stopped him moving before he’d known he would shift. "Be careful what you say, Rick. Words come back to haunt people these days. Austin regretted everything he’d said, right up to the point I left him out for the zombies to feed on."
Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival Page 26