Tag

by Everheart, AJ

  The drive is mostly uneventful and painfully slow. We have to stop several times to get out and clear a path. I swear my arms are twitching from the workout after we move the third Audi out of our path. One of the men kicks at the bumper once it’s moved, muttering something about “Fucking Audi drivers,” and it makes us laugh. Once the noise dies out, something groans in the tree line, attracted by the sounds we just made; quickly, we jump back into the Foxhound and keep moving.

  We drive around Heathrow, avoiding the main entrances and following the fence along until we find a spot my father deems safe. Alex helps them cut through the metal fence, and along with the Land Rover, we drive inside and across the tarmac of the runways. I’ve never been to an airport before; I’d seen them on the news and in films, so I know what one looks like. I’ve just never been inside one. We pull up by an open hangar, there are several planes stationary inside, a few carts with suitcases on, and a fuel truck, but nothing else seems to be alive inside—or undead, for that matter.

  “Right, let’s move. We need to get to the Underground entrance, and I can guarantee it won’t be this quiet over in Terminal 4,” my father says, keeping his voice low as not to disturb anything that may be lurking.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Alex

  We grab our shit and creep through the deserted airport. There are a few dead things lurking, but we quickly dispatch them. The worst was one of the ground crew, who crept up on us. He was decaying even as he shuffled towards us, the rancid smell hitting us moments before he did. His ear muffs hung off his skull, half the skin had slid away beneath them, and if it hadn’t been for his high-vis vest, I wouldn’t have been able to tell him apart from any other person in here, his clothes were that dirty and covered in blood and gunk. He begins to run at us down the corridor, but Donovan is already waiting and pushes over the vending machine so the monster gets trapped beneath.

  I hiss, “Did you have to? That much noise is going to draw them to us.”

  “Man, I have always wanted to do that. Don’t take this from me.” Donovan chuckles as we look down at the crew member still trying to break free. It’s when I hear him pop his own shoulder out of the socket that I know that we have to put him out of his misery. A knife to the head solves the issue, although I see Mia wince a little as I pull out my blade and clean it off. She may be a badass with a bow but some shit just doesn’t get any easier.

  We keep moving forward, everything quiet as we enter the terminal and move down the steps. I can hear low moans somewhere, but the acoustics in here are throwing me off, I’m not sure where it’s coming from as we get to the platform.

  “Thank fuck!” A soldier laughs as he dumps his bag on the floor and starts rummaging around in it.

  “Quiet, Timpson. We aren’t in the clear yet,” one of the female soldiers whispers as she nudges him with her foot.

  He pulls out a torch and holds it in his mouth as he clips his bag back up, that’s why we don’t realise what he’s trying to say as he reaches for his gun. It isn’t until he’s fired off a shot into the dark tunnel we see a group of zombies climbing onto the platform. There are only about five of them since I’m not counting the legless one clawing its way up with one arm. In such close quarters, Mia grabs her throwing knives instead of loading her bow, smart choice since I’m not entirely sure she won’t accidentally take an eye out when we’re bunched together this way.

  Hazeldine whacks one with the butt of his gun, and I can’t help but watch with disgust as its jaw detaches from its face and falls away. Donovan quickly kills the zombie that’s trying desperately to claw at his face, its head lands onto the tiles with a wet thump, and I briefly wonder when all this gore became normal?

  What was once a young woman in what could be denim dungarees launches herself at Mia, mouth snapping as it chews on air, frantically trying to reach her. It takes everything I have not to immediately rush to Mia’s side, but I have my own undead dickhead to deal with first, some fat man in a suit. The fat ones were the worst in a way, as there was more flesh to decay and fall off the bones. I can see half of his stomach hanging down lower, and I was willing to bet that beneath the rags he was wearing, his belly was rotting away, the excess flab pulling at his frame. That didn’t bother him though, as he kept trying to grab me with his porky fingers.

  My knife slides into his eye socket like butter, but that doesn’t stop him, his arms wrapping around my body as he tries to claw at me. The smell of death, damp, and decay turns my stomach as it fills my nostrils. Why couldn’t they smell like something nice like coffee, you know, to lure us in instead?

  I hear Mia call over, “Jesus, Alex, will you stop hugging these damn things and just get rid of it.”

  Somewhere else, Donovan and one of the other soldiers chuckle. I grin, it may not be an ideal situation, so fucking far from it in fact, but we still had to make jokes otherwise everything was too bleak.

  I push all my weight behind my knife and force it in deeper until it’s firmly wedged inside the creature’s skull. The thing drops against me as it finally gives up the fight with a weight I can’t support, so I let it fall to the floor. I climb over his body to reach Mia and check she’s okay. Her face is grim, but she’s fine, and I’m glad Hazeldine gets to see this version of Mia, in action, and not just the child he remembers.

  “Everyone okay? Anyone injured?” Hazeldine checks as he does a head count. He’s wearing the same solemn expression Mia is, and I can see where she gets it from. I wonder if she’d always been so serious. I imagine a toddler with cute little bunches and a frown on her sweet face—yep, I’d bet my life that Mia had always been the same.

  We all report back, no injuries and all accounted for. We’d all been vaccinated back at Litchfield, but that didn’t stop infection setting in or prevent us from bleeding out, it just guaranteed that we wouldn’t become one of these monsters.

  We grab our torches from our bags and climb down off the platform. We’re about to go down the tunnels, and I have a horrible feeling about the whole thing. There are a few emergency lights dotted down, marking out the way, but they don’t give off enough light for us to be able to see properly. I can also see that a few further down the tracks are broken, flickering or just not coming on at all.

  “Stay alert and stay quiet,” Hazeldine warns as he leads us into the dark.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Mia

  I hate the dark—no, correction, I hate everything that hides in the dark. We walk slowly, so slowly my legs ache, as we try to listen all around us and let our eyes adjust to the blackness. I can hear my heart hammering away in my chest like a tiny drum as we make our way forward. In theory, according to Dr. Landry, these tunnels should be pretty empty compared to topside, as there is simply no reason for them to stay below. I’d laughed at that, as if zombies were logical creatures, but he’d chastised me and explained that instinct would make them go above ground to hunt. Hunt us, other people, people they once knew, once loved. I’d called Alex callous the other day for talking about them as though they were animals, but maybe they were nothing more than animals now, their humanity completely wiped out by this stupid ZM8A…..stupid virus.

  We stop for a rest break about two hours into our little underground adventure, not a single thing has stirred around us, and if it has, it either can’t get to us or it can’t bother with us, which sounds nothing like any of the zombies I’ve met so far.

  “What’s it like being back?” Donovan asks Alex as we take a sip from our water bottles and sit down for a few moments. I can’t see him clearly in the dark, but I can tell which silhouette is Donovan’s and which broad figure is Alex’s.

  “Dude, I didn’t grow up in an underground tunnel—how am I supposed to answer that?” He chuckles as I hear him tap his fingers anxiously against the bottle.

  Alex’s past was his, I never needed to know about it because I trusted the man I saw in front of me now, but the last few days I know this mission had been eating hi
m up. The closer we’d gotten to London, the more agitated he’d become, and I don’t know if it was because there was too much hurt here, or because he was terrified of what he’d find upon his return.

  I playfully smack his arm, or what I think is his arm in the dimly lit tunnel. The warmth of his skin is inviting, and my fingers tentatively seek his body heat out in this damp hellhole.

  “This isn’t my home anymore, you know. It’s different, it feels different. London was never this quiet, never this terrifying.” He gives a small laugh, and I can feel the pain in his words. My hand finds his, and I give it a little squeeze.

  “I used to hang out with some bad people, so I’ve seen my share of shitholes, but I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d see London destroyed. I always thought that would come way after my time, when global warming melted half the planet and some dickhead politicians unleashed nuclear weapons. I never thought I’d be here to witness the world fall apart.” Alex’s words strike a nerve. I’d never thought I’d be here either, I was preparing to sit exams, and apply for university. I thought by now I’d be getting my first taste of freedom, living on my own and maybe making friends who were more like me instead of the army brats in the boarding school.

  None of us says anything for a moment, then Donovan whispers, “Me either.”

  I know I’m asking a lot, prying on his private life, but I can’t resist this little peek into Donovan’s life. He was so quiet, so private that I had no clue about what he even did before the outbreak.

  “What was your life like? You know, before?” I ask.

  He scoffs, as if remembering something funny. “I used to be a primary school teacher—yeah, I know, laugh it up.”

  I can almost feel Alex’s jaw drop next to me. I can’t keep the surprise from my own words either. “How the hell are you so good with a gun? And at fighting?”

  Donovan’s voice drops an octave as he talks about his father, it’s heavy with emotion.

  “My father was a farmer, hunting, camping, and wrestling used to be my hobbies before the outbreak,” he explains, and again, I hear him sip his water, the liquid sloshing around with the movement.

  Alex gives a low whistle. “Well…I didn’t see that coming.”

  That earns him a small laugh. “Yep, I used to teach history to ten-year-olds.”

  It makes me wonder how many of my primary school teachers made it? Did my old Au Pair survive too? Everyone can’t be gone, not all of them. Some of them must have fought, must have found a safe haven of some sorts. I sigh gently and remind myself that this is why we’re here, to give everyone a better chance.

  “I never finished my A levels, so maybe if we make it out of here you can teach me,” I say with a false cheeriness to cover up the fact I just said ‘if’ and not when.

  I can feel Alex smile in the dark next to me, it’s like the air shifts, and it’s one of the things I love about him. He changes the very atmosphere around me, and that makes me safe, reassured. I’m not alone in this.

  “Come on, let’s get moving,” my father calls, and I make my aching body stand back up.

  We haven’t finished our journey yet, and we’re only about half way, according to Alex’s guesstimations. My feet want to protest at that, but my brain knows we have to push on. We have no other choice.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Alex

  We creep through the tunnel system that used to make up the London Underground in darkness, our torches only offering thin, weak beams of light. It was a fucking stupid idea to travel this way, but Colonel Hazeldine was adamant, and nothing I said back at the army base would change his mind. That man is beyond stubborn, and it wasn’t just because I was shagging his daughter. The zombies that we had to put down at the entrance kept me pumped for a while, but we’ve been walking for hours now, and I can feel myself desperate for a rest. My feet are dragging in the dirt, and I feel like it’s the blind leading the bloody blind down here.

  “Stop here for a few hours,” a voice in the darkness whispers, and I don’t even question it or who it belongs to, I throw my bag down and drop back on my arse. There are only twelve of us on this mission, and I’m not surprised, it’s an idiot’s quest for El Dorado or the pissing Holy Grail, but I would follow Mia to the ends of the earth if I had to. Mia sits next to me and snuggles in, partly because it’s getting cold down here and the damp seems to be creeping into our bones.

  “Sleep, I’ll keep an eye out for a bit,” Donovan’s voice comes from across the tunnel, opposite us.

  “Yeah?” I chuckle softly as I shine my pathetic torch light in his direction. “What can you see down here that I can’t, Batman?”

  “Alex, Mia, get some rest and stop making noise,” comes Hazeldine’s voice in the blackness, and I feel like I’ve just been told off by my dad.

  Mia’s lips press against my neck, and I can feel her fighting a giggle. I wrap my arms around her tightly and give her a gentle squeeze. We sleep for an hour or so, leaning up against the wall of the tunnel, trying to use each other’s body heat to keep the chill at bay.

  I wake before she does and nudge Donovan with my foot to let him know I’m up, he flashes his light at me quickly, and I can just about make out his figure as he rolls over to try and get some sleep himself.

  I sit in the dark, not sure if anyone else is awake, not really caring either. It’s the silence I’m enjoying, I can hear the blood pumping in my ears, my heart beat filling my body with a steady rhythm. There are no groans, no guttural moans, no shuffling, no screams, and no tearing of flesh. The silence used to be too much, but I was too used to the hustle and bustle of London, now I relished the quiet. The quiet means that nothing was trying to eat me. Mia’s soft breathing is reassuring, and I control my breaths to match hers so we’re in sync. I feel oddly at peace in the dark, where I can’t see how ugly the world has become.

  The lone time doesn’t last long as the others begin to stir and wake from their naps, disoriented by the darkness.

  “Move out,” a low whisper carries on the air.

  We keep moving forward slowly until someone tells us it’s time to switch lines. We’re almost at the Jubilee line, and that makes me want to breathe a sigh of relief. We’re in the final stretch, we just had to make it down this line, find the right station, and get topside.

  We clamber up onto the platform and down on the other side to get onto the Jubilee tracks. The lights are out here too, the emergency lights flicker, giving the whole platform an eerie glow.

  We continue to creep down the tunnel in darkness, our torches dying out slowly. Mia treads carefully ahead of me, her bow drawn, ready for anything that may jump out of the shadows. The rest of us are equally twitchy with our weapons out, admittedly in trembling hands. I’d been given a gun, but my trusty knife is always my first choice and is tucked into my belt, where my hand rests on the handle, ready for action.

  There’s an odd gurgling noise, like something gargling water followed by a scream. We turn and do a quick check in, our twelve is now down to eleven. Something is following us in the blackness. We look at each other, fear so thick in the air I feel like I’m suffocating in it. Another shout dies out quickly, and I know we’ve lost another one. We can’t see a damn thing as we try to light up the tunnel with our torches.

  “Keep moving!” Hazeldine commands, and we obey, because although this hare-brained scheme is utter madness―it’s also our only hope of surviving the end of the world.

  The gurgling noise starts again, and this time, I scream, “Run.”

  We move, running as fast as we can. I make the mistake of turning to look behind, and my foot catches on a rail. I fall, landing on all fours before turning around quickly. I can hear the low groans of something no longer human close behind me. Mia shines her torch down the tunnel, and the thing that’s caught in her light makes me gag. It must be a mutant zombie, its skin is black and flaky like coal as it leaves a trail of soot-like streaks behind. We needed a closer look at these mu
tations, but right now, we just had to survive. Had the skin actually changed? Was it just camouflaging itself to fit in with its surroundings? This isn’t our mission, it was a problem we had to deal with another time, and right now, we needed to move. Whatever was once human about it is barely recognisable. It walks on two legs and has arms, but that’s about it. White teeth and milky eyes are stark in the blackness, and it begins gnashing its teeth as it moves forward. It seems uncertain, tilts its head at us as it pauses before taking a small step backwards, and I hear Mia hiss “Shit” next to me.

  She hooks her arm under mine and yanks me to my feet. Taking a shot in the darkness, we hear a howl, meaning she’d hit something. I grin at my little archery champion as we start running once again. Hazeldine directs us to a platform, and we finally make it topside. Leaning against a wall, I let Mia check me over, she tends to get all mother hen on me when I go out on patrol, and this was seemingly no different.

  “Alex…” she says slowly, and I see her hands shaking. Her big green eyes are filled with a fear I’ve never seen before. This was something new. Something terrifying.

  “I know,” I say, covering her hands with my own. I can feel her trembling beneath me.

  “It fucking paused, Alex. It thought about it.”

  Chapter Thirty