It wasn’t enough for them, but it was all I could give. There would be death aplenty in the days to come. If they didn’t trust me, if they didn’t do as I ordered… well, there was no reason that they couldn’t face the same fate I had planned for, Briony.
Chapter 22
It was a tense journey, through the silent snow-covered streets. Briony kept her little group of eleven Infected a good few hundred feet ahead of us. As soon as they came close to a zombie, that creature did it’s best to hurry out of the way.
If it wasn’t fast enough, well, we paused as the unfortunate creature was quite literally torn apart. One of the eleven would trot over to Briony, bloodied gobbets of flesh held in its outstretched hands.
The first time it happened, she reached out her own, overlong fingers and then hesitated, head turning towards me before she waved the minion away. I grinned at that, knowing that she had some reluctance to fully show off the monster she had become.
My own minions, meanwhile, kept a little ways back from me. Their faith had been shaken and I was okay with that so long as it wasn’t broken. They would still need to do as I commanded or I would be forced to kill them.
Gregg, I wouldn’t kill, of course, but he would have to rein in his dark looks and muttering. It was likely fear of the Infected, but still, it was annoying. Isaac, on the other hand, had set aside his own feelings. He’d been a mercenary long enough to understand that you sometimes had to fight alongside the enemy to accomplish a goal.
Even so, he kept his weapon to hand and hung back far enough that he could escape should the Infected turn on us. Smart man.
I paused beside a street sign that pointed out the direction of the docks and waited patiently, shivering a little from the cold, as the Infected tore apart another small group of zombies. They did it with little real noise and they used their own fists to crush the skulls of the weaker undead.
It was interesting to watch them fight, to see them kill. None of them seemed to have the same bone spur growths as Briony, and I wasn’t sure if that was due to the changes wrought in her by the ill-conceived vaccine she had been injected with.
From an outside perspective, it looked very much like a Reaper and Feral set up. Either there was something about the altered parasite that prevented it making others that could challenge her, or she killed any that began to show signs of the change.
I suspected the latter.
“Gonna take forever,” Gregg muttered as he looked up at the sky.
Dark clouds hung there, covering it in every direction, as they had done since before the summer. It was rare to get a day without them and I gathered that was due to the nuclear explosions and fires.
Whatever the cause, it meant that when night came it would be pitch black and we would be outside, in the freezing cold, with a group of Infected who could probably see better than we could.
“Ten minutes,” I said and jerked my thumb up towards the sign above me.
He glanced at it and muttered again before looking away. I rolled my eyes and went back to watching the Infected feast.
One of them was approaching Briony with yet another offering of bloodied, decaying, zombie flesh. She glanced towards me and my grin widened as I caught the gleam of her eyes beneath the hood.
Her hand shot out and she grabbed the meat, raising it to her mouth and tearing at it with her teeth. All the while, she kept her eyes on me, defying my mocking smile. Blood ran down across her chin as she chewed and I let out a theatrical yawn.
A hissed order was enough to get her group moving and as they started walking, I raised my fist and set off after them. I didn’t need to look back to see that my minions were following me. They weren’t that upset. Even so, the point between my shoulder blades began to itch and that old paranoia reared its ugly head.
The dockyards were immense. Full of huge buildings that stretched for hundreds of meters. Containers sat in endless rows, slowly rusting as their protective treatments flaked away. Cars and trucks, wagons and forklifts sat where they had been abandoned, two years before.
Thick pipes ran alongside the buildings, carrying who knew what, and bodies lay everywhere. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of zombies had died. Recently too. Many were half buried in the snow, sometimes singly, other times in large piles.
We walked amongst them slowly, cautiously. Following the walkways on the gantries above, all the way to the steel towers that would have once held fuel. They were empty then though, their fuel spilt across the ground, having leaked from the holes gouged in the sides.
It seemed like we could wander for hours, or days, trying to find our way through the mass of warehouses, containers and detritus of a civilisation two years dead. For some, Gregg and my minions included, it was a little awe-inspiring, perhaps even humbling.
Isaac seemed to be scanning everything, head moving constantly on a swivel as he tried to see in every direction at the same time.
I just saw the death all around me and I felt something close to peace.
Briony dropped back, leaving her group a good distance ahead of us in an effort not to appear like she was betraying us. I smiled at that as it was unnecessary. I didn’t expect betrayal until we reached the Genpact bunker.
“Where now?”
“We need a boat large enough for my people.”
“Just yours?”
“Yes.” I smiled at her frown. “You won’t need it.”
Her eyes narrowed, the movement causing dried flakes of blood to fall from her chin like bloody snowflakes. She ignored them and just stared, silently, as I refused to say more.
Finally, she nodded, then turned to head back to her people. A few whispered words and several of them broke away from the group, setting off running as they searched for a boat. I shivered a little in the cold, my fingers and toes had long since gone numb.
“We need a fire,” I said to Isaac as we waited for the Infected to return. “You seen anywhere we can have one without attracting attention?”
“Plenty of places,” he grunted. “Soon be too dark to see the smoke.”
“Good. Let’s set up for the night. Not much we can do once it gets too dark to see anyway.”
It didn’t take long to find somewhere suitable. Inside one of the larger buildings were some offices with doors that could be blocked. They would do as sleeping spaces. The warehouse itself had a roof almost fifty feet high with plenty of open panels for the smoke to escape through.
We kept the fires small, just enough to provide a little warmth for the people gathered around them. The fuel was made up of the office furniture and other odds and ends that had been lying around the warehouse, drying for two years.
The atmosphere was muted. My minion's were sullen companions as they ate their rations and tried to warm themselves. I sat a little way off with Gregg and Isaac. They too were rather morose and I found myself actually missing Greggs mindless chatter.
I was feeding small bits of wood into the fire a few hours later when Briony seated herself beside me. Gregg nearly leapt out of his seat and Isaac reached for his weapon as I just grinned at them both.
“You move quietly,” I offered by way of greeting.
“Not quietly enough it seems,” she replied with another frown at my lack of surprise.
I lifted my shoulders in a shrug and kept feeding the flames.
“We have found a boat.”
“Where?”
“Two kilometres to the south. It will suit your needs.”
I nodded slowly. Two kilometres wasn’t that far by boat but if we approached, we would be doing it under a hail of fire. Plus, I already knew they had rocket launchers as Isaac’s squad had used one on another boat in another place.
The helicopter sitting idle on the deck would likely be outfitted with some form of weaponry. It would be foolish beyond belief to consider otherwise. Which meant we needed a distraction if we were to accomplish our task.
“There’s a boat out on the river. A tanker.”
“Yes, well, there are some people on there that need to die.”
“This is why you want a boat?”
“Yes. But they will be heavily armed and able to fire upon us as we approach.”
I widened my smile as her eyebrows drew down, her eyes filling with anger.
“This is not our fight. We have brought you here and found you a boat. Give us the location of the base.”
“No.”
A slow hiss escaped her and Gregg’s hand moved, drawing the knife from the sheath on his belt. I shook my head, not looking his way, but warning him none the less.
“You,” I said. “You can join us on the boat. Your… people, can swim across to it. The cold won’t bother them, I’m sure.”
“And do what? They can not climb the sheer sides.”
“It’s at anchor,” I said, smile widening. “Which means an anchor chain. Your people aren’t affected by the cold and don’t get tired.”
She didn’t immediately reply and I was pretty sure that I had her almost ready to agree. She just needed a little extra push.
“The people on the boat are from the bunker.”
Briony didn’t respond though her nostrils flared and her jaw worked. I knew that I had her and she was going to do as I wanted. Which would work incredibly well for me.
“What will stop us from killing you now and then making them ours? They will take us to their home gladly when they have felt the joining.”
There was a renewed tension from my friends at that and I continued to smile, as I tossed small shards of wood into the fire. It had been a risk to tell her that but one that I suspected would be worth it.
She was too smart to react without thinking. No, she would need to consider it from all angles before she acted and in doing so, she would realise that I wouldn’t give her such an easy excuse to kill me.
“Why?” she demanded, voice rising enough that my minions looked over and noticed her for the first time.
They rose to their feet and I waved them back. Too many of them hesitated before doing as I wanted and I glared at them until they did.
“What happens if you bite a zombie?” I asked, turning back to Briony.
“They will die, eventually.”
“But they don’t turn, do they?”
“No.” Her lips twisted at that admission. “They do not.”
“Each of the people from the bunker has a small black disc attached to their chest. Right above their heart.” I picked up another piece of wood and tossed it into the fire, watching it burn. “If they die, it releases a parasite directly into their heart. In moments, they begin to change and then resurrect.”
I smiled at her.
“If one of them died from your bite, turning into one of your kind, what do you think would happen?”
She looked thoughtful at that and I could see that I had made my point. In truth, I had no idea what would happen. One parasite strain might cancel out another, or hers would be destroyed by the purer strain.
Perhaps, and I thought that would be the most likely reason she wouldn’t risk it. Perhaps the creature that resurrected would be as strong or stronger as she was and not under her control.
Like all the other weak creatures of the world, her own need for self-preservation won out and she began to nod, slowly.
“We shall travel on your boat. Our children will provide the distraction.”
Ah.
I realised then, that she understood exactly what I was doing. An interesting mind trapped in a rotting cage. She knew most, if not all, of her group, would be killed to buy me the time to get aboard with my own people.
She no doubt also knew that it would put her at risk, a single Infected amongst all of my warriors. She knew and she agreed anyway because she wanted something that was worth the risk. Her chance at the Genpact labs.
An interesting mind indeed. It would be almost a shame when I killed her.
Chapter 23
Flames engulfed the car ahead of us, with thick black small filling the air, obscuring the falling snow. A CDF soldier screamed as a bullet hit her high in the chest and she fell to the snow as the rest of her squad scrambled for safety.
I crouched behind the wheel of the truck that had been transporting me, sidearm in one hand as I wiped the blood from my face with the other. A shard of something from the explosion had ripped right through the side of the truck, cutting my cheek.
“Where’s he shooting from?” someone demanded loudly.
“North, he’s firing from the n-“
Another body hit the floor and I risked a look. Several of the CDF were lying in the snow, their bodies engulfed in flames and at least two had been shot. The attacker purposefully avoiding hitting their heads.
Which meant that at any moment we would be faced with zombies attacking us as well as the damned mercenary.
There was nothing around us. No houses full of people who could potentially offer help. There were the docks several hundred meters to the east and a large supermarket with open carpark to our south.
To the north was a hill with plenty of trees and bushes to provide a screen and to the west, the open road out of town.
“Stay down!” a sergeant screamed.
Most of the CDF soldiers had their poignards which were useless against an active shooter. The sergeant and I had sidearms.
There were still cars in the supermarket carpark, covered in snow and long since abandoned, but they could provide something to hide behind at least. The problem was, to get to them we would have to push through several feet of snow.
That would slow us down and make us easy targets for the mercenary. I tried to do a quick headcount and gave up. The only people I could really see were the four acolyte bodyguards who had been in the truck with me and the sergeant, crouched behind the rear car.
He rose up and fired several times into the trees. The mercenary didn’t immediately respond, taking his time to aim properly. A professional.
The next time the sergeant rose up above the side of the car, a bullet took him high in the cheek. He screamed and dropped to the snow, dropping his weapon and putting his hands up to press against the wound.
“Any ideas?” I asked and received only blank looks.
My head banged back against the side of the truck as I considered my options. I’d fucked up and I knew it. After the government meeting, I had decided to head out to the medical centre to question the prisoner once more.
Apparently, I had been mistaken in my belief that two squads of CDF soldiers and my four bodyguards would be enough to keep me safe. It was a mistake that had cost the lives of several soldiers.
“It is one man, in the trees,” one of the acolytes said. “If two of us run for the treeline, he will only be able to shoot one of us before the other is in amongst the trees.”
“Any ideas that don’t require a sacrifice?” I muttered as I looked around at them. “Wonderful.”
They didn’t wait for me to decide and instead, two of them stood up and set off running, one of whom was the acolyte that had proposed the plan.
“Stop you, idiots!” I called out but was far too late.
Both of them seemed to glide across the snow as they made for the trees. Then a shot rang out and the one furthest to my right fell with a cry, hand pressed against his hip. Another crack filled the air and the snow behind the other acolyte erupted in a small explosion of snow, then she was in beneath the trees.
I risked a glance around the side of the truck but could see little other than snow-covered trees and bushes. Whoever the mercenary was, he was good at his job.
A cry sounded from somewhere in the trees and a gun fired. I took the chance and burst out from behind the truck, running full speed for the trees. The snow dragged at my feet and my heart pounded in my chest as I expected a bullet at any moment.
Then I was inside the tree line, stopping and pressing my back against the trunk of a tall oak as I sucked in deep
breaths of frigid air. The other two acolytes joined me, ducking behind trees of their own and peering out cautiously up the hill.
More soldiers would be on the way, I was sure of that. I’d heard the sergeant shouting into his radio, that put the mercenary on a clock. I didn’t want to wait him out though, I wanted to stop him.
I stuck my head out for just a moment before jerking it back. Everywhere was covered in a thick coating of white snow, with more falling every minute. Wet, black branches stuck up out of it, perfect traps for me to catch my feet on as I scurried from tree to tree.
There was no sign of the mercenary. I swallowed back my fear and leapt out, ducking down and running for the next tree, feet churning up the snow in my wake.
No shot came. An acolyte did the same and then the second. I had a rough idea where the shots had come from, up and to the left of my position. I tightened my grip on my gun and looked over at the acolytes.
“All at the same time,” I whispered, hoping they’d heard me, then I moved again.
A shot fired as I reached the next tree and I sucked in a deep gulp of air as I waited for the pain to hit. When it didn’t, I opened my eyes to see one of the acolytes was down. The final one looked my way and nodded their head slowly.
We moved again and another shot rang out, this time missing the both of us. I raised my sidearm, squeezing the trigger as I aimed at where I had just seen the flash of a muzzle when he fired. There was a grunt and the rustle of branches as he changed location.
I didn’t wait, rushing out, weapon raised before me as I ran straight up to where I had seen the flash, boots slipping on the snow. I crashed through the bushes and swore.
“Blood, My Lady,” the acolyte said as he joined me.
I looked to where he pointed and grunted. I’d winged the mercenary at least, though I could hope I’d done more than that. There was more spatter further along the trail and I nodded towards it. No further words were needed as we both set off in pursuit.
There was a flash of white up ahead, out of place against the ice-covered rocks. It disappeared behind a tree and I ducked to the side just as the barrel of a rifle came into view.
Killing the Dead Season 3 Box Set | Books 13-18 Page 81
