The End of Everything | Book 8 | The End of Everything

by Artinian, Christopher

  “You’re right, but we had a few hidey-holes. She might have left me a clue as to where she’s gone. Chances are she’ll be heading west too. That’s where we were going to go when I got captured.”

  “Everybody seems to be heading west,” Bill said with a smile.

  “Are you surprised? A huge army starts taking over towns on the east coast, where would you head?”

  “Well, how about north or south?”

  “Not south,” Mila said. “We came from the south. It is bad down there.”

  “Maybe north then,” Bill replied.

  “Do you have someone?” Mila asked.

  “Not anymore. Always fancied seeing John O’Groats. If we get out, I might take a trip up there, see what all the fuss is about,” he said, smiling.

  “Well, at least we’ve all got plans then,” Rod said.

  “True enough,” Bill replied.

  All three of them knew what this was—a nonsense conversation just to pass a few minutes. As time rolled on and the violent barrage against the lorry continued, they gradually resigned themselves to the fact that the creatures were not going to lose interest. The reality was that they would die here, if not at the hands of the beasts then as a result of the siege. Their bodies would gradually shut down with the onset of terminal dehydration. It would not be pretty; it would not be quick, but it beat the alternative.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Tommy became increasingly agitated as the procession of new faces marched into the kitchen. His nervous tics went into overdrive, and Ruby had to guide him into another room while everybody else got settled down. “Is he going to be okay?” Wren asked as she and her sister stood in the hallway.

  “Yeah,” Ruby replied. “It’s always like this with new faces. He’ll carry on reading his book for a while then he’ll come out and explore.”

  “Don’t take any shit from these people,” Robyn said quietly. “That Izzy’s okay, but you were here first, you’re in charge. If they don’t like it, they can take a hike.”

  Ruby smiled. “Thank you. I didn’t know if you were going to come back.”

  “We made a promise,” Wren said.

  “Yeah, but nobody would have blamed you for not keeping it. I mean what use are me and Tommy to anyone?”

  “You survived all this by doing what you had to do,” Wren said. “You looked after your brother, and trust me; that shows a lot of strength. You’ll both be welcomed when we finally get back.”

  Ruby smiled again. “I hope so.”

  “Trust me.”

  “I do. Why wouldn’t I now?”

  “Listen, I’m leaving Wolf here with Izzy, but you’ll keep an eye out for him too, won’t you?”

  “Course I will. After what your dog did, he’s won a special place in my heart.” All three of them chuckled. “You will be careful, won’t you?”

  The smiles vanished in an instant. “Don’t worry; we know what we’re doing.”

  “Yeah, I can’t really argue with that.”

  Wren placed her hand on Ruby’s upper arm. “Make sure Tommy’s alright, and we’ll be back here before you know it.”

  Ruby smiled and headed into the bedroom where Tommy was still methodically working his way through the dictionary. “Is he okay?” Izzy asked, walking up to the two sisters as they appeared back in the kitchen.

  “Yeah, he’s okay, he just gets a little unsettled around new people,” Wren replied.

  “Can’t say I blame him,” she said, looking around at the ragtag group.

  Wren felt something against her leg. She looked down to see Wolf leaning his head against her. “It’s alright, boy,” she said, kneeling down and kissing him. “I’m not going to be long.”

  “It’s amazing what they can sense, isn’t it?” Izzy said.

  “This one’s brighter than most,” said Wren, kissing him again.

  “Don’t worry; I’m going to take good care of him.”

  Wren gulped, and as she stood up, there were tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?” Robyn asked.

  “Just being soppy. We’ve not really been apart much since I found him, that’s all.”

  Robyn’s shoulders drooped a little, and her stomach turned over once more. She was asking her sister to risk so much.

  “Err … I want to thank you for this,” Marcus said, walking up to them. “And for what you’re about to do. Are you sure I can’t convince you to let us go with you?” It was an empty gesture but a gesture all the same. He and the others had been of no use back at the roadblock, and in the middle of a city, they would be far more of a liability than a help.

  “No, but thank you,” Wren replied.

  “Look,” he said, turning to Robyn. “You seemed to handle this okay earlier, I’d like you to take it; it might come in handy.” He offered her his shotgun and a handful of shells. “I’d give you the radios, but one of them’s stopped working, which rather renders the other one pretty useless.”

  Robyn looked at the shotgun. “No thanks. I much prefer my—”

  “Please,” he replied, and Robyn studied him for a moment before placing the shotgun and the shells in her rucksack.

  “Thank you.”

  Marcus nodded, grateful that she had accepted his offering. “Come on, we need to go,” Wren said, causing Wolf to start whining almost immediately. Wren wanted to hug him and kiss him again, but she just headed out into the farmyard. Robyn closed the door behind them, and they walked across to the van.

  Wren climbed into the passenger seat, Robyn climbed into the driver’s side, and they looked back towards the farmhouse. Faces were bunched up at the windows looking out, and a quiet sob left Wren’s mouth.

  Without saying anything, Robyn reached across and squeezed her hand before turning back to the steering wheel, placing the key in the ignition, and starting the engine. “Thanks, Sis,” she said, acknowledging the huge sacrifice Wren was making. But Wren did not reply. It was taking all her power to control her tears.

  They slowly pulled out of the yard and within two minutes Wren reached across and patted Robyn’s arm, “Here,” she said.

  “Here what?”

  “Park here.”

  Robyn slowed down then stopped, pulling on the handbrake but not turning the engine off. The bridge to Inverness stood before them, and beyond that and to the left was the entrance to the city. “I don’t understand. Why do you want us to stop here?”

  “You said you trusted me.”

  “I do. Of course I do.”

  “Then from here, we’re on foot.”

  “You need to make me understand. Why did we bring the van in the first place? I mean I can practically see the road leading to the farm. What was the point?” she asked, looking in the mirror.

  “The point was … is I don’t know those people. I’ve left my Wolf with a bunch of strangers for you, Bobbi, for you because I know how important this is and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.” Wren gulped. “If you think I’m going to give them an open invitation to run out on us by leaving the van there, you’re mad, but as far as taking it into the city goes, you’re going to have to believe that I know what I’m doing.”

  Robyn stared at Wren, and her heart broke a little. “Of course I believe in you.” She turned the engine off.

  “Good, because in the city things are totally different. If you take a wrong turn in a forest, you can always switch direction. You take a wrong turn in a city and you could find yourself running down an alley with no way out.”

  “You’re right. We do this your way.”

  “Okay then, let’s get going.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The light began to flicker in the cargo compartment, starting a wave of nervous conversations to spread. Mila, Rod and Bill all looked towards it.

  “Well, it was just going to be a matter of time,” Rod said.

  “I was hoping we might get a little bit longer. I mean it’s not exactly using a lot of juice, is it?” Bill replied.

  “Y
eah, but we don’t know what was left on in the cab. The fan could be on; hell, the headlights might be on full beam for all we know.”

  “HELP! HELP US!” cried a woman at the top of her voice as she sprang to her feet. “HELP US, SOMEBODY! PLEASE!”

  Mila and Rod shared concerned looks, and they slowly rose. “You need to calm down,” Rod said as the woman began to bang on the wall, which had once been the roof of the toppled lorry.

  “HELP! HELP US!” she screamed again, beating her fists against it more frantically now. In the gradually failing light, Rod and Mila could see the look of sheer terror on the woman’s face. Tears were pouring down her cheeks as the prospect of darkness became one straw too many.

  “Look,” Rod said more firmly this time. “You’re not doing anything but making other people nervous,” he yelled in an attempt to be heard over not only the banging of the beasts from outside but her frantic pounding against the inside of the lorry.

  “I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here now,” she cried. There was an untameable madness in her eyes as she looked towards the doors.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said, stepping in front of her.

  “You don’t understand. I need to get out of here.”

  “I understand fine. We all need to get out of here, but that’s not happening any time soon.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “Aaarrrggghhh!” She charged at him, thrusting her hands out and knocking him off balance. Others just gawped as she hurtled towards the doors. Two metres, one metre, smash.

  Mila’s diving tackle had come out of nowhere. She was completely horizontal as her arms wrapped around the woman’s legs and her shoulder dug into the side of her thigh. The woman let out a cry of pain, but it was soon cut short as she crashed into the wall, banging her head hard against what had been the roof of the lorry.

  Mila grunted as she landed painfully, but the work had been done. Her target collapsed to the floor unconscious. Mila scrambled to her feet and stood there for a moment, just waiting for something to happen. When it didn’t, she looked towards Rod who was still dazed.

  “We need to put the chain back on her,” Mila said.

  “She’s unconscious,” Rod replied.

  “Yes, and when she wakes up, she will try the same thing again. We need to—”

  “You can’t do that!” shouted one of the other men. “You have no right. You’d be just as bad as them if you put her back in those things. Look, we’ll keep an eye on her, and when she wakes up, she might have calmed down; if not, we’ll talk to her, reason with her, but putting someone back in the chains, that’s not going to happen.” Five more men and women stood close behind him as if he was their spokesperson.

  Mila glared at him for a moment then looked towards the flickering light. “And when that goes out … when it is so dark in here that you will not be able to see your hand in front of your face, how will you be able to control anything?”

  “We’ll find a way. Let us worry about that,” he said as two more people joined him.

  A sneer appeared on Mila’s face. “I think not,” she said, starting towards the chain, which was on top of the unused fencing.

  The man stepped in front of her, blocking her way, and four more people stood as the rest spread out in a line, blocking off the rear of the compartment completely.

  Mila felt a presence by her side and turned to see Rod standing with her shoulder to shoulder. “In a few minutes, that light is going to go out,” he said.

  “Light or no light, you’re not putting anyone back in those chains,” the man said with a confident expression on his face before turning to look at his comrades. “And by my count, it’s twelve against two, so I really don’t fancy your chances if you try.”

  Mila looked at the others who remained seated, not wanting to get involved. “And the rest of you. This is okay with you? She will get us killed.” No one made eye contact; they looked everywhere but at Mila.

  “He’s right, let’s go and sit down,” Rod said, taking Mila’s arm, which she immediately shook free.

  “She is out of her mind. When she wakes up, nothing will have changed. She needs restraining, for her own sake as well as ours.”

  “And I’ve told you no,” insisted the man.

  Mila took a step towards him. “Then we have a problem, don’t we?”

  chapter 15

  Wren and Robyn walked slowly across the bridge. They stayed to the left-hand side, well out of the line of sight of any city dwellers, living or dead.

  “So, you used to come in here by yourself?” Robyn asked as her eyes searched the landscape looking for the first signs of trouble.

  “Yeah. I figured if you were alive you’d head here. I got into Grandad’s flat. Somebody else had already emptied the entire block of anything useful, but I wrote on the wall to let you know I was still alive. I couldn’t really write much more. Those guys we finished off back at the farm were really dangerous. I had a few run-ins with them. On the off-chance they saw something I’d written, they could use it to find me.”

  “You really took a massive risk coming in so often.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re my sister … plus they had a great library here until those Neanderthals burnt it down.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “For never giving up.”

  “Well … I did, didn’t I? I left eventually.”

  “Yeah, but you gave it much longer than anyone else would have, and you didn’t give up really, did you? You still kept looking and hoping. Even when you were back with Grandad, you didn’t stop. I know that feeling,” Robyn said, smiling briefly then looking right across towards the city.

  “If the lorry toppled and there was no structural damage to the body, there’s a really good chance she’s going to be okay. She might be banged up a bit, but she could be stuck in there, just waiting … hoping for something to happen so she can make a break for it.”

  “Yeah and what if there is damage to it? What if the infected got inside?”

  “How about we don’t think about the worst-case scenario? Let’s just take this one step at a time. Let’s get to that street first and see what we’re dealing with, eh?”

  “You’re right.”

  “Who knows, she might have even escaped already. From what you’ve told me about her, she can handle herself.”

  “Yeah, she can certainly do that.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The seconds ticked by and the light began to flicker a little more as Mila and the man continued their face-off. “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Rod said. “Why doesn’t everybody just take it down a notch and we can discuss this like adults.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” the man replied.

  “It’s Dean, isn’t it?”

  “We’re not making friends here,” he replied, breaking his face-off with Mila and glancing towards Rod briefly. “Take your girlfriend here and just go and sit down. You don’t want any trouble? That’s fine by us, but if she so much as looks at those chains again, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Mila demanded, inching a little closer.

  A sudden jarring sound erupted through the white noise of the horde’s hammering and incessant growls as the corner of a roof panel was smashed loose. There were startled gasps from everyone, even Mila as she spun around to see what was now the compartment’s left wall cave in the top right corner closest to the doors. Each time eager fists battered against it, a little more light bled through as rusted metal disintegrated.

  The gasps were soon replaced by terrified screams as the top of the panel began to buckle too. “Oh Christ, no!” Dean screamed, and at that precise moment, the woman who Mila had tackled started to rouse.

  “Scheisse!”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Wren and Robyn turned right onto the wide road leading into the city centre, and immediately they could hear a familiar sound somewhere in the distance. The demonic song of t
he infected rose into the air like the devil’s chorus.

  They looked towards one another. “I’ll bet you a pound to a penny that’s coming from the street opposite the Co-op,” Wren said excitedly.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “’Cause that means the chances are good they haven’t made it into the lorry yet. If they had, they’d probably all start drifting again, looking for the next kill. If they’re all together, there’ll be a reason.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Come on, we can’t afford to waste any time,” Wren said, and the pair of them started running. Wren’s mind drifted a little as they ran past the burnt-out husk of the empty carpet showroom where she had met Emma, Hughes and her other friends from the Safe Haven community. It all seemed like an age ago now. That one day had changed her life. Now she was heading into danger once more, would this be another day that would change her life? Or would this be the day her luck finally ran out?

  They turned right at the end of the street to see the rotten zombified corpses of schoolchildren scattered over the road. They both stopped almost in mid-stride.

  “Oh, God!” Robyn said.

  “Mike told me about this. They were buried in the snow. Before he knew it, he was surrounded by them.”

  “This was him?”

  “The virus doesn’t discriminate, Bobbi. Young, old, black, white, it takes anyone. I mean we’ve had kids to deal with before.”

  “I know. It’s just kind of…”

  “Unsettling?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, let’s take that as a good sign. It shows that we’re not completely heartless to everything going on around us.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

  “Come on, we need to keep going.” They began to run once more, this time turning left at the end of the road. With each metre they travelled, the sounds got louder. “Next right,” Wren said as they continued around the corner.

  Both of them came to a sudden stop as their eyes fixed on at least fifteen creatures huddled around a car that was parked by the side of the road. Three were sprawled over the bonnet, clawing and battering themselves against the windscreen, while others pounded against the body, desperate to gain entry to taste the sweet fruit that awaited them inside.