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

by Artinian, Christopher

  There was a split second of hope as Wren and Robyn instinctively started to back up. Maybe, just maybe we can get out of sight before those things see us, Robyn thought. And just like that, all hope vanished as one of the flesh-crazed ghouls glared in her direction.

  “Crap!”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Fencing!” Bill cried out. “We can’t repair the damage already done, but we can try to stop it getting worse.” All eyes turned towards him … all apart from Mila’s. Hers were firmly fixed on the woman who had made a run for the doors. Even in the fading light, she could see that the same insane look as before was painted on her face.

  It was something akin to second sight that made Mila start to run. The woman had not even seen her; she had not seen any of them. Whatever insanity grasped her, she had just one image in her head, and that was the sun. She needed to see the sun again with her own eyes, and not just through some rusty hole. She turned and darted towards the doors once more.

  The others, terrified and preoccupied by the growing gap in the bodywork of the lorry as the panel continued to cave further, noticed the woman’s panicked race to freedom too late, and they could only watch open-mouthed as a second wave of horror struck them.

  The woman’s hands were just inches away from the bolt when Mila grabbed her by the collar, tugging her back hard, causing the woman’s feet to kick out in front of her as the rest of her body flew backwards. She landed heavily on the floor, her head, smashing down hard. Completely undeterred, she sprang back to her feet, by which time Mila had positioned herself between the woman and the doors.

  “Aaaggghhh!” The woman screeched like a banshee as she lunged towards Mila, who brought her right arm up fast, blocking the woman’s grabbing hands. Their faces were just inches apart when Mila drew her head back and unleashed a powerful butt, causing the woman’s nose to explode in a red fountain. Blood spattered both their faces, but the woman barely seemed to register the pain as she pounced once more. Her force and angle made Mila stumble, and this time, they both went crashing to the floor.

  At that moment, everything paused for Mila as her head bounced against the solid surface, dazing her. She heard the panicked cries of the others, not just due to the widening gap as the panel was stoved in further but also because of her assailant’s unrelenting attack. There was no reasoning or talking to this poor wretch, she had lost her mind completely. No one had really been the same since all this began and Mila had seen various levels of eccentricity and madness before, but this was the stuff of nightmares.

  As the woman loomed over her, pinning her down, Mila could barely identify anything human in her eyes. There was no anchor point to keep her from falling further into madness, and as she bore her teeth like one of the infected, a tremor of dread ran through Mila. Where a wild shriek had come from her lips just seconds before, now a low-pitched growl gurgled in the back of her throat.

  Oh my God! The crazy bitch is going to take a bite out of me.

  Mila writhed and wriggled frantically as she attempted to loosen the woman’s grip on her upper arms. When the sound of charging feet began as an accompaniment to the symphony of savagery that was already rising to a climax both inside and outside the lorry, she had no idea where it was coming from or for what reason. She was mesmerised by her captor’s malevolent glare as the woman began to move her open mouth towards Mila’s bare neck.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Within a second of the first creature beginning its charge towards the two sisters, the rest began to follow. Wren and Robyn stared disbelievingly. They were both equally convinced that they would not encounter any infected until they reached their destination, but to find a sizeable group not forty metres away had made them angry at their own naivety.

  Wren dropped to the ground, immediately pulling the self-cocking levers back on both bows and loading them. Robyn grabbed an arrow from one of her quivers, raised the sight window up to her eye and fired. The first beast was down, and she began loading again just as Wren launched her bolts.

  The two missiles flew through the air, both cracking the foreheads of their targets simultaneously. The creatures instantly flew backwards, into their slightly slower moving brethren, causing a mini pile-up and giving the sisters the seconds of respite they needed while the tumbling beasts recovered. For the time being, five beasts, unfazed and unaffected by the collision, continued to tear towards them. Robyn fired another arrow, catapulting the first creature backwards, while Wren fired two more bolts, killing the second while missing the third charging monster.

  “Crap!” she cried as she hastily reloaded.

  Robyn fired, causing another creature to collapse to the ground. “Keep shooting!” she ordered as she dropped her bow and withdrew her two swords. “Aaarrrggghhh!” She screamed a fearsome battle cry as she ran to meet the advancing enemy, drawing their attention away from Wren and solely towards her.

  “Bobbi! Nooo!” Wren cried as she watched on in shock. She stopped fumbling with the cocking levers; all she could do was stare as her sister continued her attack. “Bobbiii!” she cried again as the other beasts finally gathered themselves and sprinted towards her too.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Mila could feel the woman’s breath against her neck as she continued her struggle. Suddenly she heard a loud crack and an even louder scream as the woman rolled off her clutching her ribs. Dean's eyes were like saucers as he stood over them both, his foot still stuck out in front of him as though he had just kicked a conversion on a rugby field.

  Mila stared up at him as he thrust his hand out. She grabbed it gratefully, and he pulled her back to her feet. Still covering her ribs and screaming, the woman scrambled to gather herself too, at the same time desperately reaching for the bolt on the door.

  “Nooo!” Mila yelled, charging forward once more, grabbing the woman’s arm and the scruff of her neck once again and flinging her backwards.

  The woman let out another pained cry as she landed heavily on the floor and Dean moved towards her, but she shot her left leg out and around, knocking his feet from under him. She jumped up and leapt towards Mila, this time howling like a wolf. Mila became glued to the spot. She could see the others just looking on in gobsmacked terror at the unfolding events, all apart from Rod. He began to run towards them to help, but it was too late. The woman’s grabbing hands were almost in reach of Mila again. “Scheisse!”

  chapter 16

  The first two monsters converged on Robyn at the same time. This is the easy part, she thought to herself, swinging both swords down over her shoulders. The hollow crack as the blades entered the skulls instantly gave way to a sludgy slurp as she withdrew them ready for the next wave of the attack. She still could not see who or what was in the car that had gained the attention of the pack of beasts, but that was not her priority. Her eyes glared towards the seven creatures tearing towards her, and suddenly she became deaf and blind to everything but the sound of her own heart.

  The huge growling chorus rising from the massive horde in the city, her sister’s begging cries, the thundering feet of the advancing creatures were all replaced with a steady drumbeat—du-dum, du-dum, du-dum.

  Robyn lowered her swords, spreading her arms a little until both blades were around forty-five degrees from her body. It was one of the starting stances Mila had taught her. Dummkopf, concentrate. Just the thought of her friend’s goading brought a smile to her face as she remembered all the lessons she had been taught.

  A pair of tiny missiles whizzed into her field of vision before disappearing into the heads of the two creatures furthest to the left of the loosely formed arrow of rampaging beasts that was now just a few feet from her.

  Robyn took a long deep breath and held it. Four, three, two, one.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Mila’s compassion for the woman instantly evaporated as she realised this came down to one simple reality. If she did not act decisively right this second, it would be over for all of them. She thrust her hands out, grasping
the woman’s forearms tightly. In one single fluid motion, like a batter, swinging at an easy pitch, she pivoted using all of her strength in conjunction with the woman’s own momentum to throw her into the thick metal doors.

  There was a rapturous clatter as the woman’s shoulder and head smashed against the once shiny surface. Mila froze, transfixed by her victim, wondering if she had done enough, wondering if the woman’s insanity would give her another burst of energy, but the woman collapsed to the floor. More light was beginning to bleed into the compartment as the panel whose corner had been battered loose began to give more and more.

  Mila felt a presence by her side, it was Rod; they both looked down at the woman as Dean, from his position on the floor, still a little dazed, crawled across to her. He placed his fingers on her neck and turned to look at them both with exasperation. “She’s dead.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Strike, strike, kick, strike, strike, lunge, stab, and it was all over. A thin sheen of sweat lingered on Robyn’s brow, and still all she could hear for the time being was her own breathing—in, out, in, out, in, out. She looked at the bodies piled at her feet. Their pallid faces once decorated with malevolent expressions were now daubed with single red strokes heralding their second deaths. The eyes of all but one of the demonic-looking creatures had fallen shut. This one, the one she had kicked, the one that she had sprung forward and stabbed through the forehead, seemed to continue to stare towards her. Its shattered black pupils were little more than pinpricks, but it managed to hold her gaze. A man in life. Judging by the expensive-looking three-piece suit and shoes, a pretty successful man at that.

  But in this new world, success was judged by a different index. Armani suits and Christian Louboutin shoes costing thousands were worth nothing at the side of a sharp stick or heavy club found lying by the side of the road. Knowledge of the financial markets or the legal system was worthless next to knowing which wild mushrooms to pick and which to leave.

  Once Robyn had been on the same path as this man … well, not quite the same path. She was unlikely to have achieved the kind of financial success he obviously had, but, nevertheless, she had worshipped the same God. She had aspired to a life set in the world of designer clothes, where what came out of someone’s mouth paled into insignificance at the side of how they looked when they were saying it. It was a world where shallow people shared one common goal—the acquisition of more, no matter what the cost to everyone else, no matter what the cost to the planet.

  It was a world that had come crashing down on itself. It had left humankind completely unprepared and even when this new order literally showed up at their front door to bite them on the arse, they had been so married to their lives and possessions that they were doomed to fail from the very first case in this outbreak. She had been doomed to fail; she was one of those people. But she had been given a second chance.

  “Bobbi? Bobbi?” Wren’s voice sounded distant as Robyn continued staring at the once successful businessman. She remembered back to the day this nightmare had begun. Her sister had told her to pack the essentials she wanted to take onto the road. Among those essentials was a Rebecca Minkoff designer shoulder bag. It made Robyn smile inside now to think of the person she once was and the person she had turned into. Without Wren, she would not have lasted five minutes on the streets, but now she had become a survivor, a street warrior in this crazy race for survival. She pitied that girl sitting in her bedroom, wondering how she would survive without Spotify and her designer accessories. That girl was dead now. She died that day. “Bobbi, are you okay?”

  Robyn suddenly snapped out of her daydream and looked at her sister as she stood beside her with a concerned expression on her face. “I’m fine,” Robyn said, smiling. “Just thinking.”

  “God, now I’m really worried.”

  “Funny cow.”

  “That was incredible what you did,” Wren said, handing her sister the bow, which she had collected from the ground before running to join her.

  Robyn slid it over her shoulder, looked around the area to make sure there were no more monsters about to bound towards them, then wiped off her swords and replaced them in the scabbards. “Yeah, it’s that whole practice makes perfect thing. I’ve had plenty of time to figure out what I’m doing.”

  “No. It’s more than that. It’s … I don’t know, but it’s something special.”

  Robyn smiled bashfully. In her life, she had never been really good at anything, but now she was. “You want to see Mila with these things,” she said, gesturing to the swords. “She’s on a different level.” They collected and cleaned the bolts and arrows from the corpses, as was second nature to them now; then they both turned to look at the car that the creatures had been gathered around. There was no sign of movement or anything to suggest anyone was alive inside. “I suppose we’d better check it out,” she said, drawing and nocking an arrow.

  The pair slowly advanced towards the vehicle with their bows raised. As they reached it, they saw a figure in military uniform slumped in the back seat. “Err—”

  Before Wren could even form a thought in her head, the soldier pointed a pistol towards her and shouted through the glass, “Both of you, drop your weapons. NOW!”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The words didn’t sink in at first—She’s dead. But gradually it dawned on Mila what she had done. There was a sudden swell of activity around her as she stood there, looking down towards Dean and the woman.

  Bill and the others had grabbed more fencing and were desperately trying to shuffle it into place, pressing it hard against the disintegrating panel as the creatures outside continued to hammer their fists against it. The gap was above head height, meaning they could operate with a degree of safety at least.

  “If this caves much more there are going to be arms and hands waving about in here, trying to latch on to whatever they can. When that happens, it’s goodbye sweetheart,” Bill shouted, leaning the first piece of fencing up against the panel and signalling for the next group to slide the second into place.

  “I don’t understand,” Rod said. “What good is this going to do? We’ve got nothing to secure it to.”

  The sound from outside was overwhelming as the hole grew wider. “We’re going to lean up a couple of pieces, use another couple to try to wedge them at a diagonal, and then we’re going to use our own weight to hold it all in place.”

  “What, twenty-three of us against hundreds? How effective do you think that’s going to be?”

  “More effective than doing nothing,” Bill replied, fixing Rod with a hard stare.

  “Fair enough,” Rod said, heading across to help another group with a third strip of fencing.

  Mila heard everything going on around her, she even moved out of the way as the fencing was nudged and jostled into position, but her eyes were fixed firmly on the woman and Dean as he dragged her dead body to one side out of the way. The internal light continued to flicker and dim further, but more illumination was coming from the gap in what had been the roof of the overturned vehicle as further rusted chunks of metal disintegrated.

  Dean propped the woman’s body up in the corner and then went to join Mila. Even though he was standing in front of her, she did not look at him. All she could see was the dead woman. “I was wrong,” he said.

  Those three words did make her look. “What?”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You were right. She was completely out of her mind. If you hadn’t done what you’d done, we’d all be dead now. She’d have opened that door, and those things would be in here.”

  There was an almighty ping, like the sound of a bullet hitting metal, but it was actually another rivet being smashed free from the damaged roof.

  “Hurry up with that bloody thing,” Bill shouted as a third strip of the stainless-steel fencing was wedged into place, quickly followed by another. Each time the creatures battered what had once been the rear section of the roof of the overturned vehicle the fencing lifted and clattered.
“Come on.”

  The fourth piece was slotted into position, and Rod turned around and leant his back against it, pressing his trainers firmly against the floor, doing his best to create as much friction as possible to stop the hastily and clumsily constructed barricade from shifting. It felt strange, wedging himself at such a steep angle knowing any moment the panelling could buckle, but gradually others joined him.

  Bill stood back, looking towards the hole. Despite the other rivet springing loose, the movement surrounding it was not as apparent anymore. The strange construction was doing its job reinforcing the wall of the lorry for the time being, but as he looked towards Rod, he knew it would only be a matter of time before the integrity of the barricade was tested to its limits.

  “I … I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to stop her, knock her out or something,” Mila said, still staring at the woman in the corner.

  Dean took a step to the side, blocking her view of the woman’s body. “If we’d have chained her like you were going to, none of this would have happened. Now come on,” he said, reaching out and guiding Mila away, “we’ve got plenty more problems to be focussing on.” They looked towards the diagonal fencing. Rod and a few more had leaned back against it while others bent forward, wrapping their fingers around the individual railings, casting all their weight down onto them. Arms, hands, bodies, all invaded the personal space of others as they worked towards one single goal, keeping out the creatures.

  Mila turned to look at what had been the floor of the lorry. The fencing they had strapped into position there was still holding. It had been their big concern that the creatures would find a way through the rusted undercarriage and then the plywood flooring; if they had put a little more thought into it, maybe they could have reinforced more of the cargo compartment without having to resort to such desperate measures as these.