A man slides down the windscreen. Ellie floors the accelerator, driving blind as the body blocks her view. Mimi screams. His face is a bloody mess of tissue and bone obliterated by bullets. Ellie swerves, turning the ambulance to face into the city, and blood smears the glass as the body falls to the road.
Looking back through the rearview mirror, at least a dozen figures dance to the rhythm of a spray of bullets.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A thin light shines grey in the helicopter’s cabin as Doctor Connaught adjusts the strap on his seat belt against his bulky suit, then takes a look at the land below. A smile creeps to his lips; the pounding of his heart has nothing to do with fear.
The pilot’s voice crackles in his ear. “Five minutes to ground zero, Captain.”
Captain Marks leans across. “We’ll clear the area first, Doctor Connaught, if necessary. You’ll have five minutes to get your samples, then we’re out of there.”
Connaught gives him the thumbs up. Five minutes isn’t long, but he understands Marks’ unwillingness to be on the ground any longer.
“Masks on, boys.”
Connaught follows the lead of the other men and pulls on his respirator, then the hood of his bio-suit, and turns back to the outskirts of the city below. Cars and lorries jam the outer ring roads, a group sits scorched and smouldering at the edge of the blockade. Behind them cars sit in the road, although, as he watches, several do a U-turn to make their way back into the city on the hard shoulder. Their journey comes to an abrupt halt further along the carriageway where the hard shoulder is also blocked. Numerous people are walking back into the city, others stand in small groups.
As they fly closer to the centre, the Four Stacks, the tower blocks hit by the meteors, sit broken on the skyline, a thin grey light shining across their flat rooves. The top third of one is missing, the pale interior of its destroyed rooms stark against the shaded exterior. As the pilot swings the helicopter into position, they hover beside the broken stack; a single armchair remains on the exposed floor, one wall intact, a picture still hanging above an electric fire.
Beneath, lawns laid to grass across the length of the tower blocks’ footprint, are littered with debris and ringed by emergency vehicles, lights still flashing. A crater sits at the foot of the broken stack. Several bodies also lie broken across its debris, and he spots three groups of people moving between the shards and blocks of concrete. Hovering over it all are tendrils of mist, with a concentration within the crater itself.
Captain Marks leans forward once more. “Once we’re down, Connaught, you have five minutes.” The voice over the intercom is loud in his ear.
“I need samples of the mist and soil from the crater.”
Marks nods, then addresses the pilot. “Land us as close to the crater as possible.” He turns back to Connaught. “Five minutes, Connaught.”
“Sure. I got it the first time.” Connaught turns back to the mist at the base of the towers. Bodies seem to float, the movement of people among it surreal.
“It wasn’t foggy earlier.” One of the soldiers observes.
“It’s not fog,” Connaught explains as he watches it move. “It’s a gas of some sort, created by the meteorite’s impact.” The way it twists and turns is mesmerising. He had expected it to have dispersed, vanished into the air, but it was almost dancing among the debris.
“It’s not like any kind of fog I’ve ever seen.”
“A fog from outer space?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out. It could just be that the impact of the meteorite has triggered a reaction with already existing chemicals in the ground. For example-”
“We abort on my command. Is that understood?”
Three firm responses of ‘Yes, sir’.
“Connaught! Do you understand.”
“Yes, Captain.”
As the helicopter lowers, the turbulence whips the mist into a frenzy. “Can you turn the blades off? They’re dispersing my samples!”
“Negative, Doctor.”
As they land, the door slides open and the three soldiers jump out, rifles immediately raised. The mist seeps into the helicopter, tendrils of smoke caressing its seats and curved roof. Connaught follows the men to a burst of gun fire. A figure flails, staggers, and falls below the mist.
“Get a move on, Connaught.”
Grabbing a glass cannister from his shoulder bag, he swipes it through the air. It fills with mist. He fills another. “Four minutes left.” Another volley of gunfire.
At the edge of the crater, he squats, then scoops the soil with an aluminium cannister. The mist swirls, twisting across his visor. He wafts it away, but rather than dispersing, it wraps around his gloved hand. He shakes it with force and the trail breaks. The mist in the crater moves, making the bottom momentarily visible. At its deepest point there is black debris, its glossy surface reflects the thin morning light. Another shot, another thud.
“Two minutes, Connaught.”
“Got it.”
He steps into the crater, wedging a foot against its side and grabs the debris. The material is firm and rubbery, like a thick piece of silicon, or leather, and curved, smooth and glossy on the inside, rough on the outside with tiny wart-like protuberances.
“Connaught! Get out of there.” The captain’s voice rings in Connaught’s ears as he stuffs the fabric into a cannister. Another shot and then a piercing scream. For the first time, his heart taps a hard beat.
“Abort! Abort!”
Scrambling up the sides, Connaught makes a run for the helicopter. Behind him, gunfire. Feet pound as the machine begins to hover. One soldier runs ahead, launches himself into the cabin, turns and grabs for Connaught pulling him inside with a rough jerk as the helicopter lifts. In the commotion, as the other two soldiers jump back to safety, the bag’s flap opens, and a cannister rolls out. Connaught grabs for the bag, but as the helicopter lifts, the rogue cannister rolls towards the open door. A hand reaches out, grabs the cylinder at the lip of the door, and hands it back as the machine rises. Another shriek pierces the air.
“Thanks.”
“That was close.”
“Did you see that thing run?”
“What the hell has happened to them?”
“Did you see its face? And its eyes!”
“Closest thing I’ve ever seen to a zombie.”
“Apart from Hanksy after one too many.”
The conversation becomes unintelligible banter to Connaught as he stuffs the cannister back in his bag. As the helicopter swings, the scene below is visible and Connaught notices two things: the face of a woman and child staring up at the helicopter from inside one of the fire engines; and two black-lipped, red-eyed, very sick looking people, dragging bodies. His eyes lock with the woman’s, but he quickly moves his attention to the men with the bodies, following the route they both take. The helicopter swings.
“Captain Marks. Could you ask the pilot to stay put for a few minutes, please? I want to observe the scene.”
Marks passes on the instructions and, as the soldiers talk among themselves, Connaught watches a small group of men walk towards the towers. One has a body slung across its shoulder, the two others each hold the foot of a woman, dragging her behind them. As her head knocks against the kerb, he’s thankful that she appears to be dead. The group disappears between two tower blocks.
“Enough?”
“Enough,” Connaught agrees.
The helicopter swings across the site for a final time and heads back to base.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nate wakes to thin light seeping through the curtains. Disorientated, and overwhelmed by a sense of dread, he jerks to a sitting position. He shudders as the cold morning air makes contact with clammy skin; his back, neck and chest, wet with sweat. Groaning, he lays back down with a thud, stares at the ceiling, and forces his muddled thinking into cohesion. His sleep had been fitful, his dreams lucid and grotesque, separating them from the events of last night is a stru
ggle.
Josh!
With one quick movement, he throws the duvet across the back of the settee and stands, head pounding, lack of sleep making his heart beat a deep thud. Grabbing his jeans from the floor, he pulls at them with jerking movements, overbalances, does up the zip and runs barefoot across the living room and up the stairs. He takes the risers two at a time, and opens the bedroom door to the muggy aroma of teenage boy and groans of pain.
“Josh!” His voice rasps in a dry throat.
The boy groans again. Nate reaches for the corner of the duvet, and stalls. What if he has it? What if he’s ... infected? He peels the duvet back. Josh squints as the cover is removed from his eyes, and grunts. “Josh? Are you all right?”
The boy’s skin is far paler than usual, his hair a mess of sweat and grease. A sour odour wafts to Nate’s nose as he watches Josh’s throat pulse. His breath seems too fast. “Josh!” He pushes a shoulder. Cold! Too cold. “Josh! Wake up.” Check his eyes. Check his lips. Pulling the curtain, light falls across his face. Chin between thumb and forefinger, Nate moves the boy’s head to face the light. The lips are a dark pink. He pulls at his bottom lip, spreading it taut with his thumb, and scrutinizes the skin. No black. He lifts an eyelid; the pupil contracts. He checks the other. Clear. The boy may not have black lips or red and cataract-like eyes, but there is something seriously wrong. Nate pulls the duvet back, scanning his upper body; the pale skin is bruised, a graze runs along his side, and at his shoulder is a dark mark. He checks his temperature, placing a large hand across the boy’s pale forehead. A trickle of sweat beads at Josh’s immature sideburn and trickles down past his ear. The skin is icy. Doctor! Get a doctor.
Striding to Katy’s room he knocks, waits, then knocks again. A groan of ‘just a minute’ and then she’s at the door, pulling at the cord of her dressing gown.
“He’s sick, Katy. I need to call a doctor.”
“You’ll have to wait until eight. They don’t open until then and it’s first come, first served.”
Nate checks his watch again; four minutes past six. “That’s two hours! He’s unresponsive, Katy. Perhaps I should take him to A&E?”
“Stay calm, Nate.” Katy steps out into the corridor. “Let me take a look. He had a rough night. Perhaps he’s just really tired—he’s a teenager remember.” She slips past and strides to Josh’s room, entering without knocking as Nate calls after her.
“He’s freezing! Why would he be so cold?”
Nate hangs back at the door, out of his depth; Melanie was always the one who knew what to do when Josh was sick.
“Josh!” Katy’s voice is soothing as she wipes the fringe from Josh’s forehead. “He’s cold, but not freezing, Nate. It’s probably because the window is open and there’s a draft blowing against his face.”
“But the curtains were closed, and the duvet was over his face.”
Josh groans again.
“Josh. Are you all right, love?”
He grunts, opens his eyes, and mumbles something Nate can’t hear.
“Do you want something to drink? Shall I bring you a cup of tea?”
He grunts again and Katy rises from the bed, tucking the duvet back around his shoulders. Pulling the curtains closed, she turns to Nate. “I think he’s just tired, but he does seem a little ...” She looks back at the boy’s pale face. “Perhaps he is unwell. Let’s give it an hour or so and see, shall we? He said ‘yes’ to a cup of tea, so that’s promising?”
Nate nods in response. “I just thought ... I was worried. Melanie always knew what to do.”
“You don’t look so good yourself, Nate. Why don’t you shower whilst I make some tea and toast?”
Nate offers a grateful smile; tea and toast is Katy’s answer to any crisis. “Sure.”
Ten minutes later, Nate is back in the kitchen, refreshed, relieved to have washed the stink of fear from his body, but uncomfortable in yesterday’s clothes; they stink of tobacco, sweat, and a lingering stench of sulphur beneath the spray of cologne he’d found in Katy’s bathroom cupboard.
“You found Dave’s stash then?”
“Dave’s stash?”
“Yes, the cologne. He forgot to take it in his rush to leave.”
Nate recoils with embarrassment; he is wearing her ex’s cologne. “God, I’m sorry, Katy. I just didn’t think. These clothes stink and I-”
She laughs. “Don’t worry! The smell reminded me of him for a second, but I think I must be truly over him now.”
“Oh?”
“It didn’t bother me at all. Actually, I just kind of thought, ‘Bloody hell, Katy! You had a lucky escape there.’”
“You did. That’s true. He’s ...” Nate stalls. Talking about the preening scumbag would open up old wounds and the day had started badly enough as it was. He reaches for the butter and spreads it across the toast. Sod it! He’ll indulge himself this morning. He scrapes more butter across the piece covering the already melted butter with a solid layer, and bites down. Delicious! Katy is right; tea and toast does make things better.
As Katy potters around the kitchen, refilling the kettle, slipping more bread into the toaster, Justin joins Nate at the table and helps himself to a slice. He grins with sleepy eyes.
“Morning. You’re Justin time!”
Katy groans at Nate’s feeble joke. Justin rolls his eyes then laughs and bites down on his toast. Katy pours the last drops of milk from the bottle into a beaker.
“Is that all I get?” Justin holds the beaker up to the light; the milk doesn’t reach a third of the way up its sides.
“Cheeky!” Katy reprimands. “The milkman should have delivered some this morning. I’ll go and get it.”
Nate takes another slice of toast as Katy disappears, spreads butter as she pads down the hallway, and drops his knife as she stifles a scream at the open door. The door slams shut. “Nate!” Her voice is forced, strangled.
The chair scrapes across tiles and falls to the floor as Nate pushes back and hurries to the hallway. Katy leans up against the door, both arms outstretched as though to bar the way.
“What is it?”
“A woman! In the garden!”
He takes a step forward. “Let me see.”
“No!” Her arms stiffen against the walls. “Look out the living room window.” Her face is drained of colour.
Dread swirls in Nate’s belly as he walks back into the living room. He kicks at the duvet strewn across the floor when he’d rushed to see Nate. A thin shaft of light shines through the gap at the middle of the curtains, dust eddies in the warming air. He pulls the curtains back. The room floods with light, and his breath catches. What stands in the garden looks female with its bulbous breasts hanging low over rolls of belly fat beneath a blood-stained t-shirt, but with its bleached-blonde hair straggled and matted with blood, staring red eyes and black lips pulled back in a deranged grimace over yellowing teeth, he struggles to think of it as a woman. Noticing movement at the window, its eyes dart to his. He grabs the curtains, swishing them closed, as it lurches forward.
“What is it, Nate?” Katy stands at the doorway, arm clutched around Justin’s shoulder.
“It’s one of them!” His voice cracks as he forces out the words.
“Them?”
“Like the people who attacked us at the party last night.”
“Is she on drugs? Is it that ‘Spice’ drug that turns people into zombies?”
Nate has seen the crazy videos of people on the synthetic cannabis, but the users were either just zoned out, intent on harming themselves, or screeching like lunatics possessed. “I don’t know. I guess she must be on something.”
“Zombie! Let me look.” Justin pulls from Katy’s grip and strides forward, but stops as Katy yanks him back.
“No!”
Thud!
Katy screams. The silhouette of the creature is dark against the curtain.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
“She’s trying to break in!”
“Get back. She won’t break the glass, Katy. Its double-glazed.”
“She could!”
“Only if she gets a rock or some sort of tool. Just thumping with her fist won’t-”
His words are drowned out by a concerted rapping on the window.
“Let me see!”
“No, Justin. Go back to the kitchen.”
“Is the front door locked?”
“Yes. It’s on the latch.”
“What about the milk?” Justin whines. “I only had a bit.”
The thudding continues as Katy ushers Justin back into the kitchen, placating him with promises of orange and pineapple squash.
Nate backs towards the door as the outline of the dumpy woman with the terrifying snarl, darkens the curtains. Zombies? No. This thing isn’t a zombie, but Katy could be right. Perhaps a new drug has hit the streets, one far more devastating than Spice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The sun rises over the city, casting a thin light across its numerous rows of terraced houses, blackened spires of nearly abandoned churches, and towering chimneys of defunct red-brick factories. The outskirts are marred by squat, corrugated warehouses on sprawling industrial estates. Beyond them lie green fields and the Wold’s undulating hills. From his vantage point in the apartment, Mick Trelawny can see across the city to the outer ring road, noting with rising dread that it is already gridlocked. He pulls the binoculars to bleared eyes and focuses on the point where the traffic has been cut off; roadworks have been erected in the night, as they often are, but these are blocking the road, not diverting the traffic. Nothing flows into, or out of, the city; cars and lorries sit as unmoving blocks, the queues backed up through the streets.
He lowers the binoculars, resting them on his chest, and focuses on the street below. Carnage. Where once Jim Croxley’s tree had grown in its neatly kept area of lawn, there is now an enormous crater. He grimaces at the scattered bodies sprawled and awkward on the grass, tarmac, and huge concrete blocks of broken tower block, but notes that their numbers have reduced in the past hours.
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