As they draw closer, the double doors of the last tower block open. A man and woman, both in their twenties, laden with over-stuffed rucksacks, the man with a hammer gripped tightly in his hand, the woman with what looks like a monkey wrench, step out into the sunshine. Their stride is quick and determined as they walk away from the block. Ellie’s gaze flits from the couple to the horde. With the window up, she can’t hear their chuntering, though she can see the continual movement of their jaws. A piercing shriek breaks through to the cab. Too late, the couple realise their mistake and, too far from the safety of the door, they sprint towards the road. The horde bursts into action. The creature at the front, a tall man with blood-spattered and grimy jeans, his face yellow and gaunt, the flesh beginning to hang in a jowl despite his slimness, breaks from the pack. He moves with incredible speed, gaining on the couple, their efforts to escape hampered by their heavy rucksacks.
Ellie closes her eyes against the violence, and turns back to the boy. A flow of creatures runs past, blocking her view. She searches for him through pumping arms, legs and torsos, glimpses a static pair of trainers, loses them behind the running figures, then holds back a shout of ‘yes!’ when the runners clear; he’s still there, unseen, ignored, unharmed. She raises a hand as the final ‘monster’ disappears beyond the last tower block, and beckons him to come.
“Is the boy all right?”
“Yes!” Ellie’s voice is little more than a whisper as she waits.
As the boy takes his final slow steps to the ambulance, she sees him clearly for the first time. A thick crop of black and curling hair frames a delicate face, perfectly formed lips, though they seem dry, and a neat, aquiline nose, with dark, arching eyebrows. He can’t be more than twelve years old. On his back he carries a rucksack, and in his hand, a long butcher’s knife. Though he looks ashen and exhausted, excitement flickers in his eyes, and a smile breaks onto his face as their eyes lock when Ellie leans across and opens the passenger door. He slides inside, pulls the door closed, and sags against the seat, relief escaping him in a rush of breath.
“Thank God!” Ellie exclaims. “I thought they’d see you!”
He bends forward, the rucksack a hump on his back, resting his head in his hands.
“Are you all right?”
He nods into his hands. When he pulls up his eyes are wet. “I’ve been watching them. If you stand still, they don’t get you.”
“They’re weirdos,” Mimi pipes up from the back.
He jerks in his seat at her voice. “Hell! You scared me.”
“Sorry.” Mimi pulls back again and places a thumb in her mouth.
“It’s ok. You’re right, they are weirdos.”
“I’ve been watching them too.” Ellie adds. “They leave in groups and bring back ... bodies, then disappear between the buildings. Each time it’s the same—the group leaves, comes back with a body.”
“I’ve been watching all morning, since daylight. I think they got Mr Tremayne. I saw him go down there with a chainsaw, but he didn’t come back.”
“The man with the red jumper?”
“Yes.”
“If he didn’t come back, did something get him?” Mimi asks.
Ellie exchanges a glance with the boy then nods. “Yes, I think perhaps something did.”
“When the meteor came, my brother went out to look. He came back in when they started going mental.”
“Mental?”
“Yeah. The people that went down there to look, they started attacking each other after a while.”
“But not your brother?”
“No. He was all right. He said there was smoke in the crater and when it cleared you could see something at the bottom. He said he saw something move down there—something black, like a load of greasy snakes.”
“Gross!”
“But they’re not there now? I saw you looking in the crater earlier.”
“No, it’s empty but the soil is kind of white on top.”
“So, the ... snakes have gone?”
“I don’t know if they were snakes. Callum just said they were like leathery tentacles, like snakes writhing about at the bottom of the crater, but he only saw it for a few seconds, because then Fat Babs started having a go at Mr Croxley. His wife was buried under the tree, and Babs, Mrs Fitch, was screaming about standing on her body. Callum said she just went mental and then attacked him.”
“Where’s your brother now?”
The boy’s face tightens. “He went back out to try and help one of his friends.”
“Oh.” Ellie leaves it there, doesn’t want to push him to explain; what happened to his brother is all too easy to imagine. “I’m sorry.” He turns to look out through the windscreen. “I’m Ellie, by the way, and this,” she points to the girl in the back, “is Mimi.”
He turns back to face them, his eyes glisten with tears. “I’m Todd.”
JOSH’S BELLY GRIPES with hunger as he sits in the fire engine’s cab. He ignores the pain and stares at the carnage, stroking the heavy head of the fireman’s axe he’d found in the footwell, its strong wood and sharp steel are reassuring. Tina is in the first tower block, fifth floor, apartment 6B. The lower floors of the block all have smashed windows and some of the higher ones too, though on the fifth none are damaged. He takes it as a good sign. He pulls his phone from his pocket and checks the screen. No signal, and now his battery is dying. He stuffs it back into his pocket.
For the past hour he has sat and watched the scene outside, the stench of his own vomit filling the cab. Several small groups of the ‘things’ had come from between two tower blocks, and others walked back in. The ones that had returned hadn’t been empty-handed and Josh had gagged again when he’d realised what they were dragging. At one point a face had appeared at a window, and, for a few seconds, he’d thought it was Tina, the small face framed by blonde hair had looked so familiar but, as he counted the floors to where the girl stood, it wasn’t the fifth, but the seventh—not Tina.
Frustration grips him, and he bangs on the steering wheel. About twenty feet to the right, a creature jerks its head and stares at the engine. Josh freezes. Hold still, it won’t see you if you hold still. Earlier, he’d seen the young boy step out from the doorway, watched as a horde of monsters had passed him, then sighed with huge relief as the boy’s figure, completely still, a tiny statue against the massive wall of the tower, remained. The kid had waited until they’d disappeared then made his way slowly across the street. He hadn’t returned, but it proved to Josh that the things were triggered by movement.
Another group returns, dragging another body, this one a teenage girl. He looks away, unable to stomach more death. His hands catch the keys still in the ignition and, without a second thought, he turns them. The engine bursts into life with a chug. He doesn’t have a driver’s licence, is still too young even for a provisional, but the one cool thing about spending time with his dad was taking his old jeep off-road. They’d spent hours making their way along muddy tracks, pushing the ‘old girl’ as his dad called the now rusted, 1980s cream and brown Nissan Patrol, to perform. He’d tap his hand against the steering wheel as she’d mount yet another grassy bank, laughing that she could still do it, then pull over and let Josh take over. He pulls the seat forward, belly almost touching the wheel, presses on the clutch, and slips the engine into gear, releases the gearshift, and rolls twelve tons of metal and rubber towards the double doors of Tina’s block.
Activated by movement, a group sprint across the road. Within seconds, they’re in front of the engine. Merciless, Josh grips the wheel and ploughs forward, mowing through the monsters, they fall beneath its engine with a sickening thud. The doors loom. He twists the wheel, forcing the cab to swerve right. It crashes into the wall, the passenger door facing the entrance. Engine stalled, Josh grabs the axe, throws open the door, and jumps down, pushing through the double doors. To his left are the stairs leading to the upper floors. Echoed thuds and shouts sound from beyond the stairwell, a
nd demented shrieks fill the air. He sprints to the lift. The light blinks as he presses. A distorted face leers through the window of the fire engine’s open door, and a hand gropes at its edge. The lift pings and its doors slide open. Josh raises the axe, ready to strike, but the car is empty. He jumps in as the fire engine’s door slams, and jabs at the lift’s control panel.
“Close! Close! Close!”
Feet pound.
The doors begin to slide shut.
Too slow!
The distorted face appears, and a hand grabs between the narrowing gap. Josh arcs the axe and swings it down. Sharpened metal slices into bone and the hand retracts. The doors slide shut. Stabbing at the button marked ‘5’, Josh staggers to the wall, recovers, rights himself, and readies the axe, resting its weight across his shoulder.
The lift rises. Stay calm! Got to stay calm. Three ... Four ... Five. The lift doors swing open, he waits for two seconds, then runs out, swinging the axe as he spins. The corridor is empty and the lift doors close with a smooth swish. Somewhere in the block, a man shouts whilst outside, the sirens wail their dying song as batteries fail.
Stopping at apartment 6B he knocks. Waits. No answer. He leans into the door, knocks, and listens. She has to be here! He’d told her to wait, told her that he was coming. Another bang resonates somewhere in the building. A shriek cuts through the waning sirens. “Tina!” His face pushed up to the door, he taps harder. “Tina, it’s Josh! Open up.” Another bang sounds, closer this time. “Please!”
The door opens and she’s there—eyes puffy, red with crying, hair dishevelled, but alive, with blue eyes and pink lips; normal. Grabbing his arm, she pulls him in and locks the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
All eyes return to the screen. The jarring movements of grasping, pummelling, chopping, and kicking has reduced. The dead and dying lie sprawled across the grass, some half in the crater, others broken over the slabs of cladding and concrete that are strewn across the ground. The living shuffle, reach for the dead, and begin to pull. “What the hell are they doing?” The room is silent as all twelve men watch the screen. As the minutes unfold, the five survivors of the carnage drag the bodies, feet first, away from the scene. The camera adjusts to follow them as they pull the carcasses into the dark space between two buildings and disappear.
“What the hell!”
“They’re still functioning, at least at a primary level.”
“Why did they all go the same way? I haven’t seen them talking to each other.”
“Are they organised?”
“Instinctive?”
“In-fucking-stinctive? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I have no idea. My brain is melting just watching this horror-show, Norris.”
Littleton clasps his hands behind his back, shrugs his shoulders to ease the tension, and faces the group of soldiers and scientists that are gathered in the room. “We’ve ascertained that the meteor brought with it an organism, a parasite that infects humans, driving them to kill. So far, all authorities involved, and all solutions sought, have focused on dealing with the brutal violence and murder that is a symptom of the infection.”
“Protocol five has been implemented in London and in Moscow. Unfortunately, whilst A-234 has been effective in subduing the violence, it hasn’t stopped its spread. Thanks to the work of Doctor Connaught, we are now on the cusp of understanding how we can begin to conquer this ... extra-terrestrial infestation. Whilst our focus has been on the contagion, another sinister element of the host’s behaviour has been ignored, but this footage,” he points to the screen, paused at the image of a man dragging a woman behind him, “shows a repeated collecting behaviour. The victims not only feel compelled to kill and destroy other human beings, but to carry off their victims too. Groups of the infected are leaving the tower blocks and similar groups are returning, taking the same path back between the buildings.”
“Do we know where they’re going?”
“Yes.” He forwards the footage, goes too far, skips back. “Here.” He points to a door as it comes into view. “This is the basement of Langland Tower.”
“They’re going backwards and forwards into a basement?”
“Yes. They leave empty-handed and return with the bodies.”
The recording shows a woman dragging a teenage girl between the buildings. As the helicopter rises above the building and descends on the other side, the footage shows her dragging the body down a set of concrete steps. A collective intake of breath as the girl’s head hits each riser.
“What do you think they take them back there for?”
“That does not bear thinking about!”
“It is exactly what we need to discover.”
“Perhaps they eat them?”
“Are they zombies?”
A snort of derision. “Zombies are not real.”
“Obviously, but these ... monsters are the closest thing I’ve ever seen to zombies.”
“Perhaps they’re feeding something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Why is it so ridiculous? We’ve got zombies killing-”
“They’re not zombies!”
“Whatever they are, they’re on a killing spree and dragging their victims back to some sort of lair. Why is it so unbelievable that there’s something in there – another present the meteor brought with it?”
Connaught remembers the leathery specimen he had stuffed into the cannister, with so many other experiments to carry out, it had remained untouched.
“Aliens?”
“Why not?”
“That’s just ... too far-fetched.”
“Perhaps not. I found something else in the crater-”
“Something else? And you didn’t mention it?”
“We have been hard-pressed to get the information we already have. I’m not a magician, Colonel.”
“What exactly is it?”
“A piece of skin, perhaps a rubbery type of shell.”
“Shell?”
“Well, it could be-”
“This is getting ridiculous! I can buy alien micro-organisms hitching a ride on the meteor, but are you actually suggesting that an alien lifeform has been brought to earth in a rubber egg, has hatched, and is now being fed by infected humans, in that basement?”
“Well, no. I ... All I’m saying is that there is another sample that I need to take a look at.”
“Ants take food back to their nests to grow fungi.”
“And?”
“Well, perhaps they’re-.”
“What? Growing mushrooms?” Su-Li snorts with derision. “So, we’ve got vegetarian zombies on our hands, is that what you’re saying?”
“No, but- When you put it like that it does sound ridiculous, but perhaps they’re harvesting the bodies to grow something else, yes, it’s bizarre, but this whole situation is bizarre, the world has never experienced anything like it.”
“What violence and murder?”
“Not on this level.”
“ISIS.”
“Yes, true, but that violence is borne of hate sewn over years, indoctrination of a barbaric ideology, this violence is triggered by a parasite.”
“There is also evidence,” Connaught adds, “that a variety of earth’s lifeforms are susceptible to the parasite. Could we have the clip please.” The frozen image disappears as a new video is uploaded. The glass case at the laboratory comes into view. “Experiments with rats have shown a perceptibility to the parasite triggering similar murderous behaviour.”
Su-Li groans as the two rats replay their earlier deaths. “Rats! You’re telling me that this stuff turns rats into crazed killers?”
“That’s uncharacteristically descriptive of you, Su-Li, but yes, it would appear to do so.”
“But I hate rats!”
Littleton clicks the off button and the screen blackens. “We need to discover exactly why the infected are taking bodies back to that basement.”
“W
e should just bomb the whole lot.”
“That is an option, but right now I want to discover what their hoarding behaviour is all about; you can’t fight an enemy you don’t understand.”
“A drone?”
“Do we have one small enough to follow them inside?”
“Yes.”
“Then send it in.”
THE SUN HAS LOWERED to sit half way down the tower blocks as Nate reaches the last half mile of his journey. His head pounds, the tightness across the back of his head intense. The need to find Josh has driven every step, and every step has been a torture as images of the boy, memories long forgotten, have flitted through his mind, each one painful despite its pleasure. The moment he’d slipped out from between his mother’s legs, bloodied and almost blue, eyes tight shut, the face of a tiny, exquisite elf, had been one of pure joy. The child had been perfect, and Nate had been overwhelmed, brought to tears by an intense need to protect him, and wrap him in his love. At that moment, he’d known he would kill anyone, punish anyone, that hurt him. His mind had then fallen to the boy’s mother, and the intense love he’d felt for her too, his heart nearly ripped out when he’d had to return to duty after the birth only two weeks later. Melanie! He would have walked from one end of the earth to the other for that woman. Padding footsteps unnoticed, his mind settles on two moments; a photograph of Josh riding his bike, stabiliser-free for the first time, and Melanie’s face as he’d caught her in flagrante delicto, or shagging his best mate if he was to put it crudely.
The stench of putrefaction swirls, eddies, and seeps into his nostrils.
Melanie had looked shocked, but defiant, and a sneering pleasure had crept across her face as he’d stormed to the bed, a triumph that she’d finally got to him.
As her face blurs, pain rips through his skull, and the world blackens.
NOTHING CAN BE SEEN, all is dark, but at the edge of Nate’s awareness, through a fog of pain, he realises that he is on the ground and something is gripping his legs.
Mortal Skies Omnibus Page 16
