Thud!
Pain scrapes at the back of his head, and his ear stings as though it is being ripped off. His eyes open to a haze of orange and the large blurred shape of something at his feet. He’s moving. Pain shreds his senses, his back burns, his scalp screams. The orange haze fades to black.
WHEN HE OPENS HIS EYES again, the pain is immense, riding his body in constantly lapping, biting waves. Above him, in a halo of orange haze is, a face. Eyes like charcoal blur against an oval of white, a red hole opening then closing. At the periphery of his consciousness are words he hears but doesn’t understand.
“He’s alive.”
“We can’t leave him here.”
“Get him up, before she comes round.”
“I think she’s dead.”
The voices fade and Nate slips back into the dark.
For the third time, Nate opens his eyes. The orange haze has gone, but the pain remains. He squints against the bright light shining overhead and moves to sit. His head knocks against hot metal and the lamp tips and falls.
“Catch it!” A man.
“Got it!” A woman’s voice.
He tries to sit, groans, lays back. Where the hell is he?
“Lie down, mate.” The man’s voice again.
He tries to speak, but his throat is dry, and he only manages a dry rasp. He coughs.
“Water! Get him some water.”
Footsteps pad away, tap on a tiled floor. More voices.
“Just hold on. Cathy’s getting you some water.”
“Where am I?” His thoughts compose. Josh! With enormous effort he sits up, swings his legs to the floor and tries to look up. He holds back the scream that wants to burst from his throat; the pain is excruciating. “Jesus!” he rasps.
The man, in his forties, full beard, check shirt, faded workmen’s jeans, leans forward. Nate notices the television, images moving through the flesh-ring in the stranger’s ear. A hand lays gently on Nate’s shoulder. The woman, Cathy, reappears through the door.
“Tell him to be careful, he’s in a bad way.”
“Don’t worry, Cath, I was about to.”
The hand remains, a gentle comforting pressure on his shoulder. Nate doesn’t flinch.
“Don’t try to stand, not before you’ve had something to drink.”
“And something to eat.” The woman steps forward, passes him the glass. Reaching to take it, he flinches with pain. Cathy holds the glass to his lips and he drinks.
“I’ve got painkillers. Do you want some?”
Nate nods. Pain shoots through his head and neck.
“It ... she, got you.”
“We saw her following you. She hit you then started to drag you back to their den.”
“Den?”
“That’s what we think.”
“We’ve been watching. They drag bodies back down there.”
“My son. I’m looking for my son.” Nate stiffens as the memory of the conversation with Gareth surfaces. “Oh, God!”
“What is it?”
“He looks like he’s going to faint.”
Cathy crouches beside him, and places a hand on his forearm. “Sit back if you feel like you’re going to faint.” She presses gentle fingers against his shoulder. He leans back against the sofa as the disjointed conversation fills his mind. Sweat beads at his forehead.
“We have to get out of here. I have to find my son and get out of the city.”
“We can look for him tomorrow. You need to rest now.”
“No! No, you don’t understand. They’re going to nuke the place.”
“Nuke? Who?”
“The government. They’re going to exterminate us—drop poison on us.”
“No, I’m sure they wouldn’t do that. We’re signed up to the Geneva convention. I’m sure that they’re not allowed to do that.”
“I have a friend. He works at the Cabinet Office—the department in charge of emergency response. I called him. He told me to get out; that they’re dropping Novichok on us.”
“What?”
“Sit back, love. You’ve had a nasty shock.”
“No. It’s true.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can’t leave now. It’s too dangerous out there.”
“My boy. I have to get my boy.”
Silence.
“He was going to the towers.”
A gasp from Cathy.
“To find his friend—Tina. I told him not to go.” A pain fills Nate that has nothing to do with the injuries to his back and head. His voice fills with emotion. “I told him.”
“I’m sorry.” Cathy.
“No. He’s OK. I know it.” Nate pulls himself forward, staggers to a stand. He has to find Nate and get out of the city.
“You can’t go out like this. You won’t stand a chance.”
“But, Josh-”
“There’s no way you can help Josh like this. It’s dark out, you’re hurt, you’re more likely to be ... well, not make it this time. Wait till daybreak. Get some sleep. Let Cathy dress your wounds-”
“But the Nov-”
“I’m a nurse. I can help make you comfortable.”
“In the morning, first light, we’ll tool up and go look for your boy.”
Surprised, Nate turns to Tim. “You’d do that—for me?”
“I’m not one for cowering behind doors, and these zombie-things don’t scare me. There’s nothing undead about them, it’s just some new drug on the street, that’s what we think.”
The image of Katy’s body, her cheek laid against the cold tiles of the toilet floor, burns in his memory. He wipes his hands against his jeans, the feel of them gripping her face as he broke her neck, imprinted across his palms. “It’s some sort of virus, or biological airborne weapon.”
Tim grunts. “Well, I certainly don’t believe it’s aliens come in with the comet.”
Nate’s head pounds, the last thing he wants to do is talk, nausea waves over him.
“You all right, love?” Cathy steps forward.
He grunts. “Perhaps I should just rest for a bit.” He leans back, closes his eyes.
“You should, but listen, let me clean you up. She dragged you down the road for a fair bit before we could get to you. Your back and head are a mess.”
“Cathy, I’m going to give Toby a call. He may have heard something about what the lad said.”
“Nate. My name is Nate.”
“Well, Nate. Let me get your back and head cleaned up, then you can have a rest and we’ll figure out just what to do.”
Nate agrees and drifts into a half-sleep as Cathy peels back his t-shirt, mutters, then begins to dab. He falls into fitful dreams of monstrous faces, eyes black and hollow, leering at him from broken windows, and reaching through smashed glass with clawed hands, and of a high place with winding paths and forests.
CHAPTER THIRTY
They’d fallen asleep, wrapped together, listening to the shrieks, screams, and crashing that seemed intimately woven with the dying sirens. As night became the darkest of morning, the noise of death quieted and, as Josh wakes, thin sun filtering to cast a grey light in Tina’s bedroom, only one siren makes an occasional groan.
Tina is turned to the wall, Josh’s arm still hooked beneath her neck as she sleeps. Careful not to wake her, he retrieves his arm, and resists the urge to lean down and kiss her cheek. A waft of sour sweat rises, and he sniffs the cloth of his t-shirt, relieved she’s still asleep. Yes! It’s him. Taking light steps to the bathroom, he quickly washes, searches the cabinets and sprays deodorant at his armpits, followed by a light spray over his clothes. Refreshed, teeth cleaned with a toothpaste covered finger, he walks through to the living room and peers down to the street. A single light flashes on the engine he’d driven up to the doors. He scans the street. No movement, no hordes of monsters dragging their kill, none leaving to hunt their prey.
“Are they out there?”
Tina stands in the
doorway, hair a halo of fine strands, long pony-tail hanging over her shoulder. She looks all of about twelve in this light, not the fifteen-year old he hangs out with at school. She joins him at the window.
“They’re gone!”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t seen any.”
“And it’s quiet. Listen.”
She’s right, there are no unholy screams to curdle your belly, no shrieks that make the hairs of your scalp creep.
“Maybe they’re asleep?” He pulls out his mobile. “Four thirty-four. I didn’t realise it was light at this time!”
“It’s summer.”
He turns back to the scene below, then looks out across the city. To the right, near the precinct he’d escaped from yesterday, a plume of smoke rises. Beyond that, two more plumes. “There’ve been fires! My dad ... I left him yesterday with Katy and Justin at the precinct.”
A hand rests on his shoulder. “We’ll find them.”
“I’ve said we’ll meet at my mum’s.” A siren groans. “We should leave whilst it’s quiet.”
Tina steps back. “But ... they’re still out there.”
“There’s no one down there. We can get out. We’ll find a car – drive to my mum’s. We’ll be safe there. And my Dad ... he’s expecting me.”
NATE STEPS INTO THE backyard to the first notes of birdsong. A row of tiled rooves sits beyond the back-to-back gardens and, above them, the sky, still sprinkled with stars, brightens. An intense and burning light flares in his peripheral vision as he watches the shifting clouds.
“More!” Cathy’s voice is disbelieving.
Tim steps out from the kitchen. “This can’t be natural. It has to be an attack.”
“But who?”
Nate watches in silence, in the grip of a cold dread, as the meteors burn through the sky.
“At least they’re not hitting us this time.”
“Poor sods.”
Nate swallows, the injuries to his head and back making movement stiff though the pain is masked by the post-operative painkillers Cathy had urged him to take, not that he had needed much coaxing. He isn’t prepared be a martyr to the pain, and he has to be able to function; finding Josh, getting him to safety, is the only thing he cares about now.
The meteors disappear behind the roofline. Tim strides out, making his way towards the garage built across the entire width of his garden. A rifle hangs on his back. Nate takes a step to follow him, the borrowed leather jacket that Tim had insisted he borrow, heavy and unfamiliar on his shoulders, pressing against his torn back. He grips the helmet in his hand as a tremor sends vibrations through his feet.
“Whoa! Did you feel that?” Tim turns.
“Felt like an earthquake.”
“It’s the impact from the meteors.”
“Poor sods.”
“Let’s get on with this.” Tim beckons. “Whilst it’s quiet.”
He turns back to the garage, leathers creaking as he strides forward, and unlocks the doors, pulling them open to reveal two motorcycles. Cathy steps beside him, her trim figure encased in leather, helmet clutched at her side. Her face is pale, shadows cast beneath her eyes in the thin, still growing light, but she turns to Nate with a broad smile. “We’ll get your boy, Nate.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this for me.”
“Well ... we lost our boy.” The sentence is matter of fact though not much above a whisper, and without trace of self-pity.
How the hell do you respond to that? “I’m sorry. I didn’t ... know.” Lame! Just lame.
“It was a long time ago, but he would have been Josh’s age now. Perhaps they would even have been mates. I don’t know what it is, Nate, but I can’t think about your boy ... out there ... with those monsters. I have to do something.”
“That goes for me too. We couldn’t do anything to help our boy, but we can try to save yours.”
Nate swallows down the emotion rising as a lump in his throat. The past days have been unreal, had seeped terror into his bones. He’s seen men and women rip at each other with their bare hands, and turn on each other with a savagery he hadn’t believed was possible. That humans could turn on each other like packs of rabid dogs, and that his son was out there among them, had haunted his dreams, and ate at him with each waking second. That Tim and Cathy are willing to risk their lives is astounding, but a hoarse ‘thanks’ is all he can manage.
ELLIE WAKES WITH A gasp, tears wet on her face, her chest tight as she reaches for air. The breath doesn’t satisfy, she gulps again. Mimi raises her head. “Fitz, are you all right?”
Todd wakens, and sits up. Both children stare at her through the dinge of earliest morning. Ellie breaks their gaze, and glances through the windscreen to the harsh blocks of the buildings’ walls. Every cell of her body vibrates with dread. “We have to leave this place. This morning. Now.”
Todd fist-pumps the air. “Yes! I knew it. I knew that’s what you were going to say.”
“But how, Fitz? You said we had no petrol.”
“I’ll get some.”
A tiny strangled mewl.
“Or I can find another car.”
“How about a fire engine!” Todd’s eyes gleam and he points to the engine the teenager had parked outside the tower block last night.
The thought of running across the open space, leaving the safety of the ambulance, twists at her guts. “Well ... I was thinking of something a little smaller.”
“Like?”
She searches the street. “The ambulance over there. It’s the only one that didn’t have its lights on when we arrived. Its battery should still be OK.” She doesn’t want to add ‘and it’s closer, so the monsters have less chance of getting me’.
As the children protest, she leaves the ambulance and makes her way across the back of the vehicles until she reaches the new vehicle. Its door sits ajar, and the keys are in the ignition. She gives a small prayer of thanks and slips behind the driver’s wheel. The street is surprisingly still and it crosses her mind that perhaps the creatures sleep too. Checking the gear is in neutral, she twists the key with a shaking hand. The engine turns, thrums, then idles. Nothing moves in the street. She sits back, a broad smile across her face, revelling in victory, before checking the dashboard; three-quarters of a tank, enough to get them out of this hell-hole.
Within ten minutes she has collected the children, and they all sit in the back of the new ambulance drinking from a bottle of Lucozade Todd had discovered in the glove compartment. Ellie takes another sip and passes the bottle on to Mimi. “Don’t drink too much, we’ll need some for later.”
Mimi takes a small sip and screws the cap back on. “Can we go now?”
“Yes, we can,” Ellie replies with a smile. As she turns to the windscreen, she freezes. In the recess of the first tower block’s entrance are two people; a girl and a boy. She recognises the boy as the teenager that had driven the fire engine into the wall. She doesn’t recognise the girl. As they step out onto the grass, a dishevelled figure charges at the pair. Ellie raps against the window, shouting ‘run!’. The couple stare in her direction, startled. As they notice the woman, the girl darts forwards. The woman follows. The boy stands, then sprints into action, launching himself at the woman just as she lands a hand on the girl’s shoulder. The girl falters, then tumbles to the ground, her shoulder bouncing against the kerb. Her faces crumples with pain. The woman turns, her flaccid arm arcing through the air, and the brick, gripped in her other hand, smashes against the boy’s cheek. He drops to the floor. Ellie turns away. Mimi screams. The girl crawls into the road on all fours, and the monster lunges for the boy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Todd slides down in his seat, and Ellie sits rigid as the creature makes its way across the grass, pulling the body of the boy behind it. The woman, dressed in a ripped t-shirt, and sweatpants stained with blood, and some other liquid Ellie would rather not think of, drags the boy’s body with effort.
“It’s Fat Babs!”
/> Ellie frowns. “Fat Babs! She’s not that fat.”
“She was.”
“She must have been on a diet then.”
“No, she’s shrunk. When she was at the crater, she was fat.” Todd pulls his arms away from his sides to demonstrate the woman’s girth. “Now she’s not as fat.”
“In a couple of nights?”
He nods. “She’s all saggy now. Like someone stuck a pin in her.”
Ellie snorts at the comparison, but he is right. The woman’s skin hangs loose about her jaw in folds, her face too is haggard, sagging where eyebags have emptied of fat, once thick upper arms droop, the batwings flopping beneath slack, wasted muscles, and where her t-shirt is ripped, her belly hangs in folds over a low waistband, tracked up and down by stretch-marks. Fat-now-thin-Babs staggers again, and the body she’s dragging jerks. Ellie is struck by her lack of energy; apart from the monsters that have become demented, going around and around in circles, or endlessly bashing their heads against walls, the infected have been quick. The black of the woman’s lips has spread to the surrounding tissue, fading into skin the colour of dark urine. The red of her eyes is fading to cataract blue, the whites no longer clear.
“The body moved!”
“It’s just her yanking it over the kerb.”
Movement to the left and a male comes into view. The dead boy’s arm twitches.
“He moved. He did! Look!”
The male seems to be staring straight into the ambulance, ignoring the girl now curled, foetal position, in the middle of the road.
“Stay calm, Todd. They can see us through the glass.”
“But the boy’s alive! And we should get the girl.”
Ellie’s breath catches as the male takes a step towards them. “Don’t move. Not a muscle.”
The cab falls to silence, their breath the only noise. The woman disappears between the buildings with her prey. They sit frozen as the male stares at them.
“Fitz! He’s coming!”
Mortal Skies Omnibus Page 17
