Don’t think about that little treat that he introduced you to, inserting the pudgy tip of your finger into his overly moist anus as he climaxed. The lingering smell of his waste under her sensibly short nail.
She certainly didn’t want to spend much time considering the seemingly inevitable downward crawl over his bloated belly. As she took him in her mouth in an effort to either revive or finish him.
Don’t think about swallowing down the results of your labour and collapsing at his side with that taste in your mouth.
That was something that, more often than not these days, produced vague nausea in place of the former sense of satisfied achievement.
<><><>
So, Caroline Denning was vaguely aware that there was some sort of crisis sweeping the country but she had no real grasp of the scale of it. She’d been shut away in self-imposed isolation for a couple of days.
In one of those curious twists of fate, the onset of the collapse has coincided with her decision to take a few days out to think about her life and where it was going. A few days where she could shut the world out and indulge in some unashamed and uninhibited self-contemplation.
Me-time. Work, relationship, the past, the future ...all that good stuff.
She intended checking in with Dennis. He hadn’t answered his phone or email but those services were glitching anyway. She felt obliged to show some concern before heading into work to see the state of play there.
So, as she drove to him that morning she was understandably distracted.
No wonder the open gate of Rose Road disconcerted her. No wonder she had a car crash.
<><><>
The woman drove the Range Rover with an almost reckless abandon. Like her mind was elsewhere. Not that reassuring. Dodging groups of infected, changed people where she could and angling the automobile to deflect a way through when she couldn’t. Adalia was horrified by that progress and at the same time wanted the woman to drive faster and be more brutal.
To keep both of them ...safer.
Whatever way she drove, Adalia couldn’t complain. If the woman hadn’t come back for her, she’d have been killed, so much wet meat on the road.
“Can you put that gun away please? Or at least put it down. It’s making me nervous,” the woman said through gritted teeth as she powered the vehicle through another group of snarling things.
Adalia had the gun loosely grasped in her right hand and it was swaying and waving with the motion of the car, like some exotic and hypnotically dangerous snake.
“Oh. Sorry ...sorry.”
Adalia awkwardly inserted the weapon back into her torn pocket.
“It’s not mine ...I don’t know how to use it. Don’t even know if it has any bullets left.”
Her voice trailed off.
They’d been circling the outskirts of Birmingham. Forced into one turn after another as they tried to escape groups of those creatures. Adalia felt stunned, too drained to think coherently. Looking across at her new companion, it struck her that the woman didn’t look a lot different, that maybe she was doing well to drive at all, let alone do it to Adalia’s satisfaction.
They arrived on to a long stretch of raised dual carriageway. An overpass above and between a sprawl of housing with the occasional business premises mixed in for good measure.
Other than what appeared to be three abandoned cars, several hundred metres away, the road itself was empty. God alone knew what was happening below on either side of them, but out of sight, out of mind.
Smoke rose in the distance in a couple of places. The woman slowed and stopped, scraped her hair back with trembling fingers and let out a huge breath.
She turned to Adalia and extended a still shaking hand.
“I’m Caroline ...hi ...I guess. I’m not going to say good to meet you because there’s nothing good about any of this.”
Adalia limply shook the proffered hand.
“My name’s Adalia. Adalia Baker.”
Caroline regarded the girl whilst simultaneously scanning the road ahead and behind them.
The decision to try and save her had been a close call, a split decision if ever there was one. There was a part of her that was ashamed of that reaction and another part of her, the purely primal and calculating part, which had very little trouble in justifying it. After what she’d already experienced, the sight of that pack of creatures closing in had been enough to make her act without any compassion.
Initially, the fact that those monsters were chasing a single unknown female was secondary to her own survival. Someone else was their target, not Caroline. Quick on the heels of that thought had followed a cocktail of guilt and vague self-disgust.
The young woman, really a lot younger than she’d appeared at first glance, was as dishevelled and grimy as she was herself. But underneath that the girl was exceptionally beautiful. Coltish but feminine figure and delicately fine features. Brown naturally wavy hair and darkly honey coloured skin. She could have strolled off a catwalk, always assuming the fashion show had been apocalypse chic.
“Well Adalia, keep your eyes peeled and I’ll try and get my bearings ...and my breath back, before we start out again.”
They sat in silence for a few moments.
“Where are we going?”
“My work,” was Caroline’s short answer.
“Work?” Adalia asked, a hint of disbelief in her voice.
“Err ...seriously? I don’t mean anything but ...don’t you think maybe they’ll be able to do without you ...given the circumstances? People turning into monsters that ...bite. People dying. The end of the world kind of thing.”
The comment nearly brought a smile to Caroline’s face. Nearly, but not quite.
“My office is big and fairly secure. Plus, it’s close to the city centre. There isn’t too much housing near to it. I’m assuming that most people collapsed at home, so that’s where they’ll wake up ...and hopefully the business districts will be clearer.
It’s just somewhere to rest up and try and get a better idea about what’s happening. I don’t intend making it my new home.”
Caroline shrugged. When she’d come up with that plan it had seemed like a serviceable idea but saying it out loud somehow undermined its credibility. Made it appear a little ludicrous.
“It’s just an idea.”
Adalia looked at her and slowly nodded.
“Yeah, that kind of makes sense. It was heaving with them on my estate ...once they woke up.”
The girl lapsed into silence again and her gaze drifted away, seeing something that Caroline would never be able to see.
“Where did you get the gun?” Caroline asked her, nodding to the metal sticking out of her pocket.
“It’s ...a long story,” Adalia replied, diverting hers eyes back to the road.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the barest moue of distaste evident on her face.
Caroline didn’t say anything right away. Just watched the girl’s besmirched and beautiful profile.
“Okay. I guess there’s going to be a lot of long stories the way things are shaping up. One for another day.”
“Thank you ...for helping me. I didn’t think you were going to. Thought you were just going to run, drive away. I ...I think you probably saved my life. So, yeah ...you know ...thanks.”
Silence descended again.
Caroline was at a momentary loss, confronted by her own guilt and a surge of affection for the innocence of what the girl had said.
The genuineness of it.
Adalia didn’t say anything else for a little while. Just sat there seemingly lost in her own thoughts.
Until, without speaking, she pointed forward with a finger cocked like a pistol.
A figure had emerged from behind the closest car. It was difficult to see detail at the range but it appeared to eating something, cramming its mouth and ripping, tearing and swallowing.
It stuffed the last pieces in and stopped, looking in their direction.
Started a slow and purposeful lope towards them.
“Let’s go, shall we,” Caroline said as she flicked the ignition and the engine purred into life.
<><><>
She chose a bizarre route to her workplace, staying where possible to business districts. A looping and contradictory course, despite which they still had to carefully punch through several small groups of what she was beginning to think of as wild animals. It was easier than thinking of them as people.
Driving through those things was terrifying.
Sickening.
Connection and splattering crunch, bump and fight for control of the car, fight for their safety and progress.
Adalia had shrieked to begin with, shrieked at the initial impacts. Then grew stony faced and blank as they progressed.
They eventually arrived at a barrier flanked by an empty booth that guarded a gated entrance situated at the bottom of a gradually declining ramp. A brick office edifice towering overhead. Caroline’s workplace on the outskirts of the city centre.
Thankfully, the immediate area was deserted.
“I have to get out to open this. There’s no one manning it. That’s not unusual out of hours and this is sort of out of hours I suppose ...given the ...given the circumstances. Assuming the power’s still on I can open it with my pin number,” Caroline said.
Adalia simply nodded.
Caroline took a breath and got out of the vehicle.
Stood for a moment with her hand hovering above the gore smeared metal of the door. She didn’t want to touch that filthy surface, and yet she certainly didn’t want to walk away from it. She wanted to get back inside.
She eventually walked to the barrier and raised it. Then ran down the ramp to an inconspicuously blank doorway at the side of the horizontally corrugated peekaboo gate. She fingered a keypad and the metal gateway began to trundle upwards, disappearing in on itself.
She was halfway back up the ramp when she saw the figures behind the Range Rover. Indistinct in the shadow cast by the neighbouring building.
A nightclub.
That building was a nightclub. The neighbouring building, where the figures stood like pale leftovers in the shadows, was a nightclub. Ridiculous that she should think of that. But then, ridiculous that office buildings should sit cheek by jowl with bars and clubs. Bureau of Sound or something, the nightclub. She’d never been there despite Dennis knowing the manager. Some pony tailed Bentley driver, greying hair and too much knowledge in his wrinkle-wrapped eyes.
Those figures weren’t normal people. They didn’t move right. They were changed people and they would hurt her. She knew that fact on a level that defied explanation and she was terrified beyond thought or action. They were here and they were coming. Up close and personal coming.
Not bumping through them in the lovely tank-car darling.
Coming when she was alone and unprotected. Coming when she wasn’t shielded.
The engine of the Range Rover started and the vehicle lurched down the ramp, squealing as it stopped just feet from her.
Caroline was rooted. Her pulse racing and perspiration popping out all over her body. She felt slick with it.
Imagined being crushed beneath that metal behemoth.
Imagined those things touching her.
Grinding mechanical protest from the gearbox as the vehicle reversed at speed, bouncing over people ...things.
Pulping and mashing.
Kept going until it slammed into the opposite wall, the black brick wall of the ridiculous nightclub. Crunched into it with a rending crumple of metal on stone and kaleidoscopic explosions of blood and bone.
Caroline jumped out of the way as it came again and hurtled past her into the underground garage. She had time to glimpse the girl at the wheel, shouting something that she couldn’t hear.
She scrambled back to her feet, ran down the slope, threw herself underneath the sensor activated gate as the steel portal dropped ahead of growling creatures.
Lay bruised and grateful and listened to rattles and clinks behind her as the gate was pummelled by the impact of bodies hitting it.
A metallic organic sound accompanied by frustrated hisses and snarls.
The sound of approaching summer in the new world.
Chapter 7.
Julian Gets Big Data Blues.
As he worked, Julian didn’t have a great deal of contact with others in the CIMC facility. On occasion he visited the canteen where he encountered a scattering of people. It was a communal hub that served as food preparation area-cum-cafeteria and ad hoc admin centre. He guessed that the availability of food and water had a tendency to foster meeting places. In theory, the canteen might have had catering staff but so few people had actually made it to the bunker that it had effectively become self-service.
Julian wasn’t particularly sociable by nature but he still wanted contact. The disturbing novelty of the situation aside, the bunker had a grimness to it that felt like prison. He’d never been anywhere like this before. The absence of daylight, the unimaginable weight of earth over his head. If he let his thoughts dwell on any of it, he’d have run screaming for the sun.
It was during a visit to the canteen that he met Thornton again. The centre administrator was accompanied Robert Holte, the deputy Prime Minister, and they came and sat with him. Apparently Holte was the most senior government official that had made it to the facility.
“This is ...err, Julian Halliwell, our resident number cruncher. He’s preparing an assessment of the situation, Deputy Prime Minister.”
“Holloway. Julian Holloway. I’m an analyst.”
Julian’s initial impression that Thornton could just possibly be a real life, premium grade prick was growing into certainty. Julian wasn’t quick to judge or caustic by nature, but even limited familiarity was nurturing a budding contempt in Thornton’s case. He had a developing suspicion that the man could quite possibly represent his country at Olympic level if being a self-important penis was ever established as an event in the games.
The politician was different. He had an immediate likeability about him. Somehow suave, despite being a little dishevelled.
Funny how civilisation collapsing and being interred in an underground bunker can do that to you, take the crease out of your trousers and leave the stubble on your face.
Even so, Robert Holte possessed that urbane charisma which successful public figures seem to have woven into their very genes. The people that entered the communal area of the canteen were drawn to Holte and he in turn effortlessly interacted with them. Maybe it was his background. He hadn’t followed the usual government schematic of Oxbridge, think-tank, political advisor, government elite. By all accounts, he’d started out as part of the hoi polloi, one of the commoners, the proverbial average Joe. His father had been a plumber who’d gone a step further than fixing taps and fitting central heating systems and formed his own company. He’d sent the young Holte to one of the few remaining grammar schools where he’d been a star pupil. After that, he’d foregone the joys of university in favour of starting work. Real jobs in the real world. Sold used cars and took the business online to turn himself into a millionaire before he eschewed ecommerce and became a member of parliament.
Holte’s magnetism seemed to affect Pearcey as well.
Julian recognised the taciturn security escort immediately when he stalked into the room. Even he brightened as Holte rose and greeted him with an enthusiastic shake of the hand.
“Carlton, good man. How’s it looking out there?”
“Can’t say exactly Mr Holte. We’ve suspended any further collections. No replies and we encountered the collapse scenario on nearly all of the last attempts that were made. I’m grounded, locked down here for now ...but ...well, it doesn’t look too great sir.”
The man joined them at Holte’s gestured invitation.
“Julian, have you met Carlton Pearcey, our senior security officer?” The politician said.
Pearcey sa
t impassive.
“Err yes, he brought me to the centre,” Julian replied.
Pearcey gave a subliminal nod by way of acknowledgement. If the man had accompanied that little dip of his head with the words I don’t give a shit, Julian wouldn’t have been at all surprised. The fact that he was silent didn’t remove the impression.
They discussed the situation. There in the centre and the wider picture. It struck Julian that, whilst the others were aware of enormity of what was occurring in theoretical terms, Pearcey was the only one of them that got it in a real way. The urgent and all pervasive impact of it. Partly because he’d been out there and seen it first hand, mostly because he was simply the type of guy who grasped the fundamentals. Julian got the feeling that Pearcey was primarily practical. He did things and, if philosophy was required, he addressed that aspect later. Lived in the here and now and understood the immediacy of action.
Thornton was consumed by handling things on an administrative level. And so was Holte, admittedly on a grander scale and to a different degree.
Julian had a feeling that that old way of handling things might just have gone by the board. Where you got food and what you wiped your arse with might just be have become more important than whether things had been documented properly. That the way the world was turning, someone like Pearcey might just be holding more cards.
What he witnessed online the next morning totally vindicated that feeling.
<><><>
The day after meeting Robert Holte, Julian was due to present his findings in the afternoon. Early on, he began double checking the report.
He was nervous.
Utterly bizarre situation, strangely unreal place, surrounded by strangers. He’d never revelled in public performance even amongst colleagues and friends. Performance was how he thought of anything that involved more than six guys seated informally around a table. Add someone unknown and it became public. Standing in front a roomful of strangers was akin to trial by ordeal. May as well tell him that he was going to be stripped naked, draped in sharpened USB leads, and paraded round the office by poll dancers.
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