Quiet voices leaked into the darkness and I knew we’d made it. I jogged toward them with my alien weapon banging into my leg, leaving Gabe to trail behind.
Harry jumped down from the platform and onto the tracks, gun high and ready to drop me, “John?” He asked me, apparently it was even darker than I thought.
I raised my hands, still holding the gun and he relaxed a bit, “Yep, at least, I think so? It’s been a weird day.” I joked.
He didn’t fully lower his gun until I entered the light with a smile, “Thank God, figured you’d gotten mashed after all the noise you guys made.”
I let my hands hang by sides again, “Not my fault you decided to call that exact moment. Anyway, how’s things here? Any better?”
“Depends on what you mean by that.” Gabe caught up and Harry helped both of us up onto the well-lit massive platform. It was at least thirty metres long and went fifteen back from the tracks. There was a single four-person wide set of stairs in the middle of the mosaic wall that led up to what I guessed was street level.
There were a few tarps lying around, some covering what appeared to be bodies, as well as a variety of abandoned tools and helmets. A group of over forty people, primarily women, milled around in between my four friends.
Marcus was sitting in the far right corner with Clara, yes, I classify her as a friend, she didn’t try and eat us on sight, while Kate and Wolf stood on the other end armed with M4s.
They, much like the rest of the group, were looking between a singular bandit in a bright green muscle-shirt and camo pants, who was sat cross-legged with his hands bound behind him, and two swaying women a few feet from him who seemed to be quite ill.
“Marcus hasn’t been doing so good, had a bit of a breakdown. Hold on, hey Clara! Come here for a second!”
The writer girl came jogging over after assuring Mark that she’d be right back, “What’s up?”
“How’s he doing, any better?”
Clara shook her head with genuine concern, she actually seemed to care, “I think it all sort of piled up on him. Unfortunately I’m fresh out of booze, which seems to be the only thing that he responds to. Other than that he’ll just have to work through it.”
It was those last few words that made it click in my head, “Hey, would you mind giving this to him?” I asked while passing her the alien gun, “Trigger doesn’t seem to work, that or it’s empty. I can’t tell.”
She accepted it graciously, “Thanks, something to work on would do him good, I’m pretty sure I saw a tool-kit sitting around here somewhere…” She spotted it and practically sprinted for it like someone else would snatch it if she didn’t get there first.
“You’re welcome.” I said to the empty air before turning back to Harry, “What else? What happened after you called?” Clara had finally reached Mark with the gun and tools. He looked up to me, smiled half-heartedly but gratefully, wove and then went to work before I could return the sentiment.
“After I called you a few of the bitten ones turned and I had to… you know. But while I was doing that, that guy who can’t decide whether he wants to be seen or not managed to get a gun and started mowing down civies.”
He paused for a moment, he was clearly uncomfortable with the subject, though it was the sort of uncomfortability of someone who’d seen that type of thing before.
It’s hard to describe. I decided to leave that particular topic of discussion for a while, maybe when we weren’t in a tunnel surrounded by the undead.
“Wolf managed to disarm him and restrain him, was about to execute him too, turned out though that the ones he killed were bitten. The rest of the guys gave up their weapons pretty easily and were ok with Kate and Wolf watching over them, that’s a plus. Now all we’ve got to do is try and decide what to do with him and those two, they’re the last bitten.” He said while gesturing to the women.
It was both obvious and not, in regards to what we had to do. Logically they had to be killed, but if we did that it’d cause a panic. “We need to wait. We wait ‘til they turn and then, when everyone knows, we’ll take care of it, they’ll know we didn’t have a choice.”
“That’s the conclusion we came to as well.” Harry said as he led Gabe and I toward Kate and Wolf. Gabriel refused to look at either of them even after we reached them, instead he focussed on the sick people and the one who’d have put them down if he had his way.
“Oh… Hi Gabe… how’s Mikey and Minks?” Kate asked embarrassedly.
He shrugged, looked at me and then back to the crowd, “There was a fire.” And that was the end of it, an awkward silence was left to linger in the air for a long time.
Eventually Wolf, seemingly trying to pretend nothing was going on, half-smiled at me, “How’d you guys go? Have any trouble getting in?”
‘Nice deflection buddy.’ I thought to myself sarcastically, “Not too much, Steve was there, we locked them out near the transit station. I’ll tell you more about it when we’re out of here and on our way to greener pastures.”
I glanced at the crowd then back at Wolf, I really did hope I could save these people. I both cared and didn’t, it was a strange balance. “For now we’ve got more important things to focus on, like what we’re going to do with Mr Snowtown over here.”
The bandit laughed, his back still to us, “Haven’t got any barrels to put ‘em in, but close enough. Name’s Warren and you can thank me later when we’re at your ‘greener pastures’.” He was really rather condescending despite his current position.
“Ignore him guys, he likes to run his mouth a bit, I think we should just shoot him. Use him as an example.” Both Warren and Gabe chuckled at Wolf’s suggestion.
“Course you’d say that Wolf, I mean, it’s not like he was doing it to try and save the rest of you.” Gabe said contemptuously.
“You weren’t here Gabriel, he slaughtered them like it was nothing!” Wolf said almost hysterically, it was a new tone for him. I think he was trying to make up for something by at least pretending to care about these strangers.
Warren shook his freshly shorn brown haired head, “Corpses waiting to happen Wolfy, that’s all they were, corpses waiting to happen. And I wouldn’t call a bullet to each of their heads ‘slaughter’. More… culling.”
Wolf went to club him over the back of the head with his rifle and I only just caught it along with a shocked look, “Calm down Wolf, he has a point, if he hadn’t have done what he did we’d be in a situation with a whole lot more zeds. You know that.”
Weirdly, Harry went to Wolf’s defence, “He’s right John, this guy killed civilians for no good reason.”
“Wha- huh? You do realise that we’re living in a zombie apocolypse, right? You get bitten, you get sick, you get zombie. That’s how it works.” I said with all my grand knowledge of cinema.
“Yeah, I’ve seen the movies John, but, to date, have you actually ever seen anyone who’s been bitten zed-out? Isn’t it just when they die that that happens?”
I searched my memories and they turned up with nothing. Warren’s did though, “I’ve seen it,” he said flatly, “when people get bitten the wound gets infected almost immediately, and then it’s only a matter of time. With bites they’re already dead, depending on their health they get maybe an hour, but usually less.”
Harry, grasping at straws, leapt on the only point that he could, “You said bites, you specified bites. She’s been scratched, doesn’t than mean she can be saved?” He asked while pointing at one of the women.
Warren shook his head and shuffled around until he was facing us, “Sure, if you amputated whatever part had the scratch immediately, and then disinfected the shit out of it, and then got some antibiotics in her, she might have lived. We had one guy have that happen. Lost his right arm, we did what we could and pretty soon we were back out together on scavenger duty. Ever seen a guy try to cock a shotgun with a wire hanger attached to a stump? Makes a damn mess.”
I saw the point that he was getting at.
Even if we had saved those women from infection the current world still would’ve chewed them up and spit them out.
Speaking of which,
“Somebody help me!”
Drawing Attention
We all ran over to the screams, leaving Warren and the two sick people to their own devices. In the time it took us to get there someone had had their throat ripped out and had turned. At least five people were bitten and were very quickly and fiercely turning while the thirty or so who’d managed to avoid them huddled around Mark and Clara.
I was the first to respond, pulling out my pistol and taking aim at the ones who’d turned. Someone was saying something, but it was impossible to hear them over the growls of the zeds, something to worry about later I thought.
Waiting was hard, but it had to be clear to everyone that I had no choice and that these people were seconds from eating the rest of us. Finally I got a reprieve, it was a man, twitching and snarling. He darted for the group and I pulled my trigger, deafening me in the same instant that I sprayed the once-bandit’s brains all around.
The echo-y chamber of concrete combined with gun-fire was a bad combination, but that didn’t stop me. Another zed fully turned and I splattered her too, and the next and the next, all the while the shouting voice got louder and louder. Normally I’d have been annoyed, luckily the ringing in my ears acted like a mute button.
The final, dress-wearing zed had decided that I was better food than the whimpering crowd, where the others in my group had gone, acting like a protective shield while I did all the dirty work. She launched for me tenaciously, teeth bared and arms stretched out for me, I pulled my trigger and… nothing. I figured I was just too deaf to hear the crack until I pulled it again and got the same result.
She’d reached me and, in my dazed state, was able to knock me to the ground, sending my gun rattling across the ground. The summer dress whipped in the wind as she attempted to mount me, a process I interrupted by planting my feet on her gut and sent her upward into the tiled roof before pulling out Gabe’s knife and sending it after her. The blade hit its mark, right in her forehead as she came down. I only just managed to roll out of the way as she splatted on the hard floor.
I stood up, dusted myself off, rolled the body over with my foot and pulled out the knife, wiping it off on her bloody dress before tucking it back into my belt. I looked over to my shocked group of survivors, “Any help. Any at all!” I could barely hear my own voice over the incessant ringing.
Someone pushed me hard in the back and I turned to see Warren, still cuffed, but with his hands in front of him, he proceeded to say something that I couldn’t hear. He was definitely angry about something though.
“What?” I said, trying to pop my ears by moving my jaw around and moving my palms on my ears.
“-king idiot!”
“Oh thank God, that would’ve been annoying. Now what is it?”
Warren was clearly frustrated, fuming even, “I told you not to do that!”
“Don’t be such a hypocrite, it shows poor character.” I said condescendingly. I looked over his shoulder at the two women lying on the ground completely motionless, “What happened there?”
He looked back, at the distraction, “They were going to turn, I stopped it. And don’t change the subject! Sure, I stopped the infection from spreading, but when I did it there wasn’t a transit station full of corpses less than a kay away!”
I went to argue but, as if to confirm his words, a snarl echoed through the tunnels from the direction of the Queen Street station.
Deaf and Red
Wolf, Kate, Gabe, Warren and myself all huddled as close to the tunnel as we could while the Clara, Mark, Harry and the people from S’ camp stayed in their corner on the other side of the platform.
“I thought you said you jammed the door!” Gabe hissed.
“I thought I did! Steve must’ve helped them out.” I was trying to defend myself and my skills, but there was something more important than my ego that needed to be addressed. “We have got to get these people out of here.” I said while trying to sound as caring as possible and, judging by how upset Kate seemed to be with it, I’d done a spot on job.
“Where are we meant to go? We can’t go out the gates we came through because we locked them behind us, and we can’t keep these people contained in these tunnels, it’s too dark, we won’t be able to keep track of everyone.” She said in the ‘matter-of-fact’ tact of the smart girl in your group project.
I wanted to respond with some spiel about how important it was that we maintain a sense of humanity and try and save who we can, it was just too hard to pretend for that long. Relating to these people wasn’t easy at the moment, not with all the weirdness I was going through.
Luckily the five o’clock shadow, camo pants with a bright green muscle-shirt hero of the bandits had something to say and saved me the displeasure of pulling another death-run plan out of my arse, “We could kill ‘em.”
‘Mwahaha,’ I gloated internally, ‘watch how they shoot you down for your foolishness, feel the pain of inadequacy, feeeeel it.’
My precious ego was still stinging a tiny bit, I’m actually quite proud that I didn’t say any of that stuff to the guy, and not just because of what happened next.
I was wrong to assume that his idea would be met with a tirade of rejection, as immediately Harry jumped onto his side of the fence, “How many of these guys can fight?”
“What!?” I squeezed past a pubescent voice-crack.
Warren looked at me with bewilderment, “You seem to be forgetting that most of the people you’ve captured are either military trained or equivalent, every one of them has experience fighting zeds. What’s-his-face over there,” he said while pointing with his cuffed hands to a large bald man with a tribal face-tattoo and a baggy red t-shirt, “he used to work with hunting supplies in NZ, and he’s a bloody good shot too.”
“I don’t know…”
“Look, John, is it? We used to have two hundred men on our fighter detail, after your breakout we lost well over half. The people you see here are the ones who made it, not only through that, but the overrunning as well.” He scoffed and looked at Wolf and Kate, “Hell, I made it after Wolfy there zip-tied me after a little ‘discussion’ and left me behind to get swarmed. Shoulda seen his face when I showed up here.”
All eyes fell on me, waiting for my response, trust the convict or possibly lose everyone here. Another snarl, closer than the last, pushed me to my answer, “Sure, but only if you assure me that we can trust you and your men.”
Warren smiled at that, before pointing to three of the six men out, “Those three, they’re good people who got caught up in a shitty situation, they’ll stick with us as long as I’m there, strength in numbers and all that. The others… less than tasteful.”
I could already tell what he meant just by looking at them, they were the kind of people who travelled in packs before Z-day, the kind that caused trouble, smashed windows and bullied anyone in a smaller group than them.
“Alright, Mark and Harry can stay here, keep an eye on the situation. Warren, you get your men and Kate will arm you up, meet on the tracks.” Warren raised his chained wrists and jangled the metal shackles. I rolled my eyes in response, grabbed the chain and broke it with a quick tug and let him run off.
Wolf caught my arm as I went to tell Clara and Mark the plan, “John, are you sure this is how you want to do it? Do we really need all this… baggage?”
Gabriel cut in before I could respond “Baggage… interesting, another name for that would be, you know, people. Come on John.” He grabbed my other arm and dragged me off.
I felt like I was in a weird relationship where I was the silent child while mommy, daddy and the mistress tried to get me on their side.
Again, I can’t stress it enough, I had a very weird childhood.
“Hey Clara,” I said as we approached the three, “you wanna come on a firing run?”
&n
bsp; She shrugged and gave her backpack to Mark who was still working on the gun, “Sure, could be fun.”
“Nope, not happening.” Harry said as we started to walk off.
“Pardon?”
“You’re not leaving me behind again, it’s annoying and I’m sick of it. Ever since you got your wonder team back it’s been ‘You’re on babysitting duty’ and ‘it’s for the best if you stay behind’ and I’m just… No. Not doing it anymore.”
I looked to the distracted Marcus who, somehow, saw me and started waving us off, “Don’t worry, I got this. Just give me a gun with bullets this time.”
“Fine by me, hey Kate!” I shouted over to our temporary quartermaster, “AK!” She nodded, found the weapon and tossed it to me, all without looking up.
I caught it and passed it to Mark who’d just put down the alien weapon. He proceeded to check the clip and smiled, “Had to make sure.” he said with a wink.
I chuckled and walked off with the others over to Kate and grabbed up an M4 and went toward the tracks, “Hey John! Heads!” Warren called.
A projectile soared through the air as I turned and hit me directly in the face, catching the object in my free hand before it hit the floor, “What the- oh… Cheers!” I said as I looked over the bright orange industrial grade ear muffs.
Ten men and women stood before me, each with ear muffs dangling around their necks and guns in their hands, awaiting my word, I felt like I needed to give a speech of some sort, but all I could manage was “Let’s have ourselves a jolly good slaughter then, shall we?”
Turns out that was enough though, each of the members pulled on their ear muffs, walked into the tunnel behind me, guns pointed at the ground.
I felt like we could take on the world.
The first zed in what would be an onslaught charged out of the darkness toward us and I dropped to my knee and let the others drop it. I raised my hand into the air and waved for two people to join me on the front. Another three zeds charged out as they did so, and were promptly put down.
The Mulligan Planet 2 (The Mulligan Planet Trilogy) Page 10
