It was still moving.
Even with its face caved in and the liquefied remains of its cerebellum leaking out of the terrible cavity that had once been the front of its skull, it was still struggling to get up. Still trying to get me.
Human fingers bent into ragged-nailed talons clawed in my direction, and I muffled a shriek as I scooted out of its reach. The scattershot had done a real number on the creature; half its head was gone and shrapnel burns covered the entire upper half of its body. I was fairly certain that I could see the bloody remains of its brain stem, shattered by the shell.
That should have done it. That should have killed it. It should not still be moving.
"How the hell is it still moving?" I whispered, as much to myself as to the other survivor, but he still heard me and gave me the answer.
"It's a mutation. We don't know how it's happening, but this is the fifth one we've seen this month – the second in a week. We think the virus is evolving." His voice was harsh, like he'd been running for a few hours without stopping to catch his breath.
As I scooted away from the horrible thing, the stranger put himself between me and the creature again, in a protective move that surprised me. With a glance over his shoulder, he spoke softly to me.
"Stay back. There's only one thing that we know for sure kills them."
There was a bottle in his hand, a red metal flask about the size of a drink bottle. With gloved hands, he unwound the cap and emptied the contents of the flask over the crawling undead. From the smell, I realised immediately it was either kerosene or lighter fluid.
He returned the empty flask to one of his pockets and pulled a box of matches from another – like mine, his clothing bore a lot of pockets. I noticed his hands shook when he struck the match and dropped it onto the bloody creature, but he didn’t hesitate. As the flames spread, he hopped back away just in time to avoid being burned, then turned to look at me.
By the time he finished setting the creature aflame, I was a few metres away, trying in vain to put distance between myself and danger. To my frustration, my body still didn't want to respond. He moved closer, cautiously offering me a hand to help me up. I shoved it away, afraid to let him touch me.
A surge of adrenaline hit suddenly, and gave me the strength to get up on my own, and as soon as I was up I started backing away. I needed to use the wall to support my weight, which made my retreat inelegant, but it also made my fear quite obvious.
In my mind, I was remembering all the terrible, painful, violent things that men had done to me, and forced me to do to them. Even though he had helped me and seemed to want to help me again, my instincts were reluctant to forget those terrible things that human beings were capable of doing to one another – and to me.
He hesitated as he watched me scoot away, uncertainty etched on what little I could see of his face. Finally, he reached up and slid his night vision goggles up onto his head, letting me see the rest of him. He was handsome in an angular sort of way, and his eyes made me hesitate. They were gentle and full of concern for me despite my resistance.
"Hey, it’s alright." His gruff voice was soft, as though he were trying to make himself as nonthreatening as possible – as if I was a wild animal that he could tame with gentle tones. "I just want to help you. Survivors have to help each other, right?"
"Not in my experience," I snapped back, my voice almost as harsh as his. It had been a long time since I'd held a conversation with anything that actually understood what I was saying.
His expression changed, from concern to sadness, and he closed his eyes for a moment. When they opened, he reached up to his chest, and pointed out a faded logo.
"Miss, I'm a police officer." He drew my eye to the faded word printed above his left pectoral. "I didn't mean to shoot at you, I swear on my life. I’m sorry. I thought you were one of them. I came here to hunt the mutants."
Then he looked down, suddenly noticing my gun at his feet. With a quizzical glance at me, he stooped and picked it up. I tensed, expecting to be shot with my own gun, but he didn’t. He just turned the weapon around, and offered it back to me hilt first without a word. A peace offering. A gesture of trust.
I snatched the gun away and turned it on him, pointing the weapon straight at his handsome face – but I didn’t pull the trigger. He held up his hands, trying to show me that his intentions were good. Although one of those hands did hold a shotgun, the gun was pointed about as far from my direction as it possibly could be.
Behind him, the fire cracked. The undead thing was still writhing. Oh god, it was still alive. My panic was fading, leaving me shaking from tension and sick to my stomach. The smell of burning flesh and hair in an enclosed space was nauseating. The survivor followed my eye to the writhing corpse, then swiftly stepped to his left to block my view.
"Don't look, please. You look like you've seen enough terrible things to last a lifetime," he said softly, his gruff voice barely audible over the crackle of flames. With slow, measured movements, he extended a hand towards me.
This time, it was in the form of a handshake.
"I'm Michael. Constable Michael Chan. I'm part of a group of survivors that live around here." He glanced at my foot, obviously aware of my injury, then looked back up and offered me a wry half-smile. "One of my friends is a doctor."
I stared at his hand like it was a serpent that was going to bite me. The sound of hands striking flesh, my flesh, echoed in my memory, bringing with it the remembrance of pain. Then I looked up at his face, and saw only concern in his kind eyes. My gut did a flip-flop. There was a certain honesty about that face that my instinct said wasn't faked.
I lowered my gun, feeling uncertain and confused, unsure of what to do. He waited, his hand extended, an open invitation of— what? Friendship? I didn’t understand friendship anymore. But, he was a police officer, sworn to protect and serve. He knew a doctor. I needed a doctor, so badly. And the way he was looking at me, that sweet, earnest concern.
Finally, my intuition as a human being overcame my learned paranoia as a survivor. I reached out to take his hand. A moment before our fingers would have touched, a blood-curdling shriek echoed through the empty corridors, cutting short our greeting. It was swiftly joined by a second, then a third.
All of a sudden, Michael wasn't so scary after all. Not compared to whatever was making those terrible sounds.
He spun and stared down the corridor beyond the burning corpse, his face suddenly intense. Careful steps brought him back towards me, and this time I didn't flee. I had to admit, after hearing those sounds, I really wanted a nice, big meat shield between me and whatever was making them. I didn’t care if I was being self-interested.
But then I damn near jumped out of my skin when he turned unexpectedly and shoved his shotgun into my hands.
"I'm going to pick you up." His voice was calm and soft. "And then we're going to run for our lives. Please refrain from hitting me or shooting me until we’re out of here."
Despite the warning, I still squeaked in surprise when he scooped me up into his arms, and fumbled to keep hold of the pair of guns. My torch was gone now, rolled away when he'd bowled me over to save me from the undead.
Another one screeched, this one closer.
Forget the torch. Forget the scary man. Fucking run! My instincts screamed at me. Apparently his did as well, because Michael took off with me in his arms, heading back the way we both came. I clung to him, surprised to find myself considering him the lesser of two evils at this particular moment.
The screeches were drawing closer and closer, like the baying of wolves. They were closing in on us, following our scent. Hunting us.
Just as we arrived back at the T-junction, another shriek joined the fray – this one was directly in front of us, from the direction Michael must have come, the opposite leg of the junction from the direction I had chosen.
"Wait." Self-preservation overrode my fear of him. Right now, my only hope for survival rested in the arms of a strange
man who claimed to have once been an officer of the law. I was not ready to die. I shot out an arm, pointing to the right, through the Maternity Ward. "Go that way! There's an exit, I have a car waiting."
I didn't have to tell him twice. He turned and was off like a shot down the dark corridor. I found myself praying that nothing snuck in behind me after I cleared this corridor a few minutes ago. The shrieks were coming more and more frequently, drawing closer and closer, making my ears ring with their volume and ferocity.
Chancing a glance over Michael's shoulder, I saw nothing yet, but I was sure that at any moment I would see those horrible creatures scrambling to devour us.
Suddenly we were outside, the bright spotlights that bathed the car park startling after the dark corridor. My truck was where I left it, like a beacon of hope that we might yet survive this night.
"The keys?" Michael was gasping, out of breath from his frantic run while bearing my weight, but he made no effort to put me down even as I fumbled to get the car keys from my pocket. He held me close, protectively, bracing me against the door until I found the right key and shoved it in the lock. Central locking did the rest.
Unexpectedly, he yanked me away from the driver's door, and somehow managed to juggle my weight long enough to open the rear cab. I felt a flash of panic at the strength of his hands, but all he did was lift me in gently and sit me in the back seat. With a moment of understanding, I realised that he intended to drive and that he’d seen all the supplies piled on my passenger seat; the back seat was just the quickest and safest option for us both.
Despite my inner paranoia screaming in protest, I thrust the keys into his waiting hand. He slammed the door as soon as I was safely inside, and then dove behind the wheel. The engine roared to life, and he threw the car into reverse.
As the car swung around, the headlights flashed up the corridor, briefly lighting the figures that were loping towards us. They were horrible, hunched, their strides uneven. There were four or five, and they were coming fast.
"Michael!" I cried, their demeanour shooting pure, animal terror into my heart. I’d never seen undead move like that. It was like something out of one of those goddamn zombie movies I watched as a kid.
"I see them. Put your seatbelt on." His voice was still calm somehow, and I fumbled to obey. As soon as he heard the click of my belt sliding into place, he put his foot down.
The Hilux leapt forward, careening out the gate I had snuck through so carefully before; the combination of speed and weight crushed that fallen barrier arm into splinters beneath us. He swung the car to the right and deeper into the city, gaining speed at a dangerous rate. I clung to the hand hold on the roof above me, suddenly more afraid of his driving than of the zombies.
Luckily, he seemed to know the streets and their obstacles well, and we miraculously survived our high-speed dash. As we drove I saw the flash of murky water to our right. I stared at it, trying to piece together what I saw with what I remembered from looking at my map, but my brain was too tired to co-operate.
"I'm taking a circuitous route to lose them." Michael spoke up suddenly, as though reading my mind; I was just getting myself all worried wondering where on earth he was taking me. "Our base is only a few kilometres from the hospital grounds. I'd hate to lead those things back home."
"They can track?" I was surprised. Being able to hunt was a sign of intelligence, and that seemed unlikely from what I’d seen of the creatures in the past.
"We're not really sure, but I'm not taking any risks with the lives of my friends. I hope you understand."
I did understand. I took the moment to catch my breath instead and fell into silence, staring out the window as I considered his possible motives. He seemed so genuine, so honest. Those were things you couldn’t really fake.
Could you?
I’d been alone for so long that I had lost my knack for reading people. Feeling overheated despite the cool evening air, I rubbed a hand across my forehead and slumped back in my seat.
Then a thought struck me, and I turned to peer at the back of Michael's head in the dark.
"You knew they were there. You came here all alone, at night, to a place where you knew those things were living. Why?" I asked softly, watching what I could see of his body to gauge his reaction.
Even I understood what it meant when I saw the way his hands tightened on the steering wheel; I could imagine his knuckles going white inside his gloves. I knew what that kind of tension meant.
"They killed one of my... friends. Two days ago." His voice was so low I could barely make it out over the sound of the engine. My sympathy bloomed into understanding. "We’ve only seen them attack during the day, so I hoped to catch them unaware at night. I won’t let them take anyone else. I can't. For her sake. I'll kill them all, if I have to."
"You were close," I surmised, curiosity getting the better of me. It surprised me that I was interested in this stranger's motives at all, but what better way to understand someone than to learn about what drove them to kill?
"Yes." He paused, his husky voice almost a whisper. I wondered if there were tears in his eyes, but I couldn't see from where I sat. "She was my niece. My brother's little girl. She was only twelve." I heard him swallow and could imagine him trying to centre himself, just like I would do in his place.
My heart softened when I heard the pain in his voice. I knew that pain so well; I felt it every day. Every time I saw a child’s toy or a little pair of shoes, I thought of my baby sister.
For him, the pain was still so raw, so recent. I understood that, too.
In spite of myself, I found myself reaching out to touch his shoulder. I don't know if he could feel it through the body armour, but it didn’t matter. He was motivated by revenge and a powerful need to protect what little was left. I could understand that. More importantly, I could respect that.
I sat back in my seat after a brief moment of contact, pondering what had happened over the last few hours. With the back of one hand, I wiped my forehead and found that I was sweating despite the cool night air. Strange. A minute ago I’d felt like I was boiling alive, and now I was freezing. A wave of sparkles danced in front of my eyes, which left me feeling a little light-headed. I’d put the strange feeling down to adrenaline at first, but now that I was calm I wasn't so sure.
I laid my cheek against the glass of the window beside me, letting its coolness draw some of the heat from my cheeks. My mind wandered, and I found myself bouncing from one thought to the other without connection as I stared off out the window.
Today had not been a good day for me.
***
By the time we reached our final destination, I was feeling dizzy and disoriented, and was having trouble focusing both my thoughts and my eyes. I felt the engine stop, and then Michael was saying something, but I couldn’t quite understand what he said.
If he was talking to me, then why was he so far away?
My eyes were closed but I wasn't asleep, just too dizzy to focus on the road anymore. I cracked my lids open and saw his concerned face peering back at me in the half-light. I managed a weak smile, then laid my head back down against the window again. It felt so nice and cool.
I heard a door slam.
A moment later, the window I was leaning against moved and I felt myself slipping towards the ground. Strong arms caught me, and a cool hand pressed against my forehead and cheeks. I wondered at it, but it didn't seem to matter so much anymore.
I was so tired. All I wanted to do was sleep.
I felt myself being disentangled from my seatbelt, then gathered up and held close to someone, but I wasn't sure who it was anymore and it didn't seem to matter. I heard worried voices, but when I tried to open my eyes it felt like the lids were weighted down with bricks.
No, lead.
No, bricks made of lead.
Bricks of lead tied to my feet.
So tired...
Chapter Twelve
Eventually, the fever broke.
&n
bsp; One minute I was lost in the land of nonsense dreams of times long gone, happy times spent with family and friends. The next, my eyes were opening and I felt lucid and alert for the first time in what seemed like forever. I blinked slowly as my vision cleared, then reached up to rub the crust from the corners of my eyes and lips.
Every part of me ached. How long had I slept? I rolled myself up into a sitting position, shaking my head to clear away the cobwebs. As I sat up, the thin blanket slipped down to my waist, and I realised with a flash of shock that I had been stripped to my knickers and undershirt.
My cheeks coloured, first in fear and embarrassment, and then in anger as my memory came crashing back.
How dare he? After all his talk about trust, after the way he went on about wanting to help me, he’d betrayed me just the same? A sense of overwhelming outrage shot through my breast, sending spasms of energy to the furthest reaches of my limbs. I darted a glance around the room, intent on escape, looking for anything I could use as a weapon to defend myself.
There, on the table by the door: a gun!
...and a taser. A familiar-looking taser. My taser. Actually, that gun was pretty familiar too, come to think of it. Next to the weapons, my other belongings sat stacked with care. My clothing was washed and folded, with my shoes placed neatly atop the stack. They'd even gone so far as to clean my shoes for me while I slept.
My anger evaporated.
A cocktail of confusion and guilt replaced my anger as I came to understand. There was a bucket of water on the floor beside my bed, with a pile of wet rags near it. I vaguely remembered the strange feelings as I drifted away in the car, and now realised that I had been sick. A fever. They only removed my clothing to keep me cool, to try and keep the fever at bay.
They’d left my things untouched, aside from washing my clothing, and left me untouched as well. I knew the feeling of violation very well, and I did not feel it now. I shifted my foot and found the pain was muted, and the wound was dressed in clean bandages.
The Survivors (Book 1): Summer Page 11
