That was not something any of us was happy about but there was very little to be done about it. Before that though, before anything, really, we needed to catch the damned infiltrator.
“Now,” I said, into the silence. “This mercenary that is running loose. I want an update.”
“Every location mentioned as a potential target by our prisoner has been guarded. Patrols are moving throughout the town and other than a house to house search, we need to wait for him to make a move.”
“Which could be when?” Shepherd snapped, hitting the desk again.
I winced at the marks she was making since it had been me that had polished the damn thing just before the meeting started. It wasn’t like we had a cleaning staff, after all.
“Most likely the next time it snows,” the Admiral said and seemingly instinctively, we all turned towards the wide window.
“Great,” I said as I watched the snow falling.
Chapter 21
My knife was up before me in an instant and she just smiled, staring at me with her dead eyes that seemed to suck in, rather than reflect, the light of the setting sun.
“I wouldn’t,” she said, tilting her head to the side.
Reluctantly, I risked a glance to my right where she was indicating and almost swore at what I saw.
“You’ve been busy.” I eyed the group of Infected, doing a quick headcount. Too many.
“We cannot avoid our most primal urges.”
She smiled as she said that and I narrowed my eyes as I stared at her. Behind me, my minions were gathering and I held up one hand to hold them back. The Infected were stronger and faster than your average zombie, likely as fast as the Reapers were, though with the human mind intact.
One hand was raised in a casual gesture and her group of Infected hunkered down in the snow, waiting for further commands. I cocked an eyebrow as I watched those over long fingers of hers and seeing it, she quickly dropped her hand, the oversized sleeves of her coat covering them.
“What do you want?”
She laughed then and I just stared. “I expected another question. You’re smarter than you look.”
Another question? Ah… I didn’t need to ask how she had found us. It was pretty clear that she had been watching the island from afar and had seen our boat. It wouldn’t take much for her to follow us, not having to avoid the zombies like we did.
“You haven’t answered.”
“And you haven’t displayed any manners and invited us in.”
I wondered if she meant her group. The last time I had spoken with her, just before she tried to shoot me as she escaped, she had spoken as though she were no longer an individual.
“You can come in. Your puppies stay outside.”
Briony smiled, ignoring the insult and stepped inside the police station. She looked around as she entered, not at all put out by the nineteen minions, the large mercenary with a mallet and my friend, staring at her with his mouth open.
I closed the door behind her and gestured for her to take one of the seats near the door. As she seated herself, my eyes were drawn to the snow gathered on her clothes. It wasn’t melting. Nor did the air mist before her mouth, and I had to wonder just whether she was actually alive at all.
With one long-fingered hand, she reached up and pulled down the hood of her coat, mouth twisting up at the corners as Gregg let out a gasp.
There was no hair left on her head and around her skull, bone had begun to grow, much like a Reapers. Spikey spurs of bone rising up like a crown. Her eyes didn’t leave my own, seeming to want to see my reaction to her appearance.
If so, she was disappointed as I kept my expression neutral. I merely noted the changes and revised my plan on how I would kill her.
“You’ve changed,” I said, dryly and she laughed.
“We have.”
Ah, it was the royal ‘we’ then. I couldn’t decide whether that was just her being pretentious or something else. I certainly wasn’t going to ask.
“What do you want?”
“The same as you.”
“I doubt that.”
Her eyes flicked down to the knife I held and her tongue darted out, wetting her lips.
“Perhaps not.” She returned her attention to my face. “We visited the bunker. The one where you killed so many people.”
My eyes narrowed again. When we had first met her, she had been in no real condition to do much more than trudge along. I couldn’t recall mentioning anything specific about the bunker and I certainly hadn’t spoken of killing everyone there.
“We know there is another and we know you are going there.”
That clinched it. Someone was talking to her and the only ones that could be were her old research buddies. Vanessa or one of the others had somehow managed to remain in contact, despite everything she had done before escaping the island.
I was pretty sure that when I returned home I would kill whoever it was.
“Why?”
She extended her arm out before her, lifting her hand until the palm was pointed towards me. Then, she spread her fingers to another gasp from Gregg. I shot him an irritated glance before looking back at her.
Each of her fingers was at least an inch longer than any humans had a right to be and the ends had begun to darken, the flesh melting away until it seemed only a thin bit of skin covered the sharp bone. It gave her the effect of claws and I had seen it often enough before on the Ferals and Reapers.
“We are becoming something more,” she said. “With sufficient sustenance, we can keep our control. But it is becoming harder to do.”
“No,” I said with a smirk. “It’s because you are eating so much that you are changing. Every meal you take you are fuelling that parasite.”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t found a balance, have you? One that allows you to retain control without losing yourself.”
“No.”
There was such hatred in that single word, that I smiled. It was anger, a rage, directed at herself and everyone else. She clearly despised herself for not being able to do that.
“Let me guess. You want to use the laboratories and databases at the next bunker to try and fix yourself?”
“We want stability.”
Her voice was practically a hiss as she said that and I was genuinely surprised.
“You want to remain like you are?”
“We are more than we were. We will watch the world turn for millennia, without ageing, without dying. The knowledge we can possess over all those lifetimes. We would desire that.”
“Sounds pretty fucked up to me,” Isaac said loudly. “No way to live. Like a fucking ghoul, a parasite, feasting on the living.”
“A small price for eternity,” she answered with a sneer.
“What’s to stop me just killing you now?”
“You could not that last time you faced me.”
I couldn’t stop my teeth clenching at that and she noticed. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to send my knife towards her face as she mirrored my smirk of earlier. I forced my muscles to loosen, my teeth to unclench and I twisted my neck until it cracked.
“We can lead you through the city,” she said. “The… others, they find our presence displeasing and they avoid us. We can protect you.”
She was determined to piss me off, it seemed. I didn’t immediately respond, just stared at her as I considered what she was offering. A plan already taking form in my mind.
“How could I trust you?”
“Mate!” Gregg said. “You can’t be serious.”
I silenced him with a glare and turned back to her, sitting there, so smug and confident that she was safe. I would show her that she was wrong about that.
“You have our word.”
“Hardly acceptable.”
“We do not know the location of the bunker,” she said, the words seemingly drawn out of her. “We need you.”
Which meant I could trust her right the way up till
she learned that location. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something for me to work with, especially since I didn’t really expect her to survive long enough to learn it.
Until then, she could be useful.
“You keep your people away from ours. Gather them up and wait for us.”
“We are agreed then?”
“Aye.”
“You do not need to consult your… friends?” she flicked her eyes towards the gathered minions and I simply replied with one word.
“No.”
That seemed to be acceptable enough for her. She pulled the hood of the oversized coat back over her head and rose to her feet, moving towards the door. She stopped with her hand on the door handle and looked back, eyes glinting.
“Do not try to betray us.”
And with that, she pulled open the door and stepped out into the cold. I waited until it closed before I turned to the others, expecting an explosion of questions. I didn’t have to wait long.
“I thought you were smarter than that, Clever Bastard!”
“Mate, what the hell?”
“My Lord Death, she is of the Scourge.”
I silenced them all with a single sharp gesture. I didn’t need to provide an answer for them. I didn’t need to justify my decisions. Especially not to my minions. It was for them to obey me without question, to do as I commanded, no matter what that command might be.
Even so, I could sense how precarious my position was right then. Resentment would grow, even my minions were still people and people, by and large, were stupid. They acted out of emotion and made foolish mistakes that could get me killed because they were upset with me.
“I have a plan,” I said, hating the need to explain myself. “They are useful for the moment.”
There were mutters aplenty, but they gathered their belongings, stuffing the blankets back into their backpacks and readying themselves for the trek. Gregg shook his head and wouldn’t look my way, while Isaac shot me dark glances.
It wasn’t enough for them, but it was all I could give. There would be death aplenty in the days to come. If they didn’t trust me, if they didn’t do as I ordered… well, there was no reason that they couldn’t face the same fate I had planned for, Briony.
Chapter 22
It was a tense journey, through the silent snow-covered streets. Briony kept her little group of eleven Infected a good few hundred feet ahead of us. As soon as they came close to a zombie, that creature did it’s best to hurry out of the way.
If it wasn’t fast enough, well, we paused as the unfortunate creature was quite literally torn apart. One of the eleven would trot over to Briony, bloodied gobbets of flesh held in its outstretched hands.
The first time it happened, she reached out her own, overlong fingers and then hesitated, head turning towards me before she waved the minion away. I grinned at that, knowing that she had some reluctance to fully show off the monster she had become.
My own minions, meanwhile, kept a little ways back from me. Their faith had been shaken and I was okay with that so long as it wasn’t broken. They would still need to do as I commanded or I would be forced to kill them.
Gregg, I wouldn’t kill, of course, but he would have to rein in his dark looks and muttering. It was likely fear of the Infected, but still, it was annoying. Isaac, on the other hand, had set aside his own feelings. He’d been a mercenary long enough to understand that you sometimes had to fight alongside the enemy to accomplish a goal.
Even so, he kept his weapon to hand and hung back far enough that he could escape should the Infected turn on us. Smart man.
I paused beside a street sign that pointed out the direction of the docks and waited patiently, shivering a little from the cold, as the Infected tore apart another small group of zombies. They did it with little real noise and they used their own fists to crush the skulls of the weaker undead.
It was interesting to watch them fight, to see them kill. None of them seemed to have the same bone spur growths as Briony, and I wasn’t sure if that was due to the changes wrought in her by the ill-conceived vaccine she had been injected with.
From an outside perspective, it looked very much like a Reaper and Feral set up. Either there was something about the altered parasite that prevented it making others that could challenge her, or she killed any that began to show signs of the change.
I suspected the latter.
“Gonna take forever,” Gregg muttered as he looked up at the sky.
Dark clouds hung there, covering it in every direction, as they had done since before the summer. It was rare to get a day without them and I gathered that was due to the nuclear explosions and fires.
Whatever the cause, it meant that when night came it would be pitch black and we would be outside, in the freezing cold, with a group of Infected who could probably see better than we could.
“Ten minutes,” I said and jerked my thumb up towards the sign above me.
He glanced at it and muttered again before looking away. I rolled my eyes and went back to watching the Infected feast.
One of them was approaching Briony with yet another offering of bloodied, decaying, zombie flesh. She glanced towards me and my grin widened as I caught the gleam of her eyes beneath the hood.
Her hand shot out and she grabbed the meat, raising it to her mouth and tearing at it with her teeth. All the while, she kept her eyes on me, defying my mocking smile. Blood ran down across her chin as she chewed and I let out a theatrical yawn.
A hissed order was enough to get her group moving and as they started walking, I raised my fist and set off after them. I didn’t need to look back to see that my minions were following me. They weren’t that upset. Even so, the point between my shoulder blades began to itch and that old paranoia reared its ugly head.
The dockyards were immense. Full of huge buildings that stretched for hundreds of meters. Containers sat in endless rows, slowly rusting as their protective treatments flaked away. Cars and trucks, wagons and forklifts sat where they had been abandoned, two years before.
Thick pipes ran alongside the buildings, carrying who knew what, and bodies lay everywhere. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of zombies had died. Recently too. Many were half buried in the snow, sometimes singly, other times in large piles.
We walked amongst them slowly, cautiously. Following the walkways on the gantries above, all the way to the steel towers that would have once held fuel. They were empty then though, their fuel spilt across the ground, having leaked from the holes gouged in the sides.
It seemed like we could wander for hours, or days, trying to find our way through the mass of warehouses, containers and detritus of a civilisation two years dead. For some, Gregg and my minions included, it was a little awe-inspiring, perhaps even humbling.
Isaac seemed to be scanning everything, head moving constantly on a swivel as he tried to see in every direction at the same time.
I just saw the death all around me and I felt something close to peace.
Briony dropped back, leaving her group a good distance ahead of us in an effort not to appear like she was betraying us. I smiled at that as it was unnecessary. I didn’t expect betrayal until we reached the Genpact bunker.
“Where now?”
“We need a boat large enough for my people.”
“Just yours?”
“Yes.” I smiled at her frown. “You won’t need it.”
Her eyes narrowed, the movement causing dried flakes of blood to fall from her chin like bloody snowflakes. She ignored them and just stared, silently, as I refused to say more.
Finally, she nodded, then turned to head back to her people. A few whispered words and several of them broke away from the group, setting off running as they searched for a boat. I shivered a little in the cold, my fingers and toes had long since gone numb.
“We need a fire,” I said to Isaac as we waited for the Infected to return. “You seen anywhere we can have one without attracting attention?”
“Plenty
of places,” he grunted. “Soon be too dark to see the smoke.”
“Good. Let’s set up for the night. Not much we can do once it gets too dark to see anyway.”
It didn’t take long to find somewhere suitable. Inside one of the larger buildings were some offices with doors that could be blocked. They would do as sleeping spaces. The warehouse itself had a roof almost fifty feet high with plenty of open panels for the smoke to escape through.
We kept the fires small, just enough to provide a little warmth for the people gathered around them. The fuel was made up of the office furniture and other odds and ends that had been lying around the warehouse, drying for two years.
The atmosphere was muted. My minion's were sullen companions as they ate their rations and tried to warm themselves. I sat a little way off with Gregg and Isaac. They too were rather morose and I found myself actually missing Greggs mindless chatter.
I was feeding small bits of wood into the fire a few hours later when Briony seated herself beside me. Gregg nearly leapt out of his seat and Isaac reached for his weapon as I just grinned at them both.
“You move quietly,” I offered by way of greeting.
“Not quietly enough it seems,” she replied with another frown at my lack of surprise.
I lifted my shoulders in a shrug and kept feeding the flames.
“We have found a boat.”
“Where?”
“Two kilometres to the south. It will suit your needs.”
I nodded slowly. Two kilometres wasn’t that far by boat but if we approached, we would be doing it under a hail of fire. Plus, I already knew they had rocket launchers as Isaac’s squad had used one on another boat in another place.
The helicopter sitting idle on the deck would likely be outfitted with some form of weaponry. It would be foolish beyond belief to consider otherwise. Which meant we needed a distraction if we were to accomplish our task.
“There’s a boat out on the river. A tanker.”
“We saw it.”
“Yes, well, there are some people on there that need to die.”
Killing The Dead (Book 17): Siege Page 13
