by Maxey, Phil
“And what do we do if the vaccine runs out?”
“Well, then you’ll be dead anyway…”
She had a point, thought Jess. She nodded.
“Okay, but it should be you that tells the others…”
Jess reluctantly nodded again, letting out a sigh. “Fine.” She climbed down into the slightly larger room with slanted walls. Most looked at her as she stepped off the ladder with expectation, which she hated. She wasn’t bringing them hope, just a grenade with the pin already removed and it was still better than anything she had. She briefly smiled. Even Landon looked at her, waiting for the solution to their predicament, but it was Josh and Sam’s widening eyes that weighed most heavy. Tracey climbed down behind her.
“We might have a way out of this.”
“We?” said Landon, glancing between both women.
“Tracey, knows some people. People that might be willing to come here. To rescue us…”
Arlo looked incredulous. “Who would come here? A place full of the things?”
Jess looked at the younger woman.
“I was with a group before. A bunch of survivors, they called themselves the immunes…”
Meg tilted her head. “Immunes?”
“Yeah… I think you already met two of them…”
Meg took a step forward, ignoring Tracey, looking directly at Jess. “They were going to kill a kid, Jess. They are the last people we want to be around!”
An expression of concern came to Landon. “You’re not seriously considering—”
“I got nothing!” Jess shouted, making some around her flinch. “Everyone’s expecting me to come up with some kind of genius plan to save our lives. Well, I haven’t got one! If we stay here, we die. That’s what I got!” Landon looked down. “Yeah, these immunes are bad people. But it’s the only option we have. And Tracey says that if we don’t try to contact them soon, we won’t even be able to have that.”
“But we’re not immune, Jess…” said Meg. “Once they find out…”
“I know. But we just need them to help us to get out of this city. Then we can think about getting away from them as well.” She looked at her husband, who nodded.
Now it was Meg’s turn to consider the unthinkable. She let out a sigh then looked back at Jess. “What if they know it was I who killed their people?”
Tracey answered. “Well, did they take a photo of you or something?” Meg shook her head. “Then they won’t know…” She looked around the small group, finally settling upon Jess. “So we doing this?” Jess nodded and the younger woman immediately held her hand out to Landon who gave her his radio, then climbed up the ladder to the room above.
*****
10: 27 p.m.
The fog hadn’t lifted. If anything, to Jess it looked even thicker. But the things that were once people still moved within it. Glimpses of limbs and bodies that made no sense came and went, swallowed by the milky white mist. She could think of no better scene which illustrated the end of the world. A world that she and her family still, somehow were surviving in.
And the humans that won the lottery of immunity were monsters as well, just a different kind. Perhaps worse than the B-movie creations stalking the streets outside.
Rescued by child murderers…
She wasn’t even sure she wanted that. Perhaps here, now, in this holy place, it would be better to give—
Somewhere far below, a sound bubbled up to where she was stationed, at the topmost room in the building.
“I think they’re trying to break through the lower door!” shouted Meg from the room below
This is it… the end…
The pop of gunshots came from below and Josh’s head appeared at the top of the ladder.
“Dad said we should come up here,” he said, climbing out, handing the small dog to Jess then was followed by Tye.
Jess helped him out then Sam. “Sit here.”
“They’re going to get us, aren’t they?” said Sam.
Jess grabbed her daughter’s shoulders, looking directly at her. “Don’t think like—” More gunshots rang out, this time accompanied with a guttural screech. “— that! We’ll find a way out of this!” She suddenly remembered where they were. “Have faith!” Sam nodded and Jess picked up her assault rifle and climbed down into the smell of fear. Landon and Meg rushed up the narrow set of stairs and back into the room through the small doorway, slamming it closed behind them.
He dropped the shotgun from his one good arm to the boards and pulled a Glock from the back of his belt. “If we can kill one outside the door, it might—”
Glass broke from the room upstairs as one of the kids screamed. Jess immediately climbed back on the ladder as something heavy slammed into the door behind her. As she ascended, Meg, Landon and Arlo threw their weight against it, the raging thing on the other side, smashing and splintering the paint chipped wood.
Jess didn’t get a chance to emerge into the spire room as before she reached the top a brown wrinkled appendage lined with teeth but with no discernible body swiped through the air from the small broken window. The kids ducked as it scythed above them, and Jess let forth a volley of shots, some missing, but others finding their target, sending a spray of blood across the slanted walls. The arm of the thing rapidly retracted back outside and they all hunched as they heard its heavy body scratching across the tiles above. Jess climbed into the room, her gun tracking the thing clambering across the roof.
Below, the four others shouted and grunted, their strength being drained by the increasing pressure of something battering the door. Claws pushed through the jagged gaps, trying to hook one of them on the other side. Landon responded by pushing the handgun into the hole and repeatedly firing. Screeches confirmed the hits, but the thing still retained its fury, the top part of the door now almost completely gone.
“We can’t hold them back, Jess!” shouted Landon but her mind was somewhere else, her attention being drawn not to the thing threatening to attack again just a few feet away, but from the other sound which was added to the chaos. She moved quickly but cautiously to the window, looking then stretching higher to see lower, to the street directly below. Were there lights down there? Wagons, horses?
Bullets ricocheted off the roof just inches from the broken window and her head. She pulled back as a screech came from outside and then caught a flash of something dark, fall past the window. She moved back to the opening. More of the things were moving towards the church, but within the misty gloom she could see bodies… people moving, fighting.
Her radio crackled, then a man’s voice came from the speaker. “You still alive in that church?”
She grabbed it from the floor. “Yes! Yes! We’re alive, in the top! The things are trying to get us up here!”
More gunshots echoed out, but these were muffled, coming from inside the building.
“Jess, we can’t—” Landon’s shout was cut short from the clatter of gunfire followed by a roar and screech, which was fading then fell silent, but outside a battle still raged.
“Get your asses down here, now! We ain’t waiting around for you any longer!” shouted the man from Jess’s radio.
She looked down the shaft to below, trying to see into the room. “Landon?”
He appeared, looking up, flecks of blood across his face. “I’m okay. We’re okay. I think—”
“They’re here! They came!” She whipped around to the children. “Quickly! Down the ladder. We’re leaving!”
They all scrambled to their feet then climbed and jumped down into the lower room, which was strewn with pieces of the door. Arlo was holding his arm, which was bloodied.
Landon pulled what was left of the door towards himself and peered out into the gloom. “I think it’s clear…” Meg handed him the nub of a candle that still burned and he started to descend the spiral staircase.
Jess picked up her backpack and with the others, followed.
“Someone coming down?” shouted a man within the
shadows of the staircase.
“Yeah, we’re coming down!” replied Landon. “Don’t shoot!” He reached the first floor room. A heap of brown arms, legs and other things sat, slumped beyond the bottom step, and on the other side of the room two men, one much older than the other. “Thank you for—”
The older man frowned, waving Landon forwards. “Yeah, yeah, come on! We ain’t having a party here.”
Landon, Jess and the others followed the man down the wider stairs and emerged into the office, then moved into the church. Bodies of the creatures sat like forgotten mounds of old clothes around the pews and pillars. Brown and crimson blood lay in puddles across the stone slabbed floor. The constant clatter of heavy weapons outside rattled the stained glass windows and at the end of the room near the large entrance doors were another group of people, headed by a middle-aged man. Tall, wearing a stetson and a denim jacket.
“Run, damnit!” He shouted to Jess and the others. “Or none of us are getting out of this city alive!”
Everyone ran between the scattered seating and already decaying creatures, towards the front.
The man held his radio to his lips. “Cover us, we’re coming out!”
The group with him pushed the solid looking arched doors open and a storm of noise flooded into the church. They immediately raised their weapons, firing at a sea of rage, all of it surging towards the three wagons in the street at the bottom of the church steps, lit by flaming torches attached to their sides.
The man turned. “Get your people on the wagons!” he shouted, then turned and fired a bolt action rifle, his aim true, but the bullet only slowed the spindly thing, which was sprinting across the concrete towards the first of the two shackled horses. One of them reared up in fright as more bullets slammed into the catlike creature which slumped to the ground, skidding to a halt at the horse’s hoofs.
Jess and Landon surrounded the three kids, hurrying them forward, then helped them climb up onto the back of the middle wagon. On the back of the third a heavy M2 machine gun rattled off round after round, spraying through the mist, felling angular angry things that emerged then were torn apart, but tried to continue on regardless.
The man untied a single horse that was tied to the first wagon, jumping up onto the animal and waved his hand above his head. “Go, go, go!” he shouted, and the younger man seated on the wagon cracked a whip, making the horses surge forward. The same thing happened to the second wooden and iron vehicle, almost jolting Landon and the others from their benches.
The kids were on the floor, Jess hunched over them as the cracks and booms of gunfire continued and the concrete walls and glass windows sped by, the wagons thundering through the streets. Suddenly the screeches and roars had grown silent and only the shouts of the driver and the knocking of the wheels were left.
Jess looked up. The dark silhouettes of the taller buildings had gone, and what buildings there were, were further back. She hadn’t realized but her left hand was holding Landon’s. Across from her, Meg, Arlo and Tracey were sat at the back of the wagon, left of Landon. “Is everyone…” The wagons started to slow and she sat completely up, trying to make out their new location through the fog, which appeared to be a two-lane road bordered by parking lots and trees. The convoy stopped completely and the man on the horse rode up to the side of the group’s wagon.
He was maybe fifty with a face fit for the end of the world. Beneath a strong nose was a large mustache. He looked like he belonged in the 1880s, or at least on the silver screen. He took his hat off, adjusted his graying hair and put it back on. “I’m Isiah.” He looked at Tracey who wanted to look anywhere but at him. “When we get to where we’re going, you and me need to have a chat, young lady.” She nodded.
“I am—”
He held his hand up before Jess could finish. “I only want names if you survive the journey.” He turned his horse around to face the front again. “Let’s get the hell out of this city. Got a lot of riding ahead of us to catch up with the others.”
Continued in book three. Available in February.
Thank you for reading Extinction Gene book 2: 5 Days to Endure, I hope you enjoyed it. The next book in the series will be released in February!
As an indie author it really helps if you can leave me a review on Amazon for this book.
If you would like news on my latest releases, special offers or free ebooks, you can sign up to my mailing list on my website at www.philmaxeyauthor.com .
Thank you again.
Phil.
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About the Author
Phil Maxey is an author who resides in the UK. Formally a game developer he now spends his time putting his love of sci-fi and the paranormal into words.
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Acknowledgements
Book cover design by www.starbookcovers.com.
