“You destroyed my home,” she said flatly to the soldiers as she stroked her precious dog.
“Yes, we did,” Ryan said with a humored tone. “We blew it up to save you.” He resisted the urge to add an insult; she was the queen after all.
Nathan nervously checked over his shoulders. The members of the EJG had not arrived, and he felt like they had abandoned him. He tried not to let the thoughts get to him, but he felt abandoned by his father, too, even though his father had been long gone.
Sean grabbed the curtains, ripping them down from their rods. “Yes. I’m sorry, Your Majesty. We did some damage, but that’s the least of our worries right now.” He tied the curtains together before opening the window. “We need to go. If you’d kindly come with us, that will be tip-top. I’m going to send my friend down, and then I’m going to tie this around you like a harness and lower you down. It’s the only way.”
The curtains dangled from the window, flowing in the breeze. Nathan was the first out. He wriggled down the curtain, landing heavily on the ground. Ryan helped Sean secure the queen into the makeshift rig and lowered her down with a dog in her arms. Their hearts raced every moment until she was safely on the ground.
Nathan freed the queen of the harness, allowing Sean to pull it back up. They secured it to a shelf that was bolted to the wall and climbed down.
Chapter Eleven
Harry bulleted through the large gates of the park. He reached out and grabbed the metalwork, pulling with all his strength. The gate creaked as it slowly shut.
Oliver waited outside. He’d had no problem sliding his shut. He continuously looked around to make sure nothing approached from the open road, but he always turned back and watched nervously as Harry and George fought to close the zombies inside the park. He wanted to help, but he could only help one at a time and thought he might be better used as a lookout.
Oliver looked around for potential enemies again, but his eyes pulled back to his friends when he heard the loud click of the gates slamming shut. He sighed, relief washing over him as the others turned their bikes and rode over to meet him.
George put his feet down on the ground as he brought the bicycle to a stop. “Fucking hell. I need a bloody walnut whip.” He sighed, exhausted from the chase and dealing with the gate.
Harry pulled his bike to a stop, and Isabella effortlessly slid off the back. “I could use one, too, you know.” He squeezed the water from the bottom of his shirt.
Isabella rang the water out of her long hair. “I could use a bloody towel more!” she said, flicking her hair behind her back.
Oliver sniffed. The rain thinned out, but the skies were overcast. He scanned the street as the zombies began to run into the iron gates of the park. More people stepped out of their homes, looking from left to right They seemed frightened.
They saw a few neighbors standing together, crying. Oliver wondered if it was a personal loss they cried over or if it might be the dire situation itself.
“We have to head back home,” he told the others sadly. He knew he was in trouble. From the looks of it, there were more humans in sight than zombies. His parents hadn’t believed a word he’d said, and if there wasn’t any proof, nothing would convince them otherwise.
Harry nodded, swinging his leg over his bike as Isabella climbed on the back. “If we hurry, we can beat the zombie rush hour.”
Harry pedaled ahead, weaving around confused people. Oliver followed, and George reluctantly joined them. The street had become busy. People walked around aimlessly. They made their way onto the road, not bothering to look for oncoming cars. They talked in groups on the pavement, blocking the way.
“Get out of the way!” Harry called out as he breathed heavily. He always hated crowds, especially on his bike.
Isabella held Harry tightly after failing to grip well enough to the back of the bike. “Watch out!” she called to him as they whizzed around a tight corner.
A swarm of zombies formed a line across the street. They grouped tightly together in a crowd. Harry skidded his bike to a halt, and Oliver came to a harsh stop beside him. They exchanged looks of dread. The road they were on was the direct route to Oliver’s, and the zombies had completely blocked it.
Oliver looked down at the handlebars. “There’s no way through,” he informed Harry.
At that moment, George slid around the corner, heading directly for the zombies.
“OH, SHIT NO!” he yelled as he crashed right into the long line of grey figures.
Oliver’s eyes widened as he watched his friend skid right into a confused, hunched over undead creature. The zombie doubled over more at the impact before toppling to the ground.
George shot back up, guiding his bike backward. He watched in horror as the old zombie coughed and spluttered on the ground. It didn’t take much more than a rough impact to take it down. The other zombies watched for a moment before turning their anger towards George.
Harry turned his bike in another direction. “We have to get running now, George!” he said as he zoomed off down the street.
Oliver hurried after Harry, hoping to avoid getting caught in another chase. George didn’t say a word, but he groaned and pedaled behind his friends. The grey swarm of zombies was hot on his heels.
The four friends continued down the street as the zombies tried to catch up with them. They saw a man in a sideways baseball cap and low-strung jeans standing on the opposite side of the road and watching as the zombies hurried by. He had a tablet in hand and lazily tapped at the screen.
George continued pedaling, not daring to look back again. He could hear the groans and snarls from behind him drawing in closer. He breathed heavily, ignoring the searing pain in his legs. The noises became fainter, and he wondered if they’d stopped chasing him. He stole a glance behind him, amazed that the zombies now loitered in the street. They’d all just… stopped.
George slowed his bike down. “That is…” He couldn’t believe his eyes. “That just isn’t possible,” he said, confused.
Harry turned his head quickly towards Oliver. “Mate, where are we going?” he asked, yelling into the wind. “What way?”
Oliver frantically scanned the road ahead. They were well past his home by now. The street they were on directly connected to the main street of town, which was always busy with people and busses. He felt stuck. There was no way home, but there was nowhere else to go.
Harry looked at Oliver again, who hadn’t heard him speak. “OLIVER!” he screamed at his friend.
Oliver turned to face him. “What?” he asked.
Harry shook his head. “Pull over,” he said, motioning to the side of the road.
Oliver couldn’t hear what Harry had asked. “What?” he yelled back at Harry.
Harry stopped his bicycle. The sidewalk was busier since more people stepped out of their homes.
George hurried to where Harry had stopped. “Uh… bit of a situation.” He panted, every breath coming quicker and quicker. He was starving and ached all over. “There are zombies, but it’s so strange. They…” He continued to breathe heavily as he spoke. His chest burned, and his eyes watered. “They…” he continued to pant.
Isabella placed a hand on George’s shoulder. “Hey, slow down,” she soothed. “Take a breath in… then out,” she instructed kindly.
George followed her instructions, forcing himself to slow his respirations. “Okay,” he said, catching his breath again.
Oliver came to a stop beside them. Another halt in their progress annoyed him. He wanted to get as far away from the zombies as possible. “What the fuck it is now? I mean, we’re being chased by the undead, and you guys are standing here gawking.” His voice grew louder with each word. He turned to George. “Lemme guess—this was you’re doing.”
George opened his mouth to argue, but Oliver continued on with his long-winded rant.
“Get your fucking head together, you soggy cornflake, and focus on the situation at hand!” he waved his hands around as
he spoke. “If we can kindly get back to, you know, running away, then maybe we can do something useful for once!”
Harry bit his lip as he listened to Oliver yell. “Mate, you need to calm down.” He tried to ease Oliver.
Oliver shook his head. He was angry, and when he got angry, it was hard for him to stop. “Mates, I don’t need to calm down. You just don’t understand what I’m saying, and I don’t get why. I’m speaking plain, simple English!” he screamed.
“They were moving, and now they’re not,” George said simply. “I don’t understand why you’re so mad.”
“Yes! That’s the point! They were chasing us just a few seconds ago, and now they’re not. Don’t you find that strange? Don’t you think it’s possible they could just randomly decide to chase us again? We need to stop stopping every five seconds!” Oliver shot at George, continuing on his rant.
Oliver shook his head. The living people in the streets watched him yell. “Every damn time we go somewhere, we have to stop and wait for you. You know, I had to ditch those guns from the soldiers, and no one seemed to care I had to sacrifice them! We could have used them to do something important, but no, I was being good and let them go.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He’d noticed that Oliver had ditched the guns, but in reality, it was the best way. Being four armed teenagers while riding around town wouldn’t help them as they tried to escape. Oliver’s parents would have been furious at him for having weapons at his age. Harry itched to tell Oliver his thoughts, but he forced his mouth to remain shut.
Oliver waved his hands about wildly as he complained loudly. “We need to get going.” He slammed his hands down on the handlebars, breathing heavily while looking at both George and Harry.
George waited. He didn’t want to interrupt Oliver again.
Oliver breathed through his nose heavily. He sounded like a bull about to charge. “Okay… Okay…” he repeated. He hated getting angry.
Isabella reached out for Oliver. She didn’t want to anger him all over again, but she wanted to offer him a friendly hand. “It’s okay, Oliver,” she whispered to him.
He nodded, gripping the bike’s handlebars as he breathed carefully.
She inhaled before speaking. “It’s all okay,” she repeated carefully, letting her hand rest gently on Oliver’s arm.
Oliver looked at George. He raised his eyebrows, smiling sadly at his monumental carelessness and stupidity. “I’m so sorry, mate. You didn’t deserve that. I didn’t mean to… you know.” He felt embarrassed by his actions, but there were no words to repair the damage he’d just caused.
George shrugged. “It’s fine, mate. I get worse at home, anyway.” He bit his lip after he spoke, regretting bringing his home life up. He never spoke about home.
Oliver shook his head. “No, man. I appreciate it, but no. It’s not fine, but I’m glad we’re okay. I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Harry looked down the street. The zombies loitered all across the road, and they weren’t moving. They hung back as if waiting for a call to charge. “They might not be moving, but they look like they could attack any time,” he said, nodding towards the stationary crowd.
Oliver bit his lip. “Exactly. That’s what I was so worried about. We need to get out of here.” He spoke quietly. He was grateful his friends forgave him easily, even if he hadn’t and wouldn’t forgive himself. His fuse had always been short—he attributed that to his parents, but that wasn’t an excuse, and he wasn’t about to use it as one. He wanted to be better.
He sighed, brushing off his earlier transgressions and focusing on the present. “There’s no way to get back to my house, and if we continue down this road, we’ll get to the bustling center of town. That’s not a good place to be, especially now that everyone seems to think the zombies are gone,” he said, carefully weighing his words as he spoke.
Harry mulled the situation over. Oliver was right. They really were stuck. There were zombies on one end and busy streets on the other. He could see a side road out of the corner of his eye, and he pointed. “Where does that go?” he asked Oliver.
Oliver shrugged. It was a one-way street, and he always avoided those. “I actually have no idea.”
Harry smiled. He wondered if that could be their way out. “Well, let’s find out.”
Oliver pedaled ahead. He knew the town best, even if he was unfamiliar with their current path. Harry and Isabella followed behind, avoiding the cracked tarmac as they went. George took a last glance at the zombies before following his friends, hoping the figures wouldn’t follow them.
A thick mass of trees lined one side of the street with large houses boasting long hedges and elegant pillars. The other side of the street was filled with brick terrace houses. The shabby outer walls looked tired and aged compared to the mansions across the street. Oliver smiled sadly to himself; this was the divide of the town.
Harry looked in awe at the drastic changes from either side of the narrow street. It was obvious there was a large gap in class from one side of the street to the other. A shining metal can sat outside one of the terrace houses, stinking of manure. The mansion opposite it had tall gates with a lime green Lamborghini parked in the driveway.
George couldn’t focus on the obvious absurdity of the street they were on. His mind was preoccupied. He racked his brain, thinking of how to escape the zombies’ grasps. He found it worrying that the zombies had all stopped at the same time. They’d started after him together as a group, and they stopped together as a group. He remembered the zombies in the park, their mechanical movements. They didn’t move like free-willed creatures. They moved with purpose—a single purpose. They moved as if they were being controlled.
He tried to push the thoughts from his mind, pedaling fast to keep up with his friends.
Chapter Twelve
Downing Street was chaos. The zombies screamed and moaned, filling the air with horrendous sounds. Barry and Emily crouched behind a short wall, watching the zombie’s wander around as they made so much noise.
“This is like the first concert I ever went to,” Barry told Emily quietly.
Emily looked confused at Barry. “Who did you go see, and how can this possibly compare? Was it a bunch of screeching and wailing?” She couldn’t imagine who sounded that awful.
Barry smiled, chuckling slightly. “It was my younger brother’s school concert. He was in the choir, and they sang good old traditional Scottish songs while some poor kid had to wheeze into the bagpipes.” He paused, shuffling closer towards Emily. “It was a bloody nightmare. I’ve heard food blenders that sounded better than he did.”
Emily almost snorted, but she kept it down to a quiet laugh. The zombies’ noises were outrageous, and she thought nothing could be worse than that. “If you grew up in Scotland, why don’t you sound Scottish?” His accent sounded like everyone else’s.
Barry shrugged. “When I left Glasgow, I decided I didn’t want the accent, so I forced myself to change it.” He sighed as he spoke. Talking about his home made him miss it.
“Oh, I see,” she softly replied. “Can you say ‘burglar alarm?’” she had always wanted to ask a Glaswegian if they could pronounce ‘burglar alarm.’
Barry grinned, slowly backing away from the wall. “Of course, I can. I just don’t like to.”
Emily followed closely as Barry continued to shuffle past the wall and stopped at the corner. He slid to the floor, stretching his legs out in front of him. He rested the duffel bag of weapons on his lap, patting the concrete beside him.
“Sit down and rest for a moment,” he said, slightly out of breath. He needed the rest more than Emily did.
Emily sat beside Barry. “So, what exactly is your plan?”
Barry wanted to be like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. He wanted to be a big hero who saves the day. He smiled at Emily. If only she knew his thoughts. He cleared his throat, organizing his words before speaking. “Well…”
Emily raised her eyebrows
at Barry as he gently tapped his knee. She could tell he was deep in thought. She had worked on an airline long enough to learn to read people’s emotions. It was a very important part of the job to keep everything peaceful.
He opened his mouth, struggling to find the right words. He hoped she wasn’t waiting for a large, elaborate plan. He didn’t have one. All he had was what his instincts told him to do, and he didn’t want that to make her feel uneasy or trust him less. “Well, we’ll go in the back door,” he said nervously.
“Great. Then what?” she tried to keep her tone as nice as possible, though her patience ran a little thin.
“We need to get to Lena and the others. We have to assume they’re inside with an ass load of enemies all over—or that they will be soon. They’re going in through the front, so we should go in through the back. I know it sounds crazy, but—”
Emily sighed. “Just tell me whatever the fuck is going on inside your head. I won’t make fun of you for it.” Despite her earlier wishes to remain calm with him, the words had burst out of her in a rush with more angst than she’d planned for.
He cleared his throat. “I’m thinking we do this kind of like Die Hard.” Barry stared at Emily. The flight attendant hadn’t said anything, and he was nervous he’d worried or upset her. “Or… You know, we could do something else,” he hurriedly muttered, feeling foolish.
“No, no. I like the Die-Hard idea. Tell me more about it,” she said. “How do you intend on actually getting to them?”
Barry inhaled deeply. For the first time in his life, he had a plan that could actually work. “We sneak in through the back door. It’ll land us in the bottom section of 10 Downing Street.”
Emily nodded. So far, the plan didn’t seem too difficult. She pulled at the toggles on her jogging pants. “Okay, so we have no idea where they are in there. We don’t really know if they are in there. Are we mostly banking on hearing them?” she asked, hoping his plan would work.
Pandemic Z | Book 3 | Pandemic Z 3 Page 10
