Decayed:

by Morgana Wray

  Morgana Wray

  Decayed

  Zombie Outbreak Book 2

  UUID: 33b1aa8c-1af8-11e8-9f5c-17532927e555

  This ebook was created with StreetLib Write

  http://write.streetlib.com

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 1

  I was shoved into a box, behind bars. It was the kind of place where you stuck things that you didn’t want to see the light of day. I was in a bad way. I hadn’t showered in days and nobody was letting me have my meds. Everyday was becoming a constant nightmare. It was hell out there. But it was an even bigger hell living with the things that kept popping up in my thoughts. All the terrible things I had seen on the battlefield in those godforsaken Eastern countries kept me awake all night.

  I remembered witnessing mutilations of children not old enough to remember their own names. For the sake of anonymity, I had been kept mute. Blowing ones cover on a stealth mission was definitely something that could have gotten me court-martialled or worse.

  Their innocent eyes and the numbing screams of agony tore away at the core of me. The situation around a soldier in such manic situations was just one of complete hopelessness. Juggling choices that would either keep you safe, or end someone else’s life was a constant conundrum. Everyday in the middle-east was another day of my humanity being stripped away. You got hardened by what you saw out there. Some people came out of such violence with their hearts turned to steel and others emerged with their minds shredded and completely fragmented. I sort of sat somewhere between the lines.

  I wasn’t always a hundred percent sane and I wasn’t always empathetic to the plight of others.

  My captors intended for me to stew in my own juices. They were achieving exactly that. It stank in the cell I was held in. There was a toilet in the corner. It didn’t seem very sanitary. The toilet seat smelt of urine. I had to stand over the damn thing to take a dump.

  “Bloody stinks in this dump! Wonder if that crazy wench and the kid are alright?” I positioned myself to take a leak. “They better be.”

  There was a sink screwed into against the wall. A cracked, old mirror hung over it. I could never quite see the full reflection of what my face looked like in that broken old thing. The spider web dents on the glass mirror on the wall sort of felt like my state of mind upstairs-fragmented and chaotic.

  I was afforded the luxury of a single bar of soap. There was nothing moveable or any eating utensils. There wasn’t any sheets over on the flat lumpy bed either-Nothing I could hang myself with or use as an offensive weapon to strangle the foulmouthed guards with.

  At least, I had some soap. Something I was a bit thankful for. I could wash my hands and clean the sweaty mess off my face. I barely had much moments of coherence to hash out some sort of grand escape plan. Even if I did escape, what was I going to be escaping to. In my thoughts, I reckoned that I was better off being in lock down than being out there with those dull-eyed, flesh-hungry Risers.

  I fancied keeping my throat intact. I was getting somewhat accustomed to the steel doors and the beige colour on the walls. I wasn’t sure where I was. I couldn’t see much beyond the bars on the green metal door in front of me. The only thing I ever got to see when I wasn’t being brutalized by the guards at the facility, was the food being slid through a rectangular square flap at the base of the door.

  The food was horrendous. The oats tasted like sawdust and the beans were as sloppy as ever. It was noon. I could guess by the intensity of the sun. That and the fact that the second meal of the day had just been kicked through the flap at the base of the green door. As usual, I wasn’t left any cutlery to eat with.

  With gleeful eyes, I scooped the plate up from under the ground and dug into the sloppy beans with the tip of my fingers. I chewed up the food very quickly and tore open the cap on the plastic bottle of water in the tray with my teeth.

  “I really needed that!” I sucked in air after gulping down water from the plastic bottle.

  I wasn’t allowed out of my small enclosure. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone. There wasn’t going to be any communal space for inmates and no gym to work out in. I had to improvise and do push ups to keep myself fit. I wasn’t keen on carrying any extra fatty baggage. Especially, when I was getting older. But also, it was a good way to pass some time.

  There was plenty of that to spare in this place. I had been marking the days on the walls with the edges of the food tray, trying to keep track of time. I was acting like a man compelled. There was nothing else to wake up for in the morning than to carve up a piece of wall. The tallying kept my hands busy. They didn’t always have to make perfect sense.

  Eventually, I had run out of space to carve things into the wall. I was completely unaware of time now. Not that there was much use knowing what the time was when there wasn’t much for you to do with it anyway. I wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon. If the Risers didn’t get me, there was a good chance that I would die in this hellish detention facility for the infected.

  The days that had gone by went by quite slowly. I didn’t know what Lanfen and her spacemen were going to do with us. I was certain that they had Miss Maple and the kid stashed somewhere. Maybe they had been locked away in a room just like the one I was in.

  I was wondering how they both were faring. Maybe they were getting better food than I was. Maybe they would at least put the kid somewhere a bit more comfortable. I was dying for a decent conversation with someone that wasn’t a hallucination or the blank wall bouncing my own words back at me. Not just the ones I was having inside my own head.

  I heard the footsteps of someone approaching. The pace of the walk sounded rather casual and very unenthused. I knew it must have been one of the spacemen that was in charge of keeping inmates fed and watered. The spaceman had come for the tray. There was a single bump on the other side of the door. That usually meant that I had to slide the tray out to the other side.

  I wasn’t about to do that. Not this time.

  I had had enough of being kept incommunicado. I had been completely isolated and it was starting to get to me. Living out your days in repeat mode would definitely make anyone go loopy in the head. I was angry and I felt like taking out that anger on anything or anyone in sight.

  “Are you going to say something to me? Why are you doing this? Why are you keeping me in here?” I thumped my fists on the metal door in front of my face.

  “Pass the tray asshole! If I have to come in there, you’ll be getting some good old fashioned shock therapy.” The spaceman behind the door grunted with complete disinterest in his tone of voice.

  “Look, I just want to talk! I just want to know what’s going on out there!” I pressed my ear against the door. “I know you have the two females that were with me! Are they okay?”

  There was an awkward silence. Nothing was said in response to my line of questioning. I was just treated like I did not matter. Stupidly, I held my breath for an answer. Guess desperation could make even the most intelligible person look like as dum as flipping mule.

  The door came swinging towards me without warning. The metal door crashed into my face and I was sent flying backwards. I was on the ground very quickly and bleeding from the lips. My head was abuzz with numbing pain. The pounding in my head made it hard to concentrate on much. All I could see was the blurry silhouette of the spaceman approaching me.

  He had something black in his hand. It was shaped like a stick. I only realized what it was when It was jabbed in the side of my ribs. My body jerked abo
ut like a fish out of water when the bolt of current hit me. The bastard in the spacesuit had shocked me with a stun baton.

  “What the hell? What the fuck are you doing?” I squirmed in pain as electricity crippled all the nerves in my body.

  I could barely move. All my nerve endings were sending shockwaves of pain throughout my body. The shocks from the stun baton was really painful. I nearly shed a tear. I was a grown man and that baton was almost reducing me to a sobbing mess.

  “Shut the fuck up, dimwit! Your ass belongs to us now! You breathe when we say! You don’t take a leak unless we say, and you don’t do shit unless we say!” Spaceman kicked me in the side to emphasize the point he was making. “Got it, you bellyaching bitch!”

  I crawled in pain on the floor. I nodded my head in affirmation that I understood what was being said to me. There wasn’t much I could do to fight off my attacker. He was a burly six footer armed with a stick that discharged stinging electric shock. As he turned his back to leave my enclosure, I swore within myself that I would definitely kill him. I made it a point of duty to burn the name J. Brock into my memory.

  I would recite it and I would chant it. It was my mantra, now.

  The name tag on his spacesuit was going to be his waterloo. He had made me feel smaller than I had ever felt before and my pride could not allow that to stand. He would not get away with that. I was going to make him pay for the bruises on my ribs and the busted lip.

  “You know, when I get out of this dump-l am going to remember you.” I spat blood on the floor.

  “Is that right? Now, why would you do something like that?” the spaceman scuffed at me. “If I want a blowjob I’ll call myself one of them delectable escorts with big tits. Sorry, you just don’t do it for me mate.”

  “I am going to kill you first when I get out of here.” I frowned, staring at the spacemen through vengefully wicked eyes.

  His breathing slowed. I could see some sense of concern in his eyes. He was rattled by my threat on his life. He seemed to me to be a guy that enjoyed living. Goaded by my threats, he came charging at me with his baton. He pressed the shaft of the baton against my throat. Pinning me flat on my back. He was choking the life out of me. I could feel my eyes rolling back into my skull.

  My lungs were getting sore from being deprived of oxygen. My muscles were too hard to move. They were numb from the shocks that had ran through me earlier. I desperately wanted to punch my attacker in the face. I really wanted to make this guy bleed and I don’t mean just a busted nose. He was the epitome of everything I loathed. He was cocky; too sure of himself, and determined to cause me great discomfort at the slightest opportunity.

  There was no cause for resulting to a beat down after incapacitating me with bursts of electricity . But I guess this guy didn’t know the meaning of the word heavy handed. I still had a bump over my eye from the last time this particular guard decided that I was being an inconvenience to him for not answering the roll call in time.

  On one particularly unpleasant occasion, I got punched and kicked in the face. There were three spacemen holding me down, while the prick choking my airway now, did a number on me. I passed out for days when he and his accomplices were done having a pop at me.

  My vision was nearly going black. If I was going to survive this violent throttling, I would have to do get my shit together and do something to the big hulking guy with the glorified cattle prod. The health of my windpipe depended on it. I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a faint shriek. I could barely talk with all that pressure leaning against my throat.

  I felt a flutter in my feet. There was some sensation in my right foot. Without thinking, I raised my right knee and shoved it against his crotch. I swear I almost heard the tall spaceman sing a long, painful note like the tenors in the opera. His nuts must have been sore and aching.

  “You asshole! You could have fucking killed me!” I drew in deep breaths, with my hand roaming round my neck area.

  He didn’t nurse his bruised crotch for too long. His eyes peered at me from behind the glass of his spacesuit’s helmet. I could hear his breathing get more intense. He sounded like an enraged bull warming up for one big charge against the red flag. This hulking spaceman was definitely seeing several shades of red.

  I was his target. Those eyes of his were focused on me. I could tell he was thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about me. I wasn’t entirely sure that he would be satisfied with just strangulation this time. The intent behind those frowning eyebrows were to bring a world of hurt crashing down on me.

  I had barely gathered my thoughts together when the bull of a spaceman came charging at me with a stun baton clutched in the firm grasp of his stubby fingers. I didn’t have much time for thinking. I had to rely solely on instinct. I had to remember every move that he had made on me in the past. I had to believe that my subconscious had soaked up all the errors I had made previously when I took on this guy and his heavy handed pals.

  I had been waterboarded, shocked and beaten on an almost daily basis for the past couple of weeks. I wasn’t in the mood for enduring any more of that inhumane treatment. I needed a way out of this. I was starting to rethink my theory about sheltering myself in here. When there wasn’t the odd torture, there was always someone poking, prodding and drilling into your bone for stem cells. I wasn’t always under sedation for that bad trip.

  Guess they wanted me to feel the pain. Guess they hated that I resisted. They hated that I fought the process. We were nothing but harvest bags for some sort of vaccine against the plague that had come down heavily on the human race. Some residents of Rosewood didn’t get sick, and turn. Our blood was a precious commodity to be drained and studied by any means necessary.

  Someone in the government or what was left of it, was trying to save the world in secret at our expense. The guys holding us were definitely not regular police or MI5 agents. They were kitted up with government issued tactical weapons. The kind of stuff you don’t see on the market.

  I waited for my attacker. I waited for the brute to get close enough then I shimmied out of the way, allowing the tall spaceman to crash face-first into the wall. I hit him with an elbow in the back. I hit him with everything I had.

  “Ouch!” the big spaceman yelled, as his body flattened against the wall. “You’re so going to pay for that, you little runt.”

  He staggered awkwardly when he eventually turned to face me. He still had the stun baton in his hand. He scampered towards me again, raising his hand in the air to deal me a blow with the blunt instrument he was suspending above him.

  “Not this time. I’m done with being your personal chew toy.” I threw my hands up, blocking the descending blow.

  I had his hands in a vice grip. We struggled for control of the stun baton. His weight bore down on me heavily. I was barely pushing back. The big guy had all the advantage. He had the muscle and the height. I wasn’t as tall as him but I wasn’t exactly a minnow either.

  “You are so going to get it. I eat runts like you for breakfast. Save us both the trouble and just roll over and take what is coming to you like the bitch that you are.” The tall spaceman grinned menacingly at me.

  The baton was almost on my throat again. The guy was really a powerhouse. I didn’t stand a chance against him fighting fair. So I decided to change the way the game was played. It was the only way that there would ever be a different outcome.

  “You are right! You’d probably win if I keep trying to go toe to toe against you!” I squinted under the strain of him pushing all his weight against my hands.

  I slammed my knee into his sides in very quick successions. His chin sagged and a light yelp shot out of his mouth as he fell to his knee. I stepped on his hand. The one that held the stun baton. He shrieked loudly, unwrapping his fingers from the shaft of the baton.

  I picked it up from the ground and smashed it through the glass of the spaceman’s helmet, ramming the stun baton into his awestricken face. I pressed the button releasing a bolt of curre
nt into my oppressor’s face. His whole body shook violently and his hands dangled in mid-air.

  “Does that feel therapeutic, asshole?” I sneered mockingly just before taking my finger off the stun button.

  He dropped to the ground trothing in the mouth. I didn’t give a damn about him. I didn’t care if he would survive the shock or not. The door was open and I needed to get out. I wasn’t going to waste that opportunity. It could be the only one I was going to get.

  Chapter 2

  I could almost smell the air of freedom. It was all I thought about while I was kept in the confines of the small room where I had been held against my will. I walked nervously past the green door that was wide open now. The collapsed spaceman was still unconscious on the floor and non the wiser about the current state of affairs.

  I felt like kicking the slumped spaceman in the face. Maybe knocking out a few teeth for good measure before I left-sort of a parting gift to remember me by. I didn’t have the time for such pettiness. Though I admit, stumping on the spaceman would have made me feel a little better.

  I had taken a few steps down the hallway when I remembered Miss Maple and the kid most likely were taken too. We had been in the same room when I got assaulted from behind by the damn spacemen. The chances of them having escaped capture was quite remote.

  “Tight spaces! Hate them! Even the freaking hallway is tight!” I muttered to myself, as I creeped through the hallway on my toes.

  I could hear eerie noises waft through the narrow spaces of the hallway. At first, I thought it was just light draft but then a grim realization soon hit me. My cell wasn’t the only one in that hallway. There were dozens of other green doors, all shut of course. There must have been other captives behind them. I wasn’t really interested in letting them out. I didn’t know what was going to be jumping out of the cage. For all I knew, there could have been demented, psychopathic, murderous people in there, locked away from society for the good of the public. Not that I was certain that there was much of the public left to safeguard.