"So it's going through the skin?" Gabe asked.
Gannon nodded. "They wouldn't breathe it in, now that their respiratory systems are dormant. But it's entering the epidermis, the necrosis attacking the cells, decaying them from the inside out. What they're coughing up is matter dislodging into their windpipes."
"Nasty."
"It's like bacterial acid. Once it gets under the skin, it'll eat through to the bone."
"And you created this?"
"Not long after the outbreak, the MoD asked me to come up with a way of neutralising the zombie threat over a wide area, but it never got past the prototype stage. I've been tinkering with it ever since. Thought it might be handy to have a little weapon of mass destruction all of my very own."
"Bet your masters never thought you'd be using deadheads as carriers for it. You could do a hell of a lot of damage, you know, across the whole city."
"No," Gannon replied, shaking his head. "It's only got a limited dispersal field, and a short lifespan, which is why we'll be able to go down there any second without it affecting us. In fact, it'll probably burn itself out before it's entirely disabled Flowers' goons. They'll still be on their feet - just - but should be compromised enough for us to get past them without too much trouble."
Gabe stood. "Well, I'm getting a hankering to wreak some bloody vengeance. Care to join me?"
They picked a point at the perimeter fence at which security was the most lax: a pair of guards were on their hands and knees, the flesh of their hands and forearms almost liquescent, white bone emerging from the grey puddle where their skin used to be. They barely noticed the newcomers, whimpering and pawing the earth like sick dogs, shrunken facial features disappearing into their skulls, and didn't have the time to recognise the fact that intruders were snipping the wire free before a figure snuck through and beheaded them both with a single sweep of his machete. Gabe stooped and passed one of the guns to Alice, who was next through the fence. Adam and Beth followed, leaving Gannon on the other side of the wire, looking ill at ease now he was so close to Flowers' domain.
"You sure you don't want to come with us?" Gabe asked him.
"I've done my part, I've got you in," the scientist replied. "The rest I'll leave up to you."
"Stay close by."
"I will. Good luck."
The four of them headed off, gluing themselves to the curving shadow of the house, avoiding confrontation where they could. For the most part, Flowers' enforcers were struggling to purge their bodies of the agent that was devouring them, and paid little heed to the knot of Returners that were skulking past. A few caught sight of them and tried to raise the alarm, but found no sound would emerge from their ravaged throats other than a soupy gurgle, and when they attempted to hoist their rifles the strength left their arms, the limbs putrefying. Those they were close to reached out or made an effort to block them, but Gabe either ran them through with his blade - their skulls now the consistency of mud - or Alice took them out with a discreet burst from her semi. The bullets shredded them like paper; it was as if they were vanishing, losing all sense of corporeality.
They threaded their way through the grounds, Gabe's memory of the layout leading them, and they reached the main doors of the mansion. He turned to the other three. "I want to create maximum chaos, keep them all occupied. Adam, Beth - can you see if you can get the front gate open, let the remaining deadheads in? That should cause enough confusion to keep Flowers' goons away from the house. Once that's done, make a start on the other matter."
The pair nodded, and sprinted off down the drive. He glanced at Alice and motioned that they should enter, stepping out of the light and into the cool dark of the hallway. He could feel the vaguest tingle of the bacteria in the air, despite Gannon's assurance that his bio-weapon had a finite exposure time. His skin prickled slightly, but he seemed to be suffering none of the symptoms Harry's lot were displaying. In fact, the further they moved into the building, the more the sensation eased, as if it couldn't permeate brick and mortar. If that was the case, then the ganglord was probably unaffected, hiding away within the structure's bowels, waiting for whoever was coming for him.
The design of the house hadn't changed much since Gabe was last here, he noted, but he was surprised to see it go to rack and ruin; dirt and debris were collecting on the tiled floor, and huge cobwebs dangled like gossamer nets from the ceiling. It was becoming derelict, as much subject to entropy as its residents. It looked ready to collapse. They reached the foot of the staircase, scanning left and right for signs of movement. Now they were far from the cries of the dead, it had fallen uncomfortably quiet. He hoped that much of the security had been placed outside to protect the perimeter, leaving a minimal staff within the building itself.
"We need to make for the first floor," he whispered.
"How do you know that's where Flowers will be?"
"I don't. But there's someone up there I need to see." He paused. "To save."
Alice studied him for a second. "OK. But be ready - this isn't going to be easy."
As if in answer, there was the roar of a sub-machine gun opening up and the plaster near their heads exploded as bullets raked across the hall. The pair of them dived behind the banister, splinters following in their wake. The shooter was at the top of the first flight of stairs, and was moving down, punctuating each footfall with a five-second burst. The wood around them cracked with each impact. Alice rolled into space, placed the barrel of the rifle between stairposts and fired up, catching the figure in the legs; it grunted and stumbled, pausing in its descent. She took advantage of the momentary lull, jumped to her feet, and squeezed off another blast, ripping through its neck and head. The shooter toppled onto its back, and slid down the remainder of the stairs, the remains of its skull bumping against the steps. Gabe joined her, standing over the body.
"Recognise him?" she asked, poking the cadaver's side with her barrel.
"Not any more." It was one of Harry's mob, but not much was left intact above the chin.
They started to ascend cautiously, and made it to the first landing. Gabe silently pointed to the next set of stairs they needed to take, then grimaced as a bullet powered through his arm; a second and third followed in quick succession, catching him in the thigh and chest. He didn't feel any pain, but the shock fleetingly paralysed him.
"Fuck!"
They crouched and ran, bullets zipping into the carpet at their feet or ricocheting off the light fittings: they were being fired on from above again. Gabe hooked a pistol free from his belt, and shot off several rounds blindly as they sought the safety of an alcove.
"Can you see where they are?" he breathed, curiously examining the new holes in his torso and limbs.
"Leaning over the railing, I think," Alice said, looking up. "They're going to get us pinned down."
"What do you reckon?"
She glanced around her, wiping a finger in the dust on a vase. "State of this place, you think it's got woodworm?" She smiled at him, then stood up from her hiding place, and put her semi to her shoulder, sighting it upwards on the banister above. Shots immediately rained down on her, and she took hits to the neck, arms and belly, but seemingly ignored them as she raked her fire on the structure itself, splintering the wood of the railing until it all but disintegrated. There was loud snap and it came apart, the whole balcony splitting in half. Alice dove back against the wall. As shards of debris plummeted, so they were followed by two bodies spiralling to the floor, hitting the hallway tiles with a sharp smack. Their necks twisted sideways, neither of them stirred.
Gabe whistled. "Nice shootin', Tex." He caught sight of the extent of her wounds, blood seeping from a gouge that had removed a good portion of her left cheek. "You OK?"
Alice shrugged. "A few more leaks, nothing I won't grow used to. Come on, let's keep moving, use the noise as cover."
They speedily climbed the rest of the stairs, shrouded in the clouds of grey dust that hung in the air. Gabe spotted the door that l
ed to Anna's room and strode towards it, not knowing what he was going to do or say once he crossed the threshold, or indeed what would be waiting for him on the other side. He had laid his hand on the handle when he heard the voice.
"Just like old times, eh, O'Connell?"
Hewitt emerged from the shadows of the corridor, the silhouettes of two other figures behind him. They were all armed.
"Never thought I'd get to kill you twice."
CHAPTER TWENTY
"Drop your weapons," Hewitt ordered. They did as they were told, metal hitting the floorboards with a dry thump.
The kid looked terrible. The youth was still evident in his face - his resurrection had halted any ageing process, freezing him in that early twenties self-regard that Gabe had been so familiar with a decade earlier - but he hadn't escaped the effects of Gannon's chemical agent. Half of Hewitt's features were sagging on the right side, his eye, eyebrow, cheek and the corner of his mouth dripping like melted wax, the flesh hanging from his jaw in a grey dewlap. His hands too were pinkish claws, the skin stripped from the layers of muscle, and he gripped the shotgun in an insectile manner, white bone and knotted tendons visibly jutting between his knuckles. When he spoke, his words were slurred and apparently difficult to form, spilling from his mouth in a weary monotone.
"Why am I not surprised?" he said. "Somehow I had a feeling you'd be back."
"We all come back these days," Gabe replied.
"True." He contemplated this. "Y'know, I should've shot you in the head. Thought there'd be more indignity in seeing you staggering around with the rest of the deadfucks. Can't even rely on that now. Even the maggotdicks are pulling themselves out of their tombs, dusting themselves down and pretending to be civilised."
"They're evolving."
"Towards what? You think you're more human than dead, O'Connell? Have you seen your reflection lately?"
"Look who's talking."
Hewitt made a guttural croak, which Gabe assumed was his nearest approximation of a laugh. "Yeah, you fucked us up. What the hell have you done to us, anyway?" He held up his contorted limbs in wonder.
"It's an airborne flesh-eating agent that was injected into those stiffs currently crisping up at the gate. Once the voltage hit them and they exploded, it was released."
Hewitt chuckled again. "Well, you got your revenge. Harry threw you out as his favourite son, and you wanted a little payback. That don't mean you're about to join the ranks of the living."
"That was never my intention," Gabe replied. "I'm just here to bring things to a close." He studied Hewitt curiously. "Talking of the old man, how's that working out for you, being his second in command? The position everything you hoped it would be? I know how much you wanted it."
"Fuck you, traitor."
"'Cause I also know it was you that shot me that night on Westminster Bridge, as I tried to escape. Shot me in the leg, for either the zombs or the army to get me. Either way, I was a dead man, and you were just the person to fill that vacancy."
The two Returners standing sentinel either side of the kid glanced at their colleague sharply.
Hewitt raised the shotgun, pumping the slide. "Guess this is third-time lucky—"
Gabe's eyes slid to one of the other figures. "Hey, Hendricks - how are the dogs?"
"Long gone." He had similarly suffered from the agent, his hair missing in clumps, the pigmentation of his skin almost boiled white. His voice was a low rumble. "Once Harry insisted we resurrect, the dogs couldn't stay. They wouldn't be comfortable around us. So he told me I had to kill them, every one. And I did."
"Hewitt here used to hate the stiffs with a passion," Gabe said. "Wanted to wipe them all from the face of the earth. Now he's a zomb himself. It's funny what we're prepared to do on the instructions of our masters."
"Enough." Hewitt strode forward, the shotgun held to his shoulder. "We've heard enough of your fucking bullshit." He swung the weapon towards Alice. "You thought you were going to help him overthrow Harry? Did he talk you into it? Talk up the revolution?" His grip tightened on the barrel. "You know what? It was for nothing. Because nothing changes. Ever."
At point-blank range, he discharged the shotgun into Alice face, and her head disappeared in a wet explosion of crimson skull shards, a red spray hitting the wall behind her. The body beneath crumpled in a swirl of dust and gunsmoke. The ear-splitting retort blasted Gabe into a momentary daze, but the second her lifeless corpse hit the ground at his feet, he snapped back into focus. With a yell he lunged at Hewitt, and tried to grab him around the neck, but the kid was too fast. He weaved out of Gabe's reach, then brought up the gun butt and slammed it into his temple, dropping him to his knees.
"You were a fool to come back," Hewitt snarled, standing over him. "You should've disappeared when you had the chance, grateful at your resurrection. Instead, you throw it all away on some petty pissant attempt at retribution." He straightened, withdrawing more shells from his pocket, chambering them into the shotgun. "I don't know what your problem is, O'Connell. You seem to go out of your way to make trouble for yourself."
"I was doing the right thing," Gabe murmured.
Hewitt snorted, mucus thick in his throat. "Like that means anything. Not so long ago, you thought being part of Harry's outfit was the right thing to do." He leaned in closer again. "Right and wrong have no place in this world anymore. It's just circumstances, and what you can get out of them. Isn't that what the old man taught you?"
"That's always been Flowers' way, but it's no longer mine."
"You're a weak, naive fucking idiot," Hewitt rasped and placed the shotgun to Gabe's head. "How many times have I got to put a bullet in you to make my point?"
Gabe rolled at the moment Hewitt's finger tightened on the trigger, knocking the barrel with his hand a fraction to the left just as he fired. He felt the shot scrape the side of cheek and singe his hair as the shell powered into the skirting board. Again the roar deafened him, but he was moving despite the stars dancing before his eyes. He grappled with Hewitt for control of the gun, which was gripped upwards between them.
"Fucking shoot him!" Hewitt yelled at his comrades, but they hesitated, seemingly unsure of what action to take.
Wrenching the shotgun to one side, Gabe seized the advantage and drove his forehead into the bridge of Hewitt's nose, already rendered shapeless by the chemical agent. It burst like a grape, and he staggered backwards. Gabe wrested the shotgun from him, spinning around in time to see one of the pair - the enforcer he didn't recognise - finally advancing towards him. Gabe put two shots through him, blowing him across the landing to tumble down the stairs.
He swung back to Hewitt, grabbed him by the collar and stuck the gun under his chin. "You know what your problem is, pal? You underestimate people." He fired, detonating the top of Hewitt's head; brain matter exited in a purple stream and twisted itself around the chandeliers like a Christmas decoration. He threw the remains of the kid's body over the balcony. Then he turned back to face Hendricks, who remained motionless a few feet away.
"I don't want to have to do this," Gabe warned. Hendricks nodded and held up his hands in surrender, letting go of his semi-automatic. "Get out of here," he continued. "Don't waste any more of your... life... protecting him." He made a sideways motion of the head towards the door. Hendricks nodded again, and cautiously backed down the stairs until he vanished from sight.
Gabe leaned back against the wall, putting a hand to the side of his face that had taken a portion of the shotgun blast; his fingers disappeared into a rent in his cheek and brushed against his teeth and gumline. It had been closer than he thought, and had disintegrated a considerable section of flesh. Touching his scalp, there were deep bald grooves where it had seared past. Christ, how much of him was going to be left? He felt as if he was strung together by the flimsiest of threads.
He glanced sadly at Alice's headless cadaver, reasoning that at least she was at some kind of peace, free from the limitations of this fragile shell. He'd kno
wn little about her pre-death, and she hadn't been willing to reveal the human she'd once been. The other Returners that had pledged to help him had been the same. It was as if it was too painful to remember their past lives, of what they had once been. But now there would be no more resurrections, no more hunger, no more shuddering awareness of the creature that she - that all of them - had become. It was an end, final and complete.
"Won't be long before I'll join you," he whispered. Then he turned back to the door, yanked down on the handle and entered.
The room was just as he remembered it from all those years ago. It was as if by crossing the threshold he had stepped back in time by a decade or more. Unlike the decay that had tainted the rest of the building, this room - Anna's room - remained strangely untouched by the ravages of the passing months. The clock still ticked somnolently on the mantelpiece, the bare walls still tracked the progress of the passing sun, the chair still stood before the window, the curtains pulled back to reveal the expanse of the gardens, and the occupant of the chair was still seated upon it, facing the glass. On this occasion, however, there was someone else in the room. He was knelt on the carpet beside the chair, his hands perched on the arm, his head bowed. Gabe closed the door quietly behind him, and walked towards the pair, the shotgun hanging loosely at his side. He stopped no more than a couple of feet from the prone figure.
"Harry."
Flowers looked up, age and pain prominent in his eyes before recognition flooded in to join them. "Gabriel, my boy. To what do I owe this pleasure?" He didn't seem surprised at his presence.
"I've come to kill you. To tear all this down."
"Just you?"
"No. I've brought some others with me. If you look out the window, you'll see them."
Flowers swivelled and peered into the grounds. Somehow, Beth and Adam had succeeded in breaking open the gates - or at least a section of them - and the walking dead were stumbling through. The sporadic thwump of a landmine being triggered could be intermittently heard, and the glass shook in its frame with each explosion. But there were enough of them to easily swamp the defences.
The Words of Their Roaring Page 27
