The Infected would not just die out. They wouldn’t starve. Survival for humans was not just a matter of finding a safe place and waiting for the apocalypse to pass. It had been there in front of his eyes all along. The creatures were evolving. A new species a matter of weeks old. They were genetically wired to kill humans, but there was nothing supernatural about them; they were just mammals. They would adapt, they would procreate. Some had learned to communicate; some guided those less advanced than themselves. Some could swim.
A species in its infancy, rising inexorably, learning and adapting to the environment that they had inherited.
He understood suddenly just why the creatures were compelled to kill those who had been their blood relations before they turned. The virus compelled them to kill off their old family so that they could replace it with a new one. The world belonged to them and they weren’t going anywhere. They were thriving.
Even the animals could contract the virus. Wildfire was everything now, and everywhere; a part of the planet itself, as ubiquitous as water and air and death.
The world hadn’t ended. Hadn’t been destroyed.
It’s just been transformed. And there’s no place left in it for us.
It took only a moment for Michael’s brain to run through it all, but it was long enough. Just enough time to distract him from the fact that there was a noise behind him now. A pounding of heavy feet.
Jason charged past Michael, hefting the pipe and killing the first of the Infected with a single blow, but he wasn’t quick enough. Even as he pulled the pipe clear and began to swing again, the second Infected creature registered the sudden noise in the tunnel.
And shrieked.
The noise ended a moment later with an abrupt liquid crunch, but it seemed to echo off the walls of the tunnel forever, taking on a life of its own.
Michael held his breath and began to count.
One.
Two.
Three.
He expected the darkness to be split by an answering shriek, but there was no sound. He exhaled a long, slow breath and drew in another, shuddering.
“Bet you’re glad we brought Jason along now, huh?”
Rachel breathed the words into Michael’s ear and he jumped. He hadn’t noticed her moving alongside him in the darkness. He trained his flashlight on Jason, and even as he opened his mouth to speak he saw the big man stiffen suddenly, as a faint shriek reached his ear.
Fourteen.
“That was fourteen seconds away. Behind us,” Michael growled as Rachel’s eyes widened. He turned to the group that he couldn’t see, but which he knew were clustered behind him the darkness, holding flashlights that all poured in the same direction for once, bathing Jason and the dead Infected in a wide pool of light.
“They’ll be coming,” he hissed into the darkness. “They're not far away. They’ll come fast. We have to run.”
He half-worried that there might be debate or at least terror to slow them down, but Jason provided a dreadful punctuation that underscored his argument.
With a grunt, Rachel’s giant brother began to strike the road at his feet with the lead pipe like a metronome.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
It’s up to you now, Rachel, Michael thought, and with that he turned, grabbing Claire’s small hand, and began to run once more.
*
You can do this, Rach.
John’s final words blazed in Rachel’s mind clearly, as if bright sunlight poured across them and brushed away the shadows that had obscured their true meaning.
His message hadn’t been about Annie Holloway, or the Infected or Project Wildfire. It hadn’t even been about her survival, at least not directly. John had been talking about Jason. The one thing that he had known she would have to do if she was to have any chance of living.
Rachel remained frozen as the others began to sprint forward, leaving her alone with her giant brother. She studied his empty features, his eyes pointed at the unending darkness implacably, as though that was all they had ever seen.
You can leave him. You have to leave him.
Somewhere behind her the single shriek had become a wall of static; a meaningless cacophony that grew louder with each passing second. Soon the noise would enter the tunnel like a speeding train, and Jason would be there to meet it.
A huge sob wracked her body.
“I love you, Jase. I’m so sorry.”
It might have been her imagination, maybe just a mirage spotted in the desert of her mind. Just wish fulfilment, John would probably have called it, but as Rachel sprinted away from her brother, leaving him behind forever, she thought she had detected a flicker of something in his eyes. A vague flash of terror and loneliness that made her heart break.
*
By the time Jason began to swing, cutting into the tide of Infected that split around him like water crashing over a rock in the black tunnel, Rachel’s footsteps had long moved beyond his hearing. She was gone, and what remained of Jason Roberts wasn’t certain she had ever existed in the first place. Yet with each skull he crushed, there was a part of him, a fractured part buried deep somewhere that felt glad that she ran.
Chapter 43
When Michael saw a patch of lighter darkness up ahead, he almost screamed in relief.
The tunnel seemed to have curved around under the water for an eternity, until ridiculous notions surfaced in his mind that there was no exit after all; that the Mersey Tunnel was just some terrible joke played on the people of Merseyside.
No light reached him from the city, of course, but he saw faint starlight, and he redoubled his pace, struggling to keep up with the others. In a different time Michael would have bet on himself in a race against any of them, but in the terrible present, it was all he could do to give silent thanks to whatever god might be listening that his legs still obeyed his commands.
He exploded from the tunnel to find the others had stopped running, and he came to an abrupt stop, panting for oxygen and searching frantically for Claire. Only when he saw her, bent double and heaving air into her small lungs, did he relax a little.
But only a little.
Behind him he heard the terrible echoing of death approaching. The Infected had reached the tunnel, and there was no way Jason would be able to stop them. They had a few minutes at most.
“Why have you stopped?” he panted, as he pushed his way through the bodies, but nobody answered. There was no need.
Rachel pointed ahead silently.
Around fifty yards ahead, Michael saw a row of huge stakes driven into the gardens of the houses, spread out at intervals of around ten yards.
On each stake, an eyeless body had been hung like a grisly Christmas decoration. Even at this distance, Michael could see the banner that had been hung across the road. Foot-high letters daubed in blood.
WELCOME TO LIVERPOOL.
POPULATION 113.
People.
He felt a hand clutching at his shirt, and a moment later Rachel’s voice breathed into his ear.
“What the fuck is this?”
Michael shook his head at her. He was about to say that it didn’t matter, that the docks weren’t far away and they should just run through the grisly fence that had been erected around Liverpool and make their escape, when a sudden thought occurred to him.
Stifling the urge to grunt in pain, he bent low to pick up a small stone from the ground near his feet. A trick he had learned the very first time he had encountered the Infected. A simple test.
He hurled the stone toward the hanging creatures, and when it landed with a harsh click on the road, the fence burst into life. Ragged panting. Eyeless faces twisting left and right, searching for the source of the noise, before once more lapsing into silence.
An alarm system.
The horror of it drove needles of terror deep into Michael’s heart. The Infected were horrifying, but looking at the fence and wondering at the insanity that had caused somebody to
build it, Michael realised that the most frightening thing about them was that they had once been human. Nothing was worse than humans. Maybe nothing ever would be.
Three miles behind and closing fast, a herd of killers raged through the tunnel like a pyroclastic flow. The herd would destroy everything in its path, and the hundred-and-thirteen sick bastards left in Liverpool, whoever they were, were about to discover that their time was up.
The only thing that mattered was that they didn’t get a chance to interfere with the survivors of Caernarfon before the surging river of death washed over them.
“Single file,” Michael whispered. “Straight through the middle. No noise. Move slow. Once you’re clear, you run. Don’t worry about anybody else, just run. The docks should be to the left. Whoever gets to a boat, get on it and go. Don’t wait. Got it?”
Michael stared around the group and saw frightened eyes staring back at him, but he saw understanding, too. The road into Liverpool was the point of no return. The choice had always been between death or survival, and the time had come to make it and suffer the consequences. No more hiding.
Silently and slowly, ignoring the screaming of his nerves that death was chasing him and that he should run for his life, Michael began to pad forward. One step at a time, barely daring to breathe.
The plan was doomed to fail.
Michael should have known it, but he was so focused on moving without making a sound, creeping forward by inches, that he had forgotten.
He was standing right between two of the horrific fence posts when he heard the noise that told him the game was up.
Sniff.
Sniff.
A shriek split the air right next to him, and then suddenly the entire world seemed to be screaming, as the fence came to life.
In the distance to his right, Michael heard a man’s voice shout: “People at the fence! Go!”
“Run!” Michael screamed, and he veered to the left, pouring every last drop of energy into pumping his legs, heading for the docks in the distance.
He was overtaken almost immediately. Even the larger guys, like Shirley and Gareth Roberts, men that he would once have beaten in a race without breaking sweat, swept past him, and Michael cursed his legs. After everything that had happened, his back was going to get him killed after all, right before he reached the finish line. It was so cruel, it seemed almost funny.
He watched the others disappearing toward the docks, and pounded onward, but he felt like a marathon runner in the final few paces of the race, hitting the wall.
He had to stop.
Had to draw in some oxygen.
“Michael, come on.”
Rachel’s voice.
He looked up in horror to see her coming back for him.
“Rachel, go,” he snarled. “I said don’t wait for anyone. Keep Claire safe.”
She stared at him hesitantly.
“Go!” he screamed.
He turned away from her. In the distance he saw shapes moving in the darkness, but the animal gait he had come to expect from the Infected was absent. This was a different sort of threat. Far worse.
Panting for air, he pulled the rifle from his back and took aim.
The shot rang out like thunder.
He had missed, of that he was certain. He had never been a good shot to begin with. But the roaring of the gun had stopped their approach. Michael counted ten men; maybe twelve, scattering for cover behind parked cars on the dark road.
“They've got a gun,” he heard a voice say, and Michael’s face split in a savage grin.
Well, not really, he thought.
Two bullets left.
He fired off another round when he saw the distant shadows creeping out into the road once more, and when they ducked back into cover, Michael drew in a huge lungful of air and turned away, pumping his legs through a thick lake of fire.
A few hundred yards to the docks.
It wouldn’t matter. The others would be gone by now, on a boat and heading out to sea. All that did matter was that Claire was safe. He just wanted to see the boat; to know that she was gone.
Footsteps behind him again.
Gaining ground.
He turned and fired his last bullet.
No more cards left to play, Mike.
Tossing the rifle aside, Michael focused all his thoughts on his legs once more.
And ran.
*
He heard the engine of the boat before the dock loomed into sight, and his heart sank. It sounded close. Far too close, like it had taken them a while to find a boat with a working engine and to get it started.
When he finally saw it, Michael’s heart leapt into his mouth. In the darkness, the boat was lit like a beacon, but it wasn’t far out at sea as he had hoped. It hadn’t moved at all. The engine churned the water and light spilled from every window, but it sat in next to the dock wall like it had not even been unmoored.
They don’t know how to move it, he thought in despair. He should have known; should have expected that it would all end so feebly. Get a large boat, he thought. So simple. Unless no one knows how to actually operate a large boat.
Michael slowed to a stop about twenty yards from the boat, and turned away from it. He waited on the dock, standing in the narrow alley that ran between large shipping containers and parked trucks. Only a second or two passed before the group of men that had been chasing him burst into his line of sight.
He saw knives.
Clubs.
Feral grins.
Michael balled up his fists. He couldn’t stop them getting to the boat, but he would make sure some of them didn’t get past him. Hell, he was going to make sure some of them didn’t go anywhere ever again.
The man at the front of the pack laughed savagely.
“Just you is it, mate? Everyone else on board the jolly roger over there?”
The man dropped his gaze to Michael’s fists.
“All out of bullets, too. Hope you’ve watched a lot of Jackie Chan films, fella. Or this is going to get pretty ugly for you. And for all them pretty girls you’re travelling with.”
Michael gritted his teeth as the man took a step towards him.
And then his jaw dropped in astonishment as the man’s head exploded and a deafening roar split the night air. Michael watched, stunned, as the headless corpse crumpled to the ground.
“Not just him. Me, too. And I’ve got plenty of bullets.”
Rachel stepped out of the shadows to Michael’s left, pointing the revolver at the group of stunned men.
“And we’ve all got plenty of knives. I even have this lovely mace. Any of you fuckers have a mace?"
Shirley appeared next to Rachel, grinning widely.
And then Michael saw Gareth Hughes. Linda. Ed. All of them.
Michael saw glinting knives and dead-eyed stares loaded with threat. He wouldn’t have believed them capable of it.
“Next one of you to so much as blink is going to end up in the same mess your mouthy bastard friend there found himself in,” Rachel said amiably, sweeping the revolver left and right. “Now we’re going to get on that boat, and be on our way. It’s up to you how many of you are left to wave us off.”
Michael saw hesitation on the faces of the men from Liverpool. Saw a couple of them take a faltering step backwards and his face split in a grin.
“I thought I told you not to wait for me,” he said as the men began to retreat.
“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. “You’re an idiot sometimes.”
*
Rachel kept her gun pointed at the road long after the group of men had slunk out of sight, and was still aiming it as the boat chugged slowly away from the docks.
“Good job you still had that thing,” Michael said, joining her on the small deck to the rear of the boat.
“Good job I still had one bullet left,” Rachel replied with a sly grin.
Michael’s mouth dropped open, and he shook his head in disbelief.
“Balls of steel,
” he whispered in admiration, and Rachel laughed.
“You think we’ll make it?”
Michael shook his head ruefully.
“On this thing? To Australia? Honestly, no I don’t,” he said. "We barely got this thing moving and no one has any idea how to steer it, let alone how to navigate. Getting to the other side of the planet doesn’t seem likely.”
Rachel nodded sombrely.
“Oh,” she said.
“We’ll find somewhere. A small island. Somewhere safe. As far away as we can get.”
Michael shrugged.
“It’s all I’ve got.”
Rachel nodded.
“We’ll make it,” she said, and Michael almost believed her.
*
“Vessel to starboard, Sir.”
“Range?”
“One kilometre, Sir.”
Nathan’s ears pricked up. It had been several hours since the Portsmouth had fled the waters north of Scotland. He had spent most of that time on the bridge, explaining the events of the recent past to Captain Bertrand. It was made abundantly clear to Nathan that he was a guest of the Captain’s, and that he had no rank on this ship.
He was fine with that.
He spent a long time persuading the Captain that the rumours about Australia were true. It was Sullivan’s rally point. A place to flee if disaster struck the project. Once the Captain had heard enough, Nathan was told to remain in his seat, and the journey became a procession of uneventful miles that passed slowly.
The sighting of another vessel was the first bit of excitement he’d had in hours.
The Captain scanned the windows with powerful binoculars.
“Pleasure yacht,” he said, and Nathan thought he detected a little disdain in the man’s tone.
“Should we fire on them, Sir?”
Nathan looked at the radar operator in horror, and flicked his gaze back to the Captain. He knew what Fred Sullivan’s answer would have been. He hoped the man that ran this ship might turn out to be different. So far Bertrand had been businesslike and aggressive, with a ruthless air that made Nathan edgy, but he hadn’t seemed like a maniac.
Reaction (Wildfire Chronicles Volume 6) Page 24
