“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Nolan started after him, hand gripping his weapon so hard his knuckles were going white.
“To get my personal effects.” Barrett didn’t turn around when he responded, which seemed to further agitate Nolan.
I gave Rose a come on wave of my hand and she hurried over to me so we could follow the stranger we’d just loosed into the terminal. I wondered if we’d asked enough questions, or if it was smart to trust that he was as harmless as he said he was. But it was too late now.
The cat, as it were, was out of the bag.
Chapter five.
Rose
I wasn’t sure if I’d done the right thing by letting Barrett loose. It didn’t help that I could see the unease on everyone else’s faces too. I couldn’t blame them. Barrett was one scary-looking guy. He was big, muscular, and had an innate cockiness that was obviously birthed more from being unafraid to do whatever needed to be done than anything else. You’d think having the long braid down his back would soften his physical presence, but it didn’t. Not even a little bit. He was one of those huge guys that could wear a pink shirt and drink a fruity umbrella drink and everyone would be too fucking scared to say a damn thing.
But that had been exactly why I’d decided to let him out of his cell.
We needed that—him, his grit and strength that scared the crap out of me and everyone else. Because from what I’d seen when the sun rose that morning, the horde outside was growing bigger by the hour, and the more people we had to fight them, the better chance we all stood at surviving. Besides, how bad could he really be? Surely if he were a real threat they would have taken him to a proper jail straight away, right? Urghhh, I had no idea.
Nolan caught up to me and grabbed my elbow. I shrugged out of his grip as I came to a stop, and I turned and glared at him.
“Hope you know what you’re doing,” he snapped, his expression fierce enough to make me gulp.
“You said we needed more muscle and manpower, right?” I gestured towards Barrett, who was ahead of us. “I got it for us, so stop your grumbling.”
“No, Rose, I said we’re going to need more muscle or more gunpower. That’s completely different,” he replied, sounding exasperated with me. “I meant weapons, not”—he gestured to Barrett—“whoever the fuck this guy is!”
I opened my mouth to argue with him, but realized he was right so decided to shut my mouth instead.
“So is anyone going to tell me where the ever-loving hell everyone has gone? And what that god-awful smell is?” Barrett bellowed from in front of us. “Smells like a dog took a shit in a barbecue and then we decided to slap it on some burgers!” He let out a roar of laughter.
I looked over at our new companion, wondering how to break it all to him.
He glanced up at the door he was stood in front of, and I watched as a smile stretched across his hard face. “Or do I not want to know?” He reached over and turned the handle on the door before pushing it open and looking back over at me. “Well? What’s it going to be, UK?”
Barrett focused his attention on me, and when I looked up at Nolan, silently asking for help, the asshole only folded his arms across his chest and glared back.
“Fine,” I replied with a roll of my eyes. I looked back to Barrett. “Would you believe me if I said we were slap bang in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?”
“Firstly, what the fuck does slap bang mean?” Barrett replied with a low chuckle.
I glared. “Like…we’re in the middle of—,”
“Oh, so smack dab!” he corrected as he stepped into the room and out of view before ducking his head back out and smirking at me. “And who the fuck says ‘smack dab’ anymore? What are you, ninety?” He headed back into the room and I stared after him, feeling exasperated.
“Well, he’s a big wanker isn’t he,” I grumbled. “We should have left him locked up.”
Nolan raised an eyebrow at me, and when I turned to look at the others, they still looked pretty pissed off that I’d let him out so easily. Even Sam didn’t look like she had my back on this one.
I stormed after Barrett, pushing the door wider open as I reached it. “I’ll have you know tha—”
My words died on my lips as I looked in and saw Barrett wrestling with a policewoman. Or, more correctly, a zombie policewoman. In fact, she looked like someone important, with all her badges and stuff attached to her jacket. But whatever and whoever she was was unimportant now; what was important was that she was trying to take a chunk out of Barrett.
“Zombie! Nolan! Zombie policewoman,” I yelled. I slapped around at my waist for the gun I had there and quickly pulled it out before wincing at my cluelessness. I aimed it at the mass of limbs currently fighting in front of me as Barrett punched the zombie square in the nose. So hard, in fact, that his fist sank wrist-deep into the center of it and pus and gore exploded out.
“Jesus fuck, you dirty bitch!” Barrett roared, and pulled his fist back out of her face, sending more gore splattering everywhere. Blood and bits of flesh flecked across his tanned skin and clothes.
The zombie kept on reaching towards him. The fact that she had a crater in the center of her face seemed inconsequential to her.
Nolan shoved past me just as Barrett grabbed both sides of the zombie’s head tight in his grip. He pulled its head down at the same time as he lifted his knee up and smashed it into the underside of her jaw, making the two collide in a glorious gore bath. Barrett roared again as he pulled back on the head. And even above his roaring, I could hear the strange slurping and popping sound of the zombie’s head being torn from its body.
The body fell to the floor and I was pretty sure that I squealed. I definitely wanted to piss myself. It was pathetic and girly, but the sight of Barrett holding a zombie head in his hands while gore and pus dripped down his vein-popping, muscle-taut arms was too much for me to comprehend.
I squealed again. Just for good measure.
Barrett turned to look at me, a gleam in his eye. “Damn, UK, you weren’t kidding, were you?” he said breathlessly. He dropped the head and wiped his hands down his jeans. “I mean, fuck, I thought I was high when I started seeing those red eyes down on that subway, but nah, this is happening.” He chuckled and started towards the cabinets at the back of the room.
“Red eyes?” Leon asked from behind me, making me jump and squeal again.
Barrett pulled hard on the locked cabinet until the door popped open with a loud bang. “Yeah. I was riding the subway here. Started noticing that people weren’t acting right, you know.” He shrugged like we’d know.
But I didn’t know. As far as I knew, everything and everyone was normal up until the man on my plane started chomping away at people like he was at a mile-high Subway.
“Gotcha,” Barrett said, and turned around. “There’s my girls.”
I’m not sure what I expected to see: An axe? A gun? A novelty flick knife? But no, Barrett had a huge bag of what looked like drugs.
“Dude, you just almost got your head bitten off, and for what? Drugs?” Leon spluttered.
Akhira muttered something in Japanese and shook his head, and Nolan turned and glared at me like this was all my fault.
Barrett chuckled and shook his head. “You have any idea how much this shit is worth?”
No one replied, though I was pretty sure I could hear Nolan’s chest rumbling like a guard dog.
Barrett started towards us, but neither I nor Nolan moved out of his way. “You’re going to want to get the fuck out of my way before I get real angry.” He stared at Nolan, a sneer on his face and his dark eyes promising violence.
“We can’t let you out of here,” Nolan replied. “This place is surrounded. Those things”—he gestured to the headless zombie on the floor—“are everywhere. We’ve put this entire place on lockdown, and that’s a decision made.”
I looked up at Nolan in surprise. I had expected him to be more aggressive, or to give Barrett a little more
shit. But instead he seemed pretty calm. His lack of hostility seemed to change Barrett’s attitude.
“You got water, food?” Barrett asked, stuffing his drugs into a small backpack he’d retrieved from the same locker his drugs had been in.
Nolan nodded and Barrett shrugged.
“Good, because I’m hungry. Now show me how fucked everything is.”
A moment passed between the two men, almost like they were having a silent discussion about who was in charge. Barrett seemed happy enough, at least for the time being, to take a back seat, and that was good enough for Nolan, I guess. We took one last glance at the headless zombie on the floor and left the room.
Nolan led the way, backtracking our path until we were packed into the security room once again—sardines in an apocalypse tin can.
I knew before Karla said anything that something was wrong.
“I don’t know where they are,” she blurted out immediately. “They were here, but I needed to pee, and when I got back—”
Jamie pushed past me. “Alexa?” His gaze searched the room frantically. “Karla, where is she?” he yelled as he stormed over to her. “Where the hell is my daughter?”
“I don’t know, sir, I don’t know! I’ve been checking the cameras but I haven’t seen them. It’s only been twenty minutes or so. They’re here somewhere!”
Jamie started towards the door. “All you had to do was keep her here until I got back. What is wrong with you people that you can’t even look after one teenage girl?” He pulled open the door and stormed through it.
“Teenage girl, huh? How old?” Barrett said with a laugh.
“Too young,” Sam said, emphasizing the young part.
Barrett at least had the decency to drop his smile.
“Come on,” Nolan said, heading in the same direction that Jamie had gone.
I followed him, sensing Sam and the others close by.
“Where’s the food?” Barrett asked. “Told you, I’m fucking starving.”
“You’ll get your food when you help us find the kid. Now come on,” Nolan yelled.
I followed Nolan, not caring whether Barrett came with us or not. There were enough of us to find one teenage girl in an enclosed airport terminal, surely.
“Rose?” Sam said, gripping on to my arm. She was still hot; I could feel the burn of her touch through my clothes. “I need to tell you something.”
I glanced at her as we walked. “What is it?” I frowned when I saw the genuine fear on her face. “Are you…you know?”
What I wanted to ask was did she feel okay? Did she feel human still? But I couldn’t get the words out of my too-dry mouth. She looked haunted behind her eyes.
Sam shook her head. “It’s about Alexa and Trent.”
I frowned. “What do you mean…Alexa and Trent? There is no Alexa and Trent, is there?”
She was way too young for him, but teenagers were idiots. Had I missed something going on between them?
“It’s something he said, or maybe it was something he did last night, I’m not sure. It wasn’t right, though. It made it seem wrong. It made him seem wrong.” She was stumbling over her words, and whispering so quietly that I could barely make out what she was saying. Or maybe that was the way my heart had begun pounding loudly in my chest, the implications of her suggestion settling in and making me feel nauseous.
“You mean…” I couldn’t finish off the sentence. The horror was all too real. “Oh god, Sam, why the bloody hell didn’t you say anything to someone?”
Tears sprung to her eyes. “I wasn’t sure if I imagined it. Maybe I did. God, Rose, I was burning up with fever. I didn’t know when I was awake or asleep. Maybe…maybe this is a coincidence.” She swallowed, spoke again with her voice pitched even lower. “But if I wasn’t dreaming, it was the way he was looking at her, Rose, the way he was talking.”
Nolan looked back over his shoulder, his scowl growing deeper as he saw Sam’s fraught face. “Do I even want to know?”
“Not really, but you probably should,” I replied. “Sam thinks she saw Trent looking at Alexa.”
Nolan’s expression didn’t change, so I cleared my throat and continued.
“Like, really looking at her.”
I didn’t want to say what she was suggesting out loud, so I was glad when recognition illuminated in Nolan’s eyes. It was like a thousand candles had just been lit, and fury burrowed deep into his features.
“Maybe I imagined it,” Sam murmured, but there was no conviction behind it.
“We need to find her, fast,” Nolan said instead, and we all picked up the pace.
We hit the main set of stairs that led down into the terminal, and stepped round the decomposing zombie pile at the bottom with Barrett only giving a passing glance to them. I was waiting for him to freak out, for it to hit him what was going on. Because it had to at some point, right? His blasé reaction just wasn’t normal. Though Akhira’s reaction was pretty similar, really. I glanced across at Akhira as we ran, deciding that actually he was probably just trying to understand what was being said between us all. It couldn’t have been easy.
Poor Jamie had left us all for dust and was already shouting Alexa’s name as he ran through the terminal, and we followed the sound of his voice.
“Daddy?”
Jamie stopped mid-run and turned to the small bar we had broken out of earlier. “Alexa?”
We all walked inside, barely five steps behind Jamie, our eyes slowly adjusting to the dimness.
“I wasn’t doing nothing, I swear.” Trent’s voice shook as he lifted his hands to the air. “She was just upset is all, so I was trying to help her relax.”
I looked over at Alexa, my stomach hitting the floor. She’d been crying; tears stained her face and her hands were clasped in her lap. She was sat in a chair at a table, with two glasses of something amber-colored on the table in front of her.
“What the fuck are you doing here with my kid?” Jamie stomped forwards, hands in fists at his sides.
“I swear, man, I swear. She was just upset, and I was trying to help her relax is all.” Trent backed away from the enraged father, his gaze flitting to Alexa. I saw in that split second exactly what Sam had seen in Trent the night before, because I saw it now too, and I sucked in a breath that caught Nolan’s attention.
In a fraction of a second I saw the hunger and desire on Trent’s face when he looked at Alexa, his mask slipping ever so slightly before he turned his bumbling charm back on.
“Ain’t that right, Alexa? She said she wanted a drink to help calm her down. I didn’t think it was a big deal. She’s young but she’s not exactly innocent.” He laughed nervously, but his tongue flicked across his lower lip and his mouth twitched in a smile when he said the word innocent.
“Oh god,” I murmured, an ache filling my stomach.
Jamie looked down at Alexa. The sight of her only seemed to double his anger. When he spoke, his voice was completely different, low and menacing. “Honey, what happened?”
Her gaze moved to Trent and then back to her father, but she remained mute, just the steady stream of tears trailing down her cheeks.
“Did he say anything to you? Did he make you drink that?”
This time she nodded.
Jamie crouched down next to his daughter, drowning out Trent’s continued promises that he hadn’t done anything.
“Alexa, baby, you have to tell me the truth now, okay? Did he touch you?” His voice held firm when he spoke, but I watched how his shoulders rounded and I felt those words in the pit of my stomach.
Her chin trembled and she looked down into her lap as she slowly nodded, the flood of tears growing.
“Go to Rose and stay with her.”
Alexa stood up immediately and raced to me. I held my arms open for her and hugged her fiercely. She was trembling and crying, and I wanted to say something to calm her and make her feel better, but couldn’t find a single word that might pass for soothing.
“What di
d you do?” Jamie said, taking a step closer to Trent.
“She’s lying!” Trent yelled. “She’s a lying whore. I didn’t do anything to her.”
I squeezed Alexa tighter as Jamie moved so fast he was a blur and tackled Trent to the ground. Nolan and Leon helped get Trent under control, dragging him back up and slamming him against the wall as Jamie paced back and forth, his breaths coming sharp and shallow.
“Don’t you speak about my daughter that way!” He hit Trent in the face, his hard fist coming into contact with Trent’s nose and sending a gush of blood down the lower part of his face.
Trent cried out and tried to get out from Nolan and Leon’s grip. When he realized it was futile, he stopped and started pleading with Jamie.
“No, no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I was just worried you wouldn’t believe me. Why does no one ever believe me?” Trent cried, his voice rising so high it was practically a squeak.
I stared on in horror as Trent’s gaze drifted back over to where I was hugging Alexa to me, his nostrils flaring fractionally as he looked her up and down, his sordid gaze lingering for too long on the trembling child.
“No one ever believes me when I say that it wasn’t me. That it was them.” He gritted his teeth and looked to the floor.
“What did you do?” Jamie roared.
Trent fought Nolan and Leon’s grip, but neither man relented.
“I didn’t do anything. It’s them. The way they look at me. Acting all innocent like they don’t want it. Fucking cock-teasers, that’s what they are!” Trent started out sad, his voice sounding miserable, but he ended angry, his words full of bitter hate.
I felt sick to my stomach, the nausea making me feel dizzy. But mostly I felt angry—so angry I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. I shook my head, trying to stem the rising tide of hate and fury building in me as my arms held on tight to Alexa.
Nolan caught my eye. His hard gaze connecting with mine and calming me fractionally. “Get her out of here, Rose.”
I knew, in those six words, everything he meant. Everything he was telling me and giving me. He was giving me vengeance and his word that Trent would pay. Not just for Alexa, but for anyone else he’d ever harmed. Because it was clear that he had harmed others. Very much so, from the way he was talking.
Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 3 Page 5
