The man cried out as the lead diseased bit into his face. As if the cage had been electrified, he shook and yelled as it chowed down. Seconds later, the other six crashed into him. Shortly after, his screams fell silent.
A cable that hung down from the helicopter snapped taut and the cage door slammed shut. It trapped the diseased inside the cage with the man—not that they noticed; they shared a single-minded purpose as they all chomped onto a part of the now flaccid corpse.
By the time they’d finished with him, the helicopter had lifted the cage several metres from the ground. The man had been reduced to a torn up piece of meat. The position of his shackles seemed to be the only thing that retained his human form. Covered in blood to the point where Rhys couldn’t see any of his skin, the man looked like he belonged in a butcher’s freezer.
Then he twitched and Rhys jumped. His sore throat turned arid. What the fuck?
Another twitch and the man lifted his bloody face to stare at the other monsters in the cage. Where he’d been the focus of their interest only moments before, none of them even looked his way now.
Only when the man opened his mouth did Rhys see the orientation of his face. Skinned to the flesh beneath, his head didn’t even resemble a skull. It looked more like an overripe piece of fruit, juicy and fleshy beyond any kind of definition. Suddenly he vomited what looked like about a pint of blood.
When he’d finished, he opened one of his eyes. The other seemed to have been gouged out or battered shut. As the cage moved farther away, it became harder for Rhys to see the finer details. Thank god.
Another sharp jolt ran through the man and he released a wet roar. The dampness that gargled from his throat sounded like a man drowning.
His slow moment of awakening sped up as the jilted fury of the disease took over. He snapped his jaws and thrashed his head from side to side. Now too far away for Rhys to see anything other than his form, the man shook as if he thought he could break free of his bonds.
The helicopter continued to rise and took the man and his new friends with it. Rhys squinted against the downward wind as he watched on.
Once the helicopter had cleared the top of the buildings, it tilted in the sky and pulled away from the square.
A few seconds later, the thing had disappeared from view.
Rhys glanced at his watch. Only two and a half hours left. Whatever the people in the chopper were doing didn’t matter; Rhys had to keep on. At least the helicopter had drawn the diseased in the square out of hiding; hopefully it would be clear for him now.
The Alpha Tower stood shutterless and as indomitable as ever. He focused on his breath, but it did little to combat the tension that twisted his intestines, and his lungs continued to ache from the smoke that came from Dave’s tower. He checked around one last time. It looked clear. A nod to himself as he focused on the tower and Rhys ran out into the square.
Chapter 17
Rhys slipped several times as he sprinted across the open square. Blood covered every inch of the ground, although, from what he could tell, all of the diseased had gone from the area around The Alpha Tower. Not that he could be sure of much in the fucked-up city.
The low sun forced Rhys to squint as he ran.
When he reached the other side of the square, The Alpha Tower blocked the sun’s glare and he saw Oscar for the first time. He’d obviously been there all the while and had watched Rhys run toward him. The large man leaned against the wall by the entrance and had propped his bike up next to him. He seemed almost relaxed, like someone waiting for a bus or something equally as trivial.
He’d only get a blank stare from Oscar until they were close enough to speak, so Rhys focused on the tower instead. He’d gotten so close that on a normal day, security would have shooed him away by now.
The Alpha Tower stood as the only skyscraper in the city that hadn’t been surrounded by steel shutters. Its white walls and blacked-out windows seemed even more imposing surrounded by the huge grey pods that had once been government administration offices, and were now prisons.
Rhys looked for signs of smoke and saw none. Good fucking job. It would take a lot to persuade him to enter a building on fire. Grief twisted in his chest. He had to hurry for Dave’s sake.
When Rhys caught up to Oscar, both his low level of fitness and smoke-impaired lungs prevented him from speaking to the man. His throat stuck when he swallowed, and he continued to gasp for air. He pointed back across the square and finally managed, “Did you just see that?”
Oscar stared at him.
“The helicopter, Oscar; the huge fucking helicopter with the trap beneath it.”
A glint sparkled in Oscar’s eyes. “Yeah, fucked up, wasn’t it?”
Words abandoned Rhys as he stared at the man. He looked like he knew something Rhys didn’t, almost like he got some kind of twisted pleasure from what he’d just witnessed. “What were they doing?”
A sharp shrug and Oscar said, “How the fuck would I know?” He looked around. “I’ve been standing here like a lemon waiting for you to turn up. I feel like zombie bait. So if you don’t mind, how about you open this fucking door and we get into the tower? Or do you want to see how much longer we can tempt fate before our luck runs out?”
The man’s directness ran unease straight to Rhys’ core. Sure, he’d be desperate to get into the tower too if he’d stood there waiting for that time, but yet again, Oscar’s behaviour seemed like a cover for something else. Despite all that Oscar had done for him, something sinister lurked beneath the surface of the man. He didn’t trust the fucker one little bit.
Still, Rhys needed Oscar. The Alpha Tower would no doubt be overflowing with diseased. If Rhys could choose anyone to have his back in a tight spot against them, Oscar came a close second only to Vicky. The guy knew how to fight them without a gun—leg injury or not—and right now, Rhys needed that from a companion more than anything else.
“Are you going to carry on staring at me,” Oscar said, “or are you going to open this fucking building? You can take a fucking picture of me for later if it’ll make you hurry up.”
Flynn’s Superman watch showed less than two and a half hours left. He looked at The Alpha Tower again and then back at Oscar.
Oscar shrugged. “Well?”
Oscar had helped Rhys every time he’d needed it. He had no reason to suspect him of anything untoward.
When Rhys pulled the map Vicky had drawn for him from his top pocket, he turned it around and showed it to Oscar. As he held it open, his hands shook.
“Vicky drew that for you, did she? She’s proven to be quite handy in all of this, wouldn’t you say?”
And then he goes and says something like that. Without the ability to rewind time, Rhys couldn’t know if he’d told Oscar Vicky’s name or not. It still jarred him to hear Oscar say it though. Not that it mattered what Oscar knew; the second the shutters came up, these two were done.
Rhys straightened the crinkles from the map as best as he could. The paper rustled in the near silence of the square. “We need to head straight for the elevator; that’ll take us to the top floor.” Although the map showed just a crude rendering of what they would no doubt find up there, it showed enough. “It looks like we have to head to the very end of the corridor we come out on. There are two rooms at the end.” A warble ran through Rhys’ voice and it threatened to expose his lie. “The room on the right has the computer to override the shutters.”
“And the one of the left?” Oscar said.
The rendered boxes represented the rooms at the end of the corridor and nothing more. Rhys focused on them as heat flushed his cheeks. “I dunno; let’s just worry about getting to that back room. I’m guessing it’s not important, otherwise Vicky would have said.”
Oscar pointed at the room on the right. “Don’t we need another clearance card to get into it?”
“Yes. Hopefully there’ll be some scientists up there that we can take one from.”
“Hopefully?”
“I’m not fucking psychic, Oscar. I’d say there’s a good chance, but if I’m being honest, I don’t have a fucking clue what we’re going to find in this building. We have nothing but a baseball bat and an axe on us. Your leg’s fucked and I’ve inhaled lungfuls of smoke. We could be walking straight into hell.”
The glint returned to Oscar’s eyes, almost as if the prospect of chaos excited him.
“All I know,” Rhys said, “is that I have loved ones who need rescuing.” Another check of his watch. “We don’t have long before this place goes up like a lit match to petrol. So are you ready, or do you want to spend what little time we have left complaining?”
Oscar locked a penetrative stare on Rhys. The heat returned to Rhys’ cheeks. He’d seen Rhys’ lie about the rooms at the end. He must have worked it out.
“Right,” Rhys said and clapped his hands together. “Let’s fucking do this.”
The building may have looked different from all of the others in Summit City but the card reader on the outside looked exactly the same. When Rhys swallowed, it hurt, and the taste of molten plastic still sat in his throat. He couldn’t smell a thing since he’d left Dave’s tower other than smoke. He removed Vicky’s card and his hand shook worse than before. He took another deep breath and swiped it through the reader.
The second the red light turned green, Oscar shoved him aside and barged through.
Hopefully he’d believed Rhys. Hopefully he’d go for the room on the right.
Chapter 18
The second Rhys stepped into The Alpha Tower, he drew an involuntary breath. Tall and wide, the foyer took up what could have been the first five floors had they chosen to utilise the space. The Alpha Tower seemed to be the only place in the city where efficiency bowed down to beauty.
The floor, as large as a football field, looked like it had been made from one piece of marble. The walls had been made from the same material, and like the floor, Rhys couldn’t see the joins. Several grand black leather sofas had been placed on the floor. Everything that could have a trim, had been outlined in gold.
“Talk about luxury,” Rhys said. “This place looks more like a swanky hotel than an office building.”
Rhys had to squint to see to the other end of the vast room. Two gold doors lay flush with the far wall. They stood side by side, separated by a strip of green marble about a metre wide. Each door had a small round call button next to it and nothing else. Two letters had been inlaid into the marble halfway up the wall. Gold, like every other trim in the foyer, they stood about ten metres high and five metres wide. They read ‘AT’.
Like Rhys, Oscar looked around the room. Unlike Rhys—who stood limp jawed with his arms flopped by his side—he had his axe raised, ready for use.
Rhys finally snapped out of it and looked for danger. Another good reason to have Oscar around; the man remained permanently vigilant when Rhys could only gawp like an awestruck child.
Rhys leaned close to Oscar and said, “See anything?”
“No, it looks—”
The roar of the diseased echoed through the cavernous reception area. The shrill call bounced off the hard walls, which made it difficult to pinpoint its origin. Rhys spun on the spot and his heart pounded in his neck. Although he swallowed, his throat remained dry. “Where the fuck did that noise come from?”
The darkness shifted to the left, and six diseased burst from the shadows. The group consisted of four women and two men.
They sprinted on the edge of their balance as if they’d fall face first on their next step. Their arms slashed the air in front of them and they snapped their teeth. The top halves of their bodies leaned forward, but instead of watching the floor, they lifted their faces and glared at the pair through bloody eyes.
Rhys unsheathed his bat from where he’d slid it between his rucksack and his back. He gripped the handle and wound back, ready to swing. In his peripheral vision, he saw Oscar drop into a defensive crouch, his axe still raised.
Some of the diseased ran quicker than the others. The slap of their feet beat against the hard floor as they bore down on Rhys and Oscar.
With the mob closer, Rhys re-counted. Eight! Four each. They could cope with that. Just.
The three fastest opened up a clear lead and left the pack behind.
Rhys clenched his jaw, turned his shoulder to face their attackers, and swung at the lead diseased’s nose. Its momentum carried it forward, but Rhys’ blow threw its top half back. The monster’s legs kicked up as its torso hurtled toward the floor, back first. It seemed like it shook the ground from where it hit it so hard.
“Fuck off, cunt,” Rhys yelled as he swung for the downed creature. The thing’s skull damn near popped from the blow, and a puff of rot and vinegar rushed up and smothered Rhys.
Rhys heaved, drew several heavy breaths, and looked up at Oscar.
Two quick strikes let Oscar drop both of his diseased in quick succession. Both had died before they’d hit the ground. As they lay there, limp and lifeless, their wounds leaked across the marble.
Before he had time to dwell on it, the other five descended on them.
Rhys took three this time. He swung for them one after the other. All three of them fell to the ground. As he rushed over to them, he heard Oscar behind him. The big man’s deep grunts followed by a wet squelch for each diseased, and then silence. His mechanical efficiency unsettled Rhys. What would he be like without an injury?
Rhys gripped the handle of his bat with both hands and let the thick end hang down as he stood over the first diseased. He drove a sharp jab straight into the centre of its face. When he moved onto the next one, he screamed and forced the end of the aluminium bat down again.
The last kill—a blonde woman no older than about twenty-five—stared up at him through blood-red eyes. Her mouth worked slowly; the blow had only stunned her. Rhys clenched his jaw and drove the bat straight into her dainty nose.
Out of breath, Rhys stared at Oscar. For the first time since he’d met him, he saw the large man had broken a sweat and breathed heavily too. “You ready to go?” Rhys said.
Oscar nodded.
The pair of them ran across the foyer toward the lift at the far side. Their footsteps echoed as wet slaps through the large open space.
With the power still on in The Alpha Tower, Rhys saw the pools of blood as he ran through them.
“I know it’s forcing us to look at this mess,” Rhys said as they both ran through a particularly large pool, “but at least the power’s still working in here.”
Oscar nodded. “I’m guessing it runs from its own backup.”
“Good job, really.” Rhys pointed at the gold elevator doors. “We need one of these lifts powered so it can get us to the top floor.”
Chapter 19
Once inside the lift, Rhys pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.
Nothing.
He pressed it again, harder and repeatedly.
He pressed it to the point where it stung his finger, but still nothing happened. He stared out through the open doors into the foyer; if a group ran at them now and pinned them in the elevator…
The buttons for floors twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen all looked the same. Embedded in the large gold plate like all of the elevator’s controls, the top four glowed red instead of green.
When Rhys reached up to press the button again, Oscar grabbed his wrist and squeezed hard.
“Ow,” Rhys said.
Sweat beaded Oscar’s brow and he looked pale when he pointed at the card reader below the buttons. He struggled to get his words out. “I’m guessing they’re red for a reason. Maybe you should use your security card and see if that helps.”
A glance out into the foyer and Rhys fumbled for his security card. A need to hurry made his hands shake. His cheeks flushed as he felt Oscar’s cold glare on him. Of course, the card reader would give them access to some of the other floors. It made perfect sense. It wouldn’t be there otherwise. He’d looked like a
complete idiot for the entire time he’d been around Oscar. No wonder the big man treated him with such contempt—that and the fact that Oscar was clearly a dick.
As happened with every card reader he’d come across, Rhys swiped Vicky’s card through it and the small red light turned green. Not only did the light on the reader turn green, but the buttons for the higher floors changed to the same colour.
Oscar pressed the button to the fifteenth floor and the lift doors closed.
Just before the doors had shut out Rhys’ view of the foyer, another diseased scream tore through the open space.
The hairs lifted on the back of Rhys’ neck when he saw a solitary diseased appear. Its jaw hung so loose it swung as the creature jerked its head around. Blood streaked its pale cheeks and it had a deep gouge that ran down the side of its face. When it turned to the lift, its mouth stretched wide and it screamed again.
The thud when it collided with the other side of the closed doors made both Rhys and Oscar jump back. Seconds later, the lift rose. Rhys shook his head. “Great, we’ve got to come back down to that.”
Oscar cleared his throat, but didn’t reply. The act of riding in a lift together seemed to quash any idea of conversation. Rhys nearly conformed to that social convention until he looked down at Oscar’s thigh. “What the fuck?”
The patch of blood had been large before, but now the entire top half of his trousers had turned red.
After he’d looked down at his leg, Oscar lifted his head again. Sunken eyes stared back at Rhys and he shrugged. “The fight in the foyer must have torn it open farther.”
“Take your trousers off,” Rhys said.
“Huh?” Oscar skin turned paler with every second that passed.
“Take your trousers off now.”
Although Oscar looked like he wanted to argue, he undid his belt buckle and dropped his trousers.
Rhys balked and turned away from the fleshy, deep red sight. “Fucking hell, mate; I’ve seen some bad wounds today, but… Fuck.”
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