Once the message had sent, she carefully placed the file back in the drawer and walked over to the door.
After she’d drawn a deep breath, she opened it and strode back into the hallway as if she had nothing to hide.
Between the hours of twelve and two, you couldn’t move for people in the canteen. It presented the perfect opportunity.
Nausea turned knots in Vicky’s stomach as she queued with a plate of food. The greasy smell of her sausages and chips overwhelmed her and forced her tongue against the roof of her mouth. The collective chat from the diners turned into white noise in the high-ceilinged room. The heat in the canteen didn’t help either. The middle of summer, but with heavy rainfall, they’d kept the windows closed. Humidity seemed to coat everything and made it impossible to see outside. The air had thickened to the point where it became hard to breathe and the place felt like a damn rainforest.
Vicky had seen the woman next to her around, but she didn’t know her well. Good job really, considering what she had planned for her.
As they slid their trays toward the tills at the end of the line, Vicky looked down at the woman’s white security card. Low level, but enough for what she needed. Also, it meant the owner would be much less likely to guard it. And who cared if a basic card went missing? It happened all the time. Security could issue her a new one after the obligatory bollocking. One of the main failings with the Alpha Tower’s security was that it took a week to cancel a missing card. A glitch in the system that no one had thought to fix and not many people knew about. Artem did, which in turn meant Vicky did. The week’s grace they’d have on the card gave them plenty of time.
With the woman engaged in a conversation with her friend, Vicky waited until they seemed particularly engrossed in their gossip before she pretended to straighten her own tray. As she reached across, she stole the security card.
After a couple more seconds she tutted aloud to herself, shook her head, and said, “Damn it. I need to get a drink.”
She rolled her eyes at the man behind her and said, “You go in front of me; I need to pick up a few more bits.”
Without a word, the man moved past her and Vicky walked back to the self-serving section of the canteen.
With everyone more involved in their food than their surroundings, Vicky managed to put her tray down unnoticed and leave it as she walked out of the sweaty building.
The second Vicky stepped out of the canteen, she saw Artem. She couldn’t pass up the opportunity so she raised her hand in the air and called out, “Artem.” She then ran to catch up with him and fell into stride beside him.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the security room,” Artem said. His green eyes looked from side to side. “Why?”
“Oh, no reason.”
“You just like walking along the corridors next to people, huh?”
Vicky laughed with a little too much enthusiasm and Artem looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Sorry,” she said as she pulled her hair away from her face. “I suppose I just wanted to see how you are.”
“I’m fine.”
“And work?”
“That’s fine.”
“You must get bored down in the security room on your own.”
“There’s two of us down there.”
“Always two?”
“Yes. What’s with all the questions, Vicky?”
Vicky pretended to blush. “Sorry, Artem, I just feel a bit awkward around you sometimes is all. I feel like we should talk because I don’t want it to be weird … but you’ve seen me naked so I suppose it is kind of weird.”
Artem’s jaw fell limp and he didn’t respond. Vicky patted him on the shoulder, turned around, and walked away. If in doubt, mention sex. She smirked to herself as she left him behind.
As Vicky walked back to her office, the stolen security card in her top pocket seemed to treble in weight. With one of the cleaner’s cupboards up on her right, she nipped into it and closed the door. This was another room she could justify being in. After all, the cleaners needed to have enough supplies.
The closet was so dark she couldn’t see an inch in front of her face and the stench of bleach seemed to weave into the fabric of her being. The reek of it would be stuck to her for days. Vicky removed the card from her pocket and slipped it into her knickers. Surely, they wouldn’t even search anyone for such a low-level card, but if they did …
Just before Vicky left the cupboard, she heard the voices of two men. No more than the size of a toilet cubicle, the small space had paper-thin walls. Vicky tried to think where she was in relation to the rest of the building. When it hit her, she gasped. The men she could hear were in the high-security conference room on that floor. Did the building’s architects realise they’d designed the perfect listening post?
Vicky reached out in the dark for the back of the cupboard. When she caught a broom handle, she moved it aside and stepped forward. Each blind step made her stomach lurch. At some point, she’d stand on something and give the game away. However, when she reached out again her fingertips caught the back of the cupboard. Vicky moved closer, pressed her face against the cool wall, and listened.
“So we think if we infect a person it would make them highly dangerous. Just one would be enough to bring down an entire country. The perfect weapon! And here’s the good part, the virus will stop them swimming or climbing. They’ll lose enough coordination to prevent that. Sure, they’ll be super fast, but—”
“They won’t be able get back to The West.”
“Exactly.”
“Excellent. And when do you think it will be ready?”
“Well, there’s one thing we need to do.”
“Oh?”
“We need to test it. We need to infect someone. I was thinking of doing it next Monday. The good thing about that is it will allow me to test the vaccine too. I’m hoping to turn her, assess her, and then turn her back.”
“Her?”
“Alice.”
“Your wife?”
Vicky could almost hear the man grin when he said, “That’s how confident I am I can make this work.”
Silence hung between the two men, and Vicky’s pulse throbbed so hard that her face swelled with it.
Finally, the man who clearly made the decisions sighed and said, “Okay. I’m going to put faith in you on this one, John. Don’t let me down.”
“Don’t worry,” John said, “I won’t.”
Any doubt Vicky had about their plans vanished in that moment. This had to end. Now.
Chapter 13
Rhys watched the diseased girl pull the final rabbit from the hutch and revulsion writhed through him. A slow shiver ran the length of his body as he watched the white furry creature kick and twist more than any of the others had before it. “It obviously knows what’s going to happen to it,” Rhys said.
The diseased girl didn’t pass this one back. Instead, she bit into the thing’s neck herself. Because the door to the back garden stood slightly ajar, it made the crunch of the rabbit’s windpipe crystal clear. The smell of the diseased outside had found its way in too; or maybe Rhys had become more aware of the reek that already existed in the house.
Each diseased had its own unique wound, and even in the darkness of night the little light cast from the moon glistened off the septic gashes and cuts. Rhys screwed his face up at the sight of them.
“But why are they killing the rabbits and not eating them?” Larissa asked.
Rhys watched the diseased girl drop her recently killed rabbit to the ground onto the pile of others already there. The first one had been passed around, and they’d all taken a bite, but every other one had been executed and discarded.
Before Rhys could respond, the diseased each picked up a rabbit or two from the pile. Rhys’ breath caught in his throat and he spoke in no more than a whisper. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“They’re saving food for later. It’s so strange to see them like th
is. If they know a human’s nearby, they lose their shit and can’t focus on anything but attacking them. But when they’re not they find sustenance and work together as a team. The police officer back out on the road was the first person I’d seen actually eaten by the diseased. Before then they seemed to bite people, infect them, and then leave them to change.”
Rhys’ skin crawled as he watched the diseased leave the garden. Some of them took one rabbit, some of them two. The final one, the girl who’d taken them from their hutch in the first place, took the last two and followed the rest of the diseased back out of the gate.
After they’d left, Rhys turned to Larissa. “The virus has the most perfect survival instincts. It only switches on when there are people to—”
“Kill?” Larissa asked.
“Infect. Then as soon as the people have turned, the desire to attack them vanishes. They ate the police because the officers were already dead when they found them. They were a free meal.”
A look of horror had drawn Larissa’s features long.
“So that means …”
Just the thought of saying it tightened Rhys’ stomach. “The disease isn’t burning itself out. The virus is built to survive.”
The pair stood in the dark of the house’s kitchen and listened to the mob walk away. Fortunately, they went back the way they came in. Fuck knows what Rhys and Larissa would have done had they decided to enter the house.
After a few minutes, Rhys pulled the phone from his pocket and unlocked it with the dead woman’s fingerprint. He tried Vicky again.
The same warm pulse told him the call couldn’t be connected. “Fuck it.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the bright screen like he’d done the first time around. The thing still had full service.
“You can’t get through?” Larissa asked.
After a deep sigh, Rhys shook his head. “No. But we can’t hang around here and wait for Vicky to be in an area where she has service. If the diseased are being drawn to Summit City, we need to keep moving. I don’t think London’s fallen yet, and I certainly don’t want to be there when it does.”
At that moment, Rhys saw the key rack that had been screwed into the kitchen wall. Shaped like a massive brass key itself, several sets dangled down from the small hooks. He walked over and took the only car key there. Fuck knows what all the others did.
When he turned back to Larissa, he saw her staring at the dead woman on the floor. When she looked up, confusion skewed her features. She pointed down at the woman, “But what about …?”
A wooden knife block sat on the kitchen worktop and Rhys slid the biggest knife he could from it. A heavy chopping knife, he felt the weight of it sit in his hand like an extension of his arm. The high-quality blade probably cost a small fortune.
“What are you …?”
But before Larissa could finish her sentence, Rhys had dropped down into a hunch. If he didn’t do it now, he’d never do it. One wide swing of the knife and he chopped off the four fingers on the woman’s right hand with a shunk. He left her with four bloody stumps and a thumb.
From the way Larissa jumped and clapped her hand over her mouth, Rhys had expected her to scream, but she didn’t. With the bottom half of her face covered, her wide green eyes stood out in the dark as she stared down.
Cold and soft, Rhys lifted the woman’s index finger and tested it against the phone. It unlocked it still. He then slipped the digit into his top pocket. Nausea ran through him and he wore a layer of sweat like a second skin, but he couldn’t see any other way to make the phone work and they didn’t have time to fuck about.
After he’d stood up, Rhys felt the weight of the knife in his hand again. Tempting, but … he put it down on the kitchen table. He’d have to get too close to the fuckers for it to be of any use. The stool legs would have to do for the time being.
“Come on then,” he said as he passed the car keys to Larissa.
“You want me to drive?”
“I need to call Vicky.”
For a second Larissa looked as if she wanted to argue with him. She then dipped a tight nod. “Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here. Let’s get to London before the diseased do.”
The garage door creaked and groaned when Rhys opened it to reveal the car inside. Once he had it fully lifted, he paused and listened for a moment. He couldn’t hear the footfalls of the diseased and nothing moved in the deep shadows. The ones with the rabbits must have moved on already and the rest of the residents had to be on their way to Summit City. A glance in the direction of the burning towers and he watched the orange glow for a second. The hypnotic effect that flames had over humans clearly hadn’t been lost when the virus infected a person. Although what they hoped to find when they got there …
Larissa pulled the car out onto the driveway and Rhys jumped in. Once in the passenger seat, he used the woman’s finger to unlock the phone again. He then tried Vicky.
Nothing.
The two beams from the car’s headlights lit up the street. “It seems quiet,” Larissa said as she scanned the road in front of her. “I don’t like it.”
“Don’t worry, everything will be fine. It’s quiet because the diseased have all headed the other way.”
After Larissa had thrown a dark stare at Rhys, she looked ahead again. “So what you’re saying is we can be guided by your intuition and faith, but when I have a gut feeling we need to ignore it? All that matters is you feel good about something, yeah? Just so I can get it straight.”
Rhys ignored her facetious questions. Truth be told, he felt far from good about driving into London, but they had to remain positive and they had no other options.
Larissa spoke through clenched teeth and her frown deepened. “I hate that our boy’s with a woman I don’t know or trust.”
What felt like a natural reaction to defend Vicky rose up in Rhys, but he swallowed it down. “Me too. I hate it too.”
Rhys saw Larissa in his peripheral vision. She looked at him, back to the road, at him again, and back to the road again.
He knew her well enough to hear the question before she’d asked it. ‘Why the fuck did you leave him with her then?’ But she kept it to herself. The arguments got them nowhere so Rhys kept his mouth shut too and simply watched the road ahead.
They started up a long, straight hill when he finally spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I fucked up. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Before Larissa could respond, a silhouette appeared at the top of the hill. Clumsy and with its arms flailing it ran straight for the car.
To have the thing bare down on them with such malicious intent took Rhys’ breath for a second. Even though he’d seen it countless times already, he certainly hadn’t desensitised to the horror that bore down on them. “It’s fine,” he said as he watched the monster, a warble in his voice. “One of them is no match for a car.”
“What about two?” Larissa said. She’d already eased off the gas as another silhouette appeared.
Before Rhys could reply, another one appeared.
And then another.
Larissa stopped the car.
Suddenly a crowd as wide as the road raced over the brow of the hill. The chaotic collection of rage had just one focus, the bright headlights that lit up the street. Rhys’ heart beat in his neck as he watched the furious mob. His mouth dried and his breaths grew shallow. “Fuck!”
Chapter 14
About twelve hours ago
A clipboard and a checklist always made someone look busy and like they belonged. Most buildings used tablets, but not the Alpha Tower; you couldn’t hack a paper checklist. They’d checked all the fixtures and fittings a couple of days ago and another check didn’t need to be done for a week or so. But most people would have no idea, which gave Vicky the chance to move around the Alpha Tower’s foyer without raising suspicion.
As she pretended to check every light bulb in the place, she kept her attention on the front doors. The huge clock on t
he wall read eleven fifty-eight. At twelve o’clock, the shifts switched around. The low-level buzz of anxiety that had resided inside of her for several days rose up a notch, and no matter how many times she swallowed, her nausea would not be abated.
When the toilet doors opened, Vicky’s pulse spiked. Two men emerged in the uniforms she’d stolen. They strode toward the front door and looked like any two security guards about to change shift would.
Vicky didn’t recognise the two tall men and they wouldn’t know her either. Thank God, Brendan hadn’t chosen to be one of them. One had pulled out at the last minute and it looked like he may have to step in, but they fortunately found a replacement. Already wound up so tight she could snap, she didn’t need to see Brendan putting his life in danger as well.
When one of the men opened the door to let the other one out, Vicky caught sight of the security guards outside. Both of them turned to look at the men.
The fake security guards stepped outside and Vicky watched them talk to one another for a second before the front door shut on them. Despite the porthole window in the door, she couldn’t see through it to the men on the other side.
The doors then opened again and the two security guards who had been on shift entered the foyer. They must have fallen for it. They obviously didn’t see their replacements using a stolen security card.
Vicky glanced at the clock again. Too soon and the current guards would have been suspicious. Too late and the real guards for the next shift would have appeared. They had about a minute to make this work.
At that moment, Brendan walked into the foyer and Vicky lost her breath.
With his shoulders back and his chin raised, he walked with his usual confidence. He looked like he belonged and paid Vicky no attention.
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