The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller

by Michael Robertson

  To look down at Moira’s community—a chicken coop for people—lifted nausea up through Vicky’s stomach and dragged a bitter taste into her mouth. “How can someone be as cruel as her? What the fuck do they achieve? Just to think of the prisoners she keeps down there … I hope Aaron’s okay.”

  It took for Vicky to look at Serj again before he replied. A shake of his head and he said, “It’s fucking tragic. When you take away the rules, some people feel the need to let out their darker side. I wonder what happened to her before this and why she feels the need to be such a cunt to everyone?”

  Before Vicky could reply, he added, “I don’t know if we’ll have the light for this tonight, Vick. Especially if we need to get the hammers to the prisoners before we set the diseased free.”

  Vicky opened her mouth to respond, but the words caught in her throat when she heard the sound of voices nearby.

  Serj tugged on Vicky’s arm and dragged her behind a large bush close to them.

  Vicky peered through the gaps to see the silhouettes of people appear. The gang numbered eight in total. They had to be Moira’s people.

  Careful to avoid them, both Vicky and Serj moved around the outside of the bush to remain out of the gang’s way as they walked past it. Although she didn’t want to use it, Vicky kept her sweating palm wrapped around the handle of the knife in the back of her belt just in case. She held her breath as she watched them.

  One of the men said, “So if we go over there tomorrow and kick the front door in, we should be able to take the place over no problem. They ain’t expecting an attack from us, and none of those useless fucks in Home can fight. We’ll take them down quickly and the place will be ours.”

  The others laughed, but none of them spoke. They seemed to all agree on the plan. Nothing left to discuss.

  As they walked off, blending into the night when they got far enough away, Vicky looked at Serj. “We need to tell the others,” she said. “They need to know what’s coming for them before we set the diseased loose. If anything goes wrong, they need to be ready. Besides, I hate to admit it, but you’re right about the light. It would be suicide to let the diseased out now.”

  “But if we tell the others, they’ll want to come with us in the morning. What about Scoop and Meisha?”

  Vicky chewed the inside of her mouth for a second before she said, “I have a plan.”

  Chapter 36

  The light in Home’s foyer had shown Scoop asleep against the window where she waited for her daughter’s return. Vicky hadn’t seen peace on the woman’s face for a long time, and maybe they should have let her rest, but they needed all the guards behind this.

  At a guess, Vicky assumed it to be past ten in the evening, and although it had been warm earlier, the breeze now chewed on the parts of her body not covered with clothes.

  Vicky slipped the key into Home’s front door and freed it with a click. A look at the window and she saw Scoop’s eyes flash open.

  When she slipped into the bleach-scented foyer with Serj behind her, Vicky closed the door and looked at her friend.

  A screwed-up face and confused frown and Scoop said, “I thought you were Meisha.”

  The words stabbed into Vicky’s chest and she said, “Sorry.”

  Scoop didn’t reply.

  “We went out to check on everything and got more than we bargained for.”

  Still groggy from sleep, her voice croaking as she spoke, Scoop said, “What do you mean?”

  “We need to get the guards together in the monitor room to discuss it.”

  “I ain’t going anywhere.”

  “You can look at the monitors for Meisha.”

  “The monitors are dark.”

  Vicky made a point to look out of the large window in front of her and then back at Scoop. “Your view will be as good there as it is here. If you see anything, you can leave straight away.”

  Not that Scoop looked pleased with the plan, but she accepted it with a nod.

  Chapter 37

  The same size as all of the rooms in Home. The same white walls, the same blue linoleum flooring, the same plain ceiling. Be it a bedroom, a gym, a prison cell, or a surveillance room, each one had to fit into the same cramped space of every room in Home. Other than the communal areas, the rooms were all an identical size. A single bedroom at best, a double at an absolute squeeze.

  A wall of monitors, a seat in front of them, and all five of Home’s guards meant every time Vicky moved, she bumped into something or someone. Serj, Flynn, and Piotr watched Vicky, waiting for her to speak. Scoop watched the monitors. Although what she could see in the dark …

  With her back to the monitors, Vicky faced the others, the screen glow lighting up their features and casting strong shadows in the poorly lit room.

  “Serj and I went out about half an hour ago and we saw some people from Moira’s community.”

  “You went out without us again?” Flynn said. “Why do you keep on doing that?”

  “We wanted to check on everything outside and to walk the route we’ll lead the diseased on when we set them loose.”

  “In the dark?”

  “It wasn’t dark when we went out,” Vicky said. “Besides, we don’t have much time left before they attack us.”

  Although Flynn drew a breath to reply, and the tension in the room wound tighter from the silent anticipation of it, he kept it to himself.

  Serj spoke next, reciting the lie he and Vicky had agreed upon. “They said they’re planning to attack us in two days’ time.” If they told the group they had two days, it would get them ready for an attack should they need to be, but allow Vicky and Serj to take care of things in their own way, without Scoop finding Meisha. If they thought they’d get attacked tomorrow, the guards would be up at the crack of dawn with them.

  “They want Home for their own,” Serj continued. “I’m guessing that’s the only reason the solar panels and our water filtration system have remained intact. Why would they destroy something they plan on using themselves?”

  “We need to release the diseased on them before they can do that,” Vicky said. The other guards nodded.

  Scoop had watched the monitors for the entire time, so when she spoke, Vicky jumped. “When shall we attack them?”

  Heat spread through Vicky’s cheeks as she lied to them. “Tomorrow. At nine in the morning.” If they thought they had a whole day to attack Moira’s community, the guards would accept a nine a.m. start.

  “How will we all get up at nine?” Flynn asked.

  “I’ve slept all day, so I’ll be awake,” Vicky said. “I’ll get Serj at four for his shift in here, Scoop is taking over from him at six, and Piotr after her at eight. If we need to wake people up, then we can, but we’ll be awake in time.” Before anyone could speak, Vicky added, “I don’t think we should tell the community about it yet. If we can take down Moira and her lot with the penned-in diseased, then we won’t need to involve them. Besides, I don’t want to tell them about the pen.”

  Silence met Vicky’s comment.

  Scoop finally said, “But what if we can’t?”

  “They’ll be ready,” Serj said. “Most of the people in Home are preparing for what’s coming, so I have no doubt they’ll mobilise should they need to. What’s important is that we make sure we’re ready to mobilise them. We’re keeping it between the guards for now to save an early panic.”

  “And will you actually let me do something tomorrow, Vicky?” Flynn said, his shoulders pulled back, his stare fixed on her.

  Vicky ignored the comment.

  “I hope you’re right about this,” Scoop then said, her eyes deep and dark pits in her tired face. The thick white bands of her eyeballs stood out beneath her mahogany irises. “Whatever happens, I won’t let that community take anything else from me. This world has already taken enough.”

  Silence followed her comment until she spoke again. “We lost Meisha’s dad right at the beginning of all of this. He died so we could surviv
e. He faced the diseased to give us a chance to get away. Now Meisha’s gone.”

  Although Vicky could feel Serj next to her, she didn’t look at him. Instead, she looked at the floor. If Scoop stared into her eyes, she’d surely see deceit.

  At the sound of Scoop’s sobs, Vicky looked up again.

  Scoop’s shoulders bobbed with her crying and she shook her head. “I pray she’s okay. Every waking moment I pray for Meisha.”

  No one else moved, so Vicky stepped forward and hugged her friend. If it didn’t jeopardise everything, she would have told her about her daughter, but they needed to make the decision for the greater good.

  While Vicky held Scoop, she looked up at Serj, and Serj stared straight back at her. They didn’t communicate with one another, but they didn’t need to. They’d agreed they couldn’t tell her; they didn’t need to discuss it beyond that.

  Piotr’s thick Russian accent cut through the room, taking some of the focus away from Scoop’s distress.

  “I had a wife and child too. We hid out in a school for the longest time and we thought we were safe. But one of the community got chased and he broke our number one rule: don’t bring any diseased to our door. He broke it and then some. We managed to get him in, but we couldn’t keep out the horde he brought with him. There must have been a hundred of them at least. I’d been put on guard duty that night. I was at the opposite end of the school to my wife and son. The diseased rushed in and swarmed the place. I fought.” The large man shook as he continued, “I fought long and hard, but I couldn’t do anything to overcome the monsters. There were so many of them, and they got between me and my family.”

  Tears glistened in Piotr’s eyes. “I ran around the outside of the school to get to my wife and son. I knew they would have locked themselves in our room and thought that maybe I could get in through the window. By the time I’d reached the room, I watched the diseased smash the door down and swarm the place. I saw them attack my family.” Several tears ran down Piotr’s cheeks when he looked at Flynn. “Alexander, or Sasha as we called him, would be your age now.”

  It suddenly made sense to Vicky to see this side of Piotr. His shut-off nature and coldness except for when he looked after Flynn. “You did everything you could have done,” she said.

  The large man pulled his shoulders back and lifted his wide chest with a steadying breath as he stared at the bank of monitors. “It doesn’t feel like it,” he replied.

  Silence for what felt like the longest time before Vicky said, “So, we meet in the foyer at nine tomorrow morning.” She didn’t give the others an opportunity to reply. Instead, she turned around and left the room.

  Chapter 38

  A disrupted sleeping pattern had left Vicky all over the place. Her eyes stung as if they’d been bathed in chlorine, and she fought to push her panic down every few seconds as it rose inside of her. To sit down made it worse, so she got to her feet and paced up and down in the canteen.

  Vicky currently had the space to herself, but that would soon change. Even after years of not having to get up for work, it seemed like at least at third of the community were early risers. As an insomniac, she obsessed about other people’s sleeping patterns and always saw the same faces at similar times of day.

  A look at the screens on the wall and the time read 5:45. Another five minutes would be ideal, but she couldn’t wait any longer.

  As Vicky walked down the corridor towards the monitor room, she increased her pace to try to wake herself up and spend some of her nervous energy.

  The sharp bite of bleach in the air seemed to make her eyes sting worse than before.

  When Vicky got to the monitor room, she looked up and down the corridor. It seemed clear. She knocked.

  It sounded like Serj had been sleeping from the way he said, “Uh … hello?”

  Vicky walked in to find him blinking as if trying to wake up, and she raised an eyebrow at him. He blushed but didn’t say anything.

  “It’s ten to six,” Vicky said. “I reckon we can go and wake Scoop up now and get her down here.”

  When Serj stood up, his wheeled chair scooted out away from him. He stretched up to the ceiling and groaned before he bent over and touched his toes.

  “We ain’t got time for yoga, you know?”

  “Nice,” Serj said.

  “What?”

  “I get it, because I’m Indian, I do yoga.”

  Even with the stress of what lay before them, Vicky smiled. “Do you?”

  A sharp sniff and Serj straightened his back. “That’s not the point. Don’t be so racist!”

  When Vicky said nothing in response, Serj snapped, “I’ll meet you in the canteen in five minutes. I need to piss first.”

  “Fine, I’m going to get a crossbow and some hammers for the people in Moira’s prison. I’ll hide my harness and weapons in the canteen so Scoop doesn’t see them.”

  The canteen still remained empty by the time Serj entered, and the screens now read 5:55. As the man walked toward her, Vicky pointed for him to wait in the corner with her things. It would be better if Scoop thought him to still be in the monitor room. She then walked up the short flight of stairs to Home’s foyer.

  As Vicky had expected, Scoop had fallen asleep again. She walked over to the woman and gently tugged on her shoulder.

  Scoop woke up with a deep inhale, her eyes spreading wide and fixing on Vicky. “Have you found her?”

  The tiredness returned to Scoop’s face when Vicky shook her head and she screwed up her features. “Then why the fuck are you waking me up?”

  “It’s your turn in the monitor room.”

  A scowl remained on Scoop’s face and Vicky readied herself to defend the woman’s attack. But she seemed to wake up a little and shook her head before she got unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll go to the toilet and then relieve him.”

  Vicky smiled in acknowledgement to her.

  A second after Scoop left, Serj appeared in the foyer and handed Vicky her things. She slipped her harness on and strapped her crossbow to it, held onto the three small hammers, and unlocked the front door. “I reckon we have five minutes to get out of sight,” she said. “She’s going to the toilet first, so that gives us a little bit longer to get out of the monitor’s field of vision. You ready for this?”

  Instead of nodding, Serj raised his eyebrows.

  Vicky couldn’t argue with him. How could he be ready with what they had to face? “Okay,” she said and pulled the door wide, the fresh morning air rushing into the place. “Let’s do this.”

  Chapter 39

  The early morning chill lit up Vicky’s skin with gooseflesh. Although she’d be bound to warm up soon with the pace her and Serj moved at. The dewy grass soaked her combat trousers and whipped at her thighs as she sprinted through it. Her feet coped with the uneven ground just fine, and she screwed her face up against the light pinpricks from the cold mist.

  Vicky pushed on with a new crossbow and harness strapped to her, her knife down the back of her trousers, and three small hammers in her right grip. Once they’d checked on the diseased, she’d drop the hammers with the prisoners in Moira’s community. She listened to Serj pant as he ran next to her.

  Before long the June sun would burn away the mist, but at six in the morning it would be a little while still. Vulnerable to an attack due to their lack of visibility, neither of them spoke as they looked for the diseased, their breaths turning to condensation in the sharp air.

  “Hey!” The sound cut through the still morning. A startled crow cawed as it burst to life beside Vicky.

  Vicky spun around, all three hammers raised as she faced the direction of the sound. Not that she needed to panic. Ten years of living with the same person made them easy to identify, whether they were hidden by the mist or not.

  Before he appeared, Vicky lowered her hammers.

  At first a silhouette, Flynn became more recognisable the closer he walked to them. He threw his arms in the air. “What the hell are you tw
o doing? I thought we said nine o’clock.”

  Although Serj drew a breath to speak, Vicky cut him off. “We’re checking on the diseased. We need to make sure everything’s okay before we go to Moira’s community. And we want to take these to her prisoners.” She held up the three hammers.

  “Bullshit.”

  Vicky frowned at him. “Huh?”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Watch your tongue. And why would I lie about taking the hammers to the prisoners? They need to smash the concrete up so they can get the fence free from it and escape. We need to get these to them before we set the diseased loose.”

  No more than a metre separated them at that point and Flynn shook his head. “I didn’t say you weren’t going to drop the hammers off first, but why do it now? Why so early?”

  “So I can do it while most of Moira’s community sleeps. Do you fancy sneaking down there in broad daylight?”

  A shake of his head and Flynn screwed his face up at her. “I’ve known you ten years, Vicky.”

  They were now out of the camera’s field of vision, so Vicky remained stationary and scanned around for diseased. “What’s knowing me for ten years got to do with anything?”

  “I know when you’re lying. You may have planned on dropping the hammers off with the community, but there’s more to it than that. You’re planning on letting the diseased out before nine o’clock, aren’t you?”

  There seemed little point in hiding the truth from him now. “Look, there are a few very good reasons for that.”

  “Like?”

  “Meisha’s over there.”

  Flynn’s jaw dropped so quickly it looked like it had instantly dislocated. Once he’d recovered, he said, “Why haven’t you told Scoop?”

  A look around again and Vicky saw nothing. The sound of the diseased rode on the wind toward them from the pen, but nothing else. “Does she know you’ve come out here?”