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

by Michael Robertson

“What the fuck are you talking about? They killed Vicky.”

  “But you killing them won’t bring her back. I wanted you to know …” Serj’s eyes closed for a second. When he opened them again, he said, “So you don’t think ill of Vicky anymore. She did the best for you.”

  Flynn watched Serj turn so pale his skin looked to be on the way to translucent. When he saw it in his friend’s eyes, Flynn said, “You think they were right to kick her out?”

  “They had to.”

  “Because she set the virus loose?”

  Serj dipped a feeble nod.

  “Because the world’s the way it is because of her?”

  Another nod.

  As much as Flynn wanted to argue, he couldn’t. The world had become this way because of her. The crowd of rats above should be in school now and worrying about friendships and the latest craze. Instead, they lurked in the shadows, waiting for things to eat. God knew what other things happened to them when they were with the adults who clearly directed them. The haunted looks in their eyes spoke of something much darker than cannibalism. But maybe Flynn imagined it. More speculation about a group of people he knew nothing about.

  A deep inhale lifted through Serj and he said, “Vicky said she would have done the same to someone else.” His eyes rolled in his head and he sweated more than before. “Once the decision had been made, she just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  The world turned blurry in front of Flynn, but it didn’t stop his awareness of the ever-thickening press of bodies above. A glance, and even with his poor, tear-distorted vision, there looked to be double the amount again. They waited, but for how long?

  “I just want to make sure you know how much she loved you. And that she didn’t let you down.” Serj nodded at the knife in Flynn’s hand. “Please stop my pain now.”

  Flynn drew a deep breath, the metallic essence of Serj filling his senses again as he pulled the air in. He also smelled the dirt coming from the rats above him. If many more gathered up there, the ceiling would collapse beneath their weight.

  Several blinks cleared Flynn’s sight and he nodded at Serj, gripped the handle of his knife, and yelled out as he drove it into the top of his friend’s head.

  Physically, it felt no different than killing a diseased. The blade broke through the bone and sank into Serj’s brain, turning him off.

  When Flynn let go of his grip on the knife, it protruded from Serj’s head. His dead eyes were spread wide.

  It took all Flynn had to stand up. He stumbled back several paces before he looked up at the rats one last time. More still had gathered around the hole.

  Clumsy with his steps, Flynn turned his back on the shop and shuffled through the space that had once held the front window.

  By the time he’d stepped a few metres into the high street, he heard the rush of bodies swarming from the hole down towards Serj. At least they didn’t get to take him alive.

  Chapter 8

  Not physically exhausted, but emotionally fatigued, Flynn’s legs trembled beneath his weight as he returned to Home. He’d walked over the new bridge crossing the river and currently moved through the long, grassy meadow outside their complex. The sun pushed down on the back of his head and the grass came up to his chest. On another day, it might have even been pleasant with the fresh meadow smell in the summer heat. But covered in the blood of his best friend and mentor and returning to a place full of enemies took away any appreciation he might have felt for the weather.

  The wall around Home stood as strong and indomitable as ever. As the years went on, they’d chopped down trees, stripped them of their bark and branches, and stood them in a line like soldiers. Each one had been buried at least two metres into the ground and had been butted so closely to the one next to it, it would take a tank to knock them down. Since they’d built the wall, they might have had gangs pass the place, but no one had tried to attack. Many communities fortified themselves in this way now.

  A sentry stood at either side of the gate, and when Flynn saw Brian as one of them, his stomach clenched tight as if jabbed with electricity. Bile lifted in his throat at the sight of the man, but he gulped down the bitter taste, clenched his jaw, and pushed forward.

  The gates opened before Flynn got to them and he strode through into the complex. The usual smell of sewage hit him the second he entered the place and he screwed his nose up in response to it. Since the solar panels had gone, Home had fallen into complete disrepair. They used the underground complex to sleep in and not a lot else now. Some suggested moving the toilets outside the wall to get rid of the smell, but that would put them in too much danger every time they needed to make a trip to the john.

  By the time Flynn had walked just a few metres into the place, Brian appeared at his side and said, “What happened?”

  Serj’s blood had dried against Flynn’s skin, so when he closed both of his hands into fists, it cracked.

  When Flynn didn’t respond, Brian said, “Where’s Serj?”

  A clenched jaw and quickened pulse, Flynn looked at the barn with the leaking chimney. “We didn’t get your lead.”

  “Our lead; it’s for the good of the community.”

  Flynn looked across at the bearded man and growled. “We didn’t get your lead.”

  Brian didn’t argue again. “So what happened? I’m guessing that isn’t your blood on your hands?”

  “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

  Impatience twisted Brian’s face and he focused a bitter scowl on Flynn. “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind,” Flynn said and looked away from the man.

  Many of Home’s residents hadn’t noticed Flynn’s return yet. If he could keep it that way, it would save a lot of questions.

  As Flynn passed through the place—as out of sight as possible—he watched the people working the farmland. Everyone who could work did. It made for a productive community. A community that would need to be saved from the tyrannical—or soon to be tyrannical—rule of Brian, Sharon, and Dan. Now Serj had gone, they had nothing stopping them. At least, they would think they had nothing stopping them.

  Flynn focused his attention on Home’s front door, hoping he’d remain invisible to the people in the community. It stood propped open as they always had it during the day. Now a dusty wreck of a place, they needed to ventilate Home as much as they could so when they locked it up at night it had at least been aired out.

  “Flynn!”

  A look to his right and Flynn saw some of the teenagers from Home.

  Maggie had been the one to call to him and she led the group of six over to him at a jog. Genuine concern lit up her face when she saw the blood on him. “My god, what’s happened? Is it Serj?”

  As the heart of the community, everyone loved Serj—especially the young people. He’d been one of the only adults to listen to them. He treated them like human beings while the other guards treated them like dumb kids.

  For a few seconds, Flynn bit down on his bottom lip to hold his grief back. He finally nodded. “Serj has gone.” He looked over to see Brian had come close to listen in. “He fell when we were trying to get Brian’s lead and he didn’t make it.”

  Where Brian would usually respond, he didn’t this time. He must have heard the thin ice cracking beneath his feet.

  The group walked with Flynn as he headed towards Home’s entrance. The door sat in the small hill, the once solar panel field behind it.

  Where the solar panels had been, Flynn could now see a complex twisting of tubes and funnels raised in the air. From a distance, it looked like a huge marble run like the one they had for the children inside. It had been set up to catch and store water. Without the filtration system and the electric pumps, they’d had to adapt.

  At the sight of Sharon and Dan, Flynn ground his jaw. They looked him up and down as they approached.

  “What’s happened?” Dan said.

  Before Flynn could answer, he jumped to hear Brian speak behind
him. “Serj is dead. He fell while collecting lead for the community.”

  “For you,” Flynn said.

  Again, Brian didn’t argue with him. A shared look between Brian and Dan, and Dan didn’t question it either.

  “We’re here for you, Flynn,” Brian said as he reached over and touched Flynn’s forearm.

  Flynn stopped dead and glared at the bearded man. He reached down to the baton on his hip and lifted his lip in a snarl.

  Brian removed his hand and lowered his eyes.

  “Look,” Sharon said, “I know you’re upset about Serj, but that doesn’t mean you should come back here and take it out on us.”

  A hard grip on his baton still and Flynn pulled in a deep breath. He could feel the attention of the teenagers on him. They didn’t need to see this. Were it just him and the three guards, he’d cave in every one of their deceitful heads, but he couldn’t do it here. Not now.

  “Flynn!” Sharon said again as he walked away from her. “I demand you talk to me.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you demand, Sharon.”

  Sharon gasped, and although Flynn didn’t look at them, he heard Brian say, “Leave it.”

  Flynn stopped again and turned around to face the three guards. “Just so you know, you don’t get to demand anything of me ever again, okay? Serj has gone, so as far as I’m concerned, this place needs a new leader.” He looked each of the three up and down. “Because from where I’m standing, we don’t have a suitable replacement.”

  None of the guards challenged him, and when Flynn walked off again, they all remained where they were.

  Chapter 9

  Flynn entered Home’s foyer on his own and walked down the steps into the canteen. The blue linoleum floor had rips and scuffs all over it. Dents and holes from years of wear and tear, it needed replacing, but no one cared now with the outside a much safer place than it used to be.

  The once white walls showed huge patches of exposed plaster beneath, and what paint remained had either blistered or looked ready to flake off.

  The tables in the vast space were grubby and all shoved into one corner, and the wall of monitors sat as blank, dusty screens. One of them had fallen to the ground when the bracket had given out, and had a spider’s web of cracks across the front of it.

  The corridor towards Flynn’s room had once smelled of bleach, but it now reeked of damp and dust. Daylight shone through the grates up above and a slight breeze ran down from them. With no power, they couldn’t ventilate the place in any other way. It meant water ran into Home when it rained, and it froze in the winter, but at least they could breathe.

  What little strength Flynn had left drained from him when he reached his bedroom door. He grabbed the cold handle and his vision blurred. He’d held onto his grief until now.

  When he entered his room, a candle had already been lit and he found Angelica waiting for him. Even through his teary view, Flynn saw her beauty. He fell forward and threw his arms around her. “Thank god you’re here,” he said, sobbing hard. “I needed to see you. Thank you.” He pulled back and held her face with both of his hands, his lip buckling out of shape as he repeated, “Thank you.”

  Chapter 10

  Flynn woke up to find Angelica still asleep next to him. The single bed always made for a tight squeeze, but because they still stayed in separate rooms most of the time, it didn’t matter to have a less comfortable night’s sleep once in a while.

  Flynn rolled over onto his back, leaned out of bed, and lit a candle close to them. No windows and no electricity meant the rooms were always dark when the doors were closed.

  Exhausted from the previous day, Flynn remained on his back and stared up at the ceiling. Like the walls in the place, white flecks of paint had come off it and huge patches had fallen away to reveal the plaster beneath.

  The bedding he used was the same duvet and sheet he’d had when he’d moved in with Vicky over a decade ago. Although he hand washed them, years of wear had left them covered in stains and threadbare. He could also feel the springs pushing up through his mattress. At some point he’d have to do like the others had and replace it with sacks stuffed with old rags.

  A deep sigh to his right and Flynn turned to look at Angelica. She had green eyes, so vibrant they made him think of the pictures he’d seen in books of lush rainforests. “I love it when we wake up together,” he said.

  Angelica smiled but didn’t respond.

  “Thanks for staying last night, I needed the company.”

  Again, she smiled—clearly too soon for words at that moment.

  Yesterday had been too raw for Flynn to talk about what happened with Serj, other than to tell Angelica he’d died. He couldn’t tell her he’d killed him, or what he’d found out about Vicky. What Brian, Sharon, and Dan had done to her. Should he tell her at all? After all, they needed to live in Home still. To cause trouble could seriously backfire on both of them. She needed to know Serj had died, but maybe nothing else. Just as he drew a breath to speak, someone knocked on the door.

  “Hello?” Flynn called out.

  The door muffled the voice of what sounded like one of the younger children. “There’s going to be a service outside in five minutes for Serj.”

  The kid didn’t wait for a response, and Flynn listened to his footsteps run away up the corridor before he turned to Angelica. “A service? What the fuck?”

  Flynn sat up in bed and grabbed his clothes from the day before. When he looked at Serj’s blood on them, he threw them down and picked up some different trousers and a top, muttering to himself while he did it. “A fucking service! Who the fuck do they think they are?”

  Although Angelica sat up in bed and watched him, Flynn couldn’t look back at her. Too angry to talk, he stormed out of his room.

  The grates shone bright spotlights down into the corridor as Flynn walked along it. Dust motes danced in the strong beams from where the kid had run away only moments earlier. Every time he passed beneath one, the summer heat warmed him for a second. Clearly late morning at least, he and Angelica had obviously overslept.

  As Flynn marched through the dusty and dirty canteen, he couldn’t see another soul. Filthy tables, broken screens, and the echoes of what had once been the hub of their community.

  The second Flynn stepped out of Home’s foyer, the sun blinded him and he had to blink against its glare. Not that his restricted vision prevented him from seeing the large crowd gathered there. It looked like all of Home had turned up.

  As Flynn’s sight recovered, he looked at the people and saw them all stare back at him. Some of his anger left him. He couldn’t kick off now. Not in front of everyone.

  Flynn laid eyes on Brian at the front of the group. Sharon stood on one side of him and Dan on the other. Brian nodded. “We wanted to make sure you were present for this,” he said.

  While grinding his jaw, Flynn stared at the three of them. They stood in front of the graves of their children and all the other people who’d died over the years.

  “Okay,” Brian said with a clap of his hands. “I think that’s everyone. As you all know by now, we lost Serj yesterday to a tragic accident in the town.”

  Angelica emerged from Home’s foyer and walked up next to Flynn. When she put a hand on the base of his back, he tensed at the contact.

  “For as long as most of us can remember, Serj has been here. One of the first few people to get let into the place, he’s always been a valuable member of our community.”

  The empty bullshit made Flynn want to vomit and he continued to stare at the bearded man. When he got a chance, he’d cut his fucking throat.

  “Serj was a rock in this community. I considered him one of my greatest friends.”

  It took all Flynn had to refrain from screaming in Brian’s face at that moment. What the fuck? They fucking hated each other.

  “When I asked people what they wanted to say about Serj,” Brian said, “I got an overwhelming amount of responses, all with a similar tone.” H
e used his fingers to count the points out. “He was kind, generous, always ready to listen and help. He had a lovely way about him. He was calm and a great mediator. He saw when people needed him and he offered himself freely and without condition.”

  The lump had never left Flynn’s throat, but it swelled to see all the people in the crowd nodding their agreement. Packed together, they all seemed united in their grief for Serj.

  He’d done it by consensus, but Brian had just described Serj perfectly. Another look at the crowd and Flynn saw all the people Serj had touched. The teenagers—who even in such a small society had distanced themselves from it as they managed their rampaging hormones—the cooks, the farm workers, the tailors. Every person there seemed to feel the loss of the great man.

  As much as Flynn wanted to challenge Brian, he couldn’t. As much as he wanted to go up to Sharon and Dan and bury a knife in their skulls, it would serve no purpose. Not now anyway.

  Then Flynn looked at Janice, one of the farm workers. She hugged her little boy, Adam. The eight-year-old child cried into her stomach, and he saw what this community meant to them. It meant safety.

  The teenagers—every one of them sobbing—wouldn’t last outside Home for five minutes with the rats and nomads about. If Flynn destabilised the community by taking down the three leaders, Home could fall, and the innocent citizens would pay the price.

  “Sharon, Dan, Flynn, and I will continue to run this place and will honour Serj’s memory in every decision we make.”

  The thought of working with those three monsters curled as a tight lump in Flynn’s gut, but the people all nodded in response to Brian’s plans.

  Home might not work for Flynn at that moment, but it worked for everyone else. He needed to respect that like Serj would have. Serj always thought of the greater good.

  Flynn swallowed back the lump in his throat and looked at Angelica next to him. He might not have Serj and Vicky with him anymore, and the leaders of Home were complete arseholes, but at least he had her. Maybe he could make it work here. Maybe he could get his head down and accept the rule of the three vicious bastards up at the front of the group. Maybe some sacrifices were worth it.