Thirteen Roses Book One: Before: An Apocalyptic Zombie Saga

by Michael Cairns

  Then she heard a thump and he fell, pulling her down with him.

  David - Thursday: Plague Day

  Soho was just the same as Trafalgar Square. Bodies littered the streets like leaves in autumn. But it was peaceful and the rumble of the soldiers' trucks was gone completely. In fact, he couldn't hear anything. Was this his world? Had he returned to the place he'd spent the last eleven days? Maybe that was the truth of it. Perhaps all the time he spent wandering the empty streets, the corpses had been there, yet somehow hidden from view.

  He walked into Soho Square and found an empty patch of grass. He lay down, brushing away the remnants of the fog that still clung to the ground. It was strange how tenacious it was in some parts of the city but almost gone in others. Perhaps the wind moved through here and had already stolen it.

  He lay back, settled his head onto the grass, and stared up at the sky. The blue looked wrong, like someone had painted it on there. The corners of the buildings that towered around the square crept into his vision and he grunted. He needed space.

  He climbed to his feet, brushed imaginary dirt off his trousers and jogged out the square. He'd go to Regents Park. It wasn't far and he could find somewhere to stare at the sky until his eyes watered.

  He should be more worried about what was happening. He vaguely remembered the soldiers and the shooting, but his mind was doing an excellent job of blocking it out. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend the whole waking up and running and screaming thing was a dream. He could walk with his eyes turned up to the sky and ignore the bodies and it would be like home.

  Soho fell away behind him as he jogged up Regent Street, across Oxford Street and past the BBC building. The park lay before him and he clapped his hands together as he ran through the tall black gates. It smelled better here, less rot and more trees. Maybe he'd see some squirrels.

  There were bodies. However hard he tried, he couldn't quite block them out. Runners in jogging pants, sweat still drying on their faces, lay spread-eagled as though they were trying to run despite their deaths. There were cyclists as well, tangled up in the wrecks of their bikes, the blood from scratches out of place amongst the peace of the park. The dogs were dead as well. Everything was dead.

  David found an empty patch of green grass. He flung himself down and stared up at the sky. It wasn't long before it blurred and ran with tears. He wasn't sure whether it was the brightness or the truth that was doing its best to creep around his barriers and make itself known.

  He stared and stared and tried his best to forget. He imagined when he turned his head he'd see the emptiness that had become his life. He screwed his eyes up and rolled onto his side, then slowly opened them. Twenty feet away, a woman lay face down on the grass. She was dressed in jogging pants and a crop top and would have been pretty when she was alive.

  Through the blades of grass that stood like fence posts before his face, he could see her eyes, peering out through half-open lids. They were red, devil-red, and surrounded by deep rings. She looked like she'd been on a bender and drunk herself to death. But her skin wasn't flushed. It reminded him of the modelling clay Amber used, a sort of grey putty that went crumbly if you left it out of the box.

  Her skin was already crumbling. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. She was still there. He rolled onto his back and stared up. Tiny wisps of cloud, more optimism than any real threat of rain, scudded across the sky. Scudded was the wrong word. They crept and crawled at a snail's pace.

  He tried to make shapes in the clouds but they remained obstinately clouds and nothing more. He'd never been creative, not really. All the bullshit he wrote in the cards was recycled, ideas pinched from other cards, or famous people or random tweets. Nothing really his own. The clouds seemed to know this and mocked him, shifting slowly as if they were about to reveal the shapes that hid within them, before twisting again into nothing.

  He closed his eyes, rolled onto his side and opened them. She was gone! Laughter rolled up his throat and he giggled, wrapping his hands around his sides. It had all been some horrible fever dream. It wasn't surprising, living alone did funny things to you. He chuckled and rolled onto his back, and the woman fell on top of him.

  He screamed, spit catching on his lower lip and dripping down his chin. Her hands felt like ice when they grabbed his neck and twisted and pulled. She bared rotting yellow teeth and lunged. She was going to bite him. It didn't matter, this was all part of his fever. She'd disappear any second. The smell of rot and mould hit him. She wasn't about to disappear.

  David thrashed around like he was being carted off to the gallows. Her hands lost purchase on his neck as her teeth scraped against his nose. It stung, just a little, and he got his knees between them and shoved her away. She fell beside him and he leapt to his feet. She was up almost as quick, hands outstretched like some movie zombie.

  He blinked and the world came back into focus. He remembered the flower seller and the silence, and then the blur came back. His mind, so sharp for a brief moment, felt once again like cotton wool. But he knew one important fact. This thing in front of him was a zombie. It was an actual living zombie. And this wasn't a dream.

  She grabbed his arm and he kicked her as hard as he could in the leg. The skin was hard but brittle, and broke apart like egg shells. Beneath, the flesh was soft, and he moaned as his foot sunk into it. The zombie hissed and swung at him. One clawed hand caught him across the side of the head and the force knocked him on his arse.

  She took a step towards him and her leg buckled and spilled her to the grass beside him. Where she landed, her face was turned to his and they stared at one another for a moment. Was there something in those eyes, some semblance of humanity? There really wasn't.

  Her hand landed on his leg and he shook it off and staggered to his feet. He had time for a brief glance around the park. Others were getting to their feet. None had spotted him, not yet, but they would. He made for the nearest tree with low branches and ran.

  The branches weren't as low as he'd hoped and he spent a futile few seconds jumping up and down. Something growled and without looking back he set off again. He found a tree nearer the ground and threw himself up into the branches. David climbed as high as he dared and stopped, arms wrapped around the trunk like it was Steph.

  The sudden picture of her in his mind almost made him fall off. He'd blocked her out sometime in the last week and even the image of her was ill-formed. He wrinkled his nose, trying to remember her smell, but nothing came to him. How could he forget her? Amber was still there, every detail of her, and he felt a longing he hadn't experienced in years. The need to apologise burned suddenly and brought a lump to his throat.

  He heard a growl and looked down. Anther zombie, this one a large man wearing a wife-beater t-shirt, prowled around the base of the tree. It paused. It was easier to think of it as an 'it'. As soon as he started thinking of them as people he'd lose his mind completely. He giggled. What was left of it.

  It wasn't gone completely. He knew he still had something in there, because when the zombie pulled itself up onto the lowest branch, a streak of terror went through him that left him panting and sweating. He blinked, lights flashing before his eyes. His breathing sounded like a steam train and he stared at his hands, focusing on something while he tried to calm down. It wasn't working.

  A hand grabbed his leg and he kicked and kicked. The zombie balanced on a branch beneath him. And it was waiting. They were supposed to be stupid and thoughtless, incapable of something like climbing a tree. He'd watched Dawn of the Dead, and though his memories were pretty slight, he knew they weren't smart enough to do that.

  This one was, though. It would wait as long as q—. It barked and leapt up, grabbing at his leg with both hands. He wasn't ready and with the same lurching in his gut he'd got the time his car went into a slide on ice, he lost his grip on the trunk and fell.

  Luke - Friday: 6 Days to Plague Day

  It was shitty up here. The rain had come in early
this morning and joined with the mountains to form a barrier of grey. Luke had never felt so out of touch, or so isolated. There were many things he hated. He had a list, somewhere, but not many of them compared to being in this crappy, nothing town, surrounded by people too simple to care if they lived or died.

  The ground was soft underfoot and he kept meeting huge patches of heather and bramble that sent him off on one pointless diversion after another. It should be simple. The map made it look very simple, but he was deciding maps were something he should've had a hand in. They were so deliciously deceptive and annoying.

  He'd thrown his away a few miles back. His nose was taking him where he needed to go. He was discovering he had some other advantages not shared by the people here. His sense of smell seemed to be considerably better than most. He'd realised when he got confused about how the army expected to keep a secret base up here when you could smell the oil and refuse miles away.

  Alex hadn't been able to smell it. To give him his due, he hadn't been able to do much of anything. He was still recovering from the loss of his hands, which was a good thing. The more shaken up he was by it, the less likely he was to run away, or cause some other problem Luke could do without.

  He crested a hill and looked down into the valley. It was, in a vaguely annoying way, quite pretty here. The heather glowed pink when the right light hit it and the rolling hills and crags were pleasant enough. Seeing it from a helicopter or maybe in a vision, would be all right. Being here was another story.

  In the bottom of the valley sprawled the base and he settled himself against a rock, nodding contentedly. Who needed maps? He examined it, focusing until he could pick out the details. His eyesight seemed to be better as well.

  It was a walled base and the wall was made of dark stone covered in moss. It had been here a while and the barbed wire along the top was black with rust. The front gate looked a little newer. It bore recent evidence of attempts to clean it up, and as it opened now, it rolled smoothly on oiled runners.

  Within, two long low buildings met in a right angle, and at the end of one stood a taller building bearing a tower. Beyond them were a variety of vehicles, including troop carriers and camouflaged jeeps. It all looked entirely innocent and peaceful.

  Luke watched for a while. He had no plan yet. In fact, he had no idea whatsoever of how he intended to get the formula and the test tube back. His initial thought had been to send Alex in to complain. It would, in all likelihood, fail, but would at the least be amusing. But his recent concerns regarding his possibly impending mortality had put paid to that. Anything that drew attention to him was a bad idea.

  He needed to get in quietly and subtly and without giving away even a hint of what he was doing there. He could steal a uniform and go undercover. That was tempting. So tempting that he set off over the brow of the hill towards the base. He was scrambling down the slope when he heard the thwump of helicopter rotors. He dashed back up to a rock he'd passed a minute earlier and crouched beside it.

  Seconds later, the helicopter hammered overhead towards the base. He had about two seconds to register the fact that the dull grey paint bore no insignia or markings, before something left the helicopter, travelling at speed towards the base and trailing a smoke line behind it. Seconds later, it struck the top of the tower and tore it apart.

  The explosion was loud enough to make his ears pop and he ducked lower. A second rocket followed the first and the roof of one of the low buildings collapsed, showering the rest of the base in smoke and debris. A third rocket hit the wall and it crumbled, leaving a man-sized hole into the base.

  Luke scrambled down the hill. He had his way in now. Whatever the hell was going on, this was too good an opportunity to miss. The helicopter flew low over the base and the sound of automatic gunfire drifted up to him. It was chased by screaming and the gruff sounds of men shouting. Luke smiled. Even when they were being fired at, some people were still concerned about appearing masculine and manly. Of all the sins he'd found easiest to exploit, that was at the top of the list.

  The roar of engines brought him to another stop. A set of trucks were bulling their way down the road. They looked aggressive with massive tyres and dark grey paint jobs. And as they pulled to a stop before the base, the men who poured from the back of three of them looked equally business-like.

  They approached the hole that had been blown open in the wall and were met with gunfire. Luke was about to set off when he paused. This was a secret base, yet someone knew about it and was now attacking it. What were the chances they were after the same thing as him?

  This gave him a choice. He could race down there, fight his way through the hordes, search the base to find what he needed and escape, alone, over open ground. With a helicopter and some outstandingly aggressive-looking men chasing him. Or he could change the game plan and see what happened. He clambered a little way back up the slope and settled down next to another of the huge rocks that thrust brutally into the grey sky.

  The shooting was constant now as both sides poured bullets through the hole. It didn't last long. One of the trucks drove up to the wall and reversed across the hole. The sound of the bullets striking the edge of the van was torturous to his ears and he was several hundred feet above them. It appeared to make no difference to the grey-uniformed attackers, though.

  They gathered around the van before two of them slipped beneath it, between the two sets of huge wheels. A few minutes later they emerged. By this time, the gate had opened, spewing more soldiers out into the Yorkshire countryside. They set up barricades over the road and were firing on the invaders from the other direction.

  The men in grey were supremely calm and Luke couldn't help admiring them. They were receiving guidance from somewhere, because they acted in unison, with no hesitation or doubt. It was like watching demons harvest. They settled in behind another of the trucks and took turns firing at the men behind the barricade. There was no urgency to their movements but one by one the defenders were picked off.

  The van parked before the hole in the wall pulled away and the soldiers behind it were momentarily exposed. The attackers unleashed a rain of gunfire that sent two of them sprawling, blood blossoming from wounds all over their bodies. Luke rubbed his hands together. He'd forgotten how much fun it was to just sit back and watch the chaos.

  Through some coincidence, all the firing stopped at the same moment, and into the silence came a shout that carried up to where he sat.

  'Retreat, get back!'

  Then the wall exploded. It didn't so much explode as shatter. Whatever charges the men had placed while hiding beneath the van were monstrous. Shards of brick hurtled in every direction and proved successful where the bullets hadn't. The men running back to their building were caught in the open and received a thousand tiny wounds across their backs and heads.

  For some, it was enough to kill and they went flying, as the punch of the explosion caught them. Others weren't hurt badly by the debris, but the explosion itself tossed them across the base. Luke imagined the sounds of bones snapping and people screaming. He had to imagine it because, for a moment, the explosion had done for his hearing. He looked down on a scene covered in white and grey smoke, and imagined himself back in the times before, when all the earth looked like this all the time.

  Happy days.

  The attackers were moving, streaming through the hole in the wall and finishing off the hapless defenders. Within a few minutes the base was quiet and the grey-clad soldiers went through it with impressive efficiency. It took them fifteen minutes, but before long, three of them emerged from the base of the tower carrying files and something in a small box.

  Luke knew what it was, even before he noticed that the man carrying it walked as though he was trying to balance a drink on his head. He didn't stop and the others fell in around him, far tenser now than they had been on entry. He walked through the colossal hole in the wall and straight to one of the trucks.

  The one he stopped at wasn't made f
or carrying people. It bore a cylinder on its flatbed with a variety of nozzles and pipes veering off. A man climbed down from the cab and fussed around the back of the cylinder. He took the box from the soldier and opened it.

  For a brief moment, the soldiers were vulnerable, every eye on the man with the box. If he had ten well-trained soldiers, Luke could have killed every one of them.

  The man lifted the test tube from the box and slipped it straight into a hole on the side of the cylinder. Luke imagined he could hear the sighs of relief as the hole sealed and every man down there relaxed. He blinked and stood abruptly, then dropped again, face flushed.

  They were about to leave, taking the plague and everything to do with it away. He'd been so engrossed watching them at work he'd let them get this far. Swearing under his breath, he began a sort of sliding run down the side of the valley. He didn't need to get too close, assuming this power had come with him along with the rest.

  The sweat dripped down his back as the first of the trucks pulled away, laden down with soldiers. The blood on their hands clearly didn't bother them as they chatted quietly and jumped into the trucks.

  Luke stood straight up and ran, praying they didn't see him. He picked up speed, his legs only just keeping up with gravity, and he wasn't able to stop himself before colliding with the wall of the base. He slammed into the rock and swore as his knee collided with the stone.

  Biting his tongue to block out the pain, he closed his eyes and focused on the final truck as it drove away. He caught the mind of the man in the back and saw the streets of London right at the surface. There were glass buildings and traffic lights and plenty of cars. He focused harder. There had to be something he knew. The movie in the soldier's head played a little further and panned up to a sign he recognised.