Twenty-Five Percent (Book 2): Downfall

by Nerys Wheatley

  “My mum and dad died too,” Sam said, his voice soft. “I know how you’re feeling. But Alex and Micah helped me.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Micah produced a clean tissue from his jacket pocket, handing it to her, and she buried her face in it. When he put his arm around her shoulders, she leaned against him, sobbing quietly.

  For a while they sat listening to the heartbreaking sound of Chloe crying as Micah held her. Sam crossed his arms on the table and leaned his forehead onto them, hiding his face. The revelation that he’d lost his parents wasn’t a surprise. It explained a lot.

  Alex thought about his own family. His parents lived in Edinburgh, still in the house where he’d grown up, and his brother, sister-in-law and niece were in Glasgow. It was unlikely the eaters had reached that far north yet, but it was only a matter of time. Micah’s parents and sister, who wasn’t much older than Chloe, lived outside the town of Matlock which was much closer. He hadn’t said anything, but Alex knew it had to be killing him not knowing if they were safe.

  When Chloe stopped crying, they learned that she was thirteen and they were hiding out in her school. When eaters overran her house, killing her parents, she had run here and hidden. She was a tough kid. She also hated being called a kid.

  “Do you have anyone else around here you can stay with?” Micah said.

  “My grandparents live a few miles away,” she said, “but I was too scared to walk all the way there. And I don’t know...” She stopped and wiped at her eyes again. “...I don’t know if they’re okay.”

  Finally, something he could do. “We can take you there to find them,” Alex said.

  “You would do that?” she asked, evidently surprised at the offer.

  He smiled. “Of course we will. As soon as we get out of here.”

  She looked at the windows where the tops of the eater’s heads were just visible above the high sill. “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Don’t worry,” Sam said, “they’ll think of something. They’re real live heroes.” He leaned forward as if he was imparting a great secret. “They left their capes at home.”

  Chloe burst into laughter and Alex regarded Sam with new admiration. The young man may have been unusual, but he also seemed to know exactly what to say to make people feel better. It was an art Alex had yet to learn.

  . . .

  Having made sure the building was secure, the group of soldiers joined them in the cafeteria.

  The first half an hour they spent waiting to see if the eaters would leave. When nothing changed, Ridgewell and Collins rustled up a passable, if cold, meal of baked beans, potatoes and corned beef from the supply of canned goods in the kitchen.

  “How many do you think are left in Sarcester?” Porter said around a mouthful of slightly dry, but still edible bread.

  Alex shrugged. “I really don’t know. Maybe a few thousand.”

  “What’s law and order like?” Ridgewell said.

  “I think most people are just shell shocked at the moment. Some people we know were going to set up patrols when we left, to make sure no-one’s taking advantage of the situation or to find anyone who needs help.” Alex suspected the fact that those people were Survivors and pseudo militia wouldn’t go down well, so he didn’t mention it.

  “Sounds like Sarcester’s doing better than the rest of us,” Dent said.

  “What’s left of it,” Micah muttered, frowning at his plate.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Hudson said.

  “It means that while most of the men, women and children inside the city were being either turned into eaters or slaughtered, the army was sitting on their backsides doing nothing.”

  Hudson’s face turned red and he started to get up from his seat. Dent put a hand on his arm and he sat back down again, scowling.

  “We had orders not to do anything,” she said. “We wanted to help, believe me. Those of us who actually saw what was happening...” She trailed off, releasing a long breath.

  “What happened to you when the barriers went down?” Alex said. “Why didn’t you stop the hordes? We saw you out there, all the weapons you had. We saw the planes go over, heard the bombing.”

  There were long seconds of silence. It was Ridgewell who spoke eventually.

  “It wasn’t enough.”

  “There were so many eaters,” Collins said, his voice quiet. He’d removed his cap and his red hair stuck up haphazardly over his head. “They just didn’t stop until they were dead. People were bitten and we tried to help them...”

  “That was our mistake,” Hudson said, leaning back in his chair, which was as far away from Alex and Sam as he could get at the table. “We tried to help the ones who were bitten. Never leave a man behind, that’s what we’re taught. But we should have shot them. As soon as they were infected, we should have shot them. But we didn’t. And then it was too late.”

  They lapsed into silence. Sam’s chin was resting on his arms folded on the table in front of him. Chloe pushed a baked bean around her plate with a fork. The others looked like they were lost in their own private thoughts. Alex exchanged a look with Micah and knew he was thinking the same thing. There was no-one left to help. They were on their own.

  After the meal, everyone wandered off to do their own thing. Alex and Micah moved the bikes to the foyer inside the main entrance at the front of the building so they’d be ready to go as soon as the eaters left. Whenever that would be.

  Sam was quiet, staying close to Alex wherever he went. His excitement at spending time with a Survivor seemed to have faded and he was subdued, Alex suspected because of the proximity of the horde. He was worried about the young man. Strange as it was, he felt responsible for him. For the life of him he didn’t know why, but there it was.

  The burden of being a superhero, he thought without humour.

  The four of them, including Chloe who was following Micah with the same dedication as Sam showed in following Alex, ended up in one of the upstairs classrooms overlooking the front of the school. Micah pushed two tables end to end and stretched out on his back, eyes closed. Sam sat cross legged on a third table, engrossed in a copy of The Two Towers he’d found in the library. Chloe was sitting next to him, reading The Fellowship of the Ring which he’d insisted she try when he found out she’d never read The Lord of the Rings.

  Alex paced the room, periodically looking out the window at the eaters still milling around below.

  “Stop pacing,” Micah said after a while, without opening his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep here.”

  Alex went to the window for what felt like the hundredth time. Nothing had changed. “They’re never going to leave,” he said. “Why aren’t they leaving?”

  Micah raised his left arm to look at his watch. “It’ll be dark in an hour. We might as well stay here for the night anyway.”

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Alex said. “I want to get to Omnav and find Hannah.” He kicked at a chair which skidded across the floor to hit the wall.

  “Who’s Hannah?” Sam said, closing his book. “And what’s Omnav?”

  Alex sighed and sat down. “Omnav makes the army’s vehicles and weapons. They’re responsible for this outbreak.” He explained about the underground laboratory and Omnav’s attempt to weaponise Meir’s Disease and about the doctors they’d kidnapped.

  “Is Hannah your girlfriend?” Chloe said when he’d finished.

  “No, not really. Not yet. I mean, I really like being around her and I think she likes me, but I hadn’t asked her out or anything.” Why did he suddenly sound like he was fourteen?

  “And you’re going to rescue her and stop the bad guys at Omnav and save everyone?” Sam said.

  “Um, well, I hadn’t really thought that far. I was kind of just focused on rescuing Hannah and the others.”

  Micah sat up. “He has a point. What are we going to do when we get there? Shouldn’t we try to stop them or something?”

  “Us?” Them save everyone? Was
n’t that taking the whole hero thing a bit far?

  Sam smiled. “You’re heroes. Saving people is what you do.”

  He was looking at Alex with such complete confidence and belief on his face that Alex wanted to run away and hide. He wasn’t a hero. He didn’t want to be a hero. He was just an ordinary man who’d been bitten and happened to survive the cure. He couldn’t even get his own life together, let alone save everyone else’s.

  How had this all happened? All he’d wanted to do was survive the outbreak and rescue a pretty girl who maybe liked him. Now he was supposed to be some big hero who was going to stop the big bad villains and fix everything? Somewhere there might be a person who was ready to do all that, but it wasn’t him. Sam’s belief in him was wildly misplaced and he wished he could tell him that, make him understand. But if he did, Sam would be devastated and he’d feel like pond scum.

  He looked up to see Micah watching him, a small smile on his lips.

  “We’ll do what we can,” Micah said.

  Alex heard the emphasis he’d put on we’ll and understood what Micah was saying. He wasn’t alone.

  “Yes,” he said, “we will.”

  Sam grinned. “See, heroes. I knew it. Just like in Lord of the Rings. We are on a quest.” He held up the book.

  Micah smirked, looking at Alex. “I guess that makes you a hobbit. Or are you Golum?”

  “He’s Aragorn,” Sam said.

  “Aragorn,” Alex said, trying to remember the story. “Wasn’t he a king?”

  “The rightful heir to the thrones of Gondor and Arnor,” Sam said, nodding.

  “King Alexander,” Alex said. “No, wait, Alexander the...”

  “Don’t you dare say ‘great’,” Micah said.

  “You may call me ‘Your Majesty’. Or ‘My Liege’. Yes, I like that better.”

  Sam and Chloe laughed.

  “So who am I?” Micah said.

  “Hobbit,” Alex said. “Has to be, with your huge hairy feet and all. And your limited stature.”

  “I’m five eleven,” Micah said, sitting up straight.

  “Couldn’t quite make it to six feet then?”

  “You could be Legolas,” Sam said. “He’s strong and tough and graceful and handsome.”

  Micah pointed at him. “You are a genius. That is exactly who I am.”

  “And Chloe is Arwen, strong, resourceful half-elven daughter of Elrond.”

  Chloe smiled, obviously pleased with her alter ego. “I haven’t read about her yet, but I’d like to be an elf. Who are you, Sam?”

  The smile faded from Sam’s face and he looked out the window at the darkening sky. “I’m not a hero.”

  Before Alex could reply, Ridgewell walked into the room. “The lieutenant asked if you’d come downstairs so we can discuss our strategy for getting out of here.”

  “She wants our opinion?” Alex said, surprised.

  Ridgewell shrugged. “No idea.”

  Sam hopped down from the table, pushing the book into his backpack and holding it open so Chloe could drop hers in with it. As Alex stood, the sound of the helicopter that seemed to be circling over every so often filtered through the glass. It had been over an hour since they’d last seen or heard it.

  An idea occurred to Alex and he went to the window and opened it, drawing in a few deep breaths. After a few seconds, the tingle began in his nose and he sneezed violently several times.

  “Close it,” he wheezed, sneezing again as his eyes watered.

  Sam rushed over to close the window.

  “Do you know where that helicopter comes from?” Micah said to Ridgewell.

  The soldier walked to the window and watched it disappearing into the distance. “It looks like the ones they use to ferry the army bigwigs around. That logo isn’t military though. If it came closer, we could read it. Looks kind of familiar, but if it was military they’d have come to help us. We’ve been seeing it all day, on and off.”

  “So you’ve only seen it today?” Micah said.

  “Far as I know.”

  “And this horde has been following you just today?”

  “Yeah. Why? You think whoever’s up there has something to do with it?”

  Alex shrugged, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Sam brought him a tissue from a box on the teacher’s desk and Alex blew his nose.

  “Let’s go and give Lieutenant Tracey Dent the benefit of our wisdom,” he said.

  Dent, Ridgewell, Hudson, Collins and Porter were gathered around a table in the cafeteria, where they appeared to have set up camp. What looked like gym mats were stacked in one corner. A table held piles of folded, clean towels. A few narrow armchairs that hadn’t been in the room before were now gathered in an area that had been cleared of tables. A local map lay open on the table around which they sat.

  Alex sat beside Porter and Sam immediately took the seat next to him. Micah chose the next seat along, which was at the end, opposite Dent. Chloe sat next to Micah.

  “We’ve been discussing how we’re going to get out of the school and what escape route we’ll take when we do,” Dent said. “You’ll need to know our plans so you’re ready when it happens, whatever you decide to do. You can come with us if you want to. You seem to be handy in a fight.”

  Hudson looked intensely unhappy with the suggestion, but didn’t say anything. His arguments must have been dealt with before they arrived.

  “Porter said that you’ve been trying to get away from this horde all day, but it keeps following you no matter what you do,” Alex said.

  “That’s true,” Dent said. “None of us have ever seen eaters behave like this. It’s almost like they’re thinking. Did they display hunting behaviour like this in Sarcester?”

  “Not really, no. They were gathering into hordes, which the old style eaters never did, but they didn’t hunt as such. But we do have a theory as to why it’s happening.”

  The soldiers exchanged glances. Hudson crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, his expression conveying his doubt that Alex knew what one plus one was, much less anything useful.

  “Go on,” Dent said.

  With occasional interjections from Micah, Alex recounted for the second time in half an hour the tale of the underground laboratory, the weaponisation of Meir’s and the kidnap of the doctors by Omnav. He’d have much preferred not to tell them, but he had no choice. If any of them were going to get away without Omnav on their tails, he, Micah and Sam needed their help. So he told them and watched the scepticism slide onto their faces, as he’d expected. He knew there was a big risk that they wouldn’t believe him at all.

  There was silence when he’d finished, other than Hudson’s derisive chuckle. Alex tried to ignore him.

  “That’s quite a story,” Dent said after a minute, flashing Hudson a sharp look.

  “But?” Micah said.

  “But nothing. We all saw the barriers they had up. We’ve seen the effects of this new strain of the virus.” She looked up at the ceiling. “During that week we were sat outside Sarcester, waiting for the order to go in that never came, I kept wondering why we were just sitting around doing nothing. I saw people in suits going in and out of the hall Command had taken over. When I asked someone I knew who was stationed inside the hall, she said they were from Omnav. Once, I think it was the fifth day in, I even saw the CEO pay a visit. What’s his name?”

  “Boot,” Porter said. “Henry, Harry, something like that. I only remember because the guy’s, like, four feet tall.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I recognised him,” she said. “Anyway, at the time I had no idea why he would be there. But now it makes sense.”

  “Somehow he convinced whoever was in charge to stay out,” Alex said. “I wonder how he did that.”

  “But what does that have to do with us?” Collins said. “And how are the horde following us?”

  “Well, as for the how,” Alex said, “does your humvee...”

  “Panther class armoured patrol vehicle,” Collins said
. “You’ve been watching too many American war films.”

  “Right. Does it have some kind of tracking device on it?”

  Dent shrugged one shoulder. “Of course. All military vehicles do. But the signal is encrypted. Only someone with the code could follow it.”

  “Was it made by Omnav?” Alex said.

  There were a few seconds of silence before Porter spoke. “Crap.”

  Dent frowned. “You think they’ve been tracking us just so they could send a horde after us? Why? We’re not important, we’re just a group of soldiers trying to stay alive.”

  “I don’t think it’s you personally,” Micah said. “They were probably out looking for anyone they could find and it happened to be you.”

  “For what?” Dent said.

  “Field test,” he replied. “They’re seeing if they can control the horde and using you as the target.”

  Hudson gave a derisive snort. “Rubbish. You’re just making this up.”

  “Every time that helicopter flies over, I sneeze,” Alex said.

  “Really?” Hudson said. “You’re basing your wild theories on your snot?”

  A couple of the soldiers chuckled. Even Dent smiled.

  Alex huffed out an irritated breath. “The eaters use pheromones to communicate, in a very rudimentary way. I can smell that. But I can’t smell anything when the chopper’s around, I just sneeze. I think that means they’re using a synthetic pheromone that’s affecting me in a different way.”

  “Says you,” Hudson scoffed. “We have no proof of that. Just you and your so-called ‘enhanced olfactory abilities’.” He drew the quote marks in the air. “If it makes you sneeze, why isn’t every eater out there sneezing too?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said, annoyed. “Eaters can’t feel pain; maybe they can’t feel the urge to sneeze either. Why would I be making this up?”

  “I don’t know. To support this little power trip you’ve got going on?”

  Alex gritted his teeth, trying to calm himself. “Like it or not, Survivors have an enhanced sense of smell. For instance, right now I can smell that Lieutenant Dent is wearing Chanel No.5, which I recognise because my mum wears it; someone opened a jar of pickled onions in here, but no-one ate any; Collins has been chewing a Mento and also has a packet of cigarettes on him, but he hasn’t smoked any recently; and you haven’t showered in at least three days.”