Twenty-Five Percent (Book 2): Downfall

by Nerys Wheatley

  A minute later, Micah and Chloe returned.

  “There’s no clue to where they went,” Micah said, giving Alex a pointed ‘we’re not leaving her’ look.

  “Maybe they went to my house to try and find us,” Chloe said, looking in the direction they’d come. “Or maybe they went to one of their friends or something. They could have done that, couldn’t they?”

  “We could drive around a bit,” Sam said. “See if their car is anywhere.”

  “Yes!” Chloe said, looking hopeful. “I’d know their car if I saw it.”

  Given the number of abandoned cars they’d seen with blood saturating the seats and the surrounding ground, Alex wasn’t sure that was a good idea. But maybe they were safe somewhere. Maybe miracles could happen.

  They headed for the centre of the village first. As they approached, Alex pulled over.

  Micah stopped beside him. “What is it?”

  “Pheromones.” The vague scent was drifting through the air. If Alex hadn’t known, he could have mistaken it for spring flowers, even though spring was long gone. But the smell of eater pheromones was becoming uncomfortably familiar.

  They climbed from the bikes and Sam looked around nervously. “Are you going to leave us here?”

  “You can come with us if you want,” Alex said, “but it’s likely to be dangerous. There are eaters around.”

  Sam smiled in relief. “As long as we’re with you, we’ll be safe.”

  Alex suppressed a sigh. “If we get into trouble, run away, okay? Don’t wait for us, just run and hide.”

  He nodded. “Run and hide. I’m good at that.” His smile faded for a moment, then he squared his shoulders and took a deep breath.

  They made their way along the street, following Alex’s nose. After walking for less than a minute, they heard the noise. Not moans, but movement. Shuffling feet. They crept to the corner of a building and peered round.

  Further along the street where it opened out into a wide square was an old church with a spire. It sat in its own grounds, surrounded by ancient gravestones and neatly trimmed yew trees. Milling around the church were eaters. Some of the windows were open and many of them were clustered beneath these, heads raised. The big wooden doors at the front of the building were shut, eaters gathered around it.

  “Must be people inside,” Micah whispered. “Probably went there for protection. On the plus side, it looks like a really solid building to take refuge in.”

  “But on the minus side, now they can’t get out,” Alex said.

  “But you’re going to rescue them, right?” Sam said.

  Alex looked at the church again. He estimated there were at least fifty eaters around the building, and those were the ones he could see. There could have been even more on the other side.

  “I don’t know. That’s a lot of eaters. I’m not sure what we could do that wouldn’t get us killed.”

  The look of distress on Sam’s face made him feel like he’d kicked a whole litter of puppies.

  “But you’re heroes,” he said, “this is what you do. You can’t leave them.”

  Alex decided he didn’t want to be a hero any more. It was too dangerous.

  “Maybe if we circle around and get in closer we’ll be able to get a better idea of what we’re up against,” Micah said.

  Sam nodded emphatically, looking to Alex for confirmation.

  “Can’t hurt to try,” Alex said.

  His faith in his idol restored, Sam grinned and took off away from the church, heading towards where they could come at it from another direction. Chloe ran after him and Alex and Micah followed at a more sedate pace.

  “You’re welcome,” Micah said.

  Alex watched Sam pick a pink flower from a garden and give it to Chloe, making her smile. “I wish he’d stop thinking of me as some all-powerful hero who can protect him from everything. He almost died at the school because of it.”

  “But he didn’t,” Micah replied. “I’d say so far you’re doing a pretty good job.”

  “So far we’ve muddled through somehow, but what happens the next time his life is in danger? And the time after that?”

  Micah shrugged. “You can’t see the future. For now, I think Sam is safer with you than he is without.”

  “Are you saying you think I’m a hero too?”

  “No, but I’ve known you for longer. And I also know one very important fact.”

  Alex knew it was stupid to ask, but he did anyway. “What’s that?”

  Micah smiled. “You’d be embarrassingly helpless without me.”

  He was right, he shouldn’t have asked.

  They traversed a couple of side streets, eventually working their way round to the opposite end of the village square.

  It looked even worse from that side.

  “There have to be over a hundred eaters there,” Micah said. “What on earth are we going to do with them all?”

  “Can’t you just,” Sam made a stabbing motion as if he was re-enacting Psycho’s shower scene, “you know.”

  “Not that many,” Alex said, not wanting to disappoint Sam, but not having much choice. “We’re good, but we’re not that good.”

  Sam’s shoulders slumped.

  “But maybe we can lure them away somehow,” Alex said quickly, and was immediately ashamed of himself. He was such an attention whore.

  The four of them studied the scene before them. Alongside the church, the square had a pub with picnic benches out the front, a hairdresser, a doctor’s surgery, a flower shop, a fish & chip shop, and a Co-op supermarket which was, amazingly, intact.

  “If we could trap them somewhere...” Micah said.

  They went back to their perusal. The hairdresser, surgery, florist, and fish & chip takeaway were all too small for the number of eaters around the church. Although Alex couldn’t see inside, the pub, which was oddly named The Bell and Frog, looked like it might be a tight squeeze. Plus if one of them was going to lead the horde in there, and it would probably be Alex, he didn’t want to get stuck in the small space.

  “I think our best bet is to lure them into the Co-op,” he said. “It’ll have a back door and hopefully somewhere in there will be the keys to lock the front doors.”

  “A half-baked, wildly dangerous plan,” Micah said breezily. “Sounds just like our style.”

  “If there are any KitKats in there, could I have one?” Chloe said. “I haven’t had any chocolate for days.”

  There were a few seconds of thoughtful silence.

  “New plan,” Alex said. “Before we lure the eaters in there, clear out any chocolate we come across.”

  “It would be criminal to waste it,” Sam said.

  Alex nodded. “That it would.”

  There were another few seconds of silence before Micah spoke.

  “What are our plans concerning cake?”

  14

  Alex checked his watch for the tenth time then looked across the square.

  He couldn’t see the front of the Co-op from where he was hiding, but he trusted Micah was there. They had a plan, but as they hadn’t been able to test much of it out without risking being seen by the eaters surrounding the church, whether or not it was a good plan remained to be seen.

  He went through it all in his mind one last time. Sadly, it wasn’t foolproof, but that was par for the course lately. Deciding they weren’t going to do any better, he started out into the open.

  At first, none of the eaters paid him any attention, fixated as they were on the church. Alex could almost believe they were plotting how to get in, if it wasn’t for the fact he knew they didn’t have a thought between them. As he approached the centre of the square with its little grouping of benches and shrubs, however, a few eaters turned towards him.

  He stepped up onto a bench. “Calling all eaters,” he yelled, waving his arms. “Free lunch! Come and get it!”

  More eaters turned to look at him. A few started in his direction. It wasn’t enough. He needed all of the
m, all at once.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “Call yourself a horde? Get it together!”

  It was probably just coincidence that it happened at that moment, but all the eaters he could see suddenly turned towards them. More shuffled from behind the church. An acidic sweet smell wafted past him. Finally, the pheromones were working for them. And being the natural ones, he wasn’t sneezing. Every little helped.

  The square erupted in sound as the hungry moans of over a hundred eaters echoed from the surrounding buildings. They lumbered straight at Alex.

  He jumped to the ground and ran for the Co-op doors, stopping when he was close enough to activate them and turning to see the eaters following. Already a problem was beginning to emerge. They weren’t progressing at a uniform speed, those that had been eaters the longest moving in a kind of lurching jog. He and Micah had seen this phenomenon back when Sarcester had been sealed off. The longer an eater survived, the more coordinated it became. A couple were even close to running, albeit slowly. Alex guessed they may have been among the first infected, having turned in Sarcester two weeks ago.

  He took one of his skull-spikers from his pocket. As the first eater reached him he stepped aside and swept one leg from under it, sending it crashing to the ground. Another eater was following right behind and grabbed Alex’s biceps in a grip as strong as his own. Unable to get the spiker to its head, he stabbed into its chest, aiming for where he hoped the heart was. At first there was no effect and for a few moments Alex was pushed backwards, bracing his hands against its chest as it tried to bite his face. Finally it faltered and collapsed to the ground.

  Beyond it, the first eater was rising. Alex stabbed the spiker into the back of its head before it could rise.

  By now, the faster parts of the horde were almost on him. The rest were strung out across the square behind them, but at least they were all moving towards the Co-op. It was far from ideal, but it would have to do.

  Alex ran into the store and past the trolley barricade they’d set up to funnel the eaters to one end of the shop. He glimpsed Micah hiding behind a shelving unit at the far end of the short row of checkout lanes, waiting for Alex to lure all the eaters into the store and away from the doors which he would lock before both of them would escape to the rear of the building where Sam and Chloe were on back door duty.

  At least, that was the plan.

  But that was when they’d assumed, incorrectly, that all the eaters would arrive at roughly the same time.

  Alex ran into the aisle furthest to the right, the leading eaters only feet behind. He stopped at the far end, waiting for them to catch up before climbing up the shelving separating the aisle from the next. He hoped, being designed to hold the weight of hundreds of tin cans, it would be strong enough to hold him. But as the shelves rattled under the strain, he would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t feeling a small amount of concern. He’d fallen into a horde of eaters once; he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.

  Reaching the top safely, he crawled back from the reaching hands of the horde and waited for more to follow them into the aisle. He couldn’t help wondering how many of them had browsed these shelves as normal, uninfected people. It was an unpleasant thought.

  As the eaters reached the end of the shelving run and started into the next aisle, Alex dropped to the ground on that side and jogged back towards the entrance, leading the horde towards the front like the pied piper of eaters.

  Back at the front entrance, the slower eaters were still coming in from outside and Alex began to think he’d run out of aisles before they all got in. Seeing him, they changed direction from following the others into the first aisle and tried to walk through the line of trolleys blocking the way through the checkout lanes. That could be a problem. If they stayed there instead of following the others, Micah wouldn’t be able to reach the doors.

  Alex was heading back up the next aisle, the crowd shuffling after him, when things began to go wrong. Eaters appeared at the far end of the aisle. They hadn’t attempted to restrict movement between the aisles in case he or Micah needed to make a quick escape, assuming, or maybe it was more hoping, that the eaters would simply follow each other’s pheromone trails. But they’d also thought the eaters would come in more or less together and by the time he got to the third aisle Micah would be able to lock the doors.

  Funny how life rarely turned out how he expected. And by funny, he meant infuriating.

  As Alex looked back and forth between the eaters following him from the front of the store and those who had gone for the shortcut, he realised they weren’t as predictable as they’d assumed. He could smell the pheromones floating through the store. Unfortunately, he didn’t know if they were “follow me” pheromones, or “get the moron who thought we were too stupid to trap him” pheromones.

  As the eaters closed in on him from both ends of aisle three, he climbed to the top of the next line of shelves along.

  “I’ve got a bit of a problem here,” he called. “Are the doors clear yet?”

  The shelves rattled, the eaters gathering below and pushing against them to get to him.

  “Not yet,” Micah called back. “They’re trying to get through the trolleys instead of going through the open section.”

  Alex stood and walked along the top of the shelves to the front of the store where at least twenty eaters were walking repeatedly into the line of trolleys blocking the way through the checkout lanes. Seeing him, their enthusiasm cranked it up a notch, the ones at the front almost bending double over the tops of the trolleys as they tried to reach him.

  “We need to move the trolleys and let them in,” Alex said. “If I lure all the others to the back of the store, you can...”

  “Wait, when you say we need to move the trolleys, you mean me, don’t you?”

  “Well I can’t get down there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Micah said. “Just get your lot to the back. I’ll deal with it up here.”

  “You’re so brave.”

  “Bite me.”

  Alex made his way back along the top of the shelving units slowly, making sure he kept his balance on the shuddering metal framework and giving all the eaters around him time to follow.

  “I think they’re all up here,” he called out when he reached the back of the store. He kept standing so the maximum number of eaters could see him. A moan behind him drew his attention and he watched as one enterprising eater lurched around the end of the shelving run into the hitherto empty fourth aisle, otherwise known as his escape route. “Could you hurry it up? I’m about to be surrounded back here.”

  From somewhere at the front of the store, metal clattered against metal.

  “You alright?” Alex shouted.

  “Sod it!” Micah’s voice drifted back to him. “Yeah, I’m fine. Bloody bags for life.”

  Alex heard some thuds, then Micah appeared at the far end of the aisle, leaping from checkout to checkout before leaving Alex’s field of view again. Some of the eaters closest to Alex looked in his direction. Alex waved his arms to get their attention.

  “Eyes here, guys. That’s right, keep looking at the handsome one.”

  “You wish,” Micah said. There was some more metallic clattering and a few thuds. The trolleys Alex could see moved away. “It’s clear. Make some noise so they come your way.”

  Alex waved his arms again, shouting. “Food up this way! Come and get it!”

  The eaters by the doors surged into the aisles either side of him. That wasn’t good. He was very close to being trapped. The shelves beneath him trembled as more eaters pushed against them. He thrust his arms out to keep balance. Behind him, more eaters rounded the end of the display.

  “Have you locked the doors yet?” he called. “Because things are getting hairy back here.”

  “Almost got it... Okay. Oh, crap.”

  “What?”

  At the front of the store, Micah appeared again, this time sprinting past on the far side of the checkou
ts. A moment later, a mob of eaters came into view, staggering after him.

  There was a yell.

  “Micah?” Alex shouted. “Micah!”

  Some metallic clanks came from the end of the next run of shelves along, then Micah appeared at the end, climbing to the top and standing. He walked along the shelves until he was parallel to Alex. Some of the eaters between them turned their attention to him

  “I think there were more eaters than we were anticipating,” he said, blowing a strand of hair from his eyes and planting his hands on his hips. “But I think we got them all in here.”

  “That’s nice,” Alex said. He moved his foot away from a particularly tall eater who was trying to grab his ankle. “So now what do I do?”

  They both looked down. Alex was surrounded, standing on a shelf island in a sea of eaters.

  “Can you jump over here?” Micah said.

  Alex tried to judge the distance between them. “That’s, what, seven or eight feet? From a standing start?”

  “Are you saying you can’t do it? Because I think I could.”

  “Yeah, says the man who doesn’t have to prove it and whose life doesn’t depend on him being right.”

  “So you can’t do it?”

  “I didn’t say that. Just give me a second.”

  Alex studied the gap between the shelves he was on and the ones Micah occupied, trying to ignore the eaters filling it. He was certain he could do it. Almost certain.

  “Oh, heck,” he muttered, bracing himself.

  Pushing one foot against the edge of the top shelf, he launched himself across the space.

  It was a good jump.

  He was going to make it.

  An eater caught his foot as he flew by, yanking him out of the air. He crashed into the unit at Micah’s feet, his torso folded over the top and his legs hanging off the edge. Eaters immediately grabbed at him, some trying to bite through the denim of his jeans, the rest trying to pull him down. He cried out as he was dragged backwards.

  Micah dropped to his knees and grabbed beneath his arms. Alex clutched the back of the support unit and kicked at the eaters holding onto him.