Alex kept an eye on the eaters, but so far none of them were paying attention to anything other than swaying and moaning. Hopefully, that was about to change.
After a nod from Micah to indicate he was ready, Alex thumped the side of the truck several times. The startled sheep began to scuffle around in the truck. There were a few baas.
Alex and Micah moved away from the truck to where they could watch the eaters without being seen, and waited. A few had lifted their heads and were staring at the truck. As luck would have it, at that moment the tarpaulin dislodged on one side, drifting down over the pickup’s woolly passengers.
This did not make the sheep happy.
A flurry of bleating and the melee of hooves on metal attracted more attention from the eaters. All those within sight had raised their heads. A few started to shuffle in the truck’s direction.
“I think we should go,” Micah said.
“I think you’re right.”
They made their way through the undergrowth towards a spot opposite where they intended to scale the fence. Alex glanced back to see more eaters breaking from the horde to lurch towards the commotion in the pickup.
Looking back where he was going, he almost fell over Micah who was bending down, muttering in irritation.
“What are you doing?” Alex hissed.
“I’m caught on something.” He tugged a branch free of his jeans. “When this is over, I am never going into a forest again.”
Behind them, the first eaters reached the truck. The sheep, still covered by the tarpaulin and freaked by the sound of moaning, were moving to the front end of the truck bed. Even to Alex it looked like there could have been people in there, huddling away from the eaters.
The eaters reached over the tailgate.
“Hurry up, the horde should be moving any second.”
Finally freeing himself, Micah continued onwards. The symphony of cracking twigs and crunching leaves made Alex wince, but the eater’s moaning and the baaing of the sheep was so loud the eaters didn’t seem to notice.
As they reached the place to wait, the majority of the eaters were still standing by the fence and Alex began to think that maybe their plan hadn’t worked. But then the sweet acid smell of pheromones reached him. En masse, the horde moved.
“Get ready,” Micah said.
“I was born ready.” Alex grinned. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
Even though Micah was facing away from him, Alex could feel his eye roll.
The section of fence across from them was clearing as more of the horde headed for the truck. Eaters were surrounding it now, trying to get to the panicked sheep as the press of bodies rocked the pickup. Alex felt bad for the animals, unpleasant as his dealings with them had been.
“It’s almost clear,” Micah hissed.
Dragging his gaze back to the fence, Alex saw there were just a handful of eaters left, every one of them moving as fast as they could to join their brothers and sisters.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Alex and Micah walked from the cover of the trees. They kept their gait uneven, matching the movement of the eaters. As always happened around an eater horde, Alex had to fight an intense urge to run, but he knew to do so would mean attracting attention. They smelled enough like sheep to fool the eaters from a distance. As long as they didn’t panic, they’d be fine.
A few eaters passed them, intent on joining the excitement at the truck. None of them even looked at Micah and Alex. Alex considered the possibility that even the eaters were finding their smell offensive.
He looked towards the pickup. As he watched, one of the eaters managed to snag a corner of the tarpaulin and it slid from the backs of the sheep.
The sheep stared at the eaters. The eaters stared back.
Two sheep immediately charged at the end of the truck, landing in the horde in a tangle of arms, legs and hooves before barrelling through a forest of legs to freedom and taking off into the trees.
Their natural flocking instinct prompted several more to follow. One was caught by an eater which tried to take a bite from it, getting a mouthful of grubby wool in return. The sheep squirmed from its grip, kicked it in the face, and galloped after its friends.
As the final two sheep cowered in the truck bed, Alex saw the surrounding eaters losing interest. Their moans quietened and one by one they turned away. He breathed a sigh of relief, although only a shallow one because he and Micah really did smell exceptionally bad. He would have felt terrible if he’d had to watch a sheep being torn to shreds. Eaters had no taste for anything that wasn’t human, but in the midst of a hunger frenzy they could make a mistake. As the horde broke up, the two sheep leaped from the truck and hurtled into the forest, leaving behind an empty pickup and a lot of disappointed eaters.
Reaching the ten foot high fence, Alex gave Micah a boost and he vaulted over the top, landing in a crouch on the other side. Alex took a couple of steps back, ran, and jumped, catching hold of the top and propelling himself over.
The rapid movement caused his fly-attracting odour to waft in his face and he fought back a gag as he hit the ground.
Fifty feet away, a door in the main Omnav building banged open against the wall beside it.
The nearest cover was thirty feet away, one of the canvas topped military trucks. Micah took off towards it, Alex close behind.
At the door, a tall man in a black suit emerged, followed by another. Alex skidded around the end of the truck and stopped, trying not to pant. He peered through a narrow gap between vehicles.
“What on earth is going on with them?” the older of the two men said. He slid a pair of sunglasses onto his ruggedly ugly face and pointed at the horde with an automatic rifle.
His companion squinted at the milling eaters, lifting one hand to shade his eyes. His pristine white shirt stretched across one huge pectoral.
“Better get the bug gun,” tall, dark and ugly said.
“Should we tell Boot?”
The older man drew in a breath between his teeth. “We don’t want to bother him with nothing. The weirdo freaks probably just saw a deer or something.”
The younger man disappeared back into the building.
Micah tapped Alex’s shoulder to get his attention, then pointed between them and away from the man. Alex shook his head, pointing his index and middle fingers at his eyes then towards the man. Micah shook his head hard, pointing at them both, then drawing one finger across his throat, crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out. Alex pointed at himself and then Micah then at the truck they were hiding behind. Micah frowned slightly and looked up at the truck.
The sound of footsteps cut the argument short and Alex peered carefully around the side of the truck again. The overly buff younger man had returned, carrying what looked like a mini rocket launcher. He fed a blue cartridge into the back end and pointed it into the air above the eaters. There was a muffled pop and a whoosh and the cartridge arced into the air. At the pinnacle of its trajectory, it detonated with a small bang. After a few seconds the aimlessly wandering eaters stopped and lifted their heads.
“Think one’s enough?” the younger man said.
“Better give it another one, just in case.”
He loaded up another cartridge. “How much of this stuff is there?”
The older man looked at him sharply. “You know that’s not the sort of question we need to be asking.”
“I just don’t want to use too much and run out. Those things give me the creeps.” Despite his casual reply, Alex didn’t miss the sudden tension in the younger man’s demeanour.
“You worry about keeping this place secure. The higher ups will worry about the rest. Besides, Boot’s got those new doctors working now.”
The younger man shrugged and launched the second cartridge into the air in a different direction, closer to where Micah and Alex were hiding.
Alex moved back from the edge of the truck. “New doctors”. It had to be Hannah and the others. They w
ere here. Knowing for sure that Hannah was alive extinguished the aching fear he’d been harbouring ever since they found Jim’s body. The discovery made him feel almost physically lighter as he replaced the anxiety with a new determination. They were going to succeed. There was no way they couldn’t.
The eaters were already shuffling back to the fence when the second cartridge disintegrated in a tiny midair explosion. Alex and Micah watched as the gaps in the line of eaters filled in. Even though they were clearly visible from the fence, none of the horde even looked in their direction. What was in that stuff?
And then it hit Alex.
He clamped his hand over his nose and looked at Micah, panicked. Micah’s eyes widened and he shook his head vehemently. Alex’s eyes were starting to water. He looked around frantically for something that wasn’t covered in sheep dung. When he found nothing, he pressed both hands over his nose and mouth, unable to hold it back any longer, and sneezed twice.
“Did you hear something?” It was the grizzled older man’s voice.
Alex and Micah froze.
“What?”
“I don’t know, just a sound.”
“Chester, we’re surrounded by moaning eaters. Be more specific.”
A few moments of silence passed before Chester spoke again. “I think we should do a quick sweep of the grounds.”
“Whatever. It’s not like we have anything else to do.”
“You know, Brian, I’m sure if you asked Boot nicely, he’d send you to help at one of the labs.”
“No, thank you. I’m fine where I am.”
Micah jabbed his finger at the truck they were hiding behind. Alex nodded, rubbing his nose to stop the third sneeze that was threatening. They climbed into the back of the canvas topped truck as quietly as they could. Ten seconds later, they heard footsteps approach. Canvas rustled on one of the other trucks.
“What’s that smell?” Brian said.
Alex held his breath.
“Probably a farm somewhere around.”
“It’s gross.”
“That’s part of the reason I didn’t become a farmer like my dad,” Chester said. “Well, that and the getting up before the sun every morning.”
The footsteps moved again.
“So, what do you think Boot’s planning once these doctors do whatever he wants them to do?” Brian said, his voice sounding far too close for comfort.
“Don’t know, don’t want to know,” Chester replied. “And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t want to know either.”
More footsteps, sounding closer. A hand slapped the side of their truck.
“But aren’t you worried about your family?”
“Of course I’m bloody worried about my family,” Chester hissed. “That’s why I didn’t leave to begin with, because I know how long Boot’s reach is. But if I play my cards right, I’ll come out of this on top. Stop asking questions and do what you’re told and maybe you will too.” The hand slapped the truck again. “There’s nothing here. We’ll do a quick check round the back and get back inside. These damn eaters moaning are doing my head in.”
The footsteps retreated and finally died away. Alex breathed out.
They waited for ten minutes before Alex peered through the gap in the canvas at the back of the truck. Brian and Chester were gone.
“I assume by Boot they mean that Omnav head honcho Lieutenant Dent mentioned,” Micah said as they climbed from the back of the truck. “They sounded scared of him.”
Alex dropped to the ground and rubbed his nose again, sniffing. “If those two giants are afraid of him, he’s probably someone we really want to avoid. But at least we know they did bring Hannah and the others here. Let’s see what we can find.”
Bypassing the huge brick building that Alex assumed was a vehicle maintenance garage, they headed for the first of the three small, single storey buildings set within the landscaped grounds behind the main building. Unlike everywhere else they’d been in their travels, the grass was perfectly mowed.
The door to the first building was unlocked, which Alex regarded as a promising sign security wasn’t tight. Inside, they found four rooms, a huge generator humming away in one, more machinery and janitorial supplies in the others. Concerned about being discovered before they’d even started, they didn’t hang around.
The next building along was set back from the others. The back had a pair of wide, locked doors, next to which was what looked like a heavy duty ventilation system with a tall, narrow chimney reaching into the sky. The whole setup set alarm bells ringing for Alex.
“Let’s go round the front,” he said.
Tall hedges shielded the front of the building from those surrounding it. The walls were windowless.
Alex drew his gun. “Ready?” he mouthed.
Micah nodded, his own pistol in his hand.
Alex grasped the handle and yanked the door open. The corridor inside was empty. He listened for a few seconds then walked inside. Once Micah had closed the door, it was impossible for normal eyes to see in the windowless building. Alex felt him grip his shoulder. Even though it was unlikely there was anyone here in the dark, neither of them spoke.
A couple of doors to either side of the entrance were open and led into storage rooms. Going straight past, Alex went to a set of double doors ahead. When he pulled one open, the pungent hot air that spilled out made him gag. Micah choked behind him.
Clamping one hand over his nose did nothing to stop the toxic odour from entering his lungs. It was enough to overpower even the stench of sheep they carried with them. He switched to breathing through his mouth, but it barely helped.
“We need to get out,” he wheezed.
“Please,” Micah said between coughs.
They retreated back outside and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath.
“What was that?” Micah said, raising his face to the sky to draw in more of the clear air.
Alex had seen enough of the inside of the large room to answer him. The chunky metal doors set in the wall at the far side of the room with their small, smoke blackened windows. The flat metal trolleys lined up against the wall. The ceramic tiled, ash dulled floor.
The thick stench of burning flesh.
“Crematorium.”
“Maybe they’re experimenting on animals and it’s for the bodies,” Micah said.
“Do you really believe that?”
He didn’t reply.
Alex looked at the concrete path running from the front door of the crematorium to the back of the next building along. “I’m almost afraid to find out what it is for.”
Again, the door into the building was unsecured and there was no-one inside. As they crept along the corridor they entered, Alex couldn’t help wondering where everyone was. The Omnav complex was huge. Hundreds of people should have worked here. And as far as the roaming eaters were concerned, he would have thought inside Omnav was the safest place to be. If the outbreak had been an accident, wouldn’t the place be filled with people feverishly working to stop it before it brought down the entire country? And what was with the eaters guarding the place?
Alex was beginning to think that if Sarcester had been the frying pan, Omnav was looking disturbingly like the fire.
The sign outside the first room they came to said, ‘EXAM 1’, a sign beside the door opposite, ‘EXAM 2’. They chose Exam 1. Inside, everything became clear.
Steel worktops and sinks; surgical saws and instruments lined up on metal trays; a shiny steel table in the centre of the room with a drainage channel around the outside edge and a detachable tap over the small sink at the head. Alex didn’t need to be a medical professional to know what the room was for.
Micah was turning slowly, looking around him. “What I don’t understand is if they’re doing all this here, why did they have the secret lab in Sarcester?”
“This is out of the way,” Alex replied. “Maybe they couldn’t get a supply of eaters out here.”
“But t
hat’s an autopsy table. If it isn’t for eaters, who are they autopsying?”
It was a good question. One Alex wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to.
Exam 2 was the same as its twin across the corridor so they continued to the only other two rooms in the building. The plaque outside the one on their left read, ‘OFFICE’. The one on the right was less benign. ‘MORGUE’. They exchanged a grim look and walked in.
Alex had been in the Sarcester Hospital morgue once, when he’d taken in the victim of a stabbing they’d reached too late while his partner, Rodney Cutter, chased down the murderer. So he knew vaguely what to expect. But the sight of the rows of refrigerated drawers lining the walls still made him shiver, and not because of the unnatural chill of the air in the room.
Micah walked straight to the nearest drawer and pulled it open. Seeing what was inside, his shoulders tensed. “I was hoping it would be empty.”
It was a woman, thirty-something, attractive. Other than the greyish tinge to her dark skin, she could have been sleeping. Her blue skirt suit was neat and unmarked and she had no wounds that Alex could see. She was simply dead.
He stepped up to the body and touched his fingertips to her eyelids. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to know. Gently, he pushed her eyelids open. Her colourless eyes stared at the ceiling. Shuddering, he closed them again.
“She was either infected or a Survivor,” he said.
Micah was crouched by the drawer beneath her. “Not this one.”
Alex closed the woman’s drawer and looked down at the brown eyes of the man Micah was checking. He was also free of any obvious causes of death.
“How did they die?” he murmured to himself.
“Check the other drawers,” Micah said, standing.
They spent the next few minutes pulling out every drawer in the room. In all, they found thirty-seven bodies. Men and women, ranging in age from twenties up to fifties, almost all dressed for a day at the office, none with any signs of what killed them. The majority had white irises, but fourteen of them didn’t.
Twenty-Five Percent (Book 2): Downfall Page 18
