But she knew what it was. They all did. They were hurling themselves at the truck. It was obvious. It didn’t need to be said. Ek turned the camera around and sure enough, the streaks of gold on the right were everywhere.
‘Shit,’ Bjork muttered. ‘I’ll handle this.’ He snatched the joystick from Ek and motioned his head towards a second hatch in the ceiling. Ek nodded and moved towards it. With methodical ease, he jumped and pulled down another ladder, climbed it and popped the door that opened into the gun turret above. Bjork panned back around to the left and started firing again and no more than five seconds after the hatch snapped shut above them, the big gun started shooting too. Each shot rippled through the trailer in a shockwave that made Aaro’s teeth chatter together.
The storm of fire raged endlessly from there on out.
The noise, a bloody symphony of death, was split between the two guns, the engine, and the Varas throwing themselves recklessly against the truck.
The trailer jerked upwards as something rolled and crunched underneath them. A shrill screech echoed for a moment before being swallowed in a barrage of fire. Bjork lost his footing and swore loudly, his head clanging audibly against the wall. He pushed the intercom and Sab and Sam’s frantic voices filled the air.
‘What the hell was that?’ Bjork yelled, scrambling back to the joystick.
‘These things are jumping at the truck!’ Sab shouted back, swinging the Rover to the left. The truck lurched and then bounded upwards again as another audible crunch of bones rang from below. ‘If I try and miss them I’ll roll the whole fucking rig! We’ve got to go straight through. I’m not losing ground on Robin. I’m sticking on his ass, lizards or not. Look ahead, tell me what you see,’ she commanded, just a panicked voice in the ether.
The camera swung around to the front and Bjork switched the feed over to the high-def camera, and as he did, the true horror of the situation became apparent.
The streets ahead were lined with cars, abandoned and rusted, but between them, in front of them, behind them, and on them were Varas — stacked up and shouldering against each other. A corridor of jaws and hard-packed muscle, ready to shred whatever came their way.
They hissed and growled and ran alongside the trucks, lashing out sporadically. One hit the cab and clawed at the steel cages on the windows before falling off. Another jumped, snatching at the gun, but slipped down past the windshield and fell underneath, the huge wheels sucking it in like a vortex. The truck jumped again as the beast was crushed beneath them, its cries of pain and anguish only fueling the rage of the others.
‘Tell me we’re close to getting out of this place!?’ Bjork’s teeth were gritted, his voice hoarse. He was firing blindly into the swirling mass of black fur and scales. The bullets seemed to disappear into them, not doing any damage at all. One or two fell but the impact seemed too minimal to be real considering the calibre of their weapons. Their ranks just ate them like they ate everything else.
‘Another quarter mile and we’ll be back in the open— fuck!’ Sabina’s voice erupted in surprise as the Fido smashed into a car ahead and sent it spinning into their path. She tried to swerve but struck it side on. The weight and pace of the truck practically obliterated it, the cow-catcher sending it spearing into a boarded up shop front. The engine sagged and threatened to quit. Sab changed down quickly to accommodate and pumped the accelerator, charging the revs back into the red.
On the monitor, the Fido began to shrink into the distance ahead, the gap quickly growing.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Sab babbled, the engine screaming under the strain as she tried to manhandle some speed back into it. The distance was now more than four or five truck lengths — an eternity in their current situation. The Varas swarmed like an army into the space, forming a barricade, a raging wave of matted and spined bodies. ‘Hold on!’
And then they hit the wall.
She kept the gear low and the revs high, ploughing her way forward with brute force. The cow-catcher ripped through them and gore bounced all across the grill and roof. Ek’s shouts of indignation rang through the hull as he was splattered with blood and guts between the slats in the turret.
It was as if they were moving through water. The bodies writhed in front of them, like a braid of snakes, scrambling to get out of the way, or to attack before being pinned against the truck and smashed out of the way, or sucked under the churning and bloody wheels.
The trailer bounced left and right as the bodies rolled under them, straining against the linkage holding it to the cab. The engine mewled and lost revs under the struggle. Sam beat on the dashboard and willed it on. Horrific threats from Sabina of what she’d do if it cut out all together came through in a solid stream.
It went on and on and on, and then the gunfire ceased.
Bjork staggered backwards and sank to one knee before falling against his bunk. He held his hands in front of them, watching them shake.
‘We’re through,’ Sabina called through the intercom, almost in tears. ‘Back on the highway. Up to forty and climbing. We’re leaving them behind,’ she sighed. ‘Thank God they can’t keep up.’ She sobbed a little, but they could have been tears of joy — it was hard to tell through the mic.
‘Good work guys,’ Sam added, giving a half-hearted thumbs up.
He cut the connection and Ek dropped down from the hatch above, splattered with blood. He landed softly and sat on the bunk, smearing red across his face. He spat some on to the floor and coughed. ‘That was brutal.’
‘Did you see them?’ Bjork said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘They took the bullets like it was nothing. Didn’t even phase them.’
‘I thought they’d run for the hills when the big gun started, but they didn’t flinch,’ Ek added.
‘How are there so many of them?’ Sorina asked. ‘How do they survive up here without anything to eat?’
‘They’re eating each other,’ Aaro muttered.
‘How do you know?’ Sorina asked, surprised he’d even said it.
‘What else is there for them to eat? They must have hunted every species of animal up here into extinction by now. Bears, wolves, deer, cattle, horses, people. You saw what it was like — nothing could survive out there, nothing but them,’ Aaro spat.
No one spoke for a while. They just dwelled on that fresh horror.
The intercom eventually crackled and Sam’s voice came through. ‘I’ve got Berg on the line — he wants to speak to Ek and Bjork. I think everyone needs to hear this though.’ Berg was the gunner on the Fido, a heavyset ex-soldier, just like Ek and Bjork.
There was a high pitched screech as he merged the feeds and then a gruff voice started to speak. ‘I know that was rough, but it’s only going to get worse. I’m not gonna shit you guys, we’ve already churned through a lot more ammo than I’d have hoped. I knew it was going to be heavy but I didn’t know just how heavy. We’re still more than fourteen hours from Murmansk. And there are eight more towns just like Umea to pass through. I don’t know how they are going to be but at this point in time, we have to assume the worst. Skelleftea is next, then Pitea, Lulea, Tornio, Rovaniemi, Kemijärvi, Kandalaksha, and Monchegorsk. And from there on to Murmansk. Our best guess says that Murmansk at least, will be uninhabited by those things.’
‘How can we be sure? What if we get there and the whole place is overrun?’ Ek interjected.
‘We can’t be sure, but after the war ended and the Total Decommission Treaty was signed, Russia dumped more than a hundred and ten nuclear submarines in Kola Bay. By now they are probably partway rotten at least. Satellite images show the radiation readings in that area are too high for sustained life, at least in the immediate vicinity. Nothing can live there. There’s a thirty kilometre exclusion zone around it to stop people going in. No one’s lived there for sixty years, and no one ever will again. So, unless the Varas have got a hard-on for radiation poisoning, we should be ok,’ Berg said semi-confidently.
‘I like the use of should,’ Bj
ork snorted sarcastically.
Berg sighed over the airwaves. ‘Look, I know it’s not what we expected, and if it’s unanimous, we can turn around — head back to Stockholm. But I can tell you this. No one will get paid if we do.’
There was silence. No one spoke out to voice their opinions. After a while, Berg started again. ‘That’s what I thought. We’re more than a quarter of the way there so I just say we stick close to each other, go through at speed, guns up, eyes open, expect the worst and hope for the best. Sound good?’
It didn’t, but it was the best option they had.
In reality, it was the only option they had.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE BEGINNING
2108 AD
Over the last eight kilometres, things were becoming steadily more congested.
For so long it was just empty roads and abandoned cars. The people had disappeared altogether, having fled, or worse. Aaro had visions of coming up behind a fresh horde of the creatures, working their way through the people like a field of crops, but for a while now, the blood spatters had been getting fewer and farther between. When he did eventually catch up with the crowds, nearly fifty miles from the bridge, the people weren’t running, they were walking. Ambling down the road carrying bags and dragging suitcases, layered up with winter clothes and hungry eyes.
Maybe the monsters were full for the day. Maybe a pack hadn’t come through here, yet.
Aaro didn’t know.
He slowed now, from a wrist-locked full throttle, to a low-geared idle. He weaved slowly through the masses as they oozed forward, filling the spaces between the gridlock of cars abandoned on the roadway. There were more military jeeps on the verge, waving the people forward as they moved ever-closer to the makeshift refugee camp. Tens turned into hundreds and then thousands until both lanes were completely full of people. Guys in military fatigues were rolling cars off the roadway.
The afternoon wore on and the pace was slow as people filed one at a time into the camp somewhere in the distance ahead. Aaro dismounted and pushed the bike. It was easier than riding it and he wanted to save what petrol he had left. All he was getting were dirty looks and empty threats from the tired walkers as he weaved through them, clipping elbows with his handlebars. He resigned himself to travelling on foot too, not wanting to get knocked off, or worse, have the thing stolen from him. He took the keys out and buried them in his pocket.
The passage of time was strange and seemingly non-existent.
The scenery didn’t alter, and neither did the pace. It was as though every step was the same one over again and not a new one. It was a constant ambling stride, with an ebbing sea of familiar bodies and faces all around. You’d walk next to someone, and then manoeuvre around a car and then another and then another, and find yourself next to them again with that same disheartened and broken look on their face. It was ever-changing but constantly identical all at the same time, like walking through a field of mirrors.
The sun was low in the sky by the time the gates of the camp finally came into view over the heads of the walkers in front. Aaro’s stomach rumbled with hunger and his body ached. The blood had now soaked right through his bandages and shirt and fell to the ground in sporadic drops.
The day seemed like a dream, like a distant memory.
It was strange to think that it was less than twenty-four hours since that horror had transpired in his home, now wrecked and invaded, desecrated… by them.
But he felt no sadness, only emptiness. It was like tearing off a plaster, he thought. If it was a slow, excruciating pain, feeling every hair rip from the root and every cell pull away from its neighbour, then the pain would have stuck with him. It would have been memorable and lasting, lingering even. But such a quick, snapping upheaval, as it had been — the pain was a flash, and then it was… gone. And that’s just how it felt. Too traumatising to be real, too strange to be reality, like he would just wake up at any moment and it would all be a dream.
There was a vague memory of the trauma, but no pain.
He had the time to dwell on that as he walked. He thought that maybe it was shock, that he hadn’t had time to reflect on what had happened, that it was yet to dawn on him, the harshness of the now. A wave of nausea rolled through his body and he saw Emilie in every face of every person walking. He saw the face of his wife, of his child in hers. Another wave. He blinked and his eyes blurred with tears. He tried to swallow but the lump in his throat wouldn’t let him. He couldn’t breathe. His legs quaked and he stumbled and sagged. The weight of the bike became apparent in his arms and pushed against him. He sidestepped and sank a little, breathing hard. The sea of people parted around him and moved past like a current, knocking him with stray bags and elbows.
He forced a breath into his lungs, trying to get himself right, but it only got worse. His heart started to beat harder, his throat constricting to a pinhole. His chest felt like someone was standing on it and his hands went numb, his fingers stinging with pins and needles.
He took one last, fitful, gulping breath and sank beneath the waves of the crowd, engulfed by it all.
Cries of indignation rattled through from passers-by, telling him to get up, to get moving, but he couldn’t. He wanted to sit down, to lie down and curl up in a ball.
But before he could fall, a body caught him. He felt the warmth of a hand on his face and felt his head turned against a chest, an arm around his shoulders. With his head hung, he couldn’t see, and didn’t want to look up. For a moment at least, it was Emilie, comforting him as she knew how. As only she could.
A tear fell from his cheek, making a spot of darkness on the dusty roadway. A splotch of love in a day of horror. And then she was gone again, the fleeting smiling face inside his eyelids.
‘Hey,’ whispered a young, female voice.
Aaro shuddered, trying to look up, trying to pick his head up as the person who could have been Emilie’s fingers caressed his face.
‘Hey,’ came the voice again. ‘It’s ok,’ she said, running a gentle hand down his spine.
‘No, it’s not,’ Aaro muttered, a second tear joining the first.
‘Yeah, it is,’ she said.
‘You don’t understand,’
‘Trust me, I do,’ the girl said with a smile. Not a fake or forced smile, but a genuine understanding, concerned smile.
Her grasp loosened.
‘We’ve all lost someone,’ she said softly. ‘Some of us have lost everyone. I’m guessing you fall into the second category.’ The voice was sweet, comforting almost.
Aaro only mustered a nod, Emilie’s fingers suddenly there at his jaw again, guiding his face up and down.
She took her hand from his back and supported herself on the ground, moving from a crouched to a seated position. She nestled next to him as he knelt, hands still on the bike. She rested her arms on her knees and didn’t say another word.
‘What are you doing?’ Aaro said after a second.
‘Just sitting,’ she replied.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I saw you kneeling here and — and I know what you’re feeling. We don’t have to go to this “camp”, we don’t have to do anything. We only have to go if we want to. But right now… it’s fine to take a minute.’
Aaro reached down and pushed the kickstand out on the bike, resting it upright. Only now he looked upon her.
She was young, maybe seventeen, at the most. She was slight, delicate, with ashen hair and pale eyes. Her face was angelic almost, sweet, but drawn. She’d been awake for longer than one ever should be, not eaten in a day, and looked as though she’d seen her own share of horror. That much was obvious.
Aaro didn’t need to know who she was, or why she would want to show him any kindness. He was simply grateful for her presence. Some sort of notion that the world wasn’t totally hopeless. And maybe that was what it was for her too — maybe for her, he was a comfort, someone just to be next to for a little while. He rocked backwards and sat to
o, cheeks still wet. She smiled again. She understood. She knew.
‘Won’t someone be looking for you?’ Aaro said before he could stop himself. He regretted it immediately. He already knew the answer.
‘No.’
There wasn’t anyone to look for her.
‘You’re alone?’ Aaro asked.
‘No.’
‘Do you need help looking for them?’
‘No.’ She half smiled.
‘Why not?’ he asked, thinking that if there was anyone left out there for him to find, he would want to do it.
‘Because the people I have left are all around me. Him, her, them.’ She nodded at random walking shapes around them. ‘And you.’ She looked at Aaro now. ‘None of us are alone. We’ve lost people, but this isn’t about family any more, it’s about survival. It’s them and it’s us. Everything else is a blur. Enemies become friends, strangers become brothers and sisters. This is it from now on.’ She spoke with an empty wisdom. But Aaro understood what she meant.
‘My father was someone who believed in a lot of things, mostly the power of people, of the goodness in people. Hope survives so long as the people who carry it do. It’s been two days since he died, one since my mother. My sister last night, my brother this morning. It’s sad, sure. I’d be as bad as those monsters if I didn’t think so, but death isn’t finite. It’s not. You know it’s not. What was her name?’
‘Emilie,’ Aaro croaked. He knew what she meant, who was he crying for. Who those tears in the dirt had been shed for.
‘Is Emilie gone?’ she asked plainly, but with a familiar empathy and tact.
‘Yes,’ Aaro mumbled. ‘No. I don’t know.’
‘You still see her? You still feel her with you? You can remember the way that she used to do things? The little things that only you knew about her? They still remain in our memories, in our hearts. And while they do, they will never truly be gone. How did she die?’
‘One of those things—’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ She smiled and Aaro felt warmer.
The Veil Page 18
