Dead Frost - 02 (10 page)

Across the room,
pushed up against the wall, sat a vending-machine. Even from where
she stood she could name most of the brands of crisps and chocolate.
Her face lit up at her discovery.

Would it be
alarmed?

She didn't know,
but she would figure out how to get at the food later.

For now, though,
she was content with what she had; it was a damn sight better than
the house. She had no reason to return there, not now. The few
items which she had left behind were replaceable and unworthy of a
trip back in the wrong direction.

She began to
make herself at home in the museum.

Thirteen

Kyle was not happy
about the situation, not at all. Being ordered around by an
ex-captain was one thing, but being forced into the helicopter with a
gun to his head, well, that was just downright rude.

'There's no need
for that,' he said, seating himself in the cockpit. 'I said I was
pissed off; I didn't say I wouldn't do it.'

'Hey, I've got an
idea,' Moon said, tapping the barrel of the Walther against the
pilot's head. 'How 'bout you shut up and get this fucking thing in
the air?'

Flyboy swallowed.
There was something a little disconcerting about having a pistol held
to your head, and it was all new to him. 'We'll be in the air in a
jiffy,' he said, his throat suddenly blocked with bile.

A voice came from
behind. Flyboy recognised Victor Lord's throaty rasp almost
immediately.

'Is he giving you
shit?' Victor asked.

'Nothing I can't
handle,' Moon replied, climbing into the helicopter. 'For somebody
with a gun to his head, he sure has a lot to say.'

'No I don't,'
Flyboy interjected. 'In
fact
, I was just trying to figure out
what gun it was. I'm a huge fan of gu
—
'

'Just get this
bitch in the air,' Victor snapped. 'And if you try anything stupid,
it'll be the last thing you do.'

It'll be the
last thing we all do
, Flyboy thought. Since he was the only
pilot aboard, he was kind of irreplaceable, which gave him the
smallest sense of security. Although, he could still fly the chopper
with broken kneecaps, which was something worth thinking about when
it came to opening his big mouth.

He took the
helicopter up. The three men in the back – Victor Lord and his
minions, Moon and Randall – were mumbling amongst themselves.
Flyboy couldn't hear a damned word they were saying, which he thought
was probably a good thing. The less he knew, the better.

What he did know,
though, was that this was not a rescue mission. Shane had pissed the
captain off royally by taking the Jeep. The best possible outcome of
this little expedition was...well, he didn't want to think about it.

Had he had any
options? He didn't think so. When a man the size of David Moon
holds a gun against your head, the best thing to do is comply. Sure,
he head given a pointless diatribe in an attempt to stall the
inevitable, but that was about as far as he was willing to go.
Hopefully his recalcitrance had bought Shane and his group a few
extra minutes.

For what it was
worth.

He lowered the
chopper down to about a hundred feet. There were no powerlines in
the vicinity, nothing he could snag on at that particular height.
They were safe, for now. Beneath them, the tyre-tracks on the road
were still visible. Leading north, to I20. He knew where they were
headed, but the longer he kept that nugget of information to himself,
the better.

A group of lurkers
– around twelve of them, in total – were shambling
through the section of forest beneath them. They looked lost, which
was probably the case.

'Motherfuckers!'
Moon snapped, before beginning to fire at them with his pistol.

Victor grimaced,
contorting his face to show how annoying the gunshots were. 'Do you
have to?' he sighed. 'You're hardly making a difference.'

As if in response,
one of the creatures collapsed through the trees. Moon punched the
air with his fist.

'Oh, well, done,'
Victor added with more than a hint of sarcasm. 'You got one. Just
six and half million left to go.'

Moon holstered his
weapon and slumped against the helicopter-door. The fun had been
removed from his little game.

As they past over a
playground, a group of infected children were lurching around,
bouncing into the swings and roundabouts. Some of them still wore
the school-uniform that they had been attacked in; others were naked
and blue from the freezing snow.

Moon took out his
pistol and lined it up with on of the children. He was just about to
fire when Victor kicked him, hard as hell, in the shin.

'It's a fucking
kid,' Victor said, admonishingly. 'Would you do that if it was one
of your own?'

Moon rubbed at the
spot on his shin where Victor's foot had connected. 'Fucking
hell
,
Captain!' he said, sucking air through his teeth. 'It was just a
lurker
.'

Victor leant
forward so that his face was barely an inch away from Moon's.
'You're right,' he said. 'But you never had kids of your own, did
you? I did. Three of 'em. All grown up, now. In fact, probably
all
dead
. You shoot them for no reason, you
prick
,
then you're just as bad as they are. Lurkers, or not, the next
bullet you waste had better be on yourself. Understand?'

Moon thought
silently for a few seconds before nodding. He hadn't considered the
severe lack of ammunition; Victor was right about conserving what he
had left.

'Sir, the tracks
seem to be fading,' Randall said, pointing to the road beneath.

Victor moved
through the cabin to get a better look. When he saw that Randall was
right, he said, 'I don't think we're gonna have too much of a problem
finding them. We know which direction they're travelling, and it's
not as if there are going to be any other moving vehicles on the
road.' He returned to his seat. 'No, I really don;t think the
snow's gonna be an issue.'

Although, thinking
about it, he wasn't so sure.

FOURTEEN

As far as rest-stops
went, this one was the lowest of the low. It was basically a brick
block, in the middle of nowhere. Shane was undecided whether it had
been intended as a toilet, or whether it had just turned out to be
one because, well, it was so unsightly and godforsaken that it
couldn't be utilised as anything else.

They decided to go
in shifts; it seemed like the best way to work it. If something
should happen – if a horde should appear from nowhere, which
was something that had started to happen a lot lately – then
the person in the driver's seat could sound the horn or move to
safety.

As ideas went, it
was the best they could come up with.

Marla went first.
Not only was she bursting for a piss, but she had a few “feminine
issues” which needed taking care of, although she didn't deem
this information worthy for broadcast to the rest of the group.

The inside of the
toilet-block made the outside look like The White House. There were
shards of porcelain scattered across the ground, the aftermath of one
of the toilets getting a kicking, and an inch of dirty water coated
the ground, complete with floating cigarette-butts and tampons.

Marla sloshed
through the room and barricaded herself into cubicle three. After
wiping the seat several times with toilet-roll – which she was
surprised to find even existed in such a cesspit – she pulled
her jeans down halfway and sat.

The relief that
came was unsurprisingly welcome, and she sighed and closed her eyes,
a smile curled the corner of her mouth.

The water began to
soak through her boots; she could feel the cold creeping along her
toes and shuddered at the thought.

What she would have
given for a shower; a nice, hot soapy scrub with coconut conditioner.
She imagined the water, warm and creamy, coating her body, dripping
down and leaving a trail of warmth behind it. It was heaven –
at least, it would have been if she wasn't sat on a dirty toilet in
the middle of nowhere with ice-water sending chills through her
entire body.

She opened her eyes
and tried to forget the fact that a hot shower was currently as
likely as a lasting relationship; the apocalypse had ruined quite a
lot of peoples' days.

She finished up and
reached across for the toilet-roll.

It was then that
she saw it, and her heart jumped up into her throat.

Staring at her
through a tiny hole in the cubicle-wall was a bloodshot eye. She
almost fell of the toilet and into the freezing water beneath.

The eye vanished,
but that was not the end of it. The possessor of the eye appeared on
the floor. It – she – was trying to push herself through
the space between the cubicle and the floor. It splashed around,
growling and snapping at Marla's feet. The black ooze that fell out
of its mouth dripped into the water and diluted into a murky grey.

Marla screamed,
hoping that they would hear her in the Snatch. She slipped off the
seat and pushed herself as far away from the hellish creature as
possible. It was difficult manoeuvre with her jeans halfway down
around her knees, and she found herself on the floor of the cubicle,
whimpering, kicking in a frenzy at the lurker opposite.

The creature had
obviously been there the whole time; if it had crept in after Marla,
the guys in the Jeep would have sounded the horn.

How long? Was it
waiting, just sitting in hiding, hoping for its food to come to her?

Marla snapped out
her left leg, kicking the creature in the face so hard that its nose
ruptured, spraying black goo in all directions. The nasal-bone was
jutting out of the creature's face, now, and the visible cartilage
made Marla want to upchuck right there.

It grabbed onto
Marla's kicking-leg and dragged itself forward another couple of
inches. Marla cried out, hoping –
please God, fucking help
– that her rescuers would appear just in time, like they always
did in the movies.

The lurker was at
the halfway point; its upper-torso was all the way through, grasping
onto Marla's flailing legs, trying to pull them towards its snapping
mouth.

'Fucking biiitch!'
Marla screamed, driving a knee into the creature's face. The nose,
which had already shattered, completely detached, leaving only a
gaping hole where it had been. Thick, black sludge pumped from the
hole. The creature didn't notice – or care, for that matter –
and swung its arm over Marla's leg. It managed to latch onto her
jeans, which were still hanging around her ass, and pulled her
closer.

Marla knew that if
she didn't do something, and fast, she would be infected. All it
took was a scratch, or a single bite, and it was bye-bye old Marla,
hello cannibal-girl...

She punched out
with both fists and managed to knock the lurker's head to the side
where it couldn't snap at her bare flesh. It gave her enough time to
grab for the only available weapon.

She pushed with her
feet, actually using the lurker's face to get to where she needed to
be. Reaching across, she lifted the cistern-lid from the back of the
toilet. It felt good in her hands, heavy, dangerous.

Slipping in the
water lapping around her ankles, she landed back down on the
cubicle-floor with a painful thud. Her tailbone would be sore later
on – if there
was
a later on.

The creature
screeched, its face twisted into something more horrific than before.
Lashing out with its clawed hand, it realised that the opportunity
to infect the human, or feed from it, was fast fading. With one
final, almighty lunge, it propelled itself forward. Its entire body
was in the cubicle, now, with Marla, who was wondering just how hard
it could be to take a piss in peace.

Marla lifted the
porcelain weight high above her head and screamed, louder than the
lurker, louder even than she had anticipated. She brought it down,
caving the creature's skull in with the first impact. One eye fell
from its socket and was now floating atop the murky ice-water.

Marla lifted the
cistern-lid once more. She slammed it down, this time in silence.
The meaty squelch which came as the block made contact, though,
shattered the silence.