Infection Z (Book 2) (17 page)

“
P
ut
the key back in the drawer and step towards me. Slowly.”

Hayden’s heart pounded the second he laid eyes on Callum. His thin hair and his grey suit were completely dry, which meant he had to have been inside all along. His steady hands pointed the pistol right at Hayden’s chest as he stood behind Callum’s desk. The wind blew specks of rain and gusts of cold air in through the open bay window. The sounds of gunshots and shouting rang out from the battle with the zombies outside.

“Don’t make this more painful for you than it has to be,” Callum said. He raised the gun even higher. “Put the key back in the drawer or I swear I’ll shoot you right here. And I don’t want to shoot you all over my desk. It’s top drawer mahogany. Nobody wants to ruin top drawer mahogany.”

The way Callum spoke was so cold, and yet it didn’t surprise Hayden. Not after the doodling he’d seen in Callum’s “book.” “See your recording of events is going well,” Hayden said, as he crouched down to place the key back into the drawer.

Or at least, to find something. Anything he could use.

Callum’s stone face didn’t even twitch. “There are different kinds of artists in the world. Word artists, visual artists, musical artists. I tried my hand at writing. Wasn’t for me. Did you like the drawings?”

Hayden tasted sick in the back of his throat as he remembered the black ink scribbling of women being torn apart by the disproportionate erect penises of knife-wielding men. “Acquired taste, I think.”

Callum’s smile twitched at this. He kept on pointing the gun. “Step over here, Hayden. Drop the key right there. Come from behind my desk. I don’t want to have to clean this place up again.”

Hayden kept hold of the key, mid-crouch. He knew what would happen if he tried to search one of the other drawers. Callum would shoot him there and then. He’d clocked on to Hayden’s plan. Hayden was taking far too long.

He needed something. Anything.

“Not content with a dozen murders for the day?”

“What happened to your sister was regrettable,” Callum said, and there was a look on his face like he was genuinely remorseful. “It’s our role here to protect our women. But she was proving problematic. Don’t you see that? And, now here you are and conveniently, here a mass of zombies are. I’m assuming your selfishness had something to do with them?”

Hayden dropped the key into the top drawer. It dropped onto the photograph of Callum and his daughter. He wanted to reach in there, grab it, but he was cornered. It was no use.

“Step out here and get on your knees in front of Jared,” Callum said. Hayden assumed the poor mutilated man on the office floor had to be Jared. “I’ll make it quick if you don’t put up a fight.”

But Hayden couldn’t move. He couldn’t step towards Callum. If he stepped towards Callum, he’d be signing his own death warrant. Signing his death warrant for the man who’d sanctioned the murder of his sister.

No. He couldn’t give up. He had to find Sarah. Help her.

And he had to make these bastards pay for what they’d done to Clarice.

“Have you ever lost someone right in front of your own eyes?” Hayden asked. He felt his throat swelling up. The sounds of Clarice’s wheezing and gurgling through her sliced windpipe scratched at the corners of his sanity, but he couldn’t let those thoughts in, not now, not ever.

He saw Callum’s eyes cloud over. Rain battered against the wide open window that overlooked the dark premises of the night-drenched Riversford Industrial Estate. “I have, as a matter of fact. Lost my wife in a skiing accident. Held her hand while she was in a coma for days, weeks. Felt the life slip out of her body when the doctors finally decided enough was enough.

“I was catatonic at first, of course. I was frustrated. Frustrated with the system for giving up on her. Furious with the people who’d allowed her to die. Annoyed with myself, in a way, for even allowing her to go on a skiing holiday with her friends. But now I look back … I think putting her to rest was the right decision. Because waking up from a state like the one she was in would’ve been cruel. And no beauty thrives in the cruellest of worlds.”

Hayden noticed the complete glassiness to Callum’s eyes.

The gun was still pointed at him, but there was a stillness. Like somebody had hit the pause button on life and frozen the two men’s differences in time.

A stillness that Hayden had to exploit.

He ducked his head and yanked open one of the drawers and he heard the reactionary blast from Callum’s gun.

Heard the large window smash open, felt the gust of wind and rain work its way inside.

“Get the hell from behind that desk and stand up like a man,” Callum said. There was panic in his voice now. Footsteps pounded against the tiles. Hayden knew he didn’t have long. He knew he couldn’t just dance around the desk and hope Callum would avoid him like a confused dog.

He looked at the edge of the cracked window, gunshots flickering outside.

Saw a sharp shard of glass sticking up loosely from the bottom corner. Large enough to stick through Callum’s throat, large enough to finish him.

Footsteps getting closer.

He had to do something.

He held his breath and threw himself at the shard of glass, wrapped his fingers around it and felt the sharpness cut through his skin as he tried to yank it free.

And then he felt his face hit the floor.

Felt Callum grabbing the side of his body and twisting him over.

He pinned Hayden down. Crouched onto him and pinned him down. There was a manic look to his eyes. Manic. Bloodshot. The cool control of before was gone, replaced by a predator of a man.

He started to move the gun around to point at Hayden. “I said I’d make it quick, but now I’m not so sure. You ruined my damned window. Do you realise how much I liked standing and looking out of that window?”

Hayden stretched his right hand out to the drawer. Felt the metal of the handle tap against the tips of his fingers. Just had to stretch a little further. Just a little further …

Callum brought the gun to Hayden’s forehead and pressed so hard into it that it felt his skull was going to crack. “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy this like I would’ve enjoyed doing it to your sister.” Hayden could feel a bulge in Callum’s trousers, saw him salivating at the corners of his mouth. “I’m going to—”

The next couple of seconds were a blur.

Hayden got a grip on the metal handle of the drawer.

He pulled the heavy wood drawer out of place and smacked it into the side of Callum’s head.

And then a blast crashed through his skull and he swore he’d been shot as his ears rang, like the eardrums had been ripped open, but then he realised he couldn’t have been shot because he was thinking these thoughts.

Callum fell to Hayden’s left.

Hayden swung himself onto him, grabbed the gun, which Callum fired aimlessly and blasted at the ceiling.

Callum wasn’t letting go. He wouldn’t stop holding the gun.

So Hayden wrapped his teeth around Callum’s wrist until he pierced the flesh and the muscle while Callum screamed and kicked and whimpered in agony.

And then the gun came loose.

Hayden grabbed the gun as it fell from Callum’s hand and pointed it at Callum. He stepped away so Callum couldn’t take a swing of it. Backed off as blood dripped down Callum’s head from the impact of the wooden drawer. “On your feet,” Hayden said.

Callum shook his head. “I—I won’t—you don’t—”

Hayden pointed at Callum’s right hand and fired.

Clean shot. Slammed into his fingers and took four of them off.

Callum whined in agony and stared at his fingers in shock. He was so pale, he looked like he was going to puke.

“Now get the fuck up or I’ll make this as slow and as painful as possible,” Hayden said.

Callum shook his head. “I … you fuck. You don’t question me. You don’t—”

Hayden fired another round into Callum’s forearm—the opposite to the one he’d chewed.

Callum screamed again as blood splattered out of it.

“Now get on your feet. I mean it.”

Callum shook as he struggled to stand. “I … What happened to your sister. I’m sorry. I truly am, if that’s what you want to hear.”

“Step back to the window.”

Callum looked nervously over his shoulder. The open mouth of the massive window he’d cracked with his own shot stared back at him, waited to swallow him up. “Please,” he said. “You’ve … you’ve proven me wrong. You’re a good soldier. A good fighter. We could do with—”

“Back up to the window and I’ll think about letting you live.”

Callum stood still. Tears dripped down his pale cheeks as blood dribbled from his gunshot wounds. His jaw shook, and he looked a fraction of the calm, cool man Hayden had first met when he’d reached this place. “My daughter. I still have a daughter out there. She’s—”

“Back up to the window and I’ll let you live.”

Callum’s eyebrows narrowed. “I … I …”

“Just do it.”

Callum hesitated and then shuffled back a couple of steps. The wind from the open window brought in an icy gust of rain, drenching Callum as he stood helplessly at the edge.

He looked Hayden right in the eyes. “Show mercy. Please. You don’t want to make the—the mistakes I’ve made. You don’t want to live with that on your conscience.”

Hayden lowered the gun. He started to turn. “I’ll show mercy,” he said.

And then he turned back around and fired two bullets in each of Callum’s kneecaps.

“Don’t slip.”

But Callum did slip.

He fell backwards as the bullets smashed through his kneecaps.

He struggled and scrambled to grab the cracked edges of the windows but only sliced his hands in the process.

“Please!” he shouted, as he tumbled back. “Plea …”

His final “please” was drowned out by a scream.

He fell out of the window.

Disappeared into the night.

Hayden waited until he heard the cracking of bones before moving.

When he did, he walked back to the drawer, grabbed the key, and walked away.

Next stop: Sarah.

H
ayden stepped
outside the CityFast entrance to the sound of gunshots and gasping.

He was dressed in the green uniform the rest of Callum’s men wore. He’d found a spare on his way down. The hangar was so empty it was alarming, and it reminded Hayden that for all the apparent organisation of the place, a zombie attack still had the capability to upset all order.

It was like an ant’s nest. The queen had been butchered, and the rest of the little ants were running round in a frenzy.

Now he just had to rescue Sarah and the other tied-up women from the centre of the nest before the boiling water that was the zombies perished them all.

He walked slowly and kept himself low as he moved across the grounds. To his left, he could hear the gates squeaking as the mass of zombies he’d led here pressed up to them. It was dark, but Hayden could see an indentation forming in the metal—a sure sign that the gate wasn’t going to hold forever. Standing at the other side were at least six men, all firing at the zombies. But firing at them was doing nothing. More zombies were just taking the places of the ones who’d been executed. It was like re-spawned enemies in video games. No matter what you did, no matter how many you killed, they just kept on coming.

He held the gun in one hand and the key in the other. He moved as fast as he could across the rain-soaked concrete, the water covering the top of the brown Timberlands that were definitely a size too small for him. He’d never been fond of the darkness since the outbreak, but right now it felt like the darkness was his friend. The darkness was a tool he had to use to get into the chamber where the women were being kept, get them out of here and then flee—flee with all of them.

How he was going to get them free, he wasn’t sure yet. But it was one decision at a time. Look too far ahead at the mountain you have to climb, you risk stepping on a landmine right in front of you.

He could taste the metallic tang of blood as he reached the middle of the yard, turned his attention to the rusty door that the chamber was through. His blood, the blood of the zombie he’d bitten the neck of, the blood from Callum’s wrist. But the blood mostly made him think of his sister. Reminded him of the blood that had spurted out of her neck.

Memories he wanted to rid his mind of, memories and a reality he didn’t want to face up to.

Memories he couldn’t avoid.

He was within five metres of the rusty door when he saw a man dressed in green CityFast slacks step out from beside it.

He stopped, convinced the man had seen him. He was a big man—definitely bigger than Hayden, so not somebody he wanted to mess with. Blond hair and a ginger beard. His face was pale, and Hayden could see the nervousness in him as he twitched with his rifle.

Hayden saw the man’s eyes look right at him. He saw them connect with his—saw a glimmer of recognition, a glimmer of understanding.

So Hayden lifted the gun and readied to fire.

But then the man looked away, looked past Hayden and wandered in the other direction like he hadn’t seen Hayden at all.

Hayden couldn’t understand. A part of him wanted to believe that the guard hadn’t seen him. A part of him wanted to believe that he
had
seen him, but his morals had got the better of him and he was giving Hayden a chance to go in that chamber and save the innocent people chained up.

Hayden wanted one of those two options so badly.

But he couldn’t be certain any of them was more than just hopeful speculation.

So he lifted the pistol and fired it just once into the side of the blond guy’s head.

The noise of the gunshot alarmed Hayden. But when he looked over at the gates, he realised it was lost to the sounds of other bullets firing, to other shouts and cries.

He ran up beside the man. Looked down at him lying on the floor with a hole in the side of his head that blood was trickling out of.

“Sorry,” Hayden said.

And then he took the man’s rifle and ran towards the rusty metal door.

As he moved, he got a flash of the fear he’d felt when he’d pulled the trigger on the guy called Dave back at the cottage. Shit—it was only earlier today, and yet it felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened since. So many things that had changed who he was,
what
he was.

He compared the emotions he’d felt when he killed Dave to the emotions he’d felt when he’d killed this nameless blond guy and the comparison scared him.

It scared him, but he didn’t have the time to ponder that fear right now.

He reached the door. Stuffed the rusty key inside it. As he turned the key, he wondered whether he’d made a mistake, the door staying firmly shut and not budging.

But then it clicked open.

He turned the handle. Caught a whiff of urine, of sweat and faeces.

He was inside.

He looked back at the fences outside. Even more of an indentation forming, lit up by the gunfire—which was growing more sporadic. Some of the men were retreating, pulling back. Soon, the place would be overrun. He had to think. He had to act.

Now or never.

He stepped into the damp, narrow corridor and made his way through the darkness to the chamber door. He felt like he was walking forever, trapped in an awful nightmare. He felt his heart pick up as he became disoriented, losing sight and sense of his surroundings—had he come in from the left? Or the right?

Was he stuck in here?

Was there something else down this corridor he didn’t know about?

And then he felt something cold and metallic hit his face and he looked down and saw the dim glow of light peeking out of the door.

He held his breath, the sour smell of suffering intensifying. From outside, he heard the loudest shouts of all, heard snapping and breaking.

And then he heard a blood-curdling shout from the room in front of him.

He went rigid. Completely still. He swore the women were all gagged when he’d last been in here. And yet that scream seemed so … clean.

He put his hand on the handle. Lowered it. Pushed the door open.

Please Sarah please Sarah please.

The door creaked open.

It took Hayden a few seconds to comprehend what he was looking at inside.

The only thing he comprehended right away was Ally’s smile as he stood behind a blonde haired woman.

A blonde haired woman whose throat had been slit.