Swarm (Book 3) (2 page)

Laura moved up the basement stairs. She had untied Stacy, who now walked in front of her at gunpoint. John’s moans drifted down from the first floor. Whatever she did now, she did it for him, Dreadlocks and Duke – the two people she had chosen to freeze, the two people that still had a chance. Laura told Stacy to go right at the top of the stairs. Laura, close behind, went left.

“We’re going towards the door,” said Laura, “you are going to stay… the distance you are away from me now. You’re going to stay that distance you understand?”

Laura took a few steps back. Stacy took a few steps forward. Laura continued until she reached the front door, not once taking her eyes off Stacy.

“Stop!” Laura said, “Turn around. Lie down on your front.”

Once Stacy had done this, Laura quickly turned and put her eye up to the small peep hole. The area outside contorted into a little circle – it seemed to be clear. She looked back at Stacy. She hadn’t moved. The first part of Laura’s plan was simple. Find a vehicle.

With her gun pointed at Stacy, she used her free hand to turn the latch and pull the door open. Staying on the threshold, she stuck her neck out to look either side of the house, before taking a few tentative steps outside.

Time slowed. An urge overcame her. She threw herself to the side, narrowly avoiding the man hurtling down. The ground slammed against her shoulder as she landed. The gun still in her hand, Laura swung her arm around to aim. Before her lay a zombie, crumpled in a heap.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Her finger squeezed out the shots. The first few wild, inaccurate. The last few aimed at its head. She jumped to her feet. The zombie writhed on the floor, choking, raspy noises rising from its throat. Laura pointed her gun at it. She half-ran half-jumped around it, going back inside and slamming the door behind her.

She stood completely still, her chest rising and falling rapidly. The door did little to filter the groans. From the way the sound rose to meet her ears, she knew the zombie had not left the ground.

Where is she?

Laura bolted up the stairs to the first floor. Rounding a corner, she saw Stacy outside the bathroom, her tiny hands pulling at a table — part of Laura’s improvised barricade.

“Hey!” Laura shouted, pointing her gun at Stacy. She felt a tiny amount of control again. Stacy was trying to let John out. But even if she removed every piece of furniture there, the doors were still nailed shut. It was a feeble attempt. The act of a child.

Stacy looked at Laura sadly and stopped what she was doing, her arms falling limply by her side.

“What did I fucking tell you?!” said Laura walking up to her and trying to kick her. She scuttled back, dodging the attack. Laura took a few steps forward and tried again. This time the sole of her foot connected with Stacy’s back, who fell to the floor and began to cry.

…

Laura stared at Stacy. Numb. They sat either end of the corridor, both leaning against a door, both facing each other.

Laura did not point the gun directly at Stacy, but held it limply, with her wrists resting on her knees.

The air had become thick and suffocating. Her friends were all dead. And Laura felt that she would probably be next. Each moment was an opportunity for Stacy, each passing second a gift to her. And as for herself, what did she have? Some bullets, a rucksack and a plan with stupid odds.

Amongst all this, one thought came to her now, as it had a few times already, distant, cold but increasingly persistent. She had
known
. The zombie had jumped and she had thrown herself to the side, as if she had seen it. But she hadn’t.

A warm tingle began in her stomach and washed over her body. It was uncomfortable and yet… pleasant. A thought flashed into her mind. Maybe she was infected. Maybe, somehow, the disease had got into her wound…

As she sat there, everything changed. At first she couldn’t wrap her head around it
.
She understood only that
something
was different. Then it came to her. She was aware of every part of herself at once. Not just her skin, but her insides as well. Every cell. Every nerve. Every part of her body conspired to wash wave after wave of nauseating sensation over her. Laura’s thoughts became fractured and blurred.

Then another change. It came slowly at first, hidden in the noise of her body, until it crossed a threshold and her mind snapped to it.

I’m melting into the wall.

She jumped up and stared. She had felt it — a hallucination, surely.

“What did you do to me?” she shouted at Stacy, getting no reply. Now she felt her feet sinking. Looking down she could see they weren’t. “What did you do?” she said again, shaking her feet.

Suddenly she understood what was happening. Somehow she was forgetting herself – forgetting where her body ended and the rest of the world began. The boundary between her and everything else was becoming smudged. She kept moving, trying to show her brain what it controlled and what it didn’t.

This is me… This is me…

Then, in an instant, the feeling stopped.

Laura felt something growing in her head. A thought, coming from outside of her mind, as if it were being forced into her.

She had known. She had known about the falling zombie. This knowledge was a thorn in her. She was painfully aware of it, aware that she couldn’t stop thinking it.

Then it was gone. Now her thoughts came like a river, gushing and ever-changing, tumbling over itself. Each idea pushing away the last, turning her mind into a maddening incoherent mess.

She took a loud, gasping breath. Then another. She tried to focus on feeling normal. The air became unnaturally refreshing. Like a blast of cool water entering her lungs. Unlike everything that had come before, the sensation was gentle and inherently pleasant.

Now came images of water and coolness and healing and the colour blue. She found herself thinking about oxygen. About oxygen in the air, oxygen in her body. It was something amazing. Each breath seemed only to improve things.

A sense of deep familiarity rose within her, as if she had glimpsed her childhood momentarily. All at once, Laura was free from everything and left with clarity.

Now her thoughts and feelings seemed controllable. Now a million choices lay at her feet. She chose that she was brave. And she was. She chose that she could do it. And she could. She chose that she owned her life. And she did. She wanted to win.

Everything became a simple act of remembering; to remember that life was good, to remember that she was good, to remember love, to remember the part of her that was untouchable, to remember what she had been before all of this, to remember…

“Get up!” she shouted at Stacy.

…

They had been walking for a while, treading on grass and following the slope of the hillside upwards. The sun had risen high above the horizon. The sky was uniform blue, with only a few clouds dotted directly above. Behind them lay the bottom of the valley, and resting there a small town.

Smells, sounds, colours, thoughts – everything came to Laura with intensity. No future. No past. The present swallowed her completely, laying every second naked for her.

“I’m tired,” said Stacy.

Laura ignored her. She was trivial now.

Stacy stopped walking.

“Keep moving,” Laura said calmly, pushing the sole of her foot against Stacy’s back. Stacy fell forwards onto the ground, then slowly got back to her feet. Laura could hear her crying. “Keep moving,” Laura said again. Stacy took a few steps forward, stopped, swayed slightly and then fell flat on her face. Laura stared at her limp body. A few empty moments passed. Stacy did not move.

“Get up,” Laura said loudly. Her heart began to beat faster.
Was she faking it…?
“Get up!” Laura shouted again.

She walked forwards and stamped down on Stacy’s leg.

No reaction.

Laura glanced around the field and then used her foot to roll Stacy onto her back. Stacy’s eyes were closed. Laura’s gaze moved down to the girl’s chest. It was rising and falling.

“Fuck,” she whispered to herself.

All the confidence drained from her, she realised how vulnerable she was standing in this field. If the zombies came now, who would keep them back?

Should she go back home? Hide? No. Somehow she knew that she must press on. She needed to carry Stacy, but how? What if the girl woke up in her arms and tried to bite? It had been in the back of Laura’s mind for a while that Stacy might be like the zombies; that she might have her own infection to spread.

Taking off her backpack, Laura emptied out the contents. She put Stacy inside, pulling the straps tight so that only her head protruded from the opening, then she lifted it up and wore the rucksack on her front so that Stacy’s head remained in full sight and her teeth faced away. Laura was shocked to find that her new load weighed practically nothing. Stacy was impossibly light. Laura glanced at the objects she had dumped on the ground. All of them were too bulky to carry. She could manage without them, she thought. The important things were in her pockets.

Laura began to walk again. The plan remained – find a vehicle and find some food.

Laura marched over the grass, her eyes flicking around the expansive countryside. After a short while, she came to some woods. The fields gave her up and allowed the trees to surround her. Each breath she took lay heavy with the smell of bark and earth. Another short walk, and now the trees began to thin. She stopped. Figures lay ahead in the grass. Laura bent her knees and touched the cold, wet earth with her hands.

They didn’t move. They didn’t make a sound. But Laura knew they were zombies. She could tell. Her mind filled with questions. Were they from the group that had been outside the house? Or were they different? Had Stacy kept them here on purpose?

Every moment out here felt like a mistake. The slight breeze rustling the leaves above her. The twists and turns of the woods — it all seemed to be anticipating something. A part of her wanted to go to the house. A part of her just wanted to run. She forced herself to stay calm.

I can do this.

What about the trees, could she stay in them? Would they keep her hidden? Would they lead her stumbling into their hands?

She forced herself to make a choice and began plotting an alternative route. She would stay within the woods and arch around the clearing. She would keep a safe distance from the zombies but get around them as quickly as possible. Laura began to move once more.

…

It had been sunny moments ago. This wasn’t right. Laura could only see grey filtering through the trees. The undead would lose their sluggishness. They would come running. The clearing was somewhere to her right. A little more walking and she would be past it. Hopefully the undead were still there and hadn’t filtered into the woods.

Laura stopped. The metallic taste was in her mouth again and Stacy felt slightly heavier. A thought dropped into her mind. Stacy wasn’t incredibly light. It only felt that way because she had somehow become very strong. But the fact that Stacy seemed to be getting heavier meant that she was losing her impossible strength.

Snap
!

She froze. What was that? Where had it come from? A half-second later her heart caught up with her mind, and began to thump her chest.

“Hurghhhhhh.”

She spun to face the noise, seeing only bushes.

“Hurgggghhhh.”

Heavy rustling shook the leaves. Laura moved away. She glimpsed movement through the undergrowth. Her finger tensed on the trigger. Her eyes searched.

A male figure burst out, losing his footing and stumbling down onto his hands and knees. Laura took a few steps back, fighting her instinct to run. The man sprang up. His yellow eyes stared out from a dirt-covered face. His back arched. His hands reached towards her.

Bang! Bang! Bang! —
she shot three times.

He stopped. His body straightened. His arms slowly fell to his sides.

Laura pulled the trigger again, aiming for the chest.

Bang!

A red stain quickly grew on his shirt. Everything remained stuck as she and it stood, eyes locked. Laura started to back away. His eyes stayed wide, unblinking. Slowly, he lifted his right arm towards her. Palm facing up, he curled and uncurled his fingers a few times as if to gesture for her to come. The stain changed its pattern, as the blood streaked towards his waist.

She backed away. He looked at her gun and pointed. Her skull tingled. Pity flooded her. Without thinking, she threw the gun over. It landed near the zombie’s feet.

He slowly bent down and grasped at the gun, missing completely and closing his fingers around nothing. He tried again, dragging his fingers through dirt. This time he knocked the weapon closer to his feet. Again he closed his hand at the wrong moment and clutched only air. He took a few steps back, stumbled and fell. Sitting now, he reached forward and finally managed to pick it up. With both hands, he moved the gun to his head.

Click -
empty
.

Click, Click, Click -
The zombie did not stop. Again. Again. Again.

Click, Click, Click.

He let his arm drop.

“HURGGHHHHHHHHH-” A long, unceasing, cry. The sound tugged at something in Laura. She could hear his pain.

The cry stopped. The figure fell on his back. She stared at the still body for a while. An inner voice told her to keep moving and that was all she understood.