The Alpha Plague 2
is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Chapter One

Rhys walked down the centre of the lowered drawbridge and squinted against the setting sun. The city would be incinerated in just five hours’ time. Anxiety knotted in his stomach and his legs ached. Hopefully he had long enough to get to The Alpha Tower in the middle of the city and back again
.

Five hours seemed like a long time, but with scores of diseased and bloodthirsty lunatics to get through, it felt like nowhere near long enough. What had appeared to be a good idea ten minutes ago suddenly looked a lot worse when faced with the stark reality of it. He could have told Flynn that Mummy died, but he would have to carry the guilt that went with that for the rest of his days.

Each step forward weighed heavy with reluctance, and Rhys struggled to lift his feet. His shoes scraped the ground as he trudged along. Grief tightened his chest and burned his throat. He stared straight ahead at the city’s skyline. If he looked behind, he’d see Flynn as he watched him from the backseat of the squad car. He’d see Vicky in the bridge’s control booth. The sight of his son’s face would make him go back in a heartbeat. The prospect of escape with Vicky would make it too hard to continue.

Remorse sat as a damp weight in his chest and uncertainty nestled in his gut
,
heavy and impossible to digest. Vicky wasn’t a stranger but as good as. He’d placed a lot of trust in someone he’d only known for a day.

He pushed forward.

A strong wind howled across the open space and blasted into his right side. The undulating gusts were the only sounds he could hear in the otherwise desolate environment. The stillness didn’t fool Rhys though; chaos lurked beneath it.

Rhys continued to scan the city in front of him. The open space that separated the bridge and the first line of towers seemed empty. The thin alleyways between the tall buildings were dark and quiet, and the only sign of movement was a sheet of yellowing newspaper that drifted along the deserted street.

A glance up at the incomplete towers on his left and a chill ran through Rhys. Fatigue already gripped his body, but when he relived the chase up those damn buildings… God knows how he found the strength to outrun those things to the top. God knows where he would find the strength should he need it again.

While he continued to scan around, Rhys moved from the middle of the bridge over to the right side. He looked down to where he and Vicky had dragged the boat into the water. The muddy riverbank had been churned up like a battlefield from the sheer amount of diseased that had chased them down there. It may have been quiet at that moment, but the memory of their ravenous screams roared through Rhys’ mind.

The boat they’d used to get across the river remained tethered on the other side. Not that anyone would want to use it to get back into Summit City, but they should have capsized the thing so no one could even entertain the idea.

Another look down at the water and Rhys stopped dead. His breath left him in an involuntary gasp.

The sun may have been lower in the sky than before, but it still provided enough light for Rhys to see through the shallow water. A mixture of colours sat just beneath the surface. About ten metres in, the technicolour swathe vanished. Maybe the water got too deep to see any more than that. Maybe the diseased recognised when they’d been beaten and gave up in their attempt to catch the boat.

The colours were tinted through a rose lens of diluted blood, although the tint wasn’t dark enough to hide what Rhys saw. A dry gulp did nothing to relieve his throat as he looked at the hundreds of diseased, all drowned as they lay beneath the surface.

None of them moved but their stillness didn’t fool Rhys. They could come alive at any moment, desperate to pull on any kicking legs, and chow down. Vicky had said they drowned in water, but Rhys wouldn’t be the one to test if they were dead or not.

Their earlier escape replayed in his mind. He saw the diseased as they fell to his baseball bat and sank beneath the water’s surface. He saw their bloody maws spread wide as they thrashed, kicked, and writhed in panic. Yet, even as they drowned, they still bit at the air between them. Not even their impending end could temper their desire to get at Vicky and him. A cold chill snapped through him when he saw their bloody eyes in his mind.

A shake of his head and Rhys moved away from the right side of the bridge and crossed over to the left.

As he walked, he screwed his nose up when the fetid reek of death ran up it. A look down at his feet and he saw the sludgy, bloody secretion left behind by the diseased who’d been barricaded by the police. They may be long gone, but their stench hung heavy in the air. A small amount of bile lifted into Rhys’ throat. He swallowed, but it did nothing to relieve the sharp acidic burn.

When a strong breeze blew across his face, it banished the smell momentarily. Before long, it returned with force, its vinegary kick so aggressive, he flinched.

Once on the left side of the bridge, Rhys looked down. Boats lined the shoreline all the way along; mostly rowboats, but a few speedboats and other smaller vessels bobbed in the water. If only they’d picked that side to escape from earlier… He shook his head to himself. All that struggle for nothing.

At the end of the bridge, closer to the half-built towers, the food pods waited; the trapped woman must still be inside one of them. Another check to the open space beyond the pods. The vast area was easily as big as six football fields and littered with the evidence of carnage, but still no sight of the diseased—long may it stay that way. Rhys looked at the food pods again. Like before, they seemed like the best place to hide.

Rhys scooted over to one of the pods, pressed his back into the sun-heated shutters that encased it, and dropped down into a crouch.

For the first time since he’d stepped onto the bridge, he looked back across the river. From his current position, he couldn’t see his boy but he saw Vicky. He gave her a thumbs up, which she returned.

A loud
thunk
snapped through the near silence. Seconds later, the heavy groan of the bridge’s motor yawned to life. Rhys watched as the bridge split in two. Both sides rose and pulled away from one another in a lethargic stretch.

The higher the bridge lifted, the harder Rhys’ heart thudded. He’d made his choice; hopefully, he’d made the right one.

A diseased scream filled the air. It ran goose bumps up Rhys’ arms and down the back of his neck. The sound of the bridge had clearly drawn them out, but when he looked around, he saw nothing… nothing yet, at least.

Having initially chosen the closest pod to hide by, Rhys moved down a couple more. If the diseased descended upon the bridge—which is exactly what they should do if they could be judged by their previous behaviour—then he needed to be farther away. He stopped in front of the one he’d hidden by earlier, the one with the woman inside.

The slight coolness of late afternoon may have lowered the temperature by a degree or two, but when he pressed his face against the steel shutter to listen out for the woman within the pod, the hot metal stung his ear. He heard nothing.
Damn! Maybe she’d killed herself.

When another diseased scream called out, louder and closer than the one before, Rhys pulled his face away and drew a sharp intake of breath. He watched the bridge rise and waited for them to appear as his pulse ratcheted up a notch.

A deep breath in through his nose and a slow release through his mouth, and Rhys focused on trying to calm down. He repeated the process, his eyes wide as he looked out for the first signs of trouble.

Rhys moved across the front of the pod and slid down the side farthest away from the bridge. He had to assume they’d all head straight for the noise. If they did, he’d just made himself much harder to see. If they didn’t… well, he couldn’t plan for that.

A loud bang on the other side of the shutter caused Rhys’ heart to jump and it damn near lodged in his throat.
Fuck!
The woman inside obviously hadn’t offed herself. Earlier that day, her cries had been lost to the noise of the diseased. In the relative quiet, she sounded much louder than before. If she gave the game away…

Another loud bang and Rhys pushed his face into one of the small gaps between the metal shutters. The hot steel stung each cheek as he hissed, “Shut up.”

When he pulled back, a wide and feral eyeball appeared at the gap. The shadows hid the rest of the person behind it and made the lone organ look like something from a horror film. The woman’s voice came out in a wavered whimper. “Help me, please.”

“Shut up and I might,” Rhys said.

“But you’ll leave me like you did last time.”

Rhys lost his words. She recognised him?

“Help!”

“
Shut up
,” Rhys said through gritted teeth. “I’ll get you out of there, but you need to listen to me.”

BOOK: The Alpha Plague 2

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