The Alpha Plague 2 (20 page)

Dave stopped and turned to him. He half-smiled and lifted a gentle shrug. “All right, mate?”

“What the fuck happened? Where did you
go
?”

Instead of a reply, Dave grabbed Rhys beneath his arms and lifted him to his feet.
 

Rhys’ legs held, but he shook, coughed several times, and vomited water again.
 

Dave drove heavy pats against Rhys’ back. Each wet slap stung the space between his shoulder blades and his words came out in quick, panicked bursts. “The water was so strong down there it knocked me over. I couldn’t find you again. I couldn’t see anything. When I found the door, I swam through. What else could I do? I’m
sorry
I left you, man.”

Rhys shook his head and half laughed. “Don’t worry about it. You’re free. We’re both free.” When he looked down at the water, he saw the level visibly rise. “I’d hoped it would fill up quickly, but I’m surprised at just how bloody quick. It won’t be long before this water’s pouring out into the street.”
 

Rhys looked past his friend up the flight of stairs. They led to the next level of the basement. “There’s no diseased down here with us?”

A shake of his head and Dave said, “Not that I can see. The stupid fuckers seemed so desperate to get to us, that they didn’t know when to retreat to save their own skin. It looks like the water took all of them out. Your plan worked, buddy.”

Dizziness rocked Rhys’ world when he nodded. “Thank fuck!”

When Dave looked down at the water, Rhys did the same. The pair stood in relative silence. The water lapped, and Rhys breathed heavily. He couldn’t hear any of the diseased.
 

After another step had been claimed by the water level rise, Dave slapped Rhys on the back again. It stung just as bad as before. “Come on, man, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

A knot of anxiety tied in Rhys’ stomach. “I feel naked without a weapon. Did you manage to keep my baseball—?”

Before Rhys could finish, Dave shook his head. “No, we’d best just run fucking fast. We’re alive; that’s better than we could have hoped for fifteen minutes ago. Oh, and the water seems to have helped my cough.”

Cold and exhausted, Rhys shook. He took a deep gulp. “Okay.”

Chapter Forty-One

The climb up the long flight of stairs that led to the reception area of Building Thirteen aggravated the burn in Rhys’ lungs. Water damage and his lack of fitness combined to make every breath less nourishing than the one that had preceded it. If they came across a ravenous horde, he had no fucking chance right now.
 

Close to the top of the stairs, Rhys stopped, wiped his sodden hair away from his eyes, linked his fingers behind his head, and winced as he pulled shallow breaths into his body.

When Dave gripped the handle of the door that led through to the reception area, Rhys lifted the palm of his hand. Too exhausted for even one word, he needed a minute or two to rest.

Although Dave waited, a tightness gripped his face and his eyes narrowed as he watched Rhys. He ground his teeth and then bit his bottom lip. He tapped an impatient beat against his wet thighs. A glance through the window into the reception area, and he looked back at Rhys again and raised his eyebrows.
 

A couple more deep breaths and Rhys winced at the pain in his lungs. Every time he inhaled to a certain point, a sharp ache stopped him going any further. It would take more than a few minutes to recover. He’d have to deal with it as best as he could. He tugged on his wet shirt that had stuck to his torso, removed the walkie
-
talkie from his sodden pocket, and switched it on.
 

Nothing.
Hardly a fucking surprise
. He laughed ironically. “It would seem that a walkie
-
talkie’s an even worse swimmer than I am.”

Dave watched him in silence and his eyebrows pinched in the middle.

Rhys held the walkie
-
talkie up. “Fucking thing’s fucked.” He threw it down the concrete stairs. The plastic object clattered against every step on the way down before it landed in the water at the bottom with a pathetic
plop
.

In the absolute silence that followed, Rhys listened for the screams of the diseased in the foyer. Dave stood with his shoulders tense.
 

After a couple of seconds with no roar, Rhys said, “Didn’t think that one through, did I? Sorry, mate.”

Dave paused for a second longer and said, “No. It seems like it’s okay out there though. Good to find that out, I suppose.”

A pat of his other trouser pocket and Rhys’ heart stopped for a second. “It’s
gone
, Dave.”

“What’s gone?”

“The bark! The bark that Flynn painted and varnished for me. I’ve
lost
it.” He pointed at the rising water level. “It’s down there.” The photo remained in Rhys’ top pocket, but when he removed it, the water had damaged it so badly the paper had turned to mush.
 

The world in front of Rhys blurred and his eyeballs stung. “Oh, fuck.” A blink sent a stream of tears down each cheek. “Fuck it! Fuck!”

Rhys looked at his friend. “What the fuck are we going to do, Dave? I’ve left my kid with a
stranger
. She could have done god knows what to him. Larissa’s gone, so even if I do get back to him, I’ve got to explain that Mummy’s dead. We’ve still got to get across the open space between this tower and the draw bridge without getting attacked, and we have
no
fucking weapons now.”
 

The restriction had never left his chest, but the grief and panic accelerated his pulse and the entire area around his heart wound tighter. Each shallow breath did nothing to satisfy him or settle his furious heartbeat.

Like before, Dave dropped a heavy hand on Rhys’ shoulder and stared into his eyes. Calmness sat in his dark irises and sweat glistened on his brow. Rhys continued to shiver from his damp clothes and the cold basement.
 

“Whatever happens, Rhys, I’m going to make sure we get off this island and back to your boy.” He shook Rhys when he repeated, “
Whatever
happens. We need to focus on what’s in front of us right now and deal with that. At the moment, all we have is a closed door. We don’t know what’s on the other side.”

“Exactly,” Rhys said.
 

“But that doesn’t mean the diseased are there. We don’t know, so we shouldn’t try to guess. All we can actually do next is open the door, wouldn’t you agree?”
 

Rhys nodded.

Another squeeze of his shoulder and Dave dipped his head to get eye contact with Rhys again. “I know we’re going to be okay, man. We’ve come this far. Just like we don’t know what’s on the other side of this door, we don’t know what’s happening with Vicky. All you have is the word of a psychopath, and what’s that worth?” Dave lifted Rhys’ wrist and looked at the Superman watch. “Come on, man, we only have about twenty minutes left.”
 

Dave pulled the door open and Rhys followed him through.

***

Like the last reception area, the one in Building Thirteen had been trashed. Too many people had been forced to wait around for too long. Blankets, cups, food wrappers; the place looked a state.

The pair crossed the foyer on high alert as they both looked for signs of the diseased. It seemed quiet. Maybe all of them had drowned themselves down in the basement.
 

When they got to the front of Building Thirteen—the double doors open to the outside world—Rhys caught the faintest whiff of rot. “This is where I helped Oscar fight the three diseased. Not that he needed my help. The fucker blatantly lured me in because he needed to find someone to get him into the tower. He needed someone to help him turn the order to incinerate off. And he needed someone to watch his back because his leg was fucked. I feel so fucking
stupid
when I think about it now. He reeled me in a treat.”

“At least he got you to The Alpha Tower.”

Rhys sighed. “Yeah, I suppose he did. I may not have stood a chance without him.”

Dave’s cough returned. Deep barks ran through him and he bent over double. The enclosed space at the front of Building Thirteen reverberated with the violent expulsions. When he pulled back up again, sweat glistened on his brow.
 

Rhys’ wet clothes and the fading sun made him shiver again. “You okay, man?
How
are you still hot?”

Dave nodded and coughed again. “I guess I haven’t recovered from the fire like I thought I had. Once you’ve been that warm it’s hard to cool down.”

Before Rhys could say anything else, Dave’s eyes widened and he pointed over toward the drawbridge.
 

Rhys looked over and lost his words for a moment. After he’d opened his mouth once or twice, he finally said, “Larissa?”

Chapter Forty-Two

“You ready?” Dave said.

The breeze caught Rhys and his skin tightened with gooseflesh. The heat of the day had well and truly gone now. His damp clothes clung to him and he clenched his jaw against the cold. It seemed impossible that Dave still had a sweat
-
dampened brow. With a final deep breath as he looked across the space between them and Larissa, he dipped a sharp nod. “Yep.”

Without another word, Dave set off and Rhys followed him. The run came as a welcome relief. Sure, he ached like before
,
worse in fact, but the movement helped his frigid muscles unwind and raised his body temperature.

The pair watched their surroundings. It seemed empty; the sounds of slaughter came from the city behind—screams, cries, roars… always the roar of rage from the diseased. It wouldn’t be long before it found its way to the bridge.

The florist on Rhys’ right looked like it had a few hours previously—abandoned and bloody. The unfinished buildings stood as two large phallic skeletons. Again, abandoned. The food booths had changed. The metal shells had gone and each one had an open door as if the occupant had fled
—
even the one with the woman he’d spoken to inside. Hopefully she took Rhys’ advice and made it out across the river. Hopefully they hadn’t taken all the boats when they escaped
.

With the sound of his own breath loud inside his skull, Rhys focused on the bridge. He couldn’t do anything for the woman in the booth now. If she hadn’t run already, she’d have to deal with this world in whatever way she saw fit. Rhys couldn’t afford to help her… his little boy needed him.

As they moved towards Larissa, Rhys saw she had her attention on the ground. She sobbed and shook her head. The drawbridge remained raised behind her. Even from about twenty metres away, Rhys saw the evidence that a mob of diseased had come up against it. Blood coated the metal surface from what must have been an onslaught of fists and bodies as if the solid barrier would yield to their ineffectual assault. They must have attacked it for long after he left to help Oscar.

When they got closer to her, Larissa jumped and looked up with wide eyes. Recognition softened her features and her grief returned as it contorted and twisted her face. “Clive’s dead,” she called out.

Rhys glanced around and pressed his finger across his lips. The place may be free of the diseased now, but that could change in an instant
,
especially if she shot her mouth off.

Then Rhys saw the body by her feet. Clive, or what remained of Clive, lay lifeless on the concrete. The markings of the diseased streaked his face as dried bloody tears, and his head had been caved in. Larissa didn’t have a weapon. Rhys pointed down at Clive and said, “How the fuck did—”
 

He stopped when he looked down. Blood coated the heel of her right shoe. A look from her shoe to Clive’s face and back to her shoe again, and Rhys winced.

“I had to kill him,” she said as she shivered and breathed rapidly. The pace of her words quickened and became shriller. “I
had
to kill him. We got away but he’d been bitten. What else could I
do
? I
had
to do it, Rhys. I
had
to kill him.”

Even though the woman clearly needed it, hugging her felt like the most unnatural thing in the world. It had been a long time since they’d touched one another.
 

The kick of her strong perfume made Rhys wrinkle his nose. Anchored firmly in his pain, the strong reek dragged him back to the arguments, the nights he slept on the sofa, and the time he eventually packed his bags and left. Despite a deep desire to let go of her, he held on as she shook in his arms. He did the best he could. “Come on, Larissa, everything’s going to be okay. We’ll get off this island and everything will be fine. Flynn’s waiting for us on the other side.”

“But what about
Clive
?” Her voice carried over the open space.

“You need to keep your voice down.”

She shouted louder
.
“
Keep
my fucking voice down? I’ve just stamped the fuck out of the man I love.”

Rhys stepped away from her and clenched his fist. The desire to punch her tightened in his right arm. He wouldn’t let her hysteria put Flynn in any more danger—especially when it was over Clive. A shared look with Dave and he relaxed a little. He softened his tone. “If you don’t shut up, Flynn will be an orphan. Is that what you want?”
 

Heavy sobs stuttered through her and she shook her head.
 

“Look,” Rhys said while he pointed toward the river, “there are some boats down there. We need to get to them so we can cross to the other side. Once we’re safe you can grieve, but not here. Not now.”
 

When Rhys looked at his watch, Larissa said, “That’s Flynn’s watch.”
 

“I borrowed it. I had to. We have about fifteen minutes before this place is ablaze. If we’re not off the island by then, we ain’t ever getting off it, and Flynn will lose his Mummy and Daddy.”

Larissa continued to cry. It carried across the open space in front of the city.
 

Before Rhys could berate her again, the roar of the diseased answered her call.