The Alpha Plague (10 page)

He pulled the trainer from the shelf, tilted the tongue back, and read the label behind it. “It’s my size. Surely it’s a sign?”

As he laced it up, Vicky turned around and stared at him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’ve needed a new pair of trainers for months now. I need to make the most of this opportunity to get them.”

A shake of her head, and Vicky turned away to look at the wall of bats and racquets on another side of the shop.

The run had left Rhys’ socks damp with sweat, but he slid his foot into the shoe anyway and wiggled his toes. Nothing came close to feel of new trainers.
 

After he’d tied the shoelaces, he walked up and down and checked how it looked in the little strip of mirror along the floor. When he looked up, he met Vicky’s cold stare. The penny finally dropped. “I’m only going to have the right one, aren’t I?”

A smile cracked her stern face, and she shook her head.

Rhys pointed at the door next to the counter. “That must lead to the store room. Don’t suppose I could—”

“Hang on, weren’t you just telling me that we had no time? You think I’m going to risk my life so you can look cool? No fucking way, pal.”

The petulant teenager inside of Rhys threatened to rise to the surface, but he managed to push it down. Vicky clearly didn’t have a high opinion of him, as it was; the last thing he needed to do was give her justification for that.

 
“Anyway,” Vicky said, “you need to pick a weapon, and we need to get out of here.”

“A weapon? What’s wrong with running?”

“Nothing,”—Vicky raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down—”if you could do it!”

Rhys shrugged and turned to the wall of rackets and bats. He looked at the shiny aluminium baseball bats and grinned.
 

When Rhys pulled the fattest bat from the wall, he squeezed the soft grip. He turned the bat to the side and read the writing that ran down its edge. “Slugger series X.” With both hands, he wrung the handle as if he’d just stepped up to the plate. “I like it.” Now that he had a weapon, he had to man the fuck up. Vicky needed a man by her side, not a scared thirty-something, good-for-nothing office worker.

After she’d stared at his bat for a few seconds, Vicky gave him a nod of approval and selected the one next to it.

“So, what were you into before this, Vicky?”

Vicky cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you seriously asking me what my hobbies are?”
 

“Come on, if we’re going to get through this together, we may as well get to know one another.”

Without response, Vicky walked over to the vending machine and swiped her card through the reader. After several quick button presses, two bottles of water, wrapped in condensation, fell into the tray at the bottom with two loud thuds. She removed one and tossed it at Rhys.
 

With the bat between his legs, Rhys removed the cap. The cold water burned as he guzzled it down.

It took half of the bottle to quench his thirst. After a wet burp into his hand, he said, “So not only does that card give you high-level clearance, it gives you free food and drink too? You must have had a lot
of responsibility in The Alpha Tower.”

Vicky drank the water with much more restraint. Their escape had seemed to have very little effect on her. She still didn’t respond.

“Okay, so if you’re not going to play the game, I suppose I’m going to have to guess.” A look up and down the length of her body made Rhys smile. “I’m guessing you worked out; you look pretty fit.” She looked damn fit.
 

Vicky put a hand on her hip and straightened her back. She tilted her head to the side and looked ready to punch him. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

With his hands raised, Rhys said, “Whoa, steady on. What’s with the hostility? Let’s try and get along, yeah? We can be nice to one another, can’t we? Can’t I compliment you without you getting the wrong idea?” Not that she’d got the wrong idea at all.
 

“This ain’t about being nice. This is about survival.”

It may have been a distant sound outside, but Rhys heard it nonetheless. “Hear that?” he said. “Sirens! The police are going to handle this.”

“You don’t get it, do you? No one’s going to handle this. The army would struggle—let alone a bunch of unfit, donut-munching pigs. This is beyond being handled. I guarantee you that siren’s them getting the fuck away from here.”

“How do you know so much? What haven’t you told me?”

Silence.

Before Rhys could speak again, she cut him off. “I found out about it a year or so ago.” The aggression left her words and she looked at the floor. “I never did anything; I just ignored it and continued to go to work. It was a darkness that I pretended wasn’t there. A tumour that I hoped would go away of its own accord. But as I understood more of what they were doing, the guilt ate me up from the inside.”

She took another sip of water and stared into the distance with unfocused eyes. She had the softest skin, and although stoic, her features spoke of her regret. “If I’d have told someone sooner, then this wouldn’t have happened. You talked to me earlier about doing the right thing. I’ve spent a long time ignoring the right thing and getting on with it. I told myself the usual bullshit. I had bills to pay, it was a steady income, good holidays, medical coverage; but that’s all the crap employers give us to keep us compliant, isn’t it? So when it comes to doing the right thing, I avoided it like the best of them.”
 

Before Rhys could say anything, she added, “I convinced myself that I played no part in it, but just by working there, I was involved. I had the chance to do the right thing every day and I didn’t. So please don’t tell me to do the right thing again. As you can tell, it doesn’t wash with me.”
 

What could he say to that? “So that’s why you had a plan for when the disease broke?”

She almost laughed. “What I knew was I didn’t want to get locked in one of the buildings when it kicked off. Those buildings are nothing but prisons now.”

“But they keep the diseased out.”

“Yeah, and the people in. I’d rather take my chances than trust those in power to act in my best interests. After all, they created this. What if they never let the people out?”
 

Her words took the breath from Rhys’ lungs. “Shit, I never thought of that. I have friends trapped in those buildings.”
 

“Me too,” Vicky said.

“So what do we do?”

The blank expression said it all.
 

Rhys swallowed another mouthful of the cool water. “Okay, so we need to get out, yeah?”

Vicky shrugged.

“But the bridges are down.”

“The bridges are down?”

“Yeah. When I was running back into the square, there were seven huge explosions. They were so loud they rocked the ground. What else could they be?”
 

Vicky chewed the inside of her mouth and peered outside the shop. “I must have been distracted in The Alpha Tower when they blew up. So the only one left is the drawbridge?”

“I knew it was a drawbridge,” Rhys said.
 

Vicky stared at him.

“Never mind.” Before she could say anything, Rhys added, “I suppose you’re right about the buildings being locked down though. There are far fewer diseased on the street; far fewer creatures between us and Flynn.”

Vicky ignored the reference to Flynn. If he pushed her enough, she had to help him find his son. Either that or she’d swing for him.

A scream outside stopped the conversation. Panicked voices came on its tail.

After he shared a look with Vicky, Rhys led the dash to the edge of the shop.
 

Two survivors ran up the street. They’d come from the same direction as Rhys and Vicky. The grimaces on their faces told Rhys everything he needed to know. He recognised it all too well. “They’re fucked. They ain’t got much running left in them.”

Seconds later, three diseased appeared behind them. Their faces were twisted with hate, and their desire to hunt clearly overrode any exhaustion they may have felt from the chase.

When Rhys stepped forward, Vicky grabbed his arm. “Wait. Let’s see if there are any more.”

“But those people need our help. We can’t leave them. We have to do the right…” He stopped and Vicky glared at him.
 

Vicky gave it a few more seconds before she nodded. “It looks like they’re alone. Let’s put these bats to good use.”

Chapter Thirteen

Rhys wrung the grip of his baseball bat with his sweaty hands and stared down the street. A deep breath did little for his furious pulse, or the nausea that broiled in his stomach. Regardless, he wound back, ready to swing.

“You all set?” Vicky asked.

Rhys kept his eyes on the chaos that approached them and nodded. “Yep.”

The couple held hands as they ran up the street. The man dragged the woman forward.
 

“Please slow down, Dan,” the girl said to what must have been her, what? …partner? …friend? What did it matter? They were fucked if Rhys and Vicky didn’t intervene.

The calls and growls of the monsters behind got louder.

“Slow down? If I slow down they’ll fucking eat us.”

“He’s right, you know,” Vicky said.
 

The diseased trio gained on them with every step. The virus seemed to give them some kind of super speed and an unnatural endurance. Driven by hunger, they looked like they could run forever. If Rhys was in that situation, could he leave Vicky behind? What a ridiculous thought… like he could ever outrun Vicky.

When Dan glanced over his shoulder at their pursuers, he let go of the woman’s hand. “What the fuck?” Rhys said. “That ain’t right.”

“I can’t believe it,” Vicky said.

The woman clearly couldn’t believe it either. His abandonment seemed to rob her of her will to continue. She slowed down instantly, and her frame slumped as she watched Dan run away.
 

Within seconds, two of the three diseased hit her at the same time. One jumped at her and tackled her around the neck; the other one got her legs, and all three fell.
 

On their way down, the woman’s head bounced off one of the steel poles in the middle of the road. The loud
ping
ran straight through Rhys as he watched her neck snap back.

The third diseased stayed on Dan’s tail.
 

Rhys looked from Dan to the diseased that chased him. He looked back at Dan’s writhing love interest. She’d somehow stayed conscious, despite the blow to her head. The two monsters on top of her screamed louder than before, the kill had sent them into a guttural frenzy. The one around her neck opened its mouth wide and bit into the back of her head. The woman lifted her face and screamed.
 

For a second, she and Rhys made eye contact. A cold dread sank in Rhys’ stomach as he stared at the fear in her wide eyes. No one would ever see humanity in her face again.
 

The diseased forced her nose into the ground as it chowed down. Its head shook from the pressure of its bite. A wet
pop,
and her skull gave way.
 

Nausea rolled through Rhys’ guts. The sound even made the diseased on her leg look up. It stared for a second—its jowls painted with blood and flesh—then it dived back in again.

“Rhys!”

Vicky’s call jolted Rhys from his daze, and he watched Dan run straight past them. What a fucking coward. With his bat still wound back, the muscles in Rhys’ arms twitched as he waited for the diseased that chased Dan to catch up. In the old world, survival meant he had to work a shit job to pay mounting bills; now, it meant he had to be able to kill.

Despite reluctance turning his arms weak, Rhys swung at the diseased. The metal bat connected with its temple. A shock ran up the handle and a
ping
similar to the sound of the girl’s head against the pillar rang out.
 

The diseased’s legs turned bandy, and it stumbled for several steps before it crashed, face first, to the ground. It didn’t even try to stop its fall with its hands; instead, it slid along the asphalt road on its cheek.

Something crashed into Rhys’ shoulder as it passed him. He raised his bat, but he lowered it when he saw Vicky. She rushed at the downed diseased and swung her bat at its head. The wet squelch made Rhys think of someone crushing a pumpkin.

Several swings turned its skull to pulp on the hot road. The crunch of bones quickly turned into a ping as the bat hit the ground, but Vicky continued to attack the mess of red goo anyway.

When she eventually pulled away, she turned to Rhys. “If you want to stop them, you need to kill the brain.”
 

Rhys looked between the crushed diseased and Vicky several times before he said, “I think you might have done that.”

Vicky flashed a facetious smile, which vanished when she looked down the road behind him. “Look out!”

The two diseased and Dan’s lover had gotten to their feet. The same rage of the other two twisted Lover-girl’s features. Although, how the fuck she moved with that head wound…

As they bore down on them, Rhys widened his stance, rolled his shoulders, and wound back.
 

Vicky moved next to him. “You ready for three of ‘em?”

“I’m gonna have to be.”

The bite to Lover-girl’s leg made her run with a limp, so the other two made it to Rhys and Vicky first. One each. Perfect.

Rhys swung for the one at the front. He made contact with its jaw. It diverted the monster past him but didn’t knock it down.

When it stopped and turned around, its face hung as limp as its arms. Although gormless in most ways, fire burned in its glare. Before it could run at him again, Rhys took another swing.

He caught its temple and its legs folded beneath it. As it writhed on the floor, Rhys yelled and drove his bat deep into its head. The thing’s skull gave way instantly.

The vibration from the asphalt road ran up the bat through Rhys’ arms. It sent a sharp pain to his elbows, but he kept going. The thing needed to die now.