The Mulligan Planet (16 page)

I could see the mournful eyes
past the false smile, “I’m sorry Marcus, I’m sorry I didn’t bring
them home.” He wove me off, “No-one blames you, after this we’ll
all be going home, to Valhalla, home for the eternal warriors.” I
began walking with him through the storeroom, “You’re Irish, I’m
British, I’m pretty sure they save the seats in Valhalla for the
Norwegians, and those who died in battle, not those hiding in a
safe room until they get ripped apart by other people.” He laughed
under his breath, “You’re probably right, but still, anywhere has
got to be better than here.” He clapped me on the shoulders, I was
fuming that he’d given up like this, “There is nowhere after this
Marcus, we live, we die, make here work for you because this is it,
and I’m not giving up yet. Harry! Get over here, we’ve got some
work to do!” I shook Marcus off and grabbed one of the shelves when
Harry came from around the corner, “What is it, what are you
doing?” I pushed it onto the door, the items stored on it shaking
and dropping to the floor as it grinded, “Surviving, these guys
have decided that they want to take their chances with an
afterlife.” Harry started dragging a filing cabinet to the door
while Mark just watched us, seeing only a lost cause, “Don’t be
like that John, we’ve lost, there’s no coming back from this,
surely you must know that, we’ve al-” I dumped another shelf on the
door, “You’ve all what? Given up!? Decided it’s too hard so you’re
just going to quit? Life is hard! Now help me or get out of the
way, I’m not dying like an animal caught in a trap.” I expected
many things, but not the smile I got, “Steven! Get over here, and
close the bottle, we’re getting out of here.”

“Steven, Harry! Hold that door,
they get through and it’ll be me ripping you limb from limb!” I was
knocking over the shelves that sat along the wall looking for an
escape, “There’s nothing back there John, maybe we could go through
the floor? You bring any explosives?” I nodded, “Yeah, about five
hundred grams of C4 and a grenade, but there’s no guarantee they
aren’t down there and I don’t know how much damage we could do to
the floor’s here, they’re pretty thick…” I’d been in that shopping
centre before; I had to have made a mental map of the place at some
point. After closing my eyes for a few seconds there it was, “How
far is the elevator-shaft from here?” Mark pointed to the wall on
my right, “Right there, elevators dead though, it dropped down the
other day, heard it in our sleep.” I scratched my neck, the cables
would still be alright though, “Relieve Steve, send him over.” He
watched me for a few seconds, seemingly not to have understood what
I had said before running over. I went to the wall and started
knocking on it, listening to the faintest echo coming from the
other side, “What do you want?” Steve had come over to stand with
me, “Let’s open this wall, improve the flow of the room.” He tapped
the wall, “This one right here? Do I look like a sledge hammer to
you?” a chuckle escaped as I shrugged, “Little bit.” I slammed my
fist through the wall, okay, there was some concrete… a lot of
concrete. To be perfectly honest a tear did come to my eye. Steve
nodded, clearly not noticing the high frequency noise I was letting
out, “Got it.”

We began tearing the wall down,
pushing chunks of concrete down the shaft while coating ourselves
and the floor in dust, “Hurry it up guys!” I started shoulder
barging the crumbling white and grey mess. Steve began doing the
same but we weren’t in sync, “Stop for a second.” we took a step
back, “One, two, three!” as the word left my lips we charged into
the wall, well, Steve went into while I went through, only just
catching the steel spun elevator cable, immediately drawing blood
as I slid down slightly, “You ok John?” my blood was acting as a
lubricant, causing me to slide down another foot causing a sharp
hiss of pain to come out of me, “Yep, I’m just dandy. Send the
others, don’t grab the cable!” I looked around the claustrophobia
inducing space, my blood sliding down the cable and onto my clothes
while panic was quickly set in. ‘Think think think. Push the pain
away, find a way out.’ Footfalls came from the floor above me as
the others were now running to the shaft, Harry peeked over, the
duffel now dangling over his shoulder, “Be down in a second!” the
sound of metal bending and smashing against the floor was quickly
replaced by snarls and roars as one by one my friends leapt down
the shaft, “No!” ‘Great job John, you’ve made your friends kill
themselves.’ But my mourning was eliminated as three loud thumps
echoed up to me attracting my gaze and revealing I was only a few
feet from the ground, “Oh, that’d be about right.” I released the
cable as a zed grabbed onto my back, its teeth centimetres from my
neck as I adjusted my brief descent, smashing it into the cold
metal roof the broken elevator, the crack and blood spray of the
even more dead creature was equal parts disgusting and satisfying.
The satisfaction subdued by another zed tumbling through the
hole.

“Get us out of here! Where’s the
door?” I sent the flailing zed back up with an uppercut while
quickly surveying the ground. Harry’s finger took up my field of
vision as he pointed at a relatively untouched piece of steel,
“There! The top is near Steve’s feet, pry it open!” more were
falling through now, I pulled my baseball bat from the duffel on
Harry’s back and tossed it to Marcus as Harry dropped the shotgun
and produced his sword, “Keep them off Steven, no guns, we need the
least sound possible.” We fought the horde while more and more tore
through the hole down the shaft, peppering us with small bits of
concrete and other debris as they made the hole wider. Harry caught
one with his blade through its chest, causing him to tumble
backwards, the biting beast stopped by Marcus swinging hard against
the back of its head, causing its head to bust open and paint
Harry’s beard in red. Bodies were starting to pile up after the ten
seconds we’d been in there and I was starting to worry about the
space we were fighting in when finally a loud bell started to go
off. I spun to see Steve had pulled the doors apart wide enough for
us to fit through, “Well that’s not good, everyone through!” Steven
was the first to slide through the small gap, I pulled the duffel
off of Harry and tossed it through as soon as Marcus climbed out,
the undead were falling down the shaft five at a time but Harry
continued to stay beside me, fighting them off, “Get through Har,
I’ve got this!” Harry’s blade carved through another down its
mid-section, “Like Hell you do!” I caught one and threw it straight
back at another, “Same time!” Harry sheathed his weapon and we both
dove for the gap, Harry clawing his way out first with me in tow.
He fell out onto the floor and I had just reached the gap when a
heavy object fell on my legs, a heavy, breathing object. I shot my
hands out of the gap toward my friends, “Pull!” Marcus and Steve
got a hold of my arms and had started pulling while I kicked wildly
as hands started to grasp my legs. “Hurry up and get me – woah!” A
nose touched my calve right as I got pulled out of the gory pit,
“Shut the doors!” We started pushing on the doors but kept
slipping, it needed handles, “Handles!” I punched the elevator
door, leaving a deep dent, “Try pushing there Harry!” the bells
draining out the sound of my voice but he somehow heard me and
pushed, I put another dent in the other door and started pushing, a
head had made its way out, snarling and salivating, its eyes boring
into mine with hunger, “Push!” a communal grunt sounded as we all
let out the final strength of two vampires and two humans on the
doors, sliding the grinding metal and crushing the zed’s head as
well as the accursed bell.

I turned to face the barren
hallway behind us, “Empty, they must still all be on the second
floor, let’s get out of here before they find their way down. We
can head to our safe-house up in Alderley.” The growling and
metallic sound of zeds pouring down into the elevator shaft behind
me was almost comical, almost. Marcus’ blood-soaked hand grabbed my
shoulder, “Alderley? Up near the military base?” Marcus and Steven
both looked at me with genuine concern, “Yeah… We haven’t got to it
yet, it’s been pretty swamped, why?” I’d started walking while they
followed, Harry carrying the duffel, “There’s a group of bandits
who have holed up there, at first we thought it was you and the
team, but then we saw that they were gathering fuel, they recently
moved to a park on that river in Alderley.” I kept walking, still
feeling our current home was pretty safe, “How do you even know
they’re bandits, they could just be trying to get ready for an
escape.” We turned left, the smashed glass doors greeting us to the
torrential rain, “Because once they took the fuel and the guns they
started taking women and executing everyone else that didn’t fall
in line.” I stopped, “Yeah… ok, there’s bandits. But why haven’t we
heard or seen them before? You guys are the first people we’ve seen
in days, and gunshots are loud.” Marcus pointed outside, “This
rain, the storms, the roaring dead, they’d all contribute to
silencing the screams and shots from down the street, let alone a
few blocks away.” A distant roar sent shivers up my spine, “We
can’t stay here, look, they haven’t found us yet, we’ll get to the
safe-house and hide out for the night, then we can try to find
somewhere else to move and try to find the others. Have you had any
luck in tracking them?” Marcus showed his displeasure with this
plan through his frown, “No, not really, last I saw they’d given up
on the airfield evac and had started going north, that’s when the
signal cut, no more tracing, no more communication.”

I wiped some blood off my
forehead, “You lost communication when the giant ship showed up
right?” those good old gears clicking away in my head, “Yes, it’s
got some kind of jammer on board.” I walked to the door and cupped
some of the rain in my hands and splashed it onto my face, “Then
let’s get rid of the jammer then.” I got laughs in response but
when I turned with my smile it silenced, “Wait… you’re serious.
John, there’s no way you could get near that thing unless you’ve
got wings that I don’t know about-” I pointed out through the door,
“The airport, judging by how fast the infection spread I doubt they
had time to get to a plane, there’d be at least one left.” Steven
and Harry were seemingly bored by all this and had wandered off to
clean the weapons, “Even so, I’ve been watching that thing for
days, the only thing that came out was that gas on day one, I don’t
even know if there’s an opening. But let’s say there is, how do you
plan to board that thing at twenty thousand feet while flying a
plane?” I shrugged, “I make an opening, parachute in, same basic
principle as that last mission.” Mark rubbed his bandaged forehead
that brought a pained look to his face, “No it isn’t John, you know
that, how the Hell are you expecting us to just guess our way
through an alien aircraft?” I shook my head lightly, “I don’t
expect
us
to.” His brow furrowed in confusion for a moment
and then shot up, “No! No way John, I’m not letting you do that.”
The others quickly looked over to us then returned to their quiet
conversation, “Ok, well, what’s your suggestion? Everyone gets onto
a jumbo packed with explosives and risks their lives?” he had moved
his hand to his beard and was gently stroking it. I swear, rubbing
a beard makes genies of epiphanies come out.

“I’ve got it!” he grabbed my
shoulder and pulled me outside. “There!” his hand launched upward
and I followed its path, he was pointing at the ship, “Yes, giant
spaceship, I’m aware of its existence.” Marcus shook his head, “No,
look at the rear end,” I peered through the rain, there was a
massive turbine facing downward, blowing clouds clear from view,
“Hit that! No trying to go through the ship in the middle of the
air, bring it down to us.” The plan was solid, definitely had
merit, although standing in the soaking rain was getting to me, a
feeling that was shown to be mutual as Marcus dragged me back into
the relatively dry building where I began to shake off, “That thing
is massive though, won’t it cause massive amounts of damage?” he
chuckled a bit, “Look around us John, I think it’s done a fair bit
already, it comes down and we can find the team, or at least start
to try.” I shook my hair out of my eyes, “It’s going to take at
least a few days to get ready, we’ll need something that makes a
nice big bang, a lot of somethings.” Steven and Harry were walking
over to us now, apparently our subject matter was no longer boring
to them after the mention of explosives, “This is what you want to
do?” Marcus was quite obviously very proud of his idea and the fact
that the idea involved me not dying, “You tell the guys the plan.
Oh, and Marcus, I think it’s time you showed me to those bandits
with all the fuel, we’ll need to liberate it.”

Shenim and Neysor broke apart
from their long kiss in the doctor’s white room, tears had come to
rest on both of their cheeks as they smiled and sobbed in their
happiness. “Is she sure Neysor? There isn’t a mistake of some
kind?” This was the first time in hundreds of years that anyone
from the Gralari race had fallen pregnant without medical
fertilisation, it was a miracle that Shenim even had the ability to
bear a child naturally, let alone a boy. Neysor had confronted the
doctor about this anomaly and demanded the proof which she had
gladly given. Every test known to the Gralari had been used and
they all pointed to the same conclusion, “Yes my love, we are to
have a boy.” Shenim screamed with joy which Neysor quickly silenced
with a hand over her beaming smile, shushing her with an equally
ecstatic smile, “Quiet my darling, we mustn’t alert everyone to
this news just now.” He removed his hand slowly from her face
which, though still very clearly happy, was frowning, “Please
Neysor, you are a war hero and the commander of this magnificent
ship. I am sure that everyone aboard this ship will be happy for
us. And if not for us, our race! I am living proof that the
doctor’s method work.” Neysor was excited and terrified, he was
unsure how his brothers would react now and even more so how his
crew would. It took him several seconds to decide that he wanted to
share his news with the entire world, “Yes, go get changed into
your dress uniform.” He leaned in for a kiss but stopped as the
doctor appeared from around the corner of the mesh door, “Commander
Neysor! Come with me!” Before Neysor could tell her not to
interrupt her commander she was gone, “Go get dressed my dear, I
will see you on the bridge.” Shenim kissed her commander before he
darted away after the doctor, her mind had drifted to thoughts of
child names as she gleefully made her way toward her quarters.