The Rot (Post Apocalyptic Thriller) (5 page)

I waited until he’d stepped clear, then tried to slam the thing shut again. But it wouldn’t close. Someone had shoved a fire extinguisher in the gap. I kicked at the metal cylinder, but by that time there were already hands, arms and legs through as well. The extinguisher was gone, but I still couldn’t close it – and although I leaned hard against the door, it was obvious there were several people pushing against it from the other side; all desperate to get through and do us as much damage as possible.

The guard had his gun up, aiming at the limbs, but was hesitating. “Do it!” I shouted, having seen what they were capable of – and knowing what wavering might cost us. He swallowed dryly, then fired. The bullets came pretty close to hitting me, but he didn’t have a bad aim and a number hit their marks – puncturing arms and legs. Blood spurted from the wounds, but still the people they belonged to wouldn’t withdraw. I felt more bodies join these on the other side, and motioned for the guard to come and help me. “I can’t hold them on my own!”

He shouldered the rifle and added his bulk to the door, which helped considerably. The noise was incredible: shouting, screaming – even some singing wafting through the gap… an old hymn that rang a bell from my childhood. The man nodded back to the helicopter. “Go… get that thing fired up. I can hold them.”

“You sure?”

“
Go!
” he snapped. What choice did we have – we needed to get the chopper going or it would be overrun before we could take off.

I gave a curt nod and let go of the door, lingering just long enough to make sure it held – or I’d need to lean against it again. Then I sprinted towards the squirrel. As I neared it, I realised that I had no idea whether it had even been left unlocked. Fortunately, the door opened when I tried it – so it was just a matter of starting her up.

I slid into the cockpit, shooting a look across to see how the guard was doing. Not great, it had to be said – the gap widening more and more. A visible thump against it saw him almost lose his footing, but he managed to regain his balance. I didn’t have long, though. Quickly, I did pre-flight checks started the engine and got the rotors turning – just in time to witness the guard releasing the door.

The door swung back almost immediately as he started his run towards the chopper, and the first of the crazies piled through. They scrambled over each other, even fought with one another – which bought the man a bit of time – but my God, there were so many… He didn’t hesitate to turn and fire, arcing the machine gun and crippling those on the front line. Most had been covered in blood even before he started to shoot; flashes of white from eyes, teeth and what remained of clothing, the only thing breaking up the scene.

He faced me again, made a sprint for it – as I reached around and opened the back door for him, so he could just jump straight in. The thickset man practically ran
into
the helicopter, almost knocking himself out, just like Weeks had done back there with the glass. “Hurry!” I shouted, though I don’t think he needed telling. He tossed the rifle inside, and was about to join it when they caught up with him.

All I can remember are the hands, so many hands pulling him back out of the chopper, scratching and punching him; savaging that poor bastard. I made to get out and try to help, but it was already too late for him. I needed to get airborne as quickly as possible. There was a jolt, and I looked back to see that some silly tosser had run headlong into the tail-blade, sending bits of themselves all over the place. That was it; no more. I worked the collective – basically looks like a handbrake – and foot pedals, and we started to rise. The affected were clambering all over the landing skids, weighing us down. I shoved the cyclic – that looks like a joystick – forward, though, and we started to move towards the edge. A few of those crazies fell when we cleared it, but most of them stopped – staring at the chopper from the rooftop, some raising hands as if bidding us a fond farewell.

It was only after I’d been in the air a minute or two that I realised one had climbed into the back through the open door, and was in the well between the rear and front seats. A woman with bald patches in her mousy hair, face burned – like acid had been thrown into it – reached around and grabbed at me. I lost control, the chopper falling towards the ground. I wrestled with my passenger, at the same time trying to wrestle control back of the squirrel. In the end I punched backwards, hoping to hit her – but simultaneously gave a sigh of relief and felt sick to my stomach when I heard the crunching of bone as her nose broke. The grip released, I could fly the chopper upwards once more, but first I shoved the cyclic sideways sharply – causing the woman to fall right out through the back door again. She landed awkwardly, half on grass, half on concrete; her arms and legs creating a Swastika effect.

I levelled out the helicopter, giving a satisfied grunt when the back door slammed shut again, and continued on over the grounds. It was only now I was free of it, that I could see more of the effect of the fire from the outside – some of the windows on the lower levels of the facility had been smashed, letting out thick gouts of smoke. A few of the vehicles in the car park were aflame as well, and now that I was flying towards the fencing, I saw some of those guard dogs tearing into bodies – whether they’d actually killed the men or were just ‘playing’ with them after the fact was impossible to tell.

One thing I did know, the whole thing was a mess.

I was aware of something sparking off to the side, more gunfire. Someone at the gate was taking pot-shots at the chopper. God almighty, was this ever going to end? I veered off and away, climbing as I did so, hopefully out of range. Leaving the nightmare of that place behind me.

As I flew dead ahead I realised that nobody was going to come to those people’s aid, not somewhere as secret as that – not unless I notified the authorities. So, the first thing I did then was get on the radio, trying to hail someone… anyone. I thought I heard a tinny voice answering on one of the frequencies, but after that all I got was static. I kept trying for a little while, all the time moving forwards in a straight line, passing over patchwork countryside and narrow roads below – a chopper was much quicker than driving round all those snaky bends. When the radio went completely dead, I decided to keep going until I found the nearest hint of civilisation and take it from there. I had pretty much a full tank of fuel, according to the gauge; all I had to do was let someone in charge know once I arrived there. Simple, right?

First off, I was much further away from anywhere than I thought – took me a good hour or more to reach the nearest town, and I saw no cottages or houses between the facility and that place I could try. Heaven knows what state the facility would be in by the time I called up the cavalry. It didn’t look the largest of towns, but still I offered up a silent “thank you” when I saw buildings: warehouses and shops and fast food places; shielded on the far side by a large river, over which a bridge had been planted.

The closer and lower I flew, though, the more I saw what state the town was in. Smashed storefronts, rubble in the streets. One van was even upside down, either because it had hit something or been flipped – which must have taken several people to do. In short, it looked just as ravaged as the hellhole I’d escaped from. I think I’d assumed that whatever had happened at the facility had been contained to that place alone; it never entered my head that this might be a more widespread thing; that it might have happened anywhere else at the same time.

Yet I saw evidence of the same thing here – dead bodies everywhere. Live ones too, only they were running around, acting in that lunatic way I was familiar with. People beating each other with fists and rocks, mutilating each other with teeth and blades; others had stripped naked, fucking out in the open – not just couples, but dozens of them in scenes that would have made Caligula blush.

I couldn’t stop here. I wouldn’t find the civilisation I was looking for here. Only death and depravity, a new Sodom and Gomorrah. I’d already decided to move on to the next town or city when the chopper gave another lurch. Wasn’t anyone inside this time, no crazies in the back seat – nobody shooting at me, either. No, this was something happening internally. Something engine-related. The rotors above me began to slow down, the nose dipping as we fell; an alarm sounded, loud and annoying. I was right over the town, over the danger zone – I couldn’t drop here… Couldn’t, and yet I
was
; it was out of my control.

The chopper began to spin, then to roll… Over and over. I’d forgotten to strap myself in, hadn’t had time when I first got behind the controls and had been too busy with other things afterwards, so I rolled with the machine – hitting the roof, being smashed against the floor. The collective struck my side and I cried out in pain.

At some point the rotors just broke off, and the tail hit the side of a building, but that’s pretty much all I remember before I blacked out.

Before I thought I’d died.

Stop. Playback.

CHAPTER THREE

Record:

Wow – that was a lot to bombard you with, wasn’t it?

Took a while to play that all back – it’s almost dark now – and thought to myself
not bad, Adam
. I think I more or less captured what a shitstorm that escape from the facility was, then the crash. I hope I did anyway, hard to tell. Nobody to play this out loud to here, but me.

Dramatic wasn’t it? Tense? Got the blood pumping? Yeah? That’s great…

Pause.

Resume record:

More or less ready to continue, though it’s been hard gearing myself up to carry on. I might joke about it…you could tell I was joking, right? About how dramatic it all was. But actually, reliving all that… I shivered at one point. I never shiver. Never get cold, the SKIN sees to that. Regulates body temp. And looking back, listening to all that again, I know how lucky I am. What a million to one shot it was I’d be wearing the SKIN in the first place when…

You want to know what happened, don’t you? After the crash. Here I am babbling about my feelings, back then and when I heard my story again – but I left it on what they might call a cliffhanger in those old serials I used to watch as a kid on Saturday morning TV. Well, not that much of a cliffhanger because you know I made it, I didn’t die. Haven’t yet anyway. But here’s why I didn’t back then.

When I woke up, it was still black… quite dark, at any rate. In fact, I had a little trouble realising I
was
awake to begin with. I blinked a few times, brought my hand up to a sore spot on my head. Should have come away wet, by rights, but the SKIN had contained the wound underneath, was already recycling my spilled blood, speeding up the healing process. Nothing’s ever wasted.

I heard movement off to my left and made to get up, remembering where I’d crashed – what had happened at the facility, what had been happening below me in the town. If I was still alive, I wouldn’t stay that way if the affected had found me. I let out a moan at the pain in my side where the collective had banged into me, but fortunately hadn’t torn the SKIN.

“Don’t move!” said a voice; male. “I’m warning you!”

If he was speaking to me, and not trying to either kill me or shag me, then I figured I was okay. Slowly, I turned to look in his direction – and I saw the guard’s gun, the one that had been in the back of the chopper, pointing at me for the second time. It was in the hands of a guy of about fifty – with bushy eyebrows and a beard to match – wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and light grey trousers. I raised both my hands in surrender. “There’s no need for that. I’m okay.”

He looked at me sideways on, with suspicion. The light in the room flickered and it was then I realised it was coming from some candles. One quite close, a few more back there in the gloom, like they were deliberately keeping it dim.

“Where… where am I? How did I get—”

The man’s eyebrow’s met in the middle, and his grip on the rifle tightened. “I’ll be the one asking the questions.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“Who are you?” was the first one.

“My name is Adam Keller.”

“Where are you from?”

“What originally? Well, my mother was from—”

“Don’t get bloody smart with me.”

“I wasn’t.”

It went on in that same vein for a little while until we got to the meat of it. I told him that I’d come from a hospital – thought that would be better than a heavily guarded R&D facility – about an hour away, but not to ask me where, because I didn’t even know where
this
place was.

“Hospital? Don’t know of any hospitals that far out, just our local one,” he said. I was trying to get a handle on his accent, not that it would tell me anything – he might have moved to this town for all I knew. Northern was about as close as I got.

“Well, you asked me…”

“That why you’re dressed like that?” he used the barrel of the rifle to point to my shorts.