Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3)

TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT

Book 3

VENGEANCE

NERYS WHEATLEY

TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT BOOK 3: VENGEANCE

Copyright: Nerys Wheatley
Published: 2016
 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted, without written permission from the author. You must not circulate this book in any format.

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His heartbeat pounded in his ears, the thud, thud, thud against his ribcage feeling like he was having a heart attack.

Clutching at the rough bark of the tree next to him to stay upright, he tried to take some calming breaths, but they became harsh gasps for air. His stomach roiled, threatening to bring his lunch back up.

Closing his eyes, he focused on a single memory, the only thing that could calm him when he got like this. In his mind he saw a face framed by soft blonde curls, round, blue eyes staring up at him, pink lips turned up into a smile. A single word spoken in a gentle, sweet voice.

“Daddy.”

Gradually, the panic attack subsided. Around him the sounds of normality returned; a bird chirping, the wind rustling amongst the leaves overhead.

The moans of thousands of eaters chilling out.

Releasing his death grip on the tree and wiping his sweaty palms down the front of his thighs, Sean Hudson opened his eyes.

He looked across the grass at the Omnav headquarters compound. To his relief, the hundreds of eaters both inside and outside the fence were still gathered together, swaying and moaning. The attack felt like it had lasted for hours, but it had probably been less than a minute. The diversion hadn’t happened yet.

For a moment he was afraid he’d been wrong to volunteer. None of the others in his unit knew he was suffering from the debilitating bouts of terror, although the Lieutenant suspected something was wrong. A few days ago she’d privately brought up the possibility of post traumatic stress. He’d been quick to laugh it off. He was fine, he said. It was just a natural reaction to the constant danger they were in. Everyone was feeling it.

But he wasn’t fine and he knew it. Hiding the fear he felt all the time these days was becoming increasingly difficult and he was having a hard time controlling his anger, behaving like an arse to people who didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t proud of himself.

During Sean’s four years in the army he’d seen PTSD in those serving with him more than once, but he’d never truly understood it until now. Not that it mattered if he had it or not. What was he supposed to do? Check out of the situation and book an appointment with the nearest psychiatrist? And how could he have
post
traumatic stress when he was still in the middle of the trauma?

Whatever it was, he had no choice other than to try to keep it together and hang on, for himself, for those around him, and for his little three-year-old daughter who he prayed with all his heart was safe with his ex-wife in Skipton.

So he had volunteered for this ridiculously dangerous mission, even though he was terrified out of his mind. Because if he could do this, he figured he’d be able to do anything. And maybe, just maybe, every time he closed his eyes he’d stop seeing Jake, terrified eyes staring at him from his eater-blood spattered face, right before Sean pulled the trigger. Before he ended his best friend’s life.

A concussive boom shuddered through the ground beneath his feet.

Despite knowing it was coming, Sean flinched. He clutched the tree next to him again and swallowed against his suddenly dry mouth. This was it.

Every one of the thousands of eaters surrounding the Omnav building raised their faces towards the explosion. The ever present low moans stopped.

“Come on,” Sean whispered, “do that pheromone thing. Go and find out what’s happening.”

As if listening to him, the first few eaters broke ranks and headed towards where Sean’s unit had detonated one of their precious grenades. More followed. Soon they were all moving in the same direction like the horde they were, some shuffling, some jogging, some coming close to a run. But they were all leaving, which meant he would be too.

After a minute or so, with the last of the stragglers now far enough away, Sean did a final scan of the compound and the building for movement. Seeing none, he broke cover.

He sprinted across the lengthening grass separating the tree line from the closest section of the fence surrounding the compound, keeping as silent as possible. He’d left almost all of his equipment in the armoured patrol vehicle, including his rifle, and was dressed only in a t-shirt, trousers, and combat body armour, armed only with his pistol and knife. He felt almost naked without his pack and weapons, but it was liberating to be moving without the extra weight. If he was lucky, he’d be in and out without any need for a single bullet.

Reaching the ten foot high fence in seconds, he leaped without slowing, catching hold of the top and hauling himself over to drop into a crouch on the ground inside the compound. He looked around, stilling his breathing so he could listen for any sigh he’d been seen.

Nothing.             

Keeping low, he ran for a nearby truck. He’d scaled the fence in an area where several military vehicles were parked which provided some cover. He darted between hiding places, making his way towards his target, the two jet black helicopters resting on the asphalt a few hundred feet away. A third helicopter sat on the helipad on the roof of the building. Harvey Boot, CEO of Omnav and all around megalomaniac, had returned in it the day before. There was nothing Sean could do about that one. If they’d all been down here on the ground the plan would have been different and Sean would be carrying explosives to take out all three. But as he couldn’t, this was the next best thing. Maybe he’d get a chance another time.

Reaching the last piece of cover before the wide open space around the helicopters, he stopped and scanned the building again. Still nothing. He knew Boot was in there, along with those of his freakishly tall guards who had survived the influx of eaters four days ago. Although how many that left inside he had no idea. Hopefully they, like the eaters, were focused in the direction of the explosion at the front of the building.

He patted the pockets on his thighs to reassure himself the tiny gadgets were secure then left the cover of the truck and sprinted towards the nearest helicopter. As he’d hoped, the doors were unlocked and he placed the device easily, then he ran to the second chopper and leaned inside to repeat the process.

“Hey!”

Sean started at the voice and peered around the helicopter door. A tall man in a black suit was standing outside one of the doors in the rear of the main building, a rifle in his hands. Apparently he was a shoot first kind of guy.

Sean leaped back as the shooting started, using the door for cover. When the bullets stopped for an instant he pulled the door half closed against him and opened fire with his pistol. Without time to aim properly all his shots went wide, but it was enough to send the security guard darting back into the doorway for cover.

Sean launched himself towards the fence.

The sound of bullets ricocheting off the asphalt followed his mad dash. Ahead of him, he could see eaters making their way back to the fence. Someone inside must have used the fake pheromones to return them to their protective circle around the building. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be trapped.

With the choice of either returning fire or maintaining his speed, Sean chose the latter, pumping his arms and using every ounce of strength he had to accelerate for the fence. A sharp pain stung his ankle and he stumbled, just managing to stop himself from falling. But he’d lost precious seconds of time. Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he ran on.

Reaching the fence, he hurled himself at the top, this time adrenaline carrying him so high he almost vaulted over. On the other side, an eater was shuffling into his path. He kicked it in the face as he sailed over, landing in the grass beyond the emaciated woman. It made a clumsy grasp at his arm as bullets tore into it from the man with the rifle. Sean leaped away from possible flying blood and resumed his flight for the trees. More eaters loomed around him, many of them falling as he zigzagged through the coalescing horde and bullets meant for him ripped into them instead.

Finally, his lungs ready to explode, he burst through the tree line and crashed through the undergrowth. A few seconds later he was out of sight in the low dusk light and the firing stopped. He thought he heard someone swear loudly.

He came to a halt and looked back in the direction he’d come, leaning one hand against the broad trunk of an oak as he gasped for breath.

Fortunately, most of the eaters who might have followed him had been mown down by the guard and his rifle, unwittingly aiding Sean’s escape. One man in a white lab coat was trying pathetically to drag itself along the grass in his direction, its legs having been shredded. It would bleed out soon. Sean looked away from it.

Back in the compound a group of three guards, including the one who had shot at him, were gathered around one of the helicopters. After a brief search inside, one of them pulled out a small grey box and showed it to one of the others, an older, grizzled man who appeared to be in charge. He said something and the guard dropped the box and stamped on it, grinding it beneath his boot. A similar process followed with the second helicopter.

By this time eaters were starting to return to the inside of the compound too. After a final look at the trees in Sean’s general direction, the three guards returned to the safety of the building and sealed themselves inside.

Sean leaned back against the oak for a moment and smiled. The two tracking devices they’d found had been destroyed, but the two backups he’d also secreted were still hidden in the helicopters. The plan had worked. If Boot made a move, they would know about it.

He lifted his foot to inspect the wound on his ankle. It looked like a ricochet had grazed his skin; painful, but not life threatening. The bleeding was already slowing.

Pushing himself away from the tree, he limped away from the Omnav compound towards where he’d arranged to meet up with his unit a mile away.

Relief and victory made him feel a little lighter. Maybe he’d actually get some sleep tonight.

The heavy, grey clouds sat so low it looked like if he climbed a tall building he’d be able to reach up and touch them.

His mother would have said, “It’ll be pissing it down by lunchtime.” She always did have a way of getting to the heart of the matter.

Sam pushed his hands into his pockets and looked up and down the road, wondering which way to go. Harvey Boot was coming, that’s what Jerry had said when he’d gone around waking everyone up half an hour before. Sam wasn’t sure exactly what that would mean, but he knew it wasn’t going to be good.

Claire had already left with one group to do something for the city’s defences. They needed Survivors and she’d volunteered. Now Sam felt a little left out. Did anyone need
him
?

Across the street, the door to Alex’s block opened and for one excited moment Sam thought it might be him. He hadn’t seen Alex since they’d got back from Omnav five days ago and he missed his hero. Instead of Alex, however, Penny Creedon stepped out. Sam had only met her a couple of times, but she scared him a little. She carried a huge rifle everywhere. She’d even given it a name.

“At eight in the morning?” Penny was saying.

A slightly overweight man with glasses and greying dark hair followed her from the building. Sam smiled at the sight of his friend.

“Time tends to distort when you live underground with no outside light,” Doctor David Cranbourne said.

“And drink enough coffee to keep an elephant up all night,” the huge, bearded man following him out added.

Dave looked up at Ben Walker. “You don’t even drink... oh, you mean me.” He grinned. “Fair point. My body clock is shot, but we have a lot of work to do. Now Hannah’s gone...” A sad look passed across his face and he looked down at the pavement.

“So what are you doing here so early?” The last man out was Alex’s neighbour, Leon. He was speaking to Penny.

Sam liked Leon a lot. Of all the Survivors he’d met over the last few days, Leon was his third favourite, after Claire and Alex of course.

Penny peered into the sky as if there was something more interesting there than clouds. “Scott and I had a night patrol.”

“Really? I didn’t know you were on nights.”

She lowered her gaze to study a tree across the street. “Yeah, well, there was a change to the schedule.”

“I didn’t hear about that. Will all the patrols be affected?”

“Uh, no. It was a last minute thing.” She cleared her throat.

Leon burst into laughter. “You must be the worst liar I’ve ever met.”

She glared up at him. “Who says I’m lying?”

“Ms Creedon, you and Scott can shag each other senseless for all I care. No-one here minds what you do.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Who says we... oh, alright. Just don’t tell my dad.”

“So does this mean you like us now?”

“Don’t push it. Scott’s okay. The rest of you I’d still just as soon put a bullet between your white eyes as look at you.”

Leon smiled. “Of course. Don’t know what I was thinking.” He looked at Sam across the street for the first time. “Sam! Good, you’re ready. You’re with us.”

A bubble of joy expanded in Sam’s chest. Someone needed him. It was still a new feeling, being included in things. Maybe his mother had been right when he was growing up. Maybe things did get better when you were an adult. 

He ran over to join the small group.

“We need a couple more people,” Leon said. “No offence, Doc, but this is going to be hard work, and...”

Dave grinned and patted his round stomach. “Don’t let the gut fool you. There are muscles under here.”

“What are you all doing?” Penny said.

“Your father’s idea,” Leon replied. “We’re having a meeting later about what we’re going to do to protect the city from Boot, but Bates has been doing his own preparations in his paranoid, everyone’s-out-to-get-us kind of way. No offence.”

Penny waved a dismissive hand. “He’s my dad. You think this is news to me?”

“He’s got this idea for a way to make it more difficult for Boot’s helicopters to get around. He’s had his people raiding the DIY stores and builder’s merchants.” Leon smirked. “I imagine he would have had you helping if you hadn’t been AWOL with Scott so much.”

“Well, if you need some help...” she said, ignoring his comment and turning to wander across the road.

“Are you offering?” Dave called to her.

Leon, eyes wide, shook his head frantically at Dave. Sam had to stop himself from laughing.

“Are you insane?” Leon hissed to Dave.

“What?” Dave said. “Surely the more people we have, the quicker this will be?”

“Technically, yes, but she makes me a bit... uncomfortable. What with her wanting to wipe every Survivor from the face of the earth and everything.”

“Maybe she’s changing,” Dave said. “She seems to like Scott.”

“Wouldn’t another Survivor be a good thing?” Sam said, wanting to help. “What about Janie?”

Leon smiled at him. “Brilliant idea.” He lowered his voice. “And maybe it will put Creedon off coming.” He started towards Janie’s building. “Just going to fetch Janie,” he said to Penny as he passed her.

Penny scowled. “Do you have to?”

He ignored her and carried on into the building. Penny sat on the bonnet of one of the cars parked at the side of the street, propping her rifle up on one thigh. Dave continued doing whatever he was doing on his tablet while Ben leaned against the brick wall of the building nearby, his arms folded across his huge chest.

Sam was so used to seeing Ben in the black suit/white shirt uniform of Boot’s security guards that the jeans, t-shirt and v-neck jumper he was wearing made him look like a different person. Like the rest of Harvey Boot’s guards, Ben was huge, somewhere around six and a half feet, and he looked like a professional body builder. Somehow, however, he’d managed to find clothes to fit him. There must have been a specialist shop somewhere in the city that he and Brian had raided.

Sam wandered over to Penny and leaned back against the car next to her. “Why do you hate Survivors so much?” he said after half a minute of looking at nothing in particular while he drummed up courage to speak to her.

Penny shifted her weight on the car, lowering the rifle to lie across her lap. “Why do you like them so much?”

Sam smiled; this was one of his favourite subjects. “They’re just so cool. First of all, they survived the infection, which must be really horrible, to get sick and lose your mind, not know if you’re going to live or never become yourself again. You’d have to be tough to get through that. Then they have all these amazing things they can do, like super strength and speed and being able to smell things we can’t. They’re like real life superheroes. I don’t get why people don’t like them.”

He glanced sideways at her. She was staring at the gun on her lap.

“Survivors are dangerous,” she said. “Any one of them could kill you without even breaking a sweat. It’s like having wild animals running loose.”

“Normal people kill too,” he said. He pointed at her rifle. “You could kill me with that right now, if you wanted to. Although I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Yeah, but without Sylvester I couldn’t kill you.” She frowned. “Okay, I probably could, but that’s not the point.”

“So what is the point?” Sam said, trying not to dwell on the unsettling thought of her killing him with her bare hands.

“The point is that Survivors aren’t natural. Who knows what the disease does to their brains, even after they’re cured?”

“But you like Scott.”

“Scott’s different.”

“How?”

She huffed out a breath. “You ask a lot of questions, kid.”

Sam smiled. “I’ve been told that.”

The door to Janie’s building opened and she walked out, Leon following behind her. Penny slid from the bonnet and walked towards them.

She narrowed her eyes at Janie. “Bailey.”

Janie stared back. “Creedon.”

It was like watching two rival lionesses size each other up. From what Sam had seen over the last few days, Penny and Janie didn’t seem to get along, which mystified him.

“Why don’t they like each other?” he whispered to Leon as he walked past. “They seem a lot alike to me.”

Leon glanced back at the bristling women. “They are,” he said, “but if you ever want to father children, don’t ever mention that to them.”

Ben nudged Dave to get his attention from the tablet and they all headed for the barrier constructed of cars at the western end of the street. Past that, the six of them piled into a red Royal Mail delivery van commandeered from one of the city’s two sorting offices. The equipment they would need was already inside. It was all very organised. Leon even had a map to guide them to the spots Bates had picked for his defences, and Janie drove while he gave her directions. After having to double back twice, she asked him if he was a tourist and grabbed the map away from him. They arrived at their destination five minutes later.

Sam paid careful attention to the roads they took on the journey, trying to memorise the route. He’d explored some of the city, but there had been a lot to do since he arrived and he hadn’t seen as much as he wanted to. The people he’d met had all been so welcoming, he felt like he should at least learn his way around. 

He didn’t see anything dangerous. There were no free roaming eaters in Sarcester, that anyone knew of. Spotters with radios were stationed on the roofs of buildings on all the roads into the city, reporting any eaters that wandered in which would then be dealt with by combined groups of Survivors and Bates’ people. Sam had taken a couple of shifts, but there were plenty of volunteers for the job. The relatively few people left in the city wanted to stay safe. Sam had spent the whole five hours of each shift huddled in a blanket on a lawn chair, slightly bored.

What would happen when Mr Boot arrived, he didn’t know. Would he bring eater hordes with him like people were saying? The thought scared Sam. Even though he wanted to go back to his house in Peterborough when this was all over, even if it was just to fetch some of his stuff, he’d come to think of Sarcester as his second home. Maybe he’d choose to stay with his new friends. He didn’t want to see the city or those in it hurt in any way.

They stopped in an area close to the centre of the city where a cluster of new, eight storey blocks of flats by the river were busy raising the house prices in the adjacent areas. Or had been, before the outbreak. Everyone got out of the van and Leon and Ben began unloading supplies. Sam went to help them.

“So what are we doing here?” Janie said, planting her hands on her hips as she looked around.

“Bates thinks we can use these blocks as safe places to retreat if hordes get into the city,” Leon said, dropping the first of what turned out to be thirteen coils of thick steel cable onto the ground. “And he wants to string these between the surrounding buildings in case Boot’s helicopters attack. He seems to think we can lure them into the cables and bring them down. He’s got other groups all over the city doing the same. Sounds a bit unlikely to me, but...” He shrugged one shoulder and handed another coil to Sam, who almost fell over under the weight.

“Don’t put Dave on a ladder,” Ben said. “If he gets hurt on my watch, Larry will never let me hear the end of it.”

“Larry knows he’d be lost without me,” Dave said, winking. “I’m the brains of the operation.”

“What are you doing here then?” Penny asked. “Shouldn’t you be back at the lab making a cure or fixing the outbreak or something?”

“I volunteered.” He looked up at the clouds. “I haven’t seen the sun in two days.”

“Nor have we,” Sam said.

Dave chuckled. “Yeah, but you haven’t seen it from
outside
. I love my work, but being in that lab twenty-four seven is starting to send me loopy. I’ve got Ben here to guard me, which is keeping Larry happy.” He rolled his eyes. “You’d think I was a celebrity or something.”

“You’re one of potentially only three people in the whole country who can save us,” Ben said, dropping a black plastic bag with a metallic clatter onto the ground. “Right now you’re worth your weight in gold.”

Dave patted his stomach. “I knew these extra pounds would come in handy one day.”

They split into three pairs and headed out in different directions to the places Bates had chosen. Evidently, Penny’s father had put a lot of thought into the city’s defence. She said she’d never seen him so happily in his element.

Despite being there to guard Dave, Ben partnered with Sam and Dave went with Leon. That left Janie and Penny together. When the two women were far enough away to not hear him, Leon muttered, “I give it a fifty-fifty chance one of them doesn’t come back alive.”

Sam and Ben climbed to the third floor of one of the blocks and began the process of fixing one end of a length of cable to the wall next to a balcony via some sort of clamp. It probably had a technical name, but Sam had no idea what it was.

“Sam?” Ben said as they worked.