Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3) (21 page)

Micah kept one foot on the ground, his bike idling beneath him while he waited for the shooting to start.

The T-junction ahead of him was empty, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Even though he couldn’t hear them, he knew the horde was out there. As they weren’t on the attack yet, they were quiet. Micah hated this new stealth mode the eaters had developed. Their moans may have been enough to make his stomach migrate into his shoes, but at least he could hear them coming. Silence was worse.

He could hear the helicopter leading them in though, somewhere off to his right. He could also hear the Porsche Janie, Brian, Bates and Penny were using. It wouldn’t be long now.

Even though he’d been waiting for it, the sudden sound of gunfire made him jump. He sat up straight, revving the bike’s engine for no other reason than it sounded cool and helped to get him worked up. He felt the need for a bit of adrenaline to counteract his nerves.

The sound of the Porsche was approaching fast now and Micah realised he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly.

The car flew past the end of the street in a dim blur of red paint. No headlights. With Janie driving, they didn’t need them. He only just glimpsed Penny, Bates and Brian hanging out the windows, rifles pumping bullets into the sky behind. Two seconds later the helicopter followed, underside lit by the muzzle flashes from its guns.

Micah took off along the road, making it to the T-junction in less than five seconds. To his left the Porsche was already so far away he could barely see it in the gloom, the helicopter trailing close behind. He looked to his right. His heart leapt when he saw the road less than fifty feet away crammed wall to wall with eaters, slightly closer than he was expecting.

“Guys!” He shouted to get their attention, throwing in a wave for good measure. “Sorry, and girls of course. Shall we go for a walk?”

The horde erupted in a cacophony of moans and lumbered towards him as he pulled out in front of them. Weirdly, the sound was reassuring. It was the new normal.

He took the next turning to the right, diverting the horde towards the river and, most importantly, the Church Street bridge. In the distance, he could hear sporadic gunfire. That was good. It meant the helicopter was still after Bates and the others. The distraction was working.

He led the horde across another two streets and then veered left. Ahead of him, the buildings ended at the river. He glanced back to check the horde was still following, but he couldn’t see the back end so he just had to go on trust that they were all there. Alex’s nose would have been useful, to tell him if they were releasing the irresistible natural pheromones. But Alex had another job to do.

Now he was within a couple of hundred yards of the bridge, Micah could see it was empty. He was just wondering if he should start worrying when he heard the unmistakable sound of the sports car and the Porsche raced onto the street ahead of him, coming to a halt at the start of the bridge in a flurry of screeching brakes and burning rubber.

Relieved, Micah sped up to meet them.

“Everything good?” he said when Janie rolled down the window.

“It will be when Janie stops hogging the wheel and gives me a turn driving,” Bates said from the passenger seat.

She caressed the leather clad steering wheel. “Isn’t it gorgeous? I’m beginning to understand why men like these things so much. Turns out it might not just be overcompensation for their tiny...”

“Don’t say it,” Bates growled.

Janie grinned.

“You are enjoying this way too much,” Micah said. “Did the switch go okay?”

“Worked perfectly,” Penny said from the back seat. “They went straight after Alex. I think Boot must have given them all orders to find the two of you.”

They’d been counting on it. Micah wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that they’d been right. “You go on to the other side. I’m going to make sure the horde gets here and wait for Alex.”

“Okay,” Janie said.

She revved the engine and took off so fast Micah was left coughing and waving away a cloud of smoke and carbon monoxide.

He watched the horde getting closer. “Come on, Alex,” he murmured.

The sound of the helicopter was somewhere nearby and he hoped that was the reason he couldn’t hear Alex’s bike. He held onto his bike’s handles, his index fingers tapping out an impatient rhythm on the rubber as he watched the space between him and the eaters shrinking.

“Micah, what are you doing?” Janie shouted.

They had reached the far side of the bridge and were out of the car. Micah glanced back at them before returning his attention to the road ahead and the approaching horde.

“Come on, Alex, where are you?”

The leading eaters had almost reached the final side street before the bridge. Any closer and Micah would be forced to cross without him.

“Damn it.” He looked back at the group on the far side of the river. “Get the horde onto the bridge and blow it,” he shouted. “Alex and I’ll get across somewhere else. We’ll meet you back in East Town.”

“Be careful, Clarke,” Bates yelled.

Micah started his bike, gave them a wave, and drove straight at the eaters. He reached the side street at the same time as the first wave, taking the corner slower than he would have before his crash the previous day. Shouting came from the direction of the bridge as his friends coaxed the horde away from following him. He looked back to see a few stumbling in his direction, but most were still en route to the bridge. At least that part was working, but he and Alex had planned to be there on the other side of the river. By now he should have been used to the reality of their plans being no more than vague starting points.

The sound of the helicopter was echoing from the surrounding buildings making it difficult to pinpoint its location, but as far as Micah could tell he was heading in the general direction. After a few turns he glimpsed the black chopper and drove towards it. Focused on the sky as he rounded a corner, he almost ran into the motorcycle lying on its side in the middle of the road.

He swerved, just managing to avoid the obstacle, and stopped. It was Alex’s and in terrible condition, riddled with bullet holes and smoke rising from the engine.

Micah looked around. “Alex?”

There was no response.

Not caring who or what heard him, he cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed, “
ALEX
!”

Still no answer.

Then the shooting started.

Micah took off in the direction of the sound of gunfire and seconds later he reached the helicopter. It was hovering in front of a petrol station, spraying bullets across the forecourt. Micah saw Alex crouching behind one of the pumps and breathed out. He was alive.

The helicopter stopped firing and a voice spoke from a loudspeaker Micah didn’t know it had. “Give it up, MacCallum, there’s no way out. Mr Boot just wants to talk to you.”

Alex looked around and saw Micah. Micah held up his pistol and Alex nodded.

Taking careful aim at the helicopter’s tail rotor, Micah fired four rounds. It was more hope than anything else that he would do any damage, and he didn’t.  But he did get their attention. As they began to rotate towards him Micah stopped firing and took off, driving directly beneath the chopper. Alex darted from his hiding place and leaped on behind him before he’d even stopped. Micah crushed the throttle and they sped off down the road. Bullets and the helicopter followed.

Micah slalomed his way around corner after corner, hoping to use their greater agility between the buildings to lose their pursuers. A huge boom split the air, drowning out even the helicopter’s engine.

The bridge.

One small part of Micah rejoiced that at least some of their plan had worked. The rest of him focused on driving at speed through the streets without killing them both. Thankfully the people left in the city had cleared away the abandoned cars in this area. The last thing they needed right now was obstacles to hinder their escape.

After a couple of minutes the sound of the helicopter seemed to be falling behind. Micah looked back and up, but couldn’t see it.

He raised his voice above the engine. “I think we might have lost...”

They turned another corner. A wall of eaters blocked the road.

Too close to stop, they ploughed into the horde.

His shin itched.

He wanted to scratch it, but his arms wouldn’t move. It was annoying. All he wanted to do was sleep, but the itch wouldn’t go away. If he could only move, he could scratch and then return to hibernation. He tried again, but it was like trying to swim through tar.

A noise joined the itch, making sinking back into slumber even more difficult. It seemed to be coming from far away and he couldn’t quite make out what it was. Some kind of animal maybe? It sounded a bit like a cow, which was weird because there wasn’t a single cow anywhere near his flat in the middle of Bristol.

Slowly, over what felt like ages, the sound became louder and clearer. Not mooing, he realised. More human. More like... moaning.

Darren jerked awake.

For a few seconds he couldn’t tell which way was up. His head was spinning.

Something was scratching at his calf and he shook it. There was a moan. The touch on his leg became more insistent. Darren swivelled his throbbing head to look.

A twenty stone man with white irises and a blood encrusted face was reaching through a hole in the wreckage of the helicopter, clawing at Darren’s leg. He yelped and pulled out of reach. The eater shoved its face into the hole, moaning as it strained to get to him.

Darren scrabbled backwards and hit something soft. Choking in a breath, he whirled around. Vacant, dead eyes stared at him. He recoiled from the corpse. It was Harris, sagging against his seatbelt, his head turned at an impossible angle and blood seeping from his slack mouth. Darren looked away quickly, but it was too late. Fumbling with his seatbelt clasp as his gut convulsed, he freed himself, leaned over and vomited.

When he finally stopped throwing up, he straightened and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. It was then that he noticed his hands were shaking. He was freezing, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

When had it got so cold?

No
, he thought,
not cold. I’m in shock
.

The eater moaned again. Darren flexed his hands to return the feeling to his icy limbs and felt beneath his jacket for his knife. He was unspeakably relieved to find both it and his pistol still strapped to him. He pulled out the knife and carefully pushed it into the eater’s eyeball until it stopped trying to reach him and slid from the hole. Darren cleaned the blade off on Harris’ jacket and replaced it in its sheath.

Although the sun was still beneath the horizon, the sky was lightening and he could make out the dim interior of the helicopter. He leaned forward to check the front, the movement causing the pain in his head to flare. The pilot’s seat was empty, the door next to it open. Chester was slumped in the passenger’s seat. Darren reached around him and pressed two fingers to his neck. A strong pulse throbbed against his fingertips and he breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to be alone out here.

He was about to try to wake Chester when he heard a noise coming from outside. It almost sounded like wet fish being slapped, interspersed with an unpleasant squelching. Darren leaned between the seats, straining to see through the open door. In the low light it was difficult to make out anything but shapes, but the ground just outside seemed to be moving. Why had Boot insisted they do this in the dark?

As he stared, his night vision improving, more details came into focus. The moving mass separated into three, no, four people hunched over something on the ground. One of them shifted position, moving to one side.

Darren saw a face. Fitz. He was dead, four eaters burying their hands into his ruined body and pulling out chunks of viscera to shove into their mouths. Gut clenching again, Darren jerked back, squeezing his eyes shut and taking rapid, shallow breaths.

A moan forced his attention back to the horrific scene outside. One of the eaters was looking in his direction. He froze. He knew it would be able to see him, but maybe if he made no sound and didn’t move, it wouldn’t recognise him as prey.

For what seemed like a full minute he held his breath, heart thudding, waiting for the eater to lose interest. Finally, it lowered its head to the pilot’s body again.

Darren breathed out.

Chester groaned.

Darren’s gut plummeted as all four eaters raised their faces and looked towards the open door. Chester groaned again, his head flopping to the side.

The eaters lurched to their feet.

Darren lunged over the pilot’s seat head first and grabbed at the door handle. Legs still hooked over the back of the seat, he almost overbalanced, tilting towards the open door. One of the eaters reached the opening and slapped its hand onto the edge of the frame, its face less than a foot from Darren’s. Darren screamed and slammed the door shut, severing the eater’s fingers. They dropped, twitching, to the floor.

All four eaters crowded against the door. It was then that Darren realised the window was missing. Arms reached for him through the gap and he rolled away, ending up on his back with his head jammed against the dashboard and levers digging into his spine.

“Chester! Wake up!” he shouted, pulling his legs all the way over the seat and trying to squirm himself upright in the tight space. Why did he have to be so ridiculously tall?

Chester mumbled something, his eyes still closed.

A hand clutched at Darren’s wrist and he cried out as the eater’s grip almost crushed him. He twisted his arm, wrenching it from the eater’s grasp.

“Damn it, Chester,
wake up
.”

He finally got himself the right way round, facing the windscreen, and saw movement outside. Across the road, more eaters were approaching, drawn by the commotion.

Turning to Chester, Darren grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Chester! Wake the hell
UP!
”

He slapped the older man across the face.

Chester’s eyes snapped open. “What?!”

Darren breathed out. “Oh, thank goodness.”

“Did you just slap me?” Chester’s eyes darted around, finally settling on the approaching eaters visible through the windscreen. “We need to leave.”

“You think?”

The door on Chester’s side was clear and they climbed out, leaving the eaters on the other side still trying to get in through the broken window.

Chester swayed, grabbing the side of the helicopter for support. “I’m going to be sick.”

Darren looked towards the eaters crossing the road. “No time. Go.”

He pushed Chester ahead of him towards a side street. When he stumbled Darren grabbed his arm and pulled him to the corner, the eaters close behind.

“We have to get back to Boot,” Chester said as they ran.

“Going back to Boot will get us killed,” Darren replied, adrenaline and terror turning off the censor for his mouth.

Ahead of them, more eaters appeared. A lot more. Another street was ahead and they sprinted for it, just making it to the corner ahead of the approaching mob.

“He’s not evil,” Chester panted. “Harvey may have lost his way a bit, but he’s not a bad person. He’s had a difficult life.”

Darren didn’t answer, preferring to use his breath for running rather than discussing their diminutive, psychotic boss.

Ahead of them, a handful of eaters shuffled into view.

“We can take them,” Darren said, reaching for his pistol. Suddenly a moaning, writhing mass poured into their path, blocking the way forward. “Or not.”

They were hemmed in, surrounded by the horde they’d brought here. The words ‘poetic justice’ drifted across his mind. It annoyed him. This wasn’t the time to start growing a conscience.

“This way,” Chester grunted, grasping Darren’s arm and leading him into an alley.

There were two doors into the buildings on either side. Chester headed left and Darren right. He tugged on the handle and when it didn’t move, gripped it with both hands and pulled with all his strength. The door didn’t budge. What he wouldn’t have given for a Survivor’s strength at that moment.

He stepped back and looked across at Chester. He shook his head.

Further up the alley the way was blocked by a ten foot high temporary chain-link fence, edged in steel tubing and bolted to the walls on either side. At the sound of footsteps Darren looked back to see eaters pouring into the mouth of the alley behind them. The only way was forward.

Darren reached the fence first, jumping at the top and hauling himself up. It juddered beneath his weight. At the top, he reached down.

“Come on.”

With the eaters only feet away, Chester grabbed his hand and Darren pulled, straining to lift his large form. Chester grasped the top of the fence, pulling his feet up as the first eaters reached them. The horde pushed forwards. The fence groaned under the strain.

With a grinding squeal, it buckled, breaking free of its fixtures and toppling over.

Darren hit the ground hard. Pain exploded in his hip, his right leg pinned beneath the fence. Gunshots reverberated from the surrounding buildings. Chester was lying on his back on the fence, shooting the eaters that had fallen when it collapsed and were now clawing their way towards him. More eaters crowded forward, tripping over those on the ground.

Darren twisted his body, struggling to free his pistol trapped beneath him.

Chester cried out.

Darren looked up to see an eater on top of him, its mouth latched onto his wrist. Blood welled from between its teeth. Chester pulled his knife from under his jacket with his free hand and drove the tip into the eater’s skull, pushing it off as it slumped. Another eater grabbed his feet, pulling him towards the moaning horde.

The tension of the fence on Darren’s leg lessened a tiny amount. Gritting his teeth, he hauled himself free and scrambled to his feet.

Chester was stabbing at the eaters surrounding him. Darren pulled his pistol out and fired, taking down eater after eater, but for every one that fell, three took its place. In seconds they were all over the huge, grizzled man.

“Get back to Harvey,” Chester choked as he fought the writhing, biting mob, stabbing and punching. “He needs you.”

Teeth ripped into his flesh over and over, but he kept fighting. More eaters swarmed over his increasingly bloody form. He began to falter.

Darren took aim and fired. When his shaking hands missed, he fired again. His second shot found its mark and Chester went still.

The growing horde, those that couldn’t reach the fresh meat, turned their attention to Darren.

He turned and ran.