Twenty-Five Percent (Book 3): Vengeance Page 5

Alex watched the horde make their clumsy way towards them. Their movements had become uncertain, as if they weren’t sure if the tank was something of interest or not. Concerned they’d lose interest, he gave a wave of encouragement. The eaters focused on him, but still seemed reluctant to commit.

  “Come on!” he yelled. “Let’s get this party started.”

  That did it. Voices they knew meant food. The horde surged forward with a collective moan.

  “Get ready,” he called down to Micah.

  “Woohoo!” Micah shouted, revving the engine.

  Alex shook his head. Definitely having too much fun.

  He waited until the front of the horde was almost on them before giving Micah the order to go. They moved along the road, Alex waving his arms and yelling to keep the horde following while Micah stopped every now and then to allow them to catch up. Progress was slow and Alex was glad they only had a mile or so to travel.

  Reaching the end of the bank where the land flattened out to the side of the road, Micah turned the tank and plunged into the field. Alex winced as they ploughed through rows and rows of ripening maize. If the whole outbreak thing hadn’t been cleared up by winter they would probably need all the food they could get. Behind them the horde extended the damage, but there was nothing they could do about it. Before they survived the winter, they had to survive Boot.

  At the far end of the field they crossed a minor road, decimated a wide section of hedge on the other side, and continued into another field, this one already harvested. The eaters jogged after them, struggling through hedges, stumbling into ditches and getting a good soaking in a shallow stream, but never tiring in their quest to feed.

  Alex’s voice, however, did begin to tire as they travelled. “I can’t keep shouting at them.”

  “You want to swap?” Micah said.

  Alex imagined the hundreds of eaters just a few dozen feet behind them swarming the tank while he blundered about trying to steer. “No, I don’t think we should stop.”

  He watched the eaters following them and suddenly had an idea. He smiled, took a deep breath, and started to sing. He picked Staying Alive. It seemed appropriate and he knew all the words.

  Inside the tank, Micah burst into laughter as Alex serenaded the horde with his inexpert, but enthusiastic rendition of the Bee Gees’ disco classic. As no one could see him, Alex added in some dance moves for the benefit of the crowd.

  When he reached the chorus, Alex almost fell off his perch on the ladder when Micah joined in. By the time the industrial park came into view they both were laughing so hard Alex could hardly breathe and Micah’s driving was becoming increasingly erratic.

  Alex was fairly sure they shouldn’t be enjoying themselves under the circumstances, but it felt good to laugh with such abandon. He was almost disappointed the journey was coming to an end.

  “You ready?” Micah called when they were a couple of hundred feet from the nearest of the cluster of huge grey warehouse buildings.

  Alex wiped the tears from his eyes and put on his serious face. “Yeah. Do it.”

  The tank turned, stopping sideways on to the building. With a nervous glance back at the approaching horde, Alex climbed out of the hatch and pushed it closed. Then he slid down the side of the tank facing away from the horde, dropped to the ground, and sprinted for the building.

  Directly in front of him was a huge grey sectional shutter door, big enough to fit the back end of a large lorry and certainly big enough for the tank. It was closed. A large sign high up on the wall proclaimed the warehouse to be Carneforth Retail and Office Outfitters Distribution Centre. Alex headed for a small door to one side. It too was closed, and locked, but a hard tug on the handle got him inside.

  He looked back at the tank to see the eaters swarming around it, moaning and clawing at the metal hull. Micah was hanging out of the hatch, encouraging the eaters to stay around him. Some were making a rudimentary attempt to climb onto the top, but the tank towered above them, far too tall for their mindless efforts.

  Inside, Alex passed a series of deserted offices and an employee break room before finding his way into the main area of the distribution centre. It was huge. For a few moments Alex simply stood and stared at the massive space. Three quarters of the floor space was taken up by towering aisles between giant shelves filled with cardboard boxes and other, plastic wrapped, items on wooden pallets. A battalion of forklift trucks stood off to one side. A dozen three foot square tall steel cages on wheels, the kind he’d seen used to move boxes of goods for restocking supermarket shelves, lounged against the wall far to his right alongside a couple of huge waste containers.

  On the way, he’d been slightly concerned the eaters wouldn’t all fit inside. Now he saw the size of the place, he imagined once they were in, they’d be lost in here.

  Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted, “Hello?”

  His voice echoed back to him from every corner of the warehouse. It went unanswered.

  He tried again. “If there’s anyone in here, you need to get out. I’m not here to hurt you, but this place is about to host a very large horde of eaters.” ...eaters... eaters... eaters...

  Still no reply, but he wasn’t really expecting anyone to be here. Why would anyone choose to hide for weeks in a warehouse that didn’t even contain food?

  There were two more loading doors leading out of the warehouse, one in the wall opposite where the tank would be entering and one on the side wall. A wide, open area ran the length of that side of the building, connecting all three doors. Perfect for the tank to drive through.

  Alex jogged to the nearest door and searched for the lock. He was overjoyed to find the keys still inserted, looking like someone had left in a hurry. After making sure it was unlocked, he pulled the keys out and sprinted to the far end of the building where he opened the opposite door. Light flooded inside, reflecting off the motes of dust hanging in the air. A moment of calm before the storm.

  Leaving the door open, Alex returned to the entrance closest to where Micah and the tank were waiting.

  “Okay, now or never,” he muttered to himself as he hit the button to open the door.

  The metal roller shutter trundled up, rattling in its channel as it moved. Moans filtered in from outside. The tank, right where he’d left it minutes before, was surrounded. Some eaters had somehow even managed to clamber onto the top. Micah was nowhere to be seen and for one panicked moment Alex thought something had gone wrong. But then, as the door reached the top of its movement, the turret swung round, dislodging the eaters clinging to it and throwing them to the ground.

  Alex breathed a sigh of relief and moved back from the door, keeping to the shadows where he wouldn’t be seen. Outside, the tank started to move.

  The eaters, as always blissfully unaware of their own mortality, failed to get out of the way. After watching for a few seconds Alex turned away, feeling sick.

  The Challenger reached the door and drove in, the sound of its engine echoing around the huge space. It stopped for a moment for Alex to climb on before starting towards the door Alex had left open at the far end of the building. Behind them, the first eaters entered the door.

  Alex started singing again, both to keep the eaters following and in case he didn’t get the chance again for a while. He wasn’t a stranger to the occasional bit of karaoke. He smiled as he sang, enjoying the acoustics of the space. It almost made him sound good.

  As they reached the exit, the tank came to a halt, waiting for all the eaters to get inside. The hatch in the top of the tank opened.

  “I don’t want to jinx it or anything,” Micah said as he appeared through the opening, “but this is going unusually smoothly.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Alex replied. “Maybe it’s my singing. Must have a magical quality.”

  “Yes, I imagine it’s very good at making people disappear.”

  “You’re just jealous you don’t have talent like...” Alex was interrupted by a scream. “You just ha
d to say something, didn’t you?”

  The shriek had come from inside the warehouse. Alex stood up on the turret, straining to see into the gloomy interior of the building.

  Micah climbed from the hatch to join him. “Didn’t you check there was no-one in here?”

  “Of course I checked. I shouted.”

  “You didn’t sing to them, did you?”

  Another scream was followed by a crash. Alex looked back at the eaters. They were halfway across the warehouse towards the tank, but many of them were now slowing and looking in the direction of the new sounds.

  Alex jumped to the floor. “Stay here.”

  Without waiting for Micah to answer, he ran along the aisle to his right and into the maze of giant shelving, calling as he ran. “Whoever’s in here, where are you?”

  There were a few seconds when all he could hear were eater moans, the rumbling of the idling tank and his own footsteps. Then someone shouted.

  “Help us!”

  With the echoes it was difficult to tell the exact direction the call had come from. Alex made his best guess and picked up speed. Another sound joined the disparate noises, this one unmistakable. The crying of a baby.

  Alex sprinted to the end of the aisle, turned left, and almost ran into a group of eaters. His skull-spiker was in his hand within a moment and he stabbed the first eater reaching for him and spun away from the second, sweeping its legs from beneath it before backing away to assess the situation.

  Around ten eaters were clustered at the base of one of the giant shelving runs. Above them, huddled at the back of the first shelf roughly five feet off the ground, were seven teenagers, three girls and four boys. One of the girls held a crying bundle of clothing in her arms.

  The eater Alex had tripped grabbed his ankle and he leaned down to plunge the spiker into its forehead before it could pull him over. When he straightened, two more had turned their attention to him. At the far end of the aisle a hundred yards away more were heading in his direction.

  As Alex dispatched the next two eaters, pheromones puffed around him. The remaining eight turned towards him.

  “Stay there,” he told the kids. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  It took him a good thirty seconds to take out the rest of the mini horde and in the flurry of dodging, punching and stabbing, he ended up back around the corner, out of sight of the trapped teenagers. When he returned to their hiding place, they were gone, but he could still hear the baby. Jogging around to the next aisle, he found the group a little way along it, staring in terror at more eaters heading towards them.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Alex said.

  They turned to look at him. One of the boys stepped between him and the rest of the group. He looked around sixteen.

  “Don’t come near us,” he said, his voice shaking only slightly. “We can defend ourselves.”

  Alex huffed out a breath. Teenagers. “From them?” He pointed at the eaters rapidly closing in on them. “I’m here to help you.”

  One of the girls planted her hands on her hips. “You brought eaters to us!”

  “I didn’t know you were in here. You didn’t answer when I called.”

  “We don’t know you, white-eye.”

  The eaters were only sixty feet away now.

  Alex plastered on a fake smile. “Hello, my name is Alex and I’m the one trying to save your lives. We can discuss who is at fault vis-a-vis the eaters being here when we’re all safe, how does that sound? Good? Good. Come with me if you want to live.”

  He turned away, doing a mental fist pump. He’d been waiting to use that one since the outbreak began. He wished Micah had been there to hear it.

  He waited out of sight around the corner while the teenagers wasted precious seconds discussing whether to follow him or not. If they decided not, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Finally, however, either common sense or terror of the approaching horde got them moving. They seemed startled when they rounded the corner and found him waiting for them.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “If you try anything, we’ll... you’ll regret it,” the boy who’d spoken to him first said. “You can’t take us all at once.”

  Alex refrained from pointing out he’d just taken on ten eaters all at once. “Yeah, whatever. Just follow me.”

  He led the way along the back wall of the building until they reached the corner, then peered towards where the tank still sat by the open door. To his dismay, some of the eaters had already reached it, too many to fight through. He addressed the group huddled behind him.

  “Can you get back onto the shelf?” he said, pointing at the nearest unit. There were nods. “Good. Hide there and don’t make any noise.” He looked at the baby clutched in the girl’s arms. Its crying had reduced to little whimpering sounds. “At least, try not to. When the aisle is clear, get as fast as you can to my friend down there. His name’s Micah. You can’t miss him, he’s the one with the tank.”

  Not waiting for an answer, he ran back in the direction they’d come. He didn’t want to leave them unprotected, but he had to get the eaters away from Micah and the door or none of this was going to work. He just hoped the horde did what he wanted it to.

  Eaters were approaching down every aisle he passed as he sprinted for the far corner of the building until, fifty feet from the end, they poured into his path. He skidded to a halt and looked around. Far behind him, back at the corner, the kids had disappeared. At least he didn’t have to worry about them for now.

  Which was good because at that moment eaters began pouring from the aisles behind him too. He was surrounded. Finally settling on up as the only direction that didn’t spell certain death, he climbed the nearest huge shelves as the horde closed in on him, getting ten feet off the floor before insinuating himself between stacks of plastic wrapped cardboard boxes.

  Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted, “Micah!”

  A couple of seconds later the reply came. “What?”

  “A group of kids will be heading to you as soon as the eaters move. I’m going to try to get the horde to come to me. When you’ve got the kids, get out and close the door. I’ll get out the other end.”

  “Are you sure you can get out?”

  He wasn’t. “Yes.”

  There was a pause. “Okay.”

  Alex looked down at the growing throng of eaters below him. His mouth went dry as he flashed back three weeks to standing on the edge of the building by the barrier in Sarcester, Kerry ordering him to jump into the horde. He shook the memory away. Now was not the time.

  “Alright you lot,” he said to the moaning eaters, “let’s smell those pheromones and get all your friends over here.”

  He climbed back down so he was just above the sea of grasping hands and raised his voice to a shout. “Come and get it, eaters. I’m waiting.”

  The eaters gathered around him reached up, their moans increasing in volume. The now familiar aroma of pheromones tickled his nose, coating the back of his throat and swirling in the air around him. It made him feel slightly light-headed. Or maybe that was the adrenaline rush.

  He screamed, “Yeah, baby!”

  Because it was that kind of moment.

  “That’s right,” he yelled, holding onto one of the unit’s upright support columns with one hand and leaning out over the writhing crowd, “show me how much you want me!”

  Their moans rose to a frenzy and they surged against the shelves, causing the structure to rattle as more and more filled the wide aisles around him. Alex stared down at their upturned faces, their vacant expressions gazing at him without any emotion or thought. Every one of their busy, complicated lives reduced to one single desire – to eat.

  No love or hate, no fear or joy, no pain or pleasure.

  Alex had been like that once, for the four weeks he lay bound to a hospital bed as he was treated and fed, his body fighting off Meir’s disease while he knew nothing.

  Hannah was like that
now.

  Had Boot found her and killed her? Or was she still alive in that room where he’d left her, every part of the beautiful person she’d been as lost as all the people in front of him now? Men, women, children, now nothing more than vessels for the disease that had taken everything they once were.

  Leaning out further, he brushed his free hand over the tips of their outstretched fingers like the lead singer at a rock concert. His adoring audience went wild, straining upwards to reach him.

  It would be so easy, to just let go and allow them to carry him away...

  A sound startled him, jarring him from his reverie. He snatched his hand back.

  From across the warehouse he could hear the rattle of the loading door closing. The teenagers had made it. Now he had a job to do.

  Without altering at all, the adoring crowd transformed into a baying mob.

  How on earth do I get out of this?

  “Time to leave,” he muttered, pulling himself back onto a safer part of the shelving and beginning the long climb to the top.

  The top shelf was at least forty feet from the ground and mostly clear. Judging by the layer of dust, it wasn’t used much.

  Alex looked down at the horde gathered around him. “Later,” he said, throwing them a sloppy salute.

  The line of shelves he stood on extended roughly halfway across the width of the building then stopped, leaving a gap of around ten feet before the next line began. Given sufficient run-up, Alex could easily clear ten feet in a single jump. But that was on the ground, when his life didn’t depend on making it and the leap wasn’t across more than a forty foot drop with eaters close by, ready to swarm onto him if he fell.

  He gave it roughly two seconds’ thought before starting the climb down.

  Reaching the floor, he peered around the side of the shelves, thinking that maybe he could run the rest of the way. The move turned out to be a mistake. The horde back in the direction he’d come from spotted him immediately and ran towards him. He barely had time to dart to the next unit and haul himself out of their reach before they got to him.

  “You lot are fast, aren’t you?” he said, looking down at them.