Twenty-Five Percent (Book 3): Vengeance Page 7

  “Okay,” Alex said breezily, “so we’ll just quickly tell you why we’re here and get out of your way.”

  Jean led them into a small, cosy living room with a wood-burning stove nestling in a stone fireplace and a mild, but not overwhelming, feeling of chintz.

  “What can I do for my two brave lifesavers?” Jean said, sitting on a sage green sofa and demurely pulling her dressing gown over her knees.

  “Well, we really came to see if you knew where Everett had gone,” Micah said, lowering into an armchair, “but apparently he hasn’t gone anywhere.”

  “No, he hasn’t gone,” she said. She smiled wickedly. “But he’s come...”

  “Don’t,” Alex said, holding his palm towards her. “Just... don’t.”

  “But it’s so much fun,” she said, laughing.

  She seemed to have recovered well from the trauma of being trapped in a car for four days just feet away from hundreds of eaters. Alex was happy for her, he really was. He just didn’t need to know how she’d got over it.

  “What do you need Ev for?” Jean said.

  “No,” Everett said, walking into the room. He sat next to Jean. Thankfully, he was now wearing a blue plaid shirt. “The answer is no. You are not having the Sea Holly.”

  “It’s just a precaution,” Alex said. “If things go to plan we won’t need you or the boat at all.”

  “Don’t care, the answer is still no.”

  “Of course we’ll help,” Jean said, “in any way we can.”

  Everett gave her a pained look. “Babe...”

  She placed one hand onto his thigh, still looking at Alex and Micah. “Just tell us what you need us to do.”

  Ten minutes later they returned to their bikes on the road.

  “It’s nice that Jean is happy,” Micah said. “After what she went through, she deserves it.”

  “She does,” Alex said, tucking the partner of the two way radio they’d left with Jean into his backpack.

  “I am never going to unsee that tattoo though,” Micah said, a haunted look on his face as he stared into the distance.

  Alex shuddered. “It was like a car crash. I desperately didn’t want to look at it, but I just couldn’t look away.”

  7

  It was a rare stroke of luck that Boot had chosen somewhere easy to find to spend the night.

  In the absence of any mobile signal, and therefore Google maps, Alex wasn’t sure how they would have found a more exclusive and elusive hotel in the centre of Cambridge. But then again, he assumed the centre of Cambridge was packed with eaters, much like Sarcester had been before most of them left. The university students wouldn’t have been back from the summer holidays by the start of the outbreak, but there were still over a hundred thousand permanent residents in the city. Far fewer than in Sarcester, but that was still a lot of potential eaters.

  They reached the rendezvous point Lieutenant Dent had chosen at just after seven in the evening. Although the cloudy sky was still a dull grey with the remains of the daylight, the sun had already set, and driving without headlights to avoid attracting attention was becoming dangerous for Micah.

  They pulled onto the forecourt of the petrol station and stopped next to the incongruous armoured patrol vehicle parked in front of the kiosk.

  Lance Corporal Adam Ridgewell walked out of the small building carrying a bulging carrier bag, smiling when he saw them. “Oh, good, you found us. Hungry?”

  Alex climbed off his bike. “I could eat.”

  Sean Hudson, Matt Collins, Will Porter, and Boot’s former bodyguard Rick Hartley, emerged from the kiosk as Ridgewell opened his carrier bag, showing them the contents. It was filled with snack foods, chocolate bars, and packets of crisps.

  “Healthy,” Micah said.

  “It’s all there is in there apart from rotting packs of sandwiches and sausage rolls,” Ridgewell said. “Are you one of those health nuts who say things like their body is a temple?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Micah said. “Got any mint Aeros?”

  “How’d it go with the tank?” Collins said, biting into a Twix.

  “Two words,” Micah said. “Tanks. Rock.”

  Collins laughed. “No argument from me.”

  “They’re not so fun after you’ve been stuck in one for ten hours with three other sweaty guys,” Second Lieutenant William Porter said. “I was a gunner for four years. There wasn’t enough air freshener in the world.”

  Everyone turned to stare at Porter who made them all, with the exception of Rick, look tiny.

  “How on earth did you fit?” Alex said around a mouthful of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut.

  Porter smiled and shrugged. “On reflection, it may not have been the best choice for someone of my size. I did have to hunch a lot.”

  The sound of a high performance engine interrupted their conversation and they watched a silver Lamborghini zoom towards the garage, do a tight handbrake turn onto the forecourt, and finally glide into the spot next to the bikes. Lieutenant Tracey Dent climbed out, a huge smile stretching her face.

  She ran one hand over the bonnet. “I love driving this thing. Hello Alex, Micah.”

  “Where did you get that?” Alex said, almost salivating at the sight of the sleek, shiny sports car that would have cost more new than he made in, he didn’t even know how many years.

  “Found it not far from Omnav. We needed another vehicle with there being too many of us to fit in the APV. And it needed to be fast and powerful.”

  “She’s totally hogging it,” Ridgewell said. Then he glanced at Dent. “Which she’s completely entitled to do, being the commanding officer and all.”

  “Yes she is,” Dent said, smiling. “Boot is at a small hotel about a mile from here. I couldn’t tell how many people he’s got with him, but there are three helicopters parked at the front so I’m guessing it’s anywhere between twenty to thirty of them. There’s a small horde hanging around too, about fifty eaters.”

  “Can we take out the helicopters?” Micah said.

  “It would be risky. They’re close to the building and the horde is surrounding them. Plus, there’s no moon and it’s already getting dark and we’re running very low on ammo. We can’t afford any mistakes. The eaters could see us, but we wouldn’t be able to see them.”

  “I would,” Alex said.

  “But you’re just one man. Even a Survivor can’t take on fifty eaters at once and you’d never do it without alerting them inside. There’s probably someone on watch. They’re not going anywhere tonight. We’ll go in at dawn tomorrow while they’re still asleep, hit them with precision and take out those choppers all at once.”

  Alex didn’t say anything, but from the look Dent gave him he suspected he wasn’t hiding his displeasure too well. He knew it frustrated her that she couldn’t order him and Micah around like the rest of them.

  But he was just a mile away from the lunatic who had killed Hannah and destroyed his home. Was she really expecting him to wait?

  “Let’s get going,” she said, lowering back into the car. “We need to get inside before it gets dark.”

  . . .

  Dent had found a large, deserted house a mile from the hotel where Boot was hiding, and the group commandeered it for the night.

  After a meal of tinned potatoes and ravioli, with a dessert of chocolate bars from the petrol station haul, Alex and Micah filled the group in on the defence plans for Sarcester, in the event all attempts to stop Boot before he got there failed.

  “Assuming we’re all correct about Boot’s intention to rustle up a horde to attack the city,” Dent said, “I think that sounds like a good plan.”

  “Why’s he stopping here though?” Micah said. “It’ll take him days to get a horde from here all the way to Sarcester. Why not get closer first?”

  “There’s an airfield not too far away,” Collins said. “The choppers refuelled after stopping at the hotel so maybe he’s not planning to take any eaters from here. It could just be
a convenient place to stay.”

  “Or maybe he wants a really big horde,” Alex said. “He starts here, drives the eaters down the A14, picking up more as he goes. Plus, he can go into Newmarket and Bury St Edmunds and get more if he wants to.”

  “But even if he only gets a third of the eaters in each place,” Ridgewell said, “that’s going to be, what, over fifty thousand?”

  “Probably closer to a hundred,” Dent said.

  “Why does he want so many?”

  “To prove he can?” Micah said. “To test out the logistics of moving an eater army? Because he’s a lunatic?”

  “Or because he’s scared,” Alex said. “We already beat him once and he wants to make sure we won’t ever again. And he’s a lunatic.”

  They were all silent for a while.

  “That’s a lot of eaters,” Hudson said, staring into the flames of the fire they’d made in the open fireplace in the living room.

  “That’s why it’s important to do this right,” Dent said. “We stop him now, before he gets his army together.”

  “I think it’s a mistake to wait,” Alex said, unable to keep toeing the line. “If we went in tonight, he wouldn’t be ready. We can go in quietly and take him out before he even knows what’s happening.”

  “And if we can’t do it quietly?” Dent said. “We’d be blind out there. They can control those eaters. So far we’ve only seen them tell the eaters where to move. What if they tell them to attack? Then we are stuck fighting fifty eaters we can’t see while Boot and his people get away in the helicopters and we lose the only chance we have to take him by surprise. If we even survive that is.”

  “It won’t happen like that!” Alex said, his voice rising along with his frustration.

  She frowned. “Oh, you can guarantee that, can you?”

  “I can see in the dark. I can make sure...”

  “You’re only one man. You can’t do everything.”

  Alex’s fists clenched. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you can’t protect everyone and get Boot.”

  Alex should have left it there, but her words hit too close to where he still carried the pain for his failure to save Hannah. “You know what I think? I think you’re scared. I think you’ve seen a lot of people die and I think now you’re afraid to do anything dangerous.”

  The atmosphere in the room changed in an instant. Tension rippled around the group of soldiers.

  Dent leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “Is that what you think?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw Micah shake his head. His own small voice of reason told him to leave it, to just shut up. He didn’t listen.

  “Yes, that’s what I think.” He stood, his anger at himself turning on her. “I think you’re scared to take any risks in case you lose someone else. You can’t do what needs to be done.”

  Hudson stood up abruptly. For a moment, Alex thought he was going to march over and punch him. Instead, he left the room.

  Dent leaned back. “I think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Alex shook his head in disgust and walked out.

  Hudson was standing in the kitchen, head down, his fisted hands leaning on the surface of a table. The soldier looked up as Alex passed the door. Alex expected anger on the other man’s face, but what he saw looked like... sadness?

  Then Hudson turned away and, with nothing else to do, Alex headed for the stairs.

  They’d decided on sleeping arrangements when they reached the house and Alex went to the bedroom he and Micah would be sharing for the night. He dropped onto the lower of a set of bunk beds, rubbing both hands across his face and heaving a long sigh.

  “Well, that was as smooth as a toad with acne, Lex,” he murmured to himself, mimicking his older brother’s voice and using the not entirely affectionate version of his name that Graham had called him ever since the first time they’d seen Christopher Reeve flying across the TV screen.

  Why was he listening to Dent? She didn’t have any authority where he and Micah were concerned. He was willing to concede that maybe she had a point about the rest of them; in the dark they would be at a definite disadvantage. But not him. She was underestimating him and it could cost him his chance to stop Boot tonight, before this went any further.

  He huffed another, more forceful breath, standing and walking to the window. Boot was out there, only a mile away. He could be there in a few minutes.

  The door to the bedroom opened and Micah walked in. The room lit up with the light from the candle he was carrying and instead of staring at the trees outside, Alex was suddenly looking at his own reflection.

  Micah placed the candle on a chest of drawers with flowers painted all over it.

  “Which bunk do you want?” he said, eyeing the messed up covers where Alex had been sitting.

  Alex shrugged, still staring at the window.

  The bed squeaked a little and a mattress bounced.

  “I haven’t slept in a bunk bed since I was twelve,” Micah said. “This feels closer to the ceiling than I remember.”

  Alex glanced at him lying on the top bunk then looked back at the window.

  “You know, Dent and the others are trained in this kind of thing...”

  “Don’t,” Alex said, cutting him off.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t start being all sensible and reasonable and logical. I don’t need to hear it.”

  Micah rolled onto his side to look at him, propping his head up on his elbow. “Okay.”

  Alex stared out the window as if he could see Boot out there. “He’s there. He’s right there. I don’t know how you can be so calm about it.”

  Micah sat up, his relaxed demeanour vanishing. “Do you think this is easy for me? I’m every bit as angry as you are. Because of him, Lucy...” He stopped, his voice cracking, and looked away.

  Alex sighed, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean... I know you want to get him as much as I do. I just feel like I’m crawling the walls in here.”

  “Just a few more hours,” Micah said. “To do this right, to make sure we get him, we can wait a few more hours.”

  Alex didn’t think he could. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Well now you’re making me nervous.”

  Alex looked at his reflection in the window and was surprised to see a smile on his face. “It’s the stress. I’m not thinking straight. I’ll get over it.”

  Micah lay down again. “Get some sleep, we have to be up early. And put out the candle before you get into bed. We don’t want to burn the house down.”

  8

  After a couple of hours, Alex gave up trying to sleep.

  He lay on the bed staring up at the underside of the bunk above, listening to Micah’s slow, regular breathing as he slept. He seemed to be able to fall asleep anywhere, no matter what was going on. Alex envied him. He had no idea how he was always so calm. Alex was a bundle of tension and nervous energy.

  What if Boot decided to leave during the night? What if when they got to the hotel there were so many eaters they couldn’t get near him? What if when they got there Boot was ready for them and they were all killed and no-one was left to defend the people back in Sarcester? It was too much for him to wait all night, not with Harvey Boot so close.

  For everyone else it would be dangerous to go there in the dark, but not for Alex. He could go, make sure Boot wasn’t going anywhere, and keep an eye on the place until the others arrived for the dawn raid. He wouldn’t mess up Dent’s plans; he’d just ensure they went smoothly. She couldn’t possibly object to that.

  Being extra careful not to bounce the bed and disturb Micah, Alex got up, opened the door, and slipped out onto the landing as silently as he could. He stood and listened for a few seconds, but heard nothing. Hudson and Porter were downstairs so going that way was out, but there was a window at the end of the hallway. Alex opened it and peered down into the back garden. Despite the lack of illumina
tion on the overcast, moonless night, there was more than enough ambient light for his Survivor’s eyes to see that the garden was empty.

  He climbed through the window, lowered himself until he was hanging at arm’s length from the sill, and dropped to the ground. He crept around the side of the house, flattening himself against the wall when he reached the corner and peering round. There was nothing to see, but he knew Porter would be watching through the window of the living room. In the darkness he didn’t know if he’d be seen, but he didn’t want to risk anyone being alerted to what he was doing, so he returned to the back garden, scaled the fence, and set off in the direction of the hotel.

  It took less than ten minutes at a fast jog to reach his destination. Crouching amongst the bushes surrounding the hotel’s car park, he studied the front entrance. There were around twenty eaters clustered at the covered front entrance with another thirty or forty milling around the three black helicopters sitting on the tarmac. Not wanting to alert anyone inside, Alex moved away to circle around the building to check for back doors.

  The left side of the building had one ground floor fire exit which warned of being alarmed. Alex could tell by the only sporadic low lighting inside that the power was off, but he didn’t know if the alarms needed mains power. There was every possibility they had battery backups. It was too risky to try.

  As he made his way towards the rear of the hotel, a silhouette in one of the rooms on the top floor of the two storey building caught his attention. Even through the curtains he could tell it was a woman. Boot must have brought his PA, Valerie, with him. The silhouette looked different than Alex remembered her, more slender, but then he’d only seen her on a couple of occasions and at the time he’d had more important things to pay attention to than her body shape. He wondered what she got out of following Boot around. Or maybe she was as scared to leave as Brian, Ben and Rick had been. Whatever was the case, as long as she didn’t get in Alex’s way, once Boot was dead she could do whatever she wanted.