Dead Frost - 02 (25 page)

Shane piped up.
'You'd be surprised.' He laughed.

They all laughed,
thanks to Marla's moment of reminiscence, and whether it was true, or
not, the tension slipped out of the bus and stayed out for the last
mile to Jackson.

The final mile,
though, was where the nightmare began.

*

They stared up to
the road ahead, none of them able to speak. Cars were strewn across
the road, covered with snow. A vehicle-transporter lay overturned
and stretched all the way from one side of the street to the other.
People had been attacked in their cars on the day of the outbreak;
either that or they had run for their lives, leaving their vehicles
where they sat. The transporter was covered by a thick drift of
snow, the Hondas it had been carrying barely visible thanks to the
appalling weather.

'Do either of you
get the idea that we're not meant to get to the city?' Marla finally
asked.

'I expected this,'
Shane said, turning the key in the ignition of the bus. The silence
that came was more terrifying than the view through the windscreen.
'We were lucky to get this close.'

'Really not feeling
lucky right now,' Marla said.

Shane pushed
himself up from the driver's seat and turned to Terry, who handed him
the recently cleaned and loaded .22.

'What do you
think?' the old man asked. 'It's about a mile into the city.
Whereabouts did they – did you – live?'

'They lived with
Holly's mother the last I heard,' Shane said, slightly perturbed by
the current direction of the conversation. 'In a house not far from
the museum. I reckon we can make it in less than half an hour.'

'Without taking
into account the lurkers,' Marla said, ever the optimist. 'And the
fact that we're in the middle of a fucking blizzard.'

Shane sighed. 'I
understand if neither of you want to get off the bus,' he said,
trying not to make eye-contact with either of them. 'You've already
done enough for me, but you know this is how it has to be. I ain't
stopping now.'

'Are you saying
that you want to do this alone?' Marla asked, slightly dejected and
annoyed with Shane.

'No, of course
―
'

'Then we're getting
off this bus together,' she said. 'Look, Shane, we know what your
family mean to you. Shit, I'd be doing exactly the same fucking
thing if I thought any of my friends were still alive. We've come
this far together, and we're seeing it through, together.'

Shane smiled.

'I will never
forget this,' he said.

'We won't let you,'
Terry said, pulling the zipper on his jacket up so high the lower
half of his face disappeared. 'But can we just get moving, before I
have the sense to change my mind.'

Shane pulled the
lever on the dashboard and the door at the side noisily folded and
opened. Marla held her hand out flat, gesturing to the open door
which was already allowing snow onboard.

'After you,' she
said.

Shane turned and
carefully lowered himself from the step. The last thing he wanted to
do was slip, fall on his ass and make a complete idiot of himself.

Though the hand
that grabbed his ankle made sure he did all three.

Marla tried to
reach for him, but it happened too fast. Initially, she thought he
had simply gone over, landed with a thump in the snow, but as he
flipped over, she could see that he was genuinely terrified, staring
under the bus as if the devil himself had made a camp there.

Terry launched
himself outwards, avoiding whatever Shane was staring at. He landed
in the snow, turned, and immediately recognised the creature staring
back at them from the darkness.

Victor Lord's face
was mostly gone, but his one cheek remained, flapping about on his
oozing skull. Back at the school he had been missing one arm; now,
though, everything from the waist down was gone. He had somehow
managed to hold on to the underside of the bus for forty miles, his
remaining limbs must have been torn from him during the journey, his
face scraped off by the harsh road-conditions.

'Stubborn fucker,
I'll give him that,' Terry said.

He noticed an unlit
cigar, tattered and useless, protruding from the creature's breast
pocket – the only bit of camouflaged material that remained.

'Do you want to do
the honours, or
―
'

Shane lifted the
gun, and with one shot managed to tear apart what remained of
Victor's head. Bone fragments and flesh spattered the snow beneath
the bus. The creature's teeth chattered maniacally for a few
seconds, and then its head fell forward into the soft, white blanket.

Shane kicked the
still-twitching hand off his ankle and lay still for a few seconds,
trying to comprehend what had just happened. How the fuck had he
managed to survive for forty miles? Was he that desperate to make
them pay for stealing the Jeep, or was it simply the creature's inane
relentlessness that drove it forward?

Shane clambered to
his feet and began to brush the snow from his clothes. His ass was
soaked, and he wasn't looking forward to spending the next few hours
with his jeans clinging to him like cellophane.

Marla was standing
in the bus door looking genuinely terrified. 'Am I okay to come
down, now?'

Terry smiled before
offering his hand to her, which she duly took. As she stepped down,
she glanced under the bus. The fragment of burnt camouflage gave it
away, and she gasped, her hand slapped to her mouth.

'Wow!' she said.

Shane half-expected
her to follow it up with
OMG
, or something equally as
annoying, but she didn't.

'Guess he really
wanted to get his Jeep back,' Terry said, dusting himself off.
'Sonofabitch doesn't know when to stop.'

'Are we going to
stand here all day,' Marla asked, 'or are we gonna go find your
family?'

Shane liked her
attitude. He pointed over to where the car-transporter lay in the
road, like a dead mammoth in the middle of an ice-age. 'That's the
best way on foot,' he said. 'We leave the Bergen here; I doubt
anybody'll steal our shit.'

'Why not?' Terry
said. 'We would?'

Terry was right,
but Shane shrugged it off; there was no way they could carry the
weight, not when they needed to be quick, and what if they came
across a lurker, or worse? The packs would slow them down, no doubt
about it.

'Come on,' Shane
said.

He took one step
before a guttural moan stopped him dead. They all glanced over to
the blockade, to where the noise had apparently emanated from.

They were right.

A lurker, then
another,. And pretty soon a small horde, appeared from behind the
transporter. They hadn't spotted the survivors yet, but they would.

'We need to get
moving,' Shane said, sidling away to the right. Terry and Marla
followed. 'They can't see us if we stay in the shadows.'

'They're in our
fucking way,' Terry whispered. 'What are we gonna do about that.'

Marla shrugged. 'I
know this city like the back of my hand,' she said. 'There's a
shortcut to the museum over by the bank, providing you don't mind
climbing a little.'

'How do you know
that?' Shane asked, pushing himself against a shop-front. 'You used
to go fence-hopping when you lived above the strip-bar?'

Marla nodded.
'Something like that.'

They headed for the
bank, keeping to the shadows, and trying to ignore the incessant
racket of the shambling horde.

*

She pushed
forward, through the increasingly crowded corridor. The creatures
snapped for her, tried to grab onto her with broken fingers and
bloodied maws, but she gave them very little opportunity to get a
purchase. They were slow, awkward, and she was lithe, like a Russian
gymnast, and she danced through them, heading for the museum
entrance. As she slipped past one final creature, it almost hooked
her. She spun to find a cowboy – or what appeared to be a
cowboy – reaching for her with arthritic fingers. She was so
unsure at what she was seeing that she almost tripped over.

The corridor
opened up into the museum-foyer, and she knew that she could make it.
Shambling towards her were at least ten of them, apparently led by
the cowboy, who was eagerly lunging towards her with both arms, its
hat held on only by a piece of elastic beneath its chin.

She was so
focused on the surreal creature that she almost didn't spot the one
sneaking around to her right. Its grunt gave it away, though; she
was thankful that they didn't seem to be able to keep their mouths
shut, even when their food was at stake.

She whipped the
machete through the air and decapitated the cadaver where it stood.
Its head shot across the room, hit a wall, bounced off, knocked over
what was probably a priceless artefact which smashed into more pieces
than anybody would ever want to count, and rolled to a stop, still
blinking. By the time she realised what was happening, the cowboy
had launched itself towards her.

The machete, on
its return visit, sliced the cowboy's face off completely, and the
brim of its hat. She dropped to one knee and pushed the blade up
through the cadaver's jaw, up through its brain and out the top of
its head. The hat lifted a few inches, balancing on the tip of the
machete. As she retracted her weapon, the hat came back down onto
the confused-looking cowboy's head. To an observer, it would have
looked like the cowboy was merely being polite. 'Thank you, Ma'am.'

It fell to the
ground as she pushed herself up onto her feet.

She turned and
ran for the entrance, for the cold of the night. As she lunged
through the door, she realised that her fight had only just begun.

A hundred
creatures – maybe more – were shambling around the museum
grounds, falling over each other, bumping into things. She raced out
onto the snow, the group of cadavers approaching from behind giving
her no other option.

She whipped the
machete through the air and took a deep breath.

TWENTY-EIGHT

At first, the snow
was nothing but a hindrance, something that slowed them down. They
were covering ground as if they were wearing ice-skates on concrete;
very fucking slowly. But the snow had its perks, as they found out.

'I never came to
this side of the city,' Terry whispered, breathlessly. 'I was more
of a west-sider.' As he spoke, a plume of fog filled the air in
front of his face, obscuring him completely. 'Mind, I didn't see
much of anything after the nineties, so I can hardly comment on the
changing face of the city.'

He was, of course,
referring to the fact that he had spent almost twenty years
incarcerated for the murder of a priest. One that had made the
mistake of molesting him, but a priest nonetheless.

'You didn't miss a
lot,' Marla said. 'Just the Spice Girls and 9/11.'

'Holy shit,' Terry
said. 'I forgot about that. What an absolute fucking nightmare.
The goddamned Spice Girls...'

He waited for them
to get the joke, and when they did it was hard to stay quiet. Marla
actually had to stifle herself, shoving a hand into her mouth to
prevent the laughter from echoing around the silent street. Shane
finally hushed them cocking his head to one side as if he was trying
to hear something.

'What?' Marla
whispered. 'Shane, did you hear something?'

He nodded. They
were standing just outside a coffee-shop, the kind of place that
costs real money to drink at. Across the road lay a car on its side,
the door jutting up into the air showing that the passengers had
either managed to escape, or been dragged kicking and screaming.

Shane was looking
past the car.

'I don't see
anything,' Terry said. 'The wind
―
'

'It wasn't the
wind,' Shane mumbled. He readied the pistol in his hand,
awaiting...well, nobody knew, but it was clear that he was spooked,
and that was enough to set the others on edge.