Infection Z (Book 2) (13 page)

C
allum Hessenthaler had been hoping
for a good session on his work-in-progress before that goon Ally Chester came storming in.

He was working on a non-fiction book. Well, partly non-fiction: there were elements of it that were fictional too. It was about a fictional man’s survival in a post-apocalyptic world, and how society reacts to the challenges it has posed to it.

But the experiences he documented were real. Very real.

He just had to hope his pad didn’t get damaged anytime soon.

And now Sammy Harrison and some other new woman were in his office area. He could smell the sweat coming off both of them and it was disgusting. They needed a wash. A proper shower.

They had a duty. A role to fulfill. They couldn’t fulfill that role smelling like this.

“Sammy, what happened back there? At the cottage?”

Sammy tilted her head in that pathetic way she always did. The way she’d done when she first got here, when they found her out in the open wandering through the streets with her two children. The streets Callum’s people had
saved
her from.

Ungrateful behaviour she’d displayed since, really. Not the kind of behaviour you expect from someone in her position.

“I … I tried to stop him but it was just—”

“You didn’t try hard enough,” Callum said. He got up from the leather office chair. Walked over to Sammy, keeping a smile on his face regardless of the bubbling frustration within. The other woman—the gagged woman with the bruised eye and the brown hair—was completely quiet. Callum could see the fear drifting into her face. It wasn’t ideal. He didn’t want people to fear him.

He just wanted people to
understand
him.

Or specifically, he wanted women to understand him.

He stopped opposite Sammy. Reached for her chin and lifted her head. She was tall. Or at least, as tall as him, which admittedly wasn’t all that tall after all.

He looked into her crystal-like eyes and he saw nothing but misery, nothing but fear. “Do you want to see your children again? Your Renate and your Sebastian?”

Her eyes lit up with hope. That was nice. Hope was nice. Everyone needed a little hope in this world.

“Then turn around. Look over by the stairs. Look who’s coming to see you.”

Sammy frowned. Her cheeks flushed. She turned and looked over her shoulder.

And that’s when Callum Hessenthaler held his breath and grabbed the long, sharp razor from the edge of his desk and wrapped a hand around Sammy’s mouth, pulled her back, pressed the razor blade deep into her neck and slit.

He listened to her mumble and cry out as blood spurted out of her neck all over the dusty floor. The gagged woman looked on in wide-eyed horror as Sammy twitched, shook, convulsed. As warm, thick streams of blood splattered down her front and covered Callum’s hand.

“I’m sorry. You hush now. You’re nearly with your children.”

He held Sammy’s mouth and waited for the blood flow to ease, waited for her mumbled screams to stop.

He didn’t like killing people.

He didn’t want to have to kill Sammy.

But she’d misbehaved. He’d trusted her, and she’d stepped out of place.

And this is what happened when people stepped out of place.

He gently lay her body down on the floor and he turned to the gagged woman.

Blood dripped from the razor and onto the dusty floor and fear sparkled in her striking blue eyes.

H
ayden knew
something was wrong the second he caught a whiff of the smell.

Ally pushed him in through a rusty metal door at the back of the
CityFast
hangar, which he’d unlocked with a similarly rusty key dangling on a chain. He still had that gun wedged in Hayden’s spine, and it was growing more painful by the minute. He could hear Manish whimpering as Gav eased him in through the door, in towards the darkness, the smell.

Hayden wanted to shout out, but he knew it was worthless. There was nobody here who could help them. And all shouting out would do was attract zombies to their location.

He didn’t have a gag wrapped around his mouth, but he might as well have done. He understood that, everyone understood that.

“You’re gonna move where we push you,” Ally said, his voice echoing against the narrow walls. There was a chill to this corridor, and that horrible smell—urine, sweat, faeces. All of them mixed in a horrible cocktail that made the hairs stand up on Hayden’s arms; made him wonder what he was going to find. “Any wrong move, you’re gettin’ a bullet in your back, sunshine.”

Gav mumbled something in Manish’s ear and, judging by Manish’s shivery breath, it couldn’t have been good.

Hayden followed the push of Ally’s gun and moved through the narrow corridors. When the door had closed, it went completely dark. There was a dampness underfoot that Hayden could feel seeping through the broken tips of his shoes. And somewhere ahead, somewhere in the distance and down the corridor, he could hear something.

A kind of … mumbling.

“Had a bet with Bob you’re gonna like what you see. Might be a shock to the system at first—shock to the old ways and all that—but you’ll come round. We always do come round. Or we die.”

Ally jabbed the gun further into Hayden’s back. Hayden wanted to turn around and punch the bastard, but he knew that would be no use. His sister was being treated somewhere. Sarah was with the boss, Callum, and that ginger woman, Sammy.

There was something wrong about all of this. The fear on Sammy’s face, and on the faces of a handful of guards Hayden had seen around this place since. There was some kind of unspoken secret. An unspoken secret that Hayden felt himself getting closer and closer to unearthing.

“Take a right,” Ally said, a flicker of spit hitting Hayden’s left ear. “And remember, no—”

“I’m not going anywhere until I know my sister is being looked after. Don’t worry.”

He heard a snigger from Gav. And then he felt Ally’s breaths get more frequent on his ear, on the back of his neck.

“Oh she’s being looked after alright,” Ally said.

He said it with just enough sincerity to puzzle Hayden.

Was he being serious? Was she actually being cared for? Or was something else going on here?

All signs pointed to the latter. Everything in Hayden’s mind screamed at him to do something, to save his sister from this place, to get the hell out of here.

But what could he do, really?

They took a right and at the end of the current corridor, Hayden saw a glimmer of light.

It peeked through the bars of a metal door just ahead. The smell got stronger as they approached, and the water under his feet deepened, pooling into his shoes and freezing his toes. As he walked towards the door, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see what was inside.

And then he heard the whimpering.

“Please. Please. Please—please don’t.”

He didn’t recognise the voice but it sent another cold shiver through his body. It was a woman’s voice. Undeniably a woman’s voice. And judging by the lack of women Hayden had seen around here—Sammy aside, and she was hardly enthusiastic about her duties—it didn’t take a genius to figure out what might be going on.

They stopped right in front of the door. Hayden’s heart pounded in his chest as Ally reached around the back of him and unlocked the door. He looked at Hayden; his sweaty, bearded face lit up in the glimmer of light. He smiled, revealing his yellow, coffee and cigarette stained teeth. “Just hold your breath. Gonna be a bit of a shock to the system. But you’ll get used to it.”

And then he lowered the squeaky handle and pushed open the door.

When the door opened, Hayden didn’t understand what he was looking at. He could see where the light was coming from now—a small candle in a glass lantern flickering orange light around the dim, grey room.

And then he saw the hair.

He saw the dark, greasy hair of a woman. She was chained up to the wall by her neck. She was completely naked, covered in sweat. Her face was puffed up with bruises. Scratches and scars lined her inner thighs.

She looked up at Hayden as he stepped through the door, but he couldn’t see beyond her swollen eyelids. He could just see the fluid of a beating that looked like glimmering tears. He could just see a loss of humanity. Dehumanisation.

His body tensed. He wanted to run. He wanted to help this poor woman, bound by her neck, arms and ankles, and he wanted to get away.

But when he backed into the sharp barrel of Ally’s gun, he saw something else.

There was another woman beside her. A black woman with frizzy hair, also naked, also bound, also beaten.

And then there was another woman—a chubby woman with greying hair.

A skinny woman of eastern descent.

Hayden looked around at this room of horrors, heart racing, nausea welling in his chest, building up in his stomach.

“If the world’s gonna survive, we need two things: to breed, and to fuck,” Ally said. He grinned, and a little laugh came out of Gav’s mouth. “And you can’t have the breedin’ without the fuckin’!”

H
ayden couldn’t stop
the vomit from creeping up his throat and spurting out of his mouth.

He spewed up all over the floor, which was already wet with pools of urine, sweat, blood and other stuff. He could hear the chains of the tied up women in the room ahead of him rattling as they mumbled and cried out underneath their gags.

Women. Lots of women. All of them tied up for one purpose—to serve the urges of the sick bastards in charge of the Riversford Industrial Estate.

Ally laughed when Hayden threw up and patted his back. “Told you it’d be a shock to the damned system, didn’t I? How’s the raghead copin’, Gaz, huh? He pukin’ too?”

Manish was just staring ahead at the room of women, the whites of his eyes bulging in the darkness. His bottom lip was shaking, and tears rolled down his cheeks. A pure look of shock, of hopelessness, covered him.

“Makes a kind of sense though, huh?” Ally said, turning back to Hayden. “I mean, the world’s dying. And when a world’s dying, women ain’t all too keen on breeding. So the least we can do is enforce it. I mean, we’re gonna need kids. The new world’s gonna need kids. Otherwise what’s the point? We can’t just let the world die. Can’t just let it rot away. Huh?”

Hayden’s eyes burned as he stared at the chained up women. He felt bad even looking at them. He felt like he was contributing to their degradation by standing here and not doing a thing.

“Like I said, we’re gonna look after your sister. We’ll go easy on her. Although I’ve gotta say, she’s a pretty girl, so maybe you’ll let us off if we go a bit rough.”

Hayden couldn’t control himself.

A switch inside him flipped.

He swung around and smacked Ally’s head against the side of the alley wall. He heard the gun blast, felt his ears ringing, but he wasn’t hurting so it couldn’t have shot him, he was okay, he was fine.

He pushed Ally onto the ground and he grabbed his wrist, tried to pry the gun from him, tried to yank it out of his hand and shove it into his mouth and blow his brains out for even suggesting what he was going to do to Clarice.

But then he felt something press against the right side of his head.

“Don’t move another muscle,” Gaz said. “Or I’ll blow your frigging brains out.”

Hayden kept tight hold of Ally’s wrist. Ally was struggling and tensing, but that god-awful smile was still spread across his face. Like this was all some kind of joke, some sick game.

“They’re … they’re people,” Hayden said. “People with feelings. With emotions.”

“Emotions get you killed,” Ally said. “Just like they’re gonna get you and your friend killed if you don’t get the hell off me right this second.”

Hayden felt the gun move from his head then back to his head again, Gaz clearly struggling to keep tabs on Manish and Hayden at the same time. Hayden kept on holding onto Ally’s wrist. He could yank the gun from his hands. Blow his brains out and end this, right here.

He could rescue those women, rescue his sister, get the hell out of here.

“Y’know, when you mentioned that mate of yours, Newbie, I remembered his ex and his kiddy,” Ally said. An even bigger smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Delicious, they were. Woman was a bit frumpy and I don’t usually go for blacks, but the little flower … well, she was lovely. Just about ripe and ready for a plucking if you get me.”

Hayden felt nausea and anger work through him.

Grab the gun. Grab it and shoot him and—

No don’t he’s goading you he’s lying he’s goading you he’s—

“I mean I know she wasn’t technically legal. And it’s a shame we had to dispose of her. But some of them just ain’t as cooperative as the others. Too tight, to be honest. Way too—”

Hayden snapped Ally’s wrist back.

He yanked the gun away from his hand and he pressed the barrel right into his neck.

He’d expected to hear the sound of gunfire crack into his skull by now. He’d expected Gaz to pull the trigger, to end his life.

But instead, as he pressed the gun barrel further and further into Ally’s neck, blocking his windpipe, making him gasp and gasp for air, he heard a thud, felt the gun slip from his head and someone dropped to the floor.

He looked to his right and he saw Gaz’s body lying there, a speck of blood pooling out of his head.

Behind him, Manish was holding a loose brick from the wall and staring down at Gaz’s body like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just done.

“Hayden, come on,” he said. “We—we’re free. We can get out of here. We can find your sister and we can get out of here.”

But Hayden didn’t let go. He didn’t want to let go. He was pressing the barrel further into Ally’s neck, watching his face go red and then purple, listening to Ally’s gasps and letting Ally scratch at him and flap his hands at his face.

And he was enjoying it.

He was enjoying killing Ally.

And he was going to enjoy every moment of it.

“Hayden, we—we really need to—”

“You go,” Hayden said, tensing his biceps and pressing further into Ally’s neck. “I’ll catch you up. I need to do this.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“Then wait,” Hayden said. He could see saliva bubbling out of the corners of Ally’s mouth, and there was almost an injustice to it. An injustice that he was being allowed to die so quick when he and the nutters at Riversford had a bunch of women chained up in that room behind. Women that had been through hell, that were going through hell, and would continue to go through hell unless he ended it, finished it, right here.

He saw Ally’s eyelids flicker. His hands scratched at the concrete of the ground below. His gasps were fading away, and his face was so purple it looked like it was going to burst.

He pressed the gun in even further.

Almost there.

Almost dead.

Almost—

He didn’t understand where the blast on the left side of his head came from until he was lying on his back and staring up into the darkness.

He heard some shooting, heard struggling, and then he heard someone else hit the floor beside him and he didn’t understand. His ears rang, his vision blurred, clouded over, but he couldn’t pass out, he couldn’t let himself pass out, not now, not now …

And then he saw Ally lean above him with a piece of loose concrete in hand. Blood was dripping from it. He smiled at Hayden with that horrid grin, said a few words to him and then laughed.

It was the laughter that struck fear through Hayden’s body and mind as he drifted into blackness.

But also the thought of Sarah, the thought of his sister, both of them in line to be chained up in that awful room, both of them with a lifetime of torture ahead.

And then …