Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (20 page)

Slightly thrown by the unexpected support, Alex took it anyway.  “See?”

“Why are you wearing an evening glove?” Pi said, looking at Micah’s hand.

“I’m not... this isn’t an evening glove.  It’s a protective...”  He stopped and shook his head.  “Why am I even speaking to you?”  He returned his attention to Alex.  “Let’s get this over with.  The shots may draw in eaters.”

While Micah closed and locked the back and front doors, Alex kept an eye on Pi and Buzz, who was cradling his hand while casting venomous glances at Micah.  Gaz began to come round as Micah returned to the living room. 

“We need something to tie them up with,” Alex said.

“There’s duct tape up...” Pi stopped as Buzz elbowed him in the ribs, shaking his head furiously.

“I’ll get it,” Micah said, jogging up the stairs.

Gaz groaned, pushing himself to a seated position.  He took in Pi and Buzz sitting on the sofa then turned his glare on Alex, spitting a glob of blood onto the floor.

“White-eye,” he muttered.

Alex fought the urge to return him to a state of unconsciousness.  Apart from anything else, he didn’t want to have to drag his massive body upstairs.

Footsteps descended the stairs behind him and he turned to see Micah returning, a roll of black duct tape in his hand.  He looked furious.

Alex frowned.  “What’s wrong?”

Micah shook his head without answering, peeling the end of the tape from the roll.  He used a marked lack of gentleness as he bound the wrists of all three men, despite Buzz’s protests about his hand, and Alex wondered what he’d seen. 

When they marched the trio up the stairs, he found out.

There were two bedrooms leading from the small landing, one facing the front of the house and the other the back.  They took the men into the front bedroom and attached Pi and Buzz, via duct tape, to the large, chunky radiator on one wall.  The bathroom was in the centre of the house, carved from one of the bedrooms and without any light of its own.  Glass panels near the ceiling let in borrowed light from its parent bedroom. They taped Gaz to the base of the toilet, winding the tape round and round his stomach and chest as he struggled, until Micah pressed the barrel of his pistol to Gaz’s temple and growled at him to keep still or he’d decorate the bathroom with his brains. 

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked Micah again when they were back on the landing. 

Wordlessly, he led him into the back bedroom.

Along one wall stood an old fashioned wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a hi-fi system with two massive speakers and several stacks of CDs.  The setup was just what they needed, but Alex barely noticed it. 

Against the opposite wall was a double bed.  Scattered across the navy cover were several lengths of rope, another roll of tape, a pair of scissors, two cotton scarves and three boxes of condoms.

Alex stood perfectly still, staring at the sickening tableau.  Bile rose in his throat.  For a moment, he thought he might actually vomit.

“It doesn’t look like they’ve... I mean, it all looks too tidy...” Micah lapsed into silence.

Over the years in his job, Alex had seen a lot of unpleasant things and been witness to the aftermath of the most sickening of crimes.  But witnessing the breakdown of the city that was his home, the deaths of friends, the transformation of thousands of good people into mindless monsters, all for a reason he didn’t understand, had him on edge.  And now these men were using that tragedy as an opportunity to perpetrate one of the worst crimes in existence.

He’d had enough.

Rage coloured the edges of his vision as he turned away from the bed.

Micah was standing between him and the door.  “Alex...”

“Get out of the way,” he snarled.

Micah stepped aside and Alex stalked past him onto the landing.  He pulled his gun from its holster as he walked into the bathroom. 

Gaz looked up at him.  “What do you...”

Without a word, Alex drew his arm back, leaned down and smashed the gun into the big man’s face.  His head whipped around, a loud grunt escaping his lips.  When he turned back, a deep gash was open on his cheek and blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

He laughed, revealing teeth reddened with blood.  “Saw our little love nest, did you?  Don’t worry, we’ll look after any ladies that come here...”

Before Gaz could go on, Alex lifted one foot and drove his heel into his groin. 

He put a lot of power into the kick.  Gaz just had time to scream before his eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped forward against the layers of duct tape binding him to the toilet.

“You won’t be looking after any ladies for a long time,” he muttered, turning and walking out past Micah who was staring at Gaz’s inert form.

Alex walked straight into the front bedroom.  At the sight of him, Pi and Buzz pushed back against the radiator, their heels scrabbling at the brown carpet as they desperately tried to get as far away from him as possible.

“It was Gaz’s idea, we swear,” Pi said as Alex strode up to them.  “We had no choice.  He’s really big and scary.”

Buzz was nodding frantically.  “We don’t want to hurt anyone.  We haven’t done anything.  We haven’t seen anyone apart from you all day.  Yesterday either.  I swear.”

Alex stared down at them, still seething.  “If I thought you had, I’d be breaking your legs right now and throwing you to the eaters.”

They glanced at each other, their Adam’s apples bobbing almost in unison.

“So,” Pi ventured slowly, “will you let us go?”

For some reason, that made Alex laugh, though he felt no amusement.  “Not even close.”

He turned and marched out.

“You okay?” Micah said when they’d returned to the back bedroom.

Alex glanced at the bed then back to the wire he was unwinding from the rear of one of the stereo system speakers.  “No.”

“I know, I’m as angry as you are,” Micah said as he picked up one of the speakers and carried it to the window, “but I need to know you’re not going to lose it and do something that’s going to get us killed.”

Alex raised one eyebrow.  “You mean like aiming a gun and screaming at heavily armed soldiers in helicopters?”

Micah pursed his lips.  “Taken out of context, that could be one example.”

Despite his dour mood, Alex smiled.  “I can’t promise I won’t do anything that will get us killed.  But if I do, it will be through crass stupidity, not because I’ve lost my marbles.”

Micah stared at him for a moment then shrugged.  “Okay.”

They placed one speaker at the window of each bedroom, running the long wires back to the stereo in the back.  Pi and Buzz watched them in silent trepidation.  After a few minutes, Alex heard groaning from the bathroom.  He pulled the door shut without looking inside.

In the rear bedroom, Alex kicked over the stacks of CDs, sending them clattering across the floor, and scanned the resulting mess.  He picked up a plastic case and turned it over to read the track listing.  Micah wandered up behind him and Alex showed him the back of the CD cover, pointing. 

Micah chuckled.  “Now
that
is cruel and unusual punishment.”

Alex inserted the CD into the hi-fi and selected the track, pressing repeat and then play. 
The Birdie Song
blasted from the speakers at both sides of the house.

“What the hell...?” a voice shrieked from the adjoining bedroom.  It sounded like Buzz.

Alex opened the window at the back of the house and they returned to the room where the two men were taped to the radiator, horror stricken.  Micah went to open the front window.

“Gentlemen,” Alex said.  “That is the sound of an eater call to arms.  Very soon, every eater within earshot will be surrounding this house.  With the windows open, they’ll be able to smell you, so even if you get free you won’t be getting out.  Consider yourselves lucky.  We could have just killed you.  If you ever try anything like this again, we will come back, shoot you in the kneecaps and leave you outside.  This is your only warning.”  He stepped in closer to them and leaned down, trying to ignore the nicotine fug of their breath wafting around him.  “I’m the law here now.  If you cross me, there’ll be no trial and no mercy.  Just justice.  Slow, painful justice.”  He straightened and stepped back.  “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

He walked from the room, Micah following.

“Wait,” Buzz shouted, “you can’t just leave us here!”

“I’m the law?” Micah said as they left the house and pulled the front door shut.

“What?  Too much?”

He laughed as they jogged across the road and through a metal gate into the park, taking cover behind some bushes to watch the house. 

“Has anyone ever told you that, for a policeman, you’re slightly unhinged?” he said, peering through the undergrowth at the street.

Alex smiled.  “It’s been suggested, yes.”

The men inside were still shouting to be let free when the first eater showed up not long after.  Lurching up to the house, it began pounding at the door and moaning.  The noise from Buzz and Pi ceased immediately.  More eaters arrived, joining the first.  Then more. 

After twenty minutes or so, and at least six plays of The Birdie Song, the entire house was surrounded by a crowd of eaters.  For a moment, Alex imagined them all spontaneously launching into the elbow flapping, butt waggling dance, like a real life, slightly stranger version of the Thriller video.  He almost laughed out loud. 

“That worked way better than I thought it would,” Micah whispered.

“Yeah,” Alex replied.  “Now let’s get out of here.  If I have to listen to that one more time I’m going to rip my own ears off.”

Micah led the way down the hill through the birches and willows in the park, past a small lake, then up another slope to a gate in a tall chain link fence, and back onto the streets. 

For the most part they were able to dodge the roaming eaters, but on occasion found themselves unable to avoid them.  They had developed a system whereby Micah would attract their attention while Alex darted in behind them and utilised the skull-spiker.  It was well designed; in and out smoothly as if the bone was made of balsa, no peripheral damage, no spatter, wipe off the brain matter, next customer please.  Effective.

Distasteful.

Half an hour after leaving the house, they came to a small huddle of three 1960s ten storey blocks of flats.  Grey and uninspiring, they were separated by concrete paths, grassy areas with “No Ball Games” signs and the occasional sad looking shrub. 

They ducked behind a low wall surrounding a children’s playground.

“Home sweet home,” Micah said, without enthusiasm.

Alex looked at an abandoned sofa rotting against the side of the nearest block.  “It’s lovely.”

“It’s a dump.  But it’s a cheap dump.”

“Which one’s yours?” Alex said.

Micah jerked his head at the furthest building.  “Oxford Heights.”

A smattering of eaters wandered around the area, with almost no cover between the playground and the door.  Alex looked up at the buildings.  He saw scared faces at some of the windows, curtains twitching at others.  There were probably hundreds trapped, terrified, in their flats.

“What do you say to clearing the area?” Alex said.

Micah raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

“We can’t clear the buildings, but we can give these people a fighting chance out here if they try to leave,” Alex continued.

Micah followed Alex’s gaze up to the windows.  He opened his bag and removed a second black glove to add to the one he was already wearing, sliding it onto his left hand and tugging it up to his elbow.  Then he flicked out both of his skull-spikers. 

“Let’s do it.”

Leaving the bag by the wall, they stepped out into the open. 

The closest eaters were only thirty feet or so away and they immediately began lumbering towards them.  Micah ran forward, easily dodging the grasping hands of the nearest and spinning round to plunge a skull-spiker into its temple.  Alex took care of the next one with much less grace, but just as effectively, as he swept one leg out from beneath it and dropped to one knee to deliver the killing strike through its forehead.

Scattered as they were, the eaters only came at them in ones and twos and it took less than five minutes to dispatch the fifteen or so wandering around the area.  Breathing heavily, Alex watched a final eater shuffle towards Micah, but instead of stepping in and stabbing it with the lethal efficiency he’d used with the others, he stumbled back away from it.

It was a woman, maybe in her late sixties, short and plump, wearing a blue fleece and baggy grey trousers.

“Mrs Jacobs,” Micah gasped, shaking his head.  “No.”

Alex ran towards them, grabbing the eater from behind and pushing it to the ground.  He pinned it in place with a knee in the small of its back.

“Micah?” 

A tear rolled down Micah’s cheek.  He stripped off a glove and wiped at his eyes, still staring at the eater.

“She lives next door to me,” he said.  “She bakes me cookies every Sunday.”  His voice broke on the last word and he turned away, walking a few steps and stopping.  “She doesn’t deserve this.”

Alex looked down at the woman beneath him as she struggled to push him off.  “Do you want me to do it?”

“No, I...”  He clenched his fists and turned back.  “She has a son in Cardiff.  She was going to move out there in a couple of months.  She was really looking forward to it.  She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.  We can’t just kill her.”

“Micah, she’s gone.  She doesn’t even know her own name anymore.”

His expression hardened.  “You were gone, but you came back.”

“I was being treated.”

“How do you know there isn’t a cure out there that can help her?  Maybe that secret laboratory was working on a cure.  You don’t know she can’t be helped.  You
don’t
.”

Alex looked around at the bodies of the eaters they had killed.  Each one of them had had people who loved them, just like Mrs Jacobs.  He couldn’t allow himself to think there may be a cure, because if he did, he knew he was a murderer.  Once someone turned, if they weren’t being treated they might as well have died.  The person they were was gone forever.  That was all there was to it. 

But when he looked up at Micah, he knew it would be pointless trying to convince him.  They were both coping in their own ways.

“Okay,” Alex said, “but what are we going to do with her?”

Micah looked down for a moment as he thought.  “She gave me a key to her flat for emergencies,” he said.  “We can leave her in there.  Then if we can help her, we can come back.”

Alex nodded.  “We need something to tie her hands with.”

Micah retrieved the bag from where they’d left it and pulled out one of the rolls of duct tape he’d taken from the house. 

“Brilliant stuff, duct tape,” he said as he grasped Mrs Jacobs’ hands and crossed her wrists behind her, taping them together.  “If there’s anything you want during a Meir’s outbreak, it’s duct tape.”  He straightened.  “And a large selection of weapons.”

Alex pulled her to her feet and Micah placed another length over her mouth.  She tried to eat it.

Getting Mrs Jacobs to walk in the direction they wanted to go proved to be a problem, until Micah played the carrot, walking ahead while Alex kept hold of her arms as she strained to get to her neighbour, her moans muffled behind the tape.

Once inside, Micah headed for the door marked stairs. 

“What about the lift?” Alex said, seeing the ground floor indicator lit. 

Micah hit the up button as he passed.  Nothing happened.

“They were supposed to fix it the day this all started,” he said.  “I’m guessing the repair man had more pressing matters to deal with.”

“Which floor do you live on?” Alex said.

“Seven,” Micah said, his shoulders slumped.

Stairs proved to be as much of a problem for Mrs Jacobs as they were for the early Daleks.  Even with Micah ahead of her to lure her upwards, she kept tripping and landing on her knees or her face.  Then Alex would have to haul her upright again and they’d carry on.

During one fall, the duct tape over her mouth loosened and disappeared into her mouth.  Her neck undulated.

“Did she just swallow that?” Alex said as she turned and snapped at him.

Micah shrugged and unzipped the bag, pulling out the tape.  They used two lengths this time.

It was half an hour before they finally made it, exhausted, to the seventh floor.  Mrs Jacobs looked like she’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, but she was, of course, feeling no pain.  Micah retrieved her key from his flat while Alex kept Mrs Jacobs company in the corridor, and finally they were able to deposit her in the comfort of her own home.

“If we can, we’ll be back,” Micah said to her, “I promise.”

They removed the gag and cut the duct tape from her wrists, leaving her in the bedroom and closing the door so she couldn’t access the rest of the flat.  Micah wrote a warning note and taped it to bedroom door, then they left the flat.

“Mikey!”

Startled by the sudden shriek, Alex almost dropped the bag.  He turned to see a young, blonde woman explode from a doorway on the opposite side of the hallway and throw herself at Micah, flinging her arms around him.

“I thought you were dead for sure,” she snivelled from the region of his chest.

Micah wrapped his arms around her.  “I just got held up.”

She looked up at him and smiled.  Alex noticed that, although she had been making sobbing sounds, her makeup was flawless and no moisture was evident on her cheeks.  He also noticed her well developed bust, her perfectly proportioned body, her gorgeous face and her long, silky hair.  In that order. 

He’d have liked to say he wasn’t jealous of the man getting all her attention, but he’d have been lying. 

“Oh, Mikey, I’m so glad you’re here,” she breathed.

Alex cleared his throat.

Micah glanced at him.  “Uh, Brenda, this is Alex.”

Brenda unwound herself from Micah’s neck and looked at Alex for the first time.  Eyes widening, she flinched away from him.  Alex gave an internal sigh.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Brenda,” he said, smiling.

“Alex saved my life,” Micah said.

“Five times,” Alex added.

“Three,” Micah said.

“Oh, well then, I should thank you,” Brenda said, giving him a tiny smile.

“Bren?”

Alex tore his eyes from Brenda’s stunning features to see a man appear at her door. 

“Rob, baby, look who’s back,” Brenda said, smiling widely.  Alex hadn’t known the human mouth could contain so many perfectly white teeth.

Rob’s expression said that he wasn’t nearly as happy to see Micah as Brenda was.  “Oh, you made it,” he said, without enthusiasm.  “That’s great.”

Micah narrowed his eyes.  “Good to see you too, Rob.”

Brenda was still smiling her hundred megawatt smile, either oblivious to the animosity between the two men, or uncaring.  “Rob came yesterday, all the way from his place to take care of me,” she said, stepping in next to Rob.  He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, giving Micah a small smirk.

“Really?” Micah said.  “He came
all the way
from his flat half a mile away?  Wow.”

Brenda’s smile grew even bigger.  “Isn’t he brave?  He said he had to fight off at least thirty eaters to get here.  Isn’t that right, babe?”

Rob suddenly looked uncomfortable, muttering a quiet, “Yeah.”

“Wow,” Micah said again.  “That’s
unbelievable
.”

Rob glared at him.

Micah smiled.

“Oh,” Brenda said, waving a hand in Alex’s direction, “and this is Alex.”

Alex took a step in Rob’s direction.  “Nice to meet you.”

Rob swallowed and stepped back.  “You too.  Well, Bren, we should get back inside.”

“Oh, yeah.”  She gave Micah another hug.  “I’m really glad you’re back.”

Rob looked like steam might start coming from his ears. 

“We’re not staying,” Micah said, keeping his hands on Brenda’s waist.  “We have other things to do.”

She gasped.  “Out there?  But it’s dangerous.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, “I can look after myself.”

“Well, be careful.”

He smiled down at her.  “I will.”

She reached up to kiss his cheek then stepped back into Rob’s arms.  He almost pulled her back into the flat and slammed the door shut.

“That was entertaining,” Alex said as Micah bent to scoop up his post from the doormat and led the way into his flat, closing the door behind them.

“She’s a sweet girl,” Micah said, dropping the letters onto a coffee table.

“And hot.”

Micah grinned.  “Oh yes.”

He walked into the small kitchen off the main living area and opened the fridge, removing a can of coke and holding it out to Alex, then taking another for himself.

Alex lowered into an armchair and flicked open the tab with a soft hiss.  “Have you and she ever...?”

Micah gave an exaggerated sigh.  “Sadly not.  She was already with Rob when I moved in.”

“I thought, the way he was behaving...”

Micah took a long drink then shook his head.  “He’s just paranoid about her.  But if I had a girlfriend who looked like that, I’d probably be the same.”  He placed his half empty can onto the small dining table.  “I’m going to take a quick shower.  If you want to replace those bandages, I’ve got medical stuff in the drawer in the kitchen.  And there’s food in the fridge.  I think I might have a couple of microwaveable pizzas in the freezer.”

Alex’s saliva glands went into overdrive at the mention of pizza. 

“Micah?” he said as he headed for the bedroom.  “How come I’m not even allowed to call you Mike, but Brenda calls you
Mikey
?”

Micah looked back at him.  “When you grow long blonde hair, a pair of double D cups and legs that go on forever, you can call me Mikey too.”

. . .

The dressing on his arm seemed to be holding up okay, but the bandages on his hands were filthy and loose again.  Alex was beginning to wonder why he ever bothered dressing them in the first place.  He cleaned the cuts on his palms and re-bandaged them with what he found in the kitchen drawer, then found the pizzas and wandered back into the living room while the microwave did its thing.