The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (38 page)

Straight ahead were the cell blocks.

The truck aimed into the cup of the horseshoe, the prison yard. Wu’s bruised eyes flicked wide.
Impossible
, he thought. The yard teemed with the dead–packed tight with brawling, hungry, rotten bodies, a solid mass pressed up against the chain-link fence; one by one, corpses squeezed through the shoulder-wide gap in the fence, while the rest raged in captivity, shaking the metal with a horrific rattle that Wu could hear even above the truck’s howl. Beyond the dead at the yard’s inner end, the doors to the prison were tantalisingly open, a lightless void where the American mission had blasted its way inside.

Too many corpses
, he judged.
Too many to get through.

A hundred metres distant, where the road forked away to the north grounds, the black shape of Big Skull’s double-quad rumbled into view, trailed by the single Boar.

‘See?’ Marco said. ‘Ours was a shortcut.’

‘Hurry,’ Wu said, ‘They’re fast.’

‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this.’

‘How? The yard is suicide. We need another way.’

He’d no sooner spoken than the MTVR accelerated and, as the speedometer inched past thirty, past forty, past fifty, Wu’s heart kept frantic pace. He glanced at the American–the malnourished figure hunched over the wheel, his forehead furrowed and slashed, his skin slathered with every kind of filth, blood, sweat–and in that moment Wu judged that Henry Marco was the most relentless man he’d ever known.

‘What are you doing?’ Wu asked, quiet but stern.

Marco ignored him.

‘
Doctor.
’

‘Breaking into prison. What else?’

The yard rushed towards them at blistering speed…

… and gunfire erupted again as the Horsemen and Big Skull charged from the north, and Marco’s unyielding foot pinned the accelerator to the floor, and the dead convicts behind the chain-link snapped their jaws, urging the truck forward, and Wu thought
No!
…

… and then every last thought in his head smashed to pieces as the truck slammed the fence at sixty miles per hour.

Marco yowled upon impact, his mind vivid with imagined horrors…

… the truck somersaulting end-over-end in his thoughts, a green metal blur that broke apart on the asphalt, corpses peeling his pink wet meat from the wreck…

… but instead, thank Jesus God, that didn’t happen, and the fence imploded, the two-ton truck trumping the weight of the corpses piled against it; the scream choked off in Marco’s trachea as the chain-link crumpled around the truck’s grille, and, as easily as snapping a twig, an entire thirty-foot section of fence ripped free from the posts, carried forward by the speeding MTVR. The prison yard rang with a metal hiss and the din of a hundred balloons bursting–damp, fermented air blasting from the convicts’ dead lungs as the truck levelled them.

With the chain-link section pinned to the hood, the truck barrelled into the yard like a bizarre bulldozer, ploughing corpses into its elongated shovel; those who hit first clung to the fence, their gnarled fingers wrapped in the chain link. Briefly Marco locked eyes with a hardened male, a knife scar like a lightning bolt struck upon its ashen cheek; dozens more corpses piled behind it, amassing four or five deep as the truck raked a crazy, violent, high-speed path, knocking aside a weight rack, tossing dumbbells, skipping across the
white stripes of a basketball court on a collision course with the brick wall ahead…

Marco screamed again.

The dead took the brunt of the crash, a fifty-corpse buffer between the wall and the truck; Marco cringed at the collective
CRACK!
of a thousand pulverised bones as heads popped from bodies like champagne corks. A hailstorm of rubbery corpse flesh plopped onto the truck hood, small diamond shapes chopped by the chain-link holes into bits like greasy cookie dough. The knife-scarred male’s lips thrust open on impact; its stomach squirted from its mouth and dangled like an obscene giant purple tongue, dripping slime.

The steering wheel punched hard into Marco’s sternum, slugging his breath away. His head swooned as the truck settled to a stop; his mouth opened and closed, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. Five seconds passed until he’d gathered himself to speak.

‘Holy…
shit!
’ he spat.

Wu’s face was a rictus of pain, his hand clamped over his shoulder. Fresh red blood trickled between his fingers. ‘That–was foolish…’

‘Yeah, my bad,’ Marco cut him short. ‘C’mon, we gotta go.’

Behind the chain-link a dozen surviving corpses wriggled, pinned harmlessly against the brick–but in the mirror Marco saw another orange-suited swarm staggering towards the truck; the dead rioters were returning for an easy meal here in the yard.

He scrambled from the truck. The dead were fifty feet away. No sign of the Horsemen yet, but the noise of their quads grew louder by the second.

And the fence was torn wide open, like a red-carpet welcome.

Dammit.

‘That way,’ Marco pointed as Wu joined him at the back of the truck. The prison entrance was ten feet ahead, a scorched rectangle where the doors had been blasted off by the RRU. He hadn’t taken a step when a thunder-blast crashed down on the yard, and brick fragments exploded from the wall, peppering him like painful little bites.

‘
Christ!
’ he yelled, shielding his head with his arms.

At the open end of the yard, the Horseman quad had dragged to a stop. From atop the gun turret, Big Skull scowled across the sea of corpses.

‘
Hit them!
’ he boomed, his voice deep and savage, so feral a cry that Marco barely discerned words. ‘
Clear it out!
’ On command, a second monsoon of bullets blazed from the Browning. Corpses burst apart, strips of orange fabric fluttered in the air.

Wu blew past Marco. ‘
Inside!
’

Maddened, Marco broke for the doorway at full sprint, sensing the Browning locked on his mad running legs, the steel rounds aimed to snap him apart at his knees…

Into the blackness he leaped, sprawling as his foot caught the top step. Bullets whistled overhead. He bounced up and ran through the intense dark. Wu’s footsteps pounded ahead.
This is crazy
, Marco thought.
Reckless. Anything could be waiting in here.
Blindly he lumbered down a hallway that turned twice, arriving at a security checkpoint, a barred door–open, thank god.

He burst through and felt the space around him widen.

The central cell block. Early sunlight had just begun to penetrate the gloom, and Marco strained to see, suspicious of every shadow within the vast interior. His eyes darted to all corners, wondering from where the first corpse would charge. The dimensions were huge–an endless warehouse of cells spanning hundreds of feet before disappearing into a dark vacuum where the light finally failed. Echoes sounded
from those far depths, casting back the clump of his boots on the hard tile. He stopped alongside Wu, and the two men hovered at the threshold, taking stock.

‘See anything?’ he asked Wu.

‘As much as you.’

Outside, the muffled sound of gunfire slowed, then quit.

‘Maybe the corpses ate them,’ Marco suggested.

‘Doubtful. More likely the Horsemen emptied the yard. They’ll be coming now.’

‘So which way for us?’ Marco squinted, performing a fast survey of the block. Watery light filtered through steel-barred windows set high overhead. Dust drifted in the beams, and somewhere he heard wings flutter, birds roosting in the criss-cross of steel girders above. The air had a queasy stink like fertiliser–pungent, the smell of puke and manure combined. He saw no cells on the ground floor, but upward to his left and right were three floors of cells accessible by narrow walkways around the mezzanine. Here and there a skeletonised arm draped through a balcony railing. Loose bones riddled with bite marks littered the tile ahead. Ten feet from Marco were the discarded remains of a prison guard–table scraps from a feeding frenzy. The poor bastard’s torso had been twisted from his legs; his spine extended a full twelve inches from where his upper body ended, so that he looked like a gruesome human lollipop.

Marco remembered the video Osbourne had shown. Was this the same mezzanine? The same guard he’d seen devoured on film? Maybe, maybe not; each block was probably a carbon copy of the next. But if so, then Roger would have vaulted–Marco scanned the walkways–over
that
railing, and landed right… about…
there.

He dropped his gaze to the floor, almost wishing Roger had just broken his neck from the fall. An easier death. No escape to the lab, no secret email, no need for this bullshit.

The sudden loud growl of a quad engine snapped him back to reality.

‘They’re inside,’ Wu said. His voice echoed deep in the mezzanine… and as it returned, it brought back another sound.

Moans.

And then the slow shuffle of feet.

Sweat rolled down Marco’s cheek in a cold bead. At the distant end the shadows shifted, and, as he watched in horror, the darkness materialised into arms and legs and phantom white faces–emerging in droves from the black regions of the prison, like some monstrous army on a night march. Hundreds that Marco could see.

And hundreds more that he couldn’t.

‘Shit, Wu. You just rang the dinner bell.’ Behind him, he heard the quad gnashing through the entry hallway. ‘Come on, next floor for us!’

He busted past Wu to a bending metal staircase on the right and charged to the first walkway, half-formed thoughts bouncing in his brain with each step…

Horsemen can’t drive up, stairs too narrow

Corpses in the cells, watch out

Oh god

… and, as he ran, he planned. In the satellite photo, the infirmary had been on the opposite side of this block. So… the upper walkway would lead there, or near to it, taking them to the proper turn-off. He was sure of that. Well, sort of sure.

Okay, maybe not that sure.

At the top of the stairs he paused to pull his handgun. He checked the clip. Full, fifteen rounds. Back in the guard tower he’d snatched the first weapon handy–couldn’t find the damn shotgun–and shoved it in his holster as Horseman bullets bombarded the platform. Looking more closely now, he
recognised it as an M9, a semi-automatic handgun he’d often scavenged from dead soldier carcasses. But this one was different. A thin rod was mounted on the trigger guard, just under the barrel. A switch protruded from the side.

He flicked it.

A red pinprick of light danced on the concrete floor several feet away. He swung the pistol, and the light followed–now a bright dot on the wall adjacent to the walkway, now on the mezzanine tiles below, leaping wherever he aimed.

A laser sight.

‘Sweet,’ he said at the exact moment the two Horsemen quads erupted into the mezzanine below. The soldiers jetted beneath the grated walkway, not yet perceiving the corpses waiting in the dark. Reflexively Marco planted the red dot on the lead driver’s helmet. It was the Horseman in the leather motorcycle jacket; Marco’s finger tensed on the trigger as he swivelled to follow the moving target. He licked his dry lips.

Do it
, he urged,
don’t think
…

He didn’t get the chance.

From behind his right shoulder flashed an object, circular and metal, a spinning projectile like a flying saucer. A curved blade–Wu’s round knife. It sailed in a taut line to the single quad and buried into the driver’s neck with a meaty
thwack
. Both Marco and the soldier gasped in unison. With a clipped cry the Horseman toppled from his vehicle, arms flailing, and slid on his back at full momentum across the tiles, straight to the feet of the dead convicts.

The mob sucked him in like a vast mouth and, once inside, the meat-eating teeth went to work, chewing and skinning him alive.

The mayhem continued even as the man’s death-screams multiplied a hundred times in echoes. The driverless quad veered left and then right and then overturned, almost
knocking out the second quad carrying Big Skull; at the last moment, the second driver swerved and braked, stopping twenty feet short of the corpses themselves. Roaring, Big Skull aimed the Browning into the crowd, then decided better; instead he stirred a circle in the air with his finger, and the Horseman driver reversed the quad, gassing away just as the corpses charged.

They passed once more below the walkway, retreating; Big Skull glared up at Marco. The commander’s eyes burned bright even through the shadows–a hateful gaze promising pain and suffering–and then the surviving quad roared up the side corridor.

Gone, leaving a
fuck-you
of smoke and bad-smelling diesel exhaust.

‘The block is a continuous loop,’ Wu noted, coming up beside Marco. ‘They’ll try a counter-clockwise path. Hoping for fewer corpses.’

Marco exhaled. ‘Nice throw. Sorry you lost your cool knife.’

‘That’s why I always bring two.’ Wu waggled his remaining blade in the air, then jogged ahead down the grated walk. The cells were ominous square caves, the doors all locked in the open position. ‘Keep moving. It’s a clear lane—’

Without warning, two arms knifed through the bars beside Wu. From inside the cell, a dead prisoner snared Wu by the shirt and reeled him, struggling and kicking, against the cage.

Aw, crap
…

Startled, Marco dashed to the cell. The corpse hissed at him through the bars, a skinny male, naked with purple lesions across its scalp and a single yellowed rib stabbing out its belly like an elephant tusk. It gripped Wu in a desperate chokehold, its forehead dug against the bars, teeth snapping but unable to reach Wu and bite.

Marco centred the M9’s red dot between the bloodshot eyeballs and fired.

The gun bucked, not too hard–not as much punch as his Glock–and a hole opened in the dead man’s skull. Brains ejected from the back. Its eyes crossed, and it sagged, arms still draped around Wu, before releasing and flopping to the cell floor.

Wu straightened his shirt. His breath exited hard, antagonised. ‘Careful with your new toy, Doctor. You could have shot me…’