Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3) (11 page)

It took them less than two minutes to reach the horde.

They came to a halt at the top of a rise a hundred feet away and Alex flipped up his visor to get a better look. Or, more accurately, to help him believe what he was seeing.

The noise was deafening, the air saturated with the ravenous moans of thousands of riled up eaters. Over the heads of the horde, Alex could see the epicentre of their excitement pressed into the corner formed by two industrial buildings across a car park a couple of hundred yards down the hill. The silver Lamborghini was wedged against the wall with the APV parked sideways in front of it, apparently in an attempt to offer some protection for the more vulnerable car. Eaters surrounded both vehicles like ants, crushed against the sides, swarming over the top of the low riding sports car, scrabbling at the outside of the APV.

Alex could see Dent and Rick through the windscreen of the Lamborghini. Even from this distance he could tell they were terrified. Collins, Ridgewell, Porter and Hudson were more protected within the APV, but could do nothing for the two in the car. If any one of them set a foot outside, they’d be torn to shreds.

Two of the ever present helicopters were hovering in the distance, clearly content to let the eaters do the job for them while they stayed safely away from the APV’s weapons.

“Is this what happens when they release the pheromones to attack?” Micah said, staring at the frightening scene in horror.

“We have to get the eaters away from them.” Alex dug the phone from his pocket and dialled, watching Rick in the car as he answered.

“Alex?”

“We’re here.” He gave a jaunty wave when Rick looked up, searching for them. “We’re going to lead the horde away. Be ready to roll.”

Rick gave a desperate sounding laugh. “Yeah, we’re just chillaxing here, but we’ll be...”

He stopped abruptly as an eater scrambling over the car fell onto the windscreen. A spider web of cracks snaked out from the point of impact. A startled cry emanated from the phone as the glass gave way and sagged inwards. Then the call cut off.

Alex saw Rick and Dent scramble back from the compromised windscreen.

“Hey!” Micah shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.

None of the eaters paid them any attention.

“Together on three,” Alex said. “One, two,
HEYYYYYYY!
”

The combined volume of their roars carried to the nearest eaters. A few turned towards them. With some more yelling and arm waving, those few started in their direction and a few more looked round. A wave of distraction travelled sluggishly away from them as the natural pheromones kicked in and more and more eaters turned to see what was going on. But it wasn’t working fast enough. The Lamborghini’s windscreen had vanished and several eaters were reaching through the empty space. He couldn’t see Dent or Rick.

They needed to get the attention of the whole horde, right now.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered, pulling his pistol from the holster at his waist and aiming it into the air. He fired three shots.

As one, the horde turned to look at Alex and Micah. It took a few moments for their combined mind to come to the conclusion that people on bikes were easier prey than people in cars, then they started towards them.

So did the helicopters.

“Oh, hell,” Alex repeated as he turned his bike to leave.

The closest chopper reached them in seconds and opened fire, cutting a swath through the horde as it bore down on Alex and Micah speeding away. Alex swerved to his left as the gunfire reached them, bumping over the pavement and into a car park wrapped around a Pizza Hut. He glanced back to see Micah veer in the opposite direction for a side street.

Unable to make the sharp turn, the helicopter hurtled past between them.

Alex gasped as Micah’s bike clipped the rear end of an abandoned car blocking the road and spun out of control, crashing onto its side and skidding into a lamppost. Micah was thrown off, tumbling over and over across the ground until he hit another car.

“
Micah
!”

The second helicopter crested a building, flying straight for them. Tearing his eyes from Micah’s still form, Alex swung his rifle around and fired, desperately trying to draw attention away from him. Bullets pinged off the metal hull. One lucky shot somehow penetrated a window, punching a hole into the interior, and the chopper wobbled in the air. He kept firing until it rose higher and peeled away over the buildings.

On the ground eighty feet away, Micah still wasn’t moving.

The first helicopter reappeared, circling back towards them. Alex raised the rifle again and pulled the trigger. It fired twice and clicked empty.

Moans from his right signalled the arrival of the horde. The fastest of the eaters were almost on them.

“Micah!” Alex yelled, gripping the throttle as the helicopter heading for him fired.

The Pizza Hut sign shattered, showering the spot he’d just vacated with red plastic and glass. Bumping back over the pavement onto the road, he saw Micah raise his head. To his right, the helicopter was circling for another pass. In front of him, the joggers in the horde split, some heading for him, the others for Micah.

“
Micah
!” he screamed again.

Micah pushed to his feet, swaying unsteadily. Alex drove towards him, but at that moment the horde arrived, pouring along the road between them and forcing him to veer away. For a few heart-stopping seconds his view was blocked by the eaters swarming towards Micah.

Then he saw a figure run up the steps to the door of a block of flats. Micah flipped up his visor and waved.

“Keep going!” he shouted. “I’m okay.”

Before Alex could answer, he turned and ran into the building. A frightening number of eaters followed.

Torn between going to help Micah and leading the horde towards their trap, Alex forgot about the helicopter until it was almost on top of him. He gunned the bike as the downdraft washed against his face, speeding away along the road. The chopper followed, tearing up the asphalt with both machine guns. Not fast enough to outrun it, Alex zigzagged, trying to avoid being hit.

The road suddenly exploded in front of him. The grenade’s shockwave thumped into his chest, debris showering his path. Yanking the front wheel to the right, he lost control and fell, skidding across the road away from the detonation. The helicopter flew overhead and stopped to hover close by, weapons trained on him as he pushed out from beneath the bike.

Alex pulled off his helmet and stood, head held high, heart beating out of his chest. Staring his death in the face, he had a deep urge to close his eyes. He kept them open. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

Suddenly, the helicopter lurched to one side. It spun in a circle, rose into the air then dropped almost to the ground. Alex threw himself down as it whizzed over at head height, then watched it stagger into the distance, looking like it had just stumbled out of the pub at closing time.

“Huh,” Alex said, stunned.

The moans of thousands of eaters shook him out of his adrenaline-infused haze. What looked like the entire horde was closing on him fast.

He pushed himself up from the ground and pulled the bike upright, giving it a quick once over. The brand new shiny blue paintwork was scraped all along one side and the front mudguard was dented, but it seemed more or less in one piece. He pulled his helmet back on and swung one leg over the seat, wincing at the soreness in his left leg where he’d landed. One day maybe he’d be pain free, but it wasn’t today.

He flipped the start switch. To his relief, the engine started. He didn’t fancy running almost a mile back to the buildings. The leading edge of the horde was almost on him now. With a final glance back at the building Micah had disappeared into, he started off.

Micah was tough; he could take care of those eaters by himself.

Alex was almost sure of it.

The eater’s head exploded.

Wishing he hadn’t run out of ammunition for his pistol, Micah grimaced at the gory sight and kicked its body backwards into those on the stairs below. The Glock just made neat little holes. He didn’t know what kind of ammo was in the rifle Bates had given him, but at close range it made a horrific mess of anything he shot. It was just as well he was immune to the virus now.

He ran up to the next landing then turned again to meet the eaters following him. The first two got bullets to the head. A third which had managed to squeeze past their bodies grabbed at him, latching onto his left arm and pulling towards its gaping mouth. He tried to yank himself from its grip, but he didn’t have a chance against its super strength. Dropping the rifle to hang from the strap across his chest, he took a skull-spiker from his right pocket with his free hand, flipped out the blade, and plunged it into the side of the eater’s head as its teeth scraped his fist. It let go and collapsed to the floor.

Micah breathed out. That had been uncomfortably close.

The three bodies had momentarily blocked the way for the eaters coming up the stairs behind them and he leaned over the rail to look down the centre of the stairwell. It was wall to wall eaters as far as he could see, all the way to the ground two floors below. Had the entire horde followed him into the building?

He turned and ran up the next flight of stairs as the eaters leading the way stumbled past the bodies and lurched towards him.

He tried to ignore the various aches and pains he’d acquired when his bike crashed. For the hundredth time, he wondered how Alex was. He’d heard the helicopter fly by and lots of gunfire, but the windows on each floor of the stairwell faced the wrong way so he couldn’t see what was going on. Micah knew Alex could look after himself, but he had an unerring ability to get into bad situations. And lately... well, since they’d got back from Omnav Alex seemed to have become even more reckless. Micah hated to admit it, but he was worried about his friend.

Although for now, maybe he should be worrying about himself, he thought as he realised he’d run out of stairs. Behind him eaters spanned the width of the staircase, jostling against each other in their eagerness to be the first to take a bite out of him.

Micah pushed through into the corridor, looking both ways for an open door, somewhere he could lock himself in. No such luck. He knocked at the first flat he came to. When there was no answer he ran to the next. By the time he’d reached the third, the horde was pouring into the corridor and shuffling after him. He sprinted for the far end of the corridor, as far from the horde as he could get.

The final door on the top floor was pale blue and had a plaque at eye level with a rural scene and the number 18 in gold.

“Please don’t be home,” Micah muttered as he raised his right foot and drove it into the wooden surface beside the lock.

Despite what always happened on TV, the door didn’t fly open like it was made of balsa. Glancing nervously at the rapidly approaching eaters, he tried again. This time there was a crunching sound, but the door still held. Micah couldn’t help thinking that Alex would have been through the door in a second with barely any effort. Was he jealous? He would never admit it to Alex, but yes, he was. Especially at this moment.

With the eaters no more than ten feet away and his leg throbbing, he kicked the door a third time. The frame splintered and it crashed open. Micah ran inside.

The living room passed in a yellow blur as he threw himself into a bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. There was no lock. He grabbed a nearby chair and jammed the back beneath the handle. Bodies thumped into the other side, hands scrabbling at the wooden surface and moans crawling through the too thin barrier.

Micah turned and looked around the pink, frilly room. There were no other doors. He went to the window, opened it and looked down. The road below was on the opposite side of the building to where he’d come in and was clear of eaters. Unfortunately, it was also clear of anything he could climb down or jump onto from the third storey window.

The handle rattled. Micah looked back to see it move downwards. He threw himself across the room, catching hold of the metal handle and pulling it back up before the door unlatched. When the pressure eased, Micah grabbed a stuffed bear from the bed and pushed it between the top of the chair and the handle to keep it in place.

He began rifling through draws and cupboards for something to help him. Sadly, whoever lived in the flat wasn’t into anything kinky and he found no rope.

As he tossed cushions off the bed in preparation for hoisting the mattress out of the window to give him something vaguely soft to land on, he heard a familiar sound above the hungry eater moans and creaking doorframe.

He returned to the window and leaned out. Along the road, moving in his direction, was the APV. Leaning out as far as he dared, he waved his arms and shouted frantically.

“
Hey! Over here!
”

The APV stopped beneath the window and Hudson got out.

“I’m trapped,” Micah shouted to him. “There’s a horde of eaters right outside the door.”

At the sound of his voice the eaters grew more frenzied, their onslaught jolting the door in its frame.

“What can we do?” Hudson shouted back.

“Got any rope?”

Dent and Ridgewell also climbed out.

“Sorry,” Hudson said, “we
did
have. There was an incident.”

The thudding against the door was getting louder.

“Well, do you have anything I can use to get down? Like, fast?”

Rick, Porter and Collins emerged and Micah briefly wondered how they were all fitting inside.

“We might be able to...” Dent began.

The doorframe cracked, buckling inwards. The chair inched across the shag pile carpet.

“No more time,” Micah yelled. “Throw me a grenade.”

Hudson reached into the APV and emerged with something green and spherical in his hand. Stepping back for a better angle, he tossed the grenade underhand towards the window. He had good aim. Micah snatched it out of the air.

Inside the bedroom, he tipped the divan bed onto its side facing the door and stood behind it. The bedroom door, now only held by the wooden chair lodged beneath the handle, inched in further. Dirty, bloody arms pushed through the gap. Moans filled the room.

Micah pulled the pin from the grenade and waited, heart thumping against his ribs. He suddenly regretted discarding his helmet on the stairs. It would have been useful.

The chair gave way and the door slammed open. Eaters flooded in.

Micah threw the grenade through the doorway and dropped onto his stomach behind the bed, pulling the mattress down on top of him and clamping his hands over his ears.

“I’m sorry mum and dad,” he whispered. “I tried to survive.”

Then the room erupted in noise, light, and blood.