Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3) (12 page)

Alex kept looking up into the sky as he drove ahead of the horde, expecting the helicopters to return, but he saw no sign of them.

He had no idea what had happened to the last one, with its weird behaviour and sudden decision to leave. Not that he was complaining; whatever it was had saved his life. He glanced back at the horde following close behind him. At least, he was alive for now.

Up ahead he could see the buildings Bates had rigged with explosives. He hadn’t doubted at the time that the disturbingly knowledgeable man could do what he said, but now it was about to happen, some uncertainty was creeping in. Too late now though. He just hoped he wasn’t left with the massive horde behind him and no way to stop them.

As he got closer, he looked ahead to Reg’s block on the left of the road, hoping to see a sheet hanging from his window. There was nothing. Alex sighed and lowered his gaze to the road ahead.

“I hope it’s quick,” he said quietly.

His hands began to sweat as he drew level with the first building rigged to blow and he swallowed, wiping his palms one at a time down his thighs. With every fibre of his being he wanted to squeeze the throttle and get as far away as he could, but he didn’t want a repeat of the bridge debacle. He had to make sure the eaters were exactly where they needed to be when things got going, so he kept his pace slow and steady and tried to relax.

A little farther along, he passed building number two, this one to the left of the road. He looked back. Moaning, ravenous horde thirty feet behind him, present and correct. As he reached building three, his heart rate kicked it up a notch.

This was where Bates had told him he would have to get going in order to be far enough away when the detonations began. Alex had no intention of following the advice. This had to be done right.

The final building, Reg’s block, drew level to Alex’s left. He looked up for one final check. Reg’s window was empty. He focused on the road ahead, putting the old man out of his mind.

Squeezing the throttle gently, he gradually lengthened the gap between him and the horde. Just a little further...

The frontrunners reached the building.

Alex clamped his fingers tight and the bike leaped forwards.

Ahead of him along the ramrod-straight road, a flower shop with a red awning marked the closest point where his safety was guaranteed. Now his life depended on reaching it, it looked very far away. He glanced behind him. A few more seconds and the horde would be in place. He wasn’t going to make it.

At a corner too close to ground zero he veered off the road and jammed on the brakes behind a sturdy looking wall. Without knowing if he’d be heard, he flipped up his visor and screamed, “Blow it!”

There were two seconds of dead silence then a percussive boom shattered the calm.

Alex frantically fumbled to close his visor as the shockwave pounded his chest and the bike trembled beneath him. Clouds of dust billowed overhead.

A second blast ripped through the air. The ground shook. Pieces of render cracked on the wall sheltering him, showering him with debris. He scrambled off the bike and backed away from it.

The third detonation rocked both Alex and the wall. A few bricks dislodged. He moved away further and waited for the final explosion.

And waited.

Seconds ticked by and nothing happened. Reg must have changed his mind. Alex started to smile. So only the three buildings had gone down. It didn’t matter, Reg’s life was worth it.

A thundering bang fractured the reprieve. The wall toppled, narrowly missing Alex’s bike. Startled, he leaped away and fell.

With the sound of the collapse of Reg’s block of flats echoing around him, Alex lay on his back and stared into a sky shrouded with dust.

After a minute of dazed inactivity, he sat up and pulled off his helmet. He immediately started to cough. His clothing was covered in a fine powder and he left an Alex-shaped void on the dark tarmac when he stood. He walked back out onto the road and looked towards the four destroyed buildings. Bates hadn’t been exaggerating; he did know what he was doing.

From this distance details were hard to make out, but even through the thick dust that still hung in the air Alex could see the huge extent of the destruction. The four five storey blocks of flats which, judging from the design, had been standing since the 1960s had been reduced to piles of mangled steel and rubble. Extensive damage had befallen other structures in the immediate vicinity too, ranging from blown out windows to appearing so unstable they could fall down at any second. Other than the occasional piece of masonry shifting, there was no movement.

A four wheel drive Land Rover came to a halt in the middle of the road behind Alex. Janie jumped out and strode up to him, an expression of relief on her face. At first he thought she was going to give him a hug, so he was unprepared when her hand shot up and slapped his face.

He pressed a hand to his throbbing cheek and stepped out of reach. “What was that for?!”

“You were supposed to speed up
before
the last block. You were supposed to be back there by the time it blew.” She pointed behind her to the red awning. “You were
not
supposed to leave it so late you almost got yourself killed by the blast. What were you
thinking
?”

Leon and Brian climbed from the Land Rover, but didn’t approach.
Cowards
.

Alex took another step back, just to be certain she couldn’t slap him again. “I was thinking that I wanted to make sure it worked as well as possible. If I’d gone too early the horde might have started to break up. I needed them to keep moving. It was worth the risk.”

She glared at him. “To who? And where’s Micah?”

Micah.

Alex spun round and ran back to his bike, grabbing his helmet and quickly dusting off the seat before climbing on.

“Where are you going?” Janie said.

“To find Micah.”

Leaving Janie, Leon and Brian standing in the street, Alex sped back towards the scene of destruction. He skirted around the edge of the devastation, taking a back route to where he’d left Micah being pursued by eaters.

When he reached the place where Micah had crashed five minutes later there were no eaters left on the road and the APV was parked in front of the building Alex had seen him enter. He could hear gunfire inside.

Leaving his bike next to the APV, he ran through the front door then slowed to avoid tripping over the bodies scattered across the lobby floor. He reached the stairwell and bounded up, dodging around more sprawled eater bodies. Some of them bore the telltale small, precision hole of a spiker. There was no doubt Micah had come this way.

Sporadic shots were still coming from somewhere up ahead, echoing around the enclosed stairwell.

“It’s Alex,” he called as he ran. “I’m coming up. Don’t shoot me.”

He was just past the second floor landing when a hand grasped his foot as he leaped over a twisted, bloody body. His foot jerked from under him and he grabbed the banister rail as he fell, ending up dangling awkwardly by one arm with the eater he’d thought was dead gnawing at his shoe.

Pulling out a skull-spiker with his free hand, he dispatched the eater and stood, walking the rest of the way up with more care. On the top floor landing he found Ridgewell and Collins holding open a door leading to the corridor. Dent, Rick, Porter and Hudson were gathered beyond, facing to the left. Every couple of seconds one of them would fire a shot.

“What’s going on?” Alex said. “Where’s Micah? And you missed one, by the way.”

“Micah got trapped down there,” Dent said, indicating with her rifle. “We were outside. He set off a grenade, but we haven’t been able to reach him yet. We only just got here and there are still some eaters alive up there.”

“I’m sorry, did you say he set off a
grenade
?”

Alex edged past Collins and poked his head around the doorframe. The five foot wide corridor was filled with mangled bodies. Some of them were still moving. Four eaters were trying to walk through the mess towards them. A fifth was crawling because one of its legs had been blown off. Alex was surprised it hadn’t yet bled to death.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “
Micah
!” There was no response. “How long since the grenade went off?”

“Ten minutes maybe,” Rick said.

Alex pushed past them all and walked along the corridor towards the eaters.

“MacCallum, what are you doing?” Dent said.

Alex ignored her and pulled another skull-spiker from his pocket to add to the one still in his hand. Ten seconds later, the five still mobile eaters had joined their dead colleagues on the floor.

Reaching the end of the corridor and the only open door, Alex peered in. He immediately clapped a hand over his mouth and turned away. The overwhelming smell of blood had warned him it would be bad, but he wasn’t prepared for quite
how
bad. He took a few quick breaths through his mouth, reminded himself of why he was there, and stepped into the room.

It was immediately obvious he didn’t need his spikers in here and he put them away. Nothing was alive in what he assumed had once been a living room. Much of what had been a very large number of eaters wasn’t even recognisable. Shredded body parts covered the floor. Viscera and blood coated the walls, ceiling, and the remains of the furniture. A mild breeze wafted through where the window glass used to be. The carpet squelching unpleasantly beneath his feet, Alex picked his way across the room to an open door and stepped through.

He was in a bedroom. He knew that because what was left of a divan bed was on its side close to the far wall. Facing the door, the base had been all but destroyed, a gaping hole ripped through the wood and fabric. Chunks of metal, wood and bone shrapnel decorated the ruins of the bed, embedded into the wooden frame. He couldn’t see what was behind it.

His heart feeling like it had crawled into his throat, Alex made his way to the bed, stepping carefully over pieces of eater. As in the living room, nothing was in one piece. Could anyone really have survived in here?

He reached the bed and paused, unsure if he wanted to see whatever was behind it. Steeling himself, he stepped forward and looked over the top. Sitting on the floor, knees bent, eyes closed and head leaning against the wall behind him, was Micah.

Alex took a moment to breathe out a silent “thank you” before he walked around the bed and crouched in front of him, touching his knee gently.

Micah started and his eyes flew open. He stared at Alex for a few seconds. “Am I alive, or are we both dead?” he said in a loud voice.

“I’m pretty sure we’re both alive.”

He looked up at the blood splattered across the ceiling. “That’s a relief. I was sort of hoping heaven would look nicer than this.” He pointed to one ear and said, “I think the blast may have affected my hearing.”

“I think you may be right,” Alex said, smiling. “You okay otherwise?”

Micah looked down at himself. “I think so. Kind of a surprising twist considering a grenade went off ten feet away from me.”

Alex stood and offered his hand, pulling Micah upright and grabbing his elbow when he swayed unsteadily.

Micah put a hand to his temple. “My head is pounding.”

“Grenades will do that to you.”

Porter’s voice drifted from the living room. “Don’t come in here if your stomach isn’t made of steel.”

Micah led the way out of the bedroom and stopped.

When he saw him, Porter smiled. “You made it.”

“Mm hmm,” Micah said, looking like he was trying to avoid seeing the carnage around him. “Could we maybe leave before I ruin my tough guy image and throw up everywhere?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

They filed out into the corridor and walked to the stairwell where the others greeted Micah with variations on the theme of, “Holy crap, you’re still alive!” The volume of his responding “thanks” had reduced slightly from in the bedroom, so his hearing seemed to be improving.

“Is it really that bad in there?” Collins said, indicating the open flat door.

“A grenade went off in a room full of eaters,” Alex said. “Use your imagination.”

“I want to see,” he said, heading along the corridor.

“Why?” Dent said.

“Because I’ve never seen something like that before.”

“I’m staying here,” Rick said. “In fact...” He backed out onto the stairwell landing. “...I think I’ll actually stay
here
.”

Collins disappeared into the flat. He stayed there for almost five seconds. It may have been less. When he emerged he looked uncomfortable and slightly green.

“I’ve seen it,” he said, walking rapidly back to them. “Don’t ever need to see it again. If we’re done here, I could use some fresh air.”

There was a patch of overgrown grass in front of the building. Once outside, in an unspoken collective decision everyone headed for it and spent a minute wiping off their shoes.

“What happened with blowing up the buildings?” Micah said as they worked.

“I got the eaters there and Bates’ explosives worked,” Alex said. “I didn’t check how much of the horde had been taken out before I came to find you though.”

There was a pause before Micah spoke again. “Reg?”

Alex pursed his lips and nodded. Micah looked back at his shoes as he rubbed them on the grass.

Micah’s bike lay on its side where it had ended up when he’d crashed. Together, they hoisted it upright.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said, running his hand over the myriad of dents and scratches. He flipped the start switch and the engine roared into life, sounding none the worse for wear. He patted the seat. “That’s my girl.”

“You’ve given it a name, haven’t you?” Alex said.

Micah’s lips twitched. “Might have.”

“You’d better be careful my sofa doesn’t find out. It can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe.”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “The sofa can’t get outside, the bike can’t get in. It’s the perfect setup.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds then dissolved into the kind of giggles you only get after a life or death situation. Beside the APV, Ridgewell began to laugh with them. Soon, everyone else was joining in.

Alex laughed until his stomach muscles hurt and he was gasping for breath. Considering their circumstances, it felt strange. But good.

A couple of minutes later, when they’d collected themselves, Collins sidled up to Micah and said, “Don’t tell anyone, but the APV is called Angelina.”

It was a good five minutes before they stopped laughing again.