Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3) (13 page)

Darren jumped to the ground from the door of the helicopter and strode towards the group of men gathered around a cluster of benches, clenching his fists to disguise his trembling hands.

He glanced at the second helicopter a little way across the hotel car park. The hole in the window was covered with a multiple layered patch of duct tape. Shaking his head slightly, he thought about how MacCallum, outgunned and outnumbered, had not only faced them down, but succeeded in driving them off. Of course, he’d had help. Darren rolled his right shoulder and winced. It would be purple by tomorrow.

But there was no denying the white-eye had guts. He was an unremitting pain in Darren’s arse, but he wasn’t a coward. Or maybe he was just out of his mind. Who else would stay and face a man determined to kill him who had command over the hordes of eaters?

Then there was the incident on the bridge. Darren had been shocked to see him still alive after that one. Insanity was looking more and more likely, the more he thought about it.

“How’s the shoulder, Pinner?” he said to the man sitting on a bench with blood soaking the front of his sleeve.

“Bloody white-eye shot me,” the pilot said. “He
shot
me! Through the bloody
window
. How did that even happen?”

Darren had to quell the sudden urge to laugh. “Is it bad?”

“I’ll live, but it hurts like hell. It’s a flesh wound, but it doesn’t feel like one. Harris bandaged me up.”

“Can you fly?”

“If I have to. I’d prefer to get some painkillers first though.”

“We’ll find you something. There must be some inside.” Darren looked around at the little group. None of them seemed to want to meet his gaze, except for Timothy Pinner who had a good excuse for his failure, having been shot and everything.

“Is it bad?” Jessup said.

“They got maybe a third of the horde with those buildings.”

Darren kept his face and voice carefully neutral. No way would he reveal how impressed he’d been with the plan. He wasn’t sure how many there were in the horde now, but after the bridge and the collapsing buildings they’d be lucky to have a third of what they started out with. It was still a scary amount of eaters, but he was no longer convinced it would be enough. Not that he cared, beyond staying alive himself.

He looked at the lorry on the far side of the car park. “How is she?”

“You think any of us is going to check on that bitch?” Fitzwilliam, their other pilot, was sporting a very large bruise on his cheek and his eye was beginning to swell shut. He was also holding one arm awkwardly. “Next time, she goes with you, Tim.”

“Sod that,” Pinner said.

Darren hid his smile. It had taken all of them in the helicopter to get her under control. In hindsight, it was almost funny. “There won’t be a next time. From now on we’re more careful. And she stays with Mr Boot.”

“Tell Boot that,” Ian Baker muttered, then his eyes widened. He glanced nervously at Darren. “I mean...”

“Relax, Baker,” he said.

Baker flashed a small, nervous smile and didn’t relax at all.

“Right,” Darren said, “let’s get inside.”

There was an immediate hush. The fifteen huge men darted nervous glances at each other like they were five year olds who’d been caught doing something naughty.

Darren heaved a sigh. “And yes, I will be the one to tell Mr Boot what happened.”

His audience breathed out.

“Uh, Bish?” Fitzwilliam said, looking at the lorry. “What about her?”

“We’ll take her with us.” He started towards the lorry, stopping when no one followed him. “Well?”

The rest of them, minus Pinner, reluctantly joined him.

Half an hour and a few bruises later, they were inside the Premier Inn just outside Sarcester where Boot had chosen to set up ‘operations’; his word, not Darren’s. Darren made his way to the bedroom that had been transformed into an office for their illustrious leader.

There weren’t many of Boot’s security guards in the hotel, but he kept his game face on anyway, the one that implied a complete lack of concern, just in case anyone saw him.

But the truth was, he
was
concerned. As he walked along the hallway leading to Boot’s office his heart was beating a little faster than he would have liked. After losing a third of the horde at the bridge, Boot had been, to put it mildly, unhappy. Chester had been the one to break the news, but Darren had the misfortune to be in the room. During the ten minute screaming rant Boot’s face had turned so red Darren wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d fallen down and died of a brain aneurysm.

This time it was Darren’s turn to deliver the bad news, since Chester hadn’t been with them in either helicopter. With Boot’s severe unpredictability nowadays, there was a chance Darren would find himself looking down the barrel of the silver plated pistol he wore at all times. Chester had known Boot for over twenty years and was almost like a surrogate father to him. The problem was, Boot had no such emotional connection to Darren.

Reaching the door, he took a deep breath and knocked.

“Enter,” Boot’s imperious voice commanded.

Darren checked his pistol was secure in his shoulder holster, unclipped the safety strap in case he needed quick access, and opened the door.

Harvey Boot was sitting on a neutral coloured sofa in the neutral coloured room, reading a book. He was wearing one of his usual custom-tailored suits. Darren had no issue with his boss wearing a suit all the time, but he wished he’d let the rest of them wear something more comfortable than the Men In Black outfits. Something more practical for being in the middle of an eater apocalypse.

As usual, Boot’s devoted PA, Valerie Worth, was sitting nearby. Chester was standing by the window. When Darren glanced at him, he raised his eyebrows. Darren gave a tiny shake of his head. Chester’s responding scowl didn’t fill Darren with confidence.

“You have something to report, Mr Frobisher?” Boot said, neither looking up nor inviting Darren to sit.

“Yes, Sir.” He glanced at Chester’s impassive face again, hoping for some support. “Uh, we led the eaters in towards the city, as you told us to. We also managed to trap the soldiers who’ve been tailing us.”

“So they’re no longer a problem?” Boot said, still not looking up.

“Um, not exactly.” Darren related the bare facts of what happened when MacCallum and Clarke had turned up, and what he’d found when he subsequently returned to the scene and came across a significant proportion of the horde crushed and the rest in disarray.

When he’d finished, Boot finally raised his eyes.

“Just to clarify, you had the APV surrounded with a horde thousands strong, ready to lead them into the city, and now, with the intervention of just two men armed with a couple of rifles, not only are the soldiers not dead, but several thousand of my eaters
are
. Is that correct?”

Darren let out a slow breath and flexed his hands, feeling the pistol press reassuringly against his side. “Yes, Sir.”

Boot stood abruptly and Darren gave an involuntary flinch. Boot ignored him and walked to stand by a chest of drawers beneath the window, staring towards the tall buildings of the city two miles away. One hand clenched and unclenched while the other ran absently over a large beige vase on top of the drawers. It was half a minute before he spoke.

“Well, what I suggest you do now is take the helicopters back out there, round up the horde, and find MacCallum and Clarke. Do you think you can do that?”

“Uh, yes, Sir,” Darren replied, unnerved by Boot’s apparent calm.

Boot continued to stare out the window. Unsure what to do next, Darren backed towards the door and slipped out as quietly as he could. He’d gone three steps from the door before something vase-sized shattered against the other side. 

Darren walked quickly away.

“So what’s the plan now?” Lieutenant Dent said.

They were about to leave the building where Micah had almost blown himself up and the question caught Alex off guard. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do next.

“Um, well, first I suppose we should find out how many eaters are left. Jerry might be able to see from where he is. He’s the closest.”

Micah unclipped the radio from his belt. The black casing was somewhat more scratched and dented than it had been the last time Alex saw it.

Micah switched it on and got static. “Oh, hey, it still works. These things are tough.” He dialled in the frequency the spotters were using and held out the radio so the gathered group could hear. “Jerry?”

After a few seconds, Jerry’s voice replied. “Yo.”

“What’s happening, Jerry?”

“Not a lot,” Jerry replied, his voice distorted through the radio’s speaker. “Looks like dropping the buildings on them took out maybe a third of the horde, maybe more. It’s hard to tell in all the dust. The rest, the ones that can still walk anyway, are just milling around. That was a spectacular show, by the way. But now it’s pretty gross down there, even from up here.”

“Any sign of the helicopters?” Alex said.

“One showed up, looked around, and flew off again. What happened to them anyway?”

“One I shot through the window. I think I may have hit the pilot. The other, I have no idea. If anything changes, let us know.”

“Will do. This is Eagle One, out.”

Pete’s voice replaced Jerry’s. “I thought I was Eagle One.”

“You’re Eagle Three.”

“
Three
? Who’s Eagle Two then?”

“I am.” The voice belonged to Melissa, a forty-something divorcee who had managed to survive the outbreak by hiding in her house and being very, very careful. She had been one of the first to sign up to be a spotter, one of a small army of people armed with binoculars and stationed strategically on various tall buildings around the city.

There were a few moments of silence before Pete spoke again. “Oh, well yes, of course, Melissa.” He gave a small laugh.

Micah turned the radio off. “If Pete doesn’t ask Melissa out after all this I’m going to
make
him do it, I don’t care that he’s a Survivor. It’s painful to watch him around her.”

The radio crackled and Janie’s voice emerged. “Alex? You and Micah still in one piece?”

“More or less,” Alex replied.

“Me and Leon are on our way back to East Town to make sure everyone’s ready for whatever comes next. What are you going to do now?”

Why did people keep asking him that? “I suppose...”

Sam cut in. “Alex? Alex, are you there?”

The scared tone in his voice had Alex immediately on alert. “I’m here, Sam. What’s wrong?”

“There’s a horde...
No, get everyone back behind the fence
!”

Alex grabbed the radio from Micah’s hand. “Sam, what’s happening?”

“The bus we were using broke down. We thought it would be safe to walk because it’s only a mile or so, but a horde came out of nowhere. We’re trapped.”

Alex tried to keep the fear from his voice. “Where are you?”

“In a park on... where are we?... Samson Avenue. They have us surrounded in the play area.”

Leon’s voice cut in. “Sam, are Pat and my girls all right?”

“They’re okay, Leon. I’m right with them.”

“We’re on our way,” Alex said, already running for his bike.

The soldiers were climbing into the APV.

“We’ll follow you,” Dent called out.

Even at a speed that would have got Alex arrested before the outbreak, it took them five excruciatingly long minutes to reach the park on Samson Avenue.

They were stupid to have moved everyone to watch the main horde. It was a big city and they didn’t have enough people to cover the entire perimeter, but still, he should have thought of this. Whether or not this horde had anything to do with Boot, they should have been covering all the angles.

Sam’s group was composed of some of the men, women and children who had been sheltering in East Town, as well as those of Alex’s neighbours who were going with them to the buildings where they would be hidden from Boot’s army. Maggie and Len Carlson and their two small children, Paul and Millie, the family who had helped Alex and Micah on the second day of the outbreak, were with them, as were the family Alex and Micah rescued when their car was under attack by eaters, Jane and Roy, Luke, Miriam and Aaron.

Patrice, Emma and Katie were there.

Halfway to the park, they reached the river. The bridge they planned to cross was blocked with cars yet to be moved. There was no way past for the APV

“You keep going,” Ridgewell called. “We’ll find another way.”

“Just go south east,” Micah shouted back.

He and Alex wound their motorbikes through the blockage and continued on.

When they finally reached the public park, they drove straight in through the tall iron gates, riding through the lengthening grass and zigzagging around stands of trees and weed-strewn flowerbeds. It was a big area, covering more than sixty acres near the centre of the city, but Alex knew it well from his days on patrol and he headed directly for the children’s play area. When they got there they found bodies littering the fenced in area and the gate open.

Alex scanned the dead, heart pounding. To his relief they were all eaters.

“This way,” Micah said, pointing to a wide swath of trampled grass Alex had missed.

They followed the flattened vegetation down a hill. Hearing screams, they abandoned the path and sped towards the rose garden, a walled area criss-crossed with paths looping around beds of fragrant roses, miniature box hedges and trellises draped with climbing plants.

And eaters heedlessly trampling over everything.

Alex leaped from his bike and ran into the garden, pulling his two skull-spikers from his pockets and flicking out the blades as he approached the nearest two eaters. They were the first to die. Micah took out another three nearby.

On the far side of the garden, huddled into a seating area surrounded by three foot high box hedges, was the group of just over forty men, women and children. The terrified cries of the children mingled with the moans of at least a hundred eaters trying to reach them. They had pulled a trellis down across the open end of the hedged in area and the Survivors in the group had ripped a couple of benches from where they had been bolted into the ground to bolster it, but it wasn’t enough. The eaters were pushing at the makeshift barrier and it was obvious it wasn’t going to hold for much longer.

The adults had formed into a circle around the children and Sam, Claire and Penny, the only armed members of the group, were picking off any eaters that fell over the hedge. Pheromones swirled through the air.

Alex launched himself at the back of the horde, Micah doing the same beside him. Some of the eaters turned to face the new arrivals, but most were fixated on the desperate group of people.

There was a metallic scraping and some of the group screamed. Through a gap in the crowd, Alex saw the benches being forced back and the eaters pushing towards the terrified people. He saw Patrice, her arms wrapped around a crying Emma and Katie.

The sound of gunfire increased as Sam, Claire and Penny shot at the encroaching eaters, and then dwindled as one by one they ran out of ammunition. Alex pulled his pistol out and shot eater after eater.

Then things got worse.

The rumble of helicopter blades blended with the cacophony of moans and screams. Alex looked up to see one of Boot’s choppers swooping in. He was suddenly furious.

“
You did this
!” he screamed.

The helicopter opened fire with both machine guns. Bullets tore up the ground and ripped into the horde as it flew overhead then circled around for another pass. For an instant, Alex was too shocked to move.

“Get down and cover your faces!” Micah yelled.

“Use your coats,” Sam shouted.

The group dropped into crouches, pulling off coats and using them to shield against blood spatter. Alex and Micah backed off as the helicopter returned to hover over the garden, firing into the horde until only a handful of eaters were left standing. When the gunfire ceased, Alex and Micah waded back in and took down the last few remaining alive.

Finally, the moans stopped.

Alex and Micah turned towards the still hovering helicopter. Alex wasn’t sure if there were any rounds left in his pistol, but he pulled it from its holster anyway. He had no illusions it would help. One burst of fire from the twin fifty calibre guns and they’d be dead.

A cry came from the group of people to their left. Alex looked to see Emma running towards him.

Patrice shrieked. “
Emma, no
!”

Before he could react, Emma had thrown her arms around his waist, her small body angled between the helicopter’s weapons and him.

“
Don’t shoot him
!” she screamed, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Alex frantically tried to pry her loose without hurting her small arms, but she wouldn’t let go. Micah stepped in front of them, shielding her from the guns aimed at them, but Alex knew that if they opened fire Micah’s body wouldn’t be nearly enough to stop the powerful rounds.

“Please, Em,” he said as calmly as he could, more terrified than he ever remembered being in his life, “go back to your mum.”

She shook her head, crying into his stomach. “I won’t let them shoot you. I won’t.”

“Emma, please,” her mother called. “Please come back.” She was holding Katie, clearly torn between the need to protect her youngest daughter and the desperate urge to rescue her oldest.

Alex crouched in front of Emma. She clamped her arms around his neck, pressing her face into his shoulder. He picked her up, hoping desperately that whoever was in the helicopter weren’t the kind of monsters who would shoot a child.

“You have to go,” he whispered. “Your mum and dad and sister need you.”

“I don’t want you to die,” she sobbed, lifting her tear streaked face to look at him.

“I know, and I will do everything I can not to, everything but risk your life. I love you, Emma. You and Katie and Lisa are my girls, my three favourite people in the world.” He kissed her forehead and lowered her to the ground. “Now go to your mum.”

She stared up at him with her huge brown eyes for a second before saying, “I love you too.” Whirling around, she ran back to Patrice who crouched down to hold her sobbing daughter to her.

Alex straightened to face the helicopter, stepping forward to stand at Micah’s side.

For ten seconds nothing moved but the rotor blades, the draft blasting into their faces and the roar of the engine pounding their eardrums.

Then it rose into the air, flew over their heads, and disappeared into the distance.

Alex released the breath he’d been holding in an explosive rush.

Micah was already making his way towards the group. “Drop the coats and don’t touch them for at least five minutes,” he was saying. “Check each other for blood; clothing, skin, everywhere. If you find even a spot, don’t touch it.”

Swallowing the desert in his mouth, Alex went to help. A minute later the sound of approaching vehicles drew his attention and he looked up from searching Patrice’s clothes to see Leon and Janie arrive, the APV close behind.

Leon leaped from the passenger side of the Land Rover and ran to his family, catching them into his arms. Patrice, stoic throughout the attack, released her tears in her husband’s embrace. Emma and Katie clung to their parents.

Leon looked towards Alex and mouthed, “Thank you.”

Alex nodded and turned away, wiping a hand across his eyes.

That had been too close.

He walked a little way away from the group and stared across the expanse of the park, only vaguely seeing the duck-covered lake and the trees fading into autumn and the Victorian bandstand. He was angry, at Boot, at whoever had been in the helicopter, even at Dent and the others for not being there when it threatened an eight year old girl, despite it not being in the slightest their fault. Mostly, however, he was angry with himself. The people he loved shouldn’t be in danger because of him. This had to stop.

Micah came to stand beside him. “What just happened here?”

Alex looked into the sky where the helicopter had gone. “I have absolutely no idea.”