Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3) (30 page)

“Are you sure you can make it?”

Micah huffed an indignant breath. “Of course I can make it. Are you sure
you
can make it?”

“Please,” Alex said, “I won’t even need a run up.” He was lying.

Micah narrowed his eyes. “Take one.”

Alex shrugged. “If it will make you feel happier.” He was going to anyway.

They both stared at the ten foot gap between the roof of their building and the roof of the next block along. Ten feet wasn’t especially far to jump at ground level, but five storeys up, it might as well have been fifty.

“What are you waiting for?” Bates yelled from the far end of the roof behind them. “A goodbye kiss?”

Alex waved a hand without looking back and shouted, “We’re
going
.”

“You ready?” Micah said.

“Of course. You?”

“Born that way.”

Neither of them moved.

“It’s a long way down,” Micah said.

“If it makes you feel any better, if you don’t make it all the eaters at the bottom will probably cushion your fall. That’s what happened when Kerry pulled me off the roof that time.”

“Please stop trying to make me feel better.”

There were another few seconds of silence.

“Okay,” Micah said. “Okay.” He bounced on his toes a few times. “Okay.”

Launching himself forwards, he ran for the edge of the roof and leaped into the air.

Alex held his breath.

Two seconds later Micah landed on the far side, took several steps to stop, then turned around and punched both arms into the air. “Yes!”

“Well, if he can do it, so can I,” Alex muttered, and sprinted for the gap.

Reaching the low parapet at the edge, he planted his right foot on the top and pushed off as hard as he could. For a second he was flying over the heads of the dozens of eaters crammed into the alley below, and then he was sailing past the edge of the building on the other side, overshooting it by more than twenty feet. When he hit the ground he managed to remain upright only through sheer force of will, coming to a stumbling halt thirty feet from the gap.

“I may have overdone that a bit,” he said as Micah walked up to him.

“Next time, don’t bother with the run up. It would have looked cooler with less flailing too.”

Alex waved at those gathered on the other roof and yelled, “Give us a minute to get downstairs.”

He and Micah headed for the door leading from the roof.

“What do you mean less flailing?” Alex said. “I wasn’t flailing.”

Micah tried the door. It was locked.

“All yours,” he said, standing back. “Try not to rip the handle off this time. And your arms and legs were all over the place.”

Alex gripped the metal handle and pulled slowly, gradually increasing the pressure. “I don’t need a critique of my form. You weren’t exactly Rudolf Nureyev yourself.” He stumbled back as the latch ripped through the frame and the door jolted open.

Both of them listened for any sounds of moaning inside the building. Hearing nothing, they ventured inside.

. . .

Watching the eaters milling outside from where he and Alex were hiding behind the stairs in the lobby, Micah wondered why they were there.

Not what their purpose was for being there, but why it was
them
down there when on the roof there were plenty of physically fit, strong, capable men and women who could have been there instead.

Lately, and by lately he knew it was since he’d met Alex, he seemed to volunteer automatically for anything stupidly dangerous there was going. Alex clearly had a hero complex, which was probably what had got him infected in the first place, and now Micah was slightly concerned it was rubbing off on him. Alex was definitely a bad influence.

Micah had been arrested several times since the age of nineteen and had even spent a couple of months in jail a few years back after he broke a man’s jaw in a fight which he didn’t start, but was happy to end. And yet the upstanding police detective was the bad influence. The thought made him smile.

“What are you smiling at?” Alex whispered.

“Just thinking about how you are a bad influence on me.”

Alex stared at him in disbelief. “
I’m
a...” He stopped, glancing at the eaters outside the door, and lowered his voice. “
I’m
a bad influence on
you
?”

“As soon as anyone suggests anything remotely dangerous, you’re volunteering. And I’m going right along with you.”

“I would call that being a good influence. You want to go back up? I can do this by myself.”

“Please,” Micah said, “we both know you’d be dead within ten minutes without me.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself. Admit it, you like being the hero. Why else would you have been leading mobs into East Town before this all began?”

By now Micah was pretty sure he’d got the hang of how Alex’s mind worked, but that one had him flummoxed. “Attacking Survivors was heroic?”

“No, but you were doing what you thought was right. You thought we were dangerous and you did something about it. You tried to help. Most people wouldn’t have. That’s what makes a hero. You may have been completely, embarrassingly, and stupidly wrong, but you were still trying to save people.”

Micah considered the possibility. “I never thought of it like that.”

“Yeah, so don’t go blaming me for your heroic tendencies.” Alex waved a dismissive hand as he checked the eaters outside again. “You got yourself into this all by yourself. You could have walked away at any time.”

Micah hid his smile. “I could have, but then who would have saved your life all those many, many times?”

“It’s not
that
many.”

The distant sound of shouting joined the sporadic moans. A few eaters raised their heads, looking to the left from where Alex and Micah were standing. The rest of them stopped shuffling and followed their gaze. As one, they all began to move in that direction.

Micah’s heart rate spiked. “Here we go.”

It took a couple of minutes for the crowd to thin and then clear between them and the helicopter where it lay in a mangled heap a hundred yards away. Micah followed Alex from beneath the stairs and pressed his face to the cold glass of the door, peering along the road to the left. The eaters were gathering beneath where Bates, Janie, Brian and the others were shouting and waving from the farthest roof they could reach.

Micah withdrew a skull-spiker from his pocket. Alex did the same. They glanced at each other for a moment, but there was no discussion of what they would do once out there. After a month of fighting side by side, it was unnecessary. Even though they frequently bickered and disagreed, Micah knew that when they fought together they would always be perfectly in sync. It was a good feeling knowing whatever danger he faced, Alex would have his back. It was what gave him the courage to do ridiculously dangerous things like stepping out onto a street filled with thousands of eaters.

He opened the door and moved out onto the pavement, almost colliding with an eater hampered by a badly broken leg struggling to catch up with the horde. It opened its mouth to moan. Micah dispatched it before it could alert the others and carried on into the road.

Bodies littered the ground from the earlier battle, forcing them to pick their way towards the downed helicopter rather than run. Micah threw frequent glances at the horde along the street. The huge crowd of eaters were all looking up to where those on the roof were shouting and waving, reaching up their hands and moaning like they were the audience at a very strange rock concert. Even the former members of Boot’s security were joining in with the distraction, their large, black-suited forms towering over the others.

After an uncomfortably long half a minute during which Micah was convinced they’d be spotted at any moment, they reached the helicopter and pressed against the side facing away from the horde. Even though they hadn’t been moving very fast, his heart was pounding.

“I’ll go inside and find it,” he whispered. “You keep watch.”

Alex peered around the front end of the helicopter as Micah circled round him and climbed in through the shattered front window. Inside was a mess, broken glass and detritus everywhere. The sides of the helicopter were crumpled, buckled inwards. Micah felt a moment of guilt. It was a miracle anyone had survived the crash, much less walked away from it. They’d had no choice, but if anyone had died he would have felt horrible.

The pheromone gun was lying halfway under the pilot’s chair. Micah pulled it out and checked the barrel. Empty. He handed it out to Alex.

“It’s empty,” Alex whispered.

“I know. I’m looking.” He moved a chunk of tortured metal, dislodging a large piece of glass that shattered on the floor. Micah winced. “Sorry.”

He didn’t waste any time looking out the window. If any of the horde had heard, Alex would let him know. Instead, he continued searching for ammunition for the gun.

Something red caught his eye and he bent to pick up a two inch long cartridge. Slipping it into his pocket, he continued his search, now focused on finding anything red. He almost missed the green cartridge on the floor in the back.

He pulled the red from his pocket and compared the two. They were exactly the same other than their colour. Different colours for different pheromone messages. Micah wondered how many messages you could give an eater horde. They’d seen ‘stay’ and ‘follow’. Maybe the red was ‘attack’.

He searched for another few minutes and found three more greens and a couple that were blue. There were no other colours. So red for attack, blue for stay, and green for follow? He hoped that was right. He really didn’t want to fire an attack one by mistake.

He climbed back out and joined Alex behind the helicopter wreck, taking the cartridges he’d found from his pocket to show him.

“Different pheromones?” Alex said.

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Okay, let’s get back to the others and decide what to do next.”

“Can I have the gun? I want to see how it works.” Micah already knew how it worked, but he’d had an idea he knew Alex wouldn’t like. So he wasn’t going to tell him about it.

Alex handed him the gun and turned away to check the horde. Micah took the opportunity to load one of the green cartridges.

“I think we’re safe to go...” Alex began.

Micah stepped away from the helicopter, braced the pheromone gun against his shoulder, and fired. Compared to a regular firearm the sound it made was quiet. It also didn’t have as much of a kick as a rifle, but it sent the cartridge sailing high into the air above the horde where it exploded with a dull pop.

Micah cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled to those on the roof. “Stop shouting and move back. We’re taking them from here.”

Alex whirled around to gape at him. “What are you
doing
?”

“Right now, running,” Micah replied, indicating the eaters who were already turning in their direction. He started away from the helicopter, dodging bodies with as much dexterity and speed as he could.

With little other option, Alex followed him. “Did I miss the part where you explained what the
heck
you’re doing?”

“We might not get another chance at getting the eaters away from here.”

Alex looked back at the following horde. “Which colour did you use?”

“Green. For ‘go’.”

“How can you be sure? It could be green for go crazy and rip everything apart.”

“It’s a calculated risk. There’s no time for-”

Something clamped around Micah’s ankle and jerked him off his feet, sending him sprawling onto a very thin, very bloody, very dead eater. He recoiled in disgust. The grip tightened painfully and he twisted to see another eater, its legs crushed and pinned beneath what had once been the engine block of a car before the barrier was blown up. It was pulling his foot towards its gaping, salivating mouth.

Alex bent to shove his skull-spiker into the back of its head then grasped Micah’s arm and hauled him upright. “You were saying?”

“I was saying,” Micah said as they resumed their flight from the horde which was now only twenty feet away, “we don’t have time for discussions. We’re here, we have the pheromone gun, and most importantly,” he pointed ahead of them, beyond the remains of the car barrier, “we have Theresa.”

Alex followed the line of his finger. “You named the tank
Theresa
?”

“After a girlfriend I had a few years ago.”

“And she was built like a tank?”

Picking his way through the remains of the car barrier, Micah almost tripped over a mangled chunk of metal as he burst into laughter. “No, but she worked out a lot. I met her at the gym. She was very... strong.”