Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3) (8 page)

He froze, staring at Alex in shock. His eyes jumped to the door.

“You’d be dead before they reached you,” Alex said.

The surprise slipped from Boot’s face and he drew himself up to his full four feet and change. “If you kill me, you’ll be dead when they reach
you
.”

Alex shrugged. “After what you’ve taken from me, killing you will be worth it.”

Boot looked confused for a moment. “Oh, you mean Dr. Sanderson. Yes, I can imagine you were upset about her turning.”

Burning rage flashed through Alex’s chest. He lunged at Boot, grabbing his throat and slamming him up against the wall. Boot’s eyes widened in terror, his feet scrabbling for purchase against the smooth plaster.

Alex raised the spiker. “This is for Hannah and everyone else you’ve murdered.”

Boot clawed at Alex’s hand. “Stop,” he rasped, desperately trying to draw in more oxygen, “you can’t... she’s not...”

The door to the corridor exploded inwards.

Chester stood in the opening, a pistol clutched in his hand.

Alex dropped Boot and dived behind the bed, a trail of bullets following his movement and slamming into the mattress above him. He pulled his pistol from its holster and blindly aimed over the bed, firing five times in quick succession before raising his head. Both Boot and Chester were gone from the room. The corridor outside filled with shouting voices and running footsteps.

Alex leaped up and ran for the door. In the hallway, guards were running towards him. Beyond them, Boot was running away, Chester behind him. Alex raised his gun. Seeing him, the guards stumbled to a halt, their huge forms blocking his aim as they raised their weapons. Cursing in frustration, Alex darted back into the room as a salvo of bullets blanketed the corridor behind him.

Dashing for the window, Alex grabbed a chair and heaved it at the glass. The panel shattered and he leaped through without slowing, plummeting the fifteen feet to the ground and dropping into a roll. Bits of glass dug into his exposed hands.

Faces appeared at the ruined window above him, searching the darkness. Someone swept a torch back and forth across the ground and the beam passed across him. By the time it snapped back he was on his feet and running. Bullets followed his progress until he rounded the back corner of the building a couple of seconds later.

He reached the door into the kitchen and stopped, panting for breath, wondering what to do. Would Boot try to leave after his attack, or stay and wait for his guards to find and kill Alex? Should Alex go in and find him, or stay outside and wait for him to come out?

Alex wanted to scream. He had been so close. He’d had Boot in his hands.

Shaking his head, he went back inside. This wasn’t over. It didn’t matter what happened to him now, as long as he got Harvey Boot.

The door to the pantry was open and Simmons and the other guard were gone. Chester must have found them and gone straight to Boot’s room. Alex carried on through the dining room to the door leading to the foyer and looked through the window. Two guards stood by the staircase, rifles in hand. One had a torch and was moving it back and forth. The candle was still on the table by the sofa, but it wasn’t giving out much light. Without the torch they’d be almost blind.

Alex waited until the beam was aimed away from the door then burst through, sprinting across the space to the reception desk and throwing himself behind it. Shots rang out, but they were nowhere near him. He crawled on his stomach to the edge of the desk and peered around it. With the beam of the torch pointed above the desk, Alex took careful aim and fired. The guard holding the torch yelped. The light vanished.

“What the hell...?” one of them said.

“He shot the damn torch!”

“He’s behind the desk! Shoot the desk!”

Alex launched himself away from the wooden reception desk as it was shredded by rifle fire, rounding a corner leading further into the building two seconds later.

He briefly considered reconsidering his determination to not kill anyone but Boot. He’d be up those stairs in moments if he simply shot the two guards. He discounted the idea immediately. He wasn’t that far gone. Not yet. 

“He’s down here!” one of the men yelled. “Bring torches!”

Boot must have still been upstairs. Of course he wouldn’t leave just because one man was after him. Boot was too conceited for that.

His mistake.

Leaning around the corner, Alex fired three shots in quick succession. On the third the candle blew off the table, plunging the room into total darkness.

“That’s it, I’m done,” the guard on the left said, backing towards the stairs. “I’m not staying down here in the dark. Let them send Jessup or the others down.”

Alex stepped out from his cover, careful to not make a sound. The guard backing away had his rifle clutched in one hand while he felt behind him with the other. His back foot hit the bottom step and he stumbled, landing on his backside and uttering an expletive.

“Harris?” the remaining guard hissed.

Alex took advantage of the noise to move. Sprinting for the first guard, he slammed his palms into his chest, sending the big man flying backwards into the wall.

“Ron?” Harris said. “Ron!”

Ron had landed at the base of the wall and was lying on his back, waving his rifle back and forth frantically. “Someone bloody get down here!” he screamed. “He’s here!”

Alex dashed back to the dining room as Ron opened fire, spraying the lobby with bullets. He ran for the kitchen, hearing glass shatter behind him.

He couldn’t help but smile. “And that, ladies and gentleman, is how you create a diversion.”

Through the kitchen and back outside, Alex was about to start up the fire escape stairs when he heard a sound. He stopped and looked around, searching the bushes and trees and waste containers dotted around the service area at the back of the hotel. He could have sworn he’d heard a sound, indeterminate, but human. But he could see nothing. After spending fifteen precious seconds searching for the source, he returned his attention to the fire escape, dismissing it as the wind or an animal. There was no time for distractions now.

Taking the steps two at a time, he reached the top in seconds, grasped the handle on the fire escape door, and pulled. The door didn’t open, but an ear piercing oscillation of sound exploded around him. So the alarms did have battery backup. He grasped the handle tighter and tugged at the door with all his strength. It held out for two seconds before flying open, throwing him off balance and causing him to stumble backwards.

It saved his life.

Gunfire filled the corridor in front of him, shredding the air where he’d been a split second earlier. Startled and already off balance, Alex jerked away from the line of fire and hit the railing, pivoting over the top and falling. He slammed into the ground hard, the impact shoving the air from his lungs and pain shooting through his right arm. His gun flew from his hand.

For a few seconds he lay, unmoving and stunned, gasping oxygen back into his lungs. Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard a car engine.

Moans snapped him back to his senses.

Part of the horde from the front entrance had, for whatever reason, decided to come and investigate what was going on back here, and what was going on was Alex was lying on the ground. All thirty or so of them lurched in his direction.

A torch lit up the concrete, moving around until it fell on him. On the fire escape above him, Alex saw Frobisher’s huge form leaning over the railing and staring down at him, a pistol in his right hand. They looked at each other and Alex knew he was about to die. Frobisher wouldn’t leave it to the eaters to finish him off. Boot’s lackey would make sure he was dead.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but Alex felt no fear at his imminent death. His one regret was that he wouldn’t be taking Boot with him.

He counted five seconds.

What was Frobisher waiting for?

The sound of gunfire erupted from the direction of the front of the building. Frobisher turned and went back inside, leaving Alex wondering what had just happened.

The first eater to reach him snapped him back to the danger he was still in. He scrambled backwards on the ground, feeling for his spiker in his pocket. The eater, a rotund man with a strip of hair around the periphery of its otherwise bald head, dropped to its knees beside him. As the eater grasped his leg, Alex clutched the spiker and pulled it out, plunging the tip into the side of its head. It collapsed across him, its weight shoving him flat onto his back.

Pinned beneath the man’s bulbous body, Alex struggled to free his arms as more eaters closed in. Another sound came from the front of the hotel, a sound that made him pause and then struggle even harder. A helicopter engine.

The rest of the eaters were uncomfortably close. Alex managed to pull his left hand out and pushed frantically against the body on top of him.

The beam of a torch swept over the crowd. A shot rang out. The eater closest to him fell.

With difficulty, he freed his right arm and shoved the body aside as more bullets ripped into the horde. More than half of them were down now, the rest moving away from him. The gunfire stopped. There was a flurry of activity by the far corner of the building as the rest of the eaters fell one by one.

Finally, a lone figure was left standing. It disappeared back around the building for half a minute or so during which time Alex sat up and took stock of all the new pain in the various parts of his body. When the figure returned it walked towards him, the beam of a torch lighting its way until it reached him and put one hand on its hip.

Alex squinted up. “Boot?”

Micah kept the torch focused on the ground between them. “Gone. You okay?”

Alex hauled himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his arm and, well, everywhere else. “More or less.”

“Feel up to a tirade about how stupid coming here by yourself was and that you’ve ruined what chance we had of stopping Boot before he got to Sarcester and you could have got yourself killed?”

“Not really.” Boot was gone and Alex had failed. Again.

“Good, because at this time of night when I’ve had to wake up just to rescue you from somewhere you shouldn’t have been in the first place, I’m not in the mood to shout. So we’ll just imagine I’ve made my point in a forceful yet succinct manner and you are suitably chastised and apologetic. Just to warn you though, Dent- probably
is
in the mood to shout.”

Micah turned away and headed back around the corner. After finding his pistol lying in the grass a few feet away, Alex trudged after him.

In the car park in front of the hotel, Dent and three of the soldiers were clustered around the APV. Ridgewell and Rick were further away, slowly sweeping torches back and forth over the ground where the helicopters had been parked.

As soon as Dent saw Alex, she strode over to him.

“What the
hell
was
that
?” she yelled.

Alex walked past her. “Don’t. I’m not in the mood.”

“Not in the
mood
? You seemed to be in the mood to go off on your own on some half-arsed mission and destroy any chance we had. Now, thanks to you, we can’t track Boot and he can just do whatever he wants and we won’t have a clue.”

Alex stopped and faced her. “What do you mean, you can’t track Boot?”

“You coming here must have tipped him off to the trackers. They didn’t move when he left. They’re still here somewhere.”

Alex looked back at Ridgewell and Rick still searching the ground then closed his eyes, letting out a long breath.

“You may have just signed your friends’ death warrants.”

Alex knew she was right, and it made him angry. “I took a calculated risk and it almost paid off,” he shouted. “I had him.”

“You lost him.”

Alex turned away, fuming. He’d had Boot. He’d had his hands on him. If he’d been seconds quicker...

“Alex...” Micah began.

“
What
?” he yelled.

Micah raised his eyebrows. Alex huffed out a breath and looked away.

“Your hands,” Micah said.

Alex looked down at his hands. For the first time, he noticed the blood from a myriad of cuts from the window glass he’d landed in when he jumped from Boot’s room. One particularly large gash had sliced open his palm and was still oozing. His t-shirt and jeans were streaked red.

“I almost had him,” Alex said quietly. “I had my hand around his neck. If I’d just squeezed...”

He trailed off, staring at the blood without seeing it. Why hadn’t he killed Boot as soon as he had the chance?

“Come on,” Micah said, “there’ll be a first aid kit inside.”

“Found them,” Ridgewell called.

At dawn they headed back to the bridge.

With having to divert off the main road several times to avoid hordes, it took them three hours. Alex was glad of the time alone inside his helmet. The last thing his sullen mood wanted was any kind of social interaction.

As he and Micah drove side by side with the APV and Lamborghini following, the events in Boot’s hotel room played themselves over and over in his head. He’d had his hand on his throat. One quick squeeze and it would have all been over, just a bit more pressure and Boot’s neck would have snapped.

Alex went through it for what felt like the thousandth time, examining every moment of the memory. Did he hesitate to take a life, even Boot’s? What if the opportunity arose again? Would the same thing happen? Could he really not kill the man who had destroyed so many lives? Who had taken Hannah’s life?

Despite all the eaters whose lives he’d ended, Alex had never thought of himself as a killer. Now he needed to become one. It wasn’t enough to be physically strong, he needed to be mentally tough too. He couldn’t afford to fail again.

They found an abandoned house close to the bridge, moved in, and set up patrols along the length of road between there and Bury St Edmunds. Early the following day, Collins and Dent radioed that they’d spotted the helicopters gathering a horde. It was already tens of thousands strong, and growing. Boot was marching them along the A14. Unlike Alex, Micah and the others, he didn’t have to circle around the eaters loitering on the road; he simply added them to his own.

There was a small possibility that Boot would take another route, but it was unlikely. His eaters would have to cross the river to reach Sarcester and the bridge was the quickest way to do that. Boot wouldn’t know it had been damaged until he got there, and then it would be too late.

So Dent and Collins returned to the house and for the next twenty-four hours they cleaned weapons, refuelled at a nearby petrol station, planned their strategy, and waited for the horde to arrive.

The destroyed bridge was their first and best defence. Boot’s horde would never reach the city if their plan worked.

And Alex was going to do anything it took to make sure it did.

. . .

Listening to the approaching horde was a slightly surreal experience. Thousands of pairs of feet shuffling on asphalt. It was a sound not dissimilar to rushing water, the kind of thing that came on CDs with rainforests on the covers.
Relax to the soothing sound of eaters
.

There were no moans. Lately Alex had noticed that the eaters were confining their moaning to when they were either gathered into a group for some swaying and bonding time, or chasing down some poor unfortunate prey. Somehow he preferred it when they were simply moaning all the time. It made them easier to hear coming. The change in behaviour also gave the impression that they might be doing, or not doing, things intentionally.

The last thing they needed was for eaters to start
thinking
.

As the sound of the helicopters overrode the moving eaters, Alex and Micah moved back under the roof of the petrol station forecourt where their bikes were hidden. The radio attached to Micah’s belt crackled.

“Micah?” It was Ridgewell.

Micah unclipped the radio. “’Sup?”

“You in position?”

“Ready and waiting. What can you see?”

“The front of the horde is about half a mile from you. One of Boot’s choppers is hanging back with it and the other is almost to you. You should see it any second. Looks like it’s scouting ahead, so they’re going to realise the bridge is out pretty soon. We can’t see the third at all. It doesn’t look like they’ve spotted any of us.”

“Alright, we’ll head out as soon as the chopper heads back from the bridge, try to get the horde coming after us before they get a chance to use their pheromones. Can you keep them distracted?”

“No problem. Good luck.”

Micah smiled. “When you’re as good as us, you don’t need luck.”

Ridgewell laughed. “You two seem to run on luck.”

“Nah, we just give that impression,” Alex said. “In reality we always have everything meticulously planned.”

Micah erupted into quiet laughter.

“Yeah, right,” Ridgewell said. “We’ll see you on the other side.”

“Use the Force, Ridge,” Alex said, doing his best Alec Guinness impersonation.

Ridgewell’s laughter was the last thing they heard before the radio shut off. The deep rumbling buzz of a helicopter took its place.

“Here it comes,” Micah said.

A tree crested hill rose half a mile along the road. At a bend in the road and with a good view in both directions, it was where the soldiers and their APV were hidden. Alex followed Micah’s gaze to see one of Boot’s black helicopters appear over the rise, oblivious to those hidden there, and fly towards them. They watched it pass overhead and continue on towards the bridge, following the line of the road.

Alex looked back along the road. “And here
they
come.”

The first few eaters appeared at the corner. Within seconds the horde spanned the entire road on both sides of the central reservation, a surging mass of eaters so big Alex’s brain had trouble processing what his eyes were seeing. Minutes passed as the huge crowd approached and still the back end of the horde hadn’t come into view.

“There’s so many,” Micah said after a while, sounding as stunned as Alex felt. “How on earth can we fight that?”

Alex couldn’t begin to guess how many there were, but there was no doubt Sarcester would be overrun. If they couldn’t stop them here, no-one would stand a chance.

“Why so many?” Micah said. “He doesn’t need nearly this amount of eaters to come after us. Half, a quarter of that number would have been more than enough.”

“Two birds, one stone,” Alex said absently, his mind on the task ahead and how they were going to make this work. “He’s probably using it as a chance to put his pheromones through their paces. If he’s going to sell the virus, he needs to know the whole thing will work. I imagine the kind of people who would buy it wouldn’t be too forgiving if it was faulty.”

“We have to stop him,” Micah said. “No-one should be able to do this.”

A second helicopter was hovering above the crowd and Alex couldn’t help wondering where the third was. The sound of the first returning drew his attention.

“They must have seen the bridge,” he said, watching it fly back towards the horde.

“Then that’s our cue,” Micah replied, pulling on his helmet and climbing onto his bike. “Let’s get this over with before I piss myself.”

They waited for the helicopter to pass them, and when it was almost back to the horde they rode out from the cover of the petrol station.

The eaters leading the crowd were now no more than a hundred yards away. Alex and Micah pulled onto the road and stopped, shouting to get their attention. Not that they needed to. The familiar moaning began almost immediately. Those in the horde that could, broke into a lurching jog. Those that couldn’t followed as fast as they were able. But it didn’t matter that they weren’t all moving at the same speed; the general consensus among the eaters was that the two men were food and that was good enough.

As Alex and Micah pulled off, both helicopters apparently realised what was happening and started towards them. Seconds later, gunfire blasted through the sound of eater moans. Alex glanced back to see both helicopters peel away under a barrage from the APV’s fifty calibre gun, leaving Alex and Micah to continue leading the eaters towards the bridge.

One helicopter headed in the direction of the trees where the APV was hidden, but swerved away when it came under fire. They seemed reluctant to risk damage, so far from home and in the middle of probably the biggest eater horde ever to exist. Alex guessed Boot was less concerned about endangering the lives of his subordinates than they themselves were.

Alex’s nose started to itch despite the anti-histamines he’d taken earlier. They were using the fake pheromones. But with the eaters already fixated on him and Micah, it wasn’t working, which was what they were counting on.

It took them ten minutes to lead the horde almost to where the road broke away from the land and began its climb onto the arc of the bridge. Ten minutes of being trailed by tens of thousands of ravenous eaters, not to mention the threat of the well armed helicopters ever present. It wasn’t the most relaxing ten minutes Alex had ever spent. By the time they reached the unsurfaced farm track they were heading for, his nervous tension was through the roof.

It was the last place they could get off the road with their bikes before being trapped on the damaged bridge. Trees at the entrance to the track and a slight bend in the main road hid them from the pursuing horde as they turned off onto the compacted dirt surface.

Once through the small wooded area, the track climbed a low hill on the edge of an arable field overlooking the river. Alex and Micah stopped to look back at the road over the tops of the trees. As they’d hoped, the horde was continuing to follow the main road. From their vantage point, Alex could just see the bombed out gap in the span of the bridge. He couldn’t see the group of people on the far side waiting to coax the eaters over the edge, but he knew they were there.

“Are they slowing down?” Micah said, frowning.

Alex moved his eyes back to the horde. As he watched, those in the lead, the runners, slowed to a walk and then stopped. The next wave bunched up behind them. Bit by bit, the entire huge horde came to a halt. There was some aimless shuffling and moaning, but none of the eaters were moving up the bridge.

“It’s not working,” Alex said. “We have to do something.”

“Like what?”

Before Alex could answer, one of the helicopters swooped in from wherever they’d been hiding, crossing the back end of the horde. A door opened and one of the guns they used to launch the fake pheromone cartridges extended from inside. Alex heard shots from the APV and the chopper flew away again, but the damage had been done. Without any people to lure them forward, the horde began to turn and shuffle back the way they’d come.

“No,” Alex said under his breath. “This has to work.”

Flipping his visor down, he started his bike.

“What are you doing?” Micah said, alarmed.

“I’m going to get them onto that bridge. You go to the boat. I’ll meet you there.”

Micah leaned across and grasped his arm. “But what are you going to do?”

“I have a plan. I’m going to get them to follow me again.” He shook Micah’s hand off and waved his arm at him in a ‘go away’ gesture. “Just go. I’ll be fine.”

“No, wait, Alex...”

He didn’t wait to hear what Micah was going to say. Making a u-turn on the dirt track, Alex sped back the way they’d come, hoping Micah didn’t follow him.

Back at the road, the horde had already gone a hundred yards and was moving away from him. Alex stopped, jumped off his bike and ran towards the eaters, yelling. Most of them ignored him, but a few, those rebels who didn’t blindly follow the smell, stopped walking and turned to look at him. He waved his arms, shouting louder. Around fifty eaters started towards him.

“That’s right!” he yelled. “Come on, you know you want me!”

The eaters picked up their pace, their moans becoming more enthused. They were downwind of him so he couldn’t smell the exact moment they started to exude their own natural food alert pheromones, but he could see it. Beginning with those nearest and travelling away from him in a ripple through the horde, every eater stopped and turned around.

Alex waved some more. It was all the encouragement they needed.

The entire horde surged forward, running, jogging and shuffling in his direction. From somewhere to his left, one of the helicopters flew towards him. Alex took a moment to very deliberately flip it off in such a way that they would clearly see, then he turned and ran.

He swung the rifle from his back as he sprinted for his bike. Halfway there he turned and fired at the approaching chopper. His aim wasn’t perfect, but this close it didn’t really matter. His bullets strafed the nose. At the same time, gunfire erupted from where his military buddies were hiding. The helicopter veered away without firing a shot.

“
Cowards
!” he screamed, just for the fun of it.

Then he turned and resumed his dash for the bike because the fastest eaters were so close he could almost feel their rancid breath on his face. Adrenaline flooding his veins, he almost laughed. The danger was exhilarating.

Reaching the bike, he leaped on and waited for the horde to catch up before driving off.

After the run and being chased by the helicopter, the stop and start journey onto the bridge, each time waiting for the horde to catch up before moving on again, felt anticlimactic.

As he passed entrance to the dirt track he saw Micah sitting on his bike some way along in the shadow of the trees. Alex saw him shake his head before he turned and drove away. Alex ignored a twinge of fear. This was the only way to get the eaters onto the bridge, so this was what he had to do.