Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent (14 page)

             
“Heads up people,” Shaw warned quickly, “there’s got to be someone else in this area.”

             
“Not only that,” added Danniella urgently, “this doesn’t look like the place where he fell; someone propped him up like this and wired up the mp3 player.”

             
Benton spat onto the floor, “I’m no psychiatrist, but I’m guessing that this is not the behaviour of the mentally healthy.”

             
All eyes went to the door, but then a slurred voice from behind them whispered, “Wait, I can explain, please don’t shoot.”

             
They all whirled round to see the corpse, hands raised, eyes glassy and dead.”

             
Acting on pure instinct Benton smacked the butt of his rifle into the creature’s face.  The body spasmed and one ear of the headphones slipped out of place.

             
The corpse continued to twitch on the floor, its hands seeming to struggle to put the headphones back around its ears.

Danniella walked forward.

             
“Step back Miss!” Ordered Benton, his gun levelling to the creature’s head.

             
“Wait!” She shouted, and before the soldiers could react she bent down and placed the headphone squarely over the corpse’s ears.

             
“Wait!”  She said again. “This could be what we need...”

*   *   *

Five minutes later, Danniella and the two soldiers were sitting in a circle with a dead scientist wearing headphones.  Privates Benton and Shaw kept their guns pointed at the scientist, as he began to speak in a voice that was both slightly slurred and rasping, “You know that the zombies are a medical experiment gone wrong?  It’s nanotechnology trying to rebuild brain cells.  But it doesn’t quite work properly.”

             
“You’re kidding?” Private Benton’s voice dripped with sarcasm, “I’d never have realised that it didn’t quite work properly.”

             
Danniella ignored the interruption, “But you have found a cure, you are still sentient: can we fix them all?”

             
“Sorry, don’t build your hopes up.  I died with the signal in my ears.  Once anyone’s dead too long the brain cells are too far gone.”

             
He hesitated; Danniella could tell he was debating with himself whether he should tell them more.

             
“Go on.”

             
“It’s not
really
working on me either.”

             
“What?”

             
Suddenly the soldiers’ guns, which had been slowly lowered into their laps were once again levelled at the head of the talking zombie.

             
“My brain isn’t working anything like it used to.  I’m losing memory, losing fine motor skills, and a few days ago I lost the ability to write.”  He motioned apologetically at the notebooks that surrounded him on the floor, “I can’t do any more work, I just keep looking over what I’ve already done.”

             
“And,” he tapped the headphones, “when the music stops, I lose my humanity.”

             
Danniella placed a hand on his shoulder.  He was cold to the touch.

             
“It’s the darkness and hunger.  I can feel them growing inside me.”

             
The soldiers did not lower their weapons.

             
“So who are you?  Are we fighting back?”  The scientist looked at the military uniforms of Danniella’s escorts.

             
There was a long silence.

             
“Yes,” said Danniella eventually, “we’re fighting back.”  Looking into the scientists dead eyes she decided that she should be economical with the truth. “The Government is back in charge, but there’s still a long road ahead, and your research could guarantee victory.”

             
“Good.  I have the frequency that helps the nanites do their job, so I think it’s only a short step to finding out how to stop them working altogether.”

             
Danniella nodded.

             
“It’ll kill me for good, of course, but I’d rather that than a slow slide, brain cell by brain cell into zombiedom.”

*   *   *

So began Danniella’s research into nanite disabling frequencies.

             
Privates Benton and Shaw set about the task of securing the whole complex, which had been divided into several sealed areas as part of its containment protocols.

             
The zombies were fast, vicious and felt no pain, but they were also unthinking eating machines, so would stick their heads through a gap in a door regardless of how many of their kind had already tried it and had their heads bashed to pieces.

             
The soldiers were trying to save ammunition for an emergency situation.  They both felt that keeping an infected scientist with them made an emergency situation an inevitability.

             
Once the base was secure they needed something to do, so they decided to explore the labyrinthine underground network.

             
The laboratory was built in a disused underground station, and an old but extremely solid metal door led to the disused platform.  From the platform there was access to an extensive network of tunnels.

             
It was quite possible that the whole area was crawling with zombies.  It was also possible that if the trains had stopped running before the Apocalypse got fully underway there could be a huge network of relatively safe tunnels.

             
It was risky, but everything was risky these days.  The soldiers tooled up and found torches and spare batteries.  They tied a torch onto each of their guns, and another was taped to their helmets.

             
“I wish we had some flares.”  Benton looked nervously at the torches. “Flares don’t make us the centre of attention.”

             
“Well, at least the light is directional.”

             
Despite his misgivings, Benton was pleased to be getting away from “Frankenstein” as he had christened the scientist.

             
The cadets had been locked away in their training centre for months.  Having successfully navigated into the centre of London they now felt a fresh wave of confidence that the Apocalypse was something they could survive.  With cold, hard gunmetal in their hands they felt invincible.

             
This confidence lasted till they opened the steel door to the underground network, when their torches suddenly seemed puny in the absolute darkness of deep underground.

             
Benton, aware of the change in mood whispered, “Wait here for a moment; give your eyes chance to adjust.”

             
They peered into the blackness, and slowly the shape of the tunnel, rails and pipes appeared as their sight adapted.

             
They waited a full five minutes before setting off.  They decided to go south towards the nearest station.

             
Benton was nervous and excited. “There were shops in some of these stations.  I would love a Mars Bar.”

             
“Mmm,” Shaw licked her lips, “or a Toblerone.”

             
“Aww, now you’re just talking dirty!”

             
They edged their way into the darkness, chatting softly though enthusiastically, while their eyes scanned every new shape and curve of the tunnel that appeared through the murk.

             
They occasionally saw movement along the ground, and tiny, glinting eyes reflecting in their torch beams.

             
“Rats,” explained Benton, “nothing to control them any more, and lots of rotten meat lying around.”

             
“Do you think they could get infected?”

             
Benton felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the thought. “If they can we are well and truly fucked.”

             
“Comforting!” said Private Shaw.

             
“But,” continued Benton, “we haven’t seen any infected animals.  More than likely this thing is a human disease.”

             
“Let’s just hope you’re right.”

             
“Mind you, although rats may not
catch
the infection they could still
carry
the infection if they’ve been eating infected meat; you know, if they had zombie blood between their teeth.”

             
They carried on in silence, and now every rat they saw or sensed, or felt against their boots made them anxious.

             
After walking for almost twenty minutes they paused.

             
“Is this wise?”  Private Shaw was starting to feel even more stressed.

             
“I don’t know, but it didn’t seem wise to hang out with blondie and Doctor Frankenstein either.  It’s the lesser of two clusterfucks.”

             
“I know what you mean,” Private Shaw shivered, “that guy makes the creeps feel like warm fuzzies.”

             
“Fucking ‘freak’ doesn’t cover it!”

             
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Shaw pondered, “ becoming one of those things and totally losing your mind instantly, or slowly becoming one of those things piece by bloody piece.”

             
“We should have shot the fucker when we found him.”

             
“You did club him.”

             
Benton chuckled, “Yeah, but a bullet through the head would’ve been better.”

             
“This is one sick world we live in.”

             
“Always was babe, always will be.”  Benton hefted his rifle as he spoke.

             
“Yeah, but this… this, is a whole new level of shit.”

             
“Maybe, but at least we’re not down here to die for oil prices.”

             
“What’s it they say about cynics, Benton?”

             
“That they have the best sense of humour?”

             
“Fuck!”

             
They both heard it at the same time.  Footsteps.  Running footsteps.  Lots of them.

             
Instantly, they both turned their guns and helmet-mounted torches in the direction of the noise, clicking off their weapons’ safety-catches.

             
An underground railway station took form ahead of them, and dark silhouettes were hurling themselves off the platform onto the tracks, heading straight for them.

             
Mixed with the noise of footsteps was the sinister sound of snarling and rasping.

             
“Fuck!” shouted Shaw, “There’s too many of them!”

             
She sprayed bullets into the oncoming crowd at head level.

             
Explosions of wet meat caught the torchlight.  Shaw flashed a grim smile as she brought down the front row of zombies.  But there were more: many more, who stumbled over the bodies of their fallen comrades and continued their charge.

             
She felt a hand on her shoulder.  She spun, almost firing before realising that it was Benton.

             
“It’s no good, we gotta run.”

             
Private Shaw emptied the rest of her magazine into the crowd, and turned to sprint away.

             
They had one grenade.  Benton pulled the pin and rolled it towards the dark shapes.

             
There was a pause, a flash, then a deafening bang.  In the narrow tunnel the blast was concentrated in both directions.  The rush of hot air pushed the soldiers forward, off their feet into the dirt and clinker in the tunnel.

             
Their ears were ringing, and as Shaw’s torch beam caught Benton’s face she could see that he was shouting something, but couldn’t hear a thing.  She hoped he wasn’t calling for help as she staggered to her feet and ploughed on.

             
Benton had fallen awkwardly.  He had felt something snap just below his knee. 

             
“No, no, no, no, no!”  He screamed in frustration.  He knew his leg was broken.