Authors: Jack Lewis
19
The motorway seemed a lot more
expansive when you walked rather than drove. Alice hung at the back, stopping
every so often to rub her calves. Lou walked beside me and tapped her machete
against her shoulder as if she were pounding out a marching beat for us. Ben
was on my back, his arms around my neck and his legs around my waist. Alice
needed a break, and the kid had been slowing us down.
My anger toward Dan burnt with every
step I took, compounded by the weight of Ben on my back. For his sake I kept
the mutter of expletives in my head, stopped them from being verbalised.
“So why were you heading toward
Bury?” said Lou.
Ben’s legs slipped so I shifted my
weight. “We guessed Whittaker was going either there or Manchester, and there
was the chance that half a million infected were headed out of the city. Bury
seemed like the safest option.”
She shook her head. “Whittaker isn’t
one for safe options. For him, his work comes above everything.”
“What’s his line of work?”
“He was getting his Masters in
Medical biology. He’d just failed his second year exams when the outbreak hit.”
My leg ached under the strain of
Ben’s weight. I was going to have to put him down soon, but Alice didn’t look
ready to deal with him. She’d looked depleted ever since seeing the stalker in
the car park, and her fight with Lou.
“How do you know him, Lou?” I
said.
“It’s a whole story, a load of shit
that I don’t wanna talk about.”
We had covered most of the way to
Manchester in the car, so the walk into the city only took a few hours. We
weren’t heading into the centre, because anyone who went into the middle of the
city didn’t return. Instead, Lou was taking us to a university research
facility that was on the outskirts.
“It was Whittaker’s campus,” she
said. “He basically slept in the lab in his second year. No idea how he failed
his exams; he was obsessed with learning and knew more about the course than
the professor.”
Smoke drifted off the horizon, thick
grey plumes that rose into the air. I couldn’t make out what caused them but if
there was a fire, that meant there were people around. Maybe it was Whittaker.
As we got closer we saw a car smashed
against a lamp post, the bonnet engulfed in flames. I knew this car. I knew the
man who stood on a wall across from it, with a dozen infected straining to get
at him. The vein on my temple twitched. I wanted to walk away and leave Dan to
deal with the infected himself.
Ben stretched his hand out and
pointed. “Dan!” he said.
“We should just leave him,” said
Alice. Her voice was strained.
Stay with your mother,” I said, and
lowered Ben to the ground. Then I turned to Lou. “Are you up for this?”
Lou gripped her machete. “Is he worth
it?”
“Nobody deserves to die like that.”
Dan saw us when we got closer to the
car. At first he smiled when he thought that his rescue had arrived, but the
expression was quickly replaced by fear as an infected pulled itself onto the
wall. It straightened up and lurched toward him. Dan kicked his boot out, tried
to connect with the infected’s leg but missed. The wind blew a plume of black
smoke in his direction, and he covered his mouth and coughed.
A thick cloud of smoke drifted down
my throat. It blew into my eyes and made them sting. Lou pulled her hood over
her head.
Dan gave the infected another kick
and this time he connected, twisting its knee with a crunch. The infected fell
off the wall and into the crowd who waited below with their arms outstretched.
Dan fell back, put his hands out and managed to stay on the wall.
I reached the back of the crowd. I
lifted my knife and plunged it deep into the back of the head of the first
infected. Lou swiped her machete at another, cut through its neck tendons and
sent blood spraying out. The disturbance drew the attention of the crowd away
from Dan, and the faces of the undead turned to look at us.
I took a step back, gave myself room
to swing my knife. Lou grunted and buried her machete in the head of an old
infected woman, carving her skull open and revealing the rotted brain that sat
inside.
Dan jumped off the wall. He picked up
a brick, cried out and then brought it down on an infected’s head. We kept our
distance and let them come at us one at a time.
After stabbing my knife through the
fifth infected’s skull my hands were covered in thick blood that seeped into my
coat and made it smell like a butcher’s apron. Grey matter clung to the blade
of my knife and sweat poured down my forehead.
When the last one dropped, I sank to
the floor. Exhaustion rushed through my limbs, sweat poured from my forehead
and into my eyes and compounded the stinging of the smoke.
Dan threw his brick to the floor, and
leant against the wall. Lou wiped her machete on the jacket of a dead infected
and then slid it back into her belt.
Alice joined us. “Go sit with Kyle,”
she told Ben.
The boy ran over to me and sat down.
I blinked, tried to smile, but my eyes stung and my head pounded. Alice
walked up to Dan, her tiredness replaced by purposeful strides.
Dan looked up. “Alice, am I glad to-”
Alice cocked her arm and slammed it
into Dan’s nose. His head lurched back, hit the brick wall behind him, and a
mist of blood exploded from his face. He clutched his nose and groaned with
pain.
Alice brought her arm back again.
“Alice, don’t,” I said, but my legs
wouldn’t let me stand.
Lou stood and watched with her arms
folded. Dried blood was crusted around her knuckles, and a smear of crimson was
painted on her neck. The veins of her toned arms stuck out and sweat glazed
over her skin.
Alice threw another punch, smashed
Dan’s head back against the wall with a crack that made me wince. Dan fell to
the floor. He covered his face with his arms.
I willed my legs to work, fought
through exhaustion and got to my feet. My left leg throbbed so badly it was
like the bullet scar had re-opened.
“That’s enough Alice,” I said.
Her face was red from the blood that
pumped into it. Her features were twisted, almost bestial in her rage. She
pointed at Dan. “You selfish fucking prick!”
I put my hand on her shoulder and
squeezed. “Come on,” I said. “Go to Ben.”
Dan straightened up. He pulled his
hands away from his head. It looked like a red paintball had exploded in his
face. He wiped away a clot of blood, spreading it on the back of his hand.
I expected him to apologise or to
explain himself. I thought he would make up an excuse for taking the car.
Instead, the corners of his lips curled into a smile, but his eyes looked
wolf-like.
“You think you’re all so high and
mighty,” he said, his voice strained. “Did you know what kind of man your husband
was?”
Alice clenched her fists. “What does
Torben have to do with this?”
The grin spread wider. His words
became clearer. “Kyle killed him. Bet he hasn’t told you that yet.”
20
I led a fractured group to the
university lab, trusting Lou’s directions to get us there. Alice walked at the
back holding Ben’s hand. She didn’t talk to anybody, and instead focussed on
putting one foot in front of the other. Dan walked with his head hung and a
sorrowful look on his face. Maybe he felt guilty.
I had to decide what to do with him.
He couldn’t just get away with it; he had taken the car and abandoned us in the
Wilds. He could easily have been leaving us to die. I couldn’t condemn him to
death, but I couldn’t welcome him back into the group either. For now, my mind
was too fuzzy to make a decision.
I also needed to sort things out with
Alice. She knew I’d killed her husband, Torben Tusk, and understandably, the
news hadn’t sunk in well. Despite the fact she knew what kind of man he was,
hearing he was dead had upset her. I just wished I had told her the truth
earlier.
All of this would wait. We were so
close to finding Whittaker and Justin that everything else– broken
relationships, punishments, decisions – would have to wait until we got Justin
back.
“It’s down here,” said Lou, and
turned us away from the street.
The science lab looked like it had
been built in the seventies. The grey stone walls were decades overdue a power
wash. The face was covered in windows, some of which were single-glazed and
others double, and all of them were covered in a web of dust. We stopped at the
side door.
“You been here before?” I said.
Lou nodded. “I’d come and meet him
after class sometimes.”
“Where is he likely to be?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Probably
one of the practice labs on the first floor.”
The rusty hinges of the door
screeched open. Inside the building our steps echoed from the stone floors and
bounced off the walls. The air smelt like damp mixed with dust, a combination
that added a thick layer of mucus to my nostrils. A staircase spiralled all the
way up to the tenth floor, the steps worn by years of footfall from thousands
of university students.
Lou held a hand out and stopped us.
“This was his lab.”
The first door was labelled Biology
Laboratory A1. We were so close to Justin now that I felt the valves of my
heart slam open and shut as it pumped blood around my body. Whatever was about
to happen, we weren’t leaving without him.
“You guys ready?” I said.
Dan blinked, Alice gave a grunt. Lou
held her machete in her hand and nodded.
I pushed the door open. A sour waft
of anti-septic solution wrinkled my nose. The science lab looked as up-to-date
as the rest of the building; it should have been overhauled fifty years ago.
The floor was covered in the shiny material usually found in hospitals. A
wooden rack of shelves held various glass beakers on one side of the room, and
on the other, a counter was pushed against the wall and a bank of microscopes
was set up with transparent petri-dishes next to them.
Whittaker stood in front of a
workbench at the far end of the room. Blood was smeared on the arms of his lab
coat, making him look more like a butcher than a scientist. The back line of
his hair was jagged from the poor haircut he had given himself. He was
engrossed in something on the worktop in front of him.
A long shape was in front of him, but
I couldn’t see what it was. The room was lit by a single light bulb that hung
in the centre and emitted weak rays that were drowned in the shadows. How could
he work like this?
“Whittaker,” I said.
His body jerked and he dropped
something. He span round, and his eyes widened when he saw us. He gathered some
control over his face, and he looked at each of us in turn as though he were
evaluating us. When he looked at Lou, the wideness returned.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
The tone of his voice was cold, but there was something about it I recognised.
“Told you I’d be back,” said Lou.
“Where have you been?”
His skin had the grey pallor of a man
who survived on just minutes of sunlight each day. His lab coat spilled over
his shoulders and arms and threatened to drown him. His fingers were thin and
knobbly, the fingers of a puppeteer. Underneath his lab coat, he wore black jeans
and a black t-shirt with “Black Sabbath” painted in red on the front.
I stepped forward. I felt the heat of
anger burning in my chest at the thought of what this man had done. He’d taken
Justin, which was bad enough, but I knew he hadn’t been the first. Who else had
he kidnapped? What had he done with them? What had he done with Justin?
Whittaker blinked at my approach and
shuffled back. I didn’t give him time to react. I strode forward until I was a
foot away, swung my fist and connected with his cheek. He lurched back and fell
into the worktop behind him. Then I saw what was on top of it.
It was Justin. His face was ice, his
eyes were closed. Tubes were connected to his wrists and neck, feeding liquid
into, or out of, his body. A monitor behind him showed a digital display of
numbers, but I didn’t know what they meant. He didn’t move, and I couldn’t see
him breathing.
Whittaker squirmed on the floor
beside me. I grabbed the collar of his lab coat and threw him into the centre
of the room. He stuck his hands out and stopped his fall.
I wrung my fists. Sweat poured down
my forehead. I couldn’t tell if Justin was alive or dead, but something was
wrong. What sick experiments had Whittaker been performing? My body tensed up,
my muscles quivered.
“Is he dead?” I asked, the words
burning my throat.
Whittaker put a hand next to him and
used it to support his weight as he stood up.
“Stay on the floor,” I said.
Alice stirred behind me. She walked
across the room to Justin’s body and picked up his arm. She pressed her thumb
into his wrist and closed her eyes.
“There’s a pulse,” she said.
I felt a tiny spark of relief, but it
quickly blew out. “What have you done to him?”
Whittaker crossed his hands in front
of him. “Your friend is part of something great. He’s helping me find a cure.”
Bile rose in my throat. “Helping you?
He doesn’t look like he’s doing much to help.”
Lou stood beside me. “Just what the
fuck is going on here, Whit?” she said.
Whittaker ran his hand through his
dark hair, sweeping back the greasy strands. “Didn’t think I’d see you again,
Lou.”
Lou looked toward Justin on the work
bench. Alice had her hand on his forehead now. Lou shook her head. “You’re
crazier than I thought.”
From the back of the room, Dan spoke.
“We’ve got the kid. Let’s take him and go.”
I shook my head. “We need to decide
what to do with him.”
Whittaker tried to stand again, and
the blood drained from his face.
“Sit down,” I said.
He lowered himself to the ground. His
lip quivered and his voice was strained.
“This was never personal; I have
nothing against you. I have to think above individuals and focus on the
species.”
I spoke through gritted teeth. “And
just what the hell does that mean?”
Whittaker put his hand in his pocket,
closed his palm around something.
“Take your hand out of your pocket,”
I said.
He pulled his hand out. “It means
that if I’m going to find a cure, people will have to die along the way.”